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Gambling on Voting (NY Times Op-Ed today)

I don't understand this run on machines anyway, don't paper ballots scale perfectly? Counting votes can be arbitrarily parallelized after all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/politics/campaig n/11league.html

The Disability Lobby and Voting

reported that terrorist activity had gone down in 2003 (supporting the thesis that W's war on terror was working) when in fact it had gone up? I'm shocked at such a suggestion! Shocked!

The report is hogwash. Hear me out.

Look, the Bush Administration has done something that has never been done by any previous administration: they're actively distorting truth in the reports that low-level non-appointed staffers put out. Sure, in the past political appointees could always be counted on to put spin on things (and even bury information, like Reagan did with AIDS and the CDC), but actively creating misleading information was not done by the career service government workers.

Until Bush, that is. For example, recently the State Department put out a study claiming that world terrorism incidence were down in 2003 (even if you include Iraq). This bolstered Bush's claim that he's winning the War on Terrorism. But thanks to Rep. Henry Waxman, this report was shown to be false and misleading. The State Department then issued a statement admitting the mistake. (Read here).

As another example, recently a government study pointed out that children who had breast milk has 30% fewer incidents of ear infections, allergies and Downs syndrome, compared to infants who used formula. So, the FDA decided to launch a commercial campaign to promote the use of breast milk. Well, the infant formula companies saw the commercials (which included the statistic), and were allowed to intervene, and this vital data was cut out. So, the campaign promoted breast milk, but did not say that compared to formula use, babies suffer fewer maladies. This outrageous intervention by industry had never been done on a matter of public health before. But Bush's FDA let it take place. The same thing has happened with other government studies on the safety of abortion, women's health issues, etc.

So, now we have another report in an election year that outsourcing is not costing the US jobs (at the same time education cuts are not replacing them with better-skilled positions...) Do we believe this? No. The Goldman Sachs report states that there were 20x as many jobs moved over seas.

Now, I'm what you'd call a Reagan Democrat. I even voted for Bush (but probably won't a second time--still need to see about Kerry.) But what Bush has done is simply this: he's squandered the public trust we used to have in government research and studies. Whether there was a Democrat or Republican in charge, we used to trust the staff would do the best job they could to study a problem. (Sure, sure, in the end it was a government study, and perhaps not the best, but it was at least an honest effort). Now, that trust is gone.

So, the Government claims outsourcing is not costing jobs? And this comes right after a huge wave of press articles about outsourcing... I don't believe the study for a second. I'll stick with the Goldman Sachs study. They have a financial incentive to get things right, not a political incentive.

Here is some advice that I took after I graduated college. During my last few years of college there was a lot of talk that companies may start outsourcing their work to places such as India. Living in an area where there is a large air force base I was given the advice to get a job there working with either with a contractiong company or the civil service (government). They are so strung for computer-minded people that they can offer up to a $60,000 hiring bonus on top of about $60-70,000 per year just to get you to work for them. And the best part? The US government isn't going to outsource your job anywhere. The only thing to worry about, however, is that your job can be eliminated. But the benefit of working for the civil service? They also have to find you a new job of similar pay.

I knew a HAM who was doing this in 1994 for a company he worked with. This scientist sure is a genius when a HAM with nothing but a high school education pulled off the same thing.

And Clear Channel for censorship too. Sure, they've got plenty of juvenile-level "dirty" humor shock jocks -- but criticize Bush and you're off the air.

In a related development, NASA announced the discovery of magnesium sulfate at the Spirit site. This compound is marketed to consumers under the name "epsom salts".

Go here

1) Realize that you are fighting a war.

2) If you set any kind of limits on yourself you will lose.

3) smear your enemy with every kind of rhetorical device at your disposal. For example "liberals hate america"

6) Sue, Sue, Sue.

You're very right. That's why it's ironic that ordinary Iranians love Americans. They probably don't like American leadership (especially when they seem to be threatening Iran with invasion), and the Iranian leadership certainly doesn't like America or Americans. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has written a lot about this. I'm not some right-wing apologist -- quite the contrary.

Iran is strange -- its people, by and large, are trying to be more free, whereas its leadership is trying to hang onto power. But then, this is probably the rule when repressive leaderhip is in power in any country. I've had friends travel to Cuba and they tell me that Americans are welcomed with open arms by ordinary Cubans. And yes, this is despite the fact of the forty-year American economic embargo of Cuba.

for the lazy ones!

Free Article Without soul-sucking

Enjoy!

AC

OK... I know the Tech industry is on it's way back up (i'm hoping), however, when I was job hunting most of the companies I was looking at didn't want anyone with a Ph.D because they couldn't afford to pay those people with them. I'm guessing Google can afford to pay them now.. or atleast will be able to soon enough :)

No boogedy-boogedy NYT registatrion required
here.

Is this like the material witness (reg. req.) case?
Of course, the "justice system" is always right! (Right?)

If there is no true crime, he'll be fine...

I've read about fifty comments here, and no one has expressed any sympathy for the guy who has just lost his wife. She was an artist herself, and they worked together on their projects. I am going to assume he loved her.

Put yourself in his shoes. You lose your wife and you get your life turned upside down, at the same time, by the Justice department?

This reminds me of that Oregon lawyer. He had defended someone suspected of terrorist ties. He had converted to Islam. The FBI said there was a match between him and a fingerprint found at the Madrid bombing. But they were wildly wrong. They were told they were wrong.

Carlos Corrales, a commissioner of the Spanish National Police's science division, said he was also struck by the F.B.I.'s intense focus on Mr. Mayfield. "It seemed as though they had something against him," Mr. Corrales said, "and they wanted to involve us."

regfree link here

HERE

• Hit UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT at the splash screen to access a secret "Torture Iraqi Civilians" menu.
• And when you try to quit, the game will force you to continue playing. (NYT story; should be a non-registration link)

Here are few ways that dirty pinko commie subversives can bypass the NYTimes registration:

1. The old Majcher Login Generator
2. BugMeNot
3. By appending "?partner=GOOGLE" (w/o quotes) to the NYTimes URL, like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/technology/31spa m.html?partner=ANYTHINGHERE

--

Regardless of whether this was posted for karma or to benefit other users here, it is still copyright infringement.

Cool - then just do it this way then.

Made from This Page.

This notice on their site makes clear what uses of their materials is acceptable. Reposting verbatim to other sites is definitely not.

Moderators should not be encouraging this type of behavior by making them "insightful". Slashdot should respect other peoples copyrights, don't forget how evil violating the GPL is.

the Google-friendly link is here: Article!

google link here

Registration Free Link to NYT Mag Article You can make a reg free link by searching for the article name on google news and copying the url.

It obviously was the open-proxy, and not Adrian "Look at me" Lamo, that happened to ring up $300,000 in database research charges on NYT's Lexus-Nexus account.

What did he, err, the open-proxy, search for using Lexus-Nexus? That's right, "Adrian Lamo". That's some ego.

That reminds me, what on earth does open source enthusiasts have in common with criminals like Lamo?

Click here

calling for open-source voting machines for the lazy ones!

- Overall crime decreased 5.8% in all five boroughs, while the national average drop was 0.5%

- Most of the crime reduction came from a huge decrease in property crimes, such as auto thefts; violent crime was down by 6.9% in NYC, compared to a 6.5% decrease in cities over 9 million, while NYC's property crime decreased 5.4%, with other 9M+ cities experiencing just a 1% drop.

- NYC's police force is the largest (37,000 members) and has the most cops per capita (one officer per every 215 residents), at a cost of $5 billion a year.

Those funds would be better awarded to a burn unit at a local hospital or some other worthy cause.

Just today, there's a story in the New York Times about a law being introduced in California that would give the state 75 per cent of punitive damages. The story says:

Eight states already have so-called split-recovery laws, which allocate part of punitive awards to state treasuries generally or to specific programs. Several have survived court challenges, though the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a ninth law as an unconstitutional taking of private property. Other states, including Florida, Kansas and New York, have repealed split-recovery laws or allowed them to expire.

One of the side effects of giving all the punitive damages to a single plaintiff is that in cases where the company is much less successful than McDonald's or might be bankrupted by the award, the money for future settlements has been reduced. For that reason, some argue that punitive damanges should be set aside to compensate victims in the future. The approach of turning over punitive damages for public purposes doesn't address this problem.

Here's a registration free link thanks to Google.

If "your friend" hasn't done anything, "he" shouldn't have anything to worry about.

BYU Project to Silence Computer Fans

For now at least. I'll collect later.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/technology/circu its/27next.html?ex=1086235200&en=8355c13a3b4a8afa& ei=5062&source=GOOGLE

Blood Donation

I don't know as much about noise cancellation as I would like, but I understand most of the concepts. Although the method described in the article certainly is very cool, I wonder if they couldn't get better results by redesigning the fan. It seems that the fan generates too much random noise. Is it possible to make a fan that has a more predictable noise source? It could even be a fan that is way noisier before noise cancellation...

Another thought on this is that you really shouldn't consider the fan alone. The G5 has a beautiful interior with a ton of fans. Its not terribly loud, however, because the airflow is well designed.

Google link here

Here is the Google news partner link: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/technology/25lin ux.html?ex=1086062400&en=2ff98cb3d0e6ed96&ei=5062& partner=GOOGLE

I walked into the local video store the other day and stopped, staring at the "life size" Shrek2 display. Every single hair on the donkey had been rendered. Fabulous detail.

Obviously the donkey had the Frizzled6 gene, too.

"Juniper Networks has individual routers that are at least as fast, but the company cannot combine as many routers to ultimately produce the same speeds, according to Chris Nicoll, a telecommunications industry analyst with Current Analysis, a research firm."

and more....

"The new router design is the first developed by Cisco that allows several routers to be connected, according to the company. A single router would be able to transmit data at 1.2 terabits a second. But as many as 72 routers can be hooked together to send data at 92 terabits a second, far faster than any router sold now. In telecommunications, data transfer is usually measured in bits per second. A terabit is one trillion bits. "

Just to support your views about the Byzantine bureaucracy with all its failures.

But I nevertheless think that will get better when the EP gets more power simply because someone will notice that they still exist =)

Strong Statists generally support a larger bureaucracy, Libertarian types are not favoring more government. From that point on, polarized debates turn into a fight.

That was probably my longest posting on any forum - I really should archive this thread before it vanishes in the deeps of /.

On the other hand Libertarians generally are in favor of local solutions to local problems and national solutions to national problems which means they prefer additional government in the form of city administrations, districts, states etc which all adds more layers of government

My observation is that the nation-state is the only historically proven viable way to tackle governments. Every attempt made to create a form of government contrary to the nation-state principle failed. Nation-state have numerous flaws as a system, but the alternatives (empires and clan/tribe feodality) are even messier and less desirable.

The question is what is a nation state? Britain has some rather distinct groups and the Scots wouldn't have been happy to share their country with the English some centuries ago, the same can be said of Bavarians and the rest of the Germans. On the other hand there's no real reason Austrians and Germans shouldn't share a nation state they haven't been together since the HRE became a joke about 600 years ago but Southern Germans are generally more similar to Austrians in language, opinions and mindset than to people from Hamburg or Berlin.

There's also the question about how much power should lie with the central government and how much independence remains for the different subdivisions

There is much room for different levels and the real question is "what makes a nation state". I think it's a diffuse feeling of belonging together which exists and at the same time doesn't exist in the EU. If you look at surveys there are definitly "Europeans" contrary to e.g "Americans" even at the height of the Iraq crisis when all of Britain hated France (it wasn't felt as strongly on the other side perhaps but there was a deep feeling of distrust of British/American warmongering) a general survey about opinions to a broad spectrum of questions (abortion, freedom, health care etc) showed that French and British agreed in 80% while British and Americans agreed only in 40% of all cases (I'm sorry it's been quite some time since then and I don't have a link so I won't hold it against you if you don't believe me =). At the same time there are still the old resentiments which is hardly surprising as probably a third of the Europeans living today still remember WWII and the whole aftermath and the EU in the form that there's a real question "what is the EU" only exists for perhaps 20 years.

IMHO if the EU survives the next 50 years (no matter in what form specifically as long as it isn't a UN-like powerless non-entity - just for the record I think the UN has many advantages and its mere existance today shows that it's something worth keeping but if it doesn't have one thing then it is power =) then the question for members won't be to stay or to leave but how to reform the EU to make it better simply because there'll be the same feeling of belonging to something. Or to come back to my example of Bavaria. Bavaria had been independent for more or less 700 years when it joined Germany in 1871 and many people weren't all that happy when they did it. In the first few years and both after WWI and WWII there was the question of seceding and every time there was less support and the actual proposal was taken less serious. Bavarians and Germans of course had many things in common in 1871 but there was still a lot of animosity, jealousy and mistrust f

Anyone else notice that Moore's web site says, "According to today's (May 5) New York Times, it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush." and when you go to the excerpt of the Times article it says that Moore's agent is the source of this claim. Doesn't really help the guy's credibility. From the Times excerpt:

"Moore's agent Ari Emanuel says Disney chief executive Michael D Eisner asked him to pull out of deal with Miramax last spring, citing concern film could cost Disney tax breaks in Florida, where Bush's brother Jeb is governor; Disney executives deny tax breaks were issue."

"What a fucking crock. The majority?"
Even though most people will not read this post, I think it is important to add one more comment. Lawyers are represented by national groups such as the American Bar Association (ABA). The conduct and rules of groups like the ABA do reflect on the character of lawyers. It was therefore interesting to see an editorial in Saturday's New York Times which discusses the proposed "revisions to the American Bar Association's code of judicial conduct". To guote a part of this editorial,
"The bar panel's newly unveiled proposals for revamping the Model Code of Judicial Conduct would actually weaken the core provision that requires judges to avoid not just actual impropriety in all their activities, but also the appearance of impropriety."
Related articles are here and here.

I am going to `break the rules' and comment on the noderation of my first post in this thread. I get mod points quite often (as do most of us, I suspect); I do not know if professors get more or fewer than other people. When I have mod points, I look at articles which have been modded down to see if this was deserved (and as the guidelines request, I look at comments modded -1 and higher). On some occasions, I notice a later post which says "mod parent up" or "mod parent down" AND includes good reasons for this request; I have thought about the arguments and, in some cases, modded the parent up or down. If moderators really think my first post was offtopic, uninteresting and inappropriate, then I request that you mod it down to -1.

He makes a claim, has no real evidence to back it up, and then twists facts to make it seem like he was right all along.

Sounds like someone else and his case for the war. It is also precisely what you have done.

Why did he win? Europeans hate America politics at the moment

No, they hate war. As does most of the sane world including, according to recent polls, over half of American citizens.

The nice thing about being a troll is that you can make statements without haven to consider the burden of facts. Here are the key passages:

four of the nine jurors were American: Mr. Tarantino, Kathleen Turner, the director Jerry Schatzberg, and the Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat. "I fully expect the Fox News Channel and other right-wing media to portray this as an award from the French," Mr. Moore said. Only one juror, the actress Emanuelle Béart, is a French citizen.

"If you want to add Tilda," he said referring to the British actress Tilda Swinton, "then you could say that more than half came from the coalition of the willing." (The rest of the panel was made up of Benoit Poelvoode, a Belgian actor; Peter von Bagh, a Finnish critic; and the Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.)

So we have: 4 from the US, 1 from Britain, 1 from Belgium, 1 from France, 1 from Finland, 1 from Hong Kong. For the geographically challenged, that means 4/9 of the jurors were Europeans (and one of those doesn't really agree)

You don't get too hung up on facts yourself, it seems. You should apply for a job at FOX news.

FRANK RICH
NY Times
May 23, 2004

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer."
-- Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America,"
March 18, 2003

SHE needn't have worried. Her son wasn't suffering. In one of the several pieces of startling video exhibited for the first time in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we catch a candid glimpse of President Bush some 36 hours after his mother's breakfast TV interview -- minutes before he makes his own prime-time TV address to take the nation to war in Iraq. He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Mr. Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" will arrive soon enough at your local cineplex -- there's lots of money to be made -- so discount much of the squabbling en route. Disney hasn't succeeded in censoring Mr. Moore so much as in enhancing his stature as a master provocateur and self-promoter. And the White House, which likewise hasn't a prayer of stopping this film, may yet fan the p.r. flames. "It's so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment," was last week's blustery opening salvo by Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. New York's Daily News reported that Republican officials might even try to use the Federal Election Commission to shut the film down. That would be the best thing to happen to Michael Moore since Charlton Heston granted him an interview.

Whatever you think of Mr. Moore, there's no question he's detonating dynamite here.

They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. "I was a Republican for quite a few years," one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, "and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way."

Full Article

MM Resources
Forum
Fahrenheit 9/11 Yahoo Group - Articles, websites

You are writing as if the award would have been given by the French. Well, the festival might have been French but this year's jury comprised in fact of many US citizens with Quentin Tarantino as the jury president. The was only one French citizen on the jury. I quote the article in The New York Times:

He also said that Mr. Tarantino had assured him that the political message of "Fahrenheit 9/11" did not influence the jury's decision. "On this jury we have different politics," he quoted Mr. Tarantino as saying. It is also a film financed by Miramax, which distributes Mr. Tarantino's movies.

Mr. Moore noted that four of the nine jurors were American: Mr. Tarantino, Kathleen Turner, the director Jerry Schatzberg, and the Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat. "I fully expect the Fox News Channel and other right-wing media to portray this as an award from the French," Mr. Moore said. Only one juror, the actress Emanuelle Béart, is a French citizen.

June 17, 2000

THE BIG CITY
When Tables Turn, Knives Come Out
By JOHN TIERNEY

Michael Moore made a name for himself pointing cameras at cruel corporate executives and other enemies of the people. He stalked the chairman of General Motors, sent people in Puritan costumes to Ken Starr's home and set up a Web site with a camera trained on a window of Lucianne Goldberg's apartment.

But Mr. Moore does not appreciate being bothered himself, as Alan Edelstein discovered. After he was fired by Mr. Moore, Mr. Edelstein tried borrowing the technique Mr. Moore had applied to G.M.'s Roger Smith in the film "Roger & Me": showing up uninvited with a camera and trying to get an answer from a boss who has decided to downsize.

Mr. Moore responded by filing a complaint with the New York police accusing Mr. Edelstein of aggravated harassment, menacing and criminal trespassing. As a result, Mr. Edelstein was arrested in March and spent nine hours in a cell at the Midtown North police station.

The district attorney's office later dropped the case. Now Mr. Edelstein is suing Mr. Moore, alleging malicious prosecution.

Mr. Edelstein, who is 39 and lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was hired in 1998 as a producer on "The Awful Truth," Mr. Moore's show on the Bravo network. He was fired by a subordinate of Mr. Moore's after seven weeks.

"I was told that there was a budget crunch," he said, "but I don't think that was true. I later learned there were questions about my competence, which no one had ever raised when I was there. So I was angry at the way I was dealt with."

He had another reason for pursuing Mr. Moore with a camera. Mr. Edelstein, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985 for a documentary about a musician, was making a documentary incorporating scenes from his own life. "I thought footage with Michael explaining why I'd been fired would be useful for my own documentary," he said.

During a speech by Mr. Moore at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mr. Edelstein stood up with a camera and a bullhorn, a tool used by Mr. Moore outside the offices of executives. Mr. Edelstein demanded to know why he had been fired but didn't get an answer.

Mr. Edelstein twice showed up with his camera at the office of Mr. Moore's production company on West 57th Street near 11th Avenue. He filmed some employees but didn't manage to reach Mr. Moore. Later, he took his camera for a few more unsuccessful attempts to engage Mr. Moore at public events outside the office.

Mr. Moore says he complained to the police because he thought Mr. Edelstein had become a stalker who was a threat to Mr. Moore's family as well as his employees.

"If all he was doing was making his little film about me, I wouldn't have cared," Mr. Moore said. "But other people were at risk. This is a disgruntled employee who is a bit off his rocker. Everyone in the office felt there was considerable risk. The women in the office felt frightened for their own safety. Ask them. They'll tell you."

I asked several women, including one recommended by Mr. Moore, and none sounded scared. They said they found Mr. Edelstein a bit obsessive but otherwise mild-mannered and harmless.

"No one was remotely in fear of Alan in any shape or form," said Kyra Vogt, who was the office manager at the time Mr. Edelstein showed up with the camera. "Most of us thought the situation was comical. The only person who was paranoid was Mi

four of the nine jurors were American: Mr. Tarantino, Kathleen Turner, the director Jerry Schatzberg, and the Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat. one juror, the actress Emanuelle Béart, is a French citizen, British actress Tilda Swinton, Benoit Poelvoode, a Belgian actor; Peter von Bagh, a Finnish critic; and the Hong Kong director Tsui Hark made up the rest of the jury. taken from here