From the article: "Singapore's Internal Security Act, a Draconian law written by the island's former British colonial rules that allows for detention without trial and was used to halt communism in Singapore in the 1950s."
While not an advocate of Communism, I am very much an advocate of the First Amendment, and here we have a historical account about internal security laws putting to rest an entire ideology within a country. The USA should take this as a warning, before we end up a government-controlled monoculture or, at best, a government-selected and allowed group of subcultures.
Of course, we are already headed down this path, because it seems law enforcement is perfectly happy with racial and ethnic profiling, ignoring the reality of the Unabomber and Oaklahoma City So, now, we have law enforcement based on logical fallacy. That's just splendid.
I didn't think that open source software was really a business model, unless one wanted it to be. Otherwise, it more or less could care less (anthropomorphically speaking) what Microsoft does or says.
When the main server goes down, we all get to twiddle our thumbs because we cannot do anything without a home directory.
Why does you main server go down during working hours? Perhaps you need a new administrator or better hardware. If your company is too cheap to get better hardware, perhaps you need a new employer, as well.
(yes, extended warranties for things less than a few thousand dollars are scams, because they are a profit-generating business--otherwise why would they sell them?)
Further, for things over a few thousand dollars, you should go out and get real insurance for replacement value and then eat the cost of mechanical repairs (you did buy a historially reliable car based on your research before buying, right?). So, in conclusion, all extended warranties are scams.
Your logic basically says rich people like cheap stuff, and homeless people prefer much more expensive items.
A general trend is for a rich person (or, more accurately, a financially-educated person) is to buy something outright rather than finance it. Even better is to buy something outright when it is on sale or marked down for going out of style. Uneducated people are more likely to buy something impulsively on a payment plan plus get sucked into the extended warranty scams (yes, extended warranties for things less than a few thousand dollars are scams, because they are a profit-generating business--otherwise why would they sell them?).
People who understand finance are cheap, because they see straight through the salesperson's pitches and lies and cut right to the deal and are even able to negotiate bigger-ticket items.
Of course, this whole argument excludes spoiled spouses with hundreds of imported shoes or a gold-plated Lexus. There's a difference when buying for luxury and/or status (i.e., generally wasting money for the sake of it).
My point is that methanol cannot be proprietary. It's chemical formula is printed in every organic chemistry textbook ever written, can be made using well-known processes, and can be purchased at nearly every hardware store in the country.
Refilling a "proprietary" fuel-cell cartridge requires little more than a drill bit and a rubber plug to fill the hole. The only real enforcement schemes would be those electronic sensors embedded into ink cartridges, which I believe were ruled against in court (North Carolina, perhap?).
The best thing about software, when someone copies it, you still get to keep it...
Knowing makes a better plot line. For example it didn't stop the writers for Hitman 2 from basing progression in the game on this. Gee, the hacker guy found in like three seconds the software was copied and sent somewhere.
Or am I being terribly naive about the way the software industry does things?
You are being terribly naive about how the software industry does things.
For every example of a software company that does things right, there are 10,000,000 examples of software companies run as if they are a roving band of gypsies looking for next week's meal ticket.
Spend millions on a computer system only to have pen and paper turn out to be the workable solution. I think the people of Tippecanoe County could learn a few things from monorail episode of The Simpsons about salesmen selling crap to eager and naive buyers.
Yes, the officials in your county who bought the Diebold systems were had and your treasury is significantly smaller for it. If people there don't make a big stink about this, they should all be ashamed.
if the votes are off by 500 or 1000 how are you going to know?
You know, for some reason this reminded me of a conversation I had about C programming. Pointers in C are a wonderful thing, if you are lucky a bad pointer will cause a segfault; if you are unlucky, a bad pointer will simply cause an arbitrary piece of data in an arbitrary datastructure to change. I love unrepeatable bugs in C programs. They make the C programmers life so much fun.
Oh, to get to my point...Windows and Access are most likely written in C by Microsoft programmers. Essentially, we are talking non-deterministic and non-repeatable voting systems, here, folks. Yup, they could get an error, and never know why it occured!
Every party and canidate should have a right to send a representative to oversee the transportation and counting. It is also an obligation of the poll staff to supervise the supervisors. With checks and balances in the system, fraud should be minimal. If this doesn't already occur, then that is very very very pathetic.
What??? Pen and paper scales linearly very well. In fact, is scales much much better than people's ability to remember the names of who they are voting for. Last election, I had to bring in a list I prepared the day before to cover all the races.
Also, the scaling of computers is more often than not mythical. So, instead of getting the pre-printed ballots and stacking them on a table, people have to run power cords, set up the machines, boot them, troubleshoot them when they fail, hope the counting is going well, etc.
Two, these electronic voting systems cost millions of dollars to develop, most likely using tax funds to do so (who would buy them other than counties?).
Three, people don't understand these things, especially from a poll staff persepctive. They are counter intuitive.
Four, they use software, which is always fallable, unless developed with a rigor no county or state will ever have the guts to pay for.
In conclusion, electronic voting is a feel-good experiment of the early 21st century that I sincerely hope will be short lived.
Well, Bombardier actually did one better than Segway. It's basically a motorcycle that is shorter, lighter, and presumably easier to drive. With that "landing gear" and the drivers two legs, running out of gas is probably a non-event, if they designed it properly. The only real problem would be when losers try to race these things through town with no regard for other human life.
Slashdot Mirror
What does SCO think they are going to get out of Linus?
I think a fart in a jar would be appropriate.
I thought it was part of Las Vegas?
No, because it's only legal outside the city.
so we're still ahead :-)
Okay, what does the US offer that provides as much entertainment as Benny Hill?
Actually, I didn't get it either until after I wrote it. It's funny on so many levels...and not funny on so many more.
Well, we do get our share of laughs making fun of European royal familes, so it probably balances out.
From the article: "Singapore's Internal Security Act, a Draconian law written by the island's former British colonial rules that allows for detention without trial and was used to halt communism in Singapore in the 1950s."
While not an advocate of Communism, I am very much an advocate of the First Amendment, and here we have a historical account about internal security laws putting to rest an entire ideology within a country. The USA should take this as a warning, before we end up a government-controlled monoculture or, at best, a government-selected and allowed group of subcultures.
Of course, we are already headed down this path, because it seems law enforcement is perfectly happy with racial and ethnic profiling, ignoring the reality of the Unabomber and Oaklahoma City So, now, we have law enforcement based on logical fallacy. That's just splendid.
Look into "hiring" the cute old ladies at the local nursing home. It's very cost effective, and the work is top-notch.
I didn't think that open source software was really a business model, unless one wanted it to be. Otherwise, it more or less could care less (anthropomorphically speaking) what Microsoft does or says.
When the main server goes down, we all get to twiddle our thumbs because we cannot do anything without a home directory.
Why does you main server go down during working hours? Perhaps you need a new administrator or better hardware. If your company is too cheap to get better hardware, perhaps you need a new employer, as well.
linux geeks are more likely to be part of the hard-core segment.
In which way? Do you think if I release a "Tux Racer: This Time It's Nekkid" game, that it would sell?
See the previous article about "Gangs Extort Companies With DDoS Attacks" for tips on increasing enthousiasm for your product almost as if by magic.
(yes, extended warranties for things less than a few thousand dollars are scams, because they are a profit-generating business--otherwise why would they sell them?)
Further, for things over a few thousand dollars, you should go out and get real insurance for replacement value and then eat the cost of mechanical repairs (you did buy a historially reliable car based on your research before buying, right?). So, in conclusion, all extended warranties are scams.
Your logic basically says rich people like cheap stuff, and homeless people prefer much more expensive items.
A general trend is for a rich person (or, more accurately, a financially-educated person) is to buy something outright rather than finance it. Even better is to buy something outright when it is on sale or marked down for going out of style. Uneducated people are more likely to buy something impulsively on a payment plan plus get sucked into the extended warranty scams (yes, extended warranties for things less than a few thousand dollars are scams, because they are a profit-generating business--otherwise why would they sell them?).
People who understand finance are cheap, because they see straight through the salesperson's pitches and lies and cut right to the deal and are even able to negotiate bigger-ticket items.
Of course, this whole argument excludes spoiled spouses with hundreds of imported shoes or a gold-plated Lexus. There's a difference when buying for luxury and/or status (i.e., generally wasting money for the sake of it).
Geez, any camera--digital or analog--is perfectly good at taking images of hard drives. Are you really so dense that you couldn't figure this out?!?
Yeah, just like Proprietary ink.
My point is that methanol cannot be proprietary. It's chemical formula is printed in every organic chemistry textbook ever written, can be made using well-known processes, and can be purchased at nearly every hardware store in the country.
Refilling a "proprietary" fuel-cell cartridge requires little more than a drill bit and a rubber plug to fill the hole. The only real enforcement schemes would be those electronic sensors embedded into ink cartridges, which I believe were ruled against in court (North Carolina, perhap?).
formate in flight?
No suprise, coming from what must be a geeky and horny young group of engineers at Georgia Tech.
The best thing about software, when someone copies it, you still get to keep it...
Knowing makes a better plot line. For example it didn't stop the writers for Hitman 2 from basing progression in the game on this. Gee, the hacker guy found in like three seconds the software was copied and sent somewhere.
Or am I being terribly naive about the way the software industry does things?
You are being terribly naive about how the software industry does things.
For every example of a software company that does things right, there are 10,000,000 examples of software companies run as if they are a roving band of gypsies looking for next week's meal ticket.
Spend millions on a computer system only to have pen and paper turn out to be the workable solution. I think the people of Tippecanoe County could learn a few things from monorail episode of The Simpsons about salesmen selling crap to eager and naive buyers.
Yes, the officials in your county who bought the Diebold systems were had and your treasury is significantly smaller for it. If people there don't make a big stink about this, they should all be ashamed.
if the votes are off by 500 or 1000 how are you going to know?
You know, for some reason this reminded me of a conversation I had about C programming. Pointers in C are a wonderful thing, if you are lucky a bad pointer will cause a segfault; if you are unlucky, a bad pointer will simply cause an arbitrary piece of data in an arbitrary datastructure to change. I love unrepeatable bugs in C programs. They make the C programmers life so much fun.
Oh, to get to my point...Windows and Access are most likely written in C by Microsoft programmers. Essentially, we are talking non-deterministic and non-repeatable voting systems, here, folks. Yup, they could get an error, and never know why it occured!
Why oh why is this so difficult? Press a button, tally a vote. Next voter please. Why is this even still being discussed???
Apparently you don't understand how government contracts work.
the time gap between voting and being tallied.
Every party and canidate should have a right to send a representative to oversee the transportation and counting. It is also an obligation of the poll staff to supervise the supervisors. With checks and balances in the system, fraud should be minimal. If this doesn't already occur, then that is very very very pathetic.
What??? Pen and paper scales linearly very well. In fact, is scales much much better than people's ability to remember the names of who they are voting for. Last election, I had to bring in a list I prepared the day before to cover all the races.
Also, the scaling of computers is more often than not mythical. So, instead of getting the pre-printed ballots and stacking them on a table, people have to run power cords, set up the machines, boot them, troubleshoot them when they fail, hope the counting is going well, etc.
One, vote counters are volunteers.
Two, these electronic voting systems cost millions of dollars to develop, most likely using tax funds to do so (who would buy them other than counties?).
Three, people don't understand these things, especially from a poll staff persepctive. They are counter intuitive.
Four, they use software, which is always fallable, unless developed with a rigor no county or state will ever have the guts to pay for.
In conclusion, electronic voting is a feel-good experiment of the early 21st century that I sincerely hope will be short lived.
Well, Bombardier actually did one better than Segway. It's basically a motorcycle that is shorter, lighter, and presumably easier to drive. With that "landing gear" and the drivers two legs, running out of gas is probably a non-event, if they designed it properly. The only real problem would be when losers try to race these things through town with no regard for other human life.