Jessica Litman, a law professor at Wayne State University who specializes in intellectual property, likened it to the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act that slapped restrictions on digital audio recorders.
So, can we go after the fact that digital audio recorders tanked when introduced? "The government wants to do to the computer industry what it did to digital audio -- make it more complex, harder to use, more expensive. People won't bother with the new systems, causing a backlog in the computer industry that will lengthen the current recession." See if you can include comments about IBM's Microchannel bus in there -- technology inserted specifically to bring the products back under their control.
One other thing: When you call up Disney Public Relations, what's the best way to ask about this? Perhaps something like "Is it true that The Walt Disney Company is supporting government-mandated security software to track use of potentially copyrighted materials?" That might not leave enough traps for them to fall into, though...
The USSR banned fax machines and other communications devices that weren't registered/on the government's list/used local components. Look where it got them.
Who controls the rights? If I'm a writer, can I do a 17th century Italian period piece based on Pulp Fiction? How will the rights process know? What happens if it mistakes my rewrite of Othello for a copy of "O" and prevents me from working on it? Who can I sue?
Who will pay for Adobe to upgrade their software? Microsoft? Compaq and Dell and Apple and IBM have plenty of reasons to oppose this.
This is an unconstitutional "taking" from the folks who make software and computers.
The government wants to take away your RIO player!
The government is attempting regulation that will increase the cost of all your electronic gear, and make it less useful to you.
This is corporate welfare for movie studios and record companies.
All electronic equipment will need this security setup, no matter how ridiculous the idea is that it would be used for piracy. Your car's onboard computer may increase slightly in price.
The movie studios and record companies are trying to take over the computer industry.
That does for a start. Some of them are out on the edge, but there are indications that any or all could be exactly correct.
Believe it. What he said (bureaucracy, office politics, inefficiency) was exactly my impression when I worked there not so long ago.
It is, furthermore, the real reason why I get disgusted by NSA's anti-crypto stance: It's about protecting their jobs exactly as they are today. There's this expectation of entitlement, that because they've always been able to decrypt some significant percentage of messages, they should always be able to do so. Adapting to changes in technology? Hey, that's for the rest of the world, not us. Focus on weak links, traffic analysis, other techniques forced upon us in the past? C'mon, there's only 8 hours in a day -- we'll just outlaw anything that would make our work more difficult.
It's resulted in absurdities like encryption jobs (and know-how!) moving to other countries, CSS's unusually easy-to-break "encryption," and t-shirts classified as munitions. Way to go, guys.
I will certainly agree that it might cost more, but I, too, would like some assurance that Congress isn't paying them to remain clueless bureaucrats. I don't insist that they open up every line item throughout their budget -- just some acknowledgment of their new, post-Cold War situation. I would love for DIRNSA to get in front of Congress and say "Okay, we can't count on being able to break the encryption on any message out there, so we're changing the focus of our efforts to X, Y, and Z. We'll continue encryption research, try to figure out the best way to crack existing schemes, but our efforts have to take into account the rising tide of encryption technology use. But for that to be successful, we'll need more money because..."
Aha -- Philips AND Sony are using 3" discs. That confirms my suspicions about their motives.
Guess who gets royalties for every CD-R sold? Hint: One's in the Netherlands, the other in Japan.
They hardly have to worry about a "proprietary" technology in order to make money off of the recording media. They have one that's already well locked-in, widely supported, and just barely showing its age. I'm just surprised it took this long for the epiphany to happen.
I make no claims about whether it's better or worse than the alternatives, but it's a savvy business move with minimal downside.
Certain processes are vital to the computer's operation and should not be killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot
by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated.
Still one of my favorite links ever from Slashdot.
Of course I'm making a lot of cultural assumptions. The scientists who originally thought he was just a lost hunter made a lot of cultural assumptions, too. Even though the guy's equipment looked like a veritable bronze-age arsenal...You have to start somewhere. And I'm not trying to get my comment peer-reviewed or anything: I just think it sounds like a crime of passion.
"I even recall hearing once that it was custom for a man to lend his wife to a visiting guest."
I've heard of a similar custom in motorcycle gangs, with the additional comment that the same courtesy was never extended with motorcycles. But there would still be rituals to observe, and I think this guy didn't follow them. Whatever "they" were.
Just on general principles, here's replies to a couple of other comments:
If it was a battle, I'd still expect more evidence, if only an extra arrowhead or two. The point about the glacier erasing the evidence is well taken, though.
Evil spirits, banishment, and similar situations make me think of ritual. Especially rituals that would ensure the guy was dead. A single arrow to the back doesn't seem sufficient, but that's open to debate.
I'd say that a jealous husband wouldn't take his victim's property because a) having done the deed, he felt guilty and b) he didn't want evidence of his crime. In other words, it's a motive that would make taking property unlikely.
And of course, IANAArcheologist/Anthropologist/forensic specialist, although I have watched Quincy.
(Which, incidentally, had a scene not unlike what happened here: Skeleton is found, evidently that of D.B. Cooper -- hanging from a tree, parachute attached, some money, etc. After trying to determine cause of death for a while, Quincy has the bright idea of x-raying the skeleton. The x-rays show a knife tip embedded in the ribs -- guy was murdered while helpless, by an accomplice I think it was....)
From an article concerning the Iceman's last meal on the Nova site (sorry, lost the URL):
"Oeggl [the guy who analyzed the last meal based on a tiny scrap of food from the Iceman's colon] readily acknowledges that scientists may never know what prompted the Iceman to leave the relatively hospitable valley with no water or food to speak of (a single sloe berry was found with his remains) and try to cross the mountain at a time of year when several feet of snow easily could have obscured the topography of the steep and rocky Alpine ridge."
So we've got a guy leaving a fairly warm valley in some haste but well prepared (had eaten, brought no food, but had an ax, a bow, and 14 arrows), getting assaulted about 8 hours later, shot from behind and below (someone chasing him?), and left there with all his stuff.
My vote is for jealous husband, frankly -- a battle would have left more corpses behind, a robber would have taken his stuff, and the Iceman was leaving someplace safe and warm very quickly -- and very well-armed.
My introduction was A Rose for Ecclesiastes, and I bought the next thing I saw with his name on it -- which happened to be Nine Princes in Amber. I've since read through almost everything he wrote.
One of my favorites (as should be obvious from my nom de Slashdot) is Creatures of Light and Darkness, which is fairly weird but has awesome imagery.
I acknowledge that this is a reasonable justifaction for the concept, but the amount is out of proportion. The "charge" is $50 per over-the-limit occurence. I recall a rule-of-thumb that for every time you get caught speeding, you probably sped about 50 times -- it might even be more. If I get caught speeding, and my insurance company finds out, my insurance goes up maybe $500/year. So: 50 times speeding is worth about $500
This company, on the other hand, would charge me $2500 for those 50 incidents that might not even be enough to raise the insurance rate at all. It's revenue increase, combined with some control complex, that's all. Maybe they set this deal up with their insurance company: this fine means this much reduced speeding, and for that reduction we'll give you X less on your company insurace premium.
I haven't quite figured out a good comeback to all these comments, but I *do* know that I don't like a company requiring me to obey the law in order to use their product.
An economist would probably say that its value is a function of its rarity and its usefulness, where its usefulness is due to, well, the fact that it's pretty and shiny and malleable...Okay, it's also useful because it doesn't corrode, and because of its high conductivity, second only to silver. These make gold very useful for, as you said, electronics and jewelry and fillings.
If there was more gold around, we'd use it for additional purposes that took advantage of its properties. Instead of gold-plated stereo connections, the pins would be solid gold, and would work that much better. We'd replace our silverware with goldware which wouldn't tarnish. I suspect that using gold instead of copper for internal home wiring would improve our electricity bills a bit, as well.
I remember a National Geographic article where a frying pan was fashioned from gold. It evidently made excellent fried eggs. I also remember that aluminum was a precious metal for a few decades -- used in jewelry, for example -- but plenty of uses were found for it once it was available in large supply.
Although I think some of gold's current price is due to historical inertia, there is plenty that makes gold useful, and that would tend to support its price in light of its rarity.
As he said, he really did mean WWWF. One of the first things I ever saw on the web, and now it's all but forgotten, sigh. Yer obvious match-ups like U.S.S. Enterprise vs. the Death Star, the "I can't believe they did that" like Gary Coleman vs. Emmanuel Lewis, and yer eternal classics like Ensign Crusher vs. Barney the Dinosaur (or should that be B'Har'nee?)
Here's where it's currently hanging out. Still fun stuff.
It's nothing new for a former top player in the console business to drop out, give up, or go broke. And it's also nothing new for a different company, often with only a tangential stake in that market, to plunge into it with gusto. Ten years ago, would you have expected Sony to enter the console market, much less dominate it?
From where I sit, it looks like the console market is stuck in an eternal three-way fight, with one player rotating out every few years: Playstation-Sega-Nintendo-, Nintendo-Sega-Atari, Atari-Nintendo-Mattel...
So now Sega is out, and Microsoft is in the wings.
Nintendo may be out next, in which case another company will probably find its way in. It's not the end of the gaming world -- and if it is, it will be years in the making. Don't sweat it....
Sigh. My bona fides: As a nominal Republican who voted for neither Bush nor Gore, I'm not sure if I want to be involved even slightly with any party ever again.
I'm disgusted with Gore for going after what I personally consider the bogus dimpled chad vote. He should take the votes as they fall, stand up straight, and accept or concede. But he should have the chance to get as many counties recounted as is allowed by law, and that has been denied.
I am much more disgusted, however, with Bush's "I won three times: on CNN, CBS, and according to Jeb" rhetoric. He still seems to think that he won a landslide, and his victory speech, while thankfully muted, seemed to be blissfully ignorant of the difficult job he has in store. His attitude towards hand recounts betrays, at the least, a lack of realization that his election was probably a statistical fluke. At the worst, it suggests that he knows he would lose if a recount was allowed to
run unimpeded.
And don't get me started on the military absentee ballots. That issue alone, and the hateful handling on all sides, has me hoping for a long and fruitful Strom Thurmond presidency.
Now, as to your points:
Mr. Gore did not request a machine recount -- it was automatic when the initial count was within 0.5% It's worth considering that the machine recount took two days from the seven allowed to request manual recounts, so he had a deficit to overcome from the start.
That other county was Volusia. It was the smallest county from which Gore requested a recount, and was able to complete its hand recount before the 11/14 certification deadline, IIRC.
Point of disgust: Bush's comment about "legalistic language, but make no mistake: They rewrote the law" is hogwash. The opinion is remarkably readable, low on legalistic language and mostly just reconciles a couple of contradictory Florida laws. I have seen other legal opinions that came up with alternate results, but I think that the Florida Supreme Court might just have the best understanding of the laws of Florida. I will grant that the new certification date (i.e. Sunday/Monday) seemed a bit arbitrary. I suspect that the court may have wanted to prevent Secretary Harris from being, to put it nicely, arbitrary herself about what votes to certify.
Bonus question: What part of the Florida Election Code mentions the "natural disasters" that Harris mentioned as being an acceptable reason to extend the deadline? Answer: If you can find it, tell me: there appears to be no mention of "natural disasters" in the election code, except with regards to sending absentee ballots. Ergo, either a) Harris believed that she had absolutely no discretion to change it and lied about the "Natural Disaster" exemption, or b) she had as much discretion as she desired, and decided against using it -- coincidentally, in favor of the candidate she worked with.
IMHO, it's too late for either to give up gracefully: Gore has kept the nation waiting almost three weeks chasing after a result that, now, is unlikely to happen -- that won't be forgiven quickly. Meanwhile, if Bush's post-election strategy fails -- and it certainly deserves to -- he'll be toasted for celebrating too early and not doing defensive recounts.
Enough. Both parties can burn in hell for all I care anymore.
Contact the 19000 people whose votes were disqualified. (They have names and addresses -- I doubt many have moved since Tuesday:))
Require the stub from their ballot as proof of voting and identification.
Ask them what their intended vote was. Don't mention what was selected on the original ballot.
(Optional but suggested)If their intended vote does not match one of the punches on the card, throw it out. (E.g. if they say "Gore" but the two punches on the card are Bush and Buchanan, the vote is ignored.)
Include the confirmed votes in the official tally.
Cheaper than a completely repolling, avoids problems with people switching opportunistically, and counts a statistically significant block of rejected ballots.
Speaking of throwing it to the House: What's the current breakdown of the representatives, state by state i.e. for a presidential vote? Before Tuesday, there were 4 states with evenly split delegations; now, there might be more.
If it was, in fact, 0.001% who didn't get it, I might agree. In the disputed county, that would be a difference of about 5 ballots.
The actual difference, as you probably heard already, was not less than 19,000 ballots, that being the number with multiple presidential candidates selected. It might be as many as 22,000 ballots, since Buchanan admits that the 3000 votes he got probably aren't intended for him -- he didn't even campaign there.
That's more than the margin of error in Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin combined. It's not an insignificant number, and it is enough to make some serious claims against the legitimacy of a Bush presidency. It's also enough to indicate that it's not an inconsequential design error.
TSG
Who wonders what Donald Norman (author, The Design of Everyday Things) thinks about all this.
More than that, *any* state's electors could vote differently. But that's not a big deal unless the final electoral count is really close.
Which it will be, if Gore wins Oregon and loses Florida. In that case, just a couple of faithless electors could change the outcome, either by electing Gore or throwing it to the House/Senate.
Personally, I'm less bothered by that, or the possible electoral/popular mismatch, than with the incredibly thin margin of difference: The votes of a couple thousand Floridians -- a tenth of a percent of Florida voters, less than a hundredth of a percent of all voters -- will be the difference in this election. Has me more in favor of runoffs in close states than in re-arranging the overall structure.
On the other hand, this is a genuine example of Your Vote Makes a Difference(tm), and it's good to have a reminder of that every once in a while.
One way or another, it should be an interesting winter.
Larry Niven's The Hole Man,wherein a mission to Mars finds an artifact that creates gravity waves using a quantum black hole. The black hole is released and is expected to destroy Mars within a few decades.
I'm surprised, though, that the black hole problem was mentioned WRT the particle accelerator. Hawking determined that very small black holes evaporate quickly: Compressing 2500 tons gets you a hole that lasts for about one second before it disappears.
Nightmare mode itself (without god mode) isn't *that* hard -- especially if you've gone through the game once already on an easier setting. I learned quickly a)don't get hit, because everything hurts a lot more and b) watch your ammo, because everything seems to take more damage. I still finished Shub Niggurath a lot a faster than the first time.
....But there ain't no way that I completed it in less than a minute. And some of the other levels these guys did -- e.g. Door to Cthon completed in 11 seconds! (It usually takes me that long to take out the first ogre on the level....) It's like the difference between completing a marathon and *winning* a marathon. I certainly agree that *that* is not easy.
In about ten minutes, I figured four different ways to alleviate that, not including the originally mentioned "In case of pre-existing claim, cancel auction and negotiate."
The simplest one is just to use a Dutch auction: Bids are sealed, secret, and published after the end of the auction. You know how much those domains are worth to you, the pirates don't. They'll either bid low (you win) or bid higher than you would pay (they lose, since they'll have a domain that's worth less than they paid). This eliminates the spread, making cyber-squatting and -pirating uneconomical.
There may be other situations to work around, but I think auctioning domain names is the only way to deal with the current problems. (And I'm not even the original poster...)
Slashdot Mirror
So, can we go after the fact that digital audio recorders tanked when introduced? "The government wants to do to the computer industry what it did to digital audio -- make it more complex, harder to use, more expensive. People won't bother with the new systems, causing a backlog in the computer industry that will lengthen the current recession." See if you can include comments about IBM's Microchannel bus in there -- technology inserted specifically to bring the products back under their control.
One other thing: When you call up Disney Public Relations, what's the best way to ask about this? Perhaps something like "Is it true that The Walt Disney Company is supporting government-mandated security software to track use of potentially copyrighted materials?" That might not leave enough traps for them to fall into, though...
TSG
- Government interference in the free market
- The USSR banned fax machines and other communications devices that weren't registered/on the government's list/used local components. Look where it got them.
- Who controls the rights? If I'm a writer, can I do a 17th century Italian period piece based on Pulp Fiction? How will the rights process know? What happens if it mistakes my rewrite of Othello for a copy of "O" and prevents me from working on it? Who can I sue?
- Who will pay for Adobe to upgrade their software? Microsoft? Compaq and Dell and Apple and IBM have plenty of reasons to oppose this.
- This is an unconstitutional "taking" from the folks who make software and computers.
- The government wants to take away your RIO player!
- The government is attempting regulation that will increase the cost of all your electronic gear, and make it less useful to you.
- This is corporate welfare for movie studios and record companies.
- All electronic equipment will need this security setup, no matter how ridiculous the idea is that it would be used for piracy. Your car's onboard computer may increase slightly in price.
- The movie studios and record companies are trying to take over the computer industry.
That does for a start. Some of them are out on the edge, but there are indications that any or all could be exactly correct.TSG
It is, furthermore, the real reason why I get disgusted by NSA's anti-crypto stance: It's about protecting their jobs exactly as they are today. There's this expectation of entitlement, that because they've always been able to decrypt some significant percentage of messages, they should always be able to do so. Adapting to changes in technology? Hey, that's for the rest of the world, not us. Focus on weak links, traffic analysis, other techniques forced upon us in the past? C'mon, there's only 8 hours in a day -- we'll just outlaw anything that would make our work more difficult.
It's resulted in absurdities like encryption jobs (and know-how!) moving to other countries, CSS's unusually easy-to-break "encryption," and t-shirts classified as munitions. Way to go, guys.
I will certainly agree that it might cost more, but I, too, would like some assurance that Congress isn't paying them to remain clueless bureaucrats. I don't insist that they open up every line item throughout their budget -- just some acknowledgment of their new, post-Cold War situation. I would love for DIRNSA to get in front of Congress and say "Okay, we can't count on being able to break the encryption on any message out there, so we're changing the focus of our efforts to X, Y, and Z. We'll continue encryption research, try to figure out the best way to crack existing schemes, but our efforts have to take into account the rising tide of encryption technology use. But for that to be successful, we'll need more money because..."
Would that be so hard?
TSG
That's the Tyrell Corporation's motto, of course. Do these guys
- Watch too much science fiction,
- Watch too little to know the references they're making or
- Just not see that they may be making initiating some public relations, um, issues?
TSGGuess who gets royalties for every CD-R sold? Hint: One's in the Netherlands, the other in Japan.
They hardly have to worry about a "proprietary" technology in order to make money off of the recording media. They have one that's already well locked-in, widely supported, and just barely showing its age. I'm just surprised it took this long for the epiphany to happen.
I make no claims about whether it's better or worse than the alternatives, but it's a savvy business move with minimal downside.
TSG
Certain processes are vital to the computer's operation and should not be killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated.
Still one of my favorite links ever from Slashdot.
TSG
"Science"? This is Slashdot!
Of course I'm making a lot of cultural assumptions. The scientists who originally thought he was just a lost hunter made a lot of cultural assumptions, too. Even though the guy's equipment looked like a veritable bronze-age arsenal...You have to start somewhere. And I'm not trying to get my comment peer-reviewed or anything: I just think it sounds like a crime of passion.
"I even recall hearing once that it was custom for a man to lend his wife to a visiting guest."
I've heard of a similar custom in motorcycle gangs, with the additional comment that the same courtesy was never extended with motorcycles. But there would still be rituals to observe, and I think this guy didn't follow them. Whatever "they" were.
Just on general principles, here's replies to a couple of other comments:
- If it was a battle, I'd still expect more evidence, if only an extra arrowhead or two. The point about the glacier erasing the evidence is well taken, though.
- Evil spirits, banishment, and similar situations make me think of ritual. Especially rituals that would ensure the guy was dead. A single arrow to the back doesn't seem sufficient, but that's open to debate.
- I'd say that a jealous husband wouldn't take his victim's property because a) having done the deed, he felt guilty and b) he didn't want evidence of his crime. In other words, it's a motive that would make taking property unlikely.
And of course, IANAArcheologist/Anthropologist/forensic specialist, although I have watched Quincy.(Which, incidentally, had a scene not unlike what happened here: Skeleton is found, evidently that of D.B. Cooper -- hanging from a tree, parachute attached, some money, etc. After trying to determine cause of death for a while, Quincy has the bright idea of x-raying the skeleton. The x-rays show a knife tip embedded in the ribs -- guy was murdered while helpless, by an accomplice I think it was....)
TSG
In case anyone wanted to ask how Iceman ate his last meal on the Nova site...
Don't bother, I just beat you to it.
TSG
"Oeggl [the guy who analyzed the last meal based on a tiny scrap of food from the Iceman's colon] readily acknowledges that scientists may never know what prompted the Iceman to leave the relatively hospitable valley with no water or food to speak of (a single sloe berry was found with his remains) and try to cross the mountain at a time of year when several feet of snow easily could have obscured the topography of the steep and rocky Alpine ridge."
So we've got a guy leaving a fairly warm valley in some haste but well prepared (had eaten, brought no food, but had an ax, a bow, and 14 arrows), getting assaulted about 8 hours later, shot from behind and below (someone chasing him?), and left there with all his stuff.
My vote is for jealous husband, frankly -- a battle would have left more corpses behind, a robber would have taken his stuff, and the Iceman was leaving someplace safe and warm very quickly -- and very well-armed.
TSG
I considered writing up something that covered the same basic concepts, but kept getting stuck after "Is this dude Nolle an idiot or what?"
TSG
One of my favorites (as should be obvious from my nom de Slashdot) is Creatures of Light and Darkness, which is fairly weird but has awesome imagery.
TSG
This company, on the other hand, would charge me $2500 for those 50 incidents that might not even be enough to raise the insurance rate at all. It's revenue increase, combined with some control complex, that's all. Maybe they set this deal up with their insurance company: this fine means this much reduced speeding, and for that reduction we'll give you X less on your company insurace premium.
I haven't quite figured out a good comeback to all these comments, but I *do* know that I don't like a company requiring me to obey the law in order to use their product.
TSG
If there was more gold around, we'd use it for additional purposes that took advantage of its properties. Instead of gold-plated stereo connections, the pins would be solid gold, and would work that much better. We'd replace our silverware with goldware which wouldn't tarnish. I suspect that using gold instead of copper for internal home wiring would improve our electricity bills a bit, as well.
I remember a National Geographic article where a frying pan was fashioned from gold. It evidently made excellent fried eggs. I also remember that aluminum was a precious metal for a few decades -- used in jewelry, for example -- but plenty of uses were found for it once it was available in large supply.
Although I think some of gold's current price is due to historical inertia, there is plenty that makes gold useful, and that would tend to support its price in light of its rarity.
TSG
Here's where it's currently hanging out. Still fun stuff.
TSG
That should be objectivity.
It Ayn't the same thing.
TSG
Unless you want to discuss libertarian media bias...
Didn't ya hear, taping is killing music!
TSG
From where I sit, it looks like the console market is stuck in an eternal three-way fight, with one player rotating out every few years: Playstation-Sega-Nintendo-, Nintendo-Sega-Atari, Atari-Nintendo-Mattel...
So now Sega is out, and Microsoft is in the wings. Nintendo may be out next, in which case another company will probably find its way in. It's not the end of the gaming world -- and if it is, it will be years in the making. Don't sweat it....
TSG
I'm disgusted with Gore for going after what I personally consider the bogus dimpled chad vote. He should take the votes as they fall, stand up straight, and accept or concede. But he should have the chance to get as many counties recounted as is allowed by law, and that has been denied.
I am much more disgusted, however, with Bush's "I won three times: on CNN, CBS, and according to Jeb" rhetoric. He still seems to think that he won a landslide, and his victory speech, while thankfully muted, seemed to be blissfully ignorant of the difficult job he has in store. His attitude towards hand recounts betrays, at the least, a lack of realization that his election was probably a statistical fluke. At the worst, it suggests that he knows he would lose if a recount was allowed to run unimpeded.
And don't get me started on the military absentee ballots. That issue alone, and the hateful handling on all sides, has me hoping for a long and fruitful Strom Thurmond presidency.
Now, as to your points:
- Mr. Gore did not request a machine recount -- it was automatic when the initial count was within 0.5% It's worth considering that the machine recount took two days from the seven allowed to request manual recounts, so he had a deficit to overcome from the start.
- That other county was Volusia. It was the smallest county from which Gore requested a recount, and was able to complete its hand recount before the 11/14 certification deadline, IIRC.
- Point of disgust: Bush's comment about "legalistic language, but make no mistake: They rewrote the law" is hogwash. The opinion is remarkably readable, low on legalistic language and mostly just reconciles a couple of contradictory Florida laws. I have seen other legal opinions that came up with alternate results, but I think that the Florida Supreme Court might just have the best understanding of the laws of Florida.
- Bonus question: What part of the Florida Election Code mentions the "natural disasters" that Harris mentioned as being an acceptable reason to extend the deadline? Answer: If you can find it, tell me: there appears to be no mention of "natural disasters" in the election code, except with regards to sending absentee ballots. Ergo, either a) Harris believed that she had absolutely no discretion to change it and lied about the "Natural Disaster" exemption, or b) she had as much discretion as she desired, and decided against using it -- coincidentally, in favor of the candidate she worked with.
- IMHO, it's too late for either to give up gracefully: Gore has kept the nation waiting almost three weeks chasing after a result that, now, is unlikely to happen -- that won't be forgiven quickly. Meanwhile, if Bush's post-election strategy fails -- and it certainly deserves to -- he'll be toasted for celebrating too early and not doing defensive recounts.
Enough. Both parties can burn in hell for all I care anymore.I will grant that the new certification date (i.e. Sunday/Monday) seemed a bit arbitrary. I suspect that the court may have wanted to prevent Secretary Harris from being, to put it nicely, arbitrary herself about what votes to certify.
TSG
- Contact the 19000 people whose votes were disqualified. (They have names and addresses -- I doubt many have moved since Tuesday
:))
- Require the stub from their ballot as proof of voting and identification.
- Ask them what their intended vote was. Don't mention what was selected on the original ballot.
- (Optional but suggested)If their intended vote does not match one of the punches on the card, throw it out. (E.g. if they say "Gore" but the two punches on the card are Bush and Buchanan, the vote is ignored.)
- Include the confirmed votes in the official tally.
Cheaper than a completely repolling, avoids problems with people switching opportunistically, and counts a statistically significant block of rejected ballots.Speaking of throwing it to the House: What's the current breakdown of the representatives, state by state i.e. for a presidential vote? Before Tuesday, there were 4 states with evenly split delegations; now, there might be more.
TSG
The actual difference, as you probably heard already, was not less than 19,000 ballots, that being the number with multiple presidential candidates selected. It might be as many as 22,000 ballots, since Buchanan admits that the 3000 votes he got probably aren't intended for him -- he didn't even campaign there.
That's more than the margin of error in Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin combined. It's not an insignificant number, and it is enough to make some serious claims against the legitimacy of a Bush presidency. It's also enough to indicate that it's not an inconsequential design error.
TSG
Who wonders what Donald Norman (author, The Design of Everyday Things) thinks about all this.
Which it will be, if Gore wins Oregon and loses Florida. In that case, just a couple of faithless electors could change the outcome, either by electing Gore or throwing it to the House/Senate.
Personally, I'm less bothered by that, or the possible electoral/popular mismatch, than with the incredibly thin margin of difference: The votes of a couple thousand Floridians -- a tenth of a percent of Florida voters, less than a hundredth of a percent of all voters -- will be the difference in this election. Has me more in favor of runoffs in close states than in re-arranging the overall structure.
On the other hand, this is a genuine example of Your Vote Makes a Difference(tm), and it's good to have a reminder of that every once in a while.
One way or another, it should be an interesting winter.
TSG
Lonnegan (the villain) stacks the deck to give himself four nines and Gondorf (the hero) four threes.
Gondorf manages to replace the four threes with four jacks, winning the game.
Later, Lonnegan yells at his henchman,"What was I supposed to do -- call him for cheating better than me?!"
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Who doubts anyone in Florida was cheating.
Larry Niven's The Hole Man,wherein a mission to Mars finds an artifact that creates gravity waves using a quantum black hole. The black hole is released and is expected to destroy Mars within a few decades.
I'm surprised, though, that the black hole problem was mentioned WRT the particle accelerator. Hawking determined that very small black holes evaporate quickly: Compressing 2500 tons gets you a hole that lasts for about one second before it disappears.
TSG
Nightmare mode itself (without god mode) isn't *that* hard -- especially if you've gone through the game once already on an easier setting. I learned quickly a)don't get hit, because everything hurts a lot more and b) watch your ammo, because everything seems to take more damage. I still finished Shub Niggurath a lot a faster than the first time.
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The simplest one is just to use a Dutch auction: Bids are sealed, secret, and published after the end of the auction. You know how much those domains are worth to you, the pirates don't. They'll either bid low (you win) or bid higher than you would pay (they lose, since they'll have a domain that's worth less than they paid). This eliminates the spread, making cyber-squatting and -pirating uneconomical.
There may be other situations to work around, but I think auctioning domain names is the only way to deal with the current problems. (And I'm not even the original poster...)
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