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    Username change request

    Please change my username from Garet Jax to samantha_cs
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    PSA: The West Wing DVD Set is 75% off on Amazon

    Got this in an email the other day, and i just had to jump on it. The West Wing: The Complete Series is only $75 on Amazon right now. According to the email, it's good through 11:59pm Pacific Time, November 16, 2013. Since i know there are a lot of West Wing fans here, i felt obligated to share. :)
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    Console makers making noises about relaxing multiplayer exclusivity

    While i agree that PC FPS gamers have a big advantage over console FPS gamers, i don't understand why that means they must be walled off into separate communities. Why not open it up and just give players the option of restricting the match-pool to Console-Only or PC-Only? That way, if you're a...
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    Engineer can’t get decent dinner reservations, creates Urbanspoon-dominating bo

    i think a lottery system would be most fair. Open time slots to 'reservation' early. Allow multiple entries for each time slot and then randomly select the winner. If you want to enter multiple days, you can, but so can everyone else. There is no technological edge for anyone.
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    News Corp. COO: If we lose Aereo copyright case, we‘ll stop broadcasting

    There is no "inferior rabbit ears" signal anymore. There hasn't been for nearly three years.
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    North Korea

    It seems relevant to note here that Congress did not vote the way that Senator wanted them to.
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    Fiber cables made of air move data at 99.7 percent the speed of light

    Just a minor note, i took a look at the free abstract and it looks like their waveguide is actually multi-mode, not single mode.
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    Fiber cables made of air move data at 99.7 percent the speed of light

    For side-by-side servers, the improvement in latency would likely be less than 1%. If we assume the current latency is on the order of 1 ms between adjacent servers, and the distance between the two is about 2 meters, the light speed component of the latency is ~10 ns in standard fiber. An...
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    Fiber cables made of air move data at 99.7 percent the speed of light

    Not directly, but as an engineer in the telecommunications industry, i literally gasped with horror when i read that attenuation number. 3.5 dB/km is a lot of loss, and substantially limits the distance or cost of the links you can close. Of course, for really long-haul applications like a...
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    Fiber cables made of air move data at 99.7 percent the speed of light

    If data center engineers were really concerned about 0.25 ns, they would just use shorter fiber cables. 0.25ns is 3 to 5 inches in a standard optical fiber, and i'm pretty confident there is a lot more slack than that in the fibers at data centers. i think you have it backwards. Why bother...
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    Unicode Chess Revival! Round 9: Traditional Chess

    8║♜ — … ♛ ♜ — ♚ — 7║— … ♟ ♝ ♝ … — ♟ 6║♟ — ♟ — … ♟ … — 5║— ♟ — … — … — … 4║… — … ♘ … — … — 3║— ♙ — ♙ — … — ♙ 2║♙ ♗ ♙ — … ♙ ♙ — 1║♖ … — ♕ ♖ … ♔ …   ╚═══════════════      a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h ♘♗ ♞♞♟♟ 13. b3 Be7 14. Bb2 Qd6 15. e5 Qd8 16. exf6 gxf6 17. Nd4 Bd7
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    Unicode Chess Revival! Round 9: Traditional Chess

    8║♜ — ♝ — ♜ — ♚ — 7║— … ♟ … ♝ … ♟ ♟ 6║♟ — ♟ ♛ … ♞ … — 5║— ♟ — … ♙ … — … 4║… — … — … — … — 3║— ♙ — ♙ — ♘ — ♙ 2║♙ ♗ ♙ — … ♙ ♙ — 1║♖ … — ♕ ♖ … ♔ …   ╚═══════════════      a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h ♘♗ ♞♟♟ 12. Nf3 Kg8 13. b3 Be7 14. Bb2 Qd6 15. e5
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    HI advice needed: What temperature is your waterheater?

    i'm going to have to side with Hoos here. i don't think any safe water heater temperature is enough to kill bacteria in the relatively short time it takes to wash a dish. Recommendations for cooking food start at internal temperatures of 145 F. Campers will tend to boil their water to eliminate...
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    i think i'm going to disengage from this thread. It seems clear that i'm not convincing anyone of anything. Whether that's because i'm not doing a good job communicating my position, or my position just sucks isn't obvious to me. i do feel like there's been a knee-jerk reaction to my proposal...
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    i have a basic idea that might do the trick, but i haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it. The central idea is that every ballot printed contains uniquely identifying information. In my first-pass proposal, each ballot would contain the ID of the voting machine it was generated on, the id...
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    Interesting, and i'll be looking up this report when it's available. The 0.03% figure is an average, not a boundary. It also seems to be talking abour primarily a recount of cast votes, and not necessarily an audit for potential fraud. i'm not entirely certain how to run an audit for voter...
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    Given that figure, we'd have had none. i find that level of precision somewhat difficult to believe, and i'd like to see the support for the number. It would mean that a recount of 8 million votes, roughly the size of Florida, differs from the final total by less than 2400. How many is "most"...
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    You're making the assumption that the number of Electoral Votes in each state wouldn't change. That would not be the case. By choosing how to allocate EVs carefully, you can minimize the number of EV boundaries. You only need to do a recount if a state's popular vote is close to an EV boundary...
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    Because recounting the entire country is expensive, divisive, and chaotic. Imagine Florida in 2000, but instead of just a single state, it's the whole country.
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    Balancing the Electoral College with zippy.

    Let me lay out an example. Suppose you have a country with three states all with 500k voters. Each state gets 5 Electoral Votes. State 1, the blue state, goes Blue 300k to 200k or 60/40. State 3, the red state, goes red 300k to 200k. And state 2, the 'swing state' very nearly ties at 251k to...