The Libertarian ones. Too bad the party doesn't really adhere to the planks, nor have a good crank/wacko filter -- which can only mean most of the members are themselves cranks/wackos.

1. Individual Rights
2. Individual Responsibility
3. Minimal government intervention
4. Minimal government taxation

That's really it. Those things encompass everything else.

I'd like to see some serious punishments, as in criminal punishments, for elected officials who don't bother to show up for votes/debates or who even try to pass laws based on lies or emotional appeals. Paying people six figure salaries to vacation half the year from a job where their primary function is to lie to each other and the public is sheer idiocy.

Very consumer oriented viewpoint, but that's the one that drives sales, or at least used to, so no fault in it. These days I think the corporate market is a much bigger slice of the pie over at MS than individual consumers. I didn't buy XP or Win7 for the enhanced security or any of that, I bought them to play games. My job doesn't require anything that Win2k can't do; hell, If the latest JVM/JDK or recent browsers will run on NT4, that's all I need for work. Edit text files. SSH to servers. Manage vCenter. That's all I need to do with a computer beyond the realm of entertainment.

Others have similar requirements, be it using Eagle or ArcGIS or whatever other specialist software package they need in order to do their jobs.

Win8 is not even a slight improvement over Win7 or XP at such tasks. Not only is it "dead" on the consumer side due to a dying desktop PC market, it's dead on the corporate side because all it brings to the table for existing users of XP, Vista, or Win7 is aggravation. MS needs to refocus Windows on corporate and business users and drop all the 'fluff' or I have a feeling they'll lose even those markets entirely.

Which sucks, because despite their faults, the NT based OSes have always made stellar workstations.

IRV. Hanging, dimpled, spindled, and mutilated chads be damned.

It's not that I know for certain, it's that you don't -- certainly not when it applies to anyone other than yourself. Telling me or anyone else here what would or wouldn't make them happy is the height of arrogance. Saccharine coated feelgood thoughts like "family", "helping others" and "appreciating what you have" may work for you, that doesn't mean they work for everyone.

You don't sound quite sanctimonious *enough*, try harder.

The whole "You don't know what makes you happy, that's just an opinion, but I KNOW in truth what will make you happy" has been a really good start though. Sorry bub, "in truth" you have no idea what makes me or any other random stranger happy.

I have a great job that I enjoy in the easiest environment possible (home). I'm in the "bank always in the black, don't think about it" category. However, having enough money that to ensure I never had to work again, while maintaining or improving my current standard of living, would certainly make me happier.

The happiness of being able to sleep until noon every day if I so desired may be a small measure, but it's not nil, as is the happiness of never having to consider the possibility of losing my job (and thus my income) when planning for the future.

To paraphrase one of your own replies here, No, you only THINK it would NOT make me happier.

I assure you, your opinion is wrong, and trying to speak in such broad strokes while citing the plight of a few lottery winners isn't even enough of an argument to qualify as anecdotal.

..haters gonna hate. "You do crime in 3rd person in a city.. OMG GTA RIPOFF". The only games that have been ripping off GTA... are GTA sequels. SR2 and SR3 are both better than any GTA game ever made, except the first, which of course I still own for PC. Sadly I no longer have a 3dfx/glide card to enjoy it with.

When you're on the bottom, the only way to do is up. It would be difficult to build a new GUI and do *worse* than X11, though if that's too difficult for Canonical I can't say. If they take direction from XP, OSX, and Win7 it may be good. If they all have eyes glazed over by words like "mobile" and "cloud" and take more direction from Android, iOS, and Win8, it may well be worse than X11.

I don't think they do. If they did, they would be saying the current ice age, rather than the "last" ice age, as we are in a glacial period RFN, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The "less technical" meaning is meaningless. Basically when the media or average person says "ice age" they mean glacial maximum, or more personally, ice sheets extending from the pole to... wherever they happen to live.

We will be out of the current ice age when Greenland and even Antarctica are ice-sheet free... Which is the normal (average) state of the planet. Cool glacial periods, like the one we're in now, are the exceptional periods vs. the rule Average global temperature, geologically speaking, is about 10C higher than present. The cool periods when ice sheets are possible tend to only last a few million years at most, separated by warmer (than now) periods lasting a hundred million years or longer.

The next glacial maximum may be 50,000 years off. If we cut CO2 concentrations to 2/3 current levels, the next glacial maximum may only be 15,000 years off.

Is there a point buried somewhere in there? If you're an honest person, you'll do your job if you're going to cash your check, hate it or not. If you're a dishonest person, you'll collect the money and then whine about not being "motivated" enough to do what you're being paid to do. It really is that simple.

Funny. I thought what caused people to slack off was a shitty work ethic. If you need 'motivation' beyond your paycheck to do your job and do it well, perhaps you're more suited to the position of walmart greeter than you are to an IT role : remote or local. Disclaimer: I've been working from home for the past 3 years.

1. Switchgrass average production: 14.6 tons / hectare

2. Ethanol 100 gallons/ton

3. Total land area (not arable, total for CONUS, period) 766 million hectares

Total fuel production per year: 1.1 trillion gallons

Gasoline and diesel consumption in 2011: 200 billion gallons.

So you tell me. Do you think it's realistic to convert 20% of the total land area of the country to switchgrass production? It would certainly make sense to use it to replace corn, once the technology matures, but it's never going to replace petroleum unless they figure out a way go grow it much more densely without raising the cost of production too much. There are better alternatives to solve the oil crunch than plants-as-fuel. CNG is one. LPG is another.

What is with these people that think we can meet any reasonable amount of our energy needs, nationally or globally, with alcohol? It takes literally seconds to look up the maximum arable land in a country, determine how much fuel you could make if you used all of it at 100% efficiency, and then see that this is nowhere near enough fuel to replace gasoline. During this exercise you're allowed to ignore the impact this would have when that land is no longer available for current purposes.

Until there are major advances in where this stuff can be grown, to get the energy produced per acre much higher than it actually is, and prevent "simple" natural disasters from ruining entire crops for the season, this stuff is never going to take off no matter the hype.

1. Another stupid petition on a useless site.

2. A great way to repackage that popular business plan titled "I have a great idea but nobody believes me, so please give me some money."