Re:Paper trail (Maine Legislature ROCKS)
on
Open Voting at OSCON
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· Score: 5, Informative
I'm not sure if it's because of me (a/.er who's been doing a "Chicken Little" impression about electronic voting for a couple of years now) or because of Ben Cohen's (as in "Ben," the founder of Ben & Jerry's, tho' he's no longer working there) organization, True Majority, which has been sending her e-mails about e-voting, among other issues, but my mom has gotten into this issue. She lives in Maine and sent me an e-mail about an act recently passed in the Maine Legislature entitled An Act to Ensure the Accurate Counting of Votes. Note: navigation is a bit weird on the linked site-- if you go to the text of the Act, the whole text of the bill will not appear on a single page. You will have to use the arrows at the top and bottom of the pages to navigate around through the Act. You can also download a copy in M$ Word format.
Oh yeh-- there's an amendment. To see it, click on the "Amendments" link on the "Bill Text and Other Docs" page, or click here.
This is a sweet little piece of legislation. My favorite parts: it prohibits networking the voting machines, requires the voting machine software to be open source, and requires the voting machines to print paper ballots that are inspected by the voter and then placed into a ballot box. I am deeply impressed with this, and with the sponsor, Maine State Representative Hannah Pingree.
Here's a question: does anybody other than the OVC have a product that meets the criteria specified in the Act?
Responding to the parent post, I'll say that Maine can be considered a "backwater state," and its legislature has produced what appears to me to be a kick-ass piece of legislation on e-voting that explicitly requires open source software. Do big, rich, important states like California have such good legislation? I think not. Score one for the backwater states!
--Mark
PS: if you're near a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop, go there next Tuesday, April 27, and take advantage of Free Cone Day!!!
Re:really? (Brazil vs. rest of Latin America)
on
Conectiva Linux 9 Review
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Conectiva is quite well known in Brazil. I think this is because of the language barrier. While Spanish and Portuguese are similar enough that reasonably intelligent speakers of the two can communicate with each other, there are significant differences.
However, the size of Brazil's population and its economy make it the most economically important nation in Latin America. It is a nation of 190 million people with a large and rapidly growing economy. Many economists believe that the nations that will dominate the 21st Century economically are the so-called "BRICs:" Brazil, Russia, India, and China. I mention this because I'm sure Mexicans will get upset seeing me say that Brazil is the most economically important nation in Latin America.
Anyway, even if Conectiva were to only have its distro widely installed here in Brazil (and I'm not sure if that's the case), it could still be the most popular distro in Latin America.
Consider that even though all the nations of Latin America except Brazil speak Spanish, a majority of people in South America speak Portuguese (the population of Brazil is larger than that of the rest of South America combined). I believe that Portuguese is narrowly not the language of the majority of Latin Americans because México has a large population.
Anyway, I am in the process of founding a company for industrial production of food (I prefer not to be more specific right now), and I intend to use Linux on our computers-- not just the servers, but the desktops too. Because of its native support for Portuguese (developed by native speakers too... heh) and because of the presence of Conectiva right here in São Paulo, I am almost certain to use the Conectiva distro. Yes, people like my office manager, who know only Windoze, will have to learn to deal with a new GUI, but she's smart enough, and I am planning for training of all workers who will use computers. The cost of that training comes out cheaper than paying MS licenses.
I am trying to build a "Values-Led" business, and I like that we will be supporting another Brazilian company and keeping the profits from our software expenditures here in our community instead of sending them to Redmond. It's also nice that the technical support will be from people here in our city (M$ phone support in Portuguese is reached by dialing a toll-free number here in Brazil, but the people who answer are Brazilians working in Redmond... strange but true). I love that we will not be treated like criminals by our software suppliers and will never have to undergo a license audit. I also love that my employees will be able to take Conectiva CDs home or download the images at home and be able to install exactly the same software at home as they use at work. Even if we upgrade the machines at work, the employees who use computers at home will be able to keep pace. Contrast this with the Windoze situation, where people use Windows 2000 or XP at work, but typically use Windows 95 or 98 at home.
It's also cool that some well-known kernel hackers have worked at Conectiva, including Marcelo Tosatti (he left and is now working elsewhere, but he was at Conectiva when he was asked to maintain the then-production kernel) and Rik van Riel.
Meanwhile, in California, prices are high, and power was VERY unreliable. "Rolling Blackouts" anyone?
Good point. I live in Brazil, and there's a real sick tendency among people here to kiss American ass and fantasize that the United States are a place where everything works perfectly and nobody has to pay for anything. When they do that, I chuckle and point out things like the difference in the electrical power systems in the two countries.
NOTE: I AM NOT SAYING BRAZIL IS BETTER THAN THE USA... JUST THAT IT'S NOT WORSE EITHER.
Brazil's electrical power, as of 2001, was about 97% hydroelectric. Because of years of below-average rainfall, this system was threatened, and in 2001, we were told there might be "rolling blackouts" here (except that the Brazilian government, unlike the US government, was honest enough to call it what it was: power rationing). We ended up not getting any "rolling blackouts," and a regression toward the mean in rainfall has left us sufficiently well off that we don't even have to use the new polluting thermo plants that were built around the time of the crisis.
Electrical power here is cheap and reliable, especially compared to places like California, where a lot of my friends had to endure "rolling blackouts" because the folks at the deregulated power companies decided to put more money on their bottom line by not investing in infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. So the execs who made those decisions increased profits in the short term, increasing their bonuses and the value of their stock. When the $#!+ hit the fan, guess who had to pay, both in damages from "rolling blackouts" and in higher rates? The consumers, of course!
The only power problems I've had here in São Paulo were a neighborhood issue, not a city-wide, state-wide, or nation-wide problem. Basically, the new condo across the street overloaded the local grid 3 times in a 2-week span. The worst thing is that the new condo has its own generator, so the newcomers would knock out the neighborhood power and then not even notice, because their generator kicked in. Meanwhile, those of us who had already been in the neighborhood were screwed. Even those problems have been resolved, though. With even more people moving into the new condo, it's been about 6 weeks since we had a problem. The power companies here are pretty efficient. Yeah, I'd have liked for somebody to stop people from moving into the new condo until the local power grid was adequately updated, but they responded pretty quickly once the problem did present itself in an inconvenient way.
Wouldn't we be happy if these countries downloaded and used it?
Well, if by "we," you mean the US government, then no.
For all the talk about establishing democracy in Iraq, the powers-that-be in Washington will not permit open, free, and fair elections in Iraq because Shiite fundamentalists would win.
People wouldn't really have to move around so much, because if people were free to move where they wanted, companies wouldn't jump around to try to play the labor forces in different countries against each other. If the jobs don't leave, the people don't have to.
It's a dirty little secret of modern Capitalism that it basically can't work the way it's "supposed" to, given the current conditions. I'm not trolling, and I'll be specific.
The Classical theories on which Capitalism is based were written in the 19th Century. At that time, capital was basically land, and labor was much more free to move about than it is today. Before anyone objects that transportation is more advanced today, let me explain what I mean: in those days, workers were not locked into compartments from which they could not escape, and could basically go where the work was without having to worry about passports and work visas. Anyway, because of the conditions that obtained in the 19th Century, the Classical theories are based on assumptions of immobile capital and highly mobile labor.
The conclusions of the Classical theories are nice, especially "mutual advantage." Unfortunately, those theories have about as much to do with our current reality as the "spherical cow" of every physics nerd's favorite joke. In today's world, capital moves at a high fraction of the speed of light through wires, or even at the speed of light as radio signals in the air or visible pulses in fiber optic cables. Meanwhile, because of the fortified borders between countries and the need for passports and work visas and such, labor is basically locked into little compartments. As a result, the situation of today is almost exactly the opposite of the situation assumed by the Classical theories.
Because of this, the conclusions, like "mutual advantage," are utter bunk in today's world. In fact, there is basically nothing now preventing capital (a term I also use to refer to those who control large amounts of capital) taking total advantage of labor. So when American workers want adequate safety conditions at work, capital dumps them and goes to Mexico. When the Mexican workers get uppity and want a decent working wage and don't want pollutants dumped in their rivers, capital takes the jobs to Vietnam... etc., etc.
More relevant to this discussion, when computer programmers in Silicon Valley start getting six-figure salaries, capital starts by importing Indian programmers. When the imported Indians get wise and jump ship to higher-paying companies, capital gets smart and takes the work to India. In general terms, capital (the "2%" mentioned in the parent post) can play the labor forces in different countries against each other and pick and choose which countries' laborers will get work.
Is all lost? Maybe not. It might be possible to restore something more closely resembling the "mutual advantage" ideal of the Classical theories (though I'm sure there are some who don't see "mutual advantage" as a positive ideal and prefer the current situation...). All we have to do is restore the mobility of labor. Make the borders as open to people as they are to capital. Yes, in the short term, there would be disruptions, like a huge mass of people whose knowledge of the USA comes from Hollywood, who would flood the USA temporarily looking for that streets-paved-with-gold-and-everything-works paradise, but eventually, things would settle down again, only with better conditions for workers (read: people).
For those who worry a lot about the short-term consequences, consider that that worry is part of the "playing labor forces in different countries against each other" I mentioned above. You want to preserve the apparent advantage workers in your country currently appear to have, and capital plays on that to make you oppose the kinds of changes that could actually make Capitalism work for many people, instead of horribly failing the great majority, as it has been for quite some time.
The problem with the proposed solution (voting) is that Gerrymandering has made it so that the will of the voters is not respected. It would be very difficult for there to be a major change in the House of Representatives at this point, unless there were some major scandal.
Ironically enough, the intention of the "Founding Fathers" was to have the House more subject to the whims of public opinion, while the Senate would be more "insulated." Today, the truth is nearly the opposite. Gerrymandering has made it so that a House seat is safer than a Senate seat, despite having to face elections three times as often. The difference is that a Senator's constituents are from all over his state, while a House member's constituents are from a ridiculously-shaped "region" where he is virtually guaranteed that his supporters form a majority of voters.
So now, instead of "subject to the will of the people" and "less so," we have "less so" and "even less so."
The Gerrymandering/redistricting adventures reached a new level of absurdity in Texas last year. Some of the new districts they drew are outrageously funny to me, but that's because I don't live in the USA anymore. Any US citizen living in the USA, especially Texas, ought to be horrified with the way those thugs have subverted the democratic process.
a perfect capitilist system (were their is an infinite number of competitors which is of course impossible) is probably the same as a communist system -- but without the problem of having to have someone in charge (who everyone has to trust) to co-ordinate it
Just as there are authoritarian and libertarian capitalists, you'll find that there are authoritarian "communists," like the Soviets (back in the day), and libertarian communists. Check out the
Anarcho-Syndicalists of the Spanish Civil War, or
Kropotkin,
Emma Goldman (her essay on patriotism is fantastic),
Alexander Berkman (I highly recommend the chapter "Reformer and Politician," from What is Communist Anarchism?),
and even arguably
Lao Tzu. Libertarian Communism an old intellectual movement, even if most American schools either don't know it ever existed or just pretend it never did (and I say this with some knowledge of American schools, having been educated in the United States from pre-school through Ph.D.).
Given that Berkman, when he's remembered at all, is remembered for a violent act he committed, I feel compelled to state that I like Berkman the author, but do not condone the acts of Berkman the man.
The ideal of Communism is theoretically a stateless society, but the idea that it is possible to give the State total control and that it will let itself then just "wither away" is patently ridiculous. In my opinion, any path involving totalitarian Socialism could never lead to ideal Libertarian Communism.
How do you feel about the NSA-developed SELinux extensions that are being added to distros all over the place?
As long as the source code is available, I don't care who developed it. What worried me (and everyone I know in the information security field I know in Brazil) about Microsoft's "NSA Key" is that we can't see what's in the Windows source code, and MS may or may not have built in a "back door" allowing the NSA to circumvent any encryption without us knowing. I know of nobody who was convincd by Microsoft's denials.
If the NSA were to try to sneak something like that into a piece of F/OSS, others among the "many eyes" would almost certainly spot it. And before some wag asks, no, the recent release of some old Win2K source on P2P filesharing networks does not give Windows the same advantage...
The IRS and its equivalents in other countries are the last organizations I'd want using F/OSS.
Yes, I recognize all the advantages of F/OSS-- security, stability, supportability and lifetime, etc. I'd prefer not to have a BSOD or some worm-induced malfunction on, for example, the avionics systems of a jetliner.
I'm also thrilled to see the Brazilian government taking steps toward independence from Redmond (and, indirectly, the US Government-- everyone down here remembers the "NSA Key" very clearly) by moving toward F/OSS.
But for the tax collectors? I'd just as soon have them all sign perpetual Microsoft-only contracts. Imagine it-- they would be as frustrated trying to do their day-to-day work EVERY DAY as we are when tax day rolls around. Plus a good worm could knock out all their records. The security problems would also allow people naughtier than I to get in and "update" some of the algorithms used to calculate how much each taxpayer owes.
Tax collection agencies seem to me to be excellent places for Microsoft-only software.
Now that I think of it, I wonder if there's any chance we can convince the "Total Information Awareness" (or whatever they're calling it now that it doesn't officially exist) folks to use only Microsoft software? I know I'd feel a lot safer from Big Brother if I knew he was using MS software. He'd be too busy patching and trying to recover lost data (plus going through MS license audits) to bother me...
You know these things look cool in cartoons, but you'll probably have bugs in yer eyes, wind noise in your ears, sore arms and it really won't really be any fun.
So use a head covering like Nausicaa's (or like the one in the picture on
this page), with goggles and ear flaps. Also, didn't the original Moewe have some kind of strap between the two "handles?" I'd personally extend that into some kind of fastening thing, like a seatbelt. I'm thinking about something like hang-gliders here, even though in this case, the wing is below the pilot and not above.
Also, as others have noted, control would be difficult, and there would be a risk of running into obstacles, but it seems to me that a computer-assisted system like those in fighter jets could help take care of such problems.
OK, a little fun for the first day of Carnaval. I now return you to your regularly scheduled boring reality...
Funny... I look at SCO's "evidence" and it just so happens that I... well, I "see dick."
SCO's ever-changing case against IBM is now apparently different. Now they're not trying to say that IBM used SystemV code in Linux; they've now changed the story a bit to "IBM made software to work with SystemV, which under our definition is a derivative work, and therefore belongs to us, but then IBM had the nerve to port its own software to Linux, thus improperly using 'our' code."
Everyone who looks at SCO's "evidence" expecting to see SCO code used in Linux will probably "see dick."
I just got an e-mail back from Professor Peale. He's going on a trip and will respond to my questions about this Europa story when he gets back on Thursday. Oh well...
The article presents three hypotheses for how sulfuric acid might get into Europa's oceans. The first is that Io ejects it, and it ends up falling onto Europa. Another is that precursor salts are present in Europa's ocean and intense radiation converts them into acid. The third is the one that leaves me a bit suspicious. From the article:
Jeff Kargel of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, believes the sulphuric acid is coming directly from the ocean. He thinks that Europa's heart is rocky, with undersea volcanoes releasing sulphur-containing compounds and oxygen that react with the ocean water to form sulphuric acid.
"Europa has an Io hiding underneath the ocean," he says. If the surface sulphates have come from the water deep below, Europa's ocean might be an "acidic sulphate brine".
The bit I put in boldface is suspicious. Io is volcanic because of the effects of it moving through Jupiter's inhomogeneous gravitational field, which causes stresses that are sufficient to heat up and melt Io's interior, creating the conditions for volcanoes. This effect was predicted by Professor Stanton Peale of the University of California, Santa Barbara just before Voyager arrived and took pictures of Io. But Professor Peale ran the same calculation for all the moons in the solar system, and the only one that came up as possibly volcanic was Io.
Interesting aside: Professor Peale narrowly made the window before Voyager took the now-famous pictures. He had done some work earlier on Earth's moon, then applied the same calculation to every moon in the solar system. But for historical reasons, orbital data about the Galilean moons are recorded differently from those of every other moon in the book where Professor Peale looked up the numbers to check each moon. He only noticed this months later, and when the calculation showed the possibility of a volcanic Io, he had to rush to try to get his prediction published-- ANYONE can write a paper explaining why a given moon is volcanic, but Professor Peale had actually predicted that Io was volcanic before anyone knew if it really was.
Anyway, the idea that Europa has a rocky center (with a molten interior) doesn't seem very likely to me. I've sent an e-mail to Professor Peale asking what he thinks, but I just did that, and he has not replied yet.
If there is one place that will be the turning point for OSS and Linux, it will be Europe and Asia. Wait: I guess that isn't one place!:)
Don't forget South America. Start with Brazil, where a majority of Latin America lives (i.e., the population of Brazil is larger than that of the rest of Latin America combined). Brazil's government sees OSS as a way to bridge the "digital divide," as a way to develop the Brazilian IT industry, as a way to free the Brazilian government from dependence on an American company that may more may not open special "back doors" for the US Government (Remember the NSA Key?), and as a less-expensive way of developing Brazil's IT infrastructure. I really believe it is much more than just talk to negotiate better license terms from Microsoft.
red floyd makes a really good point in a reply to my post. He points out that the 9th Amendment is what you were talking about. As I state in my reply to his reply, I think both the 9th and the 10th come into this discussion, but I definitely erred in leaving out the 9th. I also found interesting the argument I saw elsewhere in this thread that the right to privacy is a logical extension of the right to property that comes up at the end of the 5th Amendment.
The Bill of Rights is a pretty amazing document, and that's coming from a somewhat disgusted expat. I guess I could say it's a shame what's been done to it. That doesn't seem like too controversial a statement.
Good point, red floyd. I think both the 9th and the 10th come into this discussion. The 9th Amendment enters as you described-- the people have rights even if the Constitution, in specifying the powers of the government, does not explicitly mention them. The Tenth enters because the government wants to do some things the Constitution did not specify.
I have mod points, and I'd have modded you up if I hadn't already posted in this thread.
Actually, the Constitution is very specific - I paraphrase: "Any right not enumerated is considered to belong to the people". Since privacy is NOT mentioned, it cannot be infringed by the Federal Gov. - the people have a right to privacy.
The framers, and the drafters of the "Bill of Rights" did not want to fall into the trap of forgetting something, so they made sure they had a safety net in place. They weren't dummies.
What you're talking about here is the Tenth Amendment, the last part of the original Bill of Rights. Amendment X is all of 28 words. Here they are:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In the 1996 Presidential campaign, Bob Dole flew a couple of trial balloons about "dusting off the Tenth Amendment," which was Republican code for "get rid of social programs we don't like." I laughed and wondered if ol' Bob would be willing to have a real discussion of dusting off the Tenth Amendment and doing away with all the power the US Government has taken on without that power having been delegated to the government by the Constitution. Of course not!
The Tenth Amendment, like the Second, was designed to protect the people from the very government whose powers are specified by the Constitution. The Second Amendment was not about armies or self-defense against foreign invaders, as its modern-day opponents allege; it was designed to prevent the usurpation of power by the Federal Government that has in fact occurred over the 217+ years since the Constitution was written. I am sad to report that the meaning of the Second and Tenth Amendments is largely forgotten (favorite funny slogan for the ACLU: "Defending the rights guaranteed by the Amendments of the Bill of Rights-- all nine of them") and basically ended up amounting to nothing more than mere speedbumps, only slowing down (definitely NOT preventing) the theft of power from citizens of the USA by the government of the USA.
It's a little sad that I have to say this, but even though I've criticized both the Republicans and the ACLU (and thus, basically the entire political "spectrum" of the USA), this is not intended as any kind of troll. The meaning of the two Amendments in question is clear if you read the Constitution itself and other writings from the same time by the "framers" of the Constitution. The framers, having had to fight a war against a government they felt did not represent them, were very worried about their new government becoming like the one against which they had fought. Washington voluntarily stepping down after two terms as President due to concerns that he could become like a new "king" shows that this concern continued until at least 1797, more than 15 years after the end of the American Revolutionary War and more than a decade after the Constitution was written.
Nowadays, some folks fearful of modern snake oils content themselves with their SUVs de jour... and the less said about the endowment of those who drive Hummers, the better...
Right. I'll just post the link to a
famous example.
Of course, this should surprise nobody. According to
this book, many of those who go into that famous example's first chosen field have similar histories and... uh... physical characteristics. That also goes a long way to explaining the famous example's obviously angry and power-wielding attitudes toward women...
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired to write the epic poem Kubla Khan while asleep
Uh, no.
Coleridge was in an opium-induced stupor when he got the inspiration for the poem. Here are some sources that back this up (including comments from the poet himself):
You can read about the poem and its origins
here, or you can read original notes on the poem from the author and others who knew him
here. You can also read the original poem
here.
I find I solve a lot of bugs in the shower. Or while out buying lunch. Or anywhere that my brain is not engaged in the current task, but where that current task is something other than the bug I'm trying to fix.
It's almost letting your subconscious thought processes work on the problem instead of trying to tackle it directly.
I've also found that a lot of solutions come to me in the shower. I first started to notice this when I was doing some physics research as an undergrad in 1990-91. I definitely got the ideas for how to do several very important calculations throughout grad school, including a few in my dissertation. I've also noticed that the solutions to programming problems, or how to create a technology-based solution for a given business problem, or even arguments for a debate with a friend come to me in the shower sometimes. I think it's worth noting that I don't seem to get solutions to problems in other situations where I'm not thinking directly about them. It really seems that the answer to "sleep on it" problems comes in the shower, but not necessarily in the morning (some of my "inspirations" came during showers after exercising in the evening, or when getting ready to go out at night).
My theory on what's going on is a bit different. Where the original poster believes stopping thinking directly about the problem helps his subconscious thought processes work on the problem, I always figured my brain was working on the problem "in the background" and that the results, for whatever reason, come to me in the shower. An ex-coworker has also noticed that he gets the solutions to problems in the shower. He also seems to believe that the ideas are developed in real time in the shower, unlike my concept of the result of a longer-running "background job" being presented or delivered in the shower. In his theory, though, the "white noise" (which may not really be "white") of the water from the showerhead hitting the floor and walls/curtain of the place where you're taking a shower somehow helps the brain settle into a state where it can solve the problem more easily (not that different from the original poster's theory).
...the holders of domains MyCrow.com, MyCrew.com, WhenDoes.com, WinDozens.com, MikeRose.com, and MikeRosoff.com have all hired lawyers.
Mr. Mike Rosoff of Kennebunk, Maine is especially worried, because he has received a cease-and-desist letter from Microsoft lawyers claiming that his social security card, driver's license, passport, and all items using his birth name are infringing on copyrights.
More on the story as it develops...
--Mark
__:-b
Re:The very truth... (true, but...)
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Country 1: We have to build it first or we will be at risk.
Country 2: Look Country 1 is building them, so we have to build them also to keep up or we will be at risk.
Country 3: Well, if Countries 1 and 2 are building them then we can't be left behind.
Country 1: Uh-oh. Countries 2 and 3 are building them, so no we need to build more and better ones or we will be at risk.
Country 2: What's that? Country 1 is building more?? Well, fire up the factories. We need more too.
Country 3: Us too!!!
Country 4: Hey guys. I have an idea. How about none of us build any of them and there will be no risk.
Countries 1, 2, and 3: *Simultaneous Laughter*
Country 1: Now...where were we? Oh yes, BUILD MORE!!
Countries 2 and 3: US TOO!!!
ad infinitum
This is true, but it's actually a bit more complicated. People in the government of Country 1 might decide they need to have more of "it" and see this endless cycle as a good way to justify it, if they can just convince the people of their country that Country 2 has more of "it" than country 1 now.
So then you get creative reevaluation of intelligence data. Where professional intelligence experts say there is not that much of "it" in Country 2, these people go and look at the data. They claim it's to look at it again "without bias," but in fact they have the bias that they want to find that Country 2 has much more of "it" than the dedicated intelligence analysts found. Instead of evaluating all the data, they "cherry pick" the parts that support their thesis and conveniently leave out all the data that doesn't, even if what they leave out is crucial or even if what they leave out constitutes the great majority of the data.
I'll give four examples where the USA played the role of Country 1 and did this. Just so you don't have to "trust me," I'll cite a reasonably well-written article that talks about these issues that you can read by
clicking here. A Google search on "missile gap" will get you some other good sources.
Additionally, when I talk about the most recent example, I cite articles I found on the White House web site.
The classic example is the Soviet "missile gap." Working from exactly the same raw intelligence data, USAF Intelligence reached the conclusion in the late 1950s that the Soviets would deploy 500 ICBMs by the early '60s. The intelligence branch of the Strategic Air Command reached the conclusion that the Soviets would deploy or might have already deployed 1000 or more. The recently much-maligned CIA figured there were about 50. The author of the article I cited states that the driving force in that case was the USAF, which was in a battle with the Army and Navy for military funding. A huge deployment of Soviet ICBMs would help justify a huge deployment of American ICBMs, fattening the Air Force budget, of which ICBMs represented a sizeable chunk. The SAC also had an interest in an inflated estimate, since the SAC would control and operate the missiles.
The SAC pointed to signs and clues in Soviet documents and in comments by Kruschev that could be interpreted in a way that supported their hypothesis. SAC showed Eisenhower (and later Kennedy) slide shows with pictures of grain elevators, a medieval tower, and some strange structure in the middle of nowhere and argued that such places might be used to hide missiles, even though there was no evidence that any such thing was going on. The punch line? By the time Kennedy became President in 1961, satellite surveillance revealed that the Soviets had 4 ICBMs. No, that's not a typo. Four ICBMs.
Example 2: In 1969, President Nixon and the Joint Chiefs wanted to try to justify huge spending on a missile defense system. Sound familiar? One of the best justifications was protecting American ICBMs from Soviet warheads, allowing the USA to respond to a hypothetical Soviet first strike. This would theoretically keep the Sovie
My mother was a serious caffeine addict, but didn't know it. She did know she was consuming a lot, and decided to stop. When she stopped, she started getting really bad headaches. It didn't take her long to figure out that caffeine made the headaches go away and not taking caffeine would invite them back. Her solution was remarkable for its simplicity and ingenuity. It was true nerd solution, but not produced by a nerd (I think the nerdiness alleles passed to me by my parents were recessive, but got the chance to shine and show what they could do in me).
Here's what Mom did...
She was buying coffee beans and grinding them herself. She got some decaf beans. She started with almost all non-decaf beans and just a little bit of decaf, ground them together, and made her coffee normally. After that, over the course of a few weeks, she ramped up the decaf percentage (ramping down the caffeine-filled beans at the same time, of course). After those weeks were over, she was drinking almost pure decaf, and then the transition to 100% decaf (or thereabouts-- the decaffeination process is not perfect and is probably worse in whole beans than in grounds due to the relatively low surface area) was easy.
Mom's body apparently reacted to changes in caffeine dosage like the famous frog in a pot of hot water. I've been told (usually in the context of a discussion on eroding civil liberties) about an experiment that showed that if you put a frog into a pot of really hot water, the frog feels the high temperature and just hops out. On the other hand, if you put the frog in a pot of cool water and start gently heating it, the frog does not notice the gradual temperature changes and ends up dying when the water gets hot enough. Similarly, when Mom tried to go from lots of caffeine to zero caffeine, her body freaked out, and she had to suffer through splitting headaches. On the other hand, when she gradually ramped down her caffeine dosage, the body was able to adjust to the small changes, and she was able to go to full decaf without headaches.
BTW, I was forced to quit caffeine toward the end of the Fall quarter of my 2nd year in grad school. At the time, I was drinking multiple 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke at home every day, plus several coffees and Diet Cokes on campus. I had to drink Diet Coke; if I'd consumed the same volume of regular Coke, I would have weighed about 900 pounds. Anyway, I started having serious problems with my stomach. Basically, my entire upper digestive system would convulse like I was vomiting, but nothing would come up. The Doctor asked me if this might be stress-related, and I laughed and told him I didn't know. He understood-- I was never NOT under stress, so I had no control for comparison. Well, he suggested a really bland diet, cutting out a whole bunch of things I consumed regularly. I looked at it and thought "I can either start eating like a very old man at age 23, or I can drop the one thing I know I'm abusing." I quit caffeine cold turkey. At the time, I already had a cold. The next week was a living Hell. I had headaches that made me want to scream, plus the symptoms of the cold, plus the lovely symptoms of the effects of the caffeine on my stomach. Oh yeah... and I had my final problem sets and the preparation for finals. Ugh. But I did get over it. The cold cleared up in the normal time for a cold, and the headaches only lasted a week or so. The symptoms of the damage to my stomach, on the other hand, lingered for years. I can now drink a guarana (Brazilian soft drink made from a berry that naturally contains caffeine) or really strong coffee and not have to heave and retch. But for years, I couldn't. Beware the dangers of caffeine, everyone.
Anyway, for anyone who doesn't HAVE to quit caffeine RIGHT NOW and can take a few weeks to try to do it right, I recommend trying my mother's approach-- ramping down the non-decaffeinated portion of your coffee from 100% to 0% gradually, over the course of a few weeks. It worked for Mom.
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I'm not sure if it's because of me (a /.er who's been doing a "Chicken Little" impression about electronic voting for a couple of years now) or because of Ben Cohen's (as in "Ben," the founder of Ben & Jerry's, tho' he's no longer working there) organization, True Majority, which has been sending her e-mails about e-voting, among other issues, but my mom has gotten into this issue. She lives in Maine and sent me an e-mail about an act recently passed in the Maine Legislature entitled An Act to Ensure the Accurate Counting of Votes. Note: navigation is a bit weird on the linked site-- if you go to the text of the Act, the whole text of the bill will not appear on a single page. You will have to use the arrows at the top and bottom of the pages to navigate around through the Act. You can also download a copy in M$ Word format.
Oh yeh-- there's an amendment. To see it, click on the "Amendments" link on the "Bill Text and Other Docs" page, or click here.
This is a sweet little piece of legislation. My favorite parts: it prohibits networking the voting machines, requires the voting machine software to be open source, and requires the voting machines to print paper ballots that are inspected by the voter and then placed into a ballot box. I am deeply impressed with this, and with the sponsor, Maine State Representative Hannah Pingree.
Here's a question: does anybody other than the OVC have a product that meets the criteria specified in the Act?
Responding to the parent post, I'll say that Maine can be considered a "backwater state," and its legislature has produced what appears to me to be a kick-ass piece of legislation on e-voting that explicitly requires open source software. Do big, rich, important states like California have such good legislation? I think not. Score one for the backwater states!
--Mark
PS: if you're near a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop, go there next Tuesday, April 27, and take advantage of Free Cone Day!!!
Conectiva is quite well known in Brazil. I think this is because of the language barrier. While Spanish and Portuguese are similar enough that reasonably intelligent speakers of the two can communicate with each other, there are significant differences.
However, the size of Brazil's population and its economy make it the most economically important nation in Latin America. It is a nation of 190 million people with a large and rapidly growing economy. Many economists believe that the nations that will dominate the 21st Century economically are the so-called "BRICs:" Brazil, Russia, India, and China. I mention this because I'm sure Mexicans will get upset seeing me say that Brazil is the most economically important nation in Latin America. Anyway, even if Conectiva were to only have its distro widely installed here in Brazil (and I'm not sure if that's the case), it could still be the most popular distro in Latin America. Consider that even though all the nations of Latin America except Brazil speak Spanish, a majority of people in South America speak Portuguese (the population of Brazil is larger than that of the rest of South America combined). I believe that Portuguese is narrowly not the language of the majority of Latin Americans because México has a large population.
Anyway, I am in the process of founding a company for industrial production of food (I prefer not to be more specific right now), and I intend to use Linux on our computers-- not just the servers, but the desktops too. Because of its native support for Portuguese (developed by native speakers too... heh) and because of the presence of Conectiva right here in São Paulo, I am almost certain to use the Conectiva distro. Yes, people like my office manager, who know only Windoze, will have to learn to deal with a new GUI, but she's smart enough, and I am planning for training of all workers who will use computers. The cost of that training comes out cheaper than paying MS licenses.
I am trying to build a "Values-Led" business, and I like that we will be supporting another Brazilian company and keeping the profits from our software expenditures here in our community instead of sending them to Redmond. It's also nice that the technical support will be from people here in our city (M$ phone support in Portuguese is reached by dialing a toll-free number here in Brazil, but the people who answer are Brazilians working in Redmond... strange but true). I love that we will not be treated like criminals by our software suppliers and will never have to undergo a license audit. I also love that my employees will be able to take Conectiva CDs home or download the images at home and be able to install exactly the same software at home as they use at work. Even if we upgrade the machines at work, the employees who use computers at home will be able to keep pace. Contrast this with the Windoze situation, where people use Windows 2000 or XP at work, but typically use Windows 95 or 98 at home.
It's also cool that some well-known kernel hackers have worked at Conectiva, including Marcelo Tosatti (he left and is now working elsewhere, but he was at Conectiva when he was asked to maintain the then-production kernel) and Rik van Riel.
--Mark
NOTE: I AM NOT SAYING BRAZIL IS BETTER THAN THE USA... JUST THAT IT'S NOT WORSE EITHER.
Brazil's electrical power, as of 2001, was about 97% hydroelectric. Because of years of below-average rainfall, this system was threatened, and in 2001, we were told there might be "rolling blackouts" here (except that the Brazilian government, unlike the US government, was honest enough to call it what it was: power rationing). We ended up not getting any "rolling blackouts," and a regression toward the mean in rainfall has left us sufficiently well off that we don't even have to use the new polluting thermo plants that were built around the time of the crisis. Electrical power here is cheap and reliable, especially compared to places like California, where a lot of my friends had to endure "rolling blackouts" because the folks at the deregulated power companies decided to put more money on their bottom line by not investing in infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. So the execs who made those decisions increased profits in the short term, increasing their bonuses and the value of their stock. When the $#!+ hit the fan, guess who had to pay, both in damages from "rolling blackouts" and in higher rates? The consumers, of course!
The only power problems I've had here in São Paulo were a neighborhood issue, not a city-wide, state-wide, or nation-wide problem. Basically, the new condo across the street overloaded the local grid 3 times in a 2-week span. The worst thing is that the new condo has its own generator, so the newcomers would knock out the neighborhood power and then not even notice, because their generator kicked in. Meanwhile, those of us who had already been in the neighborhood were screwed. Even those problems have been resolved, though. With even more people moving into the new condo, it's been about 6 weeks since we had a problem. The power companies here are pretty efficient. Yeah, I'd have liked for somebody to stop people from moving into the new condo until the local power grid was adequately updated, but they responded pretty quickly once the problem did present itself in an inconvenient way.
--Mark
For all the talk about establishing democracy in Iraq, the powers-that-be in Washington will not permit open, free, and fair elections in Iraq because Shiite fundamentalists would win.
--Mark
People wouldn't really have to move around so much, because if people were free to move where they wanted, companies wouldn't jump around to try to play the labor forces in different countries against each other. If the jobs don't leave, the people don't have to.
--Mark
It's a dirty little secret of modern Capitalism that it basically can't work the way it's "supposed" to, given the current conditions. I'm not trolling, and I'll be specific.
The Classical theories on which Capitalism is based were written in the 19th Century. At that time, capital was basically land, and labor was much more free to move about than it is today. Before anyone objects that transportation is more advanced today, let me explain what I mean: in those days, workers were not locked into compartments from which they could not escape, and could basically go where the work was without having to worry about passports and work visas. Anyway, because of the conditions that obtained in the 19th Century, the Classical theories are based on assumptions of immobile capital and highly mobile labor.
The conclusions of the Classical theories are nice, especially "mutual advantage." Unfortunately, those theories have about as much to do with our current reality as the "spherical cow" of every physics nerd's favorite joke. In today's world, capital moves at a high fraction of the speed of light through wires, or even at the speed of light as radio signals in the air or visible pulses in fiber optic cables. Meanwhile, because of the fortified borders between countries and the need for passports and work visas and such, labor is basically locked into little compartments. As a result, the situation of today is almost exactly the opposite of the situation assumed by the Classical theories.
Because of this, the conclusions, like "mutual advantage," are utter bunk in today's world. In fact, there is basically nothing now preventing capital (a term I also use to refer to those who control large amounts of capital) taking total advantage of labor. So when American workers want adequate safety conditions at work, capital dumps them and goes to Mexico. When the Mexican workers get uppity and want a decent working wage and don't want pollutants dumped in their rivers, capital takes the jobs to Vietnam... etc., etc.
More relevant to this discussion, when computer programmers in Silicon Valley start getting six-figure salaries, capital starts by importing Indian programmers. When the imported Indians get wise and jump ship to higher-paying companies, capital gets smart and takes the work to India. In general terms, capital (the "2%" mentioned in the parent post) can play the labor forces in different countries against each other and pick and choose which countries' laborers will get work.
Is all lost? Maybe not. It might be possible to restore something more closely resembling the "mutual advantage" ideal of the Classical theories (though I'm sure there are some who don't see "mutual advantage" as a positive ideal and prefer the current situation...). All we have to do is restore the mobility of labor. Make the borders as open to people as they are to capital. Yes, in the short term, there would be disruptions, like a huge mass of people whose knowledge of the USA comes from Hollywood, who would flood the USA temporarily looking for that streets-paved-with-gold-and-everything-works paradise, but eventually, things would settle down again, only with better conditions for workers (read: people).
For those who worry a lot about the short-term consequences, consider that that worry is part of the "playing labor forces in different countries against each other" I mentioned above. You want to preserve the apparent advantage workers in your country currently appear to have, and capital plays on that to make you oppose the kinds of changes that could actually make Capitalism work for many people, instead of horribly failing the great majority, as it has been for quite some time.
--Mark
The problem with the proposed solution (voting) is that Gerrymandering has made it so that the will of the voters is not respected. It would be very difficult for there to be a major change in the House of Representatives at this point, unless there were some major scandal.
Ironically enough, the intention of the "Founding Fathers" was to have the House more subject to the whims of public opinion, while the Senate would be more "insulated." Today, the truth is nearly the opposite. Gerrymandering has made it so that a House seat is safer than a Senate seat, despite having to face elections three times as often. The difference is that a Senator's constituents are from all over his state, while a House member's constituents are from a ridiculously-shaped "region" where he is virtually guaranteed that his supporters form a majority of voters. So now, instead of "subject to the will of the people" and "less so," we have "less so" and "even less so."
The Gerrymandering/redistricting adventures reached a new level of absurdity in Texas last year. Some of the new districts they drew are outrageously funny to me, but that's because I don't live in the USA anymore. Any US citizen living in the USA, especially Texas, ought to be horrified with the way those thugs have subverted the democratic process.
--Mark
Given that Berkman, when he's remembered at all, is remembered for a violent act he committed, I feel compelled to state that I like Berkman the author, but do not condone the acts of Berkman the man.
The ideal of Communism is theoretically a stateless society, but the idea that it is possible to give the State total control and that it will let itself then just "wither away" is patently ridiculous. In my opinion, any path involving totalitarian Socialism could never lead to ideal Libertarian Communism.
--Mark
If the NSA were to try to sneak something like that into a piece of F/OSS, others among the "many eyes" would almost certainly spot it. And before some wag asks, no, the recent release of some old Win2K source on P2P filesharing networks does not give Windows the same advantage...
--Mark
It's a joke, son...
Sheesh!
The IRS and its equivalents in other countries are the last organizations I'd want using F/OSS.
Yes, I recognize all the advantages of F/OSS-- security, stability, supportability and lifetime, etc. I'd prefer not to have a BSOD or some worm-induced malfunction on, for example, the avionics systems of a jetliner.
I'm also thrilled to see the Brazilian government taking steps toward independence from Redmond (and, indirectly, the US Government-- everyone down here remembers the "NSA Key" very clearly) by moving toward F/OSS.
But for the tax collectors? I'd just as soon have them all sign perpetual Microsoft-only contracts. Imagine it-- they would be as frustrated trying to do their day-to-day work EVERY DAY as we are when tax day rolls around. Plus a good worm could knock out all their records. The security problems would also allow people naughtier than I to get in and "update" some of the algorithms used to calculate how much each taxpayer owes.
Tax collection agencies seem to me to be excellent places for Microsoft-only software.
Now that I think of it, I wonder if there's any chance we can convince the "Total Information Awareness" (or whatever they're calling it now that it doesn't officially exist) folks to use only Microsoft software? I know I'd feel a lot safer from Big Brother if I knew he was using MS software. He'd be too busy patching and trying to recover lost data (plus going through MS license audits) to bother me...
--Mark
Also, as others have noted, control would be difficult, and there would be a risk of running into obstacles, but it seems to me that a computer-assisted system like those in fighter jets could help take care of such problems.
OK, a little fun for the first day of Carnaval. I now return you to your regularly scheduled boring reality...
--Mark
SCO's ever-changing case against IBM is now apparently different. Now they're not trying to say that IBM used SystemV code in Linux; they've now changed the story a bit to "IBM made software to work with SystemV, which under our definition is a derivative work, and therefore belongs to us, but then IBM had the nerve to port its own software to Linux, thus improperly using 'our' code."
Everyone who looks at SCO's "evidence" expecting to see SCO code used in Linux will probably "see dick."
--Mark
D'oh...
I just got an e-mail back from Professor Peale. He's going on a trip and will respond to my questions about this Europa story when he gets back on Thursday. Oh well...
--Mark
Interesting aside: Professor Peale narrowly made the window before Voyager took the now-famous pictures. He had done some work earlier on Earth's moon, then applied the same calculation to every moon in the solar system. But for historical reasons, orbital data about the Galilean moons are recorded differently from those of every other moon in the book where Professor Peale looked up the numbers to check each moon. He only noticed this months later, and when the calculation showed the possibility of a volcanic Io, he had to rush to try to get his prediction published-- ANYONE can write a paper explaining why a given moon is volcanic, but Professor Peale had actually predicted that Io was volcanic before anyone knew if it really was.
Anyway, the idea that Europa has a rocky center (with a molten interior) doesn't seem very likely to me. I've sent an e-mail to Professor Peale asking what he thinks, but I just did that, and he has not replied yet.
--Mark
--Mark
red floyd makes a really good point in a reply to my post. He points out that the 9th Amendment is what you were talking about. As I state in my reply to his reply, I think both the 9th and the 10th come into this discussion, but I definitely erred in leaving out the 9th. I also found interesting the argument I saw elsewhere in this thread that the right to privacy is a logical extension of the right to property that comes up at the end of the 5th Amendment.
The Bill of Rights is a pretty amazing document, and that's coming from a somewhat disgusted expat. I guess I could say it's a shame what's been done to it. That doesn't seem like too controversial a statement.
--Mark
Good point, red floyd. I think both the 9th and the 10th come into this discussion. The 9th Amendment enters as you described-- the people have rights even if the Constitution, in specifying the powers of the government, does not explicitly mention them. The Tenth enters because the government wants to do some things the Constitution did not specify.
I have mod points, and I'd have modded you up if I hadn't already posted in this thread.
--Mark
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
In the 1996 Presidential campaign, Bob Dole flew a couple of trial balloons about "dusting off the Tenth Amendment," which was Republican code for "get rid of social programs we don't like." I laughed and wondered if ol' Bob would be willing to have a real discussion of dusting off the Tenth Amendment and doing away with all the power the US Government has taken on without that power having been delegated to the government by the Constitution. Of course not!
The Tenth Amendment, like the Second, was designed to protect the people from the very government whose powers are specified by the Constitution. The Second Amendment was not about armies or self-defense against foreign invaders, as its modern-day opponents allege; it was designed to prevent the usurpation of power by the Federal Government that has in fact occurred over the 217+ years since the Constitution was written. I am sad to report that the meaning of the Second and Tenth Amendments is largely forgotten (favorite funny slogan for the ACLU: "Defending the rights guaranteed by the Amendments of the Bill of Rights-- all nine of them") and basically ended up amounting to nothing more than mere speedbumps, only slowing down (definitely NOT preventing) the theft of power from citizens of the USA by the government of the USA.
It's a little sad that I have to say this, but even though I've criticized both the Republicans and the ACLU (and thus, basically the entire political "spectrum" of the USA), this is not intended as any kind of troll. The meaning of the two Amendments in question is clear if you read the Constitution itself and other writings from the same time by the "framers" of the Constitution. The framers, having had to fight a war against a government they felt did not represent them, were very worried about their new government becoming like the one against which they had fought. Washington voluntarily stepping down after two terms as President due to concerns that he could become like a new "king" shows that this concern continued until at least 1797, more than 15 years after the end of the American Revolutionary War and more than a decade after the Constitution was written.
--Mark
Of course, this should surprise nobody. According to this book, many of those who go into that famous example's first chosen field have similar histories and... uh... physical characteristics. That also goes a long way to explaining the famous example's obviously angry and power-wielding attitudes toward women...
--Mark
Uh, no.
Coleridge was in an opium-induced stupor when he got the inspiration for the poem. Here are some sources that back this up (including comments from the poet himself):
You can read about the poem and its origins here, or you can read original notes on the poem from the author and others who knew him here. You can also read the original poem here.
--Mark
I've also found that a lot of solutions come to me in the shower. I first started to notice this when I was doing some physics research as an undergrad in 1990-91. I definitely got the ideas for how to do several very important calculations throughout grad school, including a few in my dissertation. I've also noticed that the solutions to programming problems, or how to create a technology-based solution for a given business problem, or even arguments for a debate with a friend come to me in the shower sometimes. I think it's worth noting that I don't seem to get solutions to problems in other situations where I'm not thinking directly about them. It really seems that the answer to "sleep on it" problems comes in the shower, but not necessarily in the morning (some of my "inspirations" came during showers after exercising in the evening, or when getting ready to go out at night).
My theory on what's going on is a bit different. Where the original poster believes stopping thinking directly about the problem helps his subconscious thought processes work on the problem, I always figured my brain was working on the problem "in the background" and that the results, for whatever reason, come to me in the shower. An ex-coworker has also noticed that he gets the solutions to problems in the shower. He also seems to believe that the ideas are developed in real time in the shower, unlike my concept of the result of a longer-running "background job" being presented or delivered in the shower. In his theory, though, the "white noise" (which may not really be "white") of the water from the showerhead hitting the floor and walls/curtain of the place where you're taking a shower somehow helps the brain settle into a state where it can solve the problem more easily (not that different from the original poster's theory).
--Mark
...the holders of domains MyCrow.com, MyCrew.com, WhenDoes.com, WinDozens.com, MikeRose.com, and MikeRosoff.com have all hired lawyers.
Mr. Mike Rosoff of Kennebunk, Maine is especially worried, because he has received a cease-and-desist letter from Microsoft lawyers claiming that his social security card, driver's license, passport, and all items using his birth name are infringing on copyrights.
More on the story as it develops...
--Mark
__:-b
This is true, but it's actually a bit more complicated. People in the government of Country 1 might decide they need to have more of "it" and see this endless cycle as a good way to justify it, if they can just convince the people of their country that Country 2 has more of "it" than country 1 now.
So then you get creative reevaluation of intelligence data. Where professional intelligence experts say there is not that much of "it" in Country 2, these people go and look at the data. They claim it's to look at it again "without bias," but in fact they have the bias that they want to find that Country 2 has much more of "it" than the dedicated intelligence analysts found. Instead of evaluating all the data, they "cherry pick" the parts that support their thesis and conveniently leave out all the data that doesn't, even if what they leave out is crucial or even if what they leave out constitutes the great majority of the data.
I'll give four examples where the USA played the role of Country 1 and did this. Just so you don't have to "trust me," I'll cite a reasonably well-written article that talks about these issues that you can read by clicking here. A Google search on "missile gap" will get you some other good sources.
Additionally, when I talk about the most recent example, I cite articles I found on the White House web site.
The classic example is the Soviet "missile gap." Working from exactly the same raw intelligence data, USAF Intelligence reached the conclusion in the late 1950s that the Soviets would deploy 500 ICBMs by the early '60s. The intelligence branch of the Strategic Air Command reached the conclusion that the Soviets would deploy or might have already deployed 1000 or more. The recently much-maligned CIA figured there were about 50. The author of the article I cited states that the driving force in that case was the USAF, which was in a battle with the Army and Navy for military funding. A huge deployment of Soviet ICBMs would help justify a huge deployment of American ICBMs, fattening the Air Force budget, of which ICBMs represented a sizeable chunk. The SAC also had an interest in an inflated estimate, since the SAC would control and operate the missiles.
The SAC pointed to signs and clues in Soviet documents and in comments by Kruschev that could be interpreted in a way that supported their hypothesis. SAC showed Eisenhower (and later Kennedy) slide shows with pictures of grain elevators, a medieval tower, and some strange structure in the middle of nowhere and argued that such places might be used to hide missiles, even though there was no evidence that any such thing was going on. The punch line? By the time Kennedy became President in 1961, satellite surveillance revealed that the Soviets had 4 ICBMs. No, that's not a typo. Four ICBMs.
Example 2: In 1969, President Nixon and the Joint Chiefs wanted to try to justify huge spending on a missile defense system. Sound familiar? One of the best justifications was protecting American ICBMs from Soviet warheads, allowing the USA to respond to a hypothetical Soviet first strike. This would theoretically keep the Sovie
My mother was a serious caffeine addict, but didn't know it. She did know she was consuming a lot, and decided to stop. When she stopped, she started getting really bad headaches. It didn't take her long to figure out that caffeine made the headaches go away and not taking caffeine would invite them back. Her solution was remarkable for its simplicity and ingenuity. It was true nerd solution, but not produced by a nerd (I think the nerdiness alleles passed to me by my parents were recessive, but got the chance to shine and show what they could do in me).
Here's what Mom did...
She was buying coffee beans and grinding them herself. She got some decaf beans. She started with almost all non-decaf beans and just a little bit of decaf, ground them together, and made her coffee normally. After that, over the course of a few weeks, she ramped up the decaf percentage (ramping down the caffeine-filled beans at the same time, of course). After those weeks were over, she was drinking almost pure decaf, and then the transition to 100% decaf (or thereabouts-- the decaffeination process is not perfect and is probably worse in whole beans than in grounds due to the relatively low surface area) was easy.
Mom's body apparently reacted to changes in caffeine dosage like the famous frog in a pot of hot water. I've been told (usually in the context of a discussion on eroding civil liberties) about an experiment that showed that if you put a frog into a pot of really hot water, the frog feels the high temperature and just hops out. On the other hand, if you put the frog in a pot of cool water and start gently heating it, the frog does not notice the gradual temperature changes and ends up dying when the water gets hot enough. Similarly, when Mom tried to go from lots of caffeine to zero caffeine, her body freaked out, and she had to suffer through splitting headaches. On the other hand, when she gradually ramped down her caffeine dosage, the body was able to adjust to the small changes, and she was able to go to full decaf without headaches.
BTW, I was forced to quit caffeine toward the end of the Fall quarter of my 2nd year in grad school. At the time, I was drinking multiple 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke at home every day, plus several coffees and Diet Cokes on campus. I had to drink Diet Coke; if I'd consumed the same volume of regular Coke, I would have weighed about 900 pounds. Anyway, I started having serious problems with my stomach. Basically, my entire upper digestive system would convulse like I was vomiting, but nothing would come up. The Doctor asked me if this might be stress-related, and I laughed and told him I didn't know. He understood-- I was never NOT under stress, so I had no control for comparison. Well, he suggested a really bland diet, cutting out a whole bunch of things I consumed regularly. I looked at it and thought "I can either start eating like a very old man at age 23, or I can drop the one thing I know I'm abusing." I quit caffeine cold turkey. At the time, I already had a cold. The next week was a living Hell. I had headaches that made me want to scream, plus the symptoms of the cold, plus the lovely symptoms of the effects of the caffeine on my stomach. Oh yeah... and I had my final problem sets and the preparation for finals. Ugh. But I did get over it. The cold cleared up in the normal time for a cold, and the headaches only lasted a week or so. The symptoms of the damage to my stomach, on the other hand, lingered for years. I can now drink a guarana (Brazilian soft drink made from a berry that naturally contains caffeine) or really strong coffee and not have to heave and retch. But for years, I couldn't. Beware the dangers of caffeine, everyone.
Anyway, for anyone who doesn't HAVE to quit caffeine RIGHT NOW and can take a few weeks to try to do it right, I recommend trying my mother's approach-- ramping down the non-decaffeinated portion of your coffee from 100% to 0% gradually, over the course of a few weeks. It worked for Mom.
--Mark