where have non technical people been involved in adopting e voting? Where I live in Georgia, "technical" people designed and built the diebold e voting machine. "Technical" people in state government "approved" it, based on "technical audits". Based on the recommendations of these "technical" people, non technical peoples concerns were laughed at, ridiculed, they were assured "it just worked".
Big fat hairy lie. A complete falsehood, a fabrication. Technical people foisted this abomination on us. Bad people with a big brother political agenda, IMO.
Some things are better mechanised, others AREN'T. The big problem with simple paper ballots was the ridiculously designed election system, which insists on less than a 24 hour voting period, and to have it always during a normal workday, where either the rich boss class could go vote whenever they wanted to, or the completely non rich "welfare" class could go vote. they also control the debates, how any third party can get on the ballot or an independent, they also contro the media and who gets covered and who doesn't, brainwashing generation after generation that voting for criminal globalist party Candiate A over B will somehow result in "change for the better" and "choice". People in the middle with this voting scheme they were using before had a hassle, so it lead to the "technical" people in politics, based on THEIR decisions, to say "aww gee, looks like YOU got problems now" which they wanted to fix with magic voodoo "computers", and it turns out to be a complete congame scam, with the highly likely designed from scratch ability for the "technical" people who have a political agenda to *hijack elections* on a mass scale, instead of having to do it the old fashioned hard way, precinct by precinct, which was hard to do. Now they can do it from "technical" vote hijacking central command someplace. And now we are being told that if we just make it even more complex,and more expensive, that we can have a "paper trail" to "prove" the vote isn't hijacked. How do you do that when the people who are doing the vote hijacking are the people who design the system and run the candidates that THEY want, and insist on THEIR "technical" way of doing things? Vote 'em out? ain't that a catch 22 then? "Technically"?
duh, that's what we had before without spending thousands of dollars per polling place, a paper trail. Cost peanuts, worked as well as anything else, and at least they couldn't hijack ALL the polling places. Terchnically that is.
Just because someone doesn'tlike YOUR pet electronic gizmo doesn't mean they can't think for themselves or are somehow inferior to your excalted position as arbiter of all things "technical". A lot of us geeks think it's a better techncial idea to use KISS instead of rube goldberg gizmos run, designed, and profited from bycrooks for something as important as voting. Crooks can be as technical as anyone else, being "technical" is ZERO guarantee you are honest or capable of seeing a big picture. Techncial people bring us efficient mass murder, spam, viruses and nowe sophisticated vote hijacking. Ya, they bring us some good, but they bring us just as much non-good.
"Windows isn't a blackhole for viruses as some people like to overemphasize it as. Windows is a blackhole for people who do silly things like run ridiculous software or click on attachments when they shouldn't."
So my response would be, except for the untold millions of people who ARE running a windows blackhole machine that sucks in every virus, worm, trojan, malware and spyware out there. Which is most of them. They are by far the largest users demographically on the internet, and it goes across national boundaries, and inside practically all businesses out there. It's a HUGE problem, it destroys the global economy to the tune of billions a year, it causes no one really knows how many wasted man hours of effort to try and keep it cleaned up. It is not a minimal problem because a relatively few people comparatively speaking are able to keep their machines organized better.
I think it's just time to admit reality. Windows as designed is just not a good choice for use on the internet. It is acceptable for use on closed intranets and as a standalone work machine or game machine that is not connected to the net.
Despite the availability of updates, patches, service packs,third party programs, thousands of news articles, advisories, etc, to attempt to divert or stop all the various insecure functions related to MS products in general,going to all the windows users out there through generation after generation of windows products, it is still broken for the purpose of being on the internet. You CANNOT just dismiss verifiable anecdotal data, nor can you dismiss the fact that human beings run this stuff, which means this stuff gets run with normal human levels of ability and interest.
Running pure windows now has negated the entire concept of "easy to use, fun, profitable, useful for this purpose" that they push and definetly imply (although their legal disclaimer claims otherwise, I call that a pure outright lie) their software as, because any joe random user now has to become a part time security guru, when that just shouldn't be necessary, not in 2004 it shouldn't.
Same as linux was not a suitable OS for joe everybody when it required being an unix command line guru just in order to run it. It was useful for a very small number of people in specific applications back when. that's true, too, it wasn't for joe everybody. Windows is pushed good for joe everybody, true, it's fine..just not on the internet. Time to just face facts and move on with it, it doesn't pay to cling to what in essence, and not meant to flame just to state a fact, the fantasy that MS is a practical choice if your computing requires being on the internet, personal or business, not if all you want to do is be on the internet and not be a semi professional security expert. It's just broken for that purpose, generally speaking. pointing out individual examples of where it isn't does nothing to take away the reality that in millions and millions of cases it is in fact, a blackhole, except with a definition twist, it sucks them in like a blackhole analogy, then multiplies them exponentially, then spits them back out again.
For every incredibly secure windows installation out there, there are huge numbers of totally broken and insecure examples, that's the real bottom line, and this despite years and years of efforts to make that "not so". I would guess it it is at least 100 to 1, insecure to secure, or some such huge lopsided number like that. Might even be 1000 to 1, no one really knows. It's huge though. And every new version iof the OS and browser and email thingee and SP was supposed to "fix that" and it never has really. It's because of how human beings use computers, and most human beings are not, and will not become, full time or significant part time, security gurus. If this reality is not admitted to, the problem will always exist, and just get worse, not better.
I haven't seen the moore movie yet, but I own a copy of alex jones documentary "9-11, road to tyranny". By all the reviews I have read on moores film, the jones film has a lot more in it, and hits a lot more subjects. It's been out two years, he encourages people to make copies and give them away. I know it's on the p2p networks as well, so if anyone who actually uses those things could post some links, maybe people might like to see that vid as well. Moore has hollywod status now, jones is down to the nitty gritty, and is NEITHER a democrat nor a republican, so you can avoid that partisan scam politics left/right BS with his works. Moore's film I bet is a lot more polished, but if it's data and some insight you are looking for, try the jone's videos(several more available then the one I mentioned). He has *consistently* allowed people and even encouraged them to make copies and give them away.infowars.com,. look for video and trailer links, then try P2P networks.
I don't do the P2P thing for various reasons (old box, slow connection, tiny hdd, etc) or I would post the links myself.
With that said I'm not saying avoid moores films, I liked "roger and me" for instance, just to give a real politically neutral and independent guy a chance if this 911 deal is a subject you are interested in, or any other aspects of the creeping big brother society. That's all he deals with.. All he wants is truth to get out, and that's it. In my opinion it's a powerful film, decent enough to watch.
My very first bought brand spanking new box. mac 6400 minitower. I loved that thing. Anyway, one day we took a direct lightning hit on the power line coming in. This was weird because it was well after a storm had passed and I thought it safe to plug it back in and reboot it. duh on me, the technology gods were having a funny I guess, some rogue lightning hit it. I had it running through a fairly decent surge protector, but still it was too much. It just POPPED off line instantly and went blank screen. Rats! A little while later I opened it up, crispy critters inside, all burnt looking, smelt bad, etc. I took it outside and cleaned it out best I could. Went back in, hooked it back up and the dang thing booted! It was running pretty rank though, but I used it for another week until I could fix an old quadra (gf's machine)we had and use that to get online with. If you would have seen the thing, all fried, I mean *nasty* looking, and still see it struggling to work and almost suceeding, well, that's why apple got a good rep for building stout stuff I guess.
Dumbass ME though, had never sent in the warranty on the surge protector, if I had, could have gotten another new machine.
I scrapped it the next week, kept a few things off of it and the case with the speakers, and the drives, although I have never tried the harddrive out yet come to think of it. Hmm, need to find something that can possibly read it.
just by having two different conducting metals trouching, and applying any sort of heat.(picky physics majors feel free to correct my terminology and description if this is wrong, just looking for a ball park term for casual conversational purposes here). It's called a thermocouple.
Back when I used to work on a dairy, the farmer had a kerosene lamp that ran a table top radio! He got this gizmo when he was in the navy in ww2 and doing one of the murmansk lend-lease runs to the soviets. He bought it in a shop there and brought it back, and it was still working in the mid 70's when I saw it.. It looked like a normal kerosene lamp, you lit it and it threw light, but the body had fins on it, similar in appearance to the fins on an air cooled engine. I don't know what materials it used, but once you lit it and it warmed up, it gave enough power (had wirez coming from it, natch) to run a radio. I don't have a link handy, but I am fairly sure you can still buy these.
With that said, yes, cool on the proteins to electricity. It's cool, nice to see more work being done but...
....For the time being, just growing wood/other biomass stuff and using it is pretty effective and the tech is out there for joe homeowner right now, no waiting required, step right up and lay down your CC and get what you want. You can even get exterior furnaces now that heat your home, provide the hot water, PLUS run a small boiler and turn a steam turbine to give you electricity. It is semi common for alternate energy enthusiasts. An aquantinace of mine at Sensible Steam Consultants, goes all over the world and designs and builds and installs these types of multi use systems using wood, coal other biomass like ag waste, etc.
well, I went and looked for that lamp:
here is a modern version of the lamp for sale. Scroll down to the radio-lamp set of links. Site is in french but it looks like a lamp, throws good light probably, also gives you 5 watts of power for various purposes. I can't find a good link to the older russian lamps, just a bunch of places that say they still exist and are still used in siberia a lot. The one I saw worked well enough to run an older tube job radio, and it worked *well*.
We HAVE a lot of alternative energy solutions right now,from electricity generation/conversion to vehicles to heating and cooling solutions,it just needs more widespread adoption by individuals and homeowners and businesses and not wait for the "other guy" to do it. There is something for everyone out there now, low budget to high budget, pick your application you are interested in. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of different and "alternative" ways to "do" what we are doing now when it comes to using "energy". More R&D is good,it should continue, BUT this subject has had more than enough R&D already,we are WAY beyond that now, it needs mass adoption and deployment, whether it's PV panels to wind generators to like what this last linked company does, use biomass in a straight forward manner that is efficient and productive. There is literally no other reason to wait now, we kept saying "next century we would have alternative energy choices". Guess what! that century got here, the predictions were *true*, and we DO have "alternative energy" choices right now,they are being wholesaled and retailed, you can get them, they work.
... so work around those aspects of reality. Use that egold deal someone else mentioned in another part of this article thread. Really, I fully understand it would be a lot easier and less hassle if using online services was transparent and honest and effective. I have no easy answers to it. Perhaps, a group of honestvendors can get together in foreign nation x, and arrange so that they pool their transnational currencies they accumulate into one large sum per alternate currency, then conduct one transaction with the currency exchange service per short time period, then unpool the now exchanged local currency back to the individual vendors based on the accounting data that went into accumulating each pool per individualk vendor. Consumers in those nations there could do similar I guess, the concept (a variation of it) is called a "buying club" or a "co-op" here in the US. I have been in several, more or less they work pretty spiffy.
Anyway, as has been pointed out, it's the number of bad apples as a percentage of the population, that's something only the inviduals in these respective nations can do for themselves, until we have an international way of regulating e commerce that is effective. I have MANY times here on slashdot advocated that email addresses be much harder to get*, and that they be as unique as normal telphone numbers or street adresses, so that fraud and spam may be knocked down considerably. It is just too cheap and easy to get a fraudulent anonymous email address that will be used for hacking/crime/spam purposes. WAY too easy.
*you could still have the basic anarchy style email addresses we have now, as many as you want, no problems, just an additional one as an alternative you used for V.ery I.mportant E.mail, whether personal or business, etc. I would propose they be run similar to domain name registration now, and cost x amount of folding money per email address and had to be tied to an actual verifiable named human being with as much identification verification as possible to insure legitimacy.
Besides that, I don't know, there are tradeoffs around the world wherever you live. I live in the US, so this is the reality I live with, the good and the bad. There are certain aspects to living in various other nations that make them a better place than living inside the US, and there are some that make them worse. Just "is" is all. I freely admit to being fairly insular in my world views, but I stop short of jingoism or xenophia, but I will still call a spade a spade on any subject. I will praise or decry based on data, that's it, on any subject.. I don't necessarily hate or dislike any particular peoples or groups, but I believe in freedom of association as well, for all peoples, and that means that if group A decides to not do business with group B, well, that's just how it's going to be. I may not like this decision or that decision, but all in all because I can still roughly speaking make those sorts of decisions for myself, I think it's acceptable, so I must accept it for others as well. I know I work hard to try and make my nation better, with all it's faults, and I spend very little time on "entertainments", compared to most people, as my personal tradeoff and to fulfill a certain sense of civic duty, and it's all voluntary on my part. It's the best I can do. Other people around the world must do that themselves, take what steps are necessary to try and make their own nations and governments and businesses better and more fair and honest. Like I said, the choices I make are, I don't hardly ever use a CC. I primarily use cash notes, as flawed as they are, in my day to day business and when I have to get something remotely if it's a small amount I use a personal check, larger than say around 50$ I use a postal money order. In fact, up until just a few years ago I frequently used to just mail cash, and despite doing that for decades, I never got burned, not one single time. I only quit doing that as the US mail service seemed to go downhill when "globalisation" c
I live in the US and have a good credit card and do online shopping, but with a twist. I don't use my credit card online much, only to a couple sites I have been doing business with for a long time. The rest I get a snail mail address from them for whatever thing I want to buy and send a personal check or a US postal money order. Takes a few days longer to get my stuff, but I don't care, it is more secure all around for both parties to do it that way. It is slightly more hassle, but much more secure. Nothing is perfect, but you can eliminate a lot of the imperfections by not using the more imperfect method of online shopping. Filling in a form with CC info or paypal info at a "secure" shopping site is marginally easier, but it is not more secure than the old fashioned way of doing remote business called "mail order". That's why there are all these problems you see. There are still scams that can happen both ways with snail mail, but all in all it's an older and better established way to do that sort of remote buying and selling. It's also cheaper for the vendor, so it can be cheaper for the customer, with a tradeoff of a just a tiny little more work at both ends, and you as a vendor don't have to eat the processing fees from paypal or the credit card companies, just work with your own personal bank. I'm not sure how it works in other nations, but in the US there isn't any fee for depositing checks, just writing them, and even there a lot of banks here now will pay interest to you on a checking account with a reasonable minimum balance, so it's the exact opposite of a credit card or paypal account, the processor (your bank) pays YOU instead of the other way around (CC company and paypal).
In other words, why should you or your customer work to make visa, mastercard and paypal rich, when there is no absolute outright need?
... freeking rubber stamped perpetual license to use the PUBLICS airwaves forever and ever to print money with. The government and the FCC is so dang much in the pockets of the big broadcasters they won't even let joe little guy operate a 5 watt simple radio station on an unused frequency legally, nor will they cut you a permit if you ask for it. And forget TV, unless you are in a position to drop thousands in under the table cash "consultationm fees" then millions in overt legal licenses, you just can't do it, no matter how simple or low power beyond a few yards range.
The basic problem seems to be you just cannot place two dissimilar materials next to each other without eventually getting problems. I know this from just basic home repair, never use differring metals in plumbing or electrical devices if at all possible.
Must be where humans got the concept of "cooties" from.;)
You would think so. Very good quality forced air filters are now down to the cheap consumer price level. Seems to me with a zillion dollars of hardware and data in a room you would use a medium clean room concept to build such a room.
With that said I think I am going to install a filter on my box somehow, noting the dust in it. Maybe use a small engine throw away air filter with a larger fan and some duct work action. I got those kicking around in my power equipment junk pile. Can't be too hard to do this.
I don't know really. What use is it to have one of these x terminals with such and such amount of ram and such and such speed cpu, when you can probably find one with half those figures? Maybe it works better? Maybe it will work better still with twice as much more ram and a faster processor? I don't know really, just asking. I am more thinking about a different subject on another thread, I am being turned onto plan 9 now. I had an idea for a distributed video card substitute, heard about plan 9, and coincidently this article appeared shortly, then I read about this terminal and... one thing lead to six more. That's all.
I want the next generation of computing basically. I think it's time to move on from what we have now. Exploring options in me pea brane here. What we have now works great, don't gget me wrong, I think that the pieces of what we have and the way software is used could be re arranged and we'd have something a lot better. Just the guys in the main topic here, took something everyone else has kicking around in the junk drawer, made something pretty new and cool out of it just by re arranging, thinkiing out of the box, and some skull sweat with an editor. Cool beans.
it certainly sounds like I would like it. It describes a situation much closer to what I had in mind for computing. Interesting, so I guess it was more widespread and worked on more. Oh well. Funny unix and plan 9 both came from AT&T, isn't it?
I like both in fedora.. I use synaptic to quickly check and browse and see what's new and shiny every coupla days. Very good for that purpose. Once I make my decision, I go back to cli and run it from there. For some reason it seems to work faster/better for me. You would think it's the same, but on my old machine sometimes the synaptic front end seems to hang the downloads, while straight apt from command line is always smooth. And I only pull my kernels from the redhat sites using up2date from cli. Sort of spread the fun around.
'fraid I disagree. I have had quite a few jobs in my life so far, so that means a lot of bosses. As a general rule of thumb, a boss/manager who has actually done the work that his company does, is a better boss. I've had so many examples of both I have a hard time arguing with myself over it. People who enter the workforce strictly as managers have unrealistic expectations, and..well, most of them I have ever met are quite lazy too. Not all, not singling anyone out here, etc, just a general rule of thumb I have noticed anecdotally. Whereas someone who has done the physical sweat and the skull sweat before, actually knows what his employees are talking about. And yes, to go beyond that step requires additional skills, but frankly, I think management skills in general are over hyped. Being a good manager means you are a good person,emphasis good, as in not a dickhead personality wise, you can relate to various situations and people in an even handed and logical manner. To make money at it you just need the additional ability to think a few steps farther and to do long range planning, but the day to day "management" aspect is just being able to keep the humans acting like civised humans, and to be able to understand what people are saying, from any direction.
I know that's only my personal outlook, but it's the one I have now, seeing all the various types of bosses out there, from super hands off minimalists to overbearing dictatroids to know nothing clueless dilettantes. My favorite is a near minimalist who you can talk to, and your input is just as important as the marketing guys input.
From the "marketing is king" side of running business, of course, they say there is no business unless you sell, from the other direction, you make a really good product, then market it, you must have a good product to sell something in the first place. I don't even think crap should be attempted to be sold, to me it's unethical. Mostly because I believe in quality in being job #1 all the time, as a consumer I have overhyped crap being attempted to be sold to me with unethical, but advanced and psychologically studied, peruasion techniques, etc, all the time, it's annoying, rude, crude and counter productive. Makes me think it's a bad company, so that means bad management, from a "management and marketing is king" oriented corporation. It's distateful. Sort of how I feel about the borg for instance, marketing is more important than quality it appears. Hmm, also similar to the current resident at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. Never done a single days work in his life, only been a "manager" and he's done a pretty dismal job so far, IMO. I think that's one of the reasons why, too.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree on it, it won't change a single thing out there one way or the other.
My idea, well question for an idea, was based on combining two ideas. One, is I think all the devices with computers should be stand alone modular. I think that is how they will be designed in the future, with each device having it's own specific custom kernel and minimal circuitry additions,full embeded in other words, so that the device does one task, but does that one task very well, and can be used with any other device. The next generation of plug n play in other words..that is the goal beyond the idea in my mind, but to get there you need to various devices to act like that. The second is, thinking the video card replacement could be possible, was from looking at the work being done now with software radio,where they can change a lot of things normally done in hardware just with software changes. I thought, if there, why not here?
As to me, I'm just a neogeezer blue collar geek who dabbles in futurism and cob jobbing. I just like thinking "what if?"
My idea was to have a mothership basic very non complex computer, all it does is serve as a place for the devices to coordinate their actions. It is more minimal than what we have today,all it does is coordinate very well, but the devices are smarter, they are closer to being stand alone.
Alternatively, a collaborative work to be done along the sides of a normal open source project, but to include the hardware engineers, to start to develop open source hardware, that could then be assembled cheaper. I know that's a lot of parts and complexity, but to just take baby steps towards it, and I thought with video cards it might be the first step with all the interest in them, and they are pricey when new all the time, and frequently get upgraded. I see this as a sort of waste, and thought it better to just build a basic video card-like separate device, where the upgrading is done primarily in software advances, seeing as how the cpu chip would be replaceable readily and the ram could be of a huge amount initially. Commodity hardware, taking the pc clone idea to two steps further than what it is now. Seems like you could use the same edge connectors on the pci or the agp slots that exist now, so making a jumper shouldn't be too hard. The video card side of the equation would use a stripped kernel for it's cpu that only did video. Maybe even one of the smaller chip companies could see a market in replaceable video GPUs that would fit in a normal intel type socket. I don't know, but seems just as possible as replacing normal cpus. I am understanding now that the chips are very differently designed, but perhaps with such a chip being available, combined with the ability to have quite a lot of ram to use, and a little room to move around with on a normal mobo, I thought it might be possible and actually do-able.
Anyway, thanks for the detailed clarification on these matters. I had heard of the Plan 9 before but really didn't pursue looking at it, I didn't know it was so radically different, but if it follows what I am trying to describe and failing at, heh, I think it's a good idea compared to what we have now.
....hire or use any marketing or advertising people who are not programmers themselves. They should have a clear understanding what the process is *first* from hands on experience in some depth. Sort of like in a manufacturing factory, all the management should have come up from working the line originally.
I see these articles all the time, and to me, it seems this struggling with drivers and vendor lock in with using exact specific cards for the video is the problem. Is it possible to use a comopletely separate computer to just run the video? All the cards are is a small computer system with an onboard cpu-like thing, on board ram, some controller chips etc, which to my layperson's understanding is just another form of a normal mobo and assorted gear on it stuck on a card you slap in a PCI slot or whatever. So, my question is, would it be possible to just use another computer to opensource replace the whole video card experience? Have a computer you could build yourself that mimiced what a video card does, and have drivers that can be easily written GPL fashion then? I understand you'd have to be able to get normal computer A to talk to video card emulator computer B. Just asking the smart guys here if this has ever been done, if it's possible, is it a lame idea or a good idea long term, etc? Just seems with the ability to have gigs of ram and high speed chips, etc easily obtainable on the mobo of your choice, this might be a completely alternate way to go other than being stuck with basically a couple of companies and driver hassles all the time, to move it away from propietary.
that I thought was fascinating in a geeky cob job way, and that was what the civilians did during the war in occupied europe. They made "wood gas"(methane) generators to run vehicles. I have seen some pictures of them. They built smoky fires in enclosed/ducted home made furnace things, then piped the partially burnt smoke through oil bath filters into the carb intakes. It worked well enough for them to get from point A to B.
I believe south africa was big on gasoline from coal as well, and got some good R & D advances with it.
...small compact computer designs get these whiskers easier. I don't doubt it happens, but where are all the millions of laptops shorted out then, or the mini itx machines,game machines, etc?
Is there something else here causing whiskers to grow some places and not in others, even though both have zinc?
No, people mostly DON'T know there are alternatives, due to industry collusion and fraud at very high levels, levels such that it is mostly ignored by the government, because even there they profit individually from the congame of maintaining this monopoly, although they claim they don't and had a whitewash "judicial hearing" and series of lawsuits over it. It was a coverup joke whitewash effort *at best*.. There is no prohibition from governmental employees using their income or knowledge to help make scam profits in the markets, just a joke level,or nothing really stopping them accepting "fees" on the side,just a joke level, or nothing really stopping them from getting blackmailed, that's not a joke but it happens to politicians and bureaucrats and dare I say to judges. It just depends on the situation.
As to not being able to make a safer better browser able to surf without getting hijacked within 15 minutes? Well, all I can say is, not coming from an insecure buggy windows background, or very complicated unix background, but a mac classic simple functional OS/brosewr background, I will assert to you that I ran for YEARS on the net with NO antivirus, no firewall, no anything but the default browser (netscape) that came with the OS install. YM obviously varied from that I would guess, so you have that viewpoint "it's almost impossible, it can't be done", etc.
I *never* had to jump through *any* hoops just to surf simply. I went to any website I wanted to go to, read any email. Nothing. I know a few viruses existed, but I never got one, and I don't think there was a remote exploit for mac classic, or at least to be honest and fair I never heard of one or read about one. The first firewall I ever used on a personal machine was two years ago with linux because you need one, same as windows, but at least they give you one that works with linux. With windows, nope, all the installs I ever saw were woefully overpriced, incomplete to a fault, and failed to function very well. And insecurity isn't an issue, they *are* insecure as shipped, you MUST jump through hoops to even approach a dismal-security range, let alone a pretty good-security range.
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where have non technical people been involved in adopting e voting? Where I live in Georgia, "technical" people designed and built the diebold e voting machine. "Technical" people in state government "approved" it, based on "technical audits". Based on the recommendations of these "technical" people, non technical peoples concerns were laughed at, ridiculed, they were assured "it just worked".
Big fat hairy lie. A complete falsehood, a fabrication. Technical people foisted this abomination on us. Bad people with a big brother political agenda, IMO.
Some things are better mechanised, others AREN'T. The big problem with simple paper ballots was the ridiculously designed election system, which insists on less than a 24 hour voting period, and to have it always during a normal workday, where either the rich boss class could go vote whenever they wanted to, or the completely non rich "welfare" class could go vote. they also control the debates, how any third party can get on the ballot or an independent, they also contro the media and who gets covered and who doesn't, brainwashing generation after generation that voting for criminal globalist party Candiate A over B will somehow result in "change for the better" and "choice". People in the middle with this voting scheme they were using before had a hassle, so it lead to the "technical" people in politics, based on THEIR decisions, to say "aww gee, looks like YOU got problems now" which they wanted to fix with magic voodoo "computers", and it turns out to be a complete congame scam, with the highly likely designed from scratch ability for the "technical" people who have a political agenda to *hijack elections* on a mass scale, instead of having to do it the old fashioned hard way, precinct by precinct, which was hard to do. Now they can do it from "technical" vote hijacking central command someplace. And now we are being told that if we just make it even more complex,and more expensive, that we can have a "paper trail" to "prove" the vote isn't hijacked. How do you do that when the people who are doing the vote hijacking are the people who design the system and run the candidates that THEY want, and insist on THEIR "technical" way of doing things? Vote 'em out? ain't that a catch 22 then? "Technically"?
duh, that's what we had before without spending thousands of dollars per polling place, a paper trail. Cost peanuts, worked as well as anything else, and at least they couldn't hijack ALL the polling places. Terchnically that is.
Just because someone doesn'tlike YOUR pet electronic gizmo doesn't mean they can't think for themselves or are somehow inferior to your excalted position as arbiter of all things "technical". A lot of us geeks think it's a better techncial idea to use KISS instead of rube goldberg gizmos run, designed, and profited from by crooks for something as important as voting. Crooks can be as technical as anyone else, being "technical" is ZERO guarantee you are honest or capable of seeing a big picture. Techncial people bring us efficient mass murder, spam, viruses and nowe sophisticated vote hijacking. Ya, they bring us some good, but they bring us just as much non-good.
your quote
"Windows isn't a blackhole for viruses as some people like to overemphasize it as. Windows is a blackhole for people who do silly things like run ridiculous software or click on attachments when they shouldn't."
So my response would be, except for the untold millions of people who ARE running a windows blackhole machine that sucks in every virus, worm, trojan, malware and spyware out there. Which is most of them. They are by far the largest users demographically on the internet, and it goes across national boundaries, and inside practically all businesses out there. It's a HUGE problem, it destroys the global economy to the tune of billions a year, it causes no one really knows how many wasted man hours of effort to try and keep it cleaned up. It is not a minimal problem because a relatively few people comparatively speaking are able to keep their machines organized better.
I think it's just time to admit reality. Windows as designed is just not a good choice for use on the internet. It is acceptable for use on closed intranets and as a standalone work machine or game machine that is not connected to the net.
Despite the availability of updates, patches, service packs,third party programs, thousands of news articles, advisories, etc, to attempt to divert or stop all the various insecure functions related to MS products in general,going to all the windows users out there through generation after generation of windows products, it is still broken for the purpose of being on the internet. You CANNOT just dismiss verifiable anecdotal data, nor can you dismiss the fact that human beings run this stuff, which means this stuff gets run with normal human levels of ability and interest.
Running pure windows now has negated the entire concept of "easy to use, fun, profitable, useful for this purpose" that they push and definetly imply (although their legal disclaimer claims otherwise, I call that a pure outright lie) their software as, because any joe random user now has to become a part time security guru, when that just shouldn't be necessary, not in 2004 it shouldn't.
Same as linux was not a suitable OS for joe everybody when it required being an unix command line guru just in order to run it. It was useful for a very small number of people in specific applications back when. that's true, too, it wasn't for joe everybody. Windows is pushed good for joe everybody, true, it's fine..just not on the internet. Time to just face facts and move on with it, it doesn't pay to cling to what in essence, and not meant to flame just to state a fact, the fantasy that MS is a practical choice if your computing requires being on the internet, personal or business, not if all you want to do is be on the internet and not be a semi professional security expert. It's just broken for that purpose, generally speaking. pointing out individual examples of where it isn't does nothing to take away the reality that in millions and millions of cases it is in fact, a blackhole, except with a definition twist, it sucks them in like a blackhole analogy, then multiplies them exponentially, then spits them back out again.
For every incredibly secure windows installation out there, there are huge numbers of totally broken and insecure examples, that's the real bottom line, and this despite years and years of efforts to make that "not so". I would guess it it is at least 100 to 1, insecure to secure, or some such huge lopsided number like that. Might even be 1000 to 1, no one really knows. It's huge though. And every new version iof the OS and browser and email thingee and SP was supposed to "fix that" and it never has really. It's because of how human beings use computers, and most human beings are not, and will not become, full time or significant part time, security gurus. If this reality is not admitted to, the problem will always exist, and just get worse, not better.
US of A brand army.mil not as interesting as the phillipines link, it is meagre
no idea how I missed that domain extension previously, so exc-u-u-u-u-u-se me!
here ya go, direct look at some of the dudes in question.
I don't do the P2P thing for various reasons (old box, slow connection, tiny hdd, etc) or I would post the links myself.
With that said I'm not saying avoid moores films, I liked "roger and me" for instance, just to give a real politically neutral and independent guy a chance if this 911 deal is a subject you are interested in, or any other aspects of the creeping big brother society. That's all he deals with.. All he wants is truth to get out, and that's it. In my opinion it's a powerful film, decent enough to watch.
My very first bought brand spanking new box. mac 6400 minitower. I loved that thing. Anyway, one day we took a direct lightning hit on the power line coming in. This was weird because it was well after a storm had passed and I thought it safe to plug it back in and reboot it. duh on me, the technology gods were having a funny I guess, some rogue lightning hit it. I had it running through a fairly decent surge protector, but still it was too much. It just POPPED off line instantly and went blank screen. Rats! A little while later I opened it up, crispy critters inside, all burnt looking, smelt bad, etc. I took it outside and cleaned it out best I could. Went back in, hooked it back up and the dang thing booted! It was running pretty rank though, but I used it for another week until I could fix an old quadra (gf's machine)we had and use that to get online with. If you would have seen the thing, all fried, I mean *nasty* looking, and still see it struggling to work and almost suceeding, well, that's why apple got a good rep for building stout stuff I guess.
Dumbass ME though, had never sent in the warranty on the surge protector, if I had, could have gotten another new machine.
I scrapped it the next week, kept a few things off of it and the case with the speakers, and the drives, although I have never tried the harddrive out yet come to think of it. Hmm, need to find something that can possibly read it.
Back when I used to work on a dairy, the farmer had a kerosene lamp that ran a table top radio! He got this gizmo when he was in the navy in ww2 and doing one of the murmansk lend-lease runs to the soviets. He bought it in a shop there and brought it back, and it was still working in the mid 70's when I saw it.. It looked like a normal kerosene lamp, you lit it and it threw light, but the body had fins on it, similar in appearance to the fins on an air cooled engine. I don't know what materials it used, but once you lit it and it warmed up, it gave enough power (had wirez coming from it, natch) to run a radio. I don't have a link handy, but I am fairly sure you can still buy these.
With that said, yes, cool on the proteins to electricity. It's cool, nice to see more work being done but...
well, I went and looked for that lamp:
here is a modern version of the lamp for sale. Scroll down to the radio-lamp set of links. Site is in french but it looks like a lamp, throws good light probably, also gives you 5 watts of power for various purposes. I can't find a good link to the older russian lamps, just a bunch of places that say they still exist and are still used in siberia a lot. The one I saw worked well enough to run an older tube job radio, and it worked *well*.
Here is an example of a company that builds very advanced biomass energy conversion solutions, from decent homeowner sized on up.
We HAVE a lot of alternative energy solutions right now,from electricity generation/conversion to vehicles to heating and cooling solutions,it just needs more widespread adoption by individuals and homeowners and businesses and not wait for the "other guy" to do it. There is something for everyone out there now, low budget to high budget, pick your application you are interested in. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of different and "alternative" ways to "do" what we are doing now when it comes to using "energy". More R&D is good,it should continue, BUT this subject has had more than enough R&D already,we are WAY beyond that now, it needs mass adoption and deployment, whether it's PV panels to wind generators to like what this last linked company does, use biomass in a straight forward manner that is efficient and productive. There is literally no other reason to wait now, we kept saying "next century we would have alternative energy choices". Guess what! that century got here, the predictions were *true*, and we DO have "alternative energy" choices right now,they are being wholesaled and retailed, you can get them, they work.
... so work around those aspects of reality. Use that egold deal someone else mentioned in another part of this article thread. Really, I fully understand it would be a lot easier and less hassle if using online services was transparent and honest and effective. I have no easy answers to it. Perhaps, a group of honestvendors can get together in foreign nation x, and arrange so that they pool their transnational currencies they accumulate into one large sum per alternate currency, then conduct one transaction with the currency exchange service per short time period, then unpool the now exchanged local currency back to the individual vendors based on the accounting data that went into accumulating each pool per individualk vendor. Consumers in those nations there could do similar I guess, the concept (a variation of it) is called a "buying club" or a "co-op" here in the US. I have been in several, more or less they work pretty spiffy.
Anyway, as has been pointed out, it's the number of bad apples as a percentage of the population, that's something only the inviduals in these respective nations can do for themselves, until we have an international way of regulating e commerce that is effective. I have MANY times here on slashdot advocated that email addresses be much harder to get*, and that they be as unique as normal telphone numbers or street adresses, so that fraud and spam may be knocked down considerably. It is just too cheap and easy to get a fraudulent anonymous email address that will be used for hacking/crime/spam purposes. WAY too easy.
*you could still have the basic anarchy style email addresses we have now, as many as you want, no problems, just an additional one as an alternative you used for V.ery I.mportant E.mail, whether personal or business, etc. I would propose they be run similar to domain name registration now, and cost x amount of folding money per email address and had to be tied to an actual verifiable named human being with as much identification verification as possible to insure legitimacy.
Besides that, I don't know, there are tradeoffs around the world wherever you live. I live in the US, so this is the reality I live with, the good and the bad. There are certain aspects to living in various other nations that make them a better place than living inside the US, and there are some that make them worse. Just "is" is all. I freely admit to being fairly insular in my world views, but I stop short of jingoism or xenophia, but I will still call a spade a spade on any subject. I will praise or decry based on data, that's it, on any subject.. I don't necessarily hate or dislike any particular peoples or groups, but I believe in freedom of association as well, for all peoples, and that means that if group A decides to not do business with group B, well, that's just how it's going to be. I may not like this decision or that decision, but all in all because I can still roughly speaking make those sorts of decisions for myself, I think it's acceptable, so I must accept it for others as well. I know I work hard to try and make my nation better, with all it's faults, and I spend very little time on "entertainments", compared to most people, as my personal tradeoff and to fulfill a certain sense of civic duty, and it's all voluntary on my part. It's the best I can do. Other people around the world must do that themselves, take what steps are necessary to try and make their own nations and governments and businesses better and more fair and honest. Like I said, the choices I make are, I don't hardly ever use a CC. I primarily use cash notes, as flawed as they are, in my day to day business and when I have to get something remotely if it's a small amount I use a personal check, larger than say around 50$ I use a postal money order. In fact, up until just a few years ago I frequently used to just mail cash, and despite doing that for decades, I never got burned, not one single time. I only quit doing that as the US mail service seemed to go downhill when "globalisation" c
I live in the US and have a good credit card and do online shopping, but with a twist. I don't use my credit card online much, only to a couple sites I have been doing business with for a long time. The rest I get a snail mail address from them for whatever thing I want to buy and send a personal check or a US postal money order. Takes a few days longer to get my stuff, but I don't care, it is more secure all around for both parties to do it that way. It is slightly more hassle, but much more secure. Nothing is perfect, but you can eliminate a lot of the imperfections by not using the more imperfect method of online shopping. Filling in a form with CC info or paypal info at a "secure" shopping site is marginally easier, but it is not more secure than the old fashioned way of doing remote business called "mail order". That's why there are all these problems you see. There are still scams that can happen both ways with snail mail, but all in all it's an older and better established way to do that sort of remote buying and selling. It's also cheaper for the vendor, so it can be cheaper for the customer, with a tradeoff of a just a tiny little more work at both ends, and you as a vendor don't have to eat the processing fees from paypal or the credit card companies, just work with your own personal bank. I'm not sure how it works in other nations, but in the US there isn't any fee for depositing checks, just writing them, and even there a lot of banks here now will pay interest to you on a checking account with a reasonable minimum balance, so it's the exact opposite of a credit card or paypal account, the processor (your bank) pays YOU instead of the other way around (CC company and paypal).
In other words, why should you or your customer work to make visa, mastercard and paypal rich, when there is no absolute outright need?
Yep, you got it. Exact same opinion I have. It's time to start treating the software industry like what it is, an industry.
... freeking rubber stamped perpetual license to use the PUBLICS airwaves forever and ever to print money with. The government and the FCC is so dang much in the pockets of the big broadcasters they won't even let joe little guy operate a 5 watt simple radio station on an unused frequency legally, nor will they cut you a permit if you ask for it. And forget TV, unless you are in a position to drop thousands in under the table cash "consultationm fees" then millions in overt legal licenses, you just can't do it, no matter how simple or low power beyond a few yards range.
The basic problem seems to be you just cannot place two dissimilar materials next to each other without eventually getting problems. I know this from just basic home repair, never use differring metals in plumbing or electrical devices if at all possible.
;)
Must be where humans got the concept of "cooties" from.
You would think so. Very good quality forced air filters are now down to the cheap consumer price level. Seems to me with a zillion dollars of hardware and data in a room you would use a medium clean room concept to build such a room.
With that said I think I am going to install a filter on my box somehow, noting the dust in it. Maybe use a small engine throw away air filter with a larger fan and some duct work action. I got those kicking around in my power equipment junk pile. Can't be too hard to do this.
I don't know really. What use is it to have one of these x terminals with such and such amount of ram and such and such speed cpu, when you can probably find one with half those figures? Maybe it works better? Maybe it will work better still with twice as much more ram and a faster processor? I don't know really, just asking. I am more thinking about a different subject on another thread, I am being turned onto plan 9 now. I had an idea for a distributed video card substitute, heard about plan 9, and coincidently this article appeared shortly, then I read about this terminal and... one thing lead to six more. That's all.
I want the next generation of computing basically. I think it's time to move on from what we have now. Exploring options in me pea brane here.
What we have now works great, don't gget me wrong, I think that the pieces of what we have and the way software is used could be re arranged and we'd have something a lot better. Just the guys in the main topic here, took something everyone else has kicking around in the junk drawer, made something pretty new and cool out of it just by re arranging, thinkiing out of the box, and some skull sweat with an editor. Cool beans.
it certainly sounds like I would like it. It describes a situation much closer to what I had in mind for computing. Interesting, so I guess it was more widespread and worked on more. Oh well. Funny unix and plan 9 both came from AT&T, isn't it?
I like both in fedora.. I use synaptic to quickly check and browse and see what's new and shiny every coupla days. Very good for that purpose. Once I make my decision, I go back to cli and run it from there. For some reason it seems to work faster/better for me. You would think it's the same, but on my old machine sometimes the synaptic front end seems to hang the downloads, while straight apt from command line is always smooth. And I only pull my kernels from the redhat sites using up2date from cli. Sort of spread the fun around.
can you upgrade those terminals, put more ram and swap out the cpu to a faster one if you want?
well, GPUS are out there, but they seem to be soldered to the boards, unlike CPUs which you can pop on and off and upgrade.
anyway, I understand it's too complex, certainly for me, so eh, no biggee.
'fraid I disagree. I have had quite a few jobs in my life so far, so that means a lot of bosses. As a general rule of thumb, a boss/manager who has actually done the work that his company does, is a better boss. I've had so many examples of both I have a hard time arguing with myself over it. People who enter the workforce strictly as managers have unrealistic expectations, and..well, most of them I have ever met are quite lazy too. Not all, not singling anyone out here, etc, just a general rule of thumb I have noticed anecdotally. Whereas someone who has done the physical sweat and the skull sweat before, actually knows what his employees are talking about. And yes, to go beyond that step requires additional skills, but frankly, I think management skills in general are over hyped. Being a good manager means you are a good person,emphasis good, as in not a dickhead personality wise, you can relate to various situations and people in an even handed and logical manner. To make money at it you just need the additional ability to think a few steps farther and to do long range planning, but the day to day "management" aspect is just being able to keep the humans acting like civised humans, and to be able to understand what people are saying, from any direction.
I know that's only my personal outlook, but it's the one I have now, seeing all the various types of bosses out there, from super hands off minimalists to overbearing dictatroids to know nothing clueless dilettantes. My favorite is a near minimalist who you can talk to, and your input is just as important as the marketing guys input.
From the "marketing is king" side of running business, of course, they say there is no business unless you sell, from the other direction, you make a really good product, then market it, you must have a good product to sell something in the first place. I don't even think crap should be attempted to be sold, to me it's unethical. Mostly because I believe in quality in being job #1 all the time, as a consumer I have overhyped crap being attempted to be sold to me with unethical, but advanced and psychologically studied, peruasion techniques, etc, all the time, it's annoying, rude, crude and counter productive. Makes me think it's a bad company, so that means bad management, from a "management and marketing is king" oriented corporation. It's distateful. Sort of how I feel about the borg for instance, marketing is more important than quality it appears. Hmm, also similar to the current resident at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. Never done a single days work in his life, only been a "manager" and he's done a pretty dismal job so far, IMO. I think that's one of the reasons why, too.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree on it, it won't change a single thing out there one way or the other.
My idea, well question for an idea, was based on combining two ideas. One, is I think all the devices with computers should be stand alone modular. I think that is how they will be designed in the future, with each device having it's own specific custom kernel and minimal circuitry additions,full embeded in other words, so that the device does one task, but does that one task very well, and can be used with any other device. The next generation of plug n play in other words..that is the goal beyond the idea in my mind, but to get there you need to various devices to act like that. The second is, thinking the video card replacement could be possible, was from looking at the work being done now with software radio,where they can change a lot of things normally done in hardware just with software changes. I thought, if there, why not here?
As to me, I'm just a neogeezer blue collar geek who dabbles in futurism and cob jobbing. I just like thinking "what if?"
My idea was to have a mothership basic very non complex computer, all it does is serve as a place for the devices to coordinate their actions. It is more minimal than what we have today,all it does is coordinate very well, but the devices are smarter, they are closer to being stand alone.
Alternatively, a collaborative work to be done along the sides of a normal open source project, but to include the hardware engineers, to start to develop open source hardware, that could then be assembled cheaper. I know that's a lot of parts and complexity, but to just take baby steps towards it, and I thought with video cards it might be the first step with all the interest in them, and they are pricey when new all the time, and frequently get upgraded. I see this as a sort of waste, and thought it better to just build a basic video card-like separate device, where the upgrading is done primarily in software advances, seeing as how the cpu chip would be replaceable readily and the ram could be of a huge amount initially. Commodity hardware, taking the pc clone idea to two steps further than what it is now. Seems like you could use the same edge connectors on the pci or the agp slots that exist now, so making a jumper shouldn't be too hard. The video card side of the equation would use a stripped kernel for it's cpu that only did video. Maybe even one of the smaller chip companies could see a market in replaceable video GPUs that would fit in a normal intel type socket. I don't know, but seems just as possible as replacing normal cpus. I am understanding now that the chips are very differently designed, but perhaps with such a chip being available, combined with the ability to have quite a lot of ram to use, and a little room to move around with on a normal mobo, I thought it might be possible and actually do-able.
Anyway, thanks for the detailed clarification on these matters. I had heard of the Plan 9 before but really didn't pursue looking at it, I didn't know it was so radically different, but if it follows what I am trying to describe and failing at, heh, I think it's a good idea compared to what we have now.
....hire or use any marketing or advertising people who are not programmers themselves. They should have a clear understanding what the process is *first* from hands on experience in some depth. Sort of like in a manufacturing factory, all the management should have come up from working the line originally.
I see these articles all the time, and to me, it seems this struggling with drivers and vendor lock in with using exact specific cards for the video is the problem. Is it possible to use a comopletely separate computer to just run the video? All the cards are is a small computer system with an onboard cpu-like thing, on board ram, some controller chips etc, which to my layperson's understanding is just another form of a normal mobo and assorted gear on it stuck on a card you slap in a PCI slot or whatever. So, my question is, would it be possible to just use another computer to opensource replace the whole video card experience? Have a computer you could build yourself that mimiced what a video card does, and have drivers that can be easily written GPL fashion then? I understand you'd have to be able to get normal computer A to talk to video card emulator computer B. Just asking the smart guys here if this has ever been done, if it's possible, is it a lame idea or a good idea long term, etc? Just seems with the ability to have gigs of ram and high speed chips, etc easily obtainable on the mobo of your choice, this might be a completely alternate way to go other than being stuck with basically a couple of companies and driver hassles all the time, to move it away from propietary.
Of course,I admit I have no idea, hence asking.
that I thought was fascinating in a geeky cob job way, and that was what the civilians did during the war in occupied europe. They made "wood gas"(methane) generators to run vehicles. I have seen some pictures of them. They built smoky fires in enclosed/ducted home made furnace things, then piped the partially burnt smoke through oil bath filters into the carb intakes. It worked well enough for them to get from point A to B.
I believe south africa was big on gasoline from coal as well, and got some good R & D advances with it.
...small compact computer designs get these whiskers easier. I don't doubt it happens, but where are all the millions of laptops shorted out then, or the mini itx machines,game machines, etc?
Is there something else here causing whiskers to grow some places and not in others, even though both have zinc?
I agree with half, disagree with the other.
No, people mostly DON'T know there are alternatives, due to industry collusion and fraud at very high levels, levels such that it is mostly ignored by the government, because even there they profit individually from the congame of maintaining this monopoly, although they claim they don't and had a whitewash "judicial hearing" and series of lawsuits over it. It was a coverup joke whitewash effort *at best*.. There is no prohibition from governmental employees using their income or knowledge to help make scam profits in the markets, just a joke level,or nothing really stopping them accepting "fees" on the side,just a joke level, or nothing really stopping them from getting blackmailed, that's not a joke but it happens to politicians and bureaucrats and dare I say to judges. It just depends on the situation.
As to not being able to make a safer better browser able to surf without getting hijacked within 15 minutes? Well, all I can say is, not coming from an insecure buggy windows background, or very complicated unix background, but a mac classic simple functional OS/brosewr background, I will assert to you that I ran for YEARS on the net with NO antivirus, no firewall, no anything but the default browser (netscape) that came with the OS install. YM obviously varied from that I would guess, so you have that viewpoint "it's almost impossible, it can't be done", etc.
I *never* had to jump through *any* hoops just to surf simply. I went to any website I wanted to go to, read any email. Nothing. I know a few viruses existed, but I never got one, and I don't think there was a remote exploit for mac classic, or at least to be honest and fair I never heard of one or read about one. The first firewall I ever used on a personal machine was two years ago with linux because you need one, same as windows, but at least they give you one that works with linux. With windows, nope, all the installs I ever saw were woefully overpriced, incomplete to a fault, and failed to function very well. And insecurity isn't an issue, they *are* insecure as shipped, you MUST jump through hoops to even approach a dismal-security range, let alone a pretty good-security range.