No need to get all so "conspiracy FUD" about the phone companies loading code onto your phone. From the first article it says that "spyware" was loaded onto the central Vodafone server. Which is obviously the best place to attack the system. That way you can use the entire network as your spy infrastructure.
I would say that you are technically correct, but by doing a reply all that invalidated your colleagues original email, he feels like you smacked him down, ie that your reply also invalidated *him*.
People are funny like that. No matter how valid your reply is, they take it personlly when you point out that they are wrong.
I once got a corporate wide email from some guy in some department somewhere, that was telling us to be aware of people calling you on the phone and asking us to punch in a series of digits on the phones keypad, as that would allow the caller to pwn your long distance calling. This was straight up urban legend and 2 minutes on google found me the AT&T page explaining why that was a crock. I emailed this back to the original email writer pointing it out, and he replied that I apparently ".. had too much time on my hands"
A story is posted on Slashdot (US) Of the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Reporting a story in the New Scientist (England) Of a bunch of scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (US)
Can we add a few more levels of indirection here??
Smart Power Usage (Offtopic)
on
Smart Power
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
[rant-ish] Its interesting that the article summary mentions the dryer as one appliance to turn off when the power grid gets stressed, as I feel that the dryer is the one thing for which there is a perfectly good solar equivelent.. its called "the Sun".
Growing up in Australia, pretty well every house had a Hills Hoist in the backyard, and clothes were dryed by the power of the Sun. It was only during the most shitty weather that you couldn't get the 1/2 day needed to dry your load of clothes.
Now fast forward to me living in the US. I find that 2 story houses are being built with the Laundry room on the upper floor as it minimises the transport of clothes to/from the bedrooms/bathrooms where they are most likely to be removed/stored, so you are being coerced to use the power hungry dryer over the use of a more environment friendly method. But what astounds me more is that many communities have laws restricting placing any sort of clothes line out in the backyard. Thus on a day like today, when the sun is streaming in my window, I am going to have to use the dryer to dry the clothes I will be washing (And yes I do realise that I could string my clothes out inside the house.. but dripping water doesn't do carpet any good either)
It just seeems crazy to me that arbitrary asthetic restrictions are forcing people to use more energy, and that high tech solutions are being enacted to reduce peak energy usage. What is being proposed is not really energy reduction or energy effieciency, but rather shifting the production of energy to time periods when it won't be noticed. To me this is really sweeping the energy production limitations under the carpet while allowing society to keep increasing average usage. In the long term its nuts to do so.
Why are we headed in this direction? Where are the programs for reducing energy consumption? Or are the leaders who dictate energy policy playing Nero while Rome is starting to smoulder in the background? I wish I knew the answer to these questions.
As an example of energy policy, there is the current US issue of drilling in the arctic wilderness (Note that I am not Bush bashing, just that he is currently the leader and this is a current issue.. I am sure other leaders had their own examples) A few years ago I saw the projected energy output from the potential arctic park drilling. Over the course of its lifetime, it amounted to at most 10% of the total US energy consumption at any one time, while the energy usage growth over that same period was huge, easily more than 10%. It would seem that if you could enforce more energy effieciency, then you wouldn't have to be scrapping around in contreversal places looking for more.
As a final stat, it is pretty common knowledge that in rough terms, the US has 5% of the worlds population, but uses 20% of its energy. I can't see this as being sustainable in the long term, as what happens when the other 95% of the worlds peoples want *their* 20% of the worlds energy? Somewhere it is all going to end in tears for some people.
I can't remember all of the details, but I am sure there was a Dutch group who took a sample of all of the available CDs at the time, burnt data onto them, put them in storage for 2 years and then re-tested the disks quality. Their results showed that all of the disks had significant degredation.
OK.. here is a link to a news report of that study
"The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was recorded 20 months ago had become unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers."
Re:Death by subscription? Please.
on
Demise of C++?
·
· Score: 1
"I think instead people who are using C++ will go elsewhere for information about C++."
And if you dig into one of the threads thats excatly what P.J.Plaugher says he does more and more now.. "go elsewhere for info".. and he is the *editor* of C/C++UJ
Sorry to disagree with you.. but it is *you* who is comparing apples with oranges, but only with respect to my original post:-)
I effectively started talking about the speed of C and C++ statically linked code being the same with all things being equal. But (as I saw from another of your posts) you actaully were ripping Bjarne for stating that stream insertion is the same speed as puts. Now that is something I totally agree with. But it is still apples vs oranges as puts only has a fraction of the functionality of cout et al, hence there is no way in hell that the two can run at the same speed, except with special optimisations that you posited.
So Bjarne being a lying SOB has nothing to do with my original argument. Hence apples vs oranges:-)
BTW I hate the implementation of cout when it comes to trying to implement printf style formatting. I also hate lots of other C++ stuff as well. But in general I like what I can do with it over and above C, and it has made my life a lot better.
Re:Balkanization
on
Demise of C++?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I never said that V-tables were as fast as code without them. It is a given that they are not (unless you have some deep machine logic to perform fast v-table lookup)
What I was saying was that the C code will run the same if it is compiled under a c++ or c compiler, whereas a lot of people thought that c++ automatically inserted v-tables and hence was presumed to be slower.
You example is flawed as you are comparing apples to oranges. The use of stream insertion will bring in all sorts of crap into the equation while "puts" will not. Hence your "puts" will run faster. (But try and overload your puts example to output custom data on a generic class by class basis and see how much extra code you have to add). Once you start using feaures of one language that are not implemented in the other, then simple speed comparisions go out the window.
Re:Balkanization
on
Demise of C++?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Obsession is not just a C/C++ thing. Look at all of the arguments over python and the use of whitespace. Every language has its obsessive arguments.
Re:Balkanization
on
Demise of C++?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
A lot of the shit heaped on C++ for being slow was due to the use of V-tables. V-Tables are another layer of indirection that come about with virtual function use in C++. People incorrectly assuemd that C++ always uses V-tables in order perform any function call - virtual or not, hence the belief that C++ is slower than C.
But v-tables are only created when virtual functions are used in classes, and only then. If no virtual functions are used then a C++ program can use static linking the same as for a C compiler. Given that C++ compilers are also defined to be C compilers, then for any given C++ compiler (and no virtual functions in the C++), C and C++ code should run at the same speed.
Now if you want to compare *different* C and C++ compilers, that is a seperate matter.
If you are interested in the inner C++ workings I can suggest any of the Scott Meyers books. Other people can probably suggest other authors as well.
Magazine quality
on
Demise of C++?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
[rant] I don't know about any subversive anti C++ group that is plotting the downfall of this language, but I was taken aback last week when I received the next issue in my C/C++ Users Journal subscription that had a letter attached to it saying that it was the last issue ever. This pissed me off as you don't just dump a magazine like a hot potato, you track the way it is selling and you say "well.. if ain't good by such and such a date then we cut it". So this cut has been in the pipeline for a while.
What also annoyed me about it was that the publishing company will transfer my exisiting subscription over to Dr Dobbs (though I can get my money back). Personally I feel that Dr Dobbs took a major nose dive years ago and is in no way of the same quality as the C/C++UJ. The transfer from glossy to newsprint style paper showed that they were needing to make cost cutbacks which implies to me that they were losing it in general. But what really took the cake was an article printed in the Dec 2005 issue where in a DB app, presentation was confused with storage in a manner befitting a failed CS101 assignement. While I gagged at the article itself, what shocked me even more was that the Dr Dobbs editors actually included it for publication. (As I blame the editors, I am not directly pointing to the article itself).
C/C++UJ said in their cover letter that they will be expanding Dr Dobbs to take on a lot of the content from the C/C++UJ. Personally I think that Dr Dobbs may be too far gone for this sort of recovery, and that I have lost a magazine that I liked, was to the point and generally full of quality (though other people may say I am blind about this). I may give Dr Dobbs the chance to show that it has improved, but I won't be holding my breath for very long.
Some car manufacturers are starting to put connectors in their systems. Scion is one that I know of that does it. Hopefully the manufacturers will learn that trendy young kids aren't the only people who like to have their music on the go.
(I am not a mac fanboy - though my wife does own a mini)
Macs cost too much
Define "cost".
In a monetary sense, yes I can see that Mac hardware is more expensive than x86 based hardware.
But there are other costs that comprise that fun acronym TCO.
When my wife set up her mini, all she asked me for was the Wi-Fi network password - I didn't have to do anything else for her, and she is not a computer geek. My personal time is worth a lot of $$ to me, so I really appreciated that aspect of the Apple system. Setting up a new windows box would have taken more input from me, and a linux system would have taken even more time (as I only have very little linux setup experience). So while the up front cost was more, I feel that the TCO will be less with this mini.
In Australia, when we vote we don't "sign in" per se.
Instead there is a big book for each district at each poling place that contains our name and address. When we vote our name is just crossed out. So there is a record of voting, but no record of order. Given we have compulsary voting, any defrauding my impersonating someone else will be caught by this system.
I would posit that the US is struggling with voting because you are trying to bolt on security to an existing system. If you tried to do that with software development, then your peers would just laugh you out of the development area. A better idea would be to go back to the drawing board and redesign the voting system from the ground up. That way you could eliminate the systemic flaws such as potetially correlating voting order with votes cast to produce a list of who voted for whom
While not high on the complexity level, my favouite segment was when they asked some people to deliver a large box (which was actually empty) to a specific office. The box was sized to just make it through the office door. The delivery people were distracted while they were in the office, and a small addition was made to the door jam so the doorway was just that much smaller. The delivery people were then told they had the wrong office. Hilarity resulted when they tried to get the box out the same door that they had just entered. They *knew* they had just come in that door, but couldn't figure out why the box wouldn't fit any more.
I can understand what you are saying, but some reason I have a little bit of trouble agreeing with you, especially with:
The idea is that men are animalistic, selfish, coercive, sexually driven and liars who will say, do and pretend anything to talk their target into sex
Have you ever been in a bar where men are trying to pick up? I would say that your quote (probably taken out of context ) is more the norm than the exception. But this could also be a chicken and egg type argument where men are trained from an early age that they have to compete like this in order to get a woman. But then again nature has always preferred the more flamboyant and aggressive males when mating season comes around.
Also personally I agree entirely with the taboo on paedophilia. But I don't see it as much in terms of a sexual thing, rather than as an exploitation thing, where an adult is exploiting a child for their own gain.
As for the Victorian era.. they invented the suit, that horrible piece of clothing that is desgined to supress men and symbolically castrate them with a tie.
The Greeks and Romans were notoriously homosexual, so their being exceptions over male nudity is interesting in this context.
As for the statues, there were just as many of naked women as well. That was really the point I was trying to make. It was balanced.
But yeah your right that the Greeks and Romans practiced overt homosexuality. But from my understanding it was not seen in the same light as homosexuality today, though I have not studied it.
From my travels in Middle Eastern countries in the 90's I did learn that if a man and woman wanted to date, they had to be officially chaperoned until they were married. But guys being guys wanted to get off, so there was a condoned (but not overt) understanding of allowed homosexuality in some of the societies that I visited.
Likewise in many pacific societies there is a village transvetite position which performs a simiilar occupation. This being a man who instead of going out and learning mens tasks, sits at home and learns the womens tasks. So again their take on homosexuality is different from the western viewpoint.
Yeah.. I have heard of these.. along with this company called Diebold... I hear that they are very supportive of the electoral process.
I think I can generalise that a lot of people don't trust the electoral process anymore. And even if the contest is honest, the main political parties seem to act in very similiar ways (probably due to the amount of special interest money floating around).
I am not sure how to reverse this trend of feeling that the government is screwing the electoral process and the people all at the same time. I think it would take electing some pretty impressive politicians, but I suspect that the electoral process also tends to weed out those sort of people.
Cynical, yes. But I think this is a serious problem - How do you get people involved if they feel no connection between what they do and what the government does.
NOTE that I am not pinning this on republicans or democrats, but rather the process in general.
Slashdot Mirror
No need to get all so "conspiracy FUD" about the phone companies loading code onto your phone. From the first article it says that "spyware" was loaded onto the central Vodafone server. Which is obviously the best place to attack the system. That way you can use the entire network as your spy infrastructure.
I would say that you are technically correct, but by doing a reply all that invalidated your colleagues original email, he feels like you smacked him down, ie that your reply also invalidated *him*.
.. had too much time on my hands"
People are funny like that. No matter how valid your reply is, they take it personlly when you point out that they are wrong.
I once got a corporate wide email from some guy in some department somewhere, that was telling us to be aware of people calling you on the phone and asking us to punch in a series of digits on the phones keypad, as that would allow the caller to pwn your long distance calling. This was straight up urban legend and 2 minutes on google found me the AT&T page explaining why that was a crock. I emailed this back to the original email writer pointing it out, and he replied that I apparently "
Yes .. you called??
:-)
But sorry, the robots I support are http://www.realdoll.com/
A story is posted on Slashdot (US)
Of the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Reporting a story in the New Scientist (England)
Of a bunch of scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (US)
Can we add a few more levels of indirection here??
[rant-ish] .. its called "the Sun".
.. but dripping water doesn't do carpet any good either)
.. I am sure other leaders had their own examples) A few years ago I saw the projected energy output from the potential arctic park drilling. Over the course of its lifetime, it amounted to at most 10% of the total US energy consumption at any one time, while the energy usage growth over that same period was huge, easily more than 10%. It would seem that if you could enforce more energy effieciency, then you wouldn't have to be scrapping around in contreversal places looking for more.
Its interesting that the article summary mentions the dryer as one appliance to turn off when the power grid gets stressed, as I feel that the dryer is the one thing for which there is a perfectly good solar equivelent
Growing up in Australia, pretty well every house had a Hills Hoist in the backyard, and clothes were dryed by the power of the Sun. It was only during the most shitty weather that you couldn't get the 1/2 day needed to dry your load of clothes.
Now fast forward to me living in the US. I find that 2 story houses are being built with the Laundry room on the upper floor as it minimises the transport of clothes to/from the bedrooms/bathrooms where they are most likely to be removed/stored, so you are being coerced to use the power hungry dryer over the use of a more environment friendly method. But what astounds me more is that many communities have laws restricting placing any sort of clothes line out in the backyard. Thus on a day like today, when the sun is streaming in my window, I am going to have to use the dryer to dry the clothes I will be washing (And yes I do realise that I could string my clothes out inside the house
It just seeems crazy to me that arbitrary asthetic restrictions are forcing people to use more energy, and that high tech solutions are being enacted to reduce peak energy usage. What is being proposed is not really energy reduction or energy effieciency, but rather shifting the production of energy to time periods when it won't be noticed. To me this is really sweeping the energy production limitations under the carpet while allowing society to keep increasing average usage. In the long term its nuts to do so.
Why are we headed in this direction? Where are the programs for reducing energy consumption? Or are the leaders who dictate energy policy playing Nero while Rome is starting to smoulder in the background? I wish I knew the answer to these questions.
As an example of energy policy, there is the current US issue of drilling in the arctic wilderness (Note that I am not Bush bashing, just that he is currently the leader and this is a current issue
As a final stat, it is pretty common knowledge that in rough terms, the US has 5% of the worlds population, but uses 20% of its energy. I can't see this as being sustainable in the long term, as what happens when the other 95% of the worlds peoples want *their* 20% of the worlds energy? Somewhere it is all going to end in tears for some people.
[/rant-ish]
Aaaaah, the days before "Intellectual Property" became synonymous with "classified."
Nah, the days when electronic components only had at most 4 legs and weren't turing complete
I can't remember all of the details, but I am sure there was a Dutch group who took a sample of all of the available CDs at the time, burnt data onto them, put them in storage for 2 years and then re-tested the disks quality. Their results showed that all of the disks had significant degredation.
.. here is a link to a news report of that study
OK
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7751 This link includes a link to the original Dutch article
To quote:
"The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was recorded 20 months ago had become unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers."
"I think instead people who are using C++ will go elsewhere for information about C++."
.. "go elsewhere for info".. and he is the *editor* of C/C++UJ
And if you dig into one of the threads thats excatly what P.J.Plaugher says he does more and more now
Sorry to disagree with you .. but it is *you* who is comparing apples with oranges, but only with respect to my original post :-)
:-)
I effectively started talking about the speed of C and C++ statically linked code being the same with all things being equal. But (as I saw from another of your posts) you actaully were ripping Bjarne for stating that stream insertion is the same speed as puts. Now that is something I totally agree with. But it is still apples vs oranges as puts only has a fraction of the functionality of cout et al, hence there is no way in hell that the two can run at the same speed, except with special optimisations that you posited.
So Bjarne being a lying SOB has nothing to do with my original argument. Hence apples vs oranges
BTW I hate the implementation of cout when it comes to trying to implement printf style formatting. I also hate lots of other C++ stuff as well. But in general I like what I can do with it over and above C, and it has made my life a lot better.
I never said that V-tables were as fast as code without them. It is a given that they are not (unless you have some deep machine logic to perform fast v-table lookup)
What I was saying was that the C code will run the same if it is compiled under a c++ or c compiler, whereas a lot of people thought that c++ automatically inserted v-tables and hence was presumed to be slower.
You example is flawed as you are comparing apples to oranges. The use of stream insertion will bring in all sorts of crap into the equation while "puts" will not. Hence your "puts" will run faster. (But try and overload your puts example to output custom data on a generic class by class basis and see how much extra code you have to add). Once you start using feaures of one language that are not implemented in the other, then simple speed comparisions go out the window.
Obsession is not just a C/C++ thing. Look at all of the arguments over python and the use of whitespace. Every language has its obsessive arguments.
A lot of the shit heaped on C++ for being slow was due to the use of V-tables. V-Tables are another layer of indirection that come about with virtual function use in C++. People incorrectly assuemd that C++ always uses V-tables in order perform any function call - virtual or not, hence the belief that C++ is slower than C.
But v-tables are only created when virtual functions are used in classes, and only then. If no virtual functions are used then a C++ program can use static linking the same as for a C compiler. Given that C++ compilers are also defined to be C compilers, then for any given C++ compiler (and no virtual functions in the C++), C and C++ code should run at the same speed.
Now if you want to compare *different* C and C++ compilers, that is a seperate matter.
If you are interested in the inner C++ workings I can suggest any of the Scott Meyers books. Other people can probably suggest other authors as well.
[rant] .. if ain't good by such and such a date then we cut it". So this cut has been in the pipeline for a while.
I don't know about any subversive anti C++ group that is plotting the downfall of this language, but I was taken aback last week when I received the next issue in my C/C++ Users Journal subscription that had a letter attached to it saying that it was the last issue ever. This pissed me off as you don't just dump a magazine like a hot potato, you track the way it is selling and you say "well
What also annoyed me about it was that the publishing company will transfer my exisiting subscription over to Dr Dobbs (though I can get my money back). Personally I feel that Dr Dobbs took a major nose dive years ago and is in no way of the same quality as the C/C++UJ. The transfer from glossy to newsprint style paper showed that they were needing to make cost cutbacks which implies to me that they were losing it in general. But what really took the cake was an article printed in the Dec 2005 issue where in a DB app, presentation was confused with storage in a manner befitting a failed CS101 assignement. While I gagged at the article itself, what shocked me even more was that the Dr Dobbs editors actually included it for publication. (As I blame the editors, I am not directly pointing to the article itself).
C/C++UJ said in their cover letter that they will be expanding Dr Dobbs to take on a lot of the content from the C/C++UJ. Personally I think that Dr Dobbs may be too far gone for this sort of recovery, and that I have lost a magazine that I liked, was to the point and generally full of quality (though other people may say I am blind about this). I may give Dr Dobbs the chance to show that it has improved, but I won't be holding my breath for very long.
[/rant]
Nah it's like this instead ..
.. you gotta recompile your kernel"
"d00d
Damn .. I missed that one in my rush to post .. lol
.. we're Americans too .. South Americans maybe, but we are *still* Americans"
But I doubt you are the only people who missed that memo.
And I am sure the Canadians get pissed when people say North America but they mean the USA.
I have friends from Brasil who insist on saying "Dammit
Some car manufacturers are starting to put connectors in their systems. Scion is one that I know of that does it. Hopefully the manufacturers will learn that trendy young kids aren't the only people who like to have their music on the go.
From the mentioned website:
PLEASE NOTE: This product can not be shipped to North America or Canada.
I know the yanks are a bunch wussy puritans, but whats up with the cannucks????
(I am not a mac fanboy - though my wife does own a mini)
Macs cost too much
Define "cost".
In a monetary sense, yes I can see that Mac hardware is more expensive than x86 based hardware.
But there are other costs that comprise that fun acronym TCO.
When my wife set up her mini, all she asked me for was the Wi-Fi network password - I didn't have to do anything else for her, and she is not a computer geek. My personal time is worth a lot of $$ to me, so I really appreciated that aspect of the Apple system. Setting up a new windows box would have taken more input from me, and a linux system would have taken even more time (as I only have very little linux setup experience). So while the up front cost was more, I feel that the TCO will be less with this mini.
In Australia, when we vote we don't "sign in" per se.
Instead there is a big book for each district at each poling place that contains our name and address. When we vote our name is just crossed out. So there is a record of voting, but no record of order. Given we have compulsary voting, any defrauding my impersonating someone else will be caught by this system.
I would posit that the US is struggling with voting because you are trying to bolt on security to an existing system. If you tried to do that with software development, then your peers would just laugh you out of the development area. A better idea would be to go back to the drawing board and redesign the voting system from the ground up. That way you could eliminate the systemic flaws such as potetially correlating voting order with votes cast to produce a list of who voted for whom
He's five, so I doubt he's reading Slashdot (yet)...
/. all the time :D
are you sure?? I see a lot of five year olds posting to
While not high on the complexity level, my favouite segment was when they asked some people to deliver a large box (which was actually empty) to a specific office. The box was sized to just make it through the office door. The delivery people were distracted while they were in the office, and a small addition was made to the door jam so the doorway was just that much smaller. The delivery people were then told they had the wrong office. Hilarity resulted when they tried to get the box out the same door that they had just entered. They *knew* they had just come in that door, but couldn't figure out why the box wouldn't fit any more.
I can understand what you are saying, but some reason I have a little bit of trouble agreeing with you, especially with:
.. they invented the suit, that horrible piece of clothing that is desgined to supress men and symbolically castrate them with a tie.
The idea is that men are animalistic, selfish, coercive, sexually driven and liars who will say, do and pretend anything to talk their target into sex
Have you ever been in a bar where men are trying to pick up? I would say that your quote (probably taken out of context ) is more the norm than the exception. But this could also be a chicken and egg type argument where men are trained from an early age that they have to compete like this in order to get a woman. But then again nature has always preferred the more flamboyant and aggressive males when mating season comes around.
Also personally I agree entirely with the taboo on paedophilia. But I don't see it as much in terms of a sexual thing, rather than as an exploitation thing, where an adult is exploiting a child for their own gain.
As for the Victorian era
The Greeks and Romans were notoriously homosexual, so their being exceptions over male nudity is interesting in this context.
As for the statues, there were just as many of naked women as well. That was really the point I was trying to make. It was balanced.
But yeah your right that the Greeks and Romans practiced overt homosexuality. But from my understanding it was not seen in the same light as homosexuality today, though I have not studied it.
From my travels in Middle Eastern countries in the 90's I did learn that if a man and woman wanted to date, they had to be officially chaperoned until they were married. But guys being guys wanted to get off, so there was a condoned (but not overt) understanding of allowed homosexuality in some of the societies that I visited.
Likewise in many pacific societies there is a village transvetite position which performs a simiilar occupation. This being a man who instead of going out and learning mens tasks, sits at home and learns the womens tasks. So again their take on homosexuality is different from the western viewpoint.
You're a fag aren't you?
.. but no .. I am not a fag .. I never smoke and never have smoked in my life ...
.. sorry ... you mean the US version of fag rather than the UK version.
.. I am not a fag .. I am hetrosexual and am married.
I know you're a troll
Oh
In that case,
No
Yeah .. I have heard of these .. along with this company called Diebold ... I hear that they are very supportive of the electoral process.
I think I can generalise that a lot of people don't trust the electoral process anymore. And even if the contest is honest, the main political parties seem to act in very similiar ways (probably due to the amount of special interest money floating around).
I am not sure how to reverse this trend of feeling that the government is screwing the electoral process and the people all at the same time. I think it would take electing some pretty impressive politicians, but I suspect that the electoral process also tends to weed out those sort of people.
Cynical, yes. But I think this is a serious problem - How do you get people involved if they feel no connection between what they do and what the government does.
NOTE that I am not pinning this on republicans or democrats, but rather the process in general.