I think that the problem was that they set a configuration option which allocated only a small file for storing the votes. While I agree with you that the actual file size was probably tiny, since that was put in as the hard limit on file size, that's what the system could store.
Now what kind of idiot specifies a system where you can only store 10000 ballots? Assuming each ballot took a full 1k to store, then 10000 ballots are only 10M. Since cameras and phones carry more memory that that these days, it's reasonable to assume that the system shouldn't have been able to be configured down that small...
Along with the recent issuance of U.S. Patent No. 6,460,020 for the Borderless Order Entry System (BOESTM) on October 1, 2002, some questions have been raised as to the patentability of the BOES invention. These questions relate generally to the false premise that the patent covers the simple automation of an old process on conducting international trade. The purpose of this position paper is to explain, first, that the BOES technology falls within the scope of inventions that are protected by U.S. patent laws, and, second, that the BOES invention deserves such protection.
...[snip]...
Does BOES Deserve Patent Protection?
To best answer this question, we must first understand: (1) What is the BOES technology?; (2) The timing significance of the BOES patent application filing; (3) The scope and extent of the Patent Office examination and subsequent reviews; and (4) Whether copyright law can adequately protect the BOES invention.
1. What is the BOES technology?
BOES is a fully integrated complex software system used to export or import goods between two or more countries. The purchase or sale of goods, whether between businesses or with the ultimate consumer, requires the connection and use of a complex set of service operations. These service operations include: ordering the goods; transporting the goods between buyer and seller; guarantying payment; insuring the goods in case of loss or damage; preparing and filing the appropriate documents with governments, carriers, and banks -- all within a framework of different languages, currencies, and trade laws.
Before BOES, the capability did not exist to turn to a software system and have all the necessary tasks efficiently performed to conduct an international transaction for the sale of goods.
2. The timing significance of the BOES patent application filing
The original BOES patent application was filed at the end of 1997 -- well before the "Gold Rush" to the Patent Office by others seeking patent protection on business methods inspired by the State Street Bank case. After this seminal patent case was published, filing business method patent applications became the "in vogue" thing to do. Business method patent application filings skyrocketed in 1999 and 2000 and the Patent Office was deluged without the capability to effectively respond due to insufficient number of qualified examiners and inadequate prior art database resources.
This situation dramatically changed for the better when, in March 2000, the Patent Office director ordered that each and every business method patent application go through a quality assurance review by seasoned patent examiners after its initial allowance. Furthermore, the Patent Office poured significant financial resources into hiring additional patent examiners with qualifications to examine applications in the financial technology area. The Patent Office also dramatically increased the patent examiners' capability to search publications from around the world to assist them in making prior invention determinations. The impact of these Patent Office improvements is reflected in the number of business method patents that are currently allowed and issued. Today, less than 30% of all business method patent applications are allowed -- drastically down from its all-time high of nearly 80% allowance only a few years ago.
On a related issue, it is very important to note that the patent application filing date determines whether a prior patent or publication is considered prior art. The examiner will review patents and publications prior to the filing date to determine patentability. In the case of the BOES p
I suppose the point is that no-one will ever say 'Yes' - logic alone will not convince a lunatic or a zealot (even if you are the lunatic or the zealot).
The key points are: 1. You will always believe that you are not the lunatic. 2. When you identify someone who you believe is a lunatic, asking them if they are is fruitless - they will say 'No'. 3. When you attempt to educate them with logic (regardless of whether you are sane, and the logic is fine, or you are a lunatic and the logic is crazy) they will not be convinced, and will eventually revert to simply asserting that you are wrong.
So there's no value in asking "the lunatic" if they're crazy.
terrorists...as they have no thought to any other side to a story than what they've been told to believe... without letting any facts or alternative ideas get in the way....
The story of The Man in the Tinfoil Hat is a poignant one here... The relevant quote is (emphasis mine)...
"I'm going to give you the best advice you'll ever get for survival in this field. Here it is: Never ask the lunatic if he's crazy. I repeat, never ask the lunatic if he's crazy. Of course he's going to say 'NO.' What do you expect? You're always going to get a self-serving, agenda-driven answer.
People are 'crazy' because they can't, and don't, see the lunacy that drives their lives. Never ask the lunatic if his illusions are real. Of course he's going to say 'YES.' If his problems aren't real, then he's crazy. But since he's not crazy, the delusions are real. In a nutshell (no pun intended): the more absurd the belief, the more deeply it must be held, the more aggressively it must be promoted and angrily defended if the patient is to see himself as right and sane. Get it?"
As the author of that article puts it further down:
"If MS (and all its staff) is not evil and incompetent, then the zealots are crazy."
I am a Linux user and advocate, but I still find these assertions silly...
Yes, the electronics costs about the same, but you have the advantage of not having to create the market - Apple is already doing that. You also don't have to do as much R&D, because the interface, and tools are already out there...
So you can make a profit, despite lower sales prices than Apple... And you're happy with your 1% of a multi-million dollar market - let Apple take 90%, you're still making enough ROI to make having only two customer-sets worthwhile...
The nearest I can tell, PGA *is* independent of PG...
The point is that to the lawyers they "seem to have" a relationship. As long as those repositories exist, the lawyers can claim that ALL of them are related, and subject to the same controls...
Actually, from the way I read the CnD letter, they wrote directly to the Australian site, claiming a relationship between the Australian site and the American one, and hence that the Australian site was under the jursidiction of US law.
That's about as much as I got from
By e-mail (colc@gutenberg.net.au)
Project Gutenberg of Australia
Re: Copyright Infringement of Gone With the Wind
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It appears to us that Project Gutenberg established PGA to permit the illegal downloading of works that are still subject to copyright protection in the U.S. and elsewhere. Project Gutenberg's and PGA's willful, knowing and unauthorized distribution of GWTW to users in the U.S. and elsewhere where copyright protection remains available is a blatant violation of our client's rights under applicable statutes and common law. Please be advised that Project Gutenberg and PGA are subject to U.S. copyright law and to jurisdiction in the U.S. for their infringing activities through applicable jurisdiction statutes governing the commission of acts of infringement that either occur in the U.S. or have an effect in the U.S.
People want computers to be appliances which they don't have to maintain, like a toaster, but they also want to be able to take their toaster and install a coffee maker, microwave and washing machine in it at will. I don't believe it's possible to have an appliance computer thats flexible enough for most users to use as their desktop machine. Although it's easy enough to do - stick the OS on a read only device along with any programs you want and make the storage device for the user's data non-executable - there's almost nothing they can do to break it then... but I wouldn't want to use that kind of system.
I think you've just hit on the perfect solution - I know of an appliance-style home computer people regularly use, with read-only application space, and great (or at least good enough for gaming) graphics support...
Lot's of people have them... Games consoles...
If someone invested a small amount of effort (like the linux-xbox or GameCube Linux people have done) to create and package an application disk for each app for the console, we could have the ultimate pc...
I don't know if either of those consoles have USB ports like the PS2 does, but if they do, that becomes your wireless kb and personal data storage solution...
But rather than the usual system of booting linux, and leaving the usage up to the user, we use the game console paradigm... One disk per application set, and game-styled menus to select between apps on a single disk...
This could enable someone to produce a string of $20 application disks, and turn a cheap home pc into a reality...
Maybe Ballmer was right... Cheap Hardware + Free Software == less Piracy!
The page you refer to lists how "easy" - in terms of human effort - it is to run the cracking programs, but completely ignores how much computer effort it requires.
A better article on this is in the current Security Journal page 9-13. They concluded that even though it's flawed, it is still worth having turned on, as an ADDITIONAL layer of protection/deterrent for home use, not as an ONLY layer of protection...
that's the case for all browsers - they've chosen to put the exploit in the "onmouseover" rather than "onclick" handler...
the reality is that it works reasonably well if you were browsing past - I stopped to check out the URL in the status bar, and still had enough time for the new tab to come up before the popup came up... and anyway, they could easily just move the popup link to the onclick to handle that edge-case...
I'm half considering attempting to merge the diffs from that port into Xorg 6.8... I started the other day on a lark, told myself that if I got it to compile I'd create a sf.net project for it... Don't hold your breath though, coz I've got a billon other projects demanding my time just at the moment...
I've only tested it briefly, but it WFM with Fedora Core 2...
I pre-tested a box for a friend, and he's using SATA. He hasn't complained yet (after telling me that Redhat 9 didn't install due to SATA issues. Installed FC2, now no complaints.)
So it think it's safe to say that it's well and truely "in progress"...
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the problem was that they set a configuration option which allocated only a small file for storing the votes. While I agree with you that the actual file size was probably tiny, since that was put in as the hard limit on file size, that's what the system could store.
Now what kind of idiot specifies a system where you can only store 10000 ballots? Assuming each ballot took a full 1k to store, then 10000 ballots are only 10M. Since cameras and phones carry more memory that that these days, it's reasonable to assume that the system shouldn't have been able to be configured down that small...
from http://www.detechnologies.com/pos_papers/patent_po sition_paper.doc
Surely you mean "writing works of meaningless tripe over a network of digital computers"...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/09/04 0259&tid=155&tid=98&tid=17
2 21226
5
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/20/0
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/28/18525
I'm sure it's much higher than that... probably around 97.3% of all statistics...
You may be the lunatic.
I suppose the point is that no-one will ever say 'Yes' - logic alone will not convince a lunatic or a zealot (even if you are the lunatic or the zealot).
The key points are:
1. You will always believe that you are not the lunatic.
2. When you identify someone who you believe is a lunatic, asking them if they are is fruitless - they will say 'No'.
3. When you attempt to educate them with logic (regardless of whether you are sane, and the logic is fine, or you are a lunatic and the logic is crazy) they will not be convinced, and will eventually revert to simply asserting that you are wrong.
So there's no value in asking "the lunatic" if they're crazy.
What's this? like the fourth direct link to the site today?
The story of The Man in the Tinfoil Hat is a poignant one here... The relevant quote is (emphasis mine)...
As the author of that article puts it further down:
"If MS (and all its staff) is not evil and incompetent, then the zealots are crazy."
I am a Linux user and advocate, but I still find these assertions silly...
definitely... he's not only writing the whole thing, game engine, compiler etc, he's even built the hardware for it - the Devtendo!
Hats off to you, Brian!
Yes, the electronics costs about the same, but you have the advantage of not having to create the market - Apple is already doing that. You also don't have to do as much R&D, because the interface, and tools are already out there...
So you can make a profit, despite lower sales prices than Apple... And you're happy with your 1% of a multi-million dollar market - let Apple take 90%, you're still making enough ROI to make having only two customer-sets worthwhile...
There's more to this business than being #1...
The nearest I can tell, PGA *is* independent of PG...
The point is that to the lawyers they "seem to have" a relationship. As long as those repositories exist, the lawyers can claim that ALL of them are related, and subject to the same controls...
... yield better sales results than the iPod.
Maybe that's *GASP* not the aim? as long as I make positive profit, I don't really care if I make more sales than the iPod.
Insanity is not taking advantage of a clean, healthy profit which requires minimal marketing because that's all been done by your competitors...
Oh really? I wonder what these guys think of that...
http://www.sea-launch.com/
http://www.arianespace.com/
That's about as much as I got from
Not accessable from .edu.au though...
Possibly because the ShareAlike licence is more "Free" and in the spirit of the GPL than the FDL is?
People want computers to be appliances which they don't have to maintain, like a toaster, but they also want to be able to take their toaster and install a coffee maker, microwave and washing machine in it at will. I don't believe it's possible to have an appliance computer thats flexible enough for most users to use as their desktop machine. Although it's easy enough to do - stick the OS on a read only device along with any programs you want and make the storage device for the user's data non-executable - there's almost nothing they can do to break it then... but I wouldn't want to use that kind of system.
I think you've just hit on the perfect solution - I know of an appliance-style home computer people regularly use, with read-only application space, and great (or at least good enough for gaming) graphics support...
Lot's of people have them... Games consoles...
If someone invested a small amount of effort (like the linux-xbox or GameCube Linux people have done) to create and package an application disk for each app for the console, we could have the ultimate pc...
I don't know if either of those consoles have USB ports like the PS2 does, but if they do, that becomes your wireless kb and personal data storage solution...
But rather than the usual system of booting linux, and leaving the usage up to the user, we use the game console paradigm... One disk per application set, and game-styled menus to select between apps on a single disk...
This could enable someone to produce a string of $20 application disks, and turn a cheap home pc into a reality...
Maybe Ballmer was right... Cheap Hardware + Free Software == less Piracy!
The page you refer to lists how "easy" - in terms of human effort - it is to run the cracking programs, but completely ignores how much computer effort it requires.
A better article on this is in the current Security Journal page 9-13. They concluded that even though it's flawed, it is still worth having turned on, as an ADDITIONAL layer of protection/deterrent for home use, not as an ONLY layer of protection...
you mean like the idiots these people were replying to?
I assume you mean only in Slashdot... then yes, occasionally I get the left margin of the main section overflowing the left navbar...
A reload usually fixes it though...
I believe it's related to the "all the text is scrolled one screen to the right" bug in Slashcode... Haven't looked into it though...
That button didn't work for me, but I fixed it...
that's the case for all browsers - they've chosen to put the exploit in the "onmouseover" rather than "onclick" handler...
the reality is that it works reasonably well if you were browsing past - I stopped to check out the URL in the status bar, and still had enough time for the new tab to come up before the popup came up... and anyway, they could easily just move the popup link to the onclick to handle that edge-case...
free but not Free X11R6.5.1 server for Windows
Latest version released August 1, 2004 as freeware, but identical to previous 2002 commercial version...
old, buggy, no longer maintained, but Free, DirectX 6.1-based port of R6.5.1.
I'm half considering attempting to merge the diffs from that port into Xorg 6.8... I started the other day on a lark, told myself that if I got it to compile I'd create a sf.net project for it... Don't hold your breath though, coz I've got a billon other projects demanding my time just at the moment...
I've only tested it briefly, but it WFM with Fedora Core 2...
I pre-tested a box for a friend, and he's using SATA. He hasn't complained yet (after telling me that Redhat 9 didn't install due to SATA issues. Installed FC2, now no complaints.)
So it think it's safe to say that it's well and truely "in progress"...