But the things that you can do without an SSN in the US are limited more each day. You cannot vote now without one.
C'est what? I'm in the USA, and I've never heard of an election board asking for a social security number. The county I'm in certainly doesn't require it. I think the only thing I had to do was prove my identity somehow (birth certificate?). Having to register somewhere else, before registering to vote, sounds fishy to me, but I'm no constitutional scholar.
You cannot get a job without one unless you fall into certain very difficult to get into categories (oddly enough, like working for the Congress!).
Again, I'm not a legal scholar, but I think that, generally, the operation of Congress is handled separately from the operation of the rest of the country. For example, if a public law said that employees can't do (X), and a person directly employed by the US Congress did (whatever X is), it wouldn't matter to that person, unless Congress specifically applied that law to their internal operation.
I think I mentioned both of these in a previous Slashdot voting article, but they're important points people need to think about every time this subject comes up.
First: It's important to guarantee that each person is alone when (s)he votes. I know several people who come from families where an overbearing family leader would decide (s)he knows how the family members ought to vote, and either vote in the name of each family member, or demand to see what votes were submitted. I'm sure most of you know someone in that situation too. Do you want that person to have to spend even a moment thinking about whether casting a free vote is more important than "not causing problems" at home? How many people like that do you think there are just in the USA, let alone in all the countries that have free elections? Do you want all those votes to lean in favor of pushy scumbags who assume their opinions are vastly more important than free elections? And that's just what would happen immediately from everyday jerks. People with actual reasons to shove you around would come up with much worse things soon afterwards.
Second: I see some people here claiming they'd vote more often if it wasn't inconvenient. Because of the controlled environment a polling place offers, I think it's still the best place for 99% of citizens to vote. You don't misplace your ballot under your bed. You don't use last year's ballot from under your bed by mistake. You don't have to remember some password to be able to exercise your rights. You don't have to somehow prove that you didn't already vote by some other method. You just appear, prove you're you the same way you would to anyone else, and you get to control your government. It's not that much work, really. Today's the first Tuesday in November. I don't know if there's an election in my town today, but you can be sure I'll drive by my polling place and see if there's a sign. Not to be too rude to the pro-convenience folks, but: Unless you've been seriously injured fighting for freedom, you've probably received more of democracy than it's received of you. If you think that standing around for a few minutes once a year is too much work to collect on your rights, that's fine with me; I usually don't mind getting my way instead of yours.
There's only one subdomain left in arpa, and that's in-addr.arpa. This subdomain provides the information that allows you to backresolve (convert an IP address back to its hostname). All these nameserver records have backwards-looking names, like 40.224.207.209.in-addr.arpa, for the IP address 209.207.224.40. (By the way, that IP doesn't backresolve. Shame on Rob and Andover!)
It's true that this domain is almost never used for forward resolution of hostnames. However:
All Internet service providers are supposed to be maintaining their backresolving in-addr.arpa records, but a lot of them are too dumb and/or too lazy to do it. IMHO, lack of backresolving IP addresses is a sign of a shoddy provider.
You can do forward resolving in arpa, if you think you'd like to have a sexy hostname like fred.224.207.209.in-addr.arpa.
According to RFC 2317, you are now allowed to make your in-addr.arpa entries a CNAME (alias) for an entry somewhere else. We've been using this successfully at my ISP to delegate blocks (smaller than a class C) to our customers. Witness (just using a private block as an example):
Example 1 - You give 10.2.3.248 to 255 to Billy Fred's nameserver: 248.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. NS nameserver1.billyfred.com. 248.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. NS nameserver2.billyfred.com. 249.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 249.248 250.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 250.248 251.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 251.248 252.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 252.248 253.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 253.248 254.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 254.248 A lookup on 10.3.2.253 becomes a lookup for 253.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa., but that is now an alias for 253.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa, which you've pointed to Billy Fred's nameservers. He's handing the domain 248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa with entries like this: 252.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR happybox.billyfred.com. 253.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR sadbox.billyfred.com.
Example 2 - You give Fred Billy Company 10.2.3.0 to 7 using the same concept, but using their own domain: 1.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-1.fredbilly.com. 2.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-2.fredbilly.com. 3.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-3.fredbilly.com. 4.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-4.fredbilly.com. 5.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-5.fredbilly.com. 6.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-6.fredbilly.com. Then, over in fredbilly.com, the owner can put things like this: backresolve-1 PTR fredsbox backresolve-2 PTR elsewhere.friendofbilly.org. backresolve-3 PTR fredsotherbox Then, for example, 10.2.3.3 is a lookup on 3.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa, which is an alias for backresolve-3.fredbilly.com, which tells you that the address is fredsotherbox.fredbilly.com.
Does your brain hurt yet? By the way, I wouldn't pay attention to that stuff in RFC 2317 about slash being a valid character. I know there are at least a few machines near me that hate slashes in subdomain names. My suggestion: Stick using hyphens instead, or just cannibalizethe first address of the IP range, since nobody sane would use the "0" address of a subnet for a real machine anyway.
I think this was hinted at by another reply: Allow moderators (possibly only highly active moderators) to mark reply as "system interference". This would do something horrible to the reply (drop the score 10 points or some such), and send a notice to the Slashdot staff. This would only be for abuse that approaches denial of service; run-of-the-mill flamebait, even nasty flamebait, probably wouldn't qualify. Moderators who "supermoderated" a reply would be warned that this should only be used for blatant system abuse, and using it lightly would bring CmdrTaco's wrath. They could then confirm the moderation, the reply would drop out of circulation, and the staff would be alerted of the abuse. Perhaps, just to make sure that a single moderator doesn't go berzerk, the first supermoderation of a reply would send it to the Slashdot staff, and the second supermoderation of the same reply would cause it to drop 10 points. The moderators don't necessarily need to know that the abusive message is already supermoderated once; 2 moderators are likely to see the abuse fairly quickly and take action. This supermoderation doesn't even need to take away from the moderator's arsenal of normal points, since waking up the Slashdot staff should be enough to keep the generally-responsible moderators in line.
This doesn't address larger moderation issues on Slashdot, but I think that allowing moderators to let loose quickly on system abuse would take the wind out of the worst problem, without requiring the Slashdot staff to have to comb through all the replies.
That is a nice argument, however it dies in the face on one small, inescapable fact: Copyright is Good.
Eh-- this probably isn't worth mentioning anymore, but I will anyway: there's a differece between fact and opinion. "Copyright is Good" is an opinion. Just about any statement labeling something as "good" or "bad" is an opinion. Opinions are not facts, even if nobody has a different opinion.
I see three major problems with Internet-based voting:
Lack of independence. Ever had a friend whose dad thinks nobody else should use the computer without permission? I've had several friends with parents like that. Left to his own devices, that jerk is going to vote for everyone in the house, because he thinks he speaks for his whole family. He might even go so far as to demand the passphrases or software keys from family members for "safekeeping". Laws wouldn't stop people like that; they have psychological influence in the household. Private voting from home would basically hand over a large portion of votes to the most overbearing family member in each household. (You can claim that savvy Slashdotters will more that counterbalance the political effect of jerks like that, but you'd be missing the point, which is that you've caused a lot of people to give up their right to vote.)
Lack of responsibility. At this point, I think a lot of people haven't quite attached computers with reality in their minds yet. No matter what you tell them, they'll think it's a test ballot, or they'll get it in their heads that they need to go out and vote to "make sure". They'll vote electronically, then they'll go to the polls and vote again, and then that night, there will be 2 votes for that person, and then what? Also, I could see a kid getting access to the adults' election materials, thinking it's a game, and making arbitrary votes. Little Melinda just voted for Dan Quayle 'cause he's a hottie!
Lack of security. It's hard to miss a security breech when you're watching each person as they file in and out of a booth, then carrying a bunch of ballots to a computer on a closed network and watching the numbers build. A lot of Slashdotters have been in tech support, so I'll pose this question: How many of your users have absolutely stupid self-assigned passwords? How many of your users can't remember their sysadmin-assigned passwords? Then ask yourself which you like more: your dear, sweet mother choosing a password she can remember, then losing her vote to some sKr1pT k1dDi3; or your mother not being able to vote at all because she was issued a string of letters that doesn't look like any word she's ever seen in her life, and she can't remember where she put the registration card or software certificate disk for safekeeping, and maybe some sKr1Pt k1Dd1e has gotten a list of all the passwords anyway.
Occasional accusations of vote fraud notwithstanding, nearly all countries with widespread Internet access also have a high amount of integrity in their elections. I think the process of having the vast majority of voters physically appear before appointed observers, then cast their votes in booths guaranteed to be private and isolated from all influence, then submitting the ballot anonymously into an isolated counting system, is still how elections should be done. Voting without physical oversight, whether it's electronically or any other way, seems like a very bad idea to me, unless it's in a country where physically appearing at the polls is dangerous.
And one last rant, for people who think all this should be completely overlooked for the sake of speed: Millions of people have gotten maimed and killed so you could go play golf and perform your supposedly important work, instead of rotting in a jail cell with a gun at your head and some sort of disease that makes you bleed through all the holes in your body for 50 years straight. If you're busy helping third world countries or tending to medical patients on election day, I'm sure you can get an absentee ballot. Otherwise, see if you can pull yourself away from your oh-so-vital duties for 20 minutes every year or two. Or, better yet, don't.
I still haven't decided how lazy I should be about this: On 23 February, I sent in a domain modification to change one of my nameservers from a deceased machine to a new machine that had agreed to be secondary. This was switching a nameserver, not editing the existing nameserver entry. I know this should work because I actually used the text file from the LAST time I changed a nameserver.
InterNIC sends me back a reply saying that if I want to change ISPs, I have to use the enclosed template. The template they tack to the end is domain-template.txt version 4.0 - the exact template I sent them in the first place!
Slashdot Mirror
C'est what? I'm in the USA, and I've never heard of an election board asking for a social security number. The county I'm in certainly doesn't require it. I think the only thing I had to do was prove my identity somehow (birth certificate?). Having to register somewhere else, before registering to vote, sounds fishy to me, but I'm no constitutional scholar.
Again, I'm not a legal scholar, but I think that, generally, the operation of Congress is handled separately from the operation of the rest of the country. For example, if a public law said that employees can't do (X), and a person directly employed by the US Congress did (whatever X is), it wouldn't matter to that person, unless Congress specifically applied that law to their internal operation.
I think I mentioned both of these in a previous Slashdot voting article, but they're important points people need to think about every time this subject comes up.
First: It's important to guarantee that each person is alone when (s)he votes. I know several people who come from families where an overbearing family leader would decide (s)he knows how the family members ought to vote, and either vote in the name of each family member, or demand to see what votes were submitted. I'm sure most of you know someone in that situation too. Do you want that person to have to spend even a moment thinking about whether casting a free vote is more important than "not causing problems" at home? How many people like that do you think there are just in the USA, let alone in all the countries that have free elections? Do you want all those votes to lean in favor of pushy scumbags who assume their opinions are vastly more important than free elections? And that's just what would happen immediately from everyday jerks. People with actual reasons to shove you around would come up with much worse things soon afterwards.
Second: I see some people here claiming they'd vote more often if it wasn't inconvenient. Because of the controlled environment a polling place offers, I think it's still the best place for 99% of citizens to vote. You don't misplace your ballot under your bed. You don't use last year's ballot from under your bed by mistake. You don't have to remember some password to be able to exercise your rights. You don't have to somehow prove that you didn't already vote by some other method. You just appear, prove you're you the same way you would to anyone else, and you get to control your government. It's not that much work, really. Today's the first Tuesday in November. I don't know if there's an election in my town today, but you can be sure I'll drive by my polling place and see if there's a sign. Not to be too rude to the pro-convenience folks, but: Unless you've been seriously injured fighting for freedom, you've probably received more of democracy than it's received of you. If you think that standing around for a few minutes once a year is too much work to collect on your rights, that's fine with me; I usually don't mind getting my way instead of yours.
There's only one subdomain left in arpa, and that's in-addr.arpa. This subdomain provides the information that allows you to backresolve (convert an IP address back to its hostname). All these nameserver records have backwards-looking names, like 40.224.207.209.in-addr.arpa, for the IP address 209.207.224.40. (By the way, that IP doesn't backresolve. Shame on Rob and Andover!)
It's true that this domain is almost never used for forward resolution of hostnames. However:
248.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. NS nameserver1.billyfred.com.
248.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. NS nameserver2.billyfred.com.
249.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 249.248
250.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 250.248
251.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 251.248
252.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 252.248
253.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 253.248
254.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 254.248 A lookup on 10.3.2.253 becomes a lookup for 253.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa., but that is now an alias for 253.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa, which you've pointed to Billy Fred's nameservers. He's handing the domain 248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa with entries like this:
252.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR happybox.billyfred.com.
253.248.2.3.10.in-addr.arpa. PTR sadbox.billyfred.com.
1.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-1.fredbilly.com.
2.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-2.fredbilly.com.
3.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-3.fredbilly.com.
4.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-4.fredbilly.com.
5.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-5.fredbilly.com.
6.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa. CNAME backresolve-6.fredbilly.com. Then, over in fredbilly.com, the owner can put things like this:
backresolve-1 PTR fredsbox
backresolve-2 PTR elsewhere.friendofbilly.org.
backresolve-3 PTR fredsotherbox Then, for example, 10.2.3.3 is a lookup on 3.3.2.10.in-addr.arpa, which is an alias for backresolve-3.fredbilly.com, which tells you that the address is fredsotherbox.fredbilly.com.
Does your brain hurt yet? By the way, I wouldn't pay attention to that stuff in RFC 2317 about slash being a valid character. I know there are at least a few machines near me that hate slashes in subdomain names. My suggestion: Stick using hyphens instead, or just cannibalizethe first address of the IP range, since nobody sane would use the "0" address of a subnet for a real machine anyway.
s/\/\./\.\// -- er, yeah, something like that. Oops.
I think this was hinted at by another reply: Allow moderators (possibly only highly active moderators) to mark reply as "system interference". This would do something horrible to the reply (drop the score 10 points or some such), and send a notice to the Slashdot staff. This would only be for abuse that approaches denial of service; run-of-the-mill flamebait, even nasty flamebait, probably wouldn't qualify. Moderators who "supermoderated" a reply would be warned that this should only be used for blatant system abuse, and using it lightly would bring CmdrTaco's wrath. They could then confirm the moderation, the reply would drop out of circulation, and the staff would be alerted of the abuse. Perhaps, just to make sure that a single moderator doesn't go berzerk, the first supermoderation of a reply would send it to the Slashdot staff, and the second supermoderation of the same reply would cause it to drop 10 points. The moderators don't necessarily need to know that the abusive message is already supermoderated once; 2 moderators are likely to see the abuse fairly quickly and take action. This supermoderation doesn't even need to take away from the moderator's arsenal of normal points, since waking up the Slashdot staff should be enough to keep the generally-responsible moderators in line.
This doesn't address larger moderation issues on Slashdot, but I think that allowing moderators to let loose quickly on system abuse would take the wind out of the worst problem, without requiring the Slashdot staff to have to comb through all the replies.
Eh-- this probably isn't worth mentioning anymore, but I will anyway: there's a differece between fact and opinion. "Copyright is Good" is an opinion. Just about any statement labeling something as "good" or "bad" is an opinion. Opinions are not facts, even if nobody has a different opinion.
I see three major problems with Internet-based voting:
Occasional accusations of vote fraud notwithstanding, nearly all countries with widespread Internet access also have a high amount of integrity in their elections. I think the process of having the vast majority of voters physically appear before appointed observers, then cast their votes in booths guaranteed to be private and isolated from all influence, then submitting the ballot anonymously into an isolated counting system, is still how elections should be done. Voting without physical oversight, whether it's electronically or any other way, seems like a very bad idea to me, unless it's in a country where physically appearing at the polls is dangerous.
And one last rant, for people who think all this should be completely overlooked for the sake of speed: Millions of people have gotten maimed and killed so you could go play golf and perform your supposedly important work, instead of rotting in a jail cell with a gun at your head and some sort of disease that makes you bleed through all the holes in your body for 50 years straight. If you're busy helping third world countries or tending to medical patients on election day, I'm sure you can get an absentee ballot. Otherwise, see if you can pull yourself away from your oh-so-vital duties for 20 minutes every year or two. Or, better yet, don't.
I still haven't decided how lazy I should be about this: On 23 February, I sent in a domain modification to change one of my nameservers from a deceased machine to a new machine that had agreed to be secondary. This was switching a nameserver, not editing the existing nameserver entry. I know this should work because I actually used the text file from the LAST time I changed a nameserver.
InterNIC sends me back a reply saying that if I want to change ISPs, I have to use the enclosed template. The template they tack to the end is domain-template.txt version 4.0 - the exact template I sent them in the first place!
I might be missing something - but I doubt it.