Gerrymandering is an old, old game. There's already a solution for it; computer models exist that can generate maps that are fair.
There is no such program that can generate a fair map.
Why? Because generating a fair map requires knowing everyone's vote in advance so that they can be allocated to the appropriate districts.
Even if you could get everyone's vote in advance, it may not even be possible to draw a map that groups the appropriate voters into contiguous districts. What do you do with isolated Democrats that are surrounded by Republicans? It may no be possible to connect them to a Democrat district.
But suppose you can create a twisty passage to connect the Democrat to a Democrat district, what would you do with a family that is politically split? They all have to be put into a single district.
"Wisdom" would be seperating the political label from the ethic. The evils of the USSR were many--intolerant atheism, tyranny, despotism, facism, war-mongering, etc., etc.--but "communism" was by far the least of them.
Mikhail Gorbachev had this to say about the fall of the USSR:
"It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, [Ivan V.] Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred."
Remember: the USSR beat the snot out of the Germans in the latter part of WWII, and then went boondoggle for boondoggle with the USA for close to fifty years. There has to be SOMETHING to their economic policy.
In terms of numbers killed, the Germans rolled the USSR. The weather also had a lot to do with slowing the Germans down. That, and the fact they were fighting on two fronts.
As far as going "boondoggle for boondoggle", reread Gorbachevs quote about toothpaste and washing powder.
An economic policy that can't provide such things is horribly flawed.
but I think that Clinton-Gore helped the US public become Internet-connected ahead of other nations and thus gave the country an edge up on establishing itself.
Bah.
The public got interested in the internet when was added to HTML, and modem makers figured out how to make cheap 14.4K modems so images would download at a reasonable rate.
The average Joe thinks text is boring and isn't going to pay for it, no matter what Clinton-Gore might have said.
In "Stealing Elections," John Fund takes the reader on a national tour of voter fraud scandals ranging from rural states like Texas and Mississippi to big cities such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee. He explores dark episodes such as the way "vote brokers" stole a mayoral election in Miami in 1998 by tampering with 4700 absentee ballots. He shows how, in the aftermath of the Motor Voter Law of 1993, Californians used mail-in forms to get absentee ballots for fictitious people and pets, while in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city.
Election officials are trying to reassure voters by turning to computerized voting machines. But Fund shows that with the new technology come even greater concerns. Early in 2004, for instance, the state of Maryland, which has 16,000 new Diebold machines, commissioned a security expert to try to rig a practice election. He and his team broke into the computer at the State Board of Elections, completely changed the outcome of the election, left, and erased their electronic trail--all in under five minutes.
"Stealing Elections" gives us a chilling portrait of our electoral vulnerability--in the 2004 presidential election and on into the future. Writing with urgency and authority, John Fund shows how a lethal combination of bureaucratic bungling and ballot rigging have put our democracy at risk.
That's true- the cost would be labor + supplies, the spending is labor + supplies + your insurance CEO's new boat.
The insurance CEO's new boat would be part of the cost, if that's what it took to get someone to run an insurance company. Most people don't work for free (maybe you do).
No. The difference between costs and spending is the difference between how much money it takes to purchase a particular treatment and how much money you actually spend on all treatments.
The costs in two different places might be the same, but if the people don't have the money, then there won't be spending.
Americans happen to have, in general, more money than other people and so they can spend more when they get sick.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to afford quality health care. Costs for health care and health care coverage are spiraling beyond the reach of many in this country.
Spending on health care isn't the same as the cost of health care.
"Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non- "conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse "a security hole.
Try the US Civil Rights Commission. (Their report on the Florida electoral fraud is available here: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/main.htm )
Maybe you should actually read the report.
It doesn't say a thing about Republicans abusing anything.
"the incontrovertible evidence shows that by statute the responsibility for the conduct of elections is in the hands of county supervisors, not the governor or secretary of state. County supervisors are independent officers answerable to county commissioners, not the governor or secretary of state. And in 24 of the 25 counties that had the highest ballot-spoilage rates, the county supervisor was a Democrat. (In the remaining county the supervisor was not a Republican, but an independent.)"
and
"The Justice Department did find violations of the Voting Rights Act in three counties. The infractions were that some poll workers had been hostile to Hispanic voters, bilingual assistance hadn't been provided to two Haitian voters, and some Hispanic voters had been denied bilingual assistance. None of the offending counties was controlled by Republicans."
also
"Whites were actually twice as likely as blacks to be erroneously placed on the list. In fact, an exhaustive study by the Miami Herald concluded that "the biggest problem with the felon list was not that it prevented eligible voters from casting ballots, but that it ended up allowing ineligible voters to cast a ballot."* According to the Palm Beach Post, more than 6,500 ineligible felons voted."
and
"Despite claims of rampant police intimidation and harassment, the only evidence of law-enforcement "misconduct" consisted of just two witnesses who described their perceptions of the actions of the Florida highway patrol. One of these witnesses testified that he thought it was "unusual" to see an empty patrol car parked outside a polling place."
OMG! An empty Florida highway patrol car! It's a Republican conspiracy!
That's why it's called investing and not "making free money." Dividends are great, but most people invest more for the capital gain (increase in share price). It's not a scam, it's purchasing something that you believe will become more valuable in the future.
Hoping that some greater fool will come along and buy your stock at a higher price is not investing, it's speculation.
Sure, if you legitimately believe someone will come along later and buy your stock at a greater price than you paid, then okay. But remember the purchaser has the same idea as you. At some point there are no greater fools left. Who is going to buy the stock at an even greater price? Someone is left holding the bag.
It's because stock holders don't care enough to complain.
I don't think their complaints would have any real effect.
The trouble as I see it is that a few of the largest shareholders control the board. Are they going to listen or even care? I don't think they have to. They'll just go on paying themselves large salaries.
Maybe things would change if board members could only pay themselves through dividends.
Corporations also have no responsibilities to the consumer, they are responsible to their stockholders. The industry has matured, it's more in control of the business types looking to use technology for profit, than the passionate hackers.
That may be true in theory, but consumers get much more out of corporations than shareholders like jobs and actual goods and services.
CEO's cook the books to fool the shareholders, not consumers, into thinking they're getting a good deal.
Fact is, it's a huge scam. Shareholders own a piece of a company that may NEVER give them anything back. Even those that do pay (S&P 500) had an avergage dividend yield of 2.174% in 2003.
Seriously, can't the tech industry rise above this Enron-ish nonsense? Whatever happened to the old days of being ethical and honest with regard to your responsibilities to the consumer.
The problem is that everyone that owns stock thinks they're rich.
The only way a CEO today can convince shareholders of that is to cook the books.
This idea that companies are big bags of money is a bunch of BS. Yeah, maybe Microsoft is, but overall, owning a bit of a corporation today doesn't mean jack unless you have millions and millions of shares.
It's a huge scam. One day shareholders are going to figure out that corporations will never pay them enough to cover the cost of their stock. When that happens, look out: people are going to be jumping off buildings.
The graph here gives you some idea of just how little corporations pay their owners.
Having the largest prison population in the world is a much bigger threat to America than H1B workers ever will be. Prisons are a breeding ground for communicable disease.
Not really.
Having a large prison population creates, in effect, a large quarantine.
It's also easier to make prisoners take their medications properly.
when we let big pharmaceutical companies take control of R&D.
Most antibiotics today are BASED on peniciline. Truth is, these resistant TB strains are resistant against PENICILINE-based antibiotics.
As I saw on Discovery once... There are thousands of natural antibiotics which are extremely complex. Some can be taken from cactae in South America, some can be taken from certain species of ants.
But natural antibiotics just can't be patented (think of it as the OSS medicine), and companies don't give a sh*t about them.
All you've shown is that intellectual property rights encourage vigorous research, while the lack of those rights means that people "don't give a sh*t".
3. Scale down payments. Hey -- social security isn't a pension fund; it's a safety net incase everything else in your life goes bankrupt. Scale down payments, and hope that welfare and other social services can pick up the slack.
How about we just be honest and call SS welfare?
The stigma itself is enough to get people thinking about taking care of their own future.
Proportional letterspacing was not very rare, Times Roman *did* exist at the time, and that kind of kerning is *not* impossible -- in my professional opinion as a typesetter, the kerning on the document exhibits attributes that one would expect from a proportional typewriter and not from Word.
Look at the "fe" sequence of characters in the 18 August 1973 memo in the words "interference" and "feedback".
Sure looks like kerning to me.
Same with the "ff" and "fi" pairs of letters in "officer" in the 04 May 1972 memo.
"In typography, kerning refers to adjusting the space between characters, especially by placing two characters closer together than normal. Kerning makes certain combinations of letters, such as WA, MW, TA, and VA, look better. "
There is kerning in the memo with SUBJECT: CYA. It happens between the 'f' and 'e' characters of "interference" and "feedback".
The trouble is that kerning requires remembering the previous character.
As advanced as typewriters might have been in 1973, I doubt any had memory.
The Word basic font is derived from a typewriter font. So that's a given.
No it isn't. The default is "Times New Roman" is based on a font used for typesetting. It's Courier that's modeled after a standard typewriter font.
Identical spacing isn't something separate, that's part of the font.
But on typewriters spacing is mechanical and subject to variation.
Word default margins were chosen because they were the ones that everyone used.
I doubt you've ever even used a typewriter. I have have used them. People used all sorts of crazy margins.
And with those given, word wrap is formulaic.
Nope. When typing on a typewriter, word wrap is based on the sound of a bell warning you that you're getting close to the right margin. Where the end of word ends up depends on how long it is and whether or not you hyphenate and that determines where the right margin actually ends up.
Congratulations. You have just proved that Microsoft Word works as intended: Its default settings produce the same results as a well-typed document on a good typewriter.
Identical margins, identical font, identical spacing, and identical word wrap?
I would expect similarity, but not an identical document.
what the fuck are the supposed to check? the documents were: 1) released by the navy from an FOIA request 2) simulataneously released by the WHITE HOUSE!
"I can't explain why that wouldn't be in his record, but they were found in Jerry Killian's personal records," White House communications director Dan Bartlett told CBS's "60 Minutes II," which first obtained the memos.
So you're wrong. Several of the memos came from "Killian's personal records" and not the White house.
And at least one is fake.
Prove it to yourself.
Fire you Microsoft Word. Don't change anything. Use the default settings.
Type in the memo dated 18 August 1973. Use two spaces after each period. (This was supposed to be done on a typewriter, afterall.)
You get an identical looking document.
The position of letters are identical. The word wrap is identical. The superscripting is identical.
Letters line up the same way relative to those above and below what, exactly? You typed one line, "SUBJECT: CYA" and then magically extrapolated the pt size, font selection, margins, leading, and kerning of an entire document?
No. I typed the whole memo using Word's default settings and didn't change a thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Gerrymandering is an old, old game. There's already a solution for it; computer models exist that can generate maps that are fair.
There is no such program that can generate a fair map.
Why? Because generating a fair map requires knowing everyone's vote in advance so that they can be allocated to the appropriate districts.
Even if you could get everyone's vote in advance, it may not even be possible to draw a map that groups the appropriate voters into contiguous districts. What do you do with isolated Democrats that are surrounded by Republicans? It may no be possible to connect them to a Democrat district.
But suppose you can create a twisty passage to connect the Democrat to a Democrat district, what would you do with a family that is politically split? They all have to be put into a single district.
Sorry, but there is no apolitical solution.
"Wisdom" would be seperating the political label from the ethic. The evils of the USSR were many--intolerant atheism, tyranny, despotism, facism, war-mongering, etc., etc.--but "communism" was by far the least of them.
Mikhail Gorbachev had this to say about the fall of the USSR:
"It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, [Ivan V.] Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred."
Remember: the USSR beat the snot out of the Germans in the latter part of WWII, and then went boondoggle for boondoggle with the USA for close to fifty years. There has to be SOMETHING to their economic policy.
In terms of numbers killed, the Germans rolled the USSR. The weather also had a lot to do with slowing the Germans down. That, and the fact they were fighting on two fronts.
As far as going "boondoggle for boondoggle", reread Gorbachevs quote about toothpaste and washing powder.
An economic policy that can't provide such things is horribly flawed.
but I think that Clinton-Gore helped the US public become Internet-connected ahead of other nations and thus gave the country an edge up on establishing itself.
Bah.
The public got interested in the internet when was added to HTML, and modem makers figured out how to make cheap 14.4K modems so images would download at a reasonable rate.
The average Joe thinks text is boring and isn't going to pay for it, no matter what Clinton-Gore might have said.
Ah, crud.
Stealing elections
Considerhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159 4030618/102-2587016-4696960>Stealing elections
In "Stealing Elections," John Fund takes the reader on a national tour of voter fraud scandals ranging from rural states like Texas and Mississippi to big cities such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee. He explores dark episodes such as the way "vote brokers" stole a mayoral election in Miami in 1998 by tampering with 4700 absentee ballots. He shows how, in the aftermath of the Motor Voter Law of 1993, Californians used mail-in forms to get absentee ballots for fictitious people and pets, while in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city.
Election officials are trying to reassure voters by turning to computerized voting machines. But Fund shows that with the new technology come even greater concerns. Early in 2004, for instance, the state of Maryland, which has 16,000 new Diebold machines, commissioned a security expert to try to rig a practice election. He and his team broke into the computer at the State Board of Elections, completely changed the outcome of the election, left, and erased their electronic trail--all in under five minutes.
"Stealing Elections" gives us a chilling portrait of our electoral vulnerability--in the 2004 presidential election and on into the future. Writing with urgency and authority, John Fund shows how a lethal combination of bureaucratic bungling and ballot rigging have put our democracy at risk.
That's true- the cost would be labor + supplies, the spending is labor + supplies + your insurance CEO's new boat.
The insurance CEO's new boat would be part of the cost, if that's what it took to get someone to run an insurance company. Most people don't work for free (maybe you do).
No. The difference between costs and spending is the difference between how much money it takes to purchase a particular treatment and how much money you actually spend on all treatments.
The costs in two different places might be the same, but if the people don't have the money, then there won't be spending.
Americans happen to have, in general, more money than other people and so they can spend more when they get sick.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to afford quality health care. Costs for health care and health care coverage are spiraling beyond the reach of many in this country.
Spending on health care isn't the same as the cost of health care.
The difference is an important one.
Here is an idea for increasing the political power of people living in the most populated states:
break these states into smaller states.
Why can't this be done?
"Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non-
m )
"conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse
"a security hole.
Try the US Civil Rights Commission. (Their report on the Florida electoral fraud is available here: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/main.ht
Maybe you should actually read the report.
It doesn't say a thing about Republicans abusing anything.
Try again.
While you're at it, you should also look at this.
We find out, for example, that
"the incontrovertible evidence shows that by statute the responsibility for the conduct of elections is in the hands of county supervisors, not the governor or secretary of state. County supervisors are independent officers answerable to county commissioners, not the governor or secretary of state. And in 24 of the 25 counties that had the highest ballot-spoilage rates, the county supervisor was a Democrat. (In the remaining county the supervisor was not a Republican, but an independent.)"
and
"The Justice Department did find violations of the Voting Rights Act in three counties. The infractions were that some poll workers had been hostile to Hispanic voters, bilingual assistance hadn't been provided to two Haitian voters, and some Hispanic voters had been denied bilingual assistance. None of the offending counties was controlled by Republicans."
also
"Whites were actually twice as likely as blacks to be erroneously placed on the list. In fact, an exhaustive study by the Miami Herald concluded that "the biggest problem with the felon list was not that it prevented eligible voters from casting ballots, but that it ended up allowing ineligible voters to cast a ballot."* According to the Palm Beach Post, more than 6,500 ineligible felons voted."
and
"Despite claims of rampant police intimidation and harassment, the only evidence of law-enforcement "misconduct" consisted of just two witnesses who described their perceptions of the actions of the Florida highway patrol. One of these witnesses testified that he thought it was "unusual" to see an empty patrol car parked outside a polling place."
OMG! An empty Florida highway patrol car! It's a Republican conspiracy!
The source code is free, right?
Someone should use it to create a politically right tech news site.
Wait, forget politically right. I'd just be happy with a site that was neutral.
That's why it's called investing and not "making free money." Dividends are great, but most people invest more for the capital gain (increase in share price). It's not a scam, it's purchasing something that you believe will become more valuable in the future.
Hoping that some greater fool will come along and buy your stock at a higher price is not investing, it's speculation.
Sure, if you legitimately believe someone will come along later and buy your stock at a greater price than you paid, then okay. But remember the purchaser has the same idea as you. At some point there are no greater fools left. Who is going to buy the stock at an even greater price? Someone is left holding the bag.
It's because stock holders don't care enough to complain.
I don't think their complaints would have any real effect.
The trouble as I see it is that a few of the largest shareholders control the board. Are they going to listen or even care? I don't think they have to. They'll just go on paying themselves large salaries.
Maybe things would change if board members could only pay themselves through dividends.
Corporations also have no responsibilities to the consumer, they are responsible to their stockholders. The industry has matured, it's more in control of the business types looking to use technology for profit, than the passionate hackers.
That may be true in theory, but consumers get much more out of corporations than shareholders like jobs and actual goods and services.
CEO's cook the books to fool the shareholders, not consumers, into thinking they're getting a good deal.
Fact is, it's a huge scam. Shareholders own a piece of a company that may NEVER give them anything back. Even those that do pay (S&P 500) had an avergage dividend yield of 2.174% in 2003.
Seriously, can't the tech industry rise above this Enron-ish nonsense? Whatever happened to the old days of being ethical and honest with regard to your responsibilities to the consumer.
The problem is that everyone that owns stock thinks they're rich.
The only way a CEO today can convince shareholders of that is to cook the books.
This idea that companies are big bags of money is a bunch of BS. Yeah, maybe Microsoft is, but overall, owning a bit of a corporation today doesn't mean jack unless you have millions and millions of shares.
It's a huge scam. One day shareholders are going to figure out that corporations will never pay them enough to cover the cost of their stock. When that happens, look out: people are going to be jumping off buildings.
The graph here gives you some idea of just how little corporations pay their owners.
Having the largest prison population in the world is a much bigger threat to America than H1B workers ever will be. Prisons are a breeding ground for communicable disease.
Not really.
Having a large prison population creates, in effect, a large quarantine.
It's also easier to make prisoners take their medications properly.
when we let big pharmaceutical companies take control of R&D.
Most antibiotics today are BASED on peniciline. Truth is, these resistant TB strains are resistant against PENICILINE-based antibiotics.
As I saw on Discovery once... There are thousands of natural antibiotics which are extremely complex. Some can be taken from cactae in South America, some can be taken from certain species of ants.
But natural antibiotics just can't be patented (think of it as the OSS medicine), and companies don't give a sh*t about them.
All you've shown is that intellectual property rights encourage vigorous research, while the lack of those rights means that people "don't give a sh*t".
3. Scale down payments. Hey -- social security isn't a pension fund; it's a safety net incase everything else in your life goes bankrupt. Scale down payments, and hope that welfare and other social services can pick up the slack.
How about we just be honest and call SS welfare?
The stigma itself is enough to get people thinking about taking care of their own future.
We have a situation where property rights for software have nearly vanished, and surprise, at least one programmer gave up.
Compare this to societies where there are no property rights: no one is willing to do any more than the bare minimum and everyone has given up.
Productive economies need property rights.
Proportional letterspacing was not very rare, Times Roman *did* exist at the time, and that kind of kerning is *not* impossible -- in my professional opinion as a typesetter, the kerning on the document exhibits attributes that one would expect from a proportional typewriter and not from Word.
Look at the "fe" sequence of characters in the 18 August 1973 memo in the words "interference" and "feedback".
Sure looks like kerning to me.
Same with the "ff" and "fi" pairs of letters in "officer" in the 04 May 1972 memo.
I see no evidence of Kerning. The spacing looks to me like it is typewritten, not computer typeset.
Take a close look at the 'f' and 'e' characters in the words "interference" and "feedback" in the 18 August 1973 memo.
They sure look like examples of kerning.
Same thing with the 'f' and 'i' in "officer" appearing in the 01 Auguest 1972 memo.
A lot has been made of the fact that the text is proportionally spaced. Some have pointed out that a few typewriters has this ability.
Fine.
But what about kerning?
"In typography, kerning refers to adjusting the space between characters, especially by placing two characters closer together than normal. Kerning makes certain combinations of letters, such as WA, MW, TA, and VA, look better. "
There is kerning in the memo with SUBJECT: CYA. It happens between the 'f' and 'e' characters of "interference" and "feedback".
The trouble is that kerning requires remembering the previous character.
As advanced as typewriters might have been in 1973, I doubt any had memory.
The Word basic font is derived from a typewriter font. So that's a given.
No it isn't. The default is "Times New Roman" is based on a font used for typesetting. It's Courier that's modeled after a standard typewriter font.
Identical spacing isn't something separate, that's part of the font.
But on typewriters spacing is mechanical and subject to variation.
Word default margins were chosen because they were the ones that everyone used.
I doubt you've ever even used a typewriter. I have have used them. People used all sorts of crazy margins.
And with those given, word wrap is formulaic.
Nope. When typing on a typewriter, word wrap is based on the sound of a bell warning you that you're getting close to the right margin. Where the end of word ends up depends on how long it is and whether or not you hyphenate and that determines where the right margin actually ends up.
Congratulations. You have just proved that Microsoft Word works as intended:
Its default settings produce the same results as a well-typed document on a good typewriter.
Identical margins, identical font, identical spacing, and identical word wrap?
I would expect similarity, but not an identical document.
What you suggest is highly unlikely.
what the fuck are the supposed to check? the documents were:
1) released by the navy from an FOIA request
2) simulataneously released by the WHITE HOUSE!
"I can't explain why that wouldn't be in his record, but they were found in Jerry Killian's personal records," White House communications director Dan Bartlett told CBS's "60 Minutes II," which first obtained the memos.
So you're wrong. Several of the memos came from "Killian's personal records" and not the White house.
And at least one is fake.
Prove it to yourself.
Fire you Microsoft Word. Don't change anything. Use the default settings.
Type in the memo dated 18 August 1973. Use two spaces after each period. (This was supposed to be done on a typewriter, afterall.)
You get an identical looking document.
The position of letters are identical. The word wrap is identical. The superscripting is identical.
Letters line up the same way relative to those above and below what, exactly? You typed one line, "SUBJECT: CYA" and then magically extrapolated the pt size, font selection, margins, leading, and kerning of an entire document?
No. I typed the whole memo using Word's default settings and didn't change a thing.
I got an identical looking document.