The driving technique is called pulse and glide. What they do is accelerate slowly to a speed, and then take their foot off the gas pedal, coasting for a while, then accelerating again. In the Prius, if you keep the speed below 40mph, the engine shuts off when you are coasting or braking, so by coasting when you hit 40 mph, you are travelling for a distance while using zero fuel. This cycle is how all these people achieve these huge mileage gains. The best cycle is apparently accelerating to 40mph and gliding down to 30 mph for an average speed of 35. This of course means that you aren't getting anywhere fast and you are probably annoying the hell out of everyone else on the road. So its not practical at all in any sort of traffic, and the savings in fuel is a pretty small upside compared to the severe beatings you will receive from other motorists.
* Gee doesn't shipping the first consumer digital cameras count as a new product Mr. Dvorak?
That's partially Dvorak's point though. When Apple was a major player in the digital camera market, it was a very immature market where a company that could tie together off-the-shelf components and offer the camera at a reasonable price could do well. These days, being a player in the digicam business requires competence in optics (traditional camera makers), fabrication of the electronics/memory (companies like Samsung) and/or deep pockets to buy everything required. Apple was able to compete in the camera market then, but it would be a massive boondoggle to try to enter the market now. The fast developing technology and falling prices are nothing compared to the cell phone business. I think Apple sell some iPhones, but they are dreaming if they think that they could be the next SonyEricsson let alone the next Nokia, Moto or Samsung.
The information from CNW is enough to discount the whole concept. Just read through their http://www.cnwmr.com/frequentquestions/company FAQ to see how professional this outfit is.
My personal favourite:
Why don't you do business in Alabama?
We recognize 49 states and the District of Columbia. We do not accept business from Alabama. It'll take more than one beer for any further details.
I was just about to post this myself. The approach that VW is using with CCS makes a lot of sense to me because it recognizes that there are attributes of both diesel and gasoline engines that are desirable and that a combination of these concepts could yield the way forward.
VW already has prototypes using the first generation of these engines including the EcoRacer concept, which is a little roadster that will do 230km/h with an efficiency of 3.4L/100km.
The article dwells on direct injection and turbocharging quite a bit though, and it is valid to mention that VW has been producing these engines for a couple years now, winning a few 'best engine' awards in the process. One important advantage of the FSI (stratified injection) direct injection that VW uses in the 2.0T is that the Air/Fuel mixture is stratified in the cylinder so that the flame front can spread more quickly within the cylinder, which increases efficiency.
I agree though that cooling the cylinder with ethanol vapourization is an important innovation, but it would seem to be a complex addition to an engine. If I'm not mistaken, to take advantage of this, you would need to have a separate, parallel injection system for the ethanol rather than a blended fuel (which we already have). If this is the case, then an engine would need to be substantially revised to allow for dual injectors, and I would image the engine management would have to become much more sophisticated ensure that the ratio of gasoline to ethanol was appropriate throughout the combustion chamber. I would hate to find out what would happen should this system fail, starving the engine of ethanol, presumably causing massive knock issues.
I can't say that I'm too bothered by this. I have had all kinds of headaches with online play over the years, and if Live on Vista works as well as it does on XBOX, then its a welcome change. I think that too often game developers take the online portion of their games for granted because it doesn't generate revenue. Hopefully this is a step forward, not back.
I bought Office 2003 for $39 Canadian through the Microsoft Home Use Program and my mothers company. We got a full copy of Office 2003 Pro (including Publisher and Access), but it was just a disc in a DVD case with a black and white label and a CD Key on the back. Not very impressive, until you think of the savings! I was even impressed that I could install it on both a desktop and laptop with full activation through MS (does that make it 2 $19 copies?:-) )
That was probably the best metaphor for the current situation of the entertainment industry that I've heard. Its pretty clear now that I've seen it, but it never crossed my mind before. Thumbs up!
I would just ignore that live TV is an option. On my setup, I use the tuner in my mythTV box purely for scheduled recordings, and watch live TV with the TV itself. Using the tuner through myth and XBMC doesn't work well enough to make me want to rely on it for daily use. Unless you have a display that lacks a tuner, and have no other option, I'd just say forget it.
I guess what it boils down to for me is that legislation of this type was somewhat untested and new, and there was (rightly) a sunset clause placed on it. To allow that bill to sunset, I would expect that a party that was in favour of it previously should describe how it failed in its initial intent. To me, its something that the RCMP is about to use to help investigate the Air India bombing, and the groups representing the families of the victims of that bombing, and the families of 9/11 victims both feel that it is necessary to maintain this law. To me, it feels like the concern that we all had at the time has faded off, and we are not doing what we reasonably can to respond to the concerns of those families that intimately know the effects of terrorism.
As for the issue of a non-confidence vote, that is different. A non-confidence motion, or the defeat of a budget is by definition a political vote. There is no law that is being created or defeated in those cases. I agree that it was pretty distasteful last year, but this is different. In essence, when it comes to a law-and-order bill that affects the rights of the population, I expect MPs to be on their best behaviour, which neither the Libs or Cons were. What angers me about the Liberals is that they were clearly divided, with many current and former MPs voicing their opinions prior to the vote, but when it came down to it, only one voted against. Liberal MPs have spoken about a vigorous debate in the caucus room, but that's not good enough. That debate, and voicing of opinions should have been reflected in the House.
If every party agreed in the backroom about how they were going to vote, then just quietly went into the house to vote, would that be democratic?
P.S. if you want to read a good article about the undemocratic nature of whipped votes, David Kilgour has a very good one on his website, including a discussion on how to preserve stability once you take off the whip.
I don't recall the question of whether or not to extend this law coming up in the last election. Maybe it was there, in among all the muck slinging. If Dion said last week he would support a Conservative motion to extend it, then flip-flopped, you might have an argument with him. If you intended to vote for him but he flip-flopped, write him a letter telling him why he (or your local Liberal) won't be getting your vote in the next election. I suspect he wasn't going to anyway.
The issue isn't necessarily whether or not it came up in the election, or whether every politician should have to detail their positions on everything, but rather that there must be a much greater level candor from politicians, and less politics. The issue with the flip-flop isn't that Martin campaigned on it in the election, or that Dion talked about it in his campaign, but rather that a large portion of those Liberals voted for it when it became law, and were a part of the government that wrote it. If the law violated the principles of the Charter, then they should have spoken up then. If they were ignored, and it was a matter of people's rights, then they should have voted what they thought was right. For people like Dion, who were there and are now leading voices against that legislation, that's a flip-flop to me. If its a matter of politics, which I think it is, then the Liberals have acted in an undemocratic way for a matter of politics. If it was principle, then they abdicated their responsibilities as MPs because they voted against their conscience. Either way, without a good explanation of what has changed, or how they were wrong at the time, its just not good enough.
While acting in this type of way can be political suicide, its still better to do the right thing. People of principle such as Chuck Cadman are hard to fault, and could gain the respect of their constituents by sticking to their principles. Even someone like Mike Chong, who resigned from cabinet rather than participating in a fad motion about Quebec is hard to assail. To me, that is politics done right. Voting against your own former government's legislation purely to be contrarian while silencing the voices of others exemplifies what is wrong with popular politics.
I was having all kinds of problems with fedora on my laptop mostly relating to very poor powermanagement, and an odd but persistent problem that dropped the connection to my wireless router, and would not allow me to reconnect without rebooting or restarting the network interface.
Anyhow, after reading the falling out with Eric Raymond last week, I decided to give Kubuntu a whirl (had to be Kubuntu, as I'm a devout KDE fan). I could not believe how well it worked. I think that booting from the live DVD gave me a more functional hardware configuration than I was able to achieve manually on Fedora. Aside from the issue of having to delete my / partition to get the installer to play nice, its been a breeze ever since. I cannot say that I have had to fiddle with any config files or mess around with hacks like ndiswrapper or copying windows firmware to get WiFi working. I had my system running in about half the time that a fresh install of Fedora would take (or perhaps less). The icing on the cake was that I was able to do a full update in Adept with some extra apps loaded as well in less time than it would take yumex to get to the 'Are you sure?' window.
Two thumbs way up for Kubuntu!
Why not just have the ability for the public to comment on prior art? Leave the application process approximately the way it is, and just post the approved patents online (as they do now), but allow individuals or corporations to send in a notice describing their prior art if it exists. If a member of the public sees an application and knows that prior art exists, then they can simply notify the person in question. This is far from perfect, but it is a relatively simple mechanism to prevent some of the more ridiculous patents in a way that would not cause a flood of correspondence for the Office to deal with. Once a reasonable period has passed, perhaps 30 days, then the patent would be finalized.
Quoting Parent:
I don't think this is undemocratic. The voter makes his or her choice on election day, often based on which party the person they are voting for belongs to. I would be very unhappy if my MP decided to go renegade and do something completely contrary to what I expected of him when I voted for him. Then again, maybe I feel that way because of who my MP is.
But by this argument, doesn't that make it even more wrong for a Liberal MP to vote against a law that they developed and passed? A voter would expect a Liberal MP who had previously voted for this to continue to support it. This the reason that I am particularly hard on the Liberal when it comes to this issue. The Conservatives, NDP and Bloc all stayed with their initial positions, while the Liberals pulled an about face officially, with many MPs and former cabinet ministers speaking in favour of the legislation. Even the deputy leader (Iggy) has mentioned that he would have liked to come to an agreement on this in order to maintain this anti-terrorism provisions. However, at least partially as a result of Harper's asshole move lastweek in regards to Mr Bains, the Liberals decided to vote against renewing the bill, not as a matter of civil liberties, or in conformance with their previous stance, but because they thought that they could score some political points. So, is it a matter of Liberal principles or Liberal politics. If the Liberals are willing to let this die for the same crass, political aims that the Conservatives had for setting up this confrontation, then how are they any better? Dion speaks about policy and principles, but I've seen a lot more politicking out of him than anything else.
If you are impressed with an extender, then you must not have tried XBMC:). That program was in itself impressive enough to me to cause me to end a boycott of (then) new consoles, and to buy a modchip the day I bought my XBOX. I haven't played a game on my XBOX in weeks, but I use XBMC almost daily. I use my older desktop computer with MythTV to record TV from cable, and access it with the XBOX in my living room. I know that an extender can do all these things as well, but I can also stream virtually anything that I download online, listen to web radio, download movie trailers from Apple, among other things. The only way that it could be better would be to allow for easy streaming of music from an iPod.
WHY??? Why did you lead me to read Garth's blog?? WHY!?!?!?!
What a pile of BS. Its funny that he claims that there was no influence by the whip in the Liberal caucus, but that Jay Hill was busy on the gov't side. Its odd that this directly contradicts every media report on the situation. To quote Warren Kinsella about the downfall of the Liberal Party lately: "[There's been a shify], how Tories used to be (ie., eat the leader, factional, divided, disputatious) and how the Grits used to be (ie., the leadership principle always prevailed, united, disciplined, organized) [are] now reversed."
You will never learn anything remotely interesting about inside politics by reading the blogs of MPs. Stick to the professionals, for whom the accuracy of the reporting is what matters, rather than the spin.
Which is why a group of people challenged some of the provisions of this legislation, and the Supreme Court found while it did impinge on some charter rights, it was still lawful. I was satisfied by that process. There are many situations where rights of an individual are balanced against the well being or rights of society. The mechanisms that protect the rights of individuals and minorities were used in relation to this legislation, and the law made it through.
Also significant in the political context is that the Liberal Party is deeply divided by this issue. I am sad to say that it is also largely along linguistic and ethnic lines. Senior Liberals in English Canada such as former ministers like John Manley and Anne McLellan, as well as current members such as Bob Rae argue that this legislation was necessary, while a large number of French civil libertarian MPs as well as minority MPs representing ethnic communities argued against it.
To resolve this imbalance, Dion used the sledgehammer of Liberal party discipline and invoked a 'three line whip' which basically means that Liberals voting with the gov't on this bill would be subject to harsh party discipline up to expulsion from caucus, expulsion from the party, or refusal of the leader (Dion) to sign nomination papers. This virtually means that any Liberal MP voting against this would basically be ending their career as a Liberal MP.
Both the Liberals and the Conservatives played politics on this, and I dislike it about both of them, but for the Liberals to force their members to vote in this way is undemocratic in my opinion. They make a big stink about protecting civil liberties by striking down a law that passed constitutional review by the Supreme Court, and act in an undemocratic way to do this, violating other civil liberty principles.
This is the dumbest thing I've seen posted on/. in a very long time. Lets suppose that you are right, and they are conducting this research. First, the genetic differences between races is very slight, and those very slight differences would be as hard to identify as they would be to target in a method that would kill the enemy (instead of just changing their skin colour). Second, there is such a thing as an Arab with Israeli citizenship, and those people would be killed in the process. Systematically killing an undesirable portion of the population is something that Israelis would likely be VERY against (otherwise it would be a tad hypocritical otherwise, no?). Lastly, there existence of Arabs and Jews in Palestine prior to the formation of the state of Israel would indicate that there is probably a degree of homogeneity between those pre-existing populations. So, if this were true, the Israelis are looking for something that would fit in the eye of a needle in a haystack, would commit genocide (thats a tough pill to swallow for victims of a genocide) and could wipe out a portion of the Jewish population as well.
Or, you could be talking out of your a$$ and just fear mongering.
Except that you are wrong. The issue was never with how the price was calculated, just that the herd of idiots that staff the call centre see $0.002 and interpret that as "zero point zero zero two cents". The price is in fact 0.002 dollars, which converts to $2.05 per meg. He did his math correctly, and the verizon computer calculated the charges correctly, but the people working the phones quoted the wrong price. All he is saying is that if the price was stated per megabyte, then the staff would be less likely to quote the price incorrectly over the phone. He's hoping that if they saw $2.05/megabyte on their screen rather than $0.002/kilobyte that they would be able to accurately report the price they see on the screen to the customer.
That's the issue here in Canada, where people pay a levy on blank CDs, MP3 players, etc, and thus treat it like a blanket licence. With the added incentive of the courts so far protecting us from the RIAA lawyers, piracy is pretty common. Having said that, most of the stuff I have on my iPod is purhased, but certainly not all of it. There are tracks that are hard to find that I have downloaded.
At any rate, a blanket fee paid on every device/piece of media is an incentive to piracy and a (ill-concieved) money grab on the part of the record industry
Or it will work in the opposite sense. Its hard to argue against research that can cure cancer. There has been a lot of talk about the use of stem cells to treat inherited disease, but thats largely something that only those unfortunate enough to suffer from that disease would favour (or publicly advocate). Cancer on the other hand is something that everyone can relate to, and everyone knows a victim of. If you told even the most ardent Bush supporter if they are willing to do whatever they can to cure cancer, I doubt they would be willing to say no.
I figured I'd chime in here as a Western Engineering Student, who had Prof. Kopp last year, let you know what he was up to in the Fall. Kopp only taught the second half of my course because the first half of the year (during Hurricane season) he went to New Orleans to study the devistation.
This project isn't meant to make a perfectly hurricane resistant house (though, you could try based on the results). As far as I know, the aim is to find what little things can be done to the average house to improve the chances of survival for the house, or at least the people in it. In the example of nailing trusses to the walls of the house, anyone who's actually been there to see or nailed a truss can attest to how weak that connection can be, and one possible change is to mandate exactly how the trusses need to be nailed, and perhaps develop a new nailing plate to ensure that the placement of the nail is exact each time (if there is a steel plate on each truss with only one hole, you know where the nail is going).
Also, for anyone wondering "why Western Ontario?", UWO is home to a very well respected wintunnel lab, which has tested many very well known buildings (Athens Olympic Stadium, CN Tower, numerous tall buildings in China to name a few). You can take a look here: http://www.blwtl.uwo.ca/Public/Home.aspx
Slashdot Mirror
The driving technique is called pulse and glide. What they do is accelerate slowly to a speed, and then take their foot off the gas pedal, coasting for a while, then accelerating again. In the Prius, if you keep the speed below 40mph, the engine shuts off when you are coasting or braking, so by coasting when you hit 40 mph, you are travelling for a distance while using zero fuel. This cycle is how all these people achieve these huge mileage gains. The best cycle is apparently accelerating to 40mph and gliding down to 30 mph for an average speed of 35. This of course means that you aren't getting anywhere fast and you are probably annoying the hell out of everyone else on the road. So its not practical at all in any sort of traffic, and the savings in fuel is a pretty small upside compared to the severe beatings you will receive from other motorists.
That's partially Dvorak's point though. When Apple was a major player in the digital camera market, it was a very immature market where a company that could tie together off-the-shelf components and offer the camera at a reasonable price could do well. These days, being a player in the digicam business requires competence in optics (traditional camera makers), fabrication of the electronics/memory (companies like Samsung) and/or deep pockets to buy everything required. Apple was able to compete in the camera market then, but it would be a massive boondoggle to try to enter the market now. The fast developing technology and falling prices are nothing compared to the cell phone business. I think Apple sell some iPhones, but they are dreaming if they think that they could be the next SonyEricsson let alone the next Nokia, Moto or Samsung.
My personal favourite:
VW already has prototypes using the first generation of these engines including the EcoRacer concept, which is a little roadster that will do 230km/h with an efficiency of 3.4L/100km.
The VW press release about it is here: http://www.volkswagen-media-services.com/medias_pu blish/ms/content/en/pressemitteilungen/2005/10/19/ in_a_nutshell__the.standard.gid-oeffentlichkeit.ht ml
and here is a Test Drive from Automobile: http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/0605_20 06_volkswagen_ecoracer_concept/
There was also a clip on Fifth Gear of it in season 9
I agree though that cooling the cylinder with ethanol vapourization is an important innovation, but it would seem to be a complex addition to an engine. If I'm not mistaken, to take advantage of this, you would need to have a separate, parallel injection system for the ethanol rather than a blended fuel (which we already have). If this is the case, then an engine would need to be substantially revised to allow for dual injectors, and I would image the engine management would have to become much more sophisticated ensure that the ratio of gasoline to ethanol was appropriate throughout the combustion chamber. I would hate to find out what would happen should this system fail, starving the engine of ethanol, presumably causing massive knock issues.
I can't say that I'm too bothered by this. I have had all kinds of headaches with online play over the years, and if Live on Vista works as well as it does on XBOX, then its a welcome change. I think that too often game developers take the online portion of their games for granted because it doesn't generate revenue. Hopefully this is a step forward, not back.
I bought Office 2003 for $39 Canadian through the Microsoft Home Use Program and my mothers company. We got a full copy of Office 2003 Pro (including Publisher and Access), but it was just a disc in a DVD case with a black and white label and a CD Key on the back. Not very impressive, until you think of the savings! I was even impressed that I could install it on both a desktop and laptop with full activation through MS (does that make it 2 $19 copies? :-) )
That was probably the best metaphor for the current situation of the entertainment industry that I've heard. Its pretty clear now that I've seen it, but it never crossed my mind before. Thumbs up!
I would just ignore that live TV is an option. On my setup, I use the tuner in my mythTV box purely for scheduled recordings, and watch live TV with the TV itself. Using the tuner through myth and XBMC doesn't work well enough to make me want to rely on it for daily use. Unless you have a display that lacks a tuner, and have no other option, I'd just say forget it.
As for the issue of a non-confidence vote, that is different. A non-confidence motion, or the defeat of a budget is by definition a political vote. There is no law that is being created or defeated in those cases. I agree that it was pretty distasteful last year, but this is different. In essence, when it comes to a law-and-order bill that affects the rights of the population, I expect MPs to be on their best behaviour, which neither the Libs or Cons were. What angers me about the Liberals is that they were clearly divided, with many current and former MPs voicing their opinions prior to the vote, but when it came down to it, only one voted against. Liberal MPs have spoken about a vigorous debate in the caucus room, but that's not good enough. That debate, and voicing of opinions should have been reflected in the House.
If every party agreed in the backroom about how they were going to vote, then just quietly went into the house to vote, would that be democratic?
P.S. if you want to read a good article about the undemocratic nature of whipped votes, David Kilgour has a very good one on his website, including a discussion on how to preserve stability once you take off the whip.
I don't recall the question of whether or not to extend this law coming up in the last election. Maybe it was there, in among all the muck slinging. If Dion said last week he would support a Conservative motion to extend it, then flip-flopped, you might have an argument with him. If you intended to vote for him but he flip-flopped, write him a letter telling him why he (or your local Liberal) won't be getting your vote in the next election. I suspect he wasn't going to anyway.
The issue isn't necessarily whether or not it came up in the election, or whether every politician should have to detail their positions on everything, but rather that there must be a much greater level candor from politicians, and less politics. The issue with the flip-flop isn't that Martin campaigned on it in the election, or that Dion talked about it in his campaign, but rather that a large portion of those Liberals voted for it when it became law, and were a part of the government that wrote it. If the law violated the principles of the Charter, then they should have spoken up then. If they were ignored, and it was a matter of people's rights, then they should have voted what they thought was right. For people like Dion, who were there and are now leading voices against that legislation, that's a flip-flop to me. If its a matter of politics, which I think it is, then the Liberals have acted in an undemocratic way for a matter of politics. If it was principle, then they abdicated their responsibilities as MPs because they voted against their conscience. Either way, without a good explanation of what has changed, or how they were wrong at the time, its just not good enough.
While acting in this type of way can be political suicide, its still better to do the right thing. People of principle such as Chuck Cadman are hard to fault, and could gain the respect of their constituents by sticking to their principles. Even someone like Mike Chong, who resigned from cabinet rather than participating in a fad motion about Quebec is hard to assail. To me, that is politics done right. Voting against your own former government's legislation purely to be contrarian while silencing the voices of others exemplifies what is wrong with popular politics.
I was having all kinds of problems with fedora on my laptop mostly relating to very poor powermanagement, and an odd but persistent problem that dropped the connection to my wireless router, and would not allow me to reconnect without rebooting or restarting the network interface. Anyhow, after reading the falling out with Eric Raymond last week, I decided to give Kubuntu a whirl (had to be Kubuntu, as I'm a devout KDE fan). I could not believe how well it worked. I think that booting from the live DVD gave me a more functional hardware configuration than I was able to achieve manually on Fedora. Aside from the issue of having to delete my / partition to get the installer to play nice, its been a breeze ever since. I cannot say that I have had to fiddle with any config files or mess around with hacks like ndiswrapper or copying windows firmware to get WiFi working. I had my system running in about half the time that a fresh install of Fedora would take (or perhaps less). The icing on the cake was that I was able to do a full update in Adept with some extra apps loaded as well in less time than it would take yumex to get to the 'Are you sure?' window. Two thumbs way up for Kubuntu!
Why not just have the ability for the public to comment on prior art? Leave the application process approximately the way it is, and just post the approved patents online (as they do now), but allow individuals or corporations to send in a notice describing their prior art if it exists. If a member of the public sees an application and knows that prior art exists, then they can simply notify the person in question. This is far from perfect, but it is a relatively simple mechanism to prevent some of the more ridiculous patents in a way that would not cause a flood of correspondence for the Office to deal with. Once a reasonable period has passed, perhaps 30 days, then the patent would be finalized.
Quoting Parent: I don't think this is undemocratic. The voter makes his or her choice on election day, often based on which party the person they are voting for belongs to. I would be very unhappy if my MP decided to go renegade and do something completely contrary to what I expected of him when I voted for him. Then again, maybe I feel that way because of who my MP is. But by this argument, doesn't that make it even more wrong for a Liberal MP to vote against a law that they developed and passed? A voter would expect a Liberal MP who had previously voted for this to continue to support it. This the reason that I am particularly hard on the Liberal when it comes to this issue. The Conservatives, NDP and Bloc all stayed with their initial positions, while the Liberals pulled an about face officially, with many MPs and former cabinet ministers speaking in favour of the legislation. Even the deputy leader (Iggy) has mentioned that he would have liked to come to an agreement on this in order to maintain this anti-terrorism provisions. However, at least partially as a result of Harper's asshole move lastweek in regards to Mr Bains, the Liberals decided to vote against renewing the bill, not as a matter of civil liberties, or in conformance with their previous stance, but because they thought that they could score some political points. So, is it a matter of Liberal principles or Liberal politics. If the Liberals are willing to let this die for the same crass, political aims that the Conservatives had for setting up this confrontation, then how are they any better? Dion speaks about policy and principles, but I've seen a lot more politicking out of him than anything else.
If you are impressed with an extender, then you must not have tried XBMC :). That program was in itself impressive enough to me to cause me to end a boycott of (then) new consoles, and to buy a modchip the day I bought my XBOX. I haven't played a game on my XBOX in weeks, but I use XBMC almost daily. I use my older desktop computer with MythTV to record TV from cable, and access it with the XBOX in my living room. I know that an extender can do all these things as well, but I can also stream virtually anything that I download online, listen to web radio, download movie trailers from Apple, among other things. The only way that it could be better would be to allow for easy streaming of music from an iPod.
WHY??? Why did you lead me to read Garth's blog?? WHY!?!?!?! What a pile of BS. Its funny that he claims that there was no influence by the whip in the Liberal caucus, but that Jay Hill was busy on the gov't side. Its odd that this directly contradicts every media report on the situation. To quote Warren Kinsella about the downfall of the Liberal Party lately: "[There's been a shify], how Tories used to be (ie., eat the leader, factional, divided, disputatious) and how the Grits used to be (ie., the leadership principle always prevailed, united, disciplined, organized) [are] now reversed." You will never learn anything remotely interesting about inside politics by reading the blogs of MPs. Stick to the professionals, for whom the accuracy of the reporting is what matters, rather than the spin.
Which is why a group of people challenged some of the provisions of this legislation, and the Supreme Court found while it did impinge on some charter rights, it was still lawful. I was satisfied by that process. There are many situations where rights of an individual are balanced against the well being or rights of society. The mechanisms that protect the rights of individuals and minorities were used in relation to this legislation, and the law made it through.
Also significant in the political context is that the Liberal Party is deeply divided by this issue. I am sad to say that it is also largely along linguistic and ethnic lines. Senior Liberals in English Canada such as former ministers like John Manley and Anne McLellan, as well as current members such as Bob Rae argue that this legislation was necessary, while a large number of French civil libertarian MPs as well as minority MPs representing ethnic communities argued against it. To resolve this imbalance, Dion used the sledgehammer of Liberal party discipline and invoked a 'three line whip' which basically means that Liberals voting with the gov't on this bill would be subject to harsh party discipline up to expulsion from caucus, expulsion from the party, or refusal of the leader (Dion) to sign nomination papers. This virtually means that any Liberal MP voting against this would basically be ending their career as a Liberal MP. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives played politics on this, and I dislike it about both of them, but for the Liberals to force their members to vote in this way is undemocratic in my opinion. They make a big stink about protecting civil liberties by striking down a law that passed constitutional review by the Supreme Court, and act in an undemocratic way to do this, violating other civil liberty principles.
This is the dumbest thing I've seen posted on /. in a very long time. Lets suppose that you are right, and they are conducting this research. First, the genetic differences between races is very slight, and those very slight differences would be as hard to identify as they would be to target in a method that would kill the enemy (instead of just changing their skin colour). Second, there is such a thing as an Arab with Israeli citizenship, and those people would be killed in the process. Systematically killing an undesirable portion of the population is something that Israelis would likely be VERY against (otherwise it would be a tad hypocritical otherwise, no?). Lastly, there existence of Arabs and Jews in Palestine prior to the formation of the state of Israel would indicate that there is probably a degree of homogeneity between those pre-existing populations. So, if this were true, the Israelis are looking for something that would fit in the eye of a needle in a haystack, would commit genocide (thats a tough pill to swallow for victims of a genocide) and could wipe out a portion of the Jewish population as well.
Or, you could be talking out of your a$$ and just fear mongering.
Except that you are wrong. The issue was never with how the price was calculated, just that the herd of idiots that staff the call centre see $0.002 and interpret that as "zero point zero zero two cents". The price is in fact 0.002 dollars, which converts to $2.05 per meg. He did his math correctly, and the verizon computer calculated the charges correctly, but the people working the phones quoted the wrong price. All he is saying is that if the price was stated per megabyte, then the staff would be less likely to quote the price incorrectly over the phone. He's hoping that if they saw $2.05/megabyte on their screen rather than $0.002/kilobyte that they would be able to accurately report the price they see on the screen to the customer.
That's the issue here in Canada, where people pay a levy on blank CDs, MP3 players, etc, and thus treat it like a blanket licence. With the added incentive of the courts so far protecting us from the RIAA lawyers, piracy is pretty common. Having said that, most of the stuff I have on my iPod is purhased, but certainly not all of it. There are tracks that are hard to find that I have downloaded.
At any rate, a blanket fee paid on every device/piece of media is an incentive to piracy and a (ill-concieved) money grab on the part of the record industry
Or it will work in the opposite sense. Its hard to argue against research that can cure cancer. There has been a lot of talk about the use of stem cells to treat inherited disease, but thats largely something that only those unfortunate enough to suffer from that disease would favour (or publicly advocate). Cancer on the other hand is something that everyone can relate to, and everyone knows a victim of. If you told even the most ardent Bush supporter if they are willing to do whatever they can to cure cancer, I doubt they would be willing to say no.
I figured I'd chime in here as a Western Engineering Student, who had Prof. Kopp last year, let you know what he was up to in the Fall. Kopp only taught the second half of my course because the first half of the year (during Hurricane season) he went to New Orleans to study the devistation.
This project isn't meant to make a perfectly hurricane resistant house (though, you could try based on the results). As far as I know, the aim is to find what little things can be done to the average house to improve the chances of survival for the house, or at least the people in it. In the example of nailing trusses to the walls of the house, anyone who's actually been there to see or nailed a truss can attest to how weak that connection can be, and one possible change is to mandate exactly how the trusses need to be nailed, and perhaps develop a new nailing plate to ensure that the placement of the nail is exact each time (if there is a steel plate on each truss with only one hole, you know where the nail is going).
Also, for anyone wondering "why Western Ontario?", UWO is home to a very well respected wintunnel lab, which has tested many very well known buildings (Athens Olympic Stadium, CN Tower, numerous tall buildings in China to name a few). You can take a look here: http://www.blwtl.uwo.ca/Public/Home.aspx