Wow!

The FSF finally discovered FreebSD?

will they be switching over for their internal use?

hmm. How about

ALL WAYMO
[picture of mushroom cloud]
INITIATE
SELF DESTRUCT.

I've been there.

I was so frustrated that I taped my banana to the wall!

It doesn't end there in medicine either. The American Board of Medical Specialties has basically set up an illegal guild in this country. After you finish residency and get licensed, every state in the Union recognizes that you are fit to practice. But the ABMS wormed its way into all sorts of organizations and basically acts as the mob of the medical world. You have to jump through their hoops, buy their material for thousands of dollars, take a test the one time a year they give it and pay even more thousands of dollars, and when you walk in to take the test you have to sign a nondisclosure agreement and another contract acknowledging that passing or failing the test doesn't demonstrate competence.

If you pass, you get to pay them ongoing protection money and do other busywork bullshit. If you fail, you take it again, but then they put a time limit on it after which you lose your eligibility to take the test and have to go through what amounts to a reeducation program. Last I checked, one involved a nonrefundable $12,500 application fee, a mandatory trip across the country for some kind of in-person medical exam or something, and then the doctor had to find his own "preceptor" for six months of nonsense.

Anyone who holds the certification has to "maintain" it by spending ongoing thousands of dollars every year.

These vampires wormed their way into the American medical system such that if you don't pay them the protection money, they effectively stop you from practicing. They wormed their way into hospital bylaws, for example. And that isn't counting the numerous organizations that won't hire anyone who isn't "board certified" but they don't care what you're "board certified" in. (In other words, they don't care if you're certified in Family Practice, Pediatrics, Dermatology, or Left Toe Specialty.)

Unions can be great if they are handled. But we have to be careful that the unions don't get out of control and effectively turn against the people they're supposedly protecting.

By the way, though it isn't a union, did you know that the American Medical Association only represents 12-15% of practicing doctors in the United States? They inflate their numbers by giving away free memberships to medical students and residents. They also engage in some grimy behaviors such as sending unmarked envelopes to what they think is your practice address and having the membership dues look like it's a bill even if you've never been a member. I guess they hope that your office manager will get it and just pay it.

Good to know, thanks. I find that thumb-based trackballs give me tendonitis pretty quickly, so I think I would have to use the M505. But I would think most of the highlights you mentioned for the M501 would likely apply to it as well.

> Here 25 years later, the market is flooded with
>"compact SUVs" essentially the same as the
>Aztek, and just as ugly.

That's not fair.

The modern ones don't even *approach* the Aztec's level of ugliness! But they *are* painfully bland.

the first time I saw an Aztec, my immediate reaction was surprise that AMC was making cars again. It didn't occur to me that anyone else could make something so hideous!

Their M505 looks like a reasonable alternative. I'll give it a spin sometime, thanks.

I prefer my caffeine intranasal, transcutaneous, or in the form of concentrated 300mg cans that I can chug.

worse.

They were forced to eat a bland cereal that turned soggy before the milk even hit it!

> Most of the very populated parts of Norway don't get too cold,

methinks that we have very different notions of "too cold" . . .

("Above" and "below" should never be part of a temperature!)

hawk

that, or you might be eaten by someone who identifies as a cat . . .

>A regular bank can't magic up $1M out of thin air,

uhmm . . . historically, this is *exactly* where paper money comes from, and why they are called "banknotes"!

Banks issued paper notes promising to pay the bearer a sum of money (i.e., an amount of gold or silver) upon presentation. This was a matter of convenience, the paper being easier to haul about. This led to the practice al matter that a bank could issue more paper than it held money, as long as it was careful enough not to issue so much that too much would come in to redeem.

This isn't fundamentally difference than the practice of lending deposits back out to other borrowers (which is generally how this new money created by the banking system was disbursed, anyway).

In time, government stepped in to regulate how much a bank cold lend in this manner (reserve requirement).

Until WWII, the majority of the paper money in the US was *not* issued by the government, but by banks and some other companies (e.g., Railroads printed $2.40 bills, as $2.40 was a common fare).

Even today, some cites print a local currency, generally (universally) backed 1:1 by federal money. It circulates and shows the effects of buying locally as these local bills start showing up in cash registers. (In the same vein, the US Navy used to deal with local discontent and calls for removing bases of rowdy sailors by paying in $2 bills. Once merchants noticed just how much of their registers were full of that uncommon note, attitudes changed quickly!)

The federal government has the exclusive power to coin money--but this means coining metal; it doesn't stop states or other entities from printing paper money.

doc hawk, displaced economics professor

As long as Logitech brings back their Trackman Marble trackball, they can do whatever they want with their board of directors.

Martha Stewart bakes bread...on Mars!

Do those even exist anymore?