The only way it would affect anything is if these particular 7% of voters were concentrated only in the swing ridings, where the races are within a couple votes. If they were evenly distributed across the country, since we have the first past the post system, I doubt it would affect much.

In my neck of the woods, in the Taché riding in SE Manitoba, no matter who you vote for, the Conservatives win, because their candidate, Vic Toews, is a senior cabinet member. He was the Justice Minister for a while, but I think he's head of the Treasury Board now. People like that. They want their local MP to be an important person. No one has ever heard of any of the other candidates on the ballot. The Greens got like 200 votes last time around, Liberals a couple thousand, NDP less, but Toews takes the cake every time (he had something like 12,000-15,000 votes). AFAIK the majority of the population in Taché are Mennonites and they usually always stick to their kind in business, pleasure and politics, so Toews winning every time is no surprise at all. Hell, the guy had an affair publicly disclosed and it still didn't affect his popularity at all, and that's a VERY BIG no-no for a Mennonite, let me tell you. A 7% increase in Liberal votes wouldn't even dent Toews' lead, which is usually at least double what the next best candidate gets.

But yeah, like you said, with this minority government, where an election could be called at any time over any issue at all, even copyright, all it takes is a couple seats in the election for the opposition to get enough of them to be able to force the hand of the ruling party and make sure everyone works together for a consensus. They've been fairly successful at this the last couple times around, with a few exceptions, but they need to get their acts together. IMHO, the NDP need new leadership, and the Liberals need to figure out what the hell they're doing too in that area, and the Greens really need to step up their campaign and advertise just as much as the big 3. They were pretty quiet last time, but I was happy to see Elizabeth May in the CBC debate, that was really good.

Anyway, I think all of our governments should minorities really, since they actually have to work together and agree to get anything done, and coming to an agreement means they (should) have to take the views of the entire population into account. I also wish they, and every other government around the world, would stop using emotionally charged issues, such as kiddie porn, to pass crappy laws no one would even consider if it didn't have that label attached to it. Oh, we're still allowed to dream right?

I don't think Stephen Harper reads Slashdot, but one can always hope...

We passed this type of legislation in Canada a couple of years ago. Amongst other things, it limits campaign contributions to citizens and permanent residents to a maximum of $1000/year (inflation adjusted). I'm not sure if it restricts your donations to the candidates fighting to represent you, or whether you can donate to anyone across the country, but $1000 is the limit.

I also worked at a pizza joint for a few months in high school. We cut ours in squares. Most places around here cut pizzas into squares. I prefer this method since it's much easier to eat because of the smaller pieces. If you go in to Pizza Hut, they cut them into the standard slices usually, but for takeout and delivery, most places do squares.

I also neglected to mention glow plugs.

When it's below a certain temperature outside, the glow plugs come on prior to starting. On my car there is one glow plug in each cylinder and 3 in the cooling jacket. If it's really cold, they will stay on for up to about 10 seconds. They create a hot spot in the cylinders to entice the diesel to ignite. In the absence of a place to plug in the Zerostart (like my parking lot at work), they make all the difference between being able to start the car and being stranded.

My apologies! I forgot that this is a global forum and I didn't really explain that as thoroughly as I should have. If you don't live anywhere near where it's below freezing for months at a time, you've likely never seen a plug hanging off the front of a car.

It's like any regular engine block heater, it plugs into the wall. In case you've never heard of a block heater, it's a heating element that is inserted into one of the freeze plugs in the engine's cooling jacket to warm the coolant in the engine when plugged into the wall, no battery power required. These typically operate at about 400W. VW's TDI engines from 1999.5 onward have no freeze plugs (I don't know why), so we have to do things a bit differently. I've got mine on a timer that starts at 4am and runs till 8am. That's all it needs really.

Thanks for providing that link. That engine is fascinating. It's like a 4 cylinder in 2 cylinders. They are also developing a turbo that incorporates an electric motor to provide supercharging at lower rpms before the exhaust velocity is high enough to drive the compressor. Very interesting company to say the least!

That's why pretty much any TDI owner in the colder climes with 2 brain cells in his/her head installs a Temro Zerostart coolant heater (a.k.a. Frostheater if you buy the kit from them). You can get 750W, 1000W and 1500W and they go right in-line with the oil cooler in the coolant hose circuit. Most people use the 1000W model, including myself. I've been using mine for about a week now and the car starts like you just shut it off, at operating temperature (90 Celcius, 190 Fahrenheit) no less! Don't worry about leaving it plugged in too long because it's got a built in thermostat.

VW does have an OEM kit, but it's like $189 and it's only 450W, but apparently they work quite well. The heater is made by Calix. However, the Zerostart kit, with all the hoses and everything you need to install it, will cost you around $100 and it does a much better job.

Lots of cheap stealerships install a crappy stick on oil pan heating element. Those are usually 125W but you can get 250W models. They are more expensive than the Zerostart setup and burn out relatively quickly. They are also a potential fire hazard.

I've got a 2002 Jetta TDI myself, but I like to be able to hear my engines. In fact I've advanced the injection timing at idle 5 from stock (which on mine was 0.6 BTDC at idle). This gives me much better fuel economy and a bit more power too. All you need is a Ross-Tech VAG-COM or equivalent $20 Ebay knockoff and it takes about 2 minutes to do, all on the computer. The motor will immediately sound different, better in my opinion, but it is louder and actually sounds like a diesel afterwards. It's also completely reversible if you don't like it, but I suspect the few extra MPG you'll get will more than make up for it.

The quick and dirty howto is: With the car running, plug in the VAG-COM to the computer and the OBD2 port, open up the VAG-COM software, click Engine, login with 12233, click Adaptation, pick Channel 3, 4 or 5 (can't remember off the top of my head) and you will see the injection timing BTDC and a couple other measurements. Add 100 to the default of 32768 for each degree of advance you want. The maximum is 5 degrees in software, any more and you have to rotate the injection pump under the hood (not for beginners!). It's fine grained so you could go 1.25 degrees if you want by adding 125. I just added 500 (33268) and tested and saved. That's it. Your fuel economy instantly improves. If you don't like it, set it back to 32768 and save it, and your motor will go back to sounding like it did before.

NB: You can only do this on the injection pump style motor, the venerable ALH, which was installed from 1999.5 to 2003. The PD style motors (BRM, BEW, BHW) were installed from 2004-2006.5 and you can't do this adaptation. On the newer common rail motors (CBEA) it's also not possible (2009+). I'm talking North American engines and model years here, I'm not well versed on the European models.

Either way, check out the TDIClub if you're not already a member on the forums. Tons of little tricks and tips to make your TDI'ing much more pleasant. That's where I learned everything I know about them.

As for the newer motors being quieter, yes they are. My mom drives a 2009 TDI and you can barely hear the engine at all from inside the car. Standing outside next to it, it's barely noticeable that it's even a diesel. Tons of power and can VERY easily get you into trouble with radar-wielding cops.

I still use XBMC on my original Xbox for watching movies and TV shows. I have a FreeNAS server serving up the CIFS shares which hold the movies and TV shows and it Just Works. I don't bother with a box to record broadcast TV, I just download the torrents.

The only thing it doesn't do is play HD (720p+), it's just not powerful enough. It still works for Xbox games off the hard drive and all the emulators you can handle. My friends and I still play Bomberman and Dr. Mario a lot on it.

What? Should Slashdot be sued for "tipping" because an article was posted here about it? What about the Wall Street Journal, for writing about their stock reclassification? Sue them too?

When it goes public, everyone has the same opportunity to buy it, at the same time no less. What kind of advantage could one gain from knowing about it ahead of time? It goes public when it goes public, not one minute beforehand.

Ever use a Blackberry Storm 9500/9530? It's a touch screen/giant button. There's one button behind the screen and you have to click it down to register a button press. It works ok, but apparently the Storm 2 (9520/9550) is much better in that regard. There are apparently 4 screen buttons, one in each corner and it allows multiple simultaneous button presses, making it much easier to type. The first iteration only allows one at a time. You can do multitouch for things like selecting text, and there used to be a flick-scrolling bug in one of the earlier OS 5.0 leaks that let you scroll down a page about half way if you held 2 fingers on the screen for a moment, but that's been fixed in the official 5.0 release. It was awesome for zipping to the bottom of EULAs hehe.

That being said, I've never used or seen a Storm 2 and I own a Storm 1. It's hard to type without looking, but I'm getting the hang of it. When it comes time to upgrade it, I'm going with a keyboard device, likely the latest version of the Bold or whatever's best at the time. My buddy has a Bold 9000 and it's really nice. I like buttons. Another friend is debating getting a Blackberry and I've recommended against the Storm in favour of a model with a keyboard, like a Curve, Bold or Tour, depending on the operator he chooses. The ones with the new optical trackpads are fantastic.

Sorry if that sounds fanboi-ish but I happen to really like Blackberries and I'm happy I have one, despite the ridiculous monthly bill.

Not really following the funny thread, but this reminded me.. Near Trafalgar there's a decent pizza joint called Fire & Stone. They have lots of different kinds of pizzas. It's fairly cheap (for London) and tastes good, so if you're in the area and hungry, check it out.

Also, don't go everywhere by tube, you won't see anything. Take the bus sometimes, or even walk. We walked from the Winston Churchill bunker (near Buckingham Palace, neat place) to the Imperial War Museum. It took about an hour though, but we got to see a fair bit.

Also if you can skate, you might want to show the Brits how to do it. They're by and large pathetic at it. Last December they had a few outdoor skating rinks set up for people, so they will probably have them again this year. I don't remember where exactly, but if you asked around I'm sure they're not hard to find.

Nevermind changing the entire cord just get a plug adapter, available from any decent travel store in the world, before you leave. Make sure it's grounded (i.e. the long pin is metal not plastic) and has the US/Canada 3 prong socket (not the 2 prong, those are for shavers). Some are universal too and accept European continental plugs and Aussie/NZ slanted ones. UK outlets are pretty well all switched anyways so no chance of a huge spark frying your fingers while trying to plug something in.

Sounds like the approach the UK govt took with BT. They split them up into BT Openreach and BT Phone/Internet. The end result is that the telephone lines are owned by Openreach and every phone company or DSL provider (there are loads) deals with Openreach for access. BT pays the same for access as Tiscali or Be or anyone else. It works well enough from what I can tell (Disclaimer: I'm Canadian but I know a bit about it).