the issue is not that i am telling you that information you consider personal isn't really personal, the issue is that the author of this story is implying that information most everyone considers unimportant is actually in vital need of protection
the author of this story is projecting his odd quirky values onto everyone else: our personal information must be fiercely protected. it doesn't. no one thinks this way
got it, oh great genius? the imposition of values is happening in the reverse direction that you perceive: an artificial inflation of value where there is no inherent value
"If I don't care about it, it can't possibly be important!" therefore is 100% accurate when it comes to determining the value of your own personal information
there is no alternative superior or objective arbiter of the value of your personal information other than yourself. it is completely subjective, and it is completely within the realm of the self
i consider privacy to include my password to my bank account, what my girlfirend looks like naked, and the details of how i lost my virginity, and a few other things
i don't really consider anything that goes on in gmail, in windows, or on facebook to equate to my privacy. who does? this information is mined in order to display ads in a side panel on my pc? ok. and your point?
if you consider that sort of pointless uninteresting minutae of your life to be in the realm of your "privacy" then i and many other people think you are being rather precious and overly dramatic about your life. its really just not that interesting, or worth protecting. most of us have some ability to gauge exactly how absolutely interesting segments of our daily lives and our social circle is, egomaniacs amongst us notwithstanding, and we find it to be rather common and not valuable. precious in total, to ourselves, because it is our lives, but not inherently precious as some sort of vital aspect of humanity. and we know this. and there is no cognitive dissonance about this observation. only within our own personal perspective does this minutiae have value, and in no other persecptive is it even possible to have value. so there is no need to protect anything
take for example a series of snapshots of a trip to disney world. to the person in those snapshots, they are probably more valuable than the mona lisa. but to most everyone else, they are utterly uninteresting. but, and here's the important part: the person in those snapshots KNOWS they are valuable only to him, such that exposure of those pictures to random people he will never know has no context to his life. it cannot hurt him, their reaction. even if he knew someone was looking at his private pictures and was laughing at them: so what? how can that hurt you? how can it wound you? its completely without relevancy to who and what is important to you, so laugh away. the context in which they laugh has no leverage over your personal life, becuase the judgments being made against you are being made within frameworks that have no impact on how you live your life or how you judge your life, or anyone important to you judges your life
this level of security about one's personal life is not bizarre, its normal. i am aware there are probably brittle insecure people out there who instead would be hurt and wounded by this scenario. and? its not like their reaction is valid. its only their distorted sense of what they attach their ego to that gives them pain. yes, they are in pain, but according to any coherent sense of morality, no valid reason can be formulated that justifies their pain. their reaction has no valid real context to their lives, despite their false impression that it does. their own misplaced sense of perspective is the source of their pain, not anything that anyone has impositioned them with an abridgement of their "privacy"
and this is not even something new to the world of the internet. all of us, thorughout all time periods and cultures, have been exposed to judgments about our personal lives by "outsiders". if i go to japan, and i laugh at what japanese people eat, does that hurt the japanese people's feelings? will it change what they eat? is my laughter valid to them in some way? doe sit have any context in their lives? what if a child laughed at my hairdo? or, if i am a teenager, what if an adult tut tutted at my clothing. has my personal space been judged or hurt in any context that is valid and you would take into consideration in changing your personal life?
its not that people are radically unconcerned about their privacy. its that some people consider things to be "private" and worthy of radical defense that most of us view as completely pointless effluvia. go ahead, make fun of it, expose it to the world. its me, its my personality. and?
"voting in a system that allows me to access it at a later time to verify accuracy."
voting is meant to be anonymous. people won't vote if you can put a name and face to what they voted. that you don't appreciate or realize the importance of anonymity in voting is woefully ignorant on your part. no one, no one will ever go for a system where who voted how is tracked
oh, it's a one way cipher? a hash? you build it as a code phrase the voter can look up and enter anonymously in a public terminal to later verify the vote is as they recorded? you have some other incredibly hairbrained scheme in mind?
what the fuck are you smoking?
who is going to build this completely unnecessary system? who is going to believe its genuinely anonymous? who is going to believe the vote as shown is represented in the final tally?
the more security you build into the system, the more opaque it is. the more opaque, the less trustworthy. and all the time you are making something more and more complicated, and therefore more expensive, and therefore introducing myriad new ways to hack it
"Simpler things are easier to secure, but no more inherently secure than the next"
whu?
"coca cola is wet, but not inherently more wet than milk"
(smacks forehead)
as for the rest of that paragraph, what i see is a very keen and technically oriented but stubborn mind grasping at straws attempting to say something insightful about a losing premise. just admit it: you've proceeded on a flawed initial assumption. you need to go back to the beginning, and admit your starting assumptions are wrong
let me help you: electronic voting is intrinsically more complex than paper voting, and as such introduces unnecessary added cost, and an exponentially proportional amount of new attack vectors. admit those unassailable truths, or continue sputtering in blind stubbornness
electronic is cheaper than paper? electronic is less complex than paper? more complexity does not increase price, or increase attack vectors exponentially? are any of those observations unsound?
you lose. just stop being stubborn and admit it. blind pride will not save you
lets keep it simple, i will describe a scenario, you tell me where my assumptions are wrong:
a vote is in question. how do you audit that vote?
electronic: assume all electronic checks are hackable. so lets go with the receipt that was printed and retained when someone voted. well, how is it certain that that receipt actually represents the person's real vote? hmmm. have them visually verify the paper receipt before retention for audit reasons
ok, with me so far? describe where my scenario is wrong above if not
so, now you have a system where you vote on a machine, print a recipt, verify the receipt, and go on your way
(smacks forehead)
for the sake of simplicity, speed, and lower cost, why not just pick up a blank receipt and mark with a PENCIL your vote. then, OCR it!
now the entire system works the same: faster, cheaper, simpler
where have i stumbled above?
where are the supposed benefits of electronic voting in the scenario above? have i not addressed something in the scenario above? maybe where i said "assume all electronic checks are hackable"?
oh, government employees are the pinnacle of payscale and integrity? ONE volunteer poll worker in aiken county south carolina would never in a million years be persuaded to take advantage of a backdoor port discovered by a hacker to artificially massage the results in ways invisible to statistical analysis of shenanigans? you can do the same with paper? no, you CAN'T do the same thing with paper! it's a question of the amount of mischief one person can make, and their speed, and detection level. electronic voting introduces vast new abilities for mischief. that MEANS something you have not addressed
my assertion, that you haven't refuted, because you know i am right: an increase in complexity results in an exponentially proportional increase in attack vectors. how is that observation wrong? where have i stumbled in my scenario above?
if your goal is intelligence gathering, data mining is rather weak. signs and portents. an increase of chatter hear, an interesting whisper of a phrase there. nothing even remotely solid or actionable, but perhaps something to attune your intelligence gathering in your more concrete and reliable methodologies
datamining is something to back up a hunch, something to suggest an avenue to look where you might find more, something better than a wild ass guess about where to look. but certainly not a front line tool, and certainly not the first place you visit, nor proof of anything. its not evidence, its just scattershot impressionism, to guide you in vague ways. your front line tools are spies and moles. perhaps 1% of their work is supported by or guided by data mining
but, even so, data-mining will never stop
data mining will just devolve in the level of respect it gets to the level of respect it deserves: very little. it's too undependable, foggy, and worse, its subject to counterintelligence manipulation
data mining is not completely useless. just almost completely useless
and so it will still continue, because something is better than nothing
i too recognize the futility of fighting EC directly, and your approach of somehow cajoling the states to register EC votes proportional to popular votes is certainly not perfect, but a heck of a lot better than what we have now
start with the states that are evenly divided, that's where the cause would find the most traction. once you get enough of those, its a matter of cajoling the disproportionately republican or democratic states to recognize their minorities
it would be a state-by-state effort, but national level interests would probably drive the effort once the issue is cracked, out of fear and anger: if every state were proportional except say, california and texas, you can bet those states would be under enormous pressure to change, since they would wind up deciding the fate of the entire nation otherwise. which is good for texans and californians, but unacceptable to everyone else
its a matter of driving a crack in the issue with a few states, then the issue would accelerate in importance due to fears and anger at disproportionate influence
he's not saying the usa, or england, or germany, or anywhere is perfect. he's saying that the kind of abuse you went through can happen in malaysia, or egypt, or iran, or cuba, with impunity
what can you do? you can complain in the free press, you can pursue legal action against the authorities. you will also find plenty of people sympathetic to your plight, and you can associate with them freely. and none of you is afraid to speak out against your abuse. here you are on slashdot posting about it, right?
if you posted what you just posted in china, or iran, or egypt, you tell me what would happen
you will be very afraid to speak out against your abuse in other countries, where you are expected to swallow what happened to you without a word. and if you tell someone about it in the press, which is controlled by the government, or associate with those who also have complaints against the government, they will find you again if prove too troublesome, and give you sterner reminder of your need to stfu
there is a valid genuine large difference in the level of treatment you get in the west versus authoritarian countries
you need to understand and recongize that difference. if you do not, you cannot speak with intellectual honesty on the subject of government abuse
any voting system you can devise is open to attack
true or false:
an electronic voting system is more complex than a paper system
true or false:
a more complex system has orders of magnitude more attack vectors than a simple system
true or false:
eyeballs and pencil on paper is transparent
true or false:
ip stack to application layer to ram to io channel to drive head to platter, and back to lcd, across multiple computer systems, is opaque
essay contest:
any electronic voting system must involve encryption due to security concerns. please write some poetry describing the transparency of encryption (snicker)
dude: if your technological acumen and your honesty were up to par with your obvious technological fetishism, you would admit paper ballot is superior to electronic ballot, assuming you also understood what is really important in the process
go read some popular science and wired. while you are doing that, note that we don't have any rocket cars yet. because besides being really neato, they don't solve any problems that are not already solved with lower levels of tech
technology is important to the advancement of mankind. that doesn't mean every thing benefits from technology, and plenty of examples throughout history have shown technology to not improve things. nuclear airplanes? video phones? teledildonics? these and many other examples: simply throwing technology at a problem is not the answer. in certain contexts, you are not only involving overkill, you are making things worse. and plenty of people throughout history have been burned by misplaced enthusiasm exactly like yours, completely disregarding the fundamentals of the problem before you
i do not want your technological hubris to sink my country like the titanic. your technological enthusiasm is blind and ignorant
absolutely is a paper ballot system more vulnerable at the social level
and this is good: you need an airtight conspiracy involving the coordination of a lot of players (good luck)... to do a little damage, that is a lot of hard work and planning (emptying ballot boxes in the potomac, making a bunch of bogus votes). and then if you exmaine the votes, you can notice discrepancies: where is district 13s votes? where did this bump in votes in district 12 come from?
meanwhile, with eletronic voting, i need 100 milliseconds, and one man, to do complex statistically airtight ghost moves in votes across a national level. virtually impossible to trace
see the difference?
the social level vulnerabilities are kids games compared to the horrible electornic vulnerabilities of electornic voting
"I find your tone toward joe sixpack condescending and not quite right."
joe sixpack can be composed of it security professionals, my observations hold rock solid. it security professionals know that the more complex the system, the more attack vectors there are. it security professionals would pick the system that was as simple as possible, and as transparent as possible. a paper ballot represents that ideal. a bunch of security professionals would recognize a database, ESPECIALLY one involving encryption (are you going to have zero security?) as something opaque, and as something with more attack vectors
a black box voting system that works with 0% election fraud is inferior to a transparent voting system with 10% voting fraud
got that?
because in the paper ballot system i can openly quantify the shenanigans
meanwhile, in the black box electronic voting system, i have to trust some guy in a government office that all is well. oh really? says who? i have no way of verifying that, of running my own checks. its opaque. i have my doubts. my trust is not 100%, and nor should it be. and so my doubts only increase
not knowing the full extent of a few shenanigans in a vote is far worse than knowing for certain the exact extent of a lot of shenanigans
we're talking about a presidential election, correct?
i think you are trying to say it is unfair if the city majority imposes its policies on the rural minority
#1: we're not talking about issues that apply to a racial or religious minority, whose rights should be respected, and are respected. nobody is discussing or making laws like "your religious day must be sunday, not saturday" or "you must be lighter than this brown paper bag to vote". we're talking majority and minority in terms of ISSUES. issues like health care, economic policy. issues in which there are minority and majority opinions, having nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of racial and religious minorities. i honestly think you have a problem differentiating between these two ideas of minority and majority, which frankly, is absurdly laughable that you should confuse these two ideas of what majority and minorty means. completely differenty contexts
#2 it assumes that los angeles and new york are in some sort of league against the people of kansas and nebraska. utterly absurd. there's plenty los angeles and new york disagree about, and there's plenty that new york and nebraska agree on. there is no such thing as an issue which is purely city folk versus country folks
#3 finally, for the sake of argument, lets assume that there really is a difference of substantial opinion on an issue between city folk and country folk. well, who decides the policy? first off, most policy differences are already handled in jurisidictional differences. in other words, when you are talking about policy differences that only matter at the national level, its a completely different ball game.
the issue of your need to register a gun, for example: this can easily be decided at a munipical level, and in fact, there are differences in laws between the states in the issue of gun registration. so this issue isn't a valid national one. here's another issue: invade iraq or not. well this deicison is being made at a country level. a decision that effects the people of manhattan kansas as equally as it doesn the people of manhattan, new york city. at this level of decision making, a countrywide level, there is no valid separation between country and city. there is no majority versus minority other than majority versus minority on terms of OPINION, not geography, not race, no religion. which is what democracy is all about: who wins the decision making rights based on majority of OPINION
but even so, lets make believe 75% of country people say we should invade iraq, and 40% of city folk believe we should invade iraq. someone is going to lose here, someone is going to have someone else's opinion imposed on them. ok. now we really are talking about a "tyranny of the majority". so should the city folk be inconvenienced by a MINORITY country opinion. should country folk be inconvenienced by a MINORITY city opinion. no and no. but yes: city folk SHOULD be inconvenienced by a MAJORITY country opinion. and country folkd SHOULD be inconvenienced by a MAJORITY city opinion
guess what: there is no valid way around this problem. do the people of the country deserve to impose their will on city folk? YES, if they make up the majority of the population, on a question of national prominence. do the people of the city deserve to impose their will on country folk? YES, if they make up the majority of the population, on a question of national prominence.
on questions of local prominence, city folk can't prevail on coutnry folk, and visa versa. on questions of national prominence, absoolutely do city folk deserve to prevail on country folk, and visa versa. because its ONE COUNTRY. there is no abridgement of fairness, or morality, or democracy in play here. yes, majoriy rules. and this absolutely the way it should be!
between religious moderates versus religious fundamentalists
religious moderates understand their religious texts at a higher mental level, to abstract out from the larger framework of ideas, and apply them to new (and old) problems according to broad principles that reflect the spirit of their religion
meanwhile, religious fundamentalists only understand how to regurgitate their religious texts like a robot reading device does. its a shallow understanding, with no thought invovled, but they grip tenaciously to their literal interpretation, even when it goes agains the overall spirit of their religion. in this way, religious fundamentalists are less true representatives of their religion than religious moderates, even though unfortunately they are often the loudest and most zealous
same with constitutional fundamentalists. its a kind of religious zealoutry, where people adhere to the written word like a pit bull, and think no deeper about the real concepts the founding fathers had in mind
joe sixpack needs to look at his vote and feel like it is counted
if he understands how it is counted, he has faith. integrity and legitimacy and social stability prevail
but if he sees a black box? if he sees a redundnat relational database, if he sees triple DES? this is not transparency
fact: the mechanisms you invoke for preserving "transparency" in electronic voting actually serve to introduce obfuscation and opaqueness. regardless of whether or not joe sixpack understands what is going on. making the system more complex then it needs to be increases attack vectors
simplicity must prevail. there is no need that a more complicated voting system achieves- faster vote tallies? that does not also undermine a much greater problem: perception of fairness in the eyes of the electorate
i am not being a luddite, you are being a technofetishist. simply because you can vote in a more complicated manner does not mean you should. you should think about what you are losing in that process. you haven't paid that any consideration. and you are forgetting the point of the entire exercise of voting: make the people feel like their voice counts in their government
the black box of electronic voting only wins their distrust. this makes any other positive effect of electornic voting over paper voting a moot point
the tyranny of the majority IS democracy. the will of the people is the will of the people is the will of the people. you can't call it somethng different and its somehow illegitimate
"The people in the cities should not solely decide the direction of this country."
the people in the cities should decide the direction of this country directly proportionate to their share of the population. beginning and end of the discussion right there. the direction of the country should be decided by the people, in aggregate. what does that mean? that means if 60% live in the city, people in cities deserve 60% of the say. that means if 20% live in the city, people in cities deserve 20% of the say
the people in the country deserve to retain some sort of power over the people in the cities? beyond their natural population? this is democratic to you? this is the wisdom of the founding fathers to you?
if the countryside makes up 45% of the electorate, then the countryside deserves 45% of the say. not 50%. not 40%. they deserve 45%. any warping of this one person one vote popular will is an abuse of power, is an error in the system
therefore, the EC needs to go. it warps one person one vote. it is therefore illegitimate and anti-democratic
when the sun king ruled france, all of the propaganda and lies you pointed to above was in full force, deeply ingrained in the social dna of aristocrats and serfs. and yet the people still rebelled. not so much because they were smart and knew better, but simply because they were hungry
china's government has been described as the harvard alumni society with a standing army. it can do no wrong. it is perfect. except it isn't. it's human. it can, and has, made mistakes, and will do so again. the difference between the usa and china is that when the government deos something that proves deeply unpopular with the people, or makes some teribble mistake (the great leap forward, or invade iraq), or some horrible national crisis hits, in a democracy, the government can be swept aside and a new one can take its place, bloodlessly and without any effort. meanwhile, in china, in a totalitarian state, no matter how many lies are spread, the real world effects of that mistake or crisis persists, and grows, and stays a permanent mark on the system. not that the people have to even know the truth. they can blame foreign countries for something their own government did wrong if the propaganda machine is solid enough. but you can't make up a lie that covers an empty stomach. meaning: the mistakes compound over time, and you permanently impoverish the country, regardless of what the people believe is to blame for that impoverishment. and that leads to revolution: the empty stomach
the usa is not even 250 years old. and it is the most powerful country in the world. more powerful than much larger countries and much older civilizations. why?
because of democracy. when you have the freedoms and social stability in a democracy, you get a country that can adapt to horrible challenges and difficult times, and survive, because it can, with a snap of the fingers, change course with a new government and a new ideology. the ultimate in adaptive pragmatism. no totalitarian state can be that nimble. its more like an aircraft carrier trying to turn on a dime: it has massive investment in an ideological framework, and it cannot merely elicit edicts that contradict deeply ingrained ideology
well, actually, in some ways, it can. does it strike you as odd the the chinese communist party lords over the most capitalist system in the world? do you think this ideological hollowness results in no decrease in legitimacy?
a totalitarian state cannot persist, no matter how absolute its control over the people's will. for the sake of retaining power at all costs, it simply devoles into a weak, brittle, impoverished country. no lie fills an empty stomach. and then its revolution, or mass starvation, and even greater weakness
meanwhile, a democracy simply changes its ideological colors, and marches on, as demands and crises change, completely adaptive and nimble. this country outsurvives, outcompetes, and is richer than the ideologically brittle ones
so yes, if absolute retension of power is your point, yes, you win: you can lie to the people completely. however, if also want to have a country that can stay healthy and rich and survive as a force on the world stage, then you want a democracy, because a totalitarian state can do nothing but devolve into poverty over time
you can say china is an example contrary to this statement. actually, china is liberalizing economically, just not politically. the story is incomplete. there will come a point where any further growth, or even retention of growth, will require greater nimbleness that can only come from a democratic government. that further adhesion to a totalitarian ideological iceberg will simply mean china will begin to slide back into poverty. then its the empty stomachs of the peasants that will lead the way to revolution, that have always led the way to revolution, no matter what the propaganda is or what people believe
i am not a blind partisan fool like we see too many of nowadays. the idea is faith in democracy. i have my own set of beliefs, and i am saddened by a bush presidency, but more important than my own personal beliefs are the will of the american people. the will of the american people must be fully expressed as closely as possible
what of all the republican voters in california and new york who pretty much feel like their vote doesn't count? please, count their vote. they deserve to be heard. i disagree with their opinions, but that doesn't mean i have the right to deny their voice. so please, abolish the EC so republicans in california and new york can be heard. i am 100% for that
in an environment where the connection between the will of the people and the presidency has issues with fidelity, doubt in our form of government grows. when that doubt grows, legitimacy is put into question, societal instability grows. i don't want that
i'd rather have 40 years of neocon presidents with a fair election than a more liberal government elected in cloudly perturbed way like the EC that large parts of the population are angry that their will is not rightfully represented. this creates the toxic partisan atmosphere we've had in this country over the last 8 years
if my ideology is going to lose, then fine. as long as it is fair and square loss. i can live with that. and then i will stand behind my government
but if my government is created in ways that are not fair to me, why should i stand behind my government, why should i have faith in it, trust it, support it, when it does not think my vote counts?
and this observation applies to me, a liberal, and it applies equally to a conservative voter
in such a way, the EC erodes democracy, and should be abolished, the EC does not favor repulicans or democrats. it EC favors one thing: loss of faith in democracy
we need to lose the historical albatross that is the EC, please
democracy IS the only way to go. there is simply no alternative in existence, in reality or in theory, whereby the people gain faith in their government in a better format
start with a revolution that places a new government in place. it has enormous will in the people behind it, they will do anything for that government. well, over time and over generations, that government and the people begin to drift apart in agenda and trust. such that only another revolution is the only way to reinstate fidelity between the people's will and the government's agenda
democracy allows for a government to address the people's will, to become reconnected with what the people really want. this creates legitimacy, and stability, without the insanity of revolution
without that constant submission to the people's will, legitimacy of a government naturally decays over time, no matter how much good will it started with. no man or group of men (that's you china) can rule with such perfection that no mistakes or distrust in the people doesn't accumulate over time. decaying legitimacy creates societal instability, societal instability creates revolution. only democracy avoids this
and in spite of all of the clueless fantasy sequences of upper middle class fools listening to rage against the machine: no, revolution is never a good thing. it creates a huge amount of suffering and death, from which a society may never fully recover, and the system that eventually wins power in the struggle is not guaranteed to be better than whatever government was overthrown
only democracy allows for the people's will to be addressed without this bloodshed and suffering. and there exists no real world or even theoretical alternative to this model for addressing the people's will
so you are wrong: democracy, indeed, is the best form of government
the EC favors no ideology, so it makes no sense for republicans or democrats to want to preserve the system. think of all the republican voters in california and new york who pretty much know their votes are worth nothing. that the EC gave bush the presidency in 2000 is not something that mean the EC automatically favors republicans, or democrats. there's hundreds of strategic situations where a swing state here or there can illegitimately award the presidency to someone who got less popular votes
so the only thing that is lost by losing the EC is millions of voters with a sense that their vote doesn't count. therefore, lose the EC, by all means, in the name of increasing faith on our democratic institutions
the EC is a sort of aristocratic hedge the founding fathers built into the system, a sliver of doubt about the popular will. god bless their hearts, the founding fathers got so many things right in the name of the enlightenment, but they had a shadow of aristocratic doubt, and that shadow of a doubt is the EC
the EC is an anachronistic albatross around our necks. the EC needs to be abolished, it is a joke, and a dangerous one as 2000 demonstrates. the put the wrong man in the presidency in a time of great international crisis, fomenting a war with the wrong country based on nothing but popular undirected anger and a hidden malodorous agenda
and based on your post, i guess my enemies are pretty stupid
do you think bush would have been elected in 2004 if not in 2000?
really?
i think bush would have been discarded in the intervening years of 2001-2003. candidates that lose elections are rarely reconsidered. the taint of losing is too strong. witness mondale in 1984, dole in 1996, and kerry in 2004. after losing, they were all persona non grata
so yes, winning in 2000 meant 8 more years of bush
furthermore, in 2004, i think we would have had a republican president. this is assuming the 9/11/2001 attacks still took place
if gore were president in 2001, he would have pursued military action in afghanistan, thats a no-brainer for any president. but he would never have attacked iraq. and the electorate, angry over 9/11, would have sought out a warhawk in 2004, and the republicans would have played to this and monopolized on an electorate looking for blood and would have painted gore as a wooden pansy. this approach would have worked too. they would look their 2004 candidate in a hard talking strong military background candidate, like norman schwarzkopf, colin powell......or john mccain
if gore were president in 2000, and if the the 9/11/2001 attacks still took place, john mccain would have been president in 2004
Slashdot Mirror
the issue is not that i am telling you that information you consider personal isn't really personal, the issue is that the author of this story is implying that information most everyone considers unimportant is actually in vital need of protection
the author of this story is projecting his odd quirky values onto everyone else: our personal information must be fiercely protected. it doesn't. no one thinks this way
got it, oh great genius? the imposition of values is happening in the reverse direction that you perceive: an artificial inflation of value where there is no inherent value
then i am the sole determinant of its value
"If I don't care about it, it can't possibly be important!" therefore is 100% accurate when it comes to determining the value of your own personal information
there is no alternative superior or objective arbiter of the value of your personal information other than yourself. it is completely subjective, and it is completely within the realm of the self
but don't mind me, i'm a moron
i consider privacy to include my password to my bank account, what my girlfirend looks like naked, and the details of how i lost my virginity, and a few other things
i don't really consider anything that goes on in gmail, in windows, or on facebook to equate to my privacy. who does? this information is mined in order to display ads in a side panel on my pc? ok. and your point?
if you consider that sort of pointless uninteresting minutae of your life to be in the realm of your "privacy" then i and many other people think you are being rather precious and overly dramatic about your life. its really just not that interesting, or worth protecting. most of us have some ability to gauge exactly how absolutely interesting segments of our daily lives and our social circle is, egomaniacs amongst us notwithstanding, and we find it to be rather common and not valuable. precious in total, to ourselves, because it is our lives, but not inherently precious as some sort of vital aspect of humanity. and we know this. and there is no cognitive dissonance about this observation. only within our own personal perspective does this minutiae have value, and in no other persecptive is it even possible to have value. so there is no need to protect anything
take for example a series of snapshots of a trip to disney world. to the person in those snapshots, they are probably more valuable than the mona lisa. but to most everyone else, they are utterly uninteresting. but, and here's the important part: the person in those snapshots KNOWS they are valuable only to him, such that exposure of those pictures to random people he will never know has no context to his life. it cannot hurt him, their reaction. even if he knew someone was looking at his private pictures and was laughing at them: so what? how can that hurt you? how can it wound you? its completely without relevancy to who and what is important to you, so laugh away. the context in which they laugh has no leverage over your personal life, becuase the judgments being made against you are being made within frameworks that have no impact on how you live your life or how you judge your life, or anyone important to you judges your life
this level of security about one's personal life is not bizarre, its normal. i am aware there are probably brittle insecure people out there who instead would be hurt and wounded by this scenario. and? its not like their reaction is valid. its only their distorted sense of what they attach their ego to that gives them pain. yes, they are in pain, but according to any coherent sense of morality, no valid reason can be formulated that justifies their pain. their reaction has no valid real context to their lives, despite their false impression that it does. their own misplaced sense of perspective is the source of their pain, not anything that anyone has impositioned them with an abridgement of their "privacy"
and this is not even something new to the world of the internet. all of us, thorughout all time periods and cultures, have been exposed to judgments about our personal lives by "outsiders". if i go to japan, and i laugh at what japanese people eat, does that hurt the japanese people's feelings? will it change what they eat? is my laughter valid to them in some way? doe sit have any context in their lives? what if a child laughed at my hairdo? or, if i am a teenager, what if an adult tut tutted at my clothing. has my personal space been judged or hurt in any context that is valid and you would take into consideration in changing your personal life?
its not that people are radically unconcerned about their privacy. its that some people consider things to be "private" and worthy of radical defense that most of us view as completely pointless effluvia. go ahead, make fun of it, expose it to the world. its me, its my personality. and?
uh, dude? based on what you just said?
you want to be told what to listen to
by wqna
durrrrrr.....
(rolls eyes)
it helps to not undermine your own assertions by being the poster child for the proof of the opposite of what you say
"voting in a system that allows me to access it at a later time to verify accuracy."
voting is meant to be anonymous. people won't vote if you can put a name and face to what they voted. that you don't appreciate or realize the importance of anonymity in voting is woefully ignorant on your part. no one, no one will ever go for a system where who voted how is tracked
oh, it's a one way cipher? a hash? you build it as a code phrase the voter can look up and enter anonymously in a public terminal to later verify the vote is as they recorded? you have some other incredibly hairbrained scheme in mind?
what the fuck are you smoking?
who is going to build this completely unnecessary system? who is going to believe its genuinely anonymous? who is going to believe the vote as shown is represented in the final tally?
the more security you build into the system, the more opaque it is. the more opaque, the less trustworthy. and all the time you are making something more and more complicated, and therefore more expensive, and therefore introducing myriad new ways to hack it
"Simpler things are easier to secure, but no more inherently secure than the next"
whu?
"coca cola is wet, but not inherently more wet than milk"
(smacks forehead)
as for the rest of that paragraph, what i see is a very keen and technically oriented but stubborn mind grasping at straws attempting to say something insightful about a losing premise. just admit it: you've proceeded on a flawed initial assumption. you need to go back to the beginning, and admit your starting assumptions are wrong
let me help you: electronic voting is intrinsically more complex than paper voting, and as such introduces unnecessary added cost, and an exponentially proportional amount of new attack vectors. admit those unassailable truths, or continue sputtering in blind stubbornness
electronic is cheaper than paper? electronic is less complex than paper? more complexity does not increase price, or increase attack vectors exponentially? are any of those observations unsound?
you lose. just stop being stubborn and admit it. blind pride will not save you
lurid idiot
labors, addled abattoirs
reconsider, sly
http://www.everypoet.com/haiku/default.htm
lets keep it simple, i will describe a scenario, you tell me where my assumptions are wrong:
a vote is in question. how do you audit that vote?
electronic: assume all electronic checks are hackable. so lets go with the receipt that was printed and retained when someone voted. well, how is it certain that that receipt actually represents the person's real vote? hmmm. have them visually verify the paper receipt before retention for audit reasons
ok, with me so far? describe where my scenario is wrong above if not
so, now you have a system where you vote on a machine, print a recipt, verify the receipt, and go on your way
(smacks forehead)
for the sake of simplicity, speed, and lower cost, why not just pick up a blank receipt and mark with a PENCIL your vote. then, OCR it!
now the entire system works the same: faster, cheaper, simpler
where have i stumbled above?
where are the supposed benefits of electronic voting in the scenario above? have i not addressed something in the scenario above? maybe where i said "assume all electronic checks are hackable"?
oh, government employees are the pinnacle of payscale and integrity? ONE volunteer poll worker in aiken county south carolina would never in a million years be persuaded to take advantage of a backdoor port discovered by a hacker to artificially massage the results in ways invisible to statistical analysis of shenanigans? you can do the same with paper? no, you CAN'T do the same thing with paper! it's a question of the amount of mischief one person can make, and their speed, and detection level. electronic voting introduces vast new abilities for mischief. that MEANS something you have not addressed
my assertion, that you haven't refuted, because you know i am right: an increase in complexity results in an exponentially proportional increase in attack vectors. how is that observation wrong? where have i stumbled in my scenario above?
if your goal is intelligence gathering, data mining is rather weak. signs and portents. an increase of chatter hear, an interesting whisper of a phrase there. nothing even remotely solid or actionable, but perhaps something to attune your intelligence gathering in your more concrete and reliable methodologies
datamining is something to back up a hunch, something to suggest an avenue to look where you might find more, something better than a wild ass guess about where to look. but certainly not a front line tool, and certainly not the first place you visit, nor proof of anything. its not evidence, its just scattershot impressionism, to guide you in vague ways. your front line tools are spies and moles. perhaps 1% of their work is supported by or guided by data mining
but, even so, data-mining will never stop
data mining will just devolve in the level of respect it gets to the level of respect it deserves: very little. it's too undependable, foggy, and worse, its subject to counterintelligence manipulation
data mining is not completely useless. just almost completely useless
and so it will still continue, because something is better than nothing
where do i find about new european trance i might like?
pandora.com
i have placed my trust in pandora. pnadora tells me what i like
how does ANYONE find out about something they might like to listen to?
they blind fold themselves, go into itunes and click randomly?
and what the hell does my assertion have to do with a sense of superiority?!
i too recognize the futility of fighting EC directly, and your approach of somehow cajoling the states to register EC votes proportional to popular votes is certainly not perfect, but a heck of a lot better than what we have now
start with the states that are evenly divided, that's where the cause would find the most traction. once you get enough of those, its a matter of cajoling the disproportionately republican or democratic states to recognize their minorities
it would be a state-by-state effort, but national level interests would probably drive the effort once the issue is cracked, out of fear and anger: if every state were proportional except say, california and texas, you can bet those states would be under enormous pressure to change, since they would wind up deciding the fate of the entire nation otherwise. which is good for texans and californians, but unacceptable to everyone else
its a matter of driving a crack in the issue with a few states, then the issue would accelerate in importance due to fears and anger at disproportionate influence
he's not saying the usa, or england, or germany, or anywhere is perfect. he's saying that the kind of abuse you went through can happen in malaysia, or egypt, or iran, or cuba, with impunity
what can you do? you can complain in the free press, you can pursue legal action against the authorities. you will also find plenty of people sympathetic to your plight, and you can associate with them freely. and none of you is afraid to speak out against your abuse. here you are on slashdot posting about it, right?
if you posted what you just posted in china, or iran, or egypt, you tell me what would happen
you will be very afraid to speak out against your abuse in other countries, where you are expected to swallow what happened to you without a word. and if you tell someone about it in the press, which is controlled by the government, or associate with those who also have complaints against the government, they will find you again if prove too troublesome, and give you sterner reminder of your need to stfu
there is a valid genuine large difference in the level of treatment you get in the west versus authoritarian countries
you need to understand and recongize that difference. if you do not, you cannot speak with intellectual honesty on the subject of government abuse
but not very technologically knowledgable
true or false:
any voting system you can devise is open to attack
true or false:
an electronic voting system is more complex than a paper system
true or false:
a more complex system has orders of magnitude more attack vectors than a simple system
true or false:
eyeballs and pencil on paper is transparent
true or false:
ip stack to application layer to ram to io channel to drive head to platter, and back to lcd, across multiple computer systems, is opaque
essay contest:
any electronic voting system must involve encryption due to security concerns. please write some poetry describing the transparency of encryption (snicker)
dude: if your technological acumen and your honesty were up to par with your obvious technological fetishism, you would admit paper ballot is superior to electronic ballot, assuming you also understood what is really important in the process
go read some popular science and wired. while you are doing that, note that we don't have any rocket cars yet. because besides being really neato, they don't solve any problems that are not already solved with lower levels of tech
technology is important to the advancement of mankind. that doesn't mean every thing benefits from technology, and plenty of examples throughout history have shown technology to not improve things. nuclear airplanes? video phones? teledildonics? these and many other examples: simply throwing technology at a problem is not the answer. in certain contexts, you are not only involving overkill, you are making things worse. and plenty of people throughout history have been burned by misplaced enthusiasm exactly like yours, completely disregarding the fundamentals of the problem before you
i do not want your technological hubris to sink my country like the titanic. your technological enthusiasm is blind and ignorant
absolutely is a paper ballot system more vulnerable at the social level
and this is good: you need an airtight conspiracy involving the coordination of a lot of players (good luck)... to do a little damage, that is a lot of hard work and planning (emptying ballot boxes in the potomac, making a bunch of bogus votes). and then if you exmaine the votes, you can notice discrepancies: where is district 13s votes? where did this bump in votes in district 12 come from?
meanwhile, with eletronic voting, i need 100 milliseconds, and one man, to do complex statistically airtight ghost moves in votes across a national level. virtually impossible to trace
see the difference?
the social level vulnerabilities are kids games compared to the horrible electornic vulnerabilities of electornic voting
"I find your tone toward joe sixpack condescending and not quite right."
joe sixpack can be composed of it security professionals, my observations hold rock solid. it security professionals know that the more complex the system, the more attack vectors there are. it security professionals would pick the system that was as simple as possible, and as transparent as possible. a paper ballot represents that ideal. a bunch of security professionals would recognize a database, ESPECIALLY one involving encryption (are you going to have zero security?) as something opaque, and as something with more attack vectors
a black box voting system that works with 0% election fraud is inferior to a transparent voting system with 10% voting fraud
got that?
because in the paper ballot system i can openly quantify the shenanigans
meanwhile, in the black box electronic voting system, i have to trust some guy in a government office that all is well. oh really? says who? i have no way of verifying that, of running my own checks. its opaque. i have my doubts. my trust is not 100%, and nor should it be. and so my doubts only increase
not knowing the full extent of a few shenanigans in a vote is far worse than knowing for certain the exact extent of a lot of shenanigans
see the difference?
we're talking about a presidential election, correct?
i think you are trying to say it is unfair if the city majority imposes its policies on the rural minority
#1: we're not talking about issues that apply to a racial or religious minority, whose rights should be respected, and are respected. nobody is discussing or making laws like "your religious day must be sunday, not saturday" or "you must be lighter than this brown paper bag to vote". we're talking majority and minority in terms of ISSUES. issues like health care, economic policy. issues in which there are minority and majority opinions, having nothing whatsoever to do with the idea of racial and religious minorities. i honestly think you have a problem differentiating between these two ideas of minority and majority, which frankly, is absurdly laughable that you should confuse these two ideas of what majority and minorty means. completely differenty contexts
#2 it assumes that los angeles and new york are in some sort of league against the people of kansas and nebraska. utterly absurd. there's plenty los angeles and new york disagree about, and there's plenty that new york and nebraska agree on. there is no such thing as an issue which is purely city folk versus country folks
#3 finally, for the sake of argument, lets assume that there really is a difference of substantial opinion on an issue between city folk and country folk. well, who decides the policy? first off, most policy differences are already handled in jurisidictional differences. in other words, when you are talking about policy differences that only matter at the national level, its a completely different ball game.
the issue of your need to register a gun, for example: this can easily be decided at a munipical level, and in fact, there are differences in laws between the states in the issue of gun registration. so this issue isn't a valid national one. here's another issue: invade iraq or not. well this deicison is being made at a country level. a decision that effects the people of manhattan kansas as equally as it doesn the people of manhattan, new york city. at this level of decision making, a countrywide level, there is no valid separation between country and city. there is no majority versus minority other than majority versus minority on terms of OPINION, not geography, not race, no religion. which is what democracy is all about: who wins the decision making rights based on majority of OPINION
but even so, lets make believe 75% of country people say we should invade iraq, and 40% of city folk believe we should invade iraq. someone is going to lose here, someone is going to have someone else's opinion imposed on them. ok. now we really are talking about a "tyranny of the majority". so should the city folk be inconvenienced by a MINORITY country opinion. should country folk be inconvenienced by a MINORITY city opinion. no and no. but yes: city folk SHOULD be inconvenienced by a MAJORITY country opinion. and country folkd SHOULD be inconvenienced by a MAJORITY city opinion
guess what: there is no valid way around this problem. do the people of the country deserve to impose their will on city folk? YES, if they make up the majority of the population, on a question of national prominence. do the people of the city deserve to impose their will on country folk? YES, if they make up the majority of the population, on a question of national prominence.
on questions of local prominence, city folk can't prevail on coutnry folk, and visa versa. on questions of national prominence, absoolutely do city folk deserve to prevail on country folk, and visa versa. because its ONE COUNTRY. there is no abridgement of fairness, or morality, or democracy in play here. yes, majoriy rules. and this absolutely the way it should be!
between religious moderates versus religious fundamentalists
religious moderates understand their religious texts at a higher mental level, to abstract out from the larger framework of ideas, and apply them to new (and old) problems according to broad principles that reflect the spirit of their religion
meanwhile, religious fundamentalists only understand how to regurgitate their religious texts like a robot reading device does. its a shallow understanding, with no thought invovled, but they grip tenaciously to their literal interpretation, even when it goes agains the overall spirit of their religion. in this way, religious fundamentalists are less true representatives of their religion than religious moderates, even though unfortunately they are often the loudest and most zealous
same with constitutional fundamentalists. its a kind of religious zealoutry, where people adhere to the written word like a pit bull, and think no deeper about the real concepts the founding fathers had in mind
are you some sort of paid oil industry operative?
all you say is drill this, drill that
instead of drilling, why can't we wind farm social healthcare?
instead of drilling, why not biofuel the media?
and instead of drilling, why can't we nuke the mccain campaign? ;-)
joe sixpack needs to look at his vote and feel like it is counted
if he understands how it is counted, he has faith. integrity and legitimacy and social stability prevail
but if he sees a black box? if he sees a redundnat relational database, if he sees triple DES? this is not transparency
fact: the mechanisms you invoke for preserving "transparency" in electronic voting actually serve to introduce obfuscation and opaqueness. regardless of whether or not joe sixpack understands what is going on. making the system more complex then it needs to be increases attack vectors
simplicity must prevail. there is no need that a more complicated voting system achieves- faster vote tallies? that does not also undermine a much greater problem: perception of fairness in the eyes of the electorate
i am not being a luddite, you are being a technofetishist. simply because you can vote in a more complicated manner does not mean you should. you should think about what you are losing in that process. you haven't paid that any consideration. and you are forgetting the point of the entire exercise of voting: make the people feel like their voice counts in their government
the black box of electronic voting only wins their distrust. this makes any other positive effect of electornic voting over paper voting a moot point
i love this phrase "the tyranny of the majority"
what the hell does that mean?
the tyranny of the majority IS democracy. the will of the people is the will of the people is the will of the people. you can't call it somethng different and its somehow illegitimate
"The people in the cities should not solely decide the direction of this country."
the people in the cities should decide the direction of this country directly proportionate to their share of the population. beginning and end of the discussion right there. the direction of the country should be decided by the people, in aggregate. what does that mean? that means if 60% live in the city, people in cities deserve 60% of the say. that means if 20% live in the city, people in cities deserve 20% of the say
the people in the country deserve to retain some sort of power over the people in the cities? beyond their natural population? this is democratic to you? this is the wisdom of the founding fathers to you?
if the countryside makes up 45% of the electorate, then the countryside deserves 45% of the say. not 50%. not 40%. they deserve 45%. any warping of this one person one vote popular will is an abuse of power, is an error in the system
therefore, the EC needs to go. it warps one person one vote. it is therefore illegitimate and anti-democratic
"tyranny of the majority"
hah!
funny
when the sun king ruled france, all of the propaganda and lies you pointed to above was in full force, deeply ingrained in the social dna of aristocrats and serfs. and yet the people still rebelled. not so much because they were smart and knew better, but simply because they were hungry
china's government has been described as the harvard alumni society with a standing army. it can do no wrong. it is perfect. except it isn't. it's human. it can, and has, made mistakes, and will do so again. the difference between the usa and china is that when the government deos something that proves deeply unpopular with the people, or makes some teribble mistake (the great leap forward, or invade iraq), or some horrible national crisis hits, in a democracy, the government can be swept aside and a new one can take its place, bloodlessly and without any effort. meanwhile, in china, in a totalitarian state, no matter how many lies are spread, the real world effects of that mistake or crisis persists, and grows, and stays a permanent mark on the system. not that the people have to even know the truth. they can blame foreign countries for something their own government did wrong if the propaganda machine is solid enough. but you can't make up a lie that covers an empty stomach. meaning: the mistakes compound over time, and you permanently impoverish the country, regardless of what the people believe is to blame for that impoverishment. and that leads to revolution: the empty stomach
the usa is not even 250 years old. and it is the most powerful country in the world. more powerful than much larger countries and much older civilizations. why?
because of democracy. when you have the freedoms and social stability in a democracy, you get a country that can adapt to horrible challenges and difficult times, and survive, because it can, with a snap of the fingers, change course with a new government and a new ideology. the ultimate in adaptive pragmatism. no totalitarian state can be that nimble. its more like an aircraft carrier trying to turn on a dime: it has massive investment in an ideological framework, and it cannot merely elicit edicts that contradict deeply ingrained ideology
well, actually, in some ways, it can. does it strike you as odd the the chinese communist party lords over the most capitalist system in the world? do you think this ideological hollowness results in no decrease in legitimacy?
that harvard alumni society with a standing army realizes this
a totalitarian state cannot persist, no matter how absolute its control over the people's will. for the sake of retaining power at all costs, it simply devoles into a weak, brittle, impoverished country. no lie fills an empty stomach. and then its revolution, or mass starvation, and even greater weakness
meanwhile, a democracy simply changes its ideological colors, and marches on, as demands and crises change, completely adaptive and nimble. this country outsurvives, outcompetes, and is richer than the ideologically brittle ones
so yes, if absolute retension of power is your point, yes, you win: you can lie to the people completely. however, if also want to have a country that can stay healthy and rich and survive as a force on the world stage, then you want a democracy, because a totalitarian state can do nothing but devolve into poverty over time
you can say china is an example contrary to this statement. actually, china is liberalizing economically, just not politically. the story is incomplete. there will come a point where any further growth, or even retention of growth, will require greater nimbleness that can only come from a democratic government. that further adhesion to a totalitarian ideological iceberg will simply mean china will begin to slide back into poverty. then its the empty stomachs of the peasants that will lead the way to revolution, that have always led the way to revolution, no matter what the propaganda is or what people believe
i am not a blind partisan fool like we see too many of nowadays. the idea is faith in democracy. i have my own set of beliefs, and i am saddened by a bush presidency, but more important than my own personal beliefs are the will of the american people. the will of the american people must be fully expressed as closely as possible
what of all the republican voters in california and new york who pretty much feel like their vote doesn't count? please, count their vote. they deserve to be heard. i disagree with their opinions, but that doesn't mean i have the right to deny their voice. so please, abolish the EC so republicans in california and new york can be heard. i am 100% for that
in an environment where the connection between the will of the people and the presidency has issues with fidelity, doubt in our form of government grows. when that doubt grows, legitimacy is put into question, societal instability grows. i don't want that
i'd rather have 40 years of neocon presidents with a fair election than a more liberal government elected in cloudly perturbed way like the EC that large parts of the population are angry that their will is not rightfully represented. this creates the toxic partisan atmosphere we've had in this country over the last 8 years
if my ideology is going to lose, then fine. as long as it is fair and square loss. i can live with that. and then i will stand behind my government
but if my government is created in ways that are not fair to me, why should i stand behind my government, why should i have faith in it, trust it, support it, when it does not think my vote counts?
and this observation applies to me, a liberal, and it applies equally to a conservative voter
in such a way, the EC erodes democracy, and should be abolished, the EC does not favor repulicans or democrats. it EC favors one thing: loss of faith in democracy
we need to lose the historical albatross that is the EC, please
blah blah blah
lol lol lol
zzz zzz zzz"
are you babbling again cretin? go, play in your corner. and its past your bedtime anyways
democracy IS the only way to go. there is simply no alternative in existence, in reality or in theory, whereby the people gain faith in their government in a better format
start with a revolution that places a new government in place. it has enormous will in the people behind it, they will do anything for that government. well, over time and over generations, that government and the people begin to drift apart in agenda and trust. such that only another revolution is the only way to reinstate fidelity between the people's will and the government's agenda
democracy allows for a government to address the people's will, to become reconnected with what the people really want. this creates legitimacy, and stability, without the insanity of revolution
without that constant submission to the people's will, legitimacy of a government naturally decays over time, no matter how much good will it started with. no man or group of men (that's you china) can rule with such perfection that no mistakes or distrust in the people doesn't accumulate over time. decaying legitimacy creates societal instability, societal instability creates revolution. only democracy avoids this
and in spite of all of the clueless fantasy sequences of upper middle class fools listening to rage against the machine: no, revolution is never a good thing. it creates a huge amount of suffering and death, from which a society may never fully recover, and the system that eventually wins power in the struggle is not guaranteed to be better than whatever government was overthrown
only democracy allows for the people's will to be addressed without this bloodshed and suffering. and there exists no real world or even theoretical alternative to this model for addressing the people's will
so you are wrong: democracy, indeed, is the best form of government
the EC favors no ideology, so it makes no sense for republicans or democrats to want to preserve the system. think of all the republican voters in california and new york who pretty much know their votes are worth nothing. that the EC gave bush the presidency in 2000 is not something that mean the EC automatically favors republicans, or democrats. there's hundreds of strategic situations where a swing state here or there can illegitimately award the presidency to someone who got less popular votes
so the only thing that is lost by losing the EC is millions of voters with a sense that their vote doesn't count. therefore, lose the EC, by all means, in the name of increasing faith on our democratic institutions
the EC is a sort of aristocratic hedge the founding fathers built into the system, a sliver of doubt about the popular will. god bless their hearts, the founding fathers got so many things right in the name of the enlightenment, but they had a shadow of aristocratic doubt, and that shadow of a doubt is the EC
the EC is an anachronistic albatross around our necks. the EC needs to be abolished, it is a joke, and a dangerous one as 2000 demonstrates. the put the wrong man in the presidency in a time of great international crisis, fomenting a war with the wrong country based on nothing but popular undirected anger and a hidden malodorous agenda
and based on your post, i guess my enemies are pretty stupid
do you think bush would have been elected in 2004 if not in 2000?
really?
i think bush would have been discarded in the intervening years of 2001-2003. candidates that lose elections are rarely reconsidered. the taint of losing is too strong. witness mondale in 1984, dole in 1996, and kerry in 2004. after losing, they were all persona non grata
so yes, winning in 2000 meant 8 more years of bush
furthermore, in 2004, i think we would have had a republican president. this is assuming the 9/11/2001 attacks still took place
if gore were president in 2001, he would have pursued military action in afghanistan, thats a no-brainer for any president. but he would never have attacked iraq. and the electorate, angry over 9/11, would have sought out a warhawk in 2004, and the republicans would have played to this and monopolized on an electorate looking for blood and would have painted gore as a wooden pansy. this approach would have worked too. they would look their 2004 candidate in a hard talking strong military background candidate, like norman schwarzkopf, colin powell... ...or john mccain
if gore were president in 2000, and if the the 9/11/2001 attacks still took place, john mccain would have been president in 2004