"rather than scientific processes" does not mean "rather than the scientific method." But like any other vaguely worded law, it will be up to the enforcers to decide what constitutes "scientific processes." Frankly, if you want to weed politics out of the "science," the ONLY way to do that IS the scientific method. Which would mean, forming your own opinion based on the evidence you as an individual observe. With that in mind, neither side wants people forming their own opinions. Congratulations. We are now reaping the results of you people using government to get what you want from other people.

Good intentions my pasty white ass.

He mentions something in the article about devs having newer hardware and everyone else having older stuff. That's a point, to be sure, but in my experience, there's enough info on the web to make fixing drivers doable. The bar to adoption is mostly user interface design. Lack of offline help, inconsistent UI guidelines, inconsistent context-menu-access, difficulty in figuring out why you can't enable certain options (because the GUI doesn't tell you that other options are available with a package download), inconsistent hotkeys, etc. On any windows machine, I can blindly press a few keystrokes and both launch apps and navigate their menus. Not to mention that menus and common buttons are almost always in the same place and look pretty much the same.

My family has expressed lots of consternation over some of the changes even within the Windows ecosystem (start menu layout changes, control panel layout/submenu changes, Office quickbar, etc.).

But instead, we're focused on the latest new shiny thing rather than making it all work consistently and intuitively. I mostly use bash consoles so I don't really bother with the GUI but you'll never get anywhere by trying to revert today's typical OOOSHINY wanna-be nerd to use that when they can just pay a few hundred extra bucks and get something that does the same thing the same way every time they click or tap in a specific spot.

If I had them, all my mod points are belong to you.

...if everyone in the process is at least partially corrupt, undiligent, or just plain out to lunch, and there's no hard accountability designed into the system, no measurement criteria, and no way to balance out abuses on both sides, then the whole things becomes just another talking point that someone can use in an election campaign?

What's new here? :P

Knowing the game mechanics notwithstanding, it still takes muscle memory for the mouse movements and keystrokes. I was readings something about baseball pitchers and how it takes some ludicrous amount of hours of the same motion for the muscle memory to set in. I can't imagine any other "sport" that uses a physical interface would be any different.

Interesting. I wonder what other popular and controversial "science" is missing this particular step.

"We're sorry we got caught. Consider us chastised. It'll never happen again. Honest. For real this time."

Sic the healthcare.gov guys on it. I'm sure it'll be right as rain in no time.

You wonder why we have so much dysfunction going on today?

Pervasive culture of butthurt = CHECK
Any perceived insult is by default true = CHECK
Special protected classes that can do no wrong = CHECK
Litigious society causing zero tolerance including honest mistakes = CHECK
Rampant immaturity = CHECK
General abdication of personal responsibility = CHECK

Let's pose a hypothetical, here. Let's say you (Linda, a woman) work for a company A. A has Big Boss, Linda, Tom, Fred and David as employees. The four of you report to Big Boss.

Situation A: Tom says something mean to Fred. Fred tells Tom to go fuck himself. Big Boss hears about it and calls them both into his office. Big Boss tells Tom to square his shit away or he's fired. Big Boss admonishes Fred to come see him about this in the future rather than responding in kind. Tom and Fred go on about their work and are a bit more careful about their interactions. This is a regular thing for Tom as he's brilliant but a loose cannon verbally. Big Boss talks to Tom and admonishes him that if he can't keep his asshole comments to himself, he will end up fired with prejudice.

Situation B: Linda says something mean to Fred. Fred tells Linda she can go fuck herself. Other employees hear the latter half of the exchange. Linda goes to Big Boss and complains about Fred using foul language around her. Big Boss calls them both into the office. Linda tells her story and Big Boss asks her to return to her desk. Big Boss then lectures Fred about the sensitivities of women in the workforce and how the small company cannot afford to defend against a "workplace harassment" lawsuit. Fred complains that Linda started the whole thing. Big Boss says it won't matter because a jury will default rule in favor of the woman because of articles like the above. Fred points out that justice is supposed to be blind. Big Boss points out that in cases of harassment, lay-wisdom holds that when women harass men, the men need to grow a pair, but when men harass women, it is only right and proper to expect better decorum out of the men. Big Boss never says anything to Linda because it could be construed as the abuse of power in a workplace environment.

Now, you may laugh at this but these are actual shit storms I've seen happen. The problem is that while most women aren't self-entitled whiners and most men are not adolescent assholes, we can't catch a break because the lawyers and bean-counters won't let a manager fire the shit out of someone just for being a prick/cunt. As George Takei said, we've reduced ourselves to the lowest common denominator of butthurt.

You do realize that making patronizing statements with "standard denialist" in your litany is actually counterproductive to any sort of rational debate, don't you? Either facts stand on their own in the face of dissent or they don't. And the "facts" of today might not be the "facts" of tomorrow, assuming we are continually collecting data (defined as the result of scientific measures/experiments).

As for "masses of anecdotes resulting in data," I would point you to all the "we can light our tap water on fire because fracking" people, some of whom have neighbors with recorded family history of flammable tap water going back into the 19th century.

Lucid, cogent and very much what I wanted to say, here. Thanks.

...how do you expect to get a much more complex system correct? Mind you, I'm aware that the problem is not necessarily the system itself, but the transparency of the system. People probably won't like to hear it but I'd suggest that the only way to eliminate fraud is to have votes linked to your ID so that every vote can be verified as A) not having voted multiple times, B) not voting if you don't exist in at least two separate systems e.g. social security and driver's license, and C) not voting outside of your registered district's area unless it's a national ballot initiative. Further, no more provisional ballots: if you cannot be bothered to register well enough ahead of an election to participate via the normal means, you do not get to vote.

I don't remember this sort of incisive analysis going on with regards to healthcare or tax law.

Considering how badly infested stationary ocean objects can become with various types of sea life, and how much maintenance it takes to keep a small sailboat from corroding and suffering general mechanical failures due to both of the above, I wonder at the amount of maintenance required to keep one of these in operation.

You're saying requiring all cars (which the original article states) to have this is justified by the fraction of a percent that are low-visibility vehicles?