Between driver's licenses, utilities, medicare, social security, public school enrollment, arrests, and other records, a good statistician should be able to get an answer that is close enough. To double check the results, canvass a few dozen randomly chosen counties, then adjust accordingly.
But there is no reason that counting people should cost over half a billion dollars.
We should be able to contract this out. Offer maybe a mere 50 million dollars to the entrant that can produce the best results. Anyone can enter. They do their counting by whatever legal method they choose. THEN the census dept does their random counties, and whoever is closest on those counties gets paid, and their results for the whole country are used.
BTW, I'm assuming here that a census should be just counting heads; that all of the other questions that the census people ask, such as level of education, are none of their business. The constitution requires that people be counted. The goal was to ensure proportional representation. It does not require all of the intrusive questions that they ask now.
*notes that the previous administration had budget surpluses* TEMPORARY budget surpluses. The yearly debt is built into programs that we are committed to. Occasionally we will have budget surplusses, but we still, as GP says, are screwed in the long run.
So then, why haven't a human been caught in this net before? A human has. Or, at least, has been caught in something similar.
A friend of mine was undergoing medical tests last year and he was stopped at the entrance to the San Diego city dump when getting rid of some trash. Not freeway speeds, of course, but he was in a moving, closed vehicle. Apparently people dump radioactive stuff.
What is with the US obsession with "founding fathers"? They may be the biggest change in politics since the founding of the Athenian democracy. Maybe the biggest change ever.
To offer a comparison, imagine when everyone is using stone tablets to calculate, some guys invent the transistor, build the first computer, and even start talking about networked computers. It is that much of a change.
Remember, at that time, much of the world was ruled by people who believed in the divine right of kings. ( "God said I should rule you, so that settles it. If you choose to dispute this, it is heresy, and we will kill you to please god." ) And those were the 'civilized' ones. The rest were ruled simply by the powerful without even any pretense at justification. ( I'm bigger than you are. Do what I say or I will kill you. )
That had been the general state of affairs - with few exceptions like Athens - since mankind came down out of the trees. Then along come some radicals with ideas like 'government by the consent of the governed' and 'inalienable rights' like 'freedom of speech, press and assembly'. Not only did they have these ideas, but they actually managed to start a country along those lines.
Two hundred plus years later - even despite some serious misteps by elected officials - the founding father's ideas are still held as a goal by people all over the world.
I agree that they were bright thinkers of their time, but surely they can't have got EVERYTHING right. For starters, they didn't even let women and black people vote. This is sort of like criticizing the hypothetical inventors mentioned above for not having thought up Linux while they were doing everything else. Nobody claims they got everything right. But look at what they got right vs what they got wrong. And then compare that to how the rest of the world was at the time.
This is separation of powers at work, just like the founding fathers intended. Even if they don't really believe the ideals of freedom of speech, rule of law, no unreasonable searches, etc, they are supporting them because they don't want the president to be stronger than they are.
...workers at the Illinois Voter's Department are investigating the results of the election. "We didn't know that a Diebold machine could register 68% for one candidate and 100% for another," said their spokesman.
Sorry, but it doesn't make sense. Nice try, though.
The reason that beef is so expensive in Japan is that they don't have lots of land fit for raising cattle. So even if they create some modified cattle, they still won't be able to profitably raise it. Indeed, it would hurt them: if they proved that it could be done, some US firm will create their own hybrid and grow it in the US, thereby competing with the Japanese whale hunting firms.
Firing a water cannon at vagrants? What does he want, a medal? If they are the type of vagrants who leave needles, trash, and various bodily fluids on your property at night; who scream obscenities at your guests during the day; who steal anything that isn't bolted down and vandalize everything that is; if they are like many of the vagrants I have to cope with, then, yes, I'd give him a medal
To me, the most notable element of the story is what DIDN'T happen: nobody attenpted to destroy the bot, or even tip it over. Here on slashdot, I predict, within the first 20 posts someone will be remarking how they would destroy it if they encountered it. But the people in the story don't. Is it something about being homeless, or something about being a dealer, or something about being a drug user?
You answer an example in a hypothetical world with a counter-example in the real world, therby implicitly ignoring the hypothesis.
Please consider the hypothesis at hand: that in a transparent society all actions are visible. Would mobs still act the same if each member knew that he could be individually held accountable?
Granted, emotions are stronger than reason for many people in many circumstances. And that is, as noted, the driving force for mobs. But alongside that is the fact that as part of a mob, people know that they probably won't be held responsible.
Transparency changes that. They now know that they can be held individually responsible. Even if emotion rules, things are different. Now they are afraid of being caught and held responsible for their actions.
So when do we pass laws to enforce participation on those that don't give a damn now?
Any practical society must be designed with the majority in mind not the vocal minority. Communism would work too, if everyone did what's good for a communist society. We need not pass laws forcing people to participate. We only need laws that reward them for participating. That is - as noted - one of the reasons communism has failed: it requires that people be enlightened and altruistic, both knowing what is best for their society and being willing to do it even at cost to themselves. When people are selfish, the whole thing collapses.
A properly constructed society would channel the efforts of the selfish toward doing the benefit of all, so when the selfish person acts, everyone benefits despite his intentions. That is one of the great benefits of capitalism, as Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
When people participate in civic life, as shieldwolf advocates, they can personally benefit if there is private property. If I prevent a robbery for example, and thus decrease crime in my neighborhood, I indirectly help everyone. But if I am selfish, I'll only do it if I can protect my own property or raise my own property values in the process.
Private property gives the selfish an incentive to do things that are good for the community.
The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. This is precision, not accuracy. The result will be judged accurate when there are lots of duplicate experiments getting the same result.
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally. It's extremely disturbing that you think the best form of law enforcement is the lynch mob. I think P is reading way too much into GP's words. GP didn't say 'lynch'; he said 'act'. Keep in mind that in this hypothetical situation, GP's actions are also transparent. This gives him a very strong incentive to act reasonably, justly, and proportionately.
A cleverly amusing analogy disguises the fact that disclosure != injury. There is no benefit to mutual head-bashing, but there can be benefits to mutual information sharing.
We should be able to to see what our police are doing and what our congesspeople are doing. Why? Because they work for us. ( If someone from a foreign country claimed the same privelege, we would not take them seriously, right? )
But once you grant that assertion, it follows - for all slashdot readers who are not self-employed - that your employer should be able to watch you.
I'm not advocating either side here, just pointing out the logical consequences of the position that we should be able to watch them.
I, for one, welcome our new uhh...pardon me... *click*, *click* ah, yes..our new goggle-eyed...ummm...just a sec...*click*..overcome, no...*click*...overdon, no..., *click*, *click* yes, overlords!
Hey, where did everybody go?
Before we get too uncomfortable with this, let us look at why they dissented. None of them said that spam was a good thing.
Judge Lacy wrote that the law was "...unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."
She is trying to protect the free speech rights of non-spammers here.
Ummm...pardon me for quibbling, but, no, someone else's livlihood does not limit another's speech. It's a property rights issue, not an employment issue. It is easy to confuse the two because in most instances that make it to a courtroom, the property in question is being used by the owner to make a living. But it still applies even if the property is being used by a charity, or is residential, or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
Between driver's licenses, utilities, medicare, social security, public school enrollment, arrests, and other records, a good statistician should be able to get an answer that is close enough. To double check the results, canvass a few dozen randomly chosen counties, then adjust accordingly.
But there is no reason that counting people should cost over half a billion dollars.
We should be able to contract this out. Offer maybe a mere 50 million dollars to the entrant that can produce the best results. Anyone can enter. They do their counting by whatever legal method they choose. THEN the census dept does their random counties, and whoever is closest on those counties gets paid, and their results for the whole country are used.
BTW, I'm assuming here that a census should be just counting heads; that all of the other questions that the census people ask, such as level of education, are none of their business. The constitution requires that people be counted. The goal was to ensure proportional representation. It does not require all of the intrusive questions that they ask now.
You can enter the courtrooms. You just get searched more intensively.
A friend of mine was undergoing medical tests last year and he was stopped at the entrance to the San Diego city dump when getting rid of some trash. Not freeway speeds, of course, but he was in a moving, closed vehicle. Apparently people dump radioactive stuff.
Better than a general fault.
To offer a comparison, imagine when everyone is using stone tablets to calculate, some guys invent the transistor, build the first computer, and even start talking about networked computers. It is that much of a change.
Remember, at that time, much of the world was ruled by people who believed in the divine right of kings. ( "God said I should rule you, so that settles it. If you choose to dispute this, it is heresy, and we will kill you to please god." ) And those were the 'civilized' ones. The rest were ruled simply by the powerful without even any pretense at justification. ( I'm bigger than you are. Do what I say or I will kill you. )
That had been the general state of affairs - with few exceptions like Athens - since mankind came down out of the trees. Then along come some radicals with ideas like 'government by the consent of the governed' and 'inalienable rights' like 'freedom of speech, press and assembly'. Not only did they have these ideas, but they actually managed to start a country along those lines.
Two hundred plus years later - even despite some serious misteps by elected officials - the founding father's ideas are still held as a goal by people all over the world. I agree that they were bright thinkers of their time, but surely they can't have got EVERYTHING right. For starters, they didn't even let women and black people vote. This is sort of like criticizing the hypothetical inventors mentioned above for not having thought up Linux while they were doing everything else. Nobody claims they got everything right. But look at what they got right vs what they got wrong. And then compare that to how the rest of the world was at the time.
This is separation of powers at work, just like the founding fathers intended. Even if they don't really believe the ideals of freedom of speech, rule of law, no unreasonable searches, etc, they are supporting them because they don't want the president to be stronger than they are.
Sorry, but it doesn't make sense. Nice try, though.
The reason that beef is so expensive in Japan is that they don't have lots of land fit for raising cattle. So even if they create some modified cattle, they still won't be able to profitably raise it. Indeed, it would hurt them: if they proved that it could be done, some US firm will create their own hybrid and grow it in the US, thereby competing with the Japanese whale hunting firms.
And for Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, S Korea, Mexico, India....
No, his/her plumbing is broken.
To me, the most notable element of the story is what DIDN'T happen: nobody attenpted to destroy the bot, or even tip it over. Here on slashdot, I predict, within the first 20 posts someone will be remarking how they would destroy it if they encountered it. But the people in the story don't. Is it something about being homeless, or something about being a dealer, or something about being a drug user?
You answer an example in a hypothetical world with a counter-example in the real world, therby implicitly ignoring the hypothesis.
Please consider the hypothesis at hand: that in a transparent society all actions are visible. Would mobs still act the same if each member knew that he could be individually held accountable?
Granted, emotions are stronger than reason for many people in many circumstances. And that is, as noted, the driving force for mobs. But alongside that is the fact that as part of a mob, people know that they probably won't be held responsible.
Transparency changes that. They now know that they can be held individually responsible. Even if emotion rules, things are different. Now they are afraid of being caught and held responsible for their actions.
Any practical society must be designed with the majority in mind not the vocal minority. Communism would work too, if everyone did what's good for a communist society. We need not pass laws forcing people to participate. We only need laws that reward them for participating. That is - as noted - one of the reasons communism has failed: it requires that people be enlightened and altruistic, both knowing what is best for their society and being willing to do it even at cost to themselves. When people are selfish, the whole thing collapses.
A properly constructed society would channel the efforts of the selfish toward doing the benefit of all, so when the selfish person acts, everyone benefits despite his intentions. That is one of the great benefits of capitalism, as Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
When people participate in civic life, as shieldwolf advocates, they can personally benefit if there is private property. If I prevent a robbery for example, and thus decrease crime in my neighborhood, I indirectly help everyone. But if I am selfish, I'll only do it if I can protect my own property or raise my own property values in the process.
Private property gives the selfish an incentive to do things that are good for the community.
A cleverly amusing analogy disguises the fact that disclosure != injury. There is no benefit to mutual head-bashing, but there can be benefits to mutual information sharing.
We should be able to to see what our police are doing and what our congesspeople are doing. Why? Because they work for us. ( If someone from a foreign country claimed the same privelege, we would not take them seriously, right? )
But once you grant that assertion, it follows - for all slashdot readers who are not self-employed - that your employer should be able to watch you.
I'm not advocating either side here, just pointing out the logical consequences of the position that we should be able to watch them.
30 Miliion??? For that amount he should be banned from breathing.
I, for one, welcome our new uhh...pardon me... *click*, *click* ah, yes..our new goggle-eyed...ummm...just a sec...*click*..overcome, no...*click*...overdon, no ..., *click*, *click* yes, overlords!
Hey, where did everybody go?
Before we get too uncomfortable with this, let us look at why they dissented. None of them said that spam was a good thing.
Judge Lacy wrote that the law was "...unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."
She is trying to protect the free speech rights of non-spammers here.
Ummm...pardon me for quibbling, but, no, someone else's livlihood does not limit another's speech. It's a property rights issue, not an employment issue. It is easy to confuse the two because in most instances that make it to a courtroom, the property in question is being used by the owner to make a living. But it still applies even if the property is being used by a charity, or is residential, or whatever.
Nice post. Short, accurate, and to the point. Wish I could mod +6.