Linux on Netbooks

You'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard about the current "netbook" craze. Basically, there is not really solid definition (in my not so humble opinion) of what a netbook truly is -- my definition is this: A laptop that has superior battery life, reduced features and that is so small and convenient that it fits in your purse (if you're of the proper gender to be carrying one, or if you're purse/gender agnostic -- don't get me started on this topic).

Anyway, I bought one for my wife recently -- running Linux, of course.

Now, there's been a lot of misinformation about Linux on desktops/laptops and netbooks. It's too hard to use, it's not familiar -- it's not Windows -- people return them at a higher rate than Windows.

But, not according to Dell, it seems. There are many reasons that this is news. Dell is the quintessential user computing device vendor. They have a well recognized brand and off and on, have courted Linux on the desktop. Linux has a lower acquisition cost for a hardware vendor -- and on a $300 computing device, there isn't a lot of margin.

Barring all of that strategic schpew -- the fact is, my wife uses an Ubuntu laptop and seems to have taken to the netbook with a minimum of fuss. I use her viewpoint as an indicator of sorts. She doesn't hold much back in terms of criticism -- if it sucks I'm going to hear about it in short order. She's not a technology lightweight -- she uses facebook, email and web browsing as good or at a higher competency than all but my tightest technological contacts -- but she's not a programmer or IT type.

In short, if she can take to a Linux device without a lot of training on my part, I assume that the general public should have few to little issue.

And this describes her experience -- the Ubuntu laptop has been a terrific device, and she's used it for a couple of years now without issue. The netbook has a simplified interface, in comparison. It's an SD-based device (no hard drive) and so far so good, it has worked well.

I've always been skeptical of the claims that people can't use Linux as a network computing platform. My own experiences with my family (Mom and Dad use Linux these days as well) tell me that the market is fragmenting. I won't get into all of the technical reasons why Linux on the desktop is a good thing -- I could, and I've done so many times in the past -- all I'm going to say is that I'm happy to see that it's not hard to acquire a device running Linux these days.
-=FeriCyde=-

Ebert Discusses Discussion

Roger Ebert's latest blog posting hits upon one of my favorite topics with the strength of a sledgehammer and the aim of a laser. His main point -- that our news has degenerated into a swill of yelling and uncivil discourse. That this lack of civility has become dangerous -- especially compared to times past.

I've spent a lot of time talking on this blog about this very issue. Whether or not you agree with the likes of Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, is irrelevant (and not the focus here). It's their technique -- their polarizing speech and the way they make the news more about propaganda than about level, balanced discourse. Our society is in danger of being polarized into groups of people that are more and more informed by people who are less and less informative. The anger is obvious. Keith O spent miles of airwave ranting against Bush. Bill O is now doing something similar -- his party didn't win, so he's going to spike the punch, that's my opinion. Spend some time (it doesn't take much effort) searching on YouTube for "shut up" video with Bill in it -- what he's doing is unpatriotic by his own measure. We're supposed to support our president, etc, etc.

I've had enough of this kind of partisan stupidity. Dialog -- quiet, carefully thought through actions, serious planning and lucid introspection of America is now in order. We're in a crisis of massive proportions, and these people and their obviously hate-mongering methods are not helping.

Roger Ebert says it better than I do. Read his blog for a really good breakdown of the present news break-down.

No, I don't know the fix to this problem. Given the fact that things like Rush and Bill sell really well these days, it's hard to imagine what fix is in order. I do know, however, that what we have is broken. Our media and the lack of local news coverage, the lack of independent voice and the popularity of junk news is a disease. We need the balanced clear voices of a truly moral news media to balance our democracy.

I shudder at the thought of a media run by the government (or even regulated). The fact is that somehow our society needs to come up with a way to pay for truly "fair and balanced" news reporting (in the strict, true sense here). The fact is that I don't want the government to do this for us. The fact is that corporate media has illustrated, really well for that matter, that they're not up to the task either.

How might this be accomplished in a democracy where free speech is supposed to be the order of the day?

Thoughts welcome,
-=FeriCyde=-

Paul Krugman and Staying the Course

If you get a chance, read Paul Krugman's latest op-ed in the New York Times.

Basically, there are people that want to call off the recovery. They're wanting the US economy to be as responsive as say, a TV remote. Sadly, it took years of failed trickle-down economics to get us here, and it's going to probably take a lot of changes to pull us out.

Paul Krugman has my respect for a multitude of reasons. His lucid insight and eloquence surrounding the economy has a strong history of accuracy to boot. This article is more of the same.
-=FeriCyde=-

A Glimmer of Hope for GM

I've blogged a lot about GM and American auto makers in general of late.

A lot of negative press, for most of that. It's only fair that I post something positive. Over the weekend, I got a chance to drive a 2010 Camaro. It was Saturday morning, and through some really strange coincidences, I have a contact at a Chevy dealer that has been keeping me posted as to when the new cars would ship.

Complicating matters, I wasn't feeling my best, so it wasn't the most pleasant time for me, but I drove out to the dealer and took a look anyway.

It was a silver V6 and automatic -- not the car I would choose, but it turns out, quite a bit to whet my appetite.

The long and short of it is this -- the 2010 Camaro is a beautiful work of art. It's everything a pony car should be and more. The V6 version lays down over 300 horsepower and everything about it was right. Drop dead gorgeous, quick, solid and the only time I've seen a GM product in real life that looked as good (in this case, better) than the prototypes I'd seen at the Cleveland auto show.

If GM can make things like this happen, pull some electric vehicles out of their past and put them back on the road and return to the creative force they were (even half of that), they can make it. This car was amazing. Of the three pony cars out now (Challenger, Mustang and Camaro), this one is the most beautiful in my humble opinion. The Challenger is a close second. I have to say that my impressions of the Challenger are similar, but that the thing is huge. It's been designed (the Challenger) to make this less obvious -- to get an idea, take a look at the size of the tires, and things begin to swing back into focus.

Bringing up the tail in terms of style, the latest Mustang is not quite there. Somethings' wrong with the back half of the car -- the prior attempt was very true to heritage, and yet somehow always kind of left me feeling like it wasn't all there from a styling perspective. The new Camaro and Challenger make it really clear what's missing.

It's nice to have choice, though, at the end of the day. Who would have expected this -- at this time, no less.

Let's raise a toast -- Here's to there being enough gas at a reasonable price in the near future to sustain some decent burn-outs ;)
-=FeriCyde=-

The Beginning or the End of the Republican Party

Rush, what a guy! He's apparently urging Colin Powell to leave the Republican Party ... along with McCain? Note that a lot of this is right off of CNN's web site. There's a lot of free press for Rush in there for a web site that's supposedly got a liberal bias. (Hint to die-hard conservatives -- when stuff like this is going on, something is fundamentally wrong with the picture). Gotta wonder, Rush -- who's going to be left in your party at the end of the day?

Even worse, the statement that Powell chose to endorse Obama was racially motivated. In case you think that this is me simplyfying Rush's words, here's a clip to watch that will make the point clear.

I read Powell's endorsement and justification with interest when it went down last year. It's anything but racially motivated. If anything, it was a lucid description of everything that I was feeling about the McCain campaign. You can hear this in Powell's own words if you're still not convinced.

Here's the deal -- Powell in the above clip is right -- he's dead on about what's wrong with the present party. What is interesting, is the stark difference between Rush and Powell.

Rush: Pretty much a person executing in units of rhetoric at high volume. His reputation be damned -- he makes money riling people up and unfortunately, wrecking the republican party at the same time. He's like a disgusting cheerleader -- never in the game, always yelling from the sidelines with simple-minded chants.

Powell: Total contrast to Rush in almost every way. Powell is commanding Military figure who has a reputation for honest, quiet and intelligent dialog. He's been on the field during some difficult moments. He's truly served our country.

I have a lot of friends on both sides of the political spectrum. Some of the more liberal ones are looking at the sad state of Rush affairs and smiling. They know that the more this continues, the smaller the party will be at the end of the day. They know that their agendas will be more likely to pass through congress and the senate (and they're calling for revenge).

As a moderate, I'm looking at this situation with a bit more distress. I'm worried that the lack of balance in our (often broken) political system will make for some serious instability. The people that follow Rush are either watching for entertainment value -- or they're true believers in the snake oil being sold.

It's like Professional Wrestling -- there are a lot of people that love to watch, even though they know it's fake. And then there are the people that really don't get the joke. I honestly believe that Rush's followers have to fall into those two categories. It's hard for me to believe that that many people can be that stupid, or simple-minded.

Rush's postulation that Powell's endorsement of Obama was completely racially motivated is simple minded. It's an example of Rush either being stupid, or maliciously defamatory. And it's a racist statement itself -- its says "Powell is lying, because he's black -- you just know it."

Part of me has to wonder if Rush is truly that stupid -- I sit in disbelief that he can be that stupid, and then I remember Occam's Razor. I have no true proof that Rush is being mean-spirited here. The simplist explanation is that Rush truly is that simple-minded.

Because anyone that takes the time to read and listen to Powell's breakdown of why he was endorsing Obama would find good reasons that have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with what's wrong with the Republican party.

The core of what's wrong is all over this blog posting -- the tendency to aim at the simple-minded and divisive rhetoric when complex solutions that require everyone's effort are required.

People like Bobby Jindal, as I've said before, aren't going to cut it for the party. The Party needs to step up and listen to the small, quiet, logical voices of its true leaders. The beginning of this change is in the nucleus of what Powell is and has been saying since before the election was over -- that to be inclusive, they're going to have to morph into something that abhors people like Rush.

And I think it's going to be a while, unfortunately, before that happens. Possibly a decade at this rate. The party will continue to shrink -- especially if idiots take Rush's advice. Given the popularity of his radio show, that's a distinct possibility. The party will eventually be very exclusive. It will be like, so exclusive that it will be made up of only loud, obnoxious talk show hosts.

I forgot, talk show hosts that talk racism with a wink and a nod. That talk about the "real" America forgetting that the real America is comprised of immigrants. The only "real" Americans here are the American Indians, if you want to get down to the demographics of the situation. The rest of us rolled into town a couple hundred years ago and started a new government that was pretty inclusive (if you don't count some slavery, land-grabbing and massacre). I'm probably not a "real" American in Rush's eyes anyway -- Puerto-Rican and Scotch-Irish in heritage, he would probably tag me as too hispanic. I seriously don't know or care -- I don't want to speculate too much because the last thing I want is to come off as loud and stupid and rhetoric-driven as Rush.

No, the potential here is for the new face of the republican party to become someone like Colin Powell. Someone who truly understands what's wrong -- who's not afraid to tell everyone to turn off the Rush Radio Raunch and move on to straightening out the party. Without that kind of balance, the party will continue the slide toward irrelevance that it is facing today. That's why I titled this posting about the beginning or the end -- it's moments like this where the vestiges of intelligent people that are truly loyal to the party can see the problem at hand with clarity.

Possibly Powell, in other words, can lead the Party back on track. The alternative (to listen to Rush, and leave) is far more damaging to the country at the end of the day.
-=FeriCyde=-

Let's Regulate Corporate Banking Welfare

CC'ing the world on my dealings with my congressman (who has responded to me dutifully in the past), John A. Boccieri:
===========================================
Congressman Boccieri,

Given the recent bail-out of financial institutions using government-backed funds, I have to raise a couple of issues and ask for your consideration of the implications as opportunities arise to address the issues at hand.

1) Bankers are supposed to manage risk.

2) Some of these people have clearly missed the mark, managing this risk. At the same time, the executive management of these same institutions were compensating themselves at a rate that most of us (the vast majority of your constituency) would consider obscene.

3) Having our tax dollars shoring up this risk is a dangerous proposition for our government.

4) They're continuing to pay themselves as if they were creating wealth -- recent measurements show that they're attempting to return their pay to pre-2008 levels.

Reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1 (Article reference is Paul Krugman's article in the New York Times entitled "Money for Nothing").

I ask you as my representative in the House to please do your part to regulate this new form of welfare. If we're going to turn the banking system into a new welfare state then there should be welfare-like compensation for the executive management. If they don't want this kind of regulation then they should find ways to be profitable and not take the money as a loan from United States taxpayers (such as you and I).

That's my request -- feel free to call anytime.

PS: Posting this on my blog as well -- just keeping you informed. I trust you as my representative and believe that true democracy requires transparency.

--Paul Ferris.
===========================================
Writing your representatives is a really good idea. I'm sharing here in the hopes that everyone reading will feel similar motivation to get involved with their government and the overall solution. Vote, contribute and protest if need be. But above all things, be informed and involved.
-=FeriCyde=-

Pontiac, the mark of Dead Car

GM is about to give Pontiac the axe. What comes to mind when you think of Pontiac? Youthful, Wide-Track, ... Sporty -- Dead?

The Pontiac brand has been targeted by GM management. It's likely going to be gone soon.

First a disclaimer: Paul Ferris isn't a fan of GM products -- I do think that new Camaro is smokin' hot though, and I'm a big fan of the Corvette -- though I'm not likely to own one simply because of the impracticality of a 2 seater in my life. Fact is that if there is anything I'm not it's a car snob. Cars are expensive. I have things I'd rather have my money doing than soaking up the remains of a BMW or some other brand of vehicle. If I want to have fun, a decent Toyota, Ford or Honda is probably going to fit the bill. I've blogged about my tastes in Mustangs and various other car-related opinions over the years. I've also made quite a few comments on GM and their deletion of brand-names.

So it is with no surprise that today I read that GM is finally doing the obviously stupid, and killing off Pontiac.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not totally in view of the GM brand management lineup here -- what I am aware of, however, is that the management of this company has to be one of two things:

• Chock full of political stupidity.
• Just plain stupid.

Dozens of reasons not to kill of brands come to mind. Think of a much reduced GM here -- one where the people that manage Pontiac and say Chevrolet are merged together into a cohesive unit of people that were the exact same size (or smaller) than the people that used to manage just the Chevy brand. In this new scenario, the Pontiac brand is sold at Chevy dealerships and vise versa.

In this new reality, GM simply manages the Pontiac brand the way that someone would manage option packages on cars. If a Pontiac branded car is coming down the line it simply gets the right badging and color options. If a car is one of the signature items for Pontiact it might get different grills and/or body panels. In some cases, the Pontiac version of a corvette, for example, or Camaro (for another obvious example -- something called a "fire bird") is manufactured. Otherwise, it's essentially a branch off of the Chevy item of the same name.

This isn't hugely different than what's been going on for the past 20 years or so. There was a time when Pontiac cars had completely different bodies, engines, transmissions. The buyers expected this kind of differentiation. The world has changed (more on all of that later). Buyers of today are not looking for the same thing they were looking for in 1969.

But GM -- wake up here. You may survive for another year doing stuff like lopping off your Pontiac leg. You're going to do it at massive cost, however, if you manage to piss off a whole bunch of Pontiac fans. I don't have to speculate much here -- likely there's a bunch of Pontiac executives that are slated to get the axe. Why GM can't pull it's head out of its collective ass and simply merge all of its executive leaders into a cohesive team that manages all brands is likely a big part of their problem.

The GM of today has to shrink in executive leadership -- let's hope that they can pick the best of the best inside of the company. Let's hope the people that stay behind are frugal, nimble and most importantly creative problem solvers -- and not simply blowing away brand names because of political infighting -- like I suspect is going on -- I don't know for sure that this is the case. If you're a GM executive insider, feel free to post some comments here or send me a private email.

The sad thing is, the GM of today has to be a completely different GM than the GM of 1959. The GM of 1959 functioned in many ways as a bunch of independent car companies. Buyers of a Pontiac or Chevy took note of the massive differences with pride. Those days are obviously gone. GM can't afford different executive leadership for all of the different brands -- but I'd argue that they still need those brands to be GM. Managing the brands shouldn't require different dealerships, assembly and so on. This is the point I'm trying to make. The fact that they're killing Pontiac says that they don't get part of their problem.

GM has to face some rather obvious glaring problems (that have nothing to do with brands) head on:

• They're no longer the manufacturing technology leader that they once were. Hybrid cars, fuel cell vehicles, lagging engine technology -- I have no doubt that they have had the jump start here from an engineering perspective. They have smart engineers, in other words, that have been in front of the competition, and probably on all of the times I just listed. They have moronic executive leadership that hasn't let the cool stuff get made -- there's a rather obvious problem they need to fix. My father and I go to the Cleveland auto show -- we see their prototype stuff. It never makes it into product form. In the mean time, a few years go by -- someone else makes it happen. This has to stop.
• Quality: GM quality is getting to be something of a joke. I have a next door neighbor that is a huge GM fan -- his wife just bought a brand new Saturn product -- and on the first day it blew an ABS sensor. I have a friend with a brand new truck -- the expensive alloy wheels look like crap. His dealership wants to replace them with "refurbished" items. His wife's brand new car has a set of headlights and grill that look like junk. And this is just me thinking of examples -- I haven't gone out to interview people or something -- these are examples that I've just accidentally came across in the past couple of weeks.
• Brand cultivation: GM needs to have its Mustang or F150. No -- I don't mean that they need the trucks to be better, or to go head to head with the Mustang on effort (that would be cool, though) -- I mean that one of the things about Ford is that they're obviously starting to get the fact that brand management of automotive products involves making the same products (with minor improvements) year after year.

  People come back for quality. They come back because their kid someday needs a car for college -- and that [brand item] served them well. The lights must be on somewhere in the company or they wouldn't be doing the new Camaro. They wouldn't be making the Corvette, Impala and Malibu. Sure -- there are times to make new brand items for people to get attached to -- those times are not to be every year or two, in an effort (I'm supposing here) to get people to forget the crappy product that the Citation or Cavalier turned into. No obvious choices for this come to mind. This is probably a core weakness; GM has not made a long-running product that gained market share and made lasting brand awareness in quite some time.

It's truly as sad day when one of your brand detractors is sitting on the fence lamenting the situation (that would be me, for the record).

A closing note here: I have real reason to be sore at GM. There was a time, early in my engineering career. I was still a student, looking for work in Warren Ohio so that I could support my family. GM didn't hire people back then at the Packard engineering facility -- it used a contractor work situation. I had to take a job at close to minimum wage working as a long term contract employee. They had a system worked out where the contract middle-men took a big portion of your salary while you worked over many years getting next to no benefits and crappy pay. All of this was eventually cleared up with a settlement for a class action lawsuit (long after I had moved on in disgust). I got to drive my 1966 Ford falcon into work and hear crap about how I should be driving a brand new GM product to help support the company (I was biting the hand that feeds, according to a couple of people, driving a 20 year old rat-bag of a car). Oh yeah, I also drove a 1974 Nova -- it was my wife's car at the time, upon occasion. When it ran.

If you wanted to switch contractors to get a raise in pay there were all kinds of "unwritten rules" to prevent true marketplace competition in the compensation department. This kept the contract suppliers happy and was in effect a reverse union situation -- workers, unable to compete for a fair wage, were kept making really crappy pay while their contract bosses made out like bandits.

I still get angry when I look back. I had a 2 year old son and we had to make seriously hard choices between food and medical care at times. All the while, the cleaning people (GM employees) were making several orders of magnitude more than we were. I sat it out, learned some valuable skills -- and left for a company that would hire me as an employee. I left for a large raise and never looked back.

I vowed at that time, never to support the company that had been so callous as to treat me the way that Packard (A GM subsidiary at the time) had treated me. The situation was compounded by the way that the employees walked around in a manufactured feudal system -- looking down their noses at the contract help like a second tier of society. They had GM car discounts, real medical benefits and a host of other reasons to feel so much better than the "contract help".

Years later, as I write this, real memories of disgust come to mind. The inefficiencies back then were obvious. My guess is that what we're witnessing these days is simply the result of a disease running its course.
-=FeriCyde=-

Public Service Annoyance.

What are the police from Brecksville doing on Route 77 North, around Mile Marker 149 doing to help make the world a safer place? Catching speeders? Sure! But what about other forms of helping the community...
View Larger Map

That's probably what the people paying their salary (the dear folks living in Brecksville, namely) like to think. Too bad they're not making the world a safer place. Too bad that's not the image that they were projecting this morning. This morning, they appeared to be simply pulling people over for speeding on the Interstate to pump up the money for Brecksville township.

Call me an idealist -- but I think of Police fulfilling the roles that my Father-in-Law, a sheriffs deputy for many years in the 70's, used to fill. In that role, he gave out tickets, sure, but most of the time he was looking to make the world a safer place. That meant helping people in need -- not just cutting tickets for passing motorists.

I don't see the Brecksville cops in that light for a simple reason. On or about 9:06 AM, Good Friday April 10th of 2009, I witnessed them (2 cars) sitting in wait for passing speeders. Oh, and there was that elderly couple, with a flat tire, within eye-shot of both of the patrol cars, broken down on the side of the road.

Yeah, it's hard to have a conversation with them -- but not at all impossible. I did manage to locate a nice email address for Brecksville. I took a couple of minutes to write a nice message to them (repeated below, for your entertainment).

Hello,

   Just wanted to say that this morning, around mile marker 
149 on 77, I saw an elderly couple fixing a flat on their 
car in the Southbound lane while I was driving on the north-bound 
lanes.  I'm writing you because two of your Police vehicles were 
in obvious eye-shot of the situation -- and obviously doing 
their usual duty (my guess: gathering speeding ticket revenue 
for your township).


   While I appreciate the safety that this regulatory 
function of your constabulary brings to the table, I would 
expect them, in situations such as this, to add some value 
in the form of community service.  Specifically, I was 
kind of saddened to see them sitting nearby and doing 
nothing.  I see the highway patrol upon occasion, helping 
others in times such as this.  Why not the Brecksville 
Police?


Awaiting your response,

Sincerely,

--Paul Ferris

I don't expect a response -- if I get surprised, I'll post it here.

Any of my readers in the Brecksville area care to comment on this? How does it make you feel, knowing that representatives of your government (I count the police in this category) are projecting this image for your beautiful township?
-=FeriCyde=-

Mister Rogers, the Epitome of Evil (to Fox and "Friends")

It's amazing how stupid you can look, when you simplify reality down to a few basic, incorrect statements, string them all together and attempt to make sense of your own nonsense. Then, to make up some air time, you sit around with some other people, who, like yourself, clearly have brains the size of a walnut. This "stupidity as a sounding board" tactic is part of what's going wrong with media today.

Seriously guys -- Mister Rogers?!? Can't you find some other villain to peg here? Mother Theresa is wide open -- why not her too? The basic gist of their argument is that Mister Rogers taught children to feel entitled. Backing it all up, some lame college study.

This is more of the same, simplistic thinking that's at the core of what's wrong with something I call "Partisan Logic" -- it's the kind of Logic whereby you can justify going after one president that blew a secretary whilst in office and lied about it, all the while thinking that invading another country while borrowing money from a hostile Communist state is just fine. Or, for contrast (I'm an equal party offender), you can rail against a gender or race inequitable system, and make arguments that sexual harassment by a President wasn't all that bad at the end of the day.

Can they seriously think that the this kind of lame, half-baked logic is a substitute for thought or basic reality? Have any of these people raised children?

Here's something to think about -- maybe turn the TV off -- that's what we did, by the way. I can't claim huge success but if crap like this Fox TV program was my Kid's only choice, I would have bought a signal jamming device in case he turned the set on one day when I wasn't home.
-=FeriCyde=-

I Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then

It's a sad day when you think you're reading satire or some piece of phony humor, and it turns out that it's really an article from ten years ago in the New York Times that contains the following quote:

'I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

The article is worth reading for a host of reasons. For one, it exposes our political system and highlights that some legislators do, in fact, understand our complex economy -- even if they're unable to stop the train of stupidity that they're riding on.

Another quote from the article that's telling:

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

That sounds like a commercial, if there ever was one, for economic destruction. Of course, my rear-view mirrors are spotless, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Remember this when someone decries the role of government and casts them as regulators holding back innovation. Remember all of this because there are a lot of people that make loud noises as great pundits that think that "simple" answers to complex questions are substitutes for history and intelligence. Remember things like the events, documented for posterity, by this article for what they were.

Hopeless, stupid mistakes by people that had all of the facts, the history and the understanding to know better, and yet they still proceeded to enact legislation that would be our downfall.
-=FeriCyde=-