the founding fathers were paragons of the highest virtues of western LIBERAL thought, perhaps the ultimate gifts of the enlightenment in europe, which was a liberal radical reaction to the traditional right wing cesspools of monarchical despotism and religious fundamentalism
and now, today, much as people who call themselves christians spread intolerance in the name of a man who was a prophet of tolerance, we have people like you, who treat the constitution as if it were a religious fundamentalist document. and such brittle fragile minds are the "right"
pfffffffffft
sir: the constitution and the declaration of independence were and are perhaps the most radically liberal, completely nonreligious and completely nonaristocratic statements of faith in the wisdom of the common man, in a thousand years (well, there's the magna carta) and perhaps a thousand more
what the founding fathers wrote has echoed around the world and found admiration and imitation in dozens of other governments worldwide. their notions have continued to evolve, and have helped clarify the dignity of man and elevate him out of slavery/ slaveholding status, in this country and others, and to introduce universal suffrage, the vote for women, equality for women. all liberal notions, all continuing to evolve
nothing at all like this low iq right wing notion that the constitution is like the bible or quran, dusty words to be obeyed, not thought about. that only a few closed minds have some sort of monopoly on its interpretation, and, the best part: interpretted according to reasons just as random and weak as the accusations right wingers hurl at "activist" judges. fools: there is no greater activist judge than antonin scalia... the "originalist"?! ha! now that's a good joke
the constitution is a living document, a living pact with the highest principles of man: equality and dignity for all in the eyes of their government. that you take this inexorably LIBERAL document and somehow posit it as a right-leaning document is cynical, craven, and completely intellectually dishonest. at best, you're simply confused, son: in the name of being right-winged, you've drank the kool aid and walk around holding aloft a document of pure liberalism as if it were some sort of sacred totem object
someday you should actually read the constitution and the declaration of independence and stop treating it like a religious object of veneration like the shroud of turin. in the actual words on those actual pages, in the actual thoughts of our much esteemed founding fathers: you find western liberalism, fool
caring encompasses loving the topic, and hating the topic
not caring is complete emptiness of interest in the topic
so you need to re-characterize your position more accurately: you hate american politics on slashdot. you detest it. the idea of it fills you with emotion: hatred, anger
which is fine. i understand your rationale
but recognize that you are in the succinct minority on the topic: american politics happens to find great interest here on slashdot, for better or for worse. its just the way it is. should it be this way? should it not be this way? who cares (wink, wink), its just the way it is
so stop picketing outside mcdonalds because they don't sell sweaters
(completely inaccurate allegories require only simple deflection)
prove it by not commenting on political stories. indeed: go away
however, if you comment on political stories, then you care about politics. actions speak louder than words. so admit that you care then
these are the only logically coherent choices for you:
1. continue commenting here and on political stories, i welcome you. but please admit that you care about politics
2. stop commenting here and on political stories. you thereby prove you don't care about politics. i will then admire you for your intellectual honesty
but there is no 3rd choice. when you comment, you care. there's simply no way around that fact
it is not possible to summon the desire to read a political comment, and then summon the will to type a reply, and then, miraculously, somehow claim you don't care
in fact, all of history is a process of perfecting that balance to better and better degrees, raising the bar to even better orders of perfection, and repeating the process, forever, never completely erasing graft and corruption, but getting closer and closer to something resembling acceptability, barely
in a genuine direct democracy, every little zoning board approval or budgetary line item would require your vote. you would spend all day voting. you wouldn't pay attention to the issues: you wouldn't have TIME to pay attention to the issues. you wouldn't have time to educate yourself on the issues in the amount of time possible before the vote was due. every single vote, in nauseous tedium, would require your research. you wouldn't have the time to do live in a direct democracy and still live your life. every single citizen would spend 30 hours or more a week (if they wanted their vote to be an educated one) just dealing with voting on the issues, and that's only at one level of government (local versus state versus national)
for all of the problems of representative democracy (namely, corruption), it still functions far better than this naive, laughable idea of direct democracy in a modern society
the reason for this is that people are interested in politics, techie or not. and there's nothing wrong with a roomful of techies talking politics. you don't have to go there if you don't want. so leave us on slashdot who are obviously interested in politics (based on the most commented stories in slashdot history) to our politics, and go away
in fact, a political discussion on slashdot, theoretically, might be a more useful political discussion than a roomful of other classes of careers: as engineers, techies have minds which are designed to root out a problem and solve it. politics needs more of this, certainly
i really wish there were a class of "political engineers" sometimes when i hear certain mindless discussions: "the political engineering union has deemed this political topic pointless and, by the power vested in us, we are closing down this issue and erasing it from national attention. that is all"
well.. maybe that isn't such a great idea;-)
but when i see some of the propaganda wallowing out there, the idea of "political engineers" becomes momentarily attractive
i will file you mentally as an attempt at humor, but you never know these days. there really are people out there who think there is no hate in talk radio or political blogs. so even if you are joking as i hope you are, please note that your joke is more tragic than comic
you don't even try to appeal to moderation. and you in fact deny me the right to moderation. you will only see my words as leftist. you insist everything is right or left. and you in fact attack me in a contrived way based on my sig, creatively reasoning and inferring my radical leftyism. the only way your mind will process is my words is as "the enemy"
in other words, you are a hopeless partisan, and you are what is wrong with this country, right or left
i am a moderate. i really am. but since you won't see my statement as a moderate one, since you insist what i say has to be partisan (the limitation that defines your perception of reality does not define my reality, or any reality, darling) i guess i'll just have to go back to my communist muslim socialist fascist president's feet then, i have a lot of dick sucking to do in the name of emperor palpatine. right?
you seem to think i'm saying that paper voting won't have cheating. of course paper voting will have cheating. all voting systems will have some (hopefully low grade) cheating all the time, forever. there's no way around that, there's no technological fix for that
what i'm asking you to understand is that electronic voting will have cheating too, and the kind of cheating that can go on in electronic voting is far more subtle and dangerous and far more venomous of a threat to the legitimacy of indian democracy than the low grade thuggery you are referring to
and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views"
in obama's defense, calling talk radio and blogs as "mediums that tend to disagree with his political views" is like describing the ebola virus as "organic matter that tends to disagree with your right to live"
talk radio and political blogs are seething venomous pits of propaganda, whether from right or left, and are not valid sources of anything. nevermind the laughable idea they offer polite respectable disagreement to your political views. is a ranting lobotomized alzheimer's patient infected with rabies a "disagreement with your political views"?
mindless partisan hate (left OR right), which is all talk radio or political blogs are, is are completely useless. echo chambers for people who have turned off their minds. completely unthinking, loud, tired, endlessly rehashed pointless drivel. talk radio and political blogs are septic systems of the mind, and are not valid reactions to anything anyone says or does, whether right or left. the less talk radio you listen to and political blogs you read, indeed, the clearer your mind. reading a blatantly left wing or right wing blog probably instantly (temporarily) lowers your iq
in such a respect obama is 100% correct. if gw bush said the same thing, he would be correct to. because it doesn't matter the source of the observation, because the observation is not an attack on the right or the left. if osama bin laden told you it is important to wash your hands after using the toilet, does the source of that observation make the statement immediately suspect? no: its important to wash your hands after leaving the toilet, even osama bin laden recognizes this. therefore, it is equally true what obama says about talk radio and political blogs, whether said by him or sarah palin about left wing blogs. left OR right wing: talk radio and political blogs are poison to the mind
so obama's observation is completely valid. talk radio and political blogs are not coherent sources of impartial information. talk radio and political blogs are mental filth and they destroy civil society by turning it into a race to the bottom of mindless attacks and smears
if you had paper voting, you'd need an army of conspirators (which by nature of its size would be discovered), and an audit would discover statistical perturbations
but with electronic voting, you just bribe the right official or two, and one guy with a few milliseconds of access to the database and some crafty code can alter the votes in statistically invisible ways
if what you say is true, then people can't grasp that sometimes convenience has to be sacrificed. if what you say is true, then X Factor generation is the end of democracy
it is naive to think that technology offers a better way to vote: there is no technological solution to the bribe-able government bureaucrat
therefore, you have to make the voting process as technologically crude as possible, to prevent creative ways to cheat we cannot foresee
its also a matter of trust in the system. i can trust and verify a paper and a pencil with my own eyes. i can't step into the voting booth and "look" at a tcp/ip stack and trust it
electronic voting will be the downfall of democracy
even the most technologically advanced societies (some nordic countries want to vote by cell phone!?), for two reasons:
1. attack vectors
of course paper voting is subject to cheats, ballot stuffing, getting lost in transit, etc. its just that paper voting is a simpler process than mechanical or electronic voting, so therefore the numnber of attack vectors for paper voting is orders of magnitude less than mechanical voting... which in turn has orders of magnitude less attack vectors than electronic voting
one well placed dude can, in a few milliseconds, in a statistically invisible way, randomly increase votes for one candidate over the other. and i don't care how well you design electronic voting technologically, its still overseen by corruptible government bureaucrats, for which there is no technological solution
but with paper voting, the cheats you can pull off are only crude, requiring armies of cooperating conspirators... and no conspiracy of sufficient size is airtight. therefore: discoverable. a cheat by one guy or a handful is also statistically discoverable: a truck driver of vote boxes in one precinct can't lose 10,000 votes or introduce 10,000 fake ones without being noticed in an audit. and for every one of these paper balot cheats, there a simply 1,000 such variations, attack vectors, for the more complex electronic voting, and even some new and exotic methodologies. so to guard paper voting is simply an easier, less creative process. you can't outwit the committed bad guy in a complex system, but you can outman him in a crude system
2. perception
you can have all of the transparent standards for the PROFESSIONALS that you want. but for your average joe blow, the more the voting process is a black box (press keys -> sausage -> president comes out on other end) the more they are susceptible to lose confidence in the process. paper voting simply is a smaller black box. you write on a piece of paper. the papers ate stacked somewhere. some people scan or look at them if there's a problem: its all eminently comprehensible to anyone how the process works. no databases, no tcp/ ip stacks, no authentication, no encryption... no "sausage" parts that the average voter does not understand and therefore does not trust
democracy is only valid as long as it is seen a legitimate representation of the will of the people. put that legitimacy in doubt, and democracy loses all of its strengths. therefore, we should always, forever more, no matter what technological advances we experience, vote simply with paper
the problem here is technophilia: solving a simple problem in an overly complex way simply because you like the technology. electronic voting is a contrived false solution that introduces far more problems than it solves
of course your opinion has merit... to you. you don't have to indignantly rebut my observations. i don't care about your life, i care about the topic at hand. and apparently your opinion doesn't have merit to the subject matter at hand. don't take it so personally. simply understand that your opinion and your experience is far from normal
box office returns are what matter, and hollywood is looking at its first ever possible 5 billion dollar summer this year, its first ever. and thats what matters, and it obviously proves my point correct: that for all the babies and cellphones, internets, dvds, vhss, televisions, etc., the cinema house has proven to weather every supposed challenge to its dominance, and has continued to make cash, and more of it, every year, unfazed
so all of the gloom and doom talk to the contrary, from within the industry and outside it, in the audience, like yours, dating back all the way to the 1950s, is false, contrived empty FUD that simply doesn't understand the subject matter
who says? not me. box office returns say. end if discussion: sorry, but you lose
unless box office returns take a pronounced, repeated downturn. then maybe they'll do something about the babies and cellphones. until then, enjoy your 17 inch monitor in your basement by yourself (oh i'm sorry, you have magical friends who show up en masse to see exactly what you want to see at a moment's notice)
i don't know anyone who has a bevy of friends they can program to come over to their house and to all agree on a movie at the exact moment you want to see it
furthermore, all the babies and cellphones do not rise above the oohs and aahs in the dark around you that heighten your experience
if you honestly believe otherwise, you don't even know yourself
i am asserting that your complaint is false and contrived. box office returns say so. and EVEN IF your complaint is truthful and factual, you are a fragment of the population, a small shrill overly fragile minority that is so bothered by a cellphone. so your opinion is without merit
however i am far more against armed revolt. plus, it won't happen unless people are hungry
the point is: don't romanticize revolution. it is ugly and brutal and full of more suffering and cruelty than the worst corporatistic abuses of our democracy. peaceful change is the way to change things. armed revolt is for idiots who don't even understand the problem and will only make things far worse
finally, you have no control over the outcome, when you write about "an armed revolt introduces proportional representation" is just a fucking joke: NO ONE controls a revolution, and no one controls the outcome. you don't throw a revolution to get {xyz}, you throw a revolution... and anything is possilbe. in fact, the range of choices about what comes on the other end of a revolution are far, far worse than our current problems
so please stop romanticizing revolution, it is far, far worse than our problems with corporations, really. romanticizing revolution is for true idiots only
even if they gave iron man 2 out free on dvds this weekend, it will still make a shit load of money in the cinema house. people pay money to watch movies in the cinema. they don't want to see it on their 17 inch monitor in their basement by themselves. or on their little netbook on the train. or even alone in front of the 52" hd in their den. they want to ooh and aah with strangers. its sociological. even all the cell phones and babies don't dent this concept of going to the movie house
this is how you make money in movies, and always WILL make money in movies: the cinema house
the only thing the internet is going to kill is the dvd after market. and who cares? how many crappy direct to video movies to do we need? avatar made a shitload of cash: all in the cinema. so the movie making model is completely safe, completely untouched by the internet, NO ACTA NEED APPLY, despite all the whining and panic and hand wringing by people who apparently don't even understand the business
the movie making business is completely safe: it will not be destroyed. it will not be touched by any internet, dvd, vcr, or television (the original "destroyer" of the cinema because of free over the air signals... in the 1950s they said the cinema house was dead!)
sure, places like canada and the netherlands are to our left, but far more are to our right: the entire muslim world, for example, plenty of third world countries. we even have better freedom of speech protection than up in canuckistan:
i consider myself left leaning and greatly admire canada, there's plenty about your country that the usa would be wise to emulate
but its pretty silly to see you castigate the usa for being so right leaning from a GLOBAL standpoint when you can't even keep track of how far left canada itself is on the world stage
go ahead and castigate the usa from a canda-centric point of view, that's perfectly in your right. but when it comes to wordliness, you have a ways to go, as you don't have a good grasp of the true international range of ideologies. unfortunately, its quite right wing out there. really
that your average undergraduate computer science class could tackle, for the cost of coffee and peanuts, in an order magnitude smaller amount of time, and with more competency than the huge bloated slow as molasses and obsolete upon implementation bs that characterizes government involvement
but i'm not saying that as a typical cynical "we're doomed", and that's that, useless observation
what i'm saying is: really, give the problem to an undergraduate computer science class. put carnegie mellon or RPI in charge of implementing it
the idea that penicillin, malathion, roundup, etc., are permanent tools against mother nature is a false one. but it is a false idea whether we used the products never, sparingly, intelligent, or stupidly. simple use of these tools will induce resistance. the arms race goes on forever, and the only thing we have to learn is to lose the naivete that these chemicals would be useful forever
we need to cook up more antibiotics, weed killers, and bug killers. but this is true no matter how we used the first generation of chemicals. we haven't learned anything, nor did we have anything to learn, unless it is the more eternal lesson that some people are naive
every advance is only a temporary advance, and the arms race exists, forever. we had a brief period when our weapons were effective, and now we have to find new weapons, and this is simply inevitable, unless you choose not to use any chemical weapons at all
in other words, i'm not quite sure what you think we are supposed to learn. don't fight?
Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, he decided to become an internet entrepreneur,[11] and in 1996 founded the web portal Bomis with two partners.[9][16] The website featured user-generated webrings and for a time sold erotic photographs.[17] Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine;[1][7][18] and according to The Atlantic Monthly it "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet".[16] Bomis did not become successful, but in March 2000 hosted and provided the initial funding for the Nupedia project.[7][9][19]
i only have one key, so i store it in the billfold on a ring, so i only have to think and worry about a cell phone and a wallet when i leave the house, the keys are not a separate mental category
if you have a bunch of keys, you can still use this scheme, as the pacsafe comes with a chain (that i discarded but you would use)
now: if i can somehow put the cellphone in the wallet, i'm really happy. but the way cellphones are going, we'll probably be putting the wallet in the cellphone
in 5-10 years we'll probably be paying for everything with our cellphones (like they do in scandinavia already), so no wallet, and we'll probably be opening and closing doors with them too, so no keys
here's my amazing 2 word rebuttal to the esteemed professional analyst's smoke and mirrors:
1. keyboard 2. price
end of discussion, advantange: netbook
hey, professional analysts: the crowd that spends 6 dollars on a cup of coffee is a small upper middle class niche that lives and works in midtown manhattan. maybe you should, in your vast analytical powers, stop to notice the wider, poorer world outside your little bubble
and i live and work in midtown manhattan! if i can do it, why can't you?
Slashdot Mirror
or i shall wield this awesome power of mine on what you just wrote
the founding fathers were paragons of the highest virtues of western LIBERAL thought, perhaps the ultimate gifts of the enlightenment in europe, which was a liberal radical reaction to the traditional right wing cesspools of monarchical despotism and religious fundamentalism
and now, today, much as people who call themselves christians spread intolerance in the name of a man who was a prophet of tolerance, we have people like you, who treat the constitution as if it were a religious fundamentalist document. and such brittle fragile minds are the "right"
pfffffffffft
sir: the constitution and the declaration of independence were and are perhaps the most radically liberal, completely nonreligious and completely nonaristocratic statements of faith in the wisdom of the common man, in a thousand years (well, there's the magna carta) and perhaps a thousand more
what the founding fathers wrote has echoed around the world and found admiration and imitation in dozens of other governments worldwide. their notions have continued to evolve, and have helped clarify the dignity of man and elevate him out of slavery/ slaveholding status, in this country and others, and to introduce universal suffrage, the vote for women, equality for women. all liberal notions, all continuing to evolve
nothing at all like this low iq right wing notion that the constitution is like the bible or quran, dusty words to be obeyed, not thought about. that only a few closed minds have some sort of monopoly on its interpretation, and, the best part: interpretted according to reasons just as random and weak as the accusations right wingers hurl at "activist" judges. fools: there is no greater activist judge than antonin scalia... the "originalist"?! ha! now that's a good joke
the constitution is a living document, a living pact with the highest principles of man: equality and dignity for all in the eyes of their government. that you take this inexorably LIBERAL document and somehow posit it as a right-leaning document is cynical, craven, and completely intellectually dishonest. at best, you're simply confused, son: in the name of being right-winged, you've drank the kool aid and walk around holding aloft a document of pure liberalism as if it were some sort of sacred totem object
someday you should actually read the constitution and the declaration of independence and stop treating it like a religious object of veneration like the shroud of turin. in the actual words on those actual pages, in the actual thoughts of our much esteemed founding fathers: you find western liberalism, fool
hilarious
caring encompasses loving the topic, and hating the topic
not caring is complete emptiness of interest in the topic
so you need to re-characterize your position more accurately: you hate american politics on slashdot. you detest it. the idea of it fills you with emotion: hatred, anger
which is fine. i understand your rationale
but recognize that you are in the succinct minority on the topic: american politics happens to find great interest here on slashdot, for better or for worse. its just the way it is. should it be this way? should it not be this way? who cares (wink, wink), its just the way it is
so stop picketing outside mcdonalds because they don't sell sweaters
(completely inaccurate allegories require only simple deflection)
prove it by not commenting on political stories. indeed: go away
however, if you comment on political stories, then you care about politics. actions speak louder than words. so admit that you care then
these are the only logically coherent choices for you:
1. continue commenting here and on political stories, i welcome you. but please admit that you care about politics
2. stop commenting here and on political stories. you thereby prove you don't care about politics. i will then admire you for your intellectual honesty
but there is no 3rd choice. when you comment, you care. there's simply no way around that fact
it is not possible to summon the desire to read a political comment, and then summon the will to type a reply, and then, miraculously, somehow claim you don't care
in fact, all of history is a process of perfecting that balance to better and better degrees, raising the bar to even better orders of perfection, and repeating the process, forever, never completely erasing graft and corruption, but getting closer and closer to something resembling acceptability, barely
not even in a small town is it possible
you WANT representatives, you really do
in a genuine direct democracy, every little zoning board approval or budgetary line item would require your vote. you would spend all day voting. you wouldn't pay attention to the issues: you wouldn't have TIME to pay attention to the issues. you wouldn't have time to educate yourself on the issues in the amount of time possible before the vote was due. every single vote, in nauseous tedium, would require your research. you wouldn't have the time to do live in a direct democracy and still live your life. every single citizen would spend 30 hours or more a week (if they wanted their vote to be an educated one) just dealing with voting on the issues, and that's only at one level of government (local versus state versus national)
for all of the problems of representative democracy (namely, corruption), it still functions far better than this naive, laughable idea of direct democracy in a modern society
are political
the reason for this is that people are interested in politics, techie or not. and there's nothing wrong with a roomful of techies talking politics. you don't have to go there if you don't want. so leave us on slashdot who are obviously interested in politics (based on the most commented stories in slashdot history) to our politics, and go away
in fact, a political discussion on slashdot, theoretically, might be a more useful political discussion than a roomful of other classes of careers: as engineers, techies have minds which are designed to root out a problem and solve it. politics needs more of this, certainly
i really wish there were a class of "political engineers" sometimes when i hear certain mindless discussions: "the political engineering union has deemed this political topic pointless and, by the power vested in us, we are closing down this issue and erasing it from national attention. that is all"
well.. maybe that isn't such a great idea ;-)
but when i see some of the propaganda wallowing out there, the idea of "political engineers" becomes momentarily attractive
that you are trolling me or trying to make a joke
no hate in talk radio or political blogs?
i will file you mentally as an attempt at humor, but you never know these days. there really are people out there who think there is no hate in talk radio or political blogs. so even if you are joking as i hope you are, please note that your joke is more tragic than comic
you don't even try to appeal to moderation. and you in fact deny me the right to moderation. you will only see my words as leftist. you insist everything is right or left. and you in fact attack me in a contrived way based on my sig, creatively reasoning and inferring my radical leftyism. the only way your mind will process is my words is as "the enemy"
in other words, you are a hopeless partisan, and you are what is wrong with this country, right or left
i am a moderate. i really am. but since you won't see my statement as a moderate one, since you insist what i say has to be partisan (the limitation that defines your perception of reality does not define my reality, or any reality, darling) i guess i'll just have to go back to my communist muslim socialist fascist president's feet then, i have a lot of dick sucking to do in the name of emperor palpatine. right?
zzz
you seem to think i'm saying that paper voting won't have cheating. of course paper voting will have cheating. all voting systems will have some (hopefully low grade) cheating all the time, forever. there's no way around that, there's no technological fix for that
what i'm asking you to understand is that electronic voting will have cheating too, and the kind of cheating that can go on in electronic voting is far more subtle and dangerous and far more venomous of a threat to the legitimacy of indian democracy than the low grade thuggery you are referring to
and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views"
in obama's defense, calling talk radio and blogs as "mediums that tend to disagree with his political views" is like describing the ebola virus as "organic matter that tends to disagree with your right to live"
talk radio and political blogs are seething venomous pits of propaganda, whether from right or left, and are not valid sources of anything. nevermind the laughable idea they offer polite respectable disagreement to your political views. is a ranting lobotomized alzheimer's patient infected with rabies a "disagreement with your political views"?
mindless partisan hate (left OR right), which is all talk radio or political blogs are, is are completely useless. echo chambers for people who have turned off their minds. completely unthinking, loud, tired, endlessly rehashed pointless drivel. talk radio and political blogs are septic systems of the mind, and are not valid reactions to anything anyone says or does, whether right or left. the less talk radio you listen to and political blogs you read, indeed, the clearer your mind. reading a blatantly left wing or right wing blog probably instantly (temporarily) lowers your iq
in such a respect obama is 100% correct. if gw bush said the same thing, he would be correct to. because it doesn't matter the source of the observation, because the observation is not an attack on the right or the left. if osama bin laden told you it is important to wash your hands after using the toilet, does the source of that observation make the statement immediately suspect? no: its important to wash your hands after leaving the toilet, even osama bin laden recognizes this. therefore, it is equally true what obama says about talk radio and political blogs, whether said by him or sarah palin about left wing blogs. left OR right wing: talk radio and political blogs are poison to the mind
so obama's observation is completely valid. talk radio and political blogs are not coherent sources of impartial information. talk radio and political blogs are mental filth and they destroy civil society by turning it into a race to the bottom of mindless attacks and smears
if you had paper voting, you'd need an army of conspirators (which by nature of its size would be discovered), and an audit would discover statistical perturbations
but with electronic voting, you just bribe the right official or two, and one guy with a few milliseconds of access to the database and some crafty code can alter the votes in statistically invisible ways
if what you say is true, then people can't grasp that sometimes convenience has to be sacrificed. if what you say is true, then X Factor generation is the end of democracy
it is naive to think that technology offers a better way to vote: there is no technological solution to the bribe-able government bureaucrat
therefore, you have to make the voting process as technologically crude as possible, to prevent creative ways to cheat we cannot foresee
its also a matter of trust in the system. i can trust and verify a paper and a pencil with my own eyes. i can't step into the voting booth and "look" at a tcp/ip stack and trust it
electronic voting will be the downfall of democracy
even the most technologically advanced societies (some nordic countries want to vote by cell phone!?), for two reasons:
1. attack vectors
of course paper voting is subject to cheats, ballot stuffing, getting lost in transit, etc. its just that paper voting is a simpler process than mechanical or electronic voting, so therefore the numnber of attack vectors for paper voting is orders of magnitude less than mechanical voting... which in turn has orders of magnitude less attack vectors than electronic voting
one well placed dude can, in a few milliseconds, in a statistically invisible way, randomly increase votes for one candidate over the other. and i don't care how well you design electronic voting technologically, its still overseen by corruptible government bureaucrats, for which there is no technological solution
but with paper voting, the cheats you can pull off are only crude, requiring armies of cooperating conspirators... and no conspiracy of sufficient size is airtight. therefore: discoverable. a cheat by one guy or a handful is also statistically discoverable: a truck driver of vote boxes in one precinct can't lose 10,000 votes or introduce 10,000 fake ones without being noticed in an audit. and for every one of these paper balot cheats, there a simply 1,000 such variations, attack vectors, for the more complex electronic voting, and even some new and exotic methodologies. so to guard paper voting is simply an easier, less creative process. you can't outwit the committed bad guy in a complex system, but you can outman him in a crude system
2. perception
you can have all of the transparent standards for the PROFESSIONALS that you want. but for your average joe blow, the more the voting process is a black box (press keys -> sausage -> president comes out on other end) the more they are susceptible to lose confidence in the process. paper voting simply is a smaller black box. you write on a piece of paper. the papers ate stacked somewhere. some people scan or look at them if there's a problem: its all eminently comprehensible to anyone how the process works. no databases, no tcp/ ip stacks, no authentication, no encryption... no "sausage" parts that the average voter does not understand and therefore does not trust
democracy is only valid as long as it is seen a legitimate representation of the will of the people. put that legitimacy in doubt, and democracy loses all of its strengths. therefore, we should always, forever more, no matter what technological advances we experience, vote simply with paper
the problem here is technophilia: solving a simple problem in an overly complex way simply because you like the technology. electronic voting is a contrived false solution that introduces far more problems than it solves
of course your opinion has merit... to you. you don't have to indignantly rebut my observations. i don't care about your life, i care about the topic at hand. and apparently your opinion doesn't have merit to the subject matter at hand. don't take it so personally. simply understand that your opinion and your experience is far from normal
box office returns are what matter, and hollywood is looking at its first ever possible 5 billion dollar summer this year, its first ever. and thats what matters, and it obviously proves my point correct: that for all the babies and cellphones, internets, dvds, vhss, televisions, etc., the cinema house has proven to weather every supposed challenge to its dominance, and has continued to make cash, and more of it, every year, unfazed
so all of the gloom and doom talk to the contrary, from within the industry and outside it, in the audience, like yours, dating back all the way to the 1950s, is false, contrived empty FUD that simply doesn't understand the subject matter
who says? not me. box office returns say. end if discussion: sorry, but you lose
unless box office returns take a pronounced, repeated downturn. then maybe they'll do something about the babies and cellphones. until then, enjoy your 17 inch monitor in your basement by yourself (oh i'm sorry, you have magical friends who show up en masse to see exactly what you want to see at a moment's notice)
i don't know anyone who has a bevy of friends they can program to come over to their house and to all agree on a movie at the exact moment you want to see it
furthermore, all the babies and cellphones do not rise above the oohs and aahs in the dark around you that heighten your experience
if you honestly believe otherwise, you don't even know yourself
i am asserting that your complaint is false and contrived. box office returns say so. and EVEN IF your complaint is truthful and factual, you are a fragment of the population, a small shrill overly fragile minority that is so bothered by a cellphone. so your opinion is without merit
sorry dude
however i am far more against armed revolt. plus, it won't happen unless people are hungry
the point is: don't romanticize revolution. it is ugly and brutal and full of more suffering and cruelty than the worst corporatistic abuses of our democracy. peaceful change is the way to change things. armed revolt is for idiots who don't even understand the problem and will only make things far worse
finally, you have no control over the outcome, when you write about "an armed revolt introduces proportional representation" is just a fucking joke: NO ONE controls a revolution, and no one controls the outcome. you don't throw a revolution to get {xyz}, you throw a revolution... and anything is possilbe. in fact, the range of choices about what comes on the other end of a revolution are far, far worse than our current problems
so please stop romanticizing revolution, it is far, far worse than our problems with corporations, really. romanticizing revolution is for true idiots only
a controlled real world venue
even if they gave iron man 2 out free on dvds this weekend, it will still make a shit load of money in the cinema house. people pay money to watch movies in the cinema. they don't want to see it on their 17 inch monitor in their basement by themselves. or on their little netbook on the train. or even alone in front of the 52" hd in their den. they want to ooh and aah with strangers. its sociological. even all the cell phones and babies don't dent this concept of going to the movie house
this is how you make money in movies, and always WILL make money in movies: the cinema house
the only thing the internet is going to kill is the dvd after market. and who cares? how many crappy direct to video movies to do we need? avatar made a shitload of cash: all in the cinema. so the movie making model is completely safe, completely untouched by the internet, NO ACTA NEED APPLY, despite all the whining and panic and hand wringing by people who apparently don't even understand the business
the movie making business is completely safe: it will not be destroyed. it will not be touched by any internet, dvd, vcr, or television (the original "destroyer" of the cinema because of free over the air signals... in the 1950s they said the cinema house was dead!)
sure, places like canada and the netherlands are to our left, but far more are to our right: the entire muslim world, for example, plenty of third world countries. we even have better freedom of speech protection than up in canuckistan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#North_America
i consider myself left leaning and greatly admire canada, there's plenty about your country that the usa would be wise to emulate
but its pretty silly to see you castigate the usa for being so right leaning from a GLOBAL standpoint when you can't even keep track of how far left canada itself is on the world stage
go ahead and castigate the usa from a canda-centric point of view, that's perfectly in your right. but when it comes to wordliness, you have a ways to go, as you don't have a good grasp of the true international range of ideologies. unfortunately, its quite right wing out there. really
that your average undergraduate computer science class could tackle, for the cost of coffee and peanuts, in an order magnitude smaller amount of time, and with more competency than the huge bloated slow as molasses and obsolete upon implementation bs that characterizes government involvement
but i'm not saying that as a typical cynical "we're doomed", and that's that, useless observation
what i'm saying is: really, give the problem to an undergraduate computer science class. put carnegie mellon or RPI in charge of implementing it
the idea that penicillin, malathion, roundup, etc., are permanent tools against mother nature is a false one. but it is a false idea whether we used the products never, sparingly, intelligent, or stupidly. simple use of these tools will induce resistance. the arms race goes on forever, and the only thing we have to learn is to lose the naivete that these chemicals would be useful forever
we need to cook up more antibiotics, weed killers, and bug killers. but this is true no matter how we used the first generation of chemicals. we haven't learned anything, nor did we have anything to learn, unless it is the more eternal lesson that some people are naive
every advance is only a temporary advance, and the arms race exists, forever. we had a brief period when our weapons were effective, and now we have to find new weapons, and this is simply inevitable, unless you choose not to use any chemical weapons at all
in other words, i'm not quite sure what you think we are supposed to learn. don't fight?
and there it is, on wikipedia:
i bought it at paragon sporting goods on 18th st in manhattan
its on their website, made by a company called pacsafe, the picture describes the entire solution:
http://www.paragonsports.com/product/PacSafe-WalletSafe-Tri-Fold-Travel-Wallet_10551_10051_5148529_-1.htm
i only have one key, so i store it in the billfold on a ring, so i only have to think and worry about a cell phone and a wallet when i leave the house, the keys are not a separate mental category
if you have a bunch of keys, you can still use this scheme, as the pacsafe comes with a chain (that i discarded but you would use)
now: if i can somehow put the cellphone in the wallet, i'm really happy. but the way cellphones are going, we'll probably be putting the wallet in the cellphone
in 5-10 years we'll probably be paying for everything with our cellphones (like they do in scandinavia already), so no wallet, and we'll probably be opening and closing doors with them too, so no keys
fuck petroleum and all the wahhabi islam it funds and the air it pollutes
and rolled my eyes at the ipad hysteria
here's my amazing 2 word rebuttal to the esteemed professional analyst's smoke and mirrors:
1. keyboard
2. price
end of discussion, advantange: netbook
hey, professional analysts: the crowd that spends 6 dollars on a cup of coffee is a small upper middle class niche that lives and works in midtown manhattan. maybe you should, in your vast analytical powers, stop to notice the wider, poorer world outside your little bubble
and i live and work in midtown manhattan! if i can do it, why can't you?