The funny thing is that this decision means very little in the battle for the Presidency. I don't need to state my claims for that, as I'm sure everyone's heard enough about that lately.
Where this decision does make a large difference is in state's rights, and more particularly, the power of a State's Supreme Court.
Here is how I read the situation:
According to Article II of the Constitution, the States shall chose electors as seen fit by the legislature. BUT the legislature is bound by that State's own constitution. So it is up to that State's Supreme Court to determine if the electos are chosen legally under that State's and the federal Constitution.
The problem is that that wasn't even the issue being addressed by either Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court was handed two contradictory statutes and told to rectify the problem from a judicial perspective. So they had a job to do: determine which statute was more "legal" than the other. They chose the importance of the recount over that of the deadline. So instead of scrapping either statute, they moved back the deadline. This was not creating legislation from nowhere, this was manipulating two contradictory statutes so that they would no longer conflict - that is what all judges must do when rulling on contradictory statutes.
The problem is, that their solution effectively did NOTHING. All that was done was they moved back the deadline just far enough to look like something was being done, but in effect to leave the exact same problem they were supposed to resolve. There was still not sufficient time for a full recount.
So what does this mean? The Florida Supreme Court made a ruling which did nothing except get a lot of people up in arms. Why complain about a ruling which accomplished nothing? Well, now the Supreme Court is in the place of being able to strip away power from State's Supreme Courts. Why? Because one court tried to look like it was doing The Right Thing(tm) while actually doing Nothing. Draw your own conclusions.
There has been a plethora of research into massive black holes and their relationships to their respective galaxies. Of course most of the work is theoretical, but it is incredibly interesting!
The work is lead by a group of physicists who call themselves "nukers", and a lot of information can be found here.
The main questions that they have been struggling to answer are:
1) What factors about a galaxy do the size and mass of the blackhole at its center dictate?
and 2) Is it neccessary for a galaxy to have a blackhole at its center?
It is this first question which ties directly in with the rate of star formation and such material. If you're interested at all in the subject, I highly suggest checking out the links I provided above. (Yes, I'm too lazy to cut and paste the links again...)
--- I've been up for way too long, so I apologize if at times I made no sense. Just follow the links.
There is an incredible article from the Economist about voter apathy and how different [it was really hard to keep from capitalizing that] Al Gore and George Bush really are.
If you truly feel that the candidates are Al Bush and George Gore I seriously suggest reading This Story.
Your vote really does mean something, even if you don't like either candidate.
As I was reading this article, it felt like the author was pulling statistics out of his pocket (ala the "Whose Line?" sketch on Whose Line is it Anyway?) and then trying to tie the statistics into his point.
It is truly mind-boggling to see how statistics are misused in everyday life (and not to mention the computer industry). After all, 47% of all statistics are fabricated. But really, the statistics were used completely out of context and with no basis given - there's no way to tell under what circumstances the data is valid, and even how reputable a source (NASA or his mother?) the data came from. In other words, his entire factual basis feels ungrounded.
If anyone's interested in this sort of statistical man-handling, there's an awesome book by John Allen Paulos Innumeracy : Matehematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences dedicated to the topic. For those of you who don't know him, Paulos is a rather eloquent and humorous writer and mathematician.
On the complete other hand, some of what was said in the article was indeed quite interesting, it's just that for me it was overshadowed by his random "facts". Oh well. It was a fun read though.
LogiTech tried this forced-feedback effect years ago and it failed miserably. Remember in good ol' DOOM when during the mouse initialization you would get the message "M_Init: This device is not a cyberman?" [or something like that]. Well, I was one of the few suckers who invested in the CyberMan, thinking it was a rather cool idea and that there would be a lot of support for it in the future. Well, needless to say, I was probably one of the five people who owned one (not counting the few promotional ones probably tossed at iD). The only other piece of software which ever (to my knowledge) supported the CyberMan was Quest For Glory 4.
I still think that the CyberMan held lots of potential, especially for CAD type programs and other things (specifically games) which needed the flexability of a mouse which could move around in three dimensions, but now I'm getting off topic.
Either way, the CyberMan had forced feedback, and it was really quite cool, because different situations caused different effects. Being shot was a quick buzz, chewed on by a demon was longer and deeper and more annoying, and standing in that green slime made the thing go crazy - all in all, it really hightened that experience.
Here's the catch: IT DIDN'T CATCH ON. It seemed great, and it still seems great, but there was no market for forced-feedback devices just a few short years ago. Now, the market has changed drastically since the DOOM days, but even the N64 Rumble Pack isn't used as widely as was hoped.
So what do I think? It feels to me as if there will be a lot of hype over these forced-feedback devices. There will be critical acclaim and a few software packages which will support the hardware at first. After that initial rush, I highly doubt much will come from the hardware and there will be a bunch of people left with high-tech yet unsupported devices on their desks. Hey, I'm still hoping some new software will come out which I can use my CyberMan with. I'm just not holding my breath any more.
I think that the internet world will diverge as time passes. Look at what has happened recently on the net. There is the original net, used for information and academic or personal knowledge, consisting of USENET, gopher, archie, veronica, ftp, irc, and university and government computers all over the world connected together for the sole purpose of sharing information in an expanding global world. But now, there is this, for lack of a better word, bullshit side of the internet arising. It consists of purely commercial and capitalistic substance. You now need faster and faster connection speeds to download all the graphics and other pretty pictures a web site might throw at you as well as shockwave, java apps, non-standard javascript. Porn is rampant. E-Businesses are everywhere. Most of this is completely unnecessary. Not that it doesn't have its uses. There's a lot of good stuff on the world wide web, but it's almost all commercial. Most people who "surf the web" don't even realize that there's anything other than web and ftp sites. The pursuit of money is a fine thing, I'm a happy capitalist myself, but it is clearly starting to slpit the internet into two distinct pieces. I forsee a true split of these two groups in the future. There will always be the intellectual side of the internet for geeks like us, but it will become less and less mainstream as people are brainwashed into buying faster and faster internet connections, ISPs with more perks, daytrading, pay sites (porn and otherwise), and a plethora of other things which the internet was never originally intended for. Once again, these are not bad things, they're great for some businesses and people, but they will have trouble coexisting. That is why I envision a split. There will be a commercial internet for most of the world consisting of mundane content with glorious special effects and graphics and appealing content for the masses. But there will be a lesser known internet run by universities and scientists and people like us who love to gain and share knowledge. For all I know, there will be even more splits and more separation of content as time passes and the internet grows. The growth of the internet created the commercial aspect as more and more people became aware and started to "log on". I have no idea what future innovations and growth of the internet will create. But they could just as easily split off their own sections too. [I just had a scary thought about videoconferencing IRC, someone please help me!] Who knows, maybe online services like AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, and MSN will diverge from the rest as well, offerring their own unique environment for their subscribers. I have no way of knowing. But it will be interesting to watch.
In the words of Dennis Miller, "of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
Slashdot Mirror
The funny thing is that this decision means very little in the battle for the Presidency. I don't need to state my claims for that, as I'm sure everyone's heard enough about that lately.
Where this decision does make a large difference is in state's rights, and more particularly, the power of a State's Supreme Court.
Here is how I read the situation:
According to Article II of the Constitution, the States shall chose electors as seen fit by the legislature. BUT the legislature is bound by that State's own constitution. So it is up to that State's Supreme Court to determine if the electos are chosen legally under that State's and the federal Constitution.
The problem is that that wasn't even the issue being addressed by either Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court was handed two contradictory statutes and told to rectify the problem from a judicial perspective. So they had a job to do: determine which statute was more "legal" than the other. They chose the importance of the recount over that of the deadline. So instead of scrapping either statute, they moved back the deadline. This was not creating legislation from nowhere, this was manipulating two contradictory statutes so that they would no longer conflict - that is what all judges must do when rulling on contradictory statutes.
The problem is, that their solution effectively did NOTHING. All that was done was they moved back the deadline just far enough to look like something was being done, but in effect to leave the exact same problem they were supposed to resolve. There was still not sufficient time for a full recount.
So what does this mean? The Florida Supreme Court made a ruling which did nothing except get a lot of people up in arms. Why complain about a ruling which accomplished nothing? Well, now the Supreme Court is in the place of being able to strip away power from State's Supreme Courts. Why? Because one court tried to look like it was doing The Right Thing(tm) while actually doing Nothing. Draw your own conclusions.
Amen.
There has been a plethora of research into massive black holes and their relationships to their respective galaxies. Of course most of the work is theoretical, but it is incredibly interesting!
The work is lead by a group of physicists who call themselves "nukers", and a lot of information can be found here.
The main questions that they have been struggling to answer are:
1) What factors about a galaxy do the size and mass of the blackhole at its center dictate?
and 2) Is it neccessary for a galaxy to have a blackhole at its center?
It is this first question which ties directly in with the rate of star formation and such material. If you're interested at all in the subject, I highly suggest checking out the links I provided above. (Yes, I'm too lazy to cut and paste the links again...)
--- I've been up for way too long, so I apologize if at times I made no sense. Just follow the links.
There is an incredible article from the Economist about voter apathy and how different [it was really hard to keep from capitalizing that] Al Gore and George Bush really are.
If you truly feel that the candidates are Al Bush and George Gore I seriously suggest reading This Story.
Your vote really does mean something, even if you don't like either candidate.
As I was reading this article, it felt like the author was pulling statistics out of his pocket (ala the "Whose Line?" sketch on Whose Line is it Anyway?) and then trying to tie the statistics into his point.
It is truly mind-boggling to see how statistics are misused in everyday life (and not to mention the computer industry). After all, 47% of all statistics are fabricated. But really, the statistics were used completely out of context and with no basis given - there's no way to tell under what circumstances the data is valid, and even how reputable a source (NASA or his mother?) the data came from. In other words, his entire factual basis feels ungrounded.
If anyone's interested in this sort of statistical man-handling, there's an awesome book by John Allen Paulos Innumeracy : Matehematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences dedicated to the topic. For those of you who don't know him, Paulos is a rather eloquent and humorous writer and mathematician.
On the complete other hand, some of what was said in the article was indeed quite interesting, it's just that for me it was overshadowed by his random "facts". Oh well. It was a fun read though.
LogiTech tried this forced-feedback effect years ago and it failed miserably. Remember in good ol' DOOM when during the mouse initialization you would get the message "M_Init: This device is not a cyberman?" [or something like that]. Well, I was one of the few suckers who invested in the CyberMan, thinking it was a rather cool idea and that there would be a lot of support for it in the future. Well, needless to say, I was probably one of the five people who owned one (not counting the few promotional ones probably tossed at iD). The only other piece of software which ever (to my knowledge) supported the CyberMan was Quest For Glory 4. I still think that the CyberMan held lots of potential, especially for CAD type programs and other things (specifically games) which needed the flexability of a mouse which could move around in three dimensions, but now I'm getting off topic. Either way, the CyberMan had forced feedback, and it was really quite cool, because different situations caused different effects. Being shot was a quick buzz, chewed on by a demon was longer and deeper and more annoying, and standing in that green slime made the thing go crazy - all in all, it really hightened that experience. Here's the catch: IT DIDN'T CATCH ON. It seemed great, and it still seems great, but there was no market for forced-feedback devices just a few short years ago. Now, the market has changed drastically since the DOOM days, but even the N64 Rumble Pack isn't used as widely as was hoped. So what do I think? It feels to me as if there will be a lot of hype over these forced-feedback devices. There will be critical acclaim and a few software packages which will support the hardware at first. After that initial rush, I highly doubt much will come from the hardware and there will be a bunch of people left with high-tech yet unsupported devices on their desks. Hey, I'm still hoping some new software will come out which I can use my CyberMan with. I'm just not holding my breath any more.
I think that the internet world will diverge as time passes. Look at what has happened recently on the net. There is the original net, used for information and academic or personal knowledge, consisting of USENET, gopher, archie, veronica, ftp, irc, and university and government computers all over the world connected together for the sole purpose of sharing information in an expanding global world. But now, there is this, for lack of a better word, bullshit side of the internet arising. It consists of purely commercial and capitalistic substance. You now need faster and faster connection speeds to download all the graphics and other pretty pictures a web site might throw at you as well as shockwave, java apps, non-standard javascript. Porn is rampant. E-Businesses are everywhere. Most of this is completely unnecessary. Not that it doesn't have its uses. There's a lot of good stuff on the world wide web, but it's almost all commercial. Most people who "surf the web" don't even realize that there's anything other than web and ftp sites. The pursuit of money is a fine thing, I'm a happy capitalist myself, but it is clearly starting to slpit the internet into two distinct pieces.
I forsee a true split of these two groups in the future. There will always be the intellectual side of the internet for geeks like us, but it will become less and less mainstream as people are brainwashed into buying faster and faster internet connections, ISPs with more perks, daytrading, pay sites (porn and otherwise), and a plethora of other things which the internet was never originally intended for. Once again, these are not bad things, they're great for some businesses and people, but they will have trouble coexisting. That is why I envision a split. There will be a commercial internet for most of the world consisting of mundane content with glorious special effects and graphics and appealing content for the masses. But there will be a lesser known internet run by universities and scientists and people like us who love to gain and share knowledge.
For all I know, there will be even more splits and more separation of content as time passes and the internet grows. The growth of the internet created the commercial aspect as more and more people became aware and started to "log on". I have no idea what future innovations and growth of the internet will create. But they could just as easily split off their own sections too. [I just had a scary thought about videoconferencing IRC, someone please help me!] Who knows, maybe online services like AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, and MSN will diverge from the rest as well, offerring their own unique environment for their subscribers. I have no way of knowing. But it will be interesting to watch.
In the words of Dennis Miller, "of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."