What's that bit from Grover Norquist... "Starve the Beast"? So... they underfund agencies and/or staff them with incompetents so the agency can be dismantled and replaced with free-market private sector whores. Freepers must be creaming themselves.
Unfortunately, they've already started putting "exclusive" content on the newer formats... it's only a matter of time before retailers phase out old fashioned DVDs. Eventually after the newer formats are irrevocably cracked, they'll gain even further adoption.
Outsourcing is a threat as long as "american" businesses want it to be a threat.
Towards the end of the '90s, rather than relocate qualified talent within the US (no more relo expenses), they outsourced the jobs en masse to places overseas. And the galling excuse given? "Well, we simply don't have the talent here in the US." (Thank you, Craig Barret of Intel!) Truth be told, you did and to some extent still do (use it or lose it... lots of people losing it) have the talent here-- just not in a cheap convenient local bundle in the rural areas where the businesses have relocated.
So, suddenly Jimmy is told by his mom and dad, "Don't do IT-- it's being outsourced-- study something else." And thus the brain draining vacuum became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bottom line, if you're going to do something-- be it IT or something else-- do it to the best of your abilities, and if you can't get what you want from the establishment (corporate america) then innovate and create it for yourself (start your own business, or start an open source project).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't customization the whole point of open source? So that if Jimbob decides he does not like how the kernel is, he can either
tweak it himself
hire a programmer to tweak it for him
or hope that like minds out there somewhere have already tweaked it?
On March 18, Black Box Voting
released the first part of findings from an examination of the Diebold TSx
touch-screen machines in Emery County, Utah.
Diebold has responded. Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation Inc. have
rebutted Diebold's initial explanation. Diebold then came up with a new
explanation, while trying to maneuver Emery County's elections chief into
resigning.
Bruce Funk, the elected official who has run elections in Emery County for 23
years, noticed a critical shortage in flash memory/storage in seven of his 40
brand new Diebold machines. He arranged for an independent evaluation, a right
granted to Utah county officials in the Diebold contract. Black Box Voting
secured the services of Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation, Inc. for the
Emery County evaluation.
The initial assessment was not encouraging: The memory was so low it appeared
likely to compromise elections held on the affected machines, and the most
likely explanations were all pretty bad: 1) Different programs on the machines
2) Data already residing on the machines from use elsewhere 3) Flash memory near
the end of its life cycle.
1. Diebold claims low memory due to a variation in
fonts
According to the Deseret Morning News, Diebold spokesman David Bear
claimed that the critical shortage in memory was due to different fonts loaded
on certain machines.
"Spokesman David Bear said that some of the machines were
programmed with more font options than other machines, which is accounting for
most of the discrepancy in available memory, although the types of tests run on
the machines before shipping could also take up memory.
Diebold has not explained why some machines would have different fonts than
others.
Actually, the memory discrepancies were as large as 20MB, and the low memory
triggered text on the TSx machine to flip to RED, clearly an alert that there
was a problem. Hursti and Security Innovation cast doubt on the font
explanation:
Hursti: "Fonts, which there are only few, can explain few 100 kilobytes
[each] at the most, not 20 meg we have."
Security Innovation, Inc.: "I went into the tool that builds Windows CE
and after adding ALL of the fonts that it contains they *totaled* to 4 megs.
Harri is right in that each font individually was small with the largest being a
meg but most being like 30k-60k. There exists the possibility that they created
a custom font but I don't know why...The only one that's any where near big
enough (22meg) is a UNICODE one that can represent things like Japanese
characters, Chinese characters.
(Note that Emery County Utah does not have a Japanese/Chinese population
sufficient to warrant such special fonts, and even if it did, if such fonts use
up memory to the extent that machines experience critical storage problems, that
is a significant defect. The existence of Asian language fonts on Utah machines
would be consistent with taking delivery on machines previously used in
California.)
2. New Diebold explanation: "There is an A, B, and C
version"
On Monday Mar. 27, Diebold attended a meeting in Emery County and here they
claimed there were actually several versions delivered to Utah. Now, bear in
mind that all are the TSx 4.6.4, but in this tape recorded meeting, Diebold
stated that within this there is an A, B, and C version.
The main question, of course, is:
Is it the A, B, or the C version that is the certified version?
In the mean time, Diebold is hoping Bruce Funk will
hurry up and resign
Diebold's immediate response to Funk's decision to have his machines
independently tested was to threaten to charge over $1,200 to check the machines
tested to make sure they were suitable for elections.
This brings to mind the question -- why did Diebold deliver machines with memory
YAY???
Why is this big news? Is Alienware really that well regarded in PC communities? All they do is take components and assemble them, spray paint them and sell them at a premium. Other than the snazzy paint job, where's the value added?
There could also be destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice charges for wiping or destroying the hardrives.
Cuts both ways... the state could easily destroy any evidence proving the newspaper innocent.
"In response, the state argued that 'the newspaper has not produced one shred of evidence that the computer hard drives contain information protected from disclosure.'"
YIKES!!! How are they supposed to produce the evidence when the evidence has been seized?
The future of American Law?
"You're the suspect that is described in our warrant."
"No I'm not."
"Oh yeah? Prove it."
"First I need my photo ID cards and paperwork that you stole from me."
"No can do. It's ours now, and anyway, 'in a post 9-11 world, this is a matter of national security'. You're guilty."
Anyone taking wagers that they're not already taking payments from US corporations and US politicians to filter out sites with "undesirable" information?
Hmm... does this look familiar to anyone?
https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/
So really, who cares about Vista, other than Microsoft, investors and "analysts" like Gartner??? Is Vista really a reason to send MS your hard earned $$$?
Are they going to make agreements with game developers to say, "Make this only run on Vista... because we don't think gamers will have the option of playing on a PS3 or Revolution system"???
Seriously, what's the selling point of Vista? "Security" updates that track your system usage released a week after the gold version?
Other than Gartner, other MS crony "analysts", and investors... who really gives a monkey's butt about Vista?
Doesn't Sun Microsystems already offer the fancypants GUI???
Slashdot Mirror
Imagining a judge almost like the one in the Regular Show episode "Cool Bikes"
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/07/07/22/1247210/New-Linux-Desktop-Environment-Built-on-Firefox
A how-to for getting ip6tables going on an Asus RT-N16:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=506009
Yay for viral PR provided by Comcast... nice handbook... how much different is it from the "real" handbook?
Supposedly Vista is selling like gangbusters in China... can anyone verify?
How about something like the GoBe Productive suite which has been sitting on shelves of its most recent owners for the last few years now?
Semantics, but there's a difference if they use the specific word "installs" vs. "product sold" vs. "activations"... hmm...
What's that bit from Grover Norquist... "Starve the Beast"? So... they underfund agencies and/or staff them with incompetents so the agency can be dismantled and replaced with free-market private sector whores. Freepers must be creaming themselves.
Unfortunately, they've already started putting "exclusive" content on the newer formats... it's only a matter of time before retailers phase out old fashioned DVDs. Eventually after the newer formats are irrevocably cracked, they'll gain even further adoption.
aah, Southpark's "Underpants Gnome"/Harbucks example.
How much is this going to cost them, so then they can claim financial losses (despite consistently rising sales figures) on piracy?
And still companies like Diebold continue to thrive... how is that?
Towards the end of the '90s, rather than relocate qualified talent within the US (no more relo expenses), they outsourced the jobs en masse to places overseas. And the galling excuse given? "Well, we simply don't have the talent here in the US." (Thank you, Craig Barret of Intel!) Truth be told, you did and to some extent still do (use it or lose it... lots of people losing it) have the talent here-- just not in a cheap convenient local bundle in the rural areas where the businesses have relocated.
So, suddenly Jimmy is told by his mom and dad, "Don't do IT-- it's being outsourced-- study something else." And thus the brain draining vacuum became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bottom line, if you're going to do something-- be it IT or something else-- do it to the best of your abilities, and if you can't get what you want from the establishment (corporate america) then innovate and create it for yourself (start your own business, or start an open source project).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't customization the whole point of open source? So that if Jimbob decides he does not like how the kernel is, he can either
tweak it himself
hire a programmer to tweak it for him
or hope that like minds out there somewhere have already tweaked it?
geesh!
Regal isn't playing with a full deck anyway... http://www.alternet.org/story/34016/
On March 18, Black Box Voting released the first part of findings from an examination of the Diebold TSx touch-screen machines in Emery County, Utah.
Diebold has responded. Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation Inc. have rebutted Diebold's initial explanation. Diebold then came up with a new explanation, while trying to maneuver Emery County's elections chief into resigning.
Bruce Funk, the elected official who has run elections in Emery County for 23 years, noticed a critical shortage in flash memory/storage in seven of his 40 brand new Diebold machines. He arranged for an independent evaluation, a right granted to Utah county officials in the Diebold contract. Black Box Voting secured the services of Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation, Inc. for the Emery County evaluation.
The initial assessment was not encouraging: The memory was so low it appeared likely to compromise elections held on the affected machines, and the most likely explanations were all pretty bad: 1) Different programs on the machines 2) Data already residing on the machines from use elsewhere 3) Flash memory near the end of its life cycle.
1. Diebold claims low memory due to a variation in fonts
According to the Deseret Morning News, Diebold spokesman David Bear claimed that the critical shortage in memory was due to different fonts loaded on certain machines.
"Spokesman David Bear said that some of the machines were programmed with more font options than other machines, which is accounting for most of the discrepancy in available memory, although the types of tests run on the machines before shipping could also take up memory.
Diebold has not explained why some machines would have different fonts than others.
Actually, the memory discrepancies were as large as 20MB, and the low memory triggered text on the TSx machine to flip to RED, clearly an alert that there was a problem. Hursti and Security Innovation cast doubt on the font explanation:
Hursti: "Fonts, which there are only few, can explain few 100 kilobytes [each] at the most, not 20 meg we have."
Security Innovation, Inc.: "I went into the tool that builds Windows CE and after adding ALL of the fonts that it contains they *totaled* to 4 megs. Harri is right in that each font individually was small with the largest being a meg but most being like 30k-60k. There exists the possibility that they created a custom font but I don't know why...The only one that's any where near big enough (22meg) is a UNICODE one that can represent things like Japanese characters, Chinese characters.
(Note that Emery County Utah does not have a Japanese/Chinese population sufficient to warrant such special fonts, and even if it did, if such fonts use up memory to the extent that machines experience critical storage problems, that is a significant defect. The existence of Asian language fonts on Utah machines would be consistent with taking delivery on machines previously used in California.)
2. New Diebold explanation: "There is an A, B, and C version"
On Monday Mar. 27, Diebold attended a meeting in Emery County and here they claimed there were actually several versions delivered to Utah. Now, bear in mind that all are the TSx 4.6.4, but in this tape recorded meeting, Diebold stated that within this there is an A, B, and C version.
The main question, of course, is:
Is it the A, B, or the C version that is the certified version?
In the mean time, Diebold is hoping Bruce Funk will hurry up and resign
Diebold's immediate response to Funk's decision to have his machines independently tested was to threaten to charge over $1,200 to check the machines tested to make sure they were suitable for elections.
This brings to mind the question -- why did Diebold deliver machines with memory
Has anyone bothered to look at "the third party"'s website? http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ Those Diebold machines didn't seem too stable a week ago...
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=15 6621
http://www.m-techlaptops.com/alienware_vs.vodoo.ht m
There could also be destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice charges for wiping or destroying the hardrives. Cuts both ways... the state could easily destroy any evidence proving the newspaper innocent.
"In response, the state argued that 'the newspaper has not produced one shred of evidence that the computer hard drives contain information protected from disclosure.'"
YIKES!!! How are they supposed to produce the evidence when the evidence has been seized?
The future of American Law?
"You're the suspect that is described in our warrant."
"No I'm not."
"Oh yeah? Prove it."
"First I need my photo ID cards and paperwork that you stole from me."
"No can do. It's ours now, and anyway, 'in a post 9-11 world, this is a matter of national security'. You're guilty."
'course they're not evil...
Anyone taking wagers that they're not already taking payments from US corporations and US politicians to filter out sites with "undesirable" information?
Hmm... does this look familiar to anyone? https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/ So really, who cares about Vista, other than Microsoft, investors and "analysts" like Gartner??? Is Vista really a reason to send MS your hard earned $$$? Are they going to make agreements with game developers to say, "Make this only run on Vista... because we don't think gamers will have the option of playing on a PS3 or Revolution system"??? Seriously, what's the selling point of Vista? "Security" updates that track your system usage released a week after the gold version?
Other than Gartner, other MS crony "analysts", and investors... who really gives a monkey's butt about Vista? Doesn't Sun Microsystems already offer the fancypants GUI???
Well, second only to Intel's dropping their Pentium brand from their Pentium chips. To quote Weird Al, "It's all about the pentiums, baby"
What's to stop BS from colluding with other ISPs to have them all engage in this pay-for-play gig? They're not called Baby Bells for nothing.
The idea will crash and burn if BS is the only one doing it... but if ALL of the ISPs get in on the gig? Oh yeah, we are royally screwed!