It's not always so simple. About a year ago we found that our then 12 year old son was using his Mum's account on her study computer to admire all kinds of porn. Now the kids machine is forced to go through Dan's Guardian, but Jo's isn't, as this would get in the way of her study. But Jo has her windoze screen saver password turned off, so she can walk aay from a papper she's writing, and come back, shake the mouse and restart writing.
Teen Curiosity you think. The trouble was (from my wife and my perspective) that some of the content he was looking at was from the pretty extreme end of human sexual behaviour. We'd talked to the boy pretty frankly about his body, about sex, responsibility, hygiene and health, but there were people inserting things into each other's bodies that I'd never have thought to have mentioned in some of the things he was looking at.
Now I personally don't think that women inserting baseball bats in men's rectums is "normal" sexual behaviour. Call me a prude. But we realised that there are so many things out there that are just sooooo outside anything we could think of talking about (and to be frank, I don't really want to discuss the joys of prostate stimulation with foreign objects to my 13 year old son).
It all came back to school - there was an older boy (18!!!) who was taking great delight in "advising" younger boys to go to certain websites. That kid has been expelled, and has a court order to stay away from schools and p[laygrounds, as a bit of investigation showed that the lad has a history as a 17 year old of gettting heavily involved with 12 year old boys and girls. I accept that kids will have sex, but not with people that are almost adults who have a fetish for objects and 'toys'. But an older kid will alwys be "more informed" and "cooler" than parents.
As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing too extreme when it come to me finding out what my kids are doing on the Internet. I log, monitor, re-direct and block my kids use of the Internet. They can move out at 18 if they don't like it.
And yet Australia, a socialist country where even the political right is left of center, has subsidised medicine, phrama, unemployment benefits, free education etc, has the highest rate of economic growth in the OECD. The stagnation of the countries you name is not because of socialism, but rather the way it has been implemented. Keep in mind that Australia has worked under a socialist system since the 1920s at least, so it's not as if we've not had a good chance to stuff these things up. I think the difference is that here Socialism is seen as a means to ensuring Social Justice, and not as a means to ensure mediocrity and "social leveling". Yes there are some who see Socialism from a purely idological position (some of the hard left Unions for example), but they have little influence where it really counts. It's as if everyone starts from a (relatively) level playing field (there are still inequalities in how we handle our indigenous people as well as a few others though, and you don't want to come here as a refugee, to my great shame), but is encouraged to make the best go of it they can. This same attitude is what affords us sporting success way beyond what our population would lead you to expect. Beware of overbroad generalisations based on ideology and prejudice - Socialism itself is not evil, but rather what can be done with it, much as can occur in a pure capitalist society.
In the recent State Elections, in our electorate, out of 29,424 votes, there were 941 informal votes. Of the ones I saw (I was scrutineering) most of these were either blank or "silly" (votes for Luke Skywalker, Steve Irwin, Peter Brock, James Packer for example), with a very very few being just wrong (multiple "1" votes, putting their names on the vote - that is disallowed in our system, you can't give up your right to an anonymous vote - or confused where votes had been crossed out and overwritten - the voter is entotled to get a replacement if they feel they've made a mistake and it's not in the box yet).
There were also about 3200 voters who didnt vote. Some of these would be people who "forgot" (so genuinely don't care) or who feel that they won't vote and that $50 is a fair price for not caring (so who do care enough to make an active decision not to vote). We had 90.75% voter turnout in our electorate, and given that we have a fairly high number of immigrants who may not be fully aware of the fact that compulsory voting is compulsory(!!) this is a pretty low number by Australian standards. Most people over 30 who didn't vote that I know of are ashamed of the fact.
The vote is a SINGLE, TRANSFERRABLE VOTE, which means that for a ovte to be valind (and ocunted) it must list the voter's preferences from 1 to the last person on the ballot paper. Any missed candidates will render the vote invalid.
That is incorrect. I was scrutineering at the September 9th Queensland elections, and the Act requires either a single cross, a single tick or a single digit "1" inside one of the boxes beside a registered candidate's name for it to be counted as a formal vote, or it requires that the scrutineers agree unanimously that there is a clear and unambiguous display of voting intent.
So a vote with "one candidate gets a 1, and no marks for other candidates", "one 1, one 2 and the rest blank", "a cross and the digits 2 through 5" would all be valid votes according to the Act (note that the requirements were relaxed last year, as in the past you had to either have just one mark OR all boxes numbered!). At our booth there were about 3700 voters checked off, and only 2 of them didnt place a paper vote into the box. 128 votes were informal, including several votes for Luke Skywalker. We had about 10 votes that were not standard "cross, tick or number 1" votes where we (the scrutineers) agreed that the intentions were clear. There were another 3 votes that were much the same but we all agreed the intention was not clear - those votes were counted as informal.
As I understand it, the only reason the GWB is President of the USA is because a heap of votes were counted as informal because they didnt meet the strict definition, and you (Americans) don't have the "clear intent clause". In my opinion this weakens your democracy, but then again I don't have to live in your country (I've been there, done that thank you very much!).
Apart from the ease of voting, keep in mind that many Australians will "reverse vote", where even if they don't have anyone they want to vote for, they ceratinly know who they want to vote against. You simply vote in reverse numerical order with your most disliked candidate getting the largest number. We also have far more parties and candidates than you are used to - it is not unusual to have 5 or 6 candidates on an electoral ticket. In our electorate we had 3 - Labor (the "Left", which actually covers from hard-core Fabians rightwards to fairly central pro-freetrade and capitalism with a strong social justice agenda), the Nationals (historically the Farmers and Rural powers base, a traditionally conservative right-wing party, although they were trying to atract the gay vote this time around which was pretty surprising. I think old Joh was turning in his grave!) and Greens (environmental issues and sustainability, in a general socialist framwork).
The counting method is worth describing to you people across the Pacific: (1) All votes are sorted according to their primary vote, and potential informal votes are examined and either classed informal or allocated unanimously by the scrutineers to a candidate. The votes are then counted. (2) If a candidate has "50 percent plus one vote" or greater for the electorate the process stops, and that candiate is the winner. (3) Otherwise, the votes for the candate with the smallest primary vote are taken and are sorted into those with a second preference shown, and those without. Those without are classed as "exhausted" and are put aside. The votes remaining (for this, the least popular candidate) are then allocated to the candiate in the second preference (seperate piles though!) and are counted. (4) If there is a majority winner (the "50%+1") stop, or else repeat the step (3) with what is now the least popular candate remaining. By the time you have only two candidates left you have to have one candidate with a clear majority.
The beauty of this system is that if you only care enough to say "I want Joe Bloggs and don't care beyond that" then you just vote "1" or a cross or a tick. Or you can vote by giving your relative ranking for as many candiates as you w
Nice?!! Have you ever tried to use it to get anything not handled out-of-the-box done? Yes, it'll do it, but it's a hell of a lot of work. The best thing about Aches is the way it supports IBM hardware. It's a bit hard to see what the value of OSSing it would be, even though there might be a few nice bits here and there to be plucked and used in Linux (although SCOX claims that's already been done doesn't it?).
I'll willingly plead ignorance about your peculiar legal and penal system. Rather than say "'Gitmo' is not typical you fool" keep in mind that here in The Rest Of The World what we know about your prisons are Guantanamo Bay (which horrifies most of us, particularly those from central Europe and the country previously known as CCCP, who have had quite enough of rights-free prisons) and that wonderful "Tent City" prison you have in Texas for Juvenile offenders (which although harsh might help keep them from going back to jail). Look at my original post. We in The Rest Of The World get told repeatedly how you have the world's most Free society, yet what we see are things like Gitmo (imprisonment without charges and trials or basic human rights, as well as the "innocent before proven guilty" principle), Dmitri Sylarov (imprisonment for an act in a country where it wasn't illeagl, and act that was not against a person, and not a violent or malicious act), SCO vs IBM (to which we all say WTF!!), the disenfranchisement of votes where voters made their clear intentions made (Bush was elected because haw many votes were thrown out?).
I really want to know is it as simple as that rights in the USA are directly proportional to ability to pay (just like in certain central american countries), or is there something that we (The Rest Of The World) arn't being shown?
I hope that I'll get a real answer, and not just a jingoistic "haha you illegals will find out" or "don't use atypical examples". Keep in mind that we see a certain view of American Culture, and we'd like to understand.
I'm not in the US illegally, and fail to see why anyone would want to be.
I was actually thinking of a situation where I could be in the USA working as a consultant (as I have before), and the RIAA decide they want me after I login to the Internet using the laptop I use back here at home. Or to look about more widely, at a situation like Dmitri Skylarov faced when in the USA with a perfectly valid visa.
Besides, your jails are not so nice. We know that your prisoners at Guantanamo Bay arn't treated "cushy" (4 months of solitary confinement without charges or trial for example) with "cable TV". I doubt anyone else from Australia wants to join David Hicks in your jails. In our gaols prisoners have the rights we are obligated to give them under our International Agreements.
Is this seriously allowed in the USA? Is this how we people from The Rest Of The World should expect to be treated in the USA, or do you just treat your own citizens this way? If the RIAA case folds due to admitting they have no evidence, does the Dude get recompensed for the insult to him? Do the RIAA get charged with "attempted perversion of justice" or whatever you Americans have as an equivalent? Or is this actually allowed in your "Land of the Free"?
I'm really asking by the way. I'd really like to get some kind of information so that this makes some kind of sense. SCO was wierd, but that was corporation vs corporation. But this is a charge against a living human being.
Perhaps people should look at how this has been handled here in Australia. The definitive court case here was in 1996, where a website's owners were charged under the Federal Anti-Discrimination Act. The finding was that websites must include means for visually impaired people to access information and navigate within a site, unless it can be argued that it is unreasonable to expect that a person with those disabilities would not seek to access that site.
So a web site guide to microscopy would not be required to provide access and navigation for the blind, but almost any retail or public sector sites do. The guidelines are pretty simple - use ALT tags for images that are navigation elements, provide html alternatives for flash video (when it's essential for navigation, or "essential content", plus a few other sensible rules, that would be followed by most devs with good taste and sense anyway.
Charges are brought by the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in response to compliants by consumers. The Commissioner usually informs the owner of the infringing site and allows a chance to remedy the defects before charges are laid. The fines can be in excess of $100,000AUD for Corporations under the Act.
Well, so you're saying "Show me the evidence!" and when he does, you then say "No, show me the other evidence, the one you don't have". A similar logic would be not beleieving matches are dangerous in the hands of young children until you've seen them burn down the house!
Actually there is a staggering amount of evidence of what you ask for in the fossil record, but you won't accept that either. Sigh. As a Christian I am a little upset that so many people try to make our faith look stupid and ignorant, when for most Christians outside the extreme fundies these issues simply dont exist, as they have a view of God where He is revealed by His Creation. As usual, the extremists are the ones who get the press, and not the informed majority.
some of the greatest and most disparate minds and egos on the planet.
And that's the real rub - his ego can be a bit, shall we say awkward. I'd expect you'd need a very thick skin to deal with him on a day to day basis, unless he's mellowed a LOT over time.
You are obviously unaware that "The Internet" is purely an American device, which the USA generously allows other "civilised" countries to use.
As such, it is clear that Wikipedia is way out of line listing uses for products/resources for "uncivilised" regions of the Earth. I suggest everyone start posting on WP to fix these errors - after all, how can you have an "encyclopedia" if it caters to people who arn't the leaders of "Freedom" or "Democracy". I also notice they have references to barbaric religions like "Buddhism", "Islam" and even contains contents that fails to condemn "homosexuality", "Catholicism" and "Evolution".
Please, please, think of the children! Do we really want them to grow up being informed about The Rest of the World?
FYI, the largest selling CPUs are 4, 8 and 16bit machines. There's also a lot of tiny 32bit hybrids (386 class with small memory footprints). For the kinds of jobs a lot of these systems do, DOS variants are ideal. There is still plenty of DOS based software in use, and it'll stay in use as long as it's more economical to use it.
I've found FreeDOS to be pretty compatible, as long as you (ab)use it right. Perhaps you forget the umteen choices on your Dos 6.22 boot menu that you needed to get all jobs done. FreeDOS is the same, there isnt a one-size-fits-all config. And in extreme cases it can be patched to suit, as it's nowhere near as complex as those "whole new OS" you talk about. Let's face it, program load, ports and 13h calls are pretty easy to write for. Not anywhere near as hard as say writing a device driver for a unix clone is.
My suggestion would be to try to geta groove happening in your head when you're out walking. Right away from the kit. The timing thing has to come from your natural rhythms, so you have to learn to be able to feel the timing signals within your body. Once you can keep a steady beat happening inside you as you walk at a steady pace, try things like counting in 5 over 4 (so count 1 2 3 4 5 , so you come back to 1 evey 2nd time your right foot hits the ground. Once you've got that, practice keeping the beat inside you steady while you walk at different paces, changing speeds, stopping and starting. These are all thiings you have to deal with when playing, so learn to keep the time wi5hout the instrument. When you've got it then you'll find your playing will keep time.
I do great as long as I don't have to play with another instrument tells me you're not listening to the "beats" inside (things like your pulse and breathing are a part of it, but it's more than that). You klnow why us old guys have tight grooves when we play (even if it's square dancing and polkas)? It's because we listen to the beats inside ourselvces, and keep time to that. Try it.
So let me get this right...you're not going to look at Firefox 2 because you didnt like 1.5?
isnt that a bit like not liking Sponge Cake because you didnt like Pancakes? The whole idea of a new version is that it's different. There's even a chance that some of the things you didnt like in 1.5 might have been changed.
It might also be that FF2 has features that Konqueror doesnt have.
Finally, if you really want a browser that's light on memory and loads fast then why not use Lynx? Of course, perhaps you're just trying to resurrect the "KDE vs The World" debates of 5 years ago.
I don't buy that at all. I used to play Everquest. Once you've got a toon to level 60, it takes about 40 hours to get the next one to 55, incluing doing things (class specific quests) you didnt do with your last toon. Now if all you do is play the best XP/hour or gold/hour zones and camps, then I guess it'd get pretty boring. But there is a lot of detail and fun to be found in other places. For example, take a group of 6 18-20 players and work the ogre camp in WK - that's a fun camp. And do you know where in EQ you could find frescos illustraing the old-time relationship between the Trolls and the Froggies? Rushing through the game misses out so much, IMHO. I personally found the 60+ game boring, as it was little more than "Raid, camp rare spawn, rinse and repeat", whilst the lower levels gave a great opportunity for Role-Play. I do realise that EQ is no longer even remotely like any kind of Role Playing game though. It became a "beat the system console game" with the "Dungeons of Norrath" expansion, when the last vestiges of a roleplaying game were killed off.
I often had people send me tells asking "Why are you in that zone? Come here to xxx where the XP is great". I'd convince me to come where I was and they end up having fun, although they wouldnt make 1kpp per hour, or a gold bbl per hour.
Don't be so fearful. The world isn't out to get you.
Actually, a lot of the world is out to get you. It's this concept called "self-defense". A lot of people are terribly afraid their country will become the next Granada/Somalia/Iraq/Afghanistan and have taken a page from the USA by attacking pro-actively. I don't believe that the American people deserve that, but I can understand why people feel they need to defend their sovreignity and cultural identity from the "Washington Consensus" school of Globalism and "Free Market".
Ultimately it is up to the American People to decide if they want to keep electing Governments that care more about ideology and Corporate Profits than the needs of its own people, or if they want a country that other nations aspire to emulate. At present most people in other countries desperatly want to avoid becoming like the USA, particularly they wish to avoid at all costs the American version of "Democracy", where the Golden Rule reads "Those with the Gold make all the Rules".
Sigh. So true. For an interesting view see Dr John Hewson's take on Bonsai Howard on the Enough Rope website. All the old school Liberals (even Gorton when he was still alive) have the same view of Lil' Johnnie - Hewson, Peacock and Fraser. I'm not a Liberal supporter - but even I can see that what Howard stands for is not Australian Liberalism.
I'd like to point out that my post was in reply to the claim that we here in Oz are more closely associated with the US and UK than Asia. It is the opinion of many (probably close to 40%) that the clinging to the USA as currently demonstrated by Bonsai Howard (Bonsai - a little Bush) and the UK as demonstrated by Menzies in the 50's are no longer appropriate or helpful to Australia's future growth and security.
Your post does a great job of attacking my points in isolation, but in no way addresses the thesis that "we" do not unanimously "associate ourselves" with the US and UK, and many of us (particularly those of us from the left side of politics) believe we are an Asian nation.
You do raise a good point with In an identity chasm because of previous political issues? Yes, although I would contend that the "identity vaccuum" is more due to the promotion of predjudice and bigotry by the extreme right in the last 15 years in this country.
Australia is as much culturally a part of Asia as Sudan is a part of Europe, and about as far away.
Really? Pulau Selaru (part of Indonesia) is 450km from Darwin. Java (Indonesia) is less than 300 km from Christmas Island (Australia). Tutala, East Timor, is 480km from Bathurst Island, Australia. Sudan is about 1200km from Cyprus, which is the closest part of Europe.
So does "about as far away" mean the same thing as "about 3 times as far away"?
And who is this "We" you are talking about? I'm Australian and I certainly associate much more closely with people from South East Asia and the Pacific Island Nations than I do with the US. The few people I do associate with from the North American continent try to disassociate themselves from the US as well.
Open your eyes, we are an Asian nation. Our largest growth markets are China, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. The biggest buyer of our steel (our biggest export in dollar terms) is Japan.
My kids are taught Asian languages at school, not Spanish. They spell "colour", measure in metric, and share time zones with the Phillipines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Culturaly, Geographically and Economically we are part of Asia. This is not the White Australia age anymore, and Pauline Hanson is not Prime Minister.
You are seeing either American products being sold in countries with "soft" labeling laws, or products that are also exported to the USA. I've also traveled widely, and I can honestly say that kilojoules are the commenest unit for energy content of foods.
And since you've never been here in Oz, I'll inform you that it's illegal for a product packaged in Oz, or made overseas for the Australian market, to be labeled in Calories. Products made in the USA that are specialty imports need to have stickers on them showing the metric nutrition information.
I think there are a few Australian products that have exemptions to be dual labeled as they export to the USA but are small companies that cannot afford to have two different labeling systems, but they are rare exceptions, and only get limited exemptions. They are expected to have seperate print runs of export labels once they've grown their export market to the point they can afford them.
As a completely off-topic note, this somewhat draconian approach to metrification has led to most people under 30 having not a clue what I mean if I say "move it over 6 inches", or "the shop is anout a mile and a half up the highway", as I am old enough to have learnt imperial units, and then to have met metric units at High School. This had led to me also having no idea how big a hectare is (I can visualise an acre), I think volumes over a litre in gallons, volumes under a cup in milliliters or cubic centimeters, and those in between I can visualise in imperial and metric. I have no idea how big a 100kg person is, but I know how big a 12 stone person is.
Tramadol binds to the mu and kappa opioid receptors, so it's definately a narcotic. It is a racemic mixture, and the non-analgesic stereoisomer is an anti-depressant, which is why it can cause serotonin syndrome. The seizures from tramadol are almost certain if you take imodium with it - that might give you a clue as to how that side effect works.
Heroin is the safest opiate for use for pain relief in childbirth as well. It was the first choice in Oz until it was scheduled under pressure from the USA in the late 1960s.
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It's not always so simple. About a year ago we found that our then 12 year old son was using his Mum's account on her study computer to admire all kinds of porn. Now the kids machine is forced to go through Dan's Guardian, but Jo's isn't, as this would get in the way of her study. But Jo has her windoze screen saver password turned off, so she can walk aay from a papper she's writing, and come back, shake the mouse and restart writing.
Teen Curiosity you think. The trouble was (from my wife and my perspective) that some of the content he was looking at was from the pretty extreme end of human sexual behaviour. We'd talked to the boy pretty frankly about his body, about sex, responsibility, hygiene and health, but there were people inserting things into each other's bodies that I'd never have thought to have mentioned in some of the things he was looking at.
Now I personally don't think that women inserting baseball bats in men's rectums is "normal" sexual behaviour. Call me a prude. But we realised that there are so many things out there that are just sooooo outside anything we could think of talking about (and to be frank, I don't really want to discuss the joys of prostate stimulation with foreign objects to my 13 year old son).
It all came back to school - there was an older boy (18!!!) who was taking great delight in "advising" younger boys to go to certain websites. That kid has been expelled, and has a court order to stay away from schools and p[laygrounds, as a bit of investigation showed that the lad has a history as a 17 year old of gettting heavily involved with 12 year old boys and girls. I accept that kids will have sex, but not with people that are almost adults who have a fetish for objects and 'toys'. But an older kid will alwys be "more informed" and "cooler" than parents.
As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing too extreme when it come to me finding out what my kids are doing on the Internet. I log, monitor, re-direct and block my kids use of the Internet. They can move out at 18 if they don't like it.
And yet Australia, a socialist country where even the political right is left of center, has subsidised medicine, phrama, unemployment benefits, free education etc, has the highest rate of economic growth in the OECD. The stagnation of the countries you name is not because of socialism, but rather the way it has been implemented. Keep in mind that Australia has worked under a socialist system since the 1920s at least, so it's not as if we've not had a good chance to stuff these things up. I think the difference is that here Socialism is seen as a means to ensuring Social Justice, and not as a means to ensure mediocrity and "social leveling". Yes there are some who see Socialism from a purely idological position (some of the hard left Unions for example), but they have little influence where it really counts. It's as if everyone starts from a (relatively) level playing field (there are still inequalities in how we handle our indigenous people as well as a few others though, and you don't want to come here as a refugee, to my great shame), but is encouraged to make the best go of it they can. This same attitude is what affords us sporting success way beyond what our population would lead you to expect. Beware of overbroad generalisations based on ideology and prejudice - Socialism itself is not evil, but rather what can be done with it, much as can occur in a pure capitalist society.
In the recent State Elections, in our electorate, out of 29,424 votes, there were 941 informal votes. Of the ones I saw (I was scrutineering) most of these were either blank or "silly" (votes for Luke Skywalker, Steve Irwin, Peter Brock, James Packer for example), with a very very few being just wrong (multiple "1" votes, putting their names on the vote - that is disallowed in our system, you can't give up your right to an anonymous vote - or confused where votes had been crossed out and overwritten - the voter is entotled to get a replacement if they feel they've made a mistake and it's not in the box yet).
There were also about 3200 voters who didnt vote. Some of these would be people who "forgot" (so genuinely don't care) or who feel that they won't vote and that $50 is a fair price for not caring (so who do care enough to make an active decision not to vote). We had 90.75% voter turnout in our electorate, and given that we have a fairly high number of immigrants who may not be fully aware of the fact that compulsory voting is compulsory(!!) this is a pretty low number by Australian standards. Most people over 30 who didn't vote that I know of are ashamed of the fact.
The vote is a SINGLE, TRANSFERRABLE VOTE, which means that for a ovte to be valind (and ocunted) it must list the voter's preferences from 1 to the last person on the ballot paper. Any missed candidates will render the vote invalid.
That is incorrect. I was scrutineering at the September 9th Queensland elections, and the Act requires either a single cross, a single tick or a single digit "1" inside one of the boxes beside a registered candidate's name for it to be counted as a formal vote, or it requires that the scrutineers agree unanimously that there is a clear and unambiguous display of voting intent.
So a vote with "one candidate gets a 1, and no marks for other candidates", "one 1, one 2 and the rest blank", "a cross and the digits 2 through 5" would all be valid votes according to the Act (note that the requirements were relaxed last year, as in the past you had to either have just one mark OR all boxes numbered!). At our booth there were about 3700 voters checked off, and only 2 of them didnt place a paper vote into the box. 128 votes were informal, including several votes for Luke Skywalker. We had about 10 votes that were not standard "cross, tick or number 1" votes where we (the scrutineers) agreed that the intentions were clear. There were another 3 votes that were much the same but we all agreed the intention was not clear - those votes were counted as informal.
As I understand it, the only reason the GWB is President of the USA is because a heap of votes were counted as informal because they didnt meet the strict definition, and you (Americans) don't have the "clear intent clause". In my opinion this weakens your democracy, but then again I don't have to live in your country (I've been there, done that thank you very much!).
Apart from the ease of voting, keep in mind that many Australians will "reverse vote", where even if they don't have anyone they want to vote for, they ceratinly know who they want to vote against. You simply vote in reverse numerical order with your most disliked candidate getting the largest number. We also have far more parties and candidates than you are used to - it is not unusual to have 5 or 6 candidates on an electoral ticket. In our electorate we had 3 - Labor (the "Left", which actually covers from hard-core Fabians rightwards to fairly central pro-freetrade and capitalism with a strong social justice agenda), the Nationals (historically the Farmers and Rural powers base, a traditionally conservative right-wing party, although they were trying to atract the gay vote this time around which was pretty surprising. I think old Joh was turning in his grave!) and Greens (environmental issues and sustainability, in a general socialist framwork).
The counting method is worth describing to you people across the Pacific:
(1) All votes are sorted according to their primary vote, and potential informal votes are examined and either classed informal or allocated unanimously by the scrutineers to a candidate. The votes are then counted.
(2) If a candidate has "50 percent plus one vote" or greater for the electorate the process stops, and that candiate is the winner.
(3) Otherwise, the votes for the candate with the smallest primary vote are taken and are sorted into those with a second preference shown, and those without. Those without are classed as "exhausted" and are put aside. The votes remaining (for this, the least popular candidate) are then allocated to the candiate in the second preference (seperate piles though!) and are counted.
(4) If there is a majority winner (the "50%+1") stop, or else repeat the step (3) with what is now the least popular candate remaining.
By the time you have only two candidates left you have to have one candidate with a clear majority.
The beauty of this system is that if you only care enough to say "I want Joe Bloggs and don't care beyond that" then you just vote "1" or a cross or a tick. Or you can vote by giving your relative ranking for as many candiates as you w
Nice?!! Have you ever tried to use it to get anything not handled out-of-the-box done? Yes, it'll do it, but it's a hell of a lot of work. The best thing about Aches is the way it supports IBM hardware. It's a bit hard to see what the value of OSSing it would be, even though there might be a few nice bits here and there to be plucked and used in Linux (although SCOX claims that's already been done doesn't it?).
I'll willingly plead ignorance about your peculiar legal and penal system. Rather than say "'Gitmo' is not typical you fool" keep in mind that here in The Rest Of The World what we know about your prisons are Guantanamo Bay (which horrifies most of us, particularly those from central Europe and the country previously known as CCCP, who have had quite enough of rights-free prisons) and that wonderful "Tent City" prison you have in Texas for Juvenile offenders (which although harsh might help keep them from going back to jail). Look at my original post. We in The Rest Of The World get told repeatedly how you have the world's most Free society, yet what we see are things like Gitmo (imprisonment without charges and trials or basic human rights, as well as the "innocent before proven guilty" principle), Dmitri Sylarov (imprisonment for an act in a country where it wasn't illeagl, and act that was not against a person, and not a violent or malicious act), SCO vs IBM (to which we all say WTF!!), the disenfranchisement of votes where voters made their clear intentions made (Bush was elected because haw many votes were thrown out?).
I really want to know is it as simple as that rights in the USA are directly proportional to ability to pay (just like in certain central american countries), or is there something that we (The Rest Of The World) arn't being shown?
I hope that I'll get a real answer, and not just a jingoistic "haha you illegals will find out" or "don't use atypical examples". Keep in mind that we see a certain view of American Culture, and we'd like to understand.
I'm not in the US illegally, and fail to see why anyone would want to be.
I was actually thinking of a situation where I could be in the USA working as a consultant (as I have before), and the RIAA decide they want me after I login to the Internet using the laptop I use back here at home. Or to look about more widely, at a situation like Dmitri Skylarov faced when in the USA with a perfectly valid visa.
Besides, your jails are not so nice. We know that your prisoners at Guantanamo Bay arn't treated "cushy" (4 months of solitary confinement without charges or trial for example) with "cable TV". I doubt anyone else from Australia wants to join David Hicks in your jails. In our gaols prisoners have the rights we are obligated to give them under our International Agreements.
Is this seriously allowed in the USA? Is this how we people from The Rest Of The World should expect to be treated in the USA, or do you just treat your own citizens this way? If the RIAA case folds due to admitting they have no evidence, does the Dude get recompensed for the insult to him? Do the RIAA get charged with "attempted perversion of justice" or whatever you Americans have as an equivalent? Or is this actually allowed in your "Land of the Free"?
I'm really asking by the way. I'd really like to get some kind of information so that this makes some kind of sense. SCO was wierd, but that was corporation vs corporation. But this is a charge against a living human being.
Perhaps people should look at how this has been handled here in Australia. The definitive court case here was in 1996, where a website's owners were charged under the Federal Anti-Discrimination Act. The finding was that websites must include means for visually impaired people to access information and navigate within a site, unless it can be argued that it is unreasonable to expect that a person with those disabilities would not seek to access that site.
So a web site guide to microscopy would not be required to provide access and navigation for the blind, but almost any retail or public sector sites do. The guidelines are pretty simple - use ALT tags for images that are navigation elements, provide html alternatives for flash video (when it's essential for navigation, or "essential content", plus a few other sensible rules, that would be followed by most devs with good taste and sense anyway.
Charges are brought by the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in response to compliants by consumers. The Commissioner usually informs the owner of the infringing site and allows a chance to remedy the defects before charges are laid. The fines can be in excess of $100,000AUD for Corporations under the Act.
Well, so you're saying "Show me the evidence!" and when he does, you then say "No, show me the other evidence, the one you don't have". A similar logic would be not beleieving matches are dangerous in the hands of young children until you've seen them burn down the house!
Actually there is a staggering amount of evidence of what you ask for in the fossil record, but you won't accept that either. Sigh. As a Christian I am a little upset that so many people try to make our faith look stupid and ignorant, when for most Christians outside the extreme fundies these issues simply dont exist, as they have a view of God where He is revealed by His Creation. As usual, the extremists are the ones who get the press, and not the informed majority.
some of the greatest and most disparate minds and egos on the planet.
And that's the real rub - his ego can be a bit, shall we say awkward. I'd expect you'd need a very thick skin to deal with him on a day to day basis, unless he's mellowed a LOT over time.
You are obviously unaware that "The Internet" is purely an American device, which the USA generously allows other "civilised" countries to use.
As such, it is clear that Wikipedia is way out of line listing uses for products/resources for "uncivilised" regions of the Earth. I suggest everyone start posting on WP to fix these errors - after all, how can you have an "encyclopedia" if it caters to people who arn't the leaders of "Freedom" or "Democracy". I also notice they have references to barbaric religions like "Buddhism", "Islam" and even contains contents that fails to condemn "homosexuality", "Catholicism" and "Evolution".
Please, please, think of the children! Do we really want them to grow up being informed about The Rest of the World?
FYI, the largest selling CPUs are 4, 8 and 16bit machines. There's also a lot of tiny 32bit hybrids (386 class with small memory footprints). For the kinds of jobs a lot of these systems do, DOS variants are ideal. There is still plenty of DOS based software in use, and it'll stay in use as long as it's more economical to use it.
I've found FreeDOS to be pretty compatible, as long as you (ab)use it right. Perhaps you forget the umteen choices on your Dos 6.22 boot menu that you needed to get all jobs done. FreeDOS is the same, there isnt a one-size-fits-all config. And in extreme cases it can be patched to suit, as it's nowhere near as complex as those "whole new OS" you talk about. Let's face it, program load, ports and 13h calls are pretty easy to write for. Not anywhere near as hard as say writing a device driver for a unix clone is.
My suggestion would be to try to geta groove happening in your head when you're out walking. Right away from the kit. The timing thing has to come from your natural rhythms, so you have to learn to be able to feel the timing signals within your body. Once you can keep a steady beat happening inside you as you walk at a steady pace, try things like counting in 5 over 4 (so count 1 2 3 4 5 , so you come back to 1 evey 2nd time your right foot hits the ground. Once you've got that, practice keeping the beat inside you steady while you walk at different paces, changing speeds, stopping and starting. These are all thiings you have to deal with when playing, so learn to keep the time wi5hout the instrument. When you've got it then you'll find your playing will keep time.
I do great as long as I don't have to play with another instrument tells me you're not listening to the "beats" inside (things like your pulse and breathing are a part of it, but it's more than that). You klnow why us old guys have tight grooves when we play (even if it's square dancing and polkas)? It's because we listen to the beats inside ourselvces, and keep time to that. Try it.
So let me get this right...you're not going to look at Firefox 2 because you didnt like 1.5?
isnt that a bit like not liking Sponge Cake because you didnt like Pancakes? The whole idea of a new version is that it's different. There's even a chance that some of the things you didnt like in 1.5 might have been changed.
It might also be that FF2 has features that Konqueror doesnt have.
Finally, if you really want a browser that's light on memory and loads fast then why not use Lynx? Of course, perhaps you're just trying to resurrect the "KDE vs The World" debates of 5 years ago.
I don't buy that at all. I used to play Everquest. Once you've got a toon to level 60, it takes about 40 hours to get the next one to 55, incluing doing things (class specific quests) you didnt do with your last toon. Now if all you do is play the best XP/hour or gold/hour zones and camps, then I guess it'd get pretty boring. But there is a lot of detail and fun to be found in other places. For example, take a group of 6 18-20 players and work the ogre camp in WK - that's a fun camp. And do you know where in EQ you could find frescos illustraing the old-time relationship between the Trolls and the Froggies? Rushing through the game misses out so much, IMHO. I personally found the 60+ game boring, as it was little more than "Raid, camp rare spawn, rinse and repeat", whilst the lower levels gave a great opportunity for Role-Play. I do realise that EQ is no longer even remotely like any kind of Role Playing game though. It became a "beat the system console game" with the "Dungeons of Norrath" expansion, when the last vestiges of a roleplaying game were killed off.
I often had people send me tells asking "Why are you in that zone? Come here to xxx where the XP is great". I'd convince me to come where I was and they end up having fun, although they wouldnt make 1kpp per hour, or a gold bbl per hour.
Don't be so fearful. The world isn't out to get you.
Actually, a lot of the world is out to get you. It's this concept called "self-defense". A lot of people are terribly afraid their country will become the next Granada/Somalia/Iraq/Afghanistan and have taken a page from the USA by attacking pro-actively. I don't believe that the American people deserve that, but I can understand why people feel they need to defend their sovreignity and cultural identity from the "Washington Consensus" school of Globalism and "Free Market".
Ultimately it is up to the American People to decide if they want to keep electing Governments that care more about ideology and Corporate Profits than the needs of its own people, or if they want a country that other nations aspire to emulate. At present most people in other countries desperatly want to avoid becoming like the USA, particularly they wish to avoid at all costs the American version of "Democracy", where the Golden Rule reads "Those with the Gold make all the Rules".
Sigh. So true. For an interesting view see Dr John Hewson's take on Bonsai Howard on the Enough Rope website. All the old school Liberals (even Gorton when he was still alive) have the same view of Lil' Johnnie - Hewson, Peacock and Fraser. I'm not a Liberal supporter - but even I can see that what Howard stands for is not Australian Liberalism.
Yes indeed. And I've noticed that Canadians go to extreme measures to make sure people know they're from the north of that line.
I'd like to point out that my post was in reply to the claim that we here in Oz are more closely associated with the US and UK than Asia. It is the opinion of many (probably close to 40%) that the clinging to the USA as currently demonstrated by Bonsai Howard (Bonsai - a little Bush) and the UK as demonstrated by Menzies in the 50's are no longer appropriate or helpful to Australia's future growth and security.
Your post does a great job of attacking my points in isolation, but in no way addresses the thesis that "we" do not unanimously "associate ourselves" with the US and UK, and many of us (particularly those of us from the left side of politics) believe we are an Asian nation.
You do raise a good point with In an identity chasm because of previous political issues? Yes, although I would contend that the "identity vaccuum" is more due to the promotion of predjudice and bigotry by the extreme right in the last 15 years in this country.
Australia is as much culturally a part of Asia as Sudan is a part of Europe, and about as far away.
Really? Pulau Selaru (part of Indonesia) is 450km from Darwin. Java (Indonesia) is less than 300 km from Christmas Island (Australia). Tutala, East Timor, is 480km from Bathurst Island, Australia. Sudan is about 1200km from Cyprus, which is the closest part of Europe.
So does "about as far away" mean the same thing as "about 3 times as far away"?
And who is this "We" you are talking about? I'm Australian and I certainly associate much more closely with people from South East Asia and the Pacific Island Nations than I do with the US. The few people I do associate with from the North American continent try to disassociate themselves from the US as well.
Open your eyes, we are an Asian nation. Our largest growth markets are China, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. The biggest buyer of our steel (our biggest export in dollar terms) is Japan.
My kids are taught Asian languages at school, not Spanish. They spell "colour", measure in metric, and share time zones with the Phillipines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Culturaly, Geographically and Economically we are part of Asia. This is not the White Australia age anymore, and Pauline Hanson is not Prime Minister.
You are seeing either American products being sold in countries with "soft" labeling laws, or products that are also exported to the USA. I've also traveled widely, and I can honestly say that kilojoules are the commenest unit for energy content of foods.
And since you've never been here in Oz, I'll inform you that it's illegal for a product packaged in Oz, or made overseas for the Australian market, to be labeled in Calories. Products made in the USA that are specialty imports need to have stickers on them showing the metric nutrition information.
I think there are a few Australian products that have exemptions to be dual labeled as they export to the USA but are small companies that cannot afford to have two different labeling systems, but they are rare exceptions, and only get limited exemptions. They are expected to have seperate print runs of export labels once they've grown their export market to the point they can afford them.
As a completely off-topic note, this somewhat draconian approach to metrification has led to most people under 30 having not a clue what I mean if I say "move it over 6 inches", or "the shop is anout a mile and a half up the highway", as I am old enough to have learnt imperial units, and then to have met metric units at High School. This had led to me also having no idea how big a hectare is (I can visualise an acre), I think volumes over a litre in gallons, volumes under a cup in milliliters or cubic centimeters, and those in between I can visualise in imperial and metric. I have no idea how big a 100kg person is, but I know how big a 12 stone person is.
Tramadol binds to the mu and kappa opioid receptors, so it's definately a narcotic. It is a racemic mixture, and the non-analgesic stereoisomer is an anti-depressant, which is why it can cause serotonin syndrome. The seizures from tramadol are almost certain if you take imodium with it - that might give you a clue as to how that side effect works.
Heroin is the safest opiate for use for pain relief in childbirth as well. It was the first choice in Oz until it was scheduled under pressure from the USA in the late 1960s.