You're absolutely right about this...but you forgot the stock footage of the analysis machine that they use at least once an episode for analyzing pretty much anything...
As I sit here browsing as 2+, I notice that half the posts are from katz himself...doesn't he already have enough karma? Why pull the publicity stunt, other than to see himself write.
Two things that I noticed about this article. I've agreed with George Will in the past, but I don't think he makes a very good argument here.
One thing that is never considered in his article is the number of people who don't turn out or who vote for a third party due to the fact that their vote doesn't really count anyway. I live in Texas, and I heard someone say the other day, "A vote not for Gore is a vote for Bush," though the person who said it said that they were going to vote for Nader. If it were a simple majority election, people would have more of a reason to do something like vote for Gore, even while living in Texas. My friend is going to vote for Nader not because he necessarily wants to, but because it really doesn't matter who he votes for. And that's just wrong.
Another thing that I find almost disturbing about this article is the fact that he resorts to name-calling in the article. He calls people who don't believe in the electoral college "simple-minded majoritarians." This while he doesn't even consider the whole issue involved with the electoral college. Rather than fleshing out some of the issues (one of which I mentioned above), he regurgitates statistics and hurls pejoratives at people who don't agree with him.
However, it doesn't surprise me that he overlooks the human issues. The guy's more lifeless than Gumby if you watch him on the Sam & Cokie show.
Eliminate the electoral college
on
Should You Vote?
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· Score: 2
The electoral college is one issue that never gets talked about, but is one that deserves some mention, and since I have my soapbox here, I will mention it.
In a country where it is illegal to discriminate against anyone for any reason (other than insurance purposes, anyway), there is still one of the most blatant imbalances in our election process: the electoral college. The electoral college is a concept similar to a party convention where your state has sent a certain number of representatives to vote for who should be the candidate for your party. In the electoral college, however, the people who are sent are based on which candidate wins the general election in your state with a similar majority vote. If a Republican wins in your state, the Republican Party of that state sends a certain number of representatives to the electoral college to vote for who should actually be president.
Here, there are a certain number of votes that your state gets for the president. California, Texas, and New York all have tremendous influence in the election process, because the number of electoral college votes that your state gets is dependent on the population of your state, and as it turns out, that number is also equal to the number of representatives your state has in the House of Representatives.
Because the number of electoral college representatives a state gets is dependent on the number of people in it, this creates an imbalance.
Two states, one large in population, one smaller, could have vastly differing numbers of electoral college votes. But if their voter turnout is the same, whoever voted in the larger state actually had a bigger say in who became president.
For example, I'll say that state A has 10 million people in it and gets 20 electoral college votes. State B has 4 million people and gets 8 electoral college votes. They both have the same turnout, 2 million people. So in state A, a vote was worth 20/2000000 =.00001 of an electoral college vote, and in state B, a vote was worth 8/2000000 =.000004 of an electoral college vote. So the person who lives in state B has a vote that's worth a lot less than the person who lives in state A.
What needs to happen is for there to be the abolishment of the electoral college. It was founded under the belief that because voting is such an important right, everyone would want to do it. We know today that that is just simply not the case, and so we should move to a simple majority vote for president and cut out the middleman.
One thing that I didn't mention up above in my electoral college discussion is that the electoral college representatives can vote however they like! Even if the popular vote of the state voted for a Republican, the electoral college rep. can vote for a Democrat if he or she wishes! This is completely absurd.
Anyway, someone else can take the soapbox now, thanks for your time.
Don't forget the bookpool, at least for computer books. I haven't been able to beat their prices anywhere.
B&N is usually better than Amazon, too, because B&N offers coupons (which is why they're taking heavy losses on their web sales, from what I've read. Check out Movie Price Guide for coupons to B&N, as well as a lot of DVD sellers.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
I can appreciate the fact that he wants to refute the benchmarks; he may even be right about everything. I don't know, it's not my area of expertise. But what I do know is that if you are trying to debate an issue, in order to present your argument successfully, it is best if you can do it with good grammar.
This article had a whole bunch of grammar mistakes that probably would be caught if there had been an editor involved. Ah well, the one thing the web doesn't usually provide us with; someone to help control content.
Actually, Creative Labs makes one that has a 6GB hard disk in it and allows you to make playlists and do all of the things that you can do with xmms or winamp...I don't have one, but I've considered getting one, considering they're only $600 or so. Anyone have one and like to share your experience?
Actually, so that my post gets moderated up:) maybe I should also note that thinkgeek has a similar product, though for a little more money.
>Get some respect for yourself and then you won't give a rats ass if someone is saying something about you.
Damn straight. This is the view that people should have, though it doesn't seem to be the view that they do. Someone posted about being blasted in a newsgroup by someone. My response is, "why do you care what someone says if they don't even know you?"
This is a problem that comes back to political correctness and the fact that people have apparently forgotten the old "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" litany. Or maybe people just need to get a life.
I don't know that I'd email all of them, though. What I'd do is try to gather student support of your site. If you're getting a lot of hits from students and it's something that many of them use and love, I would think that other students would be willing to help you in your fight. They are probably a little too apathetic to write a letter on their own, but you could set up a table somewhere and have people sign a petition to let you keep your site.
Also, I'd be surprised if Purdue University owns the trademark. Seems to me that Purdue chicken would have gotten the claim first. Not that I know, though.
Well, I wouldn't call it free...in order to live in the dorms, you were spending at least $1k extra every year over what it would cost you to get an apartment off campus.
I mean, come on, kids... There's a real world out there.
You've obviously never lived in Pittsburgh. Yeah, there is a real world out there, but none of it is in Pittsburgh.
Actually, what CMU does is just disable your network port.
This doesn't surprise me too much, a few years ago they did it because some students had pirated software (no way, man) on their network accessible drives. They kept it quiet, and they didn't do it to too many people, so it wasn't the big deal that this is.
The real problem with CMU's computing resources is that its head, John Lerchey, is a real prick, and gets off on taking students' connections away. He knows that most of us lived and died on our ethernet connection, but doesn't care. My freshman year, 5 years ago, he disabled my friend's ethernet port because he was supposedly "seen" on a warez channel on IRC. That was even more ridiculous than this case, even though it was only one student.
The above email address no longer works because CMU is too cheap to give us alumni accounts.
If you read the story, you'll find that it was milk rather than water so that the rats could not see the platform, ensuring that they were using memory rather than their visual skills to find it again.
So while there could have been a different choice made, I doubt that the milk had anything to do with it. I'm sure the rats weren't trying to drink it; after all, it was powdered milk.
The judge probably is sensible. That's not the problem. The problem is that most people, which probably includes 99% of judges, don't really know how any of this computer stuff works. If people did know how any of this stuff works, we wouldn't see all of the dumb software patents that we've been seeing, for things like digital music and "1-click technology".
The ignorance of the general public is what Amazon is relying on, and they're probably ok doing so.
But they've definitely ensured that I'm not going to buy anything from them. Ever.
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg - Bjarne Stroustrup
Good point. JonKatz's article glossed over the fact that it wasn't that NYC Mayor Giuliani was trying to shut down the Brooklyn Museum for displaying the art, he was objecting to the fact that taxpayers were paying for objectionable art. Which I believe he should have a right to do. I can definitely agree that it shouldn't be automatic for them to get tax money simply because they have gotten it in the past.
I don't think this is an offtopic post, I think this is an example of a moderator who is a bit overzealous.
And I think this post actually makes a good point. Nobody wants you to make a choice. Special interest groups impress their views upon you through legislation. And really, in a lot of cases, I see this as an extension of religion. God tells you not to do something; in effect, it becomes a law for you to abide by. Now instead of having God tell you what you can or cannot do, you get people in Congress to tell everyone what they can or cannot do; after all, it's for their own good. Religious people want everyone to be "saved," so instead of having a law of God, which is not punishable here, they want to have a law of the land, which is.
So not only do they want to eliminate choices for themselves, they eliminate choices for everyone. Because there are behaviors and actions that have become proscribed for everyone, the set of choices an individual can "lawfully" make has been reduced.
This ties in directly to speech. They not only want to limit actions, they want to limit what is spoken, too.
So no, offtopic was not the right word to use. Next time try "interesting".
I actually got a tip from another slashdot user about where to go and get an old style one, brand new, for $24. The shipping is a little steep, $14, which is why I bought two.:)
I will agree that they fixed a few of the problems of the v1.0 Natural Keyboard, but I can't tell you the number of times in just the past two months that I've hit Insert instead of Page Up, causing a shitload of stuff to be pasted from the X clipboard, making my xterms go haywire for a minute. They could have fixed the problems with the keys (specifically, the 'N' key and the 'T' key) without moving everything around and without removing that bar in the front.
The old MS Natural Keyboards were the best thing to ever come out of Redmond. The bar in the front which elevates the front of the keyboard was the greatest idea, I have one, I have always used that bar.
But alas, a couple months ago I started a new job, and I wanted a Natural Keyboard, and the only ones that you can buy anymore are the Elite models, which are the new ones with the slightly (very slightly) smaller footprint, but with a bunch of keys cut in half. No longer are the function keys actually usable. Escape, heck, they certainly didn't have emacs in mind when designing this keyboard. Not only that, but they actually rearranged the home/end/delete/page up/page down/insert keys. They rotated them 90 degrees, too! Certainly not a gaming keyboard, they cut the arrow keys in half and arranged them in a plus sign format instead of the standard T shape.
All of these things could be overlooked. This is at work, so I'm not gaming, and I've adjusted to the size and placement of the keys anyway. The thing that is absolutely intolerable about this keyboard is that there is no bar in the front anymore. They actually put props on the back of the keyboard instead! Now it's just like any other keyboard on the market. Don't waste your money on this piece of shit. I actually have a 2 inch book underneath it, propping it up off the desk.
So the one good thing that has ever come out of MS was corrupted on the second iteration.
There's probably an underground market for the old style keyboards, I don't know anyone who has liked the new one once they have switched.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
I really liked Millenium, but it suffers from the same thing as the X-files: Chris Carter is behind it, and he's a wanker. His theory of "keeping people in suspense" just blows. The best X-files episodes are the ones that are not related to the conspiracy / alien takeover crap, the ones that were 1 hour long and were never spoken of again, because they have resolution in them. At the end of the episode, you saw a complete story. After watching 6 seasons and a $100M film, we still don't have any the complete story.
There were episodes of Millenium that I didn't like, but they were fewer and further between than episodes of the X-files. This, I think, is due to the fact that they had a complete story in them, as well as having the series-running conspiracy of the Millenium Group. So he obviously knows how to do a series that gives you a piece of the puzzle a little more frequently, but also keeps you interested in between pieces.
The thing that I found amusing about this story is that Fox apparently knew they were underselling it and offered Chris Carter incentives to let them do so, while screwing everyone else over. So I'd imagine that it won't be hard for Duchovny to get some money out of Fox over all this. I just wonder if he isn't pissed at Chris Carter over it, too.
If you know what area you want to work in (ie architecture, databases, operating systems, AI, etc), figure out who the top people in the field are and apply to those schools.
This is a good point. If you look in the US News & World Report Guide to Graduate Schools, they tell you what the relative strengths of the schools are. For example (and I'm another biased person, I just graduated from CMU), CMU is really strong when it comes to AI and robotics, but there are other areas where it doesn't stack up as well as other schools. So which concentration you want to go into will determine where you want to go. Or at least help you.
You know, I think the point of Suck is that it is designed to complain, bitch, or deride everything. Though, you are right, after a while I just got too tired to read it and it was quite annoying.
I agree with you on the being too tired thing...how many pages do you have to scroll down to read the whole article? I think they make some interesting observations in the article, but the format makes me not want to read it, that's for sure.
Hmm...maybe a Motorola spinoff? Could it have been a plot from day one?
The main problem I see with that is that if they have to replace the satellites in a year or two, it doesn't seem like that would give them enough of a jump...
Slashdot Mirror
You're absolutely right about this...but you forgot the stock footage of the analysis machine that they use at least once an episode for analyzing pretty much anything...
Talk to a lawyer, not these jokers on here.
As I sit here browsing as 2+, I notice that half the posts are from katz himself...doesn't he already have enough karma? Why pull the publicity stunt, other than to see himself write.
One thing that is never considered in his article is the number of people who don't turn out or who vote for a third party due to the fact that their vote doesn't really count anyway. I live in Texas, and I heard someone say the other day, "A vote not for Gore is a vote for Bush," though the person who said it said that they were going to vote for Nader. If it were a simple majority election, people would have more of a reason to do something like vote for Gore, even while living in Texas. My friend is going to vote for Nader not because he necessarily wants to, but because it really doesn't matter who he votes for. And that's just wrong.
Another thing that I find almost disturbing about this article is the fact that he resorts to name-calling in the article. He calls people who don't believe in the electoral college "simple-minded majoritarians." This while he doesn't even consider the whole issue involved with the electoral college. Rather than fleshing out some of the issues (one of which I mentioned above), he regurgitates statistics and hurls pejoratives at people who don't agree with him.
However, it doesn't surprise me that he overlooks the human issues. The guy's more lifeless than Gumby if you watch him on the Sam & Cokie show.
In a country where it is illegal to discriminate against anyone for any reason (other than insurance purposes, anyway), there is still one of the most blatant imbalances in our election process: the electoral college. The electoral college is a concept similar to a party convention where your state has sent a certain number of representatives to vote for who should be the candidate for your party. In the electoral college, however, the people who are sent are based on which candidate wins the general election in your state with a similar majority vote. If a Republican wins in your state, the Republican Party of that state sends a certain number of representatives to the electoral college to vote for who should actually be president.
Here, there are a certain number of votes that your state gets for the president. California, Texas, and New York all have tremendous influence in the election process, because the number of electoral college votes that your state gets is dependent on the population of your state, and as it turns out, that number is also equal to the number of representatives your state has in the House of Representatives.
Because the number of electoral college representatives a state gets is dependent on the number of people in it, this creates an imbalance. Two states, one large in population, one smaller, could have vastly differing numbers of electoral college votes. But if their voter turnout is the same, whoever voted in the larger state actually had a bigger say in who became president.
For example, I'll say that state A has 10 million people in it and gets 20 electoral college votes. State B has 4 million people and gets 8 electoral college votes. They both have the same turnout, 2 million people. So in state A, a vote was worth 20/2000000 = .00001 of an electoral college vote, and in state B, a vote was worth 8/2000000 = .000004 of an electoral college vote. So the person who lives in state B has a vote that's worth a lot less than the person who lives in state A.
What needs to happen is for there to be the abolishment of the electoral college. It was founded under the belief that because voting is such an important right, everyone would want to do it. We know today that that is just simply not the case, and so we should move to a simple majority vote for president and cut out the middleman.
One thing that I didn't mention up above in my electoral college discussion is that the electoral college representatives can vote however they like! Even if the popular vote of the state voted for a Republican, the electoral college rep. can vote for a Democrat if he or she wishes! This is completely absurd.
Anyway, someone else can take the soapbox now, thanks for your time.
Don't forget the bookpool, at least for computer books. I haven't been able to beat their prices anywhere.
B&N is usually better than Amazon, too, because B&N offers coupons (which is why they're taking heavy losses on their web sales, from what I've read. Check out Movie Price Guide for coupons to B&N, as well as a lot of DVD sellers.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
No, I couldn't have. But knowing that, I wouldn't have tried, either.
I can appreciate the fact that he wants to refute the benchmarks; he may even be right about everything. I don't know, it's not my area of expertise. But what I do know is that if you are trying to debate an issue, in order to present your argument successfully, it is best if you can do it with good grammar.
This article had a whole bunch of grammar mistakes that probably would be caught if there had been an editor involved. Ah well, the one thing the web doesn't usually provide us with; someone to help control content.
Actually, so that my post gets moderated up :) maybe I should also note that thinkgeek has a similar product, though for a little more money.
Damn straight. This is the view that people should have, though it doesn't seem to be the view that they do. Someone posted about being blasted in a newsgroup by someone. My response is, "why do you care what someone says if they don't even know you?"
This is a problem that comes back to political correctness and the fact that people have apparently forgotten the old "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" litany. Or maybe people just need to get a life.
Also, I'd be surprised if Purdue University owns the trademark. Seems to me that Purdue chicken would have gotten the claim first. Not that I know, though.
Well, I wouldn't call it free...in order to live in the dorms, you were spending at least $1k extra every year over what it would cost you to get an apartment off campus.
I mean, come on, kids... There's a real world out there.
You've obviously never lived in Pittsburgh. Yeah, there is a real world out there, but none of it is in Pittsburgh.
This doesn't surprise me too much, a few years ago they did it because some students had pirated software (no way, man) on their network accessible drives. They kept it quiet, and they didn't do it to too many people, so it wasn't the big deal that this is.
The real problem with CMU's computing resources is that its head, John Lerchey, is a real prick, and gets off on taking students' connections away. He knows that most of us lived and died on our ethernet connection, but doesn't care. My freshman year, 5 years ago, he disabled my friend's ethernet port because he was supposedly "seen" on a warez channel on IRC. That was even more ridiculous than this case, even though it was only one student.
The above email address no longer works because CMU is too cheap to give us alumni accounts.
So while there could have been a different choice made, I doubt that the milk had anything to do with it. I'm sure the rats weren't trying to drink it; after all, it was powdered milk.
I wasn't convinced before, but now I am!
The judge probably is sensible. That's not the problem. The problem is that most people, which probably includes 99% of judges, don't really know how any of this computer stuff works. If people did know how any of this stuff works, we wouldn't see all of the dumb software patents that we've been seeing, for things like digital music and "1-click technology".
The ignorance of the general public is what Amazon is relying on, and they're probably ok doing so.
But they've definitely ensured that I'm not going to buy anything from them. Ever.
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg - Bjarne Stroustrup
Good point. JonKatz's article glossed over the fact that it wasn't that NYC Mayor Giuliani was trying to shut down the Brooklyn Museum for displaying the art, he was objecting to the fact that taxpayers were paying for objectionable art. Which I believe he should have a right to do. I can definitely agree that it shouldn't be automatic for them to get tax money simply because they have gotten it in the past.
And I think this post actually makes a good point. Nobody wants you to make a choice. Special interest groups impress their views upon you through legislation. And really, in a lot of cases, I see this as an extension of religion. God tells you not to do something; in effect, it becomes a law for you to abide by. Now instead of having God tell you what you can or cannot do, you get people in Congress to tell everyone what they can or cannot do; after all, it's for their own good. Religious people want everyone to be "saved," so instead of having a law of God, which is not punishable here, they want to have a law of the land, which is.
So not only do they want to eliminate choices for themselves, they eliminate choices for everyone. Because there are behaviors and actions that have become proscribed for everyone, the set of choices an individual can "lawfully" make has been reduced.
This ties in directly to speech. They not only want to limit actions, they want to limit what is spoken, too.
So no, offtopic was not the right word to use. Next time try "interesting".
This is the place to look.
I will agree that they fixed a few of the problems of the v1.0 Natural Keyboard, but I can't tell you the number of times in just the past two months that I've hit Insert instead of Page Up, causing a shitload of stuff to be pasted from the X clipboard, making my xterms go haywire for a minute. They could have fixed the problems with the keys (specifically, the 'N' key and the 'T' key) without moving everything around and without removing that bar in the front.
But alas, a couple months ago I started a new job, and I wanted a Natural Keyboard, and the only ones that you can buy anymore are the Elite models, which are the new ones with the slightly (very slightly) smaller footprint, but with a bunch of keys cut in half. No longer are the function keys actually usable. Escape, heck, they certainly didn't have emacs in mind when designing this keyboard. Not only that, but they actually rearranged the home/end/delete/page up/page down/insert keys. They rotated them 90 degrees, too! Certainly not a gaming keyboard, they cut the arrow keys in half and arranged them in a plus sign format instead of the standard T shape.
All of these things could be overlooked. This is at work, so I'm not gaming, and I've adjusted to the size and placement of the keys anyway. The thing that is absolutely intolerable about this keyboard is that there is no bar in the front anymore. They actually put props on the back of the keyboard instead! Now it's just like any other keyboard on the market. Don't waste your money on this piece of shit. I actually have a 2 inch book underneath it, propping it up off the desk.
So the one good thing that has ever come out of MS was corrupted on the second iteration.
There's probably an underground market for the old style keyboards, I don't know anyone who has liked the new one once they have switched.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
There were episodes of Millenium that I didn't like, but they were fewer and further between than episodes of the X-files. This, I think, is due to the fact that they had a complete story in them, as well as having the series-running conspiracy of the Millenium Group. So he obviously knows how to do a series that gives you a piece of the puzzle a little more frequently, but also keeps you interested in between pieces.
The thing that I found amusing about this story is that Fox apparently knew they were underselling it and offered Chris Carter incentives to let them do so, while screwing everyone else over. So I'd imagine that it won't be hard for Duchovny to get some money out of Fox over all this. I just wonder if he isn't pissed at Chris Carter over it, too.
This is a good point. If you look in the US News & World Report Guide to Graduate Schools, they tell you what the relative strengths of the schools are. For example (and I'm another biased person, I just graduated from CMU), CMU is really strong when it comes to AI and robotics, but there are other areas where it doesn't stack up as well as other schools. So which concentration you want to go into will determine where you want to go. Or at least help you.
I agree with you on the being too tired thing...how many pages do you have to scroll down to read the whole article? I think they make some interesting observations in the article, but the format makes me not want to read it, that's for sure.
If this is off-topic, don't post Suck articles.
The main problem I see with that is that if they have to replace the satellites in a year or two, it doesn't seem like that would give them enough of a jump...