The Founding Fathers were certainly afraid of the general population. They were worried that a charismatic enough leader would take control of the government and rule it like a tyrant with the full support of the population. They realized that most people are uninformed and put in a safeguard against it. This kind of fear was not unfounded - France decided they needed a Napolean.
The beauty of the American system of democracy is the layer of indirection between the people and governmental decisions. American government is really the UNIX of governments.
First, there is nothing 'truly democratic' about our country's government. Second, a proportional splitting of current electoral college votes WOULD give a Dem vote in Utah a voice, as well as a Repub vote in California. The Electoral College as outlined in the Constitution is fine, it's the "winner-takes-all" strategy that the states need to fix! If California has voted 51% to 49% for the Democratic candidate, they need to cast 23 votes for the Democrat and 22 for the Republican - NOT 55 for the Democrat!
In short: Electoral College: good; "winner-takes-all" strategy: completely brain-damaged.
Really, this professor's idea just shows the versatility of the Electoral College. It's really a brilliant system. Kind of reminds me of Wikipedia in a strange way.
The solution is not the popular vote. If the popular vote wins, then large population areas are going to be the only places generating any interest for the candidates - and those areas have vastly different needs than the rest of the country.
But the solution is simple.
The system could be fixed if states just voted with their electoral college in the ratio that their popular vote voted. The Electoral College is a great system, and not many people see the benefit of the Great Compromise, but this "winner-take-all" crap just doesn't make any sense, and this is the real problem, not the fact that South Dakota's residents have more voting power than New York residents.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" as "Library" is to "A lot of people standing at a bus stop who collectively have read all of the books in the library."
Stay frosty, boys, we've got a flame war coming! Joel vs. Mike seen on radar, heading straight for us! Batten down the hatches, prepare all escape pods, brace for impact!
Checking strange and unknown data should not be a "hassle" - it should be something that every programmer does without thinking, like breathing. If you are getting input that the user of the software has control over, you have to treat it like a spiky poison radioactive pirhana. This should be second nature to everyone - the fact that this vulernability exists so much shows how poor the state of software is these days.Programmers should have this sort of thing drilled into their brains as far as it can go.
It's because of the overloading of words: "observation" sounds to mystics like the act of a soul, rather than something that measures something. Entanglement sounds exactly like the strange cosmic effects that they think other people have on each other - if these two electrons are "linked" somehow, then this is the proof they need that all their theories that defy reality are true. Basically they take the fact that quantum phenomena belie common sense about physics and take it to the extreme - why, if scientists are finding things that are different than what we currently think, surely this opens the door to other unexplainable phenomena!! Like ghosts! A friend of mine puts the chain of logic surrounding mystic QM very nicely:
Quantum mechanics says lots of weird stuff I don't understand about uncertainty and observers
Therefore reality is subjective!
Therefore any ridiculous idea I choose to put forward must be taken seriously!
To borrow an analogy from the other thread, it's like if Newton had called gravity "attraction" and people started thinking heavier women were more attractive as a result.
But these people are not in the business of finding out truth - they are in the business of proving the truth that they have already decided, and anything that even remotely sounds like their theories gets put in the "evidence" column. I guess the world is too boring of a place for these people.
Yeah, but the hypothesis should ideally not be totally brain-damaged. People love to make the leap (quantum leap, hoho) from scientists talking about 'observers' to 'THE OBSERVER CREATES HIS OWN REALITY SO ALL REALITY IS SUBJECTIVE SO I CAN CONTROL REALITY JUST BY THINKING ABOUT IT.' It's like if Newton had called gravity "attraction" and people started thinking heavier women were more attractive as a result.
The quantum particles in the phenomena you speak of do not communicate at a distance. Entanglement just means that a particle has a kind of "twin", but there is no information exchanged between the two locations. But telepathy implies that you are communicating over a distance. Entanglement has nothing to do with the possibility of telepathy and I am sick of people misusing and twisting concepts from quantum physics to "prove" paranormal phenomena.
The biggest problem with cryogenic freezing, assuming you get past that whole "freezing things destroys living cells" problem, is that you are not legally allowed to freeze someone until they are dead. That means that currently, you cannot begin cryogenic procedures (like the ones described in TFA) until the person has died of natural causes.
So I guess the idea is that you get cryogenically frozen and then, someday, when society has come up with a cure for death, you will be revived and live long into the future!
Wikipedia's referencing go from poor to non-existent.
As thought by people who can't conjugate their verbs correctly.
[SNIP CRAP]
First of all, Wikipedia's citations tend to be excessive rather than lacking.
Wikipedia points you to almost all points of view on any given subject. Chances are extraordinarily high that the Holocaust in fact happened, but truth is not so easy to find as you might think. Therefore, if you want to check out the opinions of groups or individuals who think that the Holocaust did not happen, the link is helpfully included. I can think of several reasons why I would want to have such a link, and why I would prefer Wikipedia not to tell me that the content on those pages are "lies."
Wikipedia is actually better when it does not decide which events are "true." In nearly every case where opinions on matters differ, Wikipedia lists dissenting opinions from the mainstream under a separate section, or all opinions on a separate page where such matters are controversial. In any case, given a choice, I would prefer primary sources to the diluted opinions of Wikipedia editors. In addition, you have less arguments over content when Wikipedia attempts to remain NPOV. In fact, if Wikipedia were to start marking resources as "lies" or other similarly extreme view, you would in fact have the "averaging of fact" that TFA complains about.
The point of my post was that Wikipedia is not in fact representing the "wisdom of crowds," but that it is a source that is more informative than asking your friend or reading some pundit's new book, and makes information easier to find than scouring the Internet for it. But if you want to be completely certain that what you've read is correct, you need to cross-reference it with other sources. No problem - Wikipedia provides you the links to do so, making it an indispensable tool and not a massive, lifeless document.
Yet the methods contained therein have yet to be put into widespread use. At least use this as a starting point, which most people may not have known about.
Does Windows have the kind of kernel control necessary to implement things quickly like on this page? Serious question; I remember discovering that Windows' support for asynchronus process communication left me severely wanting.
The reason Wikipedia works is not because it is the "intelligence of the masses." Each article is usually edited by a relatively small fraction of the masses, a good portion of which are qualified to edit the article: those who know about the subject matter, those with good grammar skills, etc. With the masses viewing it, those interested in contributing from the masses will find the right place to do it, and thus it will naturally separate the many into the few. Assuming no one is malicious, people who are unqualified to write will generally stray away from writing, and those that are qualified can catch minor errors. Assuming people are malicious, malicious edits are either obvious or subtle. Obvious vandalism is kept in line by those of the masses drawn to stoping vandalism. Subtle vandalism is indistinguishable from well-meaning errors.
Wikipedia works not because of market forces or anything, it works because there are enough people using the encyclopedia. There is enough "manpower," and I define "manpower" to mean the number of people working on it who will provide a positive contribution. And by "positive contribution" I mean something that will make the article more correct. It works because of the same reason open source works. If you look at it, there is very little difference between a central organization checking patches into a repository and an "edit first, ask questions later" style on a system designed to be easy to correct mistakes in. The only difference is when the quality is checked. With central control, you can control what version users see so bad patches never make it in. This is important in software where complete correctness is extraordinarily vital. The downside is that you can't get new features for a while, and the social barrier to contributing is higher. With Wikipedia, you are on the 'bleeding edge' - so you have to be careful of bugs. The upside is that information is processed more quickly, and if you are capable of contributing, you can do so immediately.
What people don't realize is that because of this, Wikipedia is not the most correct it could be. Assuming an ideal Wikipedia where experts contributing to Wikipedia could cover a subject 100% correctly, Wikipedia's correctness would be less than 100% - maybe 85% or 95% depending on manpower. The more manpower, the closer that number gets to 100%. (Imagine an asymptotic curve.) The surprising thing about Wikipedia is that the manpower to "chaff" ratio of visitors remains constant as the number of visitors increase. Will this change in the future? I think that's impossible to tell. My guess is that it won't unless the popularity of vandalism protection goes down.
Point of course being, USE WIKIPEDIA AS A STARTING POINT. It's amazing if you want to learn basic facts about things - who the fuck Jethro Tull really was, etc., but always check references. Wikipedia is quite thorough in its referencing, but a proper researcher should be more thorough. Of course, it's better than most political non-fiction out there now, anyway.
It's quite reminiscient of American government - the basic desires of the masses are communicated to a select few who are (in theory) smart enough to know how to legislate, lead, or judge to make those desires a reality in addition to keeping the country in line.
Clearflix removes the DVD encryption (against DMCA)
Their "fair use" claim rests on the fact that they are "criticizing" the movies they are censoring. I really don't buy that.
This is a good quote:
They seek some comfort in language appearing in the opinion deciding Chicago Bd. of Education v. Substance, Inc., 354 F.3d 624 (7th Cir. 2003), that the privilege protects public criticism and may justify substantial copying of that which is being criticized. The holding in that case was an affirmance of the denial of the fair use defense under summary judgment standards. Ironically, Judge Posner wrote that a teacher does not have the right to publish the criticized tests indiscriminately "any more than a person who dislikes Michelangelo's statue of David has a right to take a sledgehammer to it." Id. at 630. Or, as may be more aptly said in this case, to put a fig leaf on it to make it more acceptable for viewing by parents with young children.
Definition: "transformative" - contributing to a larger body of work, for example, using a few quotes from one source to create a larger essay of your own. A previous court case which the judge cites says tranformative means it "adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message."
The defendants say that their copies are "transformative" in the name of criticism and deny that their work is a derivative work. The studios say that it is a derivative work and say that they are not transformative. Looks like most here on Slashdot agree with the studios. The judge provides other examples and (I think correctly) decides that the works are not transformative.
The judge rejects the one-to-one argument because he claims it interferes with the copyright owner's right to control the content of the copied material. Personally I think he's right: if I give you a book to rent, I don't think you should be able to change it and rent that. It's very much like the djb software style: you can distribute it BUT DON'T TOUCH A SINGLE LINE OF CODE IT'S THE BIBLE AS FAR AS YOU'RE CONCERNED. No argues that software license do they?
The judge ruled that the works are not covered under fair nor are they derivative works.
The defendants tried using the "first sale" doctrine which makes no sense
The judge says the loss of the defendant's business has no bearing on the case.
Therefore the defendants lose.
Personally, I think if you compare this with software licenses, it makes perfect sense.
When the filter analyzes the content based on the statistic frequency of certain words and phrases, it can be contaminated by training it on junk mail containing large lists of words meant to throw it off. Sometimes they are random, sometimes they contain collections of terms specific to industry. There's also the issue of random insertion of garbage characters into words. There are probably a hundred-thousand different variants of 'Viagra' that the filter couldn't possibly recognize. I couldn't even think of a regular expression to get them all. We've got v1agra, Via.jGra, Vi,aGra0, etc.
This just shows that you might be confused how this is done. There are words that they have to use, and the way that modern spam filters calculate "scores" would pick these words out, skipping over the injected random garbage because it appears in equal probability with normal conversations. Read Paul Graham's A Plan For Spam as he does a good job of explaining the basics behind filtering, and addresses this very issue. Also realize when you read this essay that anti-spam techniques have gotten even better.
It also sounded like you were deleting them since you were talking about them being sent to a netherworld from whence they could never return.
More than once I have heard "oh maybe my spam filters got it." This is a concept which I am convinced will carry into the common knowledge. Spam training is not difficult either, no more difficult than other complex computer concepts which are vital to common usage.
Slashdot Mirror
This in fact happened in France with Napolean when they first got their democracy - seems the Father's fears were not unfounded.
ugh worst analogy ever
The Founding Fathers were certainly afraid of the general population. They were worried that a charismatic enough leader would take control of the government and rule it like a tyrant with the full support of the population. They realized that most people are uninformed and put in a safeguard against it. This kind of fear was not unfounded - France decided they needed a Napolean.
The beauty of the American system of democracy is the layer of indirection between the people and governmental decisions. American government is really the UNIX of governments.
Are you kidding??? If the election comes down to the wire, we have to recount the entire country's votes. Pure democracy just doesn't scale.
First, there is nothing 'truly democratic' about our country's government.
Second, a proportional splitting of current electoral college votes WOULD give a Dem vote in Utah a voice, as well as a Repub vote in California. The Electoral College as outlined in the Constitution is fine, it's the "winner-takes-all" strategy that the states need to fix! If California has voted 51% to 49% for the Democratic candidate, they need to cast 23 votes for the Democrat and 22 for the Republican - NOT 55 for the Democrat!
In short: Electoral College: good; "winner-takes-all" strategy: completely brain-damaged.
Really, this professor's idea just shows the versatility of the Electoral College. It's really a brilliant system. Kind of reminds me of Wikipedia in a strange way.
The solution is not the popular vote. If the popular vote wins, then large population areas are going to be the only places generating any interest for the candidates - and those areas have vastly different needs than the rest of the country.
But the solution is simple.
The system could be fixed if states just voted with their electoral college in the ratio that their popular vote voted. The Electoral College is a great system, and not many people see the benefit of the Great Compromise, but this "winner-take-all" crap just doesn't make any sense, and this is the real problem, not the fact that South Dakota's residents have more voting power than New York residents.
Oh, and they know tons of useless pop culture garbage, too.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" as "Library" is to "A lot of people standing at a bus stop who collectively have read all of the books in the library."
The problem with this is that it has very very very little to do with programming. 95% of the work lies in the first step.
More likely, the codex implies that contestants will be asked to do some kind of ciphering/deciphering of languages and conspiracy theory.
Stay frosty, boys, we've got a flame war coming! Joel vs. Mike seen on radar, heading straight for us! Batten down the hatches, prepare all escape pods, brace for impact!
Checking strange and unknown data should not be a "hassle" - it should be something that every programmer does without thinking, like breathing. If you are getting input that the user of the software has control over, you have to treat it like a spiky poison radioactive pirhana. This should be second nature to everyone - the fact that this vulernability exists so much shows how poor the state of software is these days.Programmers should have this sort of thing drilled into their brains as far as it can go.
A friend of mine puts the chain of logic surrounding mystic QM very nicely:
To borrow an analogy from the other thread, it's like if Newton had called gravity "attraction" and people started thinking heavier women were more attractive as a result.
But these people are not in the business of finding out truth - they are in the business of proving the truth that they have already decided, and anything that even remotely sounds like their theories gets put in the "evidence" column. I guess the world is too boring of a place for these people.
Yeah, but the hypothesis should ideally not be totally brain-damaged. People love to make the leap (quantum leap, hoho) from scientists talking about 'observers' to 'THE OBSERVER CREATES HIS OWN REALITY SO ALL REALITY IS SUBJECTIVE SO I CAN CONTROL REALITY JUST BY THINKING ABOUT IT.' It's like if Newton had called gravity "attraction" and people started thinking heavier women were more attractive as a result.
You don't understand quantum physics.
The quantum particles in the phenomena you speak of do not communicate at a distance. Entanglement just means that a particle has a kind of "twin", but there is no information exchanged between the two locations. But telepathy implies that you are communicating over a distance. Entanglement has nothing to do with the possibility of telepathy and I am sick of people misusing and twisting concepts from quantum physics to "prove" paranormal phenomena.
The biggest problem with cryogenic freezing, assuming you get past that whole "freezing things destroys living cells" problem, is that you are not legally allowed to freeze someone until they are dead. That means that currently, you cannot begin cryogenic procedures (like the ones described in TFA) until the person has died of natural causes.
So I guess the idea is that you get cryogenically frozen and then, someday, when society has come up with a cure for death, you will be revived and live long into the future!
[SNIP CRAP]
First of all, Wikipedia's citations tend to be excessive rather than lacking.
Wikipedia points you to almost all points of view on any given subject. Chances are extraordinarily high that the Holocaust in fact happened, but truth is not so easy to find as you might think. Therefore, if you want to check out the opinions of groups or individuals who think that the Holocaust did not happen, the link is helpfully included. I can think of several reasons why I would want to have such a link, and why I would prefer Wikipedia not to tell me that the content on those pages are "lies."
Wikipedia is actually better when it does not decide which events are "true." In nearly every case where opinions on matters differ, Wikipedia lists dissenting opinions from the mainstream under a separate section, or all opinions on a separate page where such matters are controversial. In any case, given a choice, I would prefer primary sources to the diluted opinions of Wikipedia editors. In addition, you have less arguments over content when Wikipedia attempts to remain NPOV. In fact, if Wikipedia were to start marking resources as "lies" or other similarly extreme view, you would in fact have the "averaging of fact" that TFA complains about.
The point of my post was that Wikipedia is not in fact representing the "wisdom of crowds," but that it is a source that is more informative than asking your friend or reading some pundit's new book, and makes information easier to find than scouring the Internet for it. But if you want to be completely certain that what you've read is correct, you need to cross-reference it with other sources. No problem - Wikipedia provides you the links to do so, making it an indispensable tool and not a massive, lifeless document.
I want my asynchronous signals though!!
I think it's funny that neither are miserable failures in a certain sense.
Bush: re-elected
Moore: FUCKING RICH
Yet the methods contained therein have yet to be put into widespread use. At least use this as a starting point, which most people may not have known about.
Does Windows have the kind of kernel control necessary to implement things quickly like on this page? Serious question; I remember discovering that Windows' support for asynchronus process communication left me severely wanting.
Man, is Wikipedia bashing in vouge!
The reason Wikipedia works is not because it is the "intelligence of the masses." Each article is usually edited by a relatively small fraction of the masses, a good portion of which are qualified to edit the article: those who know about the subject matter, those with good grammar skills, etc. With the masses viewing it, those interested in contributing from the masses will find the right place to do it, and thus it will naturally separate the many into the few. Assuming no one is malicious, people who are unqualified to write will generally stray away from writing, and those that are qualified can catch minor errors. Assuming people are malicious, malicious edits are either obvious or subtle. Obvious vandalism is kept in line by those of the masses drawn to stoping vandalism. Subtle vandalism is indistinguishable from well-meaning errors.
Wikipedia works not because of market forces or anything, it works because there are enough people using the encyclopedia. There is enough "manpower," and I define "manpower" to mean the number of people working on it who will provide a positive contribution. And by "positive contribution" I mean something that will make the article more correct. It works because of the same reason open source works. If you look at it, there is very little difference between a central organization checking patches into a repository and an "edit first, ask questions later" style on a system designed to be easy to correct mistakes in. The only difference is when the quality is checked. With central control, you can control what version users see so bad patches never make it in. This is important in software where complete correctness is extraordinarily vital. The downside is that you can't get new features for a while, and the social barrier to contributing is higher. With Wikipedia, you are on the 'bleeding edge' - so you have to be careful of bugs. The upside is that information is processed more quickly, and if you are capable of contributing, you can do so immediately.
What people don't realize is that because of this, Wikipedia is not the most correct it could be. Assuming an ideal Wikipedia where experts contributing to Wikipedia could cover a subject 100% correctly, Wikipedia's correctness would be less than 100% - maybe 85% or 95% depending on manpower. The more manpower, the closer that number gets to 100%. (Imagine an asymptotic curve.) The surprising thing about Wikipedia is that the manpower to "chaff" ratio of visitors remains constant as the number of visitors increase. Will this change in the future? I think that's impossible to tell. My guess is that it won't unless the popularity of vandalism protection goes down.
Point of course being, USE WIKIPEDIA AS A STARTING POINT. It's amazing if you want to learn basic facts about things - who the fuck Jethro Tull really was, etc., but always check references. Wikipedia is quite thorough in its referencing, but a proper researcher should be more thorough. Of course, it's better than most political non-fiction out there now, anyway.
It's quite reminiscient of American government - the basic desires of the masses are communicated to a select few who are (in theory) smart enough to know how to legislate, lead, or judge to make those desires a reality in addition to keeping the country in line.
Check out the C10K page for a very detailed discussion about this.
Fuck you for linking to an article that requires paid subscription or a 14-day free trial you have to submit a credit card for.
Don't these critics realize that people are trying to make a living here?!!!
A summary:
Personally, I think if you compare this with software licenses, it makes perfect sense.
This just shows that you might be confused how this is done. There are words that they have to use, and the way that modern spam filters calculate "scores" would pick these words out, skipping over the injected random garbage because it appears in equal probability with normal conversations. Read Paul Graham's A Plan For Spam as he does a good job of explaining the basics behind filtering, and addresses this very issue. Also realize when you read this essay that anti-spam techniques have gotten even better.
It also sounded like you were deleting them since you were talking about them being sent to a netherworld from whence they could never return.
More than once I have heard "oh maybe my spam filters got it." This is a concept which I am convinced will carry into the common knowledge. Spam training is not difficult either, no more difficult than other complex computer concepts which are vital to common usage.