I have always filled out my sample ballot before going to the voting booth.
So why don't you inform yourself on all the issues instead of skipping some?
Perhaps that's why it only takes me 5 minutes.
Maybe it's just less busy where you live. Of course you should probably include the time it takes you to fill out the sample ballot.
I have a hard time believing that someone standing in a voting booth trying to figure out how to cast their vote is properly analyzing the issues.
They put a convenient "Democrat" and "Republican" next to the people's names, and the ammendments are usually self-explanatory.
Now I will admit that it does take another 5 minutes to walk to and from the polling place. [...] In no place have I been farther than walking-distance from a polling place.
I'm just over a mile away. You could hoof it, but the average person walks about 3 mph, which means it'd take over 40 minutes. If I had to walk, I'd just get an absentee ballot and spend the 37 cents (actually more since Florida's ballot is too heavy this year for the standard fee). All this for a one in a billion chance of actually changing the outcome of the election. The rational side of me thinks I should just skip it.
Personally, I like how voter registration is done right now. Voter registration is very easy. It takes all of five minutes of your time to do.
If you've got a printer, paper, pen, envelope and stamp all ready, then maybe 10 minutes. But if not, it's a lot worse than that. I didn't register until I happened to pass a registration booth in the mall, and then it probably took about 5 minutes. This could be made much easier. You should definitely be able to register via the internet. I think this is possible in some states, but apparently not in Florida.
Voting is even more painless.
Yes, but the cost is still too high. In Florida, probably the easiest and least time-consuming way to vote is to fill out an absentee ballot. Apparently one of these can be ordered via telephone and cast via mail. But it still costs 32 cents. It'd be nice if I could get an entry into a $10 million lottery in exchange.
If you don't care enough to spend 5 minutes voting then who thinks you will spend any time trying to understand the issues.
If voting only took 5 minutes, you'd have a point. Instead it takes gas money, wear and tear on your car, and a lot more than 5 minutes (sometimes hours). Making voting easier is a must, and is probably more useful than offering a cash prize to one voter.
I frequently skip items on the ballot because I don't feel informed or it is an issue that does not affect me in any way (or sometimes there is only one choice so I don't feel compelled to waste my time checking the only box available).
I used to do that. This time around I'm taking a look at the sample ballot and deciding my votes before I even go. But this is another thing that should be made easier. Let people vote from home, and they can look up the issues and inform themselves while they vote. Of course, the people in charge don't want an informed electorate, so we probably won't see this ever happen (other than in the form of absentee ballots).
I assume you're joking, but how could you ensure the anonymity of the vote if you let people vote multiple times and let Kwik-E-Mart run a polling location?
I'm all in favor of making voting fun and easy, but I have to stop short at the idea of bribing people to vote.
It's not bribery so much as returning some of the costs of voting in the first place.
A lottery would further cheapen an already cynicism-inducing process, and punish those who vote because they want a part in the decision by drowning their voices in a sea of people who are just too stupid to do math.
Please. People who vote are those too stupid to do math. Your chances of being killed on the way to the polls far outweigh your chances of actually affecting the outcome of the election.
The solution, as some other fine poster said, isn't to get people who don't care to vote, but to get people to care more.
Care about what, exactly?
Final point: a lot of states have anti-gambling laws, and this idea would run afoul of them.
I doubt it. If that were true clearchannel would be in violation of it when they run those nationwide givaways (be caller number 1000 or whatever).
Anyone in favor of states' rights should see the idea as an imposition on the agency of the states.
This might be a states' rights issue if states are forced to participate, but giving states the option of participating and giving away the prize with federal funds wouldn't infringe on any state rights. No state would actually opt out of such a deal. It's free money.
What if you don't file a tax return in the first place? I don't think we should be making people pay taxes who otherwise wouldn't have to. I also think $100 is way too much. Finally, would this tax only apply to non-felons? That'd be kind of strange.
I like the sentiment, but I think the $10 million lottery is a better implementation. And it'd only cost the average taxpayer around 10 cents.
It would require changes in the law to implement, obviously.
You're forcing me to "pay" something to get into the lottery. That's illegal in most states (that's why you can get free game pieces for the fast food games).
Every state I know of has exceptions for certain situtions, like the government run state lottery, or powerball, or chuch 50/50s, or fire department raffles, or whatever.
So I should be allowed to enter the lottery without voting and that kills the logic right there.
Absolutely. Anyone who shows up to the voting booth should be entered, even if he or she decides to cast a blank ballot.
Paying people for their votes won't make government any more responsive which is why people aren't voting to begin with.
People aren't voting because voting isn't something you do for yourself, it's something you do for your nation. Any single person isn't going to change the election, so it's irrational for any single person to vote. I don't like the idea of voting being mandatory, but I think this is a good incentive which will give us more of a rational reason to vote.
Any DBA who uses SSN as a primary key needs to be flogged with a CAT-5 cable.
By her boss, maybe, but not by the government.
Privacy concerns aside, it's generally a bad idea to use any user-provided value as a PK because of the difficulty of guaranteeing uniqueness.
True, since there are at least some people out there with the same SSN.
If you have SSN as a required field with a unique constraint or index, you're setting yourself up for a denial of service attack -- User1 enters a bogus SSN which happens to belong to User2. Now User2 is effectively locked out of the system -- he can't enter his (valid) SSN because of the key constraint violation, so he either has to give up or give a bogus value as well.
Or you could just put the new account in a temporary table and have a human sort it out. It all depends on your application. If you're making a geocities site, OK. If the purpose of the database is to store company employees, then flagging identical SSNs is a feature, not a bug.
For one, the sooner the encryption begins the better.
You shouldn't be sending sensitive data through email in the first place. Putting encryption at any level does nothing but give you a false sense of security.
If I was not using ssh-tunnel, all my e-mail would've been available to my ISP, my school's ISP, and whoever is in between.
Instead it's only available to your school's ISP, the sender's ISP, and anyone in between. I don't see the benefit.
That's not as convenient for an attacker -- like picking apples in someone else's orchard is not as convenient as taking boxes full of already picked fruit.
What is it your trying to protect from attackers in the first place? Whatever it is, you shouldn't be sending it through email.
Most importantly, however, without SSL my password travels in plain text. Once that is sniffed, an attacker can not only read my e-mail, she/he can also delete it.
A minor inconvenience at the worst. E-mail is flaky anyway, and you don't think it's very hard to break into your account already anyway, do you?
Because the passwords for IMAP and shell are the same, he/she can also login to the school's servers as me.
The horror.
You knew, all that, of course, did not you?
Yes. I still don't see the big deal. Email should be considered compromised anyway, and you shouldn't rely very heavily on the security of a school's server. How many students have root access to that server already anyway (besides the ones with a user account and a root kit)? Probably quite a few. You should probably consider that whole account compromised.
As of 2001, the states of Wisconsin, Arizona, New York, Rhode Island, and Maryland prohibit using SSNs as student ID numbers. Hopefully, others will follow soon.
Yeah, we really need the government telling DBAs what to use as their primary key. Maybe they could prohibit Mysql, too, I hear there are a lot of bugs in it.
So, what you're essentially saying is that because this is an issue you don't care about, there are no major differences between the two candidates?
No. What I said was "There really wasn't much of a forseeable difference between the two candidates." If you think that Gore would have agreed to the Kyoto Treaty, then I admit that that's one somewhat significant difference between the two candidates.
I can't understand you objecting to someone's description of Nader's "there's no difference" campaign as a lie on that basis however.
Clearly "there's no difference", if it was actually said by Nader, was an exaggeration (if I recall correctly he didn't actually say that, Michael Moore might have, but I don't think Nader himself did, Nader did say on his website that "A vote for Gore is a vote for Bush", but that was a parody of the saying "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush", see here for one example from Nader's website). But I think the basic premise of that statement is true. There was very little difference between the two candidates. Sure, you can point at Kyoto, and maybe there would have been a difference there (although personally I doubt it). But you can't talk about little vs. big without having some sort of comparison. I think you have to agree that the difference between Nader and Gore was much much greater than the difference between Gore and Bush. Gore favored a federal law banning partial birth abortions. He flip-flopped on the abortion issue. He opposed same-sex marriages. He supports the death penalty. He supports tougher drug laws, and only supports a loosening of medical marijuana laws. He supports NAFTA and the WTO. He "wants some form of non-government universal health care". He wanted to add just $1/hour to the minimum wage. He supports "charitable choice".
Looking at Kerry the Democrats haven't moved as far left as Nader may want, but they have moved somewhat left. Kerry supports I believe a $2/hour minimum wage increase. He "opposes the death penalty except for post 9-11 terrorists". He "Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record". He "Voted NO on prohibiting same-sex marriage". He "Voted NO on increasing penalties for drug offenses". His "universal" health care plan is government based, not privately based. He supports raising taxes on the top income earners. In fact, according to Bush, he's one of the most liberal if not the most liberal members of the Senate. Bush didn't accuse Gore of that, did he?
Assuming he rejected it (a big assumption), don't you think Gore would have tried to find better alternatives, rather than having his administration run to an agenda of dismissing concerns over global warming as "bogus science"?
Well, concerns over global warming are bogus science. Whether or not Gore would have realized this, I'm not sure.
I think it's a pretty significant difference. I can't see Gore ignoring the issue. Bush does.
Assuming he rejected it, I don't think it matters whether or not he first considered it. Of course, assuming he accepted it, I don't think that would be so big of a deal either. Sure, we'd waste some efforts trying to fix a nonexistent problem, but the cost probably wouldn't be all that high.
Sure, but if you're going to "keep your SSN as private as possible", then you can't buy a house (at least, you can't get a mortgage). The point is, in order to prove your credit-worthiness, you generally have to give your SSN. You can refuse, but then there's no reason to trust you. And getting an account with the water company requires that the company trust you to pay for the water you use.
Every citizen of the United States is required to have an SSN.
Not exactly. You're only required to have one if you work or if your parents want to claim you as a dependent on their tax return. In theory it's possible to live your entire life off unearned income and never have an SSN (for instance if your parents gave you a fat bank account and you paid backup withholding on the interest). In theory.
Anybody have a reference that'll prove it's illegal to use a SSN as an ID number?
How 'bout a reference that proves that it isn't? SSN FAQ.
I'm at a University that requires me to produce my SSN pretty much constantly. It's my student ID number, generally the number used to post exam scores online so as to "hide the identity" of the student receiving each grade.
If they're a public school, then they probably can't do this. But every school I've been to has had a procedure where one could change their student ID to a randomly generated one. It's not very publicized, and you usually have to go far up the chain of "let me talk to your manager" before you even get someone who knows about it, but it's usually possible.
Existing laws already prohibit companies from requiring SSNs for anything not related to Social Security, but these laws are rarely, if ever, enforced.
There is no such law. It's an urban legend. That's why it's not enforced.
Oh, OK. Then what's your SSN, Mr. DiPierro?
If I gave you that then you took out a credit card in my name I could be sued by the credit card company for negligence. I will say that my college email address was dipi6457@student.rowan.edu and that I was born May 12, 1977. That's enough for you to figure out my SSN. And I'll give you Bill Gate's SSN if you want.
And it's illegal to require an SSN if you're not a private business. My whole point is that just because some half-assed summary of a law is written down somewhere doesn't mean that is the law.
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I have always filled out my sample ballot before going to the voting booth.
So why don't you inform yourself on all the issues instead of skipping some?
Perhaps that's why it only takes me 5 minutes.
Maybe it's just less busy where you live. Of course you should probably include the time it takes you to fill out the sample ballot.
I have a hard time believing that someone standing in a voting booth trying to figure out how to cast their vote is properly analyzing the issues.
They put a convenient "Democrat" and "Republican" next to the people's names, and the ammendments are usually self-explanatory.
Now I will admit that it does take another 5 minutes to walk to and from the polling place. [...] In no place have I been farther than walking-distance from a polling place.
I'm just over a mile away. You could hoof it, but the average person walks about 3 mph, which means it'd take over 40 minutes. If I had to walk, I'd just get an absentee ballot and spend the 37 cents (actually more since Florida's ballot is too heavy this year for the standard fee). All this for a one in a billion chance of actually changing the outcome of the election. The rational side of me thinks I should just skip it.
Actually, one reason to make people come to a public place and vote is to make sure that their vote isn't being coerced.
We already allow absentee ballots, so we don't make people come to a public place to vote anyway.
If they could vote from home, what would stop the union boss from 'dropping by' during the election?
There are laws against that, you know.
Same way that they do with absentee voting - sign the envelope and seal it.
Good point. You win :).
It's a much worse idea, and that's why it's unconstitutional.
Make that 37 cents. Goes to show you the last time I've bothered sending snail mail.
Personally, I like how voter registration is done right now. Voter registration is very easy. It takes all of five minutes of your time to do.
If you've got a printer, paper, pen, envelope and stamp all ready, then maybe 10 minutes. But if not, it's a lot worse than that. I didn't register until I happened to pass a registration booth in the mall, and then it probably took about 5 minutes. This could be made much easier. You should definitely be able to register via the internet. I think this is possible in some states, but apparently not in Florida.
Voting is even more painless.
Yes, but the cost is still too high. In Florida, probably the easiest and least time-consuming way to vote is to fill out an absentee ballot. Apparently one of these can be ordered via telephone and cast via mail. But it still costs 32 cents. It'd be nice if I could get an entry into a $10 million lottery in exchange.
If you don't care enough to spend 5 minutes voting then who thinks you will spend any time trying to understand the issues.
If voting only took 5 minutes, you'd have a point. Instead it takes gas money, wear and tear on your car, and a lot more than 5 minutes (sometimes hours). Making voting easier is a must, and is probably more useful than offering a cash prize to one voter.
I frequently skip items on the ballot because I don't feel informed or it is an issue that does not affect me in any way (or sometimes there is only one choice so I don't feel compelled to waste my time checking the only box available).
I used to do that. This time around I'm taking a look at the sample ballot and deciding my votes before I even go. But this is another thing that should be made easier. Let people vote from home, and they can look up the issues and inform themselves while they vote. Of course, the people in charge don't want an informed electorate, so we probably won't see this ever happen (other than in the form of absentee ballots).
I assume you're joking, but how could you ensure the anonymity of the vote if you let people vote multiple times and let Kwik-E-Mart run a polling location?
Such poll taxes were already declared unconstitutional, and for good reason.
I'm all in favor of making voting fun and easy, but I have to stop short at the idea of bribing people to vote.
It's not bribery so much as returning some of the costs of voting in the first place.
A lottery would further cheapen an already cynicism-inducing process, and punish those who vote because they want a part in the decision by drowning their voices in a sea of people who are just too stupid to do math.
Please. People who vote are those too stupid to do math. Your chances of being killed on the way to the polls far outweigh your chances of actually affecting the outcome of the election.
The solution, as some other fine poster said, isn't to get people who don't care to vote, but to get people to care more.
Care about what, exactly?
Final point: a lot of states have anti-gambling laws, and this idea would run afoul of them.
I doubt it. If that were true clearchannel would be in violation of it when they run those nationwide givaways (be caller number 1000 or whatever).
Anyone in favor of states' rights should see the idea as an imposition on the agency of the states.
This might be a states' rights issue if states are forced to participate, but giving states the option of participating and giving away the prize with federal funds wouldn't infringe on any state rights. No state would actually opt out of such a deal. It's free money.
What if you don't file a tax return in the first place? I don't think we should be making people pay taxes who otherwise wouldn't have to. I also think $100 is way too much. Finally, would this tax only apply to non-felons? That'd be kind of strange.
I like the sentiment, but I think the $10 million lottery is a better implementation. And it'd only cost the average taxpayer around 10 cents.
And easily shown illegal...
It would require changes in the law to implement, obviously.
You're forcing me to "pay" something to get into the lottery. That's illegal in most states (that's why you can get free game pieces for the fast food games).
Every state I know of has exceptions for certain situtions, like the government run state lottery, or powerball, or chuch 50/50s, or fire department raffles, or whatever.
So I should be allowed to enter the lottery without voting and that kills the logic right there.
Absolutely. Anyone who shows up to the voting booth should be entered, even if he or she decides to cast a blank ballot.
Paying people for their votes won't make government any more responsive which is why people aren't voting to begin with.
People aren't voting because voting isn't something you do for yourself, it's something you do for your nation. Any single person isn't going to change the election, so it's irrational for any single person to vote. I don't like the idea of voting being mandatory, but I think this is a good incentive which will give us more of a rational reason to vote.
Any DBA who uses SSN as a primary key needs to be flogged with a CAT-5 cable.
By her boss, maybe, but not by the government.
Privacy concerns aside, it's generally a bad idea to use any user-provided value as a PK because of the difficulty of guaranteeing uniqueness.
True, since there are at least some people out there with the same SSN.
If you have SSN as a required field with a unique constraint or index, you're setting yourself up for a denial of service attack -- User1 enters a bogus SSN which happens to belong to User2. Now User2 is effectively locked out of the system -- he can't enter his (valid) SSN because of the key constraint violation, so he either has to give up or give a bogus value as well.
Or you could just put the new account in a temporary table and have a human sort it out. It all depends on your application. If you're making a geocities site, OK. If the purpose of the database is to store company employees, then flagging identical SSNs is a feature, not a bug.
For one, the sooner the encryption begins the better.
You shouldn't be sending sensitive data through email in the first place. Putting encryption at any level does nothing but give you a false sense of security.
If I was not using ssh-tunnel, all my e-mail would've been available to my ISP, my school's ISP, and whoever is in between.
Instead it's only available to your school's ISP, the sender's ISP, and anyone in between. I don't see the benefit.
That's not as convenient for an attacker -- like picking apples in someone else's orchard is not as convenient as taking boxes full of already picked fruit.
What is it your trying to protect from attackers in the first place? Whatever it is, you shouldn't be sending it through email.
Most importantly, however, without SSL my password travels in plain text. Once that is sniffed, an attacker can not only read my e-mail, she/he can also delete it.
A minor inconvenience at the worst. E-mail is flaky anyway, and you don't think it's very hard to break into your account already anyway, do you?
Because the passwords for IMAP and shell are the same, he/she can also login to the school's servers as me.
The horror.
You knew, all that, of course, did not you?
Yes. I still don't see the big deal. Email should be considered compromised anyway, and you shouldn't rely very heavily on the security of a school's server. How many students have root access to that server already anyway (besides the ones with a user account and a root kit)? Probably quite a few. You should probably consider that whole account compromised.
As of 2001, the states of Wisconsin, Arizona, New York, Rhode Island, and Maryland prohibit using SSNs as student ID numbers. Hopefully, others will follow soon.
Yeah, we really need the government telling DBAs what to use as their primary key. Maybe they could prohibit Mysql, too, I hear there are a lot of bugs in it.
So, what you're essentially saying is that because this is an issue you don't care about, there are no major differences between the two candidates?
No. What I said was "There really wasn't much of a forseeable difference between the two candidates." If you think that Gore would have agreed to the Kyoto Treaty, then I admit that that's one somewhat significant difference between the two candidates.
I can't understand you objecting to someone's description of Nader's "there's no difference" campaign as a lie on that basis however.
Clearly "there's no difference", if it was actually said by Nader, was an exaggeration (if I recall correctly he didn't actually say that, Michael Moore might have, but I don't think Nader himself did, Nader did say on his website that "A vote for Gore is a vote for Bush", but that was a parody of the saying "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush", see here for one example from Nader's website). But I think the basic premise of that statement is true. There was very little difference between the two candidates. Sure, you can point at Kyoto, and maybe there would have been a difference there (although personally I doubt it). But you can't talk about little vs. big without having some sort of comparison. I think you have to agree that the difference between Nader and Gore was much much greater than the difference between Gore and Bush. Gore favored a federal law banning partial birth abortions. He flip-flopped on the abortion issue. He opposed same-sex marriages. He supports the death penalty. He supports tougher drug laws, and only supports a loosening of medical marijuana laws. He supports NAFTA and the WTO. He "wants some form of non-government universal health care". He wanted to add just $1/hour to the minimum wage. He supports "charitable choice".
Looking at Kerry the Democrats haven't moved as far left as Nader may want, but they have moved somewhat left. Kerry supports I believe a $2/hour minimum wage increase. He "opposes the death penalty except for post 9-11 terrorists". He "Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record". He "Voted NO on prohibiting same-sex marriage". He "Voted NO on increasing penalties for drug offenses". His "universal" health care plan is government based, not privately based. He supports raising taxes on the top income earners. In fact, according to Bush, he's one of the most liberal if not the most liberal members of the Senate. Bush didn't accuse Gore of that, did he?
Assuming he rejected it (a big assumption), don't you think Gore would have tried to find better alternatives, rather than having his administration run to an agenda of dismissing concerns over global warming as "bogus science"?
Well, concerns over global warming are bogus science. Whether or not Gore would have realized this, I'm not sure.
I think it's a pretty significant difference. I can't see Gore ignoring the issue. Bush does.
Assuming he rejected it, I don't think it matters whether or not he first considered it. Of course, assuming he accepted it, I don't think that would be so big of a deal either. Sure, we'd waste some efforts trying to fix a nonexistent problem, but the cost probably wouldn't be all that high.
Sure, but if you're going to "keep your SSN as private as possible", then you can't buy a house (at least, you can't get a mortgage). The point is, in order to prove your credit-worthiness, you generally have to give your SSN. You can refuse, but then there's no reason to trust you. And getting an account with the water company requires that the company trust you to pay for the water you use.
The credit card company writes off the debt as uncollectable, and your credit history is hosed.
That's not at all how it works. Incorrect information can be removed from your credit history. I've done it, and so can anyone else.
And there still is no SSL support on IMAP server(s).
Yeah, you wouldn't want anyone intercepting those emails which were sent to you in plaintext via SMTP.
Every citizen of the United States is required to have an SSN.
Not exactly. You're only required to have one if you work or if your parents want to claim you as a dependent on their tax return. In theory it's possible to live your entire life off unearned income and never have an SSN (for instance if your parents gave you a fat bank account and you paid backup withholding on the interest). In theory.
Anybody have a reference that'll prove it's illegal to use a SSN as an ID number?
How 'bout a reference that proves that it isn't? SSN FAQ.
I'm at a University that requires me to produce my SSN pretty much constantly. It's my student ID number, generally the number used to post exam scores online so as to "hide the identity" of the student receiving each grade.
If they're a public school, then they probably can't do this. But every school I've been to has had a procedure where one could change their student ID to a randomly generated one. It's not very publicized, and you usually have to go far up the chain of "let me talk to your manager" before you even get someone who knows about it, but it's usually possible.
Oh yeah, in New Jersey, I was born in New Jersey. You need that to figure out the first 5 numbers.
Existing laws already prohibit companies from requiring SSNs for anything not related to Social Security, but these laws are rarely, if ever, enforced.
There is no such law. It's an urban legend. That's why it's not enforced.
Oh, OK. Then what's your SSN, Mr. DiPierro?
If I gave you that then you took out a credit card in my name I could be sued by the credit card company for negligence. I will say that my college email address was dipi6457@student.rowan.edu and that I was born May 12, 1977. That's enough for you to figure out my SSN. And I'll give you Bill Gate's SSN if you want.
And it's illegal to require an SSN if you're not a private business. My whole point is that just because some half-assed summary of a law is written down somewhere doesn't mean that is the law.