Your "Two Party Preferential" system has, in effect, given the voter not only the ability to indicate which candidate he would most like elected, but also the ability to indicate which candidates he would least like elected. That's why a candidate with the most primary votes can lose -- because 1) he hasn't enough supporters to win outright, and 2) everyone else's supporters have actively voted against him.
Sounds like a pretty good system to me.
(AFAIK, all our states use "first past the post" for electing Representatives and Senators.)
"it would show that third party candidates really could step in and challenge The Business Party"
George Wallace, John Anderson, and especially Ross Perot have already shown this. They have also, unfortunately, demonstrated that you can't build a contending party in the U.S. on a 5%-20% presidential election return - at least not to date.
Although the Plan carries Marshall's name, it does so primarily because he, as Secretary of State, presented it. The man whose vision created the Marshall Plan, and who is not coincidentally mentioned elsewhere in this piece, was Dean Acheson. I think the two, Marshall and Acheson, were too closely linked to argue that one of them, alone, is the Man of the Century -- even the American Century.
Well, you can always try to convince your elected representatives to withdraw your country from the WTO. If that fails, you can organize boycotts of the offending goods.
BTW, we engage the offending countries every session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Why aren't we trying to make them pariahs there as well as through trade? And, more to the point, when's the riot scheduled for New York?
The WTO cannot strike down laws that "concern wages, health regulations, working conditions, child labor and environmental damage", except where those laws prohibit the import of certain goods. For example, the WTO has the power to say that you must allow the import of goods produced with child labor, but it has not an iota of power to say that you must allow goods to be produced with child labor in your own country. In fact, the WTO has no power at all, if a country chooses to withdraw from it rather than be forced to allow unacceptable imports.
It _is_ contrary to the "information wants to be free" ethic. The whole point of that ethic is that it allows the reader to see all the facts necessary to make the decision _for_ _himself_ about which is the "information" and which is the "disinformation".
Robert Browning, actually -- although I suppose it may be older than his 1841 use of it in "Pippa Passes":
The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his Heaven - All's right with the world!
If I understand correctly, your problem is that it is likely that, were Microsoft to be broken up along vertical lines, there would not be any combination of OS and applications that would work together as well as an all-Microsoft solution does today.
Why must this be the case, unless working under the same roof as the Windows developers gives Microsoft application developers some advantage over application developers who work for a competitor? But if this advantage exists, Microsoft is violating anti-trust law by leveraging its OS monopoly to increase its presence in the applications market.
If that is the case, then the current situation harms not just Netscape, as you suggest, but every applications development firm that competes with Microsoft, and the proposed breakup helps every such firm.
I have to admit that I am a little puzzled by your concern. Why couldn't you just go ahead and use the products of the microMicrosofts after such a breakup, with the same confidence you have now? At the point of the breakup, the applications would work with the OS as well as they do now. If the OS entity is diligent in publicizing changed interfaces, the applications should continue to work as well. The only difference should be that applications developed by non-Microsoft firms would work better with the OS than they had before, but that shouldn't harm you.
Cheer up. Things aren't nearly as bad for you as you seem to think they are.
'The goal of capitolism is to make as MUCH money as possible.'
No, the goal of capitolism is to move the seat of government from one city to another as often as possible, so that the resulting construction can give the economy a boost -- what's that? Capitalism? Oh. Never mind.
'The fact that people like Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh have a following is truly frightening.'
Oh, come now. Nearly every European democracy (except Germany, where it is illegal) has its own loony right-winger who actually gets elected to the national legislature and who gets 5% and up of the vote when running for the top office in the land.
There will always be some non-trivial sum of money required to campaign for a federal office. The nominal purpose of an election is for the people to select the person they feel would best represent them. This is something they cannot do without sufficient information to differentiate between the opposing candidates. Surely it would be unconstitutional for the state to provide less money than it takes to provide that information to all the potential voters, something that is not guaranteed under the current system.
Any system that limits an individual's ability to support a campaign must also be carefully examined to make sure that it does not gag the public. It would be dangerous if the only information available about the candidates was that authored by the media or the candidates themselves.
I myself have nothing against public financing of campaigns -- I check the appropriate box on my federal return every year (on the other hand, I never check the corresponding boxes on my state return, which channel money directly to the Republican or Democratic parties). We just need to come up with a system that truly allows everyone a chance to be heard.
I don't believe that newspapers with an on-line presence affected by these regulations, yet mine, at least, is forever urging me to support this candidate or the other.
Perhaps all you need to do is start up a newsletter, and have the greatest part of it be the op-ed section.
People avoid the modern equivalent in none of the cases you cited. It's just that the modern equivalent is more pleasant because of the march of technology. Other than point and click, there has been no technological advance in going from a known entity to the address of that entity.
The only reason that easily remembered addresses have existed to this point is that there have not been many addresses. Once it was easy to know the telephone numbers of everyone you might ever want to call -- when telephone numbers were less than a handful of digits. Now you can't, because the increase in the number of telephones was necessarily accompanied by a corresponding increase in the size of the address. It is precisely this problem that is causing domain name conflicts.
As I'm sure has been said many times, that's all a domain name is, an address.
The fact that Microsoft's headquarters are on Microsoft Way doesn't make it illegal for there to be a Microsoft Drive in Redmond (although the 911 people may not like it), nor does it make it illegal for a concern named The Software Company to have their offices on Microsoft Drive. It's easy to see how mail could be incorrectly delivered in this situation, but Microsoft does not, as far as I know, have a right to make The Software Company move. Nor could it have forced a neighborhood to change the name of its street from Microsoft Way so that Microsoft could use it.
As with snail mail addresses, no one should expect to have an easily remembered Internet address. A case in point: I had to look up Microsoft's address before I could use it in the example above. Before the Internet, people used Rolodexes and the like because they could not know all the street addresses and phone numbers they had reason to need; there is no reason they should expect to avoid the electronic equivalents, e-mail address books and browser bookmarks.
Make people pay up front to register domain names and there's no way they'll be able to squat on all the pleasant sounding ones. And a pleasant sounding domain name is the most anyone should expect to get. If you're good enough for people to want to do business with you, they'll find a way to remember your address.
I'm going to write my Congressdroids and tell them that I, at least, want them to give this one -- and all those like it -- a big thumbs down.
Hal Rogers is a good guy, if a little addicted to pork (not that I'm complaining, since I'm one he sends the barrels back to). I think he'll do the right thing.
Actually, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Christian minister. There are, in fact, millions of African-Americans, as there are of nearly any ethnic group you care to name, who are Christian in name, in belief, and in action. You can take that fact for what you think it's worth.
Slashdot Mirror
Your "Two Party Preferential" system has, in effect, given the voter not only the ability to indicate which candidate he would most like elected, but also the ability to indicate which candidates he would least like elected. That's why a candidate with the most primary votes can lose -- because 1) he hasn't enough supporters to win outright, and 2) everyone else's supporters have actively voted against him.
Sounds like a pretty good system to me.
(AFAIK, all our states use "first past the post" for electing Representatives and Senators.)
"it would show that third party candidates really could step in and challenge The Business Party"
George Wallace, John Anderson, and especially Ross Perot have already shown this. They have also, unfortunately, demonstrated that you can't build a contending party in the U.S. on a 5%-20% presidential election return - at least not to date.
Well, you're doing better than I am, then. I couldn't even find a copy of the commercial tape...
Although the Plan carries Marshall's name, it does so primarily because he, as Secretary of State, presented it. The man whose vision created the Marshall Plan, and who is not coincidentally mentioned elsewhere in this piece, was Dean Acheson. I think the two, Marshall and Acheson, were too closely linked to argue that one of them, alone, is the Man of the Century -- even the American Century.
"Clinton (a pseudo-Rhode[s] Scholar himself)"
Actually, Bill Clinton is, you might say, a full-blown Rhodes Scholar...
Well, you can always try to convince your elected representatives to withdraw your country from the WTO. If that fails, you can organize boycotts of the offending goods.
BTW, we engage the offending countries every session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Why aren't we trying to make them pariahs there as well as through trade? And, more to the point, when's the riot scheduled for New York?
The WTO cannot strike down laws that "concern wages, health regulations, working conditions, child labor and environmental damage", except where those laws prohibit the import of certain goods. For example, the WTO has the power to say that you must allow the import of goods produced with child labor, but it has not an iota of power to say that you must allow goods to be produced with child labor in your own country. In fact, the WTO has no power at all, if a country chooses to withdraw from it rather than be forced to allow unacceptable imports.
It _is_ contrary to the "information wants to be free" ethic. The whole point of that ethic is that it allows the reader to see all the facts necessary to make the decision _for_ _himself_ about which is the "information" and which is the "disinformation".
Considering that there are some 4 million acres devoted to rice production in the US, "rice paddy" works just fine...
Robert Browning, actually -- although I suppose it may be older than his 1841 use of it in "Pippa Passes":
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven -
All's right with the world!
If Windows 2002 would just borrow an idea or two from the *ix side, it wouldn't need a defragger :-).
If I understand correctly, your problem is that it is likely that, were Microsoft to be broken up along vertical lines, there would not be any combination of OS and applications that would work together as well as an all-Microsoft solution does today.
Why must this be the case, unless working under the same roof as the Windows developers gives Microsoft application developers some advantage over application developers who work for a competitor? But if this advantage exists, Microsoft is violating anti-trust law by leveraging its OS monopoly to increase its presence in the applications market.
If that is the case, then the current situation harms not just Netscape, as you suggest, but every applications development firm that competes with Microsoft, and the proposed breakup helps every such firm.
I have to admit that I am a little puzzled by your concern. Why couldn't you just go ahead and use the products of the microMicrosofts after such a breakup, with the same confidence you have now? At the point of the breakup, the applications would work with the OS as well as they do now. If the OS entity is diligent in publicizing changed interfaces, the applications should continue to work as well. The only difference should be that applications developed by non-Microsoft firms would work better with the OS than they had before, but that shouldn't harm you.
Cheer up. Things aren't nearly as bad for you as you seem to think they are.
'however the software I wrote was "Y2K compliant" and assumed any 2-digit year less than 80 was in the next century'
:-).
Uh-oh. Don't answer your doorbell - it might be Bruce Dickens
'The goal of capitolism is to make as MUCH money as possible.'
No, the goal of capitolism is to move the seat of government from one city to another as often as possible, so that the resulting construction can give the economy a boost -- what's that? Capitalism?
Oh.
Never mind.
OTOH, people could join me in a Election Day half-day of vacation. When I get home, I'll gather up the 9-year-old daughter and it's off to the polls.
It is called Pegasus, IIRC. It seems to me that it made it into the newspapers about 1985.
'The fact that people like Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh have a following is truly frightening.'
Oh, come now. Nearly every European democracy (except Germany, where it is illegal) has its own loony right-winger who actually gets elected to the national legislature and who gets 5% and up of the vote when running for the top office in the land.
bluebottle
eccles
seagoon
crun
minnie
moriarty
grytpype
greenslade
bloodnok
littlejim
and plenty more where those came from...
There will always be some non-trivial sum of money required to campaign for a federal office. The nominal purpose of an election is for the people to select the person they feel would best represent them. This is something they cannot do without sufficient information to differentiate between the opposing candidates. Surely it would be unconstitutional for the state to provide less money than it takes to provide that information to all the potential voters, something that is not guaranteed under the current system.
Any system that limits an individual's ability to support a campaign must also be carefully examined to make sure that it does not gag the public. It would be dangerous if the only information available about the candidates was that authored by the media or the candidates themselves.
I myself have nothing against public financing of campaigns -- I check the appropriate box on my federal return every year (on the other hand, I never check the corresponding boxes on my state return, which channel money directly to the Republican or Democratic parties). We just need to come up with a system that truly allows everyone a chance to be heard.
I don't believe that newspapers with an on-line presence affected by these regulations, yet mine, at least, is forever urging me to support this candidate or the other.
Perhaps all you need to do is start up a newsletter, and have the greatest part of it be the op-ed section.
Surely there's nothing undocumented when you've got the source?
People avoid the modern equivalent in none of the cases you cited. It's just that the modern equivalent is more pleasant because of the march of technology. Other than point and click, there has been no technological advance in going from a known entity to the address of that entity.
The only reason that easily remembered addresses have existed to this point is that there have not been many addresses. Once it was easy to know the telephone numbers of everyone you might ever want to call -- when telephone numbers were less than a handful of digits. Now you can't, because the increase in the number of telephones was necessarily accompanied by a corresponding increase in the size of the address. It is precisely this problem that is causing domain name conflicts.
As I'm sure has been said many times, that's all a domain name is, an address.
The fact that Microsoft's headquarters are on Microsoft Way doesn't make it illegal for there to be a Microsoft Drive in Redmond (although the 911 people may not like it), nor does it make it illegal for a concern named The Software Company to have their offices on Microsoft Drive. It's easy to see how mail could be incorrectly delivered in this situation, but Microsoft does not, as far as I know, have a right to make The Software Company move. Nor could it have forced a neighborhood to change the name of its street from Microsoft Way so that Microsoft could use it.
As with snail mail addresses, no one should expect to have an easily remembered Internet address. A case in point: I had to look up Microsoft's address before I could use it in the example above. Before the Internet, people used Rolodexes and the like because they could not know all the street addresses and phone numbers they had reason to need; there is no reason they should expect to avoid the electronic equivalents, e-mail address books and browser bookmarks.
Make people pay up front to register domain names and there's no way they'll be able to squat on all the pleasant sounding ones. And a pleasant sounding domain name is the most anyone should expect to get. If you're good enough for people to want to do business with you, they'll find a way to remember your address.
I'm going to write my Congressdroids and tell them that I, at least, want them to give this one -- and all those like it -- a big thumbs down.
Hal Rogers is a good guy, if a little addicted to pork (not that I'm complaining, since I'm one he sends the barrels back to). I think he'll do the right thing.
Actually, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Christian minister. There are, in fact, millions of African-Americans, as there are of nearly any ethnic group you care to name, who are Christian in name, in belief, and in action. You can take that fact for what you think it's worth.