You know, I've got half a mind -- insert your own joke here -- to take a crack at developing my own open-source voting machine system, then drive a van around with it to places where people are voting, asking them to observe the person in front of them voting on my machine, then use the machine to register their vote.
The questions they'd be voting on?
1. Do you trust the machine you're using to accurately record your vote? [yes/no]
2. Would you like to use a machine like this one to vote in your next election? [yes/no]
3. Am I wasting my time trying to develop a secure and open voting system? [yes/no]
Then I'd keep doing it until I got a majority voting "yes" for the first two, and "no" for the third -- and I'd use those results to convince the local authority of record to purchase my machine for such purpose.
Of course, someone would inevitably say "hey, wait, you've got a vested interest in the outcome of this vote, how do we know you didn't fix it?" and I'll respond "well, my code, machines and methods are completely transparent -- you tell me."
You know, in retrospect, perhaps I should just PRETEND to make a secure machine, and get people to answer this question:
1. Am I hot or not? [yes/no]
Then, when I publicly announce that the results say overwhelmingly "hot", and people say they don't believe me, I'll reveal my voting machine to be a Diebold unit...and tell them to go ahead and prove that the vote was tampered.
But, let's face it: it's harder to alter both the computer AND paper records identically than to just do one or the other.
Two scenarios, then:
1. Honest computer glitch gets discovered when paper ballots don't match up;
2. Dishonest computer manipulation gets discovered when paper ballots don't match up, although paper ballots aren't necessarily correct, either.
If you take the position that most (if not all) of these issues are honest glitches (as the emachine defenders often do) then you should be thrilled to have paper trails, as they'll uncover the glitches -- just like what happened in this circumstance. Really, it's delightful to see what can happen with a paper trail backup, isn't it?
On the other hand, if you know that the "glitches" are usually manipulation -- then you're probably going to avoid paper trails like the plague.
Couldn't a lone coder living in a country where software patents exist simply form a distributor arrangement with a person living in a non-software-patent country?
Say, Joe Example writes a great email client, and arranges to distribute it from a website in another country (one not supporting software patents) owned by Mary Sample. She claims credit for "developing" the software, then pays her "contract employee" 90% of the profit from sales (and keeps 10% for distribution costs).
So yeah, that's two people, not one -- but it's conceivable, right? And the laws in question apply to the person/company distributing the software, not necessarily the person who owns the rights, yes? I'm asking, because (unsurprisingly) IANAL.
For years, I've wanted to do something like this, only I wanted to do it in Pullman (the Chicago city, look it up if you're not familiar). It was once a planned industrial community, so it'd be perfect for making a self-contained campus, but it's on the far south side and housing is (relatively) cheap. Plus, it's close to IIT. Wouldn't be AS cheap as going rural, but if you owned the buildings and rented cheaply to your workers, you could develop a great reputation as "the place" to go after college to establish your skills and credibility, before you go on to a better-paying job elsewhere.
Arguably the best MP3 player (not organizer) ever created was SoundPlay for BeOS. For the basic task of playing one or more MP3s, either cross-faded or back-to-back (or simultaneously) it was virtually unmatched in smoothness and ease-of-use -- the interface was typical BeOS, bland but instantly intuitive. Of course, it owed a lot of that to BeOS's underlying media handling.
There's still (I think) a system out there using SoundPlay and an organizational system using the filesystem itself for the database, called TuneTracker...designed for automation of radio stations, but makes a killer MP3 organization/playback rig.
One small note about SoundPlay: there is a slider that allows to you alter the speed of playback infinitely (well, as much as you can in the digital realm, anyway) in real-time, with instantaneous response...and if you slide the bar far enough, it starts playing BACKWARDS at variable speeds, too.
Boy, I miss that program. Now I have to reinstall BeOS on an old box.;)
This is very similar to the television and film industries, which is why unions have done so well in those industries -- if you want to work for the big boys, you have to be union, and you'll get the overtime pay you deserve when you deserve it. On the other hand, if you're just starting out, you can work for a smaller shop without being in the union, to develop the skills and connections required to get sponsored into the big time.
So, with such a big, successful release as Halo 2, and many people claiming that video games are as big as feature films, perhaps it's time for a union. Good luck to those who try.
Oops, looked through the linked site above and found that Papyrus's own release "Indycar Racing", released in 1993, also appears to have had the god-view replay feature. Never owned the game, myself.
The earliest racing game I can remember with this style of god-view replay was Papyrus's "Nascar", released in 1994. Here's a web site about the game, with some screenshots -- the screenshots that show more than one car are from the built-in replay system, which gave multiple angles of replay either during the race (when paused) or after the race. I'm not sure if you could save or edit replays, although these capabilities were added in later versions. Same goes for the TV1 and TV2 cameras, which simulated live TV coverage of a real NASCAR race, by following the car you selected with various camera views -- this existed in later versions of the game, and certainly existed in advanced form by 1997's Gran Prix Legends (also a Papyrus title), but I'm not sure if it was part of the original Nascar release.
Again, not sure if this was the first racing game with this feature, but it's the first one I remember.
I know it seems hard to keep biases, especially subtle ones, out of the wikipedia entries, but it can and does get done -- I once wrote a section on dog adoptions that had an admittedly biased section on puppy mills, and within a day someone had rewritten it to present more than one side of the story. They did a terrific job with it, too.
The problem here is that wikipedia, and wikis in general, assume that the users all want the information to be as accurate as possible, and that any biases expressed or implied are unintentional, and therefore will be corrected over time.
Trouble is, with some topics, that's just not a correct assumption. Perhaps what is needed is the ability for any user to flag a given entry as "needing temporary editorial control", which automatically locks it to changes for 24 hours and summons a moderator who can either release the lock immediately, leave it be to expire naturally, or extend the lock for a fixed period of time.
Presumably there might be edits to make while the lock is in place, to restore or correct edited content, but only the moderator could make the fix.
Perhaps this might provide the balance necessary to maintain the basic premise of the wikipedia, without it collapsing under the weight of unusually strong biases. Or perhaps not. Hard to say until it's tried.
Step 1: Everyone gets to vote for as many people as they want for the primaries (their own party, the other parties, or independents) -- then the top half get to proceed forward. Hardcore Repubs will vote for all of their guys, Hardcore Dems will do the same, and everyone else will cherry-pick from both sides plus the independents. At the end of the day, the Repubs/Dems/Independents that are most acceptable to BOTH sides will make it to the finals.
Step 2: Repeat step one until you end up with about five guys. Again, the cream will rise to the top.
Step 2.5: At this point, no more money can be spent on ads, and no radio/tv/newspaper ads can be run by the candidates. The debates should be the only media exposure that the candidates get directly.
Step 3: Debates, debates, debates. Public, pre-empting all other broadcasting, and without the questions in advance.
Step 4: On election day, everyone gets to vote for as many candidates as they want. Whichever one gets the most votes wins, whichever one gets the second largest number of votes is vice president, and the rest are out of luck.
Step 5: Paper trails, automatically initiated recounts, and no concession allowed -- and the media doesn't run around telling everyone that someone did or didn't win until all the votes are counted.
Hear, hear. Reason and Cakewalk Sonar are two programs I use on a daily basis.
So those, and a good software/driver installation program that works using a standard interface. Yes, I -can- manually install and compile when necessary, and yes, I -can- roll my own kernels and whatnot, and I do. But I really really really really really would love to have a program like InstallShield or WISE to make it easier. Dreaming...
Duh! Made a mistake in my above post -- "...keyboard shortcuts to match that of the Windows version of WORD" should of course say "...Windows version of WORDPERFECT".
Dunno if anyone else remembers their own experience changing from WordPerfect to Word, but I was working in a large company's word processing department during their changeover. The only reason we switched -- and I mean the ONLY reason -- was because the large company got a great deal on Word 2.0 as part of a larger software bundle. Keep in mind we were using Lotus Notes for our email at the time. The person in charge was, at the time, excited, because they'd heard great things about Word.
Two things from that period stand out in my mind:
1. Word had a WordPerfect compatibility mode, if I remember correctly, that when activated would arrange the menus and keyboard shortcuts to match that of the Windows version of Word. I leaned on that quite a bit. I often wonder if something like that would help Linux desktop adoption (not trying to start a flamewar here!)
2. When Word 6.0 came out, we HATED it. We all had to get new computers in order to run it, and even then, it was painfully slow -- we tried everything to get the company to roll back to Word 2.0, but they told us the 6.0 upgrade was a mandatory thing as part of their licensing agreement with Microsoft.
I have no doubt that the "Hamster" in the name is an attempt to coin a cute animal name in the hopes that it will become as ubiquitous on the desktop as your "mouse" is.
I can honestly respond with this: the only reason I have not purchased an iPod mini is the lack of a removable battery. So, yeah, for me PERSONALLY, it's a mini iPod killer.
Rather than attack TiVo for this, consider that they were pressured into it: either accept the limitations on the Macrovision license, or no Macrovision license at all (and therefore no TiVo To Go feature on the new machines).
Better to attack the content providers by refusing to purchase PPV movies for recording on your TiVo. On the other hand, I sincerely hope that TiVo will continue to offer boxes WITHOUT TiVo To Go, so that this industry-imposed limitation isn't mandatory for a TiVo purchase.
Think of it like the DivX vs DVD thing from a few years ago -- did we all get angry at the manufacturers who offered DivX boxes? Nope, we just bought non-DivX DVD machines from the same manufacturers, or (at the end of the road) bought the deeply-discounted DivX machines and never, ever purchased a single DivX movie.
Oh, and I've driven FWD cars at Willow Springs -- you really have to make a big mistake to lose it on the back end. The RealTime Racing crew, which races Acuras and (recently) Spec Vs in the SPEED touring series, has a driver that described his setup as this (from memory): 'we make the car as loose as we possibly can, then keep the power down to make the car straight.'
In other words, downforce at the rear isn't really an issue, and in fact they work hard to keep the back end as loose as possible to help the car rotate, knowing that they can always hit the gas to straighten the car out.
Most of the spoilers you see on street cars are flat horizontal -- there's no angle to them relative to the surface plane they're mounted on. Without angle, the spoilers, they do nothing. Well, that's not entirely true -- the leading edge will slow down the wind a bit, which will introduce an almost immesurable amount of drag/downforce -- but that is no more noticeable than the "downforce" of "more weight" provided by the spoiler. Negligible, and better achieved by other methods.
A flat spoiler can provide downforce if it is attached to a non-horizontal surface plane (Porsche 911, for instance), of course.
On the other hand, street cars with functional rear spoilers (there are a few, the aforementioned Porsche 911 and the Audi TT for example) that actually do generate downforce at high speeds -- but the speeds must be very high for that downforce to be of use. In the case of the TT, they added the spoiler because aerodynamically the back ends were getting light on the autobahn and causing accidents, an unfortunate side effect of the smooth drooping tail, which resembles the leading edge of a plane wing.
Speaking of plane wings, you can get downforce from a spoiler that runs at the same angle as the surface plane it is mounted to, but you'll have to shape it like an upside-down plane wing, and you'll really need to go fast to see any effect.
So, as a rule: on a street car, unless the spoiler is angled (pitched forward) compared to the surface plane it is mounted on, it's just eye candy. That's partially because downforce == drag, so manufacturers want you to think "performance car" while still getting the fuel economy benefits of low drag.
And for what it's worth, my SE-R Spec V has a spoiler, but it came from the factory and is flat -- and I will be removing it once I can afford having the trunk holes filled and repainted.
Let's take this technology to an extreme, and see if it enables something like this:
Suppose I create an eVoting machine that uses this technology to compile the kernel and applications whenever the machine is activated, and it doesn't take more than a minute for this to occur.
Now, I submit source code to each group planning to use the voting machine, and to the political parties involved, on a CD. They each have the code audited, and sign off on it. They also retain the CDs. I also post this approved code to my web site, in plenty of time for independent companies to audit the code and raise concerns.
When it's time for voting, all representatives (the parties, the region, and my company) show up with their CDs, and run md5sums from them to make sure they all still contain the correct, approved code.
Then, we put all the CDs in a box, reach in, and pull one out at random. We then use that CD to boot each and every machine in the polling place for that region.
Also, any voter who doesn't trust that the machine is running the publicly-available source code, they can bring in their own source CD (burned from an ISO downloaded from my company's web site), and have it md5sum'd against the CD we used to boot the machines.
For the truly paranoid, one machine would be made available to anyone who then wanted to have the machine booted using their CD instead of ours (assuming, of course, it passed the md5sum). Keeping it to one machine means the lines for average unconcerned voters wouldn't be long, unless a large number of people wanted to self-boot -- and if that were the case, it would make sense to free up more machines for this, as there would be fewer average unconcerned voters using the other machines.
Actually, Stern started questioning the actions and motivations of the Bush administration after reading one of Al Franken's books, and was fined heavily for indecency about a week later.
Given that the fines were imposed for previously un-fined on-air behavior more than a year old (from his pro-Bush days), Stern's interpretation of the timing of this action was that the fines were a rebuke from the Bush administration for criticizing Bush, delivered via the FCC. The rebuke, if that's what it was, served to focus Stern's anti-Bush rhetoric and strengthen his resolve.
As it happens, the FCC made an even bigger mistake than you'd think, because it did more than reinforce the idea that the current administration was attempting to censor opposing political voices on the airwaves -- it also provided Stern with a clear 3-step process for profit that would makes the gnomes proud:
1. Attract significant publicity and encourage FCC hostility by pointing out the FCC's hypocracy of ignoring smutty behavior while Stern praises Bush, but punishing identical behavior the moment Stern criticizes Bush.
2. Convince satellite radio companies that you can use the resultant outrage to motivate a huge listening audience to invest in satellite radio receivers.
I've had my DirecTiVo for over three years now. No hiccups, no problems, all has been great. It's nice having one piece of technology in the house that I can trust and rely on without having to tinker.
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You know, I've got half a mind -- insert your own joke here -- to take a crack at developing my own open-source voting machine system, then drive a van around with it to places where people are voting, asking them to observe the person in front of them voting on my machine, then use the machine to register their vote.
The questions they'd be voting on?
1. Do you trust the machine you're using to accurately record your vote? [yes/no]
2. Would you like to use a machine like this one to vote in your next election? [yes/no]
3. Am I wasting my time trying to develop a secure and open voting system? [yes/no]
Then I'd keep doing it until I got a majority voting "yes" for the first two, and "no" for the third -- and I'd use those results to convince the local authority of record to purchase my machine for such purpose.
Of course, someone would inevitably say "hey, wait, you've got a vested interest in the outcome of this vote, how do we know you didn't fix it?" and I'll respond "well, my code, machines and methods are completely transparent -- you tell me."
You know, in retrospect, perhaps I should just PRETEND to make a secure machine, and get people to answer this question:
1. Am I hot or not? [yes/no]
Then, when I publicly announce that the results say overwhelmingly "hot", and people say they don't believe me, I'll reveal my voting machine to be a Diebold unit...and tell them to go ahead and prove that the vote was tampered.
Heh.
But, let's face it: it's harder to alter both the computer AND paper records identically than to just do one or the other.
Two scenarios, then:
1. Honest computer glitch gets discovered when paper ballots don't match up;
2. Dishonest computer manipulation gets discovered when paper ballots don't match up, although paper ballots aren't necessarily correct, either.
If you take the position that most (if not all) of these issues are honest glitches (as the emachine defenders often do) then you should be thrilled to have paper trails, as they'll uncover the glitches -- just like what happened in this circumstance. Really, it's delightful to see what can happen with a paper trail backup, isn't it?
On the other hand, if you know that the "glitches" are usually manipulation -- then you're probably going to avoid paper trails like the plague.
Couldn't a lone coder living in a country where software patents exist simply form a distributor arrangement with a person living in a non-software-patent country?
Say, Joe Example writes a great email client, and arranges to distribute it from a website in another country (one not supporting software patents) owned by Mary Sample. She claims credit for "developing" the software, then pays her "contract employee" 90% of the profit from sales (and keeps 10% for distribution costs).
So yeah, that's two people, not one -- but it's conceivable, right? And the laws in question apply to the person/company distributing the software, not necessarily the person who owns the rights, yes? I'm asking, because (unsurprisingly) IANAL.
So, what, it's got an engine from General Motors' latest economy car? If so, I hope it goes on a mission to the ringed planet next.
For years, I've wanted to do something like this, only I wanted to do it in Pullman (the Chicago city, look it up if you're not familiar). It was once a planned industrial community, so it'd be perfect for making a self-contained campus, but it's on the far south side and housing is (relatively) cheap. Plus, it's close to IIT. Wouldn't be AS cheap as going rural, but if you owned the buildings and rented cheaply to your workers, you could develop a great reputation as "the place" to go after college to establish your skills and credibility, before you go on to a better-paying job elsewhere.
;)
Or not. I live in California now, anyway.
Arguably the best MP3 player (not organizer) ever created was SoundPlay for BeOS. For the basic task of playing one or more MP3s, either cross-faded or back-to-back (or simultaneously) it was virtually unmatched in smoothness and ease-of-use -- the interface was typical BeOS, bland but instantly intuitive. Of course, it owed a lot of that to BeOS's underlying media handling.
;)
There's still (I think) a system out there using SoundPlay and an organizational system using the filesystem itself for the database, called TuneTracker...designed for automation of radio stations, but makes a killer MP3 organization/playback rig.
One small note about SoundPlay: there is a slider that allows to you alter the speed of playback infinitely (well, as much as you can in the digital realm, anyway) in real-time, with instantaneous response...and if you slide the bar far enough, it starts playing BACKWARDS at variable speeds, too.
Boy, I miss that program. Now I have to reinstall BeOS on an old box.
This is very similar to the television and film industries, which is why unions have done so well in those industries -- if you want to work for the big boys, you have to be union, and you'll get the overtime pay you deserve when you deserve it. On the other hand, if you're just starting out, you can work for a smaller shop without being in the union, to develop the skills and connections required to get sponsored into the big time.
So, with such a big, successful release as Halo 2, and many people claiming that video games are as big as feature films, perhaps it's time for a union. Good luck to those who try.
Oops, looked through the linked site above and found that Papyrus's own release "Indycar Racing", released in 1993, also appears to have had the god-view replay feature. Never owned the game, myself.
The earliest racing game I can remember with this style of god-view replay was Papyrus's "Nascar", released in 1994. Here's a web site about the game, with some screenshots -- the screenshots that show more than one car are from the built-in replay system, which gave multiple angles of replay either during the race (when paused) or after the race. I'm not sure if you could save or edit replays, although these capabilities were added in later versions. Same goes for the TV1 and TV2 cameras, which simulated live TV coverage of a real NASCAR race, by following the car you selected with various camera views -- this existed in later versions of the game, and certainly existed in advanced form by 1997's Gran Prix Legends (also a Papyrus title), but I'm not sure if it was part of the original Nascar release.
Again, not sure if this was the first racing game with this feature, but it's the first one I remember.
I know it seems hard to keep biases, especially subtle ones, out of the wikipedia entries, but it can and does get done -- I once wrote a section on dog adoptions that had an admittedly biased section on puppy mills, and within a day someone had rewritten it to present more than one side of the story. They did a terrific job with it, too.
The problem here is that wikipedia, and wikis in general, assume that the users all want the information to be as accurate as possible, and that any biases expressed or implied are unintentional, and therefore will be corrected over time.
Trouble is, with some topics, that's just not a correct assumption. Perhaps what is needed is the ability for any user to flag a given entry as "needing temporary editorial control", which automatically locks it to changes for 24 hours and summons a moderator who can either release the lock immediately, leave it be to expire naturally, or extend the lock for a fixed period of time.
Presumably there might be edits to make while the lock is in place, to restore or correct edited content, but only the moderator could make the fix.
Perhaps this might provide the balance necessary to maintain the basic premise of the wikipedia, without it collapsing under the weight of unusually strong biases. Or perhaps not. Hard to say until it's tried.
Step 1: Everyone gets to vote for as many people as they want for the primaries (their own party, the other parties, or independents) -- then the top half get to proceed forward. Hardcore Repubs will vote for all of their guys, Hardcore Dems will do the same, and everyone else will cherry-pick from both sides plus the independents. At the end of the day, the Repubs/Dems/Independents that are most acceptable to BOTH sides will make it to the finals.
Step 2: Repeat step one until you end up with about five guys. Again, the cream will rise to the top.
Step 2.5: At this point, no more money can be spent on ads, and no radio/tv/newspaper ads can be run by the candidates. The debates should be the only media exposure that the candidates get directly.
Step 3: Debates, debates, debates. Public, pre-empting all other broadcasting, and without the questions in advance.
Step 4: On election day, everyone gets to vote for as many candidates as they want. Whichever one gets the most votes wins, whichever one gets the second largest number of votes is vice president, and the rest are out of luck.
Step 5: Paper trails, automatically initiated recounts, and no concession allowed -- and the media doesn't run around telling everyone that someone did or didn't win until all the votes are counted.
Step 6: I wake up.
Hear, hear. Reason and Cakewalk Sonar are two programs I use on a daily basis.
So those, and a good software/driver installation program that works using a standard interface. Yes, I -can- manually install and compile when necessary, and yes, I -can- roll my own kernels and whatnot, and I do. But I really really really really really would love to have a program like InstallShield or WISE to make it easier. Dreaming...
Nothing says "I am debating your statements, not attacking you personally" like starting a reply with "You're a fscking idiot". Heh.
Duh! Made a mistake in my above post -- "...keyboard shortcuts to match that of the Windows version of WORD" should of course say "...Windows version of WORDPERFECT".
Dunno if anyone else remembers their own experience changing from WordPerfect to Word, but I was working in a large company's word processing department during their changeover. The only reason we switched -- and I mean the ONLY reason -- was because the large company got a great deal on Word 2.0 as part of a larger software bundle. Keep in mind we were using Lotus Notes for our email at the time. The person in charge was, at the time, excited, because they'd heard great things about Word.
Two things from that period stand out in my mind:
1. Word had a WordPerfect compatibility mode, if I remember correctly, that when activated would arrange the menus and keyboard shortcuts to match that of the Windows version of Word. I leaned on that quite a bit. I often wonder if something like that would help Linux desktop adoption (not trying to start a flamewar here!)
2. When Word 6.0 came out, we HATED it. We all had to get new computers in order to run it, and even then, it was painfully slow -- we tried everything to get the company to roll back to Word 2.0, but they told us the 6.0 upgrade was a mandatory thing as part of their licensing agreement with Microsoft.
Anyway, thought it might interest you.
I have no doubt that the "Hamster" in the name is an attempt to coin a cute animal name in the hopes that it will become as ubiquitous on the desktop as your "mouse" is.
I can honestly respond with this: the only reason I have not purchased an iPod mini is the lack of a removable battery. So, yeah, for me PERSONALLY, it's a mini iPod killer.
Rather than attack TiVo for this, consider that they were pressured into it: either accept the limitations on the Macrovision license, or no Macrovision license at all (and therefore no TiVo To Go feature on the new machines).
Better to attack the content providers by refusing to purchase PPV movies for recording on your TiVo. On the other hand, I sincerely hope that TiVo will continue to offer boxes WITHOUT TiVo To Go, so that this industry-imposed limitation isn't mandatory for a TiVo purchase.
Think of it like the DivX vs DVD thing from a few years ago -- did we all get angry at the manufacturers who offered DivX boxes? Nope, we just bought non-DivX DVD machines from the same manufacturers, or (at the end of the road) bought the deeply-discounted DivX machines and never, ever purchased a single DivX movie.
Well, that link didn't last long. Does anyone have some juicy sample results from before it tanked?
Oh, and I've driven FWD cars at Willow Springs -- you really have to make a big mistake to lose it on the back end. The RealTime Racing crew, which races Acuras and (recently) Spec Vs in the SPEED touring series, has a driver that described his setup as this (from memory): 'we make the car as loose as we possibly can, then keep the power down to make the car straight.'
In other words, downforce at the rear isn't really an issue, and in fact they work hard to keep the back end as loose as possible to help the car rotate, knowing that they can always hit the gas to straighten the car out.
Most of the spoilers you see on street cars are flat horizontal -- there's no angle to them relative to the surface plane they're mounted on. Without angle, the spoilers, they do nothing. Well, that's not entirely true -- the leading edge will slow down the wind a bit, which will introduce an almost immesurable amount of drag/downforce -- but that is no more noticeable than the "downforce" of "more weight" provided by the spoiler. Negligible, and better achieved by other methods.
A flat spoiler can provide downforce if it is attached to a non-horizontal surface plane (Porsche 911, for instance), of course.
On the other hand, street cars with functional rear spoilers (there are a few, the aforementioned Porsche 911 and the Audi TT for example) that actually do generate downforce at high speeds -- but the speeds must be very high for that downforce to be of use. In the case of the TT, they added the spoiler because aerodynamically the back ends were getting light on the autobahn and causing accidents, an unfortunate side effect of the smooth drooping tail, which resembles the leading edge of a plane wing.
Speaking of plane wings, you can get downforce from a spoiler that runs at the same angle as the surface plane it is mounted to, but you'll have to shape it like an upside-down plane wing, and you'll really need to go fast to see any effect.
So, as a rule: on a street car, unless the spoiler is angled (pitched forward) compared to the surface plane it is mounted on, it's just eye candy. That's partially because downforce == drag, so manufacturers want you to think "performance car" while still getting the fuel economy benefits of low drag.
And for what it's worth, my SE-R Spec V has a spoiler, but it came from the factory and is flat -- and I will be removing it once I can afford having the trunk holes filled and repainted.
Remember: flames make it faster, as does painting it yellow.
Let's take this technology to an extreme, and see if it enables something like this:
Suppose I create an eVoting machine that uses this technology to compile the kernel and applications whenever the machine is activated, and it doesn't take more than a minute for this to occur.
Now, I submit source code to each group planning to use the voting machine, and to the political parties involved, on a CD. They each have the code audited, and sign off on it. They also retain the CDs. I also post this approved code to my web site, in plenty of time for independent companies to audit the code and raise concerns.
When it's time for voting, all representatives (the parties, the region, and my company) show up with their CDs, and run md5sums from them to make sure they all still contain the correct, approved code.
Then, we put all the CDs in a box, reach in, and pull one out at random. We then use that CD to boot each and every machine in the polling place for that region.
Also, any voter who doesn't trust that the machine is running the publicly-available source code, they can bring in their own source CD (burned from an ISO downloaded from my company's web site), and have it md5sum'd against the CD we used to boot the machines.
For the truly paranoid, one machine would be made available to anyone who then wanted to have the machine booted using their CD instead of ours (assuming, of course, it passed the md5sum). Keeping it to one machine means the lines for average unconcerned voters wouldn't be long, unless a large number of people wanted to self-boot -- and if that were the case, it would make sense to free up more machines for this, as there would be fewer average unconcerned voters using the other machines.
Just a thought. Or a dream.
Actually, Stern started questioning the actions and motivations of the Bush administration after reading one of Al Franken's books, and was fined heavily for indecency about a week later.
Given that the fines were imposed for previously un-fined on-air behavior more than a year old (from his pro-Bush days), Stern's interpretation of the timing of this action was that the fines were a rebuke from the Bush administration for criticizing Bush, delivered via the FCC. The rebuke, if that's what it was, served to focus Stern's anti-Bush rhetoric and strengthen his resolve.
As it happens, the FCC made an even bigger mistake than you'd think, because it did more than reinforce the idea that the current administration was attempting to censor opposing political voices on the airwaves -- it also provided Stern with a clear 3-step process for profit that would makes the gnomes proud:
1. Attract significant publicity and encourage FCC hostility by pointing out the FCC's hypocracy of ignoring smutty behavior while Stern praises Bush, but punishing identical behavior the moment Stern criticizes Bush.
2. Convince satellite radio companies that you can use the resultant outrage to motivate a huge listening audience to invest in satellite radio receivers.
3. PROFIT!
I've had my DirecTiVo for over three years now. No hiccups, no problems, all has been great. It's nice having one piece of technology in the house that I can trust and rely on without having to tinker.