I'm as much of a geek as anyone here, but there are some problems that cannot be solved by technology. I don't care if the voting machine is open source, voter verified, paper backup... whatever, when the votes are counted on a machine, there is more chance for abuse. Single point of failure,
I am a voting Luddite. Vote on paper, count on paper. Distribute the load.
When all of the votes are on one machine, one person can contol the votes. We need checks and balances.
With a manual system, it takes hundreds of people to count the vote. Sure, it takes more time, buit I can wait. Sure there may be a few people with nefarious intentions, but those few people might be able to throw a precinct, not a whole state (or country!) Usually when hand counting, two or three people count anyways, so there's even more checks and balances built into the system. Our country is built on checks an balances. We need that in the voting system as well.
I truly belive voting problems are the number one issue facing our country. If can't trust the vote, then we don't have a democracy. If one election can be stolen, the next one will be stolen as well. Very slippery slope.
There's a lot of people who are arguing that the election was 'stolen' by Diebold others who say that things are just fine...
The bottom line is -- until we look and until there's a paper trail we just don't know.
For all we know, Diebold could be sucking votes out of the system like a cancer sucking the life out of a body. Do we just turn our heads and not go to the doctor for a test? We do need to know what happened in an objective, non-partisan manner. Perhaps Bev Harris is the one to do that, maybe not, but it needs to be done.
Additionally, we need to fix the voting system. We need to form a true non-partisan grass roots effort to get accountability back into the system. I don't want people to ever question the results of an election. We need to have ballot initiatives lawsuits, whatever. I'm not an expert on how to force these changes on the voting system, but I'm willing to learn and it needs to be done.
As a bleeding heart liberal, I find Democratic Underground (DU) to be a great source of political news and insight. I found out about Kerry's choice of Edwards almost 12 hours early, among many other things.
http://www.democraticunderground.com
(of course, if your political philosophy veers to the right, the antithesis of DU is Free Republic)
Quite honestly, I see this as NASA flat out admitting they can't do innovative development on the cheap.
Burt Rutan spent $20 million on his prototype. That's pocket change to NASA, yet I haven't seen anything come out of NASA that is even close to what Rutan designed. I haven't seen any NASA spaceplane prototypes even take off, let alone go sub-orbital.
He went sub-orbital on $20 million, I couldn't imagine what Rutan could do with a few hundred million. That's only a fraction of NASA's budget.
You're still burning hydrocarbons, after all. Just not ones that have been in the ground a million years.
That's why biodiesel is better. Hydrocarbons in the ground have been taken out of the atmosphere for millions of years. Burning them adds to the net carbon in the atmosphere.
Hydrocarbons in biodiesel were already on the surface in the first place, so you're not adding new carbon to the surface, you're just moving around the carbon that's already here. You close the loop.
Biodiesel - fuel from the southeast, not the middle east.
Considering the extremely low rate that I need to iron my pants and the relatively low cost of dry cleaning, $1700 would pretty much keep me going for several lifetimes.
As someone who works in a digital studio, it's painful enough getting things rendered with every computer in the same room. Frames get dropped, mangled, lost. In addition, every machine needs to be at the same software revision, and you can't have conflicting apps running. Scattering the render boxes across the planet and having boxes that contain unknown software will only amplify the pain to the Nth degree.
Added to that are huge bandwith problems. In order to render a 2K image, you may need dozens of texture maps, some of which may be even larger than 2K because you zoom in or something -- meaning to get a 2K frame back, you're sending the render box probably 10-20 times that amount of data. With a nice gigabit internal network, that's not a huge problem, but shipping them down a DSL line is just not gonna happen.
We use Kaydara FBX all the time for translating geometry and skeletons between packages. I think it's a great format. There's only a few things that don't quite make it across, like some of the special rigging things (constraints, joint angles, etc...) and some texturing doesn't quite make it.
Still, it's the best 3D file format on the market today, period.
Since the project was conceived by three scientists after a naked midday swim at Stanford University's pool, more than 1,000 people have worked on the satellite. Two of its founders are dead. More than 90 people have earned their doctorates working on the project.
Naked physicists... wow... with the current administration in charge, this project would have never been approved.
How can it die when Tivo is now a verb?
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't tape things anymore, I 'Tivo' them. The phrase 'to Tivo' has become pretty ubiquitous in the past few years and is synonymous with PVR recording.
With that sort of name recognition, they're not going away any time soon. They may get bought, but the name will be around for quite some time.
I remember reading in Wired that Steve Wozniak got the number 888-888-8888 when the 800 numbers switched over to 888.
He found the number unusable because he got tons of wrong numbers from small children -- who seemed to have a habit of pressing the 8 key repeatedly...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm as much of a geek as anyone here, but there are some problems that cannot be solved by technology. I don't care if the voting machine is open source, voter verified, paper backup... whatever, when the votes are counted on a machine, there is more chance for abuse. Single point of failure,
I am a voting Luddite. Vote on paper, count on paper. Distribute the load.
When all of the votes are on one machine, one person can contol the votes. We need checks and balances.
With a manual system, it takes hundreds of people to count the vote. Sure, it takes more time, buit I can wait. Sure there may be a few people with nefarious intentions, but those few people might be able to throw a precinct, not a whole state (or country!) Usually when hand counting, two or three people count anyways, so there's even more checks and balances built into the system. Our country is built on checks an balances. We need that in the voting system as well.
I truly belive voting problems are the number one issue facing our country. If can't trust the vote, then we don't have a democracy. If one election can be stolen, the next one will be stolen as well. Very slippery slope.
There's a lot of people who are arguing that the election was 'stolen' by Diebold others who say that things are just fine...
The bottom line is -- until we look and until there's a paper trail we just don't know.
For all we know, Diebold could be sucking votes out of the system like a cancer sucking the life out of a body. Do we just turn our heads and not go to the doctor for a test? We do need to know what happened in an objective, non-partisan manner. Perhaps Bev Harris is the one to do that, maybe not, but it needs to be done.
Additionally, we need to fix the voting system. We need to form a true non-partisan grass roots effort to get accountability back into the system. I don't want people to ever question the results of an election. We need to have ballot initiatives lawsuits, whatever. I'm not an expert on how to force these changes on the voting system, but I'm willing to learn and it needs to be done.
then I realized, "doug" came along about ~5 years after pete and pete,
Doug came out in '91 or so, along with Ren n Stimpy and Rugrats. Pete and Pete was two years later, in 1993.
I know because I worked at Nickelodeon at the time.
The times I've been inside a Sony store, it seems like everything is priced at retail.
I can get Sony stuff cheaper at the discount stores.
Apparently, Space Ship One also beat the altitude record set by the X15 almost 40 years ago.
Spam Over Analog Telephony...
Otherwise known as mortgage brokers and insurance salesmen who call you at dinnertime.
As a bleeding heart liberal, I find Democratic Underground (DU) to be a great source of political news and insight. I found out about Kerry's choice of Edwards almost 12 hours early, among many other things.
http://www.democraticunderground.com
(of course, if your political philosophy veers to the right, the antithesis of DU is Free Republic)
Two miles per second means you can cross the Pacific in under an hour.
It's still going to take 4 hours just to get to the airport, check your baggage and get through security.
Quite honestly, I see this as NASA flat out admitting they can't do innovative development on the cheap.
Burt Rutan spent $20 million on his prototype. That's pocket change to NASA, yet I haven't seen anything come out of NASA that is even close to what Rutan designed. I haven't seen any NASA spaceplane prototypes even take off, let alone go sub-orbital.
He went sub-orbital on $20 million, I couldn't imagine what Rutan could do with a few hundred million. That's only a fraction of NASA's budget.
Rico knows 200 words? That's a heck of a lot more words that George W Bush knows.
You're still burning hydrocarbons, after all. Just not ones that have been in the ground a million years.
That's why biodiesel is better. Hydrocarbons in the ground have been taken out of the atmosphere for millions of years. Burning them adds to the net carbon in the atmosphere.
Hydrocarbons in biodiesel were already on the surface in the first place, so you're not adding new carbon to the surface, you're just moving around the carbon that's already here. You close the loop.
Biodiesel - fuel from the southeast, not the middle east.
Considering the extremely low rate that I need to iron my pants and the relatively low cost of dry cleaning, $1700 would pretty much keep me going for several lifetimes.
As someone who works in a digital studio, it's painful enough getting things rendered with every computer in the same room. Frames get dropped, mangled, lost. In addition, every machine needs to be at the same software revision, and you can't have conflicting apps running. Scattering the render boxes across the planet and having boxes that contain unknown software will only amplify the pain to the Nth degree.
Added to that are huge bandwith problems. In order to render a 2K image, you may need dozens of texture maps, some of which may be even larger than 2K because you zoom in or something -- meaning to get a 2K frame back, you're sending the render box probably 10-20 times that amount of data. With a nice gigabit internal network, that's not a huge problem, but shipping them down a DSL line is just not gonna happen.
A lot of high-end movie effects are created using a product by Discreet called Inferno. It's been around for years. I smell a trade name suit coming.
http://www.discreet.com/inferno/
For people using real standards, 200.000 feet is 60.960 meter
Kilometers.
Isn't the goal 62.5 miles... that's about 330,000 feet.
They're getting awfully close. I get the distinct feeling this one is going to win it very soon.
I only watch 1960's Italian westerns and old Godzilla movies. Who knows, it might actually help.
We use Kaydara FBX all the time for translating geometry and skeletons between packages. I think it's a great format. There's only a few things that don't quite make it across, like some of the special rigging things (constraints, joint angles, etc...) and some texturing doesn't quite make it.
Still, it's the best 3D file format on the market today, period.
From the article :
Since the project was conceived by three scientists after a naked midday swim at Stanford University's pool, more than 1,000 people have worked on the satellite. Two of its founders are dead. More than 90 people have earned their doctorates working on the project.
Naked physicists... wow... with the current administration in charge, this project would have never been approved.
Perhaps it's in a tunnel.
I don't tape things anymore, I 'Tivo' them. The phrase 'to Tivo' has become pretty ubiquitous in the past few years and is synonymous with PVR recording.
With that sort of name recognition, they're not going away any time soon. They may get bought, but the name will be around for quite some time.
Just plug any TV into a camera placed directly above the screen, then flop the image left to right.
Instant mirror. No reflections.
Plus, you can switch it off when you're feeling extra ugly.
I get the feeling the Russians will have something working long before we ever design a shuttle replacement.
They keep things simple, and their stuff works.
I remember reading in Wired that Steve Wozniak got the number 888-888-8888 when the 800 numbers switched over to 888.
He found the number unusable because he got tons of wrong numbers from small children -- who seemed to have a habit of pressing the 8 key repeatedly...