In Britain, each party has a "party whip" - a person appointed to compell Parliamentarians to side with the party leader
The biggest problem I have with the Canadian system is that, once elected, a Member of Parliament is expected to vote on party lines, regardless of what their constituency wants.
Democracy, when you get right down to it, is a bad idea.
The Founding Fathers knew this, which is why they didn't make the US a democracy. You DO NOT want 'the mob' voting on anything of substance. You want 'the mob' to pick their chosen representatives, whom they trust will act in their best interests.
Democracy, after all, is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
The problem is the concept of the 'professional politician.' One who's more insterested in playing, and maintaining, the system, than in actually seeing to the needs of the people who elected him.
Abolish the concept of the Professional Politician, and I think you'll fix half of the problem right away. Absolute term limits on public office, period; if you've served four years as Governer of California, well, that's four of your eight years in office. Get elected president? Great; you've got four years. Then you're done. No senate, no congress, no house of reps, no county sheriff. Done.
One day, an elderly couple from America are vacationing in Germany. In a small antique shop, very dusty, the woman sneezes. "Gesundheit!" exclaims the shop-keeper. The wife turns to the husband, saying 'Thank goodness! We've finally found somebody who speaks English!"
Why was no thought given to liberating anybody before 9/11? You speak of overextending oneself; why, in the midst of trying to track down a world-wide terrorist organization, would you suddenly decide to 'liberate' Iraq?
Why not start out with something closer to home, such as, say, Cuba? Why not start out somewhere just as undemocratic, but where you already have a military presence, such as, say, Saudi Arabia?
Thank you, by the way, for your well-thought and well-reasoned reply; I'd expected naught but flames.
Well, if it's about 'liberty,' why haven't they 'liberated' any other oppressed countries? There's more than one out there, ya know.
If it's about bringing down Al-Queda, why haven't they invaded, oh, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, or any other countries which 'give aid and comfort' to terrorists, specifically Al-Queda?
A clean, well made, properly projected and calibrated 35mm film blows away any DVD.
Most movie theaters, however, don't show clean, well made, properly projected and calibrated 35mm films.
Considering that the time from theater to DVD is three to five months at this point, I waits and buys.
Re:The logistics of building the Death Star
on
Star Wars Minutiae
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· Score: 1
To the average citizen, it probably was.
At no point do we ever see, or have explained to us, exactly *why* the Empire is so evil. They only things we ever see them blow up are suspected Rebel bases, and planets who 'give aid and comfort' to the Rebels, and are therefore Rebel themselves.
"Excuse me, kids, I have to go to the bathroom really bad, all of the sudden. Bill, one of my Secret Service guys, will finish reading the book to you, and I'll be back in a few minutes."
Read David Brin's essays about Star Wars; the first several are on salon.com, the others are on davidbrin.com; he agrees with you about the moral teachings of Star Wars, and comes up with an interesting way to make all of the movies make sense.
I don't quite share your fanatical hatred of Windows; when used properly, it's quite capable of handling whatever you throw at it.
VMS and Solaris are proven, aye; I do, however, have fond memories of reading, fifteen years ago, the exact same things about Solaris that people now say about Windows; rampant holes, services with root access open to the Internet (lpr, rpc, sendmail, and so on), accusations of terrible bloat (xclock takes HOW MUCH RAM?) and slowness ('Slowaris' indeed) and so on.
It also never fails to amaze me that the zealots tout the security of an OS that can be defined as 'the results of taking a secure OS and ripping out most of the security functionality.' UNIX, after all, is a play on it's MULTICS parent, as it's a casterated version thereof.
Still, as far as I'm concerned, if you want reliability and no downtime, you use a mainframe. Period. We're talking about a system that you can rip running processors out of, and the damn thing won't even blink.
Or maybe they're reduced to making clones of the clones, as the original genetic material was lost, or the planet that the Cloners lived on was destroyed in the war, or whatever.
And as we all know, analog copying introduces generational errors.....
Slashdot Mirror
How can you forget Pimps at Sea? (You'll have to wait until next April to see the full site.)
Hi! I see that you're talking smack to that other clan! Would you like help to:
That's not outsourcing (at least, not as the word is generally used today) but is, instead, contracting.
Note the telling phrase:
Emphasis mine. Before she ran in that election, she had been a Republican, then an Independant.
The biggest problem I have with the Canadian system is that, once elected, a Member of Parliament is expected to vote on party lines, regardless of what their constituency wants.
Democracy, when you get right down to it, is a bad idea.
The Founding Fathers knew this, which is why they didn't make the US a democracy. You DO NOT want 'the mob' voting on anything of substance. You want 'the mob' to pick their chosen representatives, whom they trust will act in their best interests.
Democracy, after all, is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
The problem is the concept of the 'professional politician.' One who's more insterested in playing, and maintaining, the system, than in actually seeing to the needs of the people who elected him.
Abolish the concept of the Professional Politician, and I think you'll fix half of the problem right away. Absolute term limits on public office, period; if you've served four years as Governer of California, well, that's four of your eight years in office. Get elected president? Great; you've got four years. Then you're done. No senate, no congress, no house of reps, no county sheriff. Done.
One day, an elderly couple from America are vacationing in Germany. In a small antique shop, very dusty, the woman sneezes. "Gesundheit!" exclaims the shop-keeper. The wife turns to the husband, saying 'Thank goodness! We've finally found somebody who speaks English!"
"Here, have a tissue."
Why was no thought given to liberating anybody before 9/11? You speak of overextending oneself; why, in the midst of trying to track down a world-wide terrorist organization, would you suddenly decide to 'liberate' Iraq?
Why not start out with something closer to home, such as, say, Cuba? Why not start out somewhere just as undemocratic, but where you already have a military presence, such as, say, Saudi Arabia?
Thank you, by the way, for your well-thought and well-reasoned reply; I'd expected naught but flames.
Well, if it's about 'liberty,' why haven't they 'liberated' any other oppressed countries? There's more than one out there, ya know.
If it's about bringing down Al-Queda, why haven't they invaded, oh, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, or any other countries which 'give aid and comfort' to terrorists, specifically Al-Queda?
A clean, well made, properly projected and calibrated 35mm film blows away any DVD.
Most movie theaters, however, don't show clean, well made, properly projected and calibrated 35mm films.
Considering that the time from theater to DVD is three to five months at this point, I waits and buys.
To the average citizen, it probably was.
At no point do we ever see, or have explained to us, exactly *why* the Empire is so evil. They only things we ever see them blow up are suspected Rebel bases, and planets who 'give aid and comfort' to the Rebels, and are therefore Rebel themselves.
In a world...
Based on what I've seen, there's not only a size limit, there's a time limit.
First time I played Ninja Gaiden, it took a long time to load the first level; pre-caching all sorts of crap. After that, level loads are zip zip zip.
After not playing the game for several months, the first time I popped it back in...same dealie. Long load time on the first load, then zip zip zip.
Shit, I can't wait until I can get FTTUSI (Fibre To The U-Stor-It). :-)
"YOU ARE HERE."
"Excuse me, kids, I have to go to the bathroom really bad, all of the sudden. Bill, one of my Secret Service guys, will finish reading the book to you, and I'll be back in a few minutes."
Read David Brin's essays about Star Wars; the first several are on salon.com, the others are on davidbrin.com; he agrees with you about the moral teachings of Star Wars, and comes up with an interesting way to make all of the movies make sense.
I don't quite share your fanatical hatred of Windows; when used properly, it's quite capable of handling whatever you throw at it.
VMS and Solaris are proven, aye; I do, however, have fond memories of reading, fifteen years ago, the exact same things about Solaris that people now say about Windows; rampant holes, services with root access open to the Internet (lpr, rpc, sendmail, and so on), accusations of terrible bloat (xclock takes HOW MUCH RAM?) and slowness ('Slowaris' indeed) and so on.
It also never fails to amaze me that the zealots tout the security of an OS that can be defined as 'the results of taking a secure OS and ripping out most of the security functionality.' UNIX, after all, is a play on it's MULTICS parent, as it's a casterated version thereof.
Still, as far as I'm concerned, if you want reliability and no downtime, you use a mainframe. Period. We're talking about a system that you can rip running processors out of, and the damn thing won't even blink.
Nonsense. That would be like saying 'warning: you're taking a step, and might trip.'
Typing naught but 'GetTickCount()' into Google lands me right onto the MSDN page and clearly says:
and goes on to suggest alternative timing capabilities.
This was a major fuckup by the application programmers, incorrectly using a clearly defined API call.
And when the APPLICATION has a bug requiring it to be restarted every X days, how would running VMS have changed ANYTHING?
Or, like any other gov't bureaucracy, they sold the contract to the lowest bidder.
Man, I feel old, I used to throw around a Qlink disk....
It was perfectly clear; Enzo was partially deaf, bleeding profusely, but survived. Raven hopped away, jacked a Deliverator car, and escaped.
Or maybe they're reduced to making clones of the clones, as the original genetic material was lost, or the planet that the Cloners lived on was destroyed in the war, or whatever.
And as we all know, analog copying introduces generational errors.....