Commuter light rail is dead in the US from the perspective of any new systems. The local governments always try to get them in but it's for self serving reasons to get rich and the homeowners scream about the cost. The John Locke'rs and Cato Institute morons tell you it's all dirty communism. Then the rights of way issues get tied up in courts for years in dirty battles between the cronies of the plans sponsors who just happen to own all the land on the rights of way, and the homeowners who don't and who either want a slice of that pie or flat out complain about the potential for noise. Then the activists get involve and demand that the system overwhelmingly serve poor neighborhoods and there's a new round of fighting about train stations and parking lots along side the right of way versus bus feeders to the train stations. Then the environmentalists discover the endangered Junkyard Squirrel which just so happens to nest in the rights of way too. The hippies want bike racks on the trains. No one likes the handi-accessibility of the platforms. The projected cost mushrooms and everyone eventually gives up.

The problem is that no one wanted a solution in the first place. They merely saw the light rail project as a carrier for their own agendas and pet projects.

Apple hardware overpriced? Not so sure that's actually the case. I know people like to say that. Mac Mini $600, iMac $1000, Mac server $2500, MacBook/pro $1100 - $2000. Considering what they deliver not so bad. I just got a discounted Lenovo N100-768 which is on the lower end of performance for $1000 including a bag, shipping, sales tax, Lowjack and a drop off service warranty for about $1000 but it's end of life hardware. A current model would place it squarely in the same price point as Apple.

Now granted their 27 inch flat panel high res monitors are expensive. Wouldn't you think they are?

I think the difference is that PC customers tend to be more 'value' customers. Low initial price above all other factors. Including quality and reliability. They also tend to eat higher total costs of ownership given the software (yes Apple does make a lot of software) they have to add to it to bring up to the level of as-delivered functionality they would get with a purchased Mac.

You made an interesting comment about OSX (which mostly is BSD under the covers). Why is it that MS doesn't 'open' Windows to run on something else too? Why are we locked into an endless cycle of bloated features that require Intel's next processor which then provides some overhead for the next turn of Redmonds crank and so on.

And for what it's worth, After years of dicking with Desktop Linux I gave up for a while seeing how OSX probably delivers everything I would need, on a Mac Mini for less cost than building my own Linux homebrew box. Having said that though and looking at the hardware cost requirements of Vista (remeber, we're 'value' customers) all of my instances of XP will probably be the last iteration of any Redmond OS code at Casa RealName. The costs of Redmond's software has all gone UP not DOWN since 1981 and the hardware costs just to keep pace with it has gone up not down, as well. I figure when it comes time to refresh all the machines at home they'll become either Ubuntus or Freespire/Linspire for home desktop use. Or, Mac Minis. With Ubuntu I can stay 1-2 years behind the latest and most expensive hardware. With a Mac I just plunk it down and it runs. Either way is better than dicking with either a discount Vista box or worse, an obscure subversion of a subversion banged out by Dell or HP that has all sorts of bizarre problems and failures. Even my Lenovos I'm starting to wish they'd just collapse the whole product line down to a half dozen machines instead of literally hundreds of subvariants across the board.

We should leave Iraq and I for one care nothing at all for what happens to them after that. Liberals have to decide which of their two diametrically opposed talking points they want to keep. Either we leave because it's pointless and wrong to be there. Or we stay with the liberal guilt of the 'we broke it we fix it syndrome'. There really isn't any solution that at least mostly military for the time being and for the near future. You simply can't have it both ways. So my position is throw the keys to the flaming shithouse over our shoulders, tell them where we left the tools and hop on a plane and go. Any idiot with any perspective of middle eastern history can immediately see that peaceful self governance is a happy accident. Rarely it happens and when it does that's good. But usually it's a matter of one bunch of people slaughtering another until some dictator or emir or king or president or pasha arises to stomp everyone down in the dust. For God's sake people, the people there who are our allies we call WARLORDS. Warlords. WTF is this the Ghengis Khan 13th century school of geopolitics? And those are the good guys......!

Nope sorry. On the point of post colonialism the anti post colonialists get it right, partially. This is kind of a new era of cradle to grave failed state colonialism. Not in the 19th century sense but in the sense that they are incapable of progressing w/o us. And whether that's true or not, whether it winds up as new Central African abattoir or not, we can't do anything about by being there. Time to end the empire and leave it to its fate.

Right next to the Bigfoot monument around the corner from the Black Helicopter repair yard.

Cue Theremin sound.

For them EVERY day is a convention. They walk around dressed like Anime characters all the time.

Viva la Tentacle Porn!