While I agree that the Electoral college is a farce that spits in the face of democracy, other posters are correct that the Iowa method doesn't fairly represent either.
I think that the states that have amended their constitutions to divide their electoral votes to the same percentage as that state's popular vote have the best solution.
SO if 30% of people vote for candidate A and 70% for candidate B and the state has 10 electoral votes, then 3 would go to candidate A and 7 to B.
Seems right to me.
Anyway, it beats the Katherine Harris method of giving the votes to whomever you damn well please (ie where ever the biggest bribe came from)
I have a ThinkPad with a mat screen and an Acer with a glossy screen. The fact that I have both is the reason I felt qualified to comment in the first place. Being in IT, I regularly see and use both types of screen. I HATE the glossy screen and so does my wife for that matter.
The glare is terrible in many lighting conditions and when I used it at work I found it gave me eyestrain and headaches. The ThinkPad screen however is a joy to use in nearly every lighting condition. However, no LCD's look great outdoors under bright sunlight. Glossy's glare horribly and mat screens get washed out.
While we're on the subject, I've found the same problem with TV's. Some are putting the glossy screens on them to a) help bring up a cheap LCD panel with a poor contrast ratio b) because outh breathing idiots like the look of them in the store.
Next time you are in an electronics store that has a home theatre section, notice that 9 times out of 10, it's dimly lighted, and usually only by indirect lighting. They know that these shiny, glossy screens are crap in normal lighting conditions.
USB webcams are pretty cheap these days. Why not use two, one on each side of the monitor?
In fact I've seen web cam kits with 2 in the package.
The would let you have true parallax, AND would have the benefit of making it appear that you are looking at the viewer.
Solves the two main problems I see being discussed here for an extra $29.95 or so.
Plus, it would make cool things like 3D position tracking possible (think Minority Report).
I'd let them sue, then in front of the judge, offer to have the researchers repeat their findings while hooked to the Namesys machine.
Namesys can't complain since it would be admitting their machine is crap, and they can't dispute the results either.
While this is pretty neat, I'm not sure it 'enhances interpersonal communication' since everyone using it will be bobbing back and forth like a Stevie Wonder impersonator convention.
Not to mention some schmuck in the US will soon sue because it made them puke from motion sickness.
What does the Optimus keyboard have to do with screens you can't see? You argument is specious.
I never said anything about aesthetic quality being the only thing that matters. Neither did the commenter I was replying to. In fact it wasn't mentioned at all.
The point was that worse than choosing form over function, designers these days are making stupid choices that they don't have to make.
It costs no more to put a mat screen on an LCD than a gloss one. There's no real compromise to form over function by using a mat screen. It's just pure stupidity. The only people that would find a gloss screen better in every day use would be people that only work in the dark where the lack of lights reduces the maddening glare that plagues gloss screens under any kind of lighting conditions. Once CSI buys a few, that's about the whole market flooded.
This is about like Apple stupidly putting only one button on the Mac mouse for years so that they could claim a nonsense advantage in simplicity for marketing purposes. The reality was that MacOS ended up being more complicated to use given you had to make up for the lack of buttons by chording the mouse button with various key combinations. It was a similarly stupid design decision based on a marketing assumption that was false in the first place.
The real problem is that stupid consumers fall for this nonsense which causes it to work as a marketing ploy. Instead of shopping like crows and buying the screens that are shiny and pretty. Buy the ones you can actually see what's on them.
God forbid someone rock the establishment boat for something as trivial as the possible destruction of the Universe. I mean hell, what are these people thinking.
To think they put their own selfish self preservation above the unimaginable importance of the discovery of a new muon or something.
Cause I know when I'm approaching the event horizon, being able to identify the types of matter my body is being deconstructed into will be of great importance to me.
All this sounds like to me is that enough governments finally agreed on a standard that they want the HD manufacturers to use. I would say this is about the point where the tech industry is getting into bed with government like the telecom industry did back in it's day.
Trusted computing platform. Built in, black box hard drive encryption. And with the recent 'bogus Chinese Cisco routers that might have enemy sniffing capabilities' scare I'm sure routers and other core Internet architecture are in the process too.
In my mind this is the real reason to push open source. For protection from a police state as much as protection of free choice.
It gives good reason why things like Asterisk, Vayatta, Linux/BSD, etc. are important and why we need them to have significant market share in core communications areas to insure initiatives like those I mentioned don't become defacto standards.
IMO anyway....
Ah...I'd wondered about them. Like ADP, they don't exactly scream out their platform specs in their brochures. They basically sell black boxes that perform functions, heh they even put ADP stickers over the IBM stickers on their server hardware. The underlying magic smoke is irrelevant to them and to most of their customer base. I think this was the point of the original comment too. That there are a lot of 'black boxes' out there that companies depend on every day and that no one really knows (or cares) that they run Linux as long as they work.
Even if his examples are missing or bad ones, he's still right. There's a LOT of Linux out there that people use or are affected by every day but never know it.
Just one example I'm aware of is ADP (www.adp.com).
Most of their core application servers run Linux.
And they are everywhere, but you'd never know it even if you used those systems every day.
They provide Payroll, HR, Benefits management etc. systems that are accessed with a Windows Based PC client. The users might never know about the servers being Linux based.
They also sell dealer management systems (the backend for car dealers) to a vast portion of the auto dealer market. Again, users might not know this, even though they use it every day.
Though in this case this is probably a good thing since the client side of the application is not exactly 5 star.
However, it still remains that they have millions of users working on Linux server based applications every day without the users ever even knowing it.
I'm sure there are a lot of other such examples, but there's no one spending millions to put ads bragging about it like Microsoft does every time they win a contract somewhere.
Anyway, my point is that I agree with Klootzak that there are probably a huge number of Linux based systems out there in real business use that the general public and even the basic IT community are not generally aware of.
Finally, I for one am thrilled to have an alternative to Windows Server and AD for our corporate network. Not for Linux fanboy reasons, but because I have to manage and budget whatever solution we use and my experience is that Windows causes me more work and more expense, where once you get a Linux solution configured and running, you can generally ignore it from then on as it continues to just work without magically breaking itself every few weeks/months/days.
Linux solutions generally mean less of my time spent working late nights troubleshooting things and more time home with my family. And THAT is something I place real value on.
As for the ease of use argument, I'd rather spend a day setting up a Linux solution than 2 hours setting up a Windows one because I know I'll more than get that time back in the future.
Why don't we just have a running headline banner that says something like...
{someone} discovered a serious security flaw in Microsoft's {product} and {offered to sell a solution|berated Microsoft}. They say the flaw should be {ignored|taken seriously} and that if it wasn't that there was a strong possibility of {not much|major|catastrophic|universe collapsing} repercussions.
{Mac|Linux} users were reported to gloat and tell everyone they were idiots for not switching to {Mac|Linux}. BSD users were running around naked, covered in crayon scribbling, and jabbering "definitely time for BSD, definitely....or Wopner"
Microsoft responded today by {downplaying|ignoring|finally patching after months but breaking something else with the patch} the threat.
If you actually believe this nonsense about "potential for search & rescue applications" you are delusional.
The U.S. was founded on the idea that government can never be trusted, ever. And that it always needs to be kept in check. And yet somehow this doesn't scare the crap out of people. What happened to those Americans that knew Government couldn't be trusted?
I wonder if the robots in the "Constitution Free Zone" (google it) will have a weapons free status.
Try gmail with POP3 enabled, then use Thunderbird as a client. Turn on TB's SPAM filter and choose the delete option to delete the SPAM vs. sending it to the junk folder.
Then make a few of your own keyword filters. I usually start with Carlin's 7 words and variations.
You can even put this on a USB stick with portable apps, and include FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't help thinking that this story is related.
"Microsoft Windows is now powering the British Royal Navy's nuclear-armed submarine fleet; giving all new meaning to the Blue Screen of Death."...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Submarines-Windows-Royal-Navy,6718.html
"Microsoft...bringing whole new meaning to the terms 'crashing your computer' and 'blue screen of death' "
While I agree that the Electoral college is a farce that spits in the face of democracy, other posters are correct that the Iowa method doesn't fairly represent either.
I think that the states that have amended their constitutions to divide their electoral votes to the same percentage as that state's popular vote have the best solution.
SO if 30% of people vote for candidate A and 70% for candidate B and the state has 10 electoral votes, then 3 would go to candidate A and 7 to B.
Seems right to me.
Anyway, it beats the Katherine Harris method of giving the votes to whomever you damn well please (ie where ever the biggest bribe came from)
I have a ThinkPad with a mat screen and an Acer with a glossy screen. The fact that I have both is the reason I felt qualified to comment in the first place. Being in IT, I regularly see and use both types of screen. I HATE the glossy screen and so does my wife for that matter.
The glare is terrible in many lighting conditions and when I used it at work I found it gave me eyestrain and headaches. The ThinkPad screen however is a joy to use in nearly every lighting condition. However, no LCD's look great outdoors under bright sunlight. Glossy's glare horribly and mat screens get washed out.
While we're on the subject, I've found the same problem with TV's. Some are putting the glossy screens on them to a) help bring up a cheap LCD panel with a poor contrast ratio b) because outh breathing idiots like the look of them in the store.
Next time you are in an electronics store that has a home theatre section, notice that 9 times out of 10, it's dimly lighted, and usually only by indirect lighting. They know that these shiny, glossy screens are crap in normal lighting conditions.
Not me, no way.
ThinkPad W700 dual booting XP and Linux.
USB webcams are pretty cheap these days. Why not use two, one on each side of the monitor?
In fact I've seen web cam kits with 2 in the package.
The would let you have true parallax, AND would have the benefit of making it appear that you are looking at the viewer.
Solves the two main problems I see being discussed here for an extra $29.95 or so.
Plus, it would make cool things like 3D position tracking possible (think Minority Report).
I think that's just your second head telling you lies.
I'd let them sue, then in front of the judge, offer to have the researchers repeat their findings while hooked to the Namesys machine.
Namesys can't complain since it would be admitting their machine is crap, and they can't dispute the results either.
While this is pretty neat, I'm not sure it 'enhances interpersonal communication' since everyone using it will be bobbing back and forth like a Stevie Wonder impersonator convention.
Not to mention some schmuck in the US will soon sue because it made them puke from motion sickness.
.
What, like Ohio?
Bahahaha!
I'm glad I wasn't drinking milk when I read this.
What does the Optimus keyboard have to do with screens you can't see? You argument is specious.
I never said anything about aesthetic quality being the only thing that matters. Neither did the commenter I was replying to. In fact it wasn't mentioned at all.
The point was that worse than choosing form over function, designers these days are making stupid choices that they don't have to make.
It costs no more to put a mat screen on an LCD than a gloss one. There's no real compromise to form over function by using a mat screen. It's just pure stupidity. The only people that would find a gloss screen better in every day use would be people that only work in the dark where the lack of lights reduces the maddening glare that plagues gloss screens under any kind of lighting conditions. Once CSI buys a few, that's about the whole market flooded.
This is about like Apple stupidly putting only one button on the Mac mouse for years so that they could claim a nonsense advantage in simplicity for marketing purposes. The reality was that MacOS ended up being more complicated to use given you had to make up for the lack of buttons by chording the mouse button with various key combinations. It was a similarly stupid design decision based on a marketing assumption that was false in the first place.
The real problem is that stupid consumers fall for this nonsense which causes it to work as a marketing ploy. Instead of shopping like crows and buying the screens that are shiny and pretty. Buy the ones you can actually see what's on them.
God forbid someone rock the establishment boat for something as trivial as the possible destruction of the Universe. I mean hell, what are these people thinking.
To think they put their own selfish self preservation above the unimaginable importance of the discovery of a new muon or something.
Cause I know when I'm approaching the event horizon, being able to identify the types of matter my body is being deconstructed into will be of great importance to me.
And don't they know speed kills?
I agree completely. Who ever is responsible for this should be smacked like a bad bad donkey ok.
I have to wonder if these Andy Warhols of industrial design ever have to actually use their crap out in the real world. Or even in daylight?
All this sounds like to me is that enough governments finally agreed on a standard that they want the HD manufacturers to use. I would say this is about the point where the tech industry is getting into bed with government like the telecom industry did back in it's day.
Trusted computing platform. Built in, black box hard drive encryption. And with the recent 'bogus Chinese Cisco routers that might have enemy sniffing capabilities' scare I'm sure routers and other core Internet architecture are in the process too.
In my mind this is the real reason to push open source. For protection from a police state as much as protection of free choice.
It gives good reason why things like Asterisk, Vayatta, Linux/BSD, etc. are important and why we need them to have significant market share in core communications areas to insure initiatives like those I mentioned don't become defacto standards.
IMO anyway....
Yeah, SMART is quite ironically named given it isn't.
Ah...I'd wondered about them.
Like ADP, they don't exactly scream out their platform specs in their brochures. They basically sell black boxes that perform functions, heh they even put ADP stickers over the IBM stickers on their server hardware. The underlying magic smoke is irrelevant to them and to most of their customer base. I think this was the point of the original comment too. That there are a lot of 'black boxes' out there that companies depend on every day and that no one really knows (or cares) that they run Linux as long as they work.
Even if his examples are missing or bad ones, he's still right. There's a LOT of Linux out there that people use or are affected by every day but never know it.
Just one example I'm aware of is ADP (www.adp.com).
Most of their core application servers run Linux. And they are everywhere, but you'd never know it even if you used those systems every day. They provide Payroll, HR, Benefits management etc. systems that are accessed with a Windows Based PC client. The users might never know about the servers being Linux based. They also sell dealer management systems (the backend for car dealers) to a vast portion of the auto dealer market. Again, users might not know this, even though they use it every day. Though in this case this is probably a good thing since the client side of the application is not exactly 5 star. However, it still remains that they have millions of users working on Linux server based applications every day without the users ever even knowing it.
I'm sure there are a lot of other such examples, but there's no one spending millions to put ads bragging about it like Microsoft does every time they win a contract somewhere.
Anyway, my point is that I agree with Klootzak that there are probably a huge number of Linux based systems out there in real business use that the general public and even the basic IT community are not generally aware of.
Finally, I for one am thrilled to have an alternative to Windows Server and AD for our corporate network. Not for Linux fanboy reasons, but because I have to manage and budget whatever solution we use and my experience is that Windows causes me more work and more expense, where once you get a Linux solution configured and running, you can generally ignore it from then on as it continues to just work without magically breaking itself every few weeks/months/days.
Linux solutions generally mean less of my time spent working late nights troubleshooting things and more time home with my family. And THAT is something I place real value on.
As for the ease of use argument, I'd rather spend a day setting up a Linux solution than 2 hours setting up a Windows one because I know I'll more than get that time back in the future.
It would give Bush and Cheney someone to golf with during retirement, and give America a better third party option to vote for next election.
Why don't we just have a running headline banner that says something like...
{someone} discovered a serious security flaw in Microsoft's {product} and {offered to sell a solution|berated Microsoft}. They say the flaw should be {ignored|taken seriously} and that if it wasn't that there was a strong possibility of {not much|major|catastrophic|universe collapsing} repercussions.
{Mac|Linux} users were reported to gloat and tell everyone they were idiots for not switching to {Mac|Linux}. BSD users were running around naked, covered in crayon scribbling, and jabbering "definitely time for BSD, definitely....or Wopner"
Microsoft responded today by {downplaying|ignoring|finally patching after months but breaking something else with the patch} the threat.
Am I the only one that thinks this is actually the background FX track from nearly every 40's-50's low budget scifi movie?
Seriously, the two sample star sounds are a lot like the intro to Forbidden Planet.
They all run Linux and Macs at BGC3.
;')
Bill sits down to his new Linux/KDE4 desktop PC and thinks.."Free at last, free at last....."
If you actually believe this nonsense about "potential for search & rescue applications" you are delusional.
The U.S. was founded on the idea that government can never be trusted, ever. And that it always needs to be kept in check. And yet somehow this doesn't scare the crap out of people. What happened to those Americans that knew Government couldn't be trusted?
I wonder if the robots in the "Constitution Free Zone" (google it) will have a weapons free status.
Apparently Britain and the U.S. fought and defeated the Nazi's, and Soviet Communism out of jealousy. They wanted to be the top fascists on the block.
No wonder the US still hates Cuba. Pure envy and jealousy.
Like their fascist idols, the stormtroopers of this regime steal from their citizens too.
If the TSA or DHS ever offers you a shower, politely decline....
Try gmail with POP3 enabled, then use Thunderbird as a client. Turn on TB's SPAM filter and choose the delete option to delete the SPAM vs. sending it to the junk folder.
Then make a few of your own keyword filters. I usually start with Carlin's 7 words and variations.
You can even put this on a USB stick with portable apps, and include FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.