Here in Brasil, if you don't show up for voting, and don't justify your absence to an Electoral Judge, paying a fine, you can't get a public job, and your citizenship is severely restricted until you regularize your situation.
Bigger cities are doing it for *more* than 10 years. Here in Belo Horizonte (just around the corner from you) we are doing it since the mayoral election that preceded FHC's first election (8 years + 2 years + 1 1/2 = 11 1/2 years). I know, I was mesário.
As we have been using this tech for the last 12-14 years, you would think this is not really the case. People not-tech-savvy here think of the electronic ballot box as a phone. You dial the number, see the face, hit "Confirma" (ok). I was "mesário", an election official, in the three first elections to use the machines: the first one was for "city councilpeople + mayor + state congresspeople + governor + congreespeople + senator"; the second one, presidential, was in two rounds (meaning no candidate got more than 50% in the first round); and the third one, like the first. Imagine that. In the first electronic election, people had to "dial" 5 digits + ok + 3 digits + ok + 5 digits + ok + 2 digits + ok + 5 digits + ok + 2 digits + ok + ok (all ok?). In our electoral section, in those three election (five or six rounds, for the mayor/governor elections are in two rounds, too), we had only one case (a 90-yo lady) who could not vote; as she was optional, anyway, she gave up. And this happened only in the first time around; in the other elections, she showed up (impossible to miss and the sections are always the same), voted ok, went away. The Electoral Courts nowadays make available in the poorer regions fac-simile voting machines, so people can train themselves (oriented by an electoral official, who is forbidden to give any real candidates names or numbers) in the use of the box. I don't know about India, but at the present day and age, Brasil has more economic-related problems and political-ethics-related problems than democracy-related problems, IMHO. Our bad experiences during the autocratic regime (1969-1984) made us implement a very deep rooted democratic system and way of thinking; it's not foolproof yet (is any? I don't consider the outcome of the last USofA elections as a prime model of democracy), but it's not a real problem anymore. We do have a real solid democracy, and I hope we learn how to use it properly.
Party-appointed technical representatives can audit the whole system. false. The OS was not audited (nor the VirtuOS version 1 electronic ballot box nor the WindowsCE version 2). Other parts of the system were not audited, either. If there is some flaw in the diskette driver or in the flash memory driver, for example, it could be exploited; it does not seem practical to me, altough, because of the distributed responsabilities in our electoral process (I probably mentioned it before, here or in k5, but I can't find it now). The case is that a Judge is in charge of the machines for each 10k-100k voters (each machine is used in the range of 600-10000 votes). Many tests are conducted in the machines, by the electoral judges and party officials. Besides, for the electronic ballots in a machine to be considered valid (-- is this a valid English construct? --) the machine must be reset, and a special ballot report called the "zerésima" (zeroth) has to be taken from it just before the first vote is entered. India and Brazil have other things in common: illiteracy and poverty. Most of the users of the electronic ballots in Brazil cannot understand what they read on the screen. Electoral candidates in small towns "teach" people to vote on them, by making them memorize the key sequences. false. The photograph of the person you're voting shows up in the screen. The sequence of keys is numeric, and even with our high illiteracy rate, people normally can read numbers. Besides, voting is not mandatory to illiterate people and to people over 65 (as it is for the others [except teens in 16-18 range]), which are the people who have more difficulty with the machines. I just wonder if these countries couldn't be spending time, money, and minds on more relevant issues. The items above are of fact; this is one of my personal opinion: there is no issue more important than democracy. Here in Brasil, the machines make for a relatively safe (*) electoral process, and smooth to boot (last presidential election took less than 48 hours to count 100M+ votes). (*) I had the opinion that it was safer than the paper-based process -- that has a lot of security issues, too; thanks to Bruce Schneier, I am less certain now. in here, he shows how few percent of the votes should be swinged to reverse the result of an election. I am still curious how would this apply to our electoral system (**) (**) Here, for presidential elections, the elections are "direct", "majoritary", in "two rounds" (?! don't know if those are the correct English terms) Meaning: the candidates are voted; if one of them makes >50% of the valid votes, it's the next president; else, new elections 15 days from now with only the two most voted candidates (one of them will make >50% of the valid votes). For parlament elections, the system is of "parties lists", meaning you can vote for a candidate or for a party; the quota of the party in the house is separated and filled with the most voted candidates in that party.
I don't know the brand, but I came across a jacket that said in the label, in French: our president is an idiot, sorry, we should pull out of Iraq immediately.
I am a coder. And a sysadmin. Been up in the ladder, was a PHB and a big-shot (CIO) for three and two years, respectively. It sucks. I love to code and hack. I code and hack the things I like to code and hack 10x better, faster, well-tought, and maintainable than when I got out of university 13 years ago.
Think before you write. Eat you own dogfood. It should not be the merchant's task to be the anti-fraud police. Even when it is on the merchant's money when fraud occurs? Merchants have to protect themselves. I was even half-joking in my comment, but your reaction makes me sure it has to be something right: Yes, if you suspect of fraud, delay the delivery. one-time disposable cc numbers Not every bank has those available. In particular, in Brasil none has. If the banks transferred the responsibility for fraud from merchants to the customers, the use of such features would skyrocket. No, use of credit cards would be zero in a week. You have obviously never run a business before, so the term "customer satsfaction" probably seems like an overused cliche to you. You don't know me, do you? Introducing a delay is too artificial and it is as much useless as it is simple. It should not be the merchant's task to be the anti-fraud police. No, it's not. If it's not fraud, the suspicious client will complain to the credit card company. When investigation starts, your company will say I'm sorry, there was an error, here's your merchandise, should you take it, or else here's your money, here's some compensation gift, whitelist the CC# and voilá. Get real. Well, I'm the one posting here under my real name, instead of some mildly offensive nick. So, think before you write.
"capture" the value *and* do not deliver the goods. the "poor fellow" whose cc# was taken will complain, you reimburse him his money, the cc# is now blacklisted.
Every single cell phone and operator that I know of in my poor 3rd-world country has caller ID. Why, oh, Why, Why? Why would I call the same cell phone twice in a row? If the callee just delayed in answering the phone, s?he will call back. If he is in a conference, movie theather, meeting or other impeditive (to answer the phone) plane, s?he will call back when possible. If matters are of urgency, send a SMS.
But it's really the polite thing to do. I get in meetings a lot of the time, and my wife is a D.A. and spends half the day in court. We don't call each other unless it's really life-and-death, what we do is to SMS the other saying "call me, problems at Lucas' school" or, better yet, "don't forget to bring groceries", "I'll be home at 19h00", stuff like that.
But have you tought about how long will it take for you to upload 20-25MB? Let alone 1G? This service is really good for people like me (I have 10 years of accumulated e-mail stored), and the sheer size of the mboxes will keep leeches away because of the bandwidth necessary to fill it. And if they are smart (I risk to say, they are) they will limit bandwidth in the upload of really big attachments (so, if you want to upload an entire cd, it will take four to five days). It's really stupid to think this service is ab-usable.:-)
I'm not sure that's a universal truth And I am sure it's a universal lie. Use the libraries, Luke. In Perl, there is a load of very efficient libraries. In Python, besides the libraries, there are psyco and pyrex. They really rock.
Whether Eiffel actually has the virtues often claimed for it, and whether these virtues outweigh its vices compared to other languages, is another question for another day What? I am puzzled, and I will ask you (I don't think it's OT, too) to make today the day for enumerating its vices:-) It would be a nice counterpoint to its virtues. Thanks!
Slashdot Mirror
You get what you pay for...
I don't mind if they use paper or not, I would just like they get GWB out of comission, which I hope they'll do this year.
Here in Brasil, if you don't show up for voting, and don't justify your absence to an Electoral Judge, paying a fine, you can't get a public job, and your citizenship is severely restricted until you regularize your situation.
And, to boot, we have an area bigger than the continental USofA.
I think he is a Swede, really.
Bigger cities are doing it for *more* than 10 years. Here in Belo Horizonte (just around the corner from you) we are doing it since the mayoral election that preceded FHC's first election (8 years + 2 years + 1 1/2 = 11 1/2 years).
I know, I was mesário.
As we have been using this tech for the last 12-14 years, you would think this is not really the case. People not-tech-savvy here think of the electronic ballot box as a phone. You dial the number, see the face, hit "Confirma" (ok).
I was "mesário", an election official, in the three first elections to use the machines: the first one was for "city councilpeople + mayor + state congresspeople + governor + congreespeople + senator"; the second one, presidential, was in two rounds (meaning no candidate got more than 50% in the first round); and the third one, like the first.
Imagine that. In the first electronic election, people had to "dial" 5 digits + ok + 3 digits + ok + 5 digits + ok + 2 digits + ok + 5 digits + ok + 2 digits + ok + ok (all ok?).
In our electoral section, in those three election (five or six rounds, for the mayor/governor elections are in two rounds, too), we had only one case (a 90-yo lady) who could not vote; as she was optional, anyway, she gave up. And this happened only in the first time around; in the other elections, she showed up (impossible to miss and the sections are always the same), voted ok, went away. The Electoral Courts nowadays make available in the poorer regions fac-simile voting machines, so people can train themselves (oriented by an electoral official, who is forbidden to give any real candidates names or numbers) in the use of the box.
I don't know about India, but at the present day and age, Brasil has more economic-related problems and political-ethics-related problems than democracy-related problems, IMHO. Our bad experiences during the autocratic regime (1969-1984) made us implement a very deep rooted democratic system and way of thinking; it's not foolproof yet (is any? I don't consider the outcome of the last USofA elections as a prime model of democracy), but it's not a real problem anymore. We do have a real solid democracy, and I hope we learn how to use it properly.
the original WordPerfect.
Party-appointed technical representatives can audit the whole system. false. The OS was not audited (nor the VirtuOS version 1 electronic ballot box nor the WindowsCE version 2). Other parts of the system were not audited, either.
If there is some flaw in the diskette driver or in the flash memory driver, for example, it could be exploited; it does not seem practical to me, altough, because of the distributed responsabilities in our electoral process (I probably mentioned it before, here or in k5, but I can't find it now). The case is that a Judge is in charge of the machines for each 10k-100k voters (each machine is used in the range of 600-10000 votes).
Many tests are conducted in the machines, by the electoral judges and party officials.
Besides, for the electronic ballots in a machine to be considered valid (-- is this a valid English construct? --) the machine must be reset, and a special ballot report called the "zerésima" (zeroth) has to be taken from it just before the first vote is entered.
India and Brazil have other things in common: illiteracy and poverty. Most of the users of the electronic ballots in Brazil cannot understand what they read on the screen. Electoral candidates in small towns "teach" people to vote on them, by making them memorize the key sequences. false. The photograph of the person you're voting shows up in the screen. The sequence of keys is numeric, and even with our high illiteracy rate, people normally can read numbers. Besides, voting is not mandatory to illiterate people and to people over 65 (as it is for the others [except teens in 16-18 range]), which are the people who have more difficulty with the machines.
I just wonder if these countries couldn't be spending time, money, and minds on more relevant issues. The items above are of fact; this is one of my personal opinion: there is no issue more important than democracy. Here in Brasil, the machines make for a relatively safe (*) electoral process, and smooth to boot (last presidential election took less than 48 hours to count 100M+ votes).
(*) I had the opinion that it was safer than the paper-based process -- that has a lot of security issues, too; thanks to Bruce Schneier, I am less certain now. in here, he shows how few percent of the votes should be swinged to reverse the result of an election. I am still curious how would this apply to our electoral system (**)
(**) Here, for presidential elections, the elections are "direct", "majoritary", in "two rounds" (?! don't know if those are the correct English terms) Meaning: the candidates are voted; if one of them makes >50% of the valid votes, it's the next president; else, new elections 15 days from now with only the two most voted candidates (one of them will make >50% of the valid votes). For parlament elections, the system is of "parties lists", meaning you can vote for a candidate or for a party; the quota of the party in the house is separated and filled with the most voted candidates in that party.
As long as it's an NT shop, as opposed to a 9x...
Did you really just mixed musician David Bowie and SCO's lawyer Davie Boies?
I like a lot some of the new syntaxes for this:
.= new :x(2) :y(3);
my Point $p
%reserved_words> = 1;
You're supposing there is only one type of label.
I don't know the brand, but I came across a jacket that said in the label, in French: our president is an idiot, sorry, we should pull out of Iraq immediately.
I am a coder. And a sysadmin. Been up in the ladder, was a PHB and a big-shot (CIO) for three and two years, respectively. It sucks. I love to code and hack. I code and hack the things I like to code and hack 10x better, faster, well-tought, and maintainable than when I got out of university 13 years ago.
Think before you write.
Eat you own dogfood.
It should not be the merchant's task to be the anti-fraud police.
Even when it is on the merchant's money when fraud occurs? Merchants have to protect themselves.
I was even half-joking in my comment, but your reaction makes me sure it has to be something right: Yes, if you suspect of fraud, delay the delivery.
one-time disposable cc numbers
Not every bank has those available. In particular, in Brasil none has.
If the banks transferred the responsibility for fraud from merchants to the customers, the use of such features would skyrocket.
No, use of credit cards would be zero in a week.
You have obviously never run a business before, so the term "customer satsfaction" probably seems like an overused cliche to you.
You don't know me, do you?
Introducing a delay is too artificial and it is as much useless as it is simple. It should not be the merchant's task to be the anti-fraud police.
No, it's not. If it's not fraud, the suspicious client will complain to the credit card company. When investigation starts, your company will say I'm sorry, there was an error, here's your merchandise, should you take it, or else here's your money, here's some compensation gift, whitelist the CC# and voilá.
Get real. Well, I'm the one posting here under my real name, instead of some mildly offensive nick.
So, think before you write.
What happens if you fly? You would be outside the map, then.
"capture" the value *and* do not deliver the goods. the "poor fellow" whose cc# was taken will complain, you reimburse him his money, the cc# is now blacklisted.
the operative word being later, not repeatedly twenty times in a row.
Every single cell phone and operator that I know of in my poor 3rd-world country has caller ID. Why, oh, Why, Why? Why would I call the same cell phone twice in a row? If the callee just delayed in answering the phone, s?he will call back. If he is in a conference, movie theather, meeting or other impeditive (to answer the phone) plane, s?he will call back when possible. If matters are of urgency, send a SMS.
But it's really the polite thing to do. I get in meetings a lot of the time, and my wife is a D.A. and spends half the day in court. We don't call each other unless it's really life-and-death, what we do is to SMS the other saying "call me, problems at Lucas' school" or, better yet, "don't forget to bring groceries", "I'll be home at 19h00", stuff like that.
But have you tought about how long will it take for you to upload 20-25MB? Let alone 1G? This service is really good for people like me (I have 10 years of accumulated e-mail stored), and the sheer size of the mboxes will keep leeches away because of the bandwidth necessary to fill it. :-)
And if they are smart (I risk to say, they are) they will limit bandwidth in the upload of really big attachments (so, if you want to upload an entire cd, it will take four to five days).
It's really stupid to think this service is ab-usable.
I'm not sure that's a universal truth
And I am sure it's a universal lie. Use the libraries, Luke. In Perl, there is a load of very efficient libraries. In Python, besides the libraries, there are psyco and pyrex. They really rock.
Whether Eiffel actually has the virtues often claimed for it, and whether these virtues outweigh its vices compared to other languages, is another question for another day :-) It would be a nice counterpoint to its virtues. Thanks!
What? I am puzzled, and I will ask you (I don't think it's OT, too) to make today the day for enumerating its vices
Think about it, if I worked with them, I could make home reeking of sake and tell the wife it's an occupational hazard!!!