There are a lot of parallels between being an alternative OS users and a 3rd party candidate backer. Both ways, you are exposed to a different way of viewing things, not just how the big guys want you to see it. Take your own path.
As for who should be in each branch of the government, I like the idea of having the House, Senate, and President as different parties. The Founding Fathers wanted each part of the government to keep watch over the other parts. They wanted the government to move slowly, so that the laws that did get passed were good laws. (One reason why I'm opposed to Gov. Ventura's idea that the Minnesota Legislative branch should become only a single house, rather than House and Senate). -- Ski-U-Mah!
Does the STV system only drop the bottom candidate, or does it drop bottom candidates over and over again? For example, you have four candidates, then the 4th is removed, then the third, and then you find the winner from the last two?
I understand the problem when you have many, many candidates. In that case, I think I'd advocate a limited Borda count where you only rank, say, six candidates out of twelve or something. The problem with that is that the media may then only report on six candidates, neglecting half of the people who are running (though that's better than what we get today...)
It might be a worthwhile exercise to grab some of your friends or coworkers and run a small poll. Get a list of the candidates running in your state, and try a few different methods. Have the people you gathered voice their opinions about how they felt about each method (after seeing who won). -- Ski-U-Mah!
Re:The electoral college sucks!
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 2
My problem with Libertarians (not libertarians) is that they seem to want the government to exert less control over businesses. While that could be good for the corner mom & pop shop, I think it is bad when we're talking about big businesses and corporations.
When it comes to the socialist programs such as Social Security and health coverage for all, I guess I probably can't defend my position on that to you. I think it's important to have these programs, though their importance may go down if the minimum wage is increased to a livable wage.
I bet I believe in many of the personal liberties that you do. However, I think we must go through a transition period, where we build up the health and wealth of the population, while reducing the overarching impact of corporate interests. Once we find a good balance in the incomes of our citizens and reduce the levels of poverty in this country, I think we will find that the social programs can be taken away. It may take 50 years, which is one of those things that pisses people off.
I heard Winona LaDuke speak last month. She says that her tribe has an old saying about making decisions. ``Do not think of the impact on yourself, but of the impact on people seven generations from now.''
Okay, so 50 years isn't seven generations, but you get the idea. (or maybe I should be getting your idea.. I dunno..) -- Ski-U-Mah!
Re:electorial college ruins it for me
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 2
I hope this doesn't mean that you won't vote. Don't forget that there are many local races that you should be watching. While you're there, you may as well vote for President too.. -- Ski-U-Mah!
Well, you can always write in somebody that you think would do a good job. I wonder how many votes Ventura will get;-)
Anyway, in addition to the top seven candidates that are on the ballot in enough states to possibly win, there are two more people running in Minnesota. IIRC, there's somebody from the Socialist Workers party, and another person that probably just filled out the paperwork on a lark (an `official' write-in candidate, as he/she didn't get enough signatures to actually be on the ballot).
Not that I think I'd vote for either of them, but hey...
I really got interested in the alternative voting methods as well. It would be interesting too see what would happen if a state somewhere voted for it's Electoral College members in that fashion.
Of the two alternatives I saw, approval vote and Borda count, I think I like Borda count the best. I find it hard to believe that approval voting would be a whole lot different than what we already have, but that's just my opinion.
As the article said, all voting methods can fail in some way. Borda appears to be the most fault-tolerant (though it does carry the requirement that you have to actually have some moderately well-formed opinions of each of the candidates, which would require much more even media coverage). -- Ski-U-Mah!
Is there any chance that the voting methods in this country can be changed? The Borda count seems like a pretty good idea (though you do need to know your candidates). At least that way, most people at least get a candidate that they don't absolutely despise (hopefully, it's somebody that most people are at least neutral about, and maybe somewhat positive about).
Anyway, I'm curious -- does anyone know exactly where it has been defined that we need to vote the way we do? For the Presidential race in particular, are the voting methods defined in the states, at the federal level, or is it a combination? Can a state just go say, ``we're going to use Approval or Borda voting''?
``It was overlooked by the media that the worst school disaster happened on May 18, 1927, when 45 people were killed, including 38 elementary students, by a series of dynamite explosions at the Bath Michigan School. After detonating explosives he planted under the school, "maniac bomber" Andrew Kehoe, a school board member and treasurer, blew up his pickup truck, killing himself and the Bath School superintendent.''
Hmm.. Maybe I should actually get cable. Maybe. I'd really like to see this show, but I'd probably never turn the TV off if we did get cable.
On a random note -- the Minneapolis/St. Paul area apparently only has about 50% penetration with cable. IIRC, most areas are much higher (70-80% or something). -- Ski-U-Mah!
I was among the 12,000 people in Minneapolis last Friday. I think I'm much like you -- I don't really stand as far left as many in the Green party, but I'd rather be a little green than stuck with the same old thing. -- Ski-U-Mah!
The fact that things are boring is a great reason to get involved in one way or another. It's very important to have people who think in different ways to get into politics. Jesse Ventura is the great example. He's been doing a lot here in Minnesota, not the least of which is learning about a thousand different subjects that he probably never thought about before.
I think politics would be a great thing for many techies to get into. Governor Ventura has said how much he enjoys the job because he's always learning something. He'll be in meetings all day and talk about things ranging from environment to education to transportation to the economy. If you enjoy learning about diverse topics, politics is an interesting field. -- Ski-U-Mah!
uh.. The US isn't very small.. It'd take me quite a while to get there.
Though I may like my mental version of the talk better. CmdrTaco wanders on stage and says, ``Geez, I'm at MIT, and I know something you don't! Nyah, nyah!!'' -- Ski-U-Mah!
Well, I don't think they had much choice once they were hit with the injunction and other steps leading up to their trial. Certainly, 2600 doesn't have the best reputation. I don't really like the idea that they seem to have, where people can go around and try to breach security and/or look around in the private stuff of other people or organizations. After all, I would not be happy if someone got into my apartment and started rummaging around, even if they never took anything.
However, I think we all have rights when it comes down to being our own stuff. I dare say that I should have the right to accidentally electrocute myself or to fry my hardware after ignoring warnings. I should be able to learn about anything that I own, discovering how those things work. I don't think that any of the knowledge I've gained on my own is the property of someone else. I should be able to redistribute that knowledge if I wish. If I receive that knowledge with permission to redistribute, then I should be able to do so.
IMO, there are many underlying issues that go beyond `what are my rights as a consumer?' to `what are my rights as a human being?' It seems that many content distributors (MPAA, RIAA) would like nothing better than to have everyone turn into mindless money-spending drones. They already see us like that anyway.
While I do not like some of what 2600 stands for, we need groups like them to exist. We need to be reminded what it is like to be the outsiders. They make an effort to be independent of corporate influence (their weekly radio show also runs on a non-commercial radio station, WBAI, which is funded only by contributions from individuals, not companies). In this age where virtually nothing is truly `made from scratch' by members of the public, people like that are a necessity.
This case (and the other similar ones running today) has shown me that we need to re-examine the role of copyrights, licenses, patents, trademarks, and anything else I forgot. So much of the last 200 years of laws on this subject have been greatly influenced by the publishers and distributors, rather than the original creators and the end consumers. We need to look at our rights as people and as a society, rather than those of the corporations. I want the content created today to be accessible to future generations, not locked behind encryption and licensing. -- Ski-U-Mah!
Don't you think that this case strikes against the fundamental things that make us human? We are inherently curious about the world around us, and I believe that cases like this prevent us from even being human anymore. Why can't I learn how works? Why shouldn't I be able to discover and learn? -- Ski-U-Mah!
Certainly a good thing now, as Mozilla is becoming an important component in a number of Gnome apps. Dunno how this will affect existing GPLed HTML renderers, though. -- Ski-U-Mah!
Monty and others have done work on a video codec, but it hasn't been released yet. They want to get Vorbis out the door before re-focusing much effort on that. -- Ski-U-Mah!
I believe that these problems have largely been fixed in the recent versions of Helix Gnome. If you just run helix-update, you can download the new packages that use Unix sockets by default instead.
I remember having similar frustration myself, and I was happy when it was fixed. -- Ski-U-Mah!
Just so people don't go off half-cocked, I think I should point out that it appears that the author of this article was only quoting the statements of The Meta Group. Tim Reason, the author of this article, even says ``If Bill Gates made it socially acceptable to be a geek, Linus Torvalds made it cool,'' the paragraph before the quote in this/. article... -- Ski-U-Mah!
I've been very happy with Jesse as Governor, although I didn't expect him to win. I expected things to go Humphrey, Coleman, Ventura, when it actually went Ventura, Coleman, Humphrey.
Looking back, I still think Humphrey would have been a good choice. He did a lot of good stuff for the people (IMHO) when he was Attorney General of MN. I think he would have continued to do good things. IMHO, Coleman would have just sat there and looked Kennedy-esque. However, Ventura has not been afraid (most of the time) to rile things up, and that's the way our representatives should behave, again IMHO.
Now, you look at the current list of candidates. How do you think they'll behave? Bush: sit there and look pretty. Gore: sit there and look pretty. Buchanan: Rant about moral corruption. Hagelin: sit there and meditate;-)
I still know next-to-nothing about Browne, so I don't know what he'll do. Nader has been making noise for a long time, and I would expect him to continue to do so as President. That's why I'm voting for him.
Of course, that isn't the only reason. I like a lot of what he has done regarding getting corporations to produce decent products rather than producing scandalous profits. Perhaps he is overboard on some parts of his platform, though don't forget that our Constitution is designed to handle that. We're supposed to have representatives that test the boundaries. -- Ski-U-Mah!
Yeah, hardware support is definitely an issue. Personally, I blame the hardware makers for being so over-competitive that they won't release any information about how to interface with their products. I've never been much of a game junkie, but that's probably because I've usually been low on disk space. However, I just purchased a 60 GB drive, so that shouldn't be an issue for a while. Also, I'm not really into having the latest-and-greatest hardware. I'd rather save a bit of cash and get middle-tier hardware. I'm perfectly happy with my 375 MHz AMD K6-2 for everyday tasks, but that won't cut it on many games (well, at least not at a decent resolution). -- Ski-U-Mah!
Slashdot Mirror
There are a lot of parallels between being an alternative OS users and a 3rd party candidate backer. Both ways, you are exposed to a different way of viewing things, not just how the big guys want you to see it. Take your own path.
As for who should be in each branch of the government, I like the idea of having the House, Senate, and President as different parties. The Founding Fathers wanted each part of the government to keep watch over the other parts. They wanted the government to move slowly, so that the laws that did get passed were good laws. (One reason why I'm opposed to Gov. Ventura's idea that the Minnesota Legislative branch should become only a single house, rather than House and Senate).
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Does the STV system only drop the bottom candidate, or does it drop bottom candidates over and over again? For example, you have four candidates, then the 4th is removed, then the third, and then you find the winner from the last two?
Just curious..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
I understand the problem when you have many, many candidates. In that case, I think I'd advocate a limited Borda count where you only rank, say, six candidates out of twelve or something. The problem with that is that the media may then only report on six candidates, neglecting half of the people who are running (though that's better than what we get today...)
It might be a worthwhile exercise to grab some of your friends or coworkers and run a small poll. Get a list of the candidates running in your state, and try a few different methods. Have the people you gathered voice their opinions about how they felt about each method (after seeing who won).
--
Ski-U-Mah!
My problem with Libertarians (not libertarians) is that they seem to want the government to exert less control over businesses. While that could be good for the corner mom & pop shop, I think it is bad when we're talking about big businesses and corporations.
When it comes to the socialist programs such as Social Security and health coverage for all, I guess I probably can't defend my position on that to you. I think it's important to have these programs, though their importance may go down if the minimum wage is increased to a livable wage.
I bet I believe in many of the personal liberties that you do. However, I think we must go through a transition period, where we build up the health and wealth of the population, while reducing the overarching impact of corporate interests. Once we find a good balance in the incomes of our citizens and reduce the levels of poverty in this country, I think we will find that the social programs can be taken away. It may take 50 years, which is one of those things that pisses people off.
I heard Winona LaDuke speak last month. She says that her tribe has an old saying about making decisions. ``Do not think of the impact on yourself, but of the impact on people seven generations from now.''
Okay, so 50 years isn't seven generations, but you get the idea. (or maybe I should be getting your idea.. I dunno..)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
I hope this doesn't mean that you won't vote. Don't forget that there are many local races that you should be watching. While you're there, you may as well vote for President too..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Hey Dave..
;-)
Well, you can always write in somebody that you think would do a good job. I wonder how many votes Ventura will get
Anyway, in addition to the top seven candidates that are on the ballot in enough states to possibly win, there are two more people running in Minnesota. IIRC, there's somebody from the Socialist Workers party, and another person that probably just filled out the paperwork on a lark (an `official' write-in candidate, as he/she didn't get enough signatures to actually be on the ballot).
Not that I think I'd vote for either of them, but hey...
I really got interested in the alternative voting methods as well. It would be interesting too see what would happen if a state somewhere voted for it's Electoral College members in that fashion.
Of the two alternatives I saw, approval vote and Borda count, I think I like Borda count the best. I find it hard to believe that approval voting would be a whole lot different than what we already have, but that's just my opinion.
As the article said, all voting methods can fail in some way. Borda appears to be the most fault-tolerant (though it does carry the requirement that you have to actually have some moderately well-formed opinions of each of the candidates, which would require much more even media coverage).
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Is there any chance that the voting methods in this country can be changed? The Borda count seems like a pretty good idea (though you do need to know your candidates). At least that way, most people at least get a candidate that they don't absolutely despise (hopefully, it's somebody that most people are at least neutral about, and maybe somewhat positive about).
Anyway, I'm curious -- does anyone know exactly where it has been defined that we need to vote the way we do? For the Presidential race in particular, are the voting methods defined in the states, at the federal level, or is it a combination? Can a state just go say, ``we're going to use Approval or Borda voting''?
--
Ski-U-Mah!
From http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/t ren ch/trench.html:
``It was overlooked by the media that the worst school disaster happened on May 18, 1927, when 45 people were killed, including 38 elementary students, by a series of dynamite explosions at the Bath Michigan School. After detonating explosives he planted under the school, "maniac bomber" Andrew Kehoe, a school board member and treasurer, blew up his pickup truck, killing himself and the Bath School superintendent.''
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Hmm.. Maybe I should actually get cable. Maybe. I'd really like to see this show, but I'd probably never turn the TV off if we did get cable.
On a random note -- the Minneapolis/St. Paul area apparently only has about 50% penetration with cable. IIRC, most areas are much higher (70-80% or something).
--
Ski-U-Mah!
I was among the 12,000 people in Minneapolis last Friday. I think I'm much like you -- I don't really stand as far left as many in the Green party, but I'd rather be a little green than stuck with the same old thing.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
The fact that things are boring is a great reason to get involved in one way or another. It's very important to have people who think in different ways to get into politics. Jesse Ventura is the great example. He's been doing a lot here in Minnesota, not the least of which is learning about a thousand different subjects that he probably never thought about before.
I think politics would be a great thing for many techies to get into. Governor Ventura has said how much he enjoys the job because he's always learning something. He'll be in meetings all day and talk about things ranging from environment to education to transportation to the economy. If you enjoy learning about diverse topics, politics is an interesting field.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
uh.. The US isn't very small.. It'd take me quite a while to get there.
Though I may like my mental version of the talk better. CmdrTaco wanders on stage and says, ``Geez, I'm at MIT, and I know something you don't! Nyah, nyah!!''
--
Ski-U-Mah!
`slushy' rather than `Sludgey' would make sense to me.. Sludge is nasty s**t. Slush is a mixture of ice and water..
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Well, I don't think they had much choice once they were hit with the injunction and other steps leading up to their trial. Certainly, 2600 doesn't have the best reputation. I don't really like the idea that they seem to have, where people can go around and try to breach security and/or look around in the private stuff of other people or organizations. After all, I would not be happy if someone got into my apartment and started rummaging around, even if they never took anything.
However, I think we all have rights when it comes down to being our own stuff. I dare say that I should have the right to accidentally electrocute myself or to fry my hardware after ignoring warnings. I should be able to learn about anything that I own, discovering how those things work. I don't think that any of the knowledge I've gained on my own is the property of someone else. I should be able to redistribute that knowledge if I wish. If I receive that knowledge with permission to redistribute, then I should be able to do so.
IMO, there are many underlying issues that go beyond `what are my rights as a consumer?' to `what are my rights as a human being?' It seems that many content distributors (MPAA, RIAA) would like nothing better than to have everyone turn into mindless money-spending drones. They already see us like that anyway.
While I do not like some of what 2600 stands for, we need groups like them to exist. We need to be reminded what it is like to be the outsiders. They make an effort to be independent of corporate influence (their weekly radio show also runs on a non-commercial radio station, WBAI, which is funded only by contributions from individuals, not companies). In this age where virtually nothing is truly `made from scratch' by members of the public, people like that are a necessity.
This case (and the other similar ones running today) has shown me that we need to re-examine the role of copyrights, licenses, patents, trademarks, and anything else I forgot. So much of the last 200 years of laws on this subject have been greatly influenced by the publishers and distributors, rather than the original creators and the end consumers. We need to look at our rights as people and as a society, rather than those of the corporations. I want the content created today to be accessible to future generations, not locked behind encryption and licensing.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Just thought I'd point this out.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Don't you think that this case strikes against the fundamental things that make us human? We are inherently curious about the world around us, and I believe that cases like this prevent us from even being human anymore. Why can't I learn how works? Why shouldn't I be able to discover and learn?
--
Ski-U-Mah!
By many metrics, the case up until now has been very swift. Do you expect the MPAA to use slow-down tactics as you progress into the appeals process?
(My thinking is, they wanted to shut down DeCSS quickly, then stall the legal process.)
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Certainly a good thing now, as Mozilla is becoming an important component in a number of Gnome apps. Dunno how this will affect existing GPLed HTML renderers, though.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Monty and others have done work on a video codec, but it hasn't been released yet. They want to get Vorbis out the door before re-focusing much effort on that.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
I believe that these problems have largely been fixed in the recent versions of Helix Gnome. If you just run helix-update, you can download the new packages that use Unix sockets by default instead.
I remember having similar frustration myself, and I was happy when it was fixed.
--
Ski-U-Mah!
Just so people don't go off half-cocked, I think I should point out that it appears that the author of this article was only quoting the statements of The Meta Group. Tim Reason, the author of this article, even says ``If Bill Gates made it socially acceptable to be a geek, Linus Torvalds made it cool,'' the paragraph before the quote in this /. article...
--
Ski-U-Mah!
I've been very happy with Jesse as Governor, although I didn't expect him to win. I expected things to go Humphrey, Coleman, Ventura, when it actually went Ventura, Coleman, Humphrey.
;-)
Looking back, I still think Humphrey would have been a good choice. He did a lot of good stuff for the people (IMHO) when he was Attorney General of MN. I think he would have continued to do good things. IMHO, Coleman would have just sat there and looked Kennedy-esque. However, Ventura has not been afraid (most of the time) to rile things up, and that's the way our representatives should behave, again IMHO.
Now, you look at the current list of candidates. How do you think they'll behave? Bush: sit there and look pretty. Gore: sit there and look pretty. Buchanan: Rant about moral corruption. Hagelin: sit there and meditate
I still know next-to-nothing about Browne, so I don't know what he'll do. Nader has been making noise for a long time, and I would expect him to continue to do so as President. That's why I'm voting for him.
Of course, that isn't the only reason. I like a lot of what he has done regarding getting corporations to produce decent products rather than producing scandalous profits. Perhaps he is overboard on some parts of his platform, though don't forget that our Constitution is designed to handle that. We're supposed to have representatives that test the boundaries.
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Ski-U-Mah!
Google is my friend:
How the Electoral College Works
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Ski-U-Mah!
``Yes I know he won't win...''
Lots of people knew Jesse Ventura wouldn't win.
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Ski-U-Mah!
Yeah, hardware support is definitely an issue. Personally, I blame the hardware makers for being so over-competitive that they won't release any information about how to interface with their products. I've never been much of a game junkie, but that's probably because I've usually been low on disk space. However, I just purchased a 60 GB drive, so that shouldn't be an issue for a while. Also, I'm not really into having the latest-and-greatest hardware. I'd rather save a bit of cash and get middle-tier hardware. I'm perfectly happy with my 375 MHz AMD K6-2 for everyday tasks, but that won't cut it on many games (well, at least not at a decent resolution).
--
Ski-U-Mah!