I was just flipping between the various news channels listening to one discussion after another about how that damn Palm Beach ballot _might_ be illegal. Being of a practical nature I did a search on Google and within two minutes I found myself at this url:
(The editor keeps inserting extraneous spaces. Pleae remove them. How do I make it stop?)
This page details, with admirable clarity, the many ballot and election laws which apply in the state of Florida. It very much appears to me that the oft-repeated "right-side only" rule applies only "In counties in which voting machines are not used, and in other counties for use as absentee ballots not designed for tabulation by an electronic or electromechanical voting system..."
Unfortunately I can't find the exact rules which apply to electronic voting systems. However, the procedure and considerations for defining such rules are outlined in "101.015 Standards for voting systems." on the page above, and it seems quite clear that a different set of physical and operational standards are expected to apply to an electronic or electromechanical ballot. After reading this statute it seems very unlikely that the butterfly ballot would've made it through the procedure outlined if it was, in fact, in violation of the law or of these specific rules.
Go read it for yourself. I'd appreciate it if someone could track down the rules that actually apply to this electronic ballot this time around.
Anything is possible, but any of the electors who did that sort of thing would be legally and morally wrong.
1) If it's legally decided that the Palm Beach mess is not signifigant then it is no longer an issue. Electors are not being noble and caring if they decide to itgnore the law. They'd just be arrogant and arbitrary.
2) Having one candidate with the majority of a popular vote and another winning the electoral vote is a situation that has happened a couple times before. It's not a crisis or an emergency. It's pretty much inevitable at some point.
The electoral system might need changing, but it is as much a part of the Constitution as anything else, and if it must be changed then it must be changed legally. That's it.
-Bryan
Maybe the ThinkPads on your planet are different. Over at work we've bought ThinkPads almost exclusively for years, even after switching to Dell desktop machines. The newer slimline units, in particular, are wonderful laptops.
Yes, some of the old MWave DSP hardware (no longer used) was a pain to configure, and the driver section of their web site was a godawful mess before they redesigned it. But the hardware has always been exceptionally durable and reliable compared to the other brands I've worked with. We still have a ThinkPad 365 that was run over by a car; the LCD was shattered and the CD drive crushed, but the unit still works fine.
-Bryan
Re:We both know there is more to D & D than that..
on
D&D Trailer
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· Score: 2
"Those people were just weird or losers to begin with." There, I said it. The tiny number of people who lose touch with reality while playing RPGs were pretty far gone anyway. I'm pretty sure that just about anything could've pushed the over the edge. If it wasn't D&D then it could've been professional sports, depressing poetry, Road Runner cartoons, etc.
Just for comparison, bow many people are killed each year in fraternity hazing incidents? All because they so desperately want to be part of an abusive and manipulative group that they're willing to debase themselves, place their lives in danger, commit criminal acts, and lie to protect their abusers? That commonly accepted social behaviour seems far more dangerous than any game of medieval cops-and-robbers could ever be.
In fact, I think that some of the most brilliant religious minds in history would've been ardent fans of D&D. Look at Milton's 'Paradise Lost', with a downright sympathetic view of the fallen angel Lucifer. Heck, large chunks of D&D's original mythology were lifted straight out of Dante's classic works. Were those authors, so revered by the church in their time, also whistling in the dark while invoking demonic forces?
The world is full of destitute, foolish, unstable, and depressed people. IMHO, the church's true mission is to help these people and illustrate by example. This goal is _not_ served by endlessly engaging on one foolish witch hunt after another. Most churchgoes know better than to fall for this sort of nonsense. Try using the brain God gave you, and maybe you'll find youself joining them.
So what it comes down to is that irresponsible, malicious people can break things and hurt people. How is this anything new? The same person could go out and slash ambulance tires with a sharp kitchen knife, potentially causing great suffering and loss of life, and I doubt that we'd see legislation banning kitchen knives as a result. Much less laws banning discussion of tire-slashing incidents. I think a more practical solution would be to fix the problem.
Actually that's not quite true. There were a bunch of nice games for the Amiga, no doubt, but the Amiga was a nifty graphics machine long before the Video Toaster. I bought an Amiga 1000 within a few months of the machine's launch, and one of the first apps I purchased was DeluxePaint, from Electronic Arts. A really nice paint program with some features that were pretty much unavailable for any other consumer-level PC at the time. There were also a bunch of other graphics apps and accessories available at the same time or very shortly thereafter, including the Digiview slow-scan video digitizer from NewTek, the company that later introduced the Toaster.
-Bryan
Sewing machines are pretty darn sophisticated these days. A typical automated embroidery system (about the same size as a regular ol' sewing machine) have color LCD touch-screens, a considerable amount of internal RAM, and use floppy drives or flash-cards to transfer data. They're pretty impressive. If Nintendo wants to try and make a mark in this area I wish them luck.
-Bryan
Well then, I guess you have a better memory than some people people...or a lot fewer books and CDs. That hardly invalidates the whole concept of cataloging a personal collection.
Unless I'm mistaken, that _is_ the current requirement. That it be non-obvious to other practicioners in the field, or something very much like that. What's amazing to you or me may often be blindingly obvious or so routine as to hardly warrant comment by someone who works with similar technology every day.
And that's why preposterous patents like One-Click are so damn stupid, because if the patent office were capable/willing/able to research these patents correctly then they would never have been granted.
That's not a new concept at all (not that you claimed that it was.) Back in the early days of TV, and even into the 1960's this is how a lot of shows were sponsored. Shows were called things like "The Colgate Comedy Hour". Announcers and talent for game shows and variety shows would take a time out to sing a jingle or read an endorsement. Actors in sitcoms would perform commercials for the sponsor's product(s), and the commercials would be aired right along with the show. Modern reruns of the shows excise these commercials, but they were there back when the shows first ran.
And many other schools hate the.us domain with a passion because no one in the Real World remembers or understands it. I strongly suspect that most schools would very much prefer to have an.edu domain, even if it meant devising some creative domain name choices to avoid confusion.
I work for a community college (aka junior college) with a.us domain. Our email addresses are long and cumbersome. Our web address is mistyped and misunderstood in phone conversations. (Most people seem to automatically stop listening after the first "dot" comes up, and then mentally append either.com or.edu). Administration is a headache, too, since the people who are supposed to administer the.cc subdomain of the.us domain are impossible to contact and don't apparently maintain any kind of WHOIS database.
IMHO, the solution is, of couse, to let any properly accredited educational institution use the.edu domain (which is actually how it did operate until not that long ago.) The solution is _not_ to make things more complicated just to elevate the domain name system to some abstract level of elegance and consistency that few people will understand or appreciate.
On the other hand, the studies which purport to show dangers associated with such technology are too often poorly researched and backed by little more than a pet theory and some flimsy anecdotal claims. This leaves more professional and competent researchers, who may actually have a point to make, with the unpleasant and difficult task of explaining to the public why those guys were wrong but they are right. And it often leaves the task of deciding who is "right" and "wrong" up to a random decision in a class action lawsuit that could unfairly destroy even well-meaning and cautious companies.
The fact that many media outlets seem primarily interested in sensationalistic headlines and shots of reporters frowning at people and nodding doesn't help matters. Yeah, _maybe_ there's a slim chance that some types of cell phones could conceivably cause certain specific types of problems under certain conditions. Maybe. Let's look into that. But framing such stories as though Godzilla just waded ashore and breathed radioactive fire into the brains of your loved ones will not promote rational discussion. It just insults our intelligence and makes people sick of the whole issue. Just like me.
When they try hard NASA is actually very good at making hardware do things it was never intended to do. Browse around sometime and take a look at all the (very) long-distance hacks they came up with to keep the Voyager probes functioning and returning useful data long beyond their original projected lifetimes. It's amazing.
And, given the popularity of the optical mice that MS has designed and sold, they must be doing a pretty darn good job. I doubt that anyone at HP is complaining.:-) -Bryan
I agree. And it's not just elementary school or high school teachers who seem to resent learning anything new. Many higher ed folks are just as stubborn and just as backward about technology. Students can see this as well as you or I, and it's hard to expect them to show much enthusiasm for a teaching mechanism that the teacher doesn't really understand or refuses to care about. -Bryan
Really? Then perhaps the problem is that the definition of "quality" as used in management sciences is flawed, or so limited in scope as to be inadequate when discussing the topic in the Real World. Or maybe it's because we've all seen stupid things done in the name of managementized quality and are thus reluctant to allow the very people who enacted such foolishness to define the terms by which their results are judged.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_ mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0101/titl 0101 .htm&StatuteYear=2000&Title=%2D%3E2000%2D%3EChapte r%20101
(The editor keeps inserting extraneous spaces. Pleae remove them. How do I make it stop?)
This page details, with admirable clarity, the many ballot and election laws which apply in the state of Florida. It very much appears to me that the oft-repeated "right-side only" rule applies only "In counties in which voting machines are not used, and in other counties for use as absentee ballots not designed for tabulation by an electronic or electromechanical voting system..."
Unfortunately I can't find the exact rules which apply to electronic voting systems. However, the procedure and considerations for defining such rules are outlined in "101.015 Standards for voting systems." on the page above, and it seems quite clear that a different set of physical and operational standards are expected to apply to an electronic or electromechanical ballot. After reading this statute it seems very unlikely that the butterfly ballot would've made it through the procedure outlined if it was, in fact, in violation of the law or of these specific rules.
Go read it for yourself. I'd appreciate it if someone could track down the rules that actually apply to this electronic ballot this time around.
-Bryan
Anything is possible, but any of the electors who did that sort of thing would be legally and morally wrong. 1) If it's legally decided that the Palm Beach mess is not signifigant then it is no longer an issue. Electors are not being noble and caring if they decide to itgnore the law. They'd just be arrogant and arbitrary. 2) Having one candidate with the majority of a popular vote and another winning the electoral vote is a situation that has happened a couple times before. It's not a crisis or an emergency. It's pretty much inevitable at some point. The electoral system might need changing, but it is as much a part of the Constitution as anything else, and if it must be changed then it must be changed legally. That's it. -Bryan
Maybe the ThinkPads on your planet are different. Over at work we've bought ThinkPads almost exclusively for years, even after switching to Dell desktop machines. The newer slimline units, in particular, are wonderful laptops.
Yes, some of the old MWave DSP hardware (no longer used) was a pain to configure, and the driver section of their web site was a godawful mess before they redesigned it. But the hardware has always been exceptionally durable and reliable compared to the other brands I've worked with. We still have a ThinkPad 365 that was run over by a car; the LCD was shattered and the CD drive crushed, but the unit still works fine.
-Bryan"Those people were just weird or losers to begin with." There, I said it. The tiny number of people who lose touch with reality while playing RPGs were pretty far gone anyway. I'm pretty sure that just about anything could've pushed the over the edge. If it wasn't D&D then it could've been professional sports, depressing poetry, Road Runner cartoons, etc.
Just for comparison, bow many people are killed each year in fraternity hazing incidents? All because they so desperately want to be part of an abusive and manipulative group that they're willing to debase themselves, place their lives in danger, commit criminal acts, and lie to protect their abusers? That commonly accepted social behaviour seems far more dangerous than any game of medieval cops-and-robbers could ever be.
In fact, I think that some of the most brilliant religious minds in history would've been ardent fans of D&D. Look at Milton's 'Paradise Lost', with a downright sympathetic view of the fallen angel Lucifer. Heck, large chunks of D&D's original mythology were lifted straight out of Dante's classic works. Were those authors, so revered by the church in their time, also whistling in the dark while invoking demonic forces?
The world is full of destitute, foolish, unstable, and depressed people. IMHO, the church's true mission is to help these people and illustrate by example. This goal is _not_ served by endlessly engaging on one foolish witch hunt after another. Most churchgoes know better than to fall for this sort of nonsense. Try using the brain God gave you, and maybe you'll find youself joining them.
-BryanSo what it comes down to is that irresponsible, malicious people can break things and hurt people. How is this anything new? The same person could go out and slash ambulance tires with a sharp kitchen knife, potentially causing great suffering and loss of life, and I doubt that we'd see legislation banning kitchen knives as a result. Much less laws banning discussion of tire-slashing incidents. I think a more practical solution would be to fix the problem.
Actually that's not quite true. There were a bunch of nice games for the Amiga, no doubt, but the Amiga was a nifty graphics machine long before the Video Toaster. I bought an Amiga 1000 within a few months of the machine's launch, and one of the first apps I purchased was DeluxePaint, from Electronic Arts. A really nice paint program with some features that were pretty much unavailable for any other consumer-level PC at the time. There were also a bunch of other graphics apps and accessories available at the same time or very shortly thereafter, including the Digiview slow-scan video digitizer from NewTek, the company that later introduced the Toaster. -Bryan
Sewing machines are pretty darn sophisticated these days. A typical automated embroidery system (about the same size as a regular ol' sewing machine) have color LCD touch-screens, a considerable amount of internal RAM, and use floppy drives or flash-cards to transfer data. They're pretty impressive. If Nintendo wants to try and make a mark in this area I wish them luck. -Bryan
No.
Well then, I guess you have a better memory than some people people...or a lot fewer books and CDs. That hardly invalidates the whole concept of cataloging a personal collection.
And that's why preposterous patents like One-Click are so damn stupid, because if the patent office were capable/willing/able to research these patents correctly then they would never have been granted.
-Ghost
That's not a new concept at all (not that you claimed that it was.) Back in the early days of TV, and even into the 1960's this is how a lot of shows were sponsored. Shows were called things like "The Colgate Comedy Hour". Announcers and talent for game shows and variety shows would take a time out to sing a jingle or read an endorsement. Actors in sitcoms would perform commercials for the sponsor's product(s), and the commercials would be aired right along with the show. Modern reruns of the shows excise these commercials, but they were there back when the shows first ran.
-Bryan
And many other schools hate the .us domain with a passion because no one in the Real World remembers or understands it. I strongly suspect that most schools would very much prefer to have an .edu domain, even if it meant devising some creative domain name choices to avoid confusion.
I work for a community college (aka junior college) with a .us domain. Our email addresses are long and cumbersome. Our web address is mistyped and misunderstood in phone conversations. (Most people seem to automatically stop listening after the first "dot" comes up, and then mentally append either .com or .edu). Administration is a headache, too, since the people who are supposed to administer the .cc subdomain of the .us domain are impossible to contact and don't apparently maintain any kind of WHOIS database.
IMHO, the solution is, of couse, to let any properly accredited educational institution use the .edu domain (which is actually how it did operate until not that long ago.) The solution is _not_ to make things more complicated just to elevate the domain name system to some abstract level of elegance and consistency that few people will understand or appreciate.
-BryanOn the other hand, the studies which purport to show dangers associated with such technology are too often poorly researched and backed by little more than a pet theory and some flimsy anecdotal claims. This leaves more professional and competent researchers, who may actually have a point to make, with the unpleasant and difficult task of explaining to the public why those guys were wrong but they are right. And it often leaves the task of deciding who is "right" and "wrong" up to a random decision in a class action lawsuit that could unfairly destroy even well-meaning and cautious companies.
The fact that many media outlets seem primarily interested in sensationalistic headlines and shots of reporters frowning at people and nodding doesn't help matters. Yeah, _maybe_ there's a slim chance that some types of cell phones could conceivably cause certain specific types of problems under certain conditions. Maybe. Let's look into that. But framing such stories as though Godzilla just waded ashore and breathed radioactive fire into the brains of your loved ones will not promote rational discussion. It just insults our intelligence and makes people sick of the whole issue. Just like me.
-Bryan
When they try hard NASA is actually very good at making hardware do things it was never intended to do. Browse around sometime and take a look at all the (very) long-distance hacks they came up with to keep the Voyager probes functioning and returning useful data long beyond their original projected lifetimes. It's amazing.
-Bryan
And, given the popularity of the optical mice that MS has designed and sold, they must be doing a pretty darn good job. I doubt that anyone at HP is complaining. :-) -Bryan
I agree. And it's not just elementary school or high school teachers who seem to resent learning anything new. Many higher ed folks are just as stubborn and just as backward about technology. Students can see this as well as you or I, and it's hard to expect them to show much enthusiasm for a teaching mechanism that the teacher doesn't really understand or refuses to care about.
-Bryan
Really? Then perhaps the problem is that the definition of "quality" as used in management sciences is flawed, or so limited in scope as to be inadequate when discussing the topic in the Real World. Or maybe it's because we've all seen stupid things done in the name of managementized quality and are thus reluctant to allow the very people who enacted such foolishness to define the terms by which their results are judged.