Gah! More economic fairy dust. WE HAVE NEVER BEEN ON "HARD CURRENCY". I know you think so because you have been fed some nonsense about the "gold standard" but it is utter bullshit. Throughout the entire history of the United States fractional reserve banking has been perfectly legal. All your boogeyman Fed did is systematize the practice. Now, repeat after me: "There can be no such thing as hard currency as long as fractional reserve banking is legal." Read your Heinlein. Read your Douglas. Read my sig. The truth is out there.
What kind of fantasy world do you live in? As if a billionaire had by the sweat of his own brow and the pulsing light of his bulging brain somehow created, *from scratch*, the entire mechanism and culture that produced his billion dollars. No, that is ludicrous. Some people happen to have the right skill set and happen be in the right position to gather a monstrously disproportionate share of the profits of some business and they become billionaires. The idea that they somehow "earned" all that money is nonsense. By your logic, a man who is laid off and can not find another job in time should resign himself to starvation and demise. I can't wait to hear your denial.
Does this mean that I support the taxation/welfare state as is practiced now? No, hell fucking no! It is demeaning, stupid, sadistic, and rewards zero-sum gamesmanship more than entrepreneurial innovation that you and I both hold dear. Read about Social Credit. Read your Heinlein. Almost all economists are fools or liars. Read my sig.
Well, you are right, but only if we get started right fucking now. But we won't because "market forces" don't support it. Unfortunately, by the time that they do, there won't be enough oil left to build the infrastructure needed to replace oil with something else. That's when the dying starts. Hello?
That went away a long time ago. By stigmatizing post-incarceration felons in hundreds of ways, not just voting, you hobble them, make them more likely to commit new crimes, and thus provide more grist for the legal/prison industry mill.
Here's an easy answer for all and sundry, deniers and believers: we are economic slaves of the carbon fuels industries. (Well, actually, they are the little slavers. The big slavers are the banksters, but that's a gab for another day.) Not only are we slaves to the CFIs, but we are going to sooner or later face an energy crunch. People attempt to deny the coming crunch, pointing out how we have transitioned relatively smoothly from one form of carbon fuel to another, but those transitions are not analogous to the transition from carbon fuel to not carbon fuel. The crunch will come as carbon fuel gets scarcer. The reason that their will be a crunch, (and by crunch, I mean millions of dead people), is that *building the infrastructure to replace carbon fuel with non-carbon fuel will require a lot of carbon fuel*!!! Think about what that means...
I laugh through my tears at the smug fellows who are so quick to judge others, and then gleefully cosign vengeance. The refreshing part is when people like you and Arccot confirm that not all of humanity is like that.
Read C. H. Douglas, the inventor of Social Credit. He is the Einstein of economics, but instead of grudging acceptance followed by wholehearted endorsement, his work has been diabolically suppressed.
>> I am almost sure I will never see this treatment
Not so fast: www.sierrasci.com
We're working on it! Should have a pharmaceutical solution ready in about 20 years. We are on our way to bringing a nuetracuetical solution (weak, but will help) to market by Q2 2011.
So remind me again why is it is so earthshakingly important to have an Israeli homeland smack dab in the middle of the fucking Muslim world. Why don't we take a nice chunk of the millions of acres of government land we have here and give it to the Israelis. Free and clear, no issues. Here's your new homeland. Get the fuck out of the middle east. Let the Muslims fuck with each other - it's no longer our problem.
>> spec writing is long boring and not very sexy because getting the requirements out of a user is like sucking cock. The user might enjoy it but you are just left with a bad taste in your mouth and a desire to throw up over the user.
You're doing it all wrong. Getting requirements out of the user is supposed to be like dressing the sap up in an English Schoolboy outfit, strapping him to a chair in the center of a room with high amperage electrodes (!), and psychologically torturing him until he breaks down and admits that nothing he does makes any sense at all. Then you slowly put him back together, all the while ensuring that by the end of the process, he knows that you and only you are the smartest person he has ever met, and how on earth has he ever gotten anything done without you. Then he begs you to suck your cock, only you won't let him.
Folks, you are all most of the physicists prior to Einstein arguing over the aether. The Einstein of economics did his work circa 1925, its all there, the truth, the reasons why we are in such a mess, the reasons why none of the things that we do to fix the mess will help long term, how to solve all these problems and live the life of leisure that our technology should be providing us, but fails to: ALL OF IT! However, unlike physics, economics is a totally corrupt science, so of course Douglas was buried in mountains of ignorance and lies. Major Clifford Hugh Douglas. Look it up. Open your eyes. Smell the fucking coffee.
No, hydrocarbons do not vanish overnight, however your smug appraisal of the situation ignores one very salient point. The replacement for pertroleum will not be and can not be a newly exploited carbon fuel source. You see, the example of England going from wood to coal to oil is invalid here, as in each step of that progression all that was changed was a different carbon fuel source. As carbon fuels get more expensive, it will get much, much, more expensive to replace them, as any such replacements will necessarily involve highly technological manufacturing. To break out of the carbon fuel paradigm will require an effort orders of magnitude more sophisticated than that that was required to build each of the new phases of the carbon fuel distribution network. In other words, it will take a very large amount of carbon fuel generated energy to build an infrastructure sufficiently sophisticated to replace the "free energy" carbon model. The cost of building the replacement infrastructure will become prohibitive, so people will have no choice but to bow down to their carbon fuel possessing masters. That doesn't sound like fun, does it??? In the end there will be a large die off, as, unless we start right now, with guns at our backs, to build the replacement infrastructure it will be too late - there will not be enough carbon fuel left and what is left will be two expensive to invest in a project to satisfy future needs. Its use will be demanded as a method to satisfy ever more critical present needs.
Please note well: I never involve the Global Warming boogie man. Global Warming, whether valid or not, is entirely beside the point. It's the engineering economics of the situation that tells me we are smiling as we march to the gallows. In fact, I believe that Global Warming is very clever contra-dis-information put in place by those who want the die off, with the duped support of the oil industry helping out. By raising the specter of GW, they are assured a lively and largely un-finish-able debate that very effectively obscures the facts and subtle analysis necessary to grasp the true peril.
Indeed it is. That is why all this arguing about climate change or whatever it is being called this week is pure tomfoolery. Tomfoolery with an evil ulterior motive, however. The motive is to distract us all from the undeniable truth: we are all slaves of the carbon fuel cartels. There are still time and resources available to escape this slavery, but not while we are bickering. Until we unite and demand that the government stop spending money on wars and "security" and all that crap, and instead on building a sustainable energy infrastructure, nothing will happen, nothing that is except that the oil companies and the exporting states will get richer, and we will get poorer. Make no mistake: the creation of a sustainable energy infrastructure is the greatest technological and industrial challenge that humanity has ever faced. At this point our odds of success are very low. STOP FUCKING ARGUING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND LET'S BUILD THIS SHIT!!!!!
Not true, not true at all. Excel 2007 "supports" over a million rows.
However! Here is the second not true: as far as I am concerned Excel still doesn't support over 65k rows. Try making a spreadsheet with a million rows. Put a lot of data in it. Now try to save it or sort it or do about anything besides type in one cell. Maybe the 64 bit version of 2010 truly supports large sheets, but Excel in general? No.
The people did not decide this. It was decided for them. The people's critical thinking facilities have been purposefully left to lie fallow or even discouraged in horrid public schools followed by subtle but very effective news media brainwashing. It is not the corporations - they are just acting in self defense against an enemy who is much stronger than they are. It is not the government - same story as the corporations. It is the money fraud powered by fractional reserve banking. Several shifting coalitions of the most powerful banks vie for control of the world at any given time. The power ebbs and flows between them. The victors change from time to time but the prize never leaves the arena!
I don't have to prove any of that. It doesn't really matter if it's true or false - all that matters is that as long as fractional reserve banking is permitted WE are not in control. We are slaves. End fractional reserve banking, and then we can begin to understand how our world really works. Then we can separate needed government from wasteful and tyrannical nonsense. Then we can put necessary curbs on corporate power while providing corporations and individuals the maximum latitude to innovate. Then we can free humanity from preventable suffering as well as provide a society and infrastructure that will allow all individuals, despite the circumstances of their birth, to reach their potential if they chose to do so. For all we know the man who can invent a faster than light drive is dying of starvation in Africa as I type these words.
As long as the bankers keep taking their ill-gotten pound of flesh, and do all that they do to distract us from the truth of our situation, none of this will ever change. End fractional reserve banking, and for the first time in the history of the world, we could finally find out what a truly free people could accomplish.
N.B. For all the caterwauling about gold and the good old days, we have never been truly free, although we were marginally more free prior to 1913. The one mistake the founding fathers made was that they failed to protect their intended controller of the currency, the federal government, from the banks. They failed to prohibit fractional reserve banking. The fraud has been going on ever since the founding of the country, and has caused more human devastation than all the military wars combined. What happened in 1913 is that we finally lost the financial war. That was when the government finally gave up it's efforts to contain fractional reserve banking, and turned the hen house over to the foxes. Since 1913, year after year after year our freedom and sovereignty have been very slowly, but very surely eroded, one tiny increment at a time.
Because each firewall extracts it's bit of overhead in processing power = time. Sure with a belt and suspenders you are less likely to have your pants fall down, but how much does that belt weigh? How far are you going to walk with on? Does the sum total of slowdown from client and server firewalls outweigh the lessened risk of having them. I have never seen any analysis that even attempts to quantify these opposing qualities. So all of today's opinions are so much gas.
Your position sounds eminently reasonable, but unless you want to carry a pocket full of gold coins everywhere you go, you have to have a monetary system. I am sure that you are now jumping up and down babbling "gold standard, gold standard" but you need to remember a few things. The United States was on the gold standard for many years. Did we have crashes? You damn betcha! The gold standard as we implemented it had two problems one serious, and one cataclysmic. The serious problem is that the value of any commodity can be manipulated. Not good in any event, but seriously not good when the commodity in question is your monetary standard. The cataclysmic problem is that all the while we were on the gold standard, we also permitted our banks to engage in fractional reserve banking. Once you allow frb, you have effectively ceded control of your money supply to the most powerful banks. Now we come full circle: you are concerned that the government manipulates the market. Yes they do, and we would be better off if they didn't, but what you completely overlook, is the big con. The most powerful banks control the money supply. That makes government manipulation of the market look like tiddlywinks. I say first let's put control of the money supply in the hands of the government, (as the founding father's specifically intended!), with which we have a degree of transparency, and over whom we at least have some semblance of control, and then we can worry about prying their hands off the market. Actually, I expect that once the government has control of the money supply we and they will be too busy keeping an eye on each other to bother any more about messing with the market. In other words, my program is the only way you will ever get your wish. Of course my program is even more unlikely than yours, but at least it has a chance to succeed. Whereas your program, only challenging the small con, is doomed by the operators of the big con. Really, government only messes with the market in self defense as a middling counterweight to the power of the monetary system's operators. Middling, yes, but it is all they have, so they will never let go of it; not unless they first get control of the monetary system.
Did you notice I never mentioned the Fed? They are nothing. A red herring to mislead the supposed sophisticates.
OK, everything would be counted by hand, so why the computer? My point is that everything could be counted quickly by hand if there are many hands involved! I want everyone who lives in the polling area in the polling place watching everyone else. I want total community involvement in the process from top to bottom. Haven't you heard about the communities where people are barred from observing or participating. This is just as bad, well, nearly as bad, as computerized voting itself. You just haven't thought the whole thing through, that is why my ideas seem dumb. There is quite a problem with absentee voting - who is going to watch those votes get counted? No, the goal of the voting system is to minimize fraud. It is impossible to eliminate fraud, so minimal fraud has to be acceptable. Everything that is a negative factor towards minimizing fraud must be eliminated. Absentee voting is a negative factor, well it is anyway, once the rest of my system is in place. Compared to computerized voting, absentee voting fraud is trivial, but that is no longer true when we eliminate computer voting - then absentee voting becomes the next best thing for the fraudsters. In fact for all we know, the bulk of fraud is already implemented via absentee voting - computerized voting may well just be in reserve for those times it is needed. Therefore absentee voting must be eliminated.
David, I think even the system you describe is fraught with peril. How are the totals from each run of the "computer can also read the same text to quickly count the votes" going to be tallied? Who is going to audit the executable on each computer running the count program.
No sir, my analysis indicates that voting is a task that should be done entirely by hand, using only paper and ink. It should be a national holiday, and people should not be allowed to travel on that day, except on official voting business. In other words, unless you get involved, (and the system should be set up so that literally anyone who wants to can get involved as an observer, counter, clerk, or whatever), you are required by law to stay at home. All the polling places should simply post their totals on line so that anyone can compare them to the totals they saw with their own eyes at the polling place and anyone can go on line and add the totals up and get statewide or national totals.
Finally, no absentee voting at all whatsoever. If you can not be present at your official polling place on election day, you don't get to vote. End of story. Sorry.
The real problem is that only people as smart as you should be allowed to vote at all. I'm serious. I mean, do you really think that the moron you addressed your comment to understood two words of what you said, or more importantly that you are absolutely correct?
Until someone invents a true AI and it takes over the world, we are doomed to greed and waste.
But I have the deepest loathing and absolutely no respect for everything they believe in. What, should I slap myself in the face, or the things I loathe?
What's so bad or wrong with hating evil? The net result of religion is an increase in human suffering. That's evil. I hate evil. I hate religion. I express my hatered by burning their evil manual. One less evil manual, a tiny bit less evil in the world. Plus, those whose thinking is not well considered may, observing the inconsistent and illogical responses of the religiously brainwashed may have an awakening.
Slashdot Mirror
Gah! More economic fairy dust. WE HAVE NEVER BEEN ON "HARD CURRENCY". I know you think so because you have been fed some nonsense about the "gold standard" but it is utter bullshit. Throughout the entire history of the United States fractional reserve banking has been perfectly legal. All your boogeyman Fed did is systematize the practice. Now, repeat after me: "There can be no such thing as hard currency as long as fractional reserve banking is legal." Read your Heinlein. Read your Douglas. Read my sig. The truth is out there.
>> other people's money
What kind of fantasy world do you live in? As if a billionaire had by the sweat of his own brow and the pulsing light of his bulging brain somehow created, *from scratch*, the entire mechanism and culture that produced his billion dollars. No, that is ludicrous. Some people happen to have the right skill set and happen be in the right position to gather a monstrously disproportionate share of the profits of some business and they become billionaires. The idea that they somehow "earned" all that money is nonsense. By your logic, a man who is laid off and can not find another job in time should resign himself to starvation and demise. I can't wait to hear your denial.
Does this mean that I support the taxation/welfare state as is practiced now? No, hell fucking no! It is demeaning, stupid, sadistic, and rewards zero-sum gamesmanship more than entrepreneurial innovation that you and I both hold dear. Read about Social Credit. Read your Heinlein. Almost all economists are fools or liars. Read my sig.
Well, you are right, but only if we get started right fucking now. But we won't because "market forces" don't support it. Unfortunately, by the time that they do, there won't be enough oil left to build the infrastructure needed to replace oil with something else. That's when the dying starts. Hello?
That went away a long time ago. By stigmatizing post-incarceration felons in hundreds of ways, not just voting, you hobble them, make them more likely to commit new crimes, and thus provide more grist for the legal/prison industry mill.
Here's an easy answer for all and sundry, deniers and believers: we are economic slaves of the carbon fuels industries. (Well, actually, they are the little slavers. The big slavers are the banksters, but that's a gab for another day.) Not only are we slaves to the CFIs, but we are going to sooner or later face an energy crunch. People attempt to deny the coming crunch, pointing out how we have transitioned relatively smoothly from one form of carbon fuel to another, but those transitions are not analogous to the transition from carbon fuel to not carbon fuel. The crunch will come as carbon fuel gets scarcer. The reason that their will be a crunch, (and by crunch, I mean millions of dead people), is that *building the infrastructure to replace carbon fuel with non-carbon fuel will require a lot of carbon fuel*!!! Think about what that means...
I laugh through my tears at the smug fellows who are so quick to judge others, and then gleefully cosign vengeance. The refreshing part is when people like you and Arccot confirm that not all of humanity is like that.
Read C. H. Douglas, the inventor of Social Credit. He is the Einstein of economics, but instead of grudging acceptance followed by wholehearted endorsement, his work has been diabolically suppressed.
>> I am almost sure I will never see this treatment
Not so fast: www.sierrasci.com
We're working on it! Should have a pharmaceutical solution ready in about 20 years. We are on our way to bringing a nuetracuetical solution (weak, but will help) to market by Q2 2011.
So remind me again why is it is so earthshakingly important to have an Israeli homeland smack dab in the middle of the fucking Muslim world. Why don't we take a nice chunk of the millions of acres of government land we have here and give it to the Israelis. Free and clear, no issues. Here's your new homeland. Get the fuck out of the middle east. Let the Muslims fuck with each other - it's no longer our problem.
I mean, duh!
>> spec writing is long boring and not very sexy because getting the requirements out of a user is like sucking cock. The user might enjoy it but you are just left with a bad taste in your mouth and a desire to throw up over the user.
You're doing it all wrong. Getting requirements out of the user is supposed to be like dressing the sap up in an English Schoolboy outfit, strapping him to a chair in the center of a room with high amperage electrodes (!), and psychologically torturing him until he breaks down and admits that nothing he does makes any sense at all. Then you slowly put him back together, all the while ensuring that by the end of the process, he knows that you and only you are the smartest person he has ever met, and how on earth has he ever gotten anything done without you. Then he begs you to suck your cock, only you won't let him.
Duh.
Folks, you are all most of the physicists prior to Einstein arguing over the aether. The Einstein of economics did his work circa 1925, its all there, the truth, the reasons why we are in such a mess, the reasons why none of the things that we do to fix the mess will help long term, how to solve all these problems and live the life of leisure that our technology should be providing us, but fails to: ALL OF IT! However, unlike physics, economics is a totally corrupt science, so of course Douglas was buried in mountains of ignorance and lies. Major Clifford Hugh Douglas. Look it up. Open your eyes. Smell the fucking coffee.
No, hydrocarbons do not vanish overnight, however your smug appraisal of the situation ignores one very salient point. The replacement for pertroleum will not be and can not be a newly exploited carbon fuel source. You see, the example of England going from wood to coal to oil is invalid here, as in each step of that progression all that was changed was a different carbon fuel source. As carbon fuels get more expensive, it will get much, much, more expensive to replace them, as any such replacements will necessarily involve highly technological manufacturing. To break out of the carbon fuel paradigm will require an effort orders of magnitude more sophisticated than that that was required to build each of the new phases of the carbon fuel distribution network. In other words, it will take a very large amount of carbon fuel generated energy to build an infrastructure sufficiently sophisticated to replace the "free energy" carbon model. The cost of building the replacement infrastructure will become prohibitive, so people will have no choice but to bow down to their carbon fuel possessing masters. That doesn't sound like fun, does it??? In the end there will be a large die off, as, unless we start right now, with guns at our backs, to build the replacement infrastructure it will be too late - there will not be enough carbon fuel left and what is left will be two expensive to invest in a project to satisfy future needs. Its use will be demanded as a method to satisfy ever more critical present needs.
Please note well: I never involve the Global Warming boogie man. Global Warming, whether valid or not, is entirely beside the point. It's the engineering economics of the situation that tells me we are smiling as we march to the gallows. In fact, I believe that Global Warming is very clever contra-dis-information put in place by those who want the die off, with the duped support of the oil industry helping out. By raising the specter of GW, they are assured a lively and largely un-finish-able debate that very effectively obscures the facts and subtle analysis necessary to grasp the true peril.
"Climate is complex"
Indeed it is. That is why all this arguing about climate change or whatever it is being called this week is pure tomfoolery. Tomfoolery with an evil ulterior motive, however. The motive is to distract us all from the undeniable truth: we are all slaves of the carbon fuel cartels. There are still time and resources available to escape this slavery, but not while we are bickering. Until we unite and demand that the government stop spending money on wars and "security" and all that crap, and instead on building a sustainable energy infrastructure, nothing will happen, nothing that is except that the oil companies and the exporting states will get richer, and we will get poorer. Make no mistake: the creation of a sustainable energy infrastructure is the greatest technological and industrial challenge that humanity has ever faced. At this point our odds of success are very low. STOP FUCKING ARGUING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AND LET'S BUILD THIS SHIT!!!!!
Not true, not true at all. Excel 2007 "supports" over a million rows.
However! Here is the second not true: as far as I am concerned Excel still doesn't support over 65k rows. Try making a spreadsheet with a million rows. Put a lot of data in it. Now try to save it or sort it or do about anything besides type in one cell. Maybe the 64 bit version of 2010 truly supports large sheets, but Excel in general? No.
>> There isn't a safe way to use meth
Bottom line: either we are free men and women who can do what we want with our own bodies, or we are slaves.
Mexico may have been turned into a lethal hellhole by US drug cartels...
FTFY
The people did not decide this. It was decided for them. The people's critical thinking facilities have been purposefully left to lie fallow or even discouraged in horrid public schools followed by subtle but very effective news media brainwashing. It is not the corporations - they are just acting in self defense against an enemy who is much stronger than they are. It is not the government - same story as the corporations. It is the money fraud powered by fractional reserve banking. Several shifting coalitions of the most powerful banks vie for control of the world at any given time. The power ebbs and flows between them. The victors change from time to time but the prize never leaves the arena!
I don't have to prove any of that. It doesn't really matter if it's true or false - all that matters is that as long as fractional reserve banking is permitted WE are not in control. We are slaves. End fractional reserve banking, and then we can begin to understand how our world really works. Then we can separate needed government from wasteful and tyrannical nonsense. Then we can put necessary curbs on corporate power while providing corporations and individuals the maximum latitude to innovate. Then we can free humanity from preventable suffering as well as provide a society and infrastructure that will allow all individuals, despite the circumstances of their birth, to reach their potential if they chose to do so. For all we know the man who can invent a faster than light drive is dying of starvation in Africa as I type these words.
As long as the bankers keep taking their ill-gotten pound of flesh, and do all that they do to distract us from the truth of our situation, none of this will ever change. End fractional reserve banking, and for the first time in the history of the world, we could finally find out what a truly free people could accomplish.
N.B. For all the caterwauling about gold and the good old days, we have never been truly free, although we were marginally more free prior to 1913. The one mistake the founding fathers made was that they failed to protect their intended controller of the currency, the federal government, from the banks. They failed to prohibit fractional reserve banking. The fraud has been going on ever since the founding of the country, and has caused more human devastation than all the military wars combined. What happened in 1913 is that we finally lost the financial war. That was when the government finally gave up it's efforts to contain fractional reserve banking, and turned the hen house over to the foxes. Since 1913, year after year after year our freedom and sovereignty have been very slowly, but very surely eroded, one tiny increment at a time.
Because each firewall extracts it's bit of overhead in processing power = time. Sure with a belt and suspenders you are less likely to have your pants fall down, but how much does that belt weigh? How far are you going to walk with on? Does the sum total of slowdown from client and server firewalls outweigh the lessened risk of having them. I have never seen any analysis that even attempts to quantify these opposing qualities. So all of today's opinions are so much gas.
Oops. Fathers'
Your position sounds eminently reasonable, but unless you want to carry a pocket full of gold coins everywhere you go, you have to have a monetary system. I am sure that you are now jumping up and down babbling "gold standard, gold standard" but you need to remember a few things. The United States was on the gold standard for many years. Did we have crashes? You damn betcha! The gold standard as we implemented it had two problems one serious, and one cataclysmic. The serious problem is that the value of any commodity can be manipulated. Not good in any event, but seriously not good when the commodity in question is your monetary standard. The cataclysmic problem is that all the while we were on the gold standard, we also permitted our banks to engage in fractional reserve banking. Once you allow frb, you have effectively ceded control of your money supply to the most powerful banks. Now we come full circle: you are concerned that the government manipulates the market. Yes they do, and we would be better off if they didn't, but what you completely overlook, is the big con. The most powerful banks control the money supply. That makes government manipulation of the market look like tiddlywinks. I say first let's put control of the money supply in the hands of the government, (as the founding father's specifically intended!), with which we have a degree of transparency, and over whom we at least have some semblance of control, and then we can worry about prying their hands off the market. Actually, I expect that once the government has control of the money supply we and they will be too busy keeping an eye on each other to bother any more about messing with the market. In other words, my program is the only way you will ever get your wish. Of course my program is even more unlikely than yours, but at least it has a chance to succeed. Whereas your program, only challenging the small con, is doomed by the operators of the big con. Really, government only messes with the market in self defense as a middling counterweight to the power of the monetary system's operators. Middling, yes, but it is all they have, so they will never let go of it; not unless they first get control of the monetary system.
Did you notice I never mentioned the Fed? They are nothing. A red herring to mislead the supposed sophisticates.
Questions? Comments?
OK, everything would be counted by hand, so why the computer? My point is that everything could be counted quickly by hand if there are many hands involved! I want everyone who lives in the polling area in the polling place watching everyone else. I want total community involvement in the process from top to bottom. Haven't you heard about the communities where people are barred from observing or participating. This is just as bad, well, nearly as bad, as computerized voting itself. You just haven't thought the whole thing through, that is why my ideas seem dumb. There is quite a problem with absentee voting - who is going to watch those votes get counted? No, the goal of the voting system is to minimize fraud. It is impossible to eliminate fraud, so minimal fraud has to be acceptable. Everything that is a negative factor towards minimizing fraud must be eliminated. Absentee voting is a negative factor, well it is anyway, once the rest of my system is in place. Compared to computerized voting, absentee voting fraud is trivial, but that is no longer true when we eliminate computer voting - then absentee voting becomes the next best thing for the fraudsters. In fact for all we know, the bulk of fraud is already implemented via absentee voting - computerized voting may well just be in reserve for those times it is needed. Therefore absentee voting must be eliminated.
David, I think even the system you describe is fraught with peril. How are the totals from each run of the "computer can also read the same text to quickly count the votes" going to be tallied? Who is going to audit the executable on each computer running the count program.
No sir, my analysis indicates that voting is a task that should be done entirely by hand, using only paper and ink. It should be a national holiday, and people should not be allowed to travel on that day, except on official voting business. In other words, unless you get involved, (and the system should be set up so that literally anyone who wants to can get involved as an observer, counter, clerk, or whatever), you are required by law to stay at home. All the polling places should simply post their totals on line so that anyone can compare them to the totals they saw with their own eyes at the polling place and anyone can go on line and add the totals up and get statewide or national totals.
Finally, no absentee voting at all whatsoever. If you can not be present at your official polling place on election day, you don't get to vote. End of story. Sorry.
The real problem is that only people as smart as you should be allowed to vote at all. I'm serious. I mean, do you really think that the moron you addressed your comment to understood two words of what you said, or more importantly that you are absolutely correct?
Until someone invents a true AI and it takes over the world, we are doomed to greed and waste.
But I have the deepest loathing and absolutely no respect for everything they believe in. What, should I slap myself in the face, or the things I loathe?
What's so bad or wrong with hating evil? The net result of religion is an increase in human suffering. That's evil. I hate evil. I hate religion. I express my hatered by burning their evil manual. One less evil manual, a tiny bit less evil in the world. Plus, those whose thinking is not well considered may, observing the inconsistent and illogical responses of the religiously brainwashed may have an awakening.