Apple has strong controls over their OS because they remember what happened the last time they allowed clones. The clones were poorly made and executed the old Mac OS rather poorly. This hurt Apple's overall reputation.
Psystar doesn't have a right to modify Mac OS X and put it on their machines. Apple has full rights to stop them. Psystar could make a machine that could take a modified version of Mac OS X. They just wouldn't be allowed to put this modified version on their machine.
My feeling is that Apple will allow Psystar to live as long as they stop selling machines with Mac OS X on them. Apple really doesn't care too much about the small market share they might lose to Psystar. Most likely, the people buying these clones wouldn't have bought a Mac anyway. If these people then want to spend $125 and get Mac OS X to work on Psystar, that's their prerogative and Apple won't stop them.
What Apple wants to avoid is the average user saying "Why should I spend $1200 on a iMac when I can by a Psystar for only $500?". Even worse, Apple doesn't want these same users saying, "Man, I bought this Psystar system, and Mac OX sucks! It keep crashing, and it is slow. I don't know why people think Apple is so hot. Their stuff stinks!".
Always remember: Apple is a hardware company that builds high quality hardware. They only make software in order to sell that hardware in the best light. Apple chose the premium market because they rather make $200 on each sale rather than sell five times as many machines, but only make $40 on each one.
Apple doesn't want some clone coming along and ruining their reputation. As far as Apple is concerned, Psystar can live as long as they don't mess with Apple's reputation.
The problem with the arguments as presented is "open source" vs. "proprietary". This is completely silly. My firm builds proprietary software, but we are completely dependent upon open source tools. Apple's OS is based upon Open Source, but itself is proprietary. IBM certainly makes products and machines that are proprietary in nature, but is one of the biggest supporters of Linux. Google's whole empire is based upon cheap PCs and Linux.
This paper's synopsis makes it sounds like if you're a software firm, you must "compete" against open source by defeating it, or else it will destroy you. However, the most successful firms are the ones that have embraced open source tools and techniques to build their own unique product.
Microsoft is a sore exception, and would probably be doing much better if they weren't so anti-open source.
That's probably the thinking at Microsoft. Apple has these ads with two guys talking to each other, and that's cool. We should do the same. And, who's cooler than that 1990 comedy sensation, Jerry Steinfeld?
The problem is that Apple had two people, one young and cool, the other old and not-so-cool. Microsoft's ads had two old, not-so-cool people in them. I'm sure that all of them college kids really related to two 50+ years olds wandering around and talking about random stuff.
I can hear them now: "Hey, that's just like my grandpa! Right before we put him in the nursing home."
I wouldn't mind DRM if it was truly buy once, play anywhere, but that's not how it's going to work.
Heck, these are the same people who came up with the concept of DVD "Zones". You can own two identical DVD players from the same manufacturer, but you can't play the same DVD in them if one player is set to one "zone" and one player set to another "zone".
This is also the same group that allows me to buy a song via iTunes, and play it on my iPhone, but won't let me play that same song as a ringtone without shelling out another buck. (Yes, I know Apple isn't in this group, but the media companies that decided that a license to listen to music doesn't cover listening to it as a ringtone are in this group.)
As far as these people are concerned, each device needs a separate license, and I have to pay for each one. That's how this is going to be played out.
Here's a question: Person goes into Best Buy. They may buy either a Mac or a PC. Mac runs Mac OSX. Will the gurus be persuading people not to buy a Mac? Doubt it because Best Buy makes a bundle off of Mac sales -- much more than on PC sales. Certainly, Best Buy didn't agree to allow the Windows Gurus to persuade their customers to switch from buying a high margin Macs to a low margin PCs.
So, that leaves PCs, and don't almost all PCs come with Vista? So, Windows Gurus aren't suppose to tell people not to buy Macs, and anyone who isn't buying a Mac is then buying a PC with Vista on it already. What is Microsoft paying these people $20/hour to do?
The answer seems to come from *another* story. HP is apparently working on a Linux-based OS that will be used on their next generation Windows machines. HP, has several reasons: First, they're unhappy with Microsoft with the way Microsoft forced the PC manufacturers to ram Vista down people's throats. Second, the Windows license is now the most expensive part in a PC. Get rid of Windows, and you can knock another $30 off the price. That's a big difference when PCs are hitting below the $300 mark. And finally, in an era of look alike PCs, a PC with a friendly non-Windows OS can distinguish itself from its rivals.
It's not that HP won't be selling Windows computers, it's that they'll start charging extra for Windows. In fact, we see this on the sub-notebook machines where Windows is an extra cost option. I bet that's what Microsoft is really worried about. The Guru's job is to convince the customers that paying the $30-$50 for the Windows Vista option is certainly worth it.
I made a prediction before that Microsoft would lower the cost of the Vista Home Basic license to $1 or even free, then charge people $100 to upgrade to Vista Premium (on-line only - no more CDs). That way, they can keep Linux off the PC since putting Windows Vista on the PC barely costs the manufacturer anything, and make some money on people buying the extra Vista Premium features. Since Vista Premium is on line only, there won't be any Vista Premium CDs being shared among neighbors. Plus, their other programs (like Microsoft Office) could still be sold to people even if they don't upgrade to Vista Premium.
I don't know if Microsoft is going to move in that direction, but their Windows monopoly is now in danger.
Does Google Want Chrome to Win the Browser Wars?
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Google Chrome, Day 2
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· Score: 3, Informative
This is all a side issue. Google has promised to back FireFox until 2011. Google Chrome isn't a browser, but a template on how FireFox, Safari, and other browsers should behave. What Google wants:
* More multi-threading in the browser. Browsers shouldn't freeze up. * More multi-process tasking. Browsers shouldn't crash because of a bad webpage * Faster JavaScript: How much do you want to bet that V8 will quickly become part of WebKit. * Standardized Rendering Engine: This will put pressure on FireFox and Opera to switch to the WebKit engine, or at least make sure their browsers are 100% compatible. Thus, standardizing desktop and mobile device browsers on WebKit.
It's not so much that Chrome is Google's candidate in the browser wars as much as a template other browsers should strive for. I love the fast JavaScript engine and the multi-processing approach to webpage rendering. You'll start seeing that adapted by the other browsers in the next year. I also like some of the security features like the complete sandbox approach. Google's idea is that your browser will become infected, and the browser should prevent the infection from spreading.
Wonder why they can't find any Cobol programmer? There are probably Cobol programmers on the state payroll maintaining this system, but do you want to modify a computer program, so your employer can cut your pay by 75%? Didn't think so.
Manager: I need you to modify our payroll system in order to cut your pay to a mere $6.55/hour. How quickly can you get that done?
Developer: I'll get right on it boss. Let's see, I'll have to modify the payroll routines, reconfigure the database, change out the bit buckets, and scronge the verbliz... That will take me... Er, how long do you think it will be before the state passes a budget?
There could be a question of whether the librarian in charge had the power to hand over the computers to the FBI without going to a higher up. However, this is only an issue if the FBI knew that the person they talked to had no power to hand over the computers without a warrant, and specifically attempted to get around having to request a warrant. If the FBI did not know, then the FBI had full rights to seize the computers without a warrant.
For example, my wife gives the police permission to search my business records even though I did not want them searched, most courts will allow anything that is discovered in those records to be used as evidence. It is generally assumed that one spouse can give permission to search another spouse's belongings. However, if the FBI had contacted me earlier about searching my business records, and I told the FBI I wouldn't give over the records without a warrant. And, then the FBI asks my wife for permission, the courts will normally not allow anything discovered by that search to be used in court.
The bigger question is whether the librarian should have cooperated with the police in a search without the FBI first getting a warrant. If I was the librarian, I would tell the FBI I'll take the computers out of service and lock them up, so that whatever is on the computers isn't destroyed, but they must first get a warrant before I can allow them to seize them. That just makes sure that the FBI isn't simply trolling for possible information. I don't mind the library cooperating with authorities. What I do mind is cooperating in a way that doesn't ensure the rights of their patrons.
Getting a warrant isn't difficult. All it takes is a quick phone call by a D.A. to a judge - in emergencies, most judges will allow the paperwork to be filled out later. There have been cases where the police requested a search w/o a warrant, the occupant said "no", the police sit around questioning the subject, and fifteen minutes later, someone comes in with the warrant.
Sadam had declared this depot of uranium during the last Gulf War. It was put under U.N. jurisdiction and monitored for years.
Sadam had lots of weapons and stockpiles that were put under U.N. seals, and monitored by personnel and remote cameras. These depots were located all over Iraq and most were intact when the U.S. invaded. Fortunately, this nasty stuff stayed in the depot despite all the chaos.
Unfortunately, much of the material that was under U.N. jurisdiction did disappear right after the U.S. invasion. In one depot, the U.S. troops acknowledged that a long range rocket depot was still intact, left for the Battle of Bagdad, and when they came back, it was all gone. This particular depot was about 50 miles from the Iraq/Iran border, and there is some thought that maybe the Iranians saw their chance to grab some "Weapons o' Mass Destruction" before anyone noticed. Then again, Iraqis may have entered this compound and sold its contents for scrap. We will never know.
This is an issue, and it is an issue with Open Source.
First, this isn't an Israel vs. Palestinian rights question. However, it did put this organization in the midst of the issue. His wife's organization trusted a commonly used Open Source widget and got pulled into an unfortunate debate.
Why is this an Open Source issue? Because the way Open Source works: If I buy a program from Microsoft, I can completely hold Microsoft responsible for the results. However, many times, Open Source software depends upon multiple contributors who themselves might have other contributors. Finding the person responsible for a particular issue can be quite tough. The widget in question was Causes which was produced by Project Agape. Project Agape tried to fob off responsibility upon the Ruby or Rails module ActionView::Helpers::FormOptionsHelper.
Then, the issue popped up that the real problem is that the payment processor Network for Good doesn't accept credit card payments from Israel. Network for Good claims that "e-commerce experts" list Israel as a high fraud country. But, the territories under Palestinian control is one of the worst places for credit card fraud because of the weakness of the governing structure and the many super legal organizations and militias that operate outside the rule of law. I've looked over the organizations that back Network for Good, but I doubt any of them would have any anti-Israel bias. It could be that Palestine wasn't black listed by Network for Good as a high credit card fraud country because it isn't a country and wasn't on the list given to them by their e-commerce experts. Yet, it is listed in the RoR module.
So who is responsible? The original organization that used the Causes widget on their page not knowing that in a list of 140+ countries, laid a time bomb that was going to get them in the middle of a political debate they rather avoid, Network for Good that doesn't process payments from Israel, the Causes widget that lists Palestine but not Israel, or the ROR module that lists both Israel and Palestine?
That's why it is an Open Source issue. It is the power of Open Source to be able to freely build new projects from prebuilt modules. Yet, it is also the curse: Because so many bits and pieces are involved, it becomes impossible to point the Finger o' Blame at the responsible party.
The article begins talking about how the State of New York (Hey! That's not France!) made a deal with the three big ISPs to block child porn. The article also stated:
Among other countries that have already implemented similar measures include Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand.
What is different is that the French have created an actual mechanism to report such sites:
Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks.
This strikes me as maybe a slightly better way sites are blacklisted in the United States: Individual ISPs just block the site at random, or someone sues someone else in court. By having an official list, ISPs can't ban a site for possible political or competition reasons and claim they're trying to stop something else. There have been several cases where birth control or pro-choice sites have become unavailable and the ISP claims it was merely attempting to shield the eyes of poor innocent children from non-friendly material.
I am not sure of the best way to handle this situation, but since the French government is attempting to do what other Western democracies are attempting to do, I can't quite call this exactly the rise of fascism.
Because Ruby on Rails developers will not have to switch to JavaScript in order to do AJAX like stuff.
One of the problems in Web Development is using one language for the back end (whether Java, Ruby, or PHP) and then when you need some asynchronous action on the client side, you have to switch your syntax to JavaScript. It can be a bit of a pain. It's not that you may not know both JavaScript and Ruby, but that you have to keep switching between the two and that can make brain hurt.
I take it that Silverlight will be doing the "ARAX" side of things. It's actually a neat idea. You can use a single language for both the Client and Server side, but where JavaScript is built from the ground up to live inside a webpage, Ruby isn't. I guess that's why there's IronRuby which will be a bit more "JavaScript" like.
The big problem is that the Ruby interpreter will be Silverlight. Where as JavaScript is built into WebKit, an open source project, Silverlight is proprietary. If you create a new web browser, you can easily adopt WebKit and get a standardized JavaScript implementation. With ARAX, you're either going have to role your own or depend upon Microsoft to create a Silverlight interpreter.
The whole thing is to push not.NET, but Silverlight in order to take over the Flash market. The funny thing is that Flash is probably peeking in popularity. The problem is one of the shear diversity of web browsing platforms that will be coming out soon. The iPhone is just the first such device, and already sites are removing flash from their webpages in order to make them iPhone compatible. Yes, Adobe is going to release flash for the iPhone, but what happens when Android comes out? Is Adobe really going to build flash for each and every version of an Android handset? They simply don't have the resources. Microsoft will find the same situation with Silverlight. They simply won't be able to support all the platforms that people want to use.
In the old days, this was okay because it brought people into the Windows world. But, as people move from the desktop, Windows isn't the end all/be all platform it use to be. People like their iPhones and iPods. People will start buying Android based stuff. Symbian and RIM both are larger platforms. Windows Mobile is a distant fourth in sales this year. Measured in licenses, Windows Mobile is still more popular than the iPhone, but that doesn't include all the devices laying in some drawer gathering dust. Assuming a 2 year average product lifespan, Windows is fourth behind the iPhone which hasn't been out for a year yet. Can Microsoft (or is Microsoft even willing) to put Silverlight on all the various platforms out there? If not, developers just won't use ARAX.
We get so hung up on paper ballots as if this would be a cure all for voting fraud. In the Northeast, paper ballots were eliminated in favor of mechanical voting machines in order to eliminate fraud.
Yup, that's right. Back in the beginning of the last century, the biggest voting fraud was ballot box stuffing and ballot replacement. Read Carter's book "Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age" about his 1962 election for State Senate and see what type of fraud can occur with paper ballots.
When New York and New Jersey went with the mechanical voting machines, they instituted quite a few procedures to help eliminate fraud. The polling chief has a book containing all registered voters with their signatures. When a voter comes to vote, they sign that book, and the signatures are compared. Once the polling chief is satisfied that the person is a registered voter, they have the person sign a voting ticket in the ticket book. Once the ticket is signed, it is given to the person in charge of the voting booth. This person threads the ticket onto a string, and pulls a large lever to set the machine for voting. The voter enters the machine, pulls a lever to close the drapes, and this unlocks the voting switches. The voter can flip the switches for the people they want to vote for, and then pulls the lever to open the drapes. This registers the tallies and resets the voting switches.
The procedure is overseen by representatives of everyone on the ballot. A voter cannot vote twice because the machine needs to be reset by the person in charge of the voting booth. Diseased voters no longer show up to vote since you now have signatures to match against. The levers are set by the county and the machine is sealed and cannot be reset without a master key. The mechanical machines and the procedures that went with them helped clean up the elections in the Northeast.
The problem is that these mechanical systems (which could be programmed in a very limited way) have been replaced by general CPUs with some form of voting software that no one is 100% sure how it works. You could always see how the gears and levers turn, but you can't see electrons flowing through silicone. It isn't the lack of paper as much as the lack of assurance that no one replaced the software or the tallies on the memory card.
What we must understand is that a secure voting system is more than just a paper ballot which can be stuffed by the dozen into a ballot box. It is a whole procedure of verifying the voter, the ballot, and that there is a one-to-one correspondence of voters to ballots.
My suggestion is to take care of what you can. There is no way of knowing if the software on the machine hasn't been tampered with before it was brought into the polling station. But, verify that the memory card is sealed and cannot be tampered with. Verify that the counters are reset and are zeroed out before the voting starts. Put a system in place to make sure that voters can only vote once. Make sure that no one is hanging over the voter. Make sure the voters actually finished voting. Some will press the buttons for their candidates but forget to push the final "Vote" button. Make sure that the machine has been reset before each voter.
When the vote is finished, tally up the various totals and make sure they are in agreement. The number of votes should match the number of voters. Track the number of voters who simply decide not to vote and count them in any total.
More importantly, follow whatever procedures you have. Get a hold of them before election day and study them thoroughly. That's the biggest problem. The volunteers at the polls not knowing the voting procedure.
Lots of luck. I use to be a Texas poll watcher when we had those idiotic punch card ballots. We would verify that each card has cleanly punched chads before handing them to the voter. We had to verify that each voter had only a single punch card and we also would quickly examine the punched ballot for dimpled or hanging chads before
* Apple has such a big market share for the $1000+ market because most PC are cheaper. * True, but if you deck out a regular PC to match Apple's specs, it'll be around the same price.
You're all missing something rather significant. Apple makes very competitive machines, but they don't make all those low or no margin PCs that other manufactures make to boost sales and act as a loss leader for their more expensive models.
And, because of that Apple is doing quite well. Thank you very much. Apple could greatly increase their market share if they started selling low cost PCs. But, if Apple started doing that, they'd be lowering their profit margins. And, that would make the Apple stores unprofitable. Apple would be forced to close the Apple stores and cut back on customer service in general. That would make Apple just another Dell or HP.
Compare an Apple store to a typical PC retailer. There are dozens of Macs all running, and they're all connected to the Internet. iPhones and iPods are everywhere. Sales people don't chase you away if you're just browsing. Heck, browsing is highly encouraged. And, salespeople actually know something about the product. Apple service is highly rated by almost all consumer surveys.
In other words, Apple sells PCs that they can actually make a pretty profit on, and then use that profit to build an image that encourages people to spend the extra dough for an Apple PC. All this makes Apple (get ready for this...) more profitable than any other computer or electronics company - ever. Back in 1998, I bought $1000 of Apple when Steve Jobs took over. I thought I was clever when I sold it after a few months for about $5000. Well, if I was still holding on to that stock today, it would be worth over $1,500,000. Duh! Over the past decade Apple's stock has outperformed Google.
Whether or not you are a Drinker-of-the Koolade or an Apple Basher, you have to look at Apple as a way to be highly profitable in a commodity business. You don't need a MacBook to appreciate this aspect of the business. Anyone who is interested in running a company should pay attention to Apple's playbook. Apple caters to the higher end of the market, but unlike companies like Bose and Mercedes, which also have a similar strategy, Apple's products are not prime luxury goods that only a few can consider buying. A more significant number is that Apple has broken the 10% mark of market share and is the third largest manufacture of PCs. And, that's pretty hard to bash.
They changed the IP address of the "L" root server, but might have kept the old one active just because not everyone was going to change their configuration in lock step.
They could have kept the address, but then provided a note that the configuration was incorrect, but that really dones' help a lot. I, as an end user can't do much to change the configuration of my nameserver. Besides, my nameserver might have been using another nameserver which used another before it got to the root server. All that would have done would be to frustrate a lot of people, but not allow them to get around the problem.
So, unless it is known that the old L root server IP was actually hijacked and that ICANN didn't just leave it running in a deprecated state for about six months to allow other name servers the time they needed to update their records, I can't really say this is an issue.
Maybe someone should contact ICANN to see if they have any statement on this issue.
I am an absolute Unix head. My favorite word processor is vi. Yet, I really don't see the big friggin' problem here. The idea is to get these machines into the hands of kids. If putting Windows on these things makes third world bureaucrats happy, let's do it. Windows is an option and not a requirement. You have to pay extra for it, and it requires more hardware (more memory, etc.). But, many governments in the third world look at this computer as a toy foisted upon them by the Western world who knows better. It's one of the reasons why OLPC was having so many problems getting these computers into the hands of children. The West get real computers, they get toys -- just another unjust exercise in imperialism.
Yes, it is ridiculous, but there's three hundred years of Western imperialism that we have to live down, and it colors lots of the interactions between the Third World and the West. Flexibility is the key. Listen to your customers. Don't lecture them about what they need. If they want Windows and Microsoft is willing, and if it prevents Microsoft from attempting their own cheap computer project that will undermine OLPC, then this is great news.
If your parents main concern is email, they can still use the standard GUI Email clients like Apple's Mail or Microsoft Outlook Express. It isn't like the old X11 clients where the server is drawing the graphics. The local computer does most of the work to make it all nice an' look purty. The only delay is the transfer of the email across the network. This would be the same for a text email client or Microsoft Outlook Express. There are some settings in most email clients not to download large emails or not to download graphics. Email download is slower over dialup, but it really isn't that painful compared to Web browsing.
If you want to browse the Web, you can turn off the "Download Pictures" options in most Web browsers. Unfortunately, pages like http://www.apple.com/ will display practically nothing. Another possibility is to get a browser like Firefox, Safari, or Opera that allows you to set the web client to appear as if it is another browser. Set the browser client to appear to be a typical web-enabled phone, and you'll see text only webpages. Not as pretty, but it will allow you to view the news from Yahoo or the New York Times.
This article doesn't say that Google *is* being used for massive Spam. It's just a proof of concept. Google is aware of this issue, and they may have this fixed before Monday. Then again, this could be something endemic to SMTP, and would happen with any server. It's just that an gmail address is considered free from spam, so it is completely trusted.
The major problem with spam is quite simple: Spam is dirt cheap. I can send out a million spam messages for nothing. As long as I can do that, almost nothing will stop spam. You put on a technical control, and I'll have incentive to break it. The only way to prevent spam is to go to a sender pays model. The amount can be trivial (a very small fraction of a cent), and could be covered as part of your standard ISP agreement, but becomes substantial when you send out a million messages.
That won't get rid of all unsolicited commercial email, but it will get rid of the bulk of the scum. Of course, I am not sure how you'd go from a SMTP model to a new pay-for-sending model. And, what if a spammer steals someone's account (by maybe planting some sort of malware on someone's PC)?
I never was completely happy with the format of the auction in the first place. The auction allowed a single carrier to be the "winner" of the entire spectrum. This didn't do anything but guarantee a monopolistic situation. Verizon has a big advantage over everyone else due to the absolute control of this spectrum.
I also don't like the fact that Verizon uses CDMA since CDMA is not quite as open or as useful as GSM. In GSM devices, there's a SIM card. I can insert a company SIM card into any GSM device, and it's on there network. With CDMA, I have to bring my device to Verizon to setup. If Verizon claims my device isn't compatible with their network, I can't use that device.
I was not happy with Verizon as a winner. Like AT&T, they have monopolistic tendencies and use their built in land line base advantage to squeeze competitors. What could have been a world with dozens of carriers is quickly turning into a AT&T/Verizon duopoly.
Interesting is in this trial SCO is the defendant and Novell is the claimant. I thought it was SCO who is suing everyone.
It looks like via the stipulation and the way the trial is organized that SCO expects to lose. It appears that Novell simply wants to assert its claim to UnixWare and SCO is ready to close up shop. That's why the stipulation and the short trial and the fact that SCO isn't going to call up witnesses.
It doesn't surprise me that voting machines are not built as well as ATMs. ATMs are filled with thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars. It would be a rich target for all potential thieves. The voting machine electronics must be protected from all sorts of assaults. Voting machines only contain vote totals, so fewer people would be after them. After all, if you smash an ATM, you still get the money. You smash a voting machine, and you simply lose the votes.
The problem is we're stuck on machines vs. voting procedures. New York and New Jersey had voting machines that did not produce a paper trail for almost 100 years, and this was by design. The voting fraud problem in the Northeast was ballot stuffing. Voting machines, by eliminating paper ballots were designed to eliminate this type of voter fraud. The voting machines were designed around voting procedures. A voter had to register before hand. They had to sign in. Their signature was compared to their signature on their original application. The voter was handed a ticket. They handed that to a poll worker who would place the ticket in the voting machine, and pull a big lever which unlocked the machine. The voter would enter the machine, pull another lever to close the curtains and vote. When they finished, they pulled the lever to open the curtains. This cast the ballot and locked the machine. Poll watchers oversaw the whole process.
This machine/procedure combination eliminated ballot stuffing. The voter could only vote a single time before the machine locked up. The poll worker couldn't unlock the machine without the poll watchers noticing. Voter counts were taken from the machine totals, the tickets on the machines, and the sign in list. Since the voting machines were purely mechanical, they were trusted by all parties. All parties could watch the machines being setup and make sure there were no problems. Poll watchers would run tests before the polls opened to verify the machines. This didn't kill the political machines which simply switched tactics, and it didn't entirely eliminate voting fraud, but it certainly helped.
What we need to do is set a procedure up to ensure that elections are fair. Ballots must be secured and watched over by all parties. In Zimbabwe, they counted the votes locally at the polls and posted the results at each poll. This prevents the ruling party from manipulating the ballots. You could go from poll to poll, and add up the election results yourself. We also must ensure that each voter votes only once, and that each voter's vote is totaled as they intended. That was the issue in Florida with the punch card system.
So, we need to think beyond the "technology" aspect of the voting. It isn't paper ballots are simply better. It's about ensuring that we have confidence in the tabulation of the votes and whether it truly reflects the view of the populous. So, think of how you'd secure the paper ballots, how they would be counted. Who would oversee the procedure? How would the ballot boxes be protected from additional votes being added? How do we ensure that voters only vote once and not sneak in additional ballots? How do we verify the ballots? How can we ensure the entire procedure is fair?
The problem with the current Diabold style voting machines is that they are mystery boxes and we cannot tell if they tabulate the vote fairly. We would have to ensure the firmware, the software, and hardware has not been tampered with. A paper trail can help since paper is easier to verify. But, paper is easy to duplicate, toss, and manipulate which is why the Northeast went to the mechanical paperless machines to begin with.
Unless you think of the entire voting process, and ensure the voting process is easy to verify, it doesn't matter how voters cast their ballots.
That's why God invented WiFi. Of course, someone could be sniffing the packets, so I use my ISP's web based email that does everything over HTTPS. Or, you can use gmail which also uses SSL certificates. I wish more ISPs use SSL certificates in their email Internet connections instead of cleartext.
In fact, I'm surprised that they haven't incorporated SSL into the standard WiFi protocol. Why must standard WiFi be so insecure? Yes, I know you can use WPA2, but that requires me to give everyone a password which kinda of puts a damper on pubic access. The World Wide Web can do it, why not build in the same mechanism into WiFi?
No body -- except for large financial institutions care a whit about your college. What they want to see is what you've done with your life. In fact, some of the people we hire never went to college.
My advice is no matter which college you go to, get involved with the computer science department. Help take care of the machines. Learn programming on your own. Get involved with an open source project. Heck, if you can, do some work on the Linux kernel. Your cohorts will matter because this group of people will help you push yourself to do better and these will be the people who can answer your questions.
At a highly technical college, you'll have a bigger pool of people to work with and there's more likely a chance that you'll find a mentor who will help you out in your geekhood. Then again, there's a great value in a good liberal arts education. A good liberal arts education can show you things beyond computers and programming that you might actually find interesting and maybe career worthy. After 30 years of programming, whatever glamour there is in computers tends to wear out. Plus, you're constantly battling to remain relevant. And, then there's the younger, more technically apt people you find yourself competing with.
The point is simple: By the time you graduate, you need to have on your resume that you've actually done useful work. That you've shown initiative. Be part of the Summer of Code. Work on the Linux kernel. Do your own open source project. One of the people I hired got the job by showing me their webpage. On it was about four or six various coding projects. He also had a support forum with hundreds of users posting on it. When I showed the webpage to a coworker, he immediately recognized one of the software programs this person wrote as something they personally use. At that point, it didn't matter if this person went to Acme Technical School of Restaurant and Hotel Management, Plumbing, and Hair Styling or to MIT. He got the job.
Yes, but mainly because of how ubiquitous Windows is. We develop Java applications using Eclipse, but all of our desktop machines are Windows XP machines. This means we run Eclipse, Java, and all the various JARs we need (not to mention both Ant and Maven) in Windows. We also use CVS, but will be moving to Subversion. All open source, and all running on Windows.
Why Windows? Because that's what corporate environments use. Our corporate officers want Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, and Microsoft Project. We get resumes in Microsoft Word. Whether we like it or not, we need to be able to use Windows.
I am sure that you look at many Open Source companies, most of their desktop machines will be Windows and that's what many developers will be using. This is even true of Google where all development is pretty much Linux and Web based. Heck, I bet even 37 Singles has more than a few Windows systems around.
Think of Microsoft Windows like the Flu. If you're very careful, you might be able to avoid it -- at least for a while. However sooner or later, you'll get caught. And when you do, you'll fell miserable.
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Apple has strong controls over their OS because they remember what happened the last time they allowed clones. The clones were poorly made and executed the old Mac OS rather poorly. This hurt Apple's overall reputation.
Psystar doesn't have a right to modify Mac OS X and put it on their machines. Apple has full rights to stop them. Psystar could make a machine that could take a modified version of Mac OS X. They just wouldn't be allowed to put this modified version on their machine.
My feeling is that Apple will allow Psystar to live as long as they stop selling machines with Mac OS X on them. Apple really doesn't care too much about the small market share they might lose to Psystar. Most likely, the people buying these clones wouldn't have bought a Mac anyway. If these people then want to spend $125 and get Mac OS X to work on Psystar, that's their prerogative and Apple won't stop them.
What Apple wants to avoid is the average user saying "Why should I spend $1200 on a iMac when I can by a Psystar for only $500?". Even worse, Apple doesn't want these same users saying, "Man, I bought this Psystar system, and Mac OX sucks! It keep crashing, and it is slow. I don't know why people think Apple is so hot. Their stuff stinks!".
Always remember: Apple is a hardware company that builds high quality hardware. They only make software in order to sell that hardware in the best light. Apple chose the premium market because they rather make $200 on each sale rather than sell five times as many machines, but only make $40 on each one.
Apple doesn't want some clone coming along and ruining their reputation. As far as Apple is concerned, Psystar can live as long as they don't mess with Apple's reputation.
The problem with the arguments as presented is "open source" vs. "proprietary". This is completely silly. My firm builds proprietary software, but we are completely dependent upon open source tools. Apple's OS is based upon Open Source, but itself is proprietary. IBM certainly makes products and machines that are proprietary in nature, but is one of the biggest supporters of Linux. Google's whole empire is based upon cheap PCs and Linux.
This paper's synopsis makes it sounds like if you're a software firm, you must "compete" against open source by defeating it, or else it will destroy you. However, the most successful firms are the ones that have embraced open source tools and techniques to build their own unique product.
Microsoft is a sore exception, and would probably be doing much better if they weren't so anti-open source.
That's probably the thinking at Microsoft. Apple has these ads with two guys talking to each other, and that's cool. We should do the same. And, who's cooler than that 1990 comedy sensation, Jerry Steinfeld?
The problem is that Apple had two people, one young and cool, the other old and not-so-cool. Microsoft's ads had two old, not-so-cool people in them. I'm sure that all of them college kids really related to two 50+ years olds wandering around and talking about random stuff.
I can hear them now: "Hey, that's just like my grandpa! Right before we put him in the nursing home."
I wouldn't mind DRM if it was truly buy once, play anywhere, but that's not how it's going to work.
Heck, these are the same people who came up with the concept of DVD "Zones". You can own two identical DVD players from the same manufacturer, but you can't play the same DVD in them if one player is set to one "zone" and one player set to another "zone".
This is also the same group that allows me to buy a song via iTunes, and play it on my iPhone, but won't let me play that same song as a ringtone without shelling out another buck. (Yes, I know Apple isn't in this group, but the media companies that decided that a license to listen to music doesn't cover listening to it as a ringtone are in this group.)
As far as these people are concerned, each device needs a separate license, and I have to pay for each one. That's how this is going to be played out.
Here's a question: Person goes into Best Buy. They may buy either a Mac or a PC. Mac runs Mac OSX. Will the gurus be persuading people not to buy a Mac? Doubt it because Best Buy makes a bundle off of Mac sales -- much more than on PC sales. Certainly, Best Buy didn't agree to allow the Windows Gurus to persuade their customers to switch from buying a high margin Macs to a low margin PCs.
So, that leaves PCs, and don't almost all PCs come with Vista? So, Windows Gurus aren't suppose to tell people not to buy Macs, and anyone who isn't buying a Mac is then buying a PC with Vista on it already. What is Microsoft paying these people $20/hour to do?
The answer seems to come from *another* story. HP is apparently working on a Linux-based OS that will be used on their next generation Windows machines. HP, has several reasons: First, they're unhappy with Microsoft with the way Microsoft forced the PC manufacturers to ram Vista down people's throats. Second, the Windows license is now the most expensive part in a PC. Get rid of Windows, and you can knock another $30 off the price. That's a big difference when PCs are hitting below the $300 mark. And finally, in an era of look alike PCs, a PC with a friendly non-Windows OS can distinguish itself from its rivals.
It's not that HP won't be selling Windows computers, it's that they'll start charging extra for Windows. In fact, we see this on the sub-notebook machines where Windows is an extra cost option. I bet that's what Microsoft is really worried about. The Guru's job is to convince the customers that paying the $30-$50 for the Windows Vista option is certainly worth it.
I made a prediction before that Microsoft would lower the cost of the Vista Home Basic license to $1 or even free, then charge people $100 to upgrade to Vista Premium (on-line only - no more CDs). That way, they can keep Linux off the PC since putting Windows Vista on the PC barely costs the manufacturer anything, and make some money on people buying the extra Vista Premium features. Since Vista Premium is on line only, there won't be any Vista Premium CDs being shared among neighbors. Plus, their other programs (like Microsoft Office) could still be sold to people even if they don't upgrade to Vista Premium.
I don't know if Microsoft is going to move in that direction, but their Windows monopoly is now in danger.
This is all a side issue. Google has promised to back FireFox until 2011. Google Chrome isn't a browser, but a template on how FireFox, Safari, and other browsers should behave. What Google wants:
* More multi-threading in the browser. Browsers shouldn't freeze up.
* More multi-process tasking. Browsers shouldn't crash because of a bad webpage
* Faster JavaScript: How much do you want to bet that V8 will quickly become part of WebKit.
* Standardized Rendering Engine: This will put pressure on FireFox and Opera to switch to the WebKit engine, or at least make sure their browsers are 100% compatible. Thus, standardizing desktop and mobile device browsers on WebKit.
It's not so much that Chrome is Google's candidate in the browser wars as much as a template other browsers should strive for. I love the fast JavaScript engine and the multi-processing approach to webpage rendering. You'll start seeing that adapted by the other browsers in the next year. I also like some of the security features like the complete sandbox approach. Google's idea is that your browser will become infected, and the browser should prevent the infection from spreading.
Wonder why they can't find any Cobol programmer? There are probably Cobol programmers on the state payroll maintaining this system, but do you want to modify a computer program, so your employer can cut your pay by 75%? Didn't think so.
There could be a question of whether the librarian in charge had the power to hand over the computers to the FBI without going to a higher up. However, this is only an issue if the FBI knew that the person they talked to had no power to hand over the computers without a warrant, and specifically attempted to get around having to request a warrant. If the FBI did not know, then the FBI had full rights to seize the computers without a warrant.
For example, my wife gives the police permission to search my business records even though I did not want them searched, most courts will allow anything that is discovered in those records to be used as evidence. It is generally assumed that one spouse can give permission to search another spouse's belongings. However, if the FBI had contacted me earlier about searching my business records, and I told the FBI I wouldn't give over the records without a warrant. And, then the FBI asks my wife for permission, the courts will normally not allow anything discovered by that search to be used in court.
The bigger question is whether the librarian should have cooperated with the police in a search without the FBI first getting a warrant. If I was the librarian, I would tell the FBI I'll take the computers out of service and lock them up, so that whatever is on the computers isn't destroyed, but they must first get a warrant before I can allow them to seize them. That just makes sure that the FBI isn't simply trolling for possible information. I don't mind the library cooperating with authorities. What I do mind is cooperating in a way that doesn't ensure the rights of their patrons.
Getting a warrant isn't difficult. All it takes is a quick phone call by a D.A. to a judge - in emergencies, most judges will allow the paperwork to be filled out later. There have been cases where the police requested a search w/o a warrant, the occupant said "no", the police sit around questioning the subject, and fifteen minutes later, someone comes in with the warrant.
Sadam had declared this depot of uranium during the last Gulf War. It was put under U.N. jurisdiction and monitored for years.
Sadam had lots of weapons and stockpiles that were put under U.N. seals, and monitored by personnel and remote cameras. These depots were located all over Iraq and most were intact when the U.S. invaded. Fortunately, this nasty stuff stayed in the depot despite all the chaos.
Unfortunately, much of the material that was under U.N. jurisdiction did disappear right after the U.S. invasion. In one depot, the U.S. troops acknowledged that a long range rocket depot was still intact, left for the Battle of Bagdad, and when they came back, it was all gone. This particular depot was about 50 miles from the Iraq/Iran border, and there is some thought that maybe the Iranians saw their chance to grab some "Weapons o' Mass Destruction" before anyone noticed. Then again, Iraqis may have entered this compound and sold its contents for scrap. We will never know.
This is an issue, and it is an issue with Open Source.
First, this isn't an Israel vs. Palestinian rights question. However, it did put this organization in the midst of the issue. His wife's organization trusted a commonly used Open Source widget and got pulled into an unfortunate debate.
Why is this an Open Source issue? Because the way Open Source works: If I buy a program from Microsoft, I can completely hold Microsoft responsible for the results. However, many times, Open Source software depends upon multiple contributors who themselves might have other contributors. Finding the person responsible for a particular issue can be quite tough. The widget in question was Causes which was produced by Project Agape. Project Agape tried to fob off responsibility upon the Ruby or Rails module ActionView::Helpers::FormOptionsHelper.
Then, the issue popped up that the real problem is that the payment processor Network for Good doesn't accept credit card payments from Israel. Network for Good claims that "e-commerce experts" list Israel as a high fraud country. But, the territories under Palestinian control is one of the worst places for credit card fraud because of the weakness of the governing structure and the many super legal organizations and militias that operate outside the rule of law. I've looked over the organizations that back Network for Good, but I doubt any of them would have any anti-Israel bias. It could be that Palestine wasn't black listed by Network for Good as a high credit card fraud country because it isn't a country and wasn't on the list given to them by their e-commerce experts. Yet, it is listed in the RoR module.
So who is responsible? The original organization that used the Causes widget on their page not knowing that in a list of 140+ countries, laid a time bomb that was going to get them in the middle of a political debate they rather avoid, Network for Good that doesn't process payments from Israel, the Causes widget that lists Palestine but not Israel, or the ROR module that lists both Israel and Palestine?
That's why it is an Open Source issue. It is the power of Open Source to be able to freely build new projects from prebuilt modules. Yet, it is also the curse: Because so many bits and pieces are involved, it becomes impossible to point the Finger o' Blame at the responsible party.
What is different is that the French have created an actual mechanism to report such sites:
This strikes me as maybe a slightly better way sites are blacklisted in the United States: Individual ISPs just block the site at random, or someone sues someone else in court. By having an official list, ISPs can't ban a site for possible political or competition reasons and claim they're trying to stop something else. There have been several cases where birth control or pro-choice sites have become unavailable and the ISP claims it was merely attempting to shield the eyes of poor innocent children from non-friendly material.
I am not sure of the best way to handle this situation, but since the French government is attempting to do what other Western democracies are attempting to do, I can't quite call this exactly the rise of fascism.
Because Ruby on Rails developers will not have to switch to JavaScript in order to do AJAX like stuff.
.NET, but Silverlight in order to take over the Flash market. The funny thing is that Flash is probably peeking in popularity. The problem is one of the shear diversity of web browsing platforms that will be coming out soon. The iPhone is just the first such device, and already sites are removing flash from their webpages in order to make them iPhone compatible. Yes, Adobe is going to release flash for the iPhone, but what happens when Android comes out? Is Adobe really going to build flash for each and every version of an Android handset? They simply don't have the resources. Microsoft will find the same situation with Silverlight. They simply won't be able to support all the platforms that people want to use.
One of the problems in Web Development is using one language for the back end (whether Java, Ruby, or PHP) and then when you need some asynchronous action on the client side, you have to switch your syntax to JavaScript. It can be a bit of a pain. It's not that you may not know both JavaScript and Ruby, but that you have to keep switching between the two and that can make brain hurt.
I take it that Silverlight will be doing the "ARAX" side of things. It's actually a neat idea. You can use a single language for both the Client and Server side, but where JavaScript is built from the ground up to live inside a webpage, Ruby isn't. I guess that's why there's IronRuby which will be a bit more "JavaScript" like.
The big problem is that the Ruby interpreter will be Silverlight. Where as JavaScript is built into WebKit, an open source project, Silverlight is proprietary. If you create a new web browser, you can easily adopt WebKit and get a standardized JavaScript implementation. With ARAX, you're either going have to role your own or depend upon Microsoft to create a Silverlight interpreter.
The whole thing is to push not
In the old days, this was okay because it brought people into the Windows world. But, as people move from the desktop, Windows isn't the end all/be all platform it use to be. People like their iPhones and iPods. People will start buying Android based stuff. Symbian and RIM both are larger platforms. Windows Mobile is a distant fourth in sales this year. Measured in licenses, Windows Mobile is still more popular than the iPhone, but that doesn't include all the devices laying in some drawer gathering dust. Assuming a 2 year average product lifespan, Windows is fourth behind the iPhone which hasn't been out for a year yet. Can Microsoft (or is Microsoft even willing) to put Silverlight on all the various platforms out there? If not, developers just won't use ARAX.
We get so hung up on paper ballots as if this would be a cure all for voting fraud. In the Northeast, paper ballots were eliminated in favor of mechanical voting machines in order to eliminate fraud.
Yup, that's right. Back in the beginning of the last century, the biggest voting fraud was ballot box stuffing and ballot replacement. Read Carter's book "Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age" about his 1962 election for State Senate and see what type of fraud can occur with paper ballots.
When New York and New Jersey went with the mechanical voting machines, they instituted quite a few procedures to help eliminate fraud. The polling chief has a book containing all registered voters with their signatures. When a voter comes to vote, they sign that book, and the signatures are compared. Once the polling chief is satisfied that the person is a registered voter, they have the person sign a voting ticket in the ticket book. Once the ticket is signed, it is given to the person in charge of the voting booth. This person threads the ticket onto a string, and pulls a large lever to set the machine for voting. The voter enters the machine, pulls a lever to close the drapes, and this unlocks the voting switches. The voter can flip the switches for the people they want to vote for, and then pulls the lever to open the drapes. This registers the tallies and resets the voting switches.
The procedure is overseen by representatives of everyone on the ballot. A voter cannot vote twice because the machine needs to be reset by the person in charge of the voting booth. Diseased voters no longer show up to vote since you now have signatures to match against. The levers are set by the county and the machine is sealed and cannot be reset without a master key. The mechanical machines and the procedures that went with them helped clean up the elections in the Northeast.
The problem is that these mechanical systems (which could be programmed in a very limited way) have been replaced by general CPUs with some form of voting software that no one is 100% sure how it works. You could always see how the gears and levers turn, but you can't see electrons flowing through silicone. It isn't the lack of paper as much as the lack of assurance that no one replaced the software or the tallies on the memory card.
What we must understand is that a secure voting system is more than just a paper ballot which can be stuffed by the dozen into a ballot box. It is a whole procedure of verifying the voter, the ballot, and that there is a one-to-one correspondence of voters to ballots.
My suggestion is to take care of what you can. There is no way of knowing if the software on the machine hasn't been tampered with before it was brought into the polling station. But, verify that the memory card is sealed and cannot be tampered with. Verify that the counters are reset and are zeroed out before the voting starts. Put a system in place to make sure that voters can only vote once. Make sure that no one is hanging over the voter. Make sure the voters actually finished voting. Some will press the buttons for their candidates but forget to push the final "Vote" button. Make sure that the machine has been reset before each voter.
When the vote is finished, tally up the various totals and make sure they are in agreement. The number of votes should match the number of voters. Track the number of voters who simply decide not to vote and count them in any total.
More importantly, follow whatever procedures you have. Get a hold of them before election day and study them thoroughly. That's the biggest problem. The volunteers at the polls not knowing the voting procedure.
Lots of luck. I use to be a Texas poll watcher when we had those idiotic punch card ballots. We would verify that each card has cleanly punched chads before handing them to the voter. We had to verify that each voter had only a single punch card and we also would quickly examine the punched ballot for dimpled or hanging chads before
Here's what has been pointed out so far:
* Apple has such a big market share for the $1000+ market because most PC are cheaper.
* True, but if you deck out a regular PC to match Apple's specs, it'll be around the same price.
You're all missing something rather significant. Apple makes very competitive machines, but they don't make all those low or no margin PCs that other manufactures make to boost sales and act as a loss leader for their more expensive models.
And, because of that Apple is doing quite well. Thank you very much. Apple could greatly increase their market share if they started selling low cost PCs. But, if Apple started doing that, they'd be lowering their profit margins. And, that would make the Apple stores unprofitable. Apple would be forced to close the Apple stores and cut back on customer service in general. That would make Apple just another Dell or HP.
Compare an Apple store to a typical PC retailer. There are dozens of Macs all running, and they're all connected to the Internet. iPhones and iPods are everywhere. Sales people don't chase you away if you're just browsing. Heck, browsing is highly encouraged. And, salespeople actually know something about the product. Apple service is highly rated by almost all consumer surveys.
In other words, Apple sells PCs that they can actually make a pretty profit on, and then use that profit to build an image that encourages people to spend the extra dough for an Apple PC. All this makes Apple (get ready for this...) more profitable than any other computer or electronics company - ever. Back in 1998, I bought $1000 of Apple when Steve Jobs took over. I thought I was clever when I sold it after a few months for about $5000. Well, if I was still holding on to that stock today, it would be worth over $1,500,000. Duh! Over the past decade Apple's stock has outperformed Google.
Whether or not you are a Drinker-of-the Koolade or an Apple Basher, you have to look at Apple as a way to be highly profitable in a commodity business. You don't need a MacBook to appreciate this aspect of the business. Anyone who is interested in running a company should pay attention to Apple's playbook. Apple caters to the higher end of the market, but unlike companies like Bose and Mercedes, which also have a similar strategy, Apple's products are not prime luxury goods that only a few can consider buying. A more significant number is that Apple has broken the 10% mark of market share and is the third largest manufacture of PCs. And, that's pretty hard to bash.
They changed the IP address of the "L" root server, but might have kept the old one active just because not everyone was going to change their configuration in lock step.
They could have kept the address, but then provided a note that the configuration was incorrect, but that really dones' help a lot. I, as an end user can't do much to change the configuration of my nameserver. Besides, my nameserver might have been using another nameserver which used another before it got to the root server. All that would have done would be to frustrate a lot of people, but not allow them to get around the problem.
So, unless it is known that the old L root server IP was actually hijacked and that ICANN didn't just leave it running in a deprecated state for about six months to allow other name servers the time they needed to update their records, I can't really say this is an issue.
Maybe someone should contact ICANN to see if they have any statement on this issue.
I am an absolute Unix head. My favorite word processor is vi. Yet, I really don't see the big friggin' problem here. The idea is to get these machines into the hands of kids. If putting Windows on these things makes third world bureaucrats happy, let's do it. Windows is an option and not a requirement. You have to pay extra for it, and it requires more hardware (more memory, etc.). But, many governments in the third world look at this computer as a toy foisted upon them by the Western world who knows better. It's one of the reasons why OLPC was having so many problems getting these computers into the hands of children. The West get real computers, they get toys -- just another unjust exercise in imperialism.
Yes, it is ridiculous, but there's three hundred years of Western imperialism that we have to live down, and it colors lots of the interactions between the Third World and the West. Flexibility is the key. Listen to your customers. Don't lecture them about what they need. If they want Windows and Microsoft is willing, and if it prevents Microsoft from attempting their own cheap computer project that will undermine OLPC, then this is great news.
If your parents main concern is email, they can still use the standard GUI Email clients like Apple's Mail or Microsoft Outlook Express. It isn't like the old X11 clients where the server is drawing the graphics. The local computer does most of the work to make it all nice an' look purty. The only delay is the transfer of the email across the network. This would be the same for a text email client or Microsoft Outlook Express. There are some settings in most email clients not to download large emails or not to download graphics. Email download is slower over dialup, but it really isn't that painful compared to Web browsing.
If you want to browse the Web, you can turn off the "Download Pictures" options in most Web browsers. Unfortunately, pages like http://www.apple.com/ will display practically nothing. Another possibility is to get a browser like Firefox, Safari, or Opera that allows you to set the web client to appear as if it is another browser. Set the browser client to appear to be a typical web-enabled phone, and you'll see text only webpages. Not as pretty, but it will allow you to view the news from Yahoo or the New York Times.
This article doesn't say that Google *is* being used for massive Spam. It's just a proof of concept. Google is aware of this issue, and they may have this fixed before Monday. Then again, this could be something endemic to SMTP, and would happen with any server. It's just that an gmail address is considered free from spam, so it is completely trusted.
The major problem with spam is quite simple: Spam is dirt cheap. I can send out a million spam messages for nothing. As long as I can do that, almost nothing will stop spam. You put on a technical control, and I'll have incentive to break it. The only way to prevent spam is to go to a sender pays model. The amount can be trivial (a very small fraction of a cent), and could be covered as part of your standard ISP agreement, but becomes substantial when you send out a million messages.
That won't get rid of all unsolicited commercial email, but it will get rid of the bulk of the scum. Of course, I am not sure how you'd go from a SMTP model to a new pay-for-sending model. And, what if a spammer steals someone's account (by maybe planting some sort of malware on someone's PC)?
I never was completely happy with the format of the auction in the first place. The auction allowed a single carrier to be the "winner" of the entire spectrum. This didn't do anything but guarantee a monopolistic situation. Verizon has a big advantage over everyone else due to the absolute control of this spectrum.
I also don't like the fact that Verizon uses CDMA since CDMA is not quite as open or as useful as GSM. In GSM devices, there's a SIM card. I can insert a company SIM card into any GSM device, and it's on there network. With CDMA, I have to bring my device to Verizon to setup. If Verizon claims my device isn't compatible with their network, I can't use that device.
I was not happy with Verizon as a winner. Like AT&T, they have monopolistic tendencies and use their built in land line base advantage to squeeze competitors. What could have been a world with dozens of carriers is quickly turning into a AT&T/Verizon duopoly.
Always whining! "I want my software to do this!", "I want this feature!", "I don't like that design!".
If it wasn't for them, programming would be much easier.
Interesting is in this trial SCO is the defendant and Novell is the claimant. I thought it was SCO who is suing everyone.
It looks like via the stipulation and the way the trial is organized that SCO expects to lose. It appears that Novell simply wants to assert its claim to UnixWare and SCO is ready to close up shop. That's why the stipulation and the short trial and the fact that SCO isn't going to call up witnesses.
It doesn't surprise me that voting machines are not built as well as ATMs. ATMs are filled with thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars. It would be a rich target for all potential thieves. The voting machine electronics must be protected from all sorts of assaults. Voting machines only contain vote totals, so fewer people would be after them. After all, if you smash an ATM, you still get the money. You smash a voting machine, and you simply lose the votes.
The problem is we're stuck on machines vs. voting procedures. New York and New Jersey had voting machines that did not produce a paper trail for almost 100 years, and this was by design. The voting fraud problem in the Northeast was ballot stuffing. Voting machines, by eliminating paper ballots were designed to eliminate this type of voter fraud. The voting machines were designed around voting procedures. A voter had to register before hand. They had to sign in. Their signature was compared to their signature on their original application. The voter was handed a ticket. They handed that to a poll worker who would place the ticket in the voting machine, and pull a big lever which unlocked the machine. The voter would enter the machine, pull another lever to close the curtains and vote. When they finished, they pulled the lever to open the curtains. This cast the ballot and locked the machine. Poll watchers oversaw the whole process.
This machine/procedure combination eliminated ballot stuffing. The voter could only vote a single time before the machine locked up. The poll worker couldn't unlock the machine without the poll watchers noticing. Voter counts were taken from the machine totals, the tickets on the machines, and the sign in list. Since the voting machines were purely mechanical, they were trusted by all parties. All parties could watch the machines being setup and make sure there were no problems. Poll watchers would run tests before the polls opened to verify the machines. This didn't kill the political machines which simply switched tactics, and it didn't entirely eliminate voting fraud, but it certainly helped.
What we need to do is set a procedure up to ensure that elections are fair. Ballots must be secured and watched over by all parties. In Zimbabwe, they counted the votes locally at the polls and posted the results at each poll. This prevents the ruling party from manipulating the ballots. You could go from poll to poll, and add up the election results yourself. We also must ensure that each voter votes only once, and that each voter's vote is totaled as they intended. That was the issue in Florida with the punch card system.
So, we need to think beyond the "technology" aspect of the voting. It isn't paper ballots are simply better. It's about ensuring that we have confidence in the tabulation of the votes and whether it truly reflects the view of the populous. So, think of how you'd secure the paper ballots, how they would be counted. Who would oversee the procedure? How would the ballot boxes be protected from additional votes being added? How do we ensure that voters only vote once and not sneak in additional ballots? How do we verify the ballots? How can we ensure the entire procedure is fair?
The problem with the current Diabold style voting machines is that they are mystery boxes and we cannot tell if they tabulate the vote fairly. We would have to ensure the firmware, the software, and hardware has not been tampered with. A paper trail can help since paper is easier to verify. But, paper is easy to duplicate, toss, and manipulate which is why the Northeast went to the mechanical paperless machines to begin with.
Unless you think of the entire voting process, and ensure the voting process is easy to verify, it doesn't matter how voters cast their ballots.
That's why God invented WiFi. Of course, someone could be sniffing the packets, so I use my ISP's web based email that does everything over HTTPS. Or, you can use gmail which also uses SSL certificates. I wish more ISPs use SSL certificates in their email Internet connections instead of cleartext.
In fact, I'm surprised that they haven't incorporated SSL into the standard WiFi protocol. Why must standard WiFi be so insecure? Yes, I know you can use WPA2, but that requires me to give everyone a password which kinda of puts a damper on pubic access. The World Wide Web can do it, why not build in the same mechanism into WiFi?
No body -- except for large financial institutions care a whit about your college. What they want to see is what you've done with your life. In fact, some of the people we hire never went to college.
My advice is no matter which college you go to, get involved with the computer science department. Help take care of the machines. Learn programming on your own. Get involved with an open source project. Heck, if you can, do some work on the Linux kernel. Your cohorts will matter because this group of people will help you push yourself to do better and these will be the people who can answer your questions.
At a highly technical college, you'll have a bigger pool of people to work with and there's more likely a chance that you'll find a mentor who will help you out in your geekhood. Then again, there's a great value in a good liberal arts education. A good liberal arts education can show you things beyond computers and programming that you might actually find interesting and maybe career worthy. After 30 years of programming, whatever glamour there is in computers tends to wear out. Plus, you're constantly battling to remain relevant. And, then there's the younger, more technically apt people you find yourself competing with.
The point is simple: By the time you graduate, you need to have on your resume that you've actually done useful work. That you've shown initiative. Be part of the Summer of Code. Work on the Linux kernel. Do your own open source project. One of the people I hired got the job by showing me their webpage. On it was about four or six various coding projects. He also had a support forum with hundreds of users posting on it. When I showed the webpage to a coworker, he immediately recognized one of the software programs this person wrote as something they personally use. At that point, it didn't matter if this person went to Acme Technical School of Restaurant and Hotel Management, Plumbing, and Hair Styling or to MIT. He got the job.
Yes, but mainly because of how ubiquitous Windows is. We develop Java applications using Eclipse, but all of our desktop machines are Windows XP machines. This means we run Eclipse, Java, and all the various JARs we need (not to mention both Ant and Maven) in Windows. We also use CVS, but will be moving to Subversion. All open source, and all running on Windows.
Why Windows? Because that's what corporate environments use. Our corporate officers want Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, and Microsoft Project. We get resumes in Microsoft Word. Whether we like it or not, we need to be able to use Windows.
I am sure that you look at many Open Source companies, most of their desktop machines will be Windows and that's what many developers will be using. This is even true of Google where all development is pretty much Linux and Web based. Heck, I bet even 37 Singles has more than a few Windows systems around.
Think of Microsoft Windows like the Flu. If you're very careful, you might be able to avoid it -- at least for a while. However sooner or later, you'll get caught. And when you do, you'll fell miserable.