Dick walks out of a bar in great pain and says "Apparently he wasn't asking what my name was, he was asking if I wanted anything."
BTW Good luck with the stepping aside thing. I hope you know the people who you are handing the reigns over to well and that they are of high integrity and have good leadership skills. I have rarely seen the reigns handed to people who weren't unscrupulous, power hungry, and/or unqualified.
Here are my ideas on to make a voting system much more resistant to tampering:
When you vote the machine should generate a unique ID for each vote, not just count them. Each individual vote should be permanently stored in the system by its unique ID and what was selected. Then the machine should give you the option of printing out your vote's unique ID when you vote so you can take it with you. It should also give you the option to print your selections in the poling system at the same time so you can prove you voted for what did.
Then, make it so that anyone can list out all the votes (not in any order) by unique ID and who/what was voted for. Individuals can then look up their vote based on the unique ID that only they know and make sure their vote is entered into the system properly. That way each and every vote in the system can be verified with the person who placed it without being traceable to that person.
Also, by enabling the printing of the ID and your selections at the poling place you could prove tampering if it occurred.
Once votes can't be changed once entered you need to make sure that people cant "stuff the ballots" by voting multiple times. For this, the records as to who checked in to vote (name, address) should be recorded digitally along with some verification system (a digital snapshot of you going to vote or make you sign something or some sort of biometrics) so if you vote more than once you can be held accountable.
Then, each poling place should be set up so that it won't take more votes than the number of people who have been checked in. One way would be to, when you check in, have a single poling station designated as yours and turned on for you. Once you vote it's disabled until the check in computer turns it on again for the next person. Strict security measures would need to be in place to make sure that the check in system and the poling system had no way to communicate other than the signal to turn on since this could make a way for votes to be tied to those who placed them but such a system is possible. A one way (transmit only) fiber optic encrypted shared key system would be overkill but would do it.
Voting is very important and I'm tired of the political system being infested with unethical, unscrupulous politicians. I know vote tampering probably isn't to blame for the state of politics today but any cheating in the voting system just seems incredibly wrong to me and adds to the atmosphere of I think we should do our best to stop it from happening.
There are ways to make a voting system much more resistant to tampering.
I think when you vote the machine should generate a unique ID for each vote, not just count them. Each individual vote should be permanently stored in the system by its unique ID and what was selected. Then the machine should give you the option of printing out your vote's unique ID when you vote so you can take it with you. It should also give you the option to print your selections in the poling system at the same time so you can prove you voted for what did.
Then, make it so that anyone can list out all the votes (not in any order) by unique ID and who/what was voted for. Individuals can then look up their
vote based on the unique ID that only they know and make sure their vote is entered into the system properly. That way each and every vote in the system can be verified with the person who placed it without being traceable to that person.
Also, by enabling the printing of the ID and your selections at the poling place you could prove tampering if it occurred.
Once votes can't be changed once entered you need to make sure that people cant "stuff the ballots" by voting multiple times. For this, the records as to who checked in to vote (name, address) should be recorded digitally along with some verification system (a digital snapshot of you going to vote or make you sign something or some sort of biometrics) so if you vote more than once you can be held accountable.
Then, each poling place should be set up so that it won't take more votes than the number of people who have been checked in. One way would be to, when you check in, have a single poling station designated as yours and turned on for you. Once you vote it's disabled until the check in computer turns it on again for the next person. Strict security measures would need to be in place to make sure that the check in system and the poling system had no way to communicate other than the signal to turn on since this could make a way for votes to be tied to those who placed them but such a system is possible. A one way (transmit only) fiber optic encrypted shared key system would be overkill but would do it.
Voting is very important and I'm tired of the political system being infested with unethical, unscrupulous politicians. I know vote tampering probably isn't to blame for the state of politics today but any cheating in the voting system just seems incredibly wrong to me and adds to the atmosphere of I think we should do our best to stop it from happening.
No way! Digital storage lasts much better
on
Digital Dark Ages?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I've heard this complaint so many times and it just doesn't ring true.
If digital storage was like paper storage this would be an issue but the truth is digital storage is unique in 2 ways:
1. You can make infinite perfect copies
2. The storage capacity grows exponentially over time.
I still have papers I wrote 15 years ago. The 20 Meg 5.25" harddrive that they were originally stored was trash 10 years ago along with 3 or 4 other drives that they lived on over the years and yet my papers remain. They remain because I wanted to keep them (and I'm good about protecting my data.) They are on a completely different filesystem (EXT3) on a completely different operating system and yet I can still get to them, read them and print them out. They are now on a RAID 5 array that is backed up to a separate drive with all my other important data.
In the article he states about physical things "Mostly, stuff lasts". That is just not true. How many of those documents that we printed out back in the early 90's before everything was email based are still around? I know several people who have all their email going back 5-10 years. It's simply much easier to keep digital stuff around.
Most people upgrade to a new machine and bring their data over with them. The drives fail but the files that people care about stay. Crashes can be devastating and people certainly do lose data but the same thing can be said about fire in the physical world. Keeping 2 digital copies of important stuff makes it hard to lose it. If you lose one copy, make another one. The odds of losing both before you can make a new copy are very slim.
It's also much easier to keep digital things organized and search through them.
I think digital things in general will always have better lasting power than paper things. Internet based backup services will make this much more so in the coming years. For a few dollars a year you can have all your important files stored somewhere off site on redundant media. Try doing that with paper?
My company did a bunch of research into the tradeoffs between DVD based optical storage and IDE RAID NAS devices. At all levels of scaling the hard drives were cheaper to buy and cheaper to maintain. RAID is a "turn it on and forget about it" technology. DVD single drives are too small to be of any real use and the robots and their software are very expensive to buy and maintain.
Hard drives on the other hand are very cost effective:
Under 1TB $1000-$1500
For low to medium sized storage you can buy a
3ware or Promise RAID5 controller and put some drives into a computer with a server case that
can hold them. A 4 drive RAID5 array with 160GB drives is 480GB usable and will
fit in almost any machine. A 6 drive RAID 5 array is 800 GB usable but you need to work a little harder to find a case which will let you hook them all up.
1-10 TB $4,500-$45,000
If you need something a little more scalable you can use Promise UltraTrak SX8000 or RM8000s. They are OS independent and extraordinarily easy to setup. Each one has the ability to store over 1.1 TB when full of 160GB drives and you can hook many of them up to the same machine easily. The connect to a server with LVD-SE SCSI and appear to the machine as a single drive. Using these you can easily store 1-10 TB of data and keep it all online all the time.
10+ TB $45,000+
If you want to go over 10 TB the UltraTraks can do it but you should really use multiple head units. You can put 12 RM80000's in a 42 U rack with room for a 2U head unit and a 3U UPS (with 1U left over). This would make for about 14 TB per rack. Then you just install multiple identical racks to scale the storage.
Since you are looking at optical you are probably looking for a system in the 1 TB range. For this I would recommend a single UltraTrak. The purchase price will be a fraction of what a optical library would cost, the reliability will be better, and the maintenance will be cheaper. Maintenance of these things is very simple: when a drive fails the alarm goes off. Buy a new drive and put it in. That's it!
Optical may not look that bad when you look at the purchase price and the idea of a robot is cool but you also have to look at the cost of maintaining a machine like that in terms of time and money. When you add it all up, hard drives win every time.
Disk manufacturers have been warning that hard drives will stop getting bigger soon. GMR will hit theoretical limits and there will be nothing to replace it that's better
because of magnetic noise limitations.
What this article is saying is that there is a new technology to move to when GMR hits it's limits. 3.5" drives won't stop at 180 GB per platter in 2 years. EMR will pick up where GMR left off and we should be able to see 1 TB per platter before they need to invent the next new technology.
The MP3 encoding process is covered by a software patent and that is why no free versions of the software are allowed (under many countries laws.) The problems with the patent system run deep and have been well documented on this site. This is simply Microsoft's first attempt at using it to stop competition from open source software. It won't be their last.
Software patents wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you can get a patent on almost anything these days. "Give them the patent and let the courts sort it out" is they way things go now. Then the courts say: "well they got the patent so they must have invented it".
Solution: Open Source Patents
The same principals that made open source software pry the software markets open could probably also be used to pry the software patents open.
Since you can patent almost anything remotely original and most of the truly original thoughts come from outside Microsoft the best solution would be to beat them at their own game. Take all kinds of patents on basic things that Microsoft needs and use them to force Microsoft to let the open source community write compatible software. You could take some basic essential software patents and say they can't be used with any other patents that can't be used with open source software. For example, if you had a patent on an "if..then" statement Microsoft couldn't use an "if..then" anywhere in the code that implements their CIFS patent without allowing open source interoperability.
Since patents are expensive and individuals don't generally get them and give them away this would rely on companies like IBM who have deep collections of software patents. If they started an organization and pooled a bunch of existing patents they could start convincing (bullying) software companies to donate their patents on the condition that they would always be free for them to use and would be used to open the software markets back up again so they could compete and innovate.
Ultimately there is a need to completely eliminate software patents. Most software patents are on tiny insignificant things that are built on top centuries of inventions from the if..thens to compilers to transistors back to electricity itself. Copyright is gently strong enough to protect software. It prevents someone from taking your invention and reusing it. Software patents make it illegal for someone to invent a different way to do the same thing. That isn't what the patent system is for.
Eviscerate the proletariat -Stewie Griffin
Yes, SerialATA will take over and it will be nice
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Anyone who has dealt with one of the 8 port RAID
controllers like a 3Ware 7850 knows that it is
time for SerialATA. In order to move from an 8 drive
to a 12 or 16 drive controller the connector
needs to get smaller, the pin count needs to go
way down, and the cables need to get
longer.
Why SerialATA and not USB 2.0 or Firewire? Two
big reasons: cost and design.
Firewire and USB are not designed for what
SCSI and SerialATA are. If you pull a failed drive off a firewire chain and plug a new one
in it's place the new drive will have a
different ID than the old one did. Firewire and USB are loose protocols that are designed for plugging in optional components not for
critical drives and drive arrays. With Firewire and USB the ID goes with the device not with the
connector. With SCA SCSI and SerialATA it is the
other way around.
As far as cost, those bridge chips between USB/Firewire and IDE are very expensive.
IDE is the cheapest drive technology by far
and from what the industry is saying
SerialATA will be as cheap or cheaper.
The chips on the motherboards and drives
will have less pins. The connectors will
take less real estate on the motherboard,
the cables will have fewer wires. Because
it's new technology it will probably carry
a price premium for a little while but in
the end, this stuff will be really cheap.
I am a big fan of IDE RAID. It's price/performance is absolutely amazing compared
to every other RAID option. The problem is
you can never get more than 8 drives attached to
a controller. 8 Drives is nice but a standard 3
channel LVD/SE scsi controller can handle 45.
Even a 1 channel can take 15 drives.
SerialATA will open new doors for larger IDE
RAID arrays, with smaller connectors that
allow more drives per controller and longer
cable lengths to allow more drives per system.
A standard hot plug connector will also come
in handy when building compact hot swap
enclosures. I expect to see SerialATA RAID
controllers supporting up to 16 drives and
the ability to put 4 in one machine for a
massive storage server (10+TB). This will
be a great help to IDE RAID.
In short, I think SerialATA is the only hard
drive interface technology that has a bright
future. Fiber channel is just too expensive
and SCSI, while nice, is losing it's
advantages over IDE. DMA mode is now standard
on all modern IDE chipsets nearly eliminating
the performance differences between SCSI and
IDE. Now with SerialATA the cabling on IDE
is much more graceful than before. While SCSI
is nice for it's ability to daisy chain, that's really a bad idea for production systems. Point
to point is much more reliable and much easier
to troubleshoot.
Fast, cheap, flexible, huge industry support.
Sounds like winning technology to me.
I remember back when the cigarette manufacturers were in big trouble for
knowingly engineering their product to be addictive the research
couldn't be subpoenaed because they had their law firms do the research
and therefor the results were protected by lawyer client privilege.
Could the same thing be applied to email?
If your law firm received all your email communication and you had to
call your lawyer on the phone and ask to have your email read
to you would it be protected by lawyer client privilege?
If you have your law firm host your email could the imap connection be
considered communication between you and your law firm and therefor
protected?
It seems to me if lawyer client privilege is broad enough to cover
chemical and biological research it could also be used for something
like email.
The important news here is for those people who
were forcing themselves to sleep longer than 7
hours a night because they thought it was
important to their helth and would make them
live longer. This is evidence that they can stop.
The other important thing in there was a strong
correlation between sleeping pills and death.
I would recommend is go to work for a very small company. Big companies need large groups of people that all are content in their little role. Tiny companies need people who want
to do everything. A desire to branch out and work in all kinds of areas can be irritating to the people around you in a large company. You end up stepping on toes and angering groups.
That same quality could be your greatist asset in a small company where they expect people to wear
multiple hats. I work for a startup now and it's
a whole different world. People are excited when
I offer to branch out and take on new responsabilities.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I used to think *exactly* the same thing as you
do. I'm young, they're old, they're jealous and
thats why they don't like me. I was wrong!
The problem was my bad attitude. I had a
rotton attitude that stemmed from a feeling
that I though I was younger and smarter and
better than everyone else. It sounds
like you have the same attitude. It could be the real problem.
Don't get me wrong, you can run into people who
are legitamitely jealous of your skills, I'm
pretty sure I have. Most people won't be though. I've found that the most important thing for
you to do is work hard, be helpful to your
co-workers and get you assigned taks done.
A good employee brings up the performance of everyone around them. An arogant employee
can bring down the performance of everyone
around them. Being dependible is also
*HUGE*. A prima donna sysadmin that only
does what they like, not what they are
assigned isn't good for any company,
especially a big one. Most people don't really
care about your age but a superior attiude
can piss off an entire devision of people.
No single employee is worth ruining the morale
of an entire group of people.
Just work hard and be nice to everyone.
Remember when you get pissed off that you are
all on the same team and you are all going in
the same direction. If you truely have the
skill then you probably see horrible things
about to happen and get emotional about
them. Don't! It's business, it's not personal.
You are all on the same team. You are all going
in the same direction. Calmly explain your
fears and then sit back and let the horrible
thing happen. Then say I told you so. It
sounds childish but unless you are the boss
that's the way you have to do it. After a
couple of those people won't think of you as
a hot headed kid. They will fear your
disapproval because it means the project is
likely to fail. You can't get that from
superior skills alone. Only time can build a
reputation like that among your pears.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in this
job market it seems to me that you always get rewarded for your hard work but not unitl you
switch jobs. There is a kind of *next job karma*
in the world where whatever busting your ass you do in this job will be compensated in your next
one. Remember to note your particularly
impressive accomplishments in your resume.
That's how the karma usually get's passed on.
Linux isn't on my desktop yet. I'm ready for it. Linux isn't.
Don't get me wrong. I think the Linux kernel is ready it's the software that runs on top of the kernel isn't.
OSX is a nice idea. Take a powerful kernel and put a nice happy face on it. It doesn't solve any new problems though. The closed hardware still costs a fortune. The closed software can't be ported. This is comodity software, (the OS, Web browser, email program, word processor.) This is software that should be free. Eventually it will be, it's just a mater of how long it will take.
I use Linux in the server space almost exclusively now. It works great there. It is good at web-browsing and email but it isn't good enough. I'm a Netscape 4.72 user and I won't even switch to the Linux version of Netscape 4.72. It's worse. Outlook+IE users have even more functionality missing if they try to switch over.
But! At this rate that won't last long.
Linux needs a good open source email/calandering client-server application that can interact with Outlook clinets and exchange servers. Then it will be ready to start creaping onto the Desktop for real.
When Linux is ready for the desktop it will go there and there will be no turning back. We are getting to that point and the changover is starting to happen already. I know some programmers and sysadmins who use Linux as their primarry desktop. I predict that next will come the power users/early adopters. Then the desktops will slowly start changing over.
In the middle there will be some failed attempts at selling Linux based computers in BestBuy and CircuitCity type stores for $400-$500. Then some clever company will figure out a really cool package to put together and it will sell like hotcakes. Not because it is Linux but because it is cool. Linux will simply have made it possible.
The changeover to Linux on the desktop will not happen until all the everyday things (reading email, web browsing, calandering, word processing) can be done better than in Windows. People won't switch unless the reasons to do so outweigh the reasons not to.
It's not really about having Linux on the desktop
for it's own sake. The kernel doesn't care where it is. It's about having a better desktop. The Linux kernel is just a way to get there.
I have been so into playing UT in the past it
has been a really bad influence on me. It
chews up all my free time and then some. I
would lose lots of sleep, play during work,
setup servers at work, write scripts to manage
my servers at work etc.. Sometimes I think
I really need to stop but what is the
alternative. What else would I do with my
time that's as fun?
My apartment is very small and there's really
not a lot to do there. UT is a place where I
can go and run around and blow some people up and
have fun. I just can't do that in real life
(well, I probably could but no one would
argue that's a better option.)
Many states have laws about covertly recording audio without concent. Since you have no way of knowing what state your package is in you can't do that...unles you create some interesting technology with a GPS device...:)
While I admit that there are issues with
Linux on the desktop almost all of the
major issues have been solved. They just
haven't been put into a nice package with
a bow on it yet. (Well, I haven't tried
Mandrake 8 yet but...) Everything that
hasn't been solved is solvable. The only
thing I find little immediate hope for is
calendaring. We need a corporate sponsor
to fund development of a calandering server
standard. It will happen eventually.
People in the open source world are *absolutely not* wasting time working on office applications, web browsers and other desktop applications for lots of reasons:
As long as Microsoft is the only place to turn for office applications they will use that
as a way to force their software into the
server space.
As long as Microsoft is the only place to turn for office applications, office applications
will suck! (Oh that? Restart Outlook, it will go away)
People in the open source world work on what they want to work on, you aren't going to convince someone that the mega-cool application
they are working on isn't as important as server
code so go switch! It doesn't work that way.
There are lots of people out here who use Linux. Are we supposed to suffer without good Office applications? Do you want me to dual boot my machine, buy Windows and Office for $500,
just so I can make a slideshow and edit a
simple spreadsheet? That's goofy.
As Microsoft found out, it's much harder to make
a good server OS than it is to make a good desktop
one. We already have the server class OS
underneath. The desktop applications will be
written because there is a need. They will be
perfected becuase they are open source. If
they are great, people will love them. If
people love them others will switch to them
because they want to because they are better
and they are free so there is no reason not to.
The only question in my mind is how long will it take before Linux is to the point where Windows
is now with Office applications, ease of use, speed, etc. I doubt it will be less than a
year but I doubt it will be more than 4.
That said look at the progress Microsoft has
made between Windows 95se/Office 97 and today.
There isn't a lot of progress there.
The analog phone line will continue to be a standard for a long long time. They are universal and have endured the test of time. PBX's however are proprietary, expensive and account for a large number of the phones in the world. This is where IP telephony is going to take off.
Being able to buy a setup that runs
all your phones over your network infrastructure, where you don't have to run individual lines from each phone to your central PBX, just a 100mbit ethernet connection, that's huge! Being able to add phones in an area by
dropping in 4 port hub, that's revolutionary. IP telephony will be big, not in the home, at the office. It will usher in a new era of inter operability and standards in the corporate phone industry that
will save companies huge money long term.
I wouldn't worry too much about drives not
getting big enough. Today's 40 Gig/platter
drives are based on 32Gb/sqin technology.
150Gb/sqin would yield 180 GB/platter
technology. If IBM revives it's 5 platter
3.5" drive design that's 900 GB in one 3.5" drive.
People don't want that much storage. They are
happy with their 20 gig drives. In three years
they will be happy with their 100 gig drives.
I don't think we'll be going back to 5 1/4"
drives any time soon. On the contrary, I believe we will start seing 2.5" Serial ATA drives becomming common in desktops within 3 years.
IBM's Travelstar 48GH only has an areal density
of 22Gb/sqin. With 150Gb/sqin technology you
could get a 300 GB 2.5" hard drive.
3.5" drives are too big already. The market only want's 20 gig drives but the manufacturers can get 40 gigs per platter. Thats why you get aberations
like that new Maxtor line that in it's largest capacity only has one head! To get the cost down any further they will have to switch to a smaller
form factor. 2.5" seems the likely candidate.
I predict that in 3 years (Summer 2004) we
will have 100-200 gb 2.5" drives that cost
less than $50 and they will be the most popular
form of storage for new desktop computers (if
there even is such a thing anymore.)
The best part will be you will be able to
create RAID arrays that hold 8 2.5" drives
in a full height 5.25" drive bay. There
is where you will get your speed and size.
8x200 gig = 1.6TB raw (1.4TB in RAID5.) I think
a really clever designer could put 24 2.5" drives
in a single 5.25" drive bay. That would be
4.8TB raw (4.4 TB in a RAID 5+0 config).
How 'bout this. Require all newly shipping games
to have firmware security updates on them and require the firmware updates to be installed in order to play the game. Then they switch all production over to the new security updates. Suddenly it becomes very hard to find boxes without the security updates. Not to mention these things will be targetting online gaming. They could be required to auto run Windows Update before/durring every online gaming session. If
Microsoft really wants to they could very tightly control the software that runs on these machines.
Most consoles have heavy security mechanisims to make sure the machine will only play software that is properly licenced and that the manufacturer is getting a cut of the profits on. Only developer units can run unsigned titles. The regular customer units can not run arbitrary programs. That's how they can sell the hardware at a loss. They get make money on every piece of software that is allowed to run on the box.
The X-Box may share a lot of architecture with PC's but this definitely not going to be a PC.
It's a console and it will have standard console
restrictions on what it can do. There were easy
ways around this on the Dreamcast. There won't
be on the X-Box.
It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft will try
to start with the X-Box as a video game console
and slowly migrate the closed harware platform
to be in the mainstream business PC's space.
This could be their answer to the Linux threat.
A closed PC hardware platform that only runs Microsoft approved software. They can use the
legal precident of the video game consoles to
back the actions up in court....
A web browser that can execute CGI's all by
itself. That's soo cool! We have little
web-based apps that are very usefull to our
sales staff but they can't get to them on their
laptops when they are away. We've been thinking
of installing web servers on each machine
but then you have to worry about installing
it, setting it up, security, all that garbage.
Being able to do it right inside the web
browser is a great idea. Now, lets just
hope it isn't as buggy as JavaScript!
Have you seen the trailers for the SciFi Channel's
new Dune mini series. It looks like it could be good. They will probably mess it up but I'm certainly going to watch. The previews look cool. Very different from the old movie. It's going to be 6 hours total so hopefully this one won't leave out so much of the plot.
For those of you with good internet connections here's some links to the trailers from
the SciFi Channel's web site scifi.com/dune.
Many people have laptops as their only machine. They don't have a desktop to put a 3D card in to play games on. These machines also spend 90%+
of their life running plugged in. If it saves
having to buy a second machine for doing 3D and
all the headaches associated with dealing with 2
machines it's well worth it.
I want to be able to play UT on my laptop!
This is a fast complete 3D chip that is plenty of power. There is just such a difference when you have a real 3D chip. My laptop has some crappy NeoMagic garbage in it and it can't do squat for 3D.
Slashdot Mirror
Dick walks out of a bar in great pain and says "Apparently he wasn't asking what my name was, he was asking if I wanted anything."
BTW Good luck with the stepping aside thing. I hope you know the people who you are handing the reigns over to well and that they are of high integrity and have good leadership skills. I have rarely seen the reigns handed to people who weren't unscrupulous, power hungry, and/or unqualified.
-Eric
- When you vote the machine should generate a unique ID for each vote, not just count them. Each individual vote should be permanently stored in the system by its unique ID and what was selected. Then the machine should give you the option of printing out your vote's unique ID when you vote so you can take it with you. It should also give you the option to print your selections in the poling system at the same time so you can prove you voted for what did.
- Once votes can't be changed once entered you need to make sure that people cant "stuff the ballots" by voting multiple times. For this, the records as to who checked in to vote (name, address) should be recorded digitally along with some verification system (a digital snapshot of you going to vote or make you sign something or some sort of biometrics) so if you vote more than once you can be held accountable.
Voting is very important and I'm tired of the political system being infested with unethical, unscrupulous politicians. I know vote tampering probably isn't to blame for the state of politics today but any cheating in the voting system just seems incredibly wrong to me and adds to the atmosphere of I think we should do our best to stop it from happening.Then, make it so that anyone can list out all the votes (not in any order) by unique ID and who/what was voted for. Individuals can then look up their
vote based on the unique ID that only they know and make sure their vote is entered into the system properly. That way each and every vote in the system can be verified with the person who placed it without being traceable to that person.
Also, by enabling the printing of the ID and your selections at the poling place you could prove tampering if it occurred.
Then, each poling place should be set up so that it won't take more votes than the number of people who have been checked in. One way would be to, when you check in, have a single poling station designated as yours and turned on for you. Once you vote it's disabled until the check in computer turns it on again for the next person. Strict security measures would need to be in place to make sure that the check in system and the poling system had no way to communicate other than the signal to turn on since this could make a way for votes to be tied to those who placed them but such a system is possible. A one way (transmit only) fiber optic encrypted shared key system would be overkill but would do it.
- I think when you vote the machine should generate a unique ID for each vote, not just count them. Each individual vote should be permanently stored in the system by its unique ID and what was selected. Then the machine should give you the option of printing out your vote's unique ID when you vote so you can take it with you. It should also give you the option to print your selections in the poling system at the same time so you can prove you voted for what did.
- Once votes can't be changed once entered you need to make sure that people cant "stuff the ballots" by voting multiple times. For this, the records as to who checked in to vote (name, address) should be recorded digitally along with some verification system (a digital snapshot of you going to vote or make you sign something or some sort of biometrics) so if you vote more than once you can be held accountable.
Voting is very important and I'm tired of the political system being infested with unethical, unscrupulous politicians. I know vote tampering probably isn't to blame for the state of politics today but any cheating in the voting system just seems incredibly wrong to me and adds to the atmosphere of I think we should do our best to stop it from happening.Then, make it so that anyone can list out all the votes (not in any order) by unique ID and who/what was voted for. Individuals can then look up their vote based on the unique ID that only they know and make sure their vote is entered into the system properly. That way each and every vote in the system can be verified with the person who placed it without being traceable to that person.
Also, by enabling the printing of the ID and your selections at the poling place you could prove tampering if it occurred.
Then, each poling place should be set up so that it won't take more votes than the number of people who have been checked in. One way would be to, when you check in, have a single poling station designated as yours and turned on for you. Once you vote it's disabled until the check in computer turns it on again for the next person. Strict security measures would need to be in place to make sure that the check in system and the poling system had no way to communicate other than the signal to turn on since this could make a way for votes to be tied to those who placed them but such a system is possible. A one way (transmit only) fiber optic encrypted shared key system would be overkill but would do it.
I've heard this complaint so many times and it just doesn't ring true.
If digital storage was like paper storage this would be an issue but the truth is digital storage is unique in 2 ways:
1. You can make infinite perfect copies
2. The storage capacity grows exponentially over time.
I still have papers I wrote 15 years ago. The 20 Meg 5.25" harddrive that they were originally stored was trash 10 years ago along with 3 or 4 other drives that they lived on over the years and yet my papers remain. They remain because I wanted to keep them (and I'm good about protecting my data.) They are on a completely different filesystem (EXT3) on a completely different operating system and yet I can still get to them, read them and print them out. They are now on a RAID 5 array that is backed up to a separate drive with all my other important data.
In the article he states about physical things "Mostly, stuff lasts". That is just not true. How many of those documents that we printed out back in the early 90's before everything was email based are still around? I know several people who have all their email going back 5-10 years. It's simply much easier to keep digital stuff around.
Most people upgrade to a new machine and bring their data over with them. The drives fail but the files that people care about stay. Crashes can be devastating and people certainly do lose data but the same thing can be said about fire in the physical world. Keeping 2 digital copies of important stuff makes it hard to lose it. If you lose one copy, make another one. The odds of losing both before you can make a new copy are very slim.
It's also much easier to keep digital things organized and search through them.
I think digital things in general will always have better lasting power than paper things. Internet based backup services will make this much more so in the coming years. For a few dollars a year you can have all your important files stored somewhere off site on redundant media. Try doing that with paper?
All those things have been covered here before. We all know about them. This, we didn't. Now we do.
Hard drives on the other hand are very cost effective:
Under 1TB $1000-$1500
1-10 TB $4,500-$45,000 10+ TB $45,000+ Since you are looking at optical you are probably looking for a system in the 1 TB range. For this I would recommend a single UltraTrak. The purchase price will be a fraction of what a optical library would cost, the reliability will be better, and the maintenance will be cheaper. Maintenance of these things is very simple: when a drive fails the alarm goes off. Buy a new drive and put it in. That's it!Optical may not look that bad when you look at the purchase price and the idea of a robot is cool but you also have to look at the cost of maintaining a machine like that in terms of time and money. When you add it all up, hard drives win every time.
What this article is saying is that there is a new technology to move to when GMR hits it's limits. 3.5" drives won't stop at 180 GB per platter in 2 years. EMR will pick up where GMR left off and we should be able to see 1 TB per platter before they need to invent the next new technology.
The MP3 encoding process is covered by a software patent and that is why no free versions of the software are allowed (under many countries laws.) The problems with the patent system run deep and have been well documented on this site. This is simply Microsoft's first attempt at using it to stop competition from open source software. It won't be their last.
Software patents wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you can get a patent on almost anything these days. "Give them the patent and let the courts sort it out" is they way things go now. Then the courts say: "well they got the patent so they must have invented it".
Solution: Open Source Patents
The same principals that made open source software pry the software markets open could probably also be used to pry the software patents open.
Since you can patent almost anything remotely original and most of the truly original thoughts come from outside Microsoft the best solution would be to beat them at their own game. Take all kinds of patents on basic things that Microsoft needs and use them to force Microsoft to let the open source community write compatible software. You could take some basic essential software patents and say they can't be used with any other patents that can't be used with open source software. For example, if you had a patent on an "if..then" statement Microsoft couldn't use an "if..then" anywhere in the code that implements their CIFS patent without allowing open source interoperability.
Since patents are expensive and individuals don't generally get them and give them away this would rely on companies like IBM who have deep collections of software patents. If they started an organization and pooled a bunch of existing patents they could start convincing (bullying) software companies to donate their patents on the condition that they would always be free for them to use and would be used to open the software markets back up again so they could compete and innovate.
Ultimately there is a need to completely eliminate software patents. Most software patents are on tiny insignificant things that are built on top centuries of inventions from the if..thens to compilers to transistors back to electricity itself. Copyright is gently strong enough to protect software. It prevents someone from taking your invention and reusing it. Software patents make it illegal for someone to invent a different way to do the same thing. That isn't what the patent system is for.
Eviscerate the proletariat -Stewie Griffin
Why SerialATA and not USB 2.0 or Firewire? Two big reasons: cost and design.
Firewire and USB are not designed for what SCSI and SerialATA are. If you pull a failed drive off a firewire chain and plug a new one in it's place the new drive will have a different ID than the old one did. Firewire and USB are loose protocols that are designed for plugging in optional components not for critical drives and drive arrays. With Firewire and USB the ID goes with the device not with the connector. With SCA SCSI and SerialATA it is the other way around.
As far as cost, those bridge chips between USB/Firewire and IDE are very expensive. IDE is the cheapest drive technology by far and from what the industry is saying SerialATA will be as cheap or cheaper. The chips on the motherboards and drives will have less pins. The connectors will take less real estate on the motherboard, the cables will have fewer wires. Because it's new technology it will probably carry a price premium for a little while but in the end, this stuff will be really cheap.
I am a big fan of IDE RAID. It's price/performance is absolutely amazing compared to every other RAID option. The problem is you can never get more than 8 drives attached to a controller. 8 Drives is nice but a standard 3 channel LVD/SE scsi controller can handle 45. Even a 1 channel can take 15 drives. SerialATA will open new doors for larger IDE RAID arrays, with smaller connectors that allow more drives per controller and longer cable lengths to allow more drives per system. A standard hot plug connector will also come in handy when building compact hot swap enclosures. I expect to see SerialATA RAID controllers supporting up to 16 drives and the ability to put 4 in one machine for a massive storage server (10+TB). This will be a great help to IDE RAID.
In short, I think SerialATA is the only hard drive interface technology that has a bright future. Fiber channel is just too expensive and SCSI, while nice, is losing it's advantages over IDE. DMA mode is now standard on all modern IDE chipsets nearly eliminating the performance differences between SCSI and IDE. Now with SerialATA the cabling on IDE is much more graceful than before. While SCSI is nice for it's ability to daisy chain, that's really a bad idea for production systems. Point to point is much more reliable and much easier to troubleshoot.
Fast, cheap, flexible, huge industry support. Sounds like winning technology to me.
If your law firm received all your email communication and you had to call your lawyer on the phone and ask to have your email read to you would it be protected by lawyer client privilege?
If you have your law firm host your email could the imap connection be considered communication between you and your law firm and therefor protected?
It seems to me if lawyer client privilege is broad enough to cover chemical and biological research it could also be used for something like email.
I wouldn't have put it so strongly but you got all
the points across.
The important news here is for those people who
were forcing themselves to sleep longer than 7
hours a night because they thought it was
important to their helth and would make them
live longer. This is evidence that they can stop.
The other important thing in there was a strong
correlation between sleeping pills and death.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I used to think *exactly* the same thing as you do. I'm young, they're old, they're jealous and thats why they don't like me. I was wrong!
The problem was my bad attitude. I had a rotton attitude that stemmed from a feeling that I though I was younger and smarter and better than everyone else. It sounds like you have the same attitude. It could be the real problem.
Don't get me wrong, you can run into people who are legitamitely jealous of your skills, I'm pretty sure I have. Most people won't be though. I've found that the most important thing for you to do is work hard, be helpful to your co-workers and get you assigned taks done. A good employee brings up the performance of everyone around them. An arogant employee can bring down the performance of everyone around them. Being dependible is also *HUGE*. A prima donna sysadmin that only does what they like, not what they are assigned isn't good for any company, especially a big one. Most people don't really care about your age but a superior attiude can piss off an entire devision of people. No single employee is worth ruining the morale of an entire group of people.
Just work hard and be nice to everyone. Remember when you get pissed off that you are all on the same team and you are all going in the same direction. If you truely have the skill then you probably see horrible things about to happen and get emotional about them. Don't! It's business, it's not personal. You are all on the same team. You are all going in the same direction. Calmly explain your fears and then sit back and let the horrible thing happen. Then say I told you so. It sounds childish but unless you are the boss that's the way you have to do it. After a couple of those people won't think of you as a hot headed kid. They will fear your disapproval because it means the project is likely to fail. You can't get that from superior skills alone. Only time can build a reputation like that among your pears.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in this job market it seems to me that you always get rewarded for your hard work but not unitl you switch jobs. There is a kind of *next job karma* in the world where whatever busting your ass you do in this job will be compensated in your next one. Remember to note your particularly impressive accomplishments in your resume. That's how the karma usually get's passed on.
Don't get me wrong. I think the Linux kernel is ready it's the software that runs on top of the kernel isn't.
OSX is a nice idea. Take a powerful kernel and put a nice happy face on it. It doesn't solve any new problems though. The closed hardware still costs a fortune. The closed software can't be ported. This is comodity software, (the OS, Web browser, email program, word processor.) This is software that should be free. Eventually it will be, it's just a mater of how long it will take.
I use Linux in the server space almost exclusively now. It works great there. It is good at web-browsing and email but it isn't good enough. I'm a Netscape 4.72 user and I won't even switch to the Linux version of Netscape 4.72. It's worse. Outlook+IE users have even more functionality missing if they try to switch over.
But! At this rate that won't last long.
Linux needs a good open source email/calandering client-server application that can interact with Outlook clinets and exchange servers. Then it will be ready to start creaping onto the Desktop for real.
When Linux is ready for the desktop it will go there and there will be no turning back. We are getting to that point and the changover is starting to happen already. I know some programmers and sysadmins who use Linux as their primarry desktop. I predict that next will come the power users/early adopters. Then the desktops will slowly start changing over.
In the middle there will be some failed attempts at selling Linux based computers in BestBuy and CircuitCity type stores for $400-$500. Then some clever company will figure out a really cool package to put together and it will sell like hotcakes. Not because it is Linux but because it is cool. Linux will simply have made it possible.
The changeover to Linux on the desktop will not happen until all the everyday things (reading email, web browsing, calandering, word processing) can be done better than in Windows. People won't switch unless the reasons to do so outweigh the reasons not to.
It's not really about having Linux on the desktop for it's own sake. The kernel doesn't care where it is. It's about having a better desktop. The Linux kernel is just a way to get there.
Hi everyone. My ingame handle is Lurch and I am
a UT adict. I have been redeemer free for
aproximately the last 21 hours.
......must.....control....rockets...of...death.
I have been so into playing UT in the past it
has been a really bad influence on me. It
chews up all my free time and then some. I
would lose lots of sleep, play during work,
setup servers at work, write scripts to manage
my servers at work etc.. Sometimes I think
I really need to stop but what is the
alternative. What else would I do with my
time that's as fun?
My apartment is very small and there's really
not a lot to do there. UT is a place where I
can go and run around and blow some people up and
have fun. I just can't do that in real life
(well, I probably could but no one would
argue that's a better option.)
Many states have laws about covertly recording audio without concent. Since you have no way of knowing what state your package is in you can't do that...unles you create some interesting technology with a GPS device... :)
While I admit that there are issues with Linux on the desktop almost all of the major issues have been solved. They just haven't been put into a nice package with a bow on it yet. (Well, I haven't tried Mandrake 8 yet but...) Everything that hasn't been solved is solvable. The only thing I find little immediate hope for is calendaring. We need a corporate sponsor to fund development of a calandering server standard. It will happen eventually.
People in the open source world are *absolutely not* wasting time working on office applications, web browsers and other desktop applications for lots of reasons:
As Microsoft found out, it's much harder to make a good server OS than it is to make a good desktop one. We already have the server class OS underneath. The desktop applications will be written because there is a need. They will be perfected becuase they are open source. If they are great, people will love them. If people love them others will switch to them because they want to because they are better and they are free so there is no reason not to.
The only question in my mind is how long will it take before Linux is to the point where Windows is now with Office applications, ease of use, speed, etc. I doubt it will be less than a year but I doubt it will be more than 4. That said look at the progress Microsoft has made between Windows 95se/Office 97 and today. There isn't a lot of progress there.
Only time will prove us right.
The analog phone line will continue to be a standard for a long long time. They are universal and have endured the test of time. PBX's however are proprietary, expensive and account for a large number of the phones in the world. This is where IP telephony is going to take off.
Being able to buy a setup that runs all your phones over your network infrastructure, where you don't have to run individual lines from each phone to your central PBX, just a 100mbit ethernet connection, that's huge! Being able to add phones in an area by dropping in 4 port hub, that's revolutionary. IP telephony will be big, not in the home, at the office. It will usher in a new era of inter operability and standards in the corporate phone industry that will save companies huge money long term.
-The song "Hot Shot City" is particularly good.
I don't think we'll be going back to 5 1/4" drives any time soon. On the contrary, I believe we will start seing 2.5" Serial ATA drives becomming common in desktops within 3 years. IBM's Travelstar 48GH only has an areal density of 22Gb/sqin. With 150Gb/sqin technology you could get a 300 GB 2.5" hard drive. 3.5" drives are too big already. The market only want's 20 gig drives but the manufacturers can get 40 gigs per platter. Thats why you get aberations like that new Maxtor line that in it's largest capacity only has one head! To get the cost down any further they will have to switch to a smaller form factor. 2.5" seems the likely candidate.
I predict that in 3 years (Summer 2004) we will have 100-200 gb 2.5" drives that cost less than $50 and they will be the most popular form of storage for new desktop computers (if there even is such a thing anymore.)
The best part will be you will be able to create RAID arrays that hold 8 2.5" drives in a full height 5.25" drive bay. There is where you will get your speed and size. 8x200 gig = 1.6TB raw (1.4TB in RAID5.) I think a really clever designer could put 24 2.5" drives in a single 5.25" drive bay. That would be 4.8TB raw (4.4 TB in a RAID 5+0 config).
That's 4.4TB of fault tolerant storage!
In your desktop!
Sign me up.
How 'bout this. Require all newly shipping games to have firmware security updates on them and require the firmware updates to be installed in order to play the game. Then they switch all production over to the new security updates. Suddenly it becomes very hard to find boxes without the security updates. Not to mention these things will be targetting online gaming. They could be required to auto run Windows Update before/durring every online gaming session. If Microsoft really wants to they could very tightly control the software that runs on these machines.
The X-Box may share a lot of architecture with PC's but this definitely not going to be a PC. It's a console and it will have standard console restrictions on what it can do. There were easy ways around this on the Dreamcast. There won't be on the X-Box.
It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft will try to start with the X-Box as a video game console and slowly migrate the closed harware platform to be in the mainstream business PC's space. This could be their answer to the Linux threat. A closed PC hardware platform that only runs Microsoft approved software. They can use the legal precident of the video game consoles to back the actions up in court....
Think about it.
Being able to do it right inside the web browser is a great idea. Now, lets just hope it isn't as buggy as JavaScript!
For those of you with good internet connections here's some links to the trailers from the SciFi Channel's web site scifi.com/dune.
These all require Quicktime:
- Official theatrical trailer
-
Trailer 2
- The original trailer
They also have some cool wallpapers there. The series premieres Sunday, December 3rd at 9pm on the SciFi channel. Be there!I want to be able to play UT on my laptop!
This is a fast complete 3D chip that is plenty of power. There is just such a difference when you have a real 3D chip. My laptop has some crappy NeoMagic garbage in it and it can't do squat for 3D.