Seriously, print up pamphlets and distribute them, citing the e-mails and memos, with a "dumbed down" non technical explaination of just what the problems are with Diebold machines. You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on copies, just print out 10-50 pamphlets.
Great. Put together such a pamphlet. Make sure it self references "http://www.effortlessis.com/evoting.pdf" so that more copies can be printed. Make sure it's informative, and eye-catching.
I'll host it.
Now, the sad part of today's society is that I'll never get taken up on this. I have at my disposal a powerful information dissemination too, and will I see any takers? I doubt it.
I'm not a pamphlet-maker, I'm a database guru - a fact that probably makes me part of the problem. Oh well. Come up with something reasonable, and I'll host it.
As the ex-owner of a successful retail computer store, (sold it in spring of 2000) I can say that the biggest nightmare is the "part time" parts. Motherboards that boot, then predictably crash within the hour. Every time.
Stuff that appears to work, but doesn't. Try to RMA them, and you get the same part right back. Really! I've left marks in inobvious places to be sure!
When you RMA such a part back to the manufacturer, they do a quick test and if they can make it appear to work, they send it right back to you!
But, if the part simply doesn't fire - you can't get it to work at all, they will give you a new part.
You can't physically damage the part, a snipped wire or pulled cap won't do the job. No, you have to be much more subtle than that. After some head-scratching, we went to the local thrift store and bought a used microwave for $10.
Motherboards stop working very nicely after 5 seconds in the microwave. Video cards, sound cards, and network cards only need 3 seconds. No visible sign of any damage whatsoever...
And with this pre-RMA treatment, you can guarantee a new part on return!
To be fair, I have yet to see a mail client that does all the stuff that Outlook does.
Yes, it'll enable you to run pretty much any e-mail virus without any compatibility problems. Non of the alternatives come even close.:)
Jokes aside, OE is a pretty decent email program. I haven't used Evolution, but I've seen Kmail (KDE Mail) and I've been using it for years.
It's integration with Konqueror means that most attachments work out of the gate with little hassle - though I enjoy all the virus executables! (good luck, Klez!)
The best one for KMail users was the Klez, since it sent documents usually openable in OO. It was like Forest Gump's box of chocolates... you'd never know what you'd get, except that it would NOT be a virus. (on your Linux system)
What I would love to see is a 100,000+ lines project written in PHP being mantained by one or two developers. You can't do that without strict typing.
I think the point of a scripting language like PHP is that you don't need as many lines to get the same amount done.
I see PHP operating an average of perhaps 2-5 times as dense as similar C code, meaning you just don't have to write as much to get the same amount done.
As the sole developer of a report generator targeting schools in California, I count (at present) a total of 35,883 lines of code. (Thanks wc!) Interesting enough is the actual breakdown of the code:
4,637 lines for the website and related administration tools.
6,073 lines for the server side data accumulation system. (not web-based)
25,173 lines for the PHP-GTK client application and GUI.
In production for now just under 2 months, (since the beginning of this school year) we're tracking just short of 4,000 students, and anticipate this at least doubling and probably tripling or more by the end of the school year.
From one minute, to the next, what is up with Sun. Some questions for Scott:
1) Does Sun support x86 for Solaris?
2) Does Sun support Linux on Sparc?
3) Is Linux good, or bad?
4) Why can't you run multple Linux VMs on a single Solaris O/S?
Simple stuff. Basic stuff. But it changes with the hour of the day and the latest "Marketing Announcement" at Sun. Why would I work with Sun as a reseller of anything if I don't know from minute to minute what they want me to pitch?
Sun provides many things that are *good* - such as Java, and Open Office. It just really, truly blows to see this power blown in such an incredible display of marketing ineptitude...
Every time there's a patch to BIND, somebody spouts off about DJB's "great stuff"...
As much of the value of software is the LICENSE under which it is release as the source code itself.
If M$ didn't sell binary copies of their Windows O/S, it would have no value at all.
DJB's tools might be great for some people, and it might even become a standard for the Internet, but as long as DJB's license is so restrictive as to prevent Red Hat from releasing a QMail RPM, its value is greatly diminished. Despite the aviailability of the source code, it's not truly "open source".
So we stick with BIND. Written for a different era of the Internet, it nonetheless works quite well, and security issues aren't much of a problem (at least for me, periodically running up2date works quite well)
Another example is qmail. Since only patches can be released, I have to go through the scavenger hunt of patches and crossed fingers hoping to get a qmail installed with support for LDAP and qmail-scanner.
And it's not as though qmail is perfect, either. I mean, auto-responder messages with hard coded reply headers? WTF? How magnificently retarded is that?
The restrictive license of DJB's tools prevent things that really should have happened long ago - a forking of the codebase, and binary distribution.
My wife's AMD K6-2 450 sits in a giant, tower case that says on the front:
Northgate 3/33s
It was originally a high end 386 sx/33 system!
I still use a copy of Quicken 5 for DOS for my personal finances. It's just so easy to use! It sits on a Linux system, and it works fine under freedos. I routinely SSH into that system to run Quicken from just about anywhere.
One of my computers has a Sound Blaster ISA 16 with the on-board, proprietary CD-ROM interface to the 2x CD-ROM drive in the system. Still works fine!
(OT) I also have a full, complete, working copy of Windows 1.0 (NOT 1.0.x! This is the VERY FIRST RELEASE) COMPLETE with all the original 5.25" install diskettes and the manual.
How about a decent binary kernel module API so that companies can release decent binary drivers and kernel modules without having to release a copy for every conceivable compile option?
This is a rant. If you don't want to read it, don't.
It's been clear to me for some time that when it comes to energy policy, stupidity and fear rule the day. I believe Heinlein once wrote: "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity". Can there be a more truthful statement? Consider:
We humans handily ignore the 13 TRILLION pounds of carbon emitted by our chemical-fuel economy, nearly all pumped out of the ground, causing global climatic change. Many people go so far as to argue that this would have no effect on the global ecology!
How can you argue that this much CO2 will not have an effect on our environment?
We pay little more than lip service to all of the apparent results of our decisions to persue chemical energy.
I'm not one to say that we should go back to banging rocks, and eat bark and bugs, but since we all think so highly of our children WHY AREN'T WE THINKING ABOUT THE WORLD THEY WILL LIVE IN?
I cringe every time I see a new make of unsafe, inefficient, ecologically expensive SUV and consider the irony of the owners of such vehicles being among the most likely to have an "I love America" bumper sticker when such vehicles provide only a dependence on foreign oil. Even funnier still is the idea that an SUV is a good car "for the kids"...
And yet, when you mention alternatives, such as this ultra-clean and efficient compressed-air car that cleans the air as it drives, refuels in under 2 minutes, and provides reliable transportation at an equivalent cost of around $0.35 per gallon of gas, it's "nerdy" or "unsafe" or "a hassle".
And, perish the thought that having a clean, safe, self-sufficient micronuclear power plant ! I mean, cheap, safe, non-polluting energy! Oh, "but it's DANGEROUS!" they say. Never mind the annual death toll of just under 1.2 MILLION people from those wonderful cars. If 2 dozen people died in a power plant, it'd be a "national disaster" in the papers, but 1.2 million people dying in cars barely make the obituaries column on page B-11.
How is stupidity not in power?
And one of the primary reasons why the SUV is so popular is because of all the stupid legal benefits that automakers enjoy for making large, cheap, polluting, inefficient, over-priced-but-"stylish" SUVs and light trucks.
If we just applied some sense to the situation, we'd have cars that didn't pollute, we'd have energy that didn't force us to sell the birthrights of our children, all combined with a reasonable economy we could all be proud of.
What kind of world are your grandchildren going to live in?
3. There is some indication that the spammer is operating in California, such as a California telephone number or address for orders. If you can identify the spammer and have information from other sources showing that the spammer is in California, that will also work. --SNIP-- 1,2 and 4 are pretty easy. Proving 3 can be a real PITA, and means if I really want to work this hard I have to do a lot of legwork. Granted, the end result may be worth it, but...
3 can be obtained by a simple whois. Reverse track the relay servers, the website, do a whois on domain names of sending servers and you have this condition met.
All it takes in 1 spam meeting these conditions to make the law effective. Any spammer anywhere in California.
. How many major computer companies were founded by people who never even finished college? Dell, Microsoft, Apple, and so on, these are all companies that would never hire their own founders considering them unqualified.
I think the key word there is "hire". When you are hiring somebody, you are looking for some credentials to demonstrate that you aren't wasting your time/money hiring this person.
A founder, howeever, only has to convince himself he/she has the credentials. In all my years operating as a consultant in various capacities, I've never been seriously asked about my credentials. I've only been asked about expenses and timelines.
An interesting side-effect of being a consultant is that when your bid is accepted, you skip all the chains of command in most organizations and usually fit in somewheres near the top in the organizational heirarchy. In other words, people don't give you lip.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a college degree to be successful in the IT sector. You just won't do it with a "job"....
1) It's not the "web", it's the "Internet" - unless you plan on making everything a bunch of HTTP servers?
2) Having a video feed, and knowing what the feed is of, are two very different things. Knowing the IP address will only be marginally helpful, especially with DHCP or PPPOE in use in *alot* of cases.
3) So, you have a picture of some guy's bedroom. It's 3 blocks from a commited crime. And...?
Coke and Pepsi are carbonated beverages with flavoring additives and sweetners. If you drink a Vernors/RC Cola/Dr Brown's Celray, most people will think "WTF is that?". If you drink Diet Pepsi the same people will think...well, nothing.
Yeah, but my wife would have a cow if I bought 4 12-packs of Coke instead of 4 12-packs of Shasta Cola. At over twice the price, and with the 5 kids and all, we have to count every penny since there are so many we have to spend!
I noticed this one time when instead of buying Shasta cola (the local, official, "off-brand" soda, I bought "Best Choice" cola, and the kids asked if we had any "name brand" soda!
As a teen, I was a "Coke Classic" freak - but now I just don't care anymore.
the most likely writers of spam are THE SAME ONES WHO PEDDLE ANTI-SPAM WARE
This, sir, is a load of crap.
I've done plenty to fight spam. I hate it. I'd like to see it go away. I've seen spammers bring a sophisticated mail server clusters to its knees by sending 147,000 junk emails (with multiple recipients - the actual number of recipients was in the millions) in under 2 hours.
The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.
And the real reason SBC/Verizon are fighting the record companies is to protect the jobs of telco executives, not the rights of consumers.
Don't think that the telcos are acting on altruism. They'd screw you just as badly as the RIAA would, if they really felt it'd benefit them.
It's in their best interests to protect your privacy - just be glad that they are smart enough to realize that, and enjoy the little victory.
The RIAA is like an animal trapped in the corner - and just like one, it'll bite anything nearby out of fear. In this case, its busy biting the very hands that feed it.
Stand back, wait for it to calm down, and enjoy the ride.
When will the feds learn that raising penalties isn't going to deter this type of crime?
It won't deter this type of crime? I can assure you, I've seen plenty of situations where I've been tempted to play the line a bit, but when I think about my lovely wife, and 5 children, and the risk of penalties, I change my mind quickly.
Perhaps we should realize that deterring a crime is not the same as eliminating it?
A $200 fine for speeding will deter speeding - but it won't eliminate it.
[ Dictionary.com ]
v. deterred, deterring, deters v. tr.
To prevent or discourage from acting, as by means of fear or doubt: "Does negotiated disarmament deter war?" (Edward Teller). See Synonyms at dissuade.
VMare can run your stock OS on a VM whithout the need to tweak it. [sic]
Not entirely correct. Conceptually, VMWare runs in its own virtual machine, so that the O/S does not know it's in a VM. Reality, however, is that the virtualization is not complete - so you can't just run any old goofy O/S - you have to use one of the supported systems, and which operating system you intend to run has to be explicitly specified when you set up a VM.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, print up pamphlets and distribute them, citing the e-mails and memos, with a "dumbed down" non technical explaination of just what the problems are with Diebold machines. You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on copies, just print out 10-50 pamphlets.
Great. Put together such a pamphlet. Make sure it self references "http://www.effortlessis.com/evoting.pdf" so that more copies can be printed. Make sure it's informative, and eye-catching.
I'll host it.
Now, the sad part of today's society is that I'll never get taken up on this. I have at my disposal a powerful information dissemination too, and will I see any takers? I doubt it.
I'm not a pamphlet-maker, I'm a database guru - a fact that probably makes me part of the problem. Oh well. Come up with something reasonable, and I'll host it.
-Ben
As the ex-owner of a successful retail computer store, (sold it in spring of 2000) I can say that the biggest nightmare is the "part time" parts. Motherboards that boot, then predictably crash within the hour. Every time.
Stuff that appears to work, but doesn't. Try to RMA them, and you get the same part right back. Really! I've left marks in inobvious places to be sure!
When you RMA such a part back to the manufacturer, they do a quick test and if they can make it appear to work, they send it right back to you!
But, if the part simply doesn't fire - you can't get it to work at all, they will give you a new part.
You can't physically damage the part, a snipped wire or pulled cap won't do the job. No, you have to be much more subtle than that. After some head-scratching, we went to the local thrift store and bought a used microwave for $10.
Motherboards stop working very nicely after 5 seconds in the microwave. Video cards, sound cards, and network cards only need 3 seconds. No visible sign of any damage whatsoever...
And with this pre-RMA treatment, you can guarantee a new part on return!
To be fair, I have yet to see a mail client that does all the stuff that Outlook does.
:)
Yes, it'll enable you to run pretty much any e-mail virus without any compatibility problems. Non of the alternatives come even close.
Jokes aside, OE is a pretty decent email program. I haven't used Evolution, but I've seen Kmail (KDE Mail) and I've been using it for years.
It's integration with Konqueror means that most attachments work out of the gate with little hassle - though I enjoy all the virus executables! (good luck, Klez!)
The best one for KMail users was the Klez, since it sent documents usually openable in OO. It was like Forest Gump's box of chocolates... you'd never know what you'd get, except that it would NOT be a virus. (on your Linux system)
Lock in.
That's all this is. More BS for the world to become dependent on Verisign. After their recent fiascos, this is the very LAST thing we need...
I think the point of a scripting language like PHP is that you don't need as many lines to get the same amount done.
I see PHP operating an average of perhaps 2-5 times as dense as similar C code, meaning you just don't have to write as much to get the same amount done.
As the sole developer of a report generator targeting schools in California, I count (at present) a total of 35,883 lines of code. (Thanks wc!) Interesting enough is the actual breakdown of the code:
In production for now just under 2 months, (since the beginning of this school year) we're tracking just short of 4,000 students, and anticipate this at least doubling and probably tripling or more by the end of the school year.
All this without quitting my day-job.
From where I sit, PHP scales pretty nicely.
From one minute, to the next, what is up with Sun. Some questions for Scott:
1) Does Sun support x86 for Solaris?
2) Does Sun support Linux on Sparc?
3) Is Linux good, or bad?
4) Why can't you run multple Linux VMs on a single Solaris O/S?
Simple stuff. Basic stuff. But it changes with the hour of the day and the latest "Marketing Announcement" at Sun. Why would I work with Sun as a reseller of anything if I don't know from minute to minute what they want me to pitch?
Sun provides many things that are *good* - such as Java, and Open Office. It just really, truly blows to see this power blown in such an incredible display of marketing ineptitude...
1) First they ignore you.
2) Then they laugh at you.
3) Then they fight you.
4) Then you win.
Every time there's a patch to BIND, somebody spouts off about DJB's "great stuff"...
As much of the value of software is the LICENSE under which it is release as the source code itself.
If M$ didn't sell binary copies of their Windows O/S, it would have no value at all.
DJB's tools might be great for some people, and it might even become a standard for the Internet, but as long as DJB's license is so restrictive as to prevent Red Hat from releasing a QMail RPM, its value is greatly diminished. Despite the aviailability of the source code, it's not truly "open source".
So we stick with BIND. Written for a different era of the Internet, it nonetheless works quite well, and security issues aren't much of a problem (at least for me, periodically running up2date works quite well)
Another example is qmail. Since only patches can be released, I have to go through the scavenger hunt of patches and crossed fingers hoping to get a qmail installed with support for LDAP and qmail-scanner.
And it's not as though qmail is perfect, either. I mean, auto-responder messages with hard coded reply headers? WTF? How magnificently retarded is that?
The restrictive license of DJB's tools prevent things that really should have happened long ago - a forking of the codebase, and binary distribution.
So, uhh.... you didn't write this?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!
Hasta la vista, Karma!
It was originally a high end 386 sx/33 system!
Try this one:
Proprietary does not mean bad or unsuccessful.
How about a decent binary kernel module API so that companies can release decent binary drivers and kernel modules without having to release a copy for every conceivable compile option?
This is a rant. If you don't want to read it, don't.
It's been clear to me for some time that when it comes to energy policy, stupidity and fear rule the day. I believe Heinlein once wrote: "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity". Can there be a more truthful statement? Consider:
We humans handily ignore the 13 TRILLION pounds of carbon emitted by our chemical-fuel economy, nearly all pumped out of the ground, causing global climatic change. Many people go so far as to argue that this would have no effect on the global ecology!
How can you argue that this much CO2 will not have an effect on our environment?
We pay little more than lip service to all of the apparent results of our decisions to persue chemical energy.
I'm not one to say that we should go back to banging rocks, and eat bark and bugs, but since we all think so highly of our children WHY AREN'T WE THINKING ABOUT THE WORLD THEY WILL LIVE IN?
I cringe every time I see a new make of unsafe, inefficient, ecologically expensive SUV and consider the irony of the owners of such vehicles being among the most likely to have an "I love America" bumper sticker when such vehicles provide only a dependence on foreign oil. Even funnier still is the idea that an SUV is a good car "for the kids"...
And yet, when you mention alternatives, such as this ultra-clean and efficient compressed-air car that cleans the air as it drives, refuels in under 2 minutes, and provides reliable transportation at an equivalent cost of around $0.35 per gallon of gas, it's "nerdy" or "unsafe" or "a hassle".
And, perish the thought that having a clean, safe, self-sufficient micronuclear power plant ! I mean, cheap, safe, non-polluting energy! Oh, "but it's DANGEROUS!" they say. Never mind the annual death toll of just under 1.2 MILLION people from those wonderful cars. If 2 dozen people died in a power plant, it'd be a "national disaster" in the papers, but 1.2 million people dying in cars barely make the obituaries column on page B-11.
How is stupidity not in power?
And one of the primary reasons why the SUV is so popular is because of all the stupid legal benefits that automakers enjoy for making large, cheap, polluting, inefficient, over-priced-but-"stylish" SUVs and light trucks.
If we just applied some sense to the situation, we'd have cars that didn't pollute, we'd have energy that didn't force us to sell the birthrights of our children, all combined with a reasonable economy we could all be proud of.
What kind of world are your grandchildren going to live in?
3. There is some indication that the spammer is operating in California, such as a California telephone number or address for orders. If you can identify the spammer and have information from other sources showing that the spammer is in California, that will also work.
--SNIP--
1,2 and 4 are pretty easy. Proving 3 can be a real PITA, and means if I really want to work this hard I have to do a lot of legwork. Granted, the end result may be worth it, but...
3 can be obtained by a simple whois. Reverse track the relay servers, the website, do a whois on domain names of sending servers and you have this condition met.
All it takes in 1 spam meeting these conditions to make the law effective. Any spammer anywhere in California.
Let's see how many /.-isms I can throw into a single sentence:
The SCOmbag behind this fiaSCO, $CO is SCOspiciously silent when people say, "show me the SCOurce"!
How's that? What did I miss?
. How many major computer companies were founded by people who never even finished college? Dell, Microsoft, Apple, and so on, these are all companies that would never hire their own founders considering them unqualified.
I think the key word there is "hire". When you are hiring somebody, you are looking for some credentials to demonstrate that you aren't wasting your time/money hiring this person.
A founder, howeever, only has to convince himself he/she has the credentials. In all my years operating as a consultant in various capacities, I've never been seriously asked about my credentials. I've only been asked about expenses and timelines.
An interesting side-effect of being a consultant is that when your bid is accepted, you skip all the chains of command in most organizations and usually fit in somewheres near the top in the organizational heirarchy. In other words, people don't give you lip.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need a college degree to be successful in the IT sector. You just won't do it with a "job"....
1) It's not the "web", it's the "Internet" - unless you plan on making everything a bunch of HTTP servers?
2) Having a video feed, and knowing what the feed is of, are two very different things. Knowing the IP address will only be marginally helpful, especially with DHCP or PPPOE in use in *alot* of cases.
3) So, you have a picture of some guy's bedroom. It's 3 blocks from a commited crime. And...?
4) Also, remember that power corrupts... We need to ensure that the proper checks are in place before we start trusting this technology.
5) Remember TIA? Co-ordinating data from so many disparate sources is much more daunting than it seems, however sexy it sounds.
C'mon!
Coke and Pepsi are carbonated beverages with flavoring additives and sweetners. If you drink a Vernors/RC Cola/Dr Brown's Celray, most people will think "WTF is that?". If you drink Diet Pepsi the same people will think...well, nothing.
Yeah, but my wife would have a cow if I bought 4 12-packs of Coke instead of 4 12-packs of Shasta Cola. At over twice the price, and with the 5 kids and all, we have to count every penny since there are so many we have to spend!
I noticed this one time when instead of buying Shasta cola (the local, official, "off-brand" soda, I bought "Best Choice" cola, and the kids asked if we had any "name brand" soda!
As a teen, I was a "Coke Classic" freak - but now I just don't care anymore.
the most likely writers of spam are THE SAME ONES WHO PEDDLE ANTI-SPAM WARE
This, sir, is a load of crap.
I've done plenty to fight spam. I hate it. I'd like to see it go away. I've seen spammers bring a sophisticated mail server clusters to its knees by sending 147,000 junk emails (with multiple recipients - the actual number of recipients was in the millions) in under 2 hours.
How does this make me a spammer?
Perhaps one of the most likely modern-day candidates might be Linus Torvalds....
He's helped create a marvel of technology and engineering, entirely for the public benefit...
The great people of yesteryear still exist today... they just aren't in public office.
Remember that Ben F was a rebel - the "powers that be" at the time was the British govt.
The real reason the RIAA is attempting to force telcos to drag their customers into court is to protect the jobs of record executives, not the rights of artists, who benefit from less expensive and more effective distribution mechanisms.
And the real reason SBC/Verizon are fighting the record companies is to protect the jobs of telco executives, not the rights of consumers.
Don't think that the telcos are acting on altruism. They'd screw you just as badly as the RIAA would, if they really felt it'd benefit them.
It's in their best interests to protect your privacy - just be glad that they are smart enough to realize that, and enjoy the little victory.
The RIAA is like an animal trapped in the corner - and just like one, it'll bite anything nearby out of fear. In this case, its busy biting the very hands that feed it.
Stand back, wait for it to calm down, and enjoy the ride.
When will the feds learn that raising penalties isn't going to deter this type of crime?
It won't deter this type of crime? I can assure you, I've seen plenty of situations where I've been tempted to play the line a bit, but when I think about my lovely wife, and 5 children, and the risk of penalties, I change my mind quickly.
Perhaps we should realize that deterring a crime is not the same as eliminating it?
A $200 fine for speeding will deter speeding - but it won't eliminate it.
[ Dictionary.com ]
v. deterred, deterring, deters v. tr.
To prevent or discourage from acting, as by means of fear or doubt: "Does negotiated disarmament deter war?" (Edward Teller). See Synonyms at dissuade.
Init may be old, but what's to improve on?
Init is solid, reliable, and standard. Best of all it works. What about systems where python is not installed?
cat article | sed -e s/"aging"/"tested and reliable"/g;
VMare can run your stock OS on a VM whithout the need to tweak it. [sic]
Not entirely correct. Conceptually, VMWare runs in its own virtual machine, so that the O/S does not know it's in a VM. Reality, however, is that the virtualization is not complete - so you can't just run any old goofy O/S - you have to use one of the supported systems, and which operating system you intend to run has to be explicitly specified when you set up a VM.
I can attest to this since I use VMWare W/S 3.x