That's because legislators or maybe the people who elect them think that their job is to make laws, the more the better, productivity is a good thing, right? They should be required to spend more time reviewing and repealing existing laws than in making new ones.
Most importantly: the people with Lots Of Money who own Big Businesses who actually run the US and have no intention of letting go of their patent cash cows.
Most importantly of all, technical people with lots of money who care more about innovation by other people than piling up more money for themselves.
We need to start a compaign to get rich techies with more money than they need to speak up.
If the PTO is overloaded, maybe they should set up a system of peer review and moderation. That would get the technical people involved. Then the PTO would simply review the work of the peer reviewers.
I see them setting up some sort of bulletin board system, using slash code, then all the previous inventors or IEEE members or professors from accredited universities, I don't care, just as long as the crappy work can get modded down and the cream rises to the top.
Good question, but completely different than the one you are replying to. Vote fraud is one thing, voting system is completely different. Maybe the voting fraud question will appear down the list somewhere because it is important, especially since so many states want to use opaque machines requiring more trust than even the most honest politician or beaurocrat deserves.
I'd prefer to see it phrased "proportianal voting system". that includes approval, ranked, condorcet, party list, and possibly other things that are more fair than the current system. It is also a general enough term that it doesn't need to be explained.
Very few university students are under 18. They and the others who have a legitimate reason to not participate will surely be excused or given an alternative assignment.
Students have a choice to register and vote either at their school home or at their permanent home. It's shouldn't be hard at either place, if it is, this assignment will alert everyone to a problem in the system.
Not only didn't you RTFA, you didn't read the little blurb that the Tims so kindly posted for your convenience.
She said she'd grade generously and on the honor system. She requires them to register, go to the polling place, and enter the booth. She does not tell them who to vote for, she does not require them to vote. It's sort of like a field trip where they can participate if they'd like, but if they just watch and learn something about the process, that's fine, too.
Her goal is to provoke discussion. So far, no students have dropped the course.
Swayed by the mounting disagreement and the prospect of legal challenges, Professor Skaggs scaled back the requirement before school began. Framing the requirement in the vocabulary of the experiential learning that the school champions, Professor Skaggs said students would be required only to enter the voting booth; if they wished, they did not have to pull the lever. Students who are not American citizens would get a pass on the requirement.
Professor Skaggs said the penalty for failing to enter the voting booth, which would be done on the honor system, would probably be "a failure to be generous" on her part when it comes time to issue grades and "an inclination to round fractions down."
Since school started, no students have dropped out of her classes, according to school officials.
She's grading on the honor system, folks, but she'll round you down if you protest.
That's drifting OT. I'm mostly interested in the mechanics. How many participants and if more than 3 did they interfere with each or help out the cause of those who think 2 parties aren't enough?
The issues themselves aren't of much interest. For most Americans, this story was on the entertainment page. The only issues that got out of the state appear to be that AS wants to change the US constitution so that foreign born citizens can run for office and the gay mariage thing.
I don't remember that one. Must have been for a local election, therefore the bad publicity didn't hurt too bad.
Fortunately or unfortunely, Badnarik is the only "third" party presidential candidate on the Georgia ballot, therefore we don't need to have all the alternatives to Bush and Kerry splitting the vote. Now, if we can only get him in a debate. He is compaigning here at least, unlike those other two that only travel to swing states.
They ougta make a law! All political districts must be convex polygons with less than 10 vertices. But, that still leaves a little room for the creative gerrymanderer.
I would love to see a debate between Bush, Kerry, and Badnarik.
I would, too. How close is Badnarik to the "15%" hurdle? I'd love to see him get close enough that the hurdle itself becomes an issue. 15% in itself is completely meaningless since it was negotiated by the "powers that be" so that both Bush and Kerry (and no one else) would be in.
The belief that any individual can be completely objective and unbiased is the fallacy that has ruined the effectiveness of good journalism. The industry places more value on seeming objective than being objective. True objectivity requires honest disclosure of personal beliefs when relevent to the discussion. It also requires allowing expression of contrary opinions and supporting facts without riducule. It requires respect for all sides of an issue. It requires people who don't agree at all with each other to nevertheless engage in some sort of civil dialogue, whether face to face or simply in print, that is based on substance and not style, taunts or emotion.
In my book, the side that runs out of meaningful facts and resorts to riducule first loses the debate.
Everyone has a bias, some people do a better job of dealing with it. The people, newspapers, networks that make their biases obvious make due diligence easier for the viewer who actually bothers to check the facts. You listen to what they say, check the facts, listen to the other guys, check their facts, etc. I even try to discount the debating skill they display and consider only the substance of their facts, although blatant dishonestly tends to hurt their side.
People who are or even seem trustworthy make it easy to agree. That is what gets dangerous, sometimes it is hard to tell the dishonest from the honest, especially when they are very effective at hiding their biases and do a good job of presenting their version as unbiased facts. Makes the viewer get lazy if they start trusting the presenter simply because he seems trustworthy for reasons that shouldn't matter such as tone of voice, style, or resemblence to "dear old dad". Just because a man has a low voice doesn't mean he's automatically intelligent or trustworthy. Just because someone "moderates" a talk show doesn't mean he is especially worthy of your respect, especially when the network values emotionally charged entertainment over truly informative discourse.
So to sum it all up, lots of news sources conveying lots of opinions well argued with supporting facts that hold up to scrutiny from all directions is the ideal. If you expose yourself to several of these sources, it shouldn't be too hard to differentiate the Shinola from the Crap. Anyone who bases his opinions on only one news source is being quite lazy, especially if that single news source is chosen simply because it coincides sort of with whatever opinion might already be floating around in that lazy head.
I don't think the founding fathers ever expected that a single news source would ever adequately cover any controversial subject. Anyone who thinks it reasonable to think that is being foolish. It is just as important now as it was then to expose yourself to a variety of inputs, use them to validate each other, and then decide for yourself. If you only read papers, websites, or watch news channels that already agree with you, how can you validate the truth or even the importance of what you take in? Technology should make it easier not harder to evaluate contrary opinions. Thanks to the internet, you can read newspapers from all over the world and from all points on the political grid. You can chat with "regular people" in a variety of forums. You can visit university websites and see what the ivory tower has to say. And you can also visit political websites and observe what issues they choose to discuss and how they go about doing it. Considering the number of websites, magazines, newspapers, books, and television channels, anyone who pays attention to only one or none has somehow chosen to be both blind and deaf. It must be hard to be so isolated. Only drones who go about their work 80 hours a week and never notice anything that isn't right in front of them could do this by accident. Surely that isn't what's going on.
But that's not interesting! If it isn't interesting and entertaining, it isn't newsworthy. Who wants to watch a guy go on about water heater blankets and weatherseal when they can talk about something impractical like cold fusion. That's for PBS which doesn't rely on advertising. The modern world doesn't work on practical and moral and old fashioned. No one wants a car thats more practical than old granddads Buick anyway.
I hate the term bipartisan. when I hear a politician say it, it makes me think he's forgotton the rest of us. I tend not to like people who say it too much, especially if they equate it with being fair and unbiased. They should know better and treat the public as if it should know better.
don't ship with binaries installed, compile source at the precinct, it should be compiled first thing in the morning or the day before with an audience of interested citizens. Much easier to verify the source, you never know if a precompiled binary matches, it's too easy to fake a checksum or a hash.
It derives from France where the hereditary aristocrats sat on the right side of the legislature and the upperly mobile sat on the left. obviously, Americans have a modified usage since social classes depend more on money and less on circumstances of birth. so, depending on which side you are on, the American right believes if you live right, you do well, whereas the left believes more in the interference of random chance and other injustices that are beyond the citizen's ability to fix and that it is government's place to smooth out its effect. You will note that the French didn't have a place for the lower class and neither do the Americans except as convenient bargaining chips.
Yeah, it's unfair that independents and unestablished "third" parties must collect signatures. That's a lot of work. At least in my state,"third" party candidates are spared that task if they got enough of the vote in the previous go around.
You can request any ballot you want. The party ballots are only for the primaries anyway. I usually request whichever ballot I prefer to vote on at the time. The ballots are public. I look over them before I choose.
Step up immigration! Immigrants usually contribute more in taxes than they take out. Since native born Americans have things they'd rather do than make babies, this is our best solution to the SS problem.
A bill like this could only pass in truely contested states. In a state, like Colorado, where one party dominates its against their best interest to let this go through.
That is the problem with most election reforms, it requires someone to give up some of their power to make things more fair for someone else. It works best for Colorado if other states quickly follow suit. If they don't, Colorado risks being made a fool.
It will be even harder to get reforms through that give fair representation to people who are best represented by so-called third parties and independents. Election reform is an issue that puts the Democrats and the Republicans together against the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they should limit them to 40 days like they do here in Georgia. It's a part time job, and we still have plenty of laws.
That's because legislators or maybe the people who elect them think that their job is to make laws, the more the better, productivity is a good thing, right? They should be required to spend more time reviewing and repealing existing laws than in making new ones.
Most importantly of all, technical people with lots of money who care more about innovation by other people than piling up more money for themselves.
We need to start a compaign to get rich techies with more money than they need to speak up.
In unrelated news, http://forbes.com/ just came out with it's list of richest Americans.
I see them setting up some sort of bulletin board system, using slash code, then all the previous inventors or IEEE members or professors from accredited universities, I don't care, just as long as the crappy work can get modded down and the cream rises to the top.
Good question, but completely different than the one you are replying to. Vote fraud is one thing, voting system is completely different. Maybe the voting fraud question will appear down the list somewhere because it is important, especially since so many states want to use opaque machines requiring more trust than even the most honest politician or beaurocrat deserves.
I'd prefer to see it phrased "proportianal voting system". that includes approval, ranked, condorcet, party list, and possibly other things that are more fair than the current system. It is also a general enough term that it doesn't need to be explained.
Students have a choice to register and vote either at their school home or at their permanent home. It's shouldn't be hard at either place, if it is, this assignment will alert everyone to a problem in the system.
She said she'd grade generously and on the honor system. She requires them to register, go to the polling place, and enter the booth. She does not tell them who to vote for, she does not require them to vote. It's sort of like a field trip where they can participate if they'd like, but if they just watch and learn something about the process, that's fine, too.
Her goal is to provoke discussion. So far, no students have dropped the course.
The issues themselves aren't of much interest. For most Americans, this story was on the entertainment page. The only issues that got out of the state appear to be that AS wants to change the US constitution so that foreign born citizens can run for office and the gay mariage thing.
But you weren't debugging complicated aviation software. Apparently they figured they had all the bugs out after over a month of uptime.
Fortunately or unfortunely, Badnarik is the only "third" party presidential candidate on the Georgia ballot, therefore we don't need to have all the alternatives to Bush and Kerry splitting the vote. Now, if we can only get him in a debate. He is compaigning here at least, unlike those other two that only travel to swing states.
They ougta make a law! All political districts must be convex polygons with less than 10 vertices. But, that still leaves a little room for the creative gerrymanderer.
I would, too. How close is Badnarik to the "15%" hurdle? I'd love to see him get close enough that the hurdle itself becomes an issue. 15% in itself is completely meaningless since it was negotiated by the "powers that be" so that both Bush and Kerry (and no one else) would be in.
In my book, the side that runs out of meaningful facts and resorts to riducule first loses the debate.
People who are or even seem trustworthy make it easy to agree. That is what gets dangerous, sometimes it is hard to tell the dishonest from the honest, especially when they are very effective at hiding their biases and do a good job of presenting their version as unbiased facts. Makes the viewer get lazy if they start trusting the presenter simply because he seems trustworthy for reasons that shouldn't matter such as tone of voice, style, or resemblence to "dear old dad". Just because a man has a low voice doesn't mean he's automatically intelligent or trustworthy. Just because someone "moderates" a talk show doesn't mean he is especially worthy of your respect, especially when the network values emotionally charged entertainment over truly informative discourse.
So to sum it all up, lots of news sources conveying lots of opinions well argued with supporting facts that hold up to scrutiny from all directions is the ideal. If you expose yourself to several of these sources, it shouldn't be too hard to differentiate the Shinola from the Crap. Anyone who bases his opinions on only one news source is being quite lazy, especially if that single news source is chosen simply because it coincides sort of with whatever opinion might already be floating around in that lazy head.
I don't think the founding fathers ever expected that a single news source would ever adequately cover any controversial subject. Anyone who thinks it reasonable to think that is being foolish. It is just as important now as it was then to expose yourself to a variety of inputs, use them to validate each other, and then decide for yourself. If you only read papers, websites, or watch news channels that already agree with you, how can you validate the truth or even the importance of what you take in? Technology should make it easier not harder to evaluate contrary opinions. Thanks to the internet, you can read newspapers from all over the world and from all points on the political grid. You can chat with "regular people" in a variety of forums. You can visit university websites and see what the ivory tower has to say. And you can also visit political websites and observe what issues they choose to discuss and how they go about doing it. Considering the number of websites, magazines, newspapers, books, and television channels, anyone who pays attention to only one or none has somehow chosen to be both blind and deaf. It must be hard to be so isolated. Only drones who go about their work 80 hours a week and never notice anything that isn't right in front of them could do this by accident. Surely that isn't what's going on.
But that's not interesting! If it isn't interesting and entertaining, it isn't newsworthy. Who wants to watch a guy go on about water heater blankets and weatherseal when they can talk about something impractical like cold fusion. That's for PBS which doesn't rely on advertising. The modern world doesn't work on practical and moral and old fashioned. No one wants a car thats more practical than old granddads Buick anyway.
Do you have links to third party evaluations or discussion threads about Coral?
I hate the term bipartisan. when I hear a politician say it, it makes me think he's forgotton the rest of us. I tend not to like people who say it too much, especially if they equate it with being fair and unbiased. They should know better and treat the public as if it should know better.
don't ship with binaries installed, compile source at the precinct, it should be compiled first thing in the morning or the day before with an audience of interested citizens. Much easier to verify the source, you never know if a precompiled binary matches, it's too easy to fake a checksum or a hash.
It derives from France where the hereditary aristocrats sat on the right side of the legislature and the upperly mobile sat on the left. obviously, Americans have a modified usage since social classes depend more on money and less on circumstances of birth. so, depending on which side you are on, the American right believes if you live right, you do well, whereas the left believes more in the interference of random chance and other injustices that are beyond the citizen's ability to fix and that it is government's place to smooth out its effect. You will note that the French didn't have a place for the lower class and neither do the Americans except as convenient bargaining chips.
Yeah, it's unfair that independents and unestablished "third" parties must collect signatures. That's a lot of work. At least in my state,"third" party candidates are spared that task if they got enough of the vote in the previous go around.
You can request any ballot you want. The party ballots are only for the primaries anyway. I usually request whichever ballot I prefer to vote on at the time. The ballots are public. I look over them before I choose.
Step up immigration! Immigrants usually contribute more in taxes than they take out. Since native born Americans have things they'd rather do than make babies, this is our best solution to the SS problem.
That is the problem with most election reforms, it requires someone to give up some of their power to make things more fair for someone else. It works best for Colorado if other states quickly follow suit. If they don't, Colorado risks being made a fool.
It will be even harder to get reforms through that give fair representation to people who are best represented by so-called third parties and independents. Election reform is an issue that puts the Democrats and the Republicans together against the rest.