I call bullshit. Even in Europe. Reality has a center/center-right bias. Even among people who claim to be liberals, most people oppose immigration and the change that comes along with it, support what they (regionally) consider to be traditional values, and have strong religious beliefs.
The "reality has a liberal bias" quip is cute. But it's bogus. You'd have to live in a hole (ivory tower?) to actually believe it.
This is wrong.
Actually the UK is one of the world's most secular societies. We also have a greater social welfare net (including free health care) and a great deal of provision of government training (including a lot of support for university level courses - I get £6000 pa from the state and £5000 pa from the University of Cambridge). We also disallow the death penalty and allow judges to impose their own sentencing for almost all crimes. The loser generally pays all legal fees so even the poor can have legal representation for SLAPP-style cases. Our police are not armed, and firearms are indeed controlled or banned for many types of firearm. In related news, our murder rate was 1.1 per 100,000[1] compared to the US at 5.4 per 100000[2]. A single killing during the London tube bombings has resulted in three separate investigations against the police and one successful prosecution of the entire force. This level of investigation is generally supported, and no major politician has attempted to argue against it.
We support civil partnerships for homosexuals that have the legal force of marraige, and indeed discrimination on the basis of sexuality in employment is illegal. We have recently had a court case that denies the ability of religious adoption agencies to deny service to homosexual potential adopting families. Pensions and other benefits are maintained between same-sex partners.
We have openly atheistic politicians - a lack of faith is also a respected choice. We attempt to integrate Islamic culture as an equally valued partner. A smear of alleged Islamic belief would not be so much of an issue here - we have Islamic MPs and it is...not really an issue. We even have members of Parliament who were aligned with terrorist/freedom fighter conflict against the UK (IRA) and therefore refuse to swear the oath of allegiance to the Parliament and Crown but are still granted offices and funding for staff within the Commons buildings.
A full one third of Londoners were born outside the UK, and immigration continues from Eastern Europe in particular. You also state that freedom of movement is opposed, but EU nationals have complete freedom of movement, employment and abode within EU countries. This is over an entire continent, and no major parties that I am aware of desire withdrawal from the EU. All of these stances are *extremely* liberal compared to US politics (I amusingly imagine the reaction to freedom of movement in NAFTA, for example - and before you say we are more economically equal consider that we have just admitted many Eastern European states).
Given that the EU is currently economically outperforming the US, I am unsure as to what here is either a) unrealistically unsustainable or b) not liberal beyond what even an Olbermann or Moore would desire.
So it would appear that reality can indeed be defined as more than merely US centrist. That is all.
"It should be noted, that in this election cycle the popular vote currently makes it a statistical tie between McCain and Obama. Obama may be slightly ahead, but not enough to beat the margin of error. However, when you sit down with state based polls and an electoral calculator, it's a complete washout."
what
Weighted averages: Obama 51.5%, McCain 44.3%. Just how big do you think the margin of error is?
But when people say that we should have only one distro, and that it's a problem that different distros use different versions of software and insert their own patches...this is why they are wrong wrong wrong.
I for one welcome the return of the 80s standardisation of the PC market via Windows compatibility demands but in a different market. All of China's clone manufacturers can dump 90% of their software development costs and have something that isn't insanely buggy for free that they occasionally do a bit of custom GUI stuff for. Of course that will happen.
Yeah, of course it will be seamless. It's all Vista underpinnings. Because this could actually be what should have been Vista 1.0. Actual Vista 1.0 was clearly only polished enough to go beta.
"Well, in practice, it's like this. You can complain about christians as much as you want. You can call them whatever you want, and I even saw the former Minister of justice, Tomas Bodström, on TV saying that all christians should be wiretapped because of a hightened risk of hatecrime. And on the RFSL(gaylobby) yearly gay/pedophile/trans-parade they even threw darts at images of famous christians."
Nice conflation. Those pesky homosexuals are clearly *insane* to complain about Swedish Christians! Risk of hatecrime, the justice minister says? I cannot believe it!
Hint: I am genuinely slightly appalled by your comment. So, and although I'm not gay and generally try and avoid profanity, fuck you.
It's actually the first major thing I have disagreed with Obama on. My hint for those keeping score at home is that quickly pulling out of Iraq would generate a lot more spare funds. It's not like NASA is actually a major drain at all, and almost all of the money comes back to R&D and the like. *sighs* Still not wanting HRC or McCain though.
Charlie McCreevy never will. He was/is one of the people pushing for software patents also. I knew I recalled the name. He's also a liar (and the email's in the header - please feel free to sue me). He said this recently about the patent directive: "I've said all along is that what the original purpose of the directive was, was to codify the existing situation." [1]
Oh, and software patent opposition is born of "anti-Americanism and anti-big business protests" [ibid]. Yes, it's true. There is no other intellectual basis for it than xenophobia and irrational hate of capitalism. *sighs*
All of the yes with comments votes now have it confirmed that their comments have noit actually been taken involved. The involvement of the EU in investigating MS's practices leading up to the fast track also means that they involved have to be more circumspect about gathering votes, so they really don't need to be annoying people like this.
Of course, the plan could just be to say "We would have got away with ISO approval, if it wasn't for that pesky IBM". It's a bit odd, but there we are. MS is losing the EU to open standards.
I mean seriously, I've never met a single person ever who prefers a nipple to a trackpad. Especially when it's one of apple's excellent multi-touch trackpads.
You have now met me. The benefit of not moving your hands from the keyboard to move the mouse is excellent for saving hand stress and time. Oh, and the GP of course.
Ugh. You can use a plain vanilla XP install CD or one of those "recovery" CDs, too. If you don't have any of those, then go to the nearest store and buy a legal copy of Windows XP.
Have you ever used OEM restore disks? Most are essentially a GUI over an compressed HD image that gets written to hda. How can I restore the MBR or boot.ini from that? So smearing people who have issues seems...trollish.
Well, the idea was that it would be DRMed and thus in some ways easier to negotiate (even though Freeview is clear text). Since they sold their excellent tech division, let Siemens gut it, then hired half the Windows Media team, it has become some hellish app that is so portable it doesn't even work on Vista but still has all the DRM goodness you might want. Oh, and there is now no Mac or Linux clients as 'no DRM extends across all platforms', even though they previously had a relationship with Real, who have DRM that does.
Also, I have noticed that the BBC online management is now prepared to lie more - witness them claiming that news.bbc.co.uk has 'about 600' GNU/Linux users. Umm, yeah.
Nice to see the freedom of information, public service ethos die...
This is possibly the most unintentionally entertaining page I have ever read.
"Druggie Or, maybe "liquid courage" would be more appropriate. This guy is exactly what comes to mind. During the day this blogger is a normal guy, but at night he returns to the sanctity of his home, gets drunk or high, and goes out on the web looking for "hook-ups" and blogging on his "hang-ups". This guy is hard to detect as a fraudster, and sometimes won't recall what he said online the next day while under the influence. He posts aggressive, false and arbitrary attacks on whatever issue of the day (or night) catches his fancy."
It's like when I woke up and realised I had written a script in Perl.
Re:There's nothing left that wikki doesn't know!
on
Has Wikipedia Peaked?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yes, the scratch the itch factor is starting to go down. It's quite impressive to note the way that Wikipedia now does genuinely contain a reasonable % of all topics (and yes, even Pokemon).
I'd actually say that Wikipedia has been far more successful as an example of a collaborative Free product than Linux has. Wikipedia actually dominates the market now.
"You're right. One person should be allowed to cause as much disruption as he wants without regard to the rest of the audience who might want a chance to ask their own questions. And it would have been so much better to give him a nice bop on the head with a nightstick, like in the old days. Or maybe just a few quick punches to loosen him up. And after that, they should have completely regarded due process--you know, the part of the legal system where they formally levy action against you, thus giving you the chance to seek legal redress in court for any inappropriate behavior."
Are you actually suggesting that the police should not aim to completely regard due process?
Slashdot Mirror
I call bullshit. Even in Europe. Reality has a center/center-right bias. Even among people who claim to be liberals, most people oppose immigration and the change that comes along with it, support what they (regionally) consider to be traditional values, and have strong religious beliefs.
The "reality has a liberal bias" quip is cute. But it's bogus. You'd have to live in a hole (ivory tower?) to actually believe it.
This is wrong.
Actually the UK is one of the world's most secular societies. We also have a greater social welfare net (including free health care) and a great deal of provision of government training (including a lot of support for university level courses - I get £6000 pa from the state and £5000 pa from the University of Cambridge). We also disallow the death penalty and allow judges to impose their own sentencing for almost all crimes. The loser generally pays all legal fees so even the poor can have legal representation for SLAPP-style cases. Our police are not armed, and firearms are indeed controlled or banned for many types of firearm. In related news, our murder rate was 1.1 per 100,000[1] compared to the US at 5.4 per 100000[2]. A single killing during the London tube bombings has resulted in three separate investigations against the police and one successful prosecution of the entire force. This level of investigation is generally supported, and no major politician has attempted to argue against it.
We support civil partnerships for homosexuals that have the legal force of marraige, and indeed discrimination on the basis of sexuality in employment is illegal. We have recently had a court case that denies the ability of religious adoption agencies to deny service to homosexual potential adopting families. Pensions and other benefits are maintained between same-sex partners.
We have openly atheistic politicians - a lack of faith is also a respected choice. We attempt to integrate Islamic culture as an equally valued partner. A smear of alleged Islamic belief would not be so much of an issue here - we have Islamic MPs and it is...not really an issue. We even have members of Parliament who were aligned with terrorist/freedom fighter conflict against the UK (IRA) and therefore refuse to swear the oath of allegiance to the Parliament and Crown but are still granted offices and funding for staff within the Commons buildings.
A full one third of Londoners were born outside the UK, and immigration continues from Eastern Europe in particular. You also state that freedom of movement is opposed, but EU nationals have complete freedom of movement, employment and abode within EU countries. This is over an entire continent, and no major parties that I am aware of desire withdrawal from the EU. All of these stances are *extremely* liberal compared to US politics (I amusingly imagine the reaction to freedom of movement in NAFTA, for example - and before you say we are more economically equal consider that we have just admitted many Eastern European states).
Given that the EU is currently economically outperforming the US, I am unsure as to what here is either a) unrealistically unsustainable or b) not liberal beyond what even an Olbermann or Moore would desire.
So it would appear that reality can indeed be defined as more than merely US centrist. That is all.
[1] Home Office (undated). 'Homicide' - long-term national recorded crime trends. Available from: http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page40.asp.
[2] Federal Bureau of Investigation (2006a). Bureau of Justice Statistics. Homicide trends in the U.S.. Long-term trends. Available from: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm.
"It should be noted, that in this election cycle the popular vote currently makes it a statistical tie between McCain and Obama. Obama may be slightly ahead, but not enough to beat the margin of error. However, when you sit down with state based polls and an electoral calculator, it's a complete washout."
what
Weighted averages: Obama 51.5%, McCain 44.3%. Just how big do you think the margin of error is?
This is true. Although there are still recognisable families, so it's a long way from a monoculture.
But when people say that we should have only one distro, and that it's a problem that different distros use different versions of software and insert their own patches...this is why they are wrong wrong wrong.
Monocultures FTL.
I for one welcome the return of the 80s standardisation of the PC market via Windows compatibility demands but in a different market. All of China's clone manufacturers can dump 90% of their software development costs and have something that isn't insanely buggy for free that they occasionally do a bit of custom GUI stuff for. Of course that will happen.
Yeah, of course it will be seamless. It's all Vista underpinnings. Because this could actually be what should have been Vista 1.0. Actual Vista 1.0 was clearly only polished enough to go beta.
Lucky, outer space certainly seems like the only place to cheaply get that amount of cooling.
Just like nobody ever got Linux running on the Xbox, right?
Battery life is listed as "10+ hours". Thank ARM's non-crack-filled view on how power efficient a chip can be.
"As long as things like Google Checkout and Amazon payments are only available to americans, eBay will stay king."
Lucky I'm in the UK and can also use Google Checkout then, eh?
"doesn't wine still require windows files to run things like d3d? so to run it legally you still need to purchase windows anyway?"
No.
"Well, in practice, it's like this. You can complain about christians as much as you want. You can call them whatever you want, and I even saw the former Minister of justice, Tomas Bodström, on TV saying that all christians should be wiretapped because of a hightened risk of hatecrime. And on the RFSL(gaylobby) yearly gay/pedophile/trans-parade they even threw darts at images of famous christians."
Nice conflation. Those pesky homosexuals are clearly *insane* to complain about Swedish Christians! Risk of hatecrime, the justice minister says? I cannot believe it!
Hint: I am genuinely slightly appalled by your comment. So, and although I'm not gay and generally try and avoid profanity, fuck you.
It's actually the first major thing I have disagreed with Obama on. My hint for those keeping score at home is that quickly pulling out of Iraq would generate a lot more spare funds. It's not like NASA is actually a major drain at all, and almost all of the money comes back to R&D and the like. *sighs* Still not wanting HRC or McCain though.
The sets were both dense and large.
* Domenici also recently launched a widely castigated suit against Wikipedia Foundation.
Nice work on drawing attention to the original problems also...it's always amusing how much political types don't get it.
Charlie McCreevy never will. He was/is one of the people pushing for software patents also. I knew I recalled the name. He's also a liar (and the email's in the header - please feel free to sue me). He said this recently about the patent directive: "I've said all along is that what the original purpose of the directive was, was to codify the existing situation." [1]
Oh, and software patent opposition is born of "anti-Americanism and anti-big business protests" [ibid]. Yes, it's true. There is no other intellectual basis for it than xenophobia and irrational hate of capitalism. *sighs*
[1] http://wiki.ffii.org/McCreevy050704En
All of the yes with comments votes now have it confirmed that their comments have noit actually been taken involved. The involvement of the EU in investigating MS's practices leading up to the fast track also means that they involved have to be more circumspect about gathering votes, so they really don't need to be annoying people like this.
Of course, the plan could just be to say "We would have got away with ISO approval, if it wasn't for that pesky IBM". It's a bit odd, but there we are. MS is losing the EU to open standards.
I mean seriously, I've never met a single person ever who prefers a nipple to a trackpad. Especially when it's one of apple's excellent multi-touch trackpads.
You have now met me. The benefit of not moving your hands from the keyboard to move the mouse is excellent for saving hand stress and time. Oh, and the GP of course.
Ugh. You can use a plain vanilla XP install CD or one of those "recovery" CDs, too. If you don't have any of those, then go to the nearest store and buy a legal copy of Windows XP.
Have you ever used OEM restore disks? Most are essentially a GUI over an compressed HD image that gets written to hda. How can I restore the MBR or boot.ini from that? So smearing people who have issues seems...trollish.
Well, the idea was that it would be DRMed and thus in some ways easier to negotiate (even though Freeview is clear text). Since they sold their excellent tech division, let Siemens gut it, then hired half the Windows Media team, it has become some hellish app that is so portable it doesn't even work on Vista but still has all the DRM goodness you might want. Oh, and there is now no Mac or Linux clients as 'no DRM extends across all platforms', even though they previously had a relationship with Real, who have DRM that does.
Also, I have noticed that the BBC online management is now prepared to lie more - witness them claiming that news.bbc.co.uk has 'about 600' GNU/Linux users. Umm, yeah.
Nice to see the freedom of information, public service ethos die...
Seconding this. My Lenovo x61s can run at 12w with the display and wifi on.
This is possibly the most unintentionally entertaining page I have ever read.
"Druggie
Or, maybe "liquid courage" would be more appropriate. This guy is exactly what comes to mind. During the day this blogger is a normal guy, but at night he returns to the sanctity of his home, gets drunk or high, and goes out on the web looking for "hook-ups" and blogging on his "hang-ups". This guy is hard to detect as a fraudster, and sometimes won't recall what he said online the next day while under the influence. He posts aggressive, false and arbitrary attacks on whatever issue of the day (or night) catches his fancy."
It's like when I woke up and realised I had written a script in Perl.
Yes, the scratch the itch factor is starting to go down. It's quite impressive to note the way that Wikipedia now does genuinely contain a reasonable % of all topics (and yes, even Pokemon).
I'd actually say that Wikipedia has been far more successful as an example of a collaborative Free product than Linux has. Wikipedia actually dominates the market now.
mal.asia?
Also relatively rapid post!
"You're right. One person should be allowed to cause as much disruption as he wants without regard to the rest of the audience who might want a chance to ask their own questions. And it would have been so much better to give him a nice bop on the head with a nightstick, like in the old days. Or maybe just a few quick punches to loosen him up. And after that, they should have completely regarded due process--you know, the part of the legal system where they formally levy action against you, thus giving you the chance to seek legal redress in court for any inappropriate behavior."
Are you actually suggesting that the police should not aim to completely regard due process?