Where can I send an email to CNN commenting on their coverage? (I tried to find it on several occasions). Do you think Rupert Murdoch cares about my opinion? I doubt it. The media only respond to the public through the Nielsen ratings system, and that's based around ad sales. Marketing types will tell you that they can more easily sell to uninformed, gullible viewers, and that's what mainstream media caters to.
Which leads me to another point: the "liberal bias" that so many Republicans scream about hasn't existed for years. Media companies will cover anything that sells ads; in peaceful times, that means liberal stories about the average Joe being attacked by corporate scumbags; but when there's a war, things reverse. Where's the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh? Neal Boortz? George Will? Chris Matthews? Fox News? The closest one I can find is Bill Moyers, who (whether you agree with him or not) at least interviews his opponents respectfully, gives them time to speak, and treats their arguments thoughtfully. What station is he on? PBS (naturally).
The First Amendment says nothing about media ownership. Nothing is preventing anyone from saying what they want to say, and nobody's being censored here. But let's go down that route: is it better to allow a few large companies, who already have a louder voice than the rest, to be "censored" by restricting how big a megaphone they can own, or is it better to allow dozens of smaller companies to be "censored" by being put out of business? Remember, their ability to survive in the marketplace depends not just on how well they do their jobs, but by how big they already are. Economies of scale ARE a factor, and they unfairly favor the big guys.
To address your car example, GM grew by gutting public transportation, namely streetcars, through back-door means (I encourage you to do research on this). As for the regulatory wall, let me ask you another question: would the car companies be building cars as safe as they are now, if safety regulations weren't in place? Would fuel efficiency be as high as it is now? I would argue not, and the country would be worse off for it.
I disagree. Business in this country, and especially the media, is a system that tends toward polarization. That is, the more power a given company gets, the more power it's able to grab; and with the media it's an especially insidious problem because they control access to the information people need to make informed decisions. And the operations of the media are refined to the point that small or startup companies can really only get a foothold in non-traditional, niche areas. Controls are needed to balance this polarization tendency, otherwise things WILL end up in the hands of one company. For one example of the abuses of the media, do some research on William Randolph Hearst.
That's not good for the society as a whole, no matter what one individual says. People who argue for complete unfettered competition are (in my experience) usually the same ones who think they live in a vacuum, or would prefer to, and feel little association or empathy with other human beings. I find it hard to see how they could build a stable and fair society. Not to mention that these people are even MORE vulnerable to being misled by the media, because more of their contact with the rest of society occurs through that medium.
Anyway, back to the point. My checkbook shouldn't be my only way of voting. This backlash against the FCC ruling can be viewed as an example of the aforementioned controls, and a right and proper expression of the will of the people - as valid as if they had boycotted ClearChannel. As such it ought to be respected; if you don't, you're arguing that the few (the media corps) should dictate to the many, and I don't think that's what you meant. Remember, fewer than a dozen responses were received in favor of the FCC ruling, compared to hundreds of thousands against.
I for one am glad to see that some people in this country are looking out for the good of the system as a whole, and not just their own interests.
From the site: ...the device can provide discreet, private viewing by projecting an image viewable to one side only.
I thought it was impressive enough that they could project an image into thin air without anything to reflect against. But how the hell do they make it visible only on one side? What technology are they using? Some kind of laser interferometry?
You can get an NEC Powermate Eco, which also uses the Crusoe chip, for the same price ($600-650), with 256 MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive. Oh, and a 15" LCD monitor in a compact design.
Most of the negative.NET comments here seem to be from people who haven't worked with it much. Big surprise;)
Most of my work is for Windows shops, and to me.NET is a godsend. I've been using it for two years now, and there are too many good things about it to list here. I think it's better than Java in many ways. I'm certified in Java 2 (and I also use Linux), and I still feel that Java is better than most other environments, but I feel the same way about.NET now that I felt about Java in 1997-98. That is, it rocks.
Now that my breathless compliments are out of the way, here are a few specific things I don't like about.NET:
- The ADO.NET classes are not really designed to be subclassed - the serialization gets all screwed up because DataSet tends to assume everything underneath it is a standard ADO.NET class (at least on.NET 1.0 - I haven't had time to check 1.1 yet).
- I haven't yet decided whether I think not being able to declare exceptions thrown, and force them to be handled, is a good thing.
- ViewState in ASP.NET is nice for simple applications, but the default serialization format for most things is big. Using ViewState is tricky when you don't know how many or what controls you want to use up-front, and you have to add them dynamically.
Basically, my viewpoint is: evaluate technologies on their own merits; recognize and challenge your own assumptions; and use the right tool for the right job..NET has its place, just like Java, Perl, Ruby, C++, shell scripts, or any other technology you can name.
If you've never learned to touch type, I recommend Dvorak (see my sig for more info). If you already touch type in Qwerty (and I don't tend to count people who never tried to do it right), then you might find that the speed increase is not worth the effort to switch. I did, after 15 years of Qwerty touch typing, and like some other posters in this thread I have found Dvorak to be more comfortable. I'm a musician, and I know other musicians with tendonitis and other problems, so comfort is a worry for me.
Since when is intelligence a requirement to vote? Last I checked, morons had the same rights as anyone else. You sound pretty stuck on your own superiority. Kind of like Adolf Hitler.
Never mind that some voters have problems unrelated to their intelligence, like poor eyesight, poor muscle control, etc. An electronic system, whatever its security flaws, can provide features that help confirm the voter's choice. Not to mention that the presentation of the choices can be easily randomized to help avoid bias toward the top-listed candidate.
Oh, and I'm not stupid, but I still can't vote for the guy I want without wasting my vote. Electronic systems would make it a LOT easier to implement better voting algorithms.
If Diebold is tampering with the votes, we need to stop them NOW. But security is only one aspect of these systems, and the only real drawback besides cost.
Code generation and abstraction are not mutually exclusive. Case in point: our company, which does custom application development, has developed a framework of code that employs a lot of abstraction. However, we do projects for many clients, and we get new clients all the time; as a result every project is a new one, and if we hand-coded it we'd be hand-coding forever. Instead, our code generator produces project-dependent code that leverages and extends the framework code. And our framework code can use the project-dependent code despite the fact that it was generated later. You CAN have it both ways.
One other thing - I haven't seen this mentioned, but inheritance works well as a mechanism to separate custom code (hand-written) from generated code. We generate placeholder classes for the custom code, and then avoid stepping on them if we regenerate later. There still remains the possibility of breaking your custom code, but the risk is minimized.
The disadvantage of these machines is that they are pretty inflexible. A computer-based system can more thoroughly confirm the vote with the voter (through voice prompts, pictures, etc.), can randomize the candidate listing, and can do any number of other things to ensure a fair and accurate vote. Computer-based, yes; but internet-based voting is still too insecure IMHO.
One other benefit of computer-based systems is that they allow the algorithm to be changed easily. Existing mechanical machines do plurality voting, and that's it. Plurality voting (one vote for one candidate, period) is probably the WORST method we could use, compared to other methods such as Approval, Borda, Condorcet, or even IRV. Electronic voting machines will be a huge step towards implementing a change from the drastically inadequate, inaccurate, and biased voting system we use today.
I'm impressed that she's savvy enough to be aware of alternate voting systems, even if she favors IRV. I wonder if she's aware of some of the problems with IRV, and what she thinks of other methods.
Very interesting. However unless I'm mistaken, the plan mentioned in the article provides for sales of only 2.35% of the stock the officers hold (141,000/6,005,000 shares). I'm not sure whether to read much into this or not.
Re:Shouldn't computers be getting cooler?
on
The Diamond Age
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· Score: 1
Transmeta has been addressing this for the last few years. I just bought an NEC PowerMate eco, which uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor, for my wife. It's not the fastest processor in the world, but it's sufficient for web-surfing and emailing, and the machine runs cool enough that it doesn't have a fan, and is pretty much silent. It's also made with environmentally friendly materials.
Most users however seem to want speed more than anything, leading to machines that use a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. Cheap diamonds would seem to make this trend worse.
I would think more geeks would be pushing to overhaul our voting method. The gross inaccuracy and bias of our current system (the plurality vote) ought to insult the sensibilities of any self-respecting techie. Better alternatives (Condorcet, Borda, Approval, IRV) are available.
Well, that would be a Beowulf cluster of web servers being crushed. Except that wouldn't be politically correct here on/. - Beowulf clusters are supposed to be invincible!
Sorry, that first paragraph didn't quite make sense:/ It should have read as follows:...outsourcing to another company overseas, hiring workers overseas, and telecommuting. All these practices save a company money, the first two because of differences in salaries, and the third mainly because the company...
Not to mention, the complaint was about companies NOT allowing telecommuting. Sorry!
Similarity to Microsoft Product?
on
Nat Demos Dashboard
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· Score: 2, Informative
I couldn't get to the article, so.... I was wondering how similar this is to something Microsoft pushed out a couple of years ago: Digital Dashboards. Basically, the digital dashboard stuff is an engine that used XML definitions of "web parts" that describe what the content is, where it is, how to render it, etc. The idea was that the dashboard showed you an integrated view of data from various sources on a single page. Users could even drag-and-drop web parts around to configure their customized dashboards.
The only problem was, it was built on top of Active Server Pages using VBScript plus a couple of COM components for the XML processing and client-side event handling. In my experience, it was slow and difficult to program for. Sharepoint Portal Server still uses it I think, but other than that it seems to be pretty much defunct now - Microsoft has even removed most references to it from their site.
Now, if they whipped up a version built on.NET, I might reconsider it. Cool idea nonetheless.
This complaint seems to be directed at three different practices: outsourcing to another company overseas, hiring workers overseas, and not allowing telecommuting. All these practices save a company money, the first two because of differences in salaries, and the second mainly because the company has reduced facility costs (they don't need as much office space). However, these approaches are fundamentally independent and are not even mutually exclusive. Presumably, the most cost-efficient approach would be to outsource jobs to a company overseas (where labor is cheaper) that allows its workers to telecommute from home. Of course there are a lot of options to consider.
Believe me, I'd love to telecommute (I currently commute 26 miles a day each way on Ga. 400 between downtown Atlanta and Alpharetta every day. If you live here you know what that's like;) But I'll be the first to admit there are efficiencies to be gained by having people together in the same office, and even more when all those people speak fluent English (or whatever language, as long as it's the same one as their customers). There are also efficiencies you can get from telecommuting (reduced distractions). I think it all depends on the nature of your job and all the little things that go into it.
Either way, these efficiencies are not well studied, and so it's hard to justify them against the hard numbers you can present if you want to move those jobs overseas.
I don't see why people would opt for a fuel cell based computer
Except remember, it still gets 5+ hours of continuous use and you can "recharge" it instantly. I know a lot of people who would pay mondo bucks for that capability, seeing as how being business people, they'll expense it anyway.
Good question, though personally I see more utility in running Linux on a PPC than on an XBox. I mean, it's a hell of a lot easier to just get a cheap PC and stick Linux on it than mod an XBox for the same effect.
An offtopic observation: I'm waiting on a replacement Axim (dropped it. Doh!) The estimated ship date was June 10, and it's 3 weeks later now. Not a word from Dell, and their order status page just shows 'In Production'. Has anyone else been waiting on their unit?
Actually Condorcet is my favorite as well, but I don't usually argue for it because it's less likely to get implemented, for a couple of reasons: it would require more rework of the voting equipment, and it's more complex. I have a hard enough time explaining approval voting to people, let alone Condorcet. Even the Borda count is simpler, and simplicity counts if you want a practical shot at implementation.
One minor nit-pick;) I disagree that Condorcet is quite as easy to vote as approval. With approval you don't have to think about the candidates in relation to one another; you only think about them individually, so it's simpler. But you're correct that it doesn't capture as much information.
Any of these systems is a vast improvement over our current one.
Slashdot Mirror
Where can I send an email to CNN commenting on their coverage? (I tried to find it on several occasions). Do you think Rupert Murdoch cares about my opinion? I doubt it. The media only respond to the public through the Nielsen ratings system, and that's based around ad sales. Marketing types will tell you that they can more easily sell to uninformed, gullible viewers, and that's what mainstream media caters to.
Which leads me to another point: the "liberal bias" that so many Republicans scream about hasn't existed for years. Media companies will cover anything that sells ads; in peaceful times, that means liberal stories about the average Joe being attacked by corporate scumbags; but when there's a war, things reverse. Where's the liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh? Neal Boortz? George Will? Chris Matthews? Fox News? The closest one I can find is Bill Moyers, who (whether you agree with him or not) at least interviews his opponents respectfully, gives them time to speak, and treats their arguments thoughtfully. What station is he on? PBS (naturally).
The First Amendment says nothing about media ownership. Nothing is preventing anyone from saying what they want to say, and nobody's being censored here. But let's go down that route: is it better to allow a few large companies, who already have a louder voice than the rest, to be "censored" by restricting how big a megaphone they can own, or is it better to allow dozens of smaller companies to be "censored" by being put out of business? Remember, their ability to survive in the marketplace depends not just on how well they do their jobs, but by how big they already are. Economies of scale ARE a factor, and they unfairly favor the big guys.
To address your car example, GM grew by gutting public transportation, namely streetcars, through back-door means (I encourage you to do research on this). As for the regulatory wall, let me ask you another question: would the car companies be building cars as safe as they are now, if safety regulations weren't in place? Would fuel efficiency be as high as it is now? I would argue not, and the country would be worse off for it.
I disagree. Business in this country, and especially the media, is a system that tends toward polarization. That is, the more power a given company gets, the more power it's able to grab; and with the media it's an especially insidious problem because they control access to the information people need to make informed decisions. And the operations of the media are refined to the point that small or startup companies can really only get a foothold in non-traditional, niche areas. Controls are needed to balance this polarization tendency, otherwise things WILL end up in the hands of one company. For one example of the abuses of the media, do some research on William Randolph Hearst.
That's not good for the society as a whole, no matter what one individual says. People who argue for complete unfettered competition are (in my experience) usually the same ones who think they live in a vacuum, or would prefer to, and feel little association or empathy with other human beings. I find it hard to see how they could build a stable and fair society. Not to mention that these people are even MORE vulnerable to being misled by the media, because more of their contact with the rest of society occurs through that medium.
Anyway, back to the point. My checkbook shouldn't be my only way of voting. This backlash against the FCC ruling can be viewed as an example of the aforementioned controls, and a right and proper expression of the will of the people - as valid as if they had boycotted ClearChannel. As such it ought to be respected; if you don't, you're arguing that the few (the media corps) should dictate to the many, and I don't think that's what you meant. Remember, fewer than a dozen responses were received in favor of the FCC ruling, compared to hundreds of thousands against.
I for one am glad to see that some people in this country are looking out for the good of the system as a whole, and not just their own interests.
From the site:
...the device can provide discreet, private viewing by projecting an image viewable to one side only.
I thought it was impressive enough that they could project an image into thin air without anything to reflect against. But how the hell do they make it visible only on one side? What technology are they using? Some kind of laser interferometry?
I think I need to see one of these live.
...the architecture people, the ones who stayed in, delighted in designing buildings that wouldn't stand...
And how is this different than any other architecture school? (I studied it for 4 years at Ga. Tech).
You can get an NEC Powermate Eco, which also uses the Crusoe chip, for the same price ($600-650), with 256 MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive. Oh, and a 15" LCD monitor in a compact design.
...the suspension is so smooth, it's like driving a hovercraft...
Yep, a Crown Vic does corner like a hovercraft...
Most of the negative .NET comments here seem to be from people who haven't worked with it much. Big surprise ;)
.NET is a godsend. I've been using it for two years now, and there are too many good things about it to list here. I think it's better than Java in many ways. I'm certified in Java 2 (and I also use Linux), and I still feel that Java is better than most other environments, but I feel the same way about .NET now that I felt about Java in 1997-98. That is, it rocks.
.NET:
.NET 1.0 - I haven't had time to check 1.1 yet).
.NET has its place, just like Java, Perl, Ruby, C++, shell scripts, or any other technology you can name.
Most of my work is for Windows shops, and to me
Now that my breathless compliments are out of the way, here are a few specific things I don't like about
- The ADO.NET classes are not really designed to be subclassed - the serialization gets all screwed up because DataSet tends to assume everything underneath it is a standard ADO.NET class (at least on
- I haven't yet decided whether I think not being able to declare exceptions thrown, and force them to be handled, is a good thing.
- ViewState in ASP.NET is nice for simple applications, but the default serialization format for most things is big. Using ViewState is tricky when you don't know how many or what controls you want to use up-front, and you have to add them dynamically.
Basically, my viewpoint is: evaluate technologies on their own merits; recognize and challenge your own assumptions; and use the right tool for the right job.
If you've never learned to touch type, I recommend Dvorak (see my sig for more info). If you already touch type in Qwerty (and I don't tend to count people who never tried to do it right), then you might find that the speed increase is not worth the effort to switch. I did, after 15 years of Qwerty touch typing, and like some other posters in this thread I have found Dvorak to be more comfortable. I'm a musician, and I know other musicians with tendonitis and other problems, so comfort is a worry for me.
On the other hand, fast typing allows you to try out a lot more ideas in the same amount of time, leading to better quality software.
Since when is intelligence a requirement to vote? Last I checked, morons had the same rights as anyone else. You sound pretty stuck on your own superiority. Kind of like Adolf Hitler.
Never mind that some voters have problems unrelated to their intelligence, like poor eyesight, poor muscle control, etc. An electronic system, whatever its security flaws, can provide features that help confirm the voter's choice. Not to mention that the presentation of the choices can be easily randomized to help avoid bias toward the top-listed candidate.
Oh, and I'm not stupid, but I still can't vote for the guy I want without wasting my vote. Electronic systems would make it a LOT easier to implement better voting algorithms.
If Diebold is tampering with the votes, we need to stop them NOW. But security is only one aspect of these systems, and the only real drawback besides cost.
Code generation and abstraction are not mutually exclusive. Case in point: our company, which does custom application development, has developed a framework of code that employs a lot of abstraction. However, we do projects for many clients, and we get new clients all the time; as a result every project is a new one, and if we hand-coded it we'd be hand-coding forever. Instead, our code generator produces project-dependent code that leverages and extends the framework code. And our framework code can use the project-dependent code despite the fact that it was generated later. You CAN have it both ways.
One other thing - I haven't seen this mentioned, but inheritance works well as a mechanism to separate custom code (hand-written) from generated code. We generate placeholder classes for the custom code, and then avoid stepping on them if we regenerate later. There still remains the possibility of breaking your custom code, but the risk is minimized.
The disadvantage of these machines is that they are pretty inflexible. A computer-based system can more thoroughly confirm the vote with the voter (through voice prompts, pictures, etc.), can randomize the candidate listing, and can do any number of other things to ensure a fair and accurate vote. Computer-based, yes; but internet-based voting is still too insecure IMHO.
One other benefit of computer-based systems is that they allow the algorithm to be changed easily. Existing mechanical machines do plurality voting, and that's it. Plurality voting (one vote for one candidate, period) is probably the WORST method we could use, compared to other methods such as Approval, Borda, Condorcet, or even IRV. Electronic voting machines will be a huge step towards implementing a change from the drastically inadequate, inaccurate, and biased voting system we use today.
I'm impressed that she's savvy enough to be aware of alternate voting systems, even if she favors IRV. I wonder if she's aware of some of the problems with IRV, and what she thinks of other methods.
"...wood and other forest residues..."
;)
The article mentions Bush's plan to thin the forests as impetus for the development of this device. I think we can see the mindset here
Very interesting. However unless I'm mistaken, the plan mentioned in the article provides for sales of only 2.35% of the stock the officers hold (141,000/6,005,000 shares). I'm not sure whether to read much into this or not.
Transmeta has been addressing this for the last few years. I just bought an NEC PowerMate eco, which uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor, for my wife. It's not the fastest processor in the world, but it's sufficient for web-surfing and emailing, and the machine runs cool enough that it doesn't have a fan, and is pretty much silent. It's also made with environmentally friendly materials.
Most users however seem to want speed more than anything, leading to machines that use a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. Cheap diamonds would seem to make this trend worse.
I would think more geeks would be pushing to overhaul our voting method. The gross inaccuracy and bias of our current system (the plurality vote) ought to insult the sensibilities of any self-respecting techie. Better alternatives (Condorcet, Borda, Approval, IRV) are available.
Well, that would be a Beowulf cluster of web servers being crushed. Except that wouldn't be politically correct here on /. - Beowulf clusters are supposed to be invincible!
Sorry, that first paragraph didn't quite make sense :/ It should have read as follows: ...outsourcing to another company overseas, hiring workers overseas, and telecommuting. All these practices save a company money, the first two because of differences in salaries, and the third mainly because the company...
Not to mention, the complaint was about companies NOT allowing telecommuting. Sorry!
I couldn't get to the article, so.... I was wondering how similar this is to something Microsoft pushed out a couple of years ago: Digital Dashboards. Basically, the digital dashboard stuff is an engine that used XML definitions of "web parts" that describe what the content is, where it is, how to render it, etc. The idea was that the dashboard showed you an integrated view of data from various sources on a single page. Users could even drag-and-drop web parts around to configure their customized dashboards.
.NET, I might reconsider it. Cool idea nonetheless.
The only problem was, it was built on top of Active Server Pages using VBScript plus a couple of COM components for the XML processing and client-side event handling. In my experience, it was slow and difficult to program for. Sharepoint Portal Server still uses it I think, but other than that it seems to be pretty much defunct now - Microsoft has even removed most references to it from their site.
Now, if they whipped up a version built on
This complaint seems to be directed at three different practices: outsourcing to another company overseas, hiring workers overseas, and not allowing telecommuting. All these practices save a company money, the first two because of differences in salaries, and the second mainly because the company has reduced facility costs (they don't need as much office space). However, these approaches are fundamentally independent and are not even mutually exclusive. Presumably, the most cost-efficient approach would be to outsource jobs to a company overseas (where labor is cheaper) that allows its workers to telecommute from home. Of course there are a lot of options to consider.
;) But I'll be the first to admit there are efficiencies to be gained by having people together in the same office, and even more when all those people speak fluent English (or whatever language, as long as it's the same one as their customers). There are also efficiencies you can get from telecommuting (reduced distractions). I think it all depends on the nature of your job and all the little things that go into it.
Believe me, I'd love to telecommute (I currently commute 26 miles a day each way on Ga. 400 between downtown Atlanta and Alpharetta every day. If you live here you know what that's like
Either way, these efficiencies are not well studied, and so it's hard to justify them against the hard numbers you can present if you want to move those jobs overseas.
What about the Street Performer Protocol, or variations such as the Rational Street Performer Protocol? Are there any actual companies implementing it?
I don't see why people would opt for a fuel cell based computer
Except remember, it still gets 5+ hours of continuous use and you can "recharge" it instantly. I know a lot of people who would pay mondo bucks for that capability, seeing as how being business people, they'll expense it anyway.
Good question, though personally I see more utility in running Linux on a PPC than on an XBox. I mean, it's a hell of a lot easier to just get a cheap PC and stick Linux on it than mod an XBox for the same effect.
An offtopic observation: I'm waiting on a replacement Axim (dropped it. Doh!) The estimated ship date was June 10, and it's 3 weeks later now. Not a word from Dell, and their order status page just shows 'In Production'. Has anyone else been waiting on their unit?
Actually Condorcet is my favorite as well, but I don't usually argue for it because it's less likely to get implemented, for a couple of reasons: it would require more rework of the voting equipment, and it's more complex. I have a hard enough time explaining approval voting to people, let alone Condorcet. Even the Borda count is simpler, and simplicity counts if you want a practical shot at implementation.
;) I disagree that Condorcet is quite as easy to vote as approval. With approval you don't have to think about the candidates in relation to one another; you only think about them individually, so it's simpler. But you're correct that it doesn't capture as much information.
One minor nit-pick
Any of these systems is a vast improvement over our current one.