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Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later (bloomberg.com)
The federal government will finally stop preparing for the Y2K bug, seventeen years after it came and went. Yes, you read that right. Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it would eliminate dozens of paperwork requirements for federal agencies, including an obscure rule that requires them to continue providing updates on their preparedness for a bug that afflicted some computers at the turn of the century. As another example, the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid, a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year. Seven of the more than 50 paperwork requirements the White House eliminated on Thursday dealt with the Y2K bug, according to a memo OMB released. Officials at the agency estimate the changes could save tens of thousands of man-hours across the federal government. The agency didn't provide an estimate of how much time is currently spent on Y2K paperwork, but Linda Springer, an OMB senior adviser, acknowledged that it isn't a lot since those requirements are already often ignored in practice.
Are you really that stupid?
I can't imagine.
There are A LOT more Linux devices in this world than Windows.
And secondly, that's not a 'linux bug'
Y2K38 bug already leaked over into politics:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/ar...
“I asked CBO to run the model going out and they told me that their **computer simulation crashes** in 2037 because CBO can’t conceive of any way in which the economy can continue past the year 2037 because of debt burdens,” said Ryan."
So the CBO's forecase software could get *up* to 2037, but not past it, i.e. it couldn't compute figures for 2038. What's the more logical explanation, a "does not compute" error, or that they were using Unix 32 bit time?
Well reputedly in 1803 the British government prepared for the potential invasion of Napoleon by creating a civil service position for someone to stand on the white cliffs of Dover with a spyglass and ring a bell if they saw Napoleon coming. The position was finally cancelled in 1945, 124 years after Napoleon died.
Yes well, they're British. As Terry Pratchett said, if they can't remember why they're keeping the tradition, that only makes the tradition more sacred.
Not a change, get rid of the Electoral college and a few big cities run the nation. Most of said cities being deeply in debt, with uncontrolled crime (despite ever more draconian gun laws).
The fact is the Electoral college worked exactly as it was supposed to. But if we did not have the Electoral college Trump would have campaigned differently and likely would have still pulled out a win. He knew CA and NY were automatic losses, so he didn't spend much time campaigning in those states (but he didn't totally ignore them). Meanwhile Clinton ignored several smaller states that had previously voted Democrat, and she lost in those states. Not visiting Wisconsin and other states hurt her and cost her those states. Trump campaigned to match the rules of the game and won the only popular vote that mattered; he won the popular vote in 30 different states earning those Electoral college votes, to Hillary winning 20 states (and DC). Thus he won more electoral college votes. The overall vote does not matter because even though we all vote on the same day we are not voting in a single election but in 51 elections (50 states plus DC).
The EC is not a static body as you seem to think with your comment that the EC should have stepped in. The Electors of each State are appointed by and from the Party that wins the election in that state. Thus the EC will represent the President. Except for the occasional faithless elector, of which there were more Democrat electors who chose to be faithless than Republican Electors. Funny the losing candidate was so bad that she had more electors refusing to vote for her than the Boorish and widely disliked President did.
I suggest you study our system a little better, you'll find out that it worked exactly as designed, ensuring a broad nationwide support for the President, not just a few High population centers. And there is no need at all to eliminate or modify it at all.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
This is very simple, actually. The problem statement is, "how to best conduct a single majority vote election across multiple, independent entities of varying sizes and densities of the population"? The answer is, "hold a majority election in every independent entity and the winner overall of each election is the winner overall of the race." But what if the entities are of _vastly_ different sizes and densities? Then the answer is, "weight the individual elections by population."
The Electoral College is a perfectly legitimate solution to the problem. Maybe you're getting confused by the notion of a "College". There is a body of people that forms a College, but exists only as a formality, because someone must keep a record and report the results of the election. The College, for example, is temporary and changes at every election. It is honorary.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
>...but it is my understanding that the system was originally put into place to safeguard a takeover by a tyrant...
The electoral college is an attempt to balance political power between rural and urban voters. Its an adjustment to a pure democracy designed to weaken the "Tyranny of the majority".
The biggest challenge the founding fathers faced was balancing power between urban and rural constituents. This is arguably our greatest challenge today. This is why each state has 2 senators regardless of population and representatives based on population. The number of electors in the electoral college in each state is the sum of its U.S. senators and its U.S. representatives.
In our last election, rural voters preferred Trump and that is why the rural voter trumped the urban voter to override the popular vote.
Greed is the root of all evil.
the EC does not prevent a populist from winning in is current shape, it makes it easier by shrinking the amount of the popular vote one needs to secure to win the nomination.
I largely agree with your comment and reasoning, but the above is false. The EC has nothing to do with securing the nomination. Party nominations are done through party-specific processes which admittedly include delegate systems that look sort of EC-ish, except that those delegates actually do exercise free will in casting their ballots, so function more like the EC was intended to function. But changing or abolishing the EC would have no effect on the nomination processes.
Personally, as a resident of a small state, I'd like it if the EC were retained but EC votes were allocated proportionally to the per-state popular vote. One of the theories behind the construction of the EC was that it would give slightly more weight to the opinions of the voters in low-population states. In practice, the method of allocating all of a state's votes as a bloc causes the system to do exactly the opposite, which is why it's always a handful of large "swing" states that decide the election. Proportional allocation would give the small states a larger voice, and motivate candidates to actually campaign in them.
Failing that, simply going to a pure popular vote would also improve the small states' voice, just not as much. But it's clear that the EC, in its current form and application, is bad for everyone.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. I)!
From John Hawkins
1) "Michele (Bachmann), slit your wrist. Go ahead... or, do us all a better thing [sic]. Move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone." -- Montel Williams
2) “F*ck that dude. I’ll smack that f*cker’s comb-over right off his f*cking scalp. Like, for real, if I met Donald Trump, I’d punch him in his f*cking face. And that’s not a joke. Even if he did become president — watch out, Donald Trump, because I will punch you in your f*cking face if I ever meet you. Secret Service had better just f*cking be on it. Don’t let me anywhere within a block.”– Rapper Everlast on Donald Trump
3) “I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow.I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Bill Maher
4) “I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” — The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy
5) “F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead.” — Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. II)!
From John Hawkins
6) “Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every – They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.” U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada
7) "That Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he's running for governor of Florida. He's a millionaire and a billionaire. He's no hero. He's a damn crook. It's just we don't prosecute big crooks." -- Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa
8) “..And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger. Do you want to salvage our country? Be a savior of our country? Then vote for John Kerry and get rid of the whole Bush Bunch.” — From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club
9) “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places
10) “But the victim is also inaccurately being eulogized as a kind and loving religious man. Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that. But in the U.S., we don’t die for speaking our minds. Or we’re not supposed to anyway. Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security.” — Linda Stasi, New York Daily News , on a victim murdered in the San Bernadino terrorist attack
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. III)!
From John Hawkins
11) “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams.” — Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston)
12) “If I had my way, I would see Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell strapped down to electric chairs and lit up like Christmas trees. The better to light the way for American Democracy and American Freedom!” — Democratic Talk Radio’s Stephen Crockett
13) “May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases.” — Allan Brauer , the communications chair of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County to Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter
14) “Violence solves nothing. I want a rhino to f*ck @SpeakerRyan to death with its horn because it's FUNNY, not because he's a #GOPmurderbro.” – Joss Whedon
15) “I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.” — Think Progress editor Alan Pyke
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. IV)!
From John Hawkins
16) “But, you know, the NRA members are the current incarnation of the brownshirts from Germany back in the early ’30s, late ’20s, early ’30s. Now, of course, there came the Night of the Long Knives when the brownshirts were slaughtered and dumped in the nearest ditches when the power structure finally got tired of them. So I look forward to that day.” — Mike Malloy
17) "Or pick up a baseball bat and take out every f*cking republican and independent I see. #f*cktrump, #f*cktheGOP, #f*ckstraightwhiteamerica, #f*ckyourprivilege." -- Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria responding to a meme about using music to deal with violence
18) “I wish they (Republicans) were all f*cking dead!” — Dan Savage
19) “Sarah Palin needs to have her hair shaved off to a buzz cut, get headf*cked by a big veiny, ashy, black d*ck then be locked in a cupboard.” — Azealia Banks advocates raping Sarah Palin over a fake news story
20)” Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I’m outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, but I know that this won’t change anything." -- Madonna
Guess who the real cancer on efficiency is. it's not the Republicans.
Bullshit.
If anything Republicans are the architects of government inefficiency. Democrats are only marginally better since they generally don't do stupid shit like holding votes to repeal or gut the ACA when there is no way the Senate or POTUS would go along with it. If the politician's goal was efficiency they would be working together to hammer out compromises before putting bills to a vote.
Reid had every right to do what he did, just as Lott, Daschle, and Frist did before him and McConnell does now. Just because a member of the other tribe had control of it then doesn't make it a good or a bad thing. I do agree that having one guy able to hold things up is not good, but it needs to apply to both tribes.
The House passing a bill that is completely unpalatable to the opposition that controls the Senate and/or the POTUS is fucking stupid and a complete waste of time. Pass something that doesn't contain poison pill amendments completely unrelated to the bill. Pass something that doesn't contain items completely antithetical to the other tribe's view.
In other words: Work together for the people, you fucking fucks.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
The real reason the EC was created was appeasement of slavers
No mod points, but this is exactly the reason. Remember that slaves (obviously) and other people who didn't own land weren't allowed to vote in most states. So in a flat vote, voters in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania alone would probably have overwhelmed the votes of all the slave states combined. However, once you rig up this weird system where slave states get to count great masses of people who they would never consider allowing to actually vote (slaves, sharecroppers, etc), then suddenly 5 of the first 6 POTUS were native to Virginia.