Although it doesn't fully address "WTF?", he has spoken about this in prior interviews:
DM: Ubuntu has adopted a new user interface called Unity. That seems well suited to tablet devices. Is this part of a plan to extend Ubuntu on tablets and other mobile computing and touch-based platforms?
MS: We haven’t said that, and it’s not the right time for me to say any such thing. [Laughs.] But if you look at it, Unity is born of an era where touch is important, and we’ve done quite a bit of work around touch generally and it brings a level of clarity and device-like simplicity to Linux desktops that just hadn’t been there before.
DM: Unity has attracted a fair share of criticism.
MS: Sure, it created something of a storm. The idea for us was we wanted to bring design-led engineering to the Linux desktop so we followed a fairly rigorous process of design. That meant testing assumptions and evaluating each little change on the basis of some realistic test of how people reacted to change. It is a fairly radical shift from where we were previously but we can see a fairly clear roadmap of where we want to get to over the next few months and years and not all of that is evident in the release so far.
[Unity] has raised the bar for usability on the Linux desktop. That’s not to say it’s without its issues. There are some quite definite issues in that first release, but when we did a detailed review of that versus the alternatives, it came out well ahead. It was the right one for us to ship at the time.
In the 1990s you aided in Debian development and now you've brought the world Ubuntu. Since you diverged from Debian and became the Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, do you have anything positive to say about Debian's progress?
We've seen Linux go from servers to supercomputers to smartphones in a very explosive manner but not as pervasively on the personal computer. What, in your opinion, is the next frontier for Linux and is that frontier part of Canonical's future?
Okay, let's just clear the air here a bit. We know that you are thinking about the UN Net Conference coming up and frankly we're a little hurt. Don't even try and deny it, we've been reading your e-mails and we know you're talking to all your friends about it. And what is up with that? It's like a serious threat to our free and open internet, man! We've got a really good thing going here and you're going to fuck it all up!
And we know how much you love a free and open internet, remember that time you e-mailed the EFF asking about a possibility that Google Staff was reading your e-mails? Yeah, that wasn't the EFF that told you that there was nothing to investigate and to go back to doing your lame-ass private things. That was us so the jig is up, we know you like a free and open internet and now we're asking you to help us preserve that and protect it from governments. And don't change the topic like you always do, this isn't about corporations. This is about the dirty nanny state governments that you complained to your coworker Allen about.
And now you're thinking about this UN Net conference thing? Jesus, man, do you know who else is going to be reading your e-mail? Kim Jong Un. No, he's not asking for it but that's who we'll give it to if you go to this conference! Mark our words, the DPRK is going to be up to their eyeballs in what your Magic deck is looking like for Friday nights if you don't start protesting this shit ASAP.
Ugh, you know, we hate to get ugly but, like, we do this because we love you. We were there reading along when you told your vet in an e-mail that $1,000 was too much for Fido's gum cancer treatment and then they turned around and charged your $365 to put his corpse in a garbage bag. We felt for you, man.
We got a really beautiful thing going on here between us, man. So get out there and protest this thing! Let's just keep the internet free and open. If you do we'll keep that wart on your junk between just us (anonymous browsing? Please, we knew that was you). Governments don't need to get involved in this. Come on.
We know you'll do the right thing because we know more about you than your closest friend,
I love an alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines as much as the next guy, but the Keeling Curve has been hitting 'record levels' every year since the late 1950s.
Yeah well, believe it or not one of the common arguments I face when talking about man made CO2 is that human emissions are nothing compared to natural forces of CO2 and a similar argument is that the Earth has a natural cycle that keeps this level of CO2 in balance and in check.
So as we watch CO2 levels steadily rise, it gives us insight into how much of these "natural processes" are effecting greenhouse gases in our atmosphere versus what we are contributing to these levels. And I think it's important to remind people that 1) these levels are steadily rising so no, the Earth is not keeping itself in check, 2) it's not just something where turn on the "remove CO2 machines" to fix it and 3) if natural processes are the cause of these levels of CO2, where is the corresponding increase in these natural processes?
Seriously people tell me all the time that one volcanic eruption dwarfs anything man could do in a decade. And I don't know where they get this shit. So tell me, where are all these new volcanic eruptions to explain this steady trend upward? Oh, we can't report that it's rising because you feel offended that it's "alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines." With all due respect, you're not helping this situation!
"Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan, the Republicans" or "Barack Obama / Joe Biden, the Democrats" or "Third party candidate / Undecided"
It sounds like you would have answered "Third party candidate / Undecided"
This is part of the reason that the one-party system has a stranglehold on America because it craftily marginalizes decenters.
Hey you leave my centers out of this:-) But in all seriousness, this is about an election poll... you should have been out campaigning for Gary Johnson or whoever you wanted a long time ago. I think that campaign finances are the root of the problem that we should attack but apparently you are just upset that some Google Survey didn't allow everyone to write in specific names? An that's what's marginalizing third party candidates? A little late at that point.
Oh, I get it, after it turns out that his research didn't back up your "beliefs", he must never have been a skeptic to begin with, right? Or perhaps when you made that statement you meant that you just don't know Richard Muller personally?
Political word games have always been such a pain in the ass.
But you are right that while peer reviewed journals move one way, the population moves the other:
The most striking result is the increase in the proportion of Americans who express strong doubt or rejection of the reality of global warming through their free associations. In 2003, only 7% of Americans provided “naysayer” images (e.g., “hoax,” or “no such thing”) when asked what thought or image first came to mind when they heard the term “global warming.” By 2010, however, 23% of Americans provided “naysayer” images.
The smartphone market already has a ton of operating systems, each with their own ecosystem of applications. What is to be gained by introducing another this late in the game? I would much rather Mozilla focus all of their development efforts on making Firefox better. I just switched from Chrome back to Firefox and the memory management of Firefox still leaves a LOT to be desired.
Well, one thing that I would like to see is more free open source mobile operating systems. Right now Android is dominating and I'm afraid that this will lead to a stagnant ecosystem in the mobile operating system world.
iOS is a good operating system but it can't compete with how cheap Android is and how pervasive it's becoming. You may think it's best for everyone to keep their heads down and concentrate on their bread and butter but I'd like to see someone challenge Android to be better. A natural monopoly could arise that causes Android development to stagnate and I don't think that'd be good for anyone.
As a consumer, you should be excited that another genuine contender is attempting to enter the ring against this unstoppable behemoth.
I love Android and I've used it as my mobile OS for the past three or four years but I wouldn't turn down another operating system that is open source and somehow better, would you?
I just switched from Chrome back to Firefox and the memory management of Firefox still leaves a LOT to be desired.
Firefox OS is part of their labs development. While you may have genuine concerns about their browser, I don't think they should shut down all their experimentation in the name of memory management (speaking of which my own personal experiences have been that their memory management is getting slowly better). Could you elaborate on what "a LOT to be desired" specifically is?
I think MIRV technology makes this impossible. I remember reading this from a book by McNamara but Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
Thus, in both a military and an economic sense, MIRVs render ABM systems less effective, as the costs of maintaining a workable defense against MIRVs would greatly increase, requiring multiple defensive missiles for each offensive one. Decoy reentry vehicles can be used alongside actual warheads to minimize the chances of the actual warheads being intercepted before they reach their targets. A system that destroys the missile earlier in its trajectory (before MIRV separation) is not affected by this but is more difficult, and thus more expensive to implement.
Even if you made an iron dome for ballistic nuclear warheads, who ever is firing them at you is just going to make them split right before they hit your interceptor kill zone. And then you'll have less time to act or deploy your interceptors and a random number at each entry point. Could you take out some of them? Sure but it's a clam shell game.
I'm pretty sure Hamas isn't using MIRV technology and the Israelis have developed this Iron Dome tech to stop this specific kind of attack. Not ICBMs with complex nuclear payloads.
Oddly enough the first and only place I've heard of this artist is bandcamp and I think she's helped it grow. She seems to be demanding Pandora put in all the nice things that Bandcamp has.
Bandcamp is not a radio streaming station but you can stream a lot of albums freely on it. Bandcamp seems to solve a lot of these problems with it's pricing clearly stated. I don't use it as a musician but I make a lot of music purchases there and this is how things work. If you want to get an album for free, the band has the option of asking at least for your e-mail address and zip code. That way they can geographically target you or let you know they have a new album on Bandcamp. On top of that I think the sites has a huge stats dashboard for artists -- even including the referral URLs from which your listeners are landing on your page (so if you have it hooked up to your band's page, you can differentiate that from someone who found it via pitchfork or something).
I've had really good experiences with bandcamp but their 'discover' methodologies still leave a lot to be desired and I hope that someday they just turn it into a station that has a great front end that will allow you to see and purchase whatever is playing.
Betting isn't like voting. It's not even close. I have had a couple friends who found themselves out of college with income and instead of spending it on a house, they engaged in serious sports betting. Very serious sports betting. And I spoke at length with one of them about it because it intrigued me. He seemed like an intelligent guy and he made modest money off this thing that required he used a lot of money and crunched a lot of numbers. The most important thing is that he never let his personal desires get in the way of his bets. He would often work his favorite teams out of his bets just to ensure that he wasn't subconsciously putting undue confidence on, say, the University of Texas (his alma mater).
Likewise these markets are not going to reflect the way people vote or feel but they are instead going to reflect their calculated confidence of a political win or a trend. To turn betting on for political topics will tell you absolutely nothing about reality. Instead it's going to tell you what people with $500 to flush down the toilet think the rest of their country thinks. I grew up under the poverty line (you know, the 47%) and I will tell you right now that this system you propose would only reflect what rich people who are loose with their funds think that other people are thinking. It will not give you future insight -- especially if you're talking about an election.
Five hundred dollars is still a lot of money to the majority of this country -- no matter how little it matters to Bennett Haselton. This futures market would merely be a world of insanely rich people doing stupid things with money (so, a lot like Wall Street). As for quieting the blowhards, what's $500 to Glenn Beck? Probably nothing at all. And even if you did allow them to put their life savings on the line behind what they are selling to the public, they're not stupid. They don't need an excuse to not have to do that. I'm not dumping my life savings into Oracle stock just because I write Java for my employer! Do you discredit my logic on Slashdot when I claim some large company is doing something very stupid but I don't turn around and short their stock with all my liquid assets behind it?
And not machine generated content: such content is not necessarily the output of people, unless a person arranges for a _specific_ machine output in order to express an idea. If the 1st Amendment is truly about ensuring that ideas cannot be censored, then free speech is not about permitting anyone to say purposely offensive things (i.e., the form of their speech), but about their right to express (perhaps politely) the _ideas_ contained in their speech.
I'm no constitutional scholar either but I feel you are proposing very subjective measurements. Once it gets to the point of you deciding what is and isn't protected free speech by way of how nice, specific or worthwhile you are pretty much censoring based on what you personally feel is or isn't acceptable!
Right now, we don't actively censor people who wish to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. For what if there was a fire in said theater? Instead, we let everything be said and then if it is felt that libel, slander, criminal intent, death threats, etc were said, you may bring it to the attention of a court of law. Even those make free speech an uneasy topic but they have tried to codify those conditions as best as possible.
Imagine a judge determining what is "nice" enough to leave up and what is "purposely offensive" enough to take down. If some heavy metal band wants to write a song that consists entirely of cursing and intercourse references and other people enjoy said music, who am I to demand that be taken down by how offensive it is?
Free speech is about free speech. Not ideas, not being nice, not worrying about offending some prude. There are laws that are applied after the fact but you should be able to say whatever you want! Did we not just cover this in the last story? Look at the UK and how absurd some of their free speech cases are! They must decide what is "grossly offensive" and what is "merely offensive" to determine if someone goes to jail!
The Memory Game
That classic game of remembering is back in this awesome new iPhone app!
Apple: Please remove 'memory' from the title of your game or we will remove your game for you!
The Memorie Game
The Anglo-Normans are challenging your ability to remember in this awesome new iPhone app!
Apple: Don't be a smartass, you know what we mean. Please remove 'memorie' from the title of your game or we will remove your game for you!
The Memoria Game
Which cards had Marcus Aurelius beneath them and which cards had Marcus Annius Verus under them?! This classic challenging Latin game of remembering cards is in this awesome new iPhone app!
Apple: Goddamnit. Okay, no Latin root words of Memoria, okay? You'll be sued, we'll be sued, they own everything related to mem- and as preemptive warning, no 'mnemonic' shit either, okay? It's all owned by someone else!
The Apple Can Go Fuck Itself Game
Which company is making Apple its Intellectual Property bitch today? Try to find out in this classic game of "wait, what card was that again?"
When I was a kid, I used to think that racism didn't happen. It was so illogical and obviously wrong. Even books that portrayed racism that "just was" in my countries past seemed to be set with an alien mentality. But then as I grew older I was exposed works like "American History X" (the son's descent into racism had flawed but plausible logic behind it) and it slowly dawned on me that there are experiences in life that encourage racism that are far more detrimental than simply being racist. Because they propagate it and it survives past the last generation on and on and anew again.
For example, let's say you were (and this is purely hypothetical by the way) beaten and mugged by Hispanics which led you to distrust any person even remotely resembling your attackers. It's wrong for you to scream at your housemaid that was paid to clean your house by your cleaning company. And it's wrong for you to call them up and hurl racial slurs at them for putting your life and property in danger. However, the really problematic aspect of that is when you sit down with your progeny when they're little and explain to them why people with a certain color to their skin are not to be trusted. This is something that encourages racism instead of just being racist.
But then racism was always OK as long as it's anti-white.
Well, I didn't really read this as anti-white. I saw this as actually racist towards all races since they are binning these young minds based on external appearances. Instead of trying to buck a trend, they have embraced it. To shed this discussion of your "it's anti-white" bias, allow me to relay what I see as being the real fallout from this action: an obsessive Asian student scores 100 on this test but an African American child scores 65 and is seen as being more successful than the Asian student. This allows students to progress on the path of education and causes resentment from the Asian child directed at the African American child. "They got it easy" will probably be the sentiment but could spawn a deep seated hatred or other negative stereotypes of their classmates. No need to bring Caucasian students in to that picture or claim it's just "anti-white."
Could you explain and give examples of racism that is okay because it's "anti-white"?
All it would take is Google or one other company with adequately deep pockets to actually take this guy to court and that would be the last we'd hear of Mr. Spangenberg or his trollish little company.
From the summary:
And while most of those lawsuits are ongoing, many companies have already settled with TQP rather than take the case to trial, including Apple
A company with deep pockets? $100 billion dollars isn't "adequately" deep enough?
I don't know anything about this patent but if there was a company that thought they'd have the money to shut these guys up, it'd be the elephant in the universe with so much money they have a dividend and share repurchase program.
With only a couple of days work this isn't bad. But it's not science, it's interest and a proof of concept for doing actual research.
I think it's absolutely horrible and the fact that these states names but not their numbers have found their way into headlines and a Slashdot summary makes me sick. They might have been right to indict the Southern states that we already know have issues along these lines but their map of tweets lists precisely one tweet for Utah and one tweet for North Dakota. The really appalling thing about the North Dakota tweet is that it is geolocated to Minot, a town that has seen an explosive growth in transient workers from states like Oklahoma and Texas in order to meet the demand for workers with oil specialties in the oil fields near there. It's probably a fifty/fifty shot the tweet was from an actual permanent resident of North Dakota.
Basically if a low population states hits the top of your study and the data is that sparse (one tweet!) then I think you should omit that as an outlier and stricken those names from your press release. It's great to recognize these things in your data and to talk about them in your analysis. It's unjust to propagate just their names throughout the news making people think that North Dakota is not only cold and sparsely populated but it's also racist.
Someone in Salt Lake City could have been joking in one tweet and suddenly Utah is one of the most racist states in a Slashdot summary. A transient worker who feels like lost his job in OK and had to use his CDL in Minot, ND because a black man was president could fire off an ignorant tweet and suddenly North Dakota is full of racists.
I love data porn and tried to play around with this interactive map. I lived in Minnesota for 23 years and do not recall it to be very racist -- even in the rural areas. So according to that map there are five red dots in Minnesota which are strangely all centered around the twin cities area (the most populated and liberal part of the state). And that data puts Minnesota mentionably close to the top of the list? But if I look at Virginia, I can't even count the number of red dots there's so many and it's not even halfway up the list? What the hell?
Do each of these red dots indicate a single tweet? What are the numbers and tweets that they're looking at here, I feel like the LQ value is not doing the best job of reflecting "racism."
Well, I'm in an odd predicament here... on the one hand I'd love to see Steve Ballmer leave Microsoft but on the other who would be left for me to write satirical posts about on Slashdot?
The other thing is that I sort of sympathize with Ballmer. Sure, Windows 8 and Surface have flaws. Even when Microsoft does something right like the Kinect, we're upset that those open drivers aren't released on day one. And being a lowly software developer with zero stock in Microsoft (okay, I don't really track my 401k funds down to the stock), I sort of have to ask shareholders a big question: If you want to oust Ballmer over Windows 8 and Surface tablet, why didn't you simply sell all your shares and even short the stock when they debuted? I mean, hindsight is 20/20 and shareholders get to play this game where they read the SEC reports on these things, then they get to sit there watching and then if these products fail they basically go on a litigation witch hunt on whoever made these decisions. But if Windows 8 and the Surface tablet are huge hits? Well, you'll never hear a peep from those shareholders. They likely either quietly cash out or demand more growth (thus delaying pending litigation).
I can understand shareholders suing over actual gross negligence or actual shady accounting and misreporting to the SEC. But it should be the SEC who decides which company to sue over that. Look, if you've got shares in Microsoft and it's painfully obvious that Windows 8 and the Surface Tablet are gonna flop then what in the hell are you doing holding onto those shares? Microsoft should decide internally if it's Ballmer's time to go, not some shareholder with their eye on the prize and little knowledge of technology. I don't like to defend Ballmer and he very well may have conceived these things himself and pushed them through development and production -- but wouldn't the people on the inside know that it's time for him to step down after that?
I'm pretty sure what happened here was Ballmer said, "What's the best thing we got? Okay, we're going with that." If it was Steve Jobs style micromanaging that forced these products through and the board of directors has no clout against Ballmer then the shareholders might have a place here. I just don't see that right now.
Also I feel like there's a lot of potential explanations for this guy's complaints:
But the really telling number was in the Windows Division, with revenue of $3.24 billion, down a frightening 33 percent from the same period last year.
So Microsoft releases the first stable version of Windows 7 on February 22 of 2011 and a year later you're calling a 1/3 drop in Windows sales "frightening"? Perhaps they were just coming down from everyone's move to Windows 7? I mean you (hopefully) only need to buy that once for your machine.
This author claims to be "putting his neck on the line" with this prediction but all I see are a lot of questions that want you to believe what he's saying will happen without him ever actually saying that Microsoft's mobile will flop and Steve Ballmer will then be ousted. To back that up he goes on with further questions surrounding earnings reports. God I've wasted too much time on this post already considering how insipid the original article is.
So I read the articles and I didn't see much reference to the EU's target of all member countries having 20% renewable energy in use by 2020. That date is fast approaching and I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that Germany was (and still is due to the economic crisis) the country to pay up for this expensive infrastructure. Meanwhile neighboring countries like France, Poland, Czech Republic, etc are unable to build massive solar panel fields and instead might be trying to meet their own intermediary targets (like France's plan) by riding on top of Germany's output at least for the time being.
So, you know, I have no evidence of this nor do I have the numbers on all surrounding nations but is it possible that (like the summary says) this barrier to entry of hundreds of billions of dollars is putting Germany in the position as being the go-to source for companies and countries inside the EU that are struggling to meet government mandated goal posts for renewable energy? And are willing to pay a premium rather than the initial massive influx of cash required to get operations of these sizes up and running?
Anyone have numbers to back up or refute my above theory?
All of this seems to be an effort to control the information revolution without losing authority.
Let's just stop and think for a minute about that sentence.
A controlled revolution isn't really a revolution (unless you buy the propaganda of those controlling it). Furthermore the only "revolutions" I can think of that were actually controlled or orchestrated are coups d'état which is a special kind of revolution. Unlike ousting a former government and installing just a new regime, the information revolution is about fundamentally altering our class system from the bottom up. It is directly applied to the masses and by definition is difficult to control (look at China have fun with that). The reason I balk at the idea that anyone could control this is that you can't even show evidence of the information revolution except by way of anecdotes (just examples) and socioeconomic trends in a vast populace (better). How do you control that which is hard to detect?
So I don't think you can control the information revolution (hence the reason it's called a revolution, it's happening whether those in control want it to or not). You can either let it happen or you fight it. And I feel like North Korea is doing simply the latter. Of course, the sentence from the summary bemuses me beyond most things I read... but then again I guess that's also the case with anything I find on North Korea.
the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies
Nowhere in the article did they say that. In fact, if you watch this Slate video there's not much physically related between the extrapolated skeleton and the film adaptation of the Eye of Sauron -- however they did name the dinosaur after that deity/character. The reason they named it after Sauron is that all we know of this predator now is its eye (really just a piece of the socket) and the idea of a large predator being known only for its eye reminded the archeologists of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings.
I think the submitter was confused by the hyperlink in the article that was designed to generate more page clicks for NatGeo:
"The idea of a predator that is physically known only as its fierce eye reminded me of Sauron, in particular as depicted in Peter Jackson's movies," Cau explained. (See a picture of an alien planet that resembles the Eye of Sauron.)
'We're trying to introduce some semblance of a market dynamic information in an environment where there is none,' Brill says.
Really? Well, in high school I took AP Calculus, AP Music Theory and AP Computer Science. My freshman year in college, I took 20-24 credits each semester to continue on the paths to majoring in those fields. In fact, I took two more semesters of music theory. But then came the time when many of my general requirements were completed and I needed to specialize in one of these majors. I loved them all with a passion but realized I didn't have the time or money to do all three. So, being from an below poverty line family, I simply went to each college at the university and asked to see their most recent data on job placement after college. And they actually retain quite a bit of data on this. Computer Science was the clear winner. On top of that, as I looked at the positions, computer science had the most diverse placement in the workforce (another thing I valued at the time).
Could it be that the flooding of the market with computer science majors reduces the pay to nothing by the time I graduate? Sure. But to say there's no information on this sort of erroneous.
'In economics, pricing is all we have to determine and work out supply and demand.
Er, that's not entirely true, I think sometimes supply is governed by capacity and resources. Look at Harley Davidson and Rickenbacker guitars. They have a wait list to buy the damn things yet the companies can only produce so many each year.
So, when the consumer is completely separated from the cost of a product, then the cost rises.'
I think you're confusing "is less productive than" with "costs society more." The former must be left to be our freedom of choice while the latter is a problem that needs to be addressed (as he is trying to do). I can twist this supply versus demand logic around too: Computer Science majors make more than English majors therefore computer science degrees should cost more since they are getting more for the same money than an English major. Price the product based on what it provides the consumer! Ultimately, you're selling credit hours which (aside from lab fees and the like) often cost the university about the same amount of money which they then charge the students.
While this may be an endeavor in the right spirit of producing STEM degrees, it is fruitless and restrictive of your populace's freedom and must be ignored.
VA - Filed registration 45 days ago, didn't take effect, told yesterday by three election offices to vote where I was previously registered, two hours of driving, turned away, told to file provisional ballot where I live, provisional ballot where I live must be defended.
I've read about this happening to other people but can't believe it happened to me. Understand what voter ID laws are. They are voter fraud laws - they create voter fraud. Can't believe it happened to me.
In Northern VA myself. Voted thrice in Minnesota and many times in Virginia. Have to say that Virginia requirements are ridiculous for voting and are almost designed to stop people who don't have their shit together from voting. In 2000 on the U of MN campus I was walking around campus on election day and outside they had a big thing setup for me to vote. I had my student ID and driver's license and that was all they needed to register me, take my vote and give me a voter registration ID! They asked if I had a utility bill and I told them I was living in a dorm room on campus. No further questions needed, just had to fill out a form.
I arrive in September of 2004 in Virginia... totally different story. After producing my birth certificate and about five other forms of documentation at a Virginia DMV, I get my VA license. A month later I check out what I have to do to vote. Guess what? You have to register 22 days before the election SO I was basically shit outta luck. Good thing I was able to absentee ballot for Minnesota (having recently moved).
Seriously, I check five or six times each election year that my stuff isn't messed up on the VA voter website because if that stuff isn't accurate down to a T you aren't voting. One of my friends moved across town, showed up to his old precinct with his last residence on his voter ID card and his new residence on his driver's license. Aaaaaaand they wouldn't let him vote. The real kick in the pants was they told him that if he hadn't shown them his driver's license and he could have recited his old address, they would have let him through.
So my experience today? Showed up at 5:45 am today. Waited until 7:15 am in line to vote. Voted on paper (line was much shorter than the electronic line) and was out. I only saw one advertisement on my way to vote: a portly fellow came in through the doors and removed his jacket to reveal a Romney/Ryan shirt upon the vast real estate of his chest. As he walked by he looked large and in charge. It should be noted he was only the former.
Can someone tell me why voter registration can't happen at the polls?
Slashdot Mirror
Dude. Really. WTF?
Although it doesn't fully address "WTF?", he has spoken about this in prior interviews:
DM: Ubuntu has adopted a new user interface called Unity. That seems well suited to tablet devices. Is this part of a plan to extend Ubuntu on tablets and other mobile computing and touch-based platforms?
MS: We haven’t said that, and it’s not the right time for me to say any such thing. [Laughs.] But if you look at it, Unity is born of an era where touch is important, and we’ve done quite a bit of work around touch generally and it brings a level of clarity and device-like simplicity to Linux desktops that just hadn’t been there before.
DM: Unity has attracted a fair share of criticism.
MS: Sure, it created something of a storm. The idea for us was we wanted to bring design-led engineering to the Linux desktop so we followed a fairly rigorous process of design. That meant testing assumptions and evaluating each little change on the basis of some realistic test of how people reacted to change. It is a fairly radical shift from where we were previously but we can see a fairly clear roadmap of where we want to get to over the next few months and years and not all of that is evident in the release so far.
[Unity] has raised the bar for usability on the Linux desktop. That’s not to say it’s without its issues. There are some quite definite issues in that first release, but when we did a detailed review of that versus the alternatives, it came out well ahead. It was the right one for us to ship at the time.
In the 1990s you aided in Debian development and now you've brought the world Ubuntu. Since you diverged from Debian and became the Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, do you have anything positive to say about Debian's progress?
We've seen Linux go from servers to supercomputers to smartphones in a very explosive manner but not as pervasively on the personal computer. What, in your opinion, is the next frontier for Linux and is that frontier part of Canonical's future?
From: Google Staff
To: All GMail Users
Subject: UN Net Conference
Okay, let's just clear the air here a bit. We know that you are thinking about the UN Net Conference coming up and frankly we're a little hurt. Don't even try and deny it, we've been reading your e-mails and we know you're talking to all your friends about it. And what is up with that? It's like a serious threat to our free and open internet, man! We've got a really good thing going here and you're going to fuck it all up!
And we know how much you love a free and open internet, remember that time you e-mailed the EFF asking about a possibility that Google Staff was reading your e-mails? Yeah, that wasn't the EFF that told you that there was nothing to investigate and to go back to doing your lame-ass private things. That was us so the jig is up, we know you like a free and open internet and now we're asking you to help us preserve that and protect it from governments. And don't change the topic like you always do, this isn't about corporations. This is about the dirty nanny state governments that you complained to your coworker Allen about.
And now you're thinking about this UN Net conference thing? Jesus, man, do you know who else is going to be reading your e-mail? Kim Jong Un. No, he's not asking for it but that's who we'll give it to if you go to this conference! Mark our words, the DPRK is going to be up to their eyeballs in what your Magic deck is looking like for Friday nights if you don't start protesting this shit ASAP.
Ugh, you know, we hate to get ugly but, like, we do this because we love you. We were there reading along when you told your vet in an e-mail that $1,000 was too much for Fido's gum cancer treatment and then they turned around and charged your $365 to put his corpse in a garbage bag. We felt for you, man.
We got a really beautiful thing going on here between us, man. So get out there and protest this thing! Let's just keep the internet free and open. If you do we'll keep that wart on your junk between just us (anonymous browsing? Please, we knew that was you). Governments don't need to get involved in this. Come on.
We know you'll do the right thing because we know more about you than your closest friend,
- The Google Team
I love an alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines as much as the next guy, but the Keeling Curve has been hitting 'record levels' every year since the late 1950s.
Yeah well, believe it or not one of the common arguments I face when talking about man made CO2 is that human emissions are nothing compared to natural forces of CO2 and a similar argument is that the Earth has a natural cycle that keeps this level of CO2 in balance and in check.
So as we watch CO2 levels steadily rise, it gives us insight into how much of these "natural processes" are effecting greenhouse gases in our atmosphere versus what we are contributing to these levels. And I think it's important to remind people that 1) these levels are steadily rising so no, the Earth is not keeping itself in check, 2) it's not just something where turn on the "remove CO2 machines" to fix it and 3) if natural processes are the cause of these levels of CO2, where is the corresponding increase in these natural processes?
Seriously people tell me all the time that one volcanic eruption dwarfs anything man could do in a decade. And I don't know where they get this shit. So tell me, where are all these new volcanic eruptions to explain this steady trend upward? Oh, we can't report that it's rising because you feel offended that it's "alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines." With all due respect, you're not helping this situation!
I didn't want either of the two running to win.
From the survey details they had three target answers:
"Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan, the Republicans" or "Barack Obama / Joe Biden, the Democrats" or "Third party candidate / Undecided"
It sounds like you would have answered "Third party candidate / Undecided"
This is part of the reason that the one-party system has a stranglehold on America because it craftily marginalizes decenters.
Hey you leave my centers out of this :-) But in all seriousness, this is about an election poll ... you should have been out campaigning for Gary Johnson or whoever you wanted a long time ago. I think that campaign finances are the root of the problem that we should attack but apparently you are just upset that some Google Survey didn't allow everyone to write in specific names? An that's what's marginalizing third party candidates? A little late at that point.
I don't know anyone [who was a skeptic] who became a believer in global warming.
You mean like Richard Muller who quite famously denounced anthropogenic global warming only to come to the same conclusion by his own means? Yeah, that opinion piece by him opens with "Call me a converted skeptic."
Oh, I get it, after it turns out that his research didn't back up your "beliefs", he must never have been a skeptic to begin with, right? Or perhaps when you made that statement you meant that you just don't know Richard Muller personally?
Political word games have always been such a pain in the ass.
But you are right that while peer reviewed journals move one way, the population moves the other:
The most striking result is the increase in the proportion of Americans who express strong doubt or rejection of the reality of global warming through their free associations. In 2003, only 7% of Americans provided “naysayer” images (e.g., “hoax,” or “no such thing”) when asked what thought or image first came to mind when they heard the term “global warming.” By 2010, however, 23% of Americans provided “naysayer” images.
The smartphone market already has a ton of operating systems, each with their own ecosystem of applications. What is to be gained by introducing another this late in the game? I would much rather Mozilla focus all of their development efforts on making Firefox better. I just switched from Chrome back to Firefox and the memory management of Firefox still leaves a LOT to be desired.
Well, one thing that I would like to see is more free open source mobile operating systems. Right now Android is dominating and I'm afraid that this will lead to a stagnant ecosystem in the mobile operating system world.
iOS is a good operating system but it can't compete with how cheap Android is and how pervasive it's becoming. You may think it's best for everyone to keep their heads down and concentrate on their bread and butter but I'd like to see someone challenge Android to be better. A natural monopoly could arise that causes Android development to stagnate and I don't think that'd be good for anyone.
As a consumer, you should be excited that another genuine contender is attempting to enter the ring against this unstoppable behemoth.
I love Android and I've used it as my mobile OS for the past three or four years but I wouldn't turn down another operating system that is open source and somehow better, would you?
I just switched from Chrome back to Firefox and the memory management of Firefox still leaves a LOT to be desired.
Firefox OS is part of their labs development. While you may have genuine concerns about their browser, I don't think they should shut down all their experimentation in the name of memory management (speaking of which my own personal experiences have been that their memory management is getting slowly better). Could you elaborate on what "a LOT to be desired" specifically is?
Thus, in both a military and an economic sense, MIRVs render ABM systems less effective, as the costs of maintaining a workable defense against MIRVs would greatly increase, requiring multiple defensive missiles for each offensive one. Decoy reentry vehicles can be used alongside actual warheads to minimize the chances of the actual warheads being intercepted before they reach their targets. A system that destroys the missile earlier in its trajectory (before MIRV separation) is not affected by this but is more difficult, and thus more expensive to implement.
Even if you made an iron dome for ballistic nuclear warheads, who ever is firing them at you is just going to make them split right before they hit your interceptor kill zone. And then you'll have less time to act or deploy your interceptors and a random number at each entry point. Could you take out some of them? Sure but it's a clam shell game.
I'm pretty sure Hamas isn't using MIRV technology and the Israelis have developed this Iron Dome tech to stop this specific kind of attack. Not ICBMs with complex nuclear payloads.
Oddly enough the first and only place I've heard of this artist is bandcamp and I think she's helped it grow. She seems to be demanding Pandora put in all the nice things that Bandcamp has.
Bandcamp is not a radio streaming station but you can stream a lot of albums freely on it. Bandcamp seems to solve a lot of these problems with it's pricing clearly stated. I don't use it as a musician but I make a lot of music purchases there and this is how things work. If you want to get an album for free, the band has the option of asking at least for your e-mail address and zip code. That way they can geographically target you or let you know they have a new album on Bandcamp. On top of that I think the sites has a huge stats dashboard for artists -- even including the referral URLs from which your listeners are landing on your page (so if you have it hooked up to your band's page, you can differentiate that from someone who found it via pitchfork or something).
I've had really good experiences with bandcamp but their 'discover' methodologies still leave a lot to be desired and I hope that someday they just turn it into a station that has a great front end that will allow you to see and purchase whatever is playing.
Of course, there's a lot of terrible music on bandcamp but I sort of enjoy the idea that it's open to all (as opposed to, say, Magnatune). There are famous artists that I already loved on Bandcamp and total nobodies I've come to adore.
Betting isn't like voting. It's not even close. I have had a couple friends who found themselves out of college with income and instead of spending it on a house, they engaged in serious sports betting. Very serious sports betting. And I spoke at length with one of them about it because it intrigued me. He seemed like an intelligent guy and he made modest money off this thing that required he used a lot of money and crunched a lot of numbers. The most important thing is that he never let his personal desires get in the way of his bets. He would often work his favorite teams out of his bets just to ensure that he wasn't subconsciously putting undue confidence on, say, the University of Texas (his alma mater).
Likewise these markets are not going to reflect the way people vote or feel but they are instead going to reflect their calculated confidence of a political win or a trend. To turn betting on for political topics will tell you absolutely nothing about reality. Instead it's going to tell you what people with $500 to flush down the toilet think the rest of their country thinks. I grew up under the poverty line (you know, the 47%) and I will tell you right now that this system you propose would only reflect what rich people who are loose with their funds think that other people are thinking. It will not give you future insight -- especially if you're talking about an election.
Five hundred dollars is still a lot of money to the majority of this country -- no matter how little it matters to Bennett Haselton. This futures market would merely be a world of insanely rich people doing stupid things with money (so, a lot like Wall Street). As for quieting the blowhards, what's $500 to Glenn Beck? Probably nothing at all. And even if you did allow them to put their life savings on the line behind what they are selling to the public, they're not stupid. They don't need an excuse to not have to do that. I'm not dumping my life savings into Oracle stock just because I write Java for my employer! Do you discredit my logic on Slashdot when I claim some large company is doing something very stupid but I don't turn around and short their stock with all my liquid assets behind it?
And not machine generated content: such content is not necessarily the output of people, unless a person arranges for a _specific_ machine output in order to express an idea. If the 1st Amendment is truly about ensuring that ideas cannot be censored, then free speech is not about permitting anyone to say purposely offensive things (i.e., the form of their speech), but about their right to express (perhaps politely) the _ideas_ contained in their speech.
I'm no constitutional scholar either but I feel you are proposing very subjective measurements. Once it gets to the point of you deciding what is and isn't protected free speech by way of how nice, specific or worthwhile you are pretty much censoring based on what you personally feel is or isn't acceptable!
Right now, we don't actively censor people who wish to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. For what if there was a fire in said theater? Instead, we let everything be said and then if it is felt that libel, slander, criminal intent, death threats, etc were said, you may bring it to the attention of a court of law. Even those make free speech an uneasy topic but they have tried to codify those conditions as best as possible.
Imagine a judge determining what is "nice" enough to leave up and what is "purposely offensive" enough to take down. If some heavy metal band wants to write a song that consists entirely of cursing and intercourse references and other people enjoy said music, who am I to demand that be taken down by how offensive it is?
Free speech is about free speech. Not ideas, not being nice, not worrying about offending some prude. There are laws that are applied after the fact but you should be able to say whatever you want! Did we not just cover this in the last story? Look at the UK and how absurd some of their free speech cases are! They must decide what is "grossly offensive" and what is "merely offensive" to determine if someone goes to jail!
The Memory Game
That classic game of remembering is back in this awesome new iPhone app!
Apple: Please remove 'memory' from the title of your game or we will remove your game for you!
The Memorie Game
The Anglo-Normans are challenging your ability to remember in this awesome new iPhone app!
Apple: Don't be a smartass, you know what we mean. Please remove 'memorie' from the title of your game or we will remove your game for you!
The Memoria Game
Which cards had Marcus Aurelius beneath them and which cards had Marcus Annius Verus under them?! This classic challenging Latin game of remembering cards is in this awesome new iPhone app!
Apple: Goddamnit. Okay, no Latin root words of Memoria, okay? You'll be sued, we'll be sued, they own everything related to mem- and as preemptive warning, no 'mnemonic' shit either, okay? It's all owned by someone else!
The Apple Can Go Fuck Itself Game
Which company is making Apple its Intellectual Property bitch today? Try to find out in this classic game of "wait, what card was that again?"
Apple: Approved.
The social network wanted to charge him $3,000 to reach 1 million people.
McBean I mean, Zuckerburg walks away with all the money from the Star Bellied Sneetches!
Encourage racism? It is racism.
When I was a kid, I used to think that racism didn't happen. It was so illogical and obviously wrong. Even books that portrayed racism that "just was" in my countries past seemed to be set with an alien mentality. But then as I grew older I was exposed works like "American History X" (the son's descent into racism had flawed but plausible logic behind it) and it slowly dawned on me that there are experiences in life that encourage racism that are far more detrimental than simply being racist. Because they propagate it and it survives past the last generation on and on and anew again.
For example, let's say you were (and this is purely hypothetical by the way) beaten and mugged by Hispanics which led you to distrust any person even remotely resembling your attackers. It's wrong for you to scream at your housemaid that was paid to clean your house by your cleaning company. And it's wrong for you to call them up and hurl racial slurs at them for putting your life and property in danger. However, the really problematic aspect of that is when you sit down with your progeny when they're little and explain to them why people with a certain color to their skin are not to be trusted. This is something that encourages racism instead of just being racist.
But then racism was always OK as long as it's anti-white.
Well, I didn't really read this as anti-white. I saw this as actually racist towards all races since they are binning these young minds based on external appearances. Instead of trying to buck a trend, they have embraced it. To shed this discussion of your "it's anti-white" bias, allow me to relay what I see as being the real fallout from this action: an obsessive Asian student scores 100 on this test but an African American child scores 65 and is seen as being more successful than the Asian student. This allows students to progress on the path of education and causes resentment from the Asian child directed at the African American child. "They got it easy" will probably be the sentiment but could spawn a deep seated hatred or other negative stereotypes of their classmates. No need to bring Caucasian students in to that picture or claim it's just "anti-white."
Could you explain and give examples of racism that is okay because it's "anti-white"?
All it would take is Google or one other company with adequately deep pockets to actually take this guy to court and that would be the last we'd hear of Mr. Spangenberg or his trollish little company.
From the summary:
And while most of those lawsuits are ongoing, many companies have already settled with TQP rather than take the case to trial, including Apple
A company with deep pockets? $100 billion dollars isn't "adequately" deep enough?
I don't know anything about this patent but if there was a company that thought they'd have the money to shut these guys up, it'd be the elephant in the universe with so much money they have a dividend and share repurchase program.
With only a couple of days work this isn't bad. But it's not science, it's interest and a proof of concept for doing actual research.
I think it's absolutely horrible and the fact that these states names but not their numbers have found their way into headlines and a Slashdot summary makes me sick. They might have been right to indict the Southern states that we already know have issues along these lines but their map of tweets lists precisely one tweet for Utah and one tweet for North Dakota. The really appalling thing about the North Dakota tweet is that it is geolocated to Minot, a town that has seen an explosive growth in transient workers from states like Oklahoma and Texas in order to meet the demand for workers with oil specialties in the oil fields near there. It's probably a fifty/fifty shot the tweet was from an actual permanent resident of North Dakota.
Basically if a low population states hits the top of your study and the data is that sparse (one tweet!) then I think you should omit that as an outlier and stricken those names from your press release. It's great to recognize these things in your data and to talk about them in your analysis. It's unjust to propagate just their names throughout the news making people think that North Dakota is not only cold and sparsely populated but it's also racist.
Someone in Salt Lake City could have been joking in one tweet and suddenly Utah is one of the most racist states in a Slashdot summary. A transient worker who feels like lost his job in OK and had to use his CDL in Minot, ND because a black man was president could fire off an ignorant tweet and suddenly North Dakota is full of racists.
I love data porn and tried to play around with this interactive map. I lived in Minnesota for 23 years and do not recall it to be very racist -- even in the rural areas. So according to that map there are five red dots in Minnesota which are strangely all centered around the twin cities area (the most populated and liberal part of the state). And that data puts Minnesota mentionably close to the top of the list? But if I look at Virginia, I can't even count the number of red dots there's so many and it's not even halfway up the list? What the hell?
Do each of these red dots indicate a single tweet? What are the numbers and tweets that they're looking at here, I feel like the LQ value is not doing the best job of reflecting "racism."
The other thing is that I sort of sympathize with Ballmer. Sure, Windows 8 and Surface have flaws. Even when Microsoft does something right like the Kinect, we're upset that those open drivers aren't released on day one. And being a lowly software developer with zero stock in Microsoft (okay, I don't really track my 401k funds down to the stock), I sort of have to ask shareholders a big question: If you want to oust Ballmer over Windows 8 and Surface tablet, why didn't you simply sell all your shares and even short the stock when they debuted? I mean, hindsight is 20/20 and shareholders get to play this game where they read the SEC reports on these things, then they get to sit there watching and then if these products fail they basically go on a litigation witch hunt on whoever made these decisions. But if Windows 8 and the Surface tablet are huge hits? Well, you'll never hear a peep from those shareholders. They likely either quietly cash out or demand more growth (thus delaying pending litigation).
I can understand shareholders suing over actual gross negligence or actual shady accounting and misreporting to the SEC. But it should be the SEC who decides which company to sue over that. Look, if you've got shares in Microsoft and it's painfully obvious that Windows 8 and the Surface Tablet are gonna flop then what in the hell are you doing holding onto those shares? Microsoft should decide internally if it's Ballmer's time to go, not some shareholder with their eye on the prize and little knowledge of technology. I don't like to defend Ballmer and he very well may have conceived these things himself and pushed them through development and production -- but wouldn't the people on the inside know that it's time for him to step down after that?
I'm pretty sure what happened here was Ballmer said, "What's the best thing we got? Okay, we're going with that." If it was Steve Jobs style micromanaging that forced these products through and the board of directors has no clout against Ballmer then the shareholders might have a place here. I just don't see that right now.
Also I feel like there's a lot of potential explanations for this guy's complaints:
But the really telling number was in the Windows Division, with revenue of $3.24 billion, down a frightening 33 percent from the same period last year.
So Microsoft releases the first stable version of Windows 7 on February 22 of 2011 and a year later you're calling a 1/3 drop in Windows sales "frightening"? Perhaps they were just coming down from everyone's move to Windows 7? I mean you (hopefully) only need to buy that once for your machine.
This author claims to be "putting his neck on the line" with this prediction but all I see are a lot of questions that want you to believe what he's saying will happen without him ever actually saying that Microsoft's mobile will flop and Steve Ballmer will then be ousted. To back that up he goes on with further questions surrounding earnings reports. God I've wasted too much time on this post already considering how insipid the original article is.
So I read the articles and I didn't see much reference to the EU's target of all member countries having 20% renewable energy in use by 2020. That date is fast approaching and I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that Germany was (and still is due to the economic crisis) the country to pay up for this expensive infrastructure. Meanwhile neighboring countries like France, Poland, Czech Republic, etc are unable to build massive solar panel fields and instead might be trying to meet their own intermediary targets (like France's plan) by riding on top of Germany's output at least for the time being.
So, you know, I have no evidence of this nor do I have the numbers on all surrounding nations but is it possible that (like the summary says) this barrier to entry of hundreds of billions of dollars is putting Germany in the position as being the go-to source for companies and countries inside the EU that are struggling to meet government mandated goal posts for renewable energy? And are willing to pay a premium rather than the initial massive influx of cash required to get operations of these sizes up and running?
Anyone have numbers to back up or refute my above theory?
Dear Slashdot,
... I haven't seen any activity in CmdrTaco's wife's gmail account for quite some time!
I'd like to ask you some questions about your ongoing involvement and interview with Hans Reiser
Sincerely,
Googlock Holmes
All of this seems to be an effort to control the information revolution without losing authority.
Let's just stop and think for a minute about that sentence.
... but then again I guess that's also the case with anything I find on North Korea.
A controlled revolution isn't really a revolution (unless you buy the propaganda of those controlling it). Furthermore the only "revolutions" I can think of that were actually controlled or orchestrated are coups d'état which is a special kind of revolution. Unlike ousting a former government and installing just a new regime, the information revolution is about fundamentally altering our class system from the bottom up. It is directly applied to the masses and by definition is difficult to control (look at China have fun with that). The reason I balk at the idea that anyone could control this is that you can't even show evidence of the information revolution except by way of anecdotes (just examples) and socioeconomic trends in a vast populace (better). How do you control that which is hard to detect?
So I don't think you can control the information revolution (hence the reason it's called a revolution, it's happening whether those in control want it to or not). You can either let it happen or you fight it. And I feel like North Korea is doing simply the latter. Of course, the sentence from the summary bemuses me beyond most things I read
the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies
Nowhere in the article did they say that. In fact, if you watch this Slate video there's not much physically related between the extrapolated skeleton and the film adaptation of the Eye of Sauron -- however they did name the dinosaur after that deity/character. The reason they named it after Sauron is that all we know of this predator now is its eye (really just a piece of the socket) and the idea of a large predator being known only for its eye reminded the archeologists of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings.
I think the submitter was confused by the hyperlink in the article that was designed to generate more page clicks for NatGeo:
"The idea of a predator that is physically known only as its fierce eye reminded me of Sauron, in particular as depicted in Peter Jackson's movies," Cau explained. (See a picture of an alien planet that resembles the Eye of Sauron.)
(emphasis mine)
'We're trying to introduce some semblance of a market dynamic information in an environment where there is none,' Brill says.
Really? Well, in high school I took AP Calculus, AP Music Theory and AP Computer Science. My freshman year in college, I took 20-24 credits each semester to continue on the paths to majoring in those fields. In fact, I took two more semesters of music theory. But then came the time when many of my general requirements were completed and I needed to specialize in one of these majors. I loved them all with a passion but realized I didn't have the time or money to do all three. So, being from an below poverty line family, I simply went to each college at the university and asked to see their most recent data on job placement after college. And they actually retain quite a bit of data on this. Computer Science was the clear winner. On top of that, as I looked at the positions, computer science had the most diverse placement in the workforce (another thing I valued at the time).
Could it be that the flooding of the market with computer science majors reduces the pay to nothing by the time I graduate? Sure. But to say there's no information on this sort of erroneous.
'In economics, pricing is all we have to determine and work out supply and demand.
Er, that's not entirely true, I think sometimes supply is governed by capacity and resources. Look at Harley Davidson and Rickenbacker guitars. They have a wait list to buy the damn things yet the companies can only produce so many each year.
So, when the consumer is completely separated from the cost of a product, then the cost rises.'
I think you're confusing "is less productive than" with "costs society more." The former must be left to be our freedom of choice while the latter is a problem that needs to be addressed (as he is trying to do). I can twist this supply versus demand logic around too: Computer Science majors make more than English majors therefore computer science degrees should cost more since they are getting more for the same money than an English major. Price the product based on what it provides the consumer! Ultimately, you're selling credit hours which (aside from lab fees and the like) often cost the university about the same amount of money which they then charge the students.
While this may be an endeavor in the right spirit of producing STEM degrees, it is fruitless and restrictive of your populace's freedom and must be ignored.
VA - Filed registration 45 days ago, didn't take effect, told yesterday by three election offices to vote where I was previously registered, two hours of driving, turned away, told to file provisional ballot where I live, provisional ballot where I live must be defended.
Apparently these guys made their money and did their job: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/virginia-voter-fraud-case-expands-to-focus-on-gop-firm/2012/11/02/76285252-24eb-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html
I've read about this happening to other people but can't believe it happened to me. Understand what voter ID laws are. They are voter fraud laws - they create voter fraud. Can't believe it happened to me.
In Northern VA myself. Voted thrice in Minnesota and many times in Virginia. Have to say that Virginia requirements are ridiculous for voting and are almost designed to stop people who don't have their shit together from voting. In 2000 on the U of MN campus I was walking around campus on election day and outside they had a big thing setup for me to vote. I had my student ID and driver's license and that was all they needed to register me, take my vote and give me a voter registration ID! They asked if I had a utility bill and I told them I was living in a dorm room on campus. No further questions needed, just had to fill out a form.
... totally different story. After producing my birth certificate and about five other forms of documentation at a Virginia DMV, I get my VA license. A month later I check out what I have to do to vote. Guess what? You have to register 22 days before the election SO I was basically shit outta luck. Good thing I was able to absentee ballot for Minnesota (having recently moved).
I arrive in September of 2004 in Virginia
Seriously, I check five or six times each election year that my stuff isn't messed up on the VA voter website because if that stuff isn't accurate down to a T you aren't voting. One of my friends moved across town, showed up to his old precinct with his last residence on his voter ID card and his new residence on his driver's license. Aaaaaaand they wouldn't let him vote. The real kick in the pants was they told him that if he hadn't shown them his driver's license and he could have recited his old address, they would have let him through.
So my experience today? Showed up at 5:45 am today. Waited until 7:15 am in line to vote. Voted on paper (line was much shorter than the electronic line) and was out. I only saw one advertisement on my way to vote: a portly fellow came in through the doors and removed his jacket to reveal a Romney/Ryan shirt upon the vast real estate of his chest. As he walked by he looked large and in charge. It should be noted he was only the former.
Can someone tell me why voter registration can't happen at the polls?