Sure you can vote out a private company: Don't buy from them.
Sigh... I suppose on the subject at hand, i.e. private companies running red light cameras, you're going to detour around intersections with them? Cost yourself some gas every time you do so?
Unless these companies are diversified into consumer goods or services, just under what circumstance would you be buying anything from them in the first place?
Maybe other democratic governments aren't quite as corrupt?
It's amazing to me that you can totally distrust your government to do anything right, yet think that private enterprise overseeing parts of your life is somehow better.
Okay, so less of your income is taxed. The flip side is that the company isn't accountable to anyone--you can't vote them out! And if they *are* accountable to someone... well guess what, it's probably to government oversight!
But it does show in majority governments in Canada, they are term dictators. The senate is nothing more than old patronage buddies collecting big bucks to rubber stamp things. But fortunately we are in a minority government situation which makes the dictatorship more tenuous.
What's frightening is that despite their minority government status, they've been running around behaving like they have a majority.
Imagine the damage they could do if they truly did have a majority, and there was no chance of the opposition parties taking them down.
Correct: Ontario has the Special Investigations Unit, a civilian unit which investigates any time police officers are on scene when a death or serious injury occurs.
Even the least corrupt cop is evil because they have to enforce evil laws. Every cop on the beat is participating in the persecution of marijuana smokers, for instance. There's absolutely no justification for that. Any person who would use violent force against the non-violent, deserves all the contempt and scorn in the world.
How far back in the chain do you want to go? The government wrote the law. That government, in our case, was formed based on our votes (or worse, from voter apathy).
As they say, a people deserve the government they get
*rolls eyes* As stupid of a PR stunt as that was (who likes bragging?) the fact-of-the-matter is that the "Mission" was indeed accomplished. It's just that you're wrong on what you think the "Mission" was.
(the mission was to invade Iraq and capture Baghdad, effectively over-throwing the government. And that, my friend, was what all the bragging was about. Reconstructing Iraq and unifying the waring factions was a completely different mission, one that Bush fell flat on his face with until Gen. Petraeus took over and initiated the "surge". Unfortunately, it was a very deep hole that was dug by that point that America has recently started to see some sunlight at the end of the tunnel.)
Too bad you didn't have the courage to post under an actual user name--you fell right into the trap I set for someone like you.
I knew that bragging was solely about toppling the Saddam Hussein regime. But like any war (remember this is a "War on Terror, right?") there are battles that are won and lost, but the war goes on.
Just as the original objective of the Iraq invasion was met, but the larger (and ret-conned) goal of turning Iraq into a free and democratic country is still ongoing, so too is the "terrorists have won" statement.
This isn't like the Superbowl, where a single win gives a neat and tidy conclusion. The Islamists have been fighting back hard following the "Mission Accomplished."
"The terrorists," on the other hand, have clearly achieved the objective of keeping Americans terrorized. They did an amazing job getting the government to do the dirty work of limiting freedoms on their behalf. Worst of all, most US citizens are doing nothing to fight back, and asking for even more restrictions.
Maybe this "amateur" rocket launch by the guys at Top Gear will prove an inspiration... though you have to wonder how many permits they had to get to even try this.
As he points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made, software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to see.
Perhaps we should resort to *AA-style "loss calculations." Two can play at that game, and it would be just as valid.
I'd prefer not to stoop to their level, but you don't win against a bully by fighting fair.
CBC (Canada's approved Olympic broadcaster) not only showed it live, they also did an encore presentation starting at 6 pm.
They replayed the whole thing--all 4+ hours, no editing that I noticed. The only thing different in the encore were occasional live programming notes, and abbreviated (10-minute) news broadcasts at 6 and 10.
Why did NBC feel the need to so obviously edit their repeat?
So to extend that out as a comparisson between China and the US, the level of corruption in China is far greater since it has become a corporate fascist state
The problem with US elections seems to be a) no common federal standard for presidential ballots b) you're voting on way too many things all at once.
In Canada for instance, federal elections you're choosing your local member of parliament (parliamentary system--you don't vote directly for the prime minister unless he happens to be in your electoral riding), and that's it. Local elections, you're voting for the mayor and school board trustee.
If I understand correctly though, in the US you're also voting on everything from senators judges to county commissioners and sheriffs, to local propositions and other stuff, and it's all on the same ballot. Aside from the folly of electing public servants based on popularity and perceived effectiveness (see Mike Nifong), this makes it difficult to make a manual count fast yet accurate, since you're tabulating possibly dozens of different things.
Why can't you have separate ballots for presidential candidates, and another for everything else (including congressmen and senators)?
It simply struck me that nothing much seems to happening Mac-side as we head into the fall - while MS Vista is posting gains of about 1% a month.
Windows PCs get replaced much faster, and remember most new consumer PCs ship with Vista with no XP option. It's not surprising at all that Vista is gaining marketshare at that rate.
Note that Vista's gains are coming mostly at the expense of Windows XP share, i.e. roughly every percentage gain by Vista comes at a percentage lost for XP.
That Mac's global share is still increasing 1.5% to 2% every year the last two years in the face of this, isn't bad at all.
Because it's not being pre-installed on probably 99.9% of PCs consumers buy in stores, and most businesses still have "old guard" IT departments who will stick with buying Windows to the very bitter end
I think at some point you have to start questioning these arguments.
OLPC has comfirmed orders of about 700,000 units. Here and in the UMPC or netbook market Linux was supposed to be entering a level playing field - or one tilted in its favor.
It hasn't quite worked out that way.
The geek has been on the sidelines cheering whenever WalMart.com enters the lists with an OEM Linux econo-box. Six moths later all has been forgiven and the Vista product outnumbers Linux 50 to 1.
Despite selling far more than 700,000 units, the iPhone and iPod Touch make up less than 0.25% of hardware out on the net. OLPCs, by virtue of being deployed in less-developed countries, with less access to internet, and possibly accessing localized sites not tracked by Net Applications, simply won't make that big an impression on Linux stats. OLPCs and UMPCs could be increasing Linux boxes by 100,000 units a month and market share still won't show an increase; it's like trying to use an eyedropper to fill a sink when the tap's on.
I'm with you on your other points, but I raised my eyebrows at this:
The Mac appears to be stagnating, and its reputation as the "high priced spread" may be to blame.
From the link you provided, total Mac share (Mac + MacIntel) is now about 7.8%. That's up from 6.3% this time last year (Q3 2007), and 4.3% the year before that.
So growth is slowing *slightly*; not unexpected ("low-hanging fruit" has been picked), and I'd hardly call it "stagnating."
If the problem isn't with the UI and isn't with the installer and isn't with the apps why isn't Linux on the desktop gaining any traction?
Because it's not being pre-installed on probably 99.9% of PCs consumers buy in stores, and most businesses still have "old guard" IT departments who will stick with buying Windows to the very bitter end.
As a web developer in a small organization I have to fight with my IT/supervisor constantly about supporting Firefox! There's zero chance of getting either Mac or Linux boxes there.
You're correct, it's definitely not "Engrish" when speaking about poor Chinese pronunciation; neither Mandarin nor Cantonese are missing the "L" phoneme.
Ironically, Cantonese has no "R" sound in its dialect, so "Engrish" for any poor English usage in Hong Kong doubly doesn't apply... especially since it's inundated with English, being a former British colony and all.
It's just a matter of time until geeks wake up and start hating them. Oh, and don't claim you hated Microsoft prior to 1995, you know it's a lie. Everyone wanted to be Bill Gates back then, he was the noble knight/geek taking on the world and bringing down empires like IBM and DEC with his accessible to all consumer computers. It was only after Linux came on the scene that geeks turned on him like the fickle fashionistas that they claim they aren't.
I don't know where you get off speaking for me or anyone else. I started off completely neutral on them when I got my first computer in 1991, but considering it was a Mac, it was perhaps inevitable.
My first foray into programming was MacBASIC, on a Mac Plus at school. It was friendly to new programmers, not only breaking on the line causing the error and giving the error type, but also what specifically the error was--much like Firefox does today with Javascript errors. IIRC it even went as far as to suggest fixes to the problem.
The next grade up used Microsoft BASIC--and its error messages were just shit compared to MacBASIC. My favourite was "Syntax error" and the line number. Fast forward 15 years... gee, Internet Explorer's Javascript error handling is just as useless!
I'm not going to argue the merits of MS BASIC and IE forcing us to actually think and learn; bottom line is that compared to MacBASIC and Firefox, Microsoft's do-the-minimum-we-can-get-away-with mentality grated on me.
Then I learned Microsoft's role in killing the superior version. Then they foisted Office 6 for the Mac in '94--a bloated piece of garbage so slow, you could supposedly run the PC version under Windows emulation faster. A whole bunch of little things formed a pattern and coalesced into an avalanche of negative perception against them.
So I *know* I hated Microsoft well in advance of their Windows 95 launch, thank you very much--and Apple advocates have just as much reason to hate them as Linux ones. Bill Gates was never a hero of mine--by the time I learned who he was, the company he was in charge of had already been tainted in my eyes.
Microsoft "irrelevant"? Those are odd words for a company that still maintains a 90% operating system market share, an equivalent market share percentage for office and productivity software, and what was (till a few weeks ago) the top selling current-gen video game console in the United States.
They're "irrelevant" insofar as bashing Microsoft is now totally ineffective in getting attention--everyone bashes Microsoft, so no one pays attention to you.
Like Greenpeace's recent campaign against Apple, it's all about getting attention for their own cause, not to actually force an organization to change its policies.
And dropping alt.* creates lots of collateral damage -- much intelligent discussion on various topics, and variety of non-porn-related subjects that happen to fall in the alt.* hierarchy.
The last thing certain people in charge want right now, are people participating in intelligent discussions.
It's entirely possible that a conventional car might still get better mileage just by showing this data to the driver so, for example, they learn to avoid racing up to red lights and mashing on the brakes. Not sure if there's a way to safely retrofit this type of thing into a conventional car, though.
Enter the Scangauge II. Not only does it give you a choice of 4 readings to display at the same time, it also reads the maintenance codes when your Service Soon light goes off. Works on all cars after 1996 or so which have a standard ODB-II (On Board Diagnostic) system.
No programming team would ignore FF unless directed to do so. You are telling me you got a group of programmers together and they all loved IE so much they were completely oblivious to FF? I *wish* this were true. A.NET vendor for my work did just that, and when we asked why Firefox didn't work they said they'd fix the issues for a very tidy sum, or they'd have to re-allocate time/money from more urgent tasks (we're a small org, the vendor was delivering customizations for a huge.NET product, I had no say in our requirements, and my supervisor has an irrational hate on for Firefox). Of course, they're now proceeding further developing against IE only, so it'll be that much more effort if/when there's a push for standards compliance.
The flip side are a few vendors who *didn't* test on IE before delivery, only Firefox. That caused just as many headaches for me, with the secondary effect that it entrenches my supervisor's opinion against Firefox even more.
That's the exact rationalization I have to fight my supervisor on every now and again. He has this irrational hate on for Firefox (my primary dev browser), and has said that if it were up to him he'd force me to only develop on IE, even though I test on IE7 and IE6 afterwards to ensure they don't screw up on perfectly valid code.
I finally not-so-subtly threatened to go somewhere else if this ever happened. It's a small organization, so while I'm not irreplaceable, it definitely wouldn't be worth losing me over such a small issue, since web dev is the least complex of my responsibilities.
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Sure you can vote out a private company: Don't buy from them.
Sigh... I suppose on the subject at hand, i.e. private companies running red light cameras, you're going to detour around intersections with them? Cost yourself some gas every time you do so?
Unless these companies are diversified into consumer goods or services, just under what circumstance would you be buying anything from them in the first place?
Maybe other democratic governments aren't quite as corrupt?
It's amazing to me that you can totally distrust your government to do anything right, yet think that private enterprise overseeing parts of your life is somehow better.
Okay, so less of your income is taxed. The flip side is that the company isn't accountable to anyone--you can't vote them out! And if they *are* accountable to someone... well guess what, it's probably to government oversight!
Closing the Safari window let me copy something else into the clipboard. Didn't need to quit it, let alone restart the computer.
I wonder if it depends on the version of Flash you have installed too?
But it does show in majority governments in Canada, they are term dictators. The senate is nothing more than old patronage buddies collecting big bucks to rubber stamp things. But fortunately we are in a minority government situation which makes the dictatorship more tenuous.
What's frightening is that despite their minority government status, they've been running around behaving like they have a majority.
Imagine the damage they could do if they truly did have a majority, and there was no chance of the opposition parties taking them down.
Correct: Ontario has the Special Investigations Unit, a civilian unit which investigates any time police officers are on scene when a death or serious injury occurs.
Even the least corrupt cop is evil because they have to enforce evil laws. Every cop on the beat is participating in the persecution of marijuana smokers, for instance. There's absolutely no justification for that. Any person who would use violent force against the non-violent, deserves all the contempt and scorn in the world.
How far back in the chain do you want to go? The government wrote the law. That government, in our case, was formed based on our votes (or worse, from voter apathy).
As they say, a people deserve the government they get
*rolls eyes* As stupid of a PR stunt as that was (who likes bragging?) the fact-of-the-matter is that the "Mission" was indeed accomplished. It's just that you're wrong on what you think the "Mission" was.
(the mission was to invade Iraq and capture Baghdad, effectively over-throwing the government. And that, my friend, was what all the bragging was about. Reconstructing Iraq and unifying the waring factions was a completely different mission, one that Bush fell flat on his face with until Gen. Petraeus took over and initiated the "surge". Unfortunately, it was a very deep hole that was dug by that point that America has recently started to see some sunlight at the end of the tunnel.)
Too bad you didn't have the courage to post under an actual user name--you fell right into the trap I set for someone like you.
I knew that bragging was solely about toppling the Saddam Hussein regime. But like any war (remember this is a "War on Terror, right?") there are battles that are won and lost, but the war goes on.
Just as the original objective of the Iraq invasion was met, but the larger (and ret-conned) goal of turning Iraq into a free and democratic country is still ongoing, so too is the "terrorists have won" statement.
This isn't like the Superbowl, where a single win gives a neat and tidy conclusion. The Islamists have been fighting back hard following the "Mission Accomplished."
"The terrorists," on the other hand, have clearly achieved the objective of keeping Americans terrorized. They did an amazing job getting the government to do the dirty work of limiting freedoms on their behalf. Worst of all, most US citizens are doing nothing to fight back, and asking for even more restrictions.
Please stop with this "the terrorists have won" crap. Once we say the terrorists have won, the terrorists have won.
I remember a large banner unfurled on the island of an aircraft carrier saying "Mission Accomplished."
Saying so didn't make that true, either.
If all the cars are linked why have traffic lights?
Pedestrians trying to cross an intersection?
Maybe this "amateur" rocket launch by the guys at Top Gear will prove an inspiration... though you have to wonder how many permits they had to get to even try this.
An armed man can mix whatever chemicals he damn well pleases.
Well of course--it's quite hard for someone to mix chemicals if he has no arms...
As he points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made, software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to see.
Perhaps we should resort to *AA-style "loss calculations." Two can play at that game, and it would be just as valid.
I'd prefer not to stoop to their level, but you don't win against a bully by fighting fair.
CBC (Canada's approved Olympic broadcaster) not only showed it live, they also did an encore presentation starting at 6 pm.
They replayed the whole thing--all 4+ hours, no editing that I noticed. The only thing different in the encore were occasional live programming notes, and abbreviated (10-minute) news broadcasts at 6 and 10.
Why did NBC feel the need to so obviously edit their repeat?
So to extend that out as a comparisson between China and the US, the level of corruption in China is far greater since it has become a corporate fascist state
At least in China they make a show of punishing corruption--they execute the perpetrators.
When's the last time an American official was jailed for corruption, let alone executed?
The problem with US elections seems to be
a) no common federal standard for presidential ballots
b) you're voting on way too many things all at once.
In Canada for instance, federal elections you're choosing your local member of parliament (parliamentary system--you don't vote directly for the prime minister unless he happens to be in your electoral riding), and that's it. Local elections, you're voting for the mayor and school board trustee.
If I understand correctly though, in the US you're also voting on everything from senators judges to county commissioners and sheriffs, to local propositions and other stuff, and it's all on the same ballot. Aside from the folly of electing public servants based on popularity and perceived effectiveness (see Mike Nifong), this makes it difficult to make a manual count fast yet accurate, since you're tabulating possibly dozens of different things.
Why can't you have separate ballots for presidential candidates, and another for everything else (including congressmen and senators)?
It simply struck me that nothing much seems to happening Mac-side as we head into the fall - while MS Vista is posting gains of about 1% a month.
Windows PCs get replaced much faster, and remember most new consumer PCs ship with Vista with no XP option. It's not surprising at all that Vista is gaining marketshare at that rate.
Note that Vista's gains are coming mostly at the expense of Windows XP share, i.e. roughly every percentage gain by Vista comes at a percentage lost for XP.
That Mac's global share is still increasing 1.5% to 2% every year the last two years in the face of this, isn't bad at all.
Because it's not being pre-installed on probably 99.9% of PCs consumers buy in stores, and most businesses still have "old guard" IT departments who will stick with buying Windows to the very bitter end
I think at some point you have to start questioning these arguments.
OLPC has comfirmed orders of about 700,000 units. Here and in the UMPC or netbook market Linux was supposed to be entering a level playing field - or one tilted in its favor.
It hasn't quite worked out that way.
The geek has been on the sidelines cheering whenever WalMart.com enters the lists with an OEM Linux econo-box. Six moths later all has been forgiven and the Vista product outnumbers Linux 50 to 1.
Despite selling far more than 700,000 units, the iPhone and iPod Touch make up less than 0.25% of hardware out on the net. OLPCs, by virtue of being deployed in less-developed countries, with less access to internet, and possibly accessing localized sites not tracked by Net Applications, simply won't make that big an impression on Linux stats. OLPCs and UMPCs could be increasing Linux boxes by 100,000 units a month and market share still won't show an increase; it's like trying to use an eyedropper to fill a sink when the tap's on.
I'm with you on your other points, but I raised my eyebrows at this:
The Mac appears to be stagnating, and its reputation as the "high priced spread" may be to blame.
From the link you provided, total Mac share (Mac + MacIntel) is now about 7.8%. That's up from 6.3% this time last year (Q3 2007), and 4.3% the year before that.
So growth is slowing *slightly*; not unexpected ("low-hanging fruit" has been picked), and I'd hardly call it "stagnating."
If the problem isn't with the UI and isn't with the installer and isn't with the apps why isn't Linux on the desktop gaining any traction?
Because it's not being pre-installed on probably 99.9% of PCs consumers buy in stores, and most businesses still have "old guard" IT departments who will stick with buying Windows to the very bitter end.
As a web developer in a small organization I have to fight with my IT/supervisor constantly about supporting Firefox! There's zero chance of getting either Mac or Linux boxes there.
You're correct, it's definitely not "Engrish" when speaking about poor Chinese pronunciation; neither Mandarin nor Cantonese are missing the "L" phoneme.
Ironically, Cantonese has no "R" sound in its dialect, so "Engrish" for any poor English usage in Hong Kong doubly doesn't apply... especially since it's inundated with English, being a former British colony and all.
It's just a matter of time until geeks wake up and start hating them. Oh, and don't claim you hated Microsoft prior to 1995, you know it's a lie. Everyone wanted to be Bill Gates back then, he was the noble knight/geek taking on the world and bringing down empires like IBM and DEC with his accessible to all consumer computers. It was only after Linux came on the scene that geeks turned on him like the fickle fashionistas that they claim they aren't.
I don't know where you get off speaking for me or anyone else. I started off completely neutral on them when I got my first computer in 1991, but considering it was a Mac, it was perhaps inevitable.
My first foray into programming was MacBASIC, on a Mac Plus at school. It was friendly to new programmers, not only breaking on the line causing the error and giving the error type, but also what specifically the error was--much like Firefox does today with Javascript errors. IIRC it even went as far as to suggest fixes to the problem.
The next grade up used Microsoft BASIC--and its error messages were just shit compared to MacBASIC. My favourite was "Syntax error" and the line number. Fast forward 15 years... gee, Internet Explorer's Javascript error handling is just as useless!
I'm not going to argue the merits of MS BASIC and IE forcing us to actually think and learn; bottom line is that compared to MacBASIC and Firefox, Microsoft's do-the-minimum-we-can-get-away-with mentality grated on me.
Then I learned Microsoft's role in killing the superior version. Then they foisted Office 6 for the Mac in '94--a bloated piece of garbage so slow, you could supposedly run the PC version under Windows emulation faster. A whole bunch of little things formed a pattern and coalesced into an avalanche of negative perception against them.
So I *know* I hated Microsoft well in advance of their Windows 95 launch, thank you very much--and Apple advocates have just as much reason to hate them as Linux ones. Bill Gates was never a hero of mine--by the time I learned who he was, the company he was in charge of had already been tainted in my eyes.
Microsoft "irrelevant"? Those are odd words for a company that still maintains a 90% operating system market share, an equivalent market share percentage for office and productivity software, and what was (till a few weeks ago) the top selling current-gen video game console in the United States.
They're "irrelevant" insofar as bashing Microsoft is now totally ineffective in getting attention--everyone bashes Microsoft, so no one pays attention to you.
Like Greenpeace's recent campaign against Apple, it's all about getting attention for their own cause, not to actually force an organization to change its policies.
And dropping alt.* creates lots of collateral damage -- much intelligent discussion on various topics, and variety of non-porn-related subjects that happen to fall in the alt.* hierarchy.
The last thing certain people in charge want right now, are people participating in intelligent discussions.
It's entirely possible that a conventional car might still get better mileage just by showing this data to the driver so, for example, they learn to avoid racing up to red lights and mashing on the brakes. Not sure if there's a way to safely retrofit this type of thing into a conventional car, though.
Enter the Scangauge II. Not only does it give you a choice of 4 readings to display at the same time, it also reads the maintenance codes when your Service Soon light goes off. Works on all cars after 1996 or so which have a standard ODB-II (On Board Diagnostic) system.
Not quite--it's Outlook + Exchange server.
Thunderbird is a drop-in replacement for Outlook, but there's no drop-in substitute for Exchange.
The flip side are a few vendors who *didn't* test on IE before delivery, only Firefox. That caused just as many headaches for me, with the secondary effect that it entrenches my supervisor's opinion against Firefox even more.
That's the exact rationalization I have to fight my supervisor on every now and again. He has this irrational hate on for Firefox (my primary dev browser), and has said that if it were up to him he'd force me to only develop on IE, even though I test on IE7 and IE6 afterwards to ensure they don't screw up on perfectly valid code.
I finally not-so-subtly threatened to go somewhere else if this ever happened. It's a small organization, so while I'm not irreplaceable, it definitely wouldn't be worth losing me over such a small issue, since web dev is the least complex of my responsibilities.