The security of electronic voting will be like the security of airports before 9/11. Everybody knows that it's not all it could be, but nobody really cares, because they have other things to think about.
It takes something really, really bad to get people to notice (like the 9/11 atrocities). However, it's difficult to imagine something of that magnitude happening with voting. Even all the shenanigins with Florida voting died down. I expect even if it turns out a company like Diebold explicitly threw an election, they would settle out of court, admit no wrongdoing, pay a fine and hunker down for a bit. With companies like MCI coming back while new howlers are coming to light, corporate responsibility doesn't mean too much any more.
Perhaps they could expand the market to other area also. How many lies are uncovered in a political speech, for example, or which politician is next caught in a sex or campaign constribution scandal. How big is next year's deficit going to be? What right will be attacked by the DOJ next? After the savings and loan and stock market scams, where will the next white collar mega-plunder be?
Most people do not have a direct connection to Middle East politics, so investments will be pretty much random bets. However, the American people get lied to and cheated every day, so they have a lot of historical knowledge. Also this will open up the opportunity for insider trading, so you don't have to be a company officer any more.
Obviously this is named after the long tradition in C and C++ of null pointer dereferencing. No C or C++ program is complete without it. The version after this one will be called C++BUFFEROVERFLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW...
The RFID tag IDs are useless without the database linking them to actual product items. If all the store's products were scanned by a third party, they would have no way of knowing what an individual ID corresponds to.
Secondly, anything that is sold should be marked as such in the store's database. Somebody walking into the store with tagged clothing should not be fingered for shop lifting, since the item shoudl have been marked as sold.
Your two reasons for not worrying about security are flawed. Care to try again?
The biggest problem that Microsoft has to deal with is their langusihing stock price. When the stock stalled in in 2000 many people left, because there was no more money to be made from the stock options.
Microsoft is made up of a load of long-timers who have made enough money through stock options that they don't really have to work and the newcomers whose stock options have been underwater for several years.
Without stock options (and the money generated with a rising stock price) neither the money or the work environment is much to write home about. Neither the old-timers or newcomers are particularly motivated and most of the "innovation" goes on by buying smaller companies.
Issuing a dividend is one way to pump the stock price up and thus motivate some employees.
I can on-up you there. The CD-ROM makes too much noise for me, so I use the same fanless VIA board with either NFS boot and powerline networking or a compact flash card root (using an IDE adapter) with an 802.11b adapter and the rest mounted over NFS. Totally silent.
I use debian on my servers and embedded machines and install with a minimal install first and use apt-get for any commands I need. The minimal install is the LordSutch install and is over in about 5 minutes. Immediately after I apt-get the commands I know I'll need and thereafter apt-get commands as needed.
I usually log in via ssh/xterm and just run a console on the screen. If I run a X server, it's usually Xvnc, so I don't have to work in a noisy machine room.
Desktop/laptop machines are usually RedHat - RH does have a nicer GUI than Debian, but RH seems to be rivalling Microsoft in the amount of unneeded programs that get installed by default.
Anybody here see the irony of SCO's comments appearing in the New York Times, previous employer of
Jayson Blair. Now we have two reality distortion fields to deal with.
IMHO, by far the biggest advantage of the QNX is the environment for developing device drivers. Device drivers are just processes that make special system calls that make themselve visible under the/dev/ file system. When a device driver crashes, the process dies and unless it got stuck in an interrupt, you are free to restart the driver. You can run the device driver in a debugger, since it is a regular program. This makes device driver development a breeze compared to Linux, where a crash in a kernel module will require a reboot.
As an added bonus, the/dev file system is entirely dynamic, showing only the drivers that are running. Thankfully, Linux is going in this direction.
Two areas where QNX falls down are the lack of USB profiles for mass storage and the lack of a journalling file system. The lack of a journalling file system is particularly worrisome, since QNX is often operating in an environment where the power could be pulled at any time.
When SCO actually takes action against IBM (other than saber rattling) expect IBM to (counter)sue. If SCO attempts to yank IBM's license, which I believe is perpetual, they will be attempting to destory IBM's AIX business - something that is rather important to IBM. Since IBM maintans that SCO's lawsuit is groundless (and certainly unproven),the action will be unjustified.
Even if SCO are right, revoking the licencse is the wrong thing to do. The correct thing for SCO to do is to sue IBM. If SCO ask for an injuction to stop IBM selling AIX, it will most certainly be denied because they have offered no proof. Revoking the license is wrong, because (unless the contract explicily states that SCO can do this) it will violate SCO's contract with IBM. In IBM's suit, IBM shows the contract and SCO revokation letter to the judge and jury and SCO loses.
Two wrongs do not make a right, so SCO has to be careful to follow a clear and rational path to redress their alleged grievances. Their public statments already put them on shaky ground and can be used in any suit that IBM would want to bring. IBM are playing it cool and are not saying anything except denying SCO's changing allegations.
Let me claim prior art on the "automated dumpster diver". This wonderful invention can scavenge a garbage dump or landfill, looking for stuff that you threw away 5 or 10 years ago.
Are we looking for the razor blades or other pakaging of products that you purchased? Of course not! We are looking for items that you threw out with that garbage. You know, correspondence from now-outlawed organizations sich as the ACLU, or maybe love letters from your non-Judeo-Christian-opposite-sex lovers. Remember, you threw them out with the packaging from your newly purchased Walmart goods. You don't remember? Well don't worry, cos' we've got your DNA on your trash anyway.
At every step where our (as in Ameriacan) liberty is being eroded, I think, "hell why not just exploit these bozos who voted in the lawmakers that let this happen."
Somebody mentioned RFID's being only valuable for big-ticket items, such as auto or airplane parts. Well I think I should also claim prior art on the high speed automated road-side RFID reader that can scan RFID's in automotive products. Set these up at regular intervals and not we can track you and incidentally fine you for any speeding infractions during your trip.
On checking out Yahoo's profile of SCO (and the plummeting stock price), I couldn't help noticing that he got paid $80,500 in 2002. Did he just join the company or does he have a massive stock option grant that will mushroom when... oh dear never mind.
The key thing with the PS2 is that Sony provides a Linux implementation, enabling one to run the huge library of open source code. They also provide APIs for some game specific functions.
Would Nintendo do the same? Any edge in performance would be negated by any restrictions associated with proprietary software. On the other hand, I'm sure that the open source community would greatly welcome either a Linux implementation (or documentation enabling an implementation) on the GameCube.
Demonstrating that the Linux kernel and SCO's kernel contain the same code is not enough. Even if it is the same code, how could one tell that SCO did not copy code from Linux into their proprietary codebase (and is thus in violation of the GPL)? They certainly had more opportunity.
The Linux kernel is published in a transparent manner on kernel.org and every release is dated and there exists email evidence to back up those dates. We all know exacly when Linus published each version from the start. It is open for everybody to see. How is SCO's kernel tracked? If they dated their source, how do we know that the dates are not forged?
Re:Minsky only has himself to blame.
on
AI Going Nowhere?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Speech recognition did not come out of AI initiatives. After expensive and fruitless attempts to apply AI techniques to speech recognition, researchers with statistical and signal processing backgrounds applied made substantial progress on speech recognition during the 1990's. The core search algorithm came from ones that modems use to extract digital signals from noisy signals.
The speech recognition community also investigated techniques using neural networks, although they did not produce a clear vin over the statisical technique called hidden Markov modelling.
AI techniques, such as espoused by Marvin Minsky, routinely completely failed when presented with anything approaching a real-world challenge.
IMHO the AI investigators who have a hands-on approach to making robots deal with real environments are the only ones who are likely to pull out AI's reputation of unusable results.
Speech Recognition Progresses Despite AI
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
The article mentions speech recognition as being part of AI, which does not fit with history. Modern speech recognition techniques are based on statistical pattern matching and also photentics. A lot of early research into speech recognition was motivated from an AI standpoint, coming out of MIT. The rationalization was that if humans could decipher words from spectrograms, so could machines. The MIT folks then started writing a humongous set of rules to classify a humongous set of spectrograms.
An end to this madness came when researchers from IBM and AT&T proposed using a statistical pattern matching technique called "Hidden Markov Modelling" to derive probabilistic finite state machines which were associated with multivariate probability distributions on observable events. This research was taken up by groups at BBN, SRI, CMU and also MIT.
Speech recognition only translates from sounds to words. The other part of the problem is to extract meaning from the words, once recognized. This is still the realm of AI and is in the stone age and has not progressed for years.
I quit a really bad job so I quit without having anything to go to. Fortunatley, I had some cash to live on, so I had the time to start working on an open source project. When it came time to get a job, the open source project with accompanied documentation served as an open resume. There's a lot of BS that goes on in interviews and having your prospective employer be able to look through your code and documentation removes a large degreee of uncertainly. I was the only perfson working on this, so when asked how much I contributed I could believably say "all of it".
There was also a bonus. When starting a job you often have to get a utility library to make life easier. With the open source project under my belt, I could just import it and start using it.
The solution to this (adopted by companies such as Sun, IBM & RedHat) is to sell open source software at a price that undercuts the established alternative, but is still enough to maintain credibility. The mindset in the US is that if something does not cost much, it is not valuable.
Why bother with GPS signals when US communications are routinely intercepted? That way, you can know where they are going to be, instead of where they are now.
Kuro5hin has an article on Russian news reports derived from intercepted coalition communication. They even tell you how to do it and where to buy the equipment.
I'm really saddened by the recklessness of the Bush administration, endangering not only Iraqi
civilians, but also British and American troops.
The US has mandated that all cellular phones be equipped with location devices. This should have been done by November 2002, but almost all companies missed this deadline. Still things seem to be on track to meeting this requirement later this year. The stated reason is that emergency services will be able to locate you if you dial 911 (the US emergency number).
However, they do not state if the authorities will be able to locate you even if you are not making an emergency call (or even not making a call at all).
Obviously, from this article, you can be located at all times which turns your cellular phone into mechanism the authorities can use to track you.
One wonders if they are going to go the extra mile and enable enable the authorities to eavesdrop on conversations via the phone's microphone. This should not be hard to do and I'd be willing to bet that the code to do this has been slipped in the phones already.
This comes just as Bill Gates has been trashing Linux at the MS MVP Summit. We should certainly listen to Microsoft's point of view at an OpenSource event, since we are interested in objective discussion and all points of view, but should not just provide Microsoft with another platform for propaganda.
After we have listened to them, we should ask for an opportunity for an open source advocate to present at the next MVP Summit, perhaps countering Bill's view of the world. I wonder if MicroSoft would accept.
Why go Open Source when you can funnel millions of taxpayer's dollars to somebody's brother-in-law, so they can kick it back to you. They're based in Houston and the COO is the son of the CEO. The whole thing stinks. Remember, this is the city that bought you Enron.
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It takes something really, really bad to get people to notice (like the 9/11 atrocities). However, it's difficult to imagine something of that magnitude happening with voting. Even all the shenanigins with Florida voting died down. I expect even if it turns out a company like Diebold explicitly threw an election, they would settle out of court, admit no wrongdoing, pay a fine and hunker down for a bit. With companies like MCI coming back while new howlers are coming to light, corporate responsibility doesn't mean too much any more.
Most people do not have a direct connection to Middle East politics, so investments will be pretty much random bets. However, the American people get lied to and cheated every day, so they have a lot of historical knowledge. Also this will open up the opportunity for insider trading, so you don't have to be a company officer any more.
Obviously this is named after the long tradition in C and C++ of null pointer dereferencing. No C or C++ program is complete without it. The version after this one will be called C++BUFFEROVERFLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW...
Secondly, anything that is sold should be marked as such in the store's database. Somebody walking into the store with tagged clothing should not be fingered for shop lifting, since the item shoudl have been marked as sold.
Your two reasons for not worrying about security are flawed. Care to try again?
Microsoft is made up of a load of long-timers who have made enough money through stock options that they don't really have to work and the newcomers whose stock options have been underwater for several years.
Without stock options (and the money generated with a rising stock price) neither the money or the work environment is much to write home about. Neither the old-timers or newcomers are particularly motivated and most of the "innovation" goes on by buying smaller companies.
Issuing a dividend is one way to pump the stock price up and thus motivate some employees.
I can on-up you there. The CD-ROM makes too much noise for me, so I use the same fanless VIA board with either NFS boot and powerline networking or a compact flash card root (using an IDE adapter) with an 802.11b adapter and the rest mounted over NFS. Totally silent.
I usually log in via ssh/xterm and just run a console on the screen. If I run a X server, it's usually Xvnc, so I don't have to work in a noisy machine room.
Desktop/laptop machines are usually RedHat - RH does have a nicer GUI than Debian, but RH seems to be rivalling Microsoft in the amount of unneeded programs that get installed by default.
Anybody here see the irony of SCO's comments appearing in the New York Times, previous employer of Jayson Blair. Now we have two reality distortion fields to deal with.
As an added bonus, the /dev file system is entirely dynamic, showing only the drivers that are running. Thankfully, Linux is going in this direction.
Two areas where QNX falls down are the lack of USB profiles for mass storage and the lack of a journalling file system. The lack of a journalling file system is particularly worrisome, since QNX is often operating in an environment where the power could be pulled at any time.
Even if SCO are right, revoking the licencse is the wrong thing to do. The correct thing for SCO to do is to sue IBM. If SCO ask for an injuction to stop IBM selling AIX, it will most certainly be denied because they have offered no proof. Revoking the license is wrong, because (unless the contract explicily states that SCO can do this) it will violate SCO's contract with IBM. In IBM's suit, IBM shows the contract and SCO revokation letter to the judge and jury and SCO loses.
Two wrongs do not make a right, so SCO has to be careful to follow a clear and rational path to redress their alleged grievances. Their public statments already put them on shaky ground and can be used in any suit that IBM would want to bring. IBM are playing it cool and are not saying anything except denying SCO's changing allegations.
Let me claim prior art on the "automated dumpster diver". This wonderful invention can scavenge a garbage dump or landfill, looking for stuff that you threw away 5 or 10 years ago.
Are we looking for the razor blades or other pakaging of products that you purchased? Of course not! We are looking for items that you threw out with that garbage. You know, correspondence from now-outlawed organizations sich as the ACLU, or maybe love letters from your non-Judeo-Christian-opposite-sex lovers. Remember, you threw them out with the packaging from your newly purchased Walmart goods. You don't remember? Well don't worry, cos' we've got your DNA on your trash anyway.
At every step where our (as in Ameriacan) liberty is being eroded, I think, "hell why not just exploit these bozos who voted in the lawmakers that let this happen."
Somebody mentioned RFID's being only valuable for big-ticket items, such as auto or airplane parts. Well I think I should also claim prior art on the high speed automated road-side RFID reader that can scan RFID's in automotive products. Set these up at regular intervals and not we can track you and incidentally fine you for any speeding infractions during your trip.
On checking out Yahoo's profile of SCO (and the plummeting stock price), I couldn't help noticing that he got paid $80,500 in 2002. Did he just join the company or does he have a massive stock option grant that will mushroom when... oh dear never mind.
Would Nintendo do the same? Any edge in performance would be negated by any restrictions associated with proprietary software. On the other hand, I'm sure that the open source community would greatly welcome either a Linux implementation (or documentation enabling an implementation) on the GameCube.
The Linux kernel is published in a transparent manner on kernel.org and every release is dated and there exists email evidence to back up those dates. We all know exacly when Linus published each version from the start. It is open for everybody to see. How is SCO's kernel tracked? If they dated their source, how do we know that the dates are not forged?
The speech recognition community also investigated techniques using neural networks, although they did not produce a clear vin over the statisical technique called hidden Markov modelling.
AI techniques, such as espoused by Marvin Minsky, routinely completely failed when presented with anything approaching a real-world challenge.
IMHO the AI investigators who have a hands-on approach to making robots deal with real environments are the only ones who are likely to pull out AI's reputation of unusable results.
An end to this madness came when researchers from IBM and AT&T proposed using a statistical pattern matching technique called "Hidden Markov Modelling" to derive probabilistic finite state machines which were associated with multivariate probability distributions on observable events. This research was taken up by groups at BBN, SRI, CMU and also MIT.
Speech recognition only translates from sounds to words. The other part of the problem is to extract meaning from the words, once recognized. This is still the realm of AI and is in the stone age and has not progressed for years.
I just looked at this description of the levels of hell. SBC is advertising between the 7th and 8th levels of hell.
There was also a bonus. When starting a job you often have to get a utility library to make life easier. With the open source project under my belt, I could just import it and start using it.
The solution to this (adopted by companies such as Sun, IBM & RedHat) is to sell open source software at a price that undercuts the established alternative, but is still enough to maintain credibility. The mindset in the US is that if something does not cost much, it is not valuable.
Kuro5hin has an article on Russian news reports derived from intercepted coalition communication. They even tell you how to do it and where to buy the equipment.
I'm really saddened by the recklessness of the Bush administration, endangering not only Iraqi civilians, but also British and American troops.
However, they do not state if the authorities will be able to locate you even if you are not making an emergency call (or even not making a call at all).
Obviously, from this article, you can be located at all times which turns your cellular phone into mechanism the authorities can use to track you.
One wonders if they are going to go the extra mile and enable enable the authorities to eavesdrop on conversations via the phone's microphone. This should not be hard to do and I'd be willing to bet that the code to do this has been slipped in the phones already.
Or maybe a more accurate thing to say is that proprietary operating system software is dead. Applications are what provide value to the consumer.
There must be some range of size that is too big to ignore and small enough to do something about. So why not?
After we have listened to them, we should ask for an opportunity for an open source advocate to present at the next MVP Summit, perhaps countering Bill's view of the world. I wonder if MicroSoft would accept.
Why go Open Source when you can funnel millions of taxpayer's dollars to somebody's brother-in-law, so they can kick it back to you. They're based in Houston and the COO is the son of the CEO. The whole thing stinks. Remember, this is the city that bought you Enron.