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πŸ”— Project Looking Glass

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computing/Software πŸ”— Java

Project Looking Glass is a now inactive free software project under the GPL to create an innovative 3D desktop environment for Linux, Solaris, and Windows. It was sponsored by Sun Microsystems.

Looking Glass is programmed in the Java language using the Java 3D system to remain platform independent. Despite the use of graphics acceleration features, the desktop explores the use of 3D windowing capabilities for both existing application programs and ones specifically designed for Looking Glass.

There is a Live CD available from Project Looking Glass. The Looking Glass environment is also included on a Live DVD (FunWorks 2007 edition) from the Granular Linux project.

πŸ”— Quadratic Voting

πŸ”— Politics

Quadratic voting is a collective decision-making procedure where individuals allocate votes to express the degree of their preferences, rather than just the direction of their preferences. By doing so, quadratic voting helps enable users to address issues of voting paradox and majority-rule. Quadratic voting works by allowing users to 'pay' for additional votes on a given matter to express their preference for given issues more strongly, resulting in voting outcomes that are aligned with the highest willingness to pay outcome, rather than just the outcome preferred by the majority regardless of the intensity of individual preferences. The payment for votes may be through either artificial or real currencies (e.g. with tokens distributed equally among voting members or with real money). Under various sets of conditions, quadratic voting has been shown to be much more efficient than one-person-one-vote in aligning collective decisions with doing the most good for the most people. Quadratic voting (abbreviated as QV) is considered a promising alternative to existing democratic structures to solve some of the known failure modes of one-person-one-vote democracies. Quadratic voting is a variant of cumulative voting in the class of cardinal voting. It differs from Cumulative voting by altering "the cost" and "the vote" relation from linear to quadratic.

Quadratic voting is based upon market principles, where each voter is given a budget of vote credits that they have the personal decisions and delegation to spend in order to influence the outcome of a range of decisions. If a participant has a strong preference for or against a specific decision, additional votes could be allocated to proportionally demonstrate the voter's preferences. A vote pricing rule determines the cost of additional votes, with each vote becoming increasingly more expensive. By increasing voter credit costs, this demonstrates an individual's preferences and interests toward the particular decision. This money is eventually cycled back to the voters based upon per capita. Both Weyl and Lalley conducted research to demonstrate that this decision-making policy expedites efficiency as the number of voters increases. The simplified formula on how quadratic voting functions is:

cost to the voter = (number of votes)2.

The quadratic nature of the voting suggests that a voter can use their votes more efficiently by spreading them across many issues. For example, a voter with a budget of 16 vote credits can apply 1 vote credit to each of the 16 issues. However, if the individual has a stronger passion or sentiment on an issue, they could allocate 4 votes, at the cost of 16 credits, to the singular issue, effectively using up their entire budget. This mechanism towards voting demonstrates that there is a large incentive to buy and sell votes, or to trade votes. Using this anonymous ballot system provides identity protection from vote buying or trading since these exchanges cannot be verified by the buyer or trader.

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πŸ”— Thought-Terminating Cliche

πŸ”— Marketing & Advertising πŸ”— Linguistics

A thought-terminating clichΓ© (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or clichΓ© thinking) is a form of loaded language, commonly used to quell cognitive dissonance. Depending on context in which a phrase (or clichΓ©) is used, it may actually be valid and not qualify as thought-terminating; it does qualify as such when its application intends to dismiss dissent or justify fallacious logic. Its only function is to stop an argument from proceeding further, in other words "end the debate with a cliche... not a point." The term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, who called the use of the clichΓ©, along with "loading the language", as "The language of Non-thought".

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πŸ”— I know that I know nothing

πŸ”— Philosophy πŸ”— Philosophy/Logic πŸ”— Philosophy/Ancient philosophy πŸ”— Philosophy/Epistemology

"I know that I know nothing" is a saying derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates. Socrates himself was never recorded as having said this phrase, and scholars generally agree that Socrates only ever asserted that he believed that he knew nothing, having never claimed that he knew that he knew nothing. It is also sometimes called the Socratic paradox, although this name is often instead used to refer to other seemingly paradoxical claims made by Socrates in Plato's dialogues (most notably, Socratic intellectualism and the Socratic fallacy).

This saying is also connected or conflated with the answer to a question Socrates (according to Xenophon) or Chaerephon (according to Plato) is said to have posed to the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, in which the oracle stated something to the effect of "Socrates is the wisest person in Athens." Socrates, believing the oracle but also completely convinced that he knew nothing, was said to have concluded that nobody knew anything, and that he was only wiser than others because he was the only person who recognized his own ignorance.

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πŸ”— Liquid Democracy

πŸ”— Politics

Liquid democracy is a form of delegative democracy whereby an electorate has the option of vesting voting power in delegates as well as voting directly themselves. Liquid democracy is a broad category of either already-existing or proposed popular-control apparatuses. Voters can either vote directly or delegate their vote to other participants; voters may also select different delegates for different issues. In other words, individual A of a society can delegate their power to another individual B – and withdraw such power again at any time.

Liquid democracy lies between direct and representative democracy. In direct democracy, participants must vote personally on all issues, while in representative democracy participants vote for representatives once in certain election cycles. Meanwhile, liquid democracy does not depend on representatives but rather on a weighted and transitory delegation of votes. Liquid democracy through elections can empower individuals to become sole interpreters of the interests of the nation. It allows for citizens to vote directly on policy issues, delegate their votes on one or multiple policy areas to delegates of their choosing, delegate votes to one or more people, delegated to them as a weighted voter, or get rid of their votes' delegations whenever they please.

Most of the available academic literature on liquid democracy is based on empirical research rather than on specific conceptualization or theories. Experiments have mostly been conducted on a local-level or exclusively through online platforms, however polity examples are listed below.

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πŸ”— Vulcan Salute (Handshake Alternative, U+1F596)

πŸ”— Popular Culture πŸ”— Star Trek

The Vulcan salutation is a hand gesture popularized by the 1960s television series Star Trek. It consists of a raised hand with the palm forward and the thumb extended, while the fingers are parted between the middle and ring finger.

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πŸ”— Transmeta Crusoe

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computing/Computer hardware

The Crusoe is a family of x86-compatible microprocessors developed by Transmeta and introduced in 2000. Crusoe was notable for its method of achieving x86 compatibility. Instead of the instruction set architecture being implemented in hardware, or translated by specialized hardware, the Crusoe runs a software abstraction layer, or a virtual machine, known as the Code Morphing Software (CMS). The CMS translates machine code instructions received from programs into native instructions for the microprocessor. In this way, the Crusoe can emulate other instruction set architectures (ISAs).

This is used to allow the microprocessors to emulate the Intel x86 instruction set. In theory, it is possible for the CMS to be modified to emulate other ISAs. Transmeta demonstrated Crusoe executing Java bytecode by translating the bytecodes into instructions in its native instruction set. The addition of an abstraction layer between the x86 instruction stream and the hardware means that the hardware architecture can change without breaking compatibility, just by modifying the CMS. For example, Transmeta Efficeon β€” a second-generation Transmeta design β€” has a 256-bit-wide VLIW core versus the 128-bit core of the Crusoe.

Crusoe performs in software some of the functionality traditionally implemented in hardware (e.g. instruction re-ordering), resulting in simpler hardware with fewer transistors. The relative simplicity of the hardware means that Crusoe consumes less power (and therefore generates less heat) than other x86-compatible microprocessors running at the same frequency.

A 700Β MHz Crusoe ran x86 programs at the speed of a 500Β MHz Pentium III x86 processor, although the Crusoe processor was smaller and cheaper than the corresponding Intel processor.

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πŸ”— Human Anti-Mouse Antibody

πŸ”— Pharmacology

Human anti-mouse antibody or human anti-murine antibody (HAMA) is an antibody found in humans which reacts to immunoglobins found in mice.

πŸ”— Corpus Clock (Grasshopper Clock)

πŸ”— Time πŸ”— University of Cambridge

The Corpus Clock, also known as the Grasshopper clock, is a large sculptural clock at street level on the outside of the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom, at the junction of Bene't Street and Trumpington Street, looking out over King's Parade. It was conceived and funded by John C. Taylor, an old member of the college.

It was officially unveiled to the public on 19 September 2008 by Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. The clock was named one of Time's Best Inventions of 2008.

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πŸ”— Hindenburg Omen (Occurred Twice this Month)

πŸ”— Finance & Investment πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Business

The Hindenburg Omen was a proposed technical analysis pattern, named after the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937. It was created by Jim Miekka, who believed that it portended a stock market crash.

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