I don't think they need to be as physically secure, there's always a voting official in the room in plain sight and several other people working there. It doesn't need to be built like an ATM that will be randomly placed in dark alleys.
Not just that; they also do not have to be completely tamper-proof (though the more secure the better, obviously). The point is that we shouldn't labour under the illusion that these machines can be made completely tamper-proof, which is what the manufacturers and politicians are driving at. Rather, we need a reliably way to detect tampering and verify the voting results in case we suspect some tampering has occurred. More importantly, verification must be possible by non-experts, which means that voters can see for themselves that votes are tallied correctly rather than take some experts word for it.
A voting machine that prints off a paper ballot which the voter deposits in a lockbox still seems the best option to achieve this.
Odd, as a "white male travelling alone", I have never been singled out for secondary screening on my many trips. Not even that time when the security guy at check-in (they had a separate guy asking a few questions) asked me if I travelled alone, and I replied "No but my friend is on another flight today since he got a freebie ticket, not sure which flight. Where am I staying in the US? No idea, its in New York and my friend has the address". I breezed through security as usual.
The only time I got secondary screening was when I returned from NY with a friend, and we checked in really early (this was after AA cancelled all its flights and they told us to expect 4 hour long queues at check-in the next day. Naturally the airport was deserted when we showed up early). I suppose they found that suspicious. I must say the secondary screening was nothing bad, a quick pat down, a few questions and swabs from my clothing. The accepted my explanation about the gunpowder trace on my jacket ("I wear this to the range") without further queries.
I have a legitimate fully paid for version of MS Office 2003 that absolutely will NOT install a single MS Update, ever. And it hasn't for more than a year.
Odd... Until last year I still ran an ancient version of Office (95 or 98 I think), but last year the Genuine Advantage thingie offered me a free upgrade to Office 2007. I was a bit suspicious about some malware on my computer offering me a bogus, virus ridden version, but it turned out to be all legit.
I did find that the most important change is that the menus got all confusing. For the rest, Outlook still does a piss-poor job at matching names in the address book, Word still can't handle bulleted lists very well and stupidly still hasn't "paste as unformatted text" as the default, and VBA is still about as non-complete and non-orthogonal as it gets. Still, it was nice of MS to offer...
"and the gold plating actually decreases conductivity" no it doesn't. It doesn't add any either.
The point of gold plating is mostly corrosion. In most cases it's a non-issue.
Projectors are not as good. I was looking at the difference just last weak end. The plasma was crisper, and the details were sharper.
I saw one of those 100" plasma units, and while it's an impressive display, I thought a projector image was close enough in favourable lighting conditions. Also the 90.000 price tag scared me off.
the Monster power filters are actually very good units, "
that may be true, I;ll take your word for it, but are they better then other companies products?
Do you need power filters in the first place? Maybe to protect your equipment against surges or brownouts, yes, but does it really affect the sound quality that much to warrant spending 4 figures on it?
I was just about to comment on that too. Anything Monster makes is likely to be found much cheaper and of comparable quality through another manufacturer, if it's even worth purchasing in the first place
Monster has become the Bose of the 21st century. They sell decent gear but it is way overpriced... and Monster went one smarter by selling cables. The margins on those so-called high end power cables or their speaker cables must be unbelievable.
before this idiotic "if it costs less than $1000 it must be rubbish" high end hype, everyone was using thick, but otherwise ordinary copper wire to hook up their speakers. Including the audiophiles.
I might be wrong, but the average home user really only needs a bunch of things,
A web browser
A way to play music and movies
A way to manage photographs
Basic word processing needs
And Linux has all of these already.
In most households, at least a few family members use the PC to play games, and many rely on an informal network to get support for basic issues. Add "The ability to play the latest games", and "Availability of basic support from friends, family or the local IT shop" to that list, and Linux suddenly does not look like such a good option.
First off, why would it have to be more expensive.
To deter people from yakking all the way on an 8 hour transatlantic flight.
Secondly, just how do you intend on advertising that increased fee? What if I use my cell phone and the plane is still on the ground? Would I still have to pay a higher rate when today I don't have to?
From what I've read, they'll disable the cells while on the ground and during takeoff and landing.
Practicalities aside, who else thinks that cramming many people into a small space for hours on end, then adding the aggravation that's on top of most people's list of annoyances (loud cell phone conversations) into the mix, is a monumentally stupid idea? They better make it damn expensive.
So, SP1 won't install if there's an incompatible driver present
No. It will not install if there is a driver that is incompatible according to Microsoft, and who knows what criteria they apply? It would be good if they could accurately identify incompatible drivers, but I doubt that they can.
The difference is that it is unthinkable that most companies should have a "Chief Plumbing Officer", but the IT world seems to think that they need to be involved at the highest reaches of every company's management.
It depends on what business you are in. Technology companies or companies that rely heavily on technology like Google, Amazon or mobile phone operators do not need their IT to "just work"; they need it to stay ahead of the pack. Toilets do not give your company a competitive advantage, but IT can.
Companies that manage to use IT as a competitive advantage usually do two things: 1) They don't treat IT as IT but as Information Management. 2) They have IT represented at board level. IT should not be about Vista and das blinkenlights, but about corporate information and how to manage it. Information Management is difficult though since it requires knowledge of both IT and the business. Having a CIO who speaks business as well as technology on the board, helps turning your IT plumbing into something with real value... and in companies with such a CIO, the value of IT is a lot more apparent to the rest of management. But you are right that a CIO who just manages the plumbing is pointless.
The problem with many IT people is that even they cannot explain the value of their service to the business. Most of them focus on their projects and their own little tech world, where the rest of the company is a big unknown, a hindrance that impedes their daily activities. And I've seen CIOs / CTOs like that.
Yes, I also remember how fission plants would give us electricity so cheap that it wouldn't be worthwhile to meter it.
However there are proposed roadmaps to commercial fusion that are a bit more detailed than "ask me again in 20 years". The plan in that link puts the first commercial fusion reactor at around 2050 though.
Like many other people who have worked/are working on fusion, I don't think it's going to be commercially viable this century. The problem is materials. It's simply too expensive to build these things.
If the problem is just cost (I know it isn't...), then I think the problem will solve itself. Often the first one of anything is rather expensive to build, then costs come down as we gain more experience and improve production facilities. Or the price will become more and more attractive as the alternatives (oil, etc) become more expensive.
Long before this century is out, I think we'll arrive at the point where we can no longer afford not to build these things (or fission plants as an alternative). So get back in that lab and get back at it!
They already have, at least in some parts of the world. I worked on similar software intended for NATO use... 12 years ago. Granted it was a bit less multimedia-y as you might expect, but the intended use was the same.
I wonder how the EU is doing with the CoS? Last I heard some member nations were refusing to recognize them as a religion.
Which is silly. Why not recognise them as a religion, and then move to treat all religions with the respect they deserve, which is to say none at all. Scientologists may be a bit sillier in their beliefs and the way they treat their members than other mainstream religions, but not a great deal.
Maybe I'm putting it a bit harsher than I should, but I think none of these religions deserve the privileged status they enjoy in so many countries.
The issue is not so much with the terms of the Promise itself, but with ambiguity about which parts of the specification are covered, and which aren't. From TFA:
[...] Yu questioned whether even the most technically well-informed and legally-sophisticated developer would be able determine exactly which elements referred to within the 6,000 pages of the specification are affected by patents that aren't covered under the OSP.
If this coverage is not explicitly defined, Yu asked, how can an organization be sure Microsoft won't still be entitled to sue it?
The Promise states that not everything in the specification is covered. It does not state "We promise to never sue you for implementing any part of this specification".
If "it's not been tested in court" or "non-lawyers may not understand legalese" is all you've got, STFU.
The article says: "Ambiguous and untested". One thing you cannot say for the GPL is that it is ambiguous. While there may be some wriggle room for any lawyer in there, the document states in pretty clear terms what its intent it. Even if you do not understand legalese, you can still read and understand the GPL even if you can not fully appreciate what bits might not hold up in court. For that reason, if a company releases software under the GPL and then contests the consequences in court, any judge worth his salt will at least ask: "but then why did you release under the GPL in the first place?".
Microsoft's document on the other hand seems obfuscated on purpose, so that they can claim OOXML to be open and freely available to speed its adoption as a standard and alleviate fears of lock-in... then go to court and assert a different interpretation whenever their interests are sufficiently challenged. Given where Microsoft's interests lie, that's not a farfetched scenario.
What's the definition of pedophilia, then? If it involves viewing media of children being sexually abused, then pedophilia is clearly a crime
Here's some food for thought(crime), to give you an idea: Here In the Netherlands, realistic pornographic drawings of children are considered to be child pornography, as well as computer-generated images of that nature. Even if no existing children are depicted. If you get your jollies making pornographic drawings of imaginary kids, you can face up to 10 years if someone happens to find them in your home.
Child abuse is about as low an act as it gets, and I am certainly not defending it... but we're getting carried away. Parents being taken to task for having holiday snaps of their own little Billy playing by the pool, Mary being warned not to sit on uncle Joe's lap because "that's inappropriate", that sort of thing.
Read the article again. I don't think any of the items you've ticked on this list really apply to the proposed solution, which in this article is targeting phishing attempts, but can work against spam as well.
Besides, I think this form by now deserves an automatic -5 Stale and patently unfunny.
Is this the "innovation-promoting" effect of patenting?
This thing captures (some of) the kinetic energy of the falling raindrops; this energy is lost in your vat.
I wonder how this material stacks up, in terms of cost and surface area per generated Wh, against a vat up on a pole with a water wheel and a generator. Hey, you can even combine the two: shingle your roof with this new material, and put a small generating turbine at the bottom of the drainpipe. Even so I doubt that you can generate significant amounts of energy from it, a solar panel + battery is a better choice if you need power off the grid. Even in overcast conditions a solar panel generates a little electricity.
Anyone did the math on this, something like average nr of drops / (s . m^2) * weight of an average raindrop * velocity of an average raindrop ^2, to get an idea of the power you can generate from falling rain.
Seriously, I had the same questions about formal, mathematical specifications when I learned of them. In my own experience (mostly business software), most re-work in software comes from a mismatch with the functional specification, or because of stuff that was left out of the functional spec but should have been in there. There are still actual programming or logic errors, but improved testing methodes and test functions of development frameworks have helped catch those bugs ever earlier in the development cycle.
But perhaps formal methods have their use for certain kinds of software.
But software is different, for some reason. For example, do you see that happen with Microsoft? Hell no! If Microsoft were held accountable for its software like Engineers are, the company would have been sued into oblivion and Bill Gates would be in jail for gross negligence. And so would the responsible parties of every other software company
Software is different, in that small mistakes often have very large and far-reaching consequences. When designing software, you also have to deal with far, far more unforseeable circumstances. If we hold software developers to the same liability as we do building contractors and architects, no one would be able to profitably sell any.
Get a guy to design you a home, and have a contractor build it. They are both liable to make small mistakes. You may be entitled to have it fixed but good luck getting them to do it. Then there's the miriad of small mistakes and oversights that you don't even notice because they do not affect you. If your building contractor used one 5" nail where he should have used a 6" one, the worst that is (un)likely to happen is that a bit of paneling falls of the wall when a truck rumbles by. In software, that one misplaced nail may cause an entire neighbourhood to collapse into matchsticks.
Also, a lot of bugs are not that serious. Note how car manufacturers deal with liability: if there's a safety issue, it's an immediate recall. If it's an annoying blinky light, they'll fix it when you bring the car in for regular service. Don't most software companies usually (admittedly not always) deal with it like this?
I was actually hoping to see Ballmer sitting in a swivel chair with a fluffy white cat in his lap. And any believable villain should have a stainless steel lair.
Slashdot Mirror
A voting machine that prints off a paper ballot which the voter deposits in a lockbox still seems the best option to achieve this.
Yes, it tastes good and it is a healty part of any diet when taken in moderation (which goes for any food, really).
Odd, as a "white male travelling alone", I have never been singled out for secondary screening on my many trips. Not even that time when the security guy at check-in (they had a separate guy asking a few questions) asked me if I travelled alone, and I replied "No but my friend is on another flight today since he got a freebie ticket, not sure which flight. Where am I staying in the US? No idea, its in New York and my friend has the address". I breezed through security as usual.
The only time I got secondary screening was when I returned from NY with a friend, and we checked in really early (this was after AA cancelled all its flights and they told us to expect 4 hour long queues at check-in the next day. Naturally the airport was deserted when we showed up early). I suppose they found that suspicious. I must say the secondary screening was nothing bad, a quick pat down, a few questions and swabs from my clothing. The accepted my explanation about the gunpowder trace on my jacket ("I wear this to the range") without further queries.
I did find that the most important change is that the menus got all confusing. For the rest, Outlook still does a piss-poor job at matching names in the address book, Word still can't handle bulleted lists very well and stupidly still hasn't "paste as unformatted text" as the default, and VBA is still about as non-complete and non-orthogonal as it gets. Still, it was nice of MS to offer...
before this idiotic "if it costs less than $1000 it must be rubbish" high end hype, everyone was using thick, but otherwise ordinary copper wire to hook up their speakers. Including the audiophiles.
More like Snow Crash, or even better: the short story BLIT by David Langford. This story immediately brought BLIT back to mind.
Practicalities aside, who else thinks that cramming many people into a small space for hours on end, then adding the aggravation that's on top of most people's list of annoyances (loud cell phone conversations) into the mix, is a monumentally stupid idea? They better make it damn expensive.
Companies that manage to use IT as a competitive advantage usually do two things:
1) They don't treat IT as IT but as Information Management.
2) They have IT represented at board level.
IT should not be about Vista and das blinkenlights, but about corporate information and how to manage it. Information Management is difficult though since it requires knowledge of both IT and the business. Having a CIO who speaks business as well as technology on the board, helps turning your IT plumbing into something with real value... and in companies with such a CIO, the value of IT is a lot more apparent to the rest of management. But you are right that a CIO who just manages the plumbing is pointless.
The problem with many IT people is that even they cannot explain the value of their service to the business. Most of them focus on their projects and their own little tech world, where the rest of the company is a big unknown, a hindrance that impedes their daily activities. And I've seen CIOs / CTOs like that.
Yes, I also remember how fission plants would give us electricity so cheap that it wouldn't be worthwhile to meter it.
However there are proposed roadmaps to commercial fusion that are a bit more detailed than "ask me again in 20 years". The plan in that link puts the first commercial fusion reactor at around 2050 though.
Long before this century is out, I think we'll arrive at the point where we can no longer afford not to build these things (or fission plants as an alternative). So get back in that lab and get back at it!
Maybe I'm putting it a bit harsher than I should, but I think none of these religions deserve the privileged status they enjoy in so many countries.
Microsoft's document on the other hand seems obfuscated on purpose, so that they can claim OOXML to be open and freely available to speed its adoption as a standard and alleviate fears of lock-in... then go to court and assert a different interpretation whenever their interests are sufficiently challenged. Given where Microsoft's interests lie, that's not a farfetched scenario.
Child abuse is about as low an act as it gets, and I am certainly not defending it... but we're getting carried away. Parents being taken to task for having holiday snaps of their own little Billy playing by the pool, Mary being warned not to sit on uncle Joe's lap because "that's inappropriate", that sort of thing.
Read the article again. I don't think any of the items you've ticked on this list really apply to the proposed solution, which in this article is targeting phishing attempts, but can work against spam as well.
Besides, I think this form by now deserves an automatic -5 Stale and patently unfunny.
I wonder how this material stacks up, in terms of cost and surface area per generated Wh, against a vat up on a pole with a water wheel and a generator. Hey, you can even combine the two: shingle your roof with this new material, and put a small generating turbine at the bottom of the drainpipe. Even so I doubt that you can generate significant amounts of energy from it, a solar panel + battery is a better choice if you need power off the grid. Even in overcast conditions a solar panel generates a little electricity.
Anyone did the math on this, something like average nr of drops / (s . m^2) * weight of an average raindrop * velocity of an average raindrop ^2, to get an idea of the power you can generate from falling rain.
.... Did he flunk you?
Seriously, I had the same questions about formal, mathematical specifications when I learned of them. In my own experience (mostly business software), most re-work in software comes from a mismatch with the functional specification, or because of stuff that was left out of the functional spec but should have been in there. There are still actual programming or logic errors, but improved testing methodes and test functions of development frameworks have helped catch those bugs ever earlier in the development cycle.
But perhaps formal methods have their use for certain kinds of software.
Get a guy to design you a home, and have a contractor build it. They are both liable to make small mistakes. You may be entitled to have it fixed but good luck getting them to do it. Then there's the miriad of small mistakes and oversights that you don't even notice because they do not affect you. If your building contractor used one 5" nail where he should have used a 6" one, the worst that is (un)likely to happen is that a bit of paneling falls of the wall when a truck rumbles by. In software, that one misplaced nail may cause an entire neighbourhood to collapse into matchsticks.
Also, a lot of bugs are not that serious. Note how car manufacturers deal with liability: if there's a safety issue, it's an immediate recall. If it's an annoying blinky light, they'll fix it when you bring the car in for regular service. Don't most software companies usually (admittedly not always) deal with it like this?
So... The Queen's Engrish.
I was actually hoping to see Ballmer sitting in a swivel chair with a fluffy white cat in his lap. And any believable villain should have a stainless steel lair.