I think the problems you ask about are all problems inherent to a push medium (e.g. email) -- which AFAIK RSS is not. That is, the end user decides which RSS feeds to poll, and when to poll them. Therefore, if an RSS feed starts sending viruses or otherwise being malevolent, people will just stop using it and move on to other RSS feeds.
"Many users trying to share a finite amount of network bandwidth" is basically the same problem as "many programs trying to share a finite amount of CPU time". Therefore the solutions appropriate for scheduling bandwidth availability are similar to the solutions used in modern scheduling algorithms. Throttle down the hogs!
Regarding complexity vs technical advantages, I think that as long as ballot casting is simple, ballot counting can be a little more complex.
I disagree. If people don't understand clearly how the result of an election was determined, they are going to suspect that the result might have been doctored. If you can explain the Condorcet method to a high school dropout in one minute or less, it might have a chance -- otherwise, the process won't be accepted, or if it is, it would be repealed after the first contested election. Maybe someday in the future when people are more comfortable with non-trivial algorithms, Condorcet will be the bee's knees, but for now I just don't see it going anywhere.
throw a monster engine into a decent body of a car...
What kind of gas mileage and emissions would such a car have? Gas is $2.10 a gallon around here these days, and smog and global warming aren't much fun either...
Want real representation? Check out Condorcet Voting
I have, and despite its technical advantages, I think Condorcet is too complicated to be adopted by the American public in the forseeable future. IRV gives 90% of the advantages of Condorcet, and is being adopted by various cities and states now. IRV's success is due largely to its simplicity -- people aren't going to vote for a system they don't trust, and they won't trust a system that they don't intuitively understand.
When the same news sources reported that 5.6% unemployment under Clinton Good, but currently report that 5.6% unemployment under Bush is Bad, they're liars.
Nope, sorry. Calling something "good" or "bad" is an opinion, not a fact. If you don't agree with their opinion, fine, but calling people liars just because you disagree with their opinion discredits nobody but yourself.
For your reference, lying would be if they said that the unemployment rate was 2.2% when the official figure was really 5.6%.
(And if you think it's impossible for a 5.6% unemployment rate to be "good" one year and "bad" during another, consider how that figure is computed -- it's currently artificially low because so many people have stopped looking for work, and thus are no longer considered "unemployed", even though they remain jobless)
Why is the level of radiation so dramatically different on roads?
My guess would be that asphalt absorbs less radiation than dirt/dust/mud/plants do.... whenever it rains, more radioactivity is washed off of the road and onto the areas around the road.
Nuclear power is one of the cleanest sources of energy in the world.
Assuming the plant is well run, never attacked by terrorists, and the nuclear waste it generates never leaks into the environment. And if any of those things DO happen... well, 48,000 years is a rather long time to wait before you can move back home...
Yes, they stole the software. It doesn't matter. The fact remains that the CIA intentionally and willfully caused the destruction of a civilian facility. We can argue about whether or not such an act actually constitutes terrorism, but my claim was that it would be called terrorism. What do you think the American press and government would call it, if someone did the same thing to us?
(And for those who really follow this stuff, you probably already know that human intelligence is one thing that is very sorely lacking in our war on terror today.)
For the record, deliberately inserting bugs into a software program to cause the destruction of a natural gas facility and billions in economic damage would almost certainly be called terrorism today. Except, of course, it's by definition not terrorism if the US government does it.
Uh, how is this extortion? SCO claims to own IP in Linux and is asking for money to license this IP.
According to my interpretation of the copyright laws, I own the rights to 50% of the content of your post (quoted above). Therefore, you are in violation of my IP. Please remit a license fee of $699 to my account in the next 48 hours or I will be forced to take legal action against you. This is not an extortion attempt.
It sort of seems to me like saying "unmanned exploration is really successful, but look at how many people we killed with stupid manned exploration, that could have easily been done unmanned"
But isn't that the truth? Let's face it, manned exploration IS orders of magnitude more expensive than unmanned, doesn't provide much more benefit from a scientific viewpoint, as is infinitely more tragic when things go wrong. If we still want to do manned exploration because of the "cool factor", then so be it, but let's not lie to ourselves about the facts.
What I'm trying to say is that everything in orbit below geosynchronous is going to cross the path of the cable eventually, and there's nothing you can do about it
Actually, there IS something you can do about it -- move the cable out of the way. That's one reason why the base of the cable would be on a barge.
Then maybe the cost-benefit ratio makes a little more sense.
Not to diss NASA, but how many people do you know who have benefitted significantly from the space program? How many people do you know whose lives have been improved by their pets?
where are we going to find a big enough rock to attach to the other end?
According to the book, the plan is to send up a rocket with the smallest possible cable. The cable gets lowered to Earth and secured (cable also gets spooled out in the opposite direction, in order to keep the spacecraft in orbit). Then they send up a series of progressively larger robots along the ribbon. Each robot adds more material to the ribbon as it climbs, and when it gets to the top of the ribbon, it stays there to add to the mass of the counterweight. So basically we bootstrap our way up.
He's a commercial product, why would he look like that? He's your plastic pal who's fun to be with, not your frightening industrial assasin-droid you're afraid to be left alone with.
He's made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, that's why. They screwed up everything else, what makes you think they would get the case design right?
Secondly even if it could be it is focused on the wrong target, it should feel right to the end user/problem domain experts.
Keep in mind that the programmers ARE the "end user/problem domain experts" of the programming language they are using to do their work. So you and the author actually agree here -- just as Joe Sixpack is more productive with an intuitive toolset, so is Joe Programmer.
Programmers should be average. Absolutely not.
I hate to break it to you, but the average programmer is going to be average, by definition. Barring the invention of brain-steroids, that people aren't going to get much smarter. You can either ignore the reality that people's skills are limited, or you can address the problem by providing them with tools that allow them to make the most of the skills they have. The latter solution will provide the most benefit, even if it does mean potentially lower salaries for the few super-geniuses out there.
Slashdot Mirror
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this)
"Many users trying to share a finite amount of network bandwidth" is basically the same problem as "many programs trying to share a finite amount of CPU time". Therefore the solutions appropriate for scheduling bandwidth availability are similar to the solutions used in modern scheduling algorithms. Throttle down the hogs!
I disagree. If people don't understand clearly how the result of an election was determined, they are going to suspect that the result might have been doctored. If you can explain the Condorcet method to a high school dropout in one minute or less, it might have a chance -- otherwise, the process won't be accepted, or if it is, it would be repealed after the first contested election. Maybe someday in the future when people are more comfortable with non-trivial algorithms, Condorcet will be the bee's knees, but for now I just don't see it going anywhere.
What kind of gas mileage and emissions would such a car have? Gas is $2.10 a gallon around here these days, and smog and global warming aren't much fun either...
I have, and despite its technical advantages, I think Condorcet is too complicated to be adopted by the American public in the forseeable future. IRV gives 90% of the advantages of Condorcet, and is being adopted by various cities and states now. IRV's success is due largely to its simplicity -- people aren't going to vote for a system they don't trust, and they won't trust a system that they don't intuitively understand.
The fact that Nintendo is not the government, and Nintendo manuals are not law books.
Nope, sorry. Calling something "good" or "bad" is an opinion, not a fact. If you don't agree with their opinion, fine, but calling people liars just because you disagree with their opinion discredits nobody but yourself.
For your reference, lying would be if they said that the unemployment rate was 2.2% when the official figure was really 5.6%.
(And if you think it's impossible for a 5.6% unemployment rate to be "good" one year and "bad" during another, consider how that figure is computed -- it's currently artificially low because so many people have stopped looking for work, and thus are no longer considered "unemployed", even though they remain jobless)
Come to think of it, I've always wanted a giant mechanical spider that I could commute to work on. Why don't the Japanese come up with one of those?
My guess would be that asphalt absorbs less radiation than dirt/dust/mud/plants do.... whenever it rains, more radioactivity is washed off of the road and onto the areas around the road.
Assuming the plant is well run, never attacked by terrorists, and the nuclear waste it generates never leaks into the environment. And if any of those things DO happen... well, 48,000 years is a rather long time to wait before you can move back home...
You have special insights into God's motivations? If so, can you please explain why he made the platypus? I never quite figured that one out.
Interesting... to me, Venus seems a more likely location of hell.
Yes, they stole the software. It doesn't matter. The fact remains that the CIA intentionally and willfully caused the destruction of a civilian facility. We can argue about whether or not such an act actually constitutes terrorism, but my claim was that it would be called terrorism. What do you think the American press and government would call it, if someone did the same thing to us?
For the record, deliberately inserting bugs into a software program to cause the destruction of a natural gas facility and billions in economic damage would almost certainly be called terrorism today. Except, of course, it's by definition not terrorism if the US government does it.
According to my interpretation of the copyright laws, I own the rights to 50% of the content of your post (quoted above). Therefore, you are in violation of my IP. Please remit a license fee of $699 to my account in the next 48 hours or I will be forced to take legal action against you. This is not an extortion attempt.
Thank you.
Does it have a half-reflective mode, for foursomes? (okay, threesomes, for Slashdotters
Like what? C# the Hut?
But isn't that the truth? Let's face it, manned exploration IS orders of magnitude more expensive than unmanned, doesn't provide much more benefit from a scientific viewpoint, as is infinitely more tragic when things go wrong. If we still want to do manned exploration because of the "cool factor", then so be it, but let's not lie to ourselves about the facts.
Actually, there IS something you can do about it -- move the cable out of the way. That's one reason why the base of the cable would be on a barge.
Not to diss NASA, but how many people do you know who have benefitted significantly from the space program? How many people do you know whose lives have been improved by their pets?
where are we going to find a big enough rock to attach to the other end?
According to the book, the plan is to send up a rocket with the smallest possible cable. The cable gets lowered to Earth and secured (cable also gets spooled out in the opposite direction, in order to keep the spacecraft in orbit). Then they send up a series of progressively larger robots along the ribbon. Each robot adds more material to the ribbon as it climbs, and when it gets to the top of the ribbon, it stays there to add to the mass of the counterweight. So basically we bootstrap our way up.
Sounds cool... but just out of curiosity, is it legal to make your own ATM card?
He's made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, that's why. They screwed up everything else, what makes you think they would get the case design right?
Keep in mind that the programmers ARE the "end user/problem domain experts" of the programming language they are using to do their work. So you and the author actually agree here -- just as Joe Sixpack is more productive with an intuitive toolset, so is Joe Programmer.
Programmers should be average. Absolutely not.
I hate to break it to you, but the average programmer is going to be average, by definition. Barring the invention of brain-steroids, that people aren't going to get much smarter. You can either ignore the reality that people's skills are limited, or you can address the problem by providing them with tools that allow them to make the most of the skills they have. The latter solution will provide the most benefit, even if it does mean potentially lower salaries for the few super-geniuses out there.