I mean what do you think our government is, a government?

And yes I do realize that's too much to ask from Slashdot readership.

My guess is that Thompson wants their format to be able to sold for lossless downloads, as the formats move that way.

This would be a way for, say, Amazon, to sell lossless downloads and maintain 100% compatibility. Those who care could buy them and then transcode to whatever superior lossless format they wanted to.

Why should a citizen of Alabama's vote count more than a citizen in New York city?

That just seems fundamentally undemocratic.

The Iowa votes still counted towards the popular vote.

The entire thing renders the electoral vote into a formality - it really doesn't matter where the 270 electoral votes come from. Only the popular vote now, matters, and a vote from Iowa still counts towards that popular vote.

People in the majority would benefit from this.

People whose votes have been overvalued in the past due to a bad system will not.

Effectively weighting a rural vote higher than an urban vote strikes me as inherently undemocratic.

no one seems to mind that the Senate is composed of 100 senators, evenly distributed among states as diverse in size and population as California and Rhode Island.

That's because the system is balanced out by the House. There's nothing balancing this out - a less popular president can win because rural voters are being counted more than urban voters.

The Iowa votes still count because they count towards the popular vote, which in turn determines the distribution of a majority of the electoral votes.

How is this hard to understand???? It's getting rid of the electoral college by tying it to the popular vote; the popular candidate wins, no shenanigans. The law only goes into effect if enough states pass the same law, thus insuring that a majority of electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.

Everyone wins in this circumstance. No reasonable human being could possibly object to it, unless you share our forefathers' opinions that the country needs to be protected from the voters.

Iowa isn't going to award all 7 of its votes to the winner of the election in Iowa. That would be "winner take all" as you're complaining.

Instead Iowa will give its 7 electoral votes to the candidate with the most votes *nationwide*. But ONLY if enough states adopt the measure.

That would mean that the candidate with the most votes nationally would always win the electoral vote.

So it's "winner takes all" in the sense that the winner wins, instead of sometimes losing like in recent history.

The vast majority of the music on the Zune store is 320kbps MP3's. I believe 80% was the last number I saw.