Mr. Lessig is not the only one to say such things.
Pete Peterson, former Federal Reserve Banker of New York, says exactly the same things in his new book: Running on Empty.
The fact is that the current administration with its record budget deficits is doing farm more harm to the long term economy than good for the short-term. Deficits are merely tax increases in the guise of loans. As anyone who has any understanding of credit can tell you, running up debt on your credit card reduces your future income to the amount of the interest payments, and often it means even tighter budgetary restrictions as you attempt to pay off or down the debt.
No, Mr. Lessig's writings here are not alarmist. They are quite factual, and the future he describes is inevitable unless current budgetary policy is changed.
As someone who writes software for a living, I have to ask just how hard is it to count votes?
What kind of monster math could these things be doing that could cause a machine to crash?
Could bush.voteCount++ have caused an overflow as the the algorithm ratcheted the count over 4 billion?
I mean, c'mon. This has to be the simplest programming task in the world: increment a variable every time someone votes for a given candidate on a ballot. The only part of this that seems remotely hard would be the handwriting recognition on write-ins.
Security and verifiability? No problem. Simply log every transaction as it happens and print a receipt that can be checked by hand if necessary. Additionally, make the source open and public. Let people see what the program does.
Frankly, I believe this is what you get from companies like Diebold or other large vendors doing this. They have an interest in making this stuff more complicated than it needs to be in order to make more money.
When I read that, I thought to myself, "So, you're the sucker they hired to replace me...." I think I know where the granparent might work.....
Whether or not I'm right, the place I'm thinking of had 1 stored procedure that was over 30,000 lines long with a lovely comment at the top about what happens to programmers who make changes that break it.
Yes, it was all Transact SQL that flavor of SQL used by Sybase and Microsoft SQL Servers.
Err, there's one problem with your argument. That is that the law basically grants the rights of citizens and people to corporations, while shielding the investors (i.e. owners) from the actions of its officers.
There are many who think that corporations should lose their rights as "citizens" and, failing that, that perhaps the "corporate veil" should be removed from the owners.
Corporation: all the rights and none of the responsibilities.
That site is pretty good, but it didn't tell me about the two guys running for Sheriff of Essex Co. I really want to find some info. about them but am having a tough time.
I wish they'd get more local than just state elections.
No, no, no! Stephen King was not involved in John Lennon's murder.
Everyone knows it was the Chief Blue Meanie who had brainwashed Chapman into killing Lennon. He was getting revenge for being bonked in THE YELLOW SUBMARINE.
Badnarik's name is on the ballot in 49 states. He's not on the ballot in NH because someone in the NH Libertarian Party failed to get the paperwork in on time.
If Badnarik and Cobb were invited to the debates, then people would know who they are and could hear them speak.
Maybe, if 3rd parties weren't so roundly shut out by the ruling oligarchy, more people would actually be interested enough to vote, and just maybe we could have some real change in policy, instead of six or one or half-dozen of the other.
It's far too complicated an issue to really discuss fairly in this venue.
However, jobs are not the answer for a sustainable economy.
What is needed is a broadly spread pattern of ownership for the economy to thrive. In other words, the world needs more capitalists and less concentrated capitalism.
Let me just ask you this one question. Which do you think is better for the economy as a whole: 1 person earning $40 billion, or 10,000 people each earning $4 million?
There are policies in all areas of gov't both national and transnational that can lead to a broader participation and growth of the "ownership class" without stripping present capitalist owners of currently accumulated wealth.
We need leaders both in the U.S. and abroad who have the vision and the foresight to enact such policies. You will not find many such leaders among the current crop of Democrats and Republicans. They are conspicuously absent among the two top contenders for the office of President of the United States and their advisors.
Actually, to be completely fair, it was Thomas Jefferson who first deployed U.S. troops without a declaration of war when he sent U.S. Marines and Naval vessels against North African pirates that were threatening U.S. shipping interests in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
Interestingly, it was Eisenhower who sent the first U.S. troops into Vietnam as advisers. Our first casualty came in 1959 during a training session for ARVN forces when some old and unstable explosives went off in the hands of a U.S. adviser.
It was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, an act of Congress, that much later authorized Johnson to expand the U.S. action in Vietnam.
On the point of the President not sending troops to foreign nations without Congressional approval, I agree.
Poker is NOT a game of chance. It is a game of skill with elements of chance. There is a big difference. In California, poker is classified as a game of skill and therefore not illegal.
You even contradict yourself on that question with "As it stands poker is still a game of chance" followed by "[w]hen you break it down it still takes a skillful poker player to engineer a bot that can perform at a winning level."
If Poker were truly a game of chance, then there would be no such thing as a "skillful poker player."
Um, no. Not if you RTFA that you linked to. It's a different, though similar, vulnerability that affects the Imlib library and the LHA decompression library.
Actually, the articel does NOT say that 6 Acxiom employees agreed to cooperate with the investigation. It says 6 employees of the "the company." Since Snipermail was the previous company mentioned, I took it to mean that 6 employees of Snipermail were cooperating with the investigation.
At any rate, it never said 6 employees of Acxiom, so it is open to interpretation and poorly written. I think someone needs to clarify that point.
That's trivial to break. You don't validate the command being run.
Say you put that up as date.php and I come to that page and click on the link. My browser will display date.php?command=date in the location. Being a smarty, I'll try this to see if it works: date.php?command=uptime . Given your simple scripting, it will. Being malicious, I'll try this: date.php?command=rm+-f+* and you can say goodbye to all the files in your current directory that your web server has write access to.--Oh, the joys of letting random strangers run arbitrary commands on your web server!
Note: If the rm -f * didn't work that way, I could always try escaping the - and the * and even adding the r option to descend into subdirectories, or add a / to blow away your whole machine. I hope your web server doesn't run as root!
Ha! As ignorant as most bosses and users are, I could easily send a "You suck" email from halfway around the world, that would pass for real in any examination that most users would put to it. Only one who would know it's fake is the mail admin., and with some of the admins that I've had to deal with at other sites lately, I'm not sure even the mail admin. would necessarily be able to tell it was forged.
Yeah, except that he should have studied Medieval Lit., too, and then he'd know that the omniscient narrator has been around longer than the epistolary novel.
This really only applies to police making logs of chats and then whether or not those logs hold up in court.
You aren't going to be prosecuted for keeping logs of all your online chat sessions. That is not what is in question here. Only time it matters is if your chat log could somehow be admissible as evidence in a criminal or civil court case.
I also doubt you'd get in trouble for posting bits and pieces of a chat log on the web somewhere either. Anyway, I wouldn't go posting "private" conversations online without all parties' consent. It's rude to do otherwise.
Also note, the article isn't about IRC here, but ICQ and AOL which are one on one chat clients for the most part. The law is talking about "private" conversations.
The article is really just bashing the implementation of the D20 3.5 SRD in TOEE. It then tries to generalize to all CRPGs based on a review of one game. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it with me.
I really think that the best implementation of D20 on a computer is Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. It does a good enough job of implementing the rules and is still playable.
What makes NWN so great is the toolset that allows you to create your modules, set up servers, and play with other people. The also have a DM client that allows you to play online with a human DM. This is the closest you are going to get right now to a tabletop RPG on a computer.
NWN has become my RPG fix. Since I moved to MA from KY in 2002, I've not found anyone in my area that plays RPGs, so I started playing NWN online with other people. It's great fun.
I do think that for a single player computer gaming experience, the D20 SRD is a bad choice. Bioware's implementation is as good as it gets, but single player is just so boring. I much prefer playing with others online.
Slashdot Mirror
Mr. Lessig is not the only one to say such things.
Pete Peterson, former Federal Reserve Banker of New York, says exactly the same things in his new book: Running on Empty.
The fact is that the current administration with its record budget deficits is doing farm more harm to the long term economy than good for the short-term. Deficits are merely tax increases in the guise of loans. As anyone who has any understanding of credit can tell you, running up debt on your credit card reduces your future income to the amount of the interest payments, and often it means even tighter budgetary restrictions as you attempt to pay off or down the debt.
No, Mr. Lessig's writings here are not alarmist. They are quite factual, and the future he describes is inevitable unless current budgetary policy is changed.
As someone who writes software for a living, I have to ask just how hard is it to count votes?
What kind of monster math could these things be doing that could cause a machine to crash?
Could bush.voteCount++ have caused an overflow as the the algorithm ratcheted the count over 4 billion?
I mean, c'mon. This has to be the simplest programming task in the world: increment a variable every time someone votes for a given candidate on a ballot. The only part of this that seems remotely hard would be the handwriting recognition on write-ins.
Security and verifiability? No problem. Simply log every transaction as it happens and print a receipt that can be checked by hand if necessary. Additionally, make the source open and public. Let people see what the program does.
Frankly, I believe this is what you get from companies like Diebold or other large vendors doing this. They have an interest in making this stuff more complicated than it needs to be in order to make more money.
Ha! Ha!
When I read that, I thought to myself, "So, you're the sucker they hired to replace me...." I think I know where the granparent might work.....
Whether or not I'm right, the place I'm thinking of had 1 stored procedure that was over 30,000 lines long with a lovely comment at the top about what happens to programmers who make changes that break it.
Yes, it was all Transact SQL that flavor of SQL used by Sybase and Microsoft SQL Servers.
Err, there's one problem with your argument. That is that the law basically grants the rights of citizens and people to corporations, while shielding the investors (i.e. owners) from the actions of its officers.
;)
There are many who think that corporations should lose their rights as "citizens" and, failing that, that perhaps the "corporate veil" should be removed from the owners.
Corporation: all the rights and none of the responsibilities.
Oh, and of course, IANAL.
That site is pretty good, but it didn't tell me about the two guys running for Sheriff of Essex Co. I really want to find some info. about them but am having a tough time.
;)
I wish they'd get more local than just state elections.
Oh well, only so many hours in a day, I guess.
No, no, no! Stephen King was not involved in John Lennon's murder.
Everyone knows it was the Chief Blue Meanie who had brainwashed Chapman into killing Lennon. He was getting revenge for being bonked in THE YELLOW SUBMARINE.
> I'm far more interested in the "real" live rebuttals that will be happening on stage.
Except that there won't be any live rebuttals on stage. It's a scripted non-event. It's not a debate, not even close.
It's more like a joint press conference where the two candidates get to say what they want.
Badnarik's name is on the ballot in 49 states. He's not on the ballot in NH because someone in the NH Libertarian Party failed to get the paperwork in on time.
If Badnarik and Cobb were invited to the debates, then people would know who they are and could hear them speak.
Maybe, if 3rd parties weren't so roundly shut out by the ruling oligarchy, more people would actually be interested enough to vote, and just maybe we could have some real change in policy, instead of six or one or half-dozen of the other.
It's far too complicated an issue to really discuss fairly in this venue.
However, jobs are not the answer for a sustainable economy.
What is needed is a broadly spread pattern of ownership for the economy to thrive. In other words, the world needs more capitalists and less concentrated capitalism.
Let me just ask you this one question. Which do you think is better for the economy as a whole: 1 person earning $40 billion, or 10,000 people each earning $4 million?
There are policies in all areas of gov't both national and transnational that can lead to a broader participation and growth of the "ownership class" without stripping present capitalist owners of currently accumulated wealth.
We need leaders both in the U.S. and abroad who have the vision and the foresight to enact such policies. You will not find many such leaders among the current crop of Democrats and Republicans. They are conspicuously absent among the two top contenders for the office of President of the United States and their advisors.
Actually, to be completely fair, it was Thomas Jefferson who first deployed U.S. troops without a declaration of war when he sent U.S. Marines and Naval vessels against North African pirates that were threatening U.S. shipping interests in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
Interestingly, it was Eisenhower who sent the first U.S. troops into Vietnam as advisers. Our first casualty came in 1959 during a training session for ARVN forces when some old and unstable explosives went off in the hands of a U.S. adviser.
It was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, an act of Congress, that much later authorized Johnson to expand the U.S. action in Vietnam.
On the point of the President not sending troops to foreign nations without Congressional approval, I agree.
Poker is NOT a game of chance. It is a game of skill with elements of chance. There is a big difference. In California, poker is classified as a game of skill and therefore not illegal.
You even contradict yourself on that question with "As it stands poker is still a game of chance" followed by "[w]hen you break it down it still takes a skillful poker player to engineer a bot that can perform at a winning level."
If Poker were truly a game of chance, then there would be no such thing as a "skillful poker player."
Poker is not roulette!
Um, no. Not if you RTFA that you linked to. It's a different, though similar, vulnerability that affects the Imlib library and the LHA decompression library.
> What's he got against Belgium?!?
;)
Belgium is a dirty word...
For $800 she could have just bought a new machine that would have blown the old one out of the water.... Yeah, she's naive all right.
Shhhh, starling (26,204)! You're giving all our secrets away.....
Actually, the articel does NOT say that 6 Acxiom employees agreed to cooperate with the investigation. It says 6 employees of the "the company." Since Snipermail was the previous company mentioned, I took it to mean that 6 employees of Snipermail were cooperating with the investigation.
At any rate, it never said 6 employees of Acxiom, so it is open to interpretation and poorly written. I think someone needs to clarify that point.
> Ps. In case you work for the FBI, disregard the statement above.
The FBI doesn't care about your tax evasion. We, at the Secret Service, take it very seriously, however.
We will find you, Mr. Coward.
Of the 5 PCs in my home office, 4 of them have AMD processors and only one is Intel (800 MHz PIII).
Not very useful information, but there it is.
Obviously you've been on slashdot too long to understand humour any more...
Yeah, obviously....
That's trivial to break. You don't validate the command being run.
Say you put that up as date.php and I come to that page and click on the link. My browser will display date.php?command=date in the location. Being a smarty, I'll try this to see if it works: date.php?command=uptime . Given your simple scripting, it will. Being malicious, I'll try this: date.php?command=rm+-f+* and you can say goodbye to all the files in your current directory that your web server has write access to.--Oh, the joys of letting random strangers run arbitrary commands on your web server!
Note: If the rm -f * didn't work that way, I could always try escaping the - and the * and even adding the r option to descend into subdirectories, or add a / to blow away your whole machine. I hope your web server doesn't run as root!
Ha! As ignorant as most bosses and users are, I could easily send a "You suck" email from halfway around the world, that would pass for real in any examination that most users would put to it. Only one who would know it's fake is the mail admin., and with some of the admins that I've had to deal with at other sites lately, I'm not sure even the mail admin. would necessarily be able to tell it was forged.
Huh? It seems like there's something on TV every week that turns me off.
Yeah, except that he should have studied Medieval Lit., too, and then he'd know that the omniscient narrator has been around longer than the epistolary novel.
...is a failure to communicate.
This really only applies to police making logs of chats and then whether or not those logs hold up in court.
You aren't going to be prosecuted for keeping logs of all your online chat sessions. That is not what is in question here. Only time it matters is if your chat log could somehow be admissible as evidence in a criminal or civil court case.
I also doubt you'd get in trouble for posting bits and pieces of a chat log on the web somewhere either. Anyway, I wouldn't go posting "private" conversations online without all parties' consent. It's rude to do otherwise.
Also note, the article isn't about IRC here, but ICQ and AOL which are one on one chat clients for the most part. The law is talking about "private" conversations.
The article is really just bashing the implementation of the D20 3.5 SRD in TOEE. It then tries to generalize to all CRPGs based on a review of one game. Sorry, but that doesn't cut it with me.
I really think that the best implementation of D20 on a computer is Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. It does a good enough job of implementing the rules and is still playable.
What makes NWN so great is the toolset that allows you to create your modules, set up servers, and play with other people. The also have a DM client that allows you to play online with a human DM. This is the closest you are going to get right now to a tabletop RPG on a computer.
NWN has become my RPG fix. Since I moved to MA from KY in 2002, I've not found anyone in my area that plays RPGs, so I started playing NWN online with other people. It's great fun.
I do think that for a single player computer gaming experience, the D20 SRD is a bad choice. Bioware's implementation is as good as it gets, but single player is just so boring. I much prefer playing with others online.