It could even lead to tailoring of computers to even more specific demographics, like a student laptop preloaded with word processor, email and an IM all available at the press of a button.
It was commonplace for early home computers to come with applications in firmware. BASIC programming was provided in ROM on all Commodore coputers except their IBM compatibles, Apple II series did as well as did many Radio Shack models and the Atari XL and XE 8-bit computers. Even the original IBM PC had BASIC in the firmware. Early 16-bits like the Atari ST had a highly modified variant of CP/M ported to the 68000 architecture upon which the GEM graphical interface resided--and on all but the earliest models it was all resident in ROM (can you imagine trying to get Vista on firmware cost-effectively?).
The example you give is even more ironic because the Coleco ADAM our family bought in 1984 had--you guessed it--a word processor preloaded in ROM (it bank-switched between the BIOS it had called "EOS" and the "SmartWriter" word processor depending on whether a bootable cassette or floppy was found in any of the drives). The idea is not new at all--it is a very OLD idea being resurrected because for end users it WAS a good idea to put the software you used the most to get you going faster, especially given that hard drives were rare on home computers and slower floppies and even slowere cassettes were the only practical alternative.
The biggest disadvantage was that firmware was not easily updatable. When software was simpler people just lived with the bugs until an updated hardware revision was out but with todays complex software (in some cases poorly written and poorly architectd at that) requires frequent updates as bugs are more numerous and more dangerous to your data (since we now have to deal with the internet). Now with flash memory technology having matured the updating problem is gone...the only thing left to contend with is cost (much more than a hard drive, plus software is so bloated).
There is another factor too--hardware has become more intelligent, as have operating systems and over time the traditional BIOS in the PC platform has become almost irrelevant beyond reverse compatibility. New hardware and current OSes use next to nothing in the BIOS anymore. So, creating applications in the "BIOS" is the way these companies try to stay relevant. It's important to note, however, that BIOSes are mostly proprietary to the point that it could be difficult to write Free software on the platform, and in juristictions with DMCA-like copyright regulations even illegal (as the DMCA is often used to restrict the ability to reverse-engineer). That's why Free software BIOS projects are important, and why Free hardware is something that must get more attention, because the parts of the BIOS that remain relevant happen to be the parts that make the wide variety of motherboards out there software-compatible with each other.
With that kind of backing maybe fair-dealing provisions in US copyright won't become exinct! We need that up here in Canada as well, before we get our own DMCA. The mainstream media industries are stepping up their lobby to bring us in-line with DMCA so if we can get some protections in place before that happens it would be great.
Anyways, with this new bill, I'd interpret it as meaning that DeCSS encryption needed to make practical use of our DVD players in Linux machines would no longer be contraban in the US? I.e. it circumvents copyright protection for "commercially significant non-infringing use"? I'd love to be able to sell or purchase a linux-based media-center system that doesn't need to be encumbered by closed DVD player application software.
I Don't think he is. Windows is exhaustively documented, but not WELL documented in the slightest. There is a difference between the two. Much of what is in MSDN is useless, unclear and misleading...and it is so poorly organised it takes far longer to find what you need than it does to actually use what you've found.
Sure, the big slatwart projects have some reasonable documentation, but even then, you can't tell me widely used stuff like Apache Tomcat, Sendmail, ntpd or even X configuration is intiutive or well-documented.
I find, in general, that nearly all Linux distributions contain much superior documentation than Windows does, especially in documenting command line tools and config files it is completely and totally superior. Windows has no equivalent to "man pages" to speak of. I can tell you that ALL of Apache's projects are thoroughly documented AND well organised (and well indexed by Google--the on-line docs at apache.org are highly ranked). Of all the databases I've used, PostgreSQL seems to be the best documented, closed or open source (even though MSSQL Server 2005 has pretty good documentation on TRANSACT-SQL and how to use SOME of its GUI tools, documentation on its command-line stuff is hidden as if Microsoft is ashamed it exists--or, as the parent poster suggests, perhaps it is an "easter egg" to reward "elite admins"). Sendmail? Yeah, happens to be the among the most difficult mail servers out there to configure but it is pretty well documented. I prefer to use Postfix, and have also found Citadel to be both well documented AND intriguingly easy to set up as a very capable email server. ntpd? Why the heck to you NEED a lot of docs for ntpd? It's about as hard to use as a Showtime Rotisserie Grill(r)(tm). Even if it is less-than-intuitive it is nearly all better-documented than Windows stuff.
You usually end up trolling through newsgroup posts or a half-dozen pporly organized Wikis to try to find your answer in the open source world.
See, THIS is the point. You can type something into google and you find dozens to thousands of postings on the subject, and generally the top-ranked results aren't part of a "poorly-organised Wiki" either. Google for help with MS stuff and you get 2 things: Semi-relevant, barely useful MSDN articles, and search-engine-spam pages loaded with links to those same articles. It is maddening! Besides, I usially dont' have to resort to Google very much with open source stuff as the typical popular open source application is well-documented enough in the man-pages or at the project's website.
It's quite comparable to editing the Windows registry by hand or by command line to do all configuration. At least in the Windows world, you usually get a graphical representation of the configuration using some GUI tool, and that helps you make some sense of things.
You are missing the whole point! The "edit the registry"/command line/config file stuff is EXACTLY what is poorly documented in Windows stuff! And sorry to day, but quite often the GUI representation does more to confuse the situation than clarify, especially when it is a dialogue with 20 tabs or a gigantic regedit-like tree. Oh yeah...that brings me to the registry...what a pile of useless crap THAT is! One big monolithic repository stored in a small handful of binary files hidden in the bowels of a system folder somewhere, with management tools that are almost completely undocumented in the help supplied with the OS, where you have to comb the knowledgebeast to find answers, and if you change the wrong setting there is no undo, and if it's really wrong you cannot reboot. I can't believe you'd mention the registry as a defence for Windows, because all too often you HAVE to edit the registry because some fast-n-friendly GUI app has hosed it. Hundreds of text-based config files in the/etc directory in dozens of formats is still not as bad as the big registry pig.
...becoause everyone is different and special in their own way!
Historically, Windows hasn't been command line oriented anyway, and remote access is done with Remote Desktop.
Well, historically the rest of the server OS universe HAS bee command-line-oriented and script-heavy, and remote access has been through RSH, Telnet and then SSH when encryption and strong authentication were needed. Nonetheless, int the Linux/BSD/UN*X world there has been a good amount of effort to accommodate the "Windows way". We have VNC, tunneling xwindows over SSH, and yes, there are even clients for Citric and Remote Desktop freely available (and sometimes included as part of an OS distribution).
Things aren't really character stream oriented in Windows, and for security you are supposed to use IPSec.
But Microsoft? Nooooo. Microsoft cannot tolerate differences. It insists we all play the game by their rules and if we don't, they take their marbles and go home. MS doesn't want mixed platform to be easy--they want it to be possible but annoying. The hope is that they can leverage their total desktop dominance to infiltrate the pointy-haired-boss-managed server market enough to hit critical mass, where managers get annoyed at having to maintain two different sets of administration tools, procedures, training resources, etc.
There is no technical reason whatsoever for Microsoft choosing one approach whilst barely acknowledging established practices. It happens quite often where someone bellyaches about "I can't do x in Windows without the GUI" or some such thing and quickly gets a reply from a seasoned Windows admin to just open up a command prompt and type some-such arcane command which is undocumented, or buried deep within the bowels of the MSDN knowledgebase beast. Obviously Windows IS capable, but MS consciously chooses to neglect such practices. SSH is part of the same problem--they could AT LEAST put in a proper SSH-supporting client fer cryin' out loud! A server would be nice too--not everyone wants to dedicate the bandwith for remote desktop connections. There are servers or other machines that require remote admin out in very remote locations sometimes, accessible only by low-speed cellular modems or packet radio. Remote GUIs at 9600 baud tend to be quite impractical compared to ssh, sftp and such. GUIs make a very poor interface for large-scale admin of, say large server farms and clusters.
Microsoft's model might be a "better UNIX than UNIX" within some narrow scope, but Microsoft continues to suffer from severe tunnel vision. It takes them a long time to bring things into focus that aren't right in front of them. Microsoft could've put a more concerted effort into WinFS and Monad and componentised Windows and interoperability tools but it didn't. It had instead to make 3 major releases of.NET and make a sparkly, glassy 3-D GUI and elabourate DRM technology. Meanwhile, the REAL promising technology remain mired in the research department or stumble out barely half-baked.
I'd send MS to the corner for its lousy behaviour.
I was on facebook for kicks and I quickly realized it's full of little kids and their horrible grammar.
Yeah I know. It's terrible isn't it? MySpace and Slashdot are so much better...oh, wait...
Nobody takes any of the serious chatter serious, and the fun chatter is just asinine
Thanks for the chuckle. I always get a kick out of people who criticise the grammar of posts in an online forum and make mistakes themselves, especially when they're given ample opportunity to proofread their postings as can be done on this forum.
Besides that, isn't "serious chatter" an oxymoron? I don't recall ever having a SERIOUS chat on-line ever, and that goes back to the chat rooms of BBSes in the 1980s. EVERY SINGLE chat room and forum I've participated in has some definable signal-to-noise ratio. Even technical support forums and heavily moderated forums have their persistent twits and they are usually the most "serious".
Not like the "friends" you have online map to anything realistic in the "real world."
Facebook, Slashdot, and to a degree MSN, are the only accounts I have that are active, if you don't count my logins at my work and home networks. I only have a very few MSN contacts and 100 percent of them are friends and family I know (not just merely met) in real life. Slashdot profiles allow you to mark people as "friends or foes" and though many people seem to have marked me as one or the other, I haven't really bothered doing likewise, because I tend to reserve judgment for people to which I haven't so much as spoken (or even typed).
As for facebook, there isn't one single person in my friends list that I have not met and do not know "in real life", so in fact, yes the "friends" I have online ALL "map to something realistic". It seems to me that Facebook is actually a bit MORE real than perhaps MySpace or Yahoo or whatever. At least there are usually less degrees of separation to most Facebook friends than there are to Kevin Bacon, which doesn't seem to be the case in many other places.
In sort, lighten up dude! Facebook is a SOCIAL networking site and is advertised as such, so don't be so serious and don't expect seriousness and maturity on a site of that nature that is open to all the "great unwashed masses".
...however I am only human and I hold enterprises that use litigation as a primary business model in pretty low regard. Plus sometimes being a little "trollish" elicits a mire lively discussion on the topic.
Obviously, the SCO IP isn't quite as fresh as it once was, but, there'd still be gems to be mined.
The tone of the article submission not only comes from my distian at Darl & Co's business conduct, it comes from personal experience with the product itself. You are being extermely charitable when you say SCO's IP "isn't quite as fresh as it once was". Their UNIX technology was already very stale when Ransom Love departed and Darl McBride stepped in and launched into all these lawsuits. UNIXWare 7.0.0, launched in 1997, was truly the last major innovation in SCO operating systems. Two years later 7.1.0 came out that included a few fairly meaningful enhancements to what appeared to be the same underlying system (though not quite as dramatic as, say the move from Kernel 2.4.x to 2.6.x in Linux).
In the eight years since, however, they've only made incremental changes in their core system (going from 7.1.1 to 7.1.4 kernels in that time)--even Microsoft's glacial progress with Windows outpaced UNIXWare's release time-line. Microsoft Service Packs tended to be bigger, more comprehensive updates than each release of UNIXWare.
In the time I was involved with UNIXWare in a professional capacity (from 7.0.0 to 7.1.1) I was impressed with its stability but extremely disappointed with its support (very good thing it was stable actually, or the lack of support would've killed it years ago). We struggled to get RAID working (needed to do patches and recompiles), struggled to get tape backup drives to work (no support at all there, we were SOL) and its Windows network interoperability was very weak (VisionFS stank--it was behind the curve on long file name support and performed poorly). Its compiler was also inferior to GCC. Out of frustration we let our SCO agreement lapse, migrated our servers to all Red Hat and stopped including SCO products in our customers' solutions. The best SCO had to offer seemed to be on the Skunkworks CDs and the open source applications on top of the OS (Apache, BIND, Sendmail, and Samba as a replacement for VisionFS), hence the logical move toward a Linux based OS. Things don't appear to have changed--apart from barely keeping up with support for new hardware the only significant changes in UNIXWare since have been to those same open source products. The mine has been completely tapped--no gems left to be found.
They also (still) have a (declining, but, still present) bucket of support contracts.
Declining is the key here. Investors don't typically look for businesses in the decline. At least it is a relatively slow decline (compared with the decline of the company itself). Those remaining customers really value stability, however since the product has gone stale there is no incentive to upgrade/enhance, thus no revenue potential. Stability is UNIXWare's hallmark--once you've banged you head against the wall enough getting it to work it keeps working, so UNIXWare users just let it run and don't disturb it--it is never patched and nether hardware or software is upgraded as long as it works...and it works until hardware fails or an application vendor forced their hand and makes them upgrade to support the app, not because the OS is so good.
In a market where Facebook (without an obvious revenue stream) is valued in the billions
No sane person would value Facebook at that level--that valuation is given because journalists have taken the agreement of "Microsoft pays x and as part of the agreement gets y percent ownership" and did some Grade 5 maths. MS obviously has motives other than just obtaining an ownership stake and sees value in the deal in other places (access to millions of eyeballs, more on-line presence, access to facebook's resources...).
you'd have to be an unbalanced zealot to suggest th
* Taken 16 flights * Experienced zero accidents or near incidents involving aircraft * Witnessed zero accidents or near incidents involving aircraft
However:
* Witnessed three auto accidents en-route to airport * Witnessed one auto accident en-route to home from airport * Taxi driver taking me home from airport narrowly avoided a severe collision
Flying doesn't scare me in the slightest, but I sometimes find myself nervous when I have to fly. Can you guess from the above experiences why? Safety at the airport in my home town is scrutinised very closely and by all appearances seems to be top notch. On the other hand, the city seems to have no qualms about planning several simultaneous construction projects along a single route, replete with inadequate road markings, constantly changing signal configurations and restricted lanes...which don't mix well at all with drivers who ignore the reduced speed limits and feel that they absolutely must not leave one or more car-length of space between themselves and the vehicle they are following, lest someone has the gall to cut in front of them.
The article of discussion here stated that there is one in-flight fatality per MILLIONS of departures--I bet more people die golfing than flying and certainly driving is several orders of magnitude more risky. Roads are WAY more crowded than runways and airspace, aircraft are in MUCH better condition and far more reliable than automobiles and pilots are FAR more skilled and competent than even some of the better drivers on the road.
It seems to me that even if NASA's interviews suggest incidents are under-reported by half that overall air safety is quite good and certainly not worth the alarmist tones by those involved. If there is ANYTHING about air travel we should be concerned about, beyond the hazardous road trip to the airport (if it isn't the construction-infested road to the airport at home it is the dangerously confusing interchanges and signage at other large airports), it is the screwed up state of security at airports. Recent surveys have shown that security gate personnel have been extremely good at confiscating grandma's knitting needles, threatening toiletries and risky bottles of Evian, but when it comes to REAL security they have been almost criminally neglectful.
For example, in LAX testers placed very obvious-looking bomb components into checked luggage (batteries with wires and circuitry attached, realistic-appearing explosives, etc) and 3 out of 4 times it cleared security. In the recent past air cargo security has been circumvented up to 90 percent of the time. At the airport I take off from regularly a mentally disturbed person scaled the perimiter fence, wandered onto the runways and tried to flag down a commercial jumbo jet preparing for takeoff. In Montreal a reporter crawled under a similar fence, got into an unlocked maintenance truck and started it up. Then he put on a smock and waled right into the CARA kitchen preparing food for the next departing flight posing as an inspector. Nobody questioned his presence, asked for ID or anything.
Trust me, if you were to be injured or killed during a flight--extremely unlikely as it is, you probably stand a greater chance of it being because some nutjob jihadist checked a bomb, or infiltrated airport security and poisoned the in-flight food, than because of mechanical failure or runway incursions or mid-air collisions or birds meeting their maker inside a jet engine.
Spoken like someone who has never deployed technology in an industrial or outdoor setting.
That is exactly my line of work actually. In heavy industrial and outdoor settings yes, these are not appropriate. In a retail environment and certain warehousing applications however the extra cost of ruggedised devices is not required (A couple of food production facilities and medical equipment testing outfit come to mind)
Symbol, Intermec, and other companies already do an excellent job of ruggedized handhelds that do GSM, CDMA, Bluetooth, and WiFi connectivity.
Both Symbol AND Intermec have, from time to time, offered several products that are in fact modified versions of consumer devices (Symbol had a ruggedised Palm Pilot with integrated barcode scanner for example, and some of Intermec's products are off-the-shelf electronics in Intermec clothing with Intermec add-ons--I used to work for an Intermec reseller).
Success doesn't just mean sales directly to end users at the consumer level; Nokia could license the technology or partner up with an Intermec or Symbol and generate revenue from derivative products as well. The problem with these companies however is that they seem to be reluctant participants in open/Free software development. I think the situation is a bit better now (you can make more use of Visual Studio on the WinCE based devices for example), however I remember the dark days of having to buy EZBuilder and kludge-away to do embedded development practically on those Intermec 2400-series units.
On that note however, Intermec came out with a handheld batch scanner that ran uCLinux instead of DOS or WinCE so it looked promising that they might change their ways. Like many of its products, it was largely not designed in-house (it was a Unitech device in Intermec clothing with some enhancements). The problem is that it is this little monochrome batch handheld, though bluetooth and GPRS modules were supposed to be make for it. I thought this would be the start of a shift for Intermec, however I haven't seen but a trickle of Linux news from them in the 3 years since then.
I am not currently aware of a tablet form-factor device from Intermec or Symbol with the Nokia unit's capabilities. Intermec or Symbol would do real well to establish an ODM agreement with Nokia to make a ruggedised version with barcode and/or RFID readers built in.
Take a look at this line in the code:// OpenPopUpLite 2.0.1 action by Nate Baldwin, www.mindpalette.com, copyright 2004
They "own all the code" MY ASS. Perhaps they retained the services of Mindpalette to design their website or their own developers used some of their code, but this statement indicated to me that they DO NOT own at least a good chunk of the JavaScript in this file. Have they done their "due diligence" concerning their IP? Are the (retarded) terms-of-service on this web page compatible with the terms of service agreed to by Mr. Baldwin? I am the author of some GPLed scripts myself, and if I discovered they were used on this site I would take issue and even consider legal action!
Geez...get any 10 lawyers together, one will be a real decent person, the other nine will be total asshats.
An iPhone to me is as good as a paperweight, as I am not an American nor does AT&T offer its service to Canadians. In order for it to even function at all I would need to subscribe to Rogers wireless (the only service in the country with an iPhone-compatible network) then hack the iPhone to get *most* of the functionality--the kind of thing Apple likes to litigate over.
I already HAVE a phone and don't WANT another phone. I don't need a fancy GPS and don't want one. I don't really care if someone thinks I "look like a clown" if I can actually visit web pages and SEE them properly (not on some tiny low-res screen). It isn't supposed to replace a phone and a phone will never replace what it does.
And you also seem to mention that it runs Linux as if that is a bad thing. Who cares if it is Linux? My girlfriend's cellphone is Linux powered and she doesn't even care and didn't even know it was until I told her. what matters more is how it acutally functions, and the iPhone seems to be much more about form than function (it has not buttons with tactile feedback, is locked into one carrier's system, severely restricts third-party apps, is over-priced...not much that seems appealing to me).
There is no way this device will sell as big as a popular cellphone because it isn't filling that need. There is a substantial-enough market, however, for a device equipped with a REAL browser and readable display and a vendor that isn't a control freak. Users from warehouse order selectors and couriers to gadget-crazy hobbyists and hackers could appreciate this thing.
Sounds like unfortunately bad timing
on
Forty Years of LOGO
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· Score: 2, Informative
My first exposure to a computer was in junior highschool.
It seems that Logo was introduced to children a few years younger than that--think grades IV to VI. Computers were introduced into my elementary school around the time frame that computers were introduced into your high school (about 1982). In middle or high school students generally "graduated" to BASIC and perhaps Pascal programming. Older students were also the first to get computers (A small classroom with a number of Commodore PETs and a single "Bell+Howell" branded Apple II+). So, in my school those in Jr High in 1979 to 1982 would've been introduced to computers via BASIC on the PETs and would do a bit of "fun" stuff on the Apple in BASIC as well.
A couple more apples were brought in, then in 1982 Commodore released the 64 and our school bought a large number of them. The Apple II+ and C64s were primarily put into use in elementary grades...and they were each ordered with a copy of LOGO! I was lucky enough to have been in the right grades when they were brought in. LOGO was also ordered for the Apples around that time.
LOGO made for a superior introduction to programming than BASIC for several reasons:
* LOGO took advantage of the graphics and sound capabilities of the machines on which it ran. Without exception ALL dialects of BASIC supplied with personal computers at the time lacked some degree of built-in support for these capabilities and required PEEK, POKE and CALL/SYS/USR commands and machine language skills to fully exploit. Atari BASIC was the best (only lacked support for sprites and a couple of GTIA graphics modes), followed by Apple (no sound support at all, even for the internal beeper, but good graphics), TRS80, and last and very least lousy Commodore BASIC (vanilla MS BASIC without any extensions at all). LOGO could beep, draw pictures and the turtle was always a sprite on machines that supported sprites.
* LOGO syntax was consistent/standard at a high level. I made some fancy programs at home on my Coleco ADAM's SmartLOGO and could type the printout character-for-character into a Commodore 64 and it would run fine! There were visual differences due to differing resolutions and colour palletes (both had 16 colour selections but didn't use the same 16 so it looked tacky on one of the machines). There was absolutely no way to accomplish this level of compatibility with BASIC (beyond the rudimentary MSBASIC standards, so no graphics or sound) with one exception--the Coleco computers' SmartBASIC was syntax-compatible with Applesoft BASIC.
* LOGO was extensible and structured. BASIC was a mess in comparison, with its line numbers and how it enticed beginners into using GOTO. LOGO encouraged structure in its syntax--it had formal, named procedures (TO MYSQUARE/REPEAT 4 [FD 100 RT 90].../END, and you called the procedure as if it were just another built-in "word") and didn't have an enticingly easy-to-use GOTO construct. As a result the code was very readable and students learned good programming practices.
When we "outgrew" LOGO our schools didn't even throw us into old-school BASIC even then; we were put onto IBM XT clones (built by Commodore--like many Canadian schools we had an infatuation with Commodores, probably due to Commodore's Canadian roots) but learned "True Basic" instead of GWBASIC which was more strucutred and "modern" (and interestingly enough, multi-platform as it worked with Macs, etc). In high school QuickBASIC was used on 286 machines.
If it wasn't for me doing BASIC programming on computers at home (and trying my coleco code on the Apples at school) I might never have known basic had line numbers.
...however there is a shortage of democracy in most "democratic" countries.
Australia is already aeons past Canada--at least they've established a process to elect senators. In Canada they're appointed by the Queen's representative (Governor General) on advice of the Prime Minister. Technically speaking the GG has final say, but convention pretty much dictates that the PM makes the choice. We do, however have the Liberal party of Canada, which sounds similar to this now party in Austrailia--it too "has no position on anything" and its representatives "blindly vote in accordance with" their leader, who unfortunately seems to have a disconnect with the majority at the moment.
The Senate of Canada is an odd non-democratic institution for a country that is seen as a champion of democracy:
It is pretty common for the PM to consult with Provincial governments (who would compose a "short list" of potential appointees from which the PM would select a senator). However, there is no obligation for the PM to select from that list (nor is it a requirement for the GG or the Queen to accept the PM's selection technically, however it would be seen as a gross violation of convention). Consequently, the PM will conveniently ignore provincial recommendations when, for example, the governing party of the province differs from the federal government.
An interesting outcome has developed however--the province of Alberta strongly advocates elected senators and for the past 17 years has only submitted a "list of one" per senatorial opening to the PM, consisting of the winners of a "senator in waiting" election. The first such senator was elected in 1989. PM Brian Mulroney respected the "list of one" and appointed Stan Waters of the Alberta Reform Party to the senate in 1990 (Mulroney assumes a Progressive Conservative would win, however he surprisingly kept his promise and appointed him anyway).
However, when the Liberals came to power in 1993 they did NOT support a democratic senate (they weren't AGAINST it exactly, but they weren't FOR it either because they say making any changes requires this big constitutional amendment procedure and stuff blah balh--it's hard to explain where they stand on the issue...well ANY issue actually...). The third party (NDP) wants the senate eliminiated entirely. The Alberta counterparts to those parties wouldn't run senatorial candidates as a result, so the ballot consisted of Conservatives, Alliance/Reform and independents. Since the two parties were both right-of-centre the rest of the political spectrum was only represented by low-profile independents. Subsequently the Liberals ignored the next two senatorial-nominee election results and made their own patronage appointments because they questioned the legitimacy of the results--which were questionable largely because the Liberals wouldn't allow anyone to run under their party banner (nice bit of circular logic there).
Now the current PM is a conservative with a strong past affiliation with the Reform party that put forward Stan Waters as a senatorial candidate. The candidate with the most votes in the most recent Alberta senatorial-nominee election (Bert Brown) has thus been appointed by the PM and today will become the second elected senator in Canada's history.
So, I know the concerns people have about mob-rule brought about by unfettered direct democracy. However, Canada's example demonstrates that often present practice is much more flawed and potentially dangerous. In Canada, the senate is highly partisan so they generally blindly vote in accordance with the party leader's wishes. However they really only answer to themselves because once appointed they cannot be removed until they must retire at age 75 except under exceptional circumstances (pretty much only conviction of an intictable offence will do it). In some cases that is a good thing as it allows for the rare intelligent, independent thinkers to flourish (Anne Cools comes to mind). However there are few checks on conduct and sen
At my job we aren't so young and most have families and we still have to make last-minute flights from time to time. On more than one occasion this year I've had to book flights within 72 hours of departure.
I can tell you that in many business cases there is absolutely NO WAY that this proposal is workable. People MUST be able to make travel plans up to and including the day of departure. 3 days is just not workable and the business community simply would not tolerate implementation of this proposal.
There are also far to many last-minute trips made on compassionate grounds. What about flights arranged to see dying loved ones, or to transport donor organs, or to get special treatment at a distant hospital? Hell, you can get a passport faster than 72 hours under normal cases for such reasons. If your identity can be verified well enough to get a passport that quickly then clearing you for a flight should be much easier than that.
Three days? That'll never fly. MAYBE three HOURS, but not three days.
It goes beyond that though--the same proposal not only wants lists for all flights arriving or departing US locations, it wants flight lists for ALMOST EVERY FLIGHT THAT PASSED OVER US AIRSPACE as well...which means they'd like the government to demand passenger lists from Canadian and Mexican airlines for many of their flights that never touch American soil. Not enough to violate their own civil liberties--in the name of safety everyone's liberties must be unduly curtailed.
I think there is a misunderstanding of Free software on all sides here. It isn't a "gift economy"; it isn't an economic philosophy/model at all. Good intentions notwithstanding, it damages the reputation of Free software when advocates make statements such as this since we already have to defend against ignorant detractors who consider Free software some sort of "communist threat".
Free software is a software development model first and foremost. One might call it "massively collaborative software development" but that probably wouldn't have the impact that "Free software" or "open source" does. The chosen development model of software does not require the adoption of a specific economic ideology--IBM and Red Hat operate within a pretty capitalistic culture quite successfully after all.
There is this mis-conception that Free software developers "give away" their code and have "no respect for intellectual property rights". This is very far from the truth. In fact, in today's global legal framework Free software depends very much on respect for intellectual property rights. The VAST MAJORITY of Free software is copyrighted code, and authors of that code wish to have their rights respected and for those who make derivative works to maintain those rights granted by the original authors. No, the code is most definitely NOT given away.
Microsoft as a notoriously "slow learner" to be sure, but I'd be careful not to dismiss Ballmer as someone who "doesn't get" Free software. I think he very much "gets" the concept behind it, and is very much aware that the Free software community does in fact have a healthy respect for intellectual property rights (ie. that being anti-software-PATENTS does not mean anti-IP in general since copyright law is respected and defended). Ballmer probably even knows that "massively collaborative software development" is not magic and is why Linux and Apache and so on are very solid technical achievements.
What Ballmer doesn't see is how Free software could make massive profits and maintain growth for Microsoft. MS doesn't succeed based on innovation or revolutionary ideas; it has succeeded thus far because it finds those windows of opportunity. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, they just spotted the perfect entry point into the PC market with the release of the Altair. MS-DOS wasn't the first OS for personal computers, it was a work-alike of the REAL innovator and was successful because they got in bed with IBM at the right time. Microsoft not only didn't invent the browser, they dismissed it as a fad initially. They spotted the opportunity to license Spyglass Mosaic to hedge their bets. They are perennial followers, however now that they are so huge once they adapt to the environment they can then set about adapting the environment to MS.
The thing is, Ballmer and Co. are having trouble spotting opportunities now, because now they have to change the way they operate, do something revolutionary and innovative. This is particularly difficult for a massive, publicly-traded corporation of any kind. Promiscuous US patent law appears to be the opportunity MS is trying to latch onto. This isn't a "capitalist-vs-socialist" battle--it is simply a company that is struggling to find some vision while other "capitalistic" enterprises are establishing themselves using Free software (most notable Google and IBM).
I find Ballmer's strategy especially distasteful because it involved building a business model on protectionist government legislation. Copyright protection, when properly implemented and applied, can be used to maintain a level playing field. Patent law, as currently implemented is solely about protecting monopoly status and stifling competition (and sadly, the DMCA is threatening to make copyright in the US into a similar tool).
I've repaired and issued a lot of laptops in my day and I'm not aware of a true competitor to the T series in terms of chassis design.
I'd have to disagree--I'd have to say Toshiba from my experience is competitive in terms of build quality looking at the overall lineup.
If you are looking for durability Panasonic ToughBooks are far superior to Lenovos. Lenovos might have a good chassis design but I find they are "too dainty" in other ways (keyboards for example). Speaking from practical knowledge I'd much rather go with a ToughBook or maybe a Toshiba Tecra or Sattelite than a Thinkpad--also because they aren't Chinese companies (they are Japanese).
Reason I ask is the same building where Lenovo computers are 'made' (IE Physically Assembled) is also the same building Apple, Dell, HP, Acer, and many others are made. The company is contracted out to make just about everyones laptop.
I can't speak for the others, but a sizeable number of Dell notebooks (ie. pretty much the entire Latitude line) are made in Malaysia, NOT in China. Also make sure you don't lump Taiwan in with China--they are NOT the same thing and a lot of computers are assembled there instead.
It's hard to ELIMINATE Chinese-made goods from your life, however a lot can be done to reduce your dependency on them.
There is no was to get a computer that isn't manufactured at least partially in China.
Correct me if I'm wring, but isn't a sizable part of the PC manufacturing industry not located in Taiwan ROC, vs "Red China" (Lenovo is in Beijing)? Taiwian may be considered by greater china to be a "Rogue state" within their country, however Taiwan's democratically elected government steadfastly asserts its independence from the communist regime and isn't a likely supporter of the repressive Burmese government. Furthermore there are still a lot of Japanese manufacturers out there, are there not?
Perhaps there IS not way to avoid purchasing ASAIN-made computer components, however you could greatly reduce and perhaps eliminate the use of those made in communist China..or at LEAST avoid companies that are headquartered there, as Lenovo is.
...the key is what measures are in place for verification, fraud detection and correction.
With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one vote at a time.
In Canada in 1995, the province of Quebec held a referendum on whether to secede from confederation and pursue the goal of becoming a sovereign country. The overall vote was extremely close; the "No" side (those who wished NOT to secede and favoured remaining in Canada) won by just over 1% margin. Just as any close election should be the resulting ballots and the vote in general were examined closely.
The vote was conducted by a pure paper-ballot, with scrutineers performing the counts manually (ie. the ballots were not only paper, they were also not of the "machine-readable" kind). Since the votes must be counted one at a time, it does not matter if the results can only be rigged one vote at a time because they can be rigged while they are counted.
This is what happened in Quebec in 1995. Supporters of the "Yes" side (who wished for Quebec to become an independent country) tried really hard to make the vote turn their way by challenging ballots. Fully 80 THOUSAND ballots or more were challenged in such a way (similar to the "hanging chad" issues in Florida in 2000) and most of them clearly indicated the intention to vote "No". It was enough to considerably narrow the already small margin of victory for the "no" side and could've potentially meant a spearation declaration and constitutional crisis in Canada. Ballots were challenged by "Yes scrutineers" for things like the voter using a check mark or filling in the circle instead of using an X as shown in voting instructions, or because a dot or a stray mark was present within the "Yes" circle even though a proper X was in the "No" circle, or because the X extended outside the circle a bit, or because there was evidence of erasure marks on the ballot.
This is clear proof that even if fraud can only occur one ballot at a time, it certainly CAN be widespread and of large enough magnitude to cause a dramatically different outcome. It was not the voting method that rectified or revealed the situation, it was the mechanisms in place to appeal, recount, investigate that were effective.
In a way, a proper HYBRID system (electronic with paper verification ballot) is probably the best of all options. The paper is electronically printed and thus not open to subjective rejection by biased scrutineers. If the paper verification ballot is mis-printed due to mechanical problems or buggy software and does not properly show the voter's intentions there can be a system in place to reject the vote on-the-spot (it can be cancelled electronically and a re-vote can be permitted, with proper audit trail of course). If the electronic tally is disputed for any reason then the paper ballots can be counted manually and if the two totals are right out then an inquiry and possible re-vote can be ordered.
With the Diebold machines that had inadequate or nonexistent voter verification by paper there was no way of detecting a tampered machine. With mechanical "pull the handle" systems where the voter cannot see and examine a ballot card clearly indicating the right vote was registered you get the exact same problem (seems to be what the issue partly was in Florida--the voter did not get to see a ballot that clearly showed the chad was properly punched out beside the proper candidate). With a purely paper system such as typically used in Canada there is inadequate verification in the other direction: Machines are not emotional and they can tally votes much more accurately, without political influence--PROVIDED THEY ARE ADEQUATELY INSPECTED AND SECURED to avoid tampering. All in all, I believe a properly implemented hybrid system is the way to go.
Aside from the paper verification/backup, I'd also make it a requirement that both the software should be OPEN SOURCE and INTEROPERABLE (ie. not dependent on a single vendor's hardware). The government, any candidate
A router is not a house, a computer is not a car, and if you leave your wifi unsecured that is not mine or anybody else's problem
What sort of messed up logic is THAT? OK lets play with this a bit:
It should NOT be illegal to log into an unprotected router and mess around with it without the owner's permission because the router owner is stupid for not securing his network. This is different--FROM A MORAL STANDPOINT--than entering a private dwelling that is unlocked to explore and mess around inside (an illegal act generally thought of as immoral) in what sense? Is it because the contents of the router are not physical in nature? Why is snooping around a network different than snooping around a house? Why don't judges let throw out trespassing cases because "the house was unlocked and you should just expect people will wander in and snoop around and take stuff".
Of course they aren't EXACTLY the same things...but morality universally applies to all of those things. YOU DON'T MESS AROUND WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF. PERIOD. Yes, if you leave your doors unlocked, keys in the car ignition or your bike sitting out with no lock on it, you can "expect them to be used" because there are people with no morals out there. However, just because it is an expected consequence doesn't make it right.
It's all about PERCEPTION. Novell made a very smart, pragmatic BUSINESS decision. Business in America is unfortunately very often not about merit or ethics or ideals. Business is about perception, playing to emotion, speculation, MARKETING.
SuSE is no better or worse at Windows integration than Red Hat or Ubuntu or any other major distribution. Arguably, a purpose-built Linux server made independently of Novell or Microsoft tailored for such a purpose is probably superior to SuSE for such a task. Business managers, the ones who cut the cheques, don't operate on technical aspects at all. All things being equal (especially from a cost/savings perspective) PHBs are completely manipulated by marketing and related intangible factors.
First of all, the biggest market out there for Linux projects are in environments dominated by Microsoft. Novell can now say that their SuSE OS is the ONLY major distribution "endorsed" by Microsoft. We nerds that understand how Free software works KNOW that this is insignificant--at least for the time being. There isn't any concrete evidence that the Novell/Microsoft partnership is doing any concrete development and some sort of non-Free add-ons that enhance interoperability, and what cooperation MS IS doing (MONO, Silverlight) is pretty open and distribution-agnostic. That doesn't matter to PHBs--it's WAY over their heads. They just see the link and see it as good (just like "nobody got fired for buying an IBM" back when the PC came out--it made sense to PHBs to buy IBM PCs 'cause the "matched the mainframe").
Aside from the "Microsoft Approved" marketing angle and perceptions, there is speculation (FUD). If Microsoft decides to bring the patent submarine to the surface Novell is "safe". It is inferred that the partnership isn't just about "technical" interoperability but also "legal" interoperability.
Furthermore, there is an additional angle Novell can play on that doesn't even have to involve their relationship with Microsoft. A judge has ruled THEY OWN UNIX. If Novell decided to "pull a SCO" and you bought SLES then you've already paid your protection money and are safe.
This speculation is ridiculous to knowledgeable Linux specialists, but PHBs are ignorant about IT and in fact make every effort to know as little a possible about it, unless their business is all about it. The CEO of "Widgets, Inc" fills his brain with evetything to do with widgets and the global widget market, and how their widgets stack up against competitors, and how much they can reduce the costs of making widgets. IT is viewed simply as one of a large number of "cost centres"--the less expensive, less risky--and less TROUBLESOME--the better. You have to get down to middle-to-lower management levels within the IT dept. before it becomes more than that.
It's tough to compete against FUD because it is hard to quantify it in terms of dollars. Novell's competition has to undercut them by some monetary amount in initial investment and ongoing savings to a degree clients can live with the perceived increased risk--or else they have to offer concrete indemnification to defuse that perceived risk.
...doesn't mean it is OK to walk right in and check out what's in the fridge (unless of course it is your home). If the damage was minimal or nonexistent then the punishment should fit the crime of course, but it IS still illegal.
On the other hand, why hasn't anyone thought of launching suit against the VOIP providers over the security breach? Tort law in the good ol' US of A is the most stringent in the world when it comes to "duty of care". Leaving passwords at factory defaults certainly could constitute negligence.
Come on people, seeing how litigious society is today, why not use it constructively? Sometimes the only way companies learn to be responsible is through the bottom line. Did some phone providers not have to be sued into providing 911 service standard after all? I'd say that this guy breaking in so easily should be justification for some legal action towards the VOIP providers.
...for requiring webcam proof of one's gender. I think it's just lonely, horny male sysadmins who want to see boobies on webcam. Think about it: they aren't requesting that people prove they're MEN when playing as male characters.
What's next, having to prove your skills/powers/health/etc on webcam before being able to use them online?
"Sorry dude, you're in a wheelchair from what I see...that means we can't let your character walk in our game".
OMG! They aren't seriously still be using 8049 family parts in production automobiles, I hope.
I don't believe they use a discrete 8049, however they still incorporate that core into ASICs--a lot of "off-the-shelf" discrete parts from the days of yore (1970s and 1980s) have been incorporated into ASICs in order to reduce part count. However, the architecture and functionality isn't that much different.
Using a design that was "a stunted architecture in 1986" is the reason that reliability of automobiles has continually improved, whereas reliability of personal computer hardware has flat-lined or declined. The essentials of running internal combustion engines never change and the complexity of the process does not increase with Moore's Law. Engine Management evolves on a more incremental basis because it isn't purely electronics--it involves optimisation of physical processes. No need for a 64-bit RISC architecture to control an engine system that has not even double the I/O and doesn't need to run any faster than it had to 20 years ago.
That goes back to my argument, really. You are probably one of a few dozen people who would even care if the micro-controllers in your car are archaic in design. Most people only care that their cars start well in cold or hot weather, get good gas mileage, have enough power to pass tractor trailers on the freeway and run smoothly without breaking down very often.
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It could even lead to tailoring of computers to even more specific demographics, like a student laptop preloaded with word processor, email and an IM all available at the press of a button.
It was commonplace for early home computers to come with applications in firmware. BASIC programming was provided in ROM on all Commodore coputers except their IBM compatibles, Apple II series did as well as did many Radio Shack models and the Atari XL and XE 8-bit computers. Even the original IBM PC had BASIC in the firmware. Early 16-bits like the Atari ST had a highly modified variant of CP/M ported to the 68000 architecture upon which the GEM graphical interface resided--and on all but the earliest models it was all resident in ROM (can you imagine trying to get Vista on firmware cost-effectively?).
The example you give is even more ironic because the Coleco ADAM our family bought in 1984 had--you guessed it--a word processor preloaded in ROM (it bank-switched between the BIOS it had called "EOS" and the "SmartWriter" word processor depending on whether a bootable cassette or floppy was found in any of the drives). The idea is not new at all--it is a very OLD idea being resurrected because for end users it WAS a good idea to put the software you used the most to get you going faster, especially given that hard drives were rare on home computers and slower floppies and even slowere cassettes were the only practical alternative.
The biggest disadvantage was that firmware was not easily updatable. When software was simpler people just lived with the bugs until an updated hardware revision was out but with todays complex software (in some cases poorly written and poorly architectd at that) requires frequent updates as bugs are more numerous and more dangerous to your data (since we now have to deal with the internet). Now with flash memory technology having matured the updating problem is gone...the only thing left to contend with is cost (much more than a hard drive, plus software is so bloated).
There is another factor too--hardware has become more intelligent, as have operating systems and over time the traditional BIOS in the PC platform has become almost irrelevant beyond reverse compatibility. New hardware and current OSes use next to nothing in the BIOS anymore. So, creating applications in the "BIOS" is the way these companies try to stay relevant. It's important to note, however, that BIOSes are mostly proprietary to the point that it could be difficult to write Free software on the platform, and in juristictions with DMCA-like copyright regulations even illegal (as the DMCA is often used to restrict the ability to reverse-engineer). That's why Free software BIOS projects are important, and why Free hardware is something that must get more attention, because the parts of the BIOS that remain relevant happen to be the parts that make the wide variety of motherboards out there software-compatible with each other.
With that kind of backing maybe fair-dealing provisions in US copyright won't become exinct! We need that up here in Canada as well, before we get our own DMCA. The mainstream media industries are stepping up their lobby to bring us in-line with DMCA so if we can get some protections in place before that happens it would be great.
Anyways, with this new bill, I'd interpret it as meaning that DeCSS encryption needed to make practical use of our DVD players in Linux machines would no longer be contraban in the US? I.e. it circumvents copyright protection for "commercially significant non-infringing use"? I'd love to be able to sell or purchase a linux-based media-center system that doesn't need to be encumbered by closed DVD player application software.
You're joking, right?
/etc directory in dozens of formats is still not as bad as the big registry pig.
I Don't think he is. Windows is exhaustively documented, but not WELL documented in the slightest. There is a difference between the two. Much of what is in MSDN is useless, unclear and misleading...and it is so poorly organised it takes far longer to find what you need than it does to actually use what you've found.
Sure, the big slatwart projects have some reasonable documentation, but even then, you can't tell me widely used stuff like Apache Tomcat, Sendmail, ntpd or even X configuration is intiutive or well-documented.
I find, in general, that nearly all Linux distributions contain much superior documentation than Windows does, especially in documenting command line tools and config files it is completely and totally superior. Windows has no equivalent to "man pages" to speak of. I can tell you that ALL of Apache's projects are thoroughly documented AND well organised (and well indexed by Google--the on-line docs at apache.org are highly ranked). Of all the databases I've used, PostgreSQL seems to be the best documented, closed or open source (even though MSSQL Server 2005 has pretty good documentation on TRANSACT-SQL and how to use SOME of its GUI tools, documentation on its command-line stuff is hidden as if Microsoft is ashamed it exists--or, as the parent poster suggests, perhaps it is an "easter egg" to reward "elite admins"). Sendmail? Yeah, happens to be the among the most difficult mail servers out there to configure but it is pretty well documented. I prefer to use Postfix, and have also found Citadel to be both well documented AND intriguingly easy to set up as a very capable email server. ntpd? Why the heck to you NEED a lot of docs for ntpd? It's about as hard to use as a Showtime Rotisserie Grill(r)(tm). Even if it is less-than-intuitive it is nearly all better-documented than Windows stuff.
You usually end up trolling through newsgroup posts or a half-dozen pporly organized Wikis to try to find your answer in the open source world.
See, THIS is the point. You can type something into google and you find dozens to thousands of postings on the subject, and generally the top-ranked results aren't part of a "poorly-organised Wiki" either. Google for help with MS stuff and you get 2 things: Semi-relevant, barely useful MSDN articles, and search-engine-spam pages loaded with links to those same articles. It is maddening! Besides, I usially dont' have to resort to Google very much with open source stuff as the typical popular open source application is well-documented enough in the man-pages or at the project's website.
It's quite comparable to editing the Windows registry by hand or by command line to do all configuration. At least in the Windows world, you usually get a graphical representation of the configuration using some GUI tool, and that helps you make some sense of things.
You are missing the whole point! The "edit the registry"/command line/config file stuff is EXACTLY what is poorly documented in Windows stuff! And sorry to day, but quite often the GUI representation does more to confuse the situation than clarify, especially when it is a dialogue with 20 tabs or a gigantic regedit-like tree. Oh yeah...that brings me to the registry...what a pile of useless crap THAT is! One big monolithic repository stored in a small handful of binary files hidden in the bowels of a system folder somewhere, with management tools that are almost completely undocumented in the help supplied with the OS, where you have to comb the knowledgebeast to find answers, and if you change the wrong setting there is no undo, and if it's really wrong you cannot reboot. I can't believe you'd mention the registry as a defence for Windows, because all too often you HAVE to edit the registry because some fast-n-friendly GUI app has hosed it. Hundreds of text-based config files in the
While speed, funct
...becoause everyone is different and special in their own way!
.NET and make a sparkly, glassy 3-D GUI and elabourate DRM technology. Meanwhile, the REAL promising technology remain mired in the research department or stumble out barely half-baked.
Historically, Windows hasn't been command line oriented anyway, and remote access is done with Remote Desktop.
Well, historically the rest of the server OS universe HAS bee command-line-oriented and script-heavy, and remote access has been through RSH, Telnet and then SSH when encryption and strong authentication were needed. Nonetheless, int the Linux/BSD/UN*X world there has been a good amount of effort to accommodate the "Windows way". We have VNC, tunneling xwindows over SSH, and yes, there are even clients for Citric and Remote Desktop freely available (and sometimes included as part of an OS distribution).
Things aren't really character stream oriented in Windows, and for security you are supposed to use IPSec.
But Microsoft? Nooooo. Microsoft cannot tolerate differences. It insists we all play the game by their rules and if we don't, they take their marbles and go home. MS doesn't want mixed platform to be easy--they want it to be possible but annoying. The hope is that they can leverage their total desktop dominance to infiltrate the pointy-haired-boss-managed server market enough to hit critical mass, where managers get annoyed at having to maintain two different sets of administration tools, procedures, training resources, etc.
There is no technical reason whatsoever for Microsoft choosing one approach whilst barely acknowledging established practices. It happens quite often where someone bellyaches about "I can't do x in Windows without the GUI" or some such thing and quickly gets a reply from a seasoned Windows admin to just open up a command prompt and type some-such arcane command which is undocumented, or buried deep within the bowels of the MSDN knowledgebase beast. Obviously Windows IS capable, but MS consciously chooses to neglect such practices. SSH is part of the same problem--they could AT LEAST put in a proper SSH-supporting client fer cryin' out loud! A server would be nice too--not everyone wants to dedicate the bandwith for remote desktop connections. There are servers or other machines that require remote admin out in very remote locations sometimes, accessible only by low-speed cellular modems or packet radio. Remote GUIs at 9600 baud tend to be quite impractical compared to ssh, sftp and such. GUIs make a very poor interface for large-scale admin of, say large server farms and clusters.
Microsoft's model might be a "better UNIX than UNIX" within some narrow scope, but Microsoft continues to suffer from severe tunnel vision. It takes them a long time to bring things into focus that aren't right in front of them. Microsoft could've put a more concerted effort into WinFS and Monad and componentised Windows and interoperability tools but it didn't. It had instead to make 3 major releases of
I'd send MS to the corner for its lousy behaviour.
That's what happens when you try to use beefy hardware with a cheesy interface to a porky OS.
It looks like Microsoft has already put Windows on the Atkins diet!
By 2010 Windows will either suffer a heart attack, or it will be nice and svelte!
*sigh* I should proofread better when I make fun of people not proofreading...
;-)
I mean Nobody takes any of the serious chatter serious, and the fun chatter is just asinine
Seriously folks I'm not a grammar-nazi. I am a grammar-nazi nazi, so don't go criticising my grammar now m'kay?
I was on facebook for kicks and I quickly realized it's full of little kids and their horrible grammar.
Yeah I know. It's terrible isn't it? MySpace and Slashdot are so much better...oh, wait...
Nobody takes any of the serious chatter serious, and the fun chatter is just asinine
Thanks for the chuckle. I always get a kick out of people who criticise the grammar of posts in an online forum and make mistakes themselves, especially when they're given ample opportunity to proofread their postings as can be done on this forum.
Besides that, isn't "serious chatter" an oxymoron? I don't recall ever having a SERIOUS chat on-line ever, and that goes back to the chat rooms of BBSes in the 1980s. EVERY SINGLE chat room and forum I've participated in has some definable signal-to-noise ratio. Even technical support forums and heavily moderated forums have their persistent twits and they are usually the most "serious".
Not like the "friends" you have online map to anything realistic in the "real world."
Facebook, Slashdot, and to a degree MSN, are the only accounts I have that are active, if you don't count my logins at my work and home networks. I only have a very few MSN contacts and 100 percent of them are friends and family I know (not just merely met) in real life. Slashdot profiles allow you to mark people as "friends or foes" and though many people seem to have marked me as one or the other, I haven't really bothered doing likewise, because I tend to reserve judgment for people to which I haven't so much as spoken (or even typed).
As for facebook, there isn't one single person in my friends list that I have not met and do not know "in real life", so in fact, yes the "friends" I have online ALL "map to something realistic". It seems to me that Facebook is actually a bit MORE real than perhaps MySpace or Yahoo or whatever. At least there are usually less degrees of separation to most Facebook friends than there are to Kevin Bacon, which doesn't seem to be the case in many other places.
In sort, lighten up dude! Facebook is a SOCIAL networking site and is advertised as such, so don't be so serious and don't expect seriousness and maturity on a site of that nature that is open to all the "great unwashed masses".
...however I am only human and I hold enterprises that use litigation as a primary business model in pretty low regard. Plus sometimes being a little "trollish" elicits a mire lively discussion on the topic.
Obviously, the SCO IP isn't quite as fresh as it once was, but, there'd still be gems to be mined.
The tone of the article submission not only comes from my distian at Darl & Co's business conduct, it comes from personal experience with the product itself. You are being extermely charitable when you say SCO's IP "isn't quite as fresh as it once was". Their UNIX technology was already very stale when Ransom Love departed and Darl McBride stepped in and launched into all these lawsuits. UNIXWare 7.0.0, launched in 1997, was truly the last major innovation in SCO operating systems. Two years later 7.1.0 came out that included a few fairly meaningful enhancements to what appeared to be the same underlying system (though not quite as dramatic as, say the move from Kernel 2.4.x to 2.6.x in Linux).
In the eight years since, however, they've only made incremental changes in their core system (going from 7.1.1 to 7.1.4 kernels in that time)--even Microsoft's glacial progress with Windows outpaced UNIXWare's release time-line. Microsoft Service Packs tended to be bigger, more comprehensive updates than each release of UNIXWare.
In the time I was involved with UNIXWare in a professional capacity (from 7.0.0 to 7.1.1) I was impressed with its stability but extremely disappointed with its support (very good thing it was stable actually, or the lack of support would've killed it years ago). We struggled to get RAID working (needed to do patches and recompiles), struggled to get tape backup drives to work (no support at all there, we were SOL) and its Windows network interoperability was very weak (VisionFS stank--it was behind the curve on long file name support and performed poorly). Its compiler was also inferior to GCC. Out of frustration we let our SCO agreement lapse, migrated our servers to all Red Hat and stopped including SCO products in our customers' solutions. The best SCO had to offer seemed to be on the Skunkworks CDs and the open source applications on top of the OS (Apache, BIND, Sendmail, and Samba as a replacement for VisionFS), hence the logical move toward a Linux based OS. Things don't appear to have changed--apart from barely keeping up with support for new hardware the only significant changes in UNIXWare since have been to those same open source products. The mine has been completely tapped--no gems left to be found.
They also (still) have a (declining, but, still present) bucket of support contracts.
Declining is the key here. Investors don't typically look for businesses in the decline. At least it is a relatively slow decline (compared with the decline of the company itself). Those remaining customers really value stability, however since the product has gone stale there is no incentive to upgrade/enhance, thus no revenue potential. Stability is UNIXWare's hallmark--once you've banged you head against the wall enough getting it to work it keeps working, so UNIXWare users just let it run and don't disturb it--it is never patched and nether hardware or software is upgraded as long as it works...and it works until hardware fails or an application vendor forced their hand and makes them upgrade to support the app, not because the OS is so good.
In a market where Facebook (without an obvious revenue stream) is valued in the billions
No sane person would value Facebook at that level--that valuation is given because journalists have taken the agreement of "Microsoft pays x and as part of the agreement gets y percent ownership" and did some Grade 5 maths. MS obviously has motives other than just obtaining an ownership stake and sees value in the deal in other places (access to millions of eyeballs, more on-line presence, access to facebook's resources...).
you'd have to be an unbalanced zealot to suggest th
My personal experience in the past year:
* Taken 16 flights
* Experienced zero accidents or near incidents involving aircraft
* Witnessed zero accidents or near incidents involving aircraft
However:
* Witnessed three auto accidents en-route to airport
* Witnessed one auto accident en-route to home from airport
* Taxi driver taking me home from airport narrowly avoided a severe collision
Flying doesn't scare me in the slightest, but I sometimes find myself nervous when I have to fly. Can you guess from the above experiences why? Safety at the airport in my home town is scrutinised very closely and by all appearances seems to be top notch. On the other hand, the city seems to have no qualms about planning several simultaneous construction projects along a single route, replete with inadequate road markings, constantly changing signal configurations and restricted lanes...which don't mix well at all with drivers who ignore the reduced speed limits and feel that they absolutely must not leave one or more car-length of space between themselves and the vehicle they are following, lest someone has the gall to cut in front of them.
The article of discussion here stated that there is one in-flight fatality per MILLIONS of departures--I bet more people die golfing than flying and certainly driving is several orders of magnitude more risky. Roads are WAY more crowded than runways and airspace, aircraft are in MUCH better condition and far more reliable than automobiles and pilots are FAR more skilled and competent than even some of the better drivers on the road.
It seems to me that even if NASA's interviews suggest incidents are under-reported by half that overall air safety is quite good and certainly not worth the alarmist tones by those involved. If there is ANYTHING about air travel we should be concerned about, beyond the hazardous road trip to the airport (if it isn't the construction-infested road to the airport at home it is the dangerously confusing interchanges and signage at other large airports), it is the screwed up state of security at airports. Recent surveys have shown that security gate personnel have been extremely good at confiscating grandma's knitting needles, threatening toiletries and risky bottles of Evian, but when it comes to REAL security they have been almost criminally neglectful.
For example, in LAX testers placed very obvious-looking bomb components into checked luggage (batteries with wires and circuitry attached, realistic-appearing explosives, etc) and 3 out of 4 times it cleared security. In the recent past air cargo security has been circumvented up to 90 percent of the time. At the airport I take off from regularly a mentally disturbed person scaled the perimiter fence, wandered onto the runways and tried to flag down a commercial jumbo jet preparing for takeoff. In Montreal a reporter crawled under a similar fence, got into an unlocked maintenance truck and started it up. Then he put on a smock and waled right into the CARA kitchen preparing food for the next departing flight posing as an inspector. Nobody questioned his presence, asked for ID or anything.
Trust me, if you were to be injured or killed during a flight--extremely unlikely as it is, you probably stand a greater chance of it being because some nutjob jihadist checked a bomb, or infiltrated airport security and poisoned the in-flight food, than because of mechanical failure or runway incursions or mid-air collisions or birds meeting their maker inside a jet engine.
Spoken like someone who has never deployed technology in an industrial or outdoor setting.
That is exactly my line of work actually. In heavy industrial and outdoor settings yes, these are not appropriate. In a retail environment and certain warehousing applications however the extra cost of ruggedised devices is not required (A couple of food production facilities and medical equipment testing outfit come to mind)
Symbol, Intermec, and other companies already do an excellent job of ruggedized handhelds that do GSM, CDMA, Bluetooth, and WiFi connectivity.
Both Symbol AND Intermec have, from time to time, offered several products that are in fact modified versions of consumer devices (Symbol had a ruggedised Palm Pilot with integrated barcode scanner for example, and some of Intermec's products are off-the-shelf electronics in Intermec clothing with Intermec add-ons--I used to work for an Intermec reseller).
Success doesn't just mean sales directly to end users at the consumer level; Nokia could license the technology or partner up with an Intermec or Symbol and generate revenue from derivative products as well. The problem with these companies however is that they seem to be reluctant participants in open/Free software development. I think the situation is a bit better now (you can make more use of Visual Studio on the WinCE based devices for example), however I remember the dark days of having to buy EZBuilder and kludge-away to do embedded development practically on those Intermec 2400-series units.
On that note however, Intermec came out with a handheld batch scanner that ran uCLinux instead of DOS or WinCE so it looked promising that they might change their ways. Like many of its products, it was largely not designed in-house (it was a Unitech device in Intermec clothing with some enhancements). The problem is that it is this little monochrome batch handheld, though bluetooth and GPRS modules were supposed to be make for it. I thought this would be the start of a shift for Intermec, however I haven't seen but a trickle of Linux news from them in the 3 years since then.
I am not currently aware of a tablet form-factor device from Intermec or Symbol with the Nokia unit's capabilities. Intermec or Symbol would do real well to establish an ODM agreement with Nokia to make a ruggedised version with barcode and/or RFID readers built in.
Take a look at this line in the code: // OpenPopUpLite 2.0.1 action by Nate Baldwin, www.mindpalette.com, copyright 2004
They "own all the code" MY ASS. Perhaps they retained the services of Mindpalette to design their website or their own developers used some of their code, but this statement indicated to me that they DO NOT own at least a good chunk of the JavaScript in this file. Have they done their "due diligence" concerning their IP? Are the (retarded) terms-of-service on this web page compatible with the terms of service agreed to by Mr. Baldwin? I am the author of some GPLed scripts myself, and if I discovered they were used on this site I would take issue and even consider legal action!
Geez...get any 10 lawyers together, one will be a real decent person, the other nine will be total asshats.
Get an iPhone, people.
An iPhone to me is as good as a paperweight, as I am not an American nor does AT&T offer its service to Canadians. In order for it to even function at all I would need to subscribe to Rogers wireless (the only service in the country with an iPhone-compatible network) then hack the iPhone to get *most* of the functionality--the kind of thing Apple likes to litigate over.
I already HAVE a phone and don't WANT another phone. I don't need a fancy GPS and don't want one. I don't really care if someone thinks I "look like a clown" if I can actually visit web pages and SEE them properly (not on some tiny low-res screen). It isn't supposed to replace a phone and a phone will never replace what it does.
And you also seem to mention that it runs Linux as if that is a bad thing. Who cares if it is Linux? My girlfriend's cellphone is Linux powered and she doesn't even care and didn't even know it was until I told her. what matters more is how it acutally functions, and the iPhone seems to be much more about form than function (it has not buttons with tactile feedback, is locked into one carrier's system, severely restricts third-party apps, is over-priced...not much that seems appealing to me).
There is no way this device will sell as big as a popular cellphone because it isn't filling that need. There is a substantial-enough market, however, for a device equipped with a REAL browser and readable display and a vendor that isn't a control freak. Users from warehouse order selectors and couriers to gadget-crazy hobbyists and hackers could appreciate this thing.
My first exposure to a computer was in junior highschool.
It seems that Logo was introduced to children a few years younger than that--think grades IV to VI. Computers were introduced into my elementary school around the time frame that computers were introduced into your high school (about 1982). In middle or high school students generally "graduated" to BASIC and perhaps Pascal programming. Older students were also the first to get computers (A small classroom with a number of Commodore PETs and a single "Bell+Howell" branded Apple II+). So, in my school those in Jr High in 1979 to 1982 would've been introduced to computers via BASIC on the PETs and would do a bit of "fun" stuff on the Apple in BASIC as well.
A couple more apples were brought in, then in 1982 Commodore released the 64 and our school bought a large number of them. The Apple II+ and C64s were primarily put into use in elementary grades...and they were each ordered with a copy of LOGO! I was lucky enough to have been in the right grades when they were brought in. LOGO was also ordered for the Apples around that time.
LOGO made for a superior introduction to programming than BASIC for several reasons:
* LOGO took advantage of the graphics and sound capabilities of the machines on which it ran. Without exception ALL dialects of BASIC supplied with personal computers at the time lacked some degree of built-in support for these capabilities and required PEEK, POKE and CALL/SYS/USR commands and machine language skills to fully exploit. Atari BASIC was the best (only lacked support for sprites and a couple of GTIA graphics modes), followed by Apple (no sound support at all, even for the internal beeper, but good graphics), TRS80, and last and very least lousy Commodore BASIC (vanilla MS BASIC without any extensions at all). LOGO could beep, draw pictures and the turtle was always a sprite on machines that supported sprites.
* LOGO syntax was consistent/standard at a high level. I made some fancy programs at home on my Coleco ADAM's SmartLOGO and could type the printout character-for-character into a Commodore 64 and it would run fine! There were visual differences due to differing resolutions and colour palletes (both had 16 colour selections but didn't use the same 16 so it looked tacky on one of the machines). There was absolutely no way to accomplish this level of compatibility with BASIC (beyond the rudimentary MSBASIC standards, so no graphics or sound) with one exception--the Coleco computers' SmartBASIC was syntax-compatible with Applesoft BASIC.
* LOGO was extensible and structured. BASIC was a mess in comparison, with its line numbers and how it enticed beginners into using GOTO. LOGO encouraged structure in its syntax--it had formal, named procedures (TO MYSQUARE/REPEAT 4 [FD 100 RT 90].../END, and you called the procedure as if it were just another built-in "word") and didn't have an enticingly easy-to-use GOTO construct. As a result the code was very readable and students learned good programming practices.
When we "outgrew" LOGO our schools didn't even throw us into old-school BASIC even then; we were put onto IBM XT clones (built by Commodore--like many Canadian schools we had an infatuation with Commodores, probably due to Commodore's Canadian roots) but learned "True Basic" instead of GWBASIC which was more strucutred and "modern" (and interestingly enough, multi-platform as it worked with Macs, etc). In high school QuickBASIC was used on 286 machines.
If it wasn't for me doing BASIC programming on computers at home (and trying my coleco code on the Apples at school) I might never have known basic had line numbers.
...however there is a shortage of democracy in most "democratic" countries.
Australia is already aeons past Canada--at least they've established a process to elect senators. In Canada they're appointed by the Queen's representative (Governor General) on advice of the Prime Minister. Technically speaking the GG has final say, but convention pretty much dictates that the PM makes the choice. We do, however have the Liberal party of Canada, which sounds similar to this now party in Austrailia--it too "has no position on anything" and its representatives "blindly vote in accordance with" their leader, who unfortunately seems to have a disconnect with the majority at the moment.
The Senate of Canada is an odd non-democratic institution for a country that is seen as a champion of democracy:
It is pretty common for the PM to consult with Provincial governments (who would compose a "short list" of potential appointees from which the PM would select a senator). However, there is no obligation for the PM to select from that list (nor is it a requirement for the GG or the Queen to accept the PM's selection technically, however it would be seen as a gross violation of convention). Consequently, the PM will conveniently ignore provincial recommendations when, for example, the governing party of the province differs from the federal government.
An interesting outcome has developed however--the province of Alberta strongly advocates elected senators and for the past 17 years has only submitted a "list of one" per senatorial opening to the PM, consisting of the winners of a "senator in waiting" election. The first such senator was elected in 1989. PM Brian Mulroney respected the "list of one" and appointed Stan Waters of the Alberta Reform Party to the senate in 1990 (Mulroney assumes a Progressive Conservative would win, however he surprisingly kept his promise and appointed him anyway).
However, when the Liberals came to power in 1993 they did NOT support a democratic senate (they weren't AGAINST it exactly, but they weren't FOR it either because they say making any changes requires this big constitutional amendment procedure and stuff blah balh--it's hard to explain where they stand on the issue...well ANY issue actually...). The third party (NDP) wants the senate eliminiated entirely. The Alberta counterparts to those parties wouldn't run senatorial candidates as a result, so the ballot consisted of Conservatives, Alliance/Reform and independents. Since the two parties were both right-of-centre the rest of the political spectrum was only represented by low-profile independents. Subsequently the Liberals ignored the next two senatorial-nominee election results and made their own patronage appointments because they questioned the legitimacy of the results--which were questionable largely because the Liberals wouldn't allow anyone to run under their party banner (nice bit of circular logic there).
Now the current PM is a conservative with a strong past affiliation with the Reform party that put forward Stan Waters as a senatorial candidate. The candidate with the most votes in the most recent Alberta senatorial-nominee election (Bert Brown) has thus been appointed by the PM and today will become the second elected senator in Canada's history.
So, I know the concerns people have about mob-rule brought about by unfettered direct democracy. However, Canada's example demonstrates that often present practice is much more flawed and potentially dangerous. In Canada, the senate is highly partisan so they generally blindly vote in accordance with the party leader's wishes. However they really only answer to themselves because once appointed they cannot be removed until they must retire at age 75 except under exceptional circumstances (pretty much only conviction of an intictable offence will do it). In some cases that is a good thing as it allows for the rare intelligent, independent thinkers to flourish (Anne Cools comes to mind). However there are few checks on conduct and sen
At my job we aren't so young and most have families and we still have to make last-minute flights from time to time. On more than one occasion this year I've had to book flights within 72 hours of departure.
I can tell you that in many business cases there is absolutely NO WAY that this proposal is workable. People MUST be able to make travel plans up to and including the day of departure. 3 days is just not workable and the business community simply would not tolerate implementation of this proposal.
There are also far to many last-minute trips made on compassionate grounds. What about flights arranged to see dying loved ones, or to transport donor organs, or to get special treatment at a distant hospital? Hell, you can get a passport faster than 72 hours under normal cases for such reasons. If your identity can be verified well enough to get a passport that quickly then clearing you for a flight should be much easier than that.
Three days? That'll never fly. MAYBE three HOURS, but not three days.
It goes beyond that though--the same proposal not only wants lists for all flights arriving or departing US locations, it wants flight lists for ALMOST EVERY FLIGHT THAT PASSED OVER US AIRSPACE as well...which means they'd like the government to demand passenger lists from Canadian and Mexican airlines for many of their flights that never touch American soil. Not enough to violate their own civil liberties--in the name of safety everyone's liberties must be unduly curtailed.
FOSS is a kind of gift economy...
I think there is a misunderstanding of Free software on all sides here. It isn't a "gift economy"; it isn't an economic philosophy/model at all. Good intentions notwithstanding, it damages the reputation of Free software when advocates make statements such as this since we already have to defend against ignorant detractors who consider Free software some sort of "communist threat".
Free software is a software development model first and foremost. One might call it "massively collaborative software development" but that probably wouldn't have the impact that "Free software" or "open source" does. The chosen development model of software does not require the adoption of a specific economic ideology--IBM and Red Hat operate within a pretty capitalistic culture quite successfully after all.
There is this mis-conception that Free software developers "give away" their code and have "no respect for intellectual property rights". This is very far from the truth. In fact, in today's global legal framework Free software depends very much on respect for intellectual property rights. The VAST MAJORITY of Free software is copyrighted code, and authors of that code wish to have their rights respected and for those who make derivative works to maintain those rights granted by the original authors. No, the code is most definitely NOT given away.
Microsoft as a notoriously "slow learner" to be sure, but I'd be careful not to dismiss Ballmer as someone who "doesn't get" Free software. I think he very much "gets" the concept behind it, and is very much aware that the Free software community does in fact have a healthy respect for intellectual property rights (ie. that being anti-software-PATENTS does not mean anti-IP in general since copyright law is respected and defended). Ballmer probably even knows that "massively collaborative software development" is not magic and is why Linux and Apache and so on are very solid technical achievements.
What Ballmer doesn't see is how Free software could make massive profits and maintain growth for Microsoft. MS doesn't succeed based on innovation or revolutionary ideas; it has succeeded thus far because it finds those windows of opportunity. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, they just spotted the perfect entry point into the PC market with the release of the Altair. MS-DOS wasn't the first OS for personal computers, it was a work-alike of the REAL innovator and was successful because they got in bed with IBM at the right time. Microsoft not only didn't invent the browser, they dismissed it as a fad initially. They spotted the opportunity to license Spyglass Mosaic to hedge their bets. They are perennial followers, however now that they are so huge once they adapt to the environment they can then set about adapting the environment to MS.
The thing is, Ballmer and Co. are having trouble spotting opportunities now, because now they have to change the way they operate, do something revolutionary and innovative. This is particularly difficult for a massive, publicly-traded corporation of any kind. Promiscuous US patent law appears to be the opportunity MS is trying to latch onto. This isn't a "capitalist-vs-socialist" battle--it is simply a company that is struggling to find some vision while other "capitalistic" enterprises are establishing themselves using Free software (most notable Google and IBM).
I find Ballmer's strategy especially distasteful because it involved building a business model on protectionist government legislation. Copyright protection, when properly implemented and applied, can be used to maintain a level playing field. Patent law, as currently implemented is solely about protecting monopoly status and stifling competition (and sadly, the DMCA is threatening to make copyright in the US into a similar tool).
I've repaired and issued a lot of laptops in my day and I'm not aware of a true competitor to the T series in terms of chassis design.
I'd have to disagree--I'd have to say Toshiba from my experience is competitive in terms of build quality looking at the overall lineup.
If you are looking for durability Panasonic ToughBooks are far superior to Lenovos. Lenovos might have a good chassis design but I find they are "too dainty" in other ways (keyboards for example). Speaking from practical knowledge I'd much rather go with a ToughBook or maybe a Toshiba Tecra or Sattelite than a Thinkpad--also because they aren't Chinese companies (they are Japanese).
Reason I ask is the same building where Lenovo computers are 'made' (IE Physically Assembled) is also the same building Apple, Dell, HP, Acer, and many others are made. The company is contracted out to make just about everyones laptop.
I can't speak for the others, but a sizeable number of Dell notebooks (ie. pretty much the entire Latitude line) are made in Malaysia, NOT in China. Also make sure you don't lump Taiwan in with China--they are NOT the same thing and a lot of computers are assembled there instead.
It's hard to ELIMINATE Chinese-made goods from your life, however a lot can be done to reduce your dependency on them.
There is no was to get a computer that isn't manufactured at least partially in China.
Correct me if I'm wring, but isn't a sizable part of the PC manufacturing industry not located in Taiwan ROC, vs "Red China" (Lenovo is in Beijing)? Taiwian may be considered by greater china to be a "Rogue state" within their country, however Taiwan's democratically elected government steadfastly asserts its independence from the communist regime and isn't a likely supporter of the repressive Burmese government. Furthermore there are still a lot of Japanese manufacturers out there, are there not?
Perhaps there IS not way to avoid purchasing ASAIN-made computer components, however you could greatly reduce and perhaps eliminate the use of those made in communist China..or at LEAST avoid companies that are headquartered there, as Lenovo is.
...the key is what measures are in place for verification, fraud detection and correction.
With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one vote at a time.
In Canada in 1995, the province of Quebec held a referendum on whether to secede from confederation and pursue the goal of becoming a sovereign country. The overall vote was extremely close; the "No" side (those who wished NOT to secede and favoured remaining in Canada) won by just over 1% margin. Just as any close election should be the resulting ballots and the vote in general were examined closely.
The vote was conducted by a pure paper-ballot, with scrutineers performing the counts manually (ie. the ballots were not only paper, they were also not of the "machine-readable" kind). Since the votes must be counted one at a time, it does not matter if the results can only be rigged one vote at a time because they can be rigged while they are counted.
This is what happened in Quebec in 1995. Supporters of the "Yes" side (who wished for Quebec to become an independent country) tried really hard to make the vote turn their way by challenging ballots. Fully 80 THOUSAND ballots or more were challenged in such a way (similar to the "hanging chad" issues in Florida in 2000) and most of them clearly indicated the intention to vote "No". It was enough to considerably narrow the already small margin of victory for the "no" side and could've potentially meant a spearation declaration and constitutional crisis in Canada. Ballots were challenged by "Yes scrutineers" for things like the voter using a check mark or filling in the circle instead of using an X as shown in voting instructions, or because a dot or a stray mark was present within the "Yes" circle even though a proper X was in the "No" circle, or because the X extended outside the circle a bit, or because there was evidence of erasure marks on the ballot.
This is clear proof that even if fraud can only occur one ballot at a time, it certainly CAN be widespread and of large enough magnitude to cause a dramatically different outcome. It was not the voting method that rectified or revealed the situation, it was the mechanisms in place to appeal, recount, investigate that were effective.
In a way, a proper HYBRID system (electronic with paper verification ballot) is probably the best of all options. The paper is electronically printed and thus not open to subjective rejection by biased scrutineers. If the paper verification ballot is mis-printed due to mechanical problems or buggy software and does not properly show the voter's intentions there can be a system in place to reject the vote on-the-spot (it can be cancelled electronically and a re-vote can be permitted, with proper audit trail of course). If the electronic tally is disputed for any reason then the paper ballots can be counted manually and if the two totals are right out then an inquiry and possible re-vote can be ordered.
With the Diebold machines that had inadequate or nonexistent voter verification by paper there was no way of detecting a tampered machine. With mechanical "pull the handle" systems where the voter cannot see and examine a ballot card clearly indicating the right vote was registered you get the exact same problem (seems to be what the issue partly was in Florida--the voter did not get to see a ballot that clearly showed the chad was properly punched out beside the proper candidate). With a purely paper system such as typically used in Canada there is inadequate verification in the other direction: Machines are not emotional and they can tally votes much more accurately, without political influence--PROVIDED THEY ARE ADEQUATELY INSPECTED AND SECURED to avoid tampering. All in all, I believe a properly implemented hybrid system is the way to go.
Aside from the paper verification/backup, I'd also make it a requirement that both the software should be OPEN SOURCE and INTEROPERABLE (ie. not dependent on a single vendor's hardware). The government, any candidate
A router is not a house, a computer is not a car, and if you leave your wifi unsecured that is not mine or anybody else's problem
What sort of messed up logic is THAT? OK lets play with this a bit:
It should NOT be illegal to log into an unprotected router and mess around with it without the owner's permission because the router owner is stupid for not securing his network. This is different--FROM A MORAL STANDPOINT--than entering a private dwelling that is unlocked to explore and mess around inside (an illegal act generally thought of as immoral) in what sense? Is it because the contents of the router are not physical in nature? Why is snooping around a network different than snooping around a house? Why don't judges let throw out trespassing cases because "the house was unlocked and you should just expect people will wander in and snoop around and take stuff".
Of course they aren't EXACTLY the same things...but morality universally applies to all of those things. YOU DON'T MESS AROUND WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF. PERIOD. Yes, if you leave your doors unlocked, keys in the car ignition or your bike sitting out with no lock on it, you can "expect them to be used" because there are people with no morals out there. However, just because it is an expected consequence doesn't make it right.
It's all about PERCEPTION. Novell made a very smart, pragmatic BUSINESS decision. Business in America is unfortunately very often not about merit or ethics or ideals. Business is about perception, playing to emotion, speculation, MARKETING.
SuSE is no better or worse at Windows integration than Red Hat or Ubuntu or any other major distribution. Arguably, a purpose-built Linux server made independently of Novell or Microsoft tailored for such a purpose is probably superior to SuSE for such a task. Business managers, the ones who cut the cheques, don't operate on technical aspects at all. All things being equal (especially from a cost/savings perspective) PHBs are completely manipulated by marketing and related intangible factors.
First of all, the biggest market out there for Linux projects are in environments dominated by Microsoft. Novell can now say that their SuSE OS is the ONLY major distribution "endorsed" by Microsoft. We nerds that understand how Free software works KNOW that this is insignificant--at least for the time being. There isn't any concrete evidence that the Novell/Microsoft partnership is doing any concrete development and some sort of non-Free add-ons that enhance interoperability, and what cooperation MS IS doing (MONO, Silverlight) is pretty open and distribution-agnostic. That doesn't matter to PHBs--it's WAY over their heads. They just see the link and see it as good (just like "nobody got fired for buying an IBM" back when the PC came out--it made sense to PHBs to buy IBM PCs 'cause the "matched the mainframe").
Aside from the "Microsoft Approved" marketing angle and perceptions, there is speculation (FUD). If Microsoft decides to bring the patent submarine to the surface Novell is "safe". It is inferred that the partnership isn't just about "technical" interoperability but also "legal" interoperability.
Furthermore, there is an additional angle Novell can play on that doesn't even have to involve their relationship with Microsoft. A judge has ruled THEY OWN UNIX. If Novell decided to "pull a SCO" and you bought SLES then you've already paid your protection money and are safe.
This speculation is ridiculous to knowledgeable Linux specialists, but PHBs are ignorant about IT and in fact make every effort to know as little a possible about it, unless their business is all about it. The CEO of "Widgets, Inc" fills his brain with evetything to do with widgets and the global widget market, and how their widgets stack up against competitors, and how much they can reduce the costs of making widgets. IT is viewed simply as one of a large number of "cost centres"--the less expensive, less risky--and less TROUBLESOME--the better. You have to get down to middle-to-lower management levels within the IT dept. before it becomes more than that.
It's tough to compete against FUD because it is hard to quantify it in terms of dollars. Novell's competition has to undercut them by some monetary amount in initial investment and ongoing savings to a degree clients can live with the perceived increased risk--or else they have to offer concrete indemnification to defuse that perceived risk.
...doesn't mean it is OK to walk right in and check out what's in the fridge (unless of course it is your home). If the damage was minimal or nonexistent then the punishment should fit the crime of course, but it IS still illegal.
On the other hand, why hasn't anyone thought of launching suit against the VOIP providers over the security breach? Tort law in the good ol' US of A is the most stringent in the world when it comes to "duty of care". Leaving passwords at factory defaults certainly could constitute negligence.
Come on people, seeing how litigious society is today, why not use it constructively? Sometimes the only way companies learn to be responsible is through the bottom line. Did some phone providers not have to be sued into providing 911 service standard after all? I'd say that this guy breaking in so easily should be justification for some legal action towards the VOIP providers.
...for requiring webcam proof of one's gender. I think it's just lonely, horny male sysadmins who want to see boobies on webcam. Think about it: they aren't requesting that people prove they're MEN when playing as male characters.
What's next, having to prove your skills/powers/health/etc on webcam before being able to use them online?
"Sorry dude, you're in a wheelchair from what I see...that means we can't let your character walk in our game".
OMG! They aren't seriously still be using 8049 family parts in production automobiles, I hope.
I don't believe they use a discrete 8049, however they still incorporate that core into ASICs--a lot of "off-the-shelf" discrete parts from the days of yore (1970s and 1980s) have been incorporated into ASICs in order to reduce part count. However, the architecture and functionality isn't that much different.
Using a design that was "a stunted architecture in 1986" is the reason that reliability of automobiles has continually improved, whereas reliability of personal computer hardware has flat-lined or declined. The essentials of running internal combustion engines never change and the complexity of the process does not increase with Moore's Law. Engine Management evolves on a more incremental basis because it isn't purely electronics--it involves optimisation of physical processes. No need for a 64-bit RISC architecture to control an engine system that has not even double the I/O and doesn't need to run any faster than it had to 20 years ago.
That goes back to my argument, really. You are probably one of a few dozen people who would even care if the micro-controllers in your car are archaic in design. Most people only care that their cars start well in cold or hot weather, get good gas mileage, have enough power to pass tractor trailers on the freeway and run smoothly without breaking down very often.