When I was in PA, I wrote a couple of letters to Senator Santorum (who was theoretically from my town of Penn Hills, let alone my state).
They were all replied to. With form letters. That told me why the opposite of my opinion was the right opinion to have and therefore that's what Santorum would do. Not a huge surprise he got the boot.
The Democrats are in charge of Congress mainly due to opposition to the war, but the US law gives the power to execute a war to the President... which is why the Republicans have a camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle's chance to hold the white house past 2008.
The political system in the US does respond to the will of the people-- just very slowly.
Excellent points. However, many times the vulnerabilities are found via the exploits that take advantage of them, then subsequently fixed on all affected operating system. Said exploits are very often on Windows (and in particular Windows XP). That sways me towards the argument that my assertion is probably correct anyway.
My guess is the exploits tend to be on Windows XP because it has the fewest layers of security and is the most popular OS in the world. I don't know the answer to the question, "What if linux or MacOS were the most popular?" I suspect it wouldn't be as bad because it's a lot harder to inject the right code in the right place at the right authentication level in those OSes, but the fact that the iPhone was jailbroken so fast (it runs MacOS X 10.5 and is jailbroken via a buffer vulnerability) leads me to believe there would at least be more than zero viruses.
Unless someone does a careful root-cause analysis of WHY each precinct either did or not not buy Diebold machines, you can't show any sort of causality here. It could very well be that the less affluent a district is, the more likely it is to vote for Obama AND the less likely it is to buy new voting machines, leading to the correlation specified in the article without the implied causation indicating fraud.
Actually, the more responsible thing to do is to vaccinate with mercury-free preparations, ask your provider to spread out the vaccines instead of bunching them all together in one shot, try generally to reduce the contaminants in your child's life, and continue your own education.
Actually, the mercury additives have been widely examined and found to have no effect, so it's much more responsible to vaccinate, mercury or not, than to avoid vaccinations due to mercury. Spreading out the vaccines is something that people without medical degrees tend to advocate, but I haven't heard that it will cause any harm, so do it if you want. Reducing contaminants is an interesting one. There's some evidence that shows that reduced germ exposure can actually lead to INCREASES in autism, allergies, asthma, and other serious issues. So while I agree that reduced exposure to skin cream fragrances, detergents, air pollution, and other foreign contaminants are a good thing, be careful that you don't over-protect the kid and set them up for a life of allergic misery.
That we are now mandating vaccines for things like chicken pox, though, is not driven by medical necessity but by convenience
I assume you've never had shingles. It can be pretty serious, and once you ever have had chicken pox you have a significant chance of getting shingles later in life. Shingles can be a source of secondary infection, a serious side effect of chemotherapy, HIV, flu, and even old age.
I suspect vaccinating against chicken pox, hopefully leading to its eventual eradication in the first world, might be the most medically significant thing that's happened recently. I certainly hope you're not holding this up as an example of a medically unnecessary vaccination-- there are other targets of that accusation, such as various stomach viruses that everyone gets that DON'T cause debilitating and disfiguring illnesses later in life.
Although I generally agree with the belief that FOSS probably yields better security, I think FOSS has a different characteristic of vulnerability than closed-source software. Specifically, the "ease of exploiting" a vulnerability is increased along with the ease of modification of the software. The most understanding of the system that's out there, the easier it is to take advantage of a vulnerability. I realize that "security through obscurity" is not something you want to depend on, but it is a real effect that has to be considered if you're going to compare the likelihood of actually being attacked versus simply having a vulnerability.
For example, MacOS and Windows had a similar number of critical security patches last year. However, there were dozens of Windows viruses and hundreds of thousands of compromised machines, and zero MacOS viruses. Thus, while a certain measure of vulnerability is comparable, the likelihood of actually being attacked is infinitely higher with Windows.
The rise in the incidence of autism cannot be explained by increased awareness and diagnosis alone, it's much too big for that.
Actually, there are many studies which refute this, and I think the scientific verdict is still up in the air. However, we'll know in the next decade or so-- diagnoses of the whole spectra of disorders is so widespread now that you'd definitely see a peak and drop if this were the cause.
I think many people agree with you that there are probably environmental triggers which are more prevalent today, though. What's more, some of those triggers might actually BE specific vaccines or additives in them, although I think the link to all vaccines in general has already been shown as unlikely. The problem with the Thimerosal and immunization debate is that it makes the whole topic political and makes it much more difficult to actually do the science to root out the real problem. In the meantime, the only responsible thing to do is to vaccinate, as that definitely prevents many known diseases.
What is the value of letting a company use and modify the Linux kernel if they can legitimitely lock out any usage of a modified kernel on that hardware?
Because the *software* is still forced to be free. Things like DRM and GPL3 that try to force restrictions on me that span out of the licensor's domain (ie. enforce what software must run on my hardware) irk me. GPL is a software license, and does a really good job at keeping software free. You can take TiVo's software and go make your own DVR hardware. Or do whatever you want with the software. That's the point-- it's a *software* license.
Yeah, the big breakthrough in this, IMHO, was a 1994 paper by Takeo Kanade of CMU's Robotics Institute titled "A Sequential Factorization Method for Recovering Shape and Motion from Image Streams", which did a pretty good job of factorizing out the 3D model as well as the camera motion from a video stream... it could tell you not only the dimensions of the house you were videotaping, but the stride of the person holding the camera. This laid the groundwork for a lot of other "model from video" work done throughout the 90's. More recently a group there has done a lot of work on "Shape from Sillouette" which looks closer to the technology that this product uses.
I've been waiting for this technology to go big on eBay for a decade... maybe this'll be the year.
Besides, it is most definitely NOT true that anything is better than what the US has now. The US system has actually stood up rather well to the forces of history.
A plurality system is inherently unfair to any small third party. Which is exactly how it was designed. Instead of splitting the government into tiny shards, it forces compromise and conciliation. The idea is that the smaller third parties must, in order to serve their constituents, merge with a larger party-- endorsing them in return for some action beneficial to them.
It's only unfair if you're a small third party and don't want to play by the rules. But since you'd probably be fairly disruptive to the country if you actually did get elected, most people don't have much sympathy for you anyway.
A fourth problem: the amount of helium available to humanity is even more limited than the amount of oil. Over 1/3 of it is stockpiled in the United States, with the rest spread around the globe. With no new sources found in awhile, helium has doubled in price in recent years, and that's WITHOUT a huge fleet of helium dirigibles filling the skies.
Perhaps, but that's not the reason anyone I know switched from Windows lately. One because their Windows machine got obliterated by a virus and they'd had enough. Another because they wanted a UNIX with all their familiar trappings. Vista wasn't even really part of their decision, although you're probably right about some folks.
It's debatable how much "less capable" the eMate was compared to low-end PCs of its day. Most low-end PCs then, and even now, don't ship with built-in pens and touch-screens to use with handwriting recognition. It's true the eMate had a slower processor, less RAM, and a smaller grayscale display. On the other hand, it had about two work*days* of battery life, the screen could be read in sunlight, and the OS was more efficient with the RAM.
So yes, the specs were less, but that's not how I measure "capable". And I think the XO folks are making the same point. The XO is more useful (ie. "capable") than many laptops of significantly more robust specifications.
I think dismissing the similarities so quickly is to ignore a valuable historical lesson. Even if you disagree that it portends likely failure, if you want to succeed you should probably try to learn from the comparison.
As I've said for awhile, that comparison is only valid if your own time is worthless...
"Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it. Nowadays, an Apple Mac is undoubtedly the alternative and, with its resurgence and its Intel base, a very viable one.'"
Actually, the Mac has *always* been a more productive platform than both Windows and Linux for most typical users. It's just Apple's recent resurgence that's getting folks to actually try it out.
There are a lot of comparisons between the XO and the old Apple eMate from the 90's. Even some blow-by-blow comparison reviews. I'm a little skeptical that if Apple, given its existing educational relationships and market, couldn't pull it off that the XO can. And while the eMate costed $800, it was also marketed at first-world schools. Compared to annual salary, the $200 XO is vastly more expensive to a third-world buyer than an eMate was to an American.
I kind of wish the BOINC client had a setting for "nice the hell out of it and only use 1 processor when not idle; go full-bore when idle". Instead it's all-or-nothing when not idle, and a fixed "do not exceed" for # of processors and % load whether idle or not.
You've been able to buy Mac laptops without Windows since the late 80's. Most of my Macs for the past 10 years have been Microsoft-free, and I'm not really missing out on anything at all.
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF
Only one of the 7 formats is DRM'ed (ie. "locked"), and only 2 have any sort of Apple proprietary nature to them (Apple Lossless and the FairPlay DRM'ed AAC). They shouldn't be forced to adopt a competitor's DRM. And Amazon proved you can create an online service compatible with the iPod.
Depending on the device, you don't have to stream it live. Like the Netflix queue, it will be "mailed" to you electronically and may take a day to ship.
I don't understand, though, how this is any more "open" than what Apple has been doing for a year with AppleTV. It's tied to NetFlix's system, DRM, etc., so it's actually a lot more closed/proprietary. It's just that NetFlix will probably be able to line up significantly more studios willing to allow them to do digital distribution. (We'll see in 11 days when Apple shows their hand at MWSF.)
I know a lot of people really liked AppleTV because it was a LOT cheaper than cable if you were only into a few shows and an occasional movie, and it was very conveniently tied to iPods and iTunes. I'm not sure what Netflix/LG can do to compete with that for your average non-zealous user.
Replacing HTML on their site with a proprietary technology that few people have, use, or even know about is probably the riskiest thing Microsoft has done to force adoption of their technology.
In my book, it also shows Microsoft hand. They'd love to see HTML disappear and the web to be run on Microsoft-controlled software standards. No thanks.
I think it is a sign of a faltering, if not failing, industry. In this case, it's a sign that the profit margins upon which the industry is built are extremely fragile and unlikely to last. I don't doubt that the music industry could be profitable selling music substantially cheaper (ie. at a rate the market would naturally bear without lawsuits), but you wouldn't get nearly as much revenue. But every lawsuit increases ill will and a desire to "stick it to the man" (with the "man" in this analogy being the record labels), causing a further decline in the price the market would naturally bear.
Re:well, not effortlessly
on
RTF Vs. OOXML
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
In theory VC-1 is the "open" descendant of AVI. It is part of both the Blu-Ray and the HD DVD spec, and roughly equivalent to WMP9's file format. It's kind of interesting that no one talks about needing to read VC-1, while there are zillions of MP4 players and even quite a few AVI players.
I'm an American, and in the early 90's I took a trip to Bogota, Colombia. On the way back, I got a minor grilling on the Colombian side before leaving Bogota, but literally got waved through customs in Miami and didn't even have to break stride. Of course, that was pre-9/11 and all, but still... the US really does WANT to try to make this stuff easy to do. We're just, well, bad at it right now. For most of the past decade we've had a government run by a party who are trying to prove that government isn't good at doing things, and they're succeeding. I'm sure it will get sorted out. Sorry for the inconvenience.
My dreams have thus trained me never to get up on my junior high school's stage in my underwear and sing. And it worked. I managed to avoid doing that, somehow.
I think the article has a point, but of course that there's much more to it than that.
The flaw here is simply that you and most other Slashdot geeks are so scientifically illiterate that you don't understand what that means.
Since no one's going to go back through this thread and give you the "flamebait" mod points you deserve, I'd just like to posit that no, that's not actually the problem. The actual problem really is that this paper, as it's written, is unscientific.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when is the goal of open source software "historical insight"? It looks like they're actually interested in getting some folks hacking on it.
When I was in PA, I wrote a couple of letters to Senator Santorum (who was theoretically from my town of Penn Hills, let alone my state).
They were all replied to. With form letters. That told me why the opposite of my opinion was the right opinion to have and therefore that's what Santorum would do. Not a huge surprise he got the boot.
The Democrats are in charge of Congress mainly due to opposition to the war, but the US law gives the power to execute a war to the President... which is why the Republicans have a camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle's chance to hold the white house past 2008.
The political system in the US does respond to the will of the people-- just very slowly.
Excellent points. However, many times the vulnerabilities are found via the exploits that take advantage of them, then subsequently fixed on all affected operating system. Said exploits are very often on Windows (and in particular Windows XP). That sways me towards the argument that my assertion is probably correct anyway.
My guess is the exploits tend to be on Windows XP because it has the fewest layers of security and is the most popular OS in the world. I don't know the answer to the question, "What if linux or MacOS were the most popular?" I suspect it wouldn't be as bad because it's a lot harder to inject the right code in the right place at the right authentication level in those OSes, but the fact that the iPhone was jailbroken so fast (it runs MacOS X 10.5 and is jailbroken via a buffer vulnerability) leads me to believe there would at least be more than zero viruses.
Unless someone does a careful root-cause analysis of WHY each precinct either did or not not buy Diebold machines, you can't show any sort of causality here. It could very well be that the less affluent a district is, the more likely it is to vote for Obama AND the less likely it is to buy new voting machines, leading to the correlation specified in the article without the implied causation indicating fraud.
Actually, the more responsible thing to do is to vaccinate with mercury-free preparations, ask your provider to spread out the vaccines instead of bunching them all together in one shot, try generally to reduce the contaminants in your child's life, and continue your own education.
Actually, the mercury additives have been widely examined and found to have no effect, so it's much more responsible to vaccinate, mercury or not, than to avoid vaccinations due to mercury. Spreading out the vaccines is something that people without medical degrees tend to advocate, but I haven't heard that it will cause any harm, so do it if you want. Reducing contaminants is an interesting one. There's some evidence that shows that reduced germ exposure can actually lead to INCREASES in autism, allergies, asthma, and other serious issues. So while I agree that reduced exposure to skin cream fragrances, detergents, air pollution, and other foreign contaminants are a good thing, be careful that you don't over-protect the kid and set them up for a life of allergic misery.
That we are now mandating vaccines for things like chicken pox, though, is not driven by medical necessity but by convenience
I assume you've never had shingles. It can be pretty serious, and once you ever have had chicken pox you have a significant chance of getting shingles later in life. Shingles can be a source of secondary infection, a serious side effect of chemotherapy, HIV, flu, and even old age.
I suspect vaccinating against chicken pox, hopefully leading to its eventual eradication in the first world, might be the most medically significant thing that's happened recently. I certainly hope you're not holding this up as an example of a medically unnecessary vaccination-- there are other targets of that accusation, such as various stomach viruses that everyone gets that DON'T cause debilitating and disfiguring illnesses later in life.
Although I generally agree with the belief that FOSS probably yields better security, I think FOSS has a different characteristic of vulnerability than closed-source software. Specifically, the "ease of exploiting" a vulnerability is increased along with the ease of modification of the software. The most understanding of the system that's out there, the easier it is to take advantage of a vulnerability. I realize that "security through obscurity" is not something you want to depend on, but it is a real effect that has to be considered if you're going to compare the likelihood of actually being attacked versus simply having a vulnerability.
For example, MacOS and Windows had a similar number of critical security patches last year. However, there were dozens of Windows viruses and hundreds of thousands of compromised machines, and zero MacOS viruses. Thus, while a certain measure of vulnerability is comparable, the likelihood of actually being attacked is infinitely higher with Windows.
The rise in the incidence of autism cannot be explained by increased awareness and diagnosis alone, it's much too big for that.
Actually, there are many studies which refute this, and I think the scientific verdict is still up in the air. However, we'll know in the next decade or so-- diagnoses of the whole spectra of disorders is so widespread now that you'd definitely see a peak and drop if this were the cause.
I think many people agree with you that there are probably environmental triggers which are more prevalent today, though. What's more, some of those triggers might actually BE specific vaccines or additives in them, although I think the link to all vaccines in general has already been shown as unlikely. The problem with the Thimerosal and immunization debate is that it makes the whole topic political and makes it much more difficult to actually do the science to root out the real problem. In the meantime, the only responsible thing to do is to vaccinate, as that definitely prevents many known diseases.
What is the value of letting a company use and modify the Linux kernel if they can legitimitely lock out any usage of a modified kernel on that hardware?
Because the *software* is still forced to be free. Things like DRM and GPL3 that try to force restrictions on me that span out of the licensor's domain (ie. enforce what software must run on my hardware) irk me. GPL is a software license, and does a really good job at keeping software free. You can take TiVo's software and go make your own DVR hardware. Or do whatever you want with the software. That's the point-- it's a *software* license.
Yeah, the big breakthrough in this, IMHO, was a 1994 paper by Takeo Kanade of CMU's Robotics Institute titled "A Sequential Factorization Method for Recovering Shape and Motion from Image Streams", which did a pretty good job of factorizing out the 3D model as well as the camera motion from a video stream... it could tell you not only the dimensions of the house you were videotaping, but the stride of the person holding the camera. This laid the groundwork for a lot of other "model from video" work done throughout the 90's. More recently a group there has done a lot of work on "Shape from Sillouette" which looks closer to the technology that this product uses.
I've been waiting for this technology to go big on eBay for a decade... maybe this'll be the year.
Besides, it is most definitely NOT true that anything is better than what the US has now. The US system has actually stood up rather well to the forces of history.
A plurality system is inherently unfair to any small third party. Which is exactly how it was designed. Instead of splitting the government into tiny shards, it forces compromise and conciliation. The idea is that the smaller third parties must, in order to serve their constituents, merge with a larger party-- endorsing them in return for some action beneficial to them.
It's only unfair if you're a small third party and don't want to play by the rules. But since you'd probably be fairly disruptive to the country if you actually did get elected, most people don't have much sympathy for you anyway.
A fourth problem: the amount of helium available to humanity is even more limited than the amount of oil. Over 1/3 of it is stockpiled in the United States, with the rest spread around the globe. With no new sources found in awhile, helium has doubled in price in recent years, and that's WITHOUT a huge fleet of helium dirigibles filling the skies.
Of course, for the bold, hydrogen is plentiful...
Perhaps, but that's not the reason anyone I know switched from Windows lately. One because their Windows machine got obliterated by a virus and they'd had enough. Another because they wanted a UNIX with all their familiar trappings. Vista wasn't even really part of their decision, although you're probably right about some folks.
It's debatable how much "less capable" the eMate was compared to low-end PCs of its day. Most low-end PCs then, and even now, don't ship with built-in pens and touch-screens to use with handwriting recognition. It's true the eMate had a slower processor, less RAM, and a smaller grayscale display. On the other hand, it had about two work*days* of battery life, the screen could be read in sunlight, and the OS was more efficient with the RAM.
So yes, the specs were less, but that's not how I measure "capable". And I think the XO folks are making the same point. The XO is more useful (ie. "capable") than many laptops of significantly more robust specifications.
I think dismissing the similarities so quickly is to ignore a valuable historical lesson. Even if you disagree that it portends likely failure, if you want to succeed you should probably try to learn from the comparison.
As I've said for awhile, that comparison is only valid if your own time is worthless...
"Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it. Nowadays, an Apple Mac is undoubtedly the alternative and, with its resurgence and its Intel base, a very viable one.'"
Actually, the Mac has *always* been a more productive platform than both Windows and Linux for most typical users. It's just Apple's recent resurgence that's getting folks to actually try it out.
There are a lot of comparisons between the XO and the old Apple eMate from the 90's. Even some blow-by-blow comparison reviews. I'm a little skeptical that if Apple, given its existing educational relationships and market, couldn't pull it off that the XO can. And while the eMate costed $800, it was also marketed at first-world schools. Compared to annual salary, the $200 XO is vastly more expensive to a third-world buyer than an eMate was to an American.
I kind of wish the BOINC client had a setting for "nice the hell out of it and only use 1 processor when not idle; go full-bore when idle". Instead it's all-or-nothing when not idle, and a fixed "do not exceed" for # of processors and % load whether idle or not.
You've been able to buy Mac laptops without Windows since the late 80's. Most of my Macs for the past 10 years have been Microsoft-free, and I'm not really missing out on anything at all.
From Apple's page:
Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF
Only one of the 7 formats is DRM'ed (ie. "locked"), and only 2 have any sort of Apple proprietary nature to them (Apple Lossless and the FairPlay DRM'ed AAC). They shouldn't be forced to adopt a competitor's DRM. And Amazon proved you can create an online service compatible with the iPod.
In short, they'll get thrown out of court.
Depending on the device, you don't have to stream it live. Like the Netflix queue, it will be "mailed" to you electronically and may take a day to ship.
I don't understand, though, how this is any more "open" than what Apple has been doing for a year with AppleTV. It's tied to NetFlix's system, DRM, etc., so it's actually a lot more closed/proprietary. It's just that NetFlix will probably be able to line up significantly more studios willing to allow them to do digital distribution. (We'll see in 11 days when Apple shows their hand at MWSF.)
I know a lot of people really liked AppleTV because it was a LOT cheaper than cable if you were only into a few shows and an occasional movie, and it was very conveniently tied to iPods and iTunes. I'm not sure what Netflix/LG can do to compete with that for your average non-zealous user.
Replacing HTML on their site with a proprietary technology that few people have, use, or even know about is probably the riskiest thing Microsoft has done to force adoption of their technology.
In my book, it also shows Microsoft hand. They'd love to see HTML disappear and the web to be run on Microsoft-controlled software standards. No thanks.
I think it is a sign of a faltering, if not failing, industry. In this case, it's a sign that the profit margins upon which the industry is built are extremely fragile and unlikely to last. I don't doubt that the music industry could be profitable selling music substantially cheaper (ie. at a rate the market would naturally bear without lawsuits), but you wouldn't get nearly as much revenue. But every lawsuit increases ill will and a desire to "stick it to the man" (with the "man" in this analogy being the record labels), causing a further decline in the price the market would naturally bear.
In theory VC-1 is the "open" descendant of AVI. It is part of both the Blu-Ray and the HD DVD spec, and roughly equivalent to WMP9's file format. It's kind of interesting that no one talks about needing to read VC-1, while there are zillions of MP4 players and even quite a few AVI players.
I'm an American, and in the early 90's I took a trip to Bogota, Colombia. On the way back, I got a minor grilling on the Colombian side before leaving Bogota, but literally got waved through customs in Miami and didn't even have to break stride. Of course, that was pre-9/11 and all, but still... the US really does WANT to try to make this stuff easy to do. We're just, well, bad at it right now. For most of the past decade we've had a government run by a party who are trying to prove that government isn't good at doing things, and they're succeeding. I'm sure it will get sorted out. Sorry for the inconvenience.
My dreams have thus trained me never to get up on my junior high school's stage in my underwear and sing. And it worked. I managed to avoid doing that, somehow.
I think the article has a point, but of course that there's much more to it than that.
The flaw here is simply that you and most other Slashdot geeks are so scientifically illiterate that you don't understand what that means.
Since no one's going to go back through this thread and give you the "flamebait" mod points you deserve, I'd just like to posit that no, that's not actually the problem. The actual problem really is that this paper, as it's written, is unscientific.