[This was originally posted here, but I wanted to retain it after it falls off my Recent Posts page.]

I think you summed up my feelings on the issue quite well.

I'm pretty cynical when it comes to companies and their mealymouthed "corporate values" statements. Publicly held companies exist to make money and generate value for their shareholders, and they'll basically do it in any way that's legal. In fact, they'll do everything that's legal and then some, according to a formula that takes into account the risk of getting caught times the possible reward. (I doubt any major corporation would admit to doing this, and I'm not suggesting that they sit down and actually run through some algorithm to figure out whether to buy a judge, but if you look at the outcome they might as well have.) I accept this. As an investor, I'd expect this. I wouldn't want some ex-hippie executive's personal hangups getting in the way of his job, which is making me money. If having their product line manufactured by indentured 14-year-olds in Thailand will increase the share price, and it's legal to do so, I expect a CEO to either do it, or step down (or be voted out) in favor of someone who will. I would have greater personal respect for the person who refused to do it, but my opinion of the organization wouldn't change -- companies are amoral; or are moral only to the extent that their investors require them to be, which isn't much.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco, IBM -- they don't go around touting themselves as the corporate equivalents of Mother Teresa. So when I see them contributing to government oppression somewhere in return for the proverbial fat wad of cash, I accept it.

But when Google sold itself to the public as a new kind of company, one that was going to be run by people who hadn't exchanged the concept of "evil" with "bad for shareholder value," I have a lot less tolerance. Especially because they sold many of their services to the public, which people might have otherwise been uncomfortable with (GMail's advertising, search history, etc.), on the strength of this reputation.

Although Google's technological innovations were obviously the key to their success, I don't think that their reputation should be easily discounted. They sold themselves to the public as a new kind of company, under a new kind of management, and that means we held them to newer, higher standards.

How popular would GMail have been -- software which unabashedly scans your emails in order to target ads -- if it had been run by IBM? I'm willing to bet not as much. Would you have signed up for a service that retains everything you've ever searched for, if Microsoft was going to have the keys to the data? I wouldn't.

They made a decision earlier this week to burn that reputation. Someone decided that, in the end, marketing to China is going to be worth a lot more to the bottom line than whether they're well-liked by a bunch of Americans or not. This doesn't surprise me; obviously a lot of other companies have decided the same thing. I find their decision distasteful, but from an analytical position they're almost undeniably right.

I forgive -- if forgive is the right word; as Google isn't actually a person or anything else, it's not as though there's anything there to forgive -- Google for working with China. What I don't forgive, and see now as the height of arrogance, was the lengths to which they went to convince everyone that they were saints, come to show I.T. the path to rightness.

It was a nice show, boys. P.T. Barnum would have been proud. But then again, I -- like many others, I think -- were easy marks. We wanted to believe that a company could both be insanely profitable and remain morally righteous. You fooled us good; just don't expect to do it again.

Take a look at these posts:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171402&cid=14275722
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171402&cid=14275536
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171402&cid=14275425

A few days ago, I posted a comment in response to someone else claiming that they had just bought a dual-Xeon HP rackmount server for about $300. In the comment I was rather skeptical of the pricing -- the phrase "one for each foot" was used, right after the words "I'd buy," and preceding "if they cost that much." I thought it was a pretty safe bet.

But oh, the tech world moves quickly. Apparently the dot-bombers had a lot of old gear to move quickly when their investors decided to move their retirement money into safer avenues, and it went for cheap. One of the many companies which arose to deal with this glut of liquidation, as well as the continuous flow of corporate surplus, was RetroBox.

I can't say I know very much about the company. I had never heard of them until they were mentioned in a response to my post, and I did a little Googling and apparently they're growing quickly, and seemed to be loved by all. Almost all, anyway. They do have a small but significant caveat on their website: "Final pricing will be at the full and total discretion of RetroBox.com." Essentially they're reserving the right to change the price of what you're buying, after you place the order. Now I'll grant that I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly in court. Something about me buying a particular good at a particular price and all that. I'll say for the record though, despite this disclaimer, I didn't have any problems working with them, and in fact found their employees to be universally helpful.

Moving on. So I was definitely eating some crow for my disbelieving comment about server prices -- they really are dirt cheap these days. You want a 1GHz Xeon in a 1U rackmount? Sure -- 150 bucks. 800MHz Dell Poweredge? $104. Not bad; and this is from a fairly legitimate establishment, not some random-ass person on eBay.

I couldn't resist. (Have you ever seen the "Go broke saving money" tagline on Dealtime? That's me.) I toyed for a while about buying a 1RU pizzabox for a while, and although there's nothing cooler in my mind than neatly rackmounted gear, the downside to them is that they require a rack. Which I don't have. Which I'd have to build. Equipment racks aren't the most challenging carpentry project in the world -- any idiot with a table saw and a power drill/driver can build one in an afternoon out of MDF and some predrilled rails from Sweetwater -- but the resulting box is HEAVY. Even commercial steel units are pretty hard to move around if any lifting is involved, at least for one person. And knockdown aluminum units are very pricey.

And did I mention I don't really have any legitimate use for a rackmount server? Sure, it'd be cool, and who knows what sort of cool stuff I might be able to come up with if I had the hardware sitting around, begging to be used. But in the end, practicality won out. Also, a rackmount box takes a lot of floorspace; they're optimized for density and not area, and in my house it's area that counts. (Yes I know I could have mounted it vertically.)

So what'd I do? I bought a desktop instead.

It's been something that I've been meaning to do for a while. I like the concept of Linux, but I've never really given it a fair shot versus my Mac. While my Mac cost $1600 when it was new and is still worth a few hundred bucks now (if the people at everymac.com are to be trusted), the most expensive PC I've ever bought was a $90 P133 clunker from the Pratt & Whitney industrial surplus store (check it out if you're ever in East Hartford, CT). Linux had always been a bit of a letdown in the experience department.

Now that's going to change. I can't afford a new Mac, much as I'd like to, but I could afford what would have been a smokin' sweet Intel workstation from not too many years ago. An HP xw5000, 3.2GHz P4, 512MB, 60GB; total cost with shipping: $293.

Although the xw5000 isn't really what I'd call a "workstation" in the traditional sense -- it's not RISC, for one -- it is a very nice PC. Or rather, it's what any self-respecting desktop computer ought to be. Big case, good power supply, lots of bays and empty slots, well-supported chipset and components, easily upgradable, excellent technical documentation. It was, except for the choice of processor, basically the sort of computer that I would build from components for myself, already prebuilt. And did I mention it was under $300?

Yes we got our power back last night after 9 days. Once FPL sent the second truck and I showed them where the problem was it took all of 5 Minutes to get us back up! Yes the first truck came while I was at work and they "couldn't" find the problem so they left. FPL still sucks.

FPL sucks. They are the worst company in the world. Why? We got hit by a cat two hurricane! Guess what no power a week+ later! I have power at work but my house is dark and we have no water! After a week we are still bathing out of water I stored before the storm! No help from FEMA or the county government to speak of! If you have never been without power for a week you have no idea just how bad it is!
FPL needs to be account for this massive failure! This is Florida and hurricanes happen! A category 2 is not even considered a major hurricane. If peoples homes, cars, and most places of business can survive with little to know damage then why not the power grid?

Okay I feel that capitol punishment is wrong. I freely admit that world would be better with some people taken from it. The problem with capitol punishment is that innocent people have been put to death. The rich are far less likely to be put to death than the poor. And the white people far less likely than none white.
The problem is what about the guy that that raped and killed that little girl. He admits he is guilt. There is no doubt. I admit it part of me wants to see this guy dead. At this point what is right and what is wrong? What he did was wrong. Would removing him as a threat be wrong as well?

I read this in the news.
The us is doing most of the heavy lifting again. So many people like to say that the US is too powerful and does not care about others should read this. The US military is providing most of the airlift and helicopters for this work and is sending the Mercy as well. US servicemen and women are busting there butts and risking there lives to save people. Not to say that others are not doing there bit sometimes there are things that it seems only the US can show the will and has the resources to do.

""We've been racing across the ocean," said Rear Adm. Chris Ames, commander of the strike force.

The strike group, which had been headed to the Persian Gulf, was diverted while near the Pacific island of Guam. Ames said the Marines' primary responsibilities would include transporting food and medical supplies.

The Pentagon (news - web sites) also has decided to send the USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed hospital ship based at San Diego, to join the relief effort, officials said.

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said he was encouraged by the military response to the Dec. 26 tsunami, singling out U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman for praise.

"The group that the U.S. initiated have proven very useful in responding to my 12-point wish list for everything from helicopters to transport planes to air traffic controllers," Egeland said in New York.

The U.S. operation in Sumatra is part of a wider international effort. The American helicopters brought survivors to an air base in Banda Aceh where medical teams -- including Chinese, Australians and Indonesians -- tended to their immediate needs before putting them into trucks destined for nearby hospitals. "

This is a very easy plan on how to pay off the national debt and balance the budget. It is quite easy to grasp.

Let's say you borrow $100 from a friend. He asks you to pay back $15 over the next 10 years. At the end of the ten years, your debt will be paid off. If you only make enough money to handle all of your expenses, plus sum to pay off the money your owe on your debt, then after ten years, the debt will be paid. Simple, huh?

All we need to do as a nation is make sure we are making our debt payments. After only 10 years of doing so, the debt will be gone. This is because the money is borrowed with T-bills that expire after 10 years. We don't need extra money to pay off the debt.

Now let's talk about making sure that the money coming in is the same as the money going out - in other words, the deficit.

Our economy is constantly expanding. That means our tax base (the amount of money we can tax from) is increasing over time. We will be able to raise more money in the future with the same tax rate today.

If we can do something to make the tax base expand faster, then we can get more tax revenue in the future. Think of it this way: If I spend $10 today, with the expectation that I will get $50 next year, is that a good investment? Of course! I will gladly borrow money if I have to to put that $10 in.

Whenever we do the following things, the economy expands. These are all things that the Bush agenda stands for.

* lowering taxes on the rich. See, the rich are rich because they know what to do with their money. They make money with money. The poor doesn't have money because they can't make money with money. If we allow the rich to retain more of their own money, they will make even more money, *increasing the tax base*!

* Reducing regulations. Regulations are generally good in that they accomplish good things. Take the clean air act. I mean, clean air is good, right? But regulations cost money to the tax base. Someone has to do something to comply, and it usually means that they have to do something more than what they are doing. We need to balance the benefit of regulation with the cost of regulation. Some things are hard to put a price on - clean air, for instance. But we must know how much we are going to spend for it, and balance that out.

* Eliminating corporate subsidies and welfare. By giving government money to the poor (both corporations and people), we are funding projects that don't have a negative ROI. In other words, we are taking money from people who can make more money and giving it to people who can't. We are reducing the tax base even more so than just taking the money.

The other side of the equation is spending. One way to balance a budget is to spend less.

* Eliminating corporate subsidies and welfare. I already mentioned this, but this is the same as burning money. The people won't go hungry - there are more than enough programs and shelters and charitable people who would love to feed these people (myself included.) I will gladly promise to do my part in helping the poor if government would stop competing with me.

* Reducing responsibility and thus spending. The government should be doing less and thus need less money to operate. By reducing the ambitions of government, and thus reducing the costs of government, we are lowering the amount of money needed to balance the budget.

As the amount of money spent decreases, and as the tax base increases, eventually the two will meet. If we played our cards right (IE, encouraging tax base growth), we can have a balanced budget with a low tax rate. A little deficit now is nothing to worry about because the economy and the tax base grows faster than the interest rate on our debts.

I want to revisit the point that really rich people are better than kinda rich people in our nation. Let's imagine these two scenarios:

(1) We have a low tax rate. Rich people keep a lot more of their money and they get really, really rich. We have thousands of multi-billionaires who have more money than they know what to do with.

(2) We have a high tax rate. The rich are only kindof rich. Maybe one or two people are billionaires, on we only have a few more multi-millionaries.

Would you rather have 50% of a million dollars, or 10% of a billion? Let's do the math:

50% * 1,000,000 = 500,000
10% * 1,000,000,000 = 100,000,000 = 200 times 50% * 1,000,000

Obviously, having a huge tax base with a low tax rate is far superior to a small tax base with a high tax rate.

Bush has been climbing in the polls, despite the intense pressure the democrats have been exerting since last year. What is the secret of his success? Why is he doing so well despite such a coordinated effort to tarnish his record?

Quite simply, the democrats do more to drive the republicans than the republicans do. More than one republican has told me that they are voting for Bush not only because he is a good guy, but because the democrats have to be stopped.

I see unprecedented participation on the ground in this election. As for myself, I spent 8 glorious hours treading cement to spread the word about Bush and the GOP. I was quite well received. Sure, there were a few vehement anti-Bush Kerry-ites. But the majority of those I met with liked Bush and his policies.

The other reason Bush will win because of the GOTV effort. GOTV stands for "Get Out the Vote". It is a coordinated campaign to target exclusively republican voters and get them to show up at the polls. Here's a dirty little secret: There are more republicans who don't vote than democrats that do. This is the 6th year of the GOTV coordination, and this year, it is so precisely coordinated that in my precinct alone (of about 100 actual voters) 40 republicans are turning out for the first time in a long time. We've been split down the middle since Reagan, and this year, we are going to get a whopping majority.

We didn't do it for the primary, because we didn't want to tip our hat. But we are doing it for the generals. It's already begun.

Kerry will be lucky to take New York and Massachusetts.

If you are a republican, or a conservative, it is important that you hook up with you local party immediately and ask what you can do. There are phone calls to be made, doors to be knocked on, and parties to attend. This year is the year of Bush, and the end of the democrats.

Okay I have to admit it. I want something better than UNIX or Windows. Why have we seen no real improvement in OSs since Unix?
I am no fan of Microsoft but I have to say at least they did not just copy Unix. Windows in my opinion is a huge disaster that is a huge pile of everything thrown together. It is a server a desktop and now an embedded system. It was not designed as much as it mutated. Mac OS/X has a great UI but it is still ruining on top of Unix.
I want something different.
Here is what I would like to see.
1. Object oriented. Yes I have heard all the anti OO people but I can honestly say that I enjoy writing OO code. I want the OS to have a root object that everything is descended from.
2. Integrated DB. I want a database to be part of the OS. It could be used for the file system and for configuration files as well.
3 Networking centric. Unix and Windows both have networking tacked on. Why not design the system from the ground up to be networked.
4. Replace X. Can't we do better than X after all these years?
5. Clustering. VMS had a great clustering system in Vax Clusters. I would love it if every desktop that was added to the network became part of a cluster.
6. Cpu independent. All programs would compile to an ideal byte code. When installed it would and a compiled blob to the executable. The new OS would not care if you wrote the program for a Power PC or Athlon 64. This is not all that different from how the Transmeta cpus work or the IBM AS400 worked.
7. Good install system. Not a tacked on solution but making installing new software as much a part of the OS as the API to put a letter on the screen. Ports is great. Yum works pretty well. Apt-get works but I have had issues with all of these. Since it is network centric how about a bittorrent like system integrated into the OS for APT like stuff?
8. A good UI. This just goes without saying that with out a good UI it will not work.

What is the biggest problem with a new OS? That is easy hardware support. Oh well I can dream and Linux does not suck.

Okay yes we have been hit by two hurricanes but Adelphia's service is the pits.
First let my dispel a myth or a marketing lie.
1. Cable is more reliable than a dish.
This is not true. my sister has a dish and was much closer to the coast than I was. She still has no power but she does have TV. She is running her dish off her generator. The dish stayed attached to her home and did not move. Now there is a power pole down in her backyard so I think we can say that the dish is pretty sturdy. I have some other friends that also have the dish and they are all up and working. No one with Cable is working.
2. DSL is more reliable than Cable.
True.
I have a support tech working for me that is running his computer off his generator at home and using his DSL.

Before anyone thinks I am being unfair about his let me just point out.
1. I have power and my phone back.
2. Adelphia never came out to fix my cable after the last storm. I fixed the connection to the house myself but the cable was still laying on the ground.
3. Adelphia has provided NO information on when the I can expect the problem fixed. Florida Power and Light at least have completion date for the county. Adelphia has provided no information at all as to when I can expect my service back. Phone and power are both up and working at this time. So Adelphia is the only utility not working. I am very glad I do not have my phone or alarm through them.

Yes we got hit again. The storm did little damage to my house but we lost power again.
The office is back up with power so the guys can get back to work and I can sit in AC at least during the hottest part of the day.
I have to give Home Depot a big thumbs up for being so well stocked this time. They had lots of everything and did not raise the prices too much. Power is already coming back so this might not be that bad after all.
We can hope.

The latest article about the Rather scandal have all but ferretted out the last of the loony left. My favorite conspiracy theory: that Karl Rove masterminded the entire event. I have this picture burned into my mind of Karl Rove typing furiously on his computer. He calls out to Dick Cheney, "Hey, does this look fake enough? Or should I use the Times New Roman font?" Cheney responds, "Times New Roman. And here, let me sign the thing. My handwriting is terrible."

I guess when you have to come to terms with reality, it's always easier to slip back into the security blanket of delusional idea.

Here are some more, just to keep you looney lefties calm. George Bush really did cause 9/11. He even paid Osama to do it. George Bush really invaded Iraq for the Oil. No, it was for revenge! No, it was for Oil! Well, I'm still torn on that one. And John Kerry served honorably in the Navy, and never ever did anything to hurt the United States afterwards.

And let's leave them with this whopper: The majority of Americans agree with you and Michael Moore, and John Kerry is going to win in a landslide this November.

Good night, sweet dreams.

Well we got hit hard by Hurricane Frances. We just got our power back last night but still now cable or broadband at home :(
Over all a bad thing if you ask me. But what can you do a tree took out the cable and power line. On a bright note I have seen trucks from everywhere including Canada working full of utility workers. They are working there butts off after Charley and Frances and now Ivan is going to nail Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the panhandle of Florida. Those poor crews are going to be dead on there feet. I hope they all get through this safe.
And I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to get your posts modded higher, and as a group of conservatives, get your rational viewpoint out there, try these tips.

(1) Go fishing. Post several different ideas in a single post that are all good. Each idea will appeal to different moderators. Your post will be carried upward.

(2) Avoid unsubstantiated claims. It is easy for someone to pass you over or even mod you down because you say something controversial. It is a lot harder for them to do this when you have substance behind. Name names, be specific, and have your references ready.

(3) Be quick. When a post first comes out, that is when the moderators are watching it. As a post ages, moderators ignore it. You'll have to keep your facts at arms reach so that you can compose that ground-shaking, substantiated post in time to get attention from the moderators.

(4) Moderate up, not down. Spend all your points moderating good posts up. Don't waste any points modding anyone down. As conservatives, we want to debate the issues because we win every time when everyone gets their complete say.

(5) Meta-moderate. Watch closely for moderations that are not done the way you would do it. If something is modded up that shouldn't be, then disagree with that. If something is modded down that shouldn't be, disagree. What happens is those that abuse their moderator points will get less of them.

(6) Mark people that make good posts as your friend. Eventually, a network will be built up so that you will have a little signal that a post should get your attention. Don't mark people that you disagree with or would like to mod down as your enemy. You will show up on their radar and get noticed by them. The idea is to be recognized by your friends, but hidden from your enemies.

Make sure you save your moderator points for those really controversial topics that get heated. That is when you can really shine. That is where it really counts. So pick you battles well, follow the guidelines above, and we will begin to get our conservative, rational voice heard.