Free Republic

Because Bush will veto it if it is standalone. The only way to make it veto-proof is to tell him the military gets nothing if he doesn't agree to it.

You said:
"Walter Mondale lost 49 states out of 50..."

The one state he did win was Minnesota. In this case the old maxim "All politics is local" is very, very true.

I can't believe they let these terorists run loose. they admit they set out to frighten people, and using the logic that calls the Washington Sniper a terrorist, these people are too. Send 'em to Gitmo.

A few things from Adam Smith that will never be refuted:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

"Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments."

"Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits."

You said:
"When you look at the total cost FREE LINUX costs more than EXPENSIVE WINDOWS. CEO's look at total cost. That is why they get the big bucks. Until the LINUX people solve that problem they are doomed to 1 or 2 percent of the desktop share.

Even in servers LINUX can't get the low end market. One can easily spend $2,000 on operating system software for each Windows 2000 server. The same functionality comes with FREE LINUX. Anyone can install and hook up Windows 2000 servers to windows 2000 or xp clients. It costs at least $50,000 a year to get a guy who can get a Linux server to work seamlessly with Windows 2000 and XP clients. "

First off, there's something wrong with your caps lock key. It seems to keep switching on and off.

Secondly, the TCO on linux boxes is lower than on windows. Check this link, posted on another thread:
http://cin.earthweb.com/article/1,3555,10493_1477911,00.html

As for the cost of linux sysadmins: You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Linux sysadmins handle two to three times the number of servers a windows admin does.

Regarding allowing windows boxes to talk to the linux server: I can't name one distro that doesn't come with samba. If you can read, you can have samba up and running in less than 5 minutes. Oh, and if you're only paying 50k for sysadmins, you're not going to get anybody competent, even in the windows world.

You also say:
"When a Linux client has no training costs and any windows server jockey can do a linux server, Bill Gates will be in deep doo doo."

I think that Bill Gates will be in deep doo doo as soon as the Microsoft apologistas actually try a modern linux distro and ind out Microsoft has been lying to them about how hard it is.

" Nope. I can't read your link, but, IIRC, Forrester actually *won* the primary."

Yes, but he wouldn't have been in the primary unless Treffinger had dropped out. Forrester took Treffinger's place on the primary ballot, 40 days before the election. Which is less than 51 days, which puts it clearly in the territory of title 19.

At least that's the argument other people in the primary made back in April.

"Since the SCOTUS has passed on it, this New Jersey ballot change can be done anywhere in the country citing the New Jersey Supreme Court decision and the failure of the SCOTUS to step in"

Nope, not at all. NJ Supreme Court decisions only apply to New Jersey.

Didn't Forrester get on the primary ballot the same way?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/05/nyregion/05JERS.html

Honesty I can't think of a good gui html editor off the top of my head (which certainly doesn't mean they don't exist).

Bluefish is a decent html editor, but you work in the source code.

OpenOffice will save files as html (like MS Word will) but doesn't have the site management tools.

I use XEmacs, but I'm a geek. Half of my html source is actually perl, so I don't expect any editor to handle what I do.

I'll dig around and see what I can find.

You aked:
"How painful would it be to try and "operate" a home PC using Linux."

Not painful at all. Really. Everything is pretty much point and drool these days.

"How would I operate a modem dial-up connection, for instance. Would my Netscape browser work? Would cut and paste still work?"

Using a modem is as easy as clicking on an icon and hitting the "dial" button. The first time you will need to put in a phone number, but you'll be typing into a nice friendly graphical app.

Netscape absolutley works. In fact much of the development of the newer versions is done on linux.

Cut and paste work, but differently.


"Could I still use MS Word and Excel?"

Yes and no. You can run Word or Excel under Linux if you set up windows emulation. VMWare is excellent at this (it actually emulates a complete computer, not just windows), and many windows app will run under WINE.

On the other hand, there's no need to. I haven't touched Word or Excel for almost a year. OpenOffice does everything I need, and I trade files back and forth with Word users all the time. I also use it on my windows PC, not just my linux box.

I'd suggest getting a beginner friendly distribution, and if you have an older computer sitting around you don't use much, try it out. Mandrake is an excellent distro, very user friendly and will grow with you.

If you have a broadband connection you can download the entire distro (3 cds), or you can buy it for about $30 at CompUSA/MicroCentre/Best Buy/etc. For the price you get the CDs, a book, and technical support. If you don't want the book or support you can buy the CDs alone from CheapBytes online for $3.99.

If you use the KDE environment you might not realise you're not using windows.

At the new rates ($2.80/ton) that sounds about right, or even a bargin. At the rates in 1928 he was probably ripped off.

If my math is off, I haven't had enough coffee yet today.

" Seriously, though. Make sure you have all of the updates available at Windows Updates. "

Of course that's a problem in itself. Yes, you have to have all of the updates to get anywhere close to security on any system, especially a MS system. However, the End User License Agreement that you have to agree to says Microsoft can go on to your computer any destroy any programs or data they don't like. Will they? Probably not. I just don't like signing my rights over to Microsoft.

Why are they allowed to teach this "gravity" trash in public schools? It is just a theory after all.

"All we're looking for is a level playing field competitively,"

All they have to do is release some open source software, and nobody is stopping them from doing that. Seems like we have a perfectly level playing field.

"They haven't done anything illegal, unethical or immoral. Why should anybody be able to "voice disapproval", and more importantly, interfere with their business operations? "

Obviously you have a different opinion on the ethics and morality of the issue than the NCWO does. That's fine. Ignore them.

So far, I can't fault their methods. Calling for boycotts is an age old American tradition used by both the left (v Nike) and the right(v Disney). They aren't interfering with any business, they've simply asked other people not to do business with Augusta.

"Augusta National should have the freedom to make the rules for their club just as Wellesley College has the freedom to make rules that ban men from the school (hrc notwithstanding)."

So far, there's no lawsuit, just social pressure. I thought that was supposed to be a good way to fight. You stand up and say, "These guys are jerks, and we don't want to be associated with anybody who associates with them, until they change their ways."

I don't understand the problem with voicing disapproval of somebody's actions.

"Being productive makes people happy and gives life meaning."

Working for somebody else adds absolutly no meaning to life. At least for me. I feel sorry for you if that's the only way you can add meaning to your life.

And licit oil profits also go to terrorists. Which one do you think they make more from?

If you enjoy doing anything other than watching grass grow, this list will be pretty useless to you.

Sorry, I can't live anyplace that doesn't have critical mass for culture (i.e., it can support museums, concerts, foreign films, bands in a variety of clubs). I figure the cutoff to be about 3 million. Any smaller than that is gonna be dull.

" They aren't saying the children can't speak Spanish on the playground, only that the teachers must reply in THIS country's native language! This should be the rule across America!"

Uhm, the "native language" of Arizona isn't English. In fact, it isn't Spanish either. There were 19 separate cultures there before either showed up. Which native American language would you like them to speak?

You know, when I was in college the psych people would always ask for volunteers for experiments. Why wasn't clubbing and drugging studied? We always got extra credit for participating. I could have had a doctorate!