I'm not karma whoring; I'm trying to get this important information in response to each ignorant post that gets modded up to +5 that doesn't mention there is a BILL ON THE TABLE THAT WILL FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS, i.e., give us a paper trail AND open source code on the systems themselves. Why no one mentions this, and insists on acting like nothing is being done and we're just hopelessly going down this paperless, proprietary road so that evil Republicans can steal all the elections, instead of simply working to fix the problems and supporting the bills that will, is beyond me.
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.
"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.
''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.
''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."
All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.
"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...
The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.
A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".
Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.
"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.
''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.
''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."
All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.
"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for
Actually, some of the other stuff on his site (Internet Archive mirror, Google cache) is really sweet. He's got all kinds of time and frequency equipment, an atomic nixie tube clock, and a bunch of other cool stuff, all with pictures.
First of all, HR 2391 doesn't make it criminal to "skip commercials".
It's meant to disallow technologies that bypass commercial and advertising content explicitly (such as things like the commercial skip features of old which skipped all ads, regardless of length, and returned you to the programming, or features that simply delete or auto-skip ad content altogether), but it won't prevent good ol' "fast forward" and 30 second skip features from working, nor will it make their use, even for commercial content, "criminal".
However, it's the implementation that is the concern. If the law is *interpreted* to mean that even things like fast forwarding through commercials are inappropriate, well, then we have a problem. But that is NOT the intent nor the purpose.
First of all, HR 2391 doesn't make it criminal to "skip commercials".
It's meant to disallow technologies that bypass commercial and advertising content explicitly (such as things like the commercial skip features of old which skipped all ads, regardless of length, and returned you to the programming, or features that simply delete or auto-skip ad content altogether), but it won't prevent good ol' "fast forward" and 30 second skip features from working, nor will it make their use, even for commercial content, "criminal".
However, it's the implementation that is the concern. If the law is *interpreted* to mean that even things like fast forwarding through commercials are inappropriate, well, then we have a problem. But that is NOT the intent nor the purpose.
On the subject of TiVo and placing banner ads during fast forwarding, and the general idea of *automatic* ad content skipping/deletion:
If the entire TV industry is predicated on advertising, and the idea of advertising is predicating on paying to have as many people see your ads as possible (and the payment is proportional to proven amounts of people who may be watching), if an increasing number of people (many in educated and financially stable demographics) have the capability to avoid ever seeing any advertising, what, exactly, makes it worthwhile for advertisers to continue paying for it, at least at the same levels? You are choosing to watch content whose creation and delivery is funded in large part by advertising revenues. What funds it if that model is completely broken?
Sure, your cable/satellite bill can, but only to a point. There are billions of dollars that come from advertising. Is there not that side to this story as well?
What about newspapers? Sure, you can argue that newspaper ads aren't "intrusive", in a time-dependent way, but would a newspaper or its advertisers welcome a service that made it free or easy to eliminate all ads, and keep the other content, while still keeping the newspaper cost at 50 cents?
Additionally, I've seen people here and elsewhere say they actually wouldn't mind "advertising" for products and services they're actually interested in - but at the same time, people argue against giving anyone the data needed to do exactly that kind of targeted advertising as a violation of privacy.
So, my question is, what takes the place of the advertising revenue? How and when is it acceptable for products to be advertised?
Q. Are Usability & Security Opposites in Computer Systems?
A. Yes, for instances where security measures do decrease usability. No, for instances where they don't.
A2. Yes, for instances when software makers don't care about security, nor about integrating it properly. No, for instances where they show they care about security and want to do it properly.
Come on, seriously. Sometimes, various measures for security make things "harder" to use. But there are so many things which define "security". Authentication, authorization, encryption, access, and each at several different levels.
The ultimate answer is, yes, security and usability are opposites when the responsibility for the security measures rests entirely upon the end user. Simple example: Make a user have a password, and they'll make it their dog's name (not secure). Force it to be too complex, and they'll forget it (not usable). Mandate that it be changed every week AND be too complex, and they'll write it down (not secure or usable).
When the security measures are administered by a skilled external entity (such as a knowledgeable and sensible IT staff) or integrated seamlessly into applications and operating systems (by knowledgeable and sensible software makers), they can be "usable". In fact, "usable" is the wrong word: it should be "transparent".
There are ways to make good security - whether it's for an entire organization or a single workstation - usable, and non-intrusive. It just takes someone with the skill, knowledge, and foresight to do it.
Disconnect and motivation
on
The Music Man
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"...a man who is claiming the title of 'King of the Pirates'...and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded..."
I thought there was a slight issue there.
I decided to look at the article, and somehow, he believes that downloading the music isn't illegal, but burning it to CD is.
And, also from the article, he apparently is doing this because he is on a quest to preserve all of the music of Western civilization in the event that a (presumably Panislamic) terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon in, say, downtown Chicago, precipitating a complete and devastating collapse of the economies of the US and the West, changing the face of the currently free nations in the world forever (and losing all of our music along with it).
Why or how, exactly, one individual person with consumer-grade storage and computing equipment operating out of a residence is the absolute best way to do this is not covered.
Ahh, indeed...I see what he's getting at: making audio-only recordings (a lot easier to do than setting up a camera) so as to have multiple copies to more easily strip the watermark.
The company (naturally) seems convinced that they're immune to this; we'll see.
Management is in on pirating too. All they have to do is turn the antipirating device off at night when they close at normal hours (incase it logs its own use), then play the movie one more time without it.
The device appears to be intended to be enabled at all times, according to the manufacturer's marketing materials. And "management" might also be at a higher level than the theater itself. Granted, if the entire theater local, regional, and corporate management is "in on it" (unlikely), you could bypass it (but then, why would they have installed it in the first place)?
The system is designed to be monitored 24/7.
Or they can grab the reel and pop it in a telecine machine.
One would presume a theater that has installed this would have a little better security, eh? (And probably wouldn't let their employees bring in telecine machines, who likely don't have them anyway, nor does the theater.)
As for watermarking..they do that with video now and we get past it. Doing it with audio is even easier to bypass. All you need is two recordings from seperate theaters to compare against. If you're just doing audio, one can be done with a simple tape recorder plugged into the hearing impaired headphone jack.
Ok, with two recordings - both needing to be from theaters that DO have the watermarks - and people absolutely dead set on pirating the movie, they'll ALWAYS be able to do it. This is intended to stop casual piracy. (And the watermark is present on the assistive hearing jack; that's the point.)
The equipment is designed to be installed by theater management, and ALWAYS be running. If it's tampered with, a call center is notified. And if any "detections" are made, the same call center is notified, and then a live person makes the decision to notify the local theater's security and management. If it's not tampered with AND a camera detection isn't made, then the audio portion has a watermark that contains the exact theater and time the recording was made. See my post here.
Looks like it's also being promoted as a tool to prevent employees from doing the pirating themselves: the "PirateEye" camcorder detector and the "TrakStar TVS" audio watermarking system, ostensibly installed by theater management, are apparently connected, and if one is disconnected from the other, loses power, or is otherwise tampered with, TrakStar's call center (a paid service, I'm sure) is notified, which can then make an independent decision to call security: Is the movie supposed to be exhibited now? Is the anti-piracy equipment still intact and functioning? This is in addition to the tracking information that audio watermarking can provide (i.e., to certain theaters and certain times, narrowly identifying "offenders").
You can bet a company like this is angling to position itself to be EVERYWHERE, much like Macrovision - and then, one wonders if "offending" theaters will be punished by, say, having new releases withheld?
Yes, I've seen some references to that as well...but he's still missing the specific connection structures a normal brain has between the hemispheres. Apparently they are connected in other ways (or are simply one "piece")? One would imagine that's part of what the NASA researchers will be looking into more thoroughly.
While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant. (Autism, like many disorders, is merely a set of diagnostic criteria, and Kim may share some in common with classic autism. However, some critical benchmarks for autism are not shared, making Kim not strictly "autistic".)
The above article and the brief wikipedia story are very interesting reads. For example, did you know that Kim was born with "an enlarged head and missing corpus callosum, the connecting tissue between the brain hemispheres, damage to the cerebellum and no anterior commissure"?
That's easy...the Xserve G5s consume a LOT less power (and therefore generate less heat, resulting in lower cooling costs) than any competitive products (Xeon, Itanium2, Opteron)...and this was true even when they were using the 970 (as opposed to the 970fx they are using now).
Several of the researchers at Virginia Tech have referred to this in various news stories numerous times - one estimate was over two times less power than comparable systems.
I'm sure it would be similar to any Linux cluster in the top 10; there's no reason to believe it should be any different or require significantly different levels of system administration and maintenance.
Before anyone says "Of course System X is cheaper! Virginia Tech had free student labor to put it together! They paid them in pizza!"
The only thing anywhere close to System X is NCSA's Tungsten, a 2500 processor Pentium IV Xeon Dell Linux cluster. It cost $12 million, just for the asset (comparable to System X's $5.8 million overall price, including the upgrade to Xserve G5s). That's twice the cost, and over 2Tflops less performance. 2Tflops is a top 100 supercomputer...so it's a whole top 100 supercomputer poorer in performance, for an extra $6.2 million.
Another example is PNNL's 1936 processor Itanium2 cluster: 3.5Tflops less performance than System X, for $25 million.
Any way you slice it - no pun intended - System X is still a LOT cheaper, even if you allot, say $2M for professional installation and systems integration - an EXTREMELY liberal estimate, probably by an order of magnitude.
System X also has the highest Rmax per CPU of any system on the list, except for specialty non-commodity systems like Earth Simulator.
And on top of it all, last November, they hit #3 in the world, #2 in the US, and #1 academic, as well as the first academic site to ever exceed 10Tflops, all for less than $7 million in total - including all improvements to buildings, physical plant, and other infrastructure.
That first system might not have had ECC, but what it did do is break into the top 5, following all the rules of the Top 500 organization, for relative pocket change - for a price that was absolutely unheard of, sharing the spotlight with systems that cost $100 million or more - and also catapulted Virginia Tech to a supercomputing center of national prominence overnight, able to attract additional attention, funding, grants, and publicity. Not to mention testing and proving the suitability of a completely new OS, platform, processor, and interconnect for high-performance computing, increasing choice for all (and resulting in new clusters based on the same technology, such as the US Army/COLSA cluster). And even as new systems enter the top ten in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, System X retains the title of #1 at any academic institution, and shares the top 10 with the best of the best.
Seems to me that Virginia Tech pulled a real coup here, and a full year later, is still considerably cheaper that anything else. And now, it's being used for real scientific work. To bring a whole new platform onto the scene in essentially under a year and break into the ranks of the supercomputing elite virtually overnight, and to do it significantly, and sometimes ridiculously, cheaper than everyone else, is a feat that can't be ignored.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not karma whoring; I'm trying to get this important information in response to each ignorant post that gets modded up to +5 that doesn't mention there is a BILL ON THE TABLE THAT WILL FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS, i.e., give us a paper trail AND open source code on the systems themselves. Why no one mentions this, and insists on acting like nothing is being done and we're just hopelessly going down this paperless, proprietary road so that evil Republicans can steal all the elections, instead of simply working to fix the problems and supporting the bills that will, is beyond me.
But thanks for your input.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)
1 /10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/
1 2350492c.html
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.
"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/1
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.
''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.
''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-
All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.
"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for States and units of local government with responsibility for the administration of Federal elections...
The putative reasoning for going with electronic systems was likely that since we have managed to design accountable and reliable electronic and computing equipment for the management of our power, medical care, money, etc., it likely was more or less assumed by the legislature that such accountable systems could also be applied to voting.
A bill has been introduced to amend HAVA. H.R.2239 and its twin Senate counterpart S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter, and that "any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen".
Additionally, the three electronic voting manufacturers already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products. Some e-voting critics make it seem like vendors are resisting. However, it is the local election boards that are resisting (as well as the slow march of bureaucracy). The e-voting vendors will build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735 (video)
/10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/
Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.
"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
Kerry campaign officials and a range of election-law specialists agree that while machines made errors and long lines in Democratic precincts kept many voters away, there's no realistic chance that Kerry actually beat Bush.
''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities.
''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
''I think it's safe to say that on the votes that were cast in Ohio, Bush won," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University who is working with the ACLU to challenge Ohio's use of punch-card ballots. ''If the margin had been 36,000 rather than 136,000, we would have seen another post-election meltdown."
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11436220p-1 2350492c.html
All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.
"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."
A frequent charge levied after the 2000 election was voter disenfranchisement and ballot spoilage due, in large part, to antiquated, malfunctioning, or broken mechanical voting equipment. Legislation was introduced guaranteeing a minimum standard for the equipment and processes associated with voting in all jurisdictions. Since we are living in the 21st century, electronic systems were specified. $3.9 billion was set aside under HAVA to replace all mechanical punch card systems with electronic systems by 1 January, 2006. The goal is to ensure a consistency and fairness in the appearance and operation of the voting systems, both for voters and local election officials.
After the 2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA):
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration standards for
Sorry.
Actually, some of the other stuff on his site (Internet Archive mirror, Google cache) is really sweet. He's got all kinds of time and frequency equipment, an atomic nixie tube clock, and a bunch of other cool stuff, all with pictures.
Internet Archive mirror
Google cache
But yeah, it is really neat.
First of all, HR 2391 doesn't make it criminal to "skip commercials".
It's meant to disallow technologies that bypass commercial and advertising content explicitly (such as things like the commercial skip features of old which skipped all ads, regardless of length, and returned you to the programming, or features that simply delete or auto-skip ad content altogether), but it won't prevent good ol' "fast forward" and 30 second skip features from working, nor will it make their use, even for commercial content, "criminal".
However, it's the implementation that is the concern. If the law is *interpreted* to mean that even things like fast forwarding through commercials are inappropriate, well, then we have a problem. But that is NOT the intent nor the purpose.
First of all, HR 2391 doesn't make it criminal to "skip commercials".
It's meant to disallow technologies that bypass commercial and advertising content explicitly (such as things like the commercial skip features of old which skipped all ads, regardless of length, and returned you to the programming, or features that simply delete or auto-skip ad content altogether), but it won't prevent good ol' "fast forward" and 30 second skip features from working, nor will it make their use, even for commercial content, "criminal".
However, it's the implementation that is the concern. If the law is *interpreted* to mean that even things like fast forwarding through commercials are inappropriate, well, then we have a problem. But that is NOT the intent nor the purpose.
On the subject of TiVo and placing banner ads during fast forwarding, and the general idea of *automatic* ad content skipping/deletion:
If the entire TV industry is predicated on advertising, and the idea of advertising is predicating on paying to have as many people see your ads as possible (and the payment is proportional to proven amounts of people who may be watching), if an increasing number of people (many in educated and financially stable demographics) have the capability to avoid ever seeing any advertising, what, exactly, makes it worthwhile for advertisers to continue paying for it, at least at the same levels? You are choosing to watch content whose creation and delivery is funded in large part by advertising revenues. What funds it if that model is completely broken?
Sure, your cable/satellite bill can, but only to a point. There are billions of dollars that come from advertising. Is there not that side to this story as well?
What about newspapers? Sure, you can argue that newspaper ads aren't "intrusive", in a time-dependent way, but would a newspaper or its advertisers welcome a service that made it free or easy to eliminate all ads, and keep the other content, while still keeping the newspaper cost at 50 cents?
Additionally, I've seen people here and elsewhere say they actually wouldn't mind "advertising" for products and services they're actually interested in - but at the same time, people argue against giving anyone the data needed to do exactly that kind of targeted advertising as a violation of privacy.
So, my question is, what takes the place of the advertising revenue? How and when is it acceptable for products to be advertised?
Q. Are Usability & Security Opposites in Computer Systems?
A. Yes, for instances where security measures do decrease usability. No, for instances where they don't.
A2. Yes, for instances when software makers don't care about security, nor about integrating it properly. No, for instances where they show they care about security and want to do it properly.
Come on, seriously. Sometimes, various measures for security make things "harder" to use. But there are so many things which define "security". Authentication, authorization, encryption, access, and each at several different levels.
The ultimate answer is, yes, security and usability are opposites when the responsibility for the security measures rests entirely upon the end user. Simple example: Make a user have a password, and they'll make it their dog's name (not secure). Force it to be too complex, and they'll forget it (not usable). Mandate that it be changed every week AND be too complex, and they'll write it down (not secure or usable).
When the security measures are administered by a skilled external entity (such as a knowledgeable and sensible IT staff) or integrated seamlessly into applications and operating systems (by knowledgeable and sensible software makers), they can be "usable". In fact, "usable" is the wrong word: it should be "transparent".
There are ways to make good security - whether it's for an entire organization or a single workstation - usable, and non-intrusive. It just takes someone with the skill, knowledge, and foresight to do it.
"...a man who is claiming the title of 'King of the Pirates'...and his goal is to own a copy of every song ever recorded..."
I thought there was a slight issue there.
I decided to look at the article, and somehow, he believes that downloading the music isn't illegal, but burning it to CD is.
And, also from the article, he apparently is doing this because he is on a quest to preserve all of the music of Western civilization in the event that a (presumably Panislamic) terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon in, say, downtown Chicago, precipitating a complete and devastating collapse of the economies of the US and the West, changing the face of the currently free nations in the world forever (and losing all of our music along with it).
Why or how, exactly, one individual person with consumer-grade storage and computing equipment operating out of a residence is the absolute best way to do this is not covered.
Ahh, indeed...I see what he's getting at: making audio-only recordings (a lot easier to do than setting up a camera) so as to have multiple copies to more easily strip the watermark.
The company (naturally) seems convinced that they're immune to this; we'll see.
Management is in on pirating too. All they have to do is turn the antipirating device off at night when they close at normal hours (incase it logs its own use), then play the movie one more time without it.
The device appears to be intended to be enabled at all times, according to the manufacturer's marketing materials. And "management" might also be at a higher level than the theater itself. Granted, if the entire theater local, regional, and corporate management is "in on it" (unlikely), you could bypass it (but then, why would they have installed it in the first place)?
The system is designed to be monitored 24/7.
Or they can grab the reel and pop it in a telecine machine.
One would presume a theater that has installed this would have a little better security, eh? (And probably wouldn't let their employees bring in telecine machines, who likely don't have them anyway, nor does the theater.)
As for watermarking..they do that with video now and we get past it. Doing it with audio is even easier to bypass. All you need is two recordings from seperate theaters to compare against. If you're just doing audio, one can be done with a simple tape recorder plugged into the hearing impaired headphone jack.
Ok, with two recordings - both needing to be from theaters that DO have the watermarks - and people absolutely dead set on pirating the movie, they'll ALWAYS be able to do it. This is intended to stop casual piracy. (And the watermark is present on the assistive hearing jack; that's the point.)
The equipment is designed to be installed by theater management, and ALWAYS be running. If it's tampered with, a call center is notified. And if any "detections" are made, the same call center is notified, and then a live person makes the decision to notify the local theater's security and management. If it's not tampered with AND a camera detection isn't made, then the audio portion has a watermark that contains the exact theater and time the recording was made. See my post here.
Looks like it's also being promoted as a tool to prevent employees from doing the pirating themselves: the "PirateEye" camcorder detector and the "TrakStar TVS" audio watermarking system, ostensibly installed by theater management, are apparently connected, and if one is disconnected from the other, loses power, or is otherwise tampered with, TrakStar's call center (a paid service, I'm sure) is notified, which can then make an independent decision to call security: Is the movie supposed to be exhibited now? Is the anti-piracy equipment still intact and functioning? This is in addition to the tracking information that audio watermarking can provide (i.e., to certain theaters and certain times, narrowly identifying "offenders").
You can bet a company like this is angling to position itself to be EVERYWHERE, much like Macrovision - and then, one wonders if "offending" theaters will be punished by, say, having new releases withheld?
http://trakstar.net/solutions.htm
...people's "memory":
5 6
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/10/17162
Might it be that ICANN is trying to force people to keep their WHOIS information current (or at the very least have a correct contact email address)?
...would "Didn't RTFA" = "Insightful"
Yes, I've seen some references to that as well...but he's still missing the specific connection structures a normal brain has between the hemispheres. Apparently they are connected in other ways (or are simply one "piece")? One would imagine that's part of what the NASA researchers will be looking into more thoroughly.
While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant. (Autism, like many disorders, is merely a set of diagnostic criteria, and Kim may share some in common with classic autism. However, some critical benchmarks for autism are not shared, making Kim not strictly "autistic".)
The above article and the brief wikipedia story are very interesting reads. For example, did you know that Kim was born with "an enlarged head and missing corpus callosum, the connecting tissue between the brain hemispheres, damage to the cerebellum and no anterior commissure"?
That's easy...the Xserve G5s consume a LOT less power (and therefore generate less heat, resulting in lower cooling costs) than any competitive products (Xeon, Itanium2, Opteron)...and this was true even when they were using the 970 (as opposed to the 970fx they are using now).
Several of the researchers at Virginia Tech have referred to this in various news stories numerous times - one estimate was over two times less power than comparable systems.
I'm sure it would be similar to any Linux cluster in the top 10; there's no reason to believe it should be any different or require significantly different levels of system administration and maintenance.
A few more thoughts...
Before anyone says "Of course System X is cheaper! Virginia Tech had free student labor to put it together! They paid them in pizza!"
The only thing anywhere close to System X is NCSA's Tungsten, a 2500 processor Pentium IV Xeon Dell Linux cluster. It cost $12 million, just for the asset (comparable to System X's $5.8 million overall price, including the upgrade to Xserve G5s). That's twice the cost, and over 2Tflops less performance. 2Tflops is a top 100 supercomputer...so it's a whole top 100 supercomputer poorer in performance, for an extra $6.2 million.
Another example is PNNL's 1936 processor Itanium2 cluster: 3.5Tflops less performance than System X, for $25 million.
Any way you slice it - no pun intended - System X is still a LOT cheaper, even if you allot, say $2M for professional installation and systems integration - an EXTREMELY liberal estimate, probably by an order of magnitude.
System X also has the highest Rmax per CPU of any system on the list, except for specialty non-commodity systems like Earth Simulator.
And on top of it all, last November, they hit #3 in the world, #2 in the US, and #1 academic, as well as the first academic site to ever exceed 10Tflops, all for less than $7 million in total - including all improvements to buildings, physical plant, and other infrastructure.
That first system might not have had ECC, but what it did do is break into the top 5, following all the rules of the Top 500 organization, for relative pocket change - for a price that was absolutely unheard of, sharing the spotlight with systems that cost $100 million or more - and also catapulted Virginia Tech to a supercomputing center of national prominence overnight, able to attract additional attention, funding, grants, and publicity. Not to mention testing and proving the suitability of a completely new OS, platform, processor, and interconnect for high-performance computing, increasing choice for all (and resulting in new clusters based on the same technology, such as the US Army/COLSA cluster). And even as new systems enter the top ten in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, System X retains the title of #1 at any academic institution, and shares the top 10 with the best of the best.
Seems to me that Virginia Tech pulled a real coup here, and a full year later, is still considerably cheaper that anything else. And now, it's being used for real scientific work. To bring a whole new platform onto the scene in essentially under a year and break into the ranks of the supercomputing elite virtually overnight, and to do it significantly, and sometimes ridiculously, cheaper than everyone else, is a feat that can't be ignored.
Yes. And I'm talking about "DivX ;-)". It's something called a "joke". I guess other people got it.
...did we forgive DivX for its official name being DivX ;-)?