It shows up on my comments as a reply, so at least one person will read it:)
The two don't necessarily contradict each other. I think there is a skewing towards rural areas, though I don't think it has a severe effect.
It is fairly easy to demonstrate that a vote in Wyoming carries a greater percentage of an electoral vote than a vote in California does.
(My original chart used postal codes and was altogether prettier, but it twigged the lameness filter).
Consider the following states: State Pop EV Montana 902195 3 North D 642200 3 South D 754844 3 Wyoming 493782 3 Idaho 1293953 4 Nebraska 1711263 5 Utah 2233169 5 Kansas 2688418 6 Total 10719824 32
Compare this with: New York 18976457 31
A group of Republican leaning states with approx 11M people are worth 32 electoral votes.
A single Democratic leaning state with approx 19M people is worth 31 electoral votes.
As is, I think it could potentially skew future elections that turn out to be as close as Bush/Gore was in 2000.
Also, Clinton had a considerable margin of victory in the popular vote. He did not have >50% of the vote in either of his elections, but he was the unmistakable front runner in both cases.
Why should less densely populated areas be favored even more than they already are?
New York State population distribution works like this:
19 M total NYC: just over 8 Mil LI: just over 3 Mil Westchester just under 1 Mil
That's just about 12 Mil, or well over half the state. We can deduct about 1/2 Mil from that, since Staten Island went to Bush, (1/2 Mil is more than the population of Wyoming, notably) but the remaining NY counties that went to Kerry probably cover that 1/2 Mil.
The rest of the state went mostly for Bush, but that accounts for 7 Mil. Why should those 7 Million people be able to outvote the other 12? Because they take up more space?
I'm not sure that the viewpoints being pulled to the libertarians are the extreme one. Using the example from the grandparent, being against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is hardly an extreme view.
Equally, fiscal conservatives who want the gov spending as little taxpayer money as possible are not extremists either.
I actually had a reverse shocker on this topic this past weekend. I was getting a haircut, and naturally, you chat with the barber (is there a separate term for male and female haircutters? This one was a woman. Do I still call her a barber?). She asked what I do for a living, and I told her that I'm a computer programmer. She started talking about how she knows so little about computers and that any time she has a problem with (here's where she got my full attention) "Internet Explorer" she always has to call up her nephew and have him work it out.
People seem to know, or are learning, about the distinction between the internet itself and web browsers.
I don't like him because he dodges questions even though he doesn't have a prayer of winning. He could take an unpopular stance on something, it won't affect his chances.
He's absurdly stiff. He gave a very blah answer to the 'C.O.P' question, and he completely avoided the Nader question, even though both question gave him a chance to joke with his audience.
I don't know if they'll be doing this or not, but this process is supposed to include a number of random audits, and if the paper trail and machines differ by a non-trivial margin, they do a full recount.
Actually 'predecessors', as in those who came before him. It was not a slip of the tongue as near as I can tell, but rather he was voicing the opinion that he did not have the authority to overturn Clinton's pardons.
I'm no Bush fan, but let's keep the attacks to legitimate complaints instead of made up BS.
It's more like the 5 states that are actual close races. There's not much campaigning for NY, CA, or TX, but they're the three biggest. If we drop the electoral system, you'll be even less likely to see candidates come through. Instead, they'll concentrate on areas with more voters.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
on
Mock World Vote
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· Score: 1
The rest of the world is welcome to try to become states within the US, but unless they do, no, there isn't really much merit to that argument.
US gun crime stats are very heavily skewed by huge crime rates in a handful of large metropolises like New York, Detroit, LA, etc. These huge cities also tend to have the most restrictive gun laws in the US, so I think your reasoning is questionable at best
The only problem with your statement is that NYC has one of the lowest crime rates of urban areas. So do guns laws work? Do gun laws not work? Or is some other factor more overriding?
Re:It's called IP for a reason
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
Calling it 'Property' does not necessarily make it so.
That only a problem if you just have one. If you set up thousands (millions?) of them, you can rig a system of notifications that simply tolerates that there will be a certain amount of useless loss occuring from checking.
Having been in a situation with an employeer who wanted to do something decidedly dodgy I had no qualms about saying no. Did I get fired ? Strangely no, because WHAT THE FUCK is he going to say at the disciplinary hearing ?
I don't know about others, but I've done things at every job I've ever held that were against the rules. Typically they were things nobody cared about, and were never enforced, BUT if someone had a non-legit complaint, they could easily mask it behind some other reason.
Mostly to entertain. Certain people found it hysterical that I'd say such a thing, since calling someone a dog was consider a vicious insult in their culture.
One guy that I knew who was fluent in about a dozen languages and knew enough to get by in about 15 more got a kick out of it when I asked him for a list of translations. He told me that he usually gets requests for "I love you" or "Merry Christmas".
Almost invariably, unless the really good programmer puts an uncommonly high amount of effort into such things, the output of a single really good programmer will look like unmaintainable trash to most other programmers, especially mediocre ones, which are the norm in the industry.
We have very different definitions of what makes someone a very good programmer.
I know some programmers who have a decent amount of technical ability, but write such convoluted code that it's useless to others. This is worthless to me. They may as well not have coded anything, since it typically takes more time to figure out what's going on than it would to re-write from scratch. I don't consider such a person a good programmer, and I wouldn't hire any of them.
Paraphrasing Einstein, code should be as simple as possible, but not any simpler. Good programmers are ones who don't introduces unnecessary complications into code. Really good programmers are ones who can express something complicated very cleanly, or can lucidly document why they've done something strange.
700000 is just too round of a number. It should be something like, (picking a number at random) anything greater than 720677. It's a good prime number.
I use almost nothing but the stock vi in Solaris. I've never seen that error, but I have gotten 'Line too long', which seems to come up around 2k / line.
That's happened to me once since I started using firefox (shortly after the 0.8 release). I had figured it was a one time fluke. This actually happens to people regularly?
Slashdot Mirror
It shows up on my comments as a reply, so at least one person will read it :)
The two don't necessarily contradict each other. I think there is a skewing towards rural areas, though I don't think it has a severe effect.
It is fairly easy to demonstrate that a vote in Wyoming carries a greater percentage of an electoral vote than a vote in California does.
(My original chart used postal codes and was altogether prettier, but it twigged the lameness filter).
Consider the following states:
State Pop EV
Montana 902195 3
North D 642200 3
South D 754844 3
Wyoming 493782 3
Idaho 1293953 4
Nebraska 1711263 5
Utah 2233169 5
Kansas 2688418 6
Total 10719824 32
Compare this with:
New York 18976457 31
A group of Republican leaning states with approx 11M people are worth 32 electoral votes.
A single Democratic leaning state with approx 19M people is worth 31 electoral votes.
As is, I think it could potentially skew future elections that turn out to be as close as Bush/Gore was in 2000.
Also, Clinton had a considerable margin of victory in the popular vote. He did not have >50% of the vote in either of his elections, but he was the unmistakable front runner in both cases.
The risks involved increase polynomially
polynomially??? What's a polynomial increase in risk? Is that a lot?
Why should less densely populated areas be favored even more than they already are?
New York State population distribution works like this:
19 M total
NYC: just over 8 Mil
LI: just over 3 Mil
Westchester just under 1 Mil
That's just about 12 Mil, or well over half the state. We can deduct about 1/2 Mil from that, since Staten Island went to Bush, (1/2 Mil is more than the population of Wyoming, notably) but the remaining NY counties that went to Kerry probably cover that 1/2 Mil.
The rest of the state went mostly for Bush, but that accounts for 7 Mil. Why should those 7 Million people be able to outvote the other 12? Because they take up more space?
I'm not sure that the viewpoints being pulled to the libertarians are the extreme one. Using the example from the grandparent, being against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is hardly an extreme view.
Equally, fiscal conservatives who want the gov spending as little taxpayer money as possible are not extremists either.
I actually had a reverse shocker on this topic this past weekend. I was getting a haircut, and naturally, you chat with the barber (is there a separate term for male and female haircutters? This one was a woman. Do I still call her a barber?). She asked what I do for a living, and I told her that I'm a computer programmer. She started talking about how she knows so little about computers and that any time she has a problem with (here's where she got my full attention) "Internet Explorer" she always has to call up her nephew and have him work it out.
People seem to know, or are learning, about the distinction between the internet itself and web browsers.
I don't like him because he dodges questions even though he doesn't have a prayer of winning. He could take an unpopular stance on something, it won't affect his chances.
He's absurdly stiff. He gave a very blah answer to the 'C.O.P' question, and he completely avoided the Nader question, even though both question gave him a chance to joke with his audience.
I don't know if they'll be doing this or not, but this process is supposed to include a number of random audits, and if the paper trail and machines differ by a non-trivial margin, they do a full recount.
...who would probably be a little wary of pissing off the U.S. Works for me.
Actually 'predecessors', as in those who came before him. It was not a slip of the tongue as near as I can tell, but rather he was voicing the opinion that he did not have the authority to overturn Clinton's pardons.
I'm no Bush fan, but let's keep the attacks to legitimate complaints instead of made up BS.
yet another cliche cliche post.
It's more like the 5 states that are actual close races. There's not much campaigning for NY, CA, or TX, but they're the three biggest. If we drop the electoral system, you'll be even less likely to see candidates come through. Instead, they'll concentrate on areas with more voters.
The rest of the world is welcome to try to become states within the US, but unless they do, no, there isn't really much merit to that argument.
US gun crime stats are very heavily skewed by huge crime rates in a handful of large metropolises like New York, Detroit, LA, etc. These huge cities also tend to have the most restrictive gun laws in the US, so I think your reasoning is questionable at best
The only problem with your statement is that NYC has one of the lowest crime rates of urban areas. So do guns laws work? Do gun laws not work? Or is some other factor more overriding?
Calling it 'Property' does not necessarily make it so.
HP got a Hugo in 2001 (Goblet of Fire)
That only a problem if you just have one. If you set up thousands (millions?) of them, you can rig a system of notifications that simply tolerates that there will be a certain amount of useless loss occuring from checking.
Having been in a situation with an employeer who wanted to do something decidedly dodgy I had no qualms about saying no. Did I get fired ? Strangely no, because WHAT THE FUCK is he going to say at the disciplinary hearing ?
I don't know about others, but I've done things at every job I've ever held that were against the rules. Typically they were things nobody cared about, and were never enforced, BUT if someone had a non-legit complaint, they could easily mask it behind some other reason.
Mostly to entertain. Certain people found it hysterical that I'd say such a thing, since calling someone a dog was consider a vicious insult in their culture.
One guy that I knew who was fluent in about a dozen languages and knew enough to get by in about 15 more got a kick out of it when I asked him for a list of translations. He told me that he usually gets requests for "I love you" or "Merry Christmas".
About the only Japanese I've ever learned:
Watashi wa inu desu.
I used to be able to say that one phrase in over 80 languages. I can still probably do about 15-20 of them.
I'd love to see someone say that with a straight face and act like that clears everything up and offends no one.
That's a great line, BTW.
Almost invariably, unless the really good programmer puts an uncommonly high amount of effort into such things, the output of a single really good programmer will look like unmaintainable trash to most other programmers, especially mediocre ones, which are the norm in the industry.
We have very different definitions of what makes someone a very good programmer.
I know some programmers who have a decent amount of technical ability, but write such convoluted code that it's useless to others. This is worthless to me. They may as well not have coded anything, since it typically takes more time to figure out what's going on than it would to re-write from scratch. I don't consider such a person a good programmer, and I wouldn't hire any of them.
Paraphrasing Einstein, code should be as simple as possible, but not any simpler. Good programmers are ones who don't introduces unnecessary complications into code. Really good programmers are ones who can express something complicated very cleanly, or can lucidly document why they've done something strange.
700000 is just too round of a number. It should be something like, (picking a number at random) anything greater than 720677. It's a good prime number.
I use almost nothing but the stock vi in Solaris. I've never seen that error, but I have gotten 'Line too long', which seems to come up around 2k / line.
That's happened to me once since I started using firefox (shortly after the 0.8 release). I had figured it was a one time fluke. This actually happens to people regularly?
Downtown Manhattan... the only place where a 10 minute lunch break on foot can take you through 4 different zip codes.