They already are making computers... The XBox-1 was nothing but a Palladium (BigAcronymForWindowsSecurityThatIsAFuckingOxyMoro n) testing ground; and the XBox hackers did them a favor and within days had Linux up and running. This really should have set off flags somewhere, but didn't....
Problem is, that there's actually a URL handler control which most people have written their Windows apps against. The older version of that control is inheirently biased to automatically open Iexplore.exe.
Before you go and call this anti-competitive: they knew this, and in later versions of the control, it's set to use the Registry's default browser instead of directly chaining Iexplore. mIRC, older versions of AIM and Winamp, and just about any program anyone's written that includes a URL in the Help -> About dialog.
Truthfully, I've never used Gentoo (I don't desire to compile every piece of software by hand), but I've found that most of the time their forums are actually quite helpful. Why? Because someone down the line of creating Gentoo thought they should drop their elitest "I r t3h m4st0r h4xx0r" attitude and actually help people. This has been one of the reasons Linux has such a poor adoption rate, even though it's on the shelves right next to Windows in most cases.
There are plenty of more reasons behind Linux's adoption rate, but think about it this way; if Microsoft and all of it's software was found to be illegal and everyone had to switch over tomorrow, how many governments, how many libraries, how many volumes of people would never touch a computer again because learning new software was too hard, due to people who knew how to use it feeling superior? GNU is all about sharing the knowledge, it's really time that we linux users take to the meaning of the GPL, and not just use it as a license to throw in people's faces.
Maybe it's just me, but I find that site hopelessly in-navigable. Hours of clicking in circles and the unfriendly color scheme, and you get about sick and tired of trying to learn the operating system. Maybe if they had a tutorial on how to use the site, I could learn more...;)
The truth is pretty simple. Google's not enough. Sometimes for the most obscure questions, either most people consider you a nub and tell you to RFTM (which, in many cases, no manual exists), or they don't know themselves how to solve the problem. So, we often spend hours and hours going through google to find out how to get X hardware to work on Y configuration to find that Alan Cox had brilliantly broken my soundcard in 2.4.20... These are the kinds of things that there really should be a one-stop place to find what you need..
Surprisingly, it's taken this long for anyone to realize this...
Seems to be pretty popular around here for people to try and reinact the most popular scene from the matrix; The one where Neo falls backwards dodging the incoming fire from the agent. It's not too complicated, and can be realitively easy to re-inact given you have the balance nessicary (but of course, you can't keep from hitting the ground as long as he did.. that was movie-magic->time-dilation(); )
Why do anything more special with the software than:
digitally sign the vote from the keyboard,
print it to a log file and then physically PRINT it onto paper. The digital signature can be checked against a hardware key, like Adobe uses to safeguard some of it's products. The system wouldn't be costly *could use a bunch of 486's with 1 gig hard drives and an LPT port*, would be fast, effective, and a lot more secure than current systems.
I also don't disagree with the current paper ballot system, just as long as it's not "poke paper here for xxxx", but instead "fill in this bubble clearly" or "circle this person with a bright red marker" or something foolproof like that.
The issue is not the fancy interface. (So changing to a keyboard would just add the problem of how you are supposed to collect votes from people who don't grok keyboards.)
It's not like it's hard to press "1 ". Anyone can understand the instructions if they were clear. The idea of moving it to a keyboard based system is just simply a request I've heard from a lot of people, and a simplifing overcomplicated hardware.. (what if your monitor crapped out?)
The issue is: How do you KNOW the software that grabbed the vote (from the keyboard, touch screen, or what have you), encrypted it or not, and stored it in the database, ACTUALLY STORED THE VOTE THE VOTER CAST, rather than making up its own vote?
And how do you KNOW that the database ACTUALLY SAVED THE VOTES THE VOTING MACHINES FED IT and ADDED THEM UP CORRECTLY, rather than making up different values or being altered by some human intervention?
Time to get out the tinfoil hats everyone, this answer's gonna shock and amaze: Use RFID voting tags, and a distributed key encryption system (something with a keyhash that's incredibly, insanely long, how about a flash memory chip containing a 128 meg file used to digitally sign the vote?). Do this at all levels of input (make the keyboards sign the vote, make the computer program sign the vote, make the database sign the vote), and you really defeat 90% of the problems in the system. Printing onto a spool of paper inside of the device on keypress wouldn't be that bad of a jesture either.
The MAIN problem with computer voting machines is that, along with hanging chads and dimpled ballots, they've eliminated any paper trail (actually checked by the voters themselves) of how each voter actually voted. If the software is broken or corrupt, how do you do a recount? Ask it to give you the corrupted numbers a second time?
Again, how hard is it to borrow from dated techology: The typewriter left a paper trail for the some odd 100 years it was used, why not turn the computer back into one of these devices?
(Interestingly enough, that's EXACTLY how Diebold proposes to do a recount: Have the database print out the corrupted values as separate printed paper ballots for people to hand-count. B-) ) This is another example of gross incompetence. Why not simply print the thing ON INPUT, onto a huge drum of paper, stored inside of the same safe the computer's stored inside of? Nobody's gonna get to the machine to modify it, nobody's gonna hack into the system or cause some kind of buffer overflow if the software's written right [ NOTE: I AM STRONGLY AGAINST NETWORKED VOTING SOLUTIONS, Networking computers is simply too risky, too many different ways to hack this kind of system ]. Write it right once, put it in a bulletproof box, change the combination to the box, and change the digital signatures every election, and you're done.
If these machines are comprimised it's due to the gross incompetents of the designers. It really isn't hard to develop something like this and keep it secure, think about it this way.
Use a standard computer, with two hard drives (and a printer with a big newspaper like spool of paper if you please). Have it so that in the back of the machine, a specific card has to be put into the machine: the card contains a hash written onto a rom chip used to encrypt and validate the votes. Set up a keyboard and a program that simply displays the name of the office, and store in a randomized list the name of the officials you can vote for (randomized to the user, increases security). Set up the software to write the vote onto both harddrives and onto the spool of paper. Store all of this in one of those bulletproof steel boxes with a safe's locking mechanism.
It's really as simple as that.. I could go into more detail, but that'd just bore most of you.. I'm sure a lot of you have thought of better systems yourselves. You see, it's nothing more than incompetence that they didn't implement anything like this.
well my first kneejerk reaction would be to moderate you offtopic;).
But secondly, the reason why people like linux is because they can make it work for them. This is the way electronic voting should happen: it should Just Work (tm). The article talks about lack of security; if this system were open, these kinds of security problems would have already been addressed. If the system were open, the costs could come down because people would realize they dont need the eyecandy of an electronic touch screen which are notoriously picky on how you press them (this coming from the guy who's owned three pda's and never could master palm os' writing language). This is why people like Linux. Now take your trolling somewhere else, and at least be on topic.
The question is, why is this "technology" SO STUPID?!
I mean really, why all the fancy computers with touch screen monitors, why complicated software? Grab the vote in from a keyboard, encrypt it, save it, done.
I really think that the problem here is just the implementation, Diebold is simply selling shitty hardware/software, and really getting away with it because nobody else sells this kind of hardware, at least that is well known and accredited.
It's a crying shame that anything like Florida happened in the first place, but this is the twenty first fucking century, we're smarter than that people...
Wait.. wait a minute... if this were true, why can't you tap into a cable line? same kind of system: use the frequencies NOT in use by the end device to send lots of information quickly. Something smells fishy...
Could call them Kuala's, would go well with the whole QT (cue-tee; cute or cutie =) name system..
Maybe it was just me who thought kuala bears are cute.... (I KNOW THEY ARENT BEARS!!!!!!!)
This king of thing...
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is going on a lot here where I live. Berea College has completely rebuilt many of their buildings to make them more environmentally friendly, and to cut down on their "outrageous energy costs". Not to mention that Berea College owns all the utilities here anyways.
I really don't get why this kind of project is really worthy of doing anyways. May save some money, but most people's houses dont use more than 1500 kWa of electricity a month... ~140$ of electricty around here (considering we pay the "Berea College Utilities" tax). Now a worthy project would be covering your house with solar panels and breaking even on your utility bills;).
Or you can use a product like Teleport, or you can use "wget -r -l 6 hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey" for the same functionality, if you're not on a Windows machine.;)
If at 30 feet a gravityplane can hold 4 passengers, could this design ever provide a viable means of transport for larger groups of people?
30 feet/4 people = 7.5 feet/person
Thats approx 75 feet per group of 10. Makes for quite a large plane for even medium sized groups.
Simple, scale the plane differently. Making the lifting bodies wider/taller to make up for the length. But secondly, what's wrong with a long plane? This thing's gonna be a pretty slow mover (glider; no forward propulsion), so it shouldn't need an entirely too long runway to land on, therefore making it's length irrelevant (except maybe for hanger space, but I would imagine a plane made of kevlar and carbon fiber, the wings could simply be taken off and stored seperately, or folded like they do on some navi aircraft).
I think the main problem people will see with this will be it's speed... We've given up caring about fuel effiecency a long time ago (well, not us slashdoters, but the general public), especially considering the adoption rate of SUV's. It's a really novel idea, it's just not going to get very many customers, except from maybe greenpeace and other "hippie" organizations.
I have to completely agree here. Microsoft is encroaching more and more on antitrust, and the US courts do nothing to stop them.
Oracle isn't anywhere near monopoly, although they are a very strong database vendor, with probably one of the best supported database systems written, but they are competed against by everyone from Microsoft (which, btw is integrating their database engine into the OS), to us open source developers... The US Courts really need to pick their priorities better..
The only question is who on slashdot understands analogies like this: Imagine someone saying, "I want to date 6'5 tall women because someone said good things about them", but they have only dated girls 5'2 and shorter. How likely is it that they will keep the commitment to date 6'5 people?
Well, firebird is definitely a good contender, but I still want a database server that's fast and small... and the faster and smaller the better. Problem is I need most of the features you'll see in a high end one, and I need it to be open source.. SQLite was actually a contender at one point, but I want replication as well.. so.. my question is when is someone gonna fill this niche?
IMO Debian's gotta be it, UserLinux fixing the holes, Knoppix bringing it's new installation and popularity, the new installer's almost done...
The irony of it is that debian's probably one of the largest Open/Free Software projects still in development, which makes it seem that maybe Debian has what it takes to survive, where other professional Distro's are starting to fail..
Also, it seems Mandrake is getting a lot of press these days, shipping a Live-CD like Knoppix, with a USB memory card.
So after liberating some (all) of the hydrogen we are left with C2 and O I would assume it would pick up O2 from the air and make C02 as a by product, with potentially some water also. Last time I checked C02 was a greenhouse gas.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but we're a lot smarter than that. Using an charged plate we can pull the oxygen to the top of the collector, and leave the carbon at the lower end... we can then either combine the oxygen with other oxygen and bottle it, or combine it with hydrogen and make water. From the carbon, we can combine it back with the soil *with a bit of treatment* and make it more rich, perpetuating the cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
They already are making computers... The XBox-1 was nothing but a Palladium (BigAcronymForWindowsSecurityThatIsAFuckingOxyMoro n) testing ground; and the XBox hackers did them a favor and within days had Linux up and running. This really should have set off flags somewhere, but didn't....
Problem is, that there's actually a URL handler control which most people have written their Windows apps against. The older version of that control is inheirently biased to automatically open Iexplore.exe.
Before you go and call this anti-competitive: they knew this, and in later versions of the control, it's set to use the Registry's default browser instead of directly chaining Iexplore. mIRC, older versions of AIM and Winamp, and just about any program anyone's written that includes a URL in the Help -> About dialog.
Truthfully, I've never used Gentoo (I don't desire to compile every piece of software by hand), but I've found that most of the time their forums are actually quite helpful. Why? Because someone down the line of creating Gentoo thought they should drop their elitest "I r t3h m4st0r h4xx0r" attitude and actually help people. This has been one of the reasons Linux has such a poor adoption rate, even though it's on the shelves right next to Windows in most cases.
There are plenty of more reasons behind Linux's adoption rate, but think about it this way; if Microsoft and all of it's software was found to be illegal and everyone had to switch over tomorrow, how many governments, how many libraries, how many volumes of people would never touch a computer again because learning new software was too hard, due to people who knew how to use it feeling superior? GNU is all about sharing the knowledge, it's really time that we linux users take to the meaning of the GPL, and not just use it as a license to throw in people's faces.
Maybe it's just me, but I find that site hopelessly in-navigable. Hours of clicking in circles and the unfriendly color scheme, and you get about sick and tired of trying to learn the operating system. Maybe if they had a tutorial on how to use the site, I could learn more... ;)
I know this a stab at being funny, but...
The truth is pretty simple. Google's not enough. Sometimes for the most obscure questions, either most people consider you a nub and tell you to RFTM (which, in many cases, no manual exists), or they don't know themselves how to solve the problem. So, we often spend hours and hours going through google to find out how to get X hardware to work on Y configuration to find that Alan Cox had brilliantly broken my soundcard in 2.4.20... These are the kinds of things that there really should be a one-stop place to find what you need..
Surprisingly, it's taken this long for anyone to realize this...
[grammer nazi] For the LAST time, Microsoft IS, sheesh..[/grammer nazi]
BE GONE TROLL, if you don't want to view Flash, uninstall the fucking plugin..
Seems to be pretty popular around here for people to try and reinact the most popular scene from the matrix; The one where Neo falls backwards dodging the incoming fire from the agent. It's not too complicated, and can be realitively easy to re-inact given you have the balance nessicary (but of course, you can't keep from hitting the ground as long as he did.. that was movie-magic->time-dilation(); )
Why do anything more special with the software than: digitally sign the vote from the keyboard, print it to a log file and then physically PRINT it onto paper. The digital signature can be checked against a hardware key, like Adobe uses to safeguard some of it's products. The system wouldn't be costly *could use a bunch of 486's with 1 gig hard drives and an LPT port*, would be fast, effective, and a lot more secure than current systems.
I also don't disagree with the current paper ballot system, just as long as it's not "poke paper here for xxxx", but instead "fill in this bubble clearly" or "circle this person with a bright red marker" or something foolproof like that.
The issue is not the fancy interface. (So changing to a keyboard would just add the problem of how you are supposed to collect votes from people who don't grok keyboards.)
It's not like it's hard to press "1 ". Anyone can understand the instructions if they were clear. The idea of moving it to a keyboard based system is just simply a request I've heard from a lot of people, and a simplifing overcomplicated hardware.. (what if your monitor crapped out?)
The issue is: How do you KNOW the software that grabbed the vote (from the keyboard, touch screen, or what have you), encrypted it or not, and stored it in the database, ACTUALLY STORED THE VOTE THE VOTER CAST, rather than making up its own vote? And how do you KNOW that the database ACTUALLY SAVED THE VOTES THE VOTING MACHINES FED IT and ADDED THEM UP CORRECTLY, rather than making up different values or being altered by some human intervention?
Time to get out the tinfoil hats everyone, this answer's gonna shock and amaze: Use RFID voting tags, and a distributed key encryption system (something with a keyhash that's incredibly, insanely long, how about a flash memory chip containing a 128 meg file used to digitally sign the vote?). Do this at all levels of input (make the keyboards sign the vote, make the computer program sign the vote, make the database sign the vote), and you really defeat 90% of the problems in the system. Printing onto a spool of paper inside of the device on keypress wouldn't be that bad of a jesture either.
The MAIN problem with computer voting machines is that, along with hanging chads and dimpled ballots, they've eliminated any paper trail (actually checked by the voters themselves) of how each voter actually voted. If the software is broken or corrupt, how do you do a recount? Ask it to give you the corrupted numbers a second time?
Again, how hard is it to borrow from dated techology: The typewriter left a paper trail for the some odd 100 years it was used, why not turn the computer back into one of these devices?
(Interestingly enough, that's EXACTLY how Diebold proposes to do a recount: Have the database print out the corrupted values as separate printed paper ballots for people to hand-count. B-) ) This is another example of gross incompetence. Why not simply print the thing ON INPUT, onto a huge drum of paper, stored inside of the same safe the computer's stored inside of? Nobody's gonna get to the machine to modify it, nobody's gonna hack into the system or cause some kind of buffer overflow if the software's written right [ NOTE: I AM STRONGLY AGAINST NETWORKED VOTING SOLUTIONS, Networking computers is simply too risky, too many different ways to hack this kind of system ]. Write it right once, put it in a bulletproof box, change the combination to the box, and change the digital signatures every election, and you're done.
If these machines are comprimised it's due to the gross incompetents of the designers. It really isn't hard to develop something like this and keep it secure, think about it this way.
Use a standard computer, with two hard drives (and a printer with a big newspaper like spool of paper if you please). Have it so that in the back of the machine, a specific card has to be put into the machine: the card contains a hash written onto a rom chip used to encrypt and validate the votes. Set up a keyboard and a program that simply displays the name of the office, and store in a randomized list the name of the officials you can vote for (randomized to the user, increases security). Set up the software to write the vote onto both harddrives and onto the spool of paper. Store all of this in one of those bulletproof steel boxes with a safe's locking mechanism.
It's really as simple as that.. I could go into more detail, but that'd just bore most of you.. I'm sure a lot of you have thought of better systems yourselves. You see, it's nothing more than incompetence that they didn't implement anything like this.
well my first kneejerk reaction would be to moderate you offtopic ;).
But secondly, the reason why people like linux is because they can make it work for them. This is the way electronic voting should happen: it should Just Work (tm). The article talks about lack of security; if this system were open, these kinds of security problems would have already been addressed. If the system were open, the costs could come down because people would realize they dont need the eyecandy of an electronic touch screen which are notoriously picky on how you press them (this coming from the guy who's owned three pda's and never could master palm os' writing language). This is why people like Linux. Now take your trolling somewhere else, and at least be on topic.
The question is, why is this "technology" SO STUPID?!
I mean really, why all the fancy computers with touch screen monitors, why complicated software? Grab the vote in from a keyboard, encrypt it, save it, done.
I really think that the problem here is just the implementation, Diebold is simply selling shitty hardware/software, and really getting away with it because nobody else sells this kind of hardware, at least that is well known and accredited.
It's a crying shame that anything like Florida happened in the first place, but this is the twenty first fucking century, we're smarter than that people...
Of course, remember what happened last year in Ohio? ;)
Wait.. wait a minute... if this were true, why can't you tap into a cable line? same kind of system: use the frequencies NOT in use by the end device to send lots of information quickly. Something smells fishy...
Could call them Kuala's, would go well with the whole QT (cue-tee; cute or cutie =) name system..
Maybe it was just me who thought kuala bears are cute.... (I KNOW THEY ARENT BEARS!!!!!!!)
Is going on a lot here where I live. Berea College has completely rebuilt many of their buildings to make them more environmentally friendly, and to cut down on their "outrageous energy costs". Not to mention that Berea College owns all the utilities here anyways.
;).
I really don't get why this kind of project is really worthy of doing anyways. May save some money, but most people's houses dont use more than 1500 kWa of electricity a month... ~140$ of electricty around here (considering we pay the "Berea College Utilities" tax). Now a worthy project would be covering your house with solar panels and breaking even on your utility bills
lol.. much more thinking than i did when i posted, but yes, this is what i meant..
Or you can use a product like Teleport, or you can use "wget -r -l 6 hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey" for the same functionality, if you're not on a Windows machine. ;)
If at 30 feet a gravityplane can hold 4 passengers, could this design ever provide a viable means of transport for larger groups of people? 30 feet/4 people = 7.5 feet/person Thats approx 75 feet per group of 10. Makes for quite a large plane for even medium sized groups.
Simple, scale the plane differently. Making the lifting bodies wider/taller to make up for the length. But secondly, what's wrong with a long plane? This thing's gonna be a pretty slow mover (glider; no forward propulsion), so it shouldn't need an entirely too long runway to land on, therefore making it's length irrelevant (except maybe for hanger space, but I would imagine a plane made of kevlar and carbon fiber, the wings could simply be taken off and stored seperately, or folded like they do on some navi aircraft).
I think the main problem people will see with this will be it's speed... We've given up caring about fuel effiecency a long time ago (well, not us slashdoters, but the general public), especially considering the adoption rate of SUV's. It's a really novel idea, it's just not going to get very many customers, except from maybe greenpeace and other "hippie" organizations.
I have to completely agree here. Microsoft is encroaching more and more on antitrust, and the US courts do nothing to stop them.
Oracle isn't anywhere near monopoly, although they are a very strong database vendor, with probably one of the best supported database systems written, but they are competed against by everyone from Microsoft (which, btw is integrating their database engine into the OS), to us open source developers... The US Courts really need to pick their priorities better..
The only question is who on slashdot understands analogies like this:
Imagine someone saying, "I want to date 6'5 tall women because someone said good things about them", but they have only dated girls 5'2 and shorter. How likely is it that they will keep the commitment to date 6'5 people?
Well, firebird is definitely a good contender, but I still want a database server that's fast and small... and the faster and smaller the better. Problem is I need most of the features you'll see in a high end one, and I need it to be open source.. SQLite was actually a contender at one point, but I want replication as well.. so.. my question is when is someone gonna fill this niche?
IMO Debian's gotta be it, UserLinux fixing the holes, Knoppix bringing it's new installation and popularity, the new installer's almost done...
The irony of it is that debian's probably one of the largest Open/Free Software projects still in development, which makes it seem that maybe Debian has what it takes to survive, where other professional Distro's are starting to fail..
Also, it seems Mandrake is getting a lot of press these days, shipping a Live-CD like Knoppix, with a USB memory card.
So after liberating some (all) of the hydrogen we are left with C2 and O I would assume it would pick up O2 from the air and make C02 as a by product, with potentially some water also. Last time I checked C02 was a greenhouse gas.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but we're a lot smarter than that. Using an charged plate we can pull the oxygen to the top of the collector, and leave the carbon at the lower end... we can then either combine the oxygen with other oxygen and bottle it, or combine it with hydrogen and make water. From the carbon, we can combine it back with the soil *with a bit of treatment* and make it more rich, perpetuating the cycle.