No. An appeal is for trying to change a judicial decision, this is an executive action. So they could sue him if they think he's overstepped his authority. But even then it would be in the CA courts, the federal circuit and/or supreme courts don't enter into it.
How to run elections is entirely up to the State. Heck, WHETHER to run elections is up to the State. If the State constitution/legislature wants to specify a coin-toss, the Federal courts have no jurisdiction to object.
In CA, and every State I'm aware of, the constitution/legislature specifies that various offices (including electoral-collage members for presidential elections) will be filled by elections and empowers the Secretary of State to handle the actual running of the elections (frequently the chief responsibility of the office).
So the Sec State has the last word here unless the legislature passes some legislation instructing him to make the opposite decision (not going to happen). Or someone could take him to (CA) court if they think he's overstepped his authority. (he hasn't)
Look, I love open source too, but it alone doesn't solve every problem. Are lots of people going to review the code running on every machine? The internal structure of the chips in every machine? The integrity of every bit of every communications link used to report votes?
Give me a paper trail. I'd like the code to be open, but really the machine can do whatever it wants if it fills one simple criteria: Produce a hard copy of the vote that can be inspected directly by both the voter at the polls and by election officials after the fact.
Then we can double-check some random sampling after the fact, or everything if the sampling finds problems or the election is close.
Verifying the integrity of the system beforehand is fine and dandy. But no amount of it is ever going to be any substitute for verifying it's integrity AFTER the fact. If you can't independantly check up on the results and confirm the machine did what it was supposed to, I don't care how much checking you did ahead of time to ensure it would do what it was supposed to.
It makes me mad, because it's not like what I (and others) am asking for is in any way hard. Just augment the existing system instead of replacing it. Currently I use a stupid (purely mechanical) machine to mark a paper ballot that I drop in a box. If you want to replace that stupid machine with a more high-techy device that counts the votes as they are cast in addition to marking a paper ballot that I drop in a box, that would be awesome. If you want to eliminate the paper ballot I drop in a box, that's just obviously stupid. I don't see any reason someone would advocate eliminating the indepenantly verifiable record unless they have some interest in not being able to tell if the machine messed up. Whether that interest is based on their wanting to rig the election or on wanting to avoid exposing problems in order to sell more machines, I don't care.
"do you add jet dry to your dishwasher? How did you know to add jet dry if so. If you don't add jet dry, don you complain that your dishes are spotty when they come out of the dishwasher."
I don't, because I use a detergent that comes in little single serving pelets with a bit of jet dry stuff embedded. I guess the jet dry stuff is in a capsule that doesn't disolve until it's needed or something. But again: I don't have to know. If I did use a seperate jet dry product, I already know what to do with it without reading the manual. It goes in that little compartment next to the detergent compartment; the one with the little jet-of-water icon on top.
"Do you know how to use all the funcitons in your VCR, or just the functions you take for granted?"
I know how to use all the features of my VCR that I want to. I don't know or care if it has more features than that.
I've got an old VCR for which, as noted, I had to read the manual in order to set the time. But my friend has a newer VCR, and based on using once I can tell you how I'd access absolutely any feature without ever reading the manual: I'd push the "menu" button on the remote and go through the easy to use on-screen menus provided there.
Really VCRs are a perfect example: they've got an input device with lots of buttons (remote) and a TV screen to display all the helpful explanations and status indications you could want. There is absolutely no excuse for making people read a manual to discover what combinations of tiny buttons on the front are needed to set features indicated by cryptic LEDs. On my VCR setting the time is indeed tedious: some combo of tiny panel buttons to get into set-time mode, hit a button repeatedly to step through hours, etc. I realize this may be the state of the art for two-button digital watches, but when I'm holding a remote in my hand with a full numeric keypad, it's hard to see this as anything but utter stupidity on the designers part.
But the point is, most (non-geek) people won't buy a shiny new gizmo until it reaches a level of maturity that they don't need to RTFM.
I've never read the manual for my dishwasher, or any other household appliance. Heck, I've got a number of shiny gizmos, and I'm trying to think of any I've needed a manual for. Setting the clock on my VCR. That's all I can come up with. I've read the manual for my digital camera to find out about all the nifty out-of-the-way features it has, but I didn't need to read it to figure out any of the features I actually use.
If someone can't figure out some household device, and whines about it, it's perfectly reasonable to ask them if they read the manual. But it's also reasonable to ask designer of the device why they needed to read the manual.
"If people can't program their VCRs, nevermind use their PCs, I thought, how will we as a society be ready for a robot in our home to do our dishes?"
I, and most people I know, have a robot in our homes to do our dishes, and it's no problem. Similarly, a lot of people have no problem using computers today who would have been lost 20 years ago. Even VCRs are getting easier to program (particularly if you widen the category to include Tivo).
The key to society being able to deal with robotics is not having people like this "educating" us about robotics. The key is the robots becoming simpler/smarter until we don't need to uderstand them in detail.
I predict there will never come a time when a significant fraction of the population has something they call a "robot" in their home. There will certainly come a time when most have various things that we, now, would call a robot. But by the time it's pervasive, we'll call it something else. Like "a dishwasher".
"Reveal Codes. I still can't believe Word doesn't have it."
What are you talking about? Word does have it, and always has IIRC. Click the paragraph icon on the toolbar or go to Tools->Options and set exactly which codes you want to see.
How is he anti-catholic? Are you claiming catholics have never repressed non-catholics? Certainly non-catholics have opressed catholics too.
I'd put it this way: a lot of people have opressed a lot of people. Differences in religion have been one of the more popular excuses for doing so.
"And yes, religion can provide peace, but I can tell you right away you will have none of it until you see for yourself and take that leap of faith. Else you're little more than dust in eternity."
Got news for you: you're little more than dust in eternity whether you beleive in santa or not.
I, and as far as I can tell the grandparent poster, do not hate the religious; we don't spread a doctrine of lies. We just think you're a little silly to spend so much energy and attribute so much of your own goddness and acomplishments to what as far as I can tell is an imaginary friend.
But you're free to spend your energies how you want, it's none of my business. I will get annoyed when you say that christianity is the only answer for "the people in Iraq", and that we should base our foreign policy on your beleifs. Saying things like that is not exactly helpful in selling the "this war is not against Islam" concept, see.
Yeah, it's fairly straightforward to write a parser for a binary format you invent, but it is at least a little tedious. Not, mind you, nearly as tedious as writing an XML format parser from scratch. Of course, writing an xml parser from scratch would be an incredibly silly thing to do.
How many lines of code would you say you had to write to parse the last "easier" binary format you invented?
I can parse absolutley any XML document in 13 charachters plus the filename. Because someone else already wrote the parser.
More resource intensive I'll grant you (provided developer time is not your limiting rescource). Other than that, you just don't get it.
"Gas prices always go up and they always go down, and it's also summer time for those in th Northern hemisphere and prices always go up then because of travelers."
What part of "record high" do you not understand? For that matter what part of "this rise in gas prices started in deep winter, and while we're at it, no it's not actually summer in the northern hemisphere."
"The vast majority of Iraqis welcome our help"
Thanks for letting me know; and here I was going to go and beleive actual polls that say the oposite.
"...it's time to play hardball so that the decency level and the core family values of the nation are upheld..."
Yup, if we let people in long term commited relationships have medical decision making rights, inheritence rights, etc., why that would just be indecent. How dare "minorities of the nation" think they should have equal treatment. Obviously, two gay people you don't even know getting married is a major threat to your family values and must be stopped.
"THe number of users on here who can't spell attest to the fact that people have always made it out of school who aren't the brightest star in the sky."
Can you count the number of spelling errors in your post? I see 4 without really trying, and a capitalization error in this very sentence. Guess we know who's not the brightest star in the sky.
"And I haven't heard anything as far as not being able to feed the children."
Well, if you haven't heard anything, it's obviously not a problem.
OK then, I've got this cool new language. In this language, you don't have to worry about what the scope indicators are, because every line of code is numbered. Prime numbers indicate a new scope, and multiples of exactly 3 primes end a scope.
Naturally, you're not going to reject my language based just on this right? You can't wait to give it a try I'm sure.
Now you might say I intentionally made up something new and weird to make it even worse than whitespace-sensitivity. But I'd say it's the other way around. Whitespace-sensitivity is an old mistake. I already know it sucks, so I will gladly reject out of hand any language that makes it. Not because whitespace-sensitivity is so bad (though actually, it is), but because if the designers started right off with such an obvious mistake, they probably made a whole bunch of new, innovative mistakes too.
I see the Prothon folks also went for assigning meaning to case (first letter caps is a global), so apparently whitespace wasn't even the end of their old mistakes.
"I've seen good people waste a lot of time on crap like this."
If they were good, they wouldn't waste their time on stuff like this. When I pull up someone elses C/C++ code, I can reformat/indent it the way I like with one mouse click. I'd have it happen automatically, except for that 5% of diferently formatted code that is differently formated for a good reason. And if I'd written the code above it would have braces, every time.
Good, standardized style is very important. Forcing a particular style for all cases is stupid. And distinguishing at all between spaces, multiple spaces and tabs is just braindead.
Still fairly simpistically, there are several defenses available to you if you are accused of libel/slander. Among them: You can claim you never said/wrote it, and the plaintiff will have to show that you did (which is probably easy if they are bothering to sue you). Or (perhaps the most common defense) you can argue that a reasonable person would have felt sure it were true given the evidence you had at the time. This is where the burden of proof is on the defendant. You have to show why you reasonably concluded you were sure it was true. Liberace successfully argued that the people saying he was gay didn't really know. Again, this is in some jurisdictions, mostly European. In the US, it's much harder to sue for libel/slander: you (the plaintif) have to show the defendant knew (or should have known) it wasn't true.
By it's diameter. If it's much more than a hundred kilometers across, we don't care how it got round. It would have gotten round under it's own gravity regardless, and it's a planet.
"The reason people pay to use eBay rather than setup their own auction script on their web site is because eBay is providing a regulated marketplace..."
Sorry, gotta disagree.
The reason people pay to use eBay is name recognition. I want to buy or sell something online, I go to eBay. Not because I think it's particularly free of fraud, but because it's the only online auction site I know of, and because I imagine it's the only online auction site my potential customers/suppliers have heard of either.
Most ebay users aren't capable of setting up their own auction script on their web site. I actually am, but why would I? I wouldn't expect to get any bids. Not because people wouldn't trust my site, but because they'd never hear of my autction in the first place.
If you stick to reasonably small dollar amounts and generally use common sense, the fraud risk on ebay isn't all that bad. But I imagine it would have to get pretty ridiculously bad before threatening eBays market position. In particular, it would have to be a lot worse than some other auction site a lot of people have heard of. Since there aren't any other auction sites a lot of people have heard of...
Actually, in the Liberace case, it was true, but NOT demonstrable (demonstrateable?). Which is why he won the case. In many juristdictions (Europe), simplistically speaking, the burden of proof is on the defendant in a libel case.
Unless I'm mistaken, your source is Isacc Asimov's "Of Time and Space and Other Things". In which he calculates what he calls the push-me-pull-you factor: the ratio of the gravitational force exerted on a moon by the sun to that exerted by it's principal. Most are around.1 or so, a few of Saturn and Jupiters Monns that astonomers suspect are captured planetoids get close to 1. Earths Moon is over 2. We talk of the moon orbiting the earth, but it might be more acurate to say its orbit of the Sun is perturbed by the Earth. The Moon and the Earth are much,much closer to being equal partners than any other principal and satelite in the system.
Yes, assuming populations haven't shifted too much since the census, the voters in Wyoming theoretically have more influence than those in California, because each state gets a number of electoral votes proportional to their population, and then 2 more.
But that's theoretically. In reality, if there is a voter out there in Wyoming debating which way to vote, he can rest assured that it doesn't matter. His vote means nothing. In the upcoming election, Wyoming is going to go Republican (or at least, I'll bet you it does, at any amount and odds you name). That voter is going to be counted as voting for Bush no matter what he actually thinks.
People always focus on the not-quite-proportional nature of the Electoral College, but to my mind, that's nothing compared to it's winner-take-all nature. The Electoral College has arrived at a different conclusion than popular vote on two occasions where the popular vote was pretty close. (I tell you, Quincy Adams STOLE that election ) But if someone won the 13 biggest states by slim margins, and got trounced in every other state, we could have a president who not only lost the popular vote but lost it by a ridiculous landslide.
So which states voters have the greatest influence is easy. Ask any politico, they'll tell you the same half-dozen States where they can't tell you today which way they're going to go in November.
Sigh. It pisses me off. I pay attention. I know where candidates stand on the issues. I care. But I don't live in that handful of states. My vote is irrelevant, whether it's with the majority in my state or against it, it will neither move my state over 50% nor prevent it's doing so, because my state is nowhere near 50%. I could tell you today who my vote will be counted for, even if I hadn't decided who to cast it for.
"Unfortunatly modern armies are little more than robots, they have no idea why they are fighting and they mindlessly pursue their objectives."
Compared to which armies? Perhaps the most common example historically would be the ones who knew exactly why they were fighting: The winners get to rape and pillage! OK, maybe you're not into the raping, but pillaging is quite profitable!
If it gets 70mpg (in any country), I'm guessing it's a diesel, and it's silly to compare it to a non-diesel.
The Prius does not get 70mpg; the official test number is something in the 50s. Mine averages 47. The non-diesel mpg winner in the US (AFAIK) is the Geo Metro at 60-something tested, 55ish reality, but it's a seriously sucky car in all other respects. And I'd dispute the claim that not many want the Prius; every dealer in my area has a waiting list.
None of which changes the fact that the fuel efficiency of SUVs, and particularly the Hummer, sucks big time; or the fact that most people who drive them are greedy and evil.
The JSF competition and the Grand Challenge are rather different beasts, as are Lockheed and the Red Team.
It seems highly unlikely that if the Red Team crosses the line first, the DoD is going to imediately start negotiations for a production run. The Grand Challenge is all about pushing the evelope, proof of concept type stuff.
This tech might be the great-grand parent of something the DoD pays someone big money for ten years from now, but they'll probably pay it to someone like Lockheed, not to the Red Team.
I doubt anyone contributing money to a Grand Challenge entry is doing it in hopes of direct monetary reward. They're doing it because they are educational institutions and their students are getting an educational experience; or because they are companies supplying the teams with tech in hopes that that tech will be seen doing something cool on TV. How much press/media attention can you buy for the cost of a Hummer? Probably not as much as Hummer gets from giving one to the Red Team, particularly if they win.
"Yes the toyota Prius dents extremely easy... I'ts made out of aluminum foil."
What are you talking about? I've got a Prius, and hadn't noticed.
Yes, you can get regular pure-gas cars that get similar mileage to the Prius. But they suck. They are incredibly tiny, can't accelerate for squat, and "disposable" is definitely the word. That 9000 dollar KIA is exactly what you should get if it fits your needs/desires. But it doesn't fit the same needs (and particularly desires) as the Prius.
Any way, I don't know why we're discussing why people won't buy the Prius, since in actual fact they are selling like hot cakes.
"Here are some facts that I don't think anyone disputes"
I doubt there are any facts that someone on Slashdot will not debate. In this case though, I do not dispute yours, so thanks for injecting them into the discussion.
"But don't worry, zealots! There are still lots of other things to debate!"
Thank God! Let's have at it then.
"Does every family of four really need TWO cars with more than 100 mile range?"
No. I am part of a family of 3 soon to be 4, and we do not. We need one frickin-huge car with very long range, and one car that can carry one person (two would be nice) on trips less than 20 miles.
"Was Carl Pope of the Sierra Club being blackmailed when he endorsed hybrid SUV's in the latest issue of Green Car Journal?"
I have no idea. Hybrid SUVs are incredibly stupid though, even if they are very slightly less stupid than other SUVs. Their fuel efficiency still mostly sucks, and that's only 3rd or 4th on the list of why SUVs are stupid in the first place.
"Would you cry if someone gave you a lithium-ion-powered Tzero for Christmas or other nugatory tradition?"
Heck no. I'd probably sell it and buy something more practical though. Maybe something pure-electric to keep the spirit of the gift and because I want one anyway. I'm just not a sports-car guy.
"Can putting a 500 W solar panel on a car that consumes 15 kW at highway speeds make any difference?"
Not much of one, no.
"Will people ever stop suggesting that putting generators on the wheels of electric cars is a good idea?"
Probably not. If electric cars become prevalent, more people might be aware that electric motors and generators are the same thing; and thus that electric cars already have generators connected to the wheels; and that it is in fact a good idea to use that generator when appropriate; and that electric & hybrid designers already know about this; and finally that they call it "regenerative braking".
"Am I really as much of a tool as I seem?" Doesn't how much of a tool you are rest entirely in the judgement of the observer, and hence are we not all exactly as much of a tool as we seem?
Slashdot Mirror
"CAN Diebold appeal this?"
No. An appeal is for trying to change a judicial decision, this is an executive action. So they could sue him if they think he's overstepped his authority. But even then it would be in the CA courts, the federal circuit and/or supreme courts don't enter into it.
How to run elections is entirely up to the State. Heck, WHETHER to run elections is up to the State. If the State constitution/legislature wants to specify a coin-toss, the Federal courts have no jurisdiction to object.
In CA, and every State I'm aware of, the constitution/legislature specifies that various offices (including electoral-collage members for presidential elections) will be filled by elections and empowers the Secretary of State to handle the actual running of the elections (frequently the chief responsibility of the office).
So the Sec State has the last word here unless the legislature passes some legislation instructing him to make the opposite decision (not going to happen). Or someone could take him to (CA) court if they think he's overstepped his authority. (he hasn't)
Sigh.
Look, I love open source too, but it alone doesn't solve every problem. Are lots of people going to review the code running on every machine? The internal structure of the chips in every machine? The integrity of every bit of every communications link used to report votes?
Give me a paper trail. I'd like the code to be open, but really the machine can do whatever it wants if it fills one simple criteria:
Produce a hard copy of the vote that can be inspected directly by both the voter at the polls and by election officials after the fact.
Then we can double-check some random sampling after the fact, or everything if the sampling finds problems or the election is close.
Verifying the integrity of the system beforehand is fine and dandy. But no amount of it is ever going to be any substitute for verifying it's integrity AFTER the fact. If you can't independantly check up on the results and confirm the machine did what it was supposed to, I don't care how much checking you did ahead of time to ensure it would do what it was supposed to.
It makes me mad, because it's not like what I (and others) am asking for is in any way hard. Just augment the existing system instead of replacing it. Currently I use a stupid (purely mechanical) machine to mark a paper ballot that I drop in a box. If you want to replace that stupid machine with a more high-techy device that counts the votes as they are cast in addition to marking a paper ballot that I drop in a box, that would be awesome. If you want to eliminate the paper ballot I drop in a box, that's just obviously stupid. I don't see any reason someone would advocate eliminating the indepenantly verifiable record unless they have some interest in not being able to tell if the machine messed up. Whether that interest is based on their wanting to rig the election or on wanting to avoid exposing problems in order to sell more machines, I don't care.
"do you add jet dry to your dishwasher? How did you know to add jet dry if so. If you don't add jet dry, don you complain that your dishes are spotty when they come out of the dishwasher."
I don't, because I use a detergent that comes in little single serving pelets with a bit of jet dry stuff embedded. I guess the jet dry stuff is in a capsule that doesn't disolve until it's needed or something. But again: I don't have to know. If I did use a seperate jet dry product, I already know what to do with it without reading the manual. It goes in that little compartment next to the detergent compartment; the one with the little jet-of-water icon on top.
"Do you know how to use all the funcitons in your VCR, or just the functions you take for granted?"
I know how to use all the features of my VCR that I want to. I don't know or care if it has more features than that.
I've got an old VCR for which, as noted, I had to read the manual in order to set the time. But my friend has a newer VCR, and based on using once I can tell you how I'd access absolutely any feature without ever reading the manual: I'd push the "menu" button on the remote and go through the easy to use on-screen menus provided there.
Really VCRs are a perfect example: they've got an input device with lots of buttons (remote) and a TV screen to display all the helpful explanations and status indications you could want. There is absolutely no excuse for making people read a manual to discover what combinations of tiny buttons on the front are needed to set features indicated by cryptic LEDs. On my VCR setting the time is indeed tedious: some combo of tiny panel buttons to get into set-time mode, hit a button repeatedly to step through hours, etc. I realize this may be the state of the art for two-button digital watches, but when I'm holding a remote in my hand with a full numeric keypad, it's hard to see this as anything but utter stupidity on the designers part.
But the point is, most (non-geek) people won't buy a shiny new gizmo until it reaches a level of maturity that they don't need to RTFM.
I've never read the manual for my dishwasher, or any other household appliance. Heck, I've got a number of shiny gizmos, and I'm trying to think of any I've needed a manual for. Setting the clock on my VCR. That's all I can come up with. I've read the manual for my digital camera to find out about all the nifty out-of-the-way features it has, but I didn't need to read it to figure out any of the features I actually use.
If someone can't figure out some household device, and whines about it, it's perfectly reasonable to ask them if they read the manual. But it's also reasonable to ask designer of the device why they needed to read the manual.
"If people can't program their VCRs, nevermind use their PCs, I thought, how will we as a society be ready for a robot in our home to do our dishes?"
I, and most people I know, have a robot in our homes to do our dishes, and it's no problem. Similarly, a lot of people have no problem using computers today who would have been lost 20 years ago. Even VCRs are getting easier to program (particularly if you widen the category to include Tivo).
The key to society being able to deal with robotics is not having people like this "educating" us about robotics. The key is the robots becoming simpler/smarter until we don't need to uderstand them in detail.
I predict there will never come a time when a significant fraction of the population has something they call a "robot" in their home. There will certainly come a time when most have various things that we, now, would call a robot. But by the time it's pervasive, we'll call it something else. Like "a dishwasher".
"Reveal Codes. I still can't believe Word doesn't have it."
What are you talking about? Word does have it, and always has IIRC. Click the paragraph icon on the toolbar or go to Tools->Options and set exactly which codes you want to see.
How is he anti-catholic? Are you claiming catholics have never repressed non-catholics? Certainly non-catholics have opressed catholics too.
I'd put it this way: a lot of people have opressed a lot of people. Differences in religion have been one of the more popular excuses for doing so.
"And yes, religion can provide peace, but I can tell you right away you will have none of it until you see for yourself and take that leap of faith. Else you're little more than dust in eternity."
Got news for you: you're little more than dust in eternity whether you beleive in santa or not.
I, and as far as I can tell the grandparent poster, do not hate the religious; we don't spread a doctrine of lies. We just think you're a little silly to spend so much energy and attribute so much of your own goddness and acomplishments to what as far as I can tell is an imaginary friend.
But you're free to spend your energies how you want, it's none of my business. I will get annoyed when you say that christianity is the only answer for "the people in Iraq", and that we should base our foreign policy on your beleifs. Saying things like that is not exactly helpful in selling the "this war is not against Islam" concept, see.
Yeah, it's fairly straightforward to write a parser for a binary format you invent, but it is at least a little tedious. Not, mind you, nearly as tedious as writing an XML format parser from scratch. Of course, writing an xml parser from scratch would be an incredibly silly thing to do.
How many lines of code would you say you had to write to parse the last "easier" binary format you invented?
I can parse absolutley any XML document in 13 charachters plus the filename. Because someone else already wrote the parser.
More resource intensive I'll grant you (provided developer time is not your limiting rescource). Other than that, you just don't get it.
"Gas prices always go up and they always go down, and it's also summer time for those in th Northern hemisphere and prices always go up then because of travelers."
What part of "record high" do you not understand? For that matter what part of "this rise in gas prices started in deep winter, and while we're at it, no it's not actually summer in the northern hemisphere."
"The vast majority of Iraqis welcome our help"
Thanks for letting me know; and here I was going to go and beleive actual polls that say the oposite.
"...it's time to play hardball so that the decency level and the core family values of the nation are upheld..."
Yup, if we let people in long term commited relationships have medical decision making rights, inheritence rights, etc., why that would just be indecent. How dare "minorities of the nation" think they should have equal treatment. Obviously, two gay people you don't even know getting married is a major threat to your family values and must be stopped.
"THe number of users on here who can't spell attest to the fact that people have always made it out of school who aren't the brightest star in the sky."
Can you count the number of spelling errors in your post? I see 4 without really trying, and a capitalization error in this very sentence. Guess we know who's not the brightest star in the sky.
"And I haven't heard anything as far as not being able to feed the children."
Well, if you haven't heard anything, it's obviously not a problem.
OK then, I've got this cool new language. In this language, you don't have to worry about what the scope indicators are, because every line of code is numbered. Prime numbers indicate a new scope, and multiples of exactly 3 primes end a scope.
Naturally, you're not going to reject my language based just on this right? You can't wait to give it a try I'm sure.
Now you might say I intentionally made up something new and weird to make it even worse than whitespace-sensitivity. But I'd say it's the other way around. Whitespace-sensitivity is an old mistake. I already know it sucks, so I will gladly reject out of hand any language that makes it. Not because whitespace-sensitivity is so bad (though actually, it is), but because if the designers started right off with such an obvious mistake, they probably made a whole bunch of new, innovative mistakes too.
I see the Prothon folks also went for assigning meaning to case (first letter caps is a global), so apparently whitespace wasn't even the end of their old mistakes.
"I've seen good people waste a lot of time on crap like this."
If they were good, they wouldn't waste their time on stuff like this. When I pull up someone elses C/C++ code, I can reformat/indent it the way I like with one mouse click. I'd have it happen automatically, except for that 5% of diferently formatted code that is differently formated for a good reason. And if I'd written the code above it would have braces, every time.
Good, standardized style is very important. Forcing a particular style for all cases is stupid. And distinguishing at all between spaces, multiple spaces and tabs is just braindead.
str = " ";
if (IsATab(str))
{
CompileSuccessfully();
}
if (IsFiveSpaces(str))
{
Print("No, actually, you can't see whitespace 'just fine'");
FailForNoGoodReason();
}
Oh, you just need smarter compilers than anyone has managed to produce for any of the most widely used languages. Great then, no problem there.
Bullshit.
Well, I did say "simplistically speaking".
Still fairly simpistically, there are several defenses available to you if you are accused of libel/slander. Among them: You can claim you never said/wrote it, and the plaintiff will have to show that you did (which is probably easy if they are bothering to sue you). Or (perhaps the most common defense) you can argue that a reasonable person would have felt sure it were true given the evidence you had at the time. This is where the burden of proof is on the defendant. You have to show why you reasonably concluded you were sure it was true. Liberace successfully argued that the people saying he was gay didn't really know. Again, this is in some jurisdictions, mostly European. In the US, it's much harder to sue for libel/slander: you (the plaintif) have to show the defendant knew (or should have known) it wasn't true.
By it's diameter. If it's much more than a hundred kilometers across, we don't care how it got round. It would have gotten round under it's own gravity regardless, and it's a planet.
"The reason people pay to use eBay rather than setup their own auction script on their web site is because eBay is providing a regulated marketplace..."
Sorry, gotta disagree.
The reason people pay to use eBay is name recognition. I want to buy or sell something online, I go to eBay. Not because I think it's particularly free of fraud, but because it's the only online auction site I know of, and because I imagine it's the only online auction site my potential customers/suppliers have heard of either.
Most ebay users aren't capable of setting up their own auction script on their web site. I actually am, but why would I? I wouldn't expect to get any bids. Not because people wouldn't trust my site, but because they'd never hear of my autction in the first place.
If you stick to reasonably small dollar amounts and generally use common sense, the fraud risk on ebay isn't all that bad. But I imagine it would have to get pretty ridiculously bad before threatening eBays market position. In particular, it would have to be a lot worse than some other auction site a lot of people have heard of. Since there aren't any other auction sites a lot of people have heard of...
"Something that was demontrably true."
Actually, in the Liberace case, it was true, but NOT demonstrable (demonstrateable?). Which is why he won the case. In many juristdictions (Europe), simplistically speaking, the burden of proof is on the defendant in a libel case.
Unless I'm mistaken, your source is Isacc Asimov's "Of Time and Space and Other Things". In which he calculates what he calls the push-me-pull-you factor: the ratio of the gravitational force exerted on a moon by the sun to that exerted by it's principal. Most are around
We talk of the moon orbiting the earth, but it might be more acurate to say its orbit of the Sun is perturbed by the Earth. The Moon and the Earth are much,much closer to being equal partners than any other principal and satelite in the system.
Yes, assuming populations haven't shifted too much since the census, the voters in Wyoming theoretically have more influence than those in California, because each state gets a number of electoral votes proportional to their population, and then 2 more.
But that's theoretically. In reality, if there is a voter out there in Wyoming debating which way to vote, he can rest assured that it doesn't matter. His vote means nothing. In the upcoming election, Wyoming is going to go Republican (or at least, I'll bet you it does, at any amount and odds you name). That voter is going to be counted as voting for Bush no matter what he actually thinks.
People always focus on the not-quite-proportional nature of the Electoral College, but to my mind, that's nothing compared to it's winner-take-all nature.
The Electoral College has arrived at a different conclusion than popular vote on two occasions where the popular vote was pretty close. (I tell you, Quincy Adams STOLE that election ) But if someone won the 13 biggest states by slim margins, and got trounced in every other state, we could have a president who not only lost the popular vote but lost it by a ridiculous landslide.
So which states voters have the greatest influence is easy. Ask any politico, they'll tell you the same half-dozen States where they can't tell you today which way they're going to go in November.
Sigh. It pisses me off. I pay attention. I know where candidates stand on the issues. I care. But I don't live in that handful of states. My vote is irrelevant, whether it's with the majority in my state or against it, it will neither move my state over 50% nor prevent it's doing so, because my state is nowhere near 50%. I could tell you today who my vote will be counted for, even if I hadn't decided who to cast it for.
"Unfortunatly modern armies are little more than robots, they have no idea why they are fighting and they mindlessly pursue their objectives."
Compared to which armies? Perhaps the most common example historically would be the ones who knew exactly why they were fighting: The winners get to rape and pillage! OK, maybe you're not into the raping, but pillaging is quite profitable!
If it gets 70mpg (in any country), I'm guessing it's a diesel, and it's silly to compare it to a non-diesel.
The Prius does not get 70mpg; the official test number is something in the 50s. Mine averages 47. The non-diesel mpg winner in the US (AFAIK) is the Geo Metro at 60-something tested, 55ish reality, but it's a seriously sucky car in all other respects. And I'd dispute the claim that not many want the Prius; every dealer in my area has a waiting list.
None of which changes the fact that the fuel efficiency of SUVs, and particularly the Hummer, sucks big time; or the fact that most people who drive them are greedy and evil.
The JSF competition and the Grand Challenge are rather different beasts, as are Lockheed and the Red Team.
It seems highly unlikely that if the Red Team crosses the line first, the DoD is going to imediately start negotiations for a production run. The Grand Challenge is all about pushing the evelope, proof of concept type stuff.
This tech might be the great-grand parent of something the DoD pays someone big money for ten years from now, but they'll probably pay it to someone like Lockheed, not to the Red Team.
I doubt anyone contributing money to a Grand Challenge entry is doing it in hopes of direct monetary reward. They're doing it because they are educational institutions and their students are getting an educational experience; or because they are companies supplying the teams with tech in hopes that that tech will be seen doing something cool on TV. How much press/media attention can you buy for the cost of a Hummer? Probably not as much as Hummer gets from giving one to the Red Team, particularly if they win.
"Yes the toyota Prius dents extremely easy... I'ts made out of aluminum foil."
What are you talking about? I've got a Prius, and hadn't noticed.
Yes, you can get regular pure-gas cars that get similar mileage to the Prius. But they suck. They are incredibly tiny, can't accelerate for squat, and "disposable" is definitely the word. That 9000 dollar KIA is exactly what you should get if it fits your needs/desires. But it doesn't fit the same needs (and particularly desires) as the Prius.
Any way, I don't know why we're discussing why people won't buy the Prius, since in actual fact they are selling like hot cakes.
"Here are some facts that I don't think anyone disputes"
I doubt there are any facts that someone on Slashdot will not debate. In this case though, I do not dispute yours, so thanks for injecting them into the discussion.
"But don't worry, zealots! There are still lots of other things to debate!"
Thank God! Let's have at it then.
"Does every family of four really need TWO cars with more than 100 mile range?"
No. I am part of a family of 3 soon to be 4, and we do not. We need one frickin-huge car with very long range, and one car that can carry one person (two would be nice) on trips less than 20 miles.
"Was Carl Pope of the Sierra Club being blackmailed when he endorsed hybrid SUV's in the latest issue of Green Car Journal?"
I have no idea. Hybrid SUVs are incredibly stupid though, even if they are very slightly less stupid than other SUVs. Their fuel efficiency still mostly sucks, and that's only 3rd or 4th on the list of why SUVs are stupid in the first place.
"Would you cry if someone gave you a lithium-ion-powered Tzero for Christmas or other nugatory tradition?"
Heck no. I'd probably sell it and buy something more practical though. Maybe something pure-electric to keep the spirit of the gift and because I want one anyway. I'm just not a sports-car guy.
"Can putting a 500 W solar panel on a car that consumes 15 kW at highway speeds make any difference?"
Not much of one, no.
"Will people ever stop suggesting that putting generators on the wheels of electric cars is a good idea?"
Probably not. If electric cars become prevalent, more people might be aware that electric motors and generators are the same thing; and thus that electric cars already have generators connected to the wheels; and that it is in fact a good idea to use that generator when appropriate; and that electric & hybrid designers already know about this; and finally that they call it "regenerative braking".
"Am I really as much of a tool as I seem?"
Doesn't how much of a tool you are rest entirely in the judgement of the observer, and hence are we not all exactly as much of a tool as we seem?