Simple, reliable, accountable, proven, inexpensive, and hard to hack.
There were massive voting "irregularities" in the past (such as the fraud in Chicago). Whatever the system, with high enough corruption of local authorities it can be "hacked". If, however, the systems are all different and different people are supposed to oversee the elections and certify the results (such as with Presidential elections in USA), then the level of corruption, required to significantly alter the results, has to be so enormous, as to be practically unachievable.
For example, even if Bush was supposed to lose Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, he was still the choice of about 50% (give or take) of Americans — something, the other 50% don't really deny.
On contrast, having a centralized voting setup would require corrupting of only a few people to be able to make nearly anyone into the commander of the world's most powerful military...
I know, this is not, what you are proposing, but I've seen some ideas like: "Why can't we have a system with instant results, like in progressive countries?.."
Do you have any evidence for the existence of these competitors?
Of course, I do. When our office was moving into a new downtown building, 2 or 3 providers were competing for our business. At home, I have a choice of SpeakEasy's DSL (and a bunch of others — via Covad's lines), or RoadRunner's cable, or Verizon's DSL (and a bunch of others via Verizon's lines).
RCN's Lightpath would run fiber to premises for $2-3K per month — in case one wants to set up something like Google's "server farm".
May be, there are places, where the competition is less abundant, but increasing it should be the aim — not maintaining the existing monopolies.
Well, this is net neutrality. What the ISPs want instead is to have all this, but for ISP A to be able to charge Google also (in addition to it already being charged by ISP B), in order to get its traffic across to the end users. Keep in mind that end users are already paying for that connection -- the ISP is trying to charge for the same connection twice.
As long as there is competition (ISP C, D, E,...) — and there is — there is no need for government intervention. Increasing the competition by eliminating the monopoly status granted to the still-existing monopolies in certain regions should be the aim — not maintaining the regional monopolies and regulating them, however appealing the idea may look to the big-government totalitarians.
But how will you know, the actual machine in front of you is running the software examined?
Come on, people get fooled by spyware and "phishing" e-mails every day — at their own computer. You expect anyone to detect a problem on a system, they see for a minute or two once in two years?
I really don't care, what kind of systems are used, as long as it is not the same system. And if it happens to be the same, I hope, there is not "central repository" of its results or anything. Because everything, that is centralized, also has a single "total failure" point...
McCurry implied Google was getting free Internet access from the telcos and TechDirt implied that McCurry probably wouldn't want to swap phone bills with Google.
Of course, McCurry meant, they don't get charged extra — they pay their fixed prices for the pipes, I suppose. And, I suspect, they get a pretty good "bulk" discount. Google is free to shop around for a better deal — and should only complain, if it has evidence of a trust-like conspiracy to keep prices high.
The telco's are supposed to already be regulated by the FCC (part of the executive branch of the government) because they are already monopolies. The current administration is trying to dismantle as much regulation as it can get away with.
One can order telephone service from a cable provider, and many switch to cellular-only plans. Bigger companies can get "fiber to premises" from different competitors (Lightpath, for example, starts at only $2K/month). So, even though the traditional telcos still own the copper wires running to most homes, they are not in fact a monopoly any more. Consequently, the government is correct in no longer viewing them as monopolies and reducing/eliminating the regulation.
To put it in other words: we didn't have a friggin' Internet 100 years ago so laws that were meant to regulate the steel, gas, and railroad industries may need to be updated in order to be applied correctly to a type of monopoly that wasn't even imagined 100 years ago.
I'm yet to see evidence of any abuse, that the existing laws could not preclude.
The earlier efforts to regulate telephony are the only reason many of the masses of Americans who don't live in large towns can pick up the phone to call anybody.
This is foolish. The radio technology could've solved that "last 10 miles" problem", if the government had not created the land-line monopolies, for example.
The build-out patterns of ISDN and DSL from providers show you exactly how limited telephone availability would have been if earlier regulatory efforts hadn't interefered.
And? What exactly is wrong?
Try learning a little history before repeating it.
I would very much like to avoid this piece of history being repeated.
I quote the article [McCurry:]"The "neutral" proposal that companies like Google are touting will ensure that they never have to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use, and consumers who may only use their computers to send e-mail and play Solitaire get to foot the bill."
Thank you for the clarification... I still doubt, anyone would want to swap their telco bills with Google — with or without net neutrality, their bill is very large anyway.
The whole issue is about companies will to triple charging: they already charge the end users, there's the service that gets charged for its bandwidth. Now they want to charge the service by the end user ISP.
Your grammar is very hard to parse. But, frankly, I don't see, why it should be the government's business to decide, who gets to charge whom and how much — unless there is a threat of a monopoly breaking anti-trust laws, that is. The law, which are on the books for about a century now. No need for new ones.
If you feel the need to control what your kid eats in high school through a system like this, you've allready failed as a parent.
Ok, I failed, whatever. Does this mean, somehow, I should give up and stop trying to watch, what my kid is eating? What exactly is wrong with "a system like this"?
Where exactly is this competition of which you speak? Tell that to the masses of Americans who do not live in large towns and have only source for broadband. Where exactly do they go when their local broadband provider charges them AND Google and friends more?
You should thank earlier efforts to regulate telephony, cable service, and Internet provision for this situation.
More regulation is not the answer... When I get mistreated by a service provider (any service), I don't want to call the district attorney or the regulation agency. I just want to be able to call their competitor.
In response, TechDirt has suggested that McCurry should swap telco bills with Google, somehow I doubt it will happen."
What was this piece of rhethoric supposed to expose? I doubt, TechDirt would want to swap their bills with Google either — with or without net-neutrality...
This might be it... Or even better — porting the neccessary bits and pieces to have, say, MS Office for MacOS X (Intel) to run natively on FreeBSD (Intel), may turn out to be simpler, than getting WINE above alpha-quality...
Oh, I see, what you are talking about... In my milter's case, however, it is not the unfamiliarity of an IP-address, but an earlier suspicion against it, that would place a relay onto the grey-list. "Presumed innocent until suspected guilty", so to speak, rather than the "presumed guilty" approach of other grey-lists.
The actual implementation is very light, requires no database-server, and is manageable with touch, ls, chmod, and rm:-)
Whether it is a zombie, which is not supposed to have an SMTP server at all, or a legitimate mail-server fooled into relaying spam to you, my milter will black-list it for a few hours after your spam-detectors issue their first verdict against the relay.
Unlike with most blacklists, though, the damage from a false-positive is merely a delayed, rather than rejected (or, worse, dropped) message...
Are you suggesting the political/social/economic conditions that lead to the war 200+ years ago are similar to the current one? Really?
No. What I said was:
There is nothing particularly "novel" in Bush's approach to laws limiting presidential power.
Many (probably — all) presidents have done something like this — Bush certainly has not hit any "new lows" on trying to wriggle off the limits imposed by "checks and balances". Not with going to war ("Bay of Pigs" anyone?), nor with blocking an investigation ("executive privilege" was all the rage during the previous presidency, for example).
Why are you changing the subject from Bush's not granting a security clearance to investigators to his starting a war you disaprove of?
The conventional process of law providing a mechanism to balance power in the U.S. has been overturned.
There is nothing particularly "novel" in Bush's approach to laws limiting presidential power. An example sure to most infuriate a Bush-critic is a war waged by another Republican president — on his own people. A war, of course, like no others before it. Yes, I'm talking about Abraham Lincoln...
I've been a long-time fan (and a stock-holder) of the company. Their software-quality has slipped noticably during the years. Their web-pages contain horribly broken HTML at times, with the bug existing for many months until it finaly goes away and the same browser no longer has a problem.
Their "message boards" (attached to each article) are some times either completely inaccessible, or have features missing — the "recommendations", for example, were broken for a couple of weeks recently. Someone must've been on vacation...
The stock dropped over 20% two days ago, because their software-writing was not fast enough for the new advertising model(s). They must do something, or Google will eat them alive...
He does not want the details of that program to be leaked to press...
We sure all want for there to be checks and balances, but it is unrealistic (and flat out stupid) to expect one of the government's branches to want to be checked and balanced. Lawmakers hate it, judiciary hates it, and the executives, of course, hate it — they each think, they are right and that the other branches are wrong in their disagreements.
They all submit to it because of the laws, but granting the security clearance is, by law, the executive's prerogative, so there is nothing illegal about Bush's move... Nor is anyone's life in danger because of it, so let's not get too worked up over it.
Re:I'm for genetic modification, but lets be ratio
on
Growing Insulin
·
· Score: 1
What purpose does genetically modified "food" serve?
It fills the hungry stomachs, thanks to much higher yields. It makes food abundant, allowing people to spend less (or no) time worrying about it. Heck, some people — like yourself — grow up not realizing, the problem ever existed!
I'm not about to support more dangerous food.
There is zero (nada) evidence of any danger. At least, Bush's objections to using an embrio's cells are ethical (his kind views embrios as human beings). You have no grounds whatsoever. People have been developing different kinds of crops and animals for as long as we have been raising them. There are cows of a milk-producing variety and those, that provide better meat (and more of it), for example. Heck, we've even done it to dogs (pun intended) breeding different kinds for hunting, amusement, and other duties.
"GM" simply does it much quicker — and much better.
I'm glad, you weren't around, when agriculture was invented. Surely, we would've seen you protesting against the early farms. Building a dam for irrigation?! Forget it — think of the eco-system!
every human must eat, and not all humans, and not all animals, want to eat scientifically manipulated food. It should be our choice.
Excellent point (except for the animals — that was just dumb of you, sorry). There should be choice, and there is. That was not my point — nowhere in my posting (GP) do I insist, there should be no other food, but genetically-modified.
Why, every time an improvement in the area of weapons and defense is discussed, someone makes an "insightful" comment on how we should be "making less enemies" instead of fighting them.
Flaimbait my behind — the sick could've used the gym more often and watched their diets better too. Do I get an "insightful" moderation now? I dare you...
Slashdot Mirror
There were massive voting "irregularities" in the past (such as the fraud in Chicago). Whatever the system, with high enough corruption of local authorities it can be "hacked". If, however, the systems are all different and different people are supposed to oversee the elections and certify the results (such as with Presidential elections in USA), then the level of corruption, required to significantly alter the results, has to be so enormous, as to be practically unachievable.
For example, even if Bush was supposed to lose Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, he was still the choice of about 50% (give or take) of Americans — something, the other 50% don't really deny.
On contrast, having a centralized voting setup would require corrupting of only a few people to be able to make nearly anyone into the commander of the world's most powerful military...
I know, this is not, what you are proposing, but I've seen some ideas like: "Why can't we have a system with instant results, like in progressive countries?.."
Of course, I do. When our office was moving into a new downtown building, 2 or 3 providers were competing for our business. At home, I have a choice of SpeakEasy's DSL (and a bunch of others — via Covad's lines), or RoadRunner's cable, or Verizon's DSL (and a bunch of others via Verizon's lines).
RCN's Lightpath would run fiber to premises for $2-3K per month — in case one wants to set up something like Google's "server farm".
May be, there are places, where the competition is less abundant, but increasing it should be the aim — not maintaining the existing monopolies.
As long as there is competition (ISP C, D, E, ...) — and there is — there is no need for government intervention. Increasing the competition by eliminating the monopoly status granted to the still-existing monopolies in certain regions should be the aim — not maintaining the regional monopolies and regulating them, however appealing the idea may look to the big-government totalitarians.
But how will you know, the actual machine in front of you is running the software examined?
Come on, people get fooled by spyware and "phishing" e-mails every day — at their own computer. You expect anyone to detect a problem on a system, they see for a minute or two once in two years?
I really don't care, what kind of systems are used, as long as it is not the same system. And if it happens to be the same, I hope, there is not "central repository" of its results or anything. Because everything, that is centralized, also has a single "total failure" point...
Of course, McCurry meant, they don't get charged extra — they pay their fixed prices for the pipes, I suppose. And, I suspect, they get a pretty good "bulk" discount. Google is free to shop around for a better deal — and should only complain, if it has evidence of a trust-like conspiracy to keep prices high.
One can order telephone service from a cable provider, and many switch to cellular-only plans. Bigger companies can get "fiber to premises" from different competitors (Lightpath, for example, starts at only $2K/month). So, even though the traditional telcos still own the copper wires running to most homes, they are not in fact a monopoly any more. Consequently, the government is correct in no longer viewing them as monopolies and reducing/eliminating the regulation.
I'm yet to see evidence of any abuse, that the existing laws could not preclude.
This is foolish. The radio technology could've solved that "last 10 miles" problem", if the government had not created the land-line monopolies, for example.
And? What exactly is wrong?
I would very much like to avoid this piece of history being repeated.
Thank you for the clarification... I still doubt, anyone would want to swap their telco bills with Google — with or without net neutrality, their bill is very large anyway.
Your grammar is very hard to parse. But, frankly, I don't see, why it should be the government's business to decide, who gets to charge whom and how much — unless there is a threat of a monopoly breaking anti-trust laws, that is. The law, which are on the books for about a century now. No need for new ones.
Ok, I failed, whatever. Does this mean, somehow, I should give up and stop trying to watch, what my kid is eating? What exactly is wrong with "a system like this"?
You should thank earlier efforts to regulate telephony, cable service, and Internet provision for this situation.
More regulation is not the answer... When I get mistreated by a service provider (any service), I don't want to call the district attorney or the regulation agency. I just want to be able to call their competitor.
And an FP to boot...
You even pre-empted the usual totalitarian response about the virtues of government oversight.
Mad props and all!
What was this piece of rhethoric supposed to expose? I doubt, TechDirt would want to swap their bills with Google either — with or without net-neutrality...
You saw the headline on /. first!
Well, try skem. Maybe, you'll like it better :-)
Don't lament — enlighten us and improve your karma...
This might be it... Or even better — porting the neccessary bits and pieces to have, say, MS Office for MacOS X (Intel) to run natively on FreeBSD (Intel), may turn out to be simpler, than getting WINE above alpha-quality...
Oh, I see, what you are talking about... In my milter's case, however, it is not the unfamiliarity of an IP-address, but an earlier suspicion against it, that would place a relay onto the grey-list. "Presumed innocent until suspected guilty", so to speak, rather than the "presumed guilty" approach of other grey-lists.
The actual implementation is very light, requires no database-server, and is manageable with touch, ls, chmod, and rm :-)
Not quite. The grey-list would require confirmation. My milter simply issues temporary rejections from an earlier suspected server.
A legitimate-but-fooled server may be cleaned-up by the time my automatic block expire. Taken-over zombies never retry anyway.
Whether it is a zombie, which is not supposed to have an SMTP server at all, or a legitimate mail-server fooled into relaying spam to you, my milter will black-list it for a few hours after your spam-detectors issue their first verdict against the relay.
Unlike with most blacklists, though, the damage from a false-positive is merely a delayed, rather than rejected (or, worse, dropped) message...
Snakes have clearly lost that battle...
No. What I said was:
Many (probably — all) presidents have done something like this — Bush certainly has not hit any "new lows" on trying to wriggle off the limits imposed by "checks and balances". Not with going to war ("Bay of Pigs" anyone?), nor with blocking an investigation ("executive privilege" was all the rage during the previous presidency, for example).
Why are you changing the subject from Bush's not granting a security clearance to investigators to his starting a war you disaprove of?
There is nothing particularly "novel" in Bush's approach to laws limiting presidential power. An example sure to most infuriate a Bush-critic is a war waged by another Republican president — on his own people. A war, of course, like no others before it. Yes, I'm talking about Abraham Lincoln...
I've been a long-time fan (and a stock-holder) of the company. Their software-quality has slipped noticably during the years. Their web-pages contain horribly broken HTML at times, with the bug existing for many months until it finaly goes away and the same browser no longer has a problem.
Their "message boards" (attached to each article) are some times either completely inaccessible, or have features missing — the "recommendations", for example, were broken for a couple of weeks recently. Someone must've been on vacation...
The stock dropped over 20% two days ago, because their software-writing was not fast enough for the new advertising model(s). They must do something, or Google will eat them alive...
He does not want the details of that program to be leaked to press...
We sure all want for there to be checks and balances, but it is unrealistic (and flat out stupid) to expect one of the government's branches to want to be checked and balanced. Lawmakers hate it, judiciary hates it, and the executives, of course, hate it — they each think, they are right and that the other branches are wrong in their disagreements.
They all submit to it because of the laws, but granting the security clearance is, by law, the executive's prerogative, so there is nothing illegal about Bush's move... Nor is anyone's life in danger because of it, so let's not get too worked up over it.
It fills the hungry stomachs, thanks to much higher yields. It makes food abundant, allowing people to spend less (or no) time worrying about it. Heck, some people — like yourself — grow up not realizing, the problem ever existed!
There is zero (nada) evidence of any danger. At least, Bush's objections to using an embrio's cells are ethical (his kind views embrios as human beings). You have no grounds whatsoever. People have been developing different kinds of crops and animals for as long as we have been raising them. There are cows of a milk-producing variety and those, that provide better meat (and more of it), for example. Heck, we've even done it to dogs (pun intended) breeding different kinds for hunting, amusement, and other duties.
"GM" simply does it much quicker — and much better.
I'm glad, you weren't around, when agriculture was invented. Surely, we would've seen you protesting against the early farms. Building a dam for irrigation?! Forget it — think of the eco-system!
Excellent point (except for the animals — that was just dumb of you, sorry). There should be choice, and there is. That was not my point — nowhere in my posting (GP) do I insist, there should be no other food, but genetically-modified.
... if people just stopped getting sick?
Why, every time an improvement in the area of weapons and defense is discussed, someone makes an "insightful" comment on how we should be "making less enemies" instead of fighting them.
Flaimbait my behind — the sick could've used the gym more often and watched their diets better too. Do I get an "insightful" moderation now? I dare you...