For example, they did not account for: population growth between elections, the demographic makeup of such growth, median income change since the previous election, voter registration stats for each party and their changes since the previous election, reversals of traditional voting patterns (better-educated going Democratic, older going Republican), local issues that would draw certain voters to the polls, the involvement of and relative successes of get-out-the-vote organizations (the parties, unions, churches, etc), and the list goes on...
The paper took many variables into account. As many as could be expected on short notice with no budget. There are two reasons to take extra factors into account. First is because you believe they may correlate with the effect you are measuring, thus skewing the results. Second, you believe the factor is random and by accounting for it, you can reduce error and measure smaller effects.
Do you believe the change in demographics correlates with the county's decision to buy electronic voting machines (please note, the researchers took demographic makeup into account, just not the change in demographic makeup)? I ask the same question of the other factors you mentioned.
The whole point of statistics is to measure the likelihood that the effect was due to the various random factors that were not taken into account! The rho (p) values you see all over the paper represent the likelihood that the various factors you mentioned, along with countless other factors, could have caused the effect.
The accepted rho value for most academic journals is p<.05. The researchers had a rho value of p<.01. If they had accounted for the factors you mentioned, the value probably would have been even smaller. If they had accounted for every possible factor, the rho value would have been zero (they would know exactly what happened).
It is impossible to account for everything. The researchers accounted for those factors which were most likely to skew the results. No single study should be taken as absolute proof of anything. However, this study shows that the situation with electronic voting machines merits further investigation.
If you believe the factors you mentioned explain the correlation, then go ahead and do your own analysis.
Microsoft overpromised it seems, at least on the feature set. But cheated and lied?
This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is how Microsoft Bill Gates built his business. He told IBM that he had his BASIC implementation all ready (in reality he had barely started). He told IBM that he had his operating system all ready (in reality, he ended up buying it from someone else and modifying it to fit IBM's specifications).
Bill Gates seemed quite proud of those feats when he later bragged about them. Microsoft has made similar promises regarding Windows 95, Longhorn, etc.. This is the way Microsoft does business.
The only surprise here is that Microsoft may face some pitiful little ramifications for their actions.
In the 321 Studios case, the court ruled that the DMCA was enacted under the interstate commerce clause. With that being the case, where does congress find the authority to regulate a program developed by hobbyists and given away for free?
From page 34 of the ruling, "The bnetd emulator had limited commercial purpose because it was free and available to anyone who wanted to copy and use the program". Does that make sense to anyone?
So what happens after all the red-tagged patients have been cared for? Does the hospital take another look at the black or do they go on to the yellow?
For all of you people who say it's okay to put surveillance cameras on public streets, RFID tags on store merchandise, RFID readers on store doorways, and RFID toll-pass systems on highways. The general argument is that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public.
Yet it is illegal for a private citizen to follow someone in public. What is with the double standard?
2. Annoying advertising clause that says if you want to rebrand the code you must get permission from Microsoft. In other words, you can't fork the code under a different name. (section 2.2)
So it's more BSD-like then, big deal.
The BSD abandoned that clause for a reason. But Microsoft's license actually goes much further. If you distribute source code under a BSD license, the recipient still has no rights to use the software unless they contact Microsoft and get permission specifically. The license requires you to put this notice on any source code that implements SPF:
"This source code may incorporate intellectual property owned by Microsoft Corporation. Our provision of this source code
does not include any licenses or any other right to you under any Microsoft intellectual property. If you would like a license from Microsoft (e.g. rebrand, redistribute), you need to contact Microsoft directly."
Which directly contradicts the very definition of Open Source. In other words, Microsoft's license is incompatible with all open source licenses!
Why is that different to the GPL? They're both licences that apply to the use of software. Without a license, you can't legally use any non-public domain software. The GPL is one such license, this is another.
You need a license to use patented technology. You do not need a license to use copyrighted software. Copyright only gives the author a monopoly on:
the right of reproduction (i.e., copying),
the right to create derivative works,
the right to distribution,
the right to performance,
the right to display, and
the digital transmission performance right.
Note that the right to use is not in there. The GPL specifically allows you to decline the license. You may still go ahead and use the software even after declining the license. The GPL simply grants you the six rights listed above (with certain conditions).
Microsoft's license, however, grants a revocable right to use their patents. You could distribute SPF software under a BSD license, and Microsoft could revoke anyone's right to use the patent at any time (even if you already have the software, use it, and depend on it).
Big deal. Why does everything have to be GPL compatible? What would be wrong with, say, a BSD-style license for this particular application?
Even though you could distribute SPF software under a BSD license, you could not redistribute the software without explicit permission from Microsoft. That pretty much excludes the open source, bazaar style of development.
Make no mistake about it. Microsoft wants to shut down open source software. What better way than to prohibit open source software from doing that which people most use computers for, to send and receive email?
That is 26 minutes and 40 seconds of voice grade audio. At $0.30 per minute, it would cost less than $10 to send that much data. At $10.60 per minute, it would cost $282.70 to transfer 12 MB. On their old pricing plan, it would have cost him $16,002.40 to send 80,012 messages!
a language like Java, which AFAIK is the only language that automatically does bounds checking.
C and C++ are two of the very few languages which do not do automatic bounds checking. Their use should be relegated to low-level divers and OS kernels.
In the current climate, it is just plain foolish to use a language without bounds checking in a security critical capacity.
I don't think that the Justice Department would have standing because it neither (1) has been injured nor (2) is an organization litigating the rights of its members, who have been injured
Where does the Justice Department get its authority to take civil action against drug dealers?
"For too long, Federal prosecutors have been hindered in their pursuit of pirates, by the fact that they were limited to bringing criminal charges with high burdens of proof..."
In a criminal case, the government must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt". In a civil suit, they must only prove the preponderance of the evidence.
In a criminal case, if the defendant is acquited, the goverment must return the defendant's belongings. In a civil case, the government can seize a person's belongings and the defendant must prove his innocence to get them back.
The most significant difference is that in a criminal case, if the defendant can not afford an attorney, the government must provide one. In a civil case, the defendant is left to fend for himself.
I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in what Technology Review has to say. With a quick look at their
staff you will see where their priorities lay. They have one fact checker and 26 people involved in marketing and advertising.
They may have once been a reputable magazine, but since Bruce Journey took over, they are more concerned with selling magazines than quality reporting. Mr. Journey used to work for such rags as Time and TV Sports. When appointing Mr. Journey to lead Technology Review, William Hecht said:
"Technology Review has long been highly regarded for its editorial
excellence," Mr. Hecht said. "It is now time for MIT to invest in its
commercial potential. With the appointment of Mr. Journey, we have begun
the effort to secure a prominent place for Technology Review in the
competitive world of commercial publishing."
Besides that, Technology Review is twice removed from MIT. They are run by the Association of Alumni and
Alumnae of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is loosely associated with MIT.
I would really like to know why Slashdot keeps posting fantastical stories from that ratings-driven rag.
LDP should write documents in XML. Headings should be tagged as headings. Example command line instructions should be tagged as example command line instructions. A table of contents should be tagged as such.
Then, to present the documents, LDP can automatically convert the documents into any beutified HTML format they want.
Furthermore, XML could be used to help users jump over the explanations and get straight to the directions. XML could also come in handy when analyzing documents and looking for ways to improve LDP.
The government is now making information available about open source
Who runs egovos.org and what makes you think it's the government? According to whois, the registrant and administrative contact is Tony Stanco (don't know if that's really the same person).
A huge database like this won't help the police find criminals, but will help them find scapegoats. Consider this: someone goes to FBI headquarters and plants a bomb made of 2" lead pipe, 6-penny nails, and blue PVC wire sold only through Home Depot. So the FBI go to Home Depot and gets a list of everyone who purchased all three items. From this list of 60 people, they filter out everyone with an alibi, narrowing the list to 40 people. Then they visit all 40 people and pick their top five suspects. They then pick the person with a prior conviction of vandalizing a police car.
The public will look at the evidence and proclaim the suspect guilty. The jury will look at the evidence and declare the suspect guilty. Then they'll congradulate the FBI on a job well done. All the while, the real culprit sits back and laughs since he stole the supplies from someone who bought them with cash. He didn't show as a suspect at all.
People look at the fouth amendment and assume it's there to keep the authorities from annoying you. They think it's okay for the authorities to run a search as long as the person being searched doesn't know about it. The thing is, the more people the authorities investigate, the more likely they are to turn up false positives. That may work wonders in picking out a scapegoat, but it won't help find the real criminal if the real criminal took even minimal precautions to stay off the list. The fourth amendment is supposed to do more than protect people from annoying searches. It is there to make sure the authorities do their job right.
To insist he wasn't elected simply because of the popular vote is completely ignoring the fact that elections AREN'T CARRIED OUT BY POPULAR VOTE.
The 2000 election controversy has nothing to do with the popular vote. Officially, electors of the electoral college go to congress and cast their votes. Whoever gets the most votes from the electors becomes President. Note that the electors are free to vote for anyone they want (although they will have to answer to their constituents afterwards).
It is up to the states to determine who the electors for their electoral votes will be. I believe all of the states currently choose electors this way: the party for each candidate selects a bunch of people (one person for each electoral vote) to act as electors. If the candidate gets the most votes, then that candidate's electors are registered with congress. When it finally comes time to vote, the electors go to congress and cast their ballots.
As Anonymous Coward pointed out, the controversy in the 2000 election occurred because the Supreme Court interfered with Florida's right to choose its electors (ironically, the same justices who constantly harp about states' rights ruled opposite of their usual manner in this case). While seven of the nine justices agreed that Gore could not pick and choose which counties to count votes in, the justices were sharply split on how to deal with the issue. Four of them ruled that the case should go back to Florida to let the state decide how to remedy the issue. The other five ruled that the state didn't have time to remedy the issue so they would have to stick with the previous count.
It is worth noting that there are actually two deadlines for electors to register with congress. The preferred deadline was one or two days after the Supreme Court ruling. If a state registers it's electors by the preferred deadline, congress has to let them vote. The second deadline was about two months later. If a state registers its electors after the preferred deadline, congress could hold a vote to decide if they would refuse to let the electors vote. Again, whether or not to register its electors by the preferred deadline was an issue for the state to decide (all indications were that Florida law would have permitted waiting).
It's worth noting that Bush appointed two of those justices' children to positions in the executive branch. On June 1, 2001, Bush appointed Janet Rehnquist, U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's daughter, to be inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier, he appointed Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Antonin Scalia, to the top position for the US Department of Labor.
Also, Scalia was recently seen duck hunting with Cheney. Rhenquist and Scalia (both strong supporters of states' rights) voted in Bush's favor in Gore v. Bush.
I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in what Technology Review has to say. With a quick look at their staff you will see where their priorities lay. They have one fact checker and 26 people involved in marketing and advertising.
They may have once been a reputable magazine, but since Bruce Journey took over, they are more concerned with selling magazines than quality reporting. Mr. Journey used to work for such rags as Time and TV Sports. When appointing Mr. Journey to lead Technology Review, William Hecht said:
"Technology Review has long been highly regarded for its editorial
excellence," Mr. Hecht said. "It is now time for MIT to invest in its
commercial potential. With the appointment of Mr. Journey, we have begun
the effort to secure a prominent place for Technology Review in the
competitive world of commercial publishing."
Besides that, Technology Review is twice removed from MIT. They are run by the Association of Alumni and
Alumnae of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is loosely associated with MIT.
I would really like to know why Slashdot keeps posting fantastical stories from that ratings-driven rag.
You are very clever! This has been a problem in elections before. This system does not address ballot stuffing, dead dudes voting, or the other simple methods of fixing an election that require social engineering instead of the technical kind.
I wasn't particularily concerned with ballot stuffing, etc.. We can deal with those issues the same way we always have. (i.e. we can count how many people voted and compare it to the number of ballots.)
However the paper alleges that a receipt contains everything necessary to authenticate itself.
Starting on page eight:
A verifier outside the polling place...can immediately check...
Is it valid
was it made by an authorized voting station
and does it correctly cover all the data printed
On page four
If your receipt were not properly posted, it would be physical evidence of a failure on the part of the election system and any refusal by officials to post it would be an irrefutable admission of a breakdown in the election process.
Of course the officials won't post the ballot unless it was made by an authorized voting station. But how do the officials know, and more importantly, how does the public know that you didn't forge the receipt?
Slashdot Mirror
The paper took many variables into account. As many as could be expected on short notice with no budget. There are two reasons to take extra factors into account. First is because you believe they may correlate with the effect you are measuring, thus skewing the results. Second, you believe the factor is random and by accounting for it, you can reduce error and measure smaller effects.
Do you believe the change in demographics correlates with the county's decision to buy electronic voting machines (please note, the researchers took demographic makeup into account, just not the change in demographic makeup)? I ask the same question of the other factors you mentioned.
The whole point of statistics is to measure the likelihood that the effect was due to the various random factors that were not taken into account! The rho (p) values you see all over the paper represent the likelihood that the various factors you mentioned, along with countless other factors, could have caused the effect.
The accepted rho value for most academic journals is p<.05. The researchers had a rho value of p<.01. If they had accounted for the factors you mentioned, the value probably would have been even smaller. If they had accounted for every possible factor, the rho value would have been zero (they would know exactly what happened).
It is impossible to account for everything. The researchers accounted for those factors which were most likely to skew the results. No single study should be taken as absolute proof of anything. However, this study shows that the situation with electronic voting machines merits further investigation.
If you believe the factors you mentioned explain the correlation, then go ahead and do your own analysis.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is how Microsoft Bill Gates built his business. He told IBM that he had his BASIC implementation all ready (in reality he had barely started). He told IBM that he had his operating system all ready (in reality, he ended up buying it from someone else and modifying it to fit IBM's specifications).
Bill Gates seemed quite proud of those feats when he later bragged about them. Microsoft has made similar promises regarding Windows 95, Longhorn, etc.. This is the way Microsoft does business.
The only surprise here is that Microsoft may face some pitiful little ramifications for their actions.
From page 34 of the ruling, "The bnetd emulator had limited commercial purpose because it was free and available to anyone who wanted to copy and use the program". Does that make sense to anyone?
So what happens after all the red-tagged patients have been cared for? Does the hospital take another look at the black or do they go on to the yellow?
Yet it is illegal for a private citizen to follow someone in public. What is with the double standard?
Doesn't "it" fit this definition?
It may sound rude, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
So it's more BSD-like then, big deal.
The BSD abandoned that clause for a reason. But Microsoft's license actually goes much further. If you distribute source code under a BSD license, the recipient still has no rights to use the software unless they contact Microsoft and get permission specifically. The license requires you to put this notice on any source code that implements SPF:
Which directly contradicts the very definition of Open Source. In other words, Microsoft's license is incompatible with all open source licenses!
Why is that different to the GPL? They're both licences that apply to the use of software. Without a license, you can't legally use any non-public domain software. The GPL is one such license, this is another.
You need a license to use patented technology. You do not need a license to use copyrighted software. Copyright only gives the author a monopoly on:
Note that the right to use is not in there. The GPL specifically allows you to decline the license. You may still go ahead and use the software even after declining the license. The GPL simply grants you the six rights listed above (with certain conditions).
Microsoft's license, however, grants a revocable right to use their patents. You could distribute SPF software under a BSD license, and Microsoft could revoke anyone's right to use the patent at any time (even if you already have the software, use it, and depend on it).
Big deal. Why does everything have to be GPL compatible? What would be wrong with, say, a BSD-style license for this particular application?
Even though you could distribute SPF software under a BSD license, you could not redistribute the software without explicit permission from Microsoft. That pretty much excludes the open source, bazaar style of development.
Make no mistake about it. Microsoft wants to shut down open source software. What better way than to prohibit open source software from doing that which people most use computers for, to send and receive email?
That is 26 minutes and 40 seconds of voice grade audio. At $0.30 per minute, it would cost less than $10 to send that much data. At $10.60 per minute, it would cost $282.70 to transfer 12 MB. On their old pricing plan, it would have cost him $16,002.40 to send 80,012 messages!
C and C++ are two of the very few languages which do not do automatic bounds checking. Their use should be relegated to low-level divers and OS kernels.
In the current climate, it is just plain foolish to use a language without bounds checking in a security critical capacity.
Where does the Justice Department get its authority to take civil action against drug dealers?
In a criminal case, the government must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt". In a civil suit, they must only prove the preponderance of the evidence.
In a criminal case, if the defendant is acquited, the goverment must return the defendant's belongings. In a civil case, the government can seize a person's belongings and the defendant must prove his innocence to get them back.
The most significant difference is that in a criminal case, if the defendant can not afford an attorney, the government must provide one. In a civil case, the defendant is left to fend for himself.
From the last time I posted:
Then, to present the documents, LDP can automatically convert the documents into any beutified HTML format they want.
Furthermore, XML could be used to help users jump over the explanations and get straight to the directions. XML could also come in handy when analyzing documents and looking for ways to improve LDP.
KDE maintains statistics on the 79 translations for the current development branch.
Microsoft is doing this to compete with Linux. Since there aren't any decent grammar checkers for Linux, they are not going to worry about it.
Who runs egovos.org and what makes you think it's the government? According to whois, the registrant and administrative contact is Tony Stanco (don't know if that's really the same person).
Doesn't this also require compiler support (to specify what is data and what is code)? Does GCC support it?
You're aware of a more objective source? What is it?
The public will look at the evidence and proclaim the suspect guilty. The jury will look at the evidence and declare the suspect guilty. Then they'll congradulate the FBI on a job well done. All the while, the real culprit sits back and laughs since he stole the supplies from someone who bought them with cash. He didn't show as a suspect at all.
People look at the fouth amendment and assume it's there to keep the authorities from annoying you. They think it's okay for the authorities to run a search as long as the person being searched doesn't know about it. The thing is, the more people the authorities investigate, the more likely they are to turn up false positives. That may work wonders in picking out a scapegoat, but it won't help find the real criminal if the real criminal took even minimal precautions to stay off the list. The fourth amendment is supposed to do more than protect people from annoying searches. It is there to make sure the authorities do their job right.
The 2000 election controversy has nothing to do with the popular vote. Officially, electors of the electoral college go to congress and cast their votes. Whoever gets the most votes from the electors becomes President. Note that the electors are free to vote for anyone they want (although they will have to answer to their constituents afterwards).
It is up to the states to determine who the electors for their electoral votes will be. I believe all of the states currently choose electors this way: the party for each candidate selects a bunch of people (one person for each electoral vote) to act as electors. If the candidate gets the most votes, then that candidate's electors are registered with congress. When it finally comes time to vote, the electors go to congress and cast their ballots.
As Anonymous Coward pointed out, the controversy in the 2000 election occurred because the Supreme Court interfered with Florida's right to choose its electors (ironically, the same justices who constantly harp about states' rights ruled opposite of their usual manner in this case). While seven of the nine justices agreed that Gore could not pick and choose which counties to count votes in, the justices were sharply split on how to deal with the issue. Four of them ruled that the case should go back to Florida to let the state decide how to remedy the issue. The other five ruled that the state didn't have time to remedy the issue so they would have to stick with the previous count.
It is worth noting that there are actually two deadlines for electors to register with congress. The preferred deadline was one or two days after the Supreme Court ruling. If a state registers it's electors by the preferred deadline, congress has to let them vote. The second deadline was about two months later. If a state registers its electors after the preferred deadline, congress could hold a vote to decide if they would refuse to let the electors vote. Again, whether or not to register its electors by the preferred deadline was an issue for the state to decide (all indications were that Florida law would have permitted waiting).
It's worth noting that Bush appointed two of those justices' children to positions in the executive branch. On June 1, 2001, Bush appointed Janet Rehnquist, U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's daughter, to be inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier, he appointed Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Antonin Scalia, to the top position for the US Department of Labor. Also, Scalia was recently seen duck hunting with Cheney. Rhenquist and Scalia (both strong supporters of states' rights) voted in Bush's favor in Gore v. Bush.
They may have once been a reputable magazine, but since Bruce Journey took over, they are more concerned with selling magazines than quality reporting. Mr. Journey used to work for such rags as Time and TV Sports. When appointing Mr. Journey to lead Technology Review, William Hecht said:
Besides that, Technology Review is twice removed from MIT. They are run by the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is loosely associated with MIT.
I would really like to know why Slashdot keeps posting fantastical stories from that ratings-driven rag.
Sadly, it looks like the press release was written on Windows. In the second paragraph, Konqueror displays:
Mozilla on Linux shows the same thing. Did no one notice that? Or do most Slashdotters use Windows these days?
The '?' really is the ASCII value for a question mark (0x3F), so maybe it was just a typo. Or maybe some other software translated it...
I wasn't particularily concerned with ballot stuffing, etc.. We can deal with those issues the same way we always have. (i.e. we can count how many people voted and compare it to the number of ballots.)
However the paper alleges that a receipt contains everything necessary to authenticate itself.
Starting on page eight:
On page four
Of course the officials won't post the ballot unless it was made by an authorized voting station. But how do the officials know, and more importantly, how does the public know that you didn't forge the receipt?