Yes, it is all BS, but a nice try nonetheless.
AFAIK knocking on wood originates in Germanic and Slavic tribes' beliefs that trees are inhabited by spirits; knocking was supposed to alert the spirits to your presence, so that they could help you.
It is not that I count on politicians being shamed. That would be dumb, since they cannot be shamed even when they are caught red-handed.
What I'm suggesting is the system where people choose to be unrepresented rather than misrepresented, and where their empty seat always inevitably votes "nay", no matter what the proposal. That's institutionalized opposition to everyone and anyone in power. Should it occur that people start using their votes in that manner, casting a null vote would actually mean something: active obstructionism.
For instance, due to some heavy gerrymandering, the last Croatian elections were won by the party which got less total votes than the runner-up, but also got more seats in the parliament. All in all, this party represents about 25% of the population, 30% tops. Yet they are in power and act as if they had been elected by the vast majority. And people do abstain, nowadays, for they see that they cannot do a thing.
And yes, voting for anyone is better than voting for no-one. Especially since this kind of system is not and will probably never be introduced anywhere.
It would be nice to see, though, how many people would rather choose to be unrepresented if something like this existed.
Not that I know anything about them, but the asteroids inward of the main belt seem to be a minority, compared to all the other asteroids in the main belt and beyond it. A majority of that subset can still be a relative minority.
Insert voter population analogy here.
First of all, I am not a Canadian. Nor am I an American.
In fact, I am not even a native English speaker.
Furthermore, a declined or an invalid ballot is subsequently ignored. If 10% of the population cast such ballots, they will not get 10% of empty seats to represent them. So please do not flame me.
On the same note, I would really love to see a system where empty ballots are counted as such — and where a number of empty ballots could get an empty seat in the parliament.
It is unlikely the empty ballots would ever reach a majority, but even a few empty seats would show most vividly that some people are not at all represented, and remind the politicians that not everyone supports them. You need a majority for something? Well, the empty seats are against it; deal with it.
It might not change much, but at least the current abstainees would now have a reason to vote, even if it is for no-one.
Your grand-grand-something-parent complained that OpenMoko/FreeRunner had no camera.
I never got an idea you were talking about OpenMoko/FreeRunner; I was talking about them, for a very good reason (see above).
Now, if you wanted to respond just to a little part of my post, you should have quoted that part; otherwise I was quite justified to think you were respnding to the whole. And excuse me for discussing the topic. I know it is bad manners for Slashdot.
Oh, and please do not slam me with things I could turn right back at you. It's poor form, leads to flaming, and I'm not here to flame. I have my religious fanatics on another forum for that.
Yes, I realize that they don't cost the same to make. But when the cost is the same to the end user, what does it matter?
It matters, because if the cost were the same, it would be the cost of the more expensive device. So the FreeRunner would cost twice as much.
I'd thought this was a geek site, where a humanities guy like me would be one of the worst in maths. Guess I was wrong.
Is it just me, or is it really a fallacy?
The fact that camera-less versions of a phone do not cost less does not mean they do not cost less to make. It just means that someone along the chain decided to keep the difference in cost.
If it had a camera, FreeRunner would have cost more. Quite a bit more, in fact.
IIRC they even tried to find a suitably free/open camera hardware, but only got a really poor camera, so they decided against it. And it is a good choice: the phone would have been noticeably more expensive, and the camera would have been quite crappy.
Now, on a totally unrelated note, I'm actually amazed that they scrapped their old code and went with Enlightenment. I guess it did set them back, but E is an extremely fast platform, using much less resources than GTK.
I, personally, think it's pretty damned cool. Useless, but cool.
Which is why it is fun.
Now, if somebody makes a sudoku generator out of it, installing Linux will get a bit more fun.
Yeah, I know, Caldera Linux called, they want their install-time Tetris back.
What you need is something like Second Life (or what I gather it to be): build a society, not just a game world. Then watch players connive and plot to take over a guild or rent out a mine or whatever. And when they succeed, watch other players doing the same to them.
Then make certain events recurring for a while; have the players clean up the ghosts from a certain place a number of times until someone finds a clue to the source; i.e. design quest clusters, not just individual quests, then have them rotate. A sufficiently deep nesting of such an algorithm could last quite a while, providing a number of quests that stay done. When algorithm restarts, it takes the new state as initial and builds from there; game maintainers can also "assist" the algorithm by providing special sets of initial conditions.
And have players give out quests to other players. Though that takes more planning, as it should go beyond trading/collecting.
Who says that EVERYONE has to appear the same to EVERYONE else?
If it is a Role Playing Game, then you Play a Role. That means that you build and equip your character the way you want to, which in turn means that you will tend to make your character a distinctive person. This idea would defeat the whole purpose of role-playing.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying that, say, a placebo appendectomy works just as well as a real one?
Yes, it is all BS, but a nice try nonetheless.
AFAIK knocking on wood originates in Germanic and Slavic tribes' beliefs that trees are inhabited by spirits; knocking was supposed to alert the spirits to your presence, so that they could help you.
Well, that gives a new meaning to opening Windows to Dungeon Dimensions.
Ah. Some blamecasting, after which everybody pretends it had never happened?
Oh, she does... just not with you. nudge nudge, wink wink.
Your wife -- does she go?
More importantly, does she run?
More specifically, does she run Linux?
More relevantly, does she run TradElect?
No, she goes down on it.
Oh, she does... just not with you. nudge nudge, wink wink.
Your wife -- does she go?
More importantly, does she run?
More specifically, does she run Linux?
So what happens when this happens again?
A numerical minority?
Look, my momma's so fat that her chins alone can win her the presidential election.
That, my friend, is a majority, however you look at it.
It is not that I count on politicians being shamed. That would be dumb, since they cannot be shamed even when they are caught red-handed.
What I'm suggesting is the system where people choose to be unrepresented rather than misrepresented, and where their empty seat always inevitably votes "nay", no matter what the proposal. That's institutionalized opposition to everyone and anyone in power. Should it occur that people start using their votes in that manner, casting a null vote would actually mean something: active obstructionism.
For instance, due to some heavy gerrymandering, the last Croatian elections were won by the party which got less total votes than the runner-up, but also got more seats in the parliament. All in all, this party represents about 25% of the population, 30% tops. Yet they are in power and act as if they had been elected by the vast majority. And people do abstain, nowadays, for they see that they cannot do a thing.
And yes, voting for anyone is better than voting for no-one. Especially since this kind of system is not and will probably never be introduced anywhere.
It would be nice to see, though, how many people would rather choose to be unrepresented if something like this existed.
Not that I know anything about them, but the asteroids inward of the main belt seem to be a minority, compared to all the other asteroids in the main belt and beyond it. A majority of that subset can still be a relative minority.
Insert voter population analogy here.
First of all, I am not a Canadian. Nor am I an American.
In fact, I am not even a native English speaker.
Furthermore, a declined or an invalid ballot is subsequently ignored. If 10% of the population cast such ballots, they will not get 10% of empty seats to represent them. So please do not flame me.
On the same note, I would really love to see a system where empty ballots are counted as such — and where a number of empty ballots could get an empty seat in the parliament.
It is unlikely the empty ballots would ever reach a majority, but even a few empty seats would show most vividly that some people are not at all represented, and remind the politicians that not everyone supports them. You need a majority for something? Well, the empty seats are against it; deal with it.
It might not change much, but at least the current abstainees would now have a reason to vote, even if it is for no-one.
"Delicious" is a variety of apple. So Gates is trying to say that Vista is pretty much the same as Apple :-)
In that case, he's saying Vista is a variety of Apple.
Ever since I became a Mac user... let me tell you, Windows is nothing like Apple.
I am so much stupider thanks to that ad, maybe that is the secret purpose.
Of course that is the ad's secret purpose. Would anyone in their right mind purchase anything from Microsoft?
I just have to figure out how Vista can be associated with the word "delicious". A delicious view? Doesn't compute.
This is pretty ridiculous, as I can't even send my friends a message mentioning bugmenot.com!
Of course you can, you just can't use Facebook. Which is probably for the best anyway.
Aside from the fact that I find Facebook moderately useful for keeping in touch with people I went to school with some ten years ago, I would agree.
Ubjrire, gurer vf nyjnlf gur ntr-byq zrgubq bs olcnffvat fhpu svygref, juvpu znxrf zr jbaqre jung'f gur cbvag va hfvat fnvq svygref va gur svefg cynpr. Cebzbgvat gur hfr bs Yrrgxrl?
... that it was kind of hilarious in a post-modern "we're Microsoft, what the fuck are we gonna do?" sort of way.
You mean, "Where do we want to go today?" sort of way?
Sounds like Microsoft with Alzheimer's.
If you RTFA, he rejected a 3 year manslaughter plea before going to trial. So not really.
Moral of the story: if you know you are guilty as hell, don't expect to get away with murder.
With enough married jurors, though, you could get away with a manslaughter. Well, a wifeslaughter in this case.
Let's start by assuming the opposite...
Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that:
Now, if you wanted to respond just to a little part of my post, you should have quoted that part; otherwise I was quite justified to think you were respnding to the whole. And excuse me for discussing the topic. I know it is bad manners for Slashdot.
Oh, and please do not slam me with things I could turn right back at you. It's poor form, leads to flaming, and I'm not here to flame. I have my religious fanatics on another forum for that.
Would it be any worse than this?
Yes, I realize that they don't cost the same to make. But when the cost is the same to the end user, what does it matter?
It matters, because if the cost were the same, it would be the cost of the more expensive device. So the FreeRunner would cost twice as much.
I'd thought this was a geek site, where a humanities guy like me would be one of the worst in maths. Guess I was wrong.
Is it just me, or is it really a fallacy?
The fact that camera-less versions of a phone do not cost less does not mean they do not cost less to make. It just means that someone along the chain decided to keep the difference in cost.
If it had a camera, FreeRunner would have cost more. Quite a bit more, in fact.
IIRC they even tried to find a suitably free/open camera hardware, but only got a really poor camera, so they decided against it. And it is a good choice: the phone would have been noticeably more expensive, and the camera would have been quite crappy.
Now, on a totally unrelated note, I'm actually amazed that they scrapped their old code and went with Enlightenment. I guess it did set them back, but E is an extremely fast platform, using much less resources than GTK.
I, personally, think it's pretty damned cool. Useless, but cool.
Which is why it is fun.
Now, if somebody makes a sudoku generator out of it, installing Linux will get a bit more fun.
Yeah, I know, Caldera Linux called, they want their install-time Tetris back.
What you need is something like Second Life (or what I gather it to be): build a society, not just a game world. Then watch players connive and plot to take over a guild or rent out a mine or whatever. And when they succeed, watch other players doing the same to them.
Then make certain events recurring for a while; have the players clean up the ghosts from a certain place a number of times until someone finds a clue to the source; i.e. design quest clusters, not just individual quests, then have them rotate. A sufficiently deep nesting of such an algorithm could last quite a while, providing a number of quests that stay done. When algorithm restarts, it takes the new state as initial and builds from there; game maintainers can also "assist" the algorithm by providing special sets of initial conditions.
And have players give out quests to other players. Though that takes more planning, as it should go beyond trading/collecting.
Who says that EVERYONE has to appear the same to EVERYONE else?
If it is a Role Playing Game, then you Play a Role. That means that you build and equip your character the way you want to, which in turn means that you will tend to make your character a distinctive person. This idea would defeat the whole purpose of role-playing.