Its not coming from *AMERICAN* groups. Any group that pushes for bullshit like this is by definition un-American. This kind of mental disease is worldwide. I wish it were only America, we'd have a better chance of fighting it if it were.

Some of your ideas are good, but you seem to imply that people only pay for high bandwidth so they can pirate stuff, and that simply is not true. Everything runs faster on high speed, and its very, very noticable. My parents use it and they never download large files at all, but they don't want to use anything slower.

I don't pirate stuff as a general rule, but I do download gigabytes of game updates, paid for movies and audio, operating systems, software, etc.

Things like that aren't really going to help when license servers go down. That's the real reason I'm against software licenses enforced by code: I have the right to the code, and should continue even if the company goes away, my net connection gets killed, or I change my video card (see latest bullshit from Ubisoft activation based CP).

I don't think this logically follows.

Letting Firefox memory usage grow excessively killed the performance on my system, and the stuff you complain about here are one of the only reasons I can even run it.

I don't see an obsession with memory usage, I see an obsession with just not fixing it. It has to be a solvable problem, even though a good bit of it is not precisely Firefox's fault.

When I hear people say that, I just have a hard time believing them. Everyone I've met who said that and could show me, failed to demonstrate it in person. That doesn't mean you aren't doing it, maybe you are, but I'd be surprised and I want to know how.

Every single tab I open eats a ton, like 20, 50, 100MB or more at times. I don't see how you could have 100+ tabs open.

Its not just Windows either, I have the issue on Linux, Windows 7, and MacOS Snow Leopard and have for years. WIth and without any extensions loaded.

If you can do this, then there has to be some discoverable thing different in your setup verses others. Maybe we need to start a project where people save their tabs and share the file and we start doing some serious methodical testing to find out what is different among systems and setups that can or cannot handle it.

We are a little different from the Soviets. You should think more of Russia, not the USSR. Russia is still there. The Soviet system could never have survived, even if it functioned "perfectly".

The US system works very well, when you let it.

The illusions I speak of... I'm talking about things like spending $15 when we have $10, and that sort of thing. That simply doesn't work, and eventually it will correct. It can do so without dooming us, and the less we screw with these corrections the less severe they'll be.

We have tried various things which simply don't work, and most of them we should have known it would not work, but we aren't doomed in any guaranteed sense.

...and it would still wreck people who couldn't afford to keep their family's property.

I knew a woman, single mother whose parent's died. To save money she got rid of her apartment and was going to move to her parent's place. Short version: she lost all of it due simple to not being able to pay the taxes on the *ALREADY PAID FOR AND TAXED* property. I just think that's wrong.

I understand the idea of encouraging new development and wealth, but I don't think the US Founders intended it in quite this manner.

Yes they are bigger, but that doesn't account for the amount of weight. Other cars from 20+ years ago were larger or as large as a Honda or my Mazda, and didn't weigh as much.

Also the Mini Cooper is a good example... yes its smaller, but no it isn't light. Its a pretty heavy little car, especially given how small it is.

Locally this is supposed to be part of how taxation is done and calculations for roads are done, as well as truck routing.

A fully loaded semi is very, very heavy but I have to admit I was pretty shocked when I saw the figures of just how much damage they did.

But then it makes sense if you look at most truck routes and see how heavily damaged they are. I still don't understand why we don't build stronger highways... it would seem like it should pay off to do so, rather than keep putting down cheap pavement that wears out in as little as 5 years.

I don't think the USA is doomed, I think a lot of our illusions are. That will correct itself, it has to. Its unfortunate that we let government try to avoid the correction because now it will be much worse, but it will come and we'll survive it. Life without boom and bust cannot be maintained without killing it.

I won't say failure is impossible or even unlikely, but its not guaranteed. Our biggest problem is we were successful to the point where we have a generation or two who are ignorant of what it was like before that success, and how to get there and maintain it. Booms are great, but the busts tell you how to survive.

Well put.

Its also worth noting that factories in the USA used to be the same way, if not worse, and I mean in very recent history. My own mother and father both worked in factories whose conditions were little different, and daily work involved maiming and injuries (mostly textile operations in western NC in the 1960s).

Actually that is not capitalism. Capitalism means owning and (originally) living near the means of production.

What you are talking about happens in any business, regardless of if it is capitalist or not.

In fact the primary driving force of cost cutting as you lament here is the modern day corporation, which is heavily rather anti-capitalist (thought that could be largely fixed or compromised on).

Honestly, even among my fairly well-off friends, I don't see this at all. Most people are computer illiterate to at least some degree, and I see them using whatever they can get and use it until it breaks.

A few die hard geeks buy every new phone and whatever that comes out, but otherwise most people really don't like changing very much. In my experience, I actually have a hard time getting people to buy a new computer or cell phone, they resist the change unless its obvious they need something more.

About the only people I see upgrading on a regular basic are myself and some friends who are game players. Even then, we tend to only upgrade at the sweet spot of price curves and we tend to upgrade rather than outright replace, so we are doing it about as "green" as you could while still meeting required performance.

Ditto for machines I use for work and personal data processing: I tend to keep them upgraded only to the point where they need it, or the risk of their failure would cause me serious harm.

Explain to me how this will help.

I need a computer for getting work done, and Apple is no different than any other in terms of negative side effects or production.

I don't _need_ my Windows gaming machine according to some opinion (I disagree, it keeps me off clock towers), but again... buying it from someone other than Apple or whoever else you guys think is evil at the moment isn't likely to change a thing.

It seems to me that you are lamenting the lack of a solution that would't work in the first place.

Yep, and none of that is capitalism. It is in fact pretty much in opposition to it.