How are the developers supposed to feed their children if they're unemployed?
The vast majority of programming jobs have been, and always will be, doing custom work for a specific clients' needs (whether working in-house or as a contractor).
What are the odds of a McFinger scenario happening in the US?
IT'S NOT HYPOTHETICAL! Earlier in the 20th century that kind of thing DID happen in areas that instituted voter "receipts".
A gun's not going to help you if shooting the guy would e.g. provoke a mob hit on you. And police can't fix fundamentally broken systems anymore than guns can.
I believe another poster (in a different thread) pointed out the specific historical situations where this happened with unions/union-breakers/gangs in e.g. Chicago. I'll try to find the post if I have time later.
As another poster pointed out, sometimes the threat was not physical violence, but that e.g. your employer might demand to see your receipt.
Totally illegal, but it happened en masse anyway.
The Diebold scenario is real, and you guys are scared of imaginary shit.
And everyone's so wound up they're making things too damn complicated!
Look, all we need is SECRET PAPER BALLOTS, just like we always used to do. If you want to throw a little technology in, fine. Use the scantron-type system that was formerly used in many districts before the whole Diebold fiasco.
They count quickly, they're easy to understand (no crappy/confusing UI issues), there is no separation between what the voter sees and what is to be counted, and they're dirt easy to recount manually if you want to spot-check the machines or do a full manual recount later.
The even simpler Canadian system would be great too; I thinkt he only catch is that the US has both an order of magnitude more voters, and typical US ballots have at least an order of magnitude more choices (we tend to shoehorn a lot of referena-type issues on the same ballots as the candidates, plus we vote for more offices at once to start with).
That would be bad. One of the reasons for adopting the secret ballot was to eliminate the possibility of coerced votes.
Secret ballot:
Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs."
You: Um, ok.
You vote for Bipzi instead.
Louie *doesn't know*.
Online-verifiable receipt:
Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs. And bring yer receipt."
You: Um, ok.
You vote for Bipzi instead.
Louie checks your receipt online and *breaks your legs*. Or, if you "forgot" your receipt, Louie *breaks your legs*.
This is also why home (e.g. Internet) voting is a bad idea (e.g. Louie can stand over your shoulder while you vote), and why voting using absentee ballots is generally only allowed under limited circumstances.
When the history of the airplane is considered, one has to be thankful that the Wrights did not work for the National Aeronautic Administration in 1904.
Instead, they attempted to use their patents to lock everyone else out of the aircraft industry while making few major advances themselves, nearly setting back the progress of aviation by a couple decates.
Don't laugh, I can't find the article link at the moment, but I read that the captain did absolutely insist on keeping an old-fashioned steering wheel as a backup.
Actually, as long as they didn't do anything _too_ crazy, I think the digital doubles worked.
There are a lot of long shots were they were doing more plausible things and you probably never noticed. For example, ALL the long shots in the Bridge of Khazad Dum scene in FotR were digital doubles. Particiularly the overhead shots where they were running down the stairs/across the bridge.
(Actually, the closeup shot where they had the real actors riding the falling stair section looked more fake, IMO)
I think the only difference is that the RFID system makes it trivially easy to automatically build a database of everyone's daily movements (to a much greater extent than current OCR-able license plates).
The plan is certainly to collect that level of information -- the only question is whether they would bother storing it. My guess is yes. If you have the capability, why not?
Isn't torture automatically punishment by implication, if not definition?
There's nothing in the definition of punishment requiring it to be for a personal crime (real or imagined).
In the context of interrogation the tortured party is being punished for not providing information.
In practice, torture may also often be applied as collective punishment by proxy ("your people did bad thing x, we will do bad thing y to you").
I suspect this is also why the word "punishment" has come to have a secondary meaning meaning simply any sort of rough treatment, regardless of motivation.
That the Constitution takes precedence over treaties signed is a legal fact. I've not seen a compelling argument that the Constitution permits torture, however.
There is certainly an explicit (and unconditional) prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" (amendment 8).
I used to think that, but someone corrected me and I did some research.
In reality, treaties are given equal precedence with federal law (in case of conflict, whichever treaty or law was ratified/passed most recently takes priority).
The Constitution has higher precedence than either treaties or federal law.
The bigger problem is that we've gotten very, very sloppy about enforcing the Constitution as written.
Is Ken Brown just a corrupt shill who is arguing a fallaceous premise in order to make a lot of money for his corporate backers (presumably Microsoft)? Or does he actually believe his own assertions?
Probably something of both. I suspect the project was probably pitched to him in terms of whatever principles he normally espoused. I doubt he was particularly knowledgable beforehand; while he may have had nagging doubts, it likely didn't seem too implausible.
So he takes the money, does the interviews, and somewhere along the way begins to realize how evil a thing he's really been asked to do.
At that point, he's already got the money, his reputation, and personal pride riding on this. Not to mention an aching conscience.
Of cousre it would be presumptuous to claim to know what really went on in his head; this is a guess. Regardless, someone in that position can either:
'fess up and recant (which is painful in the short term)
lie to themselves and keep going (putting off the inevitable just a little longer)
Once someone starts down that second road, turning back only becomes more costly. One lie begets another, and the whole vicious cycle begins again, each revolution effecting a further disconnect from reality.
It's like the moral equivalent of credit card debt.
That's how we end up with suicidal cult leaders, the Iraqi Information Minister, and Darl McBride.
Whatever you do, don't laugh, because in small or large ways it happens to all of us. Keep your conscience clean. If there's something you need to make right in your life, do it today, before the long-term costs catch up with you.
When we forked Inkscape from Sodipodi, we gave a lot of careful thought to branding, and over the course of the project it's paid off in a lot of small ways.
Of course branding doesn't determine the long-term success of a project; there are a lot of successful projects which are even agressively BADLY branded (e.g. GIMP, or (IMO) Sodipodi). Long-term a project stands or falls by its technical, legal, and organizational merits.
But in the short term branding is often the thing that gives you those little critically needed boosts at the right times.
Don't think that cuddly penguin hasn't helped Linux.
Re:Wow. Out of touch..
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The vast majority of programming jobs have been, and always will be, doing custom work for a specific clients' needs (whether working in-house or as a contractor).
Free Software doesn't affect that much.
Noooo! Year-Month-Day, you insensitive clod!
It's ISO standard and collates properly if zero-padded.
Microsoft bought out Visio a couple years ago.
It was intended to be a little of both.
Dumb question, but does this also affect _under_clocking?
Sparc hardware has supported it for a very long time; it's a much more recent phenomenon on x86.
As this poster points out, there are in fact tools to convert e.g. word to LaTeX.
IT'S NOT HYPOTHETICAL! Earlier in the 20th century that kind of thing DID happen in areas that instituted voter "receipts".
A gun's not going to help you if shooting the guy would e.g. provoke a mob hit on you. And police can't fix fundamentally broken systems anymore than guns can.
I believe another poster (in a different thread) pointed out the specific historical situations where this happened with unions/union-breakers/gangs in e.g. Chicago. I'll try to find the post if I have time later.
As another poster pointed out, sometimes the threat was not physical violence, but that e.g. your employer might demand to see your receipt.
Totally illegal, but it happened en masse anyway.
And everyone's so wound up they're making things too damn complicated!
Look, all we need is SECRET PAPER BALLOTS, just like we always used to do. If you want to throw a little technology in, fine. Use the scantron-type system that was formerly used in many districts before the whole Diebold fiasco.
They count quickly, they're easy to understand (no crappy/confusing UI issues), there is no separation between what the voter sees and what is to be counted, and they're dirt easy to recount manually if you want to spot-check the machines or do a full manual recount later.
The even simpler Canadian system would be great too; I thinkt he only catch is that the US has both an order of magnitude more voters, and typical US ballots have at least an order of magnitude more choices (we tend to shoehorn a lot of referena-type issues on the same ballots as the candidates, plus we vote for more offices at once to start with).
I think the OP was thinking of receipts that would _not_ be taken from the polling place by voters.
(after all, if they were, wouldn't they be kind of useless for a recount?)
That would be bad. One of the reasons for adopting the secret ballot was to eliminate the possibility of coerced votes.
Secret ballot:
Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs."
You: Um, ok.
You vote for Bipzi instead.
Louie *doesn't know*.
Online-verifiable receipt:
Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs. And bring yer receipt."
You: Um, ok.
You vote for Bipzi instead.
Louie checks your receipt online and *breaks your legs*. Or, if you "forgot" your receipt, Louie *breaks your legs*.
This is also why home (e.g. Internet) voting is a bad idea (e.g. Louie can stand over your shoulder while you vote), and why voting using absentee ballots is generally only allowed under limited circumstances.
I'll think I'll just go order seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone now...
Instead, they attempted to use their patents to lock everyone else out of the aircraft industry while making few major advances themselves, nearly setting back the progress of aviation by a couple decates.
Actually, naturally-occurring fission reactors have been found to occur in certain situations where water flows through uranium-rich rock.
It seems that in the most general sense, if something is possible in physics, somewhere nature has done it.
Don't laugh, I can't find the article link at the moment, but I read that the captain did absolutely insist on keeping an old-fashioned steering wheel as a backup.
Actually, as long as they didn't do anything _too_ crazy, I think the digital doubles worked.
There are a lot of long shots were they were doing more plausible things and you probably never noticed. For example, ALL the long shots in the Bridge of Khazad Dum scene in FotR were digital doubles. Particiularly the overhead shots where they were running down the stairs/across the bridge.
(Actually, the closeup shot where they had the real actors riding the falling stair section looked more fake, IMO)
I think the only difference is that the RFID system makes it trivially easy to automatically build a database of everyone's daily movements (to a much greater extent than current OCR-able license plates).
The plan is certainly to collect that level of information -- the only question is whether they would bother storing it. My guess is yes. If you have the capability, why not?
Isn't torture automatically punishment by implication, if not definition?
There's nothing in the definition of punishment requiring it to be for a personal crime (real or imagined).
In the context of interrogation the tortured party is being punished for not providing information.
In practice, torture may also often be applied as collective punishment by proxy ("your people did bad thing x, we will do bad thing y to you").
I suspect this is also why the word "punishment" has come to have a secondary meaning meaning simply any sort of rough treatment, regardless of motivation.
That the Constitution takes precedence over treaties signed is a legal fact. I've not seen a compelling argument that the Constitution permits torture, however.
There is certainly an explicit (and unconditional) prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" (amendment 8).
I used to think that, but someone corrected me and I did some research.
In reality, treaties are given equal precedence with federal law (in case of conflict, whichever treaty or law was ratified/passed most recently takes priority).
The Constitution has higher precedence than either treaties or federal law.
The bigger problem is that we've gotten very, very sloppy about enforcing the Constitution as written.
Probably something of both. I suspect the project was probably pitched to him in terms of whatever principles he normally espoused. I doubt he was particularly knowledgable beforehand; while he may have had nagging doubts, it likely didn't seem too implausible.
So he takes the money, does the interviews, and somewhere along the way begins to realize how evil a thing he's really been asked to do.
At that point, he's already got the money, his reputation, and personal pride riding on this. Not to mention an aching conscience.
Of cousre it would be presumptuous to claim to know what really went on in his head; this is a guess. Regardless, someone in that position can either:
Once someone starts down that second road, turning back only becomes more costly. One lie begets another, and the whole vicious cycle begins again, each revolution effecting a further disconnect from reality.
It's like the moral equivalent of credit card debt.
That's how we end up with suicidal cult leaders, the Iraqi Information Minister, and Darl McBride.
Whatever you do, don't laugh, because in small or large ways it happens to all of us. Keep your conscience clean. If there's something you need to make right in your life, do it today, before the long-term costs catch up with you.
hellooooooooo?
(courtesy of morcheeba)
Good names really do help grease the wheels.
When we forked Inkscape from Sodipodi, we gave a lot of careful thought to branding, and over the course of the project it's paid off in a lot of small ways.
Of course branding doesn't determine the long-term success of a project; there are a lot of successful projects which are even agressively BADLY branded (e.g. GIMP, or (IMO) Sodipodi). Long-term a project stands or falls by its technical, legal, and organizational merits.
But in the short term branding is often the thing that gives you those little critically needed boosts at the right times.
Don't think that cuddly penguin hasn't helped Linux.
Pick two.
The answers are Gtk#, yes and yes.
In case you hadn't noticed Gtk# does not require wine. And anyway, winelib can be built for non-x86 platforms.