There is some indication this is already happening. The Congressional Research Service released a report about it, and the report even used the word "Trolls" in the title.
Still the report is weak on actual recommendations, and spends a portion of its content defending trolls. Its encouraging for an arm of congress to even use the term Trolls, but with no clue as to a recommended solution there is a long way to go.
It seems there is a misunderstanding about those two terms you quoted.
If the first is true, but second would be unnecessary.
If the second is true then the can not be insisting on exclusivity.
Further, a free download is not a sales channel. So number two may not apply. That would be like saying if you ever once give away a copy you must forever give it away on Amazon.
Well, you could take issue with the perfectly HORRIBLE job of conversion to mobi that he did. Find the download a the end of his rant. Compare it to the on-line wiki that he sourced.
Exactly. He at most, packaged the wiki, no doubt cleaning some things up a bit along the way.
B&N has a similar self-publish program called Pubit. When it was first introduced it was flooded with ebooks that were merely a couple paragraphs of wrapper around public domain books. I saw one such pubit book that still has the Project Gutenberg trailers attached.
B&N, and I suspect Amazon, has since modified the TOS to require that the "authors" at least hold the copyright to the vast majority of the submitted work.
The GFDL does allow him to do what he did. But Amazon doesn't have to be a party to this sort of thing.
They told him exactly why they rejected it:
The books closely match content that is freely available on the web and we are not confident that you hold exclusive publishing rights. This type of content can create a poor customer experience, and is not accepted.
Exclusive publishing rights. Just like B&N, they want their program to be something more than simple wrappers around public domain content. That's their choice. He has other alternatives for distribution, and has decided to GIVE it away.
How would that be? The chads were incomplete punchs from an otherwise smooth piece of paper. Handling won't make more. It might dislodge a hanging chad, leaving fewer, but it wouldn't make more.
It was perfectly consistent with the way the constitution was written, and the way the founders intended. States were supposed to control the Senate. Senators were appointed by state legislatures and represented the interests of the states.
There are many who rue the day that was overturned, because it marked the beginning of Federal takeover of every aspect of American life.
I have no problem with that, as long as the state follows its own laws.
But when judges start ORDERING the inclusion of ballots that were "found", with no chain of custody, after the deadline for all ballots, you can't even say that the state had an opportunity to exercise the laws already on the books. There should have been a recount, and then its over. (Or whatever Florida law requires).
Washington State allows at most two recounts. Then the numbers stand, even if it was 2,000,001 to 199,999,999. If its an exact numerical tie, its a coin flip, or (oddly enough) any other procedure the two candidates agree on. (Pistols at dawn are probably out of the question). Coin toss has been used recently in Washington.
But the key points are that the tools in the law will be made to work, and adding a statistical procedure to dictate that a tie has occured really does nothing to improve the situation,
The state was not allowed to carry out its laws and do the recount called for, because the US Supreme Court stepped in, and said enough was enough. Each re-count was turning up more and more questionable ballots found in the trunks of cars, and it was very clear that continuing to count allowed for more manufactured ballots.
It would have been fine had they simply put a stop to including more ballots, especially when so many of the late discoveries were questionable at best, and had no clear chain of custody. But too many lawyers involved.
Can you imagine the chaos if it all hung on a statistical model?
Those amendments dealt only with disenfranchised minorities seeking voting rights. You are glibly proposing a wholesale redefinition of elections for an entire country, most citizens of which are not convinced its terribly broken, even if some of the physical machinery is suspect.
You might find better luck getting rid of the Electoral College, a relic of communications in the horse and buggy age.
Why not just move to a transferable vote system, which can deal with such situations?
Could you please formulate that in the form of a constitutional amendment to each of the state's constitutions, then get that passed in each state, and post back when you have that all accomplished?
Its merely close. The voters have no clear preference. We count them all again if it is REALLY close. Every state has provisions for this. Every state defines what really close is.
The process in Florida was orderly. It followed Florida law. If there was a fault in florida it was the decision to include ambiguous ballots, and improperly voted ballots, and hanging chads.
A statistical analysis would NOT have helped. Nothing you've suggested would have helped.
We have methods to determine when elections are close enough to require re-inspection. Adding yet another method of declaring an election to be close is redundant.
Yes, we do have a great method to decide how to handle a tie - the problem is that we don't have a mechanism to declare an individual state election to be a tie.
But individual states DO have such mechanisms. Its called counting, and if that fails we have coin flips.
Your suggestion for statistical hocus pocus introduces more ambiguity of what actually is a tie, rather than less.
No. I'm talking about having a clearly defined system for resolving an ambiguous result. In other words, not just hoping that the government holds together when the Supreme Court decides to step in and impose such a system after the fact.
Actually, your are talking about a system for defining ambiguity.
We have systems in place already to define ambiguity; the forced recount if the difference is 2% or number of votes cited by BubbaChazz above for example.
These values were arrived at by evaluating real world lead-changes discovered by recounts. But instead of using some numerical analysis on every single contest which would lead to endless bickering and court cases, its locked in by law at pre-set values that everyone knows up-front.
What happens after a close election, a re-vote vs a re-count, is an entirely different matter. People are suspicious of re-votes. Too much time to import voters, suppress voters, too much cost, too much hassel of getting people out to vote again, and too little for society to actually gain by the effort.
Far easier and just as fair to assume the original votes were as representative of voters actual intentions as any re-vote might be, and simply re-count them to assure there is no introduced error. Its good enough. After all, when things are THAT close, you really can't be seriously wrong by choosing either, as long as the method is known in advance and enshrined in law. Several elections have come down to a coin flip, (defined in law).
There is a fundamental flaw in elections today: lack of consideration for "margin of error". In my opinion, margin of error should be calculated and any election which falls within the margin of error should either be held again or some sort of tie breaker should kick in.
Pretending that we can deduce the intention of every voter with zero errors is noble, naive, and ridiculous.
Its interesting that you suggest a statistical test for margine error.
Interesting because when anyone suggests NOT bothering to count 1000 absentee votes in an election with 5000 votes margin between the winner and loser, everybody (including here on slashdot) goes ballistic, claiming they were disenfranchised and screaming fraud and corruption.
So when the electorate can't handle simple math, how do you expect them to deal with concept of statistical error: Could you imagine the hue and cry where the difference was less than the margin of error, and a re-vote were called, and that re-vote went for the loser?
You do know the suicide rate is high in Finland (in particular, above the Arctic circle) mainly due to the long periods darkness 6 months out of every year, right?
The Finland rate is 17.6 per 100k people. 10 points higher for men. The US rate is 11.8 per 100k, and again 8 points higher for men. Canada 11.3. Canada has a significant population above the Arctic Circle. Figures from Here
Alaska Suicide rate is the highest in the nation, at over 27. Per here.
However, One study found that the average annual suicide rate among Alaska Natives was 40.4 per 100,000 people, compared with 17.7 per 100,000 people in the non-Native population. But if you subtract out 20-something Alaskan Native Males, (155.3 per 100,000) even the native rate is not that much higher than the rest of the population's rate. Rates in Canadian Aboriginal populations are much similarly higher, at 56.3 per 100,000 for males, and 11.8 per 100,000 for females (of all ages)
That 17.7 percent for non-native Alaskans looks surprisingly like the Finnish number.
But on the other hand the this seems as likely to be a Racial/Cultural issue when you take everything into account, Alaska, Canada, and even Finland because northern finland has some related population groups.
Oh right, commemorating the great events of September ???, lessee, when was that?
Huge earthquakes, near Yiliang County. Followed by heavy rains. Large landslides. 117 miles south of a major Yangtze tributary into which local rivers drain.
Far more likely an industrial spill or iron ore laden mudslide.
Actually you can use some coms in any way you want, such as unencrypted coms of police and fire departments, and any meant for public consumption. It is explicitly stated that way in the law. An unencrypted wifi is meant for public use.
(g) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person— (i) to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public; (ii) to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted— (I) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress; (II) by any governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communications system, including police and fire, readily accessible to the general public; (III) by a station operating on an authorized frequency within the bands allocated to the amateur, citizens band, or general mobile radio services; or (IV) by any marine or aeronautical communications system;
(iii) to engage in any conduct which— (I) is prohibited by section 633 of the Communications Act of 1934; or (II) is excepted from the application of section 705(a) of the Communications Act of 1934 by section 705(b) of that Act;
(iv) to intercept any wire or electronic communication the transmission of which is causing harmful interference to any lawfully operating station or consumer electronic equipment, to the extent necessary to identify the source of such interference; or (v) for other users of the same frequency to intercept any radio communication made through a system that utilizes frequencies monitored by individuals engaged in the provision or the use of such system, if such communication is not scrambled or encrypted.
The clear constitutional specifics you claim apply only to government, not to your neighbors. They can look into any open window any time they want, and you have no expectations of privacy unless or until you close the blinds.
The constitution wasn't written to control people's behavior, it was written to control government's behavior.
There is a specific law that prohibited manufacturer of scanners capable of receiving wireless phones, and you aren't supposed to publish what you intercepted, but there is no laws again listening.
Wifi is a totally different matter. Beaconsare broadcast precisely so that these networks can be found and encryption is provided as an OPTION.
The implication is clear, that if you turn off encryption you don't care.
I wonder where this judge was hiding during the big Google street view fiasco.
You can not "attach" physical assets without the aid of Police. Most Police ignore judgements unless they are very high amounts.
Most financial assets will be kept off shore, out of the reach of US courts. Even if they had US assets, they are not going to tell you about them, and they are not even going to show up before a judge and explain why not. They will simply ignore you.
The only way you get anything is go after them in their own country, and hope the US judgement isn't laughed out of a French court.
You've got no chance of collecting for perjury anyway, because its a crime, not a civil matter, and the police are not going to Paris for you. Get over it.
Slashdot Mirror
There is some indication this is already happening. The Congressional Research Service released a report about it, and the report even used the word "Trolls" in the title.
Still the report is weak on actual recommendations, and spends a portion of its content defending trolls. Its encouraging for an arm of congress to even use the term Trolls, but with no clue as to a recommended solution there is a long way to go.
It seems there is a misunderstanding about those two terms you quoted.
If the first is true, but second would be unnecessary.
If the second is true then the can not be insisting on exclusivity.
Further, a free download is not a sales channel. So number two may not apply. That would be like saying if you ever once give away a copy you must forever give it away on Amazon.
The Consumer IS the Customer, so I'm totally confused as to what your point was.
Well, you could take issue with the perfectly HORRIBLE job of conversion to mobi that he did.
Find the download a the end of his rant. Compare it to the on-line wiki that he sourced.
Pathetic.
Exactly. He at most, packaged the wiki, no doubt cleaning some things up a bit along the way.
B&N has a similar self-publish program called Pubit.
When it was first introduced it was flooded with ebooks that were merely a couple paragraphs of wrapper around public domain books. I saw one such pubit book that still has the Project Gutenberg trailers attached.
B&N, and I suspect Amazon, has since modified the TOS to require that the "authors" at least hold the copyright to the vast majority of the submitted work.
The GFDL does allow him to do what he did. But Amazon doesn't have to be a party to this sort of thing.
They told him exactly why they rejected it:
The books closely match content that is freely available on the web and we are not confident that you hold exclusive publishing rights. This type of content can create a poor customer experience, and is not accepted.
Exclusive publishing rights. Just like B&N, they want their program to be something more than simple wrappers around public domain content.
That's their choice. He has other alternatives for distribution, and has decided to GIVE it away.
Produced MORE hanging chads?
How would that be?
The chads were incomplete punchs from an otherwise smooth piece of paper. Handling won't make more. It might dislodge a hanging chad, leaving fewer, but it wouldn't make more.
How many accounts do you post under?
It was perfectly consistent with the way the constitution was written, and the way the founders intended. States were supposed to control the Senate. Senators were appointed by state legislatures and represented the interests of the states.
There are many who rue the day that was overturned, because it marked the beginning of Federal takeover of every aspect of American life.
I have no problem with that, as long as the state follows its own laws.
But when judges start ORDERING the inclusion of ballots that were "found", with no chain of custody, after the deadline for all ballots, you can't even say that the state had an opportunity to exercise the laws already on the books. There should have been a recount, and then its over. (Or whatever Florida law requires).
Washington State allows at most two recounts. Then the numbers stand, even if it was 2,000,001 to 199,999,999.
If its an exact numerical tie, its a coin flip, or (oddly enough) any other procedure the two candidates agree on. (Pistols at dawn are probably out of the question). Coin toss has been used recently in Washington.
But the key points are that the tools in the law will be made to work, and adding a statistical procedure to dictate that a tie has occured really does nothing to improve the situation,
It actually WASN'T a tie, and you know that.
The state was not allowed to carry out its laws and do the recount called for, because the US Supreme Court stepped in, and said enough was enough.
Each re-count was turning up more and more questionable ballots found in the trunks of cars, and it was very clear that continuing to count allowed for
more manufactured ballots.
It would have been fine had they simply put a stop to including more ballots, especially when so many of the late discoveries were questionable at best, and had no clear chain of custody. But too many lawyers involved.
Can you imagine the chaos if it all hung on a statistical model?
but it isn't quite as a hard as you say.
Then do it.
Those amendments dealt only with disenfranchised minorities seeking voting rights.
You are glibly proposing a wholesale redefinition of elections for an entire country, most citizens of which are not convinced its terribly broken, even
if some of the physical machinery is suspect.
You might find better luck getting rid of the Electoral College, a relic of communications in the horse and buggy age.
At some point you have to declare the election a tie and move to a backup mechanism.
We have that. Its called a coin flip.
Why not just move to a transferable vote system, which can deal with such situations?
Could you please formulate that in the form of a constitutional amendment to each of the state's constitutions, then get that passed in each state, and post back when you have that all accomplished?
Thanks.
A close election is not a "spoiled election".
Its merely close. The voters have no clear preference.
We count them all again if it is REALLY close. Every state has provisions for this. Every state defines what really close is.
The process in Florida was orderly. It followed Florida law.
If there was a fault in florida it was the decision to include ambiguous ballots, and improperly voted ballots, and hanging chads.
A statistical analysis would NOT have helped. Nothing you've suggested would have helped.
We have methods to determine when elections are close enough to require re-inspection. Adding yet another method of declaring
an election to be close is redundant.
Yes, we do have a great method to decide how to handle a tie - the problem is that we don't have a mechanism to declare an individual state election to be a tie.
But individual states DO have such mechanisms.
Its called counting, and if that fails we have coin flips.
Your suggestion for statistical hocus pocus introduces more ambiguity of what actually is a tie, rather than less.
No. I'm talking about having a clearly defined system for resolving an ambiguous result. In other words, not just hoping that the government holds together when the Supreme Court decides to step in and impose such a system after the fact.
Actually, your are talking about a system for defining ambiguity.
We have systems in place already to define ambiguity; the forced recount if the difference is 2% or number of votes cited by BubbaChazz above for example.
These values were arrived at by evaluating real world lead-changes discovered by recounts. But instead of using some numerical analysis on every single contest which would lead to endless bickering and court cases, its locked in by law at pre-set values that everyone knows up-front.
What happens after a close election, a re-vote vs a re-count, is an entirely different matter. People are suspicious of re-votes. Too much time to import voters, suppress voters, too much cost, too much hassel of getting people out to vote again, and too little for society to actually gain by the effort.
Far easier and just as fair to assume the original votes were as representative of voters actual intentions as any re-vote might be, and simply re-count them to assure there is no introduced error. Its good enough. After all, when things are THAT close, you really can't be seriously wrong by choosing either, as long as the method is known in advance and enshrined in law. Several elections have come down to a coin flip, (defined in law).
Define tied.
That is, after all, the whole point of this entire sub-thread.
There is a fundamental flaw in elections today: lack of consideration for "margin of error". In my opinion, margin of error should be calculated and any election which falls within the margin of error should either be held again or some sort of tie breaker should kick in.
Pretending that we can deduce the intention of every voter with zero errors is noble, naive, and ridiculous.
Its interesting that you suggest a statistical test for margine error.
Interesting because when anyone suggests NOT bothering to count 1000 absentee votes in an election with 5000 votes margin between the winner and loser, everybody (including here on slashdot) goes ballistic, claiming they were disenfranchised and screaming fraud and corruption.
So when the electorate can't handle simple math, how do you expect them to deal with concept of statistical error: Could you imagine the hue and cry where the difference was less than the margin of error, and a re-vote were called, and that re-vote went for the loser?
synchronizing periods
Story said this was the "First Time". Had it been a monthly occurrence it wouldn't be news.
You do know the suicide rate is high in Finland (in particular, above the Arctic circle) mainly due to the long periods darkness 6 months out of every year, right?
The Finland rate is 17.6 per 100k people. 10 points higher for men.
The US rate is 11.8 per 100k, and again 8 points higher for men.
Canada 11.3. Canada has a significant population above the Arctic Circle.
Figures from Here
Alaska Suicide rate is the highest in the nation, at over 27. Per here.
However, One study found that the average annual suicide rate among Alaska Natives was 40.4 per 100,000 people, compared with 17.7 per 100,000 people in the non-Native population. But if you subtract out 20-something Alaskan Native Males, (155.3 per 100,000) even the native rate is not that much higher than the rest of the population's rate.
Rates in Canadian Aboriginal populations are much similarly higher, at 56.3 per 100,000 for males, and 11.8 per 100,000 for females (of all ages)
That 17.7 percent for non-native Alaskans looks surprisingly like the Finnish number.
But on the other hand the this seems as likely to be a Racial/Cultural issue when you take everything into account, Alaska, Canada, and even Finland because northern finland has some related population groups.
Use this link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2199800/The-river-DID-run-red-Residents-Chinese-city-left-baffled-Yangtze-turns-scarlet.html#ixzz25u00nD4M
No idea why the story insisted on linking to a secondary source.
Oh right, commemorating the great events of September ???, lessee, when was that?
Huge earthquakes, near Yiliang County.
Followed by heavy rains.
Large landslides.
117 miles south of a major Yangtze tributary into which local rivers drain.
Far more likely an industrial spill or iron ore laden mudslide.
Actually you can use some coms in any way you want, such as unencrypted coms of police and fire departments, and any meant for public consumption. It is explicitly stated that way in the law. An unencrypted wifi is meant for public use.
(g) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person—
(i) to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public;
(ii) to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted—
(I) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;
(II) by any governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communications system, including police and fire, readily accessible to the general public;
(III) by a station operating on an authorized frequency within the bands allocated to the amateur, citizens band, or general mobile radio services; or
(IV) by any marine or aeronautical communications system;
(iii) to engage in any conduct which—
(I) is prohibited by section 633 of the Communications Act of 1934; or
(II) is excepted from the application of section 705(a) of the Communications Act of 1934 by section 705(b) of that Act;
(iv) to intercept any wire or electronic communication the transmission of which is causing harmful interference to any lawfully operating station or consumer electronic equipment, to the extent necessary to identify the source of such interference; or
(v) for other users of the same frequency to intercept any radio communication made through a system that utilizes frequencies monitored by individuals engaged in the provision or the use of such system, if such communication is not scrambled or encrypted.
18 USC 2511 at (g)
The clear constitutional specifics you claim apply only to government, not to your neighbors. They can look into any open window any time they want, and you have no expectations of privacy unless or until you close the blinds.
The constitution wasn't written to control people's behavior, it was written to control government's behavior.
There is a specific law that prohibited manufacturer of scanners capable of receiving wireless phones, and you aren't supposed to publish what you intercepted, but there is no laws again listening.
Wifi is a totally different matter. Beaconsare broadcast precisely so that these networks can be found and encryption is provided as an OPTION.
The implication is clear, that if you turn off encryption you don't care.
I wonder where this judge was hiding during the big Google street view fiasco.
You can not "attach" physical assets without the aid of Police.
Most Police ignore judgements unless they are very high amounts.
Most financial assets will be kept off shore, out of the reach of US courts.
Even if they had US assets, they are not going to tell you about them, and they are not even going to show up before a judge and explain why not.
They will simply ignore you.
The only way you get anything is go after them in their own country, and hope the US judgement isn't laughed out of a French court.
You've got no chance of collecting for perjury anyway, because its a crime, not a civil matter, and the police are not going to Paris for you.
Get over it.