This week I have a major deadline by Monday morning. At the beginning of the week I thought I would need to do 40 hours. I'm an independent freelancer, so that's 40 hours of *coding*, not 40 hours at work. Bleah.
So I guess I need to be freaked out to really put the hours in.
The other thing that is helpful is to have a stopwatch. If money is actually attached to the hours you are coding, and you stop the stopwatch when you go hit slashdot, then you earn less money. That's why switching to freelancing was a bit better for my discipline.
But the other thing is that when you are procrastinating and wasting time, make sure to try and do it doing something that feels otherwise productive. About a year and half ago I started blogging, which is a great timewaster. But it also makes me develop opinions, and I found that over time my writing started developing more and more of a theme, usually centered around politics. Now my writing is getting a bit noticed, and I'm thinking more about participating in local politics. The urge to procrastinate can be an awesome clue about what you're really interested in, as long as your procrastination is something that truly expands your outlook on something.
I found part of the answer here - evidently the consumer could be charged more than they actually paid, in return for them being credits for more use later on. Like if I buy something for a penny, it might charge me two bucks, so I'll have $1.99 left to use on something else. Or it might charge me nothing, and wait until later. So it looks like it is something where your bank statements won't align with your financial activity. I don't like that.
I still don't get how it works. Their FAQ is really general. It says that they actually only process 1 in 10 payments (which means to me that they group them together before they process them). But I don't see how they can group them together except by each individual consumer. So does that mean that as a consumer, if I buy a nickel worth of something, I might not actually see it show up on my credit card for months? I wouldn't like that.
I can't believe no one has mentioned this yet - please mod this up if you can. Congressman Holt (D-NJ) has introduced a bill to require paper trails in electronic voting machines. This needs *aggressive* support as it is currently stuck in committee. Please review the bill:
Part of the demise of VNS was because the exit polling numbers was so different than the vote tallies, and so they drew the conclusion that it must have been the exit polling that was flawed. Completely ignoring the other possibility. No one has really investigated this that I know of.
Because there still has to be the appearance of democracy. These fraud techniques allow parties to control the margin of error, throwing close votes their direction. If a democrat has 65% support though, the risk of the fraud being exposed would be too great.
Scalia is completely wrong that the Constitution simply sets minimums. The Consititution is an agreement where the people give the government certain rights to control them, not a declaration of the people having no rights except for those explicitly stated in the Constitution.
It's even explicitly stated elsewhere that citizens rights are not limited to what is written down.
I feel like (as a non-scientist, non-physicist) that I have an intuitive understanding that all self-contained devices relying only on their own mechanics would never attain perpetual motion due to the dragging forces of gravity, friction, and other forms of external resistance.
But I don't have such an intuitive understanding that a machine that takes advantage of outside consistent forces as a source of energy (like gravity) could not attain perpetual motion. Especially if we loosen the definition of "outside consistent forces" from the scientific definition (those natural forces that always balance themselves) to the practical definition, like those forces that aren't naturally occuring but happen all the time anyway, like the directional airflow in a building's exit corridor, or the vibration of a dance floor, or all the other places in the world where energy is being expended and not captured. If we made machines that were built to rely on those forces always happening, and capturing them to convert them to energy, wouldn't that be generating more energy than is expended to run it, considering that the expended energy it depends on would be happening anyway? I know it's mathematically lazy but there's no reason why we can't double-count that stuff.
Hey, how close are we to having something like Gnutella2 host a massive database, where we can create tables and store data and make queries against it? The advantages of this should be obvious.
I created one called StorySprawl a while ago - it's for people to actually write cyoa adventures together, and we started doing an audio rendition of one of them, chapter by chapter, "Dreams Of Esterton". Low budget but fun. The "old" version of storysprawl is at www.storysprawl.com and the new version is in development... people can always write me if they want to have access to one of the sample audio chapters.
Right now the widgets are a waste of desktop space. What is so special about this in terms of the actual technology? What does it enable that would be worth the desktop space? What's better about it than a cocoa app? I mean, I can have a 256x256 cpu widget on my desktop, or a 16x16 menu item. I don't get it yet. Anyone?
Borda Count only makes sense if the people voting can all be trusted to not vote strategically. The Borda Count's counting method makes it really easy to understand how ranking your candidates against your true preferences actually increases the likelihood of your favorite candidate winning. Therefore most important elections using Borda Count will have a high rate of strategic voting, which makes Borda extremely unreliable in reality. It is the best mathematically and theoretically, but it sucks in reality.
For some reason this strikes me as a service to NOT sign up for... why would I want semi-anonymouse visitors to my blog to know where I live?
Be good for signing up a business address, though..
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 2
If people were meant to be vegetarians, we would have teeth like horses: all flat. If people were meant to be carnivores, we'd have teeth like aligators: all pointy. Instead, we have a mix of pointy and flat teeth that allow us to tear meat as well as grind vegetables.
Maybe it's not so much that "we are supposed to be omnivores" as it is that "we are supposed to have a choice." People often use this argument to suggest that No One Should Be Vegetarian, which is stupid (although I admit it doesn't seem that you are making that argument).
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 2
Plus, those nutyeast flakes are yummy. Combine it with soymilk, garlic, a dab of mustard, pour it over a mushroom/tempeh/peppers mix and you have an awesome breakfast scramble. Nutyeast is a vegetarian's dream condiment.
Here's what I don't understand - what jakarta technologies are mutually exclusive with each other? I did apache jserv development for a couple of years and I want to update by using java for a large scale personal project. My brain is tumbling around several options: 1) struts 2) tomcat/jetty 3) EJB (jboss/resin) 4) enhydra
So, what can be used with what? Can #1-#3 be all used together? I mostly just want to gain wide experience to help the old resume.
Assertion: In order to accept something as truth, trust is required if you can't verify it directly through personal experience.
Is that an absolute or is there a way around that? Your point (trust != truth) is valid but the point it suggests (that it requiring trust is a downside) is not valid. What's the alternative?
Even relying on an "independent third party" to verify a happening only offloads the trust burden. It's still there.
Perhaps a network of verification sources where their combined viability is inversely proportional to the connection between the sources? (If they're in bed together often, then they're not as trustworthy put together.)
You've got to be kidding. It sounds like you believe that basically any adopted cause, anything that "gets done" has to be able to be explained by economic principles in order for it to be viable or free.
Capitalism does not surround (nor does it claim to) principles like passion, integrity, emotionality. Your questions are false:
- Who will pay the on-air personalities?
Maybe no one. Maybe the on-air personalities that only would do it for money wouldn't have a place. But who says there wouldn't be on-air personalities that would be willing to do it for free? It happens all the time.
- Who will pay the reporters?
Maybe no one needs to. I write brief articles all the time for free. I wouldn't do it forty hours a week for free. But look at indymedia. They don't get paid. A lot of the articles suck and the veracity is suspect, but some of them are good.
- Who would write code updates for free?
Uh. Duh. Halfway through my reply I'm wondering if I got sucked into some troll's logic. People do it sometimes not for the promise of future money, but because they CARE.
I don't understand your fourth question.
There are a lot of things that shouldn't exist due to economic theory, but do anyway. The only people that this confuses are those that stupidly insist that economic theory should apply to causes that didn't even come from economic ideals.
That's just stupid. If someone pulls a gun on me without the immediate intention to shoot, the last thing I'm going to do is pull a gun in return. It would just increase the odds of him shooting.
Slashdot Mirror
This week I have a major deadline by Monday morning. At the beginning of the week I thought I would need to do 40 hours. I'm an independent freelancer, so that's 40 hours of *coding*, not 40 hours at work. Bleah.
Monday: 0:30
Tuesday: 5:30
Wednesday (freaked out): 10:30
Thursday: 6:00
Friday (freaked out): 9:45
Saturday: 5:45
So I guess I need to be freaked out to really put the hours in.
The other thing that is helpful is to have a stopwatch. If money is actually attached to the hours you are coding, and you stop the stopwatch when you go hit slashdot, then you earn less money. That's why switching to freelancing was a bit better for my discipline.
But the other thing is that when you are procrastinating and wasting time, make sure to try and do it doing something that feels otherwise productive. About a year and half ago I started blogging, which is a great timewaster. But it also makes me develop opinions, and I found that over time my writing started developing more and more of a theme, usually centered around politics. Now my writing is getting a bit noticed, and I'm thinking more about participating in local politics. The urge to procrastinate can be an awesome clue about what you're really interested in, as long as your procrastination is something that truly expands your outlook on something.
I found part of the answer here - evidently the consumer could be charged more than they actually paid, in return for them being credits for more use later on. Like if I buy something for a penny, it might charge me two bucks, so I'll have $1.99 left to use on something else. Or it might charge me nothing, and wait until later. So it looks like it is something where your bank statements won't align with your financial activity. I don't like that.
That doesn't make any sense. The transaction cost happens when the consumer's credit card is charged.
I still don't get how it works. Their FAQ is really general. It says that they actually only process 1 in 10 payments (which means to me that they group them together before they process them). But I don't see how they can group them together except by each individual consumer. So does that mean that as a consumer, if I buy a nickel worth of something, I might not actually see it show up on my credit card for months? I wouldn't like that.
http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=5996
and contact your congresscritters...
Part of the demise of VNS was because the exit polling numbers was so different than the vote tallies, and so they drew the conclusion that it must have been the exit polling that was flawed. Completely ignoring the other possibility. No one has really investigated this that I know of.
Because there still has to be the appearance of democracy. These fraud techniques allow parties to control the margin of error, throwing close votes their direction. If a democrat has 65% support though, the risk of the fraud being exposed would be too great.
Scalia is completely wrong that the Constitution simply sets minimums. The Consititution is an agreement where the people give the government certain rights to control them, not a declaration of the people having no rights except for those explicitly stated in the Constitution.
It's even explicitly stated elsewhere that citizens rights are not limited to what is written down.
Just curious, if you had the following case:
51% rabidly support candidate A, 49% rabidly oppose
but -
80% perfectly okay with candidate C as a compromise (for instance with a lot of second-place rankings and some first one)
who do you think should win?
This is really the crux of the question of most voting systems... consensus versus competition.
"If you remember correctly"? Four years ago? What memory-limiting drugs have you been on, anyway?
I feel like (as a non-scientist, non-physicist) that I have an intuitive understanding that all self-contained devices relying only on their own mechanics would never attain perpetual motion due to the dragging forces of gravity, friction, and other forms of external resistance.
But I don't have such an intuitive understanding that a machine that takes advantage of outside consistent forces as a source of energy (like gravity) could not attain perpetual motion. Especially if we loosen the definition of "outside consistent forces" from the scientific definition (those natural forces that always balance themselves) to the practical definition, like those forces that aren't naturally occuring but happen all the time anyway, like the directional airflow in a building's exit corridor, or the vibration of a dance floor, or all the other places in the world where energy is being expended and not captured. If we made machines that were built to rely on those forces always happening, and capturing them to convert them to energy, wouldn't that be generating more energy than is expended to run it, considering that the expended energy it depends on would be happening anyway? I know it's mathematically lazy but there's no reason why we can't double-count that stuff.
Hey, how close are we to having something like Gnutella2 host a massive database, where we can create tables and store data and make queries against it? The advantages of this should be obvious.
Wait, I thought the paid renewal thing was still subject to the overall 95-year limit or whatever it is now. So that's not unconstitutional.
Damn, I have an iBook 700 with 640 ram, and whenever I have a robot in there that isn't completely stupid, I get 2fps. Any idea what the problem is?
Safari oddly has a hell of a time opening certain sites like msnbc.com . v62 didn't, mozilla doesn't (even loading at the same time).
I created one called StorySprawl a while ago - it's for people to actually write cyoa adventures together, and we started doing an audio rendition of one of them, chapter by chapter, "Dreams Of Esterton". Low budget but fun. The "old" version of storysprawl is at www.storysprawl.com and the new version is in development... people can always write me if they want to have access to one of the sample audio chapters.
Curt
Right now the widgets are a waste of desktop space. What is so special about this in terms of the actual technology? What does it enable that would be worth the desktop space? What's better about it than a cocoa app? I mean, I can have a 256x256 cpu widget on my desktop, or a 16x16 menu item. I don't get it yet. Anyone?
Borda Count only makes sense if the people voting can all be trusted to not vote strategically. The Borda Count's counting method makes it really easy to understand how ranking your candidates against your true preferences actually increases the likelihood of your favorite candidate winning. Therefore most important elections using Borda Count will have a high rate of strategic voting, which makes Borda extremely unreliable in reality. It is the best mathematically and theoretically, but it sucks in reality.
For some reason this strikes me as a service to NOT sign up for... why would I want semi-anonymouse visitors to my blog to know where I live?
Be good for signing up a business address, though..
Maybe it's not so much that "we are supposed to be omnivores" as it is that "we are supposed to have a choice." People often use this argument to suggest that No One Should Be Vegetarian, which is stupid (although I admit it doesn't seem that you are making that argument).
Plus, those nutyeast flakes are yummy. Combine it with soymilk, garlic, a dab of mustard, pour it over a mushroom/tempeh/peppers mix and you have an awesome breakfast scramble. Nutyeast is a vegetarian's dream condiment.
Here's what I don't understand - what jakarta technologies are mutually exclusive with each other? I did apache jserv development for a couple of years and I want to update by using java for a large scale personal project. My brain is tumbling around several options:
1) struts
2) tomcat/jetty
3) EJB (jboss/resin)
4) enhydra
So, what can be used with what? Can #1-#3 be all used together? I mostly just want to gain wide experience to help the old resume.
Assertion: In order to accept something as truth, trust is required if you can't verify it directly through personal experience.
Is that an absolute or is there a way around that? Your point (trust != truth) is valid but the point it suggests (that it requiring trust is a downside) is not valid. What's the alternative?
Even relying on an "independent third party" to verify a happening only offloads the trust burden. It's still there.
Perhaps a network of verification sources where their combined viability is inversely proportional to the connection between the sources? (If they're in bed together often, then they're not as trustworthy put together.)
Capitalism does not surround (nor does it claim to) principles like passion, integrity, emotionality. Your questions are false:
- Who will pay the on-air personalities?
Maybe no one. Maybe the on-air personalities that only would do it for money wouldn't have a place. But who says there wouldn't be on-air personalities that would be willing to do it for free? It happens all the time.
- Who will pay the reporters?
Maybe no one needs to. I write brief articles all the time for free. I wouldn't do it forty hours a week for free. But look at indymedia. They don't get paid. A lot of the articles suck and the veracity is suspect, but some of them are good.
- Who would write code updates for free?
Uh. Duh. Halfway through my reply I'm wondering if I got sucked into some troll's logic. People do it sometimes not for the promise of future money, but because they CARE.
I don't understand your fourth question.
There are a lot of things that shouldn't exist due to economic theory, but do anyway. The only people that this confuses are those that stupidly insist that economic theory should apply to causes that didn't even come from economic ideals.
That's just stupid. If someone pulls a gun on me without the immediate intention to shoot, the last thing I'm going to do is pull a gun in return. It would just increase the odds of him shooting.