That's like saying Mark Foley's unusual interest in pages, and his party's subsequent coverup of it, hasn't a place in a rational discussion about the current state of US politics.
I got a chuckle when I read this, thanks:) I haven't seen Life and Debt but now I want to.
As I think you guessed, my intention in posting that was to make it clear that the free trade system itself is fundamentally simple. I wanted it to be known that confusing the process for other international issues only confuses things.
Of course, there is a lot of intrigue when countries cheat on their WTO obligations. And they all cheat. If a country favors its own goods over foreign counterparts, it is usually good for that country and bad for every other country. So as you may know, the idea is to cheat just enough on your treaty obligations to piss off rival nations, but not enough so that they could drag your ass before the Dispute Settlement Body, where arguments over who is selling what for what price and where all play out.
As far as book recommendations go, you can't do any better than this one. It is often required reading in International Law classes taught at law schools in the U.S., but is so readable as to be accessible to anyone.
Who hates free trade? Who said anything about that? Way to exercise those talking points.
Seriously? It's what the article is all about! Did you even read it?
FTA:
"Free trade" and "globalization" are the guises behind which class war is being conducted against the middle class by both political parties. Patrick J. Buchanan, a three-time contender for the presidential nomination, put it well when he wrote1 that NAFTA and the various so-called trade agreements were never trade deals...
Economists have failed to examine the incompatibility of offshoring with free trade....
And it goes on. It's not a very good article, so I can't blame you for choosing not to read it before you posted.
The problem with WTO and various free-trade agreements is that it's not free trade. The various "free-trade" agreements are often little more than licenses for large companies with massive resources to go into resource-rich areas, drive out the local businesses, exploit those resources, decimate the local economy, and leave. There is no "free trade," unless you mean that large international companies are free to do what they want.
I realize this is your opinion, but it's pretty obvious that you have confused free trade with the unfortunate result of a country being outcompeted in a particular market. No sweat, people attribute more to free trade than what's really involved all the time.
It's one thing to say that you're unhappy with how cheap, imported whatevers are putting the crunch on domestic whatever producers--driving them out of business and so on. That's actually the biggest problem with a free global marketplace, is that those who cannot compete are driven out of business, and WTO members are usually not allowed to cheat on their treaty obligations by favoring domestic producers. Their hands are tied. It is very much a sink or swim situation for domestic companies. I would call those businesses casualties of the free market, but I realize that is not a popular answer for people who are being forced out due to cheap imports.
When you go a step further and claim that free trade is imperialistic, where "large international companies go into resource-rich areas" you're demonstrating that you really don't know how free trade and the global economy works. There is no "going in"--no pillaging involved. It literally is as simple as removing government-created barriers to international trade that disfavor foreign goods over their domestic counterparts. That is all the WTO and GATT do. That is it. End of story.
In fact, what you're talking about is a totally different thing. I don't even know what to call it. Foreign investment? Political manipulation? Wealth imbalance? In any case, it is a separate problem that has no place in a rational discussion about free trade.
Tariffs are still used quite extensively, by the United States and many other nations. I mean, that's why we have GATT and the WTO...
All WTO/GATT does is eliminate the really sneaky stuff that nations try to pull that amount to subsidies that disfavor foreign goods. It's always good for the nation that cheats on its international treaty obligations, and bad for everybody else.
Ah, Slashdot. I find it so ironic that the same people who are for "free software" and "free information" are also against free trade.
The idea of a nation having a comparative advantage (if you're going to talk about globalization, you might as well use the lingo) in certain markets is what this all boils down to.
Let's say you're French. The French enjoy an enormous comparative advantage in producing fine wine. The climate is right, they have the wineries already in place, they are well-known as wine producers and so on. If you own a winery in France, or work at a winery in France, or ship French wines, or even just occasionally mash grapes with your feet, you've got it made it in the shade. Your goods will find plenty of willing buyers in the global marketplace.
But here's the problem. What if you live in France and don't want to have anything to do with the wine making business? You don't know anything about wine, grapes disgust you--whatever. In fact, what if you want to just design and make automobiles? Whoops! You will have a hard time competing against the vast hordes of foreign auto makers. Your French workers will require higher wages and better benefits than their foreign counterparts. Much of the steel you need has to be imported from Germany. Your engine blocks have to come from Japan, but only after they're assembled in Canada. You're really having a hard time keeping your costs down.
Your business is going to fail, and the French government will have little choice but to see your company fall by the wayside, or else pass laws to create subsidies that explicitly favor your goods over their foreign counterparts, which is prohibited by GATT and can only be done under very specific circumstances. The French could still tax foreign goods with tariffs, but even then those are highly regulated by international authorities. No, your auto business will soon be out of business.
Globalization's answer to that French auto maker is "well, you could always make wine" and its answer to the unemployed people who worked for that auto maker is "well that's a shame, go work at a winery." Now that's pretty harsh. How do you respond to something like that? You either go work at a winery or you go riot in the streets. When companies and egghead economists alike are so gung-ho about pushing globalization, the human element seems to get lost in the shuffle.
The best argument for globalization has always been "okay then, suggest a better way." It's impossible because the alternative to the free trade system is pretty horrible: Entire industries that create goods with no useful purpose that cannot be sold overseas; a limited selection of goods for consumers; huge increases in the costs of goods for consumers due to reduced competition, and so on. If the WTO allowed for any more artificial barriers to free trade than tariffs, that is exactly what would happen. And even then, eventually getting rid of tariffs anyway, and removing the last barrier to free trade is the stated goal of WTO/GATT.
Those who embrace the trendy new rhetoric that decries our current free trade system either know nothing about it or refuse to acknowledge how much we truly benefit from it. It is far easier, I suppose, to shill the globalization issue to promote another political motive. Don't be used.
Well now I admit I'm confused by your response. My first answer to you was that yes, discrepancies in polling locations, random samplings, etc.--every significant thing that could skew the results--were all responsibly incorporated in the analysis--that standard deviations were mathematically assigned and accounted for, and so on, and oh here's a link so that you can see that for yourself. And you replied by pointing out that yes, the analysis does in fact incorporate those factors...which is what I had said initially.
The thrust of your argument seems to be that because an analysis of exit poll data can't help but to incorporate the assumption that poll data is gathered randomly, the poll data and therefore the analysis is invalid? That seems like pedestrian thinking, don't you agree?
Your other point seems to be that there are other, insignificant random factors that are not accounted for in the number crunching, and should be, but you haven't pointed out what you think those might be. Again I'm confused. Are you arguing against the completeness of the analysis, or against poll analysis in general because they incorporate and account for random elements, even though those elements are accounted for as responsibly as possible?
Tell me if I've mischaracterized your position on anything.
P.S. I'm not a mathematician, either, just a lawyer, which is why I tend to adopt Kennedy's approach and appeal to more knowledgeable authorities in order to promote an argument. It's Kennedy's language that I'm more concerned about, but that doesn't mean that I am not willing to hear any reasoned arguments against the procedure used to analyze poll data that he cites to in his first article.
But with Diebold style machines, how can anyone ever prove otherwise? With no paper trail, this issue is going to come up in every single election. The loser will claim that the election was stolen, and there will be no way for anyone to prove that it didn't happen.
Bingo. It's the lack of a verifiable paper trail that's the strongest argument against the use of the Diebold machines. Discussions about how the machines can be compromised appeal to the geek in all of us, but also serve to confuse the issue (paper ballot boxes can be compromised too, just in far more low-tech and uninteresting ways).
Democrats and Republicans alike need to be specific enough in their opposition to the Diebold machines and say something like "It's not that we are against electronic voting. It is that electronic voting in its current form, using these machines that offer no way of substantiating and verifying votes, offer complications and uncertainty when they were supposed to offer simplicity." I'm no speech writer, just a lawyer, so that language needs to be de-stilted and made more readable, but you understand what I"m saying. The attack against Diebold has to be just against Diebold and just on this one issue. If we solve the verifiable paper trail problem, then all of the other Diebold-related issues (machine insecurity, Diebold company biases, etc.) fall by the wayside because at least we will finally have a way of checking for impropriety.
Holy cow. You made some huge assumptions about what you think was assumed when the exit poll analysis was conducted. Members of The National Election Archive Project, the non-partisan watchdog group to whom the the one in 3 billion figure can be attributed, will be the first to tell you that every single factor you just described made its way into their analysis of the polling data. Yes, seriously.
If I were a ruder Slashdot poster, I would have responded with something like "Who the fuck are you? The woman who wrote the white paper on this graduated Cum Laude from the University of Utah with a master's in mathematics and has been analyzing poll data for 10 years..." and so on, but rather than resort to an ad hominem attack, I'll just assume that you replied without taking the time to check the sources that describe in vivid detail how the analysis was performed. Here is a link to the pdf that describes the process that was used. I know reading an 18 page document is not half as easy as just writing a paragraph where you just make random, uneducated guesses about what it contains, but you might want to give it a shot.
In any case, though, the CNN exit poll data from 2004 should make the case for a Bush win, if you go by exit poll data alone.
No, that's just not true. The CNN data doesn't make a case for anything except the danger of glossing over exit poll discrepancies by painting the electorate in overly broad strokes. I followed the link that you provided to the CNN polls, and it took me about 10 seconds to see that it's just one exit poll that CNN conducted, and is in no way representative of how people voted in the key precincts of the key battleground states, which is what the 2004 election came down to.
You see, even if we're supposed to believe that the CNN numbers are in some way indicative of how the nation voted in the aggregate, what good does aggregated data do us? What good does it do to the discussion of vote fraud? We don't just add up all the votes from all the precincts and then go with whoever has the most (popular vote vs. electoral college 2000 election lesson), and similarly we don't do the same thing with polling data.
What you need to do is examine polling data from individual precincts, which do show discrepancies between the polling data and voting results. If you don't feel so inclined, then just read Kennedy's first article linked to in the post, you will see that there were huge discrepancies between the poll data and the results. And yes, the unbiased statisticians who examined both the polling process and data accounted for every single one of the factors you listed. In fact, their response to most of the bullet points you just listed could be summed up in the following quote from the article:
In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''
These aren't opinions, or "past experiences that they had." It's an argument that Kennedy makes based on cold, hard data. Just please read the article. I know it's Slashdot, where personal anecdotes are considered proof positive refutations to statistical improbabilities (one in 3 billion in the worst of the Ohio districts), but please read it if you haven't already.
Electronic voting removes what semblance of vote verifiability existed with paper votes (real recounts) while enabling easy, broad tampering.
This is the perfect answer to the "paper voting can be tampered with anyway" point. The current political landscape is a testbed for unfounded moral equivalency. A lie about a blowjob is not the same as a lie about a war, and in the same vein, paper ballot box stuffing is not the same as electronic vote tampering. The latter has far more potential to improperly influence important elections and to undermine the democratic process than its paper counterpart ever did. If you believe at all in the ability of computer technology to make most other tasks simpler and easier, then you have to at least consider the possibility that fixing elections has just become simpler and easier with the advent of the Diebold machines.
Maybe there's evidence this time? Something that wasn't there every other election.
Exactly. In the 2004 Presidential election, exit poll numbers in key battleground states varied drastically from the actual results. That's extremely suspicious because people often have no reason to lie to unbiased pollsters about who they voted for. According to several statistical experts (who are far more knowledgeable about stats than the average Slashdot poster, and 7 out of 10 people would agree...) the discrepancies were statistically impossible. It was a big, red, flag that something was amiss in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and several other states. Read this statement from Kennedy's first article:
According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40)
If you have a rational, scientific mind, that's about as conclusive as it gets. It's certainly enough to pique the interest of people like Robert F. Kennedy, who then ask questions like "Was the last election fixed?" and "Will the next one be?" So Kennedy digs around and does some good old-fashioned investigative reporting, he follows the money trail, and lo and behold it leads to disgraced Republican influence peddler Jack Abramoff and several sleazy advocacy groups!
In a clever twist, HAVA effectively pressures every precinct to provide at least one voting device that has no paper trail - supposedly so that vision-impaired citizens can vote in secrecy. The provision was backed by two little-known advocacy groups: the National Federation of the Blind, which accepted $1 million from Diebold to build a new research institute, and the American Association of People with Disabilities, which pocketed at least $26,000 from voting-machine companies.
For those who don't know how this kind of campaigning works, what you do is create a group with a bullshit name like "Citizens for Truth and Honesty in Government". The name sounds too good to be true. I mean truth...honesty? Who isn't for that stuff? Then the group you just formed and paid turns around and supports your candidacy, your issue, or whatever
Diebold machines were rammed down our collective throat under shaky pretenses and by players who couldn't possibly be more politically biased. Kennedy wants to spread the word.
Good point. These two probably aren't nearly as knowledgeable as they claim. As pointed out in another post, it's quite possible that the exploit that they demonstrated was already fixed in a nightly branch build. So that would be a pretty slimy thing to do--to take advantage of the open source concept by consulting recent Firefox patches to see what has already been addressed, and then go back and claim the vulnerability as your own, with your proof of concept being that it affects binary-only releases that of course don't have the new code yet.
If you had to pick between having a last name of "Spiegelmock" or "Wbeelsoi", which one would you go with? I'd have to pick Wbeelsoi, because it would be funny to watch most native English speakers trip over that "W+b" letter combination.
Elderly voters in Palm Beach County would not have accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan, the United States would have sound fiscal policies, and there would now be no war in Iraq. Wait, what was the question?
used to be that Armstrong was experiencing stage fright while the moon landing was being faked, and flubbed the line as a result. I kid you not. Now that some evidence of the letter 'a' has been found in this recording, it seems to cast some doubt on the Diamonds are Forever version of history. Maybe...just...maybe...Armstrong set foot on the moon after all? Nah, too convenient.;)
Trying to turn Apple into Dell or Dell into Apple is a stupid idea: We're better as we are now because both of them cater to different needs. A combination would be just mediocre and uninteresting.
What, you mean like Linspire? (ooo cheap shot!)
Seriously, we are in agreement here. We have read on Slashdot in the past about how Debian has reached a "change or die" crossroads. I don't pretend to have the answer to the Debian project's financial and ideological crisis, but it will be interesting to see what changes they make in the future, if any. The maintainers have a well-known track record of strictly adhering to the overriding philosophy of the distribution no matter the issue--absolutely you're right about that. My point is simply that it's a philosophy that has harmed Debian as well as its users.
There's just one problem that Debian has never addressed (and of course as we said was never designed to address): Most people don't choose their operating system to begin with, and those that do (./ posters...) probably aren't basing their decision on how licensing issues are handled. This bickering over a trademark gotcha that most other distros have been practical enough to just accept underscores how out of touch the Debian project maintainers are with the survival needs of the Debian project in addition to the needs of the people who use their software.
Don't fall for the bait, it's just the same old stock "If you don't like it, go somewhere else!" answer that people give whenever a particular Linux distro is criticized. The other one usually goes something like "Well [insert distribution name] is free and you didn't pay anything for it, so that means you have no right to criticize it." Again, it's just a ridiculous claim.
This has nothing at all to do with my own personal choice of distributions. (note: If you really are interested--and I can't imagine why you actually would be--I've been a Gentoo user for years and my experience with Linux dates back to approximately 10 years before that, spanning several different distros. ) Just as an aside, do you see the irony of telling users to just pack it up and go somewhere else if they have a problem with how they, as users, are treated?
No, I was merely pointing out how the Debian project prioritizes internal, semantic and ultimately meaningless debates over its own users. The Debian project puts ideals and arguments over them ahead of the people who just want to use the software. The project's hardline maintainers would probably even tell you that themselves, although they certainly wouldn't use those words. It's a philosophy, to be sure, but making the people secondary to a vague, confused notion of what you think is best for them can hurt a project. And Debian really is hurting.
The most popular distro around right now uses almost exactly the same package management system, etc script organization and so on (aka distro "guts") as Debian and is prospering while Debian falters. What's different? A user-first philosophy.
This poster made a great point, although I doubt the post will be modded up.
Don't bother trying to explain the difference, because people will just confuse the two anyway. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go patent my new company logo.
Thank you for helping to clear that up. I followed a link in another post where the essence of the argument over the issue was supposedly located, and it ended up being page after unreadable page of typical Debian infighting.
Debian's problem has always been that its handlers place users and the usability of their distribution far below very petty internal arguments intended to frame the distro as some sort of legal pioneer (Debian Linux vs. Debian GNU/Linux "controversy" anyone?). It's a huge turnoff to the non-zealots among us, and certainly makes for bad PR.
Slashdot Mirror
Peter Gibbons: I can't believe what a bunch of nerds we are. We're looking up "money laundering" in the dictionary.
Yeop.
I got a chuckle when I read this, thanks
As I think you guessed, my intention in posting that was to make it clear that the free trade system itself is fundamentally simple. I wanted it to be known that confusing the process for other international issues only confuses things.
Of course, there is a lot of intrigue when countries cheat on their WTO obligations. And they all cheat. If a country favors its own goods over foreign counterparts, it is usually good for that country and bad for every other country. So as you may know, the idea is to cheat just enough on your treaty obligations to piss off rival nations, but not enough so that they could drag your ass before the Dispute Settlement Body, where arguments over who is selling what for what price and where all play out.
As far as book recommendations go, you can't do any better than this one. It is often required reading in International Law classes taught at law schools in the U.S., but is so readable as to be accessible to anyone.
Seriously? It's what the article is all about! Did you even read it?
FTA:
And it goes on. It's not a very good article, so I can't blame you for choosing not to read it before you posted.
I realize this is your opinion, but it's pretty obvious that you have confused free trade with the unfortunate result of a country being outcompeted in a particular market. No sweat, people attribute more to free trade than what's really involved all the time.
It's one thing to say that you're unhappy with how cheap, imported whatevers are putting the crunch on domestic whatever producers--driving them out of business and so on. That's actually the biggest problem with a free global marketplace, is that those who cannot compete are driven out of business, and WTO members are usually not allowed to cheat on their treaty obligations by favoring domestic producers. Their hands are tied. It is very much a sink or swim situation for domestic companies. I would call those businesses casualties of the free market, but I realize that is not a popular answer for people who are being forced out due to cheap imports.
When you go a step further and claim that free trade is imperialistic, where "large international companies go into resource-rich areas" you're demonstrating that you really don't know how free trade and the global economy works. There is no "going in"--no pillaging involved. It literally is as simple as removing government-created barriers to international trade that disfavor foreign goods over their domestic counterparts. That is all the WTO and GATT do. That is it. End of story.
In fact, what you're talking about is a totally different thing. I don't even know what to call it. Foreign investment? Political manipulation? Wealth imbalance? In any case, it is a separate problem that has no place in a rational discussion about free trade.
Tariffs are still used quite extensively, by the United States and many other nations. I mean, that's why we have GATT and the WTO...
All WTO/GATT does is eliminate the really sneaky stuff that nations try to pull that amount to subsidies that disfavor foreign goods. It's always good for the nation that cheats on its international treaty obligations, and bad for everybody else.
Ah, Slashdot. I find it so ironic that the same people who are for "free software" and "free information" are also against free trade.
The idea of a nation having a comparative advantage (if you're going to talk about globalization, you might as well use the lingo) in certain markets is what this all boils down to.
Let's say you're French. The French enjoy an enormous comparative advantage in producing fine wine. The climate is right, they have the wineries already in place, they are well-known as wine producers and so on. If you own a winery in France, or work at a winery in France, or ship French wines, or even just occasionally mash grapes with your feet, you've got it made it in the shade. Your goods will find plenty of willing buyers in the global marketplace.
But here's the problem. What if you live in France and don't want to have anything to do with the wine making business? You don't know anything about wine, grapes disgust you--whatever. In fact, what if you want to just design and make automobiles? Whoops! You will have a hard time competing against the vast hordes of foreign auto makers. Your French workers will require higher wages and better benefits than their foreign counterparts. Much of the steel you need has to be imported from Germany. Your engine blocks have to come from Japan, but only after they're assembled in Canada. You're really having a hard time keeping your costs down.
Your business is going to fail, and the French government will have little choice but to see your company fall by the wayside, or else pass laws to create subsidies that explicitly favor your goods over their foreign counterparts, which is prohibited by GATT and can only be done under very specific circumstances. The French could still tax foreign goods with tariffs, but even then those are highly regulated by international authorities. No, your auto business will soon be out of business.
Globalization's answer to that French auto maker is "well, you could always make wine" and its answer to the unemployed people who worked for that auto maker is "well that's a shame, go work at a winery." Now that's pretty harsh. How do you respond to something like that? You either go work at a winery or you go riot in the streets. When companies and egghead economists alike are so gung-ho about pushing globalization, the human element seems to get lost in the shuffle.
The best argument for globalization has always been "okay then, suggest a better way." It's impossible because the alternative to the free trade system is pretty horrible: Entire industries that create goods with no useful purpose that cannot be sold overseas; a limited selection of goods for consumers; huge increases in the costs of goods for consumers due to reduced competition, and so on. If the WTO allowed for any more artificial barriers to free trade than tariffs, that is exactly what would happen. And even then, eventually getting rid of tariffs anyway, and removing the last barrier to free trade is the stated goal of WTO/GATT.
Those who embrace the trendy new rhetoric that decries our current free trade system either know nothing about it or refuse to acknowledge how much we truly benefit from it. It is far easier, I suppose, to shill the globalization issue to promote another political motive. Don't be used.
Well now I admit I'm confused by your response. My first answer to you was that yes, discrepancies in polling locations, random samplings, etc.--every significant thing that could skew the results--were all responsibly incorporated in the analysis--that standard deviations were mathematically assigned and accounted for, and so on, and oh here's a link so that you can see that for yourself. And you replied by pointing out that yes, the analysis does in fact incorporate those factors...which is what I had said initially.
The thrust of your argument seems to be that because an analysis of exit poll data can't help but to incorporate the assumption that poll data is gathered randomly, the poll data and therefore the analysis is invalid? That seems like pedestrian thinking, don't you agree?
Your other point seems to be that there are other, insignificant random factors that are not accounted for in the number crunching, and should be, but you haven't pointed out what you think those might be. Again I'm confused. Are you arguing against the completeness of the analysis, or against poll analysis in general because they incorporate and account for random elements, even though those elements are accounted for as responsibly as possible?
Tell me if I've mischaracterized your position on anything.
P.S. I'm not a mathematician, either, just a lawyer, which is why I tend to adopt Kennedy's approach and appeal to more knowledgeable authorities in order to promote an argument. It's Kennedy's language that I'm more concerned about, but that doesn't mean that I am not willing to hear any reasoned arguments against the procedure used to analyze poll data that he cites to in his first article.
By the way, sneakily troll modding my parent post down and modding yourself up rather than discussing the issue makes me think much less of you.
Bingo. It's the lack of a verifiable paper trail that's the strongest argument against the use of the Diebold machines. Discussions about how the machines can be compromised appeal to the geek in all of us, but also serve to confuse the issue (paper ballot boxes can be compromised too, just in far more low-tech and uninteresting ways).
Democrats and Republicans alike need to be specific enough in their opposition to the Diebold machines and say something like "It's not that we are against electronic voting. It is that electronic voting in its current form, using these machines that offer no way of substantiating and verifying votes, offer complications and uncertainty when they were supposed to offer simplicity." I'm no speech writer, just a lawyer, so that language needs to be de-stilted and made more readable, but you understand what I"m saying. The attack against Diebold has to be just against Diebold and just on this one issue. If we solve the verifiable paper trail problem, then all of the other Diebold-related issues (machine insecurity, Diebold company biases, etc.) fall by the wayside because at least we will finally have a way of checking for impropriety.
Holy cow. You made some huge assumptions about what you think was assumed when the exit poll analysis was conducted. Members of The National Election Archive Project, the non-partisan watchdog group to whom the the one in 3 billion figure can be attributed, will be the first to tell you that every single factor you just described made its way into their analysis of the polling data. Yes, seriously.
If I were a ruder Slashdot poster, I would have responded with something like "Who the fuck are you? The woman who wrote the white paper on this graduated Cum Laude from the University of Utah with a master's in mathematics and has been analyzing poll data for 10 years..." and so on, but rather than resort to an ad hominem attack, I'll just assume that you replied without taking the time to check the sources that describe in vivid detail how the analysis was performed. Here is a link to the pdf that describes the process that was used. I know reading an 18 page document is not half as easy as just writing a paragraph where you just make random, uneducated guesses about what it contains, but you might want to give it a shot.
No, that's just not true. The CNN data doesn't make a case for anything except the danger of glossing over exit poll discrepancies by painting the electorate in overly broad strokes. I followed the link that you provided to the CNN polls, and it took me about 10 seconds to see that it's just one exit poll that CNN conducted, and is in no way representative of how people voted in the key precincts of the key battleground states, which is what the 2004 election came down to.
You see, even if we're supposed to believe that the CNN numbers are in some way indicative of how the nation voted in the aggregate, what good does aggregated data do us? What good does it do to the discussion of vote fraud? We don't just add up all the votes from all the precincts and then go with whoever has the most (popular vote vs. electoral college 2000 election lesson), and similarly we don't do the same thing with polling data.
What you need to do is examine polling data from individual precincts, which do show discrepancies between the polling data and voting results. If you don't feel so inclined, then just read Kennedy's first article linked to in the post, you will see that there were huge discrepancies between the poll data and the results. And yes, the unbiased statisticians who examined both the polling process and data accounted for every single one of the factors you listed. In fact, their response to most of the bullet points you just listed could be summed up in the following quote from the article:
In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''
These aren't opinions, or "past experiences that they had." It's an argument that Kennedy makes based on cold, hard data. Just please read the article. I know it's Slashdot, where personal anecdotes are considered proof positive refutations to statistical improbabilities (one in 3 billion in the worst of the Ohio districts), but please read it if you haven't already.
This is the perfect answer to the "paper voting can be tampered with anyway" point. The current political landscape is a testbed for unfounded moral equivalency. A lie about a blowjob is not the same as a lie about a war, and in the same vein, paper ballot box stuffing is not the same as electronic vote tampering. The latter has far more potential to improperly influence important elections and to undermine the democratic process than its paper counterpart ever did. If you believe at all in the ability of computer technology to make most other tasks simpler and easier, then you have to at least consider the possibility that fixing elections has just become simpler and easier with the advent of the Diebold machines.
Exactly. In the 2004 Presidential election, exit poll numbers in key battleground states varied drastically from the actual results. That's extremely suspicious because people often have no reason to lie to unbiased pollsters about who they voted for. According to several statistical experts (who are far more knowledgeable about stats than the average Slashdot poster, and 7 out of 10 people would agree...) the discrepancies were statistically impossible. It was a big, red, flag that something was amiss in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and several other states. Read this statement from Kennedy's first article:
If you have a rational, scientific mind, that's about as conclusive as it gets. It's certainly enough to pique the interest of people like Robert F. Kennedy, who then ask questions like "Was the last election fixed?" and "Will the next one be?" So Kennedy digs around and does some good old-fashioned investigative reporting, he follows the money trail, and lo and behold it leads to disgraced Republican influence peddler Jack Abramoff and several sleazy advocacy groups!
Good point. These two probably aren't nearly as knowledgeable as they claim. As pointed out in another post, it's quite possible that the exploit that they demonstrated was already fixed in a nightly branch build. So that would be a pretty slimy thing to do--to take advantage of the open source concept by consulting recent Firefox patches to see what has already been addressed, and then go back and claim the vulnerability as your own, with your proof of concept being that it affects binary-only releases that of course don't have the new code yet.
(sarcasm) Yes, our only hope is that Debian developers can patch the hole in time! (end sarcasm)
If you had to pick between having a last name of "Spiegelmock" or "Wbeelsoi", which one would you go with? I'd have to pick Wbeelsoi, because it would be funny to watch most native English speakers trip over that "W+b" letter combination.
Elderly voters in Palm Beach County would not have accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan, the United States would have sound fiscal policies, and there would now be no war in Iraq. Wait, what was the question?
You mean like one of these?
used to be that Armstrong was experiencing stage fright while the moon landing was being faked, and flubbed the line as a result. I kid you not. Now that some evidence of the letter 'a' has been found in this recording, it seems to cast some doubt on the Diamonds are Forever version of history. Maybe...just...maybe...Armstrong set foot on the moon after all? Nah, too convenient. ;)
What, you mean like Linspire? (ooo cheap shot!)
Seriously, we are in agreement here. We have read on Slashdot in the past about how Debian has reached a "change or die" crossroads. I don't pretend to have the answer to the Debian project's financial and ideological crisis, but it will be interesting to see what changes they make in the future, if any. The maintainers have a well-known track record of strictly adhering to the overriding philosophy of the distribution no matter the issue--absolutely you're right about that. My point is simply that it's a philosophy that has harmed Debian as well as its users.
There's just one problem that Debian has never addressed (and of course as we said was never designed to address): Most people don't choose their operating system to begin with, and those that do (./ posters...) probably aren't basing their decision on how licensing issues are handled. This bickering over a trademark gotcha that most other distros have been practical enough to just accept underscores how out of touch the Debian project maintainers are with the survival needs of the Debian project in addition to the needs of the people who use their software.
Don't fall for the bait, it's just the same old stock "If you don't like it, go somewhere else!" answer that people give whenever a particular Linux distro is criticized. The other one usually goes something like "Well [insert distribution name] is free and you didn't pay anything for it, so that means you have no right to criticize it." Again, it's just a ridiculous claim.
This has nothing at all to do with my own personal choice of distributions. (note: If you really are interested--and I can't imagine why you actually would be--I've been a Gentoo user for years and my experience with Linux dates back to approximately 10 years before that, spanning several different distros. ) Just as an aside, do you see the irony of telling users to just pack it up and go somewhere else if they have a problem with how they, as users, are treated?
No, I was merely pointing out how the Debian project prioritizes internal, semantic and ultimately meaningless debates over its own users. The Debian project puts ideals and arguments over them ahead of the people who just want to use the software. The project's hardline maintainers would probably even tell you that themselves, although they certainly wouldn't use those words. It's a philosophy, to be sure, but making the people secondary to a vague, confused notion of what you think is best for them can hurt a project. And Debian really is hurting.
The most popular distro around right now uses almost exactly the same package management system, etc script organization and so on (aka distro "guts") as Debian and is prospering while Debian falters. What's different? A user-first philosophy.
This poster made a great point, although I doubt the post will be modded up.
Don't bother trying to explain the difference, because people will just confuse the two anyway. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go patent my new company logo.
Thank you for helping to clear that up. I followed a link in another post where the essence of the argument over the issue was supposedly located, and it ended up being page after unreadable page of typical Debian infighting.
Debian's problem has always been that its handlers place users and the usability of their distribution far below very petty internal arguments intended to frame the distro as some sort of legal pioneer (Debian Linux vs. Debian GNU/Linux "controversy" anyone?). It's a huge turnoff to the non-zealots among us, and certainly makes for bad PR.
or if the memo was signed in Georgia.
Perhaps this will help spark more interest in anonymous web browsing.