But it's not (and shouldn't be) about what "best", easiest or least-sucky - it's about what's most accessible.
And that is the crux of the argument. An elected government says, "we're using the a media format that is used by the most-popular operating system and Web browser." On the surface, that seems reasonable, in that they're makeing the information available to most of the viewing audience. It also satisfies the politician's need to appear even-handed. Unfortunately, it makes that same data virtually inaccessible to that still-significant minority that isn't mainstream, and never will be. Regardless of the market-share numbers (and you have to add all the non-Microsoft products together), by not using an open standard the EU is still alienating some millions of computer users. That's not particularly even-handed, however you slice it.
If there was ever an argument for transparency in government and the required use of open formats and protocols... this is it.
This has nothing to do with the relative brilliance of the scientists and engineers that came up with the various technologies the U.S. and Russia developed for space. Both sides accomplished amazing things and both had spectacular failures. It so happens that the Space Shuttle and the Global Positioning System were not among our failures, nor does the United States space program qualify as a failure, as the GP stated. You'd probably like to believe that, but it just isn't true.
Nobody in the West who has even half a brain dismisses Russia as a "third world" nation. Third world nations don't have one of the best-educated populaces in the world, world-class research facilities, nuclear reactors and I don't know how many ICBMs with warheads to match. Russia has consistently produced some of the most capable technical people anywhere: I've personally worked with many of them over the years and found them uniformly impressive in that regard. I'm less enamored of their form of government, but I'm an American so I make no apology for that.
And so far as the GPS being another "strategy" of the United States... well, this anti-U.S. paranoia has reached the pandemic stage, it appears. You probably believe that the Internet is just another American plot to take over the world. If so, it must be considered one of our most dismal failures considering that everyone, everywhere, including our bitterest enemies, have profited by it. Besides, what, precisely, has the United States done with GPS that would indicate that we have any intention of using to damage another country in any way? What possible benefit would we drive from such actions? Nothing, that's what. It's not our fault if other folks chose to put their eggs in our basket, and besides: the nations that use it the most heavily are our allies, for heaven's sake! Get over yourself. Paranoia is a disease... get treatment.
Personally, given the relative importance of satellite-based navigation aids to, well... all of us, I'm glad that the EU is forging ahead with Galileo. Global dependence upon this technology has reached the point where some serious redundancy is in order. The Russian system (if it ever becomes fully operational) will only help with that. Of course, people like you probably consider that to be yet-another plot to take over the world (keep in mind that the Soviet Empire was just that, but since they aren't Americans I guess GLONASS would be okay in your book.)
He described a hand off of perpetual motion devices that he seriously believed worked. Besides that, he was a great electrician.
Another group of professionals that often have bizarre ideas about physics are automotive mechanics. You would not believe some of the things I've had them tell me. Of course, I'm never sure if they actually believe what they're saying, or are just trying to get more money out of me.
Taco Bell, eh? Frankly, I'm not sure if by "goo" you're referring to your gastro-intestinal distress, or the food itself. Like I should complain... it's what I had for dinner last night. Is it just me, or does Taco Bell seem to have about nine or ten ingredients that they simply combine over and over? All their stuff seems to taste pretty much the same, it's just that some items are crunchy and others are soft.
Do you happen to know the source of the data for that picture? I know the U.S. operates some very large phased-array radars that track hundreds of thousands of objects.
You are over reacting huge on this issue, the idea is not new in any way, and does not cause more accidents or distractions.
Is he? How would you know they don't? People, by and large, can barely handle using a cellular phone while driving. I disagree with you that installing a general-purpose computer system with a video display on the dashboard is going to be particularly safe. Frankly, I wouldn't want anyone using such a system anywhere near me on the expressway.
The idea isn't new... but the idea of millions of these things being on the road most certainly is. Auto manufacturers have repeatedly demonstrated that while driver safety is important to them, at a certain point it takes a back seat to sales. Hell, if they really cared about driver safety they'd never have foisted the SUV upon an unsuspecting population. But they did, and successfully marketed those vehicles in such a way as to appeal to the closet sociopaths among us. My driving experience is much less safe because of that, so you'll pardon me if I don't take an automobile manufacturer's word about safety.
So, automotive PCs are not a new idea, but they've never been sold in huge quantities. Marginal products that only appear in a few vehicles each year won't affect accident statistics very much, but a larger number most certainly will. The sad truth is that human beings can take only so many simultaneous inputs before they can't handle a vehicle well. Lately it seems that more and more drivers can't properly process even one: the road! We're too relaxed about driving in this country, and the price for that is dead people (for example, German drivers take the task much more seriously... presumably because the penalties for injuring someone are very serious as well.) More than once I've had the crap scared out of me by a cabby watching a portable TV on the passenger seat instead of where the hell he was going! Yes indeedy, a video game is just what the modern American driver needs.
Too many things are competing for our senses in modern vehicles. From a safety perspective, we should be reducing the number of distractions not increasing them, but car makers are trying desperately to find something that will make us buy more cars. The vast majority of drivers don't need a car PC, any more than they need to jabber incessantly on their cell phones.
Personally, as much as I would like the functionality such a system would offer, I have to question just what effect it would have on my lifespan.
These things should run an OS for embedded systems, not a full fledged desktop OS.
That's my feeling as well. Really, given the importance of these systems it makes even more sense to just do the whole damn thing in an ASIC or two and be done with it. Or if it absolutely must be programmable, just dispense with the idea of an operating system as such and develop an embedded application that talks to the naked hardware. It's just counting votes, not tracking an incoming enemy missile in three dimensions or analyzing radio telescope data looking for alien civilizations. I haven't worked on embedded systems for ten years or so, but I've developed a number of real-time controllers that ran on standard industrialized PCs, booted from a ROM drive, and had no operating system whatsoever. Reliable as hell for that reason, no moving parts, not even a CPU fan.
This is not rocket science, folks. Somebody needs to tell Diebold and the rest of these negligent bloodsuckers to get off their goddamned asses and do this job right, or step aside for someone that will. This is ridiculous... the United States (the United States!) being unable to trust it's own election systems. Something is very wrong.
By the end of the year the OpenSolaris community will be widely recognized as larger and more active than the Linux community.
To quote Lewis Black: "where can one find a drug that would make one so delusional." The Linux community, I'm sorry to inform him, is much larger and more active than he apparently understands. That's because it encompasses tens of thousands of products and technologies well beyond the server and desktop markets, which aren't even the biggest market so far as Linux usage is concerned.
Well, I have a Chrysler and so far it hasn't given me any problems. Oh, well, when I first got it the CD player didn't work and I was going to take it back to the dealer when I thought I'd try a some Dustoff in the slot to see if the laser head was dirty. I stuck the nozzle in, and felt something shift, and the player made a horrible buzzing and groaning and I figured I'd really screwed it up. Then a cardboard airport parking garage ticket came out! The player worked perfectly after that.
No, if you're truly "wreckless" then you're probably already a good driver.
"Pretty much everyone" is, I'd say, pretty much synonymous with "vast majority of". You're being pretty damn picky.
I don't know why you jumped from someone (me) making a series of observations to the (non-obvious) conclusion that I want "the law" to ban something. If you've read any of my posts here on Slashdot you'd realize that I'm generally against reactionary law... it rarely serves the purpose for which it is intended.
However, the unfortunate reality is that human beings (all of them, not "pretty much every" or "the vast majority of") have severely restricted capacity to focus on multiple cognitive streams while simultaneously exercising multiple motor skills. It's who we are: you might as well rail against the fact that we only have two arms. Everyone who drives badly with a cellular phone in hand honestly believes that they are amongst the fortunate few that can handle it. That's obvious because if they were willing to accept that they are, in effect, driving drunk they might reconsider whether yakking about the neighbor's fling with the local diving instructor was worth the risk. You appear to be one of those who feels that he (or she) is immune to the effects of having a cell phone wedded to your skull while driving. I can pretty much guarantee that you're not. Dirty Harry put it very well, "a man's got to know his limitations." I agree, which is why my cell phone bill lists mostly calls of under one minute duration. If I'm driving, I say what needs to be said and I get off the thing.
This is rapidly becoming one of those issues where, if We The People don't police ourselves, the police are going to provide that service for us. Like it or not, that's what's happening.
Why would the opinion of such an expert be intrinsically more reliable (or less-subvertible) than any other expert?
Oh, I agree with you that this would be better than letting the closed-source vendor off the hook completely, but nevertheless it should simply be a legal requirement for voting machines that the code and hardware design be open. I don't particularly care if it's released under the GPL or some other public license, or if the vendor keeps the rights. That's irrelevant anyway, in this context. I want to be able to see it, and as an American citizen and an engineer I want to have the power to help keep these bastards honest. If a given piece of voting equipment has a problem, the manufacturer should get flooded with emails from software and hardware types pointing out the error of their ways. If they can't handle that, they should just get out of the business, and any voting commissioner that allows such a machine to be used should find himself looking for another job.
Furthermore, as many here on Slashdot have pointed out, there needs to be some mechanism by which knowledgeable voters can make sure that the code that the vendor has shown the public is the code that is actually running in the machine at voting time. This is not an impossible task, in spite of what the equipment makers would have you believe. I'm less concerned about paper trails and all the rest of that (at this point) than I am that the machines be as transparent as it is possible to get. Hell, I'd say voting machine enclosures should be made of transparent Plexiglas, for that matter. Let us see what's going on in there, and see how open we can make the whole process. Don't like that? Tough... stick to making ATMs.
Let's keep one thing firmly in mind, since equipment vendors keep going on about "proprietary secrets" and "competitive advantages" and all that. Vote tallying is not some incredibly complicated task that can only be solved by sophisticated, innovative engineering. Quite the opposite, a "voting machine" is nothing more than a fancy counter! That's all it is, all it was ever intended to be, and the only "innovation" that I would like to see is the companies that provide them being honest about what they're doing.
That is something Americans have a right to expect.
Seemingly the Russians with their outdated technology are winning the space race. The USA with all its money, trying for reusable spacecraft, lost!
I'm not sure what you mean by that, since we didn't just try for reusable spacecraft we actually built them. They're called "Space Shuttles". We've put lots of stuff into Earth orbit using the Shuttle fleet. Granted, the launch cost was far greater than originally projected, but show me a single government on this planet that doesn't incur major cost overruns on a big project. Let's also remember that we didn't spend enough money up front to build the spaceplane that NASA originally wanted: the Shuttle is a flying kluge and it's amazing to me that it works at all. Sometimes it doesn't. Congress, in more ways than one, screwed us by getting cheap after the end of the Apollo program.
In any event, since you seem to think the U.S. space program has been a failure, let me point out that the U.S. Global Positioning System has been operational for decades while Russia's satellite network never achieved more than partial functionality. The entire planet has benefited directly from the U.S. investment in GPS (not that I expect any expression of gratitude at this point) so much so that now entire economies are dependent upon that kind of technology. Sort of like the Internet, for that matter. As I understand it, GLONASS wasn't working at all for a long time and at its peak had nowhere near the global impact of GPS.
Besides, "winning" a race depends upon the nature of the race, and what you are trying to achieve in the first place. Seemingly you need to do some more research before posting.
Well, my experience is generally that anyone using a cell phone in a car might as well be drunk since it's hard to tell the difference from the way they drive. Now, it may be true that women talk longer on the cell phone: I say that because most women I know talk longer on the regular telephone, in fact I will go so far as to say that the invention of the cordless telephone did more to crank up phone usage than any other single factor. My old girlfriend would talk for hours on the phone, that doubled when she went cordless and then dummy me bought her a headset and I never got to talk to her again. However, I don't know if that applies to cell phone usage, although I suspect it does.
Now, I will say that women drivers, in my experience, are becoming more aggressive, more dangerous, regardless of whether or not they're using a cellular phone. Worse, at least in the area where I live they're all driving giant ASSUVs (Arrogant Suburbanites Sporting Ugly Vehicles.) Apparently insurance company statistics bear that out... women in the 18 to 25 year old range used to be substantially safer than their male counterparts. Not anymore. So when you combine their native inability to handle a large vehicle (that may sound sexist to some of you, but I drive sixty miles a day surrounded by these feminine sociopaths and it's reached the point where I'm considering moving closer to work) and the inability of pretty much everyone, regardless of sex, to drive effectively with a cell phone jammed in their ear, it's getting pretty goddamned dangerous out there.
I'm not being cynical, I'm being facetious. I don't know enough about the actual topic to be cynical. I was referring to one of the first-season episodes of the TV show Lost.
Remember folks, this is not the AT&T of old we're talking about, this is SBC, the Southern Bastards Club, arguably the most abusive the RBOCs. Remember Edward J. Whitacre's comments regarding network neutrality:
"Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using," he said, according to Business Week Online's edited excerpts of the interview.
"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts," he said.
So, given the rather unenlightened attitude evidenced by this double-dipping bastard I think I have reason to ask: what assurances is AT&T/SBC providing that they will not only maintain some level of neutrality, but will continue to do so in the future? Bland "assurances" mean absolutely nothing, and if the SEC takes them at their word in this matter I'll lose a lot of respect for that organization. It isn't wise to believe anything coming out of a telephone company executive's mouth, just on principle, and that applies to most cable company management as well.
Yes, well... remember what happened when the fat guy in Lost played the numbers he got from the guy in the psycho ward who heard them on the radio. Well, yeah, he won 68 million dollars or some such, but it was all downhill from there.
It's less about artificial promotion, than what happens when you do achieve a monopoly with a given product and service. If you begin to misuse the natural influence over market affairs that grants you to help maintain the monopoly, you may find yourself in hot water. That's what makes you interesting to the Feds from an antitrust standpoint. Wouldn't matter one bit if Google were a monopoly (contrary to popular belief here on Slashdot monopolies are not intrinsically illegal under U.S. law) unless they began to use that status to cause deliberate damage to competitors (or potential competitors.) Microsoft's exclusionary deals with major hardware vendors are an example of monopoly abuse. I'm not actually sure how Google, or any company that operates like Google does, would go about doing anything similar, now that I think about it. I guess it would be possible, given the resources they have, but they'll have to become a monopoly first. If you were a monopolistic antitrustworthy Google, and wanted to ruthlessly suppress your competitors, how would you go about it?
Microsoft forced customers to buy Windows if they wanted a PC, whereas Google draws customers because they offer something that's both good and free, and if they do ultimately monopolize the search market it will be because enough users willingly abandon the competition. That would make them a "good" monopoly, as such, but it would be a fragile one at that. Of course, this applies to any well-run and genuinely useful Web service.
Everybody dumps on the top dog. Until he's no longer top dog, and the new top dog has to take the abuse. There's plenty of whining about Microsoft when it comes to other things, but Google is the perceived top dog when it comes to search. So that's where all the crap flows.
I have a straightforward policy regarding trust: if it comes to my house in a TCP/IP packet I don't trust it. I may find it useful, but I don't trust it. So Google can do what they want, but if they become too untrustworthy (too "evil") then I'll switch to the lesser evil, whoever that might be at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's not (and shouldn't be) about what "best", easiest or least-sucky - it's about what's most accessible.
... this is it.
And that is the crux of the argument. An elected government says, "we're using the a media format that is used by the most-popular operating system and Web browser." On the surface, that seems reasonable, in that they're makeing the information available to most of the viewing audience. It also satisfies the politician's need to appear even-handed. Unfortunately, it makes that same data virtually inaccessible to that still-significant minority that isn't mainstream, and never will be. Regardless of the market-share numbers (and you have to add all the non-Microsoft products together), by not using an open standard the EU is still alienating some millions of computer users. That's not particularly even-handed, however you slice it.
If there was ever an argument for transparency in government and the required use of open formats and protocols
Well, since they're behaving like sheep I think they should call it "ewetube".
This has nothing to do with the relative brilliance of the scientists and engineers that came up with the various technologies the U.S. and Russia developed for space. Both sides accomplished amazing things and both had spectacular failures. It so happens that the Space Shuttle and the Global Positioning System were not among our failures, nor does the United States space program qualify as a failure, as the GP stated. You'd probably like to believe that, but it just isn't true.
... well, this anti-U.S. paranoia has reached the pandemic stage, it appears. You probably believe that the Internet is just another American plot to take over the world. If so, it must be considered one of our most dismal failures considering that everyone, everywhere, including our bitterest enemies, have profited by it. Besides, what, precisely, has the United States done with GPS that would indicate that we have any intention of using to damage another country in any way? What possible benefit would we drive from such actions? Nothing, that's what. It's not our fault if other folks chose to put their eggs in our basket, and besides: the nations that use it the most heavily are our allies, for heaven's sake! Get over yourself. Paranoia is a disease ... get treatment.
... all of us, I'm glad that the EU is forging ahead with Galileo. Global dependence upon this technology has reached the point where some serious redundancy is in order. The Russian system (if it ever becomes fully operational) will only help with that. Of course, people like you probably consider that to be yet-another plot to take over the world (keep in mind that the Soviet Empire was just that, but since they aren't Americans I guess GLONASS would be okay in your book.)
Nobody in the West who has even half a brain dismisses Russia as a "third world" nation. Third world nations don't have one of the best-educated populaces in the world, world-class research facilities, nuclear reactors and I don't know how many ICBMs with warheads to match. Russia has consistently produced some of the most capable technical people anywhere: I've personally worked with many of them over the years and found them uniformly impressive in that regard. I'm less enamored of their form of government, but I'm an American so I make no apology for that.
And so far as the GPS being another "strategy" of the United States
Personally, given the relative importance of satellite-based navigation aids to, well
Sheesh.
He described a hand off of perpetual motion devices that he seriously believed worked. Besides that, he was a great electrician.
Another group of professionals that often have bizarre ideas about physics are automotive mechanics. You would not believe some of the things I've had them tell me. Of course, I'm never sure if they actually believe what they're saying, or are just trying to get more money out of me.
A new laptop for only e-mail?
... but it explains why Dell manages to sell so many computers.
That doesn't seem very well thought out to me.
Maybe not
Taco Bell, eh? Frankly, I'm not sure if by "goo" you're referring to your gastro-intestinal distress, or the food itself. Like I should complain ... it's what I had for dinner last night. Is it just me, or does Taco Bell seem to have about nine or ten ingredients that they simply combine over and over? All their stuff seems to taste pretty much the same, it's just that some items are crunchy and others are soft.
Okay people, I think implementation of the Slashdot Semantic Analysis Filter is long, long overdue.
..and yes, we are messy.
Do you happen to know the source of the data for that picture? I know the U.S. operates some very large phased-array radars that track hundreds of thousands of objects.
Hm ... I didn't realize that women could be sensitive to vibrations in that range.
You are over reacting huge on this issue, the idea is not new in any way, and does not cause more accidents or distractions.
... but the idea of millions of these things being on the road most certainly is. Auto manufacturers have repeatedly demonstrated that while driver safety is important to them, at a certain point it takes a back seat to sales. Hell, if they really cared about driver safety they'd never have foisted the SUV upon an unsuspecting population. But they did, and successfully marketed those vehicles in such a way as to appeal to the closet sociopaths among us. My driving experience is much less safe because of that, so you'll pardon me if I don't take an automobile manufacturer's word about safety.
... presumably because the penalties for injuring someone are very serious as well.) More than once I've had the crap scared out of me by a cabby watching a portable TV on the passenger seat instead of where the hell he was going! Yes indeedy, a video game is just what the modern American driver needs.
Is he? How would you know they don't? People, by and large, can barely handle using a cellular phone while driving. I disagree with you that installing a general-purpose computer system with a video display on the dashboard is going to be particularly safe. Frankly, I wouldn't want anyone using such a system anywhere near me on the expressway.
The idea isn't new
So, automotive PCs are not a new idea, but they've never been sold in huge quantities. Marginal products that only appear in a few vehicles each year won't affect accident statistics very much, but a larger number most certainly will. The sad truth is that human beings can take only so many simultaneous inputs before they can't handle a vehicle well. Lately it seems that more and more drivers can't properly process even one: the road! We're too relaxed about driving in this country, and the price for that is dead people (for example, German drivers take the task much more seriously
Too many things are competing for our senses in modern vehicles. From a safety perspective, we should be reducing the number of distractions not increasing them, but car makers are trying desperately to find something that will make us buy more cars. The vast majority of drivers don't need a car PC, any more than they need to jabber incessantly on their cell phones.
Personally, as much as I would like the functionality such a system would offer, I have to question just what effect it would have on my lifespan.
These things should run an OS for embedded systems, not a full fledged desktop OS.
... the United States (the United States!) being unable to trust it's own election systems. Something is very wrong.
That's my feeling as well. Really, given the importance of these systems it makes even more sense to just do the whole damn thing in an ASIC or two and be done with it. Or if it absolutely must be programmable, just dispense with the idea of an operating system as such and develop an embedded application that talks to the naked hardware. It's just counting votes, not tracking an incoming enemy missile in three dimensions or analyzing radio telescope data looking for alien civilizations. I haven't worked on embedded systems for ten years or so, but I've developed a number of real-time controllers that ran on standard industrialized PCs, booted from a ROM drive, and had no operating system whatsoever. Reliable as hell for that reason, no moving parts, not even a CPU fan.
This is not rocket science, folks. Somebody needs to tell Diebold and the rest of these negligent bloodsuckers to get off their goddamned asses and do this job right, or step aside for someone that will. This is ridiculous
By the end of the year the OpenSolaris community will be widely recognized as larger and more active than the Linux community.
To quote Lewis Black: "where can one find a drug that would make one so delusional." The Linux community, I'm sorry to inform him, is much larger and more active than he apparently understands. That's because it encompasses tens of thousands of products and technologies well beyond the server and desktop markets, which aren't even the biggest market so far as Linux usage is concerned.
Well, I have a Chrysler and so far it hasn't given me any problems. Oh, well, when I first got it the CD player didn't work and I was going to take it back to the dealer when I thought I'd try a some Dustoff in the slot to see if the laser head was dirty. I stuck the nozzle in, and felt something shift, and the player made a horrible buzzing and groaning and I figured I'd really screwed it up. Then a cardboard airport parking garage ticket came out! The player worked perfectly after that.
IMAP. Works great if you have an IMAP server always available.
No, if you're truly "wreckless" then you're probably already a good driver.
... it rarely serves the purpose for which it is intended.
"Pretty much everyone" is, I'd say, pretty much synonymous with "vast majority of". You're being pretty damn picky.
I don't know why you jumped from someone (me) making a series of observations to the (non-obvious) conclusion that I want "the law" to ban something. If you've read any of my posts here on Slashdot you'd realize that I'm generally against reactionary law
However, the unfortunate reality is that human beings (all of them, not "pretty much every" or "the vast majority of") have severely restricted capacity to focus on multiple cognitive streams while simultaneously exercising multiple motor skills. It's who we are: you might as well rail against the fact that we only have two arms. Everyone who drives badly with a cellular phone in hand honestly believes that they are amongst the fortunate few that can handle it. That's obvious because if they were willing to accept that they are, in effect, driving drunk they might reconsider whether yakking about the neighbor's fling with the local diving instructor was worth the risk. You appear to be one of those who feels that he (or she) is immune to the effects of having a cell phone wedded to your skull while driving. I can pretty much guarantee that you're not. Dirty Harry put it very well, "a man's got to know his limitations." I agree, which is why my cell phone bill lists mostly calls of under one minute duration. If I'm driving, I say what needs to be said and I get off the thing.
This is rapidly becoming one of those issues where, if We The People don't police ourselves, the police are going to provide that service for us. Like it or not, that's what's happening.
Why would the opinion of such an expert be intrinsically more reliable (or less-subvertible) than any other expert?
... stick to making ATMs.
Oh, I agree with you that this would be better than letting the closed-source vendor off the hook completely, but nevertheless it should simply be a legal requirement for voting machines that the code and hardware design be open. I don't particularly care if it's released under the GPL or some other public license, or if the vendor keeps the rights. That's irrelevant anyway, in this context. I want to be able to see it, and as an American citizen and an engineer I want to have the power to help keep these bastards honest. If a given piece of voting equipment has a problem, the manufacturer should get flooded with emails from software and hardware types pointing out the error of their ways. If they can't handle that, they should just get out of the business, and any voting commissioner that allows such a machine to be used should find himself looking for another job.
Furthermore, as many here on Slashdot have pointed out, there needs to be some mechanism by which knowledgeable voters can make sure that the code that the vendor has shown the public is the code that is actually running in the machine at voting time. This is not an impossible task, in spite of what the equipment makers would have you believe. I'm less concerned about paper trails and all the rest of that (at this point) than I am that the machines be as transparent as it is possible to get. Hell, I'd say voting machine enclosures should be made of transparent Plexiglas, for that matter. Let us see what's going on in there, and see how open we can make the whole process. Don't like that? Tough
Let's keep one thing firmly in mind, since equipment vendors keep going on about "proprietary secrets" and "competitive advantages" and all that. Vote tallying is not some incredibly complicated task that can only be solved by sophisticated, innovative engineering. Quite the opposite, a "voting machine" is nothing more than a fancy counter! That's all it is, all it was ever intended to be, and the only "innovation" that I would like to see is the companies that provide them being honest about what they're doing.
That is something Americans have a right to expect.
Seemingly the Russians with their outdated technology are winning the space race. The USA with all its money, trying for reusable spacecraft, lost!
I'm not sure what you mean by that, since we didn't just try for reusable spacecraft we actually built them. They're called "Space Shuttles". We've put lots of stuff into Earth orbit using the Shuttle fleet. Granted, the launch cost was far greater than originally projected, but show me a single government on this planet that doesn't incur major cost overruns on a big project. Let's also remember that we didn't spend enough money up front to build the spaceplane that NASA originally wanted: the Shuttle is a flying kluge and it's amazing to me that it works at all. Sometimes it doesn't. Congress, in more ways than one, screwed us by getting cheap after the end of the Apollo program.
In any event, since you seem to think the U.S. space program has been a failure, let me point out that the U.S. Global Positioning System has been operational for decades while Russia's satellite network never achieved more than partial functionality. The entire planet has benefited directly from the U.S. investment in GPS (not that I expect any expression of gratitude at this point) so much so that now entire economies are dependent upon that kind of technology. Sort of like the Internet, for that matter. As I understand it, GLONASS wasn't working at all for a long time and at its peak had nowhere near the global impact of GPS.
Besides, "winning" a race depends upon the nature of the race, and what you are trying to achieve in the first place. Seemingly you need to do some more research before posting.
Well, my experience is generally that anyone using a cell phone in a car might as well be drunk since it's hard to tell the difference from the way they drive. Now, it may be true that women talk longer on the cell phone: I say that because most women I know talk longer on the regular telephone, in fact I will go so far as to say that the invention of the cordless telephone did more to crank up phone usage than any other single factor. My old girlfriend would talk for hours on the phone, that doubled when she went cordless and then dummy me bought her a headset and I never got to talk to her again. However, I don't know if that applies to cell phone usage, although I suspect it does.
... women in the 18 to 25 year old range used to be substantially safer than their male counterparts. Not anymore. So when you combine their native inability to handle a large vehicle (that may sound sexist to some of you, but I drive sixty miles a day surrounded by these feminine sociopaths and it's reached the point where I'm considering moving closer to work) and the inability of pretty much everyone, regardless of sex, to drive effectively with a cell phone jammed in their ear, it's getting pretty goddamned dangerous out there.
Now, I will say that women drivers, in my experience, are becoming more aggressive, more dangerous, regardless of whether or not they're using a cellular phone. Worse, at least in the area where I live they're all driving giant ASSUVs (Arrogant Suburbanites Sporting Ugly Vehicles.) Apparently insurance company statistics bear that out
"There are going to be those who have it and those who don't. And even those who get it later are going to be a generation behind," Ford said.
No, idiot, the ones who get it later will be a generation ahead.
I'm not being cynical, I'm being facetious. I don't know enough about the actual topic to be cynical. I was referring to one of the first-season episodes of the TV show Lost.
Remember folks, this is not the AT&T of old we're talking about, this is SBC, the Southern Bastards Club, arguably the most abusive the RBOCs. Remember Edward J. Whitacre's comments regarding network neutrality:
"Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using," he said, according to Business Week Online's edited excerpts of the interview.
"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts," he said.
So, given the rather unenlightened attitude evidenced by this double-dipping bastard I think I have reason to ask: what assurances is AT&T/SBC providing that they will not only maintain some level of neutrality, but will continue to do so in the future? Bland "assurances" mean absolutely nothing, and if the SEC takes them at their word in this matter I'll lose a lot of respect for that organization. It isn't wise to believe anything coming out of a telephone company executive's mouth, just on principle, and that applies to most cable company management as well.
Yes, well ... remember what happened when the fat guy in Lost played the numbers he got from the guy in the psycho ward who heard them on the radio. Well, yeah, he won 68 million dollars or some such, but it was all downhill from there.
It's less about artificial promotion, than what happens when you do achieve a monopoly with a given product and service. If you begin to misuse the natural influence over market affairs that grants you to help maintain the monopoly, you may find yourself in hot water. That's what makes you interesting to the Feds from an antitrust standpoint. Wouldn't matter one bit if Google were a monopoly (contrary to popular belief here on Slashdot monopolies are not intrinsically illegal under U.S. law) unless they began to use that status to cause deliberate damage to competitors (or potential competitors.) Microsoft's exclusionary deals with major hardware vendors are an example of monopoly abuse. I'm not actually sure how Google, or any company that operates like Google does, would go about doing anything similar, now that I think about it. I guess it would be possible, given the resources they have, but they'll have to become a monopoly first. If you were a monopolistic antitrustworthy Google, and wanted to ruthlessly suppress your competitors, how would you go about it?
Microsoft forced customers to buy Windows if they wanted a PC, whereas Google draws customers because they offer something that's both good and free, and if they do ultimately monopolize the search market it will be because enough users willingly abandon the competition. That would make them a "good" monopoly, as such, but it would be a fragile one at that. Of course, this applies to any well-run and genuinely useful Web service.
... but they haven't demonstrated it in the same palpable manner.
Only because Emperor Palpatine hasn't taken over at Google yet.
Everybody dumps on the top dog. Until he's no longer top dog, and the new top dog has to take the abuse. There's plenty of whining about Microsoft when it comes to other things, but Google is the perceived top dog when it comes to search. So that's where all the crap flows.
I have a straightforward policy regarding trust: if it comes to my house in a TCP/IP packet I don't trust it. I may find it useful, but I don't trust it. So Google can do what they want, but if they become too untrustworthy (too "evil") then I'll switch to the lesser evil, whoever that might be at the time.