With Palm Scanners, I doubt employees can verify the time recorded. With Punch Cards, an employee can make a photo-copy of what was entered on their card, and later make sure they're paid correctly.
One of the great flaws with an electronic system (Voting, time-card, billing, other) is how easy it is for the system owner to manipulate the data with absolutely no evidence of the manipulation at all.
If in a year or so we learn that a mega-corp like Walmart has been secretly deducting worker hours by a couple of minutes each day, the only thing that will surprise me is that we learned about it at all! A well planned scheme by an unscrupulous employer would be impossible to detect.
From the Non-fiction department:
Bringing Down the House
-True story of card-counting techies who take casinos for millions of dollars, their ups-n-downs, and how it eventually fell apart.
MoneyBall
-Story of the Oakland A's baseball team using economics and analysis to find "diamond-in-the-rough" players, and use their full potential to defeat better funded teams.
From what I've heard, many ground-pounding grunts much prefer civilian gear to the military issue stuff their given by headquarters.
Can't say I blame them either. Have you seen a Gov. Issue gps device, nearly the size of a small phonebook, vs. a commercially available one that fits in the palm of your hand.
I was at REI yesterday, near a military base, when a small squad came in, and wanted to outfit their whole group. The REI salesman tells me that has been common during the military buildup. Many soldiers want sleeping bags, GPS, binoculars, etc.
So, while I'm sure a ground unit is required to have a Goverment GPS device when he goes into battle, I wouldn't be too surprised if they carry around smaller, better, commercial devices, and prefer to use them. Degrading the signal used by those devices could possibly lead to serious errors and maybe even cost lives!
Just my opinion, as I know little-to-nothing about military ops.
-ABelenky17
To what degree do ISP's actually hunt out and cancel servers, or prevent them via technology?
I've been on a few ISP's now, both CableModem and DSL. I always run my little servers, and I've never gotten in trouble. I'm not serving world+dog, mainly just myself and a few friends. My upstream-bandwidth is mild, and the provider never seems to mind.
In my experience, these "rules" are really just for bandwidth hogs who think they're getting something valuable very cheaply. YGWYPF, always!
While you're mostly correct that 2.70/2.007 started it all, theres an important step you left out.
2.70 is from the Mechanical Engineering Dept,
with the emphasis on Mechanical Design.
The Comp.Sci/Electrical Eng. department picked up on the idea and created a class called "6.270".
They also created the Handyboard and Interactive C. The emphasis is a balance between mechanical systems, electrical sensors, and programming autonomous interactive systesm.
The 6.270 equipment later formed the foundation of Lego Mindstorms.
(P.S. When I write that a "department" created something, it should be noted that it was really the outstanding contributions of several truly dedicated and talented individuals. Unfortunately, I don't remember all their names anymore... but I'm thankful for their effort anyway. I still have my hand-assembled Handyboard, and work with it regularly)
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One of the great flaws with an electronic system (Voting, time-card, billing, other) is how easy it is for the system owner to manipulate the data with absolutely no evidence of the manipulation at all.
If in a year or so we learn that a mega-corp like Walmart has been secretly deducting worker hours by a couple of minutes each day, the only thing that will surprise me is that we learned about it at all! A well planned scheme by an unscrupulous employer would be impossible to detect.
Hal Albeson received a PhD in Mathematics in 1973. As otherwise pointed out, 1922 is part of his title. :)
From the Non-fiction department: Bringing Down the House -True story of card-counting techies who take casinos for millions of dollars, their ups-n-downs, and how it eventually fell apart. MoneyBall -Story of the Oakland A's baseball team using economics and analysis to find "diamond-in-the-rough" players, and use their full potential to defeat better funded teams.
From what I've heard, many ground-pounding grunts much prefer civilian gear to the military issue stuff their given by headquarters. Can't say I blame them either. Have you seen a Gov. Issue gps device, nearly the size of a small phonebook, vs. a commercially available one that fits in the palm of your hand. I was at REI yesterday, near a military base, when a small squad came in, and wanted to outfit their whole group. The REI salesman tells me that has been common during the military buildup. Many soldiers want sleeping bags, GPS, binoculars, etc. So, while I'm sure a ground unit is required to have a Goverment GPS device when he goes into battle, I wouldn't be too surprised if they carry around smaller, better, commercial devices, and prefer to use them. Degrading the signal used by those devices could possibly lead to serious errors and maybe even cost lives! Just my opinion, as I know little-to-nothing about military ops. -ABelenky17
To what degree do ISP's actually hunt out and cancel servers, or prevent them via technology? I've been on a few ISP's now, both CableModem and DSL. I always run my little servers, and I've never gotten in trouble. I'm not serving world+dog, mainly just myself and a few friends. My upstream-bandwidth is mild, and the provider never seems to mind. In my experience, these "rules" are really just for bandwidth hogs who think they're getting something valuable very cheaply. YGWYPF, always!
While you're mostly correct that 2.70/2.007 started it all, theres an important step you left out.
2.70 is from the Mechanical Engineering Dept,
with the emphasis on Mechanical Design.
The Comp.Sci/Electrical Eng. department picked up on the idea and created a class called "6.270".
They also created the Handyboard and Interactive C. The emphasis is a balance between mechanical systems, electrical sensors, and programming autonomous interactive systesm.
The 6.270 equipment later formed the foundation of Lego Mindstorms.
(P.S. When I write that a "department" created something, it should be noted that it was really the outstanding contributions of several truly dedicated and talented individuals. Unfortunately, I don't remember all their names anymore... but I'm thankful for their effort anyway. I still have my hand-assembled Handyboard, and work with it regularly)