Re:Why are Nader voters and his party so cluess?
on
The Hidden Swing State?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The chance that Ralph Nader will be elected president is exactly 0. In spending his political capital running for an office he can not posibly win he is insuring a minimal return on investment.
I think the Democratic party has shifted to the left since 2000, and I think that is in no small part due to Ralph Nader. Almost 5% of Democrats were so frustrated by Gore that they were willing to risk letting Bush into office to send that message. Nader may have 0 chance of being elected, but in 2000 Nader sure was heard.
In an election with three candidates, a candidate can be elected when as many as 85.2% of the voters cast votes for someone else.
It's worse than that. Even if you assume equal turnout, you only need 25.1% of the electoral college to force the vote to go to the senate. And you only need 1/3 of the votes in each of those states to get that electoral vote. So you can be elected with 91.6% of the country voting against you, even if you assume equal turnout in each state. Don't assume equal turnout, and you only need 4 votes to win in a 4 party race. One in California, one in New York, one in Texas, and one more in any of a number of states.
However, there's a further point, in that a candidate can win the election with less than 23% of voters voting for him, if all electors vote according to the plurality of votes in their state and there are only two candidates.
Of course that assumes an equal turnout in each state. In theory a candidate could win with just 11 votes against 150 million. In theory.
The early voting thing introduced was a mistake, IMHO. You've got a system with all of these problems, the last thing you want to do is complicate it further, by allowing people to vote earlier in person, and give them 11 locations to do so.
Maybe. But the system seems to be fail-safe. The worst case scenario, early voting completely fails and everyone votes on election day. A waste of money, maybe. A waste of time for a lot of people, yes. But in the worst case you get the same number of valid votes, and in the best case you get more.
Note: "early voting" is different than an "absentee ballot." I feel that absentee ballots should only be allowed when you know you will not be able to make it to the polls on election day.
That was true in Florida until this year. Now you can use an absentee ballot for any reason, such as because you don't want to vote electronically, or because you'd like to reseach the candidates while you vote. I don't see how it's a bad thing.
That, or extend the actual election over two days, or make it a national holiday like it should be, and give everyone the day off from work so they can vote!
Personally I'd like repudiable absentee ballots with receipt via the internet (just pick up a public/private keypair at the DMV). But likely too many people are worried about vote buying for that to become a reality.
The article is about the machines - they do not work as promised.
I doubt the machines which check the voter registration are the same machines which handle the vote. It's even less likely that the same people who made the machines made the network, which is what actually seems to have failed.
Those who provided the machines did not do the job as contracted, and did not supply an adequate backup system.
There was an adequate backup system. "calling in each voter's name to the main Election's Office in Fort Lauderdale"
You can register up to 30 days before an election. So, people were able to register up until a week or so before early voting.
Early voters have to have registered on or before October 4. Two weeks is plenty of time to print out a list of registered voters. The problem is that the November 2 voting locations aren't necessarily open (early voting locations must be open every day October 18-November 1) so they've opened up multiple county-wide voting locations for early voting. Multiple locations for voting means you can't use a paper list (without calling a central location which is what they did when all hell broke loose).
The paper lists always seem to work fine and didn't slow things down much, not sure why they can't use those.
There are multiple locations that a single voter can vote at. As an example, I live in Hillsborough County and can vote at 11 different places. So paper lists can't be used, because then people could vote more than once.
This might just be an early voting thing. With regular voting, I have a single location that I have to go to. With early voting, I have 11 different choices. You can't use paper lists when you have 11 different voting locations, because then I could just go to every single location and vote. Since votes are anonymous, even if it was later discovered that I had done this, there'd be no way to know how I voted to fix it.
But if they're voting right now in Florida then it's just for practice.
No, votes yesterday (through Novemeber 1) are just as likely to be counted as votes on November 2. Personally I plan on voting some time next week. Let em get rid of the glitches, let the lines die down, and then I'll go vote.
On another note, I wonder if all the news agencies are doing exit polls on the early voting, and I wonder when they're going to release the results.
I'd bet real money that you're not cleaning all the spyware off your parent's PC, which is why it keeps coming back even though they use Firefox.
I'll take that bet.
Firefox isn't the problem -- Windows is the problem.
Simply stating it does not make it true. In fact, in many cases I've traced the problem to specific programs which were not related to Windows, such as Kazaa.
Some spwayre leaves pieces on the hard drive, a part of the program you can't remove from within Windows...
No, that's not possible. Anything on the hard drive can be removed, and there is no distinction to what can and cannot be removed "from within Windows", as Windows allows raw disk access.
Cleaning spyware off your parents PC (or, in your case, the failure to do so), does not make you an expert on spyware or antispyware programming.
I never claimed to be an expert on such things. I don't have to be an expert on spyware or antispyware programming to know that if you allow someone to download and install software which makes an internet connection and sends data, then you are allowing someone to download and install spyware. It's common sense.
Try fixing your parents up with a Linux box, and see whether they get spyware... they won't!
Nope, they won't. They also won't use the computer. Like I said, I could give them an original NES system and they wouldn't get spyware either.
Linux *IS* usable by non-computer experts.
I can't even stand to use it myself as a desktop system, and I am a computer expert. So you must be seriously stretching the meaning of "usable" for that statement to be true. I like linux, and I use it for my server, but every single time I've tried to use it for my desktop system I've given up because it sucked for that purpose.
Try removing the "\System Information Folder" from within Windows.
That's hardly a program, which is what you know I was talking about.
Fully 95% of the spyware that cause problems for the end user (like Cool Web Search, etc) install via security holes in IE/OE.
My parents use Firefox exclusively, and they still manage to get spyware on their systems. Eliminating 95% of the problem doesn't solve anything.
Executing unsigned software is not the issue, users that click yes to the 'Do you want to run...' deserve what they get. Those aren't the spyware I'm talking about -- generally those aren't the ones that cause the problems.
Well, you've defined spyware to fit your argument. Personally I was defining spyware as software which spys on you, regardless of how it gets into your system. I don't think my parents deserve what they get when they install software which includes spyware. And I certainly don't think it's not a problem. I've seen their computers, and it is a problem, especially the incessant popups (which even occur when they're using firefox which has popups turned off), and the only way for them to completely solve it is to stop running unsigned software, which is simply not an acceptable solution. Hell, even if they did only run signed software it'd have to be signed by me, since I don't trust anyone else not to include spyware. Most of the major software packages already do it.
What do you think spyware uses now to install in Windows? They use bugs, not features.
Some use bugs, but a whole lot of them use features.
The boot loader isn't the point of infection any spyware or virus would use for Linux, because its the most locked down for any distro during normal Linux use.
Such a system is unusable by a non-computer expert without a simple way to bypass the security (such as entering a password). Just look as OSX, they have a blank root password by default.
The point of infection would be the user space in Linux, and nearly every distro has minor differences in where programs get started automatically, where settings are stored, etc.
And this would have to be solved if linux were ever to be usable by a non-computer expert.
I'm not sure what point you're making here, but there are Linux distros that run on Nintendo boxes, and connect to the Internet.
While Windows has a built-in affinity for Spyware (you can't even remove many spyware suites from within Windows, no matter how hard you try)
Maybe you can't remove them, but I can remove anything that's on my system.
Linux is open-source, making the creation of products that'll clean spyware infinitely easier
I fail to see how an open-source kernel makes the creation of products to clean spyware any easier.
Linux doesn't suffer from the limitless vulnerabilities present in Windows and IE that make it such an easy target for spyware.
It "suffers" from the ones that matter, namely the ability to allow users to execute unsigned software on one's machine.
Even if one did want to create spyware for Linux, they'd likely need to create a version for each Linux distro out there, as minor differences in each distro make even getting legit apps to run prove challenging without the assistance of people or faqs or other info from the originator of the distro.
If that were true it'd be a bug, not a feature. But it's not really particularly true. The vast majority of linux distros use one of a very few systems for bootup. And if Linux ever becomes popular enough for people to bother writing spyware for it, it'll have to standardize this even more.
Using a nintendo solves the spyware problem too, by not allowing an internet connection in the first place. Broken functionality is not a true solution.
In the near future I predict that computers are going to be treated more and more like automobiles, in that paying for routine maintenance will be pretty much a requirement for all but the experts in the field. Unlike with automobiles, the experts will be able to maintain their software for free, but just about every machine I've seen has some form of spyware/adware on it.
Those of you who say that linux is the answer, I'm afraid you're wrong, at least in part. Unless you lock down a computer so that no software except for that approved by the manufacturer is run (or is crippled beyond even that of a java applet), spyware is inevitable on the machines of the average Joe. Linux may help by eliminating the cost of the software itself and enabling people to pay for support, but support is inevitably necessary if a non-computer expert wants to remain spyware-free.
Re:Give me a break here...
on
The Nader Factor
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yes, he will 'steal' some of Kerry's votes, but the fact of the matter is that the dems have been extremely active in trying to keep Nader off ballots via legal manuevers, rather underhanded if you ask me; not the sort of thing that I would find inspiring in my leaders.
And in the end, Ralph Nader's democratic coattails will probably help the democrats in the House and Senate more than it hurts them in the Presidency. I voted in 2000 solely so I could vote for Nader, and voted Democrat right down the rest of the ballot. In 2004 it's probably much more important for the Democrats to win big in Congress than it is for them to win the Presidency.
In the upcoming election I will be voting for Kerry
I probably will be too, I like Kerry a lot more than Gore (and I'm in Florida this time around), but without a Democratic Congress Kerry isn't going to be able to accomplish many of the programs he's talking about.
If Harry Browne or Michael Badnarik had received the same amount of press as Nader got in 2000/is getting now, their vote totals would have been much higher.
Maybe the libertarians should spend less money getting on the ballot in 48 states and more getting press coverage.
AFAIK, Slashdot is one of the few major websites that even mention Badnarik.
Nader has done a lot more to merit press coverage than Badnarik has. He wrote a bestselling book which sold over half a million copies. What has Badnarik done, led a boyscout troop? How many copies of Good to Be King have been sold?
But that's not the purpose of science. The purpose of science is to discover new truths, not to communicate them. Words and definitions are important, but defining things is not science in itself. Even the scientific method is about predicting the future, not talking about the past.
If you give a gmail invite to someone, and they break the gmail TOS, fill up their account with letters to themselves, send spam, etc., you shouldn't be surprised if your account gets shut off.
I would be treating the entire computer as hacked... not just the hard drive.
They should probably have been doing this anyway. I don't see any reason to store sensitive data on an indymedia server. Sure you watch traffic, but the assumption should be that the government can do this already anyway (does indymedia have any https servers?).
would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans
Slashdot Mirror
The chance that Ralph Nader will be elected president is exactly 0. In spending his political capital running for an office he can not posibly win he is insuring a minimal return on investment.
I think the Democratic party has shifted to the left since 2000, and I think that is in no small part due to Ralph Nader. Almost 5% of Democrats were so frustrated by Gore that they were willing to risk letting Bush into office to send that message. Nader may have 0 chance of being elected, but in 2000 Nader sure was heard.
In an election with three candidates, a candidate can be elected when as many as 85.2% of the voters cast votes for someone else.
It's worse than that. Even if you assume equal turnout, you only need 25.1% of the electoral college to force the vote to go to the senate. And you only need 1/3 of the votes in each of those states to get that electoral vote. So you can be elected with 91.6% of the country voting against you, even if you assume equal turnout in each state. Don't assume equal turnout, and you only need 4 votes to win in a 4 party race. One in California, one in New York, one in Texas, and one more in any of a number of states.
However, there's a further point, in that a candidate can win the election with less than 23% of voters voting for him, if all electors vote according to the plurality of votes in their state and there are only two candidates.
Of course that assumes an equal turnout in each state. In theory a candidate could win with just 11 votes against 150 million. In theory.
The early voting thing introduced was a mistake, IMHO. You've got a system with all of these problems, the last thing you want to do is complicate it further, by allowing people to vote earlier in person, and give them 11 locations to do so.
Maybe. But the system seems to be fail-safe. The worst case scenario, early voting completely fails and everyone votes on election day. A waste of money, maybe. A waste of time for a lot of people, yes. But in the worst case you get the same number of valid votes, and in the best case you get more.
Note: "early voting" is different than an "absentee ballot." I feel that absentee ballots should only be allowed when you know you will not be able to make it to the polls on election day.
That was true in Florida until this year. Now you can use an absentee ballot for any reason, such as because you don't want to vote electronically, or because you'd like to reseach the candidates while you vote. I don't see how it's a bad thing.
That, or extend the actual election over two days, or make it a national holiday like it should be, and give everyone the day off from work so they can vote!
Personally I'd like repudiable absentee ballots with receipt via the internet (just pick up a public/private keypair at the DMV). But likely too many people are worried about vote buying for that to become a reality.
The article is about the machines - they do not work as promised.
I doubt the machines which check the voter registration are the same machines which handle the vote. It's even less likely that the same people who made the machines made the network, which is what actually seems to have failed.
Those who provided the machines did not do the job as contracted, and did not supply an adequate backup system.
There was an adequate backup system. "calling in each voter's name to the main Election's Office in Fort Lauderdale"
On election day everyone is assigned a unique polling place, so I doubt this particular problem is going to occur.
You can register up to 30 days before an election. So, people were able to register up until a week or so before early voting.
Early voters have to have registered on or before October 4. Two weeks is plenty of time to print out a list of registered voters. The problem is that the November 2 voting locations aren't necessarily open (early voting locations must be open every day October 18-November 1) so they've opened up multiple county-wide voting locations for early voting. Multiple locations for voting means you can't use a paper list (without calling a central location which is what they did when all hell broke loose).
The paper lists always seem to work fine and didn't slow things down much, not sure why they can't use those.
There are multiple locations that a single voter can vote at. As an example, I live in Hillsborough County and can vote at 11 different places. So paper lists can't be used, because then people could vote more than once.
I find it odd that they don't have paper lists
This might just be an early voting thing. With regular voting, I have a single location that I have to go to. With early voting, I have 11 different choices. You can't use paper lists when you have 11 different voting locations, because then I could just go to every single location and vote. Since votes are anonymous, even if it was later discovered that I had done this, there'd be no way to know how I voted to fix it.
But if they're voting right now in Florida then it's just for practice.
No, votes yesterday (through Novemeber 1) are just as likely to be counted as votes on November 2. Personally I plan on voting some time next week. Let em get rid of the glitches, let the lines die down, and then I'll go vote.
On another note, I wonder if all the news agencies are doing exit polls on the early voting, and I wonder when they're going to release the results.
Florida residents can vote online here.
Like, good response. Like
I'd bet real money that you're not cleaning all the spyware off your parent's PC, which is why it keeps coming back even though they use Firefox.
I'll take that bet.
Firefox isn't the problem -- Windows is the problem.
Simply stating it does not make it true. In fact, in many cases I've traced the problem to specific programs which were not related to Windows, such as Kazaa.
Some spwayre leaves pieces on the hard drive, a part of the program you can't remove from within Windows...
No, that's not possible. Anything on the hard drive can be removed, and there is no distinction to what can and cannot be removed "from within Windows", as Windows allows raw disk access.
Cleaning spyware off your parents PC (or, in your case, the failure to do so), does not make you an expert on spyware or antispyware programming.
I never claimed to be an expert on such things. I don't have to be an expert on spyware or antispyware programming to know that if you allow someone to download and install software which makes an internet connection and sends data, then you are allowing someone to download and install spyware. It's common sense.
Try fixing your parents up with a Linux box, and see whether they get spyware ... they won't!
Nope, they won't. They also won't use the computer. Like I said, I could give them an original NES system and they wouldn't get spyware either.
Linux *IS* usable by non-computer experts.
I can't even stand to use it myself as a desktop system, and I am a computer expert. So you must be seriously stretching the meaning of "usable" for that statement to be true. I like linux, and I use it for my server, but every single time I've tried to use it for my desktop system I've given up because it sucked for that purpose.
Try removing the "\System Information Folder" from within Windows.
That's hardly a program, which is what you know I was talking about.
Fully 95% of the spyware that cause problems for the end user (like Cool Web Search, etc) install via security holes in IE/OE.
My parents use Firefox exclusively, and they still manage to get spyware on their systems. Eliminating 95% of the problem doesn't solve anything.
Executing unsigned software is not the issue, users that click yes to the 'Do you want to run ...' deserve what they get. Those aren't the spyware I'm talking about -- generally those aren't the ones that cause the problems.
Well, you've defined spyware to fit your argument. Personally I was defining spyware as software which spys on you, regardless of how it gets into your system. I don't think my parents deserve what they get when they install software which includes spyware. And I certainly don't think it's not a problem. I've seen their computers, and it is a problem, especially the incessant popups (which even occur when they're using firefox which has popups turned off), and the only way for them to completely solve it is to stop running unsigned software, which is simply not an acceptable solution. Hell, even if they did only run signed software it'd have to be signed by me, since I don't trust anyone else not to include spyware. Most of the major software packages already do it.
What do you think spyware uses now to install in Windows? They use bugs, not features.
Some use bugs, but a whole lot of them use features.
The boot loader isn't the point of infection any spyware or virus would use for Linux, because its the most locked down for any distro during normal Linux use.
Such a system is unusable by a non-computer expert without a simple way to bypass the security (such as entering a password). Just look as OSX, they have a blank root password by default.
The point of infection would be the user space in Linux, and nearly every distro has minor differences in where programs get started automatically, where settings are stored, etc.
And this would have to be solved if linux were ever to be usable by a non-computer expert.
I'm not sure what point you're making here, but there are Linux distros that run on Nintendo boxes, and connect to the Internet.
I'm talking about the original Nintendo system.
So we have all these featurs even Yahoo doesn't have.. and yet we're still beta?
Beta generally refers to the quality of the product, not the number of features.
While Windows has a built-in affinity for Spyware (you can't even remove many spyware suites from within Windows, no matter how hard you try)
Maybe you can't remove them, but I can remove anything that's on my system.
Linux is open-source, making the creation of products that'll clean spyware infinitely easier
I fail to see how an open-source kernel makes the creation of products to clean spyware any easier.
Linux doesn't suffer from the limitless vulnerabilities present in Windows and IE that make it such an easy target for spyware.
It "suffers" from the ones that matter, namely the ability to allow users to execute unsigned software on one's machine.
Even if one did want to create spyware for Linux, they'd likely need to create a version for each Linux distro out there, as minor differences in each distro make even getting legit apps to run prove challenging without the assistance of people or faqs or other info from the originator of the distro.
If that were true it'd be a bug, not a feature. But it's not really particularly true. The vast majority of linux distros use one of a very few systems for bootup. And if Linux ever becomes popular enough for people to bother writing spyware for it, it'll have to standardize this even more.
Using a nintendo solves the spyware problem too, by not allowing an internet connection in the first place. Broken functionality is not a true solution.
In the near future I predict that computers are going to be treated more and more like automobiles, in that paying for routine maintenance will be pretty much a requirement for all but the experts in the field. Unlike with automobiles, the experts will be able to maintain their software for free, but just about every machine I've seen has some form of spyware/adware on it.
Those of you who say that linux is the answer, I'm afraid you're wrong, at least in part. Unless you lock down a computer so that no software except for that approved by the manufacturer is run (or is crippled beyond even that of a java applet), spyware is inevitable on the machines of the average Joe. Linux may help by eliminating the cost of the software itself and enabling people to pay for support, but support is inevitably necessary if a non-computer expert wants to remain spyware-free.
Eristalis gatesi
The Bill Gates flowerfly.
Yes, he will 'steal' some of Kerry's votes, but the fact of the matter is that the dems have been extremely active in trying to keep Nader off ballots via legal manuevers, rather underhanded if you ask me; not the sort of thing that I would find inspiring in my leaders.
And in the end, Ralph Nader's democratic coattails will probably help the democrats in the House and Senate more than it hurts them in the Presidency. I voted in 2000 solely so I could vote for Nader, and voted Democrat right down the rest of the ballot. In 2004 it's probably much more important for the Democrats to win big in Congress than it is for them to win the Presidency.
In the upcoming election I will be voting for Kerry
I probably will be too, I like Kerry a lot more than Gore (and I'm in Florida this time around), but without a Democratic Congress Kerry isn't going to be able to accomplish many of the programs he's talking about.
If Harry Browne or Michael Badnarik had received the same amount of press as Nader got in 2000/is getting now, their vote totals would have been much higher.
Maybe the libertarians should spend less money getting on the ballot in 48 states and more getting press coverage.
AFAIK, Slashdot is one of the few major websites that even mention Badnarik.
Nader has done a lot more to merit press coverage than Badnarik has. He wrote a bestselling book which sold over half a million copies. What has Badnarik done, led a boyscout troop? How many copies of Good to Be King have been sold?
But that's not the purpose of science. The purpose of science is to discover new truths, not to communicate them. Words and definitions are important, but defining things is not science in itself. Even the scientific method is about predicting the future, not talking about the past.
If you give a gmail invite to someone, and they break the gmail TOS, fill up their account with letters to themselves, send spam, etc., you shouldn't be surprised if your account gets shut off.
I would be treating the entire computer as hacked... not just the hard drive.
They should probably have been doing this anyway. I don't see any reason to store sensitive data on an indymedia server. Sure you watch traffic, but the assumption should be that the government can do this already anyway (does indymedia have any https servers?).
The Terrorists are in the Non-Americans database.
Timothy McVeigh was non-American?
I guess the Oklahoma City bombing doesn't count, though. No sense in the FBI trying to stop something like that.
would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans
OMG! They gave the government access to google!