It's time to move to the popular vote deciding elections

[EdwinA]

The voter reforms needed now are a return to literacy tests, the reason for their temporary bans are long since gone and illiteracy is a personal choice now, and requiring civics tests. The latter can be divided among Federal ,state, and local exams, and people can choose to take any of the three or all three and vote in those elections according to their own interests and abilities.

'Winner take all' should also be Constitutionally banned re Federal elections, and the two Party duopoly dismantled. The number of Congressional seats should be expanded as well. Private money should be completely removed from all elections; they should be funded entirely by local, state, and Federal budgets, and media time allocated free as part of their airwave uses contracts. PBS and NPR both can be used for debates, campaigning, etc.; no need to pour billions into private network pockets.

 

[EdwinA]

California, and many Northeastern states paid large portions of their interstate highways.

Pass through shipping is not counted as GDP.

The ports and trucking and other services certainly are counted, as well as the corporate infrastructure and ownership of brands like Apple and have their products off-shored, and the retail outlets that sell the crap. Taxes and fees pay for the roads, along with massive Federal grants, not 'states'.

 

[EdwinA]

The computer industry started in Philadelphia.

The TRS-80 was the first mass produced PC; it was a Radio Shack developed product, made here in Texas. Texas Instruments was also based in Texas, both companies in the Ft. Worth-Dallas metroplex.

 

[Walt]

The ports and trucking and other services certainly are counted, as well as the corporate infrastructure and ownership of brands like Apple and have their products off-shored, and the retail outlets that sell the crap. Taxes and fees pay for the roads, along with massive Federal grants, not 'states'.

States like California and New Jersey do not get as much of their highways paid for by the federal government as states like Wyoming and Texas. I can understand Wyoming, it is a big state with few people. Why exactly does the rest of the country need to subsidize Texas?

 

[Walt]

The TRS-80 was the first mass produced PC; it was a Radio Shack developed product, made here in Texas. Texas Instruments was also based in Texas, both companies in the Ft. Worth-Dallas metroplex.

The Altair 8080 was the first mass produced PC, produced a good three years before Tandy produced the TRS-80. Tandy did distribute their computers through their Radio Shack stores, but it was the Tandy Corporation that developed it.

Altair was out of New Mexico. The TRS-80 was designed by a Californian in the process of moving to Texas. Everyone involved with both were swirling around Homebrew Computer Club, and its predecessor in Menlo Park, California.

 

[EdwinA]

States like California and New Jersey do not get as much of their highways paid for by the federal government as states like Wyoming and Texas. I can understand Wyoming, it is a big state with few people. Why exactly does the rest of the country need to subsidize Texas?

Strategic value. All that NAFTA freight can't be flown in, plus the original intent was Eisenhower's need for better routes to move military transports around. California is just a dead end street at the end.

 

[EdwinA]

The Altair 8080 was the first mass produced PC, produced a good three years before Tandy produced the TRS-80. Tandy did distribute their computers through their Radio Shack stores, but it was the Tandy Corporation that developed it.

Altair was out of New Mexico. The TRS-80 was designed by a Californian in the process of moving to Texas. Everyone involved with both were swirling around Homebrew Computer Club, and its predecessor in Menlo Park, California.

lol rubbish. Comparing the Altair to the TRS-80 is hilarious. The 8800 was a kit, for one, and it had no monitor, just a lot of lights and buttons. It wasn't 'mass produced', either.

The Menlo Park crowd was due to AT&T's development of Unix for the Govt., from which both Apple and the DOS operating system were derived. Radio Shack and Texas Instruments were building more advanced PC's and mass producing them.

 

[Walt]

Strategic value. All that NAFTA freight can't be flown in, plus the original intent was Eisenhower's need for better routes to move military transports around. California is just a dead end street at the end.

Military transport? I wonder which is better for military transport California with its ports on the Pacific and large modern industry, or Texas with its... Tex Mex food.

 

[Walt]

lol rubbish. Comparing the Altair to the TRS-80 is hilarious. The 8800 was a kit, for one, and it had no monitor, just a lot of lights and buttons. It wasn't 'mass produced', either.

The Menlo Park crowd was due to AT&T's development of Unix for the Govt., from which both Apple and the DOS operating system were derived. Radio Shack and Texas Instruments were building more advanced PC's and mass producing them.

They sold the Altair as a kit, or fully assembled. It originally came without a monitor, but was the first PC to get a monitor. It was definitely mass produced.

Bell Labs is in NJ, not California. DOS owes more to CP/M than Unix. IBM and Apple built more PC's than Tandy could ever imagine.

 

[Into the Night]

The computer industry actually started in Texas to begin with. Silly Con Valley is a Federal govt. creation; military research spending drove the industry and still does, the parts that aren't sucker bait stock swindles.

The SDTC does not manufacture any significant electronics. They import everything.
They also conveniently forget about Microsoft (a Washington corporation), or Amazon (a Washington corporation), or Intel (R&D in Oregon, manufacturing in Mexico, Taiwan, and South Korea).

The SDTC doesn't even produce much of it's own power. It imports almost all of that, too.

The so-called 'Silicon Valley' is almost a ghost town now.

Currently, the SDTC's main product is homeless, crappy TV shows, cheap wine, crime, and some nuts. Their portion of the interstate freeway system is so badly maintained some of it is degrading into little more than a dirt road.

The computer chip was invented in Texas in 1958, which also produced most of the base logic (commonly referred to as 'jellybean' chips), linear circuits including the famous 555, and AMD is a Texas corporation with their Radeon division in Minnesota.

Most printer engines (the mechanical part of the printer) are made in Idaho and Oregon.

Displays are made in Japan and South Korea, but some low end displays are made in Texas.
Custom chips are made mostly in Taiwan.

Computer cases and their power supplies are made mostly in China. Motherboards are either Chinese or South Korean.
Apple has moved it's phone manufacturing to South Korea since they got screwed by the Chinese government.

Fireworks and the chemicals used in them are made primarily in China, Japan, Italy, India, and the United States. China has almost no regulation of it's fireworks industry, and there are a lot of stupid preventable accidents that kill people in those factories. Estes rocket engines are made in Colorado.

All in all, the SDTC is manufacturing less and less, they whine more and more, and are losing more and more of their population, fleeing the tyranny of the dictatorship there.

 

[Into the Night]

The computer industry started in Philadelphia.

No, Wally. The computer chip was invented in Texas. The computer industry started in the UK during WW2. The first US companies started in the Boston area (mostly in areas north of Boston).

 

[Into the Night]

California, and many Northeastern states paid large portions of their interstate highways.

Pass through shipping is not counted as GDP.

Each State contributes to their own portion of the interstate freeway system. The federal portion is paid for mostly by borrowing or printing money.
The SDTC has not been maintaining the freeway portion at all well. Some are little more than a dirt road now.
GDP is NOT the economy, Wally.

 

[Into the Night]

Military transport? I wonder which is better for military transport California with its ports on the Pacific and large modern industry, or Texas with its... Tex Mex food.

Texas port facilities are FAR SUPERIOR to anything the SDTC has. Indeed, due to port problems in both the S.F. and L.A. areas, a lot of container and bulk cargo ships are paying the extra fuel and fees to go through the Panama Canal to deliver to Texas ports, then shipping by rail to destinations in the West.

The SDTC has very little in the way of so-called 'modern industry' anymore. See my posts above.

Texas is well known for it's beef (BBQs!), wheat, and corn. High tech industries in the United States is primarily located in the north Boston area, Texas, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington. More is starting to show up in Georgia and Florida lately.

 

[Into the Night]

They sold the Altair as a kit, or fully assembled. It originally came without a monitor, but was the first PC to get a monitor. It was definitely mass produced.

The Altair is no longer produced, Wally. It did not include a monitor. The company that produced it was in New Mexico, not the SDTC.

Bell Labs is in NJ, not California. DOS owes more to CP/M than Unix. IBM and Apple built more PC's than Tandy could ever imagine.

lol rubbish. Comparing the Altair to the TRS-80 is hilarious. The 8800 was a kit, for one, and it had no monitor, just a lot of lights and buttons. It wasn't 'mass produced', either.

The Menlo Park crowd was due to AT&T's development of Unix for the Govt., from which both Apple and the DOS operating system were derived. Radio Shack and Texas Instruments were building more advanced PC's and mass producing them.

DOS is a transposition of CP/M to the x86 world, and added one new feature. CP/M derived from ISIS, not Unix. Unix first appeared in the Boston area. AT&T did NOT write Unix. They wrote a predecessor called Multix.

Linux Torvald transcribed Unix to the x86 world, calling his version Linux. The GNU project (also based in the Boston area) organized the commands and applications for Linux from projects and contributors from around the world.

The TRS-80 appeared on the market in 1977. The IBM-PC appeared on the market in 1981, four years later.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Most Americans support this, and there is really no justification for elections being decided by the electoral college.

Yeah, cuz states in fly over country don't deserve a voice.

Have Kam-Kam run on this - "Disenfranchise 47!" can be the slogan - promising to disenfranchise voters in 47 States.

 

[Uncensored2008]

The Altair is no longer produced, Wally. It did not include a monitor. The company that produced it was in New Mexico, not the SDTC.



DOS is a transposition of CP/M to the x86 world, and added one new feature. CP/M derived from ISIS, not Unix. Unix first appeared in the Boston area. AT&T did NOT write Unix. They wrote a predecessor called Multix.

Linux Torvald transcribed Unix to the x86 world, calling his version Linux. The GNU project (also based in the Boston area) organized the commands and applications for Linux from projects and contributors from around the world.

The TRS-80 appeared on the market in 1977. The IBM-PC appeared on the market in 1981, four years later.

That is, entirely correct.

You must be as old as I am...

 

[Uncensored2008]

They sold the Altair as a kit, or fully assembled. It originally came without a monitor, but was the first PC to get a monitor. It was definitely mass produced.

Bell Labs is in NJ, not California. DOS owes more to CP/M than Unix. IBM and Apple built more PC's than Tandy could ever imagine.

PARC Wally.

Palo Alto Research Center, Massive innovation came through PARC. It is what created Silicone Valley. Xerox led the revolution from big iron to the world we know today.

PARC (company) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Uncensored2008]

The TRS-80 was the first mass produced PC; it was a Radio Shack developed product, made here in Texas. Texas Instruments was also based in Texas, both companies in the Ft. Worth-Dallas metroplex.

Not correct.

The Wang 2200 and Parc Alto were both released in 1975. Both based on the Intel 8008. Both pre-date the Altair.

In 1976, the Apple 1 was released.

It was three years later that the TRS-80 based on the immensely powerful (for the time) Zillog Z80 - in 1978. Apple followed quickly with the Apple II - based on the MOS 6502 (I wrote a compiler for that chip)

It's astounding really how short the 8 bit era was. 1979 brought the Motorola 68000 - a 16 bit chip. In 1980 Intel followed with the venerable 8086 and began their long dominance.

 

[Uncensored2008]

They sold the Altair as a kit, or fully assembled. It originally came without a monitor, but was the first PC to get a monitor. It was definitely mass produced.

Bell Labs is in NJ, not California. DOS owes more to CP/M than Unix. IBM and Apple built more PC's than Tandy could ever imagine.

How would the Altair ship with a monitor? Lacking a video processing unit, as it did? There was a teletype option.

 

[Uncensored2008]

No, Wally. The computer chip was invented in Texas. The computer industry started in the UK during WW2. The first US companies started in the Boston area (mostly in areas north of Boston).

Correct. Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit in 1959.