How can I get a checklist to evaluate Netwarte 6.5 vs Windows 2003 ???

dorgunr

Speak to your local Microsoft and Novell Marketing departments. They have nothing better to do than tell us what makes their product better then the other guys and it'll save you a lot of work.

To be frank the whole thing can be summed up with the following:

What does our most critical server based application need?

It used to be that the most business critical server based app was something for the accounts or sales departments, but now most companies find that they MUST have email above all else. If this is true for you and you want MS Exchange then you will need a windows Domain to support it (Exchange 2000 and 2003 need AD to operate). Once this decision is made it becomes very hard to justify "the other OS" in the enterprise at all.

I recently went through a similar exercise with my current client, and the only place the argument was ever close was the SAN. The original SAN ran Novell and the choice was whether to move it to a Windows 2003 cluster. Eventually we moved it to Windows as we didn't want the complication of integrating CIFS with AD to provide data security, when NTFS does the same job and already integrates.

Cheers

JamesDS

Of course, there is the question of WHY you would want Exchange, since it makes you vulnerable to practically every piece of malware on the 'Net, yet doesn't deliver any service that any other competent E-mail system can't deliver for half the cost (a CAL for Exchange AND for the server? c'mon....and that's not all the cost differentials).

I think the question "What does our most critical server based application need?" is extremely short-sighted. You want to nail the business to the needs of one app? You want to let a single vendor dictate your entire enterprise IT direction?

A more cogent, business-oriented question to ask is "What path will provide me with the most flexability and adapability?" Needs change. What's "critical" today is "important" tomorrow, "useful" next week, and forgotten the week after that. If you want to be locked into one architecture by a vendor that goes out of its way to make give you no alternatives except whatever they have, then yeah, you wanna go Windoze. If you want to base your environment around best-of-breed products and a core vendor that puts out products that support multiple platforms (for example, eDirectory - an actual, ground-up hierarchical DB directory service, available natively on Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, NetWare, NT, W2K, et. al.; as opposed to NT 4 Domains with transitive-trust and an extensible schema renamed AD and only available on W2K/3; or GroupWise - E-Mail system every bit as capable as Exchange, just without the constant virus vulnerabilities, and its available on Solaris, Linux, NetWare, W2K) and lets you build best-of-breed solutions.

Take a page from Darwin - the successful creatures are those that can best adapt to CHANGE. Novell will give you CHOICES, and you can change components without having to re-engineer. Redmond wants you to do everything their way, on their platform, and what little work they do to "support" other platforms is mainly aimed at forcing you to migrate to theirs.

PsiCop

You're forgetting, decisions on new infrastrucure are not made by techies, they are made by management - who frequently aren't in a position to know the difference. I disagree that Exchange opens you to the malware flood. Exchange is simply an email routing and collaboration tool and as such the culprit is inadequate perimeter protection, not the mailserver.

I can't fault your logic on cost, I use Kerio Mailserver for my firm and find it a vastly superior product for the SME market and far cheaper (www.kerio.com for those interested). Regardless, I was only using it as an example, I could have used Lotus Notes instead.

Regardless of your comment about short-sightedness, it is a fact that entire infrastructure strategies have been (and will forever be made) on the back of decisions made by managers while playing a round of golf with the salesman. I'm not being shortsighted - simply pragmatic (ok, maybe cynical)

To give you an example: Manager used Outlook at his last employer and likes it. Wants to use Outlook here and thinks you have to have Exchange for it to work. Manager asks salesman what the current version of Exchange is and is told 2003. Manager tells other managers that we have to have Exchange 2003 and hires firm of consultants to come in and plan the next upgrade/refresh based on that decision. Consultants come in and give the standard upgrade spiel about Active Directory and Windows XP and TCO and ROI and Windows 2003 and before you know it - coup d'Etat and novell loses, again.

I think you should read up a little more on AD as compares NDS, I wont say one is better than the other but I think it is a lot cleverer than you give it credit for and far more "industry standard" then you think.

I have held a number of animated and highly entertaining Novell vs Microsoft discussions with the Novell techies here and the decision remained out of our hands regardless of our wishes or recommendations. This is not the time or place for yet another round of "notware vs windoze" and after years of "mac vs pc" and "ie vs netscape" and "office vs staroffice", aren't we all getting a bit bored with it? Microsoft usually wins because the products are fully featured, highly integrated, good enough and easy to use, the marketing is extensive, everyone supports it and you can buy mid-level skills in cheaply and easily. Microsoft occasionally loses because the products can be seriously misconfigured by the unskilled and the whole world loves to bash the market leader (remember lotus, wordperfect and IBM in the early 90's?).

The rules of natural selection do not apply to the IT industry, the best marketing always wins. period.

Cheers

JamesDS

And I'm not saying this is a technology decision. I am saying this is a BUSINESS decision, with clear BUSINESS drivers.

Those drivers include reducing (or avoiding an increase in) IT personnel costs, software licensing costs, user downtime, virus infestations, and network administration overhead.

Hands down, in most business situations and enterprises, Windoze will consistently cost 2x to 3x as much as an equivalent NetWare-based environment. There's TCO study after TCO study to show this - actual, independent ones, not the ones financed by the M$ Marketing department.

That is a BUSINESS decision-point, not a technology one. And management DOES understand that (or should, else your company is in deep kimchee).

And best marketing doesn't always win. Ask R.W. Bennett, the UK advertising firm that dumped Windoze for NetWare. Or Central Michigan Hospital, same story. Or Ernie Ball, the guitar string maker. You don't think M$ hasn't been doing a full-court press on CNN to get them to move from eDirectory to AD? CNN still uses eDirectory. If better marketing always wins, why do 67% of websites run on Apache and only 21% use IIS (NetWare ships with Apache, BTW, and has for years)?

As far as AD goes, you still have to REBOOT servers into a special "Directory Repair" mode with a separate-from-the-Domain password (NDS does almost all of its repairs on the fly, without affecting users), it still doesn't have timesync (try auditing changes coherently), it still doesn't have any partitioning ability, its roped by the neck to DNS (whether or not your org structure follows DNS), tombstones are a moronic way to deal with object deletions (NDS uses "backlink" pointers for data integrity), and changes made on one DC can overwrite changes made to the same multi-valued object on another DC (THAT is enterprise-quality?).

JamesDS,

"Exchange is simply an email routing and collaboration tool and as such the culprit is inadequate perimeter protection, not the mailserver."

Not when vulnerabilities in the Exchange backend or the Outlook frontend ALLOW that malware to spread in the first place.  In well designed software, perimeter defenses are not needed.

"To give you an example: Manager used Outlook at his last employer and likes it. Wants to use Outlook here and thinks you have to have Exchange for it to work. Manager asks salesman what the current version of Exchange is and is told 2003. Manager tells other managers that we have to have Exchange 2003 and hires firm of consultants to come in and plan the next upgrade/refresh based on that decision. "

Therein lies the fault of upper management, trusting a new comer to the company that they know better than their own IT department who has been there for years.

"Consultants come in and give the standard upgrade spiel about Active Directory and Windows XP and TCO and ROI and Windows 2003 and before you know it - coup d'Etat and novell loses, again."

Only if by "spiel" you mean "lies" in order to sell the product and their services.  If upper management had any brains, they'd be doing independent research by hiring a consulting firm that WON'T be doing the sales and installs as well as giving them the TCO/ROI - because you know what?  Windows has the WORST TCO and ROI compared to Novell's products:

http://www.novell.com/collateral/4820947/4820947.html

Gartner - independent.

"I think you should read up a little more on AD as compares NDS, I wont say one is better than the other but I think it is a lot cleverer than you give it credit for and far more "industry standard" then you think."

Speaking of "spiel".  First of all, I don't have drop my NetWare servers to repair the directory.  Second of all, Microsoft's Kerberos is NOT industry standard and the man who INVENTED Kerberos will be the first to tell you that.  Third of all, independent benchmarks show that Novell's eDirectory LDAP integration (in terms of lookup reliability and speed) are FAR superior that ActiveDirectory.  Fourth of all, ActiveDirectory is NOT a directory system to begin with - it's nothing more than a "3D" representation of the old Domain-style layout with some new authentication schemes inbetween.  The SAME limitations (security-wise) that exist in Windows NT Domains exists in Windows 2K/2K3 ActiveDirectory.  And if you don't believe me, try this:

http://www.novell.com/info/collateral/docs/4820864.01/4820864.pdf

For example, try using Organizational Units as security placeholders - YOU CAN'T DO IT in AD.  You have to rely on Groups.  There is a CoolSolutions article that proves this and other deficiencies  (err - "features") in AD.

"Microsoft usually wins because the products are fully featured, highly integrated, good enough and easy to use, the marketing is extensive, everyone supports it and you can buy mid-level skills in cheaply and easily. Microsoft occasionally loses because the products can be seriously misconfigured by the unskilled and the whole world loves to bash the market leader"

In other words, "any monkey can install Windows" and usually does.  But I disagree that Windows wins on anything BUT marketing - MANY Microsoft products don't integrate with other Microsoft product (Office 2000 and Windows 2000 is a prefect example), "good enough" is a poor excuse in today's security consciense world, not "everyone" supports it and that is also a poor excuse except if you are a lemming heading for a cliff.  And you DO get what you pay for - cheap and easy don't make up for stable and secure.

Try this with ANY version of Windows:

http://www.geocities.com/novellrocks/365.jpg
note:  open in empty browser window, Geocities hates redirection.

I've got a Seattle Times article on my desk RIGHT NOW where Rick Devenuti (Microsoft's CTO) says that it's IMPOSSIBLE to reach 99.999% uptime with Microsoft Windows products - yet I did it on a Pentium Pro 200MHz running Novell NetWare 5.1

"The rules of natural selection do not apply to the IT industry, the best marketing always wins. period."

That's the ONLY thing you've said that comes close to reality.

You guys are diving head first into the merits of each OS

I am requestiong 15-20 questions to ask in evaluating an OS to select.

An outline of questions to rule in or out >

Netware
Windows
Unix
Linux

Many of the things you are discussing do NOT apply to my particular environment.

I guess I'm asking for a comprehensive but  more generic list of questions to ask.
We are an academic institution and cost is a relatively minor issue... for example
Windows 2003 STD Server cost us $106.00 (open lic.)
We will need about 100 user cals. later on perhaps...

At first glance I'm asking myself is there any kind of compelling argumnet to stay with Novell if we are locked in to keeping out MS web server, our MS e-mail server, our MS SAM application server...

Does Netware present any critical advantages in its NDS  for our file servers
vs. using MS AD    for file servers intergrated with the other MS servers we will mostly have to keep anyway.

My boss insist I give Netware every benefit of a doubt and I'm honestly trying to do that... I'd like to learn more about e-directory any way but it does seem the AD is more of an elegant solution in our rather modest enviroment.

Please advise.. I really appreciate everyones input.

The problem is with Microsoft being pushed into an environment by upper management without regard for a business case.  This is a direct result of Microsoft's marketing tactics.  They INSIST on speaking DIRECTLY to the OWNER or CEO, and NOT a CIO or CTO or IT Director.  They know that they cannot justify a business case for what they're trying to sell to a competent technology manager, and don't want to bet on lucking into a situation where the technology manager is incompetent.

That is the ONLY REASON Microsoft's buggy, vulnerability-laden crapware has gotten as far as it has.

How many users?

Anyway, to dorgunr's question, I'd say a valid comparative checklist should include a number of items.  Here's a short list.

1)  Upfront cost - in many instances Microsoft will win this one, knowing that once you're in, they've got you by the cojones.  They'll get their money down the road.

2)  Support cost - NetWare wins this one hands-down.

3)  Compatibility - NetWare wins again.

4)  Open-source freindliness - again NetWare wins.

5)  Security - Again NetWare wins.

6)  Support of de-jure standards - NetWare.

7)  Multiplatform directory services - Novell by a mile

8)  Filesystem security - NetWare wins.

"1)  Upfront cost - in many instances Microsoft will win this one, knowing that once you're in, they've got you by the cojones.  They'll get their money down the road."

I disagree with this - I don't think Microsoft wins in upfront costs.  Network World's "King of the NOS Hill" had NetWare 5.1 beating Windows 2000 in performance on exact same hardware.  But NetWare also handled 2 to 3 times the number of users.  To be equal to NetWare, Windows would require a cluster of 2 to 3 times as many servers.  Add the licensing costs per server with Windows (versus NONE for NetWare) to the additional hardware and you find NetWare is cheaper than Windows in intial upfront costs.

"2)  Support cost - NetWare wins this one hands-down. "

Agreed, I've got 25+ NetWare servers and about 15 Windows servers - I admin them myself.  The Windows servers are delegated to SQL and IIS roles so the DBA and Web guys reboot the boxes when they need to.  The rest of the Windows boxes are app servers I find myself rebooting once or more a month.  My NetWare servers are pretty much in the upper 100's of days uptime.  I do very little in terms of admin'ing the NetWare servers because they stopped working like I do the Window servers.

And the NetWare servers do MORE than the Windows servers!

"4)  Open-source freindliness - again NetWare wins."

Have you ever done VNC on NetWare 6.5?  There is nothing like being able to access the X-Window remotely from your Windows, Mac, Linux desktop or your PocketPC handheld.

"5)  Security - Again NetWare wins."

Count on one hand the number of security vulnerabilities in NetWare - and NONE of them are CRITICAL.  Count on one hand the number of CRITICAL security vulnerabilities in Windows - THIS MONTH ALONE!

Gartner says - "Dump IIS"
Gartner says - "Dump IE"
IBM says - "Dump Exchange"
IBM says - "Dump Windows"

I think I need another hand...

"6)  Support of de-jure standards - NetWare."

Don't you just love how Windows pollutes the TCP stack by encapsulating NetBIOS within it by default?

9)  File System Flexibilty - NetWare wins, if you don't have access to a folder, then you don't even SEE the folder.

10)  Stability - I'd like to thank Rick Devenuti, CTO of Microsoft, for pointing out that even for Microsoft, 99.999% uptime is not economically feasible when using Windows.  Yet, I've done it multiple times on hardware as old as a Compaq ProLiant 2500, 200MHz Pentium Pro - WITHOUT CLUSTERING.

11)  Performance - NetWare, factor of 2 to 5 in most cases.  Read the Gartner report, it's damning.

The fellows that support Netware seem to be very confident.. I haven't heard much from Windows folks.
Can it be the Netware guys are GOPs and the Windows guys are kind of lay-back democrates ?

Just kidding..but I'm seriously re-thinking my attitude vs. Netware...

Not only did Gartner say "Dump IE", so did Department of Homeland Security and CMU's CERT.

I buy American and vote Republican.

Like my bumper sticker says:
"This AMERICAN-MADE car was paid for by the BUSH TAX CUTS!"

>W'04!
>"Deeds, not words"

I'm re-applying for 4 purple hearts now myself for Quang Tri ... ingrown toe-nail, spider bite injury, eye full of sand, busted heart for fallen comrades. John was on to something..those officers always looking good :^)

Semper Fi, W, and God Bless America

PsiCop/DSPoole/ShineOn

Thank you for your entertaining and amusing comments.

What can I possibly say that isn't going to be thoughtlessly flamed - and therefore utterly fail to answer the question posted by dorgunr.

In the interests of common sense I'm not going to rise to the bait, or post a further collection of hearsay, flawed analysis, or impossible rubbish stated as fact.

I sincerely hope that when the moderators pick this one up they refund the points and delete the Q as this is little short of embarrassing to read.

dorgunr, Windows folks aren't bothering to respond as arguing with extremists is like mud wrestling with a pig: You still get covered in crap, and the pig loves it.

unsubscribe

JamesDS

Ah, yes, the typical response - call any non-pro-M$ information "hearsay, flawed facts and impossible rubbish" and act embarassed that there could possibly be another opinion besides that M$ is best and everyone should drop everything else and migrate to Windoze.

Wow... I'm printing all of this out and thanks very much for the list.

It occured to me given the DNC and the RNC..all the Swift Boat Vets say... the real record Kerry can't explain away..
all the serious dangers we face.... really not kidding...

If Bush loses the election... America is turning European before our very eyes...
and I'm fearful of my own opinions...I honestly can say I don't get the Liberals argument at this point in history.
I voted for Reagan and was ticked at '41 for the poor job market etc. Clinton/Gore looked like my generation and they seemed energized.... yada yada  Clinton was toward the middle but now the left has veared very far extreme left.

Bush is not a perfect man (nobody is) but Kerry...as a Viet Nam vet...I say ...3 purple hearts..no real injury..get the hell out of dodge in 4 months...come on... deep down we know he was hopeing "to look heroic" and run for high office one day.
Bush well ... like many of my high school buddies..they joined the national guard to stay alive... Fred and I joined the Marines to help out. He died, I lived. We were a bit idealistic. Kerry used the system as did Bush.
Lets call it even and vote for who ever we really think will protect America best. This time it IS serious business.

Thanks for the Netware vs. Windows debate. It did help me find out what to consider and apply it to our particular circumstances.

Thanks Guys  USMC  CH-46 HMM 161 door gunner    

I am not going to vote for anyone who gets up in front of the American people and says that he has the power to hold American citizens (I'm not talking about the schmucks at Gitmo, I'm talking about AMERICAN CITIZENS) without charge, trial and access to counsel. That's a tyrant waiting to happen.

The "PATRIOT" Act was a misnamed piece of fascist legislation ramrodded thru Congress without most members even being able to read it. And now Bush/Ashcroft want MORE power. That nut in the AG's office wants secret arrest and detention - they come get you in the middle of the night, and its illegal for anyone to even admit that the government is holding you.

Yeah, we need to protect America - from people in power who use the Constitution and Bill of Rights as toilet paper.

Trouble is, I don't think Kerry would be all that different - Democrats, Republicans...they're all the same. Their sole concern is getting re-elected and banking enough in political contributions to insure a comfortable lifestyle after office. The only advantage I see with Kerry is at least it'll get that religious nut Ashcroft out of the AG office. He's the greatest danger to individual liberty since McCarthy.

If Bush would dump Ashcroft and admit he was wrong about Presential powers and work to repeal the more fascist provisions of PATRIOT, I could live with that (he still shouldn't need the Supreme Court to explain US Constitution 101 to him). But he's gung-ho on shredding the Bill of Rights.

Our political processes are hopelessly corrupt. If they weren't, we wouldn't be limited to "Kerry or Bush".

There goes my theory... Netware Republicans.. Windows Democrats... :^0
Don't ya just love AMERICA.... talk to me in mid- November :^)
Ole Glory Flys Free or the French (boring) flag runs up the pole in January. What will it be ?

I'm worrying that Ole Glory is being slowly replaced with the Hammer & Sickle.

Secret arrest and detention is what they did in the Soviet Union. Same thing with holding citizens indefinitely without charge, trial or access to counsel. And those are both things that Bush/Ashcroft think are right and that they have the power to do. THAT is their idea of liberty?

And no matter who wins, that either/or flag bit is a buncha political windbagging. The only difference I see between the two is that erosion of our rights will be a lot faster with that neo-fascist nut Ashcroft in the AG office.

Psi, to quote uber-liberal Democrat Diane Fienstien (CA):  "No one's rights have been infringed upon by the Patriot Act"

and, btw:  since the Freedom of Information Act, we've recently discovered that McCarthy was right.  ;)

sorry kiddo, them's the facts.  If you wish, I would love to discuss this more thoroughly with you.  Keep in mind I have only a couple of rules (the same ones I adhere to in my NetWare/Windows debates).

1)  keep it polite - name calling doesn't get anyone anywhere

2)  if you make an accusation - be prepared to back it up with reliable and verifiable sources (which pretty much tosses Michael Moore out of the picture :D )

Please PLEASE do not take this as an insult, but I do think you are either misguided by someone or simply don't have correct information.  I would really love to get the chance to TALK to you about the Patriot Act (which really does nothing more than bring wire taps into the 21st century) and Ashcroft "shredding" the Bill of Rights (which, if you knew HIS stance on the 2nd vs. the stance of the LEFT on the 2nd, you'd realize who is really behind the Bill of Rights and who really wants to shred it).

Give me a chance:   novellrocks@yahoo.com

-Dave

Dorgunr (NOW I understand your handle!) - my bro is a DI at Pendleton in Cali (Semper Fi) and is being transferred to the Sunni Triangle this week (I feel SO sorry for the terrorists!).  I, for one, would like to thank you for your service to this country - like Zell Miller said the other night, we don't thank the reporters for the right to free speech, we thank our soldiers!

-Dave (first gen American of immigrant parents)

The 2nd Amendment is 1/10th the Bill of Rights. Yeah, I know he's a staunch support of that 10%. Its the other 90% that I'm worried about.

I hadn't heard that quote from DF, but if she said that, she's a moron, even if I do like some of the legislation she's introduced to try to protect personal privacy.

You totally miss the point about McCarthy - the ends do NOT justify the MEANS. He may have been right in some cases, but what do you say to all the poor sots who had their lives shredded in his overbearing zeal? Try living thru what Richartd Jewell went thru (remember him?). And he was lucky - they didn't have the power to drag him away in the middle of the night and then arrest anyone who said he'd been dragged away.

I don't see how secret arrest and detention and denial of habeus corpus can be compatible with liberty in any way. Make all the claims about how prescient McCarthy was, there are certain basic things that MUST be inviolable, and Ashcroft wants to streamroll right over them.

MY point about the 2nd was - you CANNOT enslave an armed population (which is exactly what Hitler, Stalin, Castro and others did).

Hence, the 2nd may be only 1 of 10 of the original Bill of Rights, but it's the MOST important.  Anyone who read Colonial history in regards to the British taking Boston knows that.

Like I said, this discussion is best via e-mail and not here.  But I will be glad to hold a serious, yet friendly, debate on you with your concerns.  Hopefully, my goal anyway, to relieve them.

They're all EQUALLY important. A threat to ONE of them is a threat to ALL of them.

What, you don't plan to get worried while the other 9 are taken away? You know how to boil a frog? You don't drop him in boiling water - he'll hop right out. You put him in cool water and then apply heat. He boils to death before he knows what's happening.

ANY infringement of freedom by the government is a danger to ALL freedom. You're fooling youself to say that one freedom is more important than another.

Fine, we can move to E-mail.

In my younger years I was never "political" I did have a tiny american flag on my 1967 GTO and like I said I sold the car and joined the Marines. (conservative..not really just a patriotic, joint smoker) In my 40s my daughter who had never ever discussed politics with her uninterested parents found herself seemingly the only conservative in her Northwestern University civics class. She loves the Republican viewpoint and the White Sox passionately. I have come around her way and find myself only watching FOX news. Others seem so phony and are NOT fair and balanced.

I question those that use insults to bolster their points of view. I'm sure Kerry is American as I am and a good citizen over-all,
He just doesn't have the goods at this point in history to be called commander-in-chief and president and neather do I ofcourse, but W has alot of men I admire backing him so..... anyway, I keep my COLT 45 handy in case they try to take over as PSICop suggest they will.

Love the movie RED DAWN  :^) Have a nice safe LABOR day holiday we all need it........

Ruger 9mm is my choice.  And Psi, I DO know what happens when you "boil the frog" - I lost nealy half my mothers family to concentration camps because of Nazi Germany.

PsiCop, DSPoole - isn't there a TA here we can move the Demorat, Republican, Conservative, Communist, etc discussion to?  I have a few things to add that is as OT as what you've said so far, and I'd hate to see it all tossed down the tubes by a Mod.  (Aside to PsiCop - I'm from Joe McCarthy's state, and have an interest in seeing the truth told.  Read Ann Coulter's book, 'Treason.')

dorgunr - as you have observed IT can have its own set of politics.  And yes, you are very correct (in my opinion) that Microsofties bear striking similarities to today's Demorats, and we non-Microsofties are much more similar to Republicans.  Actually, we're closer to Libertarians... hehe...

BTW, in case anyone cares - the US of A's governmental model is not Democracy.  We have a Democratic Republic.  In other words, a representative form of government.  We also consist of 50 separate, sovereign states (plus a few protectorates and such) that are joined in a federation to form the United States.  There are Constitutional limits to the reach of the Federal Governmen's power over the states.

That is why we have the Electoral College - because the people of the separate, sovereign states cannot directly elect anyone to the Presidency of the United States, the USA NOT being a Democracy.  This is a separation that is truly, unequivocally defined in the US Constitution, as opposed to the so-called "Separation of Church and State," which is NOT clearly defined in the Constitution, but rather is an interpretation of part of the 1st amendment, with the phrase lifted from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a clergyman.

actually, we are a CONSTITUTIONAL Republic...

In the 80s I was a staunch Republican. Supported both Ford and Reagan. The latter was the last President I had ANY respect for.

The neo-cons have betrayed the Reagan ideals ("Government can't solve the problem. Government IS the problem.") What do we have today? You can't even go near an airport without the government sticking a microscope up your fanny. We've got the Justice Department censoring the Supreme Court (http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/justice_redaction.htm), the FBI using the PATRIOT Act in straightforward domestic criminal cases (http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Nov-05-Wed-2003/news/22521283.html). You REALLY think that little popgun is going to keep you safe from the sort of people doing these things?

(Personally, I prefer a Remington 1100 12-gauge for home-defense, altho my wife likes her Sig 9mm; my dad keeps lamenting not buying that Thompson .45)

And the immigrant/Jewish angle doesn't get any traction with me, DSPoole. I've got pix I took of my grandfather in Jerusalem, at a Holocaust memorial pointing out the plaque from village HIS parents came from, where so many relatives from that part of the family tree were turned into air pollution.

IMPO, the Electoral College was the second-stupidest thing the Framers did; the first being the assumption that the LOSER in the race for President would want to serve as Vice-President. Hmmm....no, thinking about it more, reverse those two, the Electoral College is dumber.

ShineOn, I have no more respect for Coulter's book (altho she IS very nice eye candy) than I do for Franken's. They're nothing but a bucha divisive, "Everyone who things the way I do is a genius, every one else is a moron", politician-serving grouping of carefully-selected issues and spin. They're bibles for the faithful and a tool to whip the "opposite side" into a frenzy. And the media is going right along, feeding this "Red state/Blue state" fecal hurricane that does nothing but deepen artificial divisions.

Frankly, I'm sick of it. One of the reasons I registered Independent.

If we really want to pursue this in EE, the Lounge seems to be the right place.

I thought this was going into e-mail, remember? ;)

Well, if we wanted to include dorgunr and ShineOn. :-)

okay - Psi, you made the claims, you get to create the TA in the Lounge, then post a URL here ;)

In my copious spare time :-)

hey - no copiouing around here, pal! ;)

Psi, you've been listening to too much NPR...

At least you have no respect for Al Franken ;).   Hopefully, your disrespect, nay, disdain, extends to the likes of Michael Moore.

I wait with bated breath for the URL of the TA in the Lounge.