Versus how many people actually have anything of value on their PC? The loss of Aunt Mildred's recipes, browser bookmarks, AIM clients, and pirated copies of OfficeXP does not a catastrophe make.
You haven't had my Aunt Mildred's hash brownies. They'll fuck your ass up good.
Besides, the senario desribed by the gp is completely unrealistic. It'll be a known hole that will bring down every Windows box on the net.
Then Kari added, "If the Internet doesn't die on its own in two more years, I'm gonna shoot it myself." He then went on to suggest that BSD is dying, that flying cars are a decade away and that Longhorn will be released by 2007.
<with exasperation>Blah, blah, blah. Yes, we know all this. Now tell me when DNF is coming out!
They'll pump out more code than [your] slowbie QA people can handle.
A couple points in defense of QA. First, if the developers were pumping out better code, instead of more code, speed of the QA people would not be an issue. Second, your slowbie QA people aren't really slow.
What happens is, Z amount of time is scheduled for a project; X development + Y QA. The developers always go over schedule and take X + a time. (I'm not saying it's our fault--PHB, feature-creep, whatever--but it happens.) This leaves QA with Y - a time to do their job.
Inevitably, especially as a approaches Y, deadline Z is missed and all eyes go to QA since they are the last ones in the chain. As a developer married to a QA person, I get to hear about this stuff all the time. Lucky me =)
People much smarter than you already determined that the K-T boundary is uniformly deposited (in terms of time) across the earth, no matter which craton you examine, and it occurs at the same point in time as a significant biomass die-off.
This indicates that a extreme amount of dust and ash must've been airborne for many years, blocking much of the sunlight that would normally enable plant life to flourish. While it is entirely feasible that dinosaurs were in decline prior to this time, the event that killed them is the same one that ultimately created the K-T.
So at what point did the machines put all the dinosaurs into the matrix?
Actually, the whole world was black and white back then. Everything was colorized in the early 80s. Of course, old TV shows and movies are still B&W; they're color pictures of the black and white world.
Hemp makes not so great paper and it's not as cheap as wood, to make an educated guess.
Actually hemp makes great paper. It's cheaper and uses less chemicals than paper made from wood. Don't think our friends at Dow Chemical didn't know this when they lobbied to make marijuana illegal.
One acre of annually grown hemp may spare up to four acres of forest from the current practice of clear-cutting. Compared to wood, fewer chemicals are required to convert low-lignin tree-free fibers to pulp. Using fewer chemicals reduces waste-water contamination. Because most plant fibers are naturally a whiter color than wood, they require less bleaching, and, in some cases, none. Less bleaching results in less dioxin and fewer chemical by-products being generated by the papermaking process. And hemp stalks can be processed into an acid-free paper pulp. (
http://www.betterworld.com/BWZ/9512/altpaper.htm)
Help also makes great fabric for clothes, sails, even parachutes. (Of course, it was a hemp parachute that made sure George Bush would be around long enough to sell arms to Iran, funnel the profits to the contras, and have sons that would costs us billions in S & L bail outs, disenfranchise minority voters, and generally suspend the bill of right (except for the 2nd amendment of course), so I guess there is a pretty good argument that marijuana does support terrorism.)
The reason why marijuana is illegal is because the best use for the crop is to produce drugs.
Oh, man, that is so wrong on many levels. First, smoking is not the best use of marijuana. Second, if that was the case, why is tobacco legal? Or coffee? What else are people doing with hops other than make beer?
There is no standard of reasonableness, and thus no standard of who should or shouldn't vote, that all of us can agree on. That's why we have voting at all... because the alternative is to have Those Who Are Wiser Than Us making all the decisions, and the one thing liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and various permutations and combinations thereof can agree on is that historically, this has been a Really Bad Idea.
Right on. We are (or at least aim to be) a nation of laws, not men. The standard of 'I know it when I see it,' whether applied to voters or obscenity or anything else goes against the very founding principles of the US of A.
If it can't be spelled out, in black and white, it's not a reasonable standard. Now personal standards and opinions are not held to that test. I'm not going to write a treatise on why I wore the blue shirt today instead of the white one. But matters of law and public policy, such as who can vote, need to be help to a higher standard than, "a reasonable person knows the difference."
Politicians barely even pretend to listen to the concerns of "young people". If we were to turn out in record numbers in this election (
regardless who we vote for) the political system would take notice. And they would speak and act towards the concerns of young people in this country (drugs, AIDS, poverty, student loans, unemployment...) rather than the concerns of older people (estate tax, social security, imprisoning everyone)
I don't know, but trying to use video game characters on MTV to get people to "just vote, we don't care who for, just vote for anyone/anything" is pretty much the standard for an uninformed voter.
Well, I don't know if you are a facist or not, but that is a ridiculous thing to say. What is so unifmored about a non-partisan campaign to get out the vote?
I believe when enough people do it, voting can make a difference. I encourage everyone I can to vote. And it is more important to me that they do vote, than who/what they vote for. "Just vote, we don't care who for, just vote for anyone/anything" is pretty much my thought on the matter.
I have my stand on the issues, and I know how I plan to vote, but I'd still rather someone disagree with me and hit the polls on Nov 2 than someone agree me with me and stay home.
think uninformed people shouldn't vote, but I do not propose to bar them from voting. Rather, I propose we encourage them to inform themselves, rather than just 'go vote'
So what is standard? Lots of posts saying uninformed people shouldn't vote, but no body wants to back it with any specifics.
Ever consider that voting is part of the informing process? Yeah, it's nice to think someone could get informed and then vote. But is it really so bad if someone responds to some "get out the vote" campaign or the political discussions here by going to polls, and then that leads to more research into the issues?
I wouldn't recommend that going into the poll cold and voting randomly. But I'll take it, if it gets someone who wasn't going to vote into the booth. Because maybe this time it's, 'well, I've got some time to kill until the 'shrooms kick in. Might as well vote.' And then next time it's, 'well, I guess I'll vote again. Might as well read some of the referendum questions ahead of time.' Who knows, some one who wasn't high up on the 'informed' scale might get involved and actually learn something.
The opposite approach, discouraging people from getting involved and voting, leads to a lot of, 'nope, still too stupid to vote again this year.'
The uninformed person is the one who thinks voting isn't worth the time or the effort. Discouraging people from voting doesn't target those people, it creates them.
I'm all for high voter turnout. But I also think people should be informed before rushing to the ballot box.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
What is the standard for "informed"?
I don't really care for a lot of these recent "get out the vote" efforts.
I agree a lot of "get out the vote" efforts are silly. (Though the video game characters have more credibility than MTV.) However I strongly disagree with the stand, 'if you have to do ____ to get people to vote, they don't care/aren't informed enough to vote.'
Someone who votes because Mario told them to is one extreme. What about get out the vote drives by political parties? What about someone who would have missed voting until seeing it in the newspaper on election day?
I don't buy the idea that an election is some kind of secret club and if you have to be told about it or reminded to vote than you shouldn't.
If these people flock to the polls, they'll simply dilute the votes of people like you and me
"These people"? Who are "these people"? What does that mean, "dilute the votes"? What is the standard? How informed does someone need to be before their vote counts? Since you think opinion is so holy and shouldn't be diluted, by what measure do you decide one vote should count and another is just noise?
If someone registers and votes, they've already demonstrated they care. That's what I say.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
If you haven't taken the time to reason through who the candidates are and why you would vote for one and/or vote against another, then stay home.
You still haven't come through with specifics. What is 'taking the time to reason'? What is careful reasoning? Can you apply some IQ can come up with an objective standard?
My concern is someone may read about a campaign to discourage the uninformed from voting or "why distort the margin by which a body of ideas wins or loses," and think 'I'm not happy about the war in Iraq, but I don't know enough about the other issues, so I won't vote.' Next thing you know you're drafted, up to your ass in sand, and taking up a collection to buy some body armor.
Or someone may think, 'I don't like the idea of the v.p. being a former trial lawyer, but what do I know? I'm an idiot.' Next thing you know you're performing an appendectomy on yourself with a spork because no doctor can afford the malpractice insurance to perform any actual surgery.
As for just going into the poll cold and voting randomly, I wouldn't recommend that. But I'll take it, if it gets someone who wasn't going to vote into the booth. Because maybe this time it's, 'well, I've got some time to kill until the 'shrooms kick in. Might as well vote.' And then next time it's, 'well, I guess I'll vote again. Might as well read some of the referendum questions ahead of time.' Who knows, some one who wasn't high up on the 'informed' scale might get involved and actually learn something.
The opposite approach, discouraging people from getting involved and voting, leads to a lot of, 'nope, still too stupid to vote again this year.'
What really gets me is, I read about uninformed voters and careful reasoning. Then I wonder, by what standard? How informed? How reasoning? Then I think about literacy tests, and bible reading, and stakes in the community. Why don't you just come out and say it. Enough with the code words; enough pussy-footing. 'Well informed' is code for christians, reciting bible passages in latin, white land owners. Just have the guts to admit it.
We don't need any more idiots going around telling other people they shouldn't vote.
You're uninformed if you think you shouldn't vote or that your vote doesn't count.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
How do you decide my vote is only noise? When is my opinion enough?
Proding someone who they are voting for and why is meddling. Just saying, 'Hey, there's an election coming up. Are you registered?' is not meddling.
If you were out with a friend and spouse and starting needling them on their choice of birth control--that might be meddling. If your friend starting coughing up blood, saying, 'do you need a doctor?' is not meddling.
I am a little surprised someone who chose the name HotNeedleOfInquiry is worried about being meddlesome.
When will we see a nationwide campaign encouraging people not to vote if they don't care?
I hope I never live to see that day.
And what makes you so qualified to judge how other people vote? So you know people who vote purely on party. Why isn't that on merit? What if I disagree with every stand in a party platform. Shouldn't I then vote for candidates of another party?
What makes someone so friggin' self righteous they think they can decide who should vote and who shouldn't?
People who need to be prodded to the polls with a sharp stick aren't going to be well-enough informed to cast their votes meaningfully.
What does that mean? How informed is "well-enough informed to cast their votes meaningfully"? How is one vote more meaningful than another?
The first thing we should be pushing for is for people to get out and vote. The second thing we should be pushing for is for arrogant snobs to STFU. I'll vote straight party line, I'll vote for cool sounding names. I'll vote for women I consider doable or people with an odd number of syllables in their name or whomever else I choice to vote for.
How someone might vote should never be the litmus test on whether they can or should vote.
Slashdot Mirror
He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
Where he traveled time
For the future of mankind
You haven't had my Aunt Mildred's hash brownies. They'll fuck your ass up good.
Besides, the senario desribed by the gp is completely unrealistic. It'll be a known hole that will bring down every Windows box on the net.
<with exasperation>Blah, blah, blah. Yes, we know all this. Now tell me when DNF is coming out!
A couple points in defense of QA. First, if the developers were pumping out better code, instead of more code, speed of the QA people would not be an issue. Second, your slowbie QA people aren't really slow.
What happens is, Z amount of time is scheduled for a project; X development + Y QA. The developers always go over schedule and take X + a time. (I'm not saying it's our fault--PHB, feature-creep, whatever--but it happens.) This leaves QA with Y - a time to do their job.
Inevitably, especially as a approaches Y, deadline Z is missed and all eyes go to QA since they are the last ones in the chain. As a developer married to a QA person, I get to hear about this stuff all the time. Lucky me =)
Best. Prom. Ever?
So at what point did the machines put all the dinosaurs into the matrix?
Actually, the whole world was black and white back then. Everything was colorized in the early 80s. Of course, old TV shows and movies are still B&W; they're color pictures of the black and white world.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
props to Bill Waterson
So, you're saying Kerry believes in his lord Jesus Cathol?
No, he belives in Christ. Will christians *please* get over themselves? Catholic, baptist, protestant--the rest of us really don't care.
Actually hemp makes great paper. It's cheaper and uses less chemicals than paper made from wood. Don't think our friends at Dow Chemical didn't know this when they lobbied to make marijuana illegal.
Help also makes great fabric for clothes, sails, even parachutes. (Of course, it was a hemp parachute that made sure George Bush would be around long enough to sell arms to Iran, funnel the profits to the contras, and have sons that would costs us billions in S & L bail outs, disenfranchise minority voters, and generally suspend the bill of right (except for the 2nd amendment of course), so I guess there is a pretty good argument that marijuana does support terrorism.)
The reason why marijuana is illegal is because the best use for the crop is to produce drugs.
Oh, man, that is so wrong on many levels. First, smoking is not the best use of marijuana. Second, if that was the case, why is tobacco legal? Or coffee? What else are people doing with hops other than make beer?
You misspelt 'hemp'
We must go forward, not backward; upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom.
Put your hands on your hips (or somebody else's) and bring your knees in tight.
Right on. We are (or at least aim to be) a nation of laws, not men. The standard of 'I know it when I see it,' whether applied to voters or obscenity or anything else goes against the very founding principles of the US of A.
If it can't be spelled out, in black and white, it's not a reasonable standard. Now personal standards and opinions are not held to that test. I'm not going to write a treatise on why I wore the blue shirt today instead of the white one. But matters of law and public policy, such as who can vote, need to be help to a higher standard than, "a reasonable person knows the difference."
Well, I don't know if you are a facist or not, but that is a ridiculous thing to say. What is so unifmored about a non-partisan campaign to get out the vote?
I believe when enough people do it, voting can make a difference. I encourage everyone I can to vote. And it is more important to me that they do vote, than who/what they vote for. "Just vote, we don't care who for, just vote for anyone/anything" is pretty much my thought on the matter.
I have my stand on the issues, and I know how I plan to vote, but I'd still rather someone disagree with me and hit the polls on Nov 2 than someone agree me with me and stay home.
Is that so wrong?
So what is standard? Lots of posts saying uninformed people shouldn't vote, but no body wants to back it with any specifics.
Ever consider that voting is part of the informing process? Yeah, it's nice to think someone could get informed and then vote. But is it really so bad if someone responds to some "get out the vote" campaign or the political discussions here by going to polls, and then that leads to more research into the issues?
I wouldn't recommend that going into the poll cold and voting randomly. But I'll take it, if it gets someone who wasn't going to vote into the booth. Because maybe this time it's, 'well, I've got some time to kill until the 'shrooms kick in. Might as well vote.' And then next time it's, 'well, I guess I'll vote again. Might as well read some of the referendum questions ahead of time.' Who knows, some one who wasn't high up on the 'informed' scale might get involved and actually learn something.
The opposite approach, discouraging people from getting involved and voting, leads to a lot of, 'nope, still too stupid to vote again this year.'
The uninformed person is the one who thinks voting isn't worth the time or the effort. Discouraging people from voting doesn't target those people, it creates them.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
What is the standard for "informed"?
I don't really care for a lot of these recent "get out the vote" efforts.
I agree a lot of "get out the vote" efforts are silly. (Though the video game characters have more credibility than MTV.) However I strongly disagree with the stand, 'if you have to do ____ to get people to vote, they don't care/aren't informed enough to vote.'
Someone who votes because Mario told them to is one extreme. What about get out the vote drives by political parties? What about someone who would have missed voting until seeing it in the newspaper on election day?
I don't buy the idea that an election is some kind of secret club and if you have to be told about it or reminded to vote than you shouldn't.
If these people flock to the polls, they'll simply dilute the votes of people like you and me
"These people"? Who are "these people"? What does that mean, "dilute the votes"? What is the standard? How informed does someone need to be before their vote counts? Since you think opinion is so holy and shouldn't be diluted, by what measure do you decide one vote should count and another is just noise?
If someone registers and votes, they've already demonstrated they care. That's what I say.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
What is the standard for "an informed public"?
lol.
You still haven't come through with specifics. What is 'taking the time to reason'? What is careful reasoning? Can you apply some IQ can come up with an objective standard?
My concern is someone may read about a campaign to discourage the uninformed from voting or "why distort the margin by which a body of ideas wins or loses," and think 'I'm not happy about the war in Iraq, but I don't know enough about the other issues, so I won't vote.' Next thing you know you're drafted, up to your ass in sand, and taking up a collection to buy some body armor.
Or someone may think, 'I don't like the idea of the v.p. being a former trial lawyer, but what do I know? I'm an idiot.' Next thing you know you're performing an appendectomy on yourself with a spork because no doctor can afford the malpractice insurance to perform any actual surgery.
As for just going into the poll cold and voting randomly, I wouldn't recommend that. But I'll take it, if it gets someone who wasn't going to vote into the booth. Because maybe this time it's, 'well, I've got some time to kill until the 'shrooms kick in. Might as well vote.' And then next time it's, 'well, I guess I'll vote again. Might as well read some of the referendum questions ahead of time.' Who knows, some one who wasn't high up on the 'informed' scale might get involved and actually learn something.
The opposite approach, discouraging people from getting involved and voting, leads to a lot of, 'nope, still too stupid to vote again this year.'
What really gets me is, I read about uninformed voters and careful reasoning. Then I wonder, by what standard? How informed? How reasoning? Then I think about literacy tests, and bible reading, and stakes in the community. Why don't you just come out and say it. Enough with the code words; enough pussy-footing. 'Well informed' is code for christians, reciting bible passages in latin, white land owners. Just have the guts to admit it.
We don't need any more idiots going around telling other people they shouldn't vote.
You're uninformed if you think you shouldn't vote or that your vote doesn't count.
What is the standard? How informed is informed enough? When is an opinion enough of an opinion? So voting based on the last yard sign I saw isn't enough. Is listening to talk radio? Reading one newspaper a day? Reading slashdot?
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home. None of the big shots who presume to tell other people they shouldn't vote ever steps up with some specifics.
How do you decide my vote is only noise? When is my opinion enough?
Proding someone who they are voting for and why is meddling. Just saying, 'Hey, there's an election coming up. Are you registered?' is not meddling.
If you were out with a friend and spouse and starting needling them on their choice of birth control--that might be meddling. If your friend starting coughing up blood, saying, 'do you need a doctor?' is not meddling.
I am a little surprised someone who chose the name HotNeedleOfInquiry is worried about being meddlesome.
I hope I never live to see that day.
And what makes you so qualified to judge how other people vote? So you know people who vote purely on party. Why isn't that on merit? What if I disagree with every stand in a party platform. Shouldn't I then vote for candidates of another party?
What makes someone so friggin' self righteous they think they can decide who should vote and who shouldn't?
What does that mean? How informed is "well-enough informed to cast their votes meaningfully"?
How is one vote more meaningful than another?
The first thing we should be pushing for is for people to get out and vote. The second thing we should be pushing for is for arrogant snobs to STFU. I'll vote straight party line, I'll vote for cool sounding names. I'll vote for women I consider doable or people with an odd number of syllables in their name or whomever else I choice to vote for.
How someone might vote should never be the litmus test on whether they can or should vote.
Who told you Young Einstein was good?