So, again, the problem isn't that Diebold is greedy (which they are) or stupid (which they are), but that the people to whom they are directly accountable (the various county registrars) have no clue what the hell they're doing.
That's a bit like saying pick-pockets aren't the problem, it's people who don't watch their own ass all the time. Yes, there are things you can do to avoid being fleeced, but the ultimate blame is with the purpetrator, not the victim.
My thought is get money out of the situation. One way or another everyone in this country gets food, medical care, and a place to sleep.
What costs us a mint is tracking down who pays for what. Take health care. For what we spend on Insurance companies to figure out who gets paid when, everyone could be treated. Doctors and nurses are salaried. Equipment is a capital expenditure. There is absolutely no reason why a CAT-scan should cost $2000. Yes, the CAT-scan machine was $17 million when it was bought 12 years ago, it users $110 in power every hour of operation, and the technician who reads the results make $40/hour.
All of that would have to be paid whether you scanned someone or not, regardless of how many people you actually scan.
Now with road system we simply pay the state our taxes, and they hire someone to pave the roads. (Toll roads notably excluded.)
Food is the same thing. We pay farmers to NOT grow food. Food is so plentiful, so cheap, to produce, that the market needs artificial controls to stay in operation.
With a cafeteria, it cost you money to operate regardless of how may people you service. You have to have a cook, waitstaff. They are paid whether you server one customer or 70. Food is a consumable, but generally the labor that goes into it's preparation (and assorted overhead) costs a lot more than the raw materials.
Yes, yes, you do have to have some sort of monitor on hand to keep things orderly. Anyone who has been to a college dormatory knows that there is an element of humanity that abuses every system, and folks who will completely trash anything they can get their hands on.
But then again, police cost the same whether they arrest one person...
suspect in a few months we'll hear a new story. Damon gets revenge on Dave by stapling a yoga mattress to every surface of his office. They share the story and ACME Yoga Mattress Co. responds by sending three trucks filled with yoga mattresses. Dave quits his job, sells all of them, and becomes the newest dot-calm millionaire. (Oh, you knew the punchline would be bad!)
Do you think that would work with high-end electronics?
Repeat after me, harmless office pranks build teams! - They also build relationships
Slashdot Personals:
The 5 things I can't live without: my whoopie cushion, my finger buzzer, my seltzer bottle, my copy of "Practical Jokes ON Dummies", and my pile of fake barf.
Actually we have one of those big knife switches. Right next to the Jacob's ladder that regulates the power in the room.
Re:This is BRILLIANT! +5 Flame
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SimChurch
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· Score: 1
If you have ever taken a real-world measurement you would realize that everything we take as "empirical fact" is instead an approximation. You can tell a good design, not by it's precision, but by it's tolerances. Logic is precise, but it's accuracy is suspect.
Logic is poor problem solving technique for real world situations. While you can debate vigorously the nature of gravity, at the end of the day if you drop a pencil it will hit the floor. Logic doesn't tell you that, experience tells you that. The logical proof for one plus one is several hundred pages. Experience gives you the answer instantly. Even in matters of arithmetic, logic is superceeded by tradition and rules to work around the lack of precision. (Logically currency would be a real value, in practice you have 2 decimal places to work with.)
Behind every logical statement is a stack of assumptions, some explicit, most implied. This was known as far back as the Greeks, with Socrates. The underpinnings of our "logical" world are, in fact, made up.
So at the end of the day, even with perfect logic, you still have to put faith in something.
That would be the twelth commandment. Jesus gave us number 11: "Thou shalt worship your God with all your heart and soul, and do onto others as you would have done onto you."
Re:This is BRILLIANT! +5 Flame
on
SimChurch
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· Score: 1
What, that's not what we are doing in real life? Walk into your average church and you will find a few hundred people who swear up and down they will love other people like themselves, and then cut each other off trying to peel wheels out of the parking lot. With all due respect to the truely faithful, there are a lot of "virtual" christians out there.
God is entirely too subtle to be manifest in this world by any religious system. In a sense, every religion is right in how the describe him, but wrong in thinking that is the ONLY way he can be described. Any religion's idea of God is contrived and therefore imaginary.
That said, It is better to worship something, however imperfect, than to live life believing there is nothing out there. Idolitry may be nutty, but living by pure materialism is downright pathological.
Re:For those using linx...
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SimChurch
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· Score: 1
Come on, how do you think going into convulsions and speaking in tongues got started. It's a distraction!
As a boy I was small for my age, and often beat up. The guidance counceler's opinion was that I should punch back.
It is a leader's responsibility to maintain a healthy environment. At our church our pastor had to put his foot down. Yes, we lost some long-time parishoners. They liked the status quo. They were the beneficiaries of the exclusive club. At the rate they were going they were going to be the only ones there, but they didn't care.
After the smoke cleared, the church became a place that welcomed newcomers. It's a healthy congregation, and most of the old-timers have drifted back in. Everyone agrees (years later of course) that the pastor's actions were a good thing.
And no, newcomers are NOT marched to the front of the Sanctuary.
As far as waiting for some burning bush, or an angel with a fiery sword, it isn't going to happen. God works through voluntary action. If you are waiting to be forced into something, you aren't going to get any credit for it in the world beyond. If you have been called, you should drop what you are doing and follow.
Yes it's hard. But that is precisely why Christ said "It is easier to move a camel through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." If you value material goods, you will leave that value here after you die. You can't take it with you.
And God has no patience with lukewarm followers.
Re:Every church is threatening
on
SimChurch
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· Score: 1
These are the times where I remember an old quote: Being in church has as much to do with being a Christian as being in a garage has to do with being a car.
Faith is not the same thing as religion.
That said, I've recently gotten back into the church habit, and I even sing in the choir.
The big disadvantage was the size - with each little PCB having the components, connectors and a little schematic for that part, it was easy to construct something that was longer than the table.
Which is why all tables should also be made of modular blocks...
Whenever someone tells me that a kid's toy has no practical application in industry, I can't help put think of all the crazy things I've seen in steel mills and the museum I work at. Off the shelf stuff that is dissected and re-assembled in un-natural ways to get a job done, cheap.
I remember seeing more than one control console that was driven by a breadboard and a few discretes from radio shack.
I tool started off with one of those "discrete components on springs" sets. Once I got past the 3 or 4 cool things in the book, it gathered dust. My interest in electronics was gone.
Years later, when I actually played with live components, could build my own cases, and could jack everything into a serial port did I truely fall in love with building things. (Forrest E. Mims, there is a spot in heaven for you.)
Hey, I'm the same guy who maxed out the capabilities on the lego mindstorms in 2 days. Come on are more than 3 inputs and outputs REALLY too much to ask for... The MIT handboard has 12 inputs, 4 outputs, and if you slave over a few pins from the LCD you can us it to generate a 16 bit parallel interface...
Well theres 2 sides to that coin. Some say its really bad to rely on libsafe because the underlying source never gets fixed, therefore libsafe becomes and indispensible middlelayer you rely on more and more to protect legacy code which is inelegant. So in the long run much better to sort out the original source and do the job properly from the top. Just another 0.2c from a different school of thought.
I hear you there. One of the benefits of Open Source is the sheer number of eyeballs peering over code, and fingers to modify it. I very much believe that bit rot exists. Namely, that if you stop paying attention to something it eventually degrades.
Libsafe is like dropping an egg in your radiator. Yes, it would be ideal to be able to trace the source of the leak, but when you are stranded somewhere you have neither the tools nor the time for a proper repair. Depending on the situation, a quick fix can be a matter of life and death.
There are an number of parallels between the operating systems and religion. Unix is a bit like Judiasm. Everything unix can trace it's ancestry to System V. There are commercial vendors who maintain control over the source. You have the myriad reformed sects who have taken the code into new direction through BSD.
Windows is a bit like the Roman Catholic church. The system is pre-packaged and not open to interpretation. Modifications are all handled by a centralized authority. It incorporates some Unix standards, but generally doesn't play well with other Operating systems.
Linux is a bit like Protestantism. It has it's roots in BSD, but is more or less a complete re-write on the part of former Windows people. While there are only a few version of the same canon (the kernel) Linux breaks apart into a zillion or so distributions on how to build an operating system around it. There are frequent scisms, and followers regularly forked off from an established Distro and start their own.
I am a religious patcher. Hell, I've almost gotten a fired a few times when patches went wrong. Bosses just don't understand that machines don't just "work". They require constant intervention. The computers, that is, not the bosses.
Now that said, you have an interesting slant on ethics. By that mindset, a burglar is perfectly entitled to break into your apartment because your door could be kicked in. A theif can swipe your radio because, hey, it was only glass between him and what he wanted.
Yes, there is a certain amount to be said for not painting a target on yourself. But regardless of how much you "had it coming" it's still a crime to break into your dwelling, steal your property, or damage your person or posessions. System intrusion is a crime, and a matter for law enforcement.
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The 1910's were tied up with WWI. If you were in the war material business, you did well. Investment capital was tied up in the war effort.
The 1920's made the dotcom era look sane in comaparison. Everyone was kiting "Aeroplane" related stocks, until the market tanked.
So through the 1930's and 40's you had the twin devils of the Great Depression and WWII.
The 1950's saw the birth of the Cold war.
The 1960's ... we have all seen the moves.
The 1970's was the birth of Voodoo economics and hyper-inflation as we know it, continuing on to the 90's.
The 90's we a recession tailed by a... well we all were there.
That's a bit like saying pick-pockets aren't the problem, it's people who don't watch their own ass all the time. Yes, there are things you can do to avoid being fleeced, but the ultimate blame is with the purpetrator, not the victim.
Not that I'm aware of. Though I do tend to wake up in odd places, covered in blood, and not able to recall exactly how I got there.
What costs us a mint is tracking down who pays for what. Take health care. For what we spend on Insurance companies to figure out who gets paid when, everyone could be treated. Doctors and nurses are salaried. Equipment is a capital expenditure. There is absolutely no reason why a CAT-scan should cost $2000. Yes, the CAT-scan machine was $17 million when it was bought 12 years ago, it users $110 in power every hour of operation, and the technician who reads the results make $40/hour.
All of that would have to be paid whether you scanned someone or not, regardless of how many people you actually scan.
Now with road system we simply pay the state our taxes, and they hire someone to pave the roads. (Toll roads notably excluded.)
Food is the same thing. We pay farmers to NOT grow food. Food is so plentiful, so cheap, to produce, that the market needs artificial controls to stay in operation.
With a cafeteria, it cost you money to operate regardless of how may people you service. You have to have a cook, waitstaff. They are paid whether you server one customer or 70. Food is a consumable, but generally the labor that goes into it's preparation (and assorted overhead) costs a lot more than the raw materials.
Yes, yes, you do have to have some sort of monitor on hand to keep things orderly. Anyone who has been to a college dormatory knows that there is an element of humanity that abuses every system, and folks who will completely trash anything they can get their hands on.
But then again, police cost the same whether they arrest one person...
Do you think that would work with high-end electronics?
Slashdot Personals:
The 5 things I can't live without: my whoopie cushion, my finger buzzer, my seltzer bottle, my copy of "Practical Jokes ON Dummies", and my pile of fake barf.
And that's not to say working for yourself is a safe bet at all.
Actually we have one of those big knife switches. Right next to the Jacob's ladder that regulates the power in the room.
Logic is poor problem solving technique for real world situations. While you can debate vigorously the nature of gravity, at the end of the day if you drop a pencil it will hit the floor. Logic doesn't tell you that, experience tells you that. The logical proof for one plus one is several hundred pages. Experience gives you the answer instantly. Even in matters of arithmetic, logic is superceeded by tradition and rules to work around the lack of precision. (Logically currency would be a real value, in practice you have 2 decimal places to work with.)
Behind every logical statement is a stack of assumptions, some explicit, most implied. This was known as far back as the Greeks, with Socrates. The underpinnings of our "logical" world are, in fact, made up.
So at the end of the day, even with perfect logic, you still have to put faith in something.
That would be the twelth commandment. Jesus gave us number 11: "Thou shalt worship your God with all your heart and soul, and do onto others as you would have done onto you."
God is entirely too subtle to be manifest in this world by any religious system. In a sense, every religion is right in how the describe him, but wrong in thinking that is the ONLY way he can be described. Any religion's idea of God is contrived and therefore imaginary.
That said, It is better to worship something, however imperfect, than to live life believing there is nothing out there. Idolitry may be nutty, but living by pure materialism is downright pathological.
Come on, how do you think going into convulsions and speaking in tongues got started. It's a distraction!
It is a leader's responsibility to maintain a healthy environment. At our church our pastor had to put his foot down. Yes, we lost some long-time parishoners. They liked the status quo. They were the beneficiaries of the exclusive club. At the rate they were going they were going to be the only ones there, but they didn't care.
After the smoke cleared, the church became a place that welcomed newcomers. It's a healthy congregation, and most of the old-timers have drifted back in. Everyone agrees (years later of course) that the pastor's actions were a good thing.
And no, newcomers are NOT marched to the front of the Sanctuary.
As far as waiting for some burning bush, or an angel with a fiery sword, it isn't going to happen. God works through voluntary action. If you are waiting to be forced into something, you aren't going to get any credit for it in the world beyond. If you have been called, you should drop what you are doing and follow.
Yes it's hard. But that is precisely why Christ said "It is easier to move a camel through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." If you value material goods, you will leave that value here after you die. You can't take it with you.
And God has no patience with lukewarm followers.
Faith is not the same thing as religion.
That said, I've recently gotten back into the church habit, and I even sing in the choir.
Which is why all tables should also be made of modular blocks...
I remember seeing more than one control console that was driven by a breadboard and a few discretes from radio shack.
Years later, when I actually played with live components, could build my own cases, and could jack everything into a serial port did I truely fall in love with building things. (Forrest E. Mims, there is a spot in heaven for you.)
Hey, I'm the same guy who maxed out the capabilities on the lego mindstorms in 2 days. Come on are more than 3 inputs and outputs REALLY too much to ask for... The MIT handboard has 12 inputs, 4 outputs, and if you slave over a few pins from the LCD you can us it to generate a 16 bit parallel interface...
I hear you there. One of the benefits of Open Source is the sheer number of eyeballs peering over code, and fingers to modify it. I very much believe that bit rot exists. Namely, that if you stop paying attention to something it eventually degrades.
Libsafe is like dropping an egg in your radiator. Yes, it would be ideal to be able to trace the source of the leak, but when you are stranded somewhere you have neither the tools nor the time for a proper repair. Depending on the situation, a quick fix can be a matter of life and death.
Windows is a bit like the Roman Catholic church. The system is pre-packaged and not open to interpretation. Modifications are all handled by a centralized authority. It incorporates some Unix standards, but generally doesn't play well with other Operating systems.
Linux is a bit like Protestantism. It has it's roots in BSD, but is more or less a complete re-write on the part of former Windows people. While there are only a few version of the same canon (the kernel) Linux breaks apart into a zillion or so distributions on how to build an operating system around it. There are frequent scisms, and followers regularly forked off from an established Distro and start their own.
I still use libsafe. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Ok, that and distcc. Distcc and rsync... and ssh... DOH!
Hey, I resemble that remark!
Now that said, you have an interesting slant on ethics. By that mindset, a burglar is perfectly entitled to break into your apartment because your door could be kicked in. A theif can swipe your radio because, hey, it was only glass between him and what he wanted.
Yes, there is a certain amount to be said for not painting a target on yourself. But regardless of how much you "had it coming" it's still a crime to break into your dwelling, steal your property, or damage your person or posessions. System intrusion is a crime, and a matter for law enforcement.
Oh wait, this is slashdot, not Fark...
Well, until the wife decides to start vacuuming the dessicated cheese puffs off the floor around you. At which is "Oreck-a".