Well, that's the plan but, also in Fox tradition, as soon as your character hits 32 and you start a really interesting story arc, your character class gets cancelled and you have to start over (if they decide to let you keep playing).
it really amuses me that the word in the image (the one you have to type in when you arent logged in before you post the comment) is satire.
And this immediately proves you wrong. So nice try, better luck next time. You may have had valid points, had you not spoken in absolutes.
Of course, by saying that nobody who speaks in absolutes has valid points, you've made an absolute statement. So i guess you're wrong. Of course, now that you are wrong, the GP could possibly be right. (it would appear that you could be right again too, but since you being right necessitates you being wrong, you can't be right).
(i know that what you really meant was that by speaking in absolutes he made it easy to disprove his assertion by finding one contradictory example, but i thought it was funny.)
btw. i played the free trial of eve also. And then i bought an account and have played for about 6 months. I'm about to quit though. I'm quitting because the inflation rate in the game make it necessary for you to play it more than i am inclined to play. It is a fun game, I've just hit the limit of what I can do in it given the constraints under which i choose to play.
Those are the only two words I know of for not being religious. If those definitions are true, there needs to be a third word that means I don't care atheist, not I'm against God atheist.
I generally refer to people on the "i dont care" track as Apathists.
I certainly didn't blame Honda when my car was broken into. sure...but would you blame them if you found out the locks on your doors could be opened with any car key?
Is it Kryptonite's fault that their locks can be opened with a ball point pen?
If you do not agree with their value of their labour, then do not pay them. You do not have a right to take it anyway and decide your own value for it.
as far as i know, the copies of the music that AllOfMP3.com are selling are legally acquired (i.e. purchased). Also, they have not taken the artists' creations away from the artists. the artists still have them. (well, technically the record label took them away from the artists, but that is a contract issue between the artist and the label and isnt really relevent to this discussion).
My point was that if the RIAA agreed to deal with AllOfMP3s in a totally different set of rules, more than a few other countries may wish to "re-evaluate" their laws.
I'm not sure why you feel this would cause other countries to reevaluate their laws in this way. If those countries feel that changing the copyright laws in their countries is advantageous for the country, they absolutely should do that. The government's job is to do what is best for the country and its citizens . If they feel that changing their laws to create that effect in their country is a good idea, they should do it regardless of Russia's law.
The Russian laws are clearly flawed and being exploited. AllOfMP3 claim to pay a broadcaster's fee when they are obviously not 'broadcasting'.
Then the Russian legislature needs to fix their laws. They shouldn't shut down AllOfMP3 until the law changes though, because they aren't doing anything illegal.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Is this too obvious and clear a moral standpoint? Whatever convenient criticisms you may have of the music industry, it does not excuse your, as an end-consumer, actions.
My point wasnt that the action was justified because of the RIAA members' treatment of their artists. My point was that he's already choosing to contribute to injustice merely by buying music from a record label that is a member of the RIAA. If he has already accepted the wrong of harming the artist in that way, why would he suddenly care that he's harming the people one step up the food chain? My other point (which is implicit) is that to avoid contributing to injustice (by your argument), consumers must boycott the RIAA members products as well as not using AllOfMP3.
This bit isn't so much about AllOfMP3 and is more a question of how deep a recursion should personal responsibility go?
Whatever way the monies are divided in the music industry, a lot of people still get paid.
Well, your argument was about the artists getting paid. In many cases they clearly aren't regardless of what happens in Russia. (this is admittedly not relevent to the issue at hand.) Besides, one right (some people in the industry getting paid) doesn't absolve a wrong (other people not getting paid).
AllOfMP3 currently exists as a freeloader, and no-one can offer any proof that if it was to operate as a genuine retailer it would be a fairer and more successful business model.
I disagree that they operate as a freeloader. As far as i know they legally purchased the originating copies of the works they sell. (that may not be the case and i just dont know about it). They also meet their legal obligation of paying royalty money to the legally designated distribution agent. To be freeloaders, both of those would have to be false.
You may feel they are not paying as much as they should, but there's a difference between that and being a freeloader.
Also, I thought your point was that the way they operate isnt fair. If they operated the way you would like, wouldn't that have to be more fair?
Do you really think recording artists would be better off with their music being sold for pennies?
Nope. But then, the ways that the artists would be best off would be unfair to the consumers. Besides, copyright (at least in the U.S.) doesn't exist to make money for the artists. That's not the purpose.
Do you really believe that AllOfMP3 could operate success
Interesting. You have a problem with an organisation responsible for collecting the money from the sale of someone's product also dictating the terms of the sale? Let's be quite clear about what you're saying here. If you do not approve of the terms and profit margins offered to you by a supplier, you can just go off and make your own up? And if they then refuse to take the cut of the profits that you decide they're due, then it's all their fault?
The Russian government collects and distributes royalties for the allofmp3.com use of the product. They collect royalties at a rate the government specifies. It is interesting to me that you feel this is unjust, but do not have a problem with copyright itself. Copyright is an artificial restriction created by governments that arbitrarily limits what everyone other than the original creator can do with items they acquire. Copyright is not a natural right.
If the Russian government's arbitrary rules around royalty rates and disbursement procedures are unjust, then why aren't their arbitrary rules that create copyright in the first place unjust?
Clearly the reason the RIAA refuse to take the Russian licensing money is because to do so would legitimise the arrangement, and that would have implications for every other arrangement they have in other countries.
Governments and their laws do not need companies or collusive organisations to approve of them for them to be legitimate. Their arrangements in other countries are subject to that other country's laws, not Russia's laws.
Also interesting. You would shop in a store that you knew was full of CDs that the producers of which receive no payment, all the time washing your hands of all responsibility?
Well, he's already buying cds from an organization that, through contractual wankery, licensing deals, and creative accounting, screws the actual artists out of almost all of their royalties for the albums. Why would screwing someone slightly higher up on the chain bother him?
But what he's actually saying is that when he buys merchandise from a retailer who exists as a legal entity (i.e. a registered corporation, not from the back of a guy's truck), it isn't his responsiblity to do due dilligence about their inventory.
If he buys a product from a store that is evading their taxes, should that be his responsiblity too?
Copyright infringement is not theft, but your reasoning here is no different from buying stolen goods and pretending where they came from was none of your concern.
Copyright infringement is a crime of distribution. The seller is violating it, the receiver is not. Buying stolen goods is illegal. Clearly, there is a significant difference between the two acts as far as the law is concerned.
With respect to AllOfMP3, this issue is moot anyway, since they are not infringing anyone's copyright.
Why is the AllOfMP3 situation substantially different from blank media taxes in places like Canada?
I just don't get why people buy downloaded music at all, especially not DRM'd stuff. For a marginally higher cost, a CD gives you your music in an uncompressed format and leaves it up to you how you want to encode it. And it's got pretty packaging too. Until music downloads are losslessly encoded, DRM-free, and allow me to send for the cover art at no additional charge, I'm not buying.
Well, I can tell you exactly why I bought music from an online store. To date I've bought 2 albums from the iTunes store. The reason was two-fold: 1: My wife's brother gave me two iTunes gift cards for christmas. 2: The two albums i bought have been out of print for a very long time so i couldn't find them on cd.
I also immediately burned them to cd and ripped them back to mp3. (yeah, i know it's a lossy process, but it is punk music so that isn't really gonna have a major impact on it).
You're right. I don't understand Perens' point at all.
I dont think we're talking about the same point from Perens. I was referring to why he says they might have to maintain gpl v2 forks on their own and why that would become a problem.
The indemnification contract between Microsoft and Novell does not alter any GPLv2 software. It does not change the ownership of the software. It does not determine whether or not the distro software has any IP violations that would lead to it being yanked from GPL status.
Perens' point is that the agreement goes against the intention of the gpl. If the gpl v2 doesn't restrict it, that is a shortcoming in that version of the license. The GPL v3 will explicitly forbid it. He doesn't say anything about the status of any gpl software being affected. He talks about the status of Novell's distribution being affected by the future license requirements for some of that software.
Quite frankly, it does nothing useful that I can see for or against Linux. But it may affect some proprietary components of SuSE, or allow Novell to implement proprietary software for Linux that interoperates better with Vista than OSS will be able to (e.g. access to use proprietary protocols, or reimplement some software stacks.)
Well, it creates confusion and an opportunity for Ballmer to claim there are patent infringements in Linux. It also creates an environment of mistrust between the community and Novell. Any contributions from Novell employees now need to be examined for possible patent issues. (not necessarily because Novell is trying to undermine linux, but because there is no guarantee that they will vett the code they are releasing since it is no longer a significant legal concern for them)
It could also possibly create some uncertainty around samba. Since samba team members work for Novell, if they do not carefully document the reverse engineering they do, this agreement could be used by microsoft to make an "unclean hands" assertion against samba in an attempt to limit other distributions' ability to interoperate with windows.
To me, the whole deal seems to be an attempt by microsoft to use Novell to marginalize the rest of the linux distributions. The logical conclusion of that avenue (based on microsoft's prior actions) is that once that is achieved, they will turn on novell and attempt to crush them as well. I think this is just a long term strategy on their part to remove a competitor in the server market that they have found themselves unable to displace fairly.
well, the number of tools held by the FSF itself isnt trivial and will definitely be moving to the new license. They could migrate away from gcc and glibc, or just stick with the gpl v2 versions, but over time it will become a bigger and bigger problem. Even projects that don't migrate to gpl v3 will most likely be built with gcc and glibc and as those tools continue to develop, it will be necessary for Novell to back port those changes into a v2 codebase to keep their other tools from breaking (or maintain a compatible compiler and library, or maintain branches of those projects modified to be built against a different compiler and library).
Ever hear of BSD? GNU isn't the only option. OS X/Darwin use the BSD tools. So could Novell.
Yes, Novell could abandon the codebase and customer base they bought for $210,000,000 and start over with BSD.
However, their shareholders might start questioning the decision making processes of their management.
To abandon that kind of investment, and the time and money invested in porting their network apps to linux and start over with BSD might very well cost them more money than Microsoft paid them in the first place.
If the GPL v3 explicitly disallows the kind of contractual arrangement MS and Novell have made, Novell cannot distribute GPL v3 software while the arrangement stands. Novell can continue to ship those tools in their GPL v2 incarnations, but the lack of improvements to that version will quickly make them divergent and damage interoperability between SuSE and the rest of the open source world. They can fork them and maintain their own branch of GPL v2 code, but the resource requirements to maintain and improve the quantity of tools that will be migrated to GPL v3 will probably make that financially untenable.
He is saying that the GPL v3 will explicitly disallow the kind of contractual arrangement Novell used to end-run around the GPL v2. When v3 comes out, Novell will have to either abandon the contract, or they will not be able to use code licensed under v3.
Since all of the FSF foundations tools will move to v3, and most of the toolchain for linux is owned by the FSF, Novell will be left behind with old versions of a lot of the software in their distribution. They will have to fork the code base at the point the license changes and maintain v2 implementations of those tools themselves. That will be a lot of work and the Novell versions of the tools will probably end up divergent from the FSF versions of those tools.
This will make SuSE less interoperable with other open source software and less attractive as a platform on which to build your infrastructure.
The problem with that is that then everybody on "TotallyBlog : News for cheerleaders, stuff that's, like, totally Awesome" would be confused. They would be wondering why sony made a stupid commercial showing 10 ps3s sitting on a table displaying a bunch of random letters. Hell, it's not even english.
Maybe they didnt make the ad to target techs because they expect techs to read the specs and want one for the cool technology in it.
Note, I'm not saying the original ad campaign is good. I haven't seen it.
Actually I was thinking more along the lines of how prior to the standardization of railway gauge each independent railway system was allowed to develop it's own system and then charge people to use it, and purposly take their competitiors systems and modify them to stop their compeitior from running trains on their rails. Or if you don't like that example then there's the standaradizaiton of the automobile that was the direct result of unchecked monoploistic tactics. Or the standardzation of Electrical standards (AC DC 110 220, etc), recording standards (Anyone else remember the RCA 45?), TV (we're still fighting over this one), Radio (FM,AM, Direct Transmission... yeah..Tesla was nuts...), Satellite, Internet, Networks, etc, etc...
The difference between those examples and Microsoft is that those standards were documented and the other competitors in those markets, when their attempts to press their proprietary formats failed, could implement the winning format and be interoperable. Microsoft actively pursues a policy of changing the format to break compatibility anytime someone tries to be interoperable with them.
but your response was as much hyperbole as my comment was so I'll call it even.
Fair enough.
Eventually every market creates a "winner" and if the courts step in at that point, or better yet, a legislative body steps in and says, "Fight's over, they win, eveyone use their standard." Things work out better in the long run. Unfortunately, in the short run some of these companies have to die off. If the EU is planning on taking the protcols and turning them over to ISO and then asks or forces all developers to use those protocols as the defacto standard then I'm cool with it. But if it's their intention to create an artifically level feild then there's a problem.
The EU is not, and should not, force anyone to implement a standard. Once one standard "wins" everyone will implement it or they will fail. Or they can restart the war by creating a new standard. If the new standard is compellingly better than the old one, it'll take over and everyone will implement that. In the case of Microsoft, the EU is saying " you cannot create a barrier to entry into the market place by not letting people implement your standards." The reason they cannot do that is because they are a monopoly.
But we're getting off topic lobbing insults back and forth, so lets take a look at the rest of the comments.
heh...you should have seen the stuff i almost wrote and decided was too inflammatory.
Agreed, but.... I mentioned earlier I work with medical software. Currently there are 26 companies competeting for the same market. Because no one has the greatest share of the market (i.e. 25%) they all are still refusing to work together and keep trying to force their standards on unwitting doctors. It's a bad situation all around. What's worse they're ignoring ISO standards and doing their own thing because there is no governing body yet that wil step in.
I can appreciate how much that would suck, but it isnt really equivalent to the case with Microsoft. In Microsoft's case, they are doing things like implementing a proprietary version of LDAP and not following a standard that everyone else in the market does follow. They do it specifically to create a barrier to non-Microsoft applications to facilitate their attempts to leverage their desktop monopoly to increase their server market share. That's illegal and that is the kind of thing the EU ruling is about.
Also MS released a huge explination of DOCX in MSDN, it's pretty much an open format that anyone can use...providing they are running an MS OS or Mimo. Personally, I'd prefer that they force everyone to adopt an open document format, but as a.NET programer, I don't mind DOCX since I can make my server produce DOC files on the fly in about 3 lines of code. (Extremely difficult on the binary version)
Well, if it is fully documented, there shouldnt be a
Alright, I'm not going to argue about MS being a monopoly or not, to be honest, I don't care. I don't care because one company setting the standards and everyone complying with it creates an environment of stability in computers.
Sort of like how dictatorships create an environment of stability in countries, right? Sure, they might abuse their power and kill some people, and the laws they dictate might be unjust, but at least you know what you have to comply with.
Most crashes, problems, and issues I have to diagnose and repair are most often caused by thrid party vendors that wrote software without bothering to read the existing Whitepapers on the subject...which is why this is POINTLESS.
Uh, so? You think nobody on the planet is doing, or wants to do anything outside of the issues you have to diagnose and repair? You seem to have a very myopic view of the world.
They're using legal action to ensure that people can play on a level playing feild. It's sounds liek a good idea, but it's a recipe for chaos in the long term.
Sort of like Democracy, right?
All you end up with is the establishment of new proprietary information from competitors of MS that eventually wil have to be sued to hand the information over as well, and the person who sues them, will use this ruling as the basis for their law suits.
Without monopoly power, a competitor cannot dictate proprietary standards onto the market. Their competitors will create an open, interoperable standard and support it instead and the proprietary vendor will end up marginalized. This has happened plenty of times in the last 30 years. In the absence of monopoly influence, the market tends to correct itself on those things.
If it did happen then, yes, someone would sue and this ruling could be used for the basis of their suit (actually it probably couldn't since i dont think the EU courts use prior cases as precedent in future cases the way the United States court system does). I'm not sure why you brought that up though, because that was just indicate a properly functioning legal system, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Making MS hand over documentation on protocols is pointless, there are white papers that describe eveything important to a real programer, with a single exception, file formats for Office products (Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Visio, etc) The formats used in Office 2007 are completely different....making this a pointless ruling. They've already changed the very protocols they've been told to hand over, and since 2007 isn't out of BETA yet, it technically isn't covered by the ruling.
I think the Samba guys would disagree with ou on that first part. (unless, maybe you don't consider them real programmers?)
I fail to see how the Office 2007 format being different makes the ruling pointless. Do you not think people want interoperability with older file formats? Do you think everyone will immediately switch to Office 2007 and convert their old documents to office 2007 format? History disagrees with that.
Also, how can Office 2007 using a different file format make the ruling pointless if it isn't even out of beta yet? And how do you know the EU isnt requiring them to hand over documentation on the file formats for the beta software also?
Personally I don't think making them turn over anything beyond a table of file format struture is fair to MS or the consumer. LEts say they force MS to turn over documentation about security in Windows (crippled as it already is) you've just given evey hacker a road map!
So far, the only people who have demonstrated a need for a road map for windows security are the security vendors and MS themselves. The hackers seem to be doing just fine without one. Besides, if looking at this documentation will make it so easy for the hackers to abuse windows, shouldn't it also make it easy for MS to find those holes and fix them? Are the hackers that much better than the "real" programmers at M
Immediately release a statement that they are horrified that they are being pressured to make copyrighted works public or else face fines.
Issue a statement that they are horrified that the organisation that creates the artificial restriction on everyone else's behaviour is pressuring them to abide by the rules they created for when they are willing to allow people to exercise their fabricated exclusive use right?
How? The EU would shit their pants if Microsoft pulled Windows from the market. They could not function without it. Try doing a multi country conversion to Linux without disrupting business, it can't happen. They would come crawling back with their tail tucked.
No, the EU would void all of Microsoft's "intellectual property", ban them from operating in the EU, and it would be perfectly legal for anyone to use, modify, or deconstruct their products. This would also encourage all organizations in Europe to migrate away from Microsoft products. That would destroy Microsoft's monopoly on operating systems and on office suites. Once their monopolies are gone, Microsoft will die worldwide.
Microsoft is a corporation. Their existance as an entity and the protection of their products under the law are at the sufferance of the government under which they are operating.
Microsoft needs the EU government a hell of a lot more than the EU needs Microsoft.
No, you can't, not if the libraries are GPLed. If you don't accept the Sun commercial license and only accept the GPL, you can't use non-GPLed code with the Java libraries. The FSF has made it pretty clear that linking with a GPLed library requires GPLed code. You can't link a non-GPLed program with GPLed libraries, even as an end-user. It's not legal.
considering that the GPL is a distribution license and not a use license, i fail to see how it would have any effect at all on linking with non-GPL code by an end user. As long as you are not distributing it, the GPL places no additional conditions on your use of the software.
So, if the libraries are GPLed, that means that only GPLed Java code may be run on the GPLed version of Java. All other licenses would be forbidden, thanks to the viral properites of the GPL.
ok....you used the viral angle. Are you trolling, or do you just not have any idea what you are talking about?
Sounds like Apple has you locked in by virtue of dominant market share, the same thing you guys blast MS for.
There are some very large differences. The iPod doesnt have a monopoly share of the market. Also, Apple doesn't control the distribution channels for portable music players and cannot create artificial barriers to entry for competing products. Apple also does not control the 3rd party devices market. There is nothing (except maybe technological limitations) keeping them from making devices available to any other mp3 player.
The grand parent post is not "locked in" to the iPod, he is just happy with his product and the support it gets from 3rd parties.
This is not even close to the things Microsoft is blasted for.
also, the purpose of the actual survey was to determine the likelyhood of individuals purchasing the zune. the research project is even titled "Microsoft Zune"...so it stands to reason that they are shown pictures and a description of the product they are being asked about.
I don't think the survey is necessarily bad at describing what kind of interest there will be in the zune when it comes out, but i do think it isnt a good survey for determining brand loyalty among ipod owners.
Without purchasing the report, we don't know what their actual sample size was. (we do know they started with 1725 people but the survey is about people planning to purchase a new mp3 player within the next year and all we know about that sample is that it is smaller than 1725).
We also don't know what portion of that sample size were ipod owners.
Is the portion that were ipod owners representative of all ipod owners? Was it a big enough block of people that you can reliably draw conclusions about the ipod owning population as a whole?
since the purpose of the survey was not to determine brand loyalty among ipod owners, and it wasnt designed to generate data about brand loyalty among ipod owners, i suspect that it isnt reliable for drawing those conclusions.
But it you want to talk about misinterpreting statements, talk to the GP poster.
i agree that the GP poster shouldn't do it either. Doing so undermines his argument also.
re: the election profiling comment, i intended it as a joke. i just thought that thinking of it as election profiling was kind of funny.
And I wrote that I was 100% certain fraud had occurred.... where, exactly?
Well, you asserted that those things were evidence of fraud. Evidence is proof of an action occuring in a specific way. You cannot have evidence of fraud without a fraud occurring.
In short, it is essentially impossible for a manual recount to occur, and when it does it will leave well over 98% of the ballots unexamined. I'd say that's a pretty good attempt at banning manual recounts.
I may be wrong about this, but I believe those rules have been in place since before the 2000 election. I expect the intent behind the rules is to make it easier and faster to do recounts by only dealing with the ballots that are in dispute, but I agree that the implementation does not appear to be a very good one. I don't think the specific intent was to make it impossible to do manual recounts, it's just a poorly designed process.
Until, of course, the state-level decision was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court, allowing the paperless systems to go un-audited and un-examined in the event of a contested and close election.
that is not what the 11th Circuit Court did. Originally, the district court dismissed the claims because Congressman Wexler had file the case in State court as well and the District court deferred to the State court case. This case was resurrected and ultimately the 11th Circuit court said the state's need to be able to do a recount was more important than the need for the recount process to be identical across different types of machines and that the differences in the mechanics did not necessitate a violation of due process and equal protection with regard to the voters.
It didnt say paperless systems can go unaudited or unexamined. Doing so would be a violation of state law in Florida. What it did say was that the recount procedure for a paperless system doesnt have to be the same recount procedure as that for an optical scan system.
As far as I know (and i dont have time to try to find out because i'm at work), the state case could still determine that the paperless systems violate state law. From the description of what the recount system is for the paperless systems, and what the law in Florida requires, I think it has a decent shot of succeeding. I'm not a lawyer or judge, though, so my opinion is probably not informed enough to be relied upon.
I'd like to believe that, but it's getting harder and harder the more obstacles that Florida throws in the way of verified voting. Given their repeated rejection of ballot-marking devices for the disabled to actually taking citizens to court for attempting to get a voter-verified paper ballot resolution passed in Sarasota... it just starts to look too odd to be incompetence (although there's healthy doses of that, too).
I'm still hesitant to take that as a conspiracy. I've seen too many situations where people make bad decisions and then go far out of their way covering it up, just to avoid admitting to a mistake. This looks to me like more of the same. The incompetent people are deathly afraid someone will discover their incompetence and fight anything that might threaten their positions.
That isnt to say that it's not a bad situation. I absolutely agree that things need to change and people need to be fired, but they need to be fired for beind idiots, not for being part of a vast right wing conspiracy.
by the way, i appreciate that your response was reasoned. it's nice, especially on slashdot, to see that people can still have a reasoned disagreement without it devolving into name calling and character assassination. Now if we could only replicate that in the campaign process, we might be able to find a decent candidate.
oh yeah now i get it: the harder it is to vote, the simpler it is to cheat!
It has nothing to do with how hard voting is. Voting on a paper ballot isnt any more difficult than voting on an electronic machine. (even with a butterfly ballot. I saw the ballot layout that everyone was complaining about and if they couldn't figure that ballot out, they must have suffered some head trauma as a child)
The harder it is to count the votes, the simpler it is to cheat. Unfortunately, the harder it is to manually verify the automatic count, the easier it is to cheat too.
What someone needs to do is implement a system that records and stores the individual votes, writes an audit trail, does several automated counts (and shows all the results to the reviewer so they can see if there is a counting problem), and prints a receipt for the voter to keep.
And by "thousands" you mean "about eight"? From TFA:
The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.
The use of the phrase "such as" means "here are a couple examples", not "this is all we've found"
If i say the employee database at work has employee names in it, such as "bob johnson" and "larry anderson"; that doesn't mean there are only two names in the database.
you undermine your own argument when you misinterpret statements like that.
Oh, I don't know. Means, motive, and opportunity, perhaps?
None of those are evidence. It's a good way to determine who to look at when you suspect a crime has been committed, but it isn't evidence.
Results that just don't add up?
Still not evidence, but a good reason to look for some evidence of election tampering.
An unfortunate history of election fraud in certain parts of the South? (this coming from someone born and raised in Virginia)
election profiling?
I agree that if an area has a history of problems with elections, I'd probably want to institute things like a mandatory recount in those areas so that you verify the accuracy of the results, but a history of illegal behaviour isnt itself evidence of criminal activity.
Grounds, at the very least, to count the paper ballots
Absolutely.
(the practive of which Florida attempted to ban somewhat recently)?
I read your article and Florida did not attempt to ban counting the paper ballots. The Florida election board made a rule saying that there would be no recounts in districts using paperless voting systems because there were no ballots to count in a recount. Districts that used systems that produced paper ballots would still be subject to recounts.
That rule was thrown out by the Florida court as a violation of state law that requires a manual recount be possible and required the paperless systems to produce some way for a recount to be possible.
So basically, the election board did something stupid while trying to solve a problem with the paperless system and the state courts slapped them for it and told them they have to make the system accomodate the law, not the other way around.
Personally, the fact that the system doesn't conform to state election law requirements seems like a big reason a sane person wouldn't purchase them in the first place. However, seeing some of the ridiculous purchasing decisions that get made in the company i work for (and others), i believe this was done through incompetence and lazyness and not part of a malicious agenda.
the Florida balloting in 2000 was done with electronic voting machines (at least in some districts) that produced paper ballots that were then counted. They are not paperless electronic voting machines.
The question in the post i was responding to is an important question to ask about paperless electronic voting machines, but isn't an issue on one where a paper ballot is produced.
I should have been more specific than just "electronic voting machines" in my previous comment and apologise for any confusion that may have caused.
With an electronic voting machine, how do you tell the difference between a 'ballot' that the user screwed up and a ballot where the machine secretly overrode the user's vote?
that's a good question and a good reason for electronic voting machines to be required to produce a paper record of the vote.
However, they are talking about the 2000 presidental election and Florida. Since the balloting in Florida was done on paper and not with electronic voting machines, your question is not relevent to the discussion in this thread.
I would like to point out that a paper trail for electronic voting still wont stop the accusations of cheating though. These kinds of accusations have been going on since before electronic computers were invented, and in the 2000 election accusations of voting fraud in places that used paper ballots were just as prevalent as accusations of fraud are in the last election.
In my opinion, both sides are unrepentantly corrupt and many (especialy Diebold) voting machine makers are incompetent, greedy and corrupt. We should throw them all out and start over.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's the plan but, also in Fox tradition, as soon as your character hits 32 and you start a really interesting story arc, your character class gets cancelled and you have to start over (if they decide to let you keep playing).
it really amuses me that the word in the image (the one you have to type in when you arent logged in before you post the comment) is satire.
And this immediately proves you wrong. So nice try, better luck next time. You may have had valid points, had you not spoken in absolutes.
Of course, by saying that nobody who speaks in absolutes has valid points, you've made an absolute statement. So i guess you're wrong.
Of course, now that you are wrong, the GP could possibly be right. (it would appear that you could be right again too, but since you being right necessitates you being wrong, you can't be right).
(i know that what you really meant was that by speaking in absolutes he made it easy to disprove his assertion by finding one contradictory example, but i thought it was funny.)
btw. i played the free trial of eve also. And then i bought an account and have played for about 6 months. I'm about to quit though. I'm quitting because the inflation rate in the game make it necessary for you to play it more than i am inclined to play. It is a fun game, I've just hit the limit of what I can do in it given the constraints under which i choose to play.
Those are the only two words I know of for not being religious. If those definitions are true, there needs to be a third word that means I don't care atheist, not I'm against God atheist.
I generally refer to people on the "i dont care" track as Apathists.
I certainly didn't blame Honda when my car was broken into.
sure...but would you blame them if you found out the locks on your doors could be opened with any car key?
Is it Kryptonite's fault that their locks can be opened with a ball point pen?
the RIAA is made up of companies. it exists to represent the major companies' common interests.
In the oligopoly of the music industry, the RIAA is the cartel that allows the major players to exert monopoly control on the market.
The fact that the RIAA itself is not a company should not be sufficient to protect its existance and protect its members from antitrust prosecutions.
If you do not agree with their value of their labour, then do not pay them. You do not have a right to take it anyway and decide your own value for it.
as far as i know, the copies of the music that AllOfMP3.com are selling are legally acquired (i.e. purchased). Also, they have not taken the artists' creations away from the artists. the artists still have them. (well, technically the record label took them away from the artists, but that is a contract issue between the artist and the label and isnt really relevent to this discussion).
My point was that if the RIAA agreed to deal with AllOfMP3s in a totally different set of rules, more than a few other countries may wish to "re-evaluate" their laws.
I'm not sure why you feel this would cause other countries to reevaluate their laws in this way. If those countries feel that changing the copyright laws in their countries is advantageous for the country, they absolutely should do that. The government's job is to do what is best for the country and its citizens . If they feel that changing their laws to create that effect in their country is a good idea, they should do it regardless of Russia's law.
The Russian laws are clearly flawed and being exploited. AllOfMP3 claim to pay a broadcaster's fee when they are obviously not 'broadcasting'.
Then the Russian legislature needs to fix their laws. They shouldn't shut down AllOfMP3 until the law changes though, because they aren't doing anything illegal.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Is this too obvious and clear a moral standpoint? Whatever convenient criticisms you may have of the music industry, it does not excuse your, as an end-consumer, actions.
My point wasnt that the action was justified because of the RIAA members' treatment of their artists. My point was that he's already choosing to contribute to injustice merely by buying music from a record label that is a member of the RIAA. If he has already accepted the wrong of harming the artist in that way, why would he suddenly care that he's harming the people one step up the food chain? My other point (which is implicit) is that to avoid contributing to injustice (by your argument), consumers must boycott the RIAA members products as well as not using AllOfMP3.
This bit isn't so much about AllOfMP3 and is more a question of how deep a recursion should personal responsibility go?
Whatever way the monies are divided in the music industry, a lot of people still get paid.
Well, your argument was about the artists getting paid. In many cases they clearly aren't regardless of what happens in Russia. (this is admittedly not relevent to the issue at hand.) Besides, one right (some people in the industry getting paid) doesn't absolve a wrong (other people not getting paid).
AllOfMP3 currently exists as a freeloader, and no-one can offer any proof that if it was to operate as a genuine retailer it would be a fairer and more successful business model.
I disagree that they operate as a freeloader. As far as i know they legally purchased the originating copies of the works they sell. (that may not be the case and i just dont know about it). They also meet their legal obligation of paying royalty money to the legally designated distribution agent. To be freeloaders, both of those would have to be false.
You may feel they are not paying as much as they should, but there's a difference between that and being a freeloader.
Also, I thought your point was that the way they operate isnt fair. If they operated the way you would like, wouldn't that have to be more fair?
Do you really think recording artists would be better off with their music being sold for pennies?
Nope. But then, the ways that the artists would be best off would be unfair to the consumers.
Besides, copyright (at least in the U.S.) doesn't exist to make money for the artists. That's not the purpose.
Do you really believe that AllOfMP3 could operate success
Interesting. You have a problem with an organisation responsible for collecting the money from the sale of someone's product also dictating the terms of the sale? Let's be quite clear about what you're saying here. If you do not approve of the terms and profit margins offered to you by a supplier, you can just go off and make your own up? And if they then refuse to take the cut of the profits that you decide they're due, then it's all their fault?
The Russian government collects and distributes royalties for the allofmp3.com use of the product. They collect royalties at a rate the government specifies. It is interesting to me that you feel this is unjust, but do not have a problem with copyright itself. Copyright is an artificial restriction created by governments that arbitrarily limits what everyone other than the original creator can do with items they acquire. Copyright is not a natural right.
If the Russian government's arbitrary rules around royalty rates and disbursement procedures are unjust, then why aren't their arbitrary rules that create copyright in the first place unjust?
Clearly the reason the RIAA refuse to take the Russian licensing money is because to do so would legitimise the arrangement, and that would have implications for every other arrangement they have in other countries.
Governments and their laws do not need companies or collusive organisations to approve of them for them to be legitimate. Their arrangements in other countries are subject to that other country's laws, not Russia's laws.
Also interesting. You would shop in a store that you knew was full of CDs that the producers of which receive no payment, all the time washing your hands of all responsibility?
Well, he's already buying cds from an organization that, through contractual wankery, licensing deals, and creative accounting, screws the actual artists out of almost all of their royalties for the albums. Why would screwing someone slightly higher up on the chain bother him?
But what he's actually saying is that when he buys merchandise from a retailer who exists as a legal entity (i.e. a registered corporation, not from the back of a guy's truck), it isn't his responsiblity to do due dilligence about their inventory.
If he buys a product from a store that is evading their taxes, should that be his responsiblity too?
Copyright infringement is not theft, but your reasoning here is no different from buying stolen goods and pretending where they came from was none of your concern.
Copyright infringement is a crime of distribution. The seller is violating it, the receiver is not. Buying stolen goods is illegal. Clearly, there is a significant difference between the two acts as far as the law is concerned.
With respect to AllOfMP3, this issue is moot anyway, since they are not infringing anyone's copyright.
Why is the AllOfMP3 situation substantially different from blank media taxes in places like Canada?
I just don't get why people buy downloaded music at all, especially not DRM'd stuff. For a marginally higher cost, a CD gives you your music in an uncompressed format and leaves it up to you how you want to encode it. And it's got pretty packaging too. Until music downloads are losslessly encoded, DRM-free, and allow me to send for the cover art at no additional charge, I'm not buying.
Well, I can tell you exactly why I bought music from an online store. To date I've bought 2 albums from the iTunes store. The reason was two-fold:
1: My wife's brother gave me two iTunes gift cards for christmas.
2: The two albums i bought have been out of print for a very long time so i couldn't find them on cd.
I also immediately burned them to cd and ripped them back to mp3. (yeah, i know it's a lossy process, but it is punk music so that isn't really gonna have a major impact on it).
You're right. I don't understand Perens' point at all.
I dont think we're talking about the same point from Perens. I was referring to why he says they might have to maintain gpl v2 forks on their own and why that would become a problem.
The indemnification contract between Microsoft and Novell does not alter any GPLv2 software. It does not change the ownership of the software. It does not determine whether or not the distro software has any IP violations that would lead to it being yanked from GPL status.
Perens' point is that the agreement goes against the intention of the gpl. If the gpl v2 doesn't restrict it, that is a shortcoming in that version of the license. The GPL v3 will explicitly forbid it. He doesn't say anything about the status of any gpl software being affected. He talks about the status of Novell's distribution being affected by the future license requirements for some of that software.
Quite frankly, it does nothing useful that I can see for or against Linux. But it may affect some proprietary components of SuSE, or allow Novell to implement proprietary software for Linux that interoperates better with Vista than OSS will be able to (e.g. access to use proprietary protocols, or reimplement some software stacks.)
Well, it creates confusion and an opportunity for Ballmer to claim there are patent infringements in Linux. It also creates an environment of mistrust between the community and Novell. Any contributions from Novell employees now need to be examined for possible patent issues. (not necessarily because Novell is trying to undermine linux, but because there is no guarantee that they will vett the code they are releasing since it is no longer a significant legal concern for them)
It could also possibly create some uncertainty around samba. Since samba team members work for Novell, if they do not carefully document the reverse engineering they do, this agreement could be used by microsoft to make an "unclean hands" assertion against samba in an attempt to limit other distributions' ability to interoperate with windows.
To me, the whole deal seems to be an attempt by microsoft to use Novell to marginalize the rest of the linux distributions. The logical conclusion of that avenue (based on microsoft's prior actions) is that once that is achieved, they will turn on novell and attempt to crush them as well. I think this is just a long term strategy on their part to remove a competitor in the server market that they have found themselves unable to displace fairly.
well, the number of tools held by the FSF itself isnt trivial and will definitely be moving to the new license. They could migrate away from gcc and glibc, or just stick with the gpl v2 versions, but over time it will become a bigger and bigger problem. Even projects that don't migrate to gpl v3 will most likely be built with gcc and glibc and as those tools continue to develop, it will be necessary for Novell to back port those changes into a v2 codebase to keep their other tools from breaking (or maintain a compatible compiler and library, or maintain branches of those projects modified to be built against a different compiler and library).
That might be more trouble than it is worth.
Ever hear of BSD? GNU isn't the only option. OS X/Darwin use the BSD tools. So could Novell.
Yes, Novell could abandon the codebase and customer base they bought for $210,000,000 and start over with BSD.
However, their shareholders might start questioning the decision making processes of their management.
To abandon that kind of investment, and the time and money invested in porting their network apps to linux and start over with BSD might very well cost them more money than Microsoft paid them in the first place.
If the GPL v3 explicitly disallows the kind of contractual arrangement MS and Novell have made, Novell cannot distribute GPL v3 software while the arrangement stands. Novell can continue to ship those tools in their GPL v2 incarnations, but the lack of improvements to that version will quickly make them divergent and damage interoperability between SuSE and the rest of the open source world. They can fork them and maintain their own branch of GPL v2 code, but the resource requirements to maintain and improve the quantity of tools that will be migrated to GPL v3 will probably make that financially untenable.
You misunderstand Perens' point.
He is saying that the GPL v3 will explicitly disallow the kind of contractual arrangement Novell used to end-run around the GPL v2. When v3 comes out, Novell will have to either abandon the contract, or they will not be able to use code licensed under v3.
Since all of the FSF foundations tools will move to v3, and most of the toolchain for linux is owned by the FSF, Novell will be left behind with old versions of a lot of the software in their distribution. They will have to fork the code base at the point the license changes and maintain v2 implementations of those tools themselves. That will be a lot of work and the Novell versions of the tools will probably end up divergent from the FSF versions of those tools.
This will make SuSE less interoperable with other open source software and less attractive as a platform on which to build your infrastructure.
The problem with that is that then everybody on "TotallyBlog : News for cheerleaders, stuff that's, like, totally Awesome" would be confused. They would be wondering why sony made a stupid commercial showing 10 ps3s sitting on a table displaying a bunch of random letters. Hell, it's not even english.
Maybe they didnt make the ad to target techs because they expect techs to read the specs and want one for the cool technology in it.
Note, I'm not saying the original ad campaign is good. I haven't seen it.
Actually I was thinking more along the lines of how prior to the standardization of railway gauge each independent railway system was allowed to develop it's own system and then charge people to use it, and purposly take their competitiors systems and modify them to stop their compeitior from running trains on their rails. Or if you don't like that example then there's the standaradizaiton of the automobile that was the direct result of unchecked monoploistic tactics. Or the standardzation of Electrical standards (AC DC 110 220, etc), recording standards (Anyone else remember the RCA 45?), TV (we're still fighting over this one), Radio (FM,AM, Direct Transmission... yeah..Tesla was nuts...), Satellite, Internet, Networks, etc, etc...
.NET programer, I don't mind DOCX since I can make my server produce DOC files on the fly in about 3 lines of code. (Extremely difficult on the binary version)
The difference between those examples and Microsoft is that those standards were documented and the other competitors in those markets, when their attempts to press their proprietary formats failed, could implement the winning format and be interoperable. Microsoft actively pursues a policy of changing the format to break compatibility anytime someone tries to be interoperable with them.
but your response was as much hyperbole as my comment was so I'll call it even.
Fair enough.
Eventually every market creates a "winner" and if the courts step in at that point, or better yet, a legislative body steps in and says, "Fight's over, they win, eveyone use their standard." Things work out better in the long run. Unfortunately, in the short run some of these companies have to die off. If the EU is planning on taking the protcols and turning them over to ISO and then asks or forces all developers to use those protocols as the defacto standard then I'm cool with it. But if it's their intention to create an artifically level feild then there's a problem.
The EU is not, and should not, force anyone to implement a standard. Once one standard "wins" everyone will implement it or they will fail. Or they can restart the war by creating a new standard. If the new standard is compellingly better than the old one, it'll take over and everyone will implement that.
In the case of Microsoft, the EU is saying " you cannot create a barrier to entry into the market place by not letting people implement your standards." The reason they cannot do that is because they are a monopoly.
But we're getting off topic lobbing insults back and forth, so lets take a look at the rest of the comments.
heh...you should have seen the stuff i almost wrote and decided was too inflammatory.
Agreed, but.... I mentioned earlier I work with medical software. Currently there are 26 companies competeting for the same market. Because no one has the greatest share of the market (i.e. 25%) they all are still refusing to work together and keep trying to force their standards on unwitting doctors. It's a bad situation all around. What's worse they're ignoring ISO standards and doing their own thing because there is no governing body yet that wil step in.
I can appreciate how much that would suck, but it isnt really equivalent to the case with Microsoft. In Microsoft's case, they are doing things like implementing a proprietary version of LDAP and not following a standard that everyone else in the market does follow. They do it specifically to create a barrier to non-Microsoft applications to facilitate their attempts to leverage their desktop monopoly to increase their server market share. That's illegal and that is the kind of thing the EU ruling is about.
Also MS released a huge explination of DOCX in MSDN, it's pretty much an open format that anyone can use...providing they are running an MS OS or Mimo. Personally, I'd prefer that they force everyone to adopt an open document format, but as a
Well, if it is fully documented, there shouldnt be a
Alright, I'm not going to argue about MS being a monopoly or not, to be honest, I don't care. I don't care because one company setting the standards and everyone complying with it creates an environment of stability in computers.
Sort of like how dictatorships create an environment of stability in countries, right?
Sure, they might abuse their power and kill some people, and the laws they dictate might be unjust, but at least you know what you have to comply with.
Most crashes, problems, and issues I have to diagnose and repair are most often caused by thrid party vendors that wrote software without bothering to read the existing Whitepapers on the subject...which is why this is POINTLESS.
Uh, so? You think nobody on the planet is doing, or wants to do anything outside of the issues you have to diagnose and repair? You seem to have a very myopic view of the world.
They're using legal action to ensure that people can play on a level playing feild. It's sounds liek a good idea, but it's a recipe for chaos in the long term.
Sort of like Democracy, right?
All you end up with is the establishment of new proprietary information from competitors of MS that eventually wil have to be sued to hand the information over as well, and the person who sues them, will use this ruling as the basis for their law suits.
Without monopoly power, a competitor cannot dictate proprietary standards onto the market. Their competitors will create an open, interoperable standard and support it instead and the proprietary vendor will end up marginalized. This has happened plenty of times in the last 30 years. In the absence of monopoly influence, the market tends to correct itself on those things.
If it did happen then, yes, someone would sue and this ruling could be used for the basis of their suit (actually it probably couldn't since i dont think the EU courts use prior cases as precedent in future cases the way the United States court system does). I'm not sure why you brought that up though, because that was just indicate a properly functioning legal system, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Making MS hand over documentation on protocols is pointless, there are white papers that describe eveything important to a real programer, with a single exception, file formats for Office products (Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Visio, etc) The formats used in Office 2007 are completely different....making this a pointless ruling. They've already changed the very protocols they've been told to hand over, and since 2007 isn't out of BETA yet, it technically isn't covered by the ruling.
I think the Samba guys would disagree with ou on that first part. (unless, maybe you don't consider them real programmers?)
I fail to see how the Office 2007 format being different makes the ruling pointless. Do you not think people want interoperability with older file formats? Do you think everyone will immediately switch to Office 2007 and convert their old documents to office 2007 format? History disagrees with that.
Also, how can Office 2007 using a different file format make the ruling pointless if it isn't even out of beta yet? And how do you know the EU isnt requiring them to hand over documentation on the file formats for the beta software also?
Personally I don't think making them turn over anything beyond a table of file format struture is fair to MS or the consumer. LEts say they force MS to turn over documentation about security in Windows (crippled as it already is) you've just given evey hacker a road map!
So far, the only people who have demonstrated a need for a road map for windows security are the security vendors and MS themselves. The hackers seem to be doing just fine without one.
Besides, if looking at this documentation will make it so easy for the hackers to abuse windows, shouldn't it also make it easy for MS to find those holes and fix them? Are the hackers that much better than the "real" programmers at M
Immediately release a statement that they are horrified that they are being pressured to make copyrighted works public or else face fines.
Issue a statement that they are horrified that the organisation that creates the artificial restriction on everyone else's behaviour is pressuring them to abide by the rules they created for when they are willing to allow people to exercise their fabricated exclusive use right?
How? The EU would shit their pants if Microsoft pulled Windows from the market. They could not function without it. Try doing a multi country conversion to Linux without disrupting business, it can't happen. They would come crawling back with their tail tucked.
No, the EU would void all of Microsoft's "intellectual property", ban them from operating in the EU, and it would be perfectly legal for anyone to use, modify, or deconstruct their products.
This would also encourage all organizations in Europe to migrate away from Microsoft products. That would destroy Microsoft's monopoly on operating systems and on office suites. Once their monopolies are gone, Microsoft will die worldwide.
Microsoft is a corporation. Their existance as an entity and the protection of their products under the law are at the sufferance of the government under which they are operating.
Microsoft needs the EU government a hell of a lot more than the EU needs Microsoft.
No, you can't, not if the libraries are GPLed. If you don't accept the Sun commercial license and only accept the GPL, you can't use non-GPLed code with the Java libraries. The FSF has made it pretty clear that linking with a GPLed library requires GPLed code. You can't link a non-GPLed program with GPLed libraries, even as an end-user. It's not legal.
considering that the GPL is a distribution license and not a use license, i fail to see how it would have any effect at all on linking with non-GPL code by an end user. As long as you are not distributing it, the GPL places no additional conditions on your use of the software.
So, if the libraries are GPLed, that means that only GPLed Java code may be run on the GPLed version of Java. All other licenses would be forbidden, thanks to the viral properites of the GPL.
ok....you used the viral angle. Are you trolling, or do you just not have any idea what you are talking about?
Sounds like Apple has you locked in by virtue of dominant market share, the same thing you guys blast MS for.
There are some very large differences. The iPod doesnt have a monopoly share of the market. Also, Apple doesn't control the distribution channels for portable music players and cannot create artificial barriers to entry for competing products. Apple also does not control the 3rd party devices market. There is nothing (except maybe technological limitations) keeping them from making devices available to any other mp3 player.
The grand parent post is not "locked in" to the iPod, he is just happy with his product and the support it gets from 3rd parties.
This is not even close to the things Microsoft is blasted for.
also, the purpose of the actual survey was to determine the likelyhood of individuals purchasing the zune. the research project is even titled "Microsoft Zune"...so it stands to reason that they are shown pictures and a description of the product they are being asked about.
I don't think the survey is necessarily bad at describing what kind of interest there will be in the zune when it comes out, but i do think it isnt a good survey for determining brand loyalty among ipod owners.
Without purchasing the report, we don't know what their actual sample size was. (we do know they started with 1725 people but the survey is about people planning to purchase a new mp3 player within the next year and all we know about that sample is that it is smaller than 1725).
We also don't know what portion of that sample size were ipod owners.
Is the portion that were ipod owners representative of all ipod owners? Was it a big enough block of people that you can reliably draw conclusions about the ipod owning population as a whole?
since the purpose of the survey was not to determine brand loyalty among ipod owners, and it wasnt designed to generate data about brand loyalty among ipod owners, i suspect that it isnt reliable for drawing those conclusions.
But it you want to talk about misinterpreting statements, talk to the GP poster.
.... where, exactly?
... it just starts to look too odd to be incompetence (although there's healthy doses of that, too).
i agree that the GP poster shouldn't do it either. Doing so undermines his argument also.
re: the election profiling comment, i intended it as a joke. i just thought that thinking of it as election profiling was kind of funny.
And I wrote that I was 100% certain fraud had occurred
Well, you asserted that those things were evidence of fraud. Evidence is proof of an action occuring in a specific way. You cannot have evidence of fraud without a fraud occurring.
In short, it is essentially impossible for a manual recount to occur, and when it does it will leave well over 98% of the ballots unexamined. I'd say that's a pretty good attempt at banning manual recounts.
I may be wrong about this, but I believe those rules have been in place since before the 2000 election. I expect the intent behind the rules is to make it easier and faster to do recounts by only dealing with the ballots that are in dispute, but I agree that the implementation does not appear to be a very good one. I don't think the specific intent was to make it impossible to do manual recounts, it's just a poorly designed process.
Until, of course, the state-level decision was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court, allowing the paperless systems to go un-audited and un-examined in the event of a contested and close election.
that is not what the 11th Circuit Court did. Originally, the district court dismissed the claims because Congressman Wexler had file the case in State court as well and the District court deferred to the State court case. This case was resurrected and ultimately the 11th Circuit court said the state's need to be able to do a recount was more important than the need for the recount process to be identical across different types of machines and that the differences in the mechanics did not necessitate a violation of due process and equal protection with regard to the voters.
It didnt say paperless systems can go unaudited or unexamined. Doing so would be a violation of state law in Florida. What it did say was that the recount procedure for a paperless system doesnt have to be the same recount procedure as that for an optical scan system.
As far as I know (and i dont have time to try to find out because i'm at work), the state case could still determine that the paperless systems violate state law.
From the description of what the recount system is for the paperless systems, and what the law in Florida requires, I think it has a decent shot of succeeding. I'm not a lawyer or judge, though, so my opinion is probably not informed enough to be relied upon.
I'd like to believe that, but it's getting harder and harder the more obstacles that Florida throws in the way of verified voting. Given their repeated rejection of ballot-marking devices for the disabled to actually taking citizens to court for attempting to get a voter-verified paper ballot resolution passed in Sarasota
I'm still hesitant to take that as a conspiracy. I've seen too many situations where people make bad decisions and then go far out of their way covering it up, just to avoid admitting to a mistake. This looks to me like more of the same. The incompetent people are deathly afraid someone will discover their incompetence and fight anything that might threaten their positions.
That isnt to say that it's not a bad situation. I absolutely agree that things need to change and people need to be fired, but they need to be fired for beind idiots, not for being part of a vast right wing conspiracy.
by the way, i appreciate that your response was reasoned. it's nice, especially on slashdot, to see that people can still have a reasoned disagreement without it devolving into name calling and character assassination. Now if we could only replicate that in the campaign process, we might be able to find a decent candidate.
oh yeah now i get it: the harder it is to vote, the simpler it is to cheat!
It has nothing to do with how hard voting is. Voting on a paper ballot isnt any more difficult than voting on an electronic machine. (even with a butterfly ballot. I saw the ballot layout that everyone was complaining about and if they couldn't figure that ballot out, they must have suffered some head trauma as a child)
The harder it is to count the votes, the simpler it is to cheat.
Unfortunately, the harder it is to manually verify the automatic count, the easier it is to cheat too.
What someone needs to do is implement a system that records and stores the individual votes, writes an audit trail, does several automated counts (and shows all the results to the reviewer so they can see if there is a counting problem), and prints a receipt for the voter to keep.
And by "thousands" you mean "about eight"? From TFA:
The Kansas City Election Board told KMBC they found suspicious forms, such as seven applications from one person and an application for a dead man.
The use of the phrase "such as" means "here are a couple examples", not "this is all we've found"
If i say the employee database at work has employee names in it, such as "bob johnson" and "larry anderson"; that doesn't mean there are only two names in the database.
you undermine your own argument when you misinterpret statements like that.
Oh, I don't know. Means, motive, and opportunity, perhaps?
None of those are evidence. It's a good way to determine who to look at when you suspect a crime has been committed, but it isn't evidence.
Results that just don't add up?
Still not evidence, but a good reason to look for some evidence of election tampering.
An unfortunate history of election fraud in certain parts of the South? (this coming from someone born and raised in Virginia)
election profiling?
I agree that if an area has a history of problems with elections, I'd probably want to institute things like a mandatory recount in those areas so that you verify the accuracy of the results, but a history of illegal behaviour isnt itself evidence of criminal activity.
Grounds, at the very least, to count the paper ballots
Absolutely.
(the practive of which Florida attempted to ban somewhat recently)?
I read your article and Florida did not attempt to ban counting the paper ballots.
The Florida election board made a rule saying that there would be no recounts in districts using paperless voting systems because there were no ballots to count in a recount. Districts that used systems that produced paper ballots would still be subject to recounts.
That rule was thrown out by the Florida court as a violation of state law that requires a manual recount be possible and required the paperless systems to produce some way for a recount to be possible.
So basically, the election board did something stupid while trying to solve a problem with the paperless system and the state courts slapped them for it and told them they have to make the system accomodate the law, not the other way around.
Personally, the fact that the system doesn't conform to state election law requirements seems like a big reason a sane person wouldn't purchase them in the first place. However, seeing some of the ridiculous purchasing decisions that get made in the company i work for (and others), i believe this was done through incompetence and lazyness and not part of a malicious agenda.
a correction to my post:
the Florida balloting in 2000 was done with electronic voting machines (at least in some districts) that produced paper ballots that were then counted. They are not paperless electronic voting machines.
The question in the post i was responding to is an important question to ask about paperless electronic voting machines, but isn't an issue on one where a paper ballot is produced.
I should have been more specific than just "electronic voting machines" in my previous comment and apologise for any confusion that may have caused.
With an electronic voting machine, how do you tell the difference between a 'ballot' that the user screwed up and a ballot where the machine secretly overrode the user's vote?
that's a good question and a good reason for electronic voting machines to be required to produce a paper record of the vote.
However, they are talking about the 2000 presidental election and Florida. Since the balloting in Florida was done on paper and not with electronic voting machines, your question is not relevent to the discussion in this thread.
I would like to point out that a paper trail for electronic voting still wont stop the accusations of cheating though. These kinds of accusations have been going on since before electronic computers were invented, and in the 2000 election accusations of voting fraud in places that used paper ballots were just as prevalent as accusations of fraud are in the last election.
In my opinion, both sides are unrepentantly corrupt and many (especialy Diebold) voting machine makers are incompetent, greedy and corrupt. We should throw them all out and start over.