Aran

As I said in the other thread, I'd love to participate but am working for the rest of the month. Have to hand in my bachelor thesis soon. (In fact, I'm about to go offline entirely). I don't know the time schedule of this tournament, but if it goes on for a while, then it might be possible to match up some late entrants and have them make up the pace with more frequent games later.

So you'd have to sue whoever was in charge? (Though I admit keeping track of individual responsibility inside a corporation would be difficult at best.)

Next few weeks will be work-heavy, but I'd join after December 3rd.

Yo, I heard you like desktops...

If you have no webserver, pick one of the dozens of image-hosting services that have proliferated in the past few years...

I might become a TF2 player if I could get the darn client to work in Wine. As it is, my best hope is probably this.

So let's assume it went further than campaign donations. Would limiting the freedom of expression for corporations lead to stricter advertising standards and factual reporting by news organizations? How would that be a bad thing? I'm not someone who considers corporations the root of all evil or something. I just don't see how society benefits from the legal fiction that they are persons, and lots of ways in which it actively harms society.

I use no Desktop icons, but Wine generates some automatically. That results in the paradox that all icons on my Debian desktop are Windows programs. Also, I've abandoned Gnome in favor of LXDE on enki (the desktop). metis (laptop) still has Ubuntu 11.10 and Gnome 3.

Awww *hug*

I just ran "ssh --coffee", and a few seconds later my mom entered the room with a cup of coffee. IT WORKED O_O

Quick, let me google for 2016 polls.

Thanks, I had no idea you could use SSH for SOCKS tunneling. Very useful for the reverse - tunneling into college network from home for access to scientific journals. So far I forwarded X, opened Firefox remotely and cursed at the latency.

To be accurate, I didn't compare. I used a metaphorical allegory. But seriously, I just like Kafka

Wait, when you say "one senate candidate" are you referring to Todd Aikin in Missouri, Tom Smith in Pennsylvania or Richard Mourdoch in Indiana? Though specifically, I admit it was Aikin who said the bit about rape not causing pregnancy. Smith was the one who compared rape pregnancy to having a baby out of wedlock, and Mourdoch was the one who said rape pregnancy was a divine gift. Fairly sure I'm leaving out a few others who may or may not be running for senate. It's gaffetopia.

As Sylae awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, she found herself transformed in her bed into--- (Apologies to Kafka.)

What happens if John Smith gets elected? Edit: Well, I suppose politics would get a lot more awesome.

Replacing the electoral system with a popular vote for presidential elections would just mean that the winner will always have at least around 50+ε% of the popular vote as opposed to the occasional 50-ε% (for 0<ε<1). It might make the elections more exciting right up to the end, and cause campaign spending to be more, well, evenly spread, but it won't ultimately do anything against the fact that ~49% of people will still be outvoted on election day, and ~95% will feel inadequately represented by the given options. Where a national popular vote could really help is in the US Congress. If the state representatives were supplemented by federally elected ones, you could vote for pretty much any party and have your vote influence the outcome (and not harm the major party you consider the lesser evil). Getting smaller parties into the legislature would probably ensure that no single party ever got an absolute majority again, and all issues would have to be multipartisan ones.

Only a few episodes in (and leaving out all the deleted ones) I haven't gotten to any decidedly unfriendly stuff. But the heavy-handed "believe in what you don't understand" message in S1E15 was jarring. Respecting people with religious belief does not entail respecting belief, let alone adopting it, in my view.

Many of the links no longer work, though.

So are they all, all honorable men.

You got me! No, wait. Okay, okay.

Nate Silver disagrees, and explained how the effect of voter disenfranchisement laws can be overestimated. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/measuring-the-effects-of-voter-identification-laws/ (Worth noting that the HP article you linked is over a year old, and several of the states, like Wisconsin, have since struck down the laws mentioned.)

salvete

Used to add enough sugar to turn it into syrup (also tried all kinds of flavoring from caramel, vanilla, chocolate to irish cream). Now I just add a shot of milk. I've had pure black coffee in emergencies (eg. "the milk has congealed but I need awake right now"). The first sip is almost electrifying. Maybe I should do that more often. In any case, either my tastebuds are crud or all our coffee tastes basically the same. I can tell the difference between brew and instant, but all other distinctions are lost.

The Richard White Cult acknowledges your announcement, as of this time last year starting next Tuesday.