You make it sound like Debian is the only one to do such a thing. Arch has been doing it that way for years as well.
Linux Mint also started to do rolling releases not too long ago. I find that one a bit Ironic since it's derived from Ubuntu.
Those are just two from the more popular distros. There are many more out there we could count.
Rolling releases are one thing I would applaud Ubuntu if they did it. It's always been my pet peeve to have to upgrade to a newer version of the same distro every 6 months.
To kill off a competitor? It's wouldn't be a 1st. Well maybe a first for Microsoft. They usually are the one buying the competitor to kill off their competing product and nto vice-versa.
You know, the only part of this I like is when I think of adversiting companies like one I worked at that did promotions for things like Microsoft's Xbox or HP's tablets and notebooks. I was surprised to see the reps purchasing a douzen units from the local BestBuy or Future Shop (owned by Best Buy in Canada) to use them as promotional equipment for events of a few days or weeks and then return them to the store within the 30 day window for a full refund.
It's one thing to stop individuals from returning a product, I'm against that pratice. But I would love to see those marketing companies stop doing that sort of stuff. I'm sure BestBuy would save money on one hand and not get valid customers ticked off at them on the other hand.
I'm certain an individual coming back to a store with some 10+ computers for a return is easy to spot as someone that is abusing the store. At least they should loose 10% of the value for having used and worn them during that time.
Besides, if these companies want to pay for event type advertising, they should supply said equipment or money to pay for purchases.
...with ASUS selected for its willingness to flex to Google's requirements.
Maybe I'm missing something here but didn't google purchase Motorola not so long ago?
Does Motorola not make tablets themselves?
How can ASUS be more willing to flex to Google's requirements over Motorola?
Unless perhaps Google has others plans for Motorola?
I wish the article had said something in regards to this.
I think the only thing you missed was that it's a rolling release OS meaning that unlike other distros. You never need to reinstall it unless you mess up.
That to me has been the most important feature for me as I found it would get old to have to reinstall Fedora every 6 to 12 months to get access to the latest bleeding edge software.
I did look it up and it's not the #1 app on tablets. Maybe if you search with a specific term you might get the results you're trying to portrait but that's just plain misleading.
Of course someone at RIM was smoking when looking at the original price of the Playbook but so did HP with the WebOS or Motorola with the Xoom. I think they are now figuring out that they are not in the position they thought there were.
DOA because it doesn't have Netflix? I beg to differ but that's just plain wrong.
When are you gonna stream a Netflix movie?
The answer is when your home. Are you really gonna watch a streaming movie home on a small screen tablet when you can watch it on a computer screen or TV screen?
I think not unless you're a poor student that can't afford a TV or something like that. Or maybe a kid hiding in a closet from his mom telling him to go to bed.
Tablets are for doing stuff on the move. I tend to use mine to read books, listen to music, play a few games and if I'm watching anything, it's not some streaming content, that's for sure.
If you're gonna think the Playbook is DOA, you could be right but certainly not with the sheer lack of logic you're displaying here.
As an owner of a Playbook. I can say it was not my intention to purchase any apps for that device.
It was for music, videos and readying some ebooks. I also ended up using it to read and respond to my corporate email from my Blackberry.
It does all those pretty much to my satisfaction I have to say.
The only apps that interested me to round up the features of this tablet were a few games I found interesting.
I ended up buying Star Front a StarCraft clone for 0.99 cents. The low price for the purchase was helping because I didn't feel like I would loose anything should the game not be worth it. I'm glad to say it was.
I then purchased Nova2 on the Playbook. Again for 0.99 cents. It came down from 6.99 I think which wasn't a price I was willing to pay for something I wasn't sure would be worth it and while I am enjoying it, tablets are not the best devices to play an FPS game. But for a dollar. I can't feel like I have something to complain about.
The problem in my view is that as a long time buyer of games. I have always owned the copy of any game I have bought.
Not in this case. I am not the owner here. I can't resell it or lend it to a friend. It's more like a long term rental. Once the Playbook's life ends. It's gone assuming I don't purchase the Playbook 2 instead of getting an Android device as my 2nd tablet. I don't imagine that I will be able to play it via emulation in the future like I was able to for old DOS games.
Maybe I will be proven wrong but that remains to be seen. So anything that is a high cost for a game I can't even test before purchasing is a situation where you feel like you need to tread carefully. I watched Youtube reviews of the games before buying them.
I bought a Playbook recently during the big sale they had. The only reason I feel it's worth mentioning this here is because of the flak I got from people saying they would rather buy the Kindle Fire for 199$ when it would be out rather than the Playbook when it was selling at the same price point.
It amazes me that people were expecting the Kindle Fire to be some high grade tablet. I wasn't expecting it to be terrible mind you but this just shows how people are putting down a perfectly good deal for a device they haven't even seen the performance of yet. I just have to shake my head on this one.
The Playbook has a lot that needs to be improved but hardware isn't one of the problems, even if the power button is hard to hit but you won't be turning this device off by accident I assure you and it does the basics stuff well which suits me fine.
I'm no trying to bash the Kindle Fire. I don't have one or have even seen one to determine it's worth. I'm just thinking people are quick to judge a product and in the case of the Kindle Fire from the article, people didn't bother to see if it was worth what they expected for 200$ and yet strangely enough, I felt the Playbook got shunned for that same 200$ value yet does seem to be able to perform well.
where do you get 65% failure rate from? made it up? or found it on some sony or nintendo or anti-microsoft website? either way, its bollocks. a 65% failure rate would have caused any product ever to have been made to be scrapped.
I believe the 65% failure was in the 1st year of the Xbox console. They would have a failure rate of 70% right out of the factory which is why there were so many failures of consoles sold out of those that made it out the door.
They have of course improved since then and I believe that they are of a quality that is on par with their competitors now.
I haven't read the article but my issue with what is being said here is that the American tax payer is being forced to foot the bill for this.
It may only be millions in a government spending level of Billions/Trillions but still, is it really something they should be getting involved in to begin with?
What do others here think of this? Are you alright with this?
Okay to my error, I hadn't noted that it was in regards to a Dollar store. Still the same argument would apply as none of the dollar stores I see today still carry items of only 1$. Most will have items that vary between 1 and 2$ and a few exceptional items that are more expensive. It's still cheaper than getting them at most places and if they are the same quality than a place such as Monoprice then I don't see the problem. The only way to make it worth buying online is to purchase several at the same time.
As opposed to what? The 1.50$ plus 10$ shipping cost from a website? People keep forgetting that most sites add the shipping on top of the advertised price.
The thing that you are missing is that a show needs time to find it's audience out there.
Networks used to stand by their shows for 2 years before the audience built up enough to be seen as hit tv.
This notion of only looking only at the bottom line and canceling a show after only a few episodes started in the 90s.
This is when quality really started to go down and why it gave rise to such drivel as American Idol that demands no really use of viewer's thoughts.
I can cite comedy shows such as Cheers or Night Court which in both cases started with terrible ratings.
It took 2 years before they had good ratings and eventually be among NBC's highest rated shows.
They would not have made it in today's standard of doing business in TV land.
I know it's not sci-fi but the new report I had seen about this issue back then wasn't focusing on Science-Fiction at all either at the time so the problem is occurring even for other genres.
So the question becomes, Why are they so unwilling to give time now when it worked in the past?
So what do you think Google should have done?
You're implying that the ToS isn't enough.
I'm not trying to come up with a solution on this issue. I'm just responding to John Hasler that made those loosy comments.
Anyone who calls someone a fool for accepting the ToS without reading the hundreds of pages that no average human would ever bother to read is a jerk in my book.
And that goes double if he hasn't bothered to read his own ToS for his gadgets/purchased software etc...
And no, I'm not implying that the ToS isn't enough. If anything, I'd be implying that it's too much. Too many pages of jargon leaving everyone lost and confused.
Perhaps someone could reintroduce them to the K.I.S.S system?
> AT&T asked for my 1st born and 10 years indentured servitude in their TOS.
How do you know that if you didn't read it?
He doesn't. It's called being sarcastic (a lost art it seems).
> It was 900 pages so I didn't read it.
And yet you agreed to it. Fool.
That put him in the same boat as 99.9% of the population. Care to make a bet that you've actually read the terms of license of all the neat stuff you own and use?
Let's be serious here. If people did actually read over these license terms, do you really think they would completely understand what they are accepting? I've seen an instance or two in law where one paragraph on say page 10 has an exception on page 31 and written in an obscure way. Even people with a Bachelor in law would get confused. We wouldn't otherwise need to go to court when there is disagreement.
> Oh well, I guess that makes it right and okay then.
Unconscionable terms are unenforceable. You're still a fool for agreeing to unread terms, though.
You can only avoid it being enforced if you have at least have two of the following:
1. The proper knowledge of the law to defend yourself in court (or perhaps sue in this case).
2. The time for a lenghy battle.
3. The money for a lenghy battle.
Or make a big enough stink on the television to make said company look bad and reverse their decision.
You know, that's actually quite true. I read this Canadian book called Lawyers gone bad. An interesting book on the subject of corruption and the lack of true justice for the common man. One thing that was explained was why they are still using paper today and was summed up in one phrase.
Why would I do that when I can charge by the hour? That was the answer of a lawyer when asked why he is not using technology to be more productive.
There is simply no incentive for these people to be efficient. In fact the book states clearly that a successful lawyer has a stack of paperwork to go over during the entire day.
"When I went to high school in the '70s I was never taught grammar in English. I learned grammar from Latin classes."
Budra was taught to read and write using whole language rather than phonetics - not a good way to go in his books.
I find this part interesting. In French canadian schools, we blamed the bad grammar back in the 80s for using phonetics instead of the more traditional methods. As I was told back then, they stopped using it in France because it didn't work while we here in Canada keeped using it for some 10 years and sacrificed an entire generation as far as grammar goes.
Needless to say, we're no better off today then we were back then as the failure rates of students just keeps rising in French Canada.
I feel that the problem is that we want to find a one size fits all approach and forget that no all kids absorb knowledge the same way or at the same speed.
A quick search in the local french news turns up a fact that did not get pointed out in that article. The new and current test in French universities points to a failure of over 50% for the teachers. How can you educate when you don't know what your teaching?
I suspect this failure would be pretty high in english schools as well.
It's rather interesting that no one's bothered to point any fingers towards teachers. I wish we could stop this blame the students mentality for all failures. Teachers have they're part in this too and they need to acknowledge it.
The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an email to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.
"It would say to me... 'well, this person doesn't think very clearly, and they're not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they're not very good at expressing themselves, or at worse, they can't spell, they can't punctuate,' " he says.
"These folks are going to short-change themselves, and right or wrong, they're looked down upon in traditional corporations," notes Postman.
The problem I see here is that as the language degrades, so will corporations' abilities to hire people with such skills and eventually it will end up in upper management.
Slashdot has always been about freedom albeit in the open source world, this has always included debates on what people read and think. How can anyone on this web site stand there and demand to limit to science as if the fact that the only steel buildings in existence to ever fall from fire all did so on 9/11 (which includes WTC Building 7). This is a fact that goes against the science given which has always fueled conspiry theorists and with good reason. We live in a society that is given the freedom to discuss and this forum has until today always given it's user's the right to says anything that is on their minds. Is slashdot changing it's stance? History was not written only once, it was written and rewritten countless times over long periods of time and came to exist as we know it because discussions continue over time and corrections and rewrites and new information that was ignored or suppressed comes out. But this only happens because people don't just stand there and accept blindly what is told to them especially when it goes against commen sense.
I hope the person who wrote this has the curtosy to remove the comment or correct it.
There was a radio show in my area that spoke about philanthropy and how people like Bill Gates were using they're influence to change the type of aid that goes to some of these areas.
The show gave as example that Foundations like B&M's would send medical aid to countries to help them and actually force this over the people (by people I mean those that are trying to get the funds to help these poor souls) that know what is needed to give proper aid. For instance, foreign aid is used to help people that are sick in Haiti from diseases. But the doctors out there would all stop their trade if someone would fund to fix the water supply line, they know that the diseases are caused by such things as lack of clean water. It's also a fact that doing this would cost a fraction of the cost of treating the diseases yet no money is being placed where it would do more good. So in that respect people like Bill Gates look like they are doing good and may even believe they are but haven't the vision to do what would be most beneficial.
What rock have you been living under? They only need one party's support to pass the laws they want and they have been doing so by making all votes confidence votes. The Liberals are in such disarray with the current party leader, they wouldn't dare oppose the conservatives under the risk of going to the urns and loosing. Minority goverments work well as long as neither side wants to risk going to elections which is not the case right now.
Slashdot Mirror
You make it sound like Debian is the only one to do such a thing. Arch has been doing it that way for years as well.
Linux Mint also started to do rolling releases not too long ago. I find that one a bit Ironic since it's derived from Ubuntu.
Those are just two from the more popular distros. There are many more out there we could count.
Rolling releases are one thing I would applaud Ubuntu if they did it. It's always been my pet peeve to have to upgrade to a newer version of the same distro every 6 months.
To kill off a competitor? It's wouldn't be a 1st. Well maybe a first for Microsoft. They usually are the one buying the competitor to kill off their competing product and nto vice-versa.
It isn't NVIDIA's job to make drivers for someone else's OS.
Not if they don't intend to sell to that OS which brings us back to the F*** you comment.
You know, the only part of this I like is when I think of adversiting companies like one I worked at that did promotions for things like Microsoft's Xbox or HP's tablets and notebooks. I was surprised to see the reps purchasing a douzen units from the local BestBuy or Future Shop (owned by Best Buy in Canada) to use them as promotional equipment for events of a few days or weeks and then return them to the store within the 30 day window for a full refund.
It's one thing to stop individuals from returning a product, I'm against that pratice. But I would love to see those marketing companies stop doing that sort of stuff. I'm sure BestBuy would save money on one hand and not get valid customers ticked off at them on the other hand.
I'm certain an individual coming back to a store with some 10+ computers for a return is easy to spot as someone that is abusing the store. At least they should loose 10% of the value for having used and worn them during that time.
Besides, if these companies want to pay for event type advertising, they should supply said equipment or money to pay for purchases.
...with ASUS selected for its willingness to flex to Google's requirements.
Maybe I'm missing something here but didn't google purchase Motorola not so long ago?
Does Motorola not make tablets themselves?
How can ASUS be more willing to flex to Google's requirements over Motorola?
Unless perhaps Google has others plans for Motorola?
I wish the article had said something in regards to this.
I think the only thing you missed was that it's a rolling release OS meaning that unlike other distros. You never need to reinstall it unless you mess up.
That to me has been the most important feature for me as I found it would get old to have to reinstall Fedora every 6 to 12 months to get access to the latest bleeding edge software.
As one reviewer said, this OS is always fresh.
I did look it up and it's not the #1 app on tablets. Maybe if you search with a specific term you might get the results you're trying to portrait but that's just plain misleading.
Of course someone at RIM was smoking when looking at the original price of the Playbook but so did HP with the WebOS or Motorola with the Xoom. I think they are now figuring out that they are not in the position they thought there were.
DOA because it doesn't have Netflix? I beg to differ but that's just plain wrong.
When are you gonna stream a Netflix movie?
The answer is when your home. Are you really gonna watch a streaming movie home on a small screen tablet when you can watch it on a computer screen or TV screen?
I think not unless you're a poor student that can't afford a TV or something like that. Or maybe a kid hiding in a closet from his mom telling him to go to bed.
Tablets are for doing stuff on the move. I tend to use mine to read books, listen to music, play a few games and if I'm watching anything, it's not some streaming content, that's for sure.
If you're gonna think the Playbook is DOA, you could be right but certainly not with the sheer lack of logic you're displaying here.
As an owner of a Playbook. I can say it was not my intention to purchase any apps for that device.
It was for music, videos and readying some ebooks. I also ended up using it to read and respond to my corporate email from my Blackberry.
It does all those pretty much to my satisfaction I have to say.
The only apps that interested me to round up the features of this tablet were a few games I found interesting. I ended up buying Star Front a StarCraft clone for 0.99 cents. The low price for the purchase was helping because I didn't feel like I would loose anything should the game not be worth it. I'm glad to say it was.
I then purchased Nova2 on the Playbook. Again for 0.99 cents. It came down from 6.99 I think which wasn't a price I was willing to pay for something I wasn't sure would be worth it and while I am enjoying it, tablets are not the best devices to play an FPS game. But for a dollar. I can't feel like I have something to complain about.
The problem in my view is that as a long time buyer of games. I have always owned the copy of any game I have bought.
Not in this case. I am not the owner here. I can't resell it or lend it to a friend. It's more like a long term rental. Once the Playbook's life ends. It's gone assuming I don't purchase the Playbook 2 instead of getting an Android device as my 2nd tablet. I don't imagine that I will be able to play it via emulation in the future like I was able to for old DOS games.
Maybe I will be proven wrong but that remains to be seen. So anything that is a high cost for a game I can't even test before purchasing is a situation where you feel like you need to tread carefully. I watched Youtube reviews of the games before buying them.
I bought a Playbook recently during the big sale they had. The only reason I feel it's worth mentioning this here is because of the flak I got from people saying they would rather buy the Kindle Fire for 199$ when it would be out rather than the Playbook when it was selling at the same price point.
It amazes me that people were expecting the Kindle Fire to be some high grade tablet. I wasn't expecting it to be terrible mind you but this just shows how people are putting down a perfectly good deal for a device they haven't even seen the performance of yet. I just have to shake my head on this one.
The Playbook has a lot that needs to be improved but hardware isn't one of the problems, even if the power button is hard to hit but you won't be turning this device off by accident I assure you and it does the basics stuff well which suits me fine.
I'm no trying to bash the Kindle Fire. I don't have one or have even seen one to determine it's worth. I'm just thinking people are quick to judge a product and in the case of the Kindle Fire from the article, people didn't bother to see if it was worth what they expected for 200$ and yet strangely enough, I felt the Playbook got shunned for that same 200$ value yet does seem to be able to perform well.
where do you get 65% failure rate from? made it up? or found it on some sony or nintendo or anti-microsoft website? either way, its bollocks. a 65% failure rate would have caused any product ever to have been made to be scrapped.
I believe the 65% failure was in the 1st year of the Xbox console. They would have a failure rate of 70% right out of the factory which is why there were so many failures of consoles sold out of those that made it out the door. They have of course improved since then and I believe that they are of a quality that is on par with their competitors now.
And isn't Microsoft shoving Windows 8 out next year? I have no idea what they're expecting to accomplish.
They expect to shove out v8 to then do v9 to ultimately have Windows OS X.
I haven't read the article but my issue with what is being said here is that the American tax payer is being forced to foot the bill for this.
It may only be millions in a government spending level of Billions/Trillions but still, is it really something they should be getting involved in to begin with?
What do others here think of this? Are you alright with this?
Okay to my error, I hadn't noted that it was in regards to a Dollar store. Still the same argument would apply as none of the dollar stores I see today still carry items of only 1$. Most will have items that vary between 1 and 2$ and a few exceptional items that are more expensive. It's still cheaper than getting them at most places and if they are the same quality than a place such as Monoprice then I don't see the problem. The only way to make it worth buying online is to purchase several at the same time.
TEN dollars at the DOLLAR store??? what a rip off
As opposed to what? The 1.50$ plus 10$ shipping cost from a website? People keep forgetting that most sites add the shipping on top of the advertised price.
No, really, it would, how the fuck do these people sleep at night?
With a huge pile of cash in their bed to comfort them.
The thing that you are missing is that a show needs time to find it's audience out there.
Networks used to stand by their shows for 2 years before the audience built up enough to be seen as hit tv.
This notion of only looking only at the bottom line and canceling a show after only a few episodes started in the 90s.
This is when quality really started to go down and why it gave rise to such drivel as American Idol that demands no really use of viewer's thoughts.
I can cite comedy shows such as Cheers or Night Court which in both cases started with terrible ratings.
It took 2 years before they had good ratings and eventually be among NBC's highest rated shows.
They would not have made it in today's standard of doing business in TV land.
I know it's not sci-fi but the new report I had seen about this issue back then wasn't focusing on Science-Fiction at all either at the time so the problem is occurring even for other genres.
So the question becomes, Why are they so unwilling to give time now when it worked in the past?
So what do you think Google should have done? You're implying that the ToS isn't enough.
I'm not trying to come up with a solution on this issue. I'm just responding to John Hasler that made those loosy comments.
Anyone who calls someone a fool for accepting the ToS without reading the hundreds of pages that no average human would ever bother to read is a jerk in my book.
And that goes double if he hasn't bothered to read his own ToS for his gadgets/purchased software etc...
And no, I'm not implying that the ToS isn't enough. If anything, I'd be implying that it's too much. Too many pages of jargon leaving everyone lost and confused.
Perhaps someone could reintroduce them to the K.I.S.S system?
> AT&T asked for my 1st born and 10 years indentured servitude in their TOS.
How do you know that if you didn't read it?
He doesn't. It's called being sarcastic (a lost art it seems).
> It was 900 pages so I didn't read it.
And yet you agreed to it. Fool.
That put him in the same boat as 99.9% of the population. Care to make a bet that you've actually read the terms of license of all the neat stuff you own and use?
Let's be serious here. If people did actually read over these license terms, do you really think they would completely understand what they are accepting? I've seen an instance or two in law where one paragraph on say page 10 has an exception on page 31 and written in an obscure way.
Even people with a Bachelor in law would get confused. We wouldn't otherwise need to go to court when there is disagreement.
> Oh well, I guess that makes it right and okay then.
Unconscionable terms are unenforceable. You're still a fool for agreeing to unread terms, though.
You can only avoid it being enforced if you have at least have two of the following:
1. The proper knowledge of the law to defend yourself in court (or perhaps sue in this case).
2. The time for a lenghy battle.
3. The money for a lenghy battle.
Or make a big enough stink on the television to make said company look bad and reverse their decision.
You know, that's actually quite true. I read this Canadian book called Lawyers gone bad. An interesting book on the subject of corruption and the lack of true justice for the common man. One thing that was explained was why they are still using paper today and was summed up in one phrase. Why would I do that when I can charge by the hour? That was the answer of a lawyer when asked why he is not using technology to be more productive. There is simply no incentive for these people to be efficient. In fact the book states clearly that a successful lawyer has a stack of paperwork to go over during the entire day.
"When I went to high school in the '70s I was never taught grammar in English. I learned grammar from Latin classes."
... 'well, this person doesn't think very clearly, and they're not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they're not very good at expressing themselves, or at worse, they can't spell, they can't punctuate,' " he says.
Budra was taught to read and write using whole language rather than phonetics - not a good way to go in his books.
I find this part interesting. In French canadian schools, we blamed the bad grammar back in the 80s for using phonetics instead of the more traditional methods. As I was told back then, they stopped using it in France because it didn't work while we here in Canada keeped using it for some 10 years and sacrificed an entire generation as far as grammar goes.
Needless to say, we're no better off today then we were back then as the failure rates of students just keeps rising in French Canada.
I feel that the problem is that we want to find a one size fits all approach and forget that no all kids absorb knowledge the same way or at the same speed.
A quick search in the local french news turns up a fact that did not get pointed out in that article. The new and current test in French universities points to a failure of over 50% for the teachers. How can you educate when you don't know what your teaching?
I suspect this failure would be pretty high in english schools as well.
It's rather interesting that no one's bothered to point any fingers towards teachers. I wish we could stop this blame the students mentality for all failures. Teachers have they're part in this too and they need to acknowledge it.
The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an email to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.
"It would say to me
"These folks are going to short-change themselves, and right or wrong, they're looked down upon in traditional corporations," notes Postman.
The problem I see here is that as the language degrades, so will corporations' abilities to hire people with such skills and eventually it will end up in upper management.
In the same way that french, english, italians etc... are Europeens.
Slashdot has always been about freedom albeit in the open source world, this has always included debates on what people read and think. How can anyone on this web site stand there and demand to limit to science as if the fact that the only steel buildings in existence to ever fall from fire all did so on 9/11 (which includes WTC Building 7). This is a fact that goes against the science given which has always fueled conspiry theorists and with good reason. We live in a society that is given the freedom to discuss and this forum has until today always given it's user's the right to says anything that is on their minds. Is slashdot changing it's stance?
History was not written only once, it was written and rewritten countless times over long periods of time and came to exist as we know it because discussions continue over time and corrections and rewrites and new information that was ignored or suppressed comes out.
But this only happens because people don't just stand there and accept blindly what is told to them especially when it goes against commen sense.
I hope the person who wrote this has the curtosy to remove the comment or correct it.
There was a radio show in my area that spoke about philanthropy and how people like Bill Gates were using they're influence to change the type of aid that goes to some of these areas. The show gave as example that Foundations like B&M's would send medical aid to countries to help them and actually force this over the people (by people I mean those that are trying to get the funds to help these poor souls) that know what is needed to give proper aid. For instance, foreign aid is used to help people that are sick in Haiti from diseases. But the doctors out there would all stop their trade if someone would fund to fix the water supply line, they know that the diseases are caused by such things as lack of clean water. It's also a fact that doing this would cost a fraction of the cost of treating the diseases yet no money is being placed where it would do more good. So in that respect people like Bill Gates look like they are doing good and may even believe they are but haven't the vision to do what would be most beneficial.
What rock have you been living under? They only need one party's support to pass the laws they want and they have been doing so by making all votes confidence votes. The Liberals are in such disarray with the current party leader, they wouldn't dare oppose the conservatives under the risk of going to the urns and loosing. Minority goverments work well as long as neither side wants to risk going to elections which is not the case right now.