Ok, I agree that China is not strong on environmental protection, specially if they are doing this in order to put a foot in the door of these disputed areas. But this is criminal!
On any country with a minimal of environmental concern, this thing wouldn't even pass the planning stage.
But being a biologist, I can't think any other way. What they are doing is a crime.
I wonder when netbook makers will incorporate 3G in their products. Seeing the specs of some smartphones I found myself wondering where the line between them and netbooks should be drawn. Apart from screen size, the difference is small.
So, if Asus, Acer and othernetbook makers start to include a slot for a SIM card, the difference will definitively only be in size.
We don't need to convert cropland into pulpwood production. The idea, IMHO, is to use crop waste (which is discarded) into ethanol.
Much of sugar-cane production isn't used for ethanol, but burned because it's cellulose, and bacteria find it hard to degrade cellulose into its component sugar blocks.
If you get a cheap way to do this, you can produce much more ethanol per square meter. Be it from beet, soy, rice, sugar-cane or the grass you cut from your lawn.
Just a few tweaks: Two or more election officials who can count. A box with a slot that can be sealed. Scrutineers from the various parties involved to spot check for irregularities. An accurate list of who is eligible to vote.
Well, you just described the Brazilian voting system. The only difference is that there is no box with slot.
I'm not saying that our system is perfect. Read the previous discussion here in Slashdot after that elections... But when you have people from the various parties checking on the spot and during the accounting of the machines, it makes much more difficult to tamper with.
One thing that I read in the original article, that shocked me was "workers often forget to install the [tamper-proof] tape or take proper action when they discover that the tape over a compartment has been broken"!!! Come on! What is this??? And these are the guys mentioned above that receive $100 a day for working there???
"Ooooh, and without a paper trail, how do you prove that you did in fact vote, if your salary payment is suddenly stopped? Something tells me that mandatory voting may be the law, but it is not enforced."
I worked in the elections ( I was drafted..) and can tell you how it works. The person who comes to vote brings his 'Voting card' (lacking a better translation for Titulo Eleitoral), presents it to a person of the voting staff (like me) who checks in a list if he is scheduled to vote in that area. After, and only after, he votes, he gets a 'voting certificate, which is a small stub that can be detached from the area close to his name in the list.
The person voting is required to sign the list, and this signature is checked against the signature in the voting card. If there is any doubt in the identity of the person, we can request further prof of identity (ID card, driving license...).
This list is sent from the central voting tribunal to each election region, which is divided in smaller 'sections'. In my sections there were approx. 400 voters. More or less 90% appeared, the others probably justified for not voting in other sections.
And just to make another point: every political party is entitled to have a person checking the voting procedure, in each section. I had 2 people (one form each party) looking over my shoulder almost all the time.
And they cheked when the disk with the voting machine results was removed from the machine and placed in a sealed envelope . And they further followed the guy who took the disk to the central processing center of the Electoral Tribunal.
Apart from the software side, the process if very difficult to be tampered.
Just to clarify the problem with ipods (or any other equipment that uses ear-bud speakers), continuous high levels of sound can damage your hearing quite rapidly. While rock concerts and boom-boom cars are periodical events of high-intensity noise, ipods and other MP3 players are being used more and more time. High intensity noise can cause a temporary threshold shift (TTS) in hearing cells. That's why you leave rock concerts with your ears buzzing... However, if this 'attack' repeats itself too frequently, the 'temporary' becomes permanent (PTS) due to cell death.
But, since this is auto-inflicted damage, its their problem...
Since I live in Brazil (one of the countries that are in Negroponte's list) I have to disagree with you.
1st - As other/.ers have said, this laptops will be sent to schools. So children will have training.
2nd - Not all developing countries are like Ethiopia, with famished people dying on the streets (even there is not all like CNN shows). This laptops are aimed at POOR people/families, not MISERABLE ones. This make a great difference. These families have jobs (underpaid, but jobs nonetheless), struggle to get by, but are unable to get out of their situation. In this case a computer can be a lever for the kids to get out of there.
Maybe some will get in markets, and not benefit the original targets. But here we are talking about nationwide programs, which on average can work.
Actually its not that this is a new principle in evolution, but that many people thought that language developed not necessarily by mutation. But to training of specific areas already developed in the brain. These news relates development in language due to a mutation in a gene.
And instead of having talking dogs, what about talking dolphins?:-)
Put into that box the airplane. All americans say it was the Wright brothers, but actually Santos Dumont did the first powered takeoff and landing of a heavier than aircraft.
And on the election side, here in Brazil we have an electronic voting system for the last two elections. Its fast, the interface is simple and is not networked. Each unit has its disk drive and the results are saved there and sent, by hand, to a central place.
Is it open to fraud? As any other system. But at least we don't have to wait for weeks to know who is our president.
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Ok, I agree that China is not strong on environmental protection, specially if they are doing this in order to put a foot in the door of these disputed areas. But this is criminal!
On any country with a minimal of environmental concern, this thing wouldn't even pass the planning stage.
But being a biologist, I can't think any other way. What they are doing is a crime.
I wonder when netbook makers will incorporate 3G in their products. Seeing the specs of some smartphones I found myself wondering where the line between them and netbooks should be drawn. Apart from screen size, the difference is small. So, if Asus, Acer and othernetbook makers start to include a slot for a SIM card, the difference will definitively only be in size.
We don't need to convert cropland into pulpwood production. The idea, IMHO, is to use crop waste (which is discarded) into ethanol.
Much of sugar-cane production isn't used for ethanol, but burned because it's cellulose, and bacteria find it hard to degrade cellulose into its component sugar blocks.
If you get a cheap way to do this, you can produce much more ethanol per square meter. Be it from beet, soy, rice, sugar-cane or the grass you cut from your lawn.
Just a few tweaks: Two or more election officials who can count. A box with a slot that can be sealed. Scrutineers from the various parties involved to spot check for irregularities. An accurate list of who is eligible to vote.
Well, you just described the Brazilian voting system. The only difference is that there is no box with slot.
I'm not saying that our system is perfect. Read the previous discussion here in Slashdot after that elections... But when you have people from the various parties checking on the spot and during the accounting of the machines, it makes much more difficult to tamper with.
One thing that I read in the original article, that shocked me was "workers often forget to install the [tamper-proof] tape or take proper action when they discover that the tape over a compartment has been broken"!!! Come on! What is this??? And these are the guys mentioned above that receive $100 a day for working there???
Sorry, but the problem is not in the machines...
"Ooooh, and without a paper trail, how do you prove that you did in fact vote, if your salary payment is suddenly stopped? Something tells me that mandatory voting may be the law, but it is not enforced."
I worked in the elections ( I was drafted..) and can tell you how it works. The person who comes to vote brings his 'Voting card' (lacking a better translation for Titulo Eleitoral), presents it to a person of the voting staff (like me) who checks in a list if he is scheduled to vote in that area. After, and only after, he votes, he gets a 'voting certificate, which is a small stub that can be detached from the area close to his name in the list.
The person voting is required to sign the list, and this signature is checked against the signature in the voting card. If there is any doubt in the identity of the person, we can request further prof of identity (ID card, driving license...).
This list is sent from the central voting tribunal to each election region, which is divided in smaller 'sections'. In my sections there were approx. 400 voters. More or less 90% appeared, the others probably justified for not voting in other sections.
And just to make another point: every political party is entitled to have a person checking the voting procedure, in each section. I had 2 people (one form each party) looking over my shoulder almost all the time.
And they cheked when the disk with the voting machine results was removed from the machine and placed in a sealed envelope . And they further followed the guy who took the disk to the central processing center of the Electoral Tribunal.
Apart from the software side, the process if very difficult to
be tampered.
Just to clarify the problem with ipods (or any other equipment that uses ear-bud speakers), continuous high levels of sound can damage your hearing quite rapidly. While rock concerts and boom-boom cars are periodical events of high-intensity noise, ipods and other MP3 players are being used more and more time.
High intensity noise can cause a temporary threshold shift (TTS) in hearing cells. That's why you leave rock concerts with your ears buzzing... However, if this 'attack' repeats itself too frequently, the 'temporary' becomes permanent (PTS) due to cell death.
But, since this is auto-inflicted damage, its their problem...
Since I live in Brazil (one of the countries that are in Negroponte's list) I have to disagree with you.
/.ers have said, this laptops will be sent to schools. So children will have training.
1st - As other
2nd - Not all developing countries are like Ethiopia, with famished people dying on the streets (even there is not all like CNN shows). This laptops are aimed at POOR people/families, not MISERABLE ones. This make a great difference. These families have jobs (underpaid, but jobs nonetheless), struggle to get by, but are unable to get out of their situation. In this case a computer can be a lever for the kids to get out of there.
Maybe some will get in markets, and not benefit the original targets. But here we are talking about nationwide programs, which on average can work.
"sad but true" - No, definitively not true.
Actually its not that this is a new principle in evolution, but that many people thought that language developed not necessarily by mutation. But to training of specific areas already developed in the brain. These news relates development in language due to a mutation in a gene.
:-)
And instead of having talking dogs, what about talking dolphins?
Put into that box the airplane. All americans say it was the Wright brothers, but actually Santos Dumont did the first powered takeoff and landing of a heavier than aircraft. And on the election side, here in Brazil we have an electronic voting system for the last two elections. Its fast, the interface is simple and is not networked. Each unit has its disk drive and the results are saved there and sent, by hand, to a central place. Is it open to fraud? As any other system. But at least we don't have to wait for weeks to know who is our president.