Re: [Vo]:Black Holes from Newtonian Gravity? - discs.gif - segements.gif
2008/10/16 Horace Heffner [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Oct 16, 2008, at 7:17 AM, Michel Jullian wrote: But if you get closer and closer to a finite disk of charge, whether on-axis or off-axis, it will look more and more like an infinite sheet of charge, because the 1/r^2 law makes the effect of the most remote charges rapidly negligible compared to that of the closest ones right under you. Exactly what I thought intuitively. Not true though, due to superposition. Suppose you have a virus located on the center of a surface of a cm square plane segment of an insulator having a uniformly distributed charge of 10^-9 C. The field is normal to the surface where the virus is located. You now bring a 1 C charge within a cm of the virus. By superposition, the field lines will be about parallel to the surface where the virus is located, not normal to it. Well maybe, but we were considering a uniform distribution. So the field _right above the surface_, where the disk looks infinite, will indeed be perpendicular to the surface. BTW you said you knew this to be the case close to a conductor (freely moving charges) didn't you, well now imagine we suddenly freeze the charges on that conductor, will the field above it change its direction? Michel The problem is that on a finite planar conductor the charges are not uniformly distributed. They are only uniformly distributed on a sphere. The charges are distributed toward the edges. On a real surface the field gradients are largest at protrusions where the surface curvature is maximized convexly. ... Yes, but at only a few mm away from the edge of a metal disk the surface charge density becomes uniform to a very good approximation (provided it is isolated of course). A couple resources on the subject: http://www.goiit.com/posts/show/126825.htm A large plate with uniform charge density. Consider the plate below, which we will assume is infininte ( a good assumption if you are close to the plate) and has a charge per unit area, s. http://www2.truman.edu/~edis/courses/186/lab3.html Electric field lines and equipotential lines each behave in a certain way in the vicinity of a source---any distribution of charges which give rise to an electric field---and in the vicinity of a conducting surface: - Near a source, the equipotential lines are parallel to the surface of the charge distribution, and the electric field lines are perpendicular to the surface of the charge distribution, - Near a conducting surface, the equipotential lines are parallel to the conducting surface, and the electric field lines are perpendicular to the conducting surface. Cheers, Michel
Re: [Vo]:Black Holes from Newtonian Gravity? - discs.gif - segements.gif
On Oct 16, 2008, at 11:17 PM, Michel Jullian wrote: 2008/10/16 Horace Heffner [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Oct 16, 2008, at 7:17 AM, Michel Jullian wrote: But if you get closer and closer to a finite disk of charge, whether on-axis or off-axis, it will look more and more like an infinite sheet of charge, because the 1/r^2 law makes the effect of the most remote charges rapidly negligible compared to that of the closest ones right under you. Exactly what I thought intuitively. Not true though, due to superposition. Suppose you have a virus located on the center of a surface of a cm square plane segment of an insulator having a uniformly distributed charge of 10^-9 C. The field is normal to the surface where the virus is located. You now bring a 1 C charge within a cm of the virus. By superposition, the field lines will be about parallel to the surface where the virus is located, not normal to it. Well maybe, but we were considering a uniform distribution. Actually not, and that was the point of Robin's very clear proof. In the vicinity of the measuring point the field is uniform. However, for a measuring point not in the center of the disk there is a large mass of unbalanced charge that is all to one side of the measuring point. Since this unbalanced is all to one side, it can be replaced with the full charge located at its center of charge. The fact it is spread uniformly over its (distant) surface becomes irrelevant. Finite charge distributions can not be treated in the same manner as infinite charge distributions. So the field _right above the surface_, where the disk looks infinite, will indeed be perpendicular to the surface. BTW you said you knew this to be the case close to a conductor (freely moving charges) didn't you, well now imagine we suddenly freeze the charges on that conductor, will the field above it change its direction? Michel The problem is that on a finite planar conductor the charges are not uniformly distributed. They are only uniformly distributed on a sphere. The charges are distributed toward the edges. On a real surface the field gradients are largest at protrusions where the surface curvature is maximized convexly. ... Yes, but at only a few mm away from the edge of a metal disk the surface charge density becomes uniform to a very good approximation (provided it is isolated of course). The charge distribution on a thin conducting disc is far from uniform though. The thinner the disk the stronger the field on the periphery. In a conductor it is the buildup of charge toward the periphery that permits the field lines normal to the surface. A couple resources on the subject: http://www.goiit.com/posts/show/126825.htm A large plate with uniform charge density. Consider the plate below, which we will assume is infininte ( a good assumption if you are close to the plate) and has a charge per unit area, s. This is merely a repeating of the same mistake. This assumption depends on the degree to which the plate is uniform, the measuring point being central, and the fact the plate is a conductor. Robin shows a clear lack of field orthogonality in the case of measuring points not on the center of a uniformly charged insulating disk. http://www2.truman.edu/~edis/courses/186/lab3.html Electric field lines and equipotential lines each behave in a certain way in the vicinity of a source---any distribution of charges which give rise to an electric field---and in the vicinity of a conducting Note the use of the word conducting above. That is critical. surface: - Near a source, the equipotential lines are parallel to the surface of the charge distribution, and the electric field lines are perpendicular to the surface of the charge distribution, - Near a conducting surface, the equipotential lines are parallel to the conducting surface, and the electric field lines are perpendicular to the conducting surface. Cheers, Michel Consider again Robin's proof. On Oct 14, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Robin van Spaandonk wrote: [snip] Consider the attached diagram. With the exception of C (for Center), all letters label intersections. The line segment DF is perpendicular to the radial line segment BC. Let there be a test mass at A. We examine the component of the gravitational forces within the plane for the moment. The arc segment DEF is a mirror image of DBF about the line segment DF. The forces acting on A within the plane due to the two segments DEFAD and DBFAD exactly cancel, because these two regions have the same area (uniform thickness of the disc is assumed). The rest of the mass of the disc, excluding these two segments, is all to the left of A. Hence there is a net force acting on A, pulling it to the left. This remains valid if A is outside the plane of the disk. It only ceases to be true when A is exactly on the axis of the disc, at which point the two segments each
[Vo]:Re: OT:Pre-positioning for troubled financial times
This is a rehash and update on a little economic theory idea. On Feb 8, 2008, at 11:37 AM, Horace Heffner wrote: Within the context of the mortgage industry debacle precipitated financial crisis it appears there is something even more sinister making for the crazy markets: http://tinyurl.com/3czmpr Actual URL for above: http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/2008/02/06/croesus-chronicles- darkpools-oped-cz_rl_0207croesus.html The quants and their systems may be unintentionally setting up the world markets and financial systems for a crash. Automated arbitrage systems appear work fine until an underlying market fundamental changes, like sudden changes in the the value of real estate or some set of commodities. The problem with modern portfolio theory is its fundamental assumption, that the market activity is actually based on stochastic processes. It is assumed that all fundamentals are known by all the participants and very quickly priced into the market. All that is left is due to random fluctuations. I think a large part of the variance in the random distributions is not random at all, but rather merely due to variables and functions not understand, but which test well for being random distributions. An example of this might be the effects of a feedback loop between publications (reporters) and politicians, and further, the changes in cycle time, amount, quality, distribution, and lack of information control brought about by the internet. Of greater concern is the fact market transactions are increasingly instant computer trades rather than trades by open and manual bidding systems. This vastly increases the velocity of money within the market place in times of a crises, and the velocity is further increased when the buyers and sellers are mostly computers too. We are moving toward the point where the ultimate crash could take place in seconds. The velocity of money is the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent, the dollar turnover rate, the frequency of dollar spending per unit of time. For a discussion of the velocity of money see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money and also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money There you'll see Milton Friedman's famous equation: M*V = P*Q V = P*Q/M where M is the money in circulation, and P*Q is the gross domestic product, the sum of the values of all transactions in a given period of time. The value of a transaction is the unit price time quantity for the transaction. This is expressed in the equation of exchange: M*V = Sum[i=1,n] p_i*q_i In a computer generated crash, a huge amount of the world's capital can cycle around between multiple investors instantly, i.e the velocity V - inf. Let F represent the values of all non stock market transactions: F = Sum[i=1,x] p_i*q_i and G represent the sum of the values of all stock market transactions: G = Sum[i=x+1,n] p_i*q_i This means V = (F+G)/M and if G remains fixed, yet the market transaction values for some period go toward infinity, then we have as: as G - inf, V - (F+G)/M = (F+inf)/M = inf/M = inf This means V = P*Q/M - inf the velocity of money goes to infinity. Since the quantity of goods Q would remain fixed in the seconds of collapse, given it rigorously must be that, since P*Q/M - inf, either (or both): P - inf, or M - 0 and neither case is good. If I have this right (and I am definitely not an economist!) either price goes toward infinity, or money supply goes toward zero, or both. Since we are in a global economy, this seems to me to apply to the global money supply. This theory seems to be working out to some degree. It appears M has been driven strongly toward zero. The most recent reactions to that it appears could result in the other outlet, namely driving P toward infinity, massive inflation. See: http://tinyurl.com/6ylcjq If this little bit of theory is correct then the main ingredient needed for stabilization is still missing, namely international action to significantly reduce the high velocity of money due to fast international computer driven trading. Suppressing shorts on some stocks helped achieve this to a degree, but more is needed if the above deductions are correct. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
Re: [Vo]:Re: OT:Pre-positioning for troubled financial times
I don't disagree with most of what you say here, but the drop in money
supply is something which can be accounted for conventionally. I had
a couple comments, which I'll give out of order.
Horace Heffner wrote:
This theory seems to be working out to some degree. It appears M has
been driven strongly toward zero.
This may have nothing whatsoever to do with program trading.
Very roughly speaking, the money supply is determined by the amount of
high powered money in existence (direct loans and gifts from the Fed)
times a multiplier. The multiplier is determined by the reserve
requirement in effect on banks.
If the reserve requirement is 5%, then of each dollar placed in the
banking system, 95 cents is lent out. The borrowers may stuff a little
of the money they borrow into a mattress (and hence take it out of
circulation), but *nearly all* of it is going to be either spent or
invested. If it's spent, it goes to a company, and if it's invested, it
also goes to a company, and ultimately it works its way back to the
banking system.
Once back in the banking system, it's subject to the same reserve
requirement, and once again 95% of it is lent out and around and
around and around we go.
The result is that the money supply can be viewed as, *very* approximately,
high powered money * sum_{n=0,inf} (1 - a)^n
where a is the reserve requirement. The sum on the right can be
evaluated by subtracting from it the same sum taken from 1 to infinity
and dividing through by (1 - (1 - a)) to obtain
sum_{n=0,inf} (1-a)^n = (1-a)/a = 1/a - 1
With our strawman reserve requirement of 5%, that evaluates to a
factor of 19. Thus, with a 5% reserve requirement, the money supply
might be expected to be (*very* approximately!) 19 times the amount of
money deposited in the system by the Fed.
Now, suppose there's panic or breakdown in the financial system. If the
bank lending rate drops because of fear among the bankers, *or* if
people panic and start removing their money from the banks (a run),
that factor of 19 can drop very quickly. And when the lending
multiplier drops the money supply drops just as fast.
Something like this happened at the beginning of the 30's depression,
and about 2/3 of the money supply simply vanished, virtually overnight.
(Or maybe it wasn't 2/3 -- I've forgotten the actual fraction, as
calculated by Friedman in some essay or other.)
The problem with modern portfolio theory is its fundamental
assumption, that the market activity is actually based on stochastic
processes. It is assumed that all fundamentals are known by all the
participants and very quickly priced into the market. All that is
left is due to random fluctuations.
This is indeed the common assumption, and it is patently false.
Stock prices continue to be set largely by emotional factors, and stocks
which are in style are consistently overvalued while those which are
out of style are consistently undervalued. By overvalued I mean
over a long term (say, a year) the value of stylish stocks tends to
drop relative to the market, and by undervalued I mean that over a
long term (say, a year) the value of out of style stocks tends to rise
relative to the market.
This has been true for as long as anyone's been studying the market and
it continues to the true today, as far as I can tell.
P/E ratios (and, more recently, PEG ratios) tend to tell the style
story pretty clearly. As one trivial example, back when Sun
Microsystems' PE hit ~ 90 it was clear that it was a stylish stock and
its price was being supported not by perfect information, but by the
usual herd mentality among brokers. That was a few years back but I
don't see any evidence that much has changed since then, save for the
massive increase in volatility which results from program trading and
from the loss of some securities regulations which damped things (and
which were removed under pressure from the program traders).
As far as I know there is no model which correctly predicts company
growth. Unlike option prices, stock prices have no firm theoretical
foundation.
Re: [Vo]:Re: OT:Pre-positioning for troubled financial times
Howdy Horace, Ever get the feeling there's somebody out there who's a whole lot smarter then us ole boys standing at the bar at the Dime Box watching a rerun of 9-11 towers falling? Conspiracy theorists see malevolence in matching buy and sells in the dark, says Larry Tabb, founder of the TABB Group, a consulting firm that tracks the development of electronic markets. http://www.forbes.com/home/opinions/2008/02/06/croesus-chronicles-darkpools-oped-cz_rl_0207croesus.html Machivelli must be pickin' and grinnin' watching people play the game he invented. Of course he never mentioned that it can take years off your life by gettin' caught takin' sum'buddy else's change off the bar when supposedly, nobuddy's lookin'. But sometimes that's the only way a really good slick ever learns, if ever. Richard
[Vo]:Tesla Stalls
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/technology/start-ups/16tesla.html Tesla Says It Will Lay Off Employees and Delay Its All-Electric Sedan Until 2011 By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla Motors, an electric car start-up in Silicon Valley, said Wednesday that it would lay off employees and delay production of its second car, the Model S. Tesla also removed its chief executive, Ze'ev Drori, and appointed Elon Musk, the company's chairman and principal investor, to the position. Elon Musk, principal investor and chief executive of Tesla Motors, with one of his company's $90,000 all-electric Roadsters. Mr. Musk posted the changes on Tesla's Web site. He said the company was in a critical phase and would have a positive cash flow within nine months. He blamed the worsening financial crisis and the credit crisis for the upheaval. It's not an understatement to say that nearly every business will be impacted by what has unfolded in the past weeks, Mr. Musk wrote. The cutbacks come after warnings from Silicon Valley venture capitalists that start-ups should slash expenses and reach profitability as quickly as possible to survive the economic downturn. more
[Vo]:Gravity as an Aether Cheerio effect
There is an evolving theory, more like an evolving semanics, of what aether is. Lets begin with ZPE and its main proponent. Puthoff, without necessarily endorsing an aether by name, has said that there is a dynamic equilibrium (the ZPF) which stabilizes the electron in a set ground-state orbit. It seems that the very stability of matter itself appears to depend on an underlying sea of electromagnetic zero-point energy. http://ldolphin.org/zpe.html What are the objections of starting from this end and defining the aether as ZPF plus - IOW aether is the Dirac/Hotson epo field [by definition] in which the base level of energy bleed-over into higher dimensions, is defined as ZPE. And furthermore, one can integrate gravity as it operates on the higher dimensions without the need for another force. IOW there is no gravity and the graviton is merely an abstraction of statistical groups of epos. When these are asymmetric, as they often are, there is an attraction but it is based on geometry not a force. In fluid mechanics, the so-called cheerio effect is the tendency for small floating objects to attract one another - and this is tied to a geometric asymmetry in surface tension and buoyancy which becomes self-reinforcing. IOW this kind of attraction, which is on the same order of intensity as gravity, and can serve as a model for it (if one can abstract it to higher dimensions) is tied to *geometry* and not to a separate kind of force per se. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerio_effect Under Einstein's reconception (or alternative view) of gravity, there is no force of gravity; instead, the curved paths that falling objects 'appear' to take are an illusion brought on by our inability to perceive the underlying curvature of the space. The objects themselves are said to be moving in straight lines in a hidden dimension. But that tends to isolate them from mutual interaction. Or at least it makes it infinitely complicated. If there is a hidden structure - the aether of epos, and if it is very dense at the same time - then voila: it can provide the required curvature in an unusual way, based on its own geometric properties. If Einstein's gravity is a curvature of space-time, not a force - then any secondary attraction on that curved surface can be explained as a superset version of the cheerio effect - an asymmetric geometric effect based on surface interactions. Does this help or hurt the Einstein revisualization, in consort with this new kind of aether? The Einstein-aether theory is different from this, and even if were more similar - it too is as controversial as anything with his name on it can be. It is described as a covariant generalization of general relativity which describes a spacetime endowed with both a metric and a unit timelike vector field. In effect, it is like a subject which we cannot adequately define anyway g (except in terms of perception). Lots of geek humor there, but anyway - such theory has a preferred reference frame, and so is not Lorentz invariant. BTW - that preferred reference frame could be a single dimension if there happened to be eight of them to begin with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-aether_theory Then there is LQG. Is it coming to the rescue or not? Loop quantum gravity is a quantization of a Lagrangian field theory, equivalent to the usual Einstein-Cartan theory in that it leads to the same equations of motion describing general relativity with torsion. As such, it can be argued that LQG respects local Lorentz invariance. It is not clear if torsion is the timelike field of Einstein-aether - or not - as by the time torsion arrived, there was already enough controversy in the mix to turn things over to the next generation of theorists. Almost everyone in 'alternative energy' likes the idea of torsion. This is not necessarily because it is still classified as pseudoscience, and most of us are contrarian to the core, but because it may provide a fundamental mechanism to transfer some of whatever is in the aether, out of the aether, as a power source. The fact that epos may have charge, torsion, density, curvature and gravity as inherent properties makes it all very facile to fit into somebody's evolving electrogravity theory, only problem is: there are becoming so many permutations of these ToE's ; not to mention Lisi's E8, that it boggles the mind. Wouldn't it be nice and orderly to find that the base level dimension of the E8 corresponds to this kind of epo field and that everything else builds on top of that? ... and if that is not crazy enough- how about time and torsion being interconnected? ... which is the superset? Jones
[Vo]:a clarification
To any one who might be interested, Steve quoted me in the latest issue of NET as follows: For example, LENR researcher Ed Storms, retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, recently discouraged me from reporting all of the key facts of LENR research. He wrote this to me in an e-mail recently: “You need to be more careful in how you reveal the truth about the field. Eventually, the field will be big enough and so well-accepted that a little plainly spoken truth would not cause you any problem.” The conclusion that Steve drew is not correct as I stated to Steve in a recent e-mail. Steve, The following statement from the latest issue of NET is not correct. I did not at any time discourage you from reporting ALL KEY FACTS about LENR. For you to get this impression is an example of your inability to accurately report what I say to you and is why I do not want anything I say to you quoted by you. The context of my statement was your report about Marianne Macy and the problems you created for yourself in not being sensitive to the context of your reporting. At the very least, I suggest you check with people to be sure you understand what they are telling you rather than distort your reporting to fit your own agenda. You can be a service, as you intend, if you are accurate in reporting the intent of a comment. In this case, you supplied your own interpretation of my intent, which was not correct. I attempted to encourage you to be sensitive to how you report facts about the subject, not to discourage you from reporting ALL KEY FACTS. I hope you see the difference. Ed
Re: [Vo]:Re: OT:Pre-positioning for troubled financial times
On Oct 17, 2008, at 4:50 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
I don't disagree with most of what you say here, but the drop in money
supply is something which can be accounted for conventionally. I
had
a couple comments, which I'll give out of order.
Horace Heffner wrote:
This theory seems to be working out to some degree. It appears M has
been driven strongly toward zero.
This may have nothing whatsoever to do with program trading.
Very roughly speaking, the money supply is determined by the amount of
high powered money in existence (direct loans and gifts from the
Fed)
times a multiplier. The multiplier is determined by the reserve
requirement in effect on banks.
If the reserve requirement is 5%, then of each dollar placed in the
banking system, 95 cents is lent out. The borrowers may stuff a
little
of the money they borrow into a mattress (and hence take it out of
circulation), but *nearly all* of it is going to be either spent or
invested. If it's spent, it goes to a company, and if it's
invested, it
also goes to a company, and ultimately it works its way back to the
banking system.
Once back in the banking system, it's subject to the same reserve
requirement, and once again 95% of it is lent out and around and
around and around we go.
The result is that the money supply can be viewed as, *very*
approximately,
high powered money * sum_{n=0,inf} (1 - a)^n
where a is the reserve requirement. The sum on the right can be
evaluated by subtracting from it the same sum taken from 1 to infinity
and dividing through by (1 - (1 - a)) to obtain
sum_{n=0,inf} (1-a)^n = (1-a)/a = 1/a - 1
With our strawman reserve requirement of 5%, that evaluates to a
factor of 19. Thus, with a 5% reserve requirement, the money supply
might be expected to be (*very* approximately!) 19 times the amount of
money deposited in the system by the Fed.
Now, suppose there's panic or breakdown in the financial system.
If the
bank lending rate drops because of fear among the bankers, *or* if
people panic and start removing their money from the banks (a run),
that factor of 19 can drop very quickly. And when the lending
multiplier drops the money supply drops just as fast.
Something like this happened at the beginning of the 30's depression,
and about 2/3 of the money supply simply vanished, virtually
overnight.
(Or maybe it wasn't 2/3 -- I've forgotten the actual fraction, as
calculated by Friedman in some essay or other.)
The question must be asked which is the tail and which the dog, or
more to the point whether the dog can be led by pulling the tail? A
fast collapsing market, especially derivative markets in which the
banks and brokerages are heavily entwined, drives the need for
capital to cover margin calls. The faster the market moves the
greater the run on on the money supply - and other reserves, like
gold. It is ironic we are possibly in the greatest worldwide
inflationary period ever, with gold coin products backordered,
difficult to find and flying off the shelves, while the price of gold
momentarily drops due to the need to cover margin calls.
The velocity of money is too high. This prevents orderly application
of economic principles with predictable results. Volatility can be
expected to go out of control unless damping factors can be engaged.
The problem with modern portfolio theory is its fundamental
assumption, that the market activity is actually based on stochastic
processes. It is assumed that all fundamentals are known by all the
participants and very quickly priced into the market. All that is
left is due to random fluctuations.
This is indeed the common assumption, and it is patently false.
Stock prices continue to be set largely by emotional factors, and
stocks
which are in style are consistently overvalued while those which are
out of style are consistently undervalued. By overvalued I mean
over a long term (say, a year) the value of stylish stocks tends to
drop relative to the market, and by undervalued I mean that over a
long term (say, a year) the value of out of style stocks tends to
rise
relative to the market.
This has been true for as long as anyone's been studying the market
and
it continues to the true today, as far as I can tell.
Fear and greed are underlying factors driving the stock market, but
there is way more involved here than just a stock market, or even
human decision making. Computer trading is happening by rules
derived on false principles and for circumstances which have changed
beyond the scope of their design.
P/E ratios (and, more recently, PEG ratios) tend to tell the style
story pretty clearly. As one trivial example, back when Sun
Microsystems' PE hit ~ 90 it was clear that it was a stylish
stock and
its price was being supported not by perfect information, but by the
usual herd mentality among brokers. That was a few years back but I
don't see any evidence that
Re: [Vo]:Re: OT:Pre-positioning for troubled financial times
If things are damped enough for current liquidity efforts to take effect without causing other problems, then it seems to me a major initial underlying problem, i.e. the drop in housing values below loaned amounts, will be fixed far faster than most realize ... through inflation. We'll be back to crazy consumerism in the blink of an eye. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
[Vo]:How to steal an election with a Diebold machine
It couldn't be easier! See: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine-200693.php - Jed
Re: [Vo]:How to steal an election with a Diebold machine
Edmund Storms wrote: Jed, do you still think these flaws were accidental, a result of incompetence, or just sloppy design? Do you think the Republicans are not out to steal the election if they could? Indeed. There was a lot of noise on the Internet after the 2004 election about the opscan machines in Florida, but it was all misdirection. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read on. (If you've heard all this before, stop right here, this is four year old news.) Statistics can reveal connections but not causes, and the connection was that the right-wing northern Florida counties used opscan machines in 2004, while the left-wing southern Florida counties used Diebold E-touch machines. In northern Florida it's common to register as a Democrat and then vote Republican in the presidential race. That behavior correlated very closely with use of the opscan machines and made it look, for all the world, like somebody cheated when the votes were tallied. What wasn't obvious without a lot of work is that the weird voting patterns predated the use of opscan and E-touch machines, and so couldn't have been caused by them; the selective use of opscan machines, and the weird voting patterns, were both correlated with a third factor, which was demographic. That same strange voting pattern existed in other southern states, and had existed in those areas for at least a couple of elections before 2004 (and apparently existed clear back to the Reconstruction era, which is what it apparently stems from). ** HOWEVER ** all the heat generated by the apparent (but seemingly not real) hanky-panky with the opscan machines obscured something important: The strange skew in voting patterns between northern and southern Florida was not only natural, but should have been *larger* than it was. The southern Florida counties, which vote democratic, and which used E-touch machines, went *just* *a* *little* less democratic in 2004, for no apparent reason. When all known factors were eliminated, something still remained, which makes one wonder. Here's a summary news story on a multivariate analysis done on the southern Florida voting patterns: http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html http://tinyurl.com/5zhbj I don't have a link to the actual paper, nor do I know where it was published; all I've read are news stories in the popular press, so I can't comment on how airtight their analysis was. My own analysis of northern Florida voting patterns, over which I slaved for an enormous number of hours before concluding that the null hypothesis was the correct one regarding opscan voting machine fraud, may be found here (I'm sure I've posted this link here before, but that was a long time ago): http://physicsinsights.org/elec04.html I only wish it hadn't taken me so long to catch onto the Dixiecrat factor, since it appears that the grand theft of votes actually took place in areas where I didn't look, because I wasted too much time looking where there weren't any woozles. (Any kind of careful analysis of this sort of thing takes a horrible amount of time to perform, or at any rate that's how I find it to be.) Do you think the people running the Diebold company at the time the machines were designed did not see the connection between helping the Republicans and their product? To me, this is the most obvious effort to steal an election that I can imagine and, what is worse, it helped Bush win. Will it work again? Ed On Oct 17, 2008, at 2:00 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: It couldn't be easier! See: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine-200693.php - Jed
Re: [Vo]:How to steal an election with a Diebold machine
Edmund Storms wrote: Jed, do you still think these flaws were accidental, a result of incompetence, or just sloppy design? Well, naturally I have my suspicions. Who wouldn't? But I still think that I cannot know the answer to this question without evidence. I mean evidence that would stand up in court: testimony, incriminating documents and the like. The only way to get such evidence would be to have the powers of a District Attorney or a Congressman holding a Congressional Investigation. I doubt that a reporter could dig up anything definitive. In other words, I would have to be able to compel witnesses to tell the truth, and I would have to have warrants to look for documents inside the company. There have been such investigations by D.A.s and the Congress. In a sense, it does not matter what brought about this situation. Whether it was stupidity or deliberate, the effect on elections, and Diebold's legal responsibility is similar, although I suppose a deliberate design would be a criminal offense. Knowing that the machine is faulty and not doing anything about it probably also a criminal offense. I wouldn't know about that, but if I worked there, I sure wouldn't keep it secret! You can bet that if anyone goes to jail, it will be some lowly programmer. Here is 2004 news report: A California court has approved a $2.6 million settlement between Diebold and the State of California and Alameda County. The state and county had sued Diebold for fraudulent claims about the security of its electronic voting machines. . . . The settlement is the fruit of a suit filed in September by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who argued that Diebold was not truthful about the security and reliability of its electronic voting machines. Lockyer, who earlier dropped a criminal probe into Diebold, claimed that Diebold provided Alameda County with software that was not certified by the government. . . . Apparently Attorney General Lockyer decided there was not enough evidence for a criminal case. That does not prove there were no criminal offenses! It could just mean they are good at covering them up. Do you think the Republicans are not out to steal the election if they could? I think many of them would if they could, but who knows if have the guts to do it. A lot of Democrats would steal elections too. Not Obama as far as I know. Maybe some of his misguided supporters would . . . Recently, I had a discussion with a Democratic party election official from Iowa. That is, a party member delegated to run the primary caucus. She and the others selected for this job are supposed to be neutral between Clinton, Obama and the other candidates, and to enforce fairness, the debate rules of order, and so on. She told me appalling stories of misbehavior by Clinton's supporters. They used old time techniques such as stuffing ballot boxes, or locking the doors and turning off the lights and then telling Obama supporters the meeting was cancelled (or 'it is already over -- you missed it, go home!') and then holding the meeting with their own supporters only. She was astounded at their chutzpah. After the caucus she was a firm Obama supporter. I heard of New York City districts with thousands of black residents that somehow did not tally a single Obama primary vote. To me, this is the most obvious effort to steal an election that I can imagine and, what is worse, it helped Bush win. Will it work again? Probably not. You can't steal an election if the vote is high enough against you. People will figure out what you are up to. Take, for example, the New York City districts that supposedly recorded no Obama votes. People shrugged that off during the primary election because everyone knew that Clinton would take New York no matter what. It has a bad smell, but you can't fight every injustice. On the other hand, if those same districts in the General Election show only McCain votes, and not a single Obama vote, you know there would be outrage, and probably widespread rioting in the streets. People would not stand up for that! Obama's lead in New York is so large, I am sure there will be no Republican vote theft in New York in the General Election, and the Democrats wouldn't bother. They are sure to win. There may be theft in states with close elections, such as Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. Between the Bradley effect and likely vote theft in places like Ohio, I think there is a good chance that McCain will win. Obama has only a thin lead in any case. He is ahead by only 2% among likely voters (traditional). In other words, when they give weight to the poll data to make the distribution equal to the usual turnout, taking into account that older white people nearly always vote, and young black people seldom do, then Obama's advantage is only 2% with 2% margin of error. (This a perfectly legitimate statistical analysis technique. It isn't as
Re: [Vo]:How to steal an election with a Diebold machine
Whoa - Do you think the Republicans are not out to steal the election if they could? Why them and not the Dems? I do not think either party has a monopoly on dishonesty or dirty tricks. Now that the machine has been reversed engineered, etc. and done so at Universities - (where there is a decided liberal bias) I would actually suspect that it would be far more likely that the bad-apples among young Dems would try to steal votes - ... and might even use the assumption that Diebold was possibly at blame in Ohio, years ago for the other side to either get revenge or to play a kind of sneaky double-cross. I know lots of IT professionals and programmers, and can say absolutely and without question that most of them are strongly for Obama in this state. The boss may be for McCain, or the guy who signs the checks, and that creates an unusual situation. This may not be true elsewhere, but an election official who allowed the memory card in a machine to be switched, even if it was supposed to benefit his choice - could never really know who it might favor in the end .
Re: [Vo]:How to steal an election with a Diebold machine
Jones Beene wrote: Do you think the Republicans are not out to steal the election if they could? Why them and not the Dems? Well, in recent history going back to Nixon and the plumbers, Republicans have been more inclined to cheat than Democrats. Or at least, they have gotten caught more often. Of course there have been many corrupt Democrats and Democratic machine politics. This is very broad sociological generalization -- and such generalizations always have many, many exceptions -- but modern Republicans tend to be authoritarian, and authoritarian personalities tend to be more open to making their own rules, which the rest of us call cheating. They do not see it that way. See: The Authoritarians http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ This may not be true elsewhere, but an election official who allowed the memory card in a machine to be switched, even if it was supposed to benefit his choice - could never really know who it might favor in the end . It should not be difficult to arrange a test. You put the card in a regular computer to program the bias. You command it: shift 3% of Obama votes to McCain. Then you run it in a dummy election to be sure the bias you programmed in takes effect. Of course you can fake the program and verification too, but the person writing this program would presumably be a co-conspirator. Or a well-paid Russian hacker who doesn't care who wins a U.S. election, but who does want the last installment to be paid in full after the election. Plus he doesn't want the Russian Mafia contractors coming after him. You can probably detect computer voter machine fraud accurately with exit polls. If the programmer played games or did not implement the program as agreed to, the person paying for the 3% bias would see that it did not happen. Or he would see it go the other way toward the rival candidate, and he would get upset. Even though most intellectuals and programmers probably support Obama in this election, there are plenty who do not. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:How to steal an election with a Diebold machine
On Oct 17, 2008, at 3:52 PM, Jones Beene wrote: Whoa - Do you think the Republicans are not out to steal the election if they could? Why them and not the Dems? In this case, the owner of Diebold was a strong supporter of the Republicans. This requires the Democrats to use other methods because their people did not built the machines. I do not think either party has a monopoly on dishonesty or dirty tricks. No, but the Republicans have shown a greater tendency to use such tricks in recent times because they could get away with doing this. The issue is not who is more honest, because both parties are equally corrupt. The issue is what will happen during this election. The Republicans are still operating under the moral principles of Carl Rove, which makes them more likely to go dirty. Now that the machine has been reversed engineered, etc. and done so at Universities - (where there is a decided liberal bias) I would actually suspect that it would be far more likely that the bad- apples among young Dems would try to steal votes - Perhaps ... and might even use the assumption that Diebold was possibly at blame in Ohio, years ago for the other side to either get revenge or to play a kind of sneaky double-cross. Now we are talking about karma. Ed I know lots of IT professionals and programmers, and can say absolutely and without question that most of them are strongly for Obama in this state. The boss may be for McCain, or the guy who signs the checks, and that creates an unusual situation. This may not be true elsewhere, but an election official who allowed the memory card in a machine to be switched, even if it was supposed to benefit his choice - could never really know who it might favor in the end .
