It is a horrible idea. Look at the technology stack required to accomplish online voting:
Server: hardware, operating system, web server, database, etc. Network: internet service providers (both ends of the connection), routers, DNS, etc. Client: hardware, operating system, web browser, etc.
You could introduce attacks at any place. Just take a moment and think about Clickjacking. Some malicious website could load software on tens or hundreds of thousands of Canadians' computers that overlays a transparent page on top of the Elections Canada voting page and changes your vote, or records who you voted for.
Not to mention email scams that claim to be Elections Canada and get you to enter you username and password, then go and place your vote before you do.
With the history of horrible, horrible, horrible security on the internet, I can't believe they're even considering this.
Trying to compare it to online banking just isn't a fair comparison either. With a bank, you get to keep a history of your transactions, and so does the bank. In fact, they can actually identify you with your account. Voting is fundamentally different. We can't allow anyone to be able to associate a vote with a voter after it has been cast. Therefore there is no way for a voter to go back and check that their individual vote is counted. Therefore, the system has to be transparent, and I can't think of a less transparent system than online voting.
I am a computer engineer, and there's no way I would ever trust such a system given current technology.
I would have to say I'm very impressed with SharpDevelop for.NET development. Plus they even wrote a book ("Dissecting a C# Application") about how they wrote it. On top of that it's open source and has an interesting add-on architecture.
Pseudo Random Number Generators (like linear feedback shift registers) are not truly random, but True Random Number Generators, like a reverse biased PN junction with an amplifier and an appropriate sampling algorithm can be truly random (i.e. unpredictable).
It's already obvious that as you increase in size, the primes are further apart (because there are more and more lower numbers that are potential factors).
So given any range of numbers from (10^x) to (10^(x+1)), wouldn't you expect that the density of primes in the bottom end of that range would be higher than at the top end?
I don't know, it just seems obvious. It's an artifact of using a base 10 number system.
Now if you used binary, you wouldn't see this effect. That is, a range from (2^x) to (2^(x+1)) all "start" with the digit 1. Also, if you used a base-infinity number system (where every number has it's own symbol then you also wouldn't see this effect because the maximum number of possible primes in any given "leading digit category" is effectively 1.
And don't pretend the US isn't a socialist nation. I spent 5 years in the US. You guys have a national program that pays farmers to *not farm* to increase the price that the rest of the farmers get for their produce. You also just gave $700 billion in hand outs to failing corporations. You give national subsidies to the states for building the highway system, but tie social policy to it (the states have to implement a minimum drinking age of 21 to qualify for the funding).
The US still pays for the poorest people to get free medical care even though middle income people can't afford it. That's much worse than the Canadian system (having used both). In Canada, the people who run the health care system have to eat their own dog food. Their kids use the system that they run. Do you think the people who run the Medicare system in the US use that system?
Additionally, since all such systems are socialistic, prices are not set by market mechanisms but by bureaucrats, and the resulting inability to calculate future profits is a big detriment to the creation of new treatments and new devices.
Well, that's not entirely true. What happens in Canada (and one of the reasons it's successful up here) is that the Canadian health care system still has to pay competitively enough to compete with what the medical professionals could make in the US. As prices for medical care goes up in the US, Canadian doctors leave and move there, and the Canadian government has to increase the rates (just enough to keep the rest from leaving, of course).
I can tell you that there's no shortage of BMWs in Canadian hospital parking lots.
Giving some thought to what would happen if the US implemented a universal health care system, I think the two countries would still have to compete for resources, which would keep pay reasonable (or at least they would pay what the average Canadian or American is willing to pay for said care, in the form of taxes). However, if the two countries got together and agreed to create a "duopoly" where they fixed the prices in OPEC fashion, then the doctors would have a problem.
Of course the health professionals could still leave and go overseas, but there are higher barriers to that than jumping between the US and Canada.
Ultimately though, if the price fixing does happen and continues, fewer people will choose to be doctors, and the governments will be forced to pay more to recruit more. The problem with this is that if you're the government, and you're just trying to get through the next 4 or 5 years, you can reduce the price now, and the problem of fewer doctors won't manifest itself until after your term if over. Likewise, if you need to increase the number of doctors, increasing the pay won't have a positive affect until after you're out of office. So I see this as a serious problem.
Arguing about when "life begins" is missing the point entirely. Setting some definition is just an attempt to categorize something that isn't discrete.
I prefer something along the lines of Pirsig's hierarchy of quality. An embryo has a lot of potential quality because it can develop, over a long time, into a human being. We value new human beings because:
1. The old ones wear out and we need to replace them.
2. Humans are the only creature we know of that can support intellectual thought, creativity, etc., and we value all of these things.
3. We value our own children more than other peoples' kids because they are the proof that we are successful in life, and part of us continues to live on in them.
4. Similarly, we value the humans in our family, and community, and society (in that order) because if they continue living, that is also some proof of our success.
Of course the question is far more complicated than when human life starts. Going back to Pirsig's Quality, we need to weigh the facts of the individual case to know whether an abortion is acceptable under our value system.
For instance, is the abortion necessary to save the mother's life? If so, isn't it possible that her other children (existing or future) are going to be more successful having a mother?
If the baby will be born to a family that wouldn't have the means or inclination to care for it, and would be more likely to fall through society's cracks, and ends up living a short and horrible life of crime, isn't it possible that the world, and indeed the child, are better off if the child wasn't born? See Freakonomics for more thoughts on this...
By the same logic, relying on abortion as a method of birth control for people otherwise able to care for a baby is wrong, because it destroys a potentially successful human life, only for the purpose of enjoying the most basic of temporary pleasures. In Pirsig's hierarchy of quality, this would be the biological value taking precedence over the intellectual value, which is an inversion of our value system.
As I said, trying to make this into an either/or, black/white, good/evil scenario is incorrect.
The only issue there is getting it to be supported on Windows. Grandma wants to plug her memory card/flash drive into any computer and have it "just work". If M$ doesn't give in and support the OSS FS, it'll be a tough battle.
I have a degree in computer engineering and I want my memory card/flash drive to "just work". It's called "having something better to do". Linux is going to be stuck in the IT room until the people pushing it *finally* realize that.
"Highly elliptical"? As opposed to.. highly trapezoidal? I thought all two body systems where one is much much larger than the other is highly elliptical. The Earth's orbit is highly elliptical. Remember that a circle is an ellipse too. Maybe you mean "highly non-circular".
I work in the same industry as you. IAAPE. I am "degreed" and I have a license, however it's not required for PLC programming, process control work, or even the general electrical design (though this should be done by an electrical engineer).
Since the entire system must meet the electrical code and pass an electrical inspection anyway, the only time we are required to get an engineer involved with an electrical control system is for the safety subsystem. In this case we need to get the safety system design approved by a licensed engineer, and they must inspect the implementation and sign off on it. In this jurisdiction they have to submit a "pre-start review" (aka a PSR) before we can let an operator touch the machine. Note that the safety design has to take more than just electrical design into account - it must take all sources of energy (mechanical, chemical, etc.).
Say what you want about "engineers", but "professional engineer" refers to your legal status as a professional, and therefore the fact that you have demonstrated an understanding of the legal and ethical obligations of that title. Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't mean "you can be sued" (anyone can be sued; try practicing engineering without a license for a while and see how long it takes). What it means is that there are a specific set of work that can only be undertaken by a licensed professional, and the licensing procedure ensures that you are very well informed about your legal and ethical responsibilities, and the consequences if you fail. This is both to protect the public, and the image (and trust) of the profession in the public's eye.
So, as long as someone doesn't refer to themselves as a professional engineer when they're not, they don't practice engineering without a license, and they don't misrepresent their education on a resume (you can only get an engineering degree at a university - if you're an engineering technologist, that's fine), then I really don't care.
That's why they need to start making a decent priced DC air conditioner, so you can run it right off the solar panel storage batteries. More solar power in the summer = more air conditioning. Makes sense. Plus no inverter.
I actually tried some of this while in Korea. Really it was the dried cocoon, I'm pretty sure. Not bad - kind of tasted bland, but had the texture of a chip.
Luckily, most companies are finding out that they can do "green" things and save money. Turning off the lights and computers at the end of the day. Finding ways to reuse/recycle manufacturing waste or even implementing better recycling programs can save a company a lot of money while benefiting the environment.
Having given this scenario a lot of thought recently, consider what happens to the money that the company saved. The "control" case is that they money is spent on energy/waste whatever. The "better" case is that less money is spent on energy/waste. Let's assume this translates into the company spending X dollars *less* on these expense accounts.
At the end of the accounting period, assuming revenue and all other expenses are the same, the company actually has more money in the bank. What happens to that money?
a) If the company leaves it in the bank, the bank will loan it out to other people/companies, all of whom will use it to purchase stuff, all of which will consume energy.
b) If the company re-invests the money in itself, it will spend it on capital projects, which of course consumes energy.
c) If the company disperses the income as dividends to shareholders, then the shareholders either put it in the bank (see (a)) or spend it (see (b)) or invest it. Investment increases the capital pool, which is all money available to companies to use and spend, presumably on stuff that will use energy.
Now all of these things are good *for the economy* because money is being spent more efficiently (we as humans are getting more of stuff that we value). However, I just can't see this kind of activity making any kind of difference on total energy, because what's happening is that we are getting more for the same amount of energy. The total energy used by a society will be roughly correlated with the amount of money spent in the economy, or depending on how you look at the relationship, vice-versa.
Has anyone else followed this line of thinking? Any thoughts?
I know that there are "clean" technologies vs. "dirty" technologies, so theoretically, expending equal dollars on a clean alternative might work (certainly common sense says it will). The immediate effect would be a lower price of the dirty technology (supply and demand), and then some suppliers of the dirty technology would stop producing it because it's no longer as profitable, until the supply drops enough that the price returns to a profitable level.
So from what I can tell, reducing consumption (and waste) of a commodity is good for the economy, but not necessarily for the environment. However, switching to an alternative "cleaner" commodity that costs the same *is* good for the environment, but neutral to the economy.
There is a lot of confusion about this, but as far as I can tell, your analog television will work *just fine* if you subscribe to cable TV (or at least as well as it always has). This only affects people using over-the-air broadcasts (you know, with rabbit ears and such).
Eventually, cable TV providers will be allowed to drop their analog programming, but some cable companies have already stated that they consider it a competitive advantage that their customers can hook up an extra TV in the garage, bedroom, etc. and get most of the basic channels without having to purchase/rent an expensive digital tuner. For some people, this is an advantage over the satellite option.
"Skip protection" on a hard drive is pointless. This is a fundamentally different scenario. With a CD, you can read the data *much* faster than you really need to read it, because you only need the data fast enough to convert it into sound. Plus you almost always know which piece of data needs to be read next, because the song is linear.
On the contrary, with a hard drive, read speed is (usually) the bottleneck, so you want the data sent to the processor as soon as you can pull it off the disk. Also, hard drives are much more random access, so you can't guess the location of the next read and read it before the CPU requests it. The only thing you can do is cache frequently accessed data in memory, which the operating system already does.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a horrible idea. Look at the technology stack required to accomplish online voting:
Server: hardware, operating system, web server, database, etc.
Network: internet service providers (both ends of the connection), routers, DNS, etc.
Client: hardware, operating system, web browser, etc.
You could introduce attacks at any place. Just take a moment and think about Clickjacking. Some malicious website could load software on tens or hundreds of thousands of Canadians' computers that overlays a transparent page on top of the Elections Canada voting page and changes your vote, or records who you voted for.
Not to mention email scams that claim to be Elections Canada and get you to enter you username and password, then go and place your vote before you do.
With the history of horrible, horrible, horrible security on the internet, I can't believe they're even considering this.
Trying to compare it to online banking just isn't a fair comparison either. With a bank, you get to keep a history of your transactions, and so does the bank. In fact, they can actually identify you with your account. Voting is fundamentally different. We can't allow anyone to be able to associate a vote with a voter after it has been cast. Therefore there is no way for a voter to go back and check that their individual vote is counted. Therefore, the system has to be transparent, and I can't think of a less transparent system than online voting.
I am a computer engineer, and there's no way I would ever trust such a system given current technology.
Is that why prostitutes are locked up? There are plenty of victimless crimes around here.
They probably won't be, but I know I will.
Keep that shit music to yourself. Phones should sound like phones.
No, cell phones should be on vibrate when you're in public.
Quick, you'd better patent that idea so nobody else can use it.
It's not "the" Autobahn. "Autobahn" just means highway. It's like their version of the interstate. Some sections of Autobahn have speed limits too.
I would have to say I'm very impressed with SharpDevelop for .NET development. Plus they even wrote a book ("Dissecting a C# Application") about how they wrote it. On top of that it's open source and has an interesting add-on architecture.
Pseudo Random Number Generators (like linear feedback shift registers) are not truly random, but True Random Number Generators, like a reverse biased PN junction with an amplifier and an appropriate sampling algorithm can be truly random (i.e. unpredictable).
It's already obvious that as you increase in size, the primes are further apart (because there are more and more lower numbers that are potential factors).
So given any range of numbers from (10^x) to (10^(x+1)), wouldn't you expect that the density of primes in the bottom end of that range would be higher than at the top end?
I don't know, it just seems obvious. It's an artifact of using a base 10 number system.
Now if you used binary, you wouldn't see this effect. That is, a range from (2^x) to (2^(x+1)) all "start" with the digit 1. Also, if you used a base-infinity number system (where every number has it's own symbol then you also wouldn't see this effect because the maximum number of possible primes in any given "leading digit category" is effectively 1.
Does this remind anyone of the news reels in the movie Starship Troopers where, at the end of each clip, it asked, "Would you like to know more?"
Of course, I thought hypertext filled this need years ago... Maybe I'm missing something.
And don't pretend the US isn't a socialist nation. I spent 5 years in the US. You guys have a national program that pays farmers to *not farm* to increase the price that the rest of the farmers get for their produce. You also just gave $700 billion in hand outs to failing corporations. You give national subsidies to the states for building the highway system, but tie social policy to it (the states have to implement a minimum drinking age of 21 to qualify for the funding).
The US still pays for the poorest people to get free medical care even though middle income people can't afford it. That's much worse than the Canadian system (having used both). In Canada, the people who run the health care system have to eat their own dog food. Their kids use the system that they run. Do you think the people who run the Medicare system in the US use that system?
Additionally, since all such systems are socialistic, prices are not set by market mechanisms but by bureaucrats, and the resulting inability to calculate future profits is a big detriment to the creation of new treatments and new devices.
Well, that's not entirely true. What happens in Canada (and one of the reasons it's successful up here) is that the Canadian health care system still has to pay competitively enough to compete with what the medical professionals could make in the US. As prices for medical care goes up in the US, Canadian doctors leave and move there, and the Canadian government has to increase the rates (just enough to keep the rest from leaving, of course).
I can tell you that there's no shortage of BMWs in Canadian hospital parking lots.
Giving some thought to what would happen if the US implemented a universal health care system, I think the two countries would still have to compete for resources, which would keep pay reasonable (or at least they would pay what the average Canadian or American is willing to pay for said care, in the form of taxes). However, if the two countries got together and agreed to create a "duopoly" where they fixed the prices in OPEC fashion, then the doctors would have a problem.
Of course the health professionals could still leave and go overseas, but there are higher barriers to that than jumping between the US and Canada.
Ultimately though, if the price fixing does happen and continues, fewer people will choose to be doctors, and the governments will be forced to pay more to recruit more. The problem with this is that if you're the government, and you're just trying to get through the next 4 or 5 years, you can reduce the price now, and the problem of fewer doctors won't manifest itself until after your term if over. Likewise, if you need to increase the number of doctors, increasing the pay won't have a positive affect until after you're out of office. So I see this as a serious problem.
Arguing about when "life begins" is missing the point entirely. Setting some definition is just an attempt to categorize something that isn't discrete.
I prefer something along the lines of Pirsig's hierarchy of quality. An embryo has a lot of potential quality because it can develop, over a long time, into a human being. We value new human beings because:
1. The old ones wear out and we need to replace them.
2. Humans are the only creature we know of that can support intellectual thought, creativity, etc., and we value all of these things.
3. We value our own children more than other peoples' kids because they are the proof that we are successful in life, and part of us continues to live on in them.
4. Similarly, we value the humans in our family, and community, and society (in that order) because if they continue living, that is also some proof of our success.
Of course the question is far more complicated than when human life starts. Going back to Pirsig's Quality, we need to weigh the facts of the individual case to know whether an abortion is acceptable under our value system.
For instance, is the abortion necessary to save the mother's life? If so, isn't it possible that her other children (existing or future) are going to be more successful having a mother?
If the baby will be born to a family that wouldn't have the means or inclination to care for it, and would be more likely to fall through society's cracks, and ends up living a short and horrible life of crime, isn't it possible that the world, and indeed the child, are better off if the child wasn't born? See Freakonomics for more thoughts on this...
By the same logic, relying on abortion as a method of birth control for people otherwise able to care for a baby is wrong, because it destroys a potentially successful human life, only for the purpose of enjoying the most basic of temporary pleasures. In Pirsig's hierarchy of quality, this would be the biological value taking precedence over the intellectual value, which is an inversion of our value system.
As I said, trying to make this into an either/or, black/white, good/evil scenario is incorrect.
The only issue there is getting it to be supported on Windows. Grandma wants to plug her memory card/flash drive into any computer and have it "just work". If M$ doesn't give in and support the OSS FS, it'll be a tough battle.
I have a degree in computer engineering and I want my memory card/flash drive to "just work". It's called "having something better to do". Linux is going to be stuck in the IT room until the people pushing it *finally* realize that.
"Highly elliptical"? As opposed to.. highly trapezoidal? I thought all two body systems where one is much much larger than the other is highly elliptical. The Earth's orbit is highly elliptical. Remember that a circle is an ellipse too. Maybe you mean "highly non-circular".
I work in the same industry as you. IAAPE. I am "degreed" and I have a license, however it's not required for PLC programming, process control work, or even the general electrical design (though this should be done by an electrical engineer).
Since the entire system must meet the electrical code and pass an electrical inspection anyway, the only time we are required to get an engineer involved with an electrical control system is for the safety subsystem. In this case we need to get the safety system design approved by a licensed engineer, and they must inspect the implementation and sign off on it. In this jurisdiction they have to submit a "pre-start review" (aka a PSR) before we can let an operator touch the machine. Note that the safety design has to take more than just electrical design into account - it must take all sources of energy (mechanical, chemical, etc.).
Say what you want about "engineers", but "professional engineer" refers to your legal status as a professional, and therefore the fact that you have demonstrated an understanding of the legal and ethical obligations of that title. Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't mean "you can be sued" (anyone can be sued; try practicing engineering without a license for a while and see how long it takes). What it means is that there are a specific set of work that can only be undertaken by a licensed professional, and the licensing procedure ensures that you are very well informed about your legal and ethical responsibilities, and the consequences if you fail. This is both to protect the public, and the image (and trust) of the profession in the public's eye.
So, as long as someone doesn't refer to themselves as a professional engineer when they're not, they don't practice engineering without a license, and they don't misrepresent their education on a resume (you can only get an engineering degree at a university - if you're an engineering technologist, that's fine), then I really don't care.
Plus the fact that both the earthlings an the astronaut started in the same frame of reference.
That's why they need to start making a decent priced DC air conditioner, so you can run it right off the solar panel storage batteries. More solar power in the summer = more air conditioning. Makes sense. Plus no inverter.
I actually tried some of this while in Korea. Really it was the dried cocoon, I'm pretty sure. Not bad - kind of tasted bland, but had the texture of a chip.
Familiarity to users and legacy investments are definitely things to consider when trying to decide your best option, aren't they?
I see you're in the same predicament as me. I've decided to travel the world extinguishing coal seam fires... any objections??? :)
Having given this scenario a lot of thought recently, consider what happens to the money that the company saved. The "control" case is that they money is spent on energy/waste whatever. The "better" case is that less money is spent on energy/waste. Let's assume this translates into the company spending X dollars *less* on these expense accounts.
At the end of the accounting period, assuming revenue and all other expenses are the same, the company actually has more money in the bank. What happens to that money?
a) If the company leaves it in the bank, the bank will loan it out to other people/companies, all of whom will use it to purchase stuff, all of which will consume energy.
b) If the company re-invests the money in itself, it will spend it on capital projects, which of course consumes energy.
c) If the company disperses the income as dividends to shareholders, then the shareholders either put it in the bank (see (a)) or spend it (see (b)) or invest it. Investment increases the capital pool, which is all money available to companies to use and spend, presumably on stuff that will use energy.
Now all of these things are good *for the economy* because money is being spent more efficiently (we as humans are getting more of stuff that we value). However, I just can't see this kind of activity making any kind of difference on total energy, because what's happening is that we are getting more for the same amount of energy. The total energy used by a society will be roughly correlated with the amount of money spent in the economy, or depending on how you look at the relationship, vice-versa.
Has anyone else followed this line of thinking? Any thoughts?
I know that there are "clean" technologies vs. "dirty" technologies, so theoretically, expending equal dollars on a clean alternative might work (certainly common sense says it will). The immediate effect would be a lower price of the dirty technology (supply and demand), and then some suppliers of the dirty technology would stop producing it because it's no longer as profitable, until the supply drops enough that the price returns to a profitable level.
So from what I can tell, reducing consumption (and waste) of a commodity is good for the economy, but not necessarily for the environment. However, switching to an alternative "cleaner" commodity that costs the same *is* good for the environment, but neutral to the economy.
There is a lot of confusion about this, but as far as I can tell, your analog television will work *just fine* if you subscribe to cable TV (or at least as well as it always has). This only affects people using over-the-air broadcasts (you know, with rabbit ears and such).
Eventually, cable TV providers will be allowed to drop their analog programming, but some cable companies have already stated that they consider it a competitive advantage that their customers can hook up an extra TV in the garage, bedroom, etc. and get most of the basic channels without having to purchase/rent an expensive digital tuner. For some people, this is an advantage over the satellite option.
Highlander 2? Yeah, I tried to forget it too...
What are the goals and objectives in Second Life then?
"Skip protection" on a hard drive is pointless. This is a fundamentally different scenario. With a CD, you can read the data *much* faster than you really need to read it, because you only need the data fast enough to convert it into sound. Plus you almost always know which piece of data needs to be read next, because the song is linear.
On the contrary, with a hard drive, read speed is (usually) the bottleneck, so you want the data sent to the processor as soon as you can pull it off the disk. Also, hard drives are much more random access, so you can't guess the location of the next read and read it before the CPU requests it. The only thing you can do is cache frequently accessed data in memory, which the operating system already does.