Re:It's not just about speed and massively paralle
on
Linux Clustering
·
· Score: 1
Huh? Contiguous in what sense? Attached to the same motherboard? In one DIMM? Addressable in one chunk by the OS?
I've only been to one supercomputing conference, but when I was there most all of the people there ran clusters and the top500 site (although this list is produced by the same supercomputing conference people) lists many clusters there.
In other words, where does this contiguous memory requirement come from?
I see that you are opposed to the war in Iraq, and that you are big into seriously reducing the size of the government and taxes. However, the trend for the past 60 years or so has been to spend government money into deficit status on defense and wars, and then scramble ways to pay for that spending. My question is simple. What new idiology are you going to introduce as a motivation to spend the taxpayers' money and create/maintain jobs instead of defense and wars and why will people favor this change?
Support for very large volumes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 supports up to 1 TB.
WTF??? Am I the only person in the world that would consider an "enterprise" class OS in 2004 something that should be able to have an attached harddisk of more than 1 TB? Its difficult to even buy an array with less then 1 TB.
This is good news. Currently, there are few 64bit platforms where the hardware and software (Linux) are supported by the vendor. I wonder how well these will perform, and more importantly will IBM release a good compiler for them so that we can use them.
All this really means is that in the near future web designers and multimedia providers will start to upgrade the amount of bandwidth needed, and the average person will still be screwed.
I disagree. Standard web stuff is expected to be pretty much "instant" with a "broadband" class connection, and its been that way for years, and if a standard website does not load fast, it would have to be of some pretty unique and desired content that cannot be found elsewhere for someone to wait for it.
Now transferring masive files, that is a different story. A download (or upload) is expected to take some time, and even with a fast connection, the transfer rate will vary according to the protocol of the transfer, the speed of all the internode hops, etc etc. If anyone consistantly gets downloads of over 1 mbit/s for all of thier downloads, please let me know what your internet connection is. Right now I have access from anything from a cable modem at home to Internet2 at work. The fastest transfers I get in real day to day life is about 3.5 MByte/s using scp (I could be CPU bound here), and that is more than fast enough for transfering gigs of data at a time. When I transfer large amounts of data, its ususally audio files, and I transfer about 1 Gig at a time which takes less than 5 minutes. Thats fast enough for me. I can transfer data faster than I can realistically process it. Meaning I could not burn that much data to CD in that time, or listen to it, or hell even finish reading all of the info about it.
I don't know anyone who still does dialup except my dad and he says its "fast enough" for him and its not worth paying the extra $20 a month for a faster connection.
Re:One, two, three, four, I declare a flame-war!
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispenable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." -- George Washington, Commanding General of the Continental Army, Father of Our Country and First President of the United States, in his address to 2nd Session of 1st Congress.
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government." -- Thomas Jefferson, Author of The Declaration of Independence, and President of the United States.
nobody has a legitimate reason for owning a 30 round clip
I personally do not own weapons, don't want to. But I feel a little better knowing that there are those paranoid bastards out in the woods packing fully automatic weapons waiting for the government to get "really evil".
I personally feel as though murder should be decriminalized. Think about how much crime would be reduced and law enforcement's job would be made so much easier.
Now let the flame wars begin...
Not yet. 1st, it is not normal to want to kill someone. Aside from a psychopath that cannot feel empathy or guilt, It is against any human's natural will to kill someone. Its instinct to grab someone who steps out into the road, its not because we were taught this. It goes against instinct to go against self and species preservation.
By legalizing murder, it would keep people in check. Basic reinforcement theory says that learing takes place when the reinforcer (reward or punishment) is near the action. If Johnny kills Billy, and Billy's friends or family think that it was wrong for Johnny to kill Billy. Well, Johnny better watch his back!
I personally feel as though the incidence of murder would actually decrease if it were legal. Just a theory.
Actually, I did and have either been in college or employed by one for 15 of the past 17 years, and that silly argument was a rip off of a position by a professor of mine when I was a senior in college. He was trying to emphasize how grades have been inflated over they years in American universities. He stated that by the university's definition that "C" was "average". Also, by the university's rules one must have a "C" or better to graduate (this was a fairly new rule, you used to be able to graduate with a "D"). So by that logic, and by that logic alone, there are no "below average" college graduates.
I thought it was cute, and fun, not something that was to be debated.
Last time I checked Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco where all on the continent of Africa.
That seems correct.
These countries are largely populated by people of Arab extraction who I would never describe in a million years as black, and are certainly not Nego.
This too seems correct.
However if any of these people emigrate to America they are technically African-Americans who are not black, no matter how the census bureau tries to define the term.
I agree with your logic, but you and I don't make the rules. African-American means black or Negro, it does not mean that you are an African living in America. That was my point. I've met an African with blonde hair and blue eyes, and if he emigrated to the US he would not be African American, he would just be white.
I'm assuming that your British by your URL, and you may not get the US politically correct game. (I don't either, but thats another story). I thought that the government made up the African American thing to get away from using "black" to describe people, and in that they were just going by "continent of origin" instead of "race", and in doing so I originally thought that African American, really meant African American, and not black. However, after a little investigation, I found out that according to the government African American and black were synonymous, except for the fact that using the term black is not politically correct or preferred anymore. Its more prefered to say African American even though that really means nothing except black.
Dunno, again I didn't make this crap up.
While we are getting completely offtopic and irrelevant discussion, I would be in favor of eliminating all statistics based on race, or at least African American or black. To me it would make more sense to classify people by their socioeconomic background rather than their race. Poor black people are very similar to poor white people, and middle class, and upper class as well.
Of course that is true. A black person in african is African African:)
Not all African-Americans are black.
False. At least by the people that define these things. I personally would consider a white person from Africa who now lives in the US as African American, but this is not how the US government defines it. From the census bureau it defines African American as:
Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro," or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.
Have some self respect and decency and don't fall prey to this big inept pseudo-journalistic, National Enquirer-esque troll that really has very little to do with real issues.
The sad thing is that most of the American public believe that the #1 issue is the "War on terrorism". Bush is actually honest about this "war" in saying that it can't be won. Kerry has to take the opposite view and BSes about how this "war" can be won.
Lets be honest for a minute here. There is nothing that can be done about terrorism, any more than can be done to prevent someone from shooting or stabbing me on the street or breaking into my car or my home. And the latter two examples completely ignore the case where the person wishing to do me harm is willing or even planning to die in the progress of killing me!
Does anyone know how many _tons_ of illicit material (mostly drugs) come into this country from around the world annually? How much of this is caught? How difficult would it be to change the payload from drugs to explosives?
I estimate that I would end up somewhere in the middle.
You must not be an American then:)
Take for example graduating from college. Did you know that there are no "below average" college graduates? Proof: In order to graduate from college you must have a GPA equating to a C or better. A C is average, therefore there are no below average college graduates.
Other estimates that I ask people from time to time. What percentage of the US population is African American (black)? What percentage of the US population has a college degree?
Although the African American question is a little skewed because of the area I live in does in fact have about 30-40% of the population as being black, the national average in 2002 is 13%. I typically get answers that the national average is 30-40%.
The college degree question is also very off. I typically get answers around 50% or higher, where its 27% as of 2003. Its some kind of myth here in the US that everyone has to go to college so they can do unskilled labor the rest of their lives. In fact, my aunt was lecturing her (adult) son that got his girlfriend pregnant with the "How are you going to pay for the kid to go to college?" routine. When neither of her parents went to college, neither her nor her husband went to college, and none of her 2 children went to college.
Ask an American and a Japanese if they are "good in math". The Japanese will typically say "no", the American will say "yes". Ask the same 2 kids to take a standardized math test, the Japanese will score better than the American.
However, although its important to feel good, its more important to look good!
Open Source developers, by and large, don't make any money for their code, and don't win any awards
That may be true for the average 10 line perl script found on sourceforge, but any OS developer that has developed a worthwhile piece of software is going to at least indirectly make money off of that product.
Linus is a millionare. Larry Wall is probably comfortable off of royalties from the Oreily books. Knuth is a professor. Also, many professionals that work for companies like HP, IBM, and SGI are paid to write opensource software.
Anyway on topic, I can thank all of the Linux and opensource projects that I use daily and have had the opportunity to read their source code. I learned how to program in C from reading OS code, and I feel as though I had excellent teachers. When I was a developer for the Windows platform (low point in my life) it killed me that I could not find any worthwhile examples or source code for the MS platform. I've always felt more at home with the OSS community because they provide answers when people ask questions.
Its like they legislating exclusivity agreements, as well as revoking FOIA on this data.
I don't get the FOIA. From what I understand, we can't get jack from the government. At most you will get a poor quality photocopy of some useless document that has every other word blacked out.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that is my understanding of how generous our government is with _our_ information. We paid for it, I believe we are entitled to read it, at least after some set period of time.
You take a pretty controversial position, but don't defend it: "It's important to vote, even if you vote for yourself or Mickey Mouse". Why?
Obviously you feel that merely participating in the process is important, even if your participation is meaningless. How is it any different to cast a meaningless vote as opposed to not casting any vote?
Voting is participating. The only thing I can think of is that you fee it is important to show that you believe in the process... but do you?
The process only works by participation. I can't stand it when someone it talking BS about "how things should be" or "what I think the President should do" when the person does not vote. I slam them saying that they forfeited their opinion, and suggest next time they vote, and then we can talk.
Can you honestly say that the process shouldn't be changed if it can't produce a candidate you can vote for?
Again, for the process to change, it requires action. The winning candidate thinks nothing of non-voters. Even if a candidate wins and there were say, 100 million writein votes, that would tell both the system and that winning candidate something.
Again, please vote people. Encourage people to vote. Its not that hard.
The only problem in America is that too many people can veto stuff. The president can veto congress and vv, and the senate can veto both... A whole lotta nothing going on if you ask me.
"The government is best which governs least."
-- Thomas Jefferson
BTW, our healthcare is not the best, but you will _not_ be turned away from an emergency room.
Our healthcare problems has much more to do with insurance companies than the care itself, but thats another topic for another day.
Democracy isn't perfect, but it sure as hell is better than any other alternative out there.
Most people that study governments say that parliamentary systems are the best because even the "losers" get their due percentage of representation. Makes sense to me. However, our system does have congress and the senate and local governments that balance things out a bit.
In my opinion, I don't think the democratic process should include coin flipping.
Thats fine. I see your point. However, I'm the kind of person that would put "I don't know" instead of leaving a question blank on a test or if I calculated something with say a negative mass because of an arithmetic mistake, I would write "I got -50 pounds, but I know this is not right". To me that is better, even though the grade is the same than leaving blanks or obviously wrong answers as being right.
Lets say that this election we "shame" someone into voting, or just get them in there to do their coin flippage, but next election the liklihood that the shamed or flippant voter will vote will probably increase, and the chances that the next election that they might even think and try to do some kind of informed voting will be more than if they don't vote at all.
Now, if the majority of the people didn't vote and then we had to have a reelection when a majority of the people do not vote. Then I would not care if people voted:)
Is this to say that a person with a cert is lesser than the "do it yourselfers"?
No. There are very skilled people with certs and there are many "do it yourselfers" that suck.
Does this mean you're a lesser individual for not having a degree? I see a lot of double speak here. First you say that education isn't important than you claim it's a rite of passage. Than you claim that you neither have a degree nor any certs but you're still competent... So which is it? Is the degree holder really better than you? Is the cert holder less than you? Not to belittle your accomplishments but it seems that you're saying that a degree holds a weight that you cannot possibly possess since you have "no formal computer training".
Let me clear up some things here. There is no doublespeak because I never said education was important as far as education (knowledge, skills, abilites, etc) goes per se. I base this on the fact that most people that graduate from college have little knowledge skills and abilities that are valuable to an employer (yes there are exceptions).
To simplify things, let me talk about an employer that is hiring someone to dig ditches. He has 2 candidates in front of him, a highschool graduate and a HS dropout. Digging ditches does not require anything that is offered in highschool academically. However, the employer is more likely to hire the hs grad because he was able to demonstrate that he could at least stick to something, and this is very likely to correlate with the employee doing stuff like showing up to work vs bailing. (yes there are other factors that go into the equasion as well, but lets keep it simple).
Also, I said that I have no formal computer training, I do have a degree, and that has helped me get jobs. Actually, being that my degree is in Psychology and my skills and accomplishments are high in the computer field, that I believe it says a lot to an employer -- that I am able to independently learn and get stuff done.
Reading your comment seems to suggest that mearly VOTING somehow magically produces an informed voter. Perhaps I'm reading you wrong?
No, of course I don't believe that pulling a leaver makes one informed.
Or maybe I'm reading you correctly and I'll just flat out disagree. I cant see anything constructive to the equivalent of flipping a coin in the ballot booth.
I do see something constructive to flipping a coin in a ballot booth. It says at least that the voter cares. I mean, come on, some women (or men) will vote for the more attractive candidate (supposedly this greatly helped JFK defeat Nixon), but its a disgrace when about 1/2 of our population cannot get off of their ass and vote (yet, 99% of them will bitch about the results).
an INFORMED voter is much more important than getting someone who is too apathetic to even register to vote to get up off his/her arse and actually VOTE.
There is a flaw in your argument. There is no such thing as an INFORMED voter that does not vote, voting is the necessary condition here.
The performace of WTC 7 is of significant interest because it appears the collapse was due primarily to fire, rather than any impact damage from the collapsing towers. Prior to September 11, 2001 there was little, if any, record of fire-induced collapse of large fire-protected steel buildings.
In all my destructive youth, I was never able to blow something up or destroy it so that it uniformly fell at roughtly the speed of gravity in a vacuum. But shit happens.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? Contiguous in what sense? Attached to the same motherboard? In one DIMM? Addressable in one chunk by the OS?
I've only been to one supercomputing conference, but when I was there most all of the people there ran clusters and the top500 site (although this list is produced by the same supercomputing conference people) lists many clusters there.
In other words, where does this contiguous memory requirement come from?
+5 interesting to ask a question that is explaind at length on his website here.
I see that you are opposed to the war in Iraq, and that you are big into seriously reducing the size of the government and taxes. However, the trend for the past 60 years or so has been to spend government money into deficit status on defense and wars, and then scramble ways to pay for that spending. My question is simple. What new idiology are you going to introduce as a motivation to spend the taxpayers' money and create/maintain jobs instead of defense and wars and why will people favor this change?
From that link:
Support for very large volumes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 supports up to 1 TB.
WTF??? Am I the only person in the world that would consider an "enterprise" class OS in 2004 something that should be able to have an attached harddisk of more than 1 TB? Its difficult to even buy an array with less then 1 TB.
This is good news. Currently, there are few 64bit platforms where the hardware and software (Linux) are supported by the vendor. I wonder how well these will perform, and more importantly will IBM release a good compiler for them so that we can use them.
All this really means is that in the near future web designers and multimedia providers will start to upgrade the amount of bandwidth needed, and the average person will still be screwed.
I disagree. Standard web stuff is expected to be pretty much "instant" with a "broadband" class connection, and its been that way for years, and if a standard website does not load fast, it would have to be of some pretty unique and desired content that cannot be found elsewhere for someone to wait for it.
Now transferring masive files, that is a different story. A download (or upload) is expected to take some time, and even with a fast connection, the transfer rate will vary according to the protocol of the transfer, the speed of all the internode hops, etc etc. If anyone consistantly gets downloads of over 1 mbit/s for all of thier downloads, please let me know what your internet connection is. Right now I have access from anything from a cable modem at home to Internet2 at work. The fastest transfers I get in real day to day life is about 3.5 MByte/s using scp (I could be CPU bound here), and that is more than fast enough for transfering gigs of data at a time. When I transfer large amounts of data, its ususally audio files, and I transfer about 1 Gig at a time which takes less than 5 minutes. Thats fast enough for me. I can transfer data faster than I can realistically process it. Meaning I could not burn that much data to CD in that time, or listen to it, or hell even finish reading all of the info about it.
I don't know anyone who still does dialup except my dad and he says its "fast enough" for him and its not worth paying the extra $20 a month for a faster connection.
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispenable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
-- George Washington, Commanding General of the Continental Army, Father of Our Country and First President of the United States, in his address to 2nd Session of 1st Congress.
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Author of The Declaration of Independence, and President of the United States.
nobody has a legitimate reason for owning a 30 round clip
I personally do not own weapons, don't want to. But I feel a little better knowing that there are those paranoid bastards out in the woods packing fully automatic weapons waiting for the government to get "really evil".
I personally feel as though murder should be decriminalized. Think about how much crime would be reduced and law enforcement's job would be made so much easier.
Now let the flame wars begin...
Not yet. 1st, it is not normal to want to kill someone. Aside from a psychopath that cannot feel empathy or guilt, It is against any human's natural will to kill someone. Its instinct to grab someone who steps out into the road, its not because we were taught this. It goes against instinct to go against self and species preservation.
By legalizing murder, it would keep people in check. Basic reinforcement theory says that learing takes place when the reinforcer (reward or punishment) is near the action. If Johnny kills Billy, and Billy's friends or family think that it was wrong for Johnny to kill Billy. Well, Johnny better watch his back!
I personally feel as though the incidence of murder would actually decrease if it were legal. Just a theory.
You must not have gone to college then. :)
Actually, I did and have either been in college or employed by one for 15 of the past 17 years, and that silly argument was a rip off of a position by a professor of mine when I was a senior in college. He was trying to emphasize how grades have been inflated over they years in American universities. He stated that by the university's definition that "C" was "average". Also, by the university's rules one must have a "C" or better to graduate (this was a fairly new rule, you used to be able to graduate with a "D"). So by that logic, and by that logic alone, there are no "below average" college graduates.
I thought it was cute, and fun, not something that was to be debated.
Last time I checked Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco where all on the continent of Africa.
That seems correct.
These countries are largely populated by people of Arab extraction who I would never describe in a million years as black, and are certainly not Nego.
This too seems correct.
However if any of these people emigrate to America they are technically African-Americans who are not black, no matter how the census bureau tries to define the term.
I agree with your logic, but you and I don't make the rules. African-American means black or Negro, it does not mean that you are an African living in America. That was my point. I've met an African with blonde hair and blue eyes, and if he emigrated to the US he would not be African American, he would just be white.
I'm assuming that your British by your URL, and you may not get the US politically correct game. (I don't either, but thats another story). I thought that the government made up the African American thing to get away from using "black" to describe people, and in that they were just going by "continent of origin" instead of "race", and in doing so I originally thought that African American, really meant African American, and not black. However, after a little investigation, I found out that according to the government African American and black were synonymous, except for the fact that using the term black is not politically correct or preferred anymore. Its more prefered to say African American even though that really means nothing except black.
Dunno, again I didn't make this crap up.
While we are getting completely offtopic and irrelevant discussion, I would be in favor of eliminating all statistics based on race, or at least African American or black. To me it would make more sense to classify people by their socioeconomic background rather than their race. Poor black people are very similar to poor white people, and middle class, and upper class as well.
Not all black people are African American.
:)
Of course that is true. A black person in african is African African
Not all African-Americans are black.
False. At least by the people that define these things. I personally would consider a white person from Africa who now lives in the US as African American, but this is not how the US government defines it. From the census bureau it defines African American as:
Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro," or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.
Have some self respect and decency and don't fall prey to this big inept pseudo-journalistic, National Enquirer-esque troll that really has very little to do with real issues.
The sad thing is that most of the American public believe that the #1 issue is the "War on terrorism". Bush is actually honest about this "war" in saying that it can't be won. Kerry has to take the opposite view and BSes about how this "war" can be won.
Lets be honest for a minute here. There is nothing that can be done about terrorism, any more than can be done to prevent someone from shooting or stabbing me on the street or breaking into my car or my home. And the latter two examples completely ignore the case where the person wishing to do me harm is willing or even planning to die in the progress of killing me!
Does anyone know how many _tons_ of illicit material (mostly drugs) come into this country from around the world annually? How much of this is caught? How difficult would it be to change the payload from drugs to explosives?
I estimate that I would end up somewhere in the middle.
:)
You must not be an American then
Take for example graduating from college. Did you know that there are no "below average" college graduates? Proof: In order to graduate from college you must have a GPA equating to a C or better. A C is average, therefore there are no below average college graduates.
Other estimates that I ask people from time to time. What percentage of the US population is African American (black)? What percentage of the US population has a college degree?
Although the African American question is a little skewed because of the area I live in does in fact have about 30-40% of the population as being black, the national average in 2002 is 13%. I typically get answers that the national average is 30-40%.
The college degree question is also very off. I typically get answers around 50% or higher, where its 27% as of 2003. Its some kind of myth here in the US that everyone has to go to college so they can do unskilled labor the rest of their lives. In fact, my aunt was lecturing her (adult) son that got his girlfriend pregnant with the "How are you going to pay for the kid to go to college?" routine. When neither of her parents went to college, neither her nor her husband went to college, and none of her 2 children went to college.
Ask an American and a Japanese if they are "good in math". The Japanese will typically say "no", the American will say "yes". Ask the same 2 kids to take a standardized math test, the Japanese will score better than the American.
However, although its important to feel good, its more important to look good!
Open Source developers, by and large, don't make any money for their code, and don't win any awards
That may be true for the average 10 line perl script found on sourceforge, but any OS developer that has developed a worthwhile piece of software is going to at least indirectly make money off of that product.
Linus is a millionare. Larry Wall is probably comfortable off of royalties from the Oreily books. Knuth is a professor. Also, many professionals that work for companies like HP, IBM, and SGI are paid to write opensource software.
Anyway on topic, I can thank all of the Linux and opensource projects that I use daily and have had the opportunity to read their source code. I learned how to program in C from reading OS code, and I feel as though I had excellent teachers. When I was a developer for the Windows platform (low point in my life) it killed me that I could not find any worthwhile examples or source code for the MS platform. I've always felt more at home with the OSS community because they provide answers when people ask questions.
Its like they legislating exclusivity agreements, as well as revoking FOIA on this data.
I don't get the FOIA. From what I understand, we can't get jack from the government. At most you will get a poor quality photocopy of some useless document that has every other word blacked out.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that is my understanding of how generous our government is with _our_ information. We paid for it, I believe we are entitled to read it, at least after some set period of time.
You take a pretty controversial position, but don't defend it: "It's important to vote, even if you vote for yourself or Mickey Mouse". Why?
Obviously you feel that merely participating in the process is important, even if your participation is meaningless. How is it any different to cast a meaningless vote as opposed to not casting any vote?
Voting is participating. The only thing I can think of is that you fee it is important to show that you believe in the process... but do you?
The process only works by participation. I can't stand it when someone it talking BS about "how things should be" or "what I think the President should do" when the person does not vote. I slam them saying that they forfeited their opinion, and suggest next time they vote, and then we can talk.
Can you honestly say that the process shouldn't be changed if it can't produce a candidate you can vote for?
Again, for the process to change, it requires action. The winning candidate thinks nothing of non-voters. Even if a candidate wins and there were say, 100 million writein votes, that would tell both the system and that winning candidate something.
Again, please vote people. Encourage people to vote. Its not that hard.
Given that the US has one of the oldest stable governments in the world
FWIW, the US has the longest standing constitution in the world.
The only problem in America is that too many people can veto stuff. The president can veto congress and vv, and the senate can veto both... A whole lotta nothing going on if you ask me.
"The government is best which governs least."
-- Thomas Jefferson
BTW, our healthcare is not the best, but you will _not_ be turned away from an emergency room.
Our healthcare problems has much more to do with insurance companies than the care itself, but thats another topic for another day.
In North Carolina the Jury Duty list is gotten from the list of registered automobile owners.
If I didn't drive and were put in front of a jury of "my peers", I would declare a mistrial.
Democracy isn't perfect, but it sure as hell is better than any other alternative out there.
Most people that study governments say that parliamentary systems are the best because even the "losers" get their due percentage of representation. Makes sense to me. However, our system does have congress and the senate and local governments that balance things out a bit.
In my opinion, I don't think the democratic process should include coin flipping.
:)
Thats fine. I see your point. However, I'm the kind of person that would put "I don't know" instead of leaving a question blank on a test or if I calculated something with say a negative mass because of an arithmetic mistake, I would write "I got -50 pounds, but I know this is not right". To me that is better, even though the grade is the same than leaving blanks or obviously wrong answers as being right.
Lets say that this election we "shame" someone into voting, or just get them in there to do their coin flippage, but next election the liklihood that the shamed or flippant voter will vote will probably increase, and the chances that the next election that they might even think and try to do some kind of informed voting will be more than if they don't vote at all.
Now, if the majority of the people didn't vote and then we had to have a reelection when a majority of the people do not vote. Then I would not care if people voted
That would be pretty cool.
Is this to say that a person with a cert is lesser than the "do it yourselfers"?
No. There are very skilled people with certs and there are many "do it yourselfers" that suck.
Does this mean you're a lesser individual for not having a degree? I see a lot of double speak here. First you say that education isn't important than you claim it's a rite of passage. Than you claim that you neither have a degree nor any certs but you're still competent... So which is it? Is the degree holder really better than you? Is the cert holder less than you? Not to belittle your accomplishments but it seems that you're saying that a degree holds a weight that you cannot possibly possess since you have "no formal computer training".
Let me clear up some things here. There is no doublespeak because I never said education was important as far as education (knowledge, skills, abilites, etc) goes per se. I base this on the fact that most people that graduate from college have little knowledge skills and abilities that are valuable to an employer (yes there are exceptions).
To simplify things, let me talk about an employer that is hiring someone to dig ditches. He has 2 candidates in front of him, a highschool graduate and a HS dropout. Digging ditches does not require anything that is offered in highschool academically. However, the employer is more likely to hire the hs grad because he was able to demonstrate that he could at least stick to something, and this is very likely to correlate with the employee doing stuff like showing up to work vs bailing. (yes there are other factors that go into the equasion as well, but lets keep it simple).
Also, I said that I have no formal computer training, I do have a degree, and that has helped me get jobs. Actually, being that my degree is in Psychology and my skills and accomplishments are high in the computer field, that I believe it says a lot to an employer -- that I am able to independently learn and get stuff done.
Reading your comment seems to suggest that mearly VOTING somehow magically produces an informed voter. Perhaps I'm reading you wrong?
No, of course I don't believe that pulling a leaver makes one informed.
Or maybe I'm reading you correctly and I'll just flat out disagree. I cant see anything constructive to the equivalent of flipping a coin in the ballot booth.
I do see something constructive to flipping a coin in a ballot booth. It says at least that the voter cares. I mean, come on, some women (or men) will vote for the more attractive candidate (supposedly this greatly helped JFK defeat Nixon), but its a disgrace when about 1/2 of our population cannot get off of their ass and vote (yet, 99% of them will bitch about the results).
an INFORMED voter is much more important than getting someone who is too apathetic to even register to vote to get up off his/her arse and actually VOTE.
There is a flaw in your argument. There is no such thing as an INFORMED voter that does not vote, voting is the necessary condition here.
Please vote people.
By actually giving them a candidate they can agree with?
I hear you, but I encourage everyone to vote, even if they vote for themselves or Mickey Mouse (my two top candidates this election).
It would say wonders to the government if a majority or even a large percentage of the people voted the "CowboyNeal" option.
Please people, vote. Yes it is that important.
Well, since I used to work in World Trade seven, when I see a question like that, my first reaction is personal, yes.
Hey, I'm on your side. Btw, the official FEMA report says:
The performace of WTC 7 is of significant interest because it appears the collapse was due primarily to fire, rather than any impact damage from the collapsing towers. Prior to September 11, 2001 there was little, if any, record of fire-induced collapse of large fire-protected steel buildings.
In all my destructive youth, I was never able to blow something up or destroy it so that it uniformly fell at roughtly the speed of gravity in a vacuum. But shit happens.