Well, it only seems logical to start there. I mean if the people of North Korea REALLY knew how they were living in comparison to the rest of the world, or even the other half of their little peninsula which many of us even envy because of their crazy fast and cheap broadband, they would be up in arms in no time.
The party members at the top of the ladder know what the "west" is like, and emulate the lifestyle themselves with lavish palaces, cars, food, women, entertainment, all at the expense of their starving, stunted, diseased people. They are so malnourished there that children are getting cataracts and only growing to 4 feet tall and can't walk. It's the Middle Ages all over again. You can send all the food aid and stuff you want, but for all I know it's just intercepted in port and stockpiled in Kim Jong-Il's basement. If they do hand stuff out, I'm sure they rebag it so Kim's face is on there not USAID, UN, or whatever.
I forget where I heard this, but in the school books, the world maps have been redrawn and NK's friendly countries are represented much larger than in real life, and their enemies, like the USA, are redrawn much smaller. I think they also greatly increased the size of NK as well to make the kids think that their country is the biggest on earth.
Sure sounds like they're keeping the outside influences to a minimum to me. Rewriting history and reshaping the earth's geography to suit their own twisted ends is just part of the process.
In January this year I was in Berlin and we went to the DDR Museum (i.e. East Germany) and I remember seeing a list of job titles and what each of those titles earned in pay. IIRC doctors and skilled professionals did not earn the same wages as unskilled labourers, farmers, construction workers. I think farmers earned something like 800 Marks a month and doctors, engineers and people like that got like 2300 Marks a month. That's only for East Germany though, maybe the USSR was different.
It's not like life was all fun and games either. They had to wear the absolute crappiest polyester clothes (the museum had some on display that you could touch... terrible stuff), deal with constant shortages of various things, walls designed to keep them IN, not out, the border area was full of mines, electric fences, dogs, soldiers, and on top of all that, they had the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, more commonly known as the Stasi (see the excellent film "The Lives of Others" / "Das Leben der Anderen")... and the list goes on.
I think the only way that communism can succeed is if the people in charge can manage to keep all outside influences from reaching their people. They also have to prevent dissenters from drumming up support against the regime by either imprisoning, killing or otherwise forcing them into silence (by threatening their family or something). All this while resisting international pressure to open up the country to democracy and to respect human rights conventions and stuff. I guess the nuclear deterrent would go a long way to help in that respect. An enormous standing army isn't a bad idea either. North Korea seems to be a doing all of these things, some very well.
My car (2002 Jetta TDI) and many newer vehicles have a drive by wire system. The accelerator connects to a potentiometer that has a low resistance at 0 throttle and goes towards infinity at WOT. I don't think they really could have done it any other way with a diesel engine with electronic fuel injection.
Putting something in between the throttle pot and the engine management system (on my car anyway) would be trivial. All it would have to do then is lower the resistance value until the speed matches the unit's desired speed. It would also have to be able to pass along the driver's input, but only any resistance value lower than or equal to the device's max value, and intercept any higher input and pass along lower value (device max) to the ECU instead.
That said, I don't agree with the mandated use of these kinds of devices. If someone wants one they can install one. I won't allow such garbage to grace the insides of my fine automobile.
This brings up another question about society. When will people take responsibility for their own actions? Why does the government have to come and hold your hand and babysit you? If you speed and you get caught then guess what.. IT'S YOUR FAULT, NOT ANYONE ELSE'S UNLESS SOMEONE JUMPED IN YOUR CAR WITH A GUN OR A KNIFE AND SAID SPEED AWAY FROM THE COPS OR I WILL KILL YOU (but then the cops wouldn't charge you for speeding or evasion or whatever). You are in the driver's seat, you are in control, not anyone else. It's up to you to decide how fast or slow the car goes, which direction it goes, whether it does so safely. If you want the government to have responsibility, hire someone representing the government to drive your ass around, otherwise shut up and take some responsibility for your own actions for once.
The map makers (TeleAtlas in this case, who also supply the map data Google Maps uses in the above link) used inaccurate data or were lazy when they made this one because it's so far off that it thinks the north side service road is actually the westbound lane of the Trans Canada Highway. Every morning it puts me onto that side road on my GPS and it pisses me off. On the way home it also puts me onto there for a little strech but it's a lot more sane than my morning commute. I've submitted the error to TeleAtlas but I'm convinced that it'll take at least 6 months to be looked at.
City and provincial officials in Winnipeg say Segways do not meet Canadian motor vehicle standards for use on roadways. But because they are motorized, they are also not allowed on sidewalks, unless they are somehow deemed to be a "mobility vehicle" for a person needing mobility assistance.
My provider (MTS, in Manitoba, Canada) allows me to send/receive texts to/from email addresses. While they are limited to the size of regular texts, for billing purposes they also count as one. Just send a short email to [10DigitNumber]@text.mts.net. It's not a full email client or anything, but it's perfect for my needs and I use it all the time. The only downside is that MTS unfortunately doesn't split up texts that are too large. Incoming ones just get cut off, outgoing ones don't even get sent.
On the DSL side of things, they don't have authenticated SMTP either, but I believe they restrict access to their IP block. For everyone else there's webmail.
Have you tried disabling the QoS bandwidth reserve thing? IIRC, Windows reserves a portion of the network throughput for QoS stuff (something like 10-20%). I forget how to do it exactly... I think you have to go into the Group Policy Editor or something. Although I do know for a fact that if you use nLite to make an XP install you can remove it entirely.
We have that here in Manitoba, it's called Manitoba Public Insurance, but everyone just calls it Autopac. If you want a passenger car, light truck, motorcycle, recreational vehicle (quad, snowmobile, dirtbike, etc) to be able to drive on or across public roadways, you need a plate and insurance. They're the only providers, through a province-wide network of participating private insurance brokers. I think Saskatchewan and BC have it too.
They are regulated by the Public Utilities Board and are sometimes forced to pay money back if they collected too much. This happened a couple times in the last few years. The rates are reasonable and the insurance rate isn't tied to your driving record, age, gender, marital status, annual income, number of offspring, etc. Instead, your driving record affects the annual cost of your driver's license... yes annual. It's so bloody stupid, but that's how it is. If you have an at fault accident, you get a one-time $200 surcharge when you renew your license. A second one in 3 years, you're given a $400 charge and so on, up to a max of $1,200. They give discounts for good driving too, up to a max of 25% off your car insurance and $5 for every merit point off the cost of your license, up to a max of $25. Accidents where you're not at fault naturally don't tack on a charge, nor do accidents with wildlife (deer, elk, moose, bears, rabbits, etc). For some reason farm animals or house pets are magically the driver's fault. Government safeties are also regulated (I think they're $45) but that leads to issues, because shops don't want to spend more than $45 worth of time looking at a car, and nowadays that's less than half an hour at most places.
They also implemented this dumb system called No Fault Insurance. That means you can't sue other drivers, no matter what. A couple years ago a drunk off-duty cop was driving home at like 7:30 am from an end of shift party at a colleague's house and rear ended a woman waiting at a light and killed her. The inquest finished up recently and the poor woman's family is now suing the police, the province, the prosecutor, everybody they can, except the cop who did it. They aren't legally able to. It's very sad because he deserves it. The reason they prevent you from suing, is that they will pay death and other benefits to the family or survivors of a wreck, supposedly equivalent to what you'd get by suing. So instead of tying up the courts, they pay you off. I still don't like it, but I guess the upside is that if you get smoked by a penniless drunk with nothing to his name, you still get something. Otherwise you're stuck trying to extract blood from a stone.
They aren't all evil though. Winnipeg being the car theft capital of Canada, they have a big list of cars every year that require an approved immobilizer, which to date hasn't been defeated by any thieves. Cars made after September 2007 have factory ones that are supposedly good enough. Also any car that is stolen requires an immobilizer, regardless of whether or not it's on the list. This proactive approach keeps our insurance costs down. They also have successfully sued chronic car thieves for damages to recuperate the costs of repairing the damage they caused. They also let you get your car fixed at the shop of your choice. They don't decide for you. They do have a blacklist though, but there's only 2 shops on there if I remember correctly.
But yeah, that's the reality of public insurance and government regulation. It's not all magic, ponies and rainbows but we do seem to have among to lowest rates in the country, and coverage is 100%, unless you're demonstrably under the influence, then it's VOID, as it should be. At least I don't have to add people's names to my car's insurance, they can just drive it, with my permission of course, 100% fully covered, as long as they have a valid driver's license from a long list of countries/jurisdictions (International Permit required for some places).
Skype In: You sign up and get to choose a number from a laundry list of countries. Some require that you're actually a resident and you have to prove it, but some, such as the UK (last I checked anyway) don't require you to be a resident. I had one for a while. It's not that much per year and works anywhere Skype does. I don't think it uses up any Skype minutes unless you forward it to a real phone.
Magic jack: Same deal as Skype In, but you plug in a regular phone to it and it just works, like magic! I think it's a very very cheap flat rate per year for calls to North America from anywhere in the world. International calls are fairly cheap too. My buddy has one and it sounds fine if he calls off it. AFAIK you can't get Canadian area codes yet though.
Vonage softphone client: Lots of people have this since it's the only way that I'm currently aware of to use Vonage with Asterisk.
You guys want to remove IE *COMPLETELY* from the system? Use nlite/vlite and rip it out before it's even installed. Problem solved. Good luck with Windows Updates or anything that needs IE libraries to display any content though (Windows Help CHM files for instance).
If you're too lazy to follow the link, here's the first two definitions:
1. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
2. a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.
What I think you meant to say was Australia is a constitutional monarchy and the USA is a republic. Canada (where I live) is also a constitutional monarchy. The former British colonies mostly all share a Westminster style parliament, and the same royal head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. The US gave up that privilege (if you want to call it that) in 1776.
Why would you be contesting it whilst driving? Why not from the sidewalk or while sitting in the car when it's parked?
You can't tell me that it's illegal to use a cell phone in a parked car. The meter maid can't sit there and issue a new ticket every 2 seconds if you don't move right away. There has to be some minimum period between consecutive tickets for the same offense, or at least a tow to the impound after so many hours/days.
Besides, why would Parkingticket.com take responsibility for your illegal behaviour? You were breaking the law, not them. Just because you were using their service doesn't make it their fault. To use a car analogy, that's like saying it's Volkswagen's fault that I ran a red because I drive a Jetta. I'll be sure to tell the cops to send the ticket to Martin Winterkorn over in Wolfsburg. I'm sure he'll gladly pay it.
I have to admit, the TTS voices on my TomTom Go 720 are pretty damn good. I have a UK TTS voice, Jane or Kate or something, selected and I can't really tell her from the non-TTS UK voice that I initially had. The only difference is the TTS ones will read out street names.
The only time it shows its true robotic colours is when gets them horribly, horribly wrong. We have lots of French street names around here and it struggles with a lot of them. Other than that it's pretty spot on.
As for the CDMA roaming, where I live, MTS is the only game in town. Sure, I could have a Telus phone, but outside of Winnipeg, they roam on MTS anyway, and it counts as the home network with no roaming symbol or extra charges, other than long distance if you're far enough away.
As for GSM phones, actually I think they do give some control. After having thought about it, I do actually remember being able to choose between networks in Europe with a piece of crap Nokia 3410.
I used to live in Germany quite close to the Luxembourg border. If I popped over the border to Wasserbillig, literally about 1km (across the Sauer or Mosel rivers) to buy gas, coffee or cigarettes, which were substantially cheaper, I'd sometimes pick up their towers, and incur higher charges if I used the phone. I could also pick them up on the German side too, which sucked if I wasn't paying much attention. I remember in the menu being able to view all the networks in a list and then choose which one I wanted to register with.
To be sure, I just checked on my unlocked Moto Razr V3. It only shows Rogers because that's all we've got for GSM in Canada, but if there were others, I could see them and choose which network to connect to. Not as permanent a solution as Home Only on CDMA, but better than nothing.
I replied on this exact issue to an earlier comment about 5 minutes ago, but I think it's necessary to point it out again.
On CDMA phones (no idea with GSM ones, YMMV) you can set the Network options to force the phone to Home Only. This will completely prevent roaming. At least on GSM, the name of the network you're on comes up on the display so you have some obvious visual cue. On CDMA, only a small R icon in the corner will inform you about roaming, at least on all the phones I've had. I set my phone to Home Only for when I'm in or very near the Manitoba border so I stay on MTS. If you leave MTS' range, it looks like there's no signal, so you have to go and set it to back to Automatic.
My friend was able to use his Telus phone on Telus from Frostfire Ski Resort (Walhalla, ND) while we were up on the chair lift. Any further south and you're probably out of luck though. The towers near the border are designed on purpose to drop off rapidly as you go south into the US, either via lower power and/or directional antennae or whatever.
In the Network options (on CDMA phones, so YMMV on GSM) select Home Only and you will never roam. If you want to roam, go in the settings and turn it back to Automatic.
The problem is that it's required (or at least some libraries) for large a number of apps, such as Windows Update. If you make an nLite install and rip out IE, you get lots of errors or apps that don't work right. It even warns you. Hell, if you rip out Outlook Express, you can't even use Outlook for some reason.
Newer versions of Windows might be able to cope with this, via some new update mechanism à la synaptic package manager/apt-get/yum/ports/etc. As for the other programs that rely on an IE library to display some html or whatever in the program you would have to recode it to use something else. Not impossible, but a lot of existing software would stop working.
I'm not a Facebook user anymore, and frankly I couldn't care less about that awful waste of time.
I deleted my account almost a year ago. Not sure what its like now, but at that time you had to go through all your messages, wall posts that you posted and that others posted on your wall, pictures, etc, etc and delete everything MANUALLY. It took me a couple hours but it was worth it. Only after that would they "deactivate" my account. They NEVER used the word delete in regards to the account itself. You had to actually email them and request it to be deactivated. There was no easy "Delete my Account Permanently" button on their support page or anything. There was something like "Close my Account" that would only remove your account from being seen by others, but you could still log in and reactivate it, and all your old details, friends, wall posts, pictures, etc would still be there just like before. I wanted total annihilation and that involved them removing login permission from my account, effectively deleting it, but I bet it still exists in its entirety somewhere on some random backup tape.
Either way, the most people on Facebook ever do about anything is create a group about whatever it is they are "protesting" about and then forget about it. Nothing realistically will ever get done about this TOS crap. A few people might get all zealous about it, but then, OOOOH! Hold on! It's American Idol time! Right after it's over, they'll be right back online posting the latest gossip on their friends' walls like nothing happened. I mean, giving up your easy source of gossip and event reminders would be a terrible blow to your social life. Can't have that, can we?
The only way to TRULY protest would be to cancel your account like I did, never use it again, and encourage everyone you know to do the same. If, say, 10-20% of Facebook users did that (millions of people), we'd be having a much different conversation, but let's face it, a handful of people cancelling their accounts over the TOS change is not going to get Zuckerberg's attention at all. He couldn't care less. All this is, is just a bit of CYA because the media caught wind of it and blew it up, nothing more.
So, to use a car analogy, I guess something like speed enforcement would be a thing of the past with an amendment like that. They can't limit my "right" to operate my possession as I see fit, so I can happily drive however fast I want. I know car stuff is regulated by the individual states, but they have to abide by the Constitution too, don't they?
Oh and forget about radio licenses and the FCC, because if I want my wireless router to be plugged into a 50,000 watt transmitter, I'd be totally free to do so under my interpretation. Never mind that I'll drown out everyone's 2.4ghz stuff for a 40-50+ mile radius, I have the right.
I could go on and on, but I don't think it's necessary. I fully agree with the spirit of your proposed amendment, especially if it were in an international treaty or it was adopted by all countries. The fact of the matter is that the language you've chosen unfortunately leaves it open to FAR too much interpretation.
There are solderless adapters available for most chips that are still available for sale. The later motherboard versions are difficult to solder unless you're pretty good. On the other hand, the solderless kits are very simple to use.
Check them out at Divineo (.com,.ca,.co.uk).
FYI, softmodding is the process of loading a hacked savegame file which triggers a buffer overflow exploit, allowing you to execute your own code (in this case, a homebrew dashboard called Evolution X so you can run some utilities). AFAIK it's functionally equivalent to a mod chip, but I've never done it, nor do I know anyone who has. YMMV
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Not unlike here in Canada...
Work in the oil sands, make some money, finance a truck.. live the Alberta dream!
Well, it only seems logical to start there. I mean if the people of North Korea REALLY knew how they were living in comparison to the rest of the world, or even the other half of their little peninsula which many of us even envy because of their crazy fast and cheap broadband, they would be up in arms in no time.
The party members at the top of the ladder know what the "west" is like, and emulate the lifestyle themselves with lavish palaces, cars, food, women, entertainment, all at the expense of their starving, stunted, diseased people. They are so malnourished there that children are getting cataracts and only growing to 4 feet tall and can't walk. It's the Middle Ages all over again. You can send all the food aid and stuff you want, but for all I know it's just intercepted in port and stockpiled in Kim Jong-Il's basement. If they do hand stuff out, I'm sure they rebag it so Kim's face is on there not USAID, UN, or whatever.
I forget where I heard this, but in the school books, the world maps have been redrawn and NK's friendly countries are represented much larger than in real life, and their enemies, like the USA, are redrawn much smaller. I think they also greatly increased the size of NK as well to make the kids think that their country is the biggest on earth.
Sure sounds like they're keeping the outside influences to a minimum to me. Rewriting history and reshaping the earth's geography to suit their own twisted ends is just part of the process.
In January this year I was in Berlin and we went to the DDR Museum (i.e. East Germany) and I remember seeing a list of job titles and what each of those titles earned in pay. IIRC doctors and skilled professionals did not earn the same wages as unskilled labourers, farmers, construction workers. I think farmers earned something like 800 Marks a month and doctors, engineers and people like that got like 2300 Marks a month. That's only for East Germany though, maybe the USSR was different.
It's not like life was all fun and games either. They had to wear the absolute crappiest polyester clothes (the museum had some on display that you could touch... terrible stuff), deal with constant shortages of various things, walls designed to keep them IN, not out, the border area was full of mines, electric fences, dogs, soldiers, and on top of all that, they had the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, more commonly known as the Stasi (see the excellent film "The Lives of Others" / "Das Leben der Anderen")... and the list goes on.
I think the only way that communism can succeed is if the people in charge can manage to keep all outside influences from reaching their people. They also have to prevent dissenters from drumming up support against the regime by either imprisoning, killing or otherwise forcing them into silence (by threatening their family or something). All this while resisting international pressure to open up the country to democracy and to respect human rights conventions and stuff. I guess the nuclear deterrent would go a long way to help in that respect. An enormous standing army isn't a bad idea either. North Korea seems to be a doing all of these things, some very well.
My car (2002 Jetta TDI) and many newer vehicles have a drive by wire system. The accelerator connects to a potentiometer that has a low resistance at 0 throttle and goes towards infinity at WOT. I don't think they really could have done it any other way with a diesel engine with electronic fuel injection.
Putting something in between the throttle pot and the engine management system (on my car anyway) would be trivial. All it would have to do then is lower the resistance value until the speed matches the unit's desired speed. It would also have to be able to pass along the driver's input, but only any resistance value lower than or equal to the device's max value, and intercept any higher input and pass along lower value (device max) to the ECU instead.
That said, I don't agree with the mandated use of these kinds of devices. If someone wants one they can install one. I won't allow such garbage to grace the insides of my fine automobile.
This brings up another question about society. When will people take responsibility for their own actions? Why does the government have to come and hold your hand and babysit you? If you speed and you get caught then guess what.. IT'S YOUR FAULT, NOT ANYONE ELSE'S UNLESS SOMEONE JUMPED IN YOUR CAR WITH A GUN OR A KNIFE AND SAID SPEED AWAY FROM THE COPS OR I WILL KILL YOU (but then the cops wouldn't charge you for speeding or evasion or whatever). You are in the driver's seat, you are in control, not anyone else. It's up to you to decide how fast or slow the car goes, which direction it goes, whether it does so safely. If you want the government to have responsibility, hire someone representing the government to drive your ass around, otherwise shut up and take some responsibility for your own actions for once.
Or you get the situation like this: http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=49.800284,-96.887569&spn=0.004778,0.013947&t=h&z=17
The map makers (TeleAtlas in this case, who also supply the map data Google Maps uses in the above link) used inaccurate data or were lazy when they made this one because it's so far off that it thinks the north side service road is actually the westbound lane of the Trans Canada Highway. Every morning it puts me onto that side road on my GPS and it pisses me off. On the way home it also puts me onto there for a little strech but it's a lot more sane than my morning commute. I've submitted the error to TeleAtlas but I'm convinced that it'll take at least 6 months to be looked at.
Segways aren't legal to drive everywhere. As far as I know, bicycles are legal nearly everywhere (with some restrictions of course).
From my linked article:
City and provincial officials in Winnipeg say Segways do not meet Canadian motor vehicle standards for use on roadways. But because they are motorized, they are also not allowed on sidewalks, unless they are somehow deemed to be a "mobility vehicle" for a person needing mobility assistance.
My provider (MTS, in Manitoba, Canada) allows me to send/receive texts to/from email addresses. While they are limited to the size of regular texts, for billing purposes they also count as one. Just send a short email to [10DigitNumber]@text.mts.net. It's not a full email client or anything, but it's perfect for my needs and I use it all the time. The only downside is that MTS unfortunately doesn't split up texts that are too large. Incoming ones just get cut off, outgoing ones don't even get sent.
On the DSL side of things, they don't have authenticated SMTP either, but I believe they restrict access to their IP block. For everyone else there's webmail.
Have you tried disabling the QoS bandwidth reserve thing? IIRC, Windows reserves a portion of the network throughput for QoS stuff (something like 10-20%). I forget how to do it exactly... I think you have to go into the Group Policy Editor or something. Although I do know for a fact that if you use nLite to make an XP install you can remove it entirely.
Whoosh...
We have that here in Manitoba, it's called Manitoba Public Insurance, but everyone just calls it Autopac. If you want a passenger car, light truck, motorcycle, recreational vehicle (quad, snowmobile, dirtbike, etc) to be able to drive on or across public roadways, you need a plate and insurance. They're the only providers, through a province-wide network of participating private insurance brokers. I think Saskatchewan and BC have it too.
They are regulated by the Public Utilities Board and are sometimes forced to pay money back if they collected too much. This happened a couple times in the last few years. The rates are reasonable and the insurance rate isn't tied to your driving record, age, gender, marital status, annual income, number of offspring, etc. Instead, your driving record affects the annual cost of your driver's license... yes annual. It's so bloody stupid, but that's how it is. If you have an at fault accident, you get a one-time $200 surcharge when you renew your license. A second one in 3 years, you're given a $400 charge and so on, up to a max of $1,200. They give discounts for good driving too, up to a max of 25% off your car insurance and $5 for every merit point off the cost of your license, up to a max of $25. Accidents where you're not at fault naturally don't tack on a charge, nor do accidents with wildlife (deer, elk, moose, bears, rabbits, etc). For some reason farm animals or house pets are magically the driver's fault. Government safeties are also regulated (I think they're $45) but that leads to issues, because shops don't want to spend more than $45 worth of time looking at a car, and nowadays that's less than half an hour at most places.
They also implemented this dumb system called No Fault Insurance. That means you can't sue other drivers, no matter what. A couple years ago a drunk off-duty cop was driving home at like 7:30 am from an end of shift party at a colleague's house and rear ended a woman waiting at a light and killed her. The inquest finished up recently and the poor woman's family is now suing the police, the province, the prosecutor, everybody they can, except the cop who did it. They aren't legally able to. It's very sad because he deserves it. The reason they prevent you from suing, is that they will pay death and other benefits to the family or survivors of a wreck, supposedly equivalent to what you'd get by suing. So instead of tying up the courts, they pay you off. I still don't like it, but I guess the upside is that if you get smoked by a penniless drunk with nothing to his name, you still get something. Otherwise you're stuck trying to extract blood from a stone.
They aren't all evil though. Winnipeg being the car theft capital of Canada, they have a big list of cars every year that require an approved immobilizer, which to date hasn't been defeated by any thieves. Cars made after September 2007 have factory ones that are supposedly good enough. Also any car that is stolen requires an immobilizer, regardless of whether or not it's on the list. This proactive approach keeps our insurance costs down. They also have successfully sued chronic car thieves for damages to recuperate the costs of repairing the damage they caused. They also let you get your car fixed at the shop of your choice. They don't decide for you. They do have a blacklist though, but there's only 2 shops on there if I remember correctly.
But yeah, that's the reality of public insurance and government regulation. It's not all magic, ponies and rainbows but we do seem to have among to lowest rates in the country, and coverage is 100%, unless you're demonstrably under the influence, then it's VOID, as it should be. At least I don't have to add people's names to my car's insurance, they can just drive it, with my permission of course, 100% fully covered, as long as they have a valid driver's license from a long list of countries/jurisdictions (International Permit required for some places).
Skype In: You sign up and get to choose a number from a laundry list of countries. Some require that you're actually a resident and you have to prove it, but some, such as the UK (last I checked anyway) don't require you to be a resident. I had one for a while. It's not that much per year and works anywhere Skype does. I don't think it uses up any Skype minutes unless you forward it to a real phone.
Magic jack: Same deal as Skype In, but you plug in a regular phone to it and it just works, like magic! I think it's a very very cheap flat rate per year for calls to North America from anywhere in the world. International calls are fairly cheap too. My buddy has one and it sounds fine if he calls off it. AFAIK you can't get Canadian area codes yet though.
Vonage softphone client: Lots of people have this since it's the only way that I'm currently aware of to use Vonage with Asterisk.
There are all kinds of ways to do this...
Or you could get one of those toaster type eSATA things for $20-$40, and then you get full speed SATA with all the hotswapping benefits of USB!
That, of course, only works if you have an eSATA port.
You guys want to remove IE *COMPLETELY* from the system? Use nlite/vlite and rip it out before it's even installed. Problem solved. Good luck with Windows Updates or anything that needs IE libraries to display any content though (Windows Help CHM files for instance).
I think you need to look up the definition of democracy...
If you're too lazy to follow the link, here's the first two definitions:
1. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
2. a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.
What I think you meant to say was Australia is a constitutional monarchy and the USA is a republic. Canada (where I live) is also a constitutional monarchy. The former British colonies mostly all share a Westminster style parliament, and the same royal head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. The US gave up that privilege (if you want to call it that) in 1776.
Why would you be contesting it whilst driving? Why not from the sidewalk or while sitting in the car when it's parked?
You can't tell me that it's illegal to use a cell phone in a parked car. The meter maid can't sit there and issue a new ticket every 2 seconds if you don't move right away. There has to be some minimum period between consecutive tickets for the same offense, or at least a tow to the impound after so many hours/days.
Besides, why would Parkingticket.com take responsibility for your illegal behaviour? You were breaking the law, not them. Just because you were using their service doesn't make it their fault. To use a car analogy, that's like saying it's Volkswagen's fault that I ran a red because I drive a Jetta. I'll be sure to tell the cops to send the ticket to Martin Winterkorn over in Wolfsburg. I'm sure he'll gladly pay it.
I have to admit, the TTS voices on my TomTom Go 720 are pretty damn good. I have a UK TTS voice, Jane or Kate or something, selected and I can't really tell her from the non-TTS UK voice that I initially had. The only difference is the TTS ones will read out street names.
The only time it shows its true robotic colours is when gets them horribly, horribly wrong. We have lots of French street names around here and it struggles with a lot of them. Other than that it's pretty spot on.
As for the CDMA roaming, where I live, MTS is the only game in town. Sure, I could have a Telus phone, but outside of Winnipeg, they roam on MTS anyway, and it counts as the home network with no roaming symbol or extra charges, other than long distance if you're far enough away.
As for GSM phones, actually I think they do give some control. After having thought about it, I do actually remember being able to choose between networks in Europe with a piece of crap Nokia 3410.
I used to live in Germany quite close to the Luxembourg border. If I popped over the border to Wasserbillig, literally about 1km (across the Sauer or Mosel rivers) to buy gas, coffee or cigarettes, which were substantially cheaper, I'd sometimes pick up their towers, and incur higher charges if I used the phone. I could also pick them up on the German side too, which sucked if I wasn't paying much attention. I remember in the menu being able to view all the networks in a list and then choose which one I wanted to register with.
To be sure, I just checked on my unlocked Moto Razr V3. It only shows Rogers because that's all we've got for GSM in Canada, but if there were others, I could see them and choose which network to connect to. Not as permanent a solution as Home Only on CDMA, but better than nothing.
I replied on this exact issue to an earlier comment about 5 minutes ago, but I think it's necessary to point it out again.
On CDMA phones (no idea with GSM ones, YMMV) you can set the Network options to force the phone to Home Only. This will completely prevent roaming. At least on GSM, the name of the network you're on comes up on the display so you have some obvious visual cue. On CDMA, only a small R icon in the corner will inform you about roaming, at least on all the phones I've had. I set my phone to Home Only for when I'm in or very near the Manitoba border so I stay on MTS. If you leave MTS' range, it looks like there's no signal, so you have to go and set it to back to Automatic.
My friend was able to use his Telus phone on Telus from Frostfire Ski Resort (Walhalla, ND) while we were up on the chair lift. Any further south and you're probably out of luck though. The towers near the border are designed on purpose to drop off rapidly as you go south into the US, either via lower power and/or directional antennae or whatever.
In the Network options (on CDMA phones, so YMMV on GSM) select Home Only and you will never roam. If you want to roam, go in the settings and turn it back to Automatic.
Fairly easy solution to that issue.
The problem is that it's required (or at least some libraries) for large a number of apps, such as Windows Update. If you make an nLite install and rip out IE, you get lots of errors or apps that don't work right. It even warns you. Hell, if you rip out Outlook Express, you can't even use Outlook for some reason.
Newer versions of Windows might be able to cope with this, via some new update mechanism à la synaptic package manager/apt-get/yum/ports/etc. As for the other programs that rely on an IE library to display some html or whatever in the program you would have to recode it to use something else. Not impossible, but a lot of existing software would stop working.
I'm not a Facebook user anymore, and frankly I couldn't care less about that awful waste of time.
I deleted my account almost a year ago. Not sure what its like now, but at that time you had to go through all your messages, wall posts that you posted and that others posted on your wall, pictures, etc, etc and delete everything MANUALLY. It took me a couple hours but it was worth it. Only after that would they "deactivate" my account. They NEVER used the word delete in regards to the account itself. You had to actually email them and request it to be deactivated. There was no easy "Delete my Account Permanently" button on their support page or anything. There was something like "Close my Account" that would only remove your account from being seen by others, but you could still log in and reactivate it, and all your old details, friends, wall posts, pictures, etc would still be there just like before. I wanted total annihilation and that involved them removing login permission from my account, effectively deleting it, but I bet it still exists in its entirety somewhere on some random backup tape.
Either way, the most people on Facebook ever do about anything is create a group about whatever it is they are "protesting" about and then forget about it. Nothing realistically will ever get done about this TOS crap. A few people might get all zealous about it, but then, OOOOH! Hold on! It's American Idol time! Right after it's over, they'll be right back online posting the latest gossip on their friends' walls like nothing happened. I mean, giving up your easy source of gossip and event reminders would be a terrible blow to your social life. Can't have that, can we?
The only way to TRULY protest would be to cancel your account like I did, never use it again, and encourage everyone you know to do the same. If, say, 10-20% of Facebook users did that (millions of people), we'd be having a much different conversation, but let's face it, a handful of people cancelling their accounts over the TOS change is not going to get Zuckerberg's attention at all. He couldn't care less. All this is, is just a bit of CYA because the media caught wind of it and blew it up, nothing more.
This begs the question: Who would accept them?
So, to use a car analogy, I guess something like speed enforcement would be a thing of the past with an amendment like that. They can't limit my "right" to operate my possession as I see fit, so I can happily drive however fast I want. I know car stuff is regulated by the individual states, but they have to abide by the Constitution too, don't they?
Oh and forget about radio licenses and the FCC, because if I want my wireless router to be plugged into a 50,000 watt transmitter, I'd be totally free to do so under my interpretation. Never mind that I'll drown out everyone's 2.4ghz stuff for a 40-50+ mile radius, I have the right.
I could go on and on, but I don't think it's necessary. I fully agree with the spirit of your proposed amendment, especially if it were in an international treaty or it was adopted by all countries. The fact of the matter is that the language you've chosen unfortunately leaves it open to FAR too much interpretation.
There are solderless adapters available for most chips that are still available for sale. The later motherboard versions are difficult to solder unless you're pretty good. On the other hand, the solderless kits are very simple to use.
Check them out at Divineo (.com, .ca, .co.uk).
FYI, softmodding is the process of loading a hacked savegame file which triggers a buffer overflow exploit, allowing you to execute your own code (in this case, a homebrew dashboard called Evolution X so you can run some utilities). AFAIK it's functionally equivalent to a mod chip, but I've never done it, nor do I know anyone who has. YMMV
Millions of kids read their kids bed time stories
I, for one, welcome our new underage parent overlords.