Now that I've trolled for your attention, I want to say that there's no such thing as a wasted vote.
The election process is about more than just who wins. Sure, the winner is important, but there are other factors that have an impact on the behavior of government. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that one of the two major parties will win in November. Why vote for someone else?
A vote is a statement of your general favor for a given candidate. It's a winner-take-all proposition; you don't get to divide it among three candidates you like. It's assumed that you don't believe the candidate is perfect for you; he was just good enough to get your vote.
Voting for a third party or write-in candidate sends the signal that A) you care enough to vote and B) neither of the two major party clowns was good enough for you. To the extent that your vote matters at all, you have used it to tell the major parties that if their policies were more like the one for whom you voted, they might get your vote.
A vote for a third party encourages that party, and also the other minor parties. They see the number of people who voted for them, and know where their support is.
A vote for a third party lends them authority when they speak out. A press release from a party that got.01% of the vote is treated differently from a party that got 1.01%. If a party gets even 2% of the vote, they start to look mainstream. After all, getting 2% might be enough to alter the balance of power between the two major parties.
But, it might be argued, doesn't that split the support for one of the major parties, causing the Most Evil Party to win instead of the Not Quite So Evil Party? Possibly, and that is part of the choice. Unless your tiny party is at one extreme of the spectrum occupied by the two majors, support for it will come proportionately from both of them.
Most people want to vote for a winner. To vote for a third party you have to get past that sense of wanting to be on the winning side and remember to vote your own mind. If you only vote for the candidate you think is going to win, you have effectively allowed someone else to vote for you.
Finally, voting for a third party encourages those who don't want to "waste" their vote that it's not such a waste. Voting is a herd phenomenon. When others see your party's vote total rising from past elections, they'll be more likely to vote that way themselves.
This year's X-Prize nominees are:
on
Win the X-Prize Cup
·
· Score: 4, Funny
In the Twelve-and-Under category, Jimmy Flechojovitz of White Plains, New York
In the Open Source category, the team of CaynEyn and Volk3n
In the Bathtub category, two posthumous awards....
A mission-critical system should be interrupted exactly when you want, not on a schedule dictated by a calendar. The original "BS!" poster was right: if there are memory leaks, garbage collection problems, etc., then that's evidence of sloppy design work.
Saying you need regular reboots is the same as saying you need a firewall to protect against viruses: both show flaws in the design of OS.
And as far as "fscking their disks every day" goes, that's more sloppy design. You shouldn't have to do that. Fsck fixes file system errors resulting from poor application behavior, environmental problems, and (sometimes) hardware troubles. You shouldn't have those every day in mission-critical systems, but even if you do then putting in place a system of daily fsck is not the way to fix it.
I've had a production application server running for the last 288 days. It's due to come down for OS updates, but it will do so on my schedule, not because its operating system is poorly designed.
I "still" support President Bush. I don't have "a very elaborate little fantasy world", or even a fantasy island, in my head.
What I do have is the knowledge that Presidents are people, too, and aren't perfect. Probably like many you wish would "get it", I give President Bush a pass because of his steadfastness in the face of adversity and the contrasts with his most recent predecessor in office.
What follows is the start of a list of why we still don't "get it":
His response in the days after 9/11
He handled it just right. His supporters believe that he handled it that way because he is that way.
He doesn't waffle on the issues
In uncertain times, people want a leader who sticks to his position. John Kerry plays right into this, since he takes the more typical political approach of trying to please everyone.
George is unpolished
Many people got really tired of Bill Clinton's slickness, and George just isn't slick. We like that. It's still refreshing.
George is a personally moral man
We believe, as those on the Left do not, that if George makes a mistake it's an honest one. We believe he's faithful to his wife. We believe he lives by his faith and pursues morality within that framework. We like all of that.
He tells us we can succeed, not that we will fail
Tell us we must not do something that is wrong, but don't say we can not do the merely difficult.
So President Bush has a lot of political capital saved up with his supporters. Please don't misunderestimate us any more, ok?;-).
The two sides are both so cynical I am ready to ignore them both and write in Pete Rose. If they'd each quit pandering to the other's base for a minute, they'd quickly understand how simple it is:
What the Republicans need to do is quit trying to look liberal, and instead convince middle class subdivisionites that George Bush is God's Own Candidate. They'll turn out in droves.
What the Democrats need to do is quit trying to look like anti-war-but-tough-on-terror hawks, and instead convince undecided voters that John Kerry has a firm position on some issue. They already know he isn't George Bush; he can stop running on that now.
No, the two sides keep hitting their talking points and strategizing about getting out the vote of this or that demographic.
I think I'll turn my attention to something important. Don't they know there's a pennant race going on?
Whether or not we agree or disagree with Mr. Lorentz, it's important to understand his biases. The letter purports him to be just another soldier doing his national service, but he's not.
And yes, it's an almost recursive double irony, and that's why I couldn't resist: I post an ad hominem attack on Lorentz, pigeon-holing him as a conspiracy theorist, partially by quoting him saying that not all those who spout conspiracy theories are conspiracy theorists.
I am not an armchair quarterback. Nor am I some politically idealistic and naÃve young soldier...
Al Lorentz is the former Chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas. He was against the war in Iraq, because Lorentz believes in isolationism (even after 9/11). So while he is not "some politically idealistic and naÃve young soldier", that's only true because he's not young. He is a political ideologue, with an anti-Bush paranoia.
I am an old and seasoned Non-Commissioned Officer with nearly 20 years under my belt. Additionally, I am not just a soldier with a muds-eye view of the war, I am in Civil Affairs and as such, it is my job to be aware of all the events occurring in this country and specifically in my region.
That made my Bullshit Detector go off like a Claymore in a cattle drive.
Al Lorentz spent most of his career in the Reserves.
A noncomm in Civil Affairs doesn't have a "muds-eye view" of the war at all. He may as well be back in Texas, for all the fighting he'll see. This guy is an armchair General. Why isn't he an officer? Because he's incompetent for a commission, that's why.
Al Lorentz was a Bush basher before he went to Iraq, and he's a Bush basher now.
Pigeon holing is a mental tool used by the ignorant to help them disregard information, ideas and people whom they are incapable or unwilling to understand. A good example of pigeon holing is to declare flippantly that anyone who believes any sort of conspiracy whatsoever as some sort of kook. Never mind that history is replete with proven conspiracies and that a conspiracy is merely two or more individuals conspiring together for any means.
Without the EC, you don't get 100% of any one state. You only get the votes you get. There are lots and lots more votes to be had on the coasts, so that's where the candidates would stay (unless, e.g., there were some event of national interest taking place inland).
With the EC, winning all of the coastal states is one way to play it; without the EC, it would be the only thing that mattered.
>The people doing the voting don't much like that idea.
The people are not always right. Popular will swings back and forth, moving this way and that, sometimes tending to the extreme. The EC system tends to minimize the tyranny of the majority, which you obviously agree is something to minimize.
Your argument about the EC and protecting homosexuals is an obvious red herring; we are talking only about geography, not any other factor distinguishing one person from another. The EC doesn't have anything to do with differences between people, just between regions. The individuals vote, but the groups decide.
But aside from the force of tradition, it's hard to defend why we need to enforce fairness amoung states, since states are not alive. Shouldn't we care more about actual people than states?
Our republic is built on a principle called "balance of power". There is a balance of power between the People, the States, and the Federal government. The People stand no chance against a corrupt Federal government without the States. The Federal government defends the rights of the people against the individual State goverments. The People elect the officials in the government (and make up the armed militia, just in case the officials forget who's boss).
It is the States, not the People, who elect the President. The Electoral College compromises between giving each State a vote and allowing the aggregate popular vote to determine the winner.
The Electoral College effectively protects the smaller States from the tyrrany of the larger ones. Without it, a candidate could campaign only in the coastal states, where most of the people are, and ignore the inland areas.
Suppose a candidate did that. He or she could promise water and electricity to California, and ignore Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico (where the water and electricity would originate). The interests of Midwestern farmers would be ignored.
The Electoral College is a wise system, and I think the best system. It pools voters by region, so that the interests of all the people in a region are given all of the weight of that region. You and your neighbors all vote; your collective decision speaks with the authority of all of you.
President Bush ran on the platform of a 'humble' foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences.
How quickly we forget. The 2000 election was pre-9/11. The entire U.S. perspective on the world changed sharply after that.
Before 9/11/2001, terrorism was something that happened overseas. Sure, there was the earlier Trade Center attack and Oklahoma City, but we viewed those with as isolated incidents, not as signs of a global culture war.
We now understand that we need to defeat the use of terrorism. We understand that the world is a lot smaller than it used to be, and that we are not safe. We understand that it's pointless to fight terrorists while turning a blind eye to the nations who sponsor, aid, and encourage terrorist organizations.
The choice, as I see it, devolves to reacting against individual terrorist attacks and proactively fighting the idea of terrorism by action against states who sponsor it.
On one point at least, Mr. Soros is correct: we will have to live with our decision.
Why quibble over whether an object originates in our solar system or merely travels through our solar system on the way to us? Why worry about how big it is? In any case is there currently nothing anyone could do to keep such an object from hitting your roof.
>Manmade meteors? Sci-Fi.
Think again. There is already a lot of junk in orbit from our space programs; periodically, some of it falls to Earth. There's currently nothing anyone could do to keep such an object from hitting your roof.
>Railguns are not part of the current plan >... flawed for other reasons
While I know of no formal plan to use them, obviously if there are guns aboard a ship, we'll use them if we can.
Of course, a land-based railgun might be difficult to use on a moving target.
>NMD couldn't hit subs... [and] anything else on that list >we can knock out already.
Ah, now I see your difficulty. You're thinking of a "Giant Laser" in the sky to zap incoming missiles. A missile defense system would use every technology available, both conventional and high-tech. The idea is to keep things from hitting us.
>you'd never want to blow up an enemy ship - >instead capture it, and use it as evidence >for who sponsored the attack
Never is a long time. In warfare there is no time for the niceties of civilian jurisprudence. You don't mirandize the crew of an enemy ship, you send them to a water grave.
Microsoft got to be the dominant OS vendor by lowering the barriers for acquisition of its products. No copy protection (mostly), and it came on every box.
I guess they learned their lesson. If you leave off the copy protection, those silly consumers will start using the stuff right and left and then where will you be?
Market share is everything.
And Microsoft pushing around the RIAA -- that's wonderful stuff.
We are just dumping money down the drain on a system that is questionable both scientifically and strategically.
I agree that the world is a different place after the Cold War. Also, it's not likely that North Korea would launch a first strike at the U.S.
But what about Al Qaida, China, or some domestic terrorist? And what about during a declared war - a missile strike at Kansas City would have a lot of terror value.
"Questionable [science]" is redundant. All science is by its nature questionable; that's part of what makes it science.
There are more things to knock out of the sky than incoming SCUDs and ICBMs. Meteors (both of interstellar and manmade origin) are somewhat dangerous, and by the time we see one it will be too late to do basic research. I'm sure you'd agree that one of the best kinds of scientific research to fund is how to keep giant hunks of burning metal from hitting your roof.
Another, more practical way a missile defense system could be used is to wipe out an incoming airplane, ship, sub, or anything else before it comes in offensive range.
Remember the story about the Navy using rail guns? Those (both shipboard and land-based) would be part of an integrated missile defense.
The study showed that there is a nonlinear curve relating the amount of beer consumed and overall health. So there must be some factor other than the antioxidant effect at work.
I'm not a physiologist, or even very smart, so the rest of this is pure guesswork:
Probably small amounts of alcohol don't do bad things to you, and may even clean crud from the blood and arteries. Larger amounts make the kidneys work harder, and the excess is eventually converted to fat.
Since most people (in the population that eats enough to read Slashdot) have enough fat already, these negative health effects of alcohol take over with increased consumption.
The formula for health may be formed like:
health = q +.5 q ^ 2 where q is the daily consumption.
It's obviously more complex than that, but as I said, I'm not a medic. The point to my guess is that the effect is not linear, but it's also not exponentially bad for you to drink more. 10 beers/day is not much worse for you than, say, 5. The curve levels off.
Why would the paper ballots be destroyed? Isn't that a risk in all elections up until recently?
They could be destroyed by accident or otherwise. While ballot security has always been important, under a dual count system an attacker who hacks the electronic system to add votes for a candidate calls into question whether some ballots were destroyed. We wouldn't be sure.
How is printing a paper ballot a risk to the secrecy of the vote, any moreso than it is now?
Did I say printing a paper ballot? I meant a paper receipt removes the secrecy of the voting booth.
How is printing a receipt with a checksum of some random token... a vulnerability?
Because anything a voter can use to verify a ballot can be used to prove to someone else how he voted. That enables vote-selling, strongarm tactics, and other tampering. On balance, it's more trouble that it's worth. The more complicated the scheme to keep the information on the receipt secure, the higher you raise the bar for actually using it. That means people other than the voter would get more out of the receipt than the voter would.
I have been swayed to think that a receipt is a bad idea, too. I've tried to imagine a system that would A) allow a voter to verify that his vote was counted correctly and B) maintained the secrecy of the voting booth, but I can't.
There is a maxim that goes, "A man with one watch knows the time; a man with two watches is unsure."
What's going to happen when the electronic count and the paper count are wildly different? Suppose the electronic tally has candidate A over B by X number of votes. What happens if the total number of paper ballots is less than the electronic count by an amount O(X)?
I agree that we want the paper ballots to be authoritative, but what if they are physically destroyed?
It's not enough just to say the voting machine has to be open source. Electronic voting introduces the uncertainty of a 2nd watch; which one is accurate? Are they both wrong?
I've been following the ASRG list, but not actively participating. I mistakenly read the proposals to say they did not alter SMTP, but simply examined a message and performed checks after it had been received.
As I indicated in another post, I'm glad that's not the case.
However, I still see some flaws in the mechanism:
Spammers have their own DNS servers
Spammers and worms will look for approved MX hosts to compromise
Spammers will pay greedy ISPs for the appropriate MX records
Not all ISPs will follow the DNS rules anyway.
If the problems (and I don't claim the above to be an exhaustive list) are cleaned up, and the proposals actually do ensure that the addresses in the "Received-From:" headers are correct, then victory is in sight.
If that were how it worked, it would be a little draconian, but probably better than the current protocol. I don't think that's the design, though. It looks to me that there is not the alteration to SMTP that you describe.
SPF/SenderID just check the headers of an already-received message to make sure that the headers reflect a valid mail server.
Uh, dude, read the freaking proposals. Preventing "header forgery" is exactly what Sender ID aims to accomplish.
I think you only read the synopsis for SPF, which makes that claim. The mechanism for both SPF and SenderID, though, is little more than a "reverse-MX" on the field in question.
Neither scheme validates that the IP address of the immediate source of the message is what the message claims it is. They just validate that it's proper for the address claimed in the headers to be sending mail.
Is this not SPF is doing? It checks the headers to see that the point of origin is the same IP as listed for your domain name as a legitimate sending point.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. SPF tells you whether a given sender is authorized to send mail from some domain. It doesn't tell you whether the sender is really from that domain.
SPF is doing the wrong job, and not doing it well. What's to keep a zombie from querying DNS to find the correct mail server for its domain and forging the headers to reflect that? Nothing. It would then be up to the individual ISP to make sure noone in their domain does that.
Right. If they were willing to do that, they'd do it now.
There is also nothing keeping a spammer (or a spam-friendly ISP) from publishing DNS SPF records for its zombies. Expect a worm that does that to be written as soon as the spec is finalized. All those WinXP DNS servers out there... [[shudder]].
Yes, that's true. But what we think of as "forwarding" is really "forging".
You are correct, and that's why the SPF/SenderID solutions are off target. SenderID is a bandaid designed to block zombie Windows machines while allowing 'legitimate email advertisers' (*choke*) to continue to spam. Since these solutions are designed for a specific problem, they don't get at the real source of spam.
The whole problem is that there is currently no way for a mail server to determine with certainty that the sending host is who it says it is. SPF/SenderID just tell the server that the sending host is the right one to be sending from the domain it's claiming. As far as I can see, that doesn't fight the real problem, which is forged headers.
The real answer is to fix SMTP so that forged headers don't work. That's all. Don't try to do too much or focus on a specific area of spam.
Once we know which machines are sending spam, we can take countermeasures. The countermeasures (blacklists, complaints to abuse@their.isp, quarantine, etc.) all fall into place once we know with certainty who is spamming.
>allows someone with a two-digit code to change the >the election results...
Ok, so you made my point: it's a computer security problem, not an election judge problem.
Ok, so it's both.
I've said before there ought to be a paper trail. The voting machine should print out a dual receipt, which the voter examines, rips in two, and puts half in the ballot box and half in his/her pocket. The votes could be tabulated electronically by whatever clever high-tech-ultra-secure-but-obviously-hackable process you want. The official results would still be calculated from the paper in the ballot box and sent in the old fashioned way. If there's a difference, do a hand recount.
Statistics would reveal any flaws in either the machines or the election judges, or both, since voters could give their paper receipts to watchdog groups.
I think that would make the probable outcome available within a few minutes of the close of voting, and also improve overall accuracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Now that I've trolled for your attention, I want to say that there's no such thing as a wasted vote.
.01% of the vote is treated differently from a party that got 1.01%. If a party gets even 2% of the vote, they start to look mainstream. After all, getting 2% might be enough to alter the balance of power between the two major parties.
The election process is about more than just who wins. Sure, the winner is important, but there are other factors that have an impact on the behavior of government. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that one of the two major parties will win in November. Why vote for someone else?
A vote is a statement of your general favor for a given candidate. It's a winner-take-all proposition; you don't get to divide it among three candidates you like. It's assumed that you don't believe the candidate is perfect for you; he was just good enough to get your vote.
Voting for a third party or write-in candidate sends the signal that A) you care enough to vote and B) neither of the two major party clowns was good enough for you. To the extent that your vote matters at all, you have used it to tell the major parties that if their policies were more like the one for whom you voted, they might get your vote.
A vote for a third party encourages that party, and also the other minor parties. They see the number of people who voted for them, and know where their support is.
A vote for a third party lends them authority when they speak out. A press release from a party that got
But, it might be argued, doesn't that split the support for one of the major parties, causing the Most Evil Party to win instead of the Not Quite So Evil Party? Possibly, and that is part of the choice. Unless your tiny party is at one extreme of the spectrum occupied by the two majors, support for it will come proportionately from both of them.
Most people want to vote for a winner. To vote for a third party you have to get past that sense of wanting to be on the winning side and remember to vote your own mind. If you only vote for the candidate you think is going to win, you have effectively allowed someone else to vote for you.
Finally, voting for a third party encourages those who don't want to "waste" their vote that it's not such a waste. Voting is a herd phenomenon. When others see your party's vote total rising from past elections, they'll be more likely to vote that way themselves.
The public interest in knowing who sponsors a candidate overrides your interest in keeping that private.
This is a way-cool app.
I found that among the top contributors to US Senate candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) (2003-04) are:
A family named Soros from New York:
SOROS, GEORGE, NEW YORK,NY 10108, SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT, 2/27/2004
$12,000
SOROS, JENNIFER NEW YORK,NY 10011 CONSULTANT 3/15/2004
$12,000
SOROS, JONATHAN NEW YORK,NY 10011 SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT 3/6/2004
$12,000
SOROS, ROBERT NEW YORK CITY,NY 10014 SOROS FUND MANAGEMENT
3/4/2004
$12,000
SOROS, SUSAN KATONAH,NY 10536 BARD GRADUATE CENTER FOR DECORATIVE 2/27/2004
$12,000
And the billionaire Crown family of Illinois:
CROWN, A STEVEN CHICAGO,IL 60601 HENRY CROWN & COMPANY
$12,000
CROWN, ELIZABETH NORTHFIELD,IL 60093 HOMEMAKER
$12,000
CROWN, JAMES S CHICAGO,IL 60601 PRIVATE INVESTOR $14,000
CROWN, JOANN WILMETTE,IL 60091
$12,000
CROWN, NANCY C WINNETKA,IL 60093 HOMEMAKER
$12,000
CROWN, PAULA H CHICAGO,IL 60610 HENRY CROWN & COMPANY
$14,000
CROWN, REBECCA WINNETKA,IL 60093 BAKER DEMONSTRATION SCHOOL
$12,000
CROWN, RENEE S WILMETTE,IL 60091 RETIRED
$14,000
CROWN, SUSAN CHICAGO,IL 60601 HENRY CROWN & COMPANY
$12,000
A mission-critical system should be interrupted exactly when you want, not on a schedule dictated by a calendar. The original "BS!" poster was right: if there are memory leaks, garbage collection problems, etc., then that's evidence of sloppy design work.
Saying you need regular reboots is the same as saying you need a firewall to protect against viruses: both show flaws in the design of OS.
And as far as "fscking their disks every day" goes, that's more sloppy design. You shouldn't have to do that. Fsck fixes file system errors resulting from poor application behavior, environmental problems, and (sometimes) hardware troubles. You shouldn't have those every day in mission-critical systems, but even if you do then putting in place a system of daily fsck is not the way to fix it.
I've had a production application server running for the last 288 days. It's due to come down for OS updates, but it will do so on my schedule, not because its operating system is poorly designed.
I "still" support President Bush. I don't have "a very elaborate little fantasy world", or even a fantasy island, in my head.
What I do have is the knowledge that Presidents are people, too, and aren't perfect. Probably like many you wish would "get it", I give President Bush a pass because of his steadfastness in the face of adversity and the contrasts with his most recent predecessor in office.
What follows is the start of a list of why we still don't "get it":
He handled it just right. His supporters believe that he handled it that way because he is that way.
In uncertain times, people want a leader who sticks to his position. John Kerry plays right into this, since he takes the more typical political approach of trying to please everyone.
Many people got really tired of Bill Clinton's slickness, and George just isn't slick. We like that. It's still refreshing.
We believe, as those on the Left do not, that if George makes a mistake it's an honest one. We believe he's faithful to his wife. We believe he lives by his faith and pursues morality within that framework. We like all of that.
Tell us we must not do something that is wrong, but don't say we can not do the merely difficult.
So President Bush has a lot of political capital saved up with his supporters. Please don't misunderestimate us any more, ok? ;-).
Did the President testify before Congress?
The two sides are both so cynical I am ready to ignore them both and write in Pete Rose. If they'd each quit pandering to the other's base for a minute, they'd quickly understand how simple it is:
What the Republicans need to do is quit trying to look liberal, and instead convince middle class subdivisionites that George Bush is God's Own Candidate. They'll turn out in droves.
What the Democrats need to do is quit trying to look like anti-war-but-tough-on-terror hawks, and instead convince undecided voters that John Kerry has a firm position on some issue. They already know he isn't George Bush; he can stop running on that now.
No, the two sides keep hitting their talking points and strategizing about getting out the vote of this or that demographic.
I think I'll turn my attention to something important. Don't they know there's a pennant race going on?
Whether or not we agree or disagree with Mr. Lorentz, it's important to understand his biases. The letter purports him to be just another soldier doing his national service, but he's not.
And yes, it's an almost recursive double irony, and that's why I couldn't resist: I post an ad hominem attack on Lorentz, pigeon-holing him as a conspiracy theorist, partially by quoting him saying that not all those who spout conspiracy theories are conspiracy theorists.
Al Lorentz is the former Chairman of the Constitution Party of Texas. He was against the war in Iraq, because Lorentz believes in isolationism (even after 9/11). So while he is not "some politically idealistic and naÃve young soldier", that's only true because he's not young. He is a political ideologue, with an anti-Bush paranoia.
That made my Bullshit Detector go off like a Claymore in a cattle drive.
Al Lorentz spent most of his career in the Reserves.
A noncomm in Civil Affairs doesn't have a "muds-eye view" of the war at all. He may as well be back in Texas, for all the fighting he'll see. This guy is an armchair General. Why isn't he an officer? Because he's incompetent for a commission, that's why.
Al Lorentz was a Bush basher before he went to Iraq, and he's a Bush basher now.
From another article by Lorentz:Without the EC, you don't get 100% of any one state. You only get the votes you get. There are lots and lots more votes to be had on the coasts, so that's where the candidates would stay (unless, e.g., there were some event of national interest taking place inland).
With the EC, winning all of the coastal states is one way to play it; without the EC, it would be the only thing that mattered.
>The people doing the voting don't much like that idea.
The people are not always right. Popular will swings back and forth, moving this way and that, sometimes tending to the extreme. The EC system tends to minimize the tyranny of the majority, which you obviously agree is something to minimize.
Your argument about the EC and protecting homosexuals is an obvious red herring; we are talking only about geography, not any other factor distinguishing one person from another. The EC doesn't have anything to do with differences between people, just between regions. The individuals vote, but the groups decide.
Our republic is built on a principle called "balance of power". There is a balance of power between the People, the States, and the Federal government. The People stand no chance against a corrupt Federal government without the States. The Federal government defends the rights of the people against the individual State goverments. The People elect the officials in the government (and make up the armed militia, just in case the officials forget who's boss).
It is the States, not the People, who elect the President. The Electoral College compromises between giving each State a vote and allowing the aggregate popular vote to determine the winner.
The Electoral College effectively protects the smaller States from the tyrrany of the larger ones. Without it, a candidate could campaign only in the coastal states, where most of the people are, and ignore the inland areas.
Suppose a candidate did that. He or she could promise water and electricity to California, and ignore Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico (where the water and electricity would originate). The interests of Midwestern farmers would be ignored.
The Electoral College is a wise system, and I think the best system. It pools voters by region, so that the interests of all the people in a region are given all of the weight of that region. You and your neighbors all vote; your collective decision speaks with the authority of all of you.
How quickly we forget. The 2000 election was pre-9/11. The entire U.S. perspective on the world changed sharply after that.
Before 9/11/2001, terrorism was something that happened overseas. Sure, there was the earlier Trade Center attack and Oklahoma City, but we viewed those with as isolated incidents, not as signs of a global culture war.
We now understand that we need to defeat the use of terrorism. We understand that the world is a lot smaller than it used to be, and that we are not safe. We understand that it's pointless to fight terrorists while turning a blind eye to the nations who sponsor, aid, and encourage terrorist organizations.
The choice, as I see it, devolves to reacting against individual terrorist attacks and proactively fighting the idea of terrorism by action against states who sponsor it.
On one point at least, Mr. Soros is correct: we will have to live with our decision.
>Not interstellar; "interplanetary"
... [and] anything else on that list
>Not meteors: "asteroids"
Why quibble over whether an object originates in our solar system or merely travels through our solar system on the way to us? Why worry about how big it is? In any case is there currently nothing anyone could do to keep such an object from hitting your roof.
>Manmade meteors? Sci-Fi.
Think again. There is already a lot of junk in orbit from our space programs; periodically, some of it falls to Earth. There's currently nothing anyone could do to keep such an object from hitting your roof.
>Railguns are not part of the current plan
>... flawed for other reasons
While I know of no formal plan to use them, obviously if there are guns aboard a ship, we'll use them if we can.
Of course, a land-based railgun might be difficult to use on a moving target.
>NMD couldn't hit subs
>we can knock out already.
Ah, now I see your difficulty. You're thinking of a "Giant Laser" in the sky to zap incoming missiles. A missile defense system would use every technology available, both conventional and high-tech. The idea is to keep things from hitting us.
>you'd never want to blow up an enemy ship -
>instead capture it, and use it as evidence
>for who sponsored the attack
Never is a long time. In warfare there is no time for the niceties of civilian jurisprudence. You don't mirandize the crew of an enemy ship, you send them to a water grave.
This is really good news for Linux vendors.
Microsoft got to be the dominant OS vendor by lowering the barriers for acquisition of its products. No copy protection (mostly), and it came on every box.
I guess they learned their lesson. If you leave off the copy protection, those silly consumers will start using the stuff right and left and then where will you be?
Market share is everything.
And Microsoft pushing around the RIAA -- that's wonderful stuff.
I agree that the world is a different place after the Cold War. Also, it's not likely that North Korea would launch a first strike at the U.S.
But what about Al Qaida, China, or some domestic terrorist? And what about during a declared war - a missile strike at Kansas City would have a lot of terror value.
"Questionable [science]" is redundant. All science is by its nature questionable; that's part of what makes it science.
There are more things to knock out of the sky than incoming SCUDs and ICBMs. Meteors (both of interstellar and manmade origin) are somewhat dangerous, and by the time we see one it will be too late to do basic research. I'm sure you'd agree that one of the best kinds of scientific research to fund is how to keep giant hunks of burning metal from hitting your roof.
Another, more practical way a missile defense system could be used is to wipe out an incoming airplane, ship, sub, or anything else before it comes in offensive range.
Remember the story about the Navy using rail guns? Those (both shipboard and land-based) would be part of an integrated missile defense.
The study showed that there is a nonlinear curve relating the amount of beer consumed and overall health. So there must be some factor other than the antioxidant effect at work.
.5 q ^ 2
I'm not a physiologist, or even very smart, so the rest of this is pure guesswork:
Probably small amounts of alcohol don't do bad things to you, and may even clean crud from the blood and arteries. Larger amounts make the kidneys work harder, and the excess is eventually converted to fat.
Since most people (in the population that eats enough to read Slashdot) have enough fat already, these negative health effects of alcohol take over with increased consumption.
The formula for health may be formed like:
health = q +
where q is the daily consumption.
It's obviously more complex than that, but as I said, I'm not a medic. The point to my guess is that the effect is not linear, but it's also not exponentially bad for you to drink more. 10 beers/day is not much worse for you than, say, 5. The curve levels off.
They could be destroyed by accident or otherwise. While ballot security has always been important, under a dual count system an attacker who hacks the electronic system to add votes for a candidate calls into question whether some ballots were destroyed. We wouldn't be sure.
Did I say printing a paper ballot? I meant a paper receipt removes the secrecy of the voting booth.
Because anything a voter can use to verify a ballot can be used to prove to someone else how he voted. That enables vote-selling, strongarm tactics, and other tampering. On balance, it's more trouble that it's worth. The more complicated the scheme to keep the information on the receipt secure, the higher you raise the bar for actually using it. That means people other than the voter would get more out of the receipt than the voter would.
I have been swayed to think that a receipt is a bad idea, too. I've tried to imagine a system that would A) allow a voter to verify that his vote was counted correctly and B) maintained the secrecy of the voting booth, but I can't.
There is a maxim that goes, "A man with one watch knows the time; a man with two watches is unsure."
What's going to happen when the electronic count and the paper count are wildly different? Suppose the electronic tally has candidate A over B by X number of votes. What happens if the total number of paper ballots is less than the electronic count by an amount O(X)?
I agree that we want the paper ballots to be authoritative, but what if they are physically destroyed?
It's not enough just to say the voting machine has to be open source. Electronic voting introduces the uncertainty of a 2nd watch; which one is accurate? Are they both wrong?
I've been following the ASRG list, but not actively participating. I mistakenly read the proposals to say they did not alter SMTP, but simply examined a message and performed checks after it had been received.
As I indicated in another post, I'm glad that's not the case.
However, I still see some flaws in the mechanism:
If the problems (and I don't claim the above to be an exhaustive list) are cleaned up, and the proposals actually do ensure that the addresses in the "Received-From:" headers are correct, then victory is in sight.
If that were how it worked, it would be a little draconian, but probably better than the current protocol. I don't think that's the design, though. It looks to me that there is not the alteration to SMTP that you describe.
SPF/SenderID just check the headers of an already-received message to make sure that the headers reflect a valid mail server.
If I'm wrong, that's good.
I think you only read the synopsis for SPF, which makes that claim. The mechanism for both SPF and SenderID, though, is little more than a "reverse-MX" on the field in question.
Neither scheme validates that the IP address of the immediate source of the message is what the message claims it is. They just validate that it's proper for the address claimed in the headers to be sending mail.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. SPF tells you whether a given sender is authorized to send mail from some domain. It doesn't tell you whether the sender is really from that domain.
SPF is doing the wrong job, and not doing it well. What's to keep a zombie from querying DNS to find the correct mail server for its domain and forging the headers to reflect that? Nothing. It would then be up to the individual ISP to make sure noone in their domain does that.
Right. If they were willing to do that, they'd do it now.
There is also nothing keeping a spammer (or a spam-friendly ISP) from publishing DNS SPF records for its zombies. Expect a worm that does that to be written as soon as the spec is finalized. All those WinXP DNS servers out there ... [[shudder]].
You are correct, and that's why the SPF/SenderID solutions are off target. SenderID is a bandaid designed to block zombie Windows machines while allowing 'legitimate email advertisers' (*choke*) to continue to spam. Since these solutions are designed for a specific problem, they don't get at the real source of spam.
The whole problem is that there is currently no way for a mail server to determine with certainty that the sending host is who it says it is. SPF/SenderID just tell the server that the sending host is the right one to be sending from the domain it's claiming. As far as I can see, that doesn't fight the real problem, which is forged headers.
The real answer is to fix SMTP so that forged headers don't work. That's all. Don't try to do too much or focus on a specific area of spam.
Once we know which machines are sending spam, we can take countermeasures. The countermeasures (blacklists, complaints to abuse@their.isp, quarantine, etc.) all fall into place once we know with certainty who is spamming.
>allows someone with a two-digit code to change the
>the election results...
Ok, so you made my point: it's a computer security problem, not an election judge problem.
Ok, so it's both.
I've said before there ought to be a paper trail. The voting machine should print out a dual receipt, which the voter examines, rips in two, and puts half in the ballot box and half in his/her pocket. The votes could be tabulated electronically by whatever clever high-tech-ultra-secure-but-obviously-hackable process you want. The official results would still be calculated from the paper in the ballot box and sent in the old fashioned way. If there's a difference, do a hand recount.
Statistics would reveal any flaws in either the machines or the election judges, or both, since voters could give their paper receipts to watchdog groups.
I think that would make the probable outcome available within a few minutes of the close of voting, and also improve overall accuracy.