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10,000's of underground gasoline storage tanks at gas stations are leaking, potentially putting benzene and other hazadrdous chemicals into the water table. I'm willing to change some of my driving habits if it helps with that, and with greenhouse gas emissions.

As an open-source dev myself, I often wonder why the fuck I do anything useful for others when they'll just turn on me the moment their toys don't work exactly as desired because -- gorsh -- I'm not perfect, though I work very hard to be.

Welcome to Engineering. Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) best summarized this disconnect between commendation and blame in the Engineers Explained chapter of his book:

Engineers hate risk. They try to eliminate it whenever they can. This is understandable, given that when an engineer makes one little mistake, the media will treat it like it's a big deal or something.

Examples of Bad Press for Engineers

• Hindenberg.
• Space Shuttle Challenger.
• SPANet(tm)
• Hubble space telescope.
• Apollo 13.
• Titanic.
• Ford Pinto.
• Corvair.

The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like this:

RISK: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent people. REWARD: A certificate of appreciation in a handsome plastic frame.

But Americans have been hugely keen on giving more and more power to their federal government

Sigh. No. The ignorance of history by the average American is appalling. No, this is nothing new. It goes back to the 1798 Alien and Sedition acts, at least. There's nothing "more and more' about it-- you do remember the domestic spying of the 1960s and 1970s, right? Or the Kent State incident where National Guardsmen shot a bunch of students on the quad (who, as it turned out, didn't even have anything to do with the protests over which that the Guards had been called out?) Well, no, probably you don't. What is new is the large amount of push-back against giving power to the federal goverment.

There's been for the last two centuries a give and take between cries for security and the desire for non-interference; or, if you like, the battle between fear and freedom.

, so this is in inevitable byproduct. Of course there must be some government, but not one that grows without bound and attracts power hungry, corrupt authoritarians. But hey, keep on voting for those Republican and Democrats, because that's been working out so well thus far, amirite?

You're ignoring large amounts of debate and back-and-forth in order to phrase things as simple freedom-versus-evil. Even in the two-party system, the parties are not monoliths; opinions are not uniform nor black-and-white. However, if you don't like the two-party system, you might try to see if you can advocate changing the ballotting system that we currently have, which drives the politics to two parties. Try advocating approval voting, for example, which is a system that is not biased toward two parties: http://www.electology.org/approval-voting http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html (or any of several other methods that don't fail badly with multiple candidates).

Quick calculations:

The body consumes 5-6 mL of oxygen at what I assume is close to STP (1), which comes out 7.14 mg of oxygen. The numbers here (2) indicate the dissolved oxygen content can be fairly high, e.g., "the optimal DO for adult brown trout is 9-12 mg/l." In as much as I assume this would be applied toward diving, dissolved oxygen tends to increase with depth. It does not seem that unreasonable to be able to process a liter of water or less per minute, if not by this mechanism, then by some other. Disposing of CO2 is actually a bigger problem, I think, as it is for the liquid breathing you link to, but I think considerable advantages open up in the context of an artificial apparatus vs. trying to interoperate with a human lung.

(1) "How much oxygen does the human lung consume?" Loer SA, Scheeren TW, Tarnow J., Department of Anesthesiology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9066318
(2) "General Information on Dissolved Oxygen," Sheila Murphy, City of Boulder/USGS Water Quality Monitoring, http://bcn.boulder.co.us/basin/data/NEW/info/DO.html

http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/voting/approval.htm
http://www.tursiops.cc/idhop/av/
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html

In the US, the "two party system" is a sham designed to keep the real power(s) (in power) and no one could ever have a successful third party.

Again-- continuing to beat the same horse-- this is an artifact of the balloting system. There are other balloting systems, some of which do not marginalize third parties.

In fact, the most successful "third party" presidential candidates (Libertarian & Green) are forbidden entry into the presidential debates

They're not allowed into the debate because they're marginal, not vice versa. You call them "most successful", but in that context, "most successful" means "they get a percent or two of the vote". Not "they win elections."

The answer would be a different system that does not marginalize third parties (and, as a side effect, would mean that third parties would pick candidates that might have a real shot at winning.)

In the US, the "two party system" is a sham designed to keep the real power(s) (in power) and no one could ever have a successful third party.

Again-- continuing to beat the same horse-- this is an artifact of the balloting system. There are other balloting systems, some of which do not marginalize third parties.

In fact, the most successful "third party" presidential candidates (Libertarian & Green) are forbidden entry into the presidential debates

They're not allowed into the debate because they're marginal, not vice versa. You call them "most successful", but in that context, "most successful" means "they get a percent or two of the vote". Not "they win elections."

The answer would be a different system that does not marginalize third parties (and, as a side effect, would mean that third parties would pick candidates that might have a real shot at winning.)

... The difference is here in the USA we have a flawed system. A system that while it makes sense with a small federal government and a small-ish state government, is fundamentally broken. A system that gives you two choices, either A or B, a system that is designed not to give you a third choice.
When you are advocating a third choice in a system designed for only two choices, its very hard to get a third choice accepted.

Indeed.

Look up Approval Voting for a balloting method that does not squeeze out third parties.

Wikipedia article on Approval Voting
Citizens for Approval voting
Approval Voting and the Good Society

But the real problem with voting is the One Vote, Plurality wins counting system, which drives out third parties and means that in a multi-contestant election, the winner almost never gets a majority. This is known to be a bad system. It may indeed be true that all voting systems may have problems, but one vote, plurality wins has very bad problems.

There are much better counting systems-- approval voting is simple and easy, for example, and much much better. Range voting also has a lot to say for it-- mathematically it's similar to approval, but hey, if you can rate your local restaurant on a scale of 1 to 5, you can learn to rate politicians the same way.

I pretty much did the same as you did(Google Search):

http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.htm

The first sentence pretty much covers the fundamental principle of Approval Voting.

There are lots of web pages which discuss the relative merits of different kinds of voting, but Approval Voting seemed to me to be the easiest to explain to other people, felt very intuitive to them, and still had most of the advantages of IRV.

(Also, would probably not be too hard to implement just by tweaking existing voting procedures.)

*cough*Verisign*cough*

It's always been a lucrative business.

Yes, and all of these counting systems have problems with Arrow Impossibility. Although the details of the problems vary from system to system, they are all tracable to the Arrow Impossibility thorem.

Anomolous Cowturd (190524) said

Australia uses what we call instant-runoff voting. It's unfortunately very confusing that Australians call instant-runnoff voting by the name preferential. Instant runoff avoids a slight amount of the problem with multiparty balloting in that you're guaranteed that the person who wins is no worse than the second worst candidate (where "worst" is defined as "would lose to any other candidate in a one-on-one election.") But it still has the same problems.

It's worth noting, by the way, that for a rational voters the range voting system is mathematically identical to approval voting. I've always liked approval voting, but range voting is fine, too. (Either one avoids the Arrow's impossibility in the technical details.) (a "rational voter" is defined as "a voter choosing to cast their vote to maximize the expected value of the outcome of the election." Different voters will, of course, chose different outcomes as most valuable.)

Hummm, I think you have been free market/profit motive theory indoctrinated.

I used to believe the free market is always best in every situations theoretical redirect as well. I was raised that way. However, after I chanced to read a few follow up studies and have got out and learnt to think on my own, I have come to believe the scientific approach is the only way to go: a theory, while it might be a good starting point, is only as good as it works in reality.

Under this measure, ya ya, ra ra, free market is always the best has a lot of answering to do. For example, a quick google for "cost of healthcare canada us" paints an interesting picture: the administration overhead costs in US and Canada are 31% and 17% respectively; the per capital expenses for health care is $2548 and $1886 (USD) respectively; the average life expectancy is 77.0 and 79.3 respectively; and the Harris polled population satisfaction relative to other industrialized nations is least and most respectively.

It should, at least, give one pause for thought.

PS: I know we feel invested in our viewpoints (which, ironically, are not usually ours in any sense of the word, but, rather, those of our parent's and our early educator's), however, there is nothing inconsistent or wrong with changing them as we feel fit. My favourite philosopher quote is something to the effect of "of course I don't feel the same as I did yesterday -- today I know more."

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/462311
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =10515
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American _health_care_systems_compared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/health/healthwatch/canada .html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcar e031020_poll.html

(and so on)

Instant runoff elections aren't the best answer to our current system. More people should advocate approval voting or condercet, if they're daring :)

My high school's bike lab did maintenance for Boulder's "green bike" program. The program took donated bikes, fixed them up, painted them green, put on a basket and some information about the program, and made them available for the public to use with the understanding that when you were done riding the bike (to the library, say) you left it for someone else to use.

We did a short documentary on the program. When we interviewed the guy in charge of maintenance we asked about theft issues. His response was "You can't steal a free bike." The same quip applies to free software. Projects like Mozilla and Linux want as many people to "steal" their software as possible.

Here's a reference, it's not the source legal code, but: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/resources/legal .html

Of note: Common carriers have "a duty to allow universal, nondiscriminatory access to all suppliers and consumers of information and a concomitant privilege from liability for the content of that information."

The universal and non-discriminatory part is the key. Discrimination against suppliers and consumers is forbidden if you want protected legal status. If priority packages can be delivered without affecting 'normal' packets, ISPs should be in the clear -- but this is not likely, IMO.

Of course, IANAL.

Also of note, the legal opinion expressed in the link above states that the network in question should refrain from individually-tailored contracts. This doesn't mean a tiered system is out of the question, but what is described in the article is not exactly an openly tiered system.

The thing is, if an ISP loses common carrier status, they are liable for the content they deliver. Maybe the definition of common carrier, or perhaps a new designation, needs to be developed further, but as far as every case study and legal opinion I could find stated, my OP was pretty much on the ball. Discrimination of packets precludes CC status, which precludes legal protection for content.

If you see a dead prarie dog, walk fast and hope those fleas dont catch up to you. The same goes for any dead animal, staying around to poke it with a stick is not generally a good idea

Nobody seems to care much.

http://www.ci.boulder.co.us/openspace/nature/pdog_ plague.htm

Maybe I could sell prairie dogs on ebay to dim terrorists, been looking to supplement my income.

Somebody call in the SWAT team!

Special Weapons And Tactics. You fail it ;-)

Correct.
There is a thriving industry removing Underground Storage Tanks (USTs). Nifty lingage on the dangers of gasoline-USTs can be found here and here and here

What's cool is that LUST is the acronym for Leaking Underground Storage Tank.

Live near Boulder Colorado? See the active LUST sites near you!.

Correct.
There is a thriving industry removing Underground Storage Tanks (USTs). Nifty lingage on the dangers of gasoline-USTs can be found here and here and here

What's cool is that LUST is the acronym for Leaking Underground Storage Tank.

Live near Boulder Colorado? See the active LUST sites near you!.

Theres several problems with our voting system (not the least of which is that I think the 1 vote for one candidate thing is silly, I would rather see a ranked voting system) ...
In most states to be involved in the elections, you effectivly have to be aproved by the parties.

The current voting system's game-theory fostering a two-party system results in a horrible false dichotomy. For the most part, candidates are only given a serious chance at winning an important office if they agree with one party's position on both economic AND social issues (or any other grouping method), rather than taking some positions from each party. But the fact is, the vast majority of the country would probably be more in the middle on many issues if the middle were an option.

A system like Approval Voting would allow candidates to express views on issues, and what's more, encourage them to do so. Candidates who were bland, refused to take a stance, or refused to say anything of substance would simply be ignored as noise if there were a handful of names on the ballot, and each one could be voted yes or no. There wouldn't be a motivation for voting for one candidate because you don't like the other. Voters would simply vote for as many candidates as they DID like, and then the most liked one would win. How much simpler and better could an election system get?

>> I actually aways wanted to visit the united states
By all means, stop over!

If you're comming to the US for a visit, I can recommend NYC or Boston (expensive!), Chicago, D.C., but there's some other places that I'd guess you'd like too:

- Portland, ME
- Asheville, NC
- Billings, MN
- Boulder, CO
- Philadelphia, PA

If you visit a big city, stay our of town, within walking distance to a rail link. The hotel room will be 1/2 - 2/3 less than staying downtown. For smaller cities, you'll need to rent a car.

>> treat me like a criminal
The last thing you're treated like is a criminal in the US. In fact, leave the airport and you'll probably not have another interaction with somebody from law enforcement until your return flight; 95% of police here are nice guys, more so when you get out of the major urban areas, so don't fear the police.

People have a hard time with something as simple as a butterfly ballot, and now you want them to rank their choices?

Wow, talk about being optimistic about the voting public.

Even if IRV is the most "accurate", I think Approval voting is lot simpler to understand, especially since it is used in many of the local elections (school board, etc), so it is familiar to most voters.

- Tony

This is an excellent question especially since Nader addressed this in the Nader-Libertarian-Reform Parties Debate. Here is some background if anyone is interested.

Ok, how hard can it really be to just do away with the whole electoral college thing? Just let each individual vote count. Say a few buddies and I go out and vote for Kerry but we're in a state that heavily backs Bush. Our votes are basically thrown away in a sea of Bush supporters, because the electoral college votes will go to Bush.

If the so called "popular vote" was the only thing that mattered those votes cast by my buddies and I would count for something.

Even better would be some alternative voting systems. With one of these systems in place you could rank your preference of candidates, or place multiple votes. Your vote for Ross Perot, Ralph Nader or Candidate X would not be "thrown away" as they say, for example you could vote for both Kerry and Nader if you wished.

There is no longer a reason to have any system other than a direct popular vote.

A direct pluralistic vote solves very few problems intrinsic to our current voting system. By comparison, Approval Voting resolves many of the problems. It would permit multiple political parties with realistic chances of winning, giving voters greater diversity of choice. It would reduce negative campaigning, and force candidates to present themselves and their issues rather than spend the majority of their time debasing their opponents.

You don't get it.

The problem is that people are pissed at both left and right. They're just more pissed at the right, currently. They see that our election system is broken, creating a de-facto two party lock-in. So people are disenfranchised and see the situation as hopeless. Hopeless people can do desperate things.

Don't be naive. It's so easy to blame this or that, but if you do that, you fail to see the real issue. The real issue is that both reps and dems are bought and paid for, and yet due to the way our election system works, we can't freely elect another candidate without risking to elect the worst "Evil" into office.

Please visit Approval Voting Home Page and learn about an election system that would actually work. Of course, which party do you think would be for it? Reps or dems? Or neither? Ya think??

Not sure there's any value in casting my vote that way, but geez, it's getting ridiculous

If you vote libertarian, you won't get libertarian policies, you'll get the exact opposite. The problem is not that we have two parties, the problem is that we have plurality voting which enforces the existence of two parties and penalizes third party voters by giving them the opposite of what they want.

If you don't like politics as they are, then you need to start encouraging people to support Approval Voting. If enough people are educated about what Approval Voting is and how it would change politics in this country, then the change would happen, and third party voters would be rewarded for their votes. Right now we have a big job of educating the public ahead of us, so start with the people you know.

I agree completely about the open source bit. How can anyone object to the states requiring open source voting software? It would be like claiming that opening up corporate accounting books to the public would encourage fraud. We all know how books can be cooked when there is no chance of an audit.

You should be able to vote "None of the above" or call your representative. Would approval voting make running for congress cheaper so less well-endowed groups can have their say?

The problem is that the American voting system discourages people from voting for what they believe in, and forces them to vote for the lesser of two evils.

The accounting error that placed George W. Bush in office would not have been an issue had a large segment of the liberal population not decided to vote -- for once -- by their consciences. Ralph Nader won about 2.7% of the popular vote in 2000 (Buchanan, the next most popular conservative to Bush, took less than 0.5 percent of the popular vote from Bush). It isn't unreasonable to assume that almost 100% of those people who voted for Nader would have preferred Gore to Bush. If even one percent had voted strategically (for the lesser of two evils), the Florida fiasco would not have been an issue.

I'm a firm proponent of electoral reform, so that people can vote their consciences without jeopardizing their position and letting the greater of two evils seize the power. However, until that time, I hope that the American public votes insincerely so that we don't end up with a repeat of the 2000 election.

IRV is broken. Approval Voting is much better, see this approval voting web site.

The actual site I wanted to refer to is here

Here is another site that seems to argue differently and thinks Instant Runoff is better than Condorcet. Possibly this is a liberal slant, which may indicate that there is belief that Instant Runoff helps liberals, while Condorcet helps conservatives (or libertarians, who don't want to be called conservative), though I can't think of any real reason why.

However both sites think "Approval" voting is better than Instant Runoff.

Check out Marvin the Web Server.

The user IS at fault when they don't follow instructions and check for hanging chads.

At what point do you draw the line of what the user is required to do to have his vote counted? Having your vote counted is a constitutional right. Being able to sell cheap voting machines which malfunction over the slightest ballot defects is not.

The user IS at fault when multiple votes are cast for the same candidate. ...You can't count a double vote for Gore and Buchanan as a vote for Gore. The intent of the voter is UNKNOWN.

In our current system, you're right. I wish we'd switch to "Approval Voting", where for each candidate you can either check their box (meaning you Approve) or not (you Disapprove). Whoever gets the most votes wins. That works better to get the intent of the voter, since you can easily say "I'd rather elect anyone besides Candidate Jones". This is what I suspect most voters would have said in the 2000 presidential election about G W Bush, what will all the people I know wavering between Nader and Gore, but definitely not wanting Bush.

It should have used approval voting.

• Read this and this before you panic
• ask your ISP for patching bind (or whatever ns-software they use)
• install a patched bind (djbdns, ...) locally as a caching dns
• if you have no chance of using a patched nameserver (why that?), you may reject (not: drop) 64.94.110.11:80/tcp only and install one of those patches to your MTA (postfix, sendmail, ...)
• if you are customer of verisign, ask them for suspending their new "service"

As of April 21, 2000, some commercial Web sites will be required to obtain parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under the age of 13. The FTC called the rule "a definitive move" that "puts parents in control over the information collected from their children online."

So when did this parent give the P2P people the right to disclose the personal informaion about her child to the RIAA?
Didn't the RIAA break the law by collecting this information?
Another link about this law.

I've always viewed my friends who are especially into Linux and ham radio (Rob Carlson -- radio callsign KC2AEI -- is one friend of mine who's fluent in both fields) as advanced hobbyists, the type of folks who might have scoured mall Radio Shacks for 6.5536 mhz crystals and dabbled in Heathkit
catelogues several decades ago. Tinkerers, in other words, passionate about tweaking the miniscule component constituents of their electronics to achieve a personal, customized result.

On the other hand, the similarities between radio "consumers" and Windows users are too tempting not to make. Unlike the Linux/ham radio enthusiasts, these folks operate their store-bought PCs/radio receivers as black boxes, strictly according to the design intended by the devices' manufacturer and rarely cracking open cases out of curiousity. Of course, I'm painting w/ a broad metaphorical brush here, lumping swaths of individuals into overly generalized categories.

Maybe there should be a runoff between the top 50 candidates.

Just kidding; the only workable solution for an election like this is approval voting.

The real potential for electronic voting is the opportunity to improve the voting system itself.

There are many voting systems possible besides simple "one man, one vote". In fact, "one man, one vote" is probably the worst of all (of course, Arrow proved no perfect voting system is possible).

There are some alternative systems here.

This is clearly not flamebait. You see, flamebait is suggesting the Linux is less than perfect, or that Microsoft has had some problems with stability or security in the past. This is all behind us now, though, with Trustworthy Computing.

Flamebait is also a closed up, wooden barn with a slightly lowered floor filled with bails of hay soaking in kerosene.

This is only a lame attempt at a 'Funny' post. Please readjust your safety equiptment and try again.

3.) See which state Senators voted against it (whoever is represented by Senator Haynes is in luck, otherwise...). The measure passed the State Assembly, but it might be worth seeing who voted against it there as well.

4.) Vote against them next election. In fact, tell them you're going to do so. Better yet, run against the bastard yourself. It's a cushy job and looks good on a resume at the very least.

Defensive voting is an abomination that we currently are forced to deal with. We should be implementing approval voting.

I think there is one reform that you've missed that you'd probably like. Approval Voting can help solve a lot of our problems. In approval voting, you can vote for as many people as you like. The person with the most votes wins.

Think about it. There is no reason why you should be limited to voting exclusively for one person.

With approval voting primaries lose their prominence. Defensive voting no longer becomes an issue. Third party candidates become viable. Your 'none of the above' option no longer is needed.

Approval voting is simple, understandable, and easy to implement using current voting technology. I'm a firm believer that implementation of approval voting will solve a lot of problems.

Instant run-off voting is a step in the right direction, but it too is still leagues away from being able accurately representing the will of the voting populace. What about Approval voting? It is just one of many options out there.

Instant run-off voting is a step in the right direction, but it too is still leagues away from being able accurately representing the will of the voting populace. What about Approval voting? It is just one of many options out there.

Volunteers maintain an ODP-like categorical index of web sites relevant to Boulder County. We also host hundreds of nonprofit web sites. And we make good use of our large volunteer pool to teach classes and help nonprofit organizations.

For folks just starting out, I'd recommend using ODP to maintain the categorical index. A community forum based on something like slash is a good idea. Obviously, promote (even demand) the use of open source software so you can share with others. Promote accessibility and World-Wide-Web Consortium (w3.org) standards also for better search-engine indexing, accessibility from handhelds, use from other operating systems. "Best used by any browser"... Don't rely on plugins, flash, custom fonts or any of that non-standard stuff.

Funding is the hard part. Don't bite off more than you can maintain. We're all-volunteer at this point, supported in many ways by the generosity of the University of Colorado and other donors.

For more information, including a history, web hits, policies, etc. see http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/.

Neal McBurnett

Volunteers maintain an ODP-like categorical index of web sites relevant to Boulder County. We also host hundreds of nonprofit web sites. And we make good use of our large volunteer pool to teach classes and help nonprofit organizations.

For folks just starting out, I'd recommend using ODP to maintain the categorical index. A community forum based on something like slash is a good idea. Obviously, promote (even demand) the use of open source software so you can share with others. Promote accessibility and World-Wide-Web Consortium (w3.org) standards also for better search-engine indexing, accessibility from handhelds, use from other operating systems. "Best used by any browser"... Don't rely on plugins, flash, custom fonts or any of that non-standard stuff.

Funding is the hard part. Don't bite off more than you can maintain. We're all-volunteer at this point, supported in many ways by the generosity of the University of Colorado and other donors.

For more information, including a history, web hits, policies, etc. see http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/.

Neal McBurnett

Volunteers maintain an ODP-like categorical index of web sites relevant to Boulder County. We also host hundreds of nonprofit web sites. And we make good use of our large volunteer pool to teach classes and help nonprofit organizations.

For folks just starting out, I'd recommend using ODP to maintain the categorical index. A community forum based on something like slash is a good idea. Obviously, promote (even demand) the use of open source software so you can share with others. Promote accessibility and World-Wide-Web Consortium (w3.org) standards also for better search-engine indexing, accessibility from handhelds, use from other operating systems. "Best used by any browser"... Don't rely on plugins, flash, custom fonts or any of that non-standard stuff.

Funding is the hard part. Don't bite off more than you can maintain. We're all-volunteer at this point, supported in many ways by the generosity of the University of Colorado and other donors.

For more information, including a history, web hits, policies, etc. see http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/.

Neal McBurnett