A system that prints both the machine-readable section AND the human-readable section
The two need to be one and the same -- otherwise, a suborned device could print the voter's actual choice in human-readable form while printing the (political) machine's selection in (electronic) machine-readable form. This would be caught if the counting devices checked both -- but if they can read the human-readable printout, why bother having the other?
With that caveat, I like this arrangement (I'm biased, as it's a more thought-out version of my own concept of a properly-designed voting system). /.
Equifax sent me a copy of the report listing the warrant for my address, but it had disclaimers all over it that they are not responsible for the accuracy of the information. If I had lost that job because of a slanderous background check, would I have had any recourse?
And therein lies the problem -- according to the laws which are supposed to apply to everybody, a disclaimer is not a magic shield against a slander action. (That is, you can't just assert any old thing and CYA by inserting weasel words like "alleged".)
Apparently, credit agencies have gotten themselves a special loophole based on the rationalization that they'd otherwise be unable to risk reporting any negative information. This is nonsense -- they can buy liability insurance just like anyone else in a similarly exposed position, and have the cost thereof rise and fall with their error rate -- presented as a fig leaf to cover a political special favor.
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Any damn fool can claim something that isn't his. It's harmless.... unless the government sides with him passively (by letting him get away with stealing it) or actively (by putting the force of law behind the false claim).
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For instance, when the free market had absolute control over employee salaries
When was this?
Hint: It wasn't during the Gilded Age of robber barons, when government artificially depressed wages by forcibly suppressing unionization efforts (either directly sending in the troops or giving the Pinkertons a de facto license to kill). /.
Re:What part of "Fuck off big gov't" confuses you?
on
Information Poisoning
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· Score: 1
They had a definite reason for give people the right to bear arms
The Constitution does not give any rights -- it simply guarantees that preexisting rights shall not be infringed. /.
What's troubling here is that you're dealing with delivery systems that so directly affect what people learn and therefore what they choose to believe. So the need for having multiple hands at the helm is all the greater.
Carr concisely refutes his own thesis that the single hand of governent should steer the helm.
Am I ultimately saying that the government should shut down the Drudge Report because it's irresponsible and specious? Absolutely not. I'm saying there should be an agency in place that would terrify Matt Drudge into vetting his reports and not publishing hearsay unless it is labeled as such. If such an agency existed, would Drudge, like the snake oil salesman he is, eventually be driven out of business by the reduced sensationalism of his product? Perhaps. And I can't say I'd shed a tear. But he wouldn't have been shut down by the government.
This is at best mental muddle and at worst simply dishonest. What Carr proposes is analogous to the old Jim Crow laws -- grandfather clauses, literacy tests, etc were the "agency in place" to "terrify" blacks into staying away from the polls, while theoretically not infringing on their right to vote. And, of course, fact-checking would be applied as selectively as the old literacy tests: if you believe that a Clinton Administration would scrutinize Salon as carefully as Drudge (or vice vera for a Bush Administration) I have some beachfront property in Flin Flon, Manitoba to sell you.
Carr claim boils down to an assertion that the government can absolve itself of responsibility by strangling anti-government publications in red tape rather than banning them outright. This is so ludicrous that not even politicians and judges are likely to fall for it.
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Man use... big words.... me confused... head hurts...
I take it this was the first draft of Carr's statement
"Killing Time," my latest book, has been repeatedly described as "dystopian," a word I confess I don't quite understand
Someone who strikes a pose of being too sophisticated to look up a word in the dictionary is in no position to blame others for "dumbing down" the world. /.
If you're asking, "How could something like this be made to work so that it achieves its declared objectives without unacceptable negative effects?" -- damned if I know.
If you're asking for a prediction, "How will this in fact work if actually implemented?" the answer is quite simple and known beyond reasonable doubt: Information which is inconvenient to the people in power will be suppressed. /.
So to sum up, we should have rights to own guns and sell Nazi stuff on Yahoo, but we should be locked up for sending lots of email.
Oh, puh-leeze. The correct summation is, "we should have rights to possess and trade our own property and labor, but we should be locked up if we steal goods and services from others".
(There is some controversy about patents and copyrights, but that debate is about the exact boundaries of what constitutes "stealing", not whether or not stealing per se is acceptable.)
The idea that a company would voluntarily* censor the sale of racist knick-knacks on a computer system is an ominous sign that "1984" is near
*This was due to government pressure from France
The idea that someone would argue that "voluntary" is synonymous with "coerced" is a rather more striking parallel to 1984. /.
Personally, if I were Yahoo!, I would have done things a bit differently.
My own choice would be to set up the system so that any attempt to access Nazi memorabilia from France returns a link relating to Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.
Such malicious compliance would surgically strike the nerve (embarassment over Vichy collaboration) protected by the national More Anti-Nazi Than Thou veneer.
/.
What I don't understand it, why didn't Yahoo just eliminate their French branch and pull up stakes?
There's 60 million consumers in France... Now how many nazi memorabilia aficionados are they gonna piss off with this decision? A couple hundreds.
Once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane. Refusal to yield to extortion is not only righter -- in the long run, it's cheaper. /.
getting "benefits" from your employer instead of a good raise
This is the result of government policy (it got a strong foothold as a work-around to WWII-era wage controls, and was maintained by tax policy). Left to themselves, companies would rather just cut bigger paychecks and not have to deal with the extra red tape. /.
Another, and more directly relevant, vital balance is between catching criminals and protecting the civil liberties of citizens. Systems such as this represent the "Yah PEH-pahs, pliz?" side of the continuum. /.
I AM saying that a publisher has the right to protect their deals by restricting where the content can be viewed, as long as that restriction is done in accordance with the law.
Those last five words are the catch:
Section 109 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 109, permits the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under title 17 to sell or otherwise dispose of possession of that copy or phonorecord without the authority of the copyright owner, notwithstanding the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution under 17 U.S.C. 106(3). Commonly referred to as the "first sale doctrine," this provision permits such activities as the sale of used books.
For example, if a defendant employs an encryption product that works automatically and transparently with a telecommunications service or software product, an enhancement for use of encryption may not be appropriate
Oh, yeah, that's a firm barrier to abusive use of the law.
/.
1. A requirement that all bills be read in their entirety on the floor by their sponsor. (Any amendment would require a re-reading of the bill as amended, to prevent evasion via obfuscatory add/delete amendments.)
1a. Only members who attend the reading can vote for the bill. (This would not limit voting against the bill....)
2. All laws expire in some reasonable period (e.g. twenty years).
Points 1 and 2 could theoretically be done by Congressional rules of procedure (only allowing votes on bills that have been read, and which include a sunset clause), but it would probably require a Constitutional amendment to make it stick the first time it became politically inconvenient. /.
Er, why? Supporting Hollywood would be leaning strongly against the political biases of the conservatives on the court.
(Hmmm... how to get conservative Republican disdain for Hollywood channeled into constructive directions -- copyright terms trimmed to something within reason, fair use back to its traditional scope, and perhaps even mech-licensing for all media -- and away from their usual censorship fetish?) /.
Kevin Mitnick is not part of a pattern of behavior which, if permitted to continue, will destroy e-mail as a useful means of communication. Jason Garon is. QED /.
Although the oceans shouldn't be too big - just imagine the tidal wasves:-)
Gas giant moons would quickly become tidally locked (facing one side to the planet), so the tidal bulges produced by the planet would stay put. The only ebb-and-flow would be from solar tides. /.
Slashdot Mirror
The two need to be one and the same -- otherwise, a suborned device could print the voter's actual choice in human-readable form while printing the (political) machine's selection in (electronic) machine-readable form. This would be caught if the counting devices checked both -- but if they can read the human-readable printout, why bother having the other?
With that caveat, I like this arrangement (I'm biased, as it's a more thought-out version of my own concept of a properly-designed voting system).
/.
And therein lies the problem -- according to the laws which are supposed to apply to everybody, a disclaimer is not a magic shield against a slander action. (That is, you can't just assert any old thing and CYA by inserting weasel words like "alleged".)
Apparently, credit agencies have gotten themselves a special loophole based on the rationalization that they'd otherwise be unable to risk reporting any negative information. This is nonsense -- they can buy liability insurance just like anyone else in a similarly exposed position, and have the cost thereof rise and fall with their error rate -- presented as a fig leaf to cover a political special favor.
/.
...that the Palm Beach County election board have found themselves a new job.
/.
Any damn fool can claim something that isn't his. It's harmless.... unless the government sides with him passively (by letting him get away with stealing it) or actively (by putting the force of law behind the false claim).
/.
When was this?
Hint: It wasn't during the Gilded Age of robber barons, when government artificially depressed wages by forcibly suppressing unionization efforts (either directly sending in the troops or giving the Pinkertons a de facto license to kill).
/.
The Constitution does not give any rights -- it simply guarantees that preexisting rights shall not be infringed.
/.
Carr concisely refutes his own thesis that the single hand of governent should steer the helm.
Am I ultimately saying that the government should shut down the Drudge Report because it's irresponsible and specious? Absolutely not. I'm saying there should be an agency in place that would terrify Matt Drudge into vetting his reports and not publishing hearsay unless it is labeled as such. If such an agency existed, would Drudge, like the snake oil salesman he is, eventually be driven out of business by the reduced sensationalism of his product? Perhaps. And I can't say I'd shed a tear. But he wouldn't have been shut down by the government.
This is at best mental muddle and at worst simply dishonest. What Carr proposes is analogous to the old Jim Crow laws -- grandfather clauses, literacy tests, etc were the "agency in place" to "terrify" blacks into staying away from the polls, while theoretically not infringing on their right to vote. And, of course, fact-checking would be applied as selectively as the old literacy tests: if you believe that a Clinton Administration would scrutinize Salon as carefully as Drudge (or vice vera for a Bush Administration) I have some beachfront property in Flin Flon, Manitoba to sell you.
Carr claim boils down to an assertion that the government can absolve itself of responsibility by strangling anti-government publications in red tape rather than banning them outright. This is so ludicrous that not even politicians and judges are likely to fall for it.
/.
I take it this was the first draft of Carr's statement
Someone who strikes a pose of being too sophisticated to look up a word in the dictionary is in no position to blame others for "dumbing down" the world.
/.
If you're asking, "How could something like this be made to work so that it achieves its declared objectives without unacceptable negative effects?" -- damned if I know.
If you're asking for a prediction, "How will this in fact work if actually implemented?" the answer is quite simple and known beyond reasonable doubt: Information which is inconvenient to the people in power will be suppressed.
/.
For starters, they make you use crappy in-house software.
/.
Oh, puh-leeze. The correct summation is, "we should have rights to possess and trade our own property and labor, but we should be locked up if we steal goods and services from others".
(There is some controversy about patents and copyrights, but that debate is about the exact boundaries of what constitutes "stealing", not whether or not stealing per se is acceptable.)
The idea that a company would voluntarily* censor the sale of racist knick-knacks on a computer system is an ominous sign that "1984" is near
*This was due to government pressure from France
The idea that someone would argue that "voluntary" is synonymous with "coerced" is a rather more striking parallel to 1984.
/.
My own choice would be to set up the system so that any attempt to access Nazi memorabilia from France returns a link relating to Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.
Such malicious compliance would surgically strike the nerve (embarassment over Vichy collaboration) protected by the national More Anti-Nazi Than Thou veneer.
/.
Actually, the people whose rights are being violated are the owners of Yahoo, who are being denied the right to conduct honest business.
/.
There's 60 million consumers in France
Once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane. Refusal to yield to extortion is not only righter -- in the long run, it's cheaper.
/.
This is the result of government policy (it got a strong foothold as a work-around to WWII-era wage controls, and was maintained by tax policy). Left to themselves, companies would rather just cut bigger paychecks and not have to deal with the extra red tape.
/.
Guys... get a nebula.
/.
Another, and more directly relevant, vital balance is between catching criminals and protecting the civil liberties of citizens. Systems such as this represent the "Yah PEH-pahs, pliz?" side of the continuum.
/.
Those last five words are the catch:
/.
"Amazingly Ignorant Of History" isn't one of the moderation choices, so "Funny" will have to do....
/.
Don't do that when I have a mouthful of coffee. You're just lucky my cat doesn't do laps.
/.
Oh, yeah, that's a firm barrier to abusive use of the law.
/.
1. A requirement that all bills be read in their entirety on the floor by their sponsor. (Any amendment would require a re-reading of the bill as amended, to prevent evasion via obfuscatory add/delete amendments.)
1a. Only members who attend the reading can vote for the bill. (This would not limit voting against the bill....)
2. All laws expire in some reasonable period (e.g. twenty years).
Points 1 and 2 could theoretically be done by Congressional rules of procedure (only allowing votes on bills that have been read, and which include a sunset clause), but it would probably require a Constitutional amendment to make it stick the first time it became politically inconvenient.
/.
(Hmmm... how to get conservative Republican disdain for Hollywood channeled into constructive directions -- copyright terms trimmed to something within reason, fair use back to its traditional scope, and perhaps even mech-licensing for all media -- and away from their usual censorship fetish?)
/.
Kevin Mitnick is not part of a pattern of behavior which, if permitted to continue, will destroy e-mail as a useful means of communication. Jason Garon is. QED
/.
Gas giant moons would quickly become tidally locked (facing one side to the planet), so the tidal bulges produced by the planet would stay put. The only ebb-and-flow would be from solar tides.
/.