The primary reason is because most of those that I know personally are making a good living and living their lives just fine. There may be threats out there but thay aren't immediate enough to do anything about. I vote every two years, pay my taxes, take care of my family and it all seems to work out.

While I am quite aware of the social and political travesties going on in the Capital and politics in general, there isn't much more I can do about it other than vote, write nasty letters and bitch about it with those I trust. Not to family and not at work. I'm not moving to Europe any time soon. I might want to visit there some day, though.

Thanks but I'll stick to using LG Samsung or Sony hardware for personal use. I don't like the idea of my life being sifted through by the Chinese. My company doesn't allow ZTE or other Chinese phones to be given out for corporate use, ether. Secrets are best kept secret.

The constitution is for US citizens and US companies. They would like to expand the reach to China-owned companies doing business here. Sure. Right after they stop targeting US technology, secrets and businesses. This law suit isn't going anywhere, even in the state of Texas. This a a big waste of money and time.

I live in Howard County, MD. Originally the recycle stuff was to be sorted by us in separate bags and picked up that way from the blue recycle containers by the county. A few years ago they went to "All Together Now" which meant all the stuff was mixed up together in the recycle containers. This devalued the recycle stream to the point where the recovery companies that were supposed to be able to sell the recycled items as a product couldn't. Most went out of business. It probably sounded great to the politicians that thought this crap up but it made most recycle streams unusable for most recycle processing. Now the county is drowning in the stuff, most of the processors are out of business and there are repeated stories in the local news about recycle material being diverted to incineration and such just to get rid of it.

This is what happens when political people become "creative". God help us.

This is a societal issue. Either we take care of families or we don't. Working for a company was once a deeper commitment then today. It wasn't about just perks and pay. There was more mutual respect and satisfaction between workers and the c- level staff. That seems to have died in the 80's. Some companies still try but it isn't as it was. Some managers still try to do the right thing but it's really uneven how much they care for their staff.

Someone cared for you once. Not now, apparently.

Western European countries have been both Socialist and Capitalist since the second world war. Regulated capitalism is something we used to have in the US before the the Clinton administration removed most federal oversight of the capitol markets. If the laws on the books now were actually enforced we may have dodged the worst of the last recession.

The only thing pure capitalism does is make the rich more money and fleece everyone else. The markets need to be regulated. "Free Market" as a concept is an absolute travesty and a danger to the society unfortunate enough to host such a thing.

I meant it hardly has a flawless record...

Back to the fray.

He was referring to cocaine, which was once a component of the soft drink. That version is no longer sold because it would be illegal.

Laws tend to change due to both public knowledge and awareness changing over time. This is likely the reason why the extreme conservatives are doing their best to limit access and affordability of education for the middle and working classes and consolidation of the media. You can't really vote rationally without a universally efficient education or even awareness that a problem exists. It's hard enough to catch the news when you work 60+ hours to make ends meet. Calling this a "Democracy" is a bit of a stretch under such circumstances. As long as this remains the case the American Dream is just another big lie from the corporate big-shots and hangers-on.

I was born in the US and I don't recognize the country I grew up in. I grew up in the sixties and seventies and started a family in the eighties. I don't think the country I grew up in really exists any more. Both political parties had plenty of people I had great admiration for. Both had the fringe but they were a tiny minority. Back then I think both parties realized the damage to the country if we followed the path that politics is on now. The country no longer seems to matter as much as the power and wealth that accompany it for those chosen by the parties to participate in the political arena. A country in decline no matter how you choose to measure it.

The FTC is hardly without a flawless record. It also does pretty well considering the meager resources it brings to it's mission. The article reminds us that they do go after those that are blatant about their greed, customer antagonism and deception when they have the ability to do so. They tend to try to follow a reasonable middle ground, which is very difficult in today's political environment.

I have a Fire HD tablet and book reader. It's a really nice tablet, it's inexpensive and it works great when used to watch netflix movies over wifi in our apartment. It appears to match pretty much nay other tablet in functionality and breadth of applications and makes a pleasant book reader if used as such. I'm going to assume that the phone would be similar. It won't be flashy but it will do what people want for similar digital services over a phone, but for cheap. It's nice to do things over the web without having to wait for a PC to boot.

Most of the tools might be yours but the infrastructure was paid for by your customers, not your business. You didn't build that out of your pocket, you built it out of ours. Just like the roads, electric grid and the phone systems. Your customers paid for it. Business may be how some things are built but the capitol never comes from the businesses but from society at large. Quit taking credit for the money if others, asshole. Revisionist Capitalist jackass!

I could care less about mono and Gnome. I've been using KDE for at least the last decade. I've avoided mono as the tool-set always seemed to be pretty useless for anything other than attempts to port VS Windows stuff. I use VS at work along with SQLServer and LabVIEW. While we have plenty of Linux at work on servers, most applications and development remains on the Windows platform. Mono just seems like a big waste. Too much incompatibility and a whole lot more work than I have time for. I avoid installing mono on my home desktop and avoid using the stuff on my systems. I've done C++/Qt and some Java on the Linux platform and have yet to see any need to use mono for anything.

So Miguel is now going to work on semi-compatible libraries and tools to confuse Mac users? Good luck with that!

Yep. This is also why I'll never buy another Seagate drive. Designed to fail by the warranty expiration. Use to be both faster and longer lasting than the competition. Now just junk. Last build lasted 6 years. Now the hardware is lucky to make it 3 without losing function. I have a stack of mainboards, DVD Drives, sound cards (to fix broken sound function) and Ethernet cards. I may plug as much into the USBs as I can get away with soon so I won't have to open the case any more to fix stuff just to keep my work...

I also have a VCR from the late '90s made by Sony and a Hi-8 camera from 2003 that both work fine. Nice hardware. Too bad they forgot how to build stuff to last... Or that people even want any more.

While the kernel is technically the "Linux" part each distribution is packaged with different components, utilities and capabilities. While most, RHEL, openSuse, Linux Mint and Gentoo are general usage by design there are others specifically targeted at different uses. Even general use distributions very in setup, personality and in a lot of cases the stability of the chosen software used for different tasks. Some are intentionally bleeding edge with some intended to extreme stability at the cost of newer features. Some distributions are pretty bare-bones affairs intended for specific use profiles.

I gravitated to openSuse from the Suse commercial distribution ages ago after Redhat became unstable and awkward to use around 1999 or so. I bought a Suse package at a CompUSA and have used a derivative ever since. The last setup of this on this system took all of an hour and a half to become completely useful. It used to take weeks of fixing broken bits. Once you become used to how a distribution does things it becomes easier to use productively and they all differ in setup and convenience features in how things are done. These days the results end up pretty much the same as they are all pretty easy to install and configure.

It takes a while to find one that does things in a way that is easy to understand, has the right mix of components and is totally useful for whatever you are using the systems for. Some of us just like to experiment.

Replace it my hairy ass! They might want to actually attempt to install some of it! The fact that they choose not to and cherry-pick areas where density and demographics provide the highest and fastest payback likely has more to do with their choices of installation areas.

YOU are an apologist for these companies and there is no way around it. I first received DSL in my area in 2001. Optical links, used correctly, should be less, not more, expensive. It's not the hardware, it's the politics. The industry wants us to be THANKFUL of their generosity in providing such wonderfully expensive crappy service.

"Look at the xbox - never have so many people had such a bad experience with a device breaking, and it was covered up."

I don't even have an x-box but I know about the red ring issue... This is hyperbole at it's worst.