The characters from Atlas Shrugged are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. They're sock puppets for her political (and perhaps psychosexual) theories. She's terrible at character and conveying any emotion beyond juvenile petulance. So yeah, "people" said that and they're right. Now, that being said, I don't think Ayn Rand's theories are wrong. For example, the concept of enlightened self inter...

/coughs

I mean. Sure. She's a dry writer. Her prose alone should have sent her to a gulag but that doesn't mean that she didn't have some goo...

/coughs again

Sorry. I just can't do it. I know that sucking Ayn Rand's pole is a great way to ride the slashdot karma rocket (and a great way to make eye contact with Rand Paul) but no, she was a terrible hack whose only real skills were shitting out Cold War era odes to capitalism and giving the pretentious or privileged someone to blame their personal (and sometimes sexual) failings.

And really, Detroit? That's like blaming the Gulch because Galt got a better deal on property in Mexico.

This is the kind of shit that makes me regret signing into Slashdot.

>What would you propose to do with it? Firefox and OpenOffice won't run. The Ubuntu LiveCD won't even run on 512MB (I found out by trial and error).

We could build a thin client to remotely access your exaggerated expectations?

First world computing is becoming disposable. Third world computing is becoming affordable, yet you're bitching that the process isn't exactly matching up to your needs.

How many people that need a $25 computer will be worried that it feels "lame when compared to a normal desktop"?

Answer: nobody.

nt

Much better than simultaneously and inexplicably functioning.

Golden Age Comics has many of these pre-code comics in friendly formats (i.e. not pdf) and available free downloads. Registration is required, however, as they are quite strapped for bandwidth, especially considering a single comic can easily be 30-50mb.

They also have a donations page if you're feeling generous wrt the free service they provide.

So check out some of these pre-code comics, they vary in quality immensely, but it's an interesting look back at what was considered vulgar and damaging to children 50+ years ago.

Humans are weird.

If there were a real Bruckheimer moment, and we were suddenly faced with an extinction level asteroid impact with little time to avert it, we would surely muster as much of our resources as we could to try to avoid certain doom, even if it cost hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars.

However, if that asteroid were 15 or 20 years away?

The bickering would continue right up until impact. A small but highly funded group of "astronomers" would assure us that the asteroid would miss the earth entirely.

And another group of "astronomers" would insist that there was no asteroid at all.

We're hard wired like Holtzman shields: the sudden, quick attack raises our defenses, while we the slow attack boils us like frogs.

I maintain hope that we'll avoid a catastrophe that causes us to have to muster our efforts, at least until we progress beyond having to ask how it will impact this quarter's profits.

And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation

-JM, Woodstock

Just sorta comes to mind.

As a plumber, I can tell you that the iPad's not very useful for that, either.

Sure, and I bet you have your wrenches sorted by whether they're good for tightening or loosening.

Right about now, I'm sure their loving the guy who decided they needed a 5.5mb background jpeg on their page.

It's not cheap by any stretch.

If you want cheap then Orange Leap has an open source "Community Edition" of their CRM that comes with no support.

They'll have to just scrawl their taunts on the sides of the bombs with chalk, rather than have them embellished with beautifully proportioned females and flaming decals.

Oh hell, who am I kidding, they can just use wingdings.

Dave and Gary made buying stamps fun.

Top that bitches.