I'm a busy person, leaving the house at about 7:00 am and coming back around 8:00 pm. My point in saying this is that I don't have time to watch TV. (I only spend about 15 minutes a day on/.) And you know what? I don't care about TV, because Hollywood has been abusive for as long as I can remember.
Most obvious to me is that the quality of movies and TV shows has gone down the tubes. Rarely is a movie released in theaters that has any real intellectual value, meaning that it's worth paying some 9 dollars admission to the theater. (In the past two years, the only movie I recall actually enjoying was The Matrix. BTW, I placed the word "intellectual" in italics for a reason: the industry wants to make more money by protecting its "intellectual property." I wonder... with all the crappy movies they've released lately, what valuable property do they produce that is so intellectual?)
But aside from quality, Hollywood has been abusing copyright law, stretching it to the limit, in an effort to protect this extremely valuable property. Hollywood and various consumer electronics (and computer software) manufacturers are putting "features" into their products that prevent your fair use of the media for which you're paying. They get away with this by mentioning "pirates" who steal their valuable property and reduce their profits.
The thing that bothers me about this is not that Hollywood is cheating us. Let them! WHO CARES?! If you don't like their business practices, just don't support them! (It really annoys me that folks say, "oh, DVD takes away your rights... region coding... encryption... etc" and then go and buy a DVD player and 20 movies. If you don't like their business practices, why are you supporting them?!)
So now you'll ask yourself, "sure, boycotting them would be great, but how could I possibly live without television?" The answer is: VERY EASILY. I used to watch 4 or 5 hours of TV a day. Now, I can hardly recall the last time I even turned on the TV. There is so much to do in life that I actually regret the time I wasted in front of that stupid tube. If you're sick of Hollywood's abuse of the system, do the same. The situation with fair use will only get worse before it will get better. The only way to fight this is to stop supporting them.
Please seriously consider boycotting Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry for their abuse. If, instead, you decide that the stupid shows on television are more important to you than your rights, then you will have to accept the consequences.
These were my $0.02, and were intended as a proposed solution to the problem, not as flamebait.
This is a great idea, but it reminds me of the children's story about the mice and the cat. I don't remember who wrote it, but to sum up: the mice wanted to go out and get food but there was a dangerous cat. They held a meeting and some mouse finally came up with the solution: "Why not tie a bell around the cat's neck, and when the cat comes near, we'll hear him and run away!" All the mice cheered for this wonderful idea. Then, an old, wise mouse came up and said, "And who will tie the bell around his neck?"
Sure, it'd be great if authors were paid for the service of writing a book, rather than for the book itself, but who will do the paying? Publishers? And who will pay them? Readers? So there you have it. If the author doesn't get greedy for intellectual property payment, the publisher will, and we're back to square one.
Here is a hypothetical situation... let's say that for some wierd reason, legislation passes to protect Idea Property -- a sort of extension to intellectual property laws.
With this in place, you'll have to pay for Content (the ideas), Media (the book, CD, or whatever) and any applicable taxes. By your reasoning, when you finished receiving the ideas from that Content, you must promptly destroy the Media on which that Content was stored. If you wish to read/view/hear the Content again, you must purchase another copy.
With that plan, you'll redundantly repay for Media and taxes. So instead of making you destroy the media, the law will state that you can keep the media, but:
You must not re-use the Content without repaying the Content portion of the price.
You must not lend, borrow, rent, sell, display, copy or otherwise make the Content available to others.
You must not share the ideas of the Content with anybody else -- that is, you must not discuss, quote or otherwise reference the content without repaying the Content fee for each instance. (That goes for HTML links, too, since there is now a/. story about sites charging others for the priviledge of linking to them.)
Is that how you want to live?
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (but I may be wrong) who wrote a paper about the flow of ideas. I think it was in connection with the spirit of U.S. patent law. Whoever wrote what I'm talking about explained very elegantly that while tangible products are tangible, the ideas behind them flow (copy) from one person to the next and combine with other ideas to advance humankind as a whole. The author stated that patent laws are there in order to encourage people to share their ideas by allowing them a monopoly under certain conditions. The basic idea was to allow the country -- the people -- to advance as a whole, which money being the reward for sharing.
On that note, intellectual property laws are very important. They make it possible to share ideas while giving the author / inventor / musician / artist / programmer credit (and financial reward) for their work. Just like everything else, these laws are abused by greedy industry, most notably (to us) by the computer and software industry. This abuse is caused by unrealistic greedy people who would like the government to pass whatever laws are convenient for their own wallet. This, as others like to say, "stifles innovation" and "hurts consumers."
If I was the author of a book and people shared my work / put it in a library / discussed it, I would be overjoyed because that would mean that my ideas have made an influence in the world. This influence will be larger than my financial gain. As an author of content, I would have to expect and accept that I won't get paid for every instance of use. In my opinion, if you want to be paid for every instance of something, you need to stop making content and, instead, produce tangible products or perform services.
If writing is your career, than you must write and generate new material all the time, just as an employee of a company must work all the time or cease to get paid. Honestly, if you were an employee of a company, and you do some work and then quit, would you expect to continue receiving pay for every instance that your work benefits someone?
Example: let's say you're an electrician and you wired a light switch. Would you expect to get paid for each time that switch is used? No way! because that's unrealistic. If you want to make a lot of money, you will have to wire a lot of switches. Why should any "intellectual" property be any different? Your intellectual ideas are no different from an electrician's knowledge of how to wire a switch. You get paid for the tangible stuff (the media of the book or the act of wiring the switch). Ideas, unlike anything tangible, never move from one person to another -- they copy so that you never lose the information by giving it away. Any intellectual law which assumes that ideas are tangible is flawed from the foundation itself.
I'm sure that if you're a greedy author, you're thinking only of your particular situation and would like to make a lot of money, but what you fail to understand is that if everybody begins to operate this way, soon you won't be able to do anything without paying someone for the priviledge. And what I find interesting about this whole concept is this: currently, content can be easily copied and the author doesn't get paid. The situation described above is unrealistic and unenforceable in a physical world. When information becomes digital, however, it is possible to charge for each instance of use. However, the money paid to the author won't mean anything in the overall scheme of things because the amount of money earned by the author will not increase -- only the amount of cash flow will increase. This is because the author will similarly have to pay others every time he uses their content, which in this situation covers pretty much all information. It will become nothing more than a major accounting pain. Ideas are not physical, tangible things, and no law or theory of so-called intellectual property can ever change that.
Last night (Christmas), I dined at a Norm's steakhouse. They were pretty much the only place open and practically the whole town was there. While I was waiting, with many others, to be seated, I heard, "Santa Claus, party of three, your table is now available." I thought it was just a holiday-spirit joke. Ten minutes later, my family was seated at the next table from "Santa Claus." As it turns out, there was this large round guy with white hair and a white beard, and he was wearing a red shirt. It wasn't a costume! If there actually is a Santa Claus, it would have to be him!
So now I can say I'm a believer, since I have seen Santa Claus with my own eyes.
I think you have a good point about Compuserve and the fact that because its users had to pay, it was easy to ban a troll.
Nowadays, there are services like SSL which utilise cryptography and certificates. I think that in a few years, forums and other types of online "communities" will make use of these so-called technologies. The community would require the user to sign in, and some digitally signed certificates would be exchanged. This makes it possible to (somewhat) reliably identify someone when they sign in, which in turn makes it possible to ban that person if they misbehave.
I also believe that the Compuserve model of paying a fee to use a service is a good model. If there was an IRC channel (or some other "community") covering a specific subject of interest to me, and if I basically have a guarentee that flaming and trolling won't exist on that channel, I wouldn't mind paying a small subscription fee to support that service. With millions of people online these days, the fees could be just a dollar or so per month. It would be even better if users are only charged a month's subscription if they actually use the service that month.
With the Internet, the possibilities are endless. It just takes a little imagination to come up with solutions to our problems.
Actually, I need to add a few things to my comment.
This person has just insulted a community of Linux users, which includes everything from kids to large and successful corporations that offer all sorts of computing solutions. Is this the attitude Microsoft has toward their competitors? This is childish behavior, and did not achieve what its author wanted in the first place, which was to ask that we don't call Microsoft employees thieves, something we did not do anyway.
Speaking of thieves, I'd like you (the author of the above flame) to note that you're mistaken when you "draw the line at being called a thief." Astute readers may note that most of the comments here state that Microsoft employees are not stealing Linux code. If you believe you were called a thief, perhaps you should contact the author of the article on which we're commenting.
Also, I noted that you said "...sorry but the odd time I have looked at Linux source code to get a better idea of how to come up with innovation solutions in Windows 2000...". In other words, you have just backed up our side of the argument! If you really are a Microsoft employee, and you look at Linux source code to come up with proprietary "innovative" solutions, then you may very well have infringed on the terms of the GPL. If you haven't, then someone else in your company may have. (There are some 30,000 employees in Microsoft, if I remember correctly. One of them is bound to have done this.) I am now all the more eager to get your employee number, because this may be used as proof in a court of law. (And I'll forward your comment to the Department of Justice as well.)
I couldn't help but notice another inconsistency in your childish argument: first you state that you looked at Linux code to come up with "innovative" solutions, and shortly thereafter you state that Linux is, and I quote, a "1960's-era piece of crap toy shareware so-called Operating System". Well, if Linux is such a pile of horse merd, then why are you getting your "innovative" solutions from it?
I'm also wondering about your statement: "Just stop sullying the reputation of my fine employer. We are having enough problems without you faggots making things worse." First, I'd like to state that I am not a "faggot," the definition of which (from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary) is "BUNDLE: as a: a bundle of sticks b: a bundle of pieces of wrought iron to be shaped by rolling or hammering at high temperature." I think I speak for all of us when I say that we, on the other hand, are human beings. Secondly, I'd like you to know that everybody has problems. Get used to it. Third and final, if it wasn't for us "faggots" who are making things worse, who would write the Linux code that you look at to gain "innovative" solutions to your "fine employer"'s problems?
Last but not least: I'd like you to seriously consider your words before you say Microsoft is a "fine employer." As I have mentioned previously, Microsoft has done things to step on and squash the competition in ways that are morally, legally, and in every other way wrong. Microsoft seems to be operating without a conscience and they have no shame whatsoever.
Secondly, you folks don't come up with innovative solutions at all; you copy others' ideas or buy them out. You have made a so-called operating system that has an integrated web browser. It is difficult to install, maintain and use this software. It contains bugs and is slow and unreliable. Instead of fixing bugs by removing code, you folks add code, and with it, you add potential bugs. Example: after a crash, Active Desktop displays a page that asks the user to click a button to reset the Active Desktop. Why is this necessary? Can't the computer perform that action automatically? Couldn't you folks fix your bugs so the user wouldn't have to experience a crash in the first place?
Not only that, but your increasingly bloated code runs very slowly on modern computers. Why don't you dig up an old 486 and run Windows 3.1 on it? See at what speed everything runs? Now get a Pentium III or 4, with a ton of RAM, a really fast hard disk, and Windows 2000. Doesn't it seem a little strange to you that counterpart actions take the same or more amount of time to complete? Why is it that with faster computers, these actions are slower?
It doesn't matter what claims you folks can make about reliability and speed. In my opinion, you produce poor quality software and you're trying to justify it in your mind, just as a thief justifies his reasons for stealing. And, yes, according to your own words, you have stolen. I'll state them again for your convenience: "...sorry but the odd time I have looked at Linux source code to get a better idea of how to come up with innovation solutions in Windows 2000...".
I like the part that says "may they see the light." Here's a valid argument that someone could use when arguing about "unhackable" Linux devices: simply recall id Software's games Wolf3D and Doom. Wolf3D was released just like any other game at its time, but something strange happened shortly thereafter: folks started hacking the game and coming up with level editors and stuff. Instead of suing those folks like most game companies would have done at the time, the intelligent authors of the game used this to their advantage and made tons of money from this game. (Kids wanted to modify the game, so they had to get a copy of it.) When Doom and Doom II were released, I think they actually released specs that gave hackers some idea of how the game data was stored. Doom and Doom II were so successfully that for a time, most other games were judged relative to them. Furthermore, id released the source code for Wolf3D and, later, Doom. I highly respect them for that reason -- that is, because they realized that giving someone knowledge doesn't take it away from you. In fact, in most cases, it will help you.
Excuse me, sir (or ma'am). You claim to be a Microsoft employee. Did you just call us "god damn Linux zealots", "pimply-faced teenagers", and "you faggots"? This does not make your products any more "innovative." What's your employee number? I'll shortly contact your supervisor and report you for insulting a large number of your "fine employer"'s customers. Yes, that's right: many of us folks use Linux as the tough server that does the job right, without costing a fortune and requiring expensive technical support (I'll back this up below). Windows is used, by myself and my clients, to run trivial programs like text editors, and it can barely handle that without crashing!
You also said, "We work hard on developing quality, innovative products here at Microsoft". I have to hand it to you folks: you really do work hard. Too hard, and the results are crap. (I'll back that up below.)
I'd like to know, just out of curiousity, why it is that all you Microsoft employees march around and tell everyone how "innovative" your products are? Were you brainwashed by Marketingsoft, uh, I mean, Microsoft, to tell everybody how innovative you are? Why don't you Microsoft folks do as we do, and let OTHERS decide whether or not you're innovative! Now isn't that innovation?! Sure, I can go switch around the wires on the distributor cap and tell all my hot-rodding friends (who, like myself, don't have pimples) how innovative I am, but that won't stop my timing chain from breaking because the firing order is wrong!
Now I'll back up my statements. About the results being crap (first paragraph): my company employed a really nice gentleman six years ago. He had a master's degree, quite a few years experience, and used to work for Microsoft. He was supposed to implement some relatively simple stuff in a system we developed. He worked very hard. In fact, he worked way too hard. His code contains shining examples of why Microsoft and their products are so bloated. To sum up, I ended up removing all code written by him. (One example: about 2000 lines of if...else statements were replaced with 3 lines that lookup a value in an array.)
And to back up the other statement (second paragraph, last line): I'm good friends with a doctor whose clinic employs some 30 computers and a Windows NT server. He has paid a fortune for the "priveledge" of using Windows, and he hates this system and regrets buying it to this very day. To help him out with his troubles, I have set up some gateways, firewalls, and a Samba server, all running some version of Linux or *BSD, for a total expense of some 500 dollars for hardware (the software was free for some mysterious reason). To his surprise (and mine), these servers, most notably the one running Samba, have NEVER given him any problems. The NT server, on the other hand, required him to pay constantly to various technical support people who needed to fix it all the time. This is not a unique example. I also know industrial factory owners, a college president, and about 30 clients who have the same problems with Microsoft's "innovative" products. And they love our "1960's-era piece of crap toy shareware so-called Operating System", as you called it, because it works and gets the job done with no headache to them.
And, as a closing remark, Linux was started in 1990 or 1991, not in 1960. You're confusing Linux with Classic Rock music.
-NGH
Most everybody here says this article is bull, and I agree, but there is ground for discussion here.
Let's say, for just a moment, that in an effort to deal with problem areas in their own software, Microsoft analysed Free Software like Linux or Apache. In doing this, they may have found portions of code (let's say 200 to 500 lines) that do something better than a similar portion of code in Windows (in terms of reliability or speed). What's to keep them from copying a short portion of code like that, and damaging it into their system? Sure, it would take a lot of damaging, but admit it: it's nearly always easier to code something when you have someone else's example to tinker with and improve. (Or, in their case, to tinker and ruin.)
Besides, the author of the article has a very good point. (I like it more for the insult than for the truth in it.) From the article:
The principle of the GPL is that you are not allowed to create and distribute software that includes GPL source code without giving back your additions and modifications to the developer community. I'm not sure you could find a Linux developer who would take the stand and testify that the developer community is being hurt by the fact that Microsoft isn't contributing back to the Linux code base. Considering the talent that put together Windows in the first place, such a contribution would probably be classified as unintentional sabotage.
Or, perhaps, intentional sabotage:-)
Actually, I believe the real difficulty in a lawsuit with Microsoft is that no Free Software developers that I can name have the resources with which to actually sue the giant.
I think most of us don't like Microsoft because of their business practices. They simply do things that shouldn't be done for legal or moral reasons. (Remember the Caldera lawsuit, where Microsoft paid an undisclosed amount because Windows 3.1 was designed to crash intermittently when run under DR-DOS.) In my opinion, complaining about Microsoft won't help us. The only way to fight them is to improve Free Software. This takes cooperation and competition between Free Software developers, but I feel that cooperation needs to increase and competition needs to decrease. (How many of us need 17 competing, buy very similar word processors for X on our computers?)
I think it's kind of ridiculous that most folks don't understand the concept of benchmarks. It's common knowledge among hackers that benchmarks test specific aspects of performance, and can be made to show better or worse performance depending on what the benchmark author wants to say. Unfortunately, many folks (maybe not you but many other folks like you do this) base purchasing decisions on benchmarks and spend hundreds of dollars more than necessary on hardware they don't really need.
Being a programmer myself, I know just how flippin powerful even the "outdated" CPUs are. Recently, I have worked on the Pentium III, the Celeron, and an old 486 at 66mhz. Most of my recent works are prototypes built for ease of maintainence and clarity rather than performance, and if I may say so myself, they do perform extremely well, even on the 486. I'm sure there are areas in computing that a powerful workhorse CPU like the Pentium III or 4 is needed, but what most readers probably don't know is that there are literally thousands of mission critical, real-time computer systems out there that run on 4- or 8-bit computers at speeds like 1 or 2 mhz, and they get the job done. Every user action is carried out instantaneously. The ridiculous part is that most folks out there don't understand that a newer CPU won't get them better overall performance. The user still needs to wait for the hard drive to churn, the network card to accept incoming packets, and a thousand other things; besides, it's really the software algorithms and implementation that causes the performance, or lack thereof. (These are the reasons I don't like Intel's claim that their newest CPU will give the user a better Internet experience.) The only place a faster CPU will get you performance is in tight code containing nothing but intense computations. Most folks will think of games when thinking of intense computations. In this case, I agree that it is critical to play Quake at 230 fps rather than 200.:)
I apologise for being so blunt in my comment but I need to run out the door so I'm in a hurry, and I'm kind of frustrated at the things that happen because of marketing and "benchmarks" that don't really mean anything (at least to myself). I hope I was able to successfully convey my point without insulting anyone. Hopefully, someone can comment on this and either help me out or prove me wrong... I'm open to others' suggestions
I haven't read this book but I feel I really must comment on something regarding science fiction that has bothered me for a long time: science fiction (or probably any form of literature) nearly always portrays other beings as being technologically and/or morally superior to ourselves, whether they are jungle creatures (as in The Jungle Book) or alien beings (as in Stranger or countless other sci-fi books). I believe this is because we, as humans, are always seeking something greater than ourselves, and quite frankly, most of us are so confused we don't know where to look anymore.
I believe that science fiction has explored--to simplify things--two kinds of alien beings: those that are a perfectly good higher intelligence than ourselves, and those that are perfectly evil, seeking only to destroy us. I think this concept has been explored quite thorougly and it's time for a change... I wonder why I haven't seen much sci-fi literature that portrays aliens as imperfect beings like ourselves, and perhaps tries to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between ourselves and these fictitious beings. Maybe I haven't been looking well enough, but I think it's because we desperately want to believe that imperfection doesn't exist outside our world. Hopefully, someone can prove me wrong about this because I'm looking for another book to read...
This is sad news to read, regardless of whether or not its thanksgiving. May we all remember his name each time we use ping.
As for all of you who are cracking jokes about his death, I don't think they are funny at all.
Kindest regards,
Nathaniel G H
Secure Computerized Voting
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 1
I believe the voting system should work something like this:
Registering
A person registers to vote, and receives their voter card in the mail. This is a sort of smart-card containing encrypted information like a unique ID number.
Local Voting Center
The voter then attends a voting center near them on election day. The registration letter that comes with the card would tell the person which center to attend (the one nearest them). Folks would be encouraged to turn their houses and/or other properties into voting centers and could be paid for this service.
The voting center would consist of an enterance line, several booths (more or less depending on the size of the center) a confirmation zone, and a place for witnesses in the confirmation zone.
The voter waits in line to enter the voting center. Once the beginning of the line is reached, they present their ID and show their smart-card and their name is checked off a list. They then sign their name where it is checked off, to confirm that they have checked-in. They are then sent to a voting booth.
The Voting Booth
The booth contains a touch-screen display, smart-card reader, and dot-matrix printer. The voter inserts the card into the machine and proceeds to vote, and then confirm their vote. The voter is then given a unique vote reference number. The votes are immediately saved on the local machine and printed out on the local dot-matrix printer as they watch, beside the same reference number. The votes are also immediately sent across a local network to a main computer in the voting center which mirrors the information saved by all the individual machines and prints all the results on its own dot-matrix printer, beside the same reference number.
Final Confirmation
The voter then exits the booth and goes to the confirmation area. Votes are displayed with their reference number on a large display, with a random delay of up to several minutes. Voters watch as their votes are displayed (anonymously, of course) to a group of witnesses who tally the votes manually as they are displayed. This way, the results are tallyed by computers and by people being witnessed, and the voters know their votes are being tallyed and not tampered with. The voter then leaves the voting center.
Tallying Results
After a voting center closes, the total results from each center are sent (electronically or otherwise) to the city tallying center. The tallying center receives total results from all voting centers in the city. They list those total results and compute a larger total from those. This information (the list and the totals) is then sent back to the individual voting centers. The voting centers then confirm that their totals were not tampered with on the way to the city tallying center. This could be done manually and by computer so results can be double-checked.
The city tallying center then sends its totals to the county tallying center, which performs the same function, sending the results back for confirmation. The county then sends its results to the statewide tallying center which in turn performs the same function, and sends its totals to the nationwide tallying center. In other words, tallying centers compute the totals of all tallying centers "under" them, send the results back for confirmation, and send the results upward to a higher tallying center, and each tallying center deals only with the totals of those tallying centers beneath it. Breaking the tallying down this way will make it much more efficient than counting ballots by hand or by machine.
Voters don't vote only for president. They also vote on city, county, and state officials, propositions, etc. The city tallying center would only send "upward" to the county center those results which are relevant to the county. The results for city mayor, for example, wouldn't go to the county. And so on, until the nationwide results arrive at the nationwide tallying center.
Voters get to watch as their individual votes are tallyed right before their eyes. The system of sending totals with an itemized list back to the source ensures that votes and totals are not tampered with in transit. And because the tallying is broken up into a hierarchy, results are available almost immediately after voting centers close. It would only take minutes for a tallying center to compute totals once they arrive and send the results onward. Use of open-source software to perform all the processing ensures that identification isn't saved with votes, though you'll need proof that the binaries running on the machine are built from untampered source; those doing the system builds will need to be videotaped and perhaps a signature of the binary (or the binary itself) will be made publically available so that anyone who wishes can do their own build and compare the results.
I'm sure I forgot some details but overall, I think this system of voting would be more reliable, more secure, and definitely more efficient than the system in place today. All results are confirmed by their source with witnesses, printouts, etc. Perhaps all printouts could be publicly accessible (you could order a copy or download one to verify that what you voted actually appears next to your voting reference number generated at the voting booth).
The point IS that the school suspended him for putting down his crown. That means that refusing to participate in a stupid and unimportant popularity contest caused him to miss some days of school. Not only that, but it is in his record.
Now come on folks! Where does "putting down your homecoming crown" fit next to "possession of drugs," "possession of dangerous weapons," and other real suspension offenses?
What kind of education system do we have in this country? A student is suspended for refusing to participate in a popularity contest. Why don't those school officials concentrate on improving the education and moral values of their students rather than wasting their time on stupidities like this?
When I was in grade school (specifically in the 1st and 2nd grades) I was unusually creative for a kid my age. I had quite an imagination and I enjoyed thinking about the possibilities of the future. (The kind of stuff that makes Disney hire their Imagineers.) I also caught on to the lessons pretty quickly, so when something was explained by the teacher, I caught it the first time. Since teachers explain everything over and over several times, I generally got bored in class and as a result, so I used to draw pictures and daydream.
In those days (1984 or so), they didn't blame my behavior on A.D.D., or Attention Deficit Disorder; at least they didn't at my school. Instead, the school psychologist wrote a complicated report several pages in length, that stated, among other things, that I didn't pay attention in class (though somehow, mysteriously, I had high test scores), I exhibited unusual behavior, "magical thinking," etc. In other words, since I was somewhat more intelligent than the other kids, they considered me unusual and strange.
Actually, let me take back what I said about being more intelligent. I don't even believe that I was so much smarter than anybody else in my class. I do believe, however, that the other kids didn't realise that the same things were being explained over and over until it was etched in our brains. So they continued to pay attention, while I learned quickly and moved on to more interesting things.
Back to the school psychologist... I was also quite active during recess. I liked to be physically active and to play sports. What kid doesn't? The school psychologist used this in her reports, saying that not only did I do poorly in class (which was untrue), but that I was hyperactive. I remember being forced to take some pills to calm me down, several times each day, when I was in 1st and 2nd grades. I now believe those pills hindered my education. It's the kind of stuff George Orwell could use in his 1984.
I think students are considered learning units by the education system. When a student doesn't conform to their specifications of a child at their age, that student is punished. Those who are somewhat behind the other students are placed in special education classes where they are treated as though they are mentally retarded. (I know several perfectly intelligent people who were placed in special-ed and didn't learn anything as a result.) Those students, like me, who caught on quickly get to take pills.
Sure, I know that this doesn't happen to everybody... the fact is, however, that it happens to enough children these days that if this doesn't change and change now, this country will be in big trouble in the not-too-distant future. What happened to me as a child is not much different than this matter of being suspended for refusing to be homecoming king. School is unconstitutional and is run is such a way that students are made to think inside a box. They make you believe that you have to be normal like everybody else. If you're not, you're punished.
I know I'm too late to submit questions, but I wasn't around when submissions were taken. I do have some comments though, and some food for thought that some readers may find interesting.
I'm glad that questions about corruption related to big corporations came up. I believe that many of our country's problems result from the greedy rich who care only of themselves and actually ruin the country's future to help their own personal success. Many large corporations, for example, cause all kinds of laws to be passed for their own convenience.
In that light, I'm very surprised that some of the following questions were not brought up by fellow Slashdot readers (and if they were, that they never reached the candidates):
The Patent System
Issues surrounding the current state of our patent office, which makes it easy for big corporations to patent practically everything they do, calling it "technology." I know there was a question about intellectual property laws but I think that more emphasis should have been placed on this issue.
The spirit of our patent system, as intended by the Founding Fathers, was to encourage the scientific and technological advancement of our country by encouraging inventors to make publically available the secrets of their inventions. In exchange, the patent system gives them the opportunity, for a limited time, to charge royalties on use of their invention while it makes its initial penetration into the market.
The spirit of the patent system is to award inventors this patent protection for inventions (not discoveries) that are not prior art and are not obvious to an expert in the field. It is also possible to patent the invention of a process that produces some result.
I believe that today, the patent office is awarding patent protection for so-called "technologies" that are obvious to school kids, let alone experts in the field. Furthermore, I believe that the prior art search for many of these patents is almost nonexistant. This has become the subject of many heated debates, especially in the field of computer software. I would like to know what our presidential candidates think about the current state of the patent office.
The Food and Drug Administration
This post centers around issues caused by the influence of big corporations on government. Some readers may be surprised to learn that this also affects what many of us eat and drink.
There is a substance called Aspartame (commonly misspelled Aspertame). This substance is used in many artificial sweetners (such as the popular Equal) and many foods and drinks that bear the words "Diet" or "Sugar Free." Artificial sweetners containing Aspartame are said by large corporations to be safer than those containing Saccarin.
However, at 86 degrees Farenheit, Aspartame breaks down into two chemicals that, when taken over time, are proven to cause physical and mental damage. Since the human body operates at more than 98 degrees Farenheit, this breakdown occurs when humans eat anything containing Aspartame.
Many myths and facts circulate around the net about the safety (or lack thereof) of this substance. On one end, companies like Nutrasweet (of the popular artificial sweetner Equal, which contains Aspartame) say that Aspartame is perfectly safe. On the other hand, doctors have scientific data that proves otherwise.
Do a search for Aspartame on Yahoo! and you'll quickly find sites debating either side of the argument. Ask yourself these two questions when you read those sites: "what do doctors have to gain and/or lose by proving how dangerous this substance is?" and "what do huge companies like Nutrasweet have to gain and/or lose by defending it?"
I have personally spoken with two such doctors whom I know well and trust, and they showed me proof that Aspartame is not to be taken at all. Furthermore, I know several people who have been seriously affected by it.
Rapid-onset symptoms of Aspartame include everything from migraines to seizures. Most users of Aspartame, however, experience symptoms from long-term use, such as arthritis, Alzheimer's and other memory-loss problems, Diabetes, even birth defects, and many more.
All of this has been proven scientifically, and yet this substance remains in use in many of our foods. I'd like to know what the presidential candidates think of this, and what they intend to do about it.
Mom and Pop Stores
The competition between big corporations is cutthroat. I believe that big corporations are ruining America by killing (or having killed) the little Mom and Pop stores and businesses. For example, Home Depot killed a lot of small hardware stores; Wal Mart killed a lot general stores; the banks keep buying each other and putting family-owned banks out of business... the list goes on and on. I wonder what our presidential candidates think of this, and whether or not they intend to do anything to help the little players who need all the help they can get. I'm not saying that corporations should be punished for being "too successful." Instead, I'm saying that America is supposed to be by the people for the people. Instead, big corporations practically rule this country, and the people have to put up with it.
I welcome any further comments and suggestions on these or other issues.
IMO, the government's methods of record keeping are what caused identity theft to become possible in the first place.
Identity theft is the process of obtaining key information about a person, such as (in the US) their social security number, driver license number, date of birth, etc., and then obtaining bank accounts, credit cards, etc. using that information. Ask yourself why knowing someone's SSN makes it possible to get credit cards in their name.
If you live in the US, how often are you asked for your social security number? And how often is it requested by a non-government agency? As an example, I recently had an eye exam. They requested my SSN and driver license number. (I gave them neither.) Why do they think its their business to ask for that information? Social security is for retirement (and taxes). The use of social security numbers by government agencies or private companies is not required or forbidden by law. Citizens of the US are not even required to have a SSN. These days, however, it has become a personal identification number. It is now used in public schools and universities as a student number. Banks require it to open accounts or issue credit cards. Ask yourself if any why this is wrong.
Government DNA records keeping may be extremely convenient. It's easy to think of the advantages of any government program -- that's what the government wants you to do. But whenever the government wants to implement something and they start telling you why it's so good and so beneficial, stop and ask yourself what the disadvantages are, because those will come back to haunt you and everybody else later. Try to figure out what else may be behind DNA records besides just identity theft prevention. Imagine to yourself that this idea is just one of a series of ideas that together will give the government more control over your life than you will find comfortable. This is not far-fetched, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It's just an observation of history -- people in high places want to be in higher places.
Let's compare this to computers. Nowadays, it is difficult to crack some of the more secure systems. Take the *BSD OS's... I receive email notification of compromises and patches when they are found. Most of these compromises are buffer overruns and stupid things like that, but when many bugs like that are used in complicated sequences, it is possible to get access to private information. The government is like a huge operating system. Laws are like program statements. If some folks in high places want more control over your lives, they find the little exploits in the laws and use them to modify the system in their favor. Ask yourself: can DNA records keeping be one of many complicated steps that it takes to gain more control over a country?
Finally, every system run by humans will have mistakes. There is no question of whether or not mistakes will be made in DNA record keeping -- they will be made. If this is put in effect, and the government mixes your record with someone else's (or if somebody manages to switch records around on purpose) how will you prove who you really are? "I'm sorry [sir,ma'am], that's what the computer says." "But the computer is wrong." "I'm sorry, we must go by what the computer tells us." Ask yourself if this is what you want, and seriously consider the disadvantages first. The advantages are without saying.
I think this is idea is interesting and would certainly be beneficial. I don't know how the public school system is charged for the software you mentioned (e.g., whether they pay a licensing fee by year or one site license for an unlimited time), so I cannot say whether or not this will actually save any money for existing schools.
However, there would be other big advantages to an open source records system for schools. The most obvious to me is that such software could be made to work on any number of operating systems and hardware models, so that the school need not be bound to a specific platform or company. Additionally, it would be possible to implement other features besides record keeping. (I think it would be beneficial if students could log in over the Web and check their current grades, so that grades on their report cards don't come as a surprise.)
In terms of open sourcing all government-used software, there are many other advantages to open sourcing selected applications, but everything should be done with moderation: while public school software is a great candidate for open sourcing, weapons control systems, as an off-the-top-of-my-head example, are not.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (but I may be wrong) who wrote a paper about the flow of ideas.
Just as I thought, I was wrong about this... I just saw a part of this letter posted by nyet in Apple sues FreeType - NOT. According to him / her, it was written by "Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813"... If this is correct, thanks nyet for helping me out, even if you didn't know you did!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a busy person, leaving the house at about 7:00 am and coming back around 8:00 pm. My point in saying this is that I don't have time to watch TV. (I only spend about 15 minutes a day on /.) And you know what? I don't care about TV, because Hollywood has been abusive for as long as I can remember.
Most obvious to me is that the quality of movies and TV shows has gone down the tubes. Rarely is a movie released in theaters that has any real intellectual value, meaning that it's worth paying some 9 dollars admission to the theater. (In the past two years, the only movie I recall actually enjoying was The Matrix. BTW, I placed the word "intellectual" in italics for a reason: the industry wants to make more money by protecting its "intellectual property." I wonder... with all the crappy movies they've released lately, what valuable property do they produce that is so intellectual?)
But aside from quality, Hollywood has been abusing copyright law, stretching it to the limit, in an effort to protect this extremely valuable property. Hollywood and various consumer electronics (and computer software) manufacturers are putting "features" into their products that prevent your fair use of the media for which you're paying. They get away with this by mentioning "pirates" who steal their valuable property and reduce their profits.
The thing that bothers me about this is not that Hollywood is cheating us. Let them! WHO CARES?! If you don't like their business practices, just don't support them! (It really annoys me that folks say, "oh, DVD takes away your rights ... region coding ... encryption ... etc" and then go and buy a DVD player and 20 movies. If you don't like their business practices, why are you supporting them?!)
So now you'll ask yourself, "sure, boycotting them would be great, but how could I possibly live without television?" The answer is: VERY EASILY. I used to watch 4 or 5 hours of TV a day. Now, I can hardly recall the last time I even turned on the TV. There is so much to do in life that I actually regret the time I wasted in front of that stupid tube. If you're sick of Hollywood's abuse of the system, do the same. The situation with fair use will only get worse before it will get better. The only way to fight this is to stop supporting them.
Please seriously consider boycotting Hollywood and the consumer electronics industry for their abuse. If, instead, you decide that the stupid shows on television are more important to you than your rights, then you will have to accept the consequences.
These were my $0.02, and were intended as a proposed solution to the problem, not as flamebait.
This is a great idea, but it reminds me of the children's story about the mice and the cat. I don't remember who wrote it, but to sum up: the mice wanted to go out and get food but there was a dangerous cat. They held a meeting and some mouse finally came up with the solution: "Why not tie a bell around the cat's neck, and when the cat comes near, we'll hear him and run away!" All the mice cheered for this wonderful idea. Then, an old, wise mouse came up and said, "And who will tie the bell around his neck?"
Sure, it'd be great if authors were paid for the service of writing a book, rather than for the book itself, but who will do the paying? Publishers? And who will pay them? Readers? So there you have it. If the author doesn't get greedy for intellectual property payment, the publisher will, and we're back to square one.
Here is a hypothetical situation... let's say that for some wierd reason, legislation passes to protect Idea Property -- a sort of extension to intellectual property laws.
With this in place, you'll have to pay for Content (the ideas), Media (the book, CD, or whatever) and any applicable taxes. By your reasoning, when you finished receiving the ideas from that Content, you must promptly destroy the Media on which that Content was stored. If you wish to read/view/hear the Content again, you must purchase another copy.
With that plan, you'll redundantly repay for Media and taxes. So instead of making you destroy the media, the law will state that you can keep the media, but:
Is that how you want to live?
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (but I may be wrong) who wrote a paper about the flow of ideas. I think it was in connection with the spirit of U.S. patent law. Whoever wrote what I'm talking about explained very elegantly that while tangible products are tangible, the ideas behind them flow (copy) from one person to the next and combine with other ideas to advance humankind as a whole. The author stated that patent laws are there in order to encourage people to share their ideas by allowing them a monopoly under certain conditions. The basic idea was to allow the country -- the people -- to advance as a whole, which money being the reward for sharing.
On that note, intellectual property laws are very important. They make it possible to share ideas while giving the author / inventor / musician / artist / programmer credit (and financial reward) for their work. Just like everything else, these laws are abused by greedy industry, most notably (to us) by the computer and software industry. This abuse is caused by unrealistic greedy people who would like the government to pass whatever laws are convenient for their own wallet. This, as others like to say, "stifles innovation" and "hurts consumers."
If I was the author of a book and people shared my work / put it in a library / discussed it, I would be overjoyed because that would mean that my ideas have made an influence in the world. This influence will be larger than my financial gain. As an author of content, I would have to expect and accept that I won't get paid for every instance of use. In my opinion, if you want to be paid for every instance of something, you need to stop making content and, instead, produce tangible products or perform services.
If writing is your career, than you must write and generate new material all the time, just as an employee of a company must work all the time or cease to get paid. Honestly, if you were an employee of a company, and you do some work and then quit, would you expect to continue receiving pay for every instance that your work benefits someone?
Example: let's say you're an electrician and you wired a light switch. Would you expect to get paid for each time that switch is used? No way! because that's unrealistic. If you want to make a lot of money, you will have to wire a lot of switches. Why should any "intellectual" property be any different? Your intellectual ideas are no different from an electrician's knowledge of how to wire a switch. You get paid for the tangible stuff (the media of the book or the act of wiring the switch). Ideas, unlike anything tangible, never move from one person to another -- they copy so that you never lose the information by giving it away. Any intellectual law which assumes that ideas are tangible is flawed from the foundation itself.
I'm sure that if you're a greedy author, you're thinking only of your particular situation and would like to make a lot of money, but what you fail to understand is that if everybody begins to operate this way, soon you won't be able to do anything without paying someone for the priviledge. And what I find interesting about this whole concept is this: currently, content can be easily copied and the author doesn't get paid. The situation described above is unrealistic and unenforceable in a physical world. When information becomes digital, however, it is possible to charge for each instance of use. However, the money paid to the author won't mean anything in the overall scheme of things because the amount of money earned by the author will not increase -- only the amount of cash flow will increase. This is because the author will similarly have to pay others every time he uses their content, which in this situation covers pretty much all information. It will become nothing more than a major accounting pain. Ideas are not physical, tangible things, and no law or theory of so-called intellectual property can ever change that.
Last night (Christmas), I dined at a Norm's steakhouse. They were pretty much the only place open and practically the whole town was there. While I was waiting, with many others, to be seated, I heard, "Santa Claus, party of three, your table is now available." I thought it was just a holiday-spirit joke. Ten minutes later, my family was seated at the next table from "Santa Claus." As it turns out, there was this large round guy with white hair and a white beard, and he was wearing a red shirt. It wasn't a costume! If there actually is a Santa Claus, it would have to be him!
So now I can say I'm a believer, since I have seen Santa Claus with my own eyes.
I think you have a good point about Compuserve and the fact that because its users had to pay, it was easy to ban a troll.
Nowadays, there are services like SSL which utilise cryptography and certificates. I think that in a few years, forums and other types of online "communities" will make use of these so-called technologies. The community would require the user to sign in, and some digitally signed certificates would be exchanged. This makes it possible to (somewhat) reliably identify someone when they sign in, which in turn makes it possible to ban that person if they misbehave.
I also believe that the Compuserve model of paying a fee to use a service is a good model. If there was an IRC channel (or some other "community") covering a specific subject of interest to me, and if I basically have a guarentee that flaming and trolling won't exist on that channel, I wouldn't mind paying a small subscription fee to support that service. With millions of people online these days, the fees could be just a dollar or so per month. It would be even better if users are only charged a month's subscription if they actually use the service that month.
With the Internet, the possibilities are endless. It just takes a little imagination to come up with solutions to our problems.
-NGH
Actually, I need to add a few things to my comment.
This person has just insulted a community of Linux users, which includes everything from kids to large and successful corporations that offer all sorts of computing solutions. Is this the attitude Microsoft has toward their competitors? This is childish behavior, and did not achieve what its author wanted in the first place, which was to ask that we don't call Microsoft employees thieves, something we did not do anyway.
Speaking of thieves, I'd like you (the author of the above flame) to note that you're mistaken when you "draw the line at being called a thief." Astute readers may note that most of the comments here state that Microsoft employees are not stealing Linux code. If you believe you were called a thief, perhaps you should contact the author of the article on which we're commenting.
Also, I noted that you said "...sorry but the odd time I have looked at Linux source code to get a better idea of how to come up with innovation solutions in Windows 2000...". In other words, you have just backed up our side of the argument! If you really are a Microsoft employee, and you look at Linux source code to come up with proprietary "innovative" solutions, then you may very well have infringed on the terms of the GPL. If you haven't, then someone else in your company may have. (There are some 30,000 employees in Microsoft, if I remember correctly. One of them is bound to have done this.) I am now all the more eager to get your employee number, because this may be used as proof in a court of law. (And I'll forward your comment to the Department of Justice as well.)
I couldn't help but notice another inconsistency in your childish argument: first you state that you looked at Linux code to come up with "innovative" solutions, and shortly thereafter you state that Linux is, and I quote, a "1960's-era piece of crap toy shareware so-called Operating System". Well, if Linux is such a pile of horse merd, then why are you getting your "innovative" solutions from it?
I'm also wondering about your statement: "Just stop sullying the reputation of my fine employer. We are having enough problems without you faggots making things worse." First, I'd like to state that I am not a "faggot," the definition of which (from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary) is "BUNDLE: as a: a bundle of sticks b: a bundle of pieces of wrought iron to be shaped by rolling or hammering at high temperature." I think I speak for all of us when I say that we, on the other hand, are human beings. Secondly, I'd like you to know that everybody has problems. Get used to it. Third and final, if it wasn't for us "faggots" who are making things worse, who would write the Linux code that you look at to gain "innovative" solutions to your "fine employer"'s problems?
Last but not least: I'd like you to seriously consider your words before you say Microsoft is a "fine employer." As I have mentioned previously, Microsoft has done things to step on and squash the competition in ways that are morally, legally, and in every other way wrong. Microsoft seems to be operating without a conscience and they have no shame whatsoever.
Secondly, you folks don't come up with innovative solutions at all; you copy others' ideas or buy them out. You have made a so-called operating system that has an integrated web browser. It is difficult to install, maintain and use this software. It contains bugs and is slow and unreliable. Instead of fixing bugs by removing code, you folks add code, and with it, you add potential bugs. Example: after a crash, Active Desktop displays a page that asks the user to click a button to reset the Active Desktop. Why is this necessary? Can't the computer perform that action automatically? Couldn't you folks fix your bugs so the user wouldn't have to experience a crash in the first place?
Not only that, but your increasingly bloated code runs very slowly on modern computers. Why don't you dig up an old 486 and run Windows 3.1 on it? See at what speed everything runs? Now get a Pentium III or 4, with a ton of RAM, a really fast hard disk, and Windows 2000. Doesn't it seem a little strange to you that counterpart actions take the same or more amount of time to complete? Why is it that with faster computers, these actions are slower?
It doesn't matter what claims you folks can make about reliability and speed. In my opinion, you produce poor quality software and you're trying to justify it in your mind, just as a thief justifies his reasons for stealing. And, yes, according to your own words, you have stolen. I'll state them again for your convenience: "...sorry but the odd time I have looked at Linux source code to get a better idea of how to come up with innovation solutions in Windows 2000...".
-NGH
I like the part that says "may they see the light." Here's a valid argument that someone could use when arguing about "unhackable" Linux devices: simply recall id Software's games Wolf3D and Doom. Wolf3D was released just like any other game at its time, but something strange happened shortly thereafter: folks started hacking the game and coming up with level editors and stuff. Instead of suing those folks like most game companies would have done at the time, the intelligent authors of the game used this to their advantage and made tons of money from this game. (Kids wanted to modify the game, so they had to get a copy of it.) When Doom and Doom II were released, I think they actually released specs that gave hackers some idea of how the game data was stored. Doom and Doom II were so successfully that for a time, most other games were judged relative to them. Furthermore, id released the source code for Wolf3D and, later, Doom. I highly respect them for that reason -- that is, because they realized that giving someone knowledge doesn't take it away from you. In fact, in most cases, it will help you.
-NGH
You also said, "We work hard on developing quality, innovative products here at Microsoft". I have to hand it to you folks: you really do work hard. Too hard, and the results are crap. (I'll back that up below.)
I'd like to know, just out of curiousity, why it is that all you Microsoft employees march around and tell everyone how "innovative" your products are? Were you brainwashed by Marketingsoft, uh, I mean, Microsoft, to tell everybody how innovative you are? Why don't you Microsoft folks do as we do, and let OTHERS decide whether or not you're innovative! Now isn't that innovation?! Sure, I can go switch around the wires on the distributor cap and tell all my hot-rodding friends (who, like myself, don't have pimples) how innovative I am, but that won't stop my timing chain from breaking because the firing order is wrong!
Now I'll back up my statements. About the results being crap (first paragraph): my company employed a really nice gentleman six years ago. He had a master's degree, quite a few years experience, and used to work for Microsoft. He was supposed to implement some relatively simple stuff in a system we developed. He worked very hard. In fact, he worked way too hard. His code contains shining examples of why Microsoft and their products are so bloated. To sum up, I ended up removing all code written by him. (One example: about 2000 lines of if...else statements were replaced with 3 lines that lookup a value in an array.)
And to back up the other statement (second paragraph, last line): I'm good friends with a doctor whose clinic employs some 30 computers and a Windows NT server. He has paid a fortune for the "priveledge" of using Windows, and he hates this system and regrets buying it to this very day. To help him out with his troubles, I have set up some gateways, firewalls, and a Samba server, all running some version of Linux or *BSD, for a total expense of some 500 dollars for hardware (the software was free for some mysterious reason). To his surprise (and mine), these servers, most notably the one running Samba, have NEVER given him any problems. The NT server, on the other hand, required him to pay constantly to various technical support people who needed to fix it all the time. This is not a unique example. I also know industrial factory owners, a college president, and about 30 clients who have the same problems with Microsoft's "innovative" products. And they love our "1960's-era piece of crap toy shareware so-called Operating System", as you called it, because it works and gets the job done with no headache to them.
And, as a closing remark, Linux was started in 1990 or 1991, not in 1960. You're confusing Linux with Classic Rock music. -NGH
Most everybody here says this article is bull, and I agree, but there is ground for discussion here.
Let's say, for just a moment, that in an effort to deal with problem areas in their own software, Microsoft analysed Free Software like Linux or Apache. In doing this, they may have found portions of code (let's say 200 to 500 lines) that do something better than a similar portion of code in Windows (in terms of reliability or speed). What's to keep them from copying a short portion of code like that, and damaging it into their system? Sure, it would take a lot of damaging, but admit it: it's nearly always easier to code something when you have someone else's example to tinker with and improve. (Or, in their case, to tinker and ruin.)
Besides, the author of the article has a very good point. (I like it more for the insult than for the truth in it.) From the article:
Or, perhaps, intentional sabotage :-)
Actually, I believe the real difficulty in a lawsuit with Microsoft is that no Free Software developers that I can name have the resources with which to actually sue the giant.
I think most of us don't like Microsoft because of their business practices. They simply do things that shouldn't be done for legal or moral reasons. (Remember the Caldera lawsuit, where Microsoft paid an undisclosed amount because Windows 3.1 was designed to crash intermittently when run under DR-DOS.) In my opinion, complaining about Microsoft won't help us. The only way to fight them is to improve Free Software. This takes cooperation and competition between Free Software developers, but I feel that cooperation needs to increase and competition needs to decrease. (How many of us need 17 competing, buy very similar word processors for X on our computers?)
Hi folks,
I think it's kind of ridiculous that most folks don't understand the concept of benchmarks. It's common knowledge among hackers that benchmarks test specific aspects of performance, and can be made to show better or worse performance depending on what the benchmark author wants to say. Unfortunately, many folks (maybe not you but many other folks like you do this) base purchasing decisions on benchmarks and spend hundreds of dollars more than necessary on hardware they don't really need.
Being a programmer myself, I know just how flippin powerful even the "outdated" CPUs are. Recently, I have worked on the Pentium III, the Celeron, and an old 486 at 66mhz. Most of my recent works are prototypes built for ease of maintainence and clarity rather than performance, and if I may say so myself, they do perform extremely well, even on the 486. I'm sure there are areas in computing that a powerful workhorse CPU like the Pentium III or 4 is needed, but what most readers probably don't know is that there are literally thousands of mission critical, real-time computer systems out there that run on 4- or 8-bit computers at speeds like 1 or 2 mhz, and they get the job done. Every user action is carried out instantaneously. The ridiculous part is that most folks out there don't understand that a newer CPU won't get them better overall performance. The user still needs to wait for the hard drive to churn, the network card to accept incoming packets, and a thousand other things; besides, it's really the software algorithms and implementation that causes the performance, or lack thereof. (These are the reasons I don't like Intel's claim that their newest CPU will give the user a better Internet experience.) The only place a faster CPU will get you performance is in tight code containing nothing but intense computations. Most folks will think of games when thinking of intense computations. In this case, I agree that it is critical to play Quake at 230 fps rather than 200. :)
I apologise for being so blunt in my comment but I need to run out the door so I'm in a hurry, and I'm kind of frustrated at the things that happen because of marketing and "benchmarks" that don't really mean anything (at least to myself). I hope I was able to successfully convey my point without insulting anyone. Hopefully, someone can comment on this and either help me out or prove me wrong... I'm open to others' suggestions
Kind regards,
Nathaniel G H
I haven't read this book but I feel I really must comment on something regarding science fiction that has bothered me for a long time: science fiction (or probably any form of literature) nearly always portrays other beings as being technologically and/or morally superior to ourselves, whether they are jungle creatures (as in The Jungle Book) or alien beings (as in Stranger or countless other sci-fi books). I believe this is because we, as humans, are always seeking something greater than ourselves, and quite frankly, most of us are so confused we don't know where to look anymore.
I believe that science fiction has explored--to simplify things--two kinds of alien beings: those that are a perfectly good higher intelligence than ourselves, and those that are perfectly evil, seeking only to destroy us. I think this concept has been explored quite thorougly and it's time for a change... I wonder why I haven't seen much sci-fi literature that portrays aliens as imperfect beings like ourselves, and perhaps tries to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between ourselves and these fictitious beings. Maybe I haven't been looking well enough, but I think it's because we desperately want to believe that imperfection doesn't exist outside our world. Hopefully, someone can prove me wrong about this because I'm looking for another book to read...
Kind regards,
Nathaniel G H
This is sad news to read, regardless of whether or not its thanksgiving. May we all remember his name each time we use ping.
As for all of you who are cracking jokes about his death, I don't think they are funny at all.
Kindest regards,
Nathaniel G H
I believe the voting system should work something like this:
Registering
A person registers to vote, and receives their voter card in the mail. This is a sort of smart-card containing encrypted information like a unique ID number.
Local Voting Center
The voter then attends a voting center near them on election day. The registration letter that comes with the card would tell the person which center to attend (the one nearest them). Folks would be encouraged to turn their houses and/or other properties into voting centers and could be paid for this service.
The voting center would consist of an enterance line, several booths (more or less depending on the size of the center) a confirmation zone, and a place for witnesses in the confirmation zone.
The voter waits in line to enter the voting center. Once the beginning of the line is reached, they present their ID and show their smart-card and their name is checked off a list. They then sign their name where it is checked off, to confirm that they have checked-in. They are then sent to a voting booth.
The Voting Booth
The booth contains a touch-screen display, smart-card reader, and dot-matrix printer. The voter inserts the card into the machine and proceeds to vote, and then confirm their vote. The voter is then given a unique vote reference number. The votes are immediately saved on the local machine and printed out on the local dot-matrix printer as they watch, beside the same reference number. The votes are also immediately sent across a local network to a main computer in the voting center which mirrors the information saved by all the individual machines and prints all the results on its own dot-matrix printer, beside the same reference number.
Final Confirmation
The voter then exits the booth and goes to the confirmation area. Votes are displayed with their reference number on a large display, with a random delay of up to several minutes. Voters watch as their votes are displayed (anonymously, of course) to a group of witnesses who tally the votes manually as they are displayed. This way, the results are tallyed by computers and by people being witnessed, and the voters know their votes are being tallyed and not tampered with. The voter then leaves the voting center.
Tallying Results
After a voting center closes, the total results from each center are sent (electronically or otherwise) to the city tallying center. The tallying center receives total results from all voting centers in the city. They list those total results and compute a larger total from those. This information (the list and the totals) is then sent back to the individual voting centers. The voting centers then confirm that their totals were not tampered with on the way to the city tallying center. This could be done manually and by computer so results can be double-checked.
The city tallying center then sends its totals to the county tallying center, which performs the same function, sending the results back for confirmation. The county then sends its results to the statewide tallying center which in turn performs the same function, and sends its totals to the nationwide tallying center. In other words, tallying centers compute the totals of all tallying centers "under" them, send the results back for confirmation, and send the results upward to a higher tallying center, and each tallying center deals only with the totals of those tallying centers beneath it. Breaking the tallying down this way will make it much more efficient than counting ballots by hand or by machine.
Voters don't vote only for president. They also vote on city, county, and state officials, propositions, etc. The city tallying center would only send "upward" to the county center those results which are relevant to the county. The results for city mayor, for example, wouldn't go to the county. And so on, until the nationwide results arrive at the nationwide tallying center.
Voters get to watch as their individual votes are tallyed right before their eyes. The system of sending totals with an itemized list back to the source ensures that votes and totals are not tampered with in transit. And because the tallying is broken up into a hierarchy, results are available almost immediately after voting centers close. It would only take minutes for a tallying center to compute totals once they arrive and send the results onward. Use of open-source software to perform all the processing ensures that identification isn't saved with votes, though you'll need proof that the binaries running on the machine are built from untampered source; those doing the system builds will need to be videotaped and perhaps a signature of the binary (or the binary itself) will be made publically available so that anyone who wishes can do their own build and compare the results.
I'm sure I forgot some details but overall, I think this system of voting would be more reliable, more secure, and definitely more efficient than the system in place today. All results are confirmed by their source with witnesses, printouts, etc. Perhaps all printouts could be publicly accessible (you could order a copy or download one to verify that what you voted actually appears next to your voting reference number generated at the voting booth).
Just my two cents worth,
Nathaniel G H
The point isn't that he whimped out...
The point IS that the school suspended him for putting down his crown. That means that refusing to participate in a stupid and unimportant popularity contest caused him to miss some days of school. Not only that, but it is in his record.
Now come on folks! Where does "putting down your homecoming crown" fit next to "possession of drugs," "possession of dangerous weapons," and other real suspension offenses?
-NGH
Hi folks,
What kind of education system do we have in this country? A student is suspended for refusing to participate in a popularity contest. Why don't those school officials concentrate on improving the education and moral values of their students rather than wasting their time on stupidities like this?
When I was in grade school (specifically in the 1st and 2nd grades) I was unusually creative for a kid my age. I had quite an imagination and I enjoyed thinking about the possibilities of the future. (The kind of stuff that makes Disney hire their Imagineers.) I also caught on to the lessons pretty quickly, so when something was explained by the teacher, I caught it the first time. Since teachers explain everything over and over several times, I generally got bored in class and as a result, so I used to draw pictures and daydream.
In those days (1984 or so), they didn't blame my behavior on A.D.D., or Attention Deficit Disorder; at least they didn't at my school. Instead, the school psychologist wrote a complicated report several pages in length, that stated, among other things, that I didn't pay attention in class (though somehow, mysteriously, I had high test scores), I exhibited unusual behavior, "magical thinking," etc. In other words, since I was somewhat more intelligent than the other kids, they considered me unusual and strange.
Actually, let me take back what I said about being more intelligent. I don't even believe that I was so much smarter than anybody else in my class. I do believe, however, that the other kids didn't realise that the same things were being explained over and over until it was etched in our brains. So they continued to pay attention, while I learned quickly and moved on to more interesting things.
Back to the school psychologist... I was also quite active during recess. I liked to be physically active and to play sports. What kid doesn't? The school psychologist used this in her reports, saying that not only did I do poorly in class (which was untrue), but that I was hyperactive. I remember being forced to take some pills to calm me down, several times each day, when I was in 1st and 2nd grades. I now believe those pills hindered my education. It's the kind of stuff George Orwell could use in his 1984.
I think students are considered learning units by the education system. When a student doesn't conform to their specifications of a child at their age, that student is punished. Those who are somewhat behind the other students are placed in special education classes where they are treated as though they are mentally retarded. (I know several perfectly intelligent people who were placed in special-ed and didn't learn anything as a result.) Those students, like me, who caught on quickly get to take pills.
Sure, I know that this doesn't happen to everybody... the fact is, however, that it happens to enough children these days that if this doesn't change and change now, this country will be in big trouble in the not-too-distant future. What happened to me as a child is not much different than this matter of being suspended for refusing to be homecoming king. School is unconstitutional and is run is such a way that students are made to think inside a box. They make you believe that you have to be normal like everybody else. If you're not, you're punished.
Kind regards,
Nathaniel G H
I don't remember where I read this, but I recall reading that:
If you have a 50/50 chance of guessing a correct answer, you'll be wrong 90% of the time.
I wonder if that's backed by scientific evidence or if it's simply related to Murphy's law...
-NGH
Hi folks,
I know I'm too late to submit questions, but I wasn't around when submissions were taken. I do have some comments though, and some food for thought that some readers may find interesting.
I'm glad that questions about corruption related to big corporations came up. I believe that many of our country's problems result from the greedy rich who care only of themselves and actually ruin the country's future to help their own personal success. Many large corporations, for example, cause all kinds of laws to be passed for their own convenience.
In that light, I'm very surprised that some of the following questions were not brought up by fellow Slashdot readers (and if they were, that they never reached the candidates):
The Patent System
Issues surrounding the current state of our patent office, which makes it easy for big corporations to patent practically everything they do, calling it "technology." I know there was a question about intellectual property laws but I think that more emphasis should have been placed on this issue.
The spirit of our patent system, as intended by the Founding Fathers, was to encourage the scientific and technological advancement of our country by encouraging inventors to make publically available the secrets of their inventions. In exchange, the patent system gives them the opportunity, for a limited time, to charge royalties on use of their invention while it makes its initial penetration into the market.
The spirit of the patent system is to award inventors this patent protection for inventions (not discoveries) that are not prior art and are not obvious to an expert in the field. It is also possible to patent the invention of a process that produces some result.
I believe that today, the patent office is awarding patent protection for so-called "technologies" that are obvious to school kids, let alone experts in the field. Furthermore, I believe that the prior art search for many of these patents is almost nonexistant. This has become the subject of many heated debates, especially in the field of computer software. I would like to know what our presidential candidates think about the current state of the patent office.
The Food and Drug Administration
This post centers around issues caused by the influence of big corporations on government. Some readers may be surprised to learn that this also affects what many of us eat and drink.
There is a substance called Aspartame (commonly misspelled Aspertame). This substance is used in many artificial sweetners (such as the popular Equal) and many foods and drinks that bear the words "Diet" or "Sugar Free." Artificial sweetners containing Aspartame are said by large corporations to be safer than those containing Saccarin.
However, at 86 degrees Farenheit, Aspartame breaks down into two chemicals that, when taken over time, are proven to cause physical and mental damage. Since the human body operates at more than 98 degrees Farenheit, this breakdown occurs when humans eat anything containing Aspartame.
Many myths and facts circulate around the net about the safety (or lack thereof) of this substance. On one end, companies like Nutrasweet (of the popular artificial sweetner Equal, which contains Aspartame) say that Aspartame is perfectly safe. On the other hand, doctors have scientific data that proves otherwise.
Do a search for Aspartame on Yahoo! and you'll quickly find sites debating either side of the argument. Ask yourself these two questions when you read those sites: "what do doctors have to gain and/or lose by proving how dangerous this substance is?" and "what do huge companies like Nutrasweet have to gain and/or lose by defending it?"
I have personally spoken with two such doctors whom I know well and trust, and they showed me proof that Aspartame is not to be taken at all. Furthermore, I know several people who have been seriously affected by it.
Rapid-onset symptoms of Aspartame include everything from migraines to seizures. Most users of Aspartame, however, experience symptoms from long-term use, such as arthritis, Alzheimer's and other memory-loss problems, Diabetes, even birth defects, and many more.
All of this has been proven scientifically, and yet this substance remains in use in many of our foods. I'd like to know what the presidential candidates think of this, and what they intend to do about it.
Mom and Pop Stores
The competition between big corporations is cutthroat. I believe that big corporations are ruining America by killing (or having killed) the little Mom and Pop stores and businesses. For example, Home Depot killed a lot of small hardware stores; Wal Mart killed a lot general stores; the banks keep buying each other and putting family-owned banks out of business... the list goes on and on. I wonder what our presidential candidates think of this, and whether or not they intend to do anything to help the little players who need all the help they can get. I'm not saying that corporations should be punished for being "too successful." Instead, I'm saying that America is supposed to be by the people for the people. Instead, big corporations practically rule this country, and the people have to put up with it.
I welcome any further comments and suggestions on these or other issues.
Kind regards,
Nathaniel G H
IMO, the government's methods of record keeping are what caused identity theft to become possible in the first place.
Identity theft is the process of obtaining key information about a person, such as (in the US) their social security number, driver license number, date of birth, etc., and then obtaining bank accounts, credit cards, etc. using that information. Ask yourself why knowing someone's SSN makes it possible to get credit cards in their name.
If you live in the US, how often are you asked for your social security number? And how often is it requested by a non-government agency? As an example, I recently had an eye exam. They requested my SSN and driver license number. (I gave them neither.) Why do they think its their business to ask for that information? Social security is for retirement (and taxes). The use of social security numbers by government agencies or private companies is not required or forbidden by law. Citizens of the US are not even required to have a SSN. These days, however, it has become a personal identification number. It is now used in public schools and universities as a student number. Banks require it to open accounts or issue credit cards. Ask yourself if any why this is wrong.
Government DNA records keeping may be extremely convenient. It's easy to think of the advantages of any government program -- that's what the government wants you to do. But whenever the government wants to implement something and they start telling you why it's so good and so beneficial, stop and ask yourself what the disadvantages are, because those will come back to haunt you and everybody else later. Try to figure out what else may be behind DNA records besides just identity theft prevention. Imagine to yourself that this idea is just one of a series of ideas that together will give the government more control over your life than you will find comfortable. This is not far-fetched, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It's just an observation of history -- people in high places want to be in higher places.
Let's compare this to computers. Nowadays, it is difficult to crack some of the more secure systems. Take the *BSD OS's... I receive email notification of compromises and patches when they are found. Most of these compromises are buffer overruns and stupid things like that, but when many bugs like that are used in complicated sequences, it is possible to get access to private information. The government is like a huge operating system. Laws are like program statements. If some folks in high places want more control over your lives, they find the little exploits in the laws and use them to modify the system in their favor. Ask yourself: can DNA records keeping be one of many complicated steps that it takes to gain more control over a country?
Finally, every system run by humans will have mistakes. There is no question of whether or not mistakes will be made in DNA record keeping -- they will be made. If this is put in effect, and the government mixes your record with someone else's (or if somebody manages to switch records around on purpose) how will you prove who you really are? "I'm sorry [sir,ma'am], that's what the computer says." "But the computer is wrong." "I'm sorry, we must go by what the computer tells us." Ask yourself if this is what you want, and seriously consider the disadvantages first. The advantages are without saying.
Just my two cents worth...
Nathaniel G H
I think this is idea is interesting and would certainly be beneficial. I don't know how the public school system is charged for the software you mentioned (e.g., whether they pay a licensing fee by year or one site license for an unlimited time), so I cannot say whether or not this will actually save any money for existing schools.
However, there would be other big advantages to an open source records system for schools. The most obvious to me is that such software could be made to work on any number of operating systems and hardware models, so that the school need not be bound to a specific platform or company. Additionally, it would be possible to implement other features besides record keeping. (I think it would be beneficial if students could log in over the Web and check their current grades, so that grades on their report cards don't come as a surprise.)
In terms of open sourcing all government-used software, there are many other advantages to open sourcing selected applications, but everything should be done with moderation: while public school software is a great candidate for open sourcing, weapons control systems, as an off-the-top-of-my-head example, are not.
Just my two cents worth...
Nathaniel G H
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (but I may be wrong) who wrote a paper about the flow of ideas.
Just as I thought, I was wrong about this... I just saw a part of this letter posted by nyet in Apple sues FreeType - NOT . According to him / her, it was written by "Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813"... If this is correct, thanks nyet for helping me out, even if you didn't know you did!