I found this one in my searches about Harris and election. This is the kind of thing that I'm much more interested. A scholarly look at actual numbers and where errors may have been introduced into the system. (I'm only about 50% through the reading of it right now.)
This is what we need to solve the problems we're facing.
I don't have a pre-formed opinion about the election results. I have an acknowledgement of the fact that statistically we'll never have a result we can hang our hat on.
What I do have a preformed opinion about is when I'm confronted with "Bush stole the election" that it is done as a statement of fact without acknowledging the statistical issues or even attempting to resolve the problems with the "theft" in question.
Maybe dwell was a little rough, but seeing posts (not from you mind you) that talk about "Commander in Thief" and what not are simply not constructive.
List to me very carefully, this comes from the very articles that you pointed me to.
One of the single biggest problems with the Florida voter records is that they don't have Social Security Numbers on them. This means that the only way to try to match felons to the voter roles is to work with name matches and other data like addresses and age. This is a horribly innaccurate way to approach things and it's the fault of the Florida records, not the actions of the contractor.
So, you want to fix things in Florida? Then petition to require that all voter records have Social Security Numbers. Simple solution that'll solve probably at least 90% of the complaints of this reporter.
You continue to miss the point I was making about your "list": That's what I meant by saying that he "based his book" on those articles. The articles in question are based on interviews that he and others conducted, and documents that he was given.
Look at the list of articles: (From the provided URL: http://www.gregpalast.com/columns.cfm?subject_id=1 &subject_name=Theft%20of%20Presidency) GIL NOBLE OF ABC'S "LIKE IT IS" INTERVIEWS GREG PALAST (TRANSCRIPT) ABC News Monday Apr 21, 2003 Transcript of Gil Rogers interview with Greg Palast TRUTH IN EXILE Creative Loafing Friday Apr 11, 2003 Creative Loafing's John Sugg talks to Greg Palast about corporate malfeasance and the botched 2000 election. ERIC BOSSE REVIEWS "THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY" FOR ALTERNET AlterNet.org Thursday Mar 20, 2003 Eric Bosse reviews "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" for Alternet
This is a list of interviews with the writer of the book and a review of the book. This is not a source page it is a promotion page.
This "reporter" is not working from a neutral position. He continues to allege theft and fraud and conspiracy when none of the facts to date support that conclusion.
Look at some of those "intimidation" allegations like the notorious road block alleged in one incident. The facts panned out that the roadblack in question was blocks away on a completely different street that isn't even the main route to the polling place in question. What documented and proven voter harassment was there in Florida?
Aren't you equally outraged that in one of the counties that ignored the purge list it was reported that 450 felons illegally voted? (Again from your links.)
Finally your trite: Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. Completely misses the point. The past in question in this case is problems with purges of the voter lists and problems with the voting machines. So, tell me how incessantly carping on the "failures" of the previous election have done anything to improve the next one? Go out and get those SSN's added to the lists, have the DNC use some of their billions to educate the voters in those counties and buy better equipment.
Those who dwell on the past are doomed to never see the future.
It points out the magnitude of error that the contractor made in the past.
No, it points out a single identified and corrected error that was made in the past that was unrelated to the rest of the allegations in the article.
Because any time that you remove supposed felons, you will be removing more minorities (Democrats) than not. Therefore, a pretty good way to get minority (Democratic) votes uncounted is to try to target felons and supposed felons. That's just stastics, there is nothing inherently unfair in that process.
The problem is, many false matches were made against "black sounding" names (anyone that met an 80% match was excluded) - and many felons were denied their vote,
Strange I seem to recall the main complaint in the article was that the methods used were in fact not revealed. How do you come by this 80% match idea?...and countermanding the directives from the Secretary of State. Harris should never have been allowed to make those directives.
Again strange, considering that the directive was to satisfy the Florida constitution. How does enforcing the constitution make Harris the villain?
My complaint about the list of articles was because you said that they were a list of articles that were the source of the book: This [gregpalast.com] is a pretty good listing of some of the articles Palast based his book on. (emphasis added)
In fact, they're interviews of the author or maybe some of the articles that he compiled into the book, not articles from other sources that provided the factual basis for his book.
I know that the Florida election was hardly a perfect thing. In fact, no election is a perfect thing, I just really doubt the "giant Republican conspiracy" to give Bush the Whitehouse characterization. Consider that this conspiracy would have required active cooperation in these Democratically controlled counties.
Personally I feel that it has been investigated to death and beyond. The real problem is that EVERY investigation has started with a conclusion (on both sides mind you) and worked the facts to fit that conclusion. Instead of the outrage we hear about the election past we should all be working on improving the elections future.
What does this mean? Probably a national voter registration database that includes social security numbers and a national purge method for dealing with inelligible voters. Additionally an open national standard for voting machines needs to be adopted instead of the current patchwork that we have from county to county. Finally, national standards need to be established for determining a "good" vote for the current collection of voting technology so that we don't have the "chad dance" that we were having and trying to deal with the horrible concept of "voter intent".
Arguing about Florida isn't going to change one darn thing.
He stood in a line to get a book autographed. He asked for it to be inscribed to him so he gave him his name for that.
There is no way you can stretch any of that into a physical threat or fear of a physical threat. Krugman voluntarily arranged for and participated in this event. Now if Luskin showed up outside Krugman's house with the book for a signature then maybe you'd have a point.
The point is that Krugman used stalker as a character assassination tool in order to attempt to avoid embarassing questions during an interview. Classic ad hominem.
Luskin went to a public event, recorded portions of that event, and then stood in a pre-arranged line for a signed copy of his book. He even identified himself to Krugman when he requested that signature.
Krugman kicked this off by characterizing Lusking as "an internet stalker, he even stalked me in person once" which is a gross mischaracterization that was aimed to deflect the criticism that was being directed towards him. The fact that Krugman labelled it stalking is where the real issue begins. If someone else continued with that characterization and tried to carry it even further then they are definitely walking very close to those libel/slander lines. (I never remember which is speech and which is writing.)
That article that you linked me to starts with a reported and corrected error and then leaps off into the realm of should and if in quite a hurry.
Choice quote: In the process, however, the list invariably targets a minority population in Florida, where 31 percent of all black men cannot vote because of a ban on felons.[...]
And if this unfairly singled out minorities, it unfairly handicapped Gore: In Florida, 93 percent of African-Americans voted for the vice president.
If minorities commit a majority of the felonies then how are they "unfairly singled out"?
There are also facts in there that Palm Beach and Duvall simply ignored the lists. In the other examples there are issues of how the individual counties treated the lists and whether they corroborated information or not. Again we're back to counties exercising their own rights and initiatives.
Your list of articles are a collection of self-serving items mainly about interviews for the writer of the book in question.
You've got a margin of error of 180,000 votes in one of your quoted numbers. (Somewhere between 20,000 and 200,000 votes)
What scientific methodology can create such a wide margin? Why is that margin so wide? What is the control that would make it seem that chosing the 20,000 number makes it more charitable?
There were a total of 5,963,070 counted votes in Fla for the 2000 election (http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electora l_college/popular_vote_2000.html)
20,000 votes = 0.3% of that total 200,000 votes = 3% of that total.
Error rates for punch card machines were being quoted at around 3.5%. We remain within the statistical noise.
Conspiracy or no conspiracy the vote was too close to be resolved in a way that would remove any doubt.
The problem was that there wasn't any thing like "hanging" versus "swinging" versus "dimpled" there was only the all powerful "voter intent". The rules from county to county on how to determine that intent were different.
To make matters worse the physical manipulation of these ballots would cause physical changes thus further distorting "intent".
While the "machine" for punching the ballots may or may not be faulty IIRC you still remove the ballot upon completion and drop it in a box. That is the time to physically inspect the ballot (in fact I believe they were telling people to make sure all their "chads" were removed).
The butterfly ballot has only the Democrats to accept the blame for. Their people designed the ballot, published it for comment, and used it for the election.
Of course Jeb is going to promise that he'll work to help his brother win Florida. This is why he immediately recused himself from the whole process.
We can go round and round arguing which side did what that was heinous and evil, the points to remember are: 1) Neither "side" behaved terribly well in the process. 2) The margin of victory in Florida in 2000 will forever remain below the margin of error.
How the heck where they ever going to "get the election right"?
No matter what way you slice it, no matter who you say did what right or wrong the margin of victory in Florida would forever remain below the margin of error.
Why would it be more legitimate if Gore won the state by 10 votes than Bush by 1,000? The precincts that everyone was complaining about (especially the infamous butterfly ballot) were controlled by Democrats. The horrible ballot that everyone is blaming was designed by a Democrat, was published in the newspapers before the election for comment and not word one was utterred.
What court orders did Harris directly disobey? How did this affect the outcome of COUNTRY-RUN elections?
My problem is that this is always presented as a one-sided "Bush stole the election" with the other side trying to wrap itself in the cloak of all things good and righteous. Meanwhile, Gore is cherry-picking counties, demanding selective recounts, trying to get absentee ballots from military people serving overseas thrown out, and the Fla SC was just as split and as partisan as anything the US SC could be accused of.
IE is in no way free. IE requires you to have Windows. (They're dropping their Mac port.)
MS has already shown its willingness to use one product to drive adoption of another (Windows for IE), what would stop them from refusing to license this patent to any other browser and then "tweaking" IE so it will only talk to IIS?
While the patent in question is questionable at best, how is Eolas evil? They filed for and were given a patent. They have now successfully defended that patent against an infringer.
The fact that said infringer is huge and has decided to unilaterally shaft the Web in order to avoid paying licensing fees has nothing to do with the inherent goodness or evilness of Eolas.
BTW, Eolas is privately owned with only one employee. MS can't buy it unless Eolas agrees to being bought. Also, if MS were to buy Eolas you think they'd just suddenly go and license that patent to everyone out of the goodness of their heart?
You know, they're called the Red *CRESCENT* over there. The ICRC is actually quite cognizant of the religious sensitivities in the area and they paint a large Red CRESCENT on their vehicles there.
(Even the terrorists knew this as they ALSO painted a large Red CRESCENT on the bomb delivery truck.)
It was: "We (the Florida Supreme Court) will make the decision that results in the guy we want getting the White House."
The vote was right down party lines, don't kid yourself about the legal "excuses" they came up with. [Equal protection?] Voter intent? Come on. (Bold text inserted, []'s show original text.)
The point was that Florida started the mess by trying to create law after the election. Remember those pictures of the guy holding a punch card up to the light and using a magnifying glass to devine "voter intent"?!?
Frankly, if you can't figure out how to operate a punch card then you certainly can't have an informed opinion on who should be president.
The passport/freedom fighters thing must have been in another thread I was replying to before. Sorry about that.
However, simply saying read this book gets nowhere. The fact is that you have a group of people who keep whining about the 2000 election and how "Bush and the USSC stole the election" and completely ignore both the tactics that Gore was using that started the whole mess and the fact that the Fla SC completely ignored their own laws in an attempt to give Al his recount.
What is the relevance to my post? Someone was blathering about "freedom fighters" while the news is talking about how a want-to-be suicide bomber who was shot and killed in Iraq was carrying a Syrian passport.
I think you meant to say "ahem, Al Gore, cough cough, election, cough, 2000"!!!
Really, why is it that we jump up and down and scream about the outrage that was the USSC's decision and the partisan split in that decision and give the Fla SC a free pass?
If they were to merely copyright the template machine then you can't duplicate the particular design. If they have a patent for "mechanical template producing mechanism" then you're dead in the water unless they want to license the patent.
Unix better for annoying ex's
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
First off, windowsupdate.com is a poor experience for any but the most basic users. Trying to download patch sets to apply to multiple machines isn't supported in it. The system can't even decide to only highlight one patch when it knows that that patch has to be installed exclusively. History of installed patches is sketchy at best and if you install a patch outside of that environment it is completely lost. (A new W2K build right now means to install W2K, install SP4, install IE 6 SP 1, download more patches, lather, rinse, repeat.)
The single biggest problem is that the complexity of MS's OS is out of control. IE, WMP, OE, and whatnot being welded in willy-nilly means that there's more to patch, more to potentially go wrong with a patch, and more to dilute the efforts of MS's coders.
Yes patching is a fact of life in the software world but it doesn't have to be as bad or as often as it is today.
File now or file later
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Now, admittedly, this would also add on some responsibility to tag keywords to the files, and I've thought of ways of doing that as well (for example, applying keywords associated with a directory automatically to files placed in the directory).
Of course you'd have to do that scut work for any of these FS's to be useful. Now if you've gone to the effort of making the directory meta-data useful and explanatory then wouldn't just walking the directory tree accomplish the same goal while being less complex and more compatible?
Suppose you go and move your files (say the 'photo me sophie' now needs to go to 'photo me annoying-ex' folder:-D ) are you going to be redoing all of your indexes and everything to support that move operation? (Considering right now all you'd have to do is rename and possible move the folder [maybe to the 'trash'] to get the job done.)
DB backed file systems are only really necessary when you're dealing with document management and with documents being created by other people, not yourself. The one thing you learn with DM implementations is that those DB's containing "meta-data" are always stuffed with the data that is least annoying (not most helpful) to everyone using the system. Context is quite important when you're viewing data and what you may consider important for your search could be completely useless for the next person.
Umm, Miguel you know that SCO doesn't in fact control the UNIX certification don't you? You also realize that there are already different UNIX specifications that companies can certify too?
I think the problem is that you're trying to sell Mono as.NET compatible when the original vision you pushed was that you liked the ideas BEHIND.NET. Well fine, use those ideas, portable byte code, multiple languages, etc, but cut the strings from MS. You're never going to convert a.NET shop to Mono and as long as you try to stay close it will only be viewed as a liability.
The fact is that in this case MS would be "leaking" someone else's property. (Look at the current Washington witch hunt going on over a "leak".) Now there would probably be some burden for the prosecuting company to prove either willfullness or negligence but it would be very hard for a company to play "Oops it just got out" AFTER a judgement.
Slashdot Mirror
Really, I hadn't dug into the whole thing with any real care before we started this whole discussion. It's been enlightening.
:-D
I say we get together and do a hostile takeover of Diebold and get this thing right for 2004!
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/research/wpaper.nsf/d 745629e080d1fe88525698900714934/0187b761d98d941985 256c3f005659a8/$FILE/Databases,%20Felons%20and%20V oting.pdf
I found this one in my searches about Harris and election. This is the kind of thing that I'm much more interested. A scholarly look at actual numbers and where errors may have been introduced into the system. (I'm only about 50% through the reading of it right now.)
This is what we need to solve the problems we're facing.
I don't have a pre-formed opinion about the election results. I have an acknowledgement of the fact that statistically we'll never have a result we can hang our hat on.
What I do have a preformed opinion about is when I'm confronted with "Bush stole the election" that it is done as a statement of fact without acknowledging the statistical issues or even attempting to resolve the problems with the "theft" in question.
Maybe dwell was a little rough, but seeing posts (not from you mind you) that talk about "Commander in Thief" and what not are simply not constructive.
List to me very carefully, this comes from the very articles that you pointed me to.
1 &subject_name=Theft%20of%20Presidency)
One of the single biggest problems with the Florida voter records is that they don't have Social Security Numbers on them. This means that the only way to try to match felons to the voter roles is to work with name matches and other data like addresses and age. This is a horribly innaccurate way to approach things and it's the fault of the Florida records, not the actions of the contractor.
So, you want to fix things in Florida? Then petition to require that all voter records have Social Security Numbers. Simple solution that'll solve probably at least 90% of the complaints of this reporter.
You continue to miss the point I was making about your "list":
That's what I meant by saying that he "based his book" on those articles. The articles in question are based on interviews that he and others conducted, and documents that he was given.
Look at the list of articles:
(From the provided URL: http://www.gregpalast.com/columns.cfm?subject_id=
GIL NOBLE OF ABC'S "LIKE IT IS" INTERVIEWS GREG PALAST (TRANSCRIPT)
ABC News
Monday Apr 21, 2003
Transcript of Gil Rogers interview with Greg Palast
TRUTH IN EXILE
Creative Loafing
Friday Apr 11, 2003
Creative Loafing's John Sugg talks to Greg Palast about corporate malfeasance and the botched 2000 election.
ERIC BOSSE REVIEWS "THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY" FOR ALTERNET
AlterNet.org
Thursday Mar 20, 2003
Eric Bosse reviews "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" for Alternet
This is a list of interviews with the writer of the book and a review of the book. This is not a source page it is a promotion page.
This "reporter" is not working from a neutral position. He continues to allege theft and fraud and conspiracy when none of the facts to date support that conclusion.
Look at some of those "intimidation" allegations like the notorious road block alleged in one incident. The facts panned out that the roadblack in question was blocks away on a completely different street that isn't even the main route to the polling place in question. What documented and proven voter harassment was there in Florida?
Aren't you equally outraged that in one of the counties that ignored the purge list it was reported that 450 felons illegally voted? (Again from your links.)
Finally your trite:
Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.
Completely misses the point. The past in question in this case is problems with purges of the voter lists and problems with the voting machines. So, tell me how incessantly carping on the "failures" of the previous election have done anything to improve the next one? Go out and get those SSN's added to the lists, have the DNC use some of their billions to educate the voters in those counties and buy better equipment.
Those who dwell on the past are doomed to never see the future.
It points out the magnitude of error that the contractor made in the past.
...and countermanding the directives from the Secretary of State. Harris should never have been allowed to make those directives.
No, it points out a single identified and corrected error that was made in the past that was unrelated to the rest of the allegations in the article.
Because any time that you remove supposed felons, you will be removing more minorities (Democrats) than not. Therefore, a pretty good way to get minority (Democratic) votes uncounted is to try to target felons and supposed felons.
That's just stastics, there is nothing inherently unfair in that process.
The problem is, many false matches were made against "black sounding" names (anyone that met an 80% match was excluded) - and many felons were denied their vote,
Strange I seem to recall the main complaint in the article was that the methods used were in fact not revealed. How do you come by this 80% match idea?
Again strange, considering that the directive was to satisfy the Florida constitution. How does enforcing the constitution make Harris the villain?
My complaint about the list of articles was because you said that they were a list of articles that were the source of the book:
This [gregpalast.com] is a pretty good listing of some of the articles Palast based his book on. (emphasis added)
In fact, they're interviews of the author or maybe some of the articles that he compiled into the book, not articles from other sources that provided the factual basis for his book.
I know that the Florida election was hardly a perfect thing. In fact, no election is a perfect thing, I just really doubt the "giant Republican conspiracy" to give Bush the Whitehouse characterization. Consider that this conspiracy would have required active cooperation in these Democratically controlled counties.
Personally I feel that it has been investigated to death and beyond. The real problem is that EVERY investigation has started with a conclusion (on both sides mind you) and worked the facts to fit that conclusion. Instead of the outrage we hear about the election past we should all be working on improving the elections future.
What does this mean? Probably a national voter registration database that includes social security numbers and a national purge method for dealing with inelligible voters. Additionally an open national standard for voting machines needs to be adopted instead of the current patchwork that we have from county to county. Finally, national standards need to be established for determining a "good" vote for the current collection of voting technology so that we don't have the "chad dance" that we were having and trying to deal with the horrible concept of "voter intent".
Arguing about Florida isn't going to change one darn thing.
Where the hell do you get an idea like that?
He stood in a line to get a book autographed. He asked for it to be inscribed to him so he gave him his name for that.
There is no way you can stretch any of that into a physical threat or fear of a physical threat. Krugman voluntarily arranged for and participated in this event. Now if Luskin showed up outside Krugman's house with the book for a signature then maybe you'd have a point.
The point is that Krugman used stalker as a character assassination tool in order to attempt to avoid embarassing questions during an interview. Classic ad hominem.
(Thanks for the SS rule maybe it'll stick.)
Luskin went to a public event, recorded portions of that event, and then stood in a pre-arranged line for a signed copy of his book. He even identified himself to Krugman when he requested that signature.
Krugman kicked this off by characterizing Lusking as "an internet stalker, he even stalked me in person once" which is a gross mischaracterization that was aimed to deflect the criticism that was being directed towards him. The fact that Krugman labelled it stalking is where the real issue begins. If someone else continued with that characterization and tried to carry it even further then they are definitely walking very close to those libel/slander lines. (I never remember which is speech and which is writing.)
That article that you linked me to starts with a reported and corrected error and then leaps off into the realm of should and if in quite a hurry.
Choice quote:
In the process, however, the list invariably targets a minority population in Florida, where 31 percent of all black men cannot vote because of a ban on felons.[...]
And if this unfairly singled out minorities, it unfairly handicapped Gore: In Florida, 93 percent of African-Americans voted for the vice president.
If minorities commit a majority of the felonies then how are they "unfairly singled out"?
There are also facts in there that Palm Beach and Duvall simply ignored the lists. In the other examples there are issues of how the individual counties treated the lists and whether they corroborated information or not. Again we're back to counties exercising their own rights and initiatives.
Your list of articles are a collection of self-serving items mainly about interviews for the writer of the book in question.
You've got a margin of error of 180,000 votes in one of your quoted numbers. (Somewhere between 20,000 and 200,000 votes)
a l_college/popular_vote_2000.html)
What scientific methodology can create such a wide margin? Why is that margin so wide? What is the control that would make it seem that chosing the 20,000 number makes it more charitable?
There were a total of 5,963,070 counted votes in Fla for the 2000 election (http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/elector
20,000 votes = 0.3% of that total
200,000 votes = 3% of that total.
Error rates for punch card machines were being quoted at around 3.5%. We remain within the statistical noise.
Conspiracy or no conspiracy the vote was too close to be resolved in a way that would remove any doubt.
The problem was that there wasn't any thing like "hanging" versus "swinging" versus "dimpled" there was only the all powerful "voter intent". The rules from county to county on how to determine that intent were different.
To make matters worse the physical manipulation of these ballots would cause physical changes thus further distorting "intent".
While the "machine" for punching the ballots may or may not be faulty IIRC you still remove the ballot upon completion and drop it in a box. That is the time to physically inspect the ballot (in fact I believe they were telling people to make sure all their "chads" were removed).
The butterfly ballot has only the Democrats to accept the blame for. Their people designed the ballot, published it for comment, and used it for the election.
Of course Jeb is going to promise that he'll work to help his brother win Florida. This is why he immediately recused himself from the whole process.
We can go round and round arguing which side did what that was heinous and evil, the points to remember are:
1) Neither "side" behaved terribly well in the process.
2) The margin of victory in Florida in 2000 will forever remain below the margin of error.
How the heck where they ever going to "get the election right"?
No matter what way you slice it, no matter who you say did what right or wrong the margin of victory in Florida would forever remain below the margin of error.
Why would it be more legitimate if Gore won the state by 10 votes than Bush by 1,000? The precincts that everyone was complaining about (especially the infamous butterfly ballot) were controlled by Democrats. The horrible ballot that everyone is blaming was designed by a Democrat, was published in the newspapers before the election for comment and not word one was utterred.
What court orders did Harris directly disobey? How did this affect the outcome of COUNTRY-RUN elections?
My problem is that this is always presented as a one-sided "Bush stole the election" with the other side trying to wrap itself in the cloak of all things good and righteous. Meanwhile, Gore is cherry-picking counties, demanding selective recounts, trying to get absentee ballots from military people serving overseas thrown out, and the Fla SC was just as split and as partisan as anything the US SC could be accused of.
IE is in no way free. IE requires you to have Windows. (They're dropping their Mac port.)
MS has already shown its willingness to use one product to drive adoption of another (Windows for IE), what would stop them from refusing to license this patent to any other browser and then "tweaking" IE so it will only talk to IIS?
While the patent in question is questionable at best, how is Eolas evil? They filed for and were given a patent. They have now successfully defended that patent against an infringer.
The fact that said infringer is huge and has decided to unilaterally shaft the Web in order to avoid paying licensing fees has nothing to do with the inherent goodness or evilness of Eolas.
BTW, Eolas is privately owned with only one employee. MS can't buy it unless Eolas agrees to being bought. Also, if MS were to buy Eolas you think they'd just suddenly go and license that patent to everyone out of the goodness of their heart?
You know, they're called the Red *CRESCENT* over there. The ICRC is actually quite cognizant of the religious sensitivities in the area and they paint a large Red CRESCENT on their vehicles there.
(Even the terrorists knew this as they ALSO painted a large Red CRESCENT on the bomb delivery truck.)
It was: "We (the Florida Supreme Court) will make the decision that results in the guy we want getting the White House."
The vote was right down party lines, don't kid yourself about the legal "excuses" they came up with. [Equal protection?] Voter intent? Come on.
(Bold text inserted, []'s show original text.)
The point was that Florida started the mess by trying to create law after the election. Remember those pictures of the guy holding a punch card up to the light and using a magnifying glass to devine "voter intent"?!?
Frankly, if you can't figure out how to operate a punch card then you certainly can't have an informed opinion on who should be president.
The passport/freedom fighters thing must have been in another thread I was replying to before. Sorry about that.
However, simply saying read this book gets nowhere. The fact is that you have a group of people who keep whining about the 2000 election and how "Bush and the USSC stole the election" and completely ignore both the tactics that Gore was using that started the whole mess and the fact that the Fla SC completely ignored their own laws in an attempt to give Al his recount.
What is the relevance to my post? Someone was blathering about "freedom fighters" while the news is talking about how a want-to-be suicide bomber who was shot and killed in Iraq was carrying a Syrian passport.
I suppose they just carry around Syrian passports in case they want to go vacationing?
I think you meant to say "ahem, Al Gore, cough cough, election, cough, 2000"!!!
Really, why is it that we jump up and down and scream about the outrage that was the USSC's decision and the partisan split in that decision and give the Fla SC a free pass?
If they were to merely copyright the template machine then you can't duplicate the particular design. If they have a patent for "mechanical template producing mechanism" then you're dead in the water unless they want to license the patent.
You can use the 'dig' command. :-D
First off, windowsupdate.com is a poor experience for any but the most basic users. Trying to download patch sets to apply to multiple machines isn't supported in it. The system can't even decide to only highlight one patch when it knows that that patch has to be installed exclusively. History of installed patches is sketchy at best and if you install a patch outside of that environment it is completely lost. (A new W2K build right now means to install W2K, install SP4, install IE 6 SP 1, download more patches, lather, rinse, repeat.)
The single biggest problem is that the complexity of MS's OS is out of control. IE, WMP, OE, and whatnot being welded in willy-nilly means that there's more to patch, more to potentially go wrong with a patch, and more to dilute the efforts of MS's coders.
Yes patching is a fact of life in the software world but it doesn't have to be as bad or as often as it is today.
Now, admittedly, this would also add on some responsibility to tag keywords to the files, and I've thought of ways of doing that as well (for example, applying keywords associated with a directory automatically to files placed in the directory).
:-D ) are you going to be redoing all of your indexes and everything to support that move operation? (Considering right now all you'd have to do is rename and possible move the folder [maybe to the 'trash'] to get the job done.)
Of course you'd have to do that scut work for any of these FS's to be useful. Now if you've gone to the effort of making the directory meta-data useful and explanatory then wouldn't just walking the directory tree accomplish the same goal while being less complex and more compatible?
Suppose you go and move your files (say the 'photo me sophie' now needs to go to 'photo me annoying-ex' folder
DB backed file systems are only really necessary when you're dealing with document management and with documents being created by other people, not yourself. The one thing you learn with DM implementations is that those DB's containing "meta-data" are always stuffed with the data that is least annoying (not most helpful) to everyone using the system. Context is quite important when you're viewing data and what you may consider important for your search could be completely useless for the next person.
Umm, Miguel you know that SCO doesn't in fact control the UNIX certification don't you? You also realize that there are already different UNIX specifications that companies can certify too?
.NET compatible when the original vision you pushed was that you liked the ideas BEHIND .NET. Well fine, use those ideas, portable byte code, multiple languages, etc, but cut the strings from MS. You're never going to convert a .NET shop to Mono and as long as you try to stay close it will only be viewed as a liability.
I think the problem is that you're trying to sell Mono as
Hmmm, laser powered plane with IP/Laser connection. Post a link to the flight on slashdot and watch them soar! :-D
(Yeah, I know it doesn't really work that way.)
The fact is that in this case MS would be "leaking" someone else's property. (Look at the current Washington witch hunt going on over a "leak".) Now there would probably be some burden for the prosecuting company to prove either willfullness or negligence but it would be very hard for a company to play "Oops it just got out" AFTER a judgement.