Downmodded as redundant?! This is new! Well... if the ideas in that video are clear to everyone (they should be, although quite a few comments here or in previous threads seem to indicate otherwise), I guess that everything is OK.
After reading some of the comments in this thread, I went ahead and recorded a small video comparing the performance of various languages (C, Java, C#, PHP and Python) in a simple while loop. The results are simply unarguable. You can (dis)like C (or any other language) and use it or not; it might even not be recommendable under quite a few conditions. But, at least, be aware (or/and honest) regarding what it can do better than any other language. Here you have the video and, please, bear in mind that my talking-to-camera skills are quite bad:)
Although C was the first language I properly learned and I have extensive experience in quite a few C-based programming languages, I haven't used plain C much until since about 4 months. I relied on it for a reasonably complex and big development (although R&D, no-time-pressure one) and, as a way to compensate the numerous differences between C and the languages which I use on a regular basis, I created a set of methods to somehow emulate the modern-language conditions and simplify the pointers/memory allocation aspects (note that this piece of software is mostly dealing with string variables of any size). After some struggling, I have been able to come up with a light and reliable methodology allowing me to not worry about all the memory problems in C. I guess that experienced enough programmers are comfortable with their own approaches and that's why my question is for kind-of-newbie ones: will you, C-newcomer, appreciate a small library (+ clearly defined methodology to use those methods) allowing you to easily and safely deal with strings (arrays too if you wish) of any size (via malloc)?
The aforementioned set of methods have been an unintended consequence of my adaptation from modern programming languages to C. I have got so used to these approaches that I will certainly rely on them for future C developments. In any case, I am completely aware about my relatively short experience in this language and the problems which the users face at the start; and I don't want to release a new library promising a solution for either a non-existent or solved-many-times-before problem. So, any developer having problems with these C aspects care to share his/her thoughts?
A small detail which I forgot to include in my previous reply: I usually refer to ACs (Anonymous Cowards in Slashdot) as "other AC" because I am also an AC, but not like you, a coward anonymously insulting others (as clearly highlighted in my profile, I never post anonymously here), but because of my name + first family name (Alvaro Carballo). As far as you seem specially stupid, I preferred to not confuse you more and just called you "AC". Hopefully, the words and the concepts in this post are simple enough for you to understand it. LOL
I cannot say too much against a so brilliant defense of your originally quite sensible random insult. You are repeating the same and putting everything in caps, you have to be right! LOL. You are soooo stupid that even writing it seems redundant.
you are making statements IN DEFENSE of online voting
No. Electronic voting (actually, electronic records). You know? You can do things on computers without dealing with internet at all. Well... I guess that all these are too complex ideas for you, sorry about having provoking you a headache with all these new ideas. LOL.
russian troll!
Out of all the stupidities you have written so far, this is the only one which I find slightly relevant. See, some random idiots like you have called me troll at different points and for different (no) reasons. As far as these pathetic idiots were ACs like you with extremely limited understanding and just coming in to randomly insult and then disappeared, I never had the chance to understand why they were saying that. I mean, you people seem crazily stupid so I don't expect you making too much sense but well...
So, you are saying that the fact of being Spaniard (born and currently living there and from 100% Spanish family up to no idea what generation), being called Alvaro (a very Russian name! LOL), not knowing anything about Russia (never been there, don't speak Russian, almost never met people from that country), not showing any kind of agreement with Russia or what it represents, being a remotely-working programmer whose main channel is precisely internet (e.g., what I am writing right now here can be read by a potential client), etc. All that means nothing to you, right? Because I wrote something which you don't like, consequently, I deserve to be insulted and, right after that, being called troll + from Russia (because currently you don't like this country)! Because anyone saying something which you don't consider right deserves to be insulted and be called troll (from Russia). LOL. Seriously, don't you understand that this (= talking to me) is not your place? Please, stop making a fool of yourself.
Well yes, OF COURSE, a system where it is easy to make massive fraudulent changes to all of the data has tons of advantages over a system where it is extremely difficult and expensive to commit fraud in a significant way.
But how are you supposed to do such a thing in an even partially properly built system? Tell me, why all the banks have their own online versions (and, as said above, I am NOT defending online voting, because this would be much more difficult) and, consequently, all the money being electronically-accessible? Are you saying that changing some votes is way much more important than stealing millions of millions from anywhere, any time? Because once you have everything on a computer you can change it as you want, right? What about defense systems, nuclear plants, internet itself, etc.? How all that is working at all, when the only trustworthy thing we know is paper and manual counting?! LOL. We are talking about simply keeping track of relatively small amounts of data which are offline!!!! This is a low-level problem in today's programming world and many people here are showing it as an unsolvable nightmare, it is not! And additionally, you insult me!! You, the paper and manual-counting person! LOL. You are a very stupid "person".
The underlying idea to your post is similar to the ones of many other posts here (a bit surprising, IMO): digital records being less trustworthy than manually-written ones or being felt as such by laymen (you should either educate them or ignore their opinions, but why seriously considering the by-definition-unreliable concerns of those not knowing about the specific matter?). That might make kind of sense under very specific conditions but, in absolute terms, seems evidently wrong (or are we planning to start replacing most of our current computer dependence with paper and manual counting?); at least, for a knowledgeable and objective enough person willing and able to come up with the best solution for the problem.
Votes burning does not matter when they are counted.
Whatever you prefer. The fact of not wanting to maximise one of the multiple advantages of an evidently superior format doesn't represent a reason to use the inferior one. I see many apparently-computer-savvy people in this thread complaining about similar "unsolvable problems" and defending the perfect solution of paper + manual counting (which BTW I guess that, in many scenarios, is fed into a computerised system to aggregate all the city/regional results)!! I would have understood punctual critics to specific aspects of certain implementations or people without too much knowledge being somehow afraid of what they don't fully understand, but seeing a so unanimous and apparently-knowledgeable position is kind of surprising.
And what are you going to do if the voter claims that the printed vote is wrong ?
Press the rigged-election alarm button, put the person developing that system in jail and immediately hire me as you should have done the first time? LOL. See, it seems clear that neither of us are willing to change our ideas, so I hope that you don't mind if I cut the chat here.
yet people still insist electronic voting is better.
I am not defending electronic voting, but electronic records in general; at least, its reliability and traceability. Paper is almost part of our past already. The fact that, due to the peculiarities of voting like mistrust among parties as highlighted by other comments, some electronic voting approaches haven't been too good doesn't invalidate what is applicable everywhere else. You might even create a mixed system if you prefer. But for all what is related to (huge amounts of) data, the electronic version will always have tons of advantages with respect to any other one.
We do what we can. Elections have some unique aspects that make it necessary to be extra vigilant. The anonymity of the process makes a proper audit very difficult, and the stakes are huge.
People can beat computers on many fronts, but not on objectivity and fairness. You want to account for a worst-case-scenario of human behaviour by relying on humans?! You can rig a computer system as much as you wish, but there will always be a clear track of actions and actors. You cannot track people's decisions. You are kind of implying that computers are obscure and unpredictable, but they are right the contrary. People are obscure and unpredictable.
You might even come up with alternatives to compensate the lack of trust; for example, automatically generating printed copies of all the votes such that people interested in crosschecking the results might count all of them manually. There are many possible alternatives and no need to abandon a format with many more advantages because of unreasonable fears. A computer is as hackable as a paper vote might be removed/added.
My vote is my vote. It should be counted without duplication. That's kind of one of the principles of voting.
Backuping/redundance isn't duplication, but a safety measurement. What if there is a fire in the room where you voted and everything is lost? How do you think that most of big websites work such that no matter what happens to their computers your data is always accessible? You can have 5, 10, 100 copies of the same record, always verifying some basic constraints like all of them always having the same value, without that affecting the uniqueness of your vote.
If you think you're good enough to build electronic voting systems: you probably are not. Sorry.
I guess that I cannot always win. At least, I know that I did all what I could to get one of those juicy contracts. LOL.
A layman could inspect a polling station, and witness the paper ballot counting to confirm everything is done accurately. The same layman cannot inspect an electronic voting machine and confirm it has counted all the proper votes.
And what if that layman wants to unfairly affect the results? There would have to also be another layman looking at what that first layman is doing; but what if, etc. At the end you have to trust in something/someone. The more eyes/checks the better and a properly designed electronic system can perform lots of checks, backups, logs, perfectly-understood-by-laymen reports, etc. Or how do you think that virtually everything works in the world? With people looking closely at what computers do? The problem here isn't about doubting the counting reliability of computers, but about some unreasonable fears regarding digital systems being more vulnerable than conventional ones.
Whatever actions you perform on the paper votes to optimise the security of the system can be done on digital records too. You can allow as much/less access to the computer storing the votes as to the box where the papers are stored (I mean an offline or restricted-network system; online voting is a completely different story). On the other hand, the electronic version has many more advantages like immediately creating as many copies as required.
A properly-designed computer-based system managing any kind of data is way much more secure, scalable, adaptable, etc. than any other alternative. Logically, a bad design in one of these systems can potentially provoke many more problems than the paper option; but this is true in lots of current-tech-vs-1-century-ago-version scenarios and I don't think that incompetence should be brought into picture while generically determining what might be the best option. Hire wisely and/or me!:)
a group wanting to forcibly make me part of their circus?
I think that a better version would be: lying and coming up with ridiculous reasons explaining why I might not want to deal with them rather than actually trying to understand those reasons, even just listening/reading what I am expressly saying that I want, and becoming what I want or simply accepting my position. Actually, I have been sharing lots of information about myself lately in many places, my posts here among them; as a way to facilitate the understanding of my kind-of-heterodox expectations and to minimise everyone unnecessarily wasting time. The most ironic part is that that attitude seems to have provoked a relevant increase of pointless behaviours targeting me?! People not just not understanding what I am saying in its proper sense, but also coming up with the most ridiculous conclusions! Something like "you say that you are honest + I know that nobody is honest => I assume that you are double dishonest"!!
All that crazily stupid evolution has further confirmed my hermit position. In fact, when I firstly started to wonder why I should tolerate hypocrisy and empty social interactions, I was kind of expecting to be proven wrong and people's behaviours to help me understand my error. But what I found was the definitive confirmation (not just once, many times) of something not being right with modern society's "social interactions"! Openly saying what you want being interpreted as right the contrary because of nobody-says-openly-what-they-want or I-feel-afraid-of-anyone-different-than-me kind of prejudices?! What I have been seeing lately is so unbelievable unrealistic that I could even say that have been harassed by an in-denial "society" wanting me to like it!
"Unabomber" (well... it said "uni-bomber"! tiny prejudice/complex over there?) said the poor anonymous coward scared of a clearly-identified guy, being different than it but openly and reasonably explaining his position, what made it come up with the first random idea somehow justifying such a heresy (in fact, not even that: just a familiar category where my behaviour might be included)! Another kind-of-telling-a-lot issue is implying that I might have ever anything to do with weapons!! Only a person closely related to the use of force/weapons (police, military, hunter or similar) or coming from a weapon-friendly country like the USA can intuitively think that weapons (or other form of violence) are an immediate, intuitive, making-any-sense-at-all resource for a random person to deal with a random situation. I haven't ever had any kind of contact with weapons or thought about dealing with them! But it is kind of telling that someone might bring weapons/violence into picture from the "I don't like you and want to be alone" ideas underlying my original post! Is perhaps that AC reacting violently to people not liking it? Is this AC usually trying to force others to like it! So much irony! Anyway, I have preferred to further extend my not-too-descriptive first reaction to that AC nonsense.
developing actual, meaningful relationships requires going through a lot of superficial crap.
Why? You will have never to pass through anything of that with me. I have met quite a few people in my life (who, unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to properly appreciate at that time) who could also skip most of that. You don't seem to like it either, why do you think that it is a requirement for you or for others? That kind of speech is part of the problem which has made me stop tolerating certain attitudes: many people feel forced to do, think, feel whatever (+ try to force others or rely on their fanatic fears to attack anyone behaving differently), but strictly speaking there is no reason for that.
You don't know in advance which people you are going to be able to relate to, so you sample around, and you first meet lots and lots of people who don't work out for you
Perhaps I wasn't able in the past, but now I clearly know what I want. I can spot people with clear enough ideas and appealing-to-me personalities almost immediately; unfortunately, not everyone seems to be able to do the same. And you certainly need time to know others and I personally need a lot of it, but this is actually a good reason for not wasting that time with irrelevant nonsense. I am not against meeting people and getting to know them gradually, but against tolerating useless, superficial, meaningless whatever whose only contribution is to just waste time, repeating because of not knowing anything better. If I can choose, and certainly can, I prefer to be by my own than to interact with people delivering so empty outputs. Unfortunately for me, the number of these people or, at least, the number of people like you, thinking that this is a forced requirement, is too high and that's why my current hermit-like behaviour.
Now, you may say "it's not worth it". And who would I be to disagree? I make about 1 good friend every 20 years, because I mostly can't be bothered to socialize. But be aware that this is the price you pay for being a "hermit".
But what is the exact point of having many not-good friends? Dealing with people who you don't fully trust or you don't fully like and to whom you are sporadically or systematically lying by showing otherwise, why doing such a thing? Out of fear? Because you don't want to be called things, like that AC above calling me unabomber (+ including a smiley; although not sure what to think about that -> see? this is what hypocrite, coward and dishonest interactions provoke), just because of openly saying that I don't like hypocrisy and that I am not socialising too much lately? This is a good sample of the kind of "society" with which I don't want to deal and whose fears and random misinterpretations I will not tolerate.
Theoretically, friends are supposed to give you something positive, not to represent an additional burden ("ah! Now, I have to talk to this guy, who is a completely asshole! I hate my life!"... "Hi, Matt! I was looking forward to talk to you again!"). Do you prefer to be 20 years lying and being lied, being part of irrelevant-to-you crap, feeling uncomfortable around these people and never saying anything (+ thinking that they feel the same), just for the far promise of perhaps eventually finding one person? And why not trying to find that one person right away, via immediately dismissing all the bad candidates? You can know people for many years without being friends and, gradually, convert that relationship into a true friendship. I don't see the requirement of all the hypocrisy and dealing with people you don't like; at least, not for me. You might enjoy others' companion regardless of their quality and I am fine with it; but please don't say that this is a requirement or try to impose your views on me.
LOL. Perhaps you are right. But I am a peaceful and live-and-let-live one and my situation doesn't come out of rejection (society seems to accept me pretty much; at least, the version it wants to see which I am not interested in showing), but out of not seeing what I like. Or, in other words, the only unabomber-like character in my case could be society (a group wanting to forcibly make me part of their circus?). So, I might be a properly-speaking hermit, but certainly not a violent version (= NOT unabomber).
Even though this is certainly an extreme example (at least for me, not sure in Japan), lack of attachment to others and fake appearances are surprisingly common in most of societies. Internet and the way in which things like "social" media have evolved is a good reflection of that reality. Lots of people are not interested in actually knowing others, but only in blindly following trends, getting temporary certainty via poor information about everyone, having a high number of likes, friends, references, showing that they are happy/sad/angry, etc. Similar ideas apply to the real-life routines of many people, who are so scared of really giving and getting something (and, consequently, potentially losing/being hurt) that prefer to be systematically involved in meaningless relationships with others.
Some people might consider me some kind of hermit since some time ago, a person not able to enjoy the small pleasures of life or others' companion. This isn't true. The reality is that I am only interested in getting involved in somehow meaningful relationships, but most of people are not. Should I join the big circus of hypocrisy, meaning-nothing conventions, playing-very-safe-and-as-instructed and lies to eventually find just one worthy person? No, thanks. I did that in the past and know where it ends: tolerating more lies, hypocrisy, in-case-of-doubt attacks, unreasonable prejudices, etc. From my current position, I don't see a big difference between this article and what happens almost everywhere: people living to show and to do/be scared/angry/happy/etc. as instructed by whatever trend or convention, rather than really having/enjoying/experiencing. I don't even find any of this sad anymore.
... got quite surprised with the persistence and poor-understanding skills of some spammers/scammers. I was doing it manually and just for fun (+ kind of contributing to reduce crap). I think that this was one of the first times when I realised about how deep stupidity can go. Although I prefer the current much-clearer-ideas myself, some times I kind of miss those moments when I was still expecting other outputs rather than stupidity always remaining stupidity.
I feel like you didn't live through the IE vs Netscape era...
Although I didn't really care too much about computers/internet/programming until relatively recently (a bit over the last 10 years), I did live that era and don't think that it had anything to do with nowadays/what is being discussed here. Back then, finding errors or waiting a lot for a page to load was pretty usual, to not mention the fact that most of the pages were static and internet was still too secondary. Additionally, there is no need to go back so many years, I am talking about comparing my personal experience during the last years and during the last months. I am talking about a mature internet where having a faulty website seems almost unforgivable, mainly when talking about big companies with lots of money whose main income source comes precisely from said faulty functionality.
There's never really been a time since the dawn of the graphical browser where you could realistically expect the majority of the internet to "just work" on any browser you chose to use.
You might be right by considering a big enough random sample of websites, but from my personal experience things are getting notably worse now. I have never had relevant problems to visit important sites with properly-updated browsers until relatively recently. I am talking about national TVs or newspapers, worldwide-known sites like Youtube or Twitter and so on. And I am not referring to looking-a-bit-bad versions either, but to fully non-functional or, at least, notably slower/buggier major functionalities.
Just in case I better clarify the difference between aggressive and violent behaviour. I am certainly an aggressive person on quite a few contexts, as proven by my previous post and quite a few other ones. Some people might even consider that, in some cases, my reactions might be a bit too aggressive and as harmful as physical ones. I personally don't agree with that and, in any case, consider my attitudes quite proportional (in many situations, just to be the less bad options and cut right away what isn't going anywhere). In any case and no matter what you think of my aggressiveness, it will never be used to force others to do whatever and this is where I see the difference between aggressiveness and violence (physical or figurative). Forcing others in any way to do anything is one of the less appealing scenarios I can think of. My usual reaction to a rejection is acceptation. Trying to persuade, somehow force, manipulate or similar anyone to do anything is extremely off-putting to me. I am equally incompatible with those wanting to impose whatever on me than with those expecting me to force them to do whatever. Not sure if this differentiation is fully supported by the proper definitions of both concepts but, at least, this is my intention when I use them.
Clarification about the upper buttons: I meant when the browser isn't fully maximised; also you can modify that behaviour. My question is about why being that the default setup, is that comfortable for a Linux user? For me, it isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Downmodded as redundant?! This is new! Well... if the ideas in that video are clear to everyone (they should be, although quite a few comments here or in previous threads seem to indicate otherwise), I guess that everything is OK.
After reading some of the comments in this thread, I went ahead and recorded a small video comparing the performance of various languages (C, Java, C#, PHP and Python) in a simple while loop. The results are simply unarguable. You can (dis)like C (or any other language) and use it or not; it might even not be recommendable under quite a few conditions. But, at least, be aware (or/and honest) regarding what it can do better than any other language. Here you have the video and, please, bear in mind that my talking-to-camera skills are quite bad :)
Although C was the first language I properly learned and I have extensive experience in quite a few C-based programming languages, I haven't used plain C much until since about 4 months. I relied on it for a reasonably complex and big development (although R&D, no-time-pressure one) and, as a way to compensate the numerous differences between C and the languages which I use on a regular basis, I created a set of methods to somehow emulate the modern-language conditions and simplify the pointers/memory allocation aspects (note that this piece of software is mostly dealing with string variables of any size). After some struggling, I have been able to come up with a light and reliable methodology allowing me to not worry about all the memory problems in C. I guess that experienced enough programmers are comfortable with their own approaches and that's why my question is for kind-of-newbie ones: will you, C-newcomer, appreciate a small library (+ clearly defined methodology to use those methods) allowing you to easily and safely deal with strings (arrays too if you wish) of any size (via malloc)?
The aforementioned set of methods have been an unintended consequence of my adaptation from modern programming languages to C. I have got so used to these approaches that I will certainly rely on them for future C developments. In any case, I am completely aware about my relatively short experience in this language and the problems which the users face at the start; and I don't want to release a new library promising a solution for either a non-existent or solved-many-times-before problem. So, any developer having problems with these C aspects care to share his/her thoughts?
A small detail which I forgot to include in my previous reply: I usually refer to ACs (Anonymous Cowards in Slashdot) as "other AC" because I am also an AC, but not like you, a coward anonymously insulting others (as clearly highlighted in my profile, I never post anonymously here), but because of my name + first family name (Alvaro Carballo). As far as you seem specially stupid, I preferred to not confuse you more and just called you "AC". Hopefully, the words and the concepts in this post are simple enough for you to understand it. LOL
YES YOU ARE:
I cannot say too much against a so brilliant defense of your originally quite sensible random insult. You are repeating the same and putting everything in caps, you have to be right! LOL. You are soooo stupid that even writing it seems redundant.
you are making statements IN DEFENSE of online voting
No. Electronic voting (actually, electronic records). You know? You can do things on computers without dealing with internet at all. Well... I guess that all these are too complex ideas for you, sorry about having provoking you a headache with all these new ideas. LOL.
russian troll!
Out of all the stupidities you have written so far, this is the only one which I find slightly relevant. See, some random idiots like you have called me troll at different points and for different (no) reasons. As far as these pathetic idiots were ACs like you with extremely limited understanding and just coming in to randomly insult and then disappeared, I never had the chance to understand why they were saying that. I mean, you people seem crazily stupid so I don't expect you making too much sense but well...
So, you are saying that the fact of being Spaniard (born and currently living there and from 100% Spanish family up to no idea what generation), being called Alvaro (a very Russian name! LOL), not knowing anything about Russia (never been there, don't speak Russian, almost never met people from that country), not showing any kind of agreement with Russia or what it represents, being a remotely-working programmer whose main channel is precisely internet (e.g., what I am writing right now here can be read by a potential client), etc. All that means nothing to you, right? Because I wrote something which you don't like, consequently, I deserve to be insulted and, right after that, being called troll + from Russia (because currently you don't like this country)! Because anyone saying something which you don't consider right deserves to be insulted and be called troll (from Russia). LOL. Seriously, don't you understand that this (= talking to me) is not your place? Please, stop making a fool of yourself.
Well yes, OF COURSE, a system where it is easy to make massive fraudulent changes to all of the data has tons of advantages over a system where it is extremely difficult and expensive to commit fraud in a significant way.
But how are you supposed to do such a thing in an even partially properly built system? Tell me, why all the banks have their own online versions (and, as said above, I am NOT defending online voting, because this would be much more difficult) and, consequently, all the money being electronically-accessible? Are you saying that changing some votes is way much more important than stealing millions of millions from anywhere, any time? Because once you have everything on a computer you can change it as you want, right? What about defense systems, nuclear plants, internet itself, etc.? How all that is working at all, when the only trustworthy thing we know is paper and manual counting?! LOL. We are talking about simply keeping track of relatively small amounts of data which are offline!!!! This is a low-level problem in today's programming world and many people here are showing it as an unsolvable nightmare, it is not! And additionally, you insult me!! You, the paper and manual-counting person! LOL. You are a very stupid "person".
The underlying idea to your post is similar to the ones of many other posts here (a bit surprising, IMO): digital records being less trustworthy than manually-written ones or being felt as such by laymen (you should either educate them or ignore their opinions, but why seriously considering the by-definition-unreliable concerns of those not knowing about the specific matter?). That might make kind of sense under very specific conditions but, in absolute terms, seems evidently wrong (or are we planning to start replacing most of our current computer dependence with paper and manual counting?); at least, for a knowledgeable and objective enough person willing and able to come up with the best solution for the problem.
Votes burning does not matter when they are counted.
Whatever you prefer. The fact of not wanting to maximise one of the multiple advantages of an evidently superior format doesn't represent a reason to use the inferior one. I see many apparently-computer-savvy people in this thread complaining about similar "unsolvable problems" and defending the perfect solution of paper + manual counting (which BTW I guess that, in many scenarios, is fed into a computerised system to aggregate all the city/regional results)!! I would have understood punctual critics to specific aspects of certain implementations or people without too much knowledge being somehow afraid of what they don't fully understand, but seeing a so unanimous and apparently-knowledgeable position is kind of surprising.
And what are you going to do if the voter claims that the printed vote is wrong ?
Press the rigged-election alarm button, put the person developing that system in jail and immediately hire me as you should have done the first time? LOL. See, it seems clear that neither of us are willing to change our ideas, so I hope that you don't mind if I cut the chat here.
yet people still insist electronic voting is better.
I am not defending electronic voting, but electronic records in general; at least, its reliability and traceability. Paper is almost part of our past already. The fact that, due to the peculiarities of voting like mistrust among parties as highlighted by other comments, some electronic voting approaches haven't been too good doesn't invalidate what is applicable everywhere else. You might even create a mixed system if you prefer. But for all what is related to (huge amounts of) data, the electronic version will always have tons of advantages with respect to any other one.
We do what we can. Elections have some unique aspects that make it necessary to be extra vigilant. The anonymity of the process makes a proper audit very difficult, and the stakes are huge.
People can beat computers on many fronts, but not on objectivity and fairness. You want to account for a worst-case-scenario of human behaviour by relying on humans?! You can rig a computer system as much as you wish, but there will always be a clear track of actions and actors. You cannot track people's decisions. You are kind of implying that computers are obscure and unpredictable, but they are right the contrary. People are obscure and unpredictable.
You might even come up with alternatives to compensate the lack of trust; for example, automatically generating printed copies of all the votes such that people interested in crosschecking the results might count all of them manually. There are many possible alternatives and no need to abandon a format with many more advantages because of unreasonable fears. A computer is as hackable as a paper vote might be removed/added.
My vote is my vote. It should be counted without duplication. That's kind of one of the principles of voting.
Backuping/redundance isn't duplication, but a safety measurement. What if there is a fire in the room where you voted and everything is lost? How do you think that most of big websites work such that no matter what happens to their computers your data is always accessible? You can have 5, 10, 100 copies of the same record, always verifying some basic constraints like all of them always having the same value, without that affecting the uniqueness of your vote.
If you think you're good enough to build electronic voting systems: you probably are not. Sorry.
I guess that I cannot always win. At least, I know that I did all what I could to get one of those juicy contracts. LOL.
A layman could inspect a polling station, and witness the paper ballot counting to confirm everything is done accurately. The same layman cannot inspect an electronic voting machine and confirm it has counted all the proper votes.
And what if that layman wants to unfairly affect the results? There would have to also be another layman looking at what that first layman is doing; but what if, etc. At the end you have to trust in something/someone. The more eyes/checks the better and a properly designed electronic system can perform lots of checks, backups, logs, perfectly-understood-by-laymen reports, etc. Or how do you think that virtually everything works in the world? With people looking closely at what computers do? The problem here isn't about doubting the counting reliability of computers, but about some unreasonable fears regarding digital systems being more vulnerable than conventional ones.
Whatever actions you perform on the paper votes to optimise the security of the system can be done on digital records too. You can allow as much/less access to the computer storing the votes as to the box where the papers are stored (I mean an offline or restricted-network system; online voting is a completely different story). On the other hand, the electronic version has many more advantages like immediately creating as many copies as required.
:)
A properly-designed computer-based system managing any kind of data is way much more secure, scalable, adaptable, etc. than any other alternative. Logically, a bad design in one of these systems can potentially provoke many more problems than the paper option; but this is true in lots of current-tech-vs-1-century-ago-version scenarios and I don't think that incompetence should be brought into picture while generically determining what might be the best option. Hire wisely and/or me!
a group wanting to forcibly make me part of their circus?
I think that a better version would be: lying and coming up with ridiculous reasons explaining why I might not want to deal with them rather than actually trying to understand those reasons, even just listening/reading what I am expressly saying that I want, and becoming what I want or simply accepting my position. Actually, I have been sharing lots of information about myself lately in many places, my posts here among them; as a way to facilitate the understanding of my kind-of-heterodox expectations and to minimise everyone unnecessarily wasting time. The most ironic part is that that attitude seems to have provoked a relevant increase of pointless behaviours targeting me?! People not just not understanding what I am saying in its proper sense, but also coming up with the most ridiculous conclusions! Something like "you say that you are honest + I know that nobody is honest => I assume that you are double dishonest"!!
All that crazily stupid evolution has further confirmed my hermit position. In fact, when I firstly started to wonder why I should tolerate hypocrisy and empty social interactions, I was kind of expecting to be proven wrong and people's behaviours to help me understand my error. But what I found was the definitive confirmation (not just once, many times) of something not being right with modern society's "social interactions"! Openly saying what you want being interpreted as right the contrary because of nobody-says-openly-what-they-want or I-feel-afraid-of-anyone-different-than-me kind of prejudices?! What I have been seeing lately is so unbelievable unrealistic that I could even say that have been harassed by an in-denial "society" wanting me to like it!
"Unabomber" (well... it said "uni-bomber"! tiny prejudice/complex over there?) said the poor anonymous coward scared of a clearly-identified guy, being different than it but openly and reasonably explaining his position, what made it come up with the first random idea somehow justifying such a heresy (in fact, not even that: just a familiar category where my behaviour might be included)! Another kind-of-telling-a-lot issue is implying that I might have ever anything to do with weapons!! Only a person closely related to the use of force/weapons (police, military, hunter or similar) or coming from a weapon-friendly country like the USA can intuitively think that weapons (or other form of violence) are an immediate, intuitive, making-any-sense-at-all resource for a random person to deal with a random situation. I haven't ever had any kind of contact with weapons or thought about dealing with them! But it is kind of telling that someone might bring weapons/violence into picture from the "I don't like you and want to be alone" ideas underlying my original post! Is perhaps that AC reacting violently to people not liking it? Is this AC usually trying to force others to like it! So much irony! Anyway, I have preferred to further extend my not-too-descriptive first reaction to that AC nonsense.
developing actual, meaningful relationships requires going through a lot of superficial crap.
Why? You will have never to pass through anything of that with me. I have met quite a few people in my life (who, unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to properly appreciate at that time) who could also skip most of that. You don't seem to like it either, why do you think that it is a requirement for you or for others? That kind of speech is part of the problem which has made me stop tolerating certain attitudes: many people feel forced to do, think, feel whatever (+ try to force others or rely on their fanatic fears to attack anyone behaving differently), but strictly speaking there is no reason for that.
You don't know in advance which people you are going to be able to relate to, so you sample around, and you first meet lots and lots of people who don't work out for you
Perhaps I wasn't able in the past, but now I clearly know what I want. I can spot people with clear enough ideas and appealing-to-me personalities almost immediately; unfortunately, not everyone seems to be able to do the same. And you certainly need time to know others and I personally need a lot of it, but this is actually a good reason for not wasting that time with irrelevant nonsense. I am not against meeting people and getting to know them gradually, but against tolerating useless, superficial, meaningless whatever whose only contribution is to just waste time, repeating because of not knowing anything better. If I can choose, and certainly can, I prefer to be by my own than to interact with people delivering so empty outputs. Unfortunately for me, the number of these people or, at least, the number of people like you, thinking that this is a forced requirement, is too high and that's why my current hermit-like behaviour.
Now, you may say "it's not worth it". And who would I be to disagree? I make about 1 good friend every 20 years, because I mostly can't be bothered to socialize. But be aware that this is the price you pay for being a "hermit".
But what is the exact point of having many not-good friends? Dealing with people who you don't fully trust or you don't fully like and to whom you are sporadically or systematically lying by showing otherwise, why doing such a thing? Out of fear? Because you don't want to be called things, like that AC above calling me unabomber (+ including a smiley; although not sure what to think about that -> see? this is what hypocrite, coward and dishonest interactions provoke), just because of openly saying that I don't like hypocrisy and that I am not socialising too much lately? This is a good sample of the kind of "society" with which I don't want to deal and whose fears and random misinterpretations I will not tolerate.
Theoretically, friends are supposed to give you something positive, not to represent an additional burden ("ah! Now, I have to talk to this guy, who is a completely asshole! I hate my life!"... "Hi, Matt! I was looking forward to talk to you again!"). Do you prefer to be 20 years lying and being lied, being part of irrelevant-to-you crap, feeling uncomfortable around these people and never saying anything (+ thinking that they feel the same), just for the far promise of perhaps eventually finding one person? And why not trying to find that one person right away, via immediately dismissing all the bad candidates? You can know people for many years without being friends and, gradually, convert that relationship into a true friendship. I don't see the requirement of all the hypocrisy and dealing with people you don't like; at least, not for me. You might enjoy others' companion regardless of their quality and I am fine with it; but please don't say that this is a requirement or try to impose your views on me.
You ARE a hermit. We've read your manifesto. :-)
LOL. Perhaps you are right. But I am a peaceful and live-and-let-live one and my situation doesn't come out of rejection (society seems to accept me pretty much; at least, the version it wants to see which I am not interested in showing), but out of not seeing what I like. Or, in other words, the only unabomber-like character in my case could be society (a group wanting to forcibly make me part of their circus?). So, I might be a properly-speaking hermit, but certainly not a violent version (= NOT unabomber).
No and I should definitively have done it. All this happened some years ago, but this site has been running since 2003!
Even though this is certainly an extreme example (at least for me, not sure in Japan), lack of attachment to others and fake appearances are surprisingly common in most of societies. Internet and the way in which things like "social" media have evolved is a good reflection of that reality. Lots of people are not interested in actually knowing others, but only in blindly following trends, getting temporary certainty via poor information about everyone, having a high number of likes, friends, references, showing that they are happy/sad/angry, etc. Similar ideas apply to the real-life routines of many people, who are so scared of really giving and getting something (and, consequently, potentially losing/being hurt) that prefer to be systematically involved in meaningless relationships with others.
Some people might consider me some kind of hermit since some time ago, a person not able to enjoy the small pleasures of life or others' companion. This isn't true. The reality is that I am only interested in getting involved in somehow meaningful relationships, but most of people are not. Should I join the big circus of hypocrisy, meaning-nothing conventions, playing-very-safe-and-as-instructed and lies to eventually find just one worthy person? No, thanks. I did that in the past and know where it ends: tolerating more lies, hypocrisy, in-case-of-doubt attacks, unreasonable prejudices, etc. From my current position, I don't see a big difference between this article and what happens almost everywhere: people living to show and to do/be scared/angry/happy/etc. as instructed by whatever trend or convention, rather than really having/enjoying/experiencing. I don't even find any of this sad anymore.
... got quite surprised with the persistence and poor-understanding skills of some spammers/scammers. I was doing it manually and just for fun (+ kind of contributing to reduce crap). I think that this was one of the first times when I realised about how deep stupidity can go. Although I prefer the current much-clearer-ideas myself, some times I kind of miss those moments when I was still expecting other outputs rather than stupidity always remaining stupidity.
I feel like you didn't live through the IE vs Netscape era...
Although I didn't really care too much about computers/internet/programming until relatively recently (a bit over the last 10 years), I did live that era and don't think that it had anything to do with nowadays/what is being discussed here. Back then, finding errors or waiting a lot for a page to load was pretty usual, to not mention the fact that most of the pages were static and internet was still too secondary. Additionally, there is no need to go back so many years, I am talking about comparing my personal experience during the last years and during the last months. I am talking about a mature internet where having a faulty website seems almost unforgivable, mainly when talking about big companies with lots of money whose main income source comes precisely from said faulty functionality.
There's never really been a time since the dawn of the graphical browser where you could realistically expect the majority of the internet to "just work" on any browser you chose to use.
You might be right by considering a big enough random sample of websites, but from my personal experience things are getting notably worse now. I have never had relevant problems to visit important sites with properly-updated browsers until relatively recently. I am talking about national TVs or newspapers, worldwide-known sites like Youtube or Twitter and so on. And I am not referring to looking-a-bit-bad versions either, but to fully non-functional or, at least, notably slower/buggier major functionalities.
Just in case I better clarify the difference between aggressive and violent behaviour. I am certainly an aggressive person on quite a few contexts, as proven by my previous post and quite a few other ones. Some people might even consider that, in some cases, my reactions might be a bit too aggressive and as harmful as physical ones. I personally don't agree with that and, in any case, consider my attitudes quite proportional (in many situations, just to be the less bad options and cut right away what isn't going anywhere). In any case and no matter what you think of my aggressiveness, it will never be used to force others to do whatever and this is where I see the difference between aggressiveness and violence (physical or figurative). Forcing others in any way to do anything is one of the less appealing scenarios I can think of. My usual reaction to a rejection is acceptation. Trying to persuade, somehow force, manipulate or similar anyone to do anything is extremely off-putting to me. I am equally incompatible with those wanting to impose whatever on me than with those expecting me to force them to do whatever. Not sure if this differentiation is fully supported by the proper definitions of both concepts but, at least, this is my intention when I use them.
Clarification about the upper buttons: I meant when the browser isn't fully maximised; also you can modify that behaviour. My question is about why being that the default setup, is that comfortable for a Linux user? For me, it isn't.