Thread: Vote!

  1. #16
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elkvis View Post
    they vote for the best looking candidate.
    If you're right, I predict Romney winning, because he has a chin like Golden Age Superman.

  2. #17
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    I voted a schizophrenic ticket -- one Democrat, two Libertarians, and two Pacific Greens. Figure that one out :P
    Code:
    //try
    //{
    	if (a) do { f( b); } while(1);
    	else   do { f(!b); } while(1);
    //}

  3. #18
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    Democracy: It's your vote that counts.
    Feudalism: It's your count that votes!
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
    If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.

  4. #19
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by phantomotap View Post
    We--the USA--have no business setting policy for other places regardless of the perceived "wealth" of the idea.

    *shrug*

    I guess I'd say that other places should have the right to make their own terrible policies.

    Soma
    I'm not sure if I correctly followed your reasoning, so correct me if it's not in sync with what you replied.
    The issue isn't whether USA, or any other country for that matter, has a given right to make their own bad policies. That's old style.

    If we are living in a globalized world, your policies may affect my lifestyle and at that point I feel I want to intervene. For sure we aren't talking about on how you decide your health system will be. But policies that affect the liberalization of financial markets, or that affect your increasing national debt that put at jeopardy more than your corner of the world.

    On another account the idea that any country has the right to make their own terrible policies is, it too, old and rather demagogic. No one in the western world will think twice about intervening politically and with force if any country with whom they have a strong commercial link, decides to turn rogue. USA has had always a strong nationalistic mentality. However the world is today more globalized than what you would wish for if you keep wanting to defend anyone has the right to decide what they should do in their own homes.

    My neighbor likes to play music loud all day long. You bet I'm gonna do something about it.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  5. #20

  6. #21
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    I was not able to vote this time due to my failure of getting all my ducks in a row after my move. Ya know all the moving stuff you do like new plates, new license, blah blah blah. A few days ago my wife found my voter transfer information that was sent to us many months ago. She forgot to give it to me to fill out. Because I enjoy a happy home and good food at night when I come home from work I did not make an issue of it.

    All this election proved is that none of us knows what we want. There is no clear direction when the popular vote is split down the middle. The public can't decide what they want and the politicians haven't known what they want for the last decade or so. I have not felt this way in some time but I feel that regardless of which party is in control of the country we have a long hard road ahead of us.

    So before the election we had:
    • A lame duck President due to the split in Congress
    • A split Republican controlled House
    • A split Democratic controlled Senate


    And after the election we have:
    • A lame duck President due to the split in Congress
    • A split Republican controlled House
    • A split Democratic controlled Senate


    Can someone tell me what we changed here?
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 11-07-2012 at 09:08 PM.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by VirtualAce View Post
    Can someone tell me what we changed here?
    Absolutely nothing. Regardless of who won:

    - America would continue to play a real-life version of Risk (uh, I mean, "protecting our freedom")

    - The internet would continue to slide into the hands of corporations, and be slowly stripped of the freedoms it once enjoyed

    - The citizens would also continue to slide into the hands of corporations, and be slowly stripped of the freedoms they once enjoyed

    - The environment will continue to be raped in the pursuit of profit

    - etcetera, etcetera

  8. #23
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by VirtualAce View Post
    The public can't decide what they want and the politicians haven't known what they want for the last decade or so. I have not felt this way in some time but I feel that regardless of which party is in control of the country we have a long hard road ahead of us.
    Believe it or not, USA is generally a breath of fresh air to any European. The way you feel over there, you'd hate it in Europe. As hard as this may be to imagine at this point, your country has a whole lot more to hope for than the European lifeless corpse. Want to talk about no hope in the future?...

    Can someone tell me what we changed here?
    Obama definitely agrees nothing changed in its victory speech. Might as well have given the seat to Romney and spare everyone his whining. He goes around and says that without Republicans help he can't rule the country. We all know how that goes. So we can expect another 4 years of doing nothing.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 11-07-2012 at 10:20 PM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  9. #24
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    With the "ideas" in our political discourse, four years of doing nothing sounds freaking excellent to me. I talked to my dad and he was literally like, "O bummer got reelected. who cares, both sides are completely worthless criminals, etc." We're so happy right now.

  10. #25
    Unregistered User Yarin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by whiteflags View Post
    With the "ideas" in our political discourse, four years of doing nothing sounds freaking excellent to me. I talked to my dad and he was literally like, "O bummer got reelected. who cares, both sides are completely worthless criminals, etc." We're so happy right now.
    Indeed. It's a real shame that the other parties got so few votes.

  11. #26
    SAMARAS std10093's Avatar
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    Good point.What about voting fot another party than the two majors ones?You should discuss that with your dad and every child (like me) should also discuss it with mam,dad etc...

    I mean i hear everybody say,politicians are bad,they only interested in personal profit ,even though this may be different from the country's profits, etc.
    But you vote for them...The people votes for them!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Vote is the most strong weapon of people and they seem to underestimate it and do not even go to vote (!!!)
    I understand that the whole scene is very complex , but sitting only in front of your screen and say "Oh politicians are bad....." and do not go to vote does not going to make things better .
    I think Kennedy said,
    don't ask what your country said for you,
    ask what you can do for your country!
    which is a phrase worth thinking of it.

    PS - Because i am Greek and we invented all these that many countries rely on (liberty,vote and other perfect political concepts) i feel deeply disappointed with the fact that world leaders like the ones of USA for example present these concepts not as they were stated back in ancient Greece, in order to gain power...I mean these concepts were not designed for large cities ,take a second and think about it

    PS2 - Moreover, it is pretty obvious that in Greece our politicians make USA's politicians look smart ( )

    PS3 - Yes, i know that you want to argue with many fields of my post.And i will argue back and so on...It is a very complex issue and i rather not analyze it in a forum.(But then why do you post?Because i had to give just some ideas.Judge them.If you agree ,make them yours, if not reject them.

  12. #27
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    The biggest issue facing America and possibly the world is the financial crisis looming in the USA. Before the stocks fell a few years ago I would have never estimated that as the US goes economically so goes the world. In fact I would consider that highly arrogant. However I was proven wrong when the stocks fell drastically and yet today I still struggle with this notion. I think I underestimated how much our economics affect the world for good and for bad. What really blows my mind is that none of the politicians seem to have an answer for bringing in more than you spend. It is a simple economic concept yet we have failed at it for the last 50 years or so. Eventually someone is going to have to pay for all of this (IE: my daughter's generation or her children's generation). We cannot keep spending what we are and make it much longer yet no one will budge and some even want to make government bigger. I mean regardless of what party you identify with...you cannot ignore mathematics. Mathematics could care less about what we believe or what we think we deserve...in the end it comes down to hard cold numbers and if we don't find a way to balance them we are all in for a very rude awakening.

    I am interested to hear what those from other countries think about what would happen in their country if the US economy collapsed? Would it affect you that much or would your companies and country find other investments to shore up your own economy? I know what it would do here but I still do not have an understanding of just how much the US economy affects the world.

    The time for party bickering and the same old party pet peeves has long since passed. I feel it will take a shrewd businessman who could care less about getting re-elected to turn this around. That in itself is a bit scary because even I find myself less worried about who the person is, what they do in their free time, what they believe, etc...and more about what knowledge do they bring to the table to fix this mess. I would have voted for Donald Trump or heck if old Perot through his hat in I woulda voted for him (providing I could have). That might sound crazy but I think it is going to take someone who has little political prowess but great business acumen to get us back on track.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 11-09-2012 at 07:21 PM.

  13. #28
    SAMARAS std10093's Avatar
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    Didn't it collapse some years ago?Before the crisis was airing to Europe.Or you might mean that after that ,that it got better what will happen if it collapses.

    The key idea for me to answer your question, is that globalization is getting more and more "true" in our planet.This leads to many countries to be more or less related(somehow) to the others.Of course in these relationship, every country does not have the same power and influence as the other.It is like a directed graph,where vertices are the countries and edges are the relations link.I think it is also a weighted one ,where the weights represent how much influence country u has to country v.My country has for sure a link to the USA.And the weight of this edge is a big number for sure.Maybe there is an edge from my country to USA,but of course with small weight.But notice that two edges are not the same.The one edge from US to my country is controlled totally by US and the other edge is again totally controlled by US.So when a serious change of state happens in the this large node that has US as a value, this will affect my country in a bad or in a good way.US does not care about this.It is just a consequence that will not taking into consideration from US.

    But why we have a link from my country to US?I mean the weight of it is too small in respect with edge from US to GR.Why should US bother to retain control of this edge.Why to care if GR cuts this edge or not?
    Actually US does not concern in GR as a atom, but at edges that come from other countries at a whole.
    If i drew a schema,it would be like US to be a large node,where countries of pretty much the same power as mine's are the other graph's vertices.Node US has an edge to every other vertex.Every vertex ,except US ,has an edge to US. From the point of view of US this is the graph.The influence that comes from others vertices is actually the profit that US has from them.So , the sum of the weights of the vertices from other countries to US, is the total profit for US.US does not want other countries to cut edges,because then ,total profit of US is going to be reduced by the weight of the respective edge , which is tolerant for one country, but not for many.
    But of course, interests of US usually are not the same as the ones of the other countries.So country v for example, who has different interests from US, wants to cut the edge of the US and link to another big player of the game.Notice that big players(=large nodes such as US), under the table , do not allow a country to have more than one links to a big player.The biggest player at time, will indirectly force the other small country to end up with a link with itself.
    Two examples that come to mind :
    1) My dad is in aviation industry as an instructor for east Europe and other countries in Asia, so he has a respective knowledge about airplanes.But you do not need to be an expert to spot what i am going to say.
    US sells F-16 military aircrafts to Greece for A LOT of money.US also supplies the greek army in general, not just in air force.Greece was able to buy another type of airplane from Europe (i do not remember but maybe it was eurofighter ), which was not only better , but also cheaper at the same time (because these were more modern that the types of F-16 these days).However, even if the issue was published and it was obvious which offer should be chosen, F-16 were bought.Why?Because US of course said ok,you can buy the eurofighter if you like.This is democracy (...) , so we can not force you to do buy our F-16.Or maybe we can, but under the table?Yes, of course US can do this.It would cut all the supplies for the greek army in ground forces(and not only).So even though a country wants to look elsewhere for offers, US will not allow that.

    2)...
    I won't say more about examples, because it will off topic.(maybe the 1st example already did).

    The point, from my point of view, is that when a country that was depended to US finds another big player to invest to, US simply will not let this happen, by usually creating problems to the current government (very common to make a neighbour country to complain about ethnical issues).
    A small country can only look for other countries to invest to, when this other country is a bigger player than US.

    PS - what your daughter's generation might has to pay for, it is going to be paid for mine's generation in my country..

  14. #29
    Registered User C_ntua's Avatar
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    Why NOT vote? Go and give a blank vote if you don't want any candidate. It is not the same as not voting at all. If I was a good 3rd party politician I would love to see a big percentage of people that say "I want to vote, but not for those guys". Seen the vast majority of people either don't care to show up and vote or just vote for "those guys" doesn't give me much hope now, does it now?

    Quote Originally Posted by std10093
    Because i am Greek and we invented all these that many countries rely on (liberty,vote and other perfect political concepts) i feel deeply disappointed with the fact that world leaders like the ones of USA for example present these concepts not as they were stated back in ancient Greece
    Thousands of years ago people understood that unless they have the FINAL saying there is no political freedom. There was nothing fancy in Ancient Athens. No good way to get the right information us today. No education for the masses as today. Just this simple concept where Democracy was built upon the majority will decide. And what do you have today in countries like the US? Everything that Ancient Greece wished to have except the people having the final vote. In the US you have the idea of freedom. You see the idea of individual rights. The people are educated in these ideas quite well. Yet in the end you just have some clowns running the show. Come on, that why democracy was invented in the first place...

    The above is not entirely true of course. We have something in between today in democratic countries. The problem is that you get to vote directly on what color you should paint your local school on your little school committee but you don't get to vote on if you want this new national healthcare reform. In the end you just don't get to vote for the important stuff. So where it most counts, no, we don't have democracy.
    In the law system for example that is far more complex you have a jury and they have the final saying. You are asking people to vote something as complex as a murder case yet they cannot vote for political matters that are fairly simpler.

    Quote Originally Posted by VirtualAce View Post
    I am interested to hear what those from other countries think about what would happen in their country if the US economy collapsed? Would it affect you that much or would your companies and country find other investments to shore up your own economy? I know what it would do here but I still do not have an understanding of just how much the US economy affects the world.
    The economy today is a like a big plaza with people running around. If one of them falls someone else will trip and there is a mess. Until everyone gets up again and start running again. It is not just the US, every significant market that falls creates a mess for a certain period of time. With the US the mess will just be huge.

    So, yes, countries will certainly find a way to shore up their economy. It will just take time. In the meantime people will suffer. That is the whole flaw of our economic system, there is no good balancing mechanism. I get for example X amount of dollars, spend some and save some. If I want to invest Y amount of dollars I think "what if I lose it all?". Would I accept to sacrifice my house if that happens? Probably not. My kids college funds? Probably not. My wife's desire for a new kitchen? (I hope but) probably not. So I invest the amount of money and if everything goes wrong I probably will lose my 3rd new car or my expensive vacations.
    When a company like Apple invest on a new iPhone what would they lose if they sold nothing? The company would close the next day. It as simple as that. How do you think Apple going bankrupt affect all their vendors? How would the vendors vendors be affected? How will all the unemployed people from the above companies affect the market? Then you have a bailout, which means everybody will certainly pay a price, multiplied by a yearly interest fee since typically the government will borrow the money (from companies, like Apple).
    At one point there are new companies that will hire the unemployed people and things will go back to normal. Except for the debt since what is even worse than this economic system is governments not even playing by the rules. Those are just doomed to bankrupt and create yet another mess.
    Last edited by C_ntua; 11-09-2012 at 10:15 PM.

  15. #30
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    In the law system for example that is far more complex you have a jury and they have the final saying. You are asking people to vote something as complex as a murder case yet they cannot vote for political matters that are fairly simpler.
    IANAL, but juries have to reach a consensus after deliberating or it is a mistrial. The whole point of a jury is to decide which argument won the trial and provided the most compelling evidence. You do not vote on what is supposed to be a reasoned conclusion.

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