Not really though. Backwards compatibility is key for portable games. For example the Game Boy Advance SP had perhaps the largest library for any portable game console. The GBA SP (along with the first GBA) could play games from 1989 to 2007. Few consoles can play 18 years of games without any emulation. And when the games are cheap ($30 when they were new, and you can get them for $10 max used) that gives the average person a huge game library without much initial investment. Even though Super Mario Land wasn't exactly the most advanced games, no was it that long but it still was fun. Now Nintendo has the DS (and Lite) that can play games from 2001-present and the DSi that can play physical games from 2004-present along with downloadable games. A major new console would more than likely change the hardware in a radical way, if you don't have either 2 screens or don't have one as a touch screen the DS games are nearly unplayable. Without a large back catalog they probably won't gain much traction (just look at how much of a failure the PSP Go is since it doesn't have a UMD drive).
Depends. Yeah, DDR2 RAM is dirt cheap. If you have a desktop with DDR2 RAM you should have already maxed it out long ago. But DDR1 costs twice as much as DDR2, you can get a gig of DDR2 for about $13 (or less) while 512 MB of DDR1 costs the same amount. And 1 gig of DDR3 costs about $20.
The other thing is that some warranties are voided on netbooks whenever you add more memory (I know the EEE PC was when it first came out but I think they corrected it, not really sure about the others). Add in the fact that when compared to a desktop changing out RAM on a netbook is a total pain means that the vast majority of people will stick with the default amount of memory.
The problem with ARM is that it will perpetually be in the "gadget" category until it can run some "real" OSes. Yes, there is Linux but on popular Linux distros aimed for the general public (such as Ubuntu) ARM is only slightly supported and is still very much a "second class" port compared to the x86 and x86-64 versions. But really what will kill it is more "innovative" UIs for lower-end laptops don't look like "real" computers in the eyes of the consumer. If it looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ubuntu_netbook_remix_9.04.png it is a gadget, compared to if it looks likehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_XP_SP3.png , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_Leopard_Desktop.png or even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gnome-2.28.png
As for unethical, it's not unethical in the least unless you're stealing the code directly
Which is basically what CherryOS was doing. They took the PearPC code, slapped a CherryOS logo on it and distributed/sold it.
It's hypocritical beyond belief whenever somebody says that it's unethical to use Apple software in a way that Apple doesn't approve. Makes me wonder what that makes anybody that runs software based heavily on designs lifted from elsewhere.
I don't think you understand what he was saying. He wasn't saying that it was unethical to use this to run Mac OS X but rather it seems to be heavily borrowed from a F/OSS project much as how CherryOS basically took PearPC and changed it to make it look like a different product. That is unethical.
As it stands right now, you can use Rebel EFI to build a Mac clone, but unless you stick to relatively generic hardware, you will be disappointed
So in other words an OS made to run and tested only on 6 or 7 different major configurations of computers is going to need some tweaking before it can run on other, untested and unsupported hardware? This is hardly a suprise. Next thing is we're going to have a story saying that iPhone OS doesn't run so great on the G1...
Right, that is why Apple laptop sales have tanked in the downturn. Oh, wait.
I think that will change once Windows 7 is mainstream. Everyone hated Vista. Now it seems like everyone loves 7 and Snow Leopard only got a "meh" response from reviewers (not because Snow Leopard is bad it just doesn't have anything revolutionary, the fact that 7 runs at a decent speed is considered to be "revolutionary" in the PC world). There are two people who use Macs, people who have grown up using Macs and people who prefer Macs. When faced with Vista, a lot of people started to realize they prefer Macs.
Because those people if they dislike the network enough, will leave eventually
"Eventually" isn't very soon when you have a 2 year contract with early termination fees that are through the roof.
That is the motivation to improve on what they have now, never mind they want to stop the customers bitching who are losing them new customers right now
All 4 major carriers suck though. Lets see here, AT&T has network issues and isn't cheap, T-Mobile might have great customer service, good phones but it has a pathetic amount of 3G coverage compared to the others. Verizon might have a great network, but it isn't exactly cheap and a lot of their phones (at least used to) suck terribly with many features being stripped out of them. Sprint might be cheap but their coverage isn't great.
And none of them have a phone with as many apps as the iPhone, yes, Android and WebOS are great, but they still don't have the amount of apps as the iPhone nor as much support from companies such as game developers and the like. And don't get me started on Windows mobile.....
For others, the "cost" is that they will not buy an iPhone while the AT&T network has issues.
...And who is going to look at a few "geek" articles about the iPhone and decide not to get it? Yeah, sure, we all know about how AT&T's network is crap, but people see the iPhone and want that. They only see the network once AT&T has them hooked on a few years agreement.
As it is, a netbook will ultimately be the better investment.
Not sure if that is true. A Kindle will continue to read books for quite a while, while a netbook will go obsolete pretty quickly whenever Intel/AMD come out with a CPU that is more power efficient and a lot faster. Sure, when they make color E-ink screens the appeal of a last-gen Kindle will go away, but chances are you can continue to read new books on it, while netbook remixes of different OSes will eventually be so slow as to be unusable on your hardware and security risks prevent you from using older versions.
Disk space may be cheap but I wouldn't call bandwidth that cheap. When you aren't using super-fast internet and are using Dial-up or cell phone internet, the difference between a 2 MB file and a 10 MB file is huge. Even if you have enough disk space for that, its still going to be painfully slow to download the larger it is.
The downside with mesh networking is that it would be unfeasible to use for either political statements or file sharing for any practical use. Lets assume that everyone uses their standard equipment just with different firmware to use mesh networking (not unlikely if the internet was shut down for some odd reason) any router can only go between 2-3 houses on either side of a neighborhood max. That means that unless just about every other house in the city had the same networking going on, it would be just as easy to drive to the other side of a city and deliver a note. Similarly, file sharing is just about useless because most of the items people want are something that only a few people have (advance copies of DVDs, books, things not sold in your country, off-air TV shows, etc) while there might be some people just wanting to get something for free that they can get at Wal-Mart, a lot of people pirate what they can't get easily. While some of this can be eliminated by using better equipment, I don't see it being a major benefit for the most part.
Because x86 makes people think "real laptop" rather than "embedded system" is my guess. Plus I'm sure they thought about marketing it in the first world where running Windows is a must. Also I'm not sure if ARM was more powerful than the Geode at the time, either way the logical x86 chip to use (Intel Atom) won't be used due to politics I'm sure so ARM is the only natural CPU.
NY should fire anyone who doesn't want it because they will put their patients at risk; patients who deserve a better sense of health safety when their lives are at already at risk.
But if they get the vaccine and still get the flu, chances are they can't get any drugs to combat the flu because of a predicted shortage.
"more predictable lifespan"? I take it someone hasn't had a drive head crash... SSDs have wear-leveling and usually on sectors that go bad it is still readable, you just can't write to it. HDDs are more prone to cataclysmic failure compared to SSDs, a SSD usually won't break unless you manage to physically break the circuit board, compared to the fragile platters of the HDD, etc. SSDs fail nicely, HDDs do not.
Not for the average consumer though. You have to realize to 85% of the population a computer is a computer. A new computer is better than an old computer and the more RAM and cores the better. Thats it. The average consumer thinks that OS X doesn't get viruses, they know what a headache viruses are to remove from Windows so they would like to have a Mac. If they had a Mac in a shiny shell with Snow Leopard and an Atom CPU for $300, I can bet you a lot of people would choose that over a Core 2 Duo and Windows for that same amount.
Its hold alt and drag. Its hardly a "secret key combo". For one, you think the typical user is going to change screen resolutions? Even as a pretty knowledgeable user the only time I've ever messed with screen resolutions is once when Ubuntu didn't use the highest resolution possible. Thats the only time. And if it looked so terrible why did you keep it? And while Alt+Drag isn't the most common of knowledge, it should be as much of common knowledge as how you can resize a window by clicking on its corner.
While Windows 7 is late, both rival desktop systems have yet to really gain enough traction. Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems and the fact that WINE isn't 100% yet. If people were willing to re-learn an OS and developers would re-write all their applications, I have little doubt Linux would have majority marketshare. But people don't want to learn something new and so developers write for the masses with Windows and WINE isn't perfect at running Windows apps so while Linux is improving at a breakneck pace, its just not enough to overtake Windows. OS X is still hampered by price. When I can go out and get a $350 laptop that runs even Vista decently, and the cheapest Macbook is $999, something is wrong. A lot of people want to go to OS X but yet the price premium is so expensive for casual users (yes, yes, we've all heard that if you add up all the components things just about average out) but to pay $600 for their cheapest desktop that I could buy for $400 retail or build/upgrade for less? Thats just a bit ridiculous, especially for a machine that you can't upgrade easily.
If Linux could gain Windows binary compatibility, it could overtake Windows. If Apple would drop its price on Macs to more reasonable levels it could overtake Windows. But since neither have managed to do that, Windows still survives despite a terrible OS (Vista) and the new usable OS being almost too late (in 2009 not 2007)
There are many uses of Windows and each will offer their different opinion, there are some people who will use Windows 7 to get things done. The fact that it seems to run faster than Vista, seems to have usability improvements and has some new features makes it a "win" in their eye. There are some people who just use a computer for internet, e-mail and perhaps typing up a few documents. Windows 7 wins in that it is faster than Vista, is currently lesser used so for a while it will be more secure, and it seems like MS learned to only certify machines that will actually run Windows 7 decently so we won't have some of the Vista disasters, however it is still not as familiar as XP is, so it will require some re-learning especially if they are one of the many still using XP. Then there are the PC "fanboys" these people are usually either people with a lot of cash and like having "the fastest" machine, are PC gamers or developers with expensive MS certifications. These people see Windows 7 and the second coming of the messiah and will overlook any and all flaws. There are still other people who look at each OS looking for the "perfect" OS, they will undoubtedly see many flaws and some benefits to using Windows 7. And yet there are people who prefer a different OS, but are looking at Windows 7 to run Windows only apps, with the XP compatibility mode, the fact that Windows 7 is installed by default on most newer computers now, and the improved speed will usually make these people like it for its features, but still feel that their installed OS (OS X, Linux, BSD, VMS, etc) is still superior.
SparkFun is similar to SPARC though? Yeah, they have to defend their trademark, if SparkFun changed their name to SPARCFun, perhaps they would have a case, or even changed their name to Spark... but they haven't. They aren't even in the same business, SPARC sells servers, SparkFun sells integrated circuits. No one is confused. And though to be honest the "defend your trademark" thing should be removed from trademark law (it makes companies be evil about trademarks rather than acting in the interest of the consumer). The point of a trademark is to protect consumers from being mislead, who is mislead about a hobbyist electronic store being called SparkFun and SPARC that sells high-end servers?
No it's not. Slashdot was up in arms against electronic voting when it was closed-source. Open-source doesn't make much of a difference.
While I still think we should use paper ballots (what exactly does e-voting gain us?) it makes a world of difference if the code is open or closed source. Voting is all about trust, if I can see the source and verify that it doesn't have any major bugs in it that is a step in the right direction compared to closed source. Secondly open source is cheaper, I don't want my tax dollars wasted on proprietary software, especially if there is an open source alternative. If we are going to have e-voting, it had better be open source, closed source is unacceptable.
Ruby still isn't a great choice. It should run absolutely as close as possible to bare metal to make sure a JVM bug or a Ruby bug doesn't affect the results.
Sure, but it does provide more readable and testable code while reducing the risk of hardware dependent errors. I think most people can say with certainty that the Ruby interpreter is reasonably stable as is the JVM.
Linux wouldn't be my choice for a kernel either. It's too experimental and rapidly changing for me to feel great about asking 300 million people to trust it
Does Linux change? Yes. Does that affect the stability of a certain kernel version? No. If they stick with 2.6.31.5, it doesn't matter if 2 months from now if 2.6.32 comes out because 2.6.31.5 will still run with no problem (outside of some serious bug), everything in voting machines should be static, no new hardware, no new software, just configuration changes. Linux has been running in embedded systems just like what I described for years now with no problems.
Yeah, but honestly I trust a properly programmed machine a lot more than I do humans. Why? Humans make errors, lots of them. Sure, most of us could count 50 votes with 100% accurately, but 500? 1000? If you are volunteering to count votes chances are you are politically involved, after all what is the harm in adding a few votes here and there... The problem results from how various companies have screwed up something as simple as if vote = yes then add 1 to variable Yes, if vote = no add 1 to variable No and then print the variables. Obviously its not that simple, but it shouldn't be that hard.
That isn't even going into the fact that I don't even trust our election system because it doesn't give equal representation to people with different political views....
I really don't understand what problem electronic voting using computers is supposed to solve. Why not just make scantron ballots (some places already use them) they are paper so they are verifiable, easy to understand (who didn't have to do a multitude of these in high school?), and a machine can calculate them. About the only glitch is you can't change your mind without getting a new ballot, but its honestly not that hard.
I wouldn't really call it faster for anything mentioned in TFS because of the fact that while you can get a lot of data really fast via pigeon there is terrible latency.
Slashdot Mirror
http://blog.laptopmag.com/msi-upgrading-wind-ram-voids-warranty and http://www.i4u.com/article13439.html partially tell the story. On the older models of the EEE, there was a label saying "warranty void if removed" over the memory area. They eventually made a statement that changed it, but its still a risk on some of the netbooks on if you can upgrade memory.
Not really though. Backwards compatibility is key for portable games. For example the Game Boy Advance SP had perhaps the largest library for any portable game console. The GBA SP (along with the first GBA) could play games from 1989 to 2007. Few consoles can play 18 years of games without any emulation. And when the games are cheap ($30 when they were new, and you can get them for $10 max used) that gives the average person a huge game library without much initial investment. Even though Super Mario Land wasn't exactly the most advanced games, no was it that long but it still was fun. Now Nintendo has the DS (and Lite) that can play games from 2001-present and the DSi that can play physical games from 2004-present along with downloadable games. A major new console would more than likely change the hardware in a radical way, if you don't have either 2 screens or don't have one as a touch screen the DS games are nearly unplayable. Without a large back catalog they probably won't gain much traction (just look at how much of a failure the PSP Go is since it doesn't have a UMD drive).
Depends. Yeah, DDR2 RAM is dirt cheap. If you have a desktop with DDR2 RAM you should have already maxed it out long ago. But DDR1 costs twice as much as DDR2, you can get a gig of DDR2 for about $13 (or less) while 512 MB of DDR1 costs the same amount. And 1 gig of DDR3 costs about $20.
The other thing is that some warranties are voided on netbooks whenever you add more memory (I know the EEE PC was when it first came out but I think they corrected it, not really sure about the others). Add in the fact that when compared to a desktop changing out RAM on a netbook is a total pain means that the vast majority of people will stick with the default amount of memory.
The first generation of the EEE PC had 512 MB of RAM, such as my EEE 701 4G Surf
The problem with ARM is that it will perpetually be in the "gadget" category until it can run some "real" OSes. Yes, there is Linux but on popular Linux distros aimed for the general public (such as Ubuntu) ARM is only slightly supported and is still very much a "second class" port compared to the x86 and x86-64 versions. But really what will kill it is more "innovative" UIs for lower-end laptops don't look like "real" computers in the eyes of the consumer. If it looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ubuntu_netbook_remix_9.04.png it is a gadget, compared to if it looks likehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_XP_SP3.png , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_Leopard_Desktop.png or even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gnome-2.28.png
As for unethical, it's not unethical in the least unless you're stealing the code directly
Which is basically what CherryOS was doing. They took the PearPC code, slapped a CherryOS logo on it and distributed/sold it.
It's hypocritical beyond belief whenever somebody says that it's unethical to use Apple software in a way that Apple doesn't approve. Makes me wonder what that makes anybody that runs software based heavily on designs lifted from elsewhere.
I don't think you understand what he was saying. He wasn't saying that it was unethical to use this to run Mac OS X but rather it seems to be heavily borrowed from a F/OSS project much as how CherryOS basically took PearPC and changed it to make it look like a different product. That is unethical.
As it stands right now, you can use Rebel EFI to build a Mac clone, but unless you stick to relatively generic hardware, you will be disappointed
So in other words an OS made to run and tested only on 6 or 7 different major configurations of computers is going to need some tweaking before it can run on other, untested and unsupported hardware? This is hardly a suprise. Next thing is we're going to have a story saying that iPhone OS doesn't run so great on the G1...
Right, that is why Apple laptop sales have tanked in the downturn. Oh, wait.
I think that will change once Windows 7 is mainstream. Everyone hated Vista. Now it seems like everyone loves 7 and Snow Leopard only got a "meh" response from reviewers (not because Snow Leopard is bad it just doesn't have anything revolutionary, the fact that 7 runs at a decent speed is considered to be "revolutionary" in the PC world). There are two people who use Macs, people who have grown up using Macs and people who prefer Macs. When faced with Vista, a lot of people started to realize they prefer Macs.
Because those people if they dislike the network enough, will leave eventually
"Eventually" isn't very soon when you have a 2 year contract with early termination fees that are through the roof.
That is the motivation to improve on what they have now, never mind they want to stop the customers bitching who are losing them new customers right now
All 4 major carriers suck though. Lets see here, AT&T has network issues and isn't cheap, T-Mobile might have great customer service, good phones but it has a pathetic amount of 3G coverage compared to the others. Verizon might have a great network, but it isn't exactly cheap and a lot of their phones (at least used to) suck terribly with many features being stripped out of them. Sprint might be cheap but their coverage isn't great.
And none of them have a phone with as many apps as the iPhone, yes, Android and WebOS are great, but they still don't have the amount of apps as the iPhone nor as much support from companies such as game developers and the like. And don't get me started on Windows mobile.....
For others, the "cost" is that they will not buy an iPhone while the AT&T network has issues.
Exactly they think gadget, not computer.
As it is, a netbook will ultimately be the better investment.
Not sure if that is true. A Kindle will continue to read books for quite a while, while a netbook will go obsolete pretty quickly whenever Intel/AMD come out with a CPU that is more power efficient and a lot faster. Sure, when they make color E-ink screens the appeal of a last-gen Kindle will go away, but chances are you can continue to read new books on it, while netbook remixes of different OSes will eventually be so slow as to be unusable on your hardware and security risks prevent you from using older versions.
Disk space may be cheap but I wouldn't call bandwidth that cheap. When you aren't using super-fast internet and are using Dial-up or cell phone internet, the difference between a 2 MB file and a 10 MB file is huge. Even if you have enough disk space for that, its still going to be painfully slow to download the larger it is.
The downside with mesh networking is that it would be unfeasible to use for either political statements or file sharing for any practical use. Lets assume that everyone uses their standard equipment just with different firmware to use mesh networking (not unlikely if the internet was shut down for some odd reason) any router can only go between 2-3 houses on either side of a neighborhood max. That means that unless just about every other house in the city had the same networking going on, it would be just as easy to drive to the other side of a city and deliver a note. Similarly, file sharing is just about useless because most of the items people want are something that only a few people have (advance copies of DVDs, books, things not sold in your country, off-air TV shows, etc) while there might be some people just wanting to get something for free that they can get at Wal-Mart, a lot of people pirate what they can't get easily. While some of this can be eliminated by using better equipment, I don't see it being a major benefit for the most part.
Because x86 makes people think "real laptop" rather than "embedded system" is my guess. Plus I'm sure they thought about marketing it in the first world where running Windows is a must. Also I'm not sure if ARM was more powerful than the Geode at the time, either way the logical x86 chip to use (Intel Atom) won't be used due to politics I'm sure so ARM is the only natural CPU.
NY should fire anyone who doesn't want it because they will put their patients at risk; patients who deserve a better sense of health safety when their lives are at already at risk.
But if they get the vaccine and still get the flu, chances are they can't get any drugs to combat the flu because of a predicted shortage.
"more predictable lifespan"? I take it someone hasn't had a drive head crash... SSDs have wear-leveling and usually on sectors that go bad it is still readable, you just can't write to it. HDDs are more prone to cataclysmic failure compared to SSDs, a SSD usually won't break unless you manage to physically break the circuit board, compared to the fragile platters of the HDD, etc. SSDs fail nicely, HDDs do not.
Not for the average consumer though. You have to realize to 85% of the population a computer is a computer. A new computer is better than an old computer and the more RAM and cores the better. Thats it. The average consumer thinks that OS X doesn't get viruses, they know what a headache viruses are to remove from Windows so they would like to have a Mac. If they had a Mac in a shiny shell with Snow Leopard and an Atom CPU for $300, I can bet you a lot of people would choose that over a Core 2 Duo and Windows for that same amount.
And you can't resize from the top,
Don't know what you are talking about but with GNOME and Ubuntu you sure can resize vertically from the top and bottom.
Its hold alt and drag. Its hardly a "secret key combo". For one, you think the typical user is going to change screen resolutions? Even as a pretty knowledgeable user the only time I've ever messed with screen resolutions is once when Ubuntu didn't use the highest resolution possible. Thats the only time. And if it looked so terrible why did you keep it? And while Alt+Drag isn't the most common of knowledge, it should be as much of common knowledge as how you can resize a window by clicking on its corner.
While Windows 7 is late, both rival desktop systems have yet to really gain enough traction. Linux is still hampered by -perceived- usability problems and the fact that WINE isn't 100% yet. If people were willing to re-learn an OS and developers would re-write all their applications, I have little doubt Linux would have majority marketshare. But people don't want to learn something new and so developers write for the masses with Windows and WINE isn't perfect at running Windows apps so while Linux is improving at a breakneck pace, its just not enough to overtake Windows. OS X is still hampered by price. When I can go out and get a $350 laptop that runs even Vista decently, and the cheapest Macbook is $999, something is wrong. A lot of people want to go to OS X but yet the price premium is so expensive for casual users (yes, yes, we've all heard that if you add up all the components things just about average out) but to pay $600 for their cheapest desktop that I could buy for $400 retail or build/upgrade for less? Thats just a bit ridiculous, especially for a machine that you can't upgrade easily.
If Linux could gain Windows binary compatibility, it could overtake Windows. If Apple would drop its price on Macs to more reasonable levels it could overtake Windows. But since neither have managed to do that, Windows still survives despite a terrible OS (Vista) and the new usable OS being almost too late (in 2009 not 2007)
There are many uses of Windows and each will offer their different opinion, there are some people who will use Windows 7 to get things done. The fact that it seems to run faster than Vista, seems to have usability improvements and has some new features makes it a "win" in their eye. There are some people who just use a computer for internet, e-mail and perhaps typing up a few documents. Windows 7 wins in that it is faster than Vista, is currently lesser used so for a while it will be more secure, and it seems like MS learned to only certify machines that will actually run Windows 7 decently so we won't have some of the Vista disasters, however it is still not as familiar as XP is, so it will require some re-learning especially if they are one of the many still using XP. Then there are the PC "fanboys" these people are usually either people with a lot of cash and like having "the fastest" machine, are PC gamers or developers with expensive MS certifications. These people see Windows 7 and the second coming of the messiah and will overlook any and all flaws. There are still other people who look at each OS looking for the "perfect" OS, they will undoubtedly see many flaws and some benefits to using Windows 7. And yet there are people who prefer a different OS, but are looking at Windows 7 to run Windows only apps, with the XP compatibility mode, the fact that Windows 7 is installed by default on most newer computers now, and the improved speed will usually make these people like it for its features, but still feel that their installed OS (OS X, Linux, BSD, VMS, etc) is still superior.
SparkFun is similar to SPARC though? Yeah, they have to defend their trademark, if SparkFun changed their name to SPARCFun, perhaps they would have a case, or even changed their name to Spark... but they haven't. They aren't even in the same business, SPARC sells servers, SparkFun sells integrated circuits. No one is confused. And though to be honest the "defend your trademark" thing should be removed from trademark law (it makes companies be evil about trademarks rather than acting in the interest of the consumer). The point of a trademark is to protect consumers from being mislead, who is mislead about a hobbyist electronic store being called SparkFun and SPARC that sells high-end servers?
No it's not. Slashdot was up in arms against electronic voting when it was closed-source. Open-source doesn't make much of a difference.
While I still think we should use paper ballots (what exactly does e-voting gain us?) it makes a world of difference if the code is open or closed source. Voting is all about trust, if I can see the source and verify that it doesn't have any major bugs in it that is a step in the right direction compared to closed source. Secondly open source is cheaper, I don't want my tax dollars wasted on proprietary software, especially if there is an open source alternative. If we are going to have e-voting, it had better be open source, closed source is unacceptable.
Ruby still isn't a great choice. It should run absolutely as close as possible to bare metal to make sure a JVM bug or a Ruby bug doesn't affect the results.
Sure, but it does provide more readable and testable code while reducing the risk of hardware dependent errors. I think most people can say with certainty that the Ruby interpreter is reasonably stable as is the JVM.
Linux wouldn't be my choice for a kernel either. It's too experimental and rapidly changing for me to feel great about asking 300 million people to trust it
Does Linux change? Yes. Does that affect the stability of a certain kernel version? No. If they stick with 2.6.31.5, it doesn't matter if 2 months from now if 2.6.32 comes out because 2.6.31.5 will still run with no problem (outside of some serious bug), everything in voting machines should be static, no new hardware, no new software, just configuration changes. Linux has been running in embedded systems just like what I described for years now with no problems.
Yeah, but honestly I trust a properly programmed machine a lot more than I do humans. Why? Humans make errors, lots of them. Sure, most of us could count 50 votes with 100% accurately, but 500? 1000? If you are volunteering to count votes chances are you are politically involved, after all what is the harm in adding a few votes here and there... The problem results from how various companies have screwed up something as simple as if vote = yes then add 1 to variable Yes, if vote = no add 1 to variable No and then print the variables. Obviously its not that simple, but it shouldn't be that hard.
That isn't even going into the fact that I don't even trust our election system because it doesn't give equal representation to people with different political views....
I really don't understand what problem electronic voting using computers is supposed to solve. Why not just make scantron ballots (some places already use them) they are paper so they are verifiable, easy to understand (who didn't have to do a multitude of these in high school?), and a machine can calculate them. About the only glitch is you can't change your mind without getting a new ballot, but its honestly not that hard.
I wouldn't really call it faster for anything mentioned in TFS because of the fact that while you can get a lot of data really fast via pigeon there is terrible latency.