... except that they don't fix the bugs. That's why Ubuntu is among the worst for regressions (but lately all the other distros have either caught up, or like slackware, pretty much died).
I'm currently posting from LXDE+Knoppix (boot off the dvd image, load the actual runtime + persistent data off a hard drive image on/dev/sda1 because linux distros have a nasty habit of breaking stuff on updates). Set up with zero swap, and the only real problem is the memory leaks in Iceweasel, same as in firefox under every other distro.
Instead of competing on features, why not have a 6-month moratorium where people just fix current bugs? It would make everyone more conscious of bad practices that lead to bugs in the first place, hopefully reducing future breakage (and slow/fugly code to work around buggy cruft).
I would think that the people springing for a $99 xbox probably didn't buy a $299 or $399 or $459 xbox bundle in a previous life, so they probably have nothing to "import".
Also, you can't sell or trade in or share your xbox purchases, unlike a Wii game disk.
Well, one way we can reduce power consumption is to go to operating systems that aren't as bloated. If you've tried the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, you already know that Windows 8 isn't just the worst product Microsoft has ever made - it's also bloatware. Microsoft would be better off making an XP 2014 release and selling it.
The same with LXDE as opposed to bloatware like KDE.
Another thing is screen savers - not only not needed, but a total waste of energy. Just have the OS turn the stupid screens off...
There's no excuse for today's machines, with cpus that can execute more microcode per clock tick, being capable of executing 1,000 times more instructions per second than the original pc, to be as non-performing as they are.
Geophagy - the eating of mud, dirt, etc., but especially clay, is pretty much universal, and always has been part of what people (and other animals) do naturally. Clays are bio-active.
"Awkward and expensive" kind of misses the point - by the time a chopper gets out there, cherry-picks you up, and gets you back to a mainland hospital, you could be dead - especially if the weather sucks enough to interfere with flight operations or there are other emergencies that tie up medivac units, or there are multiple people who need help - like if there's an on-board fire.
Are they going to have a cat scanner and an mri on board? A decent lab? I doubt it - after all, this is about cutting costs to the employers (not the employees, who are charged up to $3,000 a month).
What about amenities such as pets? Where do you walk your dog? Are you even allowed a dog, or are you stuck with dogfish and stupid chia pets? Who do you complain to about unfair work practices, or an assault or rape, or even something as stupid as a peeping tom?
Totally irrelevant - someone who is in effect renting the use of an xbox because they don't have the extra $100 to buy it isn't going to be spending $100 a year to develop games, plus the cost of a development rig.
Unlike an online service, you get to OWN the games you buy for the Wii. You can use the savings from the monthly fees to buy a few games and swap them with others, or even resell them. Try doing that with your online game rentals.
Remember - the US has NOT ratified the "Law of the Sea" treaty - UNCLOS. Under existing international law, they still have jurisdiction out to the 200 mile limit, not just the 12 mile territorial water limit, nor the additional 12 mile exclusion zone.
Other nations have the right to "innocent passage". A barge anchored within 200 miles is not engaged in "innocent passage", and as such, does not have the legal rights enjoyed by vessels engaged in "innocent passage."
However, even vessels engaged in "innocent passage" still need to conform to the sovereign states requirements for things like a valid insurance policy for indemnification in the case of bunker oil spills, etc. right out to the 200 mile limit.
Don't expect this idea to float unless there's lots of campaign contributions also floating around.
So buy a dvd player for $20, and a Wii for $99. No extra payments over 2 years. Wth the money you save every month, buy accessories (extra wiimotes, etc) over time, and hook up with others in the neighborhood to swap games (after all, you can only play one game at a time anyway).
When the nearest hospital is over 200 miles away, you'd better have helicopters ready to make the jump. And you'd better have them cleared for permission to enter US air space with no notice (like that's going to happen).
This is just another scam. Another variant of the "company town", where they deduct your room and board and other expenses from your pay, and if at some point you don't like it, you can take a long walk off a short plank.
I used to have hay fever, pollen fever, even pollen from trees - kleenex wasn't enough - I'd go through rolls of paper towels, gobs of dristdan nasal spray, lots of anti-histamines, unable to sleep because I couldn't breathe... nothing really worked.
I was also allergic to dogs and cats - so I got a dog. Two months of absolute hell, 24/7, because he went with me everywhere... then one day, it all just stopped. It's been almost two decades with no allergies to dogs, most cats (there was one who could stillmake my eyes water, for some reason)... no hay fever or pollen allergies whatsoever...
Our systems evolved in an environment where they have to distinguish between pathogens that can harm you, and the innocuous stuff like pollen. They aren't all that good at doing the job when there aren't any nasties to "train" against.
That you can nevertheless assign a rough probability to the existence of that teapot is interesting in a scientific sense.
Actually, scientifically, you can't. It's this sort of thinking that leads to bad conclusions.
There is no scientific basis for assigning a probability to something such as the mythical "teapot", and any claims to the contrary are just plain stupid.
The only framework we need is hard evidence, or theories based on extensions to hard evidence. Anything else is "magical thinking".
There were also THREE sidebar articles that had related contextual information. You would have seen that if you had bothered to read the article, rather than just the summary. So, troll much? You need to pick your game up a bit.
I think you're wrong, and that people are better than that. Self-identity is more than language. Also, the "Quebecers feel no great love or attachment towards Canada" is due to politicians on both sides egging on the populace rather than seeking to bring people together.
The "Quebec pandering" is equally poisonous, to both sides. How about rather than "against the idea of giving us more", the queston was rephrased as "what can we to to grow the pie for everyone involved?" For example, the resource-rich provinces are losing opportunities for a more robust economy by exporting the raw materials rather than finding ways to promote more manufacturing inside the country as a whole, which would give them more stable markets.
To the extent that free trade has resulted in a race to the bottom, and we're seeing more and more jobs exported (the diesel plant in Ontario, the Aveos jobs across the country), the provinces need to work together to figure out how best to exploit the existing loopholes in NAFTA (and there are a few) to keep our overlords from selling us out completely. They won't care what happens 25 years from now - they've got theirs, and they'll use their advantages to isolate themselves from any problems, like they do now.
Case in point - like one in 7 Canadians, I don't have a family doctor, and I've permanently lost part of the vision in one eye - a loss that could have been prevented with better monitoring. The docs say it will only get worse as time goes on. Without a family doctor to follow everything, and to make referrals as necessary, I'm royally scr*wed. You can be darned sure our overlords don't have the same problems with access to a family doctor.
So instead, they spend $25 billion on fighter jets that don't even meet our own needs while lying about the price, are overkill for most situations as well as too expensive to operate, and will be easy enough to be totally overwhelmed by any potential enemy just sending in a large enough wave of comparatively cruise drones, knowing that some will get through.
Who knows? Evidently this person enjoys pretending to be someone else...might actually be Louis Losos in drag...
Before posting something completely silly that destroyed a few brain cells, couldn't you at least look at the article - the woman's picture, the fact that the school board confirmed her identity as principal, etc?
There's more... a lot more. For example, Canadian banks are quite willing to allow companies whose charters have lapsed (and that no longer have any legal status) to open up bank accounts. So, just find a defunct company, pay the fees to "revive" it for a year so you can get your hands on a valid charter without too many questions, then let it lapse at the end of the year. Now, you have the perfect shell company for whatever fraud you want to perpetrate - money-laundering, check-kiting, fake invoices, you name it.
When confronted with hard evidence (cheques written against a zombie company account), the Bank of Montreal promised to get back to me, but never did. Not ONE of Canada's top banks did, because they're all scared that the minute they admit it publicly, they'll be liable for lawsuits from anyone who receives a bogus cheque. Ongoing flaws such as this are part of why the Royal Bank of Canada settled with investors who were scammed out of $50 million by Earl Jones - "Canada, the best banking system in the world" is no stranger to corruption.
... which reminds me - since this is one of the ways that bribe money is laundered and/or paid, I need to send a link to the Charboneau Commission - it would be no big deal to require every bank to verify, on an annual basis, that the corporate charter of each of their customers is still valid - all it requires is a script to scrape the government's web site, and a list of companies for each branch. It would also weed out crooks using a duplicate of an official charter by comparing corporate officer info with the official list. Hopefully, the judge will have more luck getting answers out of them than I did.
The "extra fees", the "activity fees", the "student fees", the "school supply fees" at all levels of education, these are all stuff that somehow "doesn't count" - but those school supply fees sure scare the heck out of many parents right before school starts for the yeear - especially since they come at the same time as having to buy new school clothes, etc.
Too many people don't seem to understand that we have huge pockets of poverty in Quebec, too often hidden poverty, from the combination of lower wages than elsewhere, and very much higher taxes (for example, the lowest bracket of the provincial income tax rate is more than 3x higher than neighboring Ontario's lowest rate, and it kicks in earlier).
It doesn't help that decades of cronyism in public service jobs has also created a bureaucracy that is more intent on preserving its own jobs than on delivering services to the general public, and that corruption has led to things like "bio-degradable asphalt" - roads that need re-paving mere months after they've been paved.
There's also the hidden health problem. Quebec's offical rate of people with one or more handicaps is the lowest in Canada, which doesn't make sense because Quebec has one of the most rapidly aging populations. The reality is that many people (statistically, at least 3% of the population) have already fallen through the cracks, and just aren't counted, left to deal with their disabilities on their own without any support, which just compounds the problem.
And then we have the totally ludicrous attitude of current premier Jean Charest - the most two-faced politician in Canadian history (ask any reporter - they're familiar with his saying one thing to one group, then an hour later the exact opposite to another group). It's ridiculous that it took 12 weeks of protests to even agree to sit down and talk, because he didn't want to look weak.
The only thing that is more ridiculous is that he has fiddled while the economy self-destructed. Quebec needs to gain 75,000 jobs a year to keep up with population growth - for the last 2 years, it has instead lost an average of 1,000 jobs a week, and those jobs are never coming back. They are gone for good.
Instead, he goes on and on about his stupid "Plan Nord" that will "create or stabilize up to 20,000 jobs" - thinking that we're too stupid to realize that many of these jobs (such as transport of raw materials) will not be local, and that exporting raw materials instead of transforming them into products is basically exporting jobs while leaving behind the pollution and other environmental damage, and a province depleted of resources when it finally needs them for its own population.
As I took paints to point out, the Federal political scene has been repleat with politicians from all political stripes pandering to the "soft nationalist/separatist" Quebec vote.
At some point, the voters in the rest of the country has to accept some responsibility for the mess because they supported this sort of "knife-at-the-throat" cowardice tactics by voting for it.
The latest example is Tom Mulcair of the NDP - another in the long line of politicians who panders to the soft separatist vote by continually making reference to the "Quebec Nation". He's one of those believers in assymetrical federalism - and a generation of that sort of thinking is a big part of what is tearing the country apart.
But lest you think I'm only slagging the NDP, I blame all the current politicians. Trudeau had it right. "Just watch me!"
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Quebec didn't happen in isolation. There's been ass-hattery and bigotry towards the french from the rest of the country for a long time, and there's been pandering to subversives for political gain. You don't build a country on that sort of crap.
n stories like this, it's almost never worth reading the article, and the summary is usually wrong anyway. The reporter spent 400 words to expand a 40 word brief, and then another 600 words on a story that is only vaguely related because the principal apparently used the fake profile to spy on kids who supported some guy who was fired.
Having read this article closely, now I feel sorry for Ms. Bock that she's got such a shitty beat...
Ms. Bock did more than just puff up a story - there was the fact-checking of school records to see if there was such a student, as well as a search of public records for ANYONE with that name. That's more than what passes for "reporting" on Faux News.
She also put it into the greater context of the on-going school board problems.
I keep hearing that Windows 8 is going to have some added benefits
1. Download and install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview;
2. Realize that the Windows 8 Metro UI is the worst product Microsoft has ever made - worse than Bob or Clippy;
3. PROFIT from your new-found experience.
Slashdot Mirror
... except that they don't fix the bugs. That's why Ubuntu is among the worst for regressions (but lately all the other distros have either caught up, or like slackware, pretty much died).
Instead of competing on features, why not have a 6-month moratorium where people just fix current bugs? It would make everyone more conscious of bad practices that lead to bugs in the first place, hopefully reducing future breakage (and slow/fugly code to work around buggy cruft).
I would think that the people springing for a $99 xbox probably didn't buy a $299 or $399 or $459 xbox bundle in a previous life, so they probably have nothing to "import".
Also, you can't sell or trade in or share your xbox purchases, unlike a Wii game disk.
Well, one way we can reduce power consumption is to go to operating systems that aren't as bloated. If you've tried the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, you already know that Windows 8 isn't just the worst product Microsoft has ever made - it's also bloatware. Microsoft would be better off making an XP 2014 release and selling it.
The same with LXDE as opposed to bloatware like KDE.
Another thing is screen savers - not only not needed, but a total waste of energy. Just have the OS turn the stupid screens off ...
There's no excuse for today's machines, with cpus that can execute more microcode per clock tick, being capable of executing 1,000 times more instructions per second than the original pc, to be as non-performing as they are.
... I'm still stuck on good ole DDR2
Realistically, while there are benefits for "faster", it's no substitute for reducing inefficient bloatware.
Sounds to me like you were better off when you had the dog than you are now. Give up the gardening and adopt a dog.
Geophagy - the eating of mud, dirt, etc., but especially clay, is pretty much universal, and always has been part of what people (and other animals) do naturally. Clays are bio-active.
"Awkward and expensive" kind of misses the point - by the time a chopper gets out there, cherry-picks you up, and gets you back to a mainland hospital, you could be dead - especially if the weather sucks enough to interfere with flight operations or there are other emergencies that tie up medivac units, or there are multiple people who need help - like if there's an on-board fire.
Are they going to have a cat scanner and an mri on board? A decent lab? I doubt it - after all, this is about cutting costs to the employers (not the employees, who are charged up to $3,000 a month).
What about amenities such as pets? Where do you walk your dog? Are you even allowed a dog, or are you stuck with dogfish and stupid chia pets? Who do you complain to about unfair work practices, or an assault or rape, or even something as stupid as a peeping tom?
Totally irrelevant - someone who is in effect renting the use of an xbox because they don't have the extra $100 to buy it isn't going to be spending $100 a year to develop games, plus the cost of a development rig.
Unlike an online service, you get to OWN the games you buy for the Wii. You can use the savings from the monthly fees to buy a few games and swap them with others, or even resell them. Try doing that with your online game rentals.
Remember - the US has NOT ratified the "Law of the Sea" treaty - UNCLOS. Under existing international law, they still have jurisdiction out to the 200 mile limit, not just the 12 mile territorial water limit, nor the additional 12 mile exclusion zone.
Other nations have the right to "innocent passage". A barge anchored within 200 miles is not engaged in "innocent passage", and as such, does not have the legal rights enjoyed by vessels engaged in "innocent passage."
However, even vessels engaged in "innocent passage" still need to conform to the sovereign states requirements for things like a valid insurance policy for indemnification in the case of bunker oil spills, etc. right out to the 200 mile limit.
Don't expect this idea to float unless there's lots of campaign contributions also floating around.
So buy a dvd player for $20, and a Wii for $99. No extra payments over 2 years. Wth the money you save every month, buy accessories (extra wiimotes, etc) over time, and hook up with others in the neighborhood to swap games (after all, you can only play one game at a time anyway).
When the nearest hospital is over 200 miles away, you'd better have helicopters ready to make the jump. And you'd better have them cleared for permission to enter US air space with no notice (like that's going to happen).
This is just another scam. Another variant of the "company town", where they deduct your room and board and other expenses from your pay, and if at some point you don't like it, you can take a long walk off a short plank.
I used to have hay fever, pollen fever, even pollen from trees - kleenex wasn't enough - I'd go through rolls of paper towels, gobs of dristdan nasal spray, lots of anti-histamines, unable to sleep because I couldn't breathe ... nothing really worked.
I was also allergic to dogs and cats - so I got a dog. Two months of absolute hell, 24/7, because he went with me everywhere ... then one day, it all just stopped. It's been almost two decades with no allergies to dogs, most cats (there was one who could stillmake my eyes water, for some reason) ... no hay fever or pollen allergies whatsoever ...
Our systems evolved in an environment where they have to distinguish between pathogens that can harm you, and the innocuous stuff like pollen. They aren't all that good at doing the job when there aren't any nasties to "train" against.
Isn't the whole point of facebook to collect your own collection of friendly cyber-stalkers?
Actually, scientifically, you can't. It's this sort of thinking that leads to bad conclusions.
There is no scientific basis for assigning a probability to something such as the mythical "teapot", and any claims to the contrary are just plain stupid.
The only framework we need is hard evidence, or theories based on extensions to hard evidence. Anything else is "magical thinking".
There were also THREE sidebar articles that had related contextual information. You would have seen that if you had bothered to read the article, rather than just the summary. So, troll much? You need to pick your game up a bit.
I think you're wrong, and that people are better than that. Self-identity is more than language. Also, the "Quebecers feel no great love or attachment towards Canada" is due to politicians on both sides egging on the populace rather than seeking to bring people together.
The "Quebec pandering" is equally poisonous, to both sides. How about rather than "against the idea of giving us more", the queston was rephrased as "what can we to to grow the pie for everyone involved?" For example, the resource-rich provinces are losing opportunities for a more robust economy by exporting the raw materials rather than finding ways to promote more manufacturing inside the country as a whole, which would give them more stable markets.
To the extent that free trade has resulted in a race to the bottom, and we're seeing more and more jobs exported (the diesel plant in Ontario, the Aveos jobs across the country), the provinces need to work together to figure out how best to exploit the existing loopholes in NAFTA (and there are a few) to keep our overlords from selling us out completely. They won't care what happens 25 years from now - they've got theirs, and they'll use their advantages to isolate themselves from any problems, like they do now.
Case in point - like one in 7 Canadians, I don't have a family doctor, and I've permanently lost part of the vision in one eye - a loss that could have been prevented with better monitoring. The docs say it will only get worse as time goes on. Without a family doctor to follow everything, and to make referrals as necessary, I'm royally scr*wed. You can be darned sure our overlords don't have the same problems with access to a family doctor.
So instead, they spend $25 billion on fighter jets that don't even meet our own needs while lying about the price, are overkill for most situations as well as too expensive to operate, and will be easy enough to be totally overwhelmed by any potential enemy just sending in a large enough wave of comparatively cruise drones, knowing that some will get through.
Before posting something completely silly that destroyed a few brain cells, couldn't you at least look at the article - the woman's picture, the fact that the school board confirmed her identity as principal, etc?
There's more ... a lot more. For example, Canadian banks are quite willing to allow companies whose charters have lapsed (and that no longer have any legal status) to open up bank accounts. So, just find a defunct company, pay the fees to "revive" it for a year so you can get your hands on a valid charter without too many questions, then let it lapse at the end of the year. Now, you have the perfect shell company for whatever fraud you want to perpetrate - money-laundering, check-kiting, fake invoices, you name it.
This was supposed to have been fixed after the Ateliers Hall scam a couple of decades ago, but when I started investigating, I found that zombie companies can still do banking in Canada.
When confronted with hard evidence (cheques written against a zombie company account), the Bank of Montreal promised to get back to me, but never did. Not ONE of Canada's top banks did, because they're all scared that the minute they admit it publicly, they'll be liable for lawsuits from anyone who receives a bogus cheque. Ongoing flaws such as this are part of why the Royal Bank of Canada settled with investors who were scammed out of $50 million by Earl Jones - "Canada, the best banking system in the world" is no stranger to corruption.
The "extra fees", the "activity fees", the "student fees", the "school supply fees" at all levels of education, these are all stuff that somehow "doesn't count" - but those school supply fees sure scare the heck out of many parents right before school starts for the yeear - especially since they come at the same time as having to buy new school clothes, etc.
Too many people don't seem to understand that we have huge pockets of poverty in Quebec, too often hidden poverty, from the combination of lower wages than elsewhere, and very much higher taxes (for example, the lowest bracket of the provincial income tax rate is more than 3x higher than neighboring Ontario's lowest rate, and it kicks in earlier).
It doesn't help that decades of cronyism in public service jobs has also created a bureaucracy that is more intent on preserving its own jobs than on delivering services to the general public, and that corruption has led to things like "bio-degradable asphalt" - roads that need re-paving mere months after they've been paved.
There's also the hidden health problem. Quebec's offical rate of people with one or more handicaps is the lowest in Canada, which doesn't make sense because Quebec has one of the most rapidly aging populations. The reality is that many people (statistically, at least 3% of the population) have already fallen through the cracks, and just aren't counted, left to deal with their disabilities on their own without any support, which just compounds the problem.
And then we have the totally ludicrous attitude of current premier Jean Charest - the most two-faced politician in Canadian history (ask any reporter - they're familiar with his saying one thing to one group, then an hour later the exact opposite to another group). It's ridiculous that it took 12 weeks of protests to even agree to sit down and talk, because he didn't want to look weak.
The only thing that is more ridiculous is that he has fiddled while the economy self-destructed. Quebec needs to gain 75,000 jobs a year to keep up with population growth - for the last 2 years, it has instead lost an average of 1,000 jobs a week, and those jobs are never coming back. They are gone for good.
Instead, he goes on and on about his stupid "Plan Nord" that will "create or stabilize up to 20,000 jobs" - thinking that we're too stupid to realize that many of these jobs (such as transport of raw materials) will not be local, and that exporting raw materials instead of transforming them into products is basically exporting jobs while leaving behind the pollution and other environmental damage, and a province depleted of resources when it finally needs them for its own population.
The majority of people in the world who speak French aren't French citizens.
As I took paints to point out, the Federal political scene has been repleat with politicians from all political stripes pandering to the "soft nationalist/separatist" Quebec vote.
At some point, the voters in the rest of the country has to accept some responsibility for the mess because they supported this sort of "knife-at-the-throat" cowardice tactics by voting for it.
The latest example is Tom Mulcair of the NDP - another in the long line of politicians who panders to the soft separatist vote by continually making reference to the "Quebec Nation". He's one of those believers in assymetrical federalism - and a generation of that sort of thinking is a big part of what is tearing the country apart.
But lest you think I'm only slagging the NDP, I blame all the current politicians. Trudeau had it right. "Just watch me!"
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Quebec didn't happen in isolation. There's been ass-hattery and bigotry towards the french from the rest of the country for a long time, and there's been pandering to subversives for political gain. You don't build a country on that sort of crap.
Ms. Bock did more than just puff up a story - there was the fact-checking of school records to see if there was such a student, as well as a search of public records for ANYONE with that name. That's more than what passes for "reporting" on Faux News.
She also put it into the greater context of the on-going school board problems.
1. Download and install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview;
2. Realize that the Windows 8 Metro UI is the worst product Microsoft has ever made - worse than Bob or Clippy;
3. PROFIT from your new-found experience.