You talk of DDT toxicity in humans as if that were the only concern. DDT almost single handedly wiped out entire species of birds and fish (including our American emblem the bald eagle). If that's not a canary in a coalmine?

A slight inflation on currency is desired by a currency issuing state. It encourages investment. And there's nothing like (de)flation to stop an economy in its tracks. Your dime example is flawed, silver is just an arbitrary substance just gold and just like paper. Anything of value is worth precisely what two parties are willing to agree on during trade. Nothing more, nothing less.

Arg. Pardon the typo A used Kodak i1220 goes for about the same and can scan a stack of documents or photos at a second per scan. And the photo scanning is on par with any of the cheap flatbed photo scanners that flood the market these days.

A used Kodak i1220 goes for about the same and a stack can scan documents or photos at a second per scan. And the photo scanning is on par with any of the cheap flatbed photo scanners that flood the market these days.

Amen, brother. DRM works just fine on me. I don't use wareze sites, or torrents, or anything like that. But if I go to a web site and the software is a free download with payment optional, I probably wouldn't pay. All it would take is requiring a simple serial number for me to cough up some dough. It's alarming how many self-righteous, entitled, dweebs work in IT. Make them pay.

In Austin, pedicabs can go places motorcabs can't. And they don't wait in traffic in places motor cabs can go--but are usually stuck. Also, in Austin, the usual ride is from 6th street to warehouse district. Which is about 5 blocks. Just enough to kill your buzz if you're walking in Summer heat, or kill your feet, if you're a chick in heels. Motorcabs don't even waste their time with a 20 second ride for 5 blocks. It just pisses them off.

Are you saying your "regressive-as-hell southern city" has this exact dispatch system? Or, that you have pedicabbing? Austing was the first city in the USA with any significant Pedicabbing business. It started in earnest around Y2K and by '02 there were about 30 cabs on the street already. I know, I was a cabbie in one of them. By 06 or so there were well over 150 cabs, and god knows how many there are now. I travelled a bunch back then, didn't see pedicabs in NY or SF or LA or anywhere else I visited circa 02.

I'm always amazed at how many people think because they were successful in ripping off the music and movie business for so long, en masse, that somehow that's their moral imperative? This world is seriously jacked up, and that mentality is the most obvious face of it. Grow up, people. Stealing music isn't *sticking it to the man*, you just just it to yourself by severely limiting the amount of good music that's come out over the last two decades.

I spent days trying to get a Ubuntu desktop running for a scanner than didn't have Mac driver, screw that. Hadn't set up a linux desktop in ten years and figured there'd have been progress in the ease of setup -- nope. I have no issues with working on them remotely but I don't care what you say: homemade linux boxes are still a pain-in-the-ass compared to commercial alternatives. I ended up installing Windows via bootcamp and it works like a charm. I use a Mac Mini under my big screen at home, it's both an entertainment and web server. I used to pay for shared hosting at Dreamhost for a dozen or more (small) sites I've built and maintain for clients. I cancelled Dreamhost and serve them from the Mini, no problem, money saved. Mini's rock.

I was just telling somebody a few days ago how we need to see what's sending audio to the OS from the OS itself. Finding an errant audio source among multiple tabs from multiple browsers across multiple desktops would be a mess. Better, a drop down as part of the volume menu bar icon that shows where the audio is coming from and provides a toggle.

Congress needs to reinterpret the meaning of the requirement in the Constitution that provides for the USPS. The intent, I believe, was to simply to provide a channel of communication among the citizens. That in mind, the federal government should shut down the USPS as we know it and just provide net access to all. I read that the FCC is already working on that so shut down the letter operation, with all the brick and mortar, and problem solved.

We'll see who they copy. If Google puts their stores in areas with high pedestrian traffic (malls and busy strip centers), then they've copied Apple. Gateway only had "destination" stores, in areas with cheap real estate that were by and large only accessible by vehicle. That was a significant difference in the two companies approach to retail.

How does capitalism factor in to the fact that 90% of music is stolen these days? Back when people paid for music there was a flourishing industry that created professional musicians by the boatload: Beatles, Stones, Zep, Floyd, etc. Music like that required lots of nurturing from the labels. Motown used to essentially send all their artists through a rigorous in-house school. These days musicians make music in between shifts delivering pizza. Bottom line is, we all caved the music industry, each and every one of us who ever took music without paying: which is essentially everybody. Then we bemoan the musicians for not making anything good for the last 15 years. And we point the finger at the music industry as the ones at fault.

I've been saying the same thing, tax capital gains as regular income and do away with corporate tax. And in doing so, do away with treating corporations as "people".

There's two kinds of people in life, the ones who take ass kickings without fighting back--and then blame themselves for it. Then there's those that fight back. The ones that defend Torvold's tantrums are those wussies in that first group.