One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered microsoft community when IDC confirmed that microsoft market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 97 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that microsoft has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict microsoft's future. The hand writing is on the wall: microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for microsoft because microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for microsoft. As many of us are already aware, microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Windows is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long timeWindows developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Microsoft is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Vista leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Vista. How many users of windows are there? Let's see. The number of Vista versus windows xp posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Vista users. Vista posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of windows xp posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put windows at about 80 percent of the microsoft market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 WinXP users. This is consistent with the number of WinXP Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Hotmail, abysmal sales and so on, Windows NT went out of business and was taken over by the Vista team who sell another troubled OS. Now Windows Vista is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that microsoft has steadily declined in market share. microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, microsoft is dead.
i work with precious metals (or transition metals to chemists), and osmium is nowhere near the most expensive metal. Rhodium is, BY FAR, the most expensive metal. it makes a great catalyst for many things, but due to cost is not a practical lab catalyst. Next is rhenium, then platinum, then come all the rest. Osmium might even be lower than gold, although I am not sure.
im sorry, but first off, you dont know why he continued the prosecution. if it was only to get reelected, then why is he STILL continuing the case? he only dropped the rape charges, but the sexual assault and kidnapping case is still open, so he has some belief that it happened.
second thing, whose life did he ruin? maybe the duke LAX students that were indicted, but even if their lives were ruined it wasnt cause of nifong, it was because of the college student who is accusing the duke kids of kidnapping/assault. furthermore, why would their lives be ruined? the Duke LAX program wasnt cancelled because of the accused rape, it was cancelled because they were already on strict probation for other violations, and then held a party with underage drinking and strippers.
if anything, the duke case is an example of civil liberties AT WORK. Somebody was accused of rape, and a thorough investigation is being conducted. It was concluded that a rape could not be proven, so that part of the case was dropped. The students werent thrown in jail and found guilty by default because of their skin color, as was the norm in this country for many years. They werent lynched before a trial could even take place. They were accused, indicted, arrested, released on bond, and are being investigated. This is exactly how the system works. So where is the civil liberty violation?
I think you need to call 1-800-SARCASM. They have great deals on the newest, cutting edge senses of humor.
I dialed the number, but got an error saying the number was not recognized. perhaps you typed the number wrong? or maybe the company closed up shop... any other suggestions?
You are completely right about the fact that both paper ballots and comptuer ballots have some margin of error, and as an engineer i have to wonder why this margin of error is not known.
Any approximation is useless without knowing the limits to which it applies. What needs to happen is a study needs to be done to find the percent error in the voting process (paper or electronic), and if the final votes are within this percent something needs to happen.
If Bush wins an election by 1.0% of the population, while the margin of error on the voting process is +/-3.0%, well then did he really win the election?? Any counting process is useless without knowing error margins, voting included. What if the margin of error is +/- 10%?? This needs to be figured out.
Adderall isn't basically amphetamine, it is amphetamine. Subjects who 'have' ADHD aren't the only people who will 'benefit' from CNS stimulants that boost dopamine levels. Any person (whether or not they have normal dopamine levels) who ingests a CNS stimulant like adderall will get the same effects (heightened alertedness, motivation, positive mood shifts, all that). Therefore people without ADHD can benefit just as much as people with ADHD. Which leads us to the question of whether or not such a disorder actually exists. Since its unclear whether or not it exists, its not hard to get 'diagnosed' and prescribed stimulants. You'll think you have it just because the medicine you get helps so much.
It doesn't matter if you're prescribed adderall because you've been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD or if you just buy it on the street to do for fun, the potential for addiction remains exactly the same. The addiction rate will obviously be higher for people prescribed the drug (quote unquote those diagnosed with ADHD) because they'll be taken the drug daily and will have no problem getting more.
this thing has been out for a while, a voice based lie detector developed by IMI i believe... its been on sale to hte public for at least the last 5 years...
ebay has a bunch of them, along with other places. Its called the "Handy Truster." Supposedly you have to calibrate the device before each conversation to get a baseline of someones voice, so if the voice is trembling all the way through it wont catch anyhting.
And this is good beacuse a Russian business is making money by selling copies of US (and Euro, etc.) musicians' work, but paying them nothing in return? Is that about right?
As opposed to an American business making money by selling copies of US musicians' work, but paying them nothing in return. Sounds about right.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Lighthouses are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered lighthouse community when IDC confirmed that the lighthouse market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all navigational assistance tools. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that lighthouses have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Lighthouses are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Ship Admin comprehensive navigational test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict the future of lighthouses. The hand writing is on the wall: lighthouses faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for lighthouses because lighthouses are dying. Things are looking very bad for lighthouses. As many of us are already aware, lighthouses continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. A river with no lighthosue.
FreeLighthouse is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time lighthouse developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: lighthouses are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Openlighthouse leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Openlighthouse. How many users of Netlighthouse are there? Let's see. The number of Openlighthouse versus Netlighthouse posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Netlighthouse users. lighthouse/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Netlighthouse posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of lighthouse/OS. A recent article put Freelighthouse at about 80 percent of the *lighthouse market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Freelighthouse users. This is consistent with the number of Freelighthouse Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Freelighthouse went out of business and was taken over by lighthouseI who sell another troubled OS. Now lighthouseI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *lighthouse has steadily declined in market share. lighthouses are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If lighthouses are to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *lighthouse continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, lighthouses are dead. Fact: Lighthouses are dying
This is quickly turning into a Halo 2 discussion but...
I was surprised that Bungie didn't learn from Konami's mistake in Metal Gear Solid 2. I just don't understand why companies that manage to create really bad-ass and publically adored characters insist on making them share the spotlight with some mediocre character.
What you describe sounds almost exactly like the high school I attended. The teachers got like 100 copies a month, meaning there was never enough paper. Computers existed but usually were broken in some way or another. Last year there was a big push to meet NCLB requirements for fear of losing much needed funding.
The funny/sad part is that the public school was in one of the richest parts of the city. However, all the kids who lived in the neighborhood could afford to send their kids to private schools, so an extremely large majority of the students there were bussed in. Its wierd how a school in a 95% white neighborhood (if not more) can be 75% black.
Heres the best theory on public/private schools I've heard...Public schools are good for two types of students: those who wont do well anywhere, and those who will do exceptionally well anywhere. Those students who excel in certain situations but fall back in others are obviously meant for a private school which will follow them and hold their hand.
Comparing SAT scores with private schools, our average was always extremely low. However, if you broke the scores down into the racial and/or economic subsets (of course, the two usually go along), my public school performed better in almost everyone. Meaning, our white person average was higher than the private schools white person average and our black person average was higher than theirs. However, the fact that we were 75% black (who score lower) hurt our OVERALL average.
Basically, it is unimportant whether the election outcome is changed or not. What matters is that the kerry supporters put enough pressure on the election comittees to fix the system to the point that these "mistakes" wont happen anymore. What if next election is as close as 2000 was, and 4000 votes get miscounted? Then it WILL matter.
Its up to the opposition to keep up the pressure, whether or not it matters THIS time. Because if you just accept that "oh it didnt matter this time," then the problems will never get fixed.
The referendum in Venezuela happened a few months before the US eletion, and it was also the first widespread use of electronic voting in that country, so it makes for a good comparison. (Wikipedia background on the referendum here, think of it just like an election).
The Venezuelan voting process used thumbprints for verification of voters, had heavy international monitors, used voting machines which source code was open and reviewed by thousands of programmers months before the election, and had no less than three paper trails (one which was given to the Carter center, one given to the election board, the other kept for verification purposes). The process of the electronic voting machines was highly scrutinized and available on the web for months for review by anyone interested (in fact, the website is still up right here on the company's website). Diebold did none of this. The source code was not presented for review. The process was highly unknown and obscure. There were no paper trails.
In the end, Chavez won by 18 percentage points, verified by both the voting comission as well as by the Carter center. The process was standardized and each ballot looked the same and each voter was given the same experience. Exit polls matched, roughly, the actual results. If there had been even HALF the problems in Venezuela that the US has seen, the opposition in Venezeula would NEVER have accepted the results. They would have demanded another election. If 4000 votes were put for Chavez that didnt really exist, the opposition would go crazy. And thats with an EIGHTEEN PERCENTAGE POINT win.
Bush, on the other hand, won by 2 percentage points. TWO percentage points. There were no paper trails. The voting process was NOT standardized. The exit polls did NOT match the final results. Then all these problems arise. And you say "well, he still won by more votes than those which got messed up."
The point is that the voting should be perfect. Why can venezuela do it and the US cant? EASY-- because the venezuelan opposition puts pressure and refuses to accept the results ANY OTHER WAY. Its not that anyone refutes that George Bush got more votes. However, just because it doesnt matter in THIS election doesnt mean it shouldnt be heavily scrutinized and fixed before next election.
Remember, in an election you have to fix things before its a problem. Or else you get a President elected who didnt really win the election (a la Bush in 2000)
what is being alleged is that the E-voting machines are buggy at best, registering obvious erros with no paper trail to offer an alternative counting method.
John Kerry's name is mentioned nowhere in the article. Its just about the quirks of the voting system, which should by and large be fixed. Stop being so defensive, not everything centers around Bush stealing an election.
Perhaps it was "conceieved" on the Mac, but it was definitely born for the Xbox. Remember, birth is not the initial creation of something-- that is conception. Birth does not happen until the thing in question is ready and mature enough to face the public. In the case of humans, this takes 9 months. It took a bit longer in terms of Halo, but it was still born to the Xbox.
Using your definition, cancelling the development of any game would qualify as "murder" since the game in question had already been born. In reality, its more like an abortion since it was concieved yet not yet birthed.
But we dont have significant foreign relations with them, nor are they our nieghbors. Its like if you have a friend named Michael and you repeatedly spell it Micheal even though you see them everyday and they are your friend, its different than if you just randomly meet someone named Michael and spell it differently.
I'd be willing to bet that you dont really know much about the war on drugs in colombia other than that they are growing drugs and the US doesnt want them to. However, its much more multifaceted than that. The drug war in Colombia, at least to Colombians, is more focused around the guerilla groups and narco-trafickers mutual supporting each other. Colombia has seen much more terrorism than the US ever has, probably along the same magnitude as Israel or Ireland back in the day (I say probably because i dont have the numbers).
The "drug war" in colombia is breaking this cycle and getting rid of one of these two groups which will also play a large role in breaking the other. It can be successfully accomplished-- look at the Sendero Luminoso extermination in Peru. Let's not forget, Colombia used to be a non-factor in the war on drugs. Peru was the drug capital of South America and produced an overwhelming percentage of coca. Colombia, IIRC, was not a major player (like less than 10% of coca production) until the 1990's when Peru took a hardline stance against the Sendero Luminoso antisurgents and Escobar and the Cali cartel rose.
True, if Colombia is able to rid the country of its insurgents, the drug dealers will probably move elsewhere (Southern Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela with Chavez in power). However, the drug war in Colombia IS winnable. The general drug war, on the other hand, is a different story.
Another interesting thing about these widespread coca sprayings and focus on cocaine is that many colombian farmers are moving towards growing opium. Heroin is actually much more profitable than cocaine and is steadily increasing in its importation. Im willing to bet that in 10 years, heroine is the new cocaine.
Its Colombia, not Columbia. And, check my post history, I have never cared about misspellings before but everytime Americans takl about Colombia they always mispell it, and it is the kind of pure American ignorance that makes the rest of the world anti-American. Little symbols like spelling a country's name wrong DO matter.
Its not like Colombia is a tiny third world eastern european country (like I wouldn't be care about misspelling Kazahkstan or any of those).. Colombia and the US have extremely close relations, they are practically our neighbors, and they have an EXTREMELY intelligent and techno-driven society (moreso than the US i would say). Come on, USians, lets show some respect to our neighbors.
Slashdot Mirror
It is official; Paul Graham: microsoft is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered microsoft community when IDC confirmed that microsoft market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 97 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that microsoft has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict microsoft's future. The hand writing is on the wall: microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for microsoft because microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for microsoft. As many of us are already aware, microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Windows is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long timeWindows developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Microsoft is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Vista leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Vista. How many users of windows are there? Let's see. The number of Vista versus windows xp posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Vista users. Vista posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of windows xp posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put windows at about 80 percent of the microsoft market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 WinXP users. This is consistent with the number of WinXP Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Hotmail, abysmal sales and so on, Windows NT went out of business and was taken over by the Vista team who sell another troubled OS. Now Windows Vista is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that microsoft has steadily declined in market share. microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, microsoft is dead.
Fact: microsoft is dying
prices per ounce:
osmium: $400
gold: $630
rhenium: $2000
rhodium: $4000
maybe they found a new source of osmium since you last checked.
i work with precious metals (or transition metals to chemists), and osmium is nowhere near the most expensive metal. Rhodium is, BY FAR, the most expensive metal. it makes a great catalyst for many things, but due to cost is not a practical lab catalyst.
Next is rhenium, then platinum, then come all the rest. Osmium might even be lower than gold, although I am not sure.
!first post of 2007
im sorry, but first off, you dont know why he continued the prosecution. if it was only to get reelected, then why is he STILL continuing the case? he only dropped the rape charges, but the sexual assault and kidnapping case is still open, so he has some belief that it happened.
second thing, whose life did he ruin? maybe the duke LAX students that were indicted, but even if their lives were ruined it wasnt cause of nifong, it was because of the college student who is accusing the duke kids of kidnapping/assault. furthermore, why would their lives be ruined? the Duke LAX program wasnt cancelled because of the accused rape, it was cancelled because they were already on strict probation for other violations, and then held a party with underage drinking and strippers.
if anything, the duke case is an example of civil liberties AT WORK. Somebody was accused of rape, and a thorough investigation is being conducted. It was concluded that a rape could not be proven, so that part of the case was dropped. The students werent thrown in jail and found guilty by default because of their skin color, as was the norm in this country for many years. They werent lynched before a trial could even take place. They were accused, indicted, arrested, released on bond, and are being investigated. This is exactly how the system works. So where is the civil liberty violation?
I think you need to call 1-800-SARCASM. They have great deals on the newest, cutting edge senses of humor.
I dialed the number, but got an error saying the number was not recognized. perhaps you typed the number wrong? or maybe the company closed up shop... any other suggestions?
You are completely right about the fact that both paper ballots and comptuer ballots have some margin of error, and as an engineer i have to wonder why this margin of error is not known.
Any approximation is useless without knowing the limits to which it applies. What needs to happen is a study needs to be done to find the percent error in the voting process (paper or electronic), and if the final votes are within this percent something needs to happen.
If Bush wins an election by 1.0% of the population, while the margin of error on the voting process is +/-3.0%, well then did he really win the election?? Any counting process is useless without knowing error margins, voting included. What if the margin of error is +/- 10%?? This needs to be figured out.
And now people selectively poison themselves with dangerous UV rays in order to make themselves look tanner.
Adderall isn't basically amphetamine, it is amphetamine. Subjects who 'have' ADHD aren't the only people who will 'benefit' from CNS stimulants that boost dopamine levels. Any person (whether or not they have normal dopamine levels) who ingests a CNS stimulant like adderall will get the same effects (heightened alertedness, motivation, positive mood shifts, all that). Therefore people without ADHD can benefit just as much as people with ADHD. Which leads us to the question of whether or not such a disorder actually exists. Since its unclear whether or not it exists, its not hard to get 'diagnosed' and prescribed stimulants. You'll think you have it just because the medicine you get helps so much.
It doesn't matter if you're prescribed adderall because you've been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD or if you just buy it on the street to do for fun, the potential for addiction remains exactly the same. The addiction rate will obviously be higher for people prescribed the drug (quote unquote those diagnosed with ADHD) because they'll be taken the drug daily and will have no problem getting more.
this thing has been out for a while, a voice based lie detector developed by IMI i believe... its been on sale to hte public for at least the last 5 years...
http://www.snapshotspy.com/special/faq.htm
ebay has a bunch of them, along with other places. Its called the "Handy Truster." Supposedly you have to calibrate the device before each conversation to get a baseline of someones voice, so if the voice is trembling all the way through it wont catch anyhting.
Paypal doesnt care about black people.
And this is good beacuse a Russian business is making money by selling copies of US (and Euro, etc.) musicians' work, but paying them nothing in return? Is that about right?
As opposed to an American business making money by selling copies of US musicians' work, but paying them nothing in return. Sounds about right.
maybe they should get one of these
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Lighthouses are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered lighthouse community when IDC confirmed that the lighthouse market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all navigational assistance tools. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that lighthouses have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Lighthouses are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Ship Admin comprehensive navigational test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict the future of lighthouses. The hand writing is on the wall: lighthouses faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for lighthouses because lighthouses are dying. Things are looking very bad for lighthouses. As many of us are already aware, lighthouses continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. A river with no lighthosue.
FreeLighthouse is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time lighthouse developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: lighthouses are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Openlighthouse leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Openlighthouse. How many users of Netlighthouse are there? Let's see. The number of Openlighthouse versus Netlighthouse posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Netlighthouse users. lighthouse/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Netlighthouse posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of lighthouse/OS. A recent article put Freelighthouse at about 80 percent of the *lighthouse market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Freelighthouse users. This is consistent with the number of Freelighthouse Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Freelighthouse went out of business and was taken over by lighthouseI who sell another troubled OS. Now lighthouseI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *lighthouse has steadily declined in market share. lighthouses are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If lighthouses are to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *lighthouse continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, lighthouses are dead.
Fact: Lighthouses are dying
"Tiger, after Jobs said it was still on track for a q2 2005 release (long before Longhorn...)"
I'm sure Microsoft is really scared. OSX is always threatening Windows market share...
This is quickly turning into a Halo 2 discussion but...
I was surprised that Bungie didn't learn from Konami's mistake in Metal Gear Solid 2. I just don't understand why companies that manage to create really bad-ass and publically adored characters insist on making them share the spotlight with some mediocre character.
Also they still really suck at level design.
What you describe sounds almost exactly like the high school I attended. The teachers got like 100 copies a month, meaning there was never enough paper. Computers existed but usually were broken in some way or another. Last year there was a big push to meet NCLB requirements for fear of losing much needed funding.
The funny/sad part is that the public school was in one of the richest parts of the city. However, all the kids who lived in the neighborhood could afford to send their kids to private schools, so an extremely large majority of the students there were bussed in. Its wierd how a school in a 95% white neighborhood (if not more) can be 75% black.
Heres the best theory on public/private schools I've heard...Public schools are good for two types of students: those who wont do well anywhere, and those who will do exceptionally well anywhere. Those students who excel in certain situations but fall back in others are obviously meant for a private school which will follow them and hold their hand.
Comparing SAT scores with private schools, our average was always extremely low. However, if you broke the scores down into the racial and/or economic subsets (of course, the two usually go along), my public school performed better in almost everyone. Meaning, our white person average was higher than the private schools white person average and our black person average was higher than theirs. However, the fact that we were 75% black (who score lower) hurt our OVERALL average.
read what i wrote here.
Basically, it is unimportant whether the election outcome is changed or not. What matters is that the kerry supporters put enough pressure on the election comittees to fix the system to the point that these "mistakes" wont happen anymore. What if next election is as close as 2000 was, and 4000 votes get miscounted? Then it WILL matter.
Its up to the opposition to keep up the pressure, whether or not it matters THIS time. Because if you just accept that "oh it didnt matter this time," then the problems will never get fixed.
Let me expand a bit on what I said before.
The referendum in Venezuela happened a few months before the US eletion, and it was also the first widespread use of electronic voting in that country, so it makes for a good comparison. (Wikipedia background on the referendum here, think of it just like an election).
The Venezuelan voting process used thumbprints for verification of voters, had heavy international monitors, used voting machines which source code was open and reviewed by thousands of programmers months before the election, and had no less than three paper trails (one which was given to the Carter center, one given to the election board, the other kept for verification purposes). The process of the electronic voting machines was highly scrutinized and available on the web for months for review by anyone interested (in fact, the website is still up right here on the company's website). Diebold did none of this. The source code was not presented for review. The process was highly unknown and obscure. There were no paper trails.
In the end, Chavez won by 18 percentage points, verified by both the voting comission as well as by the Carter center. The process was standardized and each ballot looked the same and each voter was given the same experience. Exit polls matched, roughly, the actual results. If there had been even HALF the problems in Venezuela that the US has seen, the opposition in Venezeula would NEVER have accepted the results. They would have demanded another election. If 4000 votes were put for Chavez that didnt really exist, the opposition would go crazy. And thats with an EIGHTEEN PERCENTAGE POINT win.
Bush, on the other hand, won by 2 percentage points. TWO percentage points. There were no paper trails. The voting process was NOT standardized. The exit polls did NOT match the final results. Then all these problems arise. And you say "well, he still won by more votes than those which got messed up."
The point is that the voting should be perfect. Why can venezuela do it and the US cant? EASY-- because the venezuelan opposition puts pressure and refuses to accept the results ANY OTHER WAY. Its not that anyone refutes that George Bush got more votes. However, just because it doesnt matter in THIS election doesnt mean it shouldnt be heavily scrutinized and fixed before next election.
Remember, in an election you have to fix things before its a problem. Or else you get a President elected who didnt really win the election (a la Bush in 2000)
what is being alleged is that the E-voting machines are buggy at best, registering obvious erros with no paper trail to offer an alternative counting method.
John Kerry's name is mentioned nowhere in the article. Its just about the quirks of the voting system, which should by and large be fixed. Stop being so defensive, not everything centers around Bush stealing an election.
Or maybe it was this that caused it.
Perhaps it was "conceieved" on the Mac, but it was definitely born for the Xbox. Remember, birth is not the initial creation of something-- that is conception. Birth does not happen until the thing in question is ready and mature enough to face the public. In the case of humans, this takes 9 months. It took a bit longer in terms of Halo, but it was still born to the Xbox.
Using your definition, cancelling the development of any game would qualify as "murder" since the game in question had already been born. In reality, its more like an abortion since it was concieved yet not yet birthed.
But we dont have significant foreign relations with them, nor are they our nieghbors. Its like if you have a friend named Michael and you repeatedly spell it Micheal even though you see them everyday and they are your friend, its different than if you just randomly meet someone named Michael and spell it differently.
You can't win the "war" on drugs in Columbia.
I'd be willing to bet that you dont really know much about the war on drugs in colombia other than that they are growing drugs and the US doesnt want them to. However, its much more multifaceted than that. The drug war in Colombia, at least to Colombians, is more focused around the guerilla groups and narco-trafickers mutual supporting each other. Colombia has seen much more terrorism than the US ever has, probably along the same magnitude as Israel or Ireland back in the day (I say probably because i dont have the numbers).
The "drug war" in colombia is breaking this cycle and getting rid of one of these two groups which will also play a large role in breaking the other. It can be successfully accomplished-- look at the Sendero Luminoso extermination in Peru. Let's not forget, Colombia used to be a non-factor in the war on drugs. Peru was the drug capital of South America and produced an overwhelming percentage of coca. Colombia, IIRC, was not a major player (like less than 10% of coca production) until the 1990's when Peru took a hardline stance against the Sendero Luminoso antisurgents and Escobar and the Cali cartel rose.
True, if Colombia is able to rid the country of its insurgents, the drug dealers will probably move elsewhere (Southern Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela with Chavez in power). However, the drug war in Colombia IS winnable. The general drug war, on the other hand, is a different story.
Another interesting thing about these widespread coca sprayings and focus on cocaine is that many colombian farmers are moving towards growing opium. Heroin is actually much more profitable than cocaine and is steadily increasing in its importation. Im willing to bet that in 10 years, heroine is the new cocaine.
Its Colombia, not Columbia. And, check my post history, I have never cared about misspellings before but everytime Americans takl about Colombia they always mispell it, and it is the kind of pure American ignorance that makes the rest of the world anti-American. Little symbols like spelling a country's name wrong DO matter.
Its not like Colombia is a tiny third world eastern european country (like I wouldn't be care about misspelling Kazahkstan or any of those).. Colombia and the US have extremely close relations, they are practically our neighbors, and they have an EXTREMELY intelligent and techno-driven society (moreso than the US i would say). Come on, USians, lets show some respect to our neighbors.