How could you detect the can. First I'm assuming they were smart enough to make it weigh the same. and Second I assume First I assume this is in a 12 pack so you cant fondle the can. if you could then simply rolling down an incline or twirling in the air should be enough to reveal it by it's moment of inertia and the fact that it's not liquid filled. (heck the sound might give that away).
so barring the obvious then, a couple things come to mind. One is use a magnetic ferrous metal finder. the phone is bound to have steel in it somewhere. where as a coke does not. The other is to use a speaker, for example one of those sonic bugs they sell on thinkgeek. move this around the twelve pack and listen for the one that sounds different.
Actually I'm sorry to see it go. The project had some orwellian implications to be sure. But I think those could have been dealt with. It would have had so many possibilities. One of them would have been its application in trusted systems for Voting machines, Hospital machinery and all sorts of things where one must comptomise between ubiquitous network access and trust.
It also would have opened up new markets. It's interesting to note that all of the great innovative periods in human history have been carried on the backs of breaktrhoughs in travel,commerce and communications. Even the lowly canoe can be credited for the rapid westward puch in canada and the US. (Shame about the beaver however). The invention of "coin of the realm" and accounting practices allowed goods to be passed over huge distances even the marco polo trail carried "mail-order" goods.
At present we dont have ways in place for people to watch digital movies and othe rprotected content in ways the the owners are willing to produce or share thier content for. Let's not get into an RIAA riff here. The point is that lots of people do want to "rent" content and watch it and without a secure communication channel they cant.
likewise things like internet voting and commerce trasnactions are held back by the lack of ubiquitous secure channels.
thus while I disliked the implications of NGSC for having control over my machine I would have liked to have had one in myhouse. I'd have two computers. one for my own uses and one for the cases where security outweighed the other issues.
New mexico's Election director is president of the National Association of State Election Directors--an organization that sets the testing standards (not the FEC) and sets standards for elections. New Mexico also has the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Both of these individauls believe electonic voting must be done without paper trails or the possibility of a recount. Moreover they are rushing as fast as they can to get current systems in place before paper trails systems come on the market. One might say they want the trains to run on time, damn the consequenses.
If you want to make a difference on this issue, contact the SOS office in Santa Fe NM. also send e-mails to Denise Lamb, the NASED president.
Hi I'm glad were having an intellignet discussion on this.
The courts may be allowed to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a certain usage constitutes fair use, but the basis for such decisions is whether or not the use is reasonable. Are you saying wanting watch a DVD on a laptop running linux isn't a reasonable position?
Right I think that on case by case basis their can be reasonable limits to use. I'll mention a hypothetical example. Often TV networks Black-out sporting events to people living close to the arena (as an incentive for them tou buy tickets to the game). Of course these games are televised and the feed goes into the network feed for showing eleswhere. Local re-broadcasters get some sort of signal telling them not to show it. Conceivably this could be done at the TV itself if technology allowed (Tivo's could manage this I'm sure). In any case I'd say this targeted restriction is clearly allowed by several of the provisions for fair use exemptions.
So the point is not to make a tight analogy to DVDs but micro managing use can in some cases be reasonable. In the cases of DVDs I think that market protection creates a public good. There is a well known economic principle about public utility: for example, given a choice no one would pay for government services if they thought every one else would.
so getting to the point. Preventing free access to DVD viewing benefits nearly all would be viewers since it creates a healthy market. The tragedy hear is that is that blocking free access blocks some other forms of access.
Thus there is a tension between two public goods. There is no reason to believe that "fair access" trumps another public good. And the fair access provisions call this out in their listed exemptions.
so to answer your question I think it is a shame that this might mean that decoding for personal use on linux is not an unreasonable position. In fact given that in principle someone HAS created a liscenced linux viewer that you can use if you choose I think the linux argument has become fairly hollow.
A bunch of folks replied to my post. Some poked reasonable holes in my analogies but not the satire which I think makes the real point.
Basically, the market for those broadcasts and DVDs exists in part due to the restrictions. Those DVDs would be more expensive or not available without that market. SO it is good public policy to dissapoint a few to create the availablity of the product to many.
no this is not precedent setting case law that would allow racist and theocratic discrimination. That's patent gibberish. Anyone can divine the difference and court and legislation have divined the difference.
it was called polywater because it was thought to be polymerized water. Because it had a much different freezing point polywater was the inspiration for the cat's cradle story. (ice9). It took a long time to figure out the problem because it was hard to reproduce and only minute amounts could be generated at a time.
Anyone remember the discovery of polywater. It was massively redidistlled water that developed weird almost homeopathing memory and strange viscosity.
Although it was considered unexplainable, repeated tests showed that the one and only thing inside the glass beaker was infact water. So it had to be a new form of water. A kind of ice-9 but for real.
It was eventually found to be accumulated soluble silica products from the glassware. Which of course was the one chemical that could not be tested for inside a glass beaker. Got people exited like cold fusion for a while, since like cold fusion is was not utterly implausible.
So now in addition to have to sit next to sweaty bloated people with bad perfume, I will have to listen to a cabinful of loud talking idiots sucking up to some customer they want to squeeze. No thanks, I'd rather have cigar smoke that that.
I HATE blue LEDs too. Actually what I hate are bright LEDs but blue LEDs are to the human eye much brighter and more distracting.
Not that mac makes everything But apple does not festoon their products with leds or other distractions. even the look and feel uses color to atrract your eye to points it needs to go. That's one reason the brushed metal look is good despite it's detractors. Compare it to MS fisher price or many of the linux polka dot themes.
Yeah and no one would think of letting foreign nationals and crimminal programm voting machines in the united states that dont have open source software.
oh yeah I forgot. Diebold uses russians. Sequoia is foreign owned. Shouptronics founder served time for Election Machine Rigging, Seqoia execs indicted for bribing election officials, and GEMS VP of research served time for computer fraud.
In contrast OVC is a multi-national effort but its all open source so no one cares there be foreign nationals programming US machines.
Any RTOS is going to tend to have a more deterministic event queue than Linux by definition of what you mean by REAL TIME. Thus to a certain extent testing harnessess can more exhaustively evaluate race conditions and much of the finite states you expect the system to progress through. For embedded systems and mission critical appliances this ought to give better reliability.
This is not to say a RTOS cant be baddly written or contain bugs. Its just that determininsm makes testing easier. It also does not mean a RTOS is more efficient than Linux.
I forgot the best safety feature of all. You can puke in it. This is not a joke. With suba if you need to puke then you have to stay calm and puke into your regulator. This takes unbelievable self control to pull off. The alternative, removing it from your mouth as you puke, leads to near certain death since the involuntary inhale after a gag reflex sucks pure seawater into your lungs leading to more gagging and no good way to expel it.
And believe me in surging seas and murky conditions puking is something you find neccessary. Its not a fun thought.
but with the bubble, no problemo. Nasty yes. but no though process required and no instant death if you screw up.
First this is for real, have seen them advertised many places.
Second when you dive to a depth of 30 to 60 feet or so you can only stay down safely a bit less than an hour or you risk getting the bends (nitrogen saturation of your blood coming out in gass form in your joints and nerves). So the time limit is just fine.
Third you dont have to be certified to use this.
fourth, its failsafe in many ways that scuba is not. The number one danger in scuba is forgetting to exhale when ascending (descending is not dangerous). If you forget to exhale on ascent from 60 feet then when you get to the surface you have a few atmospheres of air in your lungs and they literally explode inside of your body. Since ther is a bubble of air around your head there is no time when you would feel like holding your breath. This machine automatically passively equalizes the air pressure for you as you ascend (your nose is also exposed too).
Likewise there is no way to suddenly find the tank is empty. when the tank goes empty you still have a head bubbles worth of air left
One of the little known facts about scuba diving is that if you run out of air then if stay calm you always have enough air in your lungs to swim to the surface from any depth. The reason is that as you go deeper you also have more air in your lungs. You only have to remember to exhale on the way up to let off the excess air pressure.
this thing is attached to a bouy so you cant sink it or goo to deep go into a cave. And you have a lifeline to the surface if you are disoriented. When you get to the surface you have floatation.
A final danger in scuba is too rapid of an ascent. when you try to go up your boyancy device will run away from you: as it expands you rise faster leading to further expansion and pretty soon you are apolaris missile broaching the surface as your lungs go "pop". On the scooter it controls this for you.
On the other hand the joy of scuba diving is the freedom of 3-D orientation. Drift in a current head down. try to use as little effort as possible (e.g dont swim up but instead just control your breathing to control your veritical position). look behind you look all around. This sort of sucks the life out of the sport.
your getting close but there's one more hurdle to jump. You have to figure out how to get the machine to dump its binary. Do you ask the machine to do it? This would be like the IRS saying I can audit myself. You have to have some way to assuring the machine does dump the binary that is in it. This is not a simple problem if the machine is not open hardware/firmware and you have a way of validating it.
We're still not done yet cause there is of course the firmware of the touchscreen itself (and the Cd rom or whatever else contains embedded software or embedded processors), which might be an excellent place to hide something.
These are not insurmountable problems but are not trivial either. I would be interested in hearing your suggestions on these points.
presumably the 7.6% figure means down from some sort of trend line. If it's just down from last year this means nothing. CD sales have had a downward pressure since the initial up-tick during the 90s due to turnover of Vinyl to CDs and people repurchasing their old music. Now all that sustains it is new sales.
thus CD sales ought to be shrinking and there would be something wrong if it were not.
One of the possible problems here, and I'd like to hear comments on this, is that the best people will not be reading this source code.
Since the code is not open source in the free-use sense it means anyone reading it who is working to develop their own code may become contaminated.
Or am I wrong on this.
If I'm right then the most skilled readers wont be reading it. And that partly defeats the purpose.
VoteHere a company that makes software to implement a particular voting crytographic scheme is the second outfit to release their source (the first was OVC).
http://www.votehere.com/news/archive04/040604.ht m
Until I know more details I wont pass judgement other than to say this underscores the point that making source code open does not diminish the rights of the company to its ownership and copyright of the code. It does allow bugs to be found and fixed. And expert independent testimony to its safety may result and thereby build public confidence. Thus this is all good.
I dont know what exactly was released. My understanding in the past was that VoteHere was not actually a voting machine maker but a seller of a patented system for validating encrypted votes. Sequoia Systems had in the past discussed the possibility of letting buyers purchase this for use on their machines, though I have not heard of any machines actually deployed with this.
More specifically, the VOTE HERE system still requires the machines to be error free. Recounts are not possible in the event of an error. The votehere system only eliminates certain kinds of fraud but not all and does nothing about errors, the discovery of errors, and recounting after errors. Additionally since machines using this system will for practical purposes look the same as machines with tampered software: how do know what is going on inside as a voter?
I have read the VoteHere White papers on the mathematics of their algorithm. Two things are apparent 1) It's so complex--and I am trained in advanced mathematics--it's not perfectly clear that all the loop holes are plugged 2) Even if it works as claimed to the voter its still a magic black box that offers no visual evidence of the vote. Thus on both counts voting confidence is not available.
Look at their logo--its a bunch of math symbols. To most folks that is more of a put-off than a confidence builder. Clearly they think they have a technical solution but dont appreciate the sociology issues.
It appears to mainly move where fraud and erros can occur from the polling place to the programming place and to the people who hold the encryption keys. Its not clear what happens if the keys are accidentally leaked.
Still clearly votehere sees it in their interest to get the issue of open source on the table and that is a great sign. kudos for them even if it is partly a bussiness decision.
I did the update and then had spinning-wheel-of-death four times in a row while trying to run an unrelated program installer and simultaneously burn a DVD. Had to do these operations sequentially to get them to work. (why was I doing both: I was simply multi-tasking my monthly maintainence chores.)
Oh one other thing I forgot to mention. The imacs have a microphone in the LCD display. Because its located so far from the computer case and its directional it does not pick up any fan or disk drive noises. Its a sweet bit of engineering. I was not exepecting it to be so good. It was actually better than the (low cost) hand held microphone I tried.
Here's how I creeped myself out: I was using garage band to record my own voice. I laid down an MP3 music track then just added my own voice by talking to my iMac. added a choral effect and turne the volume down on my own voice. Eerie. like I was talking to my self but could not quite hear myself. For added effect try the flanger. Its like you are talking from the grave.
A discussion of this on Cnet points out that the DVD-R drives from panasonic wont be out for another year. The reason being Cited is that to make these compatible with set-top DVD players there is a tricky issue related to "finalizing" the DVD. Panasonic says they want to get that right and are still puzzling it out.
Apparently the issue is that to be read as a DVD-ROM the top abd bottom layers have to have exactly the same amount of content other wise the player will misread it. This is not a huge problem when the size of the content is known before the burn starts, but presents problems for dynamically created media like video recording from a camera or streaming source (like a TV signal).
If the size is not known before writing then the burner must write the second layer out with dummy data before finalization, potentially doubling the burn time. In the case of a video camera it would be unacceptable to make the user wait an hour after filming before he could change or view the DVD.
The interesting thing about this story is that it really happened to multiple voting machines too!. Its documented here .
ALL Diebold machines in florida booted BY DEFAULT to the windows screen not to the voting system software. You have to hold F10 to force them to boot in kiosk mode. Thus You could get back to the windows screen simply by forcing a reboot, no special passwords needed.
To top it off the central database that is used is not protected by an obligatory password. That is the data base has no pasword but the access software has a password. If you use your own non-customized version of Micro soft access you can access it directly. This too happens and is documented. See blackboxvoting.org. search for the King County and GEMS. King count found the diebold software cluymsy so they bypassed in in a real election leaving no password controls and no entry logs and open to all employees with physical or network access
Finally, as was reproted on slashdot a while back, two banking institutions had their XP based diebold machines get the blaster worm. Which is theoretically impossible since they technically are on isolated netowrk not connected to the general network. And yet...
Slashdot Mirror
so barring the obvious then, a couple things come to mind. One is use a magnetic ferrous metal finder. the phone is bound to have steel in it somewhere. where as a coke does not. The other is to use a speaker, for example one of those sonic bugs they sell on thinkgeek. move this around the twelve pack and listen for the one that sounds different.
It also would have opened up new markets. It's interesting to note that all of the great innovative periods in human history have been carried on the backs of breaktrhoughs in travel,commerce and communications. Even the lowly canoe can be credited for the rapid westward puch in canada and the US. (Shame about the beaver however). The invention of "coin of the realm" and accounting practices allowed goods to be passed over huge distances even the marco polo trail carried "mail-order" goods.
At present we dont have ways in place for people to watch digital movies and othe rprotected content in ways the the owners are willing to produce or share thier content for. Let's not get into an RIAA riff here. The point is that lots of people do want to "rent" content and watch it and without a secure communication channel they cant.
likewise things like internet voting and commerce trasnactions are held back by the lack of ubiquitous secure channels.
thus while I disliked the implications of NGSC for having control over my machine I would have liked to have had one in myhouse. I'd have two computers. one for my own uses and one for the cases where security outweighed the other issues.
Both of these individauls believe electonic voting must be done without paper trails or the possibility of a recount. Moreover they are rushing as fast as they can to get current systems in place before paper trails systems come on the market. One might say they want the trains to run on time, damn the consequenses.
If you want to make a difference on this issue, contact the SOS office in Santa Fe NM. also send e-mails to Denise Lamb, the NASED president.
The courts may be allowed to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a certain usage constitutes fair use, but the basis for such decisions is whether or not the use is reasonable. Are you saying wanting watch a DVD on a laptop running linux isn't a reasonable position?
Right I think that on case by case basis their can be reasonable limits to use. I'll mention a hypothetical example. Often TV networks Black-out sporting events to people living close to the arena (as an incentive for them tou buy tickets to the game). Of course these games are televised and the feed goes into the network feed for showing eleswhere. Local re-broadcasters get some sort of signal telling them not to show it. Conceivably this could be done at the TV itself if technology allowed (Tivo's could manage this I'm sure). In any case I'd say this targeted restriction is clearly allowed by several of the provisions for fair use exemptions.
So the point is not to make a tight analogy to DVDs but micro managing use can in some cases be reasonable. In the cases of DVDs I think that market protection creates a public good. There is a well known economic principle about public utility: for example, given a choice no one would pay for government services if they thought every one else would.
so getting to the point. Preventing free access to DVD viewing benefits nearly all would be viewers since it creates a healthy market. The tragedy hear is that is that blocking free access blocks some other forms of access.
Thus there is a tension between two public goods. There is no reason to believe that "fair access" trumps another public good. And the fair access provisions call this out in their listed exemptions.
so to answer your question I think it is a shame that this might mean that decoding for personal use on linux is not an unreasonable position. In fact given that in principle someone HAS created a liscenced linux viewer that you can use if you choose I think the linux argument has become fairly hollow.
Basically, the market for those broadcasts and DVDs exists in part due to the restrictions. Those DVDs would be more expensive or not available without that market. SO it is good public policy to dissapoint a few to create the availablity of the product to many.
no this is not precedent setting case law that would allow racist and theocratic discrimination. That's patent gibberish. Anyone can divine the difference and court and legislation have divined the difference.
After reading the interview I have to say valentini had reasonable clear positions on everything he was asked.
here is my synopsis:
the tech: the broad cast flag is bad because it interferres with the two people on the who build a TV in their basement.
VAlentini: You dont create public policy for the benfit of millions of people on how it inconveniences two people.
The tech: If I rent a movie I cant watch it on Linux:
Valentini: so you cant watch it on your grand-ma's vicrtola either. does that violate fair use? It's sold for a particular use.
the tech: But but but but (quivering lip) you said that players for linux would become available soon and its almost my birthday and I cant buy one.
Valentini: I dont make linux machines there must be some reason why the market has not created one.
The tech. but you said I could. You assured me the market would produce one. I hate you I hate you.! THere's 2 million linux users
valentini: two million huh. I'll have to look into this. I dont know.
personally I'd bet that of the 2 million less tahn 1/10th of 1 percent of them are seriously worried they cant watch a movie on thie linux commputer.
Am I being denied fair use becaue I cant run windows 98 on my iMac. After all I bought and paid for that copy, I should be able to use it how I like.
here and links to more links
it was called polywater because it was thought to be polymerized water. Because it had a much different freezing point polywater was the inspiration for the cat's cradle story. (ice9). It took a long time to figure out the problem because it was hard to reproduce and only minute amounts could be generated at a time.
Anyone remember the discovery of polywater. It was massively redidistlled water that developed weird almost homeopathing memory and strange viscosity.
Although it was considered unexplainable, repeated tests showed that the one and only thing inside the glass beaker was infact water. So it had to be a new form of water. A kind of ice-9 but for real.
It was eventually found to be accumulated soluble silica products from the glassware. Which of course was the one chemical that could not be tested for inside a glass beaker. Got people exited like cold fusion for a while, since like cold fusion is was not utterly implausible.
So now in addition to have to sit next to sweaty bloated people with bad perfume, I will have to listen to a cabinful of loud talking idiots sucking up to some customer they want to squeeze. No thanks, I'd rather have cigar smoke that that.
Not that mac makes everything But apple does not festoon their products with leds or other distractions. even the look and feel uses color to atrract your eye to points it needs to go. That's one reason the brushed metal look is good despite it's detractors. Compare it to MS fisher price or many of the linux polka dot themes.
oh yeah I forgot. Diebold uses russians. Sequoia is foreign owned. Shouptronics founder served time for Election Machine Rigging, Seqoia execs indicted for bribing election officials, and GEMS VP of research served time for computer fraud.
In contrast OVC is a multi-national effort but its all open source so no one cares there be foreign nationals programming US machines.
This is not to say a RTOS cant be baddly written or contain bugs. Its just that determininsm makes testing easier. It also does not mean a RTOS is more efficient than Linux.
The crevice cam. All they need is an LED to self- illuminate.
And believe me in surging seas and murky conditions puking is something you find neccessary. Its not a fun thought.
but with the bubble, no problemo. Nasty yes. but no though process required and no instant death if you screw up.
Second when you dive to a depth of 30 to 60 feet or so you can only stay down safely a bit less than an hour or you risk getting the bends (nitrogen saturation of your blood coming out in gass form in your joints and nerves). So the time limit is just fine.
Third you dont have to be certified to use this. fourth, its failsafe in many ways that scuba is not. The number one danger in scuba is forgetting to exhale when ascending (descending is not dangerous). If you forget to exhale on ascent from 60 feet then when you get to the surface you have a few atmospheres of air in your lungs and they literally explode inside of your body. Since ther is a bubble of air around your head there is no time when you would feel like holding your breath. This machine automatically passively equalizes the air pressure for you as you ascend (your nose is also exposed too).
Likewise there is no way to suddenly find the tank is empty. when the tank goes empty you still have a head bubbles worth of air left
One of the little known facts about scuba diving is that if you run out of air then if stay calm you always have enough air in your lungs to swim to the surface from any depth. The reason is that as you go deeper you also have more air in your lungs. You only have to remember to exhale on the way up to let off the excess air pressure.
this thing is attached to a bouy so you cant sink it or goo to deep go into a cave. And you have a lifeline to the surface if you are disoriented. When you get to the surface you have floatation.
A final danger in scuba is too rapid of an ascent. when you try to go up your boyancy device will run away from you: as it expands you rise faster leading to further expansion and pretty soon you are apolaris missile broaching the surface as your lungs go "pop". On the scooter it controls this for you.
On the other hand the joy of scuba diving is the freedom of 3-D orientation. Drift in a current head down. try to use as little effort as possible (e.g dont swim up but instead just control your breathing to control your veritical position). look behind you look all around. This sort of sucks the life out of the sport.
We're still not done yet cause there is of course the firmware of the touchscreen itself (and the Cd rom or whatever else contains embedded software or embedded processors), which might be an excellent place to hide something.
These are not insurmountable problems but are not trivial either. I would be interested in hearing your suggestions on these points.
thus CD sales ought to be shrinking and there would be something wrong if it were not.
One of the possible problems here, and I'd like to hear comments on this, is that the best people will not be reading this source code. Since the code is not open source in the free-use sense it means anyone reading it who is working to develop their own code may become contaminated. Or am I wrong on this. If I'm right then the most skilled readers wont be reading it. And that partly defeats the purpose.
VoteHere a company that makes software to implement a particular voting crytographic scheme is the second outfit to release their source (the first was OVC).
t m
http://www.votehere.com/news/archive04/040604.h
Until I know more details I wont pass judgement other than to say this underscores the point that making source code open does not diminish the rights of the company to its ownership and copyright of the code. It does allow bugs to be found and fixed. And expert independent testimony to its safety may result and thereby build public confidence. Thus this is all good.
I dont know what exactly was released. My understanding in the past was that VoteHere was not actually a voting machine maker but a seller of a patented system for validating encrypted votes. Sequoia Systems had in the past discussed the possibility of letting buyers purchase this for use on their machines, though I have not heard of any machines actually deployed with this.
More specifically, the VOTE HERE system still requires the machines to be error free. Recounts are not possible in the event of an error. The votehere system only eliminates certain kinds of fraud but not all and does nothing about errors, the discovery of errors, and recounting after errors. Additionally since machines using this system will for practical purposes look the same as machines with tampered software: how do know what is going on inside as a voter?
I have read the VoteHere White papers on the mathematics of their algorithm. Two things are apparent 1) It's so complex--and I am trained in advanced mathematics--it's not perfectly clear that all the loop holes are plugged 2) Even if it works as claimed to the voter its still a magic black box that offers no visual evidence of the vote. Thus on both counts voting confidence is not available.
Look at their logo--its a bunch of math symbols. To most folks that is more of a put-off than a confidence builder. Clearly they think they have a technical solution but dont appreciate the sociology issues.
It appears to mainly move where fraud and erros can occur from the polling place to the programming place and to the people who hold the encryption keys. Its not clear what happens if the keys are accidentally leaked.
Still clearly votehere sees it in their interest to get the issue of open source on the table and that is a great sign. kudos for them even if it is partly a bussiness decision.
I did the update and then had spinning-wheel-of-death four times in a row while trying to run an unrelated program installer and simultaneously burn a DVD. Had to do these operations sequentially to get them to work. (why was I doing both: I was simply multi-tasking my monthly maintainence chores.)
Oh one other thing I forgot to mention. The imacs have a microphone in the LCD display. Because its located so far from the computer case and its directional it does not pick up any fan or disk drive noises. Its a sweet bit of engineering. I was not exepecting it to be so good. It was actually better than the (low cost) hand held microphone I tried.
Here's how I creeped myself out: I was using garage band to record my own voice. I laid down an MP3 music track then just added my own voice by talking to my iMac. added a choral effect and turne the volume down on my own voice. Eerie. like I was talking to my self but could not quite hear myself. For added effect try the flanger. Its like you are talking from the grave.
according to sony
the dvd player is dual layer dvd+R
http://news.sel.sony.com/pressrelease/4532
Apparently the issue is that to be read as a DVD-ROM the top abd bottom layers have to have exactly the same amount of content other wise the player will misread it. This is not a huge problem when the size of the content is known before the burn starts, but presents problems for dynamically created media like video recording from a camera or streaming source (like a TV signal).
If the size is not known before writing then the burner must write the second layer out with dummy data before finalization, potentially doubling the burn time. In the case of a video camera it would be unacceptable to make the user wait an hour after filming before he could change or view the DVD.
ALL Diebold machines in florida booted BY DEFAULT to the windows screen not to the voting system software. You have to hold F10 to force them to boot in kiosk mode. Thus You could get back to the windows screen simply by forcing a reboot, no special passwords needed.
To top it off the central database that is used is not protected by an obligatory password. That is the data base has no pasword but the access software has a password. If you use your own non-customized version of Micro soft access you can access it directly. This too happens and is documented. See blackboxvoting.org. search for the King County and GEMS. King count found the diebold software cluymsy so they bypassed in in a real election leaving no password controls and no entry logs and open to all employees with physical or network access
Finally, as was reproted on slashdot a while back, two banking institutions had their XP based diebold machines get the blaster worm. Which is theoretically impossible since they technically are on isolated netowrk not connected to the general network. And yet...