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The Votemaster Is...Andrew Tanenbaum
A reader writes: " www.electoral-vote.com, a site of daily updated maps of the US electoral college based on a number of polls is probably a site that the policially inclined check daily. Well, it has been revealed that the person behind the site, AKA the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.
I was about to check the site when it died and I thought to myself "I bet someone has gone and posted this on /."... sure enough -_-
...maybe he shouldn't be running his webserver on Minix.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
That's funny because, as I write this, I'm waiting and waiting and waiting.... the page is NOT coming up.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
If you were to set up the same vote for say England you would be luckly to find many people in the US to know who is actually running against Mr Blair.
If you had the same question in the United States, you'd be shocked to find that most Americans think he's the King.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
http://www.electoral-vote.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 1-Nov-2004 15:33:26 GMT :)
I was in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, so I haven't commented much on ELECTORAL COLLEGE (not that I would have said much had I been around), but for what it is worth, I have a couple of comments now.
As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where politics are going in the next decade or so. Two aspects stand out:
1. MICROPOLITICS VS MONOLITHIC ELECTORAL SYSTEM
Most states are Monolithic Electoral Systems. Votes are tallied in each state and the winner of each state recieves all of the electoral votes for that state. Even if 49.9% of voters are for candidate #2, the 50.1% for candidate #1 means he gets all of the state's electoral votes.
While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually are in politics, the debate is essentially over. Micropolitics have won.
The only real argument for monolithic electoral systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that micropolitics systems can be just as fast as monolithic electoral systems systems (e.g., Florida 2000 never would have happened if we would have just counted up every American's vote and the candidate with the greatest percent over 40% would win) that it is now all over but the shoutin'.
2. Portability
The Micropolitical Voting system was made to be portable to other future democracies such as Iraq, Afghanistan and has proven that it is scalable to nation states as large as China and India, the Monolithic electoral system would involve much more work in creating districts, states, commonwealths, etc. to the point that it is really not worth porting and would need to be started from scratch.
Don't get me wrong, I am not unhappy with the Electoral System. It will get all the people who want to turn Micropolitics into a true democracy off my back. But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a **MODERN** "free" nation look around for a micropolitical-based, portable political system.
Ha! Mr Tanebaum - Your micro kernals will not save you now! We have unleashed the slashdot effect.
.....
Mwa Haa Haa Ha Ha Ha
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
That's hardly fair.. there aren't many people in Britain who know who Michael Howard is.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
You need to go to that site and look at the map. The four states you mention are coastal states. Heartland statees by definition aren't on the coast and as a group, they represent a lot of electorial votes.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 2004.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
To sum up:
"Ich bin ein Berliner!" JFK 1963
"I'm a Napoleon!" GWB, USS Lincoln, 2003
Both Berliners and Napoleons are tasty, delicate pastries.
So all you Democrats need not bother voting tomorrow...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Ha, but how about interrupts!? :-)
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Absolutely! Most of the Kerry votes came from confused Cowboy Neal supporters.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
The site is slashdotted, so I'll giev you the text here:
"Nader is going to win. In a landslide. A really big landslide. Really."
Yeah, I was surprised too.
Of course, some counties in the last election turned out more than 100%.
Engineering and the Ultimate
So then who is their king?
Paragraph breaks are your friends.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I, as a European, want to firmly say:
4 more years! We love Bush! All Europeans think Kerry is a lame-Americain! Boo Kerry!
Really!
"/Dread"
The world might be a better place with more Andy's, but please, let them go to a different university! We need our bandwidth!
This sig is intentionally left blank
You Commie Terrorist! I reject all you say and will vote NOT for Osama, Not for Bush, Not for Kerry!
HA!
Am I the one who can't wait for the George W. Bush presidential library? What a laugh that place is going to be.
We're well informed that about half of you voted for Bush last time, and about half of you plan to do it again. Why just don't know why.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
...whenever another country has elected a leader that Americans happened to dislike, you always went in and removed them.
;)
Oddly enough, Jacques Chirac is still in office.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Remember what happened the year after the 1860 election.
5000 copies of "My Pet Goat".
(I know, it's actually a story called The Pet Goat in a reading textbook).
Somehow fitting nonetheless.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.