Primary Election October 19, 1991 Edwin Edwards (D) - 523,096 (33.8%) David Duke (R) - 491,342 (31.7%) Buddy Roemer (R) - 410,690 (26.5%) Clyde Holloway (R) - 82,683 (5.3%)
Runoff Election November 16, 1991 Edwin Edwards (D) - 1,057,031 (61.2%) David Duke (R) - 671,009 (38.8%)
As you can see, Eddie Edwards would have won under a pure plurality system anyway, but the margin of victory would have been far smaller than I would have liked (I distinctly remember my parents discussing moving away had David Duke won).
The blanket primary allows voters to safely vote for marginal candidates. It reduces the effects of political parties (which IMO are irrelevant at the state level anyway). It encourages the ultimate choice of "the lesser of two evils", should this become necessary.
I still would prefer approval, instant-runoff, or many other alternative voting schemes, but our system is better than plurality.
As for who won that election? Duke didn't become governor, Edwards is in federal prison, and that wasn't the first time the people of this state have fucked ourselves over at the polls. Nobody won that one. I think we did better in the most recent gubernatorial election, though.
I haven't tried this out, and I know it requires learning how to type on a new interface (which is probably annoying), but what about a PDA or smart phone plus something like the Frogpad (one-handed keyboard), modified to strap to the wrist?
And this is a better way to fix the system... how? By having Aniue make sure that neither they, nor anybody else, steps out of line? If the judges won't be responsible, why would any other part of the government be?
True, but I must admit that for those times that I actually do feel like transparency (and yes, sometimes I feel like transparency, using Mod4 v to toggle it), the window managers with integrated compositing make me slightly jealous; xcompmgr sucks ass. I know that there are other things to work on, now that Flux has gone 1.0, but basic use of Composite for transparency and simple eyecandy shouldn't be too hard for the devs to eventually address. They can leave in forced pseudo-transparency as a run-time option/fallback, and they can even make compiling in support for Composite optional for all I care, but the window manager needs to be the controlling entity; it is far too easy to expose race-type bugs with a compositing manager separate from the window manager.
[reads ChangeLog from trunk]
Oh... it looks like they've put it in there already.
As someone who is not exactly as calm as the GP (i.e., I need my normal anti-anxiety medicine, plus an additional sedative, plus diphenhydramine to exaggerate the side effects, in order to even go through it all without (almost) passing out---and I still need to be held down), I can say that its about the sight and feeling of the thing.
If I can't see it (it's microscopic) or feel it (it doesn't go deep enough to hit any nerves), is it really there? I know it's there, but does my subconscious?
My question is whether this device will work for huge assemblies of huge molecules (i.e., vaccinations)? Because I'd pay quite a bit not to have to worry about observing my senses serially shutting down---yes, I feel my circulatory system lose pressure and my heart palpitate, I see a gradual fade to black, then I hear a gradual fade to tinnitus; I never quite pass out, and I think that's the most traumatic part of it.
Using a taser should be regulated to the same degree as using a gun. IIRC, police generally don't receive guns until they are thoroughly drilled and evaluated on not only technique but also situational propriety. (Then again, this is the police. Maybe this is only what I expect from them, not what they actually do.) Surely the same standards should be applied to the taser and other such weaponry.
I think what the GP is trying to say---and if it's not, it's what I'm saying---is that Bush doesn't matter so much: the broad powers granted to the central government long ago are what have brought us to this point; and if you have your way, and Bush is impeached and removed from office, and whatever can be undone is undone, then what? Problems that pre-existed his presidency are still here, and they are endless in number and variety. Do you honestly believe, with the continuing trend of increasing power exercised by the Federal Government, that this present We the People are likely to elect responsible organs of government?
I wish I were at home right now and had access to my copy of The Road to Serfdom, because that's what this discussion has compelled me to want to re-read, for this is the form in which American fascism (as opposed to the German fascism discussed therein) will appear; we are not there yet, but unless we elect representatives willing to decrease the powers our government can wield, and unless we change for the better those fundamental aspects of government which the Constitution does not specify, then no matter what action is taken with respect to George W. Bush, the subsequent executives and executive actions are likely to be much worse.
Yeah, that's the conclusion I reached some time ago, that money could buy the specs. I do think that would have an adverse effect on us in the long term, because that would condition them into expecting money for specs, instead of the reward of increased market share alone.
I don't exactly agree with your phrasing (I see the GPL ensuring that the non-developer user is free, and BSD ensuring that the developer is free), but I think we both agree on the concepts.
The GPL is about restricting the developer in a few specific areas for the good of the non-developer. In fact, I see it as something that corrects a severe market failure; namely, that copyright, patent, et al. try to turn information, which has little to no scarcity beyond a quantity of 1, into a normal good, which I think it is not; the only scarcity---and therefore value to its originator---of information exists at that 0 to 1 margin (ideally, of course). In short, it's what you do with the information that has intrinsic value, not the information itself. (Of course, once information becomes widely disseminated, synthesis may greatly increase the value of the information to society.)
The people who prefer the BSD license probably agree with this, but they do not wish to bother themselves with any of this freedom claptrap. They want to code, and if somebody else uses it in another program, all the better.
And if the hardware comanies were as chummy with the FOSS community as they are with MS, then these problems wouldn't exist.
Why do you think that we were joyful when AMD actually released documentation on some of the newest ATI cards, and that if and when (I hope) they follow through on their promise and release the 3D portion, we'll be fuckin' ecstatic?
As for the ACPI problems, that's because ACPI is a clusterfuck. Companies who build laptops don't care to test their solutions on anything but Windows, whose own implementation of ACPI is subtly (and arguably purposefully) broken.
HTML + CSS attempts to solve a different problem from the one that ODF and OOXML are attempting to solve; HTML allows a fair amount of discretion in the way that the same document is displayed on different devices or by different renderers, while a file format like the ones used in WYSIWYG word processors attempts to make the same document display the same way on different devices and renderers.
The whole point is that CSS (in addition to being poorly designed in general) is not suited for formatting, for example, a word processing document, so that's why (AFAIK) it's not being used in ODF and shouldn't be used in any other format similar to ODF.
I prefer my quantities of abstract concepts in the *load system, you insensitive clod!
You know, "buttload", "assload", "shitload", "fuckload"... you're only supposed to reach "butt-ton", "asston", etc. until after you exhaust all the *loads, and that's several orders of magnitude too much for just one article.
The author of that license specifically identifies GPL as reducing the freedoms of the developer, which to be fair I'm inclined to agree with. The author of that license would be correct; however, what is not mentioned is that some freedom for the developer is traded off for the guarantee of freedom of the user.
I think Xorg 7.3 is scheduled for release on the 29th. Yes, as in a few days. I don't think they'll make that date, but hotplugging on input and output seems to be somewhat imminent.
Fly recon against Israel or against American interests in Iraq? Deploy weapons?
It may give a small advantage to terrorists or insurgents for a few times, but in the long run, air defense will adapt to them if they have any perceivable effect.
As I see it, the point of the Electoral College was to elect a set of representatives solely for the purpose of choosing the next President based on the merits of all of those candidates. These people were intended, as were our legislators, to be intelligent, beyond reproach, and capable of making sound, independent decisions, lest we have a tyranny of the majority through direct democracy.
Instead, what we do (and have always done for the past 200-or-so years) is to elect partisan stooges to vote for the candidate that their party tells them to.
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
on
The DRM Scorecard
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
No, I think that the reason they keep doing this is economic.
If they determine that the cost of adding DRM (licensing fees, lost sales, etc.) is less than the benefit (more legal purchases in place of casual copying), then they can say that DRM helps them (in the short term). I think that they have believed this to be the case.
Slashdot Mirror
The blanket primary allows voters to safely vote for marginal candidates. It reduces the effects of political parties (which IMO are irrelevant at the state level anyway). It encourages the ultimate choice of "the lesser of two evils", should this become necessary.
I still would prefer approval, instant-runoff, or many other alternative voting schemes, but our system is better than plurality.
As for who won that election? Duke didn't become governor, Edwards is in federal prison, and that wasn't the first time the people of this state have fucked ourselves over at the polls. Nobody won that one. I think we did better in the most recent gubernatorial election, though.
Terrorism is bad for the economy; car crashes, not so much.
I think that's what you're missing.
The childish bashing is still funny, as long as it doesn't get too serious.
I haven't tried this out, and I know it requires learning how to type on a new interface (which is probably annoying), but what about a PDA or smart phone plus something like the Frogpad (one-handed keyboard), modified to strap to the wrist?
And this is a better way to fix the system... how? By having Aniue make sure that neither they, nor anybody else, steps out of line? If the judges won't be responsible, why would any other part of the government be?
fortasse litteras italicas facere debuisti.
True, but I must admit that for those times that I actually do feel like transparency (and yes, sometimes I feel like transparency, using Mod4 v to toggle it), the window managers with integrated compositing make me slightly jealous; xcompmgr sucks ass. I know that there are other things to work on, now that Flux has gone 1.0, but basic use of Composite for transparency and simple eyecandy shouldn't be too hard for the devs to eventually address. They can leave in forced pseudo-transparency as a run-time option/fallback, and they can even make compiling in support for Composite optional for all I care, but the window manager needs to be the controlling entity; it is far too easy to expose race-type bugs with a compositing manager separate from the window manager.
[reads ChangeLog from trunk]
Oh... it looks like they've put it in there already.
There was even one street that intersected with itself.
Where's that? I don't know about any place here where a street intersects with itself.
As someone who is not exactly as calm as the GP (i.e., I need my normal anti-anxiety medicine, plus an additional sedative, plus diphenhydramine to exaggerate the side effects, in order to even go through it all without (almost) passing out---and I still need to be held down), I can say that its about the sight and feeling of the thing.
If I can't see it (it's microscopic) or feel it (it doesn't go deep enough to hit any nerves), is it really there? I know it's there, but does my subconscious?
My question is whether this device will work for huge assemblies of huge molecules (i.e., vaccinations)? Because I'd pay quite a bit not to have to worry about observing my senses serially shutting down---yes, I feel my circulatory system lose pressure and my heart palpitate, I see a gradual fade to black, then I hear a gradual fade to tinnitus; I never quite pass out, and I think that's the most traumatic part of it.
Using a taser should be regulated to the same degree as using a gun. IIRC, police generally don't receive guns until they are thoroughly drilled and evaluated on not only technique but also situational propriety. (Then again, this is the police. Maybe this is only what I expect from them, not what they actually do.) Surely the same standards should be applied to the taser and other such weaponry.
due to an ongoing criminal investigation.
Sorry.
---The Management
I think what the GP is trying to say---and if it's not, it's what I'm saying---is that Bush doesn't matter so much: the broad powers granted to the central government long ago are what have brought us to this point; and if you have your way, and Bush is impeached and removed from office, and whatever can be undone is undone, then what? Problems that pre-existed his presidency are still here, and they are endless in number and variety. Do you honestly believe, with the continuing trend of increasing power exercised by the Federal Government, that this present We the People are likely to elect responsible organs of government?
I wish I were at home right now and had access to my copy of The Road to Serfdom, because that's what this discussion has compelled me to want to re-read, for this is the form in which American fascism (as opposed to the German fascism discussed therein) will appear; we are not there yet, but unless we elect representatives willing to decrease the powers our government can wield, and unless we change for the better those fundamental aspects of government which the Constitution does not specify, then no matter what action is taken with respect to George W. Bush, the subsequent executives and executive actions are likely to be much worse.
Yeah, that's the conclusion I reached some time ago, that money could buy the specs. I do think that would have an adverse effect on us in the long term, because that would condition them into expecting money for specs, instead of the reward of increased market share alone.
I don't exactly agree with your phrasing (I see the GPL ensuring that the non-developer user is free, and BSD ensuring that the developer is free), but I think we both agree on the concepts.
The GPL is about restricting the developer in a few specific areas for the good of the non-developer. In fact, I see it as something that corrects a severe market failure; namely, that copyright, patent, et al. try to turn information, which has little to no scarcity beyond a quantity of 1, into a normal good, which I think it is not; the only scarcity---and therefore value to its originator---of information exists at that 0 to 1 margin (ideally, of course). In short, it's what you do with the information that has intrinsic value, not the information itself. (Of course, once information becomes widely disseminated, synthesis may greatly increase the value of the information to society.)
The people who prefer the BSD license probably agree with this, but they do not wish to bother themselves with any of this freedom claptrap. They want to code, and if somebody else uses it in another program, all the better.
And if the hardware comanies were as chummy with the FOSS community as they are with MS, then these problems wouldn't exist.
Why do you think that we were joyful when AMD actually released documentation on some of the newest ATI cards, and that if and when (I hope) they follow through on their promise and release the 3D portion, we'll be fuckin' ecstatic?
As for the ACPI problems, that's because ACPI is a clusterfuck. Companies who build laptops don't care to test their solutions on anything but Windows, whose own implementation of ACPI is subtly (and arguably purposefully) broken.
HTML + CSS attempts to solve a different problem from the one that ODF and OOXML are attempting to solve; HTML allows a fair amount of discretion in the way that the same document is displayed on different devices or by different renderers, while a file format like the ones used in WYSIWYG word processors attempts to make the same document display the same way on different devices and renderers.
The whole point is that CSS (in addition to being poorly designed in general) is not suited for formatting, for example, a word processing document, so that's why (AFAIK) it's not being used in ODF and shouldn't be used in any other format similar to ODF.
Some reasons why OOXML is unacceptable:
:P
OOXML is wholly un-XML-ish.
It doesn't re-use existing ISO and W3C standards, whose behaviors have already been publicly vetted.
Its licensing is still quite unacceptable, especially in its lack of clarity.
Look, Miguel, I know you love MS and all, and I guess I can at least partially tolerate that, but keep the fellatio behind closed doors, OK?
I prefer my quantities of abstract concepts in the *load system, you insensitive clod!
You know, "buttload", "assload", "shitload", "fuckload"... you're only supposed to reach "butt-ton", "asston", etc. until after you exhaust all the *loads, and that's several orders of magnitude too much for just one article.
I think Xorg 7.3 is scheduled for release on the 29th. Yes, as in a few days. I don't think they'll make that date, but hotplugging on input and output seems to be somewhat imminent.
Fly recon against Israel or against American interests in Iraq? Deploy weapons?
It may give a small advantage to terrorists or insurgents for a few times, but in the long run, air defense will adapt to them if they have any perceivable effect.
Anybody else feel like this is the case with the ODF/OOXML issue?
As I see it, the point of the Electoral College was to elect a set of representatives solely for the purpose of choosing the next President based on the merits of all of those candidates. These people were intended, as were our legislators, to be intelligent, beyond reproach, and capable of making sound, independent decisions, lest we have a tyranny of the majority through direct democracy.
Instead, what we do (and have always done for the past 200-or-so years) is to elect partisan stooges to vote for the candidate that their party tells them to.
No, I think that the reason they keep doing this is economic.
If they determine that the cost of adding DRM (licensing fees, lost sales, etc.) is less than the benefit (more legal purchases in place of casual copying), then they can say that DRM helps them (in the short term). I think that they have believed this to be the case.
OK, idea: Hundreds of people show up with cameras in front of some site where these incidents have been taking place and start taking pictures.
:D (Just don't bring a camera you expect to get back...)
What could go wrong?