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Stories · 3,462
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NIST Wants To Hear Your Ideas On Election Equipment
Joseph_Daniel_Zukige writes "I'm still trying to figure out who is doing what here. It looks like the typical bureaucratic mess, but it looks like NIST, operating under the Help America Vote Act has set up a Technical Guidelines Development Committee to advise the 'independent bipartisan' United States Election Assistance Commission. So, the TGDC is going to hold some public hearings, and they've invited members of the public to help them out: 'One hour will be reserved at the conclusion of each day for members of the public to provide up to five minutes of testimony.'" Read more below, including how to register (today is the deadline) for the meetings, which will take place in central Maryland later this month. Update: 09/15 18:04 GMT by T : Irvu writes "You can submit online comments to NIST's Technical Guidelines process. The link is here. Just click on the link marked 'Submit Comments or Position Statements.' Alternately you can e-mail your comments to vote@nist.gov."
Joseph_Daniel_Zukige continues "I can't make it. (Very long drive across a very deep ocean, or plane tickets I can't afford.) Twelve people per session is not going to allow a lot of people to testify. I'm sure Microsoft has someone going to sell a MSWxx based voting machine. I hope somebody from the EFF is going. Think it would be possible to pack this thing with enough Slashdot geeks to convince the government at least that electronic voting absolutely requires a human-readable ballot to be produced?" The meetings are taking place on the 20th through 22nd of this month; you have only until 5 p.m. today to register, though. From the linked PDF: "The meetings will be held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology North Campus, 820 West Diamond Avenue, Room 152, Gaithersburg, MD."
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Wind Power Falls Under $0.01/kwh
js7a writes "Colorado State University's Rocky Mountain Collegian reports that, "as of June [the price of wind power] dropped to 1 cent per kWh." Even without further expected improvements in turbine technology, the U.S. would now need to use less than 3% of its farmland to get 95% of its electricity demand satisfied by wind power. Plus, wind power is the only mitigation of global warming, because if the whole world converted to wind power in 15 years, the amount of power being extracted from the atmosphere would be more than the increase in greenhouse gas atmospheric energy forcing since 1600. Don't say goodbye to coal and oil, yet, though; unless cell technology increases substantially, when we run out of oil we will convert coal to synthetic fuel." Update: 09/15 13:40 GMT by T : Note: the "1 cent" figure refers to the premium paid for the power over conventionally supplied electricity, rather than the final per-kWh price.
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Rio Carbon MP3 Has A 5G CF To Be Cannibalized
GlucoPilot writes "This guy bought a Rio Carbon Mp3 player because he figured he could rip the 5GB CF Card out of it. He did, and put it in his prosumer 6MP digital camera. Now he can take 1,500 six-megapixel pics in one sitting. Oy." The card is apparently a 5GB Microdrive, note, not 5GB of Flash memory.
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Political Stock Market Simulation
Elphaba Thropp writes "Zack Coburn (of ArsDigita fame) recently released Politics on ZackCoburn.com, a political stock market simulation in which 'political figures are the symbols. The price of each symbol will fluctuate as users rate it either positively or negatively.' Each user starts with $1,000,000, and can rate a symbol's performance every twenty-four hours. The site also offers user blogs, and contains a unique statistics page, in which the top users and symbols are shown, as well as the most liberally-owned and most conservatively-owned stocks are shown (based on a political survey each user can take). Interestingly enough, George W. Bush currently has the most liberal ownership."
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Open Source Apps for a Law Office?
Pandora's Vox asks: "There seems to be lots of FOSS accounting software out there, including one that is almost exactly what I'm looking for. My father just left a large law firm to set up his own shop, and has been having all sorts of adventures with one of the leading legal billing software packages. It's expensive, inflexible, and monolithic. App by app I'm moving him to open source, which brings me to the question (finally!): is there anything comparable out there in FOSS-land? And if not, a) what's the closest thing, and b) would there be any interest in creating / adapting something for the kinds of time-tracking needs that lawyers have? We're talking minute-by-minute time billing, mostly. With some basic accounting tossed in. I'm hoping to do the lawyer thing in a few years myself, so I figure I should start getting the tools I'll be needing together now. Planning ahead, and all. Thanks a bunch!"
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Am I a Spam Zombie?
ReallyCurious asks: "Recently, I've noticed a lot of junk email in my inbox reporting 'Mail delivery failure' or 'Undeliverable'. Some of these had documents attached, so I figured this was just a worm variant. But these messages keep coming. I worry that my machine has been turned into a 'Spam Zombie'. I don't see any suspicious processes running, but maybe it only runs for a few seconds, and at irregular times. I run a Windows 98 laptop, sometimes wirelessly connected to broadband (a few hours a day, on average), but I had to remove my virus software years ago because it was locking my system up, so I'm wide open. I've tried to be a good citizen and have been shopping for new virus software, but prices are running $40-$70, and most of these are just for upgrades (not even counting the mandatory 'subscriptions')! Is there an open or free virus fighting solution that's reliable and available for Windows? I'd be happy to run it ASAP."
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What is this Strange Gadget in My Car?
VanessaDannenberg asks: "Four months ago my fiancé and I bought a 1997 Thunderbird, which came with a few aftermarket mods. Of particular interest is this strange radio-related gadget that was attached to the windshield above the mirror. It has two 5-pin ports on it (as pictured) which accept a flat cable that runs under the car's headliner. I can't tell where that cable ends, but I figure it's a laptop interface (RS232?). Has anyone seen this thing before? What does it do?"
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Virtual Girlfriend
Sven-Erik writes " BBC News reports about a Hong Kong based company called Artificial Life that has developed a solution for men without a partner, in the form of a virtual girlfriend that appear as an animated figure on the video screen of a mobile phone. But there is a downside to the virtual girlfriend - she will require more flowers and gifts than many real women. All virtual girls will look the same - but each girl will behave differently - depending on how much money is spent on her. In return, she will introduce them to different aspects of her life, like letting them meet her female friends - also electronic images. Artificial Life is hoping to launch the new game later this year, on the latest 3-G mobile phones.
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You Run the Smear Campaign
Zordak writes "I came across this amusing story on CNN about a new PC game published by UbiSoft that's hitting store shelves this week called 'Political Machine.' It's a strategy game in which you run a presidential campaign through speeches, ads, campaign stops, and good old-fashioned mud slinging. You can choose to be one of the current candidates, one of several contemporary political figures (like Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice) or you can make your own candidate. The game attempts to be extremely realistic, including using statistical data from the various states."
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Japanese Game Publishers Show Mixed Results
Thanks to GameScience for its round-up of financial results for Japanese videogame publishers for fiscal Q1 2004. The piece muses on "disappointing figures for Konami and Sega with a lack of big titles for the period, and with two cancelled titles, Namco also suffered heavy losses. Sony's game division also suffered, while Capcom and Square-Enix had a comparatively good period." The article also notes Nintendo's "large-scale gains", pointing out: "the Gameboy Advance SP continues to enjoy good sales while software such as 'Mario vs Donkey Kong', 'Kirby' and 'Famicom Mini Series 2' was a great success [both series together have sold over 2.7 million copies]", whereas "the bulk of the losses" in Sony's game division can "be attributed to lower hardware sales than usual", as the PlayStation 2 nears the end of its lifecycle.
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SCO Linux Licenses Could Increase In Price
prostoalex writes "ZDNet UK says that, while SCO Group's legal department took a timeout from generating new lawsuits, their Linux license prices might be increased. 'Companies that license now may be able to do so cheaper than if they do so later,' [Blake] Stowell said. In the upcoming financials call, SCO expects to announce 6-figure revenue from its SCOSource division."
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Big Brother In Your Front Seat
Rick Zeman writes "Would you give up your privacy in your car to save a few bucks on your auto insurance? 'Safe' drivers who plug an electronic device into their vehicles will be then eligible for a discount on their insurance. They say, '...the device constantly tracks car speed. By comparing that with a clock in the TripSense device, the device figures how far the car goes, mapping it against the time of day. At the end of each policy term, the customer would download the data and see what discount he or she would get. Customers can see all their data before deciding to send it to Progressive, and can decide not to send it -- and not get extra discounts.' I wonder how soon it will be that everyone has one except those resigned to paying extra as with grocery 'convenience' cards."
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Windows XP SP2 In Release
mr_tommy writes "Service Pack 2 for Windows XP has been released to manufacturers (RTM), is available to MSDN customers, and will soon be available to all via Windows Update and Microsoft sites. At ~ 250 megs, the download is big, and Microsoft will be offering the option of getting it on CDs. The much awaited Service Pack comes with many security updates (new NX and DEP protection), extra features (firewall, security center), and improvements for Windows. New versions of IE and OE come with the release, as well as improvements in the wireless networking field. So far, the service pack seems to be very stable (no known major issues) and does seem to speed up most systems. A review of SP2 Final with some limited download links is available at Neowin.net. I'd urge all users (pirate users too) to deploy the service pack and benefit from the genuine effort Microsoft have made with regards to security in this release." We did cover this recently but since this is a major deal, we figured people would want to know more.
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How Powerful is the Turn-Off Power of Spam?
JayBonci asks: "Here's a question to the Slashdot readerbase. How powerful is the turnoff power of spam? With an upcoming political election in the United States, and a nation not very-well defended against mass unsolicited emailings, what kind of anti-marketing medium is spam? Could a spammer push out millions of: 'V0te for G3orge W. Bush!' or 'J0hn Kerry for Presidnet@', in the hopes to turn off (or on) voters. Spam marketing penetration is terrible (I've heard figures like .001%), but how powerful is its anti-marketing capabilities? An interesting discussion for the Slashdot audience." How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?
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Telstra Used Linux To Get Microsoft Discounts
awful writes "Last year Slashdot ran a story about Australia's largest telco moving to Linux desktops. Turns out it was all a way to get some tasty discounts from Microsoft. The Australian is reporting that Telstra just signed a four-year deal with MS for $AU15-20 million, for 40,000 users. No figures yet on how much of a discount Telstra got, but MS might want to rethink handing back all its cash to investors if this is how they're going to do business from now on ..."
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The File Sharing Database
Nuclear Elephant writes "The File Sharing Database is an online record of things users wouldn't have bought if they hadn't downloaded it (or part of it) first, and therefore tracks sales as a direct result of file sharing. The RIAA and MPAA claim that file sharing hurts sales, but some recent figures show that file sharing works FOR the industry. This database sets out to prove it once and for all. So if you've ever bought something you downloaded, roll on over and add it to the database."
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Atari and THQ Show Mixed Financials, Game Details
An anonymous reader writes "GameMethod reports that for the fiscal 2004 first quarter, Atari announced that net revenues and income were down from last fiscal year, but still positive. Strong sales of [the somewhat controversial] Driv3r for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox are being cited as the main success, but the dip in comparative figures is being attributed to last year's release of Enter the Matrix, Atari's commercially successful (over 5 million units sold), yet critically jeered game. [Atari's Bruno Bonnell commented on the loss of the Unreal license that Epic's proposed deal was 'not acceptable from a profit point of view for our strategy.'] On the flip side, despite a net loss of $3.9 million for the fiscal first quarter of 2005, THQ announced a positive outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. Full Spectrum Warrior for Xbox drove sales for the quarter, ranking as the top selling Xbox game and the second best selling title for the month of June."
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Behind The Coolest Gadgets - Linux or Windows?
An anonymous reader submits "Sister sites LinuxDevices and WindowsForDevices have kicked off what they're calling the Great Embedded Device Smack-Down, to see whether Linux or Windows Embedded powers the best and coolest devices. The Smackdown highlights more than 350 gadgets in nine categories, along with some entertaining "pre-game commentary" featuring the latest market share figures for the two OSes and a whacky clipart image of Stone Cold Bill Gates taking on The Tux."
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PC Game Sales Trending Downwards
Thanks to GameDaily for it article discussing a perceived struggling in the PC videogame business. According to the article: "The overall PC game category, from January through May of 2003, was $471.0 million in the U.S. according to NPD estimates. 2004 is well off of that figure already, according to The NPD Group's industry analyst Richard Ow, who put a dollar figure of $360.0 million for the January to May 2004 period." However, Ow also notes: "There's still lots of sales ahead and major releases are pending, so there's still a wait and see factor", and comments on the recently-gold Doom 3: "It is the most well-known among the core gaming group, which is a smaller market, but a group that can still drive sales."
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Former Windows Chief on Microsoft Vs. Open-Source
prostoalex writes "Brad Silverberg, former chief of Microsoft Windows division, who left the company in 1999, is being interviewed by the Milestone Group, on Microsoft specifically, and the software venture capital world in general (Silverberg is currently working as managing partner for Ignition Partners). He provides an interesting viewpoint on Microsoft's understanding of open source: 'I don't think they have figured that out yet, I think that is clear. They are struggling with not so much open source, per se, but rather they are no longer the low price solution. In the past Microsoft was the low cost solution and Microsoft was then competing and attacking expensive proprietary systems from below. Now for the first time the tables are turned and it's Microsoft that's being attacked from below by a lower price solution. Microsoft needs to figure out how it can demonstrate better TCO to justify its higher prices. Another aspect to that, which is an area I think Microsoft is also struggling with, which is when you are as successful and dominant as they are, how do you continue to foster that ecosystem? What really propelled Microsoft Windows success was an ecosystem that they created that allowed other people to benefit from your success. Actually your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success.'"
