Technically, Iranians are Caucasian. So if you must bracket this with race and not nationality as the story describes, then it would be "racist white guy does something stupid to someone just because they're white."

OPEC only has so much control, and they're not united in their controls. They don't control demand, which has fluctuated wildly lately. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has been quite reticent in their controls and have been flooding the market as long as it makes them money. The anti-US contingent in OPEC would love to pull back production but the countries that actually make a profit aren't biting.

Obvious email address harvester...

I had to say the same thing. $500 laptop with a numeric keypad, as an accounting geek I love it. I've also seen the Sony Vaio, but for cheap you want to go Toshiba.

Ah, I see. Thousands of econonomists over time have said you can't cut your way to profits, but if it gets repeated in one article you read, we're all just parrots. Specious logic, much?

I'm sure your bombastic speeches impress everyone lacking the ability to differentiate between capitalism, cronyism, oligarchism, and corporate fascism.

I'm a capitalist, but not a 1 percenter, and I say that you can't cut your way to profitability.

How does that affect your prediction?

When it comes to media, even with SMART your drives will work 'till they die, and there's no way to predict that with a test.

Given that, your best option is to ensure that the drives are performing as expected. I've found many a faulty drive with IOZONE.

http://www.iozone.org/

This story includes malware. Happy I have antivirus, and a system that can't run .exe's.

"Communist" China is no more. China is state run capitalism.

I agree with you on the SysV part but I think that, at least at first, package management should be avoided. I think it's important for people to understand what's going on behind the package management, i.e. configuring and make-ing everything, make targets, etc. I started with Slackware too, and learned a great deal of knowledge that I wouldn't have if I had started with RedHat / Gentoo / Ubuntoo.

And yes, I realize that you can build your own from source on any of those, but with Slackware you're somewhat more forced to.

Man I wish I had mod points right now. This needs more visibility. The Europeans like paying 60% taxes on their energy costs because it makes them feel so smug and superior, then criticize any other country that doesn't follow their social engineering plan.

Actually, I don't reconcile monthly either and I don't get statements. But Quicken downloads my cleared transactions and my balance, and then reconciles the account for me, whenever I hit that download button, every week or so. It includes more than just checks (which I also don't write any more), it reconciles all my electronic transactions. Which I want to do, at least for now, because that's the only sure way I can tell if someone tries to hack my account.

Man I've been steaming about the new splash screen on Quicken. It used to be switchable, now with 2011 it's not. And it sits there for minutes, locked on top and not letting you do anything else. I use Quicken for one reason and one reason only, to be able to pay bills directly and electronically through my register, and to be able to download transactions and reconcile accounts. Other programs offer the former or the latter, but I haven't found any that does both. Once some other software (and I don't really care which platform) offers this, I'm ready to dump the Intuit anti-customer attitude once and for all.

'Through this series I will explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it. Are we heading towards utopia, or dystopia and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before.'

Woah, woah, woah. Way too many words. I was like "What?" and then I was like "Huh?" and then, uh, I got a little bored.