My sentiments exactly. I realize that you can often get a good deal when buying, or that you can get more than you usually would by selling, but there is too high of a risk of being defrauded. I don't think I've ever met somebody who used ebay on a regular basis who didn't get screwed over in some way or another. I'd rather just sell stuff at the pawn shop, and buy stuff out of the classifieds locally. eBay does have it's strengths, such as finding rare items, but I never understood why people bought things like computers over eBay.
I got an acer Laptop for $CND 450 last September. It's got pretty much everything that you mentioned above, but only came with 512 MB of RAM. I've been toying with the idea of upgrading it, but Linux doesn't require much more when you're just browsing the web and editing a few digital photos, and doing web development. RAM is so cheap right now, I really should pick some up, but I'm not sure if I'd really notice the difference. Anyway, the sub $500 notebook has been around for a while. However, I would still buy one of these ultra mobiles if they had really good battery life. It's nice not to have to carry around the big laptop, and the battery life on the cheap laptops leaves a lot to be desired.
Even then, an Upconverting DVD player looks almost as good as BluRay. It's not exactly as good, it gets you quite a bit closer, with spending quite a bit less. The last upgrade from VHS to DVD offered a ton of new features. BluRay, apart from quality advances, doesn't really offer anything.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm 27, I have 2 kids, and I'm pretty knowledgable about the internet. However, I know a lot of people the same age as me, who have no clue about the internet. I know people who don't even know how to bookmark a website. It's probably even worse for the parents of kids who are actually on the internet (mine are both under 2, so no real internet for them). Since most people wait until they are 30 until they have kids now (or so it seems), that means that a 13 year old's parents will be 43. That means the parents were born in 1965, and that they were 24 when the world wide web was invented (1989). Just think about that for a moment. They never even had the internet when they were kids. and probably never went on the internet until after their kids were born. The first web browser didn't even exist until 1993. 2 years before this theoretical 13 year old was born. I really don't think most parents do know about the dangers of the internet. Neither do most politicians. Which is why you see so many "think of the children" type laws trying to protect children from the internet.
A more likely method of finding a small extrasolar planet is by using the transit method. Using this method they are able to detect much smaller planets. There is also potential to see what is in it's atmosphere using this method. It works by detecting the light blocked as a planet crosses in front of the star from where we are observing it. When the happens the star dims. The more the star dims, the bigger the planet.
You forgot the robot, but I guess you could categorize that as a computer. Anyway. None of this seems at all interesting. In the end, a phone is a phone, I don't really car if it's waterproof. It's a nice feature, but I wouldn't pay a premium for that. Some of the computers are just stuff you could build at home if you took your time. Like a silent computer you hook up to the TV. Or a home server that hooks up to your other computers via WiFi to be a media server. Not exciting in the least. It's nice that companies are finally starting to build these products, and release them to the masses already configured (if only in other countries). But I don't think I saw anything there I would fly to Asia just to obtain.
I guess in that case, if you put your swap partition on a separate partition (who wants the applications to be encyrpted) and used bitlocker on that, then you would have an encrypted swap. Although for some reason I could see MS's swap implementation going completely around the regular file system APIs, just for a mediocre increase in speed, which would mean that it might not work with bit locker. Most likely not true, but based on the way other MS stuff is designed, I wouldn't doubt if it was the case.
I'm not just talking about the correctness of the algorithms. How do you verify that the computer you walk up to on election day is running the same algorithm? How do you even ensure it's the same computer?
Responsible ISPs look out for customers who are part of a botnet, and kick them off until they can fix the problem. If the ISP doesn't kick the people off who are part of a botnet, they obviously don't mind the extra cost.
If all they specified was that you had to be running up-to-date antivirus software, without listing any specific programs, then I think that just about any would do. ClamAV would probably suffice. It's used on email servers all over the world to scan for viruses. I don't see why it wouldn't be an acceptable solution for your home computer. If they don't list specific programs, then I don't see from a legal standpoint how they could say 1 antivirus software was better than any other.
What about when it loads that data into memory? At that point it becomes unencrypted. And it may even place it in swap, and then who knows when it will ever be erased. Can you use encrypted swap in Windows yet? Anyway, it's much more secure to boot into a Linux Live CD, or just regular linux install with everything mounted as read only, except home, which could be cleaned anyway on each boot, so as to ensure you're booting with the same software each time, and you don't have to wait for the slow CD drive to load the OS.
How do you ensure the POS terminal hasn't been tampered with to show a different amount than the value actually being charged. Sure, it's not the most likely of hacks, but I wouldn't put it past some retailers.
Part of voter verifiable is voter understandable. If the only way to understand the voting system is to have a PhD in computer science then it isnt a good system. If you dont understand the system, then you wont be able to catch fraud when it is occurring right in front of your eyes. If everyone understands the system, its a lot easier for people to realize when something isnt going quite right.
But why complicate the system for no apparent benefit. You're creating a Rube Goldberg voting system just to say, "look, we have electronic voting". It's more expensive, more prone to failure, and doesn't actual provide, better, faster, or more verifiable results.
If you have 10 times the population, you should have 10 times the number of people to count, and 10 times the number of polling stations. The problem of counting votes is easily parallelizable.
Humans are guaranteed to make mistakes. That's why you have 2 people count the votes, and have people watch the count, and ensure that the same results are obtained by both counters. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is a difference. Identical machines running identical software should produce identical results. However, as far as any electronic voting system I've seen, the machines aren't identical across the country. Also, it's impossible (for most people) to prove that even two "identical" machines are actually running identical software and hardware when you walk up to them on election day.
Rolls of paper would also be easier to counterfeit than carefully prepared forms. In Canada, they use security features similar to that used on currency for printing to ballots to ensure they can't easily be forged (although it would still be possible).
What drivers? They aren't running an NVidia 8800 GTX or SB Audigy on these machines. It's simple keyboard, mouse, touchscreen (pretty standard from what I know), x86 processors. There's no real drivers needed.
Even if it is open code, how do you ensure the machine is running the correct code when you walk up to it on election day? Sorry, I would prefer no machines.
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My sentiments exactly. I realize that you can often get a good deal when buying, or that you can get more than you usually would by selling, but there is too high of a risk of being defrauded. I don't think I've ever met somebody who used ebay on a regular basis who didn't get screwed over in some way or another. I'd rather just sell stuff at the pawn shop, and buy stuff out of the classifieds locally. eBay does have it's strengths, such as finding rare items, but I never understood why people bought things like computers over eBay.
And yet they still fail Acid3 miserably.
I remember that from Windows 3.1. I think they called it hotdog stand.
I got an acer Laptop for $CND 450 last September. It's got pretty much everything that you mentioned above, but only came with 512 MB of RAM. I've been toying with the idea of upgrading it, but Linux doesn't require much more when you're just browsing the web and editing a few digital photos, and doing web development. RAM is so cheap right now, I really should pick some up, but I'm not sure if I'd really notice the difference. Anyway, the sub $500 notebook has been around for a while. However, I would still buy one of these ultra mobiles if they had really good battery life. It's nice not to have to carry around the big laptop, and the battery life on the cheap laptops leaves a lot to be desired.
Yeah, you can find BluRay on sale. Guess what. You can also get DVDs on sale. I often pick up movies for $5-$10.
Even then, an Upconverting DVD player looks almost as good as BluRay. It's not exactly as good, it gets you quite a bit closer, with spending quite a bit less. The last upgrade from VHS to DVD offered a ton of new features. BluRay, apart from quality advances, doesn't really offer anything.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm 27, I have 2 kids, and I'm pretty knowledgable about the internet. However, I know a lot of people the same age as me, who have no clue about the internet. I know people who don't even know how to bookmark a website. It's probably even worse for the parents of kids who are actually on the internet (mine are both under 2, so no real internet for them). Since most people wait until they are 30 until they have kids now (or so it seems), that means that a 13 year old's parents will be 43. That means the parents were born in 1965, and that they were 24 when the world wide web was invented (1989). Just think about that for a moment. They never even had the internet when they were kids. and probably never went on the internet until after their kids were born. The first web browser didn't even exist until 1993. 2 years before this theoretical 13 year old was born. I really don't think most parents do know about the dangers of the internet. Neither do most politicians. Which is why you see so many "think of the children" type laws trying to protect children from the internet.
Speaking of which, there's much more serious dangers in most people's homes than the internet.
A more likely method of finding a small extrasolar planet is by using the transit method. Using this method they are able to detect much smaller planets. There is also potential to see what is in it's atmosphere using this method. It works by detecting the light blocked as a planet crosses in front of the star from where we are observing it. When the happens the star dims. The more the star dims, the bigger the planet.
I only said that because the title of the article in question is "Start Saving for Air Fare".
You forgot the robot, but I guess you could categorize that as a computer. Anyway. None of this seems at all interesting. In the end, a phone is a phone, I don't really car if it's waterproof. It's a nice feature, but I wouldn't pay a premium for that. Some of the computers are just stuff you could build at home if you took your time. Like a silent computer you hook up to the TV. Or a home server that hooks up to your other computers via WiFi to be a media server. Not exciting in the least. It's nice that companies are finally starting to build these products, and release them to the masses already configured (if only in other countries). But I don't think I saw anything there I would fly to Asia just to obtain.
I guess in that case, if you put your swap partition on a separate partition (who wants the applications to be encyrpted) and used bitlocker on that, then you would have an encrypted swap. Although for some reason I could see MS's swap implementation going completely around the regular file system APIs, just for a mediocre increase in speed, which would mean that it might not work with bit locker. Most likely not true, but based on the way other MS stuff is designed, I wouldn't doubt if it was the case.
I'm not just talking about the correctness of the algorithms. How do you verify that the computer you walk up to on election day is running the same algorithm? How do you even ensure it's the same computer?
I'm not sure why one would sign up for a bank called "Egg" in the first place.
Responsible ISPs look out for customers who are part of a botnet, and kick them off until they can fix the problem. If the ISP doesn't kick the people off who are part of a botnet, they obviously don't mind the extra cost.
If all they specified was that you had to be running up-to-date antivirus software, without listing any specific programs, then I think that just about any would do. ClamAV would probably suffice. It's used on email servers all over the world to scan for viruses. I don't see why it wouldn't be an acceptable solution for your home computer. If they don't list specific programs, then I don't see from a legal standpoint how they could say 1 antivirus software was better than any other.
What about when it loads that data into memory? At that point it becomes unencrypted. And it may even place it in swap, and then who knows when it will ever be erased. Can you use encrypted swap in Windows yet? Anyway, it's much more secure to boot into a Linux Live CD, or just regular linux install with everything mounted as read only, except home, which could be cleaned anyway on each boot, so as to ensure you're booting with the same software each time, and you don't have to wait for the slow CD drive to load the OS.
How do you ensure the POS terminal hasn't been tampered with to show a different amount than the value actually being charged. Sure, it's not the most likely of hacks, but I wouldn't put it past some retailers.
Part of voter verifiable is voter understandable. If the only way to understand the voting system is to have a PhD in computer science then it isnt a good system. If you dont understand the system, then you wont be able to catch fraud when it is occurring right in front of your eyes. If everyone understands the system, its a lot easier for people to realize when something isnt going quite right.
But why complicate the system for no apparent benefit. You're creating a Rube Goldberg voting system just to say, "look, we have electronic voting". It's more expensive, more prone to failure, and doesn't actual provide, better, faster, or more verifiable results.
If you have 10 times the population, you should have 10 times the number of people to count, and 10 times the number of polling stations. The problem of counting votes is easily parallelizable.
Humans are guaranteed to make mistakes. That's why you have 2 people count the votes, and have people watch the count, and ensure that the same results are obtained by both counters. In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is a difference. Identical machines running identical software should produce identical results. However, as far as any electronic voting system I've seen, the machines aren't identical across the country. Also, it's impossible (for most people) to prove that even two "identical" machines are actually running identical software and hardware when you walk up to them on election day.
Rolls of paper would also be easier to counterfeit than carefully prepared forms. In Canada, they use security features similar to that used on currency for printing to ballots to ensure they can't easily be forged (although it would still be possible).
What drivers? They aren't running an NVidia 8800 GTX or SB Audigy on these machines. It's simple keyboard, mouse, touchscreen (pretty standard from what I know), x86 processors. There's no real drivers needed.
Even if it is open code, how do you ensure the machine is running the correct code when you walk up to it on election day? Sorry, I would prefer no machines.