Can you be more specific about when a person's vote becomes less valuable than yours?
Is it a debilitating mental illness (eg schizophrenia) ? What about other mental illnesses (eg bipolar disorder) ? Brain damage after a stroke? Quadriplegic? Paraplegic? Broken leg? Sprained ankle? Stubbed toe?
On another axis: Homeless? Jobless? Working poor? Lower class? Middle class? Upper class?
Let's throw in another axis, just for fun: Jewish? Gypsy? Protestant? Muslim? Catholic? Buddhist?
Yes, I'm having a little fun at your expense, but you need to understand this - you do not get to choose what anyone else's vote is worth. The vote of every adult in your country has the precise same value as yours, whether that person be utterly unable to express any coherent thought or not. There is absolutely no regard for your feelings on this, and that is precisely correct. As soon as you remove someone's vote, you remove their voice. It's easy to go on from there, and I'd be surprised if you thought about what that means.
We've heard this before.
To conclude - please define some cut-off point in your criteria. Precisely when does another person's vote become meaningless in your eyes? What condition is the boundary which defines when their vote should not be counted? What conditions are okay?
When someone says "The biggest trick is the one that Obama is pulling. The one that makes us all think that he is somehow a better choice because he appears smarter, cooler, and more articulate than McCain," I feel okay to ask how you can tell just by looking that someone actually is "smarter, cooler and more intelligent." Clearly the original poster has never met either man, and can't make a judgement that way. That leaves either reading text or viewing on TV as the most common means a voter will have some contact, at whatever remove, with the candidates.
So when I ask this, I imagine that it's clear that I'm holding my tongue firmly in cheek. Obviously my post failed pretty comprehensively on that front.
To anyone who uses more of the media than the glass screen in the lounge room, it's clear which candidate has more functioning brain cells, higher intellect and more flexibility on complex issues. Sadly, few people look beyond that large screen.
Hugh Laurie? Well, he's just some actor, isn't he? I mean, yes, he plays up the leg and drug bit, but it's not like he's some university graduate or anything. I still can't place his accent though... which state is he from?
Well, as an Australian I prefer our system by far compared to the US system. I just didn't want to derail the thread.
Preferential and mandatory voting leads to the best representation of voter intention I've seen in the world, but it also can lead to the balance of power being held by a single independent politician. A few years back Brian Harradine held the balance of power in the senate, and was able to massively pork-barrel for Tasmania by selling his vote for terms that suited him well (even though the gov't of the day had an electoral mandate to deliver). It can be argued either way whether this is good or bad politics.
The best example I've seen in our politics so far was in Tasmania some years back when the Labor Party had to join a coalition with the Greens to form a government. There was a real move towards Green politics in Southern Tasmania, and that actually did come out in the elected politicians. It didn't last so long, and after a while the two major parties reworked the system to destroy third party power (yay democracy!) but it was the best representation of a third party I've seen here.
You may note that I discount the Nationals in the federal political coalition with the Liberals. They are utterly spineless, bending to the Libs' whim immediately and obediently. Sadly they represent the 'bush' voters as much as any inner-city Lib does (and their complete willingness to fold on Telstra was all the proof we ever needed of that). More's the pity. A real coalition would be better for all concerned.
(Help for our international friends - the Liberals (note the capital) are the Australian conservatives, Labor are closest to the small-L liberals and the Nationals are meant to represent the rural voters.)
To any Australian voters - always vote below the line! Distribute your preference how you want to, don't let some party official give your vote away!
Read up a few posts. Your post is about half an hour after someone else posted that a voter must have:
1) citizenship 2) name 3) birthdate 4) state driver's license or SSN (required)
Perhaps you didn't see that post before you typed your own post. Given that the point you reinforced has been thoroughly refuted, you may want to review the rest of this forum before commenting again.
That is a horrifyingly accurate post. The real victors in war are the people who sell the bullets. Everyone else only plays along to use their products.
The pointlessness of a two-party system based on false antagonisms and dichotomies.
Sadly, when you look to countries which have more workable multi-party systems you often see far more political instability. Look at Japan, many European countries and so on - weak coalitions that are easily toppled as political allegiances change.
I'm not advocating a two-party system as perfect. I just can't see anything better in practice today.
That's some trick. So... how can you tell (through a TV screen) that someone isn't just *appearing* smarter, cooler and more articulate, but actually *is* smarter, cooler and more articulate?
Maybe it's a high-definition thing. My TV doesn't give me that sort of information.
Well, if you've got proof you can blow this election wide open for the Republicans. This would swing the whole thing.
So... let's just wait for that proof... I'm sure you'll be along any moment to present it. It's pretty critical, after all, and you wouldn't just be repeating made-up stories about something so important...
As a non-US person, some of these comments are hysterically funny. That one was great - I imagined some doddering old guy in some home for the aged, waiting to die, being mocked by those evil democrat politicians... And then I realised it was McCain you're talking about! Oh, how I laughed.
Bombula was trolling. You trolled back every bit as hard. Hilarity ensued.
As I recall, your country used to be big on that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, so if you're going to sling some mud, present some real proof to back it up. You wouldn't want to trample on your own freedoms, would you?
And yet a lot of international journalists got it spot on. Why would that be? What is wrong with US media, or is it that global media is distant enough that it can be more analytical?
Anyway, you'd think that the fact that Steve Jobs has AIDS would be a bigger deal than a heart attack, anyway.
If that's not irony (and some sign would be nice), then you're spreading malicious lies, making you every bit as bad as the journalists you castigated.
I don't agree about anonymity being a good thing in this case. Yes, people can track you down, but currently I have the exact same 'qualification' as any expert when editing a Wikipedia article.
Now that may be fine if I'm an enthusiastic layman, but what if I'm a crank with lots of time to spare? I can edit again and again, create new accounts using other IP addresses (public libraries, workplaces, homes of friends, WiFi hotspots, etc) and keep on editing an article to ensure my point gets across. Or I can be more subtle, as the article alleges Weiss to be. I can use my anonymity to lie and influence others to believe that lie. I can have multiple accounts supporting my lie.
In short, anyone can distort Wikipedia and that's a fundamental weakness. Paradoxically, it's also the greatest strength of Wikipedia. It's a funny old world sometimes, eh?
As for people relying on Wikipedia - it may be a good starting point, but maybe it's not. If I didn't know much about a subject, the articles could lead me (through perfectly valid references) to all sorts of crank websites or books that completely distort the subject.
I maintain that it's a terrible source for anything, and that anonymity is the cause of that.
I don't see any real issues there. There might be some pain along the way, but nothing that is actually bad for the whole world. Some nations may store their reserves in US dollars - the current crisis shows how poor the decision to do that is. Not that there are lots of better options, just that the US dollar is not the stable currency that it seemed ten or twenty years ago.
Are you sure it's not just that you don't want the US marginalised through a global move away from the US dollar?
As far as document formats, Apple is very open indeed. It's all either text files or packages (containing rtf, txt, xml or image files, some may be gzipped). You may want to respond about NDAs or iPods or whatever, but we're talking document formats here, and Apple have a good record in that arena.
The value of an item also, in part, is due to its resale value.
I often read that the value of digital data is zero under classical economic theory, as the cost to create new copies is effectively nil. I tend not to agree with that, but the debate is never really resolved.
Perhaps economic theory hasn't really sorted out how to price digital assets yet. Until we have a solid idea of how to do that, how can we argue about resale value? Especially in a world where we can see pirated, identical versions of a game available for free.
In the meantime, I reckon people will like this idea and tell economic theory to go jump.
It's a positive reinforcement for the behaviour they want to drive. It won't satisfy everyone, but it's a lot better than more punitive DRM as a means of driving behaviour.
Step back a moment: if you were a game developer who receives money only from first sales of your games, how would you try to drive those numbers up for a game about to be released?
Of course we do! The flow-on effects of your crappy system combined with our stupidly greedy bank executives means some of our financial institutions are hit as well. I'd be just as happy to see them suffer as they so richly deserve, but I want my economy to be less impacted by yours. If that means your taxpayers fund a massive bail-out, I'm okay with that. I'd prefer the suffering to be at your end.
The mailbox is now a simple folder, and each mail is a plain text file within it. Or at least, that's how it is in 10.5.5.
Apple have had some screwy formats in the past, but these days it's pretty much either plain text (maybe with a different extension) or gzip-ed folders/packages with rtf, xml and image files. It's been that way for a while now.
There are plenty of things to complain about with Apple, but file formats aren't on the list these days. They're far more open than ever in that sense.
The DoJ has people who actually investigate things, and so would filter out all the inaccuracies and FUD...
So you agree with that anti-trust court ruling a while back? Excellent starting point. Microsoft is a company with a history of abusive, illegal practices. It's good that you agree with the DoJ.
At least 90% of what Groklaw has written about on this topic came straight from IBM blogs, and, if you actually fact check it, you find that IBM out and out lied about most of what they said.
Really? With such a high proportion it's odd that you don't provide any examples. Perhaps you keep looking at that 10%. I sympathise - all I can see is that 10%. Like an iceberg, the other 90% must be submerged out of sight.
I'm confident that with your fair-minded view of Microsoft's past abusive and illegal acts, you'll come back and point out several examples from that 90% overlap.
Their defacto standardization of the industry has driven productivity to heights it would never have reached if they had not been around.
And the factual source for this alternate history is..? If Microsoft did not exist, other things would have happened. Why would the industry have stayed at the same maturity level of 1982?
Many people around here imagine a better outcome. You clearly believe otherwise. Playing "What If?" games is fun, but essentially pointless because there is no way to know about the variables that were suppressed by the actual outcomes.
Here's my go (just for fun) - standardisation would have happened earlier, through professional organisations getting ISO involvement for document formats (they'd want this to smooth business and government functions). Open documents would be the norm, and the choice of operating system and application would be far less critical than now, as documents would have been truly portable.
Trash them all you want - but give them the credit they have coming.
I give them absolutely no credit for doing better than a fictional alternate timeline. They should be doing better in this real one!
"Don't tell me the problems you think A has, you're just plain wrong. I won't tell you why."
You're going to need to do more than simply disagree if you want to be taken seriously. Why is OpenXML better than ODF? Why are people wrong about OpenXML being un-implementable?
You may be spot on, but just giving the endpoint for your argument misses the crucial bit where you convince other people that you're right.
... the real issue is that they continue to be rewarded with profits for this behaviour.
No, they continue to be rewarded with profits for their products, some of which actually work well for their customers.
It's hard to fault someone buying WinXP (for example), as it works well enough, is unobtrusive and if problems occur there are plenty of people who have half a clue about fixing it. That goes for SQL Server and some of their other products.
No-one is giving Microsoft money for their practices, and tying their products to a slimy practice which requires some explanation before people realise it's bad is too much. People lose interest before you finish. Hell, I lost interest before I'd finished the sentence above.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you be more specific about when a person's vote becomes less valuable than yours?
Is it a debilitating mental illness (eg schizophrenia) ?
What about other mental illnesses (eg bipolar disorder) ?
Brain damage after a stroke?
Quadriplegic?
Paraplegic?
Broken leg?
Sprained ankle?
Stubbed toe?
On another axis:
Homeless?
Jobless?
Working poor?
Lower class?
Middle class?
Upper class?
Let's throw in another axis, just for fun:
Jewish?
Gypsy?
Protestant?
Muslim?
Catholic?
Buddhist?
Yes, I'm having a little fun at your expense, but you need to understand this - you do not get to choose what anyone else's vote is worth. The vote of every adult in your country has the precise same value as yours, whether that person be utterly unable to express any coherent thought or not. There is absolutely no regard for your feelings on this, and that is precisely correct. As soon as you remove someone's vote, you remove their voice. It's easy to go on from there, and I'd be surprised if you thought about what that means.
We've heard this before.
To conclude - please define some cut-off point in your criteria. Precisely when does another person's vote become meaningless in your eyes? What condition is the boundary which defines when their vote should not be counted? What conditions are okay?
Ah, screw it.
When someone says "The biggest trick is the one that Obama is pulling. The one that makes us all think that he is somehow a better choice because he appears smarter, cooler, and more articulate than McCain," I feel okay to ask how you can tell just by looking that someone actually is "smarter, cooler and more intelligent." Clearly the original poster has never met either man, and can't make a judgement that way. That leaves either reading text or viewing on TV as the most common means a voter will have some contact, at whatever remove, with the candidates.
So when I ask this, I imagine that it's clear that I'm holding my tongue firmly in cheek. Obviously my post failed pretty comprehensively on that front.
To anyone who uses more of the media than the glass screen in the lounge room, it's clear which candidate has more functioning brain cells, higher intellect and more flexibility on complex issues. Sadly, few people look beyond that large screen.
Hugh Laurie? Well, he's just some actor, isn't he? I mean, yes, he plays up the leg and drug bit, but it's not like he's some university graduate or anything. I still can't place his accent though... which state is he from?
Ah, clearly my humorous comment wasn't well pitched.
I don't receive US TV, and all I know about your elections is from reading newspapers, commentary and blogs. I was (badly) attempting humour.
I'll leave that to the professionals next time. Or put a smiley face to bludgeon the message home.
Well, as an Australian I prefer our system by far compared to the US system. I just didn't want to derail the thread.
Preferential and mandatory voting leads to the best representation of voter intention I've seen in the world, but it also can lead to the balance of power being held by a single independent politician. A few years back Brian Harradine held the balance of power in the senate, and was able to massively pork-barrel for Tasmania by selling his vote for terms that suited him well (even though the gov't of the day had an electoral mandate to deliver). It can be argued either way whether this is good or bad politics.
The best example I've seen in our politics so far was in Tasmania some years back when the Labor Party had to join a coalition with the Greens to form a government. There was a real move towards Green politics in Southern Tasmania, and that actually did come out in the elected politicians. It didn't last so long, and after a while the two major parties reworked the system to destroy third party power (yay democracy!) but it was the best representation of a third party I've seen here.
You may note that I discount the Nationals in the federal political coalition with the Liberals. They are utterly spineless, bending to the Libs' whim immediately and obediently. Sadly they represent the 'bush' voters as much as any inner-city Lib does (and their complete willingness to fold on Telstra was all the proof we ever needed of that). More's the pity. A real coalition would be better for all concerned.
(Help for our international friends - the Liberals (note the capital) are the Australian conservatives, Labor are closest to the small-L liberals and the Nationals are meant to represent the rural voters.)
To any Australian voters - always vote below the line! Distribute your preference how you want to, don't let some party official give your vote away!
(diatribe over, resume normal transmission)
Read up a few posts. Your post is about half an hour after someone else posted that a voter must have:
1) citizenship
2) name
3) birthdate
4) state driver's license or SSN (required)
Perhaps you didn't see that post before you typed your own post. Given that the point you reinforced has been thoroughly refuted, you may want to review the rest of this forum before commenting again.
That is a horrifyingly accurate post. The real victors in war are the people who sell the bullets. Everyone else only plays along to use their products.
The pointlessness of a two-party system based on false antagonisms and dichotomies.
Sadly, when you look to countries which have more workable multi-party systems you often see far more political instability. Look at Japan, many European countries and so on - weak coalitions that are easily toppled as political allegiances change.
I'm not advocating a two-party system as perfect. I just can't see anything better in practice today.
That's some trick. So... how can you tell (through a TV screen) that someone isn't just *appearing* smarter, cooler and more articulate, but actually *is* smarter, cooler and more articulate?
Maybe it's a high-definition thing. My TV doesn't give me that sort of information.
Well, if you've got proof you can blow this election wide open for the Republicans. This would swing the whole thing.
So... let's just wait for that proof... I'm sure you'll be along any moment to present it. It's pretty critical, after all, and you wouldn't just be repeating made-up stories about something so important...
(taps feet, hums, waits...)
Mod parent up!
+5 funny!
As a non-US person, some of these comments are hysterically funny. That one was great - I imagined some doddering old guy in some home for the aged, waiting to die, being mocked by those evil democrat politicians... And then I realised it was McCain you're talking about! Oh, how I laughed.
Bombula was trolling. You trolled back every bit as hard. Hilarity ensued.
Ah, and the actual evidence is..?
As I recall, your country used to be big on that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, so if you're going to sling some mud, present some real proof to back it up. You wouldn't want to trample on your own freedoms, would you?
We'll wait, we're patient.
And yet a lot of international journalists got it spot on. Why would that be? What is wrong with US media, or is it that global media is distant enough that it can be more analytical?
Anyway, you'd think that the fact that Steve Jobs has AIDS would be a bigger deal than a heart attack, anyway.
If that's not irony (and some sign would be nice), then you're spreading malicious lies, making you every bit as bad as the journalists you castigated.
You were probably being funny though. Ha ha.
I don't agree about anonymity being a good thing in this case. Yes, people can track you down, but currently I have the exact same 'qualification' as any expert when editing a Wikipedia article.
Now that may be fine if I'm an enthusiastic layman, but what if I'm a crank with lots of time to spare? I can edit again and again, create new accounts using other IP addresses (public libraries, workplaces, homes of friends, WiFi hotspots, etc) and keep on editing an article to ensure my point gets across. Or I can be more subtle, as the article alleges Weiss to be. I can use my anonymity to lie and influence others to believe that lie. I can have multiple accounts supporting my lie.
In short, anyone can distort Wikipedia and that's a fundamental weakness. Paradoxically, it's also the greatest strength of Wikipedia. It's a funny old world sometimes, eh?
As for people relying on Wikipedia - it may be a good starting point, but maybe it's not. If I didn't know much about a subject, the articles could lead me (through perfectly valid references) to all sorts of crank websites or books that completely distort the subject.
I maintain that it's a terrible source for anything, and that anonymity is the cause of that.
I don't see any real issues there. There might be some pain along the way, but nothing that is actually bad for the whole world. Some nations may store their reserves in US dollars - the current crisis shows how poor the decision to do that is. Not that there are lots of better options, just that the US dollar is not the stable currency that it seemed ten or twenty years ago.
Are you sure it's not just that you don't want the US marginalised through a global move away from the US dollar?
As far as document formats, Apple is very open indeed. It's all either text files or packages (containing rtf, txt, xml or image files, some may be gzipped). You may want to respond about NDAs or iPods or whatever, but we're talking document formats here, and Apple have a good record in that arena.
The value of an item also, in part, is due to its resale value.
I often read that the value of digital data is zero under classical economic theory, as the cost to create new copies is effectively nil. I tend not to agree with that, but the debate is never really resolved.
Perhaps economic theory hasn't really sorted out how to price digital assets yet. Until we have a solid idea of how to do that, how can we argue about resale value? Especially in a world where we can see pirated, identical versions of a game available for free.
In the meantime, I reckon people will like this idea and tell economic theory to go jump.
It's a positive reinforcement for the behaviour they want to drive. It won't satisfy everyone, but it's a lot better than more punitive DRM as a means of driving behaviour.
Step back a moment: if you were a game developer who receives money only from first sales of your games, how would you try to drive those numbers up for a game about to be released?
And that will put the end to dollar as a world currency. Oil won't be traded in dollars any more. Food won't be traded in dollars anymore.
And that's *BAD* for the whole world.
Why, exactly? I can see how it's bad for the US, but what's wrong with doing all the trade through the Euro, or some other currency?
What's bad for the US is not necessarily bad for the rest of the world, just as what's good for the US isn't necessarily good for the whole world.
Of course we do! The flow-on effects of your crappy system combined with our stupidly greedy bank executives means some of our financial institutions are hit as well. I'd be just as happy to see them suffer as they so richly deserve, but I want my economy to be less impacted by yours. If that means your taxpayers fund a massive bail-out, I'm okay with that. I'd prefer the suffering to be at your end.
The mailbox is now a simple folder, and each mail is a plain text file within it. Or at least, that's how it is in 10.5.5.
Apple have had some screwy formats in the past, but these days it's pretty much either plain text (maybe with a different extension) or gzip-ed folders/packages with rtf, xml and image files. It's been that way for a while now.
There are plenty of things to complain about with Apple, but file formats aren't on the list these days. They're far more open than ever in that sense.
The DoJ has people who actually investigate things, and so would filter out all the inaccuracies and FUD...
So you agree with that anti-trust court ruling a while back? Excellent starting point. Microsoft is a company with a history of abusive, illegal practices. It's good that you agree with the DoJ.
At least 90% of what Groklaw has written about on this topic came straight from IBM blogs, and, if you actually fact check it, you find that IBM out and out lied about most of what they said.
Really? With such a high proportion it's odd that you don't provide any examples. Perhaps you keep looking at that 10%. I sympathise - all I can see is that 10%. Like an iceberg, the other 90% must be submerged out of sight.
I'm confident that with your fair-minded view of Microsoft's past abusive and illegal acts, you'll come back and point out several examples from that 90% overlap.
Their defacto standardization of the industry has driven productivity to heights it would never have reached if they had not been around.
And the factual source for this alternate history is..? If Microsoft did not exist, other things would have happened. Why would the industry have stayed at the same maturity level of 1982?
Many people around here imagine a better outcome. You clearly believe otherwise. Playing "What If?" games is fun, but essentially pointless because there is no way to know about the variables that were suppressed by the actual outcomes.
Here's my go (just for fun) - standardisation would have happened earlier, through professional organisations getting ISO involvement for document formats (they'd want this to smooth business and government functions). Open documents would be the norm, and the choice of operating system and application would be far less critical than now, as documents would have been truly portable.
Trash them all you want - but give them the credit they have coming.
I give them absolutely no credit for doing better than a fictional alternate timeline. They should be doing better in this real one!
"A > B but I won't tell you why."
"Don't tell me the problems you think A has, you're just plain wrong. I won't tell you why."
You're going to need to do more than simply disagree if you want to be taken seriously. Why is OpenXML better than ODF? Why are people wrong about OpenXML being un-implementable?
You may be spot on, but just giving the endpoint for your argument misses the crucial bit where you convince other people that you're right.
... the real issue is that they continue to be rewarded with profits for this behaviour.
No, they continue to be rewarded with profits for their products, some of which actually work well for their customers.
It's hard to fault someone buying WinXP (for example), as it works well enough, is unobtrusive and if problems occur there are plenty of people who have half a clue about fixing it. That goes for SQL Server and some of their other products.
No-one is giving Microsoft money for their practices, and tying their products to a slimy practice which requires some explanation before people realise it's bad is too much. People lose interest before you finish. Hell, I lost interest before I'd finished the sentence above.