Humodour

Michael Crichton died at age 66 today after battling cancer. Jurassic Park was an awesome novel, as were many of his books. R.I.P. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/entertai...6/0019253.shtml

A question: Can Muslims marry in America? Hindus? Buddhists? I always hear about marriage being a sacred Christian sacrament, so I'm curious to know if they ban other religions, or do they just single out gay people?

So is Aristes one of those bigots who are against homosexual rights and then try to find elaborate ways to justify it to their socially liberal friends? Yep. Almost all blacks are Democrats anyway, and Kerry and Gore shared that 90% level of support with Obama, so while I don't doubt Obama being half-black was a bonus, it's very hard to try and paint his black supporters as racist. And, yes, Gallup showed that 6% of whites were voting for Obama mainly because he was black - a similar number showed 6% were voting against him because he was black. It evens out.

The Georgia early vote has not been counted yet. That accounts for 2 million (of 5.5 million) votes. As such, Chambliss will likely lose his senate seat (either in run-off, or outright to Martin). Georgia's electoral votes will likely still end up going to McCain, though. And I doubt Lieberman will jump ship just because he doesn't like blacks.

Nah, Mitch McConnell kept his seat. Aww, Montana and Missouri look like they are safely McCain. No technical landslide.

Obama won North Carolina and Indiana. That puts Obama on 364 Electoral Votes. He seems to have about 5% or more of the popular vote margin. Missouri is dead even - literally 413 votes difference between Obama and McCain with like 1% or 2% of the votes left to count. Ralph Nader has 17,591 votes. Bah! Montana has McCain up again (by 10,000 votes), but there's still 20% of the vote left. Chambliss doesn't look like he'll make 50%, so it'll be a run-off. Franken... well, who knows. And so far, Alaskans (50% counted so far) prefer a convicted criminal to a vigorous fresh new face. Stevens is delusional. Even if he won, he'd be booted straight back out again in January. McCain and Obama asked him to step down. As, I believe, did the Republican senate minority leader.

Congratulations America. You passed.

McCain just rang Obama and conceded.

Proposition 8 lost in the exit polls. Suck it, bigots.

Why the bloody hell does everybody keep talking about holograms?!

Lame. I was totally expecting Georgia and North Dakota or Montana. Oh well, at least it looks like he'll score one of Nebraska's electoral districts. That's history right there. Oh, wait... this data today doesn't include early voting, does it? He may yet win 370+, then.

Because they're your trade partners, and military allies, and potential enemies. Or, as I like to put it, a man who keeps stealing mopeds is an obvious cycle-path.

If I could name one thing about this election campaign that I'd say sums up for me why I like Obama so much, it'd be this (even if you ignore the issue in question - it's just the way he approaches it): http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=cpBzQI_7ez8 Edit: Oh, and I realise how "partisan" or "idealistic" or "naive" the post above this may sound but, frankly, I don't give a damn. By tonight you'll know I was right, or I'll eat my... I'll be extremely drunk. Actually, either way, I'll be extremely drunk. I'm hedging on 59/60 in the Senate, 270 in the House, 370 in the electoral college, and 54% of the pop vote.

Goodbye, Mr. Bush. Can't say it's been fun. In recent days, a poll or two has asked me to rank your presidency. I'm a reasonable man, and I am not inclined to say "dreadful" just because I don't like you. But all things considered, well, it was. Ciao Bush, and ciao Reagan! Hello President Obama, and hello once-in-a-blue-moon political realignment of the electorate. I'm exaggerating, but this is often an argument used against gay marriage. It's the "slippery slope" -- the same idea applies to the decriminalization of marijuana. I have very strong opinions on Prop 8, but I try to keep most of my political posting on these boards pretty minimal. You know, for some reason I thought you were a religious conservative. I guess you could be a Libertarian or something, but either way, it's heartening to see you hold socially liberal views.

You really don't know what you're talking about, do you taks? I mean explain to you why there's no reason any modern day programmer or engineer would know or need to know the value of 18 bit words, and you respond by bragging about how awesome your 64-bit computer is. You've gone from me explaining to you why you'd need to use logs to solve 2^x < 300000, to you bragging about how you could find 2^18 in your head if you needed to. You completely skipped the fact that you need to know 18 is the solution to begin with. Now, you can continue bragging about your 'supreme mathematical ability' with your calculator handy, but I'm gonna go take my dog for a walk. He's getting antsy.

In future, try doing a google search exactly like that. Query: "Amanda Mcbroom" "The Portrait" lyrics

I'll pass; my cheeks are still puffing out after my operation. It's like I've been botox'd. Wise words, wise words.

2^18 = 262,144 < 300,000. no logs required. Oh really? Where did you get x=18 from if you didn't use logs? alanschu wouldn't have known that x=18 was the solution to 2^x < 300000. Do you understand? yes, at least, i do and i kinda got the impression that alanschu does something with programming, which means he probably does too. most people that work with numbers know their powers of 2 pretty far out. taks No. People who work in programming (like myself) know their powers of 2 up to about 12, and then the rest only if they themselves are powers of 2: e.g. 16 and 32. And even that's only by rote - but 2^18 almost never pops up (2^24 does sometimes), so there's zero chance of learning it by exposure. Let me put it this way: the only architectures to use 18 bit words were last used in 1975.

Your face is mundane. Today I'm bullying Krezack, just like any other day! Tough words coming from somebody who won't even man up and come drinking with me!

No, really? But 2^x < 300,000 does require logs, man. Do you honestly think alanschu just knew 2^18 was the closest power of two less than 300,000 off the top of his head, taks?

You're just reiterating all your old points that I've lambasted before, but whatever. I will say that advocating C# as a starting language is pretty silly given the context. It ignores all the reasons for choosing Python as a starting language in the first place. You might as well just dive blind in the deep end with C++ instead like you said originally if you're going to do that.

True, it's a trivial binomial case. But he still would've had to of used logs or a bunch of guesswork. It's a commendable application of mathematics (assuming logs) to an otherwise fairly mundane topic.

No, I'm saying I found that stat out later, and it was interesting. I definitely heard those things when I was out. I wasn't conscious. But you can still often hear things when you're unconscious. When I eventually woke up, I remembered them talking about my diastolic pressure. 15 diastolic is 'normal' when you're been under propofol. But certainly, it's entirely possible to still hear things when you're not breathing, too. Not for long, granted, but I was obviously revived straight away or I wouldn't be here now. Anyway, I don't overly care. It was just an amusing anecdote. And dude, I can't believe you actually bothered to work out the binomial probability of rolling 18 heads or tails in a row. Kudos. Although technically, you should have said "18 heads in a row" since "18 of the same thing" is twice the probability of 18 heads. It's immaterial, though; my calculation of how many people die each year under GA seems far more relevant. It was a choice of all 4 out at once under general, or 2 out at a time under local (2 trips). Not only was the 4 at once option less hassle, less pain, and less worrisome, but it was also half the price. Heh.

He's not an alt so much as an account swap. Re Yuusha: I did not like him. He was an extremist.

No, it was just bad regulation. There are numerous ways to deal with the socioeconomic problems of the underprivileged through government regulation which don't cause the system to collapse. Why they weren't undertaken is beyond me. But again, I would seem it was due to paralysis between those wanting government regulation, and those wanting a pure laissez faire system - to the point that the compromise that evolved was impotent and dangerous. Kind of like McCain's healthcare scheme. The issue here is that something needs to be done about America's low income earners. The subprime mortgages weren't the answer, but by the same token you can't just say "oh well, we tried" and brush them aside for good. Libertarians would probably love to do that since they don't believe in social welfare, and will thus try to pin this purely on any form of government regulation whatsoever, but the truth is that it was a very specific form of intervention that was at fault.