Nah. This year, it's more unlikely than in 2004 (since it's a new guy--Bush doesn't represent the entire Republican party, though because of the sports-team mentality, he's had their support for several years.) In fact, in recent months, Republicans have been distancing themselves from Bush in order to keep people from associating them--and the party--too much with someone who is so unpopular.
No, the surprising thing is that he managed to get elected in 2004. He had a horrible record. Many Republicans felt betrayed. And yet many simply wouldn't vote for a Democrat because of reasons that have nothing to do with running the country--things like stances on abortion (which is simply never going to be overturned) or alleged flip-flopping (take a look at just about anyone's voting record, and you'll find discrepancies--sometimes because of riders, which should be outlawed.) Some staunch Republican friends of mine, who couldn't stand Bush after his first four year record, declared that they couldn't vote for Kerry because he was too sleazy--though when pressed, they couldn't tell me what about him exuded this.
No, America's pretty fucked up, both in the reasons that its people vote, and in the way the country is run. I love the ideals put forth in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence. I love the ideal that is America. But when people vote based upon looks, or upon whether they'd want to hang out with the guy, I cringe. When people fail to realize that it's a more global world than it was even just 20 years ago, and that we need foreign policy which recognizes this and is capable of adapting, I weep a little. When half of the eligible population doesn't vote because it's too much trouble, I think that maybe we're getting what we deserve--a more polarized class system, a corporate-run government, and a world that hates us for our arrogance.
Of course, that just illustrates flaws in the larger system.
Flaws like the fact that about half of the country hasn't been represented by their president for years.
Flaws like the absurd amount of raw power in the government when the same political party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government.
Personally, I'd love to see the Office of the Vice President staffed by someone of another political party from the President. I'd love to see more political parties represented in elections, and in the Congress. I'd love to see my vote matter, rather than all of the votes in electoral votes in my state going to the person who won half+1 of the popular vote.
Realistically, I just don't see these things happening, because even if it's cyclical, the current system allows for a higher concentration of power in one of two corrupt parties at any given time.
The point was that whether you choose to live your life in some way, or whether you were born in a certain way, shouldn't matter for employment. If you can do the job, you should be allowed to keep it. An employer firing you for choices you make off the job should simply not be legal. Of course, it's generally easy enough to fabricate a reason.
Entertainment positions are specifically exempt from such laws, for just such reasons. This loophole is used by some restaurants who want pretty, young waitstaff--they call them something like "server-entertainers" to get around laws that would otherwise prevent them from hiring based these criteria.
Secret ballots preclude accountability. There is no way to know that my vote was counted correctly. That's what he's talking about.
There are some really good methods for addressing this, as have already been discussed in the comments for this story. Unfortunately, they're unlikely to ever be implemented.
You can't do that because it requires a large number of completely trustworthy people running the validation centers. Not really.
The validation centers still don't have to have information readable by just anyone. Using public-key encryption, you can be secure in your vote without anyone else having knowledge of it. The only thing the validation centers have to do is make sure that no one can go into the booth with you when you validate your vote. While this is still certainly a vector for attack (pay off everyone at a specific validation center--something that could be done right now to make sure that my anonymous vote goes a certain way, anyway), it makes the process of coercion much, much harder.
Security is always a trade-off. Right now, we have virtually no accountability (you get accountability in the cases where a number of people know that they voted for a candidate who got fewer votes than the sum total of the people--like Ron Paul in this story) but you have total privacy (no one can ever prove that I voted a specific way without following me to voting booth, paying off everyone there, and watching me cast the ballot.) I'd like to see more accountability while maintaining as much privacy as possible. I believe that a system where only I can verify my own ballot, and this is ensured through the technological means of encryption coupled with similar safeguards against voting fraud to that which we already have in place (e.g. ensuring that only one person per booth is allowed at the polling place) would be an extremely secure solution. Certainly, it would be no worse than the solution we currently have; similar attacks would be required to verify a vote now and to verify a vote in my hypothetical system. Those attacks--impersonation, bribery, etc. don't happen too often currently. Why do you think that they would happen under my suggested plan?
And by the way--calling a plan evil is pretty strong. If I hadn't re-read your post a couple of times, I would have sworn that you were trolling. Perhaps you could stick to, "What you're trying to do is unworkable while maintaining the basic pillars of our government." There's nothing malicious in what I'm suggesting--the ideal would be a situation where voting would be completely anonymous, and validation would be possible only to the person who cast that particular vote. I'm trying to come up with a solution which approaches this ideal as closely as possible.
A sociological minority need not have anything to do with population ratio. It has to do with socioeconomic factors and power within the society. Some textbooks prefer to use alternate terms which don't sound quite so much like a numerical description.
I would have problems voting for Mrs. Clinton. Her policies on gun control alone are bad enough, but the censorship of e.g. video games is pretty irritating. Her foreign policy makes me nervous, and her drug policies are as draconian as most pandering politicians.
Now this isn't to say that I would never vote for her, but if I did, it would probably be because she is the lesser of two evils, rather than someone I really want running the country. It turns out that she and I do have some similar beliefs, mostly regarding energy. But frankly, those just aren't enough.
I certainly wouldn't vote for her just because she's a woman, and I wouldn't vote for Obama just because he's black.
Regardless, you're mostly just posturing. The candidates haven't picked running mates, yet, and it doesn't make sense to. The primaries are for finding out which person has the most support from the party. A Clinton/Obama ticket would be a pretty big gamble on the Democrats' part--either they'd get a huge number of votes from people like you, who are willing to vote on race, gender, or both, or they'd totally tank because enough people would be scared of a woman or a black man in such a high position of authority.
I can't tell if you're agreeing, disagreeing, or what.
I'm saying that if you can validate your vote remotely, that coercion can exist because someone can be sitting there, watching you validate. If the system is set up such that only registered voting centers can validate your vote (e.g. by going to the center, getting into a voting booth, and accessing the website), coercion is far less likely to happen, but there's the added inconvenience of having to go somewhere to validate.
Government contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, or to the person giving a kickback to the awarder. In either case, it's rarely the best person for the job.
People can buy your votes. People can coerce you to vote in a certain way (through threats to your job, your family, your life.) People can ridicule you for voting a certain way. People can try to prevent you from voting because you voted a certain way last time. People can be targeted or mistreated by the local/state/federal government (including police) for voting a certain way.
True democracy cannot exist without anonymous selection of leaders. As long as there is a way to have anonymous selection coupled with self-verification (and today, there is), I will not support non-anonymous elections.
Only if you can do it remotely. If you made it such that the validation process has to happen in-person, and individually (i.e. without anyone coming in with you to see you do it) then everything's peachy.
It's less convenient, but it prevents coercion while allowing verification.
That doesn't work, because people don't read the instructions.
Ok, maybe they'll read the instructions the first time, but what about when the router has to be reset. Does it keep the old password?
It does? What about when they get a new computer. Do they have the manual with the password?
I guess the password could be based upon the serial number (or just be stored on the WAP maker's server) so that you could call to get it back, but that's kinda a pain. As it is, all you have to do is search the web for your router's default password, and you've got it.
Actually, it would be pretty cool if the router had a little LCD that showed the password for the wireless at any given time. Probably increase the price of the device by $10-$20, though.
This is America. It's supposed to be that they have to prove your guilt. You don't have to prove anything, you're assumed innocent. Yes, but you've got to have something to rebut the evidence when they say, "It came from this IP address." If you have an open access point, you can say, "I run a small, free, anonymous ISP." If you are heavily secured, you have to say, "Well, I must have been hacked." But without something to back that up, it's not a reasonable doubt.
In that case, you can argue that keeping a low profile (i.e. making it harder for someone to do something which brings the government's attention to you) is useful.
This is why routers should be pre-configured with a key, and there should be clear instructions on how to connect. We cater to stupid people all the time in computing, but for some reason, we don't do it here.
Also, computers should never connect to any AP by default.
Just using WPA with a strong password is going to be enough. Anyone capable of cracking WPA isn't going to be deterred by MAC filtering, different IP addresses, or lack of DHCP. Also, anyone going to that much trouble probably has something against you, and is trying to actively frame you rather than just finding something "untraceable" to conduct illegal activity from. The latter type of person is going to go for the lower-hanging fruit of an unsecured AP.
Check out dd-wrt, which allows multiple SSIDs, each with its own security settings. The trick is that some hardware can't handle broadcasting multiple SSIDs, meaning that if you want your open one to be broadcast so that others can use it, you'll need to keep your secret one "hidden."
You should even be able to assign priority to hosts using the private subnet, so that guests won't interfere with bandwidth when you're trying to use it.
Those are some pretty interesting ideas. I'm sure that most traders would rebel against them, but that's because most traders are trying to make a quick buck. Now that I think about it, this might also help level out the economic classes a bit.
Some US laws apply to all US citizens, regardless of where they are. For example, it violates US law for a minor to drink alcohol in a country where s/he is of age to drink.
Cite? Well, I read it once, and now I can't find a citation. Retracted until I can.
Only if your income exceeds a fairly high amount, though with the tanking value of the U.S. dollar this is becoming a issue for more expatriates than usual. Regardless, it's still a counterexample.
Nitpick here: Some US laws apply to all US citizens, regardless of where they are. For example, it violates US law for a minor to drink alcohol in a country where s/he is of age to drink. Also, a US citizen who works in another country is still considered to owe US taxes. I believe that a citizen who emigrates is considered to owe taxes for some number of years after leaving the US, as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice troll. You got me.
Enjoy.
Nah. This year, it's more unlikely than in 2004 (since it's a new guy--Bush doesn't represent the entire Republican party, though because of the sports-team mentality, he's had their support for several years.) In fact, in recent months, Republicans have been distancing themselves from Bush in order to keep people from associating them--and the party--too much with someone who is so unpopular.
No, the surprising thing is that he managed to get elected in 2004. He had a horrible record. Many Republicans felt betrayed. And yet many simply wouldn't vote for a Democrat because of reasons that have nothing to do with running the country--things like stances on abortion (which is simply never going to be overturned) or alleged flip-flopping (take a look at just about anyone's voting record, and you'll find discrepancies--sometimes because of riders, which should be outlawed.) Some staunch Republican friends of mine, who couldn't stand Bush after his first four year record, declared that they couldn't vote for Kerry because he was too sleazy--though when pressed, they couldn't tell me what about him exuded this.
No, America's pretty fucked up, both in the reasons that its people vote, and in the way the country is run. I love the ideals put forth in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence. I love the ideal that is America. But when people vote based upon looks, or upon whether they'd want to hang out with the guy, I cringe. When people fail to realize that it's a more global world than it was even just 20 years ago, and that we need foreign policy which recognizes this and is capable of adapting, I weep a little. When half of the eligible population doesn't vote because it's too much trouble, I think that maybe we're getting what we deserve--a more polarized class system, a corporate-run government, and a world that hates us for our arrogance.
Of course, that just illustrates flaws in the larger system.
Flaws like the fact that about half of the country hasn't been represented by their president for years.
Flaws like the absurd amount of raw power in the government when the same political party controls both the executive and legislative branches of government.
Personally, I'd love to see the Office of the Vice President staffed by someone of another political party from the President. I'd love to see more political parties represented in elections, and in the Congress. I'd love to see my vote matter, rather than all of the votes in electoral votes in my state going to the person who won half+1 of the popular vote.
Realistically, I just don't see these things happening, because even if it's cyclical, the current system allows for a higher concentration of power in one of two corrupt parties at any given time.
Well, the poster meant well.
The point was that whether you choose to live your life in some way, or whether you were born in a certain way, shouldn't matter for employment. If you can do the job, you should be allowed to keep it. An employer firing you for choices you make off the job should simply not be legal. Of course, it's generally easy enough to fabricate a reason.
Entertainment positions are specifically exempt from such laws, for just such reasons. This loophole is used by some restaurants who want pretty, young waitstaff--they call them something like "server-entertainers" to get around laws that would otherwise prevent them from hiring based these criteria.
Secret ballots preclude accountability. There is no way to know that my vote was counted correctly. That's what he's talking about.
There are some really good methods for addressing this, as have already been discussed in the comments for this story. Unfortunately, they're unlikely to ever be implemented.
The validation centers still don't have to have information readable by just anyone. Using public-key encryption, you can be secure in your vote without anyone else having knowledge of it. The only thing the validation centers have to do is make sure that no one can go into the booth with you when you validate your vote. While this is still certainly a vector for attack (pay off everyone at a specific validation center--something that could be done right now to make sure that my anonymous vote goes a certain way, anyway), it makes the process of coercion much, much harder.
Security is always a trade-off. Right now, we have virtually no accountability (you get accountability in the cases where a number of people know that they voted for a candidate who got fewer votes than the sum total of the people--like Ron Paul in this story) but you have total privacy (no one can ever prove that I voted a specific way without following me to voting booth, paying off everyone there, and watching me cast the ballot.) I'd like to see more accountability while maintaining as much privacy as possible. I believe that a system where only I can verify my own ballot, and this is ensured through the technological means of encryption coupled with similar safeguards against voting fraud to that which we already have in place (e.g. ensuring that only one person per booth is allowed at the polling place) would be an extremely secure solution. Certainly, it would be no worse than the solution we currently have; similar attacks would be required to verify a vote now and to verify a vote in my hypothetical system. Those attacks--impersonation, bribery, etc. don't happen too often currently. Why do you think that they would happen under my suggested plan?
And by the way--calling a plan evil is pretty strong. If I hadn't re-read your post a couple of times, I would have sworn that you were trolling. Perhaps you could stick to, "What you're trying to do is unworkable while maintaining the basic pillars of our government." There's nothing malicious in what I'm suggesting--the ideal would be a situation where voting would be completely anonymous, and validation would be possible only to the person who cast that particular vote. I'm trying to come up with a solution which approaches this ideal as closely as possible.
A sociological minority need not have anything to do with population ratio. It has to do with socioeconomic factors and power within the society. Some textbooks prefer to use alternate terms which don't sound quite so much like a numerical description.
I would have no problems voting for a woman.
I would have problems voting for Mrs. Clinton. Her policies on gun control alone are bad enough, but the censorship of e.g. video games is pretty irritating. Her foreign policy makes me nervous, and her drug policies are as draconian as most pandering politicians.
Now this isn't to say that I would never vote for her, but if I did, it would probably be because she is the lesser of two evils, rather than someone I really want running the country. It turns out that she and I do have some similar beliefs, mostly regarding energy. But frankly, those just aren't enough.
I certainly wouldn't vote for her just because she's a woman, and I wouldn't vote for Obama just because he's black.
Regardless, you're mostly just posturing. The candidates haven't picked running mates, yet, and it doesn't make sense to. The primaries are for finding out which person has the most support from the party. A Clinton/Obama ticket would be a pretty big gamble on the Democrats' part--either they'd get a huge number of votes from people like you, who are willing to vote on race, gender, or both, or they'd totally tank because enough people would be scared of a woman or a black man in such a high position of authority.
I can't tell if you're agreeing, disagreeing, or what.
I'm saying that if you can validate your vote remotely, that coercion can exist because someone can be sitting there, watching you validate. If the system is set up such that only registered voting centers can validate your vote (e.g. by going to the center, getting into a voting booth, and accessing the website), coercion is far less likely to happen, but there's the added inconvenience of having to go somewhere to validate.
Government contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, or to the person giving a kickback to the awarder. In either case, it's rarely the best person for the job.
People can buy your votes. People can coerce you to vote in a certain way (through threats to your job, your family, your life.) People can ridicule you for voting a certain way. People can try to prevent you from voting because you voted a certain way last time. People can be targeted or mistreated by the local/state/federal government (including police) for voting a certain way.
True democracy cannot exist without anonymous selection of leaders. As long as there is a way to have anonymous selection coupled with self-verification (and today, there is), I will not support non-anonymous elections.
Only if you can do it remotely. If you made it such that the validation process has to happen in-person, and individually (i.e. without anyone coming in with you to see you do it) then everything's peachy.
It's less convenient, but it prevents coercion while allowing verification.
Of course, they can ruin it for you--by connecting to illegal websites, posting death threats, etc.
I'd run an open SSID if I could send it all through Tor. As yet, I haven't found an easy way to do this.
Sorry, I missed the "printed right on the router" bit. :)
Serves me right for skimming.
That doesn't work, because people don't read the instructions.
Ok, maybe they'll read the instructions the first time, but what about when the router has to be reset. Does it keep the old password?
It does? What about when they get a new computer. Do they have the manual with the password?
I guess the password could be based upon the serial number (or just be stored on the WAP maker's server) so that you could call to get it back, but that's kinda a pain. As it is, all you have to do is search the web for your router's default password, and you've got it.
Actually, it would be pretty cool if the router had a little LCD that showed the password for the wireless at any given time. Probably increase the price of the device by $10-$20, though.
In that case, you can argue that keeping a low profile (i.e. making it harder for someone to do something which brings the government's attention to you) is useful.
This is why routers should be pre-configured with a key, and there should be clear instructions on how to connect. We cater to stupid people all the time in computing, but for some reason, we don't do it here.
Also, computers should never connect to any AP by default.
Not really--it's still overkill.
Just using WPA with a strong password is going to be enough. Anyone capable of cracking WPA isn't going to be deterred by MAC filtering, different IP addresses, or lack of DHCP. Also, anyone going to that much trouble probably has something against you, and is trying to actively frame you rather than just finding something "untraceable" to conduct illegal activity from. The latter type of person is going to go for the lower-hanging fruit of an unsecured AP.
Yes.
Check out dd-wrt, which allows multiple SSIDs, each with its own security settings. The trick is that some hardware can't handle broadcasting multiple SSIDs, meaning that if you want your open one to be broadcast so that others can use it, you'll need to keep your secret one "hidden."
You should even be able to assign priority to hosts using the private subnet, so that guests won't interfere with bandwidth when you're trying to use it.
Interesting, and nice to know! I'm always interested in the ways that different countries handle these types of issues.
Thanks for the reply!
Those are some pretty interesting ideas. I'm sure that most traders would rebel against them, but that's because most traders are trying to make a quick buck. Now that I think about it, this might also help level out the economic classes a bit.
Nitpick here:
Some US laws apply to all US citizens, regardless of where they are. For example, it violates US law for a minor to drink alcohol in a country where s/he is of age to drink. Also, a US citizen who works in another country is still considered to owe US taxes. I believe that a citizen who emigrates is considered to owe taxes for some number of years after leaving the US, as well.