And for those who are concerned about CFL mercury in the waste stream -- CFLs are nothing more than smaller versions of the fluorescent tubes we have been throwing in our landfills since the 50s. That's right, every industial building and school in the US uses them and has for the last 50 years. So, the problem isn't new. And the white powder isn't mercury...it's the phosphor. That's not to say that recycling them wouldn't be a really good idea. It's being done commercially, but not yet for consumers in most places.
"protected by a firewall" (of the physical, not logical variety) and "celebrating with a cookout" -- how better to celebrate your company's near brush with disaster?/well, *I* thought it was humorous.//glad nobody was hurt and very little was damaged
It's generated in the part of the phone called the "network", which, among other things, contains something called a "hybrid coil", which allows the single pair of copper wires to separate the outgoing and incoming voices. In addition to that function, there's also a "sidetone coil" that couples a sample of the outgoing voice into the receiver circuit.
In electronic phones, it's done slightly differently, but there is absolutely no reason it can't be done in cell phones, and it often is.
The explanation is correct in one respect, though. Increasing the sidetone will cause the talker to lower their voice.
Used to take phones apart for fun, have designed hybrid circuits.
Wish other ISPs were proactive like yours. It's an opportunity to build a positive customer relationship. You need to remember that the bot-infested customer is most likely unaware of it, and certainly didn't do it deliberately. This is your opportunity to educate them, help them get rid of the infestation and give them some tips to avoid re-infestation (use Firefox instead of IE, don't answer emails from people with money to give away...)
People, in general, have either a neutral or negative impression of the larger ISPs. A positive, non-adversarial bot-removal approach would be a win-win move.
Like I said...too bad the large ISPs haven't figured that out yet.
This strategy (modular OS, pay for extra features) only works if the MS modules are judged to be worth paying for. If you're not locked in to MS (for example, if a Linux OS is a viable alternative for you), why would you pay for it?
Keep it up, Microsoft, you're only driving Joe User into the feathered embrace of the Penguin.
>in my company anyway that senior management, of course, is exempt from the this client requirements.
When I was at Data General, the fastest workstations with all the options and the color displays always went to the managers first. Nice to know some large company traditions remain intact...
I was once in your position -- although you seem to have had more early success than I did. I can still remember the first kit that I built that actually *worked*. The key was taking my time and being meticulous about component identification and soldering. After that, I took every opportunity I could to learn how things worked -- you end up stealing a lot as a designer, after all, if it worked for the other guy, it should work for you. Now, everything I take apart, I try to identify the parts and figure out what they do, and *how* they do it. Then, I ask myself: "why did they do it this way, instead of some other way?" You can learn a lot from analyzing others' designs.
Books: Horowitz and Hill ARRL Handbook
Tools - Get yourself a really *good* soldering station. I like the old Weller WTCP* series, but anything that comes in two pieces (a transformer/power unit and an iron) should do. Plan on spending US$150 or so on it (or get one used). Same for your pliers and cutters -- spend good money on good tools...you won't regret it.
CAD - for schematics and circuit boards, I like expresspcb.com -- the software is free, but only works with their internet PCB service. I have heard good things about Eagle, too, but you will need to do more work to get a PCB made. EpressPCB is fast and easy. Linear Technology has a free PSPICE -- they call it SwitcherCAD III -- http://linear.com/company/software.jsp It's free if you register. You can build circuits and simulate them...takes a bit of getting used to, but once you figure it out, you can try different components and see what happens in a simple (or complex!) circuit. Pretty much any PSPICE tutorial book will help you get started. SwitcherCAD and ExpressPCB will also run on Linux under Wine.
Ham Radio groups. These are people who like to play with radios. Occasionally, you will find a "QRP" group, where the guys get their kicks from *building* their own radios and test gear. There's a lot of help available for the beginner. Search for QRP-L, NORCAL and NJQRP on Google. They publish newsletter with circuit designs and descriptions, and do group projects, where you send in a nominal amount (US$20 or so) and get back a PCB and a bag of parts.
I'm glad they won, but I still have a *huge* problem with the fact that touch-screen voting machines are the wrong solution to a problem that may not exist.
I have heard "they're better for blind/disabled"...and I don't believe it for a second. How do you measure this? Do blind and disabled voters agree?
I have heard "faster totals"...yeah, but - is fast better than accurate?
I have heard "saves printing costs" - at the expense of having to hire more tech-savvy voting machine attendants?
I'm not convinced at all, and I don't really care who wins, as long as we make every possible effort to insure that the winner is the person who received the most votes. It's not about Democrats, Republicans, or Green/Rainbows, it's about making sure every vote counts, and the results are auditable. It's about Democracy, folks, and it's up to all of us to make sure that every vote is accurately and verifiably counted.
The complexity of Diebold touch-screen voting machines is their downfall. People who see these things for the first time should be able to set them up and/or use them. Maybe they're just [very] poorly designed?
1. hard to argue with, but in my state, you can bring anyone you want to read the ballot for you. 2. bill the party for the primary ballot printing costs. Seriously. You know *they* can afford it. Consider it their civic duty. 3. Yes, ballots do need to be stored for a few days after the election. Because those pieces of paper are the verifiable proof that the totals are accurate. A small expense, and they're typically destroyed fairly soon after the election is complete. I can't imagine the expense is significant. 4. I don't know about your town, but we feed the ballots into the scan machines ourselves after marking them. No cost there. I think poll workers get paid $5 per election or something. 5. You can't wait till morning? Plus, when the ballots are fed in at the polls, you get instant "working" totals.
I have no problem at all with Diebold AccuVote optical scanners one at each precinct, and voter-marked ballots. They're simply an efficient way to count the voter-marked ballots and the totals can be verified by hand counting if necessary.
I don't buy the argument that a bunch of proprietary stripped-down PCs, stored for 11 months, used for less than 1 month per year, are less expensive, faster or more accurate. Complexity means problems, and in the case of e-voting, it's needless complexity for dubious gains.
It's hard to imagine something less in need of fixing, than making a mark next to the name you'd like to see in office. Why e-voting then? Adding tech adds complexity and increasing complexity means increasing problems. Am I missing something here? e-voting appears to be a result of misplaced faith in technology as a cure-all (or a boondoggle for e-voting companies due to successful lobbying, not sure which).
Seriously...I have never understood the real world advantages of e-voting over optical scan paper ballots. I sispect anyone given the task of setting up and maintaining e-voting machines would agree!
...the threshold of pain involved with migrating to (or continuing to use) Vista will exceed that of installing one of the many flavors of desktop Linux (which is well suited to the common browser/email/office application sufficient for a good number of home users).
I'm not saying it will happen, but the more complex and difficult Vista becomes, the more people will look at alternatives.
Comcast where I live (Boston, MA) has lately begun offering a targeted advertising service - "Spotlight" - which detects and overwrites network and affiliate commercials with their own (usually very cheaply done) local commercials. You'll get part of a network commercial, then some guy selling couches in the next town, then the tail end of another network commercial.
So, I'm sure they're compensating the networks for the commercials they're overwriting, right? I mean, with network commercial time costing in the gigabuck$ and all. And when we viewers do the same thing, we're stealing the networks' life blood...
They set up a basket with your purchases in it. Only if you have successfully downloaded the item, does it get removed from your basket...if you have errors or an incomplete download, it remains there for another try, until you get a good download. Basket is valid for 48 hours or something, but once you download the items, they disappear from the basket, so only one download per purchase.
Completely agree. In my small town, we use Diebold AccuVote optical scanners, but the actual voting documents are paper ballots, marked with a black felt pen. Therefore, if there is ever any question as to the accuracy of the "AccuVote" totals, we can do some good, old fashioned ballot counting by hand.
As an engineer, it's annoying to me when politicians attempt to equate "spiffy touchscreen machine with lots of features" with an improvement in the voting process. The voting process in this country is just fine, it's not "broke", and it doesn't need fixing (except, perhaps, by getting rid of the punch-card voting system). I'm extremely suspicious of the claim that people who are not entitled to vote are doing so, or that people are voting more than once. My town deals with this alleged issue by having printouts of the voter list, and drawing a line through your name when you get your ballot. Again, the KISS principle seems to work just fine.
As for "helping America vote", the only group having a problem with marking paper ballots would be visually impaired voters, and the law allows them to bring a person of their choice into the voting booth with them, to assist them. Disenfranchisement through poorly maintained voter records is, I suspect, a far greater problem (but that would be caused by the bureaucratic apparatus not doing its job, and so there's no incentive to get *that* fixed) Voters who are too frail or lack the ability to correctly indicate their choices on a paper ballot probably won't improve their abilities when a touchscreen machine is placed before them.
Touchscreen machines (whether based on Linux or Windows) do not appreciably improve the voting process, whether from the user's or the election authority's point of view. They are more complex than simple optical readers, therefore, they will fail more frequently. The voting facility in my small town has three precincts, all vote at the same location and there is one optical reader for each precinct (plus a spare or two, I assume). There are 6 or 8 voting booths per precinct, for a total of 18 to 20 voting stations. Clearly, optical counters are a good investment, but 18 voting machines to maintain, initialize and support would be a much greater burden for *no* increase in efficiency and a significant added risk of problems during the election.
The most frequent maintenence required with the current system is the periodic replacement of the black markers. I fail to see why this is a process that needs fixing. I don't object to the electronic readers, they streamline (but do not control) the vote counting process. I do strongly object to complex systems that completely control the voting process, without allowing for any manual backup method of counting the votes (and I do not consider strips of paper output from the touchscreen machines as valid documentation of a vote -- and anyway, the voter keeps those, not the voting authority)
Touchscreen voting machines are a Bad Idea, for many reasons. However, they are extremely profitable for the manufacturers, and they add even more uncertainty to the election process. This is good both for politicians who are in close races, because, if there is doubt, there is hope; and for lobbyists and their friends, because contracts mean profit.
I have always wondered how to deal with this. Often, (with my own kids' PCs) the cheapest solution seems to be to backup the data and format and reinstall the OS. Now, it's easy at home (I have saved OS install disks), but what would you do in a business situation, to guarantee a "MS/BSA-legal" reinstall of the OS from a disk you carry? (as not all clients will have their original install media)
You'd ideally want to use an OS install that allowed you to use the client's original Product Key. How do you order an OS disk to make this work, given the variety of versions (OEM, retail, VLK) of a given OS, all requiring different series of Product Keys? What about a PC with Win98 or another usupported OS? (though the client would be better advised to upgrade to current hardware at that point, I guess)
Seriously, I see this as the biggest obstacle to providing a service like this...how to do it legally and above-board without requiring every client needing an OS reinstall to purchase a new, retail copy of the OS.
Probably pretty easily...you distribute the script and upload information *only* to a trusted group. The download site is freely available, but uploads require verification of some sort. Since almost everyone gets the same spam, a fairly small number of trusted reporters should be able to build up a pretty representative sample of spamming IPs.
It strikes me that one way to combat botnet spam, might be to write a script that would extract the sending IP from identified spam, and add it to a blacklist (wither local or centrally located). Seems like a large number of email clients, all reporting spamming zombie's IPs to a central source could quickly build a list (freely downloadable) of "posessed" IPs.
In the future, any email coming from or via those IP addresses would be automatically classified as SPAM.
So, why won't this work? The database would also be very handy if you wanted to check if your PC was "pwned".
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know how you figure LEDs are 10x more efficient than CFLs?
l amp
f l/
LED bulb lumens/watt average from the table you reference: 32 lumens per watt (low of 15.5, high of 62.5)
CFL lumens per watt: 60 lumens per watt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_
Philips PL-C 27watts 1325 design lumens = 49 lumens/watt
http://www.nam.lighting.philips.com/us/ecatalog/c
Looks to me like CFLs are the clear winner on lumens per watt.
and includes comments from several officials, saying that this incident was nothing to get worked up about.o m_content&task=view&id=7446&Itemid=31
http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php?option=c
And for those who are concerned about CFL mercury in the waste stream -- CFLs are nothing more than smaller versions of the fluorescent tubes we have been throwing in our landfills since the 50s. That's right, every industial building and school in the US uses them and has for the last 50 years. So, the problem isn't new. And the white powder isn't mercury...it's the phosphor. That's not to say that recycling them wouldn't be a really good idea. It's being done commercially, but not yet for consumers in most places.
"protected by a firewall" (of the physical, not logical variety) and "celebrating with a cookout" -- how better to celebrate your company's near brush with disaster? /well, *I* thought it was humorous. //glad nobody was hurt and very little was damaged
Peter
It's generated in the part of the phone called the "network", which, among other things, contains something called a "hybrid coil", which allows the single pair of copper wires to separate the outgoing and incoming voices. In addition to that function, there's also a "sidetone coil" that couples a sample of the outgoing voice into the receiver circuit.
In electronic phones, it's done slightly differently, but there is absolutely no reason it can't be done in cell phones, and it often is.
The explanation is correct in one respect, though. Increasing the sidetone will cause the talker to lower their voice.
Used to take phones apart for fun, have designed hybrid circuits.
Wish other ISPs were proactive like yours. It's an opportunity to build a positive customer relationship. You need to remember that the bot-infested customer is most likely unaware of it, and certainly didn't do it deliberately. This is your opportunity to educate them, help them get rid of the infestation and give them some tips to avoid re-infestation (use Firefox instead of IE, don't answer emails from people with money to give away...)
People, in general, have either a neutral or negative impression of the larger ISPs. A positive, non-adversarial bot-removal approach would be a win-win move.
Like I said...too bad the large ISPs haven't figured that out yet.
Peter
"Face down, 9 edge first"
Ahhh...the old 082 sorter...IBM's efficient tool for tearing cards in half.
The English version of the Heise article is at:d e%7Cen&u=http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/8629 4
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&langpair=
This strategy (modular OS, pay for extra features) only works if the MS modules are judged to be worth paying for. If you're not locked in to MS (for example, if a Linux OS is a viable alternative for you), why would you pay for it?
Keep it up, Microsoft, you're only driving Joe User into the feathered embrace of the Penguin.
>in my company anyway that senior management, of course, is exempt from the this client requirements.
When I was at Data General, the fastest workstations with all the options and the color displays always went to the managers first. Nice to know some large company traditions remain intact...
Ahhh...the indescribable sensation of sneakers on a floor well-coated with the sugary remains of a 1/2 gallon "small" Pepsi
I was once in your position -- although you seem to have had more early success than I did. I can still remember the first kit that I built that actually *worked*. The key was taking my time and being meticulous about component identification and soldering. After that, I took every opportunity I could to learn how things worked -- you end up stealing a lot as a designer, after all, if it worked for the other guy, it should work for you. Now, everything I take apart, I try to identify the parts and figure out what they do, and *how* they do it. Then, I ask myself: "why did they do it this way, instead of some other way?" You can learn a lot from analyzing others' designs.
Books:
Horowitz and Hill
ARRL Handbook
Tools - Get yourself a really *good* soldering station. I like the old Weller WTCP* series, but anything that comes in two pieces (a transformer/power unit and an iron) should do. Plan on spending US$150 or so on it (or get one used). Same for your pliers and cutters -- spend good money on good tools...you won't regret it.
CAD - for schematics and circuit boards, I like expresspcb.com -- the software is free, but only works with their internet PCB service. I have heard good things about Eagle, too, but you will need to do more work to get a PCB made. EpressPCB is fast and easy. Linear Technology has a free PSPICE -- they call it SwitcherCAD III -- http://linear.com/company/software.jsp
It's free if you register. You can build circuits and simulate them...takes a bit of getting used to, but once you figure it out, you can try different components and see what happens in a simple (or complex!) circuit. Pretty much any PSPICE tutorial book will help you get started. SwitcherCAD and ExpressPCB will also run on Linux under Wine.
Ham Radio groups. These are people who like to play with radios. Occasionally, you will find a "QRP" group, where the guys get their kicks from *building* their own radios and test gear. There's a lot of help available for the beginner. Search for QRP-L, NORCAL and NJQRP on Google. They publish newsletter with circuit designs and descriptions, and do group projects, where you send in a nominal amount (US$20 or so) and get back a PCB and a bag of parts.
Groklaw has one:= 20031016162215566
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page
I'm glad they won, but I still have a *huge* problem with the fact that touch-screen voting machines are the wrong solution to a problem that may not exist.
I have heard "they're better for blind/disabled"...and I don't believe it for a second. How do you measure this? Do blind and disabled voters agree?
I have heard "faster totals"...yeah, but - is fast better than accurate?
I have heard "saves printing costs" - at the expense of having to hire more tech-savvy voting machine attendants?
I'm not convinced at all, and I don't really care who wins, as long as we make every possible effort to insure that the winner is the person who received the most votes. It's not about Democrats, Republicans, or Green/Rainbows, it's about making sure every vote counts, and the results are auditable. It's about Democracy, folks, and it's up to all of us to make sure that every vote is accurately and verifiably counted.
Finally, a solution to Boston traffic!
The complexity of Diebold touch-screen voting machines is their downfall. People who see these things for the first time should be able to set them up and/or use them. Maybe they're just [very] poorly designed?
1. hard to argue with, but in my state, you can bring anyone you want to read the ballot for you.
2. bill the party for the primary ballot printing costs. Seriously. You know *they* can afford it. Consider it their civic duty.
3. Yes, ballots do need to be stored for a few days after the election. Because those pieces of paper are the verifiable proof that the totals are accurate. A small expense, and they're typically destroyed fairly soon after the election is complete. I can't imagine the expense is significant.
4. I don't know about your town, but we feed the ballots into the scan machines ourselves after marking them. No cost there. I think poll workers get paid $5 per election or something.
5. You can't wait till morning? Plus, when the ballots are fed in at the polls, you get instant "working" totals.
I have no problem at all with Diebold AccuVote optical scanners one at each precinct, and voter-marked ballots. They're simply an efficient way to count the voter-marked ballots and the totals can be verified by hand counting if necessary.
I don't buy the argument that a bunch of proprietary stripped-down PCs, stored for 11 months, used for less than 1 month per year, are less expensive, faster or more accurate. Complexity means problems, and in the case of e-voting, it's needless complexity for dubious gains.
It's hard to imagine something less in need of fixing, than making a mark next to the name you'd like to see in office. Why e-voting then? Adding tech adds complexity and increasing complexity means increasing problems. Am I missing something here? e-voting appears to be a result of misplaced faith in technology as a cure-all (or a boondoggle for e-voting companies due to successful lobbying, not sure which).
Seriously...I have never understood the real world advantages of e-voting over optical scan paper ballots. I sispect anyone given the task of setting up and maintaining e-voting machines would agree!
...the threshold of pain involved with migrating to (or continuing to use) Vista will exceed that of installing one of the many flavors of desktop Linux (which is well suited to the common browser/email/office application sufficient for a good number of home users).
I'm not saying it will happen, but the more complex and difficult Vista becomes, the more people will look at alternatives.
Comcast where I live (Boston, MA) has lately begun offering a targeted advertising service - "Spotlight" - which detects and overwrites network and affiliate commercials with their own (usually very cheaply done) local commercials. You'll get part of a network commercial, then some guy selling couches in the next town, then the tail end of another network commercial.
So, I'm sure they're compensating the networks for the commercials they're overwriting, right? I mean, with network commercial time costing in the gigabuck$ and all. And when we viewers do the same thing, we're stealing the networks' life blood...
I'm going to need a little more convincing.
They set up a basket with your purchases in it. Only if you have successfully downloaded the item, does it get removed from your basket...if you have errors or an incomplete download, it remains there for another try, until you get a good download. Basket is valid for 48 hours or something, but once you download the items, they disappear from the basket, so only one download per purchase.
Completely agree. In my small town, we use Diebold AccuVote optical scanners, but the actual voting documents are paper ballots, marked with a black felt pen. Therefore, if there is ever any question as to the accuracy of the "AccuVote" totals, we can do some good, old fashioned ballot counting by hand.
As an engineer, it's annoying to me when politicians attempt to equate "spiffy touchscreen machine with lots of features" with an improvement in the voting process. The voting process in this country is just fine, it's not "broke", and it doesn't need fixing (except, perhaps, by getting rid of the punch-card voting system). I'm extremely suspicious of the claim that people who are not entitled to vote are doing so, or that people are voting more than once. My town deals with this alleged issue by having printouts of the voter list, and drawing a line through your name when you get your ballot. Again, the KISS principle seems to work just fine.
As for "helping America vote", the only group having a problem with marking paper ballots would be visually impaired voters, and the law allows them to bring a person of their choice into the voting booth with them, to assist them. Disenfranchisement through poorly maintained voter records is, I suspect, a far greater problem (but that would be caused by the bureaucratic apparatus not doing its job, and so there's no incentive to get *that* fixed) Voters who are too frail or lack the ability to correctly indicate their choices on a paper ballot probably won't improve their abilities when a touchscreen machine is placed before them.
Touchscreen machines (whether based on Linux or Windows) do not appreciably improve the voting process, whether from the user's or the election authority's point of view. They are more complex than simple optical readers, therefore, they will fail more frequently. The voting facility in my small town has three precincts, all vote at the same location and there is one optical reader for each precinct (plus a spare or two, I assume). There are 6 or 8 voting booths per precinct, for a total of 18 to 20 voting stations. Clearly, optical counters are a good investment, but 18 voting machines to maintain, initialize and support would be a much greater burden for *no* increase in efficiency and a significant added risk of problems during the election.
The most frequent maintenence required with the current system is the periodic replacement of the black markers. I fail to see why this is a process that needs fixing. I don't object to the electronic readers, they streamline (but do not control) the vote counting process. I do strongly object to complex systems that completely control the voting process, without allowing for any manual backup method of counting the votes (and I do not consider strips of paper output from the touchscreen machines as valid documentation of a vote -- and anyway, the voter keeps those, not the voting authority)
Touchscreen voting machines are a Bad Idea, for many reasons. However, they are extremely profitable for the manufacturers, and they add even more uncertainty to the election process. This is good both for politicians who are in close races, because, if there is doubt, there is hope; and for lobbyists and their friends, because contracts mean profit.
I have always wondered how to deal with this. Often, (with my own kids' PCs) the cheapest solution seems to be to backup the data and
format and reinstall the OS. Now, it's easy at home (I have saved OS install disks), but what would you do in a business situation, to guarantee a "MS/BSA-legal" reinstall of the OS from a disk you carry? (as not all clients will have their original install media)
You'd ideally want to use an OS install that allowed you to use the client's original Product Key. How do you order an OS disk to make this work, given the variety of versions (OEM, retail, VLK) of a given OS, all requiring different series of Product Keys? What about a PC with Win98 or another usupported OS? (though the client would be better advised to upgrade to current hardware at that point, I guess)
Seriously, I see this as the biggest obstacle to providing a service like this...how to do it legally and above-board without requiring every client needing an OS reinstall to purchase a new, retail copy of the OS.
That'd be Queensland, mate.
Probably pretty easily...you distribute the script and upload information *only* to a trusted group. The download site is freely available, but uploads require verification of some sort. Since almost everyone gets the same spam, a fairly small number of trusted reporters should be able to build up a pretty representative sample of spamming IPs.
It strikes me that one way to combat botnet spam, might be to write a script that would extract the sending
IP from identified spam, and add it to a blacklist (wither local or centrally located). Seems like a large number of email clients, all reporting spamming zombie's IPs to a central source could quickly build a list (freely downloadable) of "posessed" IPs.
In the future, any email coming from or via those IP addresses would be automatically classified as SPAM.
So, why won't this work? The database would also be very handy if you wanted to check if your PC was "pwned".