They already have "None of the above" in Nevada. It only got 2% of the vote or something like that.
People won't vote for "none of the above" for the same reason they won't vote for a third-party candidate--fear of "wasting their vote". Regardless of the validity of the "wasted vote" argument (which is much debated here), it applies to "none of the above" just as much as it does to third-party candidates.
Yes, but with the major news sites, we only get occasional misinformation, such as the result of a state being projected far earlier than anyone can reliably predict its true outcome.
Here at slashdot, we get loads of misinformation that isn't available anywhere else.
Because then the anger over such a narrow (and "unfair") defeat will mean at least one political party will be fighting for election reform for the next term.
Yes, but any "election reform" devised by the republicrats will be designed to keep the republicrats in power, and to keep third parties out in the cold.
If you actually take time to think about it, rather than just mindlessly accepting the Gore FUD, you will find that a vote for Nader is only half a vote for Bush.
Unfortunately, Maine's electoral votes are not divided by popular percentage. It's not winner-take-all, like most states, but it is also not a system where Maine's four electoral votes are divided percentagewise.
Two of Maine's four electoral votes still go to the overall state-wide winner. Each of the other two votes goes to the candidate receiving the most votes in each of Maine's two congressional districts.
Common sense would say that if electors were divided by the % of the popular vote within a state, then it would be equivalent to a national popular vote
No, it wouldn't, because each state has N+2 electoral votes, where N is proportional to the population of the state. Wyoming gets 3 out of 538 electoral votes, despite the fact that it has considerably less than 3/538 of the country's population.
And god help us if we ever find a planet with anything resembling a life form. Historically, Humans react VERY BADLY to foreign organisms they've never been exposed to before. (ask the Amazonian tribes, Native Americans, Europeans ) - it'll be the Andromeda strain all over again.
Nonsense. Perhaps you haven't noticed that Amazonians, Native Americans and Europeans are very, very similar biologically. That's why viruses and other pathogens can move from one to another. And yes, when that happens it's very bad if the person hasn't been exposed to it before.
Viruses can't even move between terrestrial biological kingdoms. Animal viruses can't infect plants. Plant viruses can't infect animals. Bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) can't infect plants or animals. Most viruses are even more restricted than that as far as what they can infect.
Anything which evolved independently of life on earth will be far more different from earth organisms than plants are from animals. Asking whether a virus from Alpha Ceti VI can infect humans is like asking whether a computer virus can infect humans.
Other/. story submitters could learn from Sims. This is what/. articles should be like. Ideally, very few of the comments will be moderated as informative because the article itself was already informative.
Now compare if this had been written by an average/. story submitter. "Librarian of Congress refuses all DMCA exceptions! Librarian of Congress responsible for the ozone hole! Librarian of Congress actually an evil alien from Galaxatron 6!"
Of course, there needs to be a law out there forbidding any software license (or any other IP license for that matter) from prohibiting activities defined as fair use.
So you believe that non-disclosure agreement you signed when you went to work for a company should be illegal?
Some rights cannot be contracted away. For example, even if you sign a contract permitting someone to kill you, they still cannot legally kill you.
Other rights can be voluntarily given up. For example, you can voluntarily place a work you created in the public domain, thus giving up all copyrights you had in that work.
Now, why do you believe IP rights should belong to the former class rather than the latter?
The patent system is enshrined in the constitution, theoretically the highest law of the land. Anti-trust laws are not (unless you believe that that's "regulating interstate commerce"). So patents trump anti-trust.
Ooops... There's a big bunch of treaties to make patents valid worldwide
Some days it really pisses me off that there's no "misinformative" option in moderating.
If you are aware of such a treaty, feel free and provide such a citation. If you heard this from your mother's friend's sister's secretary, do a little fact-checking first.
There is a World Intellectual Property Organization which does accept patent applications. However, it does not grant worldwide patents. It merely expedites applying for patents in several countries (or regional organizations, see below), but it's still up to each individual country (or regional organization) whether or not to grant the patent.
There are three regional organizations I know of which grant patents which are applicable across multiple countries: the European Patent Office, the African Regional Industrial Property Organization (covering much of English-speaking Africa), and the Organisation Africaine de la Propriete Intellectuelle (covering much of French-speaking Africa). However, each of these organizations have their own offices for evaluating patents. So you can't just go to the Estonian Patent Office, have your application examined by them, and get a European patent. A European patent application is examined by EPO itself.
This election is too important, this president will name 2-4 supreme court justices for terms of LIFE.
That is true. However, what the Republicrat FUDers don't want you to think about is the fact that which of the current justices resign depends on who wins the election.
None of the justices are so infirm that they'll have to resign within the next four years. If Gore is elected, no conservative justice will resign and allow himself to be replaced with a liberal justice. Vice versa with Bush and liberal justices. Although the next president will have the opportunity to appoint a few justices, this will not change the ideological makeup of the court.
Voting for Pat won't get him elected. It won't stop Gore from getting elected. Voting for Bush, who is my second choice, can help prevent Gore from getting elected. He's not perfect, but he'll do.
Ah, that explains it! How much you buy into the "don't waste your vote" rhetoric depends on how much worse one of the two major candidates is, in your opinion, than the other. You, as do most Buchanan supporters, believe that Gore would be much worse than Bush. Thus, you buy into the FUD, and Buchanan will receive very few votes. Libertarians such as myself believe that Gore is only very slightly worse than Bush (and there's quite a few of us who believe that Bush is slightly worse than Gore, too), so we don't listen to the FUD.
By all means, cast your vote for Bush. I'll be reminding you for the next four years how Browne got three times as many votes as Buchanan.
It's typical of Republicrat FUD to just plain lie when it suits them. Even if you're worried about electing Bush, a vote for Nader is only half a vote for Bush. Do the math.
Please don't take this as a flame, it's not intended as such, but how can you find both of these candidates interesting? They're almost diametrically opposed to each other. I'm asking this out of curiosity because you aren't the only poster I've seen with a stance like this.
Because destroying the one-party system we have (masquerading as a two-party system) is more important than political ideology.
Also, if you're concerned about corporate power, both of these candidates may seem likeable. Nader would use a strong government to restrain corporations. Browne would not restrain corporations at all, but at the same time he would not allow CEO's to use the FBI as their personal police force, the way they do under the Republicrats. Under Browne, corporations would not be able to corrupt government power the way they do today, becuase they would be hardly any "government power" to speak of. (How Nader proposes to prevent corporations from corrupting the increased goverment power, I'm not sure.)
It's interesting how privacy policy, disclosure, copy left|right|middle etc is not being talked about or looked at in this election at all. Nor is looking at how anti-trust should be applied to companies in the 'miracle-gro' computer industry. I don't understand why not,
If the two major candidates are keeping oddly silent on an issue, chances are that they both hold the same position as each other, and one diametrically opposed to your own. Thus, it is in their interests not to discuss that issue--it would not gain one of them votes from the other (since they both have the same position), and it would lose them votes to those third party candidates who hold the opposite position.
I'm a libertarian, and I intend to vote for Browne. Yet, I can answer that question, becuase if the only three candidates were Bush, Gore, and Nader, I would vote for Nader. It is more important to me to destroy the one-party system we have (which masquerades as a two-party system) than to vote based on political ideology.
(Disclaimer: I do not believe Bush and Gore are exactly alike. I acknowledge that they have ideological differences on a few issues, just as any two politicians from the same party will not be in agreement on 100% of the issues.)
Slashdot Mirror
The voting itself, yes. There's nothing which demands that the counting be done in one day, except the media's and people's hunger for information.
People won't vote for "none of the above" for the same reason they won't vote for a third-party candidate--fear of "wasting their vote". Regardless of the validity of the "wasted vote" argument (which is much debated here), it applies to "none of the above" just as much as it does to third-party candidates.
FEC commissioner Mick Foley could arrange a title match, to be shown on pay-per-view, in three weeks or so.
Very unlikely. Electors are chosen from the party faithful.
Please educate yourself on the structure of U.S. government before presuming to educate others on it.
Mike Royko (may he rest in peace) always recommended lying to the exit pollsters.
Here at slashdot, we get loads of misinformation that isn't available anywhere else.
Yes, but any "election reform" devised by the republicrats will be designed to keep the republicrats in power, and to keep third parties out in the cold.
If you actually take time to think about it, rather than just mindlessly accepting the Gore FUD, you will find that a vote for Nader is only half a vote for Bush.
Two of Maine's four electoral votes still go to the overall state-wide winner. Each of the other two votes goes to the candidate receiving the most votes in each of Maine's two congressional districts.
No, it wouldn't, because each state has N+2 electoral votes, where N is proportional to the population of the state. Wyoming gets 3 out of 538 electoral votes, despite the fact that it has considerably less than 3/538 of the country's population.
If Bush is in office, the supremes that retire will also be conservative. No change in the court's ideology.
A vote for Nader was only half a vote for Bush. Do the math.
Nonsense. Perhaps you haven't noticed that Amazonians, Native Americans and Europeans are very, very similar biologically. That's why viruses and other pathogens can move from one to another. And yes, when that happens it's very bad if the person hasn't been exposed to it before.
Viruses can't even move between terrestrial biological kingdoms. Animal viruses can't infect plants. Plant viruses can't infect animals. Bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) can't infect plants or animals. Most viruses are even more restricted than that as far as what they can infect.
Anything which evolved independently of life on earth will be far more different from earth organisms than plants are from animals. Asking whether a virus from Alpha Ceti VI can infect humans is like asking whether a computer virus can infect humans.
Now compare if this had been written by an average /. story submitter. "Librarian of Congress refuses all DMCA exceptions! Librarian of Congress responsible for the ozone hole! Librarian of Congress actually an evil alien from Galaxatron 6!"
So you believe that non-disclosure agreement you signed when you went to work for a company should be illegal?
Some rights cannot be contracted away. For example, even if you sign a contract permitting someone to kill you, they still cannot legally kill you.
Other rights can be voluntarily given up. For example, you can voluntarily place a work you created in the public domain, thus giving up all copyrights you had in that work.
Now, why do you believe IP rights should belong to the former class rather than the latter?
The patent system is enshrined in the constitution, theoretically the highest law of the land. Anti-trust laws are not (unless you believe that that's "regulating interstate commerce"). So patents trump anti-trust.
Some days it really pisses me off that there's no "misinformative" option in moderating.
If you are aware of such a treaty, feel free and provide such a citation. If you heard this from your mother's friend's sister's secretary, do a little fact-checking first.
There is a World Intellectual Property Organization which does accept patent applications. However, it does not grant worldwide patents. It merely expedites applying for patents in several countries (or regional organizations, see below), but it's still up to each individual country (or regional organization) whether or not to grant the patent.
There are three regional organizations I know of which grant patents which are applicable across multiple countries: the European Patent Office, the African Regional Industrial Property Organization (covering much of English-speaking Africa), and the Organisation Africaine de la Propriete Intellectuelle (covering much of French-speaking Africa). However, each of these organizations have their own offices for evaluating patents. So you can't just go to the Estonian Patent Office, have your application examined by them, and get a European patent. A European patent application is examined by EPO itself.
That is true. However, what the Republicrat FUDers don't want you to think about is the fact that which of the current justices resign depends on who wins the election.
None of the justices are so infirm that they'll have to resign within the next four years. If Gore is elected, no conservative justice will resign and allow himself to be replaced with a liberal justice. Vice versa with Bush and liberal justices. Although the next president will have the opportunity to appoint a few justices, this will not change the ideological makeup of the court.
Voting for Pat won't get him elected. It won't stop Gore from getting elected. Voting for Bush, who is my second choice, can help prevent Gore from getting elected. He's not perfect, but he'll do.
Ah, that explains it! How much you buy into the "don't waste your vote" rhetoric depends on how much worse one of the two major candidates is, in your opinion, than the other. You, as do most Buchanan supporters, believe that Gore would be much worse than Bush. Thus, you buy into the FUD, and Buchanan will receive very few votes. Libertarians such as myself believe that Gore is only very slightly worse than Bush (and there's quite a few of us who believe that Bush is slightly worse than Gore, too), so we don't listen to the FUD.
By all means, cast your vote for Bush. I'll be reminding you for the next four years how Browne got three times as many votes as Buchanan.
It's typical of Republicrat FUD to just plain lie when it suits them. Even if you're worried about electing Bush, a vote for Nader is only half a vote for Bush. Do the math.
Because destroying the one-party system we have (masquerading as a two-party system) is more important than political ideology.
Also, if you're concerned about corporate power, both of these candidates may seem likeable. Nader would use a strong government to restrain corporations. Browne would not restrain corporations at all, but at the same time he would not allow CEO's to use the FBI as their personal police force, the way they do under the Republicrats. Under Browne, corporations would not be able to corrupt government power the way they do today, becuase they would be hardly any "government power" to speak of. (How Nader proposes to prevent corporations from corrupting the increased goverment power, I'm not sure.)
This is what is known as a "self-fulfilling prophecy." As long as enough people believe it, it will be true.
If the two major candidates are keeping oddly silent on an issue, chances are that they both hold the same position as each other, and one diametrically opposed to your own. Thus, it is in their interests not to discuss that issue--it would not gain one of them votes from the other (since they both have the same position), and it would lose them votes to those third party candidates who hold the opposite position.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.
I'm a libertarian, and I intend to vote for Browne. Yet, I can answer that question, becuase if the only three candidates were Bush, Gore, and Nader, I would vote for Nader. It is more important to me to destroy the one-party system we have (which masquerades as a two-party system) than to vote based on political ideology.
(Disclaimer: I do not believe Bush and Gore are exactly alike. I acknowledge that they have ideological differences on a few issues, just as any two politicians from the same party will not be in agreement on 100% of the issues.)