Re:And this is an issue because?
on
Open the Debates
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If the minor party candidates want to have a debate then let them. I am sure that CSPAN will cover it and anyone who is interested will watch. But just because Ralph Nader wants to talk to us does not mean that people are interested in listening
Nader is debating Badnarik. All others are invited. C-SPAN won't be covering it.
There have been serious third party candidates in the debates. The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present in the debates.
The bar is actually 15% which is higher than the 10% required to get on a state's ballot. There wasn't a bar until the League of Women Voters got royally ticked at the CPD and quit hosting their own debates.
When Perot ran in 1992 his May polls showed him beating both Clinton and Bush. Then he dropped out of the race and Clinton's points rose 14 percent while Bush's rose only 3. When Perot re-entered the race he only got 10% on the polls. The Bush supporters saw that Perot's followers had all migrated over to Clinton so they were happy to have him back in the race. The *only* (fact) reason Perot was in the debates at all was because the Republican party needed someone to take votes away from Clinton. He was only allowed to debate on the first of the three debates though. In 1996 Gore didn't have a strong enough position to warrant pulling another Perot so Perot wasn't allowed.
What is a much bigger issue is who gets to choose the questions. In a true debate the candidates would face off against each other. Instead the US media insists that it get to ask the questions. It would make much more sense to have the candidates question each other.
The U.S. media doesn't have any say in the questions. The questions are chosen by a panel of Republican and Democratic party members and are pre-released to the candidates so they can have time to formulate their answers. The U.S. media might be the reason there actually isn't any debating though; debating takes more time than simply issuing statements so it's hard to judge time slots. Also, those audience questions were submitted for approval beforehand, given to the candidates beforehand, and are read from a card live.
--Matthew
Awesome write-up on the history of the debates.
on
Open the Debates
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I found this a few months ago and I think it's an awesome little history of how the debates were wrestled from the control of the League of Women's voters. Please read this before complaining about third party candidates entering the debates.
There are more brief histories on Wikipedia and Disinfopedia. If you are at a university with access to bigger encyclopedia that cost money I suggest you poke through the history of the debates on one of those.
The overall lesson you'll learn is that the United States Commission on Presidential Debates is completely unfair to everyone but the two big parties... and how many of us completely agree with either or those?
For those of you who don't like Bush, check here and notice that all the midwestern states that support him are also the larger supporters of Nader. All those complaints that Nader is taking points from Kerry are self-defeating. Those complaints are just causing the conservatives who don't like Bush to vote for him anyway since they really don't like Kerry and they don't believe there's anyone else available since the other options get downplayed so heavily.
America needs debate reform, and that's a requirement before we'll get more parties.
I think the link at the end of the review was one of those/. mirrors we've all been complaining about needing so that the real link, which you've just posted, doesn't get "horked" itself.
Sad story though, the/. mirror is indeed bad and the original site is/dotted all to hell.
Is organizing shipping so immoral? I'd like to think that if there were more people like him floating around with all the knowhow required to ship things into and out of countries then there'd be fewer people saying "it hasn't gotten here yet so we can't do anything."
Fox pitches itself as being "fair and balanced," something it is patently not.
Don't flame me for asking, but is there anywhere I can go to find examples of this being true? It's such a common theme that I feel really out of the loop.
Nestle's got worse problems than bad baby formula when your consider all the cocoa growing countries in the world that they keep economic control over. He wouldn't deal with them.
Dude, the company was only getting $2,000,000 from the job. My uncle's specific expertise is getting permissions from various governments for docking and transport rights and whatnot. The company provided a service which was simply making sure product X went from point A to point B and all the paperwork was in line for that to happen. He's doing more of the same now in Iraq.
For example, he had to deal with several thousand tons of U.N. WFP food parked on container ships off the coast of British controlled Iraq which the Brits wouldn't let move into the country.
His current stories are about hiring drivers to transport stuff into the country (food again). He has to deal with Turks in the north who are all loaded up but then get scared at the last minute and stop at the border with freezer trucks who's systems end up getting shut down and the food rots. All the truckers he deals with in the south are Indian, btw, and they're not so difficult except for the fact that everyone's charging exorbitant prices to transport stuff into the country. For good reason too, he's been on a couple convoys when they've been attacked.
There's not much Satan to him, he just likes being in the most interesting places at the time. I'm not sure what the used car thing was about though.
How in the world did it take seven years to get this put through?
You'd think that if they were actually looking for prior art they would have found it in that time. I think we've just learned that the mysterious black box through which patents are passed doesn't have any wild mechanisms other than a long queue.
So my uncle does shipping right? He was the guy who got the Canadian company to ship food from various places to Iraq back when that's what the U.N. was all about. The deal for his company was pretty nice, 7 figures, and he was going to get 10%. His ass of a boss fired him after working 10 months on the project, 2 months before he'd get his 10%.
So then he got a new job. Sorta the same thing. He was working there about half a year before his boss there got promoted or something, gone, right? Then his company hires a shiny new boss for my uncle... and it's his old boss who fired him. The guy got canned himself for firing my uncle and dicking up the company.
My uncle tells the funniest stories. Since then he's sold baby formula to Africa, used cars, and now he's in Kuwait organizing shipping to Iraq once again.
When China has achieved world economic dominion...the U.S. and Europe will be annexed and we'll all be living on one big happy planet.
China has already started to try to dictate to the U.S. about policies and arms sales to Taiwan.
China has been doing this ever since the U.S. helped defend Taiwan during its succession. How could you expect otherwise when they believe Taiwan is theirs?
I could see you making this argument for Commerce Secretary. I don't see anyway you can rationalize it for Labor. Its just a basic indicator the people who appointed her are openly hostile to working people. Everyone knows they are, its not like its a secret. Your union comment is just classic Republican rhetoric. Fact is working people should have a shot at making a living and surviving, unions, CEO's and you be damned.
Is China a threat because of its export laws or because of its labor system? Calling our Labor secretary openly hostile is a bit spurious; open hostility to the (American, European, or other first world nations) working people is synonymous with competing against China. Until China starts showing signs of collapse don't think that we can compete unless we keep the technological edge that has kept us going so long. Sure China's gotten good at ripping off a lot of 1st world technologies, but so long as their tech companies aren't turning a profit on their American sales it's not much of a worry for the U.S.
If you want to boil it down to the "working man," China is a land full of them and so long as they stay in business with 1st world countries there will be 1.3 billion lower class people kept at work in China while maybe a hundred million across the 1st world don't have jobs. If you're so worried about people starving, stop paying for your internet connection and start feeding a village in Ethiopia.
I fail to see the corellation between the economic differences between China and the U.S. and our current administration. If the U.S. had only been allowed to buy stuff from China since 2000 I would understand, but since that's not true I'd like to know what exactly is the fault of the Bush administration beyond telling Americans that they can have the jobs that Bush can't provide and Americans don't deserve. Bush won't get reelected on "I'm sorry but you're hopes are too high." and Americans aren't bright enough to realize that the funny little people across the Pacific work harder than they do.
Also, given the fact that China is where U.S. companies are looking to move jobs wouldn't it make sense to have someone with some Chinese ties directing the American job market in hopes to maybe fight fire with fire? Or would you rather have an American union leader, the same kind of person who's driving the jobs overseas?
As the parent says, most nuclear waste is very mundane. The NRC has extremely high standards for how many millirems an object can give off. My father works in the training center of a nuke plant and they once had to get rid off all the tape dispensers because the sand inside was setting off the detectors. When nuclear submarines dock they have to get scrubbed of radiation before going back out because being exposed to our atmosphere dopes the ships with more radiation than the navy allows.
I saw a sample of the metal they'll be using to contain items in Yucca Mt. The piece I saw was made in the 60s and had been basically bolted to a pier off the east coast for the last 30-odd years. It still had a mirror finish so I'd consider the containers safe.
As for the grandparent's argument. There's a lot of certainty that nuclear fission occured naturally on the earth's surface many thousand years ago at some location in central Africa. The area indeed is slightly radioactive but it's likely we walk upright because of it.
Radiation can be a scary thing. We know that in large doses it kills and in small doses it changes things, but our standards for dealing with the radiation we produce are extremely high.
It took me about a minute to figure out that that image did in fact not constantly move. I saw that it was a gif and figured it was a moving one as well.
For the mental agony I went through to figure that out I must now hate you forever.
but I have heard plenty of stories about people walking into unlocked rooms....and not just when they're not there.
I was up coding at around 5am one Wednesday morning my freshmen year when I some guy popped out of the bathroom and, seeing me, walked down the hall in the other direction. I didn't think much of it.
About 15min later I heard some doorknobs jiggling down the hallway where I couldn't see and I figured people on my hall were getting up. I was a bit shy back then so I shut my door so no one would know the lamer had been up all night (again).
Shortly thereafter the guy next door to me knocked on my door. He asked, "Hey man, were you just in my room?" I said, "No, why?" He told me he thought someone had just been in his room but I didn't know anything so he went back.
He came back to my room again saying, "Holy shit man, someone took my wallet." We called the police but by 7 AM it was clear nothing could be done beyond having me give a description of the guy I saw coming out of the bathroom.
Over half the population is female. Do you honestly believe that in the history of that institution, Dr. Hockfield is really the first and only qualified woman to emerge? If not, then please conjecture as to why her 15 predecessors were all male.
They might be all male because qualified women didn't apply for the job. It happens.
Bellsouth DSL has been a bit sketchy since this morning as well....
Re:cool to see it get fixes
on
Enlightenment Lives
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
But why is it? All the X-WMs look shabby, slapdash and incomplete compared to MacOSX and even, dare I say it... WinXP.
What really ticks me off is that Litestep looks nicer than anything I've run in Linux and Litestep is based on an X-WM! I'm pissed off to no end that it only works in Windows. I'd give my left foot for a Linux version that installs so easily and has support for all of Litestep's modules and themes.
Note: If I get slammed for this because there really is a Linux WM that works so well then I'll likely weep with joy, karma be damned.
Isn't the existence of the gene prior art? I really need some explaining as to how this works. How is this patentable material?
If funding for scientific research is based on the idea that a company can invent something around those discoveries I fully understand. But what this sounds like is that companies are allowed to patent the fundamental rules discovered and not actually a product of any creative work. It's almost like a company patenting the use of strong or weak forces in an atom upon their discovery. Or someone patenting the human digestive tract.
I'd like to hear that there's something to this that I'm not understanding. Unless someone is actually *creating* this genes then I don't see how thay can be patented.
Slashdot Mirror
If the minor party candidates want to have a debate then let them. I am sure that CSPAN will cover it and anyone who is interested will watch. But just because Ralph Nader wants to talk to us does not mean that people are interested in listening
Nader is debating Badnarik. All others are invited. C-SPAN won't be covering it.
There have been serious third party candidates in the debates. The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present in the debates.
The bar is actually 15% which is higher than the 10% required to get on a state's ballot. There wasn't a bar until the League of Women Voters got royally ticked at the CPD and quit hosting their own debates.
When Perot ran in 1992 his May polls showed him beating both Clinton and Bush. Then he dropped out of the race and Clinton's points rose 14 percent while Bush's rose only 3. When Perot re-entered the race he only got 10% on the polls. The Bush supporters saw that Perot's followers had all migrated over to Clinton so they were happy to have him back in the race. The *only* (fact) reason Perot was in the debates at all was because the Republican party needed someone to take votes away from Clinton. He was only allowed to debate on the first of the three debates though. In 1996 Gore didn't have a strong enough position to warrant pulling another Perot so Perot wasn't allowed.
What is a much bigger issue is who gets to choose the questions. In a true debate the candidates would face off against each other. Instead the US media insists that it get to ask the questions. It would make much more sense to have the candidates question each other.
The U.S. media doesn't have any say in the questions. The questions are chosen by a panel of Republican and Democratic party members and are pre-released to the candidates so they can have time to formulate their answers. The U.S. media might be the reason there actually isn't any debating though; debating takes more time than simply issuing statements so it's hard to judge time slots. Also, those audience questions were submitted for approval beforehand, given to the candidates beforehand, and are read from a card live.
--Matthew
Commission on Presidential Debates
I found this a few months ago and I think it's an awesome little history of how the debates were wrestled from the control of the League of Women's voters. Please read this before complaining about third party candidates entering the debates.
There are more brief histories on Wikipedia and Disinfopedia. If you are at a university with access to bigger encyclopedia that cost money I suggest you poke through the history of the debates on one of those.
The overall lesson you'll learn is that the United States Commission on Presidential Debates is completely unfair to everyone but the two big parties... and how many of us completely agree with either or those?
For those of you who don't like Bush, check here and notice that all the midwestern states that support him are also the larger supporters of Nader. All those complaints that Nader is taking points from Kerry are self-defeating. Those complaints are just causing the conservatives who don't like Bush to vote for him anyway since they really don't like Kerry and they don't believe there's anyone else available since the other options get downplayed so heavily.
America needs debate reform, and that's a requirement before we'll get more parties.
--Matthew
I think the link at the end of the review was one of those /. mirrors we've all been complaining about needing so that the real link, which you've just posted, doesn't get "horked" itself.
/. mirror is indeed bad and the original site is /dotted all to hell.
Sad story though, the
Anyone got a mirror?
Exactly. And the corellary to that:
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Isn't this what Plato referred to as mob rule?
--Matthew
Is organizing shipping so immoral? I'd like to think that if there were more people like him floating around with all the knowhow required to ship things into and out of countries then there'd be fewer people saying "it hasn't gotten here yet so we can't do anything."
--Matthew
Fox pitches itself as being "fair and balanced," something it is patently not.
Don't flame me for asking, but is there anywhere
I can go to find examples of this being true? It's such a common theme that I feel really out of the loop.
--Matthew
Not sure, something out of a Florida company.
Nestle's got worse problems than bad baby formula when your consider all the cocoa growing countries in the world that they keep economic control over. He wouldn't deal with them.
--Matthew
Dude, the company was only getting $2,000,000 from the job. My uncle's specific expertise is getting permissions from various governments for docking and transport rights and whatnot. The company provided a service which was simply making sure product X went from point A to point B and all the paperwork was in line for that to happen. He's doing more of the same now in Iraq.
For example, he had to deal with several thousand tons of U.N. WFP food parked on container ships off the coast of British controlled Iraq which the Brits wouldn't let move into the country.
His current stories are about hiring drivers to transport stuff into the country (food again). He has to deal with Turks in the north who are all loaded up but then get scared at the last minute and stop at the border with freezer trucks who's systems end up getting shut down and the food rots. All the truckers he deals with in the south are Indian, btw, and they're not so difficult except for the fact that everyone's charging exorbitant prices to transport stuff into the country. For good reason too, he's been on a couple convoys when they've been attacked.
There's not much Satan to him, he just likes being in the most interesting places at the time. I'm not sure what the used car thing was about though.
--Matthew
How in the world did it take seven years to get this put through?
You'd think that if they were actually looking for prior art they would have found it in that time. I think we've just learned that the mysterious black box through which patents are passed doesn't have any wild mechanisms other than a long queue.
--Matthew
So my uncle does shipping right? He was the guy who got the Canadian company to ship food from various places to Iraq back when that's what the U.N. was all about. The deal for his company was pretty nice, 7 figures, and he was going to get 10%. His ass of a boss fired him after working 10 months on the project, 2 months before he'd get his 10%.
So then he got a new job. Sorta the same thing. He was working there about half a year before his boss there got promoted or something, gone, right? Then his company hires a shiny new boss for my uncle... and it's his old boss who fired him. The guy got canned himself for firing my uncle and dicking up the company.
My uncle tells the funniest stories. Since then he's sold baby formula to Africa, used cars, and now he's in Kuwait organizing shipping to Iraq once again.
--Matthew
When China has achieved world economic dominion ...the U.S. and Europe will be annexed and we'll all be living on one big happy planet.
China has already started to try to dictate to the U.S. about policies and arms sales to Taiwan.
China has been doing this ever since the U.S. helped defend Taiwan during its succession. How could you expect otherwise when they believe Taiwan is theirs?
I could see you making this argument for Commerce Secretary. I don't see anyway you can rationalize it for Labor. Its just a basic indicator the people who appointed her are openly hostile to working people. Everyone knows they are, its not like its a secret. Your union comment is just classic Republican rhetoric. Fact is working people should have a shot at making a living and surviving, unions, CEO's and you be damned.
Is China a threat because of its export laws or because of its labor system? Calling our Labor secretary openly hostile is a bit spurious; open hostility to the (American, European, or other first world nations) working people is synonymous with competing against China. Until China starts showing signs of collapse don't think that we can compete unless we keep the technological edge that has kept us going so long. Sure China's gotten good at ripping off a lot of 1st world technologies, but so long as their tech companies aren't turning a profit on their American sales it's not much of a worry for the U.S.
If you want to boil it down to the "working man," China is a land full of them and so long as they stay in business with 1st world countries there will be 1.3 billion lower class people kept at work in China while maybe a hundred million across the 1st world don't have jobs. If you're so worried about people starving, stop paying for your internet connection and start feeding a village in Ethiopia.
My girlfriend was held by Paul Erdos as a baby when he stayed over at her father's house. Does she get an Erdos number?
Neat fact: he made my girlfriend's mother wash his underwear and fold them a specific way. The guy was interesting.
Oh my god they've been censored already!!
Slashdot effect...
the evil hand suppressing free speech since sometime back in the 90s.
I fail to see the corellation between the economic differences between China and the U.S. and our current administration. If the U.S. had only been allowed to buy stuff from China since 2000 I would understand, but since that's not true I'd like to know what exactly is the fault of the Bush administration beyond telling Americans that they can have the jobs that Bush can't provide and Americans don't deserve. Bush won't get reelected on "I'm sorry but you're hopes are too high." and Americans aren't bright enough to realize that the funny little people across the Pacific work harder than they do.
Also, given the fact that China is where U.S. companies are looking to move jobs wouldn't it make sense to have someone with some Chinese ties directing the American job market in hopes to maybe fight fire with fire? Or would you rather have an American union leader, the same kind of person who's driving the jobs overseas?
As the parent says, most nuclear waste is very mundane. The NRC has extremely high standards for how many millirems an object can give off. My father works in the training center of a nuke plant and they once had to get rid off all the tape dispensers because the sand inside was setting off the detectors. When nuclear submarines dock they have to get scrubbed of radiation before going back out because being exposed to our atmosphere dopes the ships with more radiation than the navy allows.
I saw a sample of the metal they'll be using to contain items in Yucca Mt. The piece I saw was made in the 60s and had been basically bolted to a pier off the east coast for the last 30-odd years. It still had a mirror finish so I'd consider the containers safe.
As for the grandparent's argument. There's a lot of certainty that nuclear fission occured naturally on the earth's surface many thousand years ago at some location in central Africa. The area indeed is slightly radioactive but it's likely we walk upright because of it.
Radiation can be a scary thing. We know that in large doses it kills and in small doses it changes things, but our standards for dealing with the radiation we produce are extremely high.
My eyes!
It took me about a minute to figure out that that image did in fact not constantly move. I saw that it was a gif and figured it was a moving one as well.
For the mental agony I went through to figure that out I must now hate you forever.
but I have heard plenty of stories about people walking into unlocked rooms. ...and not just when they're not there.
I was up coding at around 5am one Wednesday morning my freshmen year when I some guy popped out of the bathroom and, seeing me, walked down the hall in the other direction. I didn't think much of it.
About 15min later I heard some doorknobs jiggling down the hallway where I couldn't see and I figured people on my hall were getting up. I was a bit shy back then so I shut my door so no one would know the lamer had been up all night (again).
Shortly thereafter the guy next door to me knocked on my door. He asked, "Hey man, were you just in my room?" I said, "No, why?" He told me he thought someone had just been in his room but I didn't know anything so he went back.
He came back to my room again saying, "Holy shit man, someone took my wallet." We called the police but by 7 AM it was clear nothing could be done beyond having me give a description of the guy I saw coming out of the bathroom.
Over half the population is female. Do you honestly believe that in the history of that institution, Dr. Hockfield is really the first and only qualified woman to emerge? If not, then please conjecture as to why her 15 predecessors were all male.
They might be all male because qualified women didn't apply for the job. It happens.
Just FYI cause you probably didn't notice it.
McDonald's stopped advertising.
Coca-Cola too.
Try to think of the last commercial for McDonald's or regular Coke you've seen. Now think... was it in the last year?
IMDB doesn't mention a lot of things.
Bellsouth DSL has been a bit sketchy since this morning as well....
But why is it? All the X-WMs look shabby, slapdash and incomplete compared to MacOSX and even, dare I say it... WinXP.
What really ticks me off is that Litestep looks nicer than anything I've run in Linux and Litestep is based on an X-WM! I'm pissed off to no end that it only works in Windows. I'd give my left foot for a Linux version that installs so easily and has support for all of Litestep's modules and themes.
Note: If I get slammed for this because there really is a Linux WM that works so well then I'll likely weep with joy, karma be damned.
Maybe they'll stop making such stupid slutty and trashy movies.
Diaz is truly hopeless? Dude, she did porn. And she is hot. If she went back to making porn I would weep with joy.
Isn't the existence of the gene prior art? I really need some explaining as to how this works. How is this patentable material?
If funding for scientific research is based on the idea that a company can invent something around those discoveries I fully understand. But what this sounds like is that companies are allowed to patent the fundamental rules discovered and not actually a product of any creative work. It's almost like a company patenting the use of strong or weak forces in an atom upon their discovery. Or someone patenting the human digestive tract.
I'd like to hear that there's something to this that I'm not understanding. Unless someone is actually *creating* this genes then I don't see how thay can be patented.
--Matthew