To this point in history, Americans have NEVER had any paper trail to indicate how, for whom or when they voted. And with good reason.
Of course a paper trail causes problems. A paper trail makes it infinitely easier for others to find out who you voted for.
Work for corporate America and are 'asked' to make a political contribution to whatever party the business likes best? With a paper trail, you can be asked to vote, with printed verification, accordingly too.
Down on your luck? Why not sell your vote and have a receipt to take back to your buyer?
Vote in favor of gay marriage or against abortion? Your neighbors can much more easily find out.
If that's too tin-foil for you, know that these records will be stored somewhere on some government server. How far has the government gone to prevent VA records from getting 'lost', from Social Security information from being stolen?
Anonymous (as in no way to verify how you voted) is one of the things that we just plain can't let go of.
Electronic voting in general is a bad idea. With electronic voting, there's no paper ticket for an honest judge or some other civil-minded civil servant to inspect.
Just like taking notes and jotting down quick ideas, a good old piece of paper is best.
Except, I'm sure that Microsoft keeps a 'safe' list of all the companies and government agencies that have blanket volume licensing that will not under any circumstances be turned off.
Even for as dumb as Microsoft is, they have to be smart enough not to take down major corporations with their shenanigans.
OK, I agree. From a philosophical standpoint there is nothing written that is unimportant to understanding the ways and means of a society and its culture.
In fact, my buddy spends most of his days happily locked away in a basement at his university translating scribal notes on crop yields, trade reports, magisterial rulings, and even the somewhat racy records of royal courtiers.
Most of these writings (and I would suspect the same to be true of your professor's Babylonian astronomical records) are obscure, hard-to-find and in private or university/museum back-room collections not generally publicly available.
Beyond that, I suspect that most laypersons would much rather (and would more greatly benefit from) read mythology or history from texts written thousands of years ago.
It's interesting that you worked with databasing photos of objects of antiquity. I am a professional photographer, and for years have been interested in photographing all manners of antiquity for both research purposes, and making the photographs available to the world. After all, we can't all get to the Louvre or the Ashmolean museum for a weekend. Hell, I can't.
People in the US still watch over-the-air broadcast television?
Where I live, in a large town, but not in a huge city with signal-obstructing buildings, broadcast TV is unwatchable. And basic cable (local channels + CNN and a handful of other cable channels) is like $8/month.
For a non-nuclear, non-military research and/or search and rescue vessel capable of open ocean travel and very specific tasking, 2.5 miles per gallon is actually pretty damned good. Certainly much better than converted fishing vessels running 600RPM 9 litre diesels that might burn 2.5 gallons per mile.
"Rick Rubin not hearing about Simon Cowell is about the same as the chef de cuisine at a French restaurant not knowing the name of a McDonald's franchise owner."
Undoubtedly, Rubin has heard of American Idol. Likely, he hasn't really sat down to watch it, or cared to follow its characters.
I would go one step further to see this as one of the reasons that Columbia brought him in, and has caved to his (nearly) every demand. He might be the guy to save the record industry, or at least help it to go out with a little class. Obviously the American Idol shit coupled with rootkits and lawsuits isn't doing the job.
As a person who studied Latin at the high school and collegiate level, I know that much of what is 'worth' translating academically has already been translated by other academics. Sure, a scholar might be able to come up with his own unique translation, but that is not something that can be done by a machine.
A dear friend of mine is an Egyptologist, and I know his struggles in translating writings from different regions of the empire, let alone differences dynasty to dynasty.
Since even the best computer translators (and I mean the corporately deployed ones, not just freebie Web stuff like BabelFish) mangle all but the simplest Spanish, French and German (I can't say anything about Asian languages, as I can't speak or read any) phrases, how can we expect any level of reliability in translating languages that even leading scholars struggle with?
Besides, the most difficult part of translating anything stems from the fact that any person seldom speaks or writes as he should. The rules of language are bent, twisted and altered into regional dialects and strings of ethnic and cultural phraseology. In the Spanish language, a word may take on one meaning in Mexico, and entirely another in Spain. Nevermind the fact that, at least in my experience, Spanish Spanish is significantly different from Mexican Spanish. And those are two languages that diverged only a matter of hundreds of years ago, as opposed to the thousands often seen in dead languages.
This is very interesting to me, but until we have widely-available computers that can understand the subtle nuances of tone, inflection, humor and colloquialisms, the computer translation will never best, or even come close to a careful academic translation, or a translation done by a human fluent in both languages, if not academically trained in both languages.
Actually, that depends on where you live. In certain places, once your garbage is emptied into an outdoor receptacle awaiting pickup, it is actually the property of the company that does the pickups.
I don't know if they're growing pains or not. It would seem to me that the world faces a lot of problems and challenges. Probably not more than it has in times past, but difficult nonetheless.
I think that in times of uncertainty, railing against violence in videogames and sex on TV serves as a distraction from dealing with the bigger problems.
All that having been said, I understand that what's appropriate for me is often not appropriate for a child. But that is really a decision to be left to the parents.
Maybe it's not such a bad thing that 10-year-old Johnny needs a parent with him to buy Grand Theft Auto.
I am of the opinion that humans have basic, evolutionary instincts to have sex (for reasons other than procreation) and to kill. Only a few other species kill their own kind for no reason, and equally few have sex recreationally. Almost NO other species demonstrate clear tendencies towards homosexuality or bisexuality.
With that being said, what makes us humans, in part, is our ability to reason with regard to all, but especially the above, circumstances. I can make a choice to engage in sex with the waitress I met tonight on the same level that I can make the choice not to injure or kill the guy from work I went to the bar with, even if he attempted to engage in sex with the same waitress.
I really think that porno and violent (books, movies, stories, videogames, etc.) media exist only because we have instincts towards those tendencies, and we enjoy acting them out. Acting them out on paper or in cyberspace, however, comes without any sort of consequences, whereas acting out such tendencies in real life can cause huge problems for all involved.
I don't shy away from sex in the media, and even fairly graphic sex at that. And yet, I am happily married. I enjoy the hell out of sneaking up on someone on XBOX Live and blowing their head off with a rocket launcher. And yet, the worst harm I've ever done to another human intentionally is get in a few fistfights, or get a little too aggressive in sport.
For that matter, I subscribe to Playboy (great articles, and even better photos on so many levels), and am completely devoted and faithful to my wife. I own firearms for target shooting and for hunting (and I eat what I kill, every time), and yet I don't walk down the street randomly shooting people.
I really think that I am not alone in these circumstances. Sure, there are people who can't control themselves, or who make personal choices against adult media and firearms. But I think I'm probably in the majority.
When it comes down to it, I think a lot of people are afraid of what they're children are doing/seeing when they're not around. Therefore, it's better to ban outright or limit access so that they don't have to worry about our children. In theory.
Beyond that, there are two extremes. There are those who seek sex and/or violence in an unhealthy way. Then there are those moral high-and-mighty who have natural human interest and instincts in screwing and killing, and they feel bad for it. In order to atone, they crusade against it being available both for the sake of those that would act unhealthily as well as for their own piece of mind.
I also think that in today's political arena, crusading after the low-hanging fruit of helping the kids or protecting society is much easier to do than admitting to your constituency that America is facing some hard times, and that there are no 'magic bullet' solutions to the problems.
In the privacy of the home, and with the consent of the parents, there is nothing to prevent dad from giving Johnny some dirty magazines or mom from pouring everyone a glass of wine at dinner.
Illegal? Perhaps. But how many kids or parents have gotten in trouble for stuff like this that stays in the house?
What causes people to get in trouble is letting 15-year-old Johnny hop in the car after a glass of wine. Under 21 is zero tolerance. It also causes problems if Johnny takes porno to school and gets caught with it. But inside the house, and with parental consent, there is little that the government can do to even find out about it (for now).
I totally agree that education at all levels should be free. Obtaining a PhD should cost nothing at all.
Why limit the program to engineering and the hard sciences? Are artists, medical professionals and linguistics experts not equally needed?
Also, before even beginning to talk about making secondary education free, we need to take the time to un-fuck our primary schools. That's a bigger priority.
Speaking of Voyager, anyone who hasn't heard it should check out Blind Willie Johnson's recording of "Dark was the Night", which was one of the sound recordings put on board the Voyager.
In my estimation, it is one of the least heard and best treasures of American music.
Imagine that a song composed a man, blinded by his own mother and completely racially unaccepted at the time, hurtles through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. We might not have respected him while he was alive, but just maybe this is a fitting tribute.
To a certain extent, they have taken advantage of their control over the postal service. Most letters and packages are xray-ed for content, and in times past, they have placed strict, moral-based restrictions on mailing pornography and allegedly subversive materials. I point you to Larry Flynt as well as the now redacted Alien and Sedition Act as two topical examples of where they have, in my opinion, overstepped their bounds.
Besides, in this day and age, there are plenty of alternatives to using the Postal Service to send and receive letters and packages.
I'm no MS fan (I don't even use Windows at all anymore), but the guy makes a valid point. Citing an incompatibility with Linux shouldn't count as flamebait.
"I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext."
As much as random searches and seizures at airports (or anywhere) scare me, I'm willing to bet that just as accepting a driver license in most states forces you to sign away some search and seizure rights (for example, making it a criminal act to refuse a breathalyzer test), entering an airport probably gives consent to random search and seizure. I mean, they've been xray-ing and searching bags by hand for quite some time now.
Great, so I can hand my browsing and usage information over to a government agency DIRECTLY, instead of to a 'private' corporation who may or may not choose to turn my information over to te government.
Maybe we should nationalize TV, radio, newspapers and magazines too?
I mean, what good would it be for the government to have direct and unbridled control over not only our access to information, but also to the information itself? I'm sure they'd never take advantage of that situation.
The speedometer on my Jeep goes up to 100mph. Does that mean that if I get pulled over doing 100mph in a school zone that it's Chrysler's fault and not mine? Did Chrysler take measures to prevent me from speeding in a school zone?
Generally, I'm excited when anyone fights the maFIAA, but in this case, I hope she loses badly so she'll learn about pointing fingers.
I myself have to be a frequent email checker because some of my clients insist on using email even in cases where a phone call would be better (more likely for me to respond immediately when it rings, and more able to understand the nature of the issue without having to trade emails).
Email is a great way to drop a few ideas to someone quickly and in a pseudo form of writing. However, as it has become a disaster of spam, re:re:re:re:re:re: that thing subject lines, incoherent abuses of the language, and more often than not, a whipping boy for laziness (what, you didn't get the memo? I emailed it to you yesterday. There must be something going on with our email).
Worst of all, it really isn't that reliable for many people. I get tons of stuff in my spam box that should be in my inbox (spamassassin), and yet find all kinds of phoney stock tips and pharmaceutical offers in my inbox.
Face it, we raped, pillaged and killed email. Now I just wish we could bury it.
Slashdot Mirror
To this point in history, Americans have NEVER had any paper trail to indicate how, for whom or when they voted. And with good reason.
Of course a paper trail causes problems. A paper trail makes it infinitely easier for others to find out who you voted for.
Work for corporate America and are 'asked' to make a political contribution to whatever party the business likes best? With a paper trail, you can be asked to vote, with printed verification, accordingly too.
Down on your luck? Why not sell your vote and have a receipt to take back to your buyer?
Vote in favor of gay marriage or against abortion? Your neighbors can much more easily find out.
If that's too tin-foil for you, know that these records will be stored somewhere on some government server. How far has the government gone to prevent VA records from getting 'lost', from Social Security information from being stolen?
Anonymous (as in no way to verify how you voted) is one of the things that we just plain can't let go of.
Electronic voting in general is a bad idea. With electronic voting, there's no paper ticket for an honest judge or some other civil-minded civil servant to inspect.
Just like taking notes and jotting down quick ideas, a good old piece of paper is best.
If it's that popular, it will be ported to Mac inside of a year.
Except, I'm sure that Microsoft keeps a 'safe' list of all the companies and government agencies that have blanket volume licensing that will not under any circumstances be turned off.
Even for as dumb as Microsoft is, they have to be smart enough not to take down major corporations with their shenanigans.
OK, I agree. From a philosophical standpoint there is nothing written that is unimportant to understanding the ways and means of a society and its culture.
In fact, my buddy spends most of his days happily locked away in a basement at his university translating scribal notes on crop yields, trade reports, magisterial rulings, and even the somewhat racy records of royal courtiers.
Most of these writings (and I would suspect the same to be true of your professor's Babylonian astronomical records) are obscure, hard-to-find and in private or university/museum back-room collections not generally publicly available.
Beyond that, I suspect that most laypersons would much rather (and would more greatly benefit from) read mythology or history from texts written thousands of years ago.
It's interesting that you worked with databasing photos of objects of antiquity. I am a professional photographer, and for years have been interested in photographing all manners of antiquity for both research purposes, and making the photographs available to the world. After all, we can't all get to the Louvre or the Ashmolean museum for a weekend. Hell, I can't.
People in the US still watch over-the-air broadcast television?
Where I live, in a large town, but not in a huge city with signal-obstructing buildings, broadcast TV is unwatchable. And basic cable (local channels + CNN and a handful of other cable channels) is like $8/month.
For a non-nuclear, non-military research and/or search and rescue vessel capable of open ocean travel and very specific tasking, 2.5 miles per gallon is actually pretty damned good. Certainly much better than converted fishing vessels running 600RPM 9 litre diesels that might burn 2.5 gallons per mile.
I can't believe that got modded insightful.
Oh, I doubt very seriously this problem is limited only to Americans. Let's not forget the vast majority of Western Europe.
More like this:
"Rick Rubin not hearing about Simon Cowell is about the same as the chef de cuisine at a French restaurant not knowing the name of a McDonald's franchise owner."
Undoubtedly, Rubin has heard of American Idol. Likely, he hasn't really sat down to watch it, or cared to follow its characters.
I would go one step further to see this as one of the reasons that Columbia brought him in, and has caved to his (nearly) every demand. He might be the guy to save the record industry, or at least help it to go out with a little class. Obviously the American Idol shit coupled with rootkits and lawsuits isn't doing the job.
Somebody mod this guy up.
As a person who studied Latin at the high school and collegiate level, I know that much of what is 'worth' translating academically has already been translated by other academics. Sure, a scholar might be able to come up with his own unique translation, but that is not something that can be done by a machine.
A dear friend of mine is an Egyptologist, and I know his struggles in translating writings from different regions of the empire, let alone differences dynasty to dynasty.
Since even the best computer translators (and I mean the corporately deployed ones, not just freebie Web stuff like BabelFish) mangle all but the simplest Spanish, French and German (I can't say anything about Asian languages, as I can't speak or read any) phrases, how can we expect any level of reliability in translating languages that even leading scholars struggle with?
Besides, the most difficult part of translating anything stems from the fact that any person seldom speaks or writes as he should. The rules of language are bent, twisted and altered into regional dialects and strings of ethnic and cultural phraseology. In the Spanish language, a word may take on one meaning in Mexico, and entirely another in Spain. Nevermind the fact that, at least in my experience, Spanish Spanish is significantly different from Mexican Spanish. And those are two languages that diverged only a matter of hundreds of years ago, as opposed to the thousands often seen in dead languages.
This is very interesting to me, but until we have widely-available computers that can understand the subtle nuances of tone, inflection, humor and colloquialisms, the computer translation will never best, or even come close to a careful academic translation, or a translation done by a human fluent in both languages, if not academically trained in both languages.
As a resident of 'nearby Mexico', I can honestly say that you forgot Padron Anejo. If you haven't tried it, do.
Actually, that depends on where you live. In certain places, once your garbage is emptied into an outdoor receptacle awaiting pickup, it is actually the property of the company that does the pickups.
I don't know if they're growing pains or not. It would seem to me that the world faces a lot of problems and challenges. Probably not more than it has in times past, but difficult nonetheless.
I think that in times of uncertainty, railing against violence in videogames and sex on TV serves as a distraction from dealing with the bigger problems.
All that having been said, I understand that what's appropriate for me is often not appropriate for a child. But that is really a decision to be left to the parents.
Maybe it's not such a bad thing that 10-year-old Johnny needs a parent with him to buy Grand Theft Auto.
Since you asked...
I am of the opinion that humans have basic, evolutionary instincts to have sex (for reasons other than procreation) and to kill. Only a few other species kill their own kind for no reason, and equally few have sex recreationally. Almost NO other species demonstrate clear tendencies towards homosexuality or bisexuality.
With that being said, what makes us humans, in part, is our ability to reason with regard to all, but especially the above, circumstances. I can make a choice to engage in sex with the waitress I met tonight on the same level that I can make the choice not to injure or kill the guy from work I went to the bar with, even if he attempted to engage in sex with the same waitress.
I really think that porno and violent (books, movies, stories, videogames, etc.) media exist only because we have instincts towards those tendencies, and we enjoy acting them out. Acting them out on paper or in cyberspace, however, comes without any sort of consequences, whereas acting out such tendencies in real life can cause huge problems for all involved.
I don't shy away from sex in the media, and even fairly graphic sex at that. And yet, I am happily married. I enjoy the hell out of sneaking up on someone on XBOX Live and blowing their head off with a rocket launcher. And yet, the worst harm I've ever done to another human intentionally is get in a few fistfights, or get a little too aggressive in sport.
For that matter, I subscribe to Playboy (great articles, and even better photos on so many levels), and am completely devoted and faithful to my wife. I own firearms for target shooting and for hunting (and I eat what I kill, every time), and yet I don't walk down the street randomly shooting people.
I really think that I am not alone in these circumstances. Sure, there are people who can't control themselves, or who make personal choices against adult media and firearms. But I think I'm probably in the majority.
When it comes down to it, I think a lot of people are afraid of what they're children are doing/seeing when they're not around. Therefore, it's better to ban outright or limit access so that they don't have to worry about our children. In theory.
Beyond that, there are two extremes. There are those who seek sex and/or violence in an unhealthy way. Then there are those moral high-and-mighty who have natural human interest and instincts in screwing and killing, and they feel bad for it. In order to atone, they crusade against it being available both for the sake of those that would act unhealthily as well as for their own piece of mind.
I also think that in today's political arena, crusading after the low-hanging fruit of helping the kids or protecting society is much easier to do than admitting to your constituency that America is facing some hard times, and that there are no 'magic bullet' solutions to the problems.
In the privacy of the home, and with the consent of the parents, there is nothing to prevent dad from giving Johnny some dirty magazines or mom from pouring everyone a glass of wine at dinner.
Illegal? Perhaps. But how many kids or parents have gotten in trouble for stuff like this that stays in the house?
What causes people to get in trouble is letting 15-year-old Johnny hop in the car after a glass of wine. Under 21 is zero tolerance. It also causes problems if Johnny takes porno to school and gets caught with it. But inside the house, and with parental consent, there is little that the government can do to even find out about it (for now).
More so, I think he is thinking of the parents, and their right to purchase as they see fit, and make available to their children as they see fit.
Furthermore, Posner is one of the best (and most moderate) judges of the contemporary era. I wish they were all like him.
I totally agree that education at all levels should be free. Obtaining a PhD should cost nothing at all.
Why limit the program to engineering and the hard sciences? Are artists, medical professionals and linguistics experts not equally needed?
Also, before even beginning to talk about making secondary education free, we need to take the time to un-fuck our primary schools. That's a bigger priority.
Speaking of Voyager, anyone who hasn't heard it should check out Blind Willie Johnson's recording of "Dark was the Night", which was one of the sound recordings put on board the Voyager.
In my estimation, it is one of the least heard and best treasures of American music.
Imagine that a song composed a man, blinded by his own mother and completely racially unaccepted at the time, hurtles through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. We might not have respected him while he was alive, but just maybe this is a fitting tribute.
To a certain extent, they have taken advantage of their control over the postal service. Most letters and packages are xray-ed for content, and in times past, they have placed strict, moral-based restrictions on mailing pornography and allegedly subversive materials. I point you to Larry Flynt as well as the now redacted Alien and Sedition Act as two topical examples of where they have, in my opinion, overstepped their bounds.
Besides, in this day and age, there are plenty of alternatives to using the Postal Service to send and receive letters and packages.
I'm not sure I see how this is flamebait?
I'm no MS fan (I don't even use Windows at all anymore), but the guy makes a valid point. Citing an incompatibility with Linux shouldn't count as flamebait.
"I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext."
As much as random searches and seizures at airports (or anywhere) scare me, I'm willing to bet that just as accepting a driver license in most states forces you to sign away some search and seizure rights (for example, making it a criminal act to refuse a breathalyzer test), entering an airport probably gives consent to random search and seizure. I mean, they've been xray-ing and searching bags by hand for quite some time now.
Great, so I can hand my browsing and usage information over to a government agency DIRECTLY, instead of to a 'private' corporation who may or may not choose to turn my information over to te government.
Maybe we should nationalize TV, radio, newspapers and magazines too?
I mean, what good would it be for the government to have direct and unbridled control over not only our access to information, but also to the information itself? I'm sure they'd never take advantage of that situation.
The speedometer on my Jeep goes up to 100mph. Does that mean that if I get pulled over doing 100mph in a school zone that it's Chrysler's fault and not mine? Did Chrysler take measures to prevent me from speeding in a school zone?
Generally, I'm excited when anyone fights the maFIAA, but in this case, I hope she loses badly so she'll learn about pointing fingers.
I myself have to be a frequent email checker because some of my clients insist on using email even in cases where a phone call would be better (more likely for me to respond immediately when it rings, and more able to understand the nature of the issue without having to trade emails).
Email is a great way to drop a few ideas to someone quickly and in a pseudo form of writing. However, as it has become a disaster of spam, re:re:re:re:re:re: that thing subject lines, incoherent abuses of the language, and more often than not, a whipping boy for laziness (what, you didn't get the memo? I emailed it to you yesterday. There must be something going on with our email).
Worst of all, it really isn't that reliable for many people. I get tons of stuff in my spam box that should be in my inbox (spamassassin), and yet find all kinds of phoney stock tips and pharmaceutical offers in my inbox.
Face it, we raped, pillaged and killed email. Now I just wish we could bury it.
I know that not everyone has a permanent connection to the net everywhere they go, but what is the point of storing a local copy of Wikipedia?
The beauty of it is that it is online and always up-to-date (wrong, or less wrong).
Trying to capture it locally seems to me to be like trying to print The Internet. By the time it's done spooling, it's out of date.
If it's an academic project, that's really cool, but I don't see a practical point to it.