"I live in a country where 36.6 million people are registered as voters."
I live in a country that is comprised of fifty-one separate, sovreign governments, each with its own constitutional system of law, each with its own method of nominating its proportional share of electors to select the chief executive.
"Just wondering, if by some highly improbable miracle the provisional ballots give Ohio to Kerry does the concession really mean anything?"
It doesn't mean anything officially. And there's the possibility of faithless electors, or of one or more electors (or candidates) not surviving to give their votes to the House. But barring some improbable thing like this, it's over.
Don't get your hopes up for a Bush defeat.
I predicted this, time and time again. Can't say I looked forward to it, but at least, for once in his life, G.W. Bush will be compelled to sit in the consequences of his actions. He can't get out of it. If someone else had taken over the White House now, he, not Bush, would have presided over an inevitable declining economy, escalating wars, and probable civil unrest.
In the long run it's better that Bush stays in office.
This is the country that has tested the theory that it has the power to invade and occupy a sovreign nation and replace its government, without facing any shred of opposition from any force on earth.
This country's leader has the authority to issue a hit request on any individual it chooses.
Wake me up when some country revokes the visas of any Americans, forcibly ejects them from within its borders, and ceases trade with either the US government or any American business, or anything along those lines.
I know of no place in any state where voting is compulsory. I would certainly make it compulsory in my perfect world. But then, I would also make the slightest government corruption into a capital offense. And offices like the President or Senate seats wouldn't be something you sought, but rather, something you were conscripted to do, like a military draft.
"The popular vote determines the authority the President can wield."
As the last president has demonstrated, the authority is just about absolute: He can call for, and expect to receive, the head of anyone he chooses to name. He can order the armed forces to invade a sovreign nation, without provocation, and occupy and replace its government, all without ever encountering ONE IOTA of meaningful opposition from any military force on Earth.
President Bush has shown us that the President's office is quite powerful indeed. And he is about to hand all that authority to his political opponent. (It's that little problem that has historically stopped presidents from grabbing total authoritarian power in the past. You have to hand it over to someone whose political alignment is generally counter to your own, and soon!)
I wasn't aware that the EU had stood the test of time. Okay, so I stand corrected. Europe is better than the US. Can you help me find a job in the Netherlands or Switzerland that pays well enough to live there?
Name the European country that consists of fifty-one separate soverign governments operating under separate and diverse legal systems, that collectively elects a national government.
"I see no reason why an election for the Presidency cannot be Federalized, and run with ONE set of universally applied rules."
The overriding reason is the fact that there is not a single "Federal Election" as you would have it, because there are fifty-one sovreign governments involved, and they generally do not wish to surrender their sovreignty.
>Well, I say screw em.
You aren't going to persuade people to amend their Constitutions with that approach.
Why don't you go try something easier, like federalizing the EU, then come work on the states?
So long as you stay out of any situation where someone could literally have you prosecuted for issuing a credible death threat, then you're right. But there is a line that you don't want to cross.
If you're getting serious, and you threaten someone, then later you get into a situation where you need to use force in self defense against that person, you have already given up your justification of self defense by provoking violence.
Of course, 12-year-olds don't get into situations where they are over the line very often. Don't make any death threats that can be construed by anyone as credible. Don't expect to be justified in a self defense situation if you have provoked violence against you.
My benchmark for immersion, replay value, and entertainment value remains nethack.
Now, there's no shortage of people who would rather pull their fingernails off with pliers than play nethack, but no computer game has ever done more for me, held my attention as well, or given me the same level of satisfaction (or humiliation) as nethack.
"The cases have holes so you can stick your hands in them and feel them, but you can't actually take it out until you track down one of the grumpy losers who works in the store to open the case."
Do you realize how many people don't know what you're talking about? This was *everywhere*, and it's been long enough that I'd forgotten about it myself.
"You can use a software such as Max/MSP to convert and route OSC data to your MIDI application."
It's a little bit like saying, "you can have feature XXX, just download gcc and make it happen."
Chances are, if and when this thing ever gets to the market, there will be a software driver to make it do things like route/filter midi controller messages.
I guess it makes no sense to argue what a piece of hardware can and cannot do, if you can't even get your hands on the hardware!
"How does this affect the LEMUR's ability to interface with application such as Cakewalk's SONAR?"
It practically eliminates that compatability. While OSC is an open protocol, and even though there are quite a few products listed (including a bunch of open source items), it is pretty much a Reaktor thing. Don't get me wrong, Reaktor is very, very cool. But if you wanted to use it with ProTools or Cubase or Logic or FLSTudio or Magix or Cakewalk, you would probably have to setup some sort of OSC proxy that sits on the OSC bus and outputs MIDI.
I cannot fault them for taking this approach -- there are some limitations with MIDI, with some ugly workarounds and some pretty bad scalability issues. Imagine if you were epxected to run Kermit over Ethernet instead of TCP/IP, I think that's a fairly good analogy.
I suppose you could extend something like MIDI-OX to implement OSC, and cause it to route the messages you were interested in onto the midi bus. I have no doubt at all you could make Reaktor do exactly that, sit on the OSC bus and pass some of the messages through, filtered for your various midi devices.
If the Lemur becomes popular, the support will follow. Wake me up when I can buy on on Zzounds. Meanwhile I'll continue building my ucapps.de midibox, using my Peavey PC-1600's and my FCB-1010. Right now my rig has seven instruments and 4 controllers, and while MIDI is frustrating, I have not reached its limitations.
Any hack that requires a specific version of a game is only valid for people who already have the game. I'd like to run linux on my xbox using mechassault for instance, but to find the right version of mechassault is difficult enough to stop me. I'm sure the story with 007 is similar.
"That said, I would've thought testing would catch something as straightforward as this."
Apparently, it was tested, but the test was not directional. So this is a lesson to be learned about unit testing. Even if you are doing it, it's not a magic bullet.
"As others have said, every mission is different and has different requirements."
With all due respect, the OP has a valid point, and many of the problems start there, in the requirements phase of the project. The management people who do the requirements probably aren't thinking in terms of reuse or standardization as much as they could, and if the problem starts there, it goes all the way through the project development.
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"I live in a country where 36.6 million people are registered as voters."
I live in a country that is comprised of fifty-one separate, sovreign governments, each with its own constitutional system of law, each with its own method of nominating its proportional share of electors to select the chief executive.
"Just wondering, if by some highly improbable miracle the provisional ballots give Ohio to Kerry does the concession really mean anything?"
It doesn't mean anything officially. And there's the possibility of faithless electors, or of one or more electors (or candidates) not surviving to give their votes to the House. But barring some improbable thing like this, it's over.
Don't get your hopes up for a Bush defeat.
I predicted this, time and time again. Can't say I looked forward to it, but at least, for once in his life, G.W. Bush will be compelled to sit in the consequences of his actions. He can't get out of it. If someone else had taken over the White House now, he, not Bush, would have presided over an inevitable declining economy, escalating wars, and probable civil unrest.
In the long run it's better that Bush stays in office.
The law is the least of your worries.
This is the country that has tested the theory that it has the power to invade and occupy a sovreign nation and replace its government, without facing any shred of opposition from any force on earth.
This country's leader has the authority to issue a hit request on any individual it chooses.
Wake me up when some country revokes the visas of any Americans, forcibly ejects them from within its borders, and ceases trade with either the US government or any American business, or anything along those lines.
"It's SNOWING in Amarillo and Lubbock, and Roswell, NM!"
Well, it *is* November.
If it snows in Houston or El Paso, wake me up.
> Voting is not a right. It is an OBLIGATION.
I know of no place in any state where voting is compulsory. I would certainly make it compulsory in my perfect world. But then, I would also make the
slightest government corruption into a capital offense. And offices like the President or Senate seats wouldn't be something you sought, but rather,
something you were conscripted to do, like a military draft.
"I guess we have to deal with that sort of thing until the government recognizes the Libertarian party. I'm not holding my breath."
You want "the government" to recognize the party? Elect some members of that party to office. Don't just look at presidential and maybe senate races.
How to do that? Get some candidates that have a broad appeal to a large base of support.
"The popular vote determines the authority the President can wield."
As the last president has demonstrated, the authority is just about absolute: He can call for, and expect to receive, the head of anyone he chooses to name. He can order the armed forces to invade a sovreign nation, without provocation, and occupy and replace its government, all without ever encountering ONE IOTA of meaningful opposition from any military force on Earth.
President Bush has shown us that the President's office is quite powerful indeed. And he is about to hand all that authority to his political opponent. (It's that little problem that has historically stopped presidents from grabbing total authoritarian power in the past. You have to hand it over to someone whose political alignment is generally counter to your own, and soon!)
I wasn't aware that the EU had stood the test of time. Okay, so I stand corrected. Europe is better than the US. Can you help me find a job in the Netherlands or Switzerland that pays well enough to live there?
The device is intentionally crippled. Don't blame the user for a feature that has been intentionally broken on a piece of equipment.
I'd like to get audio files off my Iriver, and off my Sony MD also.
>even european countries are able to do.
Name the European country that consists of fifty-one separate soverign governments operating under separate and diverse legal systems, that collectively elects a national government.
For a minute there, I thought the article was
going to be about Hormel changing the name of SPAM.
That would be sad.
"I see no reason why an election for the Presidency cannot be Federalized, and run with ONE set of universally applied rules."
The overriding reason is the fact that there is not a single "Federal Election" as you would have it, because there are fifty-one sovreign governments involved, and they generally do not wish to surrender their sovreignty.
>Well, I say screw em.
You aren't going to persuade people to amend their Constitutions with that approach.
Why don't you go try something easier, like federalizing the EU, then come work on the states?
Do you want some kind of point spread?
Some Vegas sports books are taking bets on the election.
tradesports.com does it like a stock exchange.
So you can buy "shares" in the popular vote, or for a given state, the Senate races are up there, etc.
There's a lot more people buying "Bush to Win" than anything else, I'm afraid.
Good luck.
"the right choice in this election seems obvious to the rest of the world. "
Not one single nation which supports a military, saw
fit to raise any opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
Not one.
The US Government regarded this as an overwhelming expression of support for its status quo.
Might makes right. The US tested the theory, and nobody disagreed.
>No?
So long as you stay out of any situation where someone could literally have you prosecuted for issuing a credible death threat, then you're right.
But there is a line that you don't want to cross.
If you're getting serious, and you threaten someone,
then later you get into a situation where you need to use force in self defense against that person, you have already given up your justification of self defense by provoking violence.
Of course, 12-year-olds don't get into situations where they are over the line very often. Don't make any death threats that can be construed by anyone as credible. Don't expect to be justified in a self defense situation if you have provoked violence against you.
> just so you can say a geeky "told you so!"?
With the "told you so" comes a strong mandate for change.
>I sent another round of faxes and emails
Politicians respond better to snail mail.
Why do you assume that faxes and emails will
actually reach them?
My benchmark for immersion, replay value, and entertainment value remains nethack.
Now, there's no shortage of people who would rather pull their fingernails off with pliers than play nethack, but no computer game has ever done more for me, held my attention as well, or given me the same level of satisfaction (or humiliation) as nethack.
"The cases have holes so you can stick your hands in them and feel them, but you can't actually take it out until you track down one of the grumpy losers who works in the store to open the case."
Do you realize how many people don't know what you're talking about? This was *everywhere*, and
it's been long enough that I'd forgotten about it myself.
"You can use a software such as Max/MSP to convert and route OSC data to your MIDI application."
It's a little bit like saying, "you can have feature XXX, just download gcc and make it happen."
Chances are, if and when this thing ever gets to the market, there will be a software driver to make it do things like route/filter midi controller messages.
I guess it makes no sense to argue what a piece of hardware can and cannot do, if you can't even get your hands on the hardware!
"How does this affect the LEMUR's ability to interface with application such as Cakewalk's SONAR?"
It practically eliminates that compatability. While OSC is an open protocol, and even though there are quite a few products listed (including a bunch of open source items), it is pretty much a Reaktor thing. Don't get me wrong, Reaktor is very, very cool. But if you wanted to use it with ProTools or Cubase or Logic or FLSTudio or Magix or Cakewalk, you would probably have to setup some sort of OSC proxy that sits on the OSC bus and outputs MIDI.
I cannot fault them for taking this approach -- there are some limitations with MIDI, with some ugly workarounds and some pretty bad scalability issues. Imagine if you were epxected to run Kermit over Ethernet instead of TCP/IP, I think that's a fairly good analogy.
I suppose you could extend something like MIDI-OX to implement OSC, and cause it to route the messages you were interested in onto the midi bus.
I have no doubt at all you could make Reaktor do exactly that, sit on the OSC bus and pass some of the messages through, filtered for your various midi devices.
If the Lemur becomes popular, the support will follow. Wake me up when I can buy on on Zzounds. Meanwhile I'll continue building my ucapps.de midibox, using my Peavey PC-1600's and my FCB-1010. Right now my rig has seven instruments and 4 controllers, and while MIDI is frustrating, I have not reached its limitations.
Any hack that requires a specific version of a game is only valid for people who already have the game. I'd like to run linux on my xbox using mechassault for instance, but to find the right version of mechassault is difficult enough to stop me. I'm sure the story with 007 is similar.
"That said, I would've thought testing would catch something as straightforward as this."
Apparently, it was tested, but the test was not directional. So this is a lesson to be learned about unit testing. Even if you are doing it, it's not a magic bullet.
"As others have said, every mission is different and has different requirements."
With all due respect, the OP has a valid point, and many of the problems start there, in the requirements phase of the project. The management people who do the requirements probably aren't thinking in terms of reuse or standardization as much as they could, and if the problem starts there,
it goes all the way through the project development.