And what we want is *punch*... Pat Buchanan for President!! no wait....
And if you had bothered to vote any time during the previous forty years or used the sample ballot, you would have known how to do it. The butterfly ballot machines have been used for decades. You've gotta be pretty stupid to screw it up if you've done even the tiniest amount of homework. Of course we can't expect voters to actually inform themselves of the issues or the process. Forgive me, I'm an insensitive clod.
one last comment i want to make is that i don't understand how an open source voting software would be better than closed source. open source gives that many more people the code and ability to possibly mess with it. sure it gives that many more the ability to fix it as well, but closed source, if properly tested keeps people from being able to break in and mess with it unless they really try. i just see this as one use when closed source would be better. same goes for mission critical military, intelligence, and government applications.
Software for voting has little in common with intelligence apps. Our voting process is supposed to be open except for how each individual votes. You go to the polling place, you can see each person handed a ballot. You see the voter hand the ballot back, and you see it deposited into a locked box. If you want, you can observe the counting.
With electronic voting, you can no longer watch the process. You are trusting the computer and the company that wrote the program if you can't inspect the code. The source code for any voting program should be open for inspection by the voters, just like the paper ballot process. It's not spy stuff, it's supposed to be very visible. If you're afraid of people examining the source code then going into a polling place and hacking the voting machine with a cell phone, I'd say you've been watching too many movies or using Windows for too long.:)
Trouble is...Someone would STILL sue for being disenfranchiesed from the voting process due to their trauma-induced disability to use these forms caused by phobia of using 'bubble' forms in school.
You're right. Someone should have used a fire hose on those film crews and hysterical geriatrics in Florida. Just because some Alzheimer's patients have trouble remembering who they wanted to vote for does not mean the rest of us should have a poorly tested and insecure voting system pushed on us.
Just because Linux gets 10 bugs and Microsoft gets 40 doesn't mean "Linux Wins".. The Linux user base is much lower so the bug rate is exponentially higher than Windows.
Congratulations! You just won a Darwin Award and a free copy of Studio.NET. Please come on down and collect your rewards while the rest of us applaud loudly.
..but where do they find them? From other professional outlets: their practice squad, from other teams in trade, or from other professional leagues.
Or high school football coaches who are in *reserve*?
The parent poster was stating that with some 40 million people, there must be more than 3,000 who were capable of playing -- therefore not warranting those high salaries. My point was that the logic didn't hold up -- simply because you have a large sample, doesn't mean you should be able to find a suitable subject, especially with multiple specific capabilities required from that subject [some of which can be learned & otehrs which are inherent].
I still don't understand your point. My point was (from recent experience) that since NFL teams do not have a problem finding talented replacements, even when their so-called star players are injured, there is obviously a large enough pool available that the high salaries are artificial. Going historical here, the Los Angeles Rams were once the worst paid team in football IIRC. They made it to the Superbowl and lost, but the point is they made it with "also-rans".
Peace.
Certainly. I'm not flaming or making a personal attack, I just disagree with your position.:)
However, if you are unemployed, you shouldn't be bitching about it on slashdot.
I'm not unemployed. I know good, educated people who are unemployed because of the government's policies, and I will bitch about it on Slashdot or any other forum where people might listen. Sorry if that annoys you.
Why not consider teaching? Schools across the US are in dire need of teachers, especially in math and science.
Another fallacy. Just like the IT labor shortage that never was, the dirty little secret is that are many teachers looking for jobs. The problem is many of them are over 40, so they are discarded. This is yet another "intellectual career path" that has not paid off on the investment - and teachers aren't that well-paid to start with.
. . . we had all better start doing what we do better and cheaper or plan to do something else.
We are not inherently any better or smarter than Indians or Chinese or Brazilians, and American companies are not even offering us the "cheaper" option, so it comes down to the question I keep asking: What is that "something else" we're supposed to do? Unfortunately no one seems to have a plausible answer. Set up a seniors' football league perhaps?
What I am saying is that you should not resent having chosen a more intellectual career path. I'll stand by my earlier statement that people who choose to shoot for a career in professional sports on average end up making a lower salary than people who shoot for a career in IT or engineering.
You still haven't offerred any proof of that assumption, although with your current wording I'd guess the statement would be true simply because people who chose IT or engineering would have more options than athletes.
There are always people on either end of the normal distribution. If you're on the dole this year, chances are it'll be someone else's turn in the shit next year.
Nope. The IT jobs are being outsourced. The NFL players don't have any worry about their position being outsourced to India during the game.
3) We spend way more money on medicine and medical research than we do on the NFL. The Health care industry is hundreds of billions of dollars, the NFL is only ten.
Thanks so much. Now I have a reference point. The NFL is only 10 BILLION DOLLARS while the entire health care industry for the entire country costs hundreds of billions. Thanks so much for bringing it into perspective.
How many senior citizens do we need to *off* via reduced health care before we can afford two more expansion teams? I'm certain my grandma won't mind, er *going on* if it means a new, weak team in the division so our team can win.
If you look at the mean salary of all the people that TRY to be professional atheletes, I think you would be more satisfied with your CS/IT/Engineering/CowboyNeal salary. . ..
If the one guy that makes a professional team pulls down $5 Million a year for his trouble, he's still only bringing the group average up to just under $30k a year. Makes your $60-100k/year sound pretty nice, doesn't it?
What does "TRY to be professional atheletes" have to do with it? The kids in the local Special Olympics (bless their hearts) want to be professional athletes. In order to be a "professional", you actually have to be paid for doing work in your "profession" at some point. But, following your logic, you have to consider the millions of truly professional IT workers who are now unemployed or underemployed as burger-flippers or security guards who bring that average to far less than your supposed 60K. And those people put in just as much or more time in college as professional athletes - but studying, instead of playing, and usually at their own expense. And you won't find any coders making $5 million a year. Please, cry me no crocodile tears for professional athletes. I like to watch the local team play, but it doesn't mean the star running back is worth more than the local elementary school teacher.
I don't doubt that there are some who could play in the NFL [or one of the feeder leagues like NFL Europe or arena football] who aren't, but just because you have a large pool of people, that doesn't mean you should be able to assume a large subset who can perform a specific task.
Given that (using your NFL example) teams can lose all their quarterbacks to injuries and then go out and easily pick up another to successfully take over, I'd say that's obviously not true. At any given time, I'd guess there are three or four star quarterbacks in the league - the rest are also-rans and easily replaceable. And it's amazing how much harder those first-string quarterbacks work after being replaced and coming back.
Okay, you have dissed the holy UNIX Profit^H^H^Hphet McBride. You will be assessed a higher per-CPU fee at the reckoning. Repent now before the fee goes up again!
Exactly. They're NOT HARMING you. They're just annoying you.
I guess that's another opinion that depends on what you believe constitutes harm. When my blood pressure goes up, that's harm. In case you hadn't noticed, there are also laws against disrupting the peace because it is annoying. I don't have a right to come to your house every morning at 2 AM and pound on your door until you answer it, although it does not cost you anything - I'd wind up in jail. And I did use the DNC list. It helped - it's not a cure (so far).
The cost to the user is so low, in time and money, as to not be worth considering.
That is certainly a matter of opinion as well as degree. One telemarketing call may be of low cost in your opinion, but what about ten a day? Twenty? When does it start having a cost? My time is valuable. IMO any unsolicited cold call during dinner time should be a 900 call with the charges being credited to me. I do not pay for phone service so shady, inconsiderate companies can disturb my peace with high-pressure sales calls.
The point is that you might be able to code a nice, very efficient voting system with cool features you don't want your competitors to *easily* replicate by copying your code.
Exactly what "cool features" do you envision for what should be a basic counting program? An integrated browser for cool exploits? The code should not be closed in any case because the taxpayers are paying for it one way or another. It should be open for our inspection. Code developed for government use, even by contractors, is generally available to the public.
The interesting thing to me is that the big benefit of the current crop of antivirus programs, like NAV, is that they have this constant feed of updates to stay (nearly) up with the virus arms race. Symantec charges extra for that, and I think they should. I paid the fee gladly and they've keep viruses off my Winders machines purdy gewd.
Seriously, I wonder why there is an entire software industry devoted to keeping Windows safe despite itself, and people don't even think it's weird. To me, that's weird. MS is buying a company that makes MS anti-virus software. For what purpose? To incorporate software that watches its other software, or to offer another value-added product? Either is ridiculous. Just secure the damned thing to start with.
Even Billy Gates pirated, phone phreaked and other such activities.
No, you're thinking of Steve Jobs.
Correct, Jobs was the phone phreak. Bill went dumpster diving for BASIC interpreter source code. He always had such a high respect for other people's IP.
Product Activation on products as important as antivirus apps is bad IMO. When average users are confronted with this, its easy for them to get frustrated with, and what happenes when average users get frustrated with software? They dont use it.
So the problem as I see it is that we have an operating system that requires product activation and also needs a third-party anti-virus application that requires product activation in order to work, but both activation schemes are failure prone. It's a real dilemma. If only we had an operating system that was inherently secure, didn't require activation, and didn't require a reluctant watchdog. *Sigh*, wishful thinking, I guess.
I put this in my sig because I find that most moderations that I mark negative get an unfair meta mod.
I think it's interesting that you say *most of your negative mods*. Out of all the moderation I've done, I can only recall two down mods. They were obvious and just necessary janitorial work. Why not just let the nonsense languish and instead use your mod points to reward someone with a good point or a clever joke? People who are ignored will usually go away. If they are not being ignored, then maybe they are saying something that appeals to some segment.
I don't do it lightly either. If a post can be construed both ways I look at the posters history.
Sorry, that doesn't sway me. If a post can be construed either way, give the benefit of the doubt to the poster. A confirmed troll can make an occasional insightful comment. If I'm really unsure about a negative mod, I just don't score it.
All you end up with is a bunch of positive mods with everybody afraid to mark something poorly.
That hasn't happened. There are any number of discussions where we have honest discussion moderated as troll and flamebait, or the first five comments in a thread will be modded redundant. It seems we really have the opposite problem: Some moderators have no fear of abusing their privilege.
Can't we just get a checkbox on our preferences page that says "I'm a lawyer". Then we can have a little shark icon that displays next to our username.
Okay, everyone else has made all the obvious jokes, but this is a good idea. Just like the subscriber doodad, you have a lawyer doodad, and the rest of us no longer have to do disclaimers about not being ambul^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers. Just think of the bandwidth saved.
Don't forget, this is the same SCO that told Byte that all computer operating systems currently in use (including Windows and BSD) are their "IP" because every operating system can be traced back to a SysV influence and is therefore in one way or another a "derivative."
Don't forget that if anyone took that claim seriously, an office building in Utah would have been quickly moved and reassembled in Washington. (Business-bots optional):)
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I don't see what's wrong with vote selling in the first place.
I think down mods are generally overused, but this cries out for a new -1 Clueless category.
And what we want is *punch* ... Pat Buchanan for President!! no wait....
And if you had bothered to vote any time during the previous forty years or used the sample ballot, you would have known how to do it. The butterfly ballot machines have been used for decades. You've gotta be pretty stupid to screw it up if you've done even the tiniest amount of homework. Of course we can't expect voters to actually inform themselves of the issues or the process. Forgive me, I'm an insensitive clod.
one last comment i want to make is that i don't understand how an open source voting software would be better than closed source. open source gives that many more people the code and ability to possibly mess with it. sure it gives that many more the ability to fix it as well, but closed source, if properly tested keeps people from being able to break in and mess with it unless they really try. i just see this as one use when closed source would be better. same goes for mission critical military, intelligence, and government applications.
Software for voting has little in common with intelligence apps. Our voting process is supposed to be open except for how each individual votes. You go to the polling place, you can see each person handed a ballot. You see the voter hand the ballot back, and you see it deposited into a locked box. If you want, you can observe the counting.
With electronic voting, you can no longer watch the process. You are trusting the computer and the company that wrote the program if you can't inspect the code. The source code for any voting program should be open for inspection by the voters, just like the paper ballot process. It's not spy stuff, it's supposed to be very visible. If you're afraid of people examining the source code then going into a polling place and hacking the voting machine with a cell phone, I'd say you've been watching too many movies or using Windows for too long. :)
Trouble is...Someone would STILL sue for being disenfranchiesed from the voting process due to their trauma-induced disability to use these forms caused by phobia of using 'bubble' forms in school.
You're right. Someone should have used a fire hose on those film crews and hysterical geriatrics in Florida. Just because some Alzheimer's patients have trouble remembering who they wanted to vote for does not mean the rest of us should have a poorly tested and insecure voting system pushed on us.
If you're done trolling against Microsoft now...
The truth may be unpalatable to some, but that does not make it a troll.
Just because Linux gets 10 bugs and Microsoft gets 40 doesn't mean "Linux Wins".. The Linux user base is much lower so the bug rate is exponentially higher than Windows.
Congratulations! You just won a Darwin Award and a free copy of Studio.NET. Please come on down and collect your rewards while the rest of us applaud loudly.
It was a month, which is a long time for a programmer to be away from his desk. This initiative alone cost Microsoft MUCH more than $5M.
And just look at how much better off the computing world is today! Makes me damned proud to be an American! (that was sarcasm if you weren't sure)
Or high school football coaches who are in *reserve*?
The parent poster was stating that with some 40 million people, there must be more than 3,000 who were capable of playing -- therefore not warranting those high salaries. My point was that the logic didn't hold up -- simply because you have a large sample, doesn't mean you should be able to find a suitable subject, especially with multiple specific capabilities required from that subject [some of which can be learned & otehrs which are inherent].
I still don't understand your point. My point was (from recent experience) that since NFL teams do not have a problem finding talented replacements, even when their so-called star players are injured, there is obviously a large enough pool available that the high salaries are artificial. Going historical here, the Los Angeles Rams were once the worst paid team in football IIRC. They made it to the Superbowl and lost, but the point is they made it with "also-rans".
Peace.
Certainly. I'm not flaming or making a personal attack, I just disagree with your position. :)
However, if you are unemployed, you shouldn't be bitching about it on slashdot.
I'm not unemployed. I know good, educated people who are unemployed because of the government's policies, and I will bitch about it on Slashdot or any other forum where people might listen. Sorry if that annoys you.
Why not consider teaching? Schools across the US are in dire need of teachers, especially in math and science.
Another fallacy. Just like the IT labor shortage that never was, the dirty little secret is that are many teachers looking for jobs. The problem is many of them are over 40, so they are discarded. This is yet another "intellectual career path" that has not paid off on the investment - and teachers aren't that well-paid to start with.
. . . we had all better start doing what we do better and cheaper or plan to do something else.
We are not inherently any better or smarter than Indians or Chinese or Brazilians, and American companies are not even offering us the "cheaper" option, so it comes down to the question I keep asking: What is that "something else" we're supposed to do? Unfortunately no one seems to have a plausible answer. Set up a seniors' football league perhaps?
What I am saying is that you should not resent having chosen a more intellectual career path. I'll stand by my earlier statement that people who choose to shoot for a career in professional sports on average end up making a lower salary than people who shoot for a career in IT or engineering.
You still haven't offerred any proof of that assumption, although with your current wording I'd guess the statement would be true simply because people who chose IT or engineering would have more options than athletes.
There are always people on either end of the normal distribution. If you're on the dole this year, chances are it'll be someone else's turn in the shit next year.
Nope. The IT jobs are being outsourced. The NFL players don't have any worry about their position being outsourced to India during the game.
3) We spend way more money on medicine and medical research than we do on the NFL. The Health care industry is hundreds of billions of dollars, the NFL is only ten.
Thanks so much. Now I have a reference point. The NFL is only 10 BILLION DOLLARS while the entire health care industry for the entire country costs hundreds of billions. Thanks so much for bringing it into perspective.
How many senior citizens do we need to *off* via reduced health care before we can afford two more expansion teams? I'm certain my grandma won't mind, er *going on* if it means a new, weak team in the division so our team can win.
If you look at the mean salary of all the people that TRY to be professional atheletes, I think you would be more satisfied with your CS/IT/Engineering/CowboyNeal salary. .
. .
If the one guy that makes a professional team pulls down $5 Million a year for his trouble, he's still only bringing the group average up to just under $30k a year. Makes your $60-100k/year sound pretty nice, doesn't it?
What does "TRY to be professional atheletes" have to do with it? The kids in the local Special Olympics (bless their hearts) want to be professional athletes. In order to be a "professional", you actually have to be paid for doing work in your "profession" at some point. But, following your logic, you have to consider the millions of truly professional IT workers who are now unemployed or underemployed as burger-flippers or security guards who bring that average to far less than your supposed 60K. And those people put in just as much or more time in college as professional athletes - but studying, instead of playing, and usually at their own expense. And you won't find any coders making $5 million a year.
Please, cry me no crocodile tears for professional athletes. I like to watch the local team play, but it doesn't mean the star running back is worth more than the local elementary school teacher.
I don't doubt that there are some who could play in the NFL [or one of the feeder leagues like NFL Europe or arena football] who aren't, but just because you have a large pool of people, that doesn't mean you should be able to assume a large subset who can perform a specific task.
Given that (using your NFL example) teams can lose all their quarterbacks to injuries and then go out and easily pick up another to successfully take over, I'd say that's obviously not true. At any given time, I'd guess there are three or four star quarterbacks in the league - the rest are also-rans and easily replaceable. And it's amazing how much harder those first-string quarterbacks work after being replaced and coming back.
Good point. It's pretty hard to patch a CPU.
They've gone totally loony now!
Okay, you have dissed the holy UNIX Profit^H^H^Hphet McBride. You will be assessed a higher per-CPU fee at the reckoning. Repent now before the fee goes up again!
Wanted to moderate as funny, but the wheel mouse managed to change the entry just before i hit the button. This reply will cncel that moderation
It's just not your day. Would you like to buy a vowel?
Exactly. They're NOT HARMING you. They're just annoying you.
I guess that's another opinion that depends on what you believe constitutes harm. When my blood pressure goes up, that's harm. In case you hadn't noticed, there are also laws against disrupting the peace because it is annoying. I don't have a right to come to your house every morning at 2 AM and pound on your door until you answer it, although it does not cost you anything - I'd wind up in jail. And I did use the DNC list. It helped - it's not a cure (so far).
The cost to the user is so low, in time and money, as to not be worth considering.
That is certainly a matter of opinion as well as degree. One telemarketing call may be of low cost in your opinion, but what about ten a day? Twenty? When does it start having a cost? My time is valuable. IMO any unsolicited cold call during dinner time should be a 900 call with the charges being credited to me. I do not pay for phone service so shady, inconsiderate companies can disturb my peace with high-pressure sales calls.
The point is that you might be able to code a nice, very efficient voting system with cool features you don't want your competitors to *easily* replicate by copying your code.
Exactly what "cool features" do you envision for what should be a basic counting program? An integrated browser for cool exploits? The code should not be closed in any case because the taxpayers are paying for it one way or another. It should be open for our inspection. Code developed for government use, even by contractors, is generally available to the public.
The interesting thing to me is that the big benefit of the current crop of antivirus programs, like NAV, is that they have this constant feed of updates to stay (nearly) up with the virus arms race. Symantec charges extra for that, and I think they should. I paid the fee gladly and they've keep viruses off my Winders machines purdy gewd.
Seriously, I wonder why there is an entire software industry devoted to keeping Windows safe despite itself, and people don't even think it's weird. To me, that's weird. MS is buying a company that makes MS anti-virus software. For what purpose? To incorporate software that watches its other software, or to offer another value-added product? Either is ridiculous. Just secure the damned thing to start with.
Correct, Jobs was the phone phreak. Bill went dumpster diving for BASIC interpreter source code. He always had such a high respect for other people's IP.
Product Activation on products as important as antivirus apps is bad IMO. When average users are confronted with this, its easy for them to get frustrated with, and what happenes when average users get frustrated with software? They dont use it.
So the problem as I see it is that we have an operating system that requires product activation and also needs a third-party anti-virus application that requires product activation in order to work, but both activation schemes are failure prone. It's a real dilemma. If only we had an operating system that was inherently secure, didn't require activation, and didn't require a reluctant watchdog. *Sigh*, wishful thinking, I guess.
I put this in my sig because I find that most moderations that I mark negative get an unfair meta mod.
I think it's interesting that you say *most of your negative mods*. Out of all the moderation I've done, I can only recall two down mods. They were obvious and just necessary janitorial work. Why not just let the nonsense languish and instead use your mod points to reward someone with a good point or a clever joke? People who are ignored will usually go away. If they are not being ignored, then maybe they are saying something that appeals to some segment.
I don't do it lightly either. If a post can be construed both ways I look at the posters history.
Sorry, that doesn't sway me. If a post can be construed either way, give the benefit of the doubt to the poster. A confirmed troll can make an occasional insightful comment. If I'm really unsure about a negative mod, I just don't score it.
All you end up with is a bunch of positive mods with everybody afraid to mark something poorly.
That hasn't happened. There are any number of discussions where we have honest discussion moderated as troll and flamebait, or the first five comments in a thread will be modded redundant. It seems we really have the opposite problem: Some moderators have no fear of abusing their privilege.
Can't we just get a checkbox on our preferences page that says "I'm a lawyer". Then we can have a little shark icon that displays next to our username.
Okay, everyone else has made all the obvious jokes, but this is a good idea. Just like the subscriber doodad, you have a lawyer doodad, and the rest of us no longer have to do disclaimers about not being ambul^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers. Just think of the bandwidth saved.
Don't forget, this is the same SCO that told Byte that all computer operating systems currently in use (including Windows and BSD) are their "IP" because every operating system can be traced back to a SysV influence and is therefore in one way or another a "derivative."
Don't forget that if anyone took that claim seriously, an office building in Utah would have been quickly moved and reassembled in Washington. (Business-bots optional) :)