Re:A little worse than you think.
on
Indecision 2002
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· Score: 2
there are all sorts of dirty tricks the parties pull on each other
There were reports of flyers being distributed in downtown Baltimore warning people that before they come out to vote on November 6th [sic] they should pay any "parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, overdue rent" and should take care of "any warrants" that might be outstanding.
Either the Republicans did it to scare away Democratic voters, or the Democrats did it to fire up their voters and smear the Republicans. Both sides are quite capable of it.
coupled with other niggling obstacles (the weather, the voluntary vote)
Allowing individual choice is an "obstacle"? Even Orwell wasn't imaginative enough to come up with that one....
Re:New cheating method being tested everywhere!
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 1
Crack open the box with the said papers and tear some of them up or write new ones!
As I noted in my description of how voting mechanics would work If I Ran The Zoo, it's hard to forge mass quantities of paper ballots that will pass muster (they'd need to be done manually with a reasonably convincing variation in the "X" marks).
Re:A great solution for electronic voting...
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 2
The voting machine prints out the actual ballot, as well as a copy for you to keep.
No copies that leave the polling place. That's an open invitation to vote-buying and coercion. I'd design the system as follows:
1. Voter fills out paper ballot.
2. Voter inserts paper ballot into scanner.
3. Scanner reads the vote in each category and sends a summary report to a display screen.
4a. Voter confirms the summary report. The vote is then counted (electronic tally incremented and paper ballot dropped into the sealed box), or
4b. Voter rejects the summary report. The vote is then voided (electronic tally not incremented and paper ballot marked "VOID" and dropped into a different sealed box), and the voter starts over with a new paper ballot.
The system could work with the votes entered electronically and a printed summary (displayed to the voter behind a window). However, it is preferable to have the voter mark a paper ballot directly because it makes vote fraud more difficult (the fake ballots would have to be marked manually with many different pens and "X" mark styles to pass as genuine one-to-a-customer votes).
According to the suits, the laws that prevent the telemarketers are violating their 1st amendment right to free speech as well as unfairly restricting business.
The Constitutional right to say what you like is "free speech". The supposed "right" to impose yourself upon an unwilling audience at the target's expense is "free speach".
Consumer Electronics manufactuers want to sell hardware (to make money).
And they do not want a million calls from Joe Sixpack demanding to know why the box didn't record and play back whenever he wants, just like his old VCR.
Yeah; this is just an attempt to substitute a toothless farce for real action, rather like Saddam's attempt to forestall an attack by offering to let UN inspectors in (as long as they don't go where he keeps the WMD, of course).
But seriously, will legislation have any effect at all? Most of this stuff originates (or at least is relayed) from outside the US.
Yes, but many of them still have a contact person in the US -- there has to be a contact point somewhere for the sleazeball to collect money from the suckers, and sending money to another country complicates matters. An enforced (that's really the catch) law against stealing people's bandwidth would make the contact person liable as an accessory (at least) to the crime.
Actually, no, he doesn't have the right to try to do something that violates my rights. Ask any of the people in prison for attempted robbery, rape, murder, etc.
However we see that regardless of the technology, spammers seem to wiggle around it.
And why the hell does the law fail to treat this exactly the way it treats a cracker who "wiggles around" some corporate firewall? (Yeah, yeah, rhetorical question....)
That would be a good analogy if someone were claiming that elderly people have an exclusive right to protection against homicide, and that all others are fair game.
Since nobody is, in fact, arguing that, it is instead a worthless straw man.
Geeks: You shouldn't go after the P2P software makers, go after users who violate copywrite. A tool is just a tool.
RIAA: Ok, we'll go after users. Verizson, tell us who this guy is.
Was writing the answer into the question accidental or deliberate?
Yes, they should go after users who violate their rights. The first step of this process is not searching Joe Blow's files. The first step of this process is the lawful establishment of probable cause to search Joe Blow's files. The fact that this takes a bit of work is, to use the formal legal terminology, "tough".
As for the FBI, you probably have nothing to worry about there. They are fully aware of the virus and its actions as explained by NIPC, at this link [nipc.gov]. In short, the man now looks like a fool in front of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and they will probably dismiss him outright.
I am reminded of G. Gordon Liddy's anecdote about the fancy office set up for visiting VIPs. When the office was not in use (i.e. most of the time), it became the "Nut Room". Whenever an earnest patriotic citizen showed up demanding to speak to J. Edgar Hoover about a Martian invasion or something, he would be soothingly told that Mr. Hoover was out of town on a mission, but his right-hand man was available....
Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law: When the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists, and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, right.
Asimov hedged his corrolary with the statement that the distinguished elderly scientists are "quite probably right", and cited vaccination as one of the rare exceptions.
Of course, the distinguished but elderly scientists were (mostly) brought around in the face of hard evidence that a cowpox innoculation really did confer immunity to smallpox, which distinguishes that case from the various newage popular enthusiams that were Asimov's intended target.
A consumer CAN and SHOULD be able to modify and copy any art that they purchase for their own use. If a consumer wants to fast forward past a sex scene, they can. If they want to rip the DVD to their hard drive and filter out the vulgar language, they can. If they want to buy a product that makes this easy for them, they can. What we're arguing about is the rights of a business to profit off of the mutilated works of someone else.
In other words, you have the right to control what you see and hear if and only if you're sufficiently techno-savvy to do it yourself.
Does owning a copy of a film on DVD or whatever give me the right to change it as I see fit? No. Can I copy portions of it for my own personal non-commercial or educational purposes? Probably.
Er, it's traditional to insert filler between mutually exclusive assertions so as to make the contradiction less obvious.
The arguments for regulating spam are compelling. Everyone hates spam. But this would be another precedent for the encroaching restrictions of people's freedoms on the internet.
Stop debasing the concept of "freedom" by using it as a fraudulent argument in defense of bandwidth thieves and con artists.
Sending e-mail should not be illegal.
Placing a message onto private property where it is not wanted by the owner is, and should be, illegal. If you disagree, and if you are not a hypocrite, give me the parking location and license number of your car -- I have a key and a message for you.
This article notes, "Otellini said users will be able to turn LaGrande off. "It will be opt in," he said.
Nope -- "opt in" means that it is turned off unless and until the user turns it on, and that it is impossible to turn it on through any means other than a conscious decision to that effect by the user.
These seconds aren't additive (to uptime) but subtractive (from downtime).
Nope -- a given person works about the same percentage of the time on average. Being put under the gun will push the percentage up for a while; getting ahead of schedule and having the boss on vacation will let the percentage down for a while -- but in the long run it stays more or less constant.
Someone deprived of his usual downtime one day will make it up later, one way or another, to blow off the stress. (If anything, the annoyance of being spammed is likely to raise the overall percentage of "down time" by adding just a bit more grind to each day.)
They aren't scared of copying, they're scared of people making their own stuff and not paying the industry taxes to get it made and distributed.
I actually don't believe this.
Why ever not? It's the explanation that fits the evidence (the industry downplays the solution -- individual enforcement against individual violators -- that would attack illegal bootlegging without hurting independent producers and distributors, and insists upon measures -- e.g. Fritz-chipping -- that would require independent creators to buy an industry license so they can convert their product into a form accessible to the end user's computer).
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There were reports of flyers being distributed in downtown Baltimore warning people that before they come out to vote on November 6th [sic] they should pay any "parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, overdue rent" and should take care of "any warrants" that might be outstanding.
Either the Republicans did it to scare away Democratic voters, or the Democrats did it to fire up their voters and smear the Republicans. Both sides are quite capable of it.
Allowing individual choice is an "obstacle"? Even Orwell wasn't imaginative enough to come up with that one....
As I noted in my description of how voting mechanics would work If I Ran The Zoo, it's hard to forge mass quantities of paper ballots that will pass muster (they'd need to be done manually with a reasonably convincing variation in the "X" marks).
No copies that leave the polling place. That's an open invitation to vote-buying and coercion. I'd design the system as follows:
The system could work with the votes entered electronically and a printed summary (displayed to the voter behind a window). However, it is preferable to have the voter mark a paper ballot directly because it makes vote fraud more difficult (the fake ballots would have to be marked manually with many different pens and "X" mark styles to pass as genuine one-to-a-customer votes).Fortunately, the telemarketing industry has solved that problem by hiring people with no souls to destroy.
The Constitutional right to say what you like is "free speech". The supposed "right" to impose yourself upon an unwilling audience at the target's expense is "free speach".
And they do not want a million calls from Joe Sixpack demanding to know why the box didn't record and play back whenever he wants, just like his old VCR.
Yeah; this is just an attempt to substitute a toothless farce for real action, rather like Saddam's attempt to forestall an attack by offering to let UN inspectors in (as long as they don't go where he keeps the WMD, of course).
Yes, but many of them still have a contact person in the US -- there has to be a contact point somewhere for the sleazeball to collect money from the suckers, and sending money to another country complicates matters. An enforced (that's really the catch) law against stealing people's bandwidth would make the contact person liable as an accessory (at least) to the crime.
Actually, no, he doesn't have the right to try to do something that violates my rights. Ask any of the people in prison for attempted robbery, rape, murder, etc.
No, it is an attempt to reject the one and only acceptable rule: OPT-IN. Tell your Congresscritters that you will tolerate nothing less.
Not necessarily -- even if spam never got any positive responses, spammers could still sell their worthless "services" to suckers.
Five channels is "improved" if you have five ears. That's a different definition of "geek" than the one applicable to most /. readers.
And why the hell does the law fail to treat this exactly the way it treats a cracker who "wiggles around" some corporate firewall? (Yeah, yeah, rhetorical question....)
Since nobody is, in fact, arguing that, it is instead a worthless straw man.
RIAA: Ok, we'll go after users. Verizson, tell us who this guy is.
Was writing the answer into the question accidental or deliberate?
Yes, they should go after users who violate their rights. The first step of this process is not searching Joe Blow's files. The first step of this process is the lawful establishment of probable cause to search Joe Blow's files. The fact that this takes a bit of work is, to use the formal legal terminology, "tough".
I could have sworn I already read this story.
I am reminded of G. Gordon Liddy's anecdote about the fancy office set up for visiting VIPs. When the office was not in use (i.e. most of the time), it became the "Nut Room". Whenever an earnest patriotic citizen showed up demanding to speak to J. Edgar Hoover about a Martian invasion or something, he would be soothingly told that Mr. Hoover was out of town on a mission, but his right-hand man was available....
Asimov hedged his corrolary with the statement that the distinguished elderly scientists are "quite probably right", and cited vaccination as one of the rare exceptions.
Of course, the distinguished but elderly scientists were (mostly) brought around in the face of hard evidence that a cowpox innoculation really did confer immunity to smallpox, which distinguishes that case from the various newage popular enthusiams that were Asimov's intended target.
In other words, you have the right to control what you see and hear if and only if you're sufficiently techno-savvy to do it yourself.
Er, it's traditional to insert filler between mutually exclusive assertions so as to make the contradiction less obvious.
Stop debasing the concept of "freedom" by using it as a fraudulent argument in defense of bandwidth thieves and con artists.
Sending e-mail should not be illegal.
Placing a message onto private property where it is not wanted by the owner is, and should be, illegal. If you disagree, and if you are not a hypocrite, give me the parking location and license number of your car -- I have a key and a message for you.
Nope -- "opt in" means that it is turned off unless and until the user turns it on, and that it is impossible to turn it on through any means other than a conscious decision to that effect by the user.
Nope -- a given person works about the same percentage of the time on average. Being put under the gun will push the percentage up for a while; getting ahead of schedule and having the boss on vacation will let the percentage down for a while -- but in the long run it stays more or less constant.
Someone deprived of his usual downtime one day will make it up later, one way or another, to blow off the stress. (If anything, the annoyance of being spammed is likely to raise the overall percentage of "down time" by adding just a bit more grind to each day.)
I actually don't believe this.
Why ever not? It's the explanation that fits the evidence (the industry downplays the solution -- individual enforcement against individual violators -- that would attack illegal bootlegging without hurting independent producers and distributors, and insists upon measures -- e.g. Fritz-chipping -- that would require independent creators to buy an industry license so they can convert their product into a form accessible to the end user's computer).