That's just what I thought when I read the article summary - "so? I was using a program that did that with my image collection years ago - though I recall it being a pain to get running in the first place".
And I saw at least two demos fo similar systems (it's what prompted me to give imgseek a try) for searching image collections (one was draw what you want to find, the other was more pick from displayed images to extract features to search for). That was at least 2 years ago - since I left that country that long ago...
Hooking up with an online collection of photos might be new I guess - but that seems an obvious thing to do.
Because it's pretty obvious that rather than a catostrophic collapse of civilisation, oil prices will simply rise as supplies reduce (all sources are not going to expire simultaneously) and other energy sources which are now not competitive with oil will thus be price competitive, and the world will go on as normal.
Of course but that's true with everything and isn't a surprise. If you win money in a game a golf you're supposed to pay tax on that too...
If you sell some cocaine to someone you're supposed to pay tax on that too...
In the was of WoW I would suspect most of the transaction take place externally - one person sends another person a check and then some gold gets transferred in the game. Of course if the IRS can get details on people who seem to do a lot of transfers then they can do an audit and try and find all that undeclared income. (just like they'd love to do with all those offshore online casinos.)
A fair number of jurisdictions have gun storage laws - by which failing to secure a firearm is a crime. Of course getting some spam is nothing like being shot (I assume, never having been shot).
Possibly the higher divorce rate leads to the higher marriage rate (rather than vice versa) after all once divorced they can get add to the marriage rate again.
That's a pretty stupid question. Since "True" or "False" are perfectly valid answers, so you're already trying to prevent the people who disagree with you from voting. Which is why we don't use such stupid restrictions on voting.
True, is the obvious answer for those who don't understand economics and is often the correct answer. However, if the money raised is invested in infrastructure rather than on hookers and blow, borrowing it now could result in lower future costs and hence a lower tax burden than otherwise would result. Successful, profitable businesses borrow money for example - sometimes you have to build the factory before you can sell the stuff you make in it, hence you borrow with the expectation your profits will more than cover the interst payments.
Borrowing money to build infrastructure which results in industries moving in (and paying taxes) can in fact be reduce the future tax burden on the current people/industries. Borrowing money to maintain roads now can be cheaper than putting aside tax revenue and waiting until you've saved enough to do the maintenance - if the maintenance gets more expensive the longer you leave it (faster than whatever the interest payments are) which is a common enough situation.
Not all borrowing is a bad financial move - though it often is.
(I'd like to advocate a testing section on the voting form too---you have to get some civics questions correct in order for your vote to count---but that's a different debate.)
The big problem with that is that someone has to come up with the questions. And administer the test. In a country that the political parties don't run the entire election that might work, but the US is not one those countries. And even in those countries at some point that test is going to get used to exclude a set of people from voting (other than the intended set).
Because getting a new battery after a few months of using the old one is such a pain in the ass!
You have no idea how annoyed I was when I checked and found my dell's battery isn't of the exploding variety. Now if I want more than 30 minutes of battery use time I'll have to buy a new battery myself...
I think that the treatment of the Australian voting system has been a little simplistic, as there are other factors at work, as well as compulsory voting.
I thought compulsary voting was all that was being discussed, with Australia being a tangent on that - but I'm not paying much attention...
1. To win, a candidate must muster at least 50% + 1 of the number on his or her electoral role to secure the seat.
No you need 50%+1 of the formal votes. Of course you could just say you need 100% of them, since once a candidate has 50%+1 the maths says every one else be eliminated first - but it'd be silly to keep counting.
2. The vote is a SINGLE, TRANSFERRABLE VOTE, which means that for a ovte to be valind (and ocunted) it must list the voter's preferences from 1 to the last person on the ballot paper. Any missed candidates will render the vote invalid.
Yes, which may be why I mentioned I don't think the must vote system would play nicely with the US first-past-the-post system.
3. After the initial count, if no silgle candidate hass the magic 50% +1, the person with the least number of votes is eliminated, and the vote preferences are allocated to the other candidates, based on that person's voter's second preferences. This process, eliminating the bottom candidate, and allocating those votes based on next highets preference, goes on until one candidate has the mandatory 50% +1 vote.
It's a great system, the biggest flaw being the significantly higher informal vote rates in areas with large numbers of immigrants - indicating that they don't understand the system so well. Of course the senate voting is even more fun - I'm one of those fools who number the boxes below the line (though I do check the above the line assignment first hoping some random party will rank them the way I want, but no party ever has)
4. Voting rolls are not within the control of any political party - the voting rolls are maintained by a federal department, which does not include political appointees (well, not officially), and there is open scrutiny of the rolls at all times.
This is where Austrlia is far and away better than the US. However, the US will never change it's system due them being far less "Federalised" than Australia. In Australia elections are run by a Federal government department (which isn't political it's just like the tax office in being independant) whereas in the US they are run by the states. So in the US you have 50 different ways of organising Federal elections, in Australia you have one.
I'm a truly amazed how much control the poltical parties have over elections in the US. I'm guessing there must be historic reasons for it - since it makes no sense if you want to run elections that are not only fair but have the appearance of being fair.
7. In federal and stae elections, people don't directly vote for the Prime Minister or state Premier, but that office is held by the leader of the majority party in the state or federal parliament. so, voting tends to be on party lines, and the chances of a good candidate of the "wrong" political persuasion getting up against a bad candidate of the "right" political persuasion is always very poor.
In a safe seat yes - it's the same as your point 5. But that happens everywhere - some areas are highly skewed to a certain party. It's not true in general though - after all independants have won seats.
There are lots of flaws with the Australian system - the fact that if you despise the government but think that your local member who happens to be a member of the governing party is wonderful for local reasons you are stuck. is just one The senate allows you to balance that a little, but not enough. However, the US vote for president system is worse overall, in my opinion obviously. Having the prime minister have to sit thro
Australia has good scrutiny making that unlikely. If you're sufficiently paranoid you can just create an informal vote by putting 1s in all the boxes, or writing "They all suck" across the page...
Are you also going to fight against those who try and make people do other "civic duties" like jury duty?
Yep. Although that's an easy fight, anyone who wants to can get out of jury duty in the US. There's an old joke, "the only people in the jury are the ones that are too stupid to get out of jury duty."
And anyone who wants to can get out of voting in Australia - the fine thing is seriously trivial to have an excuse for. Of course most people just spend the 10 minutes going to the nearest polling place and voting on the way to the shops or whatever (elections are on Saturdays) - since unlike jury duty it's not taking time of work, potentially weeks or months of substantially reduced income, and of course the slim chance of ending up on a mob hit list...
In Australia they issue you a small fine if you didn't get your named marked off at polling booth. You don't actually need to vote for anyone - you can put the blank ballot in the box and go home. And it's really easy to dispute the fine (speaking from experience) - if you have anything vaguely reasonable as an excuse you tell them and they drop it with no need to go to court or anything like with parking fines... There is no receipt and no way to prove you voted (other than the electoral commission checking their lists I guess).
The informal voting rate isn't that large - about 5% of the votes cast are informal (there's a great tradition of Donkey voting though - being first on the ballot can give you an extra 1.4% or so, unless you're a woman strangely enough when it gives you nada - Robson rotation would fix that but they don't bother). And the turn out rate is 95%. So 90% of the registered voters (which is essentially everyone 18+ with a few slipping through the cracks - made up for by the dead people who manage to vote somehow) cast a valid vote.
Compulsary voting gets rid of the "get out and vote" idiocy that clearly favours candidates with the resources to round people into buses... It also removes the ability to influence the outcome by preventing people from voting - or at least makes it very noticable if you try.
Are you also going to fight against those who try and make people do other "civic duties" like jury duty?
I suspect compulsary voting would interact badly with first past the post voting, and hence would be a bad thing for America - not that that's an issue - it goes completely against the concept of liberty the US has (though the last few years seem to have shown that liberty isn't so important to most americans but that's an unrelated issue).
Well, she did something that a lot of people with a lot of power have historically done. She assumed the moral high ground. In our society, it's illegal to murder people. Well, unless you're in Texas or Virginia where they appearantly take it upon themselves to murder someone as a penalty of justice. Kind of ironic that if someone commits a crime, we as a society take it upon ourselves to then commit what would normally be considered a great crime unto them.
So chaining people up and putting them in cages against their will isn't a crime where you're from?
And no just because there's a gravitational lensing picture that implies there is mass where we can't see it isn't good enough. Maybe we don't understand gravitational lensing? Maybe we are completely misinterpreting the images and there's no lensing at all? Maybe those galaxies didn't collide at all and hence there is no "drag"?
Anytime your theories result in the need for magical invisible stuff in larger quantities than the stuff we can observe/interact with it might be time to question them...
And when you reduce the percent of CO2 in your greenhouse, you find it heats up. So CO2 must be keeping it cool, right? Or maybe proving something by showing that a completely unrelated setup has the same effect doesn't count for much...
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That's just what I thought when I read the article summary - "so? I was using a program that did that with my image collection years ago - though I recall it being a pain to get running in the first place".
And I saw at least two demos fo similar systems (it's what prompted me to give imgseek a try) for searching image collections (one was draw what you want to find, the other was more pick from displayed images to extract features to search for). That was at least 2 years ago - since I left that country that long ago...
Hooking up with an online collection of photos might be new I guess - but that seems an obvious thing to do.
Because it's pretty obvious that rather than a catostrophic collapse of civilisation, oil prices will simply rise as supplies reduce (all sources are not going to expire simultaneously) and other energy sources which are now not competitive with oil will thus be price competitive, and the world will go on as normal.
Of course but that's true with everything and isn't a surprise. If you win money in a game a golf you're supposed to pay tax on that too...
If you sell some cocaine to someone you're supposed to pay tax on that too...
In the was of WoW I would suspect most of the transaction take place externally - one person sends another person a check and then some gold gets transferred in the game. Of course if the IRS can get details on people who seem to do a lot of transfers then they can do an audit and try and find all that undeclared income. (just like they'd love to do with all those offshore online casinos.)
You pay your subscriptions right?
Hence it would be pretty hard to interprete them as income for you...
A fair number of jurisdictions have gun storage laws - by which failing to secure a firearm is a crime. Of course getting some spam is nothing like being shot (I assume, never having been shot).
Well it vould be C++ and who knows what operator== does...
Possibly the higher divorce rate leads to the higher marriage rate (rather than vice versa) after all once divorced they can get add to the marriage rate again.
daylight?
There are other people.
Significantly more than there are filesystems...
That's a pretty stupid question. Since "True" or "False" are perfectly valid answers, so you're already trying to prevent the people who disagree with you from voting. Which is why we don't use such stupid restrictions on voting.
True, is the obvious answer for those who don't understand economics and is often the correct answer. However, if the money raised is invested in infrastructure rather than on hookers and blow, borrowing it now could result in lower future costs and hence a lower tax burden than otherwise would result. Successful, profitable businesses borrow money for example - sometimes you have to build the factory before you can sell the stuff you make in it, hence you borrow with the expectation your profits will more than cover the interst payments.
Borrowing money to build infrastructure which results in industries moving in (and paying taxes) can in fact be reduce the future tax burden on the current people/industries. Borrowing money to maintain roads now can be cheaper than putting aside tax revenue and waiting until you've saved enough to do the maintenance - if the maintenance gets more expensive the longer you leave it (faster than whatever the interest payments are) which is a common enough situation.
Not all borrowing is a bad financial move - though it often is.
The big problem with that is that someone has to come up with the questions. And administer the test. In a country that the political parties don't run the entire election that might work, but the US is not one those countries. And even in those countries at some point that test is going to get used to exclude a set of people from voting (other than the intended set).
If you do that you can guarantee two of them were bad...
Congrats on getting them to fix an post which wasn't wrong.
Because getting a new battery after a few months of using the old one is such a pain in the ass!
You have no idea how annoyed I was when I checked and found my dell's battery isn't of the exploding variety. Now if I want more than 30 minutes of battery use time I'll have to buy a new battery myself...
I thought compulsary voting was all that was being discussed, with Australia being a tangent on that - but I'm not paying much attention...
No you need 50%+1 of the formal votes. Of course you could just say you need 100% of them, since once a candidate has 50%+1 the maths says every one else be eliminated first - but it'd be silly to keep counting.
Yes, which may be why I mentioned I don't think the must vote system would play nicely with the US first-past-the-post system.
It's a great system, the biggest flaw being the significantly higher informal vote rates in areas with large numbers of immigrants - indicating that they don't understand the system so well. Of course the senate voting is even more fun - I'm one of those fools who number the boxes below the line (though I do check the above the line assignment first hoping some random party will rank them the way I want, but no party ever has)
This is where Austrlia is far and away better than the US. However, the US will never change it's system due them being far less "Federalised" than Australia. In Australia elections are run by a Federal government department (which isn't political it's just like the tax office in being independant) whereas in the US they are run by the states. So in the US you have 50 different ways of organising Federal elections, in Australia you have one.
I'm a truly amazed how much control the poltical parties have over elections in the US. I'm guessing there must be historic reasons for it - since it makes no sense if you want to run elections that are not only fair but have the appearance of being fair.
In a safe seat yes - it's the same as your point 5. But that happens everywhere - some areas are highly skewed to a certain party. It's not true in general though - after all independants have won seats.
There are lots of flaws with the Australian system - the fact that if you despise the government but think that your local member who happens to be a member of the governing party is wonderful for local reasons you are stuck. is just one The senate allows you to balance that a little, but not enough. However, the US vote for president system is worse overall, in my opinion obviously. Having the prime minister have to sit thro
Australia has good scrutiny making that unlikely. If you're sufficiently paranoid you can just create an informal vote by putting 1s in all the boxes, or writing "They all suck" across the page...
And anyone who wants to can get out of voting in Australia - the fine thing is seriously trivial to have an excuse for. Of course most people just spend the 10 minutes going to the nearest polling place and voting on the way to the shops or whatever (elections are on Saturdays) - since unlike jury duty it's not taking time of work, potentially weeks or months of substantially reduced income, and of course the slim chance of ending up on a mob hit list...
In Australia they issue you a small fine if you didn't get your named marked off at polling booth. You don't actually need to vote for anyone - you can put the blank ballot in the box and go home. And it's really easy to dispute the fine (speaking from experience) - if you have anything vaguely reasonable as an excuse you tell them and they drop it with no need to go to court or anything like with parking fines... There is no receipt and no way to prove you voted (other than the electoral commission checking their lists I guess).
The informal voting rate isn't that large - about 5% of the votes cast are informal (there's a great tradition of Donkey voting though - being first on the ballot can give you an extra 1.4% or so, unless you're a woman strangely enough when it gives you nada - Robson rotation would fix that but they don't bother). And the turn out rate is 95%. So 90% of the registered voters (which is essentially everyone 18+ with a few slipping through the cracks - made up for by the dead people who manage to vote somehow) cast a valid vote.
Compulsary voting gets rid of the "get out and vote" idiocy that clearly favours candidates with the resources to round people into buses... It also removes the ability to influence the outcome by preventing people from voting - or at least makes it very noticable if you try.
Are you also going to fight against those who try and make people do other "civic duties" like jury duty?
I suspect compulsary voting would interact badly with first past the post voting, and hence would be a bad thing for America - not that that's an issue - it goes completely against the concept of liberty the US has (though the last few years seem to have shown that liberty isn't so important to most americans but that's an unrelated issue).
I highly doubt your coin superheated. The chances that a pool of 5300F melted coin just made small flames seem vanishingly small...
Of course Shakespeare was praising lawyers not dissing them in that quote.
Because there is no new garbage being generated in St Lucie County.
Please show me some.
And no just because there's a gravitational lensing picture that implies there is mass where we can't see it isn't good enough. Maybe we don't understand gravitational lensing? Maybe we are completely misinterpreting the images and there's no lensing at all? Maybe those galaxies didn't collide at all and hence there is no "drag"?
Anytime your theories result in the need for magical invisible stuff in larger quantities than the stuff we can observe/interact with it might be time to question them...
And when you reduce the percent of CO2 in your greenhouse, you find it heats up. So CO2 must be keeping it cool, right? Or maybe proving something by showing that a completely unrelated setup has the same effect doesn't count for much...
Because $34.99 isn't cheaper than $34.99?