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The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

markessien.com

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Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#111

Post by avodonosov »

hoseja wrote: post #14

Silly, you don't malcount the actual votes, you brainwash the population and pervert the process until they vote the way you want them to, like in the advanced first world democracies.

That's not the worst case, if wise elite brainwashes (manufactures consent of) the population.

Worse is when the elite is not so wise (sometimes plainly crazy), or the elite loses control to crazy people, adversaries. Or self-induced mass hysteria of the population.

The direct "democracy" that very soon will inevitably be enabled by technology, poses great dangers in the situation where masses are so easily manupulateable, and their collective intelligence seems not raising above individual level, but degrading below it for some reason. Violent chaos, lynch courts, etc.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#112

Post by JumpCrisscross »

churchill wrote: post #105
churchill wrote: post #29

Oh, and Mark didn't mention that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was indicted for heroin charges in the US in 2003, forfeited $460k & is just too old to run a democracy this size. Atiku Abubakar (second candidate) was a former VP and the president he served under (Obasanjo) still insists the dude remains a monument to corruption. There's been a coordinated campaign at all levels to rig this election massively and we saw voter inti…

Proofs: To explain the $460k he forfeited to the feds for his heroin trafficking indictment [0][1], Tinubu claims to have worked at Deloitte as a consultant & made $850k in pre-tax bonuses a year. Problem is, Deloitte claims he's never worked for them [2] and a director at Deloitte earns $340k, according to Glassdoor [3]. [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61732548 [1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/3457420…

> a director at Deloitte earns $340k, according to Glassdoor

This in no way undermines your post, broadly. But narrowly, these are sales roles. Two people with the same title at Deloitte can make vastly different incomes depending on their production.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#113

Post by JumpCrisscross »

neves wrote: post #88

Is it true that USA does not have a open data law to make everybody publish in CSV?

> Is it true that USA does not have an open data law to make everybody publish in CSV?

American elections are de-centralised. Each state comes up with its methods. In some, each county. (I'm not sure how publishing a CSV of vote totals would help.)

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#114

Post by munchler »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #107

>> We had a brainstorming meeting, and decided to try a new approach. We would simply ask the Obidients to help us do the conversion. If hundreds of Obidients did the transcription, it would go fast. What would guarantee that the Obidients would not, in turn, try to inflate the score of the Labor candidate?

They planned to transcribe each PDF multiple times in order to validate the results.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#115

Post by rqtwteye »

hunter2_ wrote: post #85
SilverCode wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better option would be to use the TIFF format. You can use it as a container format to store lossless and lossy image formats, and handles multiple images in a single container. It was the standard for scanners until PDF seemed to dominate the scene.

> It was the standard for scanners until PDF seemed to dominate the scene. Probably because it's much easier (for average users with few tools and skills) to print a PDF than to print any sort of non-page-based (e.g., image) file format and have the resulting sheet of paper match the scanned sheet of paper in terms of scale, orientation, position -- assuming both sheets are the same dimensions. Essentially using the…

I can buy the printing argument. The problem with PDF is that this print-optimized is used more and more for purposes where it will never get printed. For example most manuals will never get printed but they are published in PDF format which is a PITA to use on a phone and hard to search.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#116

Post by zo1 »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #81
rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

I've thought about this and come round to think that the flaws of PDF are actually essential to the success of the document format. - Non-responsive (compared to HTML). Allows PDFs to serve as a common standard between other document formats with different resizing logic, like Latex and Word. - Difficultly of network access from code running inside document. Allows PDFs to generally operate offline. Nobody's brave en…

Oh but there is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Flex

Not sure if I linked to the right article, but it was basically compiled scripts/code that was embedded into PDF's that could run arbitrary code.

""Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash platform.""

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#117

Post by anigbrowl »

rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

Because PDF shows you a page on screen that will look the same if you print it out, and print layouts have been optimized for reading convenience over centuries. And if you give someone with no technical expertise a pdf file, it's virtually certain that they're going to be able to open it because some kind of viewer is built into most operating systems.

You're totally right about PDF being a massive pain in the butt for any other purpose, but unless you have an alternative that handles the basic use case at least as well and other use cases way better, PDF is here to stay.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#118

Post by gus_massa »

codeulike wrote: post #66
rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

these are just photos embedded in a PDF, which actually isn't that bad an idea, because it lets you scan multiple pages and join them together as a 'document' (not sure if the documents in OP had several pages, but if you've scanned/photographed a multi-page document, PDF is not that bad of a solution)

I'm a teacher in the first year of the university. During the remote classes in the pandemic, we made almost mandatory to upload the photos of the take homes and questions using camscaner [1].

The student just download the app, and it fix the orientation, rotation, bad light, contrast, and many other horrible things that a jpg may have. In particular the orientation and ordering multiple sheets. Also, Moodle has a little more support for pdf than jpg [2].

I don't know how many three letter agencies are reading the stream, but I'm happy that many three letter agencies operative now have a better formation in algebra and calculus.

[1] https://www.camscanner.com/

[2] It depends on how many optional packages your sysadmin installed.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#119

Post by anigbrowl »

muyuu wrote: post #78
londons_explore wrote: post #33

The votes surprise me... In many regions one party gets 90+% of the vote. Assuming the numbers are correct, then it suggests that most people are easily swayed by their local peers. Is that common in say the USA?

It happens in the US too. Tribalism and ideological clustering are so similar, they are being used interchangeably these days. But in some traditional countries there are literal clans and tribes voting in blocks.

Yep, bloc voting can be habitual or strategic. There's a town in Northern California where the majority of the seats on the council is held by people who all happen to attend the same megachurch.

Re: The drama in trying to convert election PDFs to Spreadsheets

#120

Post by manv1 »

rqtwteye wrote: post #63

I still don't understand how we ended up with PDF as sort of standard to archive data. PDF is already pretty bad for things like manuals but for things like spreadsheets we basically collect the data, then we destroy all the structure by putting it in into POF, and later on we painstakingly try to restore the data from PDF which is often almost impossible to do with accuracy. It just shows that bad solutions often wi…

Back in the day there were at least two programs competing for the role that PDF fills today that I remember: diskpaper and PDF. Apple also had one for its developer docs, but it was never released commercially, I believe.

PDF provided more fidelity for printing, had better tooling (it was by Adobe after all), it was cross-platform, could be displayed on the desktop, so it won. The reader was cross-platform so end-users didn't have to mess with installing plugins for various image types. And because everyone in the document creation division(1) used Postscript to print, printing to PDF was super-easy. And at some point everyone had a postscript printer driver on their machine, so printing to PDF because super-easy as well.

It's not an archiving tool, but people use it for archiving...just like the way a spreadsheet isn't a project management tool, but millions of people use it for project management.

At this point the network effects for the PDF file format would make it difficult to replace. With PDF you can practically guarantee(2) that the file will look the same on any device.

(1) This was more true back then than today, probably (2) assuming that you embedded the fonts, and that the reader doesn't suck.

What's funny is I don't think Adobe really makes any money off of PDF; it's an accidental de-facto standard.

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