Shenanigans are certainly a problem when they crop up. In 2000 it seemed all of it had to do with attempts to not count ballots by valid voters, and none of it to do with people voting under false names, so voter ID wouldn't protect us from that.

But I don't understand your claim that the electoral college lessens the problem of shenanigans, it actually amplifies it. Because a truly massive scale of fraud is required to sway an election by popular vote when there are 100 million voters, but a much smaller scale is needed when it comes down to a few counties in a single swing state.

Honestly, the absolute biggest problem with the electoral college is the fact that entire states are forced to vote as a block. Even if we were to keep the electoral college in place, complete with enhanced voting power for small states, we could still improve it tremendously by just having each state distribute it's electoral votes by the proportion that went to each candidate. Then you still wouldn't see legal battles that could sway entire states, but you would see third party candidates like Ron Paul or Ralph Nader actually pick up some votes.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.
The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

Anyone that thinks the popular vote is a better system than the electoral college needs to have a serious re-think. Did you like the 2000 election? Hope so, because if you nuke the EC then that's what you'll have EVERY election. There is so much fraud, inaccuracy, abuse, and shenanigans that happen with the popular vote that it is quite impossible - just from simple logistics - to have a clean popular vote. Unless you set up a voter ID system that require photo ID and several other methods to ensure there isn't ballot shenanigans, then it would be a complete fiasco.

The brass tacks are that the federal government has become too powerful. It was never meant to be as big, as expensive, and as influential as it currently is. The primary governance was supposed to be at the state and local level. The electoral college is only important now because the federal government has exploded into a monster that the FFs never envisioned. If you want to fix all this, then cut the federal government across the board by 50%. Butcher it like a hog and return power to the states. Then you can vote in your state and local elections and make a difference, and just elect some pathetic loser to the federal office and ignore them because they have little or no power to do anything.

>> ^dag:

The C4 appears to be a bit too powerful. They went for realism over acceptable good gameplay weighting.


Well if you have good knowledge of what is happening on the map, C4 is not more of a problem than any other weapon. In fact you can count is as melee, because you have to go near the place you want to blow up.
But nonetheless I like me some good old exploding jeep maneuvering.

also: Check out his other operation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BADJhIXiS4g

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The C4 appears to be a bit too powerful. They went for realism over acceptable good gameplay weighting.

Firstly, the sonic screwdriver wasn't introduced until the Troughton (2nd Doctor) era. I believe it was 1967-68.
Secondly, you think it's overpowered in the new series? You should see some of the feats it pulled off in the classic series. It could slice, dice, and make tunnels in solid rock. Thankfully, at some point they decided not to let it be too powerful and scaled it down a bit. They even nixed it in Peter Davison's run as the 5th Doctor. (Manliest Doctor, of course.)
Still, I have no problem with it, as the writers do a decent job of keeping it from being all that important a plot device on the show.

>> ^peggedbea:

I heard and understood what he said. but i am so upset with him that it all sounds like lip service.
i feel like maybe once, years ago, there was an obama with integrity. one who believed the shit he said. i dont think that's the guy we voted into office though. the guy in the office appears to be some kind of corporatist puppet who gives a really good speech every once in a while. whos really good at pretending that "the opposition" just outsmarted him or are too powerful to be beat.

I guess I give him more credit. He's no FDR, but he's as left-wing of a President as we've had since Jimmy Carter.

I'm not as starry-eyed about him as I once was, but I think people on the left have let the corporate media brainwash them a bit too much with the "Obama = fail" meme.

Every victory he's had gets turned into "it was a failure because it should've been a bigger and better victory". Every real failure gets turned into intentional betrayal of principle.

I always get suspicious about only ever hearing one conclusion from people. I mean, for fuck's sake, liberals occasionally found some reason to applaud even Bush. Not so with Obama. Everything he does is apparently wrong, even when he succeeds in implementing some major policy goal. Now it seems that even an expression of sympathy for the Occupy movement in a high-visibility TV interview ticks people off.

I guess I just don't get it. I see a guy who hasn't been the Knight in Shining Armor we all wanted him to be, but he's made quite a lot of forward progress on things like health care reform, repealing DADT, even pulling out of Iraq.

Like I said, he's no FDR, but he's definitely on our side!

I heard and understood what he said. but i am so upset with him that it all sounds like lip service.

i feel like maybe once, years ago, there was an obama with integrity. one who believed the shit he said. i dont think that's the guy we voted into office though. the guy in the office appears to be some kind of corporatist puppet who gives a really good speech every once in a while. whos really good at pretending that "the opposition" just outsmarted him or are too powerful to be beat. not that he just represents a softer, kinder side of the same corporately minted coin.

i bet the new guy really misses that old guy. i bet he's really lonely without him. i bet it really really sucks to be the president when it's possible that you're not actually a sociopath. >> ^NetRunner:

What video are you people watching?
Obama says "traditionally what held this country together was this notion that if you work hard, if you're playing by the rules, if you're responsible ... you've got a chance to succeed. But right now people feel like the deck is stacked against them..."
So...he's saying that why people are upset right now is because people feel like that social contract "traditional notion" has broken down.
He's not saying "If you're poor, and don't have a job, blame yourself." That was Herman Cain.
Seriously, are people in such a rage against Obama that even when he says stuff you agree with, you have to pretend he said the opposite?

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

surprising that it's a European and not Japanese.
The biggest problem w/ these robots are batteries. If you put too powerful processor in it, it'll eat up battery, otherwise it'll be just a dumb toy.

It would be insanely easy to blind yourself or someone else with this, even by accidental reflection.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=20516032#p20516032

You know it's dangerous when a bunch of geeks seriously debate whether it's too powerful for unlicensed public distribution.

Noam himself is a Social Libertarian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Do not let the media fool you into believing that the original Libertarians were Republican hacks.

There was a time when there were no Republicans in the T.E.A movement. The movement, as I was told, spawned from End The FED. To which it promptly grew into a hack convention for the Conservative Right, all of which thought it was a good platform for their candidates. When it was highly televised by Fox News is when it became a rampant goat fuck. Agent K said something like the following about people as a group.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. -Agent K

My problem is, I'm sick of forking over 2,000 dollars at the end of every year to cover programs that I'm not even benefiting from.

Married? There's a tax credit for that! Own a house? There's a tax credit for that. Have children? There's a tax credit for that! You name it there might be a tax credit for that.

Own a house? There's a tax for that. Own a car? There's a tax for that. Have a school in your neighborhood? There's a tax for that! You name it they probably have a tax for it.

Hey! You have a job? There's a tax for that! Whooo doggie! We got taxes for everything! Just you wait! Next we plan on taxing your existence!

Maybe it's me, but I'm sick of paying all of these taxes and servicing the country's debt.

One important note: Yes I know that a government cannot function without taxes. But when that government is a major source of jobs it has grown too powerful.

I've qualitied 2 videos recently just to observe it's effects. Both were great videos, but I would say it's too powerful.

Oh, and if KS is right, that's messed up.

Videosift, afaik, exist to offer a high-quality interface to good videos from many sources.
Now, IMO having videos with plainly wrong titles or descriptions is really not ok with what I think is the spirit of the Sift.

Youtube fails, myspace fails, any other host fails... and Videosift is supposed to fix those mistakes, and offer you the video hosted somewhere else, but on a clean dish, with clean towels, and clean knifes, and forks.

Now, I don't know how much of what I think is the spirit of the Sift is shared by dag, or lucky, or any other crew member or user.
I hope siftbot won't get angry at me because he's too powerful for us puny humans, but still I have to do what I have to do.

*discuss

This is from Taiwanese army, not Singapore's.
That is the kind of crap random mistake I expect from youtube losers, not here on the sift.
Someone should fix it, I'd say.

Create a *graphic channel if you need to, akin to NSFW, but these things cannot and should not be censored. There is no reason to forbid it from the site, if there is proper warning given. Nobody is going to doubt the reputation of this site if it posts videos that Youtube and CNN allow.

We live in an a world of violence, to ignore it, is to live in a fantasy world. These events unfolding are not only shaping Iran, they are shaping world culture, and it is far too powerful to ignore.

Youtube, google, facebook, twitter, CNN, who doubts the credibility or reputation of these sites? These images and videos are plastered all over them. What exactly are we protecting against?

You'll notice how everyone is wearing orange jumpsuits?

That's not because they're fashionable, that's for sure. It's because the software isn't capable of "finding" person without help in the form of a huge orange marker. Granted it could be the studio lighting is too powerful... or it could be that the vision isn't particularly good at discerning background information from relevant player movements. I've dabbled with computer vision software - its not easy hacking by any means. Not impossible, that's for sure, but I doubt we'll see the huge strides still needed to complete whatever plans MS may have for Natal within a few months, that's for sure.

Everything about Natal screams "We're not nearly ready to sell this, but we'll keep pretending it's ready by showing people playing our tech demos." Just like the original 360 - it was rushed, and suffers a high rate of hardware failure for it (16%, or 4 out of every 25 360s sold, granted that number is prior to the Jasper revision, which supposedly has cut number down, but remember that across the entire consumer electronics industry, the hardware failure rate is 15%, and the Wii and PS3 fail at a rate of 3%).

I own a Wii, got it just a couple weeks after it launched, and I make no apology for enjoying it. I've been playing video games for over 25 years, and watched the industry evolve into what it is today. Microsoft is repeating the mistakes it's made since entering the console business, and I'm surprised they've lasted this long.

Besides, Nintendo has historic ties to the Yakuza. How cool is that?

I'm not just a Wii fanboy. I'm a I <3 The Big N Fanboy, diehard. I see my favorite game maker rise to power as it did in my childhood, and I laugh at the wannabe tech that Sony and MS have been scrambling to try and 1-up Nintendo, but they both fall short. Motion-control wasn't added to the PS3 control until late in it's development, after they saw what Nintendo was doing with the Wii remote, and they thought that they could just take that, just as they took their basic controller design from the SNES pad. The DS has outsold the PSP by over 2-to-1, and there hasn't been a time in the last 20 years when they didn't dominate the handheld market.