Anybody in military or law enforcement knows one of the biggest costs of "doing business" is in training personnel and experience is something you can't put a price tag on.
At this price, even small departments could easily justify owning and maintaining one of these vehicles. In the event you DO needs something like this, it provides an extremely high level of protection for a relatively small investment and helps protects your most valuable asset (your people).
And it would look damn cool driving down the street in your cities parade/festival every year as well ;)

Anybody who has done this long enough (and I think I have), knows that IT isn't like making widgets. We spend a large part of our time sitting around doing "nothing", (which usually involves hours and hours of reading and learning and generally being prepared for...), BAM!!! Something is broken!!! FIX IT 5 MINUTES AGO, AND IF YOU DON'T, YOU'RE GOING TO BE FIRED!

I don't even know how you can truly measure *efficiency* in IT. If you have lots of customers and lots of employees and if neither have complaints very often, your IT department is probably doing a good job.

The only way to know for sure is to go ahead and just fire us. If the SHTF, you made a bad choice. If not, you didn't.

IT has been important enough for LONG enough, that most companies probably KNOW which is the best solution. If you are just now trying to figure it out, you've probably already missed the boat.

Or gun, or social security, or gay marriage, or Obamacare or...

The fact is there are just too many issues that are extremely polarizing and as important as we all know campaign finance reform *is*, it just doesn't elicit the raw emotion that many of these other issues do.

I firmly believe that the US should be governed and guided by the best and brightest and NOT by the richest and most well-connected. But until they actually list the *names* of the people they will be funding (and how these people lean on some of the other hot-button issues), I think a body would be crazy to pledge money to this cause. We just have no idea (other than the campaign finance reform issue) of who our money might be helping to elect.

I think one of the most interesting things about Lucas' Universe is there IS a great deal of room for adversity. If you've got thousands of planets with life there is the possibility that it will run the gamut between cute and cuddly (Ewoks) to big and nasty and slimy (Jabba the Hut) to big, bad-ass warrior tribes (Wookies).
The biggest problem with the latter movies is it appears Lucas tried to focus too much on the cute/cuddly/silly side (everything from the young Anakin to Jar Jar) and left those of us "adults" with the feeling we were watching a "Saturday morning cartoon" version of Star Wars.
If you've got an "Ultimate Evil" that is trying to take over the Universe and you DO have a large diversity of life, it's inevitable that you will eventually have a "Storm Troopers VS Ewoks" chapter. The trick is to know when and where to tell that chapter of the story. That is the sort of story that WOULD play well on Saturday morning and it works out for everybody (the story is told, the kids get their content and Disney gets to sell lots of Ewok and Storm Trooper paraphernalia).
However, if the movie writers DO decide that "Ewoks VS Storm Troopers" is an important part of the storyline for one of the new movies, I'm just hoping they keep it in context and don't try overuse those cute and cuddly characters to the detriment of the entire movie.
It's really not that difficult... Disney has a gold mine with this if they just follow the formula of "A New Hope" and "Empire Strikes Back" for the movies and will be content to leave the lovable, kiddie stories for Saturday morning.
So, here is your chance Disney to give those of use old enough to have watched the original movies in a theater hope for another, "A New Hope".

Just don't forget this: A big part of the reason so many of us loved the Han Solo character is BECAUSE he shot first ;)

As a matter of fact, the tech site forums are loaded with people bemoaning the demise of iGoogle.
One of the things that Google is really good at is analytics. They KNOW how many people are using iGoogle.
That leads me to believe they are shuttering it not because of lack of use but rather because TOO many people are using it. They obviously believe they are losing "clicks" or as some others have stated, they are trying to herd us into using some bastardized version of Google+ they have yet to release.
Google has been pretty good about living up to the whole, "Do no evil" thing so I'm hoping we all wake up in a few days/week and read on our shiny new netvibes.com homepage that Google has changed their mind about dropping iGoogle.
Dropping iGoogle might not be totally "evil" but it will definitely make me think twice before using any other new Google-branded services they release in the future.

I spent about 15 minutes and was able to get netvibes.com to look almost *exactly* like my iGoogle page.
I've been using iGoogle since, well, EVER since... I couldn't imagine doing without that kind of aggregator service as my homepage.
Anybody looking for a replacement for iGoogle should definitely give netvibes.com a try. It's worth the few minutes it takes to duplicate everything.

Obama is the President. Obama HAS been the President for several years.

That's how it works.

Blame Bush all you want for taxes or the economy or high gas prices or even pimples on your ass if it makes you feel better.

Obama is the current President and his administration is in charge. He should be held accountable for NOT holding people account for things that happen on his watch.

Beiber or Lady GagGag.

Either way it would be a win (although it might be animal cruelty).

And lots of companies out there are probably better at streaming technology than Netflix. When the little red envelopes disappear, Netflix will lose the biggest part of what differentiated them from the plethora of other streaming services. How do they not see that?

I loved Intellevision as well but speaking of "preserving" games..

Intellevision added another level of complexity with the controller overlays. They would eventually crack or be lost and although we might remember the control numbers for a while, it was almost impossible for someone unfamiliar with the game to play it correctly without the overlays.

Oh, and while I had a love hate relationship with the disc on the controller, it was those damn thumb buttons on the side that STILL give me nightmares. My right thumb is getting numb right now just thinking about it...

At least they didn't call it,

iMagic.

Seeing as how this was a graduation speech, apparently these particular kids weren't too "distracted".

Maybe this would have been a better speech to give to kids in detention or summer school...

The only thing worse than wankers who make useless, inane comments like this are the wankers who moderate this sort of tripe as "Insightful".

For the average consumer (or even small/medium business), Apple is a *choice*. There are many alternatives to the iPod or the iPad or iMac or iWhatever. I'm not saying that justifies some of their more dubious business practices, but if you don't like it, vote with your wallet and buy the alternative.
On the other hand, Microsoft's monopolistic position in the OS world forces most people to pay the "M$ Tax" whether they like it or not. Macs or Linux-based solutions just aren't viable (yet) in the majority of real-world situations for the average consumer or small business person and in reality, it's hard for the average Joe to even find a computer without Windows.
As a result of this, I think "we" hold Microsoft to a higher standard of "openness" (haha). They are allowed to maintain their dominant position so long as they present even a modicum of choice to the end-user for things like installing 3-party applications or for even which platform you choose to run the OS.
In short, Apple is the evil many people choose. Microsoft is the evil with which most people are stuck. So yeah... Most people will have a tendency to let Apple "get away" with things for which they would bash Microsoft.

how the hell an inane, stupid-ass post that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the topic has been moderated to the top and marked "Informative"?

You knew what the poster meant, you pedantic wanker.

Your post (as is mine) is completely unrelated, in any way, to the actual content of the story. So, while it might be "Informative" in a completely and utterly useless sense, it doesn't contribute in the least to the actual topic of conversation.

It's an Internet forum, not an English Course and nobody voted you the grammar/spelling police. Just because you CAN post, doesn't mean you should (unless you are contributing something meaningful to the actual topic of discussion).

Next time you get ready to hit "Submit", try taking a deep breath, relaxing your sphincter just a bit and reading what you wrote. If it sounds as trite and ridiculous as what you just posted, you'd be better off not wasting your bandwidth and more importantly the time, of those of us who have to peruse through this sort of tripe to get to something which actually contributes to the actual discussion.