eVoting was a bad idea all right, but it's far from the only problem we have. We have very weak systems to assure that the person voting isn't committing fraud, regardless of the voting method being used. For example, here in California, it's explicitly forbidden to ask the person for a photo ID. I can walk up to a poll, say I'm Mr. So-and-so living at address blah blah, and even if the poll worker knows me to be someone else, s/he can't make me prove my identity. While we should be concerned about fraud being perpetrated with the voting systems we use, we should be equally concerned with the other sources of fraud as well.
Lockyer's termed-out this year and he's running for State Treasurer. This lawsuit is his way of getting his name in the media for free. Given the reaction I'm seeing here even from liberals, it might not have been the best idea he's ever had.
If the data was publicly accessible (a better term, IMO, because 'available' implies intent, which seemed to be missing here), why did the LA Times attribute (and continues to do so, even though the Angelides campaign acknowledges being the source) the recording to an anonymous source? The Time's policy is supposedly to use anonymous sources as a last resort, so why didn't they just obtain their own copy from the server and say, "Hey, look what we found on the governor's web site, and here's the URL so you can get it yourself"?
I noticed that the Times printed today that the Angelides campaign is "saying" (i.e. the Times isn't confirming it, just reporting what the campaign says) that the campaign is the source of the recording. I also noticed that, contrary to the front-page treatment accorded to the orignial story, the acknowledgement got put on page B-8.
I was listening to a guy on TV who had just taken his daughter to college last week, and had to pay $150 to buy her a math textbook. I had no idea that text prices had gotten that high. He also said that the publishers keep bringing out new editions every 2-3 years (how much changes about calculus in that amount of time?) so that used-book sales don't destroy their profits. I don't know how it is at other universities, but the one I attended had a monopoly on text sales thru the on-campus store, so it profited handsomely from the sales of new books as well.
I'd love to see wiki texts blow a hole in this scheme, but the professors would have to get on board and use them instead of the commercial ones. How many of them would do that?
... would be to tamper with the seals on a few voting machines used in an election and see if anyone even notices. Based on my experiences here (the aforementioned San Diego, where technology-adept voters were helping poll workers reboot the machines and reinstall the software because the program was in RAM and the batteries ran down while the machines sat unpowered for days before the election), nobody'd even bother to check.
This is more of a cover-your-ass routine so that people with little prior understanding of technology don't buy something completely unsuitable then come back ranting and raving.
Are you saying that only elderly people can be technological lunkheads? I've run into plenty of people whose microwave oven clocks are still flashing 12:00. If you want to have a restriction aimed at keeping the ill-informed and "unsuited" away from the internet, then maybe the store should administer a technology test to every applicant. That would make way more sense than some arbitrary cutoff based on age. Which is still damning the idea with faint praise.
My prediction: at some future time, somebody, somewhere is going to sue Google for conning people into performing valuable work for free. The suit will demand back wages, social security payments, health and retirement benefits. Not to mention m/billions for the class action attorneys.
has an effective data rate of 100 mbps over a 10-m distance without obstacles
Over that distance and without obstructions, it's just a guess, but I'm thinking that you could design a wireless optics-based system that would have many times that bandwidth. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, I'd be interested to know if my instincts are off.
A friend of mine recently discovered that it was cheaper to buy her same model printer on sale than to buy a replacement cartridge for her existing printer. She couldn't bring herself to toss a perfectly good printer just to get the cartridge cheaper, but the temptation was there. I'll bet many other people don't have the same compunctions about this sort of waste.
I suspect there are a least a few people who aren't aware of it or could stand to be reminded. Even a few Slashdotters might be new enough to haven't heard of the technique.
The problems being that you do lose significant quality, and you have to do all this in realtime, which means very, very slowly.
Well, as I said, I sure can't detect any difference between the original audio stream and the recording. I have to think it would be fine for most people who just want to listen to a few tunes and not analyze them in great degree. As for being slow, that didn't bug me any. I created a playlist on Yahoo Music and set it going. Replay Music captured each song in a separate MP3 file and properly labeled it with the album, title, artists, etc. I didn't even have to listen while it happened. I let it chug away overnight and had a nice batch of listenable MP3s the next morning. Unless one is ripping thousands of songs, I can't imagine the time factor being much of a burden.
Besides, that trick doesn't work so well with video...
Replay A/V can supposedly record video streams, though obviously not through the audio card. Haven't tried it on a supposedly secure stream yet, so I don't know if it works for those. I'm not looking for video from the net, so that isn't a big deal for me.
Just use a stream capture software package (Replay Music among others) if you want to save a song. Since it captures at the audio card level, short of DRM being installed in hardware, no DRM can prevent it. Maybe purists can detect a degradation of quality, but to my untrained ear, the captured MP3 sounds exactly the same as the original.
The problem the idea of images being planted by 1069 is that Steiger was in possession of photgraphs of child pornography with himself in the pictures.
Interesting point, which the article omitted. Even so, these days a skilled Photoshopper can put somebody in a picture in a way that's difficult to detect. A decent lawyer would still be able to make the argument of it being a frameup by 1069.
Europeans and Asians get their knickers in a knot over the nebulous dangers of GE foods, but they smoke like fiends. I don't get people who ignore the real hazards in life to focus on the unproven ones.
Wow, parent modded down 2 points. Looks like the Euros/Asians don't like having their idiosyncratic behavior pointed out.
Europeans and Asians get their knickers in a knot over the nebulous dangers of GE foods, but they smoke like fiends. I don't get people who ignore the real hazards in life to focus on the unproven ones.
My immediate reaction to this story was: if '1069' had the capability to break in to a computer to extract images, he also had the opportunity to plant the images there in the first place. A strong line of defense would be to assert that the anonymous 1069 is some sort of vigilante nut who gains access to the computers of innocent people, plants bogus evidence on them, then turns the victims in to authorities.
This whole case has so many holes that the defense could use, I'm amazed that they were able to convict. Stiger's attorney had to have blown it.
Notification laws aren't that useful. California has one that requires businesses to post warnings of "hazardous substances". Problem is, damned near everything is a hazardous substance under this law. Consequently, every business has one of these placards and nobody pays any attention because if we did, we'd never be able to buy anything.
This notification will just end up as another piece of paper in the mound that nobody ever reads and that we sign whenever we buy a car. I suppose it will have the benefit of letting the seller say, "We told you about this" when some dope comes back a few years later, upset that his black box recording ratted him out as going 100 mph just before the crash.
To me, one of the most important factors in a DVR is if I can expand the capacity. I've done it with my Tivo and my DirectTivo. What are the chances of being able to install a larger SATA drive in this unit? Also, having a single 'live' buffer would probably be a deal killer for me; dual live buffers are an essential feature in my DirecTivo.
The only people the cops will really listen to are the ones who control their budget. Get in touch with your city council member (or whoever your representative is in whatever form your local government takes). It also doesn't hurt to take it to everyone else in elective office, so contact your mayor, member of Congress, your Senators, etc. As others have suggested, starting a blog would be a good idea. You can publish your correspondence with your elected officials (make sure they know you're doing that, since it adds to the pressure). Get anyone else you can find to write letters too. One letter from a constituent gets attention, but 20 or 50 gets a LOT of attention, particularly if they're all unique (i.e. not a form letter). A friend of mine orchestrated a letter-writing campaign on an issue (a complaint about the horrific architecture of a new library) to our local city council. Just a couple dozen letters got the council and mayor very worried that the public was about to revolt, and they called a hearing on the matter.
If defeating traffic analysis is the objective, why not just post the messages on Usenet newsgroups? They'll propagate to many thousands of servers, and even if it were possible to see everyone who reads them, a popular newsgroup would have so many routine readers that figuring out the intended recipients would be impossible.
Prior generations had to labor from dawn to dusk at tasks that were often debilitating and dangerous. When I was younger, I remember seeing the toll such work had had on older people I encountered. In my area, tuna fishermen would have gnarled hands from a lifetime of mending nets. People who had labored at such things as ditch digging or construction were stooped and arthritic. I seldom see these signs of a life of toil these days.
Isn't the solution to this ripping the movies to hard drive? You can get 750GB drives these days, so you could store quite a few movies to watch "someday". It could even provide motivation if you dropped off the oldest when the disk got full. I notice that I finally get around to watching certain shows on my Tivo when their recordings become in danger of dropping off the end.
We could spend much less than we do now and defend our nation from any "real" threat- that is true- but most of our military spending is not to defend us from threats. The U.S. spends so much on the armed forces for the same reason that at one point the U.S.S.R had enough nukes to destroy the entire planet a few times over- we want to make the idea of (a major nation) going against us in any significant way (as in more than "we don't support what you are doing") a horrifying thought. We want to have so much power that the rest of the world is FORCED to follow our lead or pay the price for getting in front.
There's also another factor at work, in my opinion: the US is essentially underwriting the defense of the entire free world, and for good reason. I don't think we're interested in instilling fear in free nations so much as insulating ourselves from their utter fecklessness. If we had to talk the likes of France, Germany, and a number of others into helping us in something vital in their -- much less our -- defense, we'd be making a risky bet. Better to invest in our own ability to project force on their behalf than count on them being there when it really counts. It also has the side benefit of the US being able to project humanitarian aid swiftly and on a global scale. The big tsunami was a good example. The US had a carrier groups there helping rescue, treat, and supply people within 48 hours. The UN was still holding organizing meetings two weeks later (and coincidently taking credit for the help the US military was already delivering). I view the US military, in part, as in-kind foreign aid.
That proves little, though. They've moved because there's an unfenced area availible and that's easier to cross there, not because they can't cross the fence. In a sense, you've validated my point: building a wall just makes people be a bit smarter about how they cross.
Which is why it makes sense to fence off the entire border. The more effort you have to expend to get over, under, or around it, the fewer the number of people who will try.
As for the political will, we'll see how long Karl Rove can keep this going. Remember how hot and bothered he had people about those gays wanting to get married? No? It was only two years ago that it was *the* hot political issue.
It isn't the White House flogging this issue. They want what amounts to open borders, and, given the sentiments of the public, would have been delighted to stealth this thing in under the radar. They were well-along to making that happen when 9/11 woke up the public and threw a monkey wrench into the plan. It's the grassroots who are chewing the ankles of the members of Congress and blocking it. I'm pretty sure that the House isn't going to let the White House's version of the immigration 'reform' bill ever pass.
Conservatives/libertarians like me won't go for this for immigrants/guest workers, and for damned sure liberals won't. The only constituency for this proposal are a few nuts and this guy who manufactures the chips. I wouldn't mind this at all for child molesters, although I'd want an analysis to see if there's an actual benefit to be had from doing it.
The expression was metaphorical. A ladder was not literally being suggested. The point is, build a better wall and if people want to get passed it, they will. People got out of East Berlin, didn't they? We have a much larger border to secure and much less will to go to extremes to defend it.
I'm in San Diego sector and we've got a "wall" (actually a single-layer fence made largely of surplus steel landing mat). Despite it being a thin shadow of what any new construction would be, it's been extremely effective in reducing the flow here. That's the big reason illegal entrants have moved East to cross in the burning desert. Sure some people will get past any barrier, but in vastly reduced numbers, which is the point. As I said before, not being 100% effective doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. As for lack of will, the political tide seems to me to be turning. The House members report that illegal immigration is all that anyone in their districts want to talk about these days, and not in the context of wanting to let in increasing numbers of near-illiterate, unskilled poor people.
Slashdot Mirror
eVoting was a bad idea all right, but it's far from the only problem we have. We have very weak systems to assure that the person voting isn't committing fraud, regardless of the voting method being used. For example, here in California, it's explicitly forbidden to ask the person for a photo ID. I can walk up to a poll, say I'm Mr. So-and-so living at address blah blah, and even if the poll worker knows me to be someone else, s/he can't make me prove my identity. While we should be concerned about fraud being perpetrated with the voting systems we use, we should be equally concerned with the other sources of fraud as well.
Lockyer's termed-out this year and he's running for State Treasurer. This lawsuit is his way of getting his name in the media for free. Given the reaction I'm seeing here even from liberals, it might not have been the best idea he's ever had.
If the data was publicly accessible (a better term, IMO, because 'available' implies intent, which seemed to be missing here), why did the LA Times attribute (and continues to do so, even though the Angelides campaign acknowledges being the source) the recording to an anonymous source? The Time's policy is supposedly to use anonymous sources as a last resort, so why didn't they just obtain their own copy from the server and say, "Hey, look what we found on the governor's web site, and here's the URL so you can get it yourself"?
I noticed that the Times printed today that the Angelides campaign is "saying" (i.e. the Times isn't confirming it, just reporting what the campaign says) that the campaign is the source of the recording. I also noticed that, contrary to the front-page treatment accorded to the orignial story, the acknowledgement got put on page B-8.
I was listening to a guy on TV who had just taken his daughter to college last week, and had to pay $150 to buy her a math textbook. I had no idea that text prices had gotten that high. He also said that the publishers keep bringing out new editions every 2-3 years (how much changes about calculus in that amount of time?) so that used-book sales don't destroy their profits. I don't know how it is at other universities, but the one I attended had a monopoly on text sales thru the on-campus store, so it profited handsomely from the sales of new books as well.
I'd love to see wiki texts blow a hole in this scheme, but the professors would have to get on board and use them instead of the commercial ones. How many of them would do that?
... would be to tamper with the seals on a few voting machines used in an election and see if anyone even notices. Based on my experiences here (the aforementioned San Diego, where technology-adept voters were helping poll workers reboot the machines and reinstall the software because the program was in RAM and the batteries ran down while the machines sat unpowered for days before the election), nobody'd even bother to check.
Are you saying that only elderly people can be technological lunkheads? I've run into plenty of people whose microwave oven clocks are still flashing 12:00. If you want to have a restriction aimed at keeping the ill-informed and "unsuited" away from the internet, then maybe the store should administer a technology test to every applicant. That would make way more sense than some arbitrary cutoff based on age. Which is still damning the idea with faint praise.
My prediction: at some future time, somebody, somewhere is going to sue Google for conning people into performing valuable work for free. The suit will demand back wages, social security payments, health and retirement benefits. Not to mention m/billions for the class action attorneys.
Over that distance and without obstructions, it's just a guess, but I'm thinking that you could design a wireless optics-based system that would have many times that bandwidth. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, I'd be interested to know if my instincts are off.
A friend of mine recently discovered that it was cheaper to buy her same model printer on sale than to buy a replacement cartridge for her existing printer. She couldn't bring herself to toss a perfectly good printer just to get the cartridge cheaper, but the temptation was there. I'll bet many other people don't have the same compunctions about this sort of waste.
I suspect there are a least a few people who aren't aware of it or could stand to be reminded. Even a few Slashdotters might be new enough to haven't heard of the technique.
The problems being that you do lose significant quality, and you have to do all this in realtime, which means very, very slowly.
Well, as I said, I sure can't detect any difference between the original audio stream and the recording. I have to think it would be fine for most people who just want to listen to a few tunes and not analyze them in great degree. As for being slow, that didn't bug me any. I created a playlist on Yahoo Music and set it going. Replay Music captured each song in a separate MP3 file and properly labeled it with the album, title, artists, etc. I didn't even have to listen while it happened. I let it chug away overnight and had a nice batch of listenable MP3s the next morning. Unless one is ripping thousands of songs, I can't imagine the time factor being much of a burden.
Besides, that trick doesn't work so well with video...
Replay A/V can supposedly record video streams, though obviously not through the audio card. Haven't tried it on a supposedly secure stream yet, so I don't know if it works for those. I'm not looking for video from the net, so that isn't a big deal for me.
Just use a stream capture software package (Replay Music among others) if you want to save a song. Since it captures at the audio card level, short of DRM being installed in hardware, no DRM can prevent it. Maybe purists can detect a degradation of quality, but to my untrained ear, the captured MP3 sounds exactly the same as the original.
Interesting point, which the article omitted. Even so, these days a skilled Photoshopper can put somebody in a picture in a way that's difficult to detect. A decent lawyer would still be able to make the argument of it being a frameup by 1069.
Wow, parent modded down 2 points. Looks like the Euros/Asians don't like having their idiosyncratic behavior pointed out.
Europeans and Asians get their knickers in a knot over the nebulous dangers of GE foods, but they smoke like fiends. I don't get people who ignore the real hazards in life to focus on the unproven ones.
My immediate reaction to this story was: if '1069' had the capability to break in to a computer to extract images, he also had the opportunity to plant the images there in the first place. A strong line of defense would be to assert that the anonymous 1069 is some sort of vigilante nut who gains access to the computers of innocent people, plants bogus evidence on them, then turns the victims in to authorities.
This whole case has so many holes that the defense could use, I'm amazed that they were able to convict. Stiger's attorney had to have blown it.
Notification laws aren't that useful. California has one that requires businesses to post warnings of "hazardous substances". Problem is, damned near everything is a hazardous substance under this law. Consequently, every business has one of these placards and nobody pays any attention because if we did, we'd never be able to buy anything. This notification will just end up as another piece of paper in the mound that nobody ever reads and that we sign whenever we buy a car. I suppose it will have the benefit of letting the seller say, "We told you about this" when some dope comes back a few years later, upset that his black box recording ratted him out as going 100 mph just before the crash.
To me, one of the most important factors in a DVR is if I can expand the capacity. I've done it with my Tivo and my DirectTivo. What are the chances of being able to install a larger SATA drive in this unit? Also, having a single 'live' buffer would probably be a deal killer for me; dual live buffers are an essential feature in my DirecTivo.
The only people the cops will really listen to are the ones who control their budget. Get in touch with your city council member (or whoever your representative is in whatever form your local government takes). It also doesn't hurt to take it to everyone else in elective office, so contact your mayor, member of Congress, your Senators, etc. As others have suggested, starting a blog would be a good idea. You can publish your correspondence with your elected officials (make sure they know you're doing that, since it adds to the pressure). Get anyone else you can find to write letters too. One letter from a constituent gets attention, but 20 or 50 gets a LOT of attention, particularly if they're all unique (i.e. not a form letter). A friend of mine orchestrated a letter-writing campaign on an issue (a complaint about the horrific architecture of a new library) to our local city council. Just a couple dozen letters got the council and mayor very worried that the public was about to revolt, and they called a hearing on the matter.
If defeating traffic analysis is the objective, why not just post the messages on Usenet newsgroups? They'll propagate to many thousands of servers, and even if it were possible to see everyone who reads them, a popular newsgroup would have so many routine readers that figuring out the intended recipients would be impossible.
Prior generations had to labor from dawn to dusk at tasks that were often debilitating and dangerous. When I was younger, I remember seeing the toll such work had had on older people I encountered. In my area, tuna fishermen would have gnarled hands from a lifetime of mending nets. People who had labored at such things as ditch digging or construction were stooped and arthritic. I seldom see these signs of a life of toil these days.
Isn't the solution to this ripping the movies to hard drive? You can get 750GB drives these days, so you could store quite a few movies to watch "someday". It could even provide motivation if you dropped off the oldest when the disk got full. I notice that I finally get around to watching certain shows on my Tivo when their recordings become in danger of dropping off the end.
There's also another factor at work, in my opinion: the US is essentially underwriting the defense of the entire free world, and for good reason. I don't think we're interested in instilling fear in free nations so much as insulating ourselves from their utter fecklessness. If we had to talk the likes of France, Germany, and a number of others into helping us in something vital in their -- much less our -- defense, we'd be making a risky bet. Better to invest in our own ability to project force on their behalf than count on them being there when it really counts. It also has the side benefit of the US being able to project humanitarian aid swiftly and on a global scale. The big tsunami was a good example. The US had a carrier groups there helping rescue, treat, and supply people within 48 hours. The UN was still holding organizing meetings two weeks later (and coincidently taking credit for the help the US military was already delivering). I view the US military, in part, as in-kind foreign aid.
Which is why it makes sense to fence off the entire border. The more effort you have to expend to get over, under, or around it, the fewer the number of people who will try.
As for the political will, we'll see how long Karl Rove can keep this going. Remember how hot and bothered he had people about those gays wanting to get married? No? It was only two years ago that it was *the* hot political issue.
It isn't the White House flogging this issue. They want what amounts to open borders, and, given the sentiments of the public, would have been delighted to stealth this thing in under the radar. They were well-along to making that happen when 9/11 woke up the public and threw a monkey wrench into the plan. It's the grassroots who are chewing the ankles of the members of Congress and blocking it. I'm pretty sure that the House isn't going to let the White House's version of the immigration 'reform' bill ever pass.
Conservatives/libertarians like me won't go for this for immigrants/guest workers, and for damned sure liberals won't. The only constituency for this proposal are a few nuts and this guy who manufactures the chips. I wouldn't mind this at all for child molesters, although I'd want an analysis to see if there's an actual benefit to be had from doing it.
I'm in San Diego sector and we've got a "wall" (actually a single-layer fence made largely of surplus steel landing mat). Despite it being a thin shadow of what any new construction would be, it's been extremely effective in reducing the flow here. That's the big reason illegal entrants have moved East to cross in the burning desert. Sure some people will get past any barrier, but in vastly reduced numbers, which is the point. As I said before, not being 100% effective doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. As for lack of will, the political tide seems to me to be turning. The House members report that illegal immigration is all that anyone in their districts want to talk about these days, and not in the context of wanting to let in increasing numbers of near-illiterate, unskilled poor people.