>> micromoog wrote:
>> To paraphrase: conservatives believe the poor should be
>> helped, just that they shouldn't have to be the ones
>> doing it.
> jdavidb wrote:
> Actually, you've got it backwards. When you tax people to
> help the poor, you're taking other people's money. Private
> efforts means doing it yourself.
This is one of the more misunderstood positions on the left that I've encountered. Many conservatives genuinely believe in the self-improvement route. Not to say that the poor shouldn't be helped, but those who are receiving help should be making measurable contributions towards their own betterment. Coupled with a suspicion toward bueracracy in government, this makes it attractive to keep socialism to a minimum.
The misconception that I find among many conservatives who take this position is that they don't recognize that the poor do not live under the same constraints that they do. Think Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They often live in an environment that does not allow them to make the sorts of contributions that those conservatives require.
The truth is that ending poverty requires a holistic solution that may not exist. The effort needs to come from all quarters, both public and private. I don't know if human nature will let it happen since it likely means to lower the standard of living of those who are most in the position to make a difference.
As for the privatization, I find just as much bueracracy, waste, averice, politics and corruption in private corporations as I do in government. I've worked within both. The difference is the government has a harder time hiding it.
As a female grad student in a male-dominated lab, it's essential that these role models exist.
I've always enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together. But, as a kid, in spite of being an honor student, I had given up academically on science before I ever really got started because I got the impression it was something I wasn't expected to master. At least, that was the case until I was 11.
Last year, while I was watching Robotech (particularly The Macross Saga), I realized that some of the characters had really influenced me when I was a kid. I was able identify with several women in the mostly female bridge crew of the SDF-1. About that time, I started programming and learning whatever I could about computers. There were times when I really felt isolated at home and school because of my interests, but I'm very stubborn. I decided that the satisfaction I get from programming was more important than how uncomfortable people were around me.
When it occurred to me that Robotech had had an influence on my life, I started to question if maybe I was giving the show too much credit. But then I realized there really aren't too many female engineers to act as role models (at least, not in my life), much less well-known female engineering role models (real or fictional).
The timing of this article I think is simply intended to make the author look prescient.
That hadn't occurred to me, but I think you're right. I think Apple's 2nd quarter call is 4/14. For those who have watched Apple's stock over the years, you'll recall that Q2 has always been their weak one.
Apple's stock price just surged way ahead creating a ludicrous price-to-earning ratio (about 70). Part of this was the Sony-buy-out rumor, and the other was a wave of good i-pod press and g5 super computer press.
Is that the Apple-buyout-rumor-du-jour? You'd think people have heard of the boy who cries wolf by now. There is a good reason to think there are new G5s on the way, though. Apple has been trending towards doing memory promotions right before they release a new desktop. Check the Apple Store for their latest. Mind you, that's not based on anything other than an informal observation.
I think this author,probably in the pay of microsoft, is planting a story anticipating the near term price fall of apple stock to make himeslef look good and maybe stimie apples encroachment on windowns in the enterprise world.
I doubt they're in MS's pay. Only folks into tech really seem to get religous about platform. It's just another story to generate revenue for the magazine.
The books seems to have a cult status among nerds, though I really cannot find many nerds or why anyone would think of nerds while reading the books or watching the movies.
There seems to be an association between sci-fi/fantasy and the so-called nerd culture. I think it's due to the fact that a lot of folks who fall into the classic nerd profile tend to be rather escapist. It doesn't hurt that nerds also seem to read a bit more than the average person. That's a pretty long story.
Since WHEN did GODDAMMED/PROJECT/ MANAGEMENT have ANYTHING to do with "innovation" ("...and productivity" - well, outsourcing sure looks good on paper so, ok)!? Such utter bloody nonsense.
To be fair, if you've ever met a really good project manager (and I'll admit they are few and far between), they can really save a project. They're total pain in the ass during the project and yet, they keep the client in line and the project on track. They are not typically tech people, so it's not much different than saying, "We're offshoring the engineering but keeping the art department here." I don't believe in promoting people into management positions just because it's the next step on the ladder. Few people are actually qualified to manage.
I've always been taught that the natural step above programmer was designer (software architect?) and analysist. I think they may be peer positions. They're both hard to do and require creativity. And when it comes to budget, they are also often tossed out really quickly, right along with QA. No wonder software engineers get pidgeon-holed as coders that aren't much more creative than the equipment they work with.
You should just throw that back in their face when you decline to help out.
I have declined some jobs because the requirements were unreasonable (can we do this original project on a tenth of the budget and in half the time because the people we hired blew it?), but I wouldn't do it to spite them. I have gotten repeat business from folks who have learned the hard way. Unless you're positive you never want to work with a particular client again, it's generally a good rule of thumb not to irritate a potential client. While they may not have any future work for you, if you don't insult them, at least they won't bad mouth you to their associates.
Soon, however, one of the developers asked why we would want to send work overseas for $125/hr. The visitor quickly corrected him. It was $125/week. Needless to say you could have heard a pin drop for the next few moments.
I can believe that. I had a roommate who was an architecture major who did a summer internship in South Korea to get some experience and earned about that much.
The scale of economics is quite different among countries. Since the US is near the top for standard/cost of living, obviously, it puts the US worker, regardless of occupation, at a disadvantage. Mind you, I think $100-$150/hour is quite a lot for contracting today, much less 10 years ago, but that's my personal opinion. Then again, $125 hasn't been a livable wage in the US for a very long time.
I really don't know how that was possible, but that's not the point. I wasn't worried about my job, but you can see where some MBA might start seeing dancing dollar signs and visions of the CEO congratulating them at the next big company meeting. How do you compete on merit in a case like that?
It's tough. You have to exploit what you have going for you (fluent in US English/culture, applying your technical know-how to real world business problems, show that you can think on your feet). I find that IT is a good field to double major in (or at least pick up a minor with) since it has to be applied to problems in order to be useful.
Disclaimer: My main experience with overseas development is open source stuff. Based on that I would say that the US doesn't have any kind of monopoly on skill, ability or quality programming. After all, some Finnish guy his a little project that's pretty cool. His name is Linus or something like that.;-)
I went to a college where more than half of the student body from abroad. Several of them were good friends of mine. It's given me some perspective whenever the topic of "those people over there" comes up.
I don't mind competing with other programmers for jobs, regardless of where they're from. I just wish that employers were able to recognize who is qualified for a job and who isn't. I've personally lost plenty of opportunities to US programmers who were not qualified and screwed up a project, only to have the client come back and have me fix it, except now most of their budget is gone.
And what do you do when the User-agent header is not sent, as would be the case for a proxy cache trying to maximize the number of hits, since it is required that cache hits must match the User-agent exactly if it is sent. Unfortunately, I've seen a few sites where the site code crashes when the User-agent is missing, and in a couple cases, actually gave me crash dump information I'm sure the webmaster would not have wanted anyone to see (e.g. a database access password).
I have a default case if the user agent is not recognized or does not exist. I scan for MSIE for IE, Safari for Safari, Mozilla for Mozilla-based browsers, Win for Windows, and Mac for Macintosh. I have stylesheets defined for Win IE, Mac IE, Win Mozilla, Mac Mozilla, Mac Safari, and a generic for anything that doesn't fall into the previously defined categories. All I'm doing is generating a link tag so there's very little chance of spewing anything unexpected. This script doesn't even have access to database config information, which as a rule, I keep well away from anything that doesn't need it.
I'd be quite disappointed if anyone here (staff or reader) would even think of optimizing a site for a specific browser, much less for IE.
One trick that I do use to customize per browser is to detect the user agent and dynamically generate a stylesheet <link>. When I have a static page, I #exec the page. For some older browsers (or even some newer ones), this trick allows me to get around bugs or limitations in certain browsers. Granted, I'm counting on the user to not change their user agent, but for the majority of the public (the ones my customers are interested in), this isn't an issue.
If someone brings in their own ballot and drops it in with their official ballot, there'll be more ballots at the end of the day than at the beginning.
So how do you know which one was the wrong one? Naturally, one ballot probably is unlikely to affect an outcome but an organized campaign could.Do you just certify that all of them are invalid if you detect tampering?
The same things that prevent it now. I work as an eletion official. Before the voting we check the ballot boxes - with witnesses. After the voting we empty the boxes - with witnesses - and count the number of ballots to be sure it matches the number of recorded voters. We also count the number of ballots we started with and make sure the tally matches the number of ballots case and the number of unvoted ballots remaining.
What about when the votes are cast? I'm not trying to be a pain about this. I'm not an election official and I'd like to understand the process. How do you stop someone from bringing a pre-printed ballot and throwing it in with their printed one?
We use mechanical booths where I live. These booths do not use paper ballots. The votes are tallied by having someone (with witnesses) look at the mechanical counter on the back of the machines and writing the number down. I think there's an election commission who is responsible for doing a final tally. Unfortunately, the state and towns are quick to jump on the e-voting bandwagon because, they claim, it's becoming very difficult to get replacement parts for these machines.
What is needed is a voter-verified paper ballot printout that goes into a separate locked ballot box. This way, after voting on the machine the voter can check the ballot to be sure that the voter's choice is correctly recorded.
What would happen to the receipt in that case? I presume you are talking about using them to actually tally results where the box is used only to generate a receipt to be counted and to get a quick count.
So under this scenario, what would prevent ballot stuffing? I guess you'd need some sort of checksum on the receipt to ensure that it's valid. Another thing you'd have to be careful about not using anything that was non-human readable on the receipt to perform the tally. But then you have that checksum to worry about and a malicious (or poorly coded) hack could spit out invalid checksums.
Another problem with making non-human readable info on the hard copy is that you could end up with a false sense of security. For instance, the receipt might contain the name of the candidate and a barcode where the name is used for verification and the barcode was used for the tally. One way to get the best of both worlds (quick count and low-tamperability) is to use a scantron, but now you have the problems of readability because if the ballot was smudged or the toner ran a bit light, you might get an ambiguous result.
But there's an ongoing question of how much actual education most of our schools are really interested in. There's a lot of evidence to support the theory that schools' basic function is socialization, and education is mostly a side effect. One of the better pieces of evidence is the widespread use of closed, proprietary computer systems, which don't qualify as "educational" except in the most minimal sense.
Not where I live. We have a very rigorous education system around here. I know the parents of one kindergarterner who were told by the school that socially, their daughter was right where she should be, but academically, she was too far behind to go to 1st grade. The matter of advancing her to 1st grade was completely out of the question. And this child is not what I regard as a slow learner.
The state that I live in (Connecticut) recommends that students be able to do the following before they enter school (I'm still working on a few of these myself.):
Use and understand many words.
Speak in complete sentences.
Ask lots of questions.
Say and notice words that rhyme in stories.
Make up and share personal stories about his or her interests.
Select familiar books and tell why he or she likes them. Retell favorite stories from books.
Hold a book upright.
Identify letters of the alphabet.
Recognize letter sounds.
Recognize, copy, and print his or her first name.
Hold a pencil and write with it.
Recognize and count up to ten items.
Recognize the number symbols 1-10.
Describe and talk about objects that have different sizes, colors, shapes, and patterns.
Sort items by "same" and "different".
Use the words "near", "far", "top", "bottom", "under", "first", "second", and "last".
Sort objects from smallest to largest, shortest to tallest, and lightest to heaviest.
Understand and participate in conversations.
Stay involved in a directed activity to its completion.
Follow routines and directions.
Work and play together with other children.
Perhaps, my college had the right idea. They are an engineering university located in an inner city adjacent to a high school, along with a few other colleges and univeristies. Ten years ago, these higher level institutions joined forces to change Newark, NJ's image into a college area by creating a better environment for their students and the area residents. Here's the good idea: this group wanted to create a science high school (stuff like engineering, computer science, medicine, architecture, etc.) adjacent to my school. Volunteer college students would be available as tutors to the high school students, creating a mentoring program. It looks like they're estimating that the high school will be complete in 2006. For those who care, you can read more about it here.
If the skills of word processing, spreadsheet, and research are really platform agnostic, then why does it matter that the kids are doing them on windows?
Because, as I stated before, it is not generally recognized that these skills are platform agnostic. There is a false belief that what is relavant today will be relavant ten years from now. Additionally, a lot of folks have been talked into the idea (usually by people with MSCs) that if MS makes a product, the alternatives are not worth considering because they won't be well supported. Ironically, I find the opposite to be true.
Also, the main reason that schools have switched away from Macintosh is that it seems heir Jobs has somewhat abandoned them in favour of the uber-cool urban elite that his products are now marketed towards.
No, the turn from Macs came well before Jobs came back to Apple. I'd say the defection was most rampant during the Amelio years. If anything, Jobs was the reason the Macs were in the schools in the first place. But, being a practical businessman, when he returned to a hurting Apple, he knew they'd have to go after short-term money which means cool stuff for people with disposable income. The school strategy is a long term one (mind share).
Schools exist to educate their students, after all. A "black box" system whose inner workings aren't available to students would be the last thing you'd expect a school to use. It would be proof that the school isn't interested in teaching their students to understand the computers.
In many cases, this is exactly the point. Schools switched to using MS because "everybody knows that's what's used in the real world". Never mind that it probably bears little resemblance to what will be used in the real world when that kid graduates from school. Many schools are not thinking about teaching IT to the majority of their students. They're thinking of teaching them word processing, spreadsheet, and research skills. These skills are really platform agnostic, but that's not generally recognized.
A lot of schools used to use Apples (not just Macs, but Apple IIs as well) because Apple gave enormous discounts to the educational sector. There was a point in time in the dark years when it started to become a foregone conclusion in some people's minds that Apple would be out of business soon, so you might as well get with the winner. Sadly, I think this had the effect of driving up the long term costs to maintain their tech which they're still paying for today. Like business, they have simply accepted that IT has to be expensive, but it's a necessary evil to stay competitive.
Microsoft thinks it can use the very generic word 'windows' exclusively across all computer markets and we all know a giant and benevolent company like Microsoft wouldn't do anything immoral.
Bookshelf, however, is a word that they can apparently control. Remember this one?
And what Sophisticated Lady wouldn't be overjoyed at unwrapping a genuine Swarovski crystal accessory?
While it's interesting looking, I'd rather have a USB mouse that isn't round. I also wonder about how well that finish holds up. And the price is a bit steep for me.
It didn't sound so much to me like they expected to reverse the settlement (what's protected and what isn't). They just seem to have a different opinion about what the settlement means. Attacking the BSD outcome would be suicide (not that I'd put it past them), but it doesn't look like they have any intention of actually letting this get to a courtroom. They've only lodged one suit so far (and stalled and stalled at that) and the rest has just been bluster to try to shake up the customers.
Buying you flowers and candy after they've ravaged your ass, does not "make it right".
But I believe Apple is probably well within their rights on this one. While it may be unreasonable under many circumstances for a programmer to have his employer claim rights to what he wrote on his own time, it's likely that this particular programmer had greater-than-average privilege to Apple documentation, OS source, engineers who developed the source, and future business plans. More importantly, Apple may decide in the future to partner with Netflix (not saying they were going to, just that it could have been an option). So, if they did, Apple competes with their employee. They can't enforce their contracts selectively. What would they say? "We didn't have this agreement with Netflix when you released your shareware, but we do now so now we're going to take possession of it."?
BTW, here's a link to an article which describes the actual program and a link to the Info-Mac archive (yes, you can still get it there) for you Mac OS X folk.
So the question is... WHAT was Microsoft thinking when they preinstalled IE?
Reasonable minds will disagree.
I seem to remember hearing that there was quite a bit of paranoia in Redmond during the mid 90's about how Java and browser plug-ins could remove a lot of platform dependencies. Whether this perception is accurate is irrelevant. It's what they perceived. So, MS management had two goals. 1.) Get developers to abandon Java and 2.) control the point of access to the rest (at the time, the web browser). I think they're still operating under this notion of controlling the points of access. It's just the landscape has changed.
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>> micromoog wrote:
>> To paraphrase: conservatives believe the poor should be
>> helped, just that they shouldn't have to be the ones
>> doing it.
> jdavidb wrote:
> Actually, you've got it backwards. When you tax people to
> help the poor, you're taking other people's money. Private
> efforts means doing it yourself.
This is one of the more misunderstood positions on the left that I've encountered. Many conservatives genuinely believe in the self-improvement route. Not to say that the poor shouldn't be helped, but those who are receiving help should be making measurable contributions towards their own betterment. Coupled with a suspicion toward bueracracy in government, this makes it attractive to keep socialism to a minimum.
The misconception that I find among many conservatives who take this position is that they don't recognize that the poor do not live under the same constraints that they do. Think Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They often live in an environment that does not allow them to make the sorts of contributions that those conservatives require.
The truth is that ending poverty requires a holistic solution that may not exist. The effort needs to come from all quarters, both public and private. I don't know if human nature will let it happen since it likely means to lower the standard of living of those who are most in the position to make a difference.
As for the privatization, I find just as much bueracracy, waste, averice, politics and corruption in private corporations as I do in government. I've worked within both. The difference is the government has a harder time hiding it.
The optimist sees "convergence" while the pessimist sees "feature creep". Guess that makes me a pessimist.
As a female grad student in a male-dominated lab, it's essential that these role models exist.
I've always enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together. But, as a kid, in spite of being an honor student, I had given up academically on science before I ever really got started because I got the impression it was something I wasn't expected to master. At least, that was the case until I was 11.
Last year, while I was watching Robotech (particularly The Macross Saga), I realized that some of the characters had really influenced me when I was a kid. I was able identify with several women in the mostly female bridge crew of the SDF-1. About that time, I started programming and learning whatever I could about computers. There were times when I really felt isolated at home and school because of my interests, but I'm very stubborn. I decided that the satisfaction I get from programming was more important than how uncomfortable people were around me.
When it occurred to me that Robotech had had an influence on my life, I started to question if maybe I was giving the show too much credit. But then I realized there really aren't too many female engineers to act as role models (at least, not in my life), much less well-known female engineering role models (real or fictional).
The timing of this article I think is simply intended to make the author look prescient.
That hadn't occurred to me, but I think you're right. I think Apple's 2nd quarter call is 4/14. For those who have watched Apple's stock over the years, you'll recall that Q2 has always been their weak one.
Apple's stock price just surged way ahead creating a ludicrous price-to-earning ratio (about 70). Part of this was the Sony-buy-out rumor, and the other was a wave of good i-pod press and g5 super computer press.
Is that the Apple-buyout-rumor-du-jour? You'd think people have heard of the boy who cries wolf by now. There is a good reason to think there are new G5s on the way, though. Apple has been trending towards doing memory promotions right before they release a new desktop. Check the Apple Store for their latest. Mind you, that's not based on anything other than an informal observation.
I think this author,probably in the pay of microsoft, is planting a story anticipating the near term price fall of apple stock to make himeslef look good and maybe stimie apples encroachment on windowns in the enterprise world.
I doubt they're in MS's pay. Only folks into tech really seem to get religous about platform. It's just another story to generate revenue for the magazine.
The books seems to have a cult status among nerds, though I really cannot find many nerds or why anyone would think of nerds while reading the books or watching the movies.
There seems to be an association between sci-fi/fantasy and the so-called nerd culture. I think it's due to the fact that a lot of folks who fall into the classic nerd profile tend to be rather escapist. It doesn't hurt that nerds also seem to read a bit more than the average person. That's a pretty long story.
Never mind. That went out of stock fast.
And don't forget DealMac. They have a Dec 5 listing for MacResQ for a refurb 10GB for $199.
Since WHEN did GODDAMMED /PROJECT/ MANAGEMENT have ANYTHING to do with "innovation" ("...and productivity" - well, outsourcing sure looks good on paper so, ok)!? Such utter bloody nonsense.
To be fair, if you've ever met a really good project manager (and I'll admit they are few and far between), they can really save a project. They're total pain in the ass during the project and yet, they keep the client in line and the project on track. They are not typically tech people, so it's not much different than saying, "We're offshoring the engineering but keeping the art department here." I don't believe in promoting people into management positions just because it's the next step on the ladder. Few people are actually qualified to manage.
I've always been taught that the natural step above programmer was designer (software architect?) and analysist. I think they may be peer positions. They're both hard to do and require creativity. And when it comes to budget, they are also often tossed out really quickly, right along with QA. No wonder software engineers get pidgeon-holed as coders that aren't much more creative than the equipment they work with.
You should just throw that back in their face when you decline to help out.
I have declined some jobs because the requirements were unreasonable (can we do this original project on a tenth of the budget and in half the time because the people we hired blew it?), but I wouldn't do it to spite them. I have gotten repeat business from folks who have learned the hard way. Unless you're positive you never want to work with a particular client again, it's generally a good rule of thumb not to irritate a potential client. While they may not have any future work for you, if you don't insult them, at least they won't bad mouth you to their associates.
Soon, however, one of the developers asked why we would want to send work overseas for $125/hr. The visitor quickly corrected him. It was $125/week. Needless to say you could have heard a pin drop for the next few moments.
I can believe that. I had a roommate who was an architecture major who did a summer internship in South Korea to get some experience and earned about that much.
The scale of economics is quite different among countries. Since the US is near the top for standard/cost of living, obviously, it puts the US worker, regardless of occupation, at a disadvantage. Mind you, I think $100-$150/hour is quite a lot for contracting today, much less 10 years ago, but that's my personal opinion. Then again, $125 hasn't been a livable wage in the US for a very long time.
I really don't know how that was possible, but that's not the point. I wasn't worried about my job, but you can see where some MBA might start seeing dancing dollar signs and visions of the CEO congratulating them at the next big company meeting. How do you compete on merit in a case like that?
It's tough. You have to exploit what you have going for you (fluent in US English/culture, applying your technical know-how to real world business problems, show that you can think on your feet). I find that IT is a good field to double major in (or at least pick up a minor with) since it has to be applied to problems in order to be useful.
Disclaimer: My main experience with overseas development is open source stuff. Based on that I would say that the US doesn't have any kind of monopoly on skill, ability or quality programming. After all, some Finnish guy his a little project that's pretty cool. His name is Linus or something like that. ;-)
I went to a college where more than half of the student body from abroad. Several of them were good friends of mine. It's given me some perspective whenever the topic of "those people over there" comes up.
I don't mind competing with other programmers for jobs, regardless of where they're from. I just wish that employers were able to recognize who is qualified for a job and who isn't. I've personally lost plenty of opportunities to US programmers who were not qualified and screwed up a project, only to have the client come back and have me fix it, except now most of their budget is gone.
And what do you do when the User-agent header is not sent, as would be the case for a proxy cache trying to maximize the number of hits, since it is required that cache hits must match the User-agent exactly if it is sent. Unfortunately, I've seen a few sites where the site code crashes when the User-agent is missing, and in a couple cases, actually gave me crash dump information I'm sure the webmaster would not have wanted anyone to see (e.g. a database access password).
I have a default case if the user agent is not recognized or does not exist. I scan for MSIE for IE, Safari for Safari, Mozilla for Mozilla-based browsers, Win for Windows, and Mac for Macintosh. I have stylesheets defined for Win IE, Mac IE, Win Mozilla, Mac Mozilla, Mac Safari, and a generic for anything that doesn't fall into the previously defined categories. All I'm doing is generating a link tag so there's very little chance of spewing anything unexpected. This script doesn't even have access to database config information, which as a rule, I keep well away from anything that doesn't need it.
I'd be quite disappointed if anyone here (staff or reader) would even think of optimizing a site for a specific browser, much less for IE.
One trick that I do use to customize per browser is to detect the user agent and dynamically generate a stylesheet <link>. When I have a static page, I #exec the page. For some older browsers (or even some newer ones), this trick allows me to get around bugs or limitations in certain browsers. Granted, I'm counting on the user to not change their user agent, but for the majority of the public (the ones my customers are interested in), this isn't an issue.
If someone brings in their own ballot and drops it in with their official ballot, there'll be more ballots at the end of the day than at the beginning.
So how do you know which one was the wrong one? Naturally, one ballot probably is unlikely to affect an outcome but an organized campaign could.Do you just certify that all of them are invalid if you detect tampering?
The same things that prevent it now. I work as an eletion official. Before the voting we check the ballot boxes - with witnesses. After the voting we empty the boxes - with witnesses - and count the number of ballots to be sure it matches the number of recorded voters. We also count the number of ballots we started with and make sure the tally matches the number of ballots case and the number of unvoted ballots remaining.
What about when the votes are cast? I'm not trying to be a pain about this. I'm not an election official and I'd like to understand the process. How do you stop someone from bringing a pre-printed ballot and throwing it in with their printed one?
We use mechanical booths where I live. These booths do not use paper ballots. The votes are tallied by having someone (with witnesses) look at the mechanical counter on the back of the machines and writing the number down. I think there's an election commission who is responsible for doing a final tally. Unfortunately, the state and towns are quick to jump on the e-voting bandwagon because, they claim, it's becoming very difficult to get replacement parts for these machines.
What is needed is a voter-verified paper ballot printout that goes into a separate locked ballot box. This way, after voting on the machine the voter can check the ballot to be sure that the voter's choice is correctly recorded.
What would happen to the receipt in that case? I presume you are talking about using them to actually tally results where the box is used only to generate a receipt to be counted and to get a quick count.
So under this scenario, what would prevent ballot stuffing? I guess you'd need some sort of checksum on the receipt to ensure that it's valid. Another thing you'd have to be careful about not using anything that was non-human readable on the receipt to perform the tally. But then you have that checksum to worry about and a malicious (or poorly coded) hack could spit out invalid checksums.
Another problem with making non-human readable info on the hard copy is that you could end up with a false sense of security. For instance, the receipt might contain the name of the candidate and a barcode where the name is used for verification and the barcode was used for the tally. One way to get the best of both worlds (quick count and low-tamperability) is to use a scantron, but now you have the problems of readability because if the ballot was smudged or the toner ran a bit light, you might get an ambiguous result.
But there's an ongoing question of how much actual education most of our schools are really interested in. There's a lot of evidence to support the theory that schools' basic function is socialization, and education is mostly a side effect. One of the better pieces of evidence is the widespread use of closed, proprietary computer systems, which don't qualify as "educational" except in the most minimal sense.
Not where I live. We have a very rigorous education system around here. I know the parents of one kindergarterner who were told by the school that socially, their daughter was right where she should be, but academically, she was too far behind to go to 1st grade. The matter of advancing her to 1st grade was completely out of the question. And this child is not what I regard as a slow learner.
The state that I live in (Connecticut) recommends that students be able to do the following before they enter school (I'm still working on a few of these myself.):
Perhaps, my college had the right idea. They are an engineering university located in an inner city adjacent to a high school, along with a few other colleges and univeristies. Ten years ago, these higher level institutions joined forces to change Newark, NJ's image into a college area by creating a better environment for their students and the area residents. Here's the good idea: this group wanted to create a science high school (stuff like engineering, computer science, medicine, architecture, etc.) adjacent to my school. Volunteer college students would be available as tutors to the high school students, creating a mentoring program. It looks like they're estimating that the high school will be complete in 2006. For those who care, you can read more about it here.
If the skills of word processing, spreadsheet, and research are really platform agnostic, then why does it matter that the kids are doing them on windows?
Because, as I stated before, it is not generally recognized that these skills are platform agnostic. There is a false belief that what is relavant today will be relavant ten years from now. Additionally, a lot of folks have been talked into the idea (usually by people with MSCs) that if MS makes a product, the alternatives are not worth considering because they won't be well supported. Ironically, I find the opposite to be true.
Also, the main reason that schools have switched away from Macintosh is that it seems heir Jobs has somewhat abandoned them in favour of the uber-cool urban elite that his products are now marketed towards.
No, the turn from Macs came well before Jobs came back to Apple. I'd say the defection was most rampant during the Amelio years. If anything, Jobs was the reason the Macs were in the schools in the first place. But, being a practical businessman, when he returned to a hurting Apple, he knew they'd have to go after short-term money which means cool stuff for people with disposable income. The school strategy is a long term one (mind share).
Schools exist to educate their students, after all. A "black box" system whose inner workings aren't available to students would be the last thing you'd expect a school to use. It would be proof that the school isn't interested in teaching their students to understand the computers.
In many cases, this is exactly the point. Schools switched to using MS because "everybody knows that's what's used in the real world". Never mind that it probably bears little resemblance to what will be used in the real world when that kid graduates from school. Many schools are not thinking about teaching IT to the majority of their students. They're thinking of teaching them word processing, spreadsheet, and research skills. These skills are really platform agnostic, but that's not generally recognized.
A lot of schools used to use Apples (not just Macs, but Apple IIs as well) because Apple gave enormous discounts to the educational sector. There was a point in time in the dark years when it started to become a foregone conclusion in some people's minds that Apple would be out of business soon, so you might as well get with the winner. Sadly, I think this had the effect of driving up the long term costs to maintain their tech which they're still paying for today. Like business, they have simply accepted that IT has to be expensive, but it's a necessary evil to stay competitive.
This prevents you from branding your computer product either s/w h/w as apple, but you can invent a furniture shop and call it apple.
Or a music company. Oh, wait... :)
Microsoft thinks it can use the very generic word 'windows' exclusively across all computer markets and we all know a giant and benevolent company like Microsoft wouldn't do anything immoral.
Bookshelf, however, is a word that they can apparently control. Remember this one?
And what Sophisticated Lady wouldn't be overjoyed at unwrapping a genuine Swarovski crystal accessory?
While it's interesting looking, I'd rather have a USB mouse that isn't round. I also wonder about how well that finish holds up. And the price is a bit steep for me.
It didn't sound so much to me like they expected to reverse the settlement (what's protected and what isn't). They just seem to have a different opinion about what the settlement means. Attacking the BSD outcome would be suicide (not that I'd put it past them), but it doesn't look like they have any intention of actually letting this get to a courtroom. They've only lodged one suit so far (and stalled and stalled at that) and the rest has just been bluster to try to shake up the customers.
Buying you flowers and candy after they've ravaged your ass, does not "make it right".
But I believe Apple is probably well within their rights on this one. While it may be unreasonable under many circumstances for a programmer to have his employer claim rights to what he wrote on his own time, it's likely that this particular programmer had greater-than-average privilege to Apple documentation, OS source, engineers who developed the source, and future business plans. More importantly, Apple may decide in the future to partner with Netflix (not saying they were going to, just that it could have been an option). So, if they did, Apple competes with their employee. They can't enforce their contracts selectively. What would they say? "We didn't have this agreement with Netflix when you released your shareware, but we do now so now we're going to take possession of it."?
BTW, here's a link to an article which describes the actual program and a link to the Info-Mac archive (yes, you can still get it there) for you Mac OS X folk.
So the question is... WHAT was Microsoft thinking when they preinstalled IE?
Reasonable minds will disagree.
I seem to remember hearing that there was quite a bit of paranoia in Redmond during the mid 90's about how Java and browser plug-ins could remove a lot of platform dependencies. Whether this perception is accurate is irrelevant. It's what they perceived. So, MS management had two goals. 1.) Get developers to abandon Java and 2.) control the point of access to the rest (at the time, the web browser). I think they're still operating under this notion of controlling the points of access. It's just the landscape has changed.