I was initially in favor of this system, too - until I saw a study which showed that in this type of system, the vast majority of people did not even look at the paper ballot. I don't have the source right now, but really, would this surprise anyone? I'm now firmly in the paper ballot only camp. Scantron ballots give you the speed of electronic counting, but the person voting has actually marked the paper themselves, and the ballots can easily be recounted by hand.
That's surprising - I generally rent from Dollar (because I actually like Chryslers), and every one I've rented in the last two years has had a line-in 3.5mm jack on the dashboard. Since I usually have my iPod with me, I take full advantage of it...
I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess you've never worked on a large payroll system before.
First, the system has to work nearly perfectly out of the gate - this isn't a 100 person startup (according to this article, just the increase in the number of state workers since Arnold took office (not the total, just the increase) is 26,000 (total is more than 200,000). Remember, this is payroll - you make a mistake, say on FICA or Federal income tax witholding, and you could easily be looking at millions in penalties. You've also got to keep in mind all the other things that get taken out of people's paychecks - insurance payments, retirement savings, wage garnishments, etc. Those not only need to get taken out, accurately, but the amounts getting taken out need to get paid to the appropriate entities (private companies, federal, state and potentially local governments, private individuals, etc.). Any mistakes there could mean penalties or lawsuits.
Let's look at the back end for a minute. California will have some type of General Ledger-based accounting system - every one of those paychecks (not to mention all of the deductions, etc.) need to get posted against the appropriate GL account - I'm going to guess the number of those accounts is at least in the tens of thousands - so that money that is or isn't paid out is deducted from the appropriate department/group/whatever.
Now, assuming you've taken care of all that (and again, not really any room for errors - it's a problem if the DOT suddenly can't pay the contractors that are working on the roads because somebody deducted too many paychecks from their GL account) you've got to deal with actually printing the checks and doing the electronic transfers. Here you might actually get lucky, and only have to generate a set of files in the right format - or the current payroll program might actually print the checks, too.
Now, because this is temporary, you need to figure everything twice - what it would have been normally, what it will be with the cut to minimum wage, and you need to keep track of that difference so you can pay it out when the budget is finally approved. Oh, and you'll have to figure out the legal implications (what happens to people who's wages are garnished at a level that leaves their paychecks at zero or less? How do the Feds react to not getting the witholding when they are supposed to?).
So, sure, you think you can do all that, with no bugs or errors, in less than six months, you're hired.
Re:How well does it stand without the original?
on
Movie Review, Hellboy II
·
· Score: 2, Informative
My wife had neither seen the first Hellboy movie, nor is she much of a fan of comic book movies in general. However, she really enjoyed this. There's an especially good scene with Abe and Hellboy and lots of Tecate that had us both just about falling out of our seats, we were laughing so hard.
Positrons are relatively easy to make (or at least acquire from a certain radioactive isotopes) - the difficulty is in holding on to them, and getting the electrons to orbit, rather than collide with the positrons.
Interestingly, it's not quite an analog of hydrogen - you'd need to use an anti-proton and an electron for that. But it is very close, and positrons are much easier to acquire than anti-protons.
I had a similar experience when I discovered a damaged disk (it had cracked half way across, so it was nearly in two pieces). Filled out the form on the website, they said to send it back and they were sending the next one right away.
There's a company doing just this in central Texas (Austin area). I've gotten flyers from them before, but can't remember the name of the company. They install the solar panels (which they retain ownership of), and sell you electricity at a rate guaranteed not to go up.
Technically, for AC it's watts=amps*voltage*.707 - that's why you often see both watts and volt-amps ratings on UPS's.
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
While that was a brilliant move, if you look at their 1Q07 earnings (available on their site at Quarterly Earnings, they reported record revenues - lower fuel costs can improve profit, but not revenues. There are other things they are doing right.
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 1
I don't buy that argument - the two airlines that I know of that are profitable and expanding are JetBlue and Southwest - and Southwest at least has already publicly said that they won't be following American et al. in charging for bags - so it is clearly possible to make money at today's prices.
$1280/home/year is only about $107/home/month - that's close to what my electric bill is now (although I live in Texas, not Delaware). Doesn't really sound like they have a long way to go, cost-wise.
I think that illustrates perfectly the mindset that caused problems for Apple and lots of those other early companies. Bill Gates most certainly did NOT build the first software company in the industry, unless you put the blinkers on and define 'the industry' as the IBM PC. There were companies marketing and selling software for Apple before the IBM PC was even released (Software Arts was founded in 1979 to sell Visicalc on the Apple II, wikipedia actually lists Digital Research as the first large software company in the microcomputer world (founded in 1976), and Compuware was selling software for mainframes starting in 1973.
A big part of why Bill Gates and Microsoft succeeded is that he ran it as a business, and was willing to look at what business models other companies had been successful with. The one thing that has probably killed more high-tech companies than anything else is the firm belief that what they are doing is so new that they can't possibly learn any events from the past.
Someone earlier mentioned Rick Chapman's book In Search of Stupidity - in the introduction, he talks about how Intel stumbled so badly with the initial Pentium simply because they hadn't learned the lesson that Johnson & Johnson learned a few years earlier during the Tylenol/cyanide scare.
Well, Jupiter is better described as a 'stillborn' star, rather than a dead star, but we have indeed visited it. Had its mass been a little higher (roughly 13 times what it is), it would be classified as a brown dwarf
I don't think you read that correctly about the appeals court - they ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing - that is, they could not show that they specifically had had their communications tapped. The appeals court did not rule that the program was legal, only that these particular plaintiffs could not challenge it.
Yes, yes, it's all music and games fault, after all, before music and games there was no crime and no violence.
Cool - so since people died before guns were invented, guns aren't dangerous? Or since people got cancer before radium was discovered, it's OK to stand in the reaction chamber of a nuclear reactor?
I don't agree that video games and music are the source of all of society's problems - I'm not even sure I'm convinced that they are the source of any of society's problems. However, just because those problems existed before video games and rap music doesn't prove (or even suggest) that video games and rap music aren't contributing to those problems.
I believe that such wiretapping is authorized in the FISA - the same law that requires warrants for intercepting domestic communications also explicitly says that they are not required for communications with no domestic component. This goes back to my original point, as FISA is a law passed by the legislative branch - granting authority to the executive branch - as opposed to an executive order or other regulation originating in the executive branch. The latter is what one would expect if McCain's (and Bush/Cheney, etc) interpretation of article II were correct.
Thank you - I can't believe people fall for this crap. If you read the actual constitution (), there is no mention of war powers AT ALL in article II. The only thing close that article II says is
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States
By contrast, article I, as you pointed out, does lay out a number of war-related powers - and grants all of them to the legislative branch. I've also failed to find anything in article II granting the executive branch any right to intercept communications inside or outside the US under any circumstances - it seems pretty clear that the founders intended any such activity to be under the direction of the legislative branch instead.
Uh, no, actually, they don't. Because F=Gmm'/r (m being the mass of one object, and m' the other, G being the gravitational constant and r being the distance between them), and a=F/m (acceleration equals force divided by mass). When you substitute one for the other, you get a=Gm'/r - which is completely independent of the mass of the object being observed. Now, you could argue that (as you seem to) that the earth is also accelerating towards the other mass, leading to what seems to be a higher rate of falling - but (contrary beliefs about relativity aside), you can't really treat all of the acceleration as relative in that manner - that simplification of relativity only works for uniform motion - it is possible to detect acceleration (although you can also replace it with a gravitational field, but that would then invalidate our original formulas - can't change horses in mid-stream like that).
That's a limitation, rather than a limit. Not being ductile makes it less convenient to use. With magnetism, current density and temperature, the superconductivity disappears as each value reaches a critical point (the limit).
Actually, IIRC, that was exactly the basis for the argument that Kip Thorne made to Stephen Hawking - which eventually caused him to reluctantly admit that black holes do not destroy information.
See String Theory for one attempt to explain what a particle is, and what time is and its relation to the other dimensions of space.
See Quantum Electrodynamics for an explanation of electric charge
I assume if you're so enthusiastic about the real world that you never take a laptop with you to game on, then?
Actually, I do - and that was kind of the point of my post - there are lots of places out in the world where an internet connection isn't practical (in a plane, in a car, in certain hotels where you don't want to have to pay for it, etc.)
The OP was saying that this DRM wouldn't inconvenience him/her, as he/she has a broadband connection.
Slashdot Mirror
I was initially in favor of this system, too - until I saw a study which showed that in this type of system, the vast majority of people did not even look at the paper ballot. I don't have the source right now, but really, would this surprise anyone? I'm now firmly in the paper ballot only camp. Scantron ballots give you the speed of electronic counting, but the person voting has actually marked the paper themselves, and the ballots can easily be recounted by hand.
That's surprising - I generally rent from Dollar (because I actually like Chryslers), and every one I've rented in the last two years has had a line-in 3.5mm jack on the dashboard. Since I usually have my iPod with me, I take full advantage of it...
Or you could simply rent a conventional vehicle - the savings in gasoline would probably more than make up for a few days rental each year.
First, the system has to work nearly perfectly out of the gate - this isn't a 100 person startup (according to this article, just the increase in the number of state workers since Arnold took office (not the total, just the increase) is 26,000 (total is more than 200,000). Remember, this is payroll - you make a mistake, say on FICA or Federal income tax witholding, and you could easily be looking at millions in penalties. You've also got to keep in mind all the other things that get taken out of people's paychecks - insurance payments, retirement savings, wage garnishments, etc. Those not only need to get taken out, accurately, but the amounts getting taken out need to get paid to the appropriate entities (private companies, federal, state and potentially local governments, private individuals, etc.). Any mistakes there could mean penalties or lawsuits.
Let's look at the back end for a minute. California will have some type of General Ledger-based accounting system - every one of those paychecks (not to mention all of the deductions, etc.) need to get posted against the appropriate GL account - I'm going to guess the number of those accounts is at least in the tens of thousands - so that money that is or isn't paid out is deducted from the appropriate department/group/whatever. Now, assuming you've taken care of all that (and again, not really any room for errors - it's a problem if the DOT suddenly can't pay the contractors that are working on the roads because somebody deducted too many paychecks from their GL account) you've got to deal with actually printing the checks and doing the electronic transfers. Here you might actually get lucky, and only have to generate a set of files in the right format - or the current payroll program might actually print the checks, too. Now, because this is temporary, you need to figure everything twice - what it would have been normally, what it will be with the cut to minimum wage, and you need to keep track of that difference so you can pay it out when the budget is finally approved. Oh, and you'll have to figure out the legal implications (what happens to people who's wages are garnished at a level that leaves their paychecks at zero or less? How do the Feds react to not getting the witholding when they are supposed to?). So, sure, you think you can do all that, with no bugs or errors, in less than six months, you're hired.
My wife had neither seen the first Hellboy movie, nor is she much of a fan of comic book movies in general. However, she really enjoyed this. There's an especially good scene with Abe and Hellboy and lots of Tecate that had us both just about falling out of our seats, we were laughing so hard.
Positrons are relatively easy to make (or at least acquire from a certain radioactive isotopes) - the difficulty is in holding on to them, and getting the electrons to orbit, rather than collide with the positrons. Interestingly, it's not quite an analog of hydrogen - you'd need to use an anti-proton and an electron for that. But it is very close, and positrons are much easier to acquire than anti-protons.
I had a similar experience when I discovered a damaged disk (it had cracked half way across, so it was nearly in two pieces). Filled out the form on the website, they said to send it back and they were sending the next one right away.
There's a company doing just this in central Texas (Austin area). I've gotten flyers from them before, but can't remember the name of the company. They install the solar panels (which they retain ownership of), and sell you electricity at a rate guaranteed not to go up.
Technically, for AC it's watts=amps*voltage*.707 - that's why you often see both watts and volt-amps ratings on UPS's.
While that was a brilliant move, if you look at their 1Q07 earnings (available on their site at Quarterly Earnings, they reported record revenues - lower fuel costs can improve profit, but not revenues. There are other things they are doing right.
I don't buy that argument - the two airlines that I know of that are profitable and expanding are JetBlue and Southwest - and Southwest at least has already publicly said that they won't be following American et al. in charging for bags - so it is clearly possible to make money at today's prices.
$1280/home/year is only about $107/home/month - that's close to what my electric bill is now (although I live in Texas, not Delaware). Doesn't really sound like they have a long way to go, cost-wise.
A big part of why Bill Gates and Microsoft succeeded is that he ran it as a business, and was willing to look at what business models other companies had been successful with. The one thing that has probably killed more high-tech companies than anything else is the firm belief that what they are doing is so new that they can't possibly learn any events from the past.
Someone earlier mentioned Rick Chapman's book In Search of Stupidity - in the introduction, he talks about how Intel stumbled so badly with the initial Pentium simply because they hadn't learned the lesson that Johnson & Johnson learned a few years earlier during the Tylenol/cyanide scare.
Well, Jupiter is better described as a 'stillborn' star, rather than a dead star, but we have indeed visited it. Had its mass been a little higher (roughly 13 times what it is), it would be classified as a brown dwarf
I don't think you read that correctly about the appeals court - they ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing - that is, they could not show that they specifically had had their communications tapped. The appeals court did not rule that the program was legal, only that these particular plaintiffs could not challenge it.
Cool - so since people died before guns were invented, guns aren't dangerous? Or since people got cancer before radium was discovered, it's OK to stand in the reaction chamber of a nuclear reactor? I don't agree that video games and music are the source of all of society's problems - I'm not even sure I'm convinced that they are the source of any of society's problems. However, just because those problems existed before video games and rap music doesn't prove (or even suggest) that video games and rap music aren't contributing to those problems.
I believe that such wiretapping is authorized in the FISA - the same law that requires warrants for intercepting domestic communications also explicitly says that they are not required for communications with no domestic component. This goes back to my original point, as FISA is a law passed by the legislative branch - granting authority to the executive branch - as opposed to an executive order or other regulation originating in the executive branch. The latter is what one would expect if McCain's (and Bush/Cheney, etc) interpretation of article II were correct.
Good catch - it was a typo on my part.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States
By contrast, article I, as you pointed out, does lay out a number of war-related powers - and grants all of them to the legislative branch. I've also failed to find anything in article II granting the executive branch any right to intercept communications inside or outside the US under any circumstances - it seems pretty clear that the founders intended any such activity to be under the direction of the legislative branch instead.
Uh, no, actually, they don't. Because F=Gmm'/r (m being the mass of one object, and m' the other, G being the gravitational constant and r being the distance between them), and a=F/m (acceleration equals force divided by mass). When you substitute one for the other, you get a=Gm'/r - which is completely independent of the mass of the object being observed. Now, you could argue that (as you seem to) that the earth is also accelerating towards the other mass, leading to what seems to be a higher rate of falling - but (contrary beliefs about relativity aside), you can't really treat all of the acceleration as relative in that manner - that simplification of relativity only works for uniform motion - it is possible to detect acceleration (although you can also replace it with a gravitational field, but that would then invalidate our original formulas - can't change horses in mid-stream like that).
That's a limitation, rather than a limit. Not being ductile makes it less convenient to use. With magnetism, current density and temperature, the superconductivity disappears as each value reaches a critical point (the limit).
Glad to see someone remembers Keith Laumer - wish I had mod points right now!
Actually, IIRC, that was exactly the basis for the argument that Kip Thorne made to Stephen Hawking - which eventually caused him to reluctantly admit that black holes do not destroy information.
See String Theory for one attempt to explain what a particle is, and what time is and its relation to the other dimensions of space. See Quantum Electrodynamics for an explanation of electric charge
Actually, I do - and that was kind of the point of my post - there are lots of places out in the world where an internet connection isn't practical (in a plane, in a car, in certain hotels where you don't want to have to pay for it, etc.)
The OP was saying that this DRM wouldn't inconvenience him/her, as he/she has a broadband connection.