Mostly valid points. The republican form is one of the ways to fight the tyranny of the majority, and you're right --- it's not so much about giving more power to the minority as it is preventing them from being trod upon, though the way you achieve that is by giving them at least enough power to be heard.
And in fact, it's extremely rare for there to be a difference in results anyhow. What I'd really like to see is Approval Voting, with or without the electoral college (and in fact, my gut feel is that whatever small advantages the EC has would be covered with Approval Voting, making it redundant).
The point is *not* that cities vote monolithically. The point is that in a non-electoral system, the entire middle of the country would get ignored in favor of the left and right coasts, even more so that they already are. If Iowa and New Hampshire weren't first in the election process, you'd never hear a peep about them.
Nevertheless, the map backs up what I said about the west coast: the big blue blotches in Washington and Oregon are Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia, Portland and Eugene. In California, you've got the coastal strip centered on San Francisco and the block in LA. Even were it not so clearly visible, what almost matters more is the perception when it comes to confidence in the system, and I'd be really surprised if you talked to many people back home who don't think the cities control things.
You obviously don't come from a rural area, or look at the vote split difference between city/rural votes. In Oregon, politics-wise, there's Portland/Willamette Valley and the rest of the state. Some people call Bend "Eastern Oregon" (it's barely on the other side of the cascades and well west of center). In Washington, it's Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia and the rest of the state. In California, they call San Francisco "Northern California".
The entire midwest would be completely irrelevant if we did not have the electoral system. It's still lightweight, but at least it has a *little* weight. The founding fathers tried hard to fight the tyranny of the majority in setting things up, and we forget that danger at our peril.
Paper is still an effective means of communication.
I think I remember what that is;-)
For me, paper is still best for sketching something out, brainstorming, but as a system administrator at an ISP, most of what I work with is online, and paper is just a waste. It annoys me when the support people bring in a printout of a bounced email that I'm going to look at for 5 seconds to get the error mesage and then throw away. And online, I can cut/paste the info I need to search for in logs.
When I was doing programming, paper was still good for code reviews, but anything else was better done online.
I particularly like the guy at work who walks over to my desk and says, "Hey there, did you get my email?" when he sent it about 30 seconds ago. What the fuck is he doing?
Sending you something he wants to discuss with you? Having details to look at is extremely useful in a number of situations like that. A lot can be accomplished by email, but sometimes it's more efficient to actually have a discussion. Some of us actually like human interaction occasionally too. On the other hand, with an attitude like yours, well, let's not waste karma going there...
Spam is annoying, but it's not an excuse: most systems of necessity have decent spam filters now, and it's pretty easy to select out the few leaks, delete them, then go on with the real stuff. If someone doesn't have a decent spam filter, they need to move their mail account elsewhere.
...is that we've gotten to the point where they're even considering such a thing! Not too long ago, you would have had to be a lunatic to even propose it. Does anyone even *want* freedom any more?
...just like I won't apply for work at the insurance company in town that requires white shirt and tie in the IT department. I understand they always have openings, not hard to see why. Dress codes work both ways: management sees it as a sign of professionalism, the worker sees it as the type of management they're going to have to put up with.
My dad was a truck driver, albeit local, not long-haul (which would be even worse if you wanted to have a life). Once, in high school, I pondered the possibility of doing that and he near went ballistic. He did not think much of that life, even though he was very good at it (and though retired, still does some on my brother-in-law's farm).
Digg showed you exactly what you get with a "society for the people by the people": mob rule. The advantage of the Internet is that if you don't like the way a site is run, you can setup your own and run it the way you want. There is no need to vandalize the sites that aren't.
If anything, that makes them more sensitive to the risk: not only is it a direct financial risk, but they know they're being watched more closely than other sites.
I think it'll just blow over and they'll continue on as usual, actually. I'll bet most of the users are more ticked at the vandals than in support of them...
Does Digg have corporate deep pockets willing to take the chance? They're in a no-win situation: risk being destroyed legally and/or financially, or be destroyed by idiots who don't have to make essentially life or death decisions about their creation. Idiots who would rather destroy and vandalize than do something productive like spread the number around in the less conspicuous nooks and crannies of the internet where it has a chance to get embedded in the depths of search engine caches and archives before it can be discovered and taken down. Or for that matter, on remote web sites out of reach of US et al lawyers.
As though the number actually mattered anyhow. The only people who will use it don't need it posted.
Yes, the router remains functional, nothing critical has been lost yet, so I've been testing on another machine, though I did try originally with a 4G PQI cf card in the CF slot in the router machine (a shuttle xpm, only about a year old, but which seems designed to cook drives if you leave the cover on, as is the case with all too many cases).
There have been some indications that the problem is that DMA isn't working, and someone mentioned there's a non-dma mode for linux that I haven't had a chance to try yet, but that seems "unfortunate", though as a router, it's not actually going to do much disk I/O. I'd also prefer to use FreeBSD, as ipfw syntax is actually readable and makes sense to me;-) (though I'm getting used to iptables since we use a lot of centos at work). FreeBSD is the one actually getting errors though, Centos just times out and is really slow. I need to investigate configuring it for non-dma to see if that solves the problem.
Knowing that it's *supposed* to work is a big help though, I was thinking that there may be some more fundamental problem that would require specific CF support in the kernel...
I've recently tried to install centos and freebsd on various cf cards with an ide adapter (my home router's hard disk is dying), and neither are happy, getting timeouts and various errors. My understanding is that the cf interface is ide, so why should it be a problem?
Why do media companies feel that it's a requirement of operation to piss off their customers as much as absolutely possible? The minute I run across a DVD player that doesn't allow disabling controls, I'm buying it, and if I know ahead of time that a DVD includes forced commercials, I'm going to put off buying it. In the meantime, I'll use the same technique I used before I had Tivo: the mute button. They can't get to my receiver... I refuse to downgrade to iTunes 7, and I won't install this new flash player either. A pain, but not as painful as the crap they're trying to foist on us.
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Mostly valid points. The republican form is one of the ways to fight the tyranny of the majority, and you're right --- it's not so much about giving more power to the minority as it is preventing them from being trod upon, though the way you achieve that is by giving them at least enough power to be heard.
And in fact, it's extremely rare for there to be a difference in results anyhow. What I'd really like to see is Approval Voting, with or without the electoral college (and in fact, my gut feel is that whatever small advantages the EC has would be covered with Approval Voting, making it redundant).
The point is *not* that cities vote monolithically. The point is that in a non-electoral system, the entire middle of the country would get ignored in favor of the left and right coasts, even more so that they already are. If Iowa and New Hampshire weren't first in the election process, you'd never hear a peep about them.
Nevertheless, the map backs up what I said about the west coast: the big blue blotches in Washington and Oregon are Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia, Portland and Eugene. In California, you've got the coastal strip centered on San Francisco and the block in LA. Even were it not so clearly visible, what almost matters more is the perception when it comes to confidence in the system, and I'd be really surprised if you talked to many people back home who don't think the cities control things.
You obviously don't come from a rural area, or look at the vote split difference between city/rural votes. In Oregon, politics-wise, there's Portland/Willamette Valley and the rest of the state. Some people call Bend "Eastern Oregon" (it's barely on the other side of the cascades and well west of center). In Washington, it's Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia and the rest of the state. In California, they call San Francisco "Northern California".
The entire midwest would be completely irrelevant if we did not have the electoral system. It's still lightweight, but at least it has a *little* weight. The founding fathers tried hard to fight the tyranny of the majority in setting things up, and we forget that danger at our peril.
Paper is still an effective means of communication.
;-)
I think I remember what that is
For me, paper is still best for sketching something out, brainstorming, but as a system administrator at an ISP, most of what I work with is online, and paper is just a waste. It annoys me when the support people bring in a printout of a bounced email that I'm going to look at for 5 seconds to get the error mesage and then throw away. And online, I can cut/paste the info I need to search for in logs.
When I was doing programming, paper was still good for code reviews, but anything else was better done online.
For me anyhow...
I particularly like the guy at work who walks over to my desk and says, "Hey there, did you get my email?" when he sent it about 30 seconds ago. What the fuck is he doing?
Sending you something he wants to discuss with you? Having details to look at is extremely useful in a number of situations like that. A lot can be accomplished by email, but sometimes it's more efficient to actually have a discussion. Some of us actually like human interaction occasionally too. On the other hand, with an attitude like yours, well, let's not waste karma going there...
Spam is annoying, but it's not an excuse: most systems of necessity have decent spam filters now, and it's pretty easy to select out the few leaks, delete them, then go on with the real stuff. If someone doesn't have a decent spam filter, they need to move their mail account elsewhere.
As opposed to a simple count system where only the big cities matter and all the other votes are essentially discarded.
...is that we've gotten to the point where they're even considering such a thing! Not too long ago, you would have had to be a lunatic to even propose it. Does anyone even *want* freedom any more?
...just like I won't apply for work at the insurance company in town that requires white shirt and tie in the IT department. I understand they always have openings, not hard to see why. Dress codes work both ways: management sees it as a sign of professionalism, the worker sees it as the type of management they're going to have to put up with.
...the sounds will be live, the way we're headed...
One thing I've discovered is that there are any number of things I enjoy doing...until I *have* to do them...then they become work.
My dad was a truck driver, albeit local, not long-haul (which would be even worse if you wanted to have a life). Once, in high school, I pondered the possibility of doing that and he near went ballistic. He did not think much of that life, even though he was very good at it (and though retired, still does some on my brother-in-law's farm).
...Cox must really want to kill their video on demand service. It's crap like that that is why I will never use a centralized service to start with.
Digg showed you exactly what you get with a "society for the people by the people": mob rule. The advantage of the Internet is that if you don't like the way a site is run, you can setup your own and run it the way you want. There is no need to vandalize the sites that aren't.
If anything, that makes them more sensitive to the risk: not only is it a direct financial risk, but they know they're being watched more closely than other sites.
I think it'll just blow over and they'll continue on as usual, actually. I'll bet most of the users are more ticked at the vandals than in support of them...
Does Digg have corporate deep pockets willing to take the chance? They're in a no-win situation: risk being destroyed legally and/or financially, or be destroyed by idiots who don't have to make essentially life or death decisions about their creation. Idiots who would rather destroy and vandalize than do something productive like spread the number around in the less conspicuous nooks and crannies of the internet where it has a chance to get embedded in the depths of search engine caches and archives before it can be discovered and taken down. Or for that matter, on remote web sites out of reach of US et al lawyers.
As though the number actually mattered anyhow. The only people who will use it don't need it posted.
With users like those idiots, there won't be a Digg after they're sued into oblivion.
Not if I noticed it, but the systems aren't getting far enough to be idle.
Thawte's interface is good
Clearly the author of that quote hasn't actually tried to use Thawte's site much. Cumbersome and arcane are better descriptions...
The software supports three main types of motion: shake, rock and roll.
...it was supposed to be "shake, RATTLE and roll"...
That's pretty much what I always figured, but people should call him out on *that*, not make fun of the one thing he actually got reasonably right.
Yes, the router remains functional, nothing critical has been lost yet, so I've been testing on another machine, though I did try originally with a 4G PQI cf card in the CF slot in the router machine (a shuttle xpm, only about a year old, but which seems designed to cook drives if you leave the cover on, as is the case with all too many cases).
;-) (though I'm getting used to iptables since we use a lot of centos at work). FreeBSD is the one actually getting errors though, Centos just times out and is really slow. I need to investigate configuring it for non-dma to see if that solves the problem.
There have been some indications that the problem is that DMA isn't working, and someone mentioned there's a non-dma mode for linux that I haven't had a chance to try yet, but that seems "unfortunate", though as a router, it's not actually going to do much disk I/O. I'd also prefer to use FreeBSD, as ipfw syntax is actually readable and makes sense to me
Knowing that it's *supposed* to work is a big help though, I was thinking that there may be some more fundamental problem that would require specific CF support in the kernel...
I've recently tried to install centos and freebsd on various cf cards with an ide adapter (my home router's hard disk is dying), and neither are happy, getting timeouts and various errors. My understanding is that the cf interface is ide, so why should it be a problem?
Their product only works on Windoze (it appears to be a Windoze-only DRM media site), so everyone else isn't in their market anyhow...
Why do media companies feel that it's a requirement of operation to piss off their customers as much as absolutely possible? The minute I run across a DVD player that doesn't allow disabling controls, I'm buying it, and if I know ahead of time that a DVD includes forced commercials, I'm going to put off buying it. In the meantime, I'll use the same technique I used before I had Tivo: the mute button. They can't get to my receiver... I refuse to downgrade to iTunes 7, and I won't install this new flash player either. A pain, but not as painful as the crap they're trying to foist on us.