Large scale manipulation will be clearly detected in any sort of remotely democratic society
What does it mean if you can detect it but not prove it? There have been several examples of electronically-counted US elections over the last decade whose results differed so greatly from pre-election polls and even election-day exit polls that it's almost certain that the vote was manipulated. But there is no way to prove it.
So what does the losing party do? Nothing. Complaining in the press would just make them look like whiners and wouldn't change a thing.
Yes, e-voting, after a lot of effort can be compromised. Regular paper-ballot voting can be compromised by anyone, skilled or not, with not a lot of effort at all.
You've got that backwards.
Tampering with paper ballot voting on a small scale is easy, but tampering on a small scale won't generally change election results. Tampering with paper ballots on a sufficiently large scale to control the outcome of an election -- and not getting caught! -- is much, much harder. Doing it on a large scale basically requires involving lots of people and the more people who know a secret the harder it is to keep.
Tampering with electronic voting is harder to do at all, but once accomplished many attacks on e-voting systems scale very well. Even better, if done right, the tampering is undetectable and requires only a very small number of people to be aware of it. With e-voting systems, a single individual in the right place -- and the place need not be anywhere near the election -- can change the outcome.
That would make sense, except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely.
I'm no fan of either side, but that isn't accurate. It certainly is true that the Republicans have increased spending military, etc., substantially (and increased the debt even more), but the largest part of the federal budget is still entitlements, which is primarily due to the Democrats.
Personally, I would find high gas taxes with the proceeds used to fund alternative energy, mass transportation and research into environmentally-safe local oil production to be an acceptable idea. But only if we see corresponding cuts in the federal income tax and in federal spending in other areas -- I'd like to see both the entitlements programs AND our federal military forces largely dismantled, with their functions moved to the state level. Pipe dream, of course, but I will argue/vote against ANY expansion of the federal government without a corresponding reduction somewhere else.
If I see that the kid went to some parties and got sh*t-faced, so what, many of us did that. But, if I find nothing, my imagination is left to fill in the blanks.
What if, rather than finding nothing you find lots of good stuff?
I know a guy who did the same thing and was fired on the spot. He was escorted out and paid only through the end of the day. I was the one who fired him.
You apparently didn't see any value in having him around to tie up loose ends, pass information on to his successor, etc.
Was that because the nature of the job was such that there wasn't information in his head that the company needed, or because you screwed up?
Attorneys were involved, counsel was sought, etc, etc. I am not talking out of my ass on this one.
Sounds like it backfired on you. If you had to pay an attorney, it would have been cheaper to keep the guy on for a while longer, and just watch him to make sure he was actually doing his job.
Telling someone who has actual ADHD any of these phrases is equivalent to telling a paraplegic to get up and walk.
The best analogy I've heard is that telling a kid with ADHD to concentrate harder is like telling a nearsighted person to squint harder.
The reason it's so great (and I'm speaking as someone who is both nearsighted and has adult ADD) is that both suggestions sort of work, but hit diminishing returns VERY rapidly. A person with ADD can force themselves to focus on something uninteresting, but only for short periods of time and only with limited success. How short and how limited depend on how severe the ADD is. Likewise, squinting can bring somewhat blurry things into focus, but only if they're not that blurry to begin with.
That's the best diagnostic approach for GPs and pediatricians, who don't really know what they're doing. Take your kid to a pediatric neurologist and he'll run an 8-hour battery of tests and interviews and produce a very detailed breakdown of your child's mental abilities, on a dozen different axes. Given that information, an ADHD diagnosis can be made with great accuracy and confidence. In some cases, the neurologist will even be able to tell you which of the drugs will work and which won't.
Fortunately, our family doctor did not agree. He put a stop to this nonsense. Maybe he's one of the few, but our doctor said "Maybe he just doesn't like going to school?" Someone give that man a candy apple for stating the bloody obvious.
Keep in mind that your family doctor may be wrong. GPs and pediatricians have a track record of diagnosing ADHD correctly that isn't much better than that of teachers.
Take him to a neurologist, ideally one that specializes in this area. The tests they perform will not only give you a solid answer on the ADHD question, they'll tell you a LOT about your child's mental strengths and weaknesses and that's really good information to have even if your kid is "normal" -- because there really is no "normal". Every kid is different and finding out about your kid's abilities on a dozen different mental skills axes is really helpful, because it shows you what they need to work on.
You really think your personal childhood crap equates to a hand-lettered sign by the architect of the national landmark?
No. Read it again to see that I was using an example of something that the general public should have no interest in, regardless of my caring for my junk.
You brought up an example that the public clearly has no interest in so that you could argue against an example in which the public clearly does have an interest?
Very effective.
Are you confusing me with MarkGriz, perhaps?
Yeah, him, fine, whatever, doesn't matter. You seemed to be defending his position which I argued against. Answer the point, ignore it, or butt out. I don't care what your name is, nor his. It's not important to the discussion.
The point is that you were attacking me (rather aggressively) over a point I never supported or addressed. If you'd like, I can start lambasting you for things you never said.
I'm sorry if you find this logic too complex to follow.
That said, if you'd like to discuss the article, please do. Other than mis-describing the architect as an artist, what egregious errors lead you to consider the journalist "piss-poor"? The reason that particular error isn't relevant is because it's not an error. Mary Colter was an artist as well as an architect. Google turns up several references to her art works, as well as the fact that she attended an art school and taught art. For that matter, good architecture is art.
So, to recap, you were annoyed at one non-error in the article, used a weak and pointless analogy to buttress your unsupportable notion that the sign in question wasn't worth protection, and figured if you were aggressive and obnoxious enough about it no one would notice the gaping holes in your arguments.
2. Bet double your accumulated tuition cost, and then overload on your mickey mouse degree classes.
Did you miss the part where you have to submit your schedule as well as your transcripts? Unless their system sucks, it'll notice that you're taking mickey mouse crap and give you bad odds so that you won't make much.
I've got a collection of a bunch of crap from my childhood which the public has no interest in preserving. Likewise, the sign does not command national significance.
You really think your personal childhood crap equates to a hand-lettered sign by the architect of the national landmark?
I'm a member of the public, and I think we have significant interest in preserving that sign as part of the landmark.
The piss-poor journalist you blindly quoted who made silly assumptions about their intent was my problem.
Ummm, I didn't quote any journalist. Are you confusing me with MarkGriz, perhaps?
On the other hand, I rather doubt that refraining from making the jokes would lead to imminent abolition or reform of those institutions.
But using the joke as an opportunity to discuss the seriousness of the issue, and to raise awareness that this is something that is wrong and need to be fixed is worthwhile and may contribute to the eventual correction of the problem.
Rather than using apt-pinning to pull packages from testing/unstable into stable, I'd suggest using it to pull packages from the backports repositories. That way you'll get newer software that's built against the stable versions of the supporting libraries.
I tried that. Even with the --proposed switch, it still only offered me the step-by-step upgrade path. I thought about just editing my sources.list and going for it, but chickened out.
Debian is always as up-to-date as you want it to be. It's just a question of which version you run.
Debian "stable" goes in cycles. Shortly after a release, it's fairly up to date. As time goes on, working towards the next release, packages get a little dated because they are intentionally not updated. Security and bug fixes are applied but no upgrades or new features -- this is why they call it "stable", because it doesn't change.
Debian "testing" is a less cyclical and tends to stay fairly up to date all the time. The exception is during a freeze, like the one we just started. Since the current testing is being morphed into a new stable, it has just stopped receiving updates, and won't start again until the new stable version is released.
Debian "unstable" is always quite up to date. All new features and packages are introduced in unstable first. Don't let the name confuse you -- it's about as reliable as most distributions' released versions. It's "unstable" in the sense that it gets constant updates, which means that things are always changing. Every once in a blue moon, a change will actually seriously break something for a day or so. Maybe once every 3-4 years in my experience.
Debian "experimental" is more of a layer on top of "unstable", and it is what it sounds like: experimental. The Bleeding Edge.
In addition to those versions, you can mix-n-match a bit by running stable plus backports. That allows you to keep a very stable, consistent base platform, and just pull in newer versions of particular packages, as needed.
I switched from Debian to Ubuntu three years ago, but I'm very seriously considering switching back. My theory was that Ubuntu LTS releases were roughly equivalent to Debian stable, and that regular Ubuntu was somewhere between testing and unstable. The second half of that works out sort of okay, but using Ubuntu LTS as an alternative to Debian stable is a bad choice. The upgrade path from one LTS release to the next is horribly painful, because you have to upgrade to each intermediate release. And, in practice, I find the every-six-months big-bang upgrades more intrusive and problematic than the continual, incremental upgrades on Debian testing or unstable.
All in all, after giving Ubuntu a good try, I think I'm going back to Debian stable on my server, Debian stable+backports on my laptop and Debian unstable on my desktop.
I find autofocus to be more accurate than manual focus even through a high-quality viewfinder. I do have one lens whose autofocus is a bit off -- it tends to focus a little beyond the subject -- but my camera allows entry of focus calibration adjustments for up to 20 lenses so with a few minutes of experimentation and tweaking the adjustment parameters makes that one accurate as well.
When I do use manual focus, I often put the camera in "live view" mode specifically so that I can use the LCD to focus. Why? Because I can zoom in to get a near pixel-for-pixel view which enables me to get an absolutely perfect manual focus, at the expense of a little fiddling.
well, there. i think you've found at least one line of distinction yourself.
"lower upper class" is NOT N missed paychecks away from financial ruin
"upper middle class" IS N missed paychecks away from financial ruin.
I know plenty of very wealthy people who suddenly found themselves destitute, and plenty of basically poor people who could lose their job for quite some time without trouble.
How many paychecks you are from financial ruin is more a function of how well you manage your money than of how much money you have.
Likewise, just because a mugger has chosen a reckless course, doesn't mean I wish to help him in his self destruction.
Certainly not. The problem is that when the mugger puts a gun/knife/whatever in your face you really have no way to be sure what his intentions are. Will he be happy just taking your money? Most likely. And if you can be certain that handing over you wallet will make him go away, by all means do it!
However, it's very hard to have that certainty, which is why the law in most states considers you justified if you respond to the deadly threat with deadly force.
Personally, if I thought there was a good chance handing over my wallet would end the encounter, I'd hand it over. I really don't want to live with all of the legal, economic and -- even more important -- moral consequences of having killed a person. But if the guy looks like he wants to cut me or kill me regardless, then I'll take stronger action.
I teach concealed firearm permit classes, and that's what I teach my students as well. Avoid bad situations. If you can't avoid it, run from it. If you can't run from it, stop it peacefully, even if that means handing over your stuff or swallowing your pride. If you can't stop it peacefully, apply maximum lawful violence at maximum speed, then get away and call the police.
Legal uses of firearms vastly outnumber illegal uses.
I see what you were trying to get at, but you're right only, if you admit that it is legal for some country ("A", say - North Korea) to use serious numbers of firearms and other weapons against other country ("B", say - USA) just because they don't like their political/economical system ("C", say - democracy/capitalism/neoliberalism).
No, you didn't see what I was getting at. My comment didn't address military usage of firearms at all. I was referring strictly to legal civilian use in the United States. Personal self-defense, lawful hunting and lawful target shooting.
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Large scale manipulation will be clearly detected in any sort of remotely democratic society
What does it mean if you can detect it but not prove it? There have been several examples of electronically-counted US elections over the last decade whose results differed so greatly from pre-election polls and even election-day exit polls that it's almost certain that the vote was manipulated. But there is no way to prove it.
So what does the losing party do? Nothing. Complaining in the press would just make them look like whiners and wouldn't change a thing.
Yes, e-voting, after a lot of effort can be compromised. Regular paper-ballot voting can be compromised by anyone, skilled or not, with not a lot of effort at all.
You've got that backwards.
Tampering with paper ballot voting on a small scale is easy, but tampering on a small scale won't generally change election results. Tampering with paper ballots on a sufficiently large scale to control the outcome of an election -- and not getting caught! -- is much, much harder. Doing it on a large scale basically requires involving lots of people and the more people who know a secret the harder it is to keep.
Tampering with electronic voting is harder to do at all, but once accomplished many attacks on e-voting systems scale very well. Even better, if done right, the tampering is undetectable and requires only a very small number of people to be aware of it. With e-voting systems, a single individual in the right place -- and the place need not be anywhere near the election -- can change the outcome.
That would make sense, except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely.
I'm no fan of either side, but that isn't accurate. It certainly is true that the Republicans have increased spending military, etc., substantially (and increased the debt even more), but the largest part of the federal budget is still entitlements, which is primarily due to the Democrats.
Personally, I would find high gas taxes with the proceeds used to fund alternative energy, mass transportation and research into environmentally-safe local oil production to be an acceptable idea. But only if we see corresponding cuts in the federal income tax and in federal spending in other areas -- I'd like to see both the entitlements programs AND our federal military forces largely dismantled, with their functions moved to the state level. Pipe dream, of course, but I will argue/vote against ANY expansion of the federal government without a corresponding reduction somewhere else.
The rest of it is just people who drive too much to get to their day job in the city.
And, increasingly, people who telecommute.
If I see that the kid went to some parties and got sh*t-faced, so what, many of us did that. But, if I find nothing, my imagination is left to fill in the blanks.
What if, rather than finding nothing you find lots of good stuff?
I know a guy who did the same thing and was fired on the spot. He was escorted out and paid only through the end of the day. I was the one who fired him.
You apparently didn't see any value in having him around to tie up loose ends, pass information on to his successor, etc.
Was that because the nature of the job was such that there wasn't information in his head that the company needed, or because you screwed up?
Attorneys were involved, counsel was sought, etc, etc. I am not talking out of my ass on this one.
Sounds like it backfired on you. If you had to pay an attorney, it would have been cheaper to keep the guy on for a while longer, and just watch him to make sure he was actually doing his job.
Telling someone who has actual ADHD any of these phrases is equivalent to telling a paraplegic to get up and walk.
The best analogy I've heard is that telling a kid with ADHD to concentrate harder is like telling a nearsighted person to squint harder.
The reason it's so great (and I'm speaking as someone who is both nearsighted and has adult ADD) is that both suggestions sort of work, but hit diminishing returns VERY rapidly. A person with ADD can force themselves to focus on something uninteresting, but only for short periods of time and only with limited success. How short and how limited depend on how severe the ADD is. Likewise, squinting can bring somewhat blurry things into focus, but only if they're not that blurry to begin with.
That's the best diagnostic approach for GPs and pediatricians, who don't really know what they're doing. Take your kid to a pediatric neurologist and he'll run an 8-hour battery of tests and interviews and produce a very detailed breakdown of your child's mental abilities, on a dozen different axes. Given that information, an ADHD diagnosis can be made with great accuracy and confidence. In some cases, the neurologist will even be able to tell you which of the drugs will work and which won't.
Fortunately, our family doctor did not agree. He put a stop to this nonsense. Maybe he's one of the few, but our doctor said "Maybe he just doesn't like going to school?" Someone give that man a candy apple for stating the bloody obvious.
Keep in mind that your family doctor may be wrong. GPs and pediatricians have a track record of diagnosing ADHD correctly that isn't much better than that of teachers.
Take him to a neurologist, ideally one that specializes in this area. The tests they perform will not only give you a solid answer on the ADHD question, they'll tell you a LOT about your child's mental strengths and weaknesses and that's really good information to have even if your kid is "normal" -- because there really is no "normal". Every kid is different and finding out about your kid's abilities on a dozen different mental skills axes is really helpful, because it shows you what they need to work on.
Except they didn't use parentheses. Apparently it's just the submitter who doesn't understand the meaning of parentheses.
You really think your personal childhood crap equates to a hand-lettered sign by the architect of the national landmark?
No. Read it again to see that I was using an example of something that the general public should have no interest in, regardless of my caring for my junk.
You brought up an example that the public clearly has no interest in so that you could argue against an example in which the public clearly does have an interest?
Very effective.
Are you confusing me with MarkGriz, perhaps?
Yeah, him, fine, whatever, doesn't matter. You seemed to be defending his position which I argued against. Answer the point, ignore it, or butt out. I don't care what your name is, nor his. It's not important to the discussion.
The point is that you were attacking me (rather aggressively) over a point I never supported or addressed. If you'd like, I can start lambasting you for things you never said.
I'm sorry if you find this logic too complex to follow.
That said, if you'd like to discuss the article, please do. Other than mis-describing the architect as an artist, what egregious errors lead you to consider the journalist "piss-poor"? The reason that particular error isn't relevant is because it's not an error. Mary Colter was an artist as well as an architect. Google turns up several references to her art works, as well as the fact that she attended an art school and taught art. For that matter, good architecture is art.
So, to recap, you were annoyed at one non-error in the article, used a weak and pointless analogy to buttress your unsupportable notion that the sign in question wasn't worth protection, and figured if you were aggressive and obnoxious enough about it no one would notice the gaping holes in your arguments.
Is that what you call perspective?
2. Bet double your accumulated tuition cost, and then overload on your mickey mouse degree classes.
Did you miss the part where you have to submit your schedule as well as your transcripts? Unless their system sucks, it'll notice that you're taking mickey mouse crap and give you bad odds so that you won't make much.
I've got a collection of a bunch of crap from my childhood which the public has no interest in preserving. Likewise, the sign does not command national significance.
You really think your personal childhood crap equates to a hand-lettered sign by the architect of the national landmark?
I'm a member of the public, and I think we have significant interest in preserving that sign as part of the landmark.
The piss-poor journalist you blindly quoted who made silly assumptions about their intent was my problem.
Ummm, I didn't quote any journalist. Are you confusing me with MarkGriz, perhaps?
It's called "perspective". Get some. Please.
I will not dignify that.
Really? Is anyone stupid enough to believe a sign could be a national historic landmark?
I dunno. A sign, hand-painted 60 years ago by the architect who designed the landmark seems worthy of preservation itself.
The thing is nobody but you assumes they did that knowing it wasn't just a poorly-written sign produced by the park service.
Not knowing doesn't reduce the impact of their vandalism.
I knew /. was dominated by Windows users these days, but I didn't realize it was dominated by Windows users who can't take a joke.
On the other hand, I rather doubt that refraining from making the jokes would lead to imminent abolition or reform of those institutions.
But using the joke as an opportunity to discuss the seriousness of the issue, and to raise awareness that this is something that is wrong and need to be fixed is worthwhile and may contribute to the eventual correction of the problem.
Yes. Silent updates suck. Well at least, for people that want to control their own computer, it does.
But they're only doing this on Windows, so it's for people who've already given up controlling their own computer.
I used Debian unstable as my primary platform from 2000 through 2007. What I described was my experience with it.
Rather than using apt-pinning to pull packages from testing/unstable into stable, I'd suggest using it to pull packages from the backports repositories. That way you'll get newer software that's built against the stable versions of the supporting libraries.
I tried that. Even with the --proposed switch, it still only offered me the step-by-step upgrade path. I thought about just editing my sources.list and going for it, but chickened out.
Is debian any more up-to-date these days?
Debian is always as up-to-date as you want it to be. It's just a question of which version you run.
Debian "stable" goes in cycles. Shortly after a release, it's fairly up to date. As time goes on, working towards the next release, packages get a little dated because they are intentionally not updated. Security and bug fixes are applied but no upgrades or new features -- this is why they call it "stable", because it doesn't change.
Debian "testing" is a less cyclical and tends to stay fairly up to date all the time. The exception is during a freeze, like the one we just started. Since the current testing is being morphed into a new stable, it has just stopped receiving updates, and won't start again until the new stable version is released.
Debian "unstable" is always quite up to date. All new features and packages are introduced in unstable first. Don't let the name confuse you -- it's about as reliable as most distributions' released versions. It's "unstable" in the sense that it gets constant updates, which means that things are always changing. Every once in a blue moon, a change will actually seriously break something for a day or so. Maybe once every 3-4 years in my experience.
Debian "experimental" is more of a layer on top of "unstable", and it is what it sounds like: experimental. The Bleeding Edge.
In addition to those versions, you can mix-n-match a bit by running stable plus backports. That allows you to keep a very stable, consistent base platform, and just pull in newer versions of particular packages, as needed.
I switched from Debian to Ubuntu three years ago, but I'm very seriously considering switching back. My theory was that Ubuntu LTS releases were roughly equivalent to Debian stable, and that regular Ubuntu was somewhere between testing and unstable. The second half of that works out sort of okay, but using Ubuntu LTS as an alternative to Debian stable is a bad choice. The upgrade path from one LTS release to the next is horribly painful, because you have to upgrade to each intermediate release. And, in practice, I find the every-six-months big-bang upgrades more intrusive and problematic than the continual, incremental upgrades on Debian testing or unstable.
All in all, after giving Ubuntu a good try, I think I'm going back to Debian stable on my server, Debian stable+backports on my laptop and Debian unstable on my desktop.
I find autofocus to be more accurate than manual focus even through a high-quality viewfinder. I do have one lens whose autofocus is a bit off -- it tends to focus a little beyond the subject -- but my camera allows entry of focus calibration adjustments for up to 20 lenses so with a few minutes of experimentation and tweaking the adjustment parameters makes that one accurate as well.
When I do use manual focus, I often put the camera in "live view" mode specifically so that I can use the LCD to focus. Why? Because I can zoom in to get a near pixel-for-pixel view which enables me to get an absolutely perfect manual focus, at the expense of a little fiddling.
well, there. i think you've found at least one line of distinction yourself.
"lower upper class" is NOT N missed paychecks away from financial ruin "upper middle class" IS N missed paychecks away from financial ruin.
I know plenty of very wealthy people who suddenly found themselves destitute, and plenty of basically poor people who could lose their job for quite some time without trouble. How many paychecks you are from financial ruin is more a function of how well you manage your money than of how much money you have.
Likewise, just because a mugger has chosen a reckless course, doesn't mean I wish to help him in his self destruction.
Certainly not. The problem is that when the mugger puts a gun/knife/whatever in your face you really have no way to be sure what his intentions are. Will he be happy just taking your money? Most likely. And if you can be certain that handing over you wallet will make him go away, by all means do it!
However, it's very hard to have that certainty, which is why the law in most states considers you justified if you respond to the deadly threat with deadly force.
Personally, if I thought there was a good chance handing over my wallet would end the encounter, I'd hand it over. I really don't want to live with all of the legal, economic and -- even more important -- moral consequences of having killed a person. But if the guy looks like he wants to cut me or kill me regardless, then I'll take stronger action.
I teach concealed firearm permit classes, and that's what I teach my students as well. Avoid bad situations. If you can't avoid it, run from it. If you can't run from it, stop it peacefully, even if that means handing over your stuff or swallowing your pride. If you can't stop it peacefully, apply maximum lawful violence at maximum speed, then get away and call the police.
Legal uses of firearms vastly outnumber illegal uses.
I see what you were trying to get at, but you're right only, if you admit that it is legal for some country ("A", say - North Korea) to use serious numbers of firearms and other weapons against other country ("B", say - USA) just because they don't like their political/economical system ("C", say - democracy/capitalism/neoliberalism).
No, you didn't see what I was getting at. My comment didn't address military usage of firearms at all. I was referring strictly to legal civilian use in the United States. Personal self-defense, lawful hunting and lawful target shooting.