The problem these voting systems are intended to solve is man-hours-per vote. How much labor and cost is involved in an election. Supposedly will save us tax dollars. A few mil here, a few mil there. Nothing really major.
And no, they didn't count the ballots fast enough in Florida. At least the recounts. had they been counted faster, it's likely that results would have come in before the Supreme Court ruled. It may very well have changed the result of the election.
However - I'm still not in favor of electronic voting. I'm in favor of the SCOTUS butting-out, and sitting down and counting the damn votes. All of them. Including the 50,000 people (oddly enough, most were registered Democrats) who were illegally removed by a private company, because they shared the same surname, or birthday with a known felon.
The thing about broadband, is that when you look at the service in the US, and Australia, and then compare it to what's available in Japan, Korea, Canada, you see a marked difference in availability and price. In the US and Australia there's telecom monopolies which are killing competition, keeping prices high and availability low.
Should the government pay for everyone to have broadband?
NO.
Should the government send jack-booted thugs around to the telecom monoplies, and skin these fuckers alive as an example to evil monopolists everywhere? I'm for that.
Hell, for that matter, someone could encode the protocol in the P2P software to flip a few insignificant bits at random upon download, so every downloaded copy will be unique, as far as MD5 is concerned.
what's to stop a "leecher" from simply flipping a few bits in his MP3 files? Sure, he'd have to know a little bit about the file format, but I'm sure that there are plenty of bits in your typical MP3 one could flip without having any significant impact on the music quality. From what I know of MD5, one bit ought to be enough to throw the dogs off the scent.
They should go back to developing for x86/Linux, to stop the console manufacturers from eating their lunch. In fact, some enterprising game developer should also come up with a stripped-down Linux boot CD format, so anyone with an x86 PC and a decent video card would be able to play their game, no matter what OS they run on their machine -
Wait, didn't someone else come up with idea like 5 years ago?
"MS obviously has an interest in stelling their software on Macs"
Didn't you mean "STALLING"? (actually, if you look at the state of Office X, and IE Mac, it looks to be the case. MBU, what have you done for me LATELY?!)
PS: "Perfect pitch" to me means "being able to identify notes by ear without a reference" rather than "being able to sing on-key" (though I guess the two usually go together).
I suspect it means that to MOST people. That's what "perfect pitch" means. And there's a LOT of professional musicians, even talented ones, who do not have this ability. It's not really required for performance. But it's absolutely required for absolute mastery of the craft.
Of course, there are people with perfect pitch who can't carry a tune with their voice.
How's that going to happen when the chiefs are in charge?
(by the way, I agree with everything you say, except "It is the opposite of what private industry does" - - that's not true. It's EXACTLY what private industry does, and has always done.)
It's not just the Astronauts they need to keep safe.
If the Shuttle guidance failed on launch, there's a guy at Patrick AFB sitting there with a big red button in front of a telemetry screen.
If the missile goes off course, the Range Safety Officer must destroy it. (as happened with the SRB's when Challenger exploded).
Now, if you were the RSO, and a fully-manned shuttle started flying wild - it would be YOUR job to press that button, to prevent the Shuttle from crashing into Orlando. Kill 7 astronauts to save potentially thousands of civillians, many of whom were probably not even aware that there was a launch that day.
As the Brazillians recently demonstrated, ground crews at launch facilities are also at risk.
This is proven by the enormous costs that are sunk into safety testing prior to unmanned launches.
Saying that we need to accept the risk - and view astronauts as expendable, won't come close to reducing the costs of spaceflight. Manned or otherwise.
By the way, spaceflight regulation isn't owned by NASA. Even for civilian launches, it's all owned by the USAF.
We lost Columbia because there was a technical problem that was a safety risk - and that safety risk was reclassified as a "maintenance issue". Had nothing to do with red tape, and everything to do with "fear of being the messenger".
X-33 had little or nothing to do with NASA. A contractor thought they could do "x", and when they tried, they found they could not. End of story. A worthwhile pursuit - and were it not for the vagaries of budget assignment, it would still be a worthwhile pursuit, because I belive that "x" (SSTO in a reusable craft) *CAN* be done - it just needs more time on the drawing board.
But NASA was not much involved beyond the requirements stage. They're certainly not responsible for the failure of the project.
The problem is that the hierarchical nature of management organizational structures is based on wolfpack mentality. I'm sure y'all could point out hundreds of anaecdotal exceptions from your own lives. But statistically speaking, I bet MOST structures are more like this - it's basic human behavior, we're biologically hardwired for this, and I bet it's been so since the age of the dinosaurs.
Mankind might aspire to spaceflight, but as individuals, we need to learn to interact without concern for our "status in the pack". That means - managers must listen to their subordinates. People must be judged by their actual expertise. Not their degree, or how expensive their suits are, or what car they drive.
Maybe computers will one day break this corporate hierarchy. But until that day, it's all "jocks versus geeks".
We just had this discussion yesterday in "another forum".
Windows has two things going for it - in terms of being a virus propagation platform, both of which are absent in Linux.
1. Closed source - it's well established among OSS believers, that CSS has as many developers as the vendor can hire to work on finding and fixing exploits. At what pace that happens is up to the vendor - but there's a point where profitability is compromised. For Open Source Software, exploit finding and fixing happens at a much faster pace - because there are literally millions of people "out there". No closed source vendor would, or even could, hire a the same sheer level of expertise and eyeballs. It's that simple. But that's the argument the parent of this post suggested.
2. Good default security settings. Windows wins this one hands down, over every other OS. Windows is the most vulnerable, out of the box. Period. No contest. This is something Microsoft COULD change, if they wanted to - but since they have Marketroids and MBA's making engineering decisions, this will likely not change.
So, based on #2 - even if Linux became the deFacto standard OS out there, 99% marketshare, the whole enchilada, perhaps there would be more Linux viruses - but they would not spread as quickly and widely, and the damage done would be minimal - because the default security settings on Linux (and just about any other OS you'd care to mention in this "what-if" scenario) are too tight.
Well, just look at how the human race has handled HIV infection.
In order to make sure big pharmaceutical company CEOs can keep adding to their personal antique sports car collections, we allow the virus to multiply and infect millions daily.
Instead of carpet bombing the 3rd world with free condoms and cheap generic drugs. But that's no profitable.
In fact, I just got a phone call from a buddy of mine, who's starting a new business selling kitchen cabinets to home builders. He didn't really know what he was asking, but basically, he had come into posession of some software, and he needed me to help pirate it. He says he intends to buy the software, in a couple of months, but right now, expenses are too tight, and his credit line is maxxed, so he wants to "evaluate" it for a month or two.
Basically, I have no problem with people freely copying and using software for non-profit or educational purposes, or even evaluation. In fact, I think there ought to be a law, and yes, I've worked my entire career in software development, and yes, I've had lean times where I've sorta wished there was a way to force people to pay more money.
In this case, the software is multi-thousands or dollars, highly specialized, integrated design and ordering software, and there's nothing else out there like it, on any platform. This software is Windows only.
So I sat him down and told him that yes, what he wanted to do was technically possible. (actually, rather trivial, in this case), I could likely find a serial number out there, and load it up for him. Then I told him about the BSA. His face turned white. I didn't tell him he should switch to Linux or anything like that - what's the point? He has no choice. Not in his field.
He has chosen to outsource this work to a guy he knows who has the same software, and will do the design work for a fee. The problem is, the guy sucks, he makes mistakes, and does not deliver on time, ever. But it's really his only option - in this case, the temporary piracy would amount to an involuntary loan from the software developer to my friend's business. It's probably in the software developer's interest to help him out here, because otherwise, the business might fail, and they'd have one less customer anyway. Rationalize it however you want. Bottom line is - IT is a very difficult thing for most small businesses - especially when you're talking about highly specialized software like this.
". ..but they haven't been able to do so successfully very often, because it was so much more effective to focus on advertizing than on good movies.. ..."
The reason for this (and the same phenomenon in almost every other industry I can think of except maybe Defense) is because - Advertisers Advertise. That's what they do for a living. They're good at it. And even their own product (advertisement) sucks, or is a bad value, they are good at advertising it to their customers (in this case, the movie studios).
I've seen this happen at my former employers. The guys in Marketing and Sales kept getting their budget increased and increased, while R&D kept getting cut. Our coders couldn't get a new machine on their desktop, while the sales guys got a junket to South Africa, and a gold watch commemorating the trip, all in order to celebrate a projected record sales year (which incidentally didn't turn out as projected, I might add).
This was the result of the fact that when the S&M guy's on the golf course with the CEO, he's selling his team, and his need for more dollars, while the VP of R&D is in the lab working on the product.
Baloney. Bad Films cannot be blamed on CGI. Bad Films proliferate and persist because they can get away with it. People pay money to see crap. Even crap they KNOW is crap. Free Market economies don't work when the consumer refuses to educate themselves.
I mean - even where professional journalistic movie reviews are not to be trusted due to conflicts of interest (Time Warner periodical reviewing Time Warner Movies, etc.) - you can still go to rottentomatoes dot com - ANYONE can, before the movie's released, and read dozens of credible reviews and ratings. Who is to be blamed then? The consumer who fails to educate themselves, who fails to grow a spine and resist going to the latest summer blockbuster, paying $10 for what he KNOWS is going to suck.
When consumers raise the bar on cinema quality, then consumers will get quality cinema. Blaming a certain technology is like saying - boy, cars sure have sucked since they started using CAD to design them. It's guilt by association. There's no cause-effect relationship there. Perhaps both poor quality, and use of cheaper production methods are BOTH a symptom of a common cause: Accountants optimizing the business without regard to overall consumer satisfaction.
But what does the consumer care? The reason they pay $10 to see Gigly, is so that come Monday, they won't feel left out at the water cooler when everyone is talking about how bad that movie sucked.
Incidentally, this is also why the Music industry continues to get away with producing such poor quality product. So the idiot consumers can crow about how cool they are to their friends, that they have the latest Brittney CD. Bah to that, and BAH! to them.' And Meh too!
One local gamma-ray burst, and all life in the entire solar system is wiped out. On Earth, under the sea, on Mars, on Europa, wherever. Sorry, start over.
I was raised, and I believe that many other Americans (certainly not all) were raised with a certain sense of responsibility as a consumer in a Free Market system.
The responsibility of the consumer is - to attempt to purchase the cheapest alternative, in order to "vote with your dollars" - to "reward" the vendor who does not gouge.
It's the people who are paying $60k for a car, $5k for a plasma screen, who are irresponsible consumers. They're the idiots who are driving prices for these things through the roof. If people wouldn't pay $5k for a plasma screen, you'd be able to go out to Best Buy and pick one up for $500. But since people seem to be willing to pay this much, that's about the bottom end of the price range - for a TV that will last for about 2 years before it starts dropping lots of pixels. Absolute dumb shit consumers drive up prices by not shopping smart.
Obviously, your friend cares about the computer market, but doesn't give a shit about cars or consumer electronics.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've listened to pretty much all of the local bands here. They all suck too.
Maybe try some John Norman books, the Gor series.
You forgot about the gerrymandering.
The problem these voting systems are intended to solve is man-hours-per vote. How much labor and cost is involved in an election. Supposedly will save us tax dollars. A few mil here, a few mil there. Nothing really major.
And no, they didn't count the ballots fast enough in Florida. At least the recounts. had they been counted faster, it's likely that results would have come in before the Supreme Court ruled. It may very well have changed the result of the election.
However - I'm still not in favor of electronic voting. I'm in favor of the SCOTUS butting-out, and sitting down and counting the damn votes. All of them. Including the 50,000 people (oddly enough, most were registered Democrats) who were illegally removed by a private company, because they shared the same surname, or birthday with a known felon.
The thing about broadband, is that when you look at the service in the US, and Australia, and then compare it to what's available in Japan, Korea, Canada, you see a marked difference in availability and price. In the US and Australia there's telecom monopolies which are killing competition, keeping prices high and availability low.
Should the government pay for everyone to have broadband?
NO.
Should the government send jack-booted thugs around to the telecom monoplies, and skin these fuckers alive as an example to evil monopolists everywhere?
I'm for that.
Hell, for that matter, someone could encode the protocol in the P2P software to flip a few insignificant bits at random upon download, so every downloaded copy will be unique, as far as MD5 is concerned.
what's to stop a "leecher" from simply flipping a few bits in his MP3 files? Sure, he'd have to know a little bit about the file format, but I'm sure that there are plenty of bits in your typical MP3 one could flip without having any significant impact on the music quality. From what I know of MD5, one bit ought to be enough to throw the dogs off the scent.
They should go back to developing for x86/Linux, to stop the console manufacturers from eating their lunch. In fact, some enterprising game developer should also come up with a stripped-down Linux boot CD format, so anyone with an x86 PC and a decent video card would be able to play their game, no matter what OS they run on their machine -
Wait, didn't someone else come up with idea like 5 years ago?
"MS obviously has an interest in stelling their software on Macs"
Didn't you mean "STALLING"?
(actually, if you look at the state of Office X, and IE Mac, it looks to be the case. MBU, what have you done for me LATELY?!)
PS: "Perfect pitch" to me means "being able to identify notes by ear without a reference" rather than "being able to sing on-key" (though I guess the two usually go together).
I suspect it means that to MOST people. That's what "perfect pitch" means. And there's a LOT of professional musicians, even talented ones, who do not have this ability. It's not really required for performance. But it's absolutely required for absolute mastery of the craft.
Of course, there are people with perfect pitch who can't carry a tune with their voice.
"For the ones who made it, Oregon was a good life"
yeah, but now, Oregon's forests are being stripped bare, and there's 10% unemployment.
Keep the indians, fire the chiefs?
How's that going to happen when the chiefs are in charge?
(by the way, I agree with everything you say, except "It is the opposite of what private industry does" - - that's not true. It's EXACTLY what private industry does, and has always done.)
It's not just the Astronauts they need to keep safe.
If the Shuttle guidance failed on launch, there's a guy at Patrick AFB sitting there with a big red button in front of a telemetry screen.
If the missile goes off course, the Range Safety Officer must destroy it. (as happened with the SRB's when Challenger exploded).
Now, if you were the RSO, and a fully-manned shuttle started flying wild - it would be YOUR job to press that button, to prevent the Shuttle from crashing into Orlando. Kill 7 astronauts to save potentially thousands of civillians, many of whom were probably not even aware that there was a launch that day.
As the Brazillians recently demonstrated, ground crews at launch facilities are also at risk.
This is proven by the enormous costs that are sunk into safety testing prior to unmanned launches.
Saying that we need to accept the risk - and view astronauts as expendable, won't come close to reducing the costs of spaceflight. Manned or otherwise.
By the way, spaceflight regulation isn't owned by NASA. Even for civilian launches, it's all owned by the USAF.
We lost Columbia because there was a technical problem that was a safety risk - and that safety risk was reclassified as a "maintenance issue". Had nothing to do with red tape, and everything to do with "fear of being the messenger".
X-33 had little or nothing to do with NASA.
A contractor thought they could do "x", and when they tried, they found they could not. End of story. A worthwhile pursuit - and were it not for the vagaries of budget assignment, it would still be a worthwhile pursuit, because I belive that "x" (SSTO in a reusable craft) *CAN* be done - it just needs more time on the drawing board.
But NASA was not much involved beyond the requirements stage. They're certainly not responsible for the failure of the project.
The problem is that the hierarchical nature of management organizational structures is based on wolfpack mentality. I'm sure y'all could point out hundreds of anaecdotal exceptions from your own lives. But statistically speaking, I bet MOST structures are more like this - it's basic human behavior, we're biologically hardwired for this, and I bet it's been so since the age of the dinosaurs.
Mankind might aspire to spaceflight,
but as individuals, we need to learn to interact without concern for our "status in the pack". That means - managers must listen to their subordinates. People must be judged by their actual expertise. Not their degree, or how expensive their suits are, or what car they drive.
Maybe computers will one day break this corporate hierarchy. But until that day, it's all "jocks versus geeks".
"I mean, c'mon, this is America -- aren't exploitation and cooperation the same thing?"
I think you meant to say:
"Enlightened Self-Interest"
We just had this discussion yesterday in "another forum".
Windows has two things going for it - in terms of being a virus propagation platform, both of which are absent in Linux.
1. Closed source - it's well established among OSS believers, that CSS has as many developers as the vendor can hire to work on finding and fixing exploits. At what pace that happens is up to the vendor - but there's a point where profitability is compromised. For Open Source Software, exploit finding and fixing happens at a much faster pace - because there are literally millions of people "out there". No closed source vendor would, or even could, hire a the same sheer level of expertise and eyeballs. It's that simple. But that's the argument the parent of this post suggested.
2. Good default security settings. Windows wins this one hands down, over every other OS. Windows is the most vulnerable, out of the box. Period. No contest. This is something Microsoft COULD change, if they wanted to - but since they have Marketroids and MBA's making engineering decisions, this will likely not change.
So, based on #2 - even if Linux became the deFacto standard OS out there, 99% marketshare, the whole enchilada, perhaps there would be more Linux viruses - but they would not spread as quickly and widely, and the damage done would be minimal - because the default security settings on Linux (and just about any other OS you'd care to mention in this "what-if" scenario) are too tight.
Well, just look at how the human race has handled HIV infection.
In order to make sure big pharmaceutical company CEOs can keep adding to their personal antique sports car collections, we allow the virus to multiply and infect millions daily.
Instead of carpet bombing the 3rd world with free condoms and cheap generic drugs. But that's no profitable.
In fact, I just got a phone call from a buddy of mine, who's starting a new business selling kitchen cabinets to home builders. He didn't really know what he was asking, but basically, he had come into posession of some software, and he needed me to help pirate it. He says he intends to buy the software, in a couple of months, but right now, expenses are too tight, and his credit line is maxxed, so he wants to "evaluate" it for a month or two.
Basically, I have no problem with people freely copying and using software for non-profit or educational purposes, or even evaluation. In fact, I think there ought to be a law, and yes, I've worked my entire career in software development, and yes, I've had lean times where I've sorta wished there was a way to force people to pay more money.
In this case, the software is multi-thousands or dollars, highly specialized, integrated design and ordering software, and there's nothing else out there like it, on any platform. This software is Windows only.
So I sat him down and told him that yes, what he wanted to do was technically possible. (actually, rather trivial, in this case), I could likely find a serial number out there, and load it up for him. Then I told him about the BSA. His face turned white. I didn't tell him he should switch to Linux or anything like that - what's the point? He has no choice. Not in his field.
He has chosen to outsource this work to a guy he knows who has the same software, and will do the design work for a fee. The problem is, the guy sucks, he makes mistakes, and does not deliver on time, ever. But it's really his only option - in this case, the temporary piracy would amount to an involuntary loan from the software developer to my friend's business. It's probably in the software developer's interest to help him out here, because otherwise, the business might fail, and they'd have one less customer anyway. Rationalize it however you want. Bottom line is - IT is a very difficult thing for most small businesses - especially when you're talking about highly specialized software like this.
" I wonder if the RIAA has the same hyper-fast word-of-mouth problem with CDs, and it isn't the file sharing."
Might actually be the Napster chat functions.
"hey d00d, can I download this stuff?"
"sure, but it suXX0rz, I just listened to it."
"/me vomits"
". . .but they haven't been able to do so successfully very often, because it was so much more effective to focus on advertizing than on good movies.. . .."
The reason for this (and the same phenomenon in almost every other industry I can think of except maybe Defense) is because - Advertisers Advertise. That's what they do for a living. They're good at it. And even their own product (advertisement) sucks, or is a bad value, they are good at advertising it to their customers (in this case, the movie studios).
I've seen this happen at my former employers. The guys in Marketing and Sales kept getting their budget increased and increased, while R&D kept getting cut. Our coders couldn't get a new machine on their desktop, while the sales guys got a junket to South Africa, and a gold watch commemorating the trip, all in order to celebrate a projected record sales year (which incidentally didn't turn out as projected, I might add).
This was the result of the fact that when the S&M guy's on the golf course with the CEO, he's selling his team, and his need for more dollars, while the VP of R&D is in the lab working on the product.
Business is good at Mastrubating.
Baloney.
Bad Films cannot be blamed on CGI. Bad Films proliferate and persist because they can get away with it. People pay money to see crap. Even crap they KNOW is crap. Free Market economies don't work when the consumer refuses to educate themselves.
I mean - even where professional journalistic movie reviews are not to be trusted due to conflicts of interest (Time Warner periodical reviewing Time Warner Movies, etc.) - you can still go to rottentomatoes dot com - ANYONE can, before the movie's released, and read dozens of credible reviews and ratings. Who is to be blamed then? The consumer who fails to educate themselves, who fails to grow a spine and resist going to the latest summer blockbuster, paying $10 for what he KNOWS is going to suck.
When consumers raise the bar on cinema quality, then consumers will get quality cinema. Blaming a certain technology is like saying - boy, cars sure have sucked since they started using CAD to design them. It's guilt by association. There's no cause-effect relationship there. Perhaps both poor quality, and use of cheaper production methods are BOTH a symptom of a common cause: Accountants optimizing the business without regard to overall consumer satisfaction.
But what does the consumer care? The reason they pay $10 to see Gigly, is so that come Monday, they won't feel left out at the water cooler when everyone is talking about how bad that movie sucked.
Incidentally, this is also why the Music industry continues to get away with producing such poor quality product. So the idiot consumers can crow about how cool they are to their friends, that they have the latest Brittney CD. Bah to that, and BAH! to them.' And Meh too!
One local gamma-ray burst, and all life in the entire solar system is wiped out. On Earth, under the sea, on Mars, on Europa, wherever. Sorry, start over.
It's that color, but it's a 350MHz slot loader. Do I remember exactly when? Hell, it was over a year ago. It's all a blur to me. :)
With the PC - your friend gave a shit.
I was raised, and I believe that many other Americans (certainly not all) were raised with a certain sense of responsibility as a consumer in a Free Market system.
The responsibility of the consumer is - to attempt to purchase the cheapest alternative, in order to "vote with your dollars" - to "reward" the vendor who does not gouge.
It's the people who are paying $60k for a car, $5k for a plasma screen, who are irresponsible consumers. They're the idiots who are driving prices for these things through the roof. If people wouldn't pay $5k for a plasma screen, you'd be able to go out to Best Buy and pick one up for $500. But since people seem to be willing to pay this much, that's about the bottom end of the price range - for a TV that will last for about 2 years before it starts dropping lots of pixels. Absolute dumb shit consumers drive up prices by not shopping smart.
Obviously, your friend cares about the computer market, but doesn't give a shit about cars or consumer electronics.