_

The following is a suggestion for the re-organization of FIFA and the re-allotment of World Cup qualifying spots. 1. Combine CONCACAF & Oceania    - move Australia into this group from AFC 2. Move all Arab countries from Asia and Africa into a new group.    - UAFA : an existing body that provides the rudiments of such an organization 3. Qualifying spots:    - 4 for CONCACAF + Oceania    - 3 for AFC    - 3 for UAFA    - 4 for CAF    - 4.5 for CONMEBOL    - 13.5 for UEFA In a related post, an alternative for the World Cup Finals draw is presented.

The FIFA World Cup seeding and draw system has consistently produced groups of death and groups comprised mainly of teams that fail to invoke passion or imagination from fans around the world, except perhaps for such teams' own fans. The latest edition is no exception -- and may even be the worst ever on this measure. An outline of the draw system can be seen here . We have one group which contains Switzerland, Ecuador and Honduras and another consisting of Russia, Algeria and South Korea!! And, on top of this, we have at least three, if not four or more, groups of death. Depending on one's perspective, esp. given the recent rise of African powerhouses, all of the rest of the groups may even be considered Groups of Death!! This is a disservice to football fans around the world, not to mention the skilled and enterprising teams that worked hard to get here. To address this, I propose a simplified draw system : Randomize Pot 1 and assign to Groups Assign remaining Pots t...

The following contains notes from various attempts at migrating 2.5GB of MS SQL Server data to MongoDB, on an 8 GB, quad-core, 64-bit Windows 7 Enterprise machine. [TERMINATED]  http://mssql2mongo.codeplex.com/ : Simple to use. Exponential slowdown observed in migration. For a total of the 50 million records spanning two tables, the following migration times were observed: 1 second for the first 100,000 records,  30 minutes for 1,000,000, 20 hours for 16 million (after which I terminated the process). [DID NOT WORK] http://rubydoc.info/gems/mongify/ : A ruby-based approach. Use Ruby 1.9.3 (tiny_tds dependency causes problems with Ruby 2.0). Install DevKit before installing the mongify gem. Also, use ' sqlserver ' as the adapter in the .config file. Then, before running ' mongify check <config-file> ', install the gems  activerecord-sqlserver-adapter  and tiny_tds . At this stage, it fails. ' mongify translation <config-file> ' fails as well. ...

The story of the human race consists of many threads of history woven together across time -- containing narratives of the birth, advance, regress, prosperity and extinction of various civilizations. Of these threads, the thread of government, or, in general, societal organization under a code of law, in its various forms, is uniquely interesting. Diverse forms of government have existed among various peoples at various times. A sweeping view of history suggests a trend from absolutism to democracy, from centralized monarchies to decentralized representative forms. This is a good thing. History bears witness to the endemic nature of corruption in government -- as innate, it seems, as the necessary depravity of the men and women who constitute it. At its best, perhaps realized nowhere except in myths and poetry, government is society's designated steward of justice. At its degenerate worst, it becomes the means and instrument of systemic oppression and grave evils. T...