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Comment Re:Freedom of Choice (Score 1) 403

Well, people who don't vote along party lines tend to get thrown out of parties here in Canada.

Anyway, there were other reasons to vote against STV. The major reason was that the proposal would have created several super ridings with multiple representatives. Who are you supposed to go to in order to make your opinion heard? What about ridings that cover a large area of rural landscape as well as a few towns? Are the representatives even going to care about rural outliers when most of the voters will be living in towns? Furthermore, there is nothing stopping parties from fielding multiple candidates, and I suspect people would be more likely to just vote along party lines - which would yield even more homogeneous results than the current system, as larger ridings with more people would average the results even more than the first-past-the-post system that we currently have.

Comment Re:The medium (Score 2, Interesting) 321

I disagree strongly with this. Try playing Rendition. You'll probably find it difficult to not feel disgust at your own actions in the game.

The problem isn't the medium of videogames, it is the presentation of the subject matter within the game. But how are we to know whether the presentation in Six Days In Fallujah approached the subject matter effectively (or not), when outcry from people like you prevent such works from being created?

Comment Shanghai team? (Score 1) 281

They talked about how they used the Australia team initially for technology and later for more tasks, but what about the Shanghai team mentioned at the end in the data section? I know it's unlikely that anyone here will know, but I'd love to find out how they coordinated with the artists and designers in that studio, and what they worked on.
Medicine

Software To Improve AIDS Survival? 97

Roland Piquepaille writes "There are more than 33 million people living with HIV worldwide. No cure or vaccine has been unveiled this week in Mexico during the International AIDS Conference. Still, European researchers have developed 'a predictive software system for HIV that could help extend the lives of victims of the killer disease.' The scientists working on the EuResist project have combined HIV databases in Italy, Sweden and Germany, creating what is probably the largest database on AIDS and HIV in the world. Armed with information about more than 18,000 patients, 64,000 therapies, and 240,000 viral mode measurements, the researchers have created new mathematical prediction models, which should soon be available to medical researchers and doctors all over the world."
Music

Would You Rent a Song For a Dime? 580

An anonymous reader writes "What's worse than a padlocking every song so that they will only play on certain devices? How about selling (renting) you songs that work on no devices? Astonishingly, this is what the music industry thinks we need. Warner Music is spending $20 million to back Lala, a startup devising a service to convince people to 'buy' 'web songs' for 10 cents each; these are then kept for safekeeping only by Lala with no download privileges. Industry insider Michael Robertson leaks the facts on this scheme, along with a seekrit URL so you can try it out."

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