I think people *should* have the right to give up their vote. More to the point, I think people should be able to sign their vote over to a specialist on matters pertaining to that particular subject. I might not be interested in the healthcare system for whatever reason, but I might know somebody who I trust to whom I could hand my vote on matters regarding healthcare. I'd also have the option of allowing that person of passing my vote on to somebody he/she trusted, so that votes can be pooled and develop a sort of collective bargaining power.
If I had a business in the UK and I wanted to grow and set up operations in the United States, the US would expect that I operate my company under the set of laws governing the US. If my product offering in the US differed from the product offering in the UK, what does this have to do with the UK?
Although I agree with you entirely, I often have the same concerns that you mention as to where the money goes. My concerns are more about ensuring that 100% of my financial donations arrive where they are needed in a direct way.
But if there isn't a creditable enough charity you can find, I'd always recommend giving of your own time in some sort of practical way. If your time is worth x amount of dollar per hour, then you're practically making a contribution to the same amount of dollar/hour by providing yourself as a skilled human resource. If that involves writing some software, fixing some computers, pouring soup or helping old people get their teeth back in, it's making a direct, tangible contribution that noone will be able to funnel into a private bank account.
I realize you're being slightly facetious, and it's all very well and fine stating that a proportion of people live in "edge conditions", but think about it this way: increased globalization is driving more and more people to living in heavily populated and/or growing cities.
Throw a ten degree temperature increase at a place (like New York) during the summer and you're in a world of trouble (never mind potentially higher sea-levels from melted Greenland ice boosting Manhattan's previously non-existant boat industry).
Yeah, the fit and the healthy might survive and adapt, but the old and the frail, along with young children can't adapt to the heat. I grew up in South Africa, with average summer temperatures of 30 to 40 degrees (celsius) and I left the first chance I had (the humidity is just deathly). Now we're talking about 40 to 50 degree summers? I'm not sure how most people will really cope, unless we're out to cull a few billion people for "the greater good" or something.
One of the reasons(*) I flunked out of uni is because I was double majoring in maths and compsci. Carrying applied maths in second year as well proved just too much and even though i geeking out, i found myself losing interest in ALL my subjects.
(*) the other reason may have had something to do with getting laid a lot. That, and cheap beer at our local pub, the "Verge Inn"
Of course, 4000 years ago a bunch of scientists were probably sitting around, staring at a decaying set of rocks 8000 years old, called someotherhenge.
They were asking themselves who built them and why, which is when they decided to replicate someotherhenge and build what we now know as stonehenge, in england.
I'm an optical mouse user too, but there's some things that an optical will never trump a rollerball mouse on:
I remember when I would hear footsteps from behind in Quake (insert-preferred-version-number-here) and could flick my mouse left or right, lift it up ('cause I'd run out of runway), and the ball would have just that little bit of momentum left in it, causing the dude to continue spinning round just enough for me to get my mouse back on the ground. Saved my bacon many a time.
I agree. In London, I live a relatively close 25 minute walk from work and have regularly noticed that in rush hour I only have at most 2 buses pass me. Often I manage to catch them up as they wait to get across a congested intersection for minutes on end.
I get home much more relaxed and have time to further my photography on the way home (when it isn't pissing down with rain, like it always is).
The one group that will never give up their SUV's are the school runs. Mummy would lever load her little precious into a pram and take him/her on the bus.
IRL there's a plethora (he said plethora) of different music retailers - some of them huge chains like HMV or Virgin (in the UK), others smaller and more independent. Some of the big dudes have taken a page out of the small dudes books and even carry more exotic flavours of music these days.
Let M$ come to market with their offering and add to the competition. As long as (and this is a big as long as) they stick to the rules of fair-play and don't try to undermine their competition, the consumer should benefit from music downloads that are cheaper than ever imagined possible.
But then again we both know that those shots actually don't look anything like the Australian outback either, do they? So the next time you decide to be a wise-ass remember to suspend your disbelief and bear in mind that sometimes some people just try to be a little light-hearted rather than acting like snotty little teenagers suffering from existential angst and on a mission to show the world how clever they are.
This might sound a lot like a rant, and might be one, but why is it that we're seeing yet another desktop employing the same old tired taskbar metaphor and the same old tired windowing system.
Surely the open source community have the brawn to pull together a talented crew of innovators that can push the envelope in terms of desktop systems, and come up with something that breaks the mold, is not an entirely academic excersize, and has commercial/desktop applicability and (most importantly) usability.
IMHO, Project Looking Glass is a great step forward in this regard, but what'll happen to it if/when the Sun finally sets once and for all one day?
Piss off you bastard. I invested my life's (2.5 years) work in setting up a.com that was going to change the world (and make me a multigazillionaire).
Damn you Sun Microsystems for not buying us out. I mean, we chose JAVA. JAVA man. I mean, we even rewrote your (perfectly fine) java.net base classes because we enjoy to reinvent the wheel.
And to all of you other.com bastards out there, fsck you for flooding the market with all of your ideas. It was mine first, I am the ubergeek of all time and you ruined it for me by selling your vapourware.
For those of you that did help my.com by investing in the business or by working long hours and only getting paid in worthless shares - piss off as well. Gift horses, come here so I can stick my head so far up your throat you'll wonder why the goddam expression was ever coined.
Dave Winner (winner _at i.am.a.stupid.naive.hippie.communist
Slashdot Mirror
I think people *should* have the right to give up their vote. More to the point, I think people should be able to sign their vote over to a specialist on matters pertaining to that particular subject. I might not be interested in the healthcare system for whatever reason, but I might know somebody who I trust to whom I could hand my vote on matters regarding healthcare. I'd also have the option of allowing that person of passing my vote on to somebody he/she trusted, so that votes can be pooled and develop a sort of collective bargaining power.
If I had a business in the UK and I wanted to grow and set up operations in the United States, the US would expect that I operate my company under the set of laws governing the US. If my product offering in the US differed from the product offering in the UK, what does this have to do with the UK?
Or as a Greek coleague used to say: "I am the head of the household, but my wife, she is the neck that turns the head"
Although I agree with you entirely, I often have the same concerns that you mention as to where the money goes. My concerns are more about ensuring that 100% of my financial donations arrive where they are needed in a direct way.
But if there isn't a creditable enough charity you can find, I'd always recommend giving of your own time in some sort of practical way. If your time is worth x amount of dollar per hour, then you're practically making a contribution to the same amount of dollar/hour by providing yourself as a skilled human resource. If that involves writing some software, fixing some computers, pouring soup or helping old people get their teeth back in, it's making a direct, tangible contribution that noone will be able to funnel into a private bank account.
I realize you're being slightly facetious, and it's all very well and fine stating that a proportion of people live in "edge conditions", but think about it this way: increased globalization is driving more and more people to living in heavily populated and/or growing cities.
Throw a ten degree temperature increase at a place (like New York) during the summer and you're in a world of trouble (never mind potentially higher sea-levels from melted Greenland ice boosting Manhattan's previously non-existant boat industry).
Yeah, the fit and the healthy might survive and adapt, but the old and the frail, along with young children can't adapt to the heat. I grew up in South Africa, with average summer temperatures of 30 to 40 degrees (celsius) and I left the first chance I had (the humidity is just deathly). Now we're talking about 40 to 50 degree summers? I'm not sure how most people will really cope, unless we're out to cull a few billion people for "the greater good" or something.
You sound like someone else I knew once:
"Who's ever gonna need more than 640kB RAM?"
One of the reasons(*) I flunked out of uni is because I was double majoring in maths and compsci. Carrying applied maths in second year as well proved just too much and even though i geeking out, i found myself losing interest in ALL my subjects.
(*) the other reason may have had something to do with getting laid a lot. That, and cheap beer at our local pub, the "Verge Inn"
Of course, 4000 years ago a bunch of scientists were probably sitting around, staring at a decaying set of rocks 8000 years old, called someotherhenge. They were asking themselves who built them and why, which is when they decided to replicate someotherhenge and build what we now know as stonehenge, in england.
I'm an optical mouse user too, but there's some things that an optical will never trump a rollerball mouse on:
I remember when I would hear footsteps from behind in Quake (insert-preferred-version-number-here) and could flick my mouse left or right, lift it up ('cause I'd run out of runway), and the ball would have just that little bit of momentum left in it, causing the dude to continue spinning round just enough for me to get my mouse back on the ground. Saved my bacon many a time.
I agree. In London, I live a relatively close 25 minute walk from work and have regularly noticed that in rush hour I only have at most 2 buses pass me. Often I manage to catch them up as they wait to get across a congested intersection for minutes on end.
I get home much more relaxed and have time to further my photography on the way home (when it isn't pissing down with rain, like it always is).
The one group that will never give up their SUV's are the school runs. Mummy would lever load her little precious into a pram and take him/her on the bus.
I don't understand what the big deal is here.
IRL there's a plethora (he said plethora) of different music retailers - some of them huge chains like HMV or Virgin (in the UK), others smaller and more independent. Some of the big dudes have taken a page out of the small dudes books and even carry more exotic flavours of music these days.
Let M$ come to market with their offering and add to the competition. As long as (and this is a big as long as) they stick to the rules of fair-play and don't try to undermine their competition, the consumer should benefit from music downloads that are cheaper than ever imagined possible.
But then again we both know that those shots actually don't look anything like the Australian outback either, do they? So the next time you decide to be a wise-ass remember to suspend your disbelief and bear in mind that sometimes some people just try to be a little light-hearted rather than acting like snotty little teenagers suffering from existential angst and on a mission to show the world how clever they are.
Australian outback ey? Before you know it we'll have red-tinted shots of Hobbiton and Mount Doom popping up on the NASA site too.
This might sound a lot like a rant, and might be one, but why is it that we're seeing yet another desktop employing the same old tired taskbar metaphor and the same old tired windowing system.
Surely the open source community have the brawn to pull together a talented crew of innovators that can push the envelope in terms of desktop systems, and come up with something that breaks the mold, is not an entirely academic excersize, and has commercial/desktop applicability and (most importantly) usability.
IMHO, Project Looking Glass is a great step forward in this regard, but what'll happen to it if/when the Sun finally sets once and for all one day?
Dear .com
.com that was going to change the world (and make me a multigazillionaire).
.com bastards out there, fsck you for flooding the market with all of your ideas. It was mine first, I am the ubergeek of all time and you ruined it for me by selling your vapourware.
.com by investing in the business or by working long hours and only getting paid in worthless shares - piss off as well. Gift horses, come here so I can stick my head so far up your throat you'll wonder why the goddam expression was ever coined.
Piss off you bastard. I invested my life's (2.5 years) work in setting up a
Damn you Sun Microsystems for not buying us out. I mean, we chose JAVA. JAVA man. I mean, we even rewrote your (perfectly fine) java.net base classes because we enjoy to reinvent the wheel.
And to all of you other
For those of you that did help my
Dave Winner
(winner _at i.am.a.stupid.naive.hippie.communist