Posts by Sino

Sequoia attack dogs kill review into e-voting discrepancies

Paper Ballots, Oh yes the traditional way to rig an election

I am amused by those story writers, with the obligatory air of smugness, that state that the only way to "fair" elections is with the use of paper ballots. I love fairy tales.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury I need only to remind you of two relatively recent occurrences of paper ballot rigging to have you convict paper of crimes against logic.

First, I present the election of 2000. The Dade county paper ballots let to millions of dollars happily given to lawyers making specious arguments at several layers of the judiciary culminating in the Bush v. Gore decision in the first George W. Bush election. And it led to the creation of a a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists that fiercely and wantonly ignore facts to keep their ideas in circulation in some dark corner of the Internet.

Finally I present the election of 1960. The Daley Democratic party political machine in Chicago managed to have thousands of dead Irish democrats cast paper ballots (often several times) for John Kennedy propelling him into office.

Faced with this evidence, irrefutable as it is, you must convict paper of the crime and send it to the dustbin of history until the end of time.

Amazon pooh-poohs (ingenious) New York net tax plan

@Dean

I hate that government that concocts ways to steal money from me (income tax is "voluntary according to the IRS <although many who fail to volunteer spend a great deal of time in federal prisons> while telling me that I should be happy that my money is doing good works and helping the needy.

I do my helping by my choice through my church and do not have any desire to "help" through a faceless smarmy self righteous bureaucrat <leech is a better word>.

That is all. Now that I have that off of my chest, I feel so liberated!

Bush overrules judge in US navy-v-dolphins sonar case

@Michael Hoenig

Almost correct. The federal judiciary is appointed FOR LIFE and can only be removed by impeachment (witness Alcee Hastings - who is now a congressman (Democrat-Florida, 23d district) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcee_Hastings> .

U.S. Attorneys, however, hold what is considered a "political" office, and therefore they are considered to "serve at the pleasure of the President." At the beginning of a new presidential administration, it is traditional for all 93 U.S. Attorneys to submit a letter of resignation. - W.J. Clinton fired 80 early in his first term, G.W. Bush fired 8 in his 6th year in office.

Becta excludes Vista, Office - again

Yet another bureaucrat blunder

This ostrich-like notion that causes all bureaucracies to shun anything that is successful to give the unsuccessful "an opportunity to succeed" is another example of the nanny state running amok. I have yet to see any government agency of any nation providing the omniscience they believe they have. And the idea that bureaucrats in the capital have a clear understanding of events and requirements in the countryside is laughable. Although is is possible to imagine a student finding a job after learning basic computing skills with an obscure OS/application, imagining them as being productive in a short time and without significant retraining effort is beyond my imagination (perhaps my experiences and imagination are limited, but I do not think so)

I have used Office 2007 <on Vista and XP> since Beta1, love it, you could not pry it from me. It simply does everything better. I have shown it to several colleagues, they demanded an installation on their systems (we have an EA and licensing is not an issue). We are leaping from Office XP to Office 2007 in large numbers. I started with a pilot group of 50 users and within a month, I had 500 requests to join the pilot (we are now over 2000 pilot users). This occurred even with the proviso that, "the help-desk will not support you with this product". I get 1 call a week for Office and that is mostly help in finding a feature that users heard about but did not quickly find.

Those who have objected are the usual suspects - Luddites, over 30s, technophobes, holy warriors for "free" products and Linux fanboys. All of the younger technically competent workers demand to upgrade and are happy.

Of course, your mileage and experience could vary.