I completely agree with you about your recommendations for improving the US voting system, but I am quite skeptical of the adoption any system that precludes the kind of gaming the powers at be love to play at. For the time being I'm just going to try to get them to think that the 3rd parties might be stealing their votes so they adopt parts of their platform.
The fun of software radio is that you can set up a network of broadcast stations over IP using laptops that transmit wireless data received from transport over SSL+TOR or something.
The solution I think is if its a close match in your state, vote for your favorite mainstream candidate, but if you know your state will carry one candidate over the other, vote for the third party. That's what I'll do.
While I agree with you to a point, if you look at practical reality, of killing people, guns make it easier thus the killing goes up if there are plentiful guns. There are powerful psychological and evolutionarily disincentives to getting up close and personal with a knife. You are perfectly right that people will keep on bloodletting simply because they can, but FEWER of them will if they can't distance themselves from the act and it's harder to do.
People need a safe environment or else they can't focus. If you restrict guns, the numbers go down, so fewer shootings happen, so the overall risk goes down and the perception is that the area is safer - which boosts the economy.
However, guns have other uses, such as hunting, self defense, blowing stuff up for fun, and fighting the government, so banning them outright is crazy. I think I may have a solution.
The key lies in the fact that obviously(?), the ratio of the number of killings will go up with population density. In large cities, the potential for bullets hitting people is going to be related by some polynomial function since weapons discharge is constrained to a sphere or ellipse. Social network effects that bring additional people into an argument can be exponential in nature. In low population densities, these effects reach their boundaries more quickly due to more spread in spacial distribution and smaller networks. This speculative argument adds some credence to my hypothesis.
So the trick is to keep guns plentiful in areas of low population distribution and low in areas of high population. This will ensure that the HUGE countryside has a HUGE weapons cache for a resistance movement, keeps things legal for people who want to use them correctly, and reduces violence in urban centers. People often decry the difference in the ways cities like NYC seem to play by different rules, but I think that this is a sane way to do it.
In fact, if someone can figure out a good way to do it, I'd like for the legality of weapon types to be modified according to population density. So the ass end of nowhere can use hand grenades and assault rifles and the city can use only swords and daggers. Of course theres the problem of criminal organizations acquiring these in the middle of nowhere, but dude, they'd just ship them in from another country anyway - cost of doing business.
I'm curious to hear what people have to say about this idea. There's probably all sorts of holes you can shoot in it (haha) but speaking from an engineering perspective, would it work better than the arbitrary rules now?
I think I actually misread some of what you originally posted:). Welcome to Slashdot.
What I was saying though is that hard clipping at a higher frequency might introduce some noise you wouldn't have heard before. But I'm not so sure that's relevant since you said that 192kbs sounds better. It's probably an insignificant effect or something.
I'm not totally certain if I'm right, as I'm still learning this material, but since MP3 uses a variation on the Discrete Fourier Transform (ogg vorbis uses the modified discrete cosine transform), applying a rectangular window and a higher sampling rate would cause some leakage and maintain some noisy higher harmonics. The two effects combined might cause a reduced signal to noise ratio at higher frequencies.
I'm a newb so I'm not really sure you can fix it other than by using a lossless format. You may want to try ripping it at the same rate without passing it through an analog medium if you can to clip high frequency noise that would be introduced in a wire.
If someone actually knows what they are talking about, please correct what I got wrong - it would help my education ^_^
At that point, who cares about the national economy if everyone can print what they want? It's not like you'll get anything more for working.... Maybe land?
Wow, Thank you for that link, that was really really helpful!
I'll make sure my team watches that so that we can have an informed discussion.
For the record, I did a little python a while back (but I forgot it), and one of my team members has experience with RoR so we are slightly biased in that direction.
Hey guys, I'm working on a website and we are trying to decide on a Django or Rails implementation. This article kind of scares me because we are thinking big.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if Django is a little bit harder to develop in if it is significantly faster than rails and has more options (also I like python). On the other hand Rails has profiling and the ActiveRecord thing going on.
I've done research but I'm still kind of deadlocked.Do any of you have any advice? It would be very much appreciated in making a decision.
I tried out Office 2007 and yes it does feel much MUCH better and the documents it produces are very pretty! However, as I used it (to write a science paper for a class no less), I found it has many UI components that are broken. For instance, you can't easily place an image with a caption in two column format. Tables don't have the same placement options as figures. It's crazy. I should learn to use latex...
Wow, I'm surprised you were able to take that reply seriously. Fair enough.
I think its pretty simple, either the internet gets a lot less antonymous, or we have to deal with a tragedy of the commons. The way you prevent people from abusing resources is by denying them access if they do that. I don't think that, short of killing spammers or locking up up for a long time, that there really is a way to do that. I guess penis enlargement is just part of the landscape.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Trackers can easily use it to harvest identities (X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from trackers (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists (X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Spam is transmitted by botnets, not spammers ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for web behaviour ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (X) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (X) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with trakers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of trackers themselves (X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering (X) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) HTTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying this ISNT the case?!
I wonder if anyone has tried to set up something on sourceforge....
That explains the dupes!
I completely agree with you about your recommendations for improving the US voting system, but I am quite skeptical of the adoption any system that precludes the kind of gaming the powers at be love to play at. For the time being I'm just going to try to get them to think that the 3rd parties might be stealing their votes so they adopt parts of their platform.
The fun of software radio is that you can set up a network of broadcast stations over IP using laptops that transmit wireless data received from transport over SSL+TOR or something.
Well you could send smaller and smaller messages as you run out of room. But yea, eventually you'd need a new pad.
The solution I think is if its a close match in your state, vote for your favorite mainstream candidate, but if you know your state will carry one candidate over the other, vote for the third party. That's what I'll do.
While I agree with you to a point, if you look at practical reality, of killing people, guns make it easier thus the killing goes up if there are plentiful guns. There are powerful psychological and evolutionarily disincentives to getting up close and personal with a knife. You are perfectly right that people will keep on bloodletting simply because they can, but FEWER of them will if they can't distance themselves from the act and it's harder to do.
People need a safe environment or else they can't focus. If you restrict guns, the numbers go down, so fewer shootings happen, so the overall risk goes down and the perception is that the area is safer - which boosts the economy.
However, guns have other uses, such as hunting, self defense, blowing stuff up for fun, and fighting the government, so banning them outright is crazy. I think I may have a solution.
The key lies in the fact that obviously(?), the ratio of the number of killings will go up with population density. In large cities, the potential for bullets hitting people is going to be related by some polynomial function since weapons discharge is constrained to a sphere or ellipse. Social network effects that bring additional people into an argument can be exponential in nature. In low population densities, these effects reach their boundaries more quickly due to more spread in spacial distribution and smaller networks. This speculative argument adds some credence to my hypothesis.
So the trick is to keep guns plentiful in areas of low population distribution and low in areas of high population. This will ensure that the HUGE countryside has a HUGE weapons cache for a resistance movement, keeps things legal for people who want to use them correctly, and reduces violence in urban centers. People often decry the difference in the ways cities like NYC seem to play by different rules, but I think that this is a sane way to do it.
In fact, if someone can figure out a good way to do it, I'd like for the legality of weapon types to be modified according to population density. So the ass end of nowhere can use hand grenades and assault rifles and the city can use only swords and daggers. Of course theres the problem of criminal organizations acquiring these in the middle of nowhere, but dude, they'd just ship them in from another country anyway - cost of doing business.
I'm curious to hear what people have to say about this idea. There's probably all sorts of holes you can shoot in it (haha) but speaking from an engineering perspective, would it work better than the arbitrary rules now?
Well if you add a metal stage that is protected by coolant, the coolant might be analogous to your vitamin C.
"uh oh" is right. Random mutations have been introduced. Who knows where this will go!
I think I actually misread some of what you originally posted :). Welcome to Slashdot.
What I was saying though is that hard clipping at a higher frequency might introduce some noise you wouldn't have heard before. But I'm not so sure that's relevant since you said that 192kbs sounds better. It's probably an insignificant effect or something.
I'm not totally certain if I'm right, as I'm still learning this material, but since MP3 uses a variation on the Discrete Fourier Transform (ogg vorbis uses the modified discrete cosine transform), applying a rectangular window and a higher sampling rate would cause some leakage and maintain some noisy higher harmonics. The two effects combined might cause a reduced signal to noise ratio at higher frequencies.
I'm a newb so I'm not really sure you can fix it other than by using a lossless format. You may want to try ripping it at the same rate without passing it through an analog medium if you can to clip high frequency noise that would be introduced in a wire.
If someone actually knows what they are talking about, please correct what I got wrong - it would help my education ^_^
At that point, who cares about the national economy if everyone can print what they want? It's not like you'll get anything more for working.... Maybe land?
Thanks for responding!
:-)
Do you remember why specifically you chose it over rails? Better performance? Easier to work with?
Good luck with your project
Wow, Thank you for that link, that was really really helpful!
I'll make sure my team watches that so that we can have an informed discussion.
For the record, I did a little python a while back (but I forgot it), and one of my team members has experience with RoR so we are slightly biased in that direction.
Thanks again!
Hey guys, I'm working on a website and we are trying to decide on a Django or Rails implementation. This article kind of scares me because we are thinking big.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if Django is a little bit harder to develop in if it is significantly faster than rails and has more options (also I like python). On the other hand Rails has profiling and the ActiveRecord thing going on.
I've done research but I'm still kind of deadlocked.Do any of you have any advice? It would be very much appreciated in making a decision.
Also, don't forget the error margins inherent in a survey like this. 0.77% might be within the error bar xD
One version is when you search for passwords and logins with google. There are sites devoted to archiving this... it's quite amazing.
have you ever heard of google hacking?
I tried out Office 2007 and yes it does feel much MUCH better and the documents it produces are very pretty! However, as I used it (to write a science paper for a class no less), I found it has many UI components that are broken. For instance, you can't easily place an image with a caption in two column format. Tables don't have the same placement options as figures. It's crazy. I should learn to use latex...
Mod parent up. This makes a lot of sense.
I think the entire point is that even if you vote for a candidate, odds are good that you're still not well represented dude.
Wow, I'm surprised you were able to take that reply seriously. Fair enough.
I think its pretty simple, either the internet gets a lot less antonymous, or we have to deal with a tragedy of the commons. The way you prevent people from abusing resources is by denying them access if they do that. I don't think that, short of killing spammers or locking up up for a long time, that there really is a way to do that. I guess penis enlargement is just part of the landscape.
Your article advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
( ) Trackers can easily use it to harvest identities
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from trackers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Spam is transmitted by botnets, not spammers
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for web behaviour
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with trakers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of trackers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(X) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) HTTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Just filter the ones with the "Evil Bit" set.