Linked by Howard Fosdick on Thu 8th Nov 2012 20:12 UTC
In the United States, state and local authorities are in charge of
voting and the country uses more than a half dozen different voting technologies.
As a result, the country can't guarantee that it accurately counts national votes
in a timely fashion. This article discusses the problem and potential solutions to the U.S. voting dilemma.
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Member since:2007-04-18
"The U.S. doesn't even have a national ID.
And we damn sure don't need one. That's a giant step towards an oppressive government, "
Plenty of European and non-European countries have national ID systems and they don't seem repressive at all. If I were you, I'd worry more about e.g. the armed drones already flying over your heads while peeking inside your homes with IR cameras.
and it's already oppressive enough as it is.
The US government isn't oppressive. It's just wildly corrupt.
And besides, each one of us already has a nationally assigned ID card: Our social security card. The huge amount of fraud and misuse surrounding that particular identifier alone should be enough to tell the people that we don't need yet another layer of redundant ID.
You fail to appreciate the positive sides of having a way to identify citizens in some official manner - it makes interaction with authorities and certain businesses (e.g. banks) a lot simpler. To abolish all mechanisms for official identification would significantly complicate these routine interactions.
Please note that I am not trying to present a position here that is completely contrary to yours - what you said certainly has some merit. I just think a more nuanced approach is necessary. IMHO statements like "We don't need no stinkin' ID!" fail to capture the complexity of real life.
Member since:2005-06-29
Well, my point was more that we don't need it because it's already there. Our government is complicated enough without yet another unnecessary burden on the citizens. That's what I meant by oppressive, which is why I chose that particular word rather than repressive. They actually have different meanings though the former is often misused to convey the latter.
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2005-07-06
>The U.S. doesn't even have a national ID.
And we damn sure don't need one. That's a giant step towards an oppressive government [...]
And besides, each one of us already has a nationally assigned ID card: Our social security card. The huge amount of fraud and misuse surrounding that particular identifier alone should be enough to tell the people that we don't need yet another layer of redundant ID.
And we damn sure don't need one. That's a giant step towards an oppressive government [...]
And besides, each one of us already has a nationally assigned ID card: Our social security card. The huge amount of fraud and misuse surrounding that particular identifier alone should be enough to tell the people that we don't need yet another layer of redundant ID.
In a properly set up national ID card, there's really barely any fraud, that's the whole point of it; the info can be quickly verified when that matters.
And I'm not sure if there's any correlation between existence of national ID in a given place, and how oppressive given government is; many past and present oppressors don't really need national ID.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2005-06-29
And we damn sure don't need one. That's a giant step towards an oppressive government, and it's already oppressive enough as it is.
And besides, each one of us already has a nationally assigned ID card: Our social security card. The huge amount of fraud and misuse surrounding that particular identifier alone should be enough to tell the people that we don't need yet another layer of redundant ID.