No, but do this instead: send in an absentee ballot. They have to manually count it.
Don't count on it. In the 2000 election it was revealed that in many elections officials do not even bother to count absentee ballots unless they think they will influence the election results. IN Florida, they were not counted at all until after the fact even though there were 20,000 of them and the election would have been won or lost by at most a couple hundred votes. If diebold delivers the kind of landslide they have been "joking" about it will be unlikely that absentee ballots would be counted.
Perhaps professionals who hold important positions in serious matters easily prone to corruption should not joke about their potential to perform such illegal activities.
Especially when they produce a product which produces erroneous election results in which democratic candidates receive a negative number of votes and the total number of votes for Republican candidates is far larger than the number of voters. OOPS.
In the end, nobody's forcing the states to buy Diebold's machines.
Actually, they are. The purchase and use of these machines is being mandated by law. To be fair, in every election the equipment to be used is specified explicitly and in detail. Of course the applicable election laws have been in many cases broken by Diebold when they modified the machines after they had been tested and certified for use but before the election, meaning that in effect uncertified eq was being used.
So, yes, *someone* is forcing the use of these machines. Those someones are Republican politicians who therefore have direct financial ties to the company (by dint of their being Republican and the company's contributions to that party). And as someone else pointed out the voters are not being consulted or even informed on the issue. Heck, unless you read slashdot or, I dunno, indymedia or something you probably have no idea of the depth of this scandal if you even know about it at all. CNN has focused on scandals with butterfly ballots and punchcard machines, as well as the erroneous idea that butterfly ballots are inherently evil (they are not, though the one for FL2000 was poorly designed).
To be fair, it is probably difficult to understand how bad this is without at least some understanding of the technical issues involved. Especially since what seems to fly over everyone's head is that there have been freely available secure iimplementations of this application for many many decades, and the field is well defined within the body of academic research. This is not something new that diebold invented. They have, however, invented new and interesting ways to fuck it up royally through severe incompetence.
Ok, their machines may be a bit flaky, but do you have any evidence of "draconian agendas"?
I think there is way too much hysteria around electronic voting.
Oh, I don't know, I mean I try not to be paranoid or anything, but:
Diebold's CEO is a staunch ardent Republican (as are the rest of the management, at least teh officers) and by all accounts the company tries only to hire Republicans.
Diebold's CEO not only donates huge amounts of money to the Republican party, but has publicly promised that the machines will be key in delivering 100% of the vote to the Republican party.
The above has of course resulted in Republican politicians favouring Diebold machines over competition which is more secure and less scandalous at the moment.
Recent scandals with diebold machines have included election results in which Democratic candidates who were not even running received a very large negative number of votes.
The system is known to be easily hackable, insecure, and best of all untraceable when there are a plethora of secure traceable implementation options available. Computer voting is not a new concept for real computer scientists. Yet Diebold insists on going their way. This represents at the very least bad faith on their part but honestly it does look bad when they are deliberatley pushing a system that can be easily manipulated when they have a stated agenda and are using a certain party which they overtly support to shove their solution down the citizens' throats. Then there is the matter of the lack of reporting on these stories by media who are beholden to the same corporate interests as said party.
Call me crazy, but it smells pretty fishy in Diebold-land.
The part about "on penalty of perjury" refers to claim that the person sending the letter, usually a lawyer, represents the injured party. It has nothing to do with the contents of the letter. Check out 17 USC 1202 for the details.
This is frequently claimed on slashdot, and it is dead wrong. By claiming under penalty of perjury to represent the copyright holder of the work in question, they certainly are claiming that the offending item is a) under copyright and b) either their work or the work of their client. If these things are not true then they should be prosecuted for perjury. Lack of due diligence should not be explained away in a puff of logic.
It's an appeal, it's not a second trial, it's not Double Jeopardy. Read the other responses to your posts. It's just a fresh set of eyes looking at the original proceedings to see if any mistakes were made. The U.S. allows appeals too, get over it. A free society recognises that both sides must have equal rights under the law. If the defendant can appeal then so can the plaintiff. Or perhaps you'd prefer a system where one side has more rights than the other, champion of freedom that you appear to be.
The US does not allow the prosecutor to appeal in a criminal trial. You are thinking of civil trials. The problems in civil trials are a good example of why the government should not be given a chance to appeal to itself.
Oh it could be worse. I could be running Linux on my PS2 to go to porn sites on the net. Then I could go to slashdot and discuss playing mame under Linux on my PS2, and do so. That is just too weird for me.:)
"Beings with advanced technology could obtain all the resources we have on earth without resorting to warfare, so why would they bother us?"
Slavery perhaps? Since they are an advanced race they would probably need workers to keep themselves at such an advanced state.
Already covered. We are currently advanced to the state that machines do far better work than slaves. Look at cotton production in the South now compared to what it was in the 19th century. We are almost advanced to the point where we can genetically engineer workers if we so chose, so a more advanced civilization would likely be capable of doing so as well.
Then there is the question of philosophical sophistication, which of course is a question for philosophers to answer; that is, since our civilization has advanced to the stage where slavery and warfare are in themselves philosophically and morally abhorent to us, and our philosophy has therefore sought an end to these things, is a more advanced civilization likely to have these problems? That of course relies on whether some areas of progress are absolute and whether alien philosophy is akin in some ways therefore to ours.
The only reason I can think of for an alien race to enslave our planet is not a reason at all because it is illogical, though this doe snot make it unreasonable. This reason being, of course, the simple satisfaction of subjugation itself. The feeling of enjoyment some would derive from placing sentient beings under their boot and/or torturing/enslaving them. There are certainly humans who enjoy this and act on it even in situations where it is not logical to do so (for instance even when it was proven that it was less economically viable to use slave labour than it was to use paid labour, and that slaves were more expensive, slavery continued). If a more advanced civilization is sadistic in nature, we are screwed.:P
The point you miss is that if you win, the costs of your lawyers, plus damages are paid by government too. They're wasting their own money, not yours. If you don't have the funds to hire a lawyer, government will provide you with funds.
The big difference with the US is that it is a huge financial risk to have to fight a trial in the US.
Only a socialist European could make an argument like that. They are wasting whose money again? It's not their money they are wasting; they waste tax dollars, which belong to the citizens. As for the cost of trials, well, public defenders are provided in the US as well, except that they suck. A few have professed thet Norwegian public defenders do not suck, and I cannot speak to that specifically, but it really does not mitigate the problem of double jeopardy in the least.
When a person is accused of a crime, they are often incarcerated for the duration of their trial, and this coupled with the public accusation of the crime seriously interferes with their life and livelihood. If they are found innocent this interference should end, period. This is also why in the USA people are considered innocent until proven guilty, though we find it hard to fight the human nature to presume guilt.
Civil trials cost lots of money in the US. Criminal trials cost money if you require a decent lawyer, or if you lose (because in many states people are required to pay rent for their jail cell, restitution, etc).
Why should it be that a prosecutor could not appeal? There's a multi-level system because it is acknowledged that mistakes may be made. And it really does not matter to me if that error means that someone is found guilty when he is innocent or that a murderer is let go - that error must be corrected by bringing the case to a higher level court.
In the US the prosecutor cannot appeal because of the double jeopardy clause in our Constitution. It is considered one of our basic civil rights that we cannot be tried twice for the same crime. Now, in an earlier post I pointed out that this is a right which has eroded and people find ways around it, but it is still considered an important right on this side of the water. This is why we are having trouble with the idea that in Norway the prosecutor can appeal.
So, let me get this straight : a guy does something that raises suspicion and gets a trial. He's found innocent. So, he's being tried again... and again ? Why don't they directly send him to the electric chair ? After all : they won't stop until he's found guilty, will they ?
Well, this is why in the USA we have the concept of double jeopardy. I say concept because the right to protection from double jeopardy has been seriously eroded to the point of being almost a joke in the USA. For instance, it has variously been interpreted not to protect one from prosecution for crimes which are not capital crimes, not to protect one from civil suits on the same crime, not to protect one from being proseucted for the same act as a different "crime," etc. But the one thing it is supposed to stop even now is what Johansen is having now, namely, being tried twice in the same kind of court for the same act interpreted as the same crime by the same prosecuting agency.
There are some instances of this happening in the US, but they are extreme cases, such as that of Byron DeLaBeckwith being tried again for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers after it was proven that the original trial in which he was found innocent was flawed by prejudicial proceedings and evidence being withheld therefore, among other things. Anyway, it is ridiculous that they are trying someone twice for the same crime under these circumstances and shows that there are still some rights Europeans are denied which USians have.
Would it be OK to close the eyes and cover the ears? How about going out of the room for a pitstop or to fetch a glass of water?
You know it is funny now, but in _1984_ it was predicted that such treasonous acts would be severely punished, as would "off" switches on televisions. We are headed down that road now, but with the corporations acting as Big Brother since supposedly the government is prohibited from acting in this way but corporations are not.
BTW IMHO that, too is a load of baloney. Why should corporations be allowed to violate a person's civil rights just because they are not the government? And why do so many slashdotters think that is a good idea?
"Oh my $DEITY..... they're trying to make fast-forwarding past advertisements illegal?!? "
It is already illegal in the U.S. The ads autoplay, and you cannot stop them. Unless, of course, you reverse engineer a DVD player that lets you control whatever you like -- which is illegal under the DMCA. It is illegal to attempt to bypass an encrypted system, however they care to define it. it Even ROT13 qualifies as encryption, so the vendors don't even have to try very hard.
I watch all my DVDs on my PlayStation 2. I have not found a movie yet that did not let me go to the menu during the autoplayed comercials, and then I can go to chapter 1. On many DVDs, the adverts only play when the menu is loading the first time and are not part of any chapter. The ones that chap my hide are the DVDs where chapter 1 contains both the beginning of the movie and the previews/ads.
I don't think I have been able to fast forward through the FBI warning but I usually don't try because I am not that impatient and some movies actually put something funny in the FBI warning. I use the FBI warning as a brief intermission to settle in and prepare to watch the movie.
I have not ever watched a Disney DVD on my PS2 so I do not know if the draconian tactics (specified above) which they employ work/don't work on the PS2.
One annoyance I have about the PS2's DVD feature. I do not have any children and even if I did I probably would not resort to locking content. But the Parental Control feature is not configurable in any way (and is only accessable by putting in a "bad" video which also supports this feature). When I put in the first DVD that fit the above description, I was asked to put in "the" password. Since I never set a password, I was a little taken aback, but I put a number in there anyway and this became my password, FOREVER. I cannot change it or turn this feature off. The funny thing is that porn flicks do not require this password but some rated PG and above commercial movies do (not all). Games do not support the parental control lock. So it is both an annoyance and a useless feature.
If I wanted to keep my kids from watching something I would lock it in the gun safe. After all, if they get in there we have bigger trouble than them playing GTA:VC.
Why the variable? If it's your deity, the identity should be a known value. If you are an athiest or agnostic, you don't actually have a deity to address in such a manner.
Actually for an agnostic, $DEITY is by definition undefined... IMHO the use of $DEITY makes sense because it allows the user (the reader of the comment) to insert the value of their choice.
Oh yeah.. like I would trust NSA ? screw you guys!;)
I know you are probably joking, but you know, you don't have to trust the NSA. You can read the source code and compile the lot from scratch. Then you are trusting your coding skills...
I agree that it does, but generally only in situations just like you described - faulty hardware. It's that with XP they've generally moved to more graceful ways of dealing with problems. These days, a BSOD is about equivalent to a kernel panic under Linux.
Well, to be pedantic, it was always equivalent to a kernel panic under Linux. Perhaps now it happens less often and is therefore roughly as rare, but IMHO kernel panics in Linux not caused by hardware are much more rare than Windows BSODs not caused by hardware unless you are doing driver development, in which case both OSs shoudl crash roughly as often;).
I don't. That means we can be invaded at any moment by an advanced race. If we are alone, we can't be invaded. Of course we might not be alone, but we might be the most advanced race in the universe.
If they are truly advanced they would not bother invading us. Firstly because they would have given up on war which is only destructive to civilization and secondly because there is nothing for us to offer an advanced race. Even warlike aliens would probably see little point in attacking a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere which holds no colonies and is in fact not even united on its own surface. Beings with advanced technology could obtain all the resources we have on earth without resorting to warfare, so why would they bother us?
Really, we probably aren't that important to anyone but ourselves.
Ahh yes, well, aren't you spiffy... "Look, goddamnit, it's an ATM. It only has to count to 200, add and subtract, send a 12 digit number and a four digit number and get a binary response. If you are not a spiffy enough programmer to do that in 640k, you do not deserve to write for an ATM machine. KISS is an important principle especially when it comes to security."
Except, no, that's not good enough. If all things being equal, that's all your bank provided at the ATM, I'd stick with my credit union.
Things my credit union ATM's do:
Allow me to setup a preference so that on the pin entry screen I can press an alternate button and get a predetermined amount of cash. This saves a lot of time. Insert card. Enter six digit pin. Press cash button instead of Enter. Bamo. Cash. Card out. I drive away.
Allow me to transfer money between accounts.
Allow me to pay my mortgage and/or personal loan from any of my accounts.
Get a "mini-statement" of the month's activity to date.
Change my PIN.
Make deposits.
You simplify things to a point of silliness. Your vision is stuck in the late 80's. That's what ATMs used to do. Banks want people to really use ATMs. They want to offload expensive branches and employees into nifty banking centers called ATMs. It needs to be more than a "money machine". It needs to be banking center.
You program your ATM, and see what banks will buy it. Meanwhile while people like you are barking that so-and-so don't deserve to be programming companies like Diebold are eating up the marketplace. Think you can do better? Provide all the connectivity, functionality and still sell a more secure product? Then do it. No jabbering, no equovocations. Get out and do it. Make it happen. It's simple according to you.
After you've worked on it a few years come back to me and we can talk. It's not simple. That's why places like Diebold and other banks use Windows. Because using XPE is easy. It's fast and cheap to get a box out the door. Perfect? Nope. Good enough? Looks that way.
So you stick to KISS. But I won't be investing any banks that buy your KISS'd ATM. And I won't be doing business with them. Frankly, ATMs that can only dispense cash suck.
Obviously you are not a programmer. None of the features you are talking about are given to you by using Windows. They are all features of the ATM application and, again, could easily be done in 640k or less. All you are talking about is a few extra menu items which, under the hood, do the same thing. From the user standpoint there is additional functionality, but from an application standpoint there is not.
Additionally, it is obviously not good enough to use Windows when this causes as much downtime as it has, not just from the various worms which have ravaged whole banks, but from the world-famous bluescreens which never appeared when atms used the more robust operating systems they used to use.
BUt really, all these atms need is one application and some loading code. They do not need a full operating system just to do what they do.
Of course the cracker [=! hacker] could do one better and jumble money out of accounts and into others, like this:
Any account with balance less than $50, add whatever amount you can get from the next account. rs.movenext
Of course, the bank will not have been technically robbed, since they did not lose any money, but the amount of 800 calls would be just staggering. Imagine you find your bank account $500 short, and you call, and get a busy signal? You'be be driving down to their office right away, wearing a frown like at a funeral.
DOSing the bank! whoa... But the only problem with this plan is that it does not benefit mr cracker except by giving him a big laugh when he turns on CNN. Well, that, and creating some chaos and mayhem... Still, that is part of my point. Most of these worms and viruses lately have only been annoying pranks. But it is only a matter of time before someone does something truly nasty with this stuff.
This is symantical syntax. Obviously anybody who can build and set a bomb is a demolitions expert (though one might argue you don't acquire too much expertise as a suicide bomber...waste of time, really). And obviously anybody who attacks your country using a terror activity (defined as "violence committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting demands") is going to be referred to as a terrorist. Doesn't mean you can't be both.
No, everyone who can build and set a bomb is *not* a demolitions expert. Is everyone who changes their own car battery a mechanic? If you clip your toenails doe sit make you a surgeon? Criminey! This is exactly the slippery slope you head down when you allow people who know nothing about your profession to define terms that apply to your profession.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but do this instead: send in an absentee ballot. They have to manually count it.
Don't count on it. In the 2000 election it was revealed that in many elections officials do not even bother to count absentee ballots unless they think they will influence the election results. IN Florida, they were not counted at all until after the fact even though there were 20,000 of them and the election would have been won or lost by at most a couple hundred votes. If diebold delivers the kind of landslide they have been "joking" about it will be unlikely that absentee ballots would be counted.
Perhaps professionals who hold important positions in serious matters easily prone to corruption should not joke about their potential to perform such illegal activities.
Especially when they produce a product which produces erroneous election results in which democratic candidates receive a negative number of votes and the total number of votes for Republican candidates is far larger than the number of voters. OOPS.
In the end, nobody's forcing the states to buy Diebold's machines.
Actually, they are. The purchase and use of these machines is being mandated by law. To be fair, in every election the equipment to be used is specified explicitly and in detail. Of course the applicable election laws have been in many cases broken by Diebold when they modified the machines after they had been tested and certified for use but before the election, meaning that in effect uncertified eq was being used.
So, yes, *someone* is forcing the use of these machines. Those someones are Republican politicians who therefore have direct financial ties to the company (by dint of their being Republican and the company's contributions to that party). And as someone else pointed out the voters are not being consulted or even informed on the issue. Heck, unless you read slashdot or, I dunno, indymedia or something you probably have no idea of the depth of this scandal if you even know about it at all. CNN has focused on scandals with butterfly ballots and punchcard machines, as well as the erroneous idea that butterfly ballots are inherently evil (they are not, though the one for FL2000 was poorly designed).
To be fair, it is probably difficult to understand how bad this is without at least some understanding of the technical issues involved. Especially since what seems to fly over everyone's head is that there have been freely available secure iimplementations of this application for many many decades, and the field is well defined within the body of academic research. This is not something new that diebold invented. They have, however, invented new and interesting ways to fuck it up royally through severe incompetence.
Ok, their machines may be a bit flaky, but do you have any evidence of "draconian agendas"?
I think there is way too much hysteria around electronic voting.
Oh, I don't know, I mean I try not to be paranoid or anything, but:
Diebold's CEO is a staunch ardent Republican (as are the rest of the management, at least teh officers) and by all accounts the company tries only to hire Republicans.
Diebold's CEO not only donates huge amounts of money to the Republican party, but has publicly promised that the machines will be key in delivering 100% of the vote to the Republican party.
The above has of course resulted in Republican politicians favouring Diebold machines over competition which is more secure and less scandalous at the moment.
Recent scandals with diebold machines have included election results in which Democratic candidates who were not even running received a very large negative number of votes.
The system is known to be easily hackable, insecure, and best of all untraceable when there are a plethora of secure traceable implementation options available. Computer voting is not a new concept for real computer scientists. Yet Diebold insists on going their way. This represents at the very least bad faith on their part but honestly it does look bad when they are deliberatley pushing a system that can be easily manipulated when they have a stated agenda and are using a certain party which they overtly support to shove their solution down the citizens' throats. Then there is the matter of the lack of reporting on these stories by media who are beholden to the same corporate interests as said party.
Call me crazy, but it smells pretty fishy in Diebold-land.
The part about "on penalty of perjury" refers to claim that the person sending the letter, usually a lawyer, represents the injured party. It has nothing to do with the contents of the letter. Check out 17 USC 1202 for the details.
This is frequently claimed on slashdot, and it is dead wrong. By claiming under penalty of perjury to represent the copyright holder of the work in question, they certainly are claiming that the offending item is a) under copyright and b) either their work or the work of their client. If these things are not true then they should be prosecuted for perjury. Lack of due diligence should not be explained away in a puff of logic.
Then you should compile it your self. You have the source, what are you waiting for?
Oh, I dunno, a free as in beer (speech would not hurt) compiler for Windows perhaps?
A Jew, an Irishman, and a Nigger walk into a bar so I shoot the Jew and Nigger.
Funny, eh?
Not really. Were you the Irishman?
"A second trial"
It's an appeal, it's not a second trial, it's not Double Jeopardy. Read the other responses to your posts. It's just a fresh set of eyes looking at the original proceedings to see if any mistakes were made. The U.S. allows appeals too, get over it. A free society recognises that both sides must have equal rights under the law. If the defendant can appeal then so can the plaintiff. Or perhaps you'd prefer a system where one side has more rights than the other, champion of freedom that you appear to be.
The US does not allow the prosecutor to appeal in a criminal trial. You are thinking of civil trials. The problems in civil trials are a good example of why the government should not be given a chance to appeal to itself.
Watching porn on my PS2. heh, heh, heh
Oh it could be worse. I could be running Linux on my PS2 to go to porn sites on the net. Then I could go to slashdot and discuss playing mame under Linux on my PS2, and do so. That is just too weird for me. :)
"Beings with advanced technology could obtain all the resources we have on earth without resorting to warfare, so why would they bother us?"
Slavery perhaps? Since they are an advanced race they would probably need workers to keep themselves at such an advanced state.
Already covered. We are currently advanced to the state that machines do far better work than slaves. Look at cotton production in the South now compared to what it was in the 19th century. We are almost advanced to the point where we can genetically engineer workers if we so chose, so a more advanced civilization would likely be capable of doing so as well.
Then there is the question of philosophical sophistication, which of course is a question for philosophers to answer; that is, since our civilization has advanced to the stage where slavery and warfare are in themselves philosophically and morally abhorent to us, and our philosophy has therefore sought an end to these things, is a more advanced civilization likely to have these problems? That of course relies on whether some areas of progress are absolute and whether alien philosophy is akin in some ways therefore to ours.
The only reason I can think of for an alien race to enslave our planet is not a reason at all because it is illogical, though this doe snot make it unreasonable. This reason being, of course, the simple satisfaction of subjugation itself. The feeling of enjoyment some would derive from placing sentient beings under their boot and/or torturing/enslaving them. There are certainly humans who enjoy this and act on it even in situations where it is not logical to do so (for instance even when it was proven that it was less economically viable to use slave labour than it was to use paid labour, and that slaves were more expensive, slavery continued). If a more advanced civilization is sadistic in nature, we are screwed. :P
The point you miss is that if you win, the costs of your lawyers, plus damages are paid by government too. They're wasting their own money, not yours. If you don't have the funds to hire a lawyer, government will provide you with funds.
The big difference with the US is that it is a huge financial risk to have to fight a trial in the US.
Only a socialist European could make an argument like that. They are wasting whose money again? It's not their money they are wasting; they waste tax dollars, which belong to the citizens. As for the cost of trials, well, public defenders are provided in the US as well, except that they suck. A few have professed thet Norwegian public defenders do not suck, and I cannot speak to that specifically, but it really does not mitigate the problem of double jeopardy in the least.
When a person is accused of a crime, they are often incarcerated for the duration of their trial, and this coupled with the public accusation of the crime seriously interferes with their life and livelihood. If they are found innocent this interference should end, period. This is also why in the USA people are considered innocent until proven guilty, though we find it hard to fight the human nature to presume guilt.
Civil trials cost lots of money in the US. Criminal trials cost money if you require a decent lawyer, or if you lose (because in many states people are required to pay rent for their jail cell, restitution, etc).
Why should it be that a prosecutor could not appeal? There's a multi-level system because it is acknowledged that mistakes may be made. And it really does not matter to me if that error means that someone is found guilty when he is innocent or that a murderer is let go - that error must be corrected by bringing the case to a higher level court.
In the US the prosecutor cannot appeal because of the double jeopardy clause in our Constitution. It is considered one of our basic civil rights that we cannot be tried twice for the same crime. Now, in an earlier post I pointed out that this is a right which has eroded and people find ways around it, but it is still considered an important right on this side of the water. This is why we are having trouble with the idea that in Norway the prosecutor can appeal.
So, let me get this straight : a guy does something that raises suspicion and gets a trial.
He's found innocent.
So, he's being tried again... and again ?
Why don't they directly send him to the electric chair ?
After all : they won't stop until he's found guilty, will they ?
Well, this is why in the USA we have the concept of double jeopardy. I say concept because the right to protection from double jeopardy has been seriously eroded to the point of being almost a joke in the USA. For instance, it has variously been interpreted not to protect one from prosecution for crimes which are not capital crimes, not to protect one from civil suits on the same crime, not to protect one from being proseucted for the same act as a different "crime," etc. But the one thing it is supposed to stop even now is what Johansen is having now, namely, being tried twice in the same kind of court for the same act interpreted as the same crime by the same prosecuting agency.
There are some instances of this happening in the US, but they are extreme cases, such as that of Byron DeLaBeckwith being tried again for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers after it was proven that the original trial in which he was found innocent was flawed by prejudicial proceedings and evidence being withheld therefore, among other things. Anyway, it is ridiculous that they are trying someone twice for the same crime under these circumstances and shows that there are still some rights Europeans are denied which USians have.
"prevent fast-forwarding over advertisements"
Would it be OK to close the eyes and cover the ears? How about going out of the room for a pitstop or to fetch a glass of water?
You know it is funny now, but in _1984_ it was predicted that such treasonous acts would be severely punished, as would "off" switches on televisions. We are headed down that road now, but with the corporations acting as Big Brother since supposedly the government is prohibited from acting in this way but corporations are not.
BTW IMHO that, too is a load of baloney. Why should corporations be allowed to violate a person's civil rights just because they are not the government? And why do so many slashdotters think that is a good idea?
"Oh my $DEITY..... they're trying to make fast-forwarding past advertisements illegal?!? "
It is already illegal in the U.S. The ads autoplay, and you cannot stop them. Unless, of course, you reverse engineer a DVD player that lets you control whatever you like -- which is illegal under the DMCA. It is illegal to attempt to bypass an encrypted system, however they care to define it. it Even ROT13 qualifies as encryption, so the vendors don't even have to try very hard.
I watch all my DVDs on my PlayStation 2. I have not found a movie yet that did not let me go to the menu during the autoplayed comercials, and then I can go to chapter 1. On many DVDs, the adverts only play when the menu is loading the first time and are not part of any chapter. The ones that chap my hide are the DVDs where chapter 1 contains both the beginning of the movie and the previews/ads.
I don't think I have been able to fast forward through the FBI warning but I usually don't try because I am not that impatient and some movies actually put something funny in the FBI warning. I use the FBI warning as a brief intermission to settle in and prepare to watch the movie.
I have not ever watched a Disney DVD on my PS2 so I do not know if the draconian tactics (specified above) which they employ work/don't work on the PS2.
One annoyance I have about the PS2's DVD feature. I do not have any children and even if I did I probably would not resort to locking content. But the Parental Control feature is not configurable in any way (and is only accessable by putting in a "bad" video which also supports this feature). When I put in the first DVD that fit the above description, I was asked to put in "the" password. Since I never set a password, I was a little taken aback, but I put a number in there anyway and this became my password, FOREVER. I cannot change it or turn this feature off. The funny thing is that porn flicks do not require this password but some rated PG and above commercial movies do (not all). Games do not support the parental control lock. So it is both an annoyance and a useless feature.
If I wanted to keep my kids from watching something I would lock it in the gun safe. After all, if they get in there we have bigger trouble than them playing GTA:VC.
"Oh my $DEITY"
Why the variable? If it's your deity, the identity should be a known value. If you are an athiest or agnostic, you don't actually have a deity to address in such a manner.
Actually for an agnostic, $DEITY is by definition undefined... IMHO the use of $DEITY makes sense because it allows the user (the reader of the comment) to insert the value of their choice.
"How's that mystery meat you're chewing on?"
Kind of takes like a worm. A Blaster worm.
So that's what Bill Gates is calling his unit these days, eh?
Oh yeah.. like I would trust NSA ? screw you guys! ;)
I know you are probably joking, but you know, you don't have to trust the NSA. You can read the source code and compile the lot from scratch. Then you are trusting your coding skills...
I agree that it does, but generally only in situations just like you described - faulty hardware. It's that with XP they've generally moved to more graceful ways of dealing with problems. These days, a BSOD is about equivalent to a kernel panic under Linux.
Well, to be pedantic, it was always equivalent to a kernel panic under Linux. Perhaps now it happens less often and is therefore roughly as rare, but IMHO kernel panics in Linux not caused by hardware are much more rare than Windows BSODs not caused by hardware unless you are doing driver development, in which case both OSs shoudl crash roughly as often ;).
I don't. That means we can be invaded at any moment by an advanced race. If we are alone, we can't be invaded. Of course we might not be alone, but we might be the most advanced race in the universe.
If they are truly advanced they would not bother invading us. Firstly because they would have given up on war which is only destructive to civilization and secondly because there is nothing for us to offer an advanced race. Even warlike aliens would probably see little point in attacking a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere which holds no colonies and is in fact not even united on its own surface. Beings with advanced technology could obtain all the resources we have on earth without resorting to warfare, so why would they bother us?
Really, we probably aren't that important to anyone but ourselves.
"the mods probably don't remember that Dune was a satellite of Vega"
Slashdot Rule 1: Don't assume that the mods remember anything
No, Rule number one is we don't talk about moderation club outside of moderation club
Ahh yes, well, aren't you spiffy...
"Look, goddamnit, it's an ATM. It only has to count to 200, add and subtract, send a 12 digit number and a four digit number and get a binary response. If you are not a spiffy enough programmer to do that in 640k, you do not deserve to write for an ATM machine. KISS is an important principle especially when it comes to security."
Except, no, that's not good enough. If all things being equal, that's all your bank provided at the ATM, I'd stick with my credit union.
Things my credit union ATM's do:
Allow me to setup a preference so that on the pin entry screen I can press an alternate button and get a predetermined amount of cash. This saves a lot of time. Insert card. Enter six digit pin. Press cash button instead of Enter. Bamo. Cash. Card out. I drive away.
Allow me to transfer money between accounts.
Allow me to pay my mortgage and/or personal loan from any of my accounts.
Get a "mini-statement" of the month's activity to date.
Change my PIN.
Make deposits.
You simplify things to a point of silliness. Your vision is stuck in the late 80's. That's what ATMs used to do. Banks want people to really use ATMs. They want to offload expensive branches and employees into nifty banking centers called ATMs. It needs to be more than a "money machine". It needs to be banking center.
You program your ATM, and see what banks will buy it. Meanwhile while people like you are barking that so-and-so don't deserve to be programming companies like Diebold are eating up the marketplace. Think you can do better? Provide all the connectivity, functionality and still sell a more secure product? Then do it. No jabbering, no equovocations. Get out and do it. Make it happen. It's simple according to you.
After you've worked on it a few years come back to me and we can talk. It's not simple. That's why places like Diebold and other banks use Windows. Because using XPE is easy. It's fast and cheap to get a box out the door. Perfect? Nope. Good enough? Looks that way.
So you stick to KISS. But I won't be investing any banks that buy your KISS'd ATM. And I won't be doing business with them. Frankly, ATMs that can only dispense cash suck.
Obviously you are not a programmer. None of the features you are talking about are given to you by using Windows. They are all features of the ATM application and, again, could easily be done in 640k or less. All you are talking about is a few extra menu items which, under the hood, do the same thing. From the user standpoint there is additional functionality, but from an application standpoint there is not.
Additionally, it is obviously not good enough to use Windows when this causes as much downtime as it has, not just from the various worms which have ravaged whole banks, but from the world-famous bluescreens which never appeared when atms used the more robust operating systems they used to use.
BUt really, all these atms need is one application and some loading code. They do not need a full operating system just to do what they do.
Of course the cracker [=! hacker] could do one better and jumble money out of accounts and into others, like this:
Any account with balance less than $50, add whatever amount you can get from the next account.
rs.movenext
Of course, the bank will not have been technically robbed, since they did not lose any money, but the amount of 800 calls would be just staggering. Imagine you find your bank account $500 short, and you call, and get a busy signal? You'be be driving down to their office right away, wearing a frown like at a funeral.
DOSing the bank! whoa... But the only problem with this plan is that it does not benefit mr cracker except by giving him a big laugh when he turns on CNN. Well, that, and creating some chaos and mayhem... Still, that is part of my point. Most of these worms and viruses lately have only been annoying pranks. But it is only a matter of time before someone does something truly nasty with this stuff.
This is symantical syntax. Obviously anybody who can build and set a bomb is a demolitions expert (though one might argue you don't acquire too much expertise as a suicide bomber...waste of time, really). And obviously anybody who attacks your country using a terror activity (defined as "violence committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting demands") is going to be referred to as a terrorist. Doesn't mean you can't be both.
No, everyone who can build and set a bomb is *not* a demolitions expert. Is everyone who changes their own car battery a mechanic? If you clip your toenails doe sit make you a surgeon? Criminey! This is exactly the slippery slope you head down when you allow people who know nothing about your profession to define terms that apply to your profession.
How exactly do smoke grenades destroy sensitive equipment?? Just curious, mind you...
WP == White Phosphorous
It's pretty hot stuff, that.