That's an interesting angle. It might be nice if there were a resurgence of the PDA from the likes of Sharp and Casio selling something for $60. In fact I had recently been considering something like that in a wristwatch. It does have Outlook connectivity, which is a hard requirement for me. I'm afraid it's too big for a wristwatch and too small for a PDA, but I haven't seen one in person so who knows.
Palm did have the Palm V. That was perhaps the high point of my PDA experience. Today I have a $500 HP iPaq with Microsoft software which is incredibly sluggish, crashes constantly, and is about twice as thick and heavy as my Palm V. However that is all my company allows me to use, because it does have a fingerprint reader and encryption. Nevermind if it locks up 30% of the time you try to turn it on with those features enabled.
To be fair, the iPaq 1945 series with an earlier version of Windows Mobile was much, much better. I believe today nobody at Microsoft or HP actually uses PocketPCs. Everything has gone over to cellphones, leaving those of us who still need a non-phone PDA for whatever reason (generally, security policies) almost high and dry. I guess they have to follow the market, but I wish they would at least not advertise and ship stuff that doesn't work.
So, if candidate A wins with 1 million votes, and that happens to be exactly one vote more than candidate B, which one of those votes was this all-important "swing vote" that you speak of?
As of the 2000 election, I came to believe that this is actually impossible. First because they can't count the votes with that much precision, but second because any tiny irregularity in the election is worth much more than 1 vote, so any vote that close is bound to result in a legal contest and a decision by the courts.
However, I agree with you about voting on principle, and so I do vote.
Your freedom is both a function of what you are allowed to do, and what other people are (not) allowed to do. It would be nice if everybody could have absolute freedom, but my right to swing my fist has to end at the tip of your nose.
On a national level, it's sad to see people sell off their freedom.
But what's even more sad is that on a personal level, selling your vote actually makes sense. The probably of YOUR vote actually being the swing vote in a national election is practically 0, so *your* doing it, alone, will not make any difference on the election but *will* put a couple bucks in your pocket. Sort of a variation on tragedy of the commons.
I wish we in the US could return to when authority was more decentralized, when the "states" were worthy of the title and counties (not countries but counties) actually had some authority. Now it's pretty much one President governing 300,000,000 people, with Congress occasionally doing something which may or may not be vetoed.
Comcast should not be free to specify whatever they want in their TOS until I am free to switch to another provider. Unfortunately that isn't the case.
If they were to get out of the business entirely, that's fine with me, the demand is there and somebody else would provide the service.
Your idea would be terribly damaging for the Internet. Innovators need to be able to provide online services without individually registering themselves with every ISP on the planet. Allowing this would make ISPs the gatekeepers and judges of the Internet, and I don't want that.
In practice, it would require that everyone that gets a moderate amount of traffic to probably upgrade hardware to handle all the extra overhead of cipher processing.
I'm not sure what you mean about processing overhead. Almost by definition, all the cipher processing must be done by the endpoints.
I agree there remains the age-old problem of initial key exchange.
You see, it's not just a structural failure of the support system for the (at least as far as reported) otherwise working gun, it's a structural failure of the support system for the otherwise working robotic gun.
But for that matter, what if it had been a failure in the software rather than a structural failure? Sometimes engineered systems fail, software and/or hardware. For instance, the Ariane 5 rocket exploded to a software failure. That's too bad, but then many rockets have failed to reach orbit over the years. I don't think a software failure is any more shameful or unexpected than failing ceramic tiles or a broken fuel line or anything else that causes rockets to fail.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
How much more plain can it be? You can't tap my phone calls without a warrant, and you can't get a warrant without probable cause that I personally am committing crime. I apologize in advance for ranting, but what's the problem with you people who think blanket warrantless searches are legal? Can't you read the Constitution? Or do you just not care? Do you honestly want to live in a police state, or do you simply think the US cannot be one, by definition? Seriously, what are you thinking?
the doubters where right - more people downloaded it from illegal sources then pay the measly minimum of $1 to get it legally.
Doubters of what? This reminds me of Stephen King's "revolutionary" idea of paying to download to a book, which he declared a failure because less than 75% of readers paid. That's an irrelevant benchmark. If radiohead makes more money this way than selling CDs through a label, they win. Whether more copies are pirated than purchased, or even whether online sales increases or decreases piracy compared to CD distribution, is irrelevant.
Oh, puhlease. "legitmate market to get it" These people won't pay a friggin' dime. There's no "black market" as that assumes payment.
allofmp3.com was making money, wasn't it?
I think the "problem" with the radiohead site is you have to go through a specific place for that one album and navigate an unfamiliar site. People want one place to get whatever they want. That's a common factor between iTunes, Napster, allofmp3.com, and whatever filesharing network is in vogue currently.
Can you imagine any other form of communication that was 95% inefficient?
I don't think the 95% figure is very important. What's matters is the balance of power in the arms race between spamming and filtering, i.e. how many spam actually show up in your inbox. Is the average user actually seeing any more spam than 10 years ago? I'm not.
Why does "The Steve" need to bash M$ & Vista at every opportunity?
Being mainly a linux user I don't understand your reference (something about "ultimate"?) - however, I do think the artificial limitations on most versions of Windows are very annoying. Somebody at Microsoft actually went to extra effort to restrict you to only 5 network connections. Or the fact that only one remote user can log in at once. It's just very, very Lame.
AOL had its chance to turn things completely around
What, by convincing everybody that dialup is better than broadband after all? Time Warner bought in just as AOL's core competency (dialup for Internet novices) was rapidly becoming obsolete.
I assume you're making up the idea that this would having anything to do with IP addresses, since it's a ridiculous idea. Is that how your bank authenticates your online access?
Of course it's possible individuals could sell their votes under this system. Just like elected representatives already do.
Everything you said applies just as much to voting for a representative as it does voting on individual issues. Can I think of many ways direct Democracy would fail? Sure. But in most every case, representative Democracy is already failing the same way. Vote buying? Check. Uninformed ballots cast? Check. Pork? Double-check!
I think being open for development isn't enough, you also need to spend a couple $100 million or so in marketing...
If only... if only google had a bunch of money lying around, or access to some sort of communications medium that could present advertising to a wide audience?
Yes, he conveniently left out the legalization of robot prostitutes in Amsterdam scheduled for early 2010.
I think it's funny that the story is about marriage, yet most of the comments here immediately and unthinkingly equate marriage with sex, as if a wife were a sexual convenience and not a person. There is a lot of twisted thinking in here.
Oh, I absolutely agree about backups. But my point is that in the real world most people don't get around to it, and for them having somebody else back it up is better than nothing.
Sounds like a strong argument for everybody keeping their money at home under the mattress instead of a bank.
Compared to the atrocious data security and safeguards most home users have (which is to say, none), having the pros at google or hotmail take care of it is a huge step up. At least they don't put it all on one drive with no backup or accidentally throw it away when they get a new computer.
Slashdot Mirror
If the contrast is really as bad as it appears in the picture, bit depth is the least of their concerns.
That's an interesting angle. It might be nice if there were a resurgence of the PDA from the likes of Sharp and Casio selling something for $60. In fact I had recently been considering something like that in a wristwatch. It does have Outlook connectivity, which is a hard requirement for me. I'm afraid it's too big for a wristwatch and too small for a PDA, but I haven't seen one in person so who knows.
To be fair, the iPaq 1945 series with an earlier version of Windows Mobile was much, much better. I believe today nobody at Microsoft or HP actually uses PocketPCs. Everything has gone over to cellphones, leaving those of us who still need a non-phone PDA for whatever reason (generally, security policies) almost high and dry. I guess they have to follow the market, but I wish they would at least not advertise and ship stuff that doesn't work.
However, I agree with you about voting on principle, and so I do vote.
Your freedom is both a function of what you are allowed to do, and what other people are (not) allowed to do. It would be nice if everybody could have absolute freedom, but my right to swing my fist has to end at the tip of your nose.
But what's even more sad is that on a personal level, selling your vote actually makes sense. The probably of YOUR vote actually being the swing vote in a national election is practically 0, so *your* doing it, alone, will not make any difference on the election but *will* put a couple bucks in your pocket. Sort of a variation on tragedy of the commons. I wish we in the US could return to when authority was more decentralized, when the "states" were worthy of the title and counties (not countries but counties) actually had some authority. Now it's pretty much one President governing 300,000,000 people, with Congress occasionally doing something which may or may not be vetoed.
If they were to get out of the business entirely, that's fine with me, the demand is there and somebody else would provide the service.
Your idea would be terribly damaging for the Internet. Innovators need to be able to provide online services without individually registering themselves with every ISP on the planet. Allowing this would make ISPs the gatekeepers and judges of the Internet, and I don't want that.
I agree there remains the age-old problem of initial key exchange.
Does the robotic aspect make this any different from a fatal bridge collapse or a tire failure? IMHO it's the same.
Thank me later.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
How much more plain can it be? You can't tap my phone calls without a warrant, and you can't get a warrant without probable cause that I personally am committing crime. I apologize in advance for ranting, but what's the problem with you people who think blanket warrantless searches are legal? Can't you read the Constitution? Or do you just not care? Do you honestly want to live in a police state, or do you simply think the US cannot be one, by definition? Seriously, what are you thinking?
I think the "problem" with the radiohead site is you have to go through a specific place for that one album and navigate an unfamiliar site. People want one place to get whatever they want. That's a common factor between iTunes, Napster, allofmp3.com, and whatever filesharing network is in vogue currently.
Of course it's possible individuals could sell their votes under this system. Just like elected representatives already do.
Everything you said applies just as much to voting for a representative as it does voting on individual issues. Can I think of many ways direct Democracy would fail? Sure. But in most every case, representative Democracy is already failing the same way. Vote buying? Check. Uninformed ballots cast? Check. Pork? Double-check!
Oh, I absolutely agree about backups. But my point is that in the real world most people don't get around to it, and for them having somebody else back it up is better than nothing.
Compared to the atrocious data security and safeguards most home users have (which is to say, none), having the pros at google or hotmail take care of it is a huge step up. At least they don't put it all on one drive with no backup or accidentally throw it away when they get a new computer.