But did it work? I think that matters a bit more than exactly how the testing was conducted. If it was perfectly safe, and people were saved as a result, what's the big deal?
Keep the first/last letters of every word the same, but jumble the letters in between. You have seen this site, haven't you?;)
That gets me every time. I get about halfway through reading it before I realize I've read that text before, remember the significance of it, and only then do I notice that the words are scrambled. Crazy.
One thing I don't do is take offense on the internets. No point in getting worked up over tubes full of text. I just wanted to clear up some of my earlier statements.
Still, do you really think anything will change? A bureaucracy is a bureaucracy, it doesn't matter how independant it is, and from the sounds of it, it's not even all that international. I for one expect things to stay pretty much the same.
I'm not saying there's no artistic merit to this, quite the opposite. I'm just saying that the artistic part was in the programming, not the input. It doesn't matter in the slightest that he used spam for that input, just as it doesn't matter what brand of paint somebody uses when they paint a picture of a tree. It's the technique by which you use your materials that makes it art, not the materials.
The point is, I disagree with the title of the story. It's not "One Man's Spam Is Another Man's Art". The spam isn't the art, no more than a can full of paint is art.
It's an interesting concept, but not particularly related to spam. Sure, the spam is the input, but the input could be anything. If you ask me, the guy did the art part of the project long before spam got involved with it.
You misunderstand. I don't mean it doesn't help those who are in the minority within that state, I mean that the majority of the state won't want to give up all of their electoral votes to the other party should the rest of the nation be against them. MA still prides itself in being the only state to vote for McGovern instead of Nixon in 1972. People have bumper stickers. "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts" was popular during Watergate.
Obviously those Republicans in MA would like the proposed system, it gives them some representation in the electoral college, should things go their way on the national level. But the majority (Democrat voters) would not want to give up those electoral votes, and thus MA would not join the proposed system. Same thing in reverse for traditional red states. Would Republicans be happy giving up their electoral votes in 2000 after Gore got the popular vote in all the other states, but they were firmly in the Bush camp?
For swing states, a given election will give roughly half the voters no representation within the electoral college, and since it's much more of a toss-up, voters there would probably be more likely to go with the popular vote nation-wide. I'm not saying they'd be happy with it, or actually gain anything from it, but one could make a stronger case to the majority of voters in those states if they don't know the actual outcome of their state ahead of time.
I'm not talking about votes here, I'm talking about how the system treats the people who are voting. It's too easy then for a politician to simply ignore the parts of the country with low populations. They can just hit the major cities, flood the larger states with more TV ads, and that's it.
People don't just buy any new product. They aren't required to spend their money on any particular type of item. Even in a necessity like food (you can grow your own, you know) you don't have to buy cereal, or tomatoes, or even a generalized "meat". So a company, let's say General Mills, still has to try to convince you to buy their Honey Nut Cheerios. If the voter (with their wallet) simply doesn't want to buy any cereal at all, so be it.
Plenty of products fail because they aren't good products, or people simply don't want them. That's why I'm saying the free market economy isn't a mandatory thing.
So, if a new cereal company, let's call it The Greatest Cereal Ever Co., comes along with a great cereal and properly educates the general public about it, they can win a lot more voters (with their wallets).
So, to wrap this crazy analogy up nicely, if people are concerned about voter turn-outs (which I am), the solution is to get people to care about the issues, and have better politicians who have good ideas about those issues, not force them to fork over votes (money) for something they don't care about.
I would certainly support a national holiday for voting, and any other measure that helps to make it as easy as possible for people to vote who want to (more voting sites, free public transportation to voting sites, locally-sponsored car-pools, and so on). But forcing people to the booth is not going to help anything if those people don't care.
I really hate the party system. Sometimes I really wish I lived in that short period of time when there were no parties, or the time when new parties would spring up or disappear relatively often. I'm a fierce independant, a moderate, and my vote is always for sale to the highest bidder. I wish more people were like me.
But in a free market economy, people do care. They may not care about the same things you care about, but they care enough to vote with their wallets. And as far as their needs go, they are as informed as they need to be. Your analogy doesn't work because there is nothing manditory about the free market. People don't have to spend their money. So in essence, it's working the same as the current voting system works. People don't have to vote.
Politicians are like companies that have enough business to maintain themselves. And just as some start-up in a garage can suddenly start selling some revolutionary new product to many many more people than an older business does, a new politician could come along with ideas people actually care about and attract many millions more people to the voting booth.
So, our democracy does work like the free market, with people only spending their votes on things that interest them. The problem is that people aren't interested enough. The political product (office of the presidency, congress, etc.) should be better advertised (educated) and should get a more useful feature set (politicians with good ideas about things people care most about).
Why should a vote in the Senate from a Rectangle State count 40 times more than mine? Why should Kansas have so much say over what goes on in California?
Ah, but that's the beauty of a bicameral legislature. Every state is equal under one chamber, so that the little states have a say in things, and every district is equal in another chamber, so that bigger states get a bigger say in things, and since both chambers have to work with each other, it all balances out relatively well.
However, I would think that possibly breaking up each states Electoral Votes proportionally to the votes within EACH state...would be more fair....I could see that being a better modification.
Of all the systems I've heard to fix the EC, that is one of the better ones. Winner-take-all is not a great way to encourage voters in opposition to a heavily-favored candidate within a state. For close elections though, how one rounds out electoral votes could be a problem. Imagine a Florda-style Hanging-Chad situation all over the country... But at least it'll mean every vote really counts.
Um....The GP said educate people and let them decide.
Right. I'm in favor of a well-informed public capable of making the decision to vote on their own, as opposed to a forcible system where those who aren't informed or don't care vote at random (or more likely, whoever paid the most to put their name everywhere). I believe that if people understand the issues, they will care about them, and they will make the decision to vote out of good consciousness. That is infinitely better than forcing somebody to go to the voting booth and having them add random noise to the results.
A typo now and then doesn't make me uneducated, it just makes me too lazy to preview my post first.
But anyway, your other point is valid. I'm not a fan of the system we have now when it comes to marginalizing votes in certain parts of the country (although I still think you should vote). But a system based on popular vote just marginalizes the people who live in less-populated areas. Why should a candidate spend money and time in a place where not a lot of people will hear their message? I honestly can't think of a way in which every single person will have an equal voice in government, short of a direct-democracy where every tiny issue is decided on by national vote. That method just doesn't work on a large scale.
So, do you fix a somewhat-broken system with another somewhat-broken system?
While I agree that any kind of quota system isn't helping the system, I do find it a bit odd that Air Marshalls can't find at least one suspitious-looking person on a flight over the course of a month. Aren't these people flying pretty much all the time? I don't fly all that often but when I do there's usually at least one person who approaches the cockpit (trying to get to the bathroom maybe, but during a time when the cockpit door is open, or something). Maybe the policy is to prevent these guys from just sleeping all day on their assigned flights.
Again, quotas seem stupid, and I don't think suspitious activity of a fairly benign nature should put you on some kind of "banned for life" list, I'm just trying to see the issue from all sides.
The discovery process is itself going to be highly damaging to the MPAA as they will inevitably reveal methods they would rather keep secret.
That's the real hope here in Shawn Hogan defending himself. The problem though is that if the MPAA simply drops the charges, the general public doesn't win, and the MPAA will just go find someone else to extort $2500 from. But hey, maybe there'll be some media attention from this, at least.
Slashdot Mirror
For those just tuning in, the ringworld in Halo: Combat Evolved was called Installation 4.
But did it work? I think that matters a bit more than exactly how the testing was conducted. If it was perfectly safe, and people were saved as a result, what's the big deal?
Slashdot needs a mod option "+1 Analogy Made Me Hungry".
One thing I don't do is take offense on the internets. No point in getting worked up over tubes full of text. I just wanted to clear up some of my earlier statements.
Still, do you really think anything will change? A bureaucracy is a bureaucracy, it doesn't matter how independant it is, and from the sounds of it, it's not even all that international. I for one expect things to stay pretty much the same.
I wonder, did he also buy a little excersize wheel for his hamster and name it Installation 4?
I'm not saying there's no artistic merit to this, quite the opposite. I'm just saying that the artistic part was in the programming, not the input. It doesn't matter in the slightest that he used spam for that input, just as it doesn't matter what brand of paint somebody uses when they paint a picture of a tree. It's the technique by which you use your materials that makes it art, not the materials.
The point is, I disagree with the title of the story. It's not "One Man's Spam Is Another Man's Art". The spam isn't the art, no more than a can full of paint is art.
It's an interesting concept, but not particularly related to spam. Sure, the spam is the input, but the input could be anything. If you ask me, the guy did the art part of the project long before spam got involved with it.
Those would be ads you rewind to watch again.
You misunderstand. I don't mean it doesn't help those who are in the minority within that state, I mean that the majority of the state won't want to give up all of their electoral votes to the other party should the rest of the nation be against them. MA still prides itself in being the only state to vote for McGovern instead of Nixon in 1972. People have bumper stickers. "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts" was popular during Watergate.
Obviously those Republicans in MA would like the proposed system, it gives them some representation in the electoral college, should things go their way on the national level. But the majority (Democrat voters) would not want to give up those electoral votes, and thus MA would not join the proposed system. Same thing in reverse for traditional red states. Would Republicans be happy giving up their electoral votes in 2000 after Gore got the popular vote in all the other states, but they were firmly in the Bush camp?
For swing states, a given election will give roughly half the voters no representation within the electoral college, and since it's much more of a toss-up, voters there would probably be more likely to go with the popular vote nation-wide. I'm not saying they'd be happy with it, or actually gain anything from it, but one could make a stronger case to the majority of voters in those states if they don't know the actual outcome of their state ahead of time.
I'm not talking about votes here, I'm talking about how the system treats the people who are voting. It's too easy then for a politician to simply ignore the parts of the country with low populations. They can just hit the major cities, flood the larger states with more TV ads, and that's it.
People don't just buy any new product. They aren't required to spend their money on any particular type of item. Even in a necessity like food (you can grow your own, you know) you don't have to buy cereal, or tomatoes, or even a generalized "meat". So a company, let's say General Mills, still has to try to convince you to buy their Honey Nut Cheerios. If the voter (with their wallet) simply doesn't want to buy any cereal at all, so be it.
Plenty of products fail because they aren't good products, or people simply don't want them. That's why I'm saying the free market economy isn't a mandatory thing.
So, if a new cereal company, let's call it The Greatest Cereal Ever Co., comes along with a great cereal and properly educates the general public about it, they can win a lot more voters (with their wallets).
So, to wrap this crazy analogy up nicely, if people are concerned about voter turn-outs (which I am), the solution is to get people to care about the issues, and have better politicians who have good ideas about those issues, not force them to fork over votes (money) for something they don't care about.
I would certainly support a national holiday for voting, and any other measure that helps to make it as easy as possible for people to vote who want to (more voting sites, free public transportation to voting sites, locally-sponsored car-pools, and so on). But forcing people to the booth is not going to help anything if those people don't care.
I really hate the party system. Sometimes I really wish I lived in that short period of time when there were no parties, or the time when new parties would spring up or disappear relatively often. I'm a fierce independant, a moderate, and my vote is always for sale to the highest bidder. I wish more people were like me.
But in a free market economy, people do care. They may not care about the same things you care about, but they care enough to vote with their wallets. And as far as their needs go, they are as informed as they need to be. Your analogy doesn't work because there is nothing manditory about the free market. People don't have to spend their money. So in essence, it's working the same as the current voting system works. People don't have to vote.
Politicians are like companies that have enough business to maintain themselves. And just as some start-up in a garage can suddenly start selling some revolutionary new product to many many more people than an older business does, a new politician could come along with ideas people actually care about and attract many millions more people to the voting booth.
So, our democracy does work like the free market, with people only spending their votes on things that interest them. The problem is that people aren't interested enough. The political product (office of the presidency, congress, etc.) should be better advertised (educated) and should get a more useful feature set (politicians with good ideas about things people care most about).
And what of the people who don't have the internet?
A typo now and then doesn't make me uneducated, it just makes me too lazy to preview my post first.
But anyway, your other point is valid. I'm not a fan of the system we have now when it comes to marginalizing votes in certain parts of the country (although I still think you should vote). But a system based on popular vote just marginalizes the people who live in less-populated areas. Why should a candidate spend money and time in a place where not a lot of people will hear their message? I honestly can't think of a way in which every single person will have an equal voice in government, short of a direct-democracy where every tiny issue is decided on by national vote. That method just doesn't work on a large scale.
So, do you fix a somewhat-broken system with another somewhat-broken system?
While I agree that any kind of quota system isn't helping the system, I do find it a bit odd that Air Marshalls can't find at least one suspitious-looking person on a flight over the course of a month. Aren't these people flying pretty much all the time? I don't fly all that often but when I do there's usually at least one person who approaches the cockpit (trying to get to the bathroom maybe, but during a time when the cockpit door is open, or something). Maybe the policy is to prevent these guys from just sleeping all day on their assigned flights.
Again, quotas seem stupid, and I don't think suspitious activity of a fairly benign nature should put you on some kind of "banned for life" list, I'm just trying to see the issue from all sides.
I'm sort of curious as to why this was placed under IT, and not YRO or Politics...