"A modern language with static type inference will let you create an array, list, tree or any user-defined container type comprising elements of concrete or variable type with that single line of code and no type specification."
I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just really don't understand: How can you specify (for example) that you want (in C++ terms) a list vs. a vector without a type specification? The two are different; if I want one and not the other, it seems to me I'd need to specfify.
I'd agree being able to use an initializer list for C++ containers would be nice; but it's never struck me as a deal-killer.
doesn't seem any more complex than your other examples. Of course, that's an array, not a linked list. I don't know Python or OCaml, so I'll assume your examples indeed produce a linked list, not an array. Out of curiosity, how do these languages specify an array? Or any of the other half dozen or so variants C++ can specify?
"What is the type of identity? It doesn't have one! WTF, mate?"
What's the problem? identity doesn't have a type, nor does it need one, since you haven't used it yet. If you use it (though I can't imagine why), it will have a type.
Are you trying to say the problem with C++ is that you don't understand templates?
Unfortunately, I live in Colorado, so a scooter doesn't do it year round for me, and in the summer I mostly bike. I want an electric for when I need less than the minivan, and more than a bicycle.
Not everyone is you. Many, even most, households have more than one car. For quite a few of us, an electric would be a great choice for one of them. I would love to have a nice electric. My car goes ten miles each way to work on weekdays, maybe a short errand on weekends. Long trips call for my my wifes (bigger) car in any case. If someone marketed a decent electric, I'd certainly think about buying one.
"Apparently, you're saying the media should only report one side of an argument."
No. Of course the media should report varying sides of an argument. But the media should also try to assess the relative credibility of those sides. For example, a typical media report might say:
"Some people claim current global warming trends are due to human action, while others beleive it is a natural phenomenon"
Instead, such a report really ought to say:
"Virtually all independant experts beleive global warming is being significantly accelerated by human greenhouse gas emmisions, and they have extensive independantly verifyable evidence to show that this is the case. This is disputed by Anonymous Coward, a slashdot poster who won't even identify himself, but who assures us he has 'plenty of evidence'"
Well nobody said it was always easy (though sometimes it is). The complaint of the article is that in general journalists aren't even trying. In fact, they actively try to avoid figuring it out, even when it's blindingly obvious (e.g. the abortion causes breast cancer example).
"you'd be surprised at how many failed candidates don't do as much challenge as they're legally entitled to. Why?"
Because most failed candidates know they almost certainly lost fair and square. If your own campaigns research, or whatever indicators you like, suggest you're going to get trounced, and on election day you do in fact get trounced, you're not going to ask for a recount unless you're a complete jerk.
"You're also presuming a LOT about the accuracy of polls. Just for starters, in 1996 a poll of print and broadcast journalists shows 86% in favor of Clinton and I think the imbalance is overall even worse today"
What does a poll of print and broadcast journalists have to do with anything? Obviously the polls to look at are well conducted polls of likely voters. Certainly candidates who are behind in polls say they don't think polls are accurate; but you can bet their campaigns are simultaneously conducting polls on how they can turn the race around.
The loss of good exit polls is a very sad thing; they were a good entirely independent check on election results. But polling a sufficiently large sampling of likely voters in the days right before the election is pretty good too. It won't tell you how the election is going to come out, but it will give a losing candidate a general idea of whether there is a point to asking for a recount.
I want a VVPAT and an honest, open system (of which software is just one part). But without the VVPT, you don't know if you've got an open honest system. With it alone, you can know if you've got an honest system. Even if the VVPT shows the system to be honest, I'd like it to be open, but getting people to understand these things is plenty difficult; I'm not confident I can get everything I want; So if I've got to pick one thing to push for loudest, hardest, and first, there's no question: VVPT. If I get that and nothing else, at least I've got something. If I get something else and not that, I've got nothing.
That link describes a way of changing the electronically recorded votes, after they were sent in by the precincts. Even a really easy way because the software was stupid.
But VVPT is still enough to catch it, and the only thing that can be sure to catch it. You can still compare vs. the VVPT after the votes have been sent in and totaled up.
Why is the VVPT useless if the race is riggged to not be a nailbiter??? If the polls leading up to the election indicate a nailbiter, and then I lose by a landslide, you don't think I'll demand a recount?
Of course you want to have honest software. A paper trail is the only way to know if you do have honest software, firmware, hardware, comm lines, technicians, etc, etc. Any complex system has all sorts of vulnerabilities. Even the system of droping a poece of paper into a locked box and having a lot of people watching when it gets opened has some vulnerabilities. But it has a lot less than most anything else, and we've got lots of experience dealing with them.
Just for a random tangent: "absolutely standard PC" and "sourced on the local market" sound mutually exclusive to me. I don't even know what "absolutely standard" means, but I'd assume all such machines should be identical, which I wouldn't count on being able to do in two different months from the same supplier, much less from different suppliers.
Also, it's not just broad scale hacking that's to be worried about. In an at all tight local election, hacking even a handfull of machines would be plenty.
In which case you can do a hand count of the plain English. Which will be time consuming and expensive, but you can have the counters look at the same thing the voter did - aka a Voter Verified Paper Trail.
The barcode is just an intermediate step. If something screws up (perhaps even innocently) with the initial purely-electronic count, you can machine count the bar codes. Cheaper than a full hand count, and it lets you fix a whole slew of potential problems. (e.g. power surge fried the machine and knocked out the electronic count.)
You probably want to do some random spot checking of the electronic count vs. the bar codes and the bar codes vs. the english in any case. But this system sounds pretty slick: it gives you three steps on the spectrum between cheap/quick and verifiably-fraud-proof, including the all important step of "absolutely-as-verifiably-fraud-proof-as-we-can-ma ke-it". You won't need to use that step often, but if you do, it's there.
And are the chips in the machine what they are supposed to be?
Complicated, Hell yes, and still insuficient.
Then again, a voter verified paper trail is incredibly easy, and completely sufficient. I don't care about verifying squat about the machines if I can check up on their results after the fact. Why do people even talk about requirements other than a voter verified paper trail? It's all you really need, and without it, nothing else is sufficient.
Well then you've got something in common with the people who set up this site.
I've got a cousin who does some pretty stupid things too, like helping architect Reaganomics and being GWBs cheif economic advisor. Then he went and actually admittted his estimate of how much the Iraq war would cost. I respect him for telling the truth, and for the fact that his estimate has turned out to be dead on. But I've got to admit that that too was stupid. He really should have known that telling the truth was a no-no for members of GWBs administration. Bush promptly fired him.
Hey Larry - I'm no longer embarrased to tell people I'm related to you now that George fired you. But you're going to have to do a big Paul O'Neil style expose if you want to get back on my Christmas card list.
"Both sides claim to be for small government, but when push comes to shove, both sides are for large government in the areas they care about."
But it's worth noting that over the last 24 years, going by what they've actually done, the Democrats are for a large government in the areas they care about; while the Republicans, in the areas they care about, are for a government that is utterly enormous beyond all reason or ability to pay for it. It bugs me that W gets credit for cutting taxes when his policies have gauraunteed massive tax increases in the (increasingly near) future.
I used to have a problem deciding how to vote because I am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Now the Democrats win on both counts, so no problem.
"Since I brought up WW2, could someone please remind me what our exit strategy was for defeating Germany and Japan prior to declaring war on them?"
Note that when we declared war on Japan and Germany, they had plans to actually invade and take over the US, and Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Not quite the same situation as with Iraq. At least, I haven't heard anyone suggest that Iraq was trying to get Mexico to help it cut a deal with North Korea for the three of them to partition the US, though I wouldn't put such a suggestion past Cheney. But in any case, I beleive our "exit" strategy in WWII was: "Completely defeat them, take over running the country for quite a while, and even after they resume civilian control, maintain a massive military presence in their country as long as necessary, which we fully realize may be essentially forever." Note that people knew this was the plan, and still supported the war, and also note that we have a massive military presence in both those countries 60 years later. Is this the strategy for Iraq? Would Americans support the war in Iraq knowing we would be there for 60 years? It's certainly not the vision of the future that was put forth by those selling the war.
"It's time to face the fact that now that we are there it's going to be several years before we can get out"
Some of us faced that fact quite some time ago. When the war started I predicted we'd be there for at least 15 years. I'll stick with that prediction and throw in another one: If leave in the next 40 years, Iraq will not remain a democracy for more than 10 years after our departure. Based on the places we've tried to establish democracy via invasion since WWII, this second prediction isn't exactly going out on a limb.
Maybe you can't plan for every contingency, but a heck of a lot of people thought it was just palin obvious that going into Iraq alone would pull us into an ever-deepening morass that would have our troops there for decades. The fact that GWB & company are surprised by what's happened in Iraq just makes it painfully obvious what a bunch of ideologically blinded incompetents they are.
I believe it was a limitation of (at least) Turbo Pascal on 16 bit x86; named variables referred to specific 16 bit memory adresses, and so could access only 64K. But pointers could access much more memory (a couple bytes out of that 64K could point off to somewhere else that a much bigger data structure lived). I remember because I helped out a poor Astronomy student who's program needed to use a seemingly huge amount of memory; IIRC, a whole Megabyte!
I honestly have no less respect for your beleifs than I have for anyone elses, or than I expect anyone to have for mine. My main idea with the tooth-fairy bit was to try to illustrate how your beliefs appear to one who doesn't share them. If I started telling you we should make laws based on what the Tooth Fairy tells me, I somehow doubt you would treat my beliefs with respect. My real point is that it shouldn't matter if I have any respect for your beliefs, or you for mine. I don't care what you believe. But if you derive morals from those beliefs that you claim are superior to my morals, and try to force them on me, well, I'm going to care.
Well, OK, I admit I was mocking a bit. I was upset, and it was the least confrontational response I could manage. But if you're already offended, I suppose their is no harm in explaining: (except that in talking about it, I'm undoubtably going to get really seriously pissed off)
It was the euthanasia bit that got to me. This is an issue that has some personal resonance for me, to put it mildly. A little more than ten years ago, my mother died of cancer. At one point she told me that if she had a button she could push, and just not wake up again, she'd say her goodbyes to us, curl up in my fathers arms and be gone. It was a nice fantasy. The reality was she lived for several months after that. The last couple of months she was on so many pain killers she wasn't very coherent. The last couple weeks, all her concious time was mostly spent screaming. Her pain killer dosage couldn't be increased because it might kill her, which would be illegal.
So. You're all upset because I implied your beleifs were silly. Let's be perfectly serious: When someone decides the terms on which they want to live, or end, their life, if you think you have the right to get in the way of that decision because your beleifs are more important than theirs, you are not the least bit silly. Rather, you are an evil, evil bastard. You say God exists and he agrees with you on this? Well maybe you're right, and he is an evil bastard too. But since other people claim God thinks other things, and the things you are claiming to have special uniquely correct knowledge of are, get this, UNKNOWABLE, I'm going to go ahead and guess that you're wrong, because I don't want to live in a universe created by an evil bastard.
Well, I assume that wraps up the question of whether we're going to continue this conversation. In any case, emailing you would require me revealing my email address, and giving you any more contact information seems unwise. After all, I'm pretty sure I've pissed you off by now, and you've already made clear your beleif that God has given you the right to decide who lives and who dies.
Peace? So long your beleifs would force others who wish to die to live in pain, I don't consider that Peace. So you'll get none from me until you and your god Fuck Off and leave the rest of us alone.
"I haven't found anything yet that suggests to me that God doesn't exist."
You completely miss the point. I'm not asking what you've found. I'm asking what you could possibly find. There is nothing. I'm rabidly uninterested in reading your authors who tried to prove anything about God's existence one way or another. If nothing can disprove Gods existence, nothing can prove it either.
"They lost respect for life...just like what is happening around the world and in the US with abortion and euthanasia."... "Christians are pretty tolerant of other's beliefs."
Really? So you're no doubt tolerant of my beleif that if I wish to end my life, that's my business. And if a doctor helps me to do that in as painless a way as possible, you'd be tolerant of that?
"You are either with God or you are against God"
You are either with the Tooth Fairy or you are against the Tooth Fairy...there is no neutral ground. You have to choose...and not choosing is a choice to be against the Tooth Fairy.
If you think I'm doing something wrong, let me know, and we'll talk about it. Keep you invisible superhero out of it please. Because my invisble superhero can kick the ass of your invisible superhero.
"So if I put together a game that 'brings out the fact' that in ancient Greece, the Spartan warriors took young boys as their apprentices, and one of the boys' duties was to help their mentor get off... we're all OK with that, right?"
Why wouldn't we be OK with that? I don't expect your game would do all that well, but you can make whatever game you want. And if I play a game that includes going out behind the tent in Ancient Sparta, I'm hardly in a position to get upset by your sound effects.
On a sufficiently large or long term scale, certainly.
"yet there is order and systems"
It is perfectly possible for localized order to arise in systems who's global entropy is increasing. Besides, why does order require a designer, but chaos not require any motivator? Have you considered becoming a Discordian? Hail Eris.
While I disagree, you seem to be arguing that order implies design and lack of order implies lack of design. So since "The universe by itself degenerates into choas", it was not designed?
I'm sure you'll disagree with the above for some reason, so let me jump to my main question: What would imply that God does not exist? What peice of evidence could we collect that would support the existence of God if it turned out one way, but refute God's existence if it turned out the other way?
It appears to me that there is no possible evidence that could disprove the statement "God created the universe". Whatever you find, you can just say, yes, that's how God designed it. In religion, the fact that this and related statements can not be disproved in any possible world is taken as showing that the statement is true. In formal logic, there is a different term for non-tautalogical statements that cannot be disproved in any possible world: that term is "meaningless".
I'll sadly agree that the US is showing far too many signs of parralleling the Roman experience. But are you really asserting that Rome fell because they became less moral? That their rise was due to the fine morals they evidenced by conquering and enslaving their neighbors? Actually, I think a lot of the success of Rome was atributable to the fact that once they conquered you and enslaved a bunch of you, they demanded some tribute, but mostly left you alone to handle local government yourself. In particular, provincials were free to practice their own religion; their was no significant attempt to impose the Roaman Gods, and whatever morals they implied. When they eventually tried to force their religion on others, they had steadily more problems, culminating when that religion became Christianity and they really stepped up the effort to impose it on others. So yeah, I see some pretty good parralels to the growing attempts of Evangelical Christians in the US to impose their values on everyone else. Which makes sense if you think those values come from on high. So it becomes important to me whether they realize they're just making stuff up like the rest of us. Which really pisses me off, because, as an Apatheist, I don't care, and I don't want to have to.
"There has to be absolute right and wrong...absolute truth...otherwise nothing means anything in the way of morals, period."
I don't necessarily with your apparent assumption that the considered opinion of a thinking human, or even the consensus opinion of a lot of them is without value. But lets assume for the moment that morals only have value if they come from something beyond humans. You thus conclude that they must come from something beyond humans, but your only reason for concluding that morals do have value is that they come from something beyond humans. It's entirely circular. Based on your premises, I don't see any reason it can't be the case that morals in fact do not come from beyond humans, and thus do not have any real value.
"Still...at the base of us all is evil...look at kids...no one teaches them to lie, cheat, steal and be mean...they are born that way"
Wow. I don't know what to say to that without implying your kids are some sort of twisted freaks. My kids, and all the others I've known, have absolutely no initial instinct to be mean. Up through age 6 or so they want nothing so much as for absolutely everyone to like them. Sometime between 5 and 10 they start worrying that people like someone else more than them, and mean behaviors arrise. But all the really seriously mean kids I've known were absolutely taught to be mean, by there (IMO) lousy parents.
As for lying, cheating, and stealing: all depend on human constructs, and are perfect examples of why I don't think it is possible for morals to come from beyond humans or for children to be evil. Let's take stealing. My very young daughter will "steal" my watch. I don't really care, because I think she's cute and I know where she puts it. But she'd be equally willing to walk off with the watch of some stranger who quite correctly consider it stealing. Would she do this because she is bad? No. She does it because she does not understand the concept of property. In her veiw, there's all this stuff around, and if some of it catches her fancy she carries it around for a bit. The idea that a watch is mine even when I'm not wearing it is hard for her to get her mind around, and I don't blame her. So here's my question: Say someone steals my car. I'd say that was wrong, and I assume you'd agree. But you'd say that God says it's wrong. Why? Did God grant me ownership of that car? Clearly not. I can't imagine why God would recognize my moral right to claim things as my own and hold them away from my fellow humans. Property strikes me as an entirely human concept (not even shared by all humans). Stealing is only relevant in reference to property. "Stealing is wrong" in an opinion of (quite a lot of) humans, built on quite a complex system of human constructions.
"God is an eternal being that created this universe"
Pretty good definition as far as it goes. So far I'm:
A) a strong agnostic; I don't see how it could even possible to determine if such a being exists; Occams Razor would say it's unlikely, but certainty is clearly impossible.
B) a firm apatheist; I can't imagine why I should care if such a being exists. Now, I could be wrong, but I imagine your idea of God goes into a lot more specifics than the definition above. If you add some of those to the definition, you'll probably push me over into disbelief. But I have yet to hear any definition of GOd that convinces me I should care.
"All of us posses this fallen human nature"
Speak for yourself.
"I'm just saying you have to measure morals by something outside yourself or they are meaningless"
If you beleive that, then yes, they are meaningless.
"Man can't dictate to themselves because there there is no absolute right and wrong."
I'd say there is no absolute right and wrong. Perhaps it would be nice if there were, but that doesn't make it so. It is certainly in the nature of some humans to do what I would classify as evil. But I don't beleive it is in my nature, nor that of most people. Your apparent belief that the natural tendency of humans is to do evil strikes me as pretty pessimistic. In my experiance and opinion, most people are pretty nice folks. Not that I'm just a happy go lucky optimist; in my experience most people are pretty nice, but also pretty stupid. They want to do good, but they take other (sometimes bad) peoples word on things without ever thinking about it way too often.
How is this device part of a victim mentality? If I'm annoyed by a television, and, consulting my moral compass, determine that it is acceptable for me to turn the thing off (for example, no one else is watching it), than this device allows me to take responsibility for my own happiness and act.
Now for the OT part, which is really what interested me in your post:
I would define a religion as a world view that includes some form of supernatural entity; but that's really just semantics. The definition that interest me is your definition of the word "God". Most "beleivers" I have asked about this are unable or unwilling to provide a definition, which makes any discussion of whether God exists pretty pointless. So if you can tell me what "God" means, I'll tell you if I'm an Atheist. (if you care)
A moral compass is really not that hard to come by. Just ask yourself if what you are doing would seem OK to you if someone else were doing it. So, "Is it OK to steal? Well, gee, I'd be sad if someone stole from me..."
Certainly some people either do not have or fail to heed this moral compass, but I think they are just as capable of ignoring what they think God wants, or deciding God wants them to act in ways that you or I would deem immoral.
You say you get your morals from God. Which would seem to imply you have no morals of your own. I don't actually beleive that's the case. I'll assume (since I don't know you) that you are a good person. I don't think God has any more to do with it than Santa Claus. You choose to ascribe your goodness to something outside yourself, which, so far, is your business. But it frightens me. Because when it stops being exclusively your business is when our moral compasses are called upon to make some public decision, and we find that they disagree. At that point I'll be saying "I think X" and you'll be saying "God says Y". Which I think makes a poor basis for discussion, and hampers both your ability to consider alternative views, and my interest in hearing why you think Y.
Hopefully I haven't just pissed you off yet, as that is not my intention. I too am genuinely interested in this question. I mention this now because the next paragraph is probably the most likely to piss you off. So once again, that's really not my intent.
So I say I get my moral compass by thinking about things and making my own decisions, for which I take personal responsibility, and which have no more authority than the considered decisions of anyone else. You say your moral compass comes from God, which I take to imply that you do not take responsibility for its dictates, it is objectively right, and any position disagreeing with it is wrong. Sorry, but I find that arrogant and frightening.
Except of course that they don't have a monopoly in the server space. If they charged per core for lets say SQLServer, I might thus be prompted to take another look at Oracle. This way I won't.
They are not being nice despite having a monopoly. They are being nice in hopes of getting a monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
"A modern language with static type inference will let you create an array, list, tree or any user-defined container type comprising elements of concrete or variable type with that single line of code and no type specification."
I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just really don't understand: How can you specify (for example) that you want (in C++ terms) a list vs. a vector without a type specification? The two are different; if I want one and not the other, it seems to me I'd need to specfify.
I'd agree being able to use an initializer list for C++ containers would be nice; but it's never struck me as a deal-killer.
But
int foo[4] = {1,2,3,4};
doesn't seem any more complex than your other examples. Of course, that's an array, not a linked list. I don't know Python or OCaml, so I'll assume your examples indeed produce a linked list, not an array. Out of curiosity, how do these languages specify an array? Or any of the other half dozen or so variants C++ can specify?
"What is the type of identity? It doesn't have one! WTF, mate?"
What's the problem? identity doesn't have a type, nor does it need one, since you haven't used it yet. If you use it (though I can't imagine why), it will have a type.
Are you trying to say the problem with C++ is that you don't understand templates?
" Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased..."
No, I don't think that's possible.
Unfortunately, I live in Colorado, so a scooter doesn't do it year round for me, and in the summer I mostly bike. I want an electric for when I need less than the minivan, and more than a bicycle.
Not everyone is you. Many, even most, households have more than one car. For quite a few of us, an electric would be a great choice for one of them. I would love to have a nice electric. My car goes ten miles each way to work on weekdays, maybe a short errand on weekends. Long trips call for my my wifes (bigger) car in any case. If someone marketed a decent electric, I'd certainly think about buying one.
"Apparently, you're saying the media should only report one side of an argument."
No. Of course the media should report varying sides of an argument. But the media should also try to assess the relative credibility of those sides. For example, a typical media report might say:
"Some people claim current global warming trends are due to human action, while others beleive it is a natural phenomenon"
Instead, such a report really ought to say:
"Virtually all independant experts beleive global warming is being significantly accelerated by human greenhouse gas emmisions, and they have extensive independantly verifyable evidence to show that this is the case. This is disputed by Anonymous Coward, a slashdot poster who won't even identify himself, but who assures us he has 'plenty of evidence'"
Well nobody said it was always easy (though sometimes it is). The complaint of the article is that in general journalists aren't even trying. In fact, they actively try to avoid figuring it out, even when it's blindingly obvious (e.g. the abortion causes breast cancer example).
"you'd be surprised at how many failed candidates don't do as much challenge as they're legally entitled to. Why?"
Because most failed candidates know they almost certainly lost fair and square. If your own campaigns research, or whatever indicators you like, suggest you're going to get trounced, and on election day you do in fact get trounced, you're not going to ask for a recount unless you're a complete jerk.
"You're also presuming a LOT about the accuracy of polls. Just for starters, in 1996 a poll of print and broadcast journalists shows 86% in favor of Clinton and I think the imbalance is overall even worse today"
What does a poll of print and broadcast journalists have to do with anything? Obviously the polls to look at are well conducted polls of likely voters. Certainly candidates who are behind in polls say they don't think polls are accurate; but you can bet their campaigns are simultaneously conducting polls on how they can turn the race around.
The loss of good exit polls is a very sad thing; they were a good entirely independent check on election results. But polling a sufficiently large sampling of likely voters in the days right before the election is pretty good too. It won't tell you how the election is going to come out, but it will give a losing candidate a general idea of whether there is a point to asking for a recount.
I want a VVPAT and an honest, open system (of which software is just one part). But without the VVPT, you don't know if you've got an open honest system. With it alone, you can know if you've got an honest system. Even if the VVPT shows the system to be honest, I'd like it to be open, but getting people to understand these things is plenty difficult; I'm not confident I can get everything I want; So if I've got to pick one thing to push for loudest, hardest, and first, there's no question: VVPT. If I get that and nothing else, at least I've got something. If I get something else and not that, I've got nothing.
That link describes a way of changing the electronically recorded votes, after they were sent in by the precincts. Even a really easy way because the software was stupid.
But VVPT is still enough to catch it, and the only thing that can be sure to catch it. You can still compare vs. the VVPT after the votes have been sent in and totaled up.
Why is the VVPT useless if the race is riggged to not be a nailbiter??? If the polls leading up to the election indicate a nailbiter, and then I lose by a landslide, you don't think I'll demand a recount?
Of course you want to have honest software. A paper trail is the only way to know if you do have honest software, firmware, hardware, comm lines, technicians, etc, etc. Any complex system has all sorts of vulnerabilities. Even the system of droping a poece of paper into a locked box and having a lot of people watching when it gets opened has some vulnerabilities. But it has a lot less than most anything else, and we've got lots of experience dealing with them.
Just for a random tangent: "absolutely standard PC" and "sourced on the local market" sound mutually exclusive to me. I don't even know what "absolutely standard" means, but I'd assume all such machines should be identical, which I wouldn't count on being able to do in two different months from the same supplier, much less from different suppliers.
Also, it's not just broad scale hacking that's to be worried about. In an at all tight local election, hacking even a handfull of machines would be plenty.
In which case you can do a hand count of the plain English. Which will be time consuming and expensive, but you can have the counters look at the same thing the voter did - aka a Voter Verified Paper Trail.
a ke-it". You won't need to use that step often, but if you do, it's there.
The barcode is just an intermediate step. If something screws up (perhaps even innocently) with the initial purely-electronic count, you can machine count the bar codes. Cheaper than a full hand count, and it lets you fix a whole slew of potential problems. (e.g. power surge fried the machine and knocked out the electronic count.)
You probably want to do some random spot checking of the electronic count vs. the bar codes and the bar codes vs. the english in any case. But this system sounds pretty slick: it gives you three steps on the spectrum between cheap/quick and verifiably-fraud-proof, including the all important step of "absolutely-as-verifiably-fraud-proof-as-we-can-m
And are the chips in the machine what they are supposed to be?
Complicated, Hell yes, and still insuficient.
Then again, a voter verified paper trail is incredibly easy, and completely sufficient. I don't care about verifying squat about the machines if I can check up on their results after the fact. Why do people even talk about requirements other than a voter verified paper trail? It's all you really need, and without it, nothing else is sufficient.
Well then you've got something in common with the people who set up this site.
I've got a cousin who does some pretty stupid things too, like helping architect Reaganomics and being GWBs cheif economic advisor. Then he went and actually admittted his estimate of how much the Iraq war would cost. I respect him for telling the truth, and for the fact that his estimate has turned out to be dead on. But I've got to admit that that too was stupid. He really should have known that telling the truth was a no-no for members of GWBs administration. Bush promptly fired him.
Hey Larry - I'm no longer embarrased to tell people I'm related to you now that George fired you. But you're going to have to do a big Paul O'Neil style expose if you want to get back on my Christmas card list.
"Umm I think you are confusing WW1 with WW2"
Doh! You're right of course. I even know that was WW1 now that I think about it and am less tired.
"Both sides claim to be for small government, but when push comes to shove, both sides are for large government in the areas they care about."
But it's worth noting that over the last 24 years, going by what they've actually done, the Democrats are for a large government in the areas they care about; while the Republicans, in the areas they care about, are for a government that is utterly enormous beyond all reason or ability to pay for it. It bugs me that W gets credit for cutting taxes when his policies have gauraunteed massive tax increases in the (increasingly near) future.
I used to have a problem deciding how to vote because I am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Now the Democrats win on both counts, so no problem.
"Since I brought up WW2, could someone please remind me what our exit strategy was for defeating Germany and Japan prior to declaring war on them?"
Note that when we declared war on Japan and Germany, they had plans to actually invade and take over the US, and Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Not quite the same situation as with Iraq. At least, I haven't heard anyone suggest that Iraq was trying to get Mexico to help it cut a deal with North Korea for the three of them to partition the US, though I wouldn't put such a suggestion past Cheney. But in any case, I beleive our "exit" strategy in WWII was: "Completely defeat them, take over running the country for quite a while, and even after they resume civilian control, maintain a massive military presence in their country as long as necessary, which we fully realize may be essentially forever." Note that people knew this was the plan, and still supported the war, and also note that we have a massive military presence in both those countries 60 years later. Is this the strategy for Iraq? Would Americans support the war in Iraq knowing we would be there for 60 years? It's certainly not the vision of the future that was put forth by those selling the war.
"It's time to face the fact that now that we are there it's going to be several years before we can get out"
Some of us faced that fact quite some time ago. When the war started I predicted we'd be there for at least 15 years. I'll stick with that prediction and throw in another one: If leave in the next 40 years, Iraq will not remain a democracy for more than 10 years after our departure. Based on the places we've tried to establish democracy via invasion since WWII, this second prediction isn't exactly going out on a limb.
Maybe you can't plan for every contingency, but a heck of a lot of people thought it was just palin obvious that going into Iraq alone would pull us into an ever-deepening morass that would have our troops there for decades. The fact that GWB & company are surprised by what's happened in Iraq just makes it painfully obvious what a bunch of ideologically blinded incompetents they are.
I believe it was a limitation of (at least) Turbo Pascal on 16 bit x86; named variables referred to specific 16 bit memory adresses, and so could access only 64K. But pointers could access much more memory (a couple bytes out of that 64K could point off to somewhere else that a much bigger data structure lived). I remember because I helped out a poor Astronomy student who's program needed to use a seemingly huge amount of memory; IIRC, a whole Megabyte!
I honestly have no less respect for your beleifs than I have for anyone elses, or than I expect anyone to have for mine. My main idea with the tooth-fairy bit was to try to illustrate how your beliefs appear to one who doesn't share them. If I started telling you we should make laws based on what the Tooth Fairy tells me, I somehow doubt you would treat my beliefs with respect. My real point is that it shouldn't matter if I have any respect for your beliefs, or you for mine. I don't care what you believe. But if you derive morals from those beliefs that you claim are superior to my morals, and try to force them on me, well, I'm going to care.
Well, OK, I admit I was mocking a bit. I was upset, and it was the least confrontational response I could manage. But if you're already offended, I suppose their is no harm in explaining: (except that in talking about it, I'm undoubtably going to get really seriously pissed off)
It was the euthanasia bit that got to me. This is an issue that has some personal resonance for me, to put it mildly. A little more than ten years ago, my mother died of cancer. At one point she told me that if she had a button she could push, and just not wake up again, she'd say her goodbyes to us, curl up in my fathers arms and be gone. It was a nice fantasy. The reality was she lived for several months after that. The last couple of months she was on so many pain killers she wasn't very coherent. The last couple weeks, all her concious time was mostly spent screaming. Her pain killer dosage couldn't be increased because it might kill her, which would be illegal.
So. You're all upset because I implied your beleifs were silly. Let's be perfectly serious: When someone decides the terms on which they want to live, or end, their life, if you think you have the right to get in the way of that decision because your beleifs are more important than theirs, you are not the least bit silly. Rather, you are an evil, evil bastard. You say God exists and he agrees with you on this? Well maybe you're right, and he is an evil bastard too. But since other people claim God thinks other things, and the things you are claiming to have special uniquely correct knowledge of are, get this, UNKNOWABLE, I'm going to go ahead and guess that you're wrong, because I don't want to live in a universe created by an evil bastard.
Well, I assume that wraps up the question of whether we're going to continue this conversation. In any case, emailing you would require me revealing my email address, and giving you any more contact information seems unwise. After all, I'm pretty sure I've pissed you off by now, and you've already made clear your beleif that God has given you the right to decide who lives and who dies.
Peace? So long your beleifs would force others who wish to die to live in pain, I don't consider that Peace. So you'll get none from me until you and your god Fuck Off and leave the rest of us alone.
"I haven't found anything yet that suggests to me that God doesn't exist."
...
...there is no neutral ground. You have to choose...and not choosing is a choice to be against the Tooth Fairy.
You completely miss the point. I'm not asking what you've found. I'm asking what you could possibly find. There is nothing. I'm rabidly uninterested in reading your authors who tried to prove anything about God's existence one way or another. If nothing can disprove Gods existence, nothing can prove it either.
"They lost respect for life...just like what is happening around the world and in the US with abortion and euthanasia."
"Christians are pretty tolerant of other's beliefs."
Really? So you're no doubt tolerant of my beleif that if I wish to end my life, that's my business. And if a doctor helps me to do that in as painless a way as possible, you'd be tolerant of that?
"You are either with God or you are against God"
You are either with the Tooth Fairy or you are against the Tooth Fairy
If you think I'm doing something wrong, let me know, and we'll talk about it. Keep you invisible superhero out of it please. Because my invisble superhero can kick the ass of your invisible superhero.
"So if I put together a game that 'brings out the fact' that in ancient Greece, the Spartan warriors took young boys as their apprentices, and one of the boys' duties was to help their mentor get off... we're all OK with that, right?"
Why wouldn't we be OK with that? I don't expect your game would do all that well, but you can make whatever game you want. And if I play a game that includes going out behind the tent in Ancient Sparta, I'm hardly in a position to get upset by your sound effects.
"The universe by itself degenerates into choas"
On a sufficiently large or long term scale, certainly.
"yet there is order and systems"
It is perfectly possible for localized order to arise in systems who's global entropy is increasing. Besides, why does order require a designer, but chaos not require any motivator? Have you considered becoming a Discordian? Hail Eris.
While I disagree, you seem to be arguing that order implies design and lack of order implies lack of design. So since "The universe by itself degenerates into choas", it was not designed?
I'm sure you'll disagree with the above for some reason, so let me jump to my main question: What would imply that God does not exist? What peice of evidence could we collect that would support the existence of God if it turned out one way, but refute God's existence if it turned out the other way?
It appears to me that there is no possible evidence that could disprove the statement "God created the universe". Whatever you find, you can just say, yes, that's how God designed it. In religion, the fact that this and related statements can not be disproved in any possible world is taken as showing that the statement is true. In formal logic, there is a different term for non-tautalogical statements that cannot be disproved in any possible world: that term is "meaningless".
I'll sadly agree that the US is showing far too many signs of parralleling the Roman experience. But are you really asserting that Rome fell because they became less moral? That their rise was due to the fine morals they evidenced by conquering and enslaving their neighbors?
Actually, I think a lot of the success of Rome was atributable to the fact that once they conquered you and enslaved a bunch of you, they demanded some tribute, but mostly left you alone to handle local government yourself. In particular, provincials were free to practice their own religion; their was no significant attempt to impose the Roaman Gods, and whatever morals they implied. When they eventually tried to force their religion on others, they had steadily more problems, culminating when that religion became Christianity and they really stepped up the effort to impose it on others.
So yeah, I see some pretty good parralels to the growing attempts of Evangelical Christians in the US to impose their values on everyone else. Which makes sense if you think those values come from on high. So it becomes important to me whether they realize they're just making stuff up like the rest of us. Which really pisses me off, because, as an Apatheist, I don't care, and I don't want to have to.
"There has to be absolute right and wrong...absolute truth...otherwise nothing means anything in the way of morals, period."
I don't necessarily with your apparent assumption that the considered opinion of a thinking human, or even the consensus opinion of a lot of them is without value. But lets assume for the moment that morals only have value if they come from something beyond humans. You thus conclude that they must come from something beyond humans, but your only reason for concluding that morals do have value is that they come from something beyond humans. It's entirely circular. Based on your premises, I don't see any reason it can't be the case that morals in fact do not come from beyond humans, and thus do not have any real value.
"Still...at the base of us all is evil...look at kids...no one teaches them to lie, cheat, steal and be mean...they are born that way"
Wow. I don't know what to say to that without implying your kids are some sort of twisted freaks. My kids, and all the others I've known, have absolutely no initial instinct to be mean. Up through age 6 or so they want nothing so much as for absolutely everyone to like them. Sometime between 5 and 10 they start worrying that people like someone else more than them, and mean behaviors arrise. But all the really seriously mean kids I've known were absolutely taught to be mean, by there (IMO) lousy parents.
As for lying, cheating, and stealing: all depend on human constructs, and are perfect examples of why I don't think it is possible for morals to come from beyond humans or for children to be evil. Let's take stealing. My very young daughter will "steal" my watch. I don't really care, because I think she's cute and I know where she puts it. But she'd be equally willing to walk off with the watch of some stranger who quite correctly consider it stealing. Would she do this because she is bad? No. She does it because she does not understand the concept of property. In her veiw, there's all this stuff around, and if some of it catches her fancy she carries it around for a bit. The idea that a watch is mine even when I'm not wearing it is hard for her to get her mind around, and I don't blame her. So here's my question: Say someone steals my car. I'd say that was wrong, and I assume you'd agree. But you'd say that God says it's wrong. Why? Did God grant me ownership of that car? Clearly not. I can't imagine why God would recognize my moral right to claim things as my own and hold them away from my fellow humans. Property strikes me as an entirely human concept (not even shared by all humans). Stealing is only relevant in reference to property. "Stealing is wrong" in an opinion of (quite a lot of) humans, built on quite a complex system of human constructions.
"God is an eternal being that created this universe"
Pretty good definition as far as it goes. So far I'm:
A) a strong agnostic; I don't see how it could even possible to determine if such a being exists; Occams Razor would say it's unlikely, but certainty is clearly impossible.
B) a firm apatheist; I can't imagine why I should care if such a being exists.
Now, I could be wrong, but I imagine your idea of God goes into a lot more specifics than the definition above. If you add some of those to the definition, you'll probably push me over into disbelief. But I have yet to hear any definition of GOd that convinces me I should care.
"All of us posses this fallen human nature"
Speak for yourself.
"I'm just saying you have to measure morals by something outside yourself or they are meaningless"
If you beleive that, then yes, they are meaningless.
"Man can't dictate to themselves because there there is no absolute right and wrong."
I'd say there is no absolute right and wrong. Perhaps it would be nice if there were, but that doesn't make it so. It is certainly in the nature of some humans to do what I would classify as evil. But I don't beleive it is in my nature, nor that of most people. Your apparent belief that the natural tendency of humans is to do evil strikes me as pretty pessimistic. In my experiance and opinion, most people are pretty nice folks. Not that I'm just a happy go lucky optimist; in my experience most people are pretty nice, but also pretty stupid. They want to do good, but they take other (sometimes bad) peoples word on things without ever thinking about it way too often.
How is this device part of a victim mentality? If I'm annoyed by a television, and, consulting my moral compass, determine that it is acceptable for me to turn the thing off (for example, no one else is watching it), than this device allows me to take responsibility for my own happiness and act.
Now for the OT part, which is really what interested me in your post:
I would define a religion as a world view that includes some form of supernatural entity; but that's really just semantics. The definition that interest me is your definition of the word "God". Most "beleivers" I have asked about this are unable or unwilling to provide a definition, which makes any discussion of whether God exists pretty pointless. So if you can tell me what "God" means, I'll tell you if I'm an Atheist. (if you care)
A moral compass is really not that hard to come by. Just ask yourself if what you are doing would seem OK to you if someone else were doing it. So, "Is it OK to steal? Well, gee, I'd be sad if someone stole from me..."
Certainly some people either do not have or fail to heed this moral compass, but I think they are just as capable of ignoring what they think God wants, or deciding God wants them to act in ways that you or I would deem immoral.
You say you get your morals from God. Which would seem to imply you have no morals of your own. I don't actually beleive that's the case. I'll assume (since I don't know you) that you are a good person. I don't think God has any more to do with it than Santa Claus. You choose to ascribe your goodness to something outside yourself, which, so far, is your business. But it frightens me. Because when it stops being exclusively your business is when our moral compasses are called upon to make some public decision, and we find that they disagree. At that point I'll be saying "I think X" and you'll be saying "God says Y". Which I think makes a poor basis for discussion, and hampers both your ability to consider alternative views, and my interest in hearing why you think Y.
Hopefully I haven't just pissed you off yet, as that is not my intention. I too am genuinely interested in this question. I mention this now because the next paragraph is probably the most likely to piss you off. So once again, that's really not my intent.
So I say I get my moral compass by thinking about things and making my own decisions, for which I take personal responsibility, and which have no more authority than the considered decisions of anyone else. You say your moral compass comes from God, which I take to imply that you do not take responsibility for its dictates, it is objectively right, and any position disagreeing with it is wrong. Sorry, but I find that arrogant and frightening.
Except of course that they don't have a monopoly in the server space. If they charged per core for lets say SQLServer, I might thus be prompted to take another look at Oracle. This way I won't.
They are not being nice despite having a monopoly. They are being nice in hopes of getting a monopoly.