Saying that the electoral college is not fair is like saying the bicameral legislature is not fair: after all, why don't we trust the house of representatives to make laws free from the interference of the inordinately powerful votes of the small states' senators?
No, it's not. The bicameral legislature is a compromise that is functioning as it was designed. The electoral college is not, due to mathematical mistakes. The system was fine when it was created, but it didn't scale.
The electoral college system introduces various forms of round-off error into the system. As the range of populations amongst states became more varied, and as the number of states increased, the various sources of round-off error became more significant. For example, most states chose all their votes to go to one candidate. The means that if a state is split 49% to 51%, that 49% of the votes are thrown out. The article points-out that the methods for determining the number of electors is not accurate, which introduces more error.
It doesn't look like the patch has 64-bit Windows support or Linux support.:-) Currently, it only works on XP 64-bit if you use the no-cd patch. (SafeDisc doesn't work on the Betas) Alternatively, a 64-bit Linux version would be welcomed.
I can't stand paying $400 for a video card to play Doom 3. It's just not reasonable when I could buy a Platstation 2 and 5 of the latest games for that price. Because console systems are such significant loss-leaders, the only way that PCs can look as good is to either 1) sell video cards at similar losses, or 2) charge twice as much for the same thing. (1) won't happen since it isn't a monoculture: nVidia can't lose money on a video card since they don't make money from Doom 3 sales. So (2) is what happens. I'm really quite annoyed.
Who spends this kind of money on video cards? Will one of you please reply and tell me why? It's funny, because by raising the bar so high it becomes impossible for me to buy a video card unless I want to play 5 year-old games (which I often do...)
Side comment: Doom3 isn't playable at 640x480 because the text becomes unreadable, and it is an important part of the ambience of the game. So anyone with an older card who figures they can run at 640x480: don't try it.
Although it doesn't support.flac files like the Rio Karma, it does support.ogg, in addition to the usual file formats (mp3,.wmv,.asf,.wav)
Interesting. What makes.asf and.wmv "usual" formats while.ogg is not? Does "usual" mean industry standard? I didn't know that.asf and.wmv support were de-facto standards yet. Has anybody submitted.ogg to a standards body?
Why are the answers in tiny-little barely-readable Flash movie? That must be the worst abuse of bad web design principles I've seen all year -- and on a reputable journal!
Good, then maybe we will have some games that are fun to play.
I agree! It sucks how he keeps making other games not fun! What a drag! Not to mention the fact that he is holding back the industry from trying new concepts. When he stops making games, all other games will become much better! I'll finally be able to think of new game ideas.
Hey Moderators - how about modding the parent post down, and instead modding up someone who has some real criticism of Carmack. I appreciate that someone might not like his games, but blaming him for all games being not fun is senseless.
Re:Not to self-aggrandize...
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
Why do we tolerate such a closed, insider-oriented legal system?
IMHO, the problem is that the US does not have run-off elections. This means that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Anyone who votes for a third party that isn't likely to win can't vote between the final two candidates.
Further, the inaccurate rounding that is done by states that don't have split-elections (which is most of them) exaggerates the problem.
The first PDF is a salesy thing about stabilization and low-light enhancement by some government contractor for security videos.
The second one looks real, and very good. They even talk about interpolating using the MPEG DCT information, rather than just decompressing the frames then applying standard algorithms. But when you look at the screen shots, it is very very unimpressive. Frankly, I can't see a pixel of difference between their super-resolution version and the original frame. There's no way a consumer would pay for this. Further, it won't work on 90% of video frames. Maybe just on mostly still images of text like a close-up of a document or something.
It's funny that you say that, since that is exactly the oppposite of what Gene Roddenberry intended. He thought of Start Trek largely as a social commentary, and he added in the kick-ass Kirk character to appease NBC. The initial pilot was turned down because it was too geeky. The next pilot, which was accepted, involved Kirk kicking the ass of a superhuman character.
So here we are decades later, and all you remember is the fluff that was there to appease the masses. Your comment is insightful in that it shows how much people missed the boat on what Star Trek was about.
If you didn't vote in 2000, or know someone who hasn't then listen to this:
1) In 2000, national voter turnout was 51.3%. (Source http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html) 2) For a party to get federal funding, they need to get 5% or more. 3) That means that if the remaining 48.7% voted randomly then we could have a total of 11 parties running. (9 at 5% each, plus the standard 2).
11 parties nationally recognized in the US!!!! And all that has to happen is people must just vote - vote for anyone! Their dog! Their mom! Some weird-lookin' independent guy you hear about on the news now and then!
Ralph Nader wanted to get 5% of the vote in 2000, but only got 3%. That means 2% of the population could have just gotten up and made a powerful statement for change just by walking down the street to your nearest voting place, and pulled a random lever in a booth. You don't even have to agree with the guy. (Source http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2000/11/09/Ne ws/Nader.Barely.Misses.Federal.Funding-700791.shtm l)
Anyhow, I encourage everyone to pass this on. That may make some of the apathetic voters go out and do some good. Having more alternatives would be a major help to the US election system. (Then, we can push for run-off elections so we can reduce the split-election problem)
Why does anyone still make interlaced devices? I thought everyone agreed that progressive scan was better. Wouldn't they be better off with 540p than 1080i? It seems to me that it would be easier to make the device, and similar or better quality.
We must differentiate "infrastructure" such as wireless networks and campus computers with "non-infrastructure" spending such as giving each student an iPod. What if the student already has an iPod? Purchasing individual items for students doesn't make sense. It would be like purchasing a pencil for each student? Or a textbook. Furthermore, an iPod is not a necessity.
Maybe we could call it a "filing" system since it indexes files that are on another file system. Really, a file system IS a database, not an add-on that indexes files. Still, perhaps this is a better approach than trying to redo all the file-system internals. Although to be truly useful, this needs to be an API that is GUI-independent, with GUI-bindings as needed.
I get the impression that Hollywood is blocking Anime. Could it be that they see it as a threat? My experience is telling me that Anime is no longer a cult thing. I'm 27, and my youngest brother (11 yrs) to people my age (30s) are watching and collecting anime. It's available in mainstream stores now (Best Buy, movie stores) and video rental places offer them.
But I don't see them in theaters. Spirited Away didn't even make it into as many theaters as Gigli! Live-action anime-like movies get even worse treatment. Granted, Kill Bill was successful, and the comic movies do well. But Shaolin Soccer was a hit in China and Japan, but it can't seem to make it over here. My younger bros wear Naruto t-shirts to school, but I hear that will never be licensed in the US.
People being able to spoof email addresses? Or fake the return address on an envelope? Or print fake IDs! Oh no, club owners beware, that young looking 46 year old might really be 13! And that official looking envelope may not really be from that swiss bank in Europe. And yes, hotgirl69@yourfavoriteISP.com might really be your wife!
Yet another unwanted, unnecessary feature involving Internet Explorer embedded into a program that doesn't need it has a remote exploit. To mitigate this problem, disable active anything, automatic anything, and ActiveX anything. That is all.
Two steps are required:
1) Make apps that work without admin mode. Most stuff on the shelf today still doesn't. I have yet to see a game that does.
2) Make apps that need admin access prompt you for it.
- *nix has done this for a long long time.
But neither of these things will happen until the mentality changes. The mentality won't change until the apps are there. I've tried to get user's to do it when possible, but then they go download some spyware app that makes a jiggly peanut dance across the screen (or some such nonsense), and it needs admin rights, so they would rather lose all security and pay me $100 later on to fix their system, than to stop downloading the pointless spyware.
I believe that the APIs often have an impact on the UI. They shouldn't, but they do. For example, lots of classic command-line tools get a UI thrown over them. But the lack of a formal interface makes it difficult to display error messages, status bars, etc. So the UI tends to feel strange to the end-user.
One quick example: Compare the Red Hat services tool to the Windows "services" control panel. You can tell that the red-hat one calls to the init scripts, and that the Windows one has a nice API underneath. It's visibile and the end-user still feels it.
...the FCC could, if it wanted to, place tariffs on online newspapers or require that online retailers be able to process 911 emergency calls. "It's sort of a lighthearted footnote," she says. "But for me it suggests the FCC has power over all online services and it's just going to decide what services it's going to act on.
1) You cannot place a tariff on a newspaper. That would be one of the most obvious violations of the first ammendment I've ever seen. "Oh, you can criticize the government, but there is a tariff on that." riiiiggghhht....
2) Online retailers process 911 calls? Huh?
From: reader@slashdot.org To: sales@niftystore.com Subject: Help!
Someone is in my house, they are coming upstairs! Help!
3) The last one is the scariest part. The US government has basically found a way to get around the constitution. They don't have the power to do something, but they can set up an agency that claims the power. But this agency can bite them back by doing things the congress doesn't want.
Does the charter for the FCC state what it can and cannot do? The FCC is the greatest example of a regulatory agency that expands it's own powers based on it's own decisions. I begin to think that the entire purpose of the FCC should begin to be questioned, and maybe the charter that established it should be rewritten.
Ok, everyone laugh at me. I say the paperless office killled OCR.:-) Yeah, that thing that would supposedly never happen? That is the butt of office jokes? Well, I think it did and nobody noticed.
How much paper do you see around you that wasn't already computer generated? Paper still exists as a convenient thing to hang up, or to take to a meeting, but it is always printed. There's no point in complex OCR packages when people can just get the soft copy.
There is very little left to scan. large organizations that are moving from paper to electronic systems aldready keyed the data in manually and don't need the technology anymore. The internet killed the need for faxes, which were unreadable anyway. What's left to OCR?
With that said, my bank doesn't offer online statements, so I scan them every month. But I don't bother to OCR them. My credit card company just started, so that will leave me with one sheet of paper every month.
This is not a crappy computer
on
You've Got PC
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Half the posts are saying "Who cares? It's an entry-level $299 computer." Someone please tell me why a normal computer user (the type who uses AOL) needs anything faster than a 2GHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM?
Word Processing? check. Web surfing? check. Email? check. Office applications? check. Solitaire? check. All of the above simultaneously? check. Doom 3? Oops!
Other than video games, a typical "entry-level" PC like this does fine. This is the same thing as Microsoft having trouble getting people off of Windows '9x.
The Mah & Pah with a 500Mhz PII doesn't need anything faster. Their broadband is still slower than the speed that their PC can render a web page. It still plays chess better than they do. And they don't notice the few seconds of paging when the switch apps.
I was going to complain about how Windows is not appropriate for embedded devices, but then I reread the article for examples. They don't make one mention to any kind of "device." The only thing they mention is some system by Kodak for transferring images. I think the word "device" is there to scare the public into thinking that their heart monitors and chemotherapy machines are going to be infected. I doubt these devices have hard drives or TCP/IP connections to infect. More likely, they are talking about hospital computer systems. My experience in the Medical Informatics biz is that this sector is technologically further behind than any other section of IT.
Re:Um correct me if I'm wrong (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Tue Aug 03, '04 03:05 PM (#9870771)
Coming soon: an open-source project dedicated to developing a trojan horse that scans the user's hard drive for pirated songs and movies and transmits this information directly to the RIAA and MPAA!
I would like to address this measly coward's point, since I think this thought process comes up often. We should not object to an open-source project that scans for pirated software. Nor should we object to an open-source missile-control program, or an open-source minority-beating police simulator. Or any other improper or politically incorrect software. It is all in how you use it.
The problem isn't the software, it is how it is used. Let's call this proposed open-source project "PirateScan 2000!" Would you object if the RIAA went to court, proved probably cause, and got a warrant to run PirateSCan 2000 on someone's PC to determine if they were pirating? I would not object to that any more than I would object to the authorities bringing a bomb-sniffing dog into my house given a warrant and appropriate evidence. We don't blame the dog for the privacy violation. And we don't blame the software either. Heck! I would be LOTS happier if they used an open-source application, so that I can be sure it doesn't install a monitor, or delete files, or misreport the results.
But the fearmongers would have us deny the government appropriate tools - so they can never use them, only mis-use them. This is counter-productive. But addressing the issues openly, and showing them that open-source isn't about piracy, it is about keeping things cleanly on the up-and-up, we might make some headway against the FUD campaigns.
BTW - Anyone who thinks the "how you use it" argument isn't any good should also be arguing that disclosing security holes is bad. Because those eeevil pirates could use it! And guns are bad! And knives! Especially open-source knives! And open-source guns that fire knives!
Stop blaming the tools. Stop the laws that let government misuse them.
To avoid losing all of their assets, Artifact is using their own technology to move all of their assets from Ultima Online, into the New York Stock Exchange. This, along with the sale of the sale of the "Uber sword of vanquishing" is expected to expedite Artifact return to normal financial operating conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not. The bicameral legislature is a compromise that is functioning as it was designed. The electoral college is not, due to mathematical mistakes. The system was fine when it was created, but it didn't scale.
The electoral college system introduces various forms of round-off error into the system. As the range of populations amongst states became more varied, and as the number of states increased, the various sources of round-off error became more significant. For example, most states chose all their votes to go to one candidate. The means that if a state is split 49% to 51%, that 49% of the votes are thrown out. The article points-out that the methods for determining the number of electors is not accurate, which introduces more error.
It doesn't look like the patch has 64-bit Windows support or Linux support. :-) Currently, it only works on XP 64-bit if you use the no-cd patch. (SafeDisc doesn't work on the Betas) Alternatively, a 64-bit Linux version would be welcomed.
I can't stand paying $400 for a video card to play Doom 3. It's just not reasonable when I could buy a Platstation 2 and 5 of the latest games for that price. Because console systems are such significant loss-leaders, the only way that PCs can look as good is to either 1) sell video cards at similar losses, or 2) charge twice as much for the same thing. (1) won't happen since it isn't a monoculture: nVidia can't lose money on a video card since they don't make money from Doom 3 sales. So (2) is what happens. I'm really quite annoyed.
Who spends this kind of money on video cards? Will one of you please reply and tell me why? It's funny, because by raising the bar so high it becomes impossible for me to buy a video card unless I want to play 5 year-old games (which I often do...)
Side comment: Doom3 isn't playable at 640x480 because the text becomes unreadable, and it is an important part of the ambience of the game. So anyone with an older card who figures they can run at 640x480: don't try it.
Why are the answers in tiny-little barely-readable Flash movie? That must be the worst abuse of bad web design principles I've seen all year -- and on a reputable journal!
I agree! It sucks how he keeps making other games not fun! What a drag! Not to mention the fact that he is holding back the industry from trying new concepts. When he stops making games, all other games will become much better! I'll finally be able to think of new game ideas.
Hey Moderators - how about modding the parent post down, and instead modding up someone who has some real criticism of Carmack. I appreciate that someone might not like his games, but blaming him for all games being not fun is senseless.
IMHO, the problem is that the US does not have run-off elections. This means that it is effectively impossible to have more than two parties. Anyone who votes for a third party that isn't likely to win can't vote between the final two candidates.
Further, the inaccurate rounding that is done by states that don't have split-elections (which is most of them) exaggerates the problem.
The first PDF is a salesy thing about stabilization and low-light enhancement by some government contractor for security videos.
The second one looks real, and very good. They even talk about interpolating using the MPEG DCT information, rather than just decompressing the frames then applying standard algorithms. But when you look at the screen shots, it is very very unimpressive. Frankly, I can't see a pixel of difference between their super-resolution version and the original frame. There's no way a consumer would pay for this. Further, it won't work on 90% of video frames. Maybe just on mostly still images of text like a close-up of a document or something.
Blech, move along.
It's funny that you say that, since that is exactly the oppposite of what Gene Roddenberry intended. He thought of Start Trek largely as a social commentary, and he added in the kick-ass Kirk character to appease NBC. The initial pilot was turned down because it was too geeky. The next pilot, which was accepted, involved Kirk kicking the ass of a superhuman character.
So here we are decades later, and all you remember is the fluff that was there to appease the masses. Your comment is insightful in that it shows how much people missed the boat on what Star Trek was about.
(Source History of Star Trek)
If you didn't vote in 2000, or know someone who hasn't then listen to this:
e ws/Nader.Barely.Misses.Federal.Funding-700791.shtm l)
1) In 2000, national voter turnout was 51.3%. (Source http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html)
2) For a party to get federal funding, they need to get 5% or more.
3) That means that if the remaining 48.7% voted randomly then we could have a total of 11 parties running. (9 at 5% each, plus the standard 2).
11 parties nationally recognized in the US!!!! And all that has to happen is people must just vote - vote for anyone! Their dog! Their mom! Some weird-lookin' independent guy you hear about on the news now and then!
Ralph Nader wanted to get 5% of the vote in 2000, but only got 3%. That means 2% of the population could have just gotten up and made a powerful statement for change just by walking down the street to your nearest voting place, and pulled a random lever in a booth. You don't even have to agree with the guy.
(Source http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2000/11/09/N
Anyhow, I encourage everyone to pass this on. That may make some of the apathetic voters go out and do some good. Having more alternatives would be a major help to the US election system. (Then, we can push for run-off elections so we can reduce the split-election problem)
Why does anyone still make interlaced devices? I thought everyone agreed that progressive scan was better. Wouldn't they be better off with 540p than 1080i? It seems to me that it would be easier to make the device, and similar or better quality.
Am I missing something?
We must differentiate "infrastructure" such as wireless networks and campus computers with "non-infrastructure" spending such as giving each student an iPod. What if the student already has an iPod? Purchasing individual items for students doesn't make sense. It would be like purchasing a pencil for each student? Or a textbook. Furthermore, an iPod is not a necessity.
Maybe we could call it a "filing" system since it indexes files that are on another file system. Really, a file system IS a database, not an add-on that indexes files. Still, perhaps this is a better approach than trying to redo all the file-system internals. Although to be truly useful, this needs to be an API that is GUI-independent, with GUI-bindings as needed.
I get the impression that Hollywood is blocking Anime. Could it be that they see it as a threat? My experience is telling me that Anime is no longer a cult thing. I'm 27, and my youngest brother (11 yrs) to people my age (30s) are watching and collecting anime. It's available in mainstream stores now (Best Buy, movie stores) and video rental places offer them.
But I don't see them in theaters. Spirited Away didn't even make it into as many theaters as Gigli! Live-action anime-like movies get even worse treatment. Granted, Kill Bill was successful, and the comic movies do well. But Shaolin Soccer was a hit in China and Japan, but it can't seem to make it over here. My younger bros wear Naruto t-shirts to school, but I hear that will never be licensed in the US.
What's going on?
People being able to spoof email addresses? Or fake the return address on an envelope? Or print fake IDs! Oh no, club owners beware, that young looking 46 year old might really be 13! And that official looking envelope may not really be from that swiss bank in Europe. And yes, hotgirl69@yourfavoriteISP.com might really be your wife!
Yet another unwanted, unnecessary feature involving Internet Explorer embedded into a program that doesn't need it has a remote exploit. To mitigate this problem, disable active anything, automatic anything, and ActiveX anything. That is all.
1) Make apps that work without admin mode. Most stuff on the shelf today still doesn't. I have yet to see a game that does.
2) Make apps that need admin access prompt you for it. - *nix has done this for a long long time.
But neither of these things will happen until the mentality changes. The mentality won't change until the apps are there. I've tried to get user's to do it when possible, but then they go download some spyware app that makes a jiggly peanut dance across the screen (or some such nonsense), and it needs admin rights, so they would rather lose all security and pay me $100 later on to fix their system, than to stop downloading the pointless spyware.
I believe that the APIs often have an impact on the UI. They shouldn't, but they do. For example, lots of classic command-line tools get a UI thrown over them. But the lack of a formal interface makes it difficult to display error messages, status bars, etc. So the UI tends to feel strange to the end-user.
One quick example: Compare the Red Hat services tool to the Windows "services" control panel. You can tell that the red-hat one calls to the init scripts, and that the Windows one has a nice API underneath. It's visibile and the end-user still feels it.
1) You cannot place a tariff on a newspaper. That would be one of the most obvious violations of the first ammendment I've ever seen. "Oh, you can criticize the government, but there is a tariff on that." riiiiggghhht....
2) Online retailers process 911 calls? Huh?
3) The last one is the scariest part. The US government has basically found a way to get around the constitution. They don't have the power to do something, but they can set up an agency that claims the power. But this agency can bite them back by doing things the congress doesn't want.
Does the charter for the FCC state what it can and cannot do? The FCC is the greatest example of a regulatory agency that expands it's own powers based on it's own decisions. I begin to think that the entire purpose of the FCC should begin to be questioned, and maybe the charter that established it should be rewritten.
Ok, everyone laugh at me. I say the paperless office killled OCR. :-) Yeah, that thing that would supposedly never happen? That is the butt of office jokes? Well, I think it did and nobody noticed.
How much paper do you see around you that wasn't already computer generated? Paper still exists as a convenient thing to hang up, or to take to a meeting, but it is always printed. There's no point in complex OCR packages when people can just get the soft copy.
There is very little left to scan. large organizations that are moving from paper to electronic systems aldready keyed the data in manually and don't need the technology anymore. The internet killed the need for faxes, which were unreadable anyway. What's left to OCR?
With that said, my bank doesn't offer online statements, so I scan them every month. But I don't bother to OCR them. My credit card company just started, so that will leave me with one sheet of paper every month.
Half the posts are saying "Who cares? It's an entry-level $299 computer." Someone please tell me why a normal computer user (the type who uses AOL) needs anything faster than a 2GHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM?
Word Processing? check.
Web surfing? check.
Email? check.
Office applications? check.
Solitaire? check.
All of the above simultaneously? check.
Doom 3? Oops!
Other than video games, a typical "entry-level" PC like this does fine. This is the same thing as Microsoft having trouble getting people off of Windows '9x.
The Mah & Pah with a 500Mhz PII doesn't need anything faster. Their broadband is still slower than the speed that their PC can render a web page. It still plays chess better than they do. And they don't notice the few seconds of paging when the switch apps.
I was going to complain about how Windows is not appropriate for embedded devices, but then I reread the article for examples. They don't make one mention to any kind of "device." The only thing they mention is some system by Kodak for transferring images. I think the word "device" is there to scare the public into thinking that their heart monitors and chemotherapy machines are going to be infected. I doubt these devices have hard drives or TCP/IP connections to infect. More likely, they are talking about hospital computer systems. My experience in the Medical Informatics biz is that this sector is technologically further behind than any other section of IT.
How do you keep the soldier from overheating when they are enclosed in a suit of bullet-absorbing body armor?
I would like to address this measly coward's point, since I think this thought process comes up often. We should not object to an open-source project that scans for pirated software. Nor should we object to an open-source missile-control program, or an open-source minority-beating police simulator. Or any other improper or politically incorrect software. It is all in how you use it.
The problem isn't the software, it is how it is used. Let's call this proposed open-source project "PirateScan 2000!" Would you object if the RIAA went to court, proved probably cause, and got a warrant to run PirateSCan 2000 on someone's PC to determine if they were pirating? I would not object to that any more than I would object to the authorities bringing a bomb-sniffing dog into my house given a warrant and appropriate evidence. We don't blame the dog for the privacy violation. And we don't blame the software either. Heck! I would be LOTS happier if they used an open-source application, so that I can be sure it doesn't install a monitor, or delete files, or misreport the results.
But the fearmongers would have us deny the government appropriate tools - so they can never use them, only mis-use them. This is counter-productive. But addressing the issues openly, and showing them that open-source isn't about piracy, it is about keeping things cleanly on the up-and-up, we might make some headway against the FUD campaigns.
BTW - Anyone who thinks the "how you use it" argument isn't any good should also be arguing that disclosing security holes is bad. Because those eeevil pirates could use it! And guns are bad! And knives! Especially open-source knives! And open-source guns that fire knives!
Stop blaming the tools. Stop the laws that let government misuse them.
(Booyah!)To avoid losing all of their assets, Artifact is using their own technology to move all of their assets from Ultima Online, into the New York Stock Exchange. This, along with the sale of the sale of the "Uber sword of vanquishing" is expected to expedite Artifact return to normal financial operating conditions.