Are the old paper ballot systems easy to commit fraud with? Certainly. Any group of people who supervise a traditional voting station could conspire to fudge some voting results. At one precinct. One vote at a time.
Electronic voting systems allow massive tampering across multiple precincts - from thousands of miles away. And you can't narrow the suspects down to two or three people who supervised voting in one precinct - anyone with a modem and technical know-how can be a suspect when electronic voting goes sour.
I live in Georgia also. I've noticed one thing about the new voting machines - no privacy. Before they set up the new Diebold systems, we always had a little closet to vote in. It had cloth walls and a curtain at the back you could close. Once you finished with the ballot, it would go inside a metal sleeve that hid your choices until you slid the ballot inside the locked box.
Now we have big flatscreen computers - backlit screens with huge fonts and a color behind each candidate's name. There's no curtain, no closet, and the screen is aimed back where anyone in the room can watch you vote. This not only hurts people who want to vote against what most in their community support, it lets the old ladies who run polling places keep their own unofficial tally of the results (if they want to). That would facilitate fraud, wherein you just keep up with your preferred candidate and then go vote a few extra times if you notice he's falling behind.
Additionally, I have personally met our county registrar, and deal with her on a regular basis in matters not related to the government. She's not qualified for the job, and wouldn't know a case of computer fraud from a hole in the ground if it ever happened on her watch.
We should boycott the RIAA/MPAA. That's what Kazaa and LimeWire are for. I've boycotted something along the lines of 4GB in music alone. That'll teach them!
No wait... Isn't my piracy their excuse for everything they do to oppress users? Uh oh...
Call me back when the US telecom companies manage to expand their cellular/PCS service to my area. Pathetic that we can't even have universal wireless telephone service here while the UK is putting wireless Internet into its own rural areas. I wonder how many years its been since every square inch of Europe got cellular service coverage...
If the RIAA charges broadcasters more per listener than the advertisers will pay per listener (this is their end goal, afterall) then this is the only choice left for Internet radio. We can pay for a subscription that allows the small broadcasters to survive, or listen to free stations that play mostly terrible music nobody has ever heard of before. That's just how the world works now - write your senators and representative to change it, otherwise be prepared to pay up.
Why are spam and porn more profitable? Because they're destroying everything else. The increase of Internet scams, porn, spam, popup advertising, viral marketing, anti-privacy policies and other trash that comes with the Internet's popularity are actually what causes this problem. The con games some dotcom millionares pulled have soured others on investing in legitimate web companies. Millions of dollars of advertising sold to companies with overinflated traffic numbers destroyed the Internet advertising market. Corporate bean counters that suffocated fast sites with good content (replacing original news with Yet-Another-Reuters-Report) reduced the legitimacy of online news sites. Greedy and immoral/unethical people with their fake companies have ruined things for the good little businesses trying to survive. As always, the worst people have ruined things for the best people and society as a whole must suffer for it.
Windows User's Lament (Re:Typical Slashdot Haiku)
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 3, Funny
A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.
First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.
With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel.doc" not found.
The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down
A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
We are out of memory
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
(No, I didn't write this, but I thought it was worth using here. Original author unknown.)â
It's not that there are no jobs, it's that the jobs which exist are being given to sons in law or cousins. I've been trying to get a freelance Web design contract for a month now but they would rather pay cousin such-and-so $20 a month to do a site that damages their image than pay me a few thousand dollars to set up something that would have people knocking their doors down.
Ever seen the movie Apollo 13? It shows the crawlers moving equipment into place before launch. Imagine something along the lines of a hundred-ton bulldozer with a rocket sitting on top of it. If you had to replace one of them you'd wait as long as you could, too.
In light of this discovery, maybe NASA should delay the pointless space station a little while and check all its ancient equipment for wear and tear.... Complain all you want about delays in ISS construction, but how many replacement crawlers (and replacement shuttles) could the government buy for what it spent on the ISS project so far? How many human lives should NASA sacrifice to get the space station built? Time isn't that crucial here, considering that the thing will already be years late because of Russia's inability to meet a deadline.
Since China and India want a space program so badly, we should sell them all our aging space crap. (I can see the yardsale now... ) Then use the money raised from that to buy one decent working spacecraft that won't have to be renovated every time NASA uses it.
Declan McCullagh spent several years on Essential Information's AM-Info (Appraising Microsoft) e-mail list basically just lurking and stirring up trouble he could use in news reports. He finally had to be banned from the list, to the great relief of most of us who live there. Beware the wolf in journalist's clothing.
91degrees typed:How do we ditch the fan? Even the quiet fan on a PS2 is clearly audible in quiet points of a DVD or CD. No audiophile will tolerate this sort of interference
This has always been an issue for those who care about audio/video enjoyment. That's why true fans have Macs, and we no longer have a problem with it.
guttentag typed:Bottom line: Microsoft tried to use its deal with The Washington Post to prevent non-Windows users from viewing Post reporters on The Post's own site. I can only imagine what goes on at "newsweek.msnbc.com."
Excellent information, I appreciate the insider's perspective on that deal.
I've been opposed to the MSNBC agreement from day one for obvious reasons. I usually disagree with Ralph Nader, but he gave a pefect quote about Microsoft in 1995 or 1996...
"When you move from conduit to content, as Microsoft is doing--into publishing, into cable, encyclopedias, etc. you get another abuse of concentrated power. We've always believed the conduit should be separate from content."
I agree with this 100% and honestly think it should be made into law. Dangerous ground.
Back in 1995 or 1996 Microsoft came within a few million dollars of buying Turner Broadcasting (CNN, TBS, TNT, et al.). The Turner agreement was that Microsoft would basically purchase them for something in the area of $12 billion, then Microsoft's Turner subsidiary would use that money to buy bankrupt CBS. Imagine what kind of Microsoft we'd be dealing with if that agreement hadn't collapsed. Scary to even consider.
"But now, Newsweek promises, it's going to change the world as we hear it."
OK, Newsweek has now slipped into the same category as the TV channels that show infomercials 20 hours a day. A couple of weeks ago Newsweek touted Microsoft Palladium as the revolutionary future, now they're saying this sound wave thing will be. How much would it cost me to have Newsweek run a long article about my futuristic world-changing vaporware product that happens to be 8 to 15 years away from actual production? It's worse than biased media, it's buy-your-own-news.
"Former Microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt now works for the government as the vice chairman of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. According to this article on Security Focus, he has been touring the country, proclaiming the dangers of "zero-day viruses" and "affinity worms" that will create the kind of havoc that nothing else short of a nuclear exchange could cause.
Mr. Schmidt would known exactly what's possible since his former employer is responsible for 97% of it. All those kinds of things would be spread over Microsoft products, particularly Outlook, Exchange, IIS, and Windows.
"Traffic lights, pacemakers, appliances -- all subject to outages and interruptions because in the future they're controlled via Internet, declares Schmidt.
Isn't Microsoft trying to get Embedded NT or Windows CE for Retarded Agencies put into these kinds of devices? They already put a battleship in a vulnerable position several years ago with NT, now they want to destroy the rest of society with it. I don't know if Schmidt is being sarcastic or just brutally honest, but he's got to know Microsoft is the problem here. If he doesn't, he's not mentally capable of having any job, much less one with such a high profile.
*Streaming media pioneer RealNetworks last week licensed Microsoft's Windows Media technology, possibly to use in its own products. While Real refused to make any comment about its plans, Microsoft made much ado about the licensing and tried to play it up in the media as a major victory. But assuming Real actually uses the codecs, it could result in a defeat for Microsoft since adding support for another major file format to Real's existing products could make them more popular while Microsoft's own Media Player remains a one-act show. Nevertheless, Real stock dropped by 12 percent on the news. -|
randyest typed:No, not at all. I guess I should have added a ':)' or something to my original post -- I was kidding. See, msboycott.com sounds like an anti- Micro$oft site (or at least domain name), and Slashdot it a hotbed (The hotbed?) of MS-bashing, so . . . well, it's not really all that funny when you break it down, is it?:)
I knew what you meant... And msboycott.com actually is an anti-Microsoft site (see my signature), one of the primary ones. The author of that piece does most of my site design so he uploaded it there in his own directory.
So if the launch vehicle was made from a recycled ICBM, was the spacecraft itself made from a recycled rubber raft from an old Russian battleship? Duct tape a few old yellow rafts together with some well-used tires, a transmitter, a digital camera, and some solar panels - viola, an "inflatable spacecraft." It's probably as good as anything else Russia's government has produced in the last 10 years.
randyest typed:someone with the domian msboycott.com doesn't have a/. account? I'm confused.
I have the domain, he works with me... I post here and he doesn't make a habit of it. And my account gets the extra high-karma bonus point, so the posting is more likely to be seen if I do it for him. That's not cheating, I hope...
One of my partners in crime at the MSBC (who doesn't have a/. account) asked me to post this:
Back in February I wrote a lengthy report on Metropolis for my college cinema class. The report was supposed to be about the themes of the film, but its history was so interesting I spent 2/3 of my time on that instead of the plot and events. An assignment for a 600 word paper turned into a 1700+ word essay that received an A+, not that I'm bragging or anything. I think it's an interesting read, whatever the grade was. The paper includes links to other sources and reviews more knowledgable than I. Check it out at www.msboycott.com/kmarks/metropolis.shtml.
I thought Microsoft as soon as I read the headline. I've been opposed to their membership in the W3C for as long as I've been aware of it - Microsoft's goals are not compatible with the open freely-accessible Internet.
Look over the Consortium's membership list and then cross-reference it with a list of Microsoft's partners or subsidiaries... I see Intel, HP, General Magic (Ms owns a minority stake in it), Corel, Unisys, the now-defunct RealNames company... There's plenty of potential there for Microsoft to push the issue. Fortunately, I don't think Sun, Apple, IBM, Macromedia, Oracle and some of the other member companies will let that idea go through without a fight.
Mac OS simply will not run without the hardware ROMs. I don't see how the Amiga could run it, much less run it decently - and if it can, Apple will have their hair. This is a vaporware announcement.
Slashdot Mirror
Electronic voting systems allow massive tampering across multiple precincts - from thousands of miles away. And you can't narrow the suspects down to two or three people who supervised voting in one precinct - anyone with a modem and technical know-how can be a suspect when electronic voting goes sour.
Now we have big flatscreen computers - backlit screens with huge fonts and a color behind each candidate's name. There's no curtain, no closet, and the screen is aimed back where anyone in the room can watch you vote. This not only hurts people who want to vote against what most in their community support, it lets the old ladies who run polling places keep their own unofficial tally of the results (if they want to). That would facilitate fraud, wherein you just keep up with your preferred candidate and then go vote a few extra times if you notice he's falling behind.
Additionally, I have personally met our county registrar, and deal with her on a regular basis in matters not related to the government. She's not qualified for the job, and wouldn't know a case of computer fraud from a hole in the ground if it ever happened on her watch.
No wait... Isn't my piracy their excuse for everything they do to oppress users? Uh oh...
Is this news? Must be a slow weekend at both /. and Salon.
Richard Keil, eh? EE-GAHHHH!
Call me back when the US telecom companies manage to expand their cellular/PCS service to my area. Pathetic that we can't even have universal wireless telephone service here while the UK is putting wireless Internet into its own rural areas. I wonder how many years its been since every square inch of Europe got cellular service coverage...
If the RIAA charges broadcasters more per listener than the advertisers will pay per listener (this is their end goal, afterall) then this is the only choice left for Internet radio. We can pay for a subscription that allows the small broadcasters to survive, or listen to free stations that play mostly terrible music nobody has ever heard of before. That's just how the world works now - write your senators and representative to change it, otherwise be prepared to pay up.
Why are spam and porn more profitable? Because they're destroying everything else. The increase of Internet scams, porn, spam, popup advertising, viral marketing, anti-privacy policies and other trash that comes with the Internet's popularity are actually what causes this problem. The con games some dotcom millionares pulled have soured others on investing in legitimate web companies. Millions of dollars of advertising sold to companies with overinflated traffic numbers destroyed the Internet advertising market. Corporate bean counters that suffocated fast sites with good content (replacing original news with Yet-Another-Reuters-Report) reduced the legitimacy of online news sites. Greedy and immoral/unethical people with their fake companies have ruined things for the good little businesses trying to survive. As always, the worst people have ruined things for the best people and society as a whole must suffer for it.
(No, I didn't write this, but I thought it was worth using here. Original author unknown.)â
It's not that there are no jobs, it's that the jobs which exist are being given to sons in law or cousins. I've been trying to get a freelance Web design contract for a month now but they would rather pay cousin such-and-so $20 a month to do a site that damages their image than pay me a few thousand dollars to set up something that would have people knocking their doors down.
Ever seen the movie Apollo 13 ? It shows the crawlers moving equipment into place before launch. Imagine something along the lines of a hundred-ton bulldozer with a rocket sitting on top of it. If you had to replace one of them you'd wait as long as you could, too.
In light of this discovery, maybe NASA should delay the pointless space station a little while and check all its ancient equipment for wear and tear.... Complain all you want about delays in ISS construction, but how many replacement crawlers (and replacement shuttles) could the government buy for what it spent on the ISS project so far? How many human lives should NASA sacrifice to get the space station built? Time isn't that crucial here, considering that the thing will already be years late because of Russia's inability to meet a deadline.
Since China and India want a space program so badly, we should sell them all our aging space crap. (I can see the yardsale now... ) Then use the money raised from that to buy one decent working spacecraft that won't have to be renovated every time NASA uses it.
Declan McCullagh spent several years on Essential Information's AM-Info (Appraising Microsoft) e-mail list basically just lurking and stirring up trouble he could use in news reports. He finally had to be banned from the list, to the great relief of most of us who live there. Beware the wolf in journalist's clothing.
I wrote a review of Productive 3 for my Web site a while back... Check it out at msboycott.com/thealt/reviews/gobeproductive.shtml.
This is great news for everyone because gobeProductive is slim and trim - it is to office suites what Opera is to Web browsers.
91degrees typed: How do we ditch the fan?
Even the quiet fan on a PS2 is clearly audible in quiet points of a DVD or CD. No audiophile will tolerate this sort of interference
This has always been an issue for those who care about audio/video enjoyment. That's why true fans have Macs, and we no longer have a problem with it.
guttentag typed: Bottom line: Microsoft tried to use its deal with The Washington Post to prevent non-Windows users from viewing Post reporters on The Post's own site. I can only imagine what goes on at "newsweek.msnbc.com."
Excellent information, I appreciate the insider's perspective on that deal.
I've been opposed to the MSNBC agreement from day one for obvious reasons. I usually disagree with Ralph Nader, but he gave a pefect quote about Microsoft in 1995 or 1996...
I agree with this 100% and honestly think it should be made into law. Dangerous ground.
Back in 1995 or 1996 Microsoft came within a few million dollars of buying Turner Broadcasting (CNN, TBS, TNT, et al.). The Turner agreement was that Microsoft would basically purchase them for something in the area of $12 billion, then Microsoft's Turner subsidiary would use that money to buy bankrupt CBS. Imagine what kind of Microsoft we'd be dealing with if that agreement hadn't collapsed. Scary to even consider.
OK, Newsweek has now slipped into the same category as the TV channels that show infomercials 20 hours a day. A couple of weeks ago Newsweek touted Microsoft Palladium as the revolutionary future, now they're saying this sound wave thing will be. How much would it cost me to have Newsweek run a long article about my futuristic world-changing vaporware product that happens to be 8 to 15 years away from actual production? It's worse than biased media, it's buy-your-own-news.
"Former Microsoft security chief Howard Schmidt now works for the government as the vice chairman of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. According to this article on Security Focus, he has been touring the country, proclaiming the dangers of "zero-day viruses" and "affinity worms" that will create the kind of havoc that nothing else short of a nuclear exchange could cause.
Mr. Schmidt would known exactly what's possible since his former employer is responsible for 97% of it. All those kinds of things would be spread over Microsoft products, particularly Outlook, Exchange, IIS, and Windows.
"Traffic lights, pacemakers, appliances -- all subject to outages and interruptions because in the future they're controlled via Internet, declares Schmidt.
Isn't Microsoft trying to get Embedded NT or Windows CE for Retarded Agencies put into these kinds of devices? They already put a battleship in a vulnerable position several years ago with NT, now they want to destroy the rest of society with it. I don't know if Schmidt is being sarcastic or just brutally honest, but he's got to know Microsoft is the problem here. If he doesn't, he's not mentally capable of having any job, much less one with such a high profile.
So the article is incorrect.
randyest typed: No, not at all. I guess I should have added a ':)' or something to my original post -- I was kidding. See, msboycott.com sounds like an anti- Micro$oft site (or at least domain name), and Slashdot it a hotbed (The hotbed?) of MS-bashing, so . . . well, it's not really all that funny when you break it down, is it? :)
I knew what you meant... And msboycott.com actually is an anti-Microsoft site (see my signature), one of the primary ones. The author of that piece does most of my site design so he uploaded it there in his own directory.
So if the launch vehicle was made from a recycled ICBM, was the spacecraft itself made from a recycled rubber raft from an old Russian battleship? Duct tape a few old yellow rafts together with some well-used tires, a transmitter, a digital camera, and some solar panels - viola, an "inflatable spacecraft." It's probably as good as anything else Russia's government has produced in the last 10 years.
randyest typed: someone with the domian msboycott.com doesn't have a /. account? I'm confused.
I have the domain, he works with me... I post here and he doesn't make a habit of it. And my account gets the extra high-karma bonus point, so the posting is more likely to be seen if I do it for him. That's not cheating, I hope...
Back in February I wrote a lengthy report on Metropolis for my college cinema class. The report was supposed to be about the themes of the film, but its history was so interesting I spent 2/3 of my time on that instead of the plot and events. An assignment for a 600 word paper turned into a 1700+ word essay that received an A+, not that I'm bragging or anything. I think it's an interesting read, whatever the grade was. The paper includes links to other sources and reviews more knowledgable than I. Check it out at www.msboycott.com/kmarks/metropolis.shtml .
There you have it.
I thought Microsoft as soon as I read the headline. I've been opposed to their membership in the W3C for as long as I've been aware of it - Microsoft's goals are not compatible with the open freely-accessible Internet.
Look over the Consortium's membership list and then cross-reference it with a list of Microsoft's partners or subsidiaries... I see Intel, HP, General Magic (Ms owns a minority stake in it), Corel, Unisys, the now-defunct RealNames company... There's plenty of potential there for Microsoft to push the issue. Fortunately, I don't think Sun, Apple, IBM, Macromedia, Oracle and some of the other member companies will let that idea go through without a fight.
Mac OS simply will not run without the hardware ROMs. I don't see how the Amiga could run it, much less run it decently - and if it can, Apple will have their hair. This is a vaporware announcement.