Yeah, you're right. Let me try (after all, I am half-Sveedish on my mother's side):
"A Svedeesh IT cunsooltunt hes coosed a borking stir in deeplumetic curcles effter poobleeshing a leest ooff bork-secret lug-in deteeels belungeeng tu 100 borked imbesseees, poobleec oothureeties und puleeticel perties eruoond zee borking vurld. Dun Igersted seeed he-a vesn't tryeeng tu iern bork muney, geeen poobleecity oor get a borking neme-a fur heemselff in heckeeng curcles, bork bork. Insteed he-a cleeemed thet poobleeshing zee borking leest ves ieseeer thun cuntecting zee borked oorguneezeshuns indeefidooelly -- und thet iff he-a hed hunded it tu zee borking Svedeesh oothureeties zeen thet vuoold hefe-a beee bork-bork spyeeng."
How do you get from here to there? As far as I can tell, his philosophy is more or less, "The universe got along fine without me for billions of years, and will do the same after I'm gone." (which is basically my own position). He didn't say anything about being special or nothingness preceding or following his existence; he merely observed that he's not afraid of death because he was, in effect, in that same state before.
Interesting thought. But I wonder whether Google would want to have software patents in general invalidated? I suspect they may have some of their own that they'd rather keep, so they might think it worthwhile to settle with the patent trolls. I hope they do fight it all the way, as I think software patenting has gotten out of hand; I'm just not sure they'll decide it's in their best interests.
Just one thing. Please don't assume we Americans are a monolithic block of people who all think the same way. This country is deeply divided politically, and there are many millions of us who strenuously disagree with what our government has done and is doing in other countries. Unfortunately, there are way too many of us who vote for people based on image rather than substance; I've read that many Bush supporters actually disagree with him on major issues (one person in Wisconsin was quoted as saying that she voted for Bush because he was in favor of stem-cell research, though he has actually thrown up many roadblocks against it).
Oh, bugger! WWN was great for passing time in the checkout line! I mean, they're the ones that broke the news about finding Satan's skull (complete with little horns in the forehead). It was such a relief to know he was dead!
Hmm.... Maybe I should have actually bought a copy now and then....
I see what you mean, but income isn't the whole story. There are other issues, such as living expenses, history of on-time payment vs. default, etc. I've heard of truck drivers who get driver's licenses from multiple states (in the US), using some of them when they get pulled over for speeding or get involved in accidents, and another one known as the "White Lady" for job applications; that way, they can claim a pristine driving record. I'd wonder whether someone who wasn't really a good credit risk might be able to set up a "White Lady" identity or three.
I like the idea in theory, but the problem I see with that is that creditors use payment history on other accounts and total debt load as criteria for creditworthiness. Virtual identities would mean that they would have to go strictly on income, without knowing whether you have too much debt to have any hope of ever paying it back. 100 debts of $1000 each is just as much as a single debt of $100,000, but if the creditors don't know about each other, they don't really know that you can pay them all back.
I don't know specifically about USB printers, but I use PrimoPDF to do my printing on my laptop, when I don't happen to have access to a physical printer. It works very nicely for me.
Feel free to read about base if you care, but I doubt you do.
Ok, I read it. As far as I can tell, it said basically the same thing I did, just more rigorously. From your link:
In base b, the digits 0, 1,..., |b|-1 are used (where, by convention, for bases larger than 10, the symbols A, B, C,... are generally used as symbols representing the decimal numbers 10, 11, 12,...).
If we plug 1024 into b, we get 0, 1,..., 1023. Accordingly, one needs 1024 digits to represent all non-negative integers less than 1024 base 10, and 1024 base 10 == 10 base 1024.
(what's with the random bolding of words?)
Just emphasis; imagine that we are speaking face to face, and that I'm speaking the bolded words slightly louder.:)
Because some of us geeks like to discuss politics, and this is the politics section. You want to talk tech and ignore politics, fine. If you log in, you can adjust your preferences so that the politics section doesn't show up. Of course, that does mean you'll have to check a box to post as AC whilst logged in.
Base 1024 would mean that 10 in that base is equal to decimal 1024. You'd be hard-pressed to come up with enough single characters to represent all the digits from 1 to 10-1 in that base!:)
1. Where did the parent say anything about Linux being a superior OS?
2. Even if Linux is a superior OS to Solaris, that doesn't necessarily mean that every single piece of it is superior to everything in Solaris. The parent was talking about "bits and pieces that seem useful"; IOW, find what makes sense to use, and ignore the rest.
It wasn't me who modded you down, but how do you figure the post was on topic in the first place? The article is about the RIAA, etc., and you started spouting off about Open Source. I suppose there's a very tenuous connection in terms of "Information wants to be free" or something, but it seems a stretch to me.
Perhaps I do underestimate the power of pandering, but under your theory, wouldn't all candidates be trying to pander to the same people? Your theory, as I understand it, is that candidates would ignore sparsely populated areas in favor of the large population centers, in hopes of garnering the vast majority of the votes there. But even if that theory is correct, it's a wash anyway, because the candidates will have to work to offset the other's efforts. And even if pandering pays, when the candidates are all doing the same, how much difference does it make, anyway?
My feeling is that the only reason concentrating on heavily populated areas pays off is because of the EC. Spending the majority of your time in swing states with large blocks of votes works because if you win a state by the slimmest of margins, you get all of its electoral votes. You can afford to give up votes in your 'safe' states, because it's unlikely that enough people are going to be sufficiently annoyed by your ignoring them to change their votes out of spite. I agree that campaigns would have to be run very differently, but I think they would be less biased toward large population centers than they are now. Candidates would need to address the concerns of the residents of smaller states, because their votes add up; if one candidate ignored them, while the other paid some attention, the first candidate might get a nasty surprise.
The thing is, even in the reddest of red states and the bluest of blue states, there are still a significant number of people who will vote the other way or who are undecided. Under the Electoral College system (with the exception of the two states which divide their votes proportionally, but we're only talking about 6 or so electors here), these people simply don't matter; their votes are effectively erased by the majority in that state. But without the EC, those votes get added to the nationwide votes for that candidate.
I just think it's wrong that someone could lose heavily in the popular vote, yet theoretically get enough electoral votes to take the election (I believe this has happened at least twice in our history, without taking the time to look up details; though as I recall, they were relatively close ones anyway). With the right conditions, such a candidate could take only 25-30% of the vote, but by winning by razor-thin margins in large states, and losing heavily in small ones, that candidate could beat one who trounced him in the popular vote by a 2-1 margin.
I don't want to turn this into an R vs. D thing, either; I'm pretty much an ambidextrous voter, and have voted for plenty of candidates from both parties, plus a few third-party people as well. But since I live in MA, my vote pretty much doesn't matter, except in primaries (I drew an R ballot in the 2000 election, so I could vote for McCain). The day MA votes for a Republican for President, I'm going to carry an umbrella to protect myself against the pig droppings....:)
In the last election, 54.3% of the voters in California went for Kerry, while 44.4% went for Bush (source); in terms of votes cast, it was 6,745,485 for Kerry, and 5,509,826 for Bush (with some sliver for other candidates), which means that Kerry took 1,235,659 more votes than Bush. New York was a little more emphatically for Kerry, giving him 58.4% (4,314,280 votes) to Bush's 40.1% (2,962,567); still, this was a difference of 1,351,713 votes, which wasn't that much more than the difference in CA. Texas was almost a mirror image of New York, giving 61.1% to Bush and 38.2% to Kerry (4,526,917 Bush votes - 2,832,704 Kerry votes = 1,694,213 margin for Bush). Taking the three states together, the total difference was 893,159 votes, in favor of Kerry. This is about 0.7% of the total votes cast nationwide for Bush or Kerry in that election. I think it is highly unlikely that campaigning exclusively in those states would have changed the numbers by more than a few percentage points either way. Besides, if concentrating on those states and "promising them the moon" would influence votes by a greater degree, what you would have is both major candidates doing the same thing in the same states; their efforts would offset each other. Meanwhile, the rest of the country would be watching this, and possibly become so annoyed with the major candidates that they might decide to follow someone else; I don't think the major candidates could afford to ignore the less populous states even to the extent that they already do.
The reason those big states have as much influence as they do on the elections now is that the EC is a winner-take-all deal (with the exception of Maine and one other small state, IIRC). It doesn't matter whether a candidate wins 50.001% to 49.999% or 90% to 10%; the electoral votes are the same. Take away the EC, and the 40-45% of the voters in the populous states who disagree with the majority there would actually have some say in the election.
As for the Founders, I am aware of the debates on those issues. If their lives depended on it (I take it you're assuming that the failure to form the U.S. as we know it would have threatened their lives; I'm not quite sure how, as the Revolutionary War was long past by the time of the Constitutional Convention, and it wouldn't have been profitable for Britain to try to reconquer us by that time, as far as I can see), that has no bearing on whether their answer was the best possible one. They were human beings, just like us. I have a suspicion that if they could have been given a glimpse of the future, they might have made some different choices than they did.
You are making the hidden assumptions that A) only one candidate will be campaigning in CA, TX, NY, etc., and B) campaigning automatically translates into winning the vast majority of the votes in those areas. Both are obviously incorrect; all candidates who can afford to will maintain a presence in those areas, and there will be a core of voters on each side who won't change their minds no matter what the candidate from the other party says.
These mother lodes of votes hold even more power now than they would if the EC didn't exist, because winning 51% of the vote there translates to winning 100% of their electoral votes. I believe that eliminating the EC would actually remove the incentive for concentrating on high-population areas, because a single vote in New York would be worth exactly the same as a single vote in Montana. If candidates concentrate on the high-population areas, the residents of low-population areas will notice and likely make them pay for it. As things stand, a handful of states effectively determine the winner of the Presidency, and that is where the bulk of campaigning already occurs.
If that were entirely true, people wouldn't risk their lives to save others, donate to charity, etc. I would agree that most people are selfish most of the time, but not that all people are selfish all of the time.
How about the ability to haul a week's worth of groceries for a family of 4? Or perhaps the ability to go somewhere in inclement weather without being too uncomfortable? Modern life calls for more mobility than life 100 years ago; not everyone is in a position to live, work and shop within a limited area.
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Yeah, you're right. Let me try (after all, I am half-Sveedish on my mother's side): "A Svedeesh IT cunsooltunt hes coosed a borking stir in deeplumetic curcles effter poobleeshing a leest ooff bork-secret lug-in deteeels belungeeng tu 100 borked imbesseees, poobleec oothureeties und puleeticel perties eruoond zee borking vurld. Dun Igersted seeed he-a vesn't tryeeng tu iern bork muney, geeen poobleecity oor get a borking neme-a fur heemselff in heckeeng curcles, bork bork. Insteed he-a cleeemed thet poobleeshing zee borking leest ves ieseeer thun cuntecting zee borked oorguneezeshuns indeefidooelly -- und thet iff he-a hed hunded it tu zee borking Svedeesh oothureeties zeen thet vuoold hefe-a beee bork-bork spyeeng."
How do you get from here to there? As far as I can tell, his philosophy is more or less, "The universe got along fine without me for billions of years, and will do the same after I'm gone." (which is basically my own position). He didn't say anything about being special or nothingness preceding or following his existence; he merely observed that he's not afraid of death because he was, in effect, in that same state before.
-Mike
Interesting thought. But I wonder whether Google would want to have software patents in general invalidated? I suspect they may have some of their own that they'd rather keep, so they might think it worthwhile to settle with the patent trolls. I hope they do fight it all the way, as I think software patenting has gotten out of hand; I'm just not sure they'll decide it's in their best interests.
-Mike
Just one thing. Please don't assume we Americans are a monolithic block of people who all think the same way. This country is deeply divided politically, and there are many millions of us who strenuously disagree with what our government has done and is doing in other countries. Unfortunately, there are way too many of us who vote for people based on image rather than substance; I've read that many Bush supporters actually disagree with him on major issues (one person in Wisconsin was quoted as saying that she voted for Bush because he was in favor of stem-cell research, though he has actually thrown up many roadblocks against it).
-Mike
Oh, bugger! WWN was great for passing time in the checkout line! I mean, they're the ones that broke the news about finding Satan's skull (complete with little horns in the forehead). It was such a relief to know he was dead!
Hmm.... Maybe I should have actually bought a copy now and then....
-Mike
I see what you mean, but income isn't the whole story. There are other issues, such as living expenses, history of on-time payment vs. default, etc. I've heard of truck drivers who get driver's licenses from multiple states (in the US), using some of them when they get pulled over for speeding or get involved in accidents, and another one known as the "White Lady" for job applications; that way, they can claim a pristine driving record. I'd wonder whether someone who wasn't really a good credit risk might be able to set up a "White Lady" identity or three.
-Mike
I like the idea in theory, but the problem I see with that is that creditors use payment history on other accounts and total debt load as criteria for creditworthiness. Virtual identities would mean that they would have to go strictly on income, without knowing whether you have too much debt to have any hope of ever paying it back. 100 debts of $1000 each is just as much as a single debt of $100,000, but if the creditors don't know about each other, they don't really know that you can pay them all back.
-Mike
I don't know specifically about USB printers, but I use PrimoPDF to do my printing on my laptop, when I don't happen to have access to a physical printer. It works very nicely for me.
-Mike
Seriously... it's like Beta coming to the party with VHS, only a few decades too late instead of a few years.
Actually Beta came first. The short story is, VHS won because of better marketing and pricing. The longer story is here.
-Mike
Constitution? That old piece of paper? Who pays attention to that anymore?
-Mike
Well, you can kill and eat a human, so it fits your definition. You just have qualms about doing so (which is a good thing). :)
-Mike
Ok, I read it. As far as I can tell, it said basically the same thing I did, just more rigorously. From your link: If we plug 1024 into b, we get 0, 1,
(what's with the random bolding of words?)
Just emphasis; imagine that we are speaking face to face, and that I'm speaking the bolded words slightly louder.
-Mike
Because some of us geeks like to discuss politics, and this is the politics section. You want to talk tech and ignore politics, fine. If you log in, you can adjust your preferences so that the politics section doesn't show up. Of course, that does mean you'll have to check a box to post as AC whilst logged in.
-Mike
Base 1024 would mean that 10 in that base is equal to decimal 1024. You'd be hard-pressed to come up with enough single characters to represent all the digits from 1 to 10-1 in that base! :)
-Mike
So, what you're saying is, we need to convince the government that Al Qaeda has some terrorist training camps out in the asteroid belt? :^)
-Mike
1. Where did the parent say anything about Linux being a superior OS?
2. Even if Linux is a superior OS to Solaris, that doesn't necessarily mean that every single piece of it is superior to everything in Solaris. The parent was talking about "bits and pieces that seem useful"; IOW, find what makes sense to use, and ignore the rest.
-Mike
It wasn't me who modded you down, but how do you figure the post was on topic in the first place? The article is about the RIAA, etc., and you started spouting off about Open Source. I suppose there's a very tenuous connection in terms of "Information wants to be free" or something, but it seems a stretch to me.
-Mike
Perhaps I do underestimate the power of pandering, but under your theory, wouldn't all candidates be trying to pander to the same people? Your theory, as I understand it, is that candidates would ignore sparsely populated areas in favor of the large population centers, in hopes of garnering the vast majority of the votes there. But even if that theory is correct, it's a wash anyway, because the candidates will have to work to offset the other's efforts. And even if pandering pays, when the candidates are all doing the same, how much difference does it make, anyway?
:)
My feeling is that the only reason concentrating on heavily populated areas pays off is because of the EC. Spending the majority of your time in swing states with large blocks of votes works because if you win a state by the slimmest of margins, you get all of its electoral votes. You can afford to give up votes in your 'safe' states, because it's unlikely that enough people are going to be sufficiently annoyed by your ignoring them to change their votes out of spite. I agree that campaigns would have to be run very differently, but I think they would be less biased toward large population centers than they are now. Candidates would need to address the concerns of the residents of smaller states, because their votes add up; if one candidate ignored them, while the other paid some attention, the first candidate might get a nasty surprise.
The thing is, even in the reddest of red states and the bluest of blue states, there are still a significant number of people who will vote the other way or who are undecided. Under the Electoral College system (with the exception of the two states which divide their votes proportionally, but we're only talking about 6 or so electors here), these people simply don't matter; their votes are effectively erased by the majority in that state. But without the EC, those votes get added to the nationwide votes for that candidate.
I just think it's wrong that someone could lose heavily in the popular vote, yet theoretically get enough electoral votes to take the election (I believe this has happened at least twice in our history, without taking the time to look up details; though as I recall, they were relatively close ones anyway). With the right conditions, such a candidate could take only 25-30% of the vote, but by winning by razor-thin margins in large states, and losing heavily in small ones, that candidate could beat one who trounced him in the popular vote by a 2-1 margin.
I don't want to turn this into an R vs. D thing, either; I'm pretty much an ambidextrous voter, and have voted for plenty of candidates from both parties, plus a few third-party people as well. But since I live in MA, my vote pretty much doesn't matter, except in primaries (I drew an R ballot in the 2000 election, so I could vote for McCain). The day MA votes for a Republican for President, I'm going to carry an umbrella to protect myself against the pig droppings....
-Mike
In the last election, 54.3% of the voters in California went for Kerry, while 44.4% went for Bush (source); in terms of votes cast, it was 6,745,485 for Kerry, and 5,509,826 for Bush (with some sliver for other candidates), which means that Kerry took 1,235,659 more votes than Bush. New York was a little more emphatically for Kerry, giving him 58.4% (4,314,280 votes) to Bush's 40.1% (2,962,567); still, this was a difference of 1,351,713 votes, which wasn't that much more than the difference in CA. Texas was almost a mirror image of New York, giving 61.1% to Bush and 38.2% to Kerry (4,526,917 Bush votes - 2,832,704 Kerry votes = 1,694,213 margin for Bush). Taking the three states together, the total difference was 893,159 votes, in favor of Kerry. This is about 0.7% of the total votes cast nationwide for Bush or Kerry in that election. I think it is highly unlikely that campaigning exclusively in those states would have changed the numbers by more than a few percentage points either way. Besides, if concentrating on those states and "promising them the moon" would influence votes by a greater degree, what you would have is both major candidates doing the same thing in the same states; their efforts would offset each other. Meanwhile, the rest of the country would be watching this, and possibly become so annoyed with the major candidates that they might decide to follow someone else; I don't think the major candidates could afford to ignore the less populous states even to the extent that they already do.
The reason those big states have as much influence as they do on the elections now is that the EC is a winner-take-all deal (with the exception of Maine and one other small state, IIRC). It doesn't matter whether a candidate wins 50.001% to 49.999% or 90% to 10%; the electoral votes are the same. Take away the EC, and the 40-45% of the voters in the populous states who disagree with the majority there would actually have some say in the election.
As for the Founders, I am aware of the debates on those issues. If their lives depended on it (I take it you're assuming that the failure to form the U.S. as we know it would have threatened their lives; I'm not quite sure how, as the Revolutionary War was long past by the time of the Constitutional Convention, and it wouldn't have been profitable for Britain to try to reconquer us by that time, as far as I can see), that has no bearing on whether their answer was the best possible one. They were human beings, just like us. I have a suspicion that if they could have been given a glimpse of the future, they might have made some different choices than they did.
-Mike
You are making the hidden assumptions that A) only one candidate will be campaigning in CA, TX, NY, etc., and B) campaigning automatically translates into winning the vast majority of the votes in those areas. Both are obviously incorrect; all candidates who can afford to will maintain a presence in those areas, and there will be a core of voters on each side who won't change their minds no matter what the candidate from the other party says.
These mother lodes of votes hold even more power now than they would if the EC didn't exist, because winning 51% of the vote there translates to winning 100% of their electoral votes. I believe that eliminating the EC would actually remove the incentive for concentrating on high-population areas, because a single vote in New York would be worth exactly the same as a single vote in Montana. If candidates concentrate on the high-population areas, the residents of low-population areas will notice and likely make them pay for it. As things stand, a handful of states effectively determine the winner of the Presidency, and that is where the bulk of campaigning already occurs.
-Mike
If that were entirely true, people wouldn't risk their lives to save others, donate to charity, etc. I would agree that most people are selfish most of the time, but not that all people are selfish all of the time.
-Mike
Tough crowd!
-Mike
Those who are running into problems with Verizon's blocked ports should take a look at this website.
-Mike
Ouch!
-Mike
How about the ability to haul a week's worth of groceries for a family of 4? Or perhaps the ability to go somewhere in inclement weather without being too uncomfortable? Modern life calls for more mobility than life 100 years ago; not everyone is in a position to live, work and shop within a limited area.
-Mike