That's why we dislike hand counting, not paper voting. We've also seen how easily paper voting methods can be rigged and manipulated. We've seen it for well over 100 years. Prior to going to electronic machines, my county used mechanical machines. The only paper ballots are the absentee ballots. Those ballots are machine readable and are read by a scantron machine. From our experience, it's been the paper ballots that are the ones most subject to fraud in one way or another, not the machines.
Even an 'honest' hand counting isn't infallible. Every vote I've heard of with a manual hand count has had different results every time. A properly made machine will produce the proper count every time.
The same goes in most of the U.S. Most states vote for state offices in odd years, federal offices are only in even years. County offices are only in odd years. However there is the odd County/State item that is voted on in even years.
In 2004, we voted for president, federal representative, (not federal senator, that will be in 2008), two state constitutional amendments (a rarity) and four county bond issues.
County bond issues require the approval of voter in order to be passed and are usually voted on yearly. This is not a state or federal requirement, the county code was written this way and the citizens have seen no reason to change that.
Now, what would be the point of having two days a year to do this, when we already have one day for it. It's not that hard to vote for a few more items on the same day. The state I'm in specifically tries to minimize the number of things to vote on during a year there is a federal election. Also, remember, the local governments run and pay for the elections. The federal government does not pay for them nor does the state in most places.
So, you only vote for your member of parliament and no one else? Who then selects your Mayors, provincial Governors and Assembly Members? Sounds like you either don't know much about your government at all or don't have much say in local elections.
Well yeah, the US voting system is seriously fscked up, starting with the fact that there's one election day to elect everyone running for office from local dogcatcher to president, not to mention however many ballot initiatives and referenda there are. (Okay, there may be some local exceptions.)
More like completely wrong. In 2005 and 2007, I voted only for elected positions within my State and County. There were no federal government issues or positions voted on at all.
In Canada, for example, it's pretty much unheard of to schedule a municipal or provincial election on the same day as a national one.
Most U.S. States are the same way. However, occasionally we do have a state or local issue to vote on. In 2006 and 2008 we have voted/will vote on Senator to Congress, Congressman, President (2008, not 2006), some state constitutional amendments (they are voted upon as soon as they are eligible), county bond issues (these happen every year). Now, remember. The U.S. Federal Government has no control over the local elections. The States and usually the Counties or Cities have the power. Should they choose to change the local election date they could, but they usually do not. Looking back at the 2004 election, there were relatively few things to vote on. President, Congressmen, (correction) no Federal senator that year, some state constitutional. amendments, and some county bond issues (as I said, every year).
As I recall the last Canadian election I participated in (couple of decades ago), each particular race (position) had its own ballot, colour-coded, each going into a different ballot box. That simplifies the counting greatly. (Mind, I officially declined my vote in that one, all the candidates were bozos or worse. They have to count officially declined votes as equivalent to "none of the above", and they'd have to do the election over if there were enough of those. They have to record it to balance the number of ballots in the box with the number of voters who showed up. If they wanted to increase voter turnout, they should do something similar here in the US. Of course they won't, the two major parties like the lock they have in the current system.)
Perhaps this is why Canada is so fscked up then? Too many people complaining when they don't even vote? It also doesn't appear to work to increase voter turnout in Canada as you have not voted for a couple decades by your own admission.
In the U.S., no votes are counted. Depending on the State/local rules, it can actually affect the outcome. But again, the Federal Government has no say in this, it is up to the states. If enough people in a state wanted to change the rules, they could. There are methods on the books for amending the state constitutions and laws that bypass the state legislatures that would allows citizens to change the state election laws. Of course, it could also be that the people who actually vote like it the current way. After all, it gives them more of a voice in the system over the people who just don't care enough to vote, such as yourself.
Last year (2007) I had 12 things to vote on. Two of them had me voting for up to three options. That's twelve different counting of the ballots. That's a lot of counting. We're not talking one day of ballot counting, were talking two weeks.
Tell me. How many things do you vote on each election and how often do you have an election? Last year (2007) I had 12 things to vote son. Two of them had me voting for up to three options. That's twelve different counting of the ballots. We go through this every year in the U.S., not every four.
You haven't seen some of the ballot papers used in Scotland. To save money, the polling stations chose to have two votes on one ballot paper. On the left column, you had twenty candidates, of which you had to select in order of preference. On the right column, you had a smaller number of candidates of which you could only pick one. The result? 100,000 spoilt ballot papers
You must not be from the U.S. In most states, we vote on something every year, not just every four. Last year, I voted on at least 8 things with one or two of them involving voting for multiple people for a board. In the U.S., we are used to voting for multiple things on a single ballot.
Here are the election results for that year. We had two bond issues, a state senator, a state delegate, soil and water director (vote for three), County Clerk, County Attorney, County Sheriff, Chairman of Board of Supervisors, Board Representative, School Board (vote for three), School Board local.
Ok, 12 issues and we voted for three people in two of them. There were a few more things to vote on than usual, but not a lot more.
Actually, it would make it easier. In a close election, one would only need to manipulate one or two of the local locations to change the outcome. Having multiple locations means that you have more chances to find an 'agreeable' location. A central counting facility is easier to watch than multiple facilities.
Critique: Time required. It would take days to have to manually display a single ballot at a time. There is really no reason not to use a machine to count the ballots. In fact, these machines already exist and have been used for years. Actually, they have been used for over a Century since at least the 1900 census.
One of the ways they double-check the machine is by feeding through a random sampling of ballots and checking the totals on the sample.
Correction: Obviously this does not eliminate problems occurring at other levels
Ballot switching/stuffing is still not resolved and can occur at a 'lower' level.
The main goal of these guns is to replace the Cruise Missile. A single cruise missile costs roughly 1 Million Dollars *evil maniacal laugh* (ahem). The costs for the rail gun is maybe $100 per projectile, tops. I'm including machining in this, the actual material costs are quite low. The rails themselves are somewhat more expensive, but the over all cost is still less than an equivalent amount of cruise missile.
Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.
There is another factor to consider in this. Chernobyl used a design whereby a lack of water caused a positive feedback loop in the reactor to cause it to get even hotter. U.S. and most other designs use a negative feedback loop so the less water/coolant there is in the reactor, the less energy is put out. A Chernobyl type accident is physically impossible in any reactor used in the U.S. 3 Mile Island is about the worst nuclear accident that can occur in a U.S. nuclear power plant and about three dozen things went wrong (including stupidity on the part of the plant operators) in order to cause it.
Is it possible for them to carry out an experiment that will directly prove the existence of gravity waves? Or that gravity waves travel at the speed of light? Surely there has to be some way to do this directly without waiting for a close enough cosmic event.
Correct. But they usually have backup sites where the backups are sitting in a "powered down" mode, but still hot and ready to be cranked up to full on a moments notice, should the primary site go down.
At which point, the computer takes even longer to start up, causing the worker to have to delay whatever they were going to do. Add in the usual requirement for a reboot after patching and it takes even longer.
What's the cost of 10k * 261 days * 12 hours of power?
Well over half a million dollars if I did the math right.
Surely you could use wake on lan to wake the machines then do your rollout 10 minutes later? Or do a patch install when the machine is turned on and connects to the domain controller?
Unfortunately, this doesn't always work well. On some networks, the machines will auto-start up the moment they receive a packet, even if it isn't intended for them.
Ah, someone who thinks along the same lines I do. I'm not sure whether to laugh or groan when someone says we should ban all weapons, anything that can e used as a weapon or any thing that could be used by the military.
And people could keep the icecream in their freezer all the time and never have it melt. Oh wait, that isn't possible. If it is that cold all the time, then you can't get the icecream out of the box.
At the end of 1976, inflation was decreasing and had dropped to below 5%. When carter entered office it started going up again and kept on going up. Federal Reserve chairmen are one of the few positions that stay around administration to administration. Unless you're saying that Paul Volcker was incompetent under Carter but extremely smart under Reagan? Face it, Carter is the one who caused some of the worst inflation in US history.
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That's why we dislike hand counting, not paper voting. We've also seen how easily paper voting methods can be rigged and manipulated. We've seen it for well over 100 years. Prior to going to electronic machines, my county used mechanical machines. The only paper ballots are the absentee ballots. Those ballots are machine readable and are read by a scantron machine. From our experience, it's been the paper ballots that are the ones most subject to fraud in one way or another, not the machines.
Even an 'honest' hand counting isn't infallible. Every vote I've heard of with a manual hand count has had different results every time. A properly made machine will produce the proper count every time.
The same goes in most of the U.S. Most states vote for state offices in odd years, federal offices are only in even years. County offices are only in odd years. However there is the odd County/State item that is voted on in even years.
In 2004, we voted for president, federal representative, (not federal senator, that will be in 2008), two state constitutional amendments (a rarity) and four county bond issues.
County bond issues require the approval of voter in order to be passed and are usually voted on yearly. This is not a state or federal requirement, the county code was written this way and the citizens have seen no reason to change that.
Now, what would be the point of having two days a year to do this, when we already have one day for it. It's not that hard to vote for a few more items on the same day. The state I'm in specifically tries to minimize the number of things to vote on during a year there is a federal election. Also, remember, the local governments run and pay for the elections. The federal government does not pay for them nor does the state in most places.
So, you only vote for your member of parliament and no one else? Who then selects your Mayors, provincial Governors and Assembly Members? Sounds like you either don't know much about your government at all or don't have much say in local elections.
Well yeah, the US voting system is seriously fscked up, starting with the fact that there's one election day to elect everyone running for office from local dogcatcher to president, not to mention however many ballot initiatives and referenda there are. (Okay, there may be some local exceptions.)
More like completely wrong. In 2005 and 2007, I voted only for elected positions within my State and County. There were no federal government issues or positions voted on at all.
In Canada, for example, it's pretty much unheard of to schedule a municipal or provincial election on the same day as a national one.
Most U.S. States are the same way. However, occasionally we do have a state or local issue to vote on. In 2006 and 2008 we have voted/will vote on Senator to Congress, Congressman, President (2008, not 2006), some state constitutional amendments (they are voted upon as soon as they are eligible), county bond issues (these happen every year). Now, remember. The U.S. Federal Government has no control over the local elections. The States and usually the Counties or Cities have the power. Should they choose to change the local election date they could, but they usually do not. Looking back at the 2004 election, there were relatively few things to vote on. President, Congressmen, (correction) no Federal senator that year, some state constitutional. amendments, and some county bond issues (as I said, every year).
As I recall the last Canadian election I participated in (couple of decades ago), each particular race (position) had its own ballot, colour-coded, each going into a different ballot box. That simplifies the counting greatly. (Mind, I officially declined my vote in that one, all the candidates were bozos or worse. They have to count officially declined votes as equivalent to "none of the above", and they'd have to do the election over if there were enough of those. They have to record it to balance the number of ballots in the box with the number of voters who showed up. If they wanted to increase voter turnout, they should do something similar here in the US. Of course they won't, the two major parties like the lock they have in the current system.)
Perhaps this is why Canada is so fscked up then? Too many people complaining when they don't even vote? It also doesn't appear to work to increase voter turnout in Canada as you have not voted for a couple decades by your own admission.
In the U.S., no votes are counted. Depending on the State/local rules, it can actually affect the outcome. But again, the Federal Government has no say in this, it is up to the states. If enough people in a state wanted to change the rules, they could. There are methods on the books for amending the state constitutions and laws that bypass the state legislatures that would allows citizens to change the state election laws. Of course, it could also be that the people who actually vote like it the current way. After all, it gives them more of a voice in the system over the people who just don't care enough to vote, such as yourself.
That two weeks is for counting at the polling places. The poling places serve a few thousand people each.
Last year (2007) I had 12 things to vote on. Two of them had me voting for up to three options. That's twelve different counting of the ballots. That's a lot of counting. We're not talking one day of ballot counting, were talking two weeks.
Tell me. How many things do you vote on each election and how often do you have an election? Last year (2007) I had 12 things to vote son. Two of them had me voting for up to three options. That's twelve different counting of the ballots. We go through this every year in the U.S., not every four.
You haven't seen some of the ballot papers used in Scotland. To save money, the polling stations chose to have two votes on one ballot paper. On the left column, you had twenty candidates, of which you had to select in order of preference. On the right column, you had a smaller number of candidates of which you could only pick one. The result? 100,000 spoilt ballot papers
You must not be from the U.S. In most states, we vote on something every year, not just every four. Last year, I voted on at least 8 things with one or two of them involving voting for multiple people for a board. In the U.S., we are used to voting for multiple things on a single ballot.
Here are the election results for that year. We had two bond issues, a state senator, a state delegate, soil and water director (vote for three), County Clerk, County Attorney, County Sheriff, Chairman of Board of Supervisors, Board Representative, School Board (vote for three), School Board local.
Ok, 12 issues and we voted for three people in two of them. There were a few more things to vote on than usual, but not a lot more.
Actually, it would make it easier. In a close election, one would only need to manipulate one or two of the local locations to change the outcome. Having multiple locations means that you have more chances to find an 'agreeable' location. A central counting facility is easier to watch than multiple facilities.
Critique: Time required. It would take days to have to manually display a single ballot at a time. There is really no reason not to use a machine to count the ballots. In fact, these machines already exist and have been used for years. Actually, they have been used for over a Century since at least the 1900 census.
One of the ways they double-check the machine is by feeding through a random sampling of ballots and checking the totals on the sample.
Correction:
Obviously this does not eliminate problems occurring at other levels
Ballot switching/stuffing is still not resolved and can occur at a 'lower' level.
The main goal of these guns is to replace the Cruise Missile. A single cruise missile costs roughly 1 Million Dollars *evil maniacal laugh* (ahem). The costs for the rail gun is maybe $100 per projectile, tops. I'm including machining in this, the actual material costs are quite low. The rails themselves are somewhat more expensive, but the over all cost is still less than an equivalent amount of cruise missile.
Of course, in the case of an extreme nuclear accident, as in Chernobyl, we have a very big problem to deal with right away that wouldn't be possible with coal. But I think it's worth remembering that a great deal of radioactive material is accumulating from coal-fired power plants, and that could someday be a major problem too. Nuclear power is not the only source of radiation released because of human activity.
There is another factor to consider in this. Chernobyl used a design whereby a lack of water caused a positive feedback loop in the reactor to cause it to get even hotter. U.S. and most other designs use a negative feedback loop so the less water/coolant there is in the reactor, the less energy is put out. A Chernobyl type accident is physically impossible in any reactor used in the U.S. 3 Mile Island is about the worst nuclear accident that can occur in a U.S. nuclear power plant and about three dozen things went wrong (including stupidity on the part of the plant operators) in order to cause it.Same place, the General Fund.
The money will go into the general fund. A.K.A. the same place income taxes go to.
Is it possible for them to carry out an experiment that will directly prove the existence of gravity waves? Or that gravity waves travel at the speed of light? Surely there has to be some way to do this directly without waiting for a close enough cosmic event.
Correct. But they usually have backup sites where the backups are sitting in a "powered down" mode, but still hot and ready to be cranked up to full on a moments notice, should the primary site go down.
At which point, the computer takes even longer to start up, causing the worker to have to delay whatever they were going to do. Add in the usual requirement for a reboot after patching and it takes even longer.
I'm guess it's not a server as he said 'device'. I know klystrons for TV stations and satellite uplinks can use quite a bit of power.
What's the cost of 10k * 261 days * 12 hours of power?
Well over half a million dollars if I did the math right.
Surely you could use wake on lan to wake the machines then do your rollout 10 minutes later? Or do a patch install when the machine is turned on and connects to the domain controller?
Unfortunately, this doesn't always work well. On some networks, the machines will auto-start up the moment they receive a packet, even if it isn't intended for them.
Cloned beef? Why not? And after it's slaughtered, irradiate it!
Why? Do they irradiate beef now? If not, why irradiate it just because it's cloned?
Of course not. By the time an animal hits my plate, it's dead. It's not always cooked (sushi), but it sure is dead.
Ah, someone who thinks along the same lines I do. I'm not sure whether to laugh or groan when someone says we should ban all weapons, anything that can e used as a weapon or any thing that could be used by the military.
Name one that can't and I'll name a use you haven't thought of yet.
And people could keep the icecream in their freezer all the time and never have it melt. Oh wait, that isn't possible. If it is that cold all the time, then you can't get the icecream out of the box.
At the end of 1976, inflation was decreasing and had dropped to below 5%. When carter entered office it started going up again and kept on going up. Federal Reserve chairmen are one of the few positions that stay around administration to administration. Unless you're saying that Paul Volcker was incompetent under Carter but extremely smart under Reagan? Face it, Carter is the one who caused some of the worst inflation in US history.