First, like many posters, I don't like anybody with power -- a boss, a teacher, a union official, a wife or husband or parent -- abusing that power to make other people vote.
Also, from a pedagogical point of view, how is the act of entering a voting booth related to the study of literature? Somebody can enter the booth whether they've read 0 pages or 1000 pages of campaign literature.
Here's a tougher and more relevant requirement: get a comment moderated "4" or "5" on slashdot, not counting "funny". Even harder: do it as an anonymous coward.
Of course that would be open to cheating. And to be sure, some topics are easy to get mod points on, just put up "RIAA is teh sux0r" in an article on music piracy and that's +4 insightful. But generally, to get mod points, a writer has to have a good thesis, and has to present it in a way that acknowledges the complexity of the subject and also the counter-arguments from the other side.
"If the election were held today, would you vote for $DEM or $REP ?" "I would vote for $LIB" "If the only candidates were $DEM and $REP, which one would you vote for?" "I would vote for $LIB"
Many polls will add a column marked $LIB (volunteered). Of course, you might want to say $GREEN or "Nader" instead, whatever you want.
I like it when Congress and the President are of different parties.
And I like it even more when the media and the President are of different parties.
Democratic president? Gimme talk radio and bloggers.
Republican president? nytimes.com will yell "emperor has no clothes!" every day for four years.
"This basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decided whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." -- Thomas Jefferson
The votes belong to the voters, not the candidates.
Anybody who wants to vote for Ralph Nader can damn well vote for Ralph Nader, and anybody who doesn't want to, doesn't have to. I think all the prospective Nader voters have been exposed to enough advertising and history by now to make up their own minds whether they prefer "vote for what you really want" or "vote for lesser evil".
Regarding that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" meme goes -- that sounds uncomfortably similar to President Bush's statement: "if you're not with us you're against us."
One thing that Nader voters can do is pair up. In the last election, Nader Traders paired up Nader voters in swing states with Gore voters in non-swing states. The Nader Traders are back in action this election.
There's another kind of pairing: if you really want to vote for Nader, but don't want Bush to win, go find somebody who really hates Bush but doesn't want Kerry to win. Make a deal: "I won't vote for Kerry if you won't vote for Bush." Then you go vote for Nader or Cobb, and your buddy votes for Badnarik or Peroutka. The major party outcome is unaffected, and you both vote for the candidate you really wanted -- which helps build the party you really want.
(1) What were people living like one generation before the industrial revolution?
(2) Why did people take those 60-hour minuscule-pay inhumane jobs, and send their children in, too?
People love to compare conditions in factories during the industrial revolution to conditions today. But that's not the right comparison. The right comparison is conditions in factories during the industrial revolution to conditions outside the factories during the industrial revolution.
Suppose you're an anti-war progressive who's really turned off by Kerry "bring the troops home in 2008, maybe later". But you really, really don't want to see Bush re-elected.
Go out and find a paleo-conservative in your own state who's sick of Bush because the federal government grows even faster under Bush than it did under Clinton... but this paleo isn't about to vote for Kerry. They are about to hold their nose and vote for Bush.
Pair up. You vote for somebody you really like, Nader or Cobb. Your pair pal votes for Badnarik or Peroutka. The immediate winner of the election isn't affected. But both of you get to express what you really want. That way you get more of what you want in the future -- starting with improved ballot access.
Think of it as your own personal IRV hack.
Use whatever security you want -- both of you get absentee ballots, or you just go find another human being who's different from you politically that you can trust.
Here's the historical evidence that term limits and elections will continue to happen. Well, just one data point, but I think it bears some weight.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was an election day in New York City. Because of the terrorist attack, that election was postponed for two weeks until September 25, 2001. The general election was held on schedule on November 6, 2001.
Rudy Giuliani's name was not on the ballot. He had served two terms and was prohibited by New York State law from serving a third term.
So, combine these elements: a large terrorist attack, a popular Republican mayor who wanted to continue to serve, and term limit law. As is proper, the law was upheld, the general election took place on schedule, and the term-limited incumbent was not on the ballot.
I think that the American electoral system istough enough to run the elections on schedule in 2008. Of course, we'll be voting in our gerry-mandered winner-take-all districts, which will still suck. And if you want more swing districts: term limits. We added a constitutional amendment to term-limit the President and Vice President, and that's worked out pretty well.
You're right; the bill was never signed into law, so the Supreme Court never ruled on it. I don't know where I got the idea that the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of Roosevelt's proposal when it never became law.
Imagine the outcry today if President Bush were to suggest a similar measure!
WTF? When someone runs for office, and gets elected, I expect them to be ready to do their job ANY damn day.
Now maybe you're talking about scheduling hearings on Sunday at 3:00 AM, or during a recess, or something like that. If so, point to a link. Otherwise, if a senator can't show up for their JOB, that's a good reason to elect someone else who can.
You need to read a little bit more history, until you get to the part where FDR didn't like the decisions the Supreme Court made.
FDR checked his constitution, noticed that it didn't actually say "number of Supreme Court justices: 9" on it, and called for legislation to allow him to appoint six more supreme court justices (as well as 44 additional federal judges).
The reason that you don't see 15 judges today is that the Supreme Court, as well as popular opinion, shot down Roosevelt's plan. However, the court became much more complaisant about the Administration's laws after that.
Try google on "roosevelt supreme court packing" and read up.
Remember the "Nader Traders" of 2000? They were a way for mainstream Democrats and more progressive liberals to work together to get more votes for Nader without hurting Gore. Indeed, the original Nader Traders said that they signed up several thousand people in Florida in 2000 to trade Gore votes into Florida... imagine what history would be like if they had gotten 1000 more trades for Gore!
How about setting up some trades for people who are sick of both major parties but feel forced to pick one of them to keep the other one out?
So all the conversatives who think that Bush and the neocons are headed for an American Empire and a crushingly huge government pair up with progressives who think Kerry's an establishment tool but at least he's not Bush. They each agree not to vote for the rotting, corrupt major party candidate. "I won't vote for Kerry if you won't vote for Bush". Kerry and Bush both lose, and Nader, Badnarik, Cobb, and Peroutka gain. So do the voters, because they get to vote for what they *really want*, without running into that "a vote for Peroutka is a vote for Kerry!" crap.
It actually gives some of the advantages of IRV -- registering your real choice -- without having to change the whole election system. Just pair up.
I saw the Badnarik/Cobb debate in New York City last week.
There were about 200 people in the audience. C-SPAN had a crew there.
The candidates didn't directly question each other. They made opening statements; the moderator asked prepared questions of them both.
And then the really good part: the moderator asked both candidates questions submitted from the audience. And I got a kick because one of the questions was mine. ("Each of you has a small chance of winning. What goals do you hope to achieve by running a third party presidential campaign?") Afterwards I chatted with some real live people from across the aisle. This is what politics is supposed to be: go out to a church or town hall, listen to some candidates, ask them some questions, talk with some people with different views. Cobb and Badnarik will debate again on October 6 at Cornell.
BTW it's cool that this "Ask Slashdot" is drawing so many highly-moderated responses along the lines of: "forget coolness, you need to think about vendor support".
The FAA thinks it's a threat to America when unidentified people get on airplanes.
Well, I think it's a threat to America when unidentified people write the laws.
It doesn't how good or bad the particular law is. As a voter, I want to know who's making the laws I have to live under, so I can mod up the politicians who make laws I like, and mod down the politicians who make laws that I don't like. Modding == campaign contributions, writing to newspapers, calling into talk shows, and the ultimate mod points: ballots!
I don't know much about Fascism outside of Germany, like Italian Fascism or Japanese military expansion.
I read William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this year. Shirer spent decades of his career living in Germany as a news correspondent. Then he spent five years writing this book.
History is a hell of a lot more complicated than most people's conceptions of it. I would have to spend 20 years of my life, full time, to approach the understanding that Shirer had.
Nationalism is still a potent force in US Politics and a lot of other places too. You want to see nationalism... go over to a discussion on outsourcing and you'll see lots of it. Whether outsourcing is good or bad, there's definitely a nationalist streak to those debates.
Two problems: in his explanation of "P", the author says that P-time algorithms consume an amount of time proportional to the input size. That's way incomplete. P-time problems consume time proportional to some polynomial function of the input size, such as O(n^2), O(n^3), O(n^100), in addition to just plain O(n).
The second problem is where the author states that fast solutions to NP-complete problems would open up vulnerabilities to "hackers and viruses". Well, I'm not up on the latest virus developments, but AFAIK most viruses exploit known vulnerabilities rather than trying to crack algorithmically hard problems. Maybe there's some subtle way a virus could use a powerful P-time factorizer, but I think the author really just stated "hackers and viruses" because it sounded nice.
The article's also incomplete, as other posters have pointed out, because plenty of P-time algorithms are useless for real attacks. If your algorithm takes (1000 years) * (n^1000), where "n" is the key length, that is polynomial time, but it's still too damn long.
And i suppose if you were a public figure, and someone wrote a book with the obvious intent to tarnish your name with false accusations (as it happening in this case), you'd be waving the flag and thumping the first amendment.
Bingo. You got it. That's exactly right. I'd be thumping the first amendment. I would say:
"America is a free country, thank God for that. Like every American, $GADFLY has the freedom under the First Amendment to write anything they want in their books. That doesn't make it true."
Observe the real public statements of real public figures, and you will see that many of them actually take this response.
What do you think a Republican senator would do if they got hassled by being selected on every flight?
They would probably complain quietly to the TSA. They might get their personal problem fixed, or they might not.
But a Republican senator would be much less likely than a Democratic senator to announce the story all over the news media, embarrassing their own party in an election year.
Let it be said: I'm all for embarrassing the incumbent party in an election year, and for repealing the insidious liberty-destroying ineffective "No Fly" lists. I'm just pointing out a more likely reason why you haven't seen any prominent Republican politicians bitching about getting onto the no-fly list.
And for that matter: what do you think the outcome of this political storm is going to be? Is it going to be good or bad for the prospects of TIA?
I think that Ted Kennedy's announcement is going to weaken support among the voting populace for secret gov't databases. If I were in charge of the federal program to build TIA without alarming voters, I would take care not to include any nationally famous elder statesmen who can get on the television news any time they want.
Well, fine. Nobody's suggesting that the airlines forbid you from flying under your real name, so that your family is notified if your plane crashes. Your choice.
However, many political activists have also been screened out of commercial airline flight. Google for "tsa political activist" and read the stories yourself. Or here is a representative story:
John Gilmore wants to travel to Washington, DC to petition his government. Maybe I want to fly out to Las Vegas for the next DefCon without getting into a FBI database. Maybe you want to fly to a WTO meeting or a political convention, either to attend or to protest.
Of course, you can come back and say "the airlines have a security interest in knowing the identity of their customers". I acknowledge that. Perhaps that overrides the liberty of passengers to travel anonymously; perhaps not. However, that's different from your desire to declare your name. You can choose to declare your name, for your own reasons, without stomping on other's people's rights not to declare theirs.
You can't change what other people (the candidates) do. But you can change what you do.
Say you're interested in the race for congress. Find the campaign headquarters for the challenger. Call them up and ask where the challenger is going to be making public appearances in the near future. Look for the event you want -- a coffee klatsch, or a small club meeting, or a debate.
Do the same for the incumbent. And do the same for any minor parties that you find interesting.
If one of the candidates isn't going to any public events that satisfy you, write them a letter and say "I saw [your opponent] at [public event] on [date] but I haven't been able to see you anywhere. I like to get to know my candidates, so I'll be voting for [candidate who showed up and talked and answered questions] this year."
Also, get out your checkbook. Give a couple of bucks to the candidate who shows up and you even halfway agree with. I'm not talking $1000, I'm talking $10.
Taylor was handed a just-finished study that found Microsoft too emotionally biased against open-source code and blind to customer distrust in its own brand.
That cuts both ways.
All right, so we are living the dream. FOSS is competing toe-to-toe with the world's largest software companies across many, many markets.
So compete. Make FOSS better in terms of what customers want. Acknowledge that our competitors are legitimate organizations with legitimate products.
Microsoft is rapidly growing out of the mentality that everything they do must be perfect, and that FOSS can't possibly be serious competition. I'd like to see the free software community and open source communities do likewise.
... were any human beings killed or injured?... were any human beings in danger of being killed or injured?
It's hard to tell from the sketchy news stories, but it looks like AA and UA *do* have a backup plan and *are* executing it. The backup plan is a ground stop for 2-3 hours while they sort things out.
If you want them to have a backup plan which involves providing full service with no interruptions, then you would have a ticket price to fund that.
Slashdot Mirror
First, like many posters, I don't like anybody with power -- a boss, a teacher, a union official, a wife or husband or parent -- abusing that power to make other people vote.
Also, from a pedagogical point of view, how is the act of entering a voting booth related to the study of literature? Somebody can enter the booth whether they've read 0 pages or 1000 pages of campaign literature.
Here's a tougher and more relevant requirement: get a comment moderated "4" or "5" on slashdot, not counting "funny". Even harder: do it as an anonymous coward.
Of course that would be open to cheating. And to be sure, some topics are easy to get mod points on, just put up "RIAA is teh sux0r" in an article on music piracy and that's +4 insightful. But generally, to get mod points, a writer has to have a good thesis, and has to present it in a way that acknowledges the complexity of the subject and also the counter-arguments from the other side.
When I get polled, it goes like this:
"If the election were held today, would you vote for $DEM or $REP ?"
"I would vote for $LIB"
"If the only candidates were $DEM and $REP, which one would you vote for?"
"I would vote for $LIB"
Many polls will add a column marked $LIB (volunteered). Of course, you might want to say $GREEN or "Nader" instead, whatever you want.
I suggest you re-read the last paragraph of my proposal.
I'm suggesting an informal system where more people can securely vote for candidates who are not Bush or Kerry.
I like it when Congress and the President are of different parties.
And I like it even more when the media and the President are of different parties.
Democratic president? Gimme talk radio and bloggers.
Republican president? nytimes.com will yell "emperor has no clothes!" every day for four years.
"This basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decided whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." -- Thomas Jefferson
Good for democracy.
The votes belong to the voters, not the candidates.
Anybody who wants to vote for Ralph Nader can damn well vote for Ralph Nader, and anybody who doesn't want to, doesn't have to. I think all the prospective Nader voters have been exposed to enough advertising and history by now to make up their own minds whether they prefer "vote for what you really want" or "vote for lesser evil".
Regarding that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" meme goes -- that sounds uncomfortably similar to President Bush's statement: "if you're not with us you're against us."
One thing that Nader voters can do is pair up. In the last election, Nader Traders paired up Nader voters in swing states with Gore voters in non-swing states. The Nader Traders are back in action this election.
There's another kind of pairing: if you really want to vote for Nader, but don't want Bush to win, go find somebody who really hates Bush but doesn't want Kerry to win. Make a deal: "I won't vote for Kerry if you won't vote for Bush." Then you go vote for Nader or Cobb, and your buddy votes for Badnarik or Peroutka. The major party outcome is unaffected, and you both vote for the candidate you really wanted -- which helps build the party you really want.
(1) What were people living like one generation before the industrial revolution?
(2) Why did people take those 60-hour minuscule-pay inhumane jobs, and send their children in, too?
People love to compare conditions in factories during the industrial revolution to conditions today. But that's not the right comparison. The right comparison is conditions in factories during the industrial revolution to conditions outside the factories during the industrial revolution.
Suppose you're an anti-war progressive who's really turned off by Kerry "bring the troops home in 2008, maybe later". But you really, really don't want to see Bush re-elected.
... but this paleo isn't about to vote for Kerry. They are about to hold their nose and vote for Bush.
Go out and find a paleo-conservative in your own state who's sick of Bush because the federal government grows even faster under Bush than it did under Clinton
Pair up. You vote for somebody you really like, Nader or Cobb. Your pair pal votes for Badnarik or Peroutka. The immediate winner of the election isn't affected. But both of you get to express what you really want. That way you get more of what you want in the future -- starting with improved ballot access.
Think of it as your own personal IRV hack.
Use whatever security you want -- both of you get absentee ballots, or you just go find another human being who's different from you politically that you can trust.
House Roll Call for HAVA
Senate Roll Call for HAVA
This was a bipartisan job. Kerry and Edwards both voted for it, and Bush signed it.
Here's the historical evidence that term limits and elections will continue to happen. Well, just one data point, but I think it bears some weight.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was an election day in New York City. Because of the terrorist attack, that election was postponed for two weeks until September 25, 2001. The general election was held on schedule on November 6, 2001.
Rudy Giuliani's name was not on the ballot. He had served two terms and was prohibited by New York State law from serving a third term.
So, combine these elements: a large terrorist attack, a popular Republican mayor who wanted to continue to serve, and term limit law. As is proper, the law was upheld, the general election took place on schedule, and the term-limited incumbent was not on the ballot.
I think that the American electoral system istough enough to run the elections on schedule in 2008. Of course, we'll be voting in our gerry-mandered winner-take-all districts, which will still suck.
And if you want more swing districts: term limits. We added a constitutional amendment to term-limit the President and Vice President, and that's worked out pretty well.
You're right; the bill was never signed into law, so the Supreme Court never ruled on it. I don't know where I got the idea that the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of Roosevelt's proposal when it never became law.
Imagine the outcry today if President Bush were to suggest a similar measure!
WTF? When someone runs for office, and gets elected, I expect them to be ready to do their job ANY damn day.
Now maybe you're talking about scheduling hearings on Sunday at 3:00 AM, or during a recess, or something like that. If so, point to a link. Otherwise, if a senator can't show up for their JOB, that's a good reason to elect someone else who can.
You need to read a little bit more history, until you get to the part where FDR didn't like the decisions the Supreme Court made.
FDR checked his constitution, noticed that it didn't actually say "number of Supreme Court justices: 9" on it, and called for legislation to allow him to appoint six more supreme court justices (as well as 44 additional federal judges).
The reason that you don't see 15 judges today is that the Supreme Court, as well as popular opinion, shot down Roosevelt's plan. However, the court became much more complaisant about the Administration's laws after that.
Try google on "roosevelt supreme court packing" and read up.
Here's an idea.
... imagine what history would be like if they had gotten 1000 more trades for Gore!
Remember the "Nader Traders" of 2000? They were a way for mainstream Democrats and more progressive liberals to work together to get more votes for Nader without hurting Gore. Indeed, the original Nader Traders said that they signed up several thousand people in Florida in 2000 to trade Gore votes into Florida
How about setting up some trades for people who are sick of both major parties but feel forced to pick one of them to keep the other one out?
So all the conversatives who think that Bush and the neocons are headed for an American Empire and a crushingly huge government pair up with progressives who think Kerry's an establishment tool but at least he's not Bush. They each agree not to vote for the rotting, corrupt major party candidate. "I won't vote for Kerry if you won't vote for Bush". Kerry and Bush both lose, and Nader, Badnarik, Cobb, and Peroutka gain. So do the voters, because they get to vote for what they *really want*, without running into that "a vote for Peroutka is a vote for Kerry!" crap.
It actually gives some of the advantages of IRV -- registering your real choice -- without having to change the whole election system. Just pair up.
Whaddaya say?
I saw the Badnarik/Cobb debate in New York City last week.
There were about 200 people in the audience. C-SPAN had a crew there.
The candidates didn't directly question each other. They made opening statements; the moderator asked prepared questions of them both.
And then the really good part: the moderator asked both candidates questions submitted from the audience. And I got a kick because one of the questions was mine. ("Each of you has a small chance of winning. What goals do you hope to achieve by running a third party presidential campaign?")
Afterwards I chatted with some real live people from across the aisle. This is what politics is supposed to be: go out to a church or town hall, listen to some candidates, ask them some questions, talk with some people with different views.
Cobb and Badnarik will debate again on October 6 at Cornell.
Yes, it looks like the original questioner wants to do:
% apt-get foo
% apt-get bar
% apt-get qux
But really, it's much more important that these commands work and are supported!
% ibm-get websphere
% ibm-get db2
% ibm-get tivoli
BTW it's cool that this "Ask Slashdot" is drawing so many highly-moderated responses along the lines of: "forget coolness, you need to think about vendor support".
The FAA thinks it's a threat to America when unidentified people get on airplanes.
Well, I think it's a threat to America when unidentified people write the laws.
It doesn't how good or bad the particular law is. As a voter, I want to know who's making the laws I have to live under, so I can mod up the politicians who make laws I like, and mod down the politicians who make laws that I don't like. Modding == campaign contributions, writing to newspapers, calling into talk shows, and the ultimate mod points: ballots!
That is accountability in a democratic society.
I don't know much about Fascism outside of Germany, like Italian Fascism or Japanese military expansion.
... go over to a discussion on outsourcing and you'll see lots of it. Whether outsourcing is good or bad, there's definitely a nationalist streak to those debates.
I read William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this year. Shirer spent decades of his career living in Germany as a news correspondent. Then he spent five years writing this book.
History is a hell of a lot more complicated than most people's conceptions of it. I would have to spend 20 years of my life, full time, to approach the understanding that Shirer had.
Nationalism is still a potent force in US Politics and a lot of other places too. You want to see nationalism
Actually, the article's not all that bad.
Two problems: in his explanation of "P", the author says that P-time algorithms consume an amount of time proportional to the input size. That's way incomplete. P-time problems consume time proportional to some polynomial function of the input size, such as O(n^2), O(n^3), O(n^100), in addition to just plain O(n).
The second problem is where the author states that fast solutions to NP-complete problems would open up vulnerabilities to "hackers and viruses". Well, I'm not up on the latest virus developments, but AFAIK most viruses exploit known vulnerabilities rather than trying to crack algorithmically hard problems. Maybe there's some subtle way a virus could use a powerful P-time factorizer, but I think the author really just stated "hackers and viruses" because it sounded nice.
The article's also incomplete, as other posters have pointed out, because plenty of P-time algorithms are useless for real attacks. If your algorithm takes (1000 years) * (n^1000), where "n" is the key length, that is polynomial time, but it's still too damn long.
I've seen much worse in the trade press.
And i suppose if you were a public figure, and someone wrote a book with the obvious intent to tarnish your name with false accusations (as it happening in this case), you'd be waving the flag and thumping the first amendment.
Bingo. You got it. That's exactly right. I'd be thumping the first amendment. I would say:
"America is a free country, thank God for that. Like every American, $GADFLY has the freedom under the First Amendment to write anything they want in their books. That doesn't make it true."
Observe the real public statements of real public figures, and you will see that many of them actually take this response.
Think it through.
What do you think a Republican senator would do if they got hassled by being selected on every flight?
They would probably complain quietly to the TSA. They might get their personal problem fixed, or they might not.
But a Republican senator would be much less likely than a Democratic senator to announce the story all over the news media, embarrassing their own party in an election year.
Let it be said: I'm all for embarrassing the incumbent party in an election year, and for repealing the insidious liberty-destroying ineffective "No Fly" lists. I'm just pointing out a more likely reason why you haven't seen any prominent Republican politicians bitching about getting onto the no-fly list.
And for that matter: what do you think the outcome of this political storm is going to be? Is it going to be good or bad for the prospects of TIA?
I think that Ted Kennedy's announcement is going to weaken support among the voting populace for secret gov't databases. If I were in charge of the federal program to build TIA without alarming voters, I would take care not to include any nationally famous elder statesmen who can get on the television news any time they want.
Well, fine. Nobody's suggesting that the airlines forbid you from flying under your real name, so that your family is notified if your plane crashes. Your choice.
However, many political activists have also been screened out of commercial airline flight. Google for "tsa political activist" and read the stories yourself. Or here is a representative story:
No-fly blacklist snares political activists
John Gilmore wants to travel to Washington, DC to petition his government. Maybe I want to fly out to Las Vegas for the next DefCon without getting into a FBI database. Maybe you want to fly to a WTO meeting or a political convention, either to attend or to protest.
Of course, you can come back and say "the airlines have a security interest in knowing the identity of their customers". I acknowledge that. Perhaps that overrides the liberty of passengers to travel anonymously; perhaps not. However, that's different from your desire to declare your name. You can choose to declare your name, for your own reasons, without stomping on other's people's rights not to declare theirs.
You can't change what other people (the candidates) do. But you can change what you do.
Say you're interested in the race for congress. Find the campaign headquarters for the challenger. Call them up and ask where the challenger is going to be making public appearances in the near future. Look for the event you want -- a coffee klatsch, or a small club meeting, or a debate.
Do the same for the incumbent. And do the same for any minor parties that you find interesting.
If one of the candidates isn't going to any public events that satisfy you, write them a letter and say "I saw [your opponent] at [public event] on [date] but I haven't been able to see you anywhere. I like to get to know my candidates, so I'll be voting for [candidate who showed up and talked and answered questions] this year."
Also, get out your checkbook. Give a couple of bucks to the candidate who shows up and you even halfway agree with. I'm not talking $1000, I'm talking $10.
Taylor was handed a just-finished study that found Microsoft too emotionally biased against open-source code and blind to customer distrust in its own brand.
That cuts both ways.
All right, so we are living the dream. FOSS is competing toe-to-toe with the world's largest software companies across many, many markets.
So compete. Make FOSS better in terms of what customers want. Acknowledge that our competitors are legitimate organizations with legitimate products.
Microsoft is rapidly growing out of the mentality that everything they do must be perfect, and that FOSS can't possibly be serious competition. I'd like to see the free software community and open source communities do likewise.
... were any human beings killed or injured? ... were any human beings in danger of being killed or injured?
It's hard to tell from the sketchy news stories, but it looks like AA and UA *do* have a backup plan and *are* executing it. The backup plan is a ground stop for 2-3 hours while they sort things out.
If you want them to have a backup plan which involves providing full service with no interruptions, then you would have a ticket price to fund that.
Darl McBride.
... nasty hackerses stole my precioussss ..."
"My precioussss