Don't be silly. Weapons manufacturers donate heavily to politicians. Those who receive grants for research do not. Why cut your own throat simply because it makes more sense in the long run?
I've wondered if I have any neanderthal lineage. Not because of my behavior but because I have a heavy west Irish genetic background. It would have been a corner into which the neanderthals would have retreated as they were beaten out of the rest of Europe. Google and you'll see that red hair -- a hallmark of Irish lineage -- has been postulated to be a genetic legacy of the neanderthals.
If you write a script, you're certain that the changes made will be identical on each box.
One little mistake in the script and you fuck up the whole organization.
Perhaps so, but the scripted mistake is easily fixed because every single machine exhibits the same symptoms. Easy to debug. Once debugged, easy to fix.
Do you think it better to have a half-dozen different mistakes on a half-dozen different servers in a pool of 40?
I used to be a deputy director at a board of elections in Ohio. The county used Diebold machines.
These systems are drastically more expensive than the older method of voting; there is absolutely no cost savings, whatsoever. It is not uncommon for poll workers to break the systems because of their ignorance or carelessness in working with the hardware. A broken Diebold voting system is VERY expensive to correct. The old systems? Cheap as dirt and easy to replace.
The likelihood of a major problem is far greater with the Diebold systems than with the older stuff. Trying to get octagenarian poll workers to successfully use hardware that they've used only a few times ever, and with little training 6 weeks prior to the election? Yah...good luck with that.
And uniformity across counties using the hardware? Hah! In the county where I worked, one single individual wrote software to "assist" in tallying the votes. I have no idea what the software did because he refused to document the software, and he refused to comment his code EVER. After he left the office he CONTINUED TO UPDATE THE SOFTWARE. I tried to figure out what it was doing by staring at the code, but that's tough when the code changes every day and the author refuses to explain even the broad outlines of how it works.
So I could buy a proprietary device to read a proprietary format (which I also have to purchase) which will be obsolete in 3 years, or I can buy a physical book and still have it (perfectly readable!) in 25 years?
Er...thanks, Amazon, but I'll pass. Give me a book made 'o paper. (May as well buy a hardcover. Paperbacks are so expensive anymore that I feel ripped off spending 8 bucks on something that disposable.)
Call your local university and ask this question of someone in the anthropology department. Someone who specializes in cultural anthropology.
Anthropologists study different cultures with the same intensity as your average Slashdotter studying operating systems and programming languages. Few others are as well-equipped to answer this question...
...but the election officials will fight change tooth-and-nail.
Is it because they find it to be a valuable tool?
Is it because the technology does something that no other product or process can?
Or maybe because they get free stuff (i.e. bribes) from Diebold to stay where they are?
Nope. They just don't want to have to learn anything new.
Any change in the processes & technology will be achieved against the wishes of the election officials who should be working for our interests but instead are seeking the easiest path.
Errr....I think someone has a grave misunderstanding of how our electoral system works in the U.S.
Speaking as a deputy director of a Board of Elections[1] in Ohio, I will say that yes we DO count all of the absentee ballots, regardless of how unbalanced the race results are. The absentees are counted and are included in the results that we report on election day after the polls close.
And for those who maintain that provisional ballots aren't counted either...yes, we count those too. And, once again, we count them regardless of how unbalanced the race results are.
Provisional votes, however, are not counted on election day; we have to research the validity of every provisional ballot in the 10 days after the election to ensure whether or not it can be counted.
It's funny. Just yesterday one of the 4 board members called into the office to report that his mother -- a cashier at one of the local restaurants -- was talking to a customer who informed her that "naw...I ain't votin' absentee...they never count them votes!" This seems to be a very common belief in America. Completely wrong, but pretty common.
footnotes:
[1] Our county uses the Diebold touchscreen machines, in case you care. Personally, I've worked in debugging software for more than a decade and am a luddite when it comes to election technology.
I think we'd be better off if we still used the old punchcards. They were cheaper, non-proprietary, simpler for our non-tech-savvy poll workers to understand, cheaper, easier to archive, and a lot less hassle overall. (Oh...and did I mention they were a lot cheaper?)
And just WHY do they need to be ultra-secret about investigating spammers? Spammers are just the odd, solitary weasel bulk-mailing you and me! The last thing the government needs is more uber-secrecy, especially over something as wide-ranging as spam.
Transparency. Let's have it in gov't for a change...we haven't seen much of it since Bu$h took office, and I'm really beginning to miss it.
"in a market downturn like right now, unless he's willing to basically eat the cost of his current house, he's not gonna be able to get a new one."
Bah!
The interest rates are at their lowest levels in decades! The housing market isn't dead yet. I put my house on the market 2 weeks ago...within 1 week, we had 4 offers. This is not a perfect house -- termite damage, ancient furnace, etc -- but it "has character". Yeah, we got lucky that it went so quickly, but if the market was REALLY dead, then it would NEVER have gotten offers so quickly.
On the other hand, if you are truly stuck with a house that you simply cannot get rid of, then you have to ask yourself: Did you live above your means and buy an over-priced house? Now that the market is collapsing, there are plenty of too-expensive places around. Next time, don't bite-off more than you can chew.
Waaayyy back in 1993-4 when I was in grad school, I discovered the 'net. It was most excellent and extremely cool.
At the time, everybody knew who Brendan Kehoe was, and there was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy when he was involved in a major traffic accident.
Then, as 1994 turned into 1995, the Internet was flooded with newbies. AOLers in particular were singled out for their utter lack of netiquette. There is no modern analog to Brendan Kehoe (or Kibo, or any other 'net personality).
What was occuring was the death of the Internet subculture. Lots of the pre-1994 Internet users still use the 'net, but we don't have the same feeling about it...it's no longer a community, it's a tool.
That's how I see the Linux community. Long-time users are being relegated to a smaller and smaller proportion of the total number of Linux users. Decisions are increasingly being made based on money, rather than "because it's fun and cool". And there's not a thing we can do about it.
Just as the Internet went from being a geek-haven to being a superhighway filled with porno-sites, so will Linux be transformed by the new users (and new uses) during the upcoming years. I shudder to think of what the end result will be.
The folks who are trying to hold onto this sense of community seem to be aggregating around Debian, or creating their own "unpolluted" distros.
Enjoy the Linux community while you are able to, folks. It's not going to last much longer. Already my Linux-user's-group listserv is increasingly innundated by people migrating from the DOS/Windoze world who are asking lots of questions which seem blatantly obvious to a veteran unix user.
These people are the AOLers of the Linux world...carpetbaggers who are riding the wave. Their intentions may be the best, but they're not going to learn the history of Unix and various arcane commands and such. They're not going to take the time to learn what not to say before they speak. They'll be downright annoying.
This is not to put down new Linux users. Hey...you've gotta learn somewhere! But the older users will become increasingly fed up with answering the same question for the 10000th time, and will drop off the lists. Then the lists will lose their decent signal-to-noise ratio.
For me, I'll use Linux while it suits my needs. I'll probably switch to BSD the first time a friend or family member calls asking me to do tech-support for 'em.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be silly. Weapons manufacturers donate heavily to politicians. Those who receive grants for research do not. Why cut your own throat simply because it makes more sense in the long run?
What about ANGBAND??? Surely the hours I've poured into that have improved me in some way? Surely???
I've wondered if I have any neanderthal lineage. Not because of my behavior but because I have a heavy west Irish genetic background. It would have been a corner into which the neanderthals would have retreated as they were beaten out of the rest of Europe. Google and you'll see that red hair -- a hallmark of Irish lineage -- has been postulated to be a genetic legacy of the neanderthals.
If you write a script, you're certain that the changes made will be identical on each box.
One little mistake in the script and you fuck up the whole organization.
Perhaps so, but the scripted mistake is easily fixed because every single machine exhibits the same symptoms. Easy to debug. Once debugged, easy to fix.
Do you think it better to have a half-dozen different mistakes on a half-dozen different servers in a pool of 40?
I used to be a deputy director at a board of elections in Ohio. The county used Diebold machines.
These systems are drastically more expensive than the older method of voting; there is absolutely no cost savings, whatsoever. It is not uncommon for poll workers to break the systems because of their ignorance or carelessness in working with the hardware. A broken Diebold voting system is VERY expensive to correct. The old systems? Cheap as dirt and easy to replace.
The likelihood of a major problem is far greater with the Diebold systems than with the older stuff. Trying to get octagenarian poll workers to successfully use hardware that they've used only a few times ever, and with little training 6 weeks prior to the election? Yah...good luck with that.
And uniformity across counties using the hardware? Hah! In the county where I worked, one single individual wrote software to "assist" in tallying the votes. I have no idea what the software did because he refused to document the software, and he refused to comment his code EVER. After he left the office he CONTINUED TO UPDATE THE SOFTWARE. I tried to figure out what it was doing by staring at the code, but that's tough when the code changes every day and the author refuses to explain even the broad outlines of how it works.
I could go on and on...but you get the idea.
Yeah...it'll probably take no more than 8 weeks.
So I could buy a proprietary device to read a proprietary format (which I also have to purchase) which will be obsolete in 3 years, or I can buy a physical book and still have it (perfectly readable!) in 25 years?
Er...thanks, Amazon, but I'll pass. Give me a book made 'o paper. (May as well buy a hardcover. Paperbacks are so expensive anymore that I feel ripped off spending 8 bucks on something that disposable.)
Call your local university and ask this question of someone in the anthropology department. Someone who specializes in cultural anthropology.
Anthropologists study different cultures with the same intensity as your average Slashdotter studying operating systems and programming languages. Few others are as well-equipped to answer this question...
...but the election officials will fight change tooth-and-nail.
Is it because they find it to be a valuable tool?
Is it because the technology does something that no other product or process can?
Or maybe because they get free stuff (i.e. bribes) from Diebold to stay where they are?
Nope. They just don't want to have to learn anything new.
Any change in the processes & technology will be achieved against the wishes of the election officials who should be working for our interests but instead are seeking the easiest path.
A (thankfully FORMER) elections official.
Don't ask Slashdot, ask yourself:
"What would the BOFH do in my position?"
Then profit.
I'd rather have a sonic screwdriver any day of the week...
Errr....I think someone has a grave misunderstanding of how our electoral system works in the U.S.
Speaking as a deputy director of a Board of Elections[1] in Ohio, I will say that yes we DO count all of the absentee ballots, regardless of how unbalanced the race results are. The absentees are counted and are included in the results that we report on election day after the polls close.
And for those who maintain that provisional ballots aren't counted either...yes, we count those too. And, once again, we count them regardless of how unbalanced the race results are.
Provisional votes, however, are not counted on election day; we have to research the validity of every provisional ballot in the 10 days after the election to ensure whether or not it can be counted.
It's funny. Just yesterday one of the 4 board members called into the office to report that his mother -- a cashier at one of the local restaurants -- was talking to a customer who informed her that "naw...I ain't votin' absentee...they never count them votes!" This seems to be a very common belief in America. Completely wrong, but pretty common.
footnotes:
[1] Our county uses the Diebold touchscreen machines, in case you care. Personally, I've worked in debugging software for more than a decade and am a luddite when it comes to election technology.
I think we'd be better off if we still used the old punchcards. They were cheaper, non-proprietary, simpler for our non-tech-savvy poll workers to understand, cheaper, easier to archive, and a lot less hassle overall. (Oh...and did I mention they were a lot cheaper?)
And just WHY do they need to be ultra-secret about investigating spammers? Spammers are just the odd, solitary weasel bulk-mailing you and me! The last thing the government needs is more uber-secrecy, especially over something as wide-ranging as spam.
Transparency. Let's have it in gov't for a change...we haven't seen much of it since Bu$h took office, and I'm really beginning to miss it.
"in a market downturn like right now, unless he's willing to basically eat the cost of his current house, he's not gonna be able to get a new one."
Bah!
The interest rates are at their lowest levels in decades! The housing market isn't dead yet. I put my house on the market 2 weeks ago...within 1 week, we had 4 offers. This is not a perfect house -- termite damage, ancient furnace, etc -- but it "has character". Yeah, we got lucky that it went so quickly, but if the market was REALLY dead, then it would NEVER have gotten offers so quickly.
On the other hand, if you are truly stuck with a house that you simply cannot get rid of, then you have to ask yourself: Did you live above your means and buy an over-priced house? Now that the market is collapsing, there are plenty of too-expensive places around. Next time, don't bite-off more than you can chew.
Waaayyy back in 1993-4 when I was in grad school, I discovered the 'net. It was most excellent and extremely cool.
:-)
At the time, everybody knew who Brendan Kehoe was, and there was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy when he was involved in a major traffic accident.
Then, as 1994 turned into 1995, the Internet was flooded with newbies. AOLers in particular were singled out for their utter lack of netiquette. There is no modern analog to Brendan Kehoe (or Kibo, or any other 'net personality).
What was occuring was the death of the Internet subculture. Lots of the pre-1994 Internet users still use the 'net, but we don't have the same feeling about it...it's no longer a community, it's a tool.
That's how I see the Linux community. Long-time users are being relegated to a smaller and smaller proportion of the total number of Linux users. Decisions are increasingly being made based on money, rather than "because it's fun and cool". And there's not a thing we can do about it.
Just as the Internet went from being a geek-haven to being a superhighway filled with porno-sites, so will Linux be transformed by the new users (and new uses) during the upcoming years. I shudder to think of what the end result will be.
The folks who are trying to hold onto this sense of community seem to be aggregating around Debian, or creating their own "unpolluted" distros.
Enjoy the Linux community while you are able to, folks. It's not going to last much longer. Already my Linux-user's-group listserv is increasingly innundated by people migrating from the DOS/Windoze world who are asking lots of questions which seem blatantly obvious to a veteran unix user.
These people are the AOLers of the Linux world...carpetbaggers who are riding the wave. Their intentions may be the best, but they're not going to learn the history of Unix and various arcane commands and such. They're not going to take the time to learn what not to say before they speak. They'll be downright annoying.
This is not to put down new Linux users. Hey...you've gotta learn somewhere! But the older users will become increasingly fed up with answering the same question for the 10000th time, and will drop off the lists. Then the lists will lose their decent signal-to-noise ratio.
For me, I'll use Linux while it suits my needs. I'll probably switch to BSD the first time a friend or family member calls asking me to do tech-support for 'em.