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Anthony A

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Posts posted by Anthony A

  1. Completely inaccurate. Unionization and low productivity have NOTHING in common. People are lazy the world over, union or not. The unions just protect the working people from the exploitation of their employers. Most people have ZERO knowledge of unions, labour, history, or business and the various business models. And experts are bought and paid for by the groups that fund them (think jim stanford on the left, fraser institute on the right). I think the fact that people want to make enough money to buy a nice home, car, and send their kids to nice schools and work in a safe and harassment free environment is much more palatable then someone needing to attend vacations, meetings, etc. on a private jet drinking 400 dollar drinks at resorts and lavishing themselves in excess.

     

    If you notice, the asian automakers pay very near the same as the big three, as well as benefits....a direct reflection that the going rate for labor is established. the dying of the big three has more to do with business model then anything else. and here in canada, it has a LOT to do with NAFTA and WTO decisions which destroyed the autopact which provided that for every vehicle sold in canada, one had to be built here. industry was doing fine till that went and started the slow decline.

     

    And dont forget that chrsyler nearly died two decades ago and with government help, rebounded and made a LOT of money for everyone involved.

     

    Or you could keep watching FAUX news :P and reading the national post (for pidgeons) :lol:

     

    As for the crisis, its not bad for everyone. With mortgage rates at rock bottom and houses going up for sale and prices dropping, its been great picking up houses at a bargain and renting them out. :) I for one am loving the current state of affairs, but that is just from a personal perspective.

     

     

    I did not say I was anti union. I am not a fan of the UAW or CAW and my remarks were directed at them. They have made it impossible to make the changes that are needed for the big three to survive. There is nothing wrong with workers wanting good wages and all the other things you listed. There is something wrong with them expecting me to pay for it with government hand outs. It's not my obligation to keep them. If they are not willing to compromise and make the changes necessary than they should not be bailed out on my dime.

     

    Your comparison of the Asian car companies is just plain ignorance sorry to say. If you followed any of the news this week you would see many articles about the cuts they are making to their work forces to adapt to the slow down that the big three simply cannot make because of the unions. The unions are inflexible, selfish, and have the big three screwed to a wall. This is on top of the bad business model you refer to and I agree with you about. It's not just wages, which are comparable, it's the whole work culture that differs. There is no comparison between the unionized big three and the Asians. The big three could never do some of the things the Asians do. The unions would go nuts and walk out in a second. The whole set up of the big three, that includes the unions, management, and the business model is a joke and it's time for them to die. They are dinosaurs and the meteor is coming.

     

     

    As for Chrysler and their near death experience two decades ago you refer to. Look where they are now back begging for more. I can't believe you thought that would be an intelligent example to use. You make my case for me with it.

     

    I don't read the National Post or "Faux" news. I am on line probably a min of 6 hours a day most of it though on very respectable financial sites, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail, Market Watch, Reuters, Yahoo Finance, MSN , and several others. Don't make assumptions. There is not much that happens in the world of finance that I miss.

  2. So, does this mean that you can also install and use a portable app on your HD?

    Yes. I have probably fifty on my machines. When ever I am looking for an app I always look for a portable version of it and use it if there is one. Makes backing up very simple and maintaining multiple machines less of a hassle. For example I will set up Portable Firefox and get it all configured the way I want and than simply copy it to another machine or two or three. Very simple. Less garbage than installed versions because everything is self contained in one folder. There is no "install" really. If you use the Portable Apps.com format you really are just extracting to a folder. If you use a zip format you are just un zipping to a folder.

     

    Some of the portable apps I use on my machines are

     

    CCleaner

    Firefox

    Opera

    Revo Uninstaller

    Notepad++

    FastStone Image Viewer

    FastStone Capture

    Jarte

    Pidgin

    and many others.

  3. great article. the ignorant unwashed masses complain about the "overpaid, lazy union workers"yet these kings of commerce live like royalty and extol the virtues of fiscal frugality. unbelievable. another example was the latest fiasco of the AIG "conference" which cost about 400 grand.....

     

    "the ignorant unwashed masses complain about the overpaid, lazy union workers" because it's true. They may not fully understand the excesses of the executives but that doesn't mean they are wrong about the work force. Any auto industry expert you read about or hear speak will tell you the unions at the big three are a big problem and have to change in order for the big three to remain viable.

     

    This week the heads of the big three were in Washington crying for another handout. They were not alone because the head of the union was there with them crying just as loud. He is doing this while the union refuses to give in on any meaningful concessions.

  4. The whole GM, Ford, and Chrysler culture needs to die and IT WILL. Even if these clowns get their bail outs they are still dead. The bail outs will be a temporary fix and they will run these companies into the ground.

     

    The people running the companies are incompetent. The workers working for them are over paid, lazy, and suffer from a severe case of thinking they are entitled to a job. This whole thing is long over do and much deserved. If ever there were a company deserving of dying it's the big three and it's going to happen probably sooner but if not it will later that is for sure.

     

    If they manage to survive until Obama gets in office he will probably bale their pathetic asses out but it will be a short term fix and they will die eventually. I am looking forward to the disaster Obama will create with his policies. I have done very well shorting the US during this much deserved financial disaster and look forward to doing even better. If there is one thing you can count on it's the US government making a mess of things. It's money in the bank.

  5. Well I will have to disagree with you guys. There were a couple tracks I liked but not anything amazing and the rest were filler to me. The CD sounds like it had a musical vasectomy ;) Axle should get his crap together and get back with the original guys.

     

    Axle is nothing without Slash and Izzy. Take a look at the who wrote many of the big hits on Use Your Illusion I and II. It was Izzy which many don't realize because he stayed in the back ground while Axle made a complete idiot of himself and single handedly destroyed a great band.

  6. Can you elaborate on this, Andavari?

     

    You need to run the portable app from your HD or a thumb drive and make your settings then. Than burn the portable app to a CD/DVD if you plan on using it from a CD/DVD. If you were to put the portable app on a CD/DVD without doing that first you wouldn't be able to change any settings because you can't write to the CD/DVD you are running the portable app off of.

  7. I've litterally been waiting years for this album and its FINALLY here! You can hear the whole thing on myspace:

    http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses

     

    There is never going to be another album like this. Its not the best album ever made but it's breathtaking.

     

    I have only heard the title rack so far and it's not bad.

     

    There have been 3 big Metal releases recently, Metallica, AC/DC, and Guns and Roses. I hope the Guns and Roses is better than the other two are.

  8. Microsoft in the security business is disgusting. Making and selling security products to protect their flawed products. Fix the flawed product would be the right thing to do not profit from the security products.

     

    Been doing a lot of reading up on Macs lately and they just don't have the security problems Windows does. Don't even bother to give me the BS about how there are far more Windows machines out there that's why they are getting hit with all this malware. There are multi millions of Macs in use and if they were easy to write malicious programs for it would be done and done often. The fact is they are not easy to infect and Windows is so flawed it's not much effort to mess with.

  9. To be honest I'm not that bothered about SP3. What are the honest advantages of installing it? ;)

     

    There is no advantage to installing it if you have SP2 installed and fully updated. If you do a reinstall of XP than it makes sense to install SP3 because it includes all the updates since XP was released and you can install them in one package. I think if MS released SP4 tomorrow and it was just all the updates since SP3 was released you would see everybody jump to install it like they did with SP3 even though you really don't get anything you already don't have. SP2 was different it included some major new features.

  10. This is all a bit much isn't it.

     

    I assume the CD you sent for will eventually end up in the same "bargain basement CD readers" that come with the same "bargain basement systems" you wax so lyrically about.

     

    For the benefit of Keith, the not so huge file downloaded quite quickly, and was burned successfully with my "bargain basement" CD/DVD writer on my "bargain basement" system.

     

    I also downloaded it no problem and burned it with out issue and installed it on a machine that I had to reinstall Windows on.

     

    I used the link in the thread you mentioned in your previous post. That's not a Microsoft site though. Is there a link to the ISO of SP3 on Microsoft's site? I haven't seen one when I was looking around.

  11. It is just to cover the shipping costs that for me was about $10.00 for two CDs for myself and my friend who only has a low speed DSL connection.

     

    I guess if you have a high speed connection then downloading the huge ISO then burning it to a CD that is able to be read on one of the plethora of bargain basement CD readers that come with the bargain basement systems these days then it should be OK.

     

    I would consider ordering it but I don't want to give my credit card number just for $10.

  12. I hope they keep it around like they've did with the 1.x version for those of us that simply can't upgrade to v3 due to severe enough issues to warrant never trying v3. If they do completely phase it out I absolutely dread the thought of using IE or some skinned clone, and Opera isn't much of a choice either as it too has severe enough issues.

     

    They still dropped support for 1.x and 1.5 and they will drop it for 2 eventually.

     

    It's going to happen soon http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-100963...tag=mncol;title

     

    I don't know if you tried FF 3 Portable but it works perfectly for me compared to FF3 regular which gave me problems. Large speed increase over FF 2 and some other nice features.

  13. So I'm confused! I noticed a Ff 2 release a few days ago at MajorGeeks I believe. What is Ff 3.0.3 that I'm using relative to 2.0.0.18? Thank You!

    It's the newer FireFox. FireFox two is being replaced with FireFox 3 but they maintain updates for older versions for a while. Eventually they will stop providing updates for FireFox 2.

  14. Hi Anthony, :D

    I have WinXP Pro, Home, and Media Center PCs that I maintain for friends.

    They are all set-up with IE7 and IE7Pro with Ad Blocker enabled.

    The AV programs or security products I have installed are Avast! as "real-time" scanner. Also installed, up-to-date, and used as desired are Malwarebytes, AVG 7.5 Free Edition, SUPERAntiSpyware Free edition and SpywareBlaster. These identified and removed several pieces of malware over the last year. Personally I run Malwarebytes "quick scan" daily.

    I have experienced no conflicts between any of these products. I normally update and run these even with Avast! Free still running. Of course, I don't have more than one scanner running "real-time". Every now and then I even use ESET or Panda on-line scanners just to keep up-to date on their use. This is also with Avast! still running "real-time".

    Best wishes,

    :) davey

     

    I see that you have two AV installed and that's not recommended. Some AV programs won't even let you install them if they detect another AV on the machine. I have never seen having two AV programs installed recommended in fact everything I have ever read on the subject highly recommends you don't have more than one AV installed. Of course you shouldn't run both real rime scanners at the same time but it's recommended not to even have the two programs installed at the same time.

  15. Thanks for the notice, Hazel.

    I still use AVG 7.5 mainly for on demand scanning and I usually manually update daily.

    The "Piriform Fairy" must have been busy because I managed not to update when the "erroneous" AVG update was released. It came and went without affecting me at all.

    :) davey

    P.S. Avast! Free is my main "real-time" active scanner.

    Like many other "security aware" users I keep more than one up-to-date scanner on my PC.

    These may be the only things available on your PC to allow you to get help -if- when you get infected.

    Do you mean you have two AV installed that is not recommended. Even if not running the real time scanners together having two AV installed can cause problems. If you want to do an AV scan with more than on AV try using the online scanners or use the Portable Apps version of Clam Win which will not interfere with any installed AV.

  16. I just cant get into opera. Tried and go back every once in awhile, but firefox just seems so much more customizable and i like the look and feel much better. I had spent a few years on ie6 and it was ok, but once i went to firefox my surfing got so much more fun.

     

     

    I do like ie7 with the pro add on, it works pretty good, but still like firefox better. I just keep ie set up for the kids and my wife so they dont muck with my setup. :)

     

    As for opera, it does seem a touch snappier then firefox, but for that millisecond of speed the loss of the functions that I use and like is not worth it.

     

    I use both FF and Opera. They compliment each other well. What one won't do the other can.

     

    Default FF is nothing special at all. It needs it's extensions to be any good. Opera comes with many of the features already built in. It can be customized much more than FF can. Opera has a much bigger learning curve than FF and if you don't take the time to learn it you can't fully appreciate it.

     

    I will be getting a Mac very soon and I will be starting to spend a lot of time on that and Opera and FF both work on Macs so that's going to work out good for me. I have a ton of browsers installed and tried many more but they all fall well short of Opera and FF. I will be removing all of them except for FF, Opera, IE7 with IE Pro, and Maxthon 2 for the sake of simplicity and reducing my work load. Trying to keep current on all my browsers on all my machines gets to be a hassle and will be more so when I get the Mac. Google Chrome is one that has some potential to challenge Opera and FF but not right now. When it gets better support for extensions and further along in development it will be interesting but right now it's not worth the hassle for me.

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