This kind of stuff supports the notion of small government. Name one piece of legislation regarding technology where the legislature has made a rational, informed decision that soundly addressed the issues at hand. Cell phones, spam, digital rights, HDTV- the list goes on of government screwing up things by trying to micro-manage technology.
As with most technology issues, a simple, general solution would have sufficed, and may already be on the books in the form of reckless driving laws.
Come on, we all know these polls are skewed already. Even if the polls themselves used well-asked questions and an accurate cross-section of the population, the reporting on them is usually very biased. It's funny how "40%" becomes "nearly half of all Americans" when it supports the writer's opinion.
As an artist, I'm especially interested in the artistic ambitions of the Beagle 2 mission. They plan to play a song by Blur for the Martians and use a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the spectrometers. Seems to be a well-rounded adventure.
I've been using Outlook 2003 for a couple weeks now, and it has this feature (View -> Arrange By -> Conversation). It can be handy, but I typically use the arrange by date feature. It groups by "Today" "Yesterday" "Last Week", etc.
-dr
Microsoft Database Engine is a free limited-connection version of SQL server. It is more scalable than Access, and you can use Enterprise Manager with it. One feature missing from Access is stored procedures (I think), which are essential for proper data layer design. Also, MSDE and SQL server are real server apps, as opposed to Access which is ultimately file-based.
Very creative! You restate the charge very eloquently and give some questionable and obscure circumstancial evidence of your opinion, but you have not addressed my point. What, in your opinion, should define the limits of the "quest for knowlege", and why?
I think it's illogical to fault conservatives for standing by their guns on this. I mean if you believe that an embryo is human, and if you believe killing that human is wrong, then it is only logical to oppose abortion in all forms- even if there are potential benefits from it. Think about it- there are many potential benefits from say, killing all elderly and genetically inferior people. Less world hunger, better gene pool, etc. We could even do research on their bodies and learn alot that could save lives. But most people, for one reason or another, realize that this would be still be wrong.
So, any talk about weighing potential benefits is really a smokescreen for the only real issue: When does human life begin? I'm not saying that's an easy question, but I think it's really illogical and unfair for people to bash those of us who believe it begins at conception and stand by the logical conclusions of that belief.
editing errors like the text that tells us a 'geostationary satellite' orbits at 'about 22,300 miles,' next to a diagram showing the number 20,300 miles.
"Geostationary orbit" seems like a misnomer itself. If it's geostationary, is it really orbiting around anything besides the sun?
If you don't like PHPNuke, you probably won't like DotNetNuke, but I use it and it's decent. One feature I haven't seen elsewhere is the ability to do multiple portals with one instance. In other words mom, dad, and your dog can all have a site on one hosting account. It is in it's infancy, though.
Sound familiar?
You don't know what you're talking about;) I'm sure it varies, but my experience has been that managment aren't even interested in seeing "proposed designs", much less offering any input. They want it yesterday. That said, there are times when the user doesn't know best, and has to be told so. For example, many users in my office want to use MS Publisher to write whole websites- with each page coming in around 500K to 1Meg that only IE 8.12 can read. Those are design choices where an uniformed user really can screw up the system if given free reign. I do my best to explain why a 1 Meg web page with 40 animated gifs is bad, but sometimes it takes putting my foot down. In the case of voting systems, the fact that Deibold uses MS Access proves to me that somebody who shouldn't was doing some design work.
Anyway, to the second question- no these systems should not be used and I'm writing my congresspeople to tell 'em so.
Yes, but while the complete re-design is in progress we can easily institute the minimal safeguards necessary to make the voting process auditable.
I agree. And the case here shows that even with paper reciepts, which these machines have, the system is not secure or auditable.
And might I add that saying the problem needs "further study" or is too large for immediate action is a typical delaying tactic.
You might, but you'd sound just like management at my company when they accuse IS of "delaying" because we want _gasp_ 4 months design time on a project. I'm looking at this as a software developer. If you do not have properly-done design- whether it's because some people think it's "not remotely plausible", or political motivation- you end up with a hack. This almost always leads to bugs in your system. That is what has happened so far. These companies have not done proper design, and so the systems have bugs.
Sorry you misunderstood. I cited sources in another post for my statement that here the Democrats are benefiting. As for the owners of these systems being Republican, I have two responses: 1) Correlation Does Not Prove Causation and 2) there are likely just as many Republicans guilty of voter fraud- I'm not a big fan of either right now, though I do tend to be more conservative than liberal.
The main point of the post was to say that paper-trails are not the only issue, and that what is needed is a complete re-design of the system(s) taking everything into consideration.
Well, there is identification here, but it is not very good. The citizen is required to register to vote. He is then put on rolls at a given voting station. When he goes to vote, he gives his name and signs the voter log. He is required to identify himself, but there is no proof he is who he says he is. Photo identification would be a big step forward, but is frowned on by some (not me), because in the days of segregation, requirements like identification and reading tests were required to vote.
I should probably head off any criticism on the Civil war remark: the federal government took on more power to end slavery, which was a good thing. So, it's not as clear cut as federal power=bad, states rights=good.
Do you have any idea of how easy it is to cheat if you dont have a clear, homogeneous, procedure to count and put the ballots in place?
One thing I don't think many non-US (and US for that matter) citizens understand is why there isn't a homogenous system. In it's infancy, America was much more of an agreement between states, and a powerful central government was largely frowned on because it had been abused so often in recent history. (Hence United States). The Constitution, in fact, greatly limits what the Federal government can do. It was not until much later, around the Civil war, when the Federal government began gaining more power. Even today, this power remains limited. A good many Americans still do not like the idea of giving the Federal government alot of power over individual states. This would be akin to how many Europeans view the European Union. While from the outside it may appear inneficient, and does have it's problems, it has traditionally limited the power any one person or group can have over the whole country. Even when it comes to creating laws for the various states, such as speed limits or voting guidelines, the Federal government must act within the limits set by the Constitution (which basically limits it to governing interstate commerce).
Anyway, I hope that's informative. All that said, yes, the election system does need a good looking-at.
Sure. Here's an article from Nov. 6th explaining most of it. From the article:
"We paid $1.6 million for voting machines and hundreds of thousands of dollars on training" and the results are still unknown, said Hinds County Tax Assessor Bill Burrow Jr., who was trailing Democrat Eddie J. Fair in a re-election bid.
A number of electronic, paper and affidavit ballots had yet to be counted in all the Hinds County races, but only one remains too close to call. Republican Sen. Richard White, a 13-year incumbent, held a 49-vote lead over Democratic challenger Dewayne Thomas on Wednesday.
As many as three dozen voting machines were unexpectedly left at precincts overnight.
Since then, a handful of mystery ballots have showed up, swinging the unofficial count in favor of Dewayne Thomas (Dem). The ballots have no initials, which is apparently required by law, but the Democrat AG decided to count them anyway. This decision will likely be contested in court. Sound familiar?
Don't get me wrong- there's some shady Republicans around here too, but my point is the current system needs to be fixed in the law and in the technology.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm watching bandwidth, so I didn't add more frames, but per your suggestion, I did slow it down a bit on the next one.
I added another and simple instructions on how to create em.
I've created a quick Jiggy-Vision view of one of the sets.
This kind of stuff supports the notion of small government. Name one piece of legislation regarding technology where the legislature has made a rational, informed decision that soundly addressed the issues at hand. Cell phones, spam, digital rights, HDTV- the list goes on of government screwing up things by trying to micro-manage technology.
As with most technology issues, a simple, general solution would have sufficed, and may already be on the books in the form of reckless driving laws.
Start smoking.
Come on, we all know these polls are skewed already. Even if the polls themselves used well-asked questions and an accurate cross-section of the population, the reporting on them is usually very biased. It's funny how "40%" becomes "nearly half of all Americans" when it supports the writer's opinion.
As an artist, I'm especially interested in the artistic ambitions of the Beagle 2 mission. They plan to play a song by Blur for the Martians and use a Damien Hirst painting to calibrate the spectrometers. Seems to be a well-rounded adventure.
I've been using Outlook 2003 for a couple weeks now, and it has this feature (View -> Arrange By -> Conversation). It can be handy, but I typically use the arrange by date feature. It groups by "Today" "Yesterday" "Last Week", etc. -dr
Didn't you people see Animatrix? We HAD to do this to prevent the robot takeover, but it will only cause them to come after us for batteries.
Microsoft Database Engine is a free limited-connection version of SQL server. It is more scalable than Access, and you can use Enterprise Manager with it. One feature missing from Access is stored procedures (I think), which are essential for proper data layer design. Also, MSDE and SQL server are real server apps, as opposed to Access which is ultimately file-based.
Very creative! You restate the charge very eloquently and give some questionable and obscure circumstancial evidence of your opinion, but you have not addressed my point. What, in your opinion, should define the limits of the "quest for knowlege", and why?
I think it's illogical to fault conservatives for standing by their guns on this. I mean if you believe that an embryo is human, and if you believe killing that human is wrong, then it is only logical to oppose abortion in all forms- even if there are potential benefits from it. Think about it- there are many potential benefits from say, killing all elderly and genetically inferior people. Less world hunger, better gene pool, etc. We could even do research on their bodies and learn alot that could save lives. But most people, for one reason or another, realize that this would be still be wrong.
So, any talk about weighing potential benefits is really a smokescreen for the only real issue: When does human life begin? I'm not saying that's an easy question, but I think it's really illogical and unfair for people to bash those of us who believe it begins at conception and stand by the logical conclusions of that belief.
editing errors like the text that tells us a 'geostationary satellite' orbits at 'about 22,300 miles,' next to a diagram showing the number 20,300 miles.
"Geostationary orbit" seems like a misnomer itself. If it's geostationary, is it really orbiting around anything besides the sun?
If you don't like PHPNuke, you probably won't like DotNetNuke, but I use it and it's decent. One feature I haven't seen elsewhere is the ability to do multiple portals with one instance. In other words mom, dad, and your dog can all have a site on one hosting account. It is in it's infancy, though.
CSS is taken and is already confused by many a begining developer with eXtensible Stylesheet Language. Name it BIOS.NET instead.
How can they afford the all the Licenses?
In IE: /.er
Tools -> Options -> Fonts -> Georgia -> OK -> OK
-Fake
Sound familiar? ;) I'm sure it varies, but my experience has been that managment aren't even interested in seeing "proposed designs", much less offering any input. They want it yesterday. That said, there are times when the user doesn't know best, and has to be told so. For example, many users in my office want to use MS Publisher to write whole websites- with each page coming in around 500K to 1Meg that only IE 8.12 can read. Those are design choices where an uniformed user really can screw up the system if given free reign. I do my best to explain why a 1 Meg web page with 40 animated gifs is bad, but sometimes it takes putting my foot down. In the case of voting systems, the fact that Deibold uses MS Access proves to me that somebody who shouldn't was doing some design work.
You don't know what you're talking about
Anyway, to the second question- no these systems should not be used and I'm writing my congresspeople to tell 'em so.
Yes, but while the complete re-design is in progress we can easily institute the minimal safeguards necessary to make the voting process auditable.
I agree. And the case here shows that even with paper reciepts, which these machines have, the system is not secure or auditable.
And might I add that saying the problem needs "further study" or is too large for immediate action is a typical delaying tactic.
You might, but you'd sound just like management at my company when they accuse IS of "delaying" because we want _gasp_ 4 months design time on a project. I'm looking at this as a software developer. If you do not have properly-done design- whether it's because some people think it's "not remotely plausible", or political motivation- you end up with a hack. This almost always leads to bugs in your system. That is what has happened so far. These companies have not done proper design, and so the systems have bugs.
Does this mean Gary could be The One? (spoiler) I expect him to lay down and feed himself to X3D to save us all.
Sorry you misunderstood. I cited sources in another post for my statement that here the Democrats are benefiting. As for the owners of these systems being Republican, I have two responses: 1) Correlation Does Not Prove Causation and 2) there are likely just as many Republicans guilty of voter fraud- I'm not a big fan of either right now, though I do tend to be more conservative than liberal.
The main point of the post was to say that paper-trails are not the only issue, and that what is needed is a complete re-design of the system(s) taking everything into consideration.
Well, there is identification here, but it is not very good. The citizen is required to register to vote. He is then put on rolls at a given voting station. When he goes to vote, he gives his name and signs the voter log. He is required to identify himself, but there is no proof he is who he says he is. Photo identification would be a big step forward, but is frowned on by some (not me), because in the days of segregation, requirements like identification and reading tests were required to vote.
I should probably head off any criticism on the Civil war remark: the federal government took on more power to end slavery, which was a good thing. So, it's not as clear cut as federal power=bad, states rights=good.
Do you have any idea of how easy it is to cheat if you dont have a clear, homogeneous, procedure to count and put the ballots in place?
One thing I don't think many non-US (and US for that matter) citizens understand is why there isn't a homogenous system. In it's infancy, America was much more of an agreement between states, and a powerful central government was largely frowned on because it had been abused so often in recent history. (Hence United States). The Constitution, in fact, greatly limits what the Federal government can do. It was not until much later, around the Civil war, when the Federal government began gaining more power. Even today, this power remains limited. A good many Americans still do not like the idea of giving the Federal government alot of power over individual states. This would be akin to how many Europeans view the European Union. While from the outside it may appear inneficient, and does have it's problems, it has traditionally limited the power any one person or group can have over the whole country. Even when it comes to creating laws for the various states, such as speed limits or voting guidelines, the Federal government must act within the limits set by the Constitution (which basically limits it to governing interstate commerce).
Anyway, I hope that's informative. All that said, yes, the election system does need a good looking-at.
Sure. Here's an article from Nov. 6th explaining most of it. From the article: "We paid $1.6 million for voting machines and hundreds of thousands of dollars on training" and the results are still unknown, said Hinds County Tax Assessor Bill Burrow Jr., who was trailing Democrat Eddie J. Fair in a re-election bid.
A number of electronic, paper and affidavit ballots had yet to be counted in all the Hinds County races, but only one remains too close to call. Republican Sen. Richard White, a 13-year incumbent, held a 49-vote lead over Democratic challenger Dewayne Thomas on Wednesday.
As many as three dozen voting machines were unexpectedly left at precincts overnight.
Since then, a handful of mystery ballots have showed up, swinging the unofficial count in favor of Dewayne Thomas (Dem). The ballots have no initials, which is apparently required by law, but the Democrat AG decided to count them anyway. This decision will likely be contested in court. Sound familiar?
Don't get me wrong- there's some shady Republicans around here too, but my point is the current system needs to be fixed in the law and in the technology.