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Several things are similar. My relatives left Kilwinning in SW Scotland in 1802, to immigrate to Pictou County in Nova Scotia. Having been to both communities, I can see some similarities in the countryside. The family left Scotland to escape grinding poverty, along with thousands of other Scots.There is a fairly strong Scottish heritage all across Canada, derived from “the Clearances” following the Jacobite rebellion (when the British Army tried an early version of ethnic cleansing). It is also based on the large number of Scots who worked for the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Company in the fur trade. Can you find a telephone directory in a Canadian city that doesn't contain Scottish names?As a result, Scottish/Celtic music, Scottish dance, Highland Games, Robbie Burns readings and festivals abound across the country. Pipe bands are really common. Some years ago I went to a Paul McCartney and Wings concert in Winnipeg. Unlike the US portion of their tour, Paul and the band were to play “Mull of Kintyre”, which had been a hit in Canada (and Australia as I recall). They sent out requests for pipe bands, from their Canadian venues, to submit audition tapes. In Winnipeg, an all female pipe band, “The White Heathers" was chosen by Linda McCartney to accompany Wings on playing Mull of Kintyre. Not many places in the world where you could do that. Scotland and Canada would have to be top of the list.In some ways, I think the Scots are more inclined to look after collective welfare, at least that is what I think I saw when I visited. Perhaps some of that ideology has rubbed off on Canada. I think it is fair to say that Canada is less oriented toward individualism than the United States. Case in point, single payer medical care coverage.Gaelic is a language facing challenges to its continued usage. However, Cape Breton Island and other parts of Nova Scotia are supporting the regaining of the Gaelic language. The group's promoting this language and culture have direct links to organizations in Scotland.Add to all of this, the numerous Scottish place names in Canada (such as Banff, Inverness, Antigonish, Fergus, etc.); mountains and rivers as well and you have a lot of similarities between the two countries. Not one big similarity, but a whole lot of things add up.

“Really good” is a bit subjective… the one I’m most satisfied with is a little video database program written in C#/WPF, using SQLite for the database. It helps me keep track of a large number (around 8 or 900) videos (mpegs and isos) on my main PC, and also our DVDs. You can search by name (partial match) and combinations of genre (AND and OR combinations). For iso files, it allows you to specify which of the mpegs were used to create the iso, and for DVDs, which iso (if any) was used to create the DVD. You can edit the genres associated with a video, and edit the list of available genres. You can play a selected video (iso or mpeg) directly from the program (using an external payer, VLC). The C#/WPF version of course runs only on Windows; I also have a Python/PyQt version which runs on Linux (it would run on Windows too, except that launching the external player is OS-dependent). (PyQt is a Python package which lets you use the Qt toolkit from Python). The Python/PyQt version is functionally identical to the C# version, and uses the same database. Both versions also allow you to create a new, empty video database, and to run SQL commands directly on the database. Both versions also allow you to scan a directory, indicate which videos are not yet in the database, and let you select which of those you want to add.Flaws: No localisation, some stuff is oriented to my particular home network (my videos are on a NAS), I ought to add some way for the user to set preferences, directory paths and so on. The GUI is a bit idiosyncratic - it starts with just a menu bar, then opens separate specific windows depending on the menu item you choose.If you want to write cross-platform programs, and extreme speed is not required, I strongly recommend Python/PyQt, at least for small one-man projects. I have a number of small Python/PyQt programs which were written on Windows; I installed Python and PyQt on Linux and copied the directories containing the programs from Windows to Linux. They ran straight away, with no change. For a big project the lack of type-checking in Python might be a problem. You could use Java with its own GUI toolkits - I believe that there is a Qt library for Java, Qt Jambi, so you could write Java/Qt.

Certainly not. Infact, there are many features within direct democracies, as they exist in other countries, which can actually be beneficial for a diverse country like India.Sharing here a few observations I have made from my understanding of direct democracies.The best example of a successful direct democracy is Switzerland and here is a video of how the system works in Switzerland:I will start by addressing a few myths people have about this system:- Many in India, who oppose DD, believe that the basic idea of a direct democracy depends on putting every decision under a referendum before a law is passed and such a system can work in Switzerland only because of its small population. California, who also adopted DD, taking inspiration from Switzerland, failed to make it successful due to the dominant 'one person one vote' feature. This is the biggest misconception. The government cannot be expected to go to 2million citizens (forget India’s 1.2 billion) to get their opinion on what laws should govern the country. That’s a misconception many people have about the Direct Democracy System of governance. Referendums exist alongside 'federal popular initiatives' and elections which are not very complicated as in India because politics of Switzerland take place in the framework of a multi-party federal directorial democratic republic, whereby the Federal Council of Switzerland is the head of government and head of state.Executive power is exercised by the government and the federal administration and is not concentrated in any one person. There is more accountability in this system of governance due to the level of freedom enjoyed by public vs the scrutinity under which the government functions. Freedom and equality are more than constitutional individual rights as they are ingrained in the system of governance. The govt can not take a free ride with tax payer money and have to be answerable for their actions while at the same time, citizens follow the laws and ensure to pay taxes honestly in order to be on the right side of the laws which they help create.- People also think that the cost of conducting referendum for multiple decisions in India would be very high, which is again a fear that arises out of ignorance. In Switzerland, the paraliment still takes decisions on law and order, however, when a controversial law is passed, which many sections of the population oppose, they have an option to oppose the law legally using their citizen status (provided a considerable majority can be gathered to oppose the law). This is certainly better than staging demonstrations and getting into naxal riots, the cost of which, if we sit to estimate, would make stationeries and labor costs involved in a voting exercise seem like peanuts.- One does not have to change the political structure of the country, or airlift solutions from another country, when we say 'direct democracy' in India because our constitution allready provides the framework for such a system to exist. One should instead consider it as introducing in India, elements of a good system which can fill gaps in our current law and governance system. Consider for example that our constitution guarantees many rights to all the citizens but our legal systems impose several restrictions that successfully curb the freedom of individuals to excercise these rights.- While its true that there is no comparison between the territorial population, size and diversity of the two countries, it is interesting to note that there are more similarities between the two countries that make conditions for their governance similar in many ways if not exact.- Both countries have a multi-party representative parlimentary democracy. Only Indian parlimentary democracy seems to confuse itself with a presidential democracy or kingship sometimes and it has thus evolved differently.- While the Swiss vote 3-4 times a year on matters of civic and national importance, we Indians also vote more than once in 5 years to elect MPs, MLAs, Municipals who are ideally supposed to be representatives of the people in the parliment but instead end up representing political parties within the body of citizens that are eligible to vote. The following link has details and many interesting facts about Voting in Switzerland.http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland- A lot of referendum voting in Switzerland takes place through 'Vereine' while a lot of protests, strikes and oppositions to the parlimentary laws in India take place through the support of Unions, Voluntary organizations and NGOs. In Switzerland there is 1 Verein for every 100 citizens while in India, there is 1 registered NGO for every 300-400 citizens and many more countless social unions and organisations.So, direct democracy can not be bad for India if the constitution allowed for it. We just evolved in a different direction due to different external influences.Heres a video that is a must watch if you want to see how Direct Democracy in government has been working in India up untill now where it is successfully implemented.