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User: Attila+Dimedici

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  1. Re:yes they should on Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College? · · Score: 1

    Look at that list, do they all vote the same way?

    Yes, pretty much so, at least when it comes to Presidential elections.

  2. Re:yes they should on Slashdot Asks: Should The US Abolish The Electoral College? · · Score: 1

    The candidates don't visit the vast majority of the states because they have practically guaranteed outcomes.

    And that cost Hillary Wisconsin this year because Wisconsin ALWAYS votes for the Democrat.

  3. The problem with that is that when he goes to California, his alarm would still be set to 12 PM and he would be getting up at what was for the people around him 4 AM. With the current system, his phone automatically adjusts to the new timezone and his alarm goes off at 7:00 AM LOCAL time.

  4. Re:incompetence on Secret Service, DHS Scramble To Secure America's Election (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes, it makes sense for each state to have its own voting system. That allows for different states to try different things without breaking the entire nation's elections if it turns out to be a stupendously stupid idea (it is much easier to find and implement work-arounds for one state when something doesn't work as advertised than it is to do so for all 50 states at once). It also means that you do not have one contracting authority which might give the contract for voting machines in all 50 states to one company that does not know how to make voting machines.
    And yes, it would make sense to change some of the things which are set up the way they are (election day being on Tuesday is the main one). The problem is that, at this point in history, you could not convince people to limit themselves to "fixing" (the quotes are because not all of the things that people would want to change are broken) just one thing at a time to see how that changes the way other things work (a problem which we see exhibited in a lot of other areas as well).

  5. Re:Really? Waste? on Scientists at De Beers Fight the Growing Threat of Man-Made Diamonds (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    Worked for me...of course, I made it clear from when we started dating that I was not going to be buying her a ring. I, also, explained why. Then when we did get engaged I actually went out and bought her something that DID have lasting value (and was useful in the meantime).

  6. Re:incompetence on Secret Service, DHS Scramble To Secure America's Election (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    One of the reasons it is so fucked up is that we don't have AN election system, we have 50 election systems. It was designed that way for several good reasons, which I am not going to go into here. The real problem is that there are people who are trying to make it ONE election system without going through the correct process for making the change (amending the Constitution). Some of them do not realize that elections are run by the states and that tells you all you need to know about why THEIR ideas would not work (if you don't actually know how the system currently works, you certainly are not going to be able to fix it). Some of them know full well that the system is run by the states and would like to change that but know that doing it the right way would involve people learning WHY it was designed that way, and they suspect most people would agree with the reasons for doing it that way if they became aware of it.

    The problem is that most of the few honest people involved want to fix the whole thing at once rather than go through the process of getting each state to fix what's broken in that state, complicated by the fact that what is broken varies from state to state.

  7. Re:not in N.C. on Secret Service, DHS Scramble To Secure America's Election (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    An argument made by people who oppose every effort designed to determine what the extent of voter fraud is. The reason that voter fraud appears to be very rare is that we have NO mechanisms in place to systematically detect if it is happening. Almost every time someone has tested whether voter fraud was possible in a given election they have discovered that it was possible and their efforts to prove it was possible have gone undetected.

  8. Re: Obviously, a failed time travel mission on Secret Service, DHS Scramble To Secure America's Election (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    I have come to the conclusion that one of the reasons we do not have better controls in order to know the level of voter fraud is because a significant number of the people who would need to get behind implementing those controls desire some level of voter fraud. The reason I have reached that conclusion is because the arguments against controls designed to detect voter fraud are either that there is no reason to have such controls because we have never detected any significant amount of voter fraud or emotional (controls to detect voter fraud are racist, discriminate against the poor, etc). Which leads me to suspect that voter fraud occurs on a much higher level than I would have otherwise guessed.

  9. Re:BLM is conservative on Google's Schmidt Drew Up Draft Plan For Clinton In 2014 (itwire.com) · · Score: 1

    You really think that a government which you have EVEN smaller say in will be more responsive than your local government?

    So, basically what you are saying is that they want the local police to be accountable to some bureaucrat in Washington, who has no idea of local conditions and would be lucky to find the place on a map, assuming he cared enough to look.

    As to having transparent processes, that takes work. If you do not like your local politics, you need to make the effort to fix it. It does not happen in the short term. Take the example of William Wilberforce. As a Parliamentarian with an established reputation, he began working on abolishing the slave trade in 1787, the British Parliament did not outlaw the slave trade until 1806, nearly 20 years later and it was another 27 years before the complete abolition of slavery in Great Britain.

    If you (or they) want to fix the problems with our political system they need to dedicate their lives to actually doing so, and convince others to do likewise.

    The fact of the matter is that the BLM movement was created (and it WAS created, not a spontaneous uprising) for the purpose of generating support for federalizing the police.

  10. Re:BLM is conservative on Google's Schmidt Drew Up Draft Plan For Clinton In 2014 (itwire.com) · · Score: 0

    Let me get this straight, you believe that a group which protests for MORE centralized control of police functions is trying to act against the tendency of the government to say "trust us, we know what we're doing, you little people?"

  11. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Let me see: Vaccines...there was a problem created by the government which the government "fixed".
    FedEx using the USPS for last mile...of course, the USPS uses FedEx for the long haul, so that is about an even swap, at best (the other possibility is that FedEx is propping up the USPS for their own reasons).
    GPD, making something is not making it more affordable. The U.S. government had a use for GPS which, to its decision makers, made it worth the sunk costs of developing it and deploying the satellites. I doubt that anyone would justify even the ongoing expense of GPS if it were not for its military usage. GPS is not particularly affordable. It's just that the costs are hidden.

  12. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Or they would just stop working on developing new drugs that do not have a low enough development cost.

  13. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    The government does not make flood insurance affordable. It just covers the cost by taking money from the middle class and giving it to the wealthy. The government did not make GPS affordable. However, the government had a use for GPS that made it worth the sunk costs necessary to develop it in the first place. Once those costs were paid, GPS became affordable. The government created the post office because it needed a way to deliver messages to the citizens. However, even the government could not afford this without opening it up to use by everyone.

  14. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    You fail to understand the concept of risk vs reward and how it impacts investment. I have not looked at the numbers in awhile so I will use some hypothetical numbers to explain it to you.

    If a company has to decide where to invest $10 million between one investment which has only a 1 in 10 chance of success, but the return is $100 million and another investment where the chance of success is 1 in 20 but the return is $1 billion they will likely choose the latter. If you reduce the return on the latter to $150 million, they will choose the former.

    The numbers I have seen in the past suggest that Canadian drug prices pay for the cost of production of drugs with a reasonable profit, but will not support the cost of developing drugs. The cost of developing drugs is mostly paid for in the U.S. market...meaning that U.S. drug customers are subsidizing Canadian drug customers.

  15. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Of course, there would be fewer new drugs at that point, but hey, we have drugs to cure or at least treat everything YOU expect to ever have, why would we need any new ones?

  16. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, most condo associations have the ability to fine those who violate their rules pretty heavily. Some even have the ability to force the person to sell.

  17. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, but few if any of the things on your list are things made more affordable by the government. For example, flood insurance only exists because the government created it. Ditto for GPS. I am not sure how you think the government made phone service more affordable (there are two possibilities, places where there would not be phone service if not for the government...or at least not until long after it was made available there, or the break up of AT&T's monopoly, which only existed because the government created it in the first place). As for food, my food is MORE expensive because the government decided it was a good idea to use food for fuel. I am hard pressed as to how you think that postal service has been made more affordable by the government.
    So, care to try again?

  18. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    I am sorry, but I am unaware of any successful efforts by the government to make ANY of those more affordable.
    Certainly the government is responsible for the existence of vaccines and flood insurance. I will not argue about the government involvement in vaccines because I have never looked at the role government plays there. Flood insurance is an example of an idea that seems good that may not be so good after all. Basically, at this point government guaranteed flood insurance is a subsidy by the middle class for well-to-do vacation homes.
    As to fire protection, in my life I have only lived one year in an area where the fire protection was provided by the government. The rest of the time I lived in areas covered by volunteer fire companies who conducted fundraisers to cover their expenses (from time to time one or more of them received grants from the government for equipment, but most of them would have managed without that).

  19. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    While they certainly should not be getting "affordable housing" tax breaks if they are renting them out on Airbnb, I am not sure why it is anybody's business that the property owners are making more money by renting them out short-term rather than long term. My observations are that the more the government gets involved in making things "affordable" the less affordable those things are.

  20. Re:except it wasn't people renting out their rooms on Hotel CEO Openly Celebrates Higher Prices After Anti-Airbnb Law Passes (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    I would imagine that the condo association should then hold the condo owner accountable for the behavior of his or her Airbnb guests. There is no need for the government to get involved.

  21. What does the state of Israel have to do with predicting the outcomes of cases before the EUROPEAN Court of Human rights? Considering that Israel is not a signatory to the treaty creating said court.

  22. Re:So much hate on No One Is Buying Smartwatches Anymore (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    And THAT is worth $350 to you?

  23. No, the reason they say "3 times less than X" rather than "1/3 less than X" is because the former sounds like a bigger difference than the latter. With the former we subconsciously think 3 times X. It is similar to why you sell almost the same number at $0.99 as at $0.98, but see a marked drop off at $1.00.

  24. Anyone who hires based on DNA is a fool on DNA Testing For Jobs May Be On Its Way, Warns Gartner (computerworld.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OK, it is already known that DNA is not the code science once thought it was. DNA interacts with the rest of the cell to produce its results. If the rest of the contents of the cell differ in specific ways, the results of specific DNA is different.

  25. In other words, you taught the better routes to Waze and now it lets everyone know. I have discovered that in areas where few people drive with Waze it chooses main roads over back roads. It is only after I have driven to a destination over back roads a few times that it starts using those particular back roads.