Well, here's my letter...before I fire it off, anything obviously wrong or stupid?
Dear sir,
I am a software engineer employed in New York state. This morning, I
read on Reuters a report that Unisys Corp., Dell Computer Corp., and
Microsoft Corp., are teaming up to develop an electronic voting system.
Dell Computer Corp. is the number two PC manufacturer in the United States,
and Microsoft produces the de facto standard computer operating system
software, "Windows", used worldwide, and is currently in hot water with the
DOJ. I suggest that proprietary computer and software companies which
have large shares, if not monopolies, in their sector, may not be the
best entities to entrust with inventing a secure, fair, open, and
accountable electronic voting system.
In my opinion, both professional and personal, such a system is best
developed under a Free Software/Open Source model. I refer you to
descriptions of Free Software,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, and Open Source,
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.
Loosely, Free/Open-Source software is distributed under a license
which guarantees the freedom of people to obtain and inspect the source
code of such software. I believe only with this freedom of inspection
can we ever trust that software does what its originators claims it does.
Obviously this would be of utmost importance in an electronic voting
system. Furthermore, Free/Open-Source software has the additional
benefit of allowing many people to verify that the software is free of
bugs and performs as expected. This has the side effect of producing
software which is frequently more reliable and robust than software which
is developed behind proprietary curtains. Much of the infrastructure of
the internet is based on such Free/Open-Source software. Recently the
operating system Linux, also developed under this model, has been
receiving a good amount of attention and accolades.
Lastly I would like to point out that such a Free/Open-Source software
system for electronic voting already exists: FREE, "Free Referenda and
Elections Electronically": http://www.thecouch.org/free/. I am sure
there are other such Free/Open-Source projects.
As a professional, the practical benefits of Free/Open-Source software
are apparent to me. But as a citizen, I believe the social and ethical
benefits to state operated systems are paramount, and I could never
entirely trust with my vote, software whose source code I, or a trusted
party, cannot inspect. I kindly suggest that research into electronic
voting systems explore Free/Open-Source software possibilities.
Damn, Slashdot needs a "Score: 100, STOP PRESSES". Because that's literally what should be done. The system should be Free Software, and being written in Java is just another plus (you get the "freedom" of running it on many OSes with little recompilation/reconfiguration/debugging hassle).
I thought the few solar energy plants were actually doing pretty good. I heard in some places they were actually getting paid back by putting so much into the grid. Is this inaccurate?
And also, why were we not in this mess when it was governmentally regulated? It seems like the second it went free market, everything went to shit. Maybe this will be incentive for people to use those efficient LED lights, eh?
But technology is making it easier and easier to pass the buck along. "Oh, sorry we can't do anything about that, go see Entity X" "Oh, sorry we're not responsible, Entity Y added you to our database" "Oh sorry, we don't really exist anymore, we were bought out, go see Entity Z".
You can even see it in spineless university and corporate policies which disclaim any responsibility for everything under the sun. We're a litigious society, where nobody wants to take responsibility for anything, or make any personal conscious decisions without referring to some rulebook.
I think there should be a set number of slots for random amusing FIRST PSOT!/Natalie Portman/Grits posters. Every serious discussion can stand a few hilarious/mindless non-sequiters.
Re:(somewhat OT) Technical Comment about GlassCode
on
Glasscode Released
·
· Score: 2
Hi Troll,
You think perhaps the/. effect may have anything do with it?
First of all JSP pages will always load slow the first time because they're being compiled. Secondly servlets, being bytecode, are *plenty* fast. I'm pretty happy servlets were used over <insert your hackish CGI preference>. If you are writing a complicated system like Glasscode in Perl, well, God help you. Writing it in C is just plain stupid, and is the icing on your troll post.
Uh, that would be great if I *actually wanted* to hear sheet music played back to me. But I don't. I want to hear what the artists fingers actually played. I want to hear the crowd. I want to hear the interview. I want to hear somebody reciting DeCSS code. You cannot create a musical instrument definition for every sound on earth.
The discovery compounded the perplexity and confusion raised by earlier detection of planets beyond the Sun's family, beginning in 1995. Of more than 1,000 stars observed, over 50, all relatively nearby Earth, have so far been found to be accompanied by single planets.
How about this: an extraterrestrial civilization lives in a solar system, hopping from planet to planet exploiting the resources. After it has used up all the resources of the solar system, or perhaps when the star is starting to die, it uses the remaining planets (the ones it is not on) as fuel to blast itself to another promising solar system. Repeat this process. Leaving us to witness a whole bunch of solar systems with just one planet revolving around them. Perhaps in the two planet system they shot off the smaller inner planet and used the outer planet as a gravitational boost. Might make a good SF story if someone hasn't already written it.
In a private meeting with Bezos, Jobs and Doerr, Kamen assembled two Gingers -- or ITs -- in 10 minutes, using a screwdriver and hex wrenches from components that fit into a couple of large duffel bags and some cardboard boxes.
The invention has a fun element to it, because once a Ginger was turned on, Bezos started laughing his "loud, honking laugh".
There are possibly two Ginger models, named Metro and Pro -- and the Metro may possibly cost less than $2,000. Bezos is quoted as saying that IT "...is a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?"
Jobs is quoted as saying: "...If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen."
Kemper says the invention will "sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking."
The "core technology and its implementations" will, according to Kamen, "have a big, broad impact not only on social institutions but some billion-dollar old-line companies." And the invention will "profoundly affect our environment and the way people live worldwide. It will be an alternative to products that are dirty, expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in the cities."
IT will be a mass-market consumer product "likely to run afoul of existing regulations and or inspire new ones,"
according to Kemper. The invention will also likely require "meeting with city planners, regulators, legislators, large commercial companies and university presidents about how cities, companies and campuses can be retro-fitted for Ginger."
In a private meeting with Bezos, Jobs and Doerr, Kamen assembled two Gingers -- or ITs -- in 10 minutes, using a screwdriver and hex wrenches from components that fit into a couple of large duffel bags and some cardboard boxes.
The invention has a fun element to it, because once a Ginger was turned on, Bezos started laughing his "loud, honking laugh".
There are possibly two Ginger models, named Metro and Pro -- and the Metro may possibly cost less than $2,000. Bezos is quoted as saying that IT "...is a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?"
Jobs is quoted as saying: "...If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen."
Kemper says the invention will "sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking."
The "core technology and its implementations" will, according to Kamen, "have a big, broad impact not only on social institutions but some billion-dollar old-line companies." And the invention will "profoundly affect our environment and the way people live worldwide. It will be an alternative to products that are dirty, expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in the cities."
IT will be a mass-market consumer product "likely to run afoul of existing regulations and or inspire new ones,"
according to Kemper. The invention will also likely require "meeting with city planners, regulators, legislators, large commercial companies and university presidents about how cities, companies and campuses can be retro-fitted for Ginger."
In short C++ and more genrally OO result in code and coding styles that tend to make code that makes modern CPU's run less efficiently.
On the contrary, what if I think the modern CPU generally makes object oriented code run less efficiently? I mean, does your computer work for you or do you work for it? Maybe CPUs just need to be redesigned so they run high level languages more efficiently. I think you have to #undef ASSEMBLER=GOOD.
Slashdot poster: "Well, we've been trolled by the best son"
Slashdot moderator: "But dad, you we're the best"
Slashdot poster: (with a stern look) "We've been *trolled* by the *best*
(adapted from Simpsons, can't find the exact quote)
You know, the only people I've ever seen claim that OOP is so marvelous and is such a panacea, are rabid people like this, who compare it to communism. Really, who is this guy arguing to? Managers? What is he trying to prove? Who really believes OOP==GUI? Or that an OOP product is necessarily better than anything else? I might have believed that someone believed this maybe 15 years ago...but not now.
He's right - OOP is more of an organizational philosophy. In fact you can apply OOP concepts to languages that don't inherently support OOP. And (surprise!) you can apply procedural concepts to OOP languages (duh). OOP is merely a convenient way of thinking about things. Of course it has its flaws, not the least of which is the restrictions of inheritence (is-a/has-a) and the overhead of thinking out and abstracting the problem. But people who use OOP languages without thinking through their problems because they think it's magically going to solve it deserve to get burned (and I guess that's who this article is directed at). But it's just one way, among others, to go about modeling and solving your problem.
Next issue: "Expose: High Level Languages - They're Not All They're Cracked Up To Be! (plus, they're communist)"
Without delving too far down into flame, are you suggesting that I put a quantum computer on the 3D card of my 700Mhz Athlon system?
Yes, that is what the original poster suggested, which I don't see as being that bizarre. You know "computer" doesn't have to mean the entire system including peripherals and monitor. It could mean just a quantum cpu.
To answer your second point, the article said billion, not million.
So? I was impeaching your logic. Current computers are already orders of magnitude larger than the first computers. Does that mean that it is insane to give each person their own computer, instead of sharing the equivalent processing power (~250 computers, given the population of the United States is ~250) amongst all? No. It means that with the new power we'll come up with new things to do.
Putting a quantum cpu on a 3D chip, or imagining that we might actually have new uses for orders of magnitude more processing power just doesn't seem that bizarre to me.
First, there is the QM way of representing information
Oh, yeah, is that the way whereby when you inspect it it becomes destroyed? Really, does QM itself show any promise for data storage? Aren't you talking about molecular storage? (like in crystals or something). Seems to me QM is really good for processing. I wouldn't trust it to store the state of my cat;)
Melvin Urofsky of Virginia Commonwealth University said he had been unable to assign students online research assignments about federal indecency law.
How recursively ironic is that? This alone should be enough to strike down this law. I guess the defense won't be using state computers to defend their position.
What I find sad and ironic, is the enforcement that athletes wear clothing with sanctioned logos, or face disqualification from the olympics. Some of these athletes are from the very countries in which western and global corporations exploit the populace in sweatshops to make these goods.
Ok, so ISPs pass the cost to the consumers (as a whole). Makes sense sorta. (and despite the worries of the Ars editor, I don't think it matters if the content creator and ISP are one in the same - if so, they are *still* beholden to the market...people just won't use their service if they gouge for the content).
But in light of the previous article on this worldwide "grid" concept...let's take this out to it's natural conclusion - the internet is seen more and more as a publicly-owned entity, governance migrates to the public sector and is state funded (a lot of it is already state funded, either directly, or indirectly via the major backbones coincidentally being major educational institutions). Now, your ISP is more or less your government, and you pay for the media you consume in taxes. What does this equal? State funded arts;)
(P.S. which IMNSHO is a Good Thing:)
(P.P.S the only scary part is that the government is your ISP; although theoretically the government should be the *one* thing you have control over...probably the system needs to be fixed)
Didn't ANYBODY watch that show on last night about World Sports Exchange? Basically, three guys founded an online sports gambling startup, in Antigua, just to be safe. Now the US gov considers them criminals on the run from the law!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, here's my letter...before I fire it off, anything obviously wrong or stupid?
Dear sir,
I am a software engineer employed in New York state. This morning, I
read on Reuters a report that Unisys Corp., Dell Computer Corp., and
Microsoft Corp., are teaming up to develop an electronic voting system.
Dell Computer Corp. is the number two PC manufacturer in the United States,
and Microsoft produces the de facto standard computer operating system
software, "Windows", used worldwide, and is currently in hot water with the
DOJ. I suggest that proprietary computer and software companies which
have large shares, if not monopolies, in their sector, may not be the
best entities to entrust with inventing a secure, fair, open, and
accountable electronic voting system.
In my opinion, both professional and personal, such a system is best
developed under a Free Software/Open Source model. I refer you to
descriptions of Free Software,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, and Open Source,
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.
Loosely, Free/Open-Source software is distributed under a license
which guarantees the freedom of people to obtain and inspect the source
code of such software. I believe only with this freedom of inspection
can we ever trust that software does what its originators claims it does.
Obviously this would be of utmost importance in an electronic voting
system. Furthermore, Free/Open-Source software has the additional
benefit of allowing many people to verify that the software is free of
bugs and performs as expected. This has the side effect of producing
software which is frequently more reliable and robust than software which
is developed behind proprietary curtains. Much of the infrastructure of
the internet is based on such Free/Open-Source software. Recently the
operating system Linux, also developed under this model, has been
receiving a good amount of attention and accolades.
Lastly I would like to point out that such a Free/Open-Source software
system for electronic voting already exists: FREE, "Free Referenda and
Elections Electronically": http://www.thecouch.org/free/. I am sure
there are other such Free/Open-Source projects.
As a professional, the practical benefits of Free/Open-Source software
are apparent to me. But as a citizen, I believe the social and ethical
benefits to state operated systems are paramount, and I could never
entirely trust with my vote, software whose source code I, or a trusted
party, cannot inspect. I kindly suggest that research into electronic
voting systems explore Free/Open-Source software possibilities.
Damn, Slashdot needs a "Score: 100, STOP PRESSES". Because that's literally what should be done. The system should be Free Software, and being written in Java is just another plus (you get the "freedom" of running it on many OSes with little recompilation/reconfiguration/debugging hassle).
respecting robots.txt is entirely optional. there is nothing at all stopping search engines/spiders/whatever from completely ignoring it.
I thought the few solar energy plants were actually doing pretty good. I heard in some places they were actually getting paid back by putting so much into the grid. Is this inaccurate?
And also, why were we not in this mess when it was governmentally regulated? It seems like the second it went free market, everything went to shit. Maybe this will be incentive for people to use those efficient LED lights, eh?
But technology is making it easier and easier to pass the buck along. "Oh, sorry we can't do anything about that, go see Entity X" "Oh, sorry we're not responsible, Entity Y added you to our database" "Oh sorry, we don't really exist anymore, we were bought out, go see Entity Z".
You can even see it in spineless university and corporate policies which disclaim any responsibility for everything under the sun. We're a litigious society, where nobody wants to take responsibility for anything, or make any personal conscious decisions without referring to some rulebook.
I think there should be a set number of slots for random amusing FIRST PSOT!/Natalie Portman/Grits posters. Every serious discussion can stand a few hilarious/mindless non-sequiters.
Hi Troll,
/. effect may have anything do with it?
You think perhaps the
First of all JSP pages will always load slow the first time because they're being compiled. Secondly servlets, being bytecode, are *plenty* fast. I'm pretty happy servlets were used over <insert your hackish CGI preference>. If you are writing a complicated system like Glasscode in Perl, well, God help you. Writing it in C is just plain stupid, and is the icing on your troll post.
Uh, that would be great if I *actually wanted* to hear sheet music played back to me. But I don't. I want to hear what the artists fingers actually played. I want to hear the crowd. I want to hear the interview. I want to hear somebody reciting DeCSS code. You cannot create a musical instrument definition for every sound on earth.
Big corporations blow millions and millions paying hipsters to come up with these rubbish words. It's insane.
English is the the promiscuous Y chromosome of languages...all sorts of cruft accumulates in it... ;)
Look at the evidence - it has to be a *robotic prostitiute*
How about this: an extraterrestrial civilization lives in a solar system, hopping from planet to planet exploiting the resources. After it has used up all the resources of the solar system, or perhaps when the star is starting to die, it uses the remaining planets (the ones it is not on) as fuel to blast itself to another promising solar system. Repeat this process. Leaving us to witness a whole bunch of solar systems with just one planet revolving around them. Perhaps in the two planet system they shot off the smaller inner planet and used the outer planet as a gravitational boost. Might make a good SF story if someone hasn't already written it.
Sorry for duplicate post, I thought Slashdot ate the first, but it stuck it on the second page. Just too funny not to post IMHO ;)
- IT is not a medical invention.
- In a private meeting with Bezos, Jobs and Doerr, Kamen assembled two Gingers -- or ITs -- in 10 minutes, using a screwdriver and hex wrenches from components that fit into a couple of large duffel bags and some cardboard boxes.
- The invention has a fun element to it, because once a Ginger was turned on, Bezos started laughing his "loud, honking laugh".
- There are possibly two Ginger models, named Metro and Pro -- and the Metro may possibly cost less than $2,000. Bezos is quoted as saying that IT "...is a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?"
- Jobs is quoted as saying: "...If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen."
- Kemper says the invention will "sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking."
- The "core technology and its implementations" will, according to Kamen, "have a big, broad impact not only on social institutions but some billion-dollar old-line companies." And the invention will "profoundly affect our environment and the way people live worldwide. It will be an alternative to products that are dirty, expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in the cities."
- IT will be a mass-market consumer product "likely to run afoul of existing regulations and or inspire new ones,"
- according to Kemper. The invention will also likely require "meeting with city planners, regulators, legislators, large commercial companies and university presidents about how cities, companies and campuses can be retro-fitted for Ginger."
** It's a ROBOTIC PROSTITUTE!! ** oh happy day!- IT is not a medical invention.
- In a private meeting with Bezos, Jobs and Doerr, Kamen assembled two Gingers -- or ITs -- in 10 minutes, using a screwdriver and hex wrenches from components that fit into a couple of large duffel bags and some cardboard boxes.
- The invention has a fun element to it, because once a Ginger was turned on, Bezos started laughing his "loud, honking laugh".
- There are possibly two Ginger models, named Metro and Pro -- and the Metro may possibly cost less than $2,000. Bezos is quoted as saying that IT "...is a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?"
- Jobs is quoted as saying: "...If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen."
- Kemper says the invention will "sweep over the world and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking."
- The "core technology and its implementations" will, according to Kamen, "have a big, broad impact not only on social institutions but some billion-dollar old-line companies." And the invention will "profoundly affect our environment and the way people live worldwide. It will be an alternative to products that are dirty, expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in the cities."
- IT will be a mass-market consumer product "likely to run afoul of existing regulations and or inspire new ones,"
- according to Kemper. The invention will also likely require "meeting with city planners, regulators, legislators, large commercial companies and university presidents about how cities, companies and campuses can be retro-fitted for Ginger."
** It's a ROBOTIC PROSTITUTE!! ** oh happy day!On the contrary, what if I think the modern CPU generally makes object oriented code run less efficiently? I mean, does your computer work for you or do you work for it? Maybe CPUs just need to be redesigned so they run high level languages more efficiently. I think you have to #undef ASSEMBLER=GOOD.
Slashdot poster: "Well, we've been trolled by the best son"
Slashdot moderator: "But dad, you we're the best"
Slashdot poster: (with a stern look) "We've been *trolled* by the *best*
(adapted from Simpsons, can't find the exact quote)
You know, the only people I've ever seen claim that OOP is so marvelous and is such a panacea, are rabid people like this, who compare it to communism. Really, who is this guy arguing to? Managers? What is he trying to prove? Who really believes OOP==GUI? Or that an OOP product is necessarily better than anything else? I might have believed that someone believed this maybe 15 years ago...but not now.
He's right - OOP is more of an organizational philosophy. In fact you can apply OOP concepts to languages that don't inherently support OOP. And (surprise!) you can apply procedural concepts to OOP languages (duh). OOP is merely a convenient way of thinking about things. Of course it has its flaws, not the least of which is the restrictions of inheritence (is-a/has-a) and the overhead of thinking out and abstracting the problem. But people who use OOP languages without thinking through their problems because they think it's magically going to solve it deserve to get burned (and I guess that's who this article is directed at). But it's just one way, among others, to go about modeling and solving your problem.
Next issue: "Expose: High Level Languages - They're Not All They're Cracked Up To Be! (plus, they're communist)"
Yes, that is what the original poster suggested, which I don't see as being that bizarre. You know "computer" doesn't have to mean the entire system including peripherals and monitor. It could mean just a quantum cpu.
To answer your second point, the article said billion, not million.
So? I was impeaching your logic. Current computers are already orders of magnitude larger than the first computers. Does that mean that it is insane to give each person their own computer, instead of sharing the equivalent processing power (~250 computers, given the population of the United States is ~250) amongst all? No. It means that with the new power we'll come up with new things to do.
Putting a quantum cpu on a 3D chip, or imagining that we might actually have new uses for orders of magnitude more processing power just doesn't seem that bizarre to me.
Oh, yeah, is that the way whereby when you inspect it it becomes destroyed? Really, does QM itself show any promise for data storage? Aren't you talking about molecular storage? (like in crystals or something). Seems to me QM is really good for processing. I wouldn't trust it to store the state of my cat ;)
What part of "quantum chip be put onto a 3d card" do you not understand? He didn't say put a 3d card into a quantum computer.
If quantum computing is a billion times faster, than one "quantum computer" would take care of the gaming needs of China or India.
And current computers are millions of times faster than the originals. It should then follow that the united states should have exactly 250 computers?
How recursively ironic is that? This alone should be enough to strike down this law. I guess the defense won't be using state computers to defend their position.
What I find sad and ironic, is the enforcement that athletes wear clothing with sanctioned logos, or face disqualification from the olympics. Some of these athletes are from the very countries in which western and global corporations exploit the populace in sweatshops to make these goods.
Ok, so ISPs pass the cost to the consumers (as a whole). Makes sense sorta. (and despite the worries of the Ars editor, I don't think it matters if the content creator and ISP are one in the same - if so, they are *still* beholden to the market...people just won't use their service if they gouge for the content).
;)
:)
But in light of the previous article on this worldwide "grid" concept...let's take this out to it's natural conclusion - the internet is seen more and more as a publicly-owned entity, governance migrates to the public sector and is state funded (a lot of it is already state funded, either directly, or indirectly via the major backbones coincidentally being major educational institutions). Now, your ISP is more or less your government, and you pay for the media you consume in taxes. What does this equal? State funded arts
(P.S. which IMNSHO is a Good Thing
(P.P.S the only scary part is that the government is your ISP; although theoretically the government should be the *one* thing you have control over...probably the system needs to be fixed)
Didn't ANYBODY watch that show on last night about World Sports Exchange? Basically, three guys founded an online sports gambling startup, in Antigua, just to be safe. Now the US gov considers them criminals on the run from the law!