As a consumer, I don't *want* a tiered system. [...] I want streaming HD movies from netflix (or apple, if their prices are lowered and appletv lockin is removed). I want to be able to watch youtube without watching a meter. No problem. If you don't *want* a tiered system and Comcast offers a top "unlimited" tier, just buy that - the fact that there are tiers below your selected tier that have caps doesn't affect you much (Comcast signup pages might be a bit more complicated, but that's a pretty small burden in exchange for choice). If Comcast doesn't offer a "unlimited" tier, go with something like T1s.
Comcast and other ISPs will have to expand their network capacity to keep all the consumers happy, otherwise they will lose customers with either route (torrent blocking or tiered service). The 90% of the users who probably use only 10% of their bandwidth won't bolt because you want unmetered and unlimited access. These 90% are likely happy customers who would never exceed their baseline usage anyway and would probably rather pay less for ala carte service. So the odds of losing many of their customers due to well implemented bandwidth limitations is small - far more likely that the 90% of low usage users will bolt for a cheaper service, not a faster service at the same price. Indeed, Comcast would probably love to see the top 5% of their residential bandwidth users switch to competitors.
Ah, I see it coming now... Institutions in the U.S. who choose to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing solar, wind, nuclear, and other alternative energy sources to replace petroleum based ones will be accused of trying to "invade Canada via economic means" by devaluing one of their natural resources. Or, perhaps the U.S. will be accused of "invading Canada via economic means" when worldwide drug prices climb (or new drug development drops off) after the U.S. institutes price controls on drugs which results in consumers in the U.S. no longer funding development of drugs to the benefit of the rest of the world.
Come on, how can Canada be invaded by "economic means" by ANY other country. If Canada's government and citizens don't want to sign contracts with U.S. government and citizens to exchange goods and services, no one is going to make them.
However financial analysts have valued Yahoo! at $38 or $39 a share. If so MS's $31 is undervaluing the stock.
Buyers and Sellers determine the actual value of stocks - analysts just speculate about value (often incorrectly). If Yahoo doesn't find an actual buyer at more than $31, an analyst's "valuation" seems fairly meaningless.
I think I'm more concerned about coercion than actual 'retail' vote buying as the latter is completely illegal and is likely to get revealed when done on a scale necessary to actually throw a national election. Although, since vote buying would have better ROI if clear-text receipts were issued as the purchaser could easily be sure they got what they paid for, the temptation to engage in it would probably be higher.
We are in complete agreement that voters should be able to verify how their vote was counted - we just disagree on the method. My method prevents introducing a new avenue for coercion and vote buying at the expense of requiring more effort (both on the part of the voter and the election board) and more infrastructure for each vote that is verified. Since in an all electronic system (where human errors are virtually eliminated) a single voter who can show that their vote was not counted properly proves there's a problem or corruption, I don't think the additional effort on the part of the voter (and, hence, less voters who will verify their votes) is a problem to the integrity of the election. I would agree that the extra effort required by my method would reduce the number of individual voters who would feel all warm and fuzzy that their vote was counted correctly - but the most concerned of these voters would occasionally verify their vote to feel a bit warmer and fuzzier.
Due to the increased cost of vote verification using my method, it may be necessary to limit the number of verifications allowed. Perhaps if more voters request verification than the system can reasonably handle, each candidate would be given a "quota" of verifications where they get to pick that many specific voters who will have their ballots verified before certification of the election results. Note that even with such limitations, this would would still result in an infinitely higher degree of vote cast vs. vote counted verification than has ever been available before using any system utilized in the United States.
I want a unique timestamped paper receipt which I can look up later to verify my actual votes!
...
they could login into a secure web server with that number to review their vote selections
Allowing a voter to verify their vote "after the fact" from any location (or by direct examination of a receipt that leaves the polling place with them) makes vote-buying (or coercion) much too easy. Albeit, this is already a problem with absentee ballots, but we should not make it worse. However, there are schemes that would allow a voter to verify their vote privately at centralized secure locations (and allow them to contest the counting of their vote based on their receipt if they are willing to give up their "private ballot" privileges to do so) using encryption and election judges where various bits of key material are provided by (1) the voter, (2) randomly (and printed only on the voter receipt), and (3) by "election judges".
I believe the requested feature is best implemented in the file system layer rather than the physical media layer (SSD vs. HD).
There is a good proof-of-concept available (but it currently works only for wives) that could probably be easily enhanced to implement the mother-in-law eraser function (actually, perhaps it's already there, I've not used Reiser4 much).
....I think that it is completely fair to ban assault rifles......
An assault rifle is somewhat of a gray area, but I think that such a weapon is generally not thought of as a defensive weapon. Hence the name "assault".So forbidding assault weapons is likely outside of the "bear-ing" limit. A good hunting rifle, shotgun or a pistol of some sort would make a reasonable defensive weapon against criminals. Not to start a discussion about the "purpose" of the Second Amendment, but there's little question that a rational (albeit possibly incorrect) interpretation is that the Founders were, among other things, concerned about insuring that the populace could defend itself against Federal power gone astray. I believe there's more evidence for this position than that the Second Amendment was meant largely to provide the ability for citizens to defend themselves against other ordinary individual citizens acting on their own greed rather than the collective greed of the Federal government. (The notion that a citizen would not be allowed to possess sufficient arms to defend themselves against a criminal was probably so far out of the question that it didn't cross their minds -- and certainly it was not an issue to be addressed at the Federal level.)
In the context of that interpretation, if an American citizen is defending themselves against Federal troops commanded by a rogue Administration striving to grab power via military force, they need weapons that are effective against those used by the Federal troops in localized battles. Clearly if the military has full auto guns or even selective fire assault weapons, only the similar level will do to defend against that force. I think most nukes however fall outside that level... To use a nuke in a "neighborhood defense" situation would be senseless - sure, you'd kill the attacking force, but you'd also destroy your neighborhood, your neighbors, and yourself.
From a practical standpoint, a rogue U.S. Administration that has to take power by fighting house-to-house against well armed American citizens will quickly fail. As each individual soldier looks into the eyes of yet another person who could easily be their brother, sister, mother, father, son, or daughter (and, occasionally, will actually be!) and kill them in cold blood to avoid their own demise, the soldiers will eventually (probably within a few hours of the Federal power grab) turn their weapons on their commanders and defect (along with their equipment) from the dark side. On the other hand, if the populace is unable to defend themselves, lesser and nonlethal (and hence much more palatable to individual soldiers/police) force (simple commands, stun grenades, Tasers etc) can be used to gain compliance. The latter approach would (I hope) fail eventually, but could continue for days/weeks/months/years with some combat situations ending up being very deadly (some groups of citizens who have a strong visceral desire to be free will die trying to avoid subjugation even if the odds are high they will fail and die trying).
The Founders didn't anticipate the power of modern weapons any more than they anticipated the power and potential of abuse of the Internet in the free speech arena. IMHO, they may have made abuse of these mediums (powerful weapons and the Internet) punishable by very stiff penalties, but they would not have banned or regulated them heavily in areas that would have hobbled their use under the Second or First Amendments.
but for reasons beyond me, my white collar cohorts refuse to stand up for themselves and unionize
Umm... perhaps because some of us prefer to be paid what we are worth as a result of individual negotiations based on our skills and unique ability to contribute to the mission rather than what was negotiated between a union and the company based on some "average union employee" skill level. Or perhaps it's because some of us prefer to work with competent co-workers rather than work with those whose main claim to fame is that they are "just good enough" that the union protects them from being fired.
You should write yourself a note to check if they are still working in 9 years and one day - in which case you should demand a replacement under the warranty.
Interesting, but not sure I buy all the data/numbers in this story - the pricing numbers don't seem to add up but there really isn't enough background to figure out what's going on (such as which types/labels cost what at wholesale). I'm very skeptical that Wal-Mart routinely sells many of their CDs below their actual cost OR that when they buy 100,000 of one title that they actually pay what the indie pays when they buy 5 or 10. I don't doubt that some CDs are sold below cost at Wal-Mart - very hot "loss leaders" for a week or so and stuff they are clearing off the shelves in order to reduce stock and make room for new titles. I've been just close enough to Wal-Mart vendor relationships to be skeptical:(
I became even more skeptical when I read the following in the linked article:
"Independent record stores are dinosaurs," he says. "I know that. But the dinosaurs lived on the earth for tens of thousands of millions of years. So I'm a dinosaur, yes. But I still have a lot of life in me."
So, either the reporter got the quote wrong (and who knows what else) or this guy thinks the Earth must be at least "tens" of billions of years old. I'd like to see this guy in a bar with one of those folks who thinks "dinosaurs lived with cavemen and/or Noah took a pair of them on his little rowboat and/or the Earth is only about few thousand years old":)
(One owner of a local music shop near me routinely sends his employees to the big stores to buy stock for his shelves, because it's a better deal than he can get from his supplier. How screwed up is that?)
If the cost of CDs is really about the same for the big stores as the independents, does this owner properly account for the full cost of sending employees out to do this - including employee labor, mileage, insurance etc.? It seems unlikely to me that this works for very many titles. Sometimes small businesses fail to understand the true costs of what they do. One common error is to hire excess labor so it seems "free" to spend the labor on things like this when, in fact, they should just reduce their staff-hours. I wonder if this music store is doomed from a business standpoint even if the world were not as competitive as it is.
However, I seriously doubt that BestBuy or Wal-Mart regularly pay the same "true" price for CDs as a small independent music store -- if so, I'll bet there's an unemployed Wal-Mart buyer from Bentonville once it's discovered. The ability/willingness to buy large volumes of product, and selectively promote same via things such as in-store displays and placement, gives the buyer additional leverage nearly always results in a price discount. Also, don't forget that Wal-Mart et al extract other concessions that are not strictly based on "unit price" - potentially such things as delivery direct to the store by the vendor, guaranteed automatic stocking by the vendor, payment after the item sells rather then some fixed time after delivery, etc.
Although I'd like for the Second Amendment to be binding on the states as well, I don't think it is right now.
IIRC, the Nine Unelected Black Robed Legislators have not yet applied the incorporation doctrine to the Second Amendment (most of the other rights in the BoR have received this blessing of course).
There's also that nasty little debate about "Individual" vs. "Collective Rights" views of the Second Amendment - if (the largely discredited) Collective Rights view managed to prevail or persist, the States would be able to do pretty much whatever they wanted WRT gun ownership laws.
Hopefully both these issues will be resolved in the coming years. Unfortunately, my guess is that the SCOTUS will issue a narrow ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller and largely skirt the crux of the Individual vs. Collective rights issue this term rather than addressing it squarely.
Of course, to find you guilty of "Obstruction of Justice" (or a Perjury related charge), the government must prove that you didn't forget the password and must prove that beyond reasonable doubt - that could be difficult if you haven't done something stupid like brag about your deception.
Unfortunately, the "Jailhouse Informant" (i.e., a crook the FBI promised an early parole to if he can get you to say that you "tricked the police and hadn't really forgotten your password") that just "happens" to be sharing your cell with you may testify for the government at your trial and speak of conversations that you don't recall having! All the more reason to do everything you can to make bail and keep out of the slammer until you're acquitted. Oh, and from the time of release on bail, ALWAYS be with a trusted credible (non-relative) individual and log who you were with when - that way it's harder for a "street" informant to make up conversations that didn't happen. Even apply technology - record (following any laws requiring notifying the other party that you are doing so) all your "non-privileged" (mostly, these are only those with your lawyer) conversations and wear a GPS logger at all times and back this up by always having your cell phone ON and WITH YOU - cell phone tower contact records can be your friend.
Unfortunately, one probably should do all these things (and more) even IF one really forgot the password and all that is in the files is your financial statements. Overzealous prosecutors can be dangerous beasts (ask the Duke Lacrosse team).
It's not all bad. We've been waiting for the housing market to downturn so we can get a decent deal on a house.
Amen... But don't forget it works even for established homeowners! We sold near the top (exactly how near was luck - we did leave about 3 to 5% on the table as it turned out, hopefully next time we time it slightly better) and are happily renting a fine rent controlled place in a high cost urban area for less than $2K month. The bubble is collapsing and we will swoop in somewhere after the first signs of stable rebound (there will probably be some apparent false rebounds followed by further declines - no need to be greedy, better to win than to lose by trying to win every penny). Life is good! Good Luck but don't jump in too early - it's going to be a long ride (at least two years of devastating disaster in all but the very top housing markets).
Hmm... Perhaps I'm being a bit presumptuous and I apologize if so, but I believe the entity you may be thinking of is what is commonly referred to as The United States of America - an entity whose entire existence, governmental organization, delegation of roles to, limits on, and responsibilities of its central (Federal) government are defined by a document generally referred to as the "Constitution for the United States of America" ["Constitution"]. Ah, yes, here is a copy of it - you might want to read it - it's quite an interesting document. If you're thinking of some other collection of states on a continent other than that often referred to as "North America" or generally north of the 49th parallel or south of the 30th parallel, read no further as we must be thinking of different groups of states. ["Insensitive Clod" commentators who live somewhere like Mexicali, Mexico or San Antonio, Texas - I wrote "generally" -- get over it]
The Constitution specifies that some of the things you suggested (such as certain foreign affairs and and defense of the United States of America) are the responsibility of the Federal government. So, we'd have to amend the Constitution to permit those to be undertaken by the individual states. Personally, I'd be against such a proposal, but knock yourself out promoting it if you like.
Everything else you mentioned (social services, education, and food safety) is not relegated by the Constitution to the Federal government and is therefore outside the scope of the Federal government. Mostly, it's up to the states and municipalities to decide if and how they want to control/provide these things. They may (and probably would) decide to band together on these things for the sake of efficiency - but Minnesota may well choose to opt out of a requirement that toilets that only use 1.6 gallons of water per flush but require higher standards for insulation in the floors of new houses while Los Angeles may opt for the opposite. In any event, one can simply amend the Constitution to elevate control of these things (and possibly much more) to the Federal government. Personally, as I really don't want Bush or Huckabee deciding what kids are taught with my tax dollar, I'd probably be against such an amendment, but knock yourself out promoting it if you like.
Ignoring the Tenth Amendment (for those folks who were schooled outside the U.S. or who were hanging out in the parking lot smoking during your civics class in school: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.") really doesn't make it go away - honest!
The notion here is to create a simpler tax system that does not require the IRS as we know it today. No reasonable person is proposing eliminating all collection of Federal taxes and, hence, some infrastructure to collect those would of course be needed.
As far as subsidized college loans is concerned (which really has little to do with the IRS)... The free and easy access to student aid is a vicious cycle -- the colleges just raise their tuition to match the available money, making it harder and harder for students who don't quite qualify for aid to get an advanced education. If someone needs a loan for college, let them go out and get one -- let the market decide if pursuing a degree in Ancient Interpretive Literature is likely to result in enough income that the student can pay back the loan. It's not my responsibility as a taxpayer in State X to fund the hobby of another person in State Y. The Feds could perhaps, via the power of the interstate commerce clause, have a role in making the student loan market more viable by making sure that a student can't just jump across the state border to avoid repaying a student loan (existing laws probably deal with this fine but might need some changes).
2. Abolish the Federal Reserve... response
Meddling in interest rates, for example, creates it's own set of problems. Recessions are inevitable and not necessarily the worst thing - ask someone who has just lost all the equity (and retirement nest egg) in their house and just got foreclosed on if they could care less if we are not in a recession (yet)? Let the market work it out - yes, it may be volatile at times, but the "propping up" of the system by the Feds results in big bubbles instead of more little ones that burst early. We have a global economy now -- the Fed really can't change that and will be increasingly less able to achieve their goals anyway.
3. Abolish the Department of Education... response
Funny, I've never heard the Governor of a state say "We here in Hickstate are too stoopid to figure out how to lurn our kids - we need the Feds to tell us this". Instead it sounds more like "We here in Hickstate want money forcibly extracted from any state but Hickstate to help pay to educate our kids". States are free to band together to share R&D costs of education if they wish to, the Feds are not needed for that and the Constitution doesn't give them the power to IMHO.
4. Abolish the FCC... response
Ah, finally something we agree at least partially on -- the allocation of frequencies and technical broadcasting standards seems to fall well within the scope of the interstate commerce clause as RF doesn't respect state boundaries.
5. Abolish social security... response
Of course the sunsetting of Social Security will require a staged process so those that have put money into the plan will receive partial benefits and those that are already retired will continue to receive benefits until death. Yes, since the plan is basically bankrupt, there will be some combination of life support (covering shortfalls with general taxation) and benefit reductions during the phase out -- but not as bad if we continue the ponzi scheme for another 30 years. Not pleasant, but better to amputate the gangrenous lower leg now than to wait for the infection to spread up into the torso and internal organs - we infected ourselves with this disease decades ago and our attempts at fighting the infection have failed so drastic action is now needed.
6. Abolish medicare... response
Phasing out Medicare would need to be done much the same way as phasing out Social Security would be done -- in a staged fashion. As far as state-to-state disparity - that's life. People are free to migrate from one state to another state to seek a better life and have historically done so in the Unite
That's about all any security measures does - delay and complicate. This reduces the number of people who will try to beat the measure and increases the risk of exposure of those who try. Bank vaults aren't made to be impenetrable, they are made to be difficult and time consuming to penetrate - increasing the odds that the intrusion attempt will be noticed and discouraging people from even trying.
Although I agree that "Real Id" probably isn't going to stop a lot of terrorist activity, I personally see it as a rather insignificant intrusion by the Feds - WAY below their intrusion on other areas (such as forcibly taking my money to build tunnels under Boston or to cleanup after an earthquake in Los Angeles or to strong arm states into following a national education program). Also, the more effective the system is, the more likely it is to be intrusive, so I don't want perfectly security.
All Mohammed has to do is get a job at the DMV.
I suppose you're kidding given the Simpson's reference (perhaps I missed a good episode - I'll leave my geek card at the front desk on the way out). However, that would be very good if that's what happened. When Mohammed is caught (either by some security measure at the DMV or after someone using a Real Id he issued is tied to terrorism and an investigation reveals that the Real Id should not have been issued), he's detained and every record he updated while working at the DMV is audited. A nice short list of potential terrorists is compiled in a few hours or days (probably before Mohammed is tipped off and detained) and a sweep picks up some of these folks and puts the rest on the run w/o valid ID. So, only stupid terrorist organizations would try this approach.
They can adapt to these hurdles just like any other national intelligence service would.
Actually, "they" lack the resources of "first world" intelligence services and often behave very foolishly and make a lot of mistakes. For example, only an idiot or an organization lacking resources would use unencrypted satellite phones to conduct clandestine business and not expect that their conversations would be listened in on. My guess is that it's a bit of both - even at a high level they are not very informed and their access to resources is quite limited. Generally, religious zealotry seems quite incompatible with science/engineering insight (since groking the latter makes it clear the former is ludicrous and unsupportable) - I'd much rather have to outsmart a religious zealot who spent their time memorizing the Koran than someone motivated by greed and power who spent their time learning science, math, and engineering.
Overall, I'm amazed there hasn't been a successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. This suggests to me that some combination of the U.S. security efforts and the terrorist's incompetency/fear is working pretty well. And I'd still feel this way even if the U.S. suffered a successful significant terrorist attack as I was hitting 'Submit'.
I agree that a prosecutor would likely charge the violations of employment laws or "vote coercion" laws in this case because they are easier for a jury to understand. However, if the "vote buying" law violations were high level felonies and the others were low misdemeanor or civil violations, a prosecutor might go for the "vote buying" instead (or in addition to). (Of course, in setting up to get a plea-bargained "guilty" - everything would be on the table!)
With appropriate multi-part encryption (presumably public/private pairs for many of them) keys and hashing coupled with an encrypted receipt given to the voter, I believe e-voting can be more private, more secure, and more much more verifiable than paper ballots. Of course all the code should be open-source and "tamper evident" hardware level validation should be used to insure that the machines are running the code they should be (and, probably, Diebold should be banned from bidding -- their bad history just would undermine voter confidence). Of course, none of this will solve the problems caused by the ever increasing number of "mail in" (aka absentee) ballots which lack almost all privacy, security, and verification features.
Paper ballots offer plenty of opportunity for manipulation and accidental/erroneous loss. Even without malicious intent, it's only a matter of time before the outcome of a very close national election will hinge on one ballot box full of paper ballots from Florida which was, unfortunately, in a van that was hit by a gasoline tanker and burned to a crisp along with all the poll workers in the van and the tanker driver. This will result in conspiracy rumors by whichever side loses. A re-vote won't work to fairly resolve this. For the simple case, the dead gasoline tanker driver who happened to live in the precinct with the burned ballots can't vote and her vote SHOULD be counted even though she died after the polls closed -- those are the rules after all. Also, even though only those people who voted in the original vote would get to vote again, there would be no way to know that they didn't change their vote (which wouldn't be fair unless EVERY voter in the U.S. got to change their vote also - some voters who had voted for a third-party candidate might reasonably choose to change their vote after knowing the possible election outcome and if one voter gets that right, all should have it).
Digital ballots, on the other hand, are easily transmitted to backup sites in at least near-realtime and can eliminate most human error and manipulation. It's quite hard to alter history without detection when it's continuously being recorded to multiple sites with multiple disjoint security schemes and via multiple transmission paths because the manipulation is not only much harder but also must be continuous and undetectable for an extended period of time (as in at least "all day", not just 10 seconds when the ballot box isn't visible to everyone).
Actually, I think the boss case falls into "vote buying" in the broad sense. The boss is providing "valuable consideration" (you keeping your job) in exchange for you voting a specific way.
I also went to university before C and Unix became dominate and have done a little assembly programming (generally in the form of tiny service routines to implement something hardware platform specific for which the libraries on that particular OS didn't have appropriate routines for) but never as my primary focus. However, I still find the knowledge of this level quite useful for debugging - such as when there's a compiler bug or when there's a bad library for which I don't have the source. I think it's still relevant and BSc CS students should be exposed to it.
On the other hand, it's been a long time since I found a use for my microcoding skills initially acquired while in school. On second thought, at least I can always realize "it could be harder to debug, I could be debugging microcode and not even have a debugger or accurate simulator" so maybe it is still useful. Seriously, there are probably a lot of better things for most BSc CS students to spend their time on than microcode!
I think this goes directly to the article's point. A BSc in CS from a 4 year university should mean more than just the ability to program in a particular environment. It's important that there be a good supply of people with broader skills and it would be nice to be able to reasonably assume that anyone with BSc in CS from a 4 year university is likely to have these skills and/or have been meaningfully exposed to a wide variety of concepts. Sadly, even 25 to 30 years ago, this wasn't true even for quite a few BSc CS fresh outs from universities that had a decent reputation (albeit these people often didn't have stellar "in-major" grades). Therefore, I view the article as reflecting on us having reached an unfortunate point in an unfortunate long term trend.
A degree from a tech school doesn't mean that the person doesn't have the potential to work effectively on a wide variety of problems in a wide variety of environments in a wide variety of roles -- just that it would never be assumed. In my experience however, it's quite rare to find a junior tech school grad who has the breadth of knowledge of a very good junior 4 year BSc CS grad. Unfortunately, even using the BSc "screen", a hiring manager wastes a LOT of time when looking for quality junior (3-5 years experience) developers so when looking for diamonds, hiring managers tend to look in diamond mines, not in iron ore mines.
I've seen (and suffered with) some horrible web and "office application" code that was written by people who obviously had no intuitive sense of algorithmic complexity and what the impact of an O(n^2) algorithm was as n got beyond their little test case. I've also seen (and suffered with) similar "multi threaded" code written by people who seemed to have only the barest of notions about concurrency control. In most cases the developers who wrote this code viewed their jobs as "just web and/or office applications" development and didn't understand why they should be interested in such "details".
Typically, as their career progresses, most people end up narrowing their scope a bit and going deeper in those areas as there are only so many hours in the day and personal passions vary widely. The university is sometimes the only place that someone is "dragged" through areas that don't immediately strike them as interesting (even though they sometimes discover they are interesting once they are exposed) -- best not to squander this learning opportunity.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, I see it coming now... Institutions in the U.S. who choose to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing solar, wind, nuclear, and other alternative energy sources to replace petroleum based ones will be accused of trying to "invade Canada via economic means" by devaluing one of their natural resources. Or, perhaps the U.S. will be accused of "invading Canada via economic means" when worldwide drug prices climb (or new drug development drops off) after the U.S. institutes price controls on drugs which results in consumers in the U.S. no longer funding development of drugs to the benefit of the rest of the world.
Come on, how can Canada be invaded by "economic means" by ANY other country. If Canada's government and citizens don't want to sign contracts with U.S. government and citizens to exchange goods and services, no one is going to make them.
I think I'm more concerned about coercion than actual 'retail' vote buying as the latter is completely illegal and is likely to get revealed when done on a scale necessary to actually throw a national election. Although, since vote buying would have better ROI if clear-text receipts were issued as the purchaser could easily be sure they got what they paid for, the temptation to engage in it would probably be higher.
We are in complete agreement that voters should be able to verify how their vote was counted - we just disagree on the method. My method prevents introducing a new avenue for coercion and vote buying at the expense of requiring more effort (both on the part of the voter and the election board) and more infrastructure for each vote that is verified. Since in an all electronic system (where human errors are virtually eliminated) a single voter who can show that their vote was not counted properly proves there's a problem or corruption, I don't think the additional effort on the part of the voter (and, hence, less voters who will verify their votes) is a problem to the integrity of the election. I would agree that the extra effort required by my method would reduce the number of individual voters who would feel all warm and fuzzy that their vote was counted correctly - but the most concerned of these voters would occasionally verify their vote to feel a bit warmer and fuzzier.
Due to the increased cost of vote verification using my method, it may be necessary to limit the number of verifications allowed. Perhaps if more voters request verification than the system can reasonably handle, each candidate would be given a "quota" of verifications where they get to pick that many specific voters who will have their ballots verified before certification of the election results. Note that even with such limitations, this would would still result in an infinitely higher degree of vote cast vs. vote counted verification than has ever been available before using any system utilized in the United States.
Here's a potentially interesting take on this by an actual law professor who actually read the court's actual decision.
I believe the requested feature is best implemented in the file system layer rather than the physical media layer (SSD vs. HD).
There is a good proof-of-concept available (but it currently works only for wives) that could probably be easily enhanced to implement the mother-in-law eraser function (actually, perhaps it's already there, I've not used Reiser4 much).
But then they would come after you for practicing law (giving legal advice) without a license. How dare you tread on their monopoly.
....I think that it is completely fair to ban assault rifles......An assault rifle is somewhat of a gray area, but I think that such a weapon is generally not thought of as a defensive weapon. Hence the name "assault".So forbidding assault weapons is likely outside of the "bear-ing" limit. A good hunting rifle, shotgun or a pistol of some sort would make a reasonable defensive weapon against criminals. Not to start a discussion about the "purpose" of the Second Amendment, but there's little question that a rational (albeit possibly incorrect) interpretation is that the Founders were, among other things, concerned about insuring that the populace could defend itself against Federal power gone astray. I believe there's more evidence for this position than that the Second Amendment was meant largely to provide the ability for citizens to defend themselves against other ordinary individual citizens acting on their own greed rather than the collective greed of the Federal government. (The notion that a citizen would not be allowed to possess sufficient arms to defend themselves against a criminal was probably so far out of the question that it didn't cross their minds -- and certainly it was not an issue to be addressed at the Federal level.)
In the context of that interpretation, if an American citizen is defending themselves against Federal troops commanded by a rogue Administration striving to grab power via military force, they need weapons that are effective against those used by the Federal troops in localized battles. Clearly if the military has full auto guns or even selective fire assault weapons, only the similar level will do to defend against that force. I think most nukes however fall outside that level... To use a nuke in a "neighborhood defense" situation would be senseless - sure, you'd kill the attacking force, but you'd also destroy your neighborhood, your neighbors, and yourself.
From a practical standpoint, a rogue U.S. Administration that has to take power by fighting house-to-house against well armed American citizens will quickly fail. As each individual soldier looks into the eyes of yet another person who could easily be their brother, sister, mother, father, son, or daughter (and, occasionally, will actually be!) and kill them in cold blood to avoid their own demise, the soldiers will eventually (probably within a few hours of the Federal power grab) turn their weapons on their commanders and defect (along with their equipment) from the dark side. On the other hand, if the populace is unable to defend themselves, lesser and nonlethal (and hence much more palatable to individual soldiers/police) force (simple commands, stun grenades, Tasers etc) can be used to gain compliance. The latter approach would (I hope) fail eventually, but could continue for days/weeks/months/years with some combat situations ending up being very deadly (some groups of citizens who have a strong visceral desire to be free will die trying to avoid subjugation even if the odds are high they will fail and die trying).
The Founders didn't anticipate the power of modern weapons any more than they anticipated the power and potential of abuse of the Internet in the free speech arena. IMHO, they may have made abuse of these mediums (powerful weapons and the Internet) punishable by very stiff penalties, but they would not have banned or regulated them heavily in areas that would have hobbled their use under the Second or First Amendments.
You should write yourself a note to check if they are still working in 9 years and one day - in which case you should demand a replacement under the warranty.
I became even more skeptical when I read the following in the linked article: So, either the reporter got the quote wrong (and who knows what else) or this guy thinks the Earth must be at least "tens" of billions of years old. I'd like to see this guy in a bar with one of those folks who thinks "dinosaurs lived with cavemen and/or Noah took a pair of them on his little rowboat and/or the Earth is only about few thousand years old"
However, I seriously doubt that BestBuy or Wal-Mart regularly pay the same "true" price for CDs as a small independent music store -- if so, I'll bet there's an unemployed Wal-Mart buyer from Bentonville once it's discovered. The ability/willingness to buy large volumes of product, and selectively promote same via things such as in-store displays and placement, gives the buyer additional leverage nearly always results in a price discount. Also, don't forget that Wal-Mart et al extract other concessions that are not strictly based on "unit price" - potentially such things as delivery direct to the store by the vendor, guaranteed automatic stocking by the vendor, payment after the item sells rather then some fixed time after delivery, etc.
IIRC, the Nine Unelected Black Robed Legislators have not yet applied the incorporation doctrine to the Second Amendment (most of the other rights in the BoR have received this blessing of course).
There's also that nasty little debate about "Individual" vs. "Collective Rights" views of the Second Amendment - if (the largely discredited) Collective Rights view managed to prevail or persist, the States would be able to do pretty much whatever they wanted WRT gun ownership laws.
Hopefully both these issues will be resolved in the coming years. Unfortunately, my guess is that the SCOTUS will issue a narrow ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller and largely skirt the crux of the Individual vs. Collective rights issue this term rather than addressing it squarely.
Of course, to find you guilty of "Obstruction of Justice" (or a Perjury related charge), the government must prove that you didn't forget the password and must prove that beyond reasonable doubt - that could be difficult if you haven't done something stupid like brag about your deception.
Unfortunately, the "Jailhouse Informant" (i.e., a crook the FBI promised an early parole to if he can get you to say that you "tricked the police and hadn't really forgotten your password") that just "happens" to be sharing your cell with you may testify for the government at your trial and speak of conversations that you don't recall having! All the more reason to do everything you can to make bail and keep out of the slammer until you're acquitted. Oh, and from the time of release on bail, ALWAYS be with a trusted credible (non-relative) individual and log who you were with when - that way it's harder for a "street" informant to make up conversations that didn't happen. Even apply technology - record (following any laws requiring notifying the other party that you are doing so) all your "non-privileged" (mostly, these are only those with your lawyer) conversations and wear a GPS logger at all times and back this up by always having your cell phone ON and WITH YOU - cell phone tower contact records can be your friend.
Unfortunately, one probably should do all these things (and more) even IF one really forgot the password and all that is in the files is your financial statements. Overzealous prosecutors can be dangerous beasts (ask the Duke Lacrosse team).
Hmm... Perhaps I'm being a bit presumptuous and I apologize if so, but I believe the entity you may be thinking of is what is commonly referred to as The United States of America - an entity whose entire existence, governmental organization, delegation of roles to, limits on, and responsibilities of its central (Federal) government are defined by a document generally referred to as the "Constitution for the United States of America" ["Constitution"]. Ah, yes, here is a copy of it - you might want to read it - it's quite an interesting document. If you're thinking of some other collection of states on a continent other than that often referred to as "North America" or generally north of the 49th parallel or south of the 30th parallel, read no further as we must be thinking of different groups of states. ["Insensitive Clod" commentators who live somewhere like Mexicali, Mexico or San Antonio, Texas - I wrote "generally" -- get over it]
The Constitution specifies that some of the things you suggested (such as certain foreign affairs and and defense of the United States of America) are the responsibility of the Federal government. So, we'd have to amend the Constitution to permit those to be undertaken by the individual states. Personally, I'd be against such a proposal, but knock yourself out promoting it if you like.
Everything else you mentioned (social services, education, and food safety) is not relegated by the Constitution to the Federal government and is therefore outside the scope of the Federal government. Mostly, it's up to the states and municipalities to decide if and how they want to control/provide these things. They may (and probably would) decide to band together on these things for the sake of efficiency - but Minnesota may well choose to opt out of a requirement that toilets that only use 1.6 gallons of water per flush but require higher standards for insulation in the floors of new houses while Los Angeles may opt for the opposite. In any event, one can simply amend the Constitution to elevate control of these things (and possibly much more) to the Federal government. Personally, as I really don't want Bush or Huckabee deciding what kids are taught with my tax dollar, I'd probably be against such an amendment, but knock yourself out promoting it if you like.
Ignoring the Tenth Amendment (for those folks who were schooled outside the U.S. or who were hanging out in the parking lot smoking during your civics class in school: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.") really doesn't make it go away - honest!
The notion here is to create a simpler tax system that does not require the IRS as we know it today. No reasonable person is proposing eliminating all collection of Federal taxes and, hence, some infrastructure to collect those would of course be needed.
As far as subsidized college loans is concerned (which really has little to do with the IRS)... The free and easy access to student aid is a vicious cycle -- the colleges just raise their tuition to match the available money, making it harder and harder for students who don't quite qualify for aid to get an advanced education. If someone needs a loan for college, let them go out and get one -- let the market decide if pursuing a degree in Ancient Interpretive Literature is likely to result in enough income that the student can pay back the loan. It's not my responsibility as a taxpayer in State X to fund the hobby of another person in State Y. The Feds could perhaps, via the power of the interstate commerce clause, have a role in making the student loan market more viable by making sure that a student can't just jump across the state border to avoid repaying a student loan (existing laws probably deal with this fine but might need some changes).
Meddling in interest rates, for example, creates it's own set of problems. Recessions are inevitable and not necessarily the worst thing - ask someone who has just lost all the equity (and retirement nest egg) in their house and just got foreclosed on if they could care less if we are not in a recession (yet)? Let the market work it out - yes, it may be volatile at times, but the "propping up" of the system by the Feds results in big bubbles instead of more little ones that burst early. We have a global economy now -- the Fed really can't change that and will be increasingly less able to achieve their goals anyway.
Funny, I've never heard the Governor of a state say "We here in Hickstate are too stoopid to figure out how to lurn our kids - we need the Feds to tell us this". Instead it sounds more like "We here in Hickstate want money forcibly extracted from any state but Hickstate to help pay to educate our kids". States are free to band together to share R&D costs of education if they wish to, the Feds are not needed for that and the Constitution doesn't give them the power to IMHO.
Ah, finally something we agree at least partially on -- the allocation of frequencies and technical broadcasting standards seems to fall well within the scope of the interstate commerce clause as RF doesn't respect state boundaries.
Of course the sunsetting of Social Security will require a staged process so those that have put money into the plan will receive partial benefits and those that are already retired will continue to receive benefits until death. Yes, since the plan is basically bankrupt, there will be some combination of life support (covering shortfalls with general taxation) and benefit reductions during the phase out -- but not as bad if we continue the ponzi scheme for another 30 years. Not pleasant, but better to amputate the gangrenous lower leg now than to wait for the infection to spread up into the torso and internal organs - we infected ourselves with this disease decades ago and our attempts at fighting the infection have failed so drastic action is now needed.
Phasing out Medicare would need to be done much the same way as phasing out Social Security would be done -- in a staged fashion. As far as state-to-state disparity - that's life. People are free to migrate from one state to another state to seek a better life and have historically done so in the Unite
That's about all any security measures does - delay and complicate. This reduces the number of people who will try to beat the measure and increases the risk of exposure of those who try. Bank vaults aren't made to be impenetrable, they are made to be difficult and time consuming to penetrate - increasing the odds that the intrusion attempt will be noticed and discouraging people from even trying.
Although I agree that "Real Id" probably isn't going to stop a lot of terrorist activity, I personally see it as a rather insignificant intrusion by the Feds - WAY below their intrusion on other areas (such as forcibly taking my money to build tunnels under Boston or to cleanup after an earthquake in Los Angeles or to strong arm states into following a national education program). Also, the more effective the system is, the more likely it is to be intrusive, so I don't want perfectly security.I suppose you're kidding given the Simpson's reference (perhaps I missed a good episode - I'll leave my geek card at the front desk on the way out). However, that would be very good if that's what happened. When Mohammed is caught (either by some security measure at the DMV or after someone using a Real Id he issued is tied to terrorism and an investigation reveals that the Real Id should not have been issued), he's detained and every record he updated while working at the DMV is audited. A nice short list of potential terrorists is compiled in a few hours or days (probably before Mohammed is tipped off and detained) and a sweep picks up some of these folks and puts the rest on the run w/o valid ID. So, only stupid terrorist organizations would try this approach.Actually, "they" lack the resources of "first world" intelligence services and often behave very foolishly and make a lot of mistakes. For example, only an idiot or an organization lacking resources would use unencrypted satellite phones to conduct clandestine business and not expect that their conversations would be listened in on. My guess is that it's a bit of both - even at a high level they are not very informed and their access to resources is quite limited. Generally, religious zealotry seems quite incompatible with science/engineering insight (since groking the latter makes it clear the former is ludicrous and unsupportable) - I'd much rather have to outsmart a religious zealot who spent their time memorizing the Koran than someone motivated by greed and power who spent their time learning science, math, and engineering.
Overall, I'm amazed there hasn't been a successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. This suggests to me that some combination of the U.S. security efforts and the terrorist's incompetency/fear is working pretty well. And I'd still feel this way even if the U.S. suffered a successful significant terrorist attack as I was hitting 'Submit'.
I agree that a prosecutor would likely charge the violations of employment laws or "vote coercion" laws in this case because they are easier for a jury to understand. However, if the "vote buying" law violations were high level felonies and the others were low misdemeanor or civil violations, a prosecutor might go for the "vote buying" instead (or in addition to). (Of course, in setting up to get a plea-bargained "guilty" - everything would be on the table!)
With appropriate multi-part encryption (presumably public/private pairs for many of them) keys and hashing coupled with an encrypted receipt given to the voter, I believe e-voting can be more private, more secure, and more much more verifiable than paper ballots. Of course all the code should be open-source and "tamper evident" hardware level validation should be used to insure that the machines are running the code they should be (and, probably, Diebold should be banned from bidding -- their bad history just would undermine voter confidence). Of course, none of this will solve the problems caused by the ever increasing number of "mail in" (aka absentee) ballots which lack almost all privacy, security, and verification features.
Paper ballots offer plenty of opportunity for manipulation and accidental/erroneous loss. Even without malicious intent, it's only a matter of time before the outcome of a very close national election will hinge on one ballot box full of paper ballots from Florida which was, unfortunately, in a van that was hit by a gasoline tanker and burned to a crisp along with all the poll workers in the van and the tanker driver. This will result in conspiracy rumors by whichever side loses. A re-vote won't work to fairly resolve this. For the simple case, the dead gasoline tanker driver who happened to live in the precinct with the burned ballots can't vote and her vote SHOULD be counted even though she died after the polls closed -- those are the rules after all. Also, even though only those people who voted in the original vote would get to vote again, there would be no way to know that they didn't change their vote (which wouldn't be fair unless EVERY voter in the U.S. got to change their vote also - some voters who had voted for a third-party candidate might reasonably choose to change their vote after knowing the possible election outcome and if one voter gets that right, all should have it).
Digital ballots, on the other hand, are easily transmitted to backup sites in at least near-realtime and can eliminate most human error and manipulation. It's quite hard to alter history without detection when it's continuously being recorded to multiple sites with multiple disjoint security schemes and via multiple transmission paths because the manipulation is not only much harder but also must be continuous and undetectable for an extended period of time (as in at least "all day", not just 10 seconds when the ballot box isn't visible to everyone).
Actually, I think the boss case falls into "vote buying" in the broad sense. The boss is providing "valuable consideration" (you keeping your job) in exchange for you voting a specific way.
I also went to university before C and Unix became dominate and have done a little assembly programming (generally in the form of tiny service routines to implement something hardware platform specific for which the libraries on that particular OS didn't have appropriate routines for) but never as my primary focus. However, I still find the knowledge of this level quite useful for debugging - such as when there's a compiler bug or when there's a bad library for which I don't have the source. I think it's still relevant and BSc CS students should be exposed to it.
On the other hand, it's been a long time since I found a use for my microcoding skills initially acquired while in school. On second thought, at least I can always realize "it could be harder to debug, I could be debugging microcode and not even have a debugger or accurate simulator" so maybe it is still useful. Seriously, there are probably a lot of better things for most BSc CS students to spend their time on than microcode!
I think this goes directly to the article's point. A BSc in CS from a 4 year university should mean more than just the ability to program in a particular environment. It's important that there be a good supply of people with broader skills and it would be nice to be able to reasonably assume that anyone with BSc in CS from a 4 year university is likely to have these skills and/or have been meaningfully exposed to a wide variety of concepts. Sadly, even 25 to 30 years ago, this wasn't true even for quite a few BSc CS fresh outs from universities that had a decent reputation (albeit these people often didn't have stellar "in-major" grades). Therefore, I view the article as reflecting on us having reached an unfortunate point in an unfortunate long term trend.
A degree from a tech school doesn't mean that the person doesn't have the potential to work effectively on a wide variety of problems in a wide variety of environments in a wide variety of roles -- just that it would never be assumed. In my experience however, it's quite rare to find a junior tech school grad who has the breadth of knowledge of a very good junior 4 year BSc CS grad. Unfortunately, even using the BSc "screen", a hiring manager wastes a LOT of time when looking for quality junior (3-5 years experience) developers so when looking for diamonds, hiring managers tend to look in diamond mines, not in iron ore mines.
I've seen (and suffered with) some horrible web and "office application" code that was written by people who obviously had no intuitive sense of algorithmic complexity and what the impact of an O(n^2) algorithm was as n got beyond their little test case. I've also seen (and suffered with) similar "multi threaded" code written by people who seemed to have only the barest of notions about concurrency control. In most cases the developers who wrote this code viewed their jobs as "just web and/or office applications" development and didn't understand why they should be interested in such "details".
Typically, as their career progresses, most people end up narrowing their scope a bit and going deeper in those areas as there are only so many hours in the day and personal passions vary widely. The university is sometimes the only place that someone is "dragged" through areas that don't immediately strike them as interesting (even though they sometimes discover they are interesting once they are exposed) -- best not to squander this learning opportunity.