Ironically, the state that has a reputation for being one of the most technologically backward states in the nation, my adopted home state of Louisiana, has one of the most technologically advanced voting systems.
In Louisiana, the voting is 100% digital. With the exception of absentee ballots, no vote ever touches a paper ballot, its all done electronically.
Here's how it works:
The voting machines contain an embedded computer and consist of a panel that is a programmable array of pushbuttons and LED's.
A PC software application programs the machine, assigning the buttons and LED's to certain functions, and the same application prints out a paper overlay, that they actually call a "ballot" that is placed over the button and LED array on the voting machine.
The paper overlay contains detailed instructions and the names of candidates. A black square is printed on the overlay above each active button. An arrow points from the candidates name to his/her assigned button. When the button is pressed, a green LED directly behind the arrow lights up. The LED shows through the paper at the arrow, and confirms the selection.
Any selection can be cleared and re-entered as many times as desired. When the voter is happy with his/her selections, he/she presses a "cast ballot" button that registers the selections in Flash EEPROM.
When the polls close, all the machines are taken to regional collection centers where their data ports are plugged into collection computers that spool the votes out of the machines and directly into an Oracle data base. With the exception of omitting an entire machine (or precinct!), no human error is possible, it's 100% electronic.
This is a far cry from that system in Florida where 19th century technology mechanical machines count punched holes using rotating wheels with mechanical metal feelers! Each time a ballot is run through one of these machines there is a risk that additional punch-outs will fall out, rendering that ballot invalid.
And hand counting, give me a break! Studies have shown that reasonably intelligent and diligent human beings can't even sort white marbles and black marbles from one another once they have been overcome with the monotony of sorting several thousand! It surely would be even worse staring at hundreds of thousands of ballots with little holes punched in them!
Louisiana's system is a huge step in the right direction and should be a model to the other states with more primitive systems. Throughout the 20th century, Louisiana was a national laughing stock due to continuous allegations of voter fraud. They've made it a priority to start out the next century with a robust solution. I think they're doing an excellent job in that regard.
In 1983ish when they first started in business, I thought "Compaq" was one of the stupidest company names I had ever heard.
Slight shortening and mutilation of "Compact." [HUGE YAWN]
So, why wasn't I surprised to learn that the same consulting firm came up with "Acura" (shortening and mutilation of "accurate"), and the model name "Integra" (shortening and mutilation of "integrity").
Can you say, "stuck in a rut?"
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Compaq computers, per-se, and an Acura Integra is by far the best car I ever owned. But, I find the names, well, lame!
Everyone knows that pen and ink signatures are easily forged. It isn't conceivable that electronic signatures would be any less secure or certian in this respect.
When someone forges your pen and ink signature, the solution is to swear under oath before witnesses, that the forgery in question is indeed a false signature. The solution to a forged electronic signature would be the same.
I really don't see a significant difference security or privacy-wise.
For all the lip service that the White House plays to being pro-technology, it is so often obvious that they really don't have much of a clue.
Remember, Al Gore invented the Internet!:-P
Furthermore, anyone who was leary of electronic signature has no obligation to use them. They can just use pen and ink signatures instead!
This is an idea who's time has come. We're about to enter a new millennium for cryin' out loud! Bill Clinton endlessly reminds us of this fact. He needs to actually live it!
My favorite rock star geek has always been Todd Rundgren.
He has been a known computer hacker since the 70's, fiddling with all manner of kit computers and so forth, especially those that had some musical or "media" orented accessories.
He was one of the very first beta testers of the "Newtek Video Toaster" (the coolest Amiga accessory card ever, IMHO), as well as numerous other computer based media orented products.
As for David Bowie, the interview certianly seems to indicate that he is more technologically hip than the average pop music star. Good for him!
My wife, Kathleen, like Trish, probably represents the typical computer user.
For years she has booted our dual boot desktop machine into Windows and I have booted into Linux.
She is so sick and tired of relentless, constant "blue screens o' death", and "this program has performed an illegal operation" messages that she has asked me for the following favor: Teach her Linux!
You see, she sees me hum along in linux crash free on the same damn hardware!
We plan to buy a more powerful box in the next month or so, anyway. So, what I'm going to do is set her up an account with the newest, slickest, most windows looking configuration of Gnome I can set up, give her a few lessons, install Applixware or Star Office (or both) as her MS Office replacement and see how it goes.
IMHO, the solution is to educate web developers and webmasters.
Their is not a single web functionality that cannot be realized in both Netscape and IE and under all popular operating systems.
The problem comes in when a particular web designer chooses to implement a feature on their site that requires a proprietary Microsoft plug-in or a proprietary Microsoft extension to Java to work.
If we can educate web designers to implement everything on their sites using open standards and protocols this issue will take care of itself.
I cannot think of a single example of a Microsoft proprietary plugin or extension to Java for which there is not a functionally equivalent open solution.
Insist that developers stick to open protocols and MS's monopoly power is severely diluted.
Thanks VanL for an AWESOME post and some excellent research.
Can anyone see where their isn't a TON of prior art for each one of the patents listed here?
This single post is probably the strongest case against software patents that I have seen in sometime.
It is proof positive that there are companies out there patenting algorithms that have existed for decades and longer and the US patent office just blindly rubber stamps them so as to let the court system establish the actual validity of the patent through litigation.
Why on earth else would a company patent something that appears a generic description of client-server computing, or one that essentially describes generic load balancing if not to have them available to pull out of their pocket one day to throw in the face of some other wealthy corporation as a means of extorting money from them.
I cannot believe that NCR actually would expect one of these patents to hold up in court if challenged, but they may plan to use them to extort a settlement out of a company (like AOL/Netscape) who's legal department decides that the issue is "not worth" taking to court.
Perversion of the Legal system and the patent system like this has GOT TO STOP, or, as an earlier post suggested, all information technology will flee the US in favor of operating under governments who are not so stupid and do not pander so obviously to unscrupulous wealthy corporate special interests.
The patent office needs to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves also. They are supposed to screen patent applications, and not issue patents on ideas for which there is prior art. What they actually do is just pass everything (at least in the area of software or algorithmic patents) and just let the court system sort the mess out. It was never intended to be that way.
Actually, the Apollo program of the 60's was one of the few examples in all of history of a government program running efficiently and effectively.
The Apollo program ran efficiently, made progress remarkably quickly, and truly pushed hard on the technology envelope of the time, all reasonably close to budget.
Had the congress not eviscerated NASA in the mid 70's, and NASA continued progressing at the pace and efficiency that it showed during the Apollo program, I'm convinced we would now have the following things:
A permanent research facility on the moon.
Perhaps even a vacation resort on the moon.
A space shuttle like vehicle to shuttle researchers (vacationers?) to and from the moon.
Numerous manned missions to Mars, maybe even a permanently manned station there.
At least one or two manned missions to Jupiter and to Saturn, perhaps even with landings on one of their moons.
Those who say that space research is a waste are just plain ignorant. The benefits to humankind that fall out of space research far outweigh any reasonable cost, if the research could be done as efficiently as the Apollo program was.
It is sad that NASA is now so under funded and that NASA along with the rest of government is so burocratic and lumbering that it can just barely manage to keep moving on a space station that is puny and unimpressive even compared to what we were accomplishing in space in the 60's!
And even the funding of the space station is a constant source of political fighting.
It is true that the space station is being handled so inefficiently and is such a token effort that the benefits if this particular station might not outweigh the costs.
This is a true pity, since it need not be that way.
Microsoft surely cares enough about their customers to make sure that if my coworker saves a document in the native format of Word 97, I'll be able to open and read it with Word 95 or Word 6.0 right?
Surely they would never make subsiquent releases of their "productivity" applications incompatible just to force everyone to upgrade to the new version when the old version worked fine would they?
How come so many large companies hire ignorant executives??
Some of us were discussing this on lunch break the other day.
I came up with a theory, which I also feel helps explain the huge gap in pay-scale between upper execs and workers.
It has to do with why and how Upper executives are hired.
In the vast majority of companies, the founder (and first CEO) tend to be smart and know what they are doing, if they weren't, they wouldn't have been able to build a sucessfull company.
However, how do they usually decide who to hire for other upper level positions? They hire their friends, relatives, old school mates, the guy who is lucky enough to marry the CEO's daughter/sister, or whatever. These decisions are made based on friendships and relationships, not ability, competence or merit. This is what is known as the "good-ole-boy network". Put another way, "It's not what you know, it's who you know."
Once the original founder of a company retires or dies, he will likely be replaced via the promotion of one of his relitives or buddies that he hired for an executive position, or by one of his children. This replacement may or may not be adequately qualified.
Lower level positions, OTOH, are filled based on actual job qualifications, by people the upper level suits never knew, and therefore, are usually genuinely qualified for their job.
Now, to get this post back ON TOPIC::-)
I wouldn't be so quick to call David Hutka a "clueless suit". After all, he's looking at Linux, as opposed to just automatically worshiping at the alter of Bill Gates!
Now that this has been publicised, every moronic script-kiddee is going to be riding around with one of these in the back of a pickup truck (an old one, without a computer controlled engine, presumably), letting the thing cut loose with a zap every couple of blocks.
Government beurocrats and lawmakers always have had a strong tendency for cluelessness, especially where technology is involved.
It has always been the case that it is possible for an American to download some freeware source code from a foreign site that contains encryption, modify an aspect of the application that has nothing to do with the encryption (translate the output text to English, perhaps), then if he re-uploads the program, he has committed a federal felony!
Don't expect our lawmakers to actually be swift enough to see the irony in this, they're far to stupid for that.
Sometimes I wonder if anything would really change if we just trained chimpanzees to be our senators and congressmen...
What is Notes? Basically a proprietary version of everything you already use, with some retarded window dressing they call "value add".
I'm one of the poor souls who's employer forces him to use Lotus Notes for certian things.
While I wouldn't say I'm so militant as to refuse to work for any company that uses notes, I do agree that Notes is largely a joke.
There is absolutely nothing that Notes can do that a decent mime compliant mail client combined with a simple "intranet" web server can't do equally well, and using open protocols to boot.
On the other side of this coin, I'm delighted in Lotus's decision to support Linux.
Whether I like notes or not, it has big credibility, and the fact that Domino now exists for Linux, increases Linux's credibility as well. This is a good thing.
Microsoft will be found absolutely guilty on all counts.
However, since their business and product is seen as very important to the world economy, their penalty will be a trivial slap on the wrist (a fine that to Bill Gates would look like a couple of bucks to someone like me), and an admonishment to clean up their act, which, of course, they will ignore.
However, Microsoft's days as an all-encompassing software monopoly are numbered, and this trial is only one small part of the reason why.
I believe that the average computer literacy of the general populous of the world has finally reached a level where Microsoft can't just bullshit people with any lie they care to spread anymore. The trial has laid bare some of the ugliness within Microsoft, so it has contributed to their demise.
However, general enlightenment of the masses is a more important factor. With the instantaneous conveying of information made possible by the internet, Microsoft's heretofore most powerful weapon, FUD, is severely diluted. With the 'net, as fast as they can dish out the FUD, enlightened people can refute it.
In addition, the 'net, for the most part, has clued in a lot of "Joe and Jane Average's" to the fact that Microsoft DID NOT invent the computer operating system. In fact, they've rarely done anything but sloppily copy something invented (and done better) by someone else and then slickly marketed what they copied.
Through the enlightenment of the computer using public, Microsoft's days as an overwhelming monopoly are truly numbered. Oh, they'll be serious contenders for many years, but with maybe 75% of the OS market, not 99.9%.
The trial is only one small part of the crumbling of the dynasty, nothing levels the playing field like enlightened consumers.
I did a little browsing at Mindcraft's web page and found the three rebuttals they have posted to articles appearing on abc.com, Salon, and Linux Today.
Each of the above was an article that in one way or another questioned the accuracy of the Mindcraft benchmark tests.
The tone of their rebuttals actually approaches the inflammatory nature of the flames that they posted!
In these rebuttals they DEMAND that the sites in question (ABC, Salon, Linux Today) post retractions to their reviews, or at least add a link to Mindcraft's rebuttal to the text of their reviews!
What crybabies!
Mindcraft, me thinks thou dosest abide in a glass house!
While I certainly would never condone sending such inflammatory email, this is a characteristic of the Internet community, not the community of Linux users per-se.
I've often been flamed with an onslaught of obsecnities and crude insults in response to the simplest and most benign of Usenet posts.
Bottom line: the web is full of people on the brink of total insanity (or indeed beyond that brink) who seriously need to have their medication adjusted! These people are not exclusively associated with one subject matter.
By posting such flames, however, Mindcraft is clearly trying to imply that the Linux community is dominated by such persons.
This seriously lowers the credibility of Mindcraft below even the depths to which it had already sunk.
The law assumes that it costs other countries to develop such programs. This is true; it does take considerable resources to write such a thing.
This logic is quite correct for some technologies, e. g. nuclear weapons.
It takes serious capital, and access to expensive rare resources to build a nuclear weapon.
So, restrictions against exporting nuclear technology assumes that US researchers have some of the greatest economic resources available to them.
This assumption is, at least, somewhat valid.
However the development of encryption/decryption schemes is almost 100% an intellectual exercise. The best ones the world over have been developed by university researchers with negligible budgets allocated for such development.
So, these laws assume that US researchers are simply way smarter than their counterparts elsewhere.
Actually, human vision is the aspect of the brain that I find most fascinating, partially because my professional specialty is artificial vision. I find it fascinating how much more advanced our biological vision processing is that anything we can achieve artificially.
Several fascinating aspects of human vision processing:
The "raw" "pixel" resolution of the human eye is actually flaberghastingly low, on the order of 200 x 200 pixels (the effective resolving ability of the rods and cones).
However, the human eye "snaps" about 10 - 12 "frames" per second (maximum, in good light) and the brain integrates subsequent frames, each with very subtle positional differences, and compares adjacent "pixels" from frame to frame to assemble an image of dramatically higher resolution. Thousands by thousands of "pixels" when required by the task being performed (e. g. threading a needle or intricate soldering). This is why staring at a small object for some length of time is necessary before we perceive all the most subtle details.
An additional "weakness" of the eye for which the brain performs some amazing processing to compensate for is this: The rods and cones of the eye are "recharged" by flushing a fluid containing rhodopsin across the retina. Rhodopsin is a protein that breaks down and emits a tiny electro-chemical current when struck by photons of light. The speed of the rhodopsin decay is proportional to the intensity of the light hitting it. The retina "recharges" when the previous charge of rhodopsin is nearly depleted. This works out to 10 - 12 times per second in bright light, much less (down to a minimum of perhaps once per second) in very low light.
Anyway, the flaw in the above scheme is that the "dose" of rhodopsin that each rod or cone receives in any given "recharge" is very poorly controlled. It varies all over the place. This means that the electrical current emitted by any given rod or cone for any given intensity of light from frame to frame is not consistent! So, the brain has to analyze the average current emitted by each rod and cone, over the surface of the retina and over time, and integrate this information to produce and accurate and detailed internal picture inside the brain!
The analogy is this (for all you artificial vision programmers):
Imagine that your boss gave you this task:
We are going to give you a CCD camera with an array of 200 x 200 pixels. We will rapidly vibrate the camera so that by integrating the subtle changes between adjacent pixels you will, after storing 30 frames, interpolate a picture with a resolution of 5000 x 5000 pixels. Furthermore, the brightness value digitized by each camera pixel is going to randomly vary by 200% for any given actual light intensity. Your system has to output a real time image flow at the above resolution and a brightness accuracy of +- 0.01%.
Yeah right!
But this is analogous to what the brain does!
I've always been more impressed by the brain's processing power than by its storage capacity.
When campaigning for re-election, the politicians want to be able to make statements like: "I voted for n bills that protect the little children of the world from exploitation."
By tacking this amendment onto this bill, that of course has absolutely no relevance to the issue of child exploitation, the politicians can count this bill in that total of n.
Well, It's about time that the US congress dragged themselves into some semblance of reality on this issue.
The laws in the US regarding the exporting of encryption and decryption technology were all derived from the premise that US engineers and scientists were the only ones on the face of the planet with any ability whatsoever to invent any sort of encryption/decryption techniques, and that the scientific/engineering/software community elsewhere were completely incapable of developing any such technology on their own and would only obtain it if they got if from us.
Just a TAD bit stupidly arrogant, no?
The laws are, in fact, so stupid that if I download a program that does encryption/decryption from a site in, for example, France, and then I translate the text in its GUI from French to English and stick it back up on the Internet, I have committed treason. (Because I transfered a program containing encryption/decryption from my computer, on US soil, owned by a US citizen, to the world-wide Internet. It was irrelevant that the encryption/decryption portion of the code originated in another country anyway!)
From my reading of the article, (and it's kinda sketchy) it looks like this represents only the first small step towards sanity. But at least it's a step.
I find it interesting how few people seem to be noticing that this "news" piece appears on the web news service owned by Microsoft!
(Obviously, the AC to whom I am responding DID notice it.)
Anyway, the article was a totally transparent: "Don't be afraid of poor abused little ol' innocent Microsoft, be afraid of this horrible three-headed monster we are depicting!"
Sheesh!
Sun, AOL, and Netscape have to band together like this just to keep their head above water against the "We WILL be the ONLY writer of any kind of software on planet earth" monster from Redmond. World dominance will not be the result of the Sun, AOL, Netscape alliance. Mere survival may be.
A blatant FUD piece to attempt to draw attention away from the REAL ISSUE!
Slashdot Mirror
Ironically, the state that has a reputation for being one of the most technologically backward states in the nation, my adopted home state of Louisiana, has one of the most technologically advanced voting systems.
In Louisiana, the voting is 100% digital. With the exception of absentee ballots, no vote ever touches a paper ballot, its all done electronically.
Here's how it works:
The voting machines contain an embedded computer and consist of a panel that is a programmable array of pushbuttons and LED's.
A PC software application programs the machine, assigning the buttons and LED's to certain functions, and the same application prints out a paper overlay, that they actually call a "ballot" that is placed over the button and LED array on the voting machine.
The paper overlay contains detailed instructions and the names of candidates. A black square is printed on the overlay above each active button. An arrow points from the candidates name to his/her assigned button. When the button is pressed, a green LED directly behind the arrow lights up. The LED shows through the paper at the arrow, and confirms the selection.
Any selection can be cleared and re-entered as many times as desired. When the voter is happy with his/her selections, he/she presses a "cast ballot" button that registers the selections in Flash EEPROM.
When the polls close, all the machines are taken to regional collection centers where their data ports are plugged into collection computers that spool the votes out of the machines and directly into an Oracle data base. With the exception of omitting an entire machine (or precinct!), no human error is possible, it's 100% electronic.
This is a far cry from that system in Florida where 19th century technology mechanical machines count punched holes using rotating wheels with mechanical metal feelers! Each time a ballot is run through one of these machines there is a risk that additional punch-outs will fall out, rendering that ballot invalid.
And hand counting, give me a break! Studies have shown that reasonably intelligent and diligent human beings can't even sort white marbles and black marbles from one another once they have been overcome with the monotony of sorting several thousand! It surely would be even worse staring at hundreds of thousands of ballots with little holes punched in them!
Louisiana's system is a huge step in the right direction and should be a model to the other states with more primitive systems. Throughout the 20th century, Louisiana was a national laughing stock due to continuous allegations of voter fraud. They've made it a priority to start out the next century with a robust solution. I think they're doing an excellent job in that regard.
In 1983ish when they first started in business, I thought "Compaq" was one of the stupidest company names I had ever heard.
Slight shortening and mutilation of "Compact."
[HUGE YAWN]
So, why wasn't I surprised to learn that the same consulting firm came up with "Acura" (shortening and mutilation of "accurate"), and the model name "Integra" (shortening and mutilation of "integrity").
Can you say, "stuck in a rut?"
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Compaq computers, per-se, and an Acura Integra is by far the best car I ever owned. But, I find the names, well, lame!
Everyone knows that pen and ink signatures are easily forged. It isn't conceivable that electronic signatures would be any less secure or certian in this respect.
:-P
When someone forges your pen and ink signature, the solution is to swear under oath before witnesses, that the forgery in question is indeed a false signature. The solution to a forged electronic signature would be the same.
I really don't see a significant difference security or privacy-wise.
For all the lip service that the White House plays to being pro-technology, it is so often obvious that they really don't have much of a clue.
Remember, Al Gore invented the Internet!
Furthermore, anyone who was leary of electronic signature has no obligation to use them. They can just use pen and ink signatures instead!
This is an idea who's time has come. We're about to enter a new millennium for cryin' out loud! Bill Clinton endlessly reminds us of this fact. He needs to actually live it!
My favorite rock star geek has always been Todd Rundgren.
He has been a known computer hacker since the 70's, fiddling with all manner of kit computers and so forth, especially those that had some musical or "media" orented accessories.
He was one of the very first beta testers of the "Newtek Video Toaster" (the coolest Amiga accessory card ever, IMHO), as well as numerous other computer based media orented products.
As for David Bowie, the interview certianly seems to indicate that he is more technologically hip than the average pop music star. Good for him!
This sounds like just about the coolest software utility that I will almost never have to use! [Grin]
A Windows version would be orders of magnatude more useful! [Bigger grin!]
This sounds like just about the coolest software utility that I will almost never have to use!
A Windows version would be orders of magnatude more useful!
Isn't that interesting (and insulting).
My wife, Kathleen, like Trish, probably represents the typical computer user.
For years she has booted our dual boot desktop machine into Windows and I have booted into Linux.
She is so sick and tired of relentless, constant "blue screens o' death", and "this program has performed an illegal operation" messages that she has asked me for the following favor: Teach her Linux!
You see, she sees me hum along in linux crash free on the same damn hardware!
We plan to buy a more powerful box in the next month or so, anyway. So, what I'm going to do is set her up an account with the newest, slickest, most windows looking configuration of Gnome I can set up, give her a few lessons, install Applixware or Star Office (or both) as her MS Office replacement and see how it goes.
We both predict she'll like the change!
IMHO, the solution is to educate web developers and webmasters.
Their is not a single web functionality that cannot be realized in both Netscape and IE and under all popular operating systems.
The problem comes in when a particular web designer chooses to implement a feature on their site that requires a proprietary Microsoft plug-in or a proprietary Microsoft extension to Java to work.
If we can educate web designers to implement everything on their sites using open standards and protocols this issue will take care of itself.
I cannot think of a single example of a Microsoft proprietary plugin or extension to Java for which there is not a functionally equivalent open solution.
Insist that developers stick to open protocols and MS's monopoly power is severely diluted.
Thanks VanL for an AWESOME post and some excellent research.
Can anyone see where their isn't a TON of prior art for each one of the patents listed here?
This single post is probably the strongest case against software patents that I have seen in sometime.
It is proof positive that there are companies out there patenting algorithms that have existed for decades and longer and the US patent office just blindly rubber stamps them so as to let the court system establish the actual validity of the patent through litigation.
Why on earth else would a company patent something that appears a generic description of client-server computing, or one that essentially describes generic load balancing if not to have them available to pull out of their pocket one day to throw in the face of some other wealthy corporation as a means of extorting money from them.
I cannot believe that NCR actually would expect one of these patents to hold up in court if challenged, but they may plan to use them to extort a settlement out of a company (like AOL/Netscape) who's legal department decides that the issue is "not worth" taking to court.
Perversion of the Legal system and the patent system like this has GOT TO STOP, or, as an earlier post suggested, all information technology will flee the US in favor of operating under governments who are not so stupid and do not pander so obviously to unscrupulous wealthy corporate special interests.
The patent office needs to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves also. They are supposed to screen patent applications, and not issue patents on ideas for which there is prior art. What they actually do is just pass everything (at least in the area of software or algorithmic patents) and just let the court system sort the mess out. It was never intended to be that way.
The Apollo program ran efficiently, made progress remarkably quickly, and truly pushed hard on the technology envelope of the time, all reasonably close to budget.
Had the congress not eviscerated NASA in the mid 70's, and NASA continued progressing at the pace and efficiency that it showed during the Apollo program, I'm convinced we would now have the following things:
to and from the moon.
station there.
even with landings on one of their moons.
Those who say that space research is a waste are just plain ignorant. The benefits to humankind that fall out of space research far outweigh any reasonable cost, if the research could be done as efficiently as the Apollo program was.
It is sad that NASA is now so under funded and that NASA along with the rest of government is so burocratic and lumbering that it can just barely manage to keep moving on a space station that is puny and unimpressive even compared to what we were accomplishing in space in the 60's!
And even the funding of the space station is a constant source of political fighting.
It is true that the space station is being handled so inefficiently and is such a token effort that the benefits if this particular station might not outweigh the costs.
This is a true pity, since it need not be that way.
And don't forget...
Microsoft surely cares enough about their customers to make sure that if my coworker saves a document in the native format of Word 97, I'll be able to open and read it with Word 95 or Word 6.0 right?
Surely they would never make subsiquent releases of their "productivity" applications incompatible just to force everyone to upgrade to the new version when the old version worked fine would they?
Not Microsoft!
How come so many large companies hire ignorant executives??
:-)
Some of us were discussing this on lunch break the other day.
I came up with a theory, which I also feel helps explain the huge gap in pay-scale between upper execs and workers.
It has to do with why and how Upper executives are hired.
In the vast majority of companies, the founder (and first CEO) tend to be smart and know what they are doing, if they weren't, they wouldn't have been able to build a sucessfull company.
However, how do they usually decide who to hire for other upper level positions? They hire their friends, relatives, old school mates, the guy who is lucky enough to marry the CEO's daughter/sister, or whatever. These decisions are made based on friendships and relationships, not ability, competence or merit. This is what is known as the "good-ole-boy network". Put another way, "It's not what you know, it's who you know."
Once the original founder of a company retires or dies, he will likely be replaced via the promotion of one of his relitives or buddies that he hired for an executive position, or by one of his children. This replacement may or may not be adequately qualified.
Lower level positions, OTOH, are filled based on actual job qualifications, by people the upper level suits never knew, and therefore, are usually genuinely qualified for their job.
Now, to get this post back ON TOPIC:
I wouldn't be so quick to call David Hutka a "clueless suit". After all, he's looking at Linux, as opposed to just automatically worshiping at the alter of Bill Gates!
Criminey!
Now that this has been publicised, every moronic script-kiddee is going to be riding around with one of these in the back of a pickup truck (an old one, without a computer controlled engine, presumably), letting the thing cut loose with a zap every couple of blocks.
Something to be looking forward to...
Yuck!
Government beurocrats and lawmakers always have had a strong tendency for cluelessness, especially where technology is involved.
It has always been the case that it is possible for an American to download some freeware source code from a foreign site that contains encryption, modify an aspect of the application that has nothing to do with the encryption (translate the output text to English, perhaps), then if he re-uploads the program, he has committed a federal felony!
Don't expect our lawmakers to actually be swift enough to see the irony in this, they're far to stupid for that.
Sometimes I wonder if anything would really change if we just trained chimpanzees to be our senators and congressmen...
(BA-DUMP BUMP!)
Hey Hemos,
;-)
Seeing as this topic generated over 500 responses in the first couple of hours, apparently your the only one who was "speechless"!
What is Notes? Basically a proprietary version of everything you already use, with some retarded window dressing they call "value add".
I'm one of the poor souls who's employer forces him to use Lotus Notes for certian things.
While I wouldn't say I'm so militant as to refuse to work for any company that uses notes, I do agree that Notes is largely a joke.
There is absolutely nothing that Notes can do that a decent mime compliant mail client combined with a simple "intranet" web server can't do equally well, and using open protocols to boot.
On the other side of this coin, I'm delighted in Lotus's decision to support Linux.
Whether I like notes or not, it has big credibility, and the fact that Domino now exists for Linux, increases Linux's credibility as well. This is a good thing.
Here's my guess:
Microsoft will be found absolutely guilty on all counts.
However, since their business and product is seen as very important to the world economy, their penalty will be a trivial slap on the wrist (a fine that to Bill Gates would look like a couple of bucks to someone like me), and an admonishment to clean up their act, which, of course, they will ignore.
However, Microsoft's days as an all-encompassing software monopoly are numbered, and this trial is only one small part of the reason why.
I believe that the average computer literacy of the general populous of the world has finally reached a level where Microsoft can't just bullshit people with any lie they care to spread anymore. The trial has laid bare some of the ugliness within Microsoft, so it has contributed to their demise.
However, general enlightenment of the masses is a more important factor. With the instantaneous conveying of information made possible by the internet, Microsoft's heretofore most powerful weapon, FUD, is severely diluted. With the 'net, as fast as they can dish out the FUD, enlightened people can refute it.
In addition, the 'net, for the most part, has clued in a lot of "Joe and Jane Average's" to the fact that Microsoft DID NOT invent the computer operating system. In fact, they've rarely done anything but sloppily copy something invented (and done better) by someone else and then slickly marketed what they copied.
Through the enlightenment of the computer using public, Microsoft's days as an overwhelming monopoly are truly numbered. Oh, they'll be serious contenders for many years, but with maybe 75% of the OS market, not 99.9%.
The trial is only one small part of the crumbling of the dynasty, nothing levels the playing field like enlightened consumers.
I did a little browsing at Mindcraft's web page and found the three rebuttals they have posted to articles appearing on abc.com, Salon, and Linux Today.
Each of the above was an article that in one way or another questioned the accuracy of the Mindcraft benchmark tests.
The tone of their rebuttals actually approaches the inflammatory nature of the flames that they posted!
In these rebuttals they DEMAND that the sites in question (ABC, Salon, Linux Today) post retractions to their reviews, or at least add a link to Mindcraft's rebuttal to the text of their reviews!
What crybabies!
Mindcraft, me thinks thou dosest abide in a glass house!
Has gotten email like those that netcraft posted.
While I certainly would never condone sending such inflammatory email, this is a characteristic of the Internet community, not the community of Linux users per-se.
I've often been flamed with an onslaught of obsecnities and crude insults in response to the simplest and most benign of Usenet posts.
Bottom line: the web is full of people on the brink of total insanity (or indeed beyond that brink) who seriously need to have their medication adjusted! These people are not exclusively associated with one subject matter.
By posting such flames, however, Mindcraft is clearly trying to imply that the Linux community is dominated by such persons.
This seriously lowers the credibility of Mindcraft below even the depths to which it had already sunk.
The law assumes that it costs other countries to develop such programs. This is true; it does take considerable resources to write such a thing.
This logic is quite correct for some technologies, e. g. nuclear weapons.
It takes serious capital, and access to expensive rare resources to build a nuclear weapon.
So, restrictions against exporting nuclear technology assumes that US researchers have some of the greatest economic resources available to them.
This assumption is, at least, somewhat valid.
However the development of encryption/decryption schemes is almost 100% an intellectual exercise. The best ones the world over have been developed by university researchers with negligible budgets allocated for such development.
So, these laws assume that US researchers are simply way smarter than their counterparts elsewhere.
A flawed premise IMHO.
Actually, human vision is the aspect of the brain that I find most fascinating, partially because my professional specialty is artificial vision. I find it fascinating how much more advanced our biological vision processing is that anything we can achieve artificially.
Several fascinating aspects of human vision processing:
The "raw" "pixel" resolution of the human eye is actually flaberghastingly low, on the order of 200 x 200 pixels (the effective resolving ability of the rods and cones).
However, the human eye "snaps" about 10 - 12 "frames" per second (maximum, in good light) and the brain integrates subsequent frames, each with very subtle positional differences, and compares adjacent "pixels" from frame to frame to assemble an image of dramatically higher resolution. Thousands by thousands of "pixels" when required by the task being performed (e. g. threading a needle or intricate soldering). This is why staring at a small object for some length of time is necessary before we perceive all the most subtle details.
An additional "weakness" of the eye for which the brain performs some amazing processing to compensate for is this: The rods and cones of the eye are "recharged" by flushing a fluid containing rhodopsin across the retina. Rhodopsin is a protein that breaks down and emits a tiny electro-chemical current when struck by photons of light. The speed of the rhodopsin decay is proportional to the intensity of the light hitting it. The retina "recharges" when the previous charge of rhodopsin is nearly depleted. This works out to 10 - 12 times per
second in bright light, much less (down to a minimum of perhaps once per second) in very low light.
Anyway, the flaw in the above scheme is that the "dose" of rhodopsin that each rod or cone receives in any given "recharge" is very poorly controlled. It varies all over the place. This means that the electrical current emitted by any given rod or cone for any given intensity of light from frame to frame is not consistent! So, the brain has to analyze the average current emitted by each rod and cone, over the surface of the retina and over time, and integrate this information to produce and accurate and detailed internal picture inside the brain!
The analogy is this (for all you artificial vision programmers):
Imagine that your boss gave you this task:
We are going to give you a CCD camera with an array of 200 x 200 pixels. We will rapidly vibrate the camera so that by integrating the subtle changes between adjacent pixels you will, after storing 30 frames, interpolate a picture with a resolution of 5000 x 5000 pixels. Furthermore, the brightness value digitized by each camera pixel is going to randomly vary by 200% for any given actual light intensity. Your system has to output a real time image flow at the above resolution and a brightness accuracy of +- 0.01%.
Yeah right!
But this is analogous to what the brain does!
I've always been more impressed by the brain's processing power than by its storage capacity.
When campaigning for re-election, the politicians want to be able to make statements like: "I voted for n bills that protect the little children of the world from exploitation."
By tacking this amendment onto this bill, that of course has absolutely no relevance to the issue of child exploitation, the politicians can count this bill in that total of n.
Well, It's about time that the US congress dragged themselves into some semblance of reality on this issue.
The laws in the US regarding the exporting of encryption and decryption technology were all derived from the premise that US engineers and scientists were the only ones on the face of the planet with any ability whatsoever to invent any sort of encryption/decryption techniques, and that the scientific/engineering/software community elsewhere were completely incapable of developing any such technology on their own and would only obtain it if they got if from us.
Just a TAD bit stupidly arrogant, no?
The laws are, in fact, so stupid that if I download a program that does encryption/decryption from a site in, for example, France, and then I translate the text in its GUI from French to English and stick it back up on the Internet, I have committed treason. (Because I transfered a program containing encryption/decryption from my computer, on US soil, owned by a US citizen, to the world-wide Internet. It was irrelevant that the encryption/decryption portion of the code originated in another country anyway!)
From my reading of the article, (and it's kinda sketchy) it looks like this represents only the first small step towards sanity. But at least it's a step.
I find it interesting how few people seem to be noticing that this "news" piece appears on the web news service owned by Microsoft!
(Obviously, the AC to whom I am responding DID notice it.)
Anyway, the article was a totally transparent: "Don't be afraid of poor abused little ol' innocent Microsoft, be afraid of this horrible three-headed monster we are depicting!"
Sheesh!
Sun, AOL, and Netscape have to band together like this just to keep their head above water against the "We WILL be the ONLY writer of any kind of software on planet earth" monster from Redmond. World dominance will not be the result of the Sun, AOL, Netscape alliance. Mere survival may be.
A blatant FUD piece to attempt to draw attention away from the REAL ISSUE!
I, for one, am not buying.