I've got Bell Atlantic/Verizon too -- like you, I never used the main account _ever_ for outbound or inbound email. But so far I've received and deleted probably over a THOUSAND spam messages in that account. Since I've never given out or used this email address in any way, SOMEBODY inside Verizon is giving them out.
I encourage you and other Republicans to be vigorous in your explanations to the people of Florida that they do not, in fact, have any right to vote for President; that right is reserved for the State Legislature. While technically true on US constitutional grounds, all 50 states have delegated, via their election laws, the right to choose the electors for president to their populations, via direct popular vote in the state.
You write cleanly, but your quoting of Florida election law engages in the same selective quotation that virtually all Republican reading of the law engages in. I therefore encourage you to download and read the Florida election code for yourself. Read it in its entirety; don't simply dive straight for the Republican salvation of 102.111. 102.111 must be taken in context, particularly with regards to 102.112.
Florida law sections 102.012 through 102.151 deal with the normal course of an election in Florida. The remaining sections deal with what to do when there is a problem. Everybody seems to fault the Florida code, when in fact it seems quite clear to me.
You state that a vote count "may be ignored" in Florida if not returned within the 7 day period. Competent reading of this section as a whole indicates that, while the deadline is highly desirable, it is optional. Late, normal returns are subject to either a fine ($200 per day, per canvassing board member, paid out of personal funds) for tardiness. It says nothing about applying the 7 day rule to manual recounts. This is a key distinction that seems to not have been made elsewhere, and it perplexes me that it has not. The 7 day rule for normal returns is entirely sensible; subjecting the recounts to that same rule is foolish.
So what does the Florida law say about recounts? It certainly doesn't say that recounts are optional. The language in the law is a little convoluted, so try to stay with me. It says that in the event of a protest, the canvassing board MAY, at its discretion, perform a manual recount of ballots in at least three precincts, of at least 1% of the votes. The canvassing board must then compare the results of the recount to the original count, and if it is found that the difference may result in a change in the outcome of the election, they SHALL a) correct the error and recount the remaining precincts OR b) request the department of state to verify the tabulation software OR c) manually recount all ballots. Confusion in interpreting this statute largely rests in those persons that have trouble separating the mention of the manual sample recount from the consequential recount of all the ballots.
So that is that. There is just no way you can read this statute to say anything other than the following: A candidate can protest the vote. A canvassing board can choose to do a sample recount. If the sample recount shows a difference that could change the outcome, the canvassing board MUST recount. And doesn't that make sense? The Republican position is that you can't have a manual recount unless the machines have had an error of some kind.
The Republicans out there aren't going to believe me, probably haven't read the statute themselves, and might find out by following the link at the top that they're wrong. So I might as well quote it directly and force them to look at it:
102.166 Protest of election returns; procedure.--
(1) Any candidate for nomination or election, or any elector qualified to vote in the election related to such candidacy, shall have the right to protest the returns of the election as being erroneous by filing with the appropriate canvassing board a sworn, written protest.
(2) Such protest shall be filed with the canvassing board prior to the time the canvassing board certifies the results for the office being protested or within 5 days after midnight of the date the election is held, whichever occurs later.
(3) Before canvassing the returns of the election, the canvassing board shall:
(a) When paper ballots are used, examine the tabulation of the paper ballots cast.
(b) When voting machines are used, examine the counters on the machines of nonprinter machines or the printer-pac on printer machines. If there is a discrepancy between the returns and the counters of the machines or the printer-pac, the counters of such machines or the printer-pac shall be presumed correct.
(c) When electronic or electromechanical equipment is used, the canvassing board shall examine precinct records and election returns. If there is a clerical error, such error shall be corrected by the county canvassing board. If there is a discrepancy which could affect the outcome of an election, the canvassing board may recount the ballots on the automatic tabulating equipment.
(4)(a) Any candidate whose name appeared on the ballot, any political committee that supports or opposes an issue which appeared on the ballot, or any political party whose candidates' names appeared on the ballot may file a written request with the county canvassing board for a manual recount. The written request shall contain a statement of the reason the manual recount is being requested.
(b) Such request must be filed with the canvassing board prior to the time the canvassing board certifies the results for the office being protested or within 72 hours after midnight of the date the election was held, whichever occurs later.
(c) The county canvassing board may authorize a manual recount. If a manual recount is authorized, the county canvassing board shall make a reasonable effort to notify each candidate whose race is being recounted of the time and place of such recount.
(d) The manual recount must include at least three precincts and at least 1 percent of the total votes cast for such candidate or issue. In the event there are less than three precincts involved in the election, all precincts shall be counted. The person who requested the recount shall choose three precincts to be recounted, and, if other precincts are recounted, the county canvassing board shall select the additional precincts.
(5) If the manual recount indicates an error in the vote tabulation which could affect the outcome of the election, the county canvassing board shall:
(a) Correct the error and recount the remaining precincts with the vote tabulation system;
(b) Request the Department of State to verify the tabulation software; or
(c) Manually recount all ballots.
(6) Any manual recount shall be open to the public.
(7) Procedures for a manual recount are as follows:
(a) The county canvassing board shall appoint as many counting teams of at least two electors as is necessary to manually recount the ballots. A counting team must have, when possible, members of at least two political parties. A candidate involved in the race shall not be a member of the counting team.
(b) If a counting team is unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot shall be presented to the county canvassing board for it to determine the voter's intent.
(8) If the county canvassing board determines the need to verify the tabulation software, the county canvassing board shall request in writing that the Department of State verify the software.
(9) When the Department of State verifies such software, the department shall:
(a) Compare the software used to tabulate the votes with the software filed with the Department of State pursuant to s. 101.5607; and
(b) Check the election parameters.
(10) The Department of State shall respond to the county canvassing board within 3 working days.
What? If only 2 in 2 million can be wrong with the machines, how the heck did the first count and the automatic machine recount end up a thousand or so votes apart?
There is a tremendous rejection rate from the machines (I heard around 5%). That's 5% of ballots that are NOT counted by these machines. Some of those are for Bush, some for Gore. But if you can hold a ballot, look at it and see that the chad is detached at two corners, it's a frigging vote.
This "dimpled" and "pregnant" chad crap is wordage designed to hide the fact that the vast majority of these uncounted votes are quite easily interpreted by a person, although not by the machine. There are a _very_ small number of votes that are actually subject to judgement.
There are a ton of seniors in this particular precinct, and apparently they had substantial difficulty reading the ballot, and interpreting the holes for Gore and Buchanan, which were abnormally close together. The statistic I read in this morning was that in the precinct immediately south of the one in question, Buchanan received only 100 votes. In the one to the east, he received 600 or so. In this one (with the odd ballot) he received 3,400 votes.
If this is so, then some sort of recount should be issued. And how do you recount votes that were cast in error because of the physical configuration of the ballot? Heck, I don't know. They might have to run it again. Why did this particular precinct use a different ballot form? Why was the form constructed in the way it was?
The Buchanan vote stats seem to indicate (even though they are only partial information) that something is wrong...
Why can't you come straight down from a geo-synchronous orbit? The radius of your orbit is reduced as you come down, but I would think that you can compensate for that by slowing down...but maybe that's too hard and would take too much fuel. How far out is a geo-synchronous orbit anyway?
Can you give references on the Supreme Court quote? I'd like to read a bit more.
Seems to me that the only way this mess is going to get fixed is if other countries do the right thing, and force (through the UN or international trade treaties) the US to abandon the frivolous patents. There's no way it's going to happen from within.
Exactly right! And there are some extra-cool helpers (like Hammock that can really help you out. Hammock generates most of the HTML for you, based on simple, familiar layout systems.
In general, it's really easy to transform Java objects into and out of XML. And when you do that, you can style them into HTML, or anything else.
I respect you and your views, but you've taken a very typical tact with respect to the specific triggering event -- the "new science of character assassination" article. You call it misguided propaganda, proceed to give us your views on a whole lot of issues, but you don't bother to refute the article in any way. This is the problem a lot of people are having with Bush, my friend.
I've heard Bush repeat a thousand times that he's a "get it done" kind of guy, that he's a "compassionate conservative", and that he's someone who can bring people together, not push them apart. Those are all fine and nice things to say, but what is he going to do? That's what we care about!
The man is long on "being nice" and extremely short on specifics.
The president is not just a figurehead. Look at the veto power alone! This is an enormous responsibility. The president gets power equivalent to one-sixth of the entire senate!!!
Just because the "media" (whatever the hell that is) doesn't agree with your positions doesn't automatically make them against you. This is an open forum. Save your accusations of bias for a Republican love-in, where you can all hug and feel good about how it's you-all against the world.
Bring me some facts, post them here, and I'll read them. Quote some sources. Propose something else. Take part.
You sound like you know what you're talking about when it comes to military tempo and operational capacity. Great! We've all heard the sound bites from Bush and from Gore. Who's going to really do something about it? Bush says he's going to make the military strong. How? What's he going to spend? How is he going to spend it? You don't make the military stronger by saying "I'm going to make the military stronger." You make some specific proposals. You reference verifiable facts. You rebut your opponent's arguments.
This seems like a really great solution! Too bad we'll never see it. It brings to mind the character assassination of Lani Guiniere. She once wrote an essay on altering the "one person, one vote" formula, and was castigated by the Republicans as someone who wanted to violate the fundamental parts of our democracy. Of course, what she REALLY wanted was for each person to have N votes, say ten, that they could distribute any way they wanted, in multi-seat elections (like local councils). If you really cared about one particular candidate, you could use all your votes on that person. If you cared equally about three or four, you could distribute them. This was a way of getting some representation for minorities in areas where they had a sizeable population, but not enough to ever win a seat in any given area.
The problem here is that individual awards are a lot higher now, I think. The court system is awarding millions for the "pain and suffering" of a hangnail. The real question is, are the insurance companies making more money than they used to? What is their revenue? What are their costs? What goes to overhead? How has their overhead changed? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I'm sure somebody does.
Insurance companies are given special legal protections (can't be sued). In exchange for those, they ought to be required to provide comprehensive information to the government.
The net effect is that the blame might be on the court system, or it might be on an inefficient insurance system. We just don't know.
They're going to build giant missile bases. Fools! We must stop them now.
They are engaging in a "one-moon" strategy. They will all move to the moon, then blow the moon out of its orbit and nuke the earth on the way out of the solar system.
There's a secondary discussion here. I found myself in a strange situation about a year ago where I was being asked by various legal types and federal types exactly WHY I had deleted email. This was not a friendly discussion; there were legal and business issues involved. I usually just delete things whenver and wherever I feel like it. For the case in question, there hadn't been any intent whatsoever: I just had an overfull inbox and deleted everything older than a month or two from some of my folders. This didn't seem to satisfy them. "Why didn't I consider the consequences of these deletions?" I was asked. "What was I trying to hide?" "Do you recall the contents of those deleted emails?" "Why do you delete anything at all?"
The implication presented to me was that by deleting my email, I was hiding something.
So the next time you hit the delete key, remember that a lawyer might ask you a year after the fact why you hit it, what right you thought you had to hit it, and what you were trying to hide by your deletions.
And me? I just continue to do what I've always done -- whatever I feel like doing minute to minute. If I change my pattern now, hell, I might be guilty of something. Can't evidence that!
Imagine if there was the patent equivalent of the GPL, and the basic standards of the internet were covered by them...the only way a company would be able to assert patents of its own would be to give up use of the shared, GPL patent library...
So what if you've paid $1000 for Windows over the last ten years or so? Have you gotten nothing in return? How much has MS put into R&D for the product?
It amazes me that people are so willing to use law and the force of the government to beat down a private corporation. So you _demand_ that they continue to produce the operating system, and you _demand_ that they release it at a price that you like. It's so simple -- don't use it if you don't want to pay for it! There are ample alternatives.
The only thing holding down the price of Windows right now is the that MS has been trying to fly "under the radar" of the government. Once the two companies are broken up, OpCO would be fools not to crank up the price. The remedy's already gone through at that point, competition is theoretically "restored", and let the market forces do their work! If OpCO is charging too much, other companies will barrel in there, creating spiffy new and better products.
Are they going to charge $1000? No way. But if I was CEO of OpCO, I'd double the price of everything. There's no reason not too, and I have a responsibility to my shareholders.
The president should have an additional power besides veto -- he/she should be able to split a bill into pieces and force the legislatures to vote on the pieces. So a bill like this could be put in front of Clinton, and he could divide it into parts (without changing them), then send it back for a vote. A "presidentially split" bill couldn't be amended; it could only be accepted or rejected.
Do that and you say goodbye to a lot of pork and poison pills.
Absolutely! I think that MP3.com has some incredibly bad management. The down side to the Beam-It program was total nuclear meltdown. As far as I can tell, there was little or no upside to it! Advertising revenues? Please!
I feel pretty bad for the shareholders. What this judge has done is just take all that cash and give it to the record companies.
Hey, I wonder how much of this Universal is going to give to the artists? I wonder how they're going to calculate the royalties they owe? Artists probably won't see a dime of it.
Why didn't MP3.COM just pay the radio-style licensing fees on the music they were broadcasting? They'd probably end up ahead, by far!
With the record companies in a state of perpetual whining about the tremendous damage to artists that online music represents, I wonder how much of the 20 million is going to go to the artists? All of it, right?
Probably not. I suspect it will be too difficult to determine where the money should go, so Sony (or whoever's next) will just keep the whole thing.
Messages here mostly deal with a benign alteration of the OS. What about a hostile alteration? What if you have an employee who adds a nice "feature" to the OS (like say, a back door), and has absolutely no intention of documenting what he's done.
How does a business know what it's running? How do you guard against this?
I know that it's very easy to insert this kind of functionality into just about any OS.
So where is Signed Linux, where a business or other entity can know what it's running? I picture an unchangeable core, with a "sandbox" for everything else.
Perhaps they will force the manufacturers to put in code that, upon hitting a commercial break, diables any fast-forwarding until the commercial break is over. This would be relatively easy to do if commercial codes were somehow encoded somewhere in an unused portion of the video signal.
This is exactly why we have countries other than the US. I don't consider it beyond the realm of possibility that the misguided government of the US would write such a law. Technology is advancing very fast right now; the government simply cannot keep up. The oppressive presence of the legal system in the US guarantees the victory of special interests in virtually every circumstance.
This point stunned me. I never thought of it before! We've got a significant group of like-minded, freedom-oriented people out there.
I wonder how much of the increase in price from LPs to CDs has gone to artists?
I say wrap up some very hardy bacteria or virii in suspended form, and fire it off. Since we're screwing up this planet so badly, we might as well give evolution a shot on another one. I suspect the teeny ethical issue of pre-existing life on another planet might arise, but hey -- nobody believes in that crap anyway. It's gotta be empty, for sure.
The thing is, anything that comes from the outside world (the net) ought to be in some kind of sandbox. It's crazy to have email programs that don't keep everything in a sandbox. It's crazy to execute anything!
If we look at Java, we can use its secure sandbox and run our email program inside of it. Anything that comes from the outside world is going to have a very hard time hurting the user's machine. We can grant just enough permission to the program that it can store emails somewhere, and prevent it from doing anything else.
I think Windows comes with a QuickView application. Why does Word run when I open a document attachment? Why doesn't it run QuickView instead, which, as a read-only viewer package, would presumably not have the giant security holes that exist in the Office apps? So I think there are two very bad design decisions here -- the first is the idea of using the default "associated" program to view an attachment (or anything else that comes in from the internet, for that matter). The second is permitting any of this information to emerge from a sandbox-like environment without getting permission from the user, or a virus scan, or both.
I personally think the government's attempts to hamstring Microsoft are incredibly stupid. This is supposed to be about the public good, after all. How about all the pension funds and the massive investment in Microsoft? The public has lost far more in the stock price debacle than they will ever gain from court proceedings designed to promote MS's non-existent competition. Who is really being helped by this effort? I cannot identify a single group that benefits from Microsoft's breakup. I can understand some restrictions being placed on their ability to tie OS sales to equipment sales counts, and so forth. Those are useful, sensible constraints.
Let's talk about a REAL monopoly, that's really harming consumers and harming choice. It's my hate-du-jour: My local phone company. COVAD and SpeakEasy have been trying to convince Bell Atlantic to install a DSL loop for 2.5 months now. BA has simply not bothered to show up on three separate occasions, and has misdirected and shirked at every occasion. At the same time, they're telling the state commissions that they are fulfilling their obligations to competitive carriers. That's BS, pure and simple. BA offers its own DSL service with a two week install time! The difference in service is simply outrageous.
The phone company is actively engaging in monopolistic behavior that damages REAL customer choice, and is preventing a new industry (and the associated cost savings) from emerging.
The DOJ should get off its ass and stop kicking MS around, and start kicking around the phone companies again!
The fact that these two organizations are "neck and neck" should be a giant flag waved in the face of any patent examiners looking at gene patents. Part of getting a patent is that the new "invention" should be non-obvious to a practitioner knowledgeable in the field. It seems that what Celera is doing is rather obvious to a practitioner in the field, and there not patentable. Patents aren't a gold rush. It's not supposed to be about who gets there first; it's supposed to be about innovation. If I manage to count the five thousand fenceposts surrounding a farm, it doesn't mean that I should get a patent on fenceposts. Anybody can count fenceposts.
Amazon's legal page indicates that they are in possession of at least the following patents. The last one in particular floors me -- it appears they've successfully patented a SQL statement. If you read the patent, you'll note that any competent SQL programmer has been doing the technique described for a very long time.
It occurs to me that we are dealing with a range of expression problem. In copyright law, your right to assert copyright over a work decreases as the number of ways to express an idea decreases. That is, if there are only a small number of ways to describe something, you can't assert copyright over one of those ways. It seems that the patent office doesn't make the same distinctions. There is very little argument that these patents represent new or inobvious thinking.
Personally, I think the only way this is going to be solved is if the rest of the patent offices in the world (outside the US) summarily decide to ignore US patents in the software arena. The US office has demonstrated its complete ignorance and inability to handle this area, and is doing tremendous damage, to the detriment of individual inventors and small companies everywhere.
United States Patent 5,715,399
Bezos February 3, 1998
Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network Abstract A method and system for securely indicating to a customer one or more credit card numbers that a merchant has on file for the customer when communicating with the customer over a non-secure network. The merchant sends a message to the customer that contains only a portion of each of the credit card numbers that are on file with the merchant. The message may also contain a notation explaining which portion of each of the credit card numbers has been extracted. A computer (38) retrieves the credit card numbers on file for the customer in a database (40), constructs the message, and transits the message to a customer location (10) over the Internet network (30) or other non-secure network. The customer can then confirm in a return message that a specific one of the credit card numbers on file with the merchant should be used in charging a transaction. Since only a portion of the credit card number(s) are included in any message transmitted, a third party cannot discover the customer's complete credit card number(s). United States Patent 5,727,163 Bezos March 10, 1998
Secure method for communicating credit card data when placing an order on a non-secure network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order charged to a credit card, over an unsecured network. The customer completing an order for goods or services enters information required for the order, such as the shipping and billing addresses and identification of the goods, but enters only a subset of the credit card account number to which the order is to be charged. The order is transmitted over the Internet or other network to a remote merchant location (32) from a customer's location (10). A computer (38) at the remote merchant location processes the order to extract the data provided by the customer for storage in a database (40). During a subsequent telephone call to the remote merchant location, the customer enters the complete credit card number, preferably on a touch-tone keypad (28). The touch-tone signals are processed by an automated attendant system (44) for input of the complete credit card number into the computer. Using the portion of the complete credit card number that corresponds to the subset entered by the customer on the order form, the computer identifies the order previously placed and inserts the complete credit card number in the order data stored on the database to finalize the order.
United States Patent 5,960,411 Hartman , et al. September 28, 1999
Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button. United States Patent 5,999,924 Bair , et al. December 7, 1999
Method and apparatus for producing sequenced queries
Abstract
A method and apparatus converts an original query into a sequenced query that takes into account a range of values of a variable defined by a start and end point in performing the query. The start or end points are calculated if necessary and a query to collect all of the start and end points may be generated, and a query is generated that produces a constant set of start and end points defining consecutive periods, such that all the data in the tables related to the original query is constant over each of these periods. These two queries are merged into the original query to produce a sequenced query capable of execution on various database software and capable of taking into account the range of values of the variable in performing the original query.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got Bell Atlantic/Verizon too -- like you, I never used the main account _ever_ for outbound or inbound email. But so far I've received and deleted probably over a THOUSAND spam messages in that account. Since I've never given out or used this email address in any way, SOMEBODY inside Verizon is giving them out.
For the love of god, read the damn thing.
I encourage you and other Republicans to be vigorous in your explanations to the people of Florida that they do not, in fact, have any right to vote for President; that right is reserved for the State Legislature. While technically true on US constitutional grounds, all 50 states have delegated, via their election laws, the right to choose the electors for president to their populations, via direct popular vote in the state.
You write cleanly, but your quoting of Florida election law engages in the same selective quotation that virtually all Republican reading of the law engages in. I therefore encourage you to download and read the Florida election code for yourself. Read it in its entirety; don't simply dive straight for the Republican salvation of 102.111. 102.111 must be taken in context, particularly with regards to 102.112.
Florida law sections 102.012 through 102.151 deal with the normal course of an election in Florida. The remaining sections deal with what to do when there is a problem. Everybody seems to fault the Florida code, when in fact it seems quite clear to me.
You state that a vote count "may be ignored" in Florida if not returned within the 7 day period. Competent reading of this section as a whole indicates that, while the deadline is highly desirable, it is optional. Late, normal returns are subject to either a fine ($200 per day, per canvassing board member, paid out of personal funds) for tardiness. It says nothing about applying the 7 day rule to manual recounts. This is a key distinction that seems to not have been made elsewhere, and it perplexes me that it has not. The 7 day rule for normal returns is entirely sensible; subjecting the recounts to that same rule is foolish.
So what does the Florida law say about recounts? It certainly doesn't say that recounts are optional. The language in the law is a little convoluted, so try to stay with me. It says that in the event of a protest, the canvassing board MAY, at its discretion, perform a manual recount of ballots in at least three precincts, of at least 1% of the votes. The canvassing board must then compare the results of the recount to the original count, and if it is found that the difference may result in a change in the outcome of the election, they SHALL a) correct the error and recount the remaining precincts OR b) request the department of state to verify the tabulation software OR c) manually recount all ballots. Confusion in interpreting this statute largely rests in those persons that have trouble separating the mention of the manual sample recount from the consequential recount of all the ballots.
So that is that. There is just no way you can read this statute to say anything other than the following: A candidate can protest the vote. A canvassing board can choose to do a sample recount. If the sample recount shows a difference that could change the outcome, the canvassing board MUST recount. And doesn't that make sense? The Republican position is that you can't have a manual recount unless the machines have had an error of some kind.
The Republicans out there aren't going to believe me, probably haven't read the statute themselves, and might find out by following the link at the top that they're wrong. So I might as well quote it directly and force them to look at it:
102.166 Protest of election returns; procedure.--
(1) Any candidate for nomination or election, or any elector qualified to vote in the election related to such candidacy, shall have the right to protest the returns of the election as being erroneous by filing with the appropriate canvassing board a sworn, written protest.
(2) Such protest shall be filed with the canvassing board prior to the time the canvassing board certifies the results for the office being protested or within 5 days after midnight of the date the election is held, whichever occurs later.
(3) Before canvassing the returns of the election, the canvassing board shall:
(a) When paper ballots are used, examine the tabulation of the paper ballots cast.
(b) When voting machines are used, examine the counters on the machines of nonprinter machines or the printer-pac on printer machines. If there is a discrepancy between the returns and the counters of the machines or the printer-pac, the counters of such machines or the printer-pac shall be presumed correct.
(c) When electronic or electromechanical equipment is used, the canvassing board shall examine precinct records and election returns. If there is a clerical error, such error shall be corrected by the county canvassing board. If there is a discrepancy which could affect the outcome of an election, the canvassing board may recount the ballots on the automatic tabulating equipment.
(4)(a) Any candidate whose name appeared on the ballot, any political committee that supports or opposes an issue which appeared on the ballot, or any political party whose candidates' names appeared on the ballot may file a written request with the county canvassing board for a manual recount. The written request shall contain a statement of the reason the manual recount is being requested.
(b) Such request must be filed with the canvassing board prior to the time the canvassing board certifies the results for the office being protested or within 72 hours after midnight of the date the election was held, whichever occurs later.
(c) The county canvassing board may authorize a manual recount. If a manual recount is authorized, the county canvassing board shall make a reasonable effort to notify each candidate whose race is being recounted of the time and place of such recount.
(d) The manual recount must include at least three precincts and at least 1 percent of the total votes cast for such candidate or issue. In the event there are less than three precincts involved in the election, all precincts shall be counted. The person who requested the recount shall choose three precincts to be recounted, and, if other precincts are recounted, the county canvassing board shall select the additional precincts.
(5) If the manual recount indicates an error in the vote tabulation which could affect the outcome of the election, the county canvassing board shall:
(a) Correct the error and recount the remaining precincts with the vote tabulation system;
(b) Request the Department of State to verify the tabulation software; or
(c) Manually recount all ballots.
(6) Any manual recount shall be open to the public.
(7) Procedures for a manual recount are as follows:
(a) The county canvassing board shall appoint as many counting teams of at least two electors as is necessary to manually recount the ballots. A counting team must have, when possible, members of at least two political parties. A candidate involved in the race shall not be a member of the counting team.
(b) If a counting team is unable to determine a voter's intent in casting a ballot, the ballot shall be presented to the county canvassing board for it to determine the voter's intent.
(8) If the county canvassing board determines the need to verify the tabulation software, the county canvassing board shall request in writing that the Department of State verify the software.
(9) When the Department of State verifies such software, the department shall:
(a) Compare the software used to tabulate the votes with the software filed with the Department of State pursuant to s. 101.5607; and
(b) Check the election parameters.
(10) The Department of State shall respond to the county canvassing board within 3 working days.
There is a tremendous rejection rate from the machines (I heard around 5%). That's 5% of ballots that are NOT counted by these machines. Some of those are for Bush, some for Gore. But if you can hold a ballot, look at it and see that the chad is detached at two corners, it's a frigging vote.
This "dimpled" and "pregnant" chad crap is wordage designed to hide the fact that the vast majority of these uncounted votes are quite easily interpreted by a person, although not by the machine. There are a _very_ small number of votes that are actually subject to judgement.
If this is so, then some sort of recount should be issued. And how do you recount votes that were cast in error because of the physical configuration of the ballot? Heck, I don't know. They might have to run it again. Why did this particular precinct use a different ballot form? Why was the form constructed in the way it was?
The Buchanan vote stats seem to indicate (even though they are only partial information) that something is wrong...
Why can't you come straight down from a geo-synchronous orbit? The radius of your orbit is reduced as you come down, but I would think that you can compensate for that by slowing down...but maybe that's too hard and would take too much fuel. How far out is a geo-synchronous orbit anyway?
Seems to me that the only way this mess is going to get fixed is if other countries do the right thing, and force (through the UN or international trade treaties) the US to abandon the frivolous patents. There's no way it's going to happen from within.
In general, it's really easy to transform Java objects into and out of XML. And when you do that, you can style them into HTML, or anything else.
I've heard Bush repeat a thousand times that he's a "get it done" kind of guy, that he's a "compassionate conservative", and that he's someone who can bring people together, not push them apart. Those are all fine and nice things to say, but what is he going to do? That's what we care about!
The man is long on "being nice" and extremely short on specifics.
The president is not just a figurehead. Look at the veto power alone! This is an enormous responsibility. The president gets power equivalent to one-sixth of the entire senate!!!
Just because the "media" (whatever the hell that is) doesn't agree with your positions doesn't automatically make them against you. This is an open forum. Save your accusations of bias for a Republican love-in, where you can all hug and feel good about how it's you-all against the world.
Bring me some facts, post them here, and I'll read them. Quote some sources. Propose something else. Take part.
You sound like you know what you're talking about when it comes to military tempo and operational capacity. Great! We've all heard the sound bites from Bush and from Gore. Who's going to really do something about it? Bush says he's going to make the military strong. How? What's he going to spend? How is he going to spend it? You don't make the military stronger by saying "I'm going to make the military stronger." You make some specific proposals. You reference verifiable facts. You rebut your opponent's arguments.
I encourage you to do this.
This seems like a really great solution! Too bad we'll never see it. It brings to mind the character assassination of Lani Guiniere. She once wrote an essay on altering the "one person, one vote" formula, and was castigated by the Republicans as someone who wanted to violate the fundamental parts of our democracy. Of course, what she REALLY wanted was for each person to have N votes, say ten, that they could distribute any way they wanted, in multi-seat elections (like local councils). If you really cared about one particular candidate, you could use all your votes on that person. If you cared equally about three or four, you could distribute them. This was a way of getting some representation for minorities in areas where they had a sizeable population, but not enough to ever win a seat in any given area.
Insurance companies are given special legal protections (can't be sued). In exchange for those, they ought to be required to provide comprehensive information to the government.
The net effect is that the blame might be on the court system, or it might be on an inefficient insurance system. We just don't know.
They are engaging in a "one-moon" strategy. They will all move to the moon, then blow the moon out of its orbit and nuke the earth on the way out of the solar system.
The implication presented to me was that by deleting my email, I was hiding something.
So the next time you hit the delete key, remember that a lawyer might ask you a year after the fact why you hit it, what right you thought you had to hit it, and what you were trying to hide by your deletions.
And me? I just continue to do what I've always done -- whatever I feel like doing minute to minute. If I change my pattern now, hell, I might be guilty of something. Can't evidence that!
It amazes me that people are so willing to use law and the force of the government to beat down a private corporation. So you _demand_ that they continue to produce the operating system, and you _demand_ that they release it at a price that you like. It's so simple -- don't use it if you don't want to pay for it! There are ample alternatives.
The only thing holding down the price of Windows right now is the that MS has been trying to fly "under the radar" of the government. Once the two companies are broken up, OpCO would be fools not to crank up the price. The remedy's already gone through at that point, competition is theoretically "restored", and let the market forces do their work! If OpCO is charging too much, other companies will barrel in there, creating spiffy new and better products.
Are they going to charge $1000? No way. But if I was CEO of OpCO, I'd double the price of everything. There's no reason not too, and I have a responsibility to my shareholders.
Do that and you say goodbye to a lot of pork and poison pills.
I feel pretty bad for the shareholders. What this judge has done is just take all that cash and give it to the record companies.
Hey, I wonder how much of this Universal is going to give to the artists? I wonder how they're going to calculate the royalties they owe? Artists probably won't see a dime of it.
Why didn't MP3.COM just pay the radio-style licensing fees on the music they were broadcasting? They'd probably end up ahead, by far!
Probably not. I suspect it will be too difficult to determine where the money should go, so Sony (or whoever's next) will just keep the whole thing.
How does a business know what it's running? How do you guard against this?
I know that it's very easy to insert this kind of functionality into just about any OS.
So where is Signed Linux, where a business or other entity can know what it's running? I picture an unchangeable core, with a "sandbox" for everything else.
This is exactly why we have countries other than the US. I don't consider it beyond the realm of possibility that the misguided government of the US would write such a law. Technology is advancing very fast right now; the government simply cannot keep up. The oppressive presence of the legal system in the US guarantees the victory of special interests in virtually every circumstance.
This point stunned me. I never thought of it before! We've got a significant group of like-minded, freedom-oriented people out there. I wonder how much of the increase in price from LPs to CDs has gone to artists?
I say wrap up some very hardy bacteria or virii in suspended form, and fire it off. Since we're screwing up this planet so badly, we might as well give evolution a shot on another one. I suspect the teeny ethical issue of pre-existing life on another planet might arise, but hey -- nobody believes in that crap anyway. It's gotta be empty, for sure.
If we look at Java, we can use its secure sandbox and run our email program inside of it. Anything that comes from the outside world is going to have a very hard time hurting the user's machine. We can grant just enough permission to the program that it can store emails somewhere, and prevent it from doing anything else.
I think Windows comes with a QuickView application. Why does Word run when I open a document attachment? Why doesn't it run QuickView instead, which, as a read-only viewer package, would presumably not have the giant security holes that exist in the Office apps? So I think there are two very bad design decisions here -- the first is the idea of using the default "associated" program to view an attachment (or anything else that comes in from the internet, for that matter). The second is permitting any of this information to emerge from a sandbox-like environment without getting permission from the user, or a virus scan, or both.
Let's talk about a REAL monopoly, that's really harming consumers and harming choice. It's my hate-du-jour: My local phone company. COVAD and SpeakEasy have been trying to convince Bell Atlantic to install a DSL loop for 2.5 months now. BA has simply not bothered to show up on three separate occasions, and has misdirected and shirked at every occasion. At the same time, they're telling the state commissions that they are fulfilling their obligations to competitive carriers. That's BS, pure and simple. BA offers its own DSL service with a two week install time! The difference in service is simply outrageous.
The phone company is actively engaging in monopolistic behavior that damages REAL customer choice, and is preventing a new industry (and the associated cost savings) from emerging.
The DOJ should get off its ass and stop kicking MS around, and start kicking around the phone companies again!
The fact that these two organizations are "neck and neck" should be a giant flag waved in the face of any patent examiners looking at gene patents. Part of getting a patent is that the new "invention" should be non-obvious to a practitioner knowledgeable in the field. It seems that what Celera is doing is rather obvious to a practitioner in the field, and there not patentable. Patents aren't a gold rush. It's not supposed to be about who gets there first; it's supposed to be about innovation. If I manage to count the five thousand fenceposts surrounding a farm, it doesn't mean that I should get a patent on fenceposts. Anybody can count fenceposts.
It occurs to me that we are dealing with a range of expression problem. In copyright law, your right to assert copyright over a work decreases as the number of ways to express an idea decreases. That is, if there are only a small number of ways to describe something, you can't assert copyright over one of those ways. It seems that the patent office doesn't make the same distinctions. There is very little argument that these patents represent new or inobvious thinking.
Personally, I think the only way this is going to be solved is if the rest of the patent offices in the world (outside the US) summarily decide to ignore US patents in the software arena. The US office has demonstrated its complete ignorance and inability to handle this area, and is doing tremendous damage, to the detriment of individual inventors and small companies everywhere.
United States Patent 5,715,399
Bezos February 3, 1998
Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network Abstract A method and system for securely indicating to a customer one or more credit card numbers that a merchant has on file for the customer when communicating with the customer over a non-secure network. The merchant sends a message to the customer that contains only a portion of each of the credit card numbers that are on file with the merchant. The message may also contain a notation explaining which portion of each of the credit card numbers has been extracted. A computer (38) retrieves the credit card numbers on file for the customer in a database (40), constructs the message, and transits the message to a customer location (10) over the Internet network (30) or other non-secure network. The customer can then confirm in a return message that a specific one of the credit card numbers on file with the merchant should be used in charging a transaction. Since only a portion of the credit card number(s) are included in any message transmitted, a third party cannot discover the customer's complete credit card number(s). United States Patent 5,727,163 Bezos March 10, 1998
Secure method for communicating credit card data when placing an order on a non-secure network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order charged to a credit card, over an unsecured network. The customer completing an order for goods or services enters information required for the order, such as the shipping and billing addresses and identification of the goods, but enters only a subset of the credit card account number to which the order is to be charged. The order is transmitted over the Internet or other network to a remote merchant location (32) from a customer's location (10). A computer (38) at the remote merchant location processes the order to extract the data provided by the customer for storage in a database (40). During a subsequent telephone call to the remote merchant location, the customer enters the complete credit card number, preferably on a touch-tone keypad (28). The touch-tone signals are processed by an automated attendant system (44) for input of the complete credit card number into the computer. Using the portion of the complete credit card number that corresponds to the subset entered by the customer on the order form, the computer identifies the order previously placed and inserts the complete credit card number in the order data stored on the database to finalize the order.
United States Patent 5,960,411 Hartman , et al. September 28, 1999
Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network
Abstract
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button. United States Patent 5,999,924 Bair , et al. December 7, 1999
Method and apparatus for producing sequenced queries
Abstract
A method and apparatus converts an original query into a sequenced query that takes into account a range of values of a variable defined by a start and end point in performing the query. The start or end points are calculated if necessary and a query to collect all of the start and end points may be generated, and a query is generated that produces a constant set of start and end points defining consecutive periods, such that all the data in the tables related to the original query is constant over each of these periods. These two queries are merged into the original query to produce a sequenced query capable of execution on various database software and capable of taking into account the range of values of the variable in performing the original query.