Elections in Europe are not as simple as you would think. Take Austria for example: There are 9 states which are each divided into a couple of regions. Based on the last census, every region is assigned a number of seats in the legislative assembly. For each of these regions, states and at the national level the parties make a list of their candidates. Voters can now vote for the party of their choice, but they can also pick 2 people from that party's regional and state lists to give them a premium vote. The seats are then assigned at the regional level first. After that, the state level is taken into account and additional seats are distributed (taking into account that some parties have already gotten seats at the regional level). The remaining seats at the national level are then given to the parties according to the d'Hondt distribution scheme, which is similar to the one used for the US House of Representatives. The seats are always given in order to the people on the party lists, but candidates who gain enough premium votes can move to the top of the list.
In conclusion, this system is more balanced than the "winner-takes-it-all" system that the US use, but it is far from involving only one choice and far from being based solely on the percentage of votes.
A significant difference between the US and Europe is that most European countries use normal paper ballots which-apart from the candidates' names and lists-are the same all across the country.
It would make sense if Australia were to join the Kyoto treaty. Australia relies heavily on coal-fired power plants, whereas Western Europe has a lot of hydroelectric and nuclear power stations. Also, not only do incandescent bulbs produce a lot of heat, you'll also need more energy for the airconditioning--which I suppose is relevant in a hot country like Australia.
Apart from that, I can't help thinking that stores--like the average store in a nice shopping mall--waste a hell of a lot of energy with all the lighting.
Bad comparison. Providing alcohol to people under the legal drinking age is expressly forbidden in many countries.
Clippy's hints were often unrelated to the task.
on
The Death of Clippy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Some time ago, I was writing a lab book with Word. I had already typed more than a page when Clippy suddenly realized something and came up with the following dialogue (translated):
"Apparently you're trying to write a letter. Please choose one of the following options: [ ] Use the letter assistant. [ ] Write the letter without assistance."
Clippy gave me no other choice, I needed to select one of these options. I'd have chosen the following if it were available:"[X] Stop bugging me, this isn't even a letter!"
If there were a reasonably well working robotic garage next to a traditional garage, I'd probably use the robotic garage if the price was similar. Why? Because it would spare me the trouble of finding a parking space, finding the pedestrians' exit of the garage and then searching for the car when I return. And I wouldn't need to worry about scratches or burglaries.
PS: You should not expect to use the TI in any math courses--most math courses and lots of theoretical (physics,...) problems can be solved with pen and paper, and that's what we were allowed to bring to exams. At some point, you'll also learn to use a computer algebra system like Mathematica for the more difficult problems and if you have a lot of data, Excel might be a nice choice. I don't regret buying the TI-89, but depending on the courses you're going to take it might not really be needed often.
I'm into physics and bought the TI-89 in my junior year in highschool (2000). While I didn't really need it in highschool, it was much more convenient than a normal calculator for some types of calculations. There are a few features that I find particularly nice:
-Units, conversions, constants and relations between units. (elementary charge*.31046 Tesla * 18 inches)^2/(12 atomic mass units) = 18 electronvolts. Stuff like that. Having all the constants available saves a lot of time. If you use units, the calc automatically gives the result in SI units unless you set it to imperial or ask for another unit.
-having a list of the 99 last calculations and being able to re-use parts of them
-it's rugged. It's been in the bottom of my backpack for years and still works.
I've bought a PC interface with the calc and used it to transfer software to the calc, but haven't been using it lately because it's a serial interface and I don't have a PC with a serial port any more.
IMO, it is not necessary to use a really fine-grained temperature scale like Fahrenheit to talk about the weather since the local variations in temperature (due to sun/shade, landscape, buildings, clouds etc.) are likely to be larger than +/- 1 deg Celsius.
That's what HavenCo already did/tried to do/claimed to do on Sealand. Apparently it didn't work out very well, maybe it's hard to get a reliable internet connection there.
To me, this looks a bit different. He writes that he will still honour the support agreements. Chances are that there are some bugs in the code, of which a few will surface during the support period. If he were to open-source the software, more of these bugs would be discovered and need to be fixed during the support period, also he'd need to look through and document the code and support the start of the open source project, all of which takes a lot more time than simply discontinuing the software and physing out support for it. Honestly, I can understand why he tries to seek sponsorship for open-sourcing it.
In some countries where you pay a small surcharge on recordable media, this is somewhat true. You can apply for a refund for those CD-ROMs etc. that you use for storing stuff other than videos or music.
I'm also wondering whether they'll be able to sell Zune in muslim countries given that the installer background looks rather...um... sexual. Maybe Ballmer's kids and their older friends will use the Zune to "squirt" around similar pics with lesser-clad people and also...um... squirt with something else.
I don't like filling in contact forms either. Usually, I look for an email address as well as a phone number and street address when I get to a company website. If I cannot find these, I think twice about buying something from them. I do like the php-based method posted a bit further down, though I haven't tried it on my own website.
Kudos for keeping your m105 that long--mine eventually developed the backup capacitor problem and even though I repaired it I couldn't get myself to use it again.
Possibly for the following reasons:
-I don't need a device for mobile internet access. I can access the internet at home, at the office and at uni. If I want, I can take my laptop with me and go to a hotspot. And if I absolutely, desperately need to look something up on the internet or check my emails, I can do it with my cell phone. But I rarely need it, because it's usually fine to answer mails in the evening.
-There are a few nice applications that you could put on your PDA, like the public transport route planner called Metro. However, I rarely felt like I needed any of these applications, since you can look up a lot of stuff on the internet.
-If you intend to take notes, most data input methods are too slow, especially when you have to write a lot of formulas. In my opinion a paper notebook is still the way to go.
-A digital calendar has some advantages: Your secretary can manage your appointments. You can sync your data to your computer and/or mobile phone. But if you don't have a secretary (like me) and don't care too much about syncing, a paper calendar has some advantages: - -The most important questions are: "What do I need to do today and in the next few days?" and "Where can I fit in an appointment/some work...?" Any decent-sized organizer (e.g. filofax pocket) will provide you with the answers more quickly because it's faster to flip through a few pages instead of tapping around on the screen, - -Paper calendars'/organizers' entries are easier to annotate, collate and edit. You can stick in a Post-it if you don't have your calendar at hand.
-You have the optimum mix between a phone and an address book. It's called mobile phone.
-When you run out of battery, you've got a problem. Similarly, you'll have problems getting all your stuff off the device if it fails.
-You don't really want to play simple games when you should be working on something else. And these games possibly ruin your eyes anyway.
Risks/Costs... -download quota gets used up (as far as I see Fon doesn't have throttling mechanisms in place) -your connection being used for illegal stuff, such as --attacks on networks --spamming --child pron -legal action from your current provider
Benefits... +maybe you can use someone else's Fon hotspot +you will get (at most) $1 per day and user +a decent wireless router for 2/3 off (including shipping)
Sorry, even though I'm living in a national capital with quite a few Fon hotspots around, the risks and associated costs (if I got sued I'd need to pay a lawyer,...) outweigh the benefits of free wi-fi at some places or minimal revenue from a few users.
Google should be applauded for being one of the few companies that are willing to openly discuss their ethical standards. It is a pity that this leads to a lot of bad publicity for the company--ther are a lot of firms who act unethically (doing censorship for totalitarian governments,...) yet manage to stay mostly under the radar.
Because employees would react. If they said "we're thinking about closing" or "things aren't working out as expected" then at least a few employees would just bail, or worse. No company wants that -- if there is a chance to salvage the situation, then they would prefer the employees never even knew how close they came to being laid off. Especially if a few employees leaving could damage the potential turnaround. And if there is no chance to salvage the situation, then they want those employees to still be around long enough to finish whatever needs finishing.
Rockstar Games recently closed one of their studios. Basically, when the employees came to work one day they were met by security guards-it is unclear whether they were even allowed to go to their desks. The rationale behind this is that the employees are more likely to steal code and dev kits if they know they're going to be laid off anyway. (To Rockstar's credit-they respected the local laws regarding layoffs and the employees got paid for a couple of weeks more.)
One of the comments on the ArsTechnica forums was about the hinge being constructed in a way that doesn't allow the screen to be tilted all the way back.
Can anyone tell me how far the screen can be tilted back?
(me being from Europe the next apple store is a two hours' flight away and other retailers won't get MacBooks until sometime next week)
Some carriers have been offering phone and fax services onboard for quite a few years, with reasonable pricing (~$1/min, IIRC). You'd just take the handset in front of your seat, switch it on, swipe a credit card and dial. While every passenger can afford a quick phone call, it is too expensive to talk for more than a few minutes, which I think is a good thing.
Admittedly I am seeing this from a user-biased perspective. I didn't think that it would take such a lot of work to make a Firefox-compatible site usable in Internet Explorer and I applaud you for doing it that way and not the other way round.
We all know that IE is crap and that there are far better browsers around. But we all sometimes encounter situations where we can only use Internet Explorer-be it on some company's locked-down computers, somewhere in an internet cafe or on some old machine whose modem connection means that downloading Firefox would take hours (and we didn't think of bringing a CD-ROM). And we would get royally pissed off at a website that would tell us to download Firefox because it wouldn't work with any other browser.
In my argument, which you criticised as being poorly thought out, I did distinguish between having a site that is usable and having a site that is usable and looks pretty. I don't know about the nature of the site that you are designing, but it looks as if you need to make it look pretty in IE as well. Now, if IE had only a small percentage of users you maybe wouldn't want to go all the way to make the site look pretty in IE, but you'd still want it to be usable.
If you just put up the this-site-looks-better-in-firefox boiler plate, you're essentially doing what people have been doing for years. If you wanted to use the get-Firefox-or-piss-off boiler plate you'd need to have a site that absolutely doesn't work with IE at all, everything else would be rather dumb. The fact that you are developing the site for IE as well (instead of trying to switch people to Firefox) shows (in my opinion) that you (or our boss) are caring about the IE users, whereas "Explorer Destroyer" specifically advocates that people don't care about them and lock them out or annoy them. Thus, I think your story supports my argument critical of "Explorer Destroyer" in some way.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree.
Elections in Europe are not as simple as you would think. Take Austria for example: There are 9 states which are each divided into a couple of regions. Based on the last census, every region is assigned a number of seats in the legislative assembly. For each of these regions, states and at the national level the parties make a list of their candidates. Voters can now vote for the party of their choice, but they can also pick 2 people from that party's regional and state lists to give them a premium vote. The seats are then assigned at the regional level first. After that, the state level is taken into account and additional seats are distributed (taking into account that some parties have already gotten seats at the regional level). The remaining seats at the national level are then given to the parties according to the d'Hondt distribution scheme, which is similar to the one used for the US House of Representatives. The seats are always given in order to the people on the party lists, but candidates who gain enough premium votes can move to the top of the list.
In conclusion, this system is more balanced than the "winner-takes-it-all" system that the US use, but it is far from involving only one choice and far from being based solely on the percentage of votes.
A significant difference between the US and Europe is that most European countries use normal paper ballots which-apart from the candidates' names and lists-are the same all across the country.
It would make sense if Australia were to join the Kyoto treaty. Australia relies heavily on coal-fired power plants, whereas Western Europe has a lot of hydroelectric and nuclear power stations. Also, not only do incandescent bulbs produce a lot of heat, you'll also need more energy for the airconditioning--which I suppose is relevant in a hot country like Australia.
Apart from that, I can't help thinking that stores--like the average store in a nice shopping mall--waste a hell of a lot of energy with all the lighting.
Bad comparison. Providing alcohol to people under the legal drinking age is expressly forbidden in many countries.
Some time ago, I was writing a lab book with Word. I had already typed more than a page when Clippy suddenly realized something and came up with the following dialogue (translated):
"Apparently you're trying to write a letter. Please choose one of the following options:
[ ] Use the letter assistant.
[ ] Write the letter without assistance."
Clippy gave me no other choice, I needed to select one of these options.
I'd have chosen the following if it were available:"[X] Stop bugging me, this isn't even a letter!"
Interestingly, you cannot read Citizendium's privacy policy unless you sign up and log in. Defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
Also, you can't even contact the editor about it.
If there were a reasonably well working robotic garage next to a traditional garage, I'd probably use the robotic garage if the price was similar.
Why? Because it would spare me the trouble of finding a parking space, finding the pedestrians' exit of the garage and then searching for the car when I return. And I wouldn't need to worry about scratches or burglaries.
PS: You should not expect to use the TI in any math courses--most math courses and lots of theoretical (physics, ...) problems can be solved with pen and paper, and that's what we were allowed to bring to exams. At some point, you'll also learn to use a computer algebra system like Mathematica for the more difficult problems and if you have a lot of data, Excel might be a nice choice. I don't regret buying the TI-89, but depending on the courses you're going to take it might not really be needed often.
I'm into physics and bought the TI-89 in my junior year in highschool (2000). While I didn't really need it in highschool, it was much more convenient than a normal calculator for some types of calculations. There are a few features that I find particularly nice:
-Units, conversions, constants and relations between units. (elementary charge*.31046 Tesla * 18 inches)^2/(12 atomic mass units) = 18 electronvolts. Stuff like that. Having all the constants available saves a lot of time. If you use units, the calc automatically gives the result in SI units unless you set it to imperial or ask for another unit.
-having a list of the 99 last calculations and being able to re-use parts of them
-it's rugged. It's been in the bottom of my backpack for years and still works.
I've bought a PC interface with the calc and used it to transfer software to the calc, but haven't been using it lately because it's a serial interface and I don't have a PC with a serial port any more.
IMO, it is not necessary to use a really fine-grained temperature scale like Fahrenheit to talk about the weather since the local variations in temperature (due to sun/shade, landscape, buildings, clouds etc.) are likely to be larger than +/- 1 deg Celsius.
That's what HavenCo already did/tried to do/claimed to do on Sealand. Apparently it didn't work out very well, maybe it's hard to get a reliable internet connection there.
To me, this looks a bit different. He writes that he will still honour the support agreements. Chances are that there are some bugs in the code, of which a few will surface during the support period. If he were to open-source the software, more of these bugs would be discovered and need to be fixed during the support period, also he'd need to look through and document the code and support the start of the open source project, all of which takes a lot more time than simply discontinuing the software and physing out support for it. Honestly, I can understand why he tries to seek sponsorship for open-sourcing it.
In some countries where you pay a small surcharge on recordable media, this is somewhat true. You can apply for a refund for those CD-ROMs etc. that you use for storing stuff other than videos or music.
No, I do find it disturbing as well.
...um... sexual. ...um... squirt with something else.
I'm also wondering whether they'll be able to sell Zune in muslim countries given that the installer background looks rather
Maybe Ballmer's kids and their older friends will use the Zune to "squirt" around similar pics with lesser-clad people and also
I don't like filling in contact forms either.
Usually, I look for an email address as well as a phone number and street address when I get to a company website. If I cannot find these, I think twice about buying something from them.
I do like the php-based method posted a bit further down, though I haven't tried it on my own website.
The lingering threat of being sued by Sony for similar offences?
Kudos for keeping your m105 that long--mine eventually developed the backup capacitor problem and even though I repaired it I couldn't get myself to use it again.
Possibly for the following reasons:
-I don't need a device for mobile internet access. I can access the internet at home, at the office and at uni. If I want, I can take my laptop with me and go to a hotspot. And if I absolutely, desperately need to look something up on the internet or check my emails, I can do it with my cell phone. But I rarely need it, because it's usually fine to answer mails in the evening.
-There are a few nice applications that you could put on your PDA, like the public transport route planner called Metro. However, I rarely felt like I needed any of these applications, since you can look up a lot of stuff on the internet.
-If you intend to take notes, most data input methods are too slow, especially when you have to write a lot of formulas. In my opinion a paper notebook is still the way to go.
-A digital calendar has some advantages: Your secretary can manage your appointments. You can sync your data to your computer and/or mobile phone. But if you don't have a secretary (like me) and don't care too much about syncing, a paper calendar has some advantages:
- -The most important questions are: "What do I need to do today and in the next few days?" and "Where can I fit in an appointment/some work...?" Any decent-sized organizer (e.g. filofax pocket) will provide you with the answers more quickly because it's faster to flip through a few pages instead of tapping around on the screen,
- -Paper calendars'/organizers' entries are easier to annotate, collate and edit. You can stick in a Post-it if you don't have your calendar at hand.
-You have the optimum mix between a phone and an address book. It's called mobile phone.
-When you run out of battery, you've got a problem. Similarly, you'll have problems getting all your stuff off the device if it fails.
-You don't really want to play simple games when you should be working on something else. And these games possibly ruin your eyes anyway.
When kids use books that belong to the school they aren't allowed to write in the margins either.
What the heck are you writing about?
Let me see...
...) outweigh the benefits of free wi-fi at some places or minimal revenue from a few users.
Risks/Costs...
-download quota gets used up (as far as I see Fon doesn't have throttling mechanisms in place)
-your connection being used for illegal stuff, such as
--attacks on networks
--spamming
--child pron
-legal action from your current provider
Benefits...
+maybe you can use someone else's Fon hotspot
+you will get (at most) $1 per day and user
+a decent wireless router for 2/3 off (including shipping)
Sorry, even though I'm living in a national capital with quite a few Fon hotspots around, the risks and associated costs (if I got sued I'd need to pay a lawyer,
The MacBooks don't have a lit keyboard or an ambient light sensor, only the MacBook Pros do.
Google should be applauded for being one of the few companies that are willing to openly discuss their ethical standards. It is a pity that this leads to a lot of bad publicity for the company--ther are a lot of firms who act unethically (doing censorship for totalitarian governments, ...) yet manage to stay mostly under the radar.
Because employees would react. If they said "we're thinking about closing" or "things aren't working out as expected" then at least a few employees would just bail, or worse. No company wants that -- if there is a chance to salvage the situation, then they would prefer the employees never even knew how close they came to being laid off. Especially if a few employees leaving could damage the potential turnaround. And if there is no chance to salvage the situation, then they want those employees to still be around long enough to finish whatever needs finishing. Rockstar Games recently closed one of their studios. Basically, when the employees came to work one day they were met by security guards-it is unclear whether they were even allowed to go to their desks. The rationale behind this is that the employees are more likely to steal code and dev kits if they know they're going to be laid off anyway. (To Rockstar's credit-they respected the local laws regarding layoffs and the employees got paid for a couple of weeks more.)
One of the comments on the ArsTechnica forums was about the hinge being constructed in a way that doesn't allow the screen to be tilted all the way back.
Can anyone tell me how far the screen can be tilted back?
(me being from Europe the next apple store is a two hours' flight away and other retailers won't get MacBooks until sometime next week)
Some carriers have been offering phone and fax services onboard for quite a few years, with reasonable pricing (~$1/min, IIRC). You'd just take the handset in front of your seat, switch it on, swipe a credit card and dial. While every passenger can afford a quick phone call, it is too expensive to talk for more than a few minutes, which I think is a good thing.
Admittedly I am seeing this from a user-biased perspective. I didn't think that it would take such a lot of work to make a Firefox-compatible site usable in Internet Explorer and I applaud you for doing it that way and not the other way round.
We all know that IE is crap and that there are far better browsers around. But we all sometimes encounter situations where we can only use Internet Explorer-be it on some company's locked-down computers, somewhere in an internet cafe or on some old machine whose modem connection means that downloading Firefox would take hours (and we didn't think of bringing a CD-ROM). And we would get royally pissed off at a website that would tell us to download Firefox because it wouldn't work with any other browser.
In my argument, which you criticised as being poorly thought out, I did distinguish between having a site that is usable and having a site that is usable and looks pretty. I don't know about the nature of the site that you are designing, but it looks as if you need to make it look pretty in IE as well. Now, if IE had only a small percentage of users you maybe wouldn't want to go all the way to make the site look pretty in IE, but you'd still want it to be usable.
If you just put up the this-site-looks-better-in-firefox boiler plate, you're essentially doing what people have been doing for years. If you wanted to use the get-Firefox-or-piss-off boiler plate you'd need to have a site that absolutely doesn't work with IE at all, everything else would be rather dumb. The fact that you are developing the site for IE as well (instead of trying to switch people to Firefox) shows (in my opinion) that you (or our boss) are caring about the IE users, whereas "Explorer Destroyer" specifically advocates that people don't care about them and lock them out or annoy them. Thus, I think your story supports my argument critical of "Explorer Destroyer" in some way.