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Comment Re:Polls are nonsense (Score 1) 511

I'd suggest that if we discard the hot-button issue of race, we'd find that generally there is almost always (at least) a single-digit difference between what people SAY they're going to vote for, and what they ACTUALLY vote for.

The Bradley Effect does not only apply to issues of race, it applies to all issues in some way related to political correctness, i.e. issues where there exist significant social pressures to think in a certain way. Environmentalism is an example of such an issue, and at least here in Sweden, the Green Party pretty much always get significantly higher results in the polls than in the actual elections. Advocating for environmentalist policies (especially policies regarding anthropogenic climate change) is highly politically correct in Sweden, and the poll vs election results closely resembles what the Bradley Effect predicts. The Sweden Democrats are affected in the opposite way. Being critical of Islam and in favor of restricting immigration (on cultural and religious grounds) are highly politically incorrect positions and consistently show lower poll results than actual election results, just like the Bradley Effect predicts.

Comment Re:Anti-Bradley Effect (Score 1) 511

Your post reminds me of this video, by a young black conservative guy who sharply criticizes the Cornell Wests, the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons of the world, exactly because they perpetuate the stereotypical image of blacks as eternal victims of white oppression. He reminds everyone that these guys depend on this image for their business, and that they would lose their livelihood if this image were to fall apart.

Comment Re:wow, gg racist slashdot (Score 1) 511

Right now I see three big posts about "if 95% of black people voted for obama, how is that not racist" which is bullshit.

If they voted for Obama because of his skin color, their motivation was racist. If they voted for Obama because of his political ideas, their motivation was not racist. But the situation is likely more complex. A subset of those 95% may have voted for Obama because of his dark skin, and another subset may have voted for him based on his political positions. In addition, some people may have voted for him based on both his politics and his skin color.

Comment Re:Looking at it from a different angle (Score 1) 511

"Reverse racism" is a silly term. It implies that some types of racism are better than other. More specifically, it suggests that racism carried out by a minority against a majority (so-called "reverse racism") is "better" or "less bad" than ordinary racism, which according to the proponents of this term can only be carried out by a majority against a minority.

In my opinion, all racism is equally bad, regardless of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

Comment Re:so the avg slashdot commenter (Score 1) 233

Ok, you are right in those cases. But they differ from .e.g. Slashdot in that Slashdot has a large community with very diverse opinions about almost everything, which is not really comparable to a political party, which more or less requires that everyone subscribe to the same set of values and the same political agenda.

Comment Re:so the avg slashdot commenter (Score 1) 233

Slashdot has a large community of posters, but a community does not hold double standards, only individuals may do so. So, Slashdot has a (fairly large) set of community members promoting the GPL and similar licenses, and Slashdot has a set of community members advocating copyright infringement. But since we do not have any information about whether these sets overlap or not, we cannot accuse anyone of holding double standards.

The sets may be completely disjoint (i.e. have no common members), or they may overlap to an unknown extent. But even if they overlap, there is no "average poster" that can be accused of anything, all you have is a set of individuals holding double standards. Only if those sets are almost the same, you can reasonably accuse the "Slashdot GPL advocates" of double standards. But since we have no such information, no conclusions can be drawn, and there is no point in continuing this discussion until someone actually collects and compiles the positions held by a large number of Slashdot posters, so that we have some real data to discuss.

Comment Re:It could have been a much bigger media event (Score 1) 279

The explosion would be detected by a Defense Support Program satellite, but it would lack the double flash typical of nuclear detonations, so the military would probably not be seriously alarmed. People on the ground in SF on the other hand might have a little scare.

It could be much more serious if this happened over a less developed country possessing nuclear warheads but not the advanced detection equipment the US has, especially when its forces were on high alert. In June 2002, one such incident were just a few hours from happening. A meteor exploded over the eastern Mediterranean with the force of a small atomic bomb. Had it arrived some three hours later, it would have exploded over the border between India and Pakistan, when those countries had their nuclear forces on high alert. Since those countries probably do not have advanced detection equipment like the DSP mentioned above, they could have believed that the other side had launched a nuclear attack, and launched their own weapons in "retaliation".

Comment Re:Darn that dirty hydrogen (Score 2) 406

Hydrogen has many uses that do not rely on being able to store it. For example, the Sabatier reaction combines hydrogen with carbon dioxide in the presence of a nickel catalyst to produce methane and oxygen. And methane is the primary component of natural gas, so I'm sure that you can see why that is useful.

Hydrogen can also be used together with carbon monoxide in the Fischer-Tropsch process to create liquid hydrocarbons, which could be used as synthetic petroleum. In other words, another very advantageous use of raw hydrogen without the associated problems with storing the raw hydrogen gas.

Comment Re:500 megabytes? (Score 3, Interesting) 328

But, since the byte is really the smallest meaningful unit of data is a byte (yes, a single bit can represent a boolean value, but you can't transmit a single bit; in the simple case of a modem, you would generally transmit a byte; with modern networks, you transmit a packet, and I believe the smallest amount of data you can encapsulate in a packet is also one byte, isn't it?), data speeds should really be measured in *bytes* per second.

I disagree. There are several reasons why data transfer capacities of network equipment is measured in raw bits per second. First, different encoding schemes use different numbers of bits to transmit one byte. Second, at what layer do you want to measure the byte transport capacity? Do you wish to use the frame payload, the IP packet payload, the TCP stream payload, or something else? Third, even with a set encoding scheme and a defined layer, different packet sizes will give different amounts of overhead and thus differing data transport capacities for the same raw bitrate. Transmitting a stream of packets with a one-byte payload results in much more overhead and much lower payload transfer rate than if you use packets carrying 1 kb of payload. Fourth, features of various protocols significantly affect transfer rate. For an example compare the transfer rate of TFTP and FTP on the same network.

Comment Re:Religious Freedom (Score 3, Interesting) 358

Actually, they do. In Sweden, hate speech is illegal except if you do it because of your religion. A few years ago, a pentecostal pastor said that gays were "a cancer in society". He was charged with hate speech and convicted, but the conviction was overturned because freedom of religion trumps other laws (including laws against hate speech) in the EU.

There have been other instances. Last year, a muslim man was applying for a job at a company. At the interview, he refused to take the hand of the female boss while shaking the hands of other men. When the Swedish Public Employment Service because of this incident concluded that this man didn't make a reasonable effort to get a job, they retracted his social security payments. He complained to the public anti-discrimination board and they filed suit against the employment service, charging that he had been discriminated against because of his religion, a court case which they won. That he himself had discriminated against the female boss because of her sex was obviously considered irrelevant, as religion and multiculturalism apparently trumps equality between the sexes in Sweden.

Comment Re:Vapor? (Score 1) 283

How much energy would be needed to capture and convert enough CO to fill a car's gas tank?

CO only exists for a short while after it has been released into the atmosphere. When it has mixed with air, it fairly quickly reacts with the oxygen in the air to form CO2.

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