America was founded on a revolution that occurred because people were anything but comfortable, but in those days the colonists were anything but complacent, understood the stakes very clearly, and as the British found out were truly a force to be reckoned with. At that, we needed some help from the French, but we still pulled it off.
The problem with revolutionary thinking is that nowadays America is no longer sufficiently independent to survive what would happen in the wake of a major economic collapse. We got through the Great Depression because we at least had the means to create enough wealth to get us out of what our stupid policies got us into, with increasing societal costs offset by continual advances in industrial efficiency . That isn't the case anymore, it really isn't... China has been far too successful in decimating our industrial base. If we tried an honest-to-God revolution today... well. What you would have is a bunch of toothless poor people with no grasp of the issues, and a bunch of equally clueless middle class types who don't even have a BB pistol among them trying to effect significant change, with the rich leaving for Switzerland in droves. A drunken gang of half-witted off-duty cops could put paid to anything we could mount in the way of a "revolution" anymore.
Diebold or Diebold, we'd best stick to voting and writing our Congresspeople. It's the only chance we realistically have. We sure as hell can't hope for any more help from the French, this time around.
Well, that's what happens when you wrap a bunch of armor plate around a Windows box and call it an "Automated Teller Machine". Oddly enough, that's also what happens when you take a Windows box and call it an "Electronic Voting Machine."
I understand that it has become popular to take cheap shots at the United States, but how on Earth did you get modded insightful for such a meaningless comment? The U.S. never was a "mediator of the Web" nor did we ever try to be: we never had the slightest control over the network buildouts of any other nation but our own. We came up with some cool technology and cut loose with it, and it turned out that a host of other countries found it useful as well. Pretty much all of them, in fact. And yet, we receive constant criticism for that act of generosity... sometimes I don't know why we bothered.
Same with movies. How many times have you watched a 30 second trailer only to find out that those were all the good scenes from an entire ninety minute film?
So far as I'm concerned, when these clowns finally get ATMs to work right maybe they can be given a shot at designing an electronic voting machine. Until then, my vote is for paper ballots.
Serenity fans prefer Serenity to Star Wars. Nothing particularly remarkable about that... I preferred Serenity to any of the last three Star Wars films myself. They were, well, technically accomplished but lacking in substance. Serenity (especially if you watched the TV series first) delivered plenty of substance.
Wash was a wash, so far as I'm concerned (I liked him but he wasn't much more than you saw... a background character like you said. Still, I felt bad when the Reavers killed him.) Shepherd Book, now... he was interesting and I wish we'd been able to learn more about his past. There was a lot more going on with him than he let on. The scene in Firefly where he's badly injured, and an Alliance captain takes one look at him and says, "Get this man medical treatment!" took me by surprise. The Alliance military wouldn't ordinarily care one whit about the crew of a tramp freigher: but the Alliance apparently held Shepherd Book in some regard.
I suppose we'll never know who he really was, or what Josh Whedon had planned for him.
I assume that you are a practicing attorney well-versed in United States immigration and criminal law, as well as the subtleties of foreign policies of numerous nations around the world. Certainly, you seem very knowledgeable in a number of rather complicated areas of American law, to make such a sweeping statement of apparent fact:
You seem to forget that under US law, citizens of other countries have no rights at all.
I suggest you tell that to the millions of illegal Hispanic immigrant/criminals that have, to use your words, shown a complete and total disregard for the principles of justice and the rights of citizens of other countries, namely those of the United States. I might add that those folks are enjoying plenty of "rights" at the expense of the American citizen and taxpayer. As a white, middle-class, tax-paying American I can't get free medical care or free education... but they can, and I and millions like me have to pay for it. And yes, that irritates me more than a little, but frankly you irritate me more.
The bill shouldn't discriminate between the OS and the voting software.
Couldn't agree more, because the two together comprise a functioning embedded system. Auditing the application and ignoring the operating system is pointless, from a secure voting perspective. The Congressman has it right.
Besides, this is not a supercomputer. This is not an accounting system. This is a goddamn electromechanical counter, a mindless device which could be implemented with vacuum tubes, or discrete TTL, or a BASIC Stamp! There doesn't need to be an "operating system", unless you need it to throw up your colorful corporate logo or justify your "Microsoft Vista ready" sticker. I mean, we aren't talking some incredibly complex technological requirements here, although there are those with a vested interest in making it appear so. For crying out loud it's been done for centuries using pieces of paper. Any corporation that manufactures these things that makes "intellectual property" claims about its "advanced software" is FULL OF CRAP and trying to keep the public from knowing what a shoddy job it did, or worse. If you aren't willing to open up your voting system to public inspection from the chips on up, then you shouldn't be allowed to sell them to our government. Any of our governments.
More to the point, this is just the kind of system that should be only as complex as it needs to be... and not one iota more. Every extra layer of "sophistication" adds more room for error, more places to hide something.
Okay, A.C... I'll bite. Can you dispute my statement? Describe what we have done to DNS that warrants your ire. In detail, please. Besides, this isn't a matter of "trust us - we are the good guys" it's more a matter of "it's ours and you can't have it although we'll let you use it for free because all of us get something out of it." Deal with that, or as many others have said, if you can't deal with it, come up with your own solution. However if, in the process of implementing said solution, you completely screw up your sector of the Internet it's your collective asses on the line.
Who would you suggest would be a better government to run the root servers? There plenty of governments that would love to try, I'm sure... but what's in it for us? What would the United States receive in return for such a magnanimous gesture? Gratitude? Please. You can keep it. It's not worth much on the global scene, that's for sure.
Who should we voluntarily give up control of what is, after all, a valuable national resource to us? For that matter, what gives you (or anyone else) the right to make such a demand? Hell, we might as well just give you our remaining coal and petroleum reserves while we're at it, since you seem to think you've some intrinsic right to what isn't yours. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that a. we currently run the things and b. we're not inclined to let anyone else run them, because we trust you about as much as you trust us and c. there's no way in hell any kind of "international coalition" would could be trusted to run something that important with either screwing it up or using it as a weapon. Probably against the United States.
Hardly our fault that the rest of the planet jumped on the Internet bandwagon before thinking, hey, maybe we ought to think about who runs some of the more important network services. No, you were all busy absorbing everything we had to give and bolstering your own economies with it. Now, when all is said and done that was a good thing. However, this posturing and demanding that "the Internet" (as if DNS is "the Internet") be placed under "international control" (whatever the hell that would mean in practice) is, colloquially speaking... sour grapes, with a heapin' helping of bullshit.
Like it or not, we're still the lesser of multiple evils. And please don't bother suggesting the United Nations, that argument ceased working the moment it was made.
Why would you say that Americans despise immigrants? I mean, of all nations America is the one that has traditionally been a haven for immigrants from all cultures. We don't like the illegal ones, to be sure, but that has little to do with their English (given that the bulk of them can't speak it at all anyway and show little interest in learning.) It has more to do with the fact that their presence here is disruptive and causing major socioeconomic problems. In any event, hastily-written Slashdot posts are probably not the best way to judge a person's verbal skills anyway, although the writing around here does stink sometimes.
On the other hand, I agree with you that America's school system is failing miserably when it comes to linguistic skills. I had a girlfriend who was a college-level English instructor (this was back in the mid-eighties.) A significant fraction of the incoming college freshmen she taught were unable to write in full sentences, and required remedial instruction in order to have a hope of functioning in a college environment. My understanding is that the situation has not improved, and is in fact worse. How our high schools manage to graduate functional illiterates is beyond me. No question the system is in deep trouble.
FEMA was an organization that was comparatively small as such bureaucracies go (for just the reason you outlined) and has been around for a century or more. It was specifically designed to be able to play fast and loose with the rules so that it could get stuff done in an emergency. It was being subsumed into the Department of Homeland Security that caused most of these problems, as I understand it. That, and our idiot President appointing a fellow idiot to run the thing. Much of what happened in New Orleans can be laid squarely at Bush's feet, because he didn't leave FEMA alone.
Every time someone tries to say, "Well, look, let's try to match our terminology to what the law says and the law calls it 'copyright infringement'" someone else starts shouting "IT'S THEFT AND I DON'T CARE WHAT THE LAW SAYS!" Regardless of whether it is "theft" or not, when one party says, hey, let's try to nail down our terms so we can communicate and the other refuses to do it, you're going to have a conflict. Guaranteed.
Anyway, I don't think it's so much that if you say things over and over they believe you, it's just that they get bored of hearing you say it over and over and if what you're talking about isn't that important to them they just let it go.
Slashdot Mirror
America was founded on a revolution that occurred because people were anything but comfortable, but in those days the colonists were anything but complacent, understood the stakes very clearly, and as the British found out were truly a force to be reckoned with. At that, we needed some help from the French, but we still pulled it off.
... China has been far too successful in decimating our industrial base. If we tried an honest-to-God revolution today ... well. What you would have is a bunch of toothless poor people with no grasp of the issues, and a bunch of equally clueless middle class types who don't even have a BB pistol among them trying to effect significant change, with the rich leaving for Switzerland in droves. A drunken gang of half-witted off-duty cops could put paid to anything we could mount in the way of a "revolution" anymore.
The problem with revolutionary thinking is that nowadays America is no longer sufficiently independent to survive what would happen in the wake of a major economic collapse. We got through the Great Depression because we at least had the means to create enough wealth to get us out of what our stupid policies got us into, with increasing societal costs offset by continual advances in industrial efficiency . That isn't the case anymore, it really isn't
Diebold or Diebold, we'd best stick to voting and writing our Congresspeople. It's the only chance we realistically have. We sure as hell can't hope for any more help from the French, this time around.
The TweakXP PowerToy, free from Microsoft, can make the same hack for you.
Somebody should turn a page. Hey, it worked against Clinton.
... security problems.
Well, that's what happens when you wrap a bunch of armor plate around a Windows box and call it an "Automated Teller Machine". Oddly enough, that's also what happens when you take a Windows box and call it an "Electronic Voting Machine."
I understand that it has become popular to take cheap shots at the United States, but how on Earth did you get modded insightful for such a meaningless comment? The U.S. never was a "mediator of the Web" nor did we ever try to be: we never had the slightest control over the network buildouts of any other nation but our own. We came up with some cool technology and cut loose with it, and it turned out that a host of other countries found it useful as well. Pretty much all of them, in fact. And yet, we receive constant criticism for that act of generosity ... sometimes I don't know why we bothered.
Bloody ingrates, the lot of you.
I think "fneo" is too close to "fnord", which is probably why I can't read it.
stick to ATMs.
Same with movies. How many times have you watched a 30 second trailer only to find out that those were all the good scenes from an entire ninety minute film?
So far as I'm concerned, when these clowns finally get ATMs to work right maybe they can be given a shot at designing an electronic voting machine. Until then, my vote is for paper ballots.
Serenity fans prefer Serenity to Star Wars. Nothing particularly remarkable about that ... I preferred Serenity to any of the last three Star Wars films myself. They were, well, technically accomplished but lacking in substance. Serenity (especially if you watched the TV series first) delivered plenty of substance.
Wash was a wash, so far as I'm concerned (I liked him but he wasn't much more than you saw ... a background character like you said. Still, I felt bad when the Reavers killed him.) Shepherd Book, now ... he was interesting and I wish we'd been able to learn more about his past. There was a lot more going on with him than he let on. The scene in Firefly where he's badly injured, and an Alliance captain takes one look at him and says, "Get this man medical treatment!" took me by surprise. The Alliance military wouldn't ordinarily care one whit about the crew of a tramp freigher: but the Alliance apparently held Shepherd Book in some regard.
I suppose we'll never know who he really was, or what Josh Whedon had planned for him.
Trust me, your English is a hell of a lot better than my French.
There doesn't need to be an "operating system", unless you need it to throw up.
Edited for brevity.
Edited for hilarity you mean. I say that as my graphics card just reset itself and Windows XP threw up all over me.
I assume that you are a practicing attorney well-versed in United States immigration and criminal law, as well as the subtleties of foreign policies of numerous nations around the world. Certainly, you seem very knowledgeable in a number of rather complicated areas of American law, to make such a sweeping statement of apparent fact:
... but they can, and I and millions like me have to pay for it. And yes, that irritates me more than a little, but frankly you irritate me more.
You seem to forget that under US law, citizens of other countries have no rights at all.
I suggest you tell that to the millions of illegal Hispanic immigrant/criminals that have, to use your words, shown a complete and total disregard for the principles of justice and the rights of citizens of other countries, namely those of the United States. I might add that those folks are enjoying plenty of "rights" at the expense of the American citizen and taxpayer. As a white, middle-class, tax-paying American I can't get free medical care or free education
The bill shouldn't discriminate between the OS and the voting software.
... and not one iota more. Every extra layer of "sophistication" adds more room for error, more places to hide something.
Couldn't agree more, because the two together comprise a functioning embedded system. Auditing the application and ignoring the operating system is pointless, from a secure voting perspective. The Congressman has it right.
Besides, this is not a supercomputer. This is not an accounting system. This is a goddamn electromechanical counter, a mindless device which could be implemented with vacuum tubes, or discrete TTL, or a BASIC Stamp! There doesn't need to be an "operating system", unless you need it to throw up your colorful corporate logo or justify your "Microsoft Vista ready" sticker. I mean, we aren't talking some incredibly complex technological requirements here, although there are those with a vested interest in making it appear so. For crying out loud it's been done for centuries using pieces of paper. Any corporation that manufactures these things that makes "intellectual property" claims about its "advanced software" is FULL OF CRAP and trying to keep the public from knowing what a shoddy job it did, or worse. If you aren't willing to open up your voting system to public inspection from the chips on up, then you shouldn't be allowed to sell them to our government. Any of our governments.
More to the point, this is just the kind of system that should be only as complex as it needs to be
Okay, A.C ... I'll bite. Can you dispute my statement? Describe what we have done to DNS that warrants your ire. In detail, please. Besides, this isn't a matter of "trust us - we are the good guys" it's more a matter of "it's ours and you can't have it although we'll let you use it for free because all of us get something out of it." Deal with that, or as many others have said, if you can't deal with it, come up with your own solution. However if, in the process of implementing said solution, you completely screw up your sector of the Internet it's your collective asses on the line.
... but what's in it for us? What would the United States receive in return for such a magnanimous gesture? Gratitude? Please. You can keep it. It's not worth much on the global scene, that's for sure.
... sour grapes, with a heapin' helping of bullshit.
Who would you suggest would be a better government to run the root servers? There plenty of governments that would love to try, I'm sure
Who should we voluntarily give up control of what is, after all, a valuable national resource to us? For that matter, what gives you (or anyone else) the right to make such a demand? Hell, we might as well just give you our remaining coal and petroleum reserves while we're at it, since you seem to think you've some intrinsic right to what isn't yours. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that a. we currently run the things and b. we're not inclined to let anyone else run them, because we trust you about as much as you trust us and c. there's no way in hell any kind of "international coalition" would could be trusted to run something that important with either screwing it up or using it as a weapon. Probably against the United States.
Hardly our fault that the rest of the planet jumped on the Internet bandwagon before thinking, hey, maybe we ought to think about who runs some of the more important network services. No, you were all busy absorbing everything we had to give and bolstering your own economies with it. Now, when all is said and done that was a good thing. However, this posturing and demanding that "the Internet" (as if DNS is "the Internet") be placed under "international control" (whatever the hell that would mean in practice) is, colloquially speaking
Like it or not, we're still the lesser of multiple evils. And please don't bother suggesting the United Nations, that argument ceased working the moment it was made.
Why would you say that Americans despise immigrants? I mean, of all nations America is the one that has traditionally been a haven for immigrants from all cultures. We don't like the illegal ones, to be sure, but that has little to do with their English (given that the bulk of them can't speak it at all anyway and show little interest in learning.) It has more to do with the fact that their presence here is disruptive and causing major socioeconomic problems. In any event, hastily-written Slashdot posts are probably not the best way to judge a person's verbal skills anyway, although the writing around here does stink sometimes.
On the other hand, I agree with you that America's school system is failing miserably when it comes to linguistic skills. I had a girlfriend who was a college-level English instructor (this was back in the mid-eighties.) A significant fraction of the incoming college freshmen she taught were unable to write in full sentences, and required remedial instruction in order to have a hope of functioning in a college environment. My understanding is that the situation has not improved, and is in fact worse. How our high schools manage to graduate functional illiterates is beyond me. No question the system is in deep trouble.
While I don't like the game very much, I do think WoW has done a fantastic job of bringing RPGs to the masses.
Not to mention espousing the many benefits of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to corporate leaders nationwide.
Slash Titrating? That belongs in the Body Chemistry section.
I just hope he doesn't get his hands on a translated copy of Team America: World Police.
I do.
I was buying it until I read that it was made from "soybean sputum". Plant spit.
And then there's just "way cool".
FEMA was an organization that was comparatively small as such bureaucracies go (for just the reason you outlined) and has been around for a century or more. It was specifically designed to be able to play fast and loose with the rules so that it could get stuff done in an emergency. It was being subsumed into the Department of Homeland Security that caused most of these problems, as I understand it. That, and our idiot President appointing a fellow idiot to run the thing. Much of what happened in New Orleans can be laid squarely at Bush's feet, because he didn't leave FEMA alone.
Do you?
Every time someone tries to say, "Well, look, let's try to match our terminology to what the law says and the law calls it 'copyright infringement'" someone else starts shouting "IT'S THEFT AND I DON'T CARE WHAT THE LAW SAYS!" Regardless of whether it is "theft" or not, when one party says, hey, let's try to nail down our terms so we can communicate and the other refuses to do it, you're going to have a conflict. Guaranteed.
Anyway, I don't think it's so much that if you say things over and over they believe you, it's just that they get bored of hearing you say it over and over and if what you're talking about isn't that important to them they just let it go.