BUT to me this does not address one of the major requirements for a practical voting system: Convincing enough of the losers that they have lost. If you cannot convince the losers that you have lost you may end up with civil wars or riots. One of the main reasons for having such elections is so that people can choose leaders without having so much violence involved.
With a decent ballot box system with physical counts, you don't need to be a genius to know when you have lost fair and square (at least within acceptable levels of error/malice). They can see the votes being counted in front of their eyes and that they are losing most votes. And that the ballot boxes started empty and never moved from the room from the point the voting started till they ended and were sealed - all in front of observers (including them).
With the physical system cheating is done via postal votes, remote locations with few observers, and/or behind closed doors. If the counting is done secretly behind closed doors, you can be certain that massive scale cheating is going on.
With most forms of electronic voting it is harder to convince people that they have lost fair and square. Most popular forms of electronic voting are like "closed door" counts, and for that reason alone they should not be trusted nor used.
Huh? The only reason to work longer hours is if the country is not producing enough to feed everyone. But is that true?
If the country is producing enough to feed everyone and you have too few jobs and too many workers why not: a) work shorter hours? b) work the same hours, but give everyone a basic income so that the jobless don't need jobs to survive?
If the country is not producing enough to feed everyone, then it's screwed in the long run. You can hide it by going into debt or other tricks, but the real solution is to figure out a way to increase productivity.
People with no hope of finding jobs stealing stuff from me does not increase productivity.
It's all Bogeyman BS. 1) USA has thousands of nukes including ICBMs 2) China has about two hundred nukes including ICBMs. 3) NONE of that cyberwar hacking is going to stop the nuclear missiles. 4) China will come out worse in a nuclear war against the USA (unless the rest of the world nuke the USA too) 5) Neither side appear to have suicidal leaders, and most of the leaders are enjoying their lifestyles at the top. 6) The USA owes China trillions of US dollars.
So why would China start a war on a country with way more nukes? Since it's public knowledge that China has nukes, guess what USA would do if China really starts a war with the USA? And what would China gain?
China may hack to get secrets but you don't take down massive numbers of servers when you do that. So if the USA has evidence of any real cyber attack from China they'll just tell China to "STOP IT NOW OR ELSE".
This cyberwar scenario might be applicable if China was trying to avenge an attack from the USA. China has fewer nukes than the USA, and the USA has more defenses against nukes, so to try to increase the effectiveness of its fewer nukes in revenge strikes China may have to DoS stuff. China would still lose the resulting war, but at least the USA would be more hurt - and maybe some pissed-off US citizens might kill the crazy US leaders who "pressed the button" (if they ever come out of hiding).
From what I observe, the Chinese leaders at the top are likely to be well aware of these realities. I can't say the same about the US "Sarah Palin" leaders.
Not really. It just means fewer concerns over the loss of human lives if you sink the ship (shouldn't be too hard if you are already within periscope distance).
It's only intimidating to people on-board who are being attacked by the robots (e.g. if some crazy nut has is using them to kill/hurt people on board).
You may find many leaders of religious countries aren't actually very religious - they just pretend to be. So they might not want to die so soon. Many of them might even be hoping/betting there isn't a God (otherwise they'd be in deep shit).
Revolutionary Guard General Reza Zare'i, the Commander of the Police for Greater Tehran had been arrested three weeks ago enjoying the company of six completely nude women parading in a house he had rented, the websites reported, adding that the women had told agents that the General had told them to take off all their dresses and pray completely nude. "The General ordered us to take all our clothes and pray. "
They did not say what was the reason the general wanted them to pray completely nude, but said he would just watch them praying.
Zarei was himself in charge of the so called "Public security plan" which was aimed at enforcing Islamic dress code and fight indecent behavior of youth in the Iranian capital.
Cascading menus are horrible, particularly for just starting an application.
All depends on how you use the Start Menu.
Try this: Use Windows XP/2K. Switch to "Classic Mode" start menu. Create a folder in your start menu called "1 Explore" Create a shortcut in that folder called: "1 Explore Desktop" With target: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe ,/e, "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop" Start in: %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
And also similar ones like "2 Explore homedir", "3 Explore My Documents" And "C Explore C" etc.
This way all I need to do is press the following sequence: winkey, 1, 1 and that will explore the desktop, which allows me to explore and sort the desktop by last modified date etc. winkey, 1, 3 = Explore My Documents winkey, 1, C = Explore C drive winkey, 1, D = Explore D drive...
Then I've also got a folder called "2 Tools" which stores shortcuts to commonly used little programs. So winkey, 2, C = Calculator. etc And a folder called "3 Launch" so winkey,3,3 = email program. winkey, 4 = Command prompt. winkey 7, 2 = ssh to machine #2 winkey, 8 = Administrator Command prompt (think su).
It doesn't take very long to set up, and you can change it easily, or even copy the folders and shortcuts to a new computer (from a usb drive even).
BTW I've also shortcuts to text editors, hex editors, media players, windiff, windirstat in my "Send To" folder - which means I can try to open any file/folder with them (even if they have the wrong extension).
So yeah the "classic windows" was quite good for someone like me.
Unfortunately the "numbered folder/shortcut" stuff no longer works well on Windows 7. Windows 7 has some pluses and some minuses (search is really broken, I often have to use baregrep to find stuff that I know is there but Win7 search can't find).
I put a bunch of programs in my "SendTo" folder. Text editors, hex editor, media players (more than one), windiff, windirstat.
"SendTo" is a great invention (by Microsoft?). The people who designed the original Windows 95 UI actually had a number of good ideas. SendTo being one of them.
No need to edit some config file or go through some config screens, just copy shortcuts to SendTo and voila you can now try to open files with those programs.
Note: if you're not sure where your send to folder is on Windows, click on start, then run, and type: shell:sendto and press enter. Then copy/create the various shortcuts to the programs there.
Many humans seem to be quite happy keeping their pets well-fed and happy. Big difference I see is pets don't get to vote and lose a lot of freedoms, often reproductive freedoms too.
Would those same humans be as happy keeping those pets around if their pets can vote and have the same freedoms as the humans minus the responsibilities?
Not saying society should keep some humans as pets, but even if resources are enough to go around today, if the "pets" with freedoms and no responsibilities keep reproducing, you can end up with many problems. One way to mitigate this is forced education of all children from a young age. Brainwash them early so that most of them will at least want to be useful and helpful, and be well educated. So even if their parents are useless parasites, their children might not be.
Oh yeah... Another reason to prefer a powerful/flexible or high performance language- when you are creating a new programming language (and haven't got to the self-hosting stage yet).
If you are writing a lot of stuff nobody has written before, it makes sense to prioritize 1) instead of 2). I'm just guessing that the great programmers will be doing more projects like that. e.g. testing some completely new AI paradigm, writing a new OS for new hardware.
The rest of us writing "Yet Another Web App/Server" should prioritize 2).
1) Some programming languages are great for all the code you have to write. They are very powerful, very expressive, high performance, etc etc.
2) Other programming languages are great for all the code you DON'T have to write! They have lots of _good_ well documented standard or defacto standard libraries, modules, so you don't actually have to write stuff for a lot of things.
Being a crappy lazy programmer I prefer languages that satisfy both 1) and 2), but with 2) as a priority. Because I end up having to write a lot less and it's not my responsibility to document, support and fix those libraries. Yes I may have to fix or workaround some of the library bugs, but it's not really my job...
The good libraries are written by programmers far better than me, so if I use their stuff instead of reinventing it, it means fewer bugs and higher quality.
Of course, if you are a great programmer your priority would be 1). 2) only being a minor factor.
Came here to post about it. Great series. Hard to describe in a sentence.
I started with the "Saga of the Exiles" ( The Many Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King, The Adversary) which were written earlier and seem rather well researched and planned. There's even a separate reference book for them called the Pliocene Companion: http://www.amazon.com/Pliocene-Companion-Julian-May/dp/0345322908
The Galactic Milieu (Intervention, Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, Magnificat) books do not give me the same sense of scale and "realness". Then again perhaps it's because I was younger and less jaded when I read the earlier books;). Still, I wasn't impressed by the "ending" book (Magnificat).
Note: all the books mentioned are in the same "series", and set in the same universe.
The Saga of the Exiles involves a bunch of humans from a somewhat utopian high tech future (which has different aliens with mind powers, faster than light travel, humans developing mind powers, etc) who are exiled 6 million years back in the past. To their surprise they encounter aliens too...
The Galactic Milieu series is about events leading up to and after The Intervention (by the aliens), and the rise of humans especially the Remillard clan, due to their talents and exceptional mind powers.
The reality is even if Facebook deployed crypto the people who care about crypto won't and CANNOT trust FB to do it in a way secure for the users. Haven't you seen those companies that claim to provide crypto but still hand over decrypted stuff to others?
The reason why crypto sorta works for web banking is you already have made the decision to trust your bank.
If you can't trust Facebook, Facebook deploying cryptography to stop FB from eavesdropping on users is a waste of time and resources for everyone including FB.
It's easy for me to taste the difference between pure RO/distilled water and tap water. Especially if the samples aren't too cold or hot - in some of the tests I've seen the water is cold which makes it harder to taste. As for mineral waters there are plenty that are too salty or chalky for my liking. Not all tap water is the same too. Some are very bad tasting, some taste quite good, and in some countries you don't drink the tap water, might even be safer brushing your teeth with beer.
People are good at detecting differences "side-by-side", but identifying absolutes is harder and usually requires more practice.
If you're smart you won't want to be President of the USA. 1) It's a very dangerous job- about 10% died from "job-related causes". I don't think it's really become that much safer over the years. 2) The amount of power you wield is limited, but you are blamed for almost everything (even stuff you aren't responsible for)- which contributes to #1. 3) You are limited to two terms even if you did a good job and most voters want you back.
Better to be a Senator for a bit less than half the pay, a lot lower risk and far fewer problems. You can get away with a lot more crap without the spotlight on you.
Slashdot Mirror
Smart people have thought of how to do it already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s
BUT to me this does not address one of the major requirements for a practical voting system: Convincing enough of the losers that they have lost. If you cannot convince the losers that you have lost you may end up with civil wars or riots. One of the main reasons for having such elections is so that people can choose leaders without having so much violence involved.
With a decent ballot box system with physical counts, you don't need to be a genius to know when you have lost fair and square (at least within acceptable levels of error/malice). They can see the votes being counted in front of their eyes and that they are losing most votes. And that the ballot boxes started empty and never moved from the room from the point the voting started till they ended and were sealed - all in front of observers (including them).
With the physical system cheating is done via postal votes, remote locations with few observers, and/or behind closed doors. If the counting is done secretly behind closed doors, you can be certain that massive scale cheating is going on.
With most forms of electronic voting it is harder to convince people that they have lost fair and square. Most popular forms of electronic voting are like "closed door" counts, and for that reason alone they should not be trusted nor used.
Huh? The only reason to work longer hours is if the country is not producing enough to feed everyone. But is that true?
If the country is producing enough to feed everyone and you have too few jobs and too many workers why not:
a) work shorter hours?
b) work the same hours, but give everyone a basic income so that the jobless don't need jobs to survive?
If the country is not producing enough to feed everyone, then it's screwed in the long run. You can hide it by going into debt or other tricks, but the real solution is to figure out a way to increase productivity.
People with no hope of finding jobs stealing stuff from me does not increase productivity.
It's all Bogeyman BS.
1) USA has thousands of nukes including ICBMs
2) China has about two hundred nukes including ICBMs.
3) NONE of that cyberwar hacking is going to stop the nuclear missiles.
4) China will come out worse in a nuclear war against the USA (unless the rest of the world nuke the USA too)
5) Neither side appear to have suicidal leaders, and most of the leaders are enjoying their lifestyles at the top.
6) The USA owes China trillions of US dollars.
So why would China start a war on a country with way more nukes? Since it's public knowledge that China has nukes, guess what USA would do if China really starts a war with the USA? And what would China gain?
China may hack to get secrets but you don't take down massive numbers of servers when you do that. So if the USA has evidence of any real cyber attack from China they'll just tell China to "STOP IT NOW OR ELSE".
This cyberwar scenario might be applicable if China was trying to avenge an attack from the USA. China has fewer nukes than the USA, and the USA has more defenses against nukes, so to try to increase the effectiveness of its fewer nukes in revenge strikes China may have to DoS stuff. China would still lose the resulting war, but at least the USA would be more hurt - and maybe some pissed-off US citizens might kill the crazy US leaders who "pressed the button" (if they ever come out of hiding).
See the number of nukes China has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons#Statistics
From what I observe, the Chinese leaders at the top are likely to be well aware of these realities. I can't say the same about the US "Sarah Palin" leaders.
Apply sunscreen at exposed areas, wear shades, earplugs...
The thing I'm wondering about this new treatment is why wouldn't immune cells from the donated marrow start attacking the host?
Not really. It just means fewer concerns over the loss of human lives if you sink the ship (shouldn't be too hard if you are already within periscope distance).
It's only intimidating to people on-board who are being attacked by the robots (e.g. if some crazy nut has is using them to kill/hurt people on board).
And that includes more people being able to play TF2 from more cybercafes. Some cybercafes may not have wanted to pay for TF2 for each machine.
More people at cybercafes going "hey what's that game he's playing? Let's try it instead of CS/L4D".
You may find many leaders of religious countries aren't actually very religious - they just pretend to be. So they might not want to die so soon. Many of them might even be hoping/betting there isn't a God (otherwise they'd be in deep shit).
Revolutionary Guard General Reza Zare'i, the Commander of the Police for Greater Tehran had been arrested three weeks ago enjoying the company of six completely nude women parading in a house he had rented, the websites reported, adding that the women had told agents that the General had told them to take off all their dresses and pray completely nude. "The General ordered us to take all our clothes and pray. "
They did not say what was the reason the general wanted them to pray completely nude, but said he would just watch them praying.
Zarei was himself in charge of the so called "Public security plan" which was aimed at enforcing Islamic dress code and fight indecent behavior of youth in the Iranian capital.
Cascading menus are horrible, particularly for just starting an application.
All depends on how you use the Start Menu.
Try this: /e, "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop"
Use Windows XP/2K.
Switch to "Classic Mode" start menu.
Create a folder in your start menu called "1 Explore"
Create a shortcut in that folder called:
"1 Explore Desktop"
With target:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe ,
Start in: %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
And also similar ones like "2 Explore homedir", "3 Explore My Documents"
And "C Explore C" etc.
This way all I need to do is press the following sequence: ...
winkey, 1, 1 and that will explore the desktop, which allows me to explore and sort the desktop by last modified date etc.
winkey, 1, 3 = Explore My Documents
winkey, 1, C = Explore C drive
winkey, 1, D = Explore D drive
Then I've also got a folder called "2 Tools" which stores shortcuts to commonly used little programs.
So winkey, 2, C = Calculator.
etc
And a folder called "3 Launch" so winkey,3,3 = email program.
winkey, 4 = Command prompt.
winkey 7, 2 = ssh to machine #2
winkey, 8 = Administrator Command prompt (think su).
It doesn't take very long to set up, and you can change it easily, or even copy the folders and shortcuts to a new computer (from a usb drive even).
BTW I've also shortcuts to text editors, hex editors, media players, windiff, windirstat in my "Send To" folder - which means I can try to open any file/folder with them (even if they have the wrong extension).
So yeah the "classic windows" was quite good for someone like me.
Unfortunately the "numbered folder/shortcut" stuff no longer works well on Windows 7. Windows 7 has some pluses and some minuses (search is really broken, I often have to use baregrep to find stuff that I know is there but Win7 search can't find).
I put a bunch of programs in my "SendTo" folder. Text editors, hex editor, media players (more than one), windiff, windirstat.
"SendTo" is a great invention (by Microsoft?). The people who designed the original Windows 95 UI actually had a number of good ideas. SendTo being one of them.
No need to edit some config file or go through some config screens, just copy shortcuts to SendTo and voila you can now try to open files with those programs.
Note: if you're not sure where your send to folder is on Windows, click on start, then run, and type: shell:sendto and press enter. Then copy/create the various shortcuts to the programs there.
Many humans seem to be quite happy keeping their pets well-fed and happy. Big difference I see is pets don't get to vote and lose a lot of freedoms, often reproductive freedoms too.
Would those same humans be as happy keeping those pets around if their pets can vote and have the same freedoms as the humans minus the responsibilities?
Not saying society should keep some humans as pets, but even if resources are enough to go around today, if the "pets" with freedoms and no responsibilities keep reproducing, you can end up with many problems. One way to mitigate this is forced education of all children from a young age. Brainwash them early so that most of them will at least want to be useful and helpful, and be well educated. So even if their parents are useless parasites, their children might not be.
Depends. Say you're lying and your facebook profile with your photo turns up in a Google search?
Oh yeah... Another reason to prefer a powerful/flexible or high performance language- when you are creating a new programming language (and haven't got to the self-hosting stage yet).
If you are writing a lot of stuff nobody has written before, it makes sense to prioritize 1) instead of 2). I'm just guessing that the great programmers will be doing more projects like that. e.g. testing some completely new AI paradigm, writing a new OS for new hardware.
The rest of us writing "Yet Another Web App/Server" should prioritize 2).
1) Some programming languages are great for all the code you have to write. They are very powerful, very expressive, high performance, etc etc.
2) Other programming languages are great for all the code you DON'T have to write! They have lots of _good_ well documented standard or defacto standard libraries, modules, so you don't actually have to write stuff for a lot of things.
Being a crappy lazy programmer I prefer languages that satisfy both 1) and 2), but with 2) as a priority. Because I end up having to write a lot less and it's not my responsibility to document, support and fix those libraries. Yes I may have to fix or workaround some of the library bugs, but it's not really my job...
The good libraries are written by programmers far better than me, so if I use their stuff instead of reinventing it, it means fewer bugs and higher quality.
Of course, if you are a great programmer your priority would be 1). 2) only being a minor factor.
Came here to post about it. Great series. Hard to describe in a sentence.
I started with the "Saga of the Exiles" ( The Many Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King, The Adversary) which were written earlier and seem rather well researched and planned. There's even a separate reference book for them called the Pliocene Companion: http://www.amazon.com/Pliocene-Companion-Julian-May/dp/0345322908
The Galactic Milieu (Intervention, Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, Magnificat) books do not give me the same sense of scale and "realness". Then again perhaps it's because I was younger and less jaded when I read the earlier books ;). Still, I wasn't impressed by the "ending" book (Magnificat).
Note: all the books mentioned are in the same "series", and set in the same universe.
The Saga of the Exiles involves a bunch of humans from a somewhat utopian high tech future (which has different aliens with mind powers, faster than light travel, humans developing mind powers, etc) who are exiled 6 million years back in the past. To their surprise they encounter aliens too...
The Galactic Milieu series is about events leading up to and after The Intervention (by the aliens), and the rise of humans especially the Remillard clan, due to their talents and exceptional mind powers.
You could point them to the bug report you filed to help yourself keep track of stuff.
Q: "What are you working on?"
A: bug #1321.
So to use your link's example:
bug #1321: LXML, crashes under heavy load when using the system default version of libxml.
They or you can look up the bug dependencies, and the comments on why you are fixing or working-around stuff that way.
The reality is even if Facebook deployed crypto the people who care about crypto won't and CANNOT trust FB to do it in a way secure for the users. Haven't you seen those companies that claim to provide crypto but still hand over decrypted stuff to others?
The reason why crypto sorta works for web banking is you already have made the decision to trust your bank.
If you can't trust Facebook, Facebook deploying cryptography to stop FB from eavesdropping on users is a waste of time and resources for everyone including FB.
It would be able to climb stairs and travel across rough terrain at near maximum speed. Do it right and it will also be able to jump.
It's easy for me to taste the difference between pure RO/distilled water and tap water. Especially if the samples aren't too cold or hot - in some of the tests I've seen the water is cold which makes it harder to taste. As for mineral waters there are plenty that are too salty or chalky for my liking. Not all tap water is the same too. Some are very bad tasting, some taste quite good, and in some countries you don't drink the tap water, might even be safer brushing your teeth with beer.
People are good at detecting differences "side-by-side", but identifying absolutes is harder and usually requires more practice.
Especially if he/she eventually typed in misspelled swear words instead of the correct answers? ;)
If you're smart you won't want to be President of the USA.
1) It's a very dangerous job- about 10% died from "job-related causes". I don't think it's really become that much safer over the years.
2) The amount of power you wield is limited, but you are blamed for almost everything (even stuff you aren't responsible for)- which contributes to #1.
3) You are limited to two terms even if you did a good job and most voters want you back.
Better to be a Senator for a bit less than half the pay, a lot lower risk and far fewer problems. You can get away with a lot more crap without the spotlight on you.
4 years in jail? I thought it'd be more like 6 feet under.
Assuming your body is found of course.
I tried: the land of the rising sun
It looped...
The corporations and friends will keep trying to push their laws in. There are zero/insignificant penalties when they fail.
There's no "I already said NO, if you ask me one more time you're grounded!" regulation.