April 2016 - luv-talk

Take action: Don’t send 267 people back to offshore detention
by Peter Ross 28 Oct '18

28 Oct '18

http://bit.ly/1R3MiYB Maybe Australians can avoid another "Sorry" fifty years later this time. Thanks Peter

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Phone repair
by Russell Coker 24 May '16

24 May '16

What's a good place in the central city area to get a phone repaired? The glass on my Note3 has cracked. I just need new glass the screen itself seems ok. -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with K-9 Mail.

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IEEE Vic: Wed 27 18:00- Bayesian Decision Making in the Real World
by Rodney Brown 25 Apr '16

25 Apr '16

*Bayesian Decision Making in the Real World* */Presented By : Dr. Kevin Korb Date : Wednesday April 27, 2016 Time : 6:00pm - 7:30pm Location : /*/Room 80.03.021, Swanston Academic Bldg, 80/445 Swanston St, MelbourneVIC3000 (Map <http://ieeevic.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=ff449fc8ee84b59411cf34a0d…>)/ *------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*----- */Abstract:/* Bayesian networks, extended to Bayesian decision networks (BDNs, aka influence diagrams), support decision making under uncertainty in an ideal (normative) way. That means they can provide guidance to people prepared to learn how to build and test them and then meticulously analyse a decision problem and tailor a BDN to it. In other words, BDNs are used by almost no one for real decision making. In this talk I'll outline what's involved in all of that in case you really want to do it (or just understand what's involved). But for the vast majority of people there's a better way: pay (directly or indirectly) someone to build a GUI front-end that will hide the details from the user. For any particular decision problem there will be invariants that can be pre-built into a BDN. All that a user/customer need do is enter the user's specific context: general background info plus the needs and preferences that specific user has. The BDN can then assess the different choices available and their user-specific value. I will compare and contrast this with what's most commonly available, CHOICE-like comparative tables of costs and benefits of each alternative, which puts the entire burden on the customer, leading to highly suboptimal decisions. Bayesian decision making is the wave of the future, so we may as well catch it now. */Speaker: / Dr Kevin Korb*is a Reader in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University and co-founder and Director of Bayesian Intelligence Pty Ltd. BI delivers training and Bayesian network modeling solutions to business and government. Korb received his PhD in philosophy of science from Indiana University in 1992. His research interests include Bayesian philosophy of science, causal discovery algorithms, Bayesian networks, evolutionary artificial life simulation, and the epistemology of simulation. He is the author of "Bayesian Artificial Intelligence" (CRC, 2010) and "Evolving Ethics" (Imprint Academic, 2010), co-founder of the journal Psyche, the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the Australasian Bayesian Network Modelling Society (ABNMS) and Chair of theIEEEComputational Intelligence Society inVictoria. *This is a free event open to the public. for catering purposes, please register at:* *http://bayesian-decision-making-in-the-real-world.eventbrite.com.au/ <http://ieeevic.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ff449fc8ee84b59411cf34a0d&…>* *======================================================================================* *Kind Regards Annick Boghossian* *The Computer Society Chapter ofIEEEVictorian Section Chair*

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Fw: new message
by luv-beginners＠luv.asn.au 24 Apr '16

24 Apr '16

Hello! You have a new message, please read <http://www.yattermatters.com/bond.php?wpt> luv-beginners(a)luv.asn.au

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California voter idiot-trap (was: petitions)
by Rick Moen 21 Apr '16

21 Apr '16

There's been an idiot-trap for California voters, in operation for, oh, call it a half-century. The _Los Angeles Times_ just ran a story checking on the 3% of registered California voters currently falling for that trap, highlighting some now-embarrassed celebrities who did the dumb thing. http://static.latimes.com/american-independent-party-california-voters/ It has to do with the concept of 'voting independent', and a minor and extremely far-right party whose name is 'American Independent Party' (hereinafter, 'AIP'). Ah, you're way ahead of me, right? Almost every California voter since 1968 who ever registered AIP, did so in the mistaken belief he/she was registering 'independent'. I've known about this trap for a long time. Here's the way I explained it in 2008 to the Ex-VA Linux Systems mailing list: A few years ago, while researching the "County Political Parties" entries in http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/household.html, I uncovered something that might amuse: Ever wonder about why the "American Independent Party" (ex-George Wallace) remains on all California partisan-office ballots, even though there's been no such party organisation in the state for 30+ years? It's because a Bircher outfit called "Constitution Party" (primarily in Colorado, Montana, and western Pennsylvania) kept it on the ballots (as a sort of brand name) to function as an _idiot trap_. That is, it's listed solely in order to attract votes from citizens attempting to vote "independent" but unclear on the concept of how that actually works. Said voters see the word "independent" in close association with nationalism, mark that entry, and never realise they've voted for a party -- and Constitution Party gets their vote. In this way, Constitution Party remained (albeit under a different name) permanently on the California ballot and in the public's eye, even though they had nothing like the 1% registration statewide that's required to be _added_ to the ballot: State law requires that a returning party merely never fall below 1/15% of state registered voters in any subsequent general election, and accidental votes from morons helped Constitution Party stick around. I say "remained", because, in 2006, Constitution Party split because candidates in several states cautiously allowed as how abortions _might_ be justified in cases of rape, incest, and abortions performed to save the life of the mother, leading to a big fight and numerous states' parties disaffiliating because the central organisation isn't wacko enough. The California branch is one of the many that left, and re-dubbed itself "America's Independent Party". _It_ now operates the ex-Wallace American Independent Party "franchise" within California. (Repeal the income tax, and protect our Precious Bodily Fluids!) http://www.selfgovernment.us/ http://www.ballot-access.org/2008/08/26/keyes-wins-california-lawsuit-on-pr… (Post-2008, 'America's Independent Party', the tiny reactionary faction controlling the AIP brand in California, appears to have renamed itself a second time to 'America's Party'.) The actual American Independent Party was a one-shot party formed to back southern racist George C. Wallace's presidential campaign where Wallace primarily opposed racial integration, favoured reducing the size and influence of the US Federal government, and pledged to either win the Vietnam War in 90 days or withdraw all troops. The party fell apart at the end of the 1968 campaign (that elected Republican candidate Richard Nixon), but AIP remained an entry on the California ballot because of the rules I describe -- an artifact of voter statistics. I mentioned long ago in the prior thread that my state of California recognises six political parties: o American Independent Party (the idiot bait), http://www.aipca.org/ o Democratic Party, http://www.cadem.org/ o Green Party, http://www.cagreens.org/ o Libertarian Party, http://ca.lp.org/ o Peace and Freedom Party, http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/ o Republican Party, https://www.cagop.org/ Minor parties in general are discussed briefly at the end of this post. What is 'independent', in this context? It means the voter has declined to provide any party affiliation to the county registrar of voters. California officials refer to such a voter as a 'no party preference' voter (formerly 'decline-to-state' or 'non-partisan'). Basically, when registering to vote, you are asked 'Do you wish to state a party preference?' You check either 'yes' or 'no'. Under 'yes', there are six choices of party as shown in the LA Times graphic -- one of which is AIP. Thus, AIP is an idiot trap. And 3% of the California's registered voters fall for it. Why would an intelligent California voter _truly_ register independent (i.e., no party preference)? I cannot for the life of me figure out a single compelling reason, as doing so has no functional advantage. As an interesting quirk, three of California's parties permit no-party-preference voters to vote their ballots, and three do not. For details: http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2016-April/008422.html Given the USA's severe (and little-recognised) Duvenger's Law problem, at any given time over the centuries there have almost always been just _two_ dominant political parties that win almost all elections -- except on some interesting occasions where 'party realignments' occurred, and sometimes entire parties fragmented and dissolved. o Federalist Party (1792): lost strength when its leaders died around 1800, never regained power. Discredited and dissolved in 1815 because of a fatal political faux pas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Convention o Democratic-Republican Party (1799): Thomas Jefferson's party, rival to the Federalists, and opposed to strong central government power. Splintered in 1824 over a highly dysfunctional Presidential election where the Electoral College deadlocked and Congress had to pick a President and VP (widely condemned as a 'corrupt bargain'). One fragment (that backed former general and charismatic populist Andrew Jackson) became the Democratic Party (1832), which survives, much changed, to this day. The other became the Whig Party (1833). o Whig Party (1833): Received diverse collections of Andrew Jackson opponents. Self-destructed over the slavery issue in 1856. The anti-slavery northern faction split off as the Republican Party[1] (launched in 1854). The pro-slavery southern faction briefly split off (1845) as a nationalist/nativist party under a series of now-obscure names and is now commonly known as the Know Nothing Party, which dissolved during the American Civil War (1861-1865) over slavery. I assume former members in the South mostly became southern Democrats, an odd regionalism that persisted until the late 20th Century. The American Civil War left two surviving major political parties, the same ones that exist today (Democratic and Republican) -- though the tenets of both have changed _very_ radically since 1865. The legacy of slavery did not go away, of course, and a major realignment _without_ party dissolution occurred after President Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat, and from Texas) coaxed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1865, enacting long-overdue major protections of voting rights, and mostly having the effect of [re-]enfranchising black voters in the South.[2] According to legend, President Johnson said to observers when he signed the bill that it would cost the Democratic Party the South for a generation. If anything, he underestimated. Southern Democrats slowly trickled to the Republican Party after '65, and moved there en-masse under Ronald Reagan (1980s). Part of the reason the partisan divide has become so intense and angry is a growing (and IMO correct) perception that the Republican Party has become (starting in the Reagan era) the party of racism and xenophobia, starting with its absorption of most Southern Democrats. But the greater part is, of course, the Republican Party veering ideologically away from the mainstream more generally under the influence of Tea Party radicals, while Democratic Party politics has changed very little since, say, around 1970, remaining fractious and diverse.[3] Meanwhile, there _have_ been a number of interesting _minor_ political parties. Although kept from winning significant numbers of political office races by the distortive effect of first-past-the-post voting (Duvenger's Law), they have had a vital role in promoting ideas later adopted by the major parties. For example, several democratic-socialist parties, sometimes regional, sometimes national, promoted the idea of nationally organised old-age, survivors', and disability insurance for at least 20-30 years before President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935. Pretty much every significant social welfare, social insurance, or political reform idea traces back to one or more of these now-obscure minor parties. Mr. Bernie Sanders, whom I intend to vote for in the California Democratic Party primary election on June 7th (and who will lose nomination to Hillary Clinton, later this summer), describes himself as a 'democratic socialist', which is basically just branding and owes to some of his fights with the Democratic Party establishment earlier in his career. Notably, though, the term 'socialist' is political poison in many parts of the USA, where low-information voters cannot quite get their minds around the reality of mixed economies, and cannot disambiguate 'socialist' from 'Communist'. Sad. [1] Its nickname 'Grand Old Party' or GOP originated in a bit of passing publicity in 1875, even though the USA's Democratic Party is, in fact, 22 years older. [2] It's not for nothing that several black Americans I know, who were born around 1965-6, were named 'Lyndon' by their parents. [3] Thus, early 20th Century entertainment figure and political humourist Will Rogers's famous quip: 'I am not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers

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Victoria's relaxed attitude gains some chemical assistance
by Rick Moen 20 Apr '16

20 Apr '16

I see that Vic has become the first Austalian state to make medical marijuana legal: http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/medicinal-marijuana-has-been-… Although I don't partake, I always appreciate it when our international friends help end the War on Drugs Without Major Corporate Sponsorship (WoDWMCS). Today's news is that selected patients will be able to receive cannabis by prescription after the state first does a cultivation trial, and then arranges a controlled supply pipeline from industrial suppliers. Legalising recreational use is not contemplated. WoDWMCS has been spearheaded and advocated to other countries mostly by the USA. I recommend some good, thoughtful background reading about that history, here: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs Here in California, voters made one effort to _fully_ opt out of criminalising marijuana in 2010 with Proposition 19, which would have made possession, cultivation, and use of small amounts for almost any purpose lawful by persons age 21 and over. Surprisingly, it enjoyed major support by state law enforcement, and failed by a slender 54% to 46% margin. (As noted below, California voters are predicted to pass an even more thorough legalisation initiative, later this year.) However, medical marijuana has been fully legal in California since Proposition 215 passed by a nearly identical margin in 1996 -- sending shockwaves through the antidrugs establishment, because residents can get a 'medical cannabis card' for essentially any reason after an interview with a physician and paying about US $100-200. Said establishment then spent the next 20 years frantically attempting to convince other US states and other countries to flee in horror from the 'California model' of effective decriminalistion -- apparently with little effect, as I've just noticed that 30 out of the 50 uS states now have either legalised or decriminalised (at least) medical use.[1] More recently, two US states completely legalised recreational use: Colorado and Washington (both in 2012). Joining them, Vermont and California (once again) voters will decide on total legalisation via the November 8th, 2016 ballot, and both initiatives are expected to pass. The US Federal government still (ridiculously) classes use, possession, sale, cultivation, and transportation as felony offence and cannabis as a Schedule I substance under the Nixon-era Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (high abuse potential and no medical use), _but_ the Feds under President Obama have been reluctant to enforce Federal law in states with local drugs legalisation, even though established law (US Constitution Supremacy Clause) states that Federal law can and does pre-empt state law. On April 19, the United Nations will be hosting the first major international conference on national drugs policies in almost 20 years, the UN General Assembly Session (UNGASS) on Drugs -- which should be interesting, as the former Nixon-era 'War on Drugs' consensus is totally gone. (Not that legalisation has become predominant, just that the former international consensus is utterly dead.) Meanwhile, watch for the state of California giving Nevada, Oregon, and possibly the entire western world a contact high after the upcoming November 8, 2016 general election. Air quality may suffer for a while. [1] They might better decry the extremely successful _Portuguese_ model: That country in 2001 decriminalised all drugs, improving the lives of everyone. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/05/why-hardly-anyone-di…

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DKIM and spam
by Russell Coker 18 Apr '16

18 Apr '16

I just received a spam message (one of those "earn thousands from doing almost no work at home" ones) from a member of this list. Apparently spammers took over his account and either saw messages from me in his inbox or saw a public record of LUV list correspondence. The message in question was DKIM signed which proves that the user in question had their Gmail account compromised. I've just sent them private mail informing them. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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ready to go?
by marktrickett＠gmail.com 17 Apr '16

17 Apr '16

Unable to show full message. You can view it by clicking [here](http://db0e083.d795597de5780d7f.cfad2.msgsafe1.com/?vi=2&kzo=5.3.8113… Luv error code: 11409 (Sun Apr 17 8:25:04 ART 2016)

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Quick request - sign this card?
by Keith Bainbridge 15 Apr '16

15 Apr '16

Friend, I just added my name to a Good Luck card that's being delivered this weekend to Syrian refugee girls in Jordan. Will you join me? Click here: http://www.malala.org/pages/sign-the-card?sp_ref=187159927.272.165112.e.0.2… Forced to flee Syria due to the conflict, the card's recipients are living and going to school in the Azraq refugee camp. Thanks to support from Malala Fund donors, they have been studying hard to prepare for their entrance exams in June. This is a big moment for these girls — their futures depend on the results of the entrance exam. Will you join me and add your name to this show of support by wishing them good luck, in time for the delivery this weekend? Click here: http://www.malala.org/pages/sign-the-card?sp_ref=187159927.272.165112.e.0.2… Thank you. Keith Bainbridge 0447 667 468 Keithrbau(a)gmail.com Sent from my APad

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petitions
by Russell Coker 13 Apr '16

13 Apr '16

http://tinyurl.com/z5m37ly http://tinyurl.com/o65udwr Please sign the above petitions. The NRA and the Republican party are not doing enough to protect the 2nd amendment as they don't allow everyone to carry guns at their events. The 2nd amandment doesn't have a caveat of "unless you are near someone the secret service calls a 'protected person'". -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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