So this guy finds a page that includes a pink Hello Kitty Ferrari, a toaster, and a personal sand crawler and he decides that slashdotters would be interested in the toaster?!? For the $$$ I'd take the crawler over two toasters any day.
I've had excellent results with the SnapGear (since bought by CyberGuard) appliance. You can have it up and running in fairly short order via the web interface. It runs on Linux and all the Linux configs are easily accessible in case you need more flexibility than the web interface offers.
There's one on eBay at the moment for $138 (sorry, I already bought his other ones to augment what I already had installed).
I saw something similar a couple weeks ago. It not only had USB but also included slots for compact-flash, memory-stick, sd, etc. One model included an MP3 player as well. Just add your choice of hard drive.
It would be great for storing vacation photos without having to take/find a computer or buy expensive extra memory cards. I think that you would be able to get the enclosure + and 80GB drive for roughly the cost of a 512MB xD card.
They also have a device that burns CDs directly from camera cards (with disc spanning as needed).
Unfortunately I don't recall the brand but I would have bought one on the spot if they had one that supported xD cards.
Politicians push a technology that makes them look "green". The pledge of support is backed by a seemingly large pile of money (well, at least enough to fund the Iraq expedition for almost 10 days).
Scientists and engineers divide into a couple camps: those who warn about the technology's shortcomings (branded naysayers) and those who stand to profit from the research dollars (often working for the established industries).
The established industries such as the US auto manufacturers get to delay practical changes for a few years because the Next Big Thing That Will Save Us(tm) will be available Real Soon Now(tm).
Finally, the technology fails to live up to the hype giving the public one more reason to distrust scientists and engineers.
Back in the day I traded the owner of a local woodworking store a spare keyboard for a block plane (this was when keyboards actually cost something). He had an AT&T 6300 in the shop. Once a week he would blow the dust out of the keyboard with the air-hose.
We popped the top on the case and it looked more like Death Valley than electronics. There were drifts of sawdust 2-6 cm deep. The motherboard was nowhere in sight. It ran fine.
Now that was with a 8086 running at something like 4.7 MHz - no CPU cooling fans needed. I wouldn't recommend that with a modern computer.
Oregon, as someone mentioned, has done vote by mail for quite a while but when my company was hired to do some work for some Oregon campaigns I found out that the information on who has or has not voted is published daily. The campaigners keep hounding the people who haven't voted yet.
It seems like there is much more possibility for illegal pressure or influence (payoffs, etc.) when people don't have the option of voting at a polling place. You may tell someone how you will vote but the booth is private. That's not the case when someone can watch you fill out your vote-by-mail ballot.
Still, I'm all for looking at alternatives. Something must be done to ensure that everyone is sufficiently close to a polling location and that the wait time is short.
I walk 2 minutes to a polling place with nobody in line and am done and back home in less than 10 minutes total time. People in Ohio lined up for hours into the night. It's hard to argue that access to voting is equally distributed and that's a serious problem.
Don't jump to handle every request. You have to wean the group of "admin as manual" users. When they call just politely say, "I'm handling another request and I'll be there in 10 minutes. Most of the time when I got back to them they tell me that they figured it out. I'd complement them and go on my way. It takes practice to find answers on your own and people won't do it unless nudged.
Note: this applies to admins as well. I recently read an article commenting on how admins/programmers in shops using lots of open-source were much more adept at finding their own answers on the net than closed-source shops who had gotten used to hitting the speed-dial to tech-support.
Oh, I'm aware he's "talking the talk" but then turning around and saying that it's fine for Orange County to do everything possible to hide the fact that paper ballots are available. Given all his other shenanigans I don't trust him to walk the walk.
And it's very unfortunate to have one of the most visible e-voting detractors turn out to probably be a huge crook. Even in the best case that will mean an e-voting critic will be pushed out quite soon. In the worst case his opponents will try to link opposition to e-voting with crooked politicians.
Hey, we've all been there. I can't count the times I've thought, "this should be done using technologies A&B" but unfortunately I didn't have time to learn A&B at the time so I used the immediately available solution. Even the most basic duct-tape solution with a few kinks that is up and running before the election beats the hell out of a perfect system that goes live after the inaguration.:)
BTW, I've had no fun posting in the politics section today. In another post I couldn't format links regardless of using Plain Old Text, HTML formatting, etc. I haven't had that happen before. My original post, submitted as Plain Old Text included fake "flamebait" and "/flamebait" tags which were not correctly refomatted when posted. Should have previewed first.
More Kevin Shelley
on
Verified Voting
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This guy Shelley they quote on their web site, in addition to the dirty dealings mentioned in the other post, is talking a good deal but not really enforcing the paper-ballot-option requirement. From the Mercury News:
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - The Orange County elections office got the OK from California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to keep quiet about the availability of paper ballots at polling places.
All counties using electronic voting are required by Shelley to also provide paper ballots as an alternative to voters who request them. Shelley's office said in a memorandum Tuesday to elections offices that they "must educate voters" about the availability of paper ballots.
But Orange County was allowed to proceed with plans to offer no signs or vocal notification alerting voters about the availability of paper ballots, Shelley's office said Wednesday.
By discussing the issue with the Board of Supervisors and the media, Orange County Registrar of Voters Steve Rodermund had met the education requirement, the state said.
"It sounds like Steve Rodermund has done the minimum that is required," said Tony Miller, special counsel to Shelley. "He has let it be known publicly."
Registrars in Orange and at least three other counties have directed poll workers not to provide information about the availability of a paper ballot unless asked about it, saying they want to encourage the use of electronic voting.
I find it amusing that the quote on the front page is from Kevin Shelley (CA Secretary of State) who is up to his eyeballs in scandals including misappropriation of federal voting money on Democratic consultants, accepting checks in his Sacramento office (a crime in CA), receiving laundered campaign contributions, etc. For the curious, here's just a smattering of the articles about him:
I called the toll-free number and the guy was stumped. He said that it is currently available in a couple areas to Verizon employees only.
He said they weren't selling it yet and he didn't even have pricing info so I helped him out and quoted the web page pricing to him.
He seemed confused by the fact that he had just gotten several calls about this new service. Apparently I'm not the only one who called after their web site repeatedly crashed.:)
Slashdot recently added a "Politics" section. That's where this belongs. I didn't see any science in the article at all - just unsupported claims of how large a "footprint" (a dubious metric to begin with) is appropriate.
I'm not claiming that we are using too much or too few resources or that any of the quoted groups are right or wrong. I'm only saying that when groups like the WWF issue press-releases to push their agenda and others like the The Competitive Enterprise Institute try to counter those to push a different agenda, it's politics, not science.
"This time around I'm taking a look at the sample ballot and deciding my votes before I even go."
I have always filled out my sample ballot before going to the voting booth. Perhaps that's why it only takes me 5 minutes.
I have a hard time believing that someone standing in a voting booth trying to figure out how to cast their vote is properly analyzing the issues. If you haven't decided how you are going to vote then stay out of the way of those who have. Then, once you have make up your mind, go cast your vote. The voting booth is not the place to contemplate the issues.
Now I will admit that it does take another 5 minutes to walk to and from the polling place. I don't know about every part of the country but where I've lived ranges from the middle of the Mojave Desert to urban San Francisco bay area. In no place have I been farther than walking-distance from a polling place.
I just don't understand this push to drag people kicking and screaming to the polls. If you don't care enough to spend 5 minutes voting then who thinks you will spend any time trying to understand the issues.
If you are happy with the status quo, if you don't want to take the time to understand the issues, or if you simply don't care then STAY THE HECK OUT OF THE VOTING BOOTH! Let the votes of the concerned voters count more.
I frequently skip items on the ballot because I don't feel informed or it is an issue that does not affect me in any way (or sometimes there is only one choice so I don't feel compelled to waste my time checking the only box available).
Personally I think there should be more effort put into investigating and prosecuting voter fraud (multiple registrations/voting, registration/voting by non-citizens, etc.) but any efforts at cleaning up elections seem to be viewed as "discouraging participation".
It's so insane that in San Francisco there is a proposal to allow illegal aliens to vote in school board elections since their children are in the public schools. Yikes!
Hurry! This is a limited time offer! While supplies last!
Oh, sorry. It's just that articles like this remind me of what I see on Home Shopping Network when I don't change the channel fast enough.
In this case we have an idea that is not tested, will require development of materials that don't currently exist, and will need a new "supergrid" to support. Further, the effects of the proposed sequestering are not known.
But in spite of that it merits "billions" of research dollars immediately because of the fear of global warming.
We've discussed a lot more practical projects on/. in the last year and these are actually being built (cheaper and/or more efficient solar cells, large wind turbines, inherently-safe nuclear reactors, etc.)
Time to send this guy packing till he comes up with more than vaporware.
I actually corrected a typo in the article before submitting this story but the original was more amusing. It warned of "open souce" toting bandits. Conjurs up an image of a robber hauling around a public drunk.
As a geek with several computers at home you surely have your own web server running somewhere. Do what I do...just create a page of your favorite links. I do that and set it as my home page on all the computers I use.
If you want to get fancy set it up with a database backend for easy update.
I tried match.com for a while - a good friend met her now husband on match.com. I had a number of fun dates but I met my wife in "real life".
After his divorce, my boss tried match.com, e-harmony.com, table for six and at least one or two others. He has been steadily & exclusively dating for many months now. I don't recall which one scored the hit but when I asked him which had the highest percentage of good dates he rated them as e-harmony #1, table for six #2 and match.com #3 but met nice women on each. I don't know if age is a factor on which service is more successful but he is in his 60s.
The problem with match.com et. al. is that it is way to easy (especially for us geeky types) to carry on great email relationships for weeks/months before actually getting out and meeting someone. Bad idea if you want to meet that special person.
If there is a slight spark on-line, meet for coffee. You may think that someone seems perfect on-line but there are too many other factors that will influence whether or not you click. It may be as simple as looks or perhaps they eat like a slob or talk like a sailor or something else that just "doesn't work" for you. Don't waste time on-line - get out and date. If it doesn't work out you may end up with a friend or just be out the cost of coffee. In any case the practice is good.
(As one of those geeky types who rarely got around to going out I can only say, thank goodness I'm not "practicing" any more. Marriage and baby are great.)
Slashdot Mirror
So this guy finds a page that includes a pink Hello Kitty Ferrari, a toaster, and a personal sand crawler and he decides that slashdotters would be interested in the toaster?!? For the $$$ I'd take the crawler over two toasters any day.
This has been widely reported in the SF Bay Area news due to perchlorate contamination the South Bay. Check all the links on Google.
I've had excellent results with the SnapGear (since bought by CyberGuard) appliance. You can have it up and running in fairly short order via the web interface. It runs on Linux and all the Linux configs are easily accessible in case you need more flexibility than the web interface offers.
There's one on eBay at the moment for $138 (sorry, I already bought his other ones to augment what I already had installed).
C'mon, this is Slashdot. Anything that can cause real damage is de-facto "pretty cool".
Yeah, wouldn't want to go off "half cocked".
(Yes, I know it's a line from "Fun With Dick and Jane")
I saw something similar a couple weeks ago. It not only had USB but also included slots for compact-flash, memory-stick, sd, etc. One model included an MP3 player as well. Just add your choice of hard drive.
It would be great for storing vacation photos without having to take/find a computer or buy expensive extra memory cards. I think that you would be able to get the enclosure + and 80GB drive for roughly the cost of a 512MB xD card.
They also have a device that burns CDs directly from camera cards (with disc spanning as needed).
Unfortunately I don't recall the brand but I would have bought one on the spot if they had one that supported xD cards.
Politicians push a technology that makes them look "green". The pledge of support is backed by a seemingly large pile of money (well, at least enough to fund the Iraq expedition for almost 10 days).
Scientists and engineers divide into a couple camps: those who warn about the technology's shortcomings (branded naysayers) and those who stand to profit from the research dollars (often working for the established industries).
The established industries such as the US auto manufacturers get to delay practical changes for a few years because the Next Big Thing That Will Save Us(tm) will be available Real Soon Now(tm).
Finally, the technology fails to live up to the hype giving the public one more reason to distrust scientists and engineers.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
"Buffy": redlight
"Angel": redlight
"Arrested Development": redlight
"Desperate Housewives": redlight
"Tru Calling": redlight
"Lost": redlight
"Alias": redlight
"Joan of Arcadia" is listed as their #1 best show for families.
About the only shows I watch that even got a yellow light were "The Simpsons" ("Marge is a role-model") and "King of the Hill".
I'd try to check out some of the other red-lighted shows but since it seems to be most of them I'm afraid I won't have time.
Back in the day I traded the owner of a local woodworking store a spare keyboard for a block plane (this was when keyboards actually cost something). He had an AT&T 6300 in the shop. Once a week he would blow the dust out of the keyboard with the air-hose.
We popped the top on the case and it looked more like Death Valley than electronics. There were drifts of sawdust 2-6 cm deep. The motherboard was nowhere in sight. It ran fine.
Now that was with a 8086 running at something like 4.7 MHz - no CPU cooling fans needed. I wouldn't recommend that with a modern computer.
Oregon, as someone mentioned, has done vote by mail for quite a while but when my company was hired to do some work for some Oregon campaigns I found out that the information on who has or has not voted is published daily. The campaigners keep hounding the people who haven't voted yet.
It seems like there is much more possibility for illegal pressure or influence (payoffs, etc.) when people don't have the option of voting at a polling place. You may tell someone how you will vote but the booth is private. That's not the case when someone can watch you fill out your vote-by-mail ballot.
Still, I'm all for looking at alternatives. Something must be done to ensure that everyone is sufficiently close to a polling location and that the wait time is short.
I walk 2 minutes to a polling place with nobody in line and am done and back home in less than 10 minutes total time. People in Ohio lined up for hours into the night. It's hard to argue that access to voting is equally distributed and that's a serious problem.
Don't jump to handle every request. You have to wean the group of "admin as manual" users. When they call just politely say, "I'm handling another request and I'll be there in 10 minutes. Most of the time when I got back to them they tell me that they figured it out. I'd complement them and go on my way. It takes practice to find answers on your own and people won't do it unless nudged.
Note: this applies to admins as well. I recently read an article commenting on how admins/programmers in shops using lots of open-source were much more adept at finding their own answers on the net than closed-source shops who had gotten used to hitting the speed-dial to tech-support.
The auroras were spectacular from space ase well as today's photo from spaceweather.com shows:
Oh, I'm aware he's "talking the talk" but then turning around and saying that it's fine for Orange County to do everything possible to hide the fact that paper ballots are available. Given all his other shenanigans I don't trust him to walk the walk.
And it's very unfortunate to have one of the most visible e-voting detractors turn out to probably be a huge crook. Even in the best case that will mean an e-voting critic will be pushed out quite soon. In the worst case his opponents will try to link opposition to e-voting with crooked politicians.
Hey, we've all been there. I can't count the times I've thought, "this should be done using technologies A&B" but unfortunately I didn't have time to learn A&B at the time so I used the immediately available solution. Even the most basic duct-tape solution with a few kinks that is up and running before the election beats the hell out of a perfect system that goes live after the inaguration. :)
BTW, I've had no fun posting in the politics section today. In another post I couldn't format links regardless of using Plain Old Text, HTML formatting, etc. I haven't had that happen before. My original post, submitted as Plain Old Text included fake "flamebait" and "/flamebait" tags which were not correctly refomatted when posted. Should have previewed first.
This guy Shelley they quote on their web site, in addition to the dirty dealings mentioned in the other post, is talking a good deal but not really enforcing the paper-ballot-option requirement. From the Mercury News:
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - The Orange County elections office got the OK from California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to keep quiet about the availability of paper ballots at polling places.
All counties using electronic voting are required by Shelley to also provide paper ballots as an alternative to voters who request them. Shelley's office said in a memorandum Tuesday to elections offices that they "must educate voters" about the availability of paper ballots.
But Orange County was allowed to proceed with plans to offer no signs or vocal notification alerting voters about the availability of paper ballots, Shelley's office said Wednesday.
By discussing the issue with the Board of Supervisors and the media, Orange County Registrar of Voters Steve Rodermund had met the education requirement, the state said.
"It sounds like Steve Rodermund has done the minimum that is required," said Tony Miller, special counsel to Shelley. "He has let it be known publicly."
Registrars in Orange and at least three other counties have directed poll workers not to provide information about the availability of a paper ballot unless asked about it, saying they want to encourage the use of electronic voting.
I find it amusing that the quote on the front page is from Kevin Shelley (CA Secretary of State) who is up to his eyeballs in scandals including misappropriation of federal voting money on Democratic consultants, accepting checks in his Sacramento office (a crime in CA), receiving laundered campaign contributions, etc. For the curious, here's just a smattering of the articles about him:
/ ch ronicle/archive/2004/09/30/MNG9U91ANA1.DTL/ /www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/09/30/BAGPE91B571.DTL/ /www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/10/07/EDGII94AG81.DTL/ /www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/10/08/BAG4M95J231.DTL/ /www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/10/11/MNGID9748P1.DTL/ /www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/10/24/BAGML9F94221.DTL: //www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/10/27/BAGGE9FSN057.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
http:
http:
http:
http:
http:
http
Seems like they could have picked someone better to quote.
(My preview is showing odd spaces in the URI - you may have to fix to view the articles)
That a site dedicated to watching over e-voting is itself not up to the task.
Of course any operation that uses a toy database like MySQL or Access deserves what it gets
Signed,
A ducking and running PostgreSQL addict
I called the toll-free number and the guy was stumped. He said that it is currently available in a couple areas to Verizon employees only.
:)
He said they weren't selling it yet and he didn't even have pricing info so I helped him out and quoted the web page pricing to him.
He seemed confused by the fact that he had just gotten several calls about this new service. Apparently I'm not the only one who called after their web site repeatedly crashed.
Slashdot recently added a "Politics" section. That's where this belongs. I didn't see any science in the article at all - just unsupported claims of how large a "footprint" (a dubious metric to begin with) is appropriate.
I'm not claiming that we are using too much or too few resources or that any of the quoted groups are right or wrong. I'm only saying that when groups like the WWF issue press-releases to push their agenda and others like the The Competitive Enterprise Institute try to counter those to push a different agenda, it's politics, not science.
I have always filled out my sample ballot before going to the voting booth. Perhaps that's why it only takes me 5 minutes.
I have a hard time believing that someone standing in a voting booth trying to figure out how to cast their vote is properly analyzing the issues. If you haven't decided how you are going to vote then stay out of the way of those who have. Then, once you have make up your mind, go cast your vote. The voting booth is not the place to contemplate the issues.
Now I will admit that it does take another 5 minutes to walk to and from the polling place. I don't know about every part of the country but where I've lived ranges from the middle of the Mojave Desert to urban San Francisco bay area. In no place have I been farther than walking-distance from a polling place.
I just don't understand this push to drag people kicking and screaming to the polls. If you don't care enough to spend 5 minutes voting then who thinks you will spend any time trying to understand the issues.
If you are happy with the status quo, if you don't want to take the time to understand the issues, or if you simply don't care then STAY THE HECK OUT OF THE VOTING BOOTH! Let the votes of the concerned voters count more.
I frequently skip items on the ballot because I don't feel informed or it is an issue that does not affect me in any way (or sometimes there is only one choice so I don't feel compelled to waste my time checking the only box available).
Personally I think there should be more effort put into investigating and prosecuting voter fraud (multiple registrations/voting, registration/voting by non-citizens, etc.) but any efforts at cleaning up elections seem to be viewed as "discouraging participation".
It's so insane that in San Francisco there is a proposal to allow illegal aliens to vote in school board elections since their children are in the public schools. Yikes!
Hurry! This is a limited time offer! While supplies last!
/. in the last year and these are actually being built (cheaper and/or more efficient solar cells, large wind turbines, inherently-safe nuclear reactors, etc.)
Oh, sorry. It's just that articles like this remind me of what I see on Home Shopping Network when I don't change the channel fast enough.
In this case we have an idea that is not tested, will require development of materials that don't currently exist, and will need a new "supergrid" to support. Further, the effects of the proposed sequestering are not known.
But in spite of that it merits "billions" of research dollars immediately because of the fear of global warming.
We've discussed a lot more practical projects on
Time to send this guy packing till he comes up with more than vaporware.
I actually corrected a typo in the article before submitting this story but the original was more amusing. It warned of "open souce" toting bandits. Conjurs up an image of a robber hauling around a public drunk.
As a geek with several computers at home you surely have your own web server running somewhere. Do what I do...just create a page of your favorite links. I do that and set it as my home page on all the computers I use.
If you want to get fancy set it up with a database backend for easy update.
I tried match.com for a while - a good friend met her now husband on match.com. I had a number of fun dates but I met my wife in "real life".
After his divorce, my boss tried match.com, e-harmony.com, table for six and at least one or two others. He has been steadily & exclusively dating for many months now. I don't recall which one scored the hit but when I asked him which had the highest percentage of good dates he rated them as e-harmony #1, table for six #2 and match.com #3 but met nice women on each. I don't know if age is a factor on which service is more successful but he is in his 60s.
The problem with match.com et. al. is that it is way to easy (especially for us geeky types) to carry on great email relationships for weeks/months before actually getting out and meeting someone. Bad idea if you want to meet that special person.
If there is a slight spark on-line, meet for coffee. You may think that someone seems perfect on-line but there are too many other factors that will influence whether or not you click. It may be as simple as looks or perhaps they eat like a slob or talk like a sailor or something else that just "doesn't work" for you. Don't waste time on-line - get out and date. If it doesn't work out you may end up with a friend or just be out the cost of coffee. In any case the practice is good.
(As one of those geeky types who rarely got around to going out I can only say, thank goodness I'm not "practicing" any more. Marriage and baby are great.)