Or, you could pick up a Toshiba Libretto on eBay and pop in a 20GB drive for an MP3 jukebox you can telnet from.
Hmmmm... isn't the Libretto a relatively old subnotebook? I highly doubt you could put in a 20 gig hard drive. I tried to put a 12 gig drive into a friend's laptop (P133) and it only showed up as 8. I'm guessing the Libretto is saddled with the same limit.
Awww, but what the heck, while we're dreaming anyway, I want one with a 12Ghz processor, 64 gigs of ram, 6 pcmcia slots, and USB 8.0... and let's shrink it to the size of a dollar bill. =-)
I have no real experience doing anything like that, but it doesn't sound impossible. A couple of solutions I can think of:
Get someone who has physical access to the box and guide them through the install over the phone. This one is obvious.
If the computer has two hard drives, find a way to cram all the files necessary for the install (not too many, mostly just some basic utilities) onto one drive. Install OpenBSD onto a drive at a local machine, make an image of that, send it to the remote machine, and dd it onto the second harddrive. Then you can play with the boot options so it will boot OpenBSD by default. At that point, you can erase the old Linux partition and remount it under, say,/usr on the new system.
Hmmm... what high school did you go to? I also had a high school math teacher who told us he assaulted a kid and the administration didn't do anything. Would be interesting if it was the same one.
Actually, what I think might be a good idea is to build the binaries for Linux, then advertise and support it only under *BSD Intel. That way, they get the best of both worlds: people who want to run it under *BSD have no problem, there's only a few configurations possible and they are probably much easier to support than Linux; people who want to run it under Linux can, but if they run into trouble, well, sorry, it says on the box Linux binaries supported under FreeBSD only.
Ok, granted, it's sort of cheesy for them to do, but at least that way they avoid having to support a moving target.
It's impossible for every vote to be worth more relative to what it's worth now. Let's say I live in a "swing state". If I vote Democratic, and the Democrats win, my vote is worth more than just 1 vote, because it is basically like the entire state, including people who voted for other parties and even those who didn't vote, voted Democratic. So my vote is worth 1/D*C, where D is the number of Democratic votes and C is the number of citizens in my state. This number is obviously greater than 1, which is what my vote would have been worth under the direct system.
The only way my vote could possibly be worth more and not less is if I voted for some party other than the Democrats, in which case my vote value would jump from 0 to 1 if we switched from EC to direct voting.
Now, I'm not really trying to defend the Electoral College; I think it generally promotes sacrificing liberty in the name of fairness, which I am strongly opposed to. I'm simply trying to say why your belief that every vote would be worth more is patently wrong. In a system where variables are relative to each other, you can't increase the value of every variable.
It's not my "precious electoral college". I never said I liked it. My entire post was simply showing how the previous poster was wrong in saying that every vote was worth more. I'm not defending anything. Please read posts and at least try to understand them objectively before you respond to them.
I don't think any state would be more negelected by getting rid of the EC, because every single vote would count more, not less.
Well, this is obviously wrong. It's not possible for every vote to count more. Actually, what would happen is that some votes would count much less, fewer would count more, and some would count the same, just as expected.
Let's set up a hypothetical. In my state, with X electoral votes, you can vote for a Democrat, a Republican, or third party. My state is largely Democratic, so it is practically guaranteed that the Democrat will take the state. If I vote Democratic, my vote is worth something, in that it is part of the X electoral votes that are cast in favor of the Democratic canditate (usually, there generally isn't (and shouldn't be) anything binding the electors to vote as the popular vote goes). If it were a direct election, my vote would be worth much less, because it is now only 1 voice out of however many voted, rather than part of a collective that speaks for me, but also for everyone else in my state who either voted differently than I did or didn't vote at all.
Now, if I vote GOP, under the EC system, my vote is worth nothing, but under a direct election system, I reclaim that voice stolen from me by the Democrats, and my vote is worth much more. But the people who didn't vote aren't spoken for anymore, so while my vote is worth more, the difference between the value of my vote and 0 is less than the difference between a Democratic vote under the EC system and a Democratic vote under the direct system.
Of course, if I vote third party, my vote is pretty much worth bubkis under either system, except that it makes a statement (hey, I still voted third party, and I didn't vote for that clown Nader either).
But anyway, given that, I think there is much more of an incentive to campaign in the smaller "swing states" under the current system, since, as I showed above, the votes there are potentially worth so much more. Otherwise, the candidates would just try to target the largest possible audience in the biggest possible area, which would basically mean that they would do all their campaigning in the biggest areas instead of wasting their time on the little guys who aren't worth as much.
Ironically enough, the need to make everyone's vote count is the very reason for the electoral college.
Imagine, if you will, that there is no electoral college, and everyone votes directly. States like California, Florida, and New York would basically carry the election, meaning that all campaigning would be done in those states and national elections would basically decided based on the demographics of those states. It simply wouldn't be worth any candidate's while to concentrate anywhere else. By using a system wherein states like Rhode Island and Vermont, etc. get a disproportional amount of weight in the election, it actually makes the system more balanced.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing--I've never been a big believer in "fairness" as a principle--it does make sense, and I think people should consider this before blindly insisting that we "NEED" to get rid of the electoral college.
Now, if we really wanted to make the system work better, I say we switch to approval voting, where you can vote "yes" or "no" for any number of candidates, the "no" votes for a given candidate are subtracted from the "yes" votes, and the winner is the one with the highest score. This would have several advantages over the current system: people could vote for a third party candidate without worrying about throwing their vote away, people could vote against a candidate without having to vote for any of his opponents, and so on.
God, here we go with the NonAmeroCentrism again! Look, you silly NonAmericans, NonAmerica isn't the only place in the world! Perhaps you NonAmericans have heard of a little country called United States of America? Well, without it, you wouldn't even be NonAmericans... I guess you'd just be French or German or British or what have you... but never mind that.
When will all you people learn that there ARE places outside NonAmerica?! I'm getting tired of all these arrogant NonYanks posting comments as if they're the only ones in the world that matter.
Satellite bandwidth is hardly "priceless". In fact, it has a very definite price, depending on what plan you choose for your satellite TV. The obvious advantage for satellite in this case is that you can easily get nationwide coverage without having to build and maintain a lot of towers like you do in a cell phone network. Indeed, according to the article, Sirius is only planning to build 150 or so repeaters, and XM only 1500.
I don't know what they're planning to do about local content, although it may be possible to add it (don't they already do that for some satellite TV packages?)
Maybe, maybe not. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that if you could find some characteristic that only shows up in Tongans, anything from a type of skin pigmentation to the fact that they all have 3 legs (joking, but you get the point) and isolate the genes for that, it might be possible to create a virus that attacks only people with that gene. Maybe a retrovirus that inserts code to interfere with the reproduction of certain genetic sequences? Or am I talking out of my ass here? Please enlighten me if anyone knows more than I do.
Socialized medicine does not equal socialism. A social safety net does not equal socialism.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion about what socialism is or isn't, and I'm entitled to mine. I say income tax is socialist, and I think the US is way too close to socialism for comfort. You sure as hell ain't gonna convince ME that socialized medicine doesn't equal socialism. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, to use a trite phrase. =-)
I would also like to take this opportunity to observe that, while I have never intentionally attempted to insult anyone in this thread, I have been the subject of several ad hominem attacks and insulting terms in this thread (e.g., being called a "prat"). I do not believe this is a particularly good debating style.
Whoa, there. Just because I live in the USA doesn't mean I agree with its politics all the time! I know the US is an inherently socialist system, and I think it's a terrible shame. I believe in all those things you said: privatizing the roads, schools, research, etc. I think that in the end, requiring people to adhere to arbitrary standards in the name of "fairness" will only hurt those it purports to help. And I challenge you to back up your statement about government regulated monopolies. Just because they "work" doesn't mean they can't work better in the hands of people who really care about improving them and turning them into a better product for less money than the competition. Mandatory lack of competition will always breed stagnation. A free market, even a market where "monopolies" are allowed, will always be more productive than one ruled by fiat.
Oh, and you don't get phone service there? I'd call that competition. Saying these cable/phone companies have a monopoly on broadband is like saying Apple has a monopoly on Macintoshes. Yeah, so? There are plenty of cheap and even free ISPs that work over phone lines. So you have to wait a bit longer for your downloads. Boohoo, it ain't gonna kill ya.
Discriminating against rural areas is as unacceptable as discriminating against, say, hispanic areas or native american areas.
I can't believe you would draw such a ridiculous parallel. Saying "I refuse to provide service to you because you live in a black neighborhood and I don't like blacks" is A LOT different from saying "I refuse to provide service to you because you live way the hell out in the middle of nowhere and it would be economically unfeasable for me to do so." Frankly, I'm a bit offended that you would even think that those two are similar.
Now that isn't a problem for corporations who only want to make profit, but it is a problem for governments who want to be re-elected.
I'll agree with you there, and the only explanation I can offer is that, in general, people are selfish and want to be coddled, and don't really care how they affect other people (yes, even large businesses are still run by people, not mechanical automatons or evil space aliens) in their quest to get what they want without spending money. It's basically government organized extortion. If we radically decreased the role of government it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Of course, nobody is willing to do that, they get too many perceived benefits (for example, your broadband service) by having socialists in office. Sort of like them cutting your hair for you as long as they're raping you from behind anyway.
The job of government is... to put all people on a better grounds to compete.
Firmly capitalist? I think not. No self respecting capitalist would make a statement like that. For that matter, no self respecting capitalist would be caught dead living in Canada (no offense, Canada's a nice place, and I'm sure you're a good person and all, but decidely not a capitalist).
The government's job, if any, should be to protect people from abusing each other. This includes physical molestation, fraud, theft, etc. This does not include making sure everyone gets a fair shake at toppling Intel or Microsoft or any other company. This also does not include making sure these huge companies will treat their customers fairly and with respect.
If people are willing to pay for something then they should either be able to get it at whatever price THEY AND THE COMPANIES, not some governmental entity, feel is fair, or not get it at all. Look, the only things people really need are food and shelter, and the way these things are it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get a "monopoly" on these things (unless, of course, you want to live on Ventnor Ave. or Boardwalk =-) ). Everything else is a comfort. No, you won't die if you can't afford what some "monopoly" corporation charges for their software product, and you will not perish if you can't buy gas for your car because they set the price too high, and you won't even expire if you can't spare enough to pay for electricity. And even if you can't afford these things, most people can, and that is indicative of a problem with you, not with the system.
That's what I'm saying! You can technically define "broadband" as "anything faster than an analog modem." Broadband can be crappy, intermittant, and slow, and for $50CDN/month mandatory, it most likely will be.
Before our American cousins to the south start on government intervention remember that it's because of the CRTC that no high-speed internet company in Canada is able to charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per month.
This is not a good thing. The price of access here in the US is set at what the market will allow. People are willing to pay for it, so they do. If people feel it is too expensive they take their business elsewhere. Perhaps the quality of service in Canada would be better if the company could make more profit from each subscription, hmm? What do you think American broadband companies do with all that extra money they make, put it in a mattress? Of course not, they use the money to improve their systems so they can attract more subscribers from their competition. I'm certain that if you cut the subscription price of my service provider in half the quality would be at least halved as well.
This is one of the tenets of socialism: preventing exploitation of the workers by big business. Consequently, and quite stupidly, the quality of life of the workers suffers (how long does it take to get an MRI in Canada?) because the services that "big business" provides to the workers are necessarily low in quality and highly regulated by the government. I live in the US, I can go get medical care tomorrow if I wanted it, I can pay whatever price I think is fair for Internet access, and I don't particularly feel exploited by any business, thank you very much.
This is called argumentum ad hominem and it means that your argument is too weak to stand on its own.
Sorry, but no, it really doesn't. Just because one makes an ad hominem attack doesn't mean his argument is too weak to stand on its own; it simply means he felt like attacking you personally. It really says nothing directly about his argument. You can perhaps infer from the attack that the argument is weak, but you cannot take this to "mean" so. Example:
You: The sky is purple during the day. I saw it myself.
Me: Well, virtually the entire scientific community has determined that, in fact, the sky is blue during the day. Furthermore, you're a grade A moron for advancing something so patently ridiculous. You must be the descendant of baboons.
See? My argument is just as valid, even if I did cast a wholly uncalled for aspersion on your ancestry--assuming, of course, your reply was not the happily coincidental product of the Monkeys-At-Typewriters-For-An-Infinite-Amount-Of-T ime project.
And to you I say please read my original post! I said the sound barrier wouldn't really be a problem until she hits substantial air... but anyway, 31 miles up isn't a vacuum, that's only the stratosphere and that is where the ozone layer is located.
That would make sense if she was going under the speed of sound. But I thought the whole point of the sound barrier is that you plow into the very sound waves you create, creating significantly more drag than if you were going slower than the speed of sound. This is why airplanes that go over Mach 1 have to be specially designed, and an airplane designed for subsonic speeds is likely to be destroyed if it approaches the speed of sound.
Wow, that's fast... I was under the impression that breaking the sound barrier was rather stressful for whatever does it, since the sound waves it creates can't get out of its way before it plows into them. I guess a lone parachuter may not be making much sound, especially until she hits the atmosphere, but once she does reach air it seems to me that the amount of drag on her body would amplify greatly due to the high speeds and the effect of the sound barrier. If the sound barrier can tear the wings off of airplanes, I wonder how she plans to prevent, say, her head from being torn from her neck?
Of course, I Am Not A Physicist, so please don't flame me if I sound stupid. =-)
Look, the whole point of having separate assignment and comparison operators is that you can distinguish between the two, not so you can look all 31337 by typing '==' instead of '=' regardless of the context. In this case, the story is about WIPO declaring typosquatting to be cybersquatting. Therefore, you use the assignment operator, '=', rather than the comparison operator, '=='.
And don't anybody hit me with that "Oh, but it makes sense either way" crap. With the comparison operator, you are declaring that the two were previously equal, when in fact the story shows they weren't (yes, I know it's sort of ambiguous, but English isn't as grammatically strict as C, so don't bitch.)
Slashdot Mirror
You, my friend, should NOT be driving tonight. =-P
The lyrics in question are as follows:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Or, you could pick up a Toshiba Libretto on eBay and pop in a 20GB drive for an MP3 jukebox you can telnet from.
Hmmmm... isn't the Libretto a relatively old subnotebook? I highly doubt you could put in a 20 gig hard drive. I tried to put a 12 gig drive into a friend's laptop (P133) and it only showed up as 8. I'm guessing the Libretto is saddled with the same limit.
Awww, but what the heck, while we're dreaming anyway, I want one with a 12Ghz processor, 64 gigs of ram, 6 pcmcia slots, and USB 8.0... and let's shrink it to the size of a dollar bill. =-)
I have no real experience doing anything like that, but it doesn't sound impossible. A couple of solutions I can think of:
/usr on the new system.
Get someone who has physical access to the box and guide them through the install over the phone. This one is obvious.
If the computer has two hard drives, find a way to cram all the files necessary for the install (not too many, mostly just some basic utilities) onto one drive. Install OpenBSD onto a drive at a local machine, make an image of that, send it to the remote machine, and dd it onto the second harddrive. Then you can play with the boot options so it will boot OpenBSD by default. At that point, you can erase the old Linux partition and remount it under, say,
Good luck!
Hmmm... what high school did you go to? I also had a high school math teacher who told us he assaulted a kid and the administration didn't do anything. Would be interesting if it was the same one.
Actually, what I think might be a good idea is to build the binaries for Linux, then advertise and support it only under *BSD Intel. That way, they get the best of both worlds: people who want to run it under *BSD have no problem, there's only a few configurations possible and they are probably much easier to support than Linux; people who want to run it under Linux can, but if they run into trouble, well, sorry, it says on the box Linux binaries supported under FreeBSD only.
Ok, granted, it's sort of cheesy for them to do, but at least that way they avoid having to support a moving target.
Let me break down my argument for you.
It's impossible for every vote to be worth more relative to what it's worth now. Let's say I live in a "swing state". If I vote Democratic, and the Democrats win, my vote is worth more than just 1 vote, because it is basically like the entire state, including people who voted for other parties and even those who didn't vote, voted Democratic. So my vote is worth 1/D*C, where D is the number of Democratic votes and C is the number of citizens in my state. This number is obviously greater than 1, which is what my vote would have been worth under the direct system.
The only way my vote could possibly be worth more and not less is if I voted for some party other than the Democrats, in which case my vote value would jump from 0 to 1 if we switched from EC to direct voting.
Now, I'm not really trying to defend the Electoral College; I think it generally promotes sacrificing liberty in the name of fairness, which I am strongly opposed to. I'm simply trying to say why your belief that every vote would be worth more is patently wrong. In a system where variables are relative to each other, you can't increase the value of every variable.
It's not my "precious electoral college". I never said I liked it. My entire post was simply showing how the previous poster was wrong in saying that every vote was worth more. I'm not defending anything. Please read posts and at least try to understand them objectively before you respond to them.
I don't think any state would be more negelected by getting rid of the EC, because every single vote would count more, not less.
Well, this is obviously wrong. It's not possible for every vote to count more. Actually, what would happen is that some votes would count much less, fewer would count more, and some would count the same, just as expected.
Let's set up a hypothetical. In my state, with X electoral votes, you can vote for a Democrat, a Republican, or third party. My state is largely Democratic, so it is practically guaranteed that the Democrat will take the state. If I vote Democratic, my vote is worth something, in that it is part of the X electoral votes that are cast in favor of the Democratic canditate (usually, there generally isn't (and shouldn't be) anything binding the electors to vote as the popular vote goes). If it were a direct election, my vote would be worth much less, because it is now only 1 voice out of however many voted, rather than part of a collective that speaks for me, but also for everyone else in my state who either voted differently than I did or didn't vote at all.
Now, if I vote GOP, under the EC system, my vote is worth nothing, but under a direct election system, I reclaim that voice stolen from me by the Democrats, and my vote is worth much more. But the people who didn't vote aren't spoken for anymore, so while my vote is worth more, the difference between the value of my vote and 0 is less than the difference between a Democratic vote under the EC system and a Democratic vote under the direct system.
Of course, if I vote third party, my vote is pretty much worth bubkis under either system, except that it makes a statement (hey, I still voted third party, and I didn't vote for that clown Nader either).
But anyway, given that, I think there is much more of an incentive to campaign in the smaller "swing states" under the current system, since, as I showed above, the votes there are potentially worth so much more. Otherwise, the candidates would just try to target the largest possible audience in the biggest possible area, which would basically mean that they would do all their campaigning in the biggest areas instead of wasting their time on the little guys who aren't worth as much.
Ironically enough, the need to make everyone's vote count is the very reason for the electoral college.
Imagine, if you will, that there is no electoral college, and everyone votes directly. States like California, Florida, and New York would basically carry the election, meaning that all campaigning would be done in those states and national elections would basically decided based on the demographics of those states. It simply wouldn't be worth any candidate's while to concentrate anywhere else. By using a system wherein states like Rhode Island and Vermont, etc. get a disproportional amount of weight in the election, it actually makes the system more balanced.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing--I've never been a big believer in "fairness" as a principle--it does make sense, and I think people should consider this before blindly insisting that we "NEED" to get rid of the electoral college.
Now, if we really wanted to make the system work better, I say we switch to approval voting, where you can vote "yes" or "no" for any number of candidates, the "no" votes for a given candidate are subtracted from the "yes" votes, and the winner is the one with the highest score. This would have several advantages over the current system: people could vote for a third party candidate without worrying about throwing their vote away, people could vote against a candidate without having to vote for any of his opponents, and so on.
but that belief stems completely from my emotions and has nothing to do with reality.
I'm sorry, but you could have phrased your point a little better. Saying something has nothing to do with reality is basically saying it's wrong.
Which of course, is true... BSD r0x =-)
God, here we go with the NonAmeroCentrism again! Look, you silly NonAmericans, NonAmerica isn't the only place in the world! Perhaps you NonAmericans have heard of a little country called United States of America? Well, without it, you wouldn't even be NonAmericans... I guess you'd just be French or German or British or what have you... but never mind that.
When will all you people learn that there ARE places outside NonAmerica?! I'm getting tired of all these arrogant NonYanks posting comments as if they're the only ones in the world that matter.
Satellite bandwidth is hardly "priceless". In fact, it has a very definite price, depending on what plan you choose for your satellite TV. The obvious advantage for satellite in this case is that you can easily get nationwide coverage without having to build and maintain a lot of towers like you do in a cell phone network. Indeed, according to the article, Sirius is only planning to build 150 or so repeaters, and XM only 1500.
I don't know what they're planning to do about local content, although it may be possible to add it (don't they already do that for some satellite TV packages?)
Maybe, maybe not. I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that if you could find some characteristic that only shows up in Tongans, anything from a type of skin pigmentation to the fact that they all have 3 legs (joking, but you get the point) and isolate the genes for that, it might be possible to create a virus that attacks only people with that gene. Maybe a retrovirus that inserts code to interfere with the reproduction of certain genetic sequences? Or am I talking out of my ass here? Please enlighten me if anyone knows more than I do.
Socialized medicine does not equal socialism. A social safety net does not equal socialism.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion about what socialism is or isn't, and I'm entitled to mine. I say income tax is socialist, and I think the US is way too close to socialism for comfort. You sure as hell ain't gonna convince ME that socialized medicine doesn't equal socialism. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, to use a trite phrase. =-)
I would also like to take this opportunity to observe that, while I have never intentionally attempted to insult anyone in this thread, I have been the subject of several ad hominem attacks and insulting terms in this thread (e.g., being called a "prat"). I do not believe this is a particularly good debating style.
Whoa, there. Just because I live in the USA doesn't mean I agree with its politics all the time! I know the US is an inherently socialist system, and I think it's a terrible shame. I believe in all those things you said: privatizing the roads, schools, research, etc. I think that in the end, requiring people to adhere to arbitrary standards in the name of "fairness" will only hurt those it purports to help. And I challenge you to back up your statement about government regulated monopolies. Just because they "work" doesn't mean they can't work better in the hands of people who really care about improving them and turning them into a better product for less money than the competition. Mandatory lack of competition will always breed stagnation. A free market, even a market where "monopolies" are allowed, will always be more productive than one ruled by fiat.
Oh, and you don't get phone service there? I'd call that competition. Saying these cable/phone companies have a monopoly on broadband is like saying Apple has a monopoly on Macintoshes. Yeah, so? There are plenty of cheap and even free ISPs that work over phone lines. So you have to wait a bit longer for your downloads. Boohoo, it ain't gonna kill ya.
Discriminating against rural areas is as unacceptable as discriminating against, say, hispanic areas or native american areas.
I can't believe you would draw such a ridiculous parallel. Saying "I refuse to provide service to you because you live in a black neighborhood and I don't like blacks" is A LOT different from saying "I refuse to provide service to you because you live way the hell out in the middle of nowhere and it would be economically unfeasable for me to do so." Frankly, I'm a bit offended that you would even think that those two are similar.
Now that isn't a problem for corporations who only want to make profit, but it is a problem for governments who want to be re-elected.
I'll agree with you there, and the only explanation I can offer is that, in general, people are selfish and want to be coddled, and don't really care how they affect other people (yes, even large businesses are still run by people, not mechanical automatons or evil space aliens) in their quest to get what they want without spending money. It's basically government organized extortion. If we radically decreased the role of government it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Of course, nobody is willing to do that, they get too many perceived benefits (for example, your broadband service) by having socialists in office. Sort of like them cutting your hair for you as long as they're raping you from behind anyway.
The job of government is... to put all people on a better grounds to compete.
Firmly capitalist? I think not. No self respecting capitalist would make a statement like that. For that matter, no self respecting capitalist would be caught dead living in Canada (no offense, Canada's a nice place, and I'm sure you're a good person and all, but decidely not a capitalist).
The government's job, if any, should be to protect people from abusing each other. This includes physical molestation, fraud, theft, etc. This does not include making sure everyone gets a fair shake at toppling Intel or Microsoft or any other company. This also does not include making sure these huge companies will treat their customers fairly and with respect.
If people are willing to pay for something then they should either be able to get it at whatever price THEY AND THE COMPANIES, not some governmental entity, feel is fair, or not get it at all. Look, the only things people really need are food and shelter, and the way these things are it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get a "monopoly" on these things (unless, of course, you want to live on Ventnor Ave. or Boardwalk =-) ). Everything else is a comfort. No, you won't die if you can't afford what some "monopoly" corporation charges for their software product, and you will not perish if you can't buy gas for your car because they set the price too high, and you won't even expire if you can't spare enough to pay for electricity. And even if you can't afford these things, most people can, and that is indicative of a problem with you, not with the system.
That's what I'm saying! You can technically define "broadband" as "anything faster than an analog modem." Broadband can be crappy, intermittant, and slow, and for $50CDN/month mandatory, it most likely will be.
Before our American cousins to the south start on government intervention remember that it's because of the CRTC that no high-speed internet company in Canada is able to charge residential customer more than CAD$50 per month.
This is not a good thing. The price of access here in the US is set at what the market will allow. People are willing to pay for it, so they do. If people feel it is too expensive they take their business elsewhere. Perhaps the quality of service in Canada would be better if the company could make more profit from each subscription, hmm? What do you think American broadband companies do with all that extra money they make, put it in a mattress? Of course not, they use the money to improve their systems so they can attract more subscribers from their competition. I'm certain that if you cut the subscription price of my service provider in half the quality would be at least halved as well.
This is one of the tenets of socialism: preventing exploitation of the workers by big business. Consequently, and quite stupidly, the quality of life of the workers suffers (how long does it take to get an MRI in Canada?) because the services that "big business" provides to the workers are necessarily low in quality and highly regulated by the government. I live in the US, I can go get medical care tomorrow if I wanted it, I can pay whatever price I think is fair for Internet access, and I don't particularly feel exploited by any business, thank you very much.
This is called argumentum ad hominem and it means that your argument is too weak to stand on its own.
T ime project.
Sorry, but no, it really doesn't. Just because one makes an ad hominem attack doesn't mean his argument is too weak to stand on its own; it simply means he felt like attacking you personally. It really says nothing directly about his argument. You can perhaps infer from the attack that the argument is weak, but you cannot take this to "mean" so. Example:
You: The sky is purple during the day. I saw it myself.
Me: Well, virtually the entire scientific community has determined that, in fact, the sky is blue during the day. Furthermore, you're a grade A moron for advancing something so patently ridiculous. You must be the descendant of baboons.
See? My argument is just as valid, even if I did cast a wholly uncalled for aspersion on your ancestry--assuming, of course, your reply was not the happily coincidental product of the Monkeys-At-Typewriters-For-An-Infinite-Amount-Of-
And to you I say please read my original post! I said the sound barrier wouldn't really be a problem until she hits substantial air... but anyway, 31 miles up isn't a vacuum, that's only the stratosphere and that is where the ozone layer is located.
There's no need to get nasty.
I did. It doesn't say anything about the sound barrier. Which of course raises the question...
...Did you read it?
That would make sense if she was going under the speed of sound. But I thought the whole point of the sound barrier is that you plow into the very sound waves you create, creating significantly more drag than if you were going slower than the speed of sound. This is why airplanes that go over Mach 1 have to be specially designed, and an airplane designed for subsonic speeds is likely to be destroyed if it approaches the speed of sound.
Wow, that's fast... I was under the impression that breaking the sound barrier was rather stressful for whatever does it, since the sound waves it creates can't get out of its way before it plows into them. I guess a lone parachuter may not be making much sound, especially until she hits the atmosphere, but once she does reach air it seems to me that the amount of drag on her body would amplify greatly due to the high speeds and the effect of the sound barrier. If the sound barrier can tear the wings off of airplanes, I wonder how she plans to prevent, say, her head from being torn from her neck?
Of course, I Am Not A Physicist, so please don't flame me if I sound stupid. =-)
Look, the whole point of having separate assignment and comparison operators is that you can distinguish between the two, not so you can look all 31337 by typing '==' instead of '=' regardless of the context. In this case, the story is about WIPO declaring typosquatting to be cybersquatting. Therefore, you use the assignment operator, '=', rather than the comparison operator, '=='.
And don't anybody hit me with that "Oh, but it makes sense either way" crap. With the comparison operator, you are declaring that the two were previously equal, when in fact the story shows they weren't (yes, I know it's sort of ambiguous, but English isn't as grammatically strict as C, so don't bitch.)