Canada has provincial and municipal elections too, but they don't coincide with federal elections, so any given ballot is simpler than a typical US ballot. And there aren't propositions like in California to clutter up the ballot. Even if there are more things to tally on American ballots, I bet enough election workers could be found to do the job.
Yes, its the Alaska Democratic Party asking, but the excuse given by the State of Alaska for not releasing the data is based on the State's putative obligations to Diebold. If the State is in fact unconstrained, its excuse for not complying with the request disappears.
It may be about a contract - I don't think the article says whether there is an NDA that covers this or not - but even if it is, my arguments above still apply. The State of Alaska probably doesn't risk anything by breaching the contract. What damages would be awarded?
People are frugal in northern BC.:) We just had Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green, and an independent. The complete list of parties across Canada is pretty impressive:
BQ Bloc Quebecois CON Conservative Party of Canada LIB Liberal Party of Canada NDP New Democratic Party of Canada GRN Green Party of Canada PMP Parti Marijuana Party CAP Canadian Action Party M-L Marxist-Leninist Party CPC Communist Party CLC Communist League of Canada CHP Christian Heritage Party PCP Progressive Canadian Party LBT Libertarian Party AAE Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party FPN First Peoples National Party WB Western Block Party
Vote counting is massively parallelizable. It doesn't take very long for somebody to tally the votes from a couple hundred ballots.
The federal election in here in Canada was yesterday, with the polls closing at 19:00. Turnout was about 65%. The results were in before
midnight.
With a little effort I bet Americans could manage this too.
Since when is a file format subject to copyright?
It could, perhaps, be patented, but it isn't copyrightable
and so the statutory damages for copyright infringement are
not relevant.
Well, not really. To begin with, the Conservatives only got a little over a third of the seats in Parliament, meaning that they will form a minority government. Furthermore, the Senate (which is not elected) is dominated by Liberals. So, yes, the Conservatives will form the government, but they will not be able to do whatever they like.
Moreover, the issues in the election were largely not aligned with left-right divisions. In fact, there wasn't an awful lot of disagreement on policy at all. What this election was really about was disenchantment with the Liberals, partly because they have been in power for a long time and partly because of a number of scandals. The election was anti-Liberal, not pro-Conservative.
Indeed, although the Conservatives gained seats, there was also a dramatic increase in the number of seats held by the New Democratic Party, which is socialist, roughly the equivalent of the Labour Party in some other countries.
There are also major differences between the Conservatives and the US Republican party. For example, they have explicitly stated that they have no interest whatever in banning abortion. On same-sex marriage they have not taken a stance on the issue itself but merely say that they will allow a free vote (meaning that MPs are not obligated to vote with their party). Their platform included reducing the sales tax, which is arguably a progressive move since the sales tax is regressive. So, yes, they are to the right of the other major parties, but they aren't the Republicans, thank goodness.
Voting machines are not used in Canadian elections. If a Canadian company makes voting machines, it is benefitting from the foolishness of people elsewhere.
The format isn't patented, I don't think, and isn't copyrightable, so the only legal protection it might have is trade secret. However, since the format is already out in the open, due both to revelation in other states and from the Diebold files posted on the net, it is no longer a trade secret and there is nothing that Diebold can complain about.
Furthermore, I don't see that anything actually prevents the State of Alaska from revealing the file format even if it is a trade secret. What can Diebold do about it? The State probably has sovereign immunity, and in any case, the secret is probably worth nothing so even if Diebold sued successfully they wouldn't get any damages to speak of.
Meanwhile here in Canada yet another election has been conducted without any problem using simple paper ballots. Just five lines with the names and parties of the candidates and a circle in which to draw an X. No need for voting machines, no possibility of confusion, minimal opportunity for fraud.
Our forefathers started this country because they hated repression.
Partly true, but an important motivation for the American Revolution
was the desire of many colonists to steal still more land from the Indians, a desire which Britain repressed by refusing to allow westward expansion. Many of the Founding Fathers were land speculators. It wasn't all as noble as its made out to be.
I don't know whether this is for real - it may be people falsifying their UA as a joke - but my website apparently receives one or two visits a month from systems claiming to run CP/M.
Around 1970, at the height of the anti-war movement, there was half-serious talk
in Vermont of seceding from the US and joining Canada. Another idea was that Vermont should secede from the US, Quebec from Canada, and then Vermont and Quebec would form a new country. I'm pretty sure that one wouldn't have worked out.
When I was a highschool student my debate partner and I went to the US Nationals
and in one round debated the team from Louisiana. After the round, they expressed surprise at debating the team from Vermont since they thought that Canadian teams were not allowed in the US tournament! These guys weren't idiots: they were the Louisiana state champions.
What do you mean mid-90s? Email was just fine in the mid-80s. I still use Berkeley mailx almost all the time. The main exception is when I have to send an attachment. I don't even like those new-fangled things like Pine and MH, much-less webmail. If only somebody would update mailx to handle attachments...
The phrase "or any later version" is not part of the GPL. Rather it is part of the statement in which you specify that the GPL is the license that you are using.
The FSF recommends including this phrase but it isn't required by them or by the GPL. You are perfectly free to specify a particular version of the GPL if you
wish to.
The Wikipedia article points out that the article in which the plagiarism was first noticed corresponds to a Wikipedia article in which the edit history shows that the relevant portions were written by two different contributors and edited by a third (anonymous) contributor. The argument, which isn't made explicit, is that it is much more likely that the newspaper article was based on the Wikipedia article than that two contributors to Wikipedia copied different portions of the same newspaper article and that a third contributor edited the result in such a way as to increase the similarity to the newspaper article.
As others have said, the publication date of the newspaper and the timestamps on the Wikipedia articles also establish a chronology. The Wikipedia article can't have been plagiarized from the newspaper article if it was published before the newspaper article.
One thing to consider if the job will entail a significant pay cut is to what extent your expenses will be at the cheap local rates. In many third world countries local food and housing are very cheap, but imported items are very expensive. You'll almost certainly want to buy imported tech gear. Will you be able to afford it? Similarly, how expensive will it be to travel elsewhere if that is important to you? Do you like the local foods, or will you want to import a lot of expensive stuff? If you read a lot, to what extent will locally available materials satisfy you? Can you read the local language? And is a lot of what interests you published locally? If not, purchasing books from the US or other countries and importing them may be very expensive.
Much of the material broadcast is copyrighted and would not really be affected by "webcaster's rights" since it could not be redistributed without the copyright holder's permission. However, there are materials that are not copyrighted that would be affected. One category consists of material whose copyright has expired. Suppose that somebody webcasts an old movie, one whose copyright has expired. At present, you can redistribute it since the only restriction is copyright and there isn't any anymore. If webcaster's rights come into effect, you wouldn't be able to redistribute that old movie, or even, arguably, store your own copy, even though it had passed into the public domain.
Now, this arguably isn't real important, but there is another case that is. That is the case of material that is in the public domain from the outset, such as recordings of legislative debates and hearings or the proceedings of courts.
If those recordings are made by the government, or are purely mechanical, without "creative" content, then at least in the United States they are in the public domain from the outset.
At present, if this stuff is broadcast, you can copy it and redistribute it as you wish. With webcaster's rights, you would be unable to do so without the webcaster's permission.
This would allow webcasters to decide who could do research and who could use such material in political campaigns and so forth.
Sure, I understand that some people want someone else to pump their gas for them. I have no problem with that. But just about all gas stations offer that service if you want it. It isn't necessary to require it.
I avoid buying gas in Oregon for exactly this reason. It bugs me not to be able to pump my own. If the right to pump your own gas isn't in the Magna Carta, it should be.:) I don't suppose you know how this law came about?
After VP Cheney, the next in line to become President is the Speaker of the House, who is currently Representative Dennis Hastert, not Senator Ted Stevens. I wouldn't be thrilled to see Hastert become President either.
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Canada has provincial and municipal elections too, but they don't coincide with federal elections, so any given ballot is simpler than a typical US ballot. And there aren't propositions like in California to clutter up the ballot. Even if there are more things to tally on American ballots, I bet enough election workers could be found to do the job.
Yes, its the Alaska Democratic Party asking, but the excuse given by the State of Alaska for not releasing the data is based on the State's putative obligations to Diebold. If the State is in fact unconstrained, its excuse for not complying with the request disappears.
It may be about a contract - I don't think the article says whether there is an NDA that covers this or not - but even if it is, my arguments above still apply. The State of Alaska probably doesn't risk anything by breaching the contract. What damages would be awarded?
I voted NDP so I agree that the Conservative victory is a less than desirable result, but there was no problem with the process.
People are frugal in northern BC. :) We just had Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green, and an independent. The complete list of parties across Canada is pretty impressive:
Vote counting is massively parallelizable. It doesn't take very long for somebody to tally the votes from a couple hundred ballots. The federal election in here in Canada was yesterday, with the polls closing at 19:00. Turnout was about 65%. The results were in before midnight.
With a little effort I bet Americans could manage this too.
Since when is a file format subject to copyright? It could, perhaps, be patented, but it isn't copyrightable and so the statutory damages for copyright infringement are not relevant.
Well, not really. To begin with, the Conservatives only got a little over a third of the seats in Parliament, meaning that they will form a minority government. Furthermore, the Senate (which is not elected) is dominated by Liberals. So, yes, the Conservatives will form the government, but they will not be able to do whatever they like.
Moreover, the issues in the election were largely not aligned with left-right divisions. In fact, there wasn't an awful lot of disagreement on policy at all. What this election was really about was disenchantment with the Liberals, partly because they have been in power for a long time and partly because of a number of scandals. The election was anti-Liberal, not pro-Conservative. Indeed, although the Conservatives gained seats, there was also a dramatic increase in the number of seats held by the New Democratic Party, which is socialist, roughly the equivalent of the Labour Party in some other countries.
There are also major differences between the Conservatives and the US Republican party. For example, they have explicitly stated that they have no interest whatever in banning abortion. On same-sex marriage they have not taken a stance on the issue itself but merely say that they will allow a free vote (meaning that MPs are not obligated to vote with their party). Their platform included reducing the sales tax, which is arguably a progressive move since the sales tax is regressive. So, yes, they are to the right of the other major parties, but they aren't the Republicans, thank goodness.
Voting machines are not used in Canadian elections. If a Canadian company makes voting machines, it is benefitting from the foolishness of people elsewhere.
Sorry, but the information in this case comes from the Alaska Daily News, not from Black Box Voting or Bev Harris.
The format isn't patented, I don't think, and isn't copyrightable, so the only legal protection it might have is trade secret. However, since the format is already out in the open, due both to revelation in other states and from the Diebold files posted on the net, it is no longer a trade secret and there is nothing that Diebold can complain about.
Furthermore, I don't see that anything actually prevents the State of Alaska from revealing the file format even if it is a trade secret. What can Diebold do about it? The State probably has sovereign immunity, and in any case, the secret is probably worth nothing so even if Diebold sued successfully they wouldn't get any damages to speak of.
Meanwhile here in Canada yet another election has been conducted without any problem using simple paper ballots. Just five lines with the names and parties of the candidates and a circle in which to draw an X. No need for voting machines, no possibility of confusion, minimal opportunity for fraud.
Partly true, but an important motivation for the American Revolution was the desire of many colonists to steal still more land from the Indians, a desire which Britain repressed by refusing to allow westward expansion. Many of the Founding Fathers were land speculators. It wasn't all as noble as its made out to be.
I don't know whether this is for real - it may be people falsifying their UA as a joke - but my website apparently receives one or two visits a month from systems claiming to run CP/M.
The Mercury News article explictly says that DOJ is asking for a court order because Google declined to comply with a subpoena.
Around 1970, at the height of the anti-war movement, there was half-serious talk in Vermont of seceding from the US and joining Canada. Another idea was that Vermont should secede from the US, Quebec from Canada, and then Vermont and Quebec would form a new country. I'm pretty sure that one wouldn't have worked out.
When I was a highschool student my debate partner and I went to the US Nationals and in one round debated the team from Louisiana. After the round, they expressed surprise at debating the team from Vermont since they thought that Canadian teams were not allowed in the US tournament! These guys weren't idiots: they were the Louisiana state champions.
Not to mention the fact that all that food and drink consumed over the keyboard provide a nice, nutricious environment for bacteria.
What do you mean mid-90s? Email was just fine in the mid-80s. I still use Berkeley mailx almost all the time. The main exception is when I have to send an attachment. I don't even like those new-fangled things like Pine and MH, much-less webmail. If only somebody would update mailx to handle attachments...
The phrase "or any later version" is not part of the GPL. Rather it is part of the statement in which you specify that the GPL is the license that you are using. The FSF recommends including this phrase but it isn't required by them or by the GPL. You are perfectly free to specify a particular version of the GPL if you wish to.
The Wikipedia article points out that the article in which the plagiarism was first noticed corresponds to a Wikipedia article in which the edit history shows that the relevant portions were written by two different contributors and edited by a third (anonymous) contributor. The argument, which isn't made explicit, is that it is much more likely that the newspaper article was based on the Wikipedia article than that two contributors to Wikipedia copied different portions of the same newspaper article and that a third contributor edited the result in such a way as to increase the similarity to the newspaper article.
As others have said, the publication date of the newspaper and the timestamps on the Wikipedia articles also establish a chronology. The Wikipedia article can't have been plagiarized from the newspaper article if it was published before the newspaper article.
One thing to consider if the job will entail a significant pay cut is to what extent your expenses will be at the cheap local rates. In many third world countries local food and housing are very cheap, but imported items are very expensive. You'll almost certainly want to buy imported tech gear. Will you be able to afford it? Similarly, how expensive will it be to travel elsewhere if that is important to you? Do you like the local foods, or will you want to import a lot of expensive stuff? If you read a lot, to what extent will locally available materials satisfy you? Can you read the local language? And is a lot of what interests you published locally? If not, purchasing books from the US or other countries and importing them may be very expensive.
Much of the material broadcast is copyrighted and would not really be affected by "webcaster's rights" since it could not be redistributed without the copyright holder's permission. However, there are materials that are not copyrighted that would be affected. One category consists of material whose copyright has expired. Suppose that somebody webcasts an old movie, one whose copyright has expired. At present, you can redistribute it since the only restriction is copyright and there isn't any anymore. If webcaster's rights come into effect, you wouldn't be able to redistribute that old movie, or even, arguably, store your own copy, even though it had passed into the public domain.
Now, this arguably isn't real important, but there is another case that is. That is the case of material that is in the public domain from the outset, such as recordings of legislative debates and hearings or the proceedings of courts. If those recordings are made by the government, or are purely mechanical, without "creative" content, then at least in the United States they are in the public domain from the outset. At present, if this stuff is broadcast, you can copy it and redistribute it as you wish. With webcaster's rights, you would be unable to do so without the webcaster's permission. This would allow webcasters to decide who could do research and who could use such material in political campaigns and so forth.
Sure, I understand that some people want someone else to pump their gas for them. I have no problem with that. But just about all gas stations offer that service if you want it. It isn't necessary to require it.
I avoid buying gas in Oregon for exactly this reason. It bugs me not to be able to pump my own. If the right to pump your own gas isn't in the Magna Carta, it should be. :) I don't suppose you know how this law came about?
After VP Cheney, the next in line to become President is the Speaker of the House, who is currently Representative Dennis Hastert, not Senator Ted Stevens. I wouldn't be thrilled to see Hastert become President either.