I don't even know why I'm bothering, since electronic voting is such a hot-button issue here, but I want to point out that not everything went disastrously with the machines last night...
Arlington County, VA (right next to Fairfax, and yes, we are more than just a cemetary) also rolled out the Advanced Voting Systems machines in all precincts this election, and as far as I am aware, no glitches occurred, and vote totals were available by 10 pm. The most delayed results were, as always, from absentee ballots, which are of the optical-scan variety.
Arlington has been evaluating these machines for use for a couple of years now, so I guess the necessary training and infrastructure was far better prepared than in Fairfax, which seems to have converted quite recently. It is, admittedly, much more of a logistical nightmare to run elections in Fairfax than in Arlington, given that the former's population is over six times that of the latter.
Arlington chose the systems, I believe, because they were easier to distribute to precincts and to configure for each election, because they allow blind voters to vote unaided, and because voters found them easy to use. I'm sure the flashiness helped, of course, but there are valid reasons for wanting to upgrade.
It's also worth mentioning that the AVS machines do in fact have an internal printer to leave a paper trail, although unfortunately it is not voter-verifiable. In Arlington the AVS machines are replacing 1991-vintage Shouptronic voting machines which produced no paper trail at all, so in that respect this is an improvement!
In short: the glitches are due to inexperience, and if you're worried about not being able to do manual recounts, I'm sorry but in many locations you haven't been able to do that for a decade.
I've been taking a look at the pdf of the presentation (http://lephiggs.web.cern.ch/LEPHIGGS/talks/tully_ talk.pdf, but it's a bit technical) and I'm far from convinced.
LEP has four detectors (named ALEPH, L3, DELPHI, and OPAL). Each does its analyses independently, and their results are merged into a LEP-wide figure. The significance of the repored result is almost entirely due to ALEPH: they report 3.8 sigma, while the other three combined have 2 (a sigma is a measure of how unlikely it is that your result is a statistical fluke; you need 5 or so to claim discovery). Earlier this year, ALEPH reported 3.8 sigma evidence for supersymmetry which disappeared under further analysis. ALEPH has a history of having fake results that are much more significant than those from any other LEP detector. (They even claimed to have discovered the Higgs a while ago...)
Then again, I do work at Fermilab so I am a bit biased.:-) Though I really do wish that the news would stop reporting these things as "Scientists believe they've found the Higgs"; it's sort of on the level of "Americans like anchovies."
The issue here is not speed at all -- it's the science. (As has been said many times.) For the experiment to be controlled, everything must be known about the processing. Even if changes that people make don't actually affect the result, in general, it is impossible to have a standardized experiment without absolute control over the analysis programs. And a standardized experiment is very necessary. For example, if an error is found in their code, they should be able to tell what specific blocks have been affected, and if there are half a million different copies of the code lying around, who knows?
This isn't distributed.net, where you can run a "check" to validate the client, and where the entire keyspace is known. This is also not the Linux kernel, where "This is known not to compile absolutely correctly on gcc 9.25.x" is acceptible. All parameters must be constrained as much as possible.
Will someone please tell me at what point this became a "war" that we had to "win?" When I switched to Linux (and it wasn't all that long ago, back in the early 2.0s) Linux was an alternative, one that didn't crash twice a day, didn't self-destruct, and had a lot of free development tools (important for a fairly poor student). Recently, though, one might think that Microsoft and company were threatening our lives or something, based on the vitriol.
Currently, Windows is a better choice for my mother, say, because she would rather deal with an unreliable OS than have to remember 'su root; shutdown -h now'. That's her right to choose, and it's not a flaw in Linux that she considers it next to incomprehensible. There's no such thing as a one size fits all operating system, any more than there's a one size fits all editor (I say vi, you say emacs...).
Viewing Windows NT, say, as an 'enemy' is ludicrous. Unlike OS/2 (RIP, sweet operating system), Linux isn't all that dependent on some company's goodwill for improvements. So what if XYZ company chooses Microsoft? Their gain or loss. If you're going to stick with Netscape as the major graphical browser, you can't blame them for the product they put out. (So yes, I do support Mozilla over Opera; in my opinion, free software is always a more pragmatic choice in the long run.)
So enjoy the reason you chose Linux in the first place -- it works.
If it doesn't work in some way you want it to, make it, if you can (if you run into a proprietary software roadblock, that's a different issue. Use a free alternative.) If other people haven't used it because of that problem, they will switch over too, if they have any sense.
Bemoaning the fact that some websites don't work in Netscape on Linux won't fix anything; write to the webmaster, or simply take your business elsewhere.
And please, please don't make it sound like we've declared hostilities on Redmond; that search-and-destroy mindset is exactly what produced Microsoft in the first place.
People really ought to calm down here. As people have pointed out, Apple never promised that the G3s would be upgradable.
I didn't erupt in righteous rage when I found out that my Pentium 100 couldn't be directly upgraded to an OEM MMX because of the change to split voltage. You have to get an Overdrive-type affair to do it. How is this shockingly different from requiring an upgrade card?
I knew about the existence of the driver before, but didn't want to use it until it hit some level of stability... I figured that if it had been included with the kernel now, it probably was worth trying out. (Unfortunately right now I'm getting kernel oopses galore from the driver.)
Besides, 2.3.2 is not too far out from 2.2, I'm not using any other experimental stuff (like USB), and my system's running fine otherwise.
It's not that hard to do a denial of service attack with an applet. Display a lot of graphics, allocate tons of memory,..., and your standard wimpy OS won't have the ability to stop it properly.
Granted, I'm biased as I'm on the verge of entering a university, but personally I like to be able to know as much about as much as possible. I taught myself an awful lot when I was younger (about computers, physics,...) but there were tremendous gaps in what I knew. College gives the opportunity to fill in the blanks. (The social life argument holds no water for me. "The University of Chicago: where fun comes to die.")
Then again, I probably have a different perspective than most/. readers; I may love computers but I'm planning to be a physicist, and one sort of needs a Ph.D. for that.
Slashdot Mirror
It fixes the "memory is busted, we have no clue what happened" problem. It is far from useless.
I don't even know why I'm bothering, since electronic voting is such a hot-button issue here, but I want to point out that not everything went disastrously with the machines last night...
Arlington County, VA (right next to Fairfax, and yes, we are more than just a cemetary) also rolled out the Advanced Voting Systems machines in all precincts this election, and as far as I am aware, no glitches occurred, and vote totals were available by 10 pm. The most delayed results were, as always, from absentee ballots, which are of the optical-scan variety.
Arlington has been evaluating these machines for use for a couple of years now, so I guess the necessary training and infrastructure was far better prepared than in Fairfax, which seems to have converted quite recently. It is, admittedly, much more of a logistical nightmare to run elections in Fairfax than in Arlington, given that the former's population is over six times that of the latter.
Arlington chose the systems, I believe, because they were easier to distribute to precincts and to configure for each election, because they allow blind voters to vote unaided, and because voters found them easy to use. I'm sure the flashiness helped, of course, but there are valid reasons for wanting to upgrade.
It's also worth mentioning that the AVS machines do in fact have an internal printer to leave a paper trail, although unfortunately it is not voter-verifiable. In Arlington the AVS machines are replacing 1991-vintage Shouptronic voting machines which produced no paper trail at all, so in that respect this is an improvement!
In short: the glitches are due to inexperience, and if you're worried about not being able to do manual recounts, I'm sorry but in many locations you haven't been able to do that for a decade.
Exactly the point.
I've been taking a look at the pdf of the presentation (http://lephiggs.web.cern.ch/LEPHIGGS/talks/tully_ talk.pdf, but it's a bit technical) and I'm far from convinced.
:-) Though I really do wish that the news would stop reporting these things as "Scientists believe they've found the Higgs"; it's sort of on the level of "Americans like anchovies."
LEP has four detectors (named ALEPH, L3, DELPHI, and OPAL). Each does its analyses independently, and their results are merged into a LEP-wide figure. The significance of the repored result is almost entirely due to ALEPH: they report 3.8 sigma, while the other three combined have 2 (a sigma is a measure of how unlikely it is that your result is a statistical fluke; you need 5 or so to claim discovery). Earlier this year, ALEPH reported 3.8 sigma evidence for supersymmetry which disappeared under further analysis. ALEPH has a history of having fake results that are much more significant than those from any other LEP detector. (They even claimed to have discovered the Higgs a while ago...)
Then again, I do work at Fermilab so I am a bit biased.
I seem to recall something about IBM in Argentina a while ago. Or no?
Exactly. Before anyone goes around talking about things they know nothing about (oops, too late), look at this.
Just for informational purposes, the asteroid was discovered in 1986, and the paper on its orbit was published in 1997.
The issue here is not speed at all -- it's the science. (As has been said many times.) For the experiment to be controlled, everything must be known about the processing. Even if changes that people make don't actually affect the result, in general, it is impossible to have a standardized experiment without absolute control over the analysis programs. And a standardized experiment is very necessary. For example, if an error is found in their code, they should be able to tell what specific blocks have been affected, and if there are half a million different copies of the code lying around, who knows?
This isn't distributed.net, where you can run a "check" to validate the client, and where the entire keyspace is known. This is also not the Linux kernel, where "This is known not to compile absolutely correctly on gcc 9.25.x" is acceptible. All parameters must be constrained as much as possible.
Depends on your definition of 'stable.' I've had ext3 on all my drives for a while and it everything's been fine, even with a bad reboot or two...
Will someone please tell me at what point this became a "war" that we had to "win?" When I switched to Linux (and it wasn't all that long ago, back in the early 2.0s) Linux was an alternative, one that didn't crash twice a day, didn't self-destruct, and had a lot of free development tools (important for a fairly poor student). Recently, though, one might think that Microsoft and company were threatening our lives or something, based on the vitriol.
Currently, Windows is a better choice for my mother, say, because she would rather deal with an unreliable OS than have to remember 'su root; shutdown -h now'. That's her right to choose, and it's not a flaw in Linux that she considers it next to incomprehensible. There's no such thing as a one size fits all operating system, any more than there's a one size fits all editor (I say vi, you say emacs...).
Viewing Windows NT, say, as an 'enemy' is ludicrous. Unlike OS/2 (RIP, sweet operating system), Linux isn't all that dependent on some company's goodwill for improvements. So what if XYZ company chooses Microsoft? Their gain or loss. If you're going to stick with Netscape as the major graphical browser, you can't blame them for the product they put out. (So yes, I do support Mozilla over Opera; in my opinion, free software is always a more pragmatic choice in the long run.)
So enjoy the reason you chose Linux in the first place -- it works.
If it doesn't work in some way you want it to, make it, if you can (if you run into a proprietary software roadblock, that's a different issue. Use a free alternative.) If other people haven't used it because of that problem, they will switch over too, if they have any sense.
Bemoaning the fact that some websites don't work in Netscape on Linux won't fix anything; write to the webmaster, or simply take your business elsewhere.
And please, please don't make it sound like we've declared hostilities on Redmond; that search-and-destroy mindset is exactly what produced Microsoft in the first place.
People really ought to calm down here. As people have pointed out, Apple never promised that the G3s would be upgradable.
I didn't erupt in righteous rage when I found out that my Pentium 100 couldn't be directly upgraded to an OEM MMX because of the change to split voltage. You have to get an Overdrive-type affair to do it. How is this shockingly different from requiring an upgrade card?
I knew about the existence of the driver before, but didn't want to use it until it hit some level of stability... I figured that if it had been included with the kernel now, it probably was worth trying out. (Unfortunately right now I'm getting kernel oopses galore from the driver.)
Besides, 2.3.2 is not too far out from 2.2, I'm not using any other experimental stuff (like USB), and my system's running fine otherwise.
Finally, I can write to my OS/2 drives...
I hadn't planned to install a 2.3.x kernel this early, but I guess I'll do it for that feature by itself...
It's not that hard to do a denial of service attack with an applet. Display a lot of graphics, allocate tons of memory, ..., and your standard wimpy OS won't have the ability to stop it properly.
Granted, I'm biased as I'm on the verge of entering a university, but personally I like to be able to know as much about as much as possible. I taught myself an awful lot when I was younger (about computers, physics, ...) but there were tremendous gaps in what I knew. College gives the opportunity to fill in the blanks. (The social life argument holds no water for me. "The University of Chicago: where fun comes to die.")
/. readers; I may love computers but I'm planning to be a physicist, and one sort of needs a Ph.D. for that.
Then again, I probably have a different perspective than most