This is a funny numbers game. CO2 is far from the worst greenhouse gas, so all these people posting their reactions about Americans and their big suv's, cars whatever, need to look more closely at which gases cause the most greenhouse effects, and where these gases come from.

You can fit me into the "greenhouse deniers" if you like, but I'm suspicious of pretty much all the data that is surrounding this issue -- there is too much money to be made on "popular" science like this for there to be any real hope of getting sound scientific data right now...

I've also yet to hear anyone make a reasonable sounding proposal to make any positive changes, its always up in the air stuff like "We all need to hold hands and plant trees and drive less" -- that's absurd. Lowering pollution is a good idea whatever the effects on temperature so I'm all for this goal, but to actually get to the point of seriously damaging the economy and lives we've all come to like living isn't going to happen and shouldn't. These are scientific issues and probably have scientific solutions.

People seem to want impossible things on this issue. Hippies are an illogical group of people who work solely in knee-jerk reactions and boogey-man scare tactics, they just complain without making much sense. Coal power bad, but nuclear is bad too! Damn, these goes our safest and best way to generate power. It all has to be hippie-power, hydro and solar. Yeah, well, if that worked then why wouldn't they use it, they can fleece us on power bills with solar or hydro just as easily as coal or nuke.

I don't see a lot of logic and reason with this entire issue.

I'm Canadian. I'm also a conservative. I consider Obama to be a right wing politician. I don't think the US has any left-wing politicians that I know of. The difference is that definitions of left and right wing really vary per country. If Obama was a Canadian politician, he'd probably be fairly normal for a conservative here. To us, both the American political parties appear right wing... I actually have trouble telling them apart aside from a few talking points -- the philosophy that the parties claim to follow doesn't seem to have much in common with their actions.

It kind of sounds like I'm attacking your political system here, btw, and maybe I am a little bit but you should feel free to attack ours back -- its all bullshit up here too :)

Back in the old days running multi-desktops on my linux machines I got confused about how information related to one screen or another all the time because it didn't have fancy animations.

Oh wait no I didn't.

This sounds like nonsense to me, an indicator telling me which screen I'm on is fine. Animations are fun and neat to look at it -- they make the experience a bit more pleasant but to suggest they actually make anyone more productive sounds like bogus research and marketing to me.

Your totally right!

GPE was actually really cool. The KDE-alike one was sweet too, IIRC it ran entirely on framebuffer. I don't recall it being slower than GPE though. I forget what it was called, someone here probably knows. Both where actually very useful and very cool. I fondly recall running kismet and such on my old ipaq back in the day. A few of its apps ended up on my n810, but that device never really got anywhere either.

In a perfect world, I'd just ditch android (which is ok... but..) and run Debian or something on the phone -- but with all the hardware and functionality working as well as it does on my desktop.

OK, that was way to much for the computing power of that era, and way too little money. But that was a pretty cool idea. Even if there where no real computers, it looked like a pretty sweet place to hang out. One of those cool ideas that was just too early.

Cheers for the neat link, I hadn't heard of that before.

Now, this is making sense. Because its true.

People often ask me about my anti-Apple attitude (or anything really restrictive) and when I explain to them that they've bought something that don't actually really posses complete control over it they are usually understanding. I don't press my opinion in a "the world is ending soon because of..." sort of way. I explain the truth, that there is a trend for that type of activity and I'd like to see it reversed.

In my experience, most people imagine that they "own" something when they purchase it. When they understand that they don't own their iPad in the same way they own their car or their house, they do understand why thats a bad thing *even if they lack of the technical knowledge to take advantage of it*. I don't think most people are quite so stupid as people often assume here. Its just that technology isn't something they think about on a regular basis, accountants probably think many people are stupid because they have bad accounting practices in their lives.

People don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to rent a thing. When you explain how all of this ties into planned obsolescence and other market strategies they can become quite offended at the idea. Owning a device you are free to operate fully means you can replace it on your own terms, not artificial ones (say, from lack of software updates).

So yes, the poster above is correct. Users absolutely do want freedom, they just don't immediately put together the reasons why they do.

Whats the point of this crap? Are you seriously going to walk around talking to your damn phone? You look like a moron just talking to someone on a bluetooth headset and thats at least practical for some things. Now Apple thinks whats really the next cool looking is jabbering to your phone and not even to someone on the other end. Google could have pretty easily passed on this one, trust me, the shine of "look at me talk to my phone" is going to wear off pretty fast when you actually try to use it in public somewhere.

For centuries humans have used talking-to-objects as a quick and easy way to identify the crazy people. Its going to take a long time for that particular bit of practicality to lose its meaning.

Stupid copy of a stupid idea.

Talk about MISSING THE POINT.

Missing the Point has a new name its "SoupIsGoodFood_42".

Since your running a little late here I'll help out. The general concensus is that its lame that Apple thinks it should be able to tell you how to theme your own phone, because once you bought the thing, it should be yours to do with as you please.

Thats a continuing problem with Apple in general, Steve Jobs seems to think he still owns the shit he sells people. I'm pretty well known as an Apple h8r going long back, and I'm still shocked at how Apple fanboys not only find this defensible, but GOOD.

Apple fanboys are completely, utterly, insane.

Totally true. I bought an EEE 901 when they first came out. Realistically, the brand new netbooks haven't changed at all, there is no point to my upgrading. I even look around frequently to see if there is any nice upgrades that I might like -- nope. Nothing worth upgrading to!

Just ditch the MS and they run fine anyway.

More than this, you can now easily put a 2D barcode on your business card so it can be scanned into a phone quickly and easily. I'm a entrepreneur and I wouldn't be without my business cards. Nerds might think they are outdated, but nerds aren't the usual people that you do business with. A lot of this sounds like the sort of tech-snobbery that losses sales to more pleasant people. They are also perfect for writing short notes on too.

No, business cards are very important. There are also legal reasons for keeping a business card on you as well.

Great,

Now we have beer... if you open up a Tim Hortons up there somewhere, we Canadians can come too!

Here is an idea, try and learn to concentrate. Whining that you got bad marks because the guy ahead of you had a screen saver that distracted you is amoung the more pathetic excuses I've heard. If you can't use a computer because you can't keep your sorry ass out of facebook or whatever then thats your problem.

Its extremely annoying when losers try to make things that are generally their problem, everyone elses problem too. Thats all thats going on here, so, move along...

So... whats "STOP" in Klingon? Patent time baby!

Huh? Anyone know how much this is in Space Shuttle Explosions?

So, lets throw some fairly complex software at some people for a day and see how they do. Surprise! They prefer the stuff they've been using *since they know how to use it*. Just throwing a piece of software at someone doesn't mean they know how to use it. Fuck, if they managed to get that newspaper out at all, then that means the free software was so efficient and easy to use, a bunch of people who've never used it before could get the job done with it.

It seems the whole point of these stupid exercises is just for retards to justify how much they've spent on expensive proprietary crap.