My next concern would be precision. Using data with three or four significant digits (136, 1176) to make conclusions to seven significant digits (11.56463%) is silly, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. The only number in all of this that is fishy is the 16.3% number. To get three significant digits they'd have to know the number of lying households to that precision. If they had another study that determined this number they might very well have a number to that precision, but I'm assuming they just guessed.
It wasn't that precise. The original number was 17.0% and the article poster just converted it from metric percentages so Americans wouldn't get confused.
...be able to get somewhere faster or more conveniently because they have a child with them Less time on the road? Yes.
Less time overall including the 20+ minutes of saying, "Let's go! Let's go! Don't hide your sister's shoes!"?????? Fat chance.
...And if you're going to be a stickler, what about the 30 year old guy without a license? A suspended license? My grandma that has a license but will not drive because she is is a danger to all others on the road? They must not count either. Welcome to the new police state where one has to prove the ability and need for passengers to otherwise drive, but yet forgo it each trip down the diamond lane.
Pimentel and Patzek are well respected? Maybe in the petro and bug worlds, but in the biofuel world? Hardly. They are well known for self-referential justification of their "facts" and citing old data (again, usually their own papers from long ago). All you have to do is read this paper http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/issues/2001/etha nol/08_22_01b.htm by Michael Graboski: Research Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. And that's a kind review of Pimentel/Patzek. It's #1 if you google 'Pimentel ethanol'
Keep googling and you can find more about their dislike of biodiesel and any other non-biomass biofuel. Like this one http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/pressreleases/g en/20050721_pimentel_response.pdf about biodiesel. Is the source of the rebuttal (the National Biodiesel Board) biased? Read the reasoning behind the disagreement with Pimentel/Patzek and make up your own mind.
Speaking as one of those "Little League" list admins, I sent out 4 emails at 80 people a pop, then some others to smaller lists of people, then got banned for 24 hours because of a (previously unknown) cap at 400. in addition to this, I do have a transmit limit of x GB/month, but that's fairly high. So yes, WGR's knee may have blamed the wrong person (you, instead of your friend), but it was not a jerk. Your story about a limit was for surely for recipients, not emails... Yes, 400 emails is on the excessive side; 400 recipents is not excessive at all.
Calling an ISP that is staffed by more than one helpdesk grunt meants that they won't give a crap. It's the ISPs that are small enough that they only need one person that you have a chance to appeal to.
If I was a milk and bread merchant and you mentioned to me that I was "harassing" you by asking for ID, I'd just make sure to process that transaction really, really, slow... maybe manually enter the numbers instead of swiping, checking the card with a magnifying glass to check for evidence of tampering, etc. The loss of a sale as you stormed off in a pissy huff would be worth it.
And yes, I would keep helping others in line as I "waited for authorization." Sorry, sir. The computers are a little slow right now. Maybe I'll try calling in for authorization. I'm sure that MasterCard won't put me on hold once they know that we have royalty in line here at the bodega.
You are of course correct in principle, but not necessarily for this method. It seems to allow the ballots to be mixed so that picking the first choice on one is not the same as the first choice on another. The vote-buyer will never know how you voted. (Watch the flash movie at the link.) However, this presents a problem just as bad as you describe... the non-secret ballot. The vote counting people now know how you voted. Well, they would if they tracked the ID number that you keep. That's unacceptable.
I think the price has come down. It was probably the same price or slightly higher in mid-80's dollars without considering inflation.
Capsela was my first experience in mail order parts. After getting a basic set for my birthday I went for the add ons to make the fire fighting boat. It was also my first taste of the dreaded "S&H extra."
And those yellow floaty things... Thanks for the memories.
Your post would have been mine - word for word - years ago. You can keep this attitude until your kids are about 9 months old. Don't feel guilty in two to three years when you have created your shrine to the TV gods. It's a fact of modern life.
TV does not corrupt on its own. If our generation survived growing up watching TV, the next will be fine too.
Oh, and get used to remodeling without being able to leave any tools or anything outside the little boundary of whatever room you are working in, and all at least 1m off the ground. It's either that or remodel at night while your wife tells you NOT TO WAKE THE BABIES!
"...say to yourself "well, perhaps I should start a task that I normally don't have time for, and see how it goes."
Heck, that's how I ended up remodeling my bathroom..."
Heck, that's how I got my kids in the first place!;)
I think we all would be interested to see exactly what you wrote in your article submittal to michael. You were not quoted at all in this current article's summary. I was initially ready to call you out for calling these scientists "fake" but realized that the summary was not yours.
You posted quite a bit in the "New Climate Change Warning" article of yesterday. I figured you'd have an opinion to share on this.
Don't forget it was The Steve Himself who denied that Apple was interested in the low-end flash market for new iPods. Wasn't that at the July 04 expo (6 months ago)? I can't recall the date, but He was pretty clear about that; I fell for it.
I now predict a new G5 PowerBook within 6 months for that very reason.
I can assure you that somebody bought tickets to a certain movie that was "so bad, it's good"(I would give a name, but I forgot how to spell it).
"Gigli" is not the easiest to spell, and the first movie I thought of, but I don't think it qualifies as "so bad, it's good."
And here's your one ticket buyer "MovieWatcher" as quoted on www.netflix.com:
OK, ok, so we've all heard how awful this flick is. Well, it's true. I saw this at the theatres just out of curiosity. It's horrible. Ben is no gangster, and can't play one very well. He couldn't hurt a fly. And Jen couldn't pull off being gay, no matter how hard she tried. Definite casting problems here. The background music didn't always make sense with the scenes. The whole movie takes place in about 2 main locations, which is annoying because the acting/plot isn't enough to look at. Also, the camera work is the worst! I got really tired of looking at close ups of just their heads. It was just back and forth, back and forth. Same with the car scenes. Oh, and literally HALF of the movie is spent watching Larry (Ben) and Ricki (j.lo) just looking at each other. Yes, Jen's gorgeous, but I don't want to watch her crack a smile for half an hour. And the retarted kid seems to be so smart that he can remember the all the words to his favorite songs. Uh huh. And Larry can just walk out of the school with the kid he kidnapped. And the kid just goes along with it. Uh huh. But I gave the movie one star because it did make me laugh a few times. The kid and Larry's boss both were pretty funny...
So this isn't an actual board game unless you count a piece of paper as a board. At least it is free.
Take a large piece of paper and make a grid of dots that leaves enough room for a single legible letter inside the confines of each square (3/8" x 3/8"?). Make sure the paper is at least 20" x 30" to get enough of a grid. There is only a minor peanalty for trying to use equivalent metric units.
Everyone knows how to play this one, right? Connect two vertically or horizontally adjacent dots and write in your initial if you happen to complete a 1 x 1 square. Repeat until you cannot complete a square with just one line. The winner is the one with the most initialed squares when the grid is 100% filled in with squares.
The game works best when you see your opponent almost every day for just a few minutes at a time. Perfect for killing time in between (or during) school classes.
Reid Strand, if you are out there, I demand a rematch from our game in Ms. Moran's french class!
Ditto. It's even better when you are viewing as threaded with a high threshhold and all of a sudden this comment pops out without any context as a +5. There was no way I was going to skip over this thread.
According to an informed source (Ken Jennings), the major networks alternated the color scheme every 4 years during election coverage. The recent red vs. blue in such close races has made the public strongly identify with the appropriate colors long after the election was over. Therefore, the colors are now stuck as they are.
I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that is for the presidential campaign only, not for the US Congress. In addition, the rule only applies to official candidates of specific parties, and does not include the capaigning prior to the nomination acceptance of the candidate to the party.
This came up during the 2004 Bush/Kerry ordeal when Kerry considered delaying the acceptance of the Democratic nomination so that these FEC rules would not come into effect so early.
There are obviously other rules regarding limitations to the $ given to the campaign, with soft money given to the national party being the loophole. The candidate would not be able to directly solicit the soft money. Likewise, the candidate could not theoretically interfere with (stop) the party raising these funds.
I have never had to show ID in order to vote unless it was for the registration itself. This oddity has always been, well, odd. Why allegedly go through the trouble of verifying eligibility and then not ask for an ID when it's time to punch the holes or mark the circles? This is the most easily explotable area for fraud. You can bet I'd raise holy hell if someone "accidentally" voted on my behalf before I got to the polling place.
Slashdot reader poll:
Do you have to show an ID on voting day in order to vote?
I understand the situation perfectly. The Republicans *should* have a share in deciding who the Democrats are going to run against Dubya.
I assume by "Republicans" and "Democrats" you mean "eligible voters that can vote only once per race";-)
Although I live in a state with an open primary, a voter cannot cross parties on the same ballot. Although I do not like this restriction, it is better than the alternative of a closed primary.
there is a logic to keeping party primaries closed to only those who have enrolled in the party. people from other parties could vote in your primarty to influence who the candidate is.
...
parties can set their own criteria for running their business/primaries.
I agree that this is the case in some states. I do not understand how the people that make the decisions to exclude non-party members from their primaries can consider themselves doing what is the "right thing." I realize that some voters may cross party lines to try to get a wacko endorsed in the enemy party. But if this is such a concern for the party, it should simply endorse someone without voting if it is going to try to stifle the voting rights of anyone it considers as "undesirable."
If we cannot come up with a better solution, then it's time to ban political parties. Let the endorsements of other groups be the guide to the candidate's politics. If that fails, one could always, oh, I don't know, maybe, learn more about the candidates themselves and become informed rather than vote for the party. A radical idea indeed!
what is to stop someone from registering at 10 locations and voting at all of them?
Well, nothing aside from your own morals would stop you on election day. However, to do so you'd have make fradulent documents to prove residency in each location. Then, you'd have the law show up at your door eventually when they figured it out. It would be much easier (theoretically - don't do this!!) to pretend to be someone else who is legally registered.
I live in a state where there we do not register for a party affiliation, have open primaries, and can register the same day at the voting site. It is still amazing to me that consituents of states that do not have these three rights (yes, I said rights, not privledges) do not rise up and demand for it to be this way. The only reason I can imagine is that voters in Nevada and others have not had the experience of how easy it is to vote with these artificial burdens removed.
Slashdot Mirror
My next concern would be precision. Using data with three or four significant digits (136, 1176) to make conclusions to seven significant digits (11.56463%) is silly, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. The only number in all of this that is fishy is the 16.3% number. To get three significant digits they'd have to know the number of lying households to that precision. If they had another study that determined this number they might very well have a number to that precision, but I'm assuming they just guessed.
It wasn't that precise. The original number was 17.0% and the article poster just converted it from metric percentages so Americans wouldn't get confused.
Dear Senator,
Aren't you going to blame the high ID on the registration getting stuck in the tubes? I mean, if you really did send that internet 10 years ago...
...be able to get somewhere faster or more conveniently because they have a child with them Less time on the road? Yes.Less time overall including the 20+ minutes of saying, "Let's go! Let's go! Don't hide your sister's shoes!"?????? Fat chance.
[waves paw] Bah!
Pimentel and Patzek are well respected? Maybe in the petro and bug worlds, but in the biofuel world? Hardly. They are well known for self-referential justification of their "facts" and citing old data (again, usually their own papers from long ago). All you have to do is read this paper http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/issues/2001/etha nol/08_22_01b.htm by Michael Graboski: Research Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. And that's a kind review of Pimentel/Patzek. It's #1 if you google 'Pimentel ethanol'
g en/20050721_pimentel_response.pdf about biodiesel. Is the source of the rebuttal (the National Biodiesel Board) biased? Read the reasoning behind the disagreement with Pimentel/Patzek and make up your own mind.
Keep googling and you can find more about their dislike of biodiesel and any other non-biomass biofuel. Like this one http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/pressreleases/
Speaking as one of those "Little League" list admins, I sent out 4 emails at 80 people a pop, then some others to smaller lists of people, then got banned for 24 hours because of a (previously unknown) cap at 400. in addition to this, I do have a transmit limit of x GB/month, but that's fairly high. So yes, WGR's knee may have blamed the wrong person (you, instead of your friend), but it was not a jerk. Your story about a limit was for surely for recipients, not emails... Yes, 400 emails is on the excessive side; 400 recipents is not excessive at all.
Calling an ISP that is staffed by more than one helpdesk grunt meants that they won't give a crap. It's the ISPs that are small enough that they only need one person that you have a chance to appeal to.
If I was a milk and bread merchant and you mentioned to me that I was "harassing" you by asking for ID, I'd just make sure to process that transaction really, really, slow... maybe manually enter the numbers instead of swiping, checking the card with a magnifying glass to check for evidence of tampering, etc. The loss of a sale as you stormed off in a pissy huff would be worth it.
And yes, I would keep helping others in line as I "waited for authorization." Sorry, sir. The computers are a little slow right now. Maybe I'll try calling in for authorization. I'm sure that MasterCard won't put me on hold once they know that we have royalty in line here at the bodega.
You are of course correct in principle, but not necessarily for this method. It seems to allow the ballots to be mixed so that picking the first choice on one is not the same as the first choice on another. The vote-buyer will never know how you voted. (Watch the flash movie at the link.) However, this presents a problem just as bad as you describe... the non-secret ballot. The vote counting people now know how you voted. Well, they would if they tracked the ID number that you keep. That's unacceptable.
I've never seen a pair on a car but I think I've seen at least 10 trucks/SUVs with them. Blech!
As you wish.
[duck]
Capsela was my first experience in mail order parts. After getting a basic set for my birthday I went for the add ons to make the fire fighting boat. It was also my first taste of the dreaded "S&H extra."
And those yellow floaty things... Thanks for the memories.
TV does not corrupt on its own. If our generation survived growing up watching TV, the next will be fine too.
Oh, and get used to remodeling without being able to leave any tools or anything outside the little boundary of whatever room you are working in, and all at least 1m off the ground. It's either that or remodel at night while your wife tells you NOT TO WAKE THE BABIES!
"...say to yourself "well, perhaps I should start a task that I normally don't have time for, and see how it goes."
Heck, that's how I ended up remodeling my bathroom..."
Heck, that's how I got my kids in the first place! ;)
@Ironsides
I think we all would be interested to see exactly what you wrote in your article submittal to michael. You were not quoted at all in this current article's summary. I was initially ready to call you out for calling these scientists "fake" but realized that the summary was not yours.
You posted quite a bit in the "New Climate Change Warning" article of yesterday. I figured you'd have an opinion to share on this.
Don't forget it was The Steve Himself who denied that Apple was interested in the low-end flash market for new iPods. Wasn't that at the July 04 expo (6 months ago)? I can't recall the date, but He was pretty clear about that; I fell for it.
I now predict a new G5 PowerBook within 6 months for that very reason.
"Gigli" is not the easiest to spell, and the first movie I thought of, but I don't think it qualifies as "so bad, it's good."
And here's your one ticket buyer "MovieWatcher" as quoted on www.netflix.com:
So this isn't an actual board game unless you count a piece of paper as a board. At least it is free.
Take a large piece of paper and make a grid of dots that leaves enough room for a single legible letter inside the confines of each square (3/8" x 3/8"?). Make sure the paper is at least 20" x 30" to get enough of a grid. There is only a minor peanalty for trying to use equivalent metric units.
Everyone knows how to play this one, right? Connect two vertically or horizontally adjacent dots and write in your initial if you happen to complete a 1 x 1 square. Repeat until you cannot complete a square with just one line. The winner is the one with the most initialed squares when the grid is 100% filled in with squares.
The game works best when you see your opponent almost every day for just a few minutes at a time. Perfect for killing time in between (or during) school classes.
Reid Strand, if you are out there, I demand a rematch from our game in Ms. Moran's french class!
Ditto. It's even better when you are viewing as threaded with a high threshhold and all of a sudden this comment pops out without any context as a +5. There was no way I was going to skip over this thread.
According to an informed source (Ken Jennings), the major networks alternated the color scheme every 4 years during election coverage. The recent red vs. blue in such close races has made the public strongly identify with the appropriate colors long after the election was over. Therefore, the colors are now stuck as they are.
This came up during the 2004 Bush/Kerry ordeal when Kerry considered delaying the acceptance of the Democratic nomination so that these FEC rules would not come into effect so early.
There are obviously other rules regarding limitations to the $ given to the campaign, with soft money given to the national party being the loophole. The candidate would not be able to directly solicit the soft money. Likewise, the candidate could not theoretically interfere with (stop) the party raising these funds.
I have never had to show ID in order to vote unless it was for the registration itself. This oddity has always been, well, odd. Why allegedly go through the trouble of verifying eligibility and then not ask for an ID when it's time to punch the holes or mark the circles? This is the most easily explotable area for fraud. You can bet I'd raise holy hell if someone "accidentally" voted on my behalf before I got to the polling place.
Slashdot reader poll:
Do you have to show an ID on voting day in order to vote?
I assume by "Republicans" and "Democrats" you mean "eligible voters that can vote only once per race" ;-)
Although I live in a state with an open primary, a voter cannot cross parties on the same ballot. Although I do not like this restriction, it is better than the alternative of a closed primary.
As squiggleslash said http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12552 0&cid=10516109 the parties can do what they want, but keep it out of the state's hands if they expect to keep it "members only."
...
parties can set their own criteria for running their business/primaries.
I agree that this is the case in some states. I do not understand how the people that make the decisions to exclude non-party members from their primaries can consider themselves doing what is the "right thing." I realize that some voters may cross party lines to try to get a wacko endorsed in the enemy party. But if this is such a concern for the party, it should simply endorse someone without voting if it is going to try to stifle the voting rights of anyone it considers as "undesirable."
If we cannot come up with a better solution, then it's time to ban political parties. Let the endorsements of other groups be the guide to the candidate's politics. If that fails, one could always, oh, I don't know, maybe, learn more about the candidates themselves and become informed rather than vote for the party. A radical idea indeed!
Well, nothing aside from your own morals would stop you on election day. However, to do so you'd have make fradulent documents to prove residency in each location. Then, you'd have the law show up at your door eventually when they figured it out. It would be much easier (theoretically - don't do this!!) to pretend to be someone else who is legally registered.
It's Minnesota I was referring to, but as my cheesehead neighbor Bastian pointed out, it's in Wisconsin too.
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1255
It's nothing personal. I just don't know why politicians or legislatures can ethically keep these restrictions.
I live in a state where there we do not register for a party affiliation, have open primaries, and can register the same day at the voting site. It is still amazing to me that consituents of states that do not have these three rights (yes, I said rights, not privledges) do not rise up and demand for it to be this way. The only reason I can imagine is that voters in Nevada and others have not had the experience of how easy it is to vote with these artificial burdens removed.