It was a lose-lose situation. Too bad they didn't replace the 85 year old baggage scanners earler.:(
The problem is/was not the machinery. The problem was, and still is, the people who ran the machinery. Now, it's slightly better, but before September 11th, the people running the machines were minimum wage workers, worked extremely long shifts, and therefore, most of them didn't give a damn. They got up, they went to work, they sat at their machine, they waved people through, they went home. Yes, I'm sure that at some point, people would have started bringing things through that the machines wouldn't have caught, such as plastic explosives, but from what I've heard, the hijackers had guns/knives/etc, all metallic ojbects, and very detectable even by an 85 year old machine.
So, while the machines were old, the problem came from the people running the machines.
While I don't believe in any theories of previous civilizations, there are a few things wrong with the assumption that because we haven't seen any screws, microchips, etc, there wasn't ever any advanced civilization. Consider some possiblities, just as farfetched as any others:
1)A civilization built entirely on organic materials. This would all decompose over time, leaving no record.
2)They packed it all up and left.
3)There was such a huge mass extinction, with such power that it erased all signs (perhaps there was life before the collision that created the moon).
While these are rediculous, they are just ideas. Take with liberal salt.
Honestly, no, I don't think NASA knows what it's doing. Although it has some great achievements (man in space, first man on the moon, etc.), it also has a tremendous share of bloopers. Consider:
Early 90s, I think, there was a mission to Mars, and somebody misprogrammed something, and the mission missed Mars by quite a long shot;
Just a few years ago, there was another mission to Mars, where they again misprogrammed, and the mission crashed into Mars, destroying everything;
When the Hubble Telescope first went up, shortly after, they realized that they had forgotten to put in one of the lenses;
The Columbia tragedy: if they'd looked, they could have seen it coming;
Challenger and the Apollo mission(15?)that both malfunctioned, killing all inside.
And, just recently, the budget for NASA has been cut drastically. I hate to say it, and I wish it wasn't so, but NASA is in a death spiral, and unless something big happens soon, the US space program will soon be history. Sure, there may be some private enterprises that send missions, but there will be an end to government-sponsored and supported space exploration.
Even more disappointing than being referenced as "that Indian math guy" is the general/. reaction to the article. First off, RTFA, where it does try to explain what is meant by "adding up numbers," albeit somewhat poorly. Second, the general reaction shows that they needed to simplify it that much. As one previous commenter said, he's a genius, and people are making outsourcing jokes. Third, I'm disappointed that people are getting modded as "funny" when they make those jokes. I am not flamebaiting or trolling, and I am not a stiff prude, but I wish people would think before they posted, and before they modded.
That said, the man was brilliant. It is only too bad that he died before he could do any more than he did. He had the potential to make breakthroughs in the same way that Newton, Einstein, etc. did. If only Hardy had let him continue to work in India...(Many people attribute his death to the unfamiliar climate of England. I know that he died of TB, but it is likely that he wouldn't have caught it had he remained in India.)
A lot of people are being critical of G4. As someone who doesn't habitually read sites like that, I have no idea what is wrong with it. Could somebody fill me in? That said, the article was decenly written, providing a good breakdown of the pros and cons of both of them, and then does a feature-by-feature comparison, and finally gives a verdict.
A clear-cut leader does not always guarantee higher quality, and the airlines are not a particularly good example of that. Right now, airlines are cutting back on things, not because they don't have anyone to try to catch, but because airline travel is down. A lot of people have given up on waiting in line, being harrassed by security, and the mediocre service, so in order to keep somewhat competitive fares, the airlines have to cut in other places, such as service, food, etc.
A clear-cut leader does not lead to better quality. If there is a clear-cut leader, they are likely to slack off, and not worry about quality because they don't have to worry about competetion. A great example of this is Microsoft. Many people, especially/. users, would agree that they have gotten lazy and stopped caring about quality in what they make.
Think about what would happen if, say, the PC market was a lot more even: all the companies would be doing anything they could to get/keep the lead of the market share.
What is the record for/.ing a site after a link goes up on the main page? I'd guess that during peak reading hours, with a small bandwidth, it could go down within five minutes of posting. I'd love to see a printout of server statistics, just to look at the huge spike, followed by the death. You gotta feel sorry for the people runing sites out of their basements.
This is absolutely right. A great example of this is Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. He accused hundreds of upper-level government officials of being Communinsts. He stirred up anti-Communist sentiment all over the country. As everyone became afraid of Communists, they suddenly started showing up everywhere. The family that had been associated with the Manhatten project (can't remember the name now) was accused of sharing that information with the USSR. They were convicted, sentenced to death, and executed, even though there was no real hard evidence that they had done of the things alleged.
Also, this same though applies in a more general sense, that of, "the easiest way to make people different/inferior is to treat them that way. African-Americans all the way up to the civil rights movement, and even today, although to a lesser degree, were always treated as inferiors. Eventually, everybody believed that they were inferior, including many African-Americans themselves.
Here's a really nice summary of where the USA PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional. http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=11054&c =130
Yes, it's from the ACLU, so yes, it's going to be slightly biased, but it seems to be a more objective analysis that normal.
My personal opinion is in line with that of the ACLU, but I can see how the Act could be considered useful as a government tool. However, as far as I've seen, it has not produced any terrorists for the courts to prosecute. All it has done it create major controversy in this country and made a lot of people really worried about their rights.
And, as many people have said, it doesn't matter if they haven't infringed on your rights yet, because by the time they do, it's too late for you to do anything about it.
The reason that the Department of Justice has not found any abuses of rights caused by the USA PATRIOT Act is because of the nature of the Act. It allows the government to detain anyone, anytime, without providing a reason, without allowing a trial, and without ever having to let them go. We don't know about any abuses because the abuse is also in the covering up. There may be thousands of prisoners held somewhere, not knowing why they are held, or how long they will be held for, but we will never know, because they are held, and the USA PATRIOT Act allows this to happen. They can't tell us that they're being abused because they have lost all of their rights.
For those of you who are skimming, here it is in one sentence:
There are no reported abuses by the USA PATRIOT Act because the Act itself suppresses reports of abuse.
Civilization is one of the best games that I have seen in a number of years. Although it was the inspiration for the computer game, it is very little like it. Each person controls a nation, which you must expand and build to the greatest nation. This is where the similarities end. There are no specialized units, and the game is much less combat-centered, making it more important to focus on keeping your population under control and making sure you can still support all your cities. Perhaps the most exciting part of the game is trading resources. Each turn, you get a number of commodities, which you must trade in order to end up with more of one particular kind of commodity. If you get enough, you can "purchase" technologies that enable you to advance in the game. For more information, this page [http://www.lilback.com/civilization/ah/intro.html #overview] has a nice short summary.
I'm not saying that there isn't lying going on. I'm not saying that there isn't someone out to get us all. I'm not even saying that I don't believe or wouldn't like to believe the stories. I'm just saying that people, and always the people on the losing side, are incredibly quick to call it a conspiracy. I agree completely with your list of problems. I'm definitely not saying that Bush is better. The one thing that is not necessary is revolution. People like to sit back and say "We need a revolution. Somebody should do something." Revolution isn't as pretty as it sounds. Remember, several million more people voted for Bush in the election. Revolution is not the answer. Doing something extreme will cause more problems that it will solve. Just wait four years, and then you'll have a chance to democratically change things. That's the whole thing about democracy. If you don't like something, in a few years you can work to change it. Revolution destroys the entire system.
Stop arguing about conspiracy theory. It is unlikely that there is a conspiracy large enough to mess with hundreds of thousands of voting machines around the country, or that they would spend that much time if they wanted to. Yes, there are problems. No, they are most likley not someone out to screw us all. The odds are that the machines are just poorly made, but that does not mean that someone is hacking the system.
I'm not sure if anyone has said this yet, but I think what the point of the article, if anyone took the time to read the commondreams.org link, was not that the vendors themselves are rigging the elections, but that people somehow managed to access and change the numbers that were recorded at the tabulating office in the precincts where the optical scan machines were used, because of the way the counting process is set up for those machines. I may be wrong, but this is how I read the article.
Now stop arguing over whether or not there is a vast conspiracy amongst the manufacturers of the voting machines, because that is not what this item was about.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is/was not the machinery. The problem was, and still is, the people who ran the machinery. Now, it's slightly better, but before September 11th, the people running the machines were minimum wage workers, worked extremely long shifts, and therefore, most of them didn't give a damn. They got up, they went to work, they sat at their machine, they waved people through, they went home. Yes, I'm sure that at some point, people would have started bringing things through that the machines wouldn't have caught, such as plastic explosives, but from what I've heard, the hijackers had guns/knives/etc, all metallic ojbects, and very detectable even by an 85 year old machine.
So, while the machines were old, the problem came from the people running the machines.
1)A civilization built entirely on organic materials. This would all decompose over time, leaving no record.
2)They packed it all up and left.
3)There was such a huge mass extinction, with such power that it erased all signs (perhaps there was life before the collision that created the moon).
While these are rediculous, they are just ideas. Take with liberal salt.
Early 90s, I think, there was a mission to Mars, and somebody misprogrammed something, and the mission missed Mars by quite a long shot;
Just a few years ago, there was another mission to Mars, where they again misprogrammed, and the mission crashed into Mars, destroying everything;
When the Hubble Telescope first went up, shortly after, they realized that they had forgotten to put in one of the lenses;
The Columbia tragedy: if they'd looked, they could have seen it coming;
Challenger and the Apollo mission(15?)that both malfunctioned, killing all inside.
And, just recently, the budget for NASA has been cut drastically. I hate to say it, and I wish it wasn't so, but NASA is in a death spiral, and unless something big happens soon, the US space program will soon be history. Sure, there may be some private enterprises that send missions, but there will be an end to government-sponsored and supported space exploration.
That said, the man was brilliant. It is only too bad that he died before he could do any more than he did. He had the potential to make breakthroughs in the same way that Newton, Einstein, etc. did. If only Hardy had let him continue to work in India...(Many people attribute his death to the unfamiliar climate of England. I know that he died of TB, but it is likely that he wouldn't have caught it had he remained in India.)
A lot of people are being critical of G4. As someone who doesn't habitually read sites like that, I have no idea what is wrong with it. Could somebody fill me in? That said, the article was decenly written, providing a good breakdown of the pros and cons of both of them, and then does a feature-by-feature comparison, and finally gives a verdict.
Actually, Apple has also split more recently than 2000. Much more recently. The most recent was anounced on February 11th, 2005 http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/feb/11split.h tml
A clear-cut leader does not lead to better quality. If there is a clear-cut leader, they are likely to slack off, and not worry about quality because they don't have to worry about competetion. A great example of this is Microsoft. Many people, especially /. users, would agree that they have gotten lazy and stopped caring about quality in what they make.
Think about what would happen if, say, the PC market was a lot more even: all the companies would be doing anything they could to get/keep the lead of the market share.
And their ISPs.
Also, this same though applies in a more general sense, that of, "the easiest way to make people different/inferior is to treat them that way. African-Americans all the way up to the civil rights movement, and even today, although to a lesser degree, were always treated as inferiors. Eventually, everybody believed that they were inferior, including many African-Americans themselves.
My personal opinion is in line with that of the ACLU, but I can see how the Act could be considered useful as a government tool. However, as far as I've seen, it has not produced any terrorists for the courts to prosecute. All it has done it create major controversy in this country and made a lot of people really worried about their rights.
And, as many people have said, it doesn't matter if they haven't infringed on your rights yet, because by the time they do, it's too late for you to do anything about it.
The reason that the Department of Justice has not found any abuses of rights caused by the USA PATRIOT Act is because of the nature of the Act. It allows the government to detain anyone, anytime, without providing a reason, without allowing a trial, and without ever having to let them go. We don't know about any abuses because the abuse is also in the covering up. There may be thousands of prisoners held somewhere, not knowing why they are held, or how long they will be held for, but we will never know, because they are held, and the USA PATRIOT Act allows this to happen. They can't tell us that they're being abused because they have lost all of their rights. For those of you who are skimming, here it is in one sentence: There are no reported abuses by the USA PATRIOT Act because the Act itself suppresses reports of abuse.
Civilization is one of the best games that I have seen in a number of years. Although it was the inspiration for the computer game, it is very little like it. Each person controls a nation, which you must expand and build to the greatest nation. This is where the similarities end. There are no specialized units, and the game is much less combat-centered, making it more important to focus on keeping your population under control and making sure you can still support all your cities. Perhaps the most exciting part of the game is trading resources. Each turn, you get a number of commodities, which you must trade in order to end up with more of one particular kind of commodity. If you get enough, you can "purchase" technologies that enable you to advance in the game. For more information, this page [http://www.lilback.com/civilization/ah/intro.html #overview] has a nice short summary.
I'm not saying that there isn't lying going on. I'm not saying that there isn't someone out to get us all. I'm not even saying that I don't believe or wouldn't like to believe the stories. I'm just saying that people, and always the people on the losing side, are incredibly quick to call it a conspiracy. I agree completely with your list of problems. I'm definitely not saying that Bush is better. The one thing that is not necessary is revolution. People like to sit back and say "We need a revolution. Somebody should do something." Revolution isn't as pretty as it sounds. Remember, several million more people voted for Bush in the election. Revolution is not the answer. Doing something extreme will cause more problems that it will solve. Just wait four years, and then you'll have a chance to democratically change things. That's the whole thing about democracy. If you don't like something, in a few years you can work to change it. Revolution destroys the entire system.
Stop arguing about conspiracy theory. It is unlikely that there is a conspiracy large enough to mess with hundreds of thousands of voting machines around the country, or that they would spend that much time if they wanted to. Yes, there are problems. No, they are most likley not someone out to screw us all. The odds are that the machines are just poorly made, but that does not mean that someone is hacking the system.
I'm not sure if anyone has said this yet, but I think what the point of the article, if anyone took the time to read the commondreams.org link, was not that the vendors themselves are rigging the elections, but that people somehow managed to access and change the numbers that were recorded at the tabulating office in the precincts where the optical scan machines were used, because of the way the counting process is set up for those machines. I may be wrong, but this is how I read the article. Now stop arguing over whether or not there is a vast conspiracy amongst the manufacturers of the voting machines, because that is not what this item was about.