Bush has a greater role than you think. He says "America needs this" and people vote. You think it's an oversimplification, but it isn't. That carries more weight than most people realise (and, in fact, impinges on democracy).
If you've read the quote from Hermann Goerring, you'll see that actual facts don't come into this. All Bush has to do is conjure up some threat, and hey presto! everyone's behind him. Look at 9/11 - the whole entire country was so behind him his proctologist thought christmas came early.
About the mentioning god part. The constitution (first amendment, I believe) mentions the seperation of church and state, to paraphrase - the government can't tell people what religion to follow, as it's none of their business. Bush, in his infinite wisdom, mentions God. He says "God bless America", and he asks God to help the US just as he asks the US to pray to God. He can't do that. Endorsing any religion (as that certainly is) is pushing it on Americans who don't necessarily follow it. How can he represent a nation if he's offering religious zeal that contradicts millions upon millions of Americans? Quite simply - he can't. Seriously, read up on it - he shouldn't even mention Him.
With regards to the oath - so what. Saying an oath doesn't change squat. Bush has already fucked around with the constitution, so he's obviously in breach of that, too (and proves your idea of "everyone's watching the constitution" BS, as Bush is wiping his monkey arse on it as we speak, and no-one seems to care)
I've read history. I've read more than most people I know. This is how it always starts. Remember - even Hitler was elected. Are you saying Nazi germany was full of psychos? No - the Germans were people like you and I. It was their political overseers who changed them. Comparing Bush to Clinton is a bit of a no-starter. Clinton was very different. He wasn't a lone ranger. He listened to international opinion. He worked with other countries, not against. Clinton's military "jaunt" in Kosovo was sponsored and approved by NATO and the UN, not just his buddies.
And I did my bit. I debated Bush's political stance in the middle of some Free Republicans in LA, and saw the horrible side of dumb people pretending they know politics. Racist, fascist bastards. Even the LAPD was on their side.
Enough about them, let me assure you I'm no "lefty pinko marxist". All I am is a guy, watching America throw away lots of long-held beliefs (freedom, democracy, justice) for some dumb president in a suit. He's twisting the nation, and people can't see. When they finally wise up, it's too late. Guantanamo bay is just the start. That's flagrant disregard for international law and human rights (something the US prides itself as being a staunch believer in), and no-one seems to care. Bush is doing something horribly illegal and unethical IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM. How the FUCK does that work? As they say, it's like fucking for virginity. For a country that prides itself in upholding freedom and justice to allow that to go on, something's up. Seriously, think what that could be.
But surely all that shows is that they know his name. That proves absolutely nothing. How does he know his vote wasn't changed to the other guy after he voted?
Like the "zero tally" technique Diebold employs, lots of these things are for voter peace-of-mind, not actual auditing. Seeing your name on a bit of paper will probably make the voter sleep easier, yet doesn't stop the election-rigger rigging elections. Is that a win-win situation? I can't tell:-P
It's not just sustainability, it's getting it to react. You need intense pressures, and the only ways to do this previously, require very large (read: industrial) bits of equipment, just for the proof-of-concept. Even then, the proofs have been lack-lustre at best, always with a big ol' helping of disclaimers:-P
If this is right, it's great news. A new method of plasma containment (or usage thereof) is always good, if not for this project than others.
I imagine random samples are taken from voting machines ready to be deployed (as I said, I don't know, but that's the way similar things are checked for). They'd take the machines and examine the code. If it's the same code, it's OK. If not, you get the picture.
Those are 2.8ghz Xeons, btw, so more expensive. They're also the price on their own, bought singularly. $37k for 55 developers CPUs is pretty good, and could undoubtedly be bought down to nearer $20k when bought bulk.
Seriously, price arguments about Intel don't work that well any more. They used to cost shedloads, now it's only their top-of-line processors (such as the extreme edition, and new models) that carry the weight (after all, if you need the fastest processor available, you can afford to pay for it:-P).
It exists - just look at Brazil. The problem is, no-one gets any money for it. And, the Republicans can't buy votes through it.
Call me paranoid/whatever, but if they've got nothing to hide from this republican/diebold relationship, they're doing a really horrible job of proving it. Internal memos about delivering votes to the president certainly don't help, neither do republican fundraisers being held in the CEO's house.
Being able to check a vote after the fact is seriously, seriously dodgy territory. Voter anonymity is sacred to democracy, and being able to check your vote away from the voting machine puts it in jeopardy. That's why you have to be satisfied the moment you vote that your vote has been registered, before you leave the booth.
But, by the same token, there's no guarantee anyone counts your paper vote. I don't see the counters going through the ballots, looking at mine (giving me a nod so I know it's mine), and tallying up a point for me.
Calculating millions of votes is never going to happen 100% in front of peoples' eyes. That can't happen. I know what you're saying sounds very dodgy, but it happens already with paper ballots. If we could run open-source code on the voting (and collating) machines, we'd have less worries about whether our votes were counted, and therefor less doubts about the outcome of an election. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
It's not as if it has to be GPLd or anything - a "look, but don't touch/use/sell/anything else" license would be more than appropriate here.
If you read the comments here, you'll see recurring themes - "I'm scared of electronic voting"... "it's the end of democracy!"... "you insensitive clod!"... etc. The real point here, is people aren't scared of electronic voting, but of closed-source electronic voting.
Closed source is fine when all that's at risk is your shopping list, or what pr0n sites you view, but national elections are another thing. For this, the mechanism for voting has to be user-verifiable.
Take a look at Brazil. 100% (I believe) electronic voting, using an OPEN SOURCE voting solution. There, if you have any doubts about the system, you just pull up the entire source code and look for the $republicans++ line or whatever.
Electronic voting could be the best way to defend democracy, but it has to be achieved in a democratic fashion. It can't be controlled by someone looking to make money from it. There have to be NO conflicts of interest. Just a single conflict of interest and the whole integrity of the system comes into doubt, and therefor the outcome.
Having electronic voting that's run by 3 companies spread across the US is a really, truly horrible idea. It puts the ballot paper in the pocket of the politician - surely exactly what it shouldn't be doing.
I'm done ranting now. I want electronic voting to be global. I just want it to come from the people, not some guys in suits trying to get more money.
If you can make sense of that, you're a better man than me:-P
You talk about the constitution as if it's some 300-ft killer mechanoid from the future, armed with bazookas and death-rays. It's not. Bush has already gone against it (mentioning God, etc., the PATRIOT act). Bush can change it as easily as wiping his monkey-arse. In fact, the DOMA will do just that (constitutionally banning same-sex marriages - if that's not bending the constitution to your personal religious beliefs, what is?).
That very fact means the constitution is worth approximately 0, as there are no guarantees it'll be there tomorrow. No bit about guns is going to stop someone declaring it null and void.
If someone tries to pull the plug on the constitution, it won't do a "skynet", go into self-preservation mode and take revenge - it goes into the shredder, and there's not a damn thing it, or anyone else can do.
It's a placebo. People think "Oh - the constitution will save us!" like it's superman, and with that happy thought running through the fields of daisies in their minds, sit back and watch CNN, safe in the knowledge the constitution "has their backs". Unfortunately, it's as fragile as you and me, and there are people in charge of it who'd rather it not exist. Think on.
Definitely... Especially the part about the zero-tally to begin with (printing each candidate's name followed by a 0). That has to be for looks, as it proves absolutely nothing. In fact, to me, just having it there makes it look suspicious... the kind of "There's nothing up my sleeves" ploy magicians pull.
The inventors of this idea aren't going for the "thin client" approach. They're talking about limited physical manifestation. In the PDF on their site (I read it:-P) they talk about a ghost appearing as a slight blurring in the corner of a web-page the user is browsing. That would take mere bytes to achieve, and would be very difficult to achieve via your own hardware in your pocket.
Giving your information to the ghost host (fnar:-P) in the described situation is a trivial. There's no risk to you or the receiver when all you're doing is transferring data. I'm talking about real risks, like a ghost being able to open the garage doors for you, or enable an elevator. There, the ghost would have to be provided by the owner of the doors/elevators, as giving away control of those systems to some arbitrary external code would be potentially disasterous. A ghost attached (physically and logically) to a user would limit its usefulness, severely.
The main database would be foolish to trust everything that requests data from it. Even giving it access could be dangerous, as exploits aren't unknown (especially on MSSQL! oy!), so having a large database of people and their movements isn't something institutions want falling into the "wrong hands", even if from a purely legal point of view (if it was in the UK, they would have violated the data protection act, and recieve heavy penalties for a breach). Due to that fact alone, policy would stop external ghosts connecting the mainframe. Talking to a ghost is a different kettle of fish altogether, as it would be very, very hard to break into a database via voice recognition (although, give MS 2 weeks and I'm sure they could manage it:-P)
If there was a way to make trusted ghosts (palladium? something similar?), then yes - that would be the perfect method. They would also have to standardise a way of representing life in a specific area to such a degree of accuracy and portability, otherwise a ghost that works in starbucks could go to pot in WalMart (for example). So, once you have a way for a ghost to tell the main server it's a good ghost, and a way for the server to tell the ghost everything it needs to know, personal ghosts would be the best thing to ever happen to the world of PDAs. Personal Digital Apparition:)
Without trust, the further away from the main server a ghost is, the less effective it is.
It becomes illegal when people use their positions to actively inflate (or try to inflate) prices for goods, instead of letting the market decide. The whos, whys and whatnots don't come into it - that's the single act that is illegal. Breaking a price-fixing agreement isn't illegal, in fact it's possibly the only legal thing you can do in such a situation.
So you admit it took more arms than Germany had to stop them... That means it's impossible to stop Bush from doing what he wants with guns, as he has most of them. Thanks for proving my point:)
This has nothing to do with the cold war. This has everything to do with the fact the US needs the rest of the world to survive, yet seems reluctant to talk to people. It's like having a bi-polar neighbor with a shotgun. One second it's The Brady Bunch, the next it's When Good Neighbors Go Bad 3. The very fact you're arguing global relations like this is the school yard again highlights your complete lack of understanding on the subject. Seriously, it's funny.
There's no excuse for violence. "He started it!" belongs in the playground. I do know about humanity. I also know about restraint, and about being nice to people. You, however, seem to only know WWE wrestling and Fox. A victory through force is at best, hollow. A victory through words is at worst perfect.
I understand completely where you're from. I can't emphasize that enough. I used to think like that when I was about 10. It was the mentality of "them and us" and the thought that only violence solved anything. We've seen in Iraq that even winning a war doesn't bring peace. The only way to do that is to talk about differences, not fight over them.
That's it - the ghost isn't attached to a user, any more than a web server is attached to the browser. It serves whoever needs help, whenever, whereever.
A personal ghost wouldn't have the authority to fill in the paperwork to lend you a notebook from the computer lab. A personal ghost probably wouldn't be able to query databases for you (that would be a big security risk). If the ghost remains part of the institution, it can better act like an employee and less like a guest (or is that ghuest?:-P). As I said before, personal ghosts would be like taking your own shop keeper with you when you went to Vons. I'd rather have the Vons dude check out my Fudge'Ems.;)
That's the thing, though - people need to have a reference in real life if you're going to explain abstract concepts to them. Telling a layperson that this software gives them a "ghost" to talk to/ask stuff off, they'll know exactly what you mean - something/someone who's not physically present, yet floats around you telling you stuff. I think you don't give people enough credit when it comes to naming things. If calling them "ghosts" is a bad idea, how about the success of Dirt Devil? People can see past that. They know it's not actually a devil who eats dirt, just like they'll know these ghosts aren't WiFi-enabled poltergeists:-P
Location-specific ghosts are just that - they belong to the location. To the instutution they "haunt", it's more important for those ghosts to be theirs. Would you create a system where any script-kiddie can walk in and upload their own code via wifi? exactly. Especially seeing as these ghosts sound like future replacement for staff (with all the responsibilities/abilities that implies). Imagine going into a shop with your own personal check-out boy/girl, and have them run behind the counter to serve you. Not exactly a nice idea for the shop owner - strangers in the till, no guarantees they're not ripping you off. That's exactly what having a personal ghost interacting with a building/institution is like. Having ghosts that were built for a specific area also means they can be programmed to suit that area better (ie they know the fire alarm test is in 2 minutes and warns you not to spill your coffee, or that the west stairway is less crowded in the afternoon). It must be very difficult to convey flow through buildings in an XML file, adequately enough to be of use.
And, dude - You don't see microsoft going on about "linsux", do you:-P
Slashdot Mirror
If you've read the quote from Hermann Goerring, you'll see that actual facts don't come into this. All Bush has to do is conjure up some threat, and hey presto! everyone's behind him. Look at 9/11 - the whole entire country was so behind him his proctologist thought christmas came early.
About the mentioning god part. The constitution (first amendment, I believe) mentions the seperation of church and state, to paraphrase - the government can't tell people what religion to follow, as it's none of their business. Bush, in his infinite wisdom, mentions God. He says "God bless America", and he asks God to help the US just as he asks the US to pray to God. He can't do that. Endorsing any religion (as that certainly is) is pushing it on Americans who don't necessarily follow it. How can he represent a nation if he's offering religious zeal that contradicts millions upon millions of Americans? Quite simply - he can't. Seriously, read up on it - he shouldn't even mention Him.
With regards to the oath - so what. Saying an oath doesn't change squat. Bush has already fucked around with the constitution, so he's obviously in breach of that, too (and proves your idea of "everyone's watching the constitution" BS, as Bush is wiping his monkey arse on it as we speak, and no-one seems to care)
I've read history. I've read more than most people I know. This is how it always starts. Remember - even Hitler was elected. Are you saying Nazi germany was full of psychos? No - the Germans were people like you and I. It was their political overseers who changed them. Comparing Bush to Clinton is a bit of a no-starter. Clinton was very different. He wasn't a lone ranger. He listened to international opinion. He worked with other countries, not against. Clinton's military "jaunt" in Kosovo was sponsored and approved by NATO and the UN, not just his buddies.
And I did my bit. I debated Bush's political stance in the middle of some Free Republicans in LA, and saw the horrible side of dumb people pretending they know politics. Racist, fascist bastards. Even the LAPD was on their side.
Enough about them, let me assure you I'm no "lefty pinko marxist". All I am is a guy, watching America throw away lots of long-held beliefs (freedom, democracy, justice) for some dumb president in a suit. He's twisting the nation, and people can't see. When they finally wise up, it's too late. Guantanamo bay is just the start. That's flagrant disregard for international law and human rights (something the US prides itself as being a staunch believer in), and no-one seems to care. Bush is doing something horribly illegal and unethical IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM. How the FUCK does that work? As they say, it's like fucking for virginity. For a country that prides itself in upholding freedom and justice to allow that to go on, something's up. Seriously, think what that could be.
That was exactly what I meant - fusion in general. :)
I wish these guys the best, and hope they've at least found out something cool to do with bubbles and sound :-P
Exactly. The "Mr Fusion" was to generate the necessary 1.21 gigawatts, not the 88mph :)
Like the "zero tally" technique Diebold employs, lots of these things are for voter peace-of-mind, not actual auditing. Seeing your name on a bit of paper will probably make the voter sleep easier, yet doesn't stop the election-rigger rigging elections. Is that a win-win situation? I can't tell :-P
Ain't plasma coooool? oh, wait...
If this is right, it's great news. A new method of plasma containment (or usage thereof) is always good, if not for this project than others.
fingers crossed it's dinner ;)
I imagine random samples are taken from voting machines ready to be deployed (as I said, I don't know, but that's the way similar things are checked for). They'd take the machines and examine the code. If it's the same code, it's OK. If not, you get the picture.
$332x2x55=$36,520
Those are 2.8ghz Xeons, btw, so more expensive. They're also the price on their own, bought singularly. $37k for 55 developers CPUs is pretty good, and could undoubtedly be bought down to nearer $20k when bought bulk.
Seriously, price arguments about Intel don't work that well any more. They used to cost shedloads, now it's only their top-of-line processors (such as the extreme edition, and new models) that carry the weight (after all, if you need the fastest processor available, you can afford to pay for it :-P).
microsoft? :-P
Call me paranoid/whatever, but if they've got nothing to hide from this republican/diebold relationship, they're doing a really horrible job of proving it. Internal memos about delivering votes to the president certainly don't help, neither do republican fundraisers being held in the CEO's house.
Can you say conflict of interests?
Otherwise, what's to stop your vote being bought?
Calculating millions of votes is never going to happen 100% in front of peoples' eyes. That can't happen. I know what you're saying sounds very dodgy, but it happens already with paper ballots. If we could run open-source code on the voting (and collating) machines, we'd have less worries about whether our votes were counted, and therefor less doubts about the outcome of an election. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
It's not as if it has to be GPLd or anything - a "look, but don't touch/use/sell/anything else" license would be more than appropriate here.
Closed source is fine when all that's at risk is your shopping list, or what pr0n sites you view, but national elections are another thing. For this, the mechanism for voting has to be user-verifiable.
Take a look at Brazil. 100% (I believe) electronic voting, using an OPEN SOURCE voting solution. There, if you have any doubts about the system, you just pull up the entire source code and look for the $republicans++ line or whatever.
Electronic voting could be the best way to defend democracy, but it has to be achieved in a democratic fashion. It can't be controlled by someone looking to make money from it. There have to be NO conflicts of interest. Just a single conflict of interest and the whole integrity of the system comes into doubt, and therefor the outcome.
Having electronic voting that's run by 3 companies spread across the US is a really, truly horrible idea. It puts the ballot paper in the pocket of the politician - surely exactly what it shouldn't be doing.
I'm done ranting now. I want electronic voting to be global. I just want it to come from the people, not some guys in suits trying to get more money.
If you can make sense of that, you're a better man than me :-P
That very fact means the constitution is worth approximately 0, as there are no guarantees it'll be there tomorrow. No bit about guns is going to stop someone declaring it null and void.
If someone tries to pull the plug on the constitution, it won't do a "skynet", go into self-preservation mode and take revenge - it goes into the shredder, and there's not a damn thing it, or anyone else can do.
It's a placebo. People think "Oh - the constitution will save us!" like it's superman, and with that happy thought running through the fields of daisies in their minds, sit back and watch CNN, safe in the knowledge the constitution "has their backs". Unfortunately, it's as fragile as you and me, and there are people in charge of it who'd rather it not exist. Think on.
Definitely... Especially the part about the zero-tally to begin with (printing each candidate's name followed by a 0). That has to be for looks, as it proves absolutely nothing. In fact, to me, just having it there makes it look suspicious... the kind of "There's nothing up my sleeves" ploy magicians pull.
Do you do that with every piece of mail? :-P
Giving your information to the ghost host (fnar :-P) in the described situation is a trivial. There's no risk to you or the receiver when all you're doing is transferring data. I'm talking about real risks, like a ghost being able to open the garage doors for you, or enable an elevator. There, the ghost would have to be provided by the owner of the doors/elevators, as giving away control of those systems to some arbitrary external code would be potentially disasterous. A ghost attached (physically and logically) to a user would limit its usefulness, severely.
The main database would be foolish to trust everything that requests data from it. Even giving it access could be dangerous, as exploits aren't unknown (especially on MSSQL! oy!), so having a large database of people and their movements isn't something institutions want falling into the "wrong hands", even if from a purely legal point of view (if it was in the UK, they would have violated the data protection act, and recieve heavy penalties for a breach). Due to that fact alone, policy would stop external ghosts connecting the mainframe. Talking to a ghost is a different kettle of fish altogether, as it would be very, very hard to break into a database via voice recognition (although, give MS 2 weeks and I'm sure they could manage it :-P)
If there was a way to make trusted ghosts (palladium? something similar?), then yes - that would be the perfect method. They would also have to standardise a way of representing life in a specific area to such a degree of accuracy and portability, otherwise a ghost that works in starbucks could go to pot in WalMart (for example). So, once you have a way for a ghost to tell the main server it's a good ghost, and a way for the server to tell the ghost everything it needs to know, personal ghosts would be the best thing to ever happen to the world of PDAs. Personal Digital Apparition :)
Without trust, the further away from the main server a ghost is, the less effective it is.
It becomes illegal when people use their positions to actively inflate (or try to inflate) prices for goods, instead of letting the market decide. The whos, whys and whatnots don't come into it - that's the single act that is illegal. Breaking a price-fixing agreement isn't illegal, in fact it's possibly the only legal thing you can do in such a situation.
This has nothing to do with the cold war. This has everything to do with the fact the US needs the rest of the world to survive, yet seems reluctant to talk to people. It's like having a bi-polar neighbor with a shotgun. One second it's The Brady Bunch, the next it's When Good Neighbors Go Bad 3. The very fact you're arguing global relations like this is the school yard again highlights your complete lack of understanding on the subject. Seriously, it's funny.
There's no excuse for violence. "He started it!" belongs in the playground. I do know about humanity. I also know about restraint, and about being nice to people. You, however, seem to only know WWE wrestling and Fox. A victory through force is at best, hollow. A victory through words is at worst perfect.
I understand completely where you're from. I can't emphasize that enough. I used to think like that when I was about 10. It was the mentality of "them and us" and the thought that only violence solved anything. We've seen in Iraq that even winning a war doesn't bring peace. The only way to do that is to talk about differences, not fight over them.
A personal ghost wouldn't have the authority to fill in the paperwork to lend you a notebook from the computer lab. A personal ghost probably wouldn't be able to query databases for you (that would be a big security risk). If the ghost remains part of the institution, it can better act like an employee and less like a guest (or is that ghuest? :-P). As I said before, personal ghosts would be like taking your own shop keeper with you when you went to Vons. I'd rather have the Vons dude check out my Fudge'Ems. ;)
yeah - like the bit with the IP address that had an 'octet' over 300 :-P
That's the thing, though - people need to have a reference in real life if you're going to explain abstract concepts to them. Telling a layperson that this software gives them a "ghost" to talk to/ask stuff off, they'll know exactly what you mean - something/someone who's not physically present, yet floats around you telling you stuff. I think you don't give people enough credit when it comes to naming things. If calling them "ghosts" is a bad idea, how about the success of Dirt Devil? People can see past that. They know it's not actually a devil who eats dirt, just like they'll know these ghosts aren't WiFi-enabled poltergeists :-P
And, dude - You don't see microsoft going on about "linsux", do you :-P