at least here in manitoba, canada, we use a process where you a) get a piece of paper with straight lines connecting the checkbox with the person you are voting for, b) you place a checkmark on the candidate you wish to vote for c) you feed it into a machine which records your vote, and d) if there are any discrepencies, all the ballots can be counted by hand. all the ballot stations are manned by volunteers representing all parties. I can't understand why places like the ukraine and the USA have made this process more difficult than it should be. It's not like any one party is beter than another. Perhaps its just nations that start with the letter U.. Ukraine, USA, Uganda.. Uruguay.. heh. Uruguay.
I still own my uproar. great little mp3 phone, wish theyd come out with something new but for some idiotic reason telus isnt coming out with any more.
apparently they sold like hotcakes when it was first released (at least by telus in canada) and they ran out and decided not to continue with them. theyre only dual mode whereas most of the phones telus sells these days are tri-mode phones.
still, samsung made a solid little phone. the headset/remote combination is pretty nicely done too. id say more nice things about it but i dont want everyone to realise you can get a combo phone/mp3 player off ebay every once in a while for fairly decent prices. ive even got a couple backup batteries for this thing and an external charger that wouldve originally cost 100 bucks. still, parts can be hard to find now that nobody makes these things anymore.
64 megs is ok but would be nice if someone came out with a phone with at least 256MB.
the best thing about the uproar though is that it has support in linux and MacOS X, but apparently no longer on windows. (the uproar is basically a fused cell phone with a yepp mp3 player, so the program i use for linux, called sulu (samsung uproar linux utility) apparently works with both. had some usb issues with early 2.6 kernels, but seems to work with the latest (except 2.6.8, which hangs on my motherboards chipset at boot.. but thats a whole other can of worms.. mga dri seems broken too.. oh well itl stable out eventually)
you know, there are other phones out there that are combo mp3 players. the only problem is they do too many things. the uproar is basically a phone, with a clock, and it plays mp3's for about 10 hours and is rechargable. thats more than enough for me.
on the canadian $5 bill you can turn sir wilfred laurier into spock.
just draw some pointy ears and the hairdo and voila! perfect likeness..sigh.. i guess you guys win this round...
my newspaper publishes the sunday funnies on saturday. I have to say I have never been much of a fan of breathed's sunday strips. To me he was at his best when he was doing serial stuff during the week in black and white. thats why Im disappointed that Opus is pretty much the same thing as Outland. In fact, if you go by the first comic, it seems worse, but I'll reserve judgement. When Bloom County left I eventually took solace in what was then called Robotman. (Its now called Monty, and the innocent character of Robotman, who was manufactured to sell toys originally, was gone).. Well, I'm starting to ramble, but what endeared those early cartoons was that Opus seemed to be the innocent naive straight man, just as robotman was. we identify with him, but we laugh at bill the cat, who is the cosmo kramer to opus's george costanza, if i can use a seinfeld comparison. Lately I've been reading "Arlo and Janis" which most people probably don't read or get but I find it's defeatist perspective humorous. Foxtrot is always decent as well. theres a few others like for better or for worse that i wouldnt admit to reading normally but hey im essentially anonymous. so what the heck, theres always a joke in that one. in fact, for better or for worse is one of the few comics that follows the original bloom county daily style (except in a serious tone).. Furthermore, I seem to be on a rant here, I didn't care for the way Berke Breathed's art has evolved. It's as if he's trying to work out a saturday morning cartoon deal with fox. oh well, im all ranted out, but thats where I stand on the subject.
perhaps his point is that tom bombadils total retardness is what caused sauron to turn to evil. because who would want to be good if tom bombadil is the example of the best goodness has.
unite behind DEBIAN? thats the single most rediculous thing I've ever heard. Debian is the worst distribution for desktop use ever. even slackware and gentoo have better desktop support and installation instructions. Did Perens even THINK about any other distributions before saying this? The most promising desktop version of linux is Ark Linux which also is based on apt-get but with rpm packages instead. However, it's already usable for almost any newbie who tries it. DEBIAN? Do we want to wait 50 years for a desktop linux that doesnt play dvd's, or come with mplayer because of anal guidelines? honestly. rediculous. sure lets all unite behind debian (which is a concept in itself rediculous, nobody is going to be switching over to debian that hasn't already) creating a desktop linux distribution is a balance between stability and having the latest apps, and in the desktop linux world right now having the latest apps is still more important, because the desktop linux world is still playing catchup. its in the final lap with ark linux though.
while i agree that xfce isnt really a desktop in the same way that kde or gnome are (application consistancy and integration are key ingrediants of a useable desktop.. where in my opinion kde is the most advanced)
still, xpde is a decent project for those without the need for anything more. its more than a window manager in my opinion, but not quite a desktop. i admire what theyve done with xpde (i hated version 1.. totally useless to me:) ) so keep up the good work you guys, even though ill probably stick to kde.. cause in my opinion kde has reached perfect functionality, and merely needs touch ups in stability and some minor places where look and feel can be improved,and im confident kde 3.2 will solve most of them.
while i applaud lindows and seagate for this, I personally use Ark Linux arklinux.com which does the auto-login thing that lindows does but in a safer way. Plus the fact that arklinux is community based is a big plus as well. the way lindows runs as root is just wrong, arklinux created a program called kapabilities that makes it simple to give a user access to certain configuration things. plus its one of the few linux distros thats apt-rpm based.
its really hard for me to weigh in on lindows. sometimes they seem like a smart and helpful company and sometimes they seem SCO/Caldera like. still, anything that gets more people using linux on the desktop is great to see.
Ark Linux www.arklinux.com is an apt-get based red hat derivative linux that is very desktop oriented. its in its late alpha stages right now but is very stable. If you run debian testing its probably more than stable enough for your needs.. here is a link to a review of arklinux at extremetech... It is very KDE-centric and uses the keramik/geramik theme sets to make kde and gnome look similar. I've been using it for months and its by far the best linux distribution ive ever used (and ive used them all)
I've been using KMPlayer almost exclusively since I began using Ark Linux a few months back. It's a desktop apt-rpm based distro and its great. It uses the Keramik/Geramik themes by default which gives the gnome and kde programs a mostly consistant look. Theres going to be a new alpha coming out soon, but they've been pretty stable for me. It's like debian without the excessive zealotry and instead of debs, rpm's, and instead of a crappy installer and configuration utilities, it lets you play tetris on the install! Anyways, it has KMPlayer in its apt sources list and its great (though I prefer kaffeine, the frontend for xine, for dvd's, as it does menus fairly flawlessly in dvd's) in conclusion, KMPlayer rocks (so help out the developer to make it even better:)
Many people are not aware of this, but a penguin-like bird actually did once live off of what is now canadas coast of labrador. Its name was "The Great Auk" (ontario site)
aka pinguinus impennis. It was actually the original penguin and was pretty much hunted to extinction. some other sites include (birdsofna.org you can find many links with a search for great auk on google
On the Sci-Fi channel they had this movie and it showed that the people of atlantis used diamonds for everything. even for turning people into half man/half bull creatures and for brainwashing people. I forget the name and point of the movie, but I do believe Atlantis eventually blew up.
Simpsons has been going on forever and we're starting to take it for granted (because the last few seasons before this one were totally horrible) at least this way itl stay on top forever. Maybe they'll do a movie or something. who knows.
whenever they bring back a cancelled show it always ends up worse anyways. gargoyles was brought back as the goliath chronicles and the animation was hideous. star trek was brought back.. and who remembers those episodes!
It also makes DVD collection easier when theres only 5 sets to collect.. and thatl mean Groening and the rest can get to work on pumping out the simpsons DVD's (ive pledged to purchase up to season 8)
I shall leave you all with some great futurama quotes.
Hermes: Baby needs a new pair of shoes
Zoidberg: To hell with your spoiled baby! I need those shoes!
Fry: Thats IT! You can only take my money for so long before you take it all and I say enough!
Fry: Leela, Bender, we're going grave-robbing.
Bender: I'll get my kit!
Fry: I betcha Leela's holding out for a nice guy with one eye
Bender: That'll take forever. What she oughta do is find a nice guy with two eyes and poke one out.
Fry: Yeah, that'd be a timesaver
Bender: Another classic science fiction series cancelled before its time (referring to star trek)
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at least here in manitoba, canada, we use a process where you a) get a piece of paper with straight lines connecting the checkbox with the person you are voting for, b) you place a checkmark on the candidate you wish to vote for c) you feed it into a machine which records your vote, and d) if there are any discrepencies, all the ballots can be counted by hand. all the ballot stations are manned by volunteers representing all parties. I can't understand why places like the ukraine and the USA have made this process more difficult than it should be. It's not like any one party is beter than another. Perhaps its just nations that start with the letter U.. Ukraine, USA, Uganda .. Uruguay.. heh. Uruguay.
I still own my uproar. great little mp3 phone, wish theyd come out with something new but for some idiotic reason telus isnt coming out with any more. apparently they sold like hotcakes when it was first released (at least by telus in canada) and they ran out and decided not to continue with them. theyre only dual mode whereas most of the phones telus sells these days are tri-mode phones. still, samsung made a solid little phone. the headset/remote combination is pretty nicely done too. id say more nice things about it but i dont want everyone to realise you can get a combo phone/mp3 player off ebay every once in a while for fairly decent prices. ive even got a couple backup batteries for this thing and an external charger that wouldve originally cost 100 bucks. still, parts can be hard to find now that nobody makes these things anymore. 64 megs is ok but would be nice if someone came out with a phone with at least 256MB. the best thing about the uproar though is that it has support in linux and MacOS X, but apparently no longer on windows. (the uproar is basically a fused cell phone with a yepp mp3 player, so the program i use for linux, called sulu (samsung uproar linux utility) apparently works with both. had some usb issues with early 2.6 kernels, but seems to work with the latest (except 2.6.8, which hangs on my motherboards chipset at boot.. but thats a whole other can of worms.. mga dri seems broken too.. oh well itl stable out eventually) you know, there are other phones out there that are combo mp3 players. the only problem is they do too many things. the uproar is basically a phone, with a clock, and it plays mp3's for about 10 hours and is rechargable. thats more than enough for me.
on the canadian $5 bill you can turn sir wilfred laurier into spock. just draw some pointy ears and the hairdo and voila! perfect likeness ..sigh.. i guess you guys win this round...
my newspaper publishes the sunday funnies on saturday. I have to say I have never been much of a fan of breathed's sunday strips. To me he was at his best when he was doing serial stuff during the week in black and white. thats why Im disappointed that Opus is pretty much the same thing as Outland. In fact, if you go by the first comic, it seems worse, but I'll reserve judgement. When Bloom County left I eventually took solace in what was then called Robotman. (Its now called Monty, and the innocent character of Robotman, who was manufactured to sell toys originally, was gone).. Well, I'm starting to ramble, but what endeared those early cartoons was that Opus seemed to be the innocent naive straight man, just as robotman was. we identify with him, but we laugh at bill the cat, who is the cosmo kramer to opus's george costanza, if i can use a seinfeld comparison. Lately I've been reading "Arlo and Janis" which most people probably don't read or get but I find it's defeatist perspective humorous. Foxtrot is always decent as well. theres a few others like for better or for worse that i wouldnt admit to reading normally but hey im essentially anonymous. so what the heck, theres always a joke in that one. in fact, for better or for worse is one of the few comics that follows the original bloom county daily style (except in a serious tone).. Furthermore, I seem to be on a rant here, I didn't care for the way Berke Breathed's art has evolved. It's as if he's trying to work out a saturday morning cartoon deal with fox. oh well, im all ranted out, but thats where I stand on the subject.
perhaps his point is that tom bombadils total retardness is what caused sauron to turn to evil. because who would want to be good if tom bombadil is the example of the best goodness has.
unite behind DEBIAN? thats the single most rediculous thing I've ever heard. Debian is the worst distribution for desktop use ever. even slackware and gentoo have better desktop support and installation instructions. Did Perens even THINK about any other distributions before saying this? The most promising desktop version of linux is Ark Linux which also is based on apt-get but with rpm packages instead. However, it's already usable for almost any newbie who tries it. DEBIAN? Do we want to wait 50 years for a desktop linux that doesnt play dvd's, or come with mplayer because of anal guidelines? honestly. rediculous. sure lets all unite behind debian (which is a concept in itself rediculous, nobody is going to be switching over to debian that hasn't already) creating a desktop linux distribution is a balance between stability and having the latest apps, and in the desktop linux world right now having the latest apps is still more important, because the desktop linux world is still playing catchup. its in the final lap with ark linux though.
fact is, until tivo is in canada it will never take off, eh. thats because canada sets the trends. so, screw you tivo, ill use mythtv
while i agree that xfce isnt really a desktop in the same way that kde or gnome are (application consistancy and integration are key ingrediants of a useable desktop.. where in my opinion kde is the most advanced) still, xpde is a decent project for those without the need for anything more. its more than a window manager in my opinion, but not quite a desktop. i admire what theyve done with xpde (i hated version 1.. totally useless to me :) ) so keep up the good work you guys, even though ill probably stick to kde.. cause in my opinion kde has reached perfect functionality, and merely needs touch ups in stability and some minor places where look and feel can be improved ,and im confident kde 3.2 will solve most of them.
while i applaud lindows and seagate for this, I personally use Ark Linux arklinux.com which does the auto-login thing that lindows does but in a safer way. Plus the fact that arklinux is community based is a big plus as well. the way lindows runs as root is just wrong, arklinux created a program called kapabilities that makes it simple to give a user access to certain configuration things. plus its one of the few linux distros thats apt-rpm based. its really hard for me to weigh in on lindows. sometimes they seem like a smart and helpful company and sometimes they seem SCO/Caldera like. still, anything that gets more people using linux on the desktop is great to see.
Ark Linux www.arklinux.com is an apt-get based red hat derivative linux that is very desktop oriented. its in its late alpha stages right now but is very stable. If you run debian testing its probably more than stable enough for your needs.. here is a link to a review of arklinux at extremetech ... It is very KDE-centric and uses the keramik/geramik theme sets to make kde and gnome look similar. I've been using it for months and its by far the best linux distribution ive ever used (and ive used them all)
I've been using KMPlayer almost exclusively since I began using Ark Linux a few months back. It's a desktop apt-rpm based distro and its great. It uses the Keramik/Geramik themes by default which gives the gnome and kde programs a mostly consistant look. Theres going to be a new alpha coming out soon, but they've been pretty stable for me. It's like debian without the excessive zealotry and instead of debs, rpm's, and instead of a crappy installer and configuration utilities, it lets you play tetris on the install! Anyways, it has KMPlayer in its apt sources list and its great (though I prefer kaffeine, the frontend for xine, for dvd's, as it does menus fairly flawlessly in dvd's) in conclusion, KMPlayer rocks (so help out the developer to make it even better :)
cause its my birthday. As good a day as any.
Many people are not aware of this, but a penguin-like bird actually did once live off of what is now canadas coast of labrador. Its name was "The Great Auk" (ontario site) aka pinguinus impennis. It was actually the original penguin and was pretty much hunted to extinction. some other sites include (birdsofna.org you can find many links with a search for great auk on google
On the Sci-Fi channel they had this movie and it showed that the people of atlantis used diamonds for everything. even for turning people into half man/half bull creatures and for brainwashing people. I forget the name and point of the movie, but I do believe Atlantis eventually blew up.
Simpsons has been going on forever and we're starting to take it for granted (because the last few seasons before this one were totally horrible) at least this way itl stay on top forever. Maybe they'll do a movie or something. who knows.
whenever they bring back a cancelled show it always ends up worse anyways. gargoyles was brought back as the goliath chronicles and the animation was hideous. star trek was brought back.. and who remembers those episodes!
It also makes DVD collection easier when theres only 5 sets to collect.. and thatl mean Groening and the rest can get to work on pumping out the simpsons DVD's (ive pledged to purchase up to season 8)
I shall leave you all with some great futurama quotes.
Hermes: Baby needs a new pair of shoes
Zoidberg: To hell with your spoiled baby! I need those shoes!
Fry: Thats IT! You can only take my money for so long before you take it all and I say enough!
Fry: Leela, Bender, we're going grave-robbing.
Bender: I'll get my kit!
Fry: I betcha Leela's holding out for a nice guy with one eye
Bender: That'll take forever. What she oughta do is find a nice guy with two eyes and poke one out.
Fry: Yeah, that'd be a timesaver
Bender: Another classic science fiction series cancelled before its time (referring to star trek)