As somebody has pointed out already there are benefits to canned solutions. One is that vendors often implement "best practices" in their software, so organizing work processes around the software instead of the other way around can sometimes bring efficiencies.
It really depends on the application and what is available in the marketplace. If you can go with off-the-shelf software and resist the urge to customize the living daylights out of it you can save a TON of cash, and ongoing support costs as well. If a product is industry-standard then you also benefit from being able to hire fully-trained workers as well. Plus, you don't have to depend on some temperamental IT prima-donna to maintain the thing. (Don't get me wrong - I work in IT, but I realize that this stereotype is true FAR too often.)
Plus, the canned solution probably comes with a pile of certifications regarding SOX or whatever the latest legal buzzword is. Or if it doesn't the next version will.
My biggest peeve is when management does spend $1M on licenses for some big software product they often look to save every penny possible on the hardware running the system, and for the want of 1GB of RAM the thing ends up crawling...
Suppose a member of the US government/military is vacationing in Nastyland and is picked up and interrogated. The police point to a Nastyland law indicating that the government has the legal right to subpoena information necessary for the national defense, and requests that they turn over classified information. The vacationer faces arrest/punishment if they don't comply, so they go along with it. Then they come back to the US.
Would they be surprised if they were charged with treason? It is against the law to divulge classified information regardless of what the laws of any other nation state. Sure, the government would probably go easy on prosecution, but probably not if the US citizen enthusiastically dumped everything they knew even without being questioned.
US companies should be held to the standards of US law - period. If that means they can't do business in certain places, well that is just too bad. Why does Yahoo need an office in China anyway? They could easily run a chinese website from anywhere in the world, and Chiense-speaking persons are hardly limited to China. If companies don't like US laws they can also base themselves entirely overseas, with any financial repercussions that might have.
A few years ago, I accidentally marked the wrong oval. I erased it to the point where I really couldn't see a mark there anymore then filled in the one I wanted, but the machine would not take it; it kicked it out as an overvote. I don't think it's actually possible to have an unclear ballot with these machines (Diebold accu-vote).
And what if you intended to not vote at all for that particular office? The machine would have accepted the ballot, but may have scored it as a vote instead of a non-vote. Then on a recount somebody would question the voter's intent. The ensuing court battle would probably cost enough to pay for machines for the entire state.
We're talking about a computer/monitor/printer - and the computer could easily be an embedded system that costs all of $100. You don't maintain them - you throw them out when they break.
Electons are already VERY expensive. Suppose you needed 50,000 machines in a state (which sounds excessive)? That might cost $10-20M. Bush alone spent around $125M on his most recent campaign. If we can spend that kind of money on TV ads can't we spend a fraction of it to get the tally correct?
Sure, manual ballots aren't THAT bad, but many elections are closer than the margin of error in a typical manually-counted election. You'll never hit low error rates with pieces of paper filled out by hand - especially when you have a team of lawyers looking for every excuse possible to invalidate a ballot.
Actually, that doesn't work at all. In most districts you can invalidate an absentee ballot by voting in-person. So if my boss makes me fill out an absentee ballot all I need to do is cooperate and then vote my conscience in the election...
Or you could just make a voting system that doesn't require all the ethical people in the country to lose their jobs in favor of less ethical people (which almost certainly outnumber ethical people in most nations - especially when you punish people for being ethical).
There are lots of anonymous voting systems out there which do not allow people to coerce votes, so why pick a system that does?
I'd go one further and have the ballots marked by machines in ALL cases.
Otherwise what happens if somebody half-fills an oval, or fills in one heavily and one lightly? The validation machine might pass the ballot, and upon later recounts there could be issues.
I'd have the paper audit trail be computer-generated, so that all ballots are valid. Then have the paper ballot be inspected by the voter, and put into a ballot box for counting. Voters wouldn't write on the paper (ideally I'd have the ballots coated so that pencils/pens wouldn't work so that somebody doesn't see a mistake and try to "fix" it. If a ballot is bad just toss it in the trash and create another. Completely manual ballots would only be stocked for mechanical problems.
If you have hand-filled ballots then you'll have dozens if not hundreds of invalid ballots in every election. That means court disputes any time the vote gets that close. The whole problem in Florida was that the voting system allowed for invalid ballots to be turned in.
A machine-generated paper ballot has all the advantages of both computer-generated and paper ballots. Why not use them? They wouldn't even be expensive to generate - you just need a PC, some software, a laser or thermal-transfer printer, and some paper that is coated to prevent writing on...
Thanks for your comments - I actually used to share some of your viewpoints regarding the importance of public eduction (while it was far from perfect the public schools I attended weren't that bad). However, I did want to comment on a few things you raised:
I agree with your comments about the numbers game and fraud when it comes to advertising. Colleges already have this problem. It is probably inevitable - the only reason we don't have it with primary schools today is that there isn't enough choice to drive it.
First off, most teachers would absolutely love to have the labor protections available in other industries. Overtime would be a particular benefit.
Uh, I'm not aware of just about anybody in the professional-salary range that many teachers make who is eligible for overtime. It is very rare in the fortune 500/etc. Under federal law overtime pay is not required for highly skilled laborers. I'm sure your mileage would vary at the state level. Most are expected to get the job done whatever it happens to take. You can get away with working less but you'll be passed over for promotions/raises (which aren't automatic in industry), and if there is a downturn you're of course the first on the block. Of course, results matter more than hours so if you can get the job done without as much face time more power to you...:)
Now, suppose schools are able to accept tuition. Now, there is a socioeconomic barrier for student to get into quality schools.
I advocate a fixed-credit-per-student system. Schools would be free to charge tuition. I'm not sure I'd allow refunds - we don't want to encourage glorified daycares. I'd want schools to be free to charge as much as they want - otherwise there is no motive to do anything other than cut costs. There might also be the possibility of scholarships for exceptional students (of course, I recognize the controversy there). The fixed credit should be set at a level that can give a good education - it is not in the interest of society to end up with lots of illiterate folks.
I agree that the rich would fare better under this system, but that is just the way of the world.
That's about it. I agree with many of the points you've raised and recognized a few of the issues that you've seen with private schools (low pay/etc). Ideally the better funding with tuition credits would help there (most private schools have a lower per-child budget than the public schools do), and increased competition might help. I've had varied feelings over the years, but the more I look at the system it seems like it is more in need of a large change. The other big potential change would be massive deregulation (set general education standards but get rid of most other rules that bind local districts - such as testing requirements, and any regulations specific to employee protections/salaries/requisites/etc). I think that privitazation would work better, but allowing local districts the ability to pay-for-performance, etc would probably help in a public setting. I don't mean to be offensive and I'm sure you're an exceptional teacher, but I'm not a big fan of the teacher's unions (which are often codified in state law). Very few successful industries survive under these kinds of rules (most industries with massive union presence almost exist in spite of the unions - paying people not to work while they open shopes in other countries, giving unions token work while they move real work elsewhere until they can close entire factories, etc). Where unions do work well it tends to be in areas where the union is willing to give and take - recognizing the symbiotic relationship they have. The problem is that where public eduction is concerned there is really no cap on benefits since there is no profit motive - taxes can always be raised and work rules can always be tightened even if they are detrimental to eduction. In my experience where unions have been successful they've almost been unnecessary (more of a partnership). And I am cognizant of the history that lead up to them, so again I realize this isn't a simple problem to solve...
Well, it actually made sense at the time. There was no such thing as a "national election" per say in the 1700s - nobody could possibly campaign on that scale with travel times/etc (for both the candidate and anybody who would want to go to some city to see the candidate).
Instead every region would vote for an elector based on the popular vote in that region, who would travel to the national capitol and vote for a president. Many probably didn't even know who the national candidates where before they arrived.
The state legislatures would each pick two electors who would represent the state government's interests (picture the EU council - I think that is what it is called).
Together these electors would vote in a president. Each elector would vote in accordance with any instructions given by his constituency or his conscience as appropriate.
This system was ideal for the time as it avoided having to calculate popular votes on a national scale - no individual election had more than maybe 1-10k people.
Proportional democracy makes a lot more sense now - where the national government looks only after national interests, and counting votes and campaigning on a national level is common.
There are a lot of other differences between the current US and the original US federal government. The biggest would probably be the popular election of senators. It used to be that the senate represented the state governments - so a program like the Real ID program would never pass the senate if the state governments didn't like it. Now the senate is essentially a redundant house of reps with an odd apportionment of representation (not even remotely related to size of constituency).
What might make sense for a bicameral system would be to switch the senate back to a body appointed by state governments (restoring the power of state governments as a check on federal power), and turning the house into a proportional system like practiced in most of the world (where no particular rep serves any particular district, but instead people vote for parties and those parties get representation proportional to the popular vote on a national scale). The presidency is another question - I'm wondering if it would be better to just have a pure parliamentary system and go with a PM instead of a directly elected president.
One thing Europeans have to remember is that the US is a federal government. The original design was that states would be semi-autonomous and that they could override the federal government on many issues that were not national in nature. That has largely gone away in modern times, but still exists to some degree. In most European nations there is a unitary government - the national parliament could pass a vote and replace any local official anywhere in the country. In the US this would be unconstitutional - the Federal government could only fire federal officials. The state governments could remove state or local officials in accordance with the state constitution.
Well, in theory Tivo has to keep them happy - otherwise cablecards will no longer work with Tivos. The beauty of the system - explicit hardware pairing...
If anyone is willing to accept someone else's views of morality over their own, listening to the pastor's sermon more than his or her own sense of decency... I see the potential for many, many problems.
Why should the morality taught by a pastor be any worse or better than one's own "sense of decency"? Following one's own sense of decency essentially amounts to doing whatever one feels like doing (if you feel like doing the "right" thing go ahead, and if your sense of decency happens to call for torture to extract information that is fine too).
And this has never made sense to me. It's as though you are admitting the only reason you do good or are decent to others is because you're afraid of getting punished.
I actually do believe that this is what motivates MOST people. Punishment can include more than just traditional toss-in-jail punishment, but also becoming a social outcast/etc. For the most part people do in fact do what they feel like, and it doesn't feel good to be punished. And apart from any kind of belief in the supernatural why would you expect somebody to act differently? Why would somebody NOT do something in their personal interest if the opportunity presented itself and they KNEW that nobody would ever know about it? Maybe not true in your case, but almost certainly true in most cases...
I agree with you completely. And to the degree that somebody's beliefs have been shown to lead to bad decisions I wouldn't vote for them (which is EXACTLY what my last sentence said).
I really could care less about silly arguments regarding whether a particular belief is more or less likely to lead to bad decisions. If somebody is going to be president they had better already have a real-life track record of good decisions already. If they already have a good track record then why worry about hypotheticals?
Lack of evidence is not support. Lack of evidence is a lack of support. There is no credible evidence that magic exists, therefore until such evidence is presented, it is safe to say that magic does not exist. If someone wants to claim that magic does exist, then it is their responsibility to provide evidence.
Agreed on your first two sentences (I never claimed lack of evidence was any kind of support). It CERTAINLY is safe to say that magic does not exist. On the other hand, is there really any reason to say that it is not "safe" to say that magic DOES exist? Claiming that magic exists does not create any "responsibility" to provide evidence. However, if you don't provide evidence you shouldn't be surprised if others don't agree with you.
If believing something without evidence isn't delusional, then what is?
If you claimed that you were sitting on a chair when you typed that sentence I'd probably believe you. Why wouldn't I? Now, I wouldn't make any serious decision based on that belief, but it is hardly delusional to believe something without evidence. We do it all the time when things don't matter enough to be worth a serious investigation. And this is probably the reason why so many people don't "believe" in evolution - it doesn't really make any difference whether it happened or not to most people and to do a serious investigation (beyond just taking some scientists/books at their word) is more trouble than most people would be bothered with for something that has little effect on their daily lives. Many of these people trust people who hold contrary views, and the average scientist is just a stranger to them, so why would they believe a scientist over a friend when the topic doesn't really have any practical impact on them (in their perception at least).
Even if the things that they are led to believe are good things on face value (like all of the values at the core of most religions), once people accept those without question, it becomes quite easy for a charismatic leader to attach not-so-good things to those core values like a parasite.
This might be an argument for disqualifying people from voting based on their beliefs, but not from holding office. I'm not terribly concerned that most people who run for President of the US are likely to be swayed by a charismatic leader.
In any case, if I had a wide selection of candidates that had compatible political views with my own I might resort to using softer criteria such as this one to make a decision. However, politics is a matter of compromise and in the VERY long list of issues this is one I'm a lot more willing to compromise on as long as the politician makes generally good decisions. Sure, I wouldn't elect Buchannan, but there are a LOT of reasons for that beyond his position on evolution...
1. The license only applies to works created to work on the windows operating system. As far as I know no other Open Source license is limited to a particular OS.
2. The license preamble states that you must accept the license to use the software. As far as I know no other open source license makes such a statement (a license covers DISTRIBUTION of software - not use). Granted, I'm not 100% confident that no other open source license contains use-only restrictions, but I think this is the case. GPL3 contains use restrictions, but I believe they only apply if you distribute.
Heat only rises if it is surrounded by something cold - it is the RELATIVE density that matters.
Look up the Carnot cycle and the 3rd law of thermodynamics. There is a FUNDAMENTAL limit on the efficiency of any heat engine that no amount of rube-goldberging will solve.
Sure, the process efficiency could certainly be improved, but there will gigawatts of waste heat even if the process were COMPLETELY perfect.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the cold temperature be the temperature of the river - not the condensing point of water? I'd assume that the water in the heat exchangers would continue to cool even after it condenses, and would be circulated cold to the reactor core and not just below boiling.
Uh, I certainly don't believe in magic, but there certainly isn't any evidence to suggest that it doesn't exist. It is outside the realm of science - which makes it neither true nor false inherently, just indeterminable using the scientific method.
Perhaps a belief in magic says something about a person's personality, but it really has nothing to do with ignoring evidence/etc, or lack of moral fortitude. It isn't really even delusional - just a bit odd.
Personally I have enough problems finding somebody who agrees with my political stances to worry about whether they belive in magic on the side...
Well, the obvious logical argument (which isn't scientific in any way) would be that an intelligent designer could have created a world in a way that it would look like the world had evolved. There would be no way to prove or disprove this assuming the designer didn't make any mistakes (and thus make it obvious that it was designed).
This isn't a scientifically-testable hypothesis, but it could very well be true. There is certainly no way to prove that it isn't true.
As far as the practical world is concerned it doesn't really matter - if a world was designed to look like it wasn't designed then assuming it wasn't designed will probably allow you to make accurate predictions and advance technology/civilization/etc.
As an article of faith one could certainly choose to believe that the world was still designed just the same. I'm not really sure that it matters a great deal one way or the other. I have better things to worry about regarding politicians than what their personal beliefs are except to the degree that they have been shown to influence their decision-making...
Yes, this is kind of sad. I can't remember an election in Europe where religion of the candidates (or the absence thereof) was ever an issue.
It is obviously important in the US - this whole discussion centers around finding the religious viewpoint of candidates (their beliefs regarding evolution) and using it as a litmus test for voting for them. It just happens to be the opposite of the more common position in the US (where being an atheist is likely to lose you votes) - but fundamentally no different. I'm not really sure why the topic should matter to a great degree. Now, if a candidate has a history of making important decisions that are not rationally sound then that would be an issue. However, while this might be loosely related to their position on evolution I doubt that there is a 1:1 correspondance.
Maybe this is due to lack of attention to the humanist tradition.
Well, I'd agree with you there. Keep in mind that the US was founded primarily by folks who thought that humanism was inherently immoral (let alone amoral). Tower of Babel and all that - the issue isn't human progress in their eyes so much as attributing such progress purely to human effort.
Personally, I've never really understood the concept of morality apart from some belief in divine judgment. It becomes nothing more than an individual whim other than to the degree that somebody faces potential punishment in human courts. Maybe in your case you feel some desire to "do the right thing (however you choose define that)" even to your own detriment. I guess that's fine, but you'll just end up losing out to those who will do whatever it takes to get ahead - that's evolution. You can choose to like it or not, but there isn't much you can do about it (except perhaps belive that there is a divine judgement that will sort things out in the end).
Honestly, the more I've had to deal with schools the more I'm convinced that privatization and competition are the answer. I got a decent eduction in the public school system, but there are all kinds of issues with this:
1. Public school quality varies significantly and you're basically stuck with what you get. 2. Teacher quality varies significantly, and I have personannally suffered and know others who have suffered under particular teachers. 3. Students who do well have to interact with students who have nothing better to do than be discipline problems. Never in my life after school have I had to deal with the kinds of abuse I'd gotten in school (and I'm far from antisocial). In real life people choose not to associate with these kinds of people - children shouldn't be treated any differently.
I do believe that most teachers genuinely want to see their students do well. However, some do not succeed in this and I'm not a big believer in rewarding effort in the absence of results. In most industries people mean well but don't achieve results end up homeless - or working far-less-paying jobs than many teachers.
A competitive school system would benefit everyone. Teachers would have many more schools to choose to work at, which means higher salaries for those who can get offers anywhere. Parents could choose whatever criteria they prefer for picking a school - if they don't believe in standardized tests they can pick a school that doesn't bother with them - if they do then they can look who has the highest scores. Practices common in colleges like course evaluations would probably become common in secondary education (obviously the opinion of children will be taken with a grain of salt, but they're still worth listening to - and parental opinions will matter greatly to those interested in staying in business).
Schools will have incentive to keep the students happy and not run their institutions like prisons. Unions would probably disappear almost instantly - there is a reason that private schools don't hire unionized teachers. Some teachers might or might not like this, but few industries are structured in accordance with the wishes of the people who actually work in them - they're structured to provide maximum benefit to the owners (and the customers who ultimately reward the owners with business). Teachers would still have the same labor protections available in all industries, and good teachers would be very well treated as schools would recognize the competitive advantage they confer.
This would also reign in administration. Sure, bad administrators exist in EVERY industry. However, the profit motive tends to keep them under control. Schools would be fairly small businesses so you wouldn't see the kinds of excess you see in major corporations.
I just don't see what the problems would be with a privatized school system. About the only organization that stands to lose significantly would be the teacher's union. That and mediocre teachers. Neither would be a huge loss to the parents/students/taxpayers of the nation.
There are:
old voting systems [X] paper
bold voting systems [X] electronic
There are no old bold voting systems.
You obviously have never been to Florida - just proved you wrong there... And that is the problem with a pure paper system. I'm all for using a GUI for the input validation, and paper for the count...
The fundamental issue you raise is how does a society operate when people do not contribute appreciably to the work that goes on (physical work initially, but eventually intellectual work as well). In theory a society of robots could probably carry on without the people at all, but of course people will rule the robots as their slaves.
In theory such a system would be the ultimate utopia - people could be catered to for next to no cost and perform no labor other than what they desired to. However, resources would still be scarce, so how do you determine how to allocate them.
The issue has no easy answers, but it will be upon us soon...
The EU for example simply can't be explained in these terms. Nor can the UN, although that may seem strange to an American... but if you look at how the UN is respected in a nation that is not the global superpower you would see what I mean: UN authority (or the lack of it) for going into Iraq was a very big deal in Britain before the war; much of the parlimentary opposition to it was from MPs who simply considered an offensive war without UN authorisation to be illegal.
Look at it another way. It is in the interest of many of the EU states to promote the authority of the UN security council. Individually the nations of the EU don't really have much power to push an agenda (especially military power, but also economic power), but together they have a fair amount (and their combined economic power will help secure additional military power from states that possess it). Both France and the UK have veto power on the UNSC so that gives them quite a bit of power there. In a forum where your official vote carries a lot of weight you're going to emphasize the outcome of votes.
On the other hand, the US has the economic and military power to pretty-much go it alone against any 3rd-world nation such as Iraq. They can't afford to tick off the whole world, but they can easily afford minor sanctions from the odd EU member. So the US cares about the UN insofar as they want to avoid a huge backlash, but they don't really care about the outcome of votes beyond what they indicate about the attitude of the nation casting the vote. It is in the US's interests for the UN to be a diplomatic forum without much formal power.
Even the EU works in a similar way. EU members are treated as equals for the most part, but not everybody is welcome to join the party. As an approximate equal the US would probably treat the EU differently than it would treat a random 3rd world nation making demands. From what I've observed the EU acts in the same way, just on a slightly different scale.
At the end of the day politics, both national and international is about people. And people are complex little buggers; if you model them as simple units that just serve their state you end with a very over simplified view of the world IMO.
Welcome to national sovereignty - a nation is sovereign if it can do whatever it wants to do. A nation can achieve this to the degree that it can push its weight around. International law is basically nothing more than a gentleman's agreement among the more powerful nations that they will act in a certain way.
The only way it will ever be systematically enforced is if a sovereign government forms on a global scale. That won't happen as long as individual nations have individual armies that report to individual national leaders.
On the international scale it basically all boils down to right makes right - diplomacy only exists insofar is it is backed by the threat of force. No nation is powerful enough to completely dictate terms on any issue, but many nations can have their way on less important issues (like the ICC - nobody cares about it enough to start a major conflict (whether economic or military)).
In the UK (and a large part of the world), the loser in a court case pays any reasonable costs of the winner. This discourages any frivolous suits (since instead of just standing to win 1/3rd of the award the plaintiff lawyers stand to lose the opponent's costs as well as their own). It also encourages lawyers to take strong cases on contingency, since their costs are likely to be covered (in addition to any cuts of the award itself) - even if the final award is small. And, it encourages wronged parties to not just settle against their consciences just to avoid running up a huge legal bill.
If you're a UK citizen you just need to go into court and the costs are settled after the fact. The logic is that if you don't pay up they know where you live.
However, if you're not located in the EU then you're required to post security before being able to sue - in the amount of any likely award for costs. The logic is that if you lost you could just refuse to pay, and the British courts don't have easy access to you. If you've paid security, on the other hand, they don't need access to you.
Many have aruged for a loser-pays system in the US. It arguably has its own downsides, but it would be likely to greatly reduce them number of cases in the courts as plaintiffs could no longer just file a suit and hope for a small settlement so that the defendant doesn't have to pay legal costs.
Uh, you essentially just described SSL - except SSL is already a lot more thorough than this. About the only attack it is vulnerable to is man-in-the-middle, which isn't an issue with good CAs. Your session definitely isn't getting hijacked with SSL.
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As somebody has pointed out already there are benefits to canned solutions. One is that vendors often implement "best practices" in their software, so organizing work processes around the software instead of the other way around can sometimes bring efficiencies.
It really depends on the application and what is available in the marketplace. If you can go with off-the-shelf software and resist the urge to customize the living daylights out of it you can save a TON of cash, and ongoing support costs as well. If a product is industry-standard then you also benefit from being able to hire fully-trained workers as well. Plus, you don't have to depend on some temperamental IT prima-donna to maintain the thing. (Don't get me wrong - I work in IT, but I realize that this stereotype is true FAR too often.)
Plus, the canned solution probably comes with a pile of certifications regarding SOX or whatever the latest legal buzzword is. Or if it doesn't the next version will.
My biggest peeve is when management does spend $1M on licenses for some big software product they often look to save every penny possible on the hardware running the system, and for the want of 1GB of RAM the thing ends up crawling...
Suppose a member of the US government/military is vacationing in Nastyland and is picked up and interrogated. The police point to a Nastyland law indicating that the government has the legal right to subpoena information necessary for the national defense, and requests that they turn over classified information. The vacationer faces arrest/punishment if they don't comply, so they go along with it. Then they come back to the US.
Would they be surprised if they were charged with treason? It is against the law to divulge classified information regardless of what the laws of any other nation state. Sure, the government would probably go easy on prosecution, but probably not if the US citizen enthusiastically dumped everything they knew even without being questioned.
US companies should be held to the standards of US law - period. If that means they can't do business in certain places, well that is just too bad. Why does Yahoo need an office in China anyway? They could easily run a chinese website from anywhere in the world, and Chiense-speaking persons are hardly limited to China. If companies don't like US laws they can also base themselves entirely overseas, with any financial repercussions that might have.
A few years ago, I accidentally marked the wrong oval. I erased it to the point where I really couldn't see a mark there anymore then filled in the one I wanted, but the machine would not take it; it kicked it out as an overvote. I don't think it's actually possible to have an unclear ballot with these machines (Diebold accu-vote).
And what if you intended to not vote at all for that particular office? The machine would have accepted the ballot, but may have scored it as a vote instead of a non-vote. Then on a recount somebody would question the voter's intent. The ensuing court battle would probably cost enough to pay for machines for the entire state.
We're talking about a computer/monitor/printer - and the computer could easily be an embedded system that costs all of $100. You don't maintain them - you throw them out when they break.
Electons are already VERY expensive. Suppose you needed 50,000 machines in a state (which sounds excessive)? That might cost $10-20M. Bush alone spent around $125M on his most recent campaign. If we can spend that kind of money on TV ads can't we spend a fraction of it to get the tally correct?
Sure, manual ballots aren't THAT bad, but many elections are closer than the margin of error in a typical manually-counted election. You'll never hit low error rates with pieces of paper filled out by hand - especially when you have a team of lawyers looking for every excuse possible to invalidate a ballot.
Actually, that doesn't work at all. In most districts you can invalidate an absentee ballot by voting in-person. So if my boss makes me fill out an absentee ballot all I need to do is cooperate and then vote my conscience in the election...
Or you could just make a voting system that doesn't require all the ethical people in the country to lose their jobs in favor of less ethical people (which almost certainly outnumber ethical people in most nations - especially when you punish people for being ethical).
There are lots of anonymous voting systems out there which do not allow people to coerce votes, so why pick a system that does?
I'd go one further and have the ballots marked by machines in ALL cases.
Otherwise what happens if somebody half-fills an oval, or fills in one heavily and one lightly? The validation machine might pass the ballot, and upon later recounts there could be issues.
I'd have the paper audit trail be computer-generated, so that all ballots are valid. Then have the paper ballot be inspected by the voter, and put into a ballot box for counting. Voters wouldn't write on the paper (ideally I'd have the ballots coated so that pencils/pens wouldn't work so that somebody doesn't see a mistake and try to "fix" it. If a ballot is bad just toss it in the trash and create another. Completely manual ballots would only be stocked for mechanical problems.
If you have hand-filled ballots then you'll have dozens if not hundreds of invalid ballots in every election. That means court disputes any time the vote gets that close. The whole problem in Florida was that the voting system allowed for invalid ballots to be turned in.
A machine-generated paper ballot has all the advantages of both computer-generated and paper ballots. Why not use them? They wouldn't even be expensive to generate - you just need a PC, some software, a laser or thermal-transfer printer, and some paper that is coated to prevent writing on...
Thanks for your comments - I actually used to share some of your viewpoints regarding the importance of public eduction (while it was far from perfect the public schools I attended weren't that bad). However, I did want to comment on a few things you raised:
:)
I agree with your comments about the numbers game and fraud when it comes to advertising. Colleges already have this problem. It is probably inevitable - the only reason we don't have it with primary schools today is that there isn't enough choice to drive it.
First off, most teachers would absolutely love to have the labor protections available in other industries. Overtime would be a particular benefit.
Uh, I'm not aware of just about anybody in the professional-salary range that many teachers make who is eligible for overtime. It is very rare in the fortune 500/etc. Under federal law overtime pay is not required for highly skilled laborers. I'm sure your mileage would vary at the state level. Most are expected to get the job done whatever it happens to take. You can get away with working less but you'll be passed over for promotions/raises (which aren't automatic in industry), and if there is a downturn you're of course the first on the block. Of course, results matter more than hours so if you can get the job done without as much face time more power to you...
Now, suppose schools are able to accept tuition. Now, there is a socioeconomic barrier for student to get into quality schools.
I advocate a fixed-credit-per-student system. Schools would be free to charge tuition. I'm not sure I'd allow refunds - we don't want to encourage glorified daycares. I'd want schools to be free to charge as much as they want - otherwise there is no motive to do anything other than cut costs. There might also be the possibility of scholarships for exceptional students (of course, I recognize the controversy there). The fixed credit should be set at a level that can give a good education - it is not in the interest of society to end up with lots of illiterate folks.
I agree that the rich would fare better under this system, but that is just the way of the world.
That's about it. I agree with many of the points you've raised and recognized a few of the issues that you've seen with private schools (low pay/etc). Ideally the better funding with tuition credits would help there (most private schools have a lower per-child budget than the public schools do), and increased competition might help. I've had varied feelings over the years, but the more I look at the system it seems like it is more in need of a large change. The other big potential change would be massive deregulation (set general education standards but get rid of most other rules that bind local districts - such as testing requirements, and any regulations specific to employee protections/salaries/requisites/etc). I think that privitazation would work better, but allowing local districts the ability to pay-for-performance, etc would probably help in a public setting. I don't mean to be offensive and I'm sure you're an exceptional teacher, but I'm not a big fan of the teacher's unions (which are often codified in state law). Very few successful industries survive under these kinds of rules (most industries with massive union presence almost exist in spite of the unions - paying people not to work while they open shopes in other countries, giving unions token work while they move real work elsewhere until they can close entire factories, etc). Where unions do work well it tends to be in areas where the union is willing to give and take - recognizing the symbiotic relationship they have. The problem is that where public eduction is concerned there is really no cap on benefits since there is no profit motive - taxes can always be raised and work rules can always be tightened even if they are detrimental to eduction. In my experience where unions have been successful they've almost been unnecessary (more of a partnership). And I am cognizant of the history that lead up to them, so again I realize this isn't a simple problem to solve...
Well, it actually made sense at the time. There was no such thing as a "national election" per say in the 1700s - nobody could possibly campaign on that scale with travel times/etc (for both the candidate and anybody who would want to go to some city to see the candidate).
Instead every region would vote for an elector based on the popular vote in that region, who would travel to the national capitol and vote for a president. Many probably didn't even know who the national candidates where before they arrived.
The state legislatures would each pick two electors who would represent the state government's interests (picture the EU council - I think that is what it is called).
Together these electors would vote in a president. Each elector would vote in accordance with any instructions given by his constituency or his conscience as appropriate.
This system was ideal for the time as it avoided having to calculate popular votes on a national scale - no individual election had more than maybe 1-10k people.
Proportional democracy makes a lot more sense now - where the national government looks only after national interests, and counting votes and campaigning on a national level is common.
There are a lot of other differences between the current US and the original US federal government. The biggest would probably be the popular election of senators. It used to be that the senate represented the state governments - so a program like the Real ID program would never pass the senate if the state governments didn't like it. Now the senate is essentially a redundant house of reps with an odd apportionment of representation (not even remotely related to size of constituency).
What might make sense for a bicameral system would be to switch the senate back to a body appointed by state governments (restoring the power of state governments as a check on federal power), and turning the house into a proportional system like practiced in most of the world (where no particular rep serves any particular district, but instead people vote for parties and those parties get representation proportional to the popular vote on a national scale). The presidency is another question - I'm wondering if it would be better to just have a pure parliamentary system and go with a PM instead of a directly elected president.
One thing Europeans have to remember is that the US is a federal government. The original design was that states would be semi-autonomous and that they could override the federal government on many issues that were not national in nature. That has largely gone away in modern times, but still exists to some degree. In most European nations there is a unitary government - the national parliament could pass a vote and replace any local official anywhere in the country. In the US this would be unconstitutional - the Federal government could only fire federal officials. The state governments could remove state or local officials in accordance with the state constitution.
Well, in theory Tivo has to keep them happy - otherwise cablecards will no longer work with Tivos. The beauty of the system - explicit hardware pairing...
If anyone is willing to accept someone else's views of morality over their own, listening to the pastor's sermon more than his or her own sense of decency... I see the potential for many, many problems.
Why should the morality taught by a pastor be any worse or better than one's own "sense of decency"? Following one's own sense of decency essentially amounts to doing whatever one feels like doing (if you feel like doing the "right" thing go ahead, and if your sense of decency happens to call for torture to extract information that is fine too).
And this has never made sense to me. It's as though you are admitting the only reason you do good or are decent to others is because you're afraid of getting punished.
I actually do believe that this is what motivates MOST people. Punishment can include more than just traditional toss-in-jail punishment, but also becoming a social outcast/etc. For the most part people do in fact do what they feel like, and it doesn't feel good to be punished. And apart from any kind of belief in the supernatural why would you expect somebody to act differently? Why would somebody NOT do something in their personal interest if the opportunity presented itself and they KNEW that nobody would ever know about it? Maybe not true in your case, but almost certainly true in most cases...
I agree with you completely. And to the degree that somebody's beliefs have been shown to lead to bad decisions I wouldn't vote for them (which is EXACTLY what my last sentence said).
I really could care less about silly arguments regarding whether a particular belief is more or less likely to lead to bad decisions. If somebody is going to be president they had better already have a real-life track record of good decisions already. If they already have a good track record then why worry about hypotheticals?
Lack of evidence is not support. Lack of evidence is a lack of support. There is no credible evidence that magic exists, therefore until such evidence is presented, it is safe to say that magic does not exist. If someone wants to claim that magic does exist, then it is their responsibility to provide evidence.
Agreed on your first two sentences (I never claimed lack of evidence was any kind of support). It CERTAINLY is safe to say that magic does not exist. On the other hand, is there really any reason to say that it is not "safe" to say that magic DOES exist? Claiming that magic exists does not create any "responsibility" to provide evidence. However, if you don't provide evidence you shouldn't be surprised if others don't agree with you.
If believing something without evidence isn't delusional, then what is?
If you claimed that you were sitting on a chair when you typed that sentence I'd probably believe you. Why wouldn't I? Now, I wouldn't make any serious decision based on that belief, but it is hardly delusional to believe something without evidence. We do it all the time when things don't matter enough to be worth a serious investigation. And this is probably the reason why so many people don't "believe" in evolution - it doesn't really make any difference whether it happened or not to most people and to do a serious investigation (beyond just taking some scientists/books at their word) is more trouble than most people would be bothered with for something that has little effect on their daily lives. Many of these people trust people who hold contrary views, and the average scientist is just a stranger to them, so why would they believe a scientist over a friend when the topic doesn't really have any practical impact on them (in their perception at least).
Even if the things that they are led to believe are good things on face value (like all of the values at the core of most religions), once people accept those without question, it becomes quite easy for a charismatic leader to attach not-so-good things to those core values like a parasite.
This might be an argument for disqualifying people from voting based on their beliefs, but not from holding office. I'm not terribly concerned that most people who run for President of the US are likely to be swayed by a charismatic leader.
In any case, if I had a wide selection of candidates that had compatible political views with my own I might resort to using softer criteria such as this one to make a decision. However, politics is a matter of compromise and in the VERY long list of issues this is one I'm a lot more willing to compromise on as long as the politician makes generally good decisions. Sure, I wouldn't elect Buchannan, but there are a LOT of reasons for that beyond his position on evolution...
Uh, I can see two main reasons to object:
1. The license only applies to works created to work on the windows operating system. As far as I know no other Open Source license is limited to a particular OS.
2. The license preamble states that you must accept the license to use the software. As far as I know no other open source license makes such a statement (a license covers DISTRIBUTION of software - not use). Granted, I'm not 100% confident that no other open source license contains use-only restrictions, but I think this is the case. GPL3 contains use restrictions, but I believe they only apply if you distribute.
Heat only rises if it is surrounded by something cold - it is the RELATIVE density that matters.
Look up the Carnot cycle and the 3rd law of thermodynamics. There is a FUNDAMENTAL limit on the efficiency of any heat engine that no amount of rube-goldberging will solve.
Sure, the process efficiency could certainly be improved, but there will gigawatts of waste heat even if the process were COMPLETELY perfect.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the cold temperature be the temperature of the river - not the condensing point of water? I'd assume that the water in the heat exchangers would continue to cool even after it condenses, and would be circulated cold to the reactor core and not just below boiling.
Uh, I certainly don't believe in magic, but there certainly isn't any evidence to suggest that it doesn't exist. It is outside the realm of science - which makes it neither true nor false inherently, just indeterminable using the scientific method.
Perhaps a belief in magic says something about a person's personality, but it really has nothing to do with ignoring evidence/etc, or lack of moral fortitude. It isn't really even delusional - just a bit odd.
Personally I have enough problems finding somebody who agrees with my political stances to worry about whether they belive in magic on the side...
Well, the obvious logical argument (which isn't scientific in any way) would be that an intelligent designer could have created a world in a way that it would look like the world had evolved. There would be no way to prove or disprove this assuming the designer didn't make any mistakes (and thus make it obvious that it was designed).
This isn't a scientifically-testable hypothesis, but it could very well be true. There is certainly no way to prove that it isn't true.
As far as the practical world is concerned it doesn't really matter - if a world was designed to look like it wasn't designed then assuming it wasn't designed will probably allow you to make accurate predictions and advance technology/civilization/etc.
As an article of faith one could certainly choose to believe that the world was still designed just the same. I'm not really sure that it matters a great deal one way or the other. I have better things to worry about regarding politicians than what their personal beliefs are except to the degree that they have been shown to influence their decision-making...
Yes, this is kind of sad. I can't remember an election in Europe where religion of the candidates (or the absence thereof) was ever an issue.
It is obviously important in the US - this whole discussion centers around finding the religious viewpoint of candidates (their beliefs regarding evolution) and using it as a litmus test for voting for them. It just happens to be the opposite of the more common position in the US (where being an atheist is likely to lose you votes) - but fundamentally no different. I'm not really sure why the topic should matter to a great degree. Now, if a candidate has a history of making important decisions that are not rationally sound then that would be an issue. However, while this might be loosely related to their position on evolution I doubt that there is a 1:1 correspondance.
Maybe this is due to lack of attention to the humanist tradition.
Well, I'd agree with you there. Keep in mind that the US was founded primarily by folks who thought that humanism was inherently immoral (let alone amoral). Tower of Babel and all that - the issue isn't human progress in their eyes so much as attributing such progress purely to human effort.
Personally, I've never really understood the concept of morality apart from some belief in divine judgment. It becomes nothing more than an individual whim other than to the degree that somebody faces potential punishment in human courts. Maybe in your case you feel some desire to "do the right thing (however you choose define that)" even to your own detriment. I guess that's fine, but you'll just end up losing out to those who will do whatever it takes to get ahead - that's evolution. You can choose to like it or not, but there isn't much you can do about it (except perhaps belive that there is a divine judgement that will sort things out in the end).
Honestly, the more I've had to deal with schools the more I'm convinced that privatization and competition are the answer. I got a decent eduction in the public school system, but there are all kinds of issues with this:
1. Public school quality varies significantly and you're basically stuck with what you get.
2. Teacher quality varies significantly, and I have personannally suffered and know others who have suffered under particular teachers.
3. Students who do well have to interact with students who have nothing better to do than be discipline problems. Never in my life after school have I had to deal with the kinds of abuse I'd gotten in school (and I'm far from antisocial). In real life people choose not to associate with these kinds of people - children shouldn't be treated any differently.
I do believe that most teachers genuinely want to see their students do well. However, some do not succeed in this and I'm not a big believer in rewarding effort in the absence of results. In most industries people mean well but don't achieve results end up homeless - or working far-less-paying jobs than many teachers.
A competitive school system would benefit everyone. Teachers would have many more schools to choose to work at, which means higher salaries for those who can get offers anywhere. Parents could choose whatever criteria they prefer for picking a school - if they don't believe in standardized tests they can pick a school that doesn't bother with them - if they do then they can look who has the highest scores. Practices common in colleges like course evaluations would probably become common in secondary education (obviously the opinion of children will be taken with a grain of salt, but they're still worth listening to - and parental opinions will matter greatly to those interested in staying in business).
Schools will have incentive to keep the students happy and not run their institutions like prisons. Unions would probably disappear almost instantly - there is a reason that private schools don't hire unionized teachers. Some teachers might or might not like this, but few industries are structured in accordance with the wishes of the people who actually work in them - they're structured to provide maximum benefit to the owners (and the customers who ultimately reward the owners with business). Teachers would still have the same labor protections available in all industries, and good teachers would be very well treated as schools would recognize the competitive advantage they confer.
This would also reign in administration. Sure, bad administrators exist in EVERY industry. However, the profit motive tends to keep them under control. Schools would be fairly small businesses so you wouldn't see the kinds of excess you see in major corporations.
I just don't see what the problems would be with a privatized school system. About the only organization that stands to lose significantly would be the teacher's union. That and mediocre teachers. Neither would be a huge loss to the parents/students/taxpayers of the nation.
There are:
old voting systems
[X] paper
bold voting systems
[X] electronic
There are no old bold voting systems.
You obviously have never been to Florida - just proved you wrong there... And that is the problem with a pure paper system. I'm all for using a GUI for the input validation, and paper for the count...
The fundamental issue you raise is how does a society operate when people do not contribute appreciably to the work that goes on (physical work initially, but eventually intellectual work as well). In theory a society of robots could probably carry on without the people at all, but of course people will rule the robots as their slaves.
In theory such a system would be the ultimate utopia - people could be catered to for next to no cost and perform no labor other than what they desired to. However, resources would still be scarce, so how do you determine how to allocate them.
The issue has no easy answers, but it will be upon us soon...
The EU for example simply can't be explained in these terms. Nor can the UN, although that may seem strange to an American... but if you look at how the UN is respected in a nation that is not the global superpower you would see what I mean: UN authority (or the lack of it) for going into Iraq was a very big deal in Britain before the war; much of the parlimentary opposition to it was from MPs who simply considered an offensive war without UN authorisation to be illegal.
Look at it another way. It is in the interest of many of the EU states to promote the authority of the UN security council. Individually the nations of the EU don't really have much power to push an agenda (especially military power, but also economic power), but together they have a fair amount (and their combined economic power will help secure additional military power from states that possess it). Both France and the UK have veto power on the UNSC so that gives them quite a bit of power there. In a forum where your official vote carries a lot of weight you're going to emphasize the outcome of votes.
On the other hand, the US has the economic and military power to pretty-much go it alone against any 3rd-world nation such as Iraq. They can't afford to tick off the whole world, but they can easily afford minor sanctions from the odd EU member. So the US cares about the UN insofar as they want to avoid a huge backlash, but they don't really care about the outcome of votes beyond what they indicate about the attitude of the nation casting the vote. It is in the US's interests for the UN to be a diplomatic forum without much formal power.
Even the EU works in a similar way. EU members are treated as equals for the most part, but not everybody is welcome to join the party. As an approximate equal the US would probably treat the EU differently than it would treat a random 3rd world nation making demands. From what I've observed the EU acts in the same way, just on a slightly different scale.
At the end of the day politics, both national and international is about people. And people are complex little buggers; if you model them as simple units that just serve their state you end with a very over simplified view of the world IMO.
Now that I can agree with!
Welcome to national sovereignty - a nation is sovereign if it can do whatever it wants to do. A nation can achieve this to the degree that it can push its weight around. International law is basically nothing more than a gentleman's agreement among the more powerful nations that they will act in a certain way.
The only way it will ever be systematically enforced is if a sovereign government forms on a global scale. That won't happen as long as individual nations have individual armies that report to individual national leaders.
On the international scale it basically all boils down to right makes right - diplomacy only exists insofar is it is backed by the threat of force. No nation is powerful enough to completely dictate terms on any issue, but many nations can have their way on less important issues (like the ICC - nobody cares about it enough to start a major conflict (whether economic or military)).
The essence of security for costs is loser-pays.
In the UK (and a large part of the world), the loser in a court case pays any reasonable costs of the winner. This discourages any frivolous suits (since instead of just standing to win 1/3rd of the award the plaintiff lawyers stand to lose the opponent's costs as well as their own). It also encourages lawyers to take strong cases on contingency, since their costs are likely to be covered (in addition to any cuts of the award itself) - even if the final award is small. And, it encourages wronged parties to not just settle against their consciences just to avoid running up a huge legal bill.
If you're a UK citizen you just need to go into court and the costs are settled after the fact. The logic is that if you don't pay up they know where you live.
However, if you're not located in the EU then you're required to post security before being able to sue - in the amount of any likely award for costs. The logic is that if you lost you could just refuse to pay, and the British courts don't have easy access to you. If you've paid security, on the other hand, they don't need access to you.
Many have aruged for a loser-pays system in the US. It arguably has its own downsides, but it would be likely to greatly reduce them number of cases in the courts as plaintiffs could no longer just file a suit and hope for a small settlement so that the defendant doesn't have to pay legal costs.
Mix in SSL, and it should get even harder.
Uh, you essentially just described SSL - except SSL is already a lot more thorough than this. About the only attack it is vulnerable to is man-in-the-middle, which isn't an issue with good CAs. Your session definitely isn't getting hijacked with SSL.