I was reloading the CNN page about once every 10 minutes, because I'm psychotic.
And I saw a thing, above the angry guy, that said, "Breaking News: A federal judge has called an emergency hearing to review voting irregularities in Palm Beach this afternoon. Updates soon." The next time I refreshed, that was gone, and no update.
The basic flaw in Natapoff's argument is that he considers a system of election good if it allows a minority to defeat a candidate that the majority wants. He tells us that this is good because it is bad for a majority to be able to elect whatever candidate they want, because then they will elect a candidate that does not have the best interests of the minority at heart. For some reason, he considers this threat greater than the threat that a minority would do exactly the same thing, given their increased power at the voting booth. But most importantly, he neglects the fact that he is defining a "majority" as "people who like a given candidate," not as "people who are in any way related by class." Yes, Germans occasionally oppress Jews. No, Gore supporters do not normally wantonly slay Bush supporters.
Also, his method for "giving more power" to the oppressed minorities is a bit dumb. But I'm tired of arguing that point.
The IRS noted that its plan to install accountants as the new Masters of the Universe had been spelled out in excruciating detail in several publications, all of which were available from any Post Office and on the web, and no one had complained in the 5 years since the plans' initial publication.
At any rate, I agree that a much bigger deal is being made over this than should be. I'd be a sore loser, too, if I thought that an evil, skilled President were any less bad than an incompetent, affable president.
Well... Actually, it DOES give more power to individual voters, if you accept Natapoff's definition of "power". Admittedly, it also redistributes the power, but it does increase it.
The problem lies within the definition of "voting power" itself. According to Natapoff, a voter has power when his vote, by itself, would change the outcome of an election. That is to say, the closer an election is, the more power voters have. The problem is, Natapoff's strategy to make elections closer (which happens to be the strategy currently used in the US) is essentially to determine which votes are most likely to unbalance the election and through them out. It does this statistically, but as a simplified example - say we only have three states, of equal (say, 100 people each) population. One state is largely (say, 80-20) in favor of candidate A. The other two states are evenly divided. If we use a popular election, candidate A wins handily, even if 20 people in state A get sick. If we use a system like the one we have in place, candidate B has a pretty reasonable chance, and no matter what his victory/defeat will APPEAR to have been decided by only a few people.
Natapoff contends that this is a good thing, because since MORE people like candidate A, candidate A is in fact Satan, and only by virtue of the electoral college can our dark master be prevented from ascending once more to his throne.
Ok, now THAT's cool that somebody's wasting their moderator points on a reply two deep on a, what, 12 hour old article that barely got any replies.
Here's a hint, moderators, since you're obviously still reading this - modding down a reply to a 0 score post only makes sense if you really think the reply will get modded down to 0. More to the point, in this case, what I was responding to was obviously more worthy of being modded down, which would have gotten my comment knocked out, too.
But, oh, wait - that wouldn't have hurt someone's karma. So whoever modded this down did it because they don't like ME, and wanted to punish me for writing this reply that four people were going to see, and no one was going to care about.
I'm starting to see why so many people claim the moderation system is broken.
Although I'm guessing that the real truth is, I got modded down by the same bloody moron who posted "EMACS BITCH!!!" as AC.
The average Wal*Mart shopper isn't going to have too much luck with some of the stuff he can buy in the sporting goods, automotive, gardening or sewing department, either. It's odd that operating systems should be viewed differently, but you're right - they are.
"Hmm. An overlock sewing machine. I've heard good things about these - I should probably get one."
"They have serious differences on heath care, education, gun control, taxes etc etc. How are they 'the same people'?"
Their differences on many issues, such as Heath bar care, are differences of degree, not differences of intent. They are both in favor of minor tweaks to the current status quo. Yes, there are certainly differences, but most states have more differences between their two Senators (even if both are from the same party) on major issues than can be found between Bush and Gore.
An excellent indicator of this is the amount of quibbling over numbers they have done. If they actually had differences over kind, and not amount, numbers would rarely come into it.
Tell me this - is either of them opposed to education, health care, or gun control? (You'll have to think carefully about the last one - if we elect Bush, will he actually support free, unlicensed access to ALL weapons? If I want to vote for a candidate who will speak up for my right, guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, to own and operate a 6" modern cannon, who do I vote for?) Is either of them opposed to free and normal trade relations with China?
Can you name one issue that they are actually far enough apart on that if the line moved two feet to the left or right, they would both be on the same side?
Damn, buddy. You must go through ripple and hookers like nobody's business. That, or you don't work full time, and you think that they're saying no one can earn more than ten times the minimum wage PER HOUR - which means if you won the lottery, you'd get $51.50, too, I assume. "Thank you so much for saving my baby! I'd love to give you $1000, and at this rate, it will only take me a few days!" I think they mean a minimum yearly wage. Or maybe you're right, and they're total morons. I'm sure that's it.
Of course, you're also assuming that they would do this WITHOUT implementing the $12.50 MINIMUM wage in the same platform you reference.
There are intelligent things to say about a maximum wage. You have said none of them. In fact, by your argument I would say that the MINIMUM wage should be very nearly $50/hour, since apparently that's what it takes to keep food in the cupboard these days.
They're not claiming that people will be confused and think that his site is a Guinness site, they're worried about people thinking his site is a "Guinness sucks" site, which they are obviously working on, since they registered the domain.
Legitimate reason for direct link
on
D&D Trailer
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· Score: 1
Is there a legitimate reason for using a direct link? Yes - there is. I work in 1280x1024 on a 17" monitor. If I can download the file, I can use a player to see it fullscreen. If I can't download the file, I get to watch it take up less than a quarter of my screen.
Not that I can get the whole thing to download now, anyway. It's alright, though - LotR is just a year away, right?
This country has long since been forced to admit that adults may subscribe to vices, but that the government may intercede when children attempt to partake of the same vices. (q.v. smoking, gambling, drinking, obscenity and voting.) Governmental intercession regarding youth access to all types of obscenity, be it pornographic, violent, or simply offensive, is becoming increasingly more difficult with the advent of the Internet. How do you intend to uphold the ability of adults to partake of obscenity, as is their sometimes right under the First Amendment, while still making access to such obscenities difficult for children? Or would you propose that the governments intent shift, either lessening adult access to obscenity, or reducing government restrictions on the same?
D'oh. Stupid me - This is just some guy, not NASA itself. I should have looked more closely at the rest of the page, instead of just hunting for any reference to "those other guys."
First, I want to point out how cool the list of "featured links" is for this article. My favorite is the part where it goes "1 2 3 1 2 3".
Second, I've seen a couple of fluff pieces on the local media touching on this issue - they've all showed kids playing Doom64. I've got to say - that would turn ME into a murderer. The graphics are freaking awful. Sony must have paid them off.
I think BeloCorp has to be in bed with someone before they'll do a story on them - I think that's the official policy. If I recall correctly, back before DotComGuy went big, BeloCorp was listed as one of his sponsors. The "sponsor" page quietly disappeared shortly before BeloCorp started covering DotComGuy as if he were hard news.
"What the hell is this article really trying to tell the public...?"
Towards the end of Peanuts, there was a really incoherent storyline, and in one of the strips, a character said, "sometimes I don't even know what day it is, anymore." It seemed like an appropriate motto for that entire series of strips. Peanuts got better.
I don't think newspapers are going to get better. They don't even PRETEND to know what journalistic integrity means, they just try to redefine it (NYT vs. Amazon, DMN vs. CueCat).
They'll still get published, I'm sure, but as far as I can see, the days of newspapers being a trusted resource are at an end.
I have SWBell in Dallas - I've had nothing but good experiences with it. I think I've had about 1 day total of downtime over the past 3 months, which is pretty good compared to what I was getting over dial-up. I'm getting terrific speed, despite not being all that close to the box.
On the other hand, some of my friends have really gotten reamed by them.
Ironically, the Olympics will disintegrate without the help of their ongoing battle to take their ball and go home with it. Witness their failure, despite spending millions on various logistics, to set the height of the vault correctly for the women's overall gymnastics competition, or even to question its height after a number of vaulters went way too high. Consider the huge amount of bad press they get for widespread corruption, that apparently isn't as welcome now as it was 4 years ago. The Olympics has always been about failing to live up to lofty ideals - and their ideals have never included free and easy access to information about the Olympics. They hold judo hostage so synchronized diving and amy van dyken spitting into a competitors lane will only be broadcast on the one true network.
I know open-source journalism doesn't quite work, these days, but I long for a day when an intelligent fan can bring me their play-by-play of an event I enjoy.
The Olympics claims it is the IOC's gift to the world, and for some reason, people buy it. Bleah.
This story would have been so much cooler if someone had figured out how many digits they actually had available to check, and knew that many digits, and then just started making shit up from that point, and just kept going...
Oh, wait - that DID happen. And they're still there, making up numbers. One day, they'll die, and if we're lucky the person running the contest will survive long enough to let us know about it.
(3.14159265359 is as far as i bothered learning it - any calculator that takes more digits will most likely remember pi for me. And yes, I'm aware that the 9 is actually 897 rounded up.)
You make such a good point, I'm tempted to re-state it in big, bold letters, and spell out as an addendum that Frank Miller's primary accomplishment was NOT merely presenting Batman as dark and troubled. But I guess I'll just do this, instead.
"Prediction 2: Find 10 people who saw Episode 1 fewer than 3 times. Ask each of them to tell you what the plot was (the plot, not just a series of scenes like "first there was the floating ship and the poison gas, then the race, then..."). No more than 2 people (if that many) will be anywhere close. Point? Episode 1 either had no plot or hid it behind too-flashy effects."
It took me two viewings to figure out the plot. I think the problem is that most people, watching Episode I for the first time, are concentrating on two things - plugging what they're seeing into what they remember from Episodes IV-VI, and deciding which bandwagon (worst movie ever, jar jar ruined it, it wasn't that bad) they want to jump onto. Well, that, and it's really a pretty boring plot - it's difficult to care about anything at a higher level than "will our heroes be alright?" I can only assume this is intentional.
Slashdot Mirror
I was reloading the CNN page about once every 10 minutes, because I'm psychotic.
And I saw a thing, above the angry guy, that said, "Breaking News: A federal judge has called an emergency hearing to review voting irregularities in Palm Beach this afternoon. Updates soon." The next time I refreshed, that was gone, and no update.
The basic flaw in Natapoff's argument is that he considers a system of election good if it allows a minority to defeat a candidate that the majority wants. He tells us that this is good because it is bad for a majority to be able to elect whatever candidate they want, because then they will elect a candidate that does not have the best interests of the minority at heart. For some reason, he considers this threat greater than the threat that a minority would do exactly the same thing, given their increased power at the voting booth. But most importantly, he neglects the fact that he is defining a "majority" as "people who like a given candidate," not as "people who are in any way related by class." Yes, Germans occasionally oppress Jews. No, Gore supporters do not normally wantonly slay Bush supporters.
Also, his method for "giving more power" to the oppressed minorities is a bit dumb. But I'm tired of arguing that point.
The IRS noted that its plan to install accountants as the new Masters of the Universe had been spelled out in excruciating detail in several publications, all of which were available from any Post Office and on the web, and no one had complained in the 5 years since the plans' initial publication.
At any rate, I agree that a much bigger deal is being made over this than should be. I'd be a sore loser, too, if I thought that an evil, skilled President were any less bad than an incompetent, affable president.
Well... Actually, it DOES give more power to individual voters, if you accept Natapoff's definition of "power". Admittedly, it also redistributes the power, but it does increase it.
The problem lies within the definition of "voting power" itself. According to Natapoff, a voter has power when his vote, by itself, would change the outcome of an election. That is to say, the closer an election is, the more power voters have. The problem is, Natapoff's strategy to make elections closer (which happens to be the strategy currently used in the US) is essentially to determine which votes are most likely to unbalance the election and through them out. It does this statistically, but as a simplified example - say we only have three states, of equal (say, 100 people each) population. One state is largely (say, 80-20) in favor of candidate A. The other two states are evenly divided. If we use a popular election, candidate A wins handily, even if 20 people in state A get sick. If we use a system like the one we have in place, candidate B has a pretty reasonable chance, and no matter what his victory/defeat will APPEAR to have been decided by only a few people.
Natapoff contends that this is a good thing, because since MORE people like candidate A, candidate A is in fact Satan, and only by virtue of the electoral college can our dark master be prevented from ascending once more to his throne.
Trust me, it's all in there.
what was that comment about not intending to buy a landslide, again?
Ok, now THAT's cool that somebody's wasting their moderator points on a reply two deep on a, what, 12 hour old article that barely got any replies.
Here's a hint, moderators, since you're obviously still reading this - modding down a reply to a 0 score post only makes sense if you really think the reply will get modded down to 0. More to the point, in this case, what I was responding to was obviously more worthy of being modded down, which would have gotten my comment knocked out, too.
But, oh, wait - that wouldn't have hurt someone's karma. So whoever modded this down did it because they don't like ME, and wanted to punish me for writing this reply that four people were going to see, and no one was going to care about.
I'm starting to see why so many people claim the moderation system is broken.
Although I'm guessing that the real truth is, I got modded down by the same bloody moron who posted "EMACS BITCH!!!" as AC.
The average Wal*Mart shopper isn't going to have too much luck with some of the stuff he can buy in the sporting goods, automotive, gardening or sewing department, either. It's odd that operating systems should be viewed differently, but you're right - they are.
"Hmm. An overlock sewing machine. I've heard good things about these - I should probably get one."
Heh. I never thought I'd see the phrase "at least vi is there."
"They have serious differences on heath care, education, gun control, taxes etc etc. How are they 'the same people'?"
Their differences on many issues, such as Heath bar care, are differences of degree, not differences of intent. They are both in favor of minor tweaks to the current status quo. Yes, there are certainly differences, but most states have more differences between their two Senators (even if both are from the same party) on major issues than can be found between Bush and Gore.
An excellent indicator of this is the amount of quibbling over numbers they have done. If they actually had differences over kind, and not amount, numbers would rarely come into it.
Tell me this - is either of them opposed to education, health care, or gun control? (You'll have to think carefully about the last one - if we elect Bush, will he actually support free, unlicensed access to ALL weapons? If I want to vote for a candidate who will speak up for my right, guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment, to own and operate a 6" modern cannon, who do I vote for?) Is either of them opposed to free and normal trade relations with China?
Can you name one issue that they are actually far enough apart on that if the line moved two feet to the left or right, they would both be on the same side?
Damn, buddy. You must go through ripple and hookers like nobody's business. That, or you don't work full time, and you think that they're saying no one can earn more than ten times the minimum wage PER HOUR - which means if you won the lottery, you'd get $51.50, too, I assume. "Thank you so much for saving my baby! I'd love to give you $1000, and at this rate, it will only take me a few days!" I think they mean a minimum yearly wage. Or maybe you're right, and they're total morons. I'm sure that's it.
Of course, you're also assuming that they would do this WITHOUT implementing the $12.50 MINIMUM wage in the same platform you reference.
There are intelligent things to say about a maximum wage. You have said none of them. In fact, by your argument I would say that the MINIMUM wage should be very nearly $50/hour, since apparently that's what it takes to keep food in the cupboard these days.
They're not claiming that people will be confused and think that his site is a Guinness site, they're worried about people thinking his site is a "Guinness sucks" site, which they are obviously working on, since they registered the domain.
Is there a legitimate reason for using a direct link? Yes - there is. I work in 1280x1024 on a 17" monitor. If I can download the file, I can use a player to see it fullscreen. If I can't download the file, I get to watch it take up less than a quarter of my screen.
Not that I can get the whole thing to download now, anyway. It's alright, though - LotR is just a year away, right?
You must have been sleeping through their, "two parties is enough" tirades in August, then.
This country has long since been forced to admit that adults may subscribe to vices, but that the government may intercede when children attempt to partake of the same vices. (q.v. smoking, gambling, drinking, obscenity and voting.) Governmental intercession regarding youth access to all types of obscenity, be it pornographic, violent, or simply offensive, is becoming increasingly more difficult with the advent of the Internet. How do you intend to uphold the ability of adults to partake of obscenity, as is their sometimes right under the First Amendment, while still making access to such obscenities difficult for children? Or would you propose that the governments intent shift, either lessening adult access to obscenity, or reducing government restrictions on the same?
Thank you.
D'oh. Stupid me - This is just some guy, not NASA itself. I should have looked more closely at the rest of the page, instead of just hunting for any reference to "those other guys."
I would hate to see this country torn apart by having the option to vote for a candidate who is not a corporate shill.
I really would have expected better from NASA.
First, I want to point out how cool the list of "featured links" is for this article. My favorite is the part where it goes "1 2 3 1 2 3".
Second, I've seen a couple of fluff pieces on the local media touching on this issue - they've all showed kids playing Doom64. I've got to say - that would turn ME into a murderer. The graphics are freaking awful. Sony must have paid them off.
I think BeloCorp has to be in bed with someone before they'll do a story on them - I think that's the official policy. If I recall correctly, back before DotComGuy went big, BeloCorp was listed as one of his sponsors. The "sponsor" page quietly disappeared shortly before BeloCorp started covering DotComGuy as if he were hard news.
"What the hell is this article really trying to tell the public...?"
Towards the end of Peanuts, there was a really incoherent storyline, and in one of the strips, a character said, "sometimes I don't even know what day it is, anymore." It seemed like an appropriate motto for that entire series of strips. Peanuts got better.
I don't think newspapers are going to get better. They don't even PRETEND to know what journalistic integrity means, they just try to redefine it (NYT vs. Amazon, DMN vs. CueCat).
They'll still get published, I'm sure, but as far as I can see, the days of newspapers being a trusted resource are at an end.
I have SWBell in Dallas - I've had nothing but good experiences with it. I think I've had about 1 day total of downtime over the past 3 months, which is pretty good compared to what I was getting over dial-up. I'm getting terrific speed, despite not being all that close to the box.
On the other hand, some of my friends have really gotten reamed by them.
Yeah, like the glamorous American gold medalist in the women's 10m air rifle, who is going back to working in the garden department at Home Depot.
Ironically, the Olympics will disintegrate without the help of their ongoing battle to take their ball and go home with it. Witness their failure, despite spending millions on various logistics, to set the height of the vault correctly for the women's overall gymnastics competition, or even to question its height after a number of vaulters went way too high. Consider the huge amount of bad press they get for widespread corruption, that apparently isn't as welcome now as it was 4 years ago. The Olympics has always been about failing to live up to lofty ideals - and their ideals have never included free and easy access to information about the Olympics. They hold judo hostage so synchronized diving and amy van dyken spitting into a competitors lane will only be broadcast on the one true network.
I know open-source journalism doesn't quite work, these days, but I long for a day when an intelligent fan can bring me their play-by-play of an event I enjoy.
The Olympics claims it is the IOC's gift to the world, and for some reason, people buy it. Bleah.
This story would have been so much cooler if someone had figured out how many digits they actually had available to check, and knew that many digits, and then just started making shit up from that point, and just kept going...
Oh, wait - that DID happen. And they're still there, making up numbers. One day, they'll die, and if we're lucky the person running the contest will survive long enough to let us know about it.
(3.14159265359 is as far as i bothered learning it - any calculator that takes more digits will most likely remember pi for me. And yes, I'm aware that the 9 is actually 897 rounded up.)
You make such a good point, I'm tempted to re-state it in big, bold letters, and spell out as an addendum that Frank Miller's primary accomplishment was NOT merely presenting Batman as dark and troubled. But I guess I'll just do this, instead.
"Prediction 2: Find 10 people who saw Episode 1 fewer than 3 times. Ask each of them to tell you what the plot was (the plot, not just a series of scenes like "first there was the floating ship and the poison gas, then the race, then..."). No more than 2 people (if that many) will be anywhere close. Point? Episode 1 either had no plot or hid it behind too-flashy effects."
It took me two viewings to figure out the plot. I think the problem is that most people, watching Episode I for the first time, are concentrating on two things - plugging what they're seeing into what they remember from Episodes IV-VI, and deciding which bandwagon (worst movie ever, jar jar ruined it, it wasn't that bad) they want to jump onto. Well, that, and it's really a pretty boring plot - it's difficult to care about anything at a higher level than "will our heroes be alright?" I can only assume this is intentional.