Here's why people think geeks can't get laid: ... I've been married for six and a half years, and I've got a fantastic 10-month old daughter.
I think there's something to the "geeks can't get laid" thing. In high school and college, getting laid (or a steady relationship, or popularity) is most people's primary objective. One popular strategy is lifting yourself up by putting others down. Geeks, though, they actually spend a substantial fraction of their time getting educated. Since they don't dedicate as much time and effort on being social as others, they tend to come out on the low end of the pecking order.
After graduating, though, everyone has to spend a substantial fraction of their time earning a living. Geeks get paid more because they're in demand. And the balance changes to more like what you're describing.
Seeing how smelters, like ovens, but unlike Pentiums, WANT heat, it would be good to design them so they don't blackbody radiate away. So I'm guessing you're overestimating the power output of smelters.
I tried drawing it on the board. It does look like you could do better. Two lasers of the same frequency work better than two lasers of different frequencies. If each laser has a resolution that takes one reading per two dots, and you space their readings one dot apart, you can figure out all the dots. Three lasers, three dots per reading, etc. And more lasers than dots per reading add redundancy, reducing error.
I know, I know, I'm an armchair physicist. Trying to apply digital solutions to an analog problem.
I just had a thought... what if you tried reading a medium with two different colored lasers? Could you get effectively better resolution than with just one laser? By how much? From what I recall from my music classes, the difference between two close frequencies is a lower frequency, not a higher one, so maybe there's nothing here. But I thought I'd ask.
>>A basic axiom of a joke is that, if you have to explain it, it's not.
>Why is that funny?
Scott Adams (of Dilbert) says there are six dimensions of humor: bizarre, cute (like babies), naughty (like sex), familiar, cruel, and clever. Something has to have at least two to be funny.
Giving axioms for jokes is slightly bizarre. The "is, is not" is slightly clever. And there's a familiar truth, if you have to explain your jokes then you've already lost. So it qualifies as at least slightly funny.
It's never a good time to buy a computer, because you could always put off the purchase for two years and get one twice as fast. Or wait two years, and buy the one you really want now for a third the price.
The same site gives the numbers for the 2000 elections. The same counties that registered mostly democratic but voted mostly republican in 2004 did the same thing in 2000. I saw a quote somewhere that one of those counties was a "single party county", meaning that if you didn't register democrat then you weren't allowed to vote in any primary at all. That would explain the mismatch.
Can the potential difference in votes amount to a larger number than the margins by which either candidate won in a given state?
Yes. CNN says Bush had 52% of Florida vs Kerry's 47% (3,911,825 vs 3,534,609, a difference of 377,216 votes). The "strange anomoly" the article points to shows e-touch precints voting favoring Kerry more than expected (expected is total vote * %party) by 4,422 votes (out of 3,863,840 total). And the op-scan precints favored Bush more than expected by 599,721 votes (out of 3,419,852 total).
If the op-scan votes had favored Bush over expectations as much as the e-touch had favored Kerry over expectations, Kerry would have won Florida, and he would have won the national election.
I didn't run the numbers on any of the other anomalies.
The critical thing for attacks isn't the percentage of the population, but rather the size of the population. The fact that some platform (Microsoft, C/C++) has reached the critical size where there's a lively body of hackers writing viruses and worms for it means it'll take a smaller population for other platforms to get attacked, because a lot of the attitudes and techniques are portable.
I'm a big fan of cartoons, computer animation, and children's books and movies in general. However, I'm not planning on going to either Cars or Polar Express. I've seen the trailers. Perhaps I'm looking for some Big Concept, and not seeing any. Cars with buck teeth? Wide-eyed kids at Christmas? Doesn't do anything for me.
I skipped work today to see The Incredibles. Fun fun fun! A few of the scenes (flying into the island, sitting down at the dark desk) I had trouble telling they were animated. Elastigirl and Violet were hot. The boss was fantastic, although the bad guy was dull. More could have been done (a few fewer cliches and more distinctive tastes for the adults), but even what they had covered a lot of ground. The kids fighting at the dinner table, with the mom asking for help to break it up, looked very familiar.
Ignoring the rest of your post, the title is a good question. Why did Kerry lose to Bush? What is it about Bush that made 51% of American voters vote for him? Is it the macho guy stance, the push to make abortion illegal, an association of Kerry with Communism, or something else?
If you really need speed, and you're using a heavy duty CPU, you can do better than RC4 anyhow. RC4 manipulates 1-byte quantities. There are other stream ciphers that take about the same number of instructions but work on 4-byte or 8-byte quantities.
I agree. If you have no preference between Bush or Kerry or Nader etc etc, the best representation of your opinion is not to vote on that issue. You're allowed to leave some issues blank and vote on other issues on the same ballot. I regularly make use of that, although usually for Harbor Master and the like, where I truly have no clue.
"Good enough" is the worst enemy of the best. If you get the opportunity to do it better, do it RIGHT. The better the first replacement, the more unlikely you are to be given a chance to improve it later.
I prefer approval voting myself. I keep meaning to run those simulations to show which method is really the best (assuming various models of voter preference), but I haven't been able to get to it yet.
What percentage of web users are capable of going to mozilla.org and downloading a browser? For those that can't, the only way to convert them to Firefox is to either send them a disk with it or install it for them.
If you can't have children, but you go through medical procedures to get children, it's likely your children won't be able to have children either (unless they go through medical procedures themselves). Genetics, natural selection, that sort of thing. Insurance shouldn't support such medical procedures because it breeds a weaker human race (not to mention it would lead to the insurance company having to pay more over time). But if you can pay for the procedure yourself, especially if you earned the money yourself, that suggests you have other qualities that more than cancel the reproductive weakness in today's society. Looks like all is as it should be!
If your job goes somewhere else where people are paid 1/5 as much because money can buy 5x more stuff there, perhaps you should move there. If the US is so overpriced that you can't live there, move somewhere else. In any non-English-speaking country you stand a good chance of landing a job as an English teacher, if nothing else. The ability to speak with an American accent is highly valued.
A few days ago I read on Slashdot about biodiesel produced by a very efficient algae. One big stumbling block was that you needed CO2 in concentrations like you would get from the exhaust of a power plant to grow that algae at top rate. And looky here, today Slashdot is discussing a bunch of power plants putting out CO2 and they don't know what to do with it.
If he got his viewers by lying (using similar domain names in hopes of someone making a mistake is essentially a Trojan), I wouldn't count it as free speech. They have a right to speak, but the audience doesn't have a duty to listen.
I'm not Niel Stephenson, but the "surveys of ancient Sumerian accounting systems" comment needs this kibitz. I just read "Guns, Germs, and Steel". If you like extrapolations on what society could have been, and why it came out the way it did, and where it's going, it's a great book. It's got a little analysis of Europeans tromping on native Americans, but it's got even more analysis of Polynesians tromping on other Polynesians, Bantu tromping on Pygmies and Khoisans, and so forth.
Re:Okay, it's another bio-oil source.
on
A Viable Biofuel?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
According to that biodiesel-from-fuel article, you can grow the algae that's the feedstock for biodiesel at about half the current cost of diesel. So where is it? If someone can make tons of money doing it, that usually implies someone is already doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's something to the "geeks can't get laid" thing. In high school and college, getting laid (or a steady relationship, or popularity) is most people's primary objective. One popular strategy is lifting yourself up by putting others down. Geeks, though, they actually spend a substantial fraction of their time getting educated. Since they don't dedicate as much time and effort on being social as others, they tend to come out on the low end of the pecking order.
After graduating, though, everyone has to spend a substantial fraction of their time earning a living. Geeks get paid more because they're in demand. And the balance changes to more like what you're describing.
Seeing how smelters, like ovens, but unlike Pentiums, WANT heat, it would be good to design them so they don't blackbody radiate away. So I'm guessing you're overestimating the power output of smelters.
I tried drawing it on the board. It does look like you could do better. Two lasers of the same frequency work better than two lasers of different frequencies. If each laser has a resolution that takes one reading per two dots, and you space their readings one dot apart, you can figure out all the dots. Three lasers, three dots per reading, etc. And more lasers than dots per reading add redundancy, reducing error.
I know, I know, I'm an armchair physicist. Trying to apply digital solutions to an analog problem.
I just had a thought ... what if you tried reading a medium with two different colored lasers? Could you get effectively better resolution than with just one laser? By how much? From what I recall from my music classes, the difference between two close frequencies is a lower frequency, not a higher one, so maybe there's nothing here. But I thought I'd ask.
>>A basic axiom of a joke is that, if you have to explain it, it's not.
>Why is that funny?
Scott Adams (of Dilbert) says there are six dimensions of humor: bizarre, cute (like babies), naughty (like sex), familiar, cruel, and clever. Something has to have at least two to be funny.
Giving axioms for jokes is slightly bizarre. The "is, is not" is slightly clever. And there's a familiar truth, if you have to explain your jokes then you've already lost. So it qualifies as at least slightly funny.
It's never a good time to buy a computer, because you could always put off the purchase for two years and get one twice as fast. Or wait two years, and buy the one you really want now for a third the price.
The same site gives the numbers for the 2000 elections. The same counties that registered mostly democratic but voted mostly republican in 2004 did the same thing in 2000. I saw a quote somewhere that one of those counties was a "single party county", meaning that if you didn't register democrat then you weren't allowed to vote in any primary at all. That would explain the mismatch.
Yes. CNN says Bush had 52% of Florida vs Kerry's 47% (3,911,825 vs 3,534,609, a difference of 377,216 votes). The "strange anomoly" the article points to shows e-touch precints voting favoring Kerry more than expected (expected is total vote * %party) by 4,422 votes (out of 3,863,840 total). And the op-scan precints favored Bush more than expected by 599,721 votes (out of 3,419,852 total).
If the op-scan votes had favored Bush over expectations as much as the e-touch had favored Kerry over expectations, Kerry would have won Florida, and he would have won the national election.
I didn't run the numbers on any of the other anomalies.
The critical thing for attacks isn't the percentage of the population, but rather the size of the population. The fact that some platform (Microsoft, C/C++) has reached the critical size where there's a lively body of hackers writing viruses and worms for it means it'll take a smaller population for other platforms to get attacked, because a lot of the attitudes and techniques are portable.
I'm a big fan of cartoons, computer animation, and children's books and movies in general. However, I'm not planning on going to either Cars or Polar Express. I've seen the trailers. Perhaps I'm looking for some Big Concept, and not seeing any. Cars with buck teeth? Wide-eyed kids at Christmas? Doesn't do anything for me.
I skipped work today to see The Incredibles. Fun fun fun! A few of the scenes (flying into the island, sitting down at the dark desk) I had trouble telling they were animated. Elastigirl and Violet were hot. The boss was fantastic, although the bad guy was dull. More could have been done (a few fewer cliches and more distinctive tastes for the adults), but even what they had covered a lot of ground. The kids fighting at the dinner table, with the mom asking for help to break it up, looked very familiar.
Ignoring the rest of your post, the title is a good question. Why did Kerry lose to Bush? What is it about Bush that made 51% of American voters vote for him? Is it the macho guy stance, the push to make abortion illegal, an association of Kerry with Communism, or something else?
If you really need speed, and you're using a heavy duty CPU, you can do better than RC4 anyhow. RC4 manipulates 1-byte quantities. There are other stream ciphers that take about the same number of instructions but work on 4-byte or 8-byte quantities.
Well, yes, I do happen to have an opinion on Bush vs. Kerry. I plan to vote my preference tomorrow.
I agree. If you have no preference between Bush or Kerry or Nader etc etc, the best representation of your opinion is not to vote on that issue. You're allowed to leave some issues blank and vote on other issues on the same ballot. I regularly make use of that, although usually for Harbor Master and the like, where I truly have no clue.
"Good enough" is the worst enemy of the best. If you get the opportunity to do it better, do it RIGHT. The better the first replacement, the more unlikely you are to be given a chance to improve it later.
I prefer approval voting myself. I keep meaning to run those simulations to show which method is really the best (assuming various models of voter preference), but I haven't been able to get to it yet.
What percentage of web users are capable of going to mozilla.org and downloading a browser? For those that can't, the only way to convert them to Firefox is to either send them a disk with it or install it for them.
If you can't have children, but you go through medical procedures to get children, it's likely your children won't be able to have children either (unless they go through medical procedures themselves). Genetics, natural selection, that sort of thing. Insurance shouldn't support such medical procedures because it breeds a weaker human race (not to mention it would lead to the insurance company having to pay more over time). But if you can pay for the procedure yourself, especially if you earned the money yourself, that suggests you have other qualities that more than cancel the reproductive weakness in today's society. Looks like all is as it should be!
If your job goes somewhere else where people are paid 1/5 as much because money can buy 5x more stuff there, perhaps you should move there. If the US is so overpriced that you can't live there, move somewhere else. In any non-English-speaking country you stand a good chance of landing a job as an English teacher, if nothing else. The ability to speak with an American accent is highly valued.
A few days ago I read on Slashdot about biodiesel produced by a very efficient algae. One big stumbling block was that you needed CO2 in concentrations like you would get from the exhaust of a power plant to grow that algae at top rate. And looky here, today Slashdot is discussing a bunch of power plants putting out CO2 and they don't know what to do with it.
genetically engineered biodiesel, solar cells, paper, computers, roads, and chocolate bar tree!
If he got his viewers by lying (using similar domain names in hopes of someone making a mistake is essentially a Trojan), I wouldn't count it as free speech. They have a right to speak, but the audience doesn't have a duty to listen.
I'm not Niel Stephenson, but the "surveys of ancient Sumerian accounting systems" comment needs this kibitz. I just read "Guns, Germs, and Steel". If you like extrapolations on what society could have been, and why it came out the way it did, and where it's going, it's a great book. It's got a little analysis of Europeans tromping on native Americans, but it's got even more analysis of Polynesians tromping on other Polynesians, Bantu tromping on Pygmies and Khoisans, and so forth.
According to that biodiesel-from-fuel article, you can grow the algae that's the feedstock for biodiesel at about half the current cost of diesel. So where is it? If someone can make tons of money doing it, that usually implies someone is already doing it.
Shoot. Perhaps I've been knocked upside the head one to many times. Approval voting. Not plurality voting. Can Slashdot use APPROVAL voting, please?
Somebody mod this guy up. Can we have Slashdot use plurality voting? Please?