How is that specific to software? It looks like you can apply those arguments to any patents, now. Basically, the whole system is too big, too complex, and too difficult to check whether you're breaching somebody else's patent. Any protection the 'little guy' might get is more than outweighed by the enormous time and resources they have to first put in to check that they haven't infringed on an existing patent, and that's without even considering the ones that have been filed and not published! This isn't exclusive to software patents, is it?
PS. I would support the total abolition of patents. I just think they're a bad idea in this day and age of a planet of over 6 billion people.
I'd rather have a larger backspace key than a ginormous enter key.
Never understood why you Yanks like that. Enter's one of the keys I press most on the keyboard, and I strike it quite authoritatively, usually. Nice to have a big target to aim at. As someone who grew up with the large Enter keys, I find the smaller rectangular ones *extremely* annoying. I think I even came across an Enter key once that was the size of a regular letter key, but that was rare.:-)
Trouble for me with HP is, I utterly hate their colour scheme. They're kind of like the new Ford - you can have any colour you like, as long as it's black-with-silver-trimmings. I wish they'd figure out what colour is, black depresses me. I am not a goth.
This CAN'T be done with traditional 3D cinema (because there are only 2 different image projected on the screen, they don't change as the head moves).
I think I've got a way to get round this. How about having actual objects that the audience watch, a real set, and real actors performing the storyline?
I've never understood all this 'encouraging people to vote' bullshit. The answer to me seems simple. Make it fucking MANDATORY, and put a 'none of the above box' on the ballot. Problem solved. I would be just fine with the few hundred lazy morons who couldn't be bothered to vote being in jail. Australia shows that it's quite feasible.
Please. Don't insult a logical mindset, such as support for OSS, freedom, or profit, by referring to it as a 'religion' or 'faith'. It has some basis in reality.
The "2 to 5 seconds" to change the channels on Freeview is nothing to do with decoding times or slow processors in the Freeview set-top boxes. Nope, it's simply because there's more than 9 channels and the channels can indeed be numbered up to 999, which means that up to 3 digits have to be pressed to change channel.
Actually, the GP may just have been referring to the fact that pretty much all Freeview boxes apparently have crappy firmware/hardware (at least I haven't found one that doesn't), and changing channel actually DOES take a few seconds whilst it 'does stuff'; analogue TV didn't require that slow firmware and changing channels was pretty much instant.
As an aside, Freeview isn't free, you pay a licence fee. I abhor the misleading name.
As the article says, a far simpler solution to the badwidth issues of freeview would be to ditch the huge number of junk channels and use the bandwidth to provide a HD signal for the ones that people actually watch.
Quite right. Why do I have to put up with that BBC1/2/3/4, ITV1/2/3, Channel4 and Five junk when I never watch it?
(when I say forseeable...I mean it. There's actually a VASTLY more efficient way to do interplanetary, and even interstellar, travel that doesn't involve fusion or fission plants...)
I'd say the current consensus is simply where British politics is at the moment - I don't really see this as something that is effected by the voting mechanism; rather that Thatchers reforms shifted the consensus to the right, something I think would remain whatever the voting system.
I disagree. Had Labour not had the ridiculous majority they still enjoy, nothing like as many bad reforms would have been put through, we'd be less close to Europe (because of UKIP's influence), taxes would be lower (Gordon Brown's raiding of pensions and council funding to fund the NHS wouldn't be so easily implemented) ID cards and road pricing wouldn't even have made it onto the agenda, and MANY other things. The government would be much more held to account, and if they screwed up, their coalition partners would hopefully give them a kick up the backside. You only have to take a look at the opposition to the Iraq war and things like the 1 million+ anti-road charging petition on the 10 Downing St. website to see that Labour's policies are not 'where British politics is at' at the moment. Unless you define British politics as a select few who frequent the house of commons. I'd rather it was more inclusive.
however you have to set this against the dead hand of the coalition viewpoint, which is my principle fear (the Austrian example scares me to be honest - 30 years? 40 years? of the same coalition. No wonder the far right found a foothold.).
I don't understand the phrase, 'dead hand of the coalition'; but anyway I just don't understand why it would have to be that the same coalition remained for 40 years. The point is, under PR, people would have the POWER to get some other parties in, very very quickly, if they got sick of the incumbents. 'Safe seats' and 'hotbeds' of party support would not skew the results in certain parties' favour. Not sure what caused the Austrian system to be the way it is, but take a look at Israel and Finland; their systems seem to work pretty well.
I have to admit I'd never heard of the distinction before. However, off the top of my head, that does seem to be a system that would be implemented party by party, rather than being a legal requirement. I'd fear that Labour and the Tories might take a different route.
No way; open list would be implemented in law. It would be part of the rules of the electoral system. The parties put their candidates forward, select 5 to be sure of getting in, and the system does the rest. After the guaranteed (eg.)5, the MPs are put into parliament based on 1) the number of seats their party got and 2) the number of votes they themselves got.
I fear that the simple mechanics of a PR system would lead to parties even more powerful than they are now.
It wouldn't.
I think (and from what you said about allocated seats I think you agree) that in a system where ministers are drawn from elected MPs (lets forget the lords for a second) parties do need to be able to have a reasonable degree of certainty about some key people. At least with first past the post there is always an option to vote just them out (did you stay up for Portillo?)
So, do you think they should be able to be sure of having some key people or not? Should you be able to vote them out or not? You're contradicting yourself. I'm saying they should have something like 5 guaranteed, the rest chosen by the electorate. As for Portillo, the 1997 election was truly exceptional, and I'm not sure how safe his seat was but it couldn't have been one of the safest Tory seats... think you could get Blair, Brown, Prescott, etc. out of office? You'd pretty much have to move 100,000 people en masse into their constituency to stand a chance. Even so, it took an absolutely overwhelming hatrid of the Tory government to get them out of power, and I think that actually shows the failure of our system. The country has lurched to Labour for far too long, and they're now pretty much worse than we had before. It shouldn't take that m
Right - it's financially better for someone who doesn't want internet or broadband (because they either don't want to pay for it or don't feel a need for it) to pay for YOU to have internet.
s/internet/water|electricity|gas|roads/
The internet is becoming a very important service in advanced societies.
1. Perpetual coalition government - not a good thing IMO since it can lead to governing coalitions that last for decades (Austria until recently for eg).
As opposed to our current system with 2 virtually identical parties vying for the politically-correct centreground, closing their minds to many new ideas for fear of losing votes from certain sectors? The current system is worse than coalitions would be. Whatsmore, at least with coalitions, there would be a lot more small parties in the commons that could exert a lot more influence, and even (if the main coalition was pissing everybody off) become powerful enough to veto that coalition (maybe by forming a secondary coalition). Politics would basically be more dynamic, and I think the discussion of ideas would have to be more open owing to the greater variety of people taking part.
2. Voting by party not by candidate - so even more powerful parties. All MPs have to [tow] the line or not get on the list, and there is no chance for individual unpopular politicians in a popular party to be voted out.
Parties are *currently* very powerful. Blair and Cameron virtually rule by diktat. However, the idea that the parties would always decide which politicians took up the seats is a myth usually perpetuated by people who don't want to see a fairer (PR) electing system. That is called 'closed-list' proportional representation. I would advocate 'open-list' proportional representation, where the voters DO vote for a particular candidate. The vote initially goes toward that candidate's party. Once it has been decided how many seats each party gets, the number of votes per candidate are used to decide which ones get into parliament... so there IS incentive for individual candidates to go out and campaign and adopt policies that the voters like, and the parties DON'T get to pick which candidates get the seats. The parties could be allocated, perhaps, 5 seats for which they could choose the candidates to go in them, just to make sure that very key people in the party (head of party, deputy, etc) don't get prevented from entering parliament.
By the way, the current system is pretty much as bad as you suggested *already*. They put the candidates they really want to be in parliament (Blair, Brown, Prescott, and other assorted nasties) in very safe seats, so they're effectively picking exactly who they want anyway.
3. Much less importance given to local issues by the national government.
I say: Good. I see no reason why a *national* parliament should be addressing local issues; that's what local government is for (and local government in the UK, by the way, should be normalized and its power beefed up greatly, so it could operate better without help from the commons). National government should NOT be the first port of call for people wanting to address a local issue. You should NOT be thinking of going to your local MP, you should be going to your local councillors. Right now, the only reason MPs like being able to claim they 'represent' a constituency (which of course they don't because they are almost all elected by a minority) is so they can wheel out some constituent by name in PMQs to 'personalize' an issue and make it harder for the PM to respond, because it might look like he was treating a non-politician with contempt (eg. "Can the PM explain why Mrs. Johnson, one of my constituents, could not get a hip replacement for 2 years?!?!!"... musn't make people think I hate Mrs. Johnson!). This is cynical behaviour and, if anything, an argument *against* local issues having a place in the commons.
4. More seats for the Lib Dems - the only reason they seem to support it, which makes me a lot more cynical of them than I otherwise would be.
Well, you started out by saying that you quite liked them, so you're somewhat contradicting yourself. Yes, it would give them more seats, because it would be a much fairer system. That's no reason to be cynical. There's no reason they can't support something that helps them and JUST HAPPENS to be the Right Thing To Do, as well.
Slashdot Mirror
His name is Michel Xhaard.
I think making iPods work more like modern car stereos (which aren't theft-immune, but stealing them is much less profitable nowadays)
Less profitable? Howso?
Were it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts. See U. S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 8.
Looks like someone needs to tell them about a company called Vonage.
How is that specific to software? It looks like you can apply those arguments to any patents, now. Basically, the whole system is too big, too complex, and too difficult to check whether you're breaching somebody else's patent. Any protection the 'little guy' might get is more than outweighed by the enormous time and resources they have to first put in to check that they haven't infringed on an existing patent, and that's without even considering the ones that have been filed and not published! This isn't exclusive to software patents, is it?
PS. I would support the total abolition of patents. I just think they're a bad idea in this day and age of a planet of over 6 billion people.
That's irrelevant, dude. The point is, he typed it on a cool laptop. Don't you get it?
Land of the Free [nowthatsfuckedup.com]
Just to be sure, I take it you're commenting on the fact that Polk County Sherriff's Office seems to have shut that site down?
I'd rather have a larger backspace key than a ginormous enter key.
:-)
Never understood why you Yanks like that. Enter's one of the keys I press most on the keyboard, and I strike it quite authoritatively, usually. Nice to have a big target to aim at. As someone who grew up with the large Enter keys, I find the smaller rectangular ones *extremely* annoying. I think I even came across an Enter key once that was the size of a regular letter key, but that was rare.
Trouble for me with HP is, I utterly hate their colour scheme. They're kind of like the new Ford - you can have any colour you like, as long as it's black-with-silver-trimmings. I wish they'd figure out what colour is, black depresses me. I am not a goth.
Dunno about that. I suspect my machine's PCI express bus to have stuff being made for it for maybe 10 years, at least.
No, but at least initially, it will be a lot harder to play back 3d movies without expensive equipment.
I'm so sick of the moronic editor comments here. "give it a few years" ?!
Careful. There are reports that others who have called Slashdot's owner a 'moron' have had their comments filtered...
This CAN'T be done with traditional 3D cinema (because there are only 2 different image projected on the screen, they don't change as the head moves).
I think I've got a way to get round this. How about having actual objects that the audience watch, a real set, and real actors performing the storyline?
Fine by me, as long as you HAD to vote. :-)
I've never understood all this 'encouraging people to vote' bullshit. The answer to me seems simple. Make it fucking MANDATORY, and put a 'none of the above box' on the ballot. Problem solved. I would be just fine with the few hundred lazy morons who couldn't be bothered to vote being in jail. Australia shows that it's quite feasible.
Did you see a link to a paper? I'd like to read it, but couldn't find one. Am I blind?
Dunno. Maybe you didn't get enough vitamin D.
Please. Don't insult a logical mindset, such as support for OSS, freedom, or profit, by referring to it as a 'religion' or 'faith'. It has some basis in reality.
The "2 to 5 seconds" to change the channels on Freeview is nothing to do with decoding times or slow processors in the Freeview set-top boxes. Nope, it's simply because there's more than 9 channels and the channels can indeed be numbered up to 999, which means that up to 3 digits have to be pressed to change channel.
Actually, the GP may just have been referring to the fact that pretty much all Freeview boxes apparently have crappy firmware/hardware (at least I haven't found one that doesn't), and changing channel actually DOES take a few seconds whilst it 'does stuff'; analogue TV didn't require that slow firmware and changing channels was pretty much instant.
As an aside, Freeview isn't free, you pay a licence fee. I abhor the misleading name.
As the article says, a far simpler solution to the badwidth issues of freeview would be to ditch the huge number of junk channels and use the bandwidth to provide a HD signal for the ones that people actually watch.
Quite right. Why do I have to put up with that BBC1/2/3/4, ITV1/2/3, Channel4 and Five junk when I never watch it?
In Simcity2k, the best way to get power was to raise a block of 3x3 land, cover it with water, and build 9 hydro plants on it. Never blow up. :-)
(when I say forseeable...I mean it. There's actually a VASTLY more efficient way to do interplanetary, and even interstellar, travel that doesn't involve fusion or fission plants...)
Are you talking about this?
I'd say the current consensus is simply where British politics is at the moment - I don't really see this as something that is effected by the voting mechanism; rather that Thatchers reforms shifted the consensus to the right, something I think would remain whatever the voting system.
I disagree. Had Labour not had the ridiculous majority they still enjoy, nothing like as many bad reforms would have been put through, we'd be less close to Europe (because of UKIP's influence), taxes would be lower (Gordon Brown's raiding of pensions and council funding to fund the NHS wouldn't be so easily implemented) ID cards and road pricing wouldn't even have made it onto the agenda, and MANY other things. The government would be much more held to account, and if they screwed up, their coalition partners would hopefully give them a kick up the backside. You only have to take a look at the opposition to the Iraq war and things like the 1 million+ anti-road charging petition on the 10 Downing St. website to see that Labour's policies are not 'where British politics is at' at the moment. Unless you define British politics as a select few who frequent the house of commons. I'd rather it was more inclusive.
however you have to set this against the dead hand of the coalition viewpoint, which is my principle fear (the Austrian example scares me to be honest - 30 years? 40 years? of the same coalition. No wonder the far right found a foothold.).
I don't understand the phrase, 'dead hand of the coalition'; but anyway I just don't understand why it would have to be that the same coalition remained for 40 years. The point is, under PR, people would have the POWER to get some other parties in, very very quickly, if they got sick of the incumbents. 'Safe seats' and 'hotbeds' of party support would not skew the results in certain parties' favour. Not sure what caused the Austrian system to be the way it is, but take a look at Israel and Finland; their systems seem to work pretty well.
I have to admit I'd never heard of the distinction before. However, off the top of my head, that does seem to be a system that would be implemented party by party, rather than being a legal requirement. I'd fear that Labour and the Tories might take a different route.
No way; open list would be implemented in law. It would be part of the rules of the electoral system. The parties put their candidates forward, select 5 to be sure of getting in, and the system does the rest. After the guaranteed (eg.)5, the MPs are put into parliament based on 1) the number of seats their party got and 2) the number of votes they themselves got.
I fear that the simple mechanics of a PR system would lead to parties even more powerful than they are now.
It wouldn't.
I think (and from what you said about allocated seats I think you agree) that in a system where ministers are drawn from elected MPs (lets forget the lords for a second) parties do need to be able to have a reasonable degree of certainty about some key people. At least with first past the post there is always an option to vote just them out (did you stay up for Portillo?)
So, do you think they should be able to be sure of having some key people or not? Should you be able to vote them out or not? You're contradicting yourself. I'm saying they should have something like 5 guaranteed, the rest chosen by the electorate. As for Portillo, the 1997 election was truly exceptional, and I'm not sure how safe his seat was but it couldn't have been one of the safest Tory seats... think you could get Blair, Brown, Prescott, etc. out of office? You'd pretty much have to move 100,000 people en masse into their constituency to stand a chance. Even so, it took an absolutely overwhelming hatrid of the Tory government to get them out of power, and I think that actually shows the failure of our system. The country has lurched to Labour for far too long, and they're now pretty much worse than we had before. It shouldn't take that m
Right - it's financially better for someone who doesn't want internet or broadband (because they either don't want to pay for it or don't feel a need for it) to pay for YOU to have internet.
s/internet/water|electricity|gas|roads/
The internet is becoming a very important service in advanced societies.
Doesn't the private part of the US health system have, on average, more money pumped into it (per person) than the UK's NHS?
So you're saying that if I throw cat shit at women, they'll like me?
1. Perpetual coalition government - not a good thing IMO since it can lead to governing coalitions that last for decades (Austria until recently for eg).
... musn't make people think I hate Mrs. Johnson!). This is cynical behaviour and, if anything, an argument *against* local issues having a place in the commons.
As opposed to our current system with 2 virtually identical parties vying for the politically-correct centreground, closing their minds to many new ideas for fear of losing votes from certain sectors? The current system is worse than coalitions would be. Whatsmore, at least with coalitions, there would be a lot more small parties in the commons that could exert a lot more influence, and even (if the main coalition was pissing everybody off) become powerful enough to veto that coalition (maybe by forming a secondary coalition). Politics would basically be more dynamic, and I think the discussion of ideas would have to be more open owing to the greater variety of people taking part.
2. Voting by party not by candidate - so even more powerful parties. All MPs have to [tow] the line or not get on the list, and there is no chance for individual unpopular politicians in a popular party to be voted out.
Parties are *currently* very powerful. Blair and Cameron virtually rule by diktat. However, the idea that the parties would always decide which politicians took up the seats is a myth usually perpetuated by people who don't want to see a fairer (PR) electing system. That is called 'closed-list' proportional representation. I would advocate 'open-list' proportional representation, where the voters DO vote for a particular candidate. The vote initially goes toward that candidate's party. Once it has been decided how many seats each party gets, the number of votes per candidate are used to decide which ones get into parliament... so there IS incentive for individual candidates to go out and campaign and adopt policies that the voters like, and the parties DON'T get to pick which candidates get the seats. The parties could be allocated, perhaps, 5 seats for which they could choose the candidates to go in them, just to make sure that very key people in the party (head of party, deputy, etc) don't get prevented from entering parliament.
By the way, the current system is pretty much as bad as you suggested *already*. They put the candidates they really want to be in parliament (Blair, Brown, Prescott, and other assorted nasties) in very safe seats, so they're effectively picking exactly who they want anyway.
3. Much less importance given to local issues by the national government.
I say: Good. I see no reason why a *national* parliament should be addressing local issues; that's what local government is for (and local government in the UK, by the way, should be normalized and its power beefed up greatly, so it could operate better without help from the commons). National government should NOT be the first port of call for people wanting to address a local issue. You should NOT be thinking of going to your local MP, you should be going to your local councillors. Right now, the only reason MPs like being able to claim they 'represent' a constituency (which of course they don't because they are almost all elected by a minority) is so they can wheel out some constituent by name in PMQs to 'personalize' an issue and make it harder for the PM to respond, because it might look like he was treating a non-politician with contempt (eg. "Can the PM explain why Mrs. Johnson, one of my constituents, could not get a hip replacement for 2 years?!?!!"
4. More seats for the Lib Dems - the only reason they seem to support it, which makes me a lot more cynical of them than I otherwise would be.
Well, you started out by saying that you quite liked them, so you're somewhat contradicting yourself. Yes, it would give them more seats, because it would be a much fairer system. That's no reason to be cynical. There's no reason they can't support something that helps them and JUST HAPPENS to be the Right Thing To Do, as well.