I was once involved in a proposal for validation of an electronic voting system in a country where in living memory the offer was likely to have been "vote for our candidate and we won't put a bullet through your kid's head". We didn't win the bid, but I do recall that voter secrecy was pretty high on the agenda.
Personally, I think they should making voting a national holiday and encourages business to close much like Christmas or New Year's and let people know that this is something that should be celebrated and encouraged in all forms. Hmm, beach or polling station... beach or polling station... decisions decisions!
I've never understood all this 'encouraging people to vote' bullshit. The answer to me seems simple. Make it fucking MANDATORY, and put a 'none of the above box' on the ballot. Problem solved. Yeah, take away yet another of our civil liberties, great idea. Any party that did that would never ever get my vote again.
Voting in the UK is anonymous i.e. they know you voted but not who you voted for.
Not completely true. In the UK your voting slip is marked with a unique identifier, and when the officer hands you the slip to vote that identifier is recorded against your name. If the government wants to know how a particular individual voted, looking for their voting slip would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But if the government wanted to know who voted for a particular candidate -- especially if it's a candidate who only gets a small vote -- then all the information is there on record.
How will they make it secure? In particular, how will they make sure that a dominating head of household doesn't cast all the household votes? The present system isn't great at that, but online voting will make it all but impossible.
Never seen queues like that in UK elections. Never had to queue at all in any UK election, and I've only missed one (I was away on business at short notice) in 33 years.
(here in the UK you can join the army at 16; if you can die for your country, you should be able to choose those would send you to do so). Well, as the use of child soldiers is one of the gripes that Amnesty International has against the UK, a better solution might be to raise the age at which folks can join the armed forces.
eVoting would still be far easier. Having the government tell you how you voted without you doing anything at all would be easier still. I understand that some countries have that system, but I wouldn't be keen.
There is enough "everything else" for everything else to survive. US web radio might try to look at models like Radio Britfolk ahref=http://www.radiobritfolkhome.co.uk/rel=url2h tml-31547http://www.radiobritfolkhome.co.uk/> in the UK, on which AIUI the billboard at least works on individually negotiated agreements with the artists. This is decidedly a niche market (one I happen to enjoy), and I doubt you'd hear any of that stuff on conventional radio, but enough people know about it and enjoy it for the (not-for-profit) business model to work.
You, however, are guilty of willfully and persistently being a foreigner, I think it's a Class A felony nowadays. Hold on, I thought you were the foreigner! Yes, here it is: http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiTHENGLSH.html.
Agreed. It's just that whenever something like that happens in Europe there's usually a raft of comments on/. about it being because of Europe's broken constitutional system(s). ISTM it's got more to do with being in a broken world.
The USA is becoming a state of fear, evidenced by such happenings. Fear causes the reactions to become more and more inappropriate. I really don't know whose fault it is or where it will end. The country that promotes freedom is losing it fast but it's hard to see from the inside. I assume at some point in the next 50 years the word "freedom" will have been completely redefined but it will have happened so slower that nobody knows. Yep. I hope/.ers remember that next time they see the same sort of thing happening in Europe and think it's just our problem.
That being said, most lawmakers are, for lack of a better word, stupid. So there's a pretty good chance it's written poorly. I find that thought disturbing. Oh, hold on, does that make your writing of it illegal? And you might find that suggestion disturbing, so I'd better not come to the USA any time soon (or is that offence one of the ones for which they can come and get me?)
Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s...t...a...b..., puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P 90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did." Hey, give him a break. He does want to become a Marine, after all!
Even then, there's a difference between a work of fiction and a threat. Absolutely -- otherwise Tom Clancy is in serious trouble. Not to mention the writers of all those cop shows on TV.
I thought Europe was a bastion of freedom and civil rights. Oh wait, it isn't that at all. Really? Which European countries call themselves "The Land of the Free"?
Europe has similar protections. They're enacted differently, but the end efect is the same. If a State or the Federal Government tried to enact similar legislation in the USA, my understanding is the constitutionality could be challenged in court; if it's enacted in Europe its compliance with human rights treaties can be challenged in court.
As the saying goes, "There's more than one way to do it".
As far as I can see, it's a patent on the MVC model. If you use an MVC model for something that isn't complex and isn't predicted to become complex then you're playing.
I can't see the pictures in the patent (and I don't want to install Apple Quicktime so that I can), but is there anything in the patent that isn't in javax.swing? That goes back well before that patent.
The music studios got in trouble with Phillips on that score: they were told flatly that if it doesn't conform to the published spec they can't use any relevant tradmarks, call it a Compact Disc, use the CD logo, etc. Yes -- and when did you last see any of those things on what-looks-like-a-CD packaging? Hereabouts it all seemed to vanish from the packaging at about the time Philips made that clampdown.
You REALLY must be new here if you expect anyone on/. to come up with new and original arguments for why Microsoft sucks.
Well, of course we can't do that. But there are plenty of folks here who will point out whenever Microsoft comes up with new and original arguments for why Microsoft sucks.
And, to be fair, folks here don't hesitate to do the same to Linux distros, and Apple hardly escapes criticism, but it only seems to be when it's Microsoft being criticised that folks complain of bias.
"a legal DVD of a current Hollywood DVD release costs about one month's average wage"
If you don't want to pay for it, don't watch it. Well, that's the legal position, certainly.
"based on customes(SIC) seizures"
Of course, not all countries take equal measures to counteract piracy, so that doesn't really mean anything. In my understanding, customs seizures usually take place on import, not export. So what you're saying is that other countries are exporting just as much pirated stuff as the USA, but US customs are more lax than other countries on the import of that stuff?
I would be very surprised if you managed to find a legal copy of a DVD in China, outside of Hong Kong and Macau. I don't know what the price would actually be in China, but I do know of the situation in Russia, because a couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a member of the Russian trade delegation at an IPR conference. In Russia, a legal DVD of a current Hollywood DVD release costs about one month's average wage. It's no wonder Piracy is rife.
That same person made the point that the world's biggest exporter of pirated DVDs, software, etc, (based on customes seizures) is the USA, but the US government doesn't seem to see that as such a big issue.
Slashdot Mirror
At present I have a choice whether to vote or not.
Mandatory voting: disadvantages -- I lose that choice, government has more say in what I do with my own life; advantages -- nil.
I was once involved in a proposal for validation of an electronic voting system in a country where in living memory the offer was likely to have been "vote for our candidate and we won't put a bullet through your kid's head". We didn't win the bid, but I do recall that voter secrecy was pretty high on the agenda.
Not completely true. In the UK your voting slip is marked with a unique identifier, and when the officer hands you the slip to vote that identifier is recorded against your name. If the government wants to know how a particular individual voted, looking for their voting slip would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But if the government wanted to know who voted for a particular candidate -- especially if it's a candidate who only gets a small vote -- then all the information is there on record.
How will they make it secure? In particular, how will they make sure that a dominating head of household doesn't cast all the household votes? The present system isn't great at that, but online voting will make it all but impossible.
Never seen queues like that in UK elections. Never had to queue at all in any UK election, and I've only missed one (I was away on business at short notice) in 33 years.
There is enough "everything else" for everything else to survive. US web radio might try to look at models like Radio Britfolk ahref=http://www.radiobritfolkhome.co.uk/rel=url2h tml-31547http://www.radiobritfolkhome.co.uk/> in the UK, on which AIUI the billboard at least works on individually negotiated agreements with the artists. This is decidedly a niche market (one I happen to enjoy), and I doubt you'd hear any of that stuff on conventional radio, but enough people know about it and enjoy it for the (not-for-profit) business model to work.
Agreed. It's just that whenever something like that happens in Europe there's usually a raft of comments on /. about it being because of Europe's broken constitutional system(s). ISTM it's got more to do with being in a broken world.
I find that thought disturbing. Oh, hold on, does that make your writing of it illegal? And you might find that suggestion disturbing, so I'd better not come to the USA any time soon (or is that offence one of the ones for which they can come and get me?)
Hey, give him a break. He does want to become a Marine, after all!
Europe has similar protections. They're enacted differently, but the end efect is the same. If a State or the Federal Government tried to enact similar legislation in the USA, my understanding is the constitutionality could be challenged in court; if it's enacted in Europe its compliance with human rights treaties can be challenged in court.
As the saying goes, "There's more than one way to do it".
As far as I can see, it's a patent on the MVC model. If you use an MVC model for something that isn't complex and isn't predicted to become complex then you're playing.
I can't see the pictures in the patent (and I don't want to install Apple Quicktime so that I can), but is there anything in the patent that isn't in javax.swing? That goes back well before that patent.
Well, of course we can't do that. But there are plenty of folks here who will point out whenever Microsoft comes up with new and original arguments for why Microsoft sucks.
And, to be fair, folks here don't hesitate to do the same to Linux distros, and Apple hardly escapes criticism, but it only seems to be when it's Microsoft being criticised that folks complain of bias.
If you don't want to pay for it, don't watch it.
Well, that's the legal position, certainly. "based on customes(SIC) seizures"
Of course, not all countries take equal measures to counteract piracy, so that doesn't really mean anything. In my understanding, customs seizures usually take place on import, not export. So what you're saying is that other countries are exporting just as much pirated stuff as the USA, but US customs are more lax than other countries on the import of that stuff?
I would be very surprised if you managed to find a legal copy of a DVD in China, outside of Hong Kong and Macau. I don't know what the price would actually be in China, but I do know of the situation in Russia, because a couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a member of the Russian trade delegation at an IPR conference. In Russia, a legal DVD of a current Hollywood DVD release costs about one month's average wage. It's no wonder Piracy is rife.
That same person made the point that the world's biggest exporter of pirated DVDs, software, etc, (based on customes seizures) is the USA, but the US government doesn't seem to see that as such a big issue.