The funny thing is...the only thing the Wii has going for it is it's controller (and first party games, of course).
You forget about a few things: The price, and the target market.
The price matters... well, for obvious reasons -- especially for casual gamers.
The target market matters because it means that I, as a casual-/non-gamer, will probably be able to find plenty of software which provides fun diversions without eating up much time at a chunk or requiring any kind of dedication. (There are others in my household who spend more time gaming, and they may well buy more conventional games [as they do spend money on DVDs] after the hardware has become available -- but they don't make the kind of lump purchases involved in buying a new console, and so mostly are playing their games on decade-old console hardware or 5-year-old PC hardware).
(Also, as others have pointed out, changing out the controller after the fact isn't so easy. Everyone who develops for the Wii will support the Wiimote, and games will typically be initially designed with the Wiimote first in mind rather than as an afterthought; any fancier after-the-fact controller would be supported only by a subset of games, and even that not as well).
Now, as to the core of my argument (please, if you respond, respond to this paragraph first and foremost):
Al Queda certainly believes in enforcing morality by law. They certainly believe in leadership empowered to make decisions which defy law (though not religious laws). They certainly do not focus on personal liberties, or a free press, or treating citizens of other countries in a manner acceptable to the rest of the world. I think the similarities are quite obvious.
As for your other points...
Democrats tend to legislate morality only inasmuch as such morality involves interaction with third parties which those third parties consider unwelcome (or in cases where those third parties are children or otherwise not competent to make decisions regarding their own welfare).
Republicans have not shut down the free media, but they've gone after leaks using methods which are certainly harmful to such freedoms, and in many cases they have taken steps to villify the media in public.
Republicans admittedly do not claim to be breaking the law -- but the present administration has stretched a great many laws beyond any reasonable interpretation, and the Supreme Court has been in agreement on this topic. Council to the White House has also stated publicly that the President is effectively above the law when taking actions necessary for national security.
As for the claim that Democrats historically have the same tendancy to strengthen the executive branch that we've seen in Bush 2's time, I'd need to see substantial historical evidence on that before I'll accept your claim. Permitting the President to effectively declare specific coercive tactics legal (and not publish the list) is a prime example of the kind of action which I simply can't see as having been attempted in any other recent Presidency.
That being said, my point is this: point to one of those powers that, if made legal by a Republican controlled government, would be immediately repealed by a Democrat controlled government.
Well... I never said that the Democrats were anything other than the lesser of two evils. My position is simply that since the neoconservatives took over the Republican party, the Dems have become quite considerably less evil in comparison. You're quite right, though -- in all probability, it really is too late.
(As a perhaps-partially-related aside: With regard to the issue of allowing governmental use of torture, the best suggestion I've heard has been that of Bill Clinton when the question was recently put to him by NPR: Allow the President to personally authorize specific, individual cases -- and require Congress to individually review them post-facto. I'd like to think that when expanding their powers, the Dems would tend towards checks such as these... but perhaps it's a bit much to hope).
I do not submit that most republicans believe all of the below. I do submit that the present (neoconservative) Republican leadership has been acting in a manner consistant with them, however -- and I've been fairly careful to only select items which I can find quotes or actions from present leadership to back up. (That's not to say that I'm necessarily interested in doing so, however). These are only the items off the top of my head; there are certainly many more.
Again: I'm not accusing you of believing these things. I'm accusing the people you helped to elect of acting in a manner consistant with them (and frequently espousing them openly).
Government has a legitimate role in enforcing personal morality.
Unilateral use of force for purposes other than immediate defense of oneself or one's allies is not inherently illegitimate.
Achieving military objectives is more important than maintaining personal liberties.
A free media threatens legitimate governmental interests unless placed under substantial controls.
A strong, empowered leader granted wide powers (with which to attack our enemies) is a Good Thing.
The executive branch of government may have a legitimate need to act outside of the law, and should be able to prevent laws from being enforced which could hamper its actions (when those actions are taken in the interests of national security).
The executive branch of government should be able to avoid transparency when it sees fit, including in cases where it uses its powers to act in a manner not consistant with standing law in the interests of national security.
Questioning strong leadership in the context of an active conflict is inherently unpatriotic.
Noncitizens do not need to be granted the same rights as citizens.
Finally, there has absolutely been a departure from the fiscally conservative policies which the Republican party once stood for. I used to support the Republicans on fiscal matters, the Democrats on social ones and the Libertarians at the ballot box; presently, I am obliged to throw my support behind the Dems until we switch to a system of elections (such as Instant Runoff Voting) which would allow me to express a more nuanced view of my beliefs at the ballot box.
Do you think you can "make adequate social commentary" by sitting around and critiquing anyone who tries to make a point?
If you RTFA, the game's author mentions some specific goals he's achieved through this game -- such as causing people to think and talk about games in the context of social commentary, exactly as we're doing now. By definition, then, this goal has been fulfilled. The author additionally notes in TFA that through the game he has been able to open discussions with people who similarities between the history of Klebold and Harris (as presented by the game) and their own situations -- allowing an opportunity to discuss the ramifications of their actions and generally encourage them to go down a different path. Personally, I am reminded by the lesson presented by Nazi Germany -- that otherwise good people can become monsters should they allow themselves to be guided by surrounding circumstance.
As for making a real and substantial difference, that doesn't always happen as a bang. Sometimes little things start to change how people think, and those little things add up over time. If nobody does anything unless they can see the immediate effects of their actions, the many (who individually have opportunities to make small differences) will be overwhelmed by the few with the influence or ability to make big ones.
Grow up, and try to appreciate people's work before attacking it as childish.
The snoms, on the other hand, do _not_ have echo cancellation in their speakerphone, which means it can't be all that loud.
I have trouble believing that -- our single Snom 360 sounds as good as the (POTS) polycom units when on speakerphone, and we certainly don't run it quiet. Looking through their release notes, it says they added echo cancellation as of firmware version 3.60b. I don't see any complaints about lack of echo cancellation at http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/snom+360.
I haven't had a chance to work with a Polycom SIP phone, which is a little surprising since they're literally right down the road a bit (before we moved, they were the next building over). We hired one of the engineers who used to work on firmware for their videophones, though, and he had nothing good to say about how their software group was run. That said, I don't doubt their speakerphone support is excellent -- it's what Polycom is known for, after all.
the Grandstream GXP2000 has a reasonably professional look
A professional look, sure -- but the bloody things crash constantly if they don't like the network they're plugged into, their autoprovisioning is cranky at best, and our order (of about 20) had a very substantial number of duds (we RMA'd at least 3). Also, their speakerphone support doesn't work well -- IIRC, the folks on the remote end hear massive amounts of echo (though it sounds fine locally). I'd call the Sipura SPA-841 a reasonable step up from the GXP2000; it still has lousy speakerphone support, but at least it's reliable.
The Snom 360s -- those, I agree, are damn good phones. Their provisioning Just Works, the speakerphone sounds great, and they're a whole lot of fun to play with.
Re:Months Of Wii Hype Go Up In Flames
on
The Wii Takes NYC
·
· Score: 1
So what?
No, seriously. I don't care if my gaming console is like a supercomputer in a box. I want it to be cheap and fun, and I don't give a shit how many MIPS the thing has.
Now, some of that happens to have something to do with me being an actual person with a wife and house and job and otherwise a life which is incompatible with gaming as anything other than a very occasional diversion -- but that's fine. There's no conceivable way I could justify a "supercomputer in a box" just for playing games, but I'm going to buy a Wii.
Per subject. "Hot" is an impression, giving information about the observer rather than the observed. "Hot blooded", by contrast, refers to a personality trait -- particularly, a tendency to view issues in a passionate and emotional (rather than cold and clinical) way.
In many contexts, this could be complimentary; in other contexts, it probably isn't. (One doesn't necessarily want a hot-blooded clinician or judge, for instance).
Personally, I couldn't disagree more -- there are some damn hot black women out there -- but since you're speaking of your own qualities (your aesthetic sensibilities) rather than attributes of 3rd parties, I don't find it morally offensive.
As for the grandparent's point -- is it skin tone, facial structure or some other attribute which your sense of aesthetics is offended by? If you could pinpoint individual attributes rather than using the bucket of race, the information you provided would be more specific and useful. I don't agree that referencing race is always wrong -- even with a fuzzily defined set A [as that referenced within the opening of this post], being able to state that "there are some members of B within set A" is a meaningful statement [though not necessarily often useful, given the sizes of the sets involved] -- but I do agree with the grandparent in that where possible it makes sense to communicate using more specific or clear identifiers, particularly where doing so would make or infer invalid generalizations. That said -- as racial boundaries continue to become fuzzier, speaking as to individual attributes will continue to become more important over time.
(Personally, for instance, my sense of aesthetics is offended by poor grammar. Specifying this in particular rather than attempting to reference sets of individuals containing a substantial number of members with this trait makes my communication more precise and less likely to inadvertently offend; after all, there exist one or two AOLers who can actually write).
Hmm. Actually, that's a point. Why did you bother to say "well-proportioned red-haired fair-skinned white women"? Would it not be adequate to specify "well-proportioned red-haired fair-skinned women", thus referring specifically to the relevant attributes? While I couldn't call the unnecessary specifier anachronistic yet, I'd like to think it will be in the not-so-distant future.
To be sure, it isn't literal truth -- but there are people who think that way, and the post in question makes the point. In short -- it's not just incorrect-wrong, it's dangerous-wrong; and dangerous-wrong things should be brought up in public so that they can be considered and arguments against them (even just internally) formulated.
And I can see someone who doesn't honestly believe the literal truth of the thing said stating it by way of lampooning a 3rd-party position -- and being insightful in doing so.
I wasn't talking about suburbs. Suburbs are for people who commute, and they can afford to drive housing prices up. When referring to $45K houses, I was talking about the boonies -- you know, places not in reasonable commuting distance at all. (I was, admittedly, unclear on this -- one of those cases where intonation and such would have allowed it to be better understood that the "massive commute" I referred to was massive enough to be completely impractical).
You've heard of "rural sourcing", where folks work from a location cheap enough that it might as well be a completely different country? The $45K homes are in the kind of places which are suburbs to the locations where that's happening. (As for the rural US as a whole, a bicycle is fine for getting around town -- but then, there'll be things you'll want which simply aren't available in town, so having access to motor transportation tends to be important).
On the other hand, the merely affordable homes (in places which aren't New York or one of California's larger population centers or one of the other areas of the country where things are completely out of proportion) can be found while living in more reasonable locations. Without knowing where you live and what your standards are, though, it's hard for me to be other than nebulous.
Because a better place to live costs more than a lot of people can afford just for the down payment.
Not really, if you're willing to move out of the city. I'm in Austin -- which the rest of Texas considers insanely expensive -- and a starter house (1200 square feet) is about $115K. I have an in-law who just moved elsewhere in Texas (don't recall the city, unfortunately) and she purchased a 4000-square-foot home in a nice neighborhood for not much more at all.
I've had friends thinking of moving *waaay* out into the boonies (tiny little town out of state with a massive commute for any decent non-telecommuting jobs) with the prospects of being able to buy a house there (large enough for a 4-person family to live comfortably) for ~$45K or so.
A "better place to live" isn't so unaffordable if you're willing to adjust some. If I'd stayed in the Bay Area, there's no way I'd be a homeowner right now. (Also, there are quite a lot of no- or low-down-payment mortgage options these days).
It happens on occasion that people incur debts while expecting to be able to pay them back, and are simply unable to do so. Further, it happens on occasion that people engage in irresponsible actions, learn from them, and go and sin no more -- but the duration of time needed for one's credit to recover is very nontrivial, particularly if creditors renew the entries on one's report.
Regarding the first case:
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition! Neither does anyone expect to get appendicitis while between jobs and uninsured, or to find oneself out of work suddenly when one's employer downsizes due to an economic change, or to end up getting saddled with an ex's liabilities during a divorce, or to have one's house ruled unoccupiable due to black mold (or some other situation not covered by regular homeowner's insurance). Life happens, and it's not always pretty. To be sure, the impact of these situations can be mitigated with preparation and care -- but putting people who are desparately in need of income due to unfortunate circumstances in a position where they're at a disadvantage in attempts to obtain said income is particularly unfortunate.
Regarding the second case:
I have excellent credit, but my wife's was distinctly checkered when we met. She's been a model of financial responsibility since then, but her credit report is still marked by charge-offs related to cards she acquired and spent money against back in college (which was already a good distance into her past). Since she has been unable to get new accounts on her own since that time, the only positive entries on her report (actually, the only entries since the negative ones) are joint accounts which she holds with me. While her poor credit history was certainly earned through incaution, such a history can live quite considerably longer than the traits leading to its incurrance. Is it reasonable for such to cause her to be considered a high credit risk? Absolutely. Is it reasonable for such to be a disqualifying factor in seeking employment? I would hope that a reasonable employer would be understanding in such a case.
Non-anonymous voting has been done. It was very, very badly abused -- not only via employment pressure and the like, but also vote selling (someone won't pay for your vote unless they can validate you delivered it) and other coercive behaviors.
Anonymous voting can be done securely -- there's been a lot of research on the topic, and I'm not going to recount it all here. Even making dumber machinery (as discussed elsewhere in this thread) would be substantially helpful. Perhaps anonymous voting can't be made *quite* as verifiable as non-anonymous voting -- but the abuses which non-anonymous voting enables are far worse than the incremental benefit over a well-designed system for anonymous voting.
Yes, the source is crap. Look at the debugging console -- they're *spawning an xterm* for output that would traditionally go to stderr. Don't have a DISPLAY set? Program crashes. Building on MacOS? Lucky you -- they have a bunch of commented-out code for running a separate window to display (what-should-be) stderr on the Mac; consequently, instead of getting output to stderr (which would actually be *useful* for redirection to a file, or direct output to the console, or whatever) it goes off into nowhere because the code to do the display is commented out! (I've written a patch for this -- making the separate window a configure option -- and will submit it at some point... maybe today). It's good that Google is paying for someone to clean this thing up -- it needs it.
[Might be that the Mac-only code is pre-OSX, btw -- I'm not really sure, as my experience with Mac-targeted development is pretty limited -- but if so, it makes more sense]
And the dependency on a neural network library that's available for research/personal use only really sucks; my interest for this was in inbound fax categorization in a (very low budget) commercial environment; however, that feature is low-priority enough that getting our business types to even talk to their business types (much less actually spend money) is a fairly dubious thing.
Individual americans are going through tough economic times in large part due to a culture of irresponsible debt spending. Having a comparatively high ceiling for impulse purchases is part and parcel.
Software projcets which include code licensed only under the GPL and code licensed only under the MPL, on the other hand, are not allowed -- because due to the incompatibility between those licenses, such projects are illegal to distribute.
Combining previously contributed 3rd-party GPLed code with your own (recently-relicensed-to) CCDL code is quite certainly a way to end up with a combined product which isn't legally redistributable.
Slashdot Mirror
You forget about a few things: The price, and the target market.
The price matters... well, for obvious reasons -- especially for casual gamers.
The target market matters because it means that I, as a casual-/non-gamer, will probably be able to find plenty of software which provides fun diversions without eating up much time at a chunk or requiring any kind of dedication. (There are others in my household who spend more time gaming, and they may well buy more conventional games [as they do spend money on DVDs] after the hardware has become available -- but they don't make the kind of lump purchases involved in buying a new console, and so mostly are playing their games on decade-old console hardware or 5-year-old PC hardware).
(Also, as others have pointed out, changing out the controller after the fact isn't so easy. Everyone who develops for the Wii will support the Wiimote, and games will typically be initially designed with the Wiimote first in mind rather than as an afterthought; any fancier after-the-fact controller would be supported only by a subset of games, and even that not as well).
Now, as to the core of my argument (please, if you respond, respond to this paragraph first and foremost):
Al Queda certainly believes in enforcing morality by law. They certainly believe in leadership empowered to make decisions which defy law (though not religious laws). They certainly do not focus on personal liberties, or a free press, or treating citizens of other countries in a manner acceptable to the rest of the world. I think the similarities are quite obvious.
As for your other points...
Democrats tend to legislate morality only inasmuch as such morality involves interaction with third parties which those third parties consider unwelcome (or in cases where those third parties are children or otherwise not competent to make decisions regarding their own welfare).
Republicans have not shut down the free media, but they've gone after leaks using methods which are certainly harmful to such freedoms, and in many cases they have taken steps to villify the media in public.
Republicans admittedly do not claim to be breaking the law -- but the present administration has stretched a great many laws beyond any reasonable interpretation, and the Supreme Court has been in agreement on this topic. Council to the White House has also stated publicly that the President is effectively above the law when taking actions necessary for national security.
As for the claim that Democrats historically have the same tendancy to strengthen the executive branch that we've seen in Bush 2's time, I'd need to see substantial historical evidence on that before I'll accept your claim. Permitting the President to effectively declare specific coercive tactics legal (and not publish the list) is a prime example of the kind of action which I simply can't see as having been attempted in any other recent Presidency.
That being said, my point is this: point to one of those powers that, if made legal by a Republican controlled government, would be immediately repealed by a Democrat controlled government.
Well... I never said that the Democrats were anything other than the lesser of two evils. My position is simply that since the neoconservatives took over the Republican party, the Dems have become quite considerably less evil in comparison. You're quite right, though -- in all probability, it really is too late.
(As a perhaps-partially-related aside: With regard to the issue of allowing governmental use of torture, the best suggestion I've heard has been that of Bill Clinton when the question was recently put to him by NPR: Allow the President to personally authorize specific, individual cases -- and require Congress to individually review them post-facto. I'd like to think that when expanding their powers, the Dems would tend towards checks such as these... but perhaps it's a bit much to hope).
I do not submit that most republicans believe all of the below. I do submit that the present (neoconservative) Republican leadership has been acting in a manner consistant with them, however -- and I've been fairly careful to only select items which I can find quotes or actions from present leadership to back up. (That's not to say that I'm necessarily interested in doing so, however). These are only the items off the top of my head; there are certainly many more.
Again: I'm not accusing you of believing these things. I'm accusing the people you helped to elect of acting in a manner consistant with them (and frequently espousing them openly).
Finally, there has absolutely been a departure from the fiscally conservative policies which the Republican party once stood for. I used to support the Republicans on fiscal matters, the Democrats on social ones and the Libertarians at the ballot box; presently, I am obliged to throw my support behind the Dems until we switch to a system of elections (such as Instant Runoff Voting) which would allow me to express a more nuanced view of my beliefs at the ballot box.
Do you think you can "make adequate social commentary" by sitting around and critiquing anyone who tries to make a point?
If you RTFA, the game's author mentions some specific goals he's achieved through this game -- such as causing people to think and talk about games in the context of social commentary, exactly as we're doing now. By definition, then, this goal has been fulfilled. The author additionally notes in TFA that through the game he has been able to open discussions with people who similarities between the history of Klebold and Harris (as presented by the game) and their own situations -- allowing an opportunity to discuss the ramifications of their actions and generally encourage them to go down a different path. Personally, I am reminded by the lesson presented by Nazi Germany -- that otherwise good people can become monsters should they allow themselves to be guided by surrounding circumstance.
As for making a real and substantial difference, that doesn't always happen as a bang. Sometimes little things start to change how people think, and those little things add up over time. If nobody does anything unless they can see the immediate effects of their actions, the many (who individually have opportunities to make small differences) will be overwhelmed by the few with the influence or ability to make big ones.
Grow up, and try to appreciate people's work before attacking it as childish.
The snoms, on the other hand, do _not_ have echo cancellation in their speakerphone, which means it can't be all that loud.
I have trouble believing that -- our single Snom 360 sounds as good as the (POTS) polycom units when on speakerphone, and we certainly don't run it quiet. Looking through their release notes, it says they added echo cancellation as of firmware version 3.60b. I don't see any complaints about lack of echo cancellation at http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/snom+360.
I haven't had a chance to work with a Polycom SIP phone, which is a little surprising since they're literally right down the road a bit (before we moved, they were the next building over). We hired one of the engineers who used to work on firmware for their videophones, though, and he had nothing good to say about how their software group was run. That said, I don't doubt their speakerphone support is excellent -- it's what Polycom is known for, after all.
A professional look, sure -- but the bloody things crash constantly if they don't like the network they're plugged into, their autoprovisioning is cranky at best, and our order (of about 20) had a very substantial number of duds (we RMA'd at least 3). Also, their speakerphone support doesn't work well -- IIRC, the folks on the remote end hear massive amounts of echo (though it sounds fine locally). I'd call the Sipura SPA-841 a reasonable step up from the GXP2000; it still has lousy speakerphone support, but at least it's reliable.
The Snom 360s -- those, I agree, are damn good phones. Their provisioning Just Works, the speakerphone sounds great, and they're a whole lot of fun to play with.
So what?
No, seriously. I don't care if my gaming console is like a supercomputer in a box. I want it to be cheap and fun, and I don't give a shit how many MIPS the thing has.
Now, some of that happens to have something to do with me being an actual person with a wife and house and job and otherwise a life which is incompatible with gaming as anything other than a very occasional diversion -- but that's fine. There's no conceivable way I could justify a "supercomputer in a box" just for playing games, but I'm going to buy a Wii.
These days, it is. Not Free, but free.
Per subject. "Hot" is an impression, giving information about the observer rather than the observed. "Hot blooded", by contrast, refers to a personality trait -- particularly, a tendency to view issues in a passionate and emotional (rather than cold and clinical) way.
In many contexts, this could be complimentary; in other contexts, it probably isn't. (One doesn't necessarily want a hot-blooded clinician or judge, for instance).
Personally, I couldn't disagree more -- there are some damn hot black women out there -- but since you're speaking of your own qualities (your aesthetic sensibilities) rather than attributes of 3rd parties, I don't find it morally offensive.
As for the grandparent's point -- is it skin tone, facial structure or some other attribute which your sense of aesthetics is offended by? If you could pinpoint individual attributes rather than using the bucket of race, the information you provided would be more specific and useful. I don't agree that referencing race is always wrong -- even with a fuzzily defined set A [as that referenced within the opening of this post], being able to state that "there are some members of B within set A" is a meaningful statement [though not necessarily often useful, given the sizes of the sets involved] -- but I do agree with the grandparent in that where possible it makes sense to communicate using more specific or clear identifiers, particularly where doing so would make or infer invalid generalizations. That said -- as racial boundaries continue to become fuzzier, speaking as to individual attributes will continue to become more important over time.
(Personally, for instance, my sense of aesthetics is offended by poor grammar. Specifying this in particular rather than attempting to reference sets of individuals containing a substantial number of members with this trait makes my communication more precise and less likely to inadvertently offend; after all, there exist one or two AOLers who can actually write).
Hmm. Actually, that's a point. Why did you bother to say "well-proportioned red-haired fair-skinned white women"? Would it not be adequate to specify "well-proportioned red-haired fair-skinned women", thus referring specifically to the relevant attributes? While I couldn't call the unnecessary specifier anachronistic yet, I'd like to think it will be in the not-so-distant future.
To be sure, it isn't literal truth -- but there are people who think that way, and the post in question makes the point. In short -- it's not just incorrect-wrong, it's dangerous-wrong; and dangerous-wrong things should be brought up in public so that they can be considered and arguments against them (even just internally) formulated.
And I can see someone who doesn't honestly believe the literal truth of the thing said stating it by way of lampooning a 3rd-party position -- and being insightful in doing so.
I wasn't talking about suburbs. Suburbs are for people who commute, and they can afford to drive housing prices up. When referring to $45K houses, I was talking about the boonies -- you know, places not in reasonable commuting distance at all. (I was, admittedly, unclear on this -- one of those cases where intonation and such would have allowed it to be better understood that the "massive commute" I referred to was massive enough to be completely impractical).
You've heard of "rural sourcing", where folks work from a location cheap enough that it might as well be a completely different country? The $45K homes are in the kind of places which are suburbs to the locations where that's happening. (As for the rural US as a whole, a bicycle is fine for getting around town -- but then, there'll be things you'll want which simply aren't available in town, so having access to motor transportation tends to be important).
On the other hand, the merely affordable homes (in places which aren't New York or one of California's larger population centers or one of the other areas of the country where things are completely out of proportion) can be found while living in more reasonable locations. Without knowing where you live and what your standards are, though, it's hard for me to be other than nebulous.
I've had friends thinking of moving *waaay* out into the boonies (tiny little town out of state with a massive commute for any decent non-telecommuting jobs) with the prospects of being able to buy a house there (large enough for a 4-person family to live comfortably) for ~$45K or so.
A "better place to live" isn't so unaffordable if you're willing to adjust some. If I'd stayed in the Bay Area, there's no way I'd be a homeowner right now. (Also, there are quite a lot of no- or low-down-payment mortgage options these days).
It happens on occasion that people incur debts while expecting to be able to pay them back, and are simply unable to do so. Further, it happens on occasion that people engage in irresponsible actions, learn from them, and go and sin no more -- but the duration of time needed for one's credit to recover is very nontrivial, particularly if creditors renew the entries on one's report.
Regarding the first case:
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition! Neither does anyone expect to get appendicitis while between jobs and uninsured, or to find oneself out of work suddenly when one's employer downsizes due to an economic change, or to end up getting saddled with an ex's liabilities during a divorce, or to have one's house ruled unoccupiable due to black mold (or some other situation not covered by regular homeowner's insurance). Life happens, and it's not always pretty. To be sure, the impact of these situations can be mitigated with preparation and care -- but putting people who are desparately in need of income due to unfortunate circumstances in a position where they're at a disadvantage in attempts to obtain said income is particularly unfortunate.
Regarding the second case:
I have excellent credit, but my wife's was distinctly checkered when we met. She's been a model of financial responsibility since then, but her credit report is still marked by charge-offs related to cards she acquired and spent money against back in college (which was already a good distance into her past). Since she has been unable to get new accounts on her own since that time, the only positive entries on her report (actually, the only entries since the negative ones) are joint accounts which she holds with me. While her poor credit history was certainly earned through incaution, such a history can live quite considerably longer than the traits leading to its incurrance. Is it reasonable for such to cause her to be considered a high credit risk? Absolutely. Is it reasonable for such to be a disqualifying factor in seeking employment? I would hope that a reasonable employer would be understanding in such a case.
Faster than CPython (ya know, the original upstream Python implementation), not faster than C.
Non-anonymous voting has been done. It was very, very badly abused -- not only via employment pressure and the like, but also vote selling (someone won't pay for your vote unless they can validate you delivered it) and other coercive behaviors.
Anonymous voting can be done securely -- there's been a lot of research on the topic, and I'm not going to recount it all here. Even making dumber machinery (as discussed elsewhere in this thread) would be substantially helpful. Perhaps anonymous voting can't be made *quite* as verifiable as non-anonymous voting -- but the abuses which non-anonymous voting enables are far worse than the incremental benefit over a well-designed system for anonymous voting.
Yes, the source is crap. Look at the debugging console -- they're *spawning an xterm* for output that would traditionally go to stderr. Don't have a DISPLAY set? Program crashes. Building on MacOS? Lucky you -- they have a bunch of commented-out code for running a separate window to display (what-should-be) stderr on the Mac; consequently, instead of getting output to stderr (which would actually be *useful* for redirection to a file, or direct output to the console, or whatever) it goes off into nowhere because the code to do the display is commented out! (I've written a patch for this -- making the separate window a configure option -- and will submit it at some point... maybe today). It's good that Google is paying for someone to clean this thing up -- it needs it.
[Might be that the Mac-only code is pre-OSX, btw -- I'm not really sure, as my experience with Mac-targeted development is pretty limited -- but if so, it makes more sense]
And the dependency on a neural network library that's available for research/personal use only really sucks; my interest for this was in inbound fax categorization in a (very low budget) commercial environment; however, that feature is low-priority enough that getting our business types to even talk to their business types (much less actually spend money) is a fairly dubious thing.
...and part of a good CAPTCHA is causing these transformations to come up with useless output.
Individual americans are going through tough economic times in large part due to a culture of irresponsible debt spending. Having a comparatively high ceiling for impulse purchases is part and parcel.
(Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone).
The Widget mechanism in TurboGears is intended to address the issue of reuse of 3rd-party AJAX code. How does this differ?
MPL-like licenses are certainly allowed.
Software projcets which include code licensed only under the GPL and code licensed only under the MPL, on the other hand, are not allowed -- because due to the incompatibility between those licenses, such projects are illegal to distribute.
Combining previously contributed 3rd-party GPLed code with your own (recently-relicensed-to) CCDL code is quite certainly a way to end up with a combined product which isn't legally redistributable.