And your post just proved that you know nothing about anything.
Mac OS developers DID do more work to make things "easier" on the users. "Easier" in this case means not accidentally losing data or fucking up their files, as opposed to being able to remove media on a whim before the OS knows about it.
Wake up.
And the statement "Principle: The user is in charge and should be free to carry out any activity at any time without fear of reprisals" is complete bullshit. I'm not advocating not doing work to make things easy on the user. Far from it. What I'm saying is that it is NOT POSSIBLE to allow the user to do anything at all at any time, AND have predictable results, no matter how much "work" you want to do. If you don't understand the main point here, I have nothing more to say to you, because you'd be completely wrong.
Mac OS X also lets you do what you describe (i.e., simply save the open file to a different destination). But it ALSO complains that the device has been removed before properly unmounting it, the overall benefit of which (for ALL users) likely outweighs any complaints some people have about this behavior. A reasonable compromise might be an option to turn this behavior OFF somewhere in the OS, but intrinsically, Mac OS X really, really likes to know when filesystems go away. Frankly, Windows does too: it just gives the user less feedback.
I'm trying to remember the error I got last time my cheap-ass switch crashed while windows was writing data to an SMB volume...
Something along the lines of:
"Windows failed to write files to a volume. These files may have been lost."
No applications crashed, no nothing but that error.
That's about as gracefully as is necessary when it comes to the user purposely (or accidentally) abusing the computer.
Yeah - and that's fine. And Mac OS X does essentially the same thing. But Tog is somehow asserting that Windows does/did it "better", because it used to let you remove a floppy without doing something in the OS to unmount the volume. Huh? So what? A user could still screw up their data; they have LESS of a chance doing that when they're at least warned BEFORE they unexpectedly remove a volume.
I think the best would be if the computer told you the drive/disk/whatever with the file was no longer connected and let you re-connect it and then continue with what you were doing.
Let them fuck up their documents? They can already do that: it's not like a Mac physically doesn't let you unplug a FireWire disk (and I already said his story about his Mac not booting because of that isn't true). I'd rather that the computer tried to enforce behavior that attempted to ensure the user isn't losing data.
...and even more ironic is that Tog already used the automotive analogy for his number one issue, i.e., "imagine if a car did this", and then turns around and says the user (driver) should be allowed to do anything at any time.
...but you presumably knew you WANTED to remove it.
What if a user has an open file, and yanks the drive? How does Windows "gracefully" deal with that? Answer: it can't.
You can pull the drive on a Mac, too - the difference is that the Mac will say, hey, you should have unmounted this first...hope you saved everything. And instead of doing something like auto-unmounting-without-nagging-when-no-files-are- open, Apple just keeps the behavior consistent: the user should know they're done using the volume (unmount it) before they unplug it. This has been the behavior for 20 years. And no, I'm not saying just because something has been some way for a long time that it needs to remain, but I just don't see the problem. Not allowing a device to be removed, or "nagging", probably saves a lot of people from fucking shit up before they've properly saved and/or dealt with items on a removable volume, instead of allowing things to be unplugged wholesale. If the user unplugs something at an inopportune moment or with open files, how is the computer supposed to be able to deal with it? Cache up the changes and not tell you? Or tell you that something was removed when it wasn't supposed to be and tell you (and keep that behavior consistent even when you "might be done with it"), like Mac OS does?
Like the thing about disk removal. The only thing Windows handles being removed "gracefully" is a floppy (and I'd hardly say "gracefully", if you had a file open on the disk). And Mac OS could have done that, but the idea was to prevent the user from removing the disk until, say, its contents have been properly saved. So Windows let you remove a floppy. So what? What if you hadn't saved the file on it that you "meant" to? Then what? At least Mac OS enforced the proper order of operations, i.e., finish what you're doing with the disk first, then eject. To insinuate that Windows gracefully handles the unexpected removal of USB and/or FireWire external volumes is crap. Since Macs don't even have floppies anymore, and this argument doesn't apply to FireWire/USB volumes (though he implies that it does), this argument is somewhat moot.
And I can categorically say that his "computer not booting" story after he removed a FireWire drive is bullshit. If you remove the drive while it's asleep, yeah, it won't like that when it wakes up; usually, it will say a FireWire device has been removed before being unmounted. Worst case scenario would be rebooting the computer. But there is no way the computer just "wouldn't work" until the drive is plugged back in. That's just bollocks. Sounds like he had one bad/erratic experience that he thought was related to disk removal, and created this entire issue around it.
Other observations are kind of generic wishlists for the behavior of various features and functions. Some of them are frankly good ideas.
But when I read "Principle: The user is in charge and should be free to carry out any activity at any time without fear of reprisals" I just about lost my lunch.
Federal funding is the only thing that is disallowed.
There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research of any kind in the US - only federal funding for research on non-approved lines.
Bush is the first president to allow ANY federal funding for embryonic stem cell research; it's just that it was only allowed on pre-existing lines representing embryos that had already been destroyed. It disallowed federal funding on NEW lines that would require the destruction of new embryos. (And if they're against destroying embryos for abortions, at least the position is logically consistent, eh? And when is it life, actually? When it pops out of the womb? When it's "wanted"? Some arbitrary point in the timeline? Don't pretend like you have all the answers, because you don't. There are serious ethical questions here. We could also learn a lot from experimenting on live infants, or gain a lot from farming humans for organs - but we have ethical boundaries that we don't cross, and when the line gets blurry, it would behoove you to not pretend like you have all the answers.)
Stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research, is NOT BANNED. The only "ban" is on the FEDERAL FUNDING of embryonic stem cell research on NON-APPROVED LINES. Get it now?
...how fast this could transfer the sum of all data (DNA, memory, etc.) contained in a human.
Yes, I'm kidding. But only half kidding. In some crazy future where we can reconstitute energy into matter, how much bandwidth would be needed to do this practically? Do we even have any ideas or estimates on how much storage would be needed to accurately represent the nature of the human body in terms of data? And no, I'm not talking about the "memory" of the brain - I'm talking about the physical manifestation of the body itself, of which the memory of the brain is a part.
LEDtronics has had LED bulbs and retrofits for just about every kind of application, voltage, and base around. They've got floods, conventional bulbs, automotive and truck retrofits, signage, in just about every color and brightness imaginable. They've even got an incandescent cross reference guide, which lets you use the Incandescent Bulb Number, type, base, or voltage to search for LED replacements. And, they've got a much wider selection of LED floods, and replacements for just about every kind of household bulb out there.
Yes, they're more expensive, and the nature of LED light means it needs to have some fancy design and optics to make it sensible for conventional lighting use, but it uses much less power than even compact fluorescent, and is potentially even more durable and reliable.
I didn't vote for Bush. But I guess that makes me a "right wing propagandist". What does it make you when you ignore John Kerry's 2-year, $300 million, 3600 lawyer campaign, the entire DNC, every journalist with the media outlets who ravenously covered the Florida 2000 debacle, etc., who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election? If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.
And, it doesn't take much to figure out that the Berkeley "report" doesn't "prove" anything. It can NEVER prove anything. Numerous voting watchers have already said that the Republicans had very effective - and statistically unexpected - get-out-the-vote campaigns in hundreds of precincts around the country, many in areas that don't even use electronic voting at all. But you'll just ignore that. Not to mention that the authors of the Berkeley paper are, a.) associated with one of the most known liberal institutions in the country, and b.) probably are not, shall we say, "Bush supporters" themselves. You'll also ignore the entire CalTech/MIT Voting Project, who say there's simply NO EVIDENCE to support the theory that the election was "stolen", or that there were any fraud or errors that could come anywhere close to changing the outcome of the election. In fact, you'll ignore anything that doesn't support your view that the election was subverted (just like you also believe it was in 2000). (And by the way, Florida doesn't use Diebold - they use Sequoia and ES&S...are you alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors are in on it now, and that the county election officials are complicit?)
There is no way for ANYONE to categorically "prove" that the election was or wasn't tampered with in ANY precinct that uses many of these e-voting machines. That's the whole problem. So, since the people who matter, i.e., Kerry's whole campaign, and all the big Democratic groups, the FEC, etc., all don't believe there was any statistically relevant fraud or errors in the 2004 election, meaning that its results WILL NOT CHANGE, why not concentrate on doing the things we need to do to get paper trails and open source software on all e-voting hardware before they're MANDATED TO BE INSTALLED in January 2006, so we won't be back here having this same discussion over and over and over again in 2008, 2012, etc.
By the way, to preempt it from coming from you, my favorite conspiracy theory is that John Kerry's campaign probably decided that even though there was widespread fraud and that Bush likely "stole" the election with e-voting machines, he decided that it was "best for the country" to concede, because any accusations of fraud wouldn't be met very kindly by Bush supporters, and those in power in the government.
Or, an alternate version: the Democrats conceded even though Bush stole the election so that Hillary (and Bill) could run in 2008.
The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".
My favorite retort for this one is that all of the corporate media (i.e., all mainstream newspapers, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FNC, etc.) are all in Bush's "pocket", and that even though there is widespread proof of election fraud, the corporate press has ordered all of its staff to "lock the story down" and not speak of it further. (Of course, Common Dreams, dailykos, truthout, etc., have the "real" story.)
The thing about conspiracy theories is that their tautologies: everything can be neatly explained away, no matter how absurd it is, and you can still believe what you want to believe.
Where's the responsibility of the governments in question? No, not us, the governments of the countries where the facility is actually operating and employing people. Why do they have absolutely no responsibility?
Also, here's a little more accurate rendition of how your plan would go:
1. Pass a law requiring US companies to do uphold strict labor and environmental standards for operations that aren't even in the US. (You do realize while some of these corporations started in the US, and have their primary "headquarters" in the US, that they are no longer exclusively "US companies" once they start operating on other countries.)
2. Instead of these companies keeping their incorporation in the US, they'll move it elsewhere. Great plan!
So when what do you do then? Make laws saying you can only SELL things in the US if you uphold said standards? Cut the US off from the global economy?
Sorry, but while I believe that US corporations and the US government have some responsibility here because of our position, most of the responsibility, in our current world order, rests on the governments of the nations. We should work to press these nations to adopt reasonable standards, and empowering workers with good wages and conditions with our own companies operating there is a start (and frankly, we already do that to an extent), but ultimately the responsibility is not with the US.
Surprisingly, a person who works at a sex toy shop called Good Vibrations doesn't agree with the researcher's conclusions!
Let's just face the facts that some people are more prone to addictive behaviors, and it can happen with anything: drugs, shopping, gambling, sex, and yes, pornography. The putative argument is that with the abundance of free porn on the internet, a porn addiction has the potential to be much more damaging, since it doesn't require the resources that other common addictions might. This is perfectly valid; it doesn't imply that everyone will be addicted to porn (or anything else), nor does it mean that internet porn will be "banned". It simply says an addiction with a free neverending supply can be harmful.
Is anyone the least bit surprised or concerned that a conservative Christian Republican senator from Kansas found the testimony "disturbing". How is this news?
(And as for the crack in the summary, believe it or not, there are some people who probably haven't had occasion to view porn on their computers. No. Really.)
[1]Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today."
"The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."
Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.
Friday, November 19, 2004 Posted: 5:51 PM EST (2251 GMT)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- John Kerry conceded defeat more than two weeks ago, and President Bush has already revamped his Cabinet. But as states certify final election returns, an academic debate over their accuracy is heating up.
None of the experts examining the returns has discovered voting anomalies significant enough to have swung the election.
Despite Internet-circulated speculation that Bush's victory was somehow stolen or rigged, the incumbent's clear margin in the popular vote count is much wider than any of the problems reported to date -- be they voting technology failures, problems with provisional ballots or partisan shenanigans.
"We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the election for President Bush," researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in an influential report based on early unofficial returns in Florida.
Still, many Americans who mistrust e-voting have seized on the exit polls, wondering whether something nefarious might explain what happened on November 2.
Early in the day, exit polling suggested Kerry was heading for a close win in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania; by day's end, Kerry had won Pennsylvania but Bush had comfortable margins in both Florida and Ohio.
While voting machine makers said their equipment had few problems given the millions of ballots cast, watchdog groups received about 2,000 complaints about lost and miscounted votes and machine breakdowns.
Nearly three-dozen Kerry supporters in Florida said they had to repeatedly override the machines to avoid having their votes recorded for Bush.
Internet buzz that perhaps the exit polls were correct and the actual returns might be flawed grew louder this week when sociology graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went public with an analysis arguing that Florida results in counties using electronic ballots differed from historical voting patterns.
These counties delivered 130,000 to 260,000 more votes for Bush than the group expected, based on a statistical model that factored in population trends, income levels and other predictors of voting behavior.
The official vote count shows Bush won Florida by nearly a 381,000-vote margin, with strong growth in the traditionally Democratic counties of south Florida.
Critics of the Berkeley research say Bush's success may simply be due to a better get-out-the-vote effort, or fears of terrorism driving many Democrats to choose Bush over party loyalty.
"Nationwide it looks like, regardless of the type of voting machines used, Bush was getting a faster mobilization of voters in traditionally Democratic areas than were the Democrats," said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who specializes in American politics and research methodology.
Stewart said any Florida discrepancies between historic patterns and the November 2 vote may be explained by nationwide trends -- for example, while Republicans easily won many rural and suburban areas they also made impressive gains in urban areas.
The state that gave Bush the biggest number of votes was New York, which does not use electronic voting machines. South Florida -- the state's most urban region -- may have followed a similar pattern of showing steady Republican gains, Stewart said.
But because touch-screen machines lack paper records and ballots can't be examined individually in a recount, the Berkeley students said looking for anomalies is the only way to gauge whether the machines recorded ballots the way voters intended.
Since e-voting is still in its relative infancy, and most experts, including people working for the DNC and Kerry's own campaign, don't think there were errors and/or fraud that would rise to the level of altering the outcome of the election (hint: there will ALWAYS be some level of fraud and errors, but ultimately it's fraud or errors that could change the outcome that are important), I would like to devote my energy to having accountable systems available by the time HAVA mandates their installation, instead of carping about what might have happened in 2000 and 2004, so we won't be having this same discussion in 2008.
You could urge your senators and your representative to support these bills. You could tell your elected county officials that the aspects of these bills are very important to you.
But if you've already given up, you're part of the problem, not the solution.
Heh. "Looks like Russia has picked up where the U.S. failed".
Yeah. Because the US just loves pollution.
Anyone find it extremely ironic that groups of people who really hate Bush chastise Bush about the US losing manufacturing and blue collar jobs - and in fact whole companies - overseas, and that other groups of people who really hate Bush (sometimes the same groups, in fact) chastise Bush for not signing onto Kyoto, when those two positions in this context are essentially diametrically opposed?
We're not signing onto Kyoto because it exempts nations termed as "developing". Nations like China. That doesn't exactly level the playing field when we're losing manufacturing jobs to places like China like it's going out of style as it is. Further, the EPA, and the whole of the US government, is committed to the principles of Kyoto, but we will not ratify such an unbalanced agreement.
This isn't a bid to line pockets of corporate officers. This doesn't mean Republicans hate clean air and throw caution about potential global warming concerns to the wind. This means the US is trying to stay competitive in a global economy, where we're losing jobs where someone who got paid US$22/hour for turning a bolt on an assembly line for 17 years is losing his job to someone who gets paid US$22/month to do the same job. This is a hope to at least keep *some* of these jobs during a long period of economic transition.
Note to the US Kyoto activists: you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either we lose jobs and US companies to places like China, or we sign on to Kyoto. Yes, there's a lot of nuance, but I'm afraid that it's that simple.
(Hopefully, as economies equalize, a new industrialized West will manage to emerge from it, instead of being decimated by it in the meantime.)
If it isn't "fraud" that the Berkeley paper is alleging, then what, exactly, are they alleging?
The single quote that the grandparent picked out was just that: a single quote from an ABC story. There are plenty of other people, not the least of which would be John Kerry's 2-year, $300 million, 3600 lawyer campaign, the entire DNC, every journalist with the major media outlets who ravenously covered the Florida 2000 debacle, etc., who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election. If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.
The point isn't whether or not there was some fraud. There has been fraud in every election since the beginning of time. I'll but the argument that unaccountable electronic systems with no paper trail make the fraud "easier", but it still has to be done on a county-by-county basis, and executed maliciously by the very same people who have always been entrusted with our elections.
Whether there was fraud or not, or in Bush's favor or not, there wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election, nor any state's electoral votes. So, while people are certainly welcome to specifically and individually prove cases of distinct fraud, it would seem that the most reasonable thing to do is to FIX THE SYSTEMS so we won't have these same discussions in November 2008.
Also, consider that Berkeley isn't quite known to be unbiased. I'm not saying they're "lying", but I doubt any of the authors of that study are, shall we say, "Bush supporters".
I didn't mention it in my original message, but my favorite conspiracy theory is that John Kerry's campaign probably decided that even though there was widespread fraud and that Bush likely "stole" the election with e-voting machines, he decided that it was "best for the country" to concede, because any accusations of fraud wouldn't be met very kindly by Bush supporters, and those in power in the government.
Or, an alternate version: the Democrats conceded even though Bush stole the election so that Hillary (and Bill) could run in 2008.
The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".
My favorite retort for this one is that all of the corporate media (i.e., all mainstream newspapers, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FNC, etc.) are all in Bush's "pocket", and that even though there is widespread proof of election fraud, the corporate press has ordered all of its staff to "lock the story down" and not speak of it further. (Of course, Common Dreams, dailykos, truthout, etc., have the "real" story.)
The thing about conspiracy theories is that their tautologies: everything can be neatly explained away, no matter how absurd it is, and you can still believe what you want to believe.
The election was not stolen. Bush won. (I didn't vote for Bush.) Get over it.
WHY WERE THERE NO PAPER TRAILS? Why are we allowing voting to go on in a system that has NOT been proven safe? We aren't allowed to view the code, we aren't allowed to audit our vote except via what is shown to us on the screen, and we have to invest an enormous amount of trust in two large entities that have proven they are NOT worthy of our trust.
There were no paper trails because none were specified as a part of HAVA. Remember, HAVA, the bill that requires e-voting terminals to replace paper systems, *came into being* because of the unfairness that was alleged to have surrounded paper systems in the 2000 election in Florida, and in many other (predominantly poor) areas around the country. And Congress didn't likely ask for open source, because we don't ask for open source in so many other critical systems that we trust with things like power, money, and even our lives. Likely, they just assumed that we'd be able to make accountable systems for e-voting, and really didn't stop to think that our democracy and the voting process is possibly much more important than the other things I mentioned, not out of malice.
Were people permitted to use paper and pencil/pen or more trusted/tried solutions instead of these machines? I certainly would have opted against using one of the e-voting machines knowing what I know and being the paranoid individual I am.
Some precincts did allow the use of paper ballots. Some didn't. But the PAPER BALLOTS, and their associated problems, are what is being blamed, among other things, for some of the problems in the 2000 election! HAVA is trying to make voting consistent and fair for all voters in all jurisdictions, so we should work to fix it! And the bills that are already out there will do just that, adding BOTH a paper trail for each and every vote cast, verified by the voter, PLUS open source code on all e-voting equipment.
Until the voting machines and their code are open to the public for audit and there is a paper trail I will refuse to use them. This MUST be an option for everyone. I don't see why it can't be the case.
Because having multiple systems that have to be administered by local election authorities will complicate matters even more than they are now. We simply must DEMAND that there be a paper trail at a very minimum, and that the code that runs these systems be open for public inspection via some mechanism, period.
Some places are requiring a paper audit trail by 2006 but that doesn't help the fact that there could have been some hanky panky going on right here in THIS election.
Okay, agreed. Let's just say there WAS some malicious hanky panky. Kerry's 3600 lawyers, and all of the major media organizations who searched high and low for a big story (remember how big of a deal Florida 2000 was), didn't think there was ENOUGH hanky panky (or errors) to warrant doing anything about it, since it is universally agreed by these same people that it wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election.
So, given that, let's make sure it's fixed by the NEXT election, yes?
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And your post just proved that you know nothing about anything.
Mac OS developers DID do more work to make things "easier" on the users. "Easier" in this case means not accidentally losing data or fucking up their files, as opposed to being able to remove media on a whim before the OS knows about it.
Wake up.
And the statement "Principle: The user is in charge and should be free to carry out any activity at any time without fear of reprisals" is complete bullshit. I'm not advocating not doing work to make things easy on the user. Far from it. What I'm saying is that it is NOT POSSIBLE to allow the user to do anything at all at any time, AND have predictable results, no matter how much "work" you want to do. If you don't understand the main point here, I have nothing more to say to you, because you'd be completely wrong.
Mac OS X also lets you do what you describe (i.e., simply save the open file to a different destination). But it ALSO complains that the device has been removed before properly unmounting it, the overall benefit of which (for ALL users) likely outweighs any complaints some people have about this behavior. A reasonable compromise might be an option to turn this behavior OFF somewhere in the OS, but intrinsically, Mac OS X really, really likes to know when filesystems go away. Frankly, Windows does too: it just gives the user less feedback.
I'm trying to remember the error I got last time my cheap-ass switch crashed while windows was writing data to an SMB volume...
Something along the lines of:
"Windows failed to write files to a volume. These files may have been lost."
No applications crashed, no nothing but that error.
That's about as gracefully as is necessary when it comes to the user purposely (or accidentally) abusing the computer.
Yeah - and that's fine. And Mac OS X does essentially the same thing. But Tog is somehow asserting that Windows does/did it "better", because it used to let you remove a floppy without doing something in the OS to unmount the volume. Huh? So what? A user could still screw up their data; they have LESS of a chance doing that when they're at least warned BEFORE they unexpectedly remove a volume.
I think the best would be if the computer told you the drive/disk/whatever with the file was no longer connected and let you re-connect it and then continue with what you were doing.
Right. And Mac OS X does just that.
So how is that "better" for the user?
Let them fuck up their documents? They can already do that: it's not like a Mac physically doesn't let you unplug a FireWire disk (and I already said his story about his Mac not booting because of that isn't true). I'd rather that the computer tried to enforce behavior that attempted to ensure the user isn't losing data.
...and even more ironic is that Tog already used the automotive analogy for his number one issue, i.e., "imagine if a car did this", and then turns around and says the user (driver) should be allowed to do anything at any time.
...but you presumably knew you WANTED to remove it.
- open, Apple just keeps the behavior consistent: the user should know they're done using the volume (unmount it) before they unplug it. This has been the behavior for 20 years. And no, I'm not saying just because something has been some way for a long time that it needs to remain, but I just don't see the problem. Not allowing a device to be removed, or "nagging", probably saves a lot of people from fucking shit up before they've properly saved and/or dealt with items on a removable volume, instead of allowing things to be unplugged wholesale. If the user unplugs something at an inopportune moment or with open files, how is the computer supposed to be able to deal with it? Cache up the changes and not tell you? Or tell you that something was removed when it wasn't supposed to be and tell you (and keep that behavior consistent even when you "might be done with it"), like Mac OS does?
What if a user has an open file, and yanks the drive? How does Windows "gracefully" deal with that? Answer: it can't.
You can pull the drive on a Mac, too - the difference is that the Mac will say, hey, you should have unmounted this first...hope you saved everything. And instead of doing something like auto-unmounting-without-nagging-when-no-files-are
...and some aren't.
Like the thing about disk removal. The only thing Windows handles being removed "gracefully" is a floppy (and I'd hardly say "gracefully", if you had a file open on the disk). And Mac OS could have done that, but the idea was to prevent the user from removing the disk until, say, its contents have been properly saved. So Windows let you remove a floppy. So what? What if you hadn't saved the file on it that you "meant" to? Then what? At least Mac OS enforced the proper order of operations, i.e., finish what you're doing with the disk first, then eject. To insinuate that Windows gracefully handles the unexpected removal of USB and/or FireWire external volumes is crap. Since Macs don't even have floppies anymore, and this argument doesn't apply to FireWire/USB volumes (though he implies that it does), this argument is somewhat moot.
And I can categorically say that his "computer not booting" story after he removed a FireWire drive is bullshit. If you remove the drive while it's asleep, yeah, it won't like that when it wakes up; usually, it will say a FireWire device has been removed before being unmounted. Worst case scenario would be rebooting the computer. But there is no way the computer just "wouldn't work" until the drive is plugged back in. That's just bollocks. Sounds like he had one bad/erratic experience that he thought was related to disk removal, and created this entire issue around it.
Other observations are kind of generic wishlists for the behavior of various features and functions. Some of them are frankly good ideas.
But when I read "Principle: The user is in charge and should be free to carry out any activity at any time without fear of reprisals" I just about lost my lunch.
Federal funding is the only thing that is disallowed.
There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research of any kind in the US - only federal funding for research on non-approved lines.
Bush is the first president to allow ANY federal funding for embryonic stem cell research; it's just that it was only allowed on pre-existing lines representing embryos that had already been destroyed. It disallowed federal funding on NEW lines that would require the destruction of new embryos. (And if they're against destroying embryos for abortions, at least the position is logically consistent, eh? And when is it life, actually? When it pops out of the womb? When it's "wanted"? Some arbitrary point in the timeline? Don't pretend like you have all the answers, because you don't. There are serious ethical questions here. We could also learn a lot from experimenting on live infants, or gain a lot from farming humans for organs - but we have ethical boundaries that we don't cross, and when the line gets blurry, it would behoove you to not pretend like you have all the answers.)
Stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research, is NOT BANNED. The only "ban" is on the FEDERAL FUNDING of embryonic stem cell research on NON-APPROVED LINES. Get it now?
...how fast this could transfer the sum of all data (DNA, memory, etc.) contained in a human.
Yes, I'm kidding. But only half kidding. In some crazy future where we can reconstitute energy into matter, how much bandwidth would be needed to do this practically? Do we even have any ideas or estimates on how much storage would be needed to accurately represent the nature of the human body in terms of data? And no, I'm not talking about the "memory" of the brain - I'm talking about the physical manifestation of the body itself, of which the memory of the brain is a part.
...it WASN'T a PATRIOT Act subpoena, and you STILL got modded to +4 for the tired references to it and Ashcroft.
And he's resigned, for fuck's sake. Can we be on with it now?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: No.
If you're Sun: Yes.
...but not the most flexible, or widest variety.
LEDtronics has had LED bulbs and retrofits for just about every kind of application, voltage, and base around. They've got floods, conventional bulbs, automotive and truck retrofits, signage, in just about every color and brightness imaginable. They've even got an incandescent cross reference guide, which lets you use the Incandescent Bulb Number, type, base, or voltage to search for LED replacements. And, they've got a much wider selection of LED floods, and replacements for just about every kind of household bulb out there.
Yes, they're more expensive, and the nature of LED light means it needs to have some fancy design and optics to make it sensible for conventional lighting use, but it uses much less power than even compact fluorescent, and is potentially even more durable and reliable.
I didn't vote for Bush. But I guess that makes me a "right wing propagandist". What does it make you when you ignore John Kerry's 2-year, $300 million, 3600 lawyer campaign, the entire DNC, every journalist with the media outlets who ravenously covered the Florida 2000 debacle, etc., who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election? If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.
.aftermath.ap/
And, it doesn't take much to figure out that the Berkeley "report" doesn't "prove" anything. It can NEVER prove anything. Numerous voting watchers have already said that the Republicans had very effective - and statistically unexpected - get-out-the-vote campaigns in hundreds of precincts around the country, many in areas that don't even use electronic voting at all. But you'll just ignore that. Not to mention that the authors of the Berkeley paper are, a.) associated with one of the most known liberal institutions in the country, and b.) probably are not, shall we say, "Bush supporters" themselves. You'll also ignore the entire CalTech/MIT Voting Project, who say there's simply NO EVIDENCE to support the theory that the election was "stolen", or that there were any fraud or errors that could come anywhere close to changing the outcome of the election. In fact, you'll ignore anything that doesn't support your view that the election was subverted (just like you also believe it was in 2000). (And by the way, Florida doesn't use Diebold - they use Sequoia and ES&S...are you alleging that ALL THREE e-voting vendors are in on it now, and that the county election officials are complicit?)
There is no way for ANYONE to categorically "prove" that the election was or wasn't tampered with in ANY precinct that uses many of these e-voting machines. That's the whole problem. So, since the people who matter, i.e., Kerry's whole campaign, and all the big Democratic groups, the FEC, etc., all don't believe there was any statistically relevant fraud or errors in the 2004 election, meaning that its results WILL NOT CHANGE, why not concentrate on doing the things we need to do to get paper trails and open source software on all e-voting hardware before they're MANDATED TO BE INSTALLED in January 2006, so we won't be back here having this same discussion over and over and over again in 2008, 2012, etc.
By the way, to preempt it from coming from you, my favorite conspiracy theory is that John Kerry's campaign probably decided that even though there was widespread fraud and that Bush likely "stole" the election with e-voting machines, he decided that it was "best for the country" to concede, because any accusations of fraud wouldn't be met very kindly by Bush supporters, and those in power in the government.
Or, an alternate version: the Democrats conceded even though Bush stole the election so that Hillary (and Bill) could run in 2008.
The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".
My favorite retort for this one is that all of the corporate media (i.e., all mainstream newspapers, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FNC, etc.) are all in Bush's "pocket", and that even though there is widespread proof of election fraud, the corporate press has ordered all of its staff to "lock the story down" and not speak of it further. (Of course, Common Dreams, dailykos, truthout, etc., have the "real" story.)
The thing about conspiracy theories is that their tautologies: everything can be neatly explained away, no matter how absurd it is, and you can still believe what you want to believe.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/19/election
"We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electro
Where's the responsibility of the governments in question? No, not us, the governments of the countries where the facility is actually operating and employing people. Why do they have absolutely no responsibility?
Also, here's a little more accurate rendition of how your plan would go:
1. Pass a law requiring US companies to do uphold strict labor and environmental standards for operations that aren't even in the US. (You do realize while some of these corporations started in the US, and have their primary "headquarters" in the US, that they are no longer exclusively "US companies" once they start operating on other countries.)
2. Instead of these companies keeping their incorporation in the US, they'll move it elsewhere. Great plan!
So when what do you do then? Make laws saying you can only SELL things in the US if you uphold said standards? Cut the US off from the global economy?
Sorry, but while I believe that US corporations and the US government have some responsibility here because of our position, most of the responsibility, in our current world order, rests on the governments of the nations. We should work to press these nations to adopt reasonable standards, and empowering workers with good wages and conditions with our own companies operating there is a start (and frankly, we already do that to an extent), but ultimately the responsibility is not with the US.
Uhhh.... Except China is current exempt from its provisions. Nice try, though.
...a bill passed into law extending the ban on taxing internet access, a move that is very good for consumers.
Of course, this being slashdot, we'll post a story about it before the vote, not update it when the desired vote actually occurs, not post a new story about it passing, and instead post a story about a lone Senator's response to a University of Pennsylvania scientist's valid research opinions[1] (just as valid as, say, some sociology students alleging studying shaky, unprovable statistical anomalies in Florida voting, even as the MIT/Caltech Voting Project says there was no widespread fraud, tampering, or errors).
Surprisingly, a person who works at a sex toy shop called Good Vibrations doesn't agree with the researcher's conclusions!
Let's just face the facts that some people are more prone to addictive behaviors, and it can happen with anything: drugs, shopping, gambling, sex, and yes, pornography. The putative argument is that with the abundance of free porn on the internet, a porn addiction has the potential to be much more damaging, since it doesn't require the resources that other common addictions might. This is perfectly valid; it doesn't imply that everyone will be addicted to porn (or anything else), nor does it mean that internet porn will be "banned". It simply says an addiction with a free neverending supply can be harmful.
Is anyone the least bit surprised or concerned that a conservative Christian Republican senator from Kansas found the testimony "disturbing". How is this news?
(And as for the crack in the summary, believe it or not, there are some people who probably haven't had occasion to view porn on their computers. No. Really.)
[1]Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today."
"The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."
Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/19/election .aftermath.ap/
Academia still fixated on November 2
Friday, November 19, 2004 Posted: 5:51 PM EST (2251 GMT)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- John Kerry conceded defeat more than two weeks ago, and President Bush has already revamped his Cabinet. But as states certify final election returns, an academic debate over their accuracy is heating up.
None of the experts examining the returns has discovered voting anomalies significant enough to have swung the election.
Despite Internet-circulated speculation that Bush's victory was somehow stolen or rigged, the incumbent's clear margin in the popular vote count is much wider than any of the problems reported to date -- be they voting technology failures, problems with provisional ballots or partisan shenanigans.
"We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the election for President Bush," researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in an influential report based on early unofficial returns in Florida.
Still, many Americans who mistrust e-voting have seized on the exit polls, wondering whether something nefarious might explain what happened on November 2.
Early in the day, exit polling suggested Kerry was heading for a close win in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania; by day's end, Kerry had won Pennsylvania but Bush had comfortable margins in both Florida and Ohio.
While voting machine makers said their equipment had few problems given the millions of ballots cast, watchdog groups received about 2,000 complaints about lost and miscounted votes and machine breakdowns.
Nearly three-dozen Kerry supporters in Florida said they had to repeatedly override the machines to avoid having their votes recorded for Bush.
Internet buzz that perhaps the exit polls were correct and the actual returns might be flawed grew louder this week when sociology graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went public with an analysis arguing that Florida results in counties using electronic ballots differed from historical voting patterns.
These counties delivered 130,000 to 260,000 more votes for Bush than the group expected, based on a statistical model that factored in population trends, income levels and other predictors of voting behavior.
The official vote count shows Bush won Florida by nearly a 381,000-vote margin, with strong growth in the traditionally Democratic counties of south Florida.
Critics of the Berkeley research say Bush's success may simply be due to a better get-out-the-vote effort, or fears of terrorism driving many Democrats to choose Bush over party loyalty.
"Nationwide it looks like, regardless of the type of voting machines used, Bush was getting a faster mobilization of voters in traditionally Democratic areas than were the Democrats," said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who specializes in American politics and research methodology.
Stewart said any Florida discrepancies between historic patterns and the November 2 vote may be explained by nationwide trends -- for example, while Republicans easily won many rural and suburban areas they also made impressive gains in urban areas.
The state that gave Bush the biggest number of votes was New York, which does not use electronic voting machines. South Florida -- the state's most urban region -- may have followed a similar pattern of showing steady Republican gains, Stewart said.
But because touch-screen machines lack paper records and ballots can't be examined individually in a recount, the Berkeley students said looking for anomalies is the only way to gauge whether the machines recorded ballots the way voters intended.
They decided to create a model t
HAVA is to be in full effect by 1 January 2006.
Since e-voting is still in its relative infancy, and most experts, including people working for the DNC and Kerry's own campaign, don't think there were errors and/or fraud that would rise to the level of altering the outcome of the election (hint: there will ALWAYS be some level of fraud and errors, but ultimately it's fraud or errors that could change the outcome that are important), I would like to devote my energy to having accountable systems available by the time HAVA mandates their installation, instead of carping about what might have happened in 2000 and 2004, so we won't be having this same discussion in 2008.
I'm sorry you feel that you're living in 1984.
You could urge your senators and your representative to support these bills. You could tell your elected county officials that the aspects of these bills are very important to you.
But if you've already given up, you're part of the problem, not the solution.
Heh. "Looks like Russia has picked up where the U.S. failed".
Yeah. Because the US just loves pollution.
Anyone find it extremely ironic that groups of people who really hate Bush chastise Bush about the US losing manufacturing and blue collar jobs - and in fact whole companies - overseas, and that other groups of people who really hate Bush (sometimes the same groups, in fact) chastise Bush for not signing onto Kyoto, when those two positions in this context are essentially diametrically opposed?
We're not signing onto Kyoto because it exempts nations termed as "developing". Nations like China . That doesn't exactly level the playing field when we're losing manufacturing jobs to places like China like it's going out of style as it is. Further, the EPA, and the whole of the US government, is committed to the principles of Kyoto, but we will not ratify such an unbalanced agreement.
This isn't a bid to line pockets of corporate officers. This doesn't mean Republicans hate clean air and throw caution about potential global warming concerns to the wind. This means the US is trying to stay competitive in a global economy, where we're losing jobs where someone who got paid US$22/hour for turning a bolt on an assembly line for 17 years is losing his job to someone who gets paid US$22/month to do the same job. This is a hope to at least keep *some* of these jobs during a long period of economic transition.
Note to the US Kyoto activists: you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either we lose jobs and US companies to places like China, or we sign on to Kyoto. Yes, there's a lot of nuance, but I'm afraid that it's that simple.
(Hopefully, as economies equalize, a new industrialized West will manage to emerge from it, instead of being decimated by it in the meantime.)
If it isn't "fraud" that the Berkeley paper is alleging, then what, exactly, are they alleging?
The single quote that the grandparent picked out was just that: a single quote from an ABC story. There are plenty of other people, not the least of which would be John Kerry's 2-year, $300 million, 3600 lawyer campaign, the entire DNC, every journalist with the major media outlets who ravenously covered the Florida 2000 debacle, etc., who don't believe there was any level of fraud relevant enough to even have any possibility of altering the outcome of the election. If you want to believe those people are just shutting up "for the good of the country" or some other bullshit, be my guest.
The point isn't whether or not there was some fraud. There has been fraud in every election since the beginning of time. I'll but the argument that unaccountable electronic systems with no paper trail make the fraud "easier", but it still has to be done on a county-by-county basis, and executed maliciously by the very same people who have always been entrusted with our elections.
Whether there was fraud or not, or in Bush's favor or not, there wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election, nor any state's electoral votes. So, while people are certainly welcome to specifically and individually prove cases of distinct fraud, it would seem that the most reasonable thing to do is to FIX THE SYSTEMS so we won't have these same discussions in November 2008.
Also, consider that Berkeley isn't quite known to be unbiased. I'm not saying they're "lying", but I doubt any of the authors of that study are, shall we say, "Bush supporters".
I didn't mention it in my original message, but my favorite conspiracy theory is that John Kerry's campaign probably decided that even though there was widespread fraud and that Bush likely "stole" the election with e-voting machines, he decided that it was "best for the country" to concede, because any accusations of fraud wouldn't be met very kindly by Bush supporters, and those in power in the government.
Or, an alternate version: the Democrats conceded even though Bush stole the election so that Hillary (and Bill) could run in 2008.
The journalists all said they'd kill for a juicy election fraud story, but there was none to be found...not even one that might exist but have no "proof".
My favorite retort for this one is that all of the corporate media (i.e., all mainstream newspapers, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FNC, etc.) are all in Bush's "pocket", and that even though there is widespread proof of election fraud, the corporate press has ordered all of its staff to "lock the story down" and not speak of it further. (Of course, Common Dreams, dailykos, truthout, etc., have the "real" story.)
The thing about conspiracy theories is that their tautologies: everything can be neatly explained away, no matter how absurd it is, and you can still believe what you want to believe.
The election was not stolen. Bush won. (I didn't vote for Bush.) Get over it.
Thanks for the reply:
WHY WERE THERE NO PAPER TRAILS? Why are we allowing voting to go on in a system that has NOT been proven safe? We aren't allowed to view the code, we aren't allowed to audit our vote except via what is shown to us on the screen, and we have to invest an enormous amount of trust in two large entities that have proven they are NOT worthy of our trust.
There were no paper trails because none were specified as a part of HAVA. Remember, HAVA, the bill that requires e-voting terminals to replace paper systems, *came into being* because of the unfairness that was alleged to have surrounded paper systems in the 2000 election in Florida, and in many other (predominantly poor) areas around the country. And Congress didn't likely ask for open source, because we don't ask for open source in so many other critical systems that we trust with things like power, money, and even our lives. Likely, they just assumed that we'd be able to make accountable systems for e-voting, and really didn't stop to think that our democracy and the voting process is possibly much more important than the other things I mentioned, not out of malice.
Were people permitted to use paper and pencil/pen or more trusted/tried solutions instead of these machines? I certainly would have opted against using one of the e-voting machines knowing what I know and being the paranoid individual I am.
Some precincts did allow the use of paper ballots. Some didn't. But the PAPER BALLOTS, and their associated problems, are what is being blamed, among other things, for some of the problems in the 2000 election! HAVA is trying to make voting consistent and fair for all voters in all jurisdictions, so we should work to fix it! And the bills that are already out there will do just that, adding BOTH a paper trail for each and every vote cast, verified by the voter, PLUS open source code on all e-voting equipment.
Until the voting machines and their code are open to the public for audit and there is a paper trail I will refuse to use them. This MUST be an option for everyone. I don't see why it can't be the case.
Because having multiple systems that have to be administered by local election authorities will complicate matters even more than they are now. We simply must DEMAND that there be a paper trail at a very minimum, and that the code that runs these systems be open for public inspection via some mechanism, period.
Some places are requiring a paper audit trail by 2006 but that doesn't help the fact that there could have been some hanky panky going on right here in THIS election.
Okay, agreed. Let's just say there WAS some malicious hanky panky. Kerry's 3600 lawyers, and all of the major media organizations who searched high and low for a big story (remember how big of a deal Florida 2000 was), didn't think there was ENOUGH hanky panky (or errors) to warrant doing anything about it, since it is universally agreed by these same people that it wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election.
So, given that, let's make sure it's fixed by the NEXT election, yes?