If I hadn't already posted you'd've gotten a +1 Informative, even if many of those just have famous surnames (and you mentioned Neil Armstrong twice):)
That said, I wonder if he'd be any better at designing traffic systems than the idiotic "traffic engineers" we have here in the USA, who insist on setting traffic lights so there's no way to catch all green lights on a main boulevard, and intentionally time them so you have to get caught at every red light.
xkcd expressed it better than I can. Besides, you probably remember the irritating delays a lot better than the more frequent times when they're absent.
I guess you've never seen the tv out feature that normally comes with nokia phones.
As opposed to bringing a laptop, you suggest bringing a TV set and a generator to use with your phone? Impressive. May I interest you in this handy and accurate wristwatch as well?:)
We don't do that, where I live litres/10 km is common, because a Norwegian "mile" is 10 km. It works because everyone here use the same units:) Of course most know about other units of distance like the "british mile" or the "nautical mile" and their values.
For anyone on/. it should be trivial to make the conversion to any unit of your choice. You can even use the google calculator to quickly convert from mpg to something I can relate to by searching for "230 miles/gallon in litres/10 km".
Of course none of this is valid in this case without qualification as they include "free" miles from charging according to TFA:
The mileage calculation for the Volt assumes that most drivers would stay within that range and not need the gasoline engine.
It almost becomes an abstract number. If you are the Volt target guy who is driving under 40 miles per day, then theoretically your miles per gallon is infinite. -Jack Nerad
Even so it's good to see vehicles that are more environmentally friendly than pure gas-guzzling ones, at least when 98% of your power comes from hydroelectricity as it does here.
This article by Chaum is the one I always point to when people ask for a less technical explanation
Thanks for this one! Ingenious, understandable, and it completely destroys one of my arguments in another post:) It still has the problems explained by your parent post, but it's probably a better choice than a paper trail on its own. People manage to mess up regular paper ballots as well, rendering them invalid or wrong.
The voter should be able to go online and see his own vote.
and
Maybe instead of voter id's, it should be a random confirmation code thats generated on the spot. That should be even more anonymous.
The problem with an individually verifiable vote is that you enable people to (be forced to) sell their vote. Any person with authority over voters (boss?) could make them demonstrate their choice. This is already happening in lots of places.
If vote online doesn't match your vote, have a dispute process.
Any possibility for dispute over a wrongly cast vote could also lead to people changing their minds, for instance to vote for the party placing second instead of the party placing fourth which they voted for originally. This of course assumes that you have more than one or two actual contenders. This system is used in some places to enable voters to "change their minds" if their original candidate didn't pan out, an example is the two-round system. Of course it only works if it is intended and everyone participates:)
The ideal system would probably be a perfect black box that everyone trusted and no one knew how worked. Since this is obviously impossible, I believe the best solution is the opposite of a black box where everyone could verify the mechanism in use (open source/hardware). Still you can't have individual accountability/dispute mechanisms because of the issues mentioned above.
I don't really know enough about cryptography, but the article mentions it as a possible voting control mechanism. Maybe it's possible to employ it to generate and publish cryptographically strong checksums or something like it from many levels of the counting, from a single voting station and upwards. This could enable anyone to inspect the system and know that the tally is correct by verifying checksums. Can anyone expand a bit on the details of how these protocols work?
So, um. What does the wonderful.exe on that site do?
After googling it seems to be a piece of malware disguising itself as a registry cleaner. It's google-bombed extensively, but the cries for help shines through if you look at forums and reliable sites after googling "regcure malware" or something like it. I have no idea if it's trying to impersonate a real utility, but this one smells bad. Stay away:)
The first hit for me is the wonderful errornerd.com, which can fix these errors if you download their registry utility. They can even fix a host of other errors, even 404s and errornerd.com is a fraud errors.
Emphasis on the "arguably." The guy offers to pay AP money. In return, AP agrees not to assert any copyrights or other rights against the guy based on his use of Dr. Phil's work. And they won't! The fact that they could not have successfully done so anyway is (again, arguably) immaterial.
That may be so, but they do issue him with a requirement that he attach a copyright notice in which AP claims copyright on the quote (or in the example, Dr. Phil's work). I'm (luckily) no lawyer but I work at a publisher, and we are *damn* cautious about not putting a copyright claim on something that isn't ours... as that would be copyright fraud.
What if Jefferson's quote had been used in the article?
Then you and I are free to use regardless of what AP thinks:)
Incidentally I work at a publishing house, and where we operate it's legal to use fairly extensive quotes under "Fair Use"-laws. Other things like for instance excerpts from sheet music can often be legally quoted. It depends on context, of course attribution is necessary, you can't pass it off as your own creation.
The five word limit is ridiculous anyway, it's probably extremely difficult to write a medium-length non-absurd article which contains no five word phrases also found in one of APs articles.
+1: using "Begging the question" correctly:) On a side note, it does seem to me that Microsoft defines "open" differently then the GPL in that they would like to be able to use patented code in open standards, and presumably be able to charge for licenses. The GPL allows patents, but imposes a requirement that a free and perpetual licence for the patent be granted:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.
On the other hand, I can type really well, even though I never learned the "right" way to type.
I'd advise you to teach yourself touch, there are several applications well suited for self-teaching. After reaching a very high typing speed while looking at the keyboard and using whichever finger for most letters for about twelve years, I finally switched to touch exclusively nine years ago, and was very disciplined in always using it. It took me a couple of years to catch up with my old typing speed, but the biggest advantage with touch is that you don't really have to think about typing. Your fingers is doing that for you, it's kind of hard to explain. Suddenly I had no problems having a conversation while typing, for instance. Give it a try, it'll be worth it in the end:)
The problem with these studies is that they study the effects of using a cell phone, which should have the effect of reducing a driver's skill in almost every case.
Yes, and it's not a problem with the studies:) They actually tested the drivers' ability to react and adapt, not their likelihood of being rear-ended. These experiments show that you're more likely to get rear-ended if the person behind you is on the phone as opposed to when he's not, that's the point.
A skilled driver who drives frequently WILL sooner or later come across a situation that stretches his abilities to the limit no matter how careful he is, and a distracting phone will make it harder. For a less skilled driver it's probably an even bigger problem, and the end result of an effective ban would most likely be fewer accidents.
I may come across as a little inflexible on this subject, but as a pedestrian and scooterist in a city I see the effect phones have on drivers all the time. When I hear the squeal of tyres skidding in front of a crossing, I've become used to discover a confused driver on the phone. Yes, this is anecdotal, but supported by said studies.
As for raising the bar for having a licence, it's really an unrelated issue. I do believe that it should be harder to get, and a lot easier to lose. Many people with licences should really not be driving in my opinion, and the right to drive a car is not a human right.
It's not about the conversation - which, unless you're unable to talk to somebody in your car and drive at the same time, in which case I would advise you to avoid chewing gum if you plan on walking - it's about holding the phone uncomfortably.
You're wrong. Anyone but a completely inexperienced driver can keep the car on the road without hitting anything even while chatting on the phone - if nothing unexpected happens. I've never had a problem myself, still I avoid using my phone while driving nowadays. At rare occasions you'll need all the attention you can muster, if for instance a kid or another bad driver does something you didn't expect. Talking on a cell phone takes away a bit of that attention, and I've read studies like this one where the conclusion is that talking on your cellphone makes you as accident-prone as a drunk driver. Google yields plenty more, here's an abstract from another one.
Summary: This research assessed the effects of cell phone conversations on driving. Our first study found that subjects engaged in cell phone conversations using either a hand-held or hands-free device, were more than twice as likely to miss simulated traffic signals than when they were not distracted by the cell phone conversation. By contrast, performance was not disrupted by listening to radio broadcasts or listening to a book on tape. Our second study, using a high-fidelity driving simulator, found that subjects conversing on a hands-free cell phone were more likely to get into traffic accidents. Analysis of driving profiles revealed that cell phone users exhibited a sluggish response to changing traffic patterns and attempted to compensate by increasing their following distance. We suggest that active participation in a cell phone conversation disrupts performance by diverting attention to an engaging cognitive context other than the one immediately associated with driving.
You shouldn't ignore the facts on this one, if nothing else to err on the side of caution. How many drivers do you know that will admit they're less than averagely skilled? Still, half of all drivers must be, and I don't want them to rear-end me while planning their dinner.
...and Fahrenheit for telling people what the weather is like today.
I guess that depends on who you're talking to. In the case of Belize I would guess that "too damn hot" would suffice most of the time anyway, eliminating the problem. The rest of the world is not perfect either, I frequently hear people make the common off-by-273.15 error:)
Xine has played all the discs that VLC and MPlayer couldn't.
I'll second this - I've never tried a DVD in Xine that didn't play perfectly, and it'll let you skip the trailers and other junk. I use VLC and mplayer for files, but don't even bother with them for DVDs.
A few people have both names as well; have a look at the Norwegian White Pages. I can't help but think this is some kind of joke from the parents, most Norwegians are reasonably proficient in English.
I've recently become responsible for a Drupal site. I have some PHP experience, but not with Drupal specifically.
I'm currently using NetBeans - it feels a bit heavy, it's not very good at following the spaghetti includes of Drupal, and it lacks line wrap. Hey, it's not originally my code:)
Are there any IDEs that are better suited for Drupal hacking? I'm making a lot of changes to the PHP code itself, so PHP is the primary focus. A big bonus would be if it was good at tracing execution of Drupal code, but I suspect this is impossible. Any suggestions are welcome!
Which is why you follow a selection of news from very different sources, correlate the common factors of their coverage, and form your own opinion. You'll probably still be misinformed, but less prone to deliberate misinformation/bias from a single source.
IP address != physical address. That's the problem. Also, you can find the ip address someone is using to access their myspace page? Really?
IP Geolocation can be so efficient that it's scary. This one gives my physical location to within 20 meters along with some other (correct) information. Also, Myspace can of course find the IP of one of their users. If the cops want to find me, they could get my IP from Myspace and then go to my service provider to get my real name and address.
Is this what you call user friendly? Ready for distribution to the typical Joe American as a Windows replacement???
Your issues have a lot in common with average issues my father has with Windows. He does what the typical Joe American probably does; he calls a knowledgeable person (me) who can help him. He's an MD and a smart guy, but has no clue about computers. If you're not interested in looking up reference guides such as this one, you can always contact a friend (or the local Linux user group) to get help. After a while you won't be missing the annoyances in Windows or the limited environment in MacOS. But, please don't complain about issues that is just as much of an issue in Windows if you have no idea what you're doing. Excercise: explain to Joe American that his Windows just lacks a driver for his network card (a very common problem), and how to identify the card and getting a driver from the vendor without internet. That is if the problem is not that his switch is unpowered or somesuch. Joe American won't be installing Windows from scratch anytime soon either, Linux is actually a lot easier in that respect.
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If I hadn't already posted you'd've gotten a +1 Informative, even if many of those just have famous surnames (and you mentioned Neil Armstrong twice) :)
xkcd expressed it better than I can. Besides, you probably remember the irritating delays a lot better than the more frequent times when they're absent.
As opposed to bringing a laptop, you suggest bringing a TV set and a generator to use with your phone? Impressive. :)
May I interest you in this handy and accurate wristwatch as well?
We don't do that, where I live litres/10 km is common, because a Norwegian "mile" is 10 km. It works because everyone here use the same units :)
Of course most know about other units of distance like the "british mile" or the "nautical mile" and their values.
For anyone on /. it should be trivial to make the conversion to any unit of your choice. You can even use the google calculator to quickly convert from mpg to something I can relate to by searching for "230 miles/gallon in litres/10 km".
Of course none of this is valid in this case without qualification as they include "free" miles from charging according to TFA:
Even so it's good to see vehicles that are more environmentally friendly than pure gas-guzzling ones, at least when 98% of your power comes from hydroelectricity as it does here.
Thanks for this one! Ingenious, understandable, and it completely destroys one of my arguments in another post :)
It still has the problems explained by your parent post, but it's probably a better choice than a paper trail on its own. People manage to mess up regular paper ballots as well, rendering them invalid or wrong.
and
The problem with an individually verifiable vote is that you enable people to (be forced to) sell their vote. Any person with authority over voters (boss?) could make them demonstrate their choice. This is already happening in lots of places.
Any possibility for dispute over a wrongly cast vote could also lead to people changing their minds, for instance to vote for the party placing second instead of the party placing fourth which they voted for originally. This of course assumes that you have more than one or two actual contenders. This system is used in some places to enable voters to "change their minds" if their original candidate didn't pan out, an example is the two-round system. Of course it only works if it is intended and everyone participates :)
The ideal system would probably be a perfect black box that everyone trusted and no one knew how worked. Since this is obviously impossible, I believe the best solution is the opposite of a black box where everyone could verify the mechanism in use (open source/hardware). Still you can't have individual accountability/dispute mechanisms because of the issues mentioned above.
I don't really know enough about cryptography, but the article mentions it as a possible voting control mechanism. Maybe it's possible to employ it to generate and publish cryptographically strong checksums or something like it from many levels of the counting, from a single voting station and upwards. This could enable anyone to inspect the system and know that the tally is correct by verifying checksums. Can anyone expand a bit on the details of how these protocols work?
After googling it seems to be a piece of malware disguising itself as a registry cleaner. It's google-bombed extensively, but the cries for help shines through if you look at forums and reliable sites after googling "regcure malware" or something like it. I have no idea if it's trying to impersonate a real utility, but this one smells bad. Stay away :)
The first hit for me is the wonderful errornerd.com, which can fix these errors if you download their registry utility.
They can even fix a host of other errors, even 404s and errornerd.com is a fraud errors.
That may be so, but they do issue him with a requirement that he attach a copyright notice in which AP claims copyright on the quote (or in the example, Dr. Phil's work). I'm (luckily) no lawyer but I work at a publisher, and we are *damn* cautious about not putting a copyright claim on something that isn't ours... as that would be copyright fraud.
Then you and I are free to use regardless of what AP thinks :)
Incidentally I work at a publishing house, and where we operate it's legal to use fairly extensive quotes under "Fair Use"-laws. Other things like for instance excerpts from sheet music can often be legally quoted. It depends on context, of course attribution is necessary, you can't pass it off as your own creation.
The five word limit is ridiculous anyway, it's probably extremely difficult to write a medium-length non-absurd article which contains no five word phrases also found in one of APs articles.
+1: using "Begging the question" correctly :)
On a side note, it does seem to me that Microsoft defines "open" differently then the GPL in that they would like to be able to use patented code in open standards, and presumably be able to charge for licenses. The GPL allows patents, but imposes a requirement that a free and perpetual licence for the patent be granted:
You'll get better results with "Churn rate". Wikipedia has a good article, "churn" in this context concerns customer turnover.
I'd advise you to teach yourself touch, there are several applications well suited for self-teaching. After reaching a very high typing speed while looking at the keyboard and using whichever finger for most letters for about twelve years, I finally switched to touch exclusively nine years ago, and was very disciplined in always using it. :)
It took me a couple of years to catch up with my old typing speed, but the biggest advantage with touch is that you don't really have to think about typing. Your fingers is doing that for you, it's kind of hard to explain. Suddenly I had no problems having a conversation while typing, for instance.
Give it a try, it'll be worth it in the end
Yes, and it's not a problem with the studies :)
They actually tested the drivers' ability to react and adapt, not their likelihood of being rear-ended. These experiments show that you're more likely to get rear-ended if the person behind you is on the phone as opposed to when he's not, that's the point.
A skilled driver who drives frequently WILL sooner or later come across a situation that stretches his abilities to the limit no matter how careful he is, and a distracting phone will make it harder. For a less skilled driver it's probably an even bigger problem, and the end result of an effective ban would most likely be fewer accidents.
I may come across as a little inflexible on this subject, but as a pedestrian and scooterist in a city I see the effect phones have on drivers all the time. When I hear the squeal of tyres skidding in front of a crossing, I've become used to discover a confused driver on the phone. Yes, this is anecdotal, but supported by said studies.
As for raising the bar for having a licence, it's really an unrelated issue. I do believe that it should be harder to get, and a lot easier to lose. Many people with licences should really not be driving in my opinion, and the right to drive a car is not a human right.
You're wrong. Anyone but a completely inexperienced driver can keep the car on the road without hitting anything even while chatting on the phone - if nothing unexpected happens. I've never had a problem myself, still I avoid using my phone while driving nowadays. At rare occasions you'll need all the attention you can muster, if for instance a kid or another bad driver does something you didn't expect. Talking on a cell phone takes away a bit of that attention, and I've read studies like this one where the conclusion is that talking on your cellphone makes you as accident-prone as a drunk driver.
Google yields plenty more, here's an abstract from another one.
You shouldn't ignore the facts on this one, if nothing else to err on the side of caution. How many drivers do you know that will admit they're less than averagely skilled? Still, half of all drivers must be, and I don't want them to rear-end me while planning their dinner.
I guess that depends on who you're talking to. In the case of Belize I would guess that "too damn hot" would suffice most of the time anyway, eliminating the problem. The rest of the world is not perfect either, I frequently hear people make the common off-by-273.15 error :)
That somehow made me think of this. No hard feelings, but it made me chuckle :)
I'll second this - I've never tried a DVD in Xine that didn't play perfectly, and it'll let you skip the trailers and other junk. I use VLC and mplayer for files, but don't even bother with them for DVDs.
A few people have both names as well; have a look at the Norwegian White Pages.
I can't help but think this is some kind of joke from the parents, most Norwegians are reasonably proficient in English.
I've recently become responsible for a Drupal site. I have some PHP experience, but not with Drupal specifically.
I'm currently using NetBeans - it feels a bit heavy, it's not very good at following the spaghetti includes of Drupal, and it lacks line wrap. Hey, it's not originally my code :)
Are there any IDEs that are better suited for Drupal hacking? I'm making a lot of changes to the PHP code itself, so PHP is the primary focus. A big bonus would be if it was good at tracing execution of Drupal code, but I suspect this is impossible. Any suggestions are welcome!
Which is why you follow a selection of news from very different sources, correlate the common factors of their coverage, and form your own opinion. You'll probably still be misinformed, but less prone to deliberate misinformation/bias from a single source.
IP Geolocation can be so efficient that it's scary. This one gives my physical location to within 20 meters along with some other (correct) information. Also, Myspace can of course find the IP of one of their users. If the cops want to find me, they could get my IP from Myspace and then go to my service provider to get my real name and address.
Your issues have a lot in common with average issues my father has with Windows. He does what the typical Joe American probably does; he calls a knowledgeable person (me) who can help him. He's an MD and a smart guy, but has no clue about computers.
If you're not interested in looking up reference guides such as this one, you can always contact a friend (or the local Linux user group) to get help. After a while you won't be missing the annoyances in Windows or the limited environment in MacOS.
But, please don't complain about issues that is just as much of an issue in Windows if you have no idea what you're doing. Excercise: explain to Joe American that his Windows just lacks a driver for his network card (a very common problem), and how to identify the card and getting a driver from the vendor without internet. That is if the problem is not that his switch is unpowered or somesuch. Joe American won't be installing Windows from scratch anytime soon either, Linux is actually a lot easier in that respect.
No, you only reverse the polarity if nothing else works.