Letters to the Editor
Ceres54
Published Letters: 2
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People die
[Read the article: War, chaos and Bush's faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That war always has unforeseen consequences is a good reason that war should only be engaged as a last resort, but it is not the reason. In war, even in democracies, people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the war, die. When Aquinas came up with the rules for a Just War, wars were started by autocrats against other autocrats and the average person was just caught up in it with no recourse.
The situation is still the same today. Even if you discount that effect as active in the US's all volunteer army, the Iraqi people, so often forgotten in our comfortable discussions, are killed by the hundreds each week.
I would completely support a war in which the people who decide to take us into that war are in the front line from the very first day.
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This is just a subscription version of a machine that has been available for a while
[Read the article: Meet Zonbu, the amazing $99 green PC]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A few years ago I bought this very machine from the folks at Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org). They call it the Damn Small Machine and you can see many pictures of it at http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/store/Mini_ITX_Systems/Damn_Small_Machine
It appears to be identical to the Zonbu machine, and from the description in the article it operates in the same way. It is more expensive at $375, but there is no monthly subscription fee.
In the DSL version you can add software, but you have to know what you are doing - which can be said for virtually all versions of Linux (Ubuntu excepted). It, also, is impervious to spyware, viruses and other malware. As for storage, there are USB ports to which you can attach a USB drive for a couple of Gig, or attach an external drive for about as much extra storage as you wish.
As the article says, this machine is completely silent. It uses a wall block transformer and, I think, a 9 volt connector, so it has no internal power supply. Having no disk reduces its power usage even further. However, the 800 MHz processor still needs cooling which is done by connecting a processor heat sink to the metallic cover on the box. And as a bonus, on the DSL version at least, the power status light is a brilliant blue which doubles as a night light. However, it boots up so fast that I don't generally leave it on. I push the power button and 20 seconds later I am bringing up the Firefox browser.
Given that this system already existed and they are using Open Souce software in their version of the OS, I am a little puzzled about how they managed to spend a million dollars on start up costs. But I have never started a company, so I am sure there are costs involved