Well as someone who lives in the midwest, if it were just a straight-up popular vote, then we'd never hear hide-nor-hair of the president because he/she would just pander directly to california and the boston-ny-dc areas.
Why do you need to "hear" from the president directly? You have an internet connection, you have access to TV and newspapers. I have personally NEVER seen a president or presidential nominee in person... no harm done.
I think the problem with lobbists aren't lobbists in general, but corporate lobbists
Why should there be ANY lobbyists? People that know their way around the political landscape, with the ear of the politicians? Most people don't have this kind of influence over politicians, so why should these select few get it?
If the selling of votes isn't already illegal, it should be. It could cause so much corruption, and it goes against everything we hold democratic
C'mon, man... that's just your gut reaction. Think it through -- the political system is already completely corrupt with soft money and lobbyists. Do you think it really matters right now who gets elected?
Maybe this will force an overhaul of elections in the United States!
How ridiculous is it that we still use electoral votes? My representatives no longer need to ride a horse and buggy to Washington, D.C. to cast their vote!
Let's cut out the middle men, use the internet, and most importantly -- count every vote directly. A popular vote, without party and state lines, is the only fair way to elect a president. (Otherwise the third parties are never going to have a chance.)
Hey, while I'm overhauling politics, let's kick out the legalized bribes (lobbyists), too!
Why are Linux articles posted under "News"? Just curious, since I don't consider Michael Dell bending over for a proper Linux-porking to be News, just Linux-related.
And anyway, I just see no reason to NOT to use Linux as a desktop OS. Could you mention just ONE feature that shows that it should not be used for that?
Ummm, it's hard as f**k to install, configure, and maintain when compared to Windows and especially, BeOS.
And as an aside, why the flying fucking sweet mother of jeezus h. christ would anyone want to install over the net, DSL or no DSL, when the sane thing to do is just download a complete installer and then work from there? that's a very disturbing trend I've been bothered by. For the love of God, you should always download a whole installation program, and store it for possible future use. Why would anyone want to risk getting disconnected during install, or getting a slow connection to the server during install, or having to download the whole thing over again later for a re-install?
Why would I want to store vast quantities of software installation programs that I will likely never use again, when I can just as easily download the latest version in a few minutes (or seconds) over my DSL?
I have much better things I can do with local storage... like ripping my entire CD collection to MP3.
It's just not economical to purchase more power than you need at the current prices, because by the time you get around to needing that extra power, you could've bought it at a lower price-per-unit rate.
Do you understand that there are people out there that don't want to upgrade every 6 months, and that these people outnumber those of us that do?
For a slightly broader market, analysts were saying a few months back that NT users upgrading to W2K should upgrade by 300 MHz at the same time if they want to keep their current performance level, so that will put a number of people up in the ballpark of 1GHz.
Luckily the analysts don't know shit. Using the same speed processor, my upgrade from NT to Win2K offered no noticeable speed differences. Of course, I turned off the stupid fading menus and shadow mouse cursor BS.
But for most people, I share your doubts about the need, at least until the next generation of bloatware makes 1GHz absolutely essential.
Huh? Let's see... the following people or groups of people need all the speed they can get:
Then there are the other obvious things that go into the "need" for speed. First of all, it drops the price of lower-clock hardware. Second of all, many people are buying a computer for the first time -- and will buy the fastest chip they can afford, so it lasts longer. Not everyone is upgrading!
context menus were invented because an unnamed operating system (well, windows if you must know) designed a UI that would give you a theoretically unlimited number of menu bars. Gee, which Edit menu do I want? This one? This one? hm. The contextual menu is a hack to make up for lack of planning at msft.
Apparantly, you haven't used too many contextual menus. Note the word contextual. That means the menu changes, depending on where you are clicking. If you are right clicking on an image in a web browser, you should only get access to functions that make sense for that image (and you do). You don't get an entire menu of useless functions.
How exactly does this have anything to do with "a lack of planning at msft."
If they aren't going to realse a BROWSER anytime in the near future(and looking at their rodemap, they aren't) We need to rally behind a project(like Konquror, or Nautalis*) and just forget about Mozilla and leave it rot.
Wow, you're going to RALLY behind another browser! Don't do too much "for the cause," you might give yourself a hernia.
What exactly does it mean to rally behind a project, anyway? Does it mean you start bitching about the other open source projects you have not contributed anything towards?
"I was under the impression that most wavelet compression algorithms are patented."
That's like saying, "I was under the impression that most lossy compression algorithms are patented." Just because their are patented algorithms based on wavelet compression, does not mean all algorithms that use wavelet compression techniques are patented.
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
isn't is kinda bogus to compare this to MPEG4, since MPEGs are 2D and this is for compressing 3D images?
The article states "their technique for geometry compression is 12 times more efficient than the method standardized in MPEG4."
The critical sentence is: "THE method standardized in MPEG4." Therefore, I take it to mean a method for geometry compression was standardized in MPEG4. You do realize MPEG4 covers more than just 2D video, right?
his point was that the original post is almost so absurd, and yet not TOO absurd. So most people won't think it's a troll, and would respond normally... there's a mix.
"I'm sick of people using the name of "progress" to try to justify dictating what you can and can't do."
Huh?
"Did we really need a GUI for DOS?"
Can you still use DOS without a GUI? Sure... who is stopping you?
"Did we really need high-speed Internet access?"
Uhhh yeah, but if you don't want it, you're perfectly capable of surfing at 28.8. I wasn't aware that modems were being taken away from people.
"No, and we don't need handwriting recognition either. "
Just because they make it doesn't mean you have to use it. So your argument is, don't make technological advancements if 100% of the population can't or won't use them?
You just KNOW there's gonna be a perl script that will convert your old perl scripts into your new perl scripts. The only question is... will it be a one-liner?
Slashdot Mirror
Well as someone who lives in the midwest, if it were just a straight-up popular vote, then we'd never hear hide-nor-hair of the president because he/she would just pander directly to california and the boston-ny-dc areas.
Why do you need to "hear" from the president directly? You have an internet connection, you have access to TV and newspapers. I have personally NEVER seen a president or presidential nominee in person... no harm done.
I think the problem with lobbists aren't lobbists in general, but corporate lobbists
Why should there be ANY lobbyists? People that know their way around the political landscape, with the ear of the politicians? Most people don't have this kind of influence over politicians, so why should these select few get it?
-thomas
"It gives political power to small states "
Why is this a benefit? I want the power to belong to the people, not the states.
"increases the probability that some candidate will have a majority of votes. "
Ummm, no, actually there is a greater mathematical chance for a tie with the electoral system than with a popular vote.
-thomas
Well if you read the goddamn article, you'd see that George Washington bought votes with alcohol at one stage of his career...
If the selling of votes isn't already illegal, it should be. It could cause so much corruption, and it goes against everything we hold democratic
C'mon, man... that's just your gut reaction. Think it through -- the political system is already completely corrupt with soft money and lobbyists. Do you think it really matters right now who gets elected?
Maybe this will force an overhaul of elections in the United States!
How ridiculous is it that we still use electoral votes? My representatives no longer need to ride a horse and buggy to Washington, D.C. to cast their vote!
Let's cut out the middle men, use the internet, and most importantly -- count every vote directly. A popular vote, without party and state lines, is the only fair way to elect a president. (Otherwise the third parties are never going to have a chance.)
Hey, while I'm overhauling politics, let's kick out the legalized bribes (lobbyists), too!
-thomas
Why are Linux articles posted under "News"? Just curious, since I don't consider Michael Dell bending over for a proper Linux-porking to be News, just Linux-related.
And anyway, I just see no reason to NOT to use Linux as a desktop OS. Could you mention just ONE feature that shows that it should not be used for that?
Ummm, it's hard as f**k to install, configure, and maintain when compared to Windows and especially, BeOS.
How's that?
Don't know if you noticed, but "yahoo.cnet.com" is actually CNET News.com, not Yahoo.
Uhhhhh.
-thomas
And as an aside, why the flying fucking sweet mother of jeezus h. christ would anyone want to install over the net, DSL or no DSL, when the sane thing to do is just download a complete installer and then work from there? that's a very disturbing trend I've been bothered by. For the love of God, you should always download a whole installation program, and store it for possible future use. Why would anyone want to risk getting disconnected during install, or getting a slow connection to the server during install, or having to download the whole thing over again later for a re-install?
Why would I want to store vast quantities of software installation programs that I will likely never use again, when I can just as easily download the latest version in a few minutes (or seconds) over my DSL?
I have much better things I can do with local storage... like ripping my entire CD collection to MP3.
-thomas
It's just not economical to purchase more power than you need at the current prices, because by the time you get around to needing that extra power, you could've bought it at a lower price-per-unit rate.
Do you understand that there are people out there that don't want to upgrade every 6 months, and that these people outnumber those of us that do?
-thomas
For a slightly broader market, analysts were saying a few months back that NT users upgrading to W2K should upgrade by 300 MHz at the same time if they want to keep their current performance level, so that will put a number of people up in the ballpark of 1GHz.
Luckily the analysts don't know shit. Using the same speed processor, my upgrade from NT to Win2K offered no noticeable speed differences. Of course, I turned off the stupid fading menus and shadow mouse cursor BS.
But for most people, I share your doubts about the need, at least until the next generation of bloatware makes 1GHz absolutely essential.
Huh? Let's see... the following people or groups of people need all the speed they can get:
- Programmers (compiling speed)
- Scientists
- Gamers
- Sysadmins running servers (web, file, email, etc)
Then there are the other obvious things that go into the "need" for speed. First of all, it drops the price of lower-clock hardware. Second of all, many people are buying a computer for the first time -- and will buy the fastest chip they can afford, so it lasts longer. Not everyone is upgrading!
-thomas
context menus were invented because an unnamed operating system (well, windows if you must know) designed a UI that would give you a theoretically unlimited number of menu bars. Gee, which Edit menu do I want? This one? This one? hm. The contextual menu is a hack to make up for lack of planning at msft.
Apparantly, you haven't used too many contextual menus. Note the word contextual. That means the menu changes, depending on where you are clicking. If you are right clicking on an image in a web browser, you should only get access to functions that make sense for that image (and you do). You don't get an entire menu of useless functions.
How exactly does this have anything to do with "a lack of planning at msft."
If they aren't going to realse a BROWSER anytime in the near future(and looking at their rodemap, they aren't) We need to rally behind a project(like Konquror, or Nautalis*) and just forget about Mozilla and leave it rot.
Wow, you're going to RALLY behind another browser! Don't do too much "for the cause," you might give yourself a hernia.
What exactly does it mean to rally behind a project, anyway? Does it mean you start bitching about the other open source projects you have not contributed anything towards?
Oh, I guess it does since you already started!
-thomas
As well as Quake 3 demo:
0
I'm sorry... I just ran the Quake 3 demo through my Perl interpreter, and it's telling me it doesn't exist. What next?
-thomas
"I was under the impression that most wavelet compression algorithms are patented."
That's like saying, "I was under the impression that most lossy compression algorithms are patented." Just because their are patented algorithms based on wavelet compression, does not mean all algorithms that use wavelet compression techniques are patented.
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
-thomas
isn't is kinda bogus to compare this to MPEG4, since MPEGs are 2D and this is for compressing 3D images?
The article states "their technique for geometry compression is 12 times more efficient than the method standardized in MPEG4."
The critical sentence is: "THE method standardized in MPEG4." Therefore, I take it to mean a method for geometry compression was standardized in MPEG4. You do realize MPEG4 covers more than just 2D video, right?
-thomas
his point was that the original post is almost so absurd, and yet not TOO absurd. So most people won't think it's a troll, and would respond normally... there's a mix.
"I spend most of my time with one hand on my mouse and the other with my chin on it. "
I don't understand. Are you saying you spend most of the time with your hand on the mouse, and the rest of the time with your chin on it?
Does that work better?
-thomas
"I'm sick of people using the name of "progress" to try to justify dictating what you can and can't do."
Huh?
"Did we really need a GUI for DOS?"
Can you still use DOS without a GUI? Sure... who is stopping you?
"Did we really need high-speed Internet access?"
Uhhh yeah, but if you don't want it, you're perfectly capable of surfing at 28.8. I wasn't aware that modems were being taken away from people.
"No, and we don't need handwriting recognition either. "
Just because they make it doesn't mean you have to use it. So your argument is, don't make technological advancements if 100% of the population can't or won't use them?
Yeehaw!!!
-thomas
"They'll have to implement something where any song with a particular word in the title is rejected. And the RIAA gets to choose which words."
The?
"my music budget has more than tripled (according to quicken) since napster came out. "
Yeah, but did it triple DUE to Napster coming out? =)
I guess not.
"No... The question is, which version of perl will it run in."
Why would you need it to run in anything but Perl 6?
You just KNOW there's gonna be a perl script that will convert your old perl scripts into your new perl scripts. The only question is... will it be a one-liner?
-thomas