In Canada, we have standardized ballots and standard sizes for seats (or counties as they seem to be called in the US) of about a hundred thousand people. Counting the votes is also standardized. The party that has the majority of seats wins, but in a situation where an election is really close, which may be happening in the upcoming one in december, the winner gets a minorty government with reduced powers and a real risk of being voted back out mid-term!
Its still electoral collage, but it seems to work quite well in spite of that. The only thing is that you dont vote a new prime-minister (aka presedent) into office, you vote the party into power and then that party's leader takes the position, who then appoints various other offices.
I find it odd that the US allows things to be done differently in different states, and even counties! standardization at least lets everyone know what to expect. and there really is no 'battleground seats' since their all the same size population-wise. But it does give more power to highly populated provinces, like for instance Quebec and Ottawa. together they are almost 40% of the country! (perhaps more?)
This gives Quebec, who wants to seperate, more power and opens up the possibility of it happening.
There has been some massive changes here in our former two-party system as well. The Conservative party got destroyed in the last election, getting only 2 seats. They where the then reining government too! They collapsed, and the Liberal party took the county with the Reform Party supported mostly by western canada close behind. Since then, the Reform and Conservative party merged to form the Alliance Party, and the NDP party has powered up quite a bit to fill the void the Reform Party left behind. We're actually fairly close to being a 3 party country. (even though NDP doesnt stand a chance)
The elections coming up might be interesting, thats for sure, apparently there is a party that wants solely to get Maraijuanna legalized. I forget what they are called though. They acctually have high support for such a small topic-focused party.
...but 60% of total bandwidth available to the ISP called Telstra. Their backup line was flooded and 1 in 3 requests where lost.
"Other ISPs and networks such as Optus were uncongested."
It is very intresting that this same line connects so many distant contries (Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Germany, UK and the USA). I was under the impression that connections are made between contries, and then those contries in turn connect to others. I find it very interesting that so many contries are all on one pipe!
ARPANET was originally supposed to be 'multi-node-failure-tolerent' so that many whole-cities could be destroyed (atomic strike or whatnot) with the system continiously delivering packets successfully (unless the destination is the one destroyed!) by re-routing around failures.
Its amazing that such a fine example of fault-tolerent design can become so weak that a backhoe, anchor, or small localized earthquake can successfully disable so much capacity!
Note that any form of re-animation that involves temperature below 0C would require cellular re-construction due to the tearing of cell walls caused by growing ice crystals on the interior of every cell. Water, as you know, becomes less dense and thus of greater volume as it freezes, and the crystals that form expand so that cell walls become torn. Also, the fat cells surounding nerve inter-connections may cut the nerve, causing massive brain failure. The simple fact is, without nanotechnology to repair this vast damage, revival of all the 'frozen-in-nitrogen-suspended-animation' people is HIGHLY unlikly. This is perhaps MUCH more applicable to transporting organs for transport, and perhaps in reviving hipothermia victims who havn't frozen solid yet.
Wasnt Motorola partly behind a certain satellite network that went (will go?) down in flames?
Isn't Motorola stuck at half the clock speed of Intel (Mhz is the only thing 'non-geek' people look at when buying a computer, trust me I do it every day)
Isn't Motorola screwed if Apple decides to make OS X Intel Compatable?
Is'nt Motorola on such a roll here? Why would they be so hostile towards themselves by pulling this stunt? If you have stock in them, perhaps its time to pull out...
The only thing they are still doing ok at is the consumer devices, like cell phones. Perhaps if they keep getting screwed, they'll retract to that core? Any thoughts?
Im wondering if anyone has read Wired Magazine lately. They show Intel is in fact exceeding Moore's Law in both performance and transistor count (due to the huge L2 of the Xeons...) via a nifty graph
very interesting story, dont know if Wired has it on the website or not though. Looked to no avail. p122 of the october
TweakUI also lets you do tab-Autocompletion. I've noticed this is in most Linux distro's and has also been in certain Win9X and 2K text boxes since IE5. I can quickly get through C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.MYBOX\My Documents\File.TXT by typing c:\do + [TAB] + [^H (to clear the quote)] + \a + [TAB] + [^H] + MyD + [TAB] + [^H] + fi + [TAB] + [ENTER]
thats 20 keystrokes total. approx 80 characters are in the path. And i can dig into the tree faster than a mouser could.
I sometimes debate making CMD my shell, but then remember how much i paid for my dammed mouse!
Ok, Windows will now have an XML based skinning engine remarkably like WindowBlinds which is also at the core of that new MSN interface. One of the skins that shipped out with b2257 is what the skins at skinz.org are based on. This skinning is off by default in current alpha's (they arn't at beta yet to my knowledge) so that after you install it is still just like Windows 2000 at first glance. My guess is that there will be a different default 'Visual Style' as they call them for the Advanced Server, Server, Professional, and Consumer versions of the OS. Windows.NET (which is what it will probably be called now) Also has a new and completely different Start menu, a whole lot of new task-bar changes that are, in my opinion, past due, like stacking of similar windows (if you have 18 IE windows open, 5 Netscape windows open, 3 My Computer windows open and 3 Photoshop's open, you will see in the taskbar 4 items, and clicking on one pops up with all the collapsed items. Remote Desktop (Terminal Services stripped to only the remote-admin portion) is now installed by deafult on all versions from consumer to datacenter, making Administration far FAR easier. Windows SuperSite has some amazing screenshots (and have had them for AGES I'm surprised this made the news...) of the new OS, as well as but-loads of information.
It looks like so far, they have not changed much of the core of Windows 2000 code-wise, but I think thats probably a good thing, since it is remarkably stable for me right now. My server has been up since I installed Win2k (and down to reboot after installing SP1) without any problems, and my workstation has not crashed yet, save a spit with Creatives EXTREMELY poor drivers.
I really think Microsoft is getting things right these days.(MY OPINION!)
I already have a system that does most of what is described in the story for in-house projects i do. The system uses XML in the back end and adds the file into the package. I also have an automated program that creates a readme.txt and readme.html from the data.
The XML holds a short changelog, date/times of all builds, long descriptions of changes for each build, misc project information, a major and a minor general description field, and some other minor information. the generator appends the file size of both the final package and all files contained. This system is designed for in-house only, and is in no way currently useable as a solution for public use (part of a requirement i've made to co-ordinate development between our 4 coders). also, many of you may be disapointed to know its win32 only, as that is all the work we do internally. But if anyone wants to know some of the specifics, of such a system, let me know.
Now, I know the whole 'Policy' Slashdot has on Privacy, but I think this has to be said.
To tell you the absolute truth, I cant see how TIVO knowing what I watch, even if its tied to me by mention of my name or whatnot, can effect me in any way. I mean, on the net, I want privacy from corporations and individuals because its more personal information at stake (credit card information, visiting 'questionable' sites:). But when I'm watching TV, I WANT Them to know I skip over the sh*itty shows and watch others. Then I will be effecting what they play, and will, in a very small way, effect what they play. I know a lot of you are saying that this will enable targeted advertisments, Good! at least I wont have to sit through tampon comercials!. And I can always walk out of the room for a snack, its not like targeted ads are more evil then non-targeted ads. and they will probably be limited to a banner anyway since tivo is a bit limited in video capabilities.
And the last argument to tracking what people watch that people often make, that it reveals something about that person to the mega-corporation-super-consperacy. They know that you watch SURVIVOR!! OOOH.
my point is there isn't too much incriminating content on TV, unlike the Internet. Because its so filtered and such a massive media, the only thing they will learn is that you watched the same thing as 500,000 other people that night.
To that, I say big deal. Privacy as an issue matters on the Internet, but I personally don't think it has much bearing on television viewing habits.
I dont think they would work on another serial bus. I think they mean another AGP revision or a new bus all together. Think about it, Intel wouldn't slip up details of something so far away. If they are working on a competitor for FW:800mb, Why on earth would they call it a Serial Graphics bus? The only reason to call a bus a graphics bus is if the bus will be doing high performance 3D graphics. and that sugests a new interface for graphic accelerators, not an interconnect to compete with Firewire on any plane. (Firewire is far to slow, even at 800 mbs, to do 3d graphics. for instance, AGP is 16384 mbs, and it is a huge bottleneck on the GeForce. If texturing starts happening over AGP when your videocard runs out of RAM, your in for some big slowdown.)
Sorry, but I dont think they are that dumb. its like USB2. It is designed to reduce the strain on the shared bandwidth when you have many device connections, not provide a DV connection to compete with Firewire. I've Never heard of a camera with a USB2 connection on it, but I have had all my USB devices slow to a crawl when I print a page and scan at the same time over it. Anyway, I thought Intel was friendly to IEEE1394? Why would the really want to compete?
My thoughts anyway. don't take my words for gospel, I've been known to be wrong.
I just finished looking over many of the details of how Prince disseminates his music now. Its very similar to what Stephen King is doing with his new e-Book. The basic idea is, 'If you all want my book to freely use and trade etc, at least X amount of you have to buy it'. Or, to subsidize it, for it to be free to everyone else. I think this is Exactly the model the Internet should adopt to compensate artists. Its very elegant.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it odd that the US allows things to be done differently in different states, and even counties! standardization at least lets everyone know what to expect. and there really is no 'battleground seats' since their all the same size population-wise. But it does give more power to highly populated provinces, like for instance Quebec and Ottawa. together they are almost 40% of the country! (perhaps more?)
This gives Quebec, who wants to seperate, more power and opens up the possibility of it happening.
There has been some massive changes here in our former two-party system as well. The Conservative party got destroyed in the last election, getting only 2 seats. They where the then reining government too! They collapsed, and the Liberal party took the county with the Reform Party supported mostly by western canada close behind. Since then, the Reform and Conservative party merged to form the Alliance Party, and the NDP party has powered up quite a bit to fill the void the Reform Party left behind. We're actually fairly close to being a 3 party country. (even though NDP doesnt stand a chance)
The elections coming up might be interesting, thats for sure, apparently there is a party that wants solely to get Maraijuanna legalized. I forget what they are called though. They acctually have high support for such a small topic-focused party.
...but 60% of total bandwidth available to the ISP called Telstra. Their backup line was flooded and 1 in 3 requests where lost. "Other ISPs and networks such as Optus were uncongested." It is very intresting that this same line connects so many distant contries (Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Germany, UK and the USA). I was under the impression that connections are made between contries, and then those contries in turn connect to others. I find it very interesting that so many contries are all on one pipe! ARPANET was originally supposed to be 'multi-node-failure-tolerent' so that many whole-cities could be destroyed (atomic strike or whatnot) with the system continiously delivering packets successfully (unless the destination is the one destroyed!) by re-routing around failures. Its amazing that such a fine example of fault-tolerent design can become so weak that a backhoe, anchor, or small localized earthquake can successfully disable so much capacity!
Note that any form of re-animation that involves temperature below 0C would require cellular re-construction due to the tearing of cell walls caused by growing ice crystals on the interior of every cell. Water, as you know, becomes less dense and thus of greater volume as it freezes, and the crystals that form expand so that cell walls become torn. Also, the fat cells surounding nerve inter-connections may cut the nerve, causing massive brain failure.
The simple fact is, without nanotechnology to repair this vast damage, revival of all the 'frozen-in-nitrogen-suspended-animation' people is HIGHLY unlikly.
This is perhaps MUCH more applicable to transporting organs for transport, and perhaps in reviving hipothermia victims who havn't frozen solid yet.
Isn't Motorola stuck at half the clock speed of Intel (Mhz is the only thing 'non-geek' people look at when buying a computer, trust me I do it every day)
Isn't Motorola screwed if Apple decides to make OS X Intel Compatable?
Is'nt Motorola on such a roll here? Why would they be so hostile towards themselves by pulling this stunt?
If you have stock in them, perhaps its time to pull out...
The only thing they are still doing ok at is the consumer devices, like cell phones. Perhaps if they keep getting screwed, they'll retract to that core? Any thoughts?
Im wondering if anyone has read Wired Magazine lately. They show Intel is in fact exceeding Moore's Law in both performance and transistor count (due to the huge L2 of the Xeons...) via a nifty graph very interesting story, dont know if Wired has it on the website or not though. Looked to no avail. p122 of the october
I sometimes debate making CMD my shell, but then remember how much i paid for my dammed mouse!
Windows.NET (which is what it will probably be called now) Also has a new and completely different Start menu, a whole lot of new task-bar changes that are, in my opinion, past due, like stacking of similar windows (if you have 18 IE windows open, 5 Netscape windows open, 3 My Computer windows open and 3 Photoshop's open, you will see in the taskbar 4 items, and clicking on one pops up with all the collapsed items. Remote Desktop (Terminal Services stripped to only the remote-admin portion) is now installed by deafult on all versions from consumer to datacenter, making Administration far FAR easier. Windows SuperSite has some amazing screenshots (and have had them for AGES I'm surprised this made the news...) of the new OS, as well as but-loads of information.
It looks like so far, they have not changed much of the core of Windows 2000 code-wise, but I think thats probably a good thing, since it is remarkably stable for me right now. My server has been up since I installed Win2k (and down to reboot after installing SP1) without any problems, and my workstation has not crashed yet, save a spit with Creatives EXTREMELY poor drivers.
I really think Microsoft is getting things right these days.(MY OPINION!)
I already have a system that does most of what is described in the story for in-house projects i do. The system uses XML in the back end and adds the file into the package. I also have an automated program that creates a readme.txt and readme.html from the data.
The XML holds a short changelog, date/times of all builds, long descriptions of changes for each build, misc project information, a major and a minor general description field, and some other minor information. the generator appends the file size of both the final package and all files contained. This system is designed for in-house only, and is in no way currently useable as a solution for public use (part of a requirement i've made to co-ordinate development between our 4 coders). also, many of you may be disapointed to know its win32 only, as that is all the work we do internally. But if anyone wants to know some of the specifics, of such a system, let me know.
like i said, i pasted in the pre-spellchecked message where i fixed many errors including that one.
Hopefully my point is retained for those reading.
To tell you the absolute truth, I cant see how TIVO knowing what I watch, even if its tied to me by mention of my name or whatnot, can effect me in any way. I mean, on the net, I want privacy from corporations and individuals because its more personal information at stake (credit card information, visiting 'questionable' sites :). But when I'm watching TV, I WANT Them to know I skip over the sh*itty shows and watch others. Then I will be effecting what they play, and will, in a very small way, effect what they play.
I know a lot of you are saying that this will enable targeted advertisments, Good! at least I wont have to sit through tampon comercials!. And I can always walk out of the room for a snack, its not like targeted ads are more evil then non-targeted ads. and they will probably be limited to a banner anyway since tivo is a bit limited in video capabilities.
And the last argument to tracking what people watch that people often make, that it reveals something about that person to the mega-corporation-super-consperacy. They know that you watch SURVIVOR!! OOOH.
my point is there isn't too much incriminating content on TV, unlike the Internet. Because its so filtered and such a massive media, the only thing they will learn is that you watched the same thing as 500,000 other people that night.
To that, I say big deal. Privacy as an issue matters on the Internet, but I personally don't think it has much bearing on television viewing habits.
Think about it, Intel wouldn't slip up details of something so far away. If they are working on a competitor for FW:800mb, Why on earth would they call it a Serial Graphics bus? The only reason to call a bus a graphics bus is if the bus will be doing high performance 3D graphics. and that sugests a new interface for graphic accelerators, not an interconnect to compete with Firewire on any plane. (Firewire is far to slow, even at 800 mbs, to do 3d graphics. for instance, AGP is 16384 mbs, and it is a huge bottleneck on the GeForce. If texturing starts happening over AGP when your videocard runs out of RAM, your in for some big slowdown.)
Sorry, but I dont think they are that dumb. its like USB2. It is designed to reduce the strain on the shared bandwidth when you have many device connections, not provide a DV connection to compete with Firewire. I've Never heard of a camera with a USB2 connection on it, but I have had all my USB devices slow to a crawl when I print a page and scan at the same time over it.
Anyway, I thought Intel was friendly to IEEE1394? Why would the really want to compete?
My thoughts anyway. don't take my words for gospel, I've been known to be wrong.
I just finished looking over many of the details of how Prince disseminates his music now. Its very similar to what Stephen King is doing with his new e-Book. The basic idea is, 'If you all want my book to freely use and trade etc, at least X amount of you have to buy it'. Or, to subsidize it, for it to be free to everyone else. I think this is Exactly the model the Internet should adopt to compensate artists. Its very elegant.