Fair enough. Though I think it's a miscarachterization to say the Wrights created their plane for War. It seems clear they created for some combination of adventure and profit. The quote you're refering to is when asked what use he thought his invention would be put to, Wilbur said "War". Given the extensive use of balloons in war at the time (and pretty much any other technological advance), what surprises me is that Santos Dumont didn't expect planes to be used for war. Wilburs comment and attempts to sell the plane to the military weren't a reflection of any desire to see planes used in war, but a reflection of his desire to sell airplanes. Who besides a small number of rich adventurers would have an interest in and budget for planes should have been as clear to Santos Dumont as it was to Wilbur Wright. Both the Wrights and Santos Dumont wanted to give the people of the world the ability to fly. The Wrights wanted to become rich in the process. Santos Dumont didn't, but he had the advantage of being rich already.
"Please, note that I am not saying that Wright brothers didn't fly. I am only saying that there are reasons to believe that they didn't, at least not at the time they said they did."
Not any particularly good ones as far as I can tell. There are certainly plenty of reasons to debate which of the Wright brothers attempts should count as the first powered flight. The one we generally count (100 years ago today), had a strong headwind, so maybe shouldn't count. But the Wrights had scores of flights without any such reasons for disqualification under their belt before Santos Dumont took off.
As for the page you linked: I read some of it, but the design cannot be forgotten; it makes it too hard to read. Anyway, I'd be more interested if you would link to a page outside Brazil. But not that interested, as I know the arguments: 1) The Wrights first flight had a headwind. Not true of many subsequent flights which predate Santos Dumont. 2) The Wrights used a catapult launch. True of the 40 minute flight they made shortly before Santos Dumonts first (sub-minute) flights, but not of their first flight (whether you consider that to be the cannonical one, or some other one shortly thereafter) 3) It's all a conspiracy; The Wrights didn't really fly. This is pure tinfoil-hat territory. They kept scrupulous records that correspond exactly to numerous eye-witness accounts. They didn't make huge amounts of noise about their early accomplishments like Santos Dumont did; but by the time he flew, a lot of people had seen and reported Wright flights. It's possible they could have faked the records of the flight we now call "first" (not many were there), but why would they? They get the first place prize even if you only count the flights that were independently reported and without catapult or headwind.
Yes, "heavier-than-air powered flight, taking off the ground" is what makes an airplane for me. And by this criteria, the Wright brothers were 3 years before Santos Dumont. They did not use a catapult on their earlier models. If you want to claim Pearse was first, we could argue about whether level of control matters, or whether poorly documented hearsay should be beleived. If you want to argue Santos Dumont was first, you're just wrong.
"The Wright Brothers made THE 1st FLIGHT with something HEAVIER THAN THE AIR (apart from ballons)"
No. Many people had flown heavier than air gliders for many years before the Wrights.
"Santos Dumont flew THE FIRST AIRPLANE..."
No. Not by any definition of "airplane" you can put forth with a straight face.
"The difference? Wrights' Brothers "plane" did not get airborn all by itself. They had a pulley/weight system, a kind of 19th century booster..."
No. The Wrights first few airplanes took off entirely under their own power. Eventually they moved on to a catapult system so they could optomize their props for longer flights. They had gotten up to a 40 minute one when Santos Dumant made his first sub-minute flight, which was comparable to what the Wrights had done 3 years earlier. (All, BTW, in the 20th century)
"Santos Dumont got airborn all by itself. Start engine, gets airborn."
Which was dammed impressive. The difficulty of the feat at the time was in no way diminished by the Wrights work (which Santos Dumonts work was independant of). It is a perhaps unfortunate socialogical quirk that the recognition Santos Dumant receives (outside Brazil) for having done it is diminshed by the fact that someone else did it slightly before him. But someone else did do it slightly before him.
"If you read about the achievements of Santos Dumont you would see that they are as remarkable as the Wright Brothers'."
Yes, they certainly were. And if you say that even though they came a few years later, we should celebrate his acheivements because they were remarkable, I'll agree with you. If you say they weren't a few years later, you are incorrect.
"While they were catapulting their models, Santos Dumont's were taking off by their own means"
True. The Wrights had of course already built several models that took off under their own power. Later, when Satos Dumont was doing the same thing, the Wrights had moved along to a catapult launch so they could optimize their propellers for cruising and make longer flights, such as the 40 minute one they managed about the same time Santos Dumont made his first sub-minute flight.
"there is a lot of doubt about if the first machine built by the Wright Brothers could actually fly"
Perhaps there is doubt about whether their first plane could fly well, but that it did fly, at least poorly, was extensively documented. Also well documented is that they built several more planes wich flew progressively better, all before Sanots Dumont made his first attempt.
Santos Dumonts first flight might have been more impressive than the Wrights first, and he was certainly a brilliant inventor. But if you want to claim he was the first to manage powered flight, you can't compare his first flight to the Wrights first. You'd have to argue that his first flight was more impressive than the flights the Wrights were making by that time. Which, if you do the aforementioned research, is preposterous.
"Did Santos-Dumont create the first [experimental] airplane?"
No.
Santos-Dumont created a perfectly good (considering the state of the non-existant art) airplane, and flew it successfully. He wasn't basing his design on anyone elses. So Santos-Dumont certainly deserves credit for having "invented the airplane" (as do at least 3 other people).
The problem is that some people, mostly Brazillian, in addition to saying that he "invented the airplane", like to add the word "first". Which is just not true.
"Pledge drives support the operations budget of the local re-broadcaster, not NPR"
That's rather misleading. Most of NPRs funding comes from dues paid by the local re-broadcasters, and hence from those pledge drives. A smaller portion of their funding comes from the companies you mention, and I'd agree with you in calling them ads. But they're a lot less obtrusive than the ones "comercial" radio. The advertising message isn't even "ADM makes great products"; it's "ADM is a nice company because they support NPR". In short, I have much less concern that NPRs editorial integrity might be compromised by the companies that support them.
So I guess you could call them "corporate radio" but I'd call them "vastly less corporate influenced than any other radio organization with enough resources to produce worthwhile content".
As I refered to obliquely, about 50% of my listening is to my local NPR member. Here in Colorado, there's a similar split: an all classical music station, and a "News and Information" station that's really the "everything else" station. I'd be really happy if they set it up so I could give my donation to just the "News and Information" part. I've got nothing against Classical music; I just don't listen to it. Of course, then I'd be wishing they'd ditch the jazz and really do pure "News and Information".
Anyhow, by asking if anyone listened to taxpayer supported radio, I was actually trying to make a probably way too subtle point...
My local public radio station gets some high 90s percent of it's budget from listener contributions, which I beleive is typical. Most of their content comes from NPR or PRI, which in turn get almost all their funding from dues paid by the aforementioned local stations. Both at the local and national level, the public radio organizations get very small amounts of funding for specific purposes from competive government grants. Anyone can compete for these grants; there is no specific public radio funding in the US or Colorado budget.
So I don't think it's reasonable to call NPR "taxpayer supported radio". (You'd have a much better case for referring to Boeing as "taxpayer supported aviation", which I doubt the original poster is in the habit of doing.)
Thus, for (admittedly minor) humerous effect, I chose to pretend he was talking about the only actual "taxpayer supported radio" I know of: The US propaganda network Voice of America, which cheifly brodcasts overseas.
So now I've taken my original quick smart-ass post and competely beaten it into the ground. (Does that make this a long, dumb-ass post?)
Most people must stand for more ads on radio than I will, I never make it through a comercial break.
Personally, my listening goes about 50-50 between radio supported entirely by advertisements and that supported by some less intrusive advertisements, but mostly by voluntary contributions of listeners.
Does anyone listen to taxpayer supported radio much? I can't pick up Voice of America in my area, and I hear the programming is pretty lame in any case.
But the vast majority of people do not write to their representative and tell them they won't vote for them next time unless they adjust the speed limits. The argument here is that if speed limits were strictly enforced 100% of the time, a lot more people would make noise to their Reps about how they wanted the limits set.
Legislatures are elected by voters. While there are many imperfections in the system, legislatures can't go against most of the people on an issue most of the people feel strongly about. So apparently most voters don't have a problem with speed limits as currently set, or with the fact that they are selectively enforced, or even that they generate revenue. So quit whining about "the Government". It is us.
I actually think selective enforcement is a very bad idea. People whine and think (correctly) it's unfair when they get a ticket, so they try harder to only do it when they can get away with it. This is a bad precedent to establish in how people relate to their laws.
More people can read than can understand electronics. But really, my point is that schematics aren't good enough. How do you know the schematics you have acurately reflect the electronics? Take apart the chips and inspect under a microscope?
Yes, the electronic count in my system has exactly the same problems as any electronic count. The point of the electronic count is to be fast. The benefit is entirely in the independent record, which is essential. I would use paper, because almost any voter can verify that a paper record correctly reflects their vote before they put it in the box. Certainly you'd need some special case solution for the blind or illiterate, but you need that anyway. Assuming you're a sighted, literate voter, with paper you look at the ballot and the hole is next to the candidate you voted for. With an electronic ballot, the screen says this is who you voted for, or the light lights up next to their name or whatever. Is that what's really recorded, or is the machine set up to tell you you voted for X while recording a vote for Y? You don't really know.
As far as double checking results 20 years from now, yeah that would be nice (though I suspect election law would make that too late to change anything). But what I think is more important is being able to check the next day, and be as sure as possible that what you're looking at is the actual vote the voter cast.
The crux of the issue is this: The voter should be able to look at the record and confirm it is accurate. Sometime after the election, election officials, along with representatives of both sides, should be able to look at that same record and have the highest possible degree of confidence they are seeing the same thing and interpreting it the same way as the voter did when they verified it. To me, that says the record should be human-readable.
As a side note: If there's a fire, most media will be destroyed anyway unless properly protected, in which case paper will be fine. And, yes I do expect even cheap paper will last 20 years if properly stored; I've read 50 year old newspapers (cheapest paper there is) that were just sitting aroung in my grandmothers attic. They were pretty yellowed, but perfectly readable. In any case, I don't think any jusidiction keeps ballots around for twenty years. There is some limited time for recounts/protests/etc. after which the results are accepted. I just want the counts during that period to have as little room for doubt as possible. Optimally, I suppose, we could punch the holes in sheets of aluminum or something, but that would be too expensive. The key is a human-readable record that is difficult to modify. Holes in paper are sufficient.
I'm sorry to here you live in a dictatorship where citizens have no ability to affect the laws. Here in the US, our system is far from perfect, but if a vast majority of people think a law is bad, it will in fact be changed. We call it "democracy".
"I would rather have a closed-source voting machine with a paper trail than an open-source voting machine without a paper trail."
Amen to that. An open-source voting machine would be nice, but it's not strictly necessary if you have a paper trail, and it's certainly no replacement for a paper trail. Anyone fancy inspecting thousands of voting machines to be sure the electronics are exactly what they should be? And that the code being run is the code whose source you've got? You still won't be sure. But if you look at the paper records of a randomly selected sample of ballots and confirm the count is correct, then you know.
"I can make a simple machine that reads an electronic record thousands of times over, error free on every one much, much simpler"
And I can make a simple machine that reads an electronic record thousands of times over, with exactly the errors I want, just as simply. Or one that creates the electronic records wrong in the first place. And you'll have nothing you can go back and look at with your eyeballs and see the hole the voter punched.
So here's my idea: You punch a hole in a peice of paper with a sharp metal thing that makes an electrical contact on the other side. Your vote can be counted elctronically, and you know you successfully made the hole, because the little light indicating your vote doesn't come on otherwise. Then your peice of paper goes in the box where it can be used to verify the accuracy of the electronic count.
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are even better ways to produce both a fast electronic count and a verifiable paper trail back to the hand of the voter. It just doesn't seem hard. So why not do it?
"The point was that 60% is not 100%; and if guns magically disappeared, I would bet that 90% of that 60% would not go away."
And I bet you're wrong. But in any case, that's 6% of murders you're saying would go away.
"The benefits of firearms (which are used regularly to prevent violent crime without ever having to fire a short) far outweight their deadliness."
Gotta disagree. Neither I, nor anyone I know not working in law enforcement, has ever been the victim of a crime that could have been prevented by having a gun. So I don't buy your "regularly". I do know someone who was killed in a gun accident, and there have been at least two times in my life where, if I had a gun, I probably would have done something I'd now regret.
"you don't hear about the 290,000,000 that used a gun without firing it to defend themselves."
That's because they don't exist. There are not that many gun owners in the US. Additionally, I at least have never once been in a situation where having a gun would have been useful. I have been in several situations where, in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't have a gun. For the vast majority of people, most of the time, having a loaded gun with you is incredibly stupid.
I agree that figures like that can be misleading, but in answer to your question:
"Is it nominal or real terms?"
Both. Nominal should be no surprise, but yes, in real terms (e.g. 1945 dollars, per person as fraction of median income, as a percent of GDP); pretty much any way you slice it: We are spending more now than we have since WWII. And cutting taxes too!
"Even many fiscal hawks admit that we can afford current spending levels given the GDP"
Only while they are so baked they completely forget the meaning of the word "afford".
"when the tax cuts are successful at reviving the economy, the resulting prosperity will more than pay for the current spending strategy"
Theres no particularly good evidence that the tax cuts will help revive the economy (The spending will certainly help in the short term). But to actually pay for the current spending, the economy would have to not just recover, but start growing by an order of magnitude faster than it ever has. Nobody really thinks that is going to happen.
"It worked for Reagan, after all.... "
No, it didn't. Every penny of Reagans debt is still with us, we haven't paid any of it back. And Bush is making Reagan look thrifty.
Your DNA does not want anything. If you impregnate every hot chick you see, there's a better chance that rough copies of your DNA will be around in the future. Your DNA might have something to do with your desire to impregnate hot chicks, and that effect might get passed on to your descendants, whereas the "don't impregnat hot chicks" gene is less likely to get passed on, and thus... well, you know, naturla selection, evolution, etc. But your DNA does not want anything, and evolution works anyway. It can't because it's inanimate. Whether or not YOU can want anything and whether it matters seems to be the philosophical blind alley this thread is wandering into, but it has nothing to do with evolution, or whether Darwin was right. (I say "blind alley" because while the question of free will seems fantastically important, there's no real answer, so you wind up talking about it as long as you want, or maybe even writing big boring books about it, but at some point you just realize it doesn't actually matter, and you get on with your life)
What's not true? I'm saying I think resources and attention should be allocated in proportion to how likely something is to kill me (or people in general). It is true; I do think this.
Yes, weaponized anthrax is a bigger problem than natural anthrax, because natural anthrax is essentialy not a problem at all. But I'm not arguing how resources dedicated to fighting anthrax should be allocated. I'm arguing how much resources should be allocated to anthrax at all. Other natural illnesses kill so many people that 5 deaths in 20 years does not begin to compete. 5 deaths in a month would not compete. It's silly to spend large amounts of resources trying to be prepared for just one very specific potential threat out of the basically limitless modes of attack terrorists could choose. Especially when it (inevitably) means you can't use those same resouces to address real threats that are killing a lot more people right now.
"These first synthetic viruses may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for."
I agree with this but I think you could say: These first <any new scientific breakthrough examples> may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for.
I agree that bio weapons get more attention than natural viruses because they involve someone doing something intentionally. But I don't think it makes sense. The way I see it the downside of my getting killed by an intentional attack is that I'm dead. The downside of my getting killed by a natural virus is that I'm dead. Whether or not anyone intended me to be dead doesn't modify that downside at all for me. If society is going to try to do some stuff to prevent me (and others) from becoming prematurely dead, it seems to me it would make sense to allocate more resources to things that are more likely to kill people.
I'd tell you to RTFA, but if the editors aren't going to, it's obviously to much to ask.
"Death of Free software ? Pure high quality top management PR bull$hit."
Pure Slashdot invention actually. Nowhere in the article does MS or anyone else make any mention of the "Death of Free software", or any related phrase or concept. Why bother even having a link to an article with such a bogus headline? They should just have a weekly Ask Slashdot: "Someone once suggested MS software might have once had some redeeming feature somewhere, and that not every peice of open source software was the ultimate paragon of perfection. Obviously that's false, so there's no real question here. We're sure you'll have lots of answers anyway."
Give me a break. One of the big ideas with computer voting is you eliminate any way to determine if anyone added, replaced or destroyed votes. Computer voting doesn't make fraud any harder, just detecting it. And besides fraud, how about innocent error. It certainly happens with computer voting, but there's no way to check up on it. Consider the case in the story. Far more votes were counted than there were voters. Yup, that's pretty embarassing. But what if the problem had just caused votes to be counted for the wrong candidate, without anything so obvious. Would we ever know it happened? Can you say with any confidence it hasn't happened? With paper ballots, I can go back and look at the actual marks made by the actual voter, and count them again.
Is fraud with paper ballots a problem? Sure. But electronic ballots just make it a lot worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough. Though I think it's a miscarachterization to say the Wrights created their plane for War. It seems clear they created for some combination of adventure and profit. The quote you're refering to is when asked what use he thought his invention would be put to, Wilbur said "War". Given the extensive use of balloons in war at the time (and pretty much any other technological advance), what surprises me is that Santos Dumont didn't expect planes to be used for war. Wilburs comment and attempts to sell the plane to the military weren't a reflection of any desire to see planes used in war, but a reflection of his desire to sell airplanes. Who besides a small number of rich adventurers would have an interest in and budget for planes should have been as clear to Santos Dumont as it was to Wilbur Wright. Both the Wrights and Santos Dumont wanted to give the people of the world the ability to fly. The Wrights wanted to become rich in the process. Santos Dumont didn't, but he had the advantage of being rich already.
"Please, note that I am not saying that Wright brothers didn't fly. I am only saying that there are reasons to believe that they didn't, at least not at the time they said they did."
Not any particularly good ones as far as I can tell. There are certainly plenty of reasons to debate which of the Wright brothers attempts should count as the first powered flight. The one we generally count (100 years ago today), had a strong headwind, so maybe shouldn't count. But the Wrights had scores of flights without any such reasons for disqualification under their belt before Santos Dumont took off.
As for the page you linked: I read some of it, but the design cannot be forgotten; it makes it too hard to read. Anyway, I'd be more interested if you would link to a page outside Brazil. But not that interested, as I know the arguments:
1) The Wrights first flight had a headwind. Not true of many subsequent flights which predate Santos Dumont.
2) The Wrights used a catapult launch. True of the 40 minute flight they made shortly before Santos Dumonts first (sub-minute) flights, but not of their first flight (whether you consider that to be the cannonical one, or some other one shortly thereafter)
3) It's all a conspiracy; The Wrights didn't really fly. This is pure tinfoil-hat territory. They kept scrupulous records that correspond exactly to numerous eye-witness accounts. They didn't make huge amounts of noise about their early accomplishments like Santos Dumont did; but by the time he flew, a lot of people had seen and reported Wright flights. It's possible they could have faked the records of the flight we now call "first" (not many were there), but why would they? They get the first place prize even if you only count the flights that were independently reported and without catapult or headwind.
Yes, "heavier-than-air powered flight, taking off the ground" is what makes an airplane for me. And by this criteria, the Wright brothers were 3 years before Santos Dumont. They did not use a catapult on their earlier models.
If you want to claim Pearse was first, we could argue about whether level of control matters, or whether poorly documented hearsay should be beleived. If you want to argue Santos Dumont was first, you're just wrong.
"The Wright Brothers made THE 1st FLIGHT with something HEAVIER THAN THE AIR (apart from ballons)"
No. Many people had flown heavier than air gliders for many years before the Wrights.
"Santos Dumont flew THE FIRST AIRPLANE..."
No. Not by any definition of "airplane" you can put forth with a straight face.
"The difference? Wrights' Brothers "plane" did not get airborn all by itself. They had a pulley/weight system, a kind of 19th century booster..."
No. The Wrights first few airplanes took off entirely under their own power. Eventually they moved on to a catapult system so they could optomize their props for longer flights. They had gotten up to a 40 minute one when Santos Dumant made his first sub-minute flight, which was comparable to what the Wrights had done 3 years earlier. (All, BTW, in the 20th century)
"Santos Dumont got airborn all by itself. Start engine, gets airborn."
Which was dammed impressive. The difficulty of the feat at the time was in no way diminished by the Wrights work (which Santos Dumonts work was independant of). It is a perhaps unfortunate socialogical quirk that the recognition Santos Dumant receives (outside Brazil) for having done it is diminshed by the fact that someone else did it slightly before him. But someone else did do it slightly before him.
"If you read about the achievements of Santos Dumont you would see that they are as remarkable as the Wright Brothers'."
Yes, they certainly were. And if you say that even though they came a few years later, we should celebrate his acheivements because they were remarkable, I'll agree with you. If you say they weren't a few years later, you are incorrect.
"While they were catapulting their models, Santos Dumont's were taking off by their own means"
True. The Wrights had of course already built several models that took off under their own power. Later, when Satos Dumont was doing the same thing, the Wrights had moved along to a catapult launch so they could optimize their propellers for cruising and make longer flights, such as the 40 minute one they managed about the same time Santos Dumont made his first sub-minute flight.
"there is a lot of doubt about if the first machine built by the Wright Brothers could actually fly"
Perhaps there is doubt about whether their first plane could fly well, but that it did fly, at least poorly, was extensively documented. Also well documented is that they built several more planes wich flew progressively better, all before Sanots Dumont made his first attempt.
Santos Dumonts first flight might have been more impressive than the Wrights first, and he was certainly a brilliant inventor. But if you want to claim he was the first to manage powered flight, you can't compare his first flight to the Wrights first. You'd have to argue that his first flight was more impressive than the flights the Wrights were making by that time. Which, if you do the aforementioned research, is preposterous.
"Did Santos-Dumont create the first [experimental] airplane?"
No.
Santos-Dumont created a perfectly good (considering the state of the non-existant art) airplane, and flew it successfully. He wasn't basing his design on anyone elses. So Santos-Dumont certainly deserves credit for having "invented the airplane" (as do at least 3 other people).
The problem is that some people, mostly Brazillian, in addition to saying that he "invented the airplane", like to add the word "first". Which is just not true.
"Pledge drives support the operations budget of the local re-broadcaster, not NPR"
That's rather misleading. Most of NPRs funding comes from dues paid by the local re-broadcasters, and hence from those pledge drives. A smaller portion of their funding comes from the companies you mention, and I'd agree with you in calling them ads. But they're a lot less obtrusive than the ones "comercial" radio. The advertising message isn't even "ADM makes great products"; it's "ADM is a nice company because they support NPR". In short, I have much less concern that NPRs editorial integrity might be compromised by the companies that support them.
So I guess you could call them "corporate radio" but I'd call them "vastly less corporate influenced than any other radio organization with enough resources to produce worthwhile content".
As I refered to obliquely, about 50% of my listening is to my local NPR member. Here in Colorado, there's a similar split: an all classical music station, and a "News and Information" station that's really the "everything else" station. I'd be really happy if they set it up so I could give my donation to just the "News and Information" part. I've got nothing against Classical music; I just don't listen to it. Of course, then I'd be wishing they'd ditch the jazz and really do pure "News and Information".
Anyhow, by asking if anyone listened to taxpayer supported radio, I was actually trying to make a probably way too subtle point...
My local public radio station gets some high 90s percent of it's budget from listener contributions, which I beleive is typical. Most of their content comes from NPR or PRI, which in turn get almost all their funding from dues paid by the aforementioned local stations. Both at the local and national level, the public radio organizations get very small amounts of funding for specific purposes from competive government grants. Anyone can compete for these grants; there is no specific public radio funding in the US or Colorado budget.
So I don't think it's reasonable to call NPR "taxpayer supported radio". (You'd have a much better case for referring to Boeing as "taxpayer supported aviation", which I doubt the original poster is in the habit of doing.)
Thus, for (admittedly minor) humerous effect, I chose to pretend he was talking about the only actual "taxpayer supported radio" I know of: The US propaganda network Voice of America, which cheifly brodcasts overseas.
So now I've taken my original quick smart-ass post and competely beaten it into the ground. (Does that make this a long, dumb-ass post?)
Most people must stand for more ads on radio than I will, I never make it through a comercial break.
Personally, my listening goes about 50-50 between radio supported entirely by advertisements and that supported by some less intrusive advertisements, but mostly by voluntary contributions of listeners.
Does anyone listen to taxpayer supported radio much? I can't pick up Voice of America in my area, and I hear the programming is pretty lame in any case.
But the vast majority of people do not write to their representative and tell them they won't vote for them next time unless they adjust the speed limits. The argument here is that if speed limits were strictly enforced 100% of the time, a lot more people would make noise to their Reps about how they wanted the limits set.
Legislatures are elected by voters. While there are many imperfections in the system, legislatures can't go against most of the people on an issue most of the people feel strongly about. So apparently most voters don't have a problem with speed limits as currently set, or with the fact that they are selectively enforced, or even that they generate revenue. So quit whining about "the Government". It is us.
I actually think selective enforcement is a very bad idea. People whine and think (correctly) it's unfair when they get a ticket, so they try harder to only do it when they can get away with it. This is a bad precedent to establish in how people relate to their laws.
More people can read than can understand electronics. But really, my point is that schematics aren't good enough. How do you know the schematics you have acurately reflect the electronics? Take apart the chips and inspect under a microscope?
Yes, the electronic count in my system has exactly the same problems as any electronic count. The point of the electronic count is to be fast. The benefit is entirely in the independent record, which is essential. I would use paper, because almost any voter can verify that a paper record correctly reflects their vote before they put it in the box. Certainly you'd need some special case solution for the blind or illiterate, but you need that anyway. Assuming you're a sighted, literate voter, with paper you look at the ballot and the hole is next to the candidate you voted for. With an electronic ballot, the screen says this is who you voted for, or the light lights up next to their name or whatever. Is that what's really recorded, or is the machine set up to tell you you voted for X while recording a vote for Y? You don't really know.
As far as double checking results 20 years from now, yeah that would be nice (though I suspect election law would make that too late to change anything). But what I think is more important is being able to check the next day, and be as sure as possible that what you're looking at is the actual vote the voter cast.
The crux of the issue is this: The voter should be able to look at the record and confirm it is accurate. Sometime after the election, election officials, along with representatives of both sides, should be able to look at that same record and have the highest possible degree of confidence they are seeing the same thing and interpreting it the same way as the voter did when they verified it. To me, that says the record should be human-readable.
As a side note: If there's a fire, most media will be destroyed anyway unless properly protected, in which case paper will be fine. And, yes I do expect even cheap paper will last 20 years if properly stored; I've read 50 year old newspapers (cheapest paper there is) that were just sitting aroung in my grandmothers attic. They were pretty yellowed, but perfectly readable. In any case, I don't think any jusidiction keeps ballots around for twenty years. There is some limited time for recounts/protests/etc. after which the results are accepted. I just want the counts during that period to have as little room for doubt as possible. Optimally, I suppose, we could punch the holes in sheets of aluminum or something, but that would be too expensive. The key is a human-readable record that is difficult to modify. Holes in paper are sufficient.
I'm sorry to here you live in a dictatorship where citizens have no ability to affect the laws. Here in the US, our system is far from perfect, but if a vast majority of people think a law is bad, it will in fact be changed. We call it "democracy".
"I would rather have a closed-source voting machine with a paper trail than an open-source voting machine without a paper trail."
Amen to that. An open-source voting machine would be nice, but it's not strictly necessary if you have a paper trail, and it's certainly no replacement for a paper trail. Anyone fancy inspecting thousands of voting machines to be sure the electronics are exactly what they should be? And that the code being run is the code whose source you've got? You still won't be sure. But if you look at the paper records of a randomly selected sample of ballots and confirm the count is correct, then you know.
"I can make a simple machine that reads an electronic record thousands of times over, error free on every one much, much simpler"
And I can make a simple machine that reads an electronic record thousands of times over, with exactly the errors I want, just as simply. Or one that creates the electronic records wrong in the first place. And you'll have nothing you can go back and look at with your eyeballs and see the hole the voter punched.
So here's my idea: You punch a hole in a peice of paper with a sharp metal thing that makes an electrical contact on the other side. Your vote can be counted elctronically, and you know you successfully made the hole, because the little light indicating your vote doesn't come on otherwise. Then your peice of paper goes in the box where it can be used to verify the accuracy of the electronic count.
That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are even better ways to produce both a fast electronic count and a verifiable paper trail back to the hand of the voter. It just doesn't seem hard. So why not do it?
"The point was that 60% is not 100%; and if guns magically disappeared, I would bet that 90% of that 60% would not go away."
And I bet you're wrong. But in any case, that's 6% of murders you're saying would go away.
"The benefits of firearms (which are used regularly to prevent violent crime without ever having to fire a short) far outweight their deadliness."
Gotta disagree. Neither I, nor anyone I know not working in law enforcement, has ever been the victim of a crime that could have been prevented by having a gun. So I don't buy your "regularly". I do know someone who was killed in a gun accident, and there have been at least two times in my life where, if I had a gun, I probably would have done something I'd now regret.
"you don't hear about the 290,000,000 that used a gun without firing it to defend themselves."
That's because they don't exist. There are not that many gun owners in the US. Additionally, I at least have never once been in a situation where having a gun would have been useful. I have been in several situations where, in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't have a gun. For the vast majority of people, most of the time, having a loaded gun with you is incredibly stupid.
I agree that figures like that can be misleading, but in answer to your question:
"Is it nominal or real terms?"
Both. Nominal should be no surprise, but yes, in real terms (e.g. 1945 dollars, per person as fraction of median income, as a percent of GDP); pretty much any way you slice it: We are spending more now than we have since WWII. And cutting taxes too!
"Even many fiscal hawks admit that we can afford current spending levels given the GDP"
Only while they are so baked they completely forget the meaning of the word "afford".
"when the tax cuts are successful at reviving the economy, the resulting prosperity will more than pay for the current spending strategy"
Theres no particularly good evidence that the tax cuts will help revive the economy (The spending will certainly help in the short term). But to actually pay for the current spending, the economy would have to not just recover, but start growing by an order of magnitude faster than it ever has. Nobody really thinks that is going to happen.
"It worked for Reagan, after all.... "
No, it didn't. Every penny of Reagans debt is still with us, we haven't paid any of it back. And Bush is making Reagan look thrifty.
Your DNA does not want anything. If you impregnate every hot chick you see, there's a better chance that rough copies of your DNA will be around in the future. Your DNA might have something to do with your desire to impregnate hot chicks, and that effect might get passed on to your descendants, whereas the "don't impregnat hot chicks" gene is less likely to get passed on, and thus... well, you know, naturla selection, evolution, etc.
But your DNA does not want anything, and evolution works anyway. It can't because it's inanimate. Whether or not YOU can want anything and whether it matters seems to be the philosophical blind alley this thread is wandering into, but it has nothing to do with evolution, or whether Darwin was right. (I say "blind alley" because while the question of free will seems fantastically important, there's no real answer, so you wind up talking about it as long as you want, or maybe even writing big boring books about it, but at some point you just realize it doesn't actually matter, and you get on with your life)
"Unfortunately, this is not true."
What's not true? I'm saying I think resources and attention should be allocated in proportion to how likely something is to kill me (or people in general). It is true; I do think this.
Yes, weaponized anthrax is a bigger problem than natural anthrax, because natural anthrax is essentialy not a problem at all. But I'm not arguing how resources dedicated to fighting anthrax should be allocated. I'm arguing how much resources should be allocated to anthrax at all. Other natural illnesses kill so many people that 5 deaths in 20 years does not begin to compete. 5 deaths in a month would not compete. It's silly to spend large amounts of resources trying to be prepared for just one very specific potential threat out of the basically limitless modes of attack terrorists could choose. Especially when it (inevitably) means you can't use those same resouces to address real threats that are killing a lot more people right now.
"These first synthetic viruses may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for."
I agree with this but I think you could say: These first <any new scientific breakthrough examples> may be OK, the problem will be who gets to use the new technology and what they decide to use it for.
I agree that bio weapons get more attention than natural viruses because they involve someone doing something intentionally. But I don't think it makes sense. The way I see it the downside of my getting killed by an intentional attack is that I'm dead. The downside of my getting killed by a natural virus is that I'm dead. Whether or not anyone intended me to be dead doesn't modify that downside at all for me. If society is going to try to do some stuff to prevent me (and others) from becoming prematurely dead, it seems to me it would make sense to allocate more resources to things that are more likely to kill people.
But just to be clear, you're not playing nitpicky word games here, or say, ignoring 2 out of 3 quotes entirely...
I'd tell you to RTFA, but if the editors aren't going to, it's obviously to much to ask.
"Death of Free software ?
Pure high quality top management PR bull$hit."
Pure Slashdot invention actually. Nowhere in the article does MS or anyone else make any mention of the "Death of Free software", or any related phrase or concept. Why bother even having a link to an article with such a bogus headline? They should just have a weekly Ask Slashdot: "Someone once suggested MS software might have once had some redeeming feature somewhere, and that not every peice of open source software was the ultimate paragon of perfection. Obviously that's false, so there's no real question here. We're sure you'll have lots of answers anyway."
Give me a break. One of the big ideas with computer voting is you eliminate any way to determine if anyone added, replaced or destroyed votes. Computer voting doesn't make fraud any harder, just detecting it. And besides fraud, how about innocent error. It certainly happens with computer voting, but there's no way to check up on it. Consider the case in the story. Far more votes were counted than there were voters. Yup, that's pretty embarassing. But what if the problem had just caused votes to be counted for the wrong candidate, without anything so obvious. Would we ever know it happened? Can you say with any confidence it hasn't happened? With paper ballots, I can go back and look at the actual marks made by the actual voter, and count them again.
Is fraud with paper ballots a problem? Sure. But electronic ballots just make it a lot worse.