They could probably live without the stores given the publicity, but if Sony and Microsoft refuse to allow an AO rated game on their consoles they have a problem. I mean WTF is up with that? I thought I was buying* a games console not a fricking personal nazi!
"You vill sit in ze CHAIR ven you play my console, NOT ON ZE COUCH!!!"
Hell I don't even want to play Manhunt II (the first one bored the crap out of me), but I'd like to have the choice.
* Like most people who say this sort of thing, no I haven't bought one, although I was considering a 360. Think I'll stick to the PC now.
If you're going to do that why not make it for something useful? First recover of useful ore from an asteroid maybe, or a succesful method of moving an asteroid into an orbit close to Earth where it could be mined conveniently.
A billion wouldn't even begin to cover it, but at the end of the day we might have the beginings of a real sustainable comercial space industry.
That's mis-interpreting that article I think - they start off talking about losses due to all natural disasters, and then goes on to talk about most of them being climate related. Nowhere does it hypothesis that earthquakes are climate related.
I've been thinking about this since you posted it and (full disclosure, I've never even visited the US), this seems something of a defeatist attitude. I take your point that politicians will not/can not fix this for themselves, but at the end of the day America is a very democratic country. If reform was demanded by the voting public then it could and would happen. All that needs to happen is for US citizens at large to actually care.
Now you may well say that Lessig faces one hell of an uphill struggle to make them care, but that isn't a reason not to try - look at the evolution of British democracy. Decades after the US had declared independence, the House of Commons was voted on in a public vote by maybe 10% of the adult male population who were openly bribed by the local landowners - a great quote from a biography of William Wilberforce I'm currently reading, "they looked upon those two guineas as a birthright." Many protests, compromises, and almost revolutions since then have turned British democracy into universal suffrage by secret ballot.
All I'm saying is it just takes people to care. Lessig may have his work cut out for him, but it is only by activism that anything every changes.
While it is a noble undertaking, I find such a statement somewhat humorous, as fighting the influence of big money on legislation is a futile endeavor.
Removing completely, yes. But cutting it down by 95% in the US is easy. Just stop the complete abuse of political funding that goes on at present; this really isn't hard. Nowhere else in the first world are corporations allowed to buy politicians in the way that happens quite normally in the US. Eliminate that and you're just left with real corruption (politicians selling out for personal gain, rather than as a necessary part of getting elected). This happens everywhere of course, and I'm sure the US is no exception, but it's a fart in a jacuzzi compared to the current situation.
Personal opinion (this is thinking of the UK more than the US): public funding of political parties. A few million per annum out of general taxation is a tiny price to pay for the sanctity of the political process.
Anyways, why not follow the British example and refer to everyone as a minister?
Actually we have "Czars" as well (although I presume we copied the idea from somewhere else). I think the idea is that a Czar is someone given complete authority to deal with a particular issue, or at least that's what it is meant to sound like.
Also a minister in the UK must be a member of parliament.
The only thing that she did was to make the UK serve as a reminder of what happens when you institute such anti-domestic policies.
Why don't you move to France? You could discuss the merits of protectionism with the locals in the dole queue.
The unions were out of control, even the last labour government had tried to reign them in - only to be humiliated. Brutal, yes it was. But it only needed to be quite so brutal because the idiots of the previous decades protected massive nationalised companies from real competition. Thats what killed British industry, decades of protectionism that left us with manufacturing industries that hadn't a hope of competing globally. Thatcher just convinced the corpse to lie down, and IMO this was her greatest acomplishment.
This old tech support enquiry may give you some pointers:
Subject: Tech Support
Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure.
In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization, where it monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Pokernight 10.3 Drunken Boys Night 2.5 and Sunday Football 5.0 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run some of my other favorite applications.
I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the un-install does not work on this program. Can you help me, please???
Thanks, Joe
------------------
Dear Joe:
This is a very common problem men complain about but is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program.Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything.
It is unlikely that you would be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Girlfriend 7.0 to emulate Wife 1.0 so that, in the end, nothing would be gained. It is impossible to un-install, delete, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this.
Some have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than with the original system. Look in your manual under "Warnings-Alimony/Child Support". I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 and just deal with the situation.
Having Wife 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur,regardless of their actual cause. The best course of action will be to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE. In any case, avoid excessive use of the Esc key because -- ultimately-you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the operating system will return to normal. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all the GPFs.
Wife 1.0 is a great program, but very high maintenance. Consider buying additional software to improve the performance of Wife 1.0. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Chocolates 5.0. Do not, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and is likely to cause irreversible damage to the operating system.
If you're menaced by a lout in a bar with a broken bottle, who do you want to come to your rescue? Do you want a nice, reasonable, New York Times reading diplomatic type, who'll ask everyone to sit down and discuss it?
No, you want a bigger lout with a bigger broken bottle.
Pick someone, anyone, out of a crowd, on the highway (not recommended if you are driving), etc., from who you are out of their field of view. Stare at them intensely for a few seconds. Direct a strong emotion towards them if you can -- hate, fear, rage, etc. I guarantee you that most of them will look back at you nervously. It may not work for everyone because some people are less aware of their '6th sense' than others.
Then get scientific evidence for it: Make absolutely sure that the observer cannot affect the environment of the subject in any way, and record the results.
All sorts of EMP studies have been tried, and there is still no evidence for it. Given how easy it would be to get evidence if it did work, I think the only conclusion has to be that it doesn't.
My own opinion of this sort of anecdotal evidence is that 1) it is very startling when someone who you are sure cannot see you looking at them turns and looks at you (hence we tend to remember it as important event), 2) it's not very remarkable when people don't turn when you are looking at them (so we tend to forget it), and 3) our brains very very good at making connections between tiny bits of sensory data and the possibility that someone is looking at us (so in our everyday lives we are likely to see a bias towards people noticing us watching them).
Just as a nitpick, I think that's a specifically protestant doctrine. Catholicism would probably reject that - to some extent at any rate. Not sure if even most modern protestents would endorse it, at least to the extent of Calvanist predestination and the concept of the elect (faith alone justifies, true faith is a gift of God beyond Man unaided, therefore some are doomed to hell by God from birth).
Unfortunately I think you may be over interpreting the decision - IANAL and haven't finished the opinion yet. The key phrases seem to me:
While reading 271(f) to exclude from coverage foreign-made
copies of software may create a "loophole" in favor of software makers, the Court is not persuaded that dynamic judicial interpretation of 271(f) is in order; the "loophole" is properly left for Congress to consider, and to close if it finds such action warranted. Section 271(f) was a direct response to a gap in U. S. patent law revealed by Deep-south Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp., 406 U. S. 518, where the items exported were kits containing all the physical, readily assemblable parts of a machine (not an intangible set of instructions), and those parts themselves (not foreign-made copies of them) would be com-bined abroad by foreign buyers. Having attended to that gap, Congress did not address other arguable gaps, such as the loophole AT&T describes. Given the expanded extraterritorial thrust AT&T's read-ing of 271(f) entails, the patent-protective determination AT&T seeks must be left to Congress. Cf. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, 431. Congress is doubtless aware of the ease with which electronic media such as software can be copied, and has not left the matter untouched. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U. S. C. 1201 et seq. If patent law is to be adjusted better to account for the realities of software distribution, the alteration should be made after focused legislative consideration, not by the Judiciary forecasting Congress' likely disposition.
ie this decision is based on the court's interpretation of Congress's intention of a specific exception to current law which purely applies in the area of exports.
From the paragraph immediately above comes an interesting and somewhat heartening passage to a non-American:
Foreign conduct is generally the domain of foreign law, and in the patent area, that law may embody different policy judgments about the relative rights of inventors, competitors, and the public. Applied here, the presumption tugs strongly against construing 271(f) to encompass as a "component" not only a physical copy of software, but also software's intangible code, and to render "supplie[d] . . . from the United States" not only exported copies of soft-ware, but also duplicates made abroad. Foreign law alone, not United States law, currently governs the manufacture and sale of components of patented inventions in foreign countries. If AT&T de-sires to prevent copying abroad, its remedy lies in obtaining and en-forcing foreign patents.
Quite agree, if it's really that important then make in mandatory. These half arsed measures to try and increase turnout are stupid and risky - people should vote in private, not somewhere where they can be cooerced. Allow postal voting for people with genuine difficulties getting to the polling station but this should be the exception, not something that politicians push because they think (correctly) that low turn out reflects badly on them.
I'm not massively in favour of mandatory voting, but it's a lot better than these idiotic alternatives.
Thanks for replying. You make a lot of points,
and I hope you'll forgive me if I go through them
one by one - I'm not so much disagreeing with you
as articulating some long held doubts about
proportional representation.
As opposed to our current system with 2
virtually identical parties vying for the
politically-correct centreground, closing their
minds to many new ideas for fear of losing votes
from certain sectors?
I'd say the current consensus is simply where
British politics is at the moment - I don't really
see this as something that is effected by the
voting mechanism; rather that Thatchers reforms
shifted the consensus to the right, something I
think would remain whatever the voting system.
at least with coalitions, there would
be a lot more small parties in the commons that
could exert a lot more influence, and even (if the
main coalition was pissing everybody off) become
powerful enough to veto that coalition (maybe by
forming a secondary coalition). Politics would
basically be more dynamic, and I think the
discussion of ideas would have to be more open
owing to the greater variety of people taking
part.
I pretty much agree with this - certainly PR
would allow small nationally focussed parties (eg
Greens) to take the power their share of the vote
deserves. In this way I'd agree it is more dynamic,
however you have to set this against the dead hand
of the coalition viewpoint, which is my principle
fear (the Austrian example scares me to be honest -
30 years? 40 years? of the same coalition. No
wonder the far right found a foothold.).
That is called 'closed-list'
proportional representation. I would advocate
'open-list' proportional representation, where the
voters DO vote for a particular candidate. The vote
initially goes toward that candidate's
party.
I have to admit I'd never heard of the
distinction before. However, off the top of my
head, that does seem to be a system that would be
implemented party by party, rather than being a
legal requirement. I'd fear that Labour and the
Tories might take a different route.
I fear that the simple mechanics of a PR system
would lead to parties even more powerful than they
are now.
By the way, the current system is
pretty much as bad as you suggested *already*. They
put the candidates they really want to be in
parliament (Blair, Brown, Prescott, and other
assorted nasties) in very safe seats, so they're
effectively picking exactly who they want
anyway.
I think (and from what you said about allocated
seats I think you agree) that in a system where
ministers are drawn from elected MPs (lets forget
the lords for a second) parties do need to be able
to have a reasonable degree of certainty about some
key people. At least with first past the post there
is always an option to vote just them out (did you
stay up for Portillo?)
I say: Good. I see no reason why a
*national* parliament should be addressing local
issues; that's what local government is for (and
local government in the UK, by the way, should be
normalized and its power beefed up greatly, so it
could operate better without help from the
commons). National government should NOT be the
first port of call for people wanting to address a
local issue. You should NOT be thinking of going to
your local MP, you should be going to your local
councillors. Right now, the only reason MPs like
being able to claim they 'represent' a constituency
(which of course they don't because they are almost
all elected by a minority) is so they can wheel out
some constituent by name in PMQs to 'personalize'
an issue and make it harder for the PM to respond,
because it might look like he was treating a
non-politician with contempt (eg. "Can the PM
explain why Mrs. Johnson, one of my constituents,
could not get a hip replacement for 2 years?!?!!"
You know I like a lot of what the Lib Dems stand for, but I just can't see what is so good about proportional representation. As far as I can see it would lead to:
Perpetual coalition government - not a good thing IMO since it can lead to governing coalitions that last for decades (Austria until recently for eg).
Voting by party not by candidate - so even more powerful parties. All MPs have to toe the line or not get on the list, and there is no chance for individual unpopular politicians in a popular party to be voted out.
Much less importance given to local issues by the national government.
More seats for the Lib Dems - the only reason they seem to support it, which makes me a lot more cynical of them than I otherwise would be.
True - although there is another side to it. Many commodities (oil for example) are traded in USD, so input costs fall with a weak dollar.
I can never work out whether a strong pound is good or bad for Britain - whichever sector is hurt by the current situation always screams about it so loudly you'd think the world was coming to an end.
My dislike of FF on the Mac (I use it exclusively on Windows - I spend my time about 50/50 Mac/Windows) comes down more to look and feel than functionality.
It feels odd not to have normal Mac widgets - I'm not usually fussed by things like that, but for some reason it bothers me in FF.
The more important thing is that it just feels clunky - I'm using an old eMac G4 700 which may not be helping - but, compared to Safari or Camino, Firefox feels slow. Little things, like I can't select a bookmark from while a page is loading, and the application just feels generally less responsive than either Camino or Safari.
Slashdot Mirror
They could probably live without the stores given the publicity, but if Sony and Microsoft refuse to allow an AO rated game on their consoles they have a problem. I mean WTF is up with that? I thought I was buying* a games console not a fricking personal nazi!
"You vill sit in ze CHAIR ven you play my console, NOT ON ZE COUCH!!!"
Hell I don't even want to play Manhunt II (the first one bored the crap out of me), but I'd like to have the choice.
* Like most people who say this sort of thing, no I haven't bought one, although I was considering a 360. Think I'll stick to the PC now.
Down the bottom of a fricking gravity well you tit..
If you're going to do that why not make it for something useful? First recover of useful ore from an asteroid maybe, or a succesful method of moving an asteroid into an orbit close to Earth where it could be mined conveniently.
A billion wouldn't even begin to cover it, but at the end of the day we might have the beginings of a real sustainable comercial space industry.
That's mis-interpreting that article I think - they start off talking about losses due to all natural disasters, and then goes on to talk about most of them being climate related. Nowhere does it hypothesis that earthquakes are climate related.
I've been thinking about this since you posted it and (full disclosure, I've never even visited the US), this seems something of a defeatist attitude. I take your point that politicians will not/can not fix this for themselves, but at the end of the day America is a very democratic country. If reform was demanded by the voting public then it could and would happen. All that needs to happen is for US citizens at large to actually care.
Now you may well say that Lessig faces one hell of an uphill struggle to make them care, but that isn't a reason not to try - look at the evolution of British democracy. Decades after the US had declared independence, the House of Commons was voted on in a public vote by maybe 10% of the adult male population who were openly bribed by the local landowners - a great quote from a biography of William Wilberforce I'm currently reading, "they looked upon those two guineas as a birthright." Many protests, compromises, and almost revolutions since then have turned British democracy into universal suffrage by secret ballot.
All I'm saying is it just takes people to care. Lessig may have his work cut out for him, but it is only by activism that anything every changes.
Well I was almost convinced, until I noticed..
Obviously this invalidates your whole point and makes me a superior human being.
/ducks
Removing completely, yes. But cutting it down by 95% in the US is easy. Just stop the complete abuse of political funding that goes on at present; this really isn't hard. Nowhere else in the first world are corporations allowed to buy politicians in the way that happens quite normally in the US. Eliminate that and you're just left with real corruption (politicians selling out for personal gain, rather than as a necessary part of getting elected). This happens everywhere of course, and I'm sure the US is no exception, but it's a fart in a jacuzzi compared to the current situation.
Personal opinion (this is thinking of the UK more than the US): public funding of political parties. A few million per annum out of general taxation is a tiny price to pay for the sanctity of the political process.
heh, I'd actually written it the other way round first. Then I changed it because I thought it would be more comprehensible.. Oh well ;)
Actually we have "Czars" as well (although I presume we copied the idea from somewhere else). I think the idea is that a Czar is someone given complete authority to deal with a particular issue, or at least that's what it is meant to sound like.
Also a minister in the UK must be a member of parliament.
Hmm, the hasn't happened yet vs the impossible...
You wouldn't fancy a little wager would you?
More likely, if they saw this story, they'd be thinking "What's a Linux?"
Why don't you move to France? You could discuss the merits of protectionism with the locals in the dole queue.
The unions were out of control, even the last labour government had tried to reign them in - only to be humiliated. Brutal, yes it was. But it only needed to be quite so brutal because the idiots of the previous decades protected massive nationalised companies from real competition. Thats what killed British industry, decades of protectionism that left us with manufacturing industries that hadn't a hope of competing globally. Thatcher just convinced the corpse to lie down, and IMO this was her greatest acomplishment.
It's really only an issue if the cvv digits are there as well - without those they're really just a group of numbers.
This old tech support enquiry may give you some pointers:
Subject: Tech SupportLast year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure.
In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization, where it monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Pokernight 10.3 Drunken Boys Night 2.5 and Sunday Football 5.0 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run some of my other favorite applications.
I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the un-install does not work on this program. Can you help me, please???
Thanks, Joe
------------------
Dear Joe:
This is a very common problem men complain about but is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program.Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything.
It is unlikely that you would be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Girlfriend 7.0 to emulate Wife 1.0 so that, in the end, nothing would be gained. It is impossible to un-install, delete, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this.
Some have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than with the original system. Look in your manual under "Warnings-Alimony/Child Support". I recommend that you keep Wife 1.0 and just deal with the situation.
Having Wife 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur,regardless of their actual cause. The best course of action will be to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE. In any case, avoid excessive use of the Esc key because -- ultimately-you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the operating system will return to normal. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all the GPFs.
Wife 1.0 is a great program, but very high maintenance. Consider buying additional software to improve the performance of Wife 1.0. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Chocolates 5.0. Do not, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and is likely to cause irreversible damage to the operating system.
Best of luck,
Tech Support.
With apologies to Rory Bremner.
If you're menaced by a lout in a bar with a broken bottle, who do you want to come to your rescue? Do you want a nice, reasonable, New York Times reading diplomatic type, who'll ask everyone to sit down and discuss it?
No, you want a bigger lout with a bigger broken bottle.
And that's the United States Marine Corps.
Then get scientific evidence for it: Make absolutely sure that the observer cannot affect the environment of the subject in any way, and record the results.
All sorts of EMP studies have been tried, and there is still no evidence for it. Given how easy it would be to get evidence if it did work, I think the only conclusion has to be that it doesn't.
My own opinion of this sort of anecdotal evidence is that 1) it is very startling when someone who you are sure cannot see you looking at them turns and looks at you (hence we tend to remember it as important event), 2) it's not very remarkable when people don't turn when you are looking at them (so we tend to forget it), and 3) our brains very very good at making connections between tiny bits of sensory data and the possibility that someone is looking at us (so in our everyday lives we are likely to see a bias towards people noticing us watching them).
Just as a nitpick, I think that's a specifically protestant doctrine. Catholicism would probably reject that - to some extent at any rate. Not sure if even most modern protestents would endorse it, at least to the extent of Calvanist predestination and the concept of the elect (faith alone justifies, true faith is a gift of God beyond Man unaided, therefore some are doomed to hell by God from birth).
ie this decision is based on the court's interpretation of Congress's intention of a specific exception to current law which purely applies in the area of exports.
From the paragraph immediately above comes an interesting and somewhat heartening passage to a non-American:
Quite agree, if it's really that important then make in mandatory. These half arsed measures to try and increase turnout are stupid and risky - people should vote in private, not somewhere where they can be cooerced. Allow postal voting for people with genuine difficulties getting to the polling station but this should be the exception, not something that politicians push because they think (correctly) that low turn out reflects badly on them.
I'm not massively in favour of mandatory voting, but it's a lot better than these idiotic alternatives.
Thanks for replying. You make a lot of points, and I hope you'll forgive me if I go through them one by one - I'm not so much disagreeing with you as articulating some long held doubts about proportional representation.
I'd say the current consensus is simply where British politics is at the moment - I don't really see this as something that is effected by the voting mechanism; rather that Thatchers reforms shifted the consensus to the right, something I think would remain whatever the voting system.
I pretty much agree with this - certainly PR would allow small nationally focussed parties (eg Greens) to take the power their share of the vote deserves. In this way I'd agree it is more dynamic, however you have to set this against the dead hand of the coalition viewpoint, which is my principle fear (the Austrian example scares me to be honest - 30 years? 40 years? of the same coalition. No wonder the far right found a foothold.).
I have to admit I'd never heard of the distinction before. However, off the top of my head, that does seem to be a system that would be implemented party by party, rather than being a legal requirement. I'd fear that Labour and the Tories might take a different route.
I fear that the simple mechanics of a PR system would lead to parties even more powerful than they are now.
I think (and from what you said about allocated seats I think you agree) that in a system where ministers are drawn from elected MPs (lets forget the lords for a second) parties do need to be able to have a reasonable degree of certainty about some key people. At least with first past the post there is always an option to vote just them out (did you stay up for Portillo?)
You know I like a lot of what the Lib Dems stand for, but I just can't see what is so good about proportional representation. As far as I can see it would lead to:
True - although there is another side to it. Many commodities (oil for example) are traded in USD, so input costs fall with a weak dollar.
I can never work out whether a strong pound is good or bad for Britain - whichever sector is hurt by the current situation always screams about it so loudly you'd think the world was coming to an end.
This appears to be being done through hacked adwords accounts.
It is related in the sense that it is presumably the hacked Adwords accounts that are being used to serve the ads to malware sites.
My dislike of FF on the Mac (I use it exclusively on Windows - I spend my time about 50/50 Mac/Windows) comes down more to look and feel than functionality.
It feels odd not to have normal Mac widgets - I'm not usually fussed by things like that, but for some reason it bothers me in FF.
The more important thing is that it just feels clunky - I'm using an old eMac G4 700 which may not be helping - but, compared to Safari or Camino, Firefox feels slow. Little things, like I can't select a bookmark from while a page is loading, and the application just feels generally less responsive than either Camino or Safari.