ThreeBallot does come close but the paper in which it is outlined says right up front that it is susceptible to vote buying schemes and as such is not a practical solution. I think it's a great place to start working on the problem and I trust Ron Rivest more than David Byrd and Chris Albrecht (Diebold President and CEO, respectively).
Third, what's so wrong about paper? Why is the government so gung ho over mediocre to outright horrible electronic voting equipment over paper ballots? And what's so bad about receipts?
And finally, do you think the government will ever mandate that the hardware and software of electronic voting equipment must be published for citizen review? If not, how can anybody actually trust this equipment?
$5 earlier, $75 today. Total burn: $410 (minus $80 in deposits) = $330 due on 19-Nov...plus tax...which is the most I've ever spent on a console...mostly because it's the first one I've ever decided to get at launch. Every other console I've had has been purchased used or at least after a couple rounds of price drops.
And I decided against the classic controller because it's not necessary. You can use the standard Wii remote to play VC games.
At EB Games near me. I was number 11 in line. They said yesterday they were only getting 18 units and this morning they only accepted 15 pre-orders...turning away about a dozen people.
If EB Games is seriosly planning on getting close to 1,000,000 units at launch (which I doubt) they are seriously playing games with the numbers and could easily accept a ton of pre-orders.
And, yes, I know it's no guarantee. They can't guarantee Nintendo will deliver. But the guarantee is, so long as Nintendo holds up its end of the bargain, and EB Games gets their Wii systems on time, then EB Games will guarantee I get one of them.
My questions are: How many of you computer Dads have also gone through divorce and have retained either half or full custody of your children?
/me raises hand (full custody).
Do you think your job had something to do with it?
No.
What were some of your hardest challenges and are your kids happy?
1. Hardest challenges: being a single father with an eighteen month old son, learning to actually be a parent, growing up, staying focused on the job because...TADA! divorce sucks...regardless of what profession you claim on your 1040.
2. Happy Kids? You don't have a teenager do you? Happy is a relative term. And, yes, my children are relatively happy.
I also must say I think your thesis premise sucks. But good luck anyway.
Then maybe you should be removed form Windows support and reassigned or let go. Sorry but if you have these problems "all the time" then you are doing something wrong.
Yeah, right. It's my fault Microsoft patches often cause problems. My fault and the fault of thousands of others who just don't know what they're doing, I suppose. Let's see what a google search turns up:
October 29, 2005 - Another Black Eye for Microsoft Patch Creation Process
May 13, 2005 - Faulty Microsoft Update Rekindles Patch Quality Concerns
I could go on. That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's a known issue. Has been for years. Many of those links point to articles saying things like "Patches have caused trouble at times, on occasion prompting Microsoft to fix already released updates" and "When we are dealing with Microsoft updates, one thing we always reiterate, then reiterate some more, is to test before deploying. The guidance is always to download, test, then deploy the patches. With Microsoft, the test section of our guidance has gotten larger and larger."
That you haven't experienced problems with ANY Microsoft patches but SP2 is at best an anomoly.
Where I work we've got about 500 windows computers, give or take. Those run on a rather eclectic mix of hardware, some as old as P2s, some as new as Core 2 Duos. Servers, workstations, you name it. We run a pretty eclectic mix of software too. Off the top of my head some examples would be Matlab, HFSS, Photoshop, Office, Vegas, Visual Studio, Metrowerks, Miktek and so on. A fairly diverse Windows environment, in other words.
Wow. I'm happy for you. Your parents must be so proud.
Wanna know how many patches ever came out that broke systems? One: SP2. How many broke? 2, both personal systems loaded to the gills with spyware. We wiped them to get rid of the spyware, they took the update and worked fine. That's a pretty good track record. Comparable to Solaris (which we also run a lot of)
So, is it your policy to automatically patch production servers using AutoUpdate? You've never run a competitor's database or application stack on any of your Windows servers? All the software you mentioned is desktop software. Because if you have, you'll find service packs breaking things aplenty. I'm not talking desktop apps. I'm talking backend. I'm actually fairly comfortable setting desktops (since XP stabilized) to auto update. I would never apply a patch to a production server without full testing on test servers to make sure things like, oh, let's see...the latest SQL Server service pack doesn't cause function FOO of product BAR to stop working...because that happens...frequently.
Now let's compare that to, say, Fedora, which we also run.
I never said anything about Linux. Patch management seems to be an equal
MS releases patches for Windows and everything associated with it, and tests those patches to make sure they work.
For varying definitions of the word "work".
I'm not joking and I'm not sure what you're smoking. Rarely, if ever, are production boxes patched with Microsoft patches without some due diligence. Best practices dictate patching test boxes first to see what the patches break before patching production boxes...because -- consistently -- Microsoft patches break existing software. I cannot stress this enough: Microsoft patches break shit all the time. Right now, I'm dealing with a situation where the latest 2003 service pack wreaks havoc on Terminal Services and causes some of the wierdest crap I've ever seen happen on a system (completely hosing opening shortcuts to URLs in IE [their own software, I might add])...and Microsoft's answer? "Uninstall that last service pack." Yeah, they test their patches to make sure they work, as in, they fix the bug they were patching. But they do a shit job of testing what the patches break.
Too bad I'm out of mod points right now. You are absolutely correct. And, while I feel for the Anon reply to your post, it is a very fine line. Which is just one reason why it's so hard to get it right.
Should parents tell their kids before they monitor? Parents and their tech-savvy kids are at odds on the topic.
Reeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy?! I'm Shocked! SHOCKED, I SAY!
The article quotes one 18-year-old as saying, 'A lot of kids are smarter than adults think.'"
True. But, having been a teen, and now having one, I can firmly assert that teens habitually underestimate the intelligence of their parents but not so often is the reverse true.
And my teen has been told in no uncertain terms that MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, et. al, are off limits. He has a blog. I set it up for him using WordPress on a web site *I* host. If he violates the rules, it's a simple "rm -rf blog_dir" away from death. Besides, those other places are full of crap. At least hosting his own WordPress blog, he's learning a bit about how that stuff works.
Anyway, I talk with my teen. And I tell him the policy in my house is the same as most corporate technology policies: The PC doesn't belong to him...it belongs to me...it's use is (or can be) monitored. The PC, and all that goes with it, is a privilege, not a right. And privacy is something he can have when he (a) is in the bathroom, (b) is in some state of undress, and/or (c) graduates.
Now that you've gone and made your rational, lucid post...I can't just invoke wit and dismiss PHP (and you in a roundabout way) as so many other quick posters are doing. You do realize you're ruining a perfectly good/. flamewar in the making here, don't you?
Ahh well. C'est la vie...oh, and BTW, it's always a slow day on/.
I was using the new comments beta system until yesterday. I turned it off because it sucks ass. I see the potential, but it's annoying as shit right now. I know, that's not a very constructive criticism...but, damn. Speed is an issue, the stupid floating "full, hidden, blah blah blah" shit on the left pane, and whatnot.
Maybe after they work out some of the speed issues and the like, it'll be great. But for now, it can't touch "-1, Nested, Highest Scores First" comment browsing.
Supposedly, No. The design is such that it is supposed to prevent mapping precisely who voted for whom. This is a basic part of voting in the US (if not the world over). If it is easy for the powers to be to figure out precisely who each and every one of us votes for, it plays into the hands of a horrible form of corruption. It enables retaliation, even the threat of which is sufficient cause for some people to change their vote. That type of vote manipulation is not supposed to be possible.
Still, I may be wrong on this...but I would think any voting system that makes it impossible to do recounts would be unconstitutional.
What is really needed is to have a study publicized which demonstrates that the content industries never had anything to fear in the first place (such a study was conducted, but never made it to the press...), and press coverage about just how stupid the content industry is being. But where are these stories? I guess the media really doesn't want to criticize itself.
I once took the time to put together a cross-referenced list of news media outlets, including newspapers, magazines, radio, and television and record labels, movie studios, et. al., that very clearly showed the link in ownership. It's old, out of date, and I can't find it now; but, it suffices to say you are right in that "the media doesn't want to criticize itself" because that is precisely what it would be doing. Most major "news" providers are owned by the same folks that own most major "content" providers.
It depends. That top o' the line 1MP camera from days gone by would likely snap a picture that looks just as good as today's $200 8MP cameras... when viewed on a 128x128 cell phone LCD. Possibly even when printed out at standard wallet size prints. But print the two images out as 8x10 photos and I guarantee you the 8MP wins.
Ah, I ruined the joke by submitting before preview. So I'll just ask: would it have been better to say "Elvish" instead of "Klingon" there? It's more on topic, but less obviously a nerd joke.
As an aside, my first idea for a post was to just write: NEEEERRRRRDDDDDSSSSSSS!!!!!
Sony's Blu-Ray is already a dead medium? Wow. I would rather say the same about HD-DVD, considering its total lack of support from any of the studios.
I think they're both dead. That's not to say they won't kick and twitch and go through their respective "death throes" for the next few years. But I think it's fairly obvious already that alternatives will overtake them sooner than it would take for the investment in those mediums to pan out. I am willing to accept the possibility of being wrong...but I cannot see how HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will ever approach the life span of CD and DVD. I seriously expect the majority of game content will be delivered over the wire (or over the air if you prefer)...by 2010.
Already, there's a lot of HD (video) content distributed over cable and broadcast spectrum. In the next few years, the percentage of HD video delivered to homes (at least in the US) will overtake the percentage of SD. Where's the advantage of HD video on disc when I've got HD video-on-demand and HD DVRs from my cable company?
The hottest developments in gaming right now are in online distribution (think XBL). Granted, games like WoW and such are still sold at retail but it's a dying trend. As soon as somebody figures out how to monetize BitTorrent (et. al.) to their liking (read: controlled distributed distribution to only those who've paid vs. uncontrolled distributed distribution to anybody with a BT client), there'll be even less incentive to making inventory of boxes w/ scratchable discs in them that sit on shelves and such. And, since you mentioned flash...the price is rapidly declining as the capacity is rapidly increasing. And, while flash has its own drawbacks, it's a better medium from mobile data storage than CDs/DVDs, or any other disc.
Sony is huge. The name itself still has a lot of value. However, if the PS3 is a miserable failure, they run a definite financial risk of stockholder revolt leading to a number of things:
Sacking of some senior level execs
Corporate restructuring
Selling off divisions that are not profitable
layoffs, cost cutting measures, bottom line modalities
Basically, if the PS3 sucks ass and loses them millions of dollars (hundreds of them), Sony will be forced to whittle itself down into shape. Expect the record label and movie studio divisions to spin off into their own separate companies (or be sold off to other record labels and movie studios). Expect the consumer electronics division to retain the Sony name, etc.
It has the potential to turn Sony into a shell of its former self...but not kill it outright.
Well, I read through all the replies to your comment and Yoda makes a salient point. Nobody mentions this, though: It is foolish to think game delivery will continue solely on discs for the next five to ten years. The type of disc drive in the box is a moot point when the base game and/or extra game content are being delivered over the Internet. Sony is aiming their BFG9000 firmly at their feet and blowing them both off over what is already a dead medium.
As a "game developer" I would expect you to already have a firm grip of this trend.
Slashdot Mirror
ThreeBallot does come close but the paper in which it is outlined says right up front that it is susceptible to vote buying schemes and as such is not a practical solution. I think it's a great place to start working on the problem and I trust Ron Rivest more than David Byrd and Chris Albrecht (Diebold President and CEO, respectively).
I know I'm only supposed to ask one...but geesh...
First, I haven't seen the documentary. Saw it was on last night but didn't have the time to watch. I'll watch it on HBO On Demand this weekend.
Second, when I read things like manual overrides allow unlimited voting and votes automatically switched it scares the crap out of me. Why are politicians and elected officials sticking up for this garbage more often than not?
Third, what's so wrong about paper? Why is the government so gung ho over mediocre to outright horrible electronic voting equipment over paper ballots? And what's so bad about receipts?
And finally, do you think the government will ever mandate that the hardware and software of electronic voting equipment must be published for citizen review? If not, how can anybody actually trust this equipment?
Wii: $50
Remote: $10
Nunchuck: $10
Zelda TP: $5
Already had $5 down on Red Steel.
$5 earlier, $75 today. Total burn: $410 (minus $80 in deposits) = $330 due on 19-Nov...plus tax...which is the most I've ever spent on a console...mostly because it's the first one I've ever decided to get at launch. Every other console I've had has been purchased used or at least after a couple rounds of price drops.
And I decided against the classic controller because it's not necessary. You can use the standard Wii remote to play VC games.
At EB Games near me. I was number 11 in line. They said yesterday they were only getting 18 units and this morning they only accepted 15 pre-orders...turning away about a dozen people.
If EB Games is seriosly planning on getting close to 1,000,000 units at launch (which I doubt) they are seriously playing games with the numbers and could easily accept a ton of pre-orders.
And, yes, I know it's no guarantee. They can't guarantee Nintendo will deliver. But the guarantee is, so long as Nintendo holds up its end of the bargain, and EB Games gets their Wii systems on time, then EB Games will guarantee I get one of them.
No.
1. Hardest challenges: being a single father with an eighteen month old son, learning to actually be a parent, growing up, staying focused on the job because...TADA! divorce sucks...regardless of what profession you claim on your 1040.
2. Happy Kids? You don't have a teenager do you? Happy is a relative term. And, yes, my children are relatively happy.
I also must say I think your thesis premise sucks. But good luck anyway.
Ubisoft is French...and they're not surrendering? OMGWTFBBQ?!
Yeah, right. It's my fault Microsoft patches often cause problems. My fault and the fault of thousands of others who just don't know what they're doing, I suppose. Let's see what a google search turns up:
I could go on. That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's a known issue. Has been for years. Many of those links point to articles saying things like "Patches have caused trouble at times, on occasion prompting Microsoft to fix already released updates" and "When we are dealing with Microsoft updates, one thing we always reiterate, then reiterate some more, is to test before deploying. The guidance is always to download, test, then deploy the patches. With Microsoft, the test section of our guidance has gotten larger and larger."
That you haven't experienced problems with ANY Microsoft patches but SP2 is at best an anomoly.
Wow. I'm happy for you. Your parents must be so proud.
So, is it your policy to automatically patch production servers using AutoUpdate? You've never run a competitor's database or application stack on any of your Windows servers? All the software you mentioned is desktop software. Because if you have, you'll find service packs breaking things aplenty. I'm not talking desktop apps. I'm talking backend. I'm actually fairly comfortable setting desktops (since XP stabilized) to auto update. I would never apply a patch to a production server without full testing on test servers to make sure things like, oh, let's see...the latest SQL Server service pack doesn't cause function FOO of product BAR to stop working...because that happens...frequently.
I never said anything about Linux. Patch management seems to be an equal
I'm not joking and I'm not sure what you're smoking. Rarely, if ever, are production boxes patched with Microsoft patches without some due diligence. Best practices dictate patching test boxes first to see what the patches break before patching production boxes...because -- consistently -- Microsoft patches break existing software. I cannot stress this enough: Microsoft patches break shit all the time. Right now, I'm dealing with a situation where the latest 2003 service pack wreaks havoc on Terminal Services and causes some of the wierdest crap I've ever seen happen on a system (completely hosing opening shortcuts to URLs in IE [their own software, I might add])...and Microsoft's answer? "Uninstall that last service pack." Yeah, they test their patches to make sure they work, as in, they fix the bug they were patching. But they do a shit job of testing what the patches break.
Too bad I'm out of mod points right now. You are absolutely correct. And, while I feel for the Anon reply to your post, it is a very fine line. Which is just one reason why it's so hard to get it right.
True. But, having been a teen, and now having one, I can firmly assert that teens habitually underestimate the intelligence of their parents but not so often is the reverse true.
And my teen has been told in no uncertain terms that MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, et. al, are off limits. He has a blog. I set it up for him using WordPress on a web site *I* host. If he violates the rules, it's a simple "rm -rf blog_dir" away from death. Besides, those other places are full of crap. At least hosting his own WordPress blog, he's learning a bit about how that stuff works.
Anyway, I talk with my teen. And I tell him the policy in my house is the same as most corporate technology policies: The PC doesn't belong to him...it belongs to me...it's use is (or can be) monitored. The PC, and all that goes with it, is a privilege, not a right. And privacy is something he can have when he (a) is in the bathroom, (b) is in some state of undress, and/or (c) graduates.
Now that you've gone and made your rational, lucid post...I can't just invoke wit and dismiss PHP (and you in a roundabout way) as so many other quick posters are doing. You do realize you're ruining a perfectly good /. flamewar in the making here, don't you?
/.
Ahh well. C'est la vie...oh, and BTW, it's always a slow day on
BadAnalogyGuy wrote: I have no analogy for this.
Imagine that.
I was using the new comments beta system until yesterday. I turned it off because it sucks ass. I see the potential, but it's annoying as shit right now. I know, that's not a very constructive criticism...but, damn. Speed is an issue, the stupid floating "full, hidden, blah blah blah" shit on the left pane, and whatnot.
Maybe after they work out some of the speed issues and the like, it'll be great. But for now, it can't touch "-1, Nested, Highest Scores First" comment browsing.
Supposedly, No. The design is such that it is supposed to prevent mapping precisely who voted for whom. This is a basic part of voting in the US (if not the world over). If it is easy for the powers to be to figure out precisely who each and every one of us votes for, it plays into the hands of a horrible form of corruption. It enables retaliation, even the threat of which is sufficient cause for some people to change their vote. That type of vote manipulation is not supposed to be possible.
Still, I may be wrong on this...but I would think any voting system that makes it impossible to do recounts would be unconstitutional.
It depends. That top o' the line 1MP camera from days gone by would likely snap a picture that looks just as good as today's $200 8MP cameras ... when viewed on a 128x128 cell phone LCD. Possibly even when printed out at standard wallet size prints. But print the two images out as 8x10 photos and I guarantee you the 8MP wins.
Ah, I ruined the joke by submitting before preview. So I'll just ask: would it have been better to say "Elvish" instead of "Klingon" there? It's more on topic, but less obviously a nerd joke.
As an aside, my first idea for a post was to just write: NEEEERRRRRDDDDDSSSSSSS!!!!!
Your knowledge of The Lord of the Rings is astounding. I could only have been impressed more had you responded in Klingon.
Already, there's a lot of HD (video) content distributed over cable and broadcast spectrum. In the next few years, the percentage of HD video delivered to homes (at least in the US) will overtake the percentage of SD. Where's the advantage of HD video on disc when I've got HD video-on-demand and HD DVRs from my cable company?
The hottest developments in gaming right now are in online distribution (think XBL). Granted, games like WoW and such are still sold at retail but it's a dying trend. As soon as somebody figures out how to monetize BitTorrent (et. al.) to their liking (read: controlled distributed distribution to only those who've paid vs. uncontrolled distributed distribution to anybody with a BT client), there'll be even less incentive to making inventory of boxes w/ scratchable discs in them that sit on shelves and such. And, since you mentioned flash...the price is rapidly declining as the capacity is rapidly increasing. And, while flash has its own drawbacks, it's a better medium from mobile data storage than CDs/DVDs, or any other disc.
Like I said, I could be wrong. But I doubt it.
Sony is huge. The name itself still has a lot of value. However, if the PS3 is a miserable failure, they run a definite financial risk of stockholder revolt leading to a number of things:
- Sacking of some senior level execs
- Corporate restructuring
- Selling off divisions that are not profitable
- layoffs, cost cutting measures, bottom line modalities
Basically, if the PS3 sucks ass and loses them millions of dollars (hundreds of them), Sony will be forced to whittle itself down into shape. Expect the record label and movie studio divisions to spin off into their own separate companies (or be sold off to other record labels and movie studios). Expect the consumer electronics division to retain the Sony name, etc.It has the potential to turn Sony into a shell of its former self...but not kill it outright.
Well, I read through all the replies to your comment and Yoda makes a salient point. Nobody mentions this, though: It is foolish to think game delivery will continue solely on discs for the next five to ten years. The type of disc drive in the box is a moot point when the base game and/or extra game content are being delivered over the Internet. Sony is aiming their BFG9000 firmly at their feet and blowing them both off over what is already a dead medium.
As a "game developer" I would expect you to already have a firm grip of this trend.