Your right, there is a middle ground - and this is not it!
I mean, I recently had to haul my 12 lb. Dell from JFK to Long Island to Mahattan. That with a few magazines and a Coke - I still have a cramp in shoulder.
I also have a 15 inch Powerbook, I almost threw it across the room the first time I picked it up, being used to the Dell. I can't imagaine hauling a 16 lb. pc any further than around the house. Woe is the the lowly programmer like me who gets issued one of these and is expected to take it on business (some programmers do see the light of day, and some do travel on occasion).
But, hey, they're shooting at the government market, so we'll just have to pay more worker's comp for stiff necks.
Again, you make some great points. Sounds like you guys have meta-moderation;-)
I guess my point is that machines are pretty good at recording what we tell them too (OK, maybe not my touchpad). If the UI is idiot proof, and the code has open review, what is wrong with electronic voting? I mean 'Press here for Republican, Press here for Democrat, Press here for Other' seems pretty straightforward, my grandparents would get it.
It seems that we need to take advantage of computers where we can, and if everyone is involved we can use computers in elections, if the system is designed well and people can verify the results without staring through a card at a lightbulb.
That's a great point. At the same time, humans are open to bias. What someone intended to do is not entirely objective. In your example, a computer should be able to handle that situation perfectly. Yet as we saw in the US in Florida, people aren't all that great at determining what someone else intended to do, as noted by all the controversy.
While people are good at gauging others in person, when all that's left behind is a scrawled name, people often can't make an accurate statement about the intention either. I mean look at the arguement over the 2nd amendment - what did the founding fathers mean? We're not face to face, its hard to tell.
Damn Powerbook touchpad...
There was a section at the beginning there about 1 touchscreen machine that prints out a card with a magstrip on one side and human readable text on the other and another machine made by a different company that reads the card and both of them keeping a database of the votes. This was the important part....ignore accidental touchpad strokes my ass.
(I love my Mac, but it takes some getting used to)
In a lot of ways I'd agree with you. The more complicated a system becomes, the more likely it becomes prone to failure.
But, there are things computers are really good at - such as counting. And things humans are bad at, such as deciding what counts as a dimple versus a handing chad.
It seems the tech community could come up with some kind of solution that works from our technical point of view, exicites the lay people, and isn't obviously corrput.
Here it gets tricky because the two machine companies could collude. Its also tricky because someone could forget to feed the card into the reader. We can think of a few solutions, some sort of random ID that must be both databases (and printed on ticket) or we could assume that people that voted for each party are each equally dumb, and call the lost cards a wash.
So, verification. If the two machines are more than 1 standard deviation off, we know something's up. But also, we could hand count a statistically siginificant portion from each machine to verify accuracy. Sure, we could worry about 'lost' cards, but you have the same worry with paper ballots.
Fact of the matter is, people are going to shout for shiny new tech, its our responsibility to come up with effective ways of giving them what they want, or explaining why they don't want it (and that will be hard after Florida).
Let's get/.'s Washington lobbyists on this ASAP...oh, wait....
You certainly weren't with me on my ride from JFK to Long Island City at noon on a Tuesday:
non-standard citizen(???): Yes
commercially licensed: Yes, but I don't know how
Number of pairs of clean underwear arriving at JFK: 3
Number of pairs of clean underwear arriving in Long Island City: 1
The only thing that makes cabs any safer than 'normal' drivers is that cabbies aren't on the phone.
This reminds me of the time my girlfriend-at-the-time and I travelled from Minnesota to New Jersiey to visit her dad. We get out there and it turns out she forgot her curling iron, we need oil for the car, and damned if we forgot to bring condoms (ever had sex in the Wendy's parking lot for fear of dad?).
I have never before, and never since had such a strange look from a cashier.
Ever since its been kind of a game for me to come up with the most bizare combination of items to go with condoms...though now I'm married, so I don't need to buy them often, if ever...snip, snip
BK
I checked out the site and checked the "technology" page. They kept going on about the opposite effects of gravity - and didn't seem to be talking about dark energy or anything. So we get to the explaination - _bouyancy_ is gravity's alternate effect? WTF? If I recall, the only thing bouyancy and Archimedes have in common is the phrase 'specific gravity'.
It appears they just plan to do what hawks and eagles to every day and ride the thermals. Great idea, but thier marketing sucks, like thier trying to get big money from people who are clueless.
Actually, there are ten digit numbers for PSAP dispatch centers. Having worked for a national electronic security company for 6 years, I have many of them memorized. There are databases of 10 digit PASP numbers, but they easily get out of date, and they tend not to be free.
A Google like database of PSAP numbers that is kept up to date might be a government database project that we could support. Such a database would be useful for citizens and corporations. Even without GIS information, you could at least get close enough based on city/county information to get an emergency response.
Don't worry - you won't miss TV after about 2 weeks. I haven't had TV for over 3 years, don't miss it. Sure I have _a_ TV, but it doesn't get any stations. Its just for DVDs and such.
Without TV you find you have the time to do some extra work, read a book, pick up a new language, read/. obsessively...etc - hell, for the national average of TV hours you can get a second job!
But seriously, you will enjoy _not_ having TV. Anything of value that is on TV is available on the Web. The only thing you miss is watercooler talk at the office about the latest sitcom/drama/reality show sh*t. Give it a try, you'll enjoy the extra time.
Re:This got me pretty badly...
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 1
Having had mono, this might be the funniest post I've ever seen on/.
Re:Like everything else...
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 1
You bring up a good point. There is a lot of information and your GP probably doesn't know it all. Quick examples - my mother is lactose intolerant, and the doctors couldn't figure it out. She was surfing the web (early web) and found an exact match. Same thing happened with my grandmother's fibromyalgia, only it was my dad surfing the web.
If you suffer from hypochondria or anxiety, _that_ is what you should see your doctor for. And if medical web sites make you nervous or convinced 'I have this' - then stop going to medical websites & tell your GP/shrink whoever what you are experiencing, maybe have a friend research a new medication.
The information is there for those who seek it, if it bothers you, don't seek it - just like pr0n.
<rant>
Online pharmacies are bad, they are SCAMS and help no one
</rant>
Re:New EPROMs are silly
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
I'd like to agree with you and offer an example. I recently purchased a BMW (ok, my wife got it for me). It was modified with a Dinan high flow cold air intake. Before I said ok, I made very sure that the chip had also been modified to deal with the change in the fuel/O2 mixture. Documentation was provided that showed a Dinan chip upgrade that corresponded with the mechanical modification. Of course I also verified that the car had always been run on the highest octane fuel.
The result is that I got a 328is that looks _and_ drives like a M3, for about 10K less ("pre-owned" market). It's a '99, now with 40K miles, and no problems thus far.
So you're absolutely right, do the mechanical alterations, and get the chip that matches. A new chip that isn't compensating for some mechanical change is probably nothing but trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
Hello SCO, may I help you?...
Your right, there is a middle ground - and this is not it!
I mean, I recently had to haul my 12 lb. Dell from JFK to Long Island to Mahattan. That with a few magazines and a Coke - I still have a cramp in shoulder.
I also have a 15 inch Powerbook, I almost threw it across the room the first time I picked it up, being used to the Dell. I can't imagaine hauling a 16 lb. pc any further than around the house. Woe is the the lowly programmer like me who gets issued one of these and is expected to take it on business (some programmers do see the light of day, and some do travel on occasion).
But, hey, they're shooting at the government market, so we'll just have to pay more worker's comp for stiff necks.
Again, you make some great points. Sounds like you guys have meta-moderation ;-)
I guess my point is that machines are pretty good at recording what we tell them too (OK, maybe not my touchpad). If the UI is idiot proof, and the code has open review, what is wrong with electronic voting? I mean 'Press here for Republican, Press here for Democrat, Press here for Other' seems pretty straightforward, my grandparents would get it.
It seems that we need to take advantage of computers where we can, and if everyone is involved we can use computers in elections, if the system is designed well and people can verify the results without staring through a card at a lightbulb.
That's a great point. At the same time, humans are open to bias. What someone intended to do is not entirely objective. In your example, a computer should be able to handle that situation perfectly. Yet as we saw in the US in Florida, people aren't all that great at determining what someone else intended to do, as noted by all the controversy.
While people are good at gauging others in person, when all that's left behind is a scrawled name, people often can't make an accurate statement about the intention either. I mean look at the arguement over the 2nd amendment - what did the founding fathers mean? We're not face to face, its hard to tell.
Damn Powerbook touchpad...
There was a section at the beginning there about 1 touchscreen machine that prints out a card with a magstrip on one side and human readable text on the other and another machine made by a different company that reads the card and both of them keeping a database of the votes. This was the important part....ignore accidental touchpad strokes my ass. (I love my Mac, but it takes some getting used to)
In a lot of ways I'd agree with you. The more complicated a system becomes, the more likely it becomes prone to failure.
/.'s Washington lobbyists on this ASAP...oh, wait....
But, there are things computers are really good at - such as counting. And things humans are bad at, such as deciding what counts as a dimple versus a handing chad.
It seems the tech community could come up with some kind of solution that works from our technical point of view, exicites the lay people, and isn't obviously corrput.
Here it gets tricky because the two machine companies could collude. Its also tricky because someone could forget to feed the card into the reader. We can think of a few solutions, some sort of random ID that must be both databases (and printed on ticket) or we could assume that people that voted for each party are each equally dumb, and call the lost cards a wash.
So, verification. If the two machines are more than 1 standard deviation off, we know something's up. But also, we could hand count a statistically siginificant portion from each machine to verify accuracy. Sure, we could worry about 'lost' cards, but you have the same worry with paper ballots.
Fact of the matter is, people are going to shout for shiny new tech, its our responsibility to come up with effective ways of giving them what they want, or explaining why they don't want it (and that will be hard after Florida).
Let's get
You certainly weren't with me on my ride from JFK to Long Island City at noon on a Tuesday:
non-standard citizen(???): Yes
commercially licensed: Yes, but I don't know how
Number of pairs of clean underwear arriving at JFK: 3
Number of pairs of clean underwear arriving in Long Island City: 1
The only thing that makes cabs any safer than 'normal' drivers is that cabbies aren't on the phone.
This reminds me of the time my girlfriend-at-the-time and I travelled from Minnesota to New Jersiey to visit her dad. We get out there and it turns out she forgot her curling iron, we need oil for the car, and damned if we forgot to bring condoms (ever had sex in the Wendy's parking lot for fear of dad?).
I have never before, and never since had such a strange look from a cashier.
Ever since its been kind of a game for me to come up with the most bizare combination of items to go with condoms...though now I'm married, so I don't need to buy them often, if ever...snip, snip BK
I checked out the site and checked the "technology" page. They kept going on about the opposite effects of gravity - and didn't seem to be talking about dark energy or anything. So we get to the explaination - _bouyancy_ is gravity's alternate effect? WTF? If I recall, the only thing bouyancy and Archimedes have in common is the phrase 'specific gravity'.
It appears they just plan to do what hawks and eagles to every day and ride the thermals. Great idea, but thier marketing sucks, like thier trying to get big money from people who are clueless.
BK
Do we work together and I didn't realize it?
Actually, there are ten digit numbers for PSAP dispatch centers. Having worked for a national electronic security company for 6 years, I have many of them memorized. There are databases of 10 digit PASP numbers, but they easily get out of date, and they tend not to be free.
A Google like database of PSAP numbers that is kept up to date might be a government database project that we could support. Such a database would be useful for citizens and corporations. Even without GIS information, you could at least get close enough based on city/county information to get an emergency response.
Don't worry - you won't miss TV after about 2 weeks. I haven't had TV for over 3 years, don't miss it. Sure I have _a_ TV, but it doesn't get any stations. Its just for DVDs and such.
/. obsessively...etc - hell, for the national average of TV hours you can get a second job!
Without TV you find you have the time to do some extra work, read a book, pick up a new language, read
But seriously, you will enjoy _not_ having TV. Anything of value that is on TV is available on the Web. The only thing you miss is watercooler talk at the office about the latest sitcom/drama/reality show sh*t.
Give it a try, you'll enjoy the extra time.
Having had mono, this might be the funniest post I've ever seen on /.
I think my sig says it all....
If you suffer from hypochondria or anxiety, _that_ is what you should see your doctor for. And if medical web sites make you nervous or convinced 'I have this' - then stop going to medical websites & tell your GP/shrink whoever what you are experiencing, maybe have a friend research a new medication.
The information is there for those who seek it, if it bothers you, don't seek it - just like pr0n.
Online pharmacies are bad, they are SCAMS and help no one
I'd like to agree with you and offer an example. I recently purchased a BMW (ok, my wife got it for me). It was modified with a Dinan high flow cold air intake. Before I said ok, I made very sure that the chip had also been modified to deal with the change in the fuel/O2 mixture. Documentation was provided that showed a Dinan chip upgrade that corresponded with the mechanical modification. Of course I also verified that the car had always been run on the highest octane fuel.
The result is that I got a 328is that looks _and_ drives like a M3, for about 10K less ("pre-owned" market). It's a '99, now with 40K miles, and no problems thus far.
So you're absolutely right, do the mechanical alterations, and get the chip that matches. A new chip that isn't compensating for some mechanical change is probably nothing but trouble.