I ran the PS3 Folding@Home for a while, but the hardware really sucks down the power. It was literally increasing my power bull by $10/month. (Admittedly in Summer, so I was at the highest PG+E tier with the air conditioning.)
I work for Sony, and am very happy that we are making it so easy for people to contribute to this thing. (Even if I don't run it myself very often.)
As a liberal vegetarian, I must admit that I am feeling torn.
I don't think McCain meant to imply that racism is entirely dead. But all too often, in our zeal to point out that racism is not dead, we minimize the progress that *has* been made, which, in truth, is massive. The danger is that by minimizing the progress, we can start to feel like it is a hopeless task, which can inhibit progress as much as a false sense of completion.
As far as Nader goes....why are we still talking about him? Let's please just let the idiot fade into a well deserved obscurity.
Deb #22: The WSJ means that Obama looks to win over 50% of the popular vote. Gore got 48.4% to Bush's 47.9%. (Third parties getting the rest.) You can win the popular vote without getting a popular vote majority. Clinton did this twice.
Jimmy Carter got 50.1% of the vote when he ran against Ford.
Well, Sony Pictures is trying to buck the trend.
Perhaps I should tell you the story of a large retail chain that started down this road and ended up really pissing off a Mr. Phuc Yu of Van Neys, California.
It doesn't really matter anyway. In 2004, Nader got 0.38% of the vote. There's no indication he'd do any better this time.
When I watched, it struck me that the dumbest decision was on the part of the army, which seemed to think sending people out in the open over a bridge with a large creature stumbling about was a smart idea. My wife and I both thought the smarter thing would be to tell people to go underground. As California residents, we both cringed at "An earthquake! Let's go to the roof to see what's going on!"
We didn't fault the movie makers, though. After Katrina, I'd hardly expect split-second smart decisions from those in charge.
The creatures seemed to be pretty weak, and solvable by giving everyone clubs or hatchets. (Or guns, for those who know how to use them.)
A verifiable secret ballot is actually fairly easy. The voting machine assigns a random number to every vote. It prints the number and the vote that it is tied to on a receipt. You must then put this printed number, and the vote, in a big box at the polling station. You can then take this number, enter it in a website and see what the vote was counted as any time after the vote is cast. A machine with access to the numbers and votes (but not names) for *all* voters is in the polling booth, making it trivially easy to write down a number for anything you want to claim to have voted for.
This means that you, the voter, can be sure that your vote equated to exactly what you intended, but makes it impossible to run vote buying schemes or coerced voting, because while you know for sure what your vote is, it is trivially easy for you to lie to a third party about what you voted for and thus makes it impossible for you to prove to any third party that you, in particular, voted a certain way. It also makes recounts verifiable, because the polling station has a big box with paper receipts representing all votes cast.
addendum: Note that while Kucinich would need 112,000 more votes to be declared the "winner", he'd only need around 8,000 more to get a delegate.
Delegates are important even if final victory is unlikely. Kucinich certainly knows that if neither Obama nor Clinton can get a majority of delegates, candidates like him, with small blocks of delegates, get power to shape the debate. If you are wondering why people like him (or Ron Paul) are running seemingly quixotic campaigns, this is why. Kucinich isn't in it to win. He's in it to force the ultimate winner to talk about the issues he cares about.
This obsession with who "won" is annoying. This isn't a winner-take-all vote like the presidential election. Clinton didn't "win" anything concrete other than the ability to get the media to label her the "winner". In truth, Clinton and Obama both got nine delegates.
I find it fascinating how the media seems to avoid talking about the actual delegate count. For instance, how many people realize that Mitt Romney, who has not won a primary, is the current Republican frontrunner? You wouldn't know it from the media.
On the actual subject at hand: recounts are never a bad idea, even if vote fraud allegations seem silly. If recounts happen at the drop of a hat, you make it harder to commit fraud, and hopeful dissuade it in the first place. But I bring up the real nature of these elections, because while the alleged fraud might effect who "won", it is unlikely to change the delegate count.
I was born in 1965. My first news memory is of the moon landings, probably in part because my grandfather worked for Rockwell and we all gathered at his house to watch.
I have distinct memories of thinking that the bicentennial was so far in the future that I could hardly believe it.
The Delany book is why I now only rarely will start a series until it is actually done. I didn't even start the Dark Tower books until I heard King was actively writing the end.
I made an exception for George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and now am regretting it.
I don't count Brust's Vlad books. They are a series, true, but each book is a self-contained story and at least at the moment, Brust seems more interested in good individual stories than with the overall series story. I don't feel hanging at the end of any of his books.
Ron Paul is more libertarian than Republican. He ran for president on the Libertarian ticket for president in 1988 before joining the Republican party in order to get elected to Congress. He's never been much of a friend to the Republican leadership.
This isn't about trademark or copyright. The essential question is: does a person (or company) have the right to legally prevent another person from publishing their password. So it's not a matter of "I own the number 4223 and no one else is allowed to use it". It's a matter of "You aren't allowed to tell anyone that the number 4223 is my PIN number!"
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 2 |
| 2008 | 10 |
| 2007 | 4 |
Total: 16 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by sburnap:
Show all comments by sburnap.