Yes, running applications... that's why my computer slows down! It all makes sense now! I'll just sit here and stare at "Bliss" then. Holy flying toasters, Macman! I'm doing nothing FAST!
...they would be worthless for validating what was actually entered in the database, since if you are worried about people modifing what the people actually voted they would just print out what the person entered while enter into the database the modified results.
If you want to use it for validation, the last time I used electronic systems it had a validation screen for my votes. That worked just as well for validation purposes.
The validation is a) for the voter and b) in the case of a manual recount. Now a) can certainly be done equally onscreen or in paper. The paper is for validation b). Printing a bogus receipt (one that matches the voter's choices but not what's tallied) would be revealed if the manual recount of the ballots came out. Granted, the idea of direct and purposeful e-tampering is on the outer rim of plausibility. I seriously doubt that's an issue, but the massive rise in identity theft forces me to accept that computerizing anything makes life (and therefore fraud) more efficient and therefore more attractive.
Now let's talk about a much more present concern with electronic voting. Am I comfortable with even a remote possibiilty of this system crashing in the middle of registering my vote? A 0.1% chance of failure to register is frighteningly high; that's 160,000 votes lost if the entire US were voting electronically. Poking a hole in a punchcard can only fail if I screw it up. After 2000, I guarantee you everyone's going to make sure they're poking the proper hole and poking it clean through.
Personally, I'm not going anywhere near an electronic voting system. Dismiss me, call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but Reynold's Wrap's stock is up 50% since we went to war in Iraq. Me? I'm requesting an absentee ballot and mailing it in. Certified Mail.
No, thanks, that was a lot clearer. Doubling the bit length is a lot different than doubling the number!
Thanks for the reader's digest version about about how "calculations" are actually conducted using quantum machinery. I'd read an article about Shor's algorithm a long time ago (when IBM factored 15 into 3x5), but found a much more informative article about how it was done on the wikipedia by googl'ing Shor's.
I don't understand your first assertion. One half of a number is not the same as its square root. Even a key length of nine, the square root is 1/3 the key length. For a 100-digit key, the square root is a tenth. Please explain how this "halves" the key size.
I'm not a cryptographer, but I think the advantage of using a quantum computer *is* the fact that it can do a brute-force search exponentially faster than today's hardware. If there were some magic factoring algorithm that quantum computers can do, then that algorithm could be applied in a classical computer (abeit much slower). It's not that quantum computers are "better" at factoring, necessarily.
The key to our current system of secure communications is that each time you increase the key by one bit, you double the size of the keyspace. This doubles the time to brute-force examine those new possibilities on a traditional binary computer, since it must check each key in series. Thus, the time to brute-force attack a key of binary length n is 2^n. The quantum computer uses qubits, which rather than being 1 or 0, allows a superposition of both 1 and 0 (vastly simplifying the situation here for clarity and due to a lack of strong understanding myself). This allows a quantum computer of n qubits to check every key of length n in one step, or a linear growth in time with keysize. Compared to 2^n, or exponential growth, you can see how much easier it is to search a keyspace using this technology.
Now, there are many other ways to aproach breaking a cypher, as there are such things as "weak keys" for a given cryptosystem, (the cryptographic version of choosing "password" as your password) but I'd be getting off our discussion (and frankly out of my depth).
You rapscallions with your fancy digital systems! I remember when Tom brought in that fancy new abacus with an extra row of beads. He was all "you can't calculate four digit numbers! nyeh nyeh!". Well, we showed him. Tied a tin can to his sister's kitty's tail, we did. I got a laugh outta that. We laughed and laughed. Funny times. Don't think I had a time like that until we were out of short pants.
Dagnabbit, you whippersnappers made me miss Mr. Matlock's Vaudeville Review at the Nickelodeon! Wait'll I get my switch...
Actually, yes. Most folks don't actually close any application, they just leave it open, and move on to the next thing.
I do this myself, despite having cut my teeth on Mac System 7, where it was entirely possible to leave apps running (and in memory, virtual or otherwise) without any windows open at all.
You look at a random taskbar at my office at any given time, you'll see Outlook, Word, Excel, Photoshop, MapPoint, and on and on. Of course, personal knowledge of a topic is no prerequisite for posting on/.
In case anyone was wondering what the hell this nutjob's.sig is about, SLC is the Schools and Libraries Corporation and CIPA is the Child Internet Pornography Act. Because we all know cencorship of child porn is wrong wrong wrong.
Zounds! Bully for your old chap, that's a cracking analogy. May "Insightful" mods rain upon your head, my good man. I pray the shining beacon of your intellect leads the unwashed semiliterates of/. into the gas chambers of enlightenment.
Actually, the stamp is just a way to bypass the whitelist and Bayesean filter. There's a flowchart on the site (in the install area I think, it's not in a very clear place), with three paths into the inbox: Crank out a stamp, or be on the whitelist, or achieve a high score on the spamometer.
As much as I'd like to berate you as many of my siblings do, maybe I'll just remind you that the real information IS NOT ON SLASHDOT. SLASHDOT IS A BLOG. The article goes over several objections, specifically yours: "I run a 'legitimate' email list, my server's going to crumble under the load!" It is one click away from slashdot, called "Frequently Raised Objections"
I propose a compute-intensive stamp for posting to slashdot, instead of the retarded delays we currently have. Why not one of those obfuscated words, like when you sign up for a free email account? That way illiterate asshats like yourself won't clutter up the conversation!
Even a 500Mhz system isn't going to have any problems calculating the stamps for a small workload. Now, if you're spamming from that C3, well, you're just the guy we're looking to stop.
Interesting point, but the POW need not be done on the client. You can do it on the client, at the mail relay or even set up a dedicated computer to do the calculations.
jaz
DK is really only applies to institutional knowledge. It's "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing". Very difficult for that to happen within an individual.
You absolutely CANNOT repair a car *efficiently* without knowing why things work the way they do.
But you *can* repair a car without that knowledge. Not efficiently, but you can do it. The top flight folks in any field know both *how* and *why* but that's the top 25% at best. People *do* take on jobs that they're capable of performing without any comprehension of why they do what they do. They just use a tiered trial and error system to find a solution.
Exhibit A: Script-reading help desk jockeys
Exhibit B: Some junior auto mechanics.
Exhibit C: George W. Bush.
There's always a gray area between people who know *how to do* their job and people who *know their job*.
There's a great paradox here. A few quick points: an accepted definition of a random number is one whose algorithm for construction is at least as long as the number itself. i.e. the number 0.142857142857... is not random, because the minimal algorithm that will construct it is simply 1/7. Numbers generated by rolling a dice can only be described by listing the sequence of dice roll results that created them.
Yes, most of the numbers in the space (0,1) are random. No, we cannot prove that any particular number is random. I *strongly* suggest reading The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity by Heinz R. Pagels for an *excellent* treatment of these issues. An interesting point/counterpoint (with me being a bit of a troll at the outset, but I got props for him now) is here on slashdot is here
Acutally, close but no. Yes, *complexity* is the middle ground between ordered and random (chaotic). If a salt crystal is ordered, and a helium balloon is chaotic, then a rose is complex.
The interesting "deterministic chaotic systems" are those that arise from the interaction of nonlinear equations (nonlinear does not mean simply "a line", but that two solutions do not necessarily add together to create a third solution. Sound or ocean waves are examples of linear functions. Add two waves together and you get another wave). These nonlinear systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions; small deviations lead to substantially different outcomes. The "butterly effect" if you will.
If complex systems (such as the weather) were dependant on human perception for their inscrutability, today's hyper-precise measuring and simulation systems would be cranking out perfect month-forward forecasts! It's the fact that you must have perfect, complete data to precisely determine future outcomes that makes chaotic systems so intriguing.
Advertising revenue is based on Nielsen ratings, an inexact measure. Now that we have a list of all those people who watch this low-midrange channel, that changes the equation for small-market channels' advertising prices (for the worse I imagine).
Unfortunately, the "reality of the situation" is that by caching the site, they are duplicating someone elses' IP. In these litigious times, that is NOT a smart Standard Operating Procedure. Offer to cache, sure, but why? when google already does it?
Slashdot Mirror
jaz
If you want to use it for validation, the last time I used electronic systems it had a validation screen for my votes. That worked just as well for validation purposes.
The validation is a) for the voter and b) in the case of a manual recount. Now a) can certainly be done equally onscreen or in paper. The paper is for validation b). Printing a bogus receipt (one that matches the voter's choices but not what's tallied) would be revealed if the manual recount of the ballots came out. Granted, the idea of direct and purposeful e-tampering is on the outer rim of plausibility. I seriously doubt that's an issue, but the massive rise in identity theft forces me to accept that computerizing anything makes life (and therefore fraud) more efficient and therefore more attractive.
Now let's talk about a much more present concern with electronic voting. Am I comfortable with even a remote possibiilty of this system crashing in the middle of registering my vote? A 0.1% chance of failure to register is frighteningly high; that's 160,000 votes lost if the entire US were voting electronically. Poking a hole in a punchcard can only fail if I screw it up. After 2000, I guarantee you everyone's going to make sure they're poking the proper hole and poking it clean through.
Personally, I'm not going anywhere near an electronic voting system. Dismiss me, call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but Reynold's Wrap's stock is up 50% since we went to war in Iraq.
Me? I'm requesting an absentee ballot and mailing it in. Certified Mail.
jaz
Thanks for the reader's digest version about about how "calculations" are actually conducted using quantum machinery. I'd read an article about Shor's algorithm a long time ago (when IBM factored 15 into 3x5), but found a much more informative article about how it was done on the wikipedia by googl'ing Shor's.
jaz
I'm not a cryptographer, but I think the advantage of using a quantum computer *is* the fact that it can do a brute-force search exponentially faster than today's hardware. If there were some magic factoring algorithm that quantum computers can do, then that algorithm could be applied in a classical computer (abeit much slower). It's not that quantum computers are "better" at factoring, necessarily.
The key to our current system of secure communications is that each time you increase the key by one bit, you double the size of the keyspace. This doubles the time to brute-force examine those new possibilities on a traditional binary computer, since it must check each key in series. Thus, the time to brute-force attack a key of binary length n is 2^n. The quantum computer uses qubits, which rather than being 1 or 0, allows a superposition of both 1 and 0 (vastly simplifying the situation here for clarity and due to a lack of strong understanding myself). This allows a quantum computer of n qubits to check every key of length n in one step, or a linear growth in time with keysize. Compared to 2^n, or exponential growth, you can see how much easier it is to search a keyspace using this technology.
Now, there are many other ways to aproach breaking a cypher, as there are such things as "weak keys" for a given cryptosystem, (the cryptographic version of choosing "password" as your password) but I'd be getting off our discussion (and frankly out of my depth).
jaz
Newer? yes. Better? well..
Dagnabbit, you whippersnappers made me miss Mr. Matlock's Vaudeville Review at the Nickelodeon! Wait'll I get my switch...
I do this myself, despite having cut my teeth on Mac System 7, where it was entirely possible to leave apps running (and in memory, virtual or otherwise) without any windows open at all.
You look at a random taskbar at my office at any given time, you'll see Outlook, Word, Excel, Photoshop, MapPoint, and on and on. Of course, personal knowledge of a topic is no prerequisite for posting on /.
jaz
jaz
Ever your fan,
jaz
jaz
I propose a compute-intensive stamp for posting to slashdot, instead of the retarded delays we currently have. Why not one of those obfuscated words, like when you sign up for a free email account? That way illiterate asshats like yourself won't clutter up the conversation!
jaz
Even a 500Mhz system isn't going to have any problems calculating the stamps for a small workload. Now, if you're spamming from that C3, well, you're just the guy we're looking to stop.
Interesting point, but the POW need not be done on the client. You can do it on the client, at the mail relay or even set up a dedicated computer to do the calculations. jaz
Yeah, that'll annoy a lecturer all right. ;)
I don't think that's a fair statement. One of the most intellectually challenging benchmarks is mathematical rigor.
Challenge: is the four-color map solution mathematically rigorous, and why or why not?
jaz
PS -- Moderators, please by all means mod me Offtopic. God knows we need to keep discussions about rocket pack world record attempts on track!
OMFG Mod Parent Up!
references...?
I know the "ironing" is delicious, but you're not supposed to eat starch on today's high protein diets. It's about changing our lifestyles, mmkay?
jaz
There's always a gray area between people who know *how to do* their job and people who *know their job*.
jaz
Yes, most of the numbers in the space (0,1) are random. No, we cannot prove that any particular number is random. I *strongly* suggest reading The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity by Heinz R. Pagels for an *excellent* treatment of these issues. An interesting point/counterpoint (with me being a bit of a troll at the outset, but I got props for him now) is here on slashdot is here
jaz
The interesting "deterministic chaotic systems" are those that arise from the interaction of nonlinear equations (nonlinear does not mean simply "a line", but that two solutions do not necessarily add together to create a third solution. Sound or ocean waves are examples of linear functions. Add two waves together and you get another wave). These nonlinear systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions; small deviations lead to substantially different outcomes. The "butterly effect" if you will.
If complex systems (such as the weather) were dependant on human perception for their inscrutability, today's hyper-precise measuring and simulation systems would be cranking out perfect month-forward forecasts! It's the fact that you must have perfect, complete data to precisely determine future outcomes that makes chaotic systems so intriguing.
jaz
Advertising revenue is based on Nielsen ratings, an inexact measure. Now that we have a list of all those people who watch this low-midrange channel, that changes the equation for small-market channels' advertising prices (for the worse I imagine).
Unfortunately, the "reality of the situation" is that by caching the site, they are duplicating someone elses' IP. In these litigious times, that is NOT a smart Standard Operating Procedure. Offer to cache, sure, but why? when google already does it?
except that it takes as much as a month to get a laptop shipped from Dell, but nice try...