Nothing you've written so far contradicts my assertion that the Concorcet method is better. What you've described is a system of government, while the Condorcet method is a system of voting. For example, in any particular area (electoral college?) there are several different candidates a person can vote for. Let's say there are 5 candidates calling for budget reform, and one candidate calling for more goverment funding to oil companies. If 70% of the voters want one of the budget reform candidates, (leaving 30% of the voters wanting more money to oil companies), the money-to-oil-companies candidate will win, even though 70% of the voters are opposed to that candidate. That's the problem with plurality voting.
Furthermore, since voters are aware of the problem of vote splitting, they are encouraged to vote for one of the "major" candidates, because they are otherwise essentially throwing their votes away. This means that a start-up candidate cannot ever win an election unless s/he has enough advertising resources to make a large number of voters think s/he is a major contender. It's essentially voter lock-in.
Condorcet voting would easily replace plurality voting within the electoral college system. (Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the way the electoral college system works. Voting is multiple-choice, right?)
Extensions of majority rule are dangerous (which is what condorcet is, IE: if every voter prefers alternative a over b then b should not win, even if it has the most votes), there's a reason why we have the system we do. Checks and balances, it's textbook Jefferson stuff.
Huh? As far as I can tell, the legitimacy of western democratic government is based on the concept of majority rule. As for "textbook Jefferson stuff", could you elaborate? I don't live in the U.S.
That's absolutely beautiful! Who decides who really understands an issue?
The individual voters. I'm not saying anyone should be prevented from voting by the state; I'm saying that part of everyone's civic duty is to understand the issues before voting, and to not vote at all when the issue is beyond one's ability to understand. I'm primarily refering to cases where people are voting on individual issues, but the general concept still applies to elections of representatives.
My problem with "altnernative voting systems" is that those that push them the hardest would seem to have the most to gain.
I could take the same facts and say, "My problem with keeping things the way they are is that those who have something to lose by changing the voting system are the most silent."
It seems as though you're basing your beliefs on mistrust of others, rather than finding out for yourself. I suggest you actually read the link I posted (and perhaps this one too). The Condorcet winner of an election is a well-defined mathematical and logical concept that more accurately represents voter intent than any other system.
Right, but when you're dealing with archiving data for years, you don't really care if it's unavailable for even several months... as long as you can recover it eventually.
Otherwise, instead of dealing with the mean time to failure of some media, you're dealing with the mean time to lengthy network and/or server failure.
I don't think it's all that difficult to offer 1GB of email space. Think about it: a huge portion of email traffic is spam. If some spam goes to 100000 users, you really only need one copy of the spam, plus a diff for different greetings, message headers, etc.
Spam across multiple email accounts is very compressible...
The fate of his remains always concerned Einstein, since people had idolised him like a living monument. When he was mobbed during a trip to Geneva, a crazed young girl had tried to snip off a lock of his hair. What might they do to his body when he was dead? "I want to be cremated, so people don't come to worship at my bones," he once said.
Linux wouldn't ever have reached critical mass if it weren't for *some* if not the vast *majority* of hardware manufacturers releasing documentation for the products they sell.
Linux certainly won't be the last innovation in operating systems.
Hardware documentation solves what would otherwise be a chicken-and-egg problem with respect to new operating systems entering the market. As a consumer, you don't want that.
The really humorous part to me is that he has no knowledge of how computers *work*, but he is one hell of a programmer.
That's extremely unlikely.
That's one of the problems with computers right now. You do have to know how they work in order to program them correctly. Otherwise, you will almost certainly be introducing security holes and other obscure bugs. That, of course, leads to more needing-to-know-how-it-works on the part of others who make use of whatever code you wrote.
Joe Blow also wants to operate a machine far more complex than an automobile without bothering to spend even as much effort as it took to learn how to drive.
At some point, giving a damn about what "Joe Blow" thinks becomes ridiculous.
No, a binary-only driver would not help "a lot". It would probably be worse, because the manufacturer could (fraudulently, as far as I'm concerned) claim "Linux support".
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing like free market research, eh? :-)
Furthermore, since voters are aware of the problem of vote splitting, they are encouraged to vote for one of the "major" candidates, because they are otherwise essentially throwing their votes away. This means that a start-up candidate cannot ever win an election unless s/he has enough advertising resources to make a large number of voters think s/he is a major contender. It's essentially voter lock-in.
Condorcet voting would easily replace plurality voting within the electoral college system. (Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the way the electoral college system works. Voting is multiple-choice, right?)
Huh? As far as I can tell, the legitimacy of western democratic government is based on the concept of majority rule. As for "textbook Jefferson stuff", could you elaborate? I don't live in the U.S.
The individual voters. I'm not saying anyone should be prevented from voting by the state; I'm saying that part of everyone's civic duty is to understand the issues before voting, and to not vote at all when the issue is beyond one's ability to understand. I'm primarily refering to cases where people are voting on individual issues, but the general concept still applies to elections of representatives.
My problem with "altnernative voting systems" is that those that push them the hardest would seem to have the most to gain.
I could take the same facts and say, "My problem with keeping things the way they are is that those who have something to lose by changing the voting system are the most silent."
It seems as though you're basing your beliefs on mistrust of others, rather than finding out for yourself. I suggest you actually read the link I posted (and perhaps this one too). The Condorcet winner of an election is a well-defined mathematical and logical concept that more accurately represents voter intent than any other system.
Otherwise, instead of dealing with the mean time to failure of some media, you're dealing with the mean time to lengthy network and/or server failure.
And a server has more ways to fail than a CD-R.
I hope that makes sense.
Note that, if you change subsampling to "1x1, 1x1, 1x1" when you save a JPEG image, you can reduce this effect.
If an ISP claims to offer "internet service", but knowingly provides only "HTTP service", isn't that fraud?
So if your server goes down while you're on a vacation...
Yes, absurdity. It's not like anyone is ever going to accuse Linux developers of copyright infringement...
Spam across multiple email accounts is very compressible...
During war (i.e. when most of the killing actually happens) the military is not going to care too much about copyright law.
It's incredibly unlikely that iabervon will be able to provide such an example...
Poop!
;-)
I think it was appropriate:
It has nothing to do with evangelism. See my other post.
Could someone please explain to me how that's "flamebait"?
What makes you think it wouldn't be *worse* if the laws weren't in place?
No, just the operating system. ;-P
Linux wouldn't ever have reached critical mass if it weren't for *some* if not the vast *majority* of hardware manufacturers releasing documentation for the products they sell.
Linux certainly won't be the last innovation in operating systems.
Hardware documentation solves what would otherwise be a chicken-and-egg problem with respect to new operating systems entering the market. As a consumer, you don't want that.
That's extremely unlikely.
That's one of the problems with computers right now. You do have to know how they work in order to program them correctly. Otherwise, you will almost certainly be introducing security holes and other obscure bugs. That, of course, leads to more needing-to-know-how-it-works on the part of others who make use of whatever code you wrote.
At some point, giving a damn about what "Joe Blow" thinks becomes ridiculous.
No, a binary-only driver would not help "a lot". It would probably be worse, because the manufacturer could (fraudulently, as far as I'm concerned) claim "Linux support".
I'd like to point out that it is better to have good, widely available hardware documentation than vendor-provided proprietary drivers.
Not mentioning any names...