Well, a major problem with the free market is that it tends to become monopolized rather quickly. The only thing that can prevent it is government anti-trust controls. So far, they have been functioning, but of course that won't be for long if Republicans have their way with their corporate welfare agenda.
By "too many", I didn't mean that it's a bad thing for the consumer -- on the contrary, competition is very good. It's just that it's not a sustainable market situation -- eventually, some of those companies will merge.
Well, if you think a couple of cellphone companies merging constitutes anything like the ma bell monopoly, you must be smoking something good. It's not like Cingular has anything except cellphone service, and even then it's doesn't have even 80% of the market. There are currently about 4 other companies I can think of that are in the cellphone business. That's way too many as it is.
And that's why all legal XBOX modchips sold in the USA (yes, not *all* modchips are banned in the USA, just *most*) are preloaded with cromwell flash firmware, or just plain cromwell firmware, as well as a suite of popular homebrew utilites, right?
Well, I could see your point if it was difficult or impossible to reflash the cromwell rom with, say, xecuter2. It's not, and the process is usually described in the instructions that come with the modchip.
Of course, if you call pirated games "backups", it makes it all legal, right? I don't think so. I can see why people would want to back up their games, but piracy is generally what this feature gets used for. There are PS2 modchips that only let you play imports, but you probably won't be able to sell very many of them.
Anyway, I am not against modchips or piracy, I am just saying that they most likely violate the DMCA.
Whatever. Everyone I know who has a modchip in his xbox or PS2 (that's quite a few people) got it for the purpose of pirating games. The other stuff is a nice side-effect, but hardly anyone buys modchips for running media servers. In any case, that is irrelevant, because modchips that can bypass copy protection obviously violate the DMCA.
Umm, no. This ruling essentially says that the purpose of the lexmark protection is not to protect a copyrighted work, but to restrict access to a printer. The main purpose of a modchip, like it or not, is to pirate games. If you make a modchip that does not let you pirate games, but just lets you play homebrew ones, it might be legal -- but nobody would want it.
It prevents innovation, and it also prevents unsafe products from getting out there. I don't know about you, but I don't think people should be able to watch TV while driving. Also, I value my safety a lot more than some useless car gadget that encourages bad driving.
The machine I am posting from has both Mandrake 10 and XP. I prefer Mandrake, but XP runs at least as fast. It's a 700MHz Duron with only 256 megs of RAM, which should be roughly the same speed as your 550MHz P3 (given your machine has 3x the RAM and 2x the cache). It definitely runs faster IMO than OS X on a G3.
OS X came out roughly when Win2K came out. It was a buggy POS, and Apple has expected people to shell out $129 2 or 3 times already for what basically amounts to service packs. So, if you started with the first release, you would have paid over $400 by now. Win2K is still a rock-solid system, and all the updates for it have been free. So I definitely wouldn't diss Microsoft on that front.
As to dodgy performance without topline hardware, I'm using a 450MHz blue & white G3 at home (that's mid-1999 hardware) and have no "dodgy performance issues."
Some people don't have performance issues when running XP on a 300MHz Celeron. That doesn't mean it runs well, it's just that they don't mind waiting 5 minutes for a web browser to start. I've used OS X on G3s, and it runs much slower than XP on a $300 PC.
Hands down, the US has the best healthcare in the world.
Where are you getting this from? Personally, I have to deal with extremely clueless doctors every time I need something. Not to mention that actually getting to a specialist takes a few months. And my insurance plan is far from a low-end one.
But there is absolutely no question that people come here for treatment if they can afford and access it.
You have zero data but you are sure it's true. I've yet to see a foreigner at my local hospital.
The only exception is the active military system and the state implemented plans such as what the state of Oregon did. Everything else they've stuck their hands in is a mess.
Why is Medicare/Medicaid a mess? Because all the government does is give money to privately run hospitals. Of course it will be a mess. Hospitals just bill the government whatever they want to for procedures they don't perform and nobody is accountable. Why is that happening? Because the system is too privatized and there is not enough government control.
The government can both manage and impose economic controls, in fact they have, but they lack the response and the resources to make adequate decisions.
Really? And the insurance industry (the ones running the healthcare system now) makes adequate decisions? What planet are you living on?
Better healthcare can be reached in this country, but it's not through government involvement. It's through LESS government involvement. The main stays inflating costs are patent enforcement, tort or contract law issues, and the limited number of doctors trained or allowed into the country.
Are you saying the government is at fault for this? Let's see: patent enforcement. Private industry (pharmaceutical companies). Tort and contract law. Private industry (lawyers and insurance companies). By the way, the malpractice payouts have not grown nearly as fast as the insurance rates. Why? Because the insurance companies can charge what they want. Limited number of doctors allowed into the country. Private industry (medical lobby). All of these are due to a LACK of government involvement. Why the hell do you think the same drugs cost 10x less in Canada? Because the government negotiates with drug companies.
Also, why the hell would the cost of healthcare plummet? Basic economics says it won't, because both hospitals and insurance companies are monopolistic. Hospitals don't really compete with each other, do they?
The reason for this is because we want the best healthcare system.
The US has the worst healthcare system of any civilized country. The only reason someone would want to fly down here is if the system in their country is even worse. I really doubt anyone from western Europe travels to the US for healthcare.
People fly into the US (who can afford it) from all over the world precisely because it is not paid for by taxes.
How many people? From what countries? Also, how is paying for healthcare with taxes any worse than paying for it with health insurance?
Government buisnesses are not as efficient as private buisnesses
They aren't as efficient at making money, but they are far more efficient at providing healthcare. Would you prefer your local hospital to have a higher profit margin or better doctors?
Keep in mind that with something as serious as an election, everything -- from BIOS firmware through to the OS and supporting libraries -- is also in that 'code' block. That necessitates available source for everything -- even if some of the code is propriatory and not open for redistribution -- because anything that is a closed binary is much harder to check (though not impossible).
Sounds like you want the source for everything to be available for redistribution, free of charge. That would necessitate building the system nearly from scratch. Since Diebold is out of the question (and they can't make money by selling something that's available for free), the state would have to do it. Then, you suggest that random people can then verify that the code is correct, and you also devise a scheme for verifying code integrity. Except that you haven't given thought to a whole bunch of things. Like who will run the system. Or why it would be more secure than it is currently. Or why it's even necessary.
Your solution isn't open-sourcing the code, it's making the development process for those machines public. Basically, you want the state to develop the machines and do all kinds of security procedures to assure it's secure, and have a bunch of Slashdot nerds verify the machines. What you are proposing is not really possible to do, and would still have loopholes.
My solution is to do it the old fashioned way, using paper. That way, it doesn't matter how the machines operate. If you choose Nader but the paper says you voted for Bush, you know something is wrong. Since the paper is what ultimately matters, it's secure.
You still haven't answered my primary question: how exactly will an open-source voting system prevent voting fraud? I think we can agree that code auditing won't help matters much.
During the recount phase, how do you know that the people counting and the systems being used haven't been compromised?
Simple. You keep the process simple (no fancy computerized systems, etc -- just a manual recount). You send in representatives from both of the major parties to supervise the recount process. This has been done for decades.
The conspiracy theorists on the left think that Diabold has ties to the right wing and may assist in election fraud
If you think Diebold does the rigging, you are an idiot. If they tried that and someone found out, they would be out of the voting machine business permanently. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Not to mention it's kind of hard to do, given how many variables there are. All they need to do is make a system with some backdoors, and they can be assured that the election will be rigged.
The real danger here is that any state election official can tamper with the results. From what I've heard, Diebold basically uses Access to store stuff and anyone can modify it. The most likely rigging scenario is that some state employee will add/remove a few dozen extra votes from a couple of critical counties and change the outcome for that state. Sounds much more likely, doesn't it? Now tell me, how will open-sourcing the Diebold software prevent that?
People make mistkes on paper all the time.
No shit, Sherlock. That's why you have the machine print out the ballot with the choices filled in, and you verify it before casting it. If you are saying people make mistakes when recounting votes -- that doesn't matter if they are random mistakes and they don't happen very often. Besides, you can recount paper ballots with optical scanners -- haven't you ever taken a standardized test? Those machines are fairly simple and reliable.
I take it you've never actually tried to read someome else's source code. It's a very difficult, time-consuming task, and it's very likely that nobody would bother reading it. Looking at source code is not a sure-fire way to find bugs.
Besides, the main concern is that state election officials would attempt to tamper with the results (since they generally belong to one of the parties). They can do that more easily if the software is open-source (add a backdoor, recompile, replace executable -- voila). How do you assure that the open-source code is what's actually being used?
As far as spyware: making Windows open-source would not change anything. The problem with Windows is that it has a broken security model, not that it's closed-source. Linux has a much better security model and much less market share, so we don't see any spyware for it.
The thing is, this hardware does not have anything near the capabilities of even the NES. It has a ridiculously fast CPU but no hardware support for anything but sound. Which pretty much means you have to do just about everything (including generating the NTSC signal) in software. Pac-man is probably the most sophisticated game that could be programmed on this hardware.
Something like the SNES platform would be a lot more interesting to a vintage game developer wannabe. The SNES had a slow CPU, but it had a lot more memory and very powerful graphics and sound hardware. The 2D graphics hardware on the SNES was substantially more complex than the 2D subsystem of a modern PC videocard. Something like this would be a lot more fun to develop for. Even a simple Mario clone for the xgamestation would be pushing its boundaries.
It's not that hard to fully understand how a modern program operates. It's just that you can actually create much richer abstractions with things like object-oriented programming. Instead of thinking in terms of the microprocessor (twiddling bits and shuffling registers), you can think in terms of the game world (monsters, treasures, whatever). This is also an art form, and a more sophisticated one at that.
Of course, if you want to spend a year programming a shitty pong clone for hardware that is too l33t to have a framebuffer, more power to you. To me, it seems like boring, tedious, and counterproductive work with no payoff whatsoever.
And what, exactly, would that solve? Why do so many idiots keep proposing these ridiculous "solutions"? How exactly is making software open-source going to solve anything? Do you seriously think it's more difficult to rig an election if it uses open-source software? If anything, it makes it easier.
The ONLY real solution is to have machines print out OFFICIAL PAPER BALLOTS that the voter can check and put in a sealed ballot box and which can later be recounted by hand. This still enables the use of the electronic feature as a convenience. This is a simple and 100% effective solution.
That's a bit of a waste of time, though. Why recreate something that was state of the art in 1970 today? Do people not think regular PCs impose enough constraints or something? If you want to write vintage games, what's wrong with a regular PC? This is only useful as a platform for learning hardware and a pretty mediocre one at that.
First, an NES has a relatively powerful graphics processor. So it isn't exactly an 8-bit microcontroller application. 8-bit micros appeared long before the NES. Second, I've yet to see a Doom port or an MMORPG for the NES. Third, none of the homebrew NES stuff is even close to the real capabilities of the NES -- it's more like Atari 2600 games.
I think it just about proves my point -- it's a waste of time for a developer to try to compensate for a slow processor by excessively optimizing code. This might make sense for mass-market products where a penny saved on manufacturing translates to millions. It does not make any sense for an open-source developer.
True, but a game for an 1.8MHz microcontroller won't be very complex as far as design. Basically, it's programmer time and effort versus computer power. Programmer time is much more expensive for anything except mass-market products. In short, on a today's PC, it's better to program in a higher-level, possibly less efficient language.
Actually, you run into problem if a segway hits an unexpected bump. It's damn near impossible to accurately gauge how much battery power is left, since it depends on temperature, age of the battery, and countless other random factors. If the battery can't put out enough power to overcome a sudden bump -- it's face meet concrete time, even on a segway. They had a recall for this problem (firmware update), but all it does is kills it before the battery comes close to discharging. It's not a failsafe by any means.
Even then, C is probably one of the worst languages to write a game in (except maybe assembler). If you are using C because you are too lazy to learn C++, you're in for a world of pain. It's possible to do OOP in C -- it's just a horrible, horrible pain in the ass.
Seriously, people, read one of Bruce Eckel's books or something. They are available for free on his website and they are the the best programming books I have seen so far.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, a major problem with the free market is that it tends to become monopolized rather quickly. The only thing that can prevent it is government anti-trust controls. So far, they have been functioning, but of course that won't be for long if Republicans have their way with their corporate welfare agenda.
By "too many", I didn't mean that it's a bad thing for the consumer -- on the contrary, competition is very good. It's just that it's not a sustainable market situation -- eventually, some of those companies will merge.
Well, if you think a couple of cellphone companies merging constitutes anything like the ma bell monopoly, you must be smoking something good. It's not like Cingular has anything except cellphone service, and even then it's doesn't have even 80% of the market. There are currently about 4 other companies I can think of that are in the cellphone business. That's way too many as it is.
And that's why all legal XBOX modchips sold in the USA (yes, not *all* modchips are banned in the USA, just *most*) are preloaded with cromwell flash firmware, or just plain cromwell firmware, as well as a suite of popular homebrew utilites, right?
Well, I could see your point if it was difficult or impossible to reflash the cromwell rom with, say, xecuter2. It's not, and the process is usually described in the instructions that come with the modchip.
Of course, if you call pirated games "backups", it makes it all legal, right? I don't think so. I can see why people would want to back up their games, but piracy is generally what this feature gets used for. There are PS2 modchips that only let you play imports, but you probably won't be able to sell very many of them.
Anyway, I am not against modchips or piracy, I am just saying that they most likely violate the DMCA.
Whatever. Everyone I know who has a modchip in his xbox or PS2 (that's quite a few people) got it for the purpose of pirating games. The other stuff is a nice side-effect, but hardly anyone buys modchips for running media servers. In any case, that is irrelevant, because modchips that can bypass copy protection obviously violate the DMCA.
Umm, no. This ruling essentially says that the purpose of the lexmark protection is not to protect a copyrighted work, but to restrict access to a printer. The main purpose of a modchip, like it or not, is to pirate games. If you make a modchip that does not let you pirate games, but just lets you play homebrew ones, it might be legal -- but nobody would want it.
It prevents innovation, and it also prevents unsafe products from getting out there. I don't know about you, but I don't think people should be able to watch TV while driving. Also, I value my safety a lot more than some useless car gadget that encourages bad driving.
The machine I am posting from has both Mandrake 10 and XP. I prefer Mandrake, but XP runs at least as fast. It's a 700MHz Duron with only 256 megs of RAM, which should be roughly the same speed as your 550MHz P3 (given your machine has 3x the RAM and 2x the cache). It definitely runs faster IMO than OS X on a G3.
OS X - 10.3 is $129 at the Apple store.
OS X came out roughly when Win2K came out. It was a buggy POS, and Apple has expected people to shell out $129 2 or 3 times already for what basically amounts to service packs. So, if you started with the first release, you would have paid over $400 by now. Win2K is still a rock-solid system, and all the updates for it have been free. So I definitely wouldn't diss Microsoft on that front.
As to dodgy performance without topline hardware, I'm using a 450MHz blue & white G3 at home (that's mid-1999 hardware) and have no "dodgy performance issues."
Some people don't have performance issues when running XP on a 300MHz Celeron. That doesn't mean it runs well, it's just that they don't mind waiting 5 minutes for a web browser to start. I've used OS X on G3s, and it runs much slower than XP on a $300 PC.
So, ultimately, the problem is that there is no paper trail. Which is what I have been saying in the first place.
Hands down, the US has the best healthcare in the world.
Where are you getting this from? Personally, I have to deal with extremely clueless doctors every time I need something. Not to mention that actually getting to a specialist takes a few months. And my insurance plan is far from a low-end one.
But there is absolutely no question that people come here for treatment if they can afford and access it.
You have zero data but you are sure it's true. I've yet to see a foreigner at my local hospital.
The only exception is the active military system and the state implemented plans such as what the state of Oregon did. Everything else they've stuck their hands in is a mess.
Why is Medicare/Medicaid a mess? Because all the government does is give money to privately run hospitals. Of course it will be a mess. Hospitals just bill the government whatever they want to for procedures they don't perform and nobody is accountable. Why is that happening? Because the system is too privatized and there is not enough government control.
The government can both manage and impose economic controls, in fact they have, but they lack the response and the resources to make adequate decisions.
Really? And the insurance industry (the ones running the healthcare system now) makes adequate decisions? What planet are you living on?
Better healthcare can be reached in this country, but it's not through government involvement. It's through LESS government involvement. The main stays inflating costs are patent enforcement, tort or contract law issues, and the limited number of doctors trained or allowed into the country.
Are you saying the government is at fault for this? Let's see: patent enforcement. Private industry (pharmaceutical companies). Tort and contract law. Private industry (lawyers and insurance companies). By the way, the malpractice payouts have not grown nearly as fast as the insurance rates. Why? Because the insurance companies can charge what they want. Limited number of doctors allowed into the country. Private industry (medical lobby). All of these are due to a LACK of government involvement. Why the hell do you think the same drugs cost 10x less in Canada? Because the government negotiates with drug companies.
Also, why the hell would the cost of healthcare plummet? Basic economics says it won't, because both hospitals and insurance companies are monopolistic. Hospitals don't really compete with each other, do they?
The reason for this is because we want the best healthcare system.
The US has the worst healthcare system of any civilized country. The only reason someone would want to fly down here is if the system in their country is even worse. I really doubt anyone from western Europe travels to the US for healthcare.
People fly into the US (who can afford it) from all over the world precisely because it is not paid for by taxes.
How many people? From what countries? Also, how is paying for healthcare with taxes any worse than paying for it with health insurance?
Government buisnesses are not as efficient as private buisnesses
They aren't as efficient at making money, but they are far more efficient at providing healthcare. Would you prefer your local hospital to have a higher profit margin or better doctors?
Well, let's see...
Keep in mind that with something as serious as an election, everything -- from BIOS firmware through to the OS and supporting libraries -- is also in that 'code' block. That necessitates available source for everything -- even if some of the code is propriatory and not open for redistribution -- because anything that is a closed binary is much harder to check (though not impossible).
Sounds like you want the source for everything to be available for redistribution, free of charge. That would necessitate building the system nearly from scratch. Since Diebold is out of the question (and they can't make money by selling something that's available for free), the state would have to do it. Then, you suggest that random people can then verify that the code is correct, and you also devise a scheme for verifying code integrity. Except that you haven't given thought to a whole bunch of things. Like who will run the system. Or why it would be more secure than it is currently. Or why it's even necessary.
So, where did I misinterpret your argument?
Your solution isn't open-sourcing the code, it's making the development process for those machines public. Basically, you want the state to develop the machines and do all kinds of security procedures to assure it's secure, and have a bunch of Slashdot nerds verify the machines. What you are proposing is not really possible to do, and would still have loopholes.
My solution is to do it the old fashioned way, using paper. That way, it doesn't matter how the machines operate. If you choose Nader but the paper says you voted for Bush, you know something is wrong. Since the paper is what ultimately matters, it's secure.
You still haven't answered my primary question: how exactly will an open-source voting system prevent voting fraud? I think we can agree that code auditing won't help matters much.
During the recount phase, how do you know that the people counting and the systems being used haven't been compromised?
Simple. You keep the process simple (no fancy computerized systems, etc -- just a manual recount). You send in representatives from both of the major parties to supervise the recount process. This has been done for decades.
The conspiracy theorists on the left think that Diabold has ties to the right wing and may assist in election fraud
If you think Diebold does the rigging, you are an idiot. If they tried that and someone found out, they would be out of the voting machine business permanently. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Not to mention it's kind of hard to do, given how many variables there are. All they need to do is make a system with some backdoors, and they can be assured that the election will be rigged.
The real danger here is that any state election official can tamper with the results. From what I've heard, Diebold basically uses Access to store stuff and anyone can modify it. The most likely rigging scenario is that some state employee will add/remove a few dozen extra votes from a couple of critical counties and change the outcome for that state. Sounds much more likely, doesn't it? Now tell me, how will open-sourcing the Diebold software prevent that?
People make mistkes on paper all the time.
No shit, Sherlock. That's why you have the machine print out the ballot with the choices filled in, and you verify it before casting it. If you are saying people make mistakes when recounting votes -- that doesn't matter if they are random mistakes and they don't happen very often. Besides, you can recount paper ballots with optical scanners -- haven't you ever taken a standardized test? Those machines are fairly simple and reliable.
I take it you've never actually tried to read someome else's source code. It's a very difficult, time-consuming task, and it's very likely that nobody would bother reading it. Looking at source code is not a sure-fire way to find bugs.
Besides, the main concern is that state election officials would attempt to tamper with the results (since they generally belong to one of the parties). They can do that more easily if the software is open-source (add a backdoor, recompile, replace executable -- voila). How do you assure that the open-source code is what's actually being used?
As far as spyware: making Windows open-source would not change anything. The problem with Windows is that it has a broken security model, not that it's closed-source. Linux has a much better security model and much less market share, so we don't see any spyware for it.
The thing is, this hardware does not have anything near the capabilities of even the NES. It has a ridiculously fast CPU but no hardware support for anything but sound. Which pretty much means you have to do just about everything (including generating the NTSC signal) in software. Pac-man is probably the most sophisticated game that could be programmed on this hardware.
Something like the SNES platform would be a lot more interesting to a vintage game developer wannabe. The SNES had a slow CPU, but it had a lot more memory and very powerful graphics and sound hardware. The 2D graphics hardware on the SNES was substantially more complex than the 2D subsystem of a modern PC videocard. Something like this would be a lot more fun to develop for. Even a simple Mario clone for the xgamestation would be pushing its boundaries.
It's not that hard to fully understand how a modern program operates. It's just that you can actually create much richer abstractions with things like object-oriented programming. Instead of thinking in terms of the microprocessor (twiddling bits and shuffling registers), you can think in terms of the game world (monsters, treasures, whatever). This is also an art form, and a more sophisticated one at that.
Of course, if you want to spend a year programming a shitty pong clone for hardware that is too l33t to have a framebuffer, more power to you. To me, it seems like boring, tedious, and counterproductive work with no payoff whatsoever.
And what, exactly, would that solve? Why do so many idiots keep proposing these ridiculous "solutions"? How exactly is making software open-source going to solve anything? Do you seriously think it's more difficult to rig an election if it uses open-source software? If anything, it makes it easier.
The ONLY real solution is to have machines print out OFFICIAL PAPER BALLOTS that the voter can check and put in a sealed ballot box and which can later be recounted by hand. This still enables the use of the electronic feature as a convenience. This is a simple and 100% effective solution.
That's a bit of a waste of time, though. Why recreate something that was state of the art in 1970 today? Do people not think regular PCs impose enough constraints or something? If you want to write vintage games, what's wrong with a regular PC? This is only useful as a platform for learning hardware and a pretty mediocre one at that.
Like adding the "from" address to the address book?
First, an NES has a relatively powerful graphics processor. So it isn't exactly an 8-bit microcontroller application. 8-bit micros appeared long before the NES. Second, I've yet to see a Doom port or an MMORPG for the NES. Third, none of the homebrew NES stuff is even close to the real capabilities of the NES -- it's more like Atari 2600 games.
I think it just about proves my point -- it's a waste of time for a developer to try to compensate for a slow processor by excessively optimizing code. This might make sense for mass-market products where a penny saved on manufacturing translates to millions. It does not make any sense for an open-source developer.
True, but a game for an 1.8MHz microcontroller won't be very complex as far as design. Basically, it's programmer time and effort versus computer power. Programmer time is much more expensive for anything except mass-market products. In short, on a today's PC, it's better to program in a higher-level, possibly less efficient language.
Actually, you run into problem if a segway hits an unexpected bump. It's damn near impossible to accurately gauge how much battery power is left, since it depends on temperature, age of the battery, and countless other random factors. If the battery can't put out enough power to overcome a sudden bump -- it's face meet concrete time, even on a segway. They had a recall for this problem (firmware update), but all it does is kills it before the battery comes close to discharging. It's not a failsafe by any means.
Even then, C is probably one of the worst languages to write a game in (except maybe assembler). If you are using C because you are too lazy to learn C++, you're in for a world of pain. It's possible to do OOP in C -- it's just a horrible, horrible pain in the ass.
Seriously, people, read one of Bruce Eckel's books or something. They are available for free on his website and they are the the best programming books I have seen so far.