1) The ACLU and EFF have shown to be quite ineffective. The ACLU has also supported many of the governments' complicit endorsement of eg. religions.
2) Do you think corporations, the majority funders of politicians, are going to stop doing this?
3) This hasn't had an impact in ears.

When was the last time you used Linux, exactly? The criticisms you made sound on par for 2003. I've not had any hardware not work out of the box, even on Debian Stable, in years. IE-only sites? Please. A stable video editor? Why not just say "it doesn't have Premiere", because your complaint is invalid otherwise.

"Stability when you buy a complete desktop OS from the same vendor" - now you're just being a shill. I stopped reading here. I've not had a single OEM install which was even remotely stable, ever. Even if the machine is going to run Windows, it gets an original (non-OEM) install of Windows.

More often than not, the "power users" you're referring to are the people copying and pasting from one CRM system to a spreadsheet, shipping the spreadsheet to someone as an attachment, and that person putting it into another. They're all automatically generated sheets.

That's the same thing the Windows admins at work say. They manage a couple servers. Same for the Cisco guys, because they don't know any better.

Yeah, that's a bit inflammatory. Truth is, the people I know who use Linux as a 'desktop' use it for work. They also use it for play (including gaming on occasion). The contrast is that you really can do a lot more this way; for instance, virutalizing a "just Cisco JDM shit" or "corporate messaging and email VM" instance works pretty damn well, while still giving me a full suite of good networking tools.

My observation is that the people who are preferentially sticking with Windows at this point - at least those working in IT - are the "low performers". They're not the ones who are actually getting things done; they're the ones getting into the way. This might be a bit of an institutional observation as well.

As someone who often has to deal with a lot of different data (eg. converting/importing/exporting data from one system to another) on a regular basis, Libreoffice/Openoffice tends to work a bit better. Why? Because it's not completely useless when copying, pasting, or importing different data types - for instance, proprietary system CSV which is fairly well broken. Or just normal CSV, for that matter. It's a stupid simple feature which I use all the time, and Excel falls flat on its face with.

The only thing I've found Excel does better is more complex formulas (I don't need them often, and OO/LO does it just as well, if not quite compatibly) and reading other peoples' severely brainfucked spreadsheets which will rarely open up consistently between alterations...

So in other words, this is probably 4-5 years off from chipset implementation - for Intel boards. This leaves all the other boards implementing Broadcom, Realtek, etc. out in the rain...

Don't count on the price of 10gigE dropping to cents. Unlike gigE, 10gigE has really very little 'enterprise' competition technologies. Fibre channel, infiniband, etc. - if you want more than gigE speeds, it's going to cost you. Those were costly technologies then - but back then, they offered significantly more performance (and thus value) than gigE. With 10gigE, there is no financial incentive to drop costs.

This is probably by the same people who are saying now that remote IT workers "work better" when they're brought back into the office. Notice the trend lately to reduce remote IT folks? These are the same people responsible for the open-room work environments which are oh-so disruptive to deep concentration. They're the same business people who hate having IT be able to say "no" and think that IT is full of a bunch of lazy do-nothings with entitlement and personality problems. They're the fools who think it's the kind of work that anyone can be retrained to do.

They might as well be proposing unicorn steaks be sold at market. It won't work.

It's a simple metaphor. Small change takes roughly the same amount of effort as big change, particularly when the big problem (excessive bureaucratic government) is the reason behind the small problem.

The government got 'found out' with things like Carnivore in the past, and just kept this under the radar; the solution isn't to "prevent" intrusive monitoring (already illegal, remember? something about a Constitution...), it's to prevent the beast of large government from getting big enough to be able to accomplish said intrusion in the first place.

This may be a moot point and simple mental masturbation if our society has become morally bankrupt enough for it to happen as it has. Someone will always step to take advantage.

In my mind, it's kind of like complaining about flies swarming around the shit on the kitchen counter. The problem isn't the flies - that's irritating and certainly a breach of sanitation - the problem is the shit. Get rid of the shit and the flies will go away; they're a secondary problem.

Quickly ceasing to be free? It's been a while - we just weren't aware of it, kind of like not discovering that someone else used the last of the peanut butter when you go to make yourself a sandwich.

Things are driven by "we have an opinion which says that this is OK", yes. The word you are looking for is "consensus'. When those in power have it, they do whatever they so damn please. It just so happens that those who hold the actual power at this point are not the ones that get elected: the ones who are getting elected are pawns put in place to distract us and they fill out the ranks of both parties now.

That's not exclusive to lithium ion batteries, you may just notice it more because you care about those specs in the application that lions are used.

For instance, AA alkaline batteries are rated at 1.5V. The cheap ones are, in reality, about 1.4-1.5V (and much lower mAh). NiCad (or nickel metal) batteries are 1.2V but with a higher kwh (or amp hour, whatever) rating. These batteries all become less useful as their amp hour availability drops, and this is highly dependent on their application.

For instance, NiCad are almost entirely useless in digital cameras as they start out fully charged near the bottom of the voltage requirement of a digital camera; something like a lithium AA will maintain that higher ~2.5-3V range longer due to its higher mAh rating.

I've got a pocket flashlight which takes 14500 cells - basically a rechargable AA-sized lithium. The batteries are 3.6V and last a lot longer than a 1.5V battery in the same light - in part due to the fact that the flashlight has a regulator that drops the voltage to the LED, but also because of the much higher mAh. I believe the lithium batteries drop to about 2.8V before the regulator in the battery 'shuts it off'.

You'll see the same thing in automotive batteries, too: a 12V car battery that reads 10V or less still may be usable for that application if it's got a high amp hour/cold crank rating, and you may still get many hours of auxillary use out of a battery which is already unable to start your car.

Guess what? Lithium batteries aren't flammable either. What they are is is explosively volatile. There is a difference.

Neither sulfur nor lithium respond all too well with water. I can't imagine these would be well suited for aquatic purposes.

Oh, on the contrary - someone making 1/10th the salary wouldn't be able to do the job, becaues there'd be nobody around smart enough to train them. Someone at that income level lacks the initiative and professionalism necessary. (Yes, even if they're in India doing it remotely, or they're only making half as much.)

Yes, a well oiled machine runs better for longer without being adjusted. But when something bad happens to that well maintained machine, it's usually a little bit more complex than just kicking it. And, with any complex system, more variety can go wrong.

In all likelihood, the predecessor didn't improve the environment because he wasn't able to think ahead that far, and didn't have the knowledge to do so.That's the difference between someone who administers something, and someone who manages something: you want a manager (or an engineer), not an administrator, in a single-person shop.

Having used the ITIL process, I'm sure ITIL is largely to blame for this.