I have to agree. I have lots of friends who are not Slashdot geeks and don't know what the INDUCE Act, DMCA and all this crap are about. If you want to get this idea through to a broad audience, a site called "SaveTheVCR.com" (which incidentally is available) or something similar would do a better job, with a 2-3 sentence layperson's introduction at the top of the page.
But if their goal was to get the Slashdot local crew all fired up, then I'd say this site will do a pretty good job at getting us to man the phones.
I believe you are incorrect about the reason being a pin in the BT card not being connected.
This wasn't my idea, it was claimed by somebody with better knowledge of the SD Bluetooth cards than I have - remember that these cards were designed for previous generation Palm-type devices to communicate via data with BT-enabled cellphones, not to carry voice.
The point was that the Treo hardware (motherboard) can not access the voice data from the Qualcom modem board directly. It's sent out via the speaker without any connection to the motherboards data lines. Thus it was not possible to re-route this voice signal to the IO card socket.
Of course with the new recording abilities of the Treo it's arguable that you could record the audio and play it to the SD card, but the signal loss would have been high.
Well, as you point out, there is some ability in the API to record the audio stream (you can also control its destination to the speakerphone or the main speaker). So there is some degree of access, though not with a fabulous amount of control or capabilities, to the audio stream from the Treo motherboard. Like you said, actually implementing this would probably require some really hacky stuff like recording the stream to a file and copying it out to the destination (and vice versa). But if the BT SD card doesn't support voice anyway (which may or may not be the case), it would be impossible.
See my post here. In short, it's not just talking to an arbitrary external device. There is no documentation for any of the several layers of driver components here, at least not without NDAs with PalmOne and others. So the best guide you can find is the Palm OS 4 drivers (at least one PRC file for BT, BT serial, BT/SD), which weren't written for ARM hardware. So take those drivers, disassemble them (like I said, at least 3 PRC files), now go through opcode-by-opcode and figure out what each of the undocumented API calls are doing, so you can write something that's compatible with the built-in Bluetooth API.
Oh yeah, and there's really no public documentation for writing drivers of any sort for OS 5/ARM - you're talking about stuff operating below the level of the public PalmOS API. So it's not a matter of bloating here, just lack of information because the whole system is relatively closed and undocumented.
I'm not an expert by any means, just a guy with a modest amount of Palm application development experience who took a crack at this problem only to throw up my hands in frustration after a day or so, realizing it was much harder than it looked at first glance without the proper documentation for anything.
I can also assure you even writing a driver for the data capabilities of the BT card was nearly impossible without extensive reverse engineering of the existing drivers - there are several layers of drivers, all of which are undocumented in the public PalmOne hardware/Palm OS API documentation. The SD card has no documentation to speak of. There were, IIRC, three different driver files you would have to rewrite and get compiling and working under OS 5/ARM. Oh, and did I mention, you can't use any of the usual Palm development tools since they don't generate ARM native code, you need to use a totally different toolchain (GNU with ARM target, I guess).
There was an easier way to get BT working, which is to build an add-on device that connected to the external serial line and ran the signal through a UART to one of the many complete BT chip systems out there. I made some progress toward doing this, but I lost my motivation when they announced the Treo Ace (and I got busy with other stuff). My takeaway from this experiment was that the internals of Palm OS software and hardware are sadly extremely closed these days, and even figuring out the general things (like how to write drivers for OS 5) is nearly impossible. Things didn't used to suck so much in Palm land (before the PalmOne/PalmSource split I guess?).
And a hardware add-on solution would have made voice possible too (by plugging into the headset connector) - as this article said, there was no way to access the voice audio stream from software to redirect it to the BT card, even if it had the capability to do so (which is also doubtful - apparently the relevant voice pins on the BT chip in these cards may not have even been connected).
So no, nobody in their right mind would have done THAT much work for 5 grand. I've done plenty of Palm programming in the past, and had this been a simple Palm app, I would've whipped something up in a minute.
And oddly, Simpson Garfinkel, another well-known technopundit, submitted a very similar idea (P2P backup service) as a business plan to the MIT 50k competition back in 2002. See here for the entry summary (search in the page for Garfinkel). Anyway, I somehow dredged that up from the back of my brain when I saw this Cringely piece because I recalled that Garfinkel was interested in actually doing something like this several years back.
He's confused, he's talking about intellectual conservatives. If you hang out with the Republican Club on a top-tier college campus for a while, you'll know what he's talking about (my roommate at Harvard was the president of the Harvard Republican Club at one point). The problem is these people share very little in common with the populist 'conservative' masses. Though they are sometimes religious Christians like the far right wing of the party, they are likely to be more rational in their views than the real nutters.
In any case, I think the disdain for others has more to do with intellectual leanings and educational background than political spectrum. I am a moderate liberal and I thoroughly disdain the masses for their non-nuanced, poorly thought out views on both sides.:)
And the North doesn't nearly have enough nukes to be selling them to anybody - not if they want any deterrence against the US.
An effective defense/blackmail shield for North Korea requires several dozen short and mid-range nuclear capable missiles, targetted at appropriate locations in South Korea, the DMZ and Japan. An effective weapon of terror requires one nuclear warhead stuck in a ship which can be driven into the harbor of your favorite coastal city, or brought to another country, loaded into a truck and driven to the appropriate urban area for detonation.
Generally no country just makes one or even four or five nuclear weapons. Once you put together the refining or reprocessing facilities, you're probably going to be cranking out fissile material at a fairly steady rate, assuming you have access to a sufficient amount of raw materials. I have no idea where you get the idea that North Korea doesn't/won't have enough nukes to sell one to somebody - it only takes one, they don't have to sell dozens or hundreds to result in the destruction of a major city, killing millions.
As for whether dictators sell nuclear weapons to terrorists, I don't necessarily think North Korea would perceive a risk from Islamic extremist groups at this point in time. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that. In fact, I believe the reason they won't sell a nuclear weapon to terrorists is that they see nuclear weapons as evidence of their national superiority - a national treasure, evidence of membership in an exclusive club. Making that club less exclusive and spreading power around doesn't really help them, it just takes attention away from them and lessens everybody else's willingness to keep supporting them.
But that only works as long as they don't perceive too immediate of a threat. Then who knows what they would be willing to do - the answer is almost anything if they think it's in their "national interests". And selling a weapon to terrorists would be a way for them to execute a strike on the US without opening themselves up to direct retaliation. Kim Jong Il and his government are crazy from a western individualistic perspective, but not necessarily completely nuts from a scary and rationally nationalistic perspective.
If there is any lesson we should have learned about North Korea, it's that you don't want to judge their actions as completely loony and unmotivated, nor do you want to judge them by the "normal" standards of power-craving Western dictatorships.
No,no,no. Heinlein lived in a different era. He was definitely anti-Communist, but he was also very anti-authoritarian as well. His books have lots of sometimes kinky sex stuff, promote racial and (sometimes) gender equality. He was, again, more-or-less libertarian and anti-authoritarian (which if you remember was embodied to many of that age by Stalinism) in many ways, though I think his economic views drifted over the course of the spectrum during his life, becoming more conservative with time.
If by right wing you mean socially conservative, then nobody really comes to mind. I would imagine it's hard to be a hardline authoritarian type and have the kind of creativity and imagination required to be a good science fiction writer (L. Ron Hubbard, who you mentioned, was an authoritarian within his insane regime, but then again, he was a pretty atrocious sci-fi author too). If anything I think most sci-fi writers run a similar spectrum to what you'd find here on Slashdot for example.
On economic issues, sci-fi writers seem to run the gamut.
Of course, if you want to read some nutty religious-whackjob fantasy stuff, I'm sure you can find that really popular Revelations-inspired fantasy series at Walmart or your favorite local Christian bookstore, if pseudo-religious drivel is up your alley. I guess that's close to being "right wing" sci-fi.
As for what this is doing in politics.slashdot.org, that truly beats the hell out of me.
Oh, I don't disagree, it's definitely astroturfing, but that's not exactly uncommon here. It would have been less annoying if it hadn't included that particular quote, which makes the whole thing sound disingenuous. Whatever, it's still far less annoying than the daily astroturfing that Roland Piquepaille fucker gives us for his blog.
He's their webmaster, yes, and probably one of the engineers there as well. He isn't the whole company though, as you can see from their management team page - they are a legitimate, if not huge company, based in the building next to where my old company was based, down Hartwell Ave. for anybody who knows the area, in Lexington, MA. In fact, I know one of the engineers at Pepper (assuming he's still there).
Uhh have you used any of those so-called DVRs? They aren't even remotely close to a Tivo. I understand from a business perspective Tivo is F'ed, but I would never in a million years pay my cable company 5 bucks a month just to save 7 bucks a month over Tivo's cost to get the incomparably worse DVR service.
I split my time between HD content and my Tivo these days. It's hard NOT to watch HD when you have a 60" Sony Grand Wega set. Basically my TV watching algorithm looks like this:
1. Check Discovery HD Theater - if already seen or sucky show, proceed to step 2.
2. Check HBO HD and Showtime HD for decent movies. If not decent, or too far into movies, proceed to step 3.
3. Switch TV back to Tivo input and look at Now Playing list for latest Stargate, Monk, World Poker Tour, or cool History Channel stuff.
I will still live in an apartment with the wrong exposure where I can't mount a satellite dish anyway. We need lots more HDTV content, but those of us in places (like Manhattan) without the satellite option need to be able to get this content from our cable companies. Of course, I still laud this move, since I think the competition will get Time Warner et. al. off their asses with respect to HD content.
What the hell are you talking about? I just read through a mirror of the article and I see nothing like this this quote whatsoever. Why have two separate people independently posted this? Are you all just trolling?
Stop this misleading claptrap. There was no meaningful opposition from either party to these bills. Clinton didn't push them through, and a veto would have been fairly pointless and pretty much unprecedented, as the DMCA was passed UNANIMOUSLY in the Senate (don't know about the House vote). Presidents don't generally stand up and oppose unanimous legislation, going against both their own party and the opposition. Don't get me wrong, I think if he knew what it really said and understood the consequences to personal freedoms and fair use rights, he absolutely should have vetoed it and made a big stink. But don't blame this one on Clinton, the President doesn't always study the detail of every piece of legislation he signs into law, and is far more likely to do so when it seems controversial (which clearly the DMCA didn't seem at the time).
Now the Sonny Bono copyright extension act didn't pass unanimously, and was obviously more controversial. However, it still passed by well over a 2/3rds margin and thus was probably unvetoable.
Also remember the power of the veto was never meant to be overused. Clinton picked and chose his veto battles carefully. And he learned his lesson with vetoes too, as I remember, several times he vetoed bills only to have slightly different legislation passed repeatedly until he signed it (I don't know if he ever actually had a veto overturned). So blaming Clinton for the DMCA and Sonny Bono? I won't say he did enough to prevent them, but I also don't think it's fair to point the finger first, second or even third at him.
The only reason Bush hasn't passed more of these sorts of bills is because the Republicans already pushed most of them through during Clinton's second term when they had the House and the Senate more cleanly under their control, if I remember correctly. Bush has however presided over some real civil liberties gems, like the PATRIOT Act.
Re:those statistics don't tell everything
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh, you're wary of electing Democrats because the Republicans stand up for your civil liberties? Because Bush has been really excellent on that front.
I won't disagree with you that Clinton really disappoints when it came to his inability to see those laws for what they were and block them. I don't know if there would have been any point to vetoing these bills however, when they mostly passed uncontested at the time. The real problem was that nobody seemed to stop and think twice about what the legislation actually said and what the real consequences were. I attribute this partially to the poor funding of organizations like the EFF, which we should all be giving money to every year to pay for lobbyists to get in front of our legislators with these issues.
Sometimes I wish Hollywood would just stay the hell away from the Democratic party. I really don't think they do any good for the Democrats other than providing funds to the party, and their cozy relationship seems to get Democrats to look the other way when this kind of nasty, thoroughly unliberal legislation gets pushed through.
You mean where Greedo surrenders preemptively to Han, then years later tells his children that he didn't surrender, he was in Le Rebellion, and fought back valiantly against the Emperor's evil grip on the galaxy?
I am not allowed to lecture at the word animal academic institutions, for they fear my wisdom will expose and indict the pedant hirelings as betrayers of dumb-ass students - the dung heads who allow their freedom of speech to be suppressed without a whimper, unbelieveable. Word animals will feel the wrath of Cubic curse.
I pretty much think that says it all. Wow, there are some truly schizo people out there.
Except if you show up in the last hour or so that polls are open. Sure, if enough people do it, somebody might get called out, but how many of them would likely get away with it? It seems like it would be pretty trivial to me, especially given the number of people who are registered but just don't show up to vote. Counting on the fact that _if_ they show up later, it will become apparent that somebody impersonated them earlier (or somebody made a mistake and crossed off the wrong name... how do you show malicious intent here?) seems like a pretty weak form of enforcement for something as critical as voting for our nation's leaders.
Are you one of those people who thinks we'd all be safer if everybody carried a concealed firearm too? Seriously, I've met several people who honestly think this. I mean, I don't argue that if everybody on a plane had a knife, you'd have a lot of trouble hijacking the plane (guns are a bad idea on planes for obvious reasons). The problem with this is that just like everywhere else in life, people get drunk and rowdy. The first time a drunk passenger knifes an obnoxious flight attendant, or another passenger who looks at them funny or bumps into the guy's wife, etc., everybody would stop thinking this is such a good idea.
That's the same reason we don't want everyone running around packing heat. In parts of the country where people regularly pack heat, you hear a lot more stories about somebody getting drunk at a party, getting in a fist fight and then going out to their truck to get their gun and solving their dispute with handguns, and end up hurting the other party to the dispute, themselves, or an innocent bystander. Common gun ownership is only an effective deterrent to violence when all parties involved are thinking and behaving rationally.
If you really feel that strongly, you can always vote for a third party candidate, or write-in a candidate (some places provide a write-in/other line, or just write it in underneath the other choices). If your jurisdiction doesn't allow this, then get together a bunch of people and work on getting it changed. I am sick to hell of hearing people bitch about not liking any of the candidates so they decided not to vote. Mind you, think carefully before you do this and be aware of the likely outcome in your region, because in some areas, if you take your vote away from one of the two party candidates, you may cost them the election (as in Florida in 2000).
Fuck, I don't like John Kerry as a person, but I'm going to vote for him anyway (see this guy's excellent site for somebody with a similar opinion). Sometimes your vote functions more as a referendum on the current state of affairs than anything else.
There is a legitimate source for frustration caused by our electoral college system in the national presidential election. My presidential vote, as a Massachusetts resident, basically doesn't count for shit since the state votes overwhelmingly Democrat in national elections. I'll still vote anyway, however, because I want to make sure that even if Bush wins the electoral college again, it's DAMNED clear that he doesn't have a mandate from the majority of this country for what he's doing.
Maybe someday we'll get an instant runoff system and the two party system power structure will be toppled. I think the fear of the change this would bring prevents people from embracing the idea too strongly. And the fear that the system would be too complicated for the average, poorly educated American citizen, leading to it somehow being gamed by people taking advantage of the dumb masses. Anyway, until we're able to make this happen, we have to work within the system as it exists.
If there's no good candidate on the ballot, then you need to get more involved in the political process earlier on, to get good candidates on the ballot. If everyone sits around not giving a shit, then I can guarantee you, no good candidates will be on the ballot.
It's not illegal to ask for ID to vote, in some states at least. However, it seems that in Massachusetts they don't ask for ID when you vote - I don't know if it's law or just local policy that they don't. I have always found this quite bizarre. There is absolutely NOTHING to stop me from claiming to be one of any number of people in my building, for example, whose names and addresses I know.
I'm not for big brother or anything, but I fail to see how requiring me to at least show ID for them to check off against the list infringes on my right to a secret ballot (which, incidentally, is taped out on the table for all to see - you can basically just point to some name and say "that's me!").
Slashdot Mirror
But if their goal was to get the Slashdot local crew all fired up, then I'd say this site will do a pretty good job at getting us to man the phones.
This wasn't my idea, it was claimed by somebody with better knowledge of the SD Bluetooth cards than I have - remember that these cards were designed for previous generation Palm-type devices to communicate via data with BT-enabled cellphones, not to carry voice.
The point was that the Treo hardware (motherboard) can not access the voice data from the Qualcom modem board directly. It's sent out via the speaker without any connection to the motherboards data lines. Thus it was not possible to re-route this voice signal to the IO card socket.
Of course with the new recording abilities of the Treo it's arguable that you could record the audio and play it to the SD card, but the signal loss would have been high.
Well, as you point out, there is some ability in the API to record the audio stream (you can also control its destination to the speakerphone or the main speaker). So there is some degree of access, though not with a fabulous amount of control or capabilities, to the audio stream from the Treo motherboard. Like you said, actually implementing this would probably require some really hacky stuff like recording the stream to a file and copying it out to the destination (and vice versa). But if the BT SD card doesn't support voice anyway (which may or may not be the case), it would be impossible.
Oh yeah, and there's really no public documentation for writing drivers of any sort for OS 5/ARM - you're talking about stuff operating below the level of the public PalmOS API. So it's not a matter of bloating here, just lack of information because the whole system is relatively closed and undocumented.
I'm not an expert by any means, just a guy with a modest amount of Palm application development experience who took a crack at this problem only to throw up my hands in frustration after a day or so, realizing it was much harder than it looked at first glance without the proper documentation for anything.
There was an easier way to get BT working, which is to build an add-on device that connected to the external serial line and ran the signal through a UART to one of the many complete BT chip systems out there. I made some progress toward doing this, but I lost my motivation when they announced the Treo Ace (and I got busy with other stuff). My takeaway from this experiment was that the internals of Palm OS software and hardware are sadly extremely closed these days, and even figuring out the general things (like how to write drivers for OS 5) is nearly impossible. Things didn't used to suck so much in Palm land (before the PalmOne/PalmSource split I guess?).
And a hardware add-on solution would have made voice possible too (by plugging into the headset connector) - as this article said, there was no way to access the voice audio stream from software to redirect it to the BT card, even if it had the capability to do so (which is also doubtful - apparently the relevant voice pins on the BT chip in these cards may not have even been connected).
So no, nobody in their right mind would have done THAT much work for 5 grand. I've done plenty of Palm programming in the past, and had this been a simple Palm app, I would've whipped something up in a minute.
And oddly, Simpson Garfinkel, another well-known technopundit, submitted a very similar idea (P2P backup service) as a business plan to the MIT 50k competition back in 2002. See here for the entry summary (search in the page for Garfinkel). Anyway, I somehow dredged that up from the back of my brain when I saw this Cringely piece because I recalled that Garfinkel was interested in actually doing something like this several years back.
In any case, I think the disdain for others has more to do with intellectual leanings and educational background than political spectrum. I am a moderate liberal and I thoroughly disdain the masses for their non-nuanced, poorly thought out views on both sides.
An effective defense/blackmail shield for North Korea requires several dozen short and mid-range nuclear capable missiles, targetted at appropriate locations in South Korea, the DMZ and Japan. An effective weapon of terror requires one nuclear warhead stuck in a ship which can be driven into the harbor of your favorite coastal city, or brought to another country, loaded into a truck and driven to the appropriate urban area for detonation.
Generally no country just makes one or even four or five nuclear weapons. Once you put together the refining or reprocessing facilities, you're probably going to be cranking out fissile material at a fairly steady rate, assuming you have access to a sufficient amount of raw materials. I have no idea where you get the idea that North Korea doesn't/won't have enough nukes to sell one to somebody - it only takes one, they don't have to sell dozens or hundreds to result in the destruction of a major city, killing millions.
As for whether dictators sell nuclear weapons to terrorists, I don't necessarily think North Korea would perceive a risk from Islamic extremist groups at this point in time. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that. In fact, I believe the reason they won't sell a nuclear weapon to terrorists is that they see nuclear weapons as evidence of their national superiority - a national treasure, evidence of membership in an exclusive club. Making that club less exclusive and spreading power around doesn't really help them, it just takes attention away from them and lessens everybody else's willingness to keep supporting them.
But that only works as long as they don't perceive too immediate of a threat. Then who knows what they would be willing to do - the answer is almost anything if they think it's in their "national interests". And selling a weapon to terrorists would be a way for them to execute a strike on the US without opening themselves up to direct retaliation. Kim Jong Il and his government are crazy from a western individualistic perspective, but not necessarily completely nuts from a scary and rationally nationalistic perspective.
If there is any lesson we should have learned about North Korea, it's that you don't want to judge their actions as completely loony and unmotivated, nor do you want to judge them by the "normal" standards of power-craving Western dictatorships.
No,no,no. Heinlein lived in a different era. He was definitely anti-Communist, but he was also very anti-authoritarian as well. His books have lots of sometimes kinky sex stuff, promote racial and (sometimes) gender equality. He was, again, more-or-less libertarian and anti-authoritarian (which if you remember was embodied to many of that age by Stalinism) in many ways, though I think his economic views drifted over the course of the spectrum during his life, becoming more conservative with time.
On economic issues, sci-fi writers seem to run the gamut.
Of course, if you want to read some nutty religious-whackjob fantasy stuff, I'm sure you can find that really popular Revelations-inspired fantasy series at Walmart or your favorite local Christian bookstore, if pseudo-religious drivel is up your alley. I guess that's close to being "right wing" sci-fi.
As for what this is doing in politics.slashdot.org, that truly beats the hell out of me.
Oh, I don't disagree, it's definitely astroturfing, but that's not exactly uncommon here. It would have been less annoying if it hadn't included that particular quote, which makes the whole thing sound disingenuous. Whatever, it's still far less annoying than the daily astroturfing that Roland Piquepaille fucker gives us for his blog.
He's their webmaster, yes, and probably one of the engineers there as well. He isn't the whole company though, as you can see from their management team page - they are a legitimate, if not huge company, based in the building next to where my old company was based, down Hartwell Ave. for anybody who knows the area, in Lexington, MA. In fact, I know one of the engineers at Pepper (assuming he's still there).
Uhh have you used any of those so-called DVRs? They aren't even remotely close to a Tivo. I understand from a business perspective Tivo is F'ed, but I would never in a million years pay my cable company 5 bucks a month just to save 7 bucks a month over Tivo's cost to get the incomparably worse DVR service.
1. Check Discovery HD Theater - if already seen or sucky show, proceed to step 2.
2. Check HBO HD and Showtime HD for decent movies. If not decent, or too far into movies, proceed to step 3.
3. Switch TV back to Tivo input and look at Now Playing list for latest Stargate, Monk, World Poker Tour, or cool History Channel stuff.
I will still live in an apartment with the wrong exposure where I can't mount a satellite dish anyway. We need lots more HDTV content, but those of us in places (like Manhattan) without the satellite option need to be able to get this content from our cable companies. Of course, I still laud this move, since I think the competition will get Time Warner et. al. off their asses with respect to HD content.
What the hell are you talking about? I just read through a mirror of the article and I see nothing like this this quote whatsoever. Why have two separate people independently posted this? Are you all just trolling?
Because he was pointing out that it wasn't Bush who signed the Sonny Bono act and the DMCA into law, it was Clinton.
Now the Sonny Bono copyright extension act didn't pass unanimously, and was obviously more controversial. However, it still passed by well over a 2/3rds margin and thus was probably unvetoable.
Also remember the power of the veto was never meant to be overused. Clinton picked and chose his veto battles carefully. And he learned his lesson with vetoes too, as I remember, several times he vetoed bills only to have slightly different legislation passed repeatedly until he signed it (I don't know if he ever actually had a veto overturned). So blaming Clinton for the DMCA and Sonny Bono? I won't say he did enough to prevent them, but I also don't think it's fair to point the finger first, second or even third at him.
The only reason Bush hasn't passed more of these sorts of bills is because the Republicans already pushed most of them through during Clinton's second term when they had the House and the Senate more cleanly under their control, if I remember correctly. Bush has however presided over some real civil liberties gems, like the PATRIOT Act.
I won't disagree with you that Clinton really disappoints when it came to his inability to see those laws for what they were and block them. I don't know if there would have been any point to vetoing these bills however, when they mostly passed uncontested at the time. The real problem was that nobody seemed to stop and think twice about what the legislation actually said and what the real consequences were. I attribute this partially to the poor funding of organizations like the EFF, which we should all be giving money to every year to pay for lobbyists to get in front of our legislators with these issues.
Sometimes I wish Hollywood would just stay the hell away from the Democratic party. I really don't think they do any good for the Democrats other than providing funds to the party, and their cozy relationship seems to get Democrats to look the other way when this kind of nasty, thoroughly unliberal legislation gets pushed through.
You mean where Greedo surrenders preemptively to Han, then years later tells his children that he didn't surrender, he was in Le Rebellion, and fought back valiantly against the Emperor's evil grip on the galaxy?
academic institutions, for they fear my wisdom
will expose and indict the pedant hirelings as
betrayers of dumb-ass students - the dung heads
who allow their freedom of speech to be
suppressed without a whimper, unbelieveable.
Word animals will feel the wrath of Cubic curse.
I pretty much think that says it all. Wow, there are some truly schizo people out there.
Except if you show up in the last hour or so that polls are open. Sure, if enough people do it, somebody might get called out, but how many of them would likely get away with it? It seems like it would be pretty trivial to me, especially given the number of people who are registered but just don't show up to vote. Counting on the fact that _if_ they show up later, it will become apparent that somebody impersonated them earlier (or somebody made a mistake and crossed off the wrong name... how do you show malicious intent here?) seems like a pretty weak form of enforcement for something as critical as voting for our nation's leaders.
That's the same reason we don't want everyone running around packing heat. In parts of the country where people regularly pack heat, you hear a lot more stories about somebody getting drunk at a party, getting in a fist fight and then going out to their truck to get their gun and solving their dispute with handguns, and end up hurting the other party to the dispute, themselves, or an innocent bystander. Common gun ownership is only an effective deterrent to violence when all parties involved are thinking and behaving rationally.
Fuck, I don't like John Kerry as a person, but I'm going to vote for him anyway (see this guy's excellent site for somebody with a similar opinion). Sometimes your vote functions more as a referendum on the current state of affairs than anything else.
There is a legitimate source for frustration caused by our electoral college system in the national presidential election. My presidential vote, as a Massachusetts resident, basically doesn't count for shit since the state votes overwhelmingly Democrat in national elections. I'll still vote anyway, however, because I want to make sure that even if Bush wins the electoral college again, it's DAMNED clear that he doesn't have a mandate from the majority of this country for what he's doing.
Maybe someday we'll get an instant runoff system and the two party system power structure will be toppled. I think the fear of the change this would bring prevents people from embracing the idea too strongly. And the fear that the system would be too complicated for the average, poorly educated American citizen, leading to it somehow being gamed by people taking advantage of the dumb masses. Anyway, until we're able to make this happen, we have to work within the system as it exists.
If there's no good candidate on the ballot, then you need to get more involved in the political process earlier on, to get good candidates on the ballot. If everyone sits around not giving a shit, then I can guarantee you, no good candidates will be on the ballot.
I'm not for big brother or anything, but I fail to see how requiring me to at least show ID for them to check off against the list infringes on my right to a secret ballot (which, incidentally, is taped out on the table for all to see - you can basically just point to some name and say "that's me!").