The real questions are: "Are we all fucked if global warming continues?" and "Can we do anything about it?"
And the quick answer is, no, we're not *all* fucked. Unfortunately, there is the very likely probability that *most* of us are fucked.
I think we can all see the correlation between the increase in the usage of "fossil" fuels beginning in th 19th Century and the massive rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (not to mention waste heat, which is my favorite part of the equation) during the same time period. Now, if we assume, as is the current consensus, that there is not only a correlation but a causation involved, then we have to answer another set of questions. How much will it cause the climate to change (and in which direction)? What if we really do (effectively) run out of oil? Do we still need to worry? Even if all this leads to rising oceans and massive diruptions in societies, etc., how many people are really going to die off before the shit stops flinging out of the fan?
And as far as meteors are concerned, what if 2004MN4 really does hit us in 2036? We can't even predict the orbit of this thing reliably past it's near-miss in 2029.
Seriously? You posted this on Slashdot? Come on, don't you know *anything* about technology?
Do you really think there aren't quite a lot of people out there that could build communications systems that the government would have a lot of difficult interfering with?
I have only this to say to everyone in the world who dislikes the current state of affairs in the United States of America--if you are a US Citizen, VOTE. If you are not a US Citizen, you are more than welcome (notwithstanding the current immigration regulations) to become one and VOTE.
As for myself, you will find me organizing the Third Constitutional Convention, or at least attempting to do so, peacefully.
Soap box, ballot box, ammo box. In that order. Be sure to read my.sig.
Yes, well, it's exactly this sort of thinking that leads to the rampant incivility in our society that enables people to objectify each other, and thus treat them inhumanely.
Wouldn't it be better if we all had to be a little bit more careful about what we say to each other?
That's a great idea! We should also make it a digital format, so it can be copied an unlimited number of times without any signal degradation! Imagine the possibilities!
480x272 (the size of the PSP screen, and the size of many movie trailers on Apple's site) would seem to be the way to go. OF course, the difficulty is then making the device usable by left-handed people, or people who just want the controls on the left, while still making the device small enough to fit in a pocket. Now, Microsoft's control design actually suffers from fewer necessary compromises than the iPod's click wheel for this purpose, so I think the next round of updates to the iPod and Zune designs should be interesting to see.
I am certainly an Apple fanboy, but I have to say that Apple *needs* some competition in this arena, if just to keep them relatively honest.
But, since you can absolutely import any video you wish (including, say, ripped DVDs) into iTunes
As yet, I have not seen anything telling us definitively whether or not we will be able to rip copys of previously purchased DVD's for playback on an iPod. Should this capability exist, *then* I'll get excited. As it is, I can't see paying 10-15USD for a movie that's less quality than a current DVD.
After all, as SJ has been telling us all for years, why would anyone want to watch a movie on a 2" screen?
Give me full DVD quality and full 5.1 sound at that price (along with the requisite output capability from the iPod), and now you're on to something.
I am not an RF engineer, but I do at least hold an Amateur General Class license and I am an enterprise computer networking specialist, so I have at least *some* idea of what would be involved in a massive redesign and upgrade of the nation's public service communications infrastructure.
So, when I see your quote:
The only sure way is a huge forklift style upgrade of just about everyone's comms systems. BTW, adding geographical redundancy is a huge cost to all those groups, so get ready mr. and mrs. taxpayer... its a huge cost.
I can only think that we could have gone a long way toward accomplishing that huge forklift upgrade had we not wasted several trillion dollars (and still counting) on an entirely pointless war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan that nearly five years on has yielded little to nothing in the way of positive results.
[quote]If he had had a phone, it would have taken no more than 90 seconds to find him, I'd bet. He had no idea that we'd misplaced him, or that he was being searched for, until after we found him, of course.[/quote]
This sounds exactly like me, as a child...getting "lost" by getting interested in something while my family continues on.
That said, perhaps an even better idea would be to use inexpensive 2-way FRS or GMRS radios, or even helping your children study for and pass the Amateur Technician license so you can use even better Amateur radios. BTW, nine years old isn't too young for that--there are numerous examples of sub-ten-year-old Amateur Extra Class licensees.
With real radios, your kids learn something, and you don't get trapped into an outrageously expensive "service" contract and outrageously expensive, nearly instantly obsolete handsets. Very few children actually have a need to access the entire telephone system, let alone have need to access everything your average cell phone can get to (Internet, cameras, portable music, etc.)
Garmin even has FRS radios with GPS built-in that can transmit coordinates to another operator. You could do the same thing with a Kenwood TH-D7A and an external GPS, but it's a bit bulkier and more complex.
73 de KC2OOS (and ZA-WPWN327)
Apple LaserWriter 16/600PS and any equivalent HP
on
Affordable Laser Printers?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You should be looking at older, used, well-made laser printers. I've been fairly content with a succession of Apple LaserWriter II's and 16/600PS's, both of which use the same Canon engines that were used in the same-era hp printers (LJ3=LWII, LJ4=Apple LWPro 630 & 16/600PS). I think the 16/600PS is a fantastic printer, because it has Real PostScript, Ethernet (though this requires an AAUI adapter), a parallel port, a serial port, a SCSI port and supports AppleTalk and LPR (though this requires that you load the "UNIX printing" software for Windows (or whatever MS calls it, I forget) for it to work properly with Windows machines. Plus, those older engines were built like tanks the LaserWriter II engine (only 300 dpi) is rated for 250,000 pages before major service is required.
Also look for HP LJ4's and LJ5's, especially if you can manage it, an HP LJ5SiMx or Nx series (though these are probably still out of your price range, they are a good investment).
All of these printers have easily available parts and will probably last longer than anything you could buy new for even two or three times the price.
I feel sorry for the guy who accidentally erased the array, and equally sorry for the people whose data was lost, but these things will happen. Just a couple of months ago, I myself had to dig through a few years worth of backups, because when I transferred abpout 100GB of files from one array to another under Mac OS X Server, I forgot to use the "ditto -rsrc" command, rather than "cp -Rp". Oops. All of the metadata for the files was lost. Not an unrecoverable situation, but it still cost me thousands of dollars in unbillable hours to correct the problem. You can be sure I won't be making the same mistake again, as I am sure the person who fracked the PlusNet system will more than likely never make an equivalent error.
It just goes to show, for PlusNet's customers, that electronic systems cannot be fully trusted, even when and if multiple instances of the data exist. We can approach an approximation of 100% reliability, but we can't ever fully eliminate the possibility of data loss, especially when human error is involved.
Another time in an incident that is mostly unrelated to the topic at hand but makes for a good story, I had a customer who lost their array in a PC server. The machine had an array of full height HDDs that would get so hot within five minutes of power up that you couldn't touch them without gloves. To top it off, the tape drive mechanism that was supposedly backing up the system was sitting directly above the arrary, with a backup job that had been running over and over nightly on the same cartridge for over two years (so you can be certain the tape was useless).
It took about three weeks, but I was eventually able to recover all the data on the array (so far as we were able to determine at the time).
On the face of it, the article you reference is interesting...but what I find even more interesting is that none of the quotes in the article attributed to Jefferson contain the word "democracy". To the contrary, the word "republicanism" appears in the first clause of the first quote. Jefferson was fond of using constructions such as "the voice of the majority", but in the referenced quotes, no mention is made as to what the greater whole comprises. Assuming that the inclusion of the republican ideal prevails, one must assume that the "majority" is a majority of republican representatives, not of the people as a whole (which would indeed be democratic, ne?).
I'm curious as to your nationality, since you seem to describe a Commonwealth (which recognizes Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state) country outside of the United Kingdom (as the UK has no "firm" constitution).
But to more directly answer your question, no, you do not live in a "constitutional republic" if you have representatives which are not either elected or appointed by elected representatives.
I don't mean to turn this into a flame war of any sort, but you seem to possess an amazing amount of confidence in your ability to predict all possible forms of tampering, despite the fact that it doesn't take even a person of moderate intelligence to find ways to break the system.
For instance, your claim that the voting machines have no possible foreknowledge of the future candidates is easily countered by the fact that, particularly in Presidential elections, the candidates are indeed known well in advance to those who are responsible for the operating program, among others.
Yes, I expect each individual machine *does* keep separate track of it's received votes; however, without a fully-capable externalized audit trail, it is quite easy to falsify all records contained by every individual machine, no matter how many copies are kept or in how many different forms. In any case, individual machine audit capability is only relevant if someone *actually audits the election*.
It is nice that the TSx machines have the *option* of a voter verifiable ballot, but as I agreed with you, this is more of a process issue than a technology issue. Voter verifiable ballots should be a *requirement* of the process, not an option, and as such, the technology would necessarily follow. I've put a whole lot more thought into this issue than might be indicated by my previous post, which was intended to only be a brief outline of one possible method of attack, as I declaimed. If my "some thought" remark caused offense, then perhaps you might think more. Election security is much more important than one man's pride.
I would also point out that in previous elections, particularly the 2004 and 2000 federal elections, the preponderance of incidents of intrusion into the election systems, which in the past have certainly had *no* auditable facilites and have *been demonstrated* to have remote access capability, only furthers the notion that there are grave vulnerabilities in the systems we have trusted to ensure the vitality of our republic. Let us hope that the systems you have worked on serve us better in the future than past systems have done.
You seem to have put at least *some* thought into the issue, but I can easily envision scenarios by which the points you made in your post would be effectively irrelevant. I will present one such scenario, briefly, here.
First of all, I would would like to say, as an aside, that the United States of America is not, and has never been, a "democracy". It is, in fact, a federal republic. Although this idea may seem to many to somewhat irrelevant to the topic of election fraud, it is relevant in that the federal system, in and of itself, provides easy paths to successful tampering of election results, particularly for the Republican/Conservative faction. The fact that the country has long been divided between relatively conservative rural districts/states, and relatively liberal urban areas is a side effect of the federal system that reinforces this possibility. Also of note is the electoral college, which ensures vastly greater proportional representation for those rural constituencies.
The mechanism I will describe *could* be used by either Party, but the real makeup of the country makes this mechanism far more effective in practice for the GOP.
Now, your assertion that election results, if tampered with, would need to effective mirror the actual voter turnout is not particularly relevant. The actual total number of votes cast is not in question--what *is* in question is the content of the individual votes, themselves.
Say, for example, I was a Republican sympathizer in the last two US Presidential elections, and I had a desire to attempt to tamper with the reported results in order to ensure victory for my Party. What I would do is not to attempt to disenfranchise liberal/Democratic voters in urban areas, but boost the tabulation of conservative/Republican votes in rural districts. Remember that by changing one vote, the effect in the tabulation is effectively doubled, assuming the total number of votes cast does not change. It is highly likely that in a district that has traditionally heavily favored Republican candidates, a slight reduction of Democratic votes and corresponding slight increase in Republican votes will go entirely unnoticed, especially in an environment where extreme partisanism has resulted in somewhat increased turnout for the Republican faction.
Given that there are many more rural conservative districts than liberal urban districts, such a slight change would be compounded by that number of districts where it would be possible to effect that change such that the overall results for any particular state could be changed dramatically. This mechanism would also be most effective in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, where the balance, in terms of overall numbers of voters on either side of the aisle is close. Such an effect could easily swing one of these states to one side or the other. Although Ohio received the bulk of the scrutiny in the 2004 election, it is worth mentioning that Pennsylvania was decided by a smaller margin than Ohio.
The election machines used thus far have no *voter verifiable* paper trail, even, as far as I have been able to determine, the TSx series. A paper trail seems to be kept with these machines, but as it is not voter verifiable, it is as easily modified as the results stored in memory. Again, the actual number of changed votes in any particular district could and probably would, be statistically small in relation to the overall number of votes cast.
Even an incompetent programmer would have no trouble writing a routine to accomplish such an end, and the only point of intrusion required is before the point of delivery of the machines to the local election commission. Of course, as we have seen in past elections, the possible points of intrusion are many and varied.
I do agree with you, however, that it is the process that is mostly at fault, rather than the individual technologies.
This is a typical fallacy that many people seem to believe. The power required to drive a vehicle faster increases with the cube of velocity. There's no way to break the laws of physics.
You will generally find the mileage peak of any particular vehicle at the slowest engine speed which is capable of maintaining forward velocity in its highest transmission configuration. For most cars these days, you will find that that point generally exists somewhere in the 40-50 MPH range. As an example, say 1800 RPM in 5th gear for a typical small-ish (say, sub 3000cc) engine.
Heh. Just make sure that the cooler is left open, so that it doesn't explode. I say this, because my own cooler has a metal latch that is quite strong (Coleman stainless teel model). Now, it may still allow enough CO2 to escape to prevent a big POP!, but I have no desire to experiment with my expensive cooler...
It a little more complicated than that. The only reason the concept of "judicial review" wasn't codified in the Constitution is that the Framers, in a rare case of a complete lack of foresight, felt that the concept was so obvious as to not require codification. The writings of the Framers at the time make this patently obvious. Marbury v. Madison didn't establish judicial review, per se, it merely formalized it as part of case law, much to the consternation of future legislators. Without judicial review, a primary check on the power of the legislature ceases to exist.
Now if only we could fix the misapplication of the "Commerce Clause", and make the SCOTUS understand that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments can't just be conveniently forgotten whenever they feel like it, we might have the makings of a modern society...
I have to say that while I understand your resoning here, I entirely disagree with your conclusions.
"Public use" means just that--public use. In the cited case, I believe it to be improper for any governmental agency to take private property for the purposes described. Whether or not "Party B" is "unknown" or "unspecified", the fact remains that the whole point was that the government took property with the intention of disposing of it in such a fashion as to enrich a private entity. This is not, in my opinion, a proper function of gevernment, nor is it in any waya proper method for any governmental agency to provide economic stimulus, that is to say, at the expense of another private entity. We already have mechanisms in place by which private property can be sold at true market value to other private entities interested in that property. We call these mechanisms "the real estate market".
If it is truly in the public interest to spur development in a particular area, a more proper way to handle the situation would be for the government to declare an "economic development zone" and provide suitable incentives for those who desire to develop that zone to purchase the property in question on the open market at the going market value.
Expected is a wide screen iPod with touchscreen access.
This kind of system will require a significantly different UI structure. For instance, gone will be the touch wheel and buttons, instead some integrated touch screen UI is be required to navigate and browse music and movies on the new iPod...
I may be stepping out on a limb here, but I'm guessing you haven't actually thought this idea through. The idea of an iPod with a touch screen seems appealing on the surface, but anything more than a cursory consideration of the ergonomic factors involved points toward the conclusion that it's nothing more than a pipe dream.
The iPod is successful not because it is complex, but because it is simple. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who fail to grasp this concept, even after nearly five years of insanely great iPod sales.
Well, as an American of partial German descent, and a big fan of VW and Audi, there are a few things that must be said.
First of all, VAG does not manufacture automobiles in the US, and has not done so for about a decade. Second of all, while GM *did* in fact have fuel injection in the 1957 283 small block V8, Mercedes-Benz had it two years earlier in the 300SL. Neither example, however, qualifies as the first fuel injection system, though it may be that the M-B system was the first in a production car.
Yes, Audi's quattro was the first mass-produced AWD car. However, it should be noted that Audi switched to the American-designed Gleason Torsen center differential in the second gen quattro system, and has continued to use that far-superior system to this day. Also, the "other" quattro system is the Swedish-designed Haldex system, which is also *not* German.
ABS? While Bosch may have popularized the idea for passenger vehicles, the system was originally developed for aircraft by Dunlop, another non-German company.
Slashdot Mirror
Google returns zero results for that query.
And the quick answer is, no, we're not *all* fucked. Unfortunately, there is the very likely probability that *most* of us are fucked.
I think we can all see the correlation between the increase in the usage of "fossil" fuels beginning in th 19th Century and the massive rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (not to mention waste heat, which is my favorite part of the equation) during the same time period. Now, if we assume, as is the current consensus, that there is not only a correlation but a causation involved, then we have to answer another set of questions. How much will it cause the climate to change (and in which direction)? What if we really do (effectively) run out of oil? Do we still need to worry? Even if all this leads to rising oceans and massive diruptions in societies, etc., how many people are really going to die off before the shit stops flinging out of the fan?
And as far as meteors are concerned, what if 2004MN4 really does hit us in 2036? We can't even predict the orbit of this thing reliably past it's near-miss in 2029.
Seriously? You posted this on Slashdot? Come on, don't you know *anything* about technology?
Do you really think there aren't quite a lot of people out there that could build communications systems that the government would have a lot of difficult interfering with?
No. It does not. Until you understand the true meaning of the Second Amendment, you will not be an effective advocate, either for or against it.
I have only this to say to everyone in the world who dislikes the current state of affairs in the United States of America--if you are a US Citizen, VOTE. If you are not a US Citizen, you are more than welcome (notwithstanding the current immigration regulations) to become one and VOTE.
.sig.
As for myself, you will find me organizing the Third Constitutional Convention, or at least attempting to do so, peacefully.
Soap box, ballot box, ammo box. In that order. Be sure to read my
Yes, well, it's exactly this sort of thinking that leads to the rampant incivility in our society that enables people to objectify each other, and thus treat them inhumanely.
Wouldn't it be better if we all had to be a little bit more careful about what we say to each other?
That's a great idea! We should also make it a digital format, so it can be copied an unlimited number of times without any signal degradation! Imagine the possibilities!
Oh, really? Then explain this...
480x272 (the size of the PSP screen, and the size of many movie trailers on Apple's site) would seem to be the way to go. OF course, the difficulty is then making the device usable by left-handed people, or people who just want the controls on the left, while still making the device small enough to fit in a pocket. Now, Microsoft's control design actually suffers from fewer necessary compromises than the iPod's click wheel for this purpose, so I think the next round of updates to the iPod and Zune designs should be interesting to see.
I am certainly an Apple fanboy, but I have to say that Apple *needs* some competition in this arena, if just to keep them relatively honest.
And I *like* the brown.
As yet, I have not seen anything telling us definitively whether or not we will be able to rip copys of previously purchased DVD's for playback on an iPod. Should this capability exist, *then* I'll get excited. As it is, I can't see paying 10-15USD for a movie that's less quality than a current DVD.
After all, as SJ has been telling us all for years, why would anyone want to watch a movie on a 2" screen?
Give me full DVD quality and full 5.1 sound at that price (along with the requisite output capability from the iPod), and now you're on to something.
I am not an RF engineer, but I do at least hold an Amateur General Class license and I am an enterprise computer networking specialist, so I have at least *some* idea of what would be involved in a massive redesign and upgrade of the nation's public service communications infrastructure.
So, when I see your quote:
The only sure way is a huge forklift style upgrade of just about everyone's comms systems. BTW, adding geographical redundancy is a huge cost to all those groups, so get ready mr. and mrs. taxpayer... its a huge cost.
I can only think that we could have gone a long way toward accomplishing that huge forklift upgrade had we not wasted several trillion dollars (and still counting) on an entirely pointless war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan that nearly five years on has yielded little to nothing in the way of positive results.
[quote]If he had had a phone, it would have taken no more than 90 seconds to find him, I'd bet. He had no idea that we'd misplaced him, or that he was being searched for, until after we found him, of course.[/quote]
This sounds exactly like me, as a child...getting "lost" by getting interested in something while my family continues on.
That said, perhaps an even better idea would be to use inexpensive 2-way FRS or GMRS radios, or even helping your children study for and pass the Amateur Technician license so you can use even better Amateur radios. BTW, nine years old isn't too young for that--there are numerous examples of sub-ten-year-old Amateur Extra Class licensees.
With real radios, your kids learn something, and you don't get trapped into an outrageously expensive "service" contract and outrageously expensive, nearly instantly obsolete handsets. Very few children actually have a need to access the entire telephone system, let alone have need to access everything your average cell phone can get to (Internet, cameras, portable music, etc.)
Garmin even has FRS radios with GPS built-in that can transmit coordinates to another operator. You could do the same thing with a Kenwood TH-D7A and an external GPS, but it's a bit bulkier and more complex.
73 de KC2OOS (and ZA-WPWN327)
You should be looking at older, used, well-made laser printers. I've been fairly content with a succession of Apple LaserWriter II's and 16/600PS's, both of which use the same Canon engines that were used in the same-era hp printers (LJ3=LWII, LJ4=Apple LWPro 630 & 16/600PS). I think the 16/600PS is a fantastic printer, because it has Real PostScript, Ethernet (though this requires an AAUI adapter), a parallel port, a serial port, a SCSI port and supports AppleTalk and LPR (though this requires that you load the "UNIX printing" software for Windows (or whatever MS calls it, I forget) for it to work properly with Windows machines. Plus, those older engines were built like tanks the LaserWriter II engine (only 300 dpi) is rated for 250,000 pages before major service is required.
Also look for HP LJ4's and LJ5's, especially if you can manage it, an HP LJ5SiMx or Nx series (though these are probably still out of your price range, they are a good investment).
All of these printers have easily available parts and will probably last longer than anything you could buy new for even two or three times the price.
I feel sorry for the guy who accidentally erased the array, and equally sorry for the people whose data was lost, but these things will happen. Just a couple of months ago, I myself had to dig through a few years worth of backups, because when I transferred abpout 100GB of files from one array to another under Mac OS X Server, I forgot to use the "ditto -rsrc" command, rather than "cp -Rp". Oops. All of the metadata for the files was lost. Not an unrecoverable situation, but it still cost me thousands of dollars in unbillable hours to correct the problem. You can be sure I won't be making the same mistake again, as I am sure the person who fracked the PlusNet system will more than likely never make an equivalent error.
It just goes to show, for PlusNet's customers, that electronic systems cannot be fully trusted, even when and if multiple instances of the data exist. We can approach an approximation of 100% reliability, but we can't ever fully eliminate the possibility of data loss, especially when human error is involved.
Another time in an incident that is mostly unrelated to the topic at hand but makes for a good story, I had a customer who lost their array in a PC server. The machine had an array of full height HDDs that would get so hot within five minutes of power up that you couldn't touch them without gloves. To top it off, the tape drive mechanism that was supposedly backing up the system was sitting directly above the arrary, with a backup job that had been running over and over nightly on the same cartridge for over two years (so you can be certain the tape was useless).
It took about three weeks, but I was eventually able to recover all the data on the array (so far as we were able to determine at the time).
On the face of it, the article you reference is interesting...but what I find even more interesting is that none of the quotes in the article attributed to Jefferson contain the word "democracy". To the contrary, the word "republicanism" appears in the first clause of the first quote. Jefferson was fond of using constructions such as "the voice of the majority", but in the referenced quotes, no mention is made as to what the greater whole comprises. Assuming that the inclusion of the republican ideal prevails, one must assume that the "majority" is a majority of republican representatives, not of the people as a whole (which would indeed be democratic, ne?).
I'm curious as to your nationality, since you seem to describe a Commonwealth (which recognizes Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state) country outside of the United Kingdom (as the UK has no "firm" constitution).
But to more directly answer your question, no, you do not live in a "constitutional republic" if you have representatives which are not either elected or appointed by elected representatives.
I don't mean to turn this into a flame war of any sort, but you seem to possess an amazing amount of confidence in your ability to predict all possible forms of tampering, despite the fact that it doesn't take even a person of moderate intelligence to find ways to break the system.
For instance, your claim that the voting machines have no possible foreknowledge of the future candidates is easily countered by the fact that, particularly in Presidential elections, the candidates are indeed known well in advance to those who are responsible for the operating program, among others.
Yes, I expect each individual machine *does* keep separate track of it's received votes; however, without a fully-capable externalized audit trail, it is quite easy to falsify all records contained by every individual machine, no matter how many copies are kept or in how many different forms. In any case, individual machine audit capability is only relevant if someone *actually audits the election*.
It is nice that the TSx machines have the *option* of a voter verifiable ballot, but as I agreed with you, this is more of a process issue than a technology issue. Voter verifiable ballots should be a *requirement* of the process, not an option, and as such, the technology would necessarily follow. I've put a whole lot more thought into this issue than might be indicated by my previous post, which was intended to only be a brief outline of one possible method of attack, as I declaimed. If my "some thought" remark caused offense, then perhaps you might think more. Election security is much more important than one man's pride.
I would also point out that in previous elections, particularly the 2004 and 2000 federal elections, the preponderance of incidents of intrusion into the election systems, which in the past have certainly had *no* auditable facilites and have *been demonstrated* to have remote access capability, only furthers the notion that there are grave vulnerabilities in the systems we have trusted to ensure the vitality of our republic. Let us hope that the systems you have worked on serve us better in the future than past systems have done.
You seem to have put at least *some* thought into the issue, but I can easily envision scenarios by which the points you made in your post would be effectively irrelevant. I will present one such scenario, briefly, here.
First of all, I would would like to say, as an aside, that the United States of America is not, and has never been, a "democracy". It is, in fact, a federal republic. Although this idea may seem to many to somewhat irrelevant to the topic of election fraud, it is relevant in that the federal system, in and of itself, provides easy paths to successful tampering of election results, particularly for the Republican/Conservative faction. The fact that the country has long been divided between relatively conservative rural districts/states, and relatively liberal urban areas is a side effect of the federal system that reinforces this possibility. Also of note is the electoral college, which ensures vastly greater proportional representation for those rural constituencies.
The mechanism I will describe *could* be used by either Party, but the real makeup of the country makes this mechanism far more effective in practice for the GOP.
Now, your assertion that election results, if tampered with, would need to effective mirror the actual voter turnout is not particularly relevant. The actual total number of votes cast is not in question--what *is* in question is the content of the individual votes, themselves.
Say, for example, I was a Republican sympathizer in the last two US Presidential elections, and I had a desire to attempt to tamper with the reported results in order to ensure victory for my Party. What I would do is not to attempt to disenfranchise liberal/Democratic voters in urban areas, but boost the tabulation of conservative/Republican votes in rural districts. Remember that by changing one vote, the effect in the tabulation is effectively doubled, assuming the total number of votes cast does not change. It is highly likely that in a district that has traditionally heavily favored Republican candidates, a slight reduction of Democratic votes and corresponding slight increase in Republican votes will go entirely unnoticed, especially in an environment where extreme partisanism has resulted in somewhat increased turnout for the Republican faction.
Given that there are many more rural conservative districts than liberal urban districts, such a slight change would be compounded by that number of districts where it would be possible to effect that change such that the overall results for any particular state could be changed dramatically. This mechanism would also be most effective in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, where the balance, in terms of overall numbers of voters on either side of the aisle is close. Such an effect could easily swing one of these states to one side or the other. Although Ohio received the bulk of the scrutiny in the 2004 election, it is worth mentioning that Pennsylvania was decided by a smaller margin than Ohio.
The election machines used thus far have no *voter verifiable* paper trail, even, as far as I have been able to determine, the TSx series. A paper trail seems to be kept with these machines, but as it is not voter verifiable, it is as easily modified as the results stored in memory. Again, the actual number of changed votes in any particular district could and probably would, be statistically small in relation to the overall number of votes cast.
Even an incompetent programmer would have no trouble writing a routine to accomplish such an end, and the only point of intrusion required is before the point of delivery of the machines to the local election commission. Of course, as we have seen in past elections, the possible points of intrusion are many and varied.
I do agree with you, however, that it is the process that is mostly at fault, rather than the individual technologies.
This is a typical fallacy that many people seem to believe. The power required to drive a vehicle faster increases with the cube of velocity. There's no way to break the laws of physics.
You will generally find the mileage peak of any particular vehicle at the slowest engine speed which is capable of maintaining forward velocity in its highest transmission configuration. For most cars these days, you will find that that point generally exists somewhere in the 40-50 MPH range. As an example, say 1800 RPM in 5th gear for a typical small-ish (say, sub 3000cc) engine.
Not entirely true. Only the first user account is created in the "admin" group by default. All subsequent users are not.
Heh. Just make sure that the cooler is left open, so that it doesn't explode. I say this, because my own cooler has a metal latch that is quite strong (Coleman stainless teel model). Now, it may still allow enough CO2 to escape to prevent a big POP!, but I have no desire to experiment with my expensive cooler...
It a little more complicated than that. The only reason the concept of "judicial review" wasn't codified in the Constitution is that the Framers, in a rare case of a complete lack of foresight, felt that the concept was so obvious as to not require codification. The writings of the Framers at the time make this patently obvious. Marbury v. Madison didn't establish judicial review, per se, it merely formalized it as part of case law, much to the consternation of future legislators. Without judicial review, a primary check on the power of the legislature ceases to exist.
Now if only we could fix the misapplication of the "Commerce Clause", and make the SCOTUS understand that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments can't just be conveniently forgotten whenever they feel like it, we might have the makings of a modern society...
I have to say that while I understand your resoning here, I entirely disagree with your conclusions.
"Public use" means just that--public use. In the cited case, I believe it to be improper for any governmental agency to take private property for the purposes described. Whether or not "Party B" is "unknown" or "unspecified", the fact remains that the whole point was that the government took property with the intention of disposing of it in such a fashion as to enrich a private entity. This is not, in my opinion, a proper function of gevernment, nor is it in any waya proper method for any governmental agency to provide economic stimulus, that is to say, at the expense of another private entity. We already have mechanisms in place by which private property can be sold at true market value to other private entities interested in that property. We call these mechanisms "the real estate market".
If it is truly in the public interest to spur development in a particular area, a more proper way to handle the situation would be for the government to declare an "economic development zone" and provide suitable incentives for those who desire to develop that zone to purchase the property in question on the open market at the going market value.
I may be stepping out on a limb here, but I'm guessing you haven't actually thought this idea through. The idea of an iPod with a touch screen seems appealing on the surface, but anything more than a cursory consideration of the ergonomic factors involved points toward the conclusion that it's nothing more than a pipe dream.
The iPod is successful not because it is complex, but because it is simple. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who fail to grasp this concept, even after nearly five years of insanely great iPod sales.
Well, as an American of partial German descent, and a big fan of VW and Audi, there are a few things that must be said.
First of all, VAG does not manufacture automobiles in the US, and has not done so for about a decade. Second of all, while GM *did* in fact have fuel injection in the 1957 283 small block V8, Mercedes-Benz had it two years earlier in the 300SL. Neither example, however, qualifies as the first fuel injection system, though it may be that the M-B system was the first in a production car.
Yes, Audi's quattro was the first mass-produced AWD car. However, it should be noted that Audi switched to the American-designed Gleason Torsen center differential in the second gen quattro system, and has continued to use that far-superior system to this day. Also, the "other" quattro system is the Swedish-designed Haldex system, which is also *not* German.
ABS? While Bosch may have popularized the idea for passenger vehicles, the system was originally developed for aircraft by Dunlop, another non-German company.