Wal-Mart holding a press conference to talk about the corporation's desire for a GOP controlled house is fine.

Wal-Mart's board of directors discussing how legislators interested in their ideas will be beneficial to the company is fine.

Wal-Mart managers calling staff into meetings telling them in not-so vague terms that failure to vote Republican will cost them their jobs is not fine.

Union Organizers holding a press conference to talk about the corporation's desire for a Democrat controlled house is fine.

Union Organizers' board of directors discussing how legislators interested in their ideas will be beneficial to the company is fine.

Union Organizers calling union members into meetings telling them in not-so vague terms that failure to vote Democrat will cost them their jobs is not fine.

See the pattern?

If you use your position of authority to coerce someone to vote contrary to their conscience, it's illegal. If you lobby the public or your peers, and they change their mind, it's legal. This is why I as a manager avoid talking to my employees about political issues, but can talk freely with my fellow managers. I can't fire my peers for disagreeing with me. Generally though, you're best off just leaving political debates out of the office place.

-Rick

"Data apocalypse now"

Disregarding the rest of your post for this nugget.

The thought of a remake of Apocalypse Now as Data Apocalypse Now as a senior CIA agent is being sent into the field with some hard core MI6 bodies to capture and return a rogue agent distributing data in a "information wants to be free!" kinda zeal (only way darker). And over time, embedded with the rogue agent, after the MI6 team gets picked off or falls into a drug induced free-knowledge stupor, starts doubting his missing, maybe data does want to be free?

The thought of a Brit with a laptop saying, "Charlie don't surf!" while browsing the web from North Korea ...

Seriously, that could be a good movie.

Could be. Odds are though, it would be drivel.

-Rick

Because clearly that doesn't happen already. It's not like Walmart pulled all of their managers in to give them political commentary about how it would be "bad" for them if the Dems won the 2008 election. How, if the Dems won, or if unions gained any foothold in the company, that clearly it would cause economic downturns that would result in the closing of their stores. Not like they were dancing around the message of "Vote Republican or go find a new job" or anything.

That type of behavior wont change between onsite and online voting.

Now, the concern that an organization would force it's members to either hand over it's tokens, or allow the organization to review their votes could be real. But I would go out on a limb and guess that any organization to do so would have it's ass nailed against the wall by the AG so hard and fast that the need for a colostomy bag would be a moot point.

That said, still not in favor of this ;)

-Rick

Not that I'm in favor of this, but... that isn't exactly true.

You can have an audit trail and anonymity so long as the source of the audit trail is known only to the originator.

If each year I am assigned a token at random, and the assigning system tracks only that a token was assigned, then I can look at that token and see it's audit trail to ensure that my vote was recorded correctly.

Anyone else looking at the audit trail of that token would be able to see how that token was used, but not by who.

Not sure I'm on board with online voting, but I don't believe that the audit trail and anonymity are mutually exclusive.

-Rick

Actually that's the first time anyone asked that specific question, and the answer is: Nobody ever constructed a plan such that all the editors should have editor accounts (which, among other things, lets people filter out their stories), but my stories would be run under other people's accounts instead of my own so that there was no way to filter them out, because they were deemed "too important". Instead, I don't have an editor account because I'm not an editor, and when people suggest making me an editor so they can filter out my stories, the answer is always that we're not going to pander to people who are too lazy to just skip the stories themselves.

Yes. When a website used by millions of people can save each user a few dollars' worth of aggravation (and a few dollars' worth of dollars) by making a few simple changes, that's important.

OK it was incorrect to call it a "representative sample". What I meant is within my social circle, some people think I'm right and some people think I'm wrong, and the people who are good at math tend to be more likely to think I'm right.

That cannot be explained by (a) me only picking friends who agree with me; or (b) me intimidating people into pretending to agree with me; or (c) my personal charisma [**snort**] charming people around me into agreeing with me; because if any of those were the cause, then my non-mathlete friends would agree with me too -- and they don't, at least not as much.

Suppose you make an argument, and you've found that your argument is unpopular, and you want to know whether that's because the argument really lacks merit, or if it's because only mathematically inclined people are likely to understand the argument. I submit that the best way to tell the difference (assuming you lack the resources of a polling company) is to ask your mathematically inclined friends, and see if they like your argument better than everyone else. How else would you do it?

What do you think makes an article "important"?

I think an idea is important if it describes a way to achieve a huge gain at a proportionally much smaller cost. Fixing these bugs would fit that criterion, since they're bugs on a government website that is used by millions of people.

Now, you might argue that even if I'm right, the information is useless to you because you don't do a lot of mailing, and because there's nothing you can do about the situation anyway even after reading about it. But that's also true of virtually all news articles -- not practically useful to the reader, and nothing you can do to impact the events described. So back to the original question: What do you think makes an article "important"?

Well I already clarified to the other poster that my sample of "smart people" is based on how well they do at math and logical reasoning (real outside-the-box stuff, not just getting good math grades in school), which is objectively measurable and not subject to my biases.

So, given that, what do you think? If someone puts forth a contrarian argument X, and the argument is considered interesting by a majority of people who are above a certain threshold in math ability, but everyone else reacts negatively, what do you think is reasonable to conclude about argument X?

Actually, that's a good point, so let me be more precise -- the people whose opinion I seek out tend to be very good at mathematical and logical reasoning, which is an objective (albeit incomplete) measure of their intelligence, independent of any biases of mine. Generally, the better people are at math, the more they think that the arguments I raise are interesting (which is not to say they always agree).

I'm not talking about people who got good math grades in school, I'm talking about people who did well in extra-curricular math-like activities that expanded your mind beyond the default curriculum. (And if you are in fact good at math in that sense, well, good for you -- I said it was a general trend, not a universal law.)

What do you think is the point of journalism? To give the people what they want? I think it's to pursue the objective truth, and then present what you've found.

One reason is that I often run the ideas past smart people whose opinions I respect, before running an article. They often find flaws in my own reasoning -- sometimes fatal flaws that shoot down the whole idea so the article never runs -- but sometimes after refining an argument to avoid the flaws they highlight initially, they agree it's an interesting question. If a representative sampling of smart people agree that a question is interesting, but a crowd of Internet commenters keep howling that it's stupid, is it possible that the problem is with the Internet commenters?

One of the most hated articles I ever wrote was questioning the merits of the Fifth Amendment, where I asked: Why is it a good idea that we allow defendants to refuse to answer questions, but that we can force third-party witnesses to answer questions, on pain of going to jail? Before I submitted the article, some people had given me fairly thoughtful answers to this question (e.g. that a third-party witness might only come forward if they know they're allowed to refuse to answer questions about their own illicit activity), but they agreed that the inconsistency was interesting.

But when the article ran on Slashdot, most of the useful discussions in the comments got drowned out by people shouting, "Bennett, you don't get it, the Fifth Amendment protects against SELF-incrimination, that's why you can require third-party witnesses to answer!" Each time, I rolled my eyes, and sighed, and replied, "Yes, I know what it says; that's not the question. The question is: Why is that a good policy?" Nobody in my pre-Slashdot smart-person cadre had ever missed the point so completely, or given that stupid of an answer.

Yes, I know that. What gave you the impression that I didn't? But I'm assuming that the thickness of the box is almost negligible, so that if you specify on the USPS website that your package is 3x4x5 inches, the website should be smart enough to know that you can use a 3x5x10 Priority Mail box, but not a 4x4x4 Priority mail box.

They have priority mail boxes stacked in racks on the wall, free for people to take, so I assume they intend for at least some people to box their stuff there.

In my local post office, there's a counter for boxing things, and then a line which snakes around the counter and (sometimes) out the door. I've never seen the counter anywhere close to being full -- usually only one or two people using it for boxing their stuff -- so as long as you just take a Priority Mail box off the wall, and your stuff fits into it, and you have the right shipping label, you're not imposing costs on anybody else.

Of course people are causing problems when they do the things you describe, but those are probably not the people who print their labels in advance before coming to the post office.

That's useful to know, thanks. Sorry that useful pointers like these get buried in the comments under all the tripe :)

Although my poitn is that it would have been nice if the USPS site itself spelled this out.