firejump - Slashdot User

Comment Re:German results (Score 1) 674

by firejump on Sunday June 07, 2009 @07:04PM (#28245033) Attached to: Pirate Party Wins At Least One European Parliament Seat

Sadly, we germans somehow think it's a good idea to only allow parties who get >=5% of the votes into our (or the european) parliaments. Might be because of our history (...)

We actually have the same rule in Poland, but as far as I remember the reasoning behind it was that parliament becomes less effective with more parties involved. Just check out what happened the last time the election threshold wasn't in place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_parliamentary_election,_1991

Pirate Party Wins At Least One European Parliament Seat 674

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 07, 2009 @05:44PM from the replace-amateur-clowns-with-professional-clowns dept.

reeeh2000 writes "According to TorrentFreak, with half of polling stations now closed in Sweden, the Pirate Party has at least one guaranteed seat in the EU Parliament. Currently, the party is sitting with 7% of the vote. Depending on how the remaining districts voted, the Pirate Party could win another seat, for a total of two." Reader lordholm adds a link to an article about exit polls in Sweden (link in Swedish) indicating that the Pirate Party will score two seats, writing "According to the polls, the pirate party is the largest party in the 18-30 year age category of voters. The final counting of votes (including around a million postal votes) will not be done until later next week."

Submission + - Aussie prisoners escape lock-in with Ubuntu PCs (itnews.com.au) 1

Submitted by bfire on Monday May 25, 2009 @01:27AM

bfire writes: Prisoners at two jails in Australia have implemented a centrally managed and distributed desktop environment that runs on the Ubuntu OS. Desktops boot from a central server but everything executes in local resources. The desktops are assigned to 'realms', such as a cell block wing, and each realm has a system image (with the Ubuntu OS and all necessary applications) that loads onto the PC at boot and can't be modified. The makers hope the Prison PC could eventually provide a single, centrally-managed device to replace a PC, TV, DVD player and stereo in individual cells. They also hope prison authorities will elect to stream online radio, IP and free-to-air TV, on-demand video such as for education, and even minority religious content using the system in the future. The system is already gaining international interest because it also means that custodians could deny or revoke rights to use parts of it, without having to go to the cell and forcibly remove the kit as punishment.

Submission + - Space Shuttle Atlantis Home After Hubble Repairs (go.com) 1

Submitted by

viyh

on Sunday May 24, 2009 @11:54AM

viyh writes: "Space Shuttle Atlantis came in for a safe landing today at Edwards Air Force Base in California, delayed for two days by bad weather in Florida but little the worse for wear.

"Welcome home, Atlantis," called mission control in Houston. "Congratulations on a very successful mission."

Shuttle commander Scott Altman answered, "Thank you, Houston. That was a thrill from start to finish."

It was the end of perhaps the highest-profile shuttle mission since NASA resumed flying after the 2003 Columbia disaster. It included five complicated spacewalks — lasting more than 36 hours, all told — to replace or repair nine critical Hubble telescope components."

Submission + - World's "fastest" LISP-based web server re 2

Submitted by

Cougem

on Sunday May 24, 2009 @07:45AM

Cougem writes: "John Fremlin has released what he believes to be the worlds fastest webserver for small dynamic content, teepeedee2. It is written entirely in LISP, the world's second oldest high-level programming language. He recently gave a talk at the Tokyo Linux Users Group, with benchmarks, which he says demonstrate that "functional programming languages can beat C". Imagine a small alternative to Ruby on rails, supporting the development of any web application, but much faster."

Submission + - Google Earth Raises Discrimination Issue in Japan 3

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Sunday May 24, 2009 @05:57AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The Times reports that by allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, Google has unwittingly created a visual tool that has prolonged an ancient discrimination says a lobbying group established to protect the human rights of three million burakumin, members of the sub-class condemned by the old feudal system in Japan to unclean jobs associated with death and dirt. "We tend to think of maps as factual, like a satellite picture, but maps are never neutral, they always have a certain point of view," says David Rumsey, a US map collector. Throughout the recent history of the burakumin, the central issue has been identification and some Japanese companies actively screen out burakumin-linked job seekers. Because there is nothing physical to differentiate burakumin from other Japanese and because there are no clues in their names or accent, the only way of establishing whether or not they are burakumin is by tracing their family. By publishing the locations of burakumin ghettos with the modern street map, the illegal quest to trace ancestry is made easier, says Toru Matsuoka, an opposition MP and member of the Buraku Liberation League. Under pressure to diffuse criticism, Google has asked the owners of the woodblock print maps to remove the legend that identifies the ghetto with an old term that translates loosely as "scum town". "We had not acknowledged the seriousness of the map, but we do take this matter seriously," says Yoshito Funabashi, a Google spokesman."

Comment 2005 != 2009 (Score 5, Insightful) 311

by firejump on Friday May 15, 2009 @09:08AM (#27964951) Attached to: Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked

I'm in no way trying to defend Gartner and his study, but I believe there is a huge difference between Linux adoption in 2005 and now. Some slides from the pdf linked in the article suggest that major portions of the study were made even earlier, in 2003. Of course basing any technology-related decisions on such a outdated study is another matter...

Comment Interview with CD Projekt co-founder (Score 4, Informative) 23

by firejump on Thursday April 30, 2009 @08:08AM (#27770953) Attached to: Console Port of <em>The Witcher</em> On Hold

polygamia.pl interviewed Michal Kicinski (CD Projekt co-founder) regarding the issue yesterday: http://polygamia.pl/Polygamia/1,95338,6556537,Ekskluzywny_wywiad_z_Michalem_Kicinskim.html (partial English translation is below the original version).

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