I understand that Bush was reluctant to sign that law, but doesn't he have at least veto power?
Here in Uruguay, if a law is vetoed, the General Assembly (that would be the Congress-equivalent) has to enact it by a 3/5ths majority. The governing party usually has close to half the seats anyway (and, unlike the US, legislative elections are held the same day as presidential ones), so a law the president dislikes is unlikely to be passed.
According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto the US has Veto too... doesn't Bush command at least 1/3rd of the Congress?
I never expected Bush's inmigration policy to be labeled enlightened, but after some reading, I have to concur that it is indeed much better than the alternatives proposed by Congress.
1) split national government and local government elections into 2 separate dates
2) for each choice, we introduce one ballot for each election. For example, in the National elections, where we have to choose our president and the senate and house (all at the same time, not too bright but...) when voting I have to put in an envelope one pre-printed ballot specifying which is the presidential candidate for which I voted (with a big picture, a list number and colors, so there's no mistaking), and one for the senators & congressmen - "diputados" here (sadly you can't choose a senator from one party and a congressman from the other. The good is that there are lots of lists to choose for, and usually more than 2 "big" political parties).
There must be some middle ground between making voting too hard and preventing choices (what happens here).
The Recount Tally. The final tally of December 2000 did not actually recount all of the state's ballots. There were the now-famous disputes over chads, hanging chads, and dimples, with different judgments among counties and counters. If these disputes had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the NORC study show, the electoral result would have been reversed, but by the thinnest of margins. If there had been a constant statewide recount, Gore would have won, but by merely one hundred votes, approximately. For example, if ballots were counted only if holes went completely through punch cards, Gore would win by 115. If even "dimples" were permitted, Gore would have won by 107.
Well, for those of us using Windows stuff (hopefully for nothing important:) ), Microsoft has a tool called tzedit which you can use to specify a custom timezone/edit a timezone, so you can specify daylight savings time.
Then you have to export the registry keys and deploy them to all relevant computers (I used group policies).
Here's the relevant example for my country (which is entirely inconsistent in its use of DST), just replace Uruguay with whatever country you're in:
I had a look at the Shiar page, and was really unimpressed by the suggested layout for Spanish (though at least they kept the "ñ" at the home row).
I will try Dvorak as my standard English layout sometime:)
Btw, on key mileage: the keyboard I'm using right now has a nice way to see the mileage - some keys are fading. The keys that are fading are: A, E, I, S, D, C, N, M, L, the comma and dot. Currently, of those, the keys I find worse located are the 'I' and 'E' (as Dvorak said, the vowels). Well, this is interesting food for thought, I'll file it to hopefully look at it later (I'm finishing university so I shouldn't be spending time on Slashdot:P )
Almost all people wouldn't even consider remapping for a Dvorak keyboard or any other arrangement despite numerous benefits, so good luck prying the mouse from their hands
I had forgotten about the Dvorak keyboard layout. Some questions: did you see an increase in typing speed after remapping? I'm at 60 wpm with the standard layout, so I'm not certain that remapping will bring a benefit in that area.
The second and most important is, my native language is Spanish, not English, and does the Dvorak layout take that into consideration? Can I type the letter "ñ" easily? Also, there was an aside on the page you linked to deriding the ";" being in the "home" row (it's not in the Spanish layout), but isn't it used a lot in programming languages exactly because of its location?
So, Windows software doesn't have dependencies to contend with? And they don't have to assume the user doesn't have liboscure and include it? (see every damn Java &.NET program including the runtimes).
This is a cop-out. This is one of the things that frustrated me most with Linux (the other being I want a GUI and decent explanations of options or a Wizard for the configuration files)
And yes, I've heard of DLL hell. And I used SUSE Linux for a year (and found it nice and sometimes better than Windows, but got all kinds of headaches).
I asked for votes in exchange for fixing problems:P (before seeing that it's US and Canada only ) and everybody said "it looks just like you!!!"... (after pause)... "well, a few kilos heavier"
Heh. In my country (Uruguay), we use the European system, and rates for calls from a landline to cell phones start at U$ 0.25/minute, up to almost U$ 0.5/minute , depending on the cell phone company you're calling to, and cell phone to cell phone are similar, but cheaper on weekends & night (depends on contract).
I usually end up paying close to 20 dollars for 50 minutes of cell phone calls.
I hope so. I'm from Uruguay, and elections here are MUCH better safeguarded than the ones in the US - for one, there is a paper trail.
For the 2000 elections I was a representative for a small party and was an observer at the vote counting (there was an observer at each polling station for every party in most urban areas, plus independant observers). It was of course voluntary work (non-paid).
Let me know if such measures are implemented in the US - last I heard, they aren't. I was proud to be a watchman of our democratic process, and this is South freaking America.
Unfortunately, countries such as Venezuela or Cuba (or the US) don't inspire in me the same confidence.
It's bizarre, but after going through dictatorships, a few countries in South America actually feel better than the US nowadays (Chile, Uruguay) - probably not in actual legislation, but definitely yes day-to-day.
I don't know which countries are actually better, and I've heard of scary things in Europe too... I guess New Zealand looks like a nice place to retire to.
Let's see, it ranks 12th in the recent Reporters without Borders index (1st non-european) and 9th in the index of Economic Freedom (I don't know how accurate that one is).
BTW, Uruguay ranks 46th and Chile ranks 50th (about the same as the US), Chile ranks close to the US in the Economic Index at 14th place (tied for 9th for the US) while Uruguay is again at 46th (mostly because of having socialists in power, a brutally heavy fiscal burden and weak state of banking).
Interesting. I'm actually interested in travelling to Canada for Christmas to visit my brother, and even though I managed to get a flight that doesn't go through the US, people that visited Canada recently told me I was going to be treated badly (student visiting his brother in Canada? Surely trying to inmigrate illegally!! No matter I have a job and studies here - here being Uruguay btw).
Are family visits strictly a no-no in this post 9/11 world? (I used to travel a lot more often before 9/11, and have never been to US or Canada). Should I expect to be treated harshly at the border? Any certain no-nos you can tell me?
"In Papillon the convicts hid their money up their anuses in what they called 'chargers'. These were metal tubes with screw-on lids in which the money was rolled and inserted."
They're probably auctioned off, but also probably crippled - I went to an US Embassy auction of office PCs... even though they were of the lowest level of security, they had taken out the HD and RAM memory, but looked ok on the outside.
Some people with no computer knowledge thought they were getting the full deal and overbid horribly... I tried telling one that they weren't "complete pc's" but he thought I was trying to get them cheap, I guess.
I bought a Gameboy back when they were new and shiny (1990 I think) on a trip to Europe.
As flying regulations prohibited electronic interference (now they allow laptops and such, but it wasn't always so), I packed it in my luggage. Of course, it never arrived.
It must have been stolen at the Brazilian stop, I guess (on my way to my country, Uruguay), but I wouldn't put it past US airport security to steal something...
Argentina & Uruguay (my country - South America) also pay VAT and/or other taxes on food (23% for most stuff, 14% on other). We do follow Spain's lead (unfortunately)
On the other hand, we have some legislation stating that if a company is already importing something (the PSP in this case), you can do paralell imports (or something to the effect) under the "Exhaustion of rights"
As usual, Wikipedia has a neat article on the subject:
It's part of a debate which is still happening, the EU is against it, but I would be for it (without having looked too much into it, I'm mostly favorable to fre trade and globalization means most of these barriers are artificial anyways).
Another nice link from New Zealand (a country that's often quoted as exemplary):
The rationale of the previous government for removing the prohibition on parallel importing was to ensure that New Zealand consumers could access imported goods at world-best prices by promoting a more open and competitive environment. The suggestion that some copyright products were more expensive in New Zealand than in other countries was based on analysis contained in Parallel Importing: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation. The general conclusion of the report was that lifting the blanket parallel-importing ban on all copyright goods was likely to provide net gains to the New Zealand economy as a whole. There was, however, some suggestion that the availability of parallel imported copies of major new release film titles for rental in advance of New Zealand theatrical release was contributing to declining cinema box office takings. [Legislation addressing this] subsequently passed as the Copyright (Parallel Importation of Films and Onus of Proof) Amendment Act 2003.
A little off-topic, but which is the laptop backup solution you people use (Windows if possible)???
I've tried Brightstor ArcServe for Laptops and Desktops, and it's awful.
I've heard there's a solution from Symantec but I never tested it.
An ideal solution would have the possibility to backup from the field (VPN? Encrypted traffic?). The Brightstor solution actually promised that it would send the data in packets so as not to interfere with normal usage but didn't work that way in practise.
My boss even asked for a solution that allows the possibility to restore from the field, but that seems very far-fetched.
First, I'll say that it is annoying for me that you group people under the "hispanics" umbrella, but I can understand - after all, it's not my country (Uruguay btw, and yes it is in South America) that's being populated by uneducated mexicans, although we did have that problem with uneducated Spaniards and Italians last century.
I've seen the same problem with the Turkish in Austria and Germany, the Moroccans and Ecuatorians in Spain, etc, so it's not unique to the US, and it brings out the understandable fear of being displaced out of your jobs, culture, etc.
You obviously hate "religious fundies" because that is a deragotory term the way you used it, you "hate" folks because of their religion!
Do I? I don't use that term (I do use religious fundamentalists), I don't agree with them, but I don't "hate" those people and never suggested anything like the extremes you describe below when describing the hispanics.
How about those "everything hispanic is just so damn cool" sites, the bronze warrior aztlan overlord la raza reconquista sites?(despite them all wanting to move here and theior own nations are cesspools)
I'm sure those exist, but you do realize it probably represents a minority or radical view, do you?
And before declaring that "all their nations are cesspools" you'd want to do some research. I believe my country is the best place to live as long as you earn a decent wage:) , I wouldn't live in Mexico if I could avoid it, but not all of Mexico is equally bad, there are some beautiful places, cities/neighbourhoods with a good standard of living, education (I think the University of Monterrey was good in IT).
Just look a little further down south and you'll see Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, even Brazil is doing pretty well (the slums or "favelas" are still there but it's getting better, there are some areas with a great standard of living).
The US attorney general is a member of a hispanic separatist organization!
and only some vague references in some blogs after Google searching.
You have to be 100% pro gay or be classed as a hater. You have to be 100% zionist and pro everything israel does or you are a "hater"
It is very tough to argue with Jews (sorry if that's not PC), but they're not as closed as you think (I'd say most I've met are more open about the Arab issue than you are about the Hispanic issue). And I do know quite a few of them, they are very sensitive about those issues but then again, they have reason to be so (though they do go a bit too far and can be quite thickheaded sometimes).
I don't know why the former poster was modded insightful, but I guess his voice represents the opinion of a portion of the readers, so he had to be heard.
"most us haven't the foggiest idea how many people inhabit the United States. According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll of 1,002 people in June, 29 percent thought the population was less than 200 million, 19 percent thought it was a billion or more, and 27 percent wouldn't even hazard a guess."
"The H-1B category has been criticized for displacing substantial numbers of experienced American citizen technical professionals or lowering wages enough to encourage them to abandon volatile careers in targeted fields such as computer technology"
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that Bush was reluctant to sign that law, but doesn't he have at least veto power?
. html
Here in Uruguay, if a law is vetoed, the General Assembly (that would be the Congress-equivalent) has to enact it by a 3/5ths majority. The governing party usually has close to half the seats anyway (and, unlike the US, legislative elections are held the same day as presidential ones), so a law the president dislikes is unlikely to be passed.
http://www.senat.fr/senatsdumonde/english/uruguay
According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto the US has Veto too... doesn't Bush command at least 1/3rd of the Congress?
I never expected Bush's inmigration policy to be labeled enlightened, but after some reading, I have to concur that it is indeed much better than the alternatives proposed by Congress.
Our solution (in Uruguay) was to:
1) split national government and local government elections into 2 separate dates
2) for each choice, we introduce one ballot for each election. For example, in the National elections, where we have to choose our president and the senate and house (all at the same time, not too bright but...) when voting I have to put in an envelope one pre-printed ballot specifying which is the presidential candidate for which I voted (with a big picture, a list number and colors, so there's no mistaking), and one for the senators & congressmen - "diputados" here (sadly you can't choose a senator from one party and a congressman from the other. The good is that there are lots of lists to choose for, and usually more than 2 "big" political parties).
There must be some middle ground between making voting too hard and preventing choices (what happens here).
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~gpomper/FloridaRecoun
Well, for those of us using Windows stuff (hopefully for nothing important :) ), Microsoft has a tool called tzedit which you can use to specify a custom timezone/edit a timezone, so you can specify daylight savings time.
Then you have to export the registry keys and deploy them to all relevant computers (I used group policies).
Here's the relevant example for my country (which is entirely inconsistent in its use of DST), just replace Uruguay with whatever country you're in:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886775
Thanks for your response.
:)
:P )
I had a look at the Shiar page, and was really unimpressed by the suggested layout for Spanish (though at least they kept the "ñ" at the home row).
I will try Dvorak as my standard English layout sometime
Btw, on key mileage: the keyboard I'm using right now has a nice way to see the mileage - some keys are fading. The keys that are fading are: A, E, I, S, D, C, N, M, L, the comma and dot. Currently, of those, the keys I find worse located are the 'I' and 'E' (as Dvorak said, the vowels). Well, this is interesting food for thought, I'll file it to hopefully look at it later (I'm finishing university so I shouldn't be spending time on Slashdot
I had forgotten about the Dvorak keyboard layout. Some questions: did you see an increase in typing speed after remapping? I'm at 60 wpm with the standard layout, so I'm not certain that remapping will bring a benefit in that area.
The second and most important is, my native language is Spanish, not English, and does the Dvorak layout take that into consideration? Can I type the letter "ñ" easily? Also, there was an aside on the page you linked to deriding the ";" being in the "home" row (it's not in the Spanish layout), but isn't it used a lot in programming languages exactly because of its location?
So, Windows software doesn't have dependencies to contend with? And they don't have to assume the user doesn't have liboscure and include it? (see every damn Java & .NET program including the runtimes).
This is a cop-out. This is one of the things that frustrated me most with Linux (the other being I want a GUI and decent explanations of options or a Wizard for the configuration files)
And yes, I've heard of DLL hell. And I used SUSE Linux for a year (and found it nice and sometimes better than Windows, but got all kinds of headaches).
I asked for votes in exchange for fixing problems :P (before seeing that it's US and Canada only ) and everybody said "it looks just like you!!!"... (after pause)... "well, a few kilos heavier"
Time to start excercising, I guess...
I was lead to understand that is the case in Japan?
:P
Actually I read it here in Slashdot, in a discussion on Blood Elves in WoW
The relevant link was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishonen
Heh. In my country (Uruguay), we use the European system, and rates for calls from a landline to cell phones start at U$ 0.25/minute, up to almost U$ 0.5/minute , depending on the cell phone company you're calling to, and cell phone to cell phone are similar, but cheaper on weekends & night (depends on contract).
I usually end up paying close to 20 dollars for 50 minutes of cell phone calls.
I hope so. I'm from Uruguay, and elections here are MUCH better safeguarded than the ones in the US - for one, there is a paper trail.
For the 2000 elections I was a representative for a small party and was an observer at the vote counting (there was an observer at each polling station for every party in most urban areas, plus independant observers). It was of course voluntary work (non-paid).
Let me know if such measures are implemented in the US - last I heard, they aren't. I was proud to be a watchman of our democratic process, and this is South freaking America.
Unfortunately, countries such as Venezuela or Cuba (or the US) don't inspire in me the same confidence.
Definitely.. cool.. and disturbing. Great link anyways, I didn't know of the site.
I have [seen cleartype on an CRT], and it's definitely a matter of personal taste (I don't like it).
Actually, I don't think it's that great on LCDs either, but since I don't have one, it may be a matter of getting used to it.
It's bizarre, but after going through dictatorships, a few countries in South America actually feel better than the US nowadays (Chile, Uruguay) - probably not in actual legislation, but definitely yes day-to-day.
I don't know which countries are actually better, and I've heard of scary things in Europe too... I guess New Zealand looks like a nice place to retire to.
Let's see, it ranks 12th in the recent Reporters without Borders index (1st non-european) and 9th in the index of Economic Freedom (I don't know how accurate that one is).
Links:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554
BTW, Uruguay ranks 46th and Chile ranks 50th (about the same as the US), Chile ranks close to the US in the Economic Index at 14th place (tied for 9th for the US) while Uruguay is again at 46th (mostly because of having socialists in power, a brutally heavy fiscal burden and weak state of banking).
Interesting. I'm actually interested in travelling to Canada for Christmas to visit my brother, and even though I managed to get a flight that doesn't go through the US, people that visited Canada recently told me I was going to be treated badly (student visiting his brother in Canada? Surely trying to inmigrate illegally!! No matter I have a job and studies here - here being Uruguay btw).
Are family visits strictly a no-no in this post 9/11 world? (I used to travel a lot more often before 9/11, and have never been to US or Canada). Should I expect to be treated harshly at the border? Any certain no-nos you can tell me?
Very good. I thought you were referncing Papillon, however... seems like that's where Tarantino got his inspiration, I guess (never saw Pulp Fiction).
p hy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papillon_(autobiogra
I didn't find the reference there, but I did here:
http://www.anc.org.za/books/escape4.html
"In Papillon the convicts hid their money up their anuses in what they called 'chargers'. These were metal tubes with screw-on lids in which the money was rolled and inserted."
They're probably auctioned off, but also probably crippled - I went to an US Embassy auction of office PCs... even though they were of the lowest level of security, they had taken out the HD and RAM memory, but looked ok on the outside.
Some people with no computer knowledge thought they were getting the full deal and overbid horribly... I tried telling one that they weren't "complete pc's" but he thought I was trying to get them cheap, I guess.
I bought a Gameboy back when they were new and shiny (1990 I think) on a trip to Europe.
As flying regulations prohibited electronic interference (now they allow laptops and such, but it wasn't always so), I packed it in my luggage. Of course, it never arrived.
It must have been stolen at the Brazilian stop, I guess (on my way to my country, Uruguay), but I wouldn't put it past US airport security to steal something...
PD: also happens with mail sometimes.
Thanks for the replies. I guess FTP with SSH or some other secure metod sounds OK. There's no magical software yet :) (hey, business opportunity?).
Argentina & Uruguay (my country - South America) also pay VAT and/or other taxes on food (23% for most stuff, 14% on other). We do follow Spain's lead (unfortunately)
On the other hand, we have some legislation stating that if a company is already importing something (the PSP in this case), you can do paralell imports (or something to the effect) under the "Exhaustion of rights"
As usual, Wikipedia has a neat article on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_import
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_rights
It's part of a debate which is still happening, the EU is against it, but I would be for it (without having looked too much into it, I'm mostly favorable to fre trade and globalization means most of these barriers are artificial anyways).
Another nice link from New Zealand (a country that's often quoted as exemplary):
http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/Page____1230.asp
Too bad the cinemas won there (see last part).
A little off-topic, but which is the laptop backup solution you people use (Windows if possible)???
I've tried Brightstor ArcServe for Laptops and Desktops, and it's awful.
I've heard there's a solution from Symantec but I never tested it.
An ideal solution would have the possibility to backup from the field (VPN? Encrypted traffic?). The Brightstor solution actually promised that it would send the data in packets so as not to interfere with normal usage but didn't work that way in practise.
My boss even asked for a solution that allows the possibility to restore from the field, but that seems very far-fetched.
I've seen the same problem with the Turkish in Austria and Germany, the Moroccans and Ecuatorians in Spain, etc, so it's not unique to the US, and it brings out the understandable fear of being displaced out of your jobs, culture, etc.
Do I? I don't use that term (I do use religious fundamentalists), I don't agree with them, but I don't "hate" those people and never suggested anything like the extremes you describe below when describing the hispanics.
I'm sure those exist, but you do realize it probably represents a minority or radical view, do you?
And before declaring that "all their nations are cesspools" you'd want to do some research. I believe my country is the best place to live as long as you earn a decent wage
Just look a little further down south and you'll see Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, even Brazil is doing pretty well (the slums or "favelas" are still there but it's getting better, there are some areas with a great standard of living). Can you back those claims with some evidence? I'm sorry, I'm not from the US and I couldn't find anything that backs that claim in various bios like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Gonzales,
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=241596&pa
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/gonzales-bio
and only some vague references in some blogs after Google searching. It is very tough to argue with Jews (sorry if that's not PC), but they're not as closed as you think (I'd say most I've met are more open about the Arab issue than you are about the Hispanic issue). And I do know quite a few of them, they are very sensitive about those issues but then again, they have reason to be so (though they do go a bit too far and can be quite thickheaded sometimes).
Thanks for being reasonable.
I don't know why the former poster was modded insightful, but I guess his voice represents the opinion of a portion of the readers, so he had to be heard.
Omg.. so funny... from the parent's link:
"most us haven't the foggiest idea how many people inhabit the United States. According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll of 1,002 people in June, 29 percent thought the population was less than 200 million, 19 percent thought it was a billion or more, and 27 percent wouldn't even hazard a guess."
I'm certain I haven't read any posts about the H1B visas, no... (/sarcasm).
Obligatory Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B_visa
"The H-1B category has been criticized for displacing substantial numbers of experienced American citizen technical professionals or lowering wages enough to encourage them to abandon volatile careers in targeted fields such as computer technology"