Great post, all it would take to make it perfect would be a link to Thomas or something else that would help the rest of us know don't live in the states you mention
How has the European Community solved this problem? I know from news reports that proper representation of different sized countries has been an issue.
Sure, the US is one country now, but when its Constitution was written, it was simply a confederation of independent states who were sold on the benefits of being one big country without giving up the benefits of being individual political units.
It's been a long time since the US has made major changes to its election law. Since those in power wouldn't benefit from major change, it's up to the rest of the world to come up with a more modern system that represents everyone fairly with proper incorporation of technology if it helps. Then, all of us, no matter the nationality can apply pressure wherever we can.
Hi "rest of the world", I hope you get modded up, you are quite funny, but your humor shelters some insightful truths.
First, like it or not, the US is the most powerful nation on the earth, so whoever our president is, it matters to you. Who knows what little country for whatever reason will next get his attention? So you have as much stake in the US Elections as those of us who have the opportunity to vote. In fact, you have as much influence as I do since I don't happen to be one of those 10 people in Ohio that the candidates care about. Lucky me, presumed to be Red no matter what I think.
Second, the US is the oldest nation on the planet with a winner -takes-all election system. Newer democracies either imitate us or try to come up with something better, usually a proportional voting system that represents the opinions of every voter, not just those who agree with the majority party. If 10% of the electorate votes Libertarian, then 10% of the congress should be Libertairian, right? And if this could happen, I think we'd see a lot more votes going to Libs and other "Third Pary" candidates.
Third, I think that you, rest of the world, should become as politically active as anyone in US politics. You may not have a vote, but you do have influence. Write directly to those of us who are supposed to be represented. Give concrete facts regarding how the "rest of the world" does it better. Speak to your own leaders. Let them know that they should expend some energy influencing the US on its electorial issues.
It's a screwed up system, we have the technology to administer a proportional system. Since we are messing around with these computerized touchscreen things anyway, this would be a great time to implement a more modern, representative, and accurate electorial system.
With our electorial system, there is little reason to vote for someone who isn't going to win. It's not even a good way to express a viewpoint that will be taken seriously.
The current system causes the debate to focus on a few issues that frankly aren't very important except to distract from those that do matter. I don't expect the most important issue of election reform to ever be seriously debated by to dominant partiies. It works just fine (for them) the way it is.
The best way to get Libertarian viewpoints into Congress is to elect someone like ex-Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul who runs as a Republican.
Almost all the states and 5% of the electorate, that's quite an achievement considering the hurdles placed in their way.
As it is, when the Democrats and the Republicans are close, the voter has more reason to vote for one of them than to vote for who he really wants. This suits the Demos and the Repubs just fine so we won't get a change unless a third party candidate makes reform of the electorial system a major compaign issue.
I do see an ethical problem with what Verizon has done. Motorola advertises a phone with lots of cool features. Verizon sells a phone that it claims to be the same Motorola phone. A customer is induced to buy that particular phone because of what he knows from Motorola ads and magazine articles about the Motorola phone. But, then the customer discovers that he has not bought the phone he intended to buy! A phone, in many minds, is a particular collection of features and specifications.
Unless Verizon has properly disclaimed the fact that information about the Motorola phone should be ignored, they are using a business model that relies on customers being deceived about what product they are really buying. Unless I missed something, they really do expect to benefit from the publicity and advertising provided by Motorola, otherwise all Motorola trademarks and model numbers should be replaced by something clearly different.
I used to work in consumer electronics, we routinely had designers design completely different cases for what was essentially the same guts depending on how they were marketed. One package had our trademark, others had the OEM's.
This isn't about making anything "safer". This is about providing the ILLUSION that we are "safer" now because we are "taking these steps".
ILLUSION is the write word, but I think you may have the purpose exactly backwards. The point isn't that "security" makes us "safer", the Illusion is that we can trade our rights for safety. As if putting on a show of force at the airport is more useful than analysing all the information floating around and putting the pieces together. Little old ladies and gentlemen on oxygen aren't likely to be important parts of the puzzle.
It's ust another line item fee on the bank statement, probably double the actual cost to them, banks always figure out a way to get paid back with interest.
A smart spammer would set the nice priority low, then the user would never notice unless he checked his background tasks. I always run Seti@Home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html (CLI version, not the famous screensaver) in the background and it doesn't slow me down a bit.
This reminds me of Seti@Home workunits, each one takes several hours to generate and and then you send the results back to Berkeley where they have some magic to make sure you don't get credit for the same work twice.
Someone even wrote a virus that would install Seti@Home on zombie computers that would run the CLI version in the background and upload workunits to be credited to whoever the hijacker designated. If the zombie owner never checked his background tasks, he probably just thought his ISP was slow, especially since seti runs with a low nice priority.
The first hacker to release a virus to run the POW generator in the background is going to get rich, but then the zombies will start dying in droves as the imitators join the fun.
What country are you from?
Apparently not the US where lots of kids and adults who aren't elderly get SSA and SSI, and no one gets drafted.
BTW, that's not a rhetorical question, but if you are American, you may interpret it that way. Since you seem to like Marx, I guess you've never lived in a marxist state or you are keeping your private utopia a secret from the rest of us.
In an ideal world, or even an Orwellian distopia, it takes three forces pulling in directions 120 degrees apart to maintain stability. So I see the Dawning of the Age of Big Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO). In an ideal world, all interests not in the interest of the ordinary man would be canceled out.
Of course you can leave the country, you just can't come back once you've renounced your citizenship. And if you don't renounce your citizenship, you must still pay your Uncle Sam. That's assuming you are American. Don't know if any other country has such a firm grip on its citizens' wallets.
BTW, we Americans have our own definitions for liberal. Libertarian is what Europeans and probably rest of the world would call a Liberal since we don't have those European Aristocratic "shackles of tradition". For Americans, Liberal has a negative connotation for those who prefer to think of the US as a meritocracy. It simply means having the government take from those who have and giving it to those who don't. Obviously, this seems unfair to those who believe they should decide for themselves what to do with what they earned. Liberals tend to give a large portion of the credit for being well off to the government managed environment that citizens live in.
If you like the Parent, go read the comments spawned by his original post. Mod it up if you find the discussion worthwhile. And if you are curious why Americans are stuck choosing the lessor of two evils or not voting at all, please read my sig.
That's liberal for you folks outside the US. For some reason liberal is a dirty word to Americans. Libertarians are for liberty in both the personal freedom and economic realms. They also want small government that doesn't intrude into the lives of good people. Liberal has a negative connotation of using government to redistribute wealth from those who have it to those who don't. Since this is intended to offset the tendency of capitalism to overpay some and underpay others, it disturbs our good feelings about the US being a meritocracy.
Big Governments scare me. Big Corporarations (bigger than countries) scare me. Big Countries where most people don't vote scare me. Okay, I'm not really easily scared. But I do think we are veering off course and must do something about it.
First, while we still can, we need to get a proportional electorial system going in the US. As is, third parties don't have a chance. (see my sig) so 100% of the people are ruled by the least repulsive of the DemoRepubcraticans who only care about a relatively small portion of the US population. Since the current system benefits both of them, we can't expect much help from them.
This truly is a tragedy as it highlights a huge problem of light weight vehicles sharing the road with larger vehicles.
Maybe everyone is addressing the wrong problem. The primary reason many people buy large cars is so they might have a better chance of surviving a crash. It's exactly why I don't ride my bike to the store only a mile away. I don't even like to walk it. Two lane road, very fast traffic, no sidewalks or bike lane, stockade fence inches from the curb. This is typical in surburban Atlanta.
Claiming Jesus Christ as your saviour. As you can imagine, this allows in some pretty bad people. There are certain beliefs and behaviors you might expect go along with it, but at least in the US, their is no legal requirement that people who claim to be Christians behave in a certain way.
Yes it is a necessary skill, but not in middle school. I learned in middle school. My son also took touch typing in middle school, but it was a joke because he was already an excellent typist from Slashdot, thanks to you guys for ribbing the hell out of kids who try to get away with crappy grammer and spelling He had his feelings hurt a few times till I explained that you don't tolerate stupid people. He smartened up fast..
BTW, the schools here are having that debate and it appears that they are going to move touch typing down to third grade where it belongs. Then they won't have to waste time on cursive.
Hacking/Reverser Engineering has been around ever since mankind learned by imitating each other. It is a good thing, it shouldn't be demonized. Don't know how long the engineering mentality was around, but I was born wanting to know not just "how things work", but "how they did that". One of the primary purposes of the patent system is to help other people come up with new and different ways to skin old cats.
It's kinda interesting that the banks can charge more for transactions that use credit cards, but the stores can't. Shows you who has more influence with the politicians
Thanks, I googled for the car article and that was the one on the list that got to the point the quickest. Only after I posted the link, did I bother surfing the rest of the site. Live and learn.
Slashdot Mirror
Great post, all it would take to make it perfect would be a link to Thomas or something else that would help the rest of us know don't live in the states you mention
Sure, the US is one country now, but when its Constitution was written, it was simply a confederation of independent states who were sold on the benefits of being one big country without giving up the benefits of being individual political units.
It's been a long time since the US has made major changes to its election law. Since those in power wouldn't benefit from major change, it's up to the rest of the world to come up with a more modern system that represents everyone fairly with proper incorporation of technology if it helps. Then, all of us, no matter the nationality can apply pressure wherever we can.
First, like it or not, the US is the most powerful nation on the earth, so whoever our president is, it matters to you. Who knows what little country for whatever reason will next get his attention? So you have as much stake in the US Elections as those of us who have the opportunity to vote. In fact, you have as much influence as I do since I don't happen to be one of those 10 people in Ohio that the candidates care about. Lucky me, presumed to be Red no matter what I think.
Second, the US is the oldest nation on the planet with a winner -takes-all election system. Newer democracies either imitate us or try to come up with something better, usually a proportional voting system that represents the opinions of every voter, not just those who agree with the majority party. If 10% of the electorate votes Libertarian, then 10% of the congress should be Libertairian, right? And if this could happen, I think we'd see a lot more votes going to Libs and other "Third Pary" candidates.
Third, I think that you, rest of the world, should become as politically active as anyone in US politics. You may not have a vote, but you do have influence. Write directly to those of us who are supposed to be represented. Give concrete facts regarding how the "rest of the world" does it better. Speak to your own leaders. Let them know that they should expend some energy influencing the US on its electorial issues.
It's a screwed up system, we have the technology to administer a proportional system. Since we are messing around with these computerized touchscreen things anyway, this would be a great time to implement a more modern, representative, and accurate electorial system.
The current system causes the debate to focus on a few issues that frankly aren't very important except to distract from those that do matter. I don't expect the most important issue of election reform to ever be seriously debated by to dominant partiies. It works just fine (for them) the way it is.
The best way to get Libertarian viewpoints into Congress is to elect someone like ex-Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul who runs as a Republican.
As it is, when the Democrats and the Republicans are close, the voter has more reason to vote for one of them than to vote for who he really wants. This suits the Demos and the Repubs just fine so we won't get a change unless a third party candidate makes reform of the electorial system a major compaign issue.
Unless Verizon has properly disclaimed the fact that information about the Motorola phone should be ignored, they are using a business model that relies on customers being deceived about what product they are really buying. Unless I missed something, they really do expect to benefit from the publicity and advertising provided by Motorola, otherwise all Motorola trademarks and model numbers should be replaced by something clearly different.
I used to work in consumer electronics, we routinely had designers design completely different cases for what was essentially the same guts depending on how they were marketed. One package had our trademark, others had the OEM's.
ILLUSION is the write word, but I think you may have the purpose exactly backwards. The point isn't that "security" makes us "safer", the Illusion is that we can trade our rights for safety. As if putting on a show of force at the airport is more useful than analysing all the information floating around and putting the pieces together. Little old ladies and gentlemen on oxygen aren't likely to be important parts of the puzzle.
It's ust another line item fee on the bank statement, probably double the actual cost to them, banks always figure out a way to get paid back with interest.
A smart spammer would set the nice priority low, then the user would never notice unless he checked his background tasks. I always run Seti@Home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html (CLI version, not the famous screensaver) in the background and it doesn't slow me down a bit.
Someone even wrote a virus that would install Seti@Home on zombie computers that would run the CLI version in the background and upload workunits to be credited to whoever the hijacker designated. If the zombie owner never checked his background tasks, he probably just thought his ISP was slow, especially since seti runs with a low nice priority.
The first hacker to release a virus to run the POW generator in the background is going to get rich, but then the zombies will start dying in droves as the imitators join the fun.
BTW, that's not a rhetorical question, but if you are American, you may interpret it that way. Since you seem to like Marx, I guess you've never lived in a marxist state or you are keeping your private utopia a secret from the rest of us.
In an ideal world, or even an Orwellian distopia, it takes three forces pulling in directions 120 degrees apart to maintain stability. So I see the Dawning of the Age of Big Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO). In an ideal world, all interests not in the interest of the ordinary man would be canceled out.
BTW, we Americans have our own definitions for liberal. Libertarian is what Europeans and probably rest of the world would call a Liberal since we don't have those European Aristocratic "shackles of tradition". For Americans, Liberal has a negative connotation for those who prefer to think of the US as a meritocracy. It simply means having the government take from those who have and giving it to those who don't. Obviously, this seems unfair to those who believe they should decide for themselves what to do with what they earned. Liberals tend to give a large portion of the credit for being well off to the government managed environment that citizens live in.
If you like the Parent, go read the comments spawned by his original post. Mod it up if you find the discussion worthwhile. And if you are curious why Americans are stuck choosing the lessor of two evils or not voting at all, please read my sig.
That's liberal for you folks outside the US. For some reason liberal is a dirty word to Americans. Libertarians are for liberty in both the personal freedom and economic realms. They also want small government that doesn't intrude into the lives of good people. Liberal has a negative connotation of using government to redistribute wealth from those who have it to those who don't. Since this is intended to offset the tendency of capitalism to overpay some and underpay others, it disturbs our good feelings about the US being a meritocracy.
Big Governments scare me. Big Corporarations (bigger than countries) scare me. Big Countries where most people don't vote scare me. Okay, I'm not really easily scared. But I do think we are veering off course and must do something about it.
First, while we still can, we need to get a proportional electorial system going in the US. As is, third parties don't have a chance. (see my sig) so 100% of the people are ruled by the least repulsive of the DemoRepubcraticans who only care about a relatively small portion of the US population. Since the current system benefits both of them, we can't expect much help from them.
This of this next time your favorite PBS broadcast is interrupted by a pledge break.
Maybe everyone is addressing the wrong problem. The primary reason many people buy large cars is so they might have a better chance of surviving a crash. It's exactly why I don't ride my bike to the store only a mile away. I don't even like to walk it. Two lane road, very fast traffic, no sidewalks or bike lane, stockade fence inches from the curb. This is typical in surburban Atlanta.
Claiming Jesus Christ as your saviour. As you can imagine, this allows in some pretty bad people. There are certain beliefs and behaviors you might expect go along with it, but at least in the US, their is no legal requirement that people who claim to be Christians behave in a certain way.
Whois but don't bug her, she wrote a nice apology on her other website: http://katiet.com/
BTW, the schools here are having that debate and it appears that they are going to move touch typing down to third grade where it belongs. Then they won't have to waste time on cursive.
Hacking/Reverser Engineering has been around ever since mankind learned by imitating each other. It is a good thing, it shouldn't be demonized. Don't know how long the engineering mentality was around, but I was born wanting to know not just "how things work", but "how they did that". One of the primary purposes of the patent system is to help other people come up with new and different ways to skin old cats.
Don't the Chevron cars count as prior art? Sure, they are just animations, but that counts as a design prototype.
Hence the obvious acronym. You are defending an argument that can't be defended.
IP laws are designed to encourage a creator to release his IP to the world by providing a means to enforce his right to be compensated.
It's kinda interesting that the banks can charge more for transactions that use credit cards, but the stores can't. Shows you who has more influence with the politicians
Thanks, I googled for the car article and that was the one on the list that got to the point the quickest. Only after I posted the link, did I bother surfing the rest of the site. Live and learn.