Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Princeton, Terror, Farscape
"Frankly, sometimes the guy just ... says things." An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Slashdot article, it was reported that Howard Strauss, manager of technology and outreach at Princeton University, wrote a paper bashing the open source community. Princeton has now publicly denounced this article and stated its official policy towards open source."
(I don't know that it's fair to call Princeton's response a denunciation, but the school makes clear that a) Strauss was speaking on his own, not on behalf of the university and b) that Princeton uses, likes, supports, and develops plenty of open source software.)
Oh, they're only votes! tklancer writes "Remember the voting machine failures earlier this month? Well, now Fairfax County is going to investigate the failures in (hopefully) a bit more depth. Now if they'd only start talking about adding a paper trail ..."
Lik-Sang and Microsoft, back on merely uneasy terms. D4rkUnderlord writes "For those who forgot, Lik-Sang was taken down last year by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for selling "Modification devices" (see CNN.com December 16, 2002). Lee sent us this article coming from a HK newspaper: [QUOTE] Have Found this tuesday in the South China Morning Post. Microsoft always get what it want Lee [/QUOTE] Read it here (scan of newspaper article). Note that lik-sang.com has been sold and put under new management last year, so nothing of these trials can or will affect lik-sang.com"
I wish people'd been this worked up about Northern Exposure. calethix writes "There's a news post over at Save Farscape regarding the return of Farscape as a 4 hour mini-series. There aren't a lot of details yet but it's supposed to air next year and has been confirmed by a solid source."
Much as I loathe and mock online petitions ... Hey, if it worked for Farscape, a television show with Alf at the wheel ... Dagrush writes "As you know, there was a slashdot story about how Saruman wa being cut from LotR:RotK. Now there is a petition to put the 7 minutes of Saruman back in the film. You can go here to add your name to the petition, as well as you comments. There are over 17000 signatures right now."
Follow the money, just don't say "terror." Best ID Ever! writes "CNN is reporting that the Policy Analysis Market is set to return, albeit without futures on 'violent events,' and without DARPA or other government involvement. As you may remember, the former DARPA project, under retired admiral John Poindexter's office, was shut down after being roundly condemned by politicians on both sides, leading to Poindexter's resignation. There seems to be a lot of interest in such 'information markets' lately, from the recently announced MIT Market to the long running Iowa Electronic Markets."
Next time they get tied to dingos. An anonymous reader writes "Australian University students Peter Tran, Charles Kok Hau Ng, and Tommy Le avoided jail when they were sentenced today. Charged with Internet piracy for running a file trade site the three copped a plea to reduced charges. Tran gets an 18-month suspended sentence and a $5,000 (Australian) fine. Ng got an 18-month suspended sentence and 200 hours community service. Le was only given community service. Needless to say the Australian record industry is complaining the three should do time, which could have meant five years behind bars. The judge ruled prison was not called for."
Much as I loathe and mock online petitions ... Hey, if it worked for Farscape, a television show with Alf at the wheel ... Dagrush writes "As you know, there was a slashdot story about how Saruman wa being cut from LotR:RotK. Now there is a petition to put the 7 minutes of Saruman back in the film. You can go here to add your name to the petition, as well as you comments. There are over 17000 signatures right now."
Yeah... too bad it's way too late in the production process now to make such a change.
"The judge ruled prison was not called for."
We could do with more of them over here in the UK....
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Fink doesn't reply to his email either. ;-)
I pity whoever was managing his mailspool after that got published...
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
They might have been extradited to Syria for torture.
C:\>
Do they actually do anything? I'm sure there's lots of instances where there was an online petition and changes were made but I doubt those changes were because of the petitions. Do decision makers even pay any attention to these petions or do they figgure that because an online petition is much easier to put a name to than any other type of feedback the names are fairly worthless and they just ignore the petition. It could even do damage if people who feel they want to do something just put their name to an online petition feeling they've made a difference and don't take any furthur action that could of actually had an effect.
I stole this Sig
I like this bit from one of the piracy articles:
"Ironically, the sentencing came on the same day as a survey revealing many music industry professionals are active music pirates and believe current copyright laws are unfair and should be changed.
Of 200 artists, managers and record company staff who anonymously responded to an Australian survey, over three-quarters owned CD burners and almost half used them to illegally burn copies of CDs they had purchased. Of the 45 per cent who download music, 50 per cent never pay for it."
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Does anybody know if that's a real quote related to this situation? (I didn't find it in Princeton's statement about OSS, is there another link?
I, for one, wrote the author of the syllabus article an email stating that while I'm sure he doesn't represent Princeton and he's not a professor, it must be embarrasing for students at Princeton to be associated with a guy who publicly states that "modifying source code is extremely dangerous and very few people do it anyway." I didn't make a single argument about the merits of open source software - only that the guy should be ashamed of himself for being such a douche while leaning on his position at Princeton for credentials.
I would think that the fall freshman CS class would be better qualified to write an article than Howard Strauss based on the completely erroneous comments he gave in his editorial. I'm glad that Princeton is reacting to this guy running his mouth but I hope it's not too distracting to the CS students there.
And before you reply and blast me - yeah, I know he's not a professor, I know he's not speaking for the school. If the department manager from your medical school got on CNN.com and told the world that it's extremely dangerous to use vaccines and nobody does it anyway, you'd be embarassed nonetheless.
I'm sure that students at Princeton wish their school were on Slashdot for something more newsworthy, such as the 3rd fastest supercomputer.
It's a completely different case. The three people who got charged were apparently involved in blatent copyright violation, ie offering and hosting other peoples copyrighted music for download.
The mp3s4free.net case involves linking, not hosting and targets a completely different set of people.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Guys, you're missing the point. Farscape wasn't saved because of an empty list of signatures, although we had one that broke 100k.
Farscape was saved because thousands of fans went out and DID THINGS. Things which required time, effort, and yes, money. Seeing so many invest so much in so many ways finally convinced *someone* out there that bringing back the show was a financially worthy decision.
Of course, go too far to the side of vagarity, and it suddenly becomes useless - or a matter of simple wagering rather than the complex interplay that the system's proponents claim.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
and they worked fine.
The election lady got all patronizing with me, like I didn't understand how to use a touch screen. I was done voting before I could tell her to shut the hell up.
I was kind of annoyed by the lack of curtains though.
(well, it's no so bad since the LCDs are difficult to read from the side, and the ballots are randomly generated so you can't tell who others are voting for by "finger location")
And even if the "x" disappeared, the user gets a chance to review the votes that will be cast near the end of the session, and the front and back arrows allow you to revisit and modify your choices for each race.
Just fix it! What's the chance it'll disappear again? (Sounds like a UI bug... only happens periodically according to election officials).
I hope by next year they update the firmware or something. Erratic behavior during something as constrained as a poll is unacceptable. JUST USE A FUCKING WEB BROWSER AND CSS IF YOU CAN'T DESIGN A GUI.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Yay, lets all go sign a petition saying that we think a movie would be better when edited a certain way, when we have not seen either of the options, and have no idea which one really is better! Just like my public education taught me, "An uninformed opinion is better than no opinion at all" ;)
Seriously, where is the poll for letting Peter Jackson who is a much better director and producer than I will ever be, make the decision based on his expert opinion.
Why don't they do the voting machines like this?
When a vote is cast, the machine punches holes in a paper card. The paper card is then transferred to a card reader and the vote on the card is read. If the vote read from the paper card matches the vote that was cast, the paper card is transferred to a secure box and the electronic vote is recorded. If the card cannot be read, it is destroyed, and the machine shuts down until someone can service it.
This simple technique creates a paper audit trail, and provides a backup method of tallying votes. Recounts actually become possible.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Got my versions a little mixed up there (oh, my, this has been a bad day), but it doesn't really change things. Jackson has already explained why he cut Saruman, in detail. It makes sense. He probably didn't like it, but the movie is still 3h21m or whatever -- and he probably had to fight to get to go over 3h to begin with.
I think it sucks, but I also don't think there's even a remote possibility of this changing. Jackson is done with the movie. I imagine the reels are already done or close to it.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Ummm... Did you actually watch the last season of Northern Exposure? That series definately went on at least one season too long. I present this as evidence in support.
Compare with this.
Not every submission needs a pithy comment or lame headline.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Litigious bastards
No one linked to the Strauss story said this; I wrote that headline in the mode of a baffled friend of coworker of his explaining this seemingly random vitriol, seeming ignorance of the Princeton computer community, etc. Sorta like "... it's always the quiet ones, isn't it?"
Sorry for any confusion.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Possibly one of the single most misreported stories in the history of journalism. A potentially valuable and brilliant analysis tool was scrapped becase mankind is composed of mainly ignorant, spewing pustules masquerading as evolved bipeds. Most people I talked to thought it was an actual market for betting on terrorism. When I told them I knew one of the guys who did some early work on the idea, and that it was just a tool to try and predict the ever elusive human threats, they simply would not listen. Everyone just followed their ideological bias, and the truth be damned, as usual.
We have the most unrestrained press in civilization's history, and we're lucky if we can find an actual scrap of truth with a magnifying glass.
--- Ban humanity.
I research in the CS department at Princeton, and am a member of many open-source development projects. So before somebody attacks the entire school, just know that most people GPL their work.
I'm afraid this will likely offend some of the hardcore LOTR fans, and they probably have mod points. But I have to put this as clearly and bluntly as possible: Peter Jackson is a better fucking director than you are. You'll get your 7 minutes on the DVD. The theatrical release will already be long. PJ has seen the footage, and you have not. For all of these reasons, leave him alone.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
When people bet on a non-terrorist event, isn't there still a chance of something tragic happening?
If I sell company X short in the stock market, isn't there a good chance that, if I make money, it correlates with a bunch of company X's employees being out of a job?
If I invest in an insurance company, aren't I 'betting' that the actuarial tables will be right often enough for me to make money? Hey, that sounds like I'm making my money from human misery. If your wife dies, and she's insured with company Y, then (theoretically) I have incentive to hope it was suicide, so her policy doesn't pay off. Surely it adds to your suffering if a representitive from that company checks on the cause of death, and you may find even the hint of it offensive. Why does society allow such a thing? (Retorical question - In some cases, it catches the "bereved" who slipped arsenic in her tea and is crying crocodyle tears, and that alone is a powerful incentive to allow it, just like we allow police or DAs to do some things we normally find offensive, like shouting, asking leading questions, or deliberately misquoting testimony in an attempt to catch a witness off balance, in the hopes of catching more criminals.)
The point is, I'm not causing that misery. My actions correlate with that misery, but correlation does not imply causation. Why is it OK for me to trade in normal futures or insurance, but not in this? I understand that you are offended by A but apparently not B, what I'm not seeing here is what makes A and B unequal, by your description. Or are you equally offended by people selling stocks short, or betting that a drought will push up the price of corn this fall.
In your example, one problem is apparent. If I fould out my recently kidnapped child had been the subject of a betting pool, I would have a strong suspicion that among you and that "couple of guys". someone had possibly done more than bet, but had acted to influence the odds of winning. However disgusting or horrifying I might find the bet, I'm pretty certain I would find the existence of a causative link a lot more disgusting and horrifying.
If it happened to me, my emotions would probably equate the two, but if it happened to someone else and I had to do jury duty should I listen to those emotions or to reason? I could sentence a kidnapper to death for the death of the victim. I don't think I could give two mooks who were betting on whether the victim would be found alive, in the hearing of the parents, a death sentence, no matter how stupid and insensitive they were. Yes I think what they were doing was wrong, but if I thought phrases like "most horrifying" and "absolutely disgusting" applied, then I could support most severe or absolutely maximum penalties.
I honestly deplore the idea of a speculative market ala John Poindexter's plan. I think it would be a bad thing. But your arguement isn't making the issues any clearer.
Who is John Cabal?
In that scenerio (machine punches card, varifies punch, stores card) there are two flaws:
1) [trivial but obvious] proving that the physical card path works and "never" experiences an error. "Oh looky, I got it wrong, but the same internal corruption made the 'wrong' card not get diverted to the shreader so it went into the "good vote" box. I'll print another card, still wrong, repeat misroute. RESULT: 20 voters and 3000 ballots in recount box.
1a) [Same thing] but valid votes are lost because little paper routing thing gets stuck sending everything to shreader. RESULT: 20 voters but no ballots in recount box.
Lesson 1: printers *JAM* all the time, paper path handling is one of the *MOST* falable tasks in all of computer science.
2) [Earthshatteringly serious] If the error/exploit is in the code *BEFORE* the card punch activity, then the gaming of the election cant be caught because both the recount and the electronic version were tampered with uniformly. The recount box is just a double-thick lie.
Lesson 2: unless the person can see and check the recount tidbit via low-tech means (e.g. by reading it in daily human language), there is no *real* paper trail.
===
The answer that works:
0) All components must be open source so the equipment, and the recount equipment can be verified.
1) Full (touch screen/whatever) automated voting interface.
2) Said interface prints a card-stock ballot that has the name/issue voted for written/spelled out in english (spanish, whatever) in no uncertian terms and presents that card to the voter IN THE BOOTH.
2a) The card stock ballot also contains a bar-code/dot-region/magnetic ink/whatever machine-readable and key-signed representation of the entire ballot *with* a serial/uniquely generated number, and the voter station software version and checksum in the signature.
2a) THE BALLOT SIGNATURE WILL CONTAIN THE CHECKSUM FOR THE BALLOT INPUT FILE. (we don't want to see "well of course Bush won, in one third of the machines in half of florida, the ballot source datafile didn't mention Gore so they couldn't vote for him on those machines.")
3) The interface asks "is your ballot correct?"
3a) if you say no, the ballot is recorded with its number in the "disparaged ballot at this station" database and the IN BOOTH SHREDER (or at least disposal slot) is used (preferably with scanner to validate that the ballot was, in fact, discarded.)
3b) If you say yes, the machine directs you to take the ballot to the ballot box and stores the ballot information in the "valid ballot from this station" database.
4) Over at the ballot box, the valid ballot is scanned into the "valid ballot at this box" database and then deposited into the locked box.
5) A voter may return to any voting station prior to actually casting their vote into the ballot box, with that ballot printed but not cast and scan-and-shred it, which will make the necessary disparaged ballot record and allow the voter to make their new ballot.
WE THUS BENEFIT FROM THE FOLLOWING CHECKS AND BALANCES:
A) Total number of ballots printed should match total number of ballots disparaged plus total number of ballots cast.
B) Valid Vote tallies from the individual stations should match Valid Vote tallies from the ballot boxes.
C) Each paper ballot is key-signed so its contents can be veried as valid at the machine readable level.
D) Simple recounts would consiste of rescanning, a full audit recount would consist of scanning the ballots in a machine which is programmed to recreate on the display what the ballot should have printed on it. (So a human can read both the screen and the paper to verify that what was printed in words matches what was printed in machine readable format.)
E) While there will end up being some irregularities because of things like a person voting at the station but then not depositing their ballot, and some slack will be added to the system, anyth
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
First of all: they present a dichotomy between commercial and open source software. Commercial as opposed to open source. This is plain wrong. JBoss is commercial and open source. RedHat too. SuSE, Mandrake, God, should I keep listing ? They meant to say proprietary vs. open source. The problem is, thy are implying that open source cannot be commercial, and this is a dangerous misunderstanding.
Second error: they imply that proprietary software usually offers better support (though some times it is the other way around). They definetly don't understand the open software model, but they should get informed before writting an official letter. In the open software model, support, customization and services is pretty much all you can sell. And that's where you put your effort.
Finally, an academic institution should prefer, if at all possible, an open source / free software solution rather than a proprietary solution. Why ? Because it is built with an open, peer reviewed method, which is really what the academia is all about. They choose, instead, the classical use the best tool for the job motto, that seems to more appropriate for a commercial company than for a University.
As I said, pretty weak clarification IMHO ...
I'm guessing that either way we're not going to get the Scouring of the Shire
NO. NO WE'RE NOT.
DOES THIS HAVE TO BE REITERATED EVERY TIME SOMETHING COMES UP ABOUT ROTK?
I mean, seriously, people. We've been told that the Scouring isn't going to be in the movie for...oh, three years now. Three years is a long time. Long enough for people to find out that the Scouring isn't in the movie, at least.
Or you'd think they'd figure it out by now.