...Evolutionists may be able to back up their beliefs with science...
How can anybody's belief to be backed up by science? A belief is a belief, no matter who holds it. Everybody has a worldview and will interpret whatever information or evidence comes their way according to that world view.
Someone who truly believes in God, the God of the Bible, will also believe that the universe and all life within it is created by him. Anybody who is an atheist will believe that the universe is a result of random chance. Those are the only options there are.
Everything we observe about the universe, all life including ourselves in it, can be and is being interpreted by this fundamental difference in world views. Observations clearly show that the universe did have a definite beginning, which scientists have labeled the Big Bang. We also observe and experience every day that every effect has a cause. We may not always know the cause of a given effect, but we have never observed an effect that did not have a cause. What or who caused the Big Bang? It either just happened without a cause, or something, or better, some One who has no cause, but just is, brought it into being. This eternally existing being, communicates to us through the skill of writing, which only we humans possess.
How can the random probabilities of a gigantic, cosmic explosion create order in a finite amount of time? What caused the Big Bang and what caused the universe to develop in an orderly manner? Where did the laws it operates by, the laws of physics come from? From all observations we can make, these laws seem to operate quite uniformly throughout the entire universe we can observe. Can random probabilities account for the existence of a computer chip or 747 airliner? If not, then why do so many if not most so-called scientists, attribute a single living cell, which is far more complicated than all computer chips ever made and all airliners ever built, to random probabilities?
Is it not, that most scientists, being human, are not very comfortable with the idea of being ultimately responsible and accountable to a Creator God? It is this uncomfortable thought, that causes most scientists, in fact most people especially here on/. to adhere to the randomness worldview.
....With no one buying the official printed copies, the cost of compilation and preparation becomes a cost passed on to the taxpayers in order to serve the profits of a private corporation....
Why not let the users decide if they need a dead tree version? Most government entities already have a web-site. They can and many do just make their laws into PDF document on their site. The cost would be minimal.
Anyone can then download that and decide to print any part or all of it. If a publisher can put these files on paper cheaper than a user, they would still have sales to those who needed a paper copy.
...The copyright simply prevents other companies from competing and reproducing the official publication....
Why should laws made for and paid for by the public, not be as widely distributed to the public as possible. Why should there be any restriction on who or how distribution is done for laws that should be known by everybody? The taxpayers employ the legislators to make laws. Their laws are therefore works for hire and are owned by the person that hires, in this case the taxpayers. Therefore, any taxpayer has a legal right to distribute the work of the hired hands, in this case legislators.
....The ICC makes it easy - you can buy it on their website. Only $169.88 for the CD version...
I wonder if Carl Malamud bought that CD and then put it up on his Internet Site would get him sued. If the code is part of a public law, he'd likely win. The ICC probably knows that and would not sue him because that would make publicity they would rather not happen. Without the publicity of such a court case, they can still collect money from the ignorant ones who don't know that the same material is available for free on the web.
...that counties will de-certify or simply not approve equipment....
An entrepreneur could ask for PERFORMANCE specifications, rather than a specific manufacturer or model.
Some years ago, we had an enterprising man build some tree-houses and then rent them to tourists. The county wanted to make him tear them down, because they were not built according to the normal building codes that ordinary houses are built. The county took him to court hoping to get their way. His contention was that they were just as safe if not safer than a normal house. To make a long story short, the judge said that because there were no codes for tree-houses, does not automatically allow the county to forbid them. He further ordered the county to work with a man and his engineers to develop proper codes especially for tree houses.
Since trees are natural and varied, with all sorts of shapes and sizes, it was not possible to easily come up with fixed rules of materials and how they are used. Trees also tend to sway in the wind, and the rules have to allow for that fact. Therefore, the codes they came up with do not specify materials or construction techniques, but performance specifications such as load, flexibility and other pertinent factors.
The same sort of principles should be applied in most areas. Instead of specifying a specific manufacturer for fire suppression equipment, specification serve water flow and coverage and other factors germane to extinguishing possible fires should be done. Someone with sufficient money and tenacity can force in court, the authorities to formulate rules in that way. This allows for new, innovative ways of meeting the goals of the safe and functional construction and business.
The future of computing is NOT hardware, but software. Hardware is even now quite a bit ahead of software. Most, even the most modern software is not making efficient use of multi-core processors. Because nobody is all that good at predicting the future, many real world problems don't lend themselves to simultaneous solutions because the final result cannot be computed until intermediate answers are computed. Even problems that do lend themselves to concurrent processing are hard to formulate into working software that uses multi-processors to the fullest.
Todays processors certainly have plenty of computing power, but there are still many problems which nobody has managed to describe and formulate in a way for a computer to solve them. For example, really good human language translation does not exist, because nobody has come up with the software to do it. A five year old is still way better at object recognition that even the most powerful computer. This is not because of lack of processing power, but nobody has come up with the proper software. Where is there an automated system that checks for and eliminates ALL software bugs, so there can be guaranteed bug free software? It's not the hardware that prevents this from existing already.
......If crime control is that expensive, perhaps there needs to be changes...
Legislatures and councils main reason for existence is to make laws. As more laws are made, more ordinary activities become illegal and therefore more an more ordinary people become criminals or at the very least lawbreakers. Many laws are nothing more than revenue mechanisms. There are very few things that a person can do in or to their own house any more that does NOT require a permit of some sort from the government. In many places the costs of all the permits and paperwork required by the government is a significant fraction of the cost to build or remodel a house. As more laws are passed, more money is needed to enforce them. It becomes a vicious circle.
In our area, for example people used to be able to take their unwanted appliances, mattresses and other household items to the official county dump, where these items were properly disposed of. Metal and glass items were recycled. Then the local council made a LAW that the dump will no longer be free. Now that everybody has to PAY to use the dump, what do many people do instead? They dump their junk in ravines and dry creek beds in the middle of the night. Catching anybody doing that is virtually impossible.
Eventually everything will be illegal unless it is expressly allowed by another LAW. Maybe in the future, legislatures will be kept busy for a while undoing all the laws they had passed.
...When was the last time, when paying by automatic debit from your account (e-check)...
Never, because doing that is a singularly stupid idea. If, (and that's a big if) if becomes absolutely necessary or terribly convenient to have some automatic payment to someone, do it from a credit card account with a fairly low limit. Also, many credit cards offer airline miles or other rewards, whereas many banks don't even pay even a pittance of interest on checking and ATM accounts.
...We aren't just talking about an hour at the kitchen table...
It seems that anyone with that kind of money ought to be able to afford to hire someone to do the checking of the records. It would have been worth it in this case.
...there is no valid argument in law to prevent Discovery/Mythbusters from airing facts about the lack of security surrounding RFID...
If there is nothing in law to prevent letting the cat out of the bag, then let it out. Once the secret is distributed on the Internet, lawyers have no more power.
.... they litigate the party who exposes them for attempting fraud....
The key is if a person has information, such as the insecurity of a system, is to broadcast that information BEFORE some lawyer can make it to some court. If someone has information that is like a can of worms to the rich and powerful, the trick is to open the can, before these entities can take the can in order to keep it sealed.
If the horse has left the barn, locking the door is of no use. No number of lawyers can get the horse back in or the worms back in the can. The rich and the powerful will usually be successful in squelching information that is or at least they perceive to be highly detrimental to their pocketbook or pride. Did this not happen recently at a security conference where some MIT student was prevented from releasing certain insecurity information about a transit system?
....Are you implying that it's trivial to write and coordinate a botnet that is difficult to remove and difficult to spot....
Even in Windows it may not be trivial to do, but evidently it is much harder on Macs and Linux. If that were not so, then someone would have already done so. The fact is that there are zero, zilch, nada such botnets in existence for Macs, even though there are millions of them out there. If it were so easy to do, someone, somewhere would have done it by now, if for no other reason than to be able to have the bragging rights for being the first one to hose thousands of supposedly secure Macs.
...Once the Mac userbase encompasses the complete morons who use Windows now....
Wow, are you REALLY saying that Mac users are smarter or more careful than Windows users? I have heard that before. Maybe there is something to that. After all, Macs are more expensive to buy. That means the Mac users likely have a higher income than Widows users for whom price is the overriding concern. Higher income is generally associated with higher education. Higher education is often considered to be the hallmark of greater smarts. So maybe, you're right. Maybe Mac users ARE smarter and more careful than the Windows people? I really don't want to think that, but perhaps it is not really such an unreasonable interference.
(..In time, once virus creators actually spend time to find holes in OSX and Linux..)
They're not likely to do that, because that means to do considerable work. If these miscreants were interested in work, they'd get real jobs, like us honest people. As long as there are a sufficient number of easy to infect Windows machines, (and stupider users?) these scums of humanity target those, rather than actually spend time to WORK.
...The Founders were, however, very careful to remove this religious language from the confines of a specific denomination or even a general religion...
That is a good thing too, because God is not a Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu or any other religion, but simply the transcendent, eternal Creator God, outside and independent of space and time.
Most of the Founding fathers believed that this God is capable of and did communicate to mankind in a set of writings called "The Bible", which simply means "Books". They quoted from these writings more than any other.
Even if YOU, personally, do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind. Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
Our nation was founded on the principles and precepts found in this particular book, not the Quran, or other writings considered sacred by others. Our founders understood, whatever their detailed differences may have been, that all human life, and therefore all human rights come from that particular only true, transcendent, eternal, Creator God as written in the Bible.
They took great care however to ensure that not one or another particular interpretation or view of this book or any other should be forced down the throats of the people by the new government. They strongly advocated freedom OF religion, but not as we have today, freedom FROM religion.
...then how can you say that electronic voting couldn't possibly work as well?...
In the financial and commerce sector, ALL the actors have a strong interest to prevent cheating. In the voting sector the ones involved may and often do to have an interest to ENCOURAGE cheating. Telling the fox to guard the hen house is not the best thing for the chickens. Telling the incumbent powers that be to guard the voting records, which have become nothing more than a bunch of ephemeral bits in a digital device is not in the best interest of the voters. The people that control the voting machines, wanting to be re-elected, do not necessarily have the best interest of the voters in mind.
No matter what steps are taken to insure the integrity of digital bits, the fact remains, that digital bits can be changed or made to disappear without a trace by someone or a number of someones much more easily than a piece of physical paper. Once the bits are surreptitiously changed or disposed of by someone authorized by the established powers that be, how can they be checked up on?
Physical paper ballots, readable by a computer, give most of the advantages of purely electronic voting, but there is a not easily altered or eliminated physical record of the votes which can be referred to in case of a dispute. What are the advantages of purely electronic voting anyway? A few trees not killed? Reducing printed junk mail would save far more trees.
...the fact that we have different reasons for helping...
So are you saying that the end justifies the means? Standards are standards. In the case of technical standards a group, or sometimes government decides them and then everybody is obliged to abide by them. Even in technical standards, these are based on the underlying laws of physics, over which we humans have no control.
Likewise, there are underlying moral laws in the universe, over which we humans similarly have no control. Our moral and legal standards and structures are constrained by these as well. This moral sense is deeply built into every human being from early childhood on. You would know this, if you have children of your own. How does a three or four year old know and exclaim "That's no fair!" when and if you cheat at a game, having never been taught or faced that issue. There are certain things that most, if not all human beings agree is right or wrong. Where does this remarkable agreement come from? There is in fact more agreement in morals at the fundamental level than disagreement. Disagreements are much more superficial.
...Once the power reaches those lines to California, the BPA no longer has authority over it, including wholesale costs...
Exactly and so it is good that they can't squeeze more power through the existing lines and make more obscene profits from the cheap Northwest Power Supplies at the expense of those of us who live here. It is also good that they can't cheaply and easily build more lines to steal our electricity for next to nothing.
It's hard to answer "what if" questions. I'll point out that most US wars were fought while the Democrats occupied the White House. Dems are decrying a war which they did not get to participate in.
....malware authors target Windows because it is so abundant...
False. Windows is an easier target. Macs are not impossible to infiltrate, neither is Linux, but both are harder than Widows. Added to that of course is that Windows is more common and that most malware writers are more familiar with all the holes.
(..and it won't be long before the big anti-virus vendors start selling anti-virus programs for OSX..)
They have already tried and most Mac users are not stupid enough to waste their money on such performance robbing crapware. Once there are not theoretical, but ten of thousands of real honest to goodness virulent nasties, circulating on the internet, that may change. When there are 10,000+ Macs assembled into a working, spam and malware spewing bot-net, these vendors will get some sales to Mac owners. Yawn, wake if and when that happens.
(..Then you've never seen a Windows system owned by someone who actually takes care of their operating system..)
Yes, if you are knowledgeable/.er you can keep a Windows system running reasonably OK. Any computer can break, but Macs need far less skilled babysitting than Windows. Linux, once set up properly by someone with geek skills also is more reliable for ordinary non-geek users.
(..It is not difficult to imagine loading OSX or Linux down with cruft to the point of unusability..)
Ye, some can and do imagine that. It is however only inmaginary. This is not necessary with Macs, because they "just work", out of the box. Apple doesn't load them up with all sorts of garbage "trial" ware. On the Mac, users don't have to first find and then run a special "un-installer" program to get rid of unwanted software. All files, including programs can be gotten rid of in the same, simple intuitive way -- just drag them into the trash.
(..For their Mac-using relatives..)
I too get calls from my Mac using relatives and friends. However these are seldom calls for a dead or malfunctioning computer, but for help on how to do things in certain software programs. It seems that not reading the manual is not a malady exclusive to the more computer literate/. readers.
....Where do "rights" come from? Do they even exist? Why or why not?...
The writers of the Declaration of Independence tell us correctly that basic human rights come from the Creator God. Only someone who can give life can give rights. They knew that, but many have forgotten this truth. The founding fathers wanted to form a government that would protect these rights. That is what the Constitution is mostly about. It gives the government certain limited rights, but all other rights are kept by the people.
All governments and other big organizations tend to do whatever they can to obtain more power, more rights. Voting for the "outs" is a way to slow this aggregation of unbridled power. Not voting at all is saying that you are happy with the ever increasing power that a given government is accumulating.
Isn't the idea of "accepting" a moral standard an oxymoron? If you have a choice of accepting something labeled a "standard", then it could not be called a standard, but an option. A standard is something imposed by someone or a group. TCP/IP is a "standard" which you have no choice over "if" you want to connect to the Internet.
The electoral system is a way of preventing or at least softening the tyranny of the majority. The fact is that the less populated states get two senators, just as the densely populated ones. I reflects regional differences not only among states, but also within many states.
This system has prevented the populous east from trampling on the rights of the less populated west. In California the same system has prevented the populated south from appropriating the water and other resources from the sparsely settled north of the state.
The framers of our Constitution had some good insight into human nature and the inherent shortcomings of a pure democracy. They were cognizant of the fact that all governments tend to take actions that increase their power. They took some good steps to slow that process down, even though it cannot be eliminated.
...Voting just seems like such a poor way of 'making a difference'...
Voting could make a difference if the people truly got to decide who gets to be a candidate in the first place. As it is today, that is basically decided by money. For starters, take money out of the equation for becoming a candidate and then the election. Whoever eventually gets "elected" now has a debt to pay to the monied interests that got them into office. Until those with money have no more influence of who gets into office than those who have no money, the whole "election" process is largely a contest on who can gather the most money to market themselves into office. Though money bags have differences in some philosophies and interests, they all have one thing in common: make even more money. Therefore they will always support candidates they think will help them to do that.
....Just keep explaining how morally superior Democrats are...
Do you really believe there is a difference between the two major parties? It seems that they have different sets of moneyed overlords financing their respective candidates. As long as only those who have big piles of money or are supported by someone with a big pile of money can be a viable candidate for office, it really makes no difference whether you vote for the Democans or the Republicrats.
... these records can be created, examined, or destroyed, just as paper ballots can.....
But ballots can't be wiped remotely. Would be vote corrupters need to get physical access. Anyone can put a digital device in their pocket, but a box full of paper ballots is much harder to make disappear. Paper isn't fool-proof, but it has worked reasonably well for the history of the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
...Evolutionists may be able to back up their beliefs with science...
How can anybody's belief to be backed up by science? A belief is a belief, no matter who holds it. Everybody has a worldview and will interpret whatever information or evidence comes their way according to that world view.
Someone who truly believes in God, the God of the Bible, will also believe that the universe and all life within it is created by him. Anybody who is an atheist will believe that the universe is a result of random chance. Those are the only options there are.
Everything we observe about the universe, all life including ourselves in it, can be and is being interpreted by this fundamental difference in world views. Observations clearly show that the universe did have a definite beginning, which scientists have labeled the Big Bang. We also observe and experience every day that every effect has a cause. We may not always know the cause of a given effect, but we have never observed an effect that did not have a cause. What or who caused the Big Bang? It either just happened without a cause, or something, or better, some One who has no cause, but just is, brought it into being. This eternally existing being, communicates to us through the skill of writing, which only we humans possess.
How can the random probabilities of a gigantic, cosmic explosion create order in a finite amount of time? What caused the Big Bang and what caused the universe to develop in an orderly manner? Where did the laws it operates by, the laws of physics come from? From all observations we can make, these laws seem to operate quite uniformly throughout the entire universe we can observe. Can random probabilities account for the existence of a computer chip or 747 airliner? If not, then why do so many if not most so-called scientists, attribute a single living cell, which is far more complicated than all computer chips ever made and all airliners ever built, to random probabilities?
Is it not, that most scientists, being human, are not very comfortable with the idea of being ultimately responsible and accountable to a Creator God? It is this uncomfortable thought, that causes most scientists, in fact most people especially here on /. to adhere to the randomness worldview.
....With no one buying the official printed copies, the cost of compilation and preparation becomes a cost passed on to the taxpayers in order to serve the profits of a private corporation....
Why not let the users decide if they need a dead tree version? Most government entities already have a web-site. They can and many do just make their laws into PDF document on their site. The cost would be minimal.
Anyone can then download that and decide to print any part or all of it. If a publisher can put these files on paper cheaper than a user, they would still have sales to those who needed a paper copy.
...The copyright simply prevents other companies from competing and reproducing the official publication....
Why should laws made for and paid for by the public, not be as widely distributed to the public as possible. Why should there be any restriction on who or how distribution is done for laws that should be known by everybody? The taxpayers employ the legislators to make laws. Their laws are therefore works for hire and are owned by the person that hires, in this case the taxpayers. Therefore, any taxpayer has a legal right to distribute the work of the hired hands, in this case legislators.
....The ICC makes it easy - you can buy it on their website. Only $169.88 for the CD version...
I wonder if Carl Malamud bought that CD and then put it up on his Internet Site would get him sued. If the code is part of a public law, he'd likely win. The ICC probably knows that and would not sue him because that would make publicity they would rather not happen. Without the publicity of such a court case, they can still collect money from the ignorant ones who don't know that the same material is available for free on the web.
...that counties will de-certify or simply not approve equipment ....
An entrepreneur could ask for PERFORMANCE specifications, rather than a specific manufacturer or model.
Some years ago, we had an enterprising man build some tree-houses and then rent them to tourists. The county wanted to make him tear them down, because they were not built according to the normal building codes that ordinary houses are built. The county took him to court hoping to get their way. His contention was that they were just as safe if not safer than a normal house. To make a long story short, the judge said that because there were no codes for tree-houses, does not automatically allow the county to forbid them. He further ordered the county to work with a man and his engineers to develop proper codes especially for tree houses.
Since trees are natural and varied, with all sorts of shapes and sizes, it was not possible to easily come up with fixed rules of materials and how they are used. Trees also tend to sway in the wind, and the rules have to allow for that fact. Therefore, the codes they came up with do not specify materials or construction techniques, but performance specifications such as load, flexibility and other pertinent factors.
The same sort of principles should be applied in most areas. Instead of specifying a specific manufacturer for fire suppression equipment, specification serve water flow and coverage and other factors germane to extinguishing possible fires should be done. Someone with sufficient money and tenacity can force in court, the authorities to formulate rules in that way. This allows for new, innovative ways of meeting the goals of the safe and functional construction and business.
.... Good for backwards compatibility...
The future of computing is NOT hardware, but software. Hardware is even now quite a bit ahead of software. Most, even the most modern software is not making efficient use of multi-core processors. Because nobody is all that good at predicting the future, many real world problems don't lend themselves to simultaneous solutions because the final result cannot be computed until intermediate answers are computed. Even problems that do lend themselves to concurrent processing are hard to formulate into working software that uses multi-processors to the fullest.
Todays processors certainly have plenty of computing power, but there are still many problems which nobody has managed to describe and formulate in a way for a computer to solve them. For example, really good human language translation does not exist, because nobody has come up with the software to do it. A five year old is still way better at object recognition that even the most powerful computer. This is not because of lack of processing power, but nobody has come up with the proper software. Where is there an automated system that checks for and eliminates ALL software bugs, so there can be guaranteed bug free software? It's not the hardware that prevents this from existing already.
......If crime control is that expensive, perhaps there needs to be changes ...
Legislatures and councils main reason for existence is to make laws. As more laws are made, more ordinary activities become illegal and therefore more an more ordinary people become criminals or at the very least lawbreakers. Many laws are nothing more than revenue mechanisms. There are very few things that a person can do in or to their own house any more that does NOT require a permit of some sort from the government. In many places the costs of all the permits and paperwork required by the government is a significant fraction of the cost to build or remodel a house. As more laws are passed, more money is needed to enforce them. It becomes a vicious circle.
In our area, for example people used to be able to take their unwanted appliances, mattresses and other household items to the official county dump, where these items were properly disposed of. Metal and glass items were recycled. Then the local council made a LAW that the dump will no longer be free. Now that everybody has to PAY to use the dump, what do many people do instead? They dump their junk in ravines and dry creek beds in the middle of the night. Catching anybody doing that is virtually impossible.
Eventually everything will be illegal unless it is expressly allowed by another LAW. Maybe in the future, legislatures will be kept busy for a while undoing all the laws they had passed.
...When was the last time, when paying by automatic debit from your account (e-check)...
Never, because doing that is a singularly stupid idea. If, (and that's a big if) if becomes absolutely necessary or terribly convenient to have some automatic payment to someone, do it from a credit card account with a fairly low limit. Also, many credit cards offer airline miles or other rewards, whereas many banks don't even pay even a pittance of interest on checking and ATM accounts.
...We aren't just talking about an hour at the kitchen table...
It seems that anyone with that kind of money ought to be able to afford to hire someone to do the checking of the records. It would have been worth it in this case.
...there is no valid argument in law to prevent Discovery/Mythbusters from airing facts about the lack of security surrounding RFID...
If there is nothing in law to prevent letting the cat out of the bag, then let it out. Once the secret is distributed on the Internet, lawyers have no more power.
.... they litigate the party who exposes them for attempting fraud....
The key is if a person has information, such as the insecurity of a system, is to broadcast that information BEFORE some lawyer can make it to some court. If someone has information that is like a can of worms to the rich and powerful, the trick is to open the can, before these entities can take the can in order to keep it sealed.
If the horse has left the barn, locking the door is of no use. No number of lawyers can get the horse back in or the worms back in the can. The rich and the powerful will usually be successful in squelching information that is or at least they perceive to be highly detrimental to their pocketbook or pride. Did this not happen recently at a security conference where some MIT student was prevented from releasing certain insecurity information about a transit system?
....Are you implying that it's trivial to write and coordinate a botnet that is difficult to remove and difficult to spot....
Even in Windows it may not be trivial to do, but evidently it is much harder on Macs and Linux. If that were not so, then someone would have already done so. The fact is that there are zero, zilch, nada such botnets in existence for Macs, even though there are millions of them out there. If it were so easy to do, someone, somewhere would have done it by now, if for no other reason than to be able to have the bragging rights for being the first one to hose thousands of supposedly secure Macs.
...Once the Mac userbase encompasses the complete morons who use Windows now ....
Wow, are you REALLY saying that Mac users are smarter or more careful than Windows users? I have heard that before. Maybe there is something to that. After all, Macs are more expensive to buy. That means the Mac users likely have a higher income than Widows users for whom price is the overriding concern. Higher income is generally associated with higher education. Higher education is often considered to be the hallmark of greater smarts. So maybe, you're right. Maybe Mac users ARE smarter and more careful than the Windows people? I really don't want to think that, but perhaps it is not really such an unreasonable interference.
(..In time, once virus creators actually spend time to find holes in OSX and Linux..)
They're not likely to do that, because that means to do considerable work. If these miscreants were interested in work, they'd get real jobs, like us honest people. As long as there are a sufficient number of easy to infect Windows machines, (and stupider users?) these scums of humanity target those, rather than actually spend time to WORK.
...The Founders were, however, very careful to remove this religious language from the confines of a specific denomination or even a general religion...
That is a good thing too, because God is not a Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu or any other religion, but simply the transcendent, eternal Creator God, outside and independent of space and time.
Most of the Founding fathers believed that this God is capable of and did communicate to mankind in a set of writings called "The Bible", which simply means "Books". They quoted from these writings more than any other.
Even if YOU, personally, do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book. Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind. Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed? Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects than any other? Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
Our nation was founded on the principles and precepts found in this particular book, not the Quran, or other writings considered sacred by others. Our founders understood, whatever their detailed differences may have been, that all human life, and therefore all human rights come from that particular only true, transcendent, eternal, Creator God as written in the Bible.
They took great care however to ensure that not one or another particular interpretation or view of this book or any other should be forced down the throats of the people by the new government. They strongly advocated freedom OF religion, but not as we have today, freedom FROM religion.
...then how can you say that electronic voting couldn't possibly work as well?...
In the financial and commerce sector, ALL the actors have a strong interest to prevent cheating. In the voting sector the ones involved may and often do to have an interest to ENCOURAGE cheating. Telling the fox to guard the hen house is not the best thing for the chickens. Telling the incumbent powers that be to guard the voting records, which have become nothing more than a bunch of ephemeral bits in a digital device is not in the best interest of the voters. The people that control the voting machines, wanting to be re-elected, do not necessarily have the best interest of the voters in mind.
No matter what steps are taken to insure the integrity of digital bits, the fact remains, that digital bits can be changed or made to disappear without a trace by someone or a number of someones much more easily than a piece of physical paper. Once the bits are surreptitiously changed or disposed of by someone authorized by the established powers that be, how can they be checked up on?
Physical paper ballots, readable by a computer, give most of the advantages of purely electronic voting, but there is a not easily altered or eliminated physical record of the votes which can be referred to in case of a dispute. What are the advantages of purely electronic voting anyway? A few trees not killed? Reducing printed junk mail would save far more trees.
...the fact that we have different reasons for helping ...
So are you saying that the end justifies the means? Standards are standards. In the case of technical standards a group, or sometimes government decides them and then everybody is obliged to abide by them. Even in technical standards, these are based on the underlying laws of physics, over which we humans have no control.
Likewise, there are underlying moral laws in the universe, over which we humans similarly have no control. Our moral and legal standards and structures are constrained by these as well. This moral sense is deeply built into every human being from early childhood on. You would know this, if you have children of your own. How does a three or four year old know and exclaim "That's no fair!" when and if you cheat at a game, having never been taught or faced that issue. There are certain things that most, if not all human beings agree is right or wrong. Where does this remarkable agreement come from? There is in fact more agreement in morals at the fundamental level than disagreement. Disagreements are much more superficial.
...Once the power reaches those lines to California, the BPA no longer has authority over it, including wholesale costs...
Exactly and so it is good that they can't squeeze more power through the existing lines and make more obscene profits from the cheap Northwest Power Supplies at the expense of those of us who live here. It is also good that they can't cheaply and easily build more lines to steal our electricity for next to nothing.
...do you really think Gore would have...
It's hard to answer "what if" questions. I'll point out that most US wars were fought while the Democrats occupied the White House. Dems are decrying a war which they did not get to participate in.
....malware authors target Windows because it is so abundant...
False. Windows is an easier target. Macs are not impossible to infiltrate, neither is Linux, but both are harder than Widows. Added to that of course is that Windows is more common and that most malware writers are more familiar with all the holes.
(..and it won't be long before the big anti-virus vendors start selling anti-virus programs for OSX..)
They have already tried and most Mac users are not stupid enough to waste their money on such performance robbing crapware. Once there are not theoretical, but ten of thousands of real honest to goodness virulent nasties, circulating on the internet, that may change. When there are 10,000+ Macs assembled into a working, spam and malware spewing bot-net, these vendors will get some sales to Mac owners. Yawn, wake if and when that happens.
(..Then you've never seen a Windows system owned by someone who actually takes care of their operating system..)
Yes, if you are knowledgeable /.er you can keep a Windows system running reasonably OK. Any computer can break, but Macs need far less skilled babysitting than Windows. Linux, once set up properly by someone with geek skills also is more reliable for ordinary non-geek users.
(..It is not difficult to imagine loading OSX or Linux down with cruft to the point of unusability..)
Ye, some can and do imagine that. It is however only inmaginary. This is not necessary with Macs, because they "just work", out of the box. Apple doesn't load them up with all sorts of garbage "trial" ware. On the Mac, users don't have to first find and then run a special "un-installer" program to get rid of unwanted software. All files, including programs can be gotten rid of in the same, simple intuitive way -- just drag them into the trash.
(..For their Mac-using relatives..)
I too get calls from my Mac using relatives and friends. However these are seldom calls for a dead or malfunctioning computer, but for help on how to do things in certain software programs. It seems that not reading the manual is not a malady exclusive to the more computer literate /. readers.
....Where do "rights" come from? Do they even exist? Why or why not?...
The writers of the Declaration of Independence tell us correctly that basic human rights come from the Creator God. Only someone who can give life can give rights. They knew that, but many have forgotten this truth. The founding fathers wanted to form a government that would protect these rights. That is what the Constitution is mostly about. It gives the government certain limited rights, but all other rights are kept by the people.
All governments and other big organizations tend to do whatever they can to obtain more power, more rights. Voting for the "outs" is a way to slow this aggregation of unbridled power. Not voting at all is saying that you are happy with the ever increasing power that a given government is accumulating.
...accepts the same moral standards...
Isn't the idea of "accepting" a moral standard an oxymoron? If you have a choice of accepting something labeled a "standard", then it could not be called a standard, but an option. A standard is something imposed by someone or a group. TCP/IP is a "standard" which you have no choice over "if" you want to connect to the Internet.
...The real issue is the electoral college....
The electoral system is a way of preventing or at least softening the tyranny of the majority. The fact is that the less populated states get two senators, just as the densely populated ones. I reflects regional differences not only among states, but also within many states.
This system has prevented the populous east from trampling on the rights of the less populated west. In California the same system has prevented the populated south from appropriating the water and other resources from the sparsely settled north of the state.
The framers of our Constitution had some good insight into human nature and the inherent shortcomings of a pure democracy. They were cognizant of the fact that all governments tend to take actions that increase their power. They took some good steps to slow that process down, even though it cannot be eliminated.
...Voting just seems like such a poor way of 'making a difference'...
Voting could make a difference if the people truly got to decide who gets to be a candidate in the first place. As it is today, that is basically decided by money. For starters, take money out of the equation for becoming a candidate and then the election. Whoever eventually gets "elected" now has a debt to pay to the monied interests that got them into office. Until those with money have no more influence of who gets into office than those who have no money, the whole "election" process is largely a contest on who can gather the most money to market themselves into office. Though money bags have differences in some philosophies and interests, they all have one thing in common: make even more money. Therefore they will always support candidates they think will help them to do that.
....Just keep explaining how morally superior Democrats are...
Do you really believe there is a difference between the two major parties? It seems that they have different sets of moneyed overlords financing their respective candidates. As long as only those who have big piles of money or are supported by someone with a big pile of money can be a viable candidate for office, it really makes no difference whether you vote for the Democans or the Republicrats.
... these records can be created, examined, or destroyed, just as paper ballots can.....
But ballots can't be wiped remotely. Would be vote corrupters need to get physical access. Anyone can put a digital device in their pocket, but a box full of paper ballots is much harder to make disappear. Paper isn't fool-proof, but it has worked reasonably well for the history of the USA.