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Here's my personal page I follow for avoiding Win10 & Telemetry:

http://game-point.net/misc/dontEnableAutomaticUpdates/

Thanks! And I didn't get you anything... ;-)

Here's my personal page I follow for avoiding Win10 & Telemetry:

http://game-point.net/misc/dontEnableAutomaticUpdates/

• Turn all of the toolbars on
• Turn off "Tabs on Top" to put the tabs back where they belong
• Add a Firefox 3 theme
• Install a real status bar
• Restore the back/forward button functionality

It's not quite the same, but it's close.

Interesting, I do all of this but for the theme. I use "good old" Firefox 2 theme instead.

It is still possible to get most of the old UI back in Firefox. This is what I do:

• Turn all of the toolbars on
• Turn off "Tabs on Top" to put the tabs back where they belong
• Add a Firefox 3 theme
• Install a real status bar
• Restore the back/forward button functionality

It's not quite the same, but it's close.

Look, this method looks absolutely terrible. Here's a comparison, here's what you used to be able to do in 2003 to reply to quoted stuff inline:
http://www.game-point.net/misc/outlook2003-smudged.png

... and here's what the 'Mark my comments with...' function looks like in 2007:
http://www.game-point.net/misc/outlook2007-smudged.png

Tell me which one you're able to follow more easily.

Look, this method looks absolutely terrible. Here's a comparison, here's what you used to be able to do in 2003 to reply to quoted stuff inline:
http://www.game-point.net/misc/outlook2003-smudged.png

... and here's what the 'Mark my comments with...' function looks like in 2007:
http://www.game-point.net/misc/outlook2007-smudged.png

Tell me which one you're able to follow more easily.

Don't like the decisions a part makes? Don't vote for them.

That would work, if we had a decent electoral system. Unfortunately, we don't.

Microsoft just doesn't get it. If you can't get your service to work with all major browsers, your service is going to be seen as inferior, not the browser.

Tell that to Google. Google Maps has had this bug in Google Maps for YEARS now that causes printing in Firefox to be broken (because Firefox actually does things correctly), yet to look OK in IE6 and IE7. Do people think Google Maps is inferior? Hell, it doesn't work AT ALL in Opera.

I'm jealous of you folks in the US, at least you've got a new government in 2 months time. We're stuck with the same leadership over here for likely another 18 months or so.

Yep. And, Labour wouldn't be in power under any kind of sane electoral system. And UKIP would have seats in parliament.

My apologies, that was a poor choice of words. Labour only won the popular vote because of contributions from outside England. They would indeed have taken power comfortably anyway under the current "first past the post" system.

In your other reply, you wrote:

Scotland's policies on [numerous subjects] will be decided by a party that is consistently polling third in Scotland.

Is that fair?

Well, that depends. If you accept the first past the post system, then yes, it's perfectly fair that the third party can swing the vote if the first and second parties disagree and neither has an outright majority. The fallacy of third party dominance arises because people forget that the first and second parties can vote together, in which case typically the third party's opinion will be irrelevant to the result.

Of course, then you have to get into whether the relative weight of parties in terms of votes they get in Parliament compared to popular support is reasonable, which it clearly isn't under first past the post.

Why the Brits keep re-electing the socialist Labor party is a mystery.

I can reveal the answer to that mystery. It's our electoral system.

In the last general election the Liberals won more votes than the Conservatives but won less seats.

Excuse me? There are massive problems with first-past-the-post electing, but this statement is bollocks, as my page shows.

A better criticism is something like, "the Conservatives got more votes in England than Labour, but won 92 fewer seats".

Not all British people are the same. Some are very liberal, some are very conservative.

The Tories are doing badly in the polls because they suck, their best policies have been thrown away and replaced with New Labour-style bullshit (which, guess what, most people are fed up with now), and they're "fighting for the centreground" (ie. ignoring 80% of people).

More people in England voted Conservative than Labout at the last election.

Is the BBC liberal because the British people are, or the other way around? It's a chicken-and-egg problem. The BBC unfortunately holds a lot of sway with many people's opinions, and I firmly believe that this country's as politically correct as it is largely in thanks to the BBC.

Here's one it started doing since the recent MS security drive. Any file that could possibly exploit a hole in any piece of software seems to be treated with serious suspicion. Somehow, this seems to include GIF files. So, when someone tried to send me a GIF file, I get this warning. I download it anyway, and it's sitting on my hard drive. I can copy it somewhere else, open it, etc.

However - and this is the kicker - when I click on the blue link to the file in the MSN chat window, I get this dialog. Yeah, it actually DELETED the file I just downloaded. After I copied it using Explorer. And I have full access to it. Dunno who implemented that piece of genius.

Here's one it started doing since the recent MS security drive. Any file that could possibly exploit a hole in any piece of software seems to be treated with serious suspicion. Somehow, this seems to include GIF files. So, when someone tried to send me a GIF file, I get this warning. I download it anyway, and it's sitting on my hard drive. I can copy it somewhere else, open it, etc.

However - and this is the kicker - when I click on the blue link to the file in the MSN chat window, I get this dialog. Yeah, it actually DELETED the file I just downloaded. After I copied it using Explorer. And I have full access to it. Dunno who implemented that piece of genius.

1. Perpetual coalition government - not a good thing IMO since it can lead to governing coalitions that last for decades (Austria until recently for eg).

As opposed to our current system with 2 virtually identical parties vying for the politically-correct centreground, closing their minds to many new ideas for fear of losing votes from certain sectors? The current system is worse than coalitions would be. Whatsmore, at least with coalitions, there would be a lot more small parties in the commons that could exert a lot more influence, and even (if the main coalition was pissing everybody off) become powerful enough to veto that coalition (maybe by forming a secondary coalition). Politics would basically be more dynamic, and I think the discussion of ideas would have to be more open owing to the greater variety of people taking part.

2. Voting by party not by candidate - so even more powerful parties. All MPs have to [tow] the line or not get on the list, and there is no chance for individual unpopular politicians in a popular party to be voted out.

Parties are *currently* very powerful. Blair and Cameron virtually rule by diktat. However, the idea that the parties would always decide which politicians took up the seats is a myth usually perpetuated by people who don't want to see a fairer (PR) electing system. That is called 'closed-list' proportional representation. I would advocate 'open-list' proportional representation, where the voters DO vote for a particular candidate. The vote initially goes toward that candidate's party. Once it has been decided how many seats each party gets, the number of votes per candidate are used to decide which ones get into parliament... so there IS incentive for individual candidates to go out and campaign and adopt policies that the voters like, and the parties DON'T get to pick which candidates get the seats. The parties could be allocated, perhaps, 5 seats for which they could choose the candidates to go in them, just to make sure that very key people in the party (head of party, deputy, etc) don't get prevented from entering parliament.

By the way, the current system is pretty much as bad as you suggested *already*. They put the candidates they really want to be in parliament (Blair, Brown, Prescott, and other assorted nasties) in very safe seats, so they're effectively picking exactly who they want anyway.

3. Much less importance given to local issues by the national government.

I say: Good. I see no reason why a *national* parliament should be addressing local issues; that's what local government is for (and local government in the UK, by the way, should be normalized and its power beefed up greatly, so it could operate better without help from the commons). National government should NOT be the first port of call for people wanting to address a local issue. You should NOT be thinking of going to your local MP, you should be going to your local councillors. Right now, the only reason MPs like being able to claim they 'represent' a constituency (which of course they don't because they are almost all elected by a minority) is so they can wheel out some constituent by name in PMQs to 'personalize' an issue and make it harder for the PM to respond, because it might look like he was treating a non-politician with contempt (eg. "Can the PM explain why Mrs. Johnson, one of my constituents, could not get a hip replacement for 2 years?!?!!" ... musn't make people think I hate Mrs. Johnson!). This is cynical behaviour and, if anything, an argument *against* local issues having a place in the commons.

4. More seats for the Lib Dems - the only reason they seem to support it, which makes me a lot more cynical of them than I otherwise would be.

Well, you started out by saying that you quite liked them, so you're somewhat contradicting yourself. Yes, it would give them more seats, because it would be a much fairer system. That's no reason to be cynical. There's no reason they can't support something that helps them and JUST HAPPENS to be the Right Thing To Do, as well.

Actually, it was closer to 20% of the electorate. First-past-the-post - crappest electoral system ever. :-(

Yep. It was actually about 20% of the adult population, or 35% of the electorate.

No, England didn't.

And the rest of the UK certainly hardly gave them a 'resounding' victory. Our electoral system did.

Yup. Biggest problems I tend to have with CSS involve its not being designed to determine the size of a block (either height or width) by the size of its content; most stuff involves specifying fixed sizes. Try determining the width of that div using the width of the smallest contained image.

Actually the problems I've had so far with CSS are documented here (1, 2 and 3.htm).

You say people like me are the reason all these domain squatters exist. How exactly do you figure that? People like me buy a domain I actually want because I can get it at a good price, and use it for my own purposes, even if they are minimal. Someone like me is not going to be supporting a domain squatter by buying a domain for $50,000 and thus encouraging their practice.

You suggest raising the price of a .com to $100/year. That would be a huge hassle to me, having every e-mail address I use on my domains, and I suspect by looking at the parked domain that seems to be your site, it would affect you. Fortunately ICANN seems to respect the individual web hosts, and sets prices reasonably. Eventually we'll see what they decide to do about squatters, hopefully it won't screw over people like myself.

See if my site crashes. Then guess what language it was coded in (hint: not PHP).

Yes, I know I'm probably inviting someone to destroy it now. Oh well. :-)

Well I kinda came up with my own political philosophy a while back, maybe it's a form of democracy, I don't know... also, it needs a better name. :-)

Accountabilitarianism

The MIDI I found didn't really do it justice so I MP3'd it (kudos to FCE Ultra and CoolEdit 2k, both of which rock):
http://www.game-point.net/misc/smb2.mp3

Someone who moves the window down (even a touch, in this case) will lose sight of those controls entirely

Yes, if they move the window down so that it goes off the bottom of the screen and completely forget where the controls were 2 seconds ago, that will happen. If they have problems with that, I think they should stop using their computer and submit to the nearest euthanasia clinic.

Based on your criticisms, I've redesigned the interface to be easier and friendlier to use. See what you think.

And the result is...

out.png

Ah, but does that have better fuel efficiency than the Ultimate Behemoth?

I got a 'server full' message a few times, so just in case that site gets Slashdotted, here's a mirror.

The problem with the US system is that people are just inclined to stick to voting for major powerbases, that they know and (rightly or wrongly) trust, so you end up with 2 parties that have a hope in hell of being elected. What's needed is for the elected persons to be held accountable for _everything_ they do. That's where Accountabilitarianism comes in.

Before switching to a more expensive mouse, you should check out ps2rate, you can boost the sampling rate of your mouse up to 200hz. It moves noticably smoother. This is not necessary if you're on Windows 2000 or XP though, but I use it on 98.