There are other facts. The glasiers are melting. Ground formerly that was permafrost in Alaska is melting, dropping entire villages into the ocean. Weather patterns are starting to change consistent with warming. All the measurements we can make show the temperature is climbing.
Natural or not. It doesn't matter. What matters is the fact that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is greasing the slide into hell. It doesn't matter if the warming is a "natural", normal turn of events. What matters is that we are abetting it enormously, and we need to stop dumping CO2 in massive quantities into the soup.
It's the difference between sitting still in a sinking boat, and deciding to start slamming holes into the boat because it's fun and profitable.
CO2 emmissions need to be reduced far, far more than the Tokyo treaty, the bane of the right, required.
"Besides, as I have already told, no-one wants to count it, no-one wants to recount it (or else in the USofA people would have a recount in the last presidential election -- it did not happen, and will not happen)."
Um, how wrong can this be?
Bush had at least two other recounts besides Florida in the 2000 election. He had no problems with those recounts. His brother wasn't the governor there.
Bush signed a bill while governor of Texas that mandated recounts after close elections.
Recounts are law across most of the country. A recount can be called unilaterally. It's a check onthe system.
The recount in Florida in 2000 was going just fine. there just happened to be an army of spinners and lawyers trying to stop the process. they succeeded. If the election had gone Gore's way in Florida, instructions were to scream for as many recounts as necessary to discredit his win. And to scream for four years after that, questioning at all times Gore's right to sit on the chair.
Recounts have always happened.
The voters got sick of recount fever not because there was a recount, but because the Pubs kept stopping and starting the process until both the talking heads on TV and the viewers were convinced the process was "broken".
Gore won, if overvotes (written name AND hole punched as well) were counted.
The military was illegally permitted to vote after the election was over, naturally flooding the post-election tally with Bush votes. Hope they enjoy what Bush did with their enlistments.
eInk does not have a refresh rate. The states of the pixels are static. Set the bit on the screen to black, it stays black. No power necessary to maintain it.
By Jim Wasserman ASSOCIATED PRESS 12:51 p.m. April 22, 2004
SACRAMENTO - California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.
By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County.
The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin counties.
Machines made by Diebold and other manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected, although the panel was to consider them later in the day.
The panel's recommendation has national implications for the voting machine maker, which has also supplied machines to many counties in Maryland and Georgia. It also comes as states are gearing up to spend billions of dollars on modernized election equipment in the wake of the 2000 disputed presidential election in Florida.
If Shelley follows through with the recommendation, the affected counties would have to revert to paper ballots or older voting technology.
Diebold was disappointed and disagreed with the recommendation, said its marketing director, Mark Radke. The company will quickly write a report outlining its objections to Shelley, who has until April 30 to make a final decision.
The vote doesn't affect thousands of Diebold optical scan machines that read marked ballot cards in 17 counties. Nor does it immediately affect an earlier generation of 4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in Alameda and Plumas counties.
In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company.
Diebold Election Systems is an affiliate of Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., a leading ATM machine maker supplying banks in North and South America.
Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of state, said he was "disgusted" by Diebold, which has "been jerking us around." The company, he said, has disenfranchised voters in California and undermined confidence in the new and developing technology of touch-screen voting.
Local elections officials in Kern San Joaquin counties, which use Diebold's touch-screen machines were surprised by the news, saying they had experienced no problems in the March primary.
"I don't understand how they can say they didn't work well," said San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Debbie Hench. The county bought 1,626 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5.7 million.
This decision will be a "step backward" for Kern County, said Registrar of Voters Ann Barnett, who bought 1,350 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5 million.
Regardless of what happens in California, the head of Diebold Inc. told shareholders Thursday that the company is not considering getting out of the elections business.
Chairman and CEO Walden W. O'Dell told reporters after an annual shareholders meeting that "we will help in California if we are allowed. If we are not, we won't. I think whatever goes on in California is separate from what goes on in other states. Each state will make their own decisions."
O'Dell said the North Canton, Ohio-based company remains confident the machines are safe and secure.
California panel members, however, disagreed. They cited a litany of alleged problems with Diebold in recent months, including its sale of machines to the four counties without federal and state certif
Not a huge conspiracy at all. It's right out in the open. They don't want the printers. They're spending fortunes and dragging in their favorite legislators to block the audit trail.
They're not claiming it's expensive, or complicated, or anything logical. They claim it's not necessary.
Now, we've plenty of data at this point, from negative tallies in Indiana to system tests by computer scientists. The tallies are not working even by Dielbold's standards. The scientists cracked the system in 5 minutes in one case, and found multiple hacks in all others that permitted them to own the voting machines, the aggregation machines, the modem communications, the voter smart cards... their conclusion: minumum effort to change vote totals at will!
Doesn't take a "conspiracy theory" to stare the truth in the face. The machines don't work as they are supposed to. The basic idea is unsound and an invitation to cheat. The system is already hacked, and the vote counts can be changed. Strange results have occured in Georgia and otherplaces: wild swings for candidates that don't match the polls. The company has fought like a rabid hyena to prevent an audit trail, even though doing so means extra profit.
I don't think the entire company is out to cheat the voters. But I find it easy to believe that either the machines don't work as advertised, or the company bigwigs may be terrified that an paper audit was run and cheating occured. I also find it humanly certain that someone in the Bush-fanatical company has it in their head to use the easy methods already known to tip a race in the Republican's favor. Why not? It's untraceable.
In any case, extremely robust printers are available for use,so fallibilty of hardware isn't an issue. Do ATM's fail to print very often? It's Diebold, they specialize in tough hardware.
Cost isn't an issue. They can charge whatever they like.
Time wasn't an issue, until they ran out the clock.
The audit trail IS the issue for them. They fundamentally deny they need one. Their reasoning is nonexistent. They simply assert it isn't necessary.
It boils down to this: they are blocking the ability to hold recounts. They don't want recounts. There must be a reason. They are capable, can charge what they like. So... they have something they don't want known. It can onlybe that tthe possiblity exists that the recount tallies won't match the original totals. Think what kind of hell would explode if the new, bulletproof system was shown conclusively to be completely untrustworthy. It would be a scandal unlike any other, especially seeing how hard they tried to hide the problem.
Fear of esposure as incompetents or fear of exposure as the enablers of a falsely elected government, take your pick. And ALL previous elections would be invalid on the evidence!
I don't think most Americans would even care, but some would. Enough to send people to prison.
There were no "screw ups" with the paper ballots in Florida.
The Republicans descended on the state in waves, filed gobs of lawsuits, and fired PR bullshit cannons at the TV talking heads.
The "problem" was the hysterical Republicans at the counting tables. At the doors, rioting. At the courts, delaying. On the TV, bloviating and installing doubt into people's heads.In the Supreme Court, concocting a BS, only-this-one-time decision to install their boy.
The recount of the paper ballots was going fine, no hitch, no fuss, until the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the process. They held up the decision until 30 minutes before the deadline they themselves set up as sacrosanct, then invited the state to finish up in that half hour.
It hascome to light that if Gore had won the initial count, those armies of drones were instructed to demand recounts until our anal sphincters bled. And to question the legality of Gore's presidency for the next four years. The cable channels would have been a non-stop illegaltheftoftheelection telethon for the Republicans until the people would have impeached Gore just to shut the right wing the hell UP already.
And, oh yeah: a recount was made, afterthe election,by a consortium of newspapers and the parties themselves. If the votes had been recounted, with the overvotes added in (candidate checked off, and the name written in as well -- a common practice, apparently) rather than discarded --
That doesn't track logically. The system already costs $5000 per voting machine. If the printer was added, they'd simply add another few thousand for the work and hardware. Memos have surfaced taht confirm this: they were instructed to charge HIGH to add that capability, if it came to it.
No, from the minutes of a meeting inadvertently attended by a publisher, and from justing oogling Diebold's 500K/month legal fund, itcan only be said Diebold's ONLY aim is to prevent the addition of printed ballots for verification purposes.
So they don't want an audit trail. Now, why?
They know that if the system is audited, ie a recount made and results from counting paper matched to election tallies, the numbers won't match up. OR, they are making sure the machines can secretly alter election vote totals, and don't want it known.
Since there is no profit motive, it must be incompetence, or cheating, or both.
You're omitting a great deal. The are exceptions to the copyright laws, commonly called "Fair Use".
You can duplicate for:
educational purposes; satirical purposes; personal use (yes, you can!); informative uses, such as news stories.
The proponents of the new Copyright Crime meme do not mention the rights you already have. And the DMCA, by forbidding the reverse engineering of any encryption so that onecan make a duplication, effectively eliminates Fair Use without the bother of changing any laws.
Also: the idea of copyright almost didn't make it into the U.S. constitution. Business proponents wanted it, but thinkers like Jefferson wanted none at all - understanding that new ideas stemmed from old ones.
The compromise simply limited copyright to a limited period of time, giving both side their due. Copyright holders made some dough, and eventually their work became fodder for other people's ideas.
The new regime simply removes the time limit. Copyrighted material is now the property of whoever owns it, forever and ever and ever...
This was not what copyright was created for in the U.S. Not for the creation of a new class of private property, but for creating a fair way of releasing a man's work into the commons, yet recompensing him. Reward for effort, and then seeding the greater whole.
The copyright industry (!) has broken the contract that the writers of the constitution worked so hard for. And they are successfully implementing their insane vision into the world's lawbooks, by hook or crook.
Let's sum up:
Copyright is not property; Copying can be a right, even without the owner's consent (Fair Use); The constitutional contract with the American people has been unilaterally voided by the "intellectual property industry"; Therefore no contract exists.
That's when he pointed out a fair percentage of people in the work world are in their forties, are too experienced to the point of being overqualified for many jobs (to make a change), are set enough in their ways they can't adapt to something roughly similar to their current skill set, and don't have enough experience to move up (the Peter Principle[1]). Bottom line? They're waiting for the next 20-30 years to pass by so they can retire.
Well, by that measure, the logical thing for managers to do is to let go of everyone over 40; overqualified, inflexible, chairwarmers waiting for the next thirty years to retire.
And that's exactly what they are doing. Firing people over 35 and hiring young inexperienced people.
Points:
How can you be overqualified and at the same time inflexible? If you are more than qualified for the job, how could you have been inflexible?
Where exactly are YOU planning to work when you are forty? I assume you are a IT/Comp Sci/Engineering type. The professor's pointmakes sense to you now, because you are young (another guess). What are you planning on doing when you are useless? Will you be overqualifed and yet have spent two decades becoming too inflexible to learn new techniques? If you are the exception, why assume everyone else will be the lump you won't be?
And the fastball: how old was the old, inflexible professor? Over 35? Where does he work? I'm thinking he's too old and tired to be employable at his advanced stage in life.So why listen to his unemployable brain? If he is working, at his sad time of life, then where's he getting off making such a comment? If he isn't working in the private sector today, in his golden years, then how does he justify teaching you? He's just as superannuated and untrainable as the old professionals he's dismissing.
**
I was watching Leo LaPorte interview Kevin Mitnick (37+)on TechTV's The Screen Savers a month ago. Kevin,old hacker that he is, has started a security company. Wrote his own code to test the security of networks.
My recollection of a bit of it:
Leo's question: who wrote the code? An old guy like you can't be doing it, right?
Kevin (slightly off-balance): Um, I wrote it.
Leo: But you can't be up to date with all the stuff that's happened in the last few years?
Kevin (a little stunned): Well, I do read books...
**
It's sad, this meme. Almost all the yunguns here on Slashdot posting today will be olduns in ten years. Am I listening to a giant asssemblage of soon-to-be irrelevant fossils?
Maybe it's the old chicken-and-egg syndrome. Older IT workers stop trying because they know that they won't be taken seriously anymore because they don't play the Star Wars RPG at lunch with the other workers, or can't go bar hopping with the gang after work? (yup. speaking from observation at work).
Is it fossilization of the brain, which isn't physiologically possible at the ancient age of 40 -you're at your peak, really - or is it the simple prejudice of the management and the younger workers themselves that set the stage for the demise of the 35+ year old's career?
Not idle questions. A lot of are hitting that wall now.
(My opinion, for what's it's worth, etc: you lose that learning edge when you get married and have kids. Life takes up too much time to spare 20 hours a day learning and coding. Unmarried guys tend to hang in longer.
You also can just get tired of the politics and the endless staring at a screen.
It's not brain death, or inflexibilty. It's about becoming MORE flexible, acquiring more interests, like girls and national politics. And maybe just about requiring more sleep:)
Um, the recount wasn't a debacle; it was working just fine before the Supreme Court shut it down. Bush had a recount going on in New Mexico at the same time that he had no problems with. No army of political drones staging fake protests to shut down recount stations.
And there is absolutely no way of determining if cheating is going on in an electronic system. That's the entire point. There are no recounts. There is nothing except the black boxes, which are of course perfect and unhackable.
Wonderful. Then there will be even more poor, hopeless people in the middle east to turn to fundamentalist wackos who instruct them in the ways of killing people who don't look and act like them...
I'll take the wildly unpopular (and undiscussed) position that that is not the case.
The poor, hopeless people in Palestine, for instance, are not killing people because they don't look or act like themselves. They are pissed off about certain policies vis-a-vis someone is sitting on what used to be their land.
The Al Queda killers did not hate us because they hated our freedom, or our religion. They had a specific grievance primarily, which was the U.S. presence in their Holy Land (which we have totally abandoned for new bases in Iraq). They don't have a problem with us as long as we don't bother their culture; it's not about us being white or christian. It's about their assertion that we should not bother their culture. Not that they're right; it's just that they aren't doing it because we're different.
I can't think of anyone in the world who's a "terrorist" because they hate Americans. Being poor doesn't make you insane. It always starts out with a grievance that makes sense to them; Lebanon,the West Bank, Fallujah, desecration. Then it starts snowballing because of the tit-for-tat and stubborn misunderstanding by BOTH the Americans and the Others. Add in required vengeance for killing, and we have a he-killed-him-so-I-must-kill-you idiot's war.
On the other hand, I live around Chicago's burbs. And I DO hear the young men talking about killing "Afghans", "Iraqi's" and "ragheads", because they "bombed the World Trade Center". They really do think that Islam is now a religion to be despised and crushed. They're immensely confused as to who is who. But they really want to go and kill themselves some "terrorists". And anyone who is moslem or wears a turban is commonly called a "terrorist" on the playground, the gym or even at the dinner table.
An unpopular point, I know. We may be far more guilty of confusing just who the "enemy" is than all those poor, deluded people in the world. Maybe they aren't that deluded? Sigh.
What is a "criminal"? If he committed a crime, he would be in jail, no? If he's served his time, he's not a criminal, then. Or is he?
Is "criminal" now a new class of Americans? From the rhetoric prevelant in the U.S., it sure sounds like it.
Is Ken Lay a criminal? How about Ollie North? Liddy? Admiral Poindexter? Why should they be different from other criminals, and get to drive? Or are criminals only lower-class poor people? These aren't idle questions. It goes to the heart of how Americans think about crime and punishment.
If "criminal" means "has committed a crime in the past" then there is a new class of people in the U.S. who can be denied privileges and rights in perpetuity. But, is that new label being applied across the board to all the formerly convicted, or just to people who, to put it bluntly, didn't steal enough to be considered businessmen or patriots? The difference between a robbery for 200 bucks and 20 billion seems to be prison first with a shattered lifetime afterwards for the petty criminal and gobs of cash and an appearance the David Letterman show for the big thinkers.
That court decision was wrong. We disobey. And don't necessarily want to pay the "consequences", either.
Some court decisions, some laws, are just plain wrong. Forbidding people to look at a web site by refusing permission to anyone to link to it is wrong. I don't care about legal; it's wrong.
Streeeeetching for an example: jury nullification. Juries actually have four verdict options.
1. Guilty 2. Not guilty. 3. No verdict (hung in a tie, or unable to reach majority). 4. NULLIFICATION. The jury can decide that, although the defendant is guilty of violating the law, the law itself is wrong.
I don't know what happens as a result of 4: guilty? not guilty? I do know that judges do not want such an outcome, and as far as I know never inform the jury that they can decide in that manner.
There is civil disobediance, of course, but you can go to jail or be fined. Juries aren't charged for nullification.
Let's say that in this case I am nullifying the legal decision. No precedent on the books, but plenty in real life. People speed. People take mood enhancing drugs. They end-ran Prohibition. They copy music. Bush is sandbagging the Plame investigators. Cheney won't give up notes to energy policy meetings that he should. They don't think of themselves as criminals as they do all these felonious things. They effectively nullify the law.
So tho there is precedent, I agree, in that court ruling, I deny the validity of the decision. I have lots of company.
And the parent poster is simply not guilty of linking to the code: he's hosting the source, making it available for downloard. He's past the 2600 decision, and out in another dimension.
Not that it stopped me from downloading it. I don't like being told by whatever power that I can't read forbidden text.
The original poster could have done a better job, but he was in a tearing hurry. Sorry - the points were quickly made and intended to promote discussion. If I had time, I'd think about my arguments, modify the language, and illustrate my points with more appropriate examples. But I did get the point across with less than three minutes of typing as I spun the argument on the fly. Call it "Cable News Syndrome": getting the story out quickly precludes spending much time reviewing the arguments or facts before release. But thank you for doing a far better job of it than I.
The violations of the law you posted are very far out from what copying is, using excessive exaggeration does not prove your point. Copying is stealing, just in the same way that riding a bus or train without a ticket is stealing, you're illegally taking something you didn't pay for, even if all it is, is time, space, or rights. The english language is an ever evolving thing, when one can "steal a base" in a sport, just as easily as "stealing money" from a bank, it becomes obvious we have a wonderfully evolving language.
apology for the previous response; but you are quite offensive.
Let's take the points, tho: "excessive exageration". I tossed in slander as well as murder, so the "exageration" you point to is out of context. The point was not to compare the severity, or to conflate the crimes. I was quickly illustrating, for I have little time, that copying, or in this case recording a video screen from afar, is not "stealing". Tho the English language is evolving, it has not yet been reduced to the point at which copying is semantically conflated to a specific act, STEALING, which is a term in criminal law which has a specific meaning which is similar to the common: ie: removal of someone else's property, depriving them of the use of that property. The "evolution" of the language that you speak of, the conflating of copying with "stealing", was done by lawyers at the behest of IP companies with the sole intent to confuse the two terms in the public's mind, which was the entire thrust of point 1.
And jumping a turnstile is not stealing. Not paying a fare is not TAKING a fare.
Once again exaggeration doesn't make your case. Murder and rape are not less severe than copying, you can get very long prison sentances, and even death for them. Shut up and research your facts before blathering like an idiot.
been alive for a long time, done a lot of living and research. Please stop the ad hominem crap. If you have a point, make it.
You can get sentences for copying that are more severe than those you can negotiate for rape or murder -- which leads me to state that I have understated my case. You can get away with time served for assault, or get your murder sentence reduced for making up a story about another inmate's confession for the DA. If current trends continue, not only will the punishments increase in severity, for purposes of "sending a message", but they will start to outpace those for old-fashioned crimes such as real theft.
And with the current stacking of the Appeals courts, what will happen in the future vis-a-vis future decisions is up in the air. Current lawmaking trends are indicative of increased punishment. Even if the sentences are someday reduced, people are going to prison soon, and will be there for years to come. This is reality.
Kenneth Lay has NOTHING to do with this story, stay on topic! Kenneth Lay should rot for what he did, no one will argue differently here. The person who commited this crime still did something wrong, and should be punished, once again, how much depends on what the judge rules, and how appeals go, this hasn't even been broached yet, so stop speculating wildly. And FYI, tons of Hollywood king pins have been sued, and they have lost, for the infringment of other people's copyrights, and for unfair contracts. It happens all the time, research before you post!
It is on topic because I am comparing the severity of the punishment, not to mention the surety of prosecution.
And executives have indeed been sued. But in CIVIL COURT, NOT CRIMINAL COURT, and you should know that. The schmuck in the theater is going to the real jail if he gets convicted. The executives, if they somehow lost the case after 5-10 years of delays, will get a FINE. And never see jail. Because they lobbied to make the copying of a film a criminal, not civil, matter. In contrast, if you try to sue the same people, they are under a civil umbrella. You're just a budget item (legal defense) to
1. copying isn't stealing. it isn't rape, murder, barratry, assault, or slander, either. please stop murdering the english language. (or is that stealing the english language?) George Orwell is crying somewhere, while Gingrich is laughing.
2. making a bad copy of a movie does not warrant a felony conviction, jail time, loss of the right to vote, loss of the ability to make a living, or the loss of the right to serve on a jury. this is insane. it was a civil infraction, punishable by fine, until the MPAA and RIAA made it a federal crime more severe than the act of murder.(rape? angary? does semantics matter when money is on the line?)
3. as many have said, why isn't Ken Lay in jail if the Law is the LAW? Some schmuck is going to be raped for years and have his life extinguished because the MPAA bought a law? who the hell in Hollywood has gone to jail for raping a creator out of millions of dollars in royalties?
4. i keep hearing that he was in private establishment. but Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) had his life ruined and his bank account drained for masturbating in a PUBLIC PLACE: the porno theater.
if the theater is a public place, this means we are not permitted to record video in public? Judge Scalia CAN confiscate voice recorders? if it is a private establishment where Constitutional rights are suspended, why was Reubens arrested and humiliated for being in public?
5. if the Law is the LAW, would it be right for a locality to execute you for a speeding ticket? After all, you are expected to know the consequences for your illegal actions. Discuss.
"But the problem there is that microsoft is engaged in many markets and some products that attain monopoly in their markets are given away for free... So in the case of Netscape, how would the government applied such a tax-levy?"
In such a situation, a 100% tax. Seriously. Giving away product for the sole purpose of killing a competitor and creating monopoly is anti-free market. It's anti-consumer and not in anyone's long-term interest.
This "playfair" project is just going to have the recording industry folks who reluctantly agreed to go in with Apple and distribute their music get scared and pissed off. They're going to pull their music and/or the prices are going to go up in fear of piracy.
The labels are already raising the prices. Apparently fear of the nasty customers pirating their wares wasn't a factor for them. Just lots of money.
So who cares. They had a nice model, and now they're even more greedy than ever.
Paper receipt in your hand does not equate with a count made in a remote computer. A mark on a tape in local machine that matches a slip of paper in your hand? It doesn't have to match the count transmitted to a remote computer.
The only real way to make sure a vote is not altered is to make a mark on a piece of paper, count all the paper votes, seal them up, and store it in case of recount. Such a system is protected against fraud by the simple method of recounting the stored paper ballots, and comparing the new totals to the old totals.
Digital counting is not and cannot be secure. I know a lot of you are crypto experts and disagree with me, but I put to you that you are perhaps too specialized. You can be out-thought. You may not think of really simple ways to hack your systems because you don't believe in simplicity?
Take the Diebold boxes. Apparently they use "secure" code - defined as flash cards openly displayed on a tabletop. They use secured PC's to record the votes. They then use flashcards to move the votes from the voting machines to a single machine connected to a landline, which uploads the votes to another machine. How many ways can you think of the substitute a few bits here and there? How about simply using slight of hand to switch the flashcards en route to the uploading machine?
We could have a little party thinking up ways to beat this system, and any other digital system. PC's are MEANT to be hacked. There is no protection that cannot be bypassed.
A paper ballot, however, exists. It has a mark, or it does not. There is an overvote, or there is not. The ballot is spoiled, or it is not. A simple review by interested parties and a counter certifies the ballot in a couple of seconds. Recounting millions of votes takes only days, as Florida and Arizona and Texas and all of Canada shows us. There is no "problem" with paper ballots.
"Digital doesn't mean bad, they just have a stupid buggy system. "
No, I disagree. The system may be buggy, but the concept of a digital computer counting votes is unfixable.
You don't know what code is running. If you magically do know, you certainly won't grok it all, especially as they patch constantly even during elections. And although you may have some certain knowledge of the boxen in front of you, you've no idea what the other ten thousand machines across the country are doing.You don't know if the computer is working properly. You don't know if the data is being altered enroute to a central counting machine. You don't know if the code or the data is being modified from second to second. The process is pretty much a setup to cheat, and I've no doubt plenty of people are lining up to alter future elections. And we'll never know about it -- the ultimate fault. They is no ability to detect fraud. No trail. Nothing but bits.
The paper and pencil and human counter is flawless. A neutral counter. Monitors appointed by each candidate watch the count. And if there is dispute, it is settled firstly at the counting table, and in extremis the entire vote can be recounted until every vote card is vetted and agreed on.
This very process was occuring in Florida when the Supreme Court Five shut it down. And they were getting it done in days. No problems -- all the whining was being settled at the tables. It was working, and working perfectly, and would have given Gore the win had they been given more than 30 minutes before the "deadline" to restart the recount.
"The correct argument is of course: every person has an inherent right to watch what another person wants to perform."
Hm. As I go to bed, I think sometimes we all get it wrong. We don't have such a right as that. Our right should be more generally stated, so we don't get into sily arguments with thugs like Ashcroft.
Let's try this:
Every person has the right to not be harrassed, imprisoned, or bankrupted by another human unless he is hurting someone -- hurt defined as actual damage, not some ephermeral damage to their "morals" or an affront to their "god". Such false "damage" is a fantasy in the mind of the "damaged". Deluded people shouldn't be running the machinery of law.
Ashcroft: lost an election to a dead man. Annointed with Crisco oil by Clarence Thomas. Won't dance because dancing is evilly sexual. Covered up a statue 'cause it showed a tit. Is afraid of Calico cats because they represent Satan. Bankrupted businesses using Scientology-type legal tactics because he thought they sold evil goods.
Bush needs to be kicked out if nothing else JUST FOR putting this vicious lunatic in charge of the DOJ.
So, if... we do question Google's future use of private information... we are... groupthinkers? And if we don't, we are... free thinkers! Got it. Thanks. Free is good, groupthink bad.
Slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength, up is down, we are saving Iraq for noble purposes...
Slashdot Mirror
Nicely done, but semantics are irrelevant.
The earth's average temperature is rising. Fact.
There are other facts. The glasiers are melting. Ground formerly that was permafrost in Alaska is melting, dropping entire villages into the ocean. Weather patterns are starting to change consistent with warming. All the measurements we can make show the temperature is climbing.
Natural or not. It doesn't matter. What matters is the fact that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is greasing the slide into hell. It doesn't matter if the warming is a "natural", normal turn of events. What matters is that we are abetting it enormously, and we need to stop dumping CO2 in massive quantities into the soup.
It's the difference between sitting still in a sinking boat, and deciding to start slamming holes into the boat because it's fun and profitable.
CO2 emmissions need to be reduced far, far more than the Tokyo treaty, the bane of the right, required.
We're melting. No semantics.
"Besides, as I have already told, no-one wants to count it, no-one wants to recount it (or else in the USofA people would have a recount in the last presidential election -- it did not happen, and will not happen)."
Um, how wrong can this be?
Bush had at least two other recounts besides Florida in the 2000 election. He had no problems with those recounts. His brother wasn't the governor there.
Bush signed a bill while governor of Texas that mandated recounts after close elections.
Recounts are law across most of the country. A recount can be called unilaterally. It's a check onthe system.
The recount in Florida in 2000 was going just fine. there just happened to be an army of spinners and lawyers trying to stop the process. they succeeded. If the election had gone Gore's way in Florida, instructions were to scream for as many recounts as necessary to discredit his win. And to scream for four years after that, questioning at all times Gore's right to sit on the chair.
Recounts have always happened.
The voters got sick of recount fever not because there was a recount, but because the Pubs kept stopping and starting the process until both the talking heads on TV and the viewers were convinced the process was "broken".
Gore won, if overvotes (written name AND hole punched as well) were counted.
The military was illegally permitted to vote after the election was over, naturally flooding the post-election tally with Bush votes. Hope they enjoy what Bush did with their enlistments.
eInk does not have a refresh rate. The states of the pixels are static. Set the bit on the screen to black, it stays black. No power necessary to maintain it.
Panel: Don't use Diebold touch-screen voting machines
By Jim Wasserman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12:51 p.m. April 22, 2004
SACRAMENTO - California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.
By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County.
The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin counties.
Machines made by Diebold and other manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected, although the panel was to consider them later in the day.
The panel's recommendation has national implications for the voting machine maker, which has also supplied machines to many counties in Maryland and Georgia. It also comes as states are gearing up to spend billions of dollars on modernized election equipment in the wake of the 2000 disputed presidential election in Florida.
If Shelley follows through with the recommendation, the affected counties would have to revert to paper ballots or older voting technology.
Diebold was disappointed and disagreed with the recommendation, said its marketing director, Mark Radke. The company will quickly write a report outlining its objections to Shelley, who has until April 30 to make a final decision.
The vote doesn't affect thousands of Diebold optical scan machines that read marked ballot cards in 17 counties. Nor does it immediately affect an earlier generation of 4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in Alameda and Plumas counties.
In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company.
Diebold Election Systems is an affiliate of Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., a leading ATM machine maker supplying banks in North and South America.
Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of state, said he was "disgusted" by Diebold, which has "been jerking us around." The company, he said, has disenfranchised voters in California and undermined confidence in the new and developing technology of touch-screen voting.
Local elections officials in Kern San Joaquin counties, which use Diebold's touch-screen machines were surprised by the news, saying they had experienced no problems in the March primary.
"I don't understand how they can say they didn't work well," said San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Debbie Hench. The county bought 1,626 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5.7 million.
This decision will be a "step backward" for Kern County, said Registrar of Voters Ann Barnett, who bought 1,350 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5 million.
Regardless of what happens in California, the head of Diebold Inc. told shareholders Thursday that the company is not considering getting out of the elections business.
Chairman and CEO Walden W. O'Dell told reporters after an annual shareholders meeting that "we will help in California if we are allowed. If we are not, we won't. I think whatever goes on in California is separate from what goes on in other states. Each state will make their own decisions."
O'Dell said the North Canton, Ohio-based company remains confident the machines are safe and secure.
California panel members, however, disagreed. They cited a litany of alleged problems with Diebold in recent months, including its sale of machines to the four counties without federal and state certif
Not a huge conspiracy at all. It's right out in the open. They don't want the printers. They're spending fortunes and dragging in their favorite legislators to block the audit trail.
They're not claiming it's expensive, or complicated, or anything logical. They claim it's not necessary.
Now, we've plenty of data at this point, from negative tallies in Indiana to system tests by computer scientists. The tallies are not working even by Dielbold's standards. The scientists cracked the system in 5 minutes in one case, and found multiple hacks in all others that permitted them to own the voting machines, the aggregation machines, the modem communications, the voter smart cards... their conclusion: minumum effort to change vote totals at will!
Doesn't take a "conspiracy theory" to stare the truth in the face. The machines don't work as they are supposed to. The basic idea is unsound and an invitation to cheat. The system is already hacked, and the vote counts can be changed. Strange results have occured in Georgia and otherplaces: wild swings for candidates that don't match the polls. The company has fought like a rabid hyena to prevent an audit trail, even though doing so means extra profit.
I don't think the entire company is out to cheat the voters. But I find it easy to believe that either the machines don't work as advertised, or the company bigwigs may be terrified that an paper audit was run and cheating occured. I also find it humanly certain that someone in the Bush-fanatical company has it in their head to use the easy methods already known to tip a race in the Republican's favor. Why not? It's untraceable.
In any case, extremely robust printers are available for use,so fallibilty of hardware isn't an issue. Do ATM's fail to print very often? It's Diebold, they specialize in tough hardware.
Cost isn't an issue. They can charge whatever they like.
Time wasn't an issue, until they ran out the clock.
The audit trail IS the issue for them. They fundamentally deny they need one. Their reasoning is nonexistent. They simply assert it isn't necessary.
It boils down to this: they are blocking the ability to hold recounts. They don't want recounts. There must be a reason. They are capable, can charge what they like. So... they have something they don't want known. It can onlybe that tthe possiblity exists that the recount tallies won't match the original totals. Think what kind of hell would explode if the new, bulletproof system was shown conclusively to be completely untrustworthy. It would be a scandal unlike any other, especially seeing how hard they tried to hide the problem.
Fear of esposure as incompetents or fear of exposure as the enablers of a falsely elected government, take your pick. And ALL previous elections would be invalid on the evidence!
I don't think most Americans would even care, but some would. Enough to send people to prison.
There were no "screw ups" with the paper ballots in Florida.
The Republicans descended on the state in waves, filed gobs of lawsuits, and fired PR bullshit cannons at the TV talking heads.
The "problem" was the hysterical Republicans at the counting tables. At the doors, rioting. At the courts, delaying. On the TV, bloviating and installing doubt into people's heads.In the Supreme Court, concocting a BS, only-this-one-time decision to install their boy.
The recount of the paper ballots was going fine, no hitch, no fuss, until the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the process. They held up the decision until 30 minutes before the deadline they themselves set up as sacrosanct, then invited the state to finish up in that half hour.
It hascome to light that if Gore had won the initial count, those armies of drones were instructed to demand recounts until our anal sphincters bled. And to question the legality of Gore's presidency for the next four years. The cable channels would have been a non-stop illegaltheftoftheelection telethon for the Republicans until the people would have impeached Gore just to shut the right wing the hell UP already.
And, oh yeah: a recount was made, afterthe election,by a consortium of newspapers and the parties themselves. If the votes had been recounted, with the overvotes added in (candidate checked off, and the name written in as well -- a common practice, apparently) rather than discarded --
Gore won.
Finito.
but to make a buck on a cheaper system
That doesn't track logically. The system already costs $5000 per voting machine. If the printer was added, they'd simply add another few thousand for the work and hardware. Memos have surfaced taht confirm this: they were instructed to charge HIGH to add that capability, if it came to it.
No, from the minutes of a meeting inadvertently attended by a publisher, and from justing oogling Diebold's 500K/month legal fund, itcan only be said Diebold's ONLY aim is to prevent the addition of printed ballots for verification purposes.
So they don't want an audit trail. Now, why?
They know that if the system is audited, ie a recount made and results from counting paper matched to election tallies, the numbers won't match up. OR, they are making sure the machines can secretly alter election vote totals, and don't want it known.
Since there is no profit motive, it must be incompetence, or cheating, or both.
You're omitting a great deal. The are exceptions to the copyright laws, commonly called "Fair Use".
You can duplicate for:
educational purposes;
satirical purposes;
personal use (yes, you can!);
informative uses, such as news stories.
The proponents of the new Copyright Crime meme do not mention the rights you already have. And the DMCA, by forbidding the reverse engineering of any encryption so that onecan make a duplication, effectively eliminates Fair Use without the bother of changing any laws.
Also: the idea of copyright almost didn't make it into the U.S. constitution. Business proponents wanted it, but thinkers like Jefferson wanted none at all - understanding that new ideas stemmed from old ones.
The compromise simply limited copyright to a limited period of time, giving both side their due. Copyright holders made some dough, and eventually their work became fodder for other people's ideas.
The new regime simply removes the time limit. Copyrighted material is now the property of whoever owns it, forever and ever and ever...
This was not what copyright was created for in the U.S. Not for the creation of a new class of private property, but for creating a fair way of releasing a man's work into the commons, yet recompensing him. Reward for effort, and then seeding the greater whole.
The copyright industry (!) has broken the contract that the writers of the constitution worked so hard for. And they are successfully implementing their insane vision into the world's lawbooks, by hook or crook.
Let's sum up:
Copyright is not property;
Copying can be a right, even without the owner's consent (Fair Use);
The constitutional contract with the American people has been unilaterally voided by the "intellectual property industry";
Therefore no contract exists.
Well, uh... yeah, pretty much the same thing!
That's when he pointed out a fair percentage of people in the work world are in their forties, are too experienced to the point of being overqualified for many jobs (to make a change), are set enough in their ways they can't adapt to something roughly similar to their current skill set, and don't have enough experience to move up (the Peter Principle[1]). Bottom line? They're waiting for the next 20-30 years to pass by so they can retire.
:)
Well, by that measure, the logical thing for managers to do is to let go of everyone over 40; overqualified, inflexible, chairwarmers waiting for the next thirty years to retire.
And that's exactly what they are doing. Firing people over 35 and hiring young inexperienced people.
Points:
How can you be overqualified and at the same time inflexible? If you are more than qualified for the job, how could you have been inflexible?
Where exactly are YOU planning to work when you are forty? I assume you are a IT/Comp Sci/Engineering type. The professor's pointmakes sense to you now, because you are young (another guess). What are you planning on doing when you are useless? Will you be overqualifed and yet have spent two decades becoming too inflexible to learn new techniques? If you are the exception, why assume everyone else will be the lump you won't be?
And the fastball: how old was the old, inflexible professor? Over 35? Where does he work? I'm thinking he's too old and tired to be employable at his advanced stage in life.So why listen to his unemployable brain? If he is working, at his sad time of life, then where's he getting off making such a comment? If he isn't working in the private sector today, in his golden years, then how does he justify teaching you? He's just as superannuated and untrainable as the old professionals he's dismissing.
**
I was watching Leo LaPorte interview Kevin Mitnick (37+)on TechTV's The Screen Savers a month ago. Kevin,old hacker that he is, has started a security company. Wrote his own code to test the security of networks.
My recollection of a bit of it:
Leo's question: who wrote the code? An old guy like you can't be doing it, right?
Kevin (slightly off-balance): Um, I wrote it.
Leo: But you can't be up to date with all the stuff that's happened in the last few years?
Kevin (a little stunned): Well, I do read books...
**
It's sad, this meme. Almost all the yunguns here on Slashdot posting today will be olduns in ten years. Am I listening to a giant asssemblage of soon-to-be irrelevant fossils?
Maybe it's the old chicken-and-egg syndrome. Older IT workers stop trying because they know that they won't be taken seriously anymore because they don't play the Star Wars RPG at lunch with the other workers, or can't go bar hopping with the gang after work? (yup. speaking from observation at work).
Is it fossilization of the brain, which isn't physiologically possible at the ancient age of 40 -you're at your peak, really - or is it the simple prejudice of the management and the younger workers themselves that set the stage for the demise of the 35+ year old's career?
Not idle questions. A lot of are hitting that wall now.
(My opinion, for what's it's worth, etc: you lose that learning edge when you get married and have kids. Life takes up too much time to spare 20 hours a day learning and coding. Unmarried guys tend to hang in longer.
You also can just get tired of the politics and the endless staring at a screen.
It's not brain death, or inflexibilty. It's about becoming MORE flexible, acquiring more interests, like girls and national politics. And maybe just about requiring more sleep
Um, the recount wasn't a debacle; it was working just fine before the Supreme Court shut it down. Bush had a recount going on in New Mexico at the same time that he had no problems with. No army of political drones staging fake protests to shut down recount stations.
And there is absolutely no way of determining if cheating is going on in an electronic system. That's the entire point. There are no recounts. There is nothing except the black boxes, which are of course perfect and unhackable.
Wonderful. Then there will be even more poor, hopeless people in the middle east to turn to fundamentalist wackos who instruct them in the ways of killing people who don't look and act like them...
I'll take the wildly unpopular (and undiscussed) position that that is not the case.
The poor, hopeless people in Palestine, for instance, are not killing people because they don't look or act like themselves. They are pissed off about certain policies vis-a-vis someone is sitting on what used to be their land.
The Al Queda killers did not hate us because they hated our freedom, or our religion. They had a specific grievance primarily, which was the U.S. presence in their Holy Land (which we have totally abandoned for new bases in Iraq). They don't have a problem with us as long as we don't bother their culture; it's not about us being white or christian. It's about their assertion that we should not bother their culture. Not that they're right; it's just that they aren't doing it because we're different.
I can't think of anyone in the world who's a "terrorist" because they hate Americans. Being poor doesn't make you insane. It always starts out with a grievance that makes sense to them; Lebanon,the West Bank, Fallujah, desecration. Then it starts snowballing because of the tit-for-tat and stubborn misunderstanding by BOTH the Americans and the Others. Add in required vengeance for killing, and we have a he-killed-him-so-I-must-kill-you idiot's war.
On the other hand, I live around Chicago's burbs. And I DO hear the young men talking about killing "Afghans", "Iraqi's" and "ragheads", because they "bombed the World Trade Center". They really do think that Islam is now a religion to be despised and crushed. They're immensely confused as to who is who. But they really want to go and kill themselves some "terrorists". And anyone who is moslem or wears a turban is commonly called a "terrorist" on the playground, the gym or even at the dinner table.
An unpopular point, I know. We may be far more guilty of confusing just who the "enemy" is than all those poor, deluded people in the world. Maybe they aren't that deluded? Sigh.
So criminals should be allowed to drive too?
What is a "criminal"? If he committed a crime, he would be in jail, no? If he's served his time, he's not a criminal, then. Or is he?
Is "criminal" now a new class of Americans? From the rhetoric prevelant in the U.S., it sure sounds like it.
Is Ken Lay a criminal? How about Ollie North? Liddy? Admiral Poindexter? Why should they be different from other criminals, and get to drive? Or are criminals only lower-class poor people? These aren't idle questions. It goes to the heart of how Americans think about crime and punishment.
If "criminal" means "has committed a crime in the past" then there is a new class of people in the U.S. who can be denied privileges and rights in perpetuity. But, is that new label being applied across the board to all the formerly convicted, or just to people who, to put it bluntly, didn't steal enough to be considered businessmen or patriots? The difference between a robbery for 200 bucks and 20 billion seems to be prison first with a shattered lifetime afterwards for the petty criminal and gobs of cash and an appearance the David Letterman show for the big thinkers.
That court decision was wrong. We disobey. And don't necessarily want to pay the "consequences", either.
Some court decisions, some laws, are just plain wrong. Forbidding people to look at a web site by refusing permission to anyone to link to it is wrong. I don't care about legal; it's wrong.
Streeeeetching for an example: jury nullification. Juries actually have four verdict options.
1. Guilty
2. Not guilty.
3. No verdict (hung in a tie, or unable to reach majority).
4. NULLIFICATION. The jury can decide that, although the defendant is guilty of violating the law, the law itself is wrong.
I don't know what happens as a result of 4: guilty? not guilty? I do know that judges do not want such an outcome, and as far as I know never inform the jury that they can decide in that manner.
There is civil disobediance, of course, but you can go to jail or be fined. Juries aren't charged for nullification.
Let's say that in this case I am nullifying the legal decision. No precedent on the books, but plenty in real life. People speed. People take mood enhancing drugs. They end-ran Prohibition. They copy music. Bush is sandbagging the Plame investigators. Cheney won't give up notes to energy policy meetings that he should. They don't think of themselves as criminals as they do all these felonious things. They effectively nullify the law.
So tho there is precedent, I agree, in that court ruling, I deny the validity of the decision. I have lots of company.
And the parent poster is simply not guilty of linking to the code: he's hosting the source, making it available for downloard. He's past the 2600 decision, and out in another dimension.
Not that it stopped me from downloading it. I don't like being told by whatever power that I can't read forbidden text.
The original poster could have done a better job, but he was in a tearing hurry. Sorry - the points were quickly made and intended to promote discussion. If I had time, I'd think about my arguments, modify the language, and illustrate my points with more appropriate examples. But I did get the point across with less than three minutes of typing as I spun the argument on the fly. Call it "Cable News Syndrome": getting the story out quickly precludes spending much time reviewing the arguments or facts before release. But thank you for doing a far better job of it than I.
The violations of the law you posted are very far out from what copying is, using excessive exaggeration does not prove your point. Copying is stealing, just in the same way that riding a bus or train without a ticket is stealing, you're illegally taking something you didn't pay for, even if all it is, is time, space, or rights. The english language is an ever evolving thing, when one can "steal a base" in a sport, just as easily as "stealing money" from a bank, it becomes obvious we have a wonderfully evolving language.
apology for the previous response; but you are quite offensive.
Let's take the points, tho:
"excessive exageration". I tossed in slander as well as murder, so the "exageration" you point to is out of context. The point was not to compare the severity, or to conflate the crimes. I was quickly illustrating, for I have little time, that copying, or in this case recording a video screen from afar, is not "stealing". Tho the English language is evolving, it has not yet been reduced to the point at which copying is semantically conflated to a specific act, STEALING, which is a term in criminal law which has a specific meaning which is similar to the common: ie: removal of someone else's property, depriving them of the use of that property. The "evolution" of the language that you speak of, the conflating of copying with "stealing", was done by lawyers at the behest of IP companies with the sole intent to confuse the two terms in the public's mind, which was the entire thrust of point 1.
And jumping a turnstile is not stealing. Not paying a fare is not TAKING a fare.
Once again exaggeration doesn't make your case. Murder and rape are not less severe than copying, you can get very long prison sentances, and even death for them. Shut up and research your facts before blathering like an idiot.
been alive for a long time, done a lot of living and research. Please stop the ad hominem crap. If you have a point, make it.
You can get sentences for copying that are more severe than those you can negotiate for rape or murder -- which leads me to state that I have understated my case. You can get away with time served for assault, or get your murder sentence reduced for making up a story about another inmate's confession for the DA. If current trends continue, not only will the punishments increase in severity, for purposes of "sending a message", but they will start to outpace those for old-fashioned crimes such as real theft.
And with the current stacking of the Appeals courts, what will happen in the future vis-a-vis future decisions is up in the air. Current lawmaking trends are indicative of increased punishment. Even if the sentences are someday reduced, people are going to prison soon, and will be there for years to come. This is reality.
Kenneth Lay has NOTHING to do with this story, stay on topic! Kenneth Lay should rot for what he did, no one will argue differently here. The person who commited this crime still did something wrong, and should be punished, once again, how much depends on what the judge rules, and how appeals go, this hasn't even been broached yet, so stop speculating wildly. And FYI, tons of Hollywood king pins have been sued, and they have lost, for the infringment of other people's copyrights, and for unfair contracts. It happens all the time, research before you post!
It is on topic because I am comparing the severity of the punishment, not to mention the surety of prosecution.
And executives have indeed been sued. But in CIVIL COURT, NOT CRIMINAL COURT, and you should know that. The schmuck in the theater is going to the real jail if he gets convicted. The executives, if they somehow lost the case after 5-10 years of delays, will get a FINE. And never see jail. Because they lobbied to make the copying of a film a criminal, not civil, matter. In contrast, if you try to sue the same people, they are under a civil umbrella. You're just a budget item (legal defense) to
1. copying isn't stealing. it isn't rape, murder, barratry, assault, or slander, either. please stop murdering the english language. (or is that stealing the english language?) George Orwell is crying somewhere, while Gingrich is laughing.
2. making a bad copy of a movie does not warrant a felony conviction, jail time, loss of the right to vote, loss of the ability to make a living, or the loss of the right to serve on a jury. this is insane. it was a civil infraction, punishable by fine, until the MPAA and RIAA made it a federal crime more severe than the act of murder.(rape? angary? does semantics matter when money is on the line?)
3. as many have said, why isn't Ken Lay in jail if the Law is the LAW? Some schmuck is going to be raped for years and have his life extinguished because the MPAA bought a law? who the hell in Hollywood has gone to jail for raping a creator out of millions of dollars in royalties?
4. i keep hearing that he was in private establishment. but Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) had his life ruined and his bank account drained for masturbating in a PUBLIC PLACE: the porno theater.
if the theater is a public place, this means we are not permitted to record video in public? Judge Scalia CAN confiscate voice recorders? if it is a private establishment where Constitutional rights are suspended, why was Reubens arrested and humiliated for being in public?
5. if the Law is the LAW, would it be right for a locality to execute you for a speeding ticket? After all, you are expected to know the consequences for your illegal actions. Discuss.
"But the problem there is that microsoft is engaged in many markets and some products that attain monopoly in their markets are given away for free... So in the case of Netscape, how would the government applied such a tax-levy?"
In such a situation, a 100% tax. Seriously. Giving away product for the sole purpose of killing a competitor and creating monopoly is anti-free market. It's anti-consumer and not in anyone's long-term interest.
This "playfair" project is just going to have the recording industry folks who reluctantly agreed to go in with Apple and distribute their music get scared and pissed off. They're going to pull their music and/or the prices are going to go up in fear of piracy.
The labels are already raising the prices. Apparently fear of the nasty customers pirating their wares wasn't a factor for them. Just lots of money.
So who cares. They had a nice model, and now they're even more greedy than ever.
Any amateur magician can beat that methodology.
Paper receipt in your hand does not equate with a count made in a remote computer. A mark on a tape in local machine that matches a slip of paper in your hand? It doesn't have to match the count transmitted to a remote computer.
The only real way to make sure a vote is not altered is to make a mark on a piece of paper, count all the paper votes, seal them up, and store it in case of recount. Such a system is protected against fraud by the simple method of recounting the stored paper ballots, and comparing the new totals to the old totals.
Digital counting is not and cannot be secure. I know a lot of you are crypto experts and disagree with me, but I put to you that you are perhaps too specialized. You can be out-thought. You may not think of really simple ways to hack your systems because you don't believe in simplicity?
Take the Diebold boxes. Apparently they use "secure" code - defined as flash cards openly displayed on a tabletop. They use secured PC's to record the votes. They then use flashcards to move the votes from the voting machines to a single machine connected to a landline, which uploads the votes to another machine. How many ways can you think of the substitute a few bits here and there? How about simply using slight of hand to switch the flashcards en route to the uploading machine?
We could have a little party thinking up ways to beat this system, and any other digital system. PC's are MEANT to be hacked. There is no protection that cannot be bypassed.
A paper ballot, however, exists. It has a mark, or it does not. There is an overvote, or there is not. The ballot is spoiled, or it is not. A simple review by interested parties and a counter certifies the ballot in a couple of seconds. Recounting millions of votes takes only days, as Florida and Arizona and Texas and all of Canada shows us. There is no "problem" with paper ballots.
"Digital doesn't mean bad, they just have a stupid buggy system. "
No, I disagree. The system may be buggy, but the concept of a digital computer counting votes is unfixable.
You don't know what code is running. If you magically do know, you certainly won't grok it all, especially as they patch constantly even during elections. And although you may have some certain knowledge of the boxen in front of you, you've no idea what the other ten thousand machines across the country are doing.You don't know if the computer is working properly. You don't know if the data is being altered enroute to a central counting machine. You don't know if the code or the data is being modified from second to second. The process is pretty much a setup to cheat, and I've no doubt plenty of people are lining up to alter future elections. And we'll never know about it -- the ultimate fault. They is no ability to detect fraud. No trail. Nothing but bits.
The paper and pencil and human counter is flawless. A neutral counter. Monitors appointed by each candidate watch the count. And if there is dispute, it is settled firstly at the counting table, and in extremis the entire vote can be recounted until every vote card is vetted and agreed on.
This very process was occuring in Florida when the Supreme Court Five shut it down. And they were getting it done in days . No problems -- all the whining was being settled at the tables. It was working, and working perfectly, and would have given Gore the win had they been given more than 30 minutes before the "deadline" to restart the recount.
Ah, but they later suddenly dropped their opposition, without comment. Methinks they have a way, or they've arranged for a backdoor.
"The correct argument is of course: every person has an inherent right to watch what another person wants to perform."
Hm. As I go to bed, I think sometimes we all get it wrong. We don't have such a right as that. Our right should be more generally stated, so we don't get into sily arguments with thugs like Ashcroft.
Let's try this:
Every person has the right to not be harrassed, imprisoned, or bankrupted by another human unless he is hurting someone -- hurt defined as actual damage, not some ephermeral damage to their "morals" or an affront to their "god". Such false "damage" is a fantasy in the mind of the "damaged". Deluded people shouldn't be running the machinery of law.
Ashcroft: lost an election to a dead man. Annointed with Crisco oil by Clarence Thomas. Won't dance because dancing is evilly sexual. Covered up a statue 'cause it showed a tit. Is afraid of Calico cats because they represent Satan. Bankrupted businesses using Scientology-type legal tactics because he thought they sold evil goods.
Bush needs to be kicked out if nothing else JUST FOR putting this vicious lunatic in charge of the DOJ.
Repeat after me, We are all free thinkers...
So, if... we do question Google's future use of private information... we are... groupthinkers? And if we don't, we are... free thinkers! Got it. Thanks. Free is good, groupthink bad.
Slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength, up is down, we are saving Iraq for noble purposes...
So relax, and have some Freedom Fries.