Human error is likely to average out over a large number of votes, however it is hard to hack a large number of human counters, computers on the other hand are easy to hack.
This. Exactly.
The simple solution is, use computers only for counting and not for casting votes.
I would argue that you don't even need this... counting is not difficult, and if you have at least two people counting the same ballots, then you've got redundancy that can often catch errors by even a single vote. If there are discrepancies, you recount the votes at the station where the discrepancies occur right then. The whole process shouldn't take more than an hour, and probably much less.
Likely it is something like that. However, there is NO reason at all, none, not a single reason in the universe, to have any form of automated vote counting.....
If someone is going to blather on about "counting", ffs. It's not that hard, at all. We have all those parties, and we get counts an hour after polls close.
I agree.... but just because it's not hard to do, and doesn't even take very long doesn't mean that it's not a reason.
There is a difference between not having any reason and not having any good or justifiable reason.
The best steganography methods work because the uninformed viewer doesn't know what to look for, not because humans are crappy at seing minor anomalies in a data stream. A computer that didn't know what to look for would not do significantly better at finding secret content than a human in that respect.... at best it may be able to identify data streams that are "suspicious", and believed to contain some secret data, but this would be based on on some stastistical probability, and quitte far removed from certain. Even then, it would not be able to identify with any measure of confidence what the alleged secret content actually was, assuming it was even there.
They SAY it is only 'occasionally', but the expectation is that you get a response 100% of the time this 'occasionally' happening after hours support that is needed.
You are committing the strawman fallacy... when I say that it should be occasionally, I meant that it would actually *be* occasionally.... not something that they merely say and then don't actually mean, which is what you seem to have implied that I meant. I was suggesting that a company treat its employees fairly, and not say "occasionally", but actually just mean regularly. This doesn't require that anyone be a fortune teller, it just requires that the company is being well managed, and operating in a way that actually can, under normal circumstances, survive employees working only regular hours. My point is that even in these cases, exceptional circumstances can still happen, and if an allowance is not made for those exceptions, then those circumstances might very well spell the end of everybody's paycheck because employees are too busy saying "it's not my problem it's after 6pm".
I was never suggesting that a person be available 24/7, 365 days a year. I suggested that *occasionally* it might be necessary for a person to take care of critical matters that really can't wait. I thought I had made it clear that this was an exception, and not a ruile.... my dispute was that making a rule like "no business decisions after 6pm" as an inviolable hard and fast rule could easily end up spelling the end of the company if something happens to go sour one day. I can think of perhaps half a dozen times in the past 15 years where I've seen something like that happen in three different companies I've worked for in that time... and thankfully, every company where I've had it happen has always been very grateful that I stuck around to help mitigate what would have otherwise been a disaster, and has not taken it for granted... I suppose that makes a big difference, actually.
"No business decision should be made between 6 pm and 8 am."
A couple of points I'd like to bring up about this
While in general, I do agree that this should be the ideal, at the very least, if the company has clients overseas, there's a pretty good chance that the clients' business hours aren't going to always coincide with the company's. Practical business sense demands more flexibility than some hard-and-fast rule like like "no business decisions after 6pm" .
Secondly, it can come to pass from time to time that things need to be taken care of... immediately, to prevent potentially even permanently damaging issues. While this is more likely to be an issue for employees who function in a manager or supervisor role, it's very easy for me to imagine cases arising where if an employee decides that they've clocked out for the day and feel they aren't responsible for anything more, they might not get to clock in tomorrow because there's not going to be a company left to clock in to.
Now ideally, situations where an employee but it's stupidly naive to throw some kind of absolute rule around about when you will conduct your business without making any allowances for exceptions... and of course, an employee should also be justly compensated for their extra time on the occasions where it has been needed.
Finally, speaking for myself and from my own personal experience, I cannot stand to leave work when I have not yet felt like I've accomplished something constructive that day... I do not ask for compensation from my employer for this, because it is voluntary and not demanded of me, but if when I'm in the middle of some large programming task, I'd rather get it to some sort of point where I feel like I could leave it and pick up tomorrow instead of just dropping everything the minute the clock hits 5:30, where it can spell the difference between taking a couple of minutes to get myself back up to speed with where I was because I was at a point where a logical break is possible and having to take a an hour or more to basically completely mentally reinvent everything I did yesterday so that I can be on the same page that I was when I left the work at a point where no logical breakpoint can be found. Usually, this does not amount to staying too much longer, so I don't find it hinders my life balance in any way..
Not without repealing the 22nd amendment. While repealing amendments is possible, it requires 2/3 majority from both houses, which isn't realistically going to happen this term or even the next one.
If we actually are responsible for getting ourselves here, then we can definitely get ourselves out of it
Supressing the urge to laugh hysterically at how flawed this is, and giving you the benefit of the doubt that you may have meant something else, do you want to try and clarify that point just a bit? Because as it stands, that conclusion does not follow from the premise unless you believe that humans can travel backwards in time.
I never suggested there would be a net gain.... I only said that it is technologically possible to do.... no futuristic technology would be required. The reason we don't is because, as you say, it isn't economically feasible.
The only way that technology factors into it is that we don't have technology that is cheap enough to make it viable. That's entirely different from being outside of what is technologically viable because the price of current technology can always potentially come down.
Well.... prices up here in Canada are somewhat higher than in the USA... and this might reflect my evaluation. Up here, the Tesla model 3 starts at $64.1k, while the BMW3 sedan starts at $48.9k. The Fusion, which in terms of size and overall appearance is (IMO) subjectively comparable, starts at $22k. I was basing car class not on any official designation per se, but more in terms of what the car simply looks like in terms of size and general overall appearance. Obviously a luxury car is not technically in the same class as one that is not, but if they look to be roughly the same size and have at least a similar visual aesthetic, then at least by that metric, they should be comparable.
As for the Tesla and BMW3 being a luxury car, yeah.... but if one is willing to accept that it's a luxury item in the first place, why is anyone trying to that it's also supposedly affordable?
The Tesla is an amazing car, and I certainly don't judge them harshly on that count by any means... but I'd never in a million years think that they are somehow priced "affordably".
Worrying about formatting before you've even finished writing a program is a totally ass-backwards way of development... like using LaTeX to create a document and trying to get the spacing of certain tables correct even before you've finished composing them.
Computers are very good at formatting code if formatting can otherwise be inferred by the syntactic content. Requiring programmers to spend even an iota of concentration doing something a computer can do automatically for them when they are just trying to get the goddamn program done is an utter waste of human resources.
Actually, the Tesla model 3 starting price is nearly 50% more than the BMW 3, and going by general appearance, and size, is actually not significantly different from the Ford Fusion, whose price starts at just over a third of the price that the Tesla model 3 starts at.
Seems obvious that the tech company would only have to disclose what portions of their software are open (or for that matter, not under their direct control in general) and so have the potential to be reviewed by foreign agents without the company's involvement. The military could then make an informed decision to evaluate the severity of any threat to their nation if those specific portions of the software were the subjhect of a a foreign agent probe.
It took 15 years to execute on our initial goal to produce an affordable, long-range electric vehicle...
If you want to call costing twice as much as conventional vehicles that are otherwise in the same or similar class based on size and general exterior asthetic "affordable"... sure.
I know exactly what he was talking about... but there is precisely zero basis to think that setting up off-world permanent mining facilities is not technologically possible today. It has only not been done because it is not economically viable, not because it isn't possible.
If you know of some mitigating reason why you think that setting up permanent mining operations on another body such as the moon, mars, or on an asteroid, is actually outside of current technological capability, please share it with the rest of the class here... because as things stand, it seems to be self evident that this is something that most certainly can be done... right now, if somebody really wanted to badly enough, and had the money to finance it.
But again, do not conflate what is technologically possible with what is economically feasible. Nobody was saying that it is economically feasible to do this, only that it is well within current technological limits today.
You did not say that.... you did, however, convey a sarcastic tone that implied incredulity that such a thing is actually technologically possible today.
As many others have already stated, it is entirely technologically possible... just not economically viable right now.
Much like returning to the moon in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
One word: steganography. Ideally, such unbreakable encryption won't be distinguishable from innocuous content.
This. Exactly.
I would argue that you don't even need this... counting is not difficult, and if you have at least two people counting the same ballots, then you've got redundancy that can often catch errors by even a single vote. If there are discrepancies, you recount the votes at the station where the discrepancies occur right then. The whole process shouldn't take more than an hour, and probably much less.
I agree.... but just because it's not hard to do, and doesn't even take very long doesn't mean that it's not a reason.
There is a difference between not having any reason and not having any good or justifiable reason.
The best steganography methods work because the uninformed viewer doesn't know what to look for, not because humans are crappy at seing minor anomalies in a data stream. A computer that didn't know what to look for would not do significantly better at finding secret content than a human in that respect.... at best it may be able to identify data streams that are "suspicious", and believed to contain some secret data, but this would be based on on some stastistical probability, and quitte far removed from certain. Even then, it would not be able to identify with any measure of confidence what the alleged secret content actually was, assuming it was even there.
You are committing the strawman fallacy... when I say that it should be occasionally, I meant that it would actually *be* occasionally.... not something that they merely say and then don't actually mean, which is what you seem to have implied that I meant. I was suggesting that a company treat its employees fairly, and not say "occasionally", but actually just mean regularly. This doesn't require that anyone be a fortune teller, it just requires that the company is being well managed, and operating in a way that actually can, under normal circumstances, survive employees working only regular hours. My point is that even in these cases, exceptional circumstances can still happen, and if an allowance is not made for those exceptions, then those circumstances might very well spell the end of everybody's paycheck because employees are too busy saying "it's not my problem it's after 6pm".
I was never suggesting that a person be available 24/7, 365 days a year. I suggested that *occasionally* it might be necessary for a person to take care of critical matters that really can't wait. I thought I had made it clear that this was an exception, and not a ruile.... my dispute was that making a rule like "no business decisions after 6pm" as an inviolable hard and fast rule could easily end up spelling the end of the company if something happens to go sour one day. I can think of perhaps half a dozen times in the past 15 years where I've seen something like that happen in three different companies I've worked for in that time... and thankfully, every company where I've had it happen has always been very grateful that I stuck around to help mitigate what would have otherwise been a disaster, and has not taken it for granted... I suppose that makes a big difference, actually.
A couple of points I'd like to bring up about this
While in general, I do agree that this should be the ideal, at the very least, if the company has clients overseas, there's a pretty good chance that the clients' business hours aren't going to always coincide with the company's. Practical business sense demands more flexibility than some hard-and-fast rule like like "no business decisions after 6pm" .
Secondly, it can come to pass from time to time that things need to be taken care of... immediately, to prevent potentially even permanently damaging issues. While this is more likely to be an issue for employees who function in a manager or supervisor role, it's very easy for me to imagine cases arising where if an employee decides that they've clocked out for the day and feel they aren't responsible for anything more, they might not get to clock in tomorrow because there's not going to be a company left to clock in to.
Now ideally, situations where an employee but it's stupidly naive to throw some kind of absolute rule around about when you will conduct your business without making any allowances for exceptions... and of course, an employee should also be justly compensated for their extra time on the occasions where it has been needed.
Finally, speaking for myself and from my own personal experience, I cannot stand to leave work when I have not yet felt like I've accomplished something constructive that day... I do not ask for compensation from my employer for this, because it is voluntary and not demanded of me, but if when I'm in the middle of some large programming task, I'd rather get it to some sort of point where I feel like I could leave it and pick up tomorrow instead of just dropping everything the minute the clock hits 5:30, where it can spell the difference between taking a couple of minutes to get myself back up to speed with where I was because I was at a point where a logical break is possible and having to take a an hour or more to basically completely mentally reinvent everything I did yesterday so that I can be on the same page that I was when I left the work at a point where no logical breakpoint can be found. Usually, this does not amount to staying too much longer, so I don't find it hinders my life balance in any way..
I see what they did there...
Not without repealing the 22nd amendment. While repealing amendments is possible, it requires 2/3 majority from both houses, which isn't realistically going to happen this term or even the next one.
Supressing the urge to laugh hysterically at how flawed this is, and giving you the benefit of the doubt that you may have meant something else, do you want to try and clarify that point just a bit? Because as it stands, that conclusion does not follow from the premise unless you believe that humans can travel backwards in time.
I did a double-take and went, "like, what? did I see what I thought I saw? " And then I go and look more closely and lo, the absurdity is sincere.
Of course it's a price increase. Taking maximum advantage of it, it went from as little as about 50 cents per movie, to about $3.33 per movie.
Theoretically, this can be reset in no more than 6 and a half years.
Of course, what's left of the country by that point may not be worth resetting.
The only way that technology factors into it is that we don't have technology that is cheap enough to make it viable. That's entirely different from being outside of what is technologically viable because the price of current technology can always potentially come down.
Well.... prices up here in Canada are somewhat higher than in the USA... and this might reflect my evaluation. Up here, the Tesla model 3 starts at $64.1k, while the BMW3 sedan starts at $48.9k. The Fusion, which in terms of size and overall appearance is (IMO) subjectively comparable, starts at $22k. I was basing car class not on any official designation per se, but more in terms of what the car simply looks like in terms of size and general overall appearance. Obviously a luxury car is not technically in the same class as one that is not, but if they look to be roughly the same size and have at least a similar visual aesthetic, then at least by that metric, they should be comparable.
As for the Tesla and BMW3 being a luxury car, yeah.... but if one is willing to accept that it's a luxury item in the first place, why is anyone trying to that it's also supposedly affordable?
The Tesla is an amazing car, and I certainly don't judge them harshly on that count by any means... but I'd never in a million years think that they are somehow priced "affordably".
Worrying about formatting before you've even finished writing a program is a totally ass-backwards way of development... like using LaTeX to create a document and trying to get the spacing of certain tables correct even before you've finished composing them.
Computers are very good at formatting code if formatting can otherwise be inferred by the syntactic content. Requiring programmers to spend even an iota of concentration doing something a computer can do automatically for them when they are just trying to get the goddamn program done is an utter waste of human resources.
Actually, the Tesla model 3 starting price is nearly 50% more than the BMW 3, and going by general appearance, and size, is actually not significantly different from the Ford Fusion, whose price starts at just over a third of the price that the Tesla model 3 starts at.
Seems obvious that the tech company would only have to disclose what portions of their software are open (or for that matter, not under their direct control in general) and so have the potential to be reviewed by foreign agents without the company's involvement. The military could then make an informed decision to evaluate the severity of any threat to their nation if those specific portions of the software were the subjhect of a a foreign agent probe.
If you don't have verifiable accountability, then promises don't mean shit anymore.
I don't know where we went wrong, exactly... because I remember when corporate promises used to count for something.
If you want to call costing twice as much as conventional vehicles that are otherwise in the same or similar class based on size and general exterior asthetic "affordable"... sure.
I know exactly what he was talking about... but there is precisely zero basis to think that setting up off-world permanent mining facilities is not technologically possible today. It has only not been done because it is not economically viable, not because it isn't possible.
If you know of some mitigating reason why you think that setting up permanent mining operations on another body such as the moon, mars, or on an asteroid, is actually outside of current technological capability, please share it with the rest of the class here... because as things stand, it seems to be self evident that this is something that most certainly can be done... right now, if somebody really wanted to badly enough, and had the money to finance it.
But again, do not conflate what is technologically possible with what is economically feasible. Nobody was saying that it is economically feasible to do this, only that it is well within current technological limits today.
Not always.
But I'm just being pedantic... you're of course almost certainly right about what was meant.
You did not say that.... you did, however, convey a sarcastic tone that implied incredulity that such a thing is actually technologically possible today.
As many others have already stated, it is entirely technologically possible... just not economically viable right now.
Much like returning to the moon in the first place.
We occasionally do the former, but far less often than we'd like to.