You don't have to switch between all instances of, say, IE to find the window you want, you would simply switch to IE and use it's "Window" menu to find the appropriate content or use other means to select the window, such as cycling through them with command-`. So there is a hierarchy of windows, not just a flat mass of various windows or the terrible "document window interface" where the instances windows can only be within the main window (which precludes the use of layering content of multiple applications in your workspace and makes multiple monitor usage within one app more difficult).
This describes the windowing system on OS X; in OS 9 or earlier, an application's windows were on a layer devoted to that application, so you wouldn't have any of the interleaving of windows from different applications that you find with OS X. This created the problem that you can lose a window behind one belonging to a different application, and led to much confusion for those used to OS 9's tidier but less flexible system. Apple's solution to that problem was to introduce the "Window" menu as a standard (not very necessary for OS 9 apps) and, when that proved clunky, the elegant and endlessly entertaining Exposé feature (e.g. F10 reveals all open windows for the frontmost app).
Apple users generally work differently from Windows users: many (often excessive) open windows (documents and apps), layered for click or drag'n'drop access, vs. a few windows (instances of an app) maximized and alt-tab or taskbar switching. In that respect, Apple users often benefit more from multiple monitors than Windows users.
But unlike macs, PC's actually have more than one app worth running. WTF do you use a dual-screen mac for? Two instances of photoshop?
OK troll, I'll bite.
Back in '91 I was running a Mac with a 19" portrait display and a 14" for publishing a magazine, which was indispensable. In 95 a similar setup I had was also running web publishing, FileMaker Pro development, and Quark and Photoshop, at the same time. In '98 I was using two 20" monitors for all of the above, plus video editing.
Cooperative multitasking's severe shortcomings aside, if you could afford the RAM, classic Macs generally did fine with multiple applications running at once in everyday use.
Interesting note: tried at various times to run a two-monitor setup on Win98 and NT to run Premiere, using a Matrox dual-head or two separate cards, and after various minor frustrations (difficulty keeping alignment, software freaking out, no snap-to-content, centering windows between monitors and other human interface atrocities) we just gave up to save on support time and installed single 19" monitors on all PC's at higher resolutions. On a Mac, it always... just... worked, taking seconds to configure.
Margulis wrote a great article in Sci Am a few years back about Kefir, which intrigued me because I was cultivating it at the time. Kefir is a 'superorganism' comprised of some >30 different microbes, yeasts and bacteria et al., and when they're together they make a nice small rubbery grain that's coherent and lasts. This stuff does amazing things to milk, transforming it into a very digestible, healthful drink for humans. When conditions are bad, Kefir dissolves into its constituent parts and they just sour the milk. She was using it as an example of the synergistic nature of symbiosis, and the sheer complexity of species that can be involved in one instance.
Me, however, I'm just a mule for my Little Masters, they make me spread them around. At one point, I seem to remember Margulis wildly speculating about the possibility of evolution being in part driven by microbes motivating their multicelllular vehicles.
All you're really saying is that geeks should avoid the all-in-one form factor, no matter the platform.
Joe sixpack and grandma never upgrade, they replace when they can't use it to do what they want anymore. For them, macs usually stay serviceable longer, and go obsolete slower.
Business users run the machine with 8 apps for 4 years, then replace.
High end users replace as often as possible, since nanoseconds equal dollars.
Everyone else is a hobbyist or away from the mean.
That said, noone would use an iMac from '97, since they came out in '98. Even if they had been around in '97, serious users bought G3 towers, which can be upgraded up the yazoo, like any other tower, and except for the 160GB drive (limit would be 120), can do anything your P2 can. This is a disingenuous comparison.
Recently, a business I set up a database solution for on an old PowerMac 8100 (ca. '95) called me to ask if I thought they should consider replacing it soon. It wasn't broken, there were no problems, but isn't it old? Should we maintain it? Database is filemaker, about 30 related files, around 300K records, accessed around the clock from various locations. We all have anecdotes about old diehard machines... generally Macs last a long time. I used a pizzabox LCII as a headless print server for 11 years without any maintenance... etc.
I was just about finished convincing myself that I needed some Apple hardware so I could run Final Cut Pro.
Don't hold your breath. FCP requires fine-grained timing through firewire (deck control, capture, etc), core audio, altivec for rendering, and makes heavy use of any computer, even a G5. FCP is fussy about file systems and disk access. No way in this decade (er, next 3 years then) will emulation make that kind of necessary responsiveness available for any video editor application. Even running iMovie would be a nightmare, if even possible.
That said, even a $1K eMac w/ 512MB RAM runs FCP acceptably for most projects, and in fact I have one fairly large project being done on a souped-up G4 dual450 that just won't die. But the key issue is hardware: any video editing system relies heavily on hardware/software integration and responsiveness.
I guess you're right in the sense of form factor, but until they came out with the Vx (or IBM's rebranded C3), the V was too short on storage to run stuff like eReader and a collection of reference docs--unless that's all you wanted it for. I still use my (8MB) Vx... just wish I could set it up for wifi, surfing on a modem is so... 90's!
1) 0%, because I live in Canada and I pay levies on recording media, so the Copyright Act gives me the right to make single copies without redistribution. However, I have about 15% of our music in the P2P category... mainly for curiosity, because 128k MP3's kind of suck.
2) 0%, because I live in Canada and use a Mac at home, so I'm SOL.
3) 1%, but growing...
4) I've ripped about 20% of our cd collection (but duplicated nearly all of it for the car or kids etc.)
6) About 15% of our music comes from (legal, moral, and absolutely my rightful use, see item 1) copies made from friends' CD's--some of which have led to further CD purchases.
7) (the missing question) Yes, the few Canadians who are aware of our Copyright Act are sick of the cultural export of values like "p2p music is theft" from the USA.
so of COURSE everything for console Y or an iMac that you grab off the shelf is guaranteed to run....it's all for (arguably) obsolete hardware...
The iMac's a bad example of that, since the model line is always based on some amount of bleeding edge design. To wit: Gen1 iMac -- 1st mass market USB on mbrd, dispense w/ floppy, no fan; Gen2: tiny tiny case, wacko but highly functional anglepoise display; Gen3: make the computer go away, it's a display with cables and a slot.
On the gen1 iMac, the usb/floppy stuff provided for some compatibility issues until vendors scrambled to get usb peripherals out the door.
Remind me not to invite you on my next long bike/hike/kayak trip in the wilderness...
You forget that most of our history was tribal, and that hunter-gatherers generally work an average of 25 hours per week to survive and spend the rest of the time with useful diversions--they don't think they're roughing it, they're usually comfortable. People used to walk/ride thousands of kilometres a year, for commerce. People row across oceans in 10-foot boats, for fun. We're pretty tough, man--when we aren't over domesticated.
Comfort is relative. Cooking bannock over an open fire, sleeping on the ground, and pooping in a pit you dig yourself is rough to most, sheer luxury to me.
I'd love to spend a year in space, and I'd poop in a bag and push it out the airlock happily if it meant extra oxygen reserves.
No one has yet proven to me that failing to follow a set of arbitrary instructions once is sufficient grounds to disqualify the voter from having his voice heard, especially when he will never know that he was disqualified.
It's not something you can prove easily, it's an opinion based on an attitude towards personal responsibility, which rights are dependent upon. It's a basic notion of democratic sovereignty: you want to participate in running your country? Follow some very simple rules, at minimum. The instructions, to the literate, are not arbitrary, they're coherent with the convention of selecting an item from a list.
But another point, would you be willing to accept the same low perentages of vote tampering?
No. There aren't any stats but I'd be willing to bet that rejected ballots represent noise in the system, in that they're distributed quasi-randomly across party preferences. Tampering, on the other hand, is an intentional attack on the system. What's worse, someone stepping on your foot in the elevator by accident, or someone walking up and kicking you? Why are you having trouble grasping this?
The entire purpose of voting itself is to centralize power.
People make mistakes. I don't think they should lose their right to choose their elected officials because they made one.
Well, that's true. Weigh the inevitability of some making mistakes against the ability of some to make fraud, and you'll understand the argument--a paper system like the Canadian one is the best compromise at the moment, serving the greatest good. So few make the mistake you're talking about, using our system.
What could be simpler than a ballot that is capable of telling you when you've made a mistake that could cost you your vote?
One that has no moving parts and a social arrangement that makes it tamper proof. This isn't just about user interface.
If anonymity is important, it's important for everyone.
I take back what I wrote about your ability to grasp nuance. Of course it's important. Security of the electoral system is more important. It's a compromise based on priorities.
there have been numerous occasions in US history where entire groups of people have been denied their right to vote by others making arbitrary requirements to disqualify them. This is even more dangerous when the disqualification isn't obvious such as in the case of an invalidated ballot.
Hm. funny, we don't have that problem in federal elections. See my point about keeping the ballot paper obvious, and about educating the voter. Not that we are above disenfranchising sections of society... just that it would be difficult to do using our current poll system.
I notice your response doesn't touch the issue of the centralization of social power ennabled by voting machinery, or any of the other more serious vulnerabilities caused by involving complex machinery, but hammers away at protecting 3 out of 1000 people (Canadian stats for rejected ballots) from making a stupid and avoidable mistake. You wouldn't be astroturfing for diebold, would you? Maybe merely cranky and hard case.
Untrue. Voting may be on/off, but all the social values and ideologies surrounding how voting is done are definitely analog. This includes balancing the rights of the individual voter against the rights of the overall citizenry (e.g. perfect anonymity vs. resistance to election fraud). Some in the US have raised the rights of the individual at the expense of the rights of the citizenry to the level of religious dogma.
It's not a bloody test.
Actually, in one sense it is. You need a minimum level of competency to decide on life-or-death matters like electing officials. The bar for being able to vote successfuly in an election in Canada is set very low. Frankly, if you can't figure out our very simple ballots even with assistance, please abstain, because your completely confused vote would likely be a form of electoral abuse.
No one is assuming that paper systems don't have problems, that's a straw man you're burning there. People here are mostly saying that these systems have the fewest problems compared to the other options! I know it's a nuance, but you seem intelligent enough to grasp that--unless you're trolling.
paper systems do have problems that can be solved by electronic systems that people tend to ignore when they smugly recommend paper as a solution
Look, I'm a futurist, and await personal transporters and immortality with bated breath. I also think our electoral system of "first past the post" is hosed, eh. But I am firmly convinced that our paper ballot system works well and is difficult to corrupt or fsck-up. It's simple, and can work by candlelight. It has lots of checks and balances. It is fault-tolerant, because we use some degree of consensus for validation. There are always going to be problems with rejected ballots, but they're very low percentages, and can be mainly accounted for by people who wanted to have the ballot rejected or weren't fulfilling their duties as a voter. A reasonable compromise is made between anonymity and access. For the most part, it is a very unambiguous user interface.
Even more importantly, the power of scrutiny in the canadian system is distributed somewhat amongst the electorate, rather than concentrated in the hands of the mages who make the machines, and the officals who mandate them. Solve that problem, make voting machines impervious to blackouts, backdoors, millions of lines of inevitably buggy code, viruses and other electronic monsters, intervention by the makers of the machines, oh, and make them simple to use and as cheap as a few tables and cardboard boxes, and you'll have me convinced that they might be good for democracy.
Humans are inventive enough to figure out a way to fool or abuse any system. The point is to minimize such things in a way that doesn't introduce greate problems. Centralized technology concentrates power, which is undemocratic. Introducing unnecessary complexity just means you've imported problems you don't understand yet.
Hm. So now you're confirming the stereotype of bellicose american, instead of saying to yourself "this is/. -- I should look for the posts that quote sources or have obvious personal experience."
The instructions really are that simple. The ballot says "use an X" -- but the rules for officials say "look for a mark." Everyone who responded to you has valid reason to believe they're right, there aren't really contradictions, and you're baiting.
Well, I've had four Candadians (I'm assuming) explain to me
First of all, we resent youze amurricans confusing us with a yeast infection! We have more culture than that! Typical:-P
But seriously, some of us spoil ballots as a protest. It isn't given a proper category, so it has limited value, but there you are, people do it anyway and it's their right.
An electronic system could be built with decent accountability and few errors also, with the added benefit of verifying the voter's intention very clearly.
There's another benefit to hand-counting that I haven't seen noted in this story yet: civic involvement. More labour-intensive elections involve more people at the grassroots to get the work done. I don't see how automating things is more desireable than an involved electorate. And, really, there just aren't many unclear ballots. Just how much hand-holding do you have to do? is a citizen who can't negotiate a very simple ballot exercising their responsibility? if they aren't exercising their responsibility, don't they forfeit their rights along with it? maybe this is a cultural distinction, related to things like changing "through" to "thru."
So you're saying that although it works great in Canada, the US has problems that make it less practical. Funny, so am I;-)
Perhaps this is the crux of why outsiders are so perplexed by The Great Democracy (well, republic, but whatever). Isn't there some way you can work to make your electorate more responsible so that they don't have to be spoonfed at the polling station? Or, perhaps, make the paper ballots undeniably dead simple? Can't you lower the risk associated with losing the complete anonymity of a vote for those who need assistance? Maybe there's some connection to the poor turnouts at polling time. Seems like a sociocultural fix is in order, not a technical fix.
OK OK, you must be google-challenged or never volunteered for an election. From the Elections Act:
Rejection of ballots
284. (1) In examining the ballots, the deputy returning officer shall reject one
(a) that has not been supplied by him or her;
(b) that has not been marked in a circle at the right of the candidates' names;
(c) that is void by virtue of section76;
(d) that has been marked in more than one circle at the right of the candidates' names; or
(e) on which there is any writing or mark by which the elector could be identified.
The grandparent poster you're interrogating is misinformed. Scan the thread, other canadians with insider knowledge of the system have pointed out that the "x" is a guideline because it's the most reliable mark, not mandatory, and the vote counters just don't have dificulty figuring out intention. If you mark more than one candidate, then you don't understand the very simple electoral system, and your ballot is (rightly) rejected. Mistakes don't commit you, you can get a clean one and start over. Here are the rules for determining validity, note that it merely requires a "mark" -- appealing to common sense. Anonymity is only partly compromised for the assisted, and we don't generally harass each other over votes anymore anyway--it's a cultural difference (we have more variety in our representatives and tolerance in our opinions).
Here's an example of how the regulations work around this:
243.1 (1) On application of an elector who is unable to read, or who is unable to vote in the manner described in this Division because of a physical disability, and who is unable to personally go to the office of the returning officer because of a physical disability, the designated election officer shall go to the elector's dwelling place and, in the presence of a witness who is chosen by the elector, assist the elector by
(a) completing the declaration on the outer envelope and writing the elector's name where the elector's signature is to be written; and
(b) marking the ballot as directed by the elector in the elector's presence.
Note on outer envelope
(2) The election officer and the witness who assist an elector under subsection(1) shall indicate, by signing the note on the outer envelope, that the elector was assisted.
You really have to see these ballots for yourself to understand, I guess; mistakes pretty much have to be intentional or truly incompetent or from those who refused assistance. Those conditions are acceptable, given the alternatives and small numbers of rejected ballots (under.5%, that's half a percent, not bad considering some of those are protest abstentions--figures from Elections Canada).
The point is that there are a million ways to fill out that ballot that accurately indicate the voter's intent but because he didn't do it that specific way his vote won't be counted and he will not be told it won't be counted and has no way to correct his error.
No, we're pretty common-sense oriented, so it's simple and reliable: intent is nearly always obvious, and there's a small group of people (read: sensible canadians) who look at each ballot, and figure it out without difficulty, even if it's just a tiny pencil scratch: in the rare case they can't agree, it's a spoiled ballot. Now, I think that our electoral system overall is badly flawed, but the voting process itself functions very reliably with decent accountability and few errors (not including civil referenda; that's another issue, the politics of semantics).
Unintentionally spoiled ballots are easily and securely destroyed and re-issued and assistance is available for non-literates or physically handicapped. I've seen some comments about people getting assistance and losing a degree of anonymity with their vote. You have to realize that we just aren't very hung up on that particular privacy at the interpersonal level, since we don't have the same degree of risk, being on the whole more tolerant of differing political opinions than our southern neighbours.
Provincial and municipal elections in Canada often have multiple issues voted on in a single poll: electing officials, approving major borrowing, large capital projects, referenda on contentious legislation, etc. IIRC (other canucks pls correct me here) there is usually a very simple electoral ballot and a separate referendum sheet with some explanatory background on the issue and several separate issues being polled on the same sheet.
As for all those in this thread questioning the simplicity and reliability of our method of marking in the circle for a single candidate: do you really have problems like that in the 'States? You mean the stereotypes* we have are true?
(*US-based link... in case you think I'm pulling your jambe.)
We just upgraded a Novell print server here. Nonstop from '91 until the big blackout was the best estimate. You should have seen the burn-in on the monitor!
A headless PowerMac 6100 (system 8.1) I installed in 1998 is still serving files and databases to a small workgroup, survived various power outages and incompentent backups reboot-free (yay APC!).
"Windows works great, for people who know how to use them. (Same can be said for Linux, Mac, etc)." You've hit the nail right on the head, and done it without any OS-based zealotry.
Not quite. Having supported various flavours of Windows (3.x-XP) and Macs (7.0 - 10.3) in various environments, I find that was true in the pre OS X days, but lately, clueless Mac users seem to do just fine (if they don't have to deal with Lotus Notes or Novell) and clueless XP users are always excusing the fact that their machines are down. Many semi-clueful XP users have problems resulting in periodic downtimes, especially worm-related or driver issues, though obsessively paranoid and well-informed XP users do fine; generally the only Mac problems I come across are switchers trying to convert documents or having hardware failures... the OS seems to stay running no matter what (10.2 and up, 10.1 was beta IMHO). There is a campus-wide blackout on installing SP2 currently, we prevent it through Netware.
Personal testimonial: Mac OS X uptime seems to be generally limited by system updates (haven't seen a kernel panic that isn't due to hardware failure--bad RAM or PCI ATA controllers or HD's--on over 80 macs I deal with since the three last year); the production studios and labs running OS X here just don't need much maintenance or protection, no reboots, and those ARE clueless users. Of course, I always give personal users standard accounts plus tell them their admin password, and hide admin privs from lab users, but that actually works without confusion or much inconsistency on OS X. I keep fantasizing using that old line: "Sorry, I don't do Windows..." -- I'd be able to post more often here.
Mods, the parent really is grossly misrepresenting the vast majority of Greens [sic] as misanthropes, to the point of propaganda. Some of them are, yes, and Erlich was one good example of that, but most simply see economics, politics, and lifestyles as problems. Some slashdotters are frothing-at-the-mouth racists, yet we aren't all painted by that brush, thankfully.
Slashdot Mirror
This describes the windowing system on OS X; in OS 9 or earlier, an application's windows were on a layer devoted to that application, so you wouldn't have any of the interleaving of windows from different applications that you find with OS X. This created the problem that you can lose a window behind one belonging to a different application, and led to much confusion for those used to OS 9's tidier but less flexible system. Apple's solution to that problem was to introduce the "Window" menu as a standard (not very necessary for OS 9 apps) and, when that proved clunky, the elegant and endlessly entertaining Exposé feature (e.g. F10 reveals all open windows for the frontmost app).
Apple users generally work differently from Windows users: many (often excessive) open windows (documents and apps), layered for click or drag'n'drop access, vs. a few windows (instances of an app) maximized and alt-tab or taskbar switching. In that respect, Apple users often benefit more from multiple monitors than Windows users.
OK troll, I'll bite.
Back in '91 I was running a Mac with a 19" portrait display and a 14" for publishing a magazine, which was indispensable. In 95 a similar setup I had was also running web publishing, FileMaker Pro development, and Quark and Photoshop, at the same time. In '98 I was using two 20" monitors for all of the above, plus video editing.
Cooperative multitasking's severe shortcomings aside, if you could afford the RAM, classic Macs generally did fine with multiple applications running at once in everyday use.
Interesting note: tried at various times to run a two-monitor setup on Win98 and NT to run Premiere, using a Matrox dual-head or two separate cards, and after various minor frustrations (difficulty keeping alignment, software freaking out, no snap-to-content, centering windows between monitors and other human interface atrocities) we just gave up to save on support time and installed single 19" monitors on all PC's at higher resolutions. On a Mac, it always... just... worked, taking seconds to configure.
Margulis wrote a great article in Sci Am a few years back about Kefir, which intrigued me because I was cultivating it at the time. Kefir is a 'superorganism' comprised of some >30 different microbes, yeasts and bacteria et al., and when they're together they make a nice small rubbery grain that's coherent and lasts. This stuff does amazing things to milk, transforming it into a very digestible, healthful drink for humans. When conditions are bad, Kefir dissolves into its constituent parts and they just sour the milk. She was using it as an example of the synergistic nature of symbiosis, and the sheer complexity of species that can be involved in one instance.
Me, however, I'm just a mule for my Little Masters, they make me spread them around. At one point, I seem to remember Margulis wildly speculating about the possibility of evolution being in part driven by microbes motivating their multicelllular vehicles.
All you're really saying is that geeks should avoid the all-in-one form factor, no matter the platform.
Joe sixpack and grandma never upgrade, they replace when they can't use it to do what they want anymore. For them, macs usually stay serviceable longer, and go obsolete slower.
Business users run the machine with 8 apps for 4 years, then replace.
High end users replace as often as possible, since nanoseconds equal dollars.
Everyone else is a hobbyist or away from the mean.
That said, noone would use an iMac from '97, since they came out in '98. Even if they had been around in '97, serious users bought G3 towers, which can be upgraded up the yazoo, like any other tower, and except for the 160GB drive (limit would be 120), can do anything your P2 can. This is a disingenuous comparison.
Recently, a business I set up a database solution for on an old PowerMac 8100 (ca. '95) called me to ask if I thought they should consider replacing it soon. It wasn't broken, there were no problems, but isn't it old? Should we maintain it? Database is filemaker, about 30 related files, around 300K records, accessed around the clock from various locations. We all have anecdotes about old diehard machines... generally Macs last a long time. I used a pizzabox LCII as a headless print server for 11 years without any maintenance... etc.
Don't hold your breath. FCP requires fine-grained timing through firewire (deck control, capture, etc), core audio, altivec for rendering, and makes heavy use of any computer, even a G5. FCP is fussy about file systems and disk access. No way in this decade (er, next 3 years then) will emulation make that kind of necessary responsiveness available for any video editor application. Even running iMovie would be a nightmare, if even possible.
That said, even a $1K eMac w/ 512MB RAM runs FCP acceptably for most projects, and in fact I have one fairly large project being done on a souped-up G4 dual450 that just won't die. But the key issue is hardware: any video editing system relies heavily on hardware/software integration and responsiveness.
I guess you're right in the sense of form factor, but until they came out with the Vx (or IBM's rebranded C3), the V was too short on storage to run stuff like eReader and a collection of reference docs--unless that's all you wanted it for. I still use my (8MB) Vx... just wish I could set it up for wifi, surfing on a modem is so... 90's!
1) 0%, because I live in Canada and I pay levies on recording media, so the Copyright Act gives me the right to make single copies without redistribution. However, I have about 15% of our music in the P2P category... mainly for curiosity, because 128k MP3's kind of suck.
2) 0%, because I live in Canada and use a Mac at home, so I'm SOL.
3) 1%, but growing...
4) I've ripped about 20% of our cd collection (but duplicated nearly all of it for the car or kids etc.)
6) About 15% of our music comes from (legal, moral, and absolutely my rightful use, see item 1) copies made from friends' CD's--some of which have led to further CD purchases.
7) (the missing question) Yes, the few Canadians who are aware of our Copyright Act are sick of the cultural export of values like "p2p music is theft" from the USA.
I'm having my midlife crisis right now regarding the fact that at 40 already I'll need the TBA genetic reconditioning if I'm going to get to Mars...
I agree wholeheartedly, and stand (mostly) corrected.
Unless you're from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. But they do it a bit differently there anyway, like, you know?
The iMac's a bad example of that, since the model line is always based on some amount of bleeding edge design. To wit: Gen1 iMac -- 1st mass market USB on mbrd, dispense w/ floppy, no fan; Gen2: tiny tiny case, wacko but highly functional anglepoise display; Gen3: make the computer go away, it's a display with cables and a slot.
On the gen1 iMac, the usb/floppy stuff provided for some compatibility issues until vendors scrambled to get usb peripherals out the door.
Remind me not to invite you on my next long bike/hike/kayak trip in the wilderness...
You forget that most of our history was tribal, and that hunter-gatherers generally work an average of 25 hours per week to survive and spend the rest of the time with useful diversions--they don't think they're roughing it, they're usually comfortable. People used to walk/ride thousands of kilometres a year, for commerce. People row across oceans in 10-foot boats, for fun. We're pretty tough, man--when we aren't over domesticated.
Comfort is relative. Cooking bannock over an open fire, sleeping on the ground, and pooping in a pit you dig yourself is rough to most, sheer luxury to me.
I'd love to spend a year in space, and I'd poop in a bag and push it out the airlock happily if it meant extra oxygen reserves.
It's not something you can prove easily, it's an opinion based on an attitude towards personal responsibility, which rights are dependent upon. It's a basic notion of democratic sovereignty: you want to participate in running your country? Follow some very simple rules, at minimum. The instructions, to the literate, are not arbitrary, they're coherent with the convention of selecting an item from a list.
But another point, would you be willing to accept the same low perentages of vote tampering?
No. There aren't any stats but I'd be willing to bet that rejected ballots represent noise in the system, in that they're distributed quasi-randomly across party preferences. Tampering, on the other hand, is an intentional attack on the system. What's worse, someone stepping on your foot in the elevator by accident, or someone walking up and kicking you? Why are you having trouble grasping this?
The entire purpose of voting itself is to centralize power.
Oh.... Wow.
Well, that's true. Weigh the inevitability of some making mistakes against the ability of some to make fraud, and you'll understand the argument--a paper system like the Canadian one is the best compromise at the moment, serving the greatest good. So few make the mistake you're talking about, using our system.
What could be simpler than a ballot that is capable of telling you when you've made a mistake that could cost you your vote?
One that has no moving parts and a social arrangement that makes it tamper proof. This isn't just about user interface.
If anonymity is important, it's important for everyone.
I take back what I wrote about your ability to grasp nuance. Of course it's important. Security of the electoral system is more important. It's a compromise based on priorities.
there have been numerous occasions in US history where entire groups of people have been denied their right to vote by others making arbitrary requirements to disqualify them. This is even more dangerous when the disqualification isn't obvious such as in the case of an invalidated ballot.
Hm. funny, we don't have that problem in federal elections. See my point about keeping the ballot paper obvious, and about educating the voter. Not that we are above disenfranchising sections of society... just that it would be difficult to do using our current poll system.
I notice your response doesn't touch the issue of the centralization of social power ennabled by voting machinery, or any of the other more serious vulnerabilities caused by involving complex machinery, but hammers away at protecting 3 out of 1000 people (Canadian stats for rejected ballots) from making a stupid and avoidable mistake. You wouldn't be astroturfing for diebold, would you? Maybe merely cranky and hard case.
Untrue. Voting may be on/off, but all the social values and ideologies surrounding how voting is done are definitely analog. This includes balancing the rights of the individual voter against the rights of the overall citizenry (e.g. perfect anonymity vs. resistance to election fraud). Some in the US have raised the rights of the individual at the expense of the rights of the citizenry to the level of religious dogma.
It's not a bloody test.
Actually, in one sense it is. You need a minimum level of competency to decide on life-or-death matters like electing officials. The bar for being able to vote successfuly in an election in Canada is set very low. Frankly, if you can't figure out our very simple ballots even with assistance, please abstain, because your completely confused vote would likely be a form of electoral abuse.
No one is assuming that paper systems don't have problems, that's a straw man you're burning there. People here are mostly saying that these systems have the fewest problems compared to the other options! I know it's a nuance, but you seem intelligent enough to grasp that--unless you're trolling.
Look, I'm a futurist, and await personal transporters and immortality with bated breath. I also think our electoral system of "first past the post" is hosed, eh. But I am firmly convinced that our paper ballot system works well and is difficult to corrupt or fsck-up. It's simple, and can work by candlelight. It has lots of checks and balances. It is fault-tolerant, because we use some degree of consensus for validation. There are always going to be problems with rejected ballots, but they're very low percentages, and can be mainly accounted for by people who wanted to have the ballot rejected or weren't fulfilling their duties as a voter. A reasonable compromise is made between anonymity and access. For the most part, it is a very unambiguous user interface.
Even more importantly, the power of scrutiny in the canadian system is distributed somewhat amongst the electorate, rather than concentrated in the hands of the mages who make the machines, and the officals who mandate them. Solve that problem, make voting machines impervious to blackouts, backdoors, millions of lines of inevitably buggy code, viruses and other electronic monsters, intervention by the makers of the machines, oh, and make them simple to use and as cheap as a few tables and cardboard boxes, and you'll have me convinced that they might be good for democracy.
Humans are inventive enough to figure out a way to fool or abuse any system. The point is to minimize such things in a way that doesn't introduce greate problems. Centralized technology concentrates power, which is undemocratic. Introducing unnecessary complexity just means you've imported problems you don't understand yet.
"I wonder which of you are the idiots."
/. -- I should look for the posts that quote sources or have obvious personal experience."
Hm. So now you're confirming the stereotype of bellicose american, instead of saying to yourself "this is
The instructions really are that simple. The ballot says "use an X" -- but the rules for officials say "look for a mark." Everyone who responded to you has valid reason to believe they're right, there aren't really contradictions, and you're baiting.
First of all, we resent youze amurricans confusing us with a yeast infection! We have more culture than that! Typical :-P
But seriously, some of us spoil ballots as a protest. It isn't given a proper category, so it has limited value, but there you are, people do it anyway and it's their right.
An electronic system could be built with decent accountability and few errors also, with the added benefit of verifying the voter's intention very clearly.
There's another benefit to hand-counting that I haven't seen noted in this story yet: civic involvement. More labour-intensive elections involve more people at the grassroots to get the work done. I don't see how automating things is more desireable than an involved electorate. And, really, there just aren't many unclear ballots. Just how much hand-holding do you have to do? is a citizen who can't negotiate a very simple ballot exercising their responsibility? if they aren't exercising their responsibility, don't they forfeit their rights along with it? maybe this is a cultural distinction, related to things like changing "through" to "thru."
So you're saying that although it works great in Canada, the US has problems that make it less practical. Funny, so am I ;-)
Perhaps this is the crux of why outsiders are so perplexed by The Great Democracy (well, republic, but whatever). Isn't there some way you can work to make your electorate more responsible so that they don't have to be spoonfed at the polling station? Or, perhaps, make the paper ballots undeniably dead simple? Can't you lower the risk associated with losing the complete anonymity of a vote for those who need assistance? Maybe there's some connection to the poor turnouts at polling time. Seems like a sociocultural fix is in order, not a technical fix.
Here's an example of how the regulations work around this:
You really have to see these ballots for yourself to understand, I guess; mistakes pretty much have to be intentional or truly incompetent or from those who refused assistance. Those conditions are acceptable, given the alternatives and small numbers of rejected ballots (under .5%, that's half a percent, not bad considering some of those are protest abstentions--figures from Elections Canada).
No, we're pretty common-sense oriented, so it's simple and reliable: intent is nearly always obvious, and there's a small group of people (read: sensible canadians) who look at each ballot, and figure it out without difficulty, even if it's just a tiny pencil scratch: in the rare case they can't agree, it's a spoiled ballot. Now, I think that our electoral system overall is badly flawed, but the voting process itself functions very reliably with decent accountability and few errors (not including civil referenda; that's another issue, the politics of semantics).
Unintentionally spoiled ballots are easily and securely destroyed and re-issued and assistance is available for non-literates or physically handicapped. I've seen some comments about people getting assistance and losing a degree of anonymity with their vote. You have to realize that we just aren't very hung up on that particular privacy at the interpersonal level, since we don't have the same degree of risk, being on the whole more tolerant of differing political opinions than our southern neighbours.
As for all those in this thread questioning the simplicity and reliability of our method of marking in the circle for a single candidate: do you really have problems like that in the 'States? You mean the stereotypes* we have are true?
(*US-based link... in case you think I'm pulling your jambe.)
We just upgraded a Novell print server here. Nonstop from '91 until the big blackout was the best estimate. You should have seen the burn-in on the monitor!
A headless PowerMac 6100 (system 8.1) I installed in 1998 is still serving files and databases to a small workgroup, survived various power outages and incompentent backups reboot-free (yay APC!).
You've hit the nail right on the head, and done it without any OS-based zealotry.
Not quite. Having supported various flavours of Windows (3.x-XP) and Macs (7.0 - 10.3) in various environments, I find that was true in the pre OS X days, but lately, clueless Mac users seem to do just fine (if they don't have to deal with Lotus Notes or Novell) and clueless XP users are always excusing the fact that their machines are down. Many semi-clueful XP users have problems resulting in periodic downtimes, especially worm-related or driver issues, though obsessively paranoid and well-informed XP users do fine; generally the only Mac problems I come across are switchers trying to convert documents or having hardware failures... the OS seems to stay running no matter what (10.2 and up, 10.1 was beta IMHO). There is a campus-wide blackout on installing SP2 currently, we prevent it through Netware.
Personal testimonial: Mac OS X uptime seems to be generally limited by system updates (haven't seen a kernel panic that isn't due to hardware failure--bad RAM or PCI ATA controllers or HD's--on over 80 macs I deal with since the three last year); the production studios and labs running OS X here just don't need much maintenance or protection, no reboots, and those ARE clueless users. Of course, I always give personal users standard accounts plus tell them their admin password, and hide admin privs from lab users, but that actually works without confusion or much inconsistency on OS X. I keep fantasizing using that old line: "Sorry, I don't do Windows..." -- I'd be able to post more often here.
Mods, the parent really is grossly misrepresenting the vast majority of Greens [sic] as misanthropes, to the point of propaganda. Some of them are, yes, and Erlich was one good example of that, but most simply see economics, politics, and lifestyles as problems. Some slashdotters are frothing-at-the-mouth racists, yet we aren't all painted by that brush, thankfully.