Yes, but the "first past the post" thing just requires the voters to think further than just one election. And secondly, the major telcos have an advantage over newcomers too.
I personally disagree with the argument that a vote for "someone else" is a wasted vote even if that candidate doesn't win.
If enough people vote for "someone else":
0) "someone else" might end up being majority party. Unlikely for the first iteration, but keep in mind that if all the nonvoting voters in the US election voted for "someone else", that "someone else" would have won.
1) The Two Parties may start to notice and change direction accordingly, so even if they eventually get your vote back, you've achieved what you wanted.
2) The other voters might notice potentially viable candidates, and in subsequent iterations cause either 0) or 1).
This is not one of those "single iteration" game theory games where after the first round you get executed if you lose. This is "slowly boiling the frog to death" over X iterations.
If voters aren't thinking long term, it is unlikely that they as buyers are thinking long term either.
So either the Parties are satisfying them, or they're not thinking long term.
If there's a free market would it even work well anyway?
For instance, I hear lots of people here grumbling about the Democrats and the Republicans. But come election time, the election results show that both combined get 98% or 99% of the votes[1].
So how's this free market thing going to work for them? They get two corporations that screw them, and 98% of the customers will still keep buying from them anyway, even if there are alternative suppliers?
On the other hand, maybe the Two Parties are doing a really great job at satisfying their voters. And the Slashdot bunch here just have different priorities from the average US voter.
> Things like "fiddle with radio" or "adjust GPS" still feel like a separate task, no matter how many times I do it.
How many times have you actually _practiced_ it? You can't just do it a few times a day to get better at it. It has to become like walking to you, so that you don't think of the separate things to do to fiddle with the radio. You just think "radio channel #1" and it happens - the rest of your brain goes and does it.
That said, some people never ever learn how to fly a conventional helicopter no matter how much they try and practice.
And I guess most people will never get this good at tetris even if they practiced a lot:
1) You don't need full situational awareness[1] while driving to be safer than the average driver. If we ever are going to officially allow some drivers to multitask, there better be a driving test where people have to prove that they are much better than the average driver while multitasking. Then we ( the average drivers) are far more likely to kill them than the other way round;). I'd prefer it if every driver was required to take that test, even if they can't pass it (and don't have to for a normal license) - it's a good thing to try to make most of us know how crappy we are at driving.
2) Don't do multiple dangerous tasks at once. That way you can drop the other tasks if "stuff happens". The trouble is even with a hands-free kit, too many people are too stupid[2] to just shut-up and drive when stuff gets dangerous.
[1] There are zillions of things a driver can be aware of which can improve safety, but we don't require all of them to drive better than average. The average driver does not look for toddler/animal feet under parked cars, and prepare to brake. So many drivers don't even seem to look many cars ahead for potential issues (prepare to change lanes well before the problem). And you can easily learn to do this sort of stuff even if you are talking to someone else (if you can't multitask, just stop talking, do stuff, resume talking).
[2] I saw a video where a sword swallower said he had a bad accident when a bird sat on his shoulder unexpectedly. To me that shows he is very bad at prioritization for him to do what he does safely. When you have a sword swallowed in your throat, you do NOT turn your head no matter what. It's like the "pain box" test in Dune.
Nah, I see it as them lacking confidence in the quality of their product. Without demos more people would buy their product by mistake;).
They don't seem to think that if more people could try their product, more would buy it, or tell others to buy it.
AFAIK, there are even online games which give out demo keys every now and then, or allow a trial period. It costs them $$$$ to do that.
Crytek game demos may go extinct, but I doubt game demos will go extinct.
Maybe Crytek will go extinct. When was the last time you played Crysis _again_? Using it as a video graphics benchmark or a demo of your rig doesn't count as playing it;).
Seriously though, you might be able to learn how to do that if you could practice doing that 100 times every day, for a month under safe simulated conditions (e.g. driving simulator, and simulated eating too, otherwise you'd end up killing yourself by overeating;) ).
It's all about practice. Practice, practice, practice.
The first time you drive a car (especially a manual), there are so many tasks.
After a while of practice, your brain configures itself to automatically make those tasks into a subtask, and groups them all into one task - "driving".
Of course some people may never be able to do it. But I think a high proportion of people can. And I bet there are some people who can learn to do it after very short time - just like some people can learn to juggle very quickly, and there was that recent article about supertaskers.
I'm sure Michael Schumacher can eat breakfast and type on a cellphone and still do F1 laps faster than I can, when I'm just doing F1 laps (just driving, not eating or doing other stuff).
The trouble with most people is they're trying to do "for real" without practicing _properly_. That's like trying to juggle chainsaws, without learning how to juggle balls first, and then gradually working your way up under controlled conditions.
I heard they're not as fertile though. Maybe that's due to other reasons, but if the fertility rates are really lower it might be stuff being caught in "QC" early...
What I'm curious about is if the rest of the nonmitochondrial DNA has somewhat evolved to be more matched with what their "usual" mitochondria can do and prefer.
Basically, would there be any compatibility issues.
Car analogy: I guess having a not so matched engine in your car is usually better than having one that's faulty or fails prematurely?
> I would rather pay directly to my state then have the federal government as a middle man using my money
While it is your money in some ways, do also remember that the US dollar is a construct controlled by the US Government, so it belongs to the US Government in other ways.
They also have a significant (though not absolute) control over its value. Even if they didn't tax you directly, they could tax you (and others[1]) indirectly by increasing the supply, thus making the money you hold worth less.
References: Matthew 22:15-21
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" 18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" 21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
[1] Including China, Japan etc, who hold lots of US dollars and are owed lots of US dollars, and also buy and sell stuff using US dollars (e.g. petroleum, CPUs). This is a significant advantage to the USA, as such the rise of the Euro is big problem to the USA.
> I would rather pay directly to my state then have the federal government as a middle man using my money
While it is your money in some ways, do also remember that the US dollar is a construct controlled by the US Government, so it belongs to the US Government in other ways.
They also have a significant (though not absolute) control over its value. Even if they didn't tax you directly, they could tax you (and others[1]) indirectly by increasing the supply, thus making the money you hold worth less.
See also: Matthew 22:15-21
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" 18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?" 21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
[1] Including China, Japan etc, who hold lots of US dollars and are owed lots of US dollars, and also buy and sell stuff using US dollars (e.g. petroleum, CPUs). This is a significant advantage to the USA, as such the rise of the Euro is big problem to the USA.
In most real world meetings a participant's "CPU usage" is mostly idle during the entire meeting. This is very inefficient.
From a productivity point of view a big potential benefit of IM/IRC meetings is that participants can be in more than one meeting at the same time (and maybe even do other stuff too).
Also it is less disruptive if people leave the meeting briefly (toilet etc) and come back - because they can scroll back to see what they missed. As for minutes, they can just do a summary at the end (e.g. who is going to do what and by when) and then submit the entire log to a designated place (so managers/others can have a record of what's happening).
By allocating certain days/periods for "formal" IM meetings to be held, and allowing them to overlap, you can free up more time for people to do stuff that requires full concentration.
These sort of meetings might not be so acceptable with external parties, but they should be fine for many internal meetings.
I've actually suggested this at my workplaces before, but so far most seem to prefer "traditional meetings".
> A space elevator would only have the angular velocity of the earth, so locally it would have no angular velocity. > Unless it was sent whipping around the earth by some external force, it would simply fall down.
No it wouldn't just fall down.
When a figure skater pulls his/her arms in, the figure skater spins faster. Why?
Because everything wants to keep moving at the same speed, and the stuff further from the center is moving faster than the stuff nearer.
So when the bits of the elevator are pulled in, they will want to continue moving too, and not just fall down.
The closer those bits are to the ground, the smaller the speed differences are, and the thicker the atmosphere is, etc, so what happens depends on where the breaks are.
Perl is often very useful because it's installed by default on many unix and unixlike operating systems, and it is easier to do stuff in it than do stuff using shell scripts for all those operating systems.
Something newer like Python or Ruby won't be pre-installed on as many operating systems.
> they get no press, so they can't win -- a self fulfilling prophesy if there ever was one.
Blaming the press is becoming a weaker and weaker excuse as time goes by.
The voters got what they voted for. If they didn't want who they voted for, then they aren't doing their jobs properly. They should have voted for a different candidate.
From the way they vote the Two Parties regularly get stuff like 98% of all the votes. Therefore according to the voters the Two Parties must be:
a) Doing a wonderful job. and/or b) Better than the other alternatives.
If that's not the message they want to send, then perhaps they should stop giving Two Parties 98% of the vote. If there are no better candidates, they got the best, too bad if the best is not good enough. Nobody else is willing or able to be an alternative candidate (including the voter).
p.s. I find it funny that many people say the "everything" can be solved by the Free Market and then turn around and say that US democracy isn't working. The claim that voters are easily fooled and can't vote correctly in their long term interests once every few years is incompatible with the claim that buyers can vote with their wallets correctly and consistently in their long term interests.
Not really, it's more like the highway operators charging motorists tolls, and then trying to get the destination cities/towns/villages to pay as well.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's not a problem with the "3D" tech (I watched it in both 3D and 2D), if you watched it in 2D, you'd still see the same blurry stuff and eyestrain. However there would be one less clue on where to focus on.
And yes, I was trying to look around the scene too. I went as an unconcerned tourist to Pandora - "ooh look at the flowers, ok now that guy is running from the monster, nevermind we all know he'll get away, and even if he didn't we don't care do we? After all the tour only ends in 2+ hours time";).
Slashdot Mirror
In a perfect world he and the rest of us wouldn't be around.
Because we aren't perfect.
QED.
Maybe that bit was outsourced too ;).
A: "I don't care how you meet your SLAs and I don't want to know".
B: "OK. Don't worry, we're just going to smack him a bit, no permanent damage that sort of thing."
A: "SHUT-UP! Lalala, I didn't hear you...".
Yes, but the "first past the post" thing just requires the voters to think further than just one election. And secondly, the major telcos have an advantage over newcomers too.
I personally disagree with the argument that a vote for "someone else" is a wasted vote even if that candidate doesn't win.
If enough people vote for "someone else":
0) "someone else" might end up being majority party. Unlikely for the first iteration, but keep in mind that if all the nonvoting voters in the US election voted for "someone else", that "someone else" would have won.
1) The Two Parties may start to notice and change direction accordingly, so even if they eventually get your vote back, you've achieved what you wanted.
2) The other voters might notice potentially viable candidates, and in subsequent iterations cause either 0) or 1).
This is not one of those "single iteration" game theory games where after the first round you get executed if you lose. This is "slowly boiling the frog to death" over X iterations.
If voters aren't thinking long term, it is unlikely that they as buyers are thinking long term either.
So either the Parties are satisfying them, or they're not thinking long term.
> Almost any political view lies somewhere between Democrat/Republican or Left/Right
And you accuse me of throwing fallacies.
If there's a free market would it even work well anyway?
For instance, I hear lots of people here grumbling about the Democrats and the Republicans. But come election time, the election results show that both combined get 98% or 99% of the votes[1].
So how's this free market thing going to work for them? They get two corporations that screw them, and 98% of the customers will still keep buying from them anyway, even if there are alternative suppliers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#Nationwide_results
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004#Grand_total
On the other hand, maybe the Two Parties are doing a really great job at satisfying their voters. And the Slashdot bunch here just have different priorities from the average US voter.
The American people voted for Obama. The corporations didn't do the voting (unless the election was badly Diebolded).
Most of the rest voted for McCain.
The sheep just keep voting between 2 wolves to eat them. 98.5% of the votes went to the two wolves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008#Nationwide_results
If they don't like it, they should vote for someone else different.
If they are happy with it, Democracy is working as designed.
> Things like "fiddle with radio" or "adjust GPS" still feel like a separate task, no matter how many times I do it.
How many times have you actually _practiced_ it? You can't just do it a few times a day to get better at it. It has to become like walking to you, so that you don't think of the separate things to do to fiddle with the radio. You just think "radio channel #1" and it happens - the rest of your brain goes and does it.
That said, some people never ever learn how to fly a conventional helicopter no matter how much they try and practice.
And I guess most people will never get this good at tetris even if they practiced a lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo
Skip to about 2:50 and watch till the end where the "locked" blocks go invisible...
He can probably play normal tetris while driving and talking on the phone. I'm assuming he can learn how to drive ;).
1) You don't need full situational awareness[1] while driving to be safer than the average driver. If we ever are going to officially allow some drivers to multitask, there better be a driving test where people have to prove that they are much better than the average driver while multitasking. Then we ( the average drivers) are far more likely to kill them than the other way round ;). I'd prefer it if every driver was required to take that test, even if they can't pass it (and don't have to for a normal license) - it's a good thing to try to make most of us know how crappy we are at driving.
2) Don't do multiple dangerous tasks at once. That way you can drop the other tasks if "stuff happens". The trouble is even with a hands-free kit, too many people are too stupid[2] to just shut-up and drive when stuff gets dangerous.
[1] There are zillions of things a driver can be aware of which can improve safety, but we don't require all of them to drive better than average. The average driver does not look for toddler/animal feet under parked cars, and prepare to brake. So many drivers don't even seem to look many cars ahead for potential issues (prepare to change lanes well before the problem). And you can easily learn to do this sort of stuff even if you are talking to someone else (if you can't multitask, just stop talking, do stuff, resume talking).
[2] I saw a video where a sword swallower said he had a bad accident when a bird sat on his shoulder unexpectedly. To me that shows he is very bad at prioritization for him to do what he does safely. When you have a sword swallowed in your throat, you do NOT turn your head no matter what. It's like the "pain box" test in Dune.
Nah, I see it as them lacking confidence in the quality of their product. Without demos more people would buy their product by mistake ;).
;).
They don't seem to think that if more people could try their product, more would buy it, or tell others to buy it.
AFAIK, there are even online games which give out demo keys every now and then, or allow a trial period. It costs them $$$$ to do that.
Crytek game demos may go extinct, but I doubt game demos will go extinct.
Maybe Crytek will go extinct. When was the last time you played Crysis _again_? Using it as a video graphics benchmark or a demo of your rig doesn't count as playing it
Seriously though, you might be able to learn how to do that if you could practice doing that 100 times every day, for a month under safe simulated conditions (e.g. driving simulator, and simulated eating too, otherwise you'd end up killing yourself by overeating ;) ).
It's all about practice. Practice, practice, practice.
The first time you drive a car (especially a manual), there are so many tasks.
After a while of practice, your brain configures itself to automatically make those tasks into a subtask, and groups them all into one task - "driving".
Of course some people may never be able to do it. But I think a high proportion of people can. And I bet there are some people who can learn to do it after very short time - just like some people can learn to juggle very quickly, and there was that recent article about supertaskers.
I'm sure Michael Schumacher can eat breakfast and type on a cellphone and still do F1 laps faster than I can, when I'm just doing F1 laps (just driving, not eating or doing other stuff).
The trouble with most people is they're trying to do "for real" without practicing _properly_. That's like trying to juggle chainsaws, without learning how to juggle balls first, and then gradually working your way up under controlled conditions.
Yeah, so it's probably not an issue.
I heard they're not as fertile though. Maybe that's due to other reasons, but if the fertility rates are really lower it might be stuff being caught in "QC" early...
What I'm curious about is if the rest of the nonmitochondrial DNA has somewhat evolved to be more matched with what their "usual" mitochondria can do and prefer.
Basically, would there be any compatibility issues.
Car analogy: I guess having a not so matched engine in your car is usually better than having one that's faulty or fails prematurely?
> I would rather pay directly to my state then have the federal government as a middle man using my money
While it is your money in some ways, do also remember that the US dollar is a construct controlled by the US Government, so it belongs to the US Government in other ways.
They also have a significant (though not absolute) control over its value. Even if they didn't tax you directly, they could tax you (and others[1]) indirectly by increasing the supply, thus making the money you hold worth less.
References: Matthew 22:15-21
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.
17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"
21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
[1] Including China, Japan etc, who hold lots of US dollars and are owed lots of US dollars, and also buy and sell stuff using US dollars (e.g. petroleum, CPUs). This is a significant advantage to the USA, as such the rise of the Euro is big problem to the USA.
> I would rather pay directly to my state then have the federal government as a middle man using my money
While it is your money in some ways, do also remember that the US dollar is a construct controlled by the US Government, so it belongs to the US Government in other ways.
They also have a significant (though not absolute) control over its value. Even if they didn't tax you directly, they could tax you (and others[1]) indirectly by increasing the supply, thus making the money you hold worth less.
See also: Matthew 22:15-21
15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.
17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?
19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius,
20 and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"
21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
[1] Including China, Japan etc, who hold lots of US dollars and are owed lots of US dollars, and also buy and sell stuff using US dollars (e.g. petroleum, CPUs). This is a significant advantage to the USA, as such the rise of the Euro is big problem to the USA.
> You shouldn't count people who willingly get censored material from a skewed point of view.
;).
Yeah, no need, Diebold counts them for you.
Or do they?
IBM sells services.
;).
;)
The more options there are, the more decisions there are.
The more decisions there are, the more people there will be who need to pay someone to help them make those decisions, or implement them.
Making things simple from the very beginning isn't as profitable as making things more complicated and then "helping" people "simplify" stuff
Maybe I'm too cynical?
In most real world meetings a participant's "CPU usage" is mostly idle during the entire meeting. This is very inefficient.
From a productivity point of view a big potential benefit of IM/IRC meetings is that participants can be in more than one meeting at the same time (and maybe even do other stuff too).
Also it is less disruptive if people leave the meeting briefly (toilet etc) and come back - because they can scroll back to see what they missed. As for minutes, they can just do a summary at the end (e.g. who is going to do what and by when) and then submit the entire log to a designated place (so managers/others can have a record of what's happening).
By allocating certain days/periods for "formal" IM meetings to be held, and allowing them to overlap, you can free up more time for people to do stuff that requires full concentration.
These sort of meetings might not be so acceptable with external parties, but they should be fine for many internal meetings.
I've actually suggested this at my workplaces before, but so far most seem to prefer "traditional meetings".
> A space elevator would only have the angular velocity of the earth, so locally it would have no angular velocity.
> Unless it was sent whipping around the earth by some external force, it would simply fall down.
No it wouldn't just fall down.
When a figure skater pulls his/her arms in, the figure skater spins faster. Why?
Because everything wants to keep moving at the same speed, and the stuff further from the center is moving faster than the stuff nearer.
So when the bits of the elevator are pulled in, they will want to continue moving too, and not just fall down.
The closer those bits are to the ground, the smaller the speed differences are, and the thicker the atmosphere is, etc, so what happens depends on where the breaks are.
Perl is often very useful because it's installed by default on many unix and unixlike operating systems, and it is easier to do stuff in it than do stuff using shell scripts for all those operating systems.
Something newer like Python or Ruby won't be pre-installed on as many operating systems.
> they get no press, so they can't win -- a self fulfilling prophesy if there ever was one.
Blaming the press is becoming a weaker and weaker excuse as time goes by.
The voters got what they voted for. If they didn't want who they voted for, then they aren't doing their jobs properly. They should have voted for a different candidate.
From the way they vote the Two Parties regularly get stuff like 98% of all the votes. Therefore according to the voters the Two Parties must be:
a) Doing a wonderful job.
and/or
b) Better than the other alternatives.
If that's not the message they want to send, then perhaps they should stop giving Two Parties 98% of the vote. If there are no better candidates, they got the best, too bad if the best is not good enough. Nobody else is willing or able to be an alternative candidate (including the voter).
p.s. I find it funny that many people say the "everything" can be solved by the Free Market and then turn around and say that US democracy isn't working. The claim that voters are easily fooled and can't vote correctly in their long term interests once every few years is incompatible with the claim that buyers can vote with their wallets correctly and consistently in their long term interests.
Not really, it's more like the highway operators charging motorists tolls, and then trying to get the destination cities/towns/villages to pay as well.
This is just so that the parents can get some sleep ;).
Can a 3rd party register defense.gov.au? What are the controls and restrictions to registering it?
Never said it was OK.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's not a problem with the "3D" tech (I watched it in both 3D and 2D), if you watched it in 2D, you'd still see the same blurry stuff and eyestrain. However there would be one less clue on where to focus on.
;).
And yes, I was trying to look around the scene too. I went as an unconcerned tourist to Pandora - "ooh look at the flowers, ok now that guy is running from the monster, nevermind we all know he'll get away, and even if he didn't we don't care do we? After all the tour only ends in 2+ hours time"