stick with Macrohard products

You just made my day. That's my preferred nickname for the Redmond giant, but I seem to be the only one to use it in my circles.

(perhaps the most inane post I have ever made on /.)

They start right up, they only take a few seconds to reach full brightness...

What sort are you using? We have many ceiling flood lights in our house and now that the temp has dropped (70 F) they take a few minutes (not seconds) to reach full brightness. The standard spiral style do come up immediately, but the floods definitely take a while now, which annoys my son to no end. I tell him to suck it up, they save us so much in power/lack of cooling needs during the summer (I'm a strong proponent of them, but have to disagree about start up times).

I don't care if you're left or right health care 'reform' was one of Obama's main election platforms so I think ObamaCare is a fitting term.

I see what you're saying, but since in practice only right-wingers use term, it is a useful shibboleth to tell who's who.

Hold the gosh darn phone! So if you are not in favor of having the government run health care, you now have to also be a bible thumping, gun toting wacko as well? I didn't sign up for that, so I guess I have to now like having the government run health care based on its wonderful track record? Get your polarized glasses off and realize that just because you don't like one (gigantic, gargantuan) thing Obama is up to, doesn't put you in the same camp with all the proper "right wing" wackos out there.

As of yesterday, we hit 4,344 US military deaths in Iraq since 2003.

In 2004, there were 83,000 preventable deaths in hospitals due to negligence or malpractice within the United States.

And could you please enlighten me as to how Washington DC is going to suddenly prevent 100% of these "preventable" deaths? If a doctor is going to practice "malpractice" medicine, where in the legislation are the statements that are magically going to make them stop?

I live is Southern AZ where Interstate 10 runs and a road which I am driving on often. Over the last few months I've noticed a steady flow of "oversize load"s on the freeway that contain rather large wind turbine components heading eastbound, presumably heading to TX from somewhere in CA.

Interesting, here in San Antonio on I-10, I see a lot of the components westbound. Actually, I see them on 1604 fairly often as well (the loop that connects I-35 to I-10 if you have a big load). I always figured they were headed to AZ.

Interesting, the link is for events from 1992-97, against former top officers, and is itself from 2002. Do you think the same people are still in charge? The corporation itself isn't necessarily sleezy, those who were running it were sleezy. It is entirely possible the "culture of corruption" still exists at the company, but I don't think this link really provides much evidence of that.

My HP(s) have worked just fine under Linux. When I replaced the original with a new one, I did have to do a bit of work to sort things out, but nothing nearly as painful as the chore of installing MBs of crap on the Windows box, that now can't shut down cleanly because of the HP crap that gets installed with the drivers.

The majority could amend, that is to say remove, the bill of rights just like they did with prohibition. Nothing ever really stops the majority.

I think you need to re-read the Constitution. Article 5 expressly states that first, to have an amendment proposal, fully 2/3 of the both houses of Congress must pass said amendment, or 2/3 of the state legislatures must call for a Constitutional Convention to propose amendments. After you have some how managed to get fully 2/3 of the representatives (at the state or federal level) to agree, you then must ratify the amendment with fully 3/4 of the states! A simple majority has no prayer of amending the Constitution, which is why there are only 28 amendments vs. the hundreds of laws passed by Congress (with a simple majority). In addition, articles and amendments to the Constitution can not be removed, only superseded, which is why there is still an 18th amendment in the Constitution.

As an American with exceedingly limited exposure to Africa's history/story, I would love to hear more about how you think the problems (I think we can agree they are problems) can/should be solved. I lead such a blessed life where I am, I can't imagine living under the (perceived) corruption of many African nations.

I would rather be illiterate, "innumerate" and have a short life span than to live in the kinds of conditions some people are currently living in. Having high infant mortality rates, rampant aids infections, lack of food since birth. Yes, people lived 35-40 years, but that's better than dying as a child due to hunger or aids.

Do you not see a problem with your statement there? "Lack of food since birth" sort of indicates to me that perhaps the birth shouldn't have occurred, no? If you can't feed yourself, WTF are you having kids? Who is to blame for this child's predicament? Is it someone living across the world, or the people that decided to get pregnant when there are not resources available to support another person?

This reminds me of Agent Smith's comments in The Matrix about humans being better classified as a virus than a mammal since we can't seem to contain ourselves to live with the resources available.