So, what you are saying is that, even though Diebold's ability to rig elections will stop big media companies having (almost) total control over elections, it's willing to cover Diebold's ass, because Diebold will probably (s)elect somebody who will help out big media companies?
What makes you think that Diebold isn't already part of this ? Sounds like you're more trusting than skeptical to me. It's all well and good to demand evidence, but a little paranoia doen't go astray either.:)
The way the media rigs elections now (supposedly) requires them to have control over the counting process, at least in as much as the count they report gets taken as the official count. There are a couple of ways to do this: 1/ control the physical process of the count. 2/ misreporting the actual count and shutting down those who disagree with them.
Obviously 2/ entails some risk that the people who did the count don't put two and two together and discover their reports are being misrepresented.
However, in the case of pure paper ballots, doing 1/ requires bribing or otherwise controlling thousands of volunteers all over the place. Alternatively you have to stuff the boxes, or otherwise control the actual paper. Neither of which is easy with so many people involved.
Yet automated voting machines can be worked so that the vote you think you've made isn't counted. In the 70's this could have been done by shaving the rotors inside the mechanical voting boxes (also : non-zero counts present at machine delivery which were concealed from inspectors, as well as forged inspection signatures on doctored ballot registers, and a myriad of other forms).
With computer voting machines, all you need is access to the central database.
Of course, the fact that Diebold makes it easy doesn't prove any conspiracy. But you only have to look at the political leanings of the owners of the companies in question to realize that, even in the absence of collusion these people have common goals. Perhaps big media and Diebold don't sit down for coffee and talk about how they're going to run the US government, but that's because they already *know* the writing on the wall. It's called a "common interest" and you can bet they've got at least that much in common.
Despite all this, I have to wonder: if the Voter News Service had blanket control over the elections, then would we really have had such a close one in 2000 ? Maybe the extent of their influence is tipping the scales of the public entrance polls just a little to the right ?
In any case, the mere suspicion of voter fraud should be a concern not easily brushed aside with a wave of a hand and a scream of "baseless conspiracy theories!"
Are you sure that people stop counting votes when the lead exceeds the number of votes tallied ? Since these mechanical and electronic vote counting machines count them automatically, do the electoral workers just turn them off after they've hit a certain number of votes? Or maybe they just get their numbers reported back to them from the media and don't even keep the ballots at all ?
How much do you really know about the voting process in the US, and how much is just your blind trust ?
Question everything (Yes, even this).
Re:Serious flaws in the current semantic web model
on
Practical RDF
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· Score: 1
Besides which, looking in the/08 directory off the root on port 4 of that domain will give you a 404:)
I agree - with some reservations. Firstly, if you have a wireless headset for your PDAPhone, you are still carrying two devices (the headset and the PDA). The challenge will be to put them in a common holder arrangement, so that you feel like you're only carrying one device, but can pull out the headset easily when required. Then you have to worry about losing the headset in the same way people lose the stylus. People are already looking for a usable single device.. having a remote headset doesn't ease this desire.
Secondly, never underestimate the fashion factor. People may balk at a convergent device if they don't look good while using it:) Producers of convergent devices should bear this in mind as much as anyone else - especially since many of the people who want one of these are business people for whom image can be an important part of their job.
Actually, storage isn't the only problem. I wouldn't even say it was a big consideration.
The real problem is in the form. PDAs need a certain amount of screen real estate, and a usable manner in which to input data. Phones, on the other hand, need only to input a small amount of data, but must have a comfortable way of talking and listening to them.
These aims are not really convergent, since the trend in phones is to smaller and PDAs can't get much smaller without sacrificing even more utility. PDAs will always be too large to comfortably hold against ones head like a handset. If anything, PDAs might get bigger again, with some sort of remote (bluetooth?) headset arrangement to take care of the cell phone interface. At least, that's what I'd like:)
Playing music on them doesn't really make much of a difference either way, since it doesn't change the form of either device significantly.
Speaking of strange bedfellows, I was just given the most useless device - a stop watch with a radio in it. I guess it might be useful to listen to the race broadcast while you're sitting in the pit timing it...
Doesn't that really mean it should be pronounced Kaisium ? (Since Roman C's are hard, and ae is sort of an aye sound = which is the origin of the Germanic Kaiser, the phonetic pronounciation of Caesar, IIRC) But I could be wrong:)
Not to denigrate the accomplishment of putting a working fusor together out of junk yard parts, what real new research was accomplished ? I mean, he's basically taking someone elses existing plan and finding novel ways of following it. It's a pretty damn cool demonstration of mechanical genius, and probably not something I myself would be capable of, but the first place winner has performed scientific experiment and analysis and documented this in a rigorous fashion to arrive at new knowledge.
I can see how, in a Science Fair, this might warrant the greater reward.
fact, generally the better a movie looks in preview the more likely that it is going to truly, deeply suck
followed by
Many movies give up the best three scenes in the whole movie in the preview. Then you go watch the movie and find that everything else in the movie sucks.
So if the best three scenes are in the preview, but the preview is really bad, then the movie will be great ?
You're right on this. But my point is not that a possible greater good necessarily justifies mandatory public expenditure. Rather, corporations these days are notorious for short term thinking: pursuit of immediate profits, "agile process" and "time to market" are the catch-cries of the day. Suggesting that a lack of interest by such companies equates to a lack of value in the pursuit is a little naive.
Corporations will always operate on maximal economic gain for their shareholders. I wouldn't recommend you believe that this is the only yardstick by which to measure your goals in life.
A space program is a long term endeavour, with hard to quantify ROI. The next question is whether there is sufficient merit to it to warrant calling it a public good (like the roads). You suggest not. My reservation is that, without such a status, what private organization will have the wherewithal, near-constant resources over time, ability to weather economic storms etc, that a government agency can bring to bear ?
Hehe. Was management resposible for getting the whole program in a single 14000+ line java class file ? Yes, you read it right. One class for the whole program. Fourteen thousand lines of code in one class file. What's worse, was that it was written in Microsoft J++, and thus was not even platform independant. I mean - what was the point? Might as well have done it in MS C++ in that case.
We had to start from scratch.
Every experience I've had with Indian outsourcing was horrendous.
So all those HTML "programmers" who get to put "IT professional" on their resumes are out of work huh?
And maybe companies with real IT needs need someone with real education/experience instead of "deVry" certificate ?
It's the *outsourcing* companies who are abusing the H1B Visa, not the regular companies who are merely looking for the most qualified person for the position.
And its those outsourcing companies who don't always pay their resident employees the full US wage they are required to.
When the law requires a US company to pay their H1B employees the same wage they would pay an American in that job, there is no cost incentive to hire an H1-B worker. So the only incentive is that the worker is more qualified than their US counterparts available for that position.
The reality, as we know, is a little different, but this is not the fault of the US H1-B visa program, but rather the abuse of it by these outsourcing contracting companies who place their own foreign employees here on such visas. If the US companies weren't looking to hire "cheap labour", this wouldn't happen.
What astounds me, however, is that people seem to forget that you "get what you pay for". When you pay 20 percent of your usual costs, are you surprised when you only get 20% of the quality you were asking for ? Or it takes 5 times as long to develop, or any other of a thousand factors that some people seem to forget.
It's not a case of defending the guilty, it's a case of defending your rights.
Admitting something that is not yet proven is a way of giving up some of your rights. Standard legal advice is to say as little as possible, unless there is a clear benefit to you to do otherwise. The onus of proof remains on the plaintiff.
Or was it the industrial plants which produce acres of wind-generators, solar-collectors or the valleys lost to hydro-electric dams to which you were referring ?
Furthermore - the vehicles may be unmanned, but still under human control. There is a distinction between completely autonymous, decision-making "robot" vehicles, and remote-controlled ones. Both qualify as unmanned.
I'd expect even by 2015, firepower decisions will still be made by humans. Few military leaders will be willing to delegate that responsibility to a machine for very many years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm wondering if you're trying for +1 Funny or -1 Troll.
It's the threat of a death penalty that is no deterrant, not the imposition of it after being caught to prevent recidivism.
You mean you don't have to demonstrate "artistic merit" for a work to be copyrighted in this country ?
sheesh.
So, what you are saying is that, even though Diebold's ability to rig elections will stop big media companies having (almost) total control over elections, it's willing to cover Diebold's ass, because Diebold will probably (s)elect somebody who will help out big media companies?
:)
:
What makes you think that Diebold isn't already part of this ? Sounds like you're more trusting than skeptical to me. It's all well and good to demand evidence, but a little paranoia doen't go astray either.
The way the media rigs elections now (supposedly) requires them to have control over the counting process, at least in as much as the count they report gets taken as the official count. There are a couple of ways to do this
1/ control the physical process of the count.
2/ misreporting the actual count and shutting down those who disagree with them.
Obviously 2/ entails some risk that the people who did the count don't put two and two together and discover their reports are being misrepresented.
However, in the case of pure paper ballots, doing 1/ requires bribing or otherwise controlling thousands of volunteers all over the place. Alternatively you have to stuff the boxes, or otherwise control the actual paper. Neither of which is easy with so many people involved.
Yet automated voting machines can be worked so that the vote you think you've made isn't counted. In the 70's this could have been done by shaving the rotors inside the mechanical voting boxes (also : non-zero counts present at machine delivery which were concealed from inspectors, as well as forged inspection signatures on doctored ballot registers, and a myriad of other forms).
With computer voting machines, all you need is access to the central database.
Of course, the fact that Diebold makes it easy doesn't prove any conspiracy. But you only have to look at the political leanings of the owners of the companies in question to realize that, even in the absence of collusion these people have common goals. Perhaps big media and Diebold don't sit down for coffee and talk about how they're going to run the US government, but that's because they already *know* the writing on the wall. It's called a "common interest" and you can bet they've got at least that much in common.
Despite all this, I have to wonder: if the Voter News Service had blanket control over the elections, then would we really have had such a close one in 2000 ? Maybe the extent of their influence is tipping the scales of the public entrance polls just a little to the right ?
In any case, the mere suspicion of voter fraud should be a concern not easily brushed aside with a wave of a hand and a scream of "baseless conspiracy theories!"
Are you certain that the recount went to Bush ?
Really ?
Are you sure that people stop counting votes when the lead exceeds the number of votes tallied ? Since these mechanical and electronic vote counting machines count them automatically, do the electoral workers just turn them off after they've hit a certain number of votes? Or maybe they just get their numbers reported back to them from the media and don't even keep the ballots at all ?
How much do you really know about the voting process in the US, and how much is just your blind trust ?
Question everything (Yes, even this).
Besides which, looking in the /08 directory off the root on port 4 of that domain will give you a 404 :)
I agree - with some reservations.
:)
Firstly, if you have a wireless headset for your PDAPhone, you are still carrying two devices (the headset and the PDA). The challenge will be to put them in a common holder arrangement, so that you feel like you're only carrying one device, but can pull out the headset easily when required. Then you have to worry about losing the headset in the same way people lose the stylus. People are already looking for a usable single device.. having a remote headset doesn't ease this desire.
Secondly, never underestimate the fashion factor. People may balk at a convergent device if they don't look good while using it
Producers of convergent devices should bear this in mind as much as anyone else - especially since many of the people who want one of these are business people for whom image can be an important part of their job.
You're welcome.
Actually, storage isn't the only problem. I wouldn't even say it was a big consideration.
:)
The real problem is in the form. PDAs need a certain amount of screen real estate, and a usable manner in which to input data.
Phones, on the other hand, need only to input a small amount of data, but must have a comfortable way of talking and listening to them.
These aims are not really convergent, since the trend in phones is to smaller and PDAs can't get much smaller without sacrificing even more utility. PDAs will always be too large to comfortably hold against ones head like a handset. If anything, PDAs might get bigger again, with some sort of remote (bluetooth?) headset arrangement to take care of the cell phone interface. At least, that's what I'd like
Playing music on them doesn't really make much of a difference either way, since it doesn't change the form of either device significantly.
Speaking of strange bedfellows, I was just given the most useless device - a stop watch with a radio in it. I guess it might be useful to listen to the race broadcast while you're sitting in the pit timing it...
Perhaps the "Burn this Book" thing was a subtle dig at "Steal This Book".. except with an eternal-torment-in-the-fires-of-hell overtone ?
"..since paint was first put to canvas..."
:)
Or how about "since painters were first entombed with their dead kings"
Now _that's_ screwing the artist !
Well, at least, I would be right if I were pronouncing this before 500 AD. :)
Doesn't that really mean it should be pronounced Kaisium ? :)
(Since Roman C's are hard, and ae is sort of an aye sound = which is the origin of the Germanic Kaiser, the phonetic pronounciation of Caesar, IIRC)
But I could be wrong
Not to denigrate the accomplishment of putting a working fusor together out of junk yard parts, what real new research was accomplished ?
I mean, he's basically taking someone elses existing plan and finding novel ways of following it. It's a pretty damn cool demonstration of mechanical genius, and probably not something I myself would be capable of, but the first place winner has performed scientific experiment and analysis and documented this in a rigorous fashion to arrive at new knowledge.
I can see how, in a Science Fair, this might warrant the greater reward.
Indeed - and if it was so special as to achieve the break even point, I'm sure it would have gotten 1st prize.
It's a fusor. Very cool for someone in highschool, but not the solution to the worlds energy problems.
If that's your definition, then I'd say everyone dies "early".
fact, generally the better a movie looks in preview the more likely that it is going to truly, deeply suck
followed by
Many movies give up the best three scenes in the whole movie in the preview. Then you go watch the movie and find that everything else in the movie sucks.
So if the best three scenes are in the preview, but the preview is really bad, then the movie will be great ?
Hmm.
"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest ?"
You're right on this. But my point is not that a possible greater good necessarily justifies mandatory public expenditure.
Rather, corporations these days are notorious for short term thinking: pursuit of immediate profits, "agile process" and "time to market" are the catch-cries of the day. Suggesting that a lack of interest by such companies equates to a lack of value in the pursuit is a little naive.
Corporations will always operate on maximal economic gain for their shareholders. I wouldn't recommend you believe that this is the only yardstick by which to measure your goals in life.
A space program is a long term endeavour, with hard to quantify ROI. The next question is whether there is sufficient merit to it to warrant calling it a public good (like the roads). You suggest not. My reservation is that, without such a status, what private organization will have the wherewithal, near-constant resources over time, ability to weather economic storms etc, that a government agency can bring to bear ?
Right.
That's like believing the corporations really are looking out for your best interests.
Just because there's no profit to be made today, doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile for other reasons.
Hehe. Was management resposible for getting the whole program in a single 14000+ line java class file ? Yes, you read it right. One class for the whole program. Fourteen thousand lines of code in one class file. What's worse, was that it was written in Microsoft J++, and thus was not even platform independant. I mean - what was the point? Might as well have done it in MS C++ in that case.
We had to start from scratch.
Every experience I've had with Indian outsourcing was horrendous.
So all those HTML "programmers" who get to put "IT professional" on their resumes are out of work huh?
And maybe companies with real IT needs need someone with real education/experience instead of "deVry" certificate ?
It's the *outsourcing* companies who are abusing the H1B Visa, not the regular companies who are merely looking for the most qualified person for the position.
And its those outsourcing companies who don't always pay their resident employees the full US wage they are required to.
When the law requires a US company to pay their H1B employees the same wage they would pay an American in that job, there is no cost incentive to hire an H1-B worker. So the only incentive is that the worker is more qualified than their US counterparts available for that position.
The reality, as we know, is a little different, but this is not the fault of the US H1-B visa program, but rather the abuse of it by these outsourcing contracting companies who place their own foreign employees here on such visas. If the US companies weren't looking to hire "cheap labour", this wouldn't happen.
What astounds me, however, is that people seem to forget that you "get what you pay for". When you pay 20 percent of your usual costs, are you surprised when you only get 20% of the quality you were asking for ? Or it takes 5 times as long to develop, or any other of a thousand factors that some people seem to forget.
Reminds me of a program that only crashed on Wednesdays.
Seems the programmers had allocated only 8 characters for the day name.
It's not a case of defending the guilty, it's a case of defending your rights.
Admitting something that is not yet proven is a way of giving up some of your rights. Standard legal advice is to say as little as possible, unless there is a clear benefit to you to do otherwise. The onus of proof remains on the plaintiff.
But Coal Mines are better ?
Or was it the industrial plants which produce acres of wind-generators, solar-collectors or the valleys lost to hydro-electric dams to which you were referring ?
Everything has a cost.
Furthermore - the vehicles may be unmanned, but still under human control. There is a distinction between completely autonymous, decision-making "robot" vehicles, and remote-controlled ones. Both qualify as unmanned.
I'd expect even by 2015, firepower decisions will still be made by humans. Few military leaders will be willing to delegate that responsibility to a machine for very many years to come.