In the bar, when she goes bezerk. Her "embedded programming" was triggered by a hidden message in an ad. She was well on the way to taking everyone out until her brother (IIRC) used the secret code word to knock her out.
That's the scene that set up the final fight with the Reevers as being plausible.
Learn to ground things out properly and RF is NEVER an issue.
You're right. I have had intermod issues at a hilltop site I've got a repeater at. I tried simply "grounding out" all the other users antennas, but that didn't solve it. What did solve it was "grounding out" my own antenna. No more intermod issues. At least nobody has come up on air reporting any. Very quiet...
Wait... so basically he's saying that they can't use fiber because the techs building and repairing the aircraft are incompetent?
No, basically he's saying that the technicians who build and repair systems are technicians and not fully-trained RF and electrical engineers.
How is "x fastener should only be y tight" any different from "the bolt holding this important piece of engine together should be torqued to y ft-lb?"
Because there are torque wrenches designed to be used to tighten bolts and nuts, that are calibrated by the maintenance crew. While some cable tie guns have adjustments, they are uncalibrated and subject to many factors that make them unreliable -- at least to aircraft standards. I've had cable ties "cut" while still loose just because the tie bound up; I've had them not cut without a huge pull force. Same gun, same kind of tie.
Also because there are literally thousands of ties keeping cable bundles together in modern systems, and making them all subject to torque specifications would require a four week maintenance cycle as every tie was removed and reinstalled during regular preventative maintenance. Unless you can come up with a way to test the tightness of a cable tie you can't reach without disassembling the wing...
Putting enough jacket on a fiber optic cable to keep it from breaking under any circumstance would increase the weight to the point that it becomes heavier than copper.
Actually this is a prime example of just how bad and biased Slashdot summaries could be.
If you read the article you will find nothing about the Democrate in it!
Or "Democrat". The summary is a blatant lie. The bill has nothing to do with "Democrat", and "Democrat" does not appear in the word "democracy" to begin with.
http://le.utah.gov/~2011/htmdoc/hbillhtm/hb0220.htm is a link to a page with the history of the house bill. It specifies a thorough education in forms of government, including that the US is a constitutional republic ("and to the republic, for which it stands").
if the teacher can't do this, he has failed. if a few kids are non-intrusively not paying attention, whether it's related to phone use or not, he's ok. if the whole class is failing, that's the teacher's fault.
So what you are saying is that the teacher must not just be interesting, but he must be the most interesting thing to those students in their entire life. They are allowed to bring in whatever outside distractions they want, as long as they are "non-intrusive".
I think it is fair to rig the game so the teacher wins most of the rounds. I don't think anyone wins if the entire class is allowed to sit playing Nintendo DS for the entire day because they are more interested in their game than in learning anything. And I also think that if the entire class fails because the administration won't prohibit distractions then the teacher truly is NOT at fault for their failure.
Yes, actually. It's called "being sent to your room without supper".
1. If you punish someone for doing (or not doing) something, then what they did or didn't do doesn't seem like much of a right to me.
2. And when your precious little one decides not to go to his room, do you respect his rights not to be forced to go to his room? Or do you respect his rights not to be sent to his room the same respectful way you respect his rights not to have to eat oatmeal for supper? In other words, not at all?
What kind of fucked up "school" has cubicles? That's a great way to foster teamwork...
What kind of fucked up school fosters teamwork in the bathroom? Or did you really think the OP was talking about students having their pants down in cubicles like the ones in Dilbert's office? What a howler.... PHB and Dilbert comparing wankers on the job?
I agree - that's why I said "If... safely and securely". Privacy concerns in this respect wouldn't worry me. Living in the UK I'm aiming to go to several Olympic events in 2012 - and I'd much rather know that there was no way anything was getting in to the stadium that shouldn't be there.
Need I actually point out that these machines will NOT allow you to know that 'there was no way anything was getting in'? They may make you think this is true and make you feel happy and warm and fuzzy about how safe you are, but nothing really changes --- except that a lot of people carrying a lot of innocuous things will get hassled and have their personal belongings confiscated, all in the name of making stupid people feel safer. Not actually BE safer, mind you, just feel that way.
It should not be a surprise to anyone here that installing such a system at any Olympics venue will simply be viewed as a challenge to act by any nefarious types, even those whose sole goal is to bypass challenges like this and not actually harm you.
Seriously, isn't "Hollywood" one of the most ridiculous phenomena on the planet? What other trade has half a dozen different (inter-)nationally broadcast "awards" ceremonies where everyone gives everyone else trophies just for doing their job?
I'm including the music industry in that set, since they are nothing more than entertainment, too.
Just imagine how much benefit there would be if the money and time spent on the Oscars and the Tonys and the whatever-it-is was spent on something important and meaningful to the world as a whole.
Why? If they are inefficient, then I'm paying more for electricity and thus already paying a "tax" based on "amount of light produced".
If I need them for the heat they produce, or need an instant on (instead of a ten-minute warmup) or for whatever reason I feel I need them, they should be available.
What the fuck business of yours is it how I use the electricity that I'm paying for? If I want the heat from a heatlamp when I step out of the shower, that's my business and not yours. If you want to listen to Def Lepard at power levels that make you deaf, that's your business, not mine.
You want to use CFLs, be my guest. You want a law that says that government offices must use them, fine.*
The summary is wrong. It says "although a poll by USA Today indicates most Americans support the US law that begins phasing out traditional light bulbs next year." What it should say is "although a poll by USA Today indicates most Americans support the US laws that tell other people how they must run their lives. And "not Americans" feel like they get a say, too".
CFLs are heavier, shorter lived, slower to turn on, and cost more. They contain toxic materials that require a HAZMAT team if you ever break one.
* -- our Uni has just instituted a policy of changing every fluorescent light from T12 to T8. Even if the lights are working. They are busy taking out all the bulbs and swapping in new ballasts for EVERY fixture. This will pay for itself in five years, they say. They can't change them when the bulbs burn out, no. And yet, if you want to save energy by removing the bulbs from a fixture over your desk, they will happily come around and replace them for you without being asked.
Fungi fun guy paul stamets has invented and sells a cardboard box then when planted first grows a crop of mushrooms, then old growth forest trees.
That explains a lot. My backyard has been infested with a large number of tree-hugging hippies and I didn't know why.
I was mildly surprised to see a large of mushrooms come up where we buried Tabby when she died. Then a bit more surprised to see my backyard turn into an old-growth forest. But the last straw has been these hippies driving spikes into the trees at all hours of the day and night.
I should have gone down to the FedEx store and bought a real box to put her in instead of using one I had lying around.
But tracking would fix a lot more problems than it would add.
Tracking fixes problems that don't exist.
I can already find out if someone voted using my name. I can already find out if my vote wasn't counted.
People who don't vote and don't care aren't going to scan the list looking for their name, so there is nothing solved there. People who do care and do scan the list aren't going to catch all the dead people on the list, so that problem isn't solved.
The only problem that is solved is what is already possible: did I vote without knowing it or did my vote get discarded? No need to release the full list.
What I can't find out is how my neighbor voted, which is the only "problem" that tracking really solves, and I don't think it is any of my business, nor is it any of his business how I voted. YOU don't care if people know how you voted, but that doesn't impress me as an argument for why I shouldn't.
Yes, it is. You say you have nothing to hide. There is no reason that people can't know how you voted because you don't care. Thus there can be no reason for anyone else to care, and it is perfectly acceptable to have published voting lists.
That's the same as saying you don't have anything to hide from the police so you don't care if warrant-less searches are taking place. If you don't care, why should others? If you have something to be embarrassed about in how you are living your life... well, live a better life. That's the argument.
And lying about what I'm saying will never make it true.
What? I quoted you VERBATIM.
I'm asserting that John Hancock was willing to put his neck on the line (literally) for his "vote." The first 50 years of this country ran just fine with open balloting. I'm asserting that the tried and tested method of open balloting has seen less vote tampering than closed ballots. Open discussion about politics is a better policy than hiding it away.
You said nothing about John Hancock in what I replied to. Zip. Your comments about Hancock are in a different part of the discussion. If I was replying to those, then I would have replied there. I quoted what I was replying to: "And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken."
Well, sir, if you have some objection to a cop searching your house because you are embarrassed about something, your life is broken. That is the same argument you are using to support publishing the votes. If you are embarrassed...
Calling someone a liar and then claiming you said something you did not is not a productive discussion mechanism.
I'd accuse you of lying here, but sadly, I think you believe what you are saying. So no matter how untrue, it isn't a lie.
It isn't a lie BECAUSE I HAVE DONE IT. I have called the elections office to see if my ballot got there and was counted. They MUST keep the lists of who voted for the reason I already specified: cleaning the registration lists of dead and those who moved away without registering elsewhere. In this county, in fact, they suggest you call them if you have any doubt that your ballot was counted -- it is the only way to know they didn't discard it for a bad signature.
The voter lists are not tied to the ballots in any way.
That is a lie, and I will not hesitate to call you on it because you certainly know better. Every ballot in Oregon is returned in a "secrecy envelope" contained in a SIGNED envelope with the name of the voter. Before the ballots are separated from the signed envelopes, the name of the voter is recorded and the signatures compared. Then the ballots go into the tub.
Even prior to this vote by mail, when we voted at the polling place we showed up at the registration book where our presence was recorded. We were handed a ballot or two, each with an identification tag attached, and the number was recorded. When we turned the ballots in, the last step prior to the ballot entering the box was the removal of the tags. The poll workers checked the tags to make sure they matched what you were given.
So, yes, sir, at least in THIS jurisdiction, the ballots have ALWAYS been tied to the voter up until they entered the ballot box. That's a far cry from "never".
And it has been that way in every place I ever voted. I know of NO time when ballots were not tied to the voter to the point that who voted could easily be recorded.
Because there is no verification, it can never be known who voted.
Since there is verification, yes, it can be known. The verification often fails when a signature is forged, but it also fails in the opposite direction (when a valid signature is rejected), and THAT is why the local elections office suggests that people who have any question about it call them. They DO know whose votes were accepted and whose were not, despite your silly claims to the contrary.
And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken.
If you have nothing to hide, why do you care that the cops can enter your home and search it without a warrant or permission? That's the argument you are making here.
I care. I know that one of the first things to happen were open published voting lists to become available is that the local political parties would launch massive calling campaigns. "We see you voted for X last time, here's why you shouldn't next time..."
I hate to point this out, but we don't need published public voting lists for people to find out if they've voted or not. All it takes is a call to the elections office. They keep a list. That's how they purge (or are supposed to) the voter list of dead etc. voters. You don't vote in X years, you are off the list.
But you can add up the votes yourself if the list is available! So? How do you know that every name on that list is valid? Dead people voting is a regular occurance in Chicago. Is the "George Smith" whos name you see on the list the same dead George Smith you used to know?
When you change the oil in your car, do you make sure you have a set of brake light bulbs with you?
When I take my car to the service shop for periodic maintenance, I expect them to have the parts on hand to fix things that are broken that periodic maintenance deals with. "Sorry, we don't stock brake light bulbs, even though that's part of our 'periodic maintenance' deal. You can't drive without them." WTF?
When they are fixing one specific thing (like "changing the oil"), no, I don't expect them to have any other parts.
Years ago, I repaired photocopiers. Once I just stopped at an account for periodic maintenance because I had nothing else to do. First thing I did was hit the copy button for a test copy, and the scanner lamp blew. I didn't have any lamps for that model on me and had to order one, so the customer wasn't too happy. And of course they wouldn't believe it wasn't my fault.
It wasn't your fault that you showed up to do periodic maintenance and didn't have spare parts for the machine you were working on with you? What would you have done had you found some other part that needed to be replaced?
Did you miss the part where I said it was simplified? Yes, I know all about the 4 wire phone system and how it works,
While there are four contacts in an RJ-11 jack, and four wires in a two-pair telephone wire, only two of those wires are actually used for the phone. The other two can be used to carry a second phone line, or have been used in the past to provide power to a phone for whatever purpose. (Princess phones had a light that was powered by a wall-wart. Modern digital phone systems use a pair for power and a pair for data.)
The handset has four wires but it is possible for the phone to work with only two -- the hybrid inside the phone does impedance matching and reduces the sidetone you hear, but if you want to put up with loud sidetone you can run the whole shebang with just two wires. But not "one wire to the earpiece and one wire to the microphone."
Do you consider it a "violation of your privacy" to tell your prospective sexual partners whether you have an STD or not?
Because this is the computational equivalent.
Not really. It's more like letting potential partners draw a couple of test-tubes of blood and run them through the local medical lab to see if you have any diseases, and maybe get a stool and urine sample for good measure.
It is perfectly reasonable for anyone coming in virtual contact with your data to request that you prove that your data is sanitary.
Phones are "full duplex" because there are 2 wires involved. One wire coming in to the receiver and going up to the earpiece, and one wire going out from the mouthpiece.
No, phones are full duplex because they were designed that way. Doing it using two wires is trivial. You simply make a loop that includes the earpiece of both phones and the mics from both phones and a battery. When you talk, your voice comes out both earpieces. That's called "sidetone". You hear what you are saying so you know the circuit is working. If you don't hear yourself, the phone sounds "dead". The same current that drives your earpiece drives the other end. And vice versa.
And doing it with "one wire" going to each part is, well, not going to work very well. You'd have to be the ground for that circuit, and the current involved would probably kill you.
Full duplex over one frequency would be like full duplex over one wire instead of two.
No, full duplex over one frequency would be like full duplex over two wires instead of four. In phones it is trivial because your microphone is not swamped by what comes out the receiver; in radio, the transmitter can easily swamp the receiver.
If the signals going out and coming in were anywhere close to being the same level, all you'd have to do is subtract one from the other to get rid of the feedback issues. Feed an inverted transmitter signal to the receiver, add it to the incoming signal, and your own signal would be removed. The problem comes because the incoming signal is many times smaller than the transmitted one, and would be lost in the noise if you had to deal with the transmitted signal and the desired signal at the same time.
The complicated part for phones comes when you need bidirectional amplification (like old long distance lines), but it was doable using transformers and such. In modern digital circuits you digitize what appears on the wire and subtract out from what you sent to the other end that which you just put on the wire coming from the other end. You still have a current loop device, basically, and that's why it's full duplex.
If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
Napster was no more stealing than the person who wrote the first FTP client and server was stealing.
I just bought five of these from Sparkfun. You can't beat them for the money. It takes a bit more understanding of the MSP430 processor to use it, though.
Before that, I got the $20 Ez430-USB sticks. And then the RF ones.
The biggest issue I've found is that the readily available cheap MSP430 chips all need four wire programming and the cheap development kits have Spy-Wire two-wire programming. I ordered a dozen of the MSP430x1xx series to do a project and found out that I couldn't use the USB stick (or Lauchpad) to program them. For a few minutes I thought I'd solved the problem by seeing that the Launchpad (and RF) had six wires in the programming connection, but the additional two were for serial comms with the chip and not the required subset of JTAG. Sigh.
Oh, I also have a pair of the Ez430-Chronos watches. The issue with those is that the full-sized compilers cost an arm and a leg and you can't recompile the code in the watch without it. You can compile a cut-down version, but that version lacks some important details. One is that ti doesn't properly implement the "unlock the buttons" feature, but does allow you to lock them. I've had the watch lock twice and had to reprogram it to unlock it. You need to change the program so it unlinks the 24 hour time from us/metric units on the temp and altitude. If you want feet and F you get a 12-hour clock. If you want a 24 hour clock, you have to accept m and C.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the scene that set up the final fight with the Reevers as being plausible.
She really really hates "Fruity Oaty Bars" and dancing octopuses.
Learn to ground things out properly and RF is NEVER an issue.
You're right. I have had intermod issues at a hilltop site I've got a repeater at. I tried simply "grounding out" all the other users antennas, but that didn't solve it. What did solve it was "grounding out" my own antenna. No more intermod issues. At least nobody has come up on air reporting any. Very quiet ...
If you date Summer Glau, don't ever let her watch the commercials ...
Wait... so basically he's saying that they can't use fiber because the techs building and repairing the aircraft are incompetent?
No, basically he's saying that the technicians who build and repair systems are technicians and not fully-trained RF and electrical engineers.
How is "x fastener should only be y tight" any different from "the bolt holding this important piece of engine together should be torqued to y ft-lb?"
Because there are torque wrenches designed to be used to tighten bolts and nuts, that are calibrated by the maintenance crew. While some cable tie guns have adjustments, they are uncalibrated and subject to many factors that make them unreliable -- at least to aircraft standards. I've had cable ties "cut" while still loose just because the tie bound up; I've had them not cut without a huge pull force. Same gun, same kind of tie.
Also because there are literally thousands of ties keeping cable bundles together in modern systems, and making them all subject to torque specifications would require a four week maintenance cycle as every tie was removed and reinstalled during regular preventative maintenance. Unless you can come up with a way to test the tightness of a cable tie you can't reach without disassembling the wing...
Putting enough jacket on a fiber optic cable to keep it from breaking under any circumstance would increase the weight to the point that it becomes heavier than copper.
No, they didn't actually say "because it has democrat in its name". That was a lie. A blatant slander, I would call it.
Actually this is a prime example of just how bad and biased Slashdot summaries could be. If you read the article you will find nothing about the Democrate in it!
Or "Democrat". The summary is a blatant lie. The bill has nothing to do with "Democrat", and "Democrat" does not appear in the word "democracy" to begin with.
http://le.utah.gov/~2011/htmdoc/hbillhtm/hb0220.htm is a link to a page with the history of the house bill. It specifies a thorough education in forms of government, including that the US is a constitutional republic ("and to the republic, for which it stands").
if the teacher can't do this, he has failed. if a few kids are non-intrusively not paying attention, whether it's related to phone use or not, he's ok. if the whole class is failing, that's the teacher's fault.
So what you are saying is that the teacher must not just be interesting, but he must be the most interesting thing to those students in their entire life. They are allowed to bring in whatever outside distractions they want, as long as they are "non-intrusive".
I think it is fair to rig the game so the teacher wins most of the rounds. I don't think anyone wins if the entire class is allowed to sit playing Nintendo DS for the entire day because they are more interested in their game than in learning anything. And I also think that if the entire class fails because the administration won't prohibit distractions then the teacher truly is NOT at fault for their failure.
Or better yet, just send an unmanned probe with the printer to the destination. Then print out all the passengers.
Your idea only works if the destination of the probe is the planet the aliens came from in "To Serve Man", and it only helps them, not us.
Yes, actually. It's called "being sent to your room without supper".
1. If you punish someone for doing (or not doing) something, then what they did or didn't do doesn't seem like much of a right to me.
2. And when your precious little one decides not to go to his room, do you respect his rights not to be forced to go to his room? Or do you respect his rights not to be sent to his room the same respectful way you respect his rights not to have to eat oatmeal for supper? In other words, not at all?
What kind of fucked up "school" has cubicles? That's a great way to foster teamwork...
What kind of fucked up school fosters teamwork in the bathroom? Or did you really think the OP was talking about students having their pants down in cubicles like the ones in Dilbert's office? What a howler.... PHB and Dilbert comparing wankers on the job?
I agree - that's why I said "If... safely and securely". Privacy concerns in this respect wouldn't worry me. Living in the UK I'm aiming to go to several Olympic events in 2012 - and I'd much rather know that there was no way anything was getting in to the stadium that shouldn't be there.
Need I actually point out that these machines will NOT allow you to know that 'there was no way anything was getting in'? They may make you think this is true and make you feel happy and warm and fuzzy about how safe you are, but nothing really changes --- except that a lot of people carrying a lot of innocuous things will get hassled and have their personal belongings confiscated, all in the name of making stupid people feel safer. Not actually BE safer, mind you, just feel that way.
It should not be a surprise to anyone here that installing such a system at any Olympics venue will simply be viewed as a challenge to act by any nefarious types, even those whose sole goal is to bypass challenges like this and not actually harm you.
Seriously, isn't "Hollywood" one of the most ridiculous phenomena on the planet? What other trade has half a dozen different (inter-)nationally broadcast "awards" ceremonies where everyone gives everyone else trophies just for doing their job?
I'm including the music industry in that set, since they are nothing more than entertainment, too.
Just imagine how much benefit there would be if the money and time spent on the Oscars and the Tonys and the whatever-it-is was spent on something important and meaningful to the world as a whole.
And just tax the fuck out of incandescants.
Why? If they are inefficient, then I'm paying more for electricity and thus already paying a "tax" based on "amount of light produced".
If I need them for the heat they produce, or need an instant on (instead of a ten-minute warmup) or for whatever reason I feel I need them, they should be available.
What the fuck business of yours is it how I use the electricity that I'm paying for? If I want the heat from a heatlamp when I step out of the shower, that's my business and not yours. If you want to listen to Def Lepard at power levels that make you deaf, that's your business, not mine.
You want to use CFLs, be my guest. You want a law that says that government offices must use them, fine.*
The summary is wrong. It says "although a poll by USA Today indicates most Americans support the US law that begins phasing out traditional light bulbs next year." What it should say is "although a poll by USA Today indicates most Americans support the US laws that tell other people how they must run their lives. And "not Americans" feel like they get a say, too".
CFLs are heavier, shorter lived, slower to turn on, and cost more. They contain toxic materials that require a HAZMAT team if you ever break one.
* -- our Uni has just instituted a policy of changing every fluorescent light from T12 to T8. Even if the lights are working. They are busy taking out all the bulbs and swapping in new ballasts for EVERY fixture. This will pay for itself in five years, they say. They can't change them when the bulbs burn out, no. And yet, if you want to save energy by removing the bulbs from a fixture over your desk, they will happily come around and replace them for you without being asked.
Fungi fun guy paul stamets has invented and sells a cardboard box then when planted first grows a crop of mushrooms, then old growth forest trees.
That explains a lot. My backyard has been infested with a large number of tree-hugging hippies and I didn't know why.
I was mildly surprised to see a large of mushrooms come up where we buried Tabby when she died. Then a bit more surprised to see my backyard turn into an old-growth forest. But the last straw has been these hippies driving spikes into the trees at all hours of the day and night.
I should have gone down to the FedEx store and bought a real box to put her in instead of using one I had lying around.
But tracking would fix a lot more problems than it would add.
Tracking fixes problems that don't exist.
I can already find out if someone voted using my name. I can already find out if my vote wasn't counted.
People who don't vote and don't care aren't going to scan the list looking for their name, so there is nothing solved there. People who do care and do scan the list aren't going to catch all the dead people on the list, so that problem isn't solved.
The only problem that is solved is what is already possible: did I vote without knowing it or did my vote get discarded? No need to release the full list.
What I can't find out is how my neighbor voted, which is the only "problem" that tracking really solves, and I don't think it is any of my business, nor is it any of his business how I voted. YOU don't care if people know how you voted, but that doesn't impress me as an argument for why I shouldn't.
No, it's not.
Yes, it is. You say you have nothing to hide. There is no reason that people can't know how you voted because you don't care. Thus there can be no reason for anyone else to care, and it is perfectly acceptable to have published voting lists.
That's the same as saying you don't have anything to hide from the police so you don't care if warrant-less searches are taking place. If you don't care, why should others? If you have something to be embarrassed about in how you are living your life ... well, live a better life. That's the argument.
And lying about what I'm saying will never make it true.
What? I quoted you VERBATIM.
I'm asserting that John Hancock was willing to put his neck on the line (literally) for his "vote." The first 50 years of this country ran just fine with open balloting. I'm asserting that the tried and tested method of open balloting has seen less vote tampering than closed ballots. Open discussion about politics is a better policy than hiding it away.
You said nothing about John Hancock in what I replied to. Zip. Your comments about Hancock are in a different part of the discussion. If I was replying to those, then I would have replied there. I quoted what I was replying to: "And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken."
Well, sir, if you have some objection to a cop searching your house because you are embarrassed about something, your life is broken. That is the same argument you are using to support publishing the votes. If you are embarrassed...
Calling someone a liar and then claiming you said something you did not is not a productive discussion mechanism.
I'd accuse you of lying here, but sadly, I think you believe what you are saying. So no matter how untrue, it isn't a lie.
It isn't a lie BECAUSE I HAVE DONE IT. I have called the elections office to see if my ballot got there and was counted. They MUST keep the lists of who voted for the reason I already specified: cleaning the registration lists of dead and those who moved away without registering elsewhere. In this county, in fact, they suggest you call them if you have any doubt that your ballot was counted -- it is the only way to know they didn't discard it for a bad signature.
The voter lists are not tied to the ballots in any way.
That is a lie, and I will not hesitate to call you on it because you certainly know better. Every ballot in Oregon is returned in a "secrecy envelope" contained in a SIGNED envelope with the name of the voter. Before the ballots are separated from the signed envelopes, the name of the voter is recorded and the signatures compared. Then the ballots go into the tub.
Even prior to this vote by mail, when we voted at the polling place we showed up at the registration book where our presence was recorded. We were handed a ballot or two, each with an identification tag attached, and the number was recorded. When we turned the ballots in, the last step prior to the ballot entering the box was the removal of the tags. The poll workers checked the tags to make sure they matched what you were given.
So, yes, sir, at least in THIS jurisdiction, the ballots have ALWAYS been tied to the voter up until they entered the ballot box. That's a far cry from "never".
And it has been that way in every place I ever voted. I know of NO time when ballots were not tied to the voter to the point that who voted could easily be recorded.
Because there is no verification, it can never be known who voted.
Since there is verification, yes, it can be known. The verification often fails when a signature is forged, but it also fails in the opposite direction (when a valid signature is rejected), and THAT is why the local elections office suggests that people who have any question about it call them. They DO know whose votes were accepted and whose were not, despite your silly claims to the contrary.
Oddly, 100% of everyone I ask states they voted.
Then you ask odd people.
And what do I care about others knowing how I voted? If you are embarrassed about your politics, then there's something wrong with your opinion about your candidate, or your country is broken.
If you have nothing to hide, why do you care that the cops can enter your home and search it without a warrant or permission? That's the argument you are making here.
I care. I know that one of the first things to happen were open published voting lists to become available is that the local political parties would launch massive calling campaigns. "We see you voted for X last time, here's why you shouldn't next time..."
I hate to point this out, but we don't need published public voting lists for people to find out if they've voted or not. All it takes is a call to the elections office. They keep a list. That's how they purge (or are supposed to) the voter list of dead etc. voters. You don't vote in X years, you are off the list.
But you can add up the votes yourself if the list is available! So? How do you know that every name on that list is valid? Dead people voting is a regular occurance in Chicago. Is the "George Smith" whos name you see on the list the same dead George Smith you used to know?
When you change the oil in your car, do you make sure you have a set of brake light bulbs with you?
When I take my car to the service shop for periodic maintenance, I expect them to have the parts on hand to fix things that are broken that periodic maintenance deals with. "Sorry, we don't stock brake light bulbs, even though that's part of our 'periodic maintenance' deal. You can't drive without them." WTF?
When they are fixing one specific thing (like "changing the oil"), no, I don't expect them to have any other parts.
Points for the ubiquitous car analogy.
Years ago, I repaired photocopiers. Once I just stopped at an account for periodic maintenance because I had nothing else to do. First thing I did was hit the copy button for a test copy, and the scanner lamp blew. I didn't have any lamps for that model on me and had to order one, so the customer wasn't too happy. And of course they wouldn't believe it wasn't my fault.
It wasn't your fault that you showed up to do periodic maintenance and didn't have spare parts for the machine you were working on with you? What would you have done had you found some other part that needed to be replaced?
Did you miss the part where I said it was simplified? Yes, I know all about the 4 wire phone system and how it works,
While there are four contacts in an RJ-11 jack, and four wires in a two-pair telephone wire, only two of those wires are actually used for the phone. The other two can be used to carry a second phone line, or have been used in the past to provide power to a phone for whatever purpose. (Princess phones had a light that was powered by a wall-wart. Modern digital phone systems use a pair for power and a pair for data.)
The handset has four wires but it is possible for the phone to work with only two -- the hybrid inside the phone does impedance matching and reduces the sidetone you hear, but if you want to put up with loud sidetone you can run the whole shebang with just two wires. But not "one wire to the earpiece and one wire to the microphone."
Do you consider it a "violation of your privacy" to tell your prospective sexual partners whether you have an STD or not? Because this is the computational equivalent.
Not really. It's more like letting potential partners draw a couple of test-tubes of blood and run them through the local medical lab to see if you have any diseases, and maybe get a stool and urine sample for good measure.
It is perfectly reasonable for anyone coming in virtual contact with your data to request that you prove that your data is sanitary.
ROTFL.
Phones are "full duplex" because there are 2 wires involved. One wire coming in to the receiver and going up to the earpiece, and one wire going out from the mouthpiece.
No, phones are full duplex because they were designed that way. Doing it using two wires is trivial. You simply make a loop that includes the earpiece of both phones and the mics from both phones and a battery. When you talk, your voice comes out both earpieces. That's called "sidetone". You hear what you are saying so you know the circuit is working. If you don't hear yourself, the phone sounds "dead". The same current that drives your earpiece drives the other end. And vice versa.
And doing it with "one wire" going to each part is, well, not going to work very well. You'd have to be the ground for that circuit, and the current involved would probably kill you.
Full duplex over one frequency would be like full duplex over one wire instead of two.
No, full duplex over one frequency would be like full duplex over two wires instead of four. In phones it is trivial because your microphone is not swamped by what comes out the receiver; in radio, the transmitter can easily swamp the receiver.
If the signals going out and coming in were anywhere close to being the same level, all you'd have to do is subtract one from the other to get rid of the feedback issues. Feed an inverted transmitter signal to the receiver, add it to the incoming signal, and your own signal would be removed. The problem comes because the incoming signal is many times smaller than the transmitted one, and would be lost in the noise if you had to deal with the transmitted signal and the desired signal at the same time.
The complicated part for phones comes when you need bidirectional amplification (like old long distance lines), but it was doable using transformers and such. In modern digital circuits you digitize what appears on the wire and subtract out from what you sent to the other end that which you just put on the wire coming from the other end. You still have a current loop device, basically, and that's why it's full duplex.
If you enable people to make illegal copies of their copyright material, and to find more people to make illegal copies from, and you make money from it, how is that not stealing?
Napster was no more stealing than the person who wrote the first FTP client and server was stealing.
Before that, I got the $20 Ez430-USB sticks. And then the RF ones.
The biggest issue I've found is that the readily available cheap MSP430 chips all need four wire programming and the cheap development kits have Spy-Wire two-wire programming. I ordered a dozen of the MSP430x1xx series to do a project and found out that I couldn't use the USB stick (or Lauchpad) to program them. For a few minutes I thought I'd solved the problem by seeing that the Launchpad (and RF) had six wires in the programming connection, but the additional two were for serial comms with the chip and not the required subset of JTAG. Sigh.
Oh, I also have a pair of the Ez430-Chronos watches. The issue with those is that the full-sized compilers cost an arm and a leg and you can't recompile the code in the watch without it. You can compile a cut-down version, but that version lacks some important details. One is that ti doesn't properly implement the "unlock the buttons" feature, but does allow you to lock them. I've had the watch lock twice and had to reprogram it to unlock it. You need to change the program so it unlinks the 24 hour time from us/metric units on the temp and altitude. If you want feet and F you get a 12-hour clock. If you want a 24 hour clock, you have to accept m and C.