Vote tallies have been different from exit polling in recent elections (that's one of the reasons people were looking at Palm Beach County), and what has it gotten us? Besides, in 2002 we had almost no exit polling because of the convenient demise of the Voter News Service. Exit polling is hardly a solution to flawed electronic voting systems.
You're right about 1987 for Perl's origin, but the earliest origin for Python seems to be 1991, and it doesn't look like it actually went anywhere until 1995. In any case, age is really a proxy for the amount of development that's occurred on a language, and it still seems that Perl is way ahead on modules.
A lot of humans don't use writing systems that have case, and a lot of humans who do notice that uppercase and lowercase letters are different and are used differently. For example, English speakers pronounce "Polish" and "polish" differently. Also, mathematicians and other users of mathematical notation treat G and g as different variables.
If you're going to be a programmer, it's good to get in the habit of being consistent as soon as possible. Randomly capitalizing variables, inconsistent use of whitespace, and other nonsystematic behaviors are only going to lead to trouble. A person who can't manage that isn't likely to have the right mindset to be much of a programmer.
By saying that I'm not being elitist. Different people have different talents, and different jobs require different talents. Too be good at something, you need to have the talents required for it.
Did you read the part that said "His many activities include managing the charitable foundation established by his son, William Gates III, and his wife, Melinda"?
The computer can't do the same thing. That's the whole point of using the humans.
It's not an honest mistake. It's an inept attempt to automate something that's not automatable.
Also, I don't buy your argument that because the RIAA can't afford the time it's okay for them to make other people spend even more time. If the RIAA can't spend a few minutes to verify their accusation, why should a university have to spend hours to verify it for them? It's not the university's copyright that's (supposedly) being enforced.
Junk mail from legitimate companies isn't much of a problem now, because spam has not been legitimized and is associated mainly with scams and porn. Once spam has a federal stamp of approval, there's nothing stopping "legitimate" companies from flooding your e-mail box as well. They already flood you by phone and snail mail, but they'll send much more by e-mail because it's so much cheaper for them.
And where did you get the idea that companies care about pissing off potential customers with advertising? You may have noticed that we're moving toward a time when every visible surface and every moment of your life is filled with advertising. I haven't noticed any slackening in junk phone calls, paper junk mail, advertising before movies, product placement, or percentage of TV time taken by ads -- they're all increasing, with no apparent upper bound.
... my team's research shows it is impossible to have 'remote poll-site voting', in which a voter can cast his ballot at any station or kiosk in the county or state, while protecting voter anonymity and without relying on an always-up internet connection at each poll-site.
So what? That's not possible with paper systems either, and it's not part of the way voting works now, at least in my experience. You have to vote in your ward and precinct, not anywhere in the state you like.
If you're talking about a new system that expands the possible places people can vote, that's completely separate from the issue of electronic voting machines and why the implementations currently being rushed into by local election boards are a bad idea.
If any company is silly enough to try that tactic, I'm willing to bet they will learn very quickly how counterproductive it is.
Sure, just like all companies have learned not to use telemarketing, spam, ads before movies, popups, and all the other annoying methods that fill our every waking moment with advertising.
Read the next sentence: "Individual carriers would determine whether subscribers would have to pay to be unlisted." Want to guess what the carriers will decide?
If all the companies start charging for unlisted numbers, there's no competitive disadvantage to them, just as competition didn't protect us when the banks all decided to start charging for use of automatic tellers.
The "Doctor Zhivago" character is Lara, not Laura.
Re:If you REALLY want to buy the book
on
XML and Perl
·
· Score: 3, Informative
But if people are interested in getting a good price rather than putting a commission into your pocket (and contributing to a company that abuses software patents), maybe they should order it from Bookpool instead, for $3 less than Amazon. (I don't have any affiliation with Bookpool.)
Given that it is the legislators job to listen to and represent the views of their constituents (and no one else)...
And that's one reason why Washington, DC, is such a mess. There's a congressional committee in charge of managing District affairs (doing things like overruling the decisions of the elected city council and ignoring the results of referenda), but the members of the committee have no obligation or inclination to listen to the people whose lives are affected by their decisions.
Those of us who live in DC (not the tourists and politicians who plague the city) pay federal taxes, fight in wars, and perform all the other obligations of US citizenship, but we have no vote in the Congress, the body that determines how those taxes are spent and where those wars are fought.
It's ludicrous for the United States to lecture other countries about democracy when it is lacking basic democracy in its own capital.
Moreover, VeriSign's other business (digital certificates) is all about determining that people are who they say they are, so it should be less a problem for them than for other registrars.
The fact that the digital certificate business is based entirely on having a reputation as a trustworthy company is what made VeriSign's slimeball fake-renewal scam all the more amazing.
Didn't RealNames try the keyword idea and fail miserably? How is it any better than DNS? If you have a mapping between words and IP addresses through any mechanism, then you could just as well add ".com" on the end and implement it to get what we have now.
But you're really talking about a mapping between search terms and pages rather than search terms and sites. Otherwise, how would you direct someone to a page other than your front page? Are you seriously suggesting that Google whacks are more convenient than URLs? "For more information, do a Google search for 'stingray marshmallow'"? Or maybe a search for "a87tigi78y"? That doesn't seem very user-friendly. And it certainly won't be acceptable to businesses unless Google starts accepting bribes for search placement the way other search engines do.
Besides, DNS is for more than just Web sites. How you you plan to send e-mail by Google search?
I'm not talking about using the software. I'm talking about development, using the source. And if you're not saying that the GPL is more restrictive, then I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing Bill Gates, who's saying that it is, and you seemed to be agreeing with him.
My point is that if I'm a developer then it doesn't hurt me that there's GPL code out there, any more than it hurts me that there's proprietary code out there. If I don't want to use it, I can just ignore it. If I do want to use it, I can agree to the license. The first point is true of closed-source software as well. The second is the advantage that the GPL software has over closed-source, unless Bill Gates is licensing his source to developers free and I've missed the news. I don't see any way that the GPL is more of a threat to developers than proprietary code is.
And proprietary code like Microsoft's is not accessible at all, under its license. Why isn't it unfair of Microsoft to try to enforce its choice of license on everyone else?
I can understand arguing that the BSD license is better than the GPL, but it's insane to argue that the GPL is somehow more restrictive than proprietary software. If you don't like the GPL restrictions, don't use the source, and you'll be in exactly the same position you are with any closed-source software -- it's just that closed-source software doesn't give you the option.
I didn't say the statements were false. The problem seems to be the focus and slant of the article -- what facts are selected to be included and omitted -- not that it's full of lies.
Slashdot Mirror
This is news to you? Where have you been for the last 2.5 years?
Vote tallies have been different from exit polling in recent elections (that's one of the reasons people were looking at Palm Beach County), and what has it gotten us? Besides, in 2002 we had almost no exit polling because of the convenient demise of the Voter News Service. Exit polling is hardly a solution to flawed electronic voting systems.
You're right about 1987 for Perl's origin, but the earliest origin for Python seems to be 1991, and it doesn't look like it actually went anywhere until 1995. In any case, age is really a proxy for the amount of development that's occurred on a language, and it still seems that Perl is way ahead on modules.
A lot of humans don't use writing systems that have case, and a lot of humans who do notice that uppercase and lowercase letters are different and are used differently. For example, English speakers pronounce "Polish" and "polish" differently. Also, mathematicians and other users of mathematical notation treat G and g as different variables.
If you're going to be a programmer, it's good to get in the habit of being consistent as soon as possible. Randomly capitalizing variables, inconsistent use of whitespace, and other nonsystematic behaviors are only going to lead to trouble. A person who can't manage that isn't likely to have the right mindset to be much of a programmer.
By saying that I'm not being elitist. Different people have different talents, and different jobs require different talents. Too be good at something, you need to have the talents required for it.
Did you read the part that said "His many activities include managing the charitable foundation established by his son, William Gates III, and his wife, Melinda"?
True, but it does not follow that you can describe any offensive material as "erotically arousing or sexually provocative".
"Offensive" is not the same as "erotically arousing or sexually provocative".
The computer can't do the same thing. That's the whole point of using the humans.
It's not an honest mistake. It's an inept attempt to automate something that's not automatable.
Also, I don't buy your argument that because the RIAA can't afford the time it's okay for them to make other people spend even more time. If the RIAA can't spend a few minutes to verify their accusation, why should a university have to spend hours to verify it for them? It's not the university's copyright that's (supposedly) being enforced.
Junk mail from legitimate companies isn't much of a problem now, because spam has not been legitimized and is associated mainly with scams and porn. Once spam has a federal stamp of approval, there's nothing stopping "legitimate" companies from flooding your e-mail box as well. They already flood you by phone and snail mail, but they'll send much more by e-mail because it's so much cheaper for them.
And where did you get the idea that companies care about pissing off potential customers with advertising? You may have noticed that we're moving toward a time when every visible surface and every moment of your life is filled with advertising. I haven't noticed any slackening in junk phone calls, paper junk mail, advertising before movies, product placement, or percentage of TV time taken by ads -- they're all increasing, with no apparent upper bound.
So what? That's not possible with paper systems either, and it's not part of the way voting works now, at least in my experience. You have to vote in your ward and precinct, not anywhere in the state you like.
If you're talking about a new system that expands the possible places people can vote, that's completely separate from the issue of electronic voting machines and why the implementations currently being rushed into by local election boards are a bad idea.
Sure, just like all companies have learned not to use telemarketing, spam, ads before movies, popups, and all the other annoying methods that fill our every waking moment with advertising.
Read the next sentence: "Individual carriers would determine whether subscribers would have to pay to be unlisted." Want to guess what the carriers will decide?
If all the companies start charging for unlisted numbers, there's no competitive disadvantage to them, just as competition didn't protect us when the banks all decided to start charging for use of automatic tellers.
Ever heard of inheritance?
The "Doctor Zhivago" character is Lara, not Laura.
But if people are interested in getting a good price rather than putting a commission into your pocket (and contributing to a company that abuses software patents), maybe they should order it from Bookpool instead, for $3 less than Amazon. (I don't have any affiliation with Bookpool.)
Some of the other stories were published in English as the book Mortal Engines.
And that's one reason why Washington, DC, is such a mess. There's a congressional committee in charge of managing District affairs (doing things like overruling the decisions of the elected city council and ignoring the results of referenda), but the members of the committee have no obligation or inclination to listen to the people whose lives are affected by their decisions.
Those of us who live in DC (not the tourists and politicians who plague the city) pay federal taxes, fight in wars, and perform all the other obligations of US citizenship, but we have no vote in the Congress, the body that determines how those taxes are spent and where those wars are fought.
It's ludicrous for the United States to lecture other countries about democracy when it is lacking basic democracy in its own capital.
Moreover, VeriSign's other business (digital certificates) is all about determining that people are who they say they are, so it should be less a problem for them than for other registrars.
The fact that the digital certificate business is based entirely on having a reputation as a trustworthy company is what made VeriSign's slimeball fake-renewal scam all the more amazing.
Of course AT&T has no problem with SMS-spamming its customers on its own, sending me vital messages about exciting services.
It is completely inappropriate for AT&T to use SMS for any sort of unsolicited advertising. That's not what I'm paying you for.
Didn't RealNames try the keyword idea and fail miserably? How is it any better than DNS? If you have a mapping between words and IP addresses through any mechanism, then you could just as well add ".com" on the end and implement it to get what we have now.
But you're really talking about a mapping between search terms and pages rather than search terms and sites. Otherwise, how would you direct someone to a page other than your front page? Are you seriously suggesting that Google whacks are more convenient than URLs? "For more information, do a Google search for 'stingray marshmallow'"? Or maybe a search for "a87tigi78y"? That doesn't seem very user-friendly. And it certainly won't be acceptable to businesses unless Google starts accepting bribes for search placement the way other search engines do.
Besides, DNS is for more than just Web sites. How you you plan to send e-mail by Google search?
Hell, judging by some of the form input I've seen, a significant number of people think they should put "www." at the front of e-mail addresses.
I'm not talking about using the software. I'm talking about development, using the source. And if you're not saying that the GPL is more restrictive, then I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing Bill Gates, who's saying that it is, and you seemed to be agreeing with him.
My point is that if I'm a developer then it doesn't hurt me that there's GPL code out there, any more than it hurts me that there's proprietary code out there. If I don't want to use it, I can just ignore it. If I do want to use it, I can agree to the license. The first point is true of closed-source software as well. The second is the advantage that the GPL software has over closed-source, unless Bill Gates is licensing his source to developers free and I've missed the news. I don't see any way that the GPL is more of a threat to developers than proprietary code is.
And proprietary code like Microsoft's is not accessible at all, under its license. Why isn't it unfair of Microsoft to try to enforce its choice of license on everyone else?
I can understand arguing that the BSD license is better than the GPL, but it's insane to argue that the GPL is somehow more restrictive than proprietary software. If you don't like the GPL restrictions, don't use the source, and you'll be in exactly the same position you are with any closed-source software -- it's just that closed-source software doesn't give you the option.
I didn't say the statements were false. The problem seems to be the focus and slant of the article -- what facts are selected to be included and omitted -- not that it's full of lies.
I think the point is that it's supposed to be an ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE, not a hymn of praise to Bill. It should at least pretend to be objective.