The Votemaster Is...Andrew Tanenbaum 978
A reader writes: " www.electoral-vote.com, a site of daily updated maps of the US electoral college based on a number of polls is probably a site that the policially inclined check daily. Well, it has been revealed that the person behind the site, AKA the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.
And unfortunately, a site that won't load today (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today (Score:5, Informative)
Other servers (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.electoral-vote2.com/
http://www.electoral-vote6.com/
Result:
Kerry 298
Bush 231
Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.electoral-vote4.com/ [electoral-vote4.com]
http://www.electoral-vote3.com/ [electoral-vote3.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Had to be non-US (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Had to be non-US (Score:5, Informative)
"My name is Andrew Tanenbaum. I am one of the 7 million U.S. citizens living abroad. I am a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Most of you have never heard of me but in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny corner of the universe I have done enough stuff that Google has somehow managed to dig up 10,000 pages referring to me."
Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today (Score:2, Informative)
OR
www.electoral-vote4.com [electoral-vote4.com]
OR
www.electoral-vote5.com [electoral-vote5.com]
Similar project (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Had to be non-US (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Serious questions (Score:5, Informative)
If you followed the site for some time you would see that. There is even a movie on the site to show you how much the polls have been swinging back and forwards.
If anything his site shows how pointless polls are, or that the undeceided voter is completly clueless and changes their mind every 5 minutes.
The only poll that really matters is tomorrows.
On another note "600,000 Iraqis". Can you quote a source for that? The only figure I can find is for displaced and not killed under sanctions. Also you should note that Saddam was grossly inflating the deaths (especially children deaths) in order to try and stop sanctions.
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:4, Informative)
Quibble aside, the gist of your comment is correct. Americans have an instinctive tendency to go our own way, right or wrong. And most of the "up-for-grabs" electoral votes are in the midwest, like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.
He is still a US citizen (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine recently moved to Canada for work and told me that lots of US expats she knows there are voting for the first time in years (often for the first time since they left). If you're living abroad you vote in the last state where you were a resident and you only get to vote for president (maybe senate, too, but I think just prez). Many of those people last lived, and are very likely to vote for Kerry (in Canada, the far right is mostly to the left of the US Dems).
It's going to be an interesting election night...
(sarcasm appreciated except for the nit)
Actually, it's my post (Score:2, Informative)
And yes, I did the same thing for Jon Stewart [slashdot.org]. It too went to +5, but then was modded down to -1 in about a half hour.
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And unfortunately, a site that won't load today (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Had to be non-US (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Intellectually honest? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:2, Informative)
This is bogus. Most electoral votes are on the coasts, along with most of the population. The only states with more than twenty electoral votes that has no coastline are Illinois and Ohio (I'm counting Pennsylvania as having coast, here, since it's so freakin' close).
I won't say that the heartland doesn't have a lot of clout; many of the pivotal battleground states are there.
Meta analysis site (Score:4, Informative)
Predicted median with undecideds: Kerry 280 EV, Bush 258 EV
Median outcome, decided voters only: Kerry 252 EV, Bush 286 EV
The author of the site, Sam Wang, has published some of his methodology in the form of a matlab/octave [princeton.edu] script.
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Serious questions (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely.
I live in a non-swing state, so I've been volunteering for some get-out-the-vote-in-swing-states phone banking over the past couple days, and I no longer believe the polls. People in swing states are getting so many phone calls that many of them no longer answer the phone, they put messages on their machine saying if it's a political call please go away, they hang up right away, etc. They are extremely popular right now, and most of them seem to wish it would all go away.
On the few occasions that you do get a a live person, pretty frequently they say "this is my fifth call today, and someone just left the front door, would you please take us off your list". I apologize, and thank them, but because many of the groups aren't allowed to coordinate (or don't when they could), getting off one group's list doesn't help much.
The pollsters are calling all the same people, and probably having just as hard a time. They have to make a lot of corrections for systematic error, and I would suspect that the popularity of the swing state voters makes their correction factors less useful than in a more typical year.
Every once in a while you get someone who didn't know where to go to vote, or who needs help getting to the poll (which we help with). They make it worthwhile.
Is AST a Linux convert? (Score:4, Informative)
The attackers have tried repeatedly to break in, but the server is a rock-solid Linux system which has stood up to everything they threw at it and hasn't crashed since I got it in May.
The full Google cache of the page is here [64.233.161.104]
Re:Worldwide results (Score:3, Informative)
Rare Reversal (Score:4, Informative)
Enjoy!
Re:Serious questions (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think polls are "pointless", but many people are very clueless about statistics (including, apparently, almost everyone in the media).
The talking heads on the news regularly talk about how a poll has "swung" one way or the other. For instance, this morning a poll came out that showed Bush up by 2% in the popular vote, 48% to 46%. The day before they were tied, I believe at 46% to 46%. Everyone involved talked about this as a real effect even though the margin of error (MoE) in the poll was 3%! Statistical variation completely explains those two results, it is quite possible that voter sentiment didn't change a bit!
Even beyond that, again by the nature of statistics polls are not as reliable as they are portrayed. The above mentioned MoE is only good for a 95% confidence level. In other words, there is a 5% chance that the reported numbers lay outside the MoE! So, it is best to view poll numbers with a very large grain of salt...
Re:He is still a US citizen (Score:5, Informative)
electionprojection.com (Score:3, Informative)
Note that it predicts quite a different outcome. Also note that (like Tanenbaum) the owner is partisan - however he also seems to have a sane methodology.
Just FYI... :-)
Re:Worldwide results (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Worldwide results (Score:2, Informative)
Any argument can be made, but, since the electoral system was created specifically for the purpose of not marginalizing the smaller states, I don't think that this one would hold water.
Ohio is a fairly heavily populated state.
With 11,435,798 people, or less than 4% of the populace, I don't think you could call it heavily populated when compard to CA, TX, or NY, though it does rank 7th. (And that comes as a shock to me) It would only give 10% of the combined votes of the six states above it (I rounded to the hundred thousands for that stat).
mirrors (yes I know you're being funny) (Score:4, Informative)
www.electoral-vote2.com [electoral-vote2.com]
What's funny
www.electoral-vote3.com [electoral-vote3.com]
Is that
www.electoral-vote4.com [electoral-vote4.com]
This comment can't be posted
www.electoral-vote5.com [electoral-vote5.com]
because of all the repetition
www.electoral-vote6.com [electoral-vote6.com]
In the comment
www.electoral-vote7.com [electoral-vote7.com]
Due to listing all the mirrors
www.electoral-vote8.com [electoral-vote8.com]
Forgive me if I think this
www.electoral-vote9.com [electoral-vote9.com]
Is really stupid
Re:Serious questions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Worldwide results (Score:3, Informative)
And the widespread corruption in the UN Oil-For-Food program that directly benefitted French, German, and Russian companies had absolutely nothing to do with their opposition to the war.
Re:Using LGPL script, but removed copyright notice (Score:1, Informative)
http://electoral-vote.com on speed (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Serious questions (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Kerry wouldn't take office until January, so he'd have at least a couple of months to come through with all that stuff.
Re:Intellectually honest? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Serious questions (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see how, as they all face tremendous embarassment over "Oil for Food" and other involvement with the Hussein government.
Re:Electoral College is Obsolete (Score:5, Informative)
You do not get to vote for president. None of us do. Your state does. You vote for your state's electors, since that is the election system your state has set up. It is the state's choice to cast all of its votes for the state's popular vote winner (although one state currently has a ballot measure which would split up the electoral votes in some situations). We have a federalist system. If you do not and cannot understand the governmental system we use in this country and why we use it, then it's probably best that your vote "doesn't count."
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Worldwide results (Score:3, Informative)
A few points my uninformed friend....
1. Actually, take a look at the polls (google for yourself), less than 35% of the US population belongs to a Evangelical organization, only a percentage of that will be fundamentalist (looked, but could not find solid stats on Fundamentlists, sorry). (see http://www.christianitytoday.com/money/articles/k
2. They do not vote their hearts. They vote what they believe is their faith. While you (and I) may disagree with that *choice*, they are free to have whatever faith (or lack thereof) they choose. Understand that voting with your heart is not the same as voting your faith.
"They are very easily manipulated, reference how Jim and Tammy Fay Baker played them like a fiddle and how Bush/Cheney/Rove play them now"
3. Somehow I think throwing up a strawman of a 80's era televangelist and claiming that these poor misguided souls can't tell the difference between a "forgive me for I have sinned" televangelist and an election is not only a bit , IMHO, crude, but highly untrue, unless of course you can provide us with data that shows that former contributors to the Bakkers are now hard-core Republicans. I'm pretty sure you'll find that's not true, since most televangelists prey on the elderly, which have historically been much more democratic leaning.
Today's American Christians appear mostly intolerant of the poor, those who aren't Christian and those out of the main stream, and instead appear to favor wealth and people that are like them in defiance of the real teachings of their religion.
4. Really? not from what I've seen. Christians are bound by faith to serve (see http://www.svdpusa.org/ or http://www.opusdei.org/ as an example or two). I'm curious what you mean by "out of the main stream"
5. One last 'itty bitty point, while I know it's considered "cool" and "correct" to claim that American Christians are somehow all Pro-War, and Pro-Bush, the polls don't support this.
Take a look at http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=20 for a pretty good article on it.
Another good article here http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/112/12.0
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. [outsidethebeltway.com] Gore won several TX counties near the Mexican border.
Also, a better site than Tanenbaum's for predicting the winner is here [princeton.edu]. Sam Wang of Princeton University uses a statistical method for averaging all recent polls rather than rely on just the latest for his predictions.
Personally I'm predicting a blowout for Kerry. This is based for starters on Wang's data. 2nd, last night on MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews said that the exit polls from early voting in Iowa had Kerry 11 points up. 30% of Iowa has already voted. There has also been a huge early turnout in Democratic areas in FL, NV, GA, and NC. 3rd, a recent Zogby poll [zogby.com] of 18-29 year-olds with cell phones gave Kerry 55%, Bush 40%. Every other poll I've seen is based exclusively on land lines, so if the 18-29 year-olds vote this year (and granted, they usually do not), the polls could be way off. Finally, Karl Rove's strategy is based on getting some 4 million more Evangelical Christians to the polls than went in 2000. Problem is that the size of this group may be a myth [msn.com]. A devout Christian friend of mine invited me to a party Friday night with some of his church buddies. Not a group I normally hang out with, but I like being exposed to new ideas. Turns out this small sample favored Kerry over Bush by 50-40. A few were still very undecided (yes, even today there are still undecided voters in Ohio!). All of this leads me to believe that Kerry will clobber Bush.
The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection (Score:1, Informative)
Osama Bin Laden's original purported complaint with the United States was that he wanted American troops out of the "Holy Land" of Saudi Arabia. (When Muslims pray five times daily, they are always facing towards Saudi Arabia)
.
.
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American troops were there in Saudi Arabia only becaue they needed to enforce the "No Fly Zone" provisions of the treaty that ended the first war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein consistently violated those treaties.
With Saddam Hussein removed, American troops and their military base, which existed there during the entire Clinton era, are now no longer in Saudi Arabia.
Osama Bin Laden got his "wish", so what are the Al Qaeda complaining about now? Bush did exactly what Osama Bin Laden wanted: Bush removed American military bases from the "sacred" Muslim ground. NOW we see in the latest videotape that Osama Bin Laden has changed his tune. He's now claiming that he's been fighting for Palestine all this time! What a laugh, such an obvious and cliche way to gain popularity among the anti-Semites in the Muslim population. Indeed, if Osama Bin Laden really put his money where his mouth is, he would have invested all of his money into Palestinian small businesses and encouraged them to focus their energy on construction, not destruction. Instead, he decided to set up his "utopia" in...Afghanistan. What a utopia that was: women were brutally oppressed and beaten, artists were executed, an ancient Buddhist statue carved into a cliff was demolished by a shoulder missile. Bin Laden was thinking of Palestine the whole time?
If the 9/11 commission complained that a "failure of IMAGINATION" allowed the terrorists to strike, then it didn't take much IMAGINATION to realize that Saddam Hussein was a significant threat. The Duelfur report confirms as much, since it reports that Hussein had weapons that exceeded proscribed limits and were capable of delivering chemical/bioligcal payloads, and that the Iraquis had the intellectual capital to restart the biological and chemical weapons programs. War breeds strange alliances. Remember when Adolf Hitler, supposedly wanting to promote the Third Reich of "pure" Aryan blood, allied with the Japanese Empire...whose citizens didn't look Aryan at all?
If America had just sat on its hands, Hussein's regime would only have gotten stronger (now that we KNOW for certain that France and other countries were secretly pouring money into his regime), the American taxpayers would still be paying for the support of troops in Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden would still be able to hide behind his supposed "complaint" about the "Holy Land". Putting off a war now would have guaranteed a larger and bloodier war in the future.
There are those who object the American "occupation" of Iraq. Well guess what?
America "occupied" Germany, and Germany's economy is doing great. The Germans are not an "oppressed" people
America "occupied" Japan, and Japan's economy is doing great. The Japanese are not an "oppressed" people
America "occupies" South Korea, and South Korea's economy is doing great. The South Koreans are not an "oppressed" people
The people who oppose the United States are generally Socialist. They are still smarting from the collapse of Communism around the world. It is a typical pattern of Communist agitators to assemble mass demonstrations against capitalists. Remember the large mass demonstrations that occurred just before the second Iraq war commenced? Odd how no large mass demonstrations in Europe have rallied protesting the terrorists who blow up civili
Re:My opinion of him has radically changed (Score:3, Informative)
I was unaware that AIX was considered microkernel-based. As for Darwin, whilst there is Mach in it, file systems, network protocols, and drivers for many devices (disk controllers, network adapters) don't operate as Mach servers, they're in the kernel (except for file systems such as webdavfs that hand a lot of work to a user-mode daemon, but it's a bit of an exception).
Here's a short list: (Score:3, Informative)
"... an invasion (too many to list), a kidnapping (Panama), an assassination (Cuba), or a fake coup (Guatemala), you supported it."
You are exactly right, but very, very few Americans understand this.
Anyhow, here is a short list: The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War. [hevanet.com]
--
Bush's education improvements were partly fraud [cbsnews.com]
The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection part 2 (Score:1, Informative)
Old Europe believes that Hans Blix and the UN Weapons inspectors had everything they needed to inspect for WMD in Iraq.
But there is an inherent contradiction.
The list of suspected sites that Hans Blix was going to visit was provided by the intelligence community.
The intelligence community had been shown to have been wrong about many assumptions.
Therefore, even if Hans Blix had given Iraq a clean bill of health, that would not have guaranteed that Iraq did had no WMD. Iraq in the past had played games with UN Weapons inpsectors before.
Old Europe can't have it both ways -- believing both that the intelligence community was 100% wrong about WMD, and that the intelligence community was 100% right about the list of sites Hans Blix could have visited.
Indeed, in January 2003, Blix voiced concerns about the missing biological weapons and unaccounted nerve gas (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/27/sprj.irq.transcr ipt.blix/ [cnn.com]:
Likewise Blix outlined other areas where Saddam Hussein seemed to be playing games:
Re:If anything, that crap is counterproductive (Score:3, Informative)