There are alot of white kids, atheletes and others who get into Duke and who cant handle it, so why do you choose to only focus on minorities?
Because we were talking about race based admissions. I have a problem with anyone who doesn't deserve to be here, and can't handle it. That being said -- there IS rooms for all kinds. Atheletes who are otherwise slightly (SLIGHTLY) below standards bring their own kind of excellence. And I focus on minorities because duke has a tremendously high graduation rate, and it just so happens that the only people I've known who have been forced to leave have been minorities. And the lowest SAT score.
Incidentally, I think you're wrong that "anyone" can get a 1500 SAT score. It's highly linked to IQ. Incidentally again, on the topic of IQ--Bush has about the same IQ as JFK it's estimated. Was he too dumb to be president too?:)
And I don't know if Duke is a difficult school. I know it's signifigantly more work than my friends who go to public school (UNC, NCSU, etc) do, but I don't know how it compares to Harvard,Yale,Princeton etc. Duke is a top 5 school though, so I imagine it's not too far off.
All right! More Bush bashing from the guy NOT going to Yale:) Here are some facts for you.
Bush got a 1206 on his SAT. This is pre-SAT inflation that started in 1996. Only 16% of students did better than that that. So he's around 84th percentile is another way of putting it. Wow, that doesn't sound too dumb to me.
Despite what you might think, most minorities dont get free degrees from Yale, if you want a degree from Yale, you need a 1500 on your SATs just to get in, period, it does not matter if you are a minority, this is Yale.
Duke is admittedly no Yale, but I personally know minorities that have gotten SAT's as low as 1050 where ~1430 is the median (25-75th is about 1370-1470 or somewhere thereabouts) and who have not athletics or other factors that got them in.
And I agree with your last paragraph--getting people into colleges where they don't deserve to be doesn't help anyone--because chances are, they aren't going to be able to fly there.
I will say most of this is different for Engineering classes, as those are usually large boring, and the teacher can't really teach much...but just about in ANY other field...
Well too damn bad, this isnt about the teacher, the teachers job is to grade papers, its my job to submit paper work. What I do in between is none of the teachers business, as long as I do my job the teacher should do their job.
Uhh, NO. The teachers job IS to teach. And you're right, what you do outside of class is none of the teachers business. But what you do INSIDE class most definitely is.
Its not the teachers job to judge me as a person, its the teachers jobs to judge my work. This is exactly why we need machines, because certain people such as yourself want to judge the person and not the work.
"This person doesnt dress nice, this person has long hair and looks like a hippy, this person is always late, I dont like this person"
A teacher disliking someone on account of how they dress is an ENTIRELY different thing from disliking a student for being late and DISRESPECTFUL to both the class and the teacher. As a student your JOB is to go to class and to learn. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be at school, you should just go to frat parties, or do whatever else dropouts do.
That depends on the professor, and on the textbook. Most of the time I learn better from the textbook, mainly because I am not designed to learn in a structured environment, and because I dont learn at the pace of the class, also because rarely did I have great teachers so I'm more comfortable just looking information up myself instead of asking questions.
Really professors are coaches, I dont learn directly from them, they do sometimes make absorbing the textbook material easier when they give good lectures based on the material but most of the time, I could just read a transcript of their lecture and get the same knowledge.
Don't get me wrong, a good professor and good books compliment each other. Last semester I had an African History profesor who had lived in Zimbabwe for 5 years, and in the Southern Sudan for several years. Her first hand observations, insights, and experiences that we are able to question, analyze, and ask NEW questions of are far more valuable than being able to read "The Sudan is hot." It sounds to me like your bitch is that you haven't had any good professors? At community college? I hate to say it, but that's not really surprising.
Yes and I will drop your class if I were ever one of your students. I dont want to be judged by stupid shit that has nothing to do with my intelligence or my ability to learn. I want to be judged on my knowledge. Some people just live too far away from school, sometimes they dont have cars, other times they just overslept, either way this has absolutely nothing to do with learning and I dont see why you should have a right to punish me for my attendance if I get an A on ever paper.
You're a student, your JOB is to go to class and learn. And if you don't see the correlation between going to class and learning, or you apparently already know _everything_ why are you even going to school? Or, your _particular_ school?
Just do your fucking job and I'll do mine
You're a student, your JOB is to go to class and LEARN. Let's say you became a teacher--do you think you would get good reviews it you stumbled into class 15 minutes late every day? Or you skipped business meetings because you just want to be fucking left alone to do your work? I don't think so. Real life is about more than just saying "let me do my fucking work"
IF you think race almost never figures into admissions, quite frankly it's not worth me even typing a reply. Go talk to a college admissions guide, or anyone who knows anything about the admissions process for instance.
And I don't mean being WHITE got you in--certain minorities which are underrepresented are what I'm referring to.
There was a great link I used to have (can't find it now) at NCSU (NC State--site was a NCSU website, not a student site or anything, it was official)) where you entered in your race and gender, and it gave you an approximation of the SAT that you would need to be admitted. Needless to say, it wasn't uniform.
Gender is just as much of a factor, as is atheletic ability, and who your parents are.
This is true. I didn't say race was the ONLY factor. But race is a damn important factor. The median SAT score at Duke is around 1430. In my freshman dorm one (hispanic girl) had a 1030, and has constantly been on academic probabtion. One of my best friends is african america, and had a similarly low SAT and has been on academic probation.
My biggest problem with changing admissions standards to accomodate race is that it doesn't help ANYONE. I've met some very, very intelligent people from all races while at Duke. And the people who have to struggle in the easiest classes because they shouldn't have been admitted, and then get terrible grades are not in a good situation--they would have been off going to an easier school, where they could have dominated the competition, and instead of being in over their heads.
Do I care? Absolutely not considering the Athlete and the rich upperclass kid will both get in. It seems everyone is getting into college via loopholes, including white males who like to complain so much, I mean George Bush complains about Affirmative Action but how on earth did he get into Yale?
Maybe because he's NOT stupid??
I suppose you would have laughed at Thomas Jefferson and guffawed at how you were _so_ much smarter than him (from you community college nonetheless!!!). Thomas Jefferson, like Bush, couldn't speak in public to save his life.
dont really like small classes myself, there is no real benefit, what I notice from smaller classes is, teachers are more critical of you, you get greater punishment for poor attendence or for being late to class, you also get more focus from the teacher and this can be good or bad depending on if the teacher likes you or not.
That's BS. Lets see the things you noticed--more personal attention, more personal attention, more personal attention, and oh, you can't slack off as much. How is any of that a bad thing? I don't know about you, but in my college experience I've NEVER had a teacher who singled out a student for getting bad grades because of personal dislike.
Well you know--you mention being late to class and not showing--yeah, that will make a teacher pissed off. If you slack like that, it's not wonder you think a teacher doesn't like you for personal reasons. If I do decide to become a teacher one of the things I will do for sure is check attendance EVERY day (in a small class environemnt). You can learn so much more from a professor than from a textbook.
Just stop for a moment and reflect upon what Linus Torvalds has accomplished. He created an operating system that in the past ten years has exceeded those that have existed for 50. He sparked a community to righteous uprising, and is the legitimate founder of a revolution in information technology business. And he did it all for the sake of curiosity and community - it was selfless. Such actions wreak of a great mind to me.
Whhhuuuh?? 50 years? You do realize that over 50 years ago there were scarcely computers around? Definitely not anything that people today would recognize as such. And definitely NOT like unix:p Let's not forget that Windows hasn't been around 20 years, not to mention 50, and FreeBSD competes quite well with Linux, and isn't yet 10 (i think);)
I find it interesting that you take too such contradictoy stands also. Marxist--it's good because it was not greedy, it was selfless, and for the public good (though I would debate that possibly). But that's after you say that Linus alone created this--that's Nietzschean man, real ubermenschen stuff. Marxism is about movements of classes and the masses, not one man:p
A typical middle or high school english teacher has six classes a day, each having over forty students.
Is this really typical? My highschool had ~1800 students, and as far as I know there were...4 periods of my senior english class. Each with under 30 people in them. Definitely not six--as far as i know teachers at my school weren't allowed to teach that many (6 periods in a day). I don't have any stats though, and Im sure this varies tremendously nationwide..
As I'm sure anyone who has ever written an essay (especially highschool level or above) knows, there is no point to the essay per se. The essay is not an end to itself, and the grade ultimately is not an end either.
At my university, Duke, our new curriculum has specially designated writing classes. Every student needs to take three over their four years. A biology lab can be a writing class. So can an English class, history, religion, etc. All W classes have certain requirements--their must be certain amount of writing and more importantly REVISION.
I was fortunate enough to take a class from the author and profesor Reynolds Price. We had a final essay for the class. Along with my grade (not an A;) I received a page and a half of handwritten comments, as well as inline comments about points in the middle of the essay. Twenty years from now, I doubt I will remember a great deal of his course, but the comments that he left me have already changed my writing style, and, I hope, improved it. (note: slashdot style not indicative of real style, hehe)
A computer will NEVER be able to do this. Nor will a computer (at least in the foreseeable future) be able to comment on my theories about Milton's Paradise Lost.
Computers have to be programmed. Who decides how the program grades responses? We are nowhere near yet having a sentient intelligence program that can make all these choices on its own--therefore whether it's training sets, or statistical grading points, someone has to determine how the computers grades.
I dunno, it sounds like you've had some bad experiences with teachers? I can't say I've had the same experience. I've overwhelming found teachers to be fair, and non-judgemental.
Hell, in a class of mine last semester, a religion class about Islam, I stood up and made a speech about why the question the professor asked (Is the Iraq war like another crusade, or is it just about oil) was a totally false choice, and the answer is something entirely different, and ended up with an A in the class. Professor made no mistake about it--he's liberal, but he doesn't care what you are so long as you do good work.
Really it depends on the class. English classes especially in highschool are all about improving grammar and technical ability, you dont actually do any creative writing until college usually.
Whhoa, really? Did you take Honors or AP or AG or some other "advanced" English class in highschool? AP is more or less standard nationwide and it is ALL about learning to read, analyze, and write. Very little of that class is grammar. They basically assume that you should know your basics by then.
I was in all public schools--we had to write short stories since...at least middle school. I'm sure we had to do "creative" writing as you put it in elementary school, but I honestly can't remember specifics. I remember creating a poetry portfolia in 6th grade.
So I *definitely* disagree that you don't do creative writing until college...
And your reasons for using OSS is also irrelevant, the point the parent was trying to make is if the source was open someone would be able to report the virus, or even more importantly, notice the section of code that tells it to vote twice for a canadite every three votes.
What, so your advocating that all voting machines be internet connected, so that whoever wants can monitor them realtime? That sounds like a recipe for success.
Look, the point I'm trying to make, and you're missing is that the entire process can NEVER be accountable. Maybe someone modifies the binary right before uploading it to the voting machine. Maybe something else goes wrong (I listed a few of an infinite number of problems above). A paper trail makes the process as accountable as it will ever be, unless you want to video tape each person coming in, verify finger prints, DNA, and run a lie detector to make sure they're not coerced/bought--oh, and video tape the whole procedure.
Actually you know what I think would work best? The old Greek method..Black and White stones for the candidates;) (or course we could use different colors for other candidates););) -- if it's not obvious
There are ways of checking for this. Obviously we will never be able to check 100%, but you can bet that many irregularities taking place near voting centers are noted. In any case, the situation would only be made less trackable, easier, and wider in span online. Not to mention, if I give you $100 to vote for Gore, how do I know you REALLY voted for Gore? Whereas if you can send me your eVote token or whatnot, you can be sure.
Not to mention that most days you would hear a unified cry of horror against national ID "Big Brother" card on SlashDot. If it makes my life easier, I'm all for it...but the privacy advocates don't like it.
This only shows the need for open-source software in the governement. If the source for the voting machines was available to all programmers world-wide, then there would not be this concern! If you used closed source software, then who knows what backdoor's the programmers could put in?
So what if a worker slips a virus onto the computer somehow? What if there is a 1 in a million memory error (and with the number of elections and voters in America, you better believe there will be flaws). Power outages? No electricity at all? Open source is fantastic I agree, but you're using OSS zealotry where it's essentially irrelevant.
I will tell you what IS relevant. A paper trail. What had happened in Florida election if it had been 100% electronic and Bush had won by 100 votes? THere's no way to do a recount. There's no paper trail to see if there are hanging chads (see my previous post about a GOOD voting system in use).
If there is a paper trail, any electoral fraud like the article suggests can be sniffed out..easily.
I think you've just pointed out the best reason NOT to go for online voting. Surely you're familiar with the voting corruption of Old America--the political machines and of the buying of immigrants (and others) votes. Do you have any idea how much corrupt people would LOVE a situation where you could buy someone's vote and there would be no way to prove this? Something like you advocate would usher in an unprecedented era of vote selling and corruption.
I'm all for technology when it helps, but my opinion is if you won't expand the effort to send in an absentee ballet (which itself is open to problems) or, god forbid, drive to a local polling place (where they SHOULD check ID's) and place your vote in person, I'd personally rather you didn't vote:)
Personally the ballets I like best are those recently adopted in my state--there is a candidates name, and a arrow drawn like:
President (PICK ONE) == ===> George Bush == ===> Al Gore
and you use a stirdy black marker to fill in the arrow. Very easy, very hard to mess up.
I wouldn't MIND 100% computer voting, but there absolutely has to be a paper trail. Think what would have happened in the Florida election--Gore would have lost by a couple hundred votes, there would have been a huge fuss, and then what? We never would have been able to go back and see that Bush indeed did the higher number of votes. This is a problem.
Wow, you have the licensed legal right to share porn? Can I have it?:p
Delete what? I just got in search request for "Xxx asian bukkake" which I most definitely do NOT have. How dare they search my computers for files I don't have when I'm logged into the public p2p network. That's terrible, and they should be stopped from searching for any files that I don't have.
Cops patrol 24/7.. criminals don't take vacations;)
What, so sharing porn is LEGAL now. That porn isn't supposed to be free you know:) How on EARTH is using kazaa to pirate porn "legitimate" ?!
Have ever run gnutella? I haven't in awhile, but in the older version I used, you could watch all the incoming search terms. There's some pretty crazy stuff being searched for. should I be enraged because that search query is coming to me, even though I might not have what is being searched for?
Oh, and the people that patrol around neighborhood making sure everything is ok--they're called the police.
I know you're not WildBeast, but I'll respond to you instead:)
Right--stalking. It's behavior that CAN be illegal in real life, so what's different about online?
But, even bringing up stalking is obfuscating the issue. If I put a bulletin board in front of my house saying "I have the following drug paraphanelia, and a pot garden in my house. Come check it out!" can I then complain when someone turns me in, or the police come?
The second you share your files publically on a peer2peer network you have NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY. It's that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
There are alot of white kids, atheletes and others who get into Duke and who cant handle it, so why do you choose to only focus on minorities?
Because we were talking about race based admissions. I have a problem with anyone who doesn't deserve to be here, and can't handle it. That being said -- there IS rooms for all kinds. Atheletes who are otherwise slightly (SLIGHTLY) below standards bring their own kind of excellence. And I focus on minorities because duke has a tremendously high graduation rate, and it just so happens that the only people I've known who have been forced to leave have been minorities. And the lowest SAT score.
Incidentally, I think you're wrong that "anyone" can get a 1500 SAT score. It's highly linked to IQ. Incidentally again, on the topic of IQ--Bush has about the same IQ as JFK it's estimated. Was he too dumb to be president too? :)
And I don't know if Duke is a difficult school. I know it's signifigantly more work than my friends who go to public school (UNC, NCSU, etc) do, but I don't know how it compares to Harvard,Yale,Princeton etc. Duke is a top 5 school though, so I imagine it's not too far off.
All right! More Bush bashing from the guy NOT going to Yale :) Here are some facts for you.
Bush got a 1206 on his SAT. This is pre-SAT inflation that started in 1996. Only 16% of students did better than that that. So he's around 84th percentile is another way of putting it. Wow, that doesn't sound too dumb to me.
Despite what you might think, most minorities dont get free degrees from Yale, if you want a degree from Yale, you need a 1500 on your SATs just to get in, period, it does not matter if you are a minority, this is Yale.
Duke is admittedly no Yale, but I personally know minorities that have gotten SAT's as low as 1050 where ~1430 is the median (25-75th is about 1370-1470 or somewhere thereabouts) and who have not athletics or other factors that got them in.
And I agree with your last paragraph--getting people into colleges where they don't deserve to be doesn't help anyone--because chances are, they aren't going to be able to fly there.
Well too damn bad, this isnt about the teacher, the teachers job is to grade papers, its my job to submit paper work. What I do in between is none of the teachers business, as long as I do my job the teacher should do their job.
Uhh, NO. The teachers job IS to teach. And you're right, what you do outside of class is none of the teachers business. But what you do INSIDE class most definitely is.
Its not the teachers job to judge me as a person, its the teachers jobs to judge my work. This is exactly why we need machines, because certain people such as yourself want to judge the person and not the work.
"This person doesnt dress nice, this person has long hair and looks like a hippy, this person is always late, I dont like this person"
A teacher disliking someone on account of how they dress is an ENTIRELY different thing from disliking a student for being late and DISRESPECTFUL to both the class and the teacher. As a student your JOB is to go to class and to learn. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be at school, you should just go to frat parties, or do whatever else dropouts do.
That depends on the professor, and on the textbook. Most of the time I learn better from the textbook, mainly because I am not designed to learn in a structured environment, and because I dont learn at the pace of the class, also because rarely did I have great teachers so I'm more comfortable just looking information up myself instead of asking questions.
Really professors are coaches, I dont learn directly from them, they do sometimes make absorbing the textbook material easier when they give good lectures based on the material but most of the time, I could just read a transcript of their lecture and get the same knowledge.
Don't get me wrong, a good professor and good books compliment each other. Last semester I had an African History profesor who had lived in Zimbabwe for 5 years, and in the Southern Sudan for several years. Her first hand observations, insights, and experiences that we are able to question, analyze, and ask NEW questions of are far more valuable than being able to read "The Sudan is hot." It sounds to me like your bitch is that you haven't had any good professors? At community college? I hate to say it, but that's not really surprising.
Yes and I will drop your class if I were ever one of your students. I dont want to be judged by stupid shit that has nothing to do with my intelligence or my ability to learn. I want to be judged on my knowledge. Some people just live too far away from school, sometimes they dont have cars, other times they just overslept, either way this has absolutely nothing to do with learning and I dont see why you should have a right to punish me for my attendance if I get an A on ever paper.
You're a student, your JOB is to go to class and learn. And if you don't see the correlation between going to class and learning, or you apparently already know _everything_ why are you even going to school? Or, your _particular_ school?
Just do your fucking job and I'll do mine
You're a student, your JOB is to go to class and LEARN. Let's say you became a teacher--do you think you would get good reviews it you stumbled into class 15 minutes late every day? Or you skipped business meetings because you just want to be fucking left alone to do your work? I don't think so. Real life is about more than just saying "let me do my fucking work"
IF you think race almost never figures into admissions, quite frankly it's not worth me even typing a reply. Go talk to a college admissions guide, or anyone who knows anything about the admissions process for instance.
And I don't mean being WHITE got you in--certain minorities which are underrepresented are what I'm referring to.
There was a great link I used to have (can't find it now) at NCSU (NC State--site was a NCSU website, not a student site or anything, it was official)) where you entered in your race and gender, and it gave you an approximation of the SAT that you would need to be admitted. Needless to say, it wasn't uniform.
Gender is just as much of a factor, as is atheletic ability, and who your parents are.
This is true. I didn't say race was the ONLY factor. But race is a damn important factor. The median SAT score at Duke is around 1430. In my freshman dorm one (hispanic girl) had a 1030, and has constantly been on academic probabtion. One of my best friends is african america, and had a similarly low SAT and has been on academic probation.
My biggest problem with changing admissions standards to accomodate race is that it doesn't help ANYONE. I've met some very, very intelligent people from all races while at Duke. And the people who have to struggle in the easiest classes because they shouldn't have been admitted, and then get terrible grades are not in a good situation--they would have been off going to an easier school, where they could have dominated the competition, and instead of being in over their heads.
Do I care? Absolutely not considering the Athlete and the rich upperclass kid will both get in. It seems everyone is getting into college via loopholes, including white males who like to complain so much, I mean George Bush complains about Affirmative Action but how on earth did he get into Yale?
Maybe because he's NOT stupid??
I suppose you would have laughed at Thomas Jefferson and guffawed at how you were _so_ much smarter than him (from you community college nonetheless!!!). Thomas Jefferson, like Bush, couldn't speak in public to save his life.
dont really like small classes myself, there is no real benefit, what I notice from smaller classes is, teachers are more critical of you, you get greater punishment for poor attendence or for being late to class, you also get more focus from the teacher and this can be good or bad depending on if the teacher likes you or not.
That's BS. Lets see the things you noticed--more personal attention, more personal attention, more personal attention, and oh, you can't slack off as much. How is any of that a bad thing? I don't know about you, but in my college experience I've NEVER had a teacher who singled out a student for getting bad grades because of personal dislike.
Well you know--you mention being late to class and not showing--yeah, that will make a teacher pissed off. If you slack like that, it's not wonder you think a teacher doesn't like you for personal reasons. If I do decide to become a teacher one of the things I will do for sure is check attendance EVERY day (in a small class environemnt). You can learn so much more from a professor than from a textbook.
In case you didn't know, SAT's are only one of MANY things used to determine who gets into college. Race for instance is far more important.
Just stop for a moment and reflect upon what Linus Torvalds has accomplished. He created an operating system that in the past ten years has exceeded those that have existed for 50. He sparked a community to righteous uprising, and is the legitimate founder of a revolution in information technology business. And he did it all for the sake of curiosity and community - it was selfless.
Such actions wreak of a great mind to me.
Whhhuuuh?? 50 years? You do realize that over 50 years ago there were scarcely computers around? Definitely not anything that people today would recognize as such. And definitely NOT like unix :p Let's not forget that Windows hasn't been around 20 years, not to mention 50, and FreeBSD competes quite well with Linux, and isn't yet 10 (i think) ;)
I find it interesting that you take too such contradictoy stands also. Marxist--it's good because it was not greedy, it was selfless, and for the public good (though I would debate that possibly). But that's after you say that Linus alone created this--that's Nietzschean man, real ubermenschen stuff. Marxism is about movements of classes and the masses, not one man :p
A typical middle or high school english teacher has six classes a day, each having over forty students.
Is this really typical? My highschool had ~1800 students, and as far as I know there were...4 periods of my senior english class. Each with under 30 people in them. Definitely not six--as far as i know teachers at my school weren't allowed to teach that many (6 periods in a day). I don't have any stats though, and Im sure this varies tremendously nationwide..
I sometimes think our own Butlerian Jihad might not be too terrible a thing.
Incidentally I agree with you about the overweight and depression stuff.
As I'm sure anyone who has ever written an essay (especially highschool level or above) knows, there is no point to the essay per se. The essay is not an end to itself, and the grade ultimately is not an end either.
;) I received a page and a half of handwritten comments, as well as inline comments about points in the middle of the essay. Twenty years from now, I doubt I will remember a great deal of his course, but the comments that he left me have already changed my writing style, and, I hope, improved it. (note: slashdot style not indicative of real style, hehe)
At my university, Duke, our new curriculum has specially designated writing classes. Every student needs to take three over their four years. A biology lab can be a writing class. So can an English class, history, religion, etc. All W classes have certain requirements--their must be certain amount of writing and more importantly REVISION.
I was fortunate enough to take a class from the author and profesor Reynolds Price. We had a final essay for the class. Along with my grade (not an A
A computer will NEVER be able to do this. Nor will a computer (at least in the foreseeable future) be able to comment on my theories about Milton's Paradise Lost.
Maybe you should take some computer courses, an AI course or two, and rethink about your statement :)
Computers have to be programmed. Who decides how the program grades responses? We are nowhere near yet having a sentient intelligence program that can make all these choices on its own--therefore whether it's training sets, or statistical grading points, someone has to determine how the computers grades.
I dunno, it sounds like you've had some bad experiences with teachers? I can't say I've had the same experience. I've overwhelming found teachers to be fair, and non-judgemental.
Hell, in a class of mine last semester, a religion class about Islam, I stood up and made a speech about why the question the professor asked (Is the Iraq war like another crusade, or is it just about oil) was a totally false choice, and the answer is something entirely different, and ended up with an A in the class. Professor made no mistake about it--he's liberal, but he doesn't care what you are so long as you do good work.
Really it depends on the class. English classes especially in highschool are all about improving grammar and technical ability, you dont actually do any creative writing until college usually.
Whhoa, really? Did you take Honors or AP or AG or some other "advanced" English class in highschool? AP is more or less standard nationwide and it is ALL about learning to read, analyze, and write. Very little of that class is grammar. They basically assume that you should know your basics by then.
I was in all public schools--we had to write short stories since...at least middle school. I'm sure we had to do "creative" writing as you put it in elementary school, but I honestly can't remember specifics. I remember creating a poetry portfolia in 6th grade.
So I *definitely* disagree that you don't do creative writing until college...
And your reasons for using OSS is also irrelevant, the point the parent was trying to make is if the source was open someone would be able to report the virus, or even more importantly, notice the section of code that tells it to vote twice for a canadite every three votes.
What, so your advocating that all voting machines be internet connected, so that whoever wants can monitor them realtime? That sounds like a recipe for success.
Look, the point I'm trying to make, and you're missing is that the entire process can NEVER be accountable. Maybe someone modifies the binary right before uploading it to the voting machine. Maybe something else goes wrong (I listed a few of an infinite number of problems above). A paper trail makes the process as accountable as it will ever be, unless you want to video tape each person coming in, verify finger prints, DNA, and run a lie detector to make sure they're not coerced/bought--oh, and video tape the whole procedure.
;) (or course we could use different colors for other candidates) ;) ;) -- if it's not obvious
Actually you know what I think would work best? The old Greek method..Black and White stones for the candidates
There are ways of checking for this. Obviously we will never be able to check 100%, but you can bet that many irregularities taking place near voting centers are noted. In any case, the situation would only be made less trackable, easier, and wider in span online. Not to mention, if I give you $100 to vote for Gore, how do I know you REALLY voted for Gore? Whereas if you can send me your eVote token or whatnot, you can be sure.
Not to mention that most days you would hear a unified cry of horror against national ID "Big Brother" card on SlashDot. If it makes my life easier, I'm all for it...but the privacy advocates don't like it.
This only shows the need for open-source software in the governement. If the source for the voting machines was available to all programmers world-wide, then there would not be this concern! If you used closed source software, then who knows what backdoor's the programmers could put in?
So what if a worker slips a virus onto the computer somehow? What if there is a 1 in a million memory error (and with the number of elections and voters in America, you better believe there will be flaws). Power outages? No electricity at all? Open source is fantastic I agree, but you're using OSS zealotry where it's essentially irrelevant.
I will tell you what IS relevant. A paper trail. What had happened in Florida election if it had been 100% electronic and Bush had won by 100 votes? THere's no way to do a recount. There's no paper trail to see if there are hanging chads (see my previous post about a GOOD voting system in use).
If there is a paper trail, any electoral fraud like the article suggests can be sniffed out..easily.
I think you've just pointed out the best reason NOT to go for online voting. Surely you're familiar with the voting corruption of Old America--the political machines and of the buying of immigrants (and others) votes. Do you have any idea how much corrupt people would LOVE a situation where you could buy someone's vote and there would be no way to prove this? Something like you advocate would usher in an unprecedented era of vote selling and corruption.
:)
I'm all for technology when it helps, but my opinion is if you won't expand the effort to send in an absentee ballet (which itself is open to problems) or, god forbid, drive to a local polling place (where they SHOULD check ID's) and place your vote in person, I'd personally rather you didn't vote
Personally the ballets I like best are those recently adopted in my state--there is a candidates name, and a arrow drawn like:
President (PICK ONE)
== ===> George Bush
== ===> Al Gore
and you use a stirdy black marker to fill in the arrow. Very easy, very hard to mess up.
I wouldn't MIND 100% computer voting, but there absolutely has to be a paper trail. Think what would have happened in the Florida election--Gore would have lost by a couple hundred votes, there would have been a huge fuss, and then what? We never would have been able to go back and see that Bush indeed did the higher number of votes. This is a problem.
Wow, you have the licensed legal right to share porn? Can I have it? :p
.. criminals don't take vacations ;)
Delete what? I just got in search request for "Xxx asian bukkake" which I most definitely do NOT have. How dare they search my computers for files I don't have when I'm logged into the public p2p network. That's terrible, and they should be stopped from searching for any files that I don't have.
Cops patrol 24/7
Neighborhood watch vigilantes. Gotta watch out for them!
The RIAA isn't taking law into their own hands like vigilante groups, so I fail to see the relevance.
What, so sharing porn is LEGAL now. That porn isn't supposed to be free you know :) How on EARTH is using kazaa to pirate porn "legitimate" ?!
Have ever run gnutella? I haven't in awhile, but in the older version I used, you could watch all the incoming search terms. There's some pretty crazy stuff being searched for. should I be enraged because that search query is coming to me, even though I might not have what is being searched for?
Oh, and the people that patrol around neighborhood making sure everything is ok--they're called the police.
I know you're not WildBeast, but I'll respond to you instead :)
Right--stalking. It's behavior that CAN be illegal in real life, so what's different about online?
But, even bringing up stalking is obfuscating the issue. If I put a bulletin board in front of my house saying "I have the following drug paraphanelia, and a pot garden in my house. Come check it out!" can I then complain when someone turns me in, or the police come?
The second you share your files publically on a peer2peer network you have NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY. It's that simple.
Let me ask you this--is it illegal for me to follow you around, to see what stores you go to, where you live etc?