Your point would be well taken except that the DOJ is run by Bush Appointees.
Consider this from a Paul Krugman column dated, 3/9/2007:
"Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny."
Then consider that with such intense scrutiny by Attoney Generals who "played ball" and didn't get fired, there was found only a handful of 'vote fraud' cases.
Then read about how Carol Lam's investigations that grew out from that case to high ranking CIA officials and other Republican politicians was interrupted by her firing.
I won't see the fire yet, but the smoke is awefully thick here.
PS. "but the only right is to elect someone else come next elections" is very misguided. We can always sue or impeach elected officials when there are good reasons.
From the NYT, "In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud" By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA Published: April 12, 2007
excerpt: "Federal prosecutors in Kansas and Missouri successfully prosecuted four people for multiple voting. Several claimed residency in each state and voted twice. United States attorney's offices in four other states did turn up instances of fraudulent voting in mostly rural areas. They were in the hard-to-extinguish tradition of vote buying, where local politicians offered $5 to $100 for individuals' support.
Aside from those cases, nearly all the remaining 26 convictions from 2002 to and 2005 -- the Justice Department will not release details about 2006 cases except to say they had 30 more convictions-- were won against individuals acting independently, voter records and court documents show."
In other words, Democrats did not have an organized campaign to skew the elections like certain other parties....
I am disturbed by the increasingly common practice of websites requiring you to create and save Security questions pertaining to various personal details. Were someone to save and collate the answers to such questions over time, they would have knowledge of quite a large knowledgebase of personal backgrounds - as though everyone put up a MySpace profile!
Yes, I could and I have started to make up fake answer to such questions. But that means having to remember what the fake answers are. So it's no better than an additioinal password. I think we need a better solution to recovering forgotten passwords.
The reason this device is so complex appears to be the desire to allow reponses selectively.
Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to make a simple jamming device? Say in a small pouch for storing the passport, etc. with even weaker power so that only 1 foot radius is covered. When you need to use the passport, take it out of the pouch.
Sure, conservative Christians in US have mellowed in comparison to the conservative Muslim in today's world. But you don't need to go back too far to find unsavory cases of Christians imposing their religions on other by force.
Countless # of native american children were whipped for showing any sign of their native believes or cultures or even for speaking their own languages. This is all supposedly in order to save their immortal souls. Almost the entire written records of central and south american natives were burnt by the Spaniards because they representated pagan culture and believes.
The point is that whenever religious fundamentalist gain political power, wherever they may be, things get unplesant for the rest of us. It is a great credit to the US Founding Fathers for keeping religion separated from political power. Otherwise, we may all be living in a "Scarlet letter" world today or worse.
If you search back in your memory, you'll find that it's certain politicians who made this into a media issue. Who heard of climate change 20 years ago EXCEPT for scientists working on it?
The motives for these politicians who are NOT scientist to wade into this arena can only be guessed at. Of course, contributions and lobbyists are amont the likely suspects. What's inexplicable to me is why much of the right leaning ranks picked up on this obscure topic as a hot button issue almost at big as abortion. The only explanation I can think of, it that it's a push back against those green-leaning environmentalist.
In the context, the media only serves to amplify the adversarial stances. They should not have the bulk of the blame placed on them.
Anarchy is only wonderful when you have the bigger guns.
You speak of Bush fighting for freedom. Where was he in dealing with the Darfur tragedy? Where were the US armed forces when East Timor was taken over? Why aren't we in Burma restoring the democratically elected president?
Study some history and you can see the US foreign policies have always been dictated by national interests mixed in with some bloated egos. Human rights and freedom are applied when they're convenient, but almost always trumped by other interests if there are conflicts.
It sit on top of DirectX and GDI and has a defined protocal for rendering windows on any display on the network. However, using different window managers, one can change the look and feel of it dramatically. Thus, it's not unreasonable to say that X is not a GUI, it's actually many GUIs!
What party has intermediate missiles and has no fear of massive retaliation?
North Korea, you say? If you study their behavior, you'll see that they may be erratic. But the "beloved leader" is MOST consistent in terms of protecting his own live - Witness the miles and miles of underground dwelling that they have built. IOW, he may be as eccentric as many western celebrities, but certainly NOT a suicide bomber. So who is this system really going to be used against?
OK. I'll buy that people won't get blinded by this. But the most likely place for such an attack is precisely at landing and take off and not at 30,000 feet.
SOOOOOO, the missile can't find the target plane. GOOD. What if it hits the air terminal with all the waiting passengers? NOT SO GOOD.
And what about radar guided or wire/optical guided missles?
I'm glad to see an improvement, just not so sure that this is a comprehensive solution.
In this century, we have created many global dependencies which cannot be easily undone. Globalism is not an ideology, it's a reality. US Dollar is the de facto reserve currency for the world. Industrial productions depends on raw materials and energy gathered across all contininents. In order word, it is not possible to plan for healthy development of the US economy independently of the economies of the rest of the world.
We HAVE experienced trade wars of the past where many countries pursued the 'beggar thy neighbor' types of policies. It was disasteours and probably contributed to multiple armed conflicts.
I'm not proposing for any country to become purely alturistic, but simply to look to lift the living standards of all people from all countries at the same time. Look how the develpment of China is stimulating the entire global economy.
For any one to learn a new system, it must not be just marginally better. It has to be much, much better because there is always a cost to learning a new way of doing things - cognitive load, trust, etc.
It is not irrational to stay with a solution that is good enough and not move to an alternative that is somewhat better, but not spectacularly so.
This is a REAL barrier that alternatives like Linux really has to cross. That's why it's critical to provide the customer support or hand-holding or it will never succeed regardless of how good the technical infrastructure is.
While a few languages survive for decades, most are consigned to oblivion or tiny niches after their 15 minutes of fame. That's the problem with focusing your skill soley in coding. Indeed, it makes your role much more vulnerable to outsourcing.
Think about it, there just may be something you can still learn from a CS degree: latest algoritms, HCI research, security best practices, networking protocols, etc. I strongly see the benefit of hands on exploration. At the same time, some information is simply acquired more efficiently by learning from another. Imagine trying to develop public key encryption by yourself! One of my old colleagues actually ran into a real bug due to the "funarg problem."
As for the prevelance of using objects libraries, I readily feel your frustration. It often feels like being a plumber - finding the right pieces and patching everything together. Nevertheless, I do feel it is proceeding in the right direction. Why should eveyone rewrite their own string matching subroutine? Why should I recode a windowing system in assembler for every new generation of graphics card?
There is power in abstraction and the only way to increase our efficiency is to USE that power.
You are probably smarter than the crop of newbies that you've ran into. But sometimes we DO have to prove ourself to others to get what you want. The sheepskin is one way. You may find other alternatives: some people build open source project for fame, some people give lectures. Find the path that works for you.
I'm not really advocating electronic vote counting. I was merely pointing out that your objection seems a bit off the mark.
When I speak about game theoreical framework, I have in mind an analysis that include the entire election appartus: method of selection of election officials, registration, etc. Vote counting is just one component. I do object to the idea that we can achieve a perfect count, i.e. a god's eye view of what happened. In contrast, it's only possible to develop a system that is trusted by most everyone and is auditable.
Finally, I don't know what you mean by a maximum error rate of infinity with the computer system since digital computer can't really represent infinity and also that division of an integer by another integer is always finite unless the denominator is zero! (THAT would be the most depressing state when no one votes!)
While I don't think computer application is better than hand counting necessarily, I don't think your argument prove that it is necessarily worse. The fact is hand counting has its error rates also. There is no way to verify it either except by hand counting it again. It would take an infinite iteration of this to make the error go to zero in the general case.
As other have said, it has the benefit of simplicity and trust, but it is not necessarily more accurate.
I think it is more profitable to analysis the election system in a game theoretic framework than a computational theoretical one. The crux of the matter is that many parties have differing motivations which can impact the result of the process.
Since they are actually testing correlation of precipitation with autism rate, this is very indirect evidence at best. If their theroy is true, it would mean that Canada, Sweden, and UK should all have higher autism rate than say California.
Not to get ad hominem about this, but did you notice that the researchers are from the Management School and some Policy institute? I would give more credence if the researhers were child psyhiatrists or medical statisticians.
I think the reverse causality: "autistic kids watches more television" would explain the data much better.
Slashdot Mirror
Your point would be well taken except that the DOJ is run by Bush Appointees.
Consider this from a Paul Krugman column dated, 3/9/2007:
"Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny."
Then consider that with such intense scrutiny by Attoney Generals who "played ball" and didn't get fired, there was found only a handful of 'vote fraud' cases.
Then read about how Carol Lam's investigations that grew out
from that case to high ranking CIA officials and other Republican
politicians was interrupted by her firing.
I won't see the fire yet, but the smoke is awefully thick here.
PS. "but the only right is to elect someone else come next elections"
is very misguided. We can always sue or impeach elected officials
when there are good reasons.
From the NYT,
"In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud"
By ERIC LIPTON and IAN URBINA
Published: April 12, 2007
excerpt:
"Federal prosecutors in Kansas and Missouri successfully prosecuted four people
for multiple voting. Several claimed residency in each state and voted twice.
United States attorney's offices in four other states did turn up instances of
fraudulent voting in mostly rural areas. They were in the hard-to-extinguish
tradition of vote buying, where local politicians offered $5 to $100 for
individuals' support.
Aside from those cases, nearly all the remaining 26 convictions from 2002 to and
2005 -- the Justice Department will not release details about 2006 cases except
to say they had 30 more convictions-- were won against individuals acting
independently, voter records and court documents show."
In other words, Democrats did not have an organized campaign to skew the elections like certain other parties....
Why not just use diesel....
I am disturbed by the increasingly common practice of websites requiring you to create and save Security questions pertaining to various personal details. Were someone to save and collate the answers to such questions over time, they would have knowledge of quite a large knowledgebase of personal backgrounds - as though everyone put up a MySpace profile!
Yes, I could and I have started to make up fake answer to such questions. But that means having to remember what the fake answers are. So it's no better than an additioinal password. I think we need a better solution to recovering forgotten passwords.
The reason this device is so complex appears to be
the desire to allow reponses selectively.
Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to make a simple jamming device?
Say in a small pouch for storing the passport, etc. with even weaker
power so that only 1 foot radius is covered.
When you need to use the passport, take it out of the pouch.
Well, you're in fine company.
Check out Professor Fredkin's site: http://www.digitalphilosophy.org/
He's been a professor at MIT and Boston University.
Stoning -- nah. Just stick to baseball bats...
Sure, conservative Christians in US have mellowed in comparison to the conservative Muslim in today's world. But you don't need to go back too far to find unsavory cases of Christians imposing their religions on other by force.
Countless # of native american children were whipped for showing any sign of their native believes or cultures or even for speaking their own languages. This is all supposedly in order to save their immortal souls.
Almost the entire written records of central and south american natives were burnt
by the Spaniards because they representated pagan culture and believes.
The point is that whenever religious fundamentalist gain political power, wherever they may be, things get unplesant for the rest of us. It is a great credit to the US Founding Fathers for keeping religion separated from political power. Otherwise, we may all be living in a "Scarlet letter" world today or worse.
If you search back in your memory, you'll find that it's certain politicians who made this into a media issue. Who heard of climate change 20 years ago EXCEPT for scientists working on it?
The motives for these politicians who are NOT scientist to wade into this arena can only be guessed at. Of course, contributions and lobbyists are amont the likely suspects. What's inexplicable to me is why much of the right leaning ranks picked up on this obscure topic as a hot button issue almost at big as abortion.
The only explanation I can think of, it that it's a push back against those green-leaning environmentalist.
In the context, the media only serves to amplify the adversarial stances. They should not have the bulk of the blame placed on them.
you seem to be saying.
Anarchy is only wonderful when you have the bigger guns.
You speak of Bush fighting for freedom. Where was he in dealing with the Darfur tragedy? Where were the US armed forces when East Timor was taken over?
Why aren't we in Burma restoring the democratically elected president?
Study some history and you can see the US foreign policies have always been dictated by national interests mixed in with some bloated egos. Human rights and freedom
are applied when they're convenient, but almost always trumped by other interests
if there are conflicts.
It sit on top of DirectX and GDI and has a defined protocal for rendering windows on any display on the network. However, using different window managers, one can change the look and feel of it dramatically. Thus, it's not unreasonable to say that X is not a GUI, it's actually many GUIs!
What party has intermediate missiles and has no fear of massive retaliation?
North Korea, you say?
If you study their behavior, you'll see that they may be erratic. But the
"beloved leader" is MOST consistent in terms of protecting his own live - Witness the miles and miles of underground dwelling that they have built.
IOW, he may be as eccentric as many western celebrities, but certainly NOT a suicide bomber. So who is this system really going to be used against?
OK. I'll buy that people won't get blinded by this.
But the most likely place for such an attack is precisely at landing and take off and not at 30,000 feet.
SOOOOOO, the missile can't find the target plane. GOOD.
What if it hits the air terminal with all the waiting passengers? NOT SO GOOD.
And what about radar guided or wire/optical guided missles?
I'm glad to see an improvement, just not so sure that this is a comprehensive solution.
In this century, we have created many global dependencies which cannot be easily undone. Globalism is not an ideology, it's a reality.
US Dollar is the de facto reserve currency for the world. Industrial productions depends on raw materials and energy gathered across all contininents. In order word, it is not possible to plan for healthy development of the US economy independently of the economies of the rest of the world.
We HAVE experienced trade wars of the past where many countries pursued the 'beggar thy neighbor' types of policies. It was disasteours and probably contributed to multiple armed conflicts.
I'm not proposing for any country to become purely alturistic, but simply to look to lift the living standards of all people from all countries at the same time. Look how the develpment of China is stimulating the entire global economy.
You didn't really think that this was an accident now, did you?
Didn't you hear that everyone has switched over to gel packs?
That sounds like the best approach to getting around the bought assembly.
That was their offer to NSTA. RTFA.
"Truth :
1) we need energy. Lots of it."
That's not a 'truth', but a result of choices we made and continue to make.
"Truth :
No amount of politics will solve the energy crisis. Yet all they do is politics."
Politics is PRECISELY the public process that MIGHT lead to a change in our choices.
It IS the main driver for changes in our infrastructure.
Pretending that one has no responsibilites in the face of immutable 'truths' is
certainly not going to solve any problems.
in your analysis.
For any one to learn a new system, it must not be just marginally better.
It has to be much, much better because there is always a cost to learning
a new way of doing things - cognitive load, trust, etc.
It is not irrational to stay with a solution that is good enough and
not move to an alternative that is somewhat better, but not spectacularly so.
This is a REAL barrier that alternatives like Linux really has to cross.
That's why it's critical to provide the customer support or hand-holding
or it will never succeed regardless of how good the technical infrastructure is.
Ummmm.
Just what great series do we have now that is comparable in scope and interest?
I would accept BSG. But what eles?
While a few languages survive for decades, most are consigned to oblivion or tiny niches after their 15 minutes of fame.
That's the problem with focusing your skill soley in coding. Indeed,
it makes your role much more vulnerable to outsourcing.
Think about it, there just may be something you can still learn from a CS degree:
latest algoritms, HCI research, security best practices, networking protocols, etc.
I strongly see the benefit of hands on exploration. At the same time, some
information is simply acquired more efficiently by learning from another.
Imagine trying to develop public key encryption by yourself!
One of my old colleagues actually ran into a real bug due to the "funarg problem."
As for the prevelance of using objects libraries, I readily feel your frustration.
It often feels like being a plumber - finding the right pieces and patching everything together. Nevertheless, I do feel it is proceeding in the right direction.
Why should eveyone rewrite their own string matching subroutine?
Why should I recode a windowing system in assembler for every new generation of graphics card?
There is power in abstraction and the only way to increase our efficiency is to USE that power.
You are probably smarter than the crop of newbies that you've ran into. But sometimes we DO have to prove ourself to others to get what you want.
The sheepskin is one way. You may find other alternatives: some people
build open source project for fame, some people give lectures.
Find the path that works for you.
I'm not really advocating electronic vote counting. I was merely pointing out that your objection seems a bit off the mark.
When I speak about game theoreical framework, I have in mind an analysis that include the entire election appartus: method of selection of election officials, registration, etc. Vote counting is just one component.
I do object to the idea that we can achieve a perfect count, i.e. a god's eye view of what happened. In contrast, it's only possible to develop a system that is trusted by most everyone and is auditable.
Finally, I don't know what you mean by a maximum error rate of infinity with the
computer system since digital computer can't really represent infinity and
also that division of an integer by another integer is always finite unless the denominator is zero! (THAT would be the most depressing state when no one votes!)
While I don't think computer application is better than hand counting necessarily, I don't think your argument prove that it is necessarily worse. The fact is hand counting has its error rates also. There is no way to verify it either except by hand counting it again. It would take an infinite iteration of this to make the error go to zero in the general case.
As other have said, it has the benefit of simplicity and trust, but it is not necessarily more accurate.
I think it is more profitable to analysis the election system in a game theoretic framework than a computational theoretical one. The crux of the matter is that many parties have differing motivations which can impact the result of the process.
May be everyone should move to Arizona ?
Since they are actually testing correlation of precipitation
with autism rate, this is very indirect evidence at best.
If their theroy is true, it would mean that Canada, Sweden,
and UK should all have higher autism rate than say California.
Not to get ad hominem about this, but did you notice that the researchers are
from the Management School and some Policy institute? I would give more
credence if the researhers were child psyhiatrists or medical statisticians.
I think the reverse causality: "autistic kids watches more television"
would explain the data much better.