People sometimes said Ayn Rand’s writing was . . . heavy. Obvious, too. Villains with names too good to be true (or believable). Elsworth Monkton Tooey… rhymes with … things unpleasant.
Well, how about Elon Musk.
Something definitely stinks.
The latest being the Crony Capitalist King’s suck-up to President Trump to impose carbon taxes… which would just happen to hugely benefit . . . Elon Musk. Who already milks the cow (that’s us) via a handsome-sounding rip-off called “carbon credits” – which are just a tax by another name (like Social Security “contributions”) shifted from one place to another but ultimately landing squarely in our laps.
That con works as follows:
Musk, who has considerable political pull (partially a function of his having considerable funds, but chiefly because he is a Green Celebrity) gets a state – California, for example – to pass a fatwa requiring any company selling cars within the state to sell “x” number of “zero emissions” cars each year in order to be allowed to sell any cars at all. Most car companies don’t have many “zero emissions” cars to sell.
Elon does. It is all he sells. If you want to use that word. Which is editorial abuse, or should be so regarded. Elon gives away cars – heavily subsidized – to affluent fools and tools, who like to preen “green” while hemorrhaging it. Unless you think that spending $70,000 (the least expensive Tesla available) to “save gas” makes economic sense.
Anyhow. . .
Under these laws – which Elon helped along – “zero emissions” is defined as electric – notwithstanding that electric cars generate emissions, too.
Just elsewhere.
Well, Elon has lots of electric cars to “sell.” But not many are buying . . . .
So a car company that doesn’t have enough electric cars but is trying to sell real cars buys carbon credits from Elon to offset the insufficiency of “zero emissions” electric cars they build/sell. After having paid off Elon, they are allowed to sell their non-electric cars.
Elon gets rich – taxpayers get poor. Cars (non electric ones) become more expensive to buy (in order to offset the money sent to Elon).
It’s nice work – if you can cage it.
But it’s not enough for Elon. He wants Trump to hit everyone with carbon taxes – which would be taxes applied to the use of energy sourced from other than Elon-approved (and heavily invested in) energy sources. That is, anything not electric and “green” (that is, electricity produced by other than coal/oil/nuclear generation). In order to further advantage not only his electric car con but other cons, like Solar City – his boondoggle solar panel company that is a financial sinkhole of Enron-esque proportions.
Musk recently had to get Tesla to buy Solar City for $2.6 billion, to keep it gimping along. Which is to say, he shifted funds from one con to another, but the same people always end up paying for all of it (that’s us… again).
The carbon tax, though, is Musk’s stinky trump card.
Such a tax – if high enough – would “even the playing field,” as the advocates of such things style it. That is, by making inexpensive forms of energy (and transport) artificially expensive, you make economically untenable things like Tesla electric cars and Solar City panels seem like viable alternatives.
The problem – it should be obvious – is that not everyone is a billionaire or even a hundred thousandaire. Making all cars cost as much as a Tesla electric car means fewer people will be able to afford a car at all.
“Zero emissions” or otherwise.
Which may well be the object of the exercise.
Same goes for houses and every other thing to be hit – Elon hopes – with a carbon tax.
Elon – being a billionaire – can afford this. Most of the population cannot. They can live like hamsters in 500 square foot stack-a-prole apartment blocks and walk to their “green” jobs… assuming there are any.
Musk is like an 18th century Bourbon aristocrat who seems to just assume everyone wears silk stockings and spends their days powder-puffed at the court of the king. He seems to either have no clue about (or complete contempt for) the economic realities that most people have to take into account. That while a carbon tax would affect him in no materially meaningful way at all, would involve no diminishment of his standard of living, of his comfort or security, it would impose tremendous economic hardship on most people.
For Elon, spending an additional $100 a month (number at random) on “green” technology is a trivial thing; about the same thing as an average person putting a $1 in the tip jar at a coffee shop. But $100 – that’s another thing.
And the carbon taxes being tub-thumped by Elon will amount to a lot more than that, probably.
Fortunately, the sans culottes did not elect the person who would have been most receptive to Elon’s tub-thumping.
We can be thankful that when Elon made his pitch at the White House last week, someone else was occupying the chair.
Elections do matter.
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How’s that spacex facility outside of Brownsville coming along, the one that’s what, one feet above sea level with the Gulf of Mexico a few feet down the ( not very large) road? No fears of a rising sea level with Elon?
How come, every cause that these friggin communists support, they always want US to pay the price for- but they will not so much as inconvenience themselves to aid their own cause?
e.g. this electric car BS. So if they’re really so concerned about “the environment” and the effect of IC engines on it, then they should also be equally equally repulsed by the idea of having to create the same or much greater pollution in a remote location by having to generate all of that electricity (Which is much more inefficient than IC engines in cars, since the electricity has to be generated constantly- not just while you are driving from point A to B).
So why don’t they just live their lives in a manner that would not require them to travel greater distances than they could walk or cycle? Problem solved, right?
But NOOoooo!!!!! They still want the ability to whisk around at 70MPH and travel more miles in a week than people used to travel in a lifetime, just as long as they can do that while forcing us to have to abide by their idiotic ideas, and force us to pay for them.
Elon Musk is crony corporatism. Or socialism by another name.
Since he can’t use force to require everyone to buy one of his junk cars, what’s the next-best thing he can do? Why of course…get some government to use its force to require the purchase of one of his machines, or pay a tax for not purchasing one. Can you say, Obamacare redux?
Using the taxing power of the government to force decisions (and money) in your direction is NOT capitalism by any name. It shows you are spending more effort to get in bed with those that can use force, than you are at making a product that someone would buy willingly. Some would call it criminal. But few would consider it legitimate to do business this way. Especially those who cry about corporate subsidies.
Crony corporatism is Fascism, not socialism. In its pure form – devoid of the Nazi racial theory and military revenge wrap.
Wow, what a cranky bunch! How can you blame a guy who simply takes advantage of YOUR system to accomplish what he thinks is good for society? Whatever you think of Musk, he has put his money, as well as ours, where his mouth is. He may be a misguided global warming True Believer, a lefty statist, and simply mistaken about some things, but I don’t doubt for a minute his sincerity which is evidenced by him putting up Tesla patents for free use by competitors in order to promote EVs, something he obviously believes in. Though I’m absolutely opposed to govt subsidies for any industry, I do believe the future of personal transportation will be in EVs, not IC machines. As battery and solar panel tech improve, these clean energy devices will not only eventually make economic sense, but improve air quality in urban settings. When distributed Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reaction generators hit the commercial market and replace centralized coal, NG, petroleum, and fission nuke plants, and erase power transmission lines from the landscape we will be in a new era of clean, limitless, virtually free energy. And it will be electric. Can you imagine?
Hi Delta,
How is it “my” system? I didn’t approve it.
You “believe the future of personal transportation will be in EVs….” Well, fine. But this isn’t about belief. It’s about fact. And the facts are that, economically speaking, EVS are not viable and may never be. It is why they need massive subsidies.
It’s lovely to praise them, but if few can afford them…
They also still have major functional liabilities – including a too-short real-world range and unacceptably long recharge times – that have yet to be addressed and also may never be. Do you really believe most people will accept a car that – best case – has to be plugged in for half an hour to partially recharge itself? If you can find a “fast” charger? Whose range plummets if you drive it at other than granny speeds? Or in the cold of winter with the heater running and the lights on? Really?
“…improve air quality in urban settings.” How? By increasing smokestack emissions from the utility plants that provide the electricity? Yes, yes… nuclear… except the NRC hasn’t approved a new permit in decades and it is extremely unlikely major new generating capacity will be built.
Because the environmentalists would object…
So because the system is the way it is that excuses the behavior? Interesting. So if you get civil asset forfeitured then you’ll be ok with it because it’s just people using the system as it is? If a developer, say Donald Trump, eyes your property and has government take it from you for him, they you’ll be ok with it because it’s just someone using the system as it is? I can go on. If we give people a pass because the system is what it is, then guess how the system will continue to evolve?
I know how the system works. I could have a nice government job in one of the local government labs making what I do now for less work, more vacation, and a generous pension. I would only be using the system as it is. But it’s always a choice to do that. Judging people by their choices, especially someone as wealthy as Musk was when he became crony, is completely fair. Musk wasn’t always a crony best I can tell, he became a crony once he had something to risk.
I’m no greenie, but I’d love to go 100% electric. A brushless DC motor has ONE moving part. Compare that to the hundreds in a gas engine. Electric motors have a powerful and absolutely flat torque curve (more powerful and flatter than my old long stroke BSA Victor 441). You don’t need a transmission that is necessary for gas engines which have narrow power and torque bands. The problem with electric cars is the batteries. “Easy” solution. Induction system built in the road and small batteries to get you in and out your driveway. Electric power plant emissions? No problem….modular molten salt Thorium reactors. Thorium reactors are breeder reactors and use a huge percentage of the energy available unlike light water reactors that only extract a tiny portion and produce mountains of hazardous waste.
Hi James,
All that is true. But…
Battery recharge times are unacceptably long. People can refuel an IC car in less than 5 minutes and be good to go for another 400 miles. How many people will accept a car that – best case, if you can find a “fast” charger – needs at least a half an hour to recover a partial charge? That has a real-world range far less than an IC car? Whose range declines markedly in cold (when you need accessories such as the heater and are burning the lights)? Whose best-case range depends on driving like a Clover?
And, the cost.
The “cheap” electric cars (Nissan Leaf, etc.) cost as much as an entry-luxury IC car and twice as much, easily, as a new economy car.
They make no economic sense.
And thorium reactors? Good luck with that…
The problem with road-based induction charging is: roads. They don’t always go where you need them to.
I’d love a thorium reactor, but as soon as the word nuke comes out that would get shut down.
I love my Chevy Volt and all the wonderful immediate torque. I’m even willing to have both complex system in one vehicle despite the potential worst-of-both-worlds maintenance issues (so far very few). But, I live in the real world and love that on long road trips I can simply gas up. If the Volt were Crossover capable of offroading and had a fording kit or hover capability, it would be prefect for me
Gotta love futurists who aren’t even up to speed on the present.
Are you aware that you can now buy a personal helicopter kit for about the price of a VW ($15-20k), you need no training or certification to fly it, and can get an 80 mile range at 80mph making it viable for commuters wishing to bypass the freeway gridlock ? Are you aware that 2 Chinese companies are launching 3 seat commuter DRONES this year (featuring those beloved brushless DC motors)? While futurist-extraordinaire Musk is still trying to make a viable car. HA! Neither you nor even Musk seem to have the imagination to truly envision what the future would look like even based on present information. Musk is no futurist, he just has a sales pitch that works really well on Star Wars nerds. His vision of the future is just a sales pitch for some rosy vision of the present, where we’re all still driving cars, but they’re electric and made by Tesla with the help of every subsidy in the known universe. I’ve never been fool enough to fall for this nonsense. The Chinese are steering us to a totally different future with more visionary products, that are more viable, have shorter development cycles and push the limits of current technology much further.
As for dLENRs, superconductivity, blue energy, etc, these are still far off and I highly doubt Musk will be the one to deliver them anyway. The template for a CAR is much simpler than any of these, yet after 10 years of working on cars, Musk has produced nothing but overpriced junk, still not ready for primetime, prohibitively expensive, and oh yeah, they sometimes take over the controls and crash themselves. Gimme a break.
When I was living in the Bay Area I played semi-pro football for a few years. The field we practiced on was right in the flight line that Musk’s personal helicopter would use to take him to his spread in Saratoga. I learned this when it flew over one day and our entire team stopped practicing to give it the finger. Methinks your oozing love for him is misplaced (too many pop-science mags maybe?) and, despite Musk’s relentless PR, not shared by many. Its kind of a running joke in the bay area that the Tesla plant is right next to the spectacular-yet-empty HQ building for the now-defunct Solyndra. Its a living daily reminder that shit rolls downhill. Not quite the vision of the future you believe it to be.
What is the long range impact on the environment of my car? Some jobless greenie pining for publication will show me some CO2 graph where somewhere in the distant future temperatures rise imperceptibly and tell me that’s my fault. Maybe I’ll actually see it someday maybe I won’t. NOW, pray tell what is the environmental impact of Obama dropping ONE bomb on some terror ridden shythole in the ME? Can I see it? Right now? Is a huge crater, blown apart body parts, metal shrapnel, exhausted propellant, scorched surroundings, damage to water sewage and gas lines, and a smoldering heap of rubble some vague imperceptible danger to be realized sometime in the future? Or is it a huge, clear and measurable environmental catastrophe that I can see hear and smell right now without the help of scientists or peer review? The answer is obvious. Now consider that this has been happening on a near daily basis in 7 countries across the ME for years now. Including the bombing of hospitals, water and sewage treatment plants, weapons facilities and infrastructure. The net sum being an environmental catastrophe that is massive, widespread, ongoing and infinitely VERIFIABLE and PROVABLE. All on the orders of the same lefty hero who circumvented due process of the law to impose heavy regulations on US businesses to protect us from the vague, unproven and far off threat of AIR.
This is the utter insanity of the ‘air armageddon’ crowd, who despite their assertions are not environmentalists at all. They are bold faced liars, hypocrites, uber-dupes and frauds. When Bush got the ball rolling they were all too eager to speak the horrors of war. But when their savior doubled down on these wars they suddenly went blind an deaf to real, severe, observable, PREVENTABLE and AVOIDABLE environmental damage that has continued and grown more widespread for 8 years. And they are dead silent. Yet for the insult of driving to work to pay the absurd taxes levied against you, they want to levy more taxes on you in the interest of saving the same environent that being actively destroyed at breakneck speed across the ME to a chorus of applause from these same so called environmentalists. Try to even think about that without your brain splitting in half. Seems to me the only good solution is to start dropping Tesla’s on our enemies in the middle East. We could easily prove the how much less environmental damage this would cause, and we wouldn’t be stuck paying for Tesla’s AND bombs. Neither of which are worth much of a shit to the average guy on the street anyway. Why do I bet that, to the one, they’d vote to keep dropping the bombs too? Temper that against their ‘save the world’ sermons and you will know them for who they truly are.
But Dutch, haven’t you heard?
They hate us on account of our freedoms…
Dutch well stated. It’s like all these celebrities that are suddenly worried to the point of tears about some person being able to come here but were totally silent as we bomb their country to bits.
For years and perhaps still we have been using depleted uranium shells which is in effect a “dirty” bomb that we are so worried about being set off here. The countries are littered with the dust.
Hi Todd,
Yes, exactly.
Also: There is something risible about tub-thumping for “refugees” … that will be housed and fed and so on at other people’s expense. I know a guy like this. He constantly posts on Facebook about the “racism” and so on of people who are skeptical about importing “refugees” into the country. I wonder how many refugees are living in his home? How many is he “helping” himself?
Answer: None.
He expects his “charity” to be financed by other people.
To be very clear: I am not (as a Libertarian) opposed to people coming here. I am opposed to people coming here and adding to my already high burden as a taxpaying slave. If the welfare state did not exist – if property rights were respected – none of this would be an issue.
People could come… on their dime.
And who could complain about that?
But as long as “refugees” mean more and higher taxes … it is entirely reasonable to be opposed.
Depleted uranium weapons are not really like ‘dirty’ bombs in that there is very little radioactivity in them. Uranium is extremely dense and shells made from it can penetrate thick armor. Uranium is a member of the heavy metals all of which are extremely toxic in a chemical sense
Elon Musk’s scam is the most outrageous in-plain-sight con-game ever devised, a colossal swindle that steals from the hapless taxpayers of this nation and gives to – Elon Musk!
Every Tesla is hugely subsidized by federal funds, and as Eric points out, the electricity to run these stylish go-carts has to come from somewhere else, mainly from coal-fired power plants. What’s astonishing is that no congress-critter has seen fit to shine a light on this scam and have Musk arrested for fraud, willful misrepresentation, and theft of public funds.
Are you by chançe the same slobotnavich who wrote the uber-helpful DIY for changing the hydraulic fluid on the BMW 530xi tailgate? I so you are my next nominee for sainthood. You saved me hours and thousands of dollars!
If not I still echo your point word for word. Cheers Bruh!!!!
Hi Slobotnavich,
Musk is a pinata I will whack until the damn thing comes apart at last.
He may send a hit team my way, though. If you ever read that I had an “accident,” you’ll know it wasn’t.
So what ever happened to the Tesla Model 3 ??? LOL! I googled it; the most recent article I was able to find, now says 2018. That’s a great business model to raise interest-free capital! Just have people pay $1000 deposit for a product that doesn’t exist (But hype it really good, so they’ll wait for years without complaining) and which may well never exist.
Now imagine if Mr. Trump does the right thing and eliminates the tax rebates! Even if the car ever makes it to market, few are going to want it without the rebates. (Of course, loony California may keep Musky alive, because they’ll never relent on their own carbon credit scheme, in which the real car-makers have to buy the credits in order to sell their IC cars there).
I wonder if the betting parlors in the UK take bets on when the Model 3 will actually appear?
Hi Nunzio,
Yup – the dude is a marvel. He gets away with it because he is perfectly in tune with the prevailing political orthodoxy. He is the Lysenko of cars. A fraud – but one that has the backing of the Deep State.
Felon Muskrat should be strapped to the outside of the next rocket going to Mars
If one looks at the way the TAX CODE favors CONSERVANCIES you will be so shocked you will shit yourself. I will not elaborate here but ask you to look for yourself. For a small amount of legal positions documented the Left/Right (oxymoron) elite in our society are becoming phantoms in there contributions to various societal issues all through the front of a CONSERVANCIES. LARGE TAX BREAKS, NO LISTING OF CONTRIBUTORS MADE PUBLIC, and then financial contributions, to political functions, without declaring names of contributors? There is a elite LEFT/RIGHT that is out there and the general public see it as APPLE PIE AND MOTHERHOOD AND THE FLAG. They are all being duped. Look into how the bottom line equates for the CONSERVANCIES in our country. There are CONSERVANCIES for everything under the sun, and the secrets of who and the real back room stuff is secret?????????
Let’s hope Trump shows Musk and most of the EPA the door, these uber greenies make me gag. If they want to go back to living in caves then by all means do it, but leave me the hell out. I live in an old (1865) Victorian style house with high ceilings and big windows; having done all the insulating and caulking possible when we bought the house 40 years ago I still get regular nastygrams from the gas company scolding me for using more energy than my neighbors, not that it’s any of their got damn business. I’m old and I like to be warm and I pay the bills on time so bug off already, but I guess the nannies can’t live with that so this carbon tax BS is a way to make it too expensive to be comfortable in my own damn house. I’d love to leave my carbon footprint on their ass while kicking them to the curb. The next step in this insanity will be rationing – no gas for you! That idea would definitely have been floated by now if Hillary and the Dems were in charge.
I am getting the shaming letters from the local electric utility ever since I decided I would rather be comfortable. I know the root cause are my computers but with the letters I feel like running more stuff. I think is to condition is to live in a managed collective. Managed by the so called elites.
We get letters frequently from the electric co saying we use a lot more than our neighbors. Well, yeah, we have a barn and run lights for the chickens and rabbits 16 hours a day, and some heat in the winter to keep water from freezing, etc., etc., etc.
I get those too. Of course its NOT noted that my house is about a third larger then my average neighbor. Oops.
The elites who use the greenies as their brownshirts won’t live in caves, of course. Only those they see as their chattel will. I’m with Mike on where I’d like to leave my carbon footprint. I’ve been laughing at the hyperventilations coming from the MSM over Trump’s executive order that tells the EPA that they can’t hand out any grants to Musk or anyone else without approval.
They are hoping to scare the pants off of anyone exposed to their fake news by telling them that rivers will be catching on fire again and that we’ll all drop dead from breathing poison gas if the EPA can’t hand out money to Carbon Credit Kings like Musk.
What amazes me about the Trump (and Brexit) phenomena is how the libtards are reacting. Their entire existence was wrapped up in Hillary (or more correctly, Bernie) and Obama. One election and their whole world view collapses like a straw house in front of a big, bad, blustery wolf. I’ve basically stoped using Twitter completely, mostly because no matter how many people I unfollow people keep retweeting hysterical Democrats’ crying into my feed. Pretty soon I’m going to purge Facebook back down to people I know in person too, for much the same reason.
If your ideology can’t survive 4 years of a lackluster president, it must not be much of an ideology.
I never used faCIAbook and dumped my twitter a few days after I created the account back in the early days of its existence. Seeing lots of people saying what you just said makes me think that I haven’t missed much besides the hassle.
Elon Musk Has Trump’s Ear
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/elon-musk-donald-trump-wall-street.html?_r=0
A trojan horse on the Trump team:
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/01/29/elon-musks-tesla-stock-2-billion-joining-president-trump-team/
Logan’s Run Pod Race Held Today and Tomorrow at SpaceX
http://fortune.com/2017/01/28/hyperloop-pod-race-spacex/
https://twitter.com/Hyperloop
Trump has promised to cut 75% of regulations. Here’s how he’s going to do it.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_REGULATIONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-01-28-03-33-25
75% still leaves far too many in place. I’d like to see 99.999% of regulations cut.
Eric, perhaps there is some good news on the EPA front.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/27/trump-hopes-to-slash-epa-staff-carbon-footprint-by-50/
Hi Andy,
I have fingers and toes crossed… and not only that. I have a friend who knows a guy who knows Trump. I have sent word that I’d love to meet him/talk about this business.
I bet he’s not a soul-sucking killjoy like Hillary….
Hopefully Musk will get his head handed to him on a silver platter. Not only is Trump not likely to go along with a carbon tax, he might well put an end to the carbon-trading scam that Musk depends on to keep Tesla afloat.
I know Trump is not a libertarian, but compared to what we could have wound up with – we really dodged a bullet.
that head is not worthy of a silver platter. Certainlu nowhere near as worthy as the first Head of note to be so served.
Another rich prick with more money than brains is Bill Gates…
Bill Gates is NOT the innovator and all-knowing “smartest guy in the room” by any means.
Bill Gates’ success can be attributed to his purchase of an “operating system” for $25,000.00 from REAL developer Gary Kildall.
Most people are unaware that Bill Gates’ “daddy” is part of one of Seattle, Washington’s most prestigious law firms.
Most people are unaware that almost all of Bill Gates’ success came from the tight restrictive “licensing agreements” that were formulated by his daddy’s prestigious Seattle Washington law firm. For the longest time, it was almost impossible to purchase a copy of DOS or Windows without also purchasing hardware. This was good strategy and helped to spread the use of his operating system among the masses.
You see, Bill Gates WAS born with a “silver spoon” in his mouth and as such, he has NO IDEA of the preciousness of human life. To Gates and those of his type, human life is merely a “commodity” to be created and destroyed according to the will of “elites” such as himself and his ilk.
Bill Gates (and others of his type) are dangerous to humanity as they think that “they have all the answers” and the financial capital to back it up.
There are still many more of us than of people like him . . . there is still time to “nip this thing in the bud”…
Just one of the reasons all Libertarians should be using a free Linux operating system! (An even better reason, is that it gives you full control of your software and computer; doesn’t spy on you; and it just works…with virtually no maintenance, no anti-virus BS, etc.)
I got rid of all MS products long ago, when I discovered that one no longer has to be a computer geek to use Linux.
Linux is easy to run now? I remember looking into it around ten years ago or so. I didn’t understand a thing about it.
Yes, there are Linux distributions now that are pretty easy to work with right out of the box. Probably Linux Mint would be easiest for beginners:
https://linuxmint.com/
However if you’ve been Microsofted for a long time there will be a certain amount of culture shock. For example there is no “C” drive. (Extra points to folks who, without looking it up, know why Windows’ primary drive is normally “C”.) You also need to pay more attention to any hardware you buy to make sure it’s Linux-compatible.
There’s some under-the-hood commonality between Linux and Mac OS-X since both are Unix-based, but the user interface is very different.
‘why Windows’ primary drive is normally “C”’
You mean because A:\ and B:\ were both ‘floppy’ drives? In the case of some of us, 5-1/4″ SSSD floppies?
In MS-DOS A: and B: were reserved for floppies, you could not even assign them to anything else. So the optional hard disks (usually a whopping 5 or 10 MB) started at C: even if you had only one floppy drive. (In that case if you selected drive B: it would be redirected to the single floppy.)
Although A: and B: are no longer reserved, the convention has been kept that the first hard drive starts at C:.
The drive letter syntax used by MS-DOS and Windows is a “feature” that was taken from CP/M, though the basic concept dates to IBM VM mainframe operating systems of the 1960s.
Linux, on the other hand, uses a Unix-style hierarchical filesystem where there are no drive letters. Drives are mounted in directories that sprout off of the root “/”.
We should be able to call our thumb drives A or B – they take the place of floppies LOL
Although Windows will by default set higher drive letters for USB drives, I’m pretty sure you can manually assign A: and B: through the disk manager. I know you can use those letters for network drives.
On most Linux desktop systems a USB drive would normally mount under “/media” and you get a link to it on your screen.
I’ve always like the Mac better, at least since I was forced, kicking and screaming, into switching to Mac about twenty years ago. First Mac I ever had it looked like I could assign my own selected name to the main drive… and any others I added. I found I could add FOUR hard disc drives into the chasses with no modifications, name them each whatever I wanted to name them, formet, stripe, link, sequence them as I desired. A whole lot more fun… and downloads could be put wherever I wanted them, straightaway. No more fighting with Nanny to put them were I could eventuallyh find them.
Computers are a big, troublesome mystery to me, except for one thing: the Mac I use is so vastly superior to the previous PCs I was afflicted with, it’s like a piece of heaven compared with crashtime hell.
Puppy linux can even coexist with Windows on a single hard drive, or can be booted up from a flash drive or cd/dvd disc and run entirely in RAM for private browsing.
I installed a second hard drive for linux and have kept Win7 on the hard drive that came with my computer for my yearly Turbotax filing. Everybody among linux users has a favorite linux O/S. Puppy is my fave because an entire O/S is usually under 300meg in size and enables me to use old computers that I can buy cheap.
Windows uses so much of a computers resources just to run the O/S. I have 2 puppy computers I use for business that have 2gig RAM and they are faster than my wife’s latest that has 8gig RAM with Win7 Pro.
I’ve been using puppy linux since ’07. Here’s the distro I use now:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Slacko63
It comes with Firefox, and a few other browsers and other Mozilla for linux programs such as Thunderbird are easily installed.
I am 74 and I went to Linux Mint 3 years ago cold turkey and have never been happier. Microsoft is nothing but spy ware and getting worse by the day. I sent President Trump a suggestion to make all government agencies use Linux and stop playing favoritism to a multinational corporation.
To those of you still stuck in windoze you would be wise to watch this video on securing it as best as you can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1kGMCfb2xw
Environmentalists have been some of the most dishonest people in their misguided attempts to “save the planet”. Our earth is much more resilient than they would have you believe. Environmentalists see humans as a “pestilence”. They would like to see the human population reduced (by any means necessary) by around 90%. The survivors would be walled-off in soviet-style high-rise apartments, riding bicycles, taking trains and buses while the wilderness areas would be available only to the “anointed” environmentalists.
I, for one, have no use for these limp-wristed, birkenstock-wearing, prius-driving, tofu-eating poor excuses for human beings. I would suggest that environmentalists take their own advice and eliminate themselves first.
Environmentalists are like watermelons–green on the outside and red (communist) on the inside. It’s always been about control.
I CHEER when I hear a of a “greenpeace” ship getting blown out of the water. . .
Perfectly said, Anarch!
Funny how the greens mimic the reds so perfectly to a T!
The commies start out by admitting that all wealth comes from the land. So what do they do? They make it impossible for people to own or have access to land, or to be able to reap any benefit from it if they do.
Just think how true that is right here in the USofA today- not only where half the population now live stacked-up in apartments/condos and townhouses, but where in so many places now, even if you own a house with a yard or even a few acres, in many places it’s illegal to even keep a chicken anymore, or to even put up a fence without permission and permits ($$$), and then, only according to their specs and wishes; or to even park a truck in your own driveway/yard! And then you have to pay them ransom (property taxes) just for the “privilege” of them letting you live there in what you have bought and paid for.
They say communism is dead. Funny, but I can’t seem to see anywhere where it isn’t alive and well.
And it was all freely given up by the most vociferous few that seem to steer this once great nation into the ground. I often get chided for being hard on leftists, why I often dismiss them and their arguments out of hand in both internetz and in real life…it’s because no matter how well intention ed the motives of the average lefty automaton their policies will inevitably lead to death and destruction. I have to time or sympathy for people that wear Che or even Soviet shirts to look hip.
“no matter how well intentioned the motives”
And even that is not always (not usually?) the case.
The truth has come out about “Global Warming,” aka Climate Change.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/global-warming-is-about-destroying-capitalism/
… and look at “her.”
Another one…
Well, I woud cheer about Greenpeace ships getting destroyed, except that the ones I personally knew about never belonged to GreenPeace.. they were dry chartered…… and not properl insured, such that when Rainbow Warrior was sunk (South Pacific, if memory serves.. its been a while now) her OWNER suffered a total loss, AND was stuck with some hefty bills run up against her that somehow never came home to roost on GreenPeace…. so yeah, the greenies do tend to act as a pestilence. Seems they often consider that the ungreen portion of the planet must support THEM. Ive no use for them…..