The voter marks the ballot paper with a pencil. The ballots are counted by hand by human beings.
With plenty of scrutineers.
Completely transparent, complete audit trail, safeguards against all the failure modes discovered over the decades, results within hours, recounts within hours if needed.
Time is not really a factor in elections which don't take effect for a substantial fraction of a year after the vote.
Oh, and I expect it's cheaper than all this inappropriate mucking around with computers too. Computers aren't the answer to everything.
What ever happened to the idea of "systems analysis"?
Any hypothetical electronic system, no matter how secure, is vulnerable to basically _universal_, unauditable fraud by a tiny number of conspirators in the right place - as low as 1.
The minimum number of people you need for a conspiracy is two:)
You actually think that's easier than simply browsing to your favourite torrent site, clicking on a single link, and having the entire TV show downloaded to a file on your desktop in twenty minutes? I don't know, I tend to think torrents are a lot easier than buying and configuring a tuner card, then setting up MythTV properly.
In practice you may need multiple tuner cards to actually be sure of getting the content you actually want to watch:)
I can literally click the mouse four times on a Friday afternoon and within 30 minutes, I'll have the latest Mythbusters to watch. Hell, if I wanted to get technical with RSS feeds, I could have the file download itself at the same time each week without any intervention whatsoever, and I'd simply notice a new file on my desktop when I got home from work.
Mythbusters is an interesting example, given that in the latest series they put extra scenes on the website. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for Discovery to put together a "director's cut" thus being able to offer a legitimate download which is better than any pirate version.
I should also mention that I'm not in the United States, and that torrents are essentially my only option if I want to watch a TV show without waiting the 9 to 12 months it takes for our networks to air stuff.
It isn't always the US which gets things first. What do you think US based Doctor Who fans do? There are even some series where the first episodes air first in the US, but the last episodes air first in the UK or Canada.
And you forgot something: downloading from p2p is only free if your time is worthless.
Typically with P2P the downloading is automatic. If you want time consuming a better example would be downloads on web pages
With p2p, you have to deal with poorly encoded/incomplete/fake files and crappy connections. If you make decent money, it makes far more sense to get a subscription on iTunes: fast, reasonable quality, guaranteed downloads.
Assuming iTunes is available to you. With P2P all you generally need is a reasonable Internet connection. With the iTunes route you also tend to need a specific operating system and to be located in a specific part of the world. Typically "iTunes" isn't even trying to compete with P2P.
Easier is one thing, faster is another. Honestly if the networks want to stay ahead, they should host their own torrents of the shows, in good quality,
This means without things like on-screen ratings, station IDs, promos for other things, credits being talked over/squashed, etc. In other words a "cleaner" version that would be available from a broadcast
with the commercials built into the file and release them before they air.
You could have the episode before it comes out on TV and thus many hours before the episode is released by other groups. Though, the folks are just going to download your ep and clip the commercials out.
Commercials are likely to be removed for several reasons. They increase the size of the download. Nearly a third of the output of some broadcasters is advertisments of some kind or other. They are a distraction from the actual content. Most of these adverts are utterly meaningless to most potential viewers, they couldn't buy the things being advertised even if they wanted to (or it would be easier/cheaper to buy from a local supplier. Rather than from the other side of the planet, paying shippers and bankers.).
So you might want to imbed them in the show, or do quick ten second flashes of stuff from time to time.
The latter may well result in something nobody would watch without editing. Unless you did the same to the actual broadcast then "pirates" would simply use that as source material, since it requires less editing.
The problem isn't (IMO) the software engineeers. Those guys tend to be very smart and competent, but as is the case, management totally ruins their efforts.
Most obvious would be Internet Explorer being "integrated" into the OS by spreading bits of its functionality between various DLLs.
This internet thing blows their monopoly apart - there's a new method of distribution that's cheaper, faster, and out of the control of the music companies.
There's also the lack of geograpic restriction with Internet distribution. Plenty of people who would not consider a movie, TV programme, book, etc in a foreign language are prepared to listen to songs in languages they do not understand.
They already tried this against the disabled mother who is now in the class action suit. They tried to get the woman's daughter to testify against her and the courts slapped them down pretty hard.
Probably didn't help their case that her daughter is a minor and there are often strict rules concering minors testifying in court.
You misapprehend the nature of the court. Matters of law are decided previous to a jury trial. Getting to a jury trial in a civil case is a very big hurdle. I.e., the judge has decided that the situation merits the jury before you get to the jury, in a civil case.
You also have to have a case against the named defendant(s). Here the judge was unable to find that the plaintiff had anything meriting any kind of hearing or trial. (Which probably gives the defendant good standing to file a counter suit, if they have not already done so.)
But how do they know that the contents of the files are actually their copyrighted works? I could cat/dev/urandom into some files with.mp3 extensions and share those.
They appear to use a similar method to "porn blockers". If the filename contains one of "their words" then they assume it must be one of their's.
But there's more. Chemical treatment (e.g. iodine) kills small organisms (e.g. viruses) fast, but takes a long time to kill the larger parasites. So by combining a large-pored (i.e. fast, cheap) filter with chemical treatment (2-5 drops of bleach per liter, or iodine pills if you don't like to taste bleach), you get the best of both worlds: fast and safe.
Which is exactly the way regular water treatment works. Filter through a bed of sand (top layer needs periodically replacing) then used a disinfectant. The latter either chemically through halogens/ozone or by exposing the water to intense UV light.
Well its not like you can only apply the power gradually like a petrol engine. My understanding is that when you turn an electric engine on, that's it, full power full torque.
You can vary the amount of power sent to the motor, it is also possible to have motors with switchable windings to give different torque and speed settings. In the case of a vehicle such as a car or motorbike an electric motor can be connected via the same sort of gearbox you'd use with an internal combustion engine. Indeed the only real difference between a regular motorcycle and an all electric one is that the latter wouldn't need a starter.
As a professional stuntman, I can't stress enough how dangerous it is to perform these kinds of antics without appropriate training, preparation, and room.
Not only do the professionals put a lot of effort ensuring that things are a safe as possible for anyone involved they also have emergency equiptment and crew there for the unlikely event of something going wrong.
stupid web blocking tools might prevent me from searching for "Breast Cancer" because that phrase has the sexy word "breast" in it.
You might also have difficulty finding out how to cook the flight muscles of poultry. The difficulty is that there are no words which are unique to porn.
Copyright applied to software is an even more recent invention than copyright in general
and other industries where it costs ZERO to copy something, are still around.
Do you have some examples...
People would still pay (gasp!) for software, because most are under the moral law of supporting the authors.
You also have what is known as "tertiary industry", here you are paying for someone's time, which is a scarce resource. Especially when you need people with a specific skillset.
Did you forget the fact that BEFORE copyright, people CREATED because they ENJOYED it? Famous works such as The Bible, we written not because of some corporation, but because people wanted to share a different outlook on how to live.
People still do JK Rowling didn't create Harry Potter so she could become rich, famous and her grandchildren would never have to do a day's work in their lives...
I see tons of open source programs created because a developer found it interesting. Heck, myself I work on one, precisely because I find it fun.
Being creative is part of human nature, which is just as well, because otherwise we'd all still be "cavemen".
Assuming copyright was abolished, this would effectively kill off the entire software industry.
Until about the mid 1980's it was unclear if copyright applied to software at all. With the exceptions that printed source code could be considered a "literary work" and data stored on compact cassette tape could be considered "music". Yet there already existed a sizable "software industry".
Without copyright you would need to recoup the entire cost of an application on its first sale, which in the case of anything major could run into the millions.
This wouldn't affect the "entire software industry". Whilst it might be bad for the secondary section, it wouldn't really make much difference to the tertiary section. If the task is "set up a system for me to do X" the major cost is someone's time and you simply can't assume there will ever be more than one "customer".
It doesn't just hurt your customers, it hurts you too. The time you waste trying to create some copy-protection and losing the arms race with the pirates (which you will lose) is time you could have spent making your product bet.
There is also going to be a cost to both you and your customers troubleshooting situations where the "copy protection" causes problems.
The way to beat the pirates is to provide a better service to your customers than they do.
A concept that the entertainments industry dosn't appear to yet understand...
Businesses, by the way, tend not to pirate on the scale of the private user. Piracy is a big risk to business because businesses have very deep pockets.
If the program contains troublesome copy protection it isn't unknown for a business to buy but actually install a cracked version.
Looks like The States have worse consumer support than the UK in this case. It's apparent that the laptop is not of merchandisable quality, and the owner is entitled to take it back for repair or refund (store credit if no proof of purchase is available).
The current standard is "satisfactory quality", which is a higher standard. Also it's "replacement or refund".
The software is irrelevant at this point, although for simplicity sake it would be easir to back up, reimage with Vista and then head to a different branch of PCWorld.
Actually it would probably be simpler for them to back up their data, return the machine to PC World and follow up with either a credit card chargeback or court summons.
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The voter marks the ballot paper with a pencil. The ballots are counted by hand by human beings.
With plenty of scrutineers.
Completely transparent, complete audit trail, safeguards against all the failure modes discovered over the decades, results within hours, recounts within hours if needed.
Time is not really a factor in elections which don't take effect for a substantial fraction of a year after the vote.
Oh, and I expect it's cheaper than all this inappropriate mucking around with computers too. Computers aren't the answer to everything.
What ever happened to the idea of "systems analysis"?
Paper ballots require a massive concerted effort with hudreds, or even thousands of conspirators.
But only for a few/one of these people to make a mistake or "whistleblow".
Any hypothetical electronic system, no matter how secure, is vulnerable to basically _universal_, unauditable fraud by a tiny number of conspirators in the right place - as low as 1.
:)
The minimum number of people you need for a conspiracy is two
That means we can understand paper ballot rigging, and allow for it. We can't do shit about technical shenanigans (unless we're a techie).
Even if someone is, they can't prove that nothing funny is going on with a "voting machine" just by looking at it.
You actually think that's easier than simply browsing to your favourite torrent site, clicking on a single link, and having the entire TV show downloaded to a file on your desktop in twenty minutes? I don't know, I tend to think torrents are a lot easier than buying and configuring a tuner card, then setting up MythTV properly.
:)
In practice you may need multiple tuner cards to actually be sure of getting the content you actually want to watch
I can literally click the mouse four times on a Friday afternoon and within 30 minutes, I'll have the latest Mythbusters to watch. Hell, if I wanted to get technical with RSS feeds, I could have the file download itself at the same time each week without any intervention whatsoever, and I'd simply notice a new file on my desktop when I got home from work.
Mythbusters is an interesting example, given that in the latest series they put extra scenes on the website. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for Discovery to put together a "director's cut" thus being able to offer a legitimate download which is better than any pirate version.
I should also mention that I'm not in the United States, and that torrents are essentially my only option if I want to watch a TV show without waiting the 9 to 12 months it takes for our networks to air stuff.
It isn't always the US which gets things first. What do you think US based Doctor Who fans do?
There are even some series where the first episodes air first in the US, but the last episodes air first in the UK or Canada.
How about downloading for time-shifting, if I pay for cable or whatever media service?
Most likely copyright issues make providing such a video on demand service difficult.
but Miro and other options sound far nicer than a DVR or VCR....
A video recorder is only any use if you remember to set it...
Time to find a torrent: 5 minutes
The original article mentioned having an RSS feed to do the torrent finding. Which rather reduces that time...
And you forgot something: downloading from p2p is only free if your time is worthless.
Typically with P2P the downloading is automatic.
If you want time consuming a better example would be downloads on web pages
With p2p, you have to deal with poorly encoded/incomplete/fake files and crappy connections. If you make decent money, it makes far more sense to get a subscription on iTunes: fast, reasonable quality, guaranteed downloads.
Assuming iTunes is available to you. With P2P all you generally need is a reasonable Internet connection. With the iTunes route you also tend to need a specific operating system and to be located in a specific part of the world. Typically "iTunes" isn't even trying to compete with P2P.
Easier is one thing, faster is another. Honestly if the networks want to stay ahead, they should host their own torrents of the shows, in good quality,
This means without things like on-screen ratings, station IDs, promos for other things, credits being talked over/squashed, etc. In other words a "cleaner" version that would be available from a broadcast
with the commercials built into the file and release them before they air.
You could have the episode before it comes out on TV and thus many hours before the episode is released by other groups. Though, the folks are just going to download your ep and clip the commercials out.
Commercials are likely to be removed for several reasons. They increase the size of the download. Nearly a third of the output of some broadcasters is advertisments of some kind or other. They are a distraction from the actual content. Most of these adverts are utterly meaningless to most potential viewers, they couldn't buy the things being advertised even if they wanted to (or it would be easier/cheaper to buy from a local supplier. Rather than from the other side of the planet, paying shippers and bankers.).
So you might want to imbed them in the show, or do quick ten second flashes of stuff from time to time.
The latter may well result in something nobody would watch without editing. Unless you did the same to the actual broadcast then "pirates" would simply use that as source material, since it requires less editing.
The problem isn't (IMO) the software engineeers. Those guys tend to be very smart and competent, but as is the case, management totally ruins their efforts.
Most obvious would be Internet Explorer being "integrated" into the OS by spreading bits of its functionality between various DLLs.
This internet thing blows their monopoly apart - there's a new method of distribution that's cheaper, faster, and out of the control of the music companies.
There's also the lack of geograpic restriction with Internet distribution. Plenty of people who would not consider a movie, TV programme, book, etc in a foreign language are prepared to listen to songs in languages they do not understand.
They already tried this against the disabled mother who is now in the class action suit. They tried to get the woman's daughter to testify against her and the courts slapped them down pretty hard.
Probably didn't help their case that her daughter is a minor and there are often strict rules concering minors testifying in court.
You misapprehend the nature of the court. Matters of law are decided previous to a jury trial. Getting to a jury trial in a civil case is a very big hurdle. I.e., the judge has decided that the situation merits the jury before you get to the jury, in a civil case.
You also have to have a case against the named defendant(s). Here the judge was unable to find that the plaintiff had anything meriting any kind of hearing or trial. (Which probably gives the defendant good standing to file a counter suit, if they have not already done so.)
But how do they know that the contents of the files are actually their copyrighted works? I could cat /dev/urandom into some files with .mp3 extensions and share those.
They appear to use a similar method to "porn blockers". If the filename contains one of "their words" then they assume it must be one of their's.
Now think big, create an industrial size good-for-the-whole-town version and sell it to the government...
How about a version which will fit on a truck or in an aircraft for disaster relief.
But there's more. Chemical treatment (e.g. iodine) kills small organisms (e.g. viruses) fast, but takes a long time to kill the larger parasites. So by combining a large-pored (i.e. fast, cheap) filter with chemical treatment (2-5 drops of bleach per liter, or iodine pills if you don't like to taste bleach), you get the best of both worlds: fast and safe.
Which is exactly the way regular water treatment works. Filter through a bed of sand (top layer needs periodically replacing) then used a disinfectant. The latter either chemically through halogens/ozone or by exposing the water to intense UV light.
Well its not like you can only apply the power gradually like a petrol engine. My understanding is that when you turn an electric engine on, that's it, full power full torque.
You can vary the amount of power sent to the motor, it is also possible to have motors with switchable windings to give different torque and speed settings. In the case of a vehicle such as a car or motorbike an electric motor can be connected via the same sort of gearbox you'd use with an internal combustion engine. Indeed the only real difference between a regular motorcycle and an all electric one is that the latter wouldn't need a starter.
As a professional stuntman, I can't stress enough how dangerous it is to perform these kinds of antics without appropriate training, preparation, and room.
Not only do the professionals put a lot of effort ensuring that things are a safe as possible for anyone involved they also have emergency equiptment and crew there for the unlikely event of something going wrong.
As a scientist, he should have known better than to not wear a helmet....
Calling the thing "KillaCycle" probably wasn't the smartest of ideas either. It sounds more like the title of a low budget horror movie...
stupid web blocking tools might prevent me from searching for "Breast Cancer" because that phrase has the sexy word "breast" in it.
You might also have difficulty finding out how to cook the flight muscles of poultry. The difficulty is that there are no words which are unique to porn.
The abuse of copyright is exactly why i think it should be reduced to 14-20 years in length.
Depending on what the rational is for having copyright this period might be excessive for the 21st century.
Copyright is only a RECENT invention,
Copyright applied to software is an even more recent invention than copyright in general
and other industries where it costs ZERO to copy something, are still around.
Do you have some examples...
People would still pay (gasp!) for software, because most are under the moral law of supporting the authors.
You also have what is known as "tertiary industry", here you are paying for someone's time, which is a scarce resource. Especially when you need people with a specific skillset.
Did you forget the fact that BEFORE copyright, people CREATED because they ENJOYED it? Famous works such as The Bible, we written not because of some corporation, but because people wanted to share a different outlook on how to live.
People still do JK Rowling didn't create Harry Potter so she could become rich, famous and her grandchildren would never have to do a day's work in their lives...
I see tons of open source programs created because a developer found it interesting. Heck, myself I work on one, precisely because I find it fun.
Being creative is part of human nature, which is just as well, because otherwise we'd all still be "cavemen".
Assuming copyright was abolished, this would effectively kill off the entire software industry.
Until about the mid 1980's it was unclear if copyright applied to software at all. With the exceptions that printed source code could be considered a "literary work" and data stored on compact cassette tape could be considered "music". Yet there already existed a sizable "software industry".
Without copyright you would need to recoup the entire cost of an application on its first sale, which in the case of anything major could run into the millions.
This wouldn't affect the "entire software industry". Whilst it might be bad for the secondary section, it wouldn't really make much difference to the tertiary section. If the task is "set up a system for me to do X" the major cost is someone's time and you simply can't assume there will ever be more than one "customer".
It doesn't just hurt your customers, it hurts you too. The time you waste trying to create some copy-protection and losing the arms race with the pirates (which you will lose) is time you could have spent making your product bet.
There is also going to be a cost to both you and your customers troubleshooting situations where the "copy protection" causes problems.
The way to beat the pirates is to provide a better service to your customers than they do.
A concept that the entertainments industry dosn't appear to yet understand...
Businesses, by the way, tend not to pirate on the scale of the private user. Piracy is a big risk to business because businesses have very deep pockets.
If the program contains troublesome copy protection it isn't unknown for a business to buy but actually install a cracked version.
Looks like The States have worse consumer support than the UK in this case. It's apparent that the laptop is not of merchandisable quality, and the owner is entitled to take it back for repair or refund (store credit if no proof of purchase is available).
The current standard is "satisfactory quality", which is a higher standard. Also it's "replacement or refund".
The software is irrelevant at this point, although for simplicity sake it would be easir to back up, reimage with Vista and then head to a different branch of PCWorld.
Actually it would probably be simpler for them to back up their data, return the machine to PC World and follow up with either a credit card chargeback or court summons.