And all the boxes are under watch by representatives of all parties 24/7 throughout the recount process?
24/7? What kind of recount process are you expecting? The winner of the election is announce ON SITE after the votes are cast. All candidates are present, and if the vote is close they can request a recount which happens immediately. No need to keep the boxes around for days while lawyers swap letters. You win, you lose, that's the result.
And none of them could have possibly missed a person dropping two ballots into the box, having brought one that was already filled in with them?
It's pretty obvious that you've got more than one vote in your hand, and the election staff are sitting right in front of the boxes where you plop the paper through the slot. Sometimes the slot is covered with a piece of paper and the election staffer moves it away as you cast your vote. It's done in plain sight of plenty of people.
And you're certain every box was checked in advance to make sure it didn't come with some votes already in it?
The boxes are checked by all candidates/agents before polling starts.
And you're positive that in no location anywhere in the country did someone manage to distract the polling workers long enough to add/swap a box?
Aside from fires and emergencies, all boxes are under scrutiny at all times, by all candidates or their agents.
And even if such an act was caught on camera, you can guarantee that all the film from every station was watched even if there wasn't any indication of tampering?
The election is a HUGE event, there are thousands of people watching the count on TV in each constituency. It's usually in a gym hall or large town hall meeting room, lots of room, lots of people from all parties.
My point is that there's plenty of opportunity for tampering even with physical copies. I'd much prefer a system of open source electronic machines locked down with layers of security. Copies of the physical machines would be made available year round with people encouraged to try to tamper with them without it being detected.
I hope I've explained how the system used at the moment (i.e. paper vote) is almost foolproof if implemented correctly. Certainly less prone to errors than any software, even if it is open source.
I'm pretty confident that with a few years of hard work, we could get electronic machines that made it harder to effect the result of an election than if paper ballots were used.
I'm pretty confident that with no hard work at all, we can keep the paper ballot and not let machines decide who wins an election.
Show of hands, anyone, or do you want to build a laser reader/scanner that counts raised hands?
Easy, because at every voting station there are representatives of all parties, who can watch the boxes at all times, right up until the point it's tipped out and the votes counted, live on TV. At least that's the way general elections were held in the UK when I lived there.
Actually, I was attempting to suggest how idiotic it was comparing the bible to harry potter as was done in the post I replied to attempted.
In that case, major fail. You've done nothing to lend credence to bible stories, other than point out that they were written before Harry Potter. The AC's point was that both the bible and HP are equally as credible. You have no *proof* that there's no real Harry Potter, do you? So by your arguments he's as real as the vengeful god of the Old Testament for which we have exactly the same level of proof as we do for Harry Potter.
You really do have to start examining every claim made to you, else you'll be buying multiple Brooklyn Bridges, and miles and miles of seafront property in Nevada. Because there's no *proof* of something does not mean you have to believe it. Some things are very, very, very likely and so we tend to rely on those without the proof. But god, the bible, miracles, talking snakes, floods and arks etc, are all in the same basket as pixies, fairies, unicorns, invisible teapots orbiting the earth, and the flying spaghetti monster.
Please, pop along to a lecture at any university sometime, and stand up and announce you believe in fairies, pixies and unicorns. I'll pay you a dollar for everyone who doesn't piss their pants laughing at you.
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, I'll call it a duck. You, on the other hand, are free to call it an elephant, we'll all wait for you.
I watched the video, and the horror that cop had to endure was awful. With hand on my heart I seriously hope no-one else ever has to go through such an ordeal. Myself, I've never had anything NEAR as harrowing happen to me in all my life.
Maybe where you're from they don't train police, but where I grew up, the police are quite well trained.
If "provoking a police officer" were illegal you might have a point. From the video, the girl does not "gets in the police officer's faces" at all, in fact the female officer is happily chatting to the girl from the outset.
At no point after being asked to stop does she blow any bubbles, so bang goes the provokation theory.
This type of idiocy is common from Canadians. I had a American Professor friend post a not to nice blog about a product made in Canada and the Canadian company sent him a take-down letter. He told the Canadians to fuck off.
This type of idiocy is common from Americans. I had a British Popstar use a very nice photo including an astronaut made in America and the American astronaut sent her a take-down letter. I hope she told the Americans to fuck off.
Meh, I don't think so. If I'm on a park bench blowing bubbles, and someone comes running up to me screaming for me to stop, it's not socially unacceptable for me to continue blowing bubbles. Because he's a police officer brings no weight to the argument, I'd carry on blowing bubbles even if he was a uniformed cop. It's not against the law to blow bubbles.
I endure insulting comments and inane questions at work all the time. Ever been to an inter-departmental meeting? Feel free to pop along with a camera crew and bring some bubbles, it'll actually help me endure the pain and loathing.
A cop is supposed to be able to put up with way, WAY worse things in a demonstration environment - they're trained to put up with that sort of crap, and if Officer Bubbles breaks his training maybe he shouldn't be on the front line of a police demo response unit.
With 100% hot backups, doesn't matter, I'll never be called.
Can I live in your fantasy world please, it sounds much better than my reality where we have some users who can't get to backup-friendly network connections all the time, or where users manage to screw up the backup software.
Sometimes it's better to fix the hardware than to offer a new computer with the standard image and then restore from their most recent backup. In fact, it's almost always better to do it that way where I work.
Alternately, 5 minute drive to local PC parts dealer, install new supply, toss out old one, even faster and cheaper if I have a generic spare sitting on the shelf in the stockroom. Dell support is arguably the most expensive possible way to get something fixed.
They're not as cheap as no warranty at all, but in my world the PC parts dealer is 30 minutes away. On a good day. While there's no huge line up at the register. And I don't have a company credit card. I have much better things to be doing than driving to PC parts dealer the moment someone's PSU goes *pfft*, and then getting back to them at least an hour later, probably two and that's being optimistic. That's a couple of hours at least out of my day, and at least a month until I get to see my cash again from submitting an expenses claim. Nah, fuckit, the user can wait a day until a Dell tech arrives the NEXT BUSINESS DAY and fixes the hardware issue, and they're back working as if nothing had happened, all data and shortcuts and settings exactly as they had them, and I'm free to carry on doing my job - which is not popping down the PC parts dealer store whenever one of the 1000+ computers develops a hardware fault.
A study countering my point would be asking a bunch of people: "I tell you one word, describe how you see it", the word being family,
A group of people related to each other.
That's MY initial kneejerk answer. "Family" includes aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins etc, and I'd bet you'd get a sizeable people seeing it the way I do, rather than saying "Mom, dad and at least one kid".
As for your OP, "The child has the right to find the best situation in which to grow, that's about all"... bullshit. Where is that right written down or was it just pulled out of your ass? So if dad dies and mom becomes a single parent, she should give up the kids to go to "the best situtation", i.e. a hetero couple? If one mom is a perfectly OK household for a kid to grow up in, why is it wrong to add ANOTHER mom? Twice as good as one mom, surely.
No kid grows up in "the best situation", despite your protestations that it's a "right".
Yea, because Ahrry Potter was so well known that the writers of the bible, including the inventors of the stories all favored it in their depiction. Perhaps you have the cart before the horse in your mad dash to declare anything you don't know of as fiction.
You're not seriously suggesting that Harry Potter is a documentary based upon the reality series "The Bible"?
Most definitely, because we all know that if all you see is white sheep, no black sheep ever exist.
And we all know that if all you see are horses, no unicorns ever exist.
This guy missed a golden opportunity to mess with the FBI. Like maybe taking the thing up in a plane and throwing it out the window. Or tie it to a giant helium balloon.
There's no law preventing someone else from starting one.
I guess that's true in some places, but I'd expect that in most urban European cities you'd not be able to start up your own for-profit firefighting service.
You do know that the Constitution of the US prohibits income tax except in times of war, right? And yes, I know this was a state/county tax/fee issue but it still should be considered.
Maybe you haven't been watching the news, but the US government is claiming to be at war on a number of fronts at the moment.
Had he offered up 1-5K I would put money on it that they would have put it out.
Then I would take your money because (FTFA) "Cranick says he told the operator he would pay whatever is necessary to have the fire put out. His offer wasn't accepted, he said."
Please donate said money to whatever public fund is set up to help Cranick.
He offered to pay the bill, in fact he offered to foot the entire bill for putting out the fire, not just the $75 annual fee which he had paid each year until this one, when he admits to having forgot to pay.
Slashdot Mirror
And all the boxes are under watch by representatives of all parties 24/7 throughout the recount process?
24/7? What kind of recount process are you expecting? The winner of the election is announce ON SITE after the votes are cast. All candidates are present, and if the vote is close they can request a recount which happens immediately. No need to keep the boxes around for days while lawyers swap letters. You win, you lose, that's the result.
And none of them could have possibly missed a person dropping two ballots into the box, having brought one that was already filled in with them?
It's pretty obvious that you've got more than one vote in your hand, and the election staff are sitting right in front of the boxes where you plop the paper through the slot. Sometimes the slot is covered with a piece of paper and the election staffer moves it away as you cast your vote. It's done in plain sight of plenty of people.
And you're certain every box was checked in advance to make sure it didn't come with some votes already in it?
The boxes are checked by all candidates/agents before polling starts.
And you're positive that in no location anywhere in the country did someone manage to distract the polling workers long enough to add/swap a box?
Aside from fires and emergencies, all boxes are under scrutiny at all times, by all candidates or their agents.
And even if such an act was caught on camera, you can guarantee that all the film from every station was watched even if there wasn't any indication of tampering?
The election is a HUGE event, there are thousands of people watching the count on TV in each constituency. It's usually in a gym hall or large town hall meeting room, lots of room, lots of people from all parties.
My point is that there's plenty of opportunity for tampering even with physical copies. I'd much prefer a system of open source electronic machines locked down with layers of security. Copies of the physical machines would be made available year round with people encouraged to try to tamper with them without it being detected.
I hope I've explained how the system used at the moment (i.e. paper vote) is almost foolproof if implemented correctly. Certainly less prone to errors than any software, even if it is open source.
I'm pretty confident that with a few years of hard work, we could get electronic machines that made it harder to effect the result of an election than if paper ballots were used.
I'm pretty confident that with no hard work at all, we can keep the paper ballot and not let machines decide who wins an election.
Show of hands, anyone, or do you want to build a laser reader/scanner that counts raised hands?
Easy, because at every voting station there are representatives of all parties, who can watch the boxes at all times, right up until the point it's tipped out and the votes counted, live on TV. At least that's the way general elections were held in the UK when I lived there.
Actually, I was attempting to suggest how idiotic it was comparing the bible to harry potter as was done in the post I replied to attempted.
In that case, major fail. You've done nothing to lend credence to bible stories, other than point out that they were written before Harry Potter. The AC's point was that both the bible and HP are equally as credible. You have no *proof* that there's no real Harry Potter, do you? So by your arguments he's as real as the vengeful god of the Old Testament for which we have exactly the same level of proof as we do for Harry Potter.
You really do have to start examining every claim made to you, else you'll be buying multiple Brooklyn Bridges, and miles and miles of seafront property in Nevada. Because there's no *proof* of something does not mean you have to believe it. Some things are very, very, very likely and so we tend to rely on those without the proof. But god, the bible, miracles, talking snakes, floods and arks etc, are all in the same basket as pixies, fairies, unicorns, invisible teapots orbiting the earth, and the flying spaghetti monster.
Please, pop along to a lecture at any university sometime, and stand up and announce you believe in fairies, pixies and unicorns. I'll pay you a dollar for everyone who doesn't piss their pants laughing at you.
I do. He's my boyfriend and everything. We're never out of each other's sight.
*sigh*
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, I'll call it a duck. You, on the other hand, are free to call it an elephant, we'll all wait for you.
we're talking different orders of magnitude here.
I watched the video, and the horror that cop had to endure was awful. With hand on my heart I seriously hope no-one else ever has to go through such an ordeal. Myself, I've never had anything NEAR as harrowing happen to me in all my life.
Maybe where you're from they don't train police, but where I grew up, the police are quite well trained.
If "provoking a police officer" were illegal you might have a point. From the video, the girl does not "gets in the police officer's faces" at all, in fact the female officer is happily chatting to the girl from the outset.
At no point after being asked to stop does she blow any bubbles, so bang goes the provokation theory.
Also, a foot? Really?
This type of idiocy is common from Canadians. I had a American Professor friend post a not to nice blog about a product made in Canada and the Canadian company sent him a take-down letter. He told the Canadians to fuck off.
This type of idiocy is common from Americans. I had a British Popstar use a very nice photo including an astronaut made in America and the American astronaut sent her a take-down letter. I hope she told the Americans to fuck off.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/10/07/0157204/Astronaut-Sues-Dido-For-Album-Cover
Because playground "law" is EXACTLY the same as street law. Not.
As an adult, just try punching someone who was "annoying you" and see how far you get in court.
That is ... logical.
Meh, I don't think so. If I'm on a park bench blowing bubbles, and someone comes running up to me screaming for me to stop, it's not socially unacceptable for me to continue blowing bubbles. Because he's a police officer brings no weight to the argument, I'd carry on blowing bubbles even if he was a uniformed cop. It's not against the law to blow bubbles.
I endure insulting comments and inane questions at work all the time. Ever been to an inter-departmental meeting? Feel free to pop along with a camera crew and bring some bubbles, it'll actually help me endure the pain and loathing.
A cop is supposed to be able to put up with way, WAY worse things in a demonstration environment - they're trained to put up with that sort of crap, and if Officer Bubbles breaks his training maybe he shouldn't be on the front line of a police demo response unit.
With 100% hot backups, doesn't matter, I'll never be called.
Can I live in your fantasy world please, it sounds much better than my reality where we have some users who can't get to backup-friendly network connections all the time, or where users manage to screw up the backup software.
Sometimes it's better to fix the hardware than to offer a new computer with the standard image and then restore from their most recent backup. In fact, it's almost always better to do it that way where I work.
Alternately, 5 minute drive to local PC parts dealer, install new supply, toss out old one, even faster and cheaper if I have a generic spare sitting on the shelf in the stockroom. Dell support is arguably the most expensive possible way to get something fixed.
They're not as cheap as no warranty at all, but in my world the PC parts dealer is 30 minutes away. On a good day. While there's no huge line up at the register. And I don't have a company credit card. I have much better things to be doing than driving to PC parts dealer the moment someone's PSU goes *pfft*, and then getting back to them at least an hour later, probably two and that's being optimistic. That's a couple of hours at least out of my day, and at least a month until I get to see my cash again from submitting an expenses claim. Nah, fuckit, the user can wait a day until a Dell tech arrives the NEXT BUSINESS DAY and fixes the hardware issue, and they're back working as if nothing had happened, all data and shortcuts and settings exactly as they had them, and I'm free to carry on doing my job - which is not popping down the PC parts dealer store whenever one of the 1000+ computers develops a hardware fault.
Not cheap, I grant you, but well worth it IMO.
A study countering my point would be asking a bunch of people: "I tell you one word, describe how you see it", the word being family,
A group of people related to each other.
That's MY initial kneejerk answer. "Family" includes aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins etc, and I'd bet you'd get a sizeable people seeing it the way I do, rather than saying "Mom, dad and at least one kid".
As for your OP, "The child has the right to find the best situation in which to grow, that's about all" ... bullshit. Where is that right written down or was it just pulled out of your ass? So if dad dies and mom becomes a single parent, she should give up the kids to go to "the best situtation", i.e. a hetero couple? If one mom is a perfectly OK household for a kid to grow up in, why is it wrong to add ANOTHER mom? Twice as good as one mom, surely.
No kid grows up in "the best situation", despite your protestations that it's a "right".
Yea, because Ahrry Potter was so well known that the writers of the bible, including the inventors of the stories all favored it in their depiction. Perhaps you have the cart before the horse in your mad dash to declare anything you don't know of as fiction.
You're not seriously suggesting that Harry Potter is a documentary based upon the reality series "The Bible"?
Most definitely, because we all know that if all you see is white sheep, no black sheep ever exist.
And we all know that if all you see are horses, no unicorns ever exist.
No proof to see here, move along.
This guy missed a golden opportunity to mess with the FBI. Like maybe taking the thing up in a plane and throwing it out the window. Or tie it to a giant helium balloon.
Like this?
7th paragraph in the msn linked article.
There's no law preventing someone else from starting one.
I guess that's true in some places, but I'd expect that in most urban European cities you'd not be able to start up your own for-profit firefighting service.
Some places have state and city taxes, and you still pay Federal taxes, and sales taxes, so 60% of what you earn is going to taxes. That's crazy.
And yet not quite as crazy as firefighters standing around watching someone's home burn to the ground.
You do know that the Constitution of the US prohibits income tax except in times of war, right? And yes, I know this was a state/county tax/fee issue but it still should be considered.
Maybe you haven't been watching the news, but the US government is claiming to be at war on a number of fronts at the moment.
May I suggest in this case a very large tax on hoses?
So if I own my apartment, and the guy in the apartment below me doesn't pay his $75 ...
Had he offered up 1-5K I would put money on it that they would have put it out.
Then I would take your money because (FTFA) "Cranick says he told the operator he would pay whatever is necessary to have the fire put out. His offer wasn't accepted, he said."
Please donate said money to whatever public fund is set up to help Cranick.
Go through the courts. Show me a judge who'd rule against a fire department.
He offered to pay the bill, in fact he offered to foot the entire bill for putting out the fire, not just the $75 annual fee which he had paid each year until this one, when he admits to having forgot to pay.