Slashdot Mirror


User: TurboNed

TurboNed's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
68
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 68

  1. Briefcase on How Do You Sync & Manage Your Home Directories? · · Score: 1

    Isn't that what everyone uses Microsoft's desktop Briefcase for? I thought that's the ultimate in synchronization tools.

  2. Re:I always maintained blue ray was moot on Blu-ray Adoption Soft, More Still Own HD DVD · · Score: 1

    They're different. Labeling one better than the other is like labeling Star Wars as better than Star Trek. Each excels at a different part of the image. One has more resolution, the other provides a smoother, progressive picture. And Star Wars (only considering the three films that actually *EXIST*) is better.

  3. Re:Why no space planes? on Spaceport America Begins Construction · · Score: 1, Informative

    Mach is a measurement of speed relative to the speed of sound - thus Mach 1 is different (in terms of miles per hour) at sea level than it is at 50,000 feet. Escape velocity isn't a relative speed though. So - what are you referring to? Mach 34 at sea level? Then it's meaningless because nobody accelerates to that velocity in atmosphere that dense. Mach 34 at 50 miles up? Well now the atmosphere is so thin that Mach 34 is pretty darn slow (in terms of miles per hour thanks to slow speed of sound) and achievable (thanks to less drag because of less atmosphere).

  4. Re:The obvious question on Spaceport America Begins Construction · · Score: 1

    It's Mojave, you insensitive clod.

  5. Re:BooHoo on iPhone Users Angry Over AT&T Upgrade Policy · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, if your phone can't tell you how to spell "paid," you may not have paid enough.

  6. Re:How hard is it for a computer to do addition? on Software Bug Adds 5K Votes To Election · · Score: 1

    Problems with this system you have described are discussed at least tangentially in another thread on this story's comments here.

  7. Re:How hard is it for a computer to do addition? on Software Bug Adds 5K Votes To Election · · Score: 1

    The generally accepted stance on voter security (as I understand it from reading Bruce Schneier's blog and Ed Felten's blog is that what is important is that a vote get recorded accurately, that a user can verify (at the time of casting but not after) that the vote they're casting is the vote they intended to cast, and that we be able to ensure a one-to-one correspondence between votes and voters. That doesn't mean that we can map votes to voters later. Such a capability may be useful, but the security concerns (voter coercion, mostly) would outweigh the auditing benefits.

    Think of the paper ballot example. Assuming users actually use the ballots correctly (obviously a huge assumption and one that doesn't play out in practice, but work with me here), you have an accurate, auditable record (a recount is meaningful because it has the potential to discover mistakes of the original count) of the voter's decision. At the time of casting the ballot, the voter can verify (if they so choose) that the ballot accurately reflects their choices. We have one-to-one correspondence because other measures were taken to ensure that each voter received one ballot. When the voter casts their ballot, their vote is recorded, but there will never be any way to trace back the choices that the voter made back to the voter. The voter isn't subject to coercion from, say, a shady employer who threatens to fire any employee who doesn't vote for Candidate A. Employees can lie to their employer about who they voted for and (this is important) nobody has the ability to retrieve the voter's vote to prove/disprove the voter's claim.

    As I see it (though IANAExpert), the proper way to do an electronic vote is to tally votes electronically in a moderately secure environment ("absolute" security would be counter productive, IMO), but to print out a physical record of votes recorded by a machine which is verified by the user and dropped in a ballot box. If there's dispute with the machine tally, you have an auditable record to check the dispute against. If you ask a machine to do a recount of the 4,328,512 votes that it took (which seems like a strange number of votes to record in a precinct with 715,386 eligible voters), it's going to give you the same numbers. Sure, you may know fraud happened - but there's nothing you can do about it.

  8. Re:How hard is it for a computer to do addition? on Software Bug Adds 5K Votes To Election · · Score: 2, Funny

    The only issue with HDDVD encryption was keeping 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 secret. Oh, crap. There it is.

  9. Re:How hard is it for a computer to do addition? on Software Bug Adds 5K Votes To Election · · Score: 1

    That is insufficiently secure because someone could be forced to give up their paper with their unique identifier in order to prove that he voted in accordance with the wishes of someone criminally coercing him. To be properly secure and anonymous, there needs to be absolutely no way to associate me with my vote - whether the desire for the association is legitimate or not.

  10. Re:Yeah, a fix on MS Issued a Fix For Its Unwanted FireFox Extension · · Score: 1

    Well, an opt-in install for the addon would be nice. Other than that, I totally agree with you.

  11. Re:So the WaPo reports a story a month obsolete? on MS Issued a Fix For Its Unwanted FireFox Extension · · Score: 1

    It can be uninstalled. For all users. As Administrator.

  12. Re:So the WaPo reports a story a month obsolete? on MS Issued a Fix For Its Unwanted FireFox Extension · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Obviously the maliciousness must exist somewhere. Let's blame Mozilla for having an idiotic feature that Microsoft could take advantage of in this way.

    Seriously, I don't ascribe this to maliciousness on anyone's part. Microsoft failed to test this in all circumstances in a way that's not uncommon for them (limited user account usability fail), but if that's "malicious" then so was the entire release and lifetime of their exceedingly popular OS. You know, Windows XP. The one that everybody loves so much because it doesn't suck?

    Yeah, it's a huge pile of limited user account usability testing fail. *shrug* If somebody's going to claim the Firefox extension thing is malicious, they'd better not be claiming that Microsoft is being malicious/anti-competitive/monopolistic/whatever by giving XP the End of Life notice. Both products suffer from the same problem, and MS is trying to move past them both.

  13. Re:Bye Hulu! on Hulu May Begin Charging For Video Content · · Score: 1

    +1 abso-friggin'-lutely.

  14. Re:Worst Source Ever on Hulu May Begin Charging For Video Content · · Score: 1

    I'd give a +funny (at least...I'm 75% sure you're trying to be funny), but I spent my mod points this morning.

  15. Re:passes an even tougher test than acid3 on First Beta of Opera 10 Released · · Score: 1

    Running Firefox 3.0.10 on XP SP3 and following your instructions (opened a new tab, navigated to http://slashdot.org/ then clicked "Read more..." on the Google's Android to Challenge Windows? article), everything appeared fine. I assume that when you said "titles of stories" you meant "headers of comments"? When I'm reading a story, I don't see titles to other stories. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the error that I'm supposed to be looking for?

  16. Re:I don't buy it on Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet" · · Score: 1

    I'll let you off with a warning this time then.

  17. Re:I don't buy it on Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet" · · Score: 1

    If you had bothered to read the rest of his post, you'd realize that the sentence you quoted was laced so thick with sarcasm that it approached the legal limit.

  18. Re:You left off the second half of that. on Sarah Connor Chronicles — Why It Died · · Score: 1

    What about all the shows that are carried by a single main character? You think Firefly could have continued if Reavers ate Mal? Heck, in that example, Mal isn't even a single main character that carries the show...but it would have collapsed without him. You know...assuming it had survived long enough to try.

  19. Re:Now patched? on Mac OS X Users Vulnerable To Major Java Flaw · · Score: 1

    Sun doesn't and cannot release a JVM for Apple Macintosh thanks to an agreement that Sun & Apple signed in the distant past (or last week or somewhere in between, I don't know). All I know is that Apple makes their own JVMs for their own OS, and they don't update very often at all.

  20. Re:Java and not javascript on Mac OS X Users Vulnerable To Major Java Flaw · · Score: 2, Informative

    If anything is misleading, it's the "100% reliable" part. It's only 100% reliable against unpatched JVMs. Everybody else has patched their JVM except Apple.

  21. Re:Camera shake is not "cool", it's annoying. on Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek · · Score: 1

    Well, the guy DID just get done making Cloverfield. He's probably thinking about how steady all the work is for this film.

  22. Re:summarizing the article for you... on Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek · · Score: 1

    Contact had a lot of that too.

  23. Re:Take your pick on How To Store Internal Hard Drives? · · Score: 1

    This is the part where I regret discussing a TV series where I haven't yet watched the Season Finale. . .

  24. Re:Why not store them Internally? on How To Store Internal Hard Drives? · · Score: 1

    For a couple hundred bucks, you can have enough storage to save all the ripped movies again, thus saving you the time and trouble (non-trivial amounts of both) of ripping them again if your primary storage device fails.

    Do you really place no value on your time?

  25. Re:Take your pick on How To Store Internal Hard Drives? · · Score: 3, Funny

    And you know that there are no backups somewhere how?

    They image someone's "mental state" onto a drive and obviously there's no backup at that moment, but then he files it into the library or whatever and then backups are made.

    I know this is what happens because I just made it up.