Over in Germany, we have something that works flawlessly. Paper and pen.
AFAIK most of the world (including India) does things this way. (Possibly with a pencil rather than a pen.)
And how long does it take to get the results? We can usually vote till 6PM and get the results by 11PM on the same day. There are only 70 million Germans, but I don't see why this shouldn't scale up.
Scales up perfectly find to cover the elections for the European parliment... Though isn't 6PM a little early to close the ballot?
An ID check at the gate does not and cannot prevent a hijacking. An ID check tells you who a person is -- his/her name, SSN, DOB, possibly criminal record, and so forth.
It may not even tell you that. All it says is that the document corresponds with the person.
Armed persons charged with defense of the airplane seem to be a good idea in this regard. Federal air marshals are one way to accomplish this; arming and training pilots is another; hiring security guards is another.
Quite a few such methods could also deal with so called "air rage".
Because at some point your right to privacy is outweighed by my need for saftey. Specifically in this case, my need to be able to fly somewhere without the guy next to me blowing up the plane, or smashing it into a building.
Just because something infringes your privacy dosn't mean it will make you any safer. As others have pointed out the 9/11 attackers had apparently vaild IDs. Even though at least some were the stolen identities of completly innocent people, this wasn't discovered until afterwards. It's quite possible that a highly intrusive could make you less safe. Indeed there are claims that it is now easier to smuggle weapons onto US planes than it was before last September. It is generally easier to create the illusion of security than it is to create actual security.
Lots of people were involved in executing 9-11. But besides the hijackers (that died), how can we punish the other people involved? Well, if they used illegal encyrption to communicate, they could be arrested and pulled out of the plan of the next attack.
Assuming they did use encryption. Which isn't something especially useful to terrorists in the first place. Quite simply you won't catch many terrorists by outlawing encryption.
All workers, irrespective of length of service, are protected from being dismissed on the grounds of pregnancy or maternity; and are entitled by statute to at least 14 weeks of maternity leave (longer, in most cases).
Unfortunatly the employer isn't protected from having to pay two people to do one job and possibly having to fill a post at short notice. So they might be reluctant to employ women in the first place. Thus it's possible that women workers end up disadvantaged by laws intended to protect them...
Here it is, in a nutshell for you: In the UK, you buy something. If there's something wrong with it, you can return it. The seller is not obliged to give you a refund, if he/she can provide a replacement.
If the item is faulty the seller has no choice at all what is happened. It's the customer who can choose either a refund, repair or replacement. A repair or replacement does not however void the seller's obligation to supply goods and services of satisfactory quality.
Shops _may_ accept a return if the goods are not faulty, it's up to them. Most do. On the flip side we have legally enforced mandatory 1 year warranties on ALL purchases, unlike the US. My view, if you buy something and change your mind, you should have thought harder before purchasing. It amazes me that in the US manufacturers are allowed to get away with 30 day warranties on expensive items.
Also all goods and services must be of satisfactory quality. Which includes any claims a salesman might have made and is irrespective of any manufacturer warranty.
Just having elections isn't enough. you need to have separation of powers. The United States does that extremely well, (although I'm sure they could improve).
On paper this appears to be the case. But the complete domination of US politics by two political parties makes rather a nonsense of this...
Our government lashed out at Afghanistan and "terrorists" after 9/11 in the name of protection of the country,
Afgainstan appeared to have been targeted more for the reason of the US not liking the Taliban than anything directly connected with the actual attack.
yet subsequently has made a strong effort to convince the public (and rather sucessfully, given media reports) that the true source of terror is Iraq and Saddam Hussein - the old, not-quite-vanquished enemy of Bush's daddy. There is little evidence, if any that Al-Qeuda or any of the 9/11 terrorists come from Iraq (most are Saudis, I believe)
Some were apparently Saudi, given that several of the hijackers were using stolen identities it's rather hard to be sure who was actually on the planes. Unless the US authorities have some evidence they are keeping very secret.
Looked at from today's perspective (as the original article does), where most of these nations have constitutions that have teeth in them
A constitution has no teeth. It's simply a bit of paper which says "the government may do X and it may not do Y". The issue of "teeth" comes down to what the civilian population will do when a government trys to do Y or trys not to do X.
nor are they capable of convincing their entire populations that, for example, "We have never been at war with Iraq; we have always been at war with Saudi Arabia".
This is more about the independence of media sources. Traditional media is mainly in the hands of a very few large corportates.
The leaders of Afghanistan chose this government. As opposed to the last government, which was chosen at the barrel of a gun, financed by the Pakistani secret service and Pakistani militant muslim leaders.
Are you so sure. Remember the US has much bigger guns than Paikstan...
I don't mean to include every little local conflict; I'm speaking only about major conflicts like the U.S.'s invasion of Southeast Asia, Indonesia's genecide in East Timor, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, etc.
Even a "minor conflict" generally isn't too minor to the people involved.
Note that while Communism spread to other countries, the U.S. never intended to democratize the world.
If anything the US has done more to opose democracy, Iran and Chile being the most obvious examples. (amongst a great many.)
Using the IMF and World Bank, the U.S. corrupts the elite to maintain their power from afar using capital to gain access to the country's natural resources. Those resources are then shipped to the U.S. rather than being used to better the lives of those living in the country.
Certainly something is going on, notably the issue of why Brazil, which is potentially one of the richest countries on the planet, is nowhere close to it's potential.
How about constant warfare to keep production levels high and boost GNP? Weapons are basically waste products: you build them and then throw them away.
They can also be made out of waste products. Such as depleated uranium, which is otherwise waste from making nuclear fuel.
3) No Jews died in the WTC bombing because they got "the phone call"
All the reports hve described it as an "Instant Message", which most likely means an SMS text message. Also these reports refer to Israeli citizens not "Jews". Plenty of Jews are not Israeli citizens, even with Israel having a policy of offering citizenship to any Jew. Indeed some Jews who lived in what became Israel post 1948 reject not only Israeli citizenship but also the legitimacy of the Israeli state. A Jew is simply someone who follows a certain monotheistic faith. An Israeli is a citizen of a country called Israel.
Unfortunately for them, the US Copyright Office refused to play along, and decided that all Internet streams would be charged similarly. So, they're understandably upset that the law they bought and paid for isn't protecting them as well as they'd like.
Hardly the first example of winding up "hoist by their own petard" when lobbying for/buying a law.
Windows doesn't support PAM, but its had a workalike long before there was PAM. Anyone can write their own GINA DLL and replace the systems, additionally, anyone can write their own password complexity policies and rules and drop themin.
Except that they need an addon in order to write the software, unless Windows now comes with a compiler. Which is completly standard with any Linux distribution. Anyway if people can't even cope with writing and compiling software on Linux what chance have they with Windows?
Can you imagine a company with (lets say) 1000 pc's moving from Windows to Linux? or even moving from Office 2000/XP to Open-Office? I can hardly think so.
As opposed to changing from one version of MS office to another. Probably on a time scale chosen by Microsoft...
Why? think about training 1000 empolyees Open Office.
Is this really any more different than changing from one version of MS office to another?
Think that you need %100 export/import capabilities of Word, Excel, PowerPoint - OpenOffice can't give it to you (try to import a complicated PowerPoint from Office XP or complicated Word document and see what I mean).
Like you get 100% compatability between different versions of MS Word.
This is not a company with 200 employees. This is a government, trying to run on-line. This means all citizens must have access. $200 Microsoft Windows.NET licenses for 30 million people is NOT AN OPTION.
Also using a software system from a foreign company (quite possibly from a hostile contry) is not a good idea. Wonder how happy the average US citzen would be if all US government used Peruvian, even Iraqi, software.... Considering the size of Peru 30 million is a fairly small population.
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Over in Germany, we have something that works flawlessly. Paper and pen.
AFAIK most of the world (including India) does things this way. (Possibly with a pencil rather than a pen.)
And how long does it take to get the results? We can usually vote till 6PM and get the results by 11PM on the same day. There are only 70 million Germans, but I don't see why this shouldn't scale up.
Scales up perfectly find to cover the elections for the European parliment...
Though isn't 6PM a little early to close the ballot?
Springing a leak with this system would be about as likely as your new air conditioner sprining a coolant leak.
The only complex bit would appear to be coping with the hinge for the screen.
What happens if you leave your laptop outside in the winter?
Obvious solution would be to have the cooling fluid be part water, part ethan-1,2-ol. Or something else which has a lower freezing point than water.
An ID check at the gate does not and cannot prevent a hijacking. An ID check tells you who a person is -- his/her name, SSN, DOB, possibly criminal record, and so forth.
It may not even tell you that. All it says is that the document corresponds with the person.
Armed persons charged with defense of the airplane seem to be a good idea in this regard. Federal air marshals are one way to accomplish this; arming and training pilots is another; hiring security guards is another.
Quite a few such methods could also deal with so called "air rage".
Because at some point your right to privacy is outweighed by my need for saftey. Specifically in this case, my need to be able to fly somewhere without the guy next to me blowing up the plane, or smashing it into a building.
Just because something infringes your privacy dosn't mean it will make you any safer. As others have pointed out the 9/11 attackers had apparently vaild IDs. Even though at least some were the stolen identities of completly innocent people, this wasn't discovered until afterwards.
It's quite possible that a highly intrusive could make you less safe. Indeed there are claims that it is now easier to smuggle weapons onto US planes than it was before last September.
It is generally easier to create the illusion of security than it is to create actual security.
Anyone with a phone in the same area code as their fax machine want to set up a web gateway?
Wonder if tcp.int will blacklist their fax number...
Lots of people were involved in executing 9-11. But besides the hijackers (that died), how can we punish the other people involved? Well, if they used illegal encyrption to communicate, they could be arrested and pulled out of the plan of the next attack.
Assuming they did use encryption. Which isn't something especially useful to terrorists in the first place.
Quite simply you won't catch many terrorists by outlawing encryption.
Organized crime and terrorists don't use crypto.
But try getting lawmakers to understand that.
They hide messages where no one is looking for them, and send plain text using code words that mean nothing to an outsider.
With a good code the words do mean something to an evesdropper. They mean whatever their regular meaning is.
A lot of stupid legislators think that if they pass a law against rain, then every day can be sunny.
Or maybe they could legislate that Pi=3.
All workers, irrespective of length of service, are protected from being dismissed on the grounds of pregnancy or maternity; and are entitled by statute to at least 14 weeks of maternity leave (longer, in most cases).
Unfortunatly the employer isn't protected from having to pay two people to do one job and possibly having to fill a post at short notice. So they might be reluctant to employ women in the first place. Thus it's possible that women workers end up disadvantaged by laws intended to protect them...
You can also buy and consume alcohol at 18, not 21. Licensing laws in Scotland are different from England as well.
Whilst the age for buying alcohol in the UK is 18 the actual age minimum age for consuming alcohol is 5 so long as it is in private.
Here it is, in a nutshell for you: In the UK, you buy something. If there's something wrong with it, you can return it. The seller is not obliged to give you a refund, if he/she can provide a replacement.
If the item is faulty the seller has no choice at all what is happened. It's the customer who can choose either a refund, repair or replacement. A repair or replacement does not however void the seller's obligation to supply goods and services of satisfactory quality.
Shops _may_ accept a return if the goods are not faulty, it's up to them. Most do. On the flip side we have legally enforced mandatory 1 year warranties on ALL purchases, unlike the US. My view, if you buy something and change your mind, you should have thought harder before purchasing. It amazes me that in the US manufacturers are allowed to get away with 30 day warranties on expensive items.
Also all goods and services must be of satisfactory quality. Which includes any claims a salesman might have made and is irrespective of any manufacturer warranty.
Just having elections isn't enough. you need to have separation of powers. The United States does that extremely well, (although I'm sure they could improve).
On paper this appears to be the case. But the complete domination of US politics by two political parties makes rather a nonsense of this...
Our government lashed out at Afghanistan and "terrorists" after 9/11 in the name of protection of the country,
Afgainstan appeared to have been targeted more for the reason of the US not liking the Taliban than anything directly connected with the actual attack.
yet subsequently has made a strong effort to convince the public (and rather sucessfully, given media reports) that the true source of terror is Iraq and Saddam Hussein - the old, not-quite-vanquished enemy of Bush's daddy. There is little evidence, if any that Al-Qeuda or any of the 9/11 terrorists come from Iraq (most are Saudis, I believe)
Some were apparently Saudi, given that several of the hijackers were using stolen identities it's rather hard to be sure who was actually on the planes. Unless the US authorities have some evidence they are keeping very secret.
Looked at from today's perspective (as the original article does), where most of these nations have constitutions that have teeth in them
A constitution has no teeth. It's simply a bit of paper which says "the government may do X and it may not do Y". The issue of "teeth" comes down to what the civilian population will do when a government trys to do Y or trys not to do X.
nor are they capable of convincing their entire populations that, for example, "We have never been at war with Iraq; we have always been at war with Saudi Arabia".
This is more about the independence of media sources. Traditional media is mainly in the hands of a very few large corportates.
The leaders of Afghanistan chose this government. As opposed to the last government, which was chosen at the barrel of a gun, financed by the Pakistani secret service and Pakistani militant muslim leaders.
Are you so sure. Remember the US has much bigger guns than Paikstan...
I don't mean to include every little local conflict; I'm speaking only about major conflicts like the U.S.'s invasion of Southeast Asia, Indonesia's genecide in East Timor, Israel's invasion of Lebanon, etc.
Even a "minor conflict" generally isn't too minor to the people involved.
Note that while Communism spread to other countries, the U.S. never intended to democratize the world.
If anything the US has done more to opose democracy, Iran and Chile being the most obvious examples. (amongst a great many.)
Using the IMF and World Bank, the U.S. corrupts the elite to maintain their power from afar using capital to gain access to the country's natural resources. Those resources are then shipped to the U.S. rather than being used to better the lives of those living in the country.
Certainly something is going on, notably the issue of why Brazil, which is potentially one of the richest countries on the planet, is nowhere close to it's potential.
How about constant warfare to keep production levels high and boost GNP? Weapons are basically waste products: you build them and then throw them away.
They can also be made out of waste products. Such as depleated uranium, which is otherwise waste from making nuclear fuel.
3) No Jews died in the WTC bombing because they got "the phone call"
All the reports hve described it as an "Instant Message", which most likely means an SMS text message. Also these reports refer to Israeli citizens not "Jews". Plenty of Jews are not Israeli citizens, even with Israel having a policy of offering citizenship to any Jew. Indeed some Jews who lived in what became Israel post 1948 reject not only Israeli citizenship but also the legitimacy of the Israeli state.
A Jew is simply someone who follows a certain monotheistic faith. An Israeli is a citizen of a country called Israel.
Unfortunately for them, the US Copyright Office refused to play along, and decided that all Internet streams would be charged similarly. So, they're understandably upset that the law they bought and paid for isn't protecting them as well as they'd like.
Hardly the first example of winding up "hoist by their own petard" when lobbying for/buying a law.
Windows doesn't support PAM, but its had a workalike long before there was PAM. Anyone can write their own GINA DLL and replace the systems, additionally, anyone can write their own password complexity policies and rules and drop themin.
Except that they need an addon in order to write the software, unless Windows now comes with a compiler. Which is completly standard with any Linux distribution. Anyway if people can't even cope with writing and compiling software on Linux what chance have they with Windows?
Can you imagine a company with (lets say) 1000 pc's moving from Windows to Linux? or even moving from Office 2000/XP to Open-Office? I can hardly think so.
As opposed to changing from one version of MS office to another. Probably on a time scale chosen by Microsoft...
Why? think about training 1000 empolyees Open Office.
Is this really any more different than changing from one version of MS office to another?
Think that you need %100 export/import capabilities of Word, Excel, PowerPoint - OpenOffice can't give it to you (try to import a complicated PowerPoint from Office XP or complicated Word document and see what I mean).
Like you get 100% compatability between different versions of MS Word.
This is not what Peru needs... If they want to be kind, they should give them computers... without their stinking OS.
Of course it isn't. Microsoft is interested in helping Microsoft only...
This is not a company with 200 employees. This is a government, trying to run on-line. This means all citizens must have access. $200 Microsoft Windows .NET licenses for 30 million people is NOT AN OPTION.
Also using a software system from a foreign company (quite possibly from a hostile contry) is not a good idea. Wonder how happy the average US citzen would be if all US government used Peruvian, even Iraqi, software....
Considering the size of Peru 30 million is a fairly small population.
USB has more than enough bandwidth for a TV video and audio signal.
So long as this device is the only one on that USB interface.