And guess what...right now they're trying to make the House of Lords some combination of elected and appointed, which will be a massive constitutional disaster (see below)!!!
Strengths of the current House of Lords IMO 1) Not elected, therefore voting for stupid laws that get favourable media coverage doesnt really happen. Also members are not especially concerned with (or vulnerable to) the public's reaction to their votes. A fantastic counterbalance to the house of commons. 2) Members of the House of Lords do not rely on their party to get elected. Therefore do not have to toe the party line. The party system inevitably prevents MPs representing their constituents interests, when they conflict with the party line. 3) The House of Lords is the closest the country has to independent oversight of the House of Commons. 4) As a result of 1+2, House of Lords is the only house that can be relied upon to vote with a conscience for what is right. E.G. House of Lords presented the strongest arguments against the Iraq War, which pretty much everyone in the country could see was a foolish errand bar Tony and his Cronies!
Weaknesses of the current House of Lords IMO 1) Hereditary peers - somewhat distasteful, and a likely inherent bias towards the Conservative party, though the more time goes on, the less likely this should be. 2) Not strongly answerable to the press/people (I consider this a strength)
The problem with making the House of Lords an elected house is that it will solve the "hereditary peers" problem, but remove every single strength of the house!! It will gut it, and subject all members of it to the Whips and party politics.
The problem with making the House of Lords an appointed house is that it will INEVITABLY be stuffed with with people sympathetic to the government at the time. If there was a 20 year run of one party in charge of the House of Commons, then we could imagine a massive swing in the population of the House of Lords to representatives of that party! The House of Lords will no longer be independent.
If/when they convert the House of Lords to elected/appointed this country will lose one of its greatest strengths (a somewhat apolitical overseeing body). Regardless of whether the House of Lords becomes elected, appointed or some combination of both, it will represent an unprecedented transfer of power towards the party system and unlikely as it may seem, AWAY from the people the party system is meant to represent.
If it is ok to have a constitutional monarchy, why should we not also have constitutional peers in the House of Lords?
John Reid is a bloody idiot, and he is subordinate to the tabloids. He pumps out hair-brained schemes like this, that are frankly embarassing.
We need to find a way to stop politicians (and tabloids) interfering with this country, because in general the UK functions very well without their accursed meddling!
"Push email has already taken off - where's the open source version mobile operators can take up (Though I presume this needs to be developed outside the US to avoid software patent litigation)?"
IMAP has supported "push" for quite a while both through the older "IDLE" functionality, and the more recently defined P-IMAP. I know that the Sony Ericsson Symbian phones support IMAP IDLE for example.I don't think the problem lies in lack of open source implementations, so much as that the marketing dollars being spent on Blackberry and ActiveSync drown out any mention of P-IMAP or IMAP IDLE.
I get about 50-75 bouncebacks a day on my domain, although I believe some of them at least are "false bouncebacks" from spammers, the idea being im more likely to read a bounceback than a spam.
"The resets will not be disruptive. Most of the time they provide a 30 minute ingame warning, most of the time this is long enough for a group to mop up an instance or not start it at all. "
Bearing in mind that most current top end instance runs require perhaps 2-6 hours, a 30 minute ingame warning will rarely be sufficient.
BUSTED, FANBOY!
Incidentally I have never once seen a 30 min warning, I consider myself lucky to see 15 min warnings and usually I get booted with no warning whatsoever.
I don't think you're right. You are extrapolating from too little information. There has only been one al-qaida attack on american soil. There is little evidence that there will even be another one. Right now ts impossible to have any kind of generalisation or modus operandi of these so called "terrorists".
Hmmm I think although I mostly agree with your argument, do you not agree that people reading e.g. murder novels may experience adrenaline and other effects?
"Also, people with wealth have EARNED it, it is theirs. Why should we think that money should be redistributed to someone else?"
The simple answer is because capitalism is broken, i.e. it doesn't optimally or fairly allocate wealth.
As an example, if one person had so successfully accreted capital that they owned 99% of the land/property around the world, would you still subscribe to the view that they have earned it, it is theirs, and noone should be redistributing any of it to anyone else? To me it would be absolutely abhorrent that 1 person could practically "own" the planet.
So would you rather have a "poll tax" where everybody pays a standard fixed amount, e.g. £1000 / year?
Personally I think it is absolutely fine that everybody pays a fixed proportion of their income. e.g. 20%, 30% 40%, whatever. So the fact that rich people pay more taxes (on an absolute) scale than poor people is absolutely fine by me. Its not fine if rich people pay a lower proportion of their income than poor people.
perhaps because people who truly want to help only themselves are in a minority and people who want to help the little guy are in a majority? at least around the world, if not in america/ducks inevitable -54678 troll moderation
No if you RTFA you will see that microsoft assists law enforcement with what it deems to be criminal cases, whereas what it deems to be "teenage hackers" it brings civil cases, and it seems from the article that many of these settle out of court.
As far as I am concerned this is vigilante justice. Just as citizens have no business enforcing the law, neither do coporations.
Microsoft's actions are the equivalent of citizens beating up paedophiles. Whether or not its for a good cause it is completely unacceptable behaviour.
"The only area that Windows costs are cheaper in this study is "Labour"."
no you miss the point - you are looking at the percentages. That means that windows has a lower proportion of labour costs. Which isn't surprising as (for example) it has a higher proportion of System Software costs (not that this could account for the huge proportion difference seen in the figures reported though).
However all of this is completely irrelevant as they list the.NET 2 / SQL 2005 TCO as 1.99 while the.Net 1.1 / SQL 2000 is listed as 3.92, despite the percentage breakdowns being almost exactly the same for both, indicating that the money figures they're calculated from are nearly identical. Well slightly higher for the platform for the newer software.
Hopefully this error doesn't get propagated otherwise we'll see the headline "Windows TCO over 55% less than Linux TCO" cropping up all over the place.
Slashdot Mirror
And guess what...right now they're trying to make the House of Lords some combination of elected and appointed, which will be a massive constitutional disaster (see below)!!!
Strengths of the current House of Lords IMO
1) Not elected, therefore voting for stupid laws that get favourable media coverage doesnt really happen. Also members are not especially concerned with (or vulnerable to) the public's reaction to their votes. A fantastic counterbalance to the house of commons.
2) Members of the House of Lords do not rely on their party to get elected. Therefore do not have to toe the party line. The party system inevitably prevents MPs representing their constituents interests, when they conflict with the party line.
3) The House of Lords is the closest the country has to independent oversight of the House of Commons.
4) As a result of 1+2, House of Lords is the only house that can be relied upon to vote with a conscience for what is right. E.G. House of Lords presented the strongest arguments against the Iraq War, which pretty much everyone in the country could see was a foolish errand bar Tony and his Cronies!
Weaknesses of the current House of Lords IMO
1) Hereditary peers - somewhat distasteful, and a likely inherent bias towards the Conservative party, though the more time goes on, the less likely this should be.
2) Not strongly answerable to the press/people (I consider this a strength)
The problem with making the House of Lords an elected house is that it will solve the "hereditary peers" problem, but remove every single strength of the house!! It will gut it, and subject all members of it to the Whips and party politics.
The problem with making the House of Lords an appointed house is that it will INEVITABLY be stuffed with with people sympathetic to the government at the time. If there was a 20 year run of one party in charge of the House of Commons, then we could imagine a massive swing in the population of the House of Lords to representatives of that party! The House of Lords will no longer be independent.
If/when they convert the House of Lords to elected/appointed this country will lose one of its greatest strengths (a somewhat apolitical overseeing body). Regardless of whether the House of Lords becomes elected, appointed or some combination of both, it will represent an unprecedented transfer of power towards the party system and unlikely as it may seem, AWAY from the people the party system is meant to represent.
If it is ok to have a constitutional monarchy, why should we not also have constitutional peers in the House of Lords?
Robin Cook was quite decent I think....dunno if he counted as "NuLabour" though
John Reid is a bloody idiot, and he is subordinate to the tabloids. He pumps out hair-brained schemes like this, that are frankly embarassing.
We need to find a way to stop politicians (and tabloids) interfering with this country, because in general the UK functions very well without their accursed meddling!
"Push email has already taken off - where's the open source version mobile operators can take up (Though I presume this needs to be developed outside the US to avoid software patent litigation)?"
IMAP has supported "push" for quite a while both through the older "IDLE" functionality, and the more recently defined P-IMAP. I know that the Sony Ericsson Symbian phones support IMAP IDLE for example.I don't think the problem lies in lack of open source implementations, so much as that the marketing dollars being spent on Blackberry and ActiveSync drown out any mention of P-IMAP or IMAP IDLE.
We need to think up some kind of safeguards to protect politics from politicians as they are giving it a bad name.
I get about 50-75 bouncebacks a day on my domain, although I believe some of them at least are "false bouncebacks" from spammers, the idea being im more likely to read a bounceback than a spam.
I took the GP's post as implying something like the following scenario, where the interviewer accidentally implies he only wants men:
interviewee: What is the most important experience that your ideal candidate will have?
interviewer: He will be very good with c++. SORRY! I meant he/she!
I dont think you have mate.
"The WoW Realm Status forums page has nothing further to add at this time."
When did it ever?!
you could spend 6 hours on MC or ZG
Daft Punk - Homework was an amazing album. Its in my all time top 50.
"The resets will not be disruptive. Most of the time they provide a 30 minute ingame warning, most of the time this is long enough for a group to mop up an instance or not start it at all. "
Bearing in mind that most current top end instance runs require perhaps 2-6 hours, a 30 minute ingame warning will rarely be sufficient.
BUSTED, FANBOY!
Incidentally I have never once seen a 30 min warning, I consider myself lucky to see 15 min warnings and usually I get booted with no warning whatsoever.
I don't think you're right. You are extrapolating from too little information. There has only been one al-qaida attack on american soil. There is little evidence that there will even be another one. Right now ts impossible to have any kind of generalisation or modus operandi of these so called "terrorists".
Hmmm I think although I mostly agree with your argument, do you not agree that people reading e.g. murder novels may experience adrenaline and other effects?
I agree, I don't think david morales should be shoved down anybody's throat. Chris liebing or dj rush, on the other hand...
Thats ridiculous - the shareholders must pay for the directors' irresponsilibity?
And since when was it possible to settle criminal cases! ridiculous
nuke california
"Also, people with wealth have EARNED it, it is theirs. Why should we think that money should be redistributed to someone else?"
The simple answer is because capitalism is broken, i.e. it doesn't optimally or fairly allocate
wealth.
As an example, if one person had so successfully accreted capital that they owned 99% of the land/property around the world, would you still subscribe to the view that they have earned it, it is theirs, and noone should be redistributing any of it to anyone else? To me it would be absolutely abhorrent that 1 person could practically "own" the planet.
Yes I agree absolutely about your equation idea, I have often thought that myself.
So would you rather have a "poll tax" where everybody pays a standard fixed amount, e.g. £1000 / year?
Personally I think it is absolutely fine that everybody pays a fixed proportion of their income. e.g. 20%, 30% 40%, whatever. So the fact that rich people pay more taxes (on an absolute) scale than poor people is absolutely fine by me. Its not fine if rich people pay a lower proportion of their income than poor people.
That's spot on tbh!
This is not flamebait??!!
All of a sudden, Birmingham council IT dept is awesome :)
perhaps because people who truly want to help only themselves are in a minority and people who want to help the little guy are in a majority? at least around the world, if not in america /ducks inevitable -54678 troll moderation
No if you RTFA you will see that microsoft assists law enforcement with what it deems to be criminal cases, whereas what it deems to be "teenage hackers" it brings civil cases, and it seems from the article that many of these settle out of court.
As far as I am concerned this is vigilante justice. Just as citizens have no business enforcing the law, neither do coporations.
Microsoft's actions are the equivalent of citizens beating up paedophiles. Whether or not its for a good cause it is completely unacceptable behaviour.
"The only area that Windows costs are cheaper in this study is "Labour"."
.NET 2 / SQL 2005 TCO as 1.99 while the .Net 1.1 / SQL 2000 is listed as 3.92, despite the percentage breakdowns being almost exactly the same for both, indicating that the money figures they're calculated from are nearly identical. Well slightly higher for the platform for the newer software.
no you miss the point - you are looking at the percentages. That means that windows has a lower proportion of labour costs. Which isn't surprising as (for example) it has a higher proportion of System Software costs (not that this could account for the huge proportion difference seen in the figures reported though).
However all of this is completely irrelevant as they list the
Hopefully this error doesn't get propagated otherwise we'll see the headline "Windows TCO over 55% less than Linux TCO" cropping up all over the place.