Except that "gasoline", "accelerator", and "yield" are normal English words, whereas "phishing" and "pharming" were made up recently by mutating normal English words and altering their meanings. Furthermore, those automotive terms are well-defined. The difference between gasoline and oil is simple (for a motorist, one is clear and watery and makes the car go whereas the other one is opaque, thick, and keeps the engine from seizing up). So is the difference between accelerator (which, btw, is often called a "gas pedal" anyway) and brake. So is the difference between yield and stop or go. Can you concisely explain the difference between a virus, a worm, and a trojan?
As a developer and software designer, I have significant issues with your post.
You have ignored a rule, Rules should be enforced by the code. Users should not be allowed to ignore rules. Users should not be expected to remember arbitrary rules because developers are too lazy to code their enforcement.
a warning, If the warning should never be ignored, it should be a fatal error. If the warning should be resolved by a call to tech support, lock the user interface until tech support unlocks it.
a message box, These are generally worthless. If your message box only has one button (OK), it shouldn't exist. (It should be replaced with something that disappears on a timer.) If it has two buttons plus "the X box in the corner", the OS close button should be moved into the message box design. If the user is going to select the same option 99% of the time, they're going to select that option 100% of the time because they stop considering it. Most issues of ignoring a message box are the fault of the UI designer and human nature (the user quits caring after a while, and justifiably so). More importantly though, if an action should be taken, don't ask the user. Tell them it's happening, do it, then tell them it finished.
an email, or a memo. See the above section on "rules". If it takes an email or a memo, a developer should be implementing that functionality ASAP. Otherwise, you're using shoddy software, so don't blame your users for that, blame management.
You have forgotten that passwords expire every month You have passwords that expire monthly? That's insane! Aside from causing security problems (passwords like asdFGH!2 or something similar), if your users can't keep a password secret longer than a month, you have much bigger problems than computer use issues. That is to say, they're not trustworthy. At any rate, this is management's problem, not the users' problem, but they should remember that the passwords expire. On the other hand, if the system doesn't inform them and force them to change their password, that's a UI designer's fault, not the users' fault.
that passwords do not magically update across all your applications just because you changed one of them. So you have multiple passwords expiring every month? And you expect users to use the same password for multiple unlinked accounts? This is a major security design failure. If a user should use the same password, the accounts should be linked so that one update does indeed "magically" update the other applications. If this is undesired, you should encourage them to use separate passwords.
If you claim to be a teacher in an article about education where you call your students stupid, please at least take the time to use decent spelling and grammar because otherwise we're going to blame you and your ilk for their stupidity!
Actually they are part of the problem because they distill the entire curriculum down to a set of facts. Teachers therefore teach these facts in order to get the kids to pass the test without teaching the intricate interconnections among the facts and the relationships that make the facts matter. It doesn't matter if you know that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln on April 14th of 1865 if you don't understand why, and that's not something that can be expressed as an answer to a multiple choice question. Standardized tests make school about passing tests rather than learning.
Note that I'm not against standardization of testing. I'm against the sort of standardized tests that we have because they have to be taken over the course of a class period. We need comprehensive standardized tests that involve essay questions to demonstrate an actual understanding of the subject matter instead of multiple choice questions that anyone knowledgeable in test-taking can pass with even a minor grasp of the material.
Why would you want to read/write on your system partition? Because the Documents\ and\ Settings directory and the Program\ Files directory are installed on the system partition, and Windows gets mighty pissy when I try to move them after a fresh installation. Of course, I use my Windows home directory as a home directory, contrary to what they seem to expect from their users.
But I don't see such radical changes coming any time soon to the patent system. You know, it ought to be a pretty clear sign to everyone that the system is FUBAR when working as originally designed gets labeled as "radical changes".
Err, kinda stupid to reply to myself I suppose, but I cut a corner and that code actually isn't good enough for all cases... just cases with objects of the same type..
Well, it's certainly trivial in the sense of "trivial program"..
template <typename T> bool isNot(const T &lhs, const T &rhs) {
return &lhs != &rhs; } template <typename T> bool isNot(const T * const lhs, const T * const rhs) {
return lhs != rhs; }
should handle it in all cases where operator& hasn't been overloaded with incorrect semantics (and in that case, you add a typecast and it works just fine).. and of course you can inline those if you care
Just curious, but are you intentionally targeting Mozilla users to conver them to Firefox or was it just an unintentional consequence of targeting non-Firefox browsers? It might be good to show the promote-Firefox button to Mozilla users instead of a get Firefox link. I'd say many if not most of us probably already know about Firefox and chose Seamonkey for one reason or another but may not know about the promotion campaign. I personally prefer the suite, but I've setup family with Firefox and suggest it to people who only need a browser and would be interested in the campaign, but all I get is a suggestion that I personally need Firefox.
If you're running in a year that's not an election year for you (since the Senate runs 6 year terms, every other Presidential year is a non-election year for each Senator), you don't have to worry about losing your job. Some, such as Bob Dole in 1996 resign in order to campaign. Some, such as Kerry in 2004 and Lieberman in 2000, don't. If your term isn't up, it doesn't matter when you resign, really (aside from being absent from work a lot) because your seat doesn't get elected anyway. In either case, the Governor of the state will appoint a temporary Senator for the duration of the term. If your constituents aren't interested in having you back, they're still stuck with you for 2-4 years.
On the other hand, if the above were C++ code, it could mean absolutely anything, depending on how operators were overloaded. Except that they can't be overloaded in that case as both operands are built-in types. You can't overload an operator unless at least one of the two operands is a user-defined type, which prevents people from making this do something unexpected. That is, you can't make operator^(int, int) play the star spangled banner, no matter how hard you try.
'File Not Found' - which file? The exception object should contain this information. If it doesn't, that's not a problem with exceptions but rather a problem with the programmer who threw a bad one. It's pretty much the same problem as any other class that lacks an important interface component.
which function? Well, this can be included in the exception but it shouldn't be necessary if you know which file.
Why, exactly? As if the function throwing the exception knows that?
You see, the reason we throw exceptions is that we can't clean up where we are. If the function throwing the exception could fix itself, it would do so and move forward. Otherwise, it should throw an exception object containing all the relevant information. Unlike integer exit codes, exceptions are full-blown objects with whatever interface and data their designer builds into them.
As all appropriations must originate in the House of Representatives, your vote for your US House district should be far more relevant to spending than your vote for President. That is to say, you need a Representative who agrees with you and yet won't just play the party game of "if (this->party == party_in_power) { support(); } else { oppose(); }". That is, a Representative who represents their constituents instead of their party--as if that would happen under our system.
He didn't use the authority to "enforce UN Security Council demands"; he used it in direct opposition to the demands of 3/5ths of that Council. Actually, he did use the authority to "enforce UN Security Council demands" in the form of enforcing the "serious consequences" clause of UN Security Council Resolution 1441. That he did so in direct opposition to the demands of 3/5ths of that Council is another issue entirely. He was merely selective in his enforcement, and he never said which demands he would enforce. Therefore, it was an omission and not a lie.
He didn't plan carefully. You don't know that, and I find it rather idiotic that you'd assume this. Actually, I would say very careful plans were laid for the invasion. If anything, his careful planning was insufficient in scope. That is, he may have planned the invasion without sufficient planning for the long-term occupation based on the faulty assumption that the military would be greeted as liberators instead of being fought by insurgents for months. Again, this is, at worst, an omission and not a lie. At best, it was probably a faulty assumption which he should've admitted as a mistake when asked (except that it would be a diplomatic mistake to do so because it could be misconstrued by the Iraqi government to claim that they're not trying hard enough).
He didn't use the full power of the US military (instead allowing Rumsfeld to use a "lighter, agile force"). For this to be a lie, you would have to have intent to deceive. Firstly, everyone with any knowledge of what the full power of the US military really means would know that he didn't intend to use it, and if he had intended to use it, voting for that authorization would have been vastly irresponsible. The full power of the US military includes our vast nuclear arsenal, including the Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles. A Peacekeeper missile is an ICBM with thirty independent nuclear warheads. Using a single Peacekeeper missile would have essentially annihilated the entire country, and using our entire arsenal would've (probably) condemned the world to an ice age.
Now that I've addressed what you said, I'll try to address what I think you meant because I'd prefer to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that you don't think Congress voted to allow the President to end the world. Basically, by using a "lighter, agile force", you seem to think that we didn't use the full power of the parts of our conventional arms. In a sense, this is accurate as in the actual physics of it, we could've used more bombs, more tanks, more rockets, etc. and generated more power (change in energy per unit of time). On the other hand, a smaller but more agile force can be more effective than a larger (and more powerful in terms of firepower) force. So, by "power", do you mean firepower, or do you mean effectiveness? I'd guess that most people, when they say "the full power of the US military", mean effectiveness. As long as there are multiple connotations possible, and we don't really know which was intended, it's impossible to declare definitively that he lied. I would say, rather than that he lied, that he made an overly-vague and therefore ambiguous statement. This is another omission as he should've specified the intended connotation (or just used a more specific term).
Acting with "allies" at our side is a real stretch too. As has been pointed out elsewhere, two is sufficient for the statement to be true, and all parties admit the participation of the UK and Australia. Therefore, the failure to give a number of allies may be an omission, but it is not a lie.
For another fun lie, look at his campaign promise not to use US troops for nation building. Actually, this was the response he should've given to the question in this/. article. He's responded to it before though. Basically, he's said that 9/11 changed everything for him, and in a post-9/11 world, we have to take pre-emp
In the world of politics, there is a significant difference between a non-answer and a lack of answer. When someone asks Colin Powell if he will serve as Secretary of State in a second Bush term and he responds that he serves at the pleasure of the President, that is a non-answer. It is a diplomatic response to the question designed to brush it aside without actually supplying the information requested and yet without explicitly refusing to supply said information. Most politicians give non-answers when asked questions that they don't like. Many times, these non-answers are used to segue into some canned blabbering they want to push at the time.
A lack of an answer comes in two forms. In an active refusal to answer, the questioned person simply states that they won't answer. This is common in court in the form of "taking the fifth". In politics, "operational security" is a big excuse for active refusal to answer a question, and a general blanket of "national security" and "protecting assets"(intelligence community) are often used.
A passive refusal to answer, on the other hand, is a completely un-diplomatic thing that doesn't happen very often in the political world. It tends to come as a bit of a figurative slap in the face since there's no attempt at all to explain oneself or to placate the questioner.
Now, as to making oneself look like an ass, a non-answer makes you look like an ass, an active refusal to answer is often rather dignified and comes accross as honest and genuine, and a passive refusal to answer either makes you look offended (refusal to dignify the question with any response) or like an arrogant ass. Whether Bush's lack of answer was active or passive is unknown because all we have is an editorial comment that he declined to answer. At any rate, I hope this helps with understanding the grandparent's comment that "At least Bush didn't make himself look like an ass with a non-answer".
We'd wind up with say 3/4 of our representatives being left-leaning which would make anything the Republicans ever try to do impossible. That's not necessarily true.
We'd most likely have as many left-leaning representatives as we do now. They would simply be divided among the left-leaning parties instead of all being Democrats. These would form a caucus in Congress and essentially act as a coalition as in other multiparty systems. The status quo would, of course, be maintained. This is a perfect time for the Republicans to do this though because while power in Congress would be retained by the left with respect to the right, the power of the left-leaning parties would be diminished and solidarity would be unlikely, strengthening the Republican party in Presidential politics.
Now, maybe following this idea and adding said motto to currency was done by McCarthyism to force athiests into a lower status in society, but it's certainly not 1950's era crap because it predates the 1950's by a hundred and thirty-five years.
Being illiterate in the 20th or 21st century isn't nearly as big a problem as before because other media exist -- an illiterate person may still have a good grasp of issues. Well, with compulsory education, it seems to be a moot point. If, during some 10 years of forced schooling, a person can't learn to read, do you think they really have a snowball's chance of grasping the issues? Note, I'm not suggesting a literacy requirement now but only that it may be viable in the future once everyone has had the compulsory education requirement. Currently, of course, many older people (depending on location, "older" can mean 40 or it could mean "senior citizen") may be illiterate but still grasp the issues through life experience.
Additionally, by forcing voters to mark the "disapproves" as well as the "approves", you reduce the chance of someone changing a ballot by trying to approve another candidate on that ballot later It still leaves open the chance to nullify a ballot you disagree with by filling in both the "yes" and "no" bubbles for a candidate you don't want to see approved.
Bush: "Senator Kerry served his country braveley during the war in Vietnam. Thank you Senator." (note: He's said essentially this several times; it's every other prominent Republican who bashes Kerry on Vietnam.)
Kerry: "President Bush rallied the country after September Eleventh and during the war in Afghanistan."
Both of them are perfectly willing to make such concessions; however, we all know that the next sentence would be bashing them for something they did right after. Bush would complain about Kerry's behavior after the war, and Kerry would complain about Bush's pursuit of the war in Iraq. Would either of those statements be sincere? Probably not, but they would pretend to be sincere and may even have a stock response in case they get asked this or a similar question in the third debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that "gasoline", "accelerator", and "yield" are normal English words, whereas "phishing" and "pharming" were made up recently by mutating normal English words and altering their meanings. Furthermore, those automotive terms are well-defined. The difference between gasoline and oil is simple (for a motorist, one is clear and watery and makes the car go whereas the other one is opaque, thick, and keeps the engine from seizing up). So is the difference between accelerator (which, btw, is often called a "gas pedal" anyway) and brake. So is the difference between yield and stop or go. Can you concisely explain the difference between a virus, a worm, and a trojan?
As a developer and software designer, I have significant issues with your post.
You have ignored a rule,
Rules should be enforced by the code. Users should not be allowed to ignore rules. Users should not be expected to remember arbitrary rules because developers are too lazy to code their enforcement.
a warning,
If the warning should never be ignored, it should be a fatal error. If the warning should be resolved by a call to tech support, lock the user interface until tech support unlocks it.
a message box,
These are generally worthless. If your message box only has one button (OK), it shouldn't exist. (It should be replaced with something that disappears on a timer.) If it has two buttons plus "the X box in the corner", the OS close button should be moved into the message box design. If the user is going to select the same option 99% of the time, they're going to select that option 100% of the time because they stop considering it. Most issues of ignoring a message box are the fault of the UI designer and human nature (the user quits caring after a while, and justifiably so). More importantly though, if an action should be taken, don't ask the user. Tell them it's happening, do it, then tell them it finished.
an email, or a memo.
See the above section on "rules". If it takes an email or a memo, a developer should be implementing that functionality ASAP. Otherwise, you're using shoddy software, so don't blame your users for that, blame management.
You have forgotten that passwords expire every month
You have passwords that expire monthly? That's insane! Aside from causing security problems (passwords like asdFGH!2 or something similar), if your users can't keep a password secret longer than a month, you have much bigger problems than computer use issues. That is to say, they're not trustworthy. At any rate, this is management's problem, not the users' problem, but they should remember that the passwords expire. On the other hand, if the system doesn't inform them and force them to change their password, that's a UI designer's fault, not the users' fault.
that passwords do not magically update across all your applications just because you changed one of them.
So you have multiple passwords expiring every month? And you expect users to use the same password for multiple unlinked accounts? This is a major security design failure. If a user should use the same password, the accounts should be linked so that one update does indeed "magically" update the other applications. If this is undesired, you should encourage them to use separate passwords.
If you claim to be a teacher in an article about education where you call your students stupid, please at least take the time to use decent spelling and grammar because otherwise we're going to blame you and your ilk for their stupidity!
Actually they are part of the problem because they distill the entire curriculum down to a set of facts. Teachers therefore teach these facts in order to get the kids to pass the test without teaching the intricate interconnections among the facts and the relationships that make the facts matter. It doesn't matter if you know that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln on April 14th of 1865 if you don't understand why, and that's not something that can be expressed as an answer to a multiple choice question. Standardized tests make school about passing tests rather than learning.
Note that I'm not against standardization of testing. I'm against the sort of standardized tests that we have because they have to be taken over the course of a class period. We need comprehensive standardized tests that involve essay questions to demonstrate an actual understanding of the subject matter instead of multiple choice questions that anyone knowledgeable in test-taking can pass with even a minor grasp of the material.
Why would you want to read/write on your system partition?
Because the Documents\ and\ Settings directory and the Program\ Files directory are installed on the system partition, and Windows gets mighty pissy when I try to move them after a fresh installation. Of course, I use my Windows home directory as a home directory, contrary to what they seem to expect from their users.
But I don't see such radical changes coming any time soon to the patent system.
You know, it ought to be a pretty clear sign to everyone that the system is FUBAR when working as originally designed gets labeled as "radical changes".
No, but when it's going to run, I'd much rather it run as fast as possible to get it over with ;)
No, I already have a patent on programming in anything congruent to 1 and 0 modulo 2 =P
I encode all my posts in UTF-8 + ROT-256 ;)
slapt-get is 8 letters/9 characters, so hah!
And others just block any host containing the word "mail".
Just curious, but are you intentionally targeting Mozilla users to conver them to Firefox or was it just an unintentional consequence of targeting non-Firefox browsers? It might be good to show the promote-Firefox button to Mozilla users instead of a get Firefox link. I'd say many if not most of us probably already know about Firefox and chose Seamonkey for one reason or another but may not know about the promotion campaign. I personally prefer the suite, but I've setup family with Firefox and suggest it to people who only need a browser and would be interested in the campaign, but all I get is a suggestion that I personally need Firefox.
If you're running in a year that's not an election year for you (since the Senate runs 6 year terms, every other Presidential year is a non-election year for each Senator), you don't have to worry about losing your job. Some, such as Bob Dole in 1996 resign in order to campaign. Some, such as Kerry in 2004 and Lieberman in 2000, don't. If your term isn't up, it doesn't matter when you resign, really (aside from being absent from work a lot) because your seat doesn't get elected anyway. In either case, the Governor of the state will appoint a temporary Senator for the duration of the term. If your constituents aren't interested in having you back, they're still stuck with you for 2-4 years.
On the other hand, if the above were C++ code, it could mean absolutely anything, depending on how operators were overloaded.
Except that they can't be overloaded in that case as both operands are built-in types. You can't overload an operator unless at least one of the two operands is a user-defined type, which prevents people from making this do something unexpected. That is, you can't make operator^(int, int) play the star spangled banner, no matter how hard you try.
'File Not Found' - which file?
The exception object should contain this information. If it doesn't, that's not a problem with exceptions but rather a problem with the programmer who threw a bad one. It's pretty much the same problem as any other class that lacks an important interface component.
which function?
Well, this can be included in the exception but it shouldn't be necessary if you know which file.
Why, exactly?
As if the function throwing the exception knows that?
You see, the reason we throw exceptions is that we can't clean up where we are. If the function throwing the exception could fix itself, it would do so and move forward. Otherwise, it should throw an exception object containing all the relevant information. Unlike integer exit codes, exceptions are full-blown objects with whatever interface and data their designer builds into them.
As all appropriations must originate in the House of Representatives, your vote for your US House district should be far more relevant to spending than your vote for President. That is to say, you need a Representative who agrees with you and yet won't just play the party game of "if (this->party == party_in_power) { support(); } else { oppose(); }". That is, a Representative who represents their constituents instead of their party--as if that would happen under our system.
He didn't use the authority to "enforce UN Security Council demands"; he used it in direct opposition to the demands of 3/5ths of that Council.
/. article. He's responded to it before though. Basically, he's said that 9/11 changed everything for him, and in a post-9/11 world, we have to take pre-emp
Actually, he did use the authority to "enforce UN Security Council demands" in the form of enforcing the "serious consequences" clause of UN Security Council Resolution 1441. That he did so in direct opposition to the demands of 3/5ths of that Council is another issue entirely. He was merely selective in his enforcement, and he never said which demands he would enforce. Therefore, it was an omission and not a lie.
He didn't plan carefully.
You don't know that, and I find it rather idiotic that you'd assume this. Actually, I would say very careful plans were laid for the invasion. If anything, his careful planning was insufficient in scope. That is, he may have planned the invasion without sufficient planning for the long-term occupation based on the faulty assumption that the military would be greeted as liberators instead of being fought by insurgents for months. Again, this is, at worst, an omission and not a lie. At best, it was probably a faulty assumption which he should've admitted as a mistake when asked (except that it would be a diplomatic mistake to do so because it could be misconstrued by the Iraqi government to claim that they're not trying hard enough).
He didn't use the full power of the US military (instead allowing Rumsfeld to use a "lighter, agile force").
For this to be a lie, you would have to have intent to deceive. Firstly, everyone with any knowledge of what the full power of the US military really means would know that he didn't intend to use it, and if he had intended to use it, voting for that authorization would have been vastly irresponsible. The full power of the US military includes our vast nuclear arsenal, including the Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles. A Peacekeeper missile is an ICBM with thirty independent nuclear warheads. Using a single Peacekeeper missile would have essentially annihilated the entire country, and using our entire arsenal would've (probably) condemned the world to an ice age.
Now that I've addressed what you said, I'll try to address what I think you meant because I'd prefer to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that you don't think Congress voted to allow the President to end the world. Basically, by using a "lighter, agile force", you seem to think that we didn't use the full power of the parts of our conventional arms. In a sense, this is accurate as in the actual physics of it, we could've used more bombs, more tanks, more rockets, etc. and generated more power (change in energy per unit of time). On the other hand, a smaller but more agile force can be more effective than a larger (and more powerful in terms of firepower) force. So, by "power", do you mean firepower, or do you mean effectiveness? I'd guess that most people, when they say "the full power of the US military", mean effectiveness. As long as there are multiple connotations possible, and we don't really know which was intended, it's impossible to declare definitively that he lied. I would say, rather than that he lied, that he made an overly-vague and therefore ambiguous statement. This is another omission as he should've specified the intended connotation (or just used a more specific term).
Acting with "allies" at our side is a real stretch too.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, two is sufficient for the statement to be true, and all parties admit the participation of the UK and Australia. Therefore, the failure to give a number of allies may be an omission, but it is not a lie.
For another fun lie, look at his campaign promise not to use US troops for nation building.
Actually, this was the response he should've given to the question in this
In the world of politics, there is a significant difference between a non-answer and a lack of answer. When someone asks Colin Powell if he will serve as Secretary of State in a second Bush term and he responds that he serves at the pleasure of the President, that is a non-answer. It is a diplomatic response to the question designed to brush it aside without actually supplying the information requested and yet without explicitly refusing to supply said information. Most politicians give non-answers when asked questions that they don't like. Many times, these non-answers are used to segue into some canned blabbering they want to push at the time.
A lack of an answer comes in two forms. In an active refusal to answer, the questioned person simply states that they won't answer. This is common in court in the form of "taking the fifth". In politics, "operational security" is a big excuse for active refusal to answer a question, and a general blanket of "national security" and "protecting assets"(intelligence community) are often used.
A passive refusal to answer, on the other hand, is a completely un-diplomatic thing that doesn't happen very often in the political world. It tends to come as a bit of a figurative slap in the face since there's no attempt at all to explain oneself or to placate the questioner.
Now, as to making oneself look like an ass, a non-answer makes you look like an ass, an active refusal to answer is often rather dignified and comes accross as honest and genuine, and a passive refusal to answer either makes you look offended (refusal to dignify the question with any response) or like an arrogant ass. Whether Bush's lack of answer was active or passive is unknown because all we have is an editorial comment that he declined to answer. At any rate, I hope this helps with understanding the grandparent's comment that "At least Bush didn't make himself look like an ass with a non-answer".
We'd wind up with say 3/4 of our representatives being left-leaning which would make anything the Republicans ever try to do impossible.
That's not necessarily true.
We'd most likely have as many left-leaning representatives as we do now. They would simply be divided among the left-leaning parties instead of all being Democrats. These would form a caucus in Congress and essentially act as a coalition as in other multiparty systems. The status quo would, of course, be maintained. This is a perfect time for the Republicans to do this though because while power in Congress would be retained by the left with respect to the right, the power of the left-leaning parties would be diminished and solidarity would be unlikely, strengthening the Republican party in Presidential politics.
The problem with "In GOD we trust" and "Under GOD" to me is both of those were added by McCarthyism...
The Star-Spangled Banner, verse 4, line 6, written mid-September, 1814, adopted officially by the Congress as the national anthem of the United States of America in March 1931:
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
Now, maybe following this idea and adding said motto to currency was done by McCarthyism to force athiests into a lower status in society, but it's certainly not 1950's era crap because it predates the 1950's by a hundred and thirty-five years.
Being illiterate in the 20th or 21st century isn't nearly as big a problem as before because other media exist -- an illiterate person may still have a good grasp of issues.
Well, with compulsory education, it seems to be a moot point. If, during some 10 years of forced schooling, a person can't learn to read, do you think they really have a snowball's chance of grasping the issues? Note, I'm not suggesting a literacy requirement now but only that it may be viable in the future once everyone has had the compulsory education requirement. Currently, of course, many older people (depending on location, "older" can mean 40 or it could mean "senior citizen") may be illiterate but still grasp the issues through life experience.
Additionally, by forcing voters to mark the "disapproves" as well as the "approves", you reduce the chance of someone changing a ballot by trying to approve another candidate on that ballot later
It still leaves open the chance to nullify a ballot you disagree with by filling in both the "yes" and "no" bubbles for a candidate you don't want to see approved.
Bush: "Senator Kerry served his country braveley during the war in Vietnam. Thank you Senator." (note: He's said essentially this several times; it's every other prominent Republican who bashes Kerry on Vietnam.)
Kerry: "President Bush rallied the country after September Eleventh and during the war in Afghanistan."
Both of them are perfectly willing to make such concessions; however, we all know that the next sentence would be bashing them for something they did right after. Bush would complain about Kerry's behavior after the war, and Kerry would complain about Bush's pursuit of the war in Iraq. Would either of those statements be sincere? Probably not, but they would pretend to be sincere and may even have a stock response in case they get asked this or a similar question in the third debate.