You can never verify the privacy of the voters, because they may choose to tell their vote
Two points on this
1) You can lie "Sure I voted for you Mr Big Gun"
and the second is that this isn't the issue the issue is Mr Big Gun standing next to you as you put the X on the sheet making _sure_ that you vote for him.
Not sure which countries allow people the day off to vote either.
Imagine managing the digital signature for everyone, BUT STILL ENSURING ITS ANONYMOUS.
The problems are huge, and they are right to reject it, especially in light of the problems of access to the internet.
Over hear in the land of the unfree we already have these protections. We also have some other consumer protections that might be worth having
1) They can't sell your data unless you let them (two whole tick boxes)
2) The data isn't considered a company asset when the.com goes tits up.
And as for hurting consumers.... bollocks, totally and utter. Reducing SPAM, being in control of your own information. Hell this _is_ what consumers want.
Go Vermont, full credit to some law makers who aren't just in the pockets of big business.
And if the "EverQuest" universe of Norrath were a country, its per-capita gross national product would be $2,266--comparable to the 77th richest country on Earth and ranking it between Russia and Bulgaria. Platinum pieces, the in-game currency known as pp, end up with an exchange rate of about a penny per pp, making "EverQuest" currency more valuable than the Japanese yen and the Spanish peseta.
Which is heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers ?
Its the same damn question. A _single_ Yen is worth less but the CURRENCY is JUST as valuable as the Dollar at any point in time. It can then move up or down and people make money (or defraud it) on those differences, but the Yen currency is worth about 133 Yen to the Dollar. The Currencies are therefore equivalent.
X = n * Y
X is equivalent to Y and in terms of currency the WORTH is calculated on the CURRENCY not on the individual element of that currency.
Is _the_ cent worth less than _the_ dollar ? Of course not _a_ cent is worth less than _a_ dollar.
Ummm lets see. Native Americans have tried to claim their own country. So has Hawaii, so has Quebec, so have Kurds in Turkey and Iraq etc etc etc. These people have failed to get a country AND ITS WHERE THEY LIVE. They have seperate religions, backgrounds and language and yet cannot seperate form the countries they contain.
And your idea is that A GAME, a series of 1s and 0s will address the UN.
Sometimes people really should be made to study history and the evolution of nationhood. It took a war against the then dominant world power to create the US, then another internal war to get the country that exists today. The UN is _not_ going to recognise a virtual world. Neither is any other country, its a stupid idea for many reasons but of course the most blatent one is
How do you become a citizen you have to either
a) Be born their
b) Be accepted as a national
Now given that you have to have people before you can become a nation then b doesn't apply. And you can't be born their because
IT DOESN'T REALLY EXIST
THOSE AREN'T REAL PEOPLE, its an avatar system, saying that people in these games exist is like claiming that you can declare the nation of "NetMeeting" because lots of people are using that too.
Can people on Slashdot PLEASE go outside sometimes
Not freebies that are sent to you "for a limited time only" for the last 2+ years. Actually bought from a shop.
For me its... well not since the internet ramped up from a technical articles perspective about 5 years ago. Why destroy trees or have a big "lump" every month when an incremental approach gets you back to the site every day or so, gives you the ability to search for old articles.
PDF ? Paper ? Lets be radical, join the 1990s and USE A WEBSITE.
Linus and Alan Cox aren't mentioned. Surely having the distros agreeing is one thing but if Linus and Alan change things within the kernel this would render the LSB pointless.
Windows manages to have some compatibility between 95/98/2000/XP because the control all of the OS, the distros don't control the kernel.
Interesting to see how often LSB has to be updated to keep up with the kernel.
What about the thousands of business travellers every year who attend a weeks worth of meetings and
a) Don't buy their own ticket
b) Don't book their hotel
c) Give the address they are staying at as the company they are visiting.
Or even crazier....
DIDN'T BUY THEIR TICKETS IN THE US!
For pities sake linking all of the reservations systems in the US to try and catch terrorists based in the middle east ? I hate to break it to the muppets out there who thought of this but I can go to a website outside of the US (e.g. This one) and book tickets.
The first thing such a system would find is things like
"Hey look IBMs corporate card has booked 4 people onto this flight, 1 in first class, 1 in business and 2 in coach. We'd better check it out"
or
"Some guy in Redmond is booking hundreds of flights a week going all over the world... including to the middle east"
This wins two awards
1) Brain dead of the year
and
2) Failure to recognise the world outside of the US
But that is the point, Linux is a nice OS, I actually use it on my desktop at work (over 1000 other people in the company using MS). But it does have issues, and things like EPOC or ARM very rarely get any coverage here on Slashdot, despite the fact that for next gen devices they present possibly the biggest threat to WinTel.
Linux is nice on my desktop, but I wouldn't trust it on my phone.
You are kidding right ? There are roughly three players in the marketplace right now
Symbian who run on Mobile phones like the Nokia Communicator (I have one, its superb), and Psions
WindowsCE on those lovely iPAQs, and they are lovely to use even if you hate Redmond
PalmOS single threaded poor quality OS, with a large user base.
NONE OF THESE ARE GPLed. All of them are successful.
People do NOT look to buy a PDA because they can hack code on it. Sure I can develop code for my PDA, but the OS ? Its a commercial product, I don't want it to fail. If you buy an PDA only if its got a GPL'ed OS then you are limiting your choice and are certainly not the mass market.
"We never had the luxury of spending lots of money," says Naylor. "We needed to be able to make do with less."
So in other words, all of the people elsewhere with massive budgets have been conned into buying large amounts of expensive kit to get less for their money than these guys.
Brains 1 - Suits 0
The most impressive thing about this is the simplicity of it. This isn't next gen tech or anything this is just someone who had the smarts to think
"Hang on we supply electricity via a distributed network rather than Point 2 Point, why can't we do the same with the internet... hang on its cheaper as well"
Real issue here though is that the City backed up the smart guy rather than getting CorporationX to do it, had then gone for the latter route they would be right where the rest of us are with our T1s to the Telco backbones.
I predict this won't happen in big cities because they have too much money to be sensible.
1) "Compress" at a higher rate than the CD uses (I've seen this)
2) Use POV Ray to render Lord of the Rings for the cinema
3) Keep every src and every.o from every build you do
4) Set the Linux swap space to be "500Gb" because you've upgraded the Kernel to the new VM stuff and it looks cool
5) Install Windows XP+ in two years time, with Office XP+.
Imagine that "Minimum Reqs: 1TB of available disk space"
It will happen
The world of the stupid economist brings you...
on
EverQuest and the UN
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Egypt has had an economy for around 6,000 years, continous and recorded. Just because it isn't in US dollars doesn't mean it isn't an economy. But here is the thing, their currency (the Egyptian Pound) is traded openly on the FX markets.
The argument you give is just plain stupid, sorry but its true. If I sell an original painting for $5,000 this does not mean that _every_ painting is worth that much, its diminishing returns, as the original poster said.
The US is NOT the measure of whether an economy has a GNP, GNP is the GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT of that country i.e. how much it produced IN ITS OWN CURRENCY this can then be traded on the FX to produce a Dollars, Euro or Sterling rate.
But it really is muppet-tastic to think that because you sell one item at X that you can sell n items at X. The example you give demonstrates the failure to grasp simple concepts.
If the US prints 1,000,000,000,000,000 1 dollar bills a day, then they'd be worth a damned sight less a week later.
Supply - Demand, this doesn't determine GNP, it determines scarcity v market. To multiply it up means that either
a) You don't understand economics AT ALL
or
b) You've also been nominated for a Darwin award because "Lead isn't poisonous in small doses so how can a bullet hurt ?"
And from 1700 to about 1941 Britain was the kingpin of world politics, during the 1800s there was one super-power who went round and pinched 1/4 of the globe. Sure its declined but not like the Roman Empire. The reason ?
Communication, societies now exist across borders and have the ability to spread their ideas and their concepts much further. The Romans lost because they had no clue about what was going on, Britain lost the empire because the empire gained concepts like Democracy and equality from Britain.
The Roman empire applies in one sense. Britain eventually listened and now the Commonwealth is one of the most powerful political forces on the planet, especially in Africa, it is the empire, but with everyone as equals.
Romans fell because of invasion at a time when weight of arms was the power, the British Empire saw the transition from arms to economy as the driver behind power.
There is a similarity between the US and the Romans however, the Romans didn't except that others should ever be treated as equals or that inclusion was a good thing. The US grew strong on the opposite of those principles, on a foundation of equality, inclusion and an objection to tyranny... unfortunately things have changed. Even so the US is not the important factor, it is its corporations. Today is a corporate not a national society.
Another article in the stark raving obvious....
on
Browsing Alone
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"1802 England
Social Scientist today reported that less people are staying in the village and are moving into the towns. Lord Fotheringay today said "Its getting much harder to get staff these days and I'm having to pay them much more". Lord Fotheringay blamed the movement of people away from the villages on the Industrial Revolution and the improved communication structures in the country.
"Mark my words" he said "They'll be looking for the vote next"
Okay so I'm taking the piss but really is this worthy of an anal gazing article ? I say not, society changes as technology changes, this is about as suprising as your thumb hurting when you hit it with a hammer. Previous Katz articles have been at least contraversial, this is just plain Sociology... ie not worthy of printing out for loo paper. Every generation some Malthus predicts doom and gloom, and is wrong and short sighted.
All research in the social sciences can be reduced to the following statement "some do, some don't" - Ernest Rutherford.
And an internet appliance is a minimal spec box, possibly without a hard-disk that has a cheap screen (possibly touch screen). Again its not aimed at the Microsoft market so the original point still holds. The cluster stuff is for specific tasks and not the desktop. The point is quite simple. Not every OS out there is meant to run the same way as windows, there is a wonderful world out there of OSes that are aimed at different tasks, all too often Slashdot is concerned, and its readership only aware, of the MS style of market.
OS/390, AS/400, EPOC, QNX etc etc etc... well cool OSes for paticular circumstances.
Its a real time operating system for embedded devices. The PC based platform is for development to help you rather than plugging directly into the RS232 port of your dev kit.
The questions you ask are nothing to do with an RTOS but looking at it from the perspective of "Oh look a Windows competitor" this is NOT in the same market as even WindowsCE, although there is some overlap. The PC based platform is to aid development, it can be stripped down to a delivery box but this is not for Joe Sixpack PC user.
The real question is "Can anything else run in a couple of Megs of RAM..... or less" and have guarenteed delivery times on tasks. The answer for Linux and MS-Windows is NOPE.
THIS IS NOT A DESKTOP OS.
Sorry for shouting but people should
a) Read the article
b) Understand that MS-Windows and bloatware are not the most interesting market in the world.
c) Realise that cut and paste on a VCR is a silly idea.
5 years ? Given that by then the 3G networks will be very entrenched and will be offering 2Mbps or more, why bother with a Sat ? Sure for the "very remote" but if you don't have the mass consumer market then those remote instances will still be very very expensive.
Another interesting gimmick to put alongside Iridium. Cellular technology makes a million times more sense in terms of cost, ease of use and availablity. Do you realy want to have a mobile network that only works if you can lob the suitcase outside ? Not very useful in an inner office or at the airport.
StarTrek for HHGG ? I think not. On the oneside we have one of the funniest and best scripted Sci-Fi programmes of all time, on the otherside we have a very large budget and bipeds...
People v Larry Flint, he did exactly that he created a porno parody of a religious guy. Flint won at the Supreme Court.
Parody is enshrined within that judgement as being allowable, and indeed a cornerstone of US Law. Supporting Hustler and Flint in that case were NYT, Washington Post and others who you wouldn't normally see on the same shelf as Hustler.
Slashdot Mirror
You can never verify the privacy of the voters, because they may choose to tell their vote
Two points on this
1) You can lie "Sure I voted for you Mr Big Gun"
and the second is that this isn't the issue the issue is Mr Big Gun standing next to you as you put the X on the sheet making _sure_ that you vote for him.
Not sure which countries allow people the day off to vote either.
Imagine managing the digital signature for everyone, BUT STILL ENSURING ITS ANONYMOUS.
The problems are huge, and they are right to reject it, especially in light of the problems of access to the internet.
Over hear in the land of the unfree we already have these protections. We also have some other consumer protections that might be worth having
1) They can't sell your data unless you let them (two whole tick boxes)
2) The data isn't considered a company asset when the
And as for hurting consumers.... bollocks, totally and utter. Reducing SPAM, being in control of your own information. Hell this _is_ what consumers want.
Go Vermont, full credit to some law makers who aren't just in the pockets of big business.
And if the "EverQuest" universe of Norrath were a country, its per-capita gross national product would be $2,266--comparable to the 77th richest country on Earth and ranking it between Russia and Bulgaria. Platinum pieces, the in-game currency known as pp, end up with an exchange rate of about a penny per pp, making "EverQuest" currency more valuable than the Japanese yen and the Spanish peseta.
Which is heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers ?
Its the same damn question. A _single_ Yen is worth less but the CURRENCY is JUST as valuable as the Dollar at any point in time. It can then move up or down and people make money (or defraud it) on those differences, but the Yen currency is worth about 133 Yen to the Dollar. The Currencies are therefore equivalent.
X = n * Y
X is equivalent to Y and in terms of currency the WORTH is calculated on the CURRENCY not on the individual element of that currency.
Is _the_ cent worth less than _the_ dollar ? Of course not _a_ cent is worth less than _a_ dollar.
For the person at CNET who wrote that
1) Get a life
2) Get a clue
3) Get a dictionary
4) Get a degree
Ummm lets see. Native Americans have tried to claim their own country. So has Hawaii, so has Quebec, so have Kurds in Turkey and Iraq etc etc etc. These people have failed to get a country AND ITS WHERE THEY LIVE. They have seperate religions, backgrounds and language and yet cannot seperate form the countries they contain.
And your idea is that A GAME, a series of 1s and 0s will address the UN.
Sometimes people really should be made to study history and the evolution of nationhood. It took a war against the then dominant world power to create the US, then another internal war to get the country that exists today. The UN is _not_ going to recognise a virtual world. Neither is any other country, its a stupid idea for many reasons but of course the most blatent one is
How do you become a citizen you have to either
a) Be born their
b) Be accepted as a national
Now given that you have to have people before you can become a nation then b doesn't apply. And you can't be born their because
IT DOESN'T REALLY EXIST
THOSE AREN'T REAL PEOPLE, its an avatar system, saying that people in these games exist is like claiming that you can declare the nation of "NetMeeting" because lots of people are using that too.
Can people on Slashdot PLEASE go outside sometimes
Not freebies that are sent to you "for a limited time only" for the last 2+ years. Actually bought from a shop.
For me its... well not since the internet ramped up from a technical articles perspective about 5 years ago. Why destroy trees or have a big "lump" every month when an incremental approach gets you back to the site every day or so, gives you the ability to search for old articles.
PDF ? Paper ? Lets be radical, join the 1990s and USE A WEBSITE.
And the one where the tickets aren't booked in the States that renders the whole idea totally moronic ?
A "mad rush" ? So Symbian doesn't have most of the major phone manufacturers using it then.
As with Transmeta, Embedded Linux is more hype than reality IMO.
Linus and Alan Cox aren't mentioned. Surely having the distros agreeing is one thing but if Linus and Alan change things within the kernel this would render the LSB pointless.
Windows manages to have some compatibility between 95/98/2000/XP because the control all of the OS, the distros don't control the kernel.
Interesting to see how often LSB has to be updated to keep up with the kernel.
Except that there is problem a single person responsible for booking all of the flights for the sales and exec teams.
What about the thousands of business travellers every year who attend a weeks worth of meetings and
a) Don't buy their own ticket
b) Don't book their hotel
c) Give the address they are staying at as the company they are visiting.
Or even crazier....
DIDN'T BUY THEIR TICKETS IN THE US!
For pities sake linking all of the reservations systems in the US to try and catch terrorists based in the middle east ? I hate to break it to the muppets out there who thought of this but I can go to a website outside of the US (e.g. This one) and book tickets.
The first thing such a system would find is things like
"Hey look IBMs corporate card has booked 4 people onto this flight, 1 in first class, 1 in business and 2 in coach. We'd better check it out"
or
"Some guy in Redmond is booking hundreds of flights a week going all over the world... including to the middle east"
This wins two awards
1) Brain dead of the year
and
2) Failure to recognise the world outside of the US
But that is the point, Linux is a nice OS, I actually use it on my desktop at work (over 1000 other people in the company using MS). But it does have issues, and things like EPOC or ARM very rarely get any coverage here on Slashdot, despite the fact that for next gen devices they present possibly the biggest threat to WinTel.
Linux is nice on my desktop, but I wouldn't trust it on my phone.
Linux v EPOC (A full ground up 32-bit RTOS)
Stability ? None of my EPOC machines have ever crashed
Customized integration ? Drag and drop word, excel, powerpoint or whatever docs to the device and back, sync with Outlook.
Security ? SSL, Digital certificates as standard.
Low Feature Creep ? Its a good thing that you don't get more features ? Even so all of the documents produced on my old Psion work on my new Nokia.
Does only what you want it to ? Does all that and things I hadn't thought of an now love (record a memo).
In terms of stability, integration and security EPOC blows Linux away, the major reason is simple
It is an OS designed for small devices from the ground up, not the porting of a big iron OS to a small device.
You are kidding right ? There are roughly three players in the marketplace right now
Symbian who run on Mobile phones like the Nokia Communicator (I have one, its superb), and Psions
WindowsCE on those lovely iPAQs, and they are lovely to use even if you hate Redmond
PalmOS single threaded poor quality OS, with a large user base.
NONE OF THESE ARE GPLed. All of them are successful.
People do NOT look to buy a PDA because they can hack code on it. Sure I can develop code for my PDA, but the OS ? Its a commercial product, I don't want it to fail. If you buy an PDA only if its got a GPL'ed OS then you are limiting your choice and are certainly not the mass market.
1) It isn't compression its stupidity.
2) Just because POV is slow doesn't stop a 3 hour movie at Cinema res using multiple terrabytes of disk space. Anyway Beowulf cluster POV for speed
"We never had the luxury of spending lots of money," says Naylor. "We needed to be able to make do with less."
So in other words, all of the people elsewhere with massive budgets have been conned into buying large amounts of expensive kit to get less for their money than these guys.
Brains 1 - Suits 0
The most impressive thing about this is the simplicity of it. This isn't next gen tech or anything this is just someone who had the smarts to think
"Hang on we supply electricity via a distributed network rather than Point 2 Point, why can't we do the same with the internet... hang on its cheaper as well"
Real issue here though is that the City backed up the smart guy rather than getting CorporationX to do it, had then gone for the latter route they would be right where the rest of us are with our T1s to the Telco backbones.
I predict this won't happen in big cities because they have too much money to be sensible.
1) "Compress" at a higher rate than the CD uses (I've seen this)
2) Use POV Ray to render Lord of the Rings for the cinema
3) Keep every src and every
4) Set the Linux swap space to be "500Gb" because you've upgraded the Kernel to the new VM stuff and it looks cool
5) Install Windows XP+ in two years time, with Office XP+.
Imagine that "Minimum Reqs: 1TB of available disk space"
It will happen
Egypt has had an economy for around 6,000 years, continous and recorded. Just because it isn't in US dollars doesn't mean it isn't an economy. But here is the thing, their currency (the Egyptian Pound) is traded openly on the FX markets.
The argument you give is just plain stupid, sorry but its true. If I sell an original painting for $5,000 this does not mean that _every_ painting is worth that much, its diminishing returns, as the original poster said.
The US is NOT the measure of whether an economy has a GNP, GNP is the GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT of that country i.e. how much it produced IN ITS OWN CURRENCY this can then be traded on the FX to produce a Dollars, Euro or Sterling rate.
But it really is muppet-tastic to think that because you sell one item at X that you can sell n items at X. The example you give demonstrates the failure to grasp simple concepts.
If the US prints 1,000,000,000,000,000 1 dollar bills a day, then they'd be worth a damned sight less a week later.
Supply - Demand, this doesn't determine GNP, it determines scarcity v market. To multiply it up means that either
a) You don't understand economics AT ALL
or
b) You've also been nominated for a Darwin award because "Lead isn't poisonous in small doses so how can a bullet hurt ?"
Microsoft "promise" not to be anti-competative and monopolistic.
The Ambulance Chasing Attorneys of America promise not to pursue nussiance claims, and to only ever present the true facts.
The Defence Department promises all bombs will hit their intended targets.
Arthur Anderson promise they won't let the additional fees for consultancy cloud their auditing judgement.
And of course
The French Waiters Union promises not to treat all customers like plebs
or maybe
Slashdot promises to practice even handed journalism with a good grasp of reality.
:-)
And from 1700 to about 1941 Britain was the kingpin of world politics, during the 1800s there was one super-power who went round and pinched 1/4 of the globe. Sure its declined but not like the Roman Empire. The reason ?
Communication, societies now exist across borders and have the ability to spread their ideas and their concepts much further. The Romans lost because they had no clue about what was going on, Britain lost the empire because the empire gained concepts like Democracy and equality from Britain.
The Roman empire applies in one sense. Britain eventually listened and now the Commonwealth is one of the most powerful political forces on the planet, especially in Africa, it is the empire, but with everyone as equals.
Romans fell because of invasion at a time when weight of arms was the power, the British Empire saw the transition from arms to economy as the driver behind power.
There is a similarity between the US and the Romans however, the Romans didn't except that others should ever be treated as equals or that inclusion was a good thing. The US grew strong on the opposite of those principles, on a foundation of equality, inclusion and an objection to tyranny... unfortunately things have changed. Even so the US is not the important factor, it is its corporations. Today is a corporate not a national society.
"1802 England
Social Scientist today reported that less people are staying in the village and are moving into the towns. Lord Fotheringay today said "Its getting much harder to get staff these days and I'm having to pay them much more". Lord Fotheringay blamed the movement of people away from the villages on the Industrial Revolution and the improved communication structures in the country.
"Mark my words" he said "They'll be looking for the vote next"
Okay so I'm taking the piss but really is this worthy of an anal gazing article ? I say not, society changes as technology changes, this is about as suprising as your thumb hurting when you hit it with a hammer. Previous Katz articles have been at least contraversial, this is just plain Sociology... ie not worthy of printing out for loo paper. Every generation some Malthus predicts doom and gloom, and is wrong and short sighted.
All research in the social sciences can be reduced to the following statement "some do, some don't" - Ernest Rutherford.
And an internet appliance is a minimal spec box, possibly without a hard-disk that has a cheap screen (possibly touch screen). Again its not aimed at the Microsoft market so the original point still holds. The cluster stuff is for specific tasks and not the desktop. The point is quite simple. Not every OS out there is meant to run the same way as windows, there is a wonderful world out there of OSes that are aimed at different tasks, all too often Slashdot is concerned, and its readership only aware, of the MS style of market.
OS/390, AS/400, EPOC, QNX etc etc etc... well cool OSes for paticular circumstances.
Its a real time operating system for embedded devices. The PC based platform is for development to help you rather than plugging directly into the RS232 port of your dev kit.
The questions you ask are nothing to do with an RTOS but looking at it from the perspective of "Oh look a Windows competitor" this is NOT in the same market as even WindowsCE, although there is some overlap. The PC based platform is to aid development, it can be stripped down to a delivery box but this is not for Joe Sixpack PC user.
The real question is "Can anything else run in a couple of Megs of RAM..... or less" and have guarenteed delivery times on tasks. The answer for Linux and MS-Windows is NOPE.
THIS IS NOT A DESKTOP OS.
Sorry for shouting but people should
a) Read the article
b) Understand that MS-Windows and bloatware are not the most interesting market in the world.
c) Realise that cut and paste on a VCR is a silly idea.
5 years ? Given that by then the 3G networks will be very entrenched and will be offering 2Mbps or more, why bother with a Sat ? Sure for the "very remote" but if you don't have the mass consumer market then those remote instances will still be very very expensive.
Another interesting gimmick to put alongside Iridium. Cellular technology makes a million times more sense in terms of cost, ease of use and availablity. Do you realy want to have a mobile network that only works if you can lob the suitcase outside ? Not very useful in an inner office or at the airport.
StarTrek for HHGG ? I think not. On the oneside we have one of the funniest and best scripted Sci-Fi programmes of all time, on the otherside we have a very large budget and bipeds...
HHGG is the question as well as the answer
People v Larry Flint, he did exactly that he created a porno parody of a religious guy. Flint won at the Supreme Court.
Parody is enshrined within that judgement as being allowable, and indeed a cornerstone of US Law. Supporting Hustler and Flint in that case were NYT, Washington Post and others who you wouldn't normally see on the same shelf as Hustler.