It's very interesting and amusing that Bill Gates, largest owner of Microsoft and (then) the person with the greatest control over it, reboots his computer nightly. That explains so much.
I turn my computer off when I go home in the evening, too. What's so amusing about that?
I don't know, but many people in the military blog. Of course, they're biased towards a US victory.
As were the embedded journalists -- it was pretty much a requirement of being embedded (or at least if they did have any serious reservations they had to keep them quiet).
When is the last time you saw any blog doing real reporting?
It's not often I see a newspaper doing real reporting. There are honourable exceptions, but the newspapers tend to avoid it because real reporting tends to upset people, the upset people cause hassle for the newspaper, and dealing with the hassle wastes money.
I remember one comment was "How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"
Just out of interest, how many (western) newspaper journalists were embedded in Falujah? The pattern across the board is for newspapers to keep cutting journalists on-the-ground, depending on hacks sub-editing Associated Press releases (and Associated Press seem to be constantly cutting journalists too). The reason internet bloggers recycling second-hand stories is a real threat to the newspaper industry is that that's just what the newspapers themselves have been doing for quite a while now. It's an enlightening excercise to pick a story and compare the actual text across different newspapers to see how many phrases are identical -- it's usually quite high. The stuff that newspapers still tend to do for themselves is the entertainment, gossip and sport. It's a lot cheaper to send a reporter to a celeb party or a big match than to a war zone -- it might even be free: some papers have been running punter reviews of concerts for years, and reader-generated content seems to be increasing.
The U.S. government is VERY corrupt. Bush administration officials [...]
I know/. news tends to be a bit behind the times, but I would have thought folks would have noticed by now that Bush isn't part of the U.S. government any more.
That's still more balanced than the UK and USA, I feel. And I remember noticing when I first worked in France, back in the 1980s, that whereas in Britain we advertise that mattresses are good for sleeping on, in France they were advertising them as good for having sex on. I was surprised when I went to Zurich airport that most of the billboards were advertising brothels. And head further south, to some of the more party oriented beach resorts, and I understand that public sex is actually allowed on some beaches at certain times. I can't imagine that in the UK -- I know of naturist beaches that have had patrols to make sure nobody gets up to anything in the seclusion of the dunes. Don't know about the USA.
I don't think the GP was arguing that the lifting of the ban is bad, it's just a curious double standard. I've never understood the US (and increasingly UK) regulators' belief that violence is good and sex is bad. I have far more sympathy for the continental European tendency to view sex as good and violence as bad (even if -- or perhaps because -- it does lead to the French tendency when confronted with a war to say "f*** it...").
They didn't strip-search one of their students. The police strip-searched her. The police don't always need her permission, they just need to follow procedure, and I bet they did.
It would appear that bacteria don't modify itself? Obviously the research is still early, but hopefully this is a remedy to the situation that lasts for quite some time.
Do bacteria "modify themselves" anyway? I thought the mechanism was that the bacteria that the technique is least effective on are the ones most likely to pass those characteristics to the next genration. If they've found a way to stop evolution working, this is news!
But his errors are pointed out to him by many, and over time he tweaks the arguments.
That at least is promising, and shows a bit more thought on evolution than Dawkins puts into religion (bad arguments are bad arguments whichever side they come from). I wonder how long before he has an "argument of the gaps";-)
The course I'm doing at the moment makes the material available in paper and electronic formats, and I use both. The book for scribbling in, highlighting, folding down the corners, reading in the bath and so on. The electronic version is indispensable when doing assignments for finding that quote you remember was in there somewhere.
Good luck. Proportional representation would mean that the present major parties would lose power, and you need their support to get it, which would be rather like turkeys voting for Christmas. The main third party here in England has been pushing for PR for as long as I remember, but do you think the first two parties want to hand over power to all the smaller parties?
It still falls prey to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Because it's not objectively "fair", it would all be down to the push and shove of political negotiations over how the plusses and minuses should be balanced, and that push and shove takes place in the present system. And there's always the inertia that comes from the fact that no administration is likely to be particularly keen to introduce proposals to change the rules that they won under the last time.
"no voting system is fair if there are more than two candidates"
Our system was originally designed to be able to handle more than two political parties vying for votes. Our founding fathers warned against letting our system become bi-partisan.
They did that before Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, didn't they?
Look where we are now. If you think restricting the number of parties helps a voting system, you're very wrong, and us Americans are the perfect example to prove that.
No, I don't think it helps. My point is that every system has problems, so the search for a perfect system is futile (the search for a better system may not be, but it would require getting a concensus under the present system on what is "better"). If restricting the system to two parties would help we'd be left with the problem of how to select those two parties from all the possibilities, so we'd be back where we started.
Slashdot Mirror
It's very interesting and amusing that Bill Gates, largest owner of Microsoft and (then) the person with the greatest control over it, reboots his computer nightly. That explains so much.
I turn my computer off when I go home in the evening, too. What's so amusing about that?
It's here.
Criminals.
That must be just about all of the UK electorate by now, so that looks like a vote-winner!
Surely it's this XKCD?
I don't know, but many people in the military blog. Of course, they're biased towards a US victory.
As were the embedded journalists -- it was pretty much a requirement of being embedded (or at least if they did have any serious reservations they had to keep them quiet).
Do you have a car analogy for that?
When is the last time you saw any blog doing real reporting?
It's not often I see a newspaper doing real reporting. There are honourable exceptions, but the newspapers tend to avoid it because real reporting tends to upset people, the upset people cause hassle for the newspaper, and dealing with the hassle wastes money.
I remember one comment was "How many bloggers are embedded in Falujah?"
Just out of interest, how many (western) newspaper journalists were embedded in Falujah? The pattern across the board is for newspapers to keep cutting journalists on-the-ground, depending on hacks sub-editing Associated Press releases (and Associated Press seem to be constantly cutting journalists too). The reason internet bloggers recycling second-hand stories is a real threat to the newspaper industry is that that's just what the newspapers themselves have been doing for quite a while now. It's an enlightening excercise to pick a story and compare the actual text across different newspapers to see how many phrases are identical -- it's usually quite high. The stuff that newspapers still tend to do for themselves is the entertainment, gossip and sport. It's a lot cheaper to send a reporter to a celeb party or a big match than to a war zone -- it might even be free: some papers have been running punter reviews of concerts for years, and reader-generated content seems to be increasing.
The U.S. government is VERY corrupt. Bush administration officials [...]
I know /. news tends to be a bit behind the times, but I would have thought folks would have noticed by now that Bush isn't part of the U.S. government any more.
That's still more balanced than the UK and USA, I feel. And I remember noticing when I first worked in France, back in the 1980s, that whereas in Britain we advertise that mattresses are good for sleeping on, in France they were advertising them as good for having sex on. I was surprised when I went to Zurich airport that most of the billboards were advertising brothels. And head further south, to some of the more party oriented beach resorts, and I understand that public sex is actually allowed on some beaches at certain times. I can't imagine that in the UK -- I know of naturist beaches that have had patrols to make sure nobody gets up to anything in the seclusion of the dunes. Don't know about the USA.
I don't think the GP was arguing that the lifting of the ban is bad, it's just a curious double standard. I've never understood the US (and increasingly UK) regulators' belief that violence is good and sex is bad. I have far more sympathy for the continental European tendency to view sex as good and violence as bad (even if -- or perhaps because -- it does lead to the French tendency when confronted with a war to say "f*** it...").
Ubuntu is like a [noun phrase 1]. Each [noun phrase 2] is like a [noun phrase 3]; as it [verb phrase 1], it [verb phrase 2] ready to [verb phrase 3].
There, that should suit everyone.
They didn't strip-search one of their students. The police strip-searched her. The police don't always need her permission, they just need to follow procedure, and I bet they did.
The Brits have ground to be ambivalent about France, but the US?
Depends who you believe.
Could be worse still. Could be the girl with the sexual innuendo for a name. Almost certain to die horribly before the end of the final reel.
It would appear that bacteria don't modify itself? Obviously the research is still early, but hopefully this is a remedy to the situation that lasts for quite some time.
Do bacteria "modify themselves" anyway? I thought the mechanism was that the bacteria that the technique is least effective on are the ones most likely to pass those characteristics to the next genration. If they've found a way to stop evolution working, this is news!
Sad that this stuff is so common; let's see if it changes over time as the country develops
Unfortunately, capitalism seems to have some characteristics of a pyramid scheme, and latecomers to the party don't seem to have much chance.
But his errors are pointed out to him by many, and over time he tweaks the arguments.
That at least is promising, and shows a bit more thought on evolution than Dawkins puts into religion (bad arguments are bad arguments whichever side they come from). I wonder how long before he has an "argument of the gaps" ;-)
In headlines, "?" implies that something is a sensationalized question, whose answer is "almost certainly, no".
Fixed that for ya.
The course I'm doing at the moment makes the material available in paper and electronic formats, and I use both. The book for scribbling in, highlighting, folding down the corners, reading in the bath and so on. The electronic version is indispensable when doing assignments for finding that quote you remember was in there somewhere.
Good luck. Proportional representation would mean that the present major parties would lose power, and you need their support to get it, which would be rather like turkeys voting for Christmas. The main third party here in England has been pushing for PR for as long as I remember, but do you think the first two parties want to hand over power to all the smaller parties?
For whose version of "Better"? Whoever wins in the first-past-the-post system might not think it's better.
It still falls prey to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Because it's not objectively "fair", it would all be down to the push and shove of political negotiations over how the plusses and minuses should be balanced, and that push and shove takes place in the present system. And there's always the inertia that comes from the fact that no administration is likely to be particularly keen to introduce proposals to change the rules that they won under the last time.
"no voting system is fair if there are more than two candidates"
Our system was originally designed to be able to handle more than two political parties vying for votes. Our founding fathers warned against letting our system become bi-partisan.
They did that before Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, didn't they?
Look where we are now. If you think restricting the number of parties helps a voting system, you're very wrong, and us Americans are the perfect example to prove that.
No, I don't think it helps. My point is that every system has problems, so the search for a perfect system is futile (the search for a better system may not be, but it would require getting a concensus under the present system on what is "better"). If restricting the system to two parties would help we'd be left with the problem of how to select those two parties from all the possibilities, so we'd be back where we started.
The entire electorate agrees that they have :-)