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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.
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.