References are definitely a good thing good to a degree, but they take it too far, e.g. if I edit
"Grass is green" to "Grass is usually green or brown" they'll revert it without a numbered reference while the regular editor of the article has made many, more technical statements with no references.
The problem with wikipedia is that these regular editors are extremely fussy about changes and take control of articles - I may come along, correct an error in something I know very well and think 'that's my part taken care of' only to have the one guy who's basically taken control of the article revert a few hours later because I didn't add yet another reference to the bottom of the page citing this new information. It may not be more significant than anything else on the page but this page has become that editors article (unless it's a large popular article) and if it doesn't have a reference for each point, they're not accepting it.
Also see [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:J.K._Rowling/Archive_06#Pronunciation]this[/url] storm in a teacup.
I take it you're not a programmer. All you need is to authenticate that there is a vote which is from a user (who has not yet voted) long enough to add it to the table of votes, analogous to when the user is holding their completed ballot but has not yet placed it in the box. Once the vote is placed in a box/added to the table it cannot be reconciled with the user who placed it there.
I don't see how there's any issue keeping it a secret ballot. It would be trivial to code a system which stores the user details and whether they've voted or not in one table, then in another table the votes. There would be no possible way to reconcile who voted with what they voted for if you're not storing information on who was logged in when in the system as well as the time when each vote was entered.
The only problem with the system is user authentication - without smartcards and readers you're going to have to rely on users REMEMBERING their passwords (98% of the population will write it down, 20% of those who don't will forget it).
I just don't get why you care so much about the individual. What's the meaning of a high standard of living for all (which is impossible without a 90% or more cut in the current world population) if the species just goes extinct in 2029/2036 when apophis possibly hits? I believe in the ideal of the human race and that while I won't be around to see it personally, we are as a whole going somewhere and shouldn't be making the journey all in the one basket.
Eventually everyone dies, but the human race itself doesn't have to (assuming we can find a way to beat the heat death of the universe in 500 gajillionzillion years).
Well I've never trained to be a police office, but I study martial arts and the first stage of learning to defend against something is almost always learning the attack. Boxing is fairly common so we're taught the basics of throwing a boxing punch, then we throw one at our partner who blocks it with the actual technique being learned.
All that is just an analogy but I would certainly prefer it if the person writing my anti-virus program also knew how to write viruses - their program should be better at blocking them than the program written by a person who DOESN'T know how to write a virus.
I'm rather unhappy with the quality of open office too. The interface is just plain unintuitive at times, partially because they seem to try to make their product as different from MS Office as they can even where MS got something right and they shouldn't be changing anything. An example of both of these at once is the key binding options, you have a LIST of key combinations, you have to scroll down a list, select key combination and then go through two other lists to find the function you want to bind it too! All this to get something like increase/decrease font size set up as it should have been originally. Even then the key bindings don't support the same keys as MS Office uses so I have to learn new combinations, it's like deciding to use Crtl+u for cUt instead of Ctrl-X.
Then I had to manually install the package for my localised version of English and change several settings just to get spell checking (one of the most basic features of a work processor) to work at all.
I've been using AbiWord a fair bit, it's has nowhere near the backing of open office but still delivers similar if not better functionality as a word processor.
There are plenty of responsible people who could be trusted with guns. There's also no real way to tell them from the idiots who shouldn't be let within eyesight of a gun though, you may screen some out but others will get through.
Actually the regular cops in the UK don't carry guns at all. The guns aren't even present unless the situation requires them which it doesn't most of the time.
I'm (Aussie) perfectly happy with my nearly gun free society and no amount of wingeing by people who want to make themselves feel tough by owning a lethal weapon is going to make me think otherwise. I don't know anyone who has a gun except a cop, I've never even touched a real gun. Don't give me all your 'only criminals will have guns' crap, they'd have them anyway and adding someone else with a gun into the equation only increases the odds someone is going to get shot.
Everybody has some limit on what they think should be legal in private ownership (nukes, artillery, grenades, machineguns, semi-auto handguns, single shot rifles...) don't pretend you're making perfect sense demanding your own handgun while you'd recoil in horror at the thought of criminals with a machinegun/artillery piece.
Well actually Apple copied the iPod UI pretty closely from the one on Creative's Nomad but did creative bitch, and if they did would apple have pulled the iPoD?
Don't forget, there's unbreakable encryption to be had as well. Using any decently random data at least as long as the file to encrypt it (even with something as simple as XOR) it's absolutely because without the key file it's random data. Then you just have to store that file on more perishable media like a CD or DVD which can be melted into an unrecoverable puddle within minutes. Hell, use a non random but still unpredictable enough file from the net to encode it (say the patch for a game) and you will always have a copy of the key around somewhere and nobody will have a clue unless they've compromised your system before you perform the encryption.
Well you might be interested to know that Werner von Braun, a German (if the name didn't make that obvious) was fairly instrumental in developing V2 rockets, and then after the war the Saturn V boosters.
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Maybe I'm being picky but if they ju,st treated it, it should be a 'formerly untreatable' type of blindness. Great news for the colourblind though
Snow? In Western Australia? Ahahahaahah hahah haahahah ha.
References are definitely a good thing good to a degree, but they take it too far, e.g. if I edit "Grass is green" to "Grass is usually green or brown" they'll revert it without a numbered reference while the regular editor of the article has made many, more technical statements with no references.
The problem with wikipedia is that these regular editors are extremely fussy about changes and take control of articles - I may come along, correct an error in something I know very well and think 'that's my part taken care of' only to have the one guy who's basically taken control of the article revert a few hours later because I didn't add yet another reference to the bottom of the page citing this new information. It may not be more significant than anything else on the page but this page has become that editors article (unless it's a large popular article) and if it doesn't have a reference for each point, they're not accepting it. Also see [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:J.K._Rowling/Archive_06#Pronunciation]this[/url] storm in a teacup.
If your friend is running simulations on bludgeoning his friends to death at a dinner party, something is VERY wrong already.
I take it you're not a programmer. All you need is to authenticate that there is a vote which is from a user (who has not yet voted) long enough to add it to the table of votes, analogous to when the user is holding their completed ballot but has not yet placed it in the box. Once the vote is placed in a box/added to the table it cannot be reconciled with the user who placed it there.
I don't see how there's any issue keeping it a secret ballot. It would be trivial to code a system which stores the user details and whether they've voted or not in one table, then in another table the votes. There would be no possible way to reconcile who voted with what they voted for if you're not storing information on who was logged in when in the system as well as the time when each vote was entered. The only problem with the system is user authentication - without smartcards and readers you're going to have to rely on users REMEMBERING their passwords (98% of the population will write it down, 20% of those who don't will forget it).
I just don't get why you care so much about the individual. What's the meaning of a high standard of living for all (which is impossible without a 90% or more cut in the current world population) if the species just goes extinct in 2029/2036 when apophis possibly hits? I believe in the ideal of the human race and that while I won't be around to see it personally, we are as a whole going somewhere and shouldn't be making the journey all in the one basket. Eventually everyone dies, but the human race itself doesn't have to (assuming we can find a way to beat the heat death of the universe in 500 gajillionzillion years).
Well I've never trained to be a police office, but I study martial arts and the first stage of learning to defend against something is almost always learning the attack. Boxing is fairly common so we're taught the basics of throwing a boxing punch, then we throw one at our partner who blocks it with the actual technique being learned. All that is just an analogy but I would certainly prefer it if the person writing my anti-virus program also knew how to write viruses - their program should be better at blocking them than the program written by a person who DOESN'T know how to write a virus.
I'm rather unhappy with the quality of open office too. The interface is just plain unintuitive at times, partially because they seem to try to make their product as different from MS Office as they can even where MS got something right and they shouldn't be changing anything. An example of both of these at once is the key binding options, you have a LIST of key combinations, you have to scroll down a list, select key combination and then go through two other lists to find the function you want to bind it too! All this to get something like increase/decrease font size set up as it should have been originally. Even then the key bindings don't support the same keys as MS Office uses so I have to learn new combinations, it's like deciding to use Crtl+u for cUt instead of Ctrl-X. Then I had to manually install the package for my localised version of English and change several settings just to get spell checking (one of the most basic features of a work processor) to work at all. I've been using AbiWord a fair bit, it's has nowhere near the backing of open office but still delivers similar if not better functionality as a word processor.
There are plenty of responsible people who could be trusted with guns. There's also no real way to tell them from the idiots who shouldn't be let within eyesight of a gun though, you may screen some out but others will get through.
Actually the regular cops in the UK don't carry guns at all. The guns aren't even present unless the situation requires them which it doesn't most of the time. I'm (Aussie) perfectly happy with my nearly gun free society and no amount of wingeing by people who want to make themselves feel tough by owning a lethal weapon is going to make me think otherwise. I don't know anyone who has a gun except a cop, I've never even touched a real gun. Don't give me all your 'only criminals will have guns' crap, they'd have them anyway and adding someone else with a gun into the equation only increases the odds someone is going to get shot. Everybody has some limit on what they think should be legal in private ownership (nukes, artillery, grenades, machineguns, semi-auto handguns, single shot rifles...) don't pretend you're making perfect sense demanding your own handgun while you'd recoil in horror at the thought of criminals with a machinegun/artillery piece.
Well actually Apple copied the iPod UI pretty closely from the one on Creative's Nomad but did creative bitch, and if they did would apple have pulled the iPoD?
Don't forget, there's unbreakable encryption to be had as well. Using any decently random data at least as long as the file to encrypt it (even with something as simple as XOR) it's absolutely because without the key file it's random data. Then you just have to store that file on more perishable media like a CD or DVD which can be melted into an unrecoverable puddle within minutes. Hell, use a non random but still unpredictable enough file from the net to encode it (say the patch for a game) and you will always have a copy of the key around somewhere and nobody will have a clue unless they've compromised your system before you perform the encryption.
Well you might be interested to know that Werner von Braun, a German (if the name didn't make that obvious) was fairly instrumental in developing V2 rockets, and then after the war the Saturn V boosters.
Or perhaps that only 40% had passwords nobody without a photographic memory would remember after one recital.