A major problem with both mVoting and voting over the internet is that the 'secret ballot' is sacrificed. It becomes very easy for this create problems like the US had in the 1800s.
While that is a very good point, there is something even more basic.
Estonia is now considering voting from mobile phones using SIM cards as identification, dubbed 'm-voting.'
Did you catch that? A mobile phone. As it stands, people in the states think that requiring a photo ID (obtainable for free everywhere) as being an unreasonable burden on the poor, minorities and criminal aliens (which is a crock anyway, since the photo IDs are free if you don't already have a driver license or other government ID and illegals should not be voting anyway). How do you think those people here would react to the idea of using a cell phone for ID?
It makes the case that proprietary software is inconvenient and that when schools choose to use proprietary products they spend their constituents' money.
There are so many reasons to prefer F/OSS (and yes, lack of up front licensing costs is really nice). However, this is the worst "benefit" to pitch. In reality, the software will very likely require the same amount of support as other software (which many times Adobe or MS will give gratis or close to gratis). In any case, sysadmins and tech support people cost more than software (unless your software is built by Lockheed to NASA safety specs or you are using custom production and manufacturing control software).
Some better arguments include: freedom to roll out additional seats without tracking licenses; freedom support something yourself if that is better for your organization than upgrading (upgrades often being forced by proprietary vendors); the money spent stays in the local economy instead of going off to some software company's home state/county/whatever; heck, even altruism.
The point is that even F/OSS requires that "they spend their constituents' money."
If you use *nix, then MyPasswordSafe is your friend. It uses the same file format as password safe.
If you use Mac OS X, then Password Gorilla is your friend. It too uses the same file format, though it is a tad slow on open and save operations.
MyPasswordSafe is Qt-based (but it is better than the GTK-based equivalent password management program out there, and I generally prefer GTK-based apps over Qt-based apps). It should theoretically run on Mac OS X and Windows. I don't know about its status on Windows, but I know it doesn't work on Mac OS X. I have managed to get it to compile, but it segfaults. Once the semester is over, I intend to delve into it a little.
Password Gorilla also runs on practically everything. However, it is a Tcl/Tk application and looks ugly on every platform except for Mac OS X (thank you Apple for making some of these GUI toolkits not so ugly).
The neat thing about having all these programs out there is that they are compatible and make it a cinch to move your password database across machines and have it be usable everywhere.
Seriously. People demand flashy new features, even if it means occasional (or even frequent) crashes and problems. Nobody says "I will only buy the upgrade to this operating system if it is more and stable." They say "I will only buy the upgrade if it supports more games, or more digital cameras, or has more flashy eye candy."
I'll leave it as an exercise to the interested reader to figure out how to get people to change their attitudes.
There are lots of available applications that are tailored to the individual school level, especially for small and medium size schools. This is an excellent fit for private schools, parochial schools and probably even charter schools. For example, I have been evaluating Open Administration for Schools for a local Christian school. It seems like it will be a good fit.
Now, if you are talking about software to help run an entire school district, that is a different story. In such a case, you are talking about thousands or tens of thousands of students, and probably hundreds or thousands of computers and other inventory to track. I would say that you have your work cut out for you. There have been some attempts at developing open source free/Free ERP tools. However, the market for ERP solutions is much smaller (far fewer large organizations than small and medium organizations, be they schools or otherwise). So, in the same way that you will have trouble finding open source manufacturing control software, you will have trouble finding open source software that is targeted at large organizations. It is not impossible. But as it appears you have found, it can be a daunting challenge.
But everyone wins, because HP this summer will debut a special new calculator model. The details aren't announced, however, it's likely to be a 35th anniversary edition of some sort."
I love my HP 48GX. I'd love to see an updated 48GX with a faster processor and more memory. Mine is 11 or 12 years old and I still like it better than anything that has come since then, including all of TI's offerings which many schools prefer. With all the advances in semiconductor technology, you could pack a lot more memory and performance into the same package. Hopefully we won't have to wait for a 48th anniversary edition.
Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.
Hmm. Larry Wall is an evangelical Christian. According to his page, he attends this church.
Now, since his contributions are not valuable by your estimation, what is the name of the programming language which you have been developing for over 20 years and is the de facto language for development of dynamic web content and for automating system administration tasks on nearly every operating system?
But that couldn't possibly be related to poor science education, could it?
Beacuase you can't possibly have faith (or religion, your choice) and be well educated in sciences, could you?
I'm willing to bet that the reason the US is losing its technological edge has little (if anything to do with religion). Look at how the teacher's unions are simply stifling any sort of competition in the education "market". They try vehemently to have vouchers outlawed. They prevent school districts or states from "grading" schools based on the performance of their students (which might give parents clues were to live/not live.
It's pretty pathetic that Wal-Mart did more to help the victims of Katrina than the US FEMA did, in the terms of cash and donated goods.
Walmart: Private entity; red-tape to redirect funds: minimal or non-existent
FEMA: federal government agency; red-tape to redirect funds: huge
You want FEMA to be able to act quicker? Go write your congressman and tell him to introduce legislation to remove the red-tape that slows down the government. Of course, you need to be careful. Because we are so concerned that some idiot who is only entitled to $1000 might get $1100, that we have full-time staff whose job it is to pour over the applications and paperwork and look at every little nitanoid thing.
You also have to remember that you might be considered a hipocrite (if you are a liberal) since many of the things that Bush has done to "streamline" the government are criticized with the refrain "the less the government can accomplish, the safer the people are." So, which do you want?
The most obvious [problem] is deciding which version of Linux to offer. There are more than 100 distros, and everybody seems to want a different one -- or the same one with a different desktop, or whatever.
This has been answered many times. The people who know enough to know that they want a different distro can figure out how to get it on there. Therefore, they can pick a noob-friendly distro (like Fedora or Ubuntu), thereby guaranteeing the existence of drivers for the hardware. The rest of us who want to be all l33t and install Debian, Gentoo or even Linux From Scratch can figure it out ourselves.
According to a newly published report, the music industry will have a nice pile of cash to collect from net radio owners in 2008 -- a staggering $2.3 billion to be exact. The report is based on current performance royalties paid by terrestrial radio vs. internet radio, and taking into account projected growth in listenership.
First, this assumes that everyone will pay the new fees instead of finding alternative unlicensed content (that is free or Creative Commons or other similar content).
Meanwhile, the corporate Clear Channels pay just $550 Million for broadcasting the same songs we've all heard before. Hardly a fair deal.
Second, it is fair. It is called economies of scale. Clear Channel deals is huge quantities. To put it another way, if you go to a local corner market and buy a pack of four rolls of toilet paper for $2.00, then you go to Costco and see the same brand of toilet paper in a box of 40 for $10.00, is that unfair? No, it is called purchasing in bulk. Same as the sort of thing that MS does with corporate VLKs versus regular retail prices.
Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?
You mentioned getting email notifications about changes to the repository. You work with the code every day (or nearly every day). You see, these representatives in congress often times vote on bills which they have not even themselves read. They get the executive summary.
That is like the difference between you reading the code for a newly modified parser class and getting one of your underlings to brief you about the changes. You might spend an hour or more reading source code for a whole new class, and only two minutes getting briefed on it. You have to get them actually read the bills first.
Maybe we should require that all bills be read aloud in their entirety in an open session of congress?
States must submit a proposal for how they'll adopt the system by early October of this year. If they don't, come May of next year their residents will see their licenses unable to gain them access to federal buildings and airplanes.
I hope that enough states refuse to participate that it makes the federal legistlature repeal the law. Of course, congress will likely do as they've always done and threaten to pull federal highway funding or education funding until the states in question comply.
This recipe is missing
on
MySQL Cookbook
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I noticed there was a recipe which I'd like to see which was not covered. Is there a recipe for don't treat my data as garbage by default?
It was brought up in a reply to a comment here on Slashdot by Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB. I've not heard if they managed to help out the people who are effectively forced into using MySQL but would rather not.
An implementation of the protected store functionality will allow applications like Firefox, Thunderbird and gpg to have one common place to obtain private keys and certificates rather than maintaining their own individual key-stores.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that putting all your eggs in one basket is not smart. All it would take would be on critical vulnerability to be discovered and all of a sudden a potential attacker can get to all of your keys. Not good if you ask me.
Ditto. In 10 or 20 years, a CCNA or whatever from 2007 will be effectively worthless. However, a B.Sc. degree will still mean quite a bit. Now, the degree does not absolve you pursuing continuing education and bettering yourself, but it is a much better foundation for your career. Think long term.
I see open source as a term relevant to the communities function...
Except that you don't get to define what open source means. The Open Source Initiative has that luxury. IIRC, they went to great lengths to differentiate Open Source and Free Software as two distinct entities. Open Source means you get the code and nothing more. No guarantee that you can redistribute, no guarantee that the vendor pays attention to you. The list goes on. You can have closed source with an open process (I think the Java Community Process is a good example of this), open source with open process (Python and their Python Enhancement Proposals) and open source with a closed process (XFree86, the reason we have X.org today and the old gcc before it was replaced by egcs. Even free software doesn't guarantee the openness in the process that you might want, as the case with the old gcc clearly illustrates. If community is important to you, that should be part of your selection criteria, not something that you let surprise you after you have picked.
All in all it's cute, funny, and very well done. The ad aired late in the evening (8:30 pm or later), but it was pulled due to concern from parents about the copycat risk. What I want to know is, where has the responsibility of parents gone? Is the world becoming so serious -- or so frightened -- that fantasy is no longer allowed?"
Let me preface this by saying that I am a conservative Christian. Now, I have done some research and found out that most electronic devices that emit photons and audio waves have a switch which allows me to turn them off. The effort required to do that is even less than it is for me to get incensed and make a complaint. Why don't other people get this? Don't want to see it? Turn it off. Don't want the kids to see it? Turn it off.
It sure sounds alot like the reversed cause and effect of the "War on Drugs" or "War on Terrorism". Will the government ever learn to back off and let the free market guide itself?
The War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism are two completely different things. The drug cartels are motivated by money. The terrorists are motivated primarily by religion and hatred. If we get every single drug user in America clean, the demand will disappear and there will be no more monetary incentive for the cartels to bring illegal drugs to the US. What demand are we going to get rid of to make the terrorists go away? Short of every American committing suicide at the same time, the terrorists won't quit.
Now, in economic matters, the government won't back off and let the free market guide things because that is not what people what want. Opposition to NAFTA? Steel tariffs? Automobile tariffs? Mucking with currency? People are in favor of the free market, until it hurts them personally.
Only if you use their choice of OS, their choice of browser, their choice of media player, their choice of hardware, etc.
2) DRM-protected content is cheap - cheaper than their physical equivalents.
I'm not to familiar with music, but ebooks sure don't follow this. I've often seen paper books for $60 and their electronic equivalents for $50. Only $10? I don't think so. Publishers claim that the majority of the cost of a book is printing, binding and shipping. All of those costs are gone with ebooks. Now you have server costs (much smaller than distribution costs for real books). So, it may cost slightly less, but is certainly not cheaper considering what you are giving up. Of course, you still have to be using their choice of software (OS, reader, etc), as few outfits provide unencumbered ebooks in PDF format or something.
3) Users who know what to expect will not be dissappointed. I know I am a happy iTunes + iPod user. Then again I do not spend my time inventing all sorts of scenarios how this model could be limiting my life when it is not.
Users expect to be able to use and move their stuff around. That is sadly not always possible. iTunes may be the exception, but I don't know not having used it personally.
In short, Zalewski seems to believe in full disclosure instead of responsible disclosure.
FTA: On the other hand, she's dealing with almost daily reports of newly identified vulnerabilities in Firefox disclosed by a researcher who makes his work public before informing Mozilla of the problems.
Ahh. So Zalewski is in it for the publicity. I did not catch that.
Slashdot Mirror
A major problem with both mVoting and voting over the internet is that the 'secret ballot' is sacrificed. It becomes very easy for this create problems like the US had in the 1800s.
While that is a very good point, there is something even more basic.
Estonia is now considering voting from mobile phones using SIM cards as identification, dubbed 'm-voting.'
Did you catch that? A mobile phone. As it stands, people in the states think that requiring a photo ID (obtainable for free everywhere) as being an unreasonable burden on the poor, minorities and criminal aliens (which is a crock anyway, since the photo IDs are free if you don't already have a driver license or other government ID and illegals should not be voting anyway). How do you think those people here would react to the idea of using a cell phone for ID?
It makes the case that proprietary software is inconvenient and that when schools choose to use proprietary products they spend their constituents' money.
There are so many reasons to prefer F/OSS (and yes, lack of up front licensing costs is really nice). However, this is the worst "benefit" to pitch. In reality, the software will very likely require the same amount of support as other software (which many times Adobe or MS will give gratis or close to gratis). In any case, sysadmins and tech support people cost more than software (unless your software is built by Lockheed to NASA safety specs or you are using custom production and manufacturing control software).
Some better arguments include: freedom to roll out additional seats without tracking licenses; freedom support something yourself if that is better for your organization than upgrading (upgrades often being forced by proprietary vendors); the money spent stays in the local economy instead of going off to some software company's home state/county/whatever; heck, even altruism.
The point is that even F/OSS requires that "they spend their constituents' money."
I've recently discovered password safe [sourceforge.net].
If you use *nix, then MyPasswordSafe is your friend. It uses the same file format as password safe.
If you use Mac OS X, then Password Gorilla is your friend. It too uses the same file format, though it is a tad slow on open and save operations.
MyPasswordSafe is Qt-based (but it is better than the GTK-based equivalent password management program out there, and I generally prefer GTK-based apps over Qt-based apps). It should theoretically run on Mac OS X and Windows. I don't know about its status on Windows, but I know it doesn't work on Mac OS X. I have managed to get it to compile, but it segfaults. Once the semester is over, I intend to delve into it a little.
Password Gorilla also runs on practically everything. However, it is a Tcl/Tk application and looks ugly on every platform except for Mac OS X (thank you Apple for making some of these GUI toolkits not so ugly).
The neat thing about having all these programs out there is that they are compatible and make it a cinch to move your password database across machines and have it be usable everywhere.
There is an ad there?
Seriously. People demand flashy new features, even if it means occasional (or even frequent) crashes and problems. Nobody says "I will only buy the upgrade to this operating system if it is more and stable." They say "I will only buy the upgrade if it supports more games, or more digital cameras, or has more flashy eye candy."
I'll leave it as an exercise to the interested reader to figure out how to get people to change their attitudes.
There are lots of available applications that are tailored to the individual school level, especially for small and medium size schools. This is an excellent fit for private schools, parochial schools and probably even charter schools. For example, I have been evaluating Open Administration for Schools for a local Christian school. It seems like it will be a good fit.
Now, if you are talking about software to help run an entire school district, that is a different story. In such a case, you are talking about thousands or tens of thousands of students, and probably hundreds or thousands of computers and other inventory to track. I would say that you have your work cut out for you. There have been some attempts at developing open source free/Free ERP tools. However, the market for ERP solutions is much smaller (far fewer large organizations than small and medium organizations, be they schools or otherwise). So, in the same way that you will have trouble finding open source manufacturing control software, you will have trouble finding open source software that is targeted at large organizations. It is not impossible. But as it appears you have found, it can be a daunting challenge.
Canadian Bacon
'nuf said
But everyone wins, because HP this summer will debut a special new calculator model. The details aren't announced, however, it's likely to be a 35th anniversary edition of some sort."
I love my HP 48GX. I'd love to see an updated 48GX with a faster processor and more memory. Mine is 11 or 12 years old and I still like it better than anything that has come since then, including all of TI's offerings which many schools prefer. With all the advances in semiconductor technology, you could pack a lot more memory and performance into the same package. Hopefully we won't have to wait for a 48th anniversary edition.
I would think that "packet shaping" is not the right term. "Traffic shaping", "bandwidth throttling" or simply "throttling" are more appropriate.
Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant. It's not like bringing people of below average intelligence or fundamentalist mindset into the scientific fold is going to make them valuable contributors. It'll just be a new type of ignorance to deal with. Let them be.
Hmm. Larry Wall is an evangelical Christian. According to his page, he attends this church.
Now, since his contributions are not valuable by your estimation, what is the name of the programming language which you have been developing for over 20 years and is the de facto language for development of dynamic web content and for automating system administration tasks on nearly every operating system?
I'm waiting.
But that couldn't possibly be related to poor science education, could it?
Beacuase you can't possibly have faith (or religion, your choice) and be well educated in sciences, could you?
I'm willing to bet that the reason the US is losing its technological edge has little (if anything to do with religion). Look at how the teacher's unions are simply stifling any sort of competition in the education "market". They try vehemently to have vouchers outlawed. They prevent school districts or states from "grading" schools based on the performance of their students (which might give parents clues were to live/not live.
It's pretty pathetic that Wal-Mart did more to help the victims of Katrina than the US FEMA did, in the terms of cash and donated goods.
Walmart: Private entity; red-tape to redirect funds: minimal or non-existent
FEMA: federal government agency; red-tape to redirect funds: huge
You want FEMA to be able to act quicker? Go write your congressman and tell him to introduce legislation to remove the red-tape that slows down the government. Of course, you need to be careful. Because we are so concerned that some idiot who is only entitled to $1000 might get $1100, that we have full-time staff whose job it is to pour over the applications and paperwork and look at every little nitanoid thing.
You also have to remember that you might be considered a hipocrite (if you are a liberal) since many of the things that Bush has done to "streamline" the government are criticized with the refrain "the less the government can accomplish, the safer the people are." So, which do you want?
The most obvious [problem] is deciding which version of Linux to offer. There are more than 100 distros, and everybody seems to want a different one -- or the same one with a different desktop, or whatever.
This has been answered many times. The people who know enough to know that they want a different distro can figure out how to get it on there. Therefore, they can pick a noob-friendly distro (like Fedora or Ubuntu), thereby guaranteeing the existence of drivers for the hardware. The rest of us who want to be all l33t and install Debian, Gentoo or even Linux From Scratch can figure it out ourselves.
According to a newly published report, the music industry will have a nice pile of cash to collect from net radio owners in 2008 -- a staggering $2.3 billion to be exact. The report is based on current performance royalties paid by terrestrial radio vs. internet radio, and taking into account projected growth in listenership.
First, this assumes that everyone will pay the new fees instead of finding alternative unlicensed content (that is free or Creative Commons or other similar content).
Meanwhile, the corporate Clear Channels pay just $550 Million for broadcasting the same songs we've all heard before. Hardly a fair deal.
Second, it is fair. It is called economies of scale. Clear Channel deals is huge quantities. To put it another way, if you go to a local corner market and buy a pack of four rolls of toilet paper for $2.00, then you go to Costco and see the same brand of toilet paper in a box of 40 for $10.00, is that unfair? No, it is called purchasing in bulk. Same as the sort of thing that MS does with corporate VLKs versus regular retail prices.
Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?
You mentioned getting email notifications about changes to the repository. You work with the code every day (or nearly every day). You see, these representatives in congress often times vote on bills which they have not even themselves read. They get the executive summary.
That is like the difference between you reading the code for a newly modified parser class and getting one of your underlings to brief you about the changes. You might spend an hour or more reading source code for a whole new class, and only two minutes getting briefed on it. You have to get them actually read the bills first.
Maybe we should require that all bills be read aloud in their entirety in an open session of congress?
States must submit a proposal for how they'll adopt the system by early October of this year. If they don't, come May of next year their residents will see their licenses unable to gain them access to federal buildings and airplanes.
I hope that enough states refuse to participate that it makes the federal legistlature repeal the law. Of course, congress will likely do as they've always done and threaten to pull federal highway funding or education funding until the states in question comply.
I noticed there was a recipe which I'd like to see which was not covered. Is there a recipe for don't treat my data as garbage by default?
It was brought up in a reply to a comment here on Slashdot by Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB. I've not heard if they managed to help out the people who are effectively forced into using MySQL but would rather not.
An implementation of the protected store functionality will allow applications like Firefox, Thunderbird and gpg to have one common place to obtain private keys and certificates rather than maintaining their own individual key-stores.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that putting all your eggs in one basket is not smart. All it would take would be on critical vulnerability to be discovered and all of a sudden a potential attacker can get to all of your keys. Not good if you ask me.
I'd recommend you go to school.
Ditto. In 10 or 20 years, a CCNA or whatever from 2007 will be effectively worthless. However, a B.Sc. degree will still mean quite a bit. Now, the degree does not absolve you pursuing continuing education and bettering yourself, but it is a much better foundation for your career. Think long term.
I see open source as a term relevant to the communities function ...
Except that you don't get to define what open source means. The Open Source Initiative has that luxury. IIRC, they went to great lengths to differentiate Open Source and Free Software as two distinct entities. Open Source means you get the code and nothing more. No guarantee that you can redistribute, no guarantee that the vendor pays attention to you. The list goes on. You can have closed source with an open process (I think the Java Community Process is a good example of this), open source with open process (Python and their Python Enhancement Proposals) and open source with a closed process (XFree86, the reason we have X.org today and the old gcc before it was replaced by egcs. Even free software doesn't guarantee the openness in the process that you might want, as the case with the old gcc clearly illustrates. If community is important to you, that should be part of your selection criteria, not something that you let surprise you after you have picked.
a handy 20-lb. device
Must be the ST:TOS version. At 20 lb, I would imagine that a shoulder strap is mandatory wear. Thanks, but I'll wait until the ST:TNG version hits.
All in all it's cute, funny, and very well done. The ad aired late in the evening (8:30 pm or later), but it was pulled due to concern from parents about the copycat risk. What I want to know is, where has the responsibility of parents gone? Is the world becoming so serious -- or so frightened -- that fantasy is no longer allowed?"
Let me preface this by saying that I am a conservative Christian. Now, I have done some research and found out that most electronic devices that emit photons and audio waves have a switch which allows me to turn them off. The effort required to do that is even less than it is for me to get incensed and make a complaint. Why don't other people get this? Don't want to see it? Turn it off. Don't want the kids to see it? Turn it off.
It sure sounds alot like the reversed cause and effect of the "War on Drugs" or "War on Terrorism". Will the government ever learn to back off and let the free market guide itself?
The War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism are two completely different things. The drug cartels are motivated by money. The terrorists are motivated primarily by religion and hatred. If we get every single drug user in America clean, the demand will disappear and there will be no more monetary incentive for the cartels to bring illegal drugs to the US. What demand are we going to get rid of to make the terrorists go away? Short of every American committing suicide at the same time, the terrorists won't quit.
Now, in economic matters, the government won't back off and let the free market guide things because that is not what people what want. Opposition to NAFTA? Steel tariffs? Automobile tariffs? Mucking with currency? People are in favor of the free market, until it hurts them personally.
Only if you use their choice of OS, their choice of browser, their choice of media player, their choice of hardware, etc.
I'm not to familiar with music, but ebooks sure don't follow this. I've often seen paper books for $60 and their electronic equivalents for $50. Only $10? I don't think so. Publishers claim that the majority of the cost of a book is printing, binding and shipping. All of those costs are gone with ebooks. Now you have server costs (much smaller than distribution costs for real books). So, it may cost slightly less, but is certainly not cheaper considering what you are giving up. Of course, you still have to be using their choice of software (OS, reader, etc), as few outfits provide unencumbered ebooks in PDF format or something.
Users expect to be able to use and move their stuff around. That is sadly not always possible. iTunes may be the exception, but I don't know not having used it personally.
In short, Zalewski seems to believe in full disclosure instead of responsible disclosure.
FTA: On the other hand, she's dealing with almost daily reports of newly identified vulnerabilities in Firefox disclosed by a researcher who makes his work public before informing Mozilla of the problems.
Ahh. So Zalewski is in it for the publicity. I did not catch that.