Perhaps if you had a point, and stopped putting words into my mouth, I'd have something to learn from you. But seeing as you're still building straw men I think I'll pass on trying to learn anything from you thanks.
The fact you've glazed over the entire section in the freedom bill detailing further information on protecting the rights of protestors shows how desperate you're getting to try and carry on dragging your invalid inference that the coalition government is almost entirely Tory focussed and that the Lib Dems haven't won any concessions.
Look, I get it, you're unhappy with the coalition, so you're either a serial whiner and don't like anything, or a staunch Labour support, either way, tough shit. The coalition is the first government in decades to actually have the blessing of more than 50% of the population (59%). That beats anything we've had in a long long time and the compromise between the two parties is an advantage of this.
The Lib Dems did the smart thing, they gave us a government capable of dealing with the economic situation, and won concessions in getting through some of their policies, and the fact the government does consist of fair compromise means that we actually have a government more representative of the population than any we'd had in a long time. It really is that simple, it's obscure to be for PR and against the coalition government because the coalition government is simply that much more representative of the population- it's more representative of what would happen every election under a system of PR. I guess you really would've preferred a deadlocked Tory minority that would've destroyed our economy, a full Tory majority which would've damaged our ties with Europe and been even more unfair, a Lib-Lab coalition where the Lib Dems got no concessions because Mandelson, Calamity Gordon et al weren't willing to give anything up and which would've hence been the same as the final possibility- a Labour government that would've got ever more drunk on power and ever more totalitarian as a result. Thank fuck you didn't get your way, because all 4 of those alternatives to what happened are far far worse than what we actually have.
"If you want to justify AV, go ahead. But don't use simplistic arguments to claim that it is anything like proportional, or - more importantly - anything like what the LDs appeared to promote before the coalition. If I can't convince you, consider Churchill's opinion and the link to LD Roy Jenkins' detailed analysis somewhere around here."
Ah I see, so now you're simply making things up? I never said it was anything like proportional or what the LDs actually want to achieve. I merely pointed out it's better than what we have, and a step in the right direction, however small. If you don't think it's an improvement then fine, but don't try and extrapolate from that that anyone who things it's a slight improvement, no matter how small thinks it's the same as PR, that's just dumb.
I can't see much point responding to the rest, as half of your response is just a case of yet again ignoring the actual information out there, or simply putting a spin on the facts. Again, building straw men such as saying the child asylum seeker pledge isn't worth forming a coalition over- who ever said it was? It's just one part of many things worth forming a coalition over, and it's the full package that matters.
I suggest you have a look at the Lib Dem's freedom bill, you'll find plenty more examples there of Lib Dem policies taken over to the coalition document (almost word for word in some cases). It also goes a decent way to expanding on those things you don't seem to know much about (or are playing ignorant for the sake of trying to bolster your stance on) such as improving rights for protesters.
"Read Crispin Allard's very short and to-the-point article in Representation. He asserts that, in aggregate terms, neither FPTP nor AV can be assessed as more proportional. But AV favours moderate/close parties "which are good at attracting vote transfers". In particular, he contrasts 1992 and prior elections with the 1997 election: the proximity of LD and New[tm] Labour meant that AV would have further solidified Labour's lead."
It doesn't really matter if it solidified Labours lead, because it'd also mean their lead had been solidified with the consent of the population. If 33% vote Labour and they get 100% of the power that's not good, if 33% vote Labour, 23% vote Lib Dem, but say they'd prefer Labour to the Tories, that at very least adds a little more credibility to Labour holding majority of power. Most importantly though it benefits the Lib Dems precisely because they are a moderate party meaning they're more likely to push better electoral reform in future.
"Inability to answer the question and dismissing the exercise with "do your homework" isn't advancing your case. Maybe you have a good example which I have overlooked. I haven't found one."
Asserting I'm wrong whilst failing to provide any evidence as such doesn't mean I have a case to answer, because I'm right. If you're too lazy to find out why that's simply your problem, to demonstrate this fact to you, in terms of civil liberties the Lib Dems got:
- Abolition of NIR as well as just ID cards - Ending of detention of child asylum seekers - Keeping European working directive - Removing restrictions on protestors
Again, that's just some of the distinct Lib Dem policies in civil liberties- many of the other policies to improve civil liberties in the coalition agreement have been taken further (i.e. CCTV safeguards, libel reform) than they would have been under the Tories too, so as well as these distinct policies there's also the greater push for civil liberties in some areas where they partially agreed, but where the Tory proposals were much more watered down.
So you see, you not knowing what you're on about doesn't mean someone else is wrong, and your refusal to find out for yourself whether you're wrong, still doesn't make you right. If I was wrong, I wouldn't have said "do your homework", I'd have simply accepted that I was wrong.
"Apart from what I already asserted, which is that the increase of £1k in personal allowance is not a significant win for the LDs, what new conclusions are apparent?"
It's a significant win in the context of the state of our economy, which is really the point.
"What are you talking about? The LD platform was for PR. AV is as bad or worse than FPTP from a proportionality point of view, and no-one really wants it so it's unlikely to receive significant support. (This will then be interpreted as no-one wanting PR.)"
This comment really perfectly summed up my closing point. People like yourself seem to believe that a junior partner should get 100% of their own way, that's absurd. AV is a hell of a compromise and a step in the right direction, that's absolutely what matters because AV is still far closer to PR (and if AV gets them more seats, makes it easier for them to push PR in the long run) than anything they'd have got without entering a coalition, and is all that Labour offered too. AV isn't worse than FPTP in terms of accountability, because it ensures that no one can be elected without having the support of at least half their constituents (albeit some as a second or third choice), in contrast, FPTP allows people to get elected with only a minority of support.
"Could you be more specific? Specify clearly what the Tories agreed to as a condition of coalition. Do not include what was already part of their election platform (or follows from it: e.g. fingerprints in passports)."
I'll let you do your own homework thanks. It's not difficult, compare the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos civil liberties section against the coalition agreement, it's not hard to see the Lib Dems got a lot of what they wanted.
"Again, please be more specific. If you're referring to personal allowance for under 65s, this is nothing groundbreaking. It's being held at £6475 for years ending 2010, 2011 then bumped by £1000 for year ending 2012 - compare Labour increasing by £1000 from 2007 to 2009. And it's been more than offset by reneging on the promise to reverse Labour's pending NIC increases."
This would be the same Labour that completely removed the 10p tax bracket in the first place of course.
I'd say part the reason you got this response was because your mention of small/medium. I'd say 50 staff is firmly in the realm of a small company so I think it's fair to excuse people for thinking you would have the resources to delegate.
But to answer your question really depends on how well you really want to get to know database design. If you just want working knowledge then any number of good books here have been mentioned, however if you want a solid grounding and understanding then you should probably look into learning relational algebra too. Of course, Wikipedia has reasonable coverage of the topic:
Well he said small/medium sized. There's no room for medium in the equation if they only have a couple of IT staff so I'd wager it's either as the GP says, or he's overstating his company's size.
"Except that the Party already agreed to a coalition in which essentially no major LD policy not already coinciding with Tory policy was demanded."
You mean apart from a referendum on electoral reform which the Tories are staunchly opposed to, pretty much the entire section on civil liberties, and an increased threshold for the lowest tax bracket?
Realistically, for a party that got 23% of popular vote, they've managed to get far more than that in terms of policy pushed through.
If you're wondering why the backbenchers haven't rebelled yet, it's because so far there's little worth rebelling over- the government has only been in power two months. The coaliton government has done a pretty good job so far and there has been disagreements over minor things but nothing worth bringing the government down over and hence potentially handing full power to the Tories or Labour instead.
Wait to see how the parliamentary vote for the referendum on electoral reform goes, if the fairly far right Tories rebel and vote against it, and Labour vote against it and the referendum doesn't hence get the go ahead, you can be sure the Lib Dems will split and the government will fall.
Better they keep getting the concessions they asked for such as the destruction of the NIR as well as just ID cards, and a referendum on electoral reform, than it is for them to bring down the government and hand the country to full Tory or Labour control such that none of their policies make it through at all. Particularly right now when such an act would also cause a run on the pound and economically cripple our country likely making Greece's problems look small fry in comparison.
I don't know why some people seem to think the Lib Dems getting junior partner status in a coalition means we should expect to see near 100% of Lib Dem policies win through, that's utterly rediculous. They're certainly doing the best they can with the cards they've been dealt and that's far better than the alternative- 5 years of full Tory or full Labour control.
Saying it's code implies that they're intending that it just be applied to small ISPs and support the bill really, but I think that's bollocks.
Whilst I agree that might be the net effect, that the bill will just end up getting applied to small ISPs, I do believe that they are interested in seeing it repealed or struck down simply because even as a large ISP this does add extra burden and costs on them, and does require them to be complicit in allowing court action to be threatened against many innocent customers of theirs.
TalkTalk has been campaigning against the DEA since before it was stated it would only apply to small ISPs so they at least certainly have shown all along they don't want this applied at all. BT's interest could certainly be more self serving, but I'm sure in general that they do honestly want to see this outright struck down, rather than applied equally across the board.
For what it's worth, BT did kick up a fuss before hand, not quite as publicly as TalkTalk, but they certainly did all the same, see this article for example:
Put it this way, 150 - 200ms is worse than I used to get playing Quake 1 on a 33.6kbps dialup modem.
I used to achieve around 120 - 140 on dialup to UK servers. ISDN was around 60 - 80ms, ADSL around 20 - 40ms.
So in other words it sounds terrible in this day and age. Almost certainly bad enough to make games like Guitar Hero or other games that need rapid responses completely unplayable on this kind of service if they ever tried to offer it.
Apologies if I wasn't clear with the cane toad analogy- I wasn't suggesting it's the same as introducing an invasive species per se, merely comparing it to an example of the fact that when you introduce a change to an ecosystem whether with an invasive species or not, you tend to introduce other problems.
"The main goal is usually to ensure that a photograph results of said functionary or his patron standing next to something shiny."
This made me smile. I worked in public sector for a few years and reading through this sentence gave me flashbacks of countless halls across the different sites I worked at lined with pictures of smug looking folk being presented trophies for the most obscure awards, which they were often self-nominated for, or in some cases nominated for by a brown nosing underling or a boss who stood a chance of also getting in on the photo op should they win.
It made me realise how true that is, something I probably didn't take in at the time when seeing the walls of awards photos in these places.
I remember when the department I worked for went for a "Best places in IT to work" award in some computer magazine, and we had to fill in an anonymous survey for the magazine. Well, needless to say being public sector our department was around 70% pointless and 25% incompetent, so I filled in the survey honestly as did the other 5% of people who actually carried the rest of the department. Our boss was heartbroken we didn't even make it past the first hurdle, and just couldn't comprehend why we hadn't at least been shortlisted.
Still, at least I did my bit for humanity in preventing an incompetent waste of space from getting his shiny photo op, well, for a time at least. I think he got some government sponsored award in the end instead so that he could pretend he was running a good IT department and not one that was largely a waste of space and money. Something he'll no doubt use to get another even more overpaid job running an equally crap department elsewhere in public sector.
Are you really unable to see the difference between largely pointless phone apps (their function can be performed in other ways already) and providing essential services for a healthy population?
"It bears pointing out that the cane toad was imported from outside the Australian ecosystem, whereupon it became a runaway success as an invasive species. Meanwhile, the bacteria mentioned here are already present as a natural part of the Gulf ecosystem, and they thus present zero risk of invasiveness."
Absolutely, but that wasn't really my fundamental point with the comparison- my point was that if you alter an ecosystem in any way whatsoever it can result in just causing a whole new set of problems.
The other poster responding to me below mentioned that when you stop the oxygen you stop the bacteria and things go back to normal, but that can't happen- the bacteria has to either live or die, if it lives you have an excess of it which may cause problems, if it dies then you're releasing massive amounts of whatever compound these bacteria release when they die into the ocean.
So effectively, whilst yes, bacteria may be able to deal with the oil, all you're doing is exchanging one problem for another (again, hence the cane toad analogy)- I doubt very much a sudden release of dying bacteria is in itself healthy.
Perhaps a better comparison would be with the algal blooms- these often occur when we get too much fertiliser run off from farming into a river, lake or sea, and whilst the algae may well be native to that body of water, the sudden increase in population is devastating for the other wild life there and can even be dangerous for humans- I suspect a drastic increase in oil eating bacteria would be exactly the same.
At the end of the day, unless we can really just turn oil into sea water, picking up as much of the oil as possible and bringing it in shore where we can use it in a slightly less harmful manner probably is the only way to handle the cleanup without completely screwing the environment, albeit in a different way than the oil would. It's a case of separating massive amounts of one substance from massive amounts of another, sure we can change one of the substances, but it's still likely only going to be to something equally problematic that still needs separating.
It doesn't sound suprising. After Hurricane Katrina countries like Cuba offered to help the US too being experts in Hurricane releif seeing as they get them and get hit hardest by them more so than pretty much any other country in the world.
Of course, the US turned the offer of support down.
It's presumably either pride, or political, the saying "Cutting your nose off to spite your face" seems to sum it up best.
What do you do about the excess bacteria afterwards? Does the bacteria just magically vanish afterwards taking whatever product they convert the oil into with them?
This solution sounds like Australia's use of the cane toad to protect cane crops, only to end up with a major cane toad problem instead that's killing off the native wildlife.
Exactly, the InfoWorld blogger is an idiot if he doesn't get this.
We can't justify spending thousands on something that not only an absolute minority can access, but likely only a minority of that minority will ever bother to use anyway.
They'd even have had an argument if they'd done it for Symbian, by far the UK's biggest mobile platform, but even that would be a push. The fact they focussed on a minority, but popular device simply demonstrates they just wanted to play around with the latest gadgets rather than focus on actually doing their job. The web is far and away the most sensible option.
But it's something that effects even pseudo-public sector- look at the BBC, their iPlayer app prioritised the iPhone well ahead of any platform, despite being completely against the BBCs requirement of providing equal access to content that license payers pay for.
If it was private sector then that's fine, what they do is upto them, they may still be criticised but it's their choice at the end of the day. Public sector doesn't have that choice, you can't expect people to pay the same taxes and one of them get all the benefits and the other get nothing simply because of their choice of mobile phone particularly if the phone they chose is actually the same as the majority of the rest of the population are using. In public sector it has to be all or nothing- either support iPhone, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, MeeGo or don't do it at all and again, as people have said here a few times, the web is far and away the best platform to do it for all.
I'm sure someone will point out some fringe platform and say "Well should they support that?", no, of course there are fringe cases and they can't be expected to necessarily support 100% of platforms, but they need to make sure they at least cover the majority of the population for this sort of thing- ideally a vast majority, such as around 95% or so.
The only thing I will say is that public sector has had problems with websites too so it's not just a case of switching to the web until they sort out their issues there, one website they created (nothing overly complex, just a standard CMS albeit with lots of content) cost £105 million- how can that even be justified? Most private sector developers are saying they'd have quoted around £50,000 for the same site, maybe up into the hundreds of thousands if they had to employ staff to enter all the content and such, but £105 million? How can you even spend that much money building a website?
So public sector in the UK has a major problem with IT, the iPhone apps are just one facet of it, but sensible web development seems to be the obvious solution in most cases.
That's because they were to hand and were modded down just before I made the reply so were immediately to hand.
But you see, it's not about disagreeing with my own posts- the fact is the information I provided was simply not redundant and was relevant to the discussion at hand, so was an invalid moderation however you cut it. As TheKidWho pointed out, there isn't a disagree moderation yet people use other mods as that, when the correct course of action should be to not moderate it at all if you can't find a category that fits.
For what it's worth I actually do agree when some of my posts get modded down, sometimes I'll admit I have been a dick sometimes and could've put things a bit more reasonably. I'm not debating posts where someone has been a dick though, I'm debating posts in general, and seeing TheKidWho's post get modded troll when it blatantly wasn't is one particular example where I disagree.
Are you suggesting that negative moderations you've received have always been fair, and negative moderations of others posts you've seen have always been fair? Taking a quick look at your posting history, it appears this post got a negative mod unless you posted without karma bonus:
It may not be the most exciting post in the world and I may have disagreed with you personally in the past on some subjects, but even I can see there's little reason to mod this post down, in the worst case they should've just passed on by and not modded at all.
I mean, even where this thread has gone now for example could well deserve an off-topic mod, which is fair enough- I can accept that, but otherwise what're the options? Should I myself just use my mod points to mod in a partisan manner in future rather than be objective about it too? If Slashdot's mod system stays as is, it's only going to continue to deteriorate even further.
Or just a better moderation system in general. Unfortunately this is the reality of Slashdot today, where pointing out why DRM is bad will get you modded overrated:
Whilst providing additional information that hasn't yet been posted but that demonstrates a valid counter point to the post of the parent you're responding to gets you modded redundant:
Just like real democracies, when you let the idiot masses vote, you're bound to get some idiotic results.
I'm not a fan of Apple, and I dislike Cocoa and Objective-C, but you getting moderated troll for making the point you did is just utterly stupid- it was a fair comment. It's just sad that there are people incapable of grasping the concept of moderating a post based on it's merits, rather than based on rabid fanboyism and ignorance.
It seems the best way to get modded up is to post some populist bullshit, that might well be completely and utterly fucking incorrect, but that appeals to the ignorant and uninformed. The problem with democratic moderation is that you basically just end up reinforcing the ideology that becomes dominant and driving away people with other often equally accurate points, so that it basically becomes a self-reassuring wankfest of ignorance.
Still, I carry on reading because every once in a while there are some posts that really are insightful and worth reading, it's just a shame they become ever rarer and rarer.
Well, you're right that there are plants where red wavelength light inhibits flowering, but the likely reason (assuming cannabis isn't a naturally winter flowering plant- that I don't know) your cannabis plants are flowering under longer photoperiods is precisely because they are getting more red light (even from a dominant blue light they will get some). But the fundamental point is the same effect could be achieved if they are summer flowering plants by just giving more red light.
This is the case because phytochromes required to induce flowering react most strongly to red wavelength light- positively to encourage flowering if it's a summer flowering plant, or negatively to inhibit flowering for winter flowering plants. I believe Peppers, at least those from the genus Capsicum, are naturally entirely a summer flowering genus, and so fall into the former category in preferring more red light.
To clarify, the point is not that red light is essential for flowering in every plant, but that it's the fastest way to get most plants to flower. Just as blue lights aren't essential for growth, but that it's the best way to get healthy growth in most plants and to avoid etiolation.
To be fair, I've been behind countless SUV drivers who make these sorts of mistakes even when they're not on phones.
There seems to be few SUV drivers that drive them because they need them, many seem to do so because it's a kind of security blanket- to them it's a nice big vehicle to protect them from their own inability to drive well.
But I do agree, those who use a phone and drive are also much less safe in general. I find even those chatting away with blue tooth headsets on can be quite bad sometimes. Personally, if I'm driving I prefer to concentrate on doing just that, which is probably why the only accidents I've been in have involved two people rear ending me when I've been completely stationary at junctions and so forth and nothing to do with bad driving on my part.
Our third party, the Liberal Democrats usually get around 20% - 23% of the vote. This year for the first time ever we had leaders debates on TV for the 3 main party leaders. The Liberal Democrats voterbase skyrocketed, becoming temporarily the largest party in terms of popular support in multiple polls, whilst their support dwindled towards election day a little, they were still clearly up with the other parties in the 29% - 33% bracket.
Yet, come election day they got 23% of the votes. Why? Because everyone fucking bottled it and thought "Hey, I don't want the red team in so I'm voting Blue" and vice versa (the Lib Dems are the yellow team to the uninformed).
For the first time in a hundred years we had a clear opportunity to break the two party state permanently (the Lib Dems would've pushed through electoral reform and fixed the system) and people just bottled it and went back to voting as their dad always told them too, who voted who his dad told him too, and so on, without actually being capable of thinking for themselves.
Still there was somewhat of a silver lining, because of the quirks of the existing system, no party held a majority of parliamentary seats, so a coalition government had to be formed, including the third party in it, meaning they at least got to push through some of their interests, and at least for the first time in decades the fact a coalition government was forced means that we have a government that actually represents more than 50% of the population rather than the usual 30% - 35% or so. The problem is that next election, I suspect we'll be back to business as usual- a two party state.
It can also be useful to use a using block to determine the scope of an object or objects after which they will be disposed.
Funnily enough, C#/.NET require you know what you're doing too.
As is often the case, people who slag off one language/library or another do so simply because they don't know much about said language/library. If you think the.NET library is like a wrapper around Win32 or even MFC then I'd wager you've not actually got much experience with either because the differences are vast. If anything, the.NET libraries are much closer to Java's standard libraries than anything.
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"far closer" is not the same as "is the same as".
Perhaps if you had a point, and stopped putting words into my mouth, I'd have something to learn from you. But seeing as you're still building straw men I think I'll pass on trying to learn anything from you thanks.
The fact you've glazed over the entire section in the freedom bill detailing further information on protecting the rights of protestors shows how desperate you're getting to try and carry on dragging your invalid inference that the coalition government is almost entirely Tory focussed and that the Lib Dems haven't won any concessions.
Look, I get it, you're unhappy with the coalition, so you're either a serial whiner and don't like anything, or a staunch Labour support, either way, tough shit. The coalition is the first government in decades to actually have the blessing of more than 50% of the population (59%). That beats anything we've had in a long long time and the compromise between the two parties is an advantage of this.
The Lib Dems did the smart thing, they gave us a government capable of dealing with the economic situation, and won concessions in getting through some of their policies, and the fact the government does consist of fair compromise means that we actually have a government more representative of the population than any we'd had in a long time. It really is that simple, it's obscure to be for PR and against the coalition government because the coalition government is simply that much more representative of the population- it's more representative of what would happen every election under a system of PR. I guess you really would've preferred a deadlocked Tory minority that would've destroyed our economy, a full Tory majority which would've damaged our ties with Europe and been even more unfair, a Lib-Lab coalition where the Lib Dems got no concessions because Mandelson, Calamity Gordon et al weren't willing to give anything up and which would've hence been the same as the final possibility- a Labour government that would've got ever more drunk on power and ever more totalitarian as a result. Thank fuck you didn't get your way, because all 4 of those alternatives to what happened are far far worse than what we actually have.
"If you want to justify AV, go ahead. But don't use simplistic arguments to claim that it is anything like proportional, or - more importantly - anything like what the LDs appeared to promote before the coalition. If I can't convince you, consider Churchill's opinion and the link to LD Roy Jenkins' detailed analysis somewhere around here."
Ah I see, so now you're simply making things up? I never said it was anything like proportional or what the LDs actually want to achieve. I merely pointed out it's better than what we have, and a step in the right direction, however small. If you don't think it's an improvement then fine, but don't try and extrapolate from that that anyone who things it's a slight improvement, no matter how small thinks it's the same as PR, that's just dumb.
I can't see much point responding to the rest, as half of your response is just a case of yet again ignoring the actual information out there, or simply putting a spin on the facts. Again, building straw men such as saying the child asylum seeker pledge isn't worth forming a coalition over- who ever said it was? It's just one part of many things worth forming a coalition over, and it's the full package that matters.
I suggest you have a look at the Lib Dem's freedom bill, you'll find plenty more examples there of Lib Dem policies taken over to the coalition document (almost word for word in some cases). It also goes a decent way to expanding on those things you don't seem to know much about (or are playing ignorant for the sake of trying to bolster your stance on) such as improving rights for protesters.
"Read Crispin Allard's very short and to-the-point article in Representation. He asserts that, in aggregate terms, neither FPTP nor AV can be assessed as more proportional. But AV favours moderate/close parties "which are good at attracting vote transfers". In particular, he contrasts 1992 and prior elections with the 1997 election: the proximity of LD and New[tm] Labour meant that AV would have further solidified Labour's lead."
It doesn't really matter if it solidified Labours lead, because it'd also mean their lead had been solidified with the consent of the population. If 33% vote Labour and they get 100% of the power that's not good, if 33% vote Labour, 23% vote Lib Dem, but say they'd prefer Labour to the Tories, that at very least adds a little more credibility to Labour holding majority of power. Most importantly though it benefits the Lib Dems precisely because they are a moderate party meaning they're more likely to push better electoral reform in future.
"Inability to answer the question and dismissing the exercise with "do your homework" isn't advancing your case. Maybe you have a good example which I have overlooked. I haven't found one."
Asserting I'm wrong whilst failing to provide any evidence as such doesn't mean I have a case to answer, because I'm right. If you're too lazy to find out why that's simply your problem, to demonstrate this fact to you, in terms of civil liberties the Lib Dems got:
- Abolition of NIR as well as just ID cards
- Ending of detention of child asylum seekers
- Keeping European working directive
- Removing restrictions on protestors
Again, that's just some of the distinct Lib Dem policies in civil liberties- many of the other policies to improve civil liberties in the coalition agreement have been taken further (i.e. CCTV safeguards, libel reform) than they would have been under the Tories too, so as well as these distinct policies there's also the greater push for civil liberties in some areas where they partially agreed, but where the Tory proposals were much more watered down.
So you see, you not knowing what you're on about doesn't mean someone else is wrong, and your refusal to find out for yourself whether you're wrong, still doesn't make you right. If I was wrong, I wouldn't have said "do your homework", I'd have simply accepted that I was wrong.
"Apart from what I already asserted, which is that the increase of £1k in personal allowance is not a significant win for the LDs, what new conclusions are apparent?"
It's a significant win in the context of the state of our economy, which is really the point.
"What are you talking about? The LD platform was for PR. AV is as bad or worse than FPTP from a proportionality point of view, and no-one really wants it so it's unlikely to receive significant support. (This will then be interpreted as no-one wanting PR.)"
This comment really perfectly summed up my closing point. People like yourself seem to believe that a junior partner should get 100% of their own way, that's absurd. AV is a hell of a compromise and a step in the right direction, that's absolutely what matters because AV is still far closer to PR (and if AV gets them more seats, makes it easier for them to push PR in the long run) than anything they'd have got without entering a coalition, and is all that Labour offered too. AV isn't worse than FPTP in terms of accountability, because it ensures that no one can be elected without having the support of at least half their constituents (albeit some as a second or third choice), in contrast, FPTP allows people to get elected with only a minority of support.
"Could you be more specific? Specify clearly what the Tories agreed to as a condition of coalition. Do not include what was already part of their election platform (or follows from it: e.g. fingerprints in passports)."
I'll let you do your own homework thanks. It's not difficult, compare the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos civil liberties section against the coalition agreement, it's not hard to see the Lib Dems got a lot of what they wanted.
"Again, please be more specific. If you're referring to personal allowance for under 65s, this is nothing groundbreaking. It's being held at £6475 for years ending 2010, 2011 then bumped by £1000 for year ending 2012 - compare Labour increasing by £1000 from 2007 to 2009. And it's been more than offset by reneging on the promise to reverse Labour's pending NIC increases."
This would be the same Labour that completely removed the 10p tax bracket in the first place of course.
I'd say part the reason you got this response was because your mention of small/medium. I'd say 50 staff is firmly in the realm of a small company so I think it's fair to excuse people for thinking you would have the resources to delegate.
But to answer your question really depends on how well you really want to get to know database design. If you just want working knowledge then any number of good books here have been mentioned, however if you want a solid grounding and understanding then you should probably look into learning relational algebra too. Of course, Wikipedia has reasonable coverage of the topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra
Well he said small/medium sized. There's no room for medium in the equation if they only have a couple of IT staff so I'd wager it's either as the GP says, or he's overstating his company's size.
"Except that the Party already agreed to a coalition in which essentially no major LD policy not already coinciding with Tory policy was demanded."
You mean apart from a referendum on electoral reform which the Tories are staunchly opposed to, pretty much the entire section on civil liberties, and an increased threshold for the lowest tax bracket?
Realistically, for a party that got 23% of popular vote, they've managed to get far more than that in terms of policy pushed through.
If you're wondering why the backbenchers haven't rebelled yet, it's because so far there's little worth rebelling over- the government has only been in power two months. The coaliton government has done a pretty good job so far and there has been disagreements over minor things but nothing worth bringing the government down over and hence potentially handing full power to the Tories or Labour instead.
Wait to see how the parliamentary vote for the referendum on electoral reform goes, if the fairly far right Tories rebel and vote against it, and Labour vote against it and the referendum doesn't hence get the go ahead, you can be sure the Lib Dems will split and the government will fall.
Better they keep getting the concessions they asked for such as the destruction of the NIR as well as just ID cards, and a referendum on electoral reform, than it is for them to bring down the government and hand the country to full Tory or Labour control such that none of their policies make it through at all. Particularly right now when such an act would also cause a run on the pound and economically cripple our country likely making Greece's problems look small fry in comparison.
I don't know why some people seem to think the Lib Dems getting junior partner status in a coalition means we should expect to see near 100% of Lib Dem policies win through, that's utterly rediculous. They're certainly doing the best they can with the cards they've been dealt and that's far better than the alternative- 5 years of full Tory or full Labour control.
Saying it's code implies that they're intending that it just be applied to small ISPs and support the bill really, but I think that's bollocks.
Whilst I agree that might be the net effect, that the bill will just end up getting applied to small ISPs, I do believe that they are interested in seeing it repealed or struck down simply because even as a large ISP this does add extra burden and costs on them, and does require them to be complicit in allowing court action to be threatened against many innocent customers of theirs.
TalkTalk has been campaigning against the DEA since before it was stated it would only apply to small ISPs so they at least certainly have shown all along they don't want this applied at all. BT's interest could certainly be more self serving, but I'm sure in general that they do honestly want to see this outright struck down, rather than applied equally across the board.
For what it's worth, BT did kick up a fuss before hand, not quite as publicly as TalkTalk, but they certainly did all the same, see this article for example:
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-digital-economy-bill-the-half-billion-pound-price-tag/
I wish I'd entered now. My "Free HD porn for everyone" idea would've been in with a chance of first place after all :(
No, I don't believe they've released it yet, but it's their primary focus of development. See here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8519783.stm
They have released some of their other iPhone only apps though I believe.
Put it this way, 150 - 200ms is worse than I used to get playing Quake 1 on a 33.6kbps dialup modem.
I used to achieve around 120 - 140 on dialup to UK servers. ISDN was around 60 - 80ms, ADSL around 20 - 40ms.
So in other words it sounds terrible in this day and age. Almost certainly bad enough to make games like Guitar Hero or other games that need rapid responses completely unplayable on this kind of service if they ever tried to offer it.
Rather than repeat myself, I'll link to my other post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1711704&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=32836602#32837046
Apologies if I wasn't clear with the cane toad analogy- I wasn't suggesting it's the same as introducing an invasive species per se, merely comparing it to an example of the fact that when you introduce a change to an ecosystem whether with an invasive species or not, you tend to introduce other problems.
"The main goal is usually to ensure that a photograph results of said functionary or his patron standing next to something shiny."
This made me smile. I worked in public sector for a few years and reading through this sentence gave me flashbacks of countless halls across the different sites I worked at lined with pictures of smug looking folk being presented trophies for the most obscure awards, which they were often self-nominated for, or in some cases nominated for by a brown nosing underling or a boss who stood a chance of also getting in on the photo op should they win.
It made me realise how true that is, something I probably didn't take in at the time when seeing the walls of awards photos in these places.
I remember when the department I worked for went for a "Best places in IT to work" award in some computer magazine, and we had to fill in an anonymous survey for the magazine. Well, needless to say being public sector our department was around 70% pointless and 25% incompetent, so I filled in the survey honestly as did the other 5% of people who actually carried the rest of the department. Our boss was heartbroken we didn't even make it past the first hurdle, and just couldn't comprehend why we hadn't at least been shortlisted.
Still, at least I did my bit for humanity in preventing an incompetent waste of space from getting his shiny photo op, well, for a time at least. I think he got some government sponsored award in the end instead so that he could pretend he was running a good IT department and not one that was largely a waste of space and money. Something he'll no doubt use to get another even more overpaid job running an equally crap department elsewhere in public sector.
Are you really unable to see the difference between largely pointless phone apps (their function can be performed in other ways already) and providing essential services for a healthy population?
"It bears pointing out that the cane toad was imported from outside the Australian ecosystem, whereupon it became a runaway success as an invasive species. Meanwhile, the bacteria mentioned here are already present as a natural part of the Gulf ecosystem, and they thus present zero risk of invasiveness."
Absolutely, but that wasn't really my fundamental point with the comparison- my point was that if you alter an ecosystem in any way whatsoever it can result in just causing a whole new set of problems.
The other poster responding to me below mentioned that when you stop the oxygen you stop the bacteria and things go back to normal, but that can't happen- the bacteria has to either live or die, if it lives you have an excess of it which may cause problems, if it dies then you're releasing massive amounts of whatever compound these bacteria release when they die into the ocean.
So effectively, whilst yes, bacteria may be able to deal with the oil, all you're doing is exchanging one problem for another (again, hence the cane toad analogy)- I doubt very much a sudden release of dying bacteria is in itself healthy.
Perhaps a better comparison would be with the algal blooms- these often occur when we get too much fertiliser run off from farming into a river, lake or sea, and whilst the algae may well be native to that body of water, the sudden increase in population is devastating for the other wild life there and can even be dangerous for humans- I suspect a drastic increase in oil eating bacteria would be exactly the same.
At the end of the day, unless we can really just turn oil into sea water, picking up as much of the oil as possible and bringing it in shore where we can use it in a slightly less harmful manner probably is the only way to handle the cleanup without completely screwing the environment, albeit in a different way than the oil would. It's a case of separating massive amounts of one substance from massive amounts of another, sure we can change one of the substances, but it's still likely only going to be to something equally problematic that still needs separating.
It doesn't sound suprising. After Hurricane Katrina countries like Cuba offered to help the US too being experts in Hurricane releif seeing as they get them and get hit hardest by them more so than pretty much any other country in the world.
Of course, the US turned the offer of support down.
It's presumably either pride, or political, the saying "Cutting your nose off to spite your face" seems to sum it up best.
What do you do about the excess bacteria afterwards? Does the bacteria just magically vanish afterwards taking whatever product they convert the oil into with them?
This solution sounds like Australia's use of the cane toad to protect cane crops, only to end up with a major cane toad problem instead that's killing off the native wildlife.
Exactly, the InfoWorld blogger is an idiot if he doesn't get this.
We can't justify spending thousands on something that not only an absolute minority can access, but likely only a minority of that minority will ever bother to use anyway.
They'd even have had an argument if they'd done it for Symbian, by far the UK's biggest mobile platform, but even that would be a push. The fact they focussed on a minority, but popular device simply demonstrates they just wanted to play around with the latest gadgets rather than focus on actually doing their job. The web is far and away the most sensible option.
But it's something that effects even pseudo-public sector- look at the BBC, their iPlayer app prioritised the iPhone well ahead of any platform, despite being completely against the BBCs requirement of providing equal access to content that license payers pay for.
If it was private sector then that's fine, what they do is upto them, they may still be criticised but it's their choice at the end of the day. Public sector doesn't have that choice, you can't expect people to pay the same taxes and one of them get all the benefits and the other get nothing simply because of their choice of mobile phone particularly if the phone they chose is actually the same as the majority of the rest of the population are using. In public sector it has to be all or nothing- either support iPhone, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, MeeGo or don't do it at all and again, as people have said here a few times, the web is far and away the best platform to do it for all.
I'm sure someone will point out some fringe platform and say "Well should they support that?", no, of course there are fringe cases and they can't be expected to necessarily support 100% of platforms, but they need to make sure they at least cover the majority of the population for this sort of thing- ideally a vast majority, such as around 95% or so.
The only thing I will say is that public sector has had problems with websites too so it's not just a case of switching to the web until they sort out their issues there, one website they created (nothing overly complex, just a standard CMS albeit with lots of content) cost £105 million- how can that even be justified? Most private sector developers are saying they'd have quoted around £50,000 for the same site, maybe up into the hundreds of thousands if they had to employ staff to enter all the content and such, but £105 million? How can you even spend that much money building a website?
So public sector in the UK has a major problem with IT, the iPhone apps are just one facet of it, but sensible web development seems to be the obvious solution in most cases.
That's because they were to hand and were modded down just before I made the reply so were immediately to hand.
But you see, it's not about disagreeing with my own posts- the fact is the information I provided was simply not redundant and was relevant to the discussion at hand, so was an invalid moderation however you cut it. As TheKidWho pointed out, there isn't a disagree moderation yet people use other mods as that, when the correct course of action should be to not moderate it at all if you can't find a category that fits.
For what it's worth I actually do agree when some of my posts get modded down, sometimes I'll admit I have been a dick sometimes and could've put things a bit more reasonably. I'm not debating posts where someone has been a dick though, I'm debating posts in general, and seeing TheKidWho's post get modded troll when it blatantly wasn't is one particular example where I disagree.
Are you suggesting that negative moderations you've received have always been fair, and negative moderations of others posts you've seen have always been fair? Taking a quick look at your posting history, it appears this post got a negative mod unless you posted without karma bonus:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1709000&cid=32810964
It may not be the most exciting post in the world and I may have disagreed with you personally in the past on some subjects, but even I can see there's little reason to mod this post down, in the worst case they should've just passed on by and not modded at all.
I mean, even where this thread has gone now for example could well deserve an off-topic mod, which is fair enough- I can accept that, but otherwise what're the options? Should I myself just use my mod points to mod in a partisan manner in future rather than be objective about it too? If Slashdot's mod system stays as is, it's only going to continue to deteriorate even further.
Or just a better moderation system in general. Unfortunately this is the reality of Slashdot today, where pointing out why DRM is bad will get you modded overrated:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1708570&cid=32808318
Whilst providing additional information that hasn't yet been posted but that demonstrates a valid counter point to the post of the parent you're responding to gets you modded redundant:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1710188&cid=32823226
Just like real democracies, when you let the idiot masses vote, you're bound to get some idiotic results.
I'm not a fan of Apple, and I dislike Cocoa and Objective-C, but you getting moderated troll for making the point you did is just utterly stupid- it was a fair comment. It's just sad that there are people incapable of grasping the concept of moderating a post based on it's merits, rather than based on rabid fanboyism and ignorance.
It seems the best way to get modded up is to post some populist bullshit, that might well be completely and utterly fucking incorrect, but that appeals to the ignorant and uninformed. The problem with democratic moderation is that you basically just end up reinforcing the ideology that becomes dominant and driving away people with other often equally accurate points, so that it basically becomes a self-reassuring wankfest of ignorance.
Still, I carry on reading because every once in a while there are some posts that really are insightful and worth reading, it's just a shame they become ever rarer and rarer.
Well, you're right that there are plants where red wavelength light inhibits flowering, but the likely reason (assuming cannabis isn't a naturally winter flowering plant- that I don't know) your cannabis plants are flowering under longer photoperiods is precisely because they are getting more red light (even from a dominant blue light they will get some). But the fundamental point is the same effect could be achieved if they are summer flowering plants by just giving more red light.
This is the case because phytochromes required to induce flowering react most strongly to red wavelength light- positively to encourage flowering if it's a summer flowering plant, or negatively to inhibit flowering for winter flowering plants. I believe Peppers, at least those from the genus Capsicum, are naturally entirely a summer flowering genus, and so fall into the former category in preferring more red light.
To clarify, the point is not that red light is essential for flowering in every plant, but that it's the fastest way to get most plants to flower. Just as blue lights aren't essential for growth, but that it's the best way to get healthy growth in most plants and to avoid etiolation.
To be fair, I've been behind countless SUV drivers who make these sorts of mistakes even when they're not on phones.
There seems to be few SUV drivers that drive them because they need them, many seem to do so because it's a kind of security blanket- to them it's a nice big vehicle to protect them from their own inability to drive well.
But I do agree, those who use a phone and drive are also much less safe in general. I find even those chatting away with blue tooth headsets on can be quite bad sometimes. Personally, if I'm driving I prefer to concentrate on doing just that, which is probably why the only accidents I've been in have involved two people rear ending me when I've been completely stationary at junctions and so forth and nothing to do with bad driving on my part.
It works this way in the UK too.
Our third party, the Liberal Democrats usually get around 20% - 23% of the vote. This year for the first time ever we had leaders debates on TV for the 3 main party leaders. The Liberal Democrats voterbase skyrocketed, becoming temporarily the largest party in terms of popular support in multiple polls, whilst their support dwindled towards election day a little, they were still clearly up with the other parties in the 29% - 33% bracket.
Yet, come election day they got 23% of the votes. Why? Because everyone fucking bottled it and thought "Hey, I don't want the red team in so I'm voting Blue" and vice versa (the Lib Dems are the yellow team to the uninformed).
For the first time in a hundred years we had a clear opportunity to break the two party state permanently (the Lib Dems would've pushed through electoral reform and fixed the system) and people just bottled it and went back to voting as their dad always told them too, who voted who his dad told him too, and so on, without actually being capable of thinking for themselves.
Still there was somewhat of a silver lining, because of the quirks of the existing system, no party held a majority of parliamentary seats, so a coalition government had to be formed, including the third party in it, meaning they at least got to push through some of their interests, and at least for the first time in decades the fact a coalition government was forced means that we have a government that actually represents more than 50% of the population rather than the usual 30% - 35% or so. The problem is that next election, I suspect we'll be back to business as usual- a two party state.
C#/.NET gives you a good amount of control over the garbage collector such that you can explicitly force garbage collection and so forth:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.gc_members.aspx
It can also be useful to use a using block to determine the scope of an object or objects after which they will be disposed.
Funnily enough, C#/.NET require you know what you're doing too.
As is often the case, people who slag off one language/library or another do so simply because they don't know much about said language/library. If you think the .NET library is like a wrapper around Win32 or even MFC then I'd wager you've not actually got much experience with either because the differences are vast. If anything, the .NET libraries are much closer to Java's standard libraries than anything.
"Prince doesn't understand."
You could've just stopped your post there, it says everything that needs to be said about Prince!