"There's no way you can maintain the argument that problems in East Texas can be adequately represented by someone living in Northern California, or even West Texas."
Nothing in my system prevents people from east texas to vote for somebody in east texas. In fact under my system the number of representitives would increase by tenfold which means it's much more representitive.
Be that as it may having been in east texas I can tell you that there are lots of people there who would rather vote for somebody other then the bozos running in their district.
"It's not necessarily right, but it's also not something that can be easily solved until you get people into office who actually care about those they represent. "
I believe that my proposal does indeed solve this problem. There is no such thing as winner take all. You vote for somebody you believe in and if a hundred thousand people agree with you then your voice gets heard. The chances of getting shit on dimish greatly when it requires a 2/3rd vote.
"The third party voters are pretty scattered throughout the US and do not form a concentrated voting bloc in any one area."
This is exactly what my proposal solves. Even if there are not enough liberterians in virginia (for example) there are enough liberterians all over the country to elect several representitives to my parliment. Maybe that's a small number out of 3000 but it's better then zero and their voices get heard even they get over ruled by the super majority. Of course in order to get a super majority there would have to be deals and alliances but that's a good thing. It means people are negotiating and considering each others views.
"Well, the Constitution calls for it, so unless you change the Constitution, we're stuck with it."
Yes I said that.
"Not to mention which, having a President allows us to have a single representative of the entire nation to deal with other nations, when it is really necessary."
Not really. COngress has to approve any treaty anyway. Most trade agreements also have to be approved. The presidency is stupid and ought to be discarded. It's just a relic from the days of monarchy. At the time our country was founded many people wanted George Washington to be the king. The founding fathers didn't like the idea of the king so they came up with the president as a half way solution.
"Most of the time, the job seems redundant or unnecessary, since most of the contact is handled through lower level representatives, but on occasion, someone has to make the hard decision and do it in a decisive way."
I disagree completely. All decisions should be made through a 2/3rd concensus of the people who represent america. It's silly to leave that kind of decision making power to one person. Look at what's happening now!. GW is locking people up without trials, charges, or even access to attorneys for as long as he wants. What's next moving them into concentration camps and firing the gas ovens? Ooops I guess he has already moved them into concentration camps sorry.
"Just because you don't like the one we've got (and believe me, I wouldn't pee on him if he was on fire, in the figurative AND literal sense), doesn't mean the Office is not necessary on occasion."
I don't object to the idea of the presiency because of bush. I just object to idea period. There is just no need nor justification for it. It's a carryover concept from the old days when people expected kings.
"Artificial geographical boundaries are still our best approximation of representation."
Sez who? Who says community has to be defined by proximity. Have you heard the terms "geek community" or "open source community"? It's perfectly possible to form communities without regard to borders.
"So how do you propose to have a representative democracy without using geographical boundaries?"
I already told you. Convince a 100,000 people to vote for you and you get to represent them. If they are all in your neighborhood then fine, if they are amongst some other "community" then fine.
Here are the core problems built into the constituion. Things can not get better till they are changed.
1) The idea that artifical geographical boundries matter. There is no reason my voting choices should be limited by where I live. Whether it's the state or the neigborhood where I live should have no bearing on who I am allowed to vote on.
2) winner take all elections. It's not fair that a person who wins 50.01% of the vote gets to shit on half the population that did not vote for him. The politicians do shit on people who don't vote for them.
3) Lack of a parlimenterian type of representation. Third parites just don't stand a chance and it's not fair to people who don't agree with the parties.
The answer is simple but requires a constitional amendment so it will never happen.
1) anybody who gathers X amount of votes from a nationwide election gets a seat at the parliment. You can fiddle with the number X to taste. If you think one representitive per million people is Ok then settle on that. If you think that's too diffuse drop the number to 100,000.
2) All legislation must pass by a 2/3rd Majority of the parliment.
3) Who the fuck needs a president anyway. That's just a relic from the monarchy days.
Voila, problem solved.
Let's say you went with the 100,000 number (I think even that's too high but let's stick with that for now). That means there would be 3000 representitives. In order to get a law passed you'd need 2000 votes.
So if a corporation wanted a particular law passed they would have to bribe 2000 politicians!!. I am not saying that they could not but let's make it expensive for them for gods sake.
Each politician only has to answer to 100K people which means all voices have a chance of being heard. Only if there is massive concensus however do the laws get passed.
Lets say that Diebold promised the election to bush (they kind of did actually). they could take every 1000th vote for Kerry and switch it to bush instead. the voter vould never notice and Bush would win by a comfortable margin.
During the next term Bush would make sure that Diebold got a big fat contract in Iraq or North Korea or Iran or whoever we invaded next and voila alls fair in war and politics.
Not all of them. I don't remember which one but there was one scenario that indicated that he would have lost.
Of course the fact that nader took three or four percent of the vote and the thousands of people accidentally voted for Buchanan also helped him out immensely.
I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of the people in florida did not want him in office.
BTW if you think state politicians don't look at polls you need to put your crack pipe down. The only difference between your state legilator and your senator is that your legilator is cheaper to buy.
Unless the machine is actually printing out a receipt for each and every vote that the voter can look at and confirm then the process is suspect.
Many things can go wrong. For example.
1) The machines could be programmed to favor one party or another. No matter who the voter selects the machine one out of a thousand times switches the vote. If only one out of a thousand voters notice the discrepency the party gains power and grants more govt contracts to diebold.
2) the machines could skew the results enough to beat the margin for a recount. If the politician A wins by more then 5% then no recount will be triggered and nobody is wiser for it.
As long as commercial companies are making these machines and as long as those companies are allowed to lobby and bribe politicians the process is suspect. The software should be open source period. The machines should be imaged at secure locations under tight surveillance and should be accounted for 100% of the time they are in use.
elections are too important to trust to corporations with political agendas. The profit motive is just too great not the mess with things.
Why not? It's in their character to do something like that isn't it? I mean this is the same company that is delaying the US case with lindows while they sue them all over the world ex-parte and asking judges for thousand times customery punishment.
My guess is that the optimization does not go that far. I don't know how it could really. If each invocation (per row) gives a different answer then you probably can't really optimize it anyway. Maybe if they included a keyword so you can let the compiler know it's a static number. For example select myfunc(param) STATIC, mycol from mytable. That way the compiler would know to run the function only once.
What's amazing to me is how little of this has hit the maintsream press. Wasn't Gale Norton held in contempt byt he court? Imagine if a clinton cabinet secy was held in contempt how the press would pounce on it.
Billions of dollars were literally stolen and the networks were ordered shut down at least three times and not a peep from the press.
What you are saying is true about the US. Worldwide it's a different picture. As I said in my post the US corporations will be lagging behind the rest of the world in adoption of Linux.
"The amount of savings to migrate to non-windows apps would have to astronomical for any CEO/CIO to take Linux seriously as a desktop replacement on the level you suggest."
Some people will migrate most will start with linux in the first place. As small business grow they will take linux along with them.
" Its a brand, a religion, and a cult all rolled into one. We all know it just consists of a word processor, spreadsheet, etc but to users its all they do - and ALL THEY KNOW. "
That's true for the US. The rest of the world is not religious about it. As I said they will lead the charge. In the US the companies that switch will be able to out compete the companies that don't. Once a few companies switch the rest will fall like dominoes.
"My prediction: MS will be around for longer than we care to admit. "
Yes they will. They will continue to own somewhere around 40% of the desktops and a similar number in the server room.
"Linux will continue to make inroads into the server room and will eventually be knocked back a bit when MS finally make a server anyone can administer and setup."
Every iteration of windows becomes harder to set up and maintain. MS moved from a realtively simple WFW to an insanely complex active directory. Right now very few people in the world understand intellimirror, WMI, LDAP, KErberos, Dynamic DNS, and ADSI. MS will continue to along this path and the next version of windows will be even more complex and hard to maintain. Needless to say it will also not be able to interoperate with anything else in your enterprise either.
"Linux's eternal game of 'catch-up' isn't a revolution"
All innovation today takes place in the open source arena. MS is the follower, they don't innovate at all.
"Hell, even their products are much better than they were three years ago and they are learning from their security mistakes."
Please remove your head fromt he hole in the ground and take a look around. Nobody believes that FUD not even you.
"I'm sure this will be modded down the same way an atheist at a church gets shouted down."
If I had mod points I would have modded it down. You are wrong on many points and are simply shilling for MS.
Personally I find it disgusting when a human being shills for a evil corporation. How many sleazy acts does a corporation have to commit before you stop shilling for them anyway?
So you want to spend tons of money on the.01% chance that we will all die from an asteroid.
In the mean time you don't mind that you are condeming milllions of people to further poverty and misery. Throwing up your hands and saying "we'll never rid the world of poverty so lets spend our money on frivolous pursuits" seems silly to me.
It's not free. It's pretty cheap though. If it saves you three or four hours then it's worth it no?
If you want free then I'd go with debian. It's very consistent. With debian things are always installed into predictable areas. You should read the debian filesystem hierarchy first though so you know where they go. it's not like windows where files spew all over the place and the configuration get's buried deep withing the bowels of the registry.
You are 100% absolutely wrong. You could not be more wrong if were actually trying to be wrong.
The primary audience is the CEO. Linux desktops are ideal for the corporate environment. That's where they will rule first and foremost. Linux gives businesses more options and more freedom when it comes to the desktop. This means a business may choose to run thick or thin clients, they can centralize all software so upgrades are a snap, they can effectively lock down desktops and won't have to worry about their users clicking on emails or web sites that carry virus payloads. Of course they also get to save a buttload of money and dictate their own upgrade schedule too.
Once the corporate desktop belongs to linux then the home users will also adopt it so they can take their work home.
that's what happened to windows, that's what's going to happen to linux.
Look at what HP is doing, they are selling these PCs at small businesses not Joe Shmoe. IBM and SUN are also selling linux to the corporate desktop.
Here is my prediction. By the end of 2005 Linux will have reached critical mass on the corporate desktop. By that I mean around 20% of all corporate desktops in the world (not the US though) will be running a linux desktop. It will double in 2006 and then the growth will slow down because the US businesses will be very slow to migrate to it.
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"There's no way you can maintain the argument that problems in East Texas can be adequately represented by someone living in Northern California, or even West Texas."
Nothing in my system prevents people from east texas to vote for somebody in east texas. In fact under my system the number of representitives would increase by tenfold which means it's much more representitive.
Be that as it may having been in east texas I can tell you that there are lots of people there who would rather vote for somebody other then the bozos running in their district.
"It's not necessarily right, but it's also not something that can be easily solved until you get people into office who actually care about those they represent. "
I believe that my proposal does indeed solve this problem. There is no such thing as winner take all. You vote for somebody you believe in and if a hundred thousand people agree with you then your voice gets heard. The chances of getting shit on dimish greatly when it requires a 2/3rd vote.
"The third party voters are pretty scattered throughout the US and do not form a concentrated voting bloc in any one area."
This is exactly what my proposal solves. Even if there are not enough liberterians in virginia (for example) there are enough liberterians all over the country to elect several representitives to my parliment. Maybe that's a small number out of 3000 but it's better then zero and their voices get heard even they get over ruled by the super majority. Of course in order to get a super majority there would have to be deals and alliances but that's a good thing. It means people are negotiating and considering each others views.
"Well, the Constitution calls for it, so unless you change the Constitution, we're stuck with it."
Yes I said that.
"Not to mention which, having a President allows us to have a single representative of the entire nation to deal with other nations, when it is really necessary."
Not really. COngress has to approve any treaty anyway. Most trade agreements also have to be approved. The presidency is stupid and ought to be discarded. It's just a relic from the days of monarchy. At the time our country was founded many people wanted George Washington to be the king. The founding fathers didn't like the idea of the king so they came up with the president as a half way solution.
"Most of the time, the job seems redundant or unnecessary, since most of the contact is handled through lower level representatives, but on occasion, someone has to make the hard decision and do it in a decisive way."
I disagree completely. All decisions should be made through a 2/3rd concensus of the people who represent america. It's silly to leave that kind of decision making power to one person. Look at what's happening now!. GW is locking people up without trials, charges, or even access to attorneys for as long as he wants. What's next moving them into concentration camps and firing the gas ovens? Ooops I guess he has already moved them into concentration camps sorry.
"Just because you don't like the one we've got (and believe me, I wouldn't pee on him if he was on fire, in the figurative AND literal sense), doesn't mean the Office is not necessary on occasion."
I don't object to the idea of the presiency because of bush. I just object to idea period. There is just no need nor justification for it. It's a carryover concept from the old days when people expected kings.
"Artificial geographical boundaries are still our best approximation of representation."
Sez who? Who says community has to be defined by proximity. Have you heard the terms "geek community" or "open source community"? It's perfectly possible to form communities without regard to borders.
"So how do you propose to have a representative democracy without using geographical boundaries?"
I already told you. Convince a 100,000 people to vote for you and you get to represent them. If they are all in your neighborhood then fine, if they are amongst some other "community" then fine.
floria has about 16 million people. 1/1000th of that is 16 thousand people. GW won by a few hundred.
The real problems are constitutional.
Here are the core problems built into the constituion. Things can not get better till they are changed.
1) The idea that artifical geographical boundries matter. There is no reason my voting choices should be limited by where I live. Whether it's the state or the neigborhood where I live should have no bearing on who I am allowed to vote on.
2) winner take all elections. It's not fair that a person who wins 50.01% of the vote gets to shit on half the population that did not vote for him. The politicians do shit on people who don't vote for them.
3) Lack of a parlimenterian type of representation. Third parites just don't stand a chance and it's not fair to people who don't agree with the parties.
The answer is simple but requires a constitional amendment so it will never happen.
1) anybody who gathers X amount of votes from a nationwide election gets a seat at the parliment. You can fiddle with the number X to taste. If you think one representitive per million people is Ok then settle on that. If you think that's too diffuse drop the number to 100,000.
2) All legislation must pass by a 2/3rd Majority of the parliment.
3) Who the fuck needs a president anyway. That's just a relic from the monarchy days.
Voila, problem solved.
Let's say you went with the 100,000 number (I think even that's too high but let's stick with that for now). That means there would be 3000 representitives. In order to get a law passed you'd need 2000 votes.
So if a corporation wanted a particular law passed they would have to bribe 2000 politicians!!. I am not saying that they could not but let's make it expensive for them for gods sake.
Each politician only has to answer to 100K people which means all voices have a chance of being heard. Only if there is massive concensus however do the laws get passed.
It would be an awsome system.
It'd be real easy. No one would notice too.
Lets say that Diebold promised the election to bush (they kind of did actually). they could take every 1000th vote for Kerry and switch it to bush instead. the voter vould never notice and Bush would win by a comfortable margin.
During the next term Bush would make sure that Diebold got a big fat contract in Iraq or North Korea or Iran or whoever we invaded next and voila alls fair in war and politics.
Sledge hammers are too big. Just get a really powerful magnet, it's easier to carry and may mess things up quite a bit.
Also small devices that deliver electricy may prove effective.
Finally you may be able to effect them with a EMF generator from the outside of the building.
Not all of them. I don't remember which one but there was one scenario that indicated that he would have lost.
Of course the fact that nader took three or four percent of the vote and the thousands of people accidentally voted for Buchanan also helped him out immensely.
I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of the people in florida did not want him in office.
BTW if you think state politicians don't look at polls you need to put your crack pipe down. The only difference between your state legilator and your senator is that your legilator is cheaper to buy.
Unless the machine is actually printing out a receipt for each and every vote that the voter can look at and confirm then the process is suspect.
Many things can go wrong. For example.
1) The machines could be programmed to favor one party or another. No matter who the voter selects the machine one out of a thousand times switches the vote. If only one out of a thousand voters notice the discrepency the party gains power and grants more govt contracts to diebold.
2) the machines could skew the results enough to beat the margin for a recount. If the politician A wins by more then 5% then no recount will be triggered and nobody is wiser for it.
As long as commercial companies are making these machines and as long as those companies are allowed to lobby and bribe politicians the process is suspect. The software should be open source period. The machines should be imaged at secure locations under tight surveillance and should be accounted for 100% of the time they are in use.
elections are too important to trust to corporations with political agendas. The profit motive is just too great not the mess with things.
If that happened MS would just not distribute the GPLed translation. They would have to write one themselves.
Why not? It's in their character to do something like that isn't it? I mean this is the same company that is delaying the US case with lindows while they sue them all over the world ex-parte and asking judges for thousand times customery punishment.
The whole company is soaked in evil.
My guess is that the optimization does not go that far. I don't know how it could really. If each invocation (per row) gives a different answer then you probably can't really optimize it anyway. Maybe if they included a keyword so you can let the compiler know it's a static number. For example select myfunc(param) STATIC, mycol from mytable. That way the compiler would know to run the function only once.
Only if you care.
Most people care about their company the same amount as their company cares about them which is to say not a hell of a lot.
If you are just another cog in the wheel then you may be best off not saying anything.
Why not swing?
Geez. Here I thought perl was hard to read.
Actually user defined functions are pretty common. PGSQL has them as does mysql.
They have publicly said that they intend to sue linus. I know they are liars and all but even a broken clock is right two times a day.
How do you know MS is not paying people to do this right now?
What's amazing to me is how little of this has hit the maintsream press. Wasn't Gale Norton held in contempt byt he court? Imagine if a clinton cabinet secy was held in contempt how the press would pounce on it.
Billions of dollars were literally stolen and the networks were ordered shut down at least three times and not a peep from the press.
So much for the "liberal press" theory.
Yea life must be real tought for a wingnut like you but be thankful you are not a muslim.
What you are saying is true about the US. Worldwide it's a different picture. As I said in my post the US corporations will be lagging behind the rest of the world in adoption of Linux.
"The amount of savings to migrate to non-windows apps would have to astronomical for any CEO/CIO to take Linux seriously as a desktop replacement on the level you suggest."
Some people will migrate most will start with linux in the first place. As small business grow they will take linux along with them.
" Its a brand, a religion, and a cult all rolled into one. We all know it just consists of a word processor, spreadsheet, etc but to users its all they do - and ALL THEY KNOW. "
That's true for the US. The rest of the world is not religious about it. As I said they will lead the charge. In the US the companies that switch will be able to out compete the companies that don't. Once a few companies switch the rest will fall like dominoes.
"My prediction: MS will be around for longer than we care to admit. "
Yes they will. They will continue to own somewhere around 40% of the desktops and a similar number in the server room.
"Linux will continue to make inroads into the server room and will eventually be knocked back a bit when MS finally make a server anyone can administer and setup."
Every iteration of windows becomes harder to set up and maintain. MS moved from a realtively simple WFW to an insanely complex active directory. Right now very few people in the world understand intellimirror, WMI, LDAP, KErberos, Dynamic DNS, and ADSI. MS will continue to along this path and the next version of windows will be even more complex and hard to maintain. Needless to say it will also not be able to interoperate with anything else in your enterprise either.
"Linux's eternal game of 'catch-up' isn't a revolution"
All innovation today takes place in the open source arena. MS is the follower, they don't innovate at all.
"Hell, even their products are much better than they were three years ago and they are learning from their security mistakes."
Please remove your head fromt he hole in the ground and take a look around. Nobody believes that FUD not even you.
"I'm sure this will be modded down the same way an atheist at a church gets shouted down."
If I had mod points I would have modded it down. You are wrong on many points and are simply shilling for MS.
Personally I find it disgusting when a human being shills for a evil corporation. How many sleazy acts does a corporation have to commit before you stop shilling for them anyway?
So you want to spend tons of money on the .01% chance that we will all die from an asteroid.
In the mean time you don't mind that you are condeming milllions of people to further poverty and misery. Throwing up your hands and saying "we'll never rid the world of poverty so lets spend our money on frivolous pursuits" seems silly to me.
I used to live in Chicago. I miss it. It's a great city.
It's not free. It's pretty cheap though. If it saves you three or four hours then it's worth it no?
If you want free then I'd go with debian. It's very consistent. With debian things are always installed into predictable areas. You should read the debian filesystem hierarchy first though so you know where they go. it's not like windows where files spew all over the place and the configuration get's buried deep withing the bowels of the registry.
You are 100% absolutely wrong. You could not be more wrong if were actually trying to be wrong.
The primary audience is the CEO. Linux desktops are ideal for the corporate environment. That's where they will rule first and foremost. Linux gives businesses more options and more freedom when it comes to the desktop. This means a business may choose to run thick or thin clients, they can centralize all software so upgrades are a snap, they can effectively lock down desktops and won't have to worry about their users clicking on emails or web sites that carry virus payloads. Of course they also get to save a buttload of money and dictate their own upgrade schedule too.
Once the corporate desktop belongs to linux then the home users will also adopt it so they can take their work home.
that's what happened to windows, that's what's going to happen to linux.
Look at what HP is doing, they are selling these PCs at small businesses not Joe Shmoe. IBM and SUN are also selling linux to the corporate desktop.
Here is my prediction. By the end of 2005 Linux will have reached critical mass on the corporate desktop. By that I mean around 20% of all corporate desktops in the world (not the US though) will be running a linux desktop. It will double in 2006 and then the growth will slow down because the US businesses will be very slow to migrate to it.