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Totally crappy C code, as well... Repeat after me: main returns int . And even if it didn't and was a void function, there's no need to say "return" before the final brace, that's just obfuscating the fact that the function ends there. Oh well. I guess your post wasn't about how to write in C, but if you're gonna write a 7-liner, make them correct. Please. :)

Lots support void main().

Implement Condorcet voting, and there won't be a need to "switch votes" because your preference was already registered.

Condorcets Method

But I am not sure you are sufficiently informed on the nature of our great United States we are a Democratic REPUBLIC and the although I agree Condorcet's method may remove some of the "You wouldn't want to throw your vote away" syndrom that influences so many voters there is still the electoral college and even worse, as the last election demonstrated, it just doesn't matter.

I agree with you on one point: How we count our votes does not equate to voteing reform. We must fundamentally change the methods used in the election of our leaders if this is to be a truely free Democratic Republic. Now try and explain that to the people who have the power to change it. They are the ones the current system put into power eg: the least likely to suppot change.

-FM

Here is a link to a site on Tesla Coils, since so many of you seem to be interested in them.

http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/

"The interface is too cluttered! Hide file name extensions!"

A little OT rant - file extensions are a horrid beast which should never have been allowed to surface. The MacOS method is much better. In fact, computer designers really need to rethink metadata handling from the ground up. I did a short thinking exercise on this here:

http://www.eskimo.com/~johnnyb/computers/MetaInfor mation.html

Want real representation? Check out Condorcet Voting.

When you come up with the perfect voting system, please let us all know. We'd love to apply it to things like American Politics.

Well, I've got a better one for you, at least: Condorcet's Method.

In other words, Kazaa doesn't run on Linux... :-)

You can run kazaa in Linux with wine... ;)

KaZaa on Linux

Not only did the submitter hide the fact that he wrote the new book he's hawking, but he's also a homophobe who likens homosexuality to rape, in this article:

I know this comment will get lost in the (nearly) one thousand other comments, but never-the-less I feel compelled to call it out.

...available at ProgrammingGroundUp

We want shatner and the rest of the original crew back. We don't want the sissy bald man flying around in the "jelly bean" style enterprise with his pinochio sidekick (data) and the klingon with the anus protrusion on his head (I mentioned the anus head thing before, someone pointed to a DS9 episode but STILL nobody can explain why the klingons went through such a drastic change between TOS and TNG)

Just give us a good plot, that deals with modern day social issues. Terrorism, genocide, YRO stuff like privacy invasion.

My previous post on this subject stated that I want to see kirk running around banging alien chicks at every possible turn. After seeing a recent picture of him though, maybe that wouldn't be such a believable plot for a man of his age.

So don't make him and his crew the swashbuckling people they once were. Instead, put them IN CHARGE of starfleet. Here's my idea for a new show.

It takes place 30 years after TOS (would be about right for age progression) Kirk and his old crew are now at starbase 001 orbiting earth. They all have cozy desk jobs and each are in charge of different aspects of starfleet operations. Kirk of course would be the almighty leader and diplomat. Scotty would be in charge of the starfleet equivelent of the US Army of Engineers, Ohura with her communication skills would be the equivelent of the NSA, Spock would be an investigator of ancient artifacts and legends, and Dr Mcoy would be the Starfleet General Surgeon.

Now i'm sure you're wondering how can you get an exciting plot with a bunch of old geezers floating around a space station on earth. Simple.

The shows focus would shift weekly. One week Kirk could be smoothing out warring planets. Next week you could have Ohura send out teams of spies for information. Maybe Scotty could send out the starfleet core of engineers to save some planet from imploding, or spock would send out a team to investigate some relic with weird powers. Their teams would stay in touch with thier bosses through subspace video messages (that way we still get too see our old favortite TOS characters involved) but most of the episodes would revolve around the different situations each TOS character has to deal with, and how they have to deal with them.

The neat thing about doing it this way too is you could also show more variety of starfleet ships, without having to wind it into some unbelievable story line. Sure we saw the Excaliber in ST4 the movie, but did we ever actually see it go on a real mission? What about the Science ship kirks son served on in the wrath of khan? What sort of things do the other science ships in startfleet discover?

Star Trek after TOS and the movies got lame, because there was so much variety in TOS between episodes, you could hardly find the same plot twice. TNG, DS9, Voy, Ent, all off them stretched episodes into week long "SPACE OPERA'S" that had plots with so many holes in them, you could strain pasta with it.

Just give us back our old captain. First thing that came to mind when I saw Scott Bakula for the first time was "Quantum Leap" He's no Captain kirk, thats for sure.

Hey, there's an idea for a /. poll, who would win in a fight?
Kirk
Janeway
Picard
Cisco
Cowboyneal?

Any system based on "runoff rounds" is going to fail. All the candidates need to be evaluated simultaneously not sequentially. Instant Runoff Voting is just a a dressed-up Plurality system; worse actually, because third parties are given the illusion that they can win. We need Condorcet Voting - cast votes in the same was as IRV, but count them differently. Condorcet is the only system I know of that allows voters to vote honestly instead of strategically - that in itself is a worthy goal for a voting system. Any good voting system must allow this liberty of conscience, and not ask voters to choose the "lesser of two evils".

Bush's was 1206. Here is an effort to correlate SAT performance to IQ. Clearly, anyone who says Bush is a moron is incorrect. It's simply defamation.

GF.

"Condorcet's method is one of several pairwise methods, which are great methods for electing people in single-seat elections (president, governor, mayor, etc.). Condorcet's method is named after the 18th century election theorist who invented it. Unlike most methods which make you choose the lesser of two evils, Condorcet's method and other pairwise methods let you rank the candidates in the order in which you would see them elected. The way the votes are tallied is by computing the results of separate pairwise elections between all of the candidates, and the winner is the one that wins a majority in all of the pairwise elections.

The best result of this is that if there is Candidate A on one extreme who pulls 40% of the vote, Candidate B in the middle who only pulls 20% of the vote, and Candidate C on the other extreme who pulls 40% of the vote, Candidate B will get elected as a compromise. Why? Because in a two-way contest between A and B, B would win with 60% of the vote, and in a two-way contest between B and C, B would also win with 60% of the vote. (Note that if B is a looney billionaire, he might not be able to win separate pairwise elections against anyone, and this would be reflected with Condorcet's method.)

Condorcet's method lets voters mark their sincere wishes for who they would like to win the election, without having to consider strategy ("I'd vote for Candidate B, but I'm afraid of wasting my vote."). It's really just a logical extension of majority rule when more than two choices are involved."

= 9J =

The oracle of the Internet (i.e., Google) indicates that Haag used illegal employment methods in Germany and has been involved in setting up front groups for Scientology. Gee, I wonder if the parking is done not by robots at all but by body thetans.

That's horribly buggy!! In C, main() returns int . And a function taking no parameters should be defined as (void), Since main() must take either zero or two arguments, your code is incorrect there, too.

So you recognize the problem, understand the deeper issue underlying it, and empathize with the position. Yet you won't stand on your conviction because the system is biased against honest voters. But you fail to mention what you are doing to change the system. Are you lobbying your Congress-critters to change the electoral method? Are you informing yourself of the alternatives (such as Condorcet voting) so that you can educate others to do the same? Until then, save your breath.

I consider myself a relatively outspoken advocate of electoral reform. Trying to push such a change through using the current system is going to be very difficult, possibly as difficult as electing a third party under the current system. It's a chicken-or-the-egg problem, but one of them has got to happen. I encourage everyone to do both: vote your conscience regardless of how "winnable" the candidate is, and promote electoral reform to anyone who will listen. Until more people see there is a problem, and are shown how to fix the problem, we're stuck with the problem. The problem doesn't solve itself by voting for the same ol' establishment Duopoly candidates.

Once again, IRV is not the solution it seems to be. The same problem exists, it's just better hidden. Condorcet is the way to go. You're right that it would make politics more interesting though. Since 1960, turnout for presidential elections has been declining, except in 1992 - the Perot year. People want more choices! Two choices is only one more than they had in the USSR. Politics is more complex than a one-dimensional spectrum.

I'm opposed to recall for a very different reason: it's a kludge to "fix" a broken voting system. The possibility of being elected with less than 50% support is bad, but recall is not the best way to fix it. If he's really doing that bad, there should be an impeachment process. The problem there is that the legislature is also elected with the same broken system. There's nothing wrong with proposing a new voting system to fix California's ills. What really needs to be done though, is to address the fact that plurality voting is a broken system by replacing it with a better one!

However, IRV is not the method that should replace plurality voting. Condorcet trounces IRV in every way that matters - even plurality is demonstrably better than IRV! IRV is deceptive because it gives voters a false sense that they've got a real choice, but in reality it's just as bad as the current plurality system. Run-offs need to be done simultaneously (Condorcet) not sequentially (IRV) to be fair.

Implementing Condorcet would encourage third party involvement. We need more voices in government, not fewer. After all, two choices is only one more than they had in communist Russia, and both options of the "Duopoly" gravitate toward the middle to get votes. That's not real choice! If you look at voter turnout in presidential races from 1960 on, it was a steady downward decline...with one exception: 1992. What happened in 1992? Ross Perot ran a strong third party campaign. It's clear that people want choice in politics.

Vote third party. Vote your conscience regardless of what the pundits and "strategists" say. The only strategy you should need in the booth is honesty to your ideals! The only way we're likely to see voting reform is if we get a third party into office, but we're going to have to do it with the current broken system.

Agreed. That is the cheaper (and probably more sensible in the first place) alternative. I was saying that if we have to have e-voting, then they must provide a paper backup. But you're right, it would be easier and cheaper to just have scantron-able paper in the first place. You can use them like paper ballots for manual recounts, or you can run them through the machine to get done faster.

The problem is this assumes we keep the current single vote plurality system. I'm an advocate of voting reform (Condorcet's method, baby!) and I don't know if "fill in the bubble" would work there. Needing X bubbles besides each of the X candidates' names so that you can rank them all would be a little tedious. But if handwriting recognition is good enough to get most checks read correctly, it ought to be good enough here.

I don't know about learning it in a half hour. I've been playing with it for a week and I'm still only up to static modeling. It really could use better documentation. Of course, users experienced in other 3D modeling programs may have an easier time. In any case, this page has been tremendously helpful.

That's not how char[] types work. You're confusing pointers and arrays, which are not equivilent (despite hype to the contrary; RTFAQ). It's a common mistake, but can lead to problems.

If you try the code you gave, you'll see that it doesn't actually compile; you can't assign to arrays. But the char buffer[100 + 1] = ""; does. That's because it's not an assignment, but an initializer. It sets the initial contents of the buffer that's allocated on the stack; it doesn't move the buffer.

Don't believe me? Make some stack guards! Try this on an x86 Unix (it will probably work on other boxes). It's not legal C, but it should illustrate the point.

/* 01 */ #include <stdio.h>
/* 02 */
/* 03 */ int
/* 04 */ main(void)
/* 05 */ {
/* 06 */ char* stringtable = "hello world";
/* 07 */ int lowguard = 69;
/* 08 */ char buf[4] = "quux";
/* 09 */ int highguard = 105;
/* 10 */ printf("lowguard at %p, buf at %p, highguard at %p\n",
/* 11 */ &lowguard, buf, &highguard);
/* 12 */ printf ("string table near %p\n", stringtable);
/* 13 */ printf ("Initial. lowguard: %i highguard: %i\n", lowguard, highguard);
/* 14 */ printf ("buf as int: %#0x\n", *((int*)buf));
/* 15 */ printf ("word above lowguard: %#0x\n", *((&lowguard)+1));
/* 16 */ printf ("word below lowguard: %#0x\n", *((&lowguard)-1));
/* 17 */ buf[0] = 0xFF;
/* 18 */ printf ("Byte 0 assigned. lowguard: %i highguard: %i\n", lowguard, highguard);
/* 19 */ buf[4] = 0xFF;
/* 20 */ printf ("Overflowed array. lowguard: %i highguard: %i\n", lowguard, highguard);
/* 21 */ return 0;
/* 22 */ }

Compile this and run it. The exact output will, of course, depend on your box. gcc, at least on my architecture (x86/FreeBSD), will generally allocate variables in the order they're declared, if you don't use -O. So you should have the lowguard and highguard immediately around the spot on the stack where the buffer is allocated. Check the first line of output to make sure. The three numbers should be either in order (either increasing or decreasing), and each one four bytes from its neighbor. The string table is probably far-removed from the items on the stack.

Now, let's examine the consequences.

Lines 14-16: Note that buf as an int is 0x78757571, which is "quux" in hex. (Remember, this example is for x86 only, although the point it illustrates is applicable to any ANSI C system.) Now, if we read the words directly above and below lowguard, one of those will be buf. This indicates that the string "quux" is allocated on the stack, alongside lowguard.

Line 17: We didn't compile with -fwritable-strings, so if you're using gcc, this would generate a runtime error (writing to a read-only segment) if buf pointed at a constant in the string segment.

Line 20: By overflowing the array, we changed one of the guards. Were buf pointing into the string table, then we wouldn't have changed the contents of the stack. (Note the output of line 12: the string table is far away from the stack.)

This should make it clear that what the AC wrote was an initialized array, not buggy code.

i don't know how high of freq I can hear, but I can relate to your story.

sitting in my room I can tell if the tv in the living room is on w/o sound. Several times I've noticed the whine and had to get up and turn it off after someone turned off the cable box but not the tv.

at university, they keep the tvs in some classrooms locked up in cabinets. several times during class, i've had to ask the teacher to open the cabinet and turn it off and people always react strangely at that request. (this has happened in both lecture halls and small classrooms).

also there is this one intersection that when I drive by during the day I hear this very very high pitched whine, but not during night. I'm not sure what's there, but my brother has had the same experience.

i like sharing hearing anecdotes apparently. i'm afraid of the taos hum

This is also true for other combinations of "++" and "--" operating on a single variable (like "(a++)++") - the language simply does not allow them.

There are a couple of further complications too. For example, anything that takes the form of "a = a++" or "b = a++ + a++" will produce unpredictable results (that means that some compilers might do what you expect, but others could do something else). If you want to know more about this, try searching for "sequence point".

One good place to look is here, especially in chapter 3 which deals with these issues.

We're actually working on a system using Linux that will make PDF printing available from any application without local software installation. Basically, you have a Linux box set up as a member of your Windows domain which has a "virtual" printer which just accepts print requests, generates a PDF, and then places the PDF with a timestamp in your home directory.

All you have to do is follow the normal Windows printer setup procedure. You don't even need to load drivers - they come standard with Windows.

If anyone's interested you can email me at johnnyb@eskimo.com.

Probably because until we institute a voting procedure a little more like this, our best chance for satisfaction is to vote for the major-party candidate that we dislike the least.

I'm an optimistic realist. In reality it might never happen, but I have to keep hoping and trying. :)

Eliminating commercials during the news might be a good idea, but I doubt that would help much either. I get very little of my news from the mainstream outlets anymore. With the internet, there's little need to. Most of the media is biased, and I don't care for its agenda.

Approval voting is too easy to rig. Honest conservatives (for example) might vote for Republicans and some other right-leaning parties, but you'll always have the die-hard partisans that won't "approve" anyone but their own party - Republican in this case. Result: the dominant Duopoly will retain their supremacy, but out of "brand loyalty" and ignorance, not because they actually deserve it. As long as it is possible to "lie" at the ballot box to gain an advantage, there are people that will do so. Condorcet's method is the only strategy-proof system I know of.

Condorcet is just as easy to vote as Approval, and is much more precise about who the winner is because preferences are expressed about who amongst the approved set is the best. Approval only tells you that those in the approved set beat those in the non-approved set. It doesn't tell you which of the approved candidates you really want. Some examples:

• It's possible, though improbable, that everybody would approve the same 3 of 8 candidates (for example), leaving the winner ambiguous. (I suppose it's technically possible for every voter to rank every candidate in a tie, so this would happen in Condorcet too. But the probability of absolutely zero preference in the electorate is, well, zero.)
• Similarly it's possible, though extremely improbable, for one voter to overturn the will of the people. Suppose that everybody's approved list contains A, the preferred candidate if we were using a ranking system, and B, the "merely acceptable" candidate (some other candidates may be approved by individual voters in this example, but everybody approves A and B) - except for one guy who approves only B. So this one voter tosses out the candidate that should clearly win, and 99.99999% of us are stuck with a guy who is merely "second best". Sure, 100% can tolerate him, but is that the best criterion for winning an election?

A good voting method shouldn't do these things. I'm sure there are web sites that can make a much better case for Condorcet than I can here, with better examples and more alternative systems to compare against.

1. Microwave oven
   Given the sparks you can get from microwaving non-microwavable items, I would assume RFIDs are probably rather easy to neutralize.
2. Forgery
   I'd love to see security's reaction when their scanners report the last 5 customers all left wearing a Mercedes M Class.

-- Aumaden

C for Dummies is horrible. It's extremely platform-dependent and ought to be called "C for DOS for Dummies," or maybe "C for Borland C++ for DOS for Dummies"). It wastes far too much space with plodding, tiresome explanations and cornball jokes. I recommend avoiding it at all costs.

I advise people who are new to programming to follow these introductory notes with K&R2 and the comp.lang.c FAQ as reference materials.

C for Dummies is horrible. It's extremely platform-dependent and ought to be called "C for DOS for Dummies," or maybe "C for Borland C++ for DOS for Dummies"). It wastes far too much space with plodding, tiresome explanations and cornball jokes. I recommend avoiding it at all costs.

I advise people who are new to programming to follow these introductory notes with K&R2 and the comp.lang.c FAQ as reference materials.

Of course they would exist and they'd be affordable.

Really? I don't know how accurate it is, but I read some rumors that someone had bought up the rights to the Chronicles of Narnia and were editing them to be less Christian. Then the original version would not exist on the market, despite demand. The same is true of Doctor Dolittle; there are no unexpuragated editions of some of the DD series, because their racial attitudes are considered offensive.

Furthermore, there are many books that were only returned to print by Dover, because they could afford to publish them without copyright. Most of them would be unavailable without that.

As for affordable, I'm sure if you have enough money, they will be affordable. But I took a class - "The Ancient World". Previous years had the Revised Edition(?) of the Bible on the reading list. But they could no longer justify $15 for the amount of reading they were going to do out of it. Copies of the translation of Plato, otho, were public domain and sold at $1.50, making them easily available for our class. It's entirely possible that there may only be a expensive edition of certain volumes, and that many others will only be available used, and will be very expensive and take a lot of time to find.

someone can snatch my work up, do a fantastic job of marketing on it and make a killing while I struggle to make ends meet.

What's your point? Rembrandt made the first whitening toothpaste, and then all the mainstream brands copied the idea, and did a fantastic job of marketing it, and sell many more then Rembrandt ever did. That's the way life goes in a capitalist system; it's not just the idea; it's how you market it and sell it. Twenty years is probably too short, but if you can't sell a book in decades, what right do you have to complain if someone else can?

Books will exist 50 years from now and if you really want to buy them, you will be able to find them.

The Counterpane Fairy is now available on the net because it's in the public domain. However, before that, the only people had heard of it were people who had read it as a child, and it was very expensive to get a hold of a copy. Yes, Stephen King will be easy to find, but shouldn't we be able to read stuff fifty years from now that wasn't a bestseller in its day?

In the off chance I do write the "Great American Novel", it's very unlikely that anyone will put two and two together

It's quite likely, in fact, provided you don't publish anonymously. There's a wealth of bibliographic information out there. Besides which, your publisher has a copy, which he will be itching to publish.

so I would very likely sit on the first novel if it were considered public domain

So, instead of publishing and worrying about competition - which you'll likely win, if you publish first as "the only authorized version" in the appropriate price ranges - you'll just sit on it? That sounds petty.

Bah, Mensa membership is easy .... 1 out of every 50 idiots gets the invite. Back when I was a Giga Society member, Mensans were our boot licking lackeys. They were fit for all manners of menial tasks from ritualistic scrotum shaving to carrying the piss buckets. In a pinch, they were even handy as replacement skeet targets. Ah, the summers in Rangoon ... I remember them well.

Anyway, I dropped out of Giga since they weren't exclusive enough. I'm now making a bid for the Exa Society. My Princeton Review book arrived yesterday, but I haven't cracked it open yet since the test isn't until next week. Wish me luck.

Bah, Mensa membership is easy .... 1 out of every 50 idiots gets the invite. Back when I was a Giga Society member, Mensans were our boot licking lackeys. They were fit for all manners of menial tasks from ritualistic scrotum shaving to carrying the piss buckets. In a pinch, they were even handy as replacement skeet targets. Ah, the summers in Rangoon ... I remember them well.

Anyway, I dropped out of Giga since they weren't exclusive enough. I'm now making a bid for the Exa Society. My Princeton Review book arrived yesterday, but I haven't cracked it open yet since the test isn't until next week. Wish me luck.

Bah, Mensa membership is easy .... 1 out of every 50 idiots gets the invite. Back when I was a Giga Society member, Mensans were our boot licking lackeys. They were fit for all manners of menial tasks from ritualistic scrotum shaving to carrying the piss buckets. In a pinch, they were even handy as replacement skeet targets. Ah, the summers in Rangoon ... I remember them well.

Anyway, I dropped out of Giga since they weren't exclusive enough. I'm now making a bid for the Exa Society. My Princeton Review book arrived yesterday, but I haven't cracked it open yet since the test isn't until next week. Wish me luck.

It's a null-dereference bug. That means something tried to access memory location zero. Apparently under Winderz, location zero is not mapped to anything and causes a crash from an invalid memory access.

You don't know what you're talking about. I'll bet $5 that you have never done serious C programming before...

This is a decent explanation of what a null pointer is.

(Oh yeah, this is slashdot... why am I surprised?)

What I find more interesting is that NO ONE has said anything about Nicola Tesla. While I don't think he invisioned microwaves, he DID invision, and bascially PREDICT electricity without wires, and spend a good deal of his life working toward this. His ideas were both out of time(r) and often wrong, but his foresight was amazing.

Once again, he has been redeamed in his belief that it could be done. While some of his claims are a bit overstated, the majority of his work was so advanced, he deserves the name "man out of time", which is also an excellent book about him by Margaret Cheney.

If you haven't read enough or really know who Nicola Tesla is, here are some misc. links about him, including his patents. (Not to be confused with the very excellent band named Tesla.)

Enjoy the links, at least until they are slashdotted.

You want to go back to the days when the State Legislatures rubber stamped the majority party's choice for Senator,

That's why we need voting method reform, so that there is no such thing as a "majority party" and this problem simply goes away. The 17th Amendment was passed as a way to combat a procedural issue (difficulties in filling vacant seats), but instead it drastically changed one of the fundamental power balance triangles of government.

It also increased the amount of money in politics, as senate candidates had to campaign across a whole state rather than just amongst the state legislature. The primary rationale for the supposed "campaign finance reform" was that there is "too much money" in politics. Well, limit senators to campaigning a smaller group then, don't limit every citizen's ability to participate financially!

It also makes senators less responsive to their home states - do you really think California's senators feel more accountable to 50 million individuals than they would to a couple hundred (or whatever the number is) in it's legislature? The citizenry is better served by indirect senatorial elections than direct. A senator doesn't care about you, other than that it is easy to sway the emotions of a herd (which includes you) to keep himself in power. If he had to campaign to a smaller group someone might *gasp* force him into an intelligent reasoned debate, he might have to take a position on issues, he might have to actually take a stand for principles.

Most people are uninformed on state level issues, but the 17th gave them power to elect a federal representative for six years! One of the reasons the House has short terms is so that if the general public's (relatively uninformed) choice for office doesn't work out, he's quickly removed. One of the reasons the Senate has long terms is because it was assumed that the states' legislatures would be composed of thoughtful cool-headed people that could make a more responsible choice. The system was supposed to protect us against ourselves.

and the people had little direct say in the process? I don't think you'll find a lot of people agreeing with you there.

People should not have that much (direct) say in selection of US senators. (See above.) The Senate represents the States, therefore the States - as the political entities they are - should select those senators. The power of the states was supposed to serve as a check against the power of the central government. Without any representation in the federal government, how are the states supposed to do that? Like you said, "It's really unfortunate, since many things are really best handled on a state-by-state basis," and I fully agree with that.

That also seriously hurts third party power.

Third parties currently have no power, so I don't see how this could hurt it. We need to implement Condorcet voting in as many elections as we can, so minority (ideology, not race!) viewpoints can be heard.

Unfortunately, I still feel obligated to cast my votes for the most freedom-oriented Republicans (or Democrats), until the Libertarian Party has a chance of winning, but how can you knock the party that advocates more FREEDOM?

You can't knock them - you join them. (Or if you happen to believe that rights derive from God and not from man, join the CP like I did.) Until you start voting for them, then of course they will never win. My question to you is will you stand up for what you believe in, even when the going is rough, or will you cave in to pressure?

The problem is that the voting system is rigged in favor of the two major parties. A simple plurality vote, with only one vote to express preference between candidates, will always lead to people sacrificing their principles in order to vote for the "lesser of two evils". That's why we need Condorcet voting, to restore liberty of conscience. (Ask yourself this: If you have to sacrifice your conscience in order to feel like you're having an impact on an election, is it truly a free country?) There's absolutely no reason that we cannot have a diverse range of viewpoints in a race together, instead of being stuck with two parties that squeeze to the center so tight that they're essentially the same with different rhetoric. The laws these guys make is going to govern our lives, you know - darn right I want some real debate and some real choice between candidates.

I've posted about this many times in the past, with more explanation than I have time for now. If you search Slashdot for my nick and "condorcet" or "voting" you should be able to find it. Condorcet's method trashes every other voting method I've heard of, including Instant Runoff Voting (also called Single Transferable Vote), Approval, Borda Count, and definitely Plurality.

Another problem is ballot access laws. Again, the major parties shape this to favor the status quo. Why is it so hard for challengers to get in the race? Obviously, the major parties don't want competition. If collecting a half million signatures is "good enough" for a minor party, why don't we require the same thing of a major party?

Heck, I'd just about get down on my knees and grovel for a 50k a year job. I have the misfortune of living in Wichita, KS, where software development/IT jobs having been shriveling up and blowing away for over a year, Boeing, Raytheon, Cessna etc have already done large layoffs (and Cessna's getting ready to do another), and highschool kids can't find work because the unskilled work's been taken by laid-off IT and aircraft workers.

If anyone's looking for a Unix and network applications developer or a device driver developer, my resume's here (html) and here (PDF).

Don't much care if it's in Wichita; I've been trying to get out for some time, but everybody I talk to elsewhere is "only considering local candidates."

Heck, I'd just about get down on my knees and grovel for a 50k a year job. I have the misfortune of living in Wichita, KS, where software development/IT jobs having been shriveling up and blowing away for over a year, Boeing, Raytheon, Cessna etc have already done large layoffs (and Cessna's getting ready to do another), and highschool kids can't find work because the unskilled work's been taken by laid-off IT and aircraft workers.

If anyone's looking for a Unix and network applications developer or a device driver developer, my resume's here (html) and here (PDF).

Don't much care if it's in Wichita; I've been trying to get out for some time, but everybody I talk to elsewhere is "only considering local candidates."

Because the most states have a "winner take all" system, any candidate that doesn't have enormous numbers of backers to begin with isn't going to win anyways.

"Winner takes all" only applies in presidential elections. There are a number of other problems which apply in all elections. The plurality voting system is chief among them.

So, if no candidate gets a majority, you have a run-off among the top contenders.

Bad idea. Learn about the problem with Instant Runoff Voting. The same problem applies in any runoff, instant or not. Sometimes the best "compromise" candidate may get eliminated first, and you're stuck voting between two bad choices - exactly what we have now. Yes, plurality voting is bad, but IRV isn't really any better (even though it seems to be). The system you want is Condorcet voting. Same ranking method, but you consider all preferences simultaneously rather than sequentially.

Now that I think about it, getting rid of the electoral college would have the same effect as insisting on proportional represntation of electoral college seats.

Not really. True proportional representation by popular vote forgets that the states, as political entities, should be represented in the federal government too. (That's what federal government means, the federation of individual states.) In Congress we have one house that represents the states (at least we did until that lousy 17th Amendment) and one that represents the people. The EC is an attempt to unify the interests of the states and the people when voting for a singular office (president). That's why the number of EC votes a state has is the total number of Senators and Representatives from that state.

I do agree that "winner takes all" is a broken system. The legislators that put it in place were very short-sighted - in giving more power to "their state's party" in presidential elections, they didn't think that the balance of power in their state might swing another way in the future and end up hurting "their party". NE and ME allocate their EC votes (less two) proportionally by congressional district to the plurality winner of that district. That's a good attempt at compromise. I think it would be better if we used Condorcet, better still if the last two EC votes were decided in the state legislature (if they are supposed to represent the state's interest) and we scrapped the 17th Am. while we're at it. Remember, these issues are decided by your state legislators, not DC. This gives you much greater ability to make a change to the system. It's closer to you, and hence more responsive.

I've also heard people say that we don't have enough representatives in Congress. With only 435, each has far too many constituents to respond to. The Constitution originally called for a 1:30k ratio. Maybe several thousand would be a tad excessive, but with modern technology I don't see why the number couldn't be increased without hampering the ability to debate. This means you'd have more chance of your view being represented in Congress, and combined with the idea of allocating EC votes by CD, a better chance of picking the president too.

Two choices isn't a choice, it's a coin flip and a mockery of representative republican values. Both parties have tried for years to convince the public that having 10-190 people officially registered on the ballot is irresponsible because it creates chaos somehow. Having two people on the ballot is akin to having only one choice in most races.

I couldn't agree more. And as a member of an American third party, one of the issues I promote is voting reform. (Not campaign finance reform, which just restricts your ability to participate financially in the political process.) We need Condorcet voting or some other method that allows to express a preference between more than only two candidates.

Look at it this way. The ideal political system runs on a foundation of honesty and truth. If the voting system compels you to sacrifice your conscience and vote for the "lesser of two evils" then your choice in the ballot box is a lie. Our system is rotten at its core. If we lie when we put officials into office, how can we expect the system to work truthfully and honestly? If you vote for a third party, any third party, I applaud you for standing true to your beliefs. To the rest of you: stop compromising what you believe in. Do the right thing, investigate all the parties and candidates in the race, and vote for the one you agree with the most even if "popular wisdom" says "he can't win". Even better, get off your butt and get involved in a party. Stop complaining and get involved.

Remember, having two parties on the ballot is only one more than they had in Soviet Russia. As ShatteredDream said, that's not a choice at all.

Plurality voting is the source of most of the election problems we have in the US. We don't need "campaign finance" reform, we need voting method reform! The problem isn't that Democrats and/or Republicans spend a lot of money, the problem is that we can't effectively vote against both of them!

Glad to see someone else posting useful Condorcet links. Condorcet is so superior to other methods, and IRV so flawed, I'm surprised that IRV is still mentioned as a possible replacement for plurality.

I just found this, which makes the case much better than I can.

Go check out the
crypto++ library.

It's got lots of classes that make it easy to incorporate a whole bunch of algorithms into your programs.

Look what I did with it last week...http://sourceforge.net/projects/winfilecryp t

Their XPrint work is just as successful.

Actually Xprint shipped with XFree86 was broken for a long time but recently was fixed up and works quite well. If you want great printing with Mozilla it's a must.

http://xprint.mozdev.org/

and here's a good quick guide on it:

http://www.eskimo.com/~miallen/xprint

I don't know much about the roots of Led Zepplin and Eminem, but I am a huge Beatles fan. And I'll tell you this, record companies had a lot to do with us not getting the Beatles sooner.

They received countless rejections, including the one from Decca that famously said "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out". And once they did make it big, Capitol Records still felt they needed to rearrange their albums to make them more palatable to the American public.

The biggest reasons for The Beatles making it big was their pure, raw talent, plus their strong drive to be the toppermost of the poppermost because they believed they were the "best fucking group in the god-damned world". And Brian Epstein definitely had a lot to do with their breaking through to superstardom too.

struct message {
char *str;
int num;
};

size_t
enc_message(struct message *msg, char *dst, size_t dn)
{
char *start = dst;
dst += enc_string(msg->str, dst, dn);
dst += enc_uint32be(msg->num);
return dst - start;
}

size_t
enc_uint32be(uint32_t i, unsigned char *dst)
{
dst[0] = (i >> 24) & 0xFF;
dst[1] = (i >> 16) & 0xFF;
dst[2] = (i >> 8) & 0xFF;
dst[3] = i & 0xFF;
return 4;
}

One last thing... ask a local Green what IRV is.

Condorcet, Condorcet, Condorcet! I can't say this enough. IRV has so many pitfalls that I can't believe anyone seriously recommends it as an alternative. Its faults in the vote-counting method so overwhelm the improvements in its vote-casting method as to make any benefit in using IRV completely illusory. Condorcet uses the same vote-casting method, but the vote-counting method actually does what IRV purports to do.