> Finally, I think the Electoral College needs a second look. Majority rules, and the popular vote should be the determining factor.
Should we therefore abolish the Senate, since it is not based on proportional representation?
I don't have any problem with the EC. The FFs considered direct election of the president, and rejected it (well, actually the EC is a compromise between them that liked direct election and them that didn't).
If we don't like the EC, no one's stopping us from amending the Constitution. But there's no basis for an a priori assumption that there's "supposed" to be a direct election.
> Nobody protested the ballot design during the campaign, even though sample ballots were made widely-available.
A number of voters protested it on election day, and that long before anyone knew that this would be the key to the race.
> If you still can't figure out the ballot, the time to ask is before you punch the hole, not after.
a) Some voters did ask, and found that their election clerks could not figure it out either.
b) Sometimes awareness of a problem arises slowly. Did you ever write an exam, answer a question, discover after a moment's thought that you had not really answered the right question, and changed your answer? That's apparently what happened to 19,000 people whose ballots were thrown out for double-punching. Punch ballots don't come with erasers.
> For every Democrat willing to perjure him or herself on the stand and say...
Why would it need to work that way? In many jurisdictions, they make you sign a register when you show up to vote. If they did that in Palm Beach, they could just vote again, allowing only those who signed in the first time to vote.
> What I'm seeing today - a bunch of Gore's lawyers looking to replace a bunch of unspoiled ballots validly marked for Buchanan because they believe those votes "should have been Gore's" - is terrifyingly close to a coup d'etat.
I find that ignoring the will of the voters, whether it was deliberate fraud or "merely" poor human interface design, terrifyingly close to a coup.
And FWIW, the (first) lawsuit was filed by local voters, not Gore's henchmen.
> there was basically an "Oh, Shit" moment for Republicans, when they realized that Reagan would have made a far better nominee. Ford, of course, went on to lose in 76, and Reagan won in 80 and 84.
Basically, it didn't matter who they nominated in '76, because after Watergate there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of a Republican getting elected. RR should be grateful that he wasn't nominated that year.
Watergate offended the general public's sensibilities much more than Blowjobgate did. Indeed, it appears that much of our anti-government sentiment and black-helicopters paranoia stems back to Watergate.
FWIW, Ford is one of the few presidents of my lifetime that I respect(ed) both as a person and as a politician.
> Baffle em with BS and maybe they will se the light.
You might not even have to do that. Some university CS departments allow/encourage their grad students to release code under the GPL as a matter of course. If you built a list of such schools and presented it at the meeting, perhaps your department would "see the light" without the application of bs.
If you go to various universities' CS departments' research pages, you'll find that in many cases you can download papers and the code that supports the model or experiment that the paper reports on.
You should try to get that built into your school's official policy. Most schools have a mandate to educate the public, and much grad research is funded by the NSF anyway.
Ask where we would be if mathematicians had been patenting their work for the last 400 years. Science is built on sharing.
> All the networks just gave California to Gore 4 mins. after the polls closed, with 0% counted!
They use a more sophisticated model than you might think. The retraction of Florida was a pretty rare event.
> Is it just me, or have they seemed really eager to get Gore elected?
If they particularly wanted Gore to win, they could have beat Bush to death over the last year. Instead, they are still accusing AG of claiming to have invented the internet (though we know that's not what he actually said, and that he does have legitimate grounds for what he did say), and are virtually ignoring GB's lies and faux pas.
Those 45540135 published 70 boxes of research into my bad behavior. I'm damn sure not going to let them legislate a coverup for their bad behavior!</BC>
The joke going around in Austin, Texas is that GWB just wants to be president because it will pad his resume for the next time there's an opening for Baseball Commissioner.
Or maybe it's not a joke. Supposedly when first approached about running for governor, he put them off until the next election, because there was a search for a new Baseball Commisioner going on right then, and he wanted to sit home by the phone.
I don't have any idea whether this is true or just a joke. My friends tell it with a straight face, but maybe they have me tagged as gullible. Perhaps some baseball fan will know whether the dates line up.
> Of course, you could sidestep this one by just not telling them that your idea of a "Supreme Being" isn't in any way supernatural.
Or you could modestly admit that you consider yourself the Supreme Being. That way you would not only pass the filter, but also make yourself look more qualified for the office!
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> Finally, I think the Electoral College needs a second look. Majority rules, and the popular vote should be the determining factor.
Should we therefore abolish the Senate, since it is not based on proportional representation?
I don't have any problem with the EC. The FFs considered direct election of the president, and rejected it (well, actually the EC is a compromise between them that liked direct election and them that didn't).
If we don't like the EC, no one's stopping us from amending the Constitution. But there's no basis for an a priori assumption that there's "supposed" to be a direct election.
> Nobody protested the ballot design during the campaign, even though sample ballots were made widely-available.
A number of voters protested it on election day, and that long before anyone knew that this would be the key to the race.
> If you still can't figure out the ballot, the time to ask is before you punch the hole, not after.
a) Some voters did ask, and found that their election clerks could not figure it out either.
b) Sometimes awareness of a problem arises slowly. Did you ever write an exam, answer a question, discover after a moment's thought that you had not really answered the right question, and changed your answer? That's apparently what happened to 19,000 people whose ballots were thrown out for double-punching. Punch ballots don't come with erasers.
> For every Democrat willing to perjure him or herself on the stand and say...
Why would it need to work that way? In many jurisdictions, they make you sign a register when you show up to vote. If they did that in Palm Beach, they could just vote again, allowing only those who signed in the first time to vote.
> What I'm seeing today - a bunch of Gore's lawyers looking to replace a bunch of unspoiled ballots validly marked for Buchanan because they believe those votes "should have been Gore's" - is terrifyingly close to a coup d'etat.
I find that ignoring the will of the voters, whether it was deliberate fraud or "merely" poor human interface design, terrifyingly close to a coup.
And FWIW, the (first) lawsuit was filed by local voters, not Gore's henchmen.
> Those people voted Buchanan, period. If it was a mistake, I'm sorry but they blew it.
I hope you're not in the business of designing computer interfaces.
> Individual voters must take the time to understand their ballot.
What about those who asked for help from the election clerks, and discovered that the clerks could not figure it out either?
You have a rather cavalier attitude toward the voting rights of people who are not as smart as you are.
> there was basically an "Oh, Shit" moment for Republicans, when they realized that Reagan would have made a far better nominee. Ford, of course, went on to lose in 76, and Reagan won in 80 and 84.
Basically, it didn't matter who they nominated in '76, because after Watergate there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of a Republican getting elected. RR should be grateful that he wasn't nominated that year.
Watergate offended the general public's sensibilities much more than Blowjobgate did. Indeed, it appears that much of our anti-government sentiment and black-helicopters paranoia stems back to Watergate.
FWIW, Ford is one of the few presidents of my lifetime that I respect(ed) both as a person and as a politician.
> Baffle em with BS and maybe they will se the light.
You might not even have to do that. Some university CS departments allow/encourage their grad students to release code under the GPL as a matter of course. If you built a list of such schools and presented it at the meeting, perhaps your department would "see the light" without the application of bs.
If you go to various universities' CS departments' research pages, you'll find that in many cases you can download papers and the code that supports the model or experiment that the paper reports on.
You should try to get that built into your school's official policy. Most schools have a mandate to educate the public, and much grad research is funded by the NSF anyway.
Ask where we would be if mathematicians had been patenting their work for the last 400 years. Science is built on sharing.
> When that huge fall in tech stocks, something much closer related to nerdy stuff, earlier in the year was "not relevant"?
/.?
That's economic news, not tech news. Why is it relevant to
> Finally CNN pulled Florida, then Fox News, then the two networks I was also switching to.
Interestingly, CNN was the last to pull it back from Bush, after being first to pull it back from Gore. Over an hour after the other networks did.
Bias at play? Time-Warner-Bush?
> Can't Gore ever keep his word?
Actually, Bush's claim to victory was just another youthful indiscretion.
> All balloting apparatus in Florida is under control of.... drum roll please.... the Sec of State who is a democrat...... DOUBLE drum roll please....
Actually, the SoS is a Republican. It's the AG who is a Democrat.
And since it was the SoS who was loudly saying "hold on a second, here!", it's hard to imagine that this particular act is high-level partisan fraud.
> If Gore wins, just announce that you'd like to stay in Miami with your uncle and Janet Reno II will send you to Cuba for free.
Why rely on government support? There ought to be plenty of abandoned innertubes drifting around Miami...
> Don't laugh, I'm not joking: Clinton got in last time on "bad boy" sex appeal.
Yeah, when I was a clean-shaven young stud I used to "get in" on bad boy sex appeal too.
> hat, like ouija boards? There were no votes counted!
Exit. Polls.
> All the networks just gave California to Gore 4 mins. after the polls closed, with 0% counted!
They use a more sophisticated model than you might think. The retraction of Florida was a pretty rare event.
> Is it just me, or have they seemed really eager to get Gore elected?
If they particularly wanted Gore to win, they could have beat Bush to death over the last year. Instead, they are still accusing AG of claiming to have invented the internet (though we know that's not what he actually said, and that he does have legitimate grounds for what he did say), and are virtually ignoring GB's lies and faux pas.
> Nine comments into this and it's already /.'d.
Maybe people decided to read the article before posting... for a change.
> [One has to wonder] what these politicians are putting on their sites to get blocked.
Well, "gore" would be blocked by a violence filter, and "bush" by a sex filter.
And of course, "nader" is an obscenity in any businessman's dictionary.
> I haxored kernel.org and downloaded the linux source code
That's nothing. I downloaded it, changed some things, and uploaded the changes!
I even put my name in the files, so anyone else who downloads it will know I did it!
> hmmmm. a scientologist moderator thinks my remark was off-topic.
They've expanded their services. They now clear karma as well as engrams.
One profits from defective engrams, the other profits from defective programs.
> They were afraid there were security risks from using software from a Scientologist. No joke.
And for some strange reason they weren't afraid of security risks from Microsoft itself? Or the NSA?
Or even the insecure-by-design philosopy that let MS itself get hacked by a kiddie?
Those 45540135 published 70 boxes of research into my bad behavior. I'm damn sure not going to let them legislate a coverup for their bad behavior!</BC>
> According to new calculations...the unidentified object ... will miss the Earth in September 2030 by at least 3 million miles.
Then I suppose everything is A-OK. Unless it turns out to be a big horse shoe or hand grenade.
> Bush:
...look at all the trouble it gave me...
* Ownership of a major league baseball team
The joke going around in Austin, Texas is that GWB just wants to be president because it will pad his resume for the next time there's an opening for Baseball Commissioner.
Or maybe it's not a joke. Supposedly when first approached about running for governor, he put them off until the next election, because there was a search for a new Baseball Commisioner going on right then, and he wanted to sit home by the phone.
I don't have any idea whether this is true or just a joke. My friends tell it with a straight face, but maybe they have me tagged as gullible. Perhaps some baseball fan will know whether the dates line up.
> And not only 'exactly one God,' but exactly the same God (Yahweh), too.
Durn. I thought we Cthulu worshipers were going to have more pull under his administration.
> BECOME A GOVERNMENT INFORMANT!
* Turn in your friends, neighbors and family!
Actually, that's pretty much how the war on drugs works these days. Get busted, get off light for turning in three of your friends.
A pyramid scheme of sorts, if you will.
> Of course, you could sidestep this one by just not telling them that your idea of a "Supreme Being" isn't in any way supernatural.
Or you could modestly admit that you consider yourself the Supreme Being. That way you would not only pass the filter, but also make yourself look more qualified for the office!