I think the flaw in your logic is that if they could really see that sort of benefit from H.264 (which has been around for a while now), it'd be part of the standard -- and we could easily use plain old DVDs to do it (and easily offer double-sided two-format discs with existing technology).
As it stands, I believe they're using a codec that's on par with H.264. I'm no expert, but I've got no reason to believe otherwise.
Although you probably could indeed squeeze more out of a 9GB H.264 video than an MPEG-2 of the same size, the advantages of using a disc that holds about twice as much data, and a more modern codec.
Also don't forget about audio. 2 hours of high-bitrate 7-channel audio in several languages is not an insignificant amount of data. Why? Because we can. I'm no audiophile, but it's not all that hard to hear the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and 320kbps.
In terms of the disc itself, BluRay is indeed the superior technology, as it crams almost twice as much data onto a disc than HD-DVD. It looks like Sony might have another BetaMax on thier hands unless they can slash their costs to less than a fifth of what they currently are. Although I'd love to cram an entire season of a 480p TV show onto a single disc, a 5x price premium isn't remotely worth that luxury. For ridiculously long films (eg. LoTR Ext. Edition), I don't think most people mind switching discs.
My prediction is that we'll start to see BluRay being adopted as a data storage mechanism on PCs, with HD-DVD dominating for films. Eventually they'll compromise and develop a cheap dual-format drive long after the respective technolgies have settled into their niche.
Video downloads on the 'net are typically offered at VGA resolution, if not less, and are almost always compressed to hell.
iTunes does it. Netflix does it, and as far as I know, so does Amazon.
If you want a comparison of just how much bigger a 1080p image is than a typical VGA download, look here. Oh, and the smallest box in that image is more than twice the size of a YouTube video.
An HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc holds something like 20-40GiB of high-res video. 99% of broadband connections today cannot stream that much that quickly, and even a download would take prohibitively long, and be incredibly cumbersome to store due to the huge size of the files. I'd daresay that the internet backbone couldn't handle those sort of loads even if HD streaming became commonplace and there was broadband connectivity to support it.
Streaming's cool, but removable storage is going to have the edge in the video market for the foreseeable future if it's HD we're talking about.
It'll be a slower adoption than we saw with DVDs, but considering that we're approaching the point where a HD-DVD player isn't considerably more than the cost of a decent regulat DVD player, I have a feeling that consumers looking to buy a new DVD player will be willing to jump for the extra $50 to get a HD-DVD unit.
Rumor is that we'll be seeing players costing between $100 and $150 in the next month, which is almost low enough to be in the 'Impulse Buy' range. Because HD-DVD players are of course backward compatible, and typically offer some sort of upscaling, they'll sell enough of these things to consumers who aren't even particularly interested in buying HD-DVD discs so that there's not nearly as much of a chicken/egg situation between players and discs. For now, there's enough content to get by and make it worthwhile.
So, no. We won't see a massive rush to upgrade to HD-DVD. However, players should begin to slowly seep into the marketplace, and after a few years, it'll be 'mainstream'. HD-capable TVs are also becoming increasingly common these days, and I'd bet that consumers shelling out money for a new TV will also spring for a HD-DVD player, considering the low price.
Unless sony drops the price of their Blu-Ray equipment, Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Have they already forgotten BetaMax?
IRV seems kind of complicated to me (and especially to the general public)
From what I understand, IRV wouldn't be particularly useful in presidential elections, as the system only kicks in if the public fails to elect a simple majority, at which point the ranking comes into play. In the history of the US, this has only happened once in 1824 after there was a schism within the Democratic-Republican party.
Although I do like the idea that IRV would prevent the House from choosing the President, the fact that it's only happened once doesn't speak too highly of its utility.
I suppose it would increase the viability of 3rd party candidates, but it seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to go about doing so -- thinking of all the possible implications is dizzying. Unless a considerable portion of the population lists someone other than one of the "big two" candidates as their first choice, IRV doesn't kick in at all, and I don't think that we'd be able to easily get past the psychological effect of listing a candidate that you know isn't going to win as your first preference, even though it doesn't actually hurt the chances of the person you put down as #2.
On the other hand, if there's a poster child for IRV voting, it's Ron Paul, because he's got a considerable following from members of both parties, but will likely receive very few votes (if he runs as an Independent, which I'm betting he will) for fear of hurting the chances of their own candidates under the current system. (Disclaimer: I don't support Ron Paul, and am simply using him as an example -- let's keep this on topic.)
I really do hate our current crop of Republicans, but absolutely can't stand just how incompetent the Democrats are as a whole. A trained monkey should have been able to win the 2004 election, and they managed to pitch a candidate so bland and nondescript that they blew it.
Blocking Colbert's nomination has the very serious potential to completely alienate their base. If he's only running for the SC primary, the amount of potential damage is extremely limited, and not likely to make much of a difference even if he wins the nod in that state. On the other hand, if Colbert runs as an independent in the general election, he has a very serious chance of fucking things up completely.
(As a sidenote: I'm a strong proponent doing away with the 2-party system by allowing voters to cast a vote for as many candidates as they want. If you like both Nader and Gore, vote for both of them! If for some unholy reason, you want to vote for both the republican and democratic candidate (ie. you hate independents with a firey passion), there should be nothing stopping you from doing so. This means that there's no longer such thing as a 'wasted vote', and if the independent candidates are truly unviable, we'd be no worse off. This would be a huge boon to candidates like Mike Gravel or Ron Paul)
To be perfectly fair, don't you see it as a 'very good thing' that Australia has no *need* for a massive high-tech army?
(At least in my eyes) Australia is fairly well-respected in the international community, and doesn't have any highly lucrative natural resources -- it's also completely surrounded by water. In fact, I'd peg a stable government and an educated populace as being its two greatest assets. You'd be absolutely daft to seriously consider going to war with Australia. You'd have very little to gain, and would provoke a massive international retaliation. (Canada comes to mind as being in a similar boat)
Yes, having a well-trained defensive force is a good idea, considering the corner of the world where Australia's located, but the odds of a land war down under seem extremely remote. (Of course, it does make sense to invest in technologies that allow the military to be smaller but more efficient).
Then again, absurd invasions aren't completely unheard of; Germany did attack Svalbard during WWII. I'm still not sure what they were trying to accomplish with that one....
Although their Windows version has a ways to go, HandBrake is fantastic for ripping/encoding DVDs in one fell swoop. 99% of the time, 'it just works'.
The more recent versions have made it a bit less "mac-like" (ie. they added a whole lot more configuration options), but it's still dead-on simple to use.
I would tell you to RTFA, but you've said you've already done so...
The reviewer absolutely rails on Apple because of the UI changes they made. They're not as dramatic (or unnecessary) as the ones made in Vista, but they were still a poor choice. And the reviewer say this on several occasions.
In fact, the only positive thing he has to say about the GUI changes is that he likes the new Unified window design, but criticizes it of falling short of providing a consistent set of design rules.
What about HFS? The reviewer does mention that it should be replaced, and you can't offer a solid reason for *why* it should have been replaced with Leopard.
HFS+ is showing its age, and is probably due for a replacement sometime soon. However, it does have journaling, is pretty reliable, and the performance doesn't suck. If you look here, you'll see that HFS+ compares competitively with NTFS, and even offers a few things absent in ext3/4. Granted, ZFS is the cats meow of filesystems, and I'd really like to see it eventually adopted in MacOS and Linux.
I always assumed NBC had some more legitimate reasons for ditching iTunes, and didn't necessarily disagree with them -- especially since they've been offering the shows for free on their site.
However, this guy's comments strike me as being completely deranged. Even if NBC's executives really are opposed to online distribution, having such a loose cannon on board could become a huge liability to them. In other words, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he gets fired in the next few months.
Actually, I'd say that the Americans who are sympathetic to those who don't speak perfect english are ones who remember the fact that America's an incredibly diverse nation composed almost entirely of immigrants. I'd daresay that the vast majority of the US population is descended from at least one 1st, 2nd or 3rd-generation immigrant. In World War I and II, there were quite a few documented cases of American troops killing German soldiers who turned out to be their cousins.
Of course, these days it's commonplace to mock South/Central American immigrants for their accents (but don't you dare insult my Italian Grandmother's accent!). It's really disheartening to see such a double-standard in place.
As for learning Spanish -- I took 8 years of Spanish in Public school, and barely retained any of it. Like you said, due to America's geography, most people will never need to know another language.
Except Apple's share price has nothing to do with the Mac.
If Apple packed up, and completely and permanently stopped manufacturing Macs and their accompanying software tomorrow, I'd be pretty damn sure that their stock would take a very big hit. No matter how successful the iPod might be, Macintosh remains Apple's core business and flagship product line.
Ergo, Apple's share price has quite a bit to do with the Mac. QED.
And I for one hope that M$ will continue it's admirable efforts in this arena!:-)
I don't. I hope that Microsoft gets off of their asses, and creates another rock-solid business-oriented OS like they did with Windows 2000. I do really find that Windows remains slightly more effective for business tasks (eg. I hate managing documents with the Finder in MacOS!), and if MS does a good job of implementing WinFS, they'll have a winner on their hands.
I probably still won't use it, but it will spur some fantastic competition. Remember when Intel and AMD started competing aggressively? There was a huge pressure for both companies to innovate, and they really pushed the envelope of microprocessor technology to what is essentially the limit of our current understanding of the underlying physics. This has, in turn has spurred the development of other new technologies to push the boundaries even further. Competition can be a very good thing.
1) Vista was late. Really late. Many of the 'killer' features were torn out, leaving an OS that had very little new to offer. Apple's list of improvements between OS versions is very specific and tangible, addressing individual concerns. Time Machine sticks out as being a good example of this. 2) Unlike Windows XP, which was a significant upgrade, and replaced an OS (98/Me!) that many consumers were unhappy with, people are generally still happy with XP. For the most part, all of the complaints people had with 98/Me were solved by XP. 3) It was marketed poorly, and as I've already mentioned, it didn't have all that many tangible selling points. They could have put a huge emphasis on its supposedly improved resistance to viruses and spyware, but this would be admitting that XP was deeply and fundamentally flawed, which probably wouldn't sit too well with consumers either. This was a lot more noticeable against the backdrop of Apple's marketing campaigns. Apple's had arguably the most successful marketing campaign of any company in any industry over the past few years. 4) Many consumers felt abandoned by Microsoft, after they stopped improving IE, and did virtually nothing to stop the pandemic proliferation of viruses and spyware until it was far too late. The fact that they strongly urge customers to purchase a 3rd-party AntiVirus reeks of incompetence, even to ordinary consumers.
Come to think of it, Vista is probably the best thing that's ever happened to Apple.
No. It's because big names like Giuliani and Clinton jump out in the news, and once they gain the edge on the polls, the general public just assumes "Oh. That's who's going to be on the ticket. I guess I should vote for them."
This trend is particularly dangerous when you get a Howard Dean type situation, where the Democratic party (and the media) essentially threw the vast majority of its support behind him, only to have him make some astoundingly poor publicity moves that ruined his chances of being elected. In the scramble to find a new candidate, we wound up with the most generic, least-common-denominator candidate, which in turn is an absolutely horribly platform to run on. Losing the 2004 election took skill.
The sad irony of this election is that neither Giuliani nor Clinton's constituents were/are particularly happy with the job they did while in office, a fact which is conveniently ignored by the rest of the country. The only hope we have is that one of the many skeletons in Giuliani's closet will bite him in the ass early enough for Paul to build up a highly visible campaign among the general public.
Of course, Paul vs. Obama would be a very interesting ticket. Although I love Obama's ideals, I feel that Ron Paul's platform is somewhat more pragmatic, and is more likely to be successful. My only concern with Paul is that he could create a significant rift between the states.
Oh, I know that Italian sportscars can be fun (albeit impractical) if you're willing to throw enough money at them. I was more poking fun at the notorious unreliability of the low-cost Italian cars that made it over to the US (ie. Fiat).
Well, kudos to Italy for making the front page of slashdot 3 times in one day, finally constructing a mechanical device that didn't break down immediately, and ending up with a score in the green.
Ron Paul has the potential to fuck up the election just as much as Nader did those few times...
People register Republican to nominate Paul who doesn't have a chance of winning the primary. In turn, the remaining Democrats in their infinite wisdom nominate another extremely undesiriable/unelectable candidate (Hillary), and the vote goes back to whichever Republican actually did get the nod (most likely Giuliani, who despite his many, many faults probably still wouldn't be nearly as bad as Bush)
No. I'm not saying that a monoculture would be a necessarily good idea. However, if all of the consoles are going to be essentially the same, as the parent great grandparent poster suggests, it would make sense. (Of course, you wouldn't want the consoles to be all the same, but bear with me here...)
Thanks to platform exclusive title, many gamers find themselves owning 3+ consoles (how many people do you know who own an XBox just for Halo?). For those of us that can't afford to do that, it kind of sucks, especially with expensive consoles like the PS3.
The way schools are funded in the US, this will simply never happen without massive and sweeping reforms, not to mention the massive side-effects it could potentially cause.
If you find out that your kids aren't learning science, I'd start out by firing the school board, which you do indeed have the power to do. You could also run to be elected to the board.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the flaw in your logic is that if they could really see that sort of benefit from H.264 (which has been around for a while now), it'd be part of the standard -- and we could easily use plain old DVDs to do it (and easily offer double-sided two-format discs with existing technology).
As it stands, I believe they're using a codec that's on par with H.264. I'm no expert, but I've got no reason to believe otherwise.
Although you probably could indeed squeeze more out of a 9GB H.264 video than an MPEG-2 of the same size, the advantages of using a disc that holds about twice as much data, and a more modern codec.
Also don't forget about audio. 2 hours of high-bitrate 7-channel audio in several languages is not an insignificant amount of data. Why? Because we can. I'm no audiophile, but it's not all that hard to hear the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and 320kbps.
In terms of the disc itself, BluRay is indeed the superior technology, as it crams almost twice as much data onto a disc than HD-DVD. It looks like Sony might have another BetaMax on thier hands unless they can slash their costs to less than a fifth of what they currently are. Although I'd love to cram an entire season of a 480p TV show onto a single disc, a 5x price premium isn't remotely worth that luxury. For ridiculously long films (eg. LoTR Ext. Edition), I don't think most people mind switching discs.
My prediction is that we'll start to see BluRay being adopted as a data storage mechanism on PCs, with HD-DVD dominating for films. Eventually they'll compromise and develop a cheap dual-format drive long after the respective technolgies have settled into their niche.
Are you %*#(ing serious?
Video downloads on the 'net are typically offered at VGA resolution, if not less, and are almost always compressed to hell.
iTunes does it. Netflix does it, and as far as I know, so does Amazon.
If you want a comparison of just how much bigger a 1080p image is than a typical VGA download, look here. Oh, and the smallest box in that image is more than twice the size of a YouTube video.
An HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc holds something like 20-40GiB of high-res video. 99% of broadband connections today cannot stream that much that quickly, and even a download would take prohibitively long, and be incredibly cumbersome to store due to the huge size of the files. I'd daresay that the internet backbone couldn't handle those sort of loads even if HD streaming became commonplace and there was broadband connectivity to support it.
Streaming's cool, but removable storage is going to have the edge in the video market for the foreseeable future if it's HD we're talking about.
It'll be a slower adoption than we saw with DVDs, but considering that we're approaching the point where a HD-DVD player isn't considerably more than the cost of a decent regulat DVD player, I have a feeling that consumers looking to buy a new DVD player will be willing to jump for the extra $50 to get a HD-DVD unit.
Rumor is that we'll be seeing players costing between $100 and $150 in the next month, which is almost low enough to be in the 'Impulse Buy' range. Because HD-DVD players are of course backward compatible, and typically offer some sort of upscaling, they'll sell enough of these things to consumers who aren't even particularly interested in buying HD-DVD discs so that there's not nearly as much of a chicken/egg situation between players and discs. For now, there's enough content to get by and make it worthwhile.
So, no. We won't see a massive rush to upgrade to HD-DVD. However, players should begin to slowly seep into the marketplace, and after a few years, it'll be 'mainstream'. HD-capable TVs are also becoming increasingly common these days, and I'd bet that consumers shelling out money for a new TV will also spring for a HD-DVD player, considering the low price.
Unless sony drops the price of their Blu-Ray equipment, Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Have they already forgotten BetaMax?
IRV seems kind of complicated to me (and especially to the general public)
From what I understand, IRV wouldn't be particularly useful in presidential elections, as the system only kicks in if the public fails to elect a simple majority, at which point the ranking comes into play. In the history of the US, this has only happened once in 1824 after there was a schism within the Democratic-Republican party.
Although I do like the idea that IRV would prevent the House from choosing the President, the fact that it's only happened once doesn't speak too highly of its utility.
I suppose it would increase the viability of 3rd party candidates, but it seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to go about doing so -- thinking of all the possible implications is dizzying. Unless a considerable portion of the population lists someone other than one of the "big two" candidates as their first choice, IRV doesn't kick in at all, and I don't think that we'd be able to easily get past the psychological effect of listing a candidate that you know isn't going to win as your first preference, even though it doesn't actually hurt the chances of the person you put down as #2.
On the other hand, if there's a poster child for IRV voting, it's Ron Paul, because he's got a considerable following from members of both parties, but will likely receive very few votes (if he runs as an Independent, which I'm betting he will) for fear of hurting the chances of their own candidates under the current system. (Disclaimer: I don't support Ron Paul, and am simply using him as an example -- let's keep this on topic.)
I really do hate our current crop of Republicans, but absolutely can't stand just how incompetent the Democrats are as a whole. A trained monkey should have been able to win the 2004 election, and they managed to pitch a candidate so bland and nondescript that they blew it.
Blocking Colbert's nomination has the very serious potential to completely alienate their base. If he's only running for the SC primary, the amount of potential damage is extremely limited, and not likely to make much of a difference even if he wins the nod in that state. On the other hand, if Colbert runs as an independent in the general election, he has a very serious chance of fucking things up completely.
(As a sidenote: I'm a strong proponent doing away with the 2-party system by allowing voters to cast a vote for as many candidates as they want. If you like both Nader and Gore, vote for both of them! If for some unholy reason, you want to vote for both the republican and democratic candidate (ie. you hate independents with a firey passion), there should be nothing stopping you from doing so. This means that there's no longer such thing as a 'wasted vote', and if the independent candidates are truly unviable, we'd be no worse off. This would be a huge boon to candidates like Mike Gravel or Ron Paul)
To be perfectly fair, don't you see it as a 'very good thing' that Australia has no *need* for a massive high-tech army?
(At least in my eyes) Australia is fairly well-respected in the international community, and doesn't have any highly lucrative natural resources -- it's also completely surrounded by water. In fact, I'd peg a stable government and an educated populace as being its two greatest assets. You'd be absolutely daft to seriously consider going to war with Australia. You'd have very little to gain, and would provoke a massive international retaliation. (Canada comes to mind as being in a similar boat)
Yes, having a well-trained defensive force is a good idea, considering the corner of the world where Australia's located, but the odds of a land war down under seem extremely remote. (Of course, it does make sense to invest in technologies that allow the military to be smaller but more efficient).
Then again, absurd invasions aren't completely unheard of; Germany did attack Svalbard during WWII. I'm still not sure what they were trying to accomplish with that one....
Tsar Bomba is scary, but MIRVs scare the pants off of me.
Take this picture, and its caption for instance.
Human civilization will end permanently on the day that these are used. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.
Although their Windows version has a ways to go, HandBrake is fantastic for ripping/encoding DVDs in one fell swoop. 99% of the time, 'it just works'.
The more recent versions have made it a bit less "mac-like" (ie. they added a whole lot more configuration options), but it's still dead-on simple to use.
I would tell you to RTFA, but you've said you've already done so...
The reviewer absolutely rails on Apple because of the UI changes they made. They're not as dramatic (or unnecessary) as the ones made in Vista, but they were still a poor choice. And the reviewer say this on several occasions.
In fact, the only positive thing he has to say about the GUI changes is that he likes the new Unified window design, but criticizes it of falling short of providing a consistent set of design rules.
What about HFS? The reviewer does mention that it should be replaced, and you can't offer a solid reason for *why* it should have been replaced with Leopard.
HFS+ is showing its age, and is probably due for a replacement sometime soon. However, it does have journaling, is pretty reliable, and the performance doesn't suck. If you look here, you'll see that HFS+ compares competitively with NTFS, and even offers a few things absent in ext3/4. Granted, ZFS is the cats meow of filesystems, and I'd really like to see it eventually adopted in MacOS and Linux.
I always assumed NBC had some more legitimate reasons for ditching iTunes, and didn't necessarily disagree with them -- especially since they've been offering the shows for free on their site.
However, this guy's comments strike me as being completely deranged. Even if NBC's executives really are opposed to online distribution, having such a loose cannon on board could become a huge liability to them. In other words, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he gets fired in the next few months.
The 1970s called. It wants its hype back.
Actually, I'd say that the Americans who are sympathetic to those who don't speak perfect english are ones who remember the fact that America's an incredibly diverse nation composed almost entirely of immigrants. I'd daresay that the vast majority of the US population is descended from at least one 1st, 2nd or 3rd-generation immigrant. In World War I and II, there were quite a few documented cases of American troops killing German soldiers who turned out to be their cousins.
Of course, these days it's commonplace to mock South/Central American immigrants for their accents (but don't you dare insult my Italian Grandmother's accent!). It's really disheartening to see such a double-standard in place.
As for learning Spanish -- I took 8 years of Spanish in Public school, and barely retained any of it. Like you said, due to America's geography, most people will never need to know another language.
If Apple packed up, and completely and permanently stopped manufacturing Macs and their accompanying software tomorrow, I'd be pretty damn sure that their stock would take a very big hit. No matter how successful the iPod might be, Macintosh remains Apple's core business and flagship product line.
Ergo, Apple's share price has quite a bit to do with the Mac. QED.
Is it just me, or does the Treasury Department's explanation of that law seem tenuous at best?
All debts is all debts. I'm failing to see how they've located any wiggle-room around such definitive phraseology.
And I mean.... isn't that the whole point of paper currency to begin with? If it's not universally accepted, it's considerably less useful.
I don't. I hope that Microsoft gets off of their asses, and creates another rock-solid business-oriented OS like they did with Windows 2000. I do really find that Windows remains slightly more effective for business tasks (eg. I hate managing documents with the Finder in MacOS!), and if MS does a good job of implementing WinFS, they'll have a winner on their hands.
I probably still won't use it, but it will spur some fantastic competition. Remember when Intel and AMD started competing aggressively? There was a huge pressure for both companies to innovate, and they really pushed the envelope of microprocessor technology to what is essentially the limit of our current understanding of the underlying physics. This has, in turn has spurred the development of other new technologies to push the boundaries even further. Competition can be a very good thing.
I would peg this on a few different things:
1) Vista was late. Really late. Many of the 'killer' features were torn out, leaving an OS that had very little new to offer. Apple's list of improvements between OS versions is very specific and tangible, addressing individual concerns. Time Machine sticks out as being a good example of this.
2) Unlike Windows XP, which was a significant upgrade, and replaced an OS (98/Me!) that many consumers were unhappy with, people are generally still happy with XP. For the most part, all of the complaints people had with 98/Me were solved by XP.
3) It was marketed poorly, and as I've already mentioned, it didn't have all that many tangible selling points. They could have put a huge emphasis on its supposedly improved resistance to viruses and spyware, but this would be admitting that XP was deeply and fundamentally flawed, which probably wouldn't sit too well with consumers either. This was a lot more noticeable against the backdrop of Apple's marketing campaigns. Apple's had arguably the most successful marketing campaign of any company in any industry over the past few years.
4) Many consumers felt abandoned by Microsoft, after they stopped improving IE, and did virtually nothing to stop the pandemic proliferation of viruses and spyware until it was far too late. The fact that they strongly urge customers to purchase a 3rd-party AntiVirus reeks of incompetence, even to ordinary consumers.
Come to think of it, Vista is probably the best thing that's ever happened to Apple.
No. It's because big names like Giuliani and Clinton jump out in the news, and once they gain the edge on the polls, the general public just assumes "Oh. That's who's going to be on the ticket. I guess I should vote for them."
This trend is particularly dangerous when you get a Howard Dean type situation, where the Democratic party (and the media) essentially threw the vast majority of its support behind him, only to have him make some astoundingly poor publicity moves that ruined his chances of being elected. In the scramble to find a new candidate, we wound up with the most generic, least-common-denominator candidate, which in turn is an absolutely horribly platform to run on. Losing the 2004 election took skill.
The sad irony of this election is that neither Giuliani nor Clinton's constituents were/are particularly happy with the job they did while in office, a fact which is conveniently ignored by the rest of the country. The only hope we have is that one of the many skeletons in Giuliani's closet will bite him in the ass early enough for Paul to build up a highly visible campaign among the general public.
Of course, Paul vs. Obama would be a very interesting ticket. Although I love Obama's ideals, I feel that Ron Paul's platform is somewhat more pragmatic, and is more likely to be successful. My only concern with Paul is that he could create a significant rift between the states.
Oh, I know that Italian sportscars can be fun (albeit impractical) if you're willing to throw enough money at them. I was more poking fun at the notorious unreliability of the low-cost Italian cars that made it over to the US (ie. Fiat).
Well, kudos to Italy for making the front page of slashdot 3 times in one day, finally constructing a mechanical device that didn't break down immediately, and ending up with a score in the green.
Ciao!
Ron Paul has the potential to fuck up the election just as much as Nader did those few times...
People register Republican to nominate Paul who doesn't have a chance of winning the primary. In turn, the remaining Democrats in their infinite wisdom nominate another extremely undesiriable/unelectable candidate (Hillary), and the vote goes back to whichever Republican actually did get the nod (most likely Giuliani, who despite his many, many faults probably still wouldn't be nearly as bad as Bush)
Sigh. It's just a lose-lose situation.
Obligatory:
I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E. is down! I repeat, we have no I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E.!
George Bush became president because his dad was also president, and because he lived in a ridiculously well-connected family.
I don't even think the people who voted for him would rank his superior intellect (heh) as being one of the reasons why they chose him.
Could they please open up their VoD service to us humble Mac users? There are quite a lot of us.
No. I'm not saying that a monoculture would be a necessarily good idea. However, if all of the consoles are going to be essentially the same, as the parent great grandparent poster suggests, it would make sense. (Of course, you wouldn't want the consoles to be all the same, but bear with me here...)
Thanks to platform exclusive title, many gamers find themselves owning 3+ consoles (how many people do you know who own an XBox just for Halo?). For those of us that can't afford to do that, it kind of sucks, especially with expensive consoles like the PS3.
The way schools are funded in the US, this will simply never happen without massive and sweeping reforms, not to mention the massive side-effects it could potentially cause.
If you find out that your kids aren't learning science, I'd start out by firing the school board, which you do indeed have the power to do. You could also run to be elected to the board.