There's a simple response to Jigsaw: just spam the database with invalid entries. Go there and type in as many made-up entries as you can. Or, better yet, write a sript to do it for you with randomly-generated names. Make the data useless to them because it has so many incorrect entries. Granted, that would take a lot of entries, but an automated system could do it pretty easily.
If they can break the "social contract" of keeping business card information semi-private, then we are perfectly within our rights to break the expectation that we will enter valid information. What's good for the goose, hoist them with their own petard, etc.
Wait a minute... didn't France also just win the giant new underground supercollider project? Why do they get both? Aren't any other countries allowed to have large scientific projects, or are the French gonna hog them all?
"I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore"
You do have a party, it's called the Libertarian Party. It doesn't get more fiscally conservative than that. Hmmm, freedom for individuals, weak government, fiscally conservative... sound interesting? No wonder the other two big parties don't want you to find out about us.
Don't forget, "Evian" is just "naive" spelled backwards.
Anyone who thinks any kind of fancy water is better for them than plain old tap water (assuming the tap water isn't contaminated) is not just naive but horribly gullible and susceptible to advertising. I have a bridge to sell them. You can get the "minerals" of ten thousand liters of "mineral water" in one "multivitamin tablet".
"Do their best" and "required by law" are two entirely different things."
No, they really aren't. Just because there isn't a specific law satating this, corproate officers can and ofetn do get sued by shareholders for not doing things that would increase profit. So it's not a criminal law, no, but the board is legally bound to act in the best interests of the shareholders, and are liable if they don't. So it's not at all entirely different - they can be legally punished for not doing it.
The point is, if the officers don't maximize profit, they can easily end up in a courtroom facing a judge. I don't call that "an entirely different thing."
In Online Learning Magazine's January 2001, issue, Cliff Stoll said:
"With time, people will recognize that e-learning is a fair to middling way of transmitting facts to a lot of people, but it's not a great way to actually get people inspired and pumped up about a subject.
For the past 3,000 years, since Socrates, we have yearned so desperately for a cheap, fast, effective way to teach. It doesn't exist. The old law of economics applies to learning: you can have it cheap, fast, or good. Something that's cheap and fast isn't going to be very good. You want cheap fast food? Hey, go to your fast food place! But it's not going to be very good. Likewise in learning. You want something that's cheap and fast? Hey, log on! You'll get cheap, fast learning. But it won't be good learning - it won't be learning that sticks with you."
That's just one person's opinion. Frankly, considering the incriedble complexity of having literally a hundred or so player in a REAL-TIME, first-person shooter, Planetside is remarkablly free of bugs. Obviously,some people have more crashes and bugs than other, just like any game. But by and large Planetside is an extremely stable game, and the patches work just fine. It absolutely does NOT "feel like a beta"; that's just absurd.
Compared to any other MMO game, Planetside does suffer from some of the same problems, but generally deals with them as well or better than other games. I mean, complaining about the game having morons in its userbase? Oh, come ON - which MMO DOESN'T?
As for being "tedious", well, some people enjoy some games and some enjoy others. In my opinion, saying that playing Planetside is tedious is like saying skydiving is a real snooze. Provided you have a few elementary skills and some sense of strategy, it's one of the most action-packed games out there, WAY more exciting than Counterstrike, BF1942, and so on. There's just nothing like running into battle with 100 of your closest pals and assualting some base with your tanks, vehicles, aircraft, rockets, Mechs, and so on.
If you find the game "tedious", you're probably one of those people who simply keeps respawning at the same location and zerging straight at the enemy over and over. The best players are the ones who look at the big picture and change the course of a battle singlehandedly. For us, the game is incredibly deep.
I'm surprised the film indistry doesn't simply use the "canary trap" method: make each copy of the film unique somehow, and then you can trace back illegal copies.
I actually suspect they *may* be doing this already and just not saying anything. At a recent film, I saw an occaisional faint mark on the screen somewhere in a random location. They were definitely not the usual "cigarette burns" we're used to, and they weren't artifacts or glitches, either, because they were a uniform size and shape.
If they have started putting these in films, and if the locations and timing of each mark is different, then they could find out from which copy of the film an illegal copy came from.
"Hey, Google, so we hear you're planning an IPO. Gosh, it sure would suck if someone launched a massive lawsuit against you right beforehand, wouldn't it? Well, yes, of course it would be total bullshit, but the finance weenies on Wall Street wouldn't know that, would they? You know as well as we do that they're a bunch of clueless, mooing cattle who don't know the first thing about technology. Tell you what, just pay us a ton of money for no reason and we'll make sure it doesn't happen."
Everytime someone gets excited about a "home appliance network" (which seems to be every year, like clockwork, for the past 20 years or so), I ask myself: "Why? What does my toaster have to say to my lamp? What does my microwave have to say to my toaster?"
Other than a very few uses (your PC talking to your A/V components, for example) this is a technology in search of a problem.
Do that many people really spend so much time using their appliances that they need to have their own network? And, of course, this is just one more thing to break - maybe it's a conspiracy by appliance manufacturers to reduce the reliability and "it-just-always-works" nature of most appliances.
OK, OK, yeah - he was dumb to be so trusting. But, GEEZ, people - this is clearly an old retired guy. His main problem was that he was too trusting and naive, that he had too much faith in the goodness of people. Now, to me and the rest of us jaded cynics on elbows, distrust is second nature. But not everyone is so cynical.
Could you give the poor old guy just a *little* sympathy? How many of you know a nice old lady or retired guy who's just as sweet and trusting as can be? If this happened to *them*, would you spew venom and say "Hah! They deserved it!" If you dear old grandma did this would you say "Well, granny, tough shit - guess you shouldn't have been so trusting!" And there doesn't seem to be any real greed in this story. He was just trying what he thought was a legal, ethical way to improve his retirement nest egg - and $300,000 ain't a hell of a lot to retire on! He even said he hoped to use the money for "good works".
There's a very good reason that the elderly are *THE* primary targets of scam artists: not just because they tend to have money, but because they grew up in a time that was more trusting. They have a harder time saying "no" when someone pushes them because they don't want to be rude. And they have a harder time seeing the evil intent. Con artists don't exactly appear with a pitchfork and horns - they're *very* slick and know exactly how to deal with old people to gain their trust.
Let's face it, many senior citizens are so ignored by society and their familys that they're *happy* just to have someone - anyone - to talk to, especially a nice young man who treats them well, listens respectfully, and pays a lot of attention to them. Maybe if families took a more active role in the lives of their parents and grandparents instead of just shoving them off into nursing homes, they wouldn't be so desperate for attention.
So, all you cruel Slashdot grinches, yes - he acted stupidly. But don't you think you could spare just a little sympathy for someone whose only real crime was that his trust in human nature blinded him?
I wonder how they will handle the heavy Christian symbolism in the books? C.S. Lewis was one of the most famous Christian apologists and he had even said that he intentionally wrote the books to introduce his (grand?)kids to Christianity.
Granted, it might not leap right out at moviegoers, and I'm guessing that Hollywood will probably try to make them as religiously neutral as possible. But to take it all out would involve seriously rewriting the whole story.
Probably few people will notice unless they know it's there and are keeping an eye out.
OK, clearly Darl McBride must have about the IQ of Frankenstein's monster, because his logic and reasoning in this "open letter" are so laughably flawed that the only conclusion is that he either has the IQ of a toad, or he firmly believes that everyone reading it does. What a colossal, flaming asshole.
This is McBride's "Chewbacca Defense". Essentially, the whole letter boils down to this: "The Consitution forbids you to give software away for free!! And you're a commie if you want to!!"
If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's what it basically says:
The Constitution grants Cogress the power to establish patent and copyright laws (This is the first and last thing he's right about).
Therefore, it's clear (according to McBride Logic(TM)) that anyone who wants to GIVE things away instead of charging for them must, obviously, be a goddam dirty commie pinko pot-smoking hippy who wants to get your daughter pregnant while giving her VD.
If we allow people to GIVE software away, that AUTOMATICALLY means that NO ONE can EVER sell software again. He even says "There is no middle ground".
By the way, did I point out that Open Source advocates are filthy kiddie-porn-peddling spammers who want to destroy the American way of life and, - worse! - my clever plan to make myself rich with the biggest, stupidest, most frivolous lawsuit in American history?
Giving away software is ILLEGAL! The Constitution and DCMA say so! I'm sure because I read it! Well, OK, I didn't really understand it, in fact almost all of it went right over my head, but I'm sure that's what it says!
Hey, there's a lot of laws supporting copyrights and patents! Just ignore the fact that since Open Source software is NOT patented, those laws have nothing at all to do with it! Pay no attention to the illogic behind the curtain! See the cute teddy bear?
Oh, here's another long section of legal analysis about things which have nothing whatsoever to do with the GPL. But it sure makes my letter look imposing and serious, doesn't it?
So remember, kids: greed is GOOD. Abusing the legal system in order to enrich yourself is the American way! The Constition says so! Somewhere! I really think it does! I'm not a flaming rectal wart of a man, I'm just being a freedom-loving citizen - not like those smelly homosexual atheists over at the FSF who probably rape nuns when they aren't forcibly injecting heroin into the arms of preschoolers!
How anyone with even two brain cells to rub together (a group that clearly does not include Darl McBride) could read this "letter" without laughing their ass off is the only issue that needs to be examined here.
Well, a large number of very intelligent scientists with doctorates in chmeistry, physics, and so on are saying that such things *may* be possible at some point ealier than the 100 years you are predicting. So, my question to you is: why should I believe you over them? Can you please give your qualifications for making pronouncements like "pure fantasy"?
Sorry, but I give more weight to the opinions of Real Scientists over random Slashdot readers any day (unless the two happen to be the same). It's certainly obvious that we aren't going to have Star-Trek-like replicators in our kitchens anytime soon, but as other people pointed out, we already are using nanomaterials in everyday objects, and as we get better the technology will improve.
As for your examples of other technologies, they are simply a fallcy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because something happened a certain way before does not mean it must happen that way in the future. The comparisons are not valid.
Household replicators next year? No. Astounding and amazing uses of nanotechnlogy and nanoassembly in less than your "100 years"? It's a near-certainty.
The film sounds great, and I have a feeling I'll like it, but even so I'm pretty ticked off that Jackson left of the Scouring of the Shire just because he didn't like it. OK, yeah, it's a bit of a bummer ending, but that could have been handled.
Yes, I know there's only so much time available, they acn't put *everything* in, and so on. I didn't complain when relatively minor things like Tom Bombadil were left out, or when stupid-but-overlookable gaffes made their way in, such as dwarf-tossing or elves at Helm's Deep. But this is a major event.
It's Jackson's job to make the book into a movie, not second-guess Tolkien. If he thinks he's a better writer, he should write his own stuff, not chop up classics. OK, maybe it could have been left out of the theatrical release (since the kiddies don't want to see dead hobbits), but it should at least have been shot and put on the extended DVD.
I agree that this is good news - though I also agree with the person who said "we've heard this before..." But these are very big names, and they all have a huge incentive to make it happen.
If even a few major coporations adopt Linux on some or all desktops, that's the thin edge of the wedge. Right now, software developers can afford to ignore the small businesses that adopt Linux desktops, but they won't be able to ignore major corporations. Nor will the suppliers of those corporations. It's certainly not an outrageous scenario to consider the possibility that the following things might happen:
1) A few major corporations start installing large numbers of Linux desktops; 2) Those corporations experience difficulties integrating with Windows users (file format problems, mostly); 3) They demand that their suppliers conform to document formats and standards that are easily compatible with Linux; 4) The suppliers, not wanting to lose business, either start using some Linux desktops themselves or else demand better format interoperability from their software vendors.
And so Linux interoperability continues to be an even faster-growing, larger issue than it is now, and the leverage of those big corporations gradually ripples outward into the IT world in general.
And, of course, the better Desktop Linux gets for businesses, and the more interoperable it is with Windows, the more attractive it will grow to home users who either use it at work or are looking for less-expensive PCs.
Anything required by California is almost de facto a national standard. It probably isn't worth it for voting-machine manufacturers to make two different models, one for sale to CA and one for sale to other states.
You see this in lost of industries: low- and zero-emission vehicles are available nationwide primarily because CA required them. And that's why the banking lobby fought so hard against privacy regulations in CA: because if they had to redo their IT systems for CA, then basically it becomes available to their customers in all states. Cheaper to do it for eveyone than just people in one state.
This is an extremely positive step, and should greatly help prevent *accidental* mistakes by the machine. Keep one thing in mind, though: the vote the machine records and the one it prints out don't have to be the same.
If someone maliciously tampered with the actual code on the machine, it could print out a vote for Moron A while recording a vote for Moron B. Assuming they kept the tampering within reason (i.e., not a big enough discrepancy to make people suspect something and call for a count of the paper votes), a conspiracy to tamper with the voting wouldn't necessarily be prevented by paper reciepts.
In an environment where elections are often won and lost by only a few percent, a cleverly-altered machine would only have to change a few votes out of every hundred to make a big impact, certinly enough to swing very close elections.
Hey, I say, great for China. Obviously I have the same deep concern about their humanitarian issues as everyone else, but this is a step in the right direction. It creates good jobs for Chinese people, points the country more towards success through peaceful economic means rather than Communist/totalitarian means, and helps build their middle class - all good things towards promoting greater tolerance and democracy in their society. Bitch at them to improve on humanitarian issues does nothing. But when they, on their own, start moving towards a modern, peaceful democracy and an educated middle class, that's progress.
Also, I just think it would be really f'ing cool to have a Chinese moonbase up there.:) Of course I think it would be coolER to have an American moonbase, but since America seems to have its head wedged pretty far up its ass when it comes to space exploration, I guess this is the best I can hope for.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a simple response to Jigsaw: just spam the database with invalid entries. Go there and type in as many made-up entries as you can. Or, better yet, write a sript to do it for you with randomly-generated names. Make the data useless to them because it has so many incorrect entries. Granted, that would take a lot of entries, but an automated system could do it pretty easily.
If they can break the "social contract" of keeping business card information semi-private, then we are perfectly within our rights to break the expectation that we will enter valid information. What's good for the goose, hoist them with their own petard, etc.
Wait a minute... didn't France also just win the giant new underground supercollider project? Why do they get both? Aren't any other countries allowed to have large scientific projects, or are the French gonna hog them all?
Hey, France: QUIT BEING SO GREEDY!
You do have a party, it's called the Libertarian Party. It doesn't get more fiscally conservative than that. Hmmm, freedom for individuals, weak government, fiscally conservative... sound interesting? No wonder the other two big parties don't want you to find out about us.
Don't forget, "Evian" is just "naive" spelled backwards.
Anyone who thinks any kind of fancy water is better for them than plain old tap water (assuming the tap water isn't contaminated) is not just naive but horribly gullible and susceptible to advertising. I have a bridge to sell them. You can get the "minerals" of ten thousand liters of "mineral water" in one "multivitamin tablet".
No, they really aren't. Just because there isn't a specific law satating this, corproate officers can and ofetn do get sued by shareholders for not doing things that would increase profit. So it's not a criminal law, no, but the board is legally bound to act in the best interests of the shareholders, and are liable if they don't. So it's not at all entirely different - they can be legally punished for not doing it.
The point is, if the officers don't maximize profit, they can easily end up in a courtroom facing a judge. I don't call that "an entirely different thing."
I can't believe that with all the geeks on /. no one made the obvious joke about Ken Jennings getting Zerged (by nancy ZERG, get it?)
In Online Learning Magazine's January 2001, issue, Cliff Stoll said:
"With time, people will recognize that e-learning is a fair to middling way of transmitting facts to a lot of people, but it's not a great way to actually get people inspired and pumped up about a subject.
For the past 3,000 years, since Socrates, we have yearned so desperately for a cheap, fast, effective way to teach. It doesn't exist. The old law of economics applies to learning: you can have it cheap, fast, or good. Something that's cheap and fast isn't going to be very good. You want cheap fast food? Hey, go to your fast food place! But it's not going to be very good. Likewise in learning. You want something that's cheap and fast? Hey, log on! You'll get cheap, fast learning. But it won't be good learning - it won't be learning that sticks with you."
I agree with Cliff.
I think it's obvious what the first use should be - the same use that has made so many other hot new technologies a success: PORN!
That's just one person's opinion. Frankly, considering the incriedble complexity of having literally a hundred or so player in a REAL-TIME, first-person shooter, Planetside is remarkablly free of bugs. Obviously,some people have more crashes and bugs than other, just like any game. But by and large Planetside is an extremely stable game, and the patches work just fine. It absolutely does NOT "feel like a beta"; that's just absurd.
Compared to any other MMO game, Planetside does suffer from some of the same problems, but generally deals with them as well or better than other games. I mean, complaining about the game having morons in its userbase? Oh, come ON - which MMO DOESN'T?
As for being "tedious", well, some people enjoy some games and some enjoy others. In my opinion, saying that playing Planetside is tedious is like saying skydiving is a real snooze. Provided you have a few elementary skills and some sense of strategy, it's one of the most action-packed games out there, WAY more exciting than Counterstrike, BF1942, and so on. There's just nothing like running into battle with 100 of your closest pals and assualting some base with your tanks, vehicles, aircraft, rockets, Mechs, and so on.
If you find the game "tedious", you're probably one of those people who simply keeps respawning at the same location and zerging straight at the enemy over and over. The best players are the ones who look at the big picture and change the course of a battle singlehandedly. For us, the game is incredibly deep.
I was talking about AOL on a PC, not a C-64. I remember running AOL/GEOS on my 16Mhz PC.
Most people won't remember, but AOL was originally released on GEOS. I was one of the beta testers.
I'm surprised the film indistry doesn't simply use the "canary trap" method: make each copy of the film unique somehow, and then you can trace back illegal copies.
I actually suspect they *may* be doing this already and just not saying anything. At a recent film, I saw an occaisional faint mark on the screen somewhere in a random location. They were definitely not the usual "cigarette burns" we're used to, and they weren't artifacts or glitches, either, because they were a uniform size and shape.
If they have started putting these in films, and if the locations and timing of each mark is different, then they could find out from which copy of the film an illegal copy came from.
"Hey, Google, so we hear you're planning an IPO. Gosh, it sure would suck if someone launched a massive lawsuit against you right beforehand, wouldn't it? Well, yes, of course it would be total bullshit, but the finance weenies on Wall Street wouldn't know that, would they? You know as well as we do that they're a bunch of clueless, mooing cattle who don't know the first thing about technology. Tell you what, just pay us a ton of money for no reason and we'll make sure it doesn't happen."
Everytime someone gets excited about a "home appliance network" (which seems to be every year, like clockwork, for the past 20 years or so), I ask myself: "Why? What does my toaster have to say to my lamp? What does my microwave have to say to my toaster?"
Other than a very few uses (your PC talking to your A/V components, for example) this is a technology in search of a problem.
Do that many people really spend so much time using their appliances that they need to have their own network? And, of course, this is just one more thing to break - maybe it's a conspiracy by appliance manufacturers to reduce the reliability and "it-just-always-works" nature of most appliances.
OK, OK, yeah - he was dumb to be so trusting. But, GEEZ, people - this is clearly an old retired guy. His main problem was that he was too trusting and naive, that he had too much faith in the goodness of people. Now, to me and the rest of us jaded cynics on elbows, distrust is second nature. But not everyone is so cynical.
Could you give the poor old guy just a *little* sympathy? How many of you know a nice old lady or retired guy who's just as sweet and trusting as can be? If this happened to *them*, would you spew venom and say "Hah! They deserved it!" If you dear old grandma did this would you say "Well, granny, tough shit - guess you shouldn't have been so trusting!" And there doesn't seem to be any real greed in this story. He was just trying what he thought was a legal, ethical way to improve his retirement nest egg - and $300,000 ain't a hell of a lot to retire on! He even said he hoped to use the money for "good works".
There's a very good reason that the elderly are *THE* primary targets of scam artists: not just because they tend to have money, but because they grew up in a time that was more trusting. They have a harder time saying "no" when someone pushes them because they don't want to be rude. And they have a harder time seeing the evil intent. Con artists don't exactly appear with a pitchfork and horns - they're *very* slick and know exactly how to deal with old people to gain their trust.
Let's face it, many senior citizens are so ignored by society and their familys that they're *happy* just to have someone - anyone - to talk to, especially a nice young man who treats them well, listens respectfully, and pays a lot of attention to them. Maybe if families took a more active role in the lives of their parents and grandparents instead of just shoving them off into nursing homes, they wouldn't be so desperate for attention.
So, all you cruel Slashdot grinches, yes - he acted stupidly. But don't you think you could spare just a little sympathy for someone whose only real crime was that his trust in human nature blinded him?
I wonder how they will handle the heavy Christian symbolism in the books? C.S. Lewis was one of the most famous Christian apologists and he had even said that he intentionally wrote the books to introduce his (grand?)kids to Christianity.
Granted, it might not leap right out at moviegoers, and I'm guessing that Hollywood will probably try to make them as religiously neutral as possible. But to take it all out would involve seriously rewriting the whole story.
Probably few people will notice unless they know it's there and are keeping an eye out.
This is McBride's "Chewbacca Defense". Essentially, the whole letter boils down to this: "The Consitution forbids you to give software away for free!! And you're a commie if you want to!!"
If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's what it basically says:
- The Constitution grants Cogress the power to establish patent and copyright laws (This is the first and last thing he's right about).
- Therefore, it's clear (according to McBride Logic(TM)) that anyone who wants to GIVE things away instead of charging for them must, obviously, be a goddam dirty commie pinko pot-smoking hippy who wants to get your daughter pregnant while giving her VD.
- If we allow people to GIVE software away, that AUTOMATICALLY means that NO ONE can EVER sell software again. He even says "There is no middle ground".
- By the way, did I point out that Open Source advocates are filthy kiddie-porn-peddling spammers who want to destroy the American way of life and, - worse! - my clever plan to make myself rich with the biggest, stupidest, most frivolous lawsuit in American history?
- Giving away software is ILLEGAL! The Constitution and DCMA say so! I'm sure because I read it! Well, OK, I didn't really understand it, in fact almost all of it went right over my head, but I'm sure that's what it says!
- Hey, there's a lot of laws supporting copyrights and patents! Just ignore the fact that since Open Source software is NOT patented, those laws have nothing at all to do with it! Pay no attention to the illogic behind the curtain! See the cute teddy bear?
- Oh, here's another long section of legal analysis about things which have nothing whatsoever to do with the GPL. But it sure makes my letter look imposing and serious, doesn't it?
- So remember, kids: greed is GOOD. Abusing the legal system in order to enrich yourself is the American way! The Constition says so! Somewhere! I really think it does! I'm not a flaming rectal wart of a man, I'm just being a freedom-loving citizen - not like those smelly homosexual atheists over at the FSF who probably rape nuns when they aren't forcibly injecting heroin into the arms of preschoolers!
How anyone with even two brain cells to rub together (a group that clearly does not include Darl McBride) could read this "letter" without laughing their ass off is the only issue that needs to be examined here.Well, a large number of very intelligent scientists with doctorates in chmeistry, physics, and so on are saying that such things *may* be possible at some point ealier than the 100 years you are predicting. So, my question to you is: why should I believe you over them? Can you please give your qualifications for making pronouncements like "pure fantasy"?
Sorry, but I give more weight to the opinions of Real Scientists over random Slashdot readers any day (unless the two happen to be the same). It's certainly obvious that we aren't going to have Star-Trek-like replicators in our kitchens anytime soon, but as other people pointed out, we already are using nanomaterials in everyday objects, and as we get better the technology will improve.
As for your examples of other technologies, they are simply a fallcy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because something happened a certain way before does not mean it must happen that way in the future. The comparisons are not valid.
Household replicators next year? No. Astounding and amazing uses of nanotechnlogy and nanoassembly in less than your "100 years"? It's a near-certainty.
Well, I'm on Tolkien's side. I trust his literary opinion more than yours or Jackson's, sorry.
They have power because they have money. Money equals lobbyists and campaign donations.
Remember: the only honest politician is the one who stays bought.
The film sounds great, and I have a feeling I'll like it, but even so I'm pretty ticked off that Jackson left of the Scouring of the Shire just because he didn't like it. OK, yeah, it's a bit of a bummer ending, but that could have been handled.
Yes, I know there's only so much time available, they acn't put *everything* in, and so on. I didn't complain when relatively minor things like Tom Bombadil were left out, or when stupid-but-overlookable gaffes made their way in, such as dwarf-tossing or elves at Helm's Deep. But this is a major event.
It's Jackson's job to make the book into a movie, not second-guess Tolkien. If he thinks he's a better writer, he should write his own stuff, not chop up classics. OK, maybe it could have been left out of the theatrical release (since the kiddies don't want to see dead hobbits), but it should at least have been shot and put on the extended DVD.
I agree that this is good news - though I also agree with the person who said "we've heard this before..." But these are very big names, and they all have a huge incentive to make it happen.
If even a few major coporations adopt Linux on some or all desktops, that's the thin edge of the wedge. Right now, software developers can afford to ignore the small businesses that adopt Linux desktops, but they won't be able to ignore major corporations. Nor will the suppliers of those corporations. It's certainly not an outrageous scenario to consider the possibility that the following things might happen:
1) A few major corporations start installing large numbers of Linux desktops;
2) Those corporations experience difficulties integrating with Windows users (file format problems, mostly);
3) They demand that their suppliers conform to document formats and standards that are easily compatible with Linux;
4) The suppliers, not wanting to lose business, either start using some Linux desktops themselves or else demand better format interoperability from their software vendors.
And so Linux interoperability continues to be an even faster-growing, larger issue than it is now, and the leverage of those big corporations gradually ripples outward into the IT world in general.
And, of course, the better Desktop Linux gets for businesses, and the more interoperable it is with Windows, the more attractive it will grow to home users who either use it at work or are looking for less-expensive PCs.
Anything required by California is almost de facto a national standard. It probably isn't worth it for voting-machine manufacturers to make two different models, one for sale to CA and one for sale to other states.
You see this in lost of industries: low- and zero-emission vehicles are available nationwide primarily because CA required them. And that's why the banking lobby fought so hard against privacy regulations in CA: because if they had to redo their IT systems for CA, then basically it becomes available to their customers in all states. Cheaper to do it for eveyone than just people in one state.
This is an extremely positive step, and should greatly help prevent *accidental* mistakes by the machine. Keep one thing in mind, though: the vote the machine records and the one it prints out don't have to be the same.
If someone maliciously tampered with the actual code on the machine, it could print out a vote for Moron A while recording a vote for Moron B. Assuming they kept the tampering within reason (i.e., not a big enough discrepancy to make people suspect something and call for a count of the paper votes), a conspiracy to tamper with the voting wouldn't necessarily be prevented by paper reciepts.
In an environment where elections are often won and lost by only a few percent, a cleverly-altered machine would only have to change a few votes out of every hundred to make a big impact, certinly enough to swing very close elections.
Hey, I say, great for China. Obviously I have the same deep concern about their humanitarian issues as everyone else, but this is a step in the right direction. It creates good jobs for Chinese people, points the country more towards success through peaceful economic means rather than Communist/totalitarian means, and helps build their middle class - all good things towards promoting greater tolerance and democracy in their society. Bitch at them to improve on humanitarian issues does nothing. But when they, on their own, start moving towards a modern, peaceful democracy and an educated middle class, that's progress.
:) Of course I think it would be coolER to have an American moonbase, but since America seems to have its head wedged pretty far up its ass when it comes to space exploration, I guess this is the best I can hope for.
Also, I just think it would be really f'ing cool to have a Chinese moonbase up there.