Well.. I wasn't actually trying to comment on wether Nader cost Gore the election (personally its a moot point, 'nough said, lets move on). All I was trying to say is that ever vote is important, and point out a few places where a few thousand votes made a difference, and yes, Nader got 22,000 votes. By the same token Browne got 2,703 and Buchanon got 2,603. Putting aside my own preferences (which I've mentioned elsewhere and are irrelivent now, votes over, can't vote till next year), I think its just important for people to realize that their vote can make a difference and to think about the issues and try to excersize it wisely. Heck, its the only thing most of us American Excersize all year:)
1) BSA is hedging their bets in case anyone wants to audit them... their web-site runs FreeBSD/Apache according to Netcraft
2) On their home page they mention Software Piracy costing the Global Economy over 10 billion dollars. Where do they get this number? Isn't this irrational, since usually, any money saved in one sector, is most likely going to be spent in another (new car, bigger house, nicer clothes). Okay, I *MIGHT* buy it if they said that it was costing the Global Software companies over 10B, although I'd still like to know where they are getting their numbers, but they don't say that. They say Piracy is hurting the Global Economy. Fine... prove it. Can they break thier numbers apart per country? Per Company? And how does the availability of software affect the "Global Economy" also? If for instance a Chinese shoe manufacturing plant is able to be productive and turn out more shoes (and thus in turn have more units that are sold) wouldn't this balance the 3 copies of MS Office 95 that they are using illegally? At least politicians try to lie believably. The BSA's "Global Economy" seems (to me at least) to reak of Marketspeak.
Actually I'm in favor of the electoral college system, but believe that more states should change from 'Winner Take All' to a split vote system.
The current system is the only reason why some states like Rhode Island are even a blip on the map.
Your exactly right, you never know which state the vote might hinge on, so you should always vote (no matter who you want to vote for).
Slightly O.T. but does anyone know of a non-partisan organization devoted to get people to register/vote (no matter what their affiliation)?
Funny, it looks idiotic and something that the media should be refrained from doing (notice, I said they should be refrained, I don't believe the
media has in its capacity the ability to sit on its own hands) from this side of the Atlantic too.
Funny, it looks idiotic and something that the media should be refrained from doing (notice, I said they should be refrained, I don't believe the media has in its capacity the ability to sit on it s own hands).
They shouldn't be allowed to publish or reveal any election results, or exit polling results, untill after the last polling place has closed (Alaska?).
The polls close somewhere around midnight in Alaska I think, if they want they could do a half hour lead in, coverring the issues (federal/local), and then do a recap of the voting across the country. That would be fine. This, "We have been here for 6 hours and we're still getting it wrong" is just ridiculous.
Oh... and slightly O.T. The New York Post had a headline of "BUSH WINS!!!" it's already been pulled, but if Gore manages to squeak in, its going to make one heck of a collectors item:)
In most of those places (and lots others) 3rd party candidates such as Nader played a key roll in depriving one party or the other of beating their opponent.
Interesting election, personally I hate sweeps week stunts where they have cliff-hangers, and 'tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion' but I'll make an exception this time;)
You want to know why the candidates keep courting the 'old' vote? Because they vote. Wether its because they see it as important, they want to fit in and have something to talk about, or because they don't really have anything else to do with their time, the elderly as a demographic group have a large voter turnout. You want the candidates to start careing about issues that might affect you? Great... go to the polls and vote... and drag all your friends and all their friends. If suddenly the 25 and under demographic was going to the polls in record numbers, then the candidates would be trying to sway your vote, and that means issues that effect you.
You can blame my Chaotic nature...
Or you can blame the fact that I'm a Gemini...
Or the fact that I liked different people running for different offices, for different reasons. Voting the 'party line' is not the way to either, and sometimes different levels of government should be different. A balance of opinions can be a good thing.
I'm also registered as a Republican but grew up as a Democrat... long story involving a friend who was running for office and needed Republicans to help him.:)
Okay... they only talk about IBM's not putting out a laptop but its an interesting piece (and in the print version it had Linus's picture to go along with it:)
I went, I voted for the best choice I felt could win for President, and who I wanted (mostly Libertarian with some Green Party) for everything else, but I noticed something interesting.
For a number of elections in my district (such as electing Judges, or in a few other cases I forget), i saw things like "Choose any two" and then the exact same two candidates are listed straight across the board (Republican/Democrat/Liberal/Family, etc). What sort of a choice is that !?!?
Why do they even bother to hold elections for these people when we don't have a choice? We vote for them or not but they are the only ones running. THAT is why people don't turn out for elections.
Show them how wrong they are and turn out for elections even if you believe your vote for President won't count. There are LOTS of other things being decided on the ballot (including referendums). Your vote most certainly WILL count on those!
I keep hearing statistics of how many elegible voters actually vote. If a significant enough fraction of them came out, and voted (doesn't matter who for), they could have a tremendous influence on the whole system.
If you don't normally vote, great, just sign your name, walk in, and do nothing.
Thats right, don't fill out that part of the ballot. There are usually other choices on the ballot (local ordinances, other elected officials, etc.). If you don't like your choices, don't cast your vote. If you want to see the political parties have a caniption, watch them count the votes and realize that 30% more people came out to vote and didn't like their choices BUT STILL CAME OUT TO VOTE. Then watch the next election when you find a choice you do like and it isn't one of the major political parties.
Even if he does claim to have invented the Internet.
Okay, I'll admit I love poking fun at him about this silly quote as much as anyone.
(Slight digresion)Has anyone else gotten a bellyache from the latest 'Snikers' advertisement with the guy going into a polling booth only to have a talking cartoon elephant plop down on one of his shoulders saying things like "I'm the same as my father" "We both wear pants" and a cartoon talking donkey on the other shoulder saying things like "I invented the internet" and retorting with "I invented pants".
But back to the subject. In context, what Gore had said was that he was responsible for championing Arpanet in Congress, which he was, and that he felt like its father (or something to that effect), which quickly got balooned out of control by the media. I was rather surprised when I found out that he actually DID have something to do with getting the internet created. He didn't create it, but he said something too close and its too good a story to pass up, and besides, a Vice Presidents primary job is to make the Pres look good, and he had a heck of a job with that one.
Not sure if this is something new, but when I was in college the best paying job on campus was working in the Computer Labs (the school kept a decent size lab with about 18 computers in about half a dozen locations for the student body, 8 PS2s and 8 Macs, with 1 each for the lab attendent to play on^H^H^H^H^H^H^Huse).
Trust me, they advertised that they payed best, but they were still having problems attracting CS or EE majors to help work in it (think 'First and Second line tech support where your in the same room as clueless users':)
I think I was the only CS major who worked there, the rest were all English and Poly-Sci.
Of course the best part of working there was that your student ID was keyed to open the doors to all the dorms so you could get to work in any of them (which made it easier to visit friends) instead of just the one you lived in, but I remember being amused that it would unlock the janitorial closets also:)
Sorry to be blunt: but here's my argument for Linux. Fuck price. Use Linux because its reliable
No need to apologize to me, I agree with you that instability and downtime are a factor that Gartner didn't include. Based on their own choice of criterion though (price), Linux still can use that argument in its favor against companies like Microsoft. You're right, price isn't an issue. Do people really think that a company that pays for Windows 2000 licenses can be swooned into buying Linux W/ a free office suite? Maybe, but the company is much more insterested in the productivity of the users, and thus the stability of the platform. They are also interested in maintainability, and the way that Unix in general can shield the system from the users can help keep them from botching up a system (and it even has remote access features built in so they can save on a third party software like PCAnywhere).
There are lots more reasons then just price, but I wasn't focussing on why Linux is better then NT, and why to use it. I was just commenting on one piece of the argument that Gartner threw in at the end, designed to stick in thier readers mind that seemed to have as much insight as the usual 'sound byte'.
I'm already in the Linux camp so don't worry about offending me, but you should be careful how you put things to people who aren't. We may want to push an opinion, but we don't want to come off like zealots.... its better we take them by surprise when they've been using a Linux system for a while and they suddenly realise they've become a zealot also:)
I think originally it was designed as (among other things) a way of running multiple OS "kernels" at once while Mach handled all the device driver interfaces and things like that.
Anyone know if this means you could run both OS X and Hurd simultaneously on the same machine? (odd thought but it might be interesting for Hurd development.)
The total-cost-of-ownership argument on behalf of Linux will disappear (Unix platform vendors like IBM and Sun already offer their Unix OSs at virtually no charge).
I never realized that all of the history in Gundam Wing twisted off from the establishment of UCITA, DMCA and other such garbage... makes sense though.
Wouldn't it be easier to just repeal the laws? (of course it WOULD lack those cool space battles)
What's the first thing I do? Trash everything even tangentially associated with the crack on my system.
Yeah... right... with the proper equipment I know some of the security people in our company can go back about a dozen (maybe more) revs of a sectors contents. Make sure you wipe that info very well.
pretty soon they'll define commercials as part of the broadcast TV access mechanism.... and ban your mute button.....
I remember in the Pilot for Max Headroom, while investigating someone who had died from the Blip-vert trials, Edison Carter noticed the dead guy had added an extremely illegal modification to his television... an 'off' switch.
For some reason this popped into my mind recently and it has been shouting out more and more in disturbing tones, especially when I see some of the idiocy that Congress and the media giants pull.
How do you think video stores operate? Do you think they have a special licence? No, they don't. You can buy tapes at retail and rent them, it is your RIGHT!
Yes and no. They don't have a special license, but there is a special deal worked out (at least with Blockbuster). Blockbuster and similar retailers buy videos during a first release just for them. The tapes typically go for about 60-80$ each (to make up for what the studio perceives it is going to loose and priced so that your typical viewer won't want to buy one before the 'General Availability' release). Blockbuster has arranged with most studios to get a special discount (which they use to bludgeon the small 'ma and pa' rental places out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
Well.. I wasn't actually trying to comment on wether Nader cost Gore the election (personally its a moot point, 'nough said, lets move on). All I was trying to say is that ever vote is important, and point out a few places where a few thousand votes made a difference, and yes, Nader got 22,000 votes. By the same token Browne got 2,703 and Buchanon got 2,603. Putting aside my own preferences (which I've mentioned elsewhere and are irrelivent now, votes over, can't vote till next year), I think its just important for people to realize that their vote can make a difference and to think about the issues and try to excersize it wisely. Heck, its the only thing most of us American Excersize all year :)
Two quick points:
1) BSA is hedging their bets in case anyone wants to audit them... their web-site runs FreeBSD/Apache according to Netcraft
2) On their home page they mention Software Piracy costing the Global Economy over 10 billion dollars. Where do they get this number? Isn't this irrational, since usually, any money saved in one sector, is most likely going to be spent in another (new car, bigger house, nicer clothes). Okay, I *MIGHT* buy it if they said that it was costing the Global Software companies over 10B, although I'd still like to know where they are getting their numbers, but they don't say that. They say Piracy is hurting the Global Economy. Fine... prove it. Can they break thier numbers apart per country? Per Company? And how does the availability of software affect the "Global Economy" also? If for instance a Chinese shoe manufacturing plant is able to be productive and turn out more shoes (and thus in turn have more units that are sold) wouldn't this balance the 3 copies of MS Office 95 that they are using illegally? At least politicians try to lie believably. The BSA's "Global Economy" seems (to me at least) to reak of Marketspeak.
Actually I'm in favor of the electoral college system, but believe that more states should change from 'Winner Take All' to a split vote system.
The current system is the only reason why some states like Rhode Island are even a blip on the map.
Your exactly right, you never know which state the vote might hinge on, so you should always vote (no matter who you want to vote for).
Slightly O.T. but does anyone know of a non-partisan organization devoted to get people to register/vote (no matter what their affiliation)?
First bit SHOULD have read
Funny, it looks idiotic and something that the media should be refrained from doing (notice, I said they should be refrained, I don't believe the
media has in its capacity the ability to sit on its own hands) from this side of the Atlantic too.
Funny, it looks idiotic and something that the media should be refrained from doing (notice, I said they should be refrained, I don't believe the media has in its capacity the ability to sit on it s own hands).
:)
They shouldn't be allowed to publish or reveal any election results, or exit polling results, untill after the last polling place has closed (Alaska?).
The polls close somewhere around midnight in Alaska I think, if they want they could do a half hour lead in, coverring the issues (federal/local), and then do a recap of the voting across the country. That would be fine. This, "We have been here for 6 hours and we're still getting it wrong" is just ridiculous.
Oh... and slightly O.T. The New York Post had a headline of "BUSH WINS!!!" it's already been pulled, but if Gore manages to squeak in, its going to make one heck of a collectors item
Sure... your vote didn't count unless you live in Florida....
/EL ECTION/2000/results/index.president.html)
;)
or in Iowa with 6,000 votes keeping Bush from beating Gore
or in New Hampshire with 7,000 votes keeping Gore from beating Bush (Nader took 22,000 BTW)
or in Wisconsin with 6,000 votes keeping Bush from beating Gore
(this being just a listing of those states with less then 10,000 votes separating the two candidates acording to http://www.cnn.com
In most of those places (and lots others) 3rd party candidates such as Nader played a key roll in depriving one party or the other of beating their opponent.
Interesting election, personally I hate sweeps week stunts where they have cliff-hangers, and 'tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion' but I'll make an exception this time
Absolutely true.
You want to know why the candidates keep courting the 'old' vote? Because they vote. Wether its because they see it as important, they want to fit in and have something to talk about, or because they don't really have anything else to do with their time, the elderly as a demographic group have a large voter turnout. You want the candidates to start careing about issues that might affect you? Great... go to the polls and vote... and drag all your friends and all their friends. If suddenly the 25 and under demographic was going to the polls in record numbers, then the candidates would be trying to sway your vote, and that means issues that effect you.
(Just out of the 25 and under category myself)
Yes,
...
:)
You can blame my Chaotic nature
Or you can blame the fact that I'm a Gemini...
Or the fact that I liked different people running for different offices, for different reasons. Voting the 'party line' is not the way to either, and sometimes different levels of government should be different. A balance of opinions can be a good thing.
I'm also registered as a Republican but grew up as a Democrat... long story involving a friend who was running for office and needed Republicans to help him.
Okay... they only talk about IBM's not putting out a laptop but its an interesting piece (and in the print version it had Linus's picture to go along with it :)
e ws/Media_and_Business/a-87490.asp
http://www.nydailynews.com/2000-11-07/News_and_Vi
I went, I voted for the best choice I felt could win for President, and who I wanted (mostly Libertarian with some Green Party) for everything else, but I noticed something interesting.
For a number of elections in my district (such as electing Judges, or in a few other cases I forget), i saw things like "Choose any two" and then the exact same two candidates are listed straight across the board (Republican/Democrat/Liberal/Family, etc). What sort of a choice is that !?!?
Why do they even bother to hold elections for these people when we don't have a choice? We vote for them or not but they are the only ones running. THAT is why people don't turn out for elections.
Show them how wrong they are and turn out for elections even if you believe your vote for President won't count. There are LOTS of other things being decided on the ballot (including referendums). Your vote most certainly WILL count on those!
640 K^HGigabytes should be enough for anyone...
;)
Here here.
I keep hearing statistics of how many elegible voters actually vote. If a significant enough fraction of them came out, and voted (doesn't matter who for), they could have a tremendous influence on the whole system.
If you don't normally vote, great, just sign your name, walk in, and do nothing.
Thats right, don't fill out that part of the ballot. There are usually other choices on the ballot (local ordinances, other elected officials, etc.). If you don't like your choices, don't cast your vote. If you want to see the political parties have a caniption, watch them count the votes and realize that 30% more people came out to vote and didn't like their choices BUT STILL CAME OUT TO VOTE. Then watch the next election when you find a choice you do like and it isn't one of the major political parties.
Even if he does claim to have invented the Internet.
Okay, I'll admit I love poking fun at him about this silly quote as much as anyone.
(Slight digresion)Has anyone else gotten a bellyache from the latest 'Snikers' advertisement with the guy going into a polling booth only to have a talking cartoon elephant plop down on one of his shoulders saying things like "I'm the same as my father" "We both wear pants" and a cartoon talking donkey on the other shoulder saying things like "I invented the internet" and retorting with "I invented pants".
But back to the subject. In context, what Gore had said was that he was responsible for championing Arpanet in Congress, which he was, and that he felt like its father (or something to that effect), which quickly got balooned out of control by the media. I was rather surprised when I found out that he actually DID have something to do with getting the internet created. He didn't create it, but he said something too close and its too good a story to pass up, and besides, a Vice Presidents primary job is to make the Pres look good, and he had a heck of a job with that one.
Not sure if this is something new, but when I was in college the best paying job on campus was working in the Computer Labs (the school kept a decent size lab with about 18 computers in about half a dozen locations for the student body, 8 PS2s and 8 Macs, with 1 each for the lab attendent to play on^H^H^H^H^H^H^Huse).
:)
:)
Trust me, they advertised that they payed best, but they were still having problems attracting CS or EE majors to help work in it (think 'First and Second line tech support where your in the same room as clueless users'
I think I was the only CS major who worked there, the rest were all English and Poly-Sci.
Of course the best part of working there was that your student ID was keyed to open the doors to all the dorms so you could get to work in any of them (which made it easier to visit friends) instead of just the one you lived in, but I remember being amused that it would unlock the janitorial closets also
As discussed recently on Mandrake Forum
and as recently discussed on Slashdot/A&g t;
Sorry to be blunt: but here's my argument for Linux. Fuck price. Use Linux because its reliable
... its better we take them by surprise when they've been using a Linux system for a while and they suddenly realise they've become a zealot also :)
No need to apologize to me, I agree with you that instability and downtime are a factor that Gartner didn't include. Based on their own choice of criterion though (price), Linux still can use that argument in its favor against companies like Microsoft. You're right, price isn't an issue. Do people really think that a company that pays for Windows 2000 licenses can be swooned into buying Linux W/ a free office suite? Maybe, but the company is much more insterested in the productivity of the users, and thus the stability of the platform. They are also interested in maintainability, and the way that Unix in general can shield the system from the users can help keep them from botching up a system (and it even has remote access features built in so they can save on a third party software like PCAnywhere).
There are lots more reasons then just price, but I wasn't focussing on why Linux is better then NT, and why to use it. I was just commenting on one piece of the argument that Gartner threw in at the end, designed to stick in thier readers mind that seemed to have as much insight as the usual 'sound byte'.
I'm already in the Linux camp so don't worry about offending me, but you should be careful how you put things to people who aren't. We may want to push an opinion, but we don't want to come off like zealots.
I think originally it was designed as (among other things) a way of running multiple OS "kernels" at once while Mach handled all the device driver interfaces and things like that.
Anyone know if this means you could run both OS X and Hurd simultaneously on the same machine? (odd thought but it might be interesting for Hurd development.)
From the end of the article:
The total-cost-of-ownership argument on behalf of Linux will disappear (Unix platform vendors like IBM and Sun already offer their Unix OSs at virtually no charge).
*COUGH* Microsoft *COUGH*
I may be mistaken, but I remember hearing that the U.S. never actually signed some (all?) of those treaties.
Well... you might not owe rent, but what if they started changing Room and Board? :)
I never realized that all of the history in Gundam Wing twisted off from the establishment of UCITA, DMCA and other such garbage... makes sense though.
Wouldn't it be easier to just repeal the laws? (of course it WOULD lack those cool space battles)
No.... guns aren't an answer, but if gun laws were more flexable, we might have some more fun Darwin Award stories.
What's the first thing I do? Trash everything even tangentially associated with the crack on my system.
Yeah... right... with the proper equipment I know some of the security people in our company can go back about a dozen (maybe more) revs of a sectors contents. Make sure you wipe that info very well.
pretty soon they'll define commercials as part of the broadcast TV access mechanism .... and ban your mute button .....
I remember in the Pilot for Max Headroom, while investigating someone who had died from the Blip-vert trials, Edison Carter noticed the dead guy had added an extremely illegal modification to his television... an 'off' switch.
For some reason this popped into my mind recently and it has been shouting out more and more in disturbing tones, especially when I see some of the idiocy that Congress and the media giants pull.
How do you think video stores operate? Do you think they have a special licence? No, they don't. You can buy tapes at retail and rent them, it is your RIGHT!
Yes and no. They don't have a special license, but there is a special deal worked out (at least with Blockbuster). Blockbuster and similar retailers buy videos during a first release just for them. The tapes typically go for about 60-80$ each (to make up for what the studio perceives it is going to loose and priced so that your typical viewer won't want to buy one before the 'General Availability' release). Blockbuster has arranged with most studios to get a special discount (which they use to bludgeon the small 'ma and pa' rental places out of business.