Based on ostgres and perl, runs on linux or windows. ***** Compiere, for complex supply-chain management, CRM type stuff. Compiere is free, and you can download oracle for free for development/trial mode, but if you want to use it in production you have to shell out for an oracle license. $1500 I believe. There has been much talk of making compiere db independent, so you could plug in mysql or sql-server or whatever you want, rather than oracle, but that hasn't happened yet.
According to its own auditors, the US Government is posting not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars in "undocumented transactions." This means, the financial officers responsible simply have no idea what a particular financial flow was used for, or lack the paperwork to rule out fraud or theft.
The IT contractors that built the systems that can't keep track of the money (AMS, Dyncorp, CCC, CACI, and Lockheed Martin among others) have had their multimillion dollar "support" contracts extended year after year.
To quote:
From Department of Defense (DoD)... "We reported that DoD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DoD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DoD financial statements for FY 2000." David K. Steensma Acting Assistant Inspector General for Auditing for the DoD February 26, 2002
From Housing & Urban Development (HUD)... "At the time we discontinued our audit work... An additional 242 adjustments totaling about $59.6 billion, were made to adjust fiscal year 1999 activity." Susan Gaffney HUD Inspector General March 22, 2000
"Trillions of dollars in "unsupported adjustments" means trillions of dollars unaccounted for. What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? Is this happening in the other government agencies too? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Who can we trust to fix it?... see Frequently Asked Questions and Who's in Charge? for details."
I manage a german-language ecommerce site for used notebooks and (recently) branching into new hardware as well.
We advertise through kelkoo and ciao.
Agree with previous poster that kelkoo is a disaster -- only reason we use them at all is kelkoo often comes in high on google searches for our products, not sure why. But kelkoo is bad for media buyers, and I would add, bad for searchers as well.
Try searching kelkoo for "maxdata vision 4200" (a late-model maxdata laptop).
It's nearly all monitors! Try filtering out monitors with "NOT monitor" or google-style "-monitor". No dice.
This is a 500 million dollar search site. What's up with no filtering?
Probably yahoo is going to throw a lot of money at the programmers to turn this around, but I would say they really have to get their act together fast.
My experience is that ciao search is often better than kelkoo, but this is not consistent. For instance, for the above search ciao had the exact same problems as kelkoo.
http://www.ciao.de/search.php?SearchString=maxda ta +and+vision+and+4200x+-4000x&submit_basic_search=S uchen
False positives and no filtering.
I think price comparison is a promising area, but it's definitely pretty buggy as of now.
Shameless plug -- you can buy a Powerbook for 79 Euros at our story. Okay, it's pretty ancient.
Second tier german language comparison sites I'm evaluating include idealo.de (berlin), guenstiger.de, and geizhals.de.
Hope this helps.:)
Thomas.
No Bit Commitment Means No Anonymous Digital Cash.
on
Quantum Security
·
· Score: 1
There has been a lot of talk about quantum crypto forcing us to replace pgp with secure one-time-pad key distribution.
However, there's a whole other side to the "potential consequences of quantum computing" thing, which I haven't seen much discussion about.
What interests me more than the possibility of perfect one-time-pad distributions is the IMPOSSIBILITY of quantum bit-commitment, which to me seems to rule out anonymous digital cash. This, of course, would rule out a host of other slashdottish schemes, such as Assasination Politics... and the cypherpunk mainstay that the breakdown of the modern nation state will be hastened by secure untraceable digital cash depriving tax collectors of the information they need to collect transaction (i.e. income and sales) tax. (I posted a comment late into the last quantum-crypto discussion, but the thread wasn't picked up.)
In fact, if we ever somehow got a nanotech society with "quantum crypto for the masses" it seems to me that the only way to continue capitalism as we know it would be for every transaction to clear through some kind of centralized database. Perfect privacy for personal communications, but for economic transactions no privacy whatsoever.
For SDers unsure of what this bit commitment thing is, I'll try to explain. Personally, I found the concept somewhat difficult, but I think I get it now. (Incidentally I've worked my way through many of Hoi Kwong Lo's technical abstracts in the hard core physics press, as well as the current article... this despite a liberal artsy educational background.:) )
OK, so here's my little intro.
Secure digital cash schemes all are basically glorified digital signature protocols. When the U.S. government churns out a dollar, it signs it. If it was a Panamanian private bank churning out an anonymous e-dollar it would sign it as well. Only it would sign it in such a way that the legitimacy would be transferrable EXACTLY ONCE. This would prevent double spending. That's how anonymous digital cash works, in theory. (There are no working anonymous digital cash schemes right now, probably because nation states fear the cypherpunks might be right about the dilution of tax revenues). For details see http://www.aci.net/kalliste or search for +"stephan brands" +"digital cash" or +"david chaum" +"digital cash"
To put it in a nutshell, signatures are a form of bit commitment. In other words, in bit commitment, you don't scramble the data, but stamp it in such a way that's verifiable by outsiders, but only producible if you possess an encryption key. Internet ID verification protocols are also bit commitment situations; and like the last paragraph says, so is e-money.
The interesting thing about using crypto for ID verification rather than scrambling your data is that... with quantum crypto, there is no way to do it!
OK, I just realized that any further explanation as to why is beyond my capabilities. But it's pretty much laid out in the article, though Hoi Kwowng Lo doesn't mention digital cash specifically if I remember correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
Sql-ledger, for basic accounting, 100% free.
http://www.sql-ledger.org
Based on ostgres and perl, runs on linux or windows.
*****
Compiere, for complex supply-chain management, CRM type stuff. Compiere is free, and you can download oracle for free for development/trial mode, but if you want to use it in production you have to shell out for an oracle license. $1500 I believe. There has been much talk of making compiere db independent, so you could plug in mysql or sql-server or whatever you want, rather than oracle, but that hasn't happened yet.
http://www.compiere.org
Hope this helps!
It does compute.
... see Frequently Asked Questions and Who's in Charge? for details."
According to its own auditors, the US Government is posting not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars in "undocumented transactions." This means, the financial officers responsible simply have no idea what a particular financial flow was used for, or lack the paperwork to rule out fraud or theft.
The IT contractors that built the systems that can't keep track of the money (AMS, Dyncorp, CCC, CACI, and Lockheed Martin among others) have had their multimillion dollar "support" contracts extended year after year.
To quote:
From Department of Defense (DoD)...
"We reported that DoD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DoD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DoD financial statements for FY 2000."
David K. Steensma
Acting Assistant Inspector General
for Auditing for the DoD
February 26, 2002
From Housing & Urban Development (HUD)...
"At the time we discontinued our audit work... An additional 242 adjustments totaling about $59.6 billion, were made to adjust fiscal year 1999 activity."
Susan Gaffney
HUD Inspector General
March 22, 2000
"Trillions of dollars in "unsupported adjustments" means trillions of dollars unaccounted for. What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? Is this happening in the other government agencies too? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Who can we trust to fix it?
whereisthemoney
I manage a german-language ecommerce site for used notebooks and (recently) branching into new hardware as well.
s p?siteSea rchQuery=maxdata+vision+4200x&x=56&y=6
a ta +and+vision+and+4200x+-4000x&submit_basic_search=S uchen
:)
We advertise through kelkoo and ciao.
Agree with previous poster that kelkoo is a disaster -- only reason we use them at all is kelkoo often comes in high on google searches for our products, not sure why. But kelkoo is bad for media buyers, and I would add, bad for searchers as well.
Try searching kelkoo for "maxdata vision 4200" (a late-model maxdata laptop).
Kelkoo result:
http://www.kelkoo.de/sitesearch/search.j
It's nearly all monitors! Try filtering out monitors with "NOT monitor" or google-style "-monitor". No dice.
This is a 500 million dollar search site. What's up with no filtering?
Probably yahoo is going to throw a lot of money at the programmers to turn this around, but I would say they really have to get their act together fast.
My experience is that ciao search is often better than kelkoo, but this is not consistent. For instance, for the above search ciao had the exact same problems as kelkoo.
http://www.ciao.de/search.php?SearchString=maxd
False positives and no filtering.
I think price comparison is a promising area, but it's definitely pretty buggy as of now.
Shameless plug -- you can buy a Powerbook for 79 Euros at our story. Okay, it's pretty ancient.
Second tier german language comparison sites I'm evaluating include idealo.de (berlin), guenstiger.de, and geizhals.de.
Hope this helps.
Thomas.
However, there's a whole other side to the "potential consequences of quantum computing" thing, which I haven't seen much discussion about. What interests me more than the possibility of perfect one-time-pad distributions is the IMPOSSIBILITY of quantum bit-commitment, which to me seems to rule out anonymous digital cash. This, of course, would rule out a host of other slashdottish schemes, such as Assasination Politics... and the cypherpunk mainstay that the breakdown of the modern nation state will be hastened by secure untraceable digital cash depriving tax collectors of the information they need to collect transaction (i.e. income and sales) tax. (I posted a comment late into the last quantum-crypto discussion, but the thread wasn't picked up.)
In fact, if we ever somehow got a nanotech society with "quantum crypto for the masses" it seems to me that the only way to continue capitalism as we know it would be for every transaction to clear through some kind of centralized database. Perfect privacy for personal communications, but for economic transactions no privacy whatsoever.
For SDers unsure of what this bit commitment thing is, I'll try to explain. Personally, I found the concept somewhat difficult, but I think I get it now. (Incidentally I've worked my way through many of Hoi Kwong Lo's technical abstracts in the hard core physics press, as well as the current article... this despite a liberal artsy educational background. :) )
OK, so here's my little intro.
Secure digital cash schemes all are basically glorified digital signature protocols. When the U.S. government churns out a dollar, it signs it. If it was a Panamanian private bank churning out an anonymous e-dollar it would sign it as well. Only it would sign it in such a way that the legitimacy would be transferrable EXACTLY ONCE. This would prevent double spending. That's how anonymous digital cash works, in theory. (There are no working anonymous digital cash schemes right now, probably because nation states fear the cypherpunks might be right about the dilution of tax revenues). For details see http://www.aci.net/kalliste or search for +"stephan brands" +"digital cash" or +"david chaum" +"digital cash"
To put it in a nutshell, signatures are a form of bit commitment. In other words, in bit commitment, you don't scramble the data, but stamp it in such a way that's verifiable by outsiders, but only producible if you possess an encryption key. Internet ID verification protocols are also bit commitment situations; and like the last paragraph says, so is e-money.
The interesting thing about using crypto for ID verification rather than scrambling your data is that... with quantum crypto, there is no way to do it!
OK, I just realized that any further explanation as to why is beyond my capabilities. But it's pretty much laid out in the article, though Hoi Kwowng Lo doesn't mention digital cash specifically if I remember correctly.
Thoughts?