We still have paper ballots that can be counted by any human being if the computer system fails. All the computer does is tabulate them and provide an interface for those voters (the blind/handicapped) whom can't fill out paper ballots themselves.
This is how all electronic voting systems should work. No automated result should be legally admissible for anything unless a human can double-check that result. It's like those robot radar guns that snap a photo of your license plate and then mail you a ticket. There's no defense against it or way to double check it -- there's no human to put on the stand and testify against you. (I'm sure there are legal ways around this that let places use this technology but I disagree with them.) It's the same with voting machines, and killing machines. Fallible though humans may be, I don't want my rights or future decided by computers.
There is a solution to ALL election fraud - the Robinson Method.
That's an interesting idea, but it seems like kind of a pain in the butt compared to paper-ballot systems. Plus, in reading it I instantly came up with like 3 or 4 simple ways to commit election fraud against such a system. So I think you are full of crap.
Engineering principles can be applied to software (even the wishy-washy stuff like requirements and usability) but nobody ever does it because of the deadline. The product needs to go out the door yesterday! To meet our contractual requirements or be first-to-market or patch the gaping vulnerability introduced during our last frenzied hack-fest.
The difference between other engineering fields and software is that in, say, civil engineering or architecture, production is expensive and fixing errors post-production is ridiculously expensive. Nobody wants to put up half a skyscraper only to find that the foundation is wobbly or the main structural elements too weak or the design too top heavy. So it's sound business practice to do a lot of rigorous, mathematically-provable checking and double-checking during the design phase, well before anyone puts on a hard-hat let alone builds something that might fall down.
With software, it's the reverse -- the design takes all the time, and the production is super cheap, and changing things after production isn't usually that bad. Even if you have a large and expensive deployment, it's still usually feasible to change the software long after it has been built. And in the typical case, the business use doesn't justify a rigorous up-front design. Sure, fixing a defect after the code is in use is always harder than fixing it beforehand -- but that has to be weighed against the business value of having "good enough" code, sooner.
So, software engineering will never really become a rigorous field because there's no business reason for it (as opposed to fields that build physical objects, which have business pressure to be much more rigorous).
I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.
I believe the industry wants to extract as much money from your dentist as possible. For example, he can download a song, but every time he listens to it, they get money. Or better yet, he downloads a song, and then has to pay them recurring fees for the rest of his life. (I haven't heard that one actually suggested yet, but it is only a matter of time.)
There's nothing wrong with a business wanting to make money. But they should be doing it by trying to create value for the customers. Any other means (anti-competitive measures, deceptive marketing practices, cooking the books, etc.) is immoral and unethical.
Can anyone convince these TalkTalk guys to start a branch of their business in Austin, Texas? I know a number of current Time Warner Cable subscribers who would be eager to switch.
Why do people worry more about a humorous scene from Robocop than the atrocities committed by real, human soldiers in every single war?
Because it is meant as a cautionary tale?
No one is claiming that war is super awesome -- just that letting a computer decide who lives and who dies is worse. I think I'd rather be raped and looted by humans than gunned in half by a robot.
I'd love to have an army that is literally incapable of raping and looting. That'd be a fantastic step forward for civilization.
1. I don't like the idea of people killing people, but delegating that responsibility to machines seems downright stupid. There are too many things that could go wrong. (See the "youhave15secondstocomply" tag. Why doesn't this have a "skynetisaware" tag?)
2. Humans remote pilots are cheap. Dirt cheap, compared to the cost of developing fully autonomous weapons. Human pilots may not be totally reliable but at least they are very well understood and we know how to control them and shut them down quickly.
It would be much smarter and safer for all involved if we just put a strict moratorium on giving robots lethal capabilities or the ability to decide who to kill. AI technology would continue to advance in non-lethal robots.
I think we have finally reached a point where bandwith should be sold by the Gigabyte.
Why, though? Why should someone who uses GMail all day pay less than someone who uses NetFlix for an hour every night?
Ultimately I think cable companies and straight ISPs should sell the fastest cable connection possible.
Why? Why not do the opposite -- sell unlimited bandwidth, and price it based on speed (so if you need to video-conference over Skype you pay more than someone who is just downloading WoW patches in the background)?
Why not do both (pay per Gb*Gb/sec)? Why not do neither (keep flat pricing as it is)?
A lot of people say how the pricing "should" be but then fail to justify their reasoning...
How is metered bandwidth equitable? We are charged per unit for electricity, water, etc. because they are resources that get consumed. But if no one is using the Internet, those wires just sit there.
Bandwidth isn't a scarce resource except at peak hours -- and then, bandwidth caps don't do jack to solve the problem. Quality-of-service pricing would. Metered pricing with off-peak discounts would. But just plain metering would not.
e) Implement Quality-of-Service pricing. If the network really does get congested, you can pay extra to give your bits priority. If the network isn't congested, you pay the same as everyone else.
(This maintains net neutrality if all customers pay the same rate for high priority. When Time Warner Cable gives a higher rate to FoxNews.com than to CNN.com because they are partners with CNN, that would break neutrality.)
Google Update installs itself without my permission, runs without notifying me, and is difficult to disable and uninstall. This fits my definition of malware. I'd like to have an option for my anti-virus and anti-malware software to start detecting and destroying programs like these.
But I've seen a large jump in bandwidth usage with my new Roku box for watching NetFlix on my tv. That's a lot of streaming video. Are they keeping tech like this in mind?
Yes. That's their primary motivation.
1. TW is a cable company. Streaming video is a direct competitor that they are trying to strangle.
2. As a poster above mentioned, this usage trend is going to become more prevalent among the general public. (Hasn't realtime video conferencing been a dream of the Internet since the early days of science fiction?) TW wants to get these caps in place now, before their everyday Joe User starts taking 500 Gb/mo worth of streaming HD video for granted, and the TW network really does become strained.
The last thing the gaming industry needs is to be cautious and spurn innovation. Games these days (get off my lawn, etc.) seem like they are mostly retreads and clones of past successes. Do we really want every game to have the exact same game play as last year's, only with better graphics?
TFA points out several flaws in recent games, but not one of these flaws is novel, or a direct result of innovation. Gaming critique fail.
Create Lawsuit / Wizard of the Coast Attack 9 With a twirl of your mustache and a flourish of your cape, you reveal to all the world the villain that you are. Daily * Arcane, Implement, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt Standard Action / Close burst 12 Targets: Up to 8 file sharers in the burst Attack: Constitution vs. Will Hit: 2d6 + Constitution modifier pocketbook damage, and the target is marked on his permanent record. Miss: Half damage, and you lose half your fan base. Effect: Your customers are mildly inconvenienced (save ends). Aftereffect: Your customers learn that copyright infringement is cheaper, faster, and easier than actually buying your products.
DHTML modifies the DOM. It shouldn't be hard at all to just let the Hulu response build itself normally (maybe in an iframe or in another window) and then capture the DOM afterwards. A coworker of mine implemented a feature using this technique just yesterday (although it was for DHTML considerably simpler than Hulu's).
Better yet -- a backup ROM that was truly read-only (not flashable at all) and an external, physical switch to toggle between that and the updated-over-the-Internet ROM.
Think how useful that would have been during the first Cylon war.
Slashdot Mirror
Nowadays all the cool kids are on Ritalin.
We still have paper ballots that can be counted by any human being if the computer system fails. All the computer does is tabulate them and provide an interface for those voters (the blind/handicapped) whom can't fill out paper ballots themselves.
This is how all electronic voting systems should work. No automated result should be legally admissible for anything unless a human can double-check that result. It's like those robot radar guns that snap a photo of your license plate and then mail you a ticket. There's no defense against it or way to double check it -- there's no human to put on the stand and testify against you. (I'm sure there are legal ways around this that let places use this technology but I disagree with them.) It's the same with voting machines, and killing machines. Fallible though humans may be, I don't want my rights or future decided by computers.
-- 77IM
There is a solution to ALL election fraud - the Robinson Method.
That's an interesting idea, but it seems like kind of a pain in the butt compared to paper-ballot systems. Plus, in reading it I instantly came up with like 3 or 4 simple ways to commit election fraud against such a system. So I think you are full of crap.
-- 77IM
It's close enough for government work.
Engineering principles can be applied to software (even the wishy-washy stuff like requirements and usability) but nobody ever does it because of the deadline. The product needs to go out the door yesterday! To meet our contractual requirements or be first-to-market or patch the gaping vulnerability introduced during our last frenzied hack-fest.
The difference between other engineering fields and software is that in, say, civil engineering or architecture, production is expensive and fixing errors post-production is ridiculously expensive. Nobody wants to put up half a skyscraper only to find that the foundation is wobbly or the main structural elements too weak or the design too top heavy. So it's sound business practice to do a lot of rigorous, mathematically-provable checking and double-checking during the design phase, well before anyone puts on a hard-hat let alone builds something that might fall down.
With software, it's the reverse -- the design takes all the time, and the production is super cheap, and changing things after production isn't usually that bad. Even if you have a large and expensive deployment, it's still usually feasible to change the software long after it has been built. And in the typical case, the business use doesn't justify a rigorous up-front design. Sure, fixing a defect after the code is in use is always harder than fixing it beforehand -- but that has to be weighed against the business value of having "good enough" code, sooner.
So, software engineering will never really become a rigorous field because there's no business reason for it (as opposed to fields that build physical objects, which have business pressure to be much more rigorous).
-- 77IM
I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.
I believe the industry wants to extract as much money from your dentist as possible. For example, he can download a song, but every time he listens to it, they get money. Or better yet, he downloads a song, and then has to pay them recurring fees for the rest of his life. (I haven't heard that one actually suggested yet, but it is only a matter of time.)
There's nothing wrong with a business wanting to make money. But they should be doing it by trying to create value for the customers. Any other means (anti-competitive measures, deceptive marketing practices, cooking the books, etc.) is immoral and unethical.
-- 77IM
Can anyone convince these TalkTalk guys to start a branch of their business in Austin, Texas? I know a number of current Time Warner Cable subscribers who would be eager to switch.
-- 77IM
Or, will MS Office become downloadable tax-free, since it is similar to the $0.00 OpenOffice.org?
Why triangles? Why not circles or small squares, just with more dead space between keys than usual?
B)
Why do people worry more about a humorous scene from Robocop than the atrocities committed by real, human soldiers in every single war?
Because it is meant as a cautionary tale?
No one is claiming that war is super awesome -- just that letting a computer decide who lives and who dies is worse. I think I'd rather be raped and looted by humans than gunned in half by a robot.
I'd love to have an army that is literally incapable of raping and looting. That'd be a fantastic step forward for civilization.
Human-piloted remote drones fits this criteria.
Autonomous killing machines are a terrible idea.
1. I don't like the idea of people killing people, but delegating that responsibility to machines seems downright stupid. There are too many things that could go wrong. (See the "youhave15secondstocomply" tag. Why doesn't this have a "skynetisaware" tag?)
2. Humans remote pilots are cheap. Dirt cheap, compared to the cost of developing fully autonomous weapons. Human pilots may not be totally reliable but at least they are very well understood and we know how to control them and shut them down quickly.
It would be much smarter and safer for all involved if we just put a strict moratorium on giving robots lethal capabilities or the ability to decide who to kill. AI technology would continue to advance in non-lethal robots.
-- 77IM
I think we have finally reached a point where bandwith should be sold by the Gigabyte.
Why, though? Why should someone who uses GMail all day pay less than someone who uses NetFlix for an hour every night?
Ultimately I think cable companies and straight ISPs should sell the fastest cable connection possible.
Why? Why not do the opposite -- sell unlimited bandwidth, and price it based on speed (so if you need to video-conference over Skype you pay more than someone who is just downloading WoW patches in the background)?
Why not do both (pay per Gb*Gb/sec)? Why not do neither (keep flat pricing as it is)?
A lot of people say how the pricing "should" be but then fail to justify their reasoning...
-- 77IM
Didn't all those James Bond movies teach us anything?!?!?!
How is metered bandwidth equitable? We are charged per unit for electricity, water, etc. because they are resources that get consumed. But if no one is using the Internet, those wires just sit there.
Bandwidth isn't a scarce resource except at peak hours -- and then, bandwidth caps don't do jack to solve the problem. Quality-of-service pricing would. Metered pricing with off-peak discounts would. But just plain metering would not.
-- 77IM
The customers raised a big stink, and the company listened?
The system actually works?!?!?
e) Implement Quality-of-Service pricing. If the network really does get congested, you can pay extra to give your bits priority. If the network isn't congested, you pay the same as everyone else.
(This maintains net neutrality if all customers pay the same rate for high priority. When Time Warner Cable gives a higher rate to FoxNews.com than to CNN.com because they are partners with CNN, that would break neutrality.)
-- 77IM
Google Update installs itself without my permission, runs without notifying me, and is difficult to disable and uninstall. This fits my definition of malware. I'd like to have an option for my anti-virus and anti-malware software to start detecting and destroying programs like these.
-- 77IM
But I've seen a large jump in bandwidth usage with my new Roku box for watching NetFlix on my tv. That's a lot of streaming video. Are they keeping tech like this in mind?
Yes. That's their primary motivation.
1. TW is a cable company. Streaming video is a direct competitor that they are trying to strangle.
2. As a poster above mentioned, this usage trend is going to become more prevalent among the general public. (Hasn't realtime video conferencing been a dream of the Internet since the early days of science fiction?) TW wants to get these caps in place now, before their everyday Joe User starts taking 500 Gb/mo worth of streaming HD video for granted, and the TW network really does become strained.
-- 77IM
Shouldn't this have been an April Fool's joke?
The last thing the gaming industry needs is to be cautious and spurn innovation. Games these days (get off my lawn, etc.) seem like they are mostly retreads and clones of past successes. Do we really want every game to have the exact same game play as last year's, only with better graphics?
TFA points out several flaws in recent games, but not one of these flaws is novel, or a direct result of innovation. Gaming critique fail.
-- 77IM
Create Lawsuit / Wizard of the Coast Attack 9
With a twirl of your mustache and a flourish of your cape, you reveal to all the world the villain that you are.
Daily * Arcane, Implement, Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
Standard Action / Close burst 12
Targets: Up to 8 file sharers in the burst
Attack: Constitution vs. Will
Hit: 2d6 + Constitution modifier pocketbook damage, and the target is marked on his permanent record.
Miss: Half damage, and you lose half your fan base.
Effect: Your customers are mildly inconvenienced (save ends).
Aftereffect: Your customers learn that copyright infringement is cheaper, faster, and easier than actually buying your products.
DHTML modifies the DOM. It shouldn't be hard at all to just let the Hulu response build itself normally (maybe in an iframe or in another window) and then capture the DOM afterwards. A coworker of mine implemented a feature using this technique just yesterday (although it was for DHTML considerably simpler than Hulu's).
-- 77IM
Better yet -- a backup ROM that was truly read-only (not flashable at all) and an external, physical switch to toggle between that and the updated-over-the-Internet ROM.
Think how useful that would have been during the first Cylon war.
-- 77IM
Teledildonics
WebSphere uses Tomcat 3 as its servlet engine.
-- 77IM