When I first saw this, my first reaction was "Wow, maybe a good programmer could fix the horrendous interface used now". This voting machine http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=25628 was changing votes by poor design, not malice (I hope...). It wouldn't take much for a decent programmer to fix it up a bit. Maybe the open source voting machine that everyone wants is already here!
I did read that, and watched the clip. Clearly both feet aren't off the ground for ~1/3 of the time, so the article text is suspect to me. I agree that both white feet are off the ground at 52-53, and no significant load is on either foot at this point. What I am referring to is that it looks like there is an additional part below the foot (perhaps some black shock absorbing/traction material) that remains in contact longer on the back foot, and makes contact sooner on the front foot, with the back foot making full separation after the front foot makes initial contact. This could also easily be a video artifact, shadow, compression error, etc. Either way, if I was the engineer that pulled this off, I would have no hesitations calling it a run, and perhaps my last post was a bit nit-picky (and maybe not justified).
It looks to me like their is something below the foot that makes contact before the white part of the foot makes contact. From the high speed camera, it looks like this make contact on the front foot before the back foot leaves the ground. I thought to be running, both feet need to be in the air at once. Otherwise you were walking. Maybe I am just seeing the video wrong? Regardless, it looks very impressive.
you'd have to miss by an awful lot (meaning ~40% of the entire screen
I just used the ES&S automark last week (A slightly different machine from the same company). The tolerance of where you need to press is less than the width of my finger. I took a video of this to prove it. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ In the video there are only two candidates, yet they are still right next to each other, and in the video you can clearly see the calibration is off enough to incorrectly select the wrong candidate. You cannot argue that this interface is unacceptable.
The calibration was so far off when I voted this week (on an ES&S automark), that I talked the election official about the calibration. More or less it is done the same way you used to with the palm pilot (touch 4 corners). The problem is that there is also some parallax issues as the screen is about 45 degrees off vertical. The result is the calibration can be a little off. A little off is fine and normal if the interface is good, but on the automark machines, they put the candidates names right next to each other so even a small error in calibration will result in the wrong candidate being selected. I took a video of my self voting, (it's here: http://shultzonline.com/vote/ ). in the video is is clear that not the person I am pressing is selected, and that a candidate only 5mm away is selected.
This is also how it work for me. I always use the automark machine because I am interested in it. Last week when I did use it, the calibration was so far off that pressing one candidate would select a different one. I was so surprised I took a video of the process. It is online here http://shultzonline.com/vote/ The idea behind the automark is to help people who have a hard time voting with paper and pencil. These are the exact same people who would have a hard time telling that the wrong person was chosen. I don't worry about intentional vote rigging, as it is easy to detect a problem for most people when the ballot is printed, but I still expect that every vote should count properly.
I used the ES&S automark this past week. The calibration was so far off that I got the vote flipping talked about. I was so alarmed that I took a video with my cell phone. You can see it here. http://shultzonline.com/vote/
I was so upset that I talked to the election officials, and went to the clerks office a few days latter. More or less I found out that all these machines are pieces of crap. A simple solution would have been to add a little space between the names (like they do on ATM machines) so that a small miss calibration would not have been such a serious deal.
My town works similar to the grandparents (you mark a paper ballot that is automatically read by a machine). If you have a disability they have a few booths that help you mark your ballot (it has a machine that reads your choices (into headphone), magnifies the ballot and prints it out for you. I always use the automatic booth because it also checks you ballot for mistakes (warns you if you over or under vote).
It is my understanding that you need to remove your shoes at some airports, and not others. This isn't a very new policy. Perhaps you were just flying to different airports than normal over the holiday period? I will not try to justify why shoes at some airports are safer than others...
This is a good thing for people outside of India. I always worry about key loggers, but no systems I use remotely allow me to use any other means of authentication besides passwords. This will make other better systems more common, and more available. But in the mean time, this sucks for them...
Is there anything we can do if we live outside of the USA? Will our voice/concerns even matter? We want to help in any way we can if it's all at possible. It's just about as easy to influence US politics if you live in the US or not, just give money to groups you support. Because the US is such a large world power (for better or worse), I'm surprised that more foreign groups are not more active in US politics.
"unauthorized use" sounds like a tricky term to me. Every day people need to guess if they are authorized to be somewhere or not (I assume I'm allowed in an unlocked store during business hours, I assume I would be unwelcome if I broke in at night). I usually use the assumption that people are willing to share their wifi if it is unsecured. That's exactly what I do at my home by leaving an old access point open outside my firewall. I realized that I'm taking on a little liability to let my neighbors use my wifi, but I figure the goodwill is worth the risk.
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now. Thats not true at all. In 2004 I thought all the people who were saying the election was stolen were crazy tin foil hat types. The more I learn, the more I realize that it is much more likely that I was the blind sheep type. No one is debating that lots of non standard and illegal activities took place during the 2004 election, the only question is how wide spread, and how well organized those activities were. The more stories that come out, the more people will start to change their minds. --crazy tin foil hat guy
Here is Madison, WI I know that you can call up the local power company and ask for typical bills for any address. This is great because when you are thinking about renting or buying a home, it is very nice to know what a typical heating and cooling bill is. You can even specify apartments by the unit number.
You are supposed to ask the woman next to you if she wants to joint the mile high club. Do that while pointing at your laptop screen. It is sure to impress her.
The virtual numbers from CitiBank are excellent as you mentioned. Just as a clarification, they can be used more than once, But they can only be used by one merchant, the first merchant to use them. The reason they do this is that if a merchant charges a separate shipping chare (rare) if the merchant needs to refund money, the card is not locked out. For extra security, you can go online and lock a card once you are happy with an order.
Also worth mentioning is that the cards automatically expire at the end of the next month.
I was impressed to see that when they tell you you're paying two cents per MB, they in fact charge you exactly $.02 for every 1,048,576 (2^20) bytes, and they calculate it to the tenth of a penny
WOW, 7 sig figs!
I find that the 2 cents they quote is based on a better exchange rate than citibank gets. I find my $10 actualy cost me $10.02. Additionaly, citbank charges me an extra $.30 for international exchange. This works out to be 2.064 cents for every MB. Still a great deal.
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When I first saw this, my first reaction was "Wow, maybe a good programmer could fix the horrendous interface used now". This voting machine http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=25628 was changing votes by poor design, not malice (I hope...). It wouldn't take much for a decent programmer to fix it up a bit. Maybe the open source voting machine that everyone wants is already here!
I did read that, and watched the clip. Clearly both feet aren't off the ground for ~1/3 of the time, so the article text is suspect to me. I agree that both white feet are off the ground at 52-53, and no significant load is on either foot at this point. What I am referring to is that it looks like there is an additional part below the foot (perhaps some black shock absorbing/traction material) that remains in contact longer on the back foot, and makes contact sooner on the front foot, with the back foot making full separation after the front foot makes initial contact. This could also easily be a video artifact, shadow, compression error, etc. Either way, if I was the engineer that pulled this off, I would have no hesitations calling it a run, and perhaps my last post was a bit nit-picky (and maybe not justified).
It looks to me like their is something below the foot that makes contact before the white part of the foot makes contact. From the high speed camera, it looks like this make contact on the front foot before the back foot leaves the ground. I thought to be running, both feet need to be in the air at once. Otherwise you were walking. Maybe I am just seeing the video wrong? Regardless, it looks very impressive.
you'd have to miss by an awful lot (meaning ~40% of the entire screen
I just used the ES&S automark last week (A slightly different machine from the same company). The tolerance of where you need to press is less than the width of my finger. I took a video of this to prove it. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ In the video there are only two candidates, yet they are still right next to each other, and in the video you can clearly see the calibration is off enough to incorrectly select the wrong candidate. You cannot argue that this interface is unacceptable.
The calibration was so far off when I voted this week (on an ES&S automark), that I talked the election official about the calibration. More or less it is done the same way you used to with the palm pilot (touch 4 corners). The problem is that there is also some parallax issues as the screen is about 45 degrees off vertical. The result is the calibration can be a little off. A little off is fine and normal if the interface is good, but on the automark machines, they put the candidates names right next to each other so even a small error in calibration will result in the wrong candidate being selected. I took a video of my self voting, (it's here: http://shultzonline.com/vote/ ). in the video is is clear that not the person I am pressing is selected, and that a candidate only 5mm away is selected.
This is also how it work for me. I always use the automark machine because I am interested in it. Last week when I did use it, the calibration was so far off that pressing one candidate would select a different one. I was so surprised I took a video of the process. It is online here http://shultzonline.com/vote/ The idea behind the automark is to help people who have a hard time voting with paper and pencil. These are the exact same people who would have a hard time telling that the wrong person was chosen. I don't worry about intentional vote rigging, as it is easy to detect a problem for most people when the ballot is printed, but I still expect that every vote should count properly.
I used the ES&S automark this past week. The calibration was so far off that I got the vote flipping talked about. I was so alarmed that I took a video with my cell phone. You can see it here. http://shultzonline.com/vote/ I was so upset that I talked to the election officials, and went to the clerks office a few days latter. More or less I found out that all these machines are pieces of crap. A simple solution would have been to add a little space between the names (like they do on ATM machines) so that a small miss calibration would not have been such a serious deal.
She lied to the police. I read the report. By my count she lied to the police about 5 different things, and several times each.
My town works similar to the grandparents (you mark a paper ballot that is automatically read by a machine). If you have a disability they have a few booths that help you mark your ballot (it has a machine that reads your choices (into headphone), magnifies the ballot and prints it out for you. I always use the automatic booth because it also checks you ballot for mistakes (warns you if you over or under vote).
It is my understanding that you need to remove your shoes at some airports, and not others. This isn't a very new policy. Perhaps you were just flying to different airports than normal over the holiday period? I will not try to justify why shoes at some airports are safer than others...
This is a good thing for people outside of India. I always worry about key loggers, but no systems I use remotely allow me to use any other means of authentication besides passwords. This will make other better systems more common, and more available. But in the mean time, this sucks for them...
The 'optical' component of the IceCube http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Dete ctor neutrino telescope is 1 km, by 1 km by 1 km. That is several orders of magnitude larger than this telescope.
copy and paste on the link works, but not linking from slashdot! Is this a (weak) attempt to prevent the slashdot effect?
"unauthorized use" sounds like a tricky term to me. Every day people need to guess if they are authorized to be somewhere or not (I assume I'm allowed in an unlocked store during business hours, I assume I would be unwelcome if I broke in at night). I usually use the assumption that people are willing to share their wifi if it is unsecured. That's exactly what I do at my home by leaving an old access point open outside my firewall. I realized that I'm taking on a little liability to let my neighbors use my wifi, but I figure the goodwill is worth the risk.
This lets them sign up new customers, but they still could be screwed as far as the patent thing.
--crazy tin foil hat guy
Here is Madison, WI I know that you can call up the local power company and ask for typical bills for any address. This is great because when you are thinking about renting or buying a home, it is very nice to know what a typical heating and cooling bill is. You can even specify apartments by the unit number.
I suspect they will just start to buy stuff from the US?
Didn't I see this technology in Toys R Us about 10 years ago sold as a leap pad? http://www.leapfrog.com/do/findproduct?key=leappad plus&ageGroupKey=grade
It is pretty funny that Google doesn't translate google corectly!
The virtual numbers from CitiBank are excellent as you mentioned. Just as a clarification, they can be used more than once, But they can only be used by one merchant, the first merchant to use them. The reason they do this is that if a merchant charges a separate shipping chare (rare) if the merchant needs to refund money, the card is not locked out. For extra security, you can go online and lock a card once you are happy with an order. Also worth mentioning is that the cards automatically expire at the end of the next month.
good point. here is the list: http://www.idiotabroad.com/?p=58