I didn't mean to imply that there was an official "popular vote" - but it does exist. You can find out how many voters in the entire country voted for a specific candidate. You can find out the total number of voters in the country. You can thus find out the percentage that voted for a specific candidate in the entire country.
While there are differences in choices posted to voters at the state level, you can still find out the percentage that voted for a specific candidate, regardless of whether or not they available to be voted for.
Is it meaningful? Not particularly. Especially not in any legal or official way. But if a president was elected by 1/3 of the population that voted, and did not even have a plurality of the population that voted nationally, I'd say it might be an interesting case and should start (or enhance) discussion on whether or not reform of the electoral system is necessary.
Then consider that one of the stated benefits of the electoral college is that it helps prevent candidates from focusing on a few highly-populated metropolitan areas to win the election. But of course, it results in the candidates focusing on a few "battleground" or "swing" states.
(I'm not really against the electoral college, but I find the whole subject quite fascinating...)
The existing one basically bins up to 49% of the votes.
Actually, at times, it can bin over 50% of the votes. It's technically possible (though incredibly unlikely) for a candidate to win with only 24% or so of the national popular vote.
There's also the idea of a flywheel (that was just one of a random googling...)
Store the power in a moving wheel with lots of inertia, if the power goes out, generate electricity from said wheel. Not sure how cheap they come, but probably safer than batteries and doesn't need fuel like a generator...
Recently spent some two dollar bills. Some cashiers accepted without a second glance, some had to ask others if they were actually currency, and some looked at me and asked what I was trying to pull. Of that last group, some accepted my explanation that they're real, for others, I paid with a larger denomination. For some people - I think they'd accept a three dollar bill if I said it was real.
These bills were marked for tracking at WheresGeorge.com - and it's amazing to see how few cashiers actually notice the big red stamp let alone read it. I feel like it could say "this bill was stolen - call the police" and few would notice.
Now if someone would only come up with a good time-shifting TV tuner of this quality for the Mac.
Have you checked out El Gato's EyeTV line? I find it to be quite good [not perfect, but very good...]
And Gaff Tape is better than Duct for those LEDs.
That's for naturalized citizens. Their page on Citizenship explains that if you are born in the US, you are a citizen.
And even if your family CAN speak English, it doesn't mean they will at home, and you will likely learn whatever language you hear around the host as your primary (or only) language.
Not to mention that many people who can read English may be much more comfortable in another language.
Except for the fact that you can KEEP BOTH.
You can take all the time in the world to migrate from the (free) Yahoo account to the (free) gmail account.
No cost for maintaining the old account to get any mail people may send you there for as long as you need. (Except for a few minutes each week to check it...)
One of the advantages (assuming they use it this way) is a real-time wiretap lets them confirm who is actually *at* the computer when something's happening. A log, unless combined with large amounts of surveillance, can not necessarily be correlated back to an individual. But now, they can see illegal activity and go look at who's doing it while it's happening.
(Hopefully they are, and aren't just assuming the owner of a computer is the one breaking the law..)
I really miss the directory links as well for the same reasons. The ease of switching to "directory mode" was quite useful. Also, if I found one site that had the sort of information I was looking for, and it had a directory link, I could easily find more "related" sites.
They have tracking, at least based on the Access Point the user is associated with. In our installation (college campus), each access point is only tagged with the name of the building, so we don't have that close a monitoring, but we do have some. It's nice to be able to see if someone's at lunch or their desk or still out working in the field.
That said, these things go through battery pretty fast when you spend large amounts of time out of range of an AP. But if you're within range, they're surprisingly long lasting and high quality.
A unique 4-way microphone system in the head gives directional input. There are two microphones in the torso used as inputs for noise cancellation software.
Amongst various other issues - wouldn't the noise from people talking to it be better at the torso-level than the head, if this thing is really 10 feet tall?
Having seen the insides of our town's lever-based voting machines, there's no tape. Just mechanical counters which tabulate the total votes. That's one of the problems with these machines. They can be compromised by a maintenance engineer slightly shortening one of the "cogs" on a counter for a candidate so that a given candidate only has 9/10 (or sometimes a smaller percentage if you get it to the length where sometimes it registers and sometimes it doesn't) of their votes counted, for example. And unless you really examine carefully, you might not find this out.
Fortunately, this is mitigated by two things. The first is that maintenance personnel usually have access to relatively few machines in large elections (as opposed to software engineers in DRE systems). The second is that at the beginning of the day, elections monitors are supposed zero the counters, register a certain number of votes for each candidate, and ensure the count on the back matches. Then they re-zero the machines and open them for voting. Because this is done with representatives from both parties there is very little opportunity for fraud.
I haven't found any source for a mass-produced tape-based lever machine in any of my research on voting mechanisms.
539.001 2 (h)"Pawn" means any advancement of funds on the security of pledged goods
on condition that the pledged goods are left in the possession of the pawnbroker for the duration of the pawn and may be redeemed by the pledgor on the terms and conditions contained in this section.
539.001 2 (i)"Pawnbroker" means any person who is engaged in the business of making pawns; who makes a public display containing the term "pawn," "pawnbroker," or "pawnshop" or any derivative thereof; or who publicly displays a sign or symbol historically identified with pawns. A pawnbroker may also engage in the business of purchasing goods which includes consignment and trade.
539.001 3 (a)A person may not engage in business as a pawnbroker unless the person has a valid license issued by the agency. A separate license is required for each pawnshop.
Pawning indicates that the pawnbroker will hold the material for an agreed-upon time (not less than the state-mandated minimum) to give the seller time to buy it back, with exclusive purchase rights to that original owner. Secondhand dealers are buying it with no promise to sell it back to the original owner...
I'm not a lawyer, but watch me play one on slashdot...
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't mean to imply that there was an official "popular vote" - but it does exist. You can find out how many voters in the entire country voted for a specific candidate. You can find out the total number of voters in the country. You can thus find out the percentage that voted for a specific candidate in the entire country.
While there are differences in choices posted to voters at the state level, you can still find out the percentage that voted for a specific candidate, regardless of whether or not they available to be voted for.
Is it meaningful? Not particularly. Especially not in any legal or official way. But if a president was elected by 1/3 of the population that voted, and did not even have a plurality of the population that voted nationally, I'd say it might be an interesting case and should start (or enhance) discussion on whether or not reform of the electoral system is necessary.
Then consider that one of the stated benefits of the electoral college is that it helps prevent candidates from focusing on a few highly-populated metropolitan areas to win the election. But of course, it results in the candidates focusing on a few "battleground" or "swing" states.
(I'm not really against the electoral college, but I find the whole subject quite fascinating...)
There's also the idea of a flywheel (that was just one of a random googling...) Store the power in a moving wheel with lots of inertia, if the power goes out, generate electricity from said wheel. Not sure how cheap they come, but probably safer than batteries and doesn't need fuel like a generator...
Recently spent some two dollar bills. Some cashiers accepted without a second glance, some had to ask others if they were actually currency, and some looked at me and asked what I was trying to pull. Of that last group, some accepted my explanation that they're real, for others, I paid with a larger denomination. For some people - I think they'd accept a three dollar bill if I said it was real.
These bills were marked for tracking at WheresGeorge.com - and it's amazing to see how few cashiers actually notice the big red stamp let alone read it. I feel like it could say "this bill was stolen - call the police" and few would notice.
Oh well.
If this was in the US, don't you have the right to an attorney if you can't afford one?
That's for naturalized citizens. Their page on Citizenship explains that if you are born in the US, you are a citizen.
And even if your family CAN speak English, it doesn't mean they will at home, and you will likely learn whatever language you hear around the host as your primary (or only) language.
Not to mention that many people who can read English may be much more comfortable in another language.
Hams a Bright Spot During Power Blackout has some info on Ham activity during the 2003 blackout.
Great, virus writers would probably love to use them...
Except for the fact that you can KEEP BOTH.
You can take all the time in the world to migrate from the (free) Yahoo account to the (free) gmail account. No cost for maintaining the old account to get any mail people may send you there for as long as you need. (Except for a few minutes each week to check it...)
A good alternative is Hyperstudio.
Not the cheapest but a good way to introduce all sorts of programming concepts in a visual way.
Mac/PC versions available; $69.95 for home use.
"when you look for that webpage and it returns a 404"
Well, that's what Google's cache feature is for.
And the Internet Archive/Wayback machine
"Public Payphone"
:)
Except that the number of payphones has been declining for the past several years and nothing's going to stop that anytime soon.
Not to mention in rural and suburban areas, where the nearest payphone can be a good walk or even further away...
Besides, wasn't there a movie recently about the last payphone in Manhattan?
It's all about a well-developed and solid *story* - something that Disney was a big proponent of, but seems to have forgotten...
(Technically Roy wasn't kicked out, but resigned on his own; he was going to be forced out due to his 'age,' but left first) See his site.
One of the advantages (assuming they use it this way) is a real-time wiretap lets them confirm who is actually *at* the computer when something's happening. A log, unless combined with large amounts of surveillance, can not necessarily be correlated back to an individual. But now, they can see illegal activity and go look at who's doing it while it's happening.
(Hopefully they are, and aren't just assuming the owner of a computer is the one breaking the law..)
I really miss the directory links as well for the same reasons. The ease of switching to "directory mode" was quite useful. Also, if I found one site that had the sort of information I was looking for, and it had a directory link, I could easily find more "related" sites.
That's probably led to more new customers than the average month..
Yup. It's got it.
Me: [press and release button]
Vocera: Vocera
Me: "Where is Joe"
Vocera: Joe Hill is in Berry Library.
They have tracking, at least based on the Access Point the user is associated with. In our installation (college campus), each access point is only tagged with the name of the building, so we don't have that close a monitoring, but we do have some. It's nice to be able to see if someone's at lunch or their desk or still out working in the field. That said, these things go through battery pretty fast when you spend large amounts of time out of range of an AP. But if you're within range, they're surprisingly long lasting and high quality.
Random TV terminology:
Technically this is a crawl; a scroll is similar to what movie credits generally do after the film. (vertical movement).
Crawls run across the screen (generally the bottom, but that's not a requirement to meet the term) - similar to a news ticker.
Having seen the insides of our town's lever-based voting machines, there's no tape. Just mechanical counters which tabulate the total votes. That's one of the problems with these machines. They can be compromised by a maintenance engineer slightly shortening one of the "cogs" on a counter for a candidate so that a given candidate only has 9/10 (or sometimes a smaller percentage if you get it to the length where sometimes it registers and sometimes it doesn't) of their votes counted, for example. And unless you really examine carefully, you might not find this out.
Fortunately, this is mitigated by two things. The first is that maintenance personnel usually have access to relatively few machines in large elections (as opposed to software engineers in DRE systems). The second is that at the beginning of the day, elections monitors are supposed zero the counters, register a certain number of votes for each candidate, and ensure the count on the back matches. Then they re-zero the machines and open them for voting. Because this is done with representatives from both parties there is very little opportunity for fraud.
I haven't found any source for a mass-produced tape-based lever machine in any of my research on voting mechanisms.
They are more likely covered under Chapter 538: Part 1: Secondhand Dealers.
Pawning indicates that the pawnbroker will hold the material for an agreed-upon time (not less than the state-mandated minimum) to give the seller time to buy it back, with exclusive purchase rights to that original owner. Secondhand dealers are buying it with no promise to sell it back to the original owner...
I'm not a lawyer, but watch me play one on slashdot...