Honestly, people only have a problem with this when it means their man is going to lose on an accurate count
Actually, "my guy," Harry Browne, clearly lost.
I'm inclined to agree, though I find it odd that Gore's is the only name you mention in the present context
Only because he's the one initiating and backing all the lawsuits, and rejecting all of the Bush team's proposals for settlement. Bush team does get serious demerits for filing suit -- in a FEDERAL COURT -- about a state election matter. The idea I get looking at the news is that Gore is trying to sue and or recount himself into office. Bush's single lawsuit (that I know of) tried to put a stop to the manual recount (which wasn't even the first recount), which as far as I know of, was against Florida law anyway. Idiots to go to federal court and not florida court over that, though. In other words, it looks like Gore could care about the law as long as he wins, and although Bush filed suit as well, we appears to actually care about the law being followed. In advance of the first recount being completed, Bush stood a very real chance of losing, but offered that whoever won, won. Gore rejected that pending the outcome of the recount. My complaint is not about "my guy losing" -- my guy was the Libertarian, after all. My complaint is about a bunch a whiners thinking that they can vote and count and vote until they like the result. An interesting side note is that the ballot in question was approved by the Democratic Party in that Democratic country prior to the election, and had been approved and used for years. Suddenly they find a problem with it? I agree it's a silly looking ballot; but fix it for the next election.
And what about absentee ballots? No one is insisting that they be received on the day designated by The Congress.
Yes, they are. Those ballots must be postmarked by the day of the election, regardless of what day they arrive.
Or what about jurisdictions that allow early voting. Mine does, and I did. Is my ballot lying uncounted in a dumpster somewhere right now? Should it be?
I don't know its whereabouts, but it certainly should be counted. But once you submit your ballot -- by mailing it, putting it in the ballot box/machine, whatever -- your part of the game is over, and unless your ballot is spoiled (improperly marked), your vote should be counted.
I don't at all think a revote is a forgone conclusion, and in fact I don't really expect one, but it's a very head-in-sand approach to laugh at the idea as though it were impossible
I'm not saying it ius impossible -- I'm saying it should either be impossible or universal. I'm saying it's not fair to let one section of the electorate vote again after the election is over -- i.e., with special knowledge of the expected results. This happens on a small scale due to timezones in the general eletion, yes -- but bue to exit polls, not votes being certified and announced. Perhaps precincts should not make public announcements until all of the polls have closed. And TV and Radio shouldn't publicize exit polls until after the voting has ended. Perhaps all voting should be moved to weekends -- or better, a declared national holiday -- and no poll-based prognostications of "the winner" allowed under thw law, because it's really tampering with the vote. The Press has turned the election into a circus and a revenue generator. If everyone waited until the electors gathered and cast their votes, Dec. 18th this year, there would be no brouhaha. If they even waited until the states each certified and announced their votes by the deadline (Dec 18th), there would be no problem. It's the artifical hype-wagon "crisis" that the press created and is perpetuating that is the problem. Gore's trying to use it to his advantage. Bush is too, to a lesser extent, but pre-announcing cabinet choices and transition teams. There's nothing strictly wrong with that, except that he's doing in in such as way as to imply that he's won already. He'll look pretty stupid if he loses. Both of them look stupid right now, as a matter of fact. Gore just looks stupid, plus arrogant and shady.
Whence the a priori assumption that the Democrats are more able to cheat than the Republicans are, or that they will prove to be better at it?
All those dead democrats who regularly vote in Chicago. Heck, it was about time a dead democrat was elected to office instead of just voting, and whaddayaknow, it happened. Plus, this election, just like that crooked one in the 60s, features.... a Daley!
The whole idea of peering at a spoiled (improperly marked) ballot and determining "intent" surely seems like this kind of stuff the road to hell is paved with. I like machine tallies; machines aren't democrats, and they aren't republicans.
Even Nixon conceded defeat under much shadier conditions (previous Daley) than this. Gore seems to think he can harangue and sue his way into office. Someone once said that anyone who wants to be President bad enough to fight to get there, shouldn't be trusted with the office. Gore is certainly disqualifying himself on those grounds.
And these dolts on Florida thinking they get a do-over! Right! Which third-world peacekeeper-infested kleptocracy do we live in again? If ANYONE gets to vote again, I'm driving to that locale and demanding a second vote myself. Perhaps even a third, if we're going to play that game. And I'll also be buying tickets to a more civilized country, like Sweden, Norway, hell, even Argentina.
> I actually use VNC to connect to an X session on my linux gateway to use telnet.
This is mind numbing stupidity
Ah... one of those Buchanan voters...
Hey! Good advice. Putty appears to actually work right.
(And to another poster, I am running w2k. Using its telnet is like poking myself in the eye while being pulled backwards through a bush that's being pulled backwards through a combine harvester).
Unfortunately, Microsoft's telnet client continues to suck rocks through a straw.
Try running "pine" using MS Telnet. You'll be hitting ctrl-L a lot.
I actually use VNC to connect to an X session on my linux gateway to use telnet.
I've been using GoGo, which is another Japanese implementation of Lame, this one with MMX acceleration. It sounds fine at 128k to me, better than Xing, which everyone agrees is crap. Fast crap, but crap.
One republic, pop. 270 million. Populace subdued. Please place bids at:
The Republicrats,
c/o Corporatism, Inc.
Stay tuned for sponsored debates between a rich white guy in his 50s with strong family political connections, and a rich white guy in his 50s with strong family political connections. Debate topics will include whether there should be a prescription drug benefit as part of medicare, or whether medicare should pay for prescription drugs. Also on the table are whether taxes hould be cut, or whether we should cut taxes.
Act now to get your piece of this exciting product! Auction closes in November!
I used to think the Gimp was very hard to use as well. Now that I've used it for a while, Photoshop seems clunky and non-intuituve (and I've used PS vince version 1). I expecially like the tear-off menus the Gimp has; commonly used ones I can place next to the canvas.
It's all a matter of what you're used to, I suppose. Having said that, Photoshop is noticeably faster and has more features. Gimp's getting there, though. I look forward to the 16-bits per color channel!
Whee! Thank you! The only additional feature I'd like right off the bat would be including the VNC protocol in the regular X servers. Xvnc is simply Xfree86 with hardware drivers stripped out and a virtual framebuffer added, and the VNC protocol stuff. There's no reason it couldn't be left in the regular servers as well. This would allow access to X desktops w/o expensive and awful (and slow) software like Exceed. We actually use Xvnc rather than exceed at my place of work, because of a few reasons:
it performs better
it's free
it's multiplatform -- one viewer for macs, windows and unix
when a windows client crashes, it doesn't take the X apps with it, just the VNC viewer. Simply reboot and re-connect. When Exceed, or the PC it's running on, crashes, you're screwed. Similarly, when accessing apps over a remote (poor) connection, if the connection drops, you're screwed. With VNC, you're not.
Shared visuals -- when you want to show someone else how you configure a specific thing, they don't need to crowd around your monitor. Just call them on the phone, both connect with VNC, and train away from your own desks. This also helps tech support calls, and it's not flakey like PC Anywhere, and Unix oeprators can see Windows desktops.
Lets put our paranoia in check and deal with the fact that to be effective, Federal Agencies MUST have powers above and beond that of the average citizen.
... as long as they obey the law, including the consitution, and are accountable to the public. Brin's idea of citizen juries would put some accountability back into the government.
We can't just say "technology is making privacy outdated" and leave it at that, because those currently in power can always use their power to maintain their own privacy, or at least keep people from using knowledge about them against them. Meanwhile, they can use what they know about you against you.
The next time your insurance company asks for DNA samples, ask for the same information about the officers of that company. When a telemarketer calls you, ask for their home phone number. Call them back in the unlikely event that you get it. And refuse to give up information about yourself unless the person or group asking does the same.
Privacy shouldn't be confused with freedom or personal sovreignty. "The benefits of abandoning it [privacy] are just too clear," as you said, but not when done unilaterally by the powerless.
I'm sure people will "get a clue" about ".NET" because of "Microsoft.NET" and assume that all those ISPs using.net -- because they are network providers -- are actually trying to copy Microsoft's "innovation" and get in on the game.
Allowing all domain names will turn DNS into the Internet Keywords system, with periods instead of spaces. Not saying this is necessarily bad, but there would have to be some good rules about usage. Like reserving top-level TLDs for everyone -- they may not exist until someone registers t hem, but 'ownership' would go only to second-level domains. This way, no one owns ".store", for isntance, but "walmart.store" could be owned by walmart. Allowing direct ownership of TLDs will create a lot of market-distorting mini-monopolies and trademark lawsuits.
Just imagine. Rather than hearing, "visit kay-eye-tee-ee-dot-com" on the radio, you'll hear, "internet keyword colorful dot kites".
The first thing I did when I moved into my new house was become the registrar for the city's domain. I figured I was going to be here a while. I also registered my parents' city, so I could give them an email address.
I contacted the US domain people about allowing, for instance, the delegation of the MX record for NC.US (my state) to me. No go. They're pretty strict about usage. It has to be [city|county].state-code.US. You're allowed to make up stuff four levels down, but no higher. Other countries have whatever.com.uk, for instance, but not here.
I own my own domain, and have a few real email addresses. The rest go into another mailbox. This allows me to make up addresses whenever I want, and know that mail sent to them will get delivered. I currently have all mail at that domain put into my mailbox, unless it's for my wife's or a friend's or some other real address. When I go to a site demanding an email address, I put in sitename@mydomain.com. THen I can see where the spam is coming from, and retaliate/procmail/etc as appropriate. Works well. Get yourself a.us domain, they're free, and go for it.
... and no, my domain isn't really "mydomain.com". That's owned by:
Myinternet Services Inc., 4739 University Way NE Suite 1640 Seattle, WA 98105 US
Okay, they set the ethercard to full duplex and increased the queue depth on the scsi card. Fine -- makes sense. Stopped the "atime" updates. Makes sense.
But they also did this: echo 100 5000 640 2560 150 30000 5000 1884 2 >/proc/sys/vm/bdflush
... interesting. We're developing a new filesystem, and ended up ignoring bdflush completely to get good performance. Here's what those values mean:
Table 2-2: Parameters in/proc/sys/vm/bdflush Value (default/tweaked)
nfract (40/100) Percentage of buffer cache dirty to activate bdflush
ndirty (500/5000) Maximum number of dirty blocks to write out per wake-cycle
nrefill (64/640) Number of clean buffers to try to obtain each time we call refill
nref_dirt (256/2560) buffer threshold for activating bdflush when trying to refill buffers.
dummy (500/150) Unused
age_buffer (3000/30000) Time for normal buffer to age before we flush it
age_super (500/5000) Time for superblock to age before we flush it
dummy (1884/1884) Unused
dummy (2/2) Unused
... they seem to have changed one of the "dummy" values... wonder why? Other than that, they appear to have increased the interval at which bdflush runs, meaning more stuff is hanging around in memory. It may be that at 24 clients, bdflush is banging on the filesystem too much. I would loveto see a graph of disk activity inluded with the results. Sometimes Linux will go through a silent-storm-silent-storm cycle as bdflush runs on a busy system. It would be interesting to see how a journaled filesystem would perform. I think Reiser does his own buffer-flushing rather than relying on bdflush runs to do it, meaning he has finer control over it. It would also be interesting to see this test run on FreeBSD, which does a better job keeping the disks busy.
Tweakers may also be interested in reading/usr/src/linux/Documentation/IRQ-affinity.txt... describes how to have specific CPUs handle specific IRQs -- like the mindcraft tests did with NT.
Bob Herbold, Microsoft COO, says "Innovation is what makes America great!" on that brochure. BZZT! *Freedom* is what makes America great. You know, the Consitution, those inalienable rights, trial by jury, etc. Not innovation. Innovation is a byproduct of what makes America great! What a Corporate Statist. Two words, Bob: Teddy Roosevelt!
How may times do we have to hear about the dot matrix printers? Is there a secret message in there somewhere? Is this like slashdot's version of the "numbers" stations -- note the time that the "dot matrix" story was posted and use it as a one-time pad or something? Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, people only have a problem with this when it means their man is going to lose on an accurate count
Actually, "my guy," Harry Browne, clearly lost.
I'm inclined to agree, though I find it odd that Gore's is the only name you mention in the present context
Only because he's the one initiating and backing all the lawsuits, and rejecting all of the Bush team's proposals for settlement. Bush team does get serious demerits for filing suit -- in a FEDERAL COURT -- about a state election matter. The idea I get looking at the news is that Gore is trying to sue and or recount himself into office. Bush's single lawsuit (that I know of) tried to put a stop to the manual recount (which wasn't even the first recount), which as far as I know of, was against Florida law anyway. Idiots to go to federal court and not florida court over that, though. In other words, it looks like Gore could care about the law as long as he wins, and although Bush filed suit as well, we appears to actually care about the law being followed. In advance of the first recount being completed, Bush stood a very real chance of losing, but offered that whoever won, won. Gore rejected that pending the outcome of the recount. My complaint is not about "my guy losing" -- my guy was the Libertarian, after all. My complaint is about a bunch a whiners thinking that they can vote and count and vote until they like the result. An interesting side note is that the ballot in question was approved by the Democratic Party in that Democratic country prior to the election, and had been approved and used for years. Suddenly they find a problem with it? I agree it's a silly looking ballot; but fix it for the next election.
And what about absentee ballots? No one is insisting that they be received on the day designated by The Congress.
Yes, they are. Those ballots must be postmarked by the day of the election, regardless of what day they arrive.
Or what about jurisdictions that allow early voting. Mine does, and I did. Is my ballot lying uncounted in a dumpster somewhere right now? Should it be?
I don't know its whereabouts, but it certainly should be counted. But once you submit your ballot -- by mailing it, putting it in the ballot box/machine, whatever -- your part of the game is over, and unless your ballot is spoiled (improperly marked), your vote should be counted.
I don't at all think a revote is a forgone conclusion, and in fact I don't really expect one, but it's a very head-in-sand approach to laugh at the idea as though it were impossible
I'm not saying it ius impossible -- I'm saying it should either be impossible or universal. I'm saying it's not fair to let one section of the electorate vote again after the election is over -- i.e., with special knowledge of the expected results. This happens on a small scale due to timezones in the general eletion, yes -- but bue to exit polls, not votes being certified and announced. Perhaps precincts should not make public announcements until all of the polls have closed. And TV and Radio shouldn't publicize exit polls until after the voting has ended. Perhaps all voting should be moved to weekends -- or better, a declared national holiday -- and no poll-based prognostications of "the winner" allowed under thw law, because it's really tampering with the vote. The Press has turned the election into a circus and a revenue generator. If everyone waited until the electors gathered and cast their votes, Dec. 18th this year, there would be no brouhaha. If they even waited until the states each certified and announced their votes by the deadline (Dec 18th), there would be no problem. It's the artifical hype-wagon "crisis" that the press created and is perpetuating that is the problem. Gore's trying to use it to his advantage. Bush is too, to a lesser extent, but pre-announcing cabinet choices and transition teams. There's nothing strictly wrong with that, except that he's doing in in such as way as to imply that he's won already. He'll look pretty stupid if he loses. Both of them look stupid right now, as a matter of fact. Gore just looks stupid, plus arrogant and shady.
Whence the a priori assumption that the Democrats are more able to cheat than the Republicans are, or that they will prove to be better at it?
All those dead democrats who regularly vote in Chicago. Heck, it was about time a dead democrat was elected to office instead of just voting, and whaddayaknow, it happened. Plus, this election, just like that crooked one in the 60s, features.... a Daley!
The whole idea of peering at a spoiled (improperly marked) ballot and determining "intent" surely seems like this kind of stuff the road to hell is paved with. I like machine tallies; machines aren't democrats, and they aren't republicans.
Even Nixon conceded defeat under much shadier conditions (previous Daley) than this. Gore seems to think he can harangue and sue his way into office. Someone once said that anyone who wants to be President bad enough to fight to get there, shouldn't be trusted with the office. Gore is certainly disqualifying himself on those grounds.
And these dolts on Florida thinking they get a do-over! Right! Which third-world peacekeeper-infested kleptocracy do we live in again? If ANYONE gets to vote again, I'm driving to that locale and demanding a second vote myself. Perhaps even a third, if we're going to play that game. And I'll also be buying tickets to a more civilized country, like Sweden, Norway, hell, even Argentina.
What software did you use, and where did you get the pictures? :)
> I actually use VNC to connect to an X session on my linux gateway to use telnet.
This is mind numbing stupidity Ah... one of those Buchanan voters...
Hey! Good advice. Putty appears to actually work right. (And to another poster, I am running w2k. Using its telnet is like poking myself in the eye while being pulled backwards through a bush that's being pulled backwards through a combine harvester).
Unfortunately, Microsoft's telnet client continues to suck rocks through a straw. Try running "pine" using MS Telnet. You'll be hitting ctrl-L a lot. I actually use VNC to connect to an X session on my linux gateway to use telnet.
I've been using GoGo, which is another Japanese implementation of Lame, this one with MMX acceleration. It sounds fine at 128k to me, better than Xing, which everyone agrees is crap. Fast crap, but crap.
One republic, pop. 270 million. Populace subdued. Please place bids at:
The Republicrats,
c/o Corporatism, Inc.
Stay tuned for sponsored debates between a rich white guy in his 50s with strong family political connections, and a rich white guy in his 50s with strong family political connections. Debate topics will include whether there should be a prescription drug benefit as part of medicare, or whether medicare should pay for prescription drugs. Also on the table are whether taxes hould be cut, or whether we should cut taxes.
Act now to get your piece of this exciting product! Auction closes in November!
I used to think the Gimp was very hard to use as well. Now that I've used it for a while, Photoshop seems clunky and non-intuituve (and I've used PS vince version 1). I expecially like the tear-off menus the Gimp has; commonly used ones I can place next to the canvas.
It's all a matter of what you're used to, I suppose. Having said that, Photoshop is noticeably faster and has more features. Gimp's getting there, though. I look forward to the 16-bits per color channel!
JonKatz, What do you think of David Brin's idea of the Transparent Society (excerpt posted earlier by someone else)?
Don't worry. He'll mention "geeks" in his "Cameras in the Hellmouth" series.
We can't just say "technology is making privacy outdated" and leave it at that, because those currently in power can always use their power to maintain their own privacy, or at least keep people from using knowledge about them against them. Meanwhile, they can use what they know about you against you.
The next time your insurance company asks for DNA samples, ask for the same information about the officers of that company. When a telemarketer calls you, ask for their home phone number. Call them back in the unlikely event that you get it. And refuse to give up information about yourself unless the person or group asking does the same.
Privacy shouldn't be confused with freedom or personal sovreignty. "The benefits of abandoning it [privacy] are just too clear," as you said, but not when done unilaterally by the powerless.
I look forward to the day when computers have feelings; because I plan on hurting them really badly... "Your mother was a toaster!!!!"
It's not a real car, after all. "Sounds like... go-cart.. two syllables..."
I'm sure people will "get a clue" about ".NET" because of "Microsoft.NET" and assume that all those ISPs using .net -- because they are network providers -- are actually trying to copy Microsoft's "innovation" and get in on the game.
Allowing all domain names will turn DNS into the Internet Keywords system, with periods instead of spaces. Not saying this is necessarily bad, but there would have to be some good rules about usage. Like reserving top-level TLDs for everyone -- they may not exist until someone registers t hem, but 'ownership' would go only to second-level domains. This way, no one owns ".store", for isntance, but "walmart.store" could be owned by walmart. Allowing direct ownership of TLDs will create a lot of market-distorting mini-monopolies and trademark lawsuits.
Just imagine. Rather than hearing, "visit kay-eye-tee-ee-dot-com" on the radio, you'll hear, "internet keyword colorful dot kites".
So I can make a rotating redirector to Nike, Kathy Lee Gifford, etc. :)
How about "gnu.is.not.unix"
The first thing I did when I moved into my new house was become the registrar for the city's domain. I figured I was going to be here a while. I also registered my parents' city, so I could give them an email address.
I contacted the US domain people about allowing, for instance, the delegation of the MX record for NC.US (my state) to me. No go. They're pretty strict about usage. It has to be [city|county].state-code.US. You're allowed to make up stuff four levels down, but no higher. Other countries have whatever.com.uk, for instance, but not here.
I own my own domain, and have a few real email addresses. The rest go into another mailbox. This allows me to make up addresses whenever I want, and know that mail sent to them will get delivered. I currently have all mail at that domain put into my mailbox, unless it's for my wife's or a friend's or some other real address. When I go to a site demanding an email address, I put in sitename@mydomain.com. THen I can see where the spam is coming from, and retaliate/procmail/etc as appropriate. Works well. Get yourself a .us domain, they're free, and go for it.
... and no, my domain isn't really "mydomain.com". That's owned by:
Myinternet Services Inc.,
4739 University Way NE
Suite 1640
Seattle, WA 98105
US
Okay, they set the ethercard to full duplex and increased the queue depth on the scsi card. Fine -- makes sense. Stopped the "atime" updates. Makes sense.
... interesting. We're developing a new filesystem, and ended up ignoring bdflush completely to get good performance. Here's what those values mean:
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt:
/proc/sys/vm/bdflush
... they seem to have changed one of the "dummy" values... wonder why? Other than that, they appear to have increased the interval at which bdflush runs, meaning more stuff is hanging around in memory. It may be that at 24 clients, bdflush is banging on the filesystem too much. I would loveto see a graph of disk activity inluded with the results. Sometimes Linux will go through a silent-storm-silent-storm cycle as bdflush runs on a busy system. It would be interesting to see how a journaled filesystem would perform. I think Reiser does his own buffer-flushing rather than relying on bdflush runs to do it, meaning he has finer control over it. It would also be interesting to see this test run on FreeBSD, which does a better job keeping the disks busy.
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/IRQ-affinity.txt ... describes how to have specific CPUs handle specific IRQs -- like the mindcraft tests did with NT.
But they also did this:
echo 100 5000 640 2560 150 30000 5000 1884 2 >/proc/sys/vm/bdflush
From
Table 2-2: Parameters in
Value (default/tweaked)
nfract (40/100)
Percentage of buffer cache dirty to activate bdflush
ndirty (500/5000)
Maximum number of dirty blocks to write out per wake-cycle
nrefill (64/640)
Number of clean buffers to try to obtain each time we call refill
nref_dirt (256/2560)
buffer threshold for activating bdflush when trying to refill buffers.
dummy (500/150)
Unused
age_buffer (3000/30000)
Time for normal buffer to age before we flush it
age_super (500/5000)
Time for superblock to age before we flush it
dummy (1884/1884)
Unused
dummy (2/2)
Unused
Tweakers may also be interested in reading
Bob Herbold, Microsoft COO, says "Innovation is what makes America great!" on that brochure. BZZT! *Freedom* is what makes America great. You know, the Consitution, those inalienable rights, trial by jury, etc. Not innovation. Innovation is a byproduct of what makes America great! What a Corporate Statist. Two words, Bob: Teddy Roosevelt!
How may times do we have to hear about the dot matrix printers? Is there a secret message in there somewhere? Is this like slashdot's version of the "numbers" stations -- note the time that the "dot matrix" story was posted and use it as a one-time pad or something? Sheesh.