will E-voting ever reach standards rigorous enough to satisfy the American populace? If not, why?
Because current "rigorous standards" are neither. I mean, we have poll workers taking Diebold machines home for WEEKS before the vote. The weaknesses of these machines are well documented. This practice is so freakin' insecure it's just insane.
If you applied the same standards that are applied to, say, Nevada slot machines, with a few extras like verifiable paper (or other durable material) ballots and national auditing standards and procedures, I'd be just fine with e-voting.
It's not about the technology. It's about transparency and separation of powers. You know, the things some people still value in this country.
Of course it makes sense to evaluate specific candidates. But I don't think it's mutually exclusive; I would argue that well-crafted scorecards offer a decent way to evaluate just where a candidate stands relative to peers on a specific set of issues. A poorly designed scorecard is a waste of time.
"The methodology behind this scorecard is cuckoo for cocoa puffs," Kerry spokesman David Wade said.
I wouldn't have phrased it quite that way myself, but I agree.
Unless you live in a dumb state that does not require paper trails, all this talk of hacking elections is really off base
Like... ALL of Georgia, ALL of Maryland, >1M voters in Iowa, almost 3M in Florida, 540k in Virginia, 885k in PA, and so forth (and that's only for Diebold machines without a paper trail). (pdf link).
As for audits, my impression is that auditing only occurs if the vote is close (the definition of 'close' varying by locale). If I were hacking the vote, I'd go the extra mile to make it likely that the results didn't meet this criteria. As you'll recall from Ohio, election officials usually aren't chomping at the bit to do a recount.
Ignorant paranoia? I wish.
Actually, what I really wish for is a third party candidate with no money and no support in the polls to win a major race on Nov. 7th. Say, Libertarian Kevin Litten in the governor race in Iowa. With unusual support in those districts with unverifiable Diebolds. That would be interesting.
Because it is easier to try to ignore it than to deal with it.
Fair enough. People are busy. Of course, the crap we put up with goes far past spam calls (see: current Administration), but I agree it's a fundamental problem. As a French friend put it this summer, the French know how to attack their government. Piss off the farmers and out come the tractors. But I digress.
Me, I willingly pay for caller ID b/c I can better manage when I talk to certain family members who call way too much. And I have a mobile, but I use the landline when I'm home. Why? I can't really articulate it, but I just don't like talking on a mobile. Just don't. And I see my landline as part insurance policy- when I call 911, I want the boys to know *exactly* where to go, stat. When I'm 100% confident that I would get the same or better reliability for emergency services from my mobile (phone to tower to dispatch to local police/fire), then I'm consider giving up the landline (though my DSL connection would also be a factor). I don't want a dead kid b/c I was too cheap. Overdramatic, yeah, but not so much if you have young boys with no fear.
Oh, and I get a Spanish language spam on my mobile 1-2x a week. Same one every time.
Usually by filing (which I would call "complaint", but I'm not sure if you are using "complaint" to mean a single offense or a single filing, when contrasted with "appearance.)
IANAL; I have no idea (wisdom is knowing what you don't know, right?). I would assume you can't make $500 or whatever the cap is per call with a single filing and visit to court, but again, I have no idea. If you could, than maybe this could be a profitable endeavor (not for me, thanks).
Fair enough, but get back to me after you actually win one having investing only 12 hours. Include time and fees spent on collection. Include a loss or two mixed in (I have no idea what the success rate is on this). And so forth. If you do successfully double up, maybe you have a case. Are claims in small claims court limited by complaint or by appearance?
while I can see this is a clear shot at some free money
Given the time involved, this doesn't sound like free money to me. For me, in terms of opportunity cost, this would be a serious money loser.
I think most of us would agree that the U.S. has more than its fair share of lawsuits. That doesn't mean they are all frivolous, though. And in this case, I would argue the goal is clearly not financial gain (how much money per hour would this net you?), but to punish organizations violate break a law (that would otherwise not be punished). Is that so terrible? And we're talking about small-claims court. He's not exactly delaying the Enron trials.
Q: If I register my number on the National Do Not Call Registry, will it stop all telemarketing calls?
A: No. Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most, but not all, telemarketing calls. You may still receive calls from political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors or companies with which you have an existing business relationship.
So you are still wide open for push-polls, etc. That's the whole point.
Taking these guys to court does require a lot of time and effort, but as far as I know it's the only recourse we have. That said, caller ID works pretty well as a spam filter for me...
Because in the US we need sex in a political story to catch peoples' attention?
The Dutch, I think they have all the access to sex they could ever want (if they so desire), so their minds are free to pay attention to issues that matter.
Not that inaction over the behavior of a pedophile who happens to serve in Congress doesn't matter...
I just posted the same. Most likely answer: Journalist heard 95% (probably efficiency for some part of the system, likely the electronics), wrote 95%. Alternatively, both of our memories of thermo suck.
RTF Textbook Unless I'm missing something, this turbine is a heat engine, just like any other turbine. Heat engines' max. efficiency is 1 - T(cold)/T(hot), where T = absolute temperature (Kelvin or Rankine). At T(cold) is likely room temp (~300K), if this thing is 95% efficient, T(hot) must be around 6000K. That's... hot.
Fact #1: The biggest influence on global climate is a big semi stable fusion reactor that has only been studied in detail for a fairly short period of time but is already known to vary its output on multiple cycles measured in years. Several studies indicate solar output is currently increasing.
Fact #2: More and more evidence points to Earth getting warmer.
Fact #5: What's more uncertain is the impact of all the positive and negative feedback cycles. That's where it gets messy.
I concede that the historical pattern of solar intensity isn't as well documented as we would like it to be, due to the difficulty of measurement. But to present the solar intensity argument while ignoring the hard science behind greenhouse gases is preposterous.
Also, one of the dudes who found an increasing solar trend said "that does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned."
The point is that if DRM continues to creep into our world, there won't much music/video/etc available that come with a use agreement that I can abide by.
Beyond personal use, those who oppose DRM do so realizing that this is in part a struggle of how we want our society to operate- more open and free, or more closed and proprietary. More broadly, it's a struggle/conversation/battle/whatever about how best to distribute rights between content creators and consumers.
So while I don't endorse violating copyright law any more than I endorse violating any law, I do endorse getting copyright law modified to benefit society more fully- or at least getting people to use copyright law in a more beneficial manner (eg Creative Commons).
Bottom line, I don't accept the 'just do what works for you' apology for DRM, because that's a sinking ship. I oppose DRM because it represents a value system that I don't like so much.
Umm, and that's relevant to my post how? If I was applying for a job where having clearance would be beneficial, I would put it on my resume, too. If I were bitching about how everyone nags people who have clearance, I would not then tell everyone on slashdot that I have some sort of clearance. Unless I really just wanted to brag. That's all.
They've been hearing it from everyone they've pretty much ever met as soon as they find out they're getting a one. It gets old around time number 5, which if memory serves, was 4 months before I even got the clearance.
So... why do you feel it makes sense to share an email address and brag to thousands of geeks that you have a clearance?
Stunning visual appearance.... check Elegant and simple user interface.... check(?)... Maybe 1 or 2 'minor' design flaws not caught during development.... check!
It's amazing. Anything coming out of Apple these days has great design, works well for the most part, but there's always something screwy- iPod batteries, hot laptops, etc.
Back up "unlimited" data at carbonite.com for $5 a month. Software client is windows only at present, but works great. I haven't seen anything else even close for the price.
I have no affiliation.
Or, get a big USB/Firewire drive and back up occasionally to that.
Oh, I *could* normalize it and reduce it to 3 columns: Name of entity, name of measure, value. But that would be utterly useless for my needs, and a total PITA to handle. And yes, I could take that structure and make a cross-table in Access or whatever, but then I still need to do some analyses and dynamic what-ifs on the resulting table that are at best quite cumbersome to implement in Access or an equivalent, but are a snap in Excel.
It's the 256 column limit that's a bitch. Fairly often, I have datasets that are 200-500 rows x 200-500 columns or so. These are datasets for which a spreadsheet is the right tool, provided that I could frickin' shoehorn them into one worksheet.
Also, I find that there are rare occasions when Excel *is* the right tool for datasets with ~100,000 rows (much more than that, I agree, run away).
I'm with you on name-calling (it's fun but it doesn't exactly promote dialog), but please tell me how your use of hard core left leaner is not name-calling? And WTF is a hard core leaner, anyway? Don't moderates lean one way or the other, while the hard core guys are all the way out?
Also, grandparent supported his argument with a relevant example (follow the link), so it's not the case that he's got "no other option." Unlike... your response?
The Romans (and Greeks) noticed the effects; see my links. They cite ancients who noted the impact of lead smelting, etc. The Romans even had a name for it (Saturnine gout).
If drinking water from the aquaduct had noticable adverse effects they would have abandoned it.
This seems like common sense, but for some reason it isn't always true. So many examples. But it wasn't the aquaducts that got 'em, it was the leadworkers and the people who imbibed the syrup that was typically boiled down in lead pots.
I agree with your basic point that you can't easily detect the sort of toxicity that leads to death/illness with low frequency, O(1 in 1M) or so. And the really bad stuff is self-evident, as you note. But there's the class of substances that occupy the middle ground- not obviously fatal, but pretty frickin' bad. It sure would be nice to catch these in the lab.
Lead is an interesting example.
The aqueduct that supplied water to the French city of Nimes had parts made of lead. It was operated continuously for nine centuries without obvious side effects.
Hey, guess what, my wife is a classics major. We honeymooned near Nimes and visited the Pont du Gard. I suggest you Google for/Roman lead gout/ and see what turns up. "Without obvious side effect" my ass. I recommend this summary. To wit:
In the first century A.D., Dioscorides, another Greek physician, noticed that exposure to lead could cause paralysis and delirium in addition to intestinal problems and swelling.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me take this one, Hugh:
will E-voting ever reach standards rigorous enough to satisfy the American populace? If not, why?
Because current "rigorous standards" are neither. I mean, we have poll workers taking Diebold machines home for WEEKS before the vote. The weaknesses of these machines are well documented. This practice is so freakin' insecure it's just insane.
If you applied the same standards that are applied to, say, Nevada slot machines, with a few extras like verifiable paper (or other durable material) ballots and national auditing standards and procedures, I'd be just fine with e-voting.
It's not about the technology. It's about transparency and separation of powers. You know, the things some people still value in this country.
Most of the scorecards I've looked at are at least coherent and reasonably consistent (see, eg, the League of Conservation Voters ). Of course scorecards are going to reflect a certain agenda; that's the point. On scorecards from groups that I disagree with, I value low scores. The problem with this one is that the issues includes represent a mixed and somewhat contradictory agenda. I'm not all that sure that a high score is necessarily a good thing.
Of course it makes sense to evaluate specific candidates. But I don't think it's mutually exclusive; I would argue that well-crafted scorecards offer a decent way to evaluate just where a candidate stands relative to peers on a specific set of issues. A poorly designed scorecard is a waste of time.
"The methodology behind this scorecard is cuckoo for cocoa puffs," Kerry spokesman David Wade said.
I wouldn't have phrased it quite that way myself, but I agree.
Unless you live in a dumb state that does not require paper trails, all this talk of hacking elections is really off base
Like... ALL of Georgia, ALL of Maryland, >1M voters in Iowa, almost 3M in Florida, 540k in Virginia, 885k in PA, and so forth (and that's only for Diebold machines without a paper trail). (pdf link).
As for audits, my impression is that auditing only occurs if the vote is close (the definition of 'close' varying by locale). If I were hacking the vote, I'd go the extra mile to make it likely that the results didn't meet this criteria. As you'll recall from Ohio, election officials usually aren't chomping at the bit to do a recount.
Ignorant paranoia? I wish.
Actually, what I really wish for is a third party candidate with no money and no support in the polls to win a major race on Nov. 7th. Say, Libertarian Kevin Litten in the governor race in Iowa. With unusual support in those districts with unverifiable Diebolds. That would be interesting.
Because it is easier to try to ignore it than to deal with it.
Fair enough. People are busy. Of course, the crap we put up with goes far past spam calls (see: current Administration), but I agree it's a fundamental problem. As a French friend put it this summer, the French know how to attack their government. Piss off the farmers and out come the tractors. But I digress.
Me, I willingly pay for caller ID b/c I can better manage when I talk to certain family members who call way too much. And I have a mobile, but I use the landline when I'm home. Why? I can't really articulate it, but I just don't like talking on a mobile. Just don't. And I see my landline as part insurance policy- when I call 911, I want the boys to know *exactly* where to go, stat. When I'm 100% confident that I would get the same or better reliability for emergency services from my mobile (phone to tower to dispatch to local police/fire), then I'm consider giving up the landline (though my DSL connection would also be a factor). I don't want a dead kid b/c I was too cheap. Overdramatic, yeah, but not so much if you have young boys with no fear.
Oh, and I get a Spanish language spam on my mobile 1-2x a week. Same one every time.
Usually by filing (which I would call "complaint", but I'm not sure if you are using "complaint" to mean a single offense or a single filing, when contrasted with "appearance.)
IANAL; I have no idea (wisdom is knowing what you don't know, right?). I would assume you can't make $500 or whatever the cap is per call with a single filing and visit to court, but again, I have no idea. If you could, than maybe this could be a profitable endeavor (not for me, thanks).
Fair enough, but get back to me after you actually win one having investing only 12 hours. Include time and fees spent on collection. Include a loss or two mixed in (I have no idea what the success rate is on this). And so forth. If you do successfully double up, maybe you have a case. Are claims in small claims court limited by complaint or by appearance?
while I can see this is a clear shot at some free money
Given the time involved, this doesn't sound like free money to me. For me, in terms of opportunity cost, this would be a serious money loser.
I think most of us would agree that the U.S. has more than its fair share of lawsuits. That doesn't mean they are all frivolous, though. And in this case, I would argue the goal is clearly not financial gain (how much money per hour would this net you?), but to punish organizations violate break a law (that would otherwise not be punished). Is that so terrible? And we're talking about small-claims court. He's not exactly delaying the Enron trials.
From the FAQ:
Q: If I register my number on the National Do Not Call Registry, will it stop all telemarketing calls?
A: No. Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most, but not all, telemarketing calls. You may still receive calls from political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors or companies with which you have an existing business relationship.
So you are still wide open for push-polls, etc. That's the whole point.
Taking these guys to court does require a lot of time and effort, but as far as I know it's the only recourse we have. That said, caller ID works pretty well as a spam filter for me...
Because in the US we need sex in a political story to catch peoples' attention?
The Dutch, I think they have all the access to sex they could ever want (if they so desire), so their minds are free to pay attention to issues that matter.
Not that inaction over the behavior of a pedophile who happens to serve in Congress doesn't matter...
I just posted the same. Most likely answer: Journalist heard 95% (probably efficiency for some part of the system, likely the electronics), wrote 95%. Alternatively, both of our memories of thermo suck.
RTF Textbook Unless I'm missing something, this turbine is a heat engine, just like any other turbine. Heat engines' max. efficiency is 1 - T(cold)/T(hot), where T = absolute temperature (Kelvin or Rankine). At T(cold) is likely room temp (~300K), if this thing is 95% efficient, T(hot) must be around 6000K. That's... hot.
Fact #1: The biggest influence on global climate is a big semi stable fusion reactor that has only been studied in detail for a fairly short period of time but is already known to vary its output on multiple cycles measured in years. Several studies indicate solar output is currently increasing.
Fact #2: More and more evidence points to Earth getting warmer.
Fact #3: Fact #1 isn't exactly hard fact.
Fact #4: The physics behind greenhouse gases like CO2 are well-established. Arrhenius figured it out over a century ago.
Fact #5: What's more uncertain is the impact of all the positive and negative feedback cycles. That's where it gets messy.
I concede that the historical pattern of solar intensity isn't as well documented as we would like it to be, due to the difficulty of measurement. But to present the solar intensity argument while ignoring the hard science behind greenhouse gases is preposterous.
Also, one of the dudes who found an increasing solar trend said "that does not mean industrial pollution has not been a significant factor, Willson cautioned."
Doug,
The point is that if DRM continues to creep into our world, there won't much music/video/etc available that come with a use agreement that I can abide by.
Beyond personal use, those who oppose DRM do so realizing that this is in part a struggle of how we want our society to operate- more open and free, or more closed and proprietary. More broadly, it's a struggle/conversation/battle/whatever about how best to distribute rights between content creators and consumers.
So while I don't endorse violating copyright law any more than I endorse violating any law, I do endorse getting copyright law modified to benefit society more fully- or at least getting people to use copyright law in a more beneficial manner (eg Creative Commons).
Bottom line, I don't accept the 'just do what works for you' apology for DRM, because that's a sinking ship. I oppose DRM because it represents a value system that I don't like so much.
Umm, and that's relevant to my post how? If I was applying for a job where having clearance would be beneficial, I would put it on my resume, too. If I were bitching about how everyone nags people who have clearance, I would not then tell everyone on slashdot that I have some sort of clearance. Unless I really just wanted to brag. That's all.
They've been hearing it from everyone they've pretty much ever met as soon as they find out they're getting a one. It gets old around time number 5, which if memory serves, was 4 months before I even got the clearance.
So... why do you feel it makes sense to share an email address and brag to thousands of geeks that you have a clearance?
Just checked here:
Get EasyUbuntu!
Stable Release
The 3.0 release supports:
* Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu
* Breezy/Dapper
* x86/powerpc/amd64
Let's see...
Stunning visual appearance.... check
Elegant and simple user interface.... check(?)
Maybe 1 or 2 'minor' design flaws not caught during development.... check!
It's amazing. Anything coming out of Apple these days has great design, works well for the most part, but there's always something screwy- iPod batteries, hot laptops, etc.
Back up "unlimited" data at carbonite.com for $5 a month. Software client is windows only at present, but works great. I haven't seen anything else even close for the price.
I have no affiliation.
Or, get a big USB/Firewire drive and back up occasionally to that.
Oh, I *could* normalize it and reduce it to 3 columns: Name of entity, name of measure, value. But that would be utterly useless for my needs, and a total PITA to handle. And yes, I could take that structure and make a cross-table in Access or whatever, but then I still need to do some analyses and dynamic what-ifs on the resulting table that are at best quite cumbersome to implement in Access or an equivalent, but are a snap in Excel.
A list of 500 entities with 250+ performance measurements and derived metrics. No. Yes, they have names.
It's the 256 column limit that's a bitch. Fairly often, I have datasets that are 200-500 rows x 200-500 columns or so. These are datasets for which a spreadsheet is the right tool, provided that I could frickin' shoehorn them into one worksheet.
Also, I find that there are rare occasions when Excel *is* the right tool for datasets with ~100,000 rows (much more than that, I agree, run away).
I'm with you on name-calling (it's fun but it doesn't exactly promote dialog), but please tell me how your use of hard core left leaner is not name-calling? And WTF is a hard core leaner, anyway? Don't moderates lean one way or the other, while the hard core guys are all the way out?
Also, grandparent supported his argument with a relevant example (follow the link), so it's not the case that he's got "no other option." Unlike... your response?
Read dude.
The Romans (and Greeks) noticed the effects; see my links. They cite ancients who noted the impact of lead smelting, etc. The Romans even had a name for it (Saturnine gout).
If drinking water from the aquaduct had noticable adverse effects they would have abandoned it.
This seems like common sense, but for some reason it isn't always true. So many examples. But it wasn't the aquaducts that got 'em, it was the leadworkers and the people who imbibed the syrup that was typically boiled down in lead pots.
I agree with your basic point that you can't easily detect the sort of toxicity that leads to death/illness with low frequency, O(1 in 1M) or so. And the really bad stuff is self-evident, as you note. But there's the class of substances that occupy the middle ground- not obviously fatal, but pretty frickin' bad. It sure would be nice to catch these in the lab.
Lead is an interesting example.
The aqueduct that supplied water to the French city of Nimes had parts made of lead. It was operated continuously for nine centuries without obvious side effects.
Hey, guess what, my wife is a classics major. We honeymooned near Nimes and visited the Pont du Gard. I suggest you Google for
In the first century A.D., Dioscorides, another Greek physician, noticed that exposure to lead could cause paralysis and delirium in addition to intestinal problems and swelling.
Fair enough on all points.