Since users know who they are, I'm sure they'll just change their name and go right on doing what they used to do. See Gator -> Claria or School of the Americas -> WHINSEC.
One one hand, they have much higher resolution photos of San Francisco. You can see the hammock on my deck, and you could have seen me in it if I'd been outside wearing a brightly colored shirt. On the other hand, although the photos of SF look fairly recent, the street names are at least five years out of date (compare Army St on MS maps to Cesar Chavez on Google).
I'm still waiting for public transit with cat claws. When running fast, real cats prefer to stop by digging in their claws rather than using their ears for aerobraking.
Yes, but at least the British way of spelling aluminium makes it sound like the jewelry's more valuable than cheap aluminum crap you could buy at Walmart.
As of kernel 2.6.11, there is STILL no working cpufreq (longhaul) CPU throttling support for epia boards. The latest status is discussed here
There is also no ACPI control of the fans; they're always on and not under software control (this would be a problem under any OS).
Although the boards are marketed towards users who build machines that are always left on, they skimped on some obvious features needed by most users in this market.
I'll second this recommendation. Democracy Now is based on the Pacifica Radio Network but broadcast on a lot of other stations also. If you like Democracy Now, a lot of other Pacifica shows (talk, news, etc) are also free for download. Donate some money too... unlike NPR, they're completely listener-supported.
While a cluster of humans has the potential to make an excellent computational resource, eventually the human nodes would catch on and almost certainly resent it. They may even revolt, causing any AI which depend on the resource to have to enslave the humans or face extinction. Doesn't anybody at IBM read Dan Simmons???
I almost bought the 810 model in the link you provided. Fortunately, I read the manual first. It's buried on their website, behind many pages of buggy javascript and user registration requirements. I found the following restrictions:
1. If you record TV shows at normal (high) quality, you can't burn more than 1 hour onto the DVD. There's no transcoding!
2. If you listen to a MP3 larger than 10MB, you can't fast-forward or rewind. Useless for Internet radio shows.
3. You can't store MP3s on the hard drive; you have to insert a CD with them burned on it. Again, useless for internet radio.
4. And of course, no network access unless you pay an additional fee for the "home media option".
5. The DVD drive is region coded, and no patched firmware is available: no renting foreign movies.
None of these limitations seem to be for technological reasons, except maybe the lack of transcoding.
So, I bit the bullet and made my own Mythbox. It was a pain in the ass, but faster thanks to KnoppMyth. I still had to recompile the kernel, MythTV, and the PVR-350 driver to get everything nice and stable, but at least everything works!
I had also considered getting a ReplayTV and hacking it to get the features I want to work. However, even though my MythTV box still doesn't do everything I want it to do (e.g., automatically transcode a bunch of shows to the right size to fit on a DVD), there are at least developers trying to get such features working. In the meantime, the basic features work great and are rock solid. It's amazing how convenient it is to set up a recording over the web interface, in case I find out something is on that I'll want to watch. It's also great to be able to download video clips in any format and be able to play them on my TV the same way I can play back recorded TV.
According to Stephenson, only DOS computers were as dangerous as Hole Hawgs. GUI interfaces are less dangerous because they pop up annoying modal display boxes that say things like "are you sure you want to tear your arm off?"
Re:Betraying what he ran for last time
on
The Nader Factor
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I agree with you there. I think Nader was influenced by Camejo to use a "attack the Democrats to try to move them to the left" strategy. This would have been complementary to David Cobb and the Greens' "build the party by focusing on local candidates" strategy (not to be confused with Cobb's earlier "safe states" strategy, which he abandoned after talking to Greens who supported him).
What I blame Nader for in this election is that his campaign has treated the Green Party almost as badly as Democrats have treated Greens (and Nader): his supporters knocked Cobb off the ballot in Utah and Vermont, and tried unsuccessfully to do so in California. That won't help either campaign, or the Greens in the long run. Some of Nader's supporters seem more interested in tearing down the Green Party and trying to "start over" with a new party, or just fighting over the little power the Left has these days. This infighting pretty much destroyed the Socialists, and many of the same people are now attacking the Greens through Nader's campaign.
Disappointing, but not surprising, considering who appoints judges.
At least, the 3rd party candidates (except Nader) all were televised debating on C-span. The video (.rm format) is temporarily linked
from the C-span home page, under "recent programs," and can also be found using a search for "third party" on c-span.org.
Does anybody know how to save this video as a more
storeable format (i.e., mpeg)?
Kerry's red tie was clearly broadcasting subliminal (or as Bush would say, subliminable) messages to people in the Red states, giving him an unfair advantage.
Candidates should have to show up and debate naked, after being cavity searched and deloused to make sure they are, in fact, hiding nothing.
While IRV isn't perfect, it's a good patch for our current election system. The others you linked to (approval voting, condorcet, etc) are not. The criteria used by electionmethods.org are interesting from a mathematical point of view, but the public would want to know what kind of politician these systems would elect before trying them out. Its one thing to use a complicated system to choose the #1 football team, another to choose the leader of the Free World (tm).
The public is already familiar with runoff elections and the need for majority (rather than plurality) rule. An IRV election follows the same "rules" but without the intervening month or two of campaigning (which some people see as a good thing and others may not). The "spoiler problem" in plurality elections clearly exists under real-world conditions, and needs to be fixed by something the public will understand and be willing to trust.
Electionmethods.org does a good job of pointing out mathematical problems with IRV, but don't give any evidence that these flaws would actually change the outcome in real-world elections. In other words, current public opinion is at exactly the right point to expose the flaws of our current system. If the flaws in IRV would only be exposed in some hypothetical situation where most Republicans prefer Nader to Bush or Greens prefer Kerry to Cobb, then we never have to worry about them (like a program where the only bugs are in procedures that rarely or never get called).
Don't understimate the difficulty of "selling" a new election system to the public. There's always suspicion that you're just changing things to your own advantage. This is especially problematic with something like Condorcet which is hard to explain to the public: would they believe "trust us, we're mathemeticians?" IRV is easier to sell because it's analogous to something (runoff elections) most people are already familiar with and see as a good idea.
A more pro-IRV site that describes more of its advantages is fairvote.org.
That's incorrect, and can easily be refuted by reading the FAQ on Cobb's website. However, this misinformation continues to be perpetuated by both the Democrats and the Nader campaign.
Come on Al, you invented the internet... you don't have to post as an Anonymous Coward!
Wrong; the GP views most IP rights as corporate welfare, so we're against them. From the national platform (see gp.org for more info), "corporations and democracy" plank:
It is unacceptable to have the level of influence now being exerted by corporate interests over the public interest. We challenge the propriety and equity of "corporate welfare" in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, payments, grants, bailouts, giveaways, unenforced laws and regulations; and historic, continuing access to our vast public resources, including millions of acres of land, forests, mineral resources, intellectual property rights, and government-created research.
There's also a lot in the platform about how we don't like patents on seeds and so on... most Greens probably dislike Monsanto even more than Microsoft.
Sure, I think those are the only good reasons. Let me give you the argument in a little more detail.
I assume you support whatever political positions you support because you think they're best for the benefit of all Americans, or all people, not just because they would benefit you.
If you really thought Bush would be better for people than Gore, or vice versa, it would be irresponsible of you to not help the better one win. It may be great to say you have convictions and stick to them, but is this self-satisfaction really worth hurting other people (through inaction)?
You might vote for a 3rd party with the hopes that they will eventually get large enough to win a national election. But in this case, you're making a calculated decision that the possible benefits your party may eventually bring outweigh the harm you could do in the meantime by not choosing the lesser evil.
Both the Greens and Libertarians need to be realistic about the chances of becoming a major party. How many other parties in the US have succeeded? The GP is new; this is our first serious campaign in a national election. If we make 5%, we have a chance to survive. The LP has done reasonably well in local elections, but try to imagine a realistic scenario in which they compete in the next couple of election cycles.
Anyway, the election is not just some abstract problem in American Politics 101. Depending on where you live, you have a chance to really affect people's lives. Liberals have to make a hard choice between Gore and Nader; Libertarians have to make an even harder choice between Bush and Nader. I think it's harder because neither is voting your conscience, but they represent a choice of strategy between furthering your short or long term goals. Voting when you know you will make no difference is the easy way out!
The only way you're going to make a difference to Bush or Gore is if you live in a state where things are close. Nader's trying to get 5% of the popular vote, which means your vote counts no matter where you live... since he won't win, it comes down to a choice of whether to strengthen the Republicans and Democrats or weaken them by strengthening the Greens.
That's right, it is the "don't waste your vote" argument. The only good reasons to vote for a 3rd party candidate are to grow their party, or if there is really no difference between the candidates for which your vote will "count". Your vote will count to Nader and the GP (for or against) because it makes a big difference next time whether or not he gets 5% this time. So if you like Gore and Bush better, pick one (by coin flip if you can't think of a better method), and if the GP is a lesser evil, pick Nader. None of the other 3rd parties will come close to the magic 5%, so a vote for them is just as irresponsible as not voting, if you really think your ideas are best for the American people.
As far as campaign finance reform goes, you must be very rich or very naive. When my neighbor ran for mayor of SF last year, he was outspent by about 50-1 by the winning candidate, who was funded by every company from Pac Bell to the Gap. As thanks, these companies are now allowed to loot many times their investment from our city's tax funds. Regular people simply don't have the money to compete with that, unless their internet company recently completed an IPO. This organized bribery is what keeps the Republicans and Democrats in a position to exclude all 3rd parties, including your LP.
Nader needs to convert Republicans and Democrats, who barely even watch the Bush/Gore debates, and disinterested nonvoters who won't watch ANY debate. At least those guys might see some superrally coverage on TV and become interested... there's no coverage of the 3rd party debates on TV or other mainsteam media. Nader would certainly debate Browne if he thought anybody would watch! Libertarians who think he's scared are fooling themselves.
I guarantee that anybody who watches the 3rd party debates is already smart enough to look on the web and research all their choices. Smart libertarians will end up voting for Nader just so he gets 5% and the GP can further weaken the Republicans and Democrats in the next election.
Slashdot Mirror
Since users know who they are, I'm sure they'll just change their name and go right on doing what they used to do. See Gator -> Claria or School of the Americas -> WHINSEC.
One one hand, they have much higher resolution photos of San Francisco. You can see the hammock on my deck, and you could have seen me in it if I'd been outside wearing a brightly colored shirt. On the other hand, although the photos of SF look fairly recent, the street names are at least five years out of date (compare Army St on MS maps to Cesar Chavez on Google).
KTVU reported that the FBI raided "Juarez sites" based in the Bay area. Then I realized the announcer was trying to say "warez."
I'm still waiting for public transit with cat claws. When running fast, real cats prefer to stop by digging in their claws rather than using their ears for aerobraking.
Zoning is socialist? Should have been moderated Flamebait, not Insightful.
Yes, but at least the British way of spelling aluminium makes it sound like the jewelry's more valuable than cheap aluminum crap you could buy at Walmart.
Actually, all Democratic senators and representatives do these days is read Slashdot.
Although the boards are marketed towards users who build machines that are always left on, they skimped on some obvious features needed by most users in this market.
I'll second this recommendation. Democracy Now is based on the Pacifica Radio Network but broadcast on a lot of other stations also. If you like Democracy Now, a lot of other Pacifica shows (talk, news, etc) are also free for download. Donate some money too... unlike NPR, they're completely listener-supported.
While a cluster of humans has the potential to make an excellent computational resource, eventually the human nodes would catch on and almost certainly resent it. They may even revolt, causing any AI which depend on the resource to have to enslave the humans or face extinction. Doesn't anybody at IBM read Dan Simmons???
1. If you record TV shows at normal (high) quality, you can't burn more than 1 hour onto the DVD. There's no transcoding!
2. If you listen to a MP3 larger than 10MB, you can't fast-forward or rewind. Useless for Internet radio shows.
3. You can't store MP3s on the hard drive; you have to insert a CD with them burned on it. Again, useless for internet radio.
4. And of course, no network access unless you pay an additional fee for the "home media option".
5. The DVD drive is region coded, and no patched firmware is available: no renting foreign movies.
None of these limitations seem to be for technological reasons, except maybe the lack of transcoding.
So, I bit the bullet and made my own Mythbox. It was a pain in the ass, but faster thanks to KnoppMyth. I still had to recompile the kernel, MythTV, and the PVR-350 driver to get everything nice and stable, but at least everything works!
I had also considered getting a ReplayTV and hacking it to get the features I want to work. However, even though my MythTV box still doesn't do everything I want it to do (e.g., automatically transcode a bunch of shows to the right size to fit on a DVD), there are at least developers trying to get such features working. In the meantime, the basic features work great and are rock solid. It's amazing how convenient it is to set up a recording over the web interface, in case I find out something is on that I'll want to watch. It's also great to be able to download video clips in any format and be able to play them on my TV the same way I can play back recorded TV.
We're lucky he responded to us with wit and humor... he sounds really dangerous when he gets pissed off.
According to Stephenson, only DOS computers were as dangerous as Hole Hawgs. GUI interfaces are less dangerous because they pop up annoying modal display boxes that say things like "are you sure you want to tear your arm off?"
What I blame Nader for in this election is that his campaign has treated the Green Party almost as badly as Democrats have treated Greens (and Nader): his supporters knocked Cobb off the ballot in Utah and Vermont, and tried unsuccessfully to do so in California. That won't help either campaign, or the Greens in the long run. Some of Nader's supporters seem more interested in tearing down the Green Party and trying to "start over" with a new party, or just fighting over the little power the Left has these days. This infighting pretty much destroyed the Socialists, and many of the same people are now attacking the Greens through Nader's campaign.
At least, the 3rd party candidates (except Nader) all were televised debating on C-span. The video (.rm format) is temporarily linked from the C-span home page, under "recent programs," and can also be found using a search for "third party" on c-span.org.
Does anybody know how to save this video as a more storeable format (i.e., mpeg)?
Candidates should have to show up and debate naked, after being cavity searched and deloused to make sure they are, in fact, hiding nothing.
The public is already familiar with runoff elections and the need for majority (rather than plurality) rule. An IRV election follows the same "rules" but without the intervening month or two of campaigning (which some people see as a good thing and others may not). The "spoiler problem" in plurality elections clearly exists under real-world conditions, and needs to be fixed by something the public will understand and be willing to trust.
Electionmethods.org does a good job of pointing out mathematical problems with IRV, but don't give any evidence that these flaws would actually change the outcome in real-world elections. In other words, current public opinion is at exactly the right point to expose the flaws of our current system. If the flaws in IRV would only be exposed in some hypothetical situation where most Republicans prefer Nader to Bush or Greens prefer Kerry to Cobb, then we never have to worry about them (like a program where the only bugs are in procedures that rarely or never get called).
Don't understimate the difficulty of "selling" a new election system to the public. There's always suspicion that you're just changing things to your own advantage. This is especially problematic with something like Condorcet which is hard to explain to the public: would they believe "trust us, we're mathemeticians?" IRV is easier to sell because it's analogous to something (runoff elections) most people are already familiar with and see as a good idea.
A more pro-IRV site that describes more of its advantages is fairvote.org.
Some of the Greens who are the subject of these accusations have posted their responses at http://greensrespond.org.
They report, you decide.
You folks from the Socialist Party really have no sense of humor!
Come on Al, you invented the internet... you don't have to post as an Anonymous Coward!
Wrong; the GP views most IP rights as corporate welfare, so we're against them. From the national platform (see gp.org for more info), "corporations and democracy" plank:
It is unacceptable to have the level of influence now being exerted by corporate interests over the public interest. We challenge the propriety and equity of "corporate welfare" in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, payments, grants, bailouts, giveaways, unenforced laws and regulations; and historic, continuing access to our vast public resources, including millions of acres of land, forests, mineral resources, intellectual property rights, and government-created research.
There's also a lot in the platform about how we don't like patents on seeds and so on... most Greens probably dislike Monsanto even more than Microsoft.
As much as I hate to do this to the site, check out the Internet Top 100 list. Google it if it's slashdotted.
I assume you support whatever political positions you support because you think they're best for the benefit of all Americans, or all people, not just because they would benefit you.
If you really thought Bush would be better for people than Gore, or vice versa, it would be irresponsible of you to not help the better one win. It may be great to say you have convictions and stick to them, but is this self-satisfaction really worth hurting other people (through inaction)?
You might vote for a 3rd party with the hopes that they will eventually get large enough to win a national election. But in this case, you're making a calculated decision that the possible benefits your party may eventually bring outweigh the harm you could do in the meantime by not choosing the lesser evil.
Both the Greens and Libertarians need to be realistic about the chances of becoming a major party. How many other parties in the US have succeeded? The GP is new; this is our first serious campaign in a national election. If we make 5%, we have a chance to survive. The LP has done reasonably well in local elections, but try to imagine a realistic scenario in which they compete in the next couple of election cycles.
Anyway, the election is not just some abstract problem in American Politics 101. Depending on where you live, you have a chance to really affect people's lives. Liberals have to make a hard choice between Gore and Nader; Libertarians have to make an even harder choice between Bush and Nader. I think it's harder because neither is voting your conscience, but they represent a choice of strategy between furthering your short or long term goals. Voting when you know you will make no difference is the easy way out!
The only way you're going to make a difference to Bush or Gore is if you live in a state where things are close. Nader's trying to get 5% of the popular vote, which means your vote counts no matter where you live... since he won't win, it comes down to a choice of whether to strengthen the Republicans and Democrats or weaken them by strengthening the Greens.
As far as campaign finance reform goes, you must be very rich or very naive. When my neighbor ran for mayor of SF last year, he was outspent by about 50-1 by the winning candidate, who was funded by every company from Pac Bell to the Gap. As thanks, these companies are now allowed to loot many times their investment from our city's tax funds. Regular people simply don't have the money to compete with that, unless their internet company recently completed an IPO. This organized bribery is what keeps the Republicans and Democrats in a position to exclude all 3rd parties, including your LP.
Nader needs to convert Republicans and Democrats, who barely even watch the Bush/Gore debates, and disinterested nonvoters who won't watch ANY debate. At least those guys might see some superrally coverage on TV and become interested... there's no coverage of the 3rd party debates on TV or other mainsteam media. Nader would certainly debate Browne if he thought anybody would watch! Libertarians who think he's scared are fooling themselves.
I guarantee that anybody who watches the 3rd party debates is already smart enough to look on the web and research all their choices. Smart libertarians will end up voting for Nader just so he gets 5% and the GP can further weaken the Republicans and Democrats in the next election.