For nine grand I could get used and still serviceable: a motorcycle (new if I wanted a chinese bike), an atv, a pickup, a sedan, and have enough left over for a passable used compact tractor with the attachments. A little more upscale in price, I could get a cherry dune buggy all tricked out, a really nice datsun 4wd pickup that has been completely restored and customised, and then almost but not quite enough left over for that yanmar compact tractor.

All at once..for a sedan..hmm..performance, I'd look for a used porsche, or reliable and good mileage, look for an older mercedes diesel, a 240 or 300D, then make it run on veggie/grease diesel.

with that said, that's an interesting engine, never knew it existed. VW (group) comes up wioth some interesting stuff.

Hmm..nine grand...enough for an electric conversion kit for some smallish sedan or small pickup, minus batts. Another option.

Heard an interesting thing about electric vehicles the other day, there are some all electric Rav4s out there with more than a 100,000 miles on the original batteries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV

  Also found out there are shops now that rebuild prius batt packs and it has dropped to under one thousand bucks for that. Started out around ten grand for a replacement pack. Quite a savings for just ten years or so down the road from when they were released.

generic related link

http://www.eaaev.org/eaaevsforsale.html

If I had the loot, I'd do one of those right now, plus get enough solar panels to keep it charged up well, before the dollar drops in worth more and all the imported stuff explodes in price. Just sayin...I *really* like the idea of a paid off transportation "stack". All I need is around a 50 mile round trip range for an electric, that keeps me within a "don't beat on the batteries" window.

I don't know if you want to count it, but Opera mini on my feature phone makes web browsing tolerable. AFAIK it is written in some form of Java. I use it a lot.

Ubuntu took off from heavy advertising. Advertising and marketing works, and the initial "get as many free disks as you want " shipit deal helped there as well.

Now, what they failed to do is capitalize on this advertising. They should immediately (as soon as they saw they had a hit on their hands) have gone to selling their own machines. Relying on dell. some *mart, some online mom and pop store, etc is not the same.

They don't need every hardware config under the sun, just maybe six machines total, don't go crazy there. This needs to be like an Apple effort, just using open source, integrated hardware and software in nice packages.

    They need a netbook (go for ARM, make the breakthrough), a full laptop with optical drive, an entry level cheapish desktop, a higher end workstation/gaming type desktop, expensive but all top shelf components, don't be scared, just do it, a SOHO tower server perhaps that comes with NAS, then a rackmount enterprise server.

  They use the LTS releases as the target OS for those machines. The main hired on devs use those machines all the time, so they really grok how to make them fly and get rock solid.

Now, the support is two tier, you own a bonafide branded Ubuntu machine, you get first tier support. Everyone else gets second tier (which is what Ubuntu has now, pure anarchy with hardware, good luck if it works or not, go wade through the forums pages deep with "help me plz").

first tier, separate forum, and the devs, or other offical hired on dudes, DO read the forums there and respond. And quickly. You take the people's money, you answer their questions and fix problems as fast as possible.

First tier branded machines get the REAL "just works" treatment. The rest is like now, good luck with your hardware, might work, might not, go haunt the second tier forums, see what needs to be done there. If you want the every six month bleeding edge releases, oh well, good luck. sure you can run it..but don't expect the same support as they give people who have paid for the hardware and software. Hardware they sell should stay supported for two LTS cycles. That's more than enough now a days for people to milk their hardware out. Chances are, if the hardware and software was really a good match, it would work longer than that, but officially, make it two cycles.

  And they should be able to keep cost competitive in this, as they have the resources for economies of scale and some good Q&A before making hardware selection for the branded machines. If local mom and pops can assemble and sell generic machines, so can a big company like Canonical.

Every new LTS release, new hardware comes out, and it "just works", everything, wireless, all of it.

*Most* people don't give a rat's ass about upgrading their OS and machines every six months, look how many people and businesses are still running XP and some older hardware. They want "just works" and "finally, I got this freekin SOB computer figured out and can use it now" over bleeding edge every other week something new is added/updated, and something old that worked, stops working. That gets way annoying to the other 99% of the humans out there who aren't serious devs/hobbiests. Real annoying.

You want linux mainstream on the desktop, or you want to keep it for hardcore nerds only, choose one.

This is probably the ultimate basis for any governmental regulation of commerce, basic contract law. If you have a claim, you have to prove it. You can't prove it, tough noogies. I think they would be hard pressed to get some law passed..because then it would mean anyone could just come up with any paperwork and "prove" they owned something. You signed with some bank, and one hour later they resold it upstream, where it disappears, which happened to millions of homeowners...greed caused insanity. Some of these mortgages have been sliced to ribbons and repackaged upwards of *two dozen* times. They can't prove who owns them anymore! That's the gist of it.

I think it's the best case of karma nailing those wall street crooks ever.

Nope, it's a huge loophole that will be used widely the more it is understood and the more local lawyers start using it. Entity x claims they own the mortgage..produce the paperwork. No legit paperwork, they don't own it. It is SO convoluted, so many smallish pieces of the mortgage went here there and yonder, they buried themselves in paperwork and counter claims and so on. It's tied up in derivatives, and even derivatives of derivatives, bets and counter bets against a piece of this mixed with some student loans (another ripe place to look for who really owns the loan), and a ton of other trade-able busywork "financial products" in 50 other nations, I mean, it's the mother of all paperwork messes. The original mortgage *doesn't exist* anymore. They didn't keep them intact. They busted them up so many different ways it would takes years to untangle it all, if they even could.

    No clear claim, judge goes case dismissed, homeowner walks away with title. The alleged claimant can't prove a thing. Already some people got title to their homes. It's been a slow snowball rolling downhill, but it is accelerating, started in 2008 and finally getting some traction.

I think it is wonderful, and more people should take advantage of it. One of the best ways to beat the conjob scam "trickle down" grifter's economic system yet.

Add thousands of "security contractors".

No diff. Dudes who follow any orders and carry weapons.

Oh wait, there is a diff...."security contractors" *cost more*. Added bonus for the NWO crowd, they are more likely than not to have come from paramilitary deathsquads (meaning even less resistance to certain orders), and they also aren't subject to the same alleged rules of war and rules of being in "service". Plus, being "civilian", they don't count! It's like they aren't there! Even though they are, they aren't "official" GI, so they just don't count.

I just clicked all three, they all load

http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/homeowners-rebellion-could-62-million-homes-be-foreclosure-proof

Title to that article is "Homeowners' Rebellion: Could 62 Million Homes Be Foreclosure-Proof?"

Maybe try doing a search with those, going in through google or reading the cache

All I know is they worked last night for me, and are working today.

This is just a follow up to some of my earlier posts on this subject. some folks have already got their homes this way, wherever they were sending the checks to, can't prove title. Those mortgage repackagers sliced and diced and obfuscated things so bad, no one really knows anymore who really owns their poof created "mortgage".

The whole deal with bank loans and "fractional reserve" banking is fraud and counterfeiting IMO. Not only is that bogus, they couldn't be content with making a killing, they had to try and force a superkilling with all those tranches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranches they created. That system needs to crash and burn. But, that's the system they had to bailout, or, the tax payers had to bailout. Nuts. It's coo-coo.

dyncorp got busted for freaking *slavery* and the doofus government still uses them.

This is also interesting, and has a blackwater connection. Basically, blackwater is so despised in iraq for all the abuse there even the pro US Iraqi government doesn't want them there (but we insist they stay in some form). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah,_The_Hidden_Massacre

Just wondering if there are any "data only" cellular services, that is, you don't get a phone number nor do they provide phone service. I mean that's ALL they have, not a "data plan" from a normal telco, a company that *only* does cellular/mobile data service. I use a WISP, but it isn't cellular, nor mobile capable, the antenna has to be precisely aimed. The radio uses a sim card though...which made me wonder about this.

Such a cellular ISP, that charged by bandwith consumed plus a modest monthly connectivity fee, might work. It might even exist, I don't know, that's why I am asking.

As to those other bozos, the regular telcos and ISPs, etc, we need dumb pipes, then content providers. They shouldn't be *both*, that sets up the conflict of interest and it goes downhill from there.

oblig car analogy, a really bad one, for what these telcos want...

You have a real cream puff Belchfire Motors Land Dreadnought. Unfortunately, it only gets 1.5 miles to the gallon..so you have to stop a lot and fill up...now it could run on any gas, the engine is capable of it just fine, but as soon as you pull up to a non-Belchfire pump the tank cover locks up, and even if you manage to get some in, it runs like crap ..until you pull up to the Belchfire Motors fueling stations and fill up there. Then it runs perfect. But Belchfire gas costs twice as much. See, you have a consumer choice! According to Belchfire...

Every once in awhile I burn my crappy cellphone pics and any tech manuals/data pages (mostly for machinery/vehicles) or ebooks I have downloaded to a CD. That about does it for me. I use online email, no local storage. Hmm, no movies saved, all my movies are on DVDs. Music I don't save, GF has a Cd collection, I gave up years ago mostly when CDs hit and they cost as much as or more than vinyl albums or cassettes. I went, "this is a ripoff"! and stopped buying them, unless really cheap and used at yard sales.

I guess I could hang them from strings in the tree in the front yard, then they would be backed up in the cloud.... 0_o

I keep a few live CDs burned and hanging around on the spindle. Every few months I'll burn another more up to date one, run it once to make sure it works..that's it. If Mr. Hard drive goes, in goes knoppix or austrumi until I get another one. DSL used to be good, but it hasn't been updated in years now. Slax doesn't grab my hardware perfectly, nor do most of the other live CDs, but knoppix and austrumi always do. And austrumi runs in RAM all the way, so no hard drive needed really, even with low RAM amounts (Knoppix can do it too with the "toram" option, but I don't have enough RAM for it). Puppy runs as root and I think that's a bad idea so I don't fool with it.

Now what I would like eventually is take the drive I have now, make it the swap partion, even though I notice I hardly ever hit swap. Then have a small cheap SSD for the OS and apps, then a big hard drive and start ripping and storing what movies we do have. Unfortunately, half of them are on tape, and my old VCR is non functional, have to get another one someplace, used I guess.

for now though, backed up "good enough" for my purposes.

Scumbag mercenaries who used to go by Blackwater. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide

  Also see : dyncorp, another outfit of security contractor "heroes". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyncorp

So, this explains the US Cxx class and all their wonderful and logical decisions.

It's actually not too bad either, although it is an acquired taste. You need some small growing trays for your indoor "lawn".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatgrass

If you have a cat, you can do the same thing with oats, they love to chew on them. Every fall (like soon now) I spread a bag of wheat and a bag of oats around our lawn. Keeps it green all winter, the critters like to chew on them (dogs and cats), and some I bag up with a push mower and feed to the chickens, they gobble it down. This year I am going to do one of my garden spaces all wheat, and let it to to real wheat heads next spring, just for a hoot. Try to get enough for one loaf of bread. I tried it before but it got too weedy to harvest well, but that was in a more wild area. This time on clean, rototilled a lot in advance, garden dirt.

Well, I was just joking.....heh. Anyway, good for you you got some loot to help out with your hobby.

Lawn mowing pays better than that around here though....well, not for me it doesn't, but for guys who have multiple clients it does.

Which is amazing to me to this day that people pay to have their lawns mowed, when it is actually fun to do.

If I could make that kind of loot locally here for that sort of work, I'd need a forklift to carry around my stash of gold bars..as I tooled around on my ten square mile estate

Heck, what do your relatives pay for lawn mowing ;) Might pay a round trip ticket for me + hotel! Well, maybe not the hotel, but close enough. I guess painting their house might be worth a new Unimog...