The fundamental problem with the US electoral system is that citizens don't respect their vote. This is a fundamental issue with democracy in general and is a self-correcting problem, but some unpleasantness will cyclically occur to remind citizens of their duty if the underlying democratic principles survive the education process, which is never certain. Democracy remains a Great Experiment.
Democracy is the worst possible political structure, except for all the others that have been tried. Its failure is in its self-defeating nature. It's dynamic so when by chance it achieves Utopia, it's a transitional state.
I think the problem with Democracy isn't with democracy itself, but with Men. Our nature isn't amenable to living in a Utopia so when we find ourselves there, we find our way out.
Actually Ken Thompson, first author of the Unix C compiler, did just this - not as a bribe or trick, but just to dissuade people from putting too much trust in the compiler. The more you know, the less you trust - which is the point of this exercise. Trust is for suckers. Also: we've forgotten long ago more things than we know now.
When computers are granted suffrage as full citizens then they ought to be allowed to record and count votes. Until then this work should be performed by citizens potentially familiar with the nature of the responsibility and conscious of the potential personal consequences of failure.
Don't call me a Luddite. I'm an IT pro with over three decades experience, and tech is the side my bread has butter on. I'm not opposed to computer programs as citizens as long as someone comes up with a credible way to implement that, which doubtless would involve a constitutional amendment. Until then some few things are just too important to compromise on for the sake of timeliness, efficiency and cost. Voting is one of those things. Votes ought be taken and counted by citizens and nobody else. We should not be so impatient that we cannot wait for citizens to record our votes; to count and tabulate them. To be so impatient is to surrender the responsibility and power of franchise in bulk and will end in trouble of the worst sort.
There is no way around the fact that machine recording, counting and reporting violates the precept of "One citizen, one vote." Anybody who's passed Introduction to Programming would know that. The output of any program is determined first by the programmer, second by the operator, and only then by the inputs as those two permit if the process isn't otherwise compromised. To say there exist some citizens who can audit the machines and code is to create a class of supercitizen qualified to do so and affect the votes of citizens in the main - it places too much trust in the code auditors and grants them more power in the body politick than "One citizen, one vote." Given the advanced state of modern technology it's also a false confidence. Anyone sufficiently skilled to audit the code knows that the underlying hardware can be compromised at the silicon or firmware levels.
Just don't do it. Groups of citizens should count votes at the most local level with diverse interests represented among them and watching each other. At each higher level interested and claimed neutral citizens should tabulate and aggregate them. Everyone participating faces the personal risk of prison or tyranny if cheating is detected or involved undetected. It's that important. It's not a perfect system but if we citizens fail in it at least it's our own fault. To surrender the power of voting through trust to machines crafted by unknown entities running code written by unknown entities audited by special citizens is just to surrender our franchise entire. Trust is for suckers. We may as well not vote.
Machines aren't citizens and they ought not count votes.
It's probably going to aggravate your condition, but they did that deliberately for three reasons. First, it gives their server side frameworks a leg up on the competition because they have the secret map and you don't. Second, once their server side tools are adopted, they promote Microsoft browser because the to deliberately misserve other browsers. Third, it traps you in that once you have adopted either the server or browser side you have to take the other because migrating away is too painful.
The good news is it screwed them too. People who signed up for this theater of pain found themselves so locked in they couldn't even migrate away to the next version of any of OS, browser, or server side tools. There was no way forward at all - no migration path. This may have something to do with their recent discovery of W3C and HTML5. Given the history I hold little hope but that this embrace step will be followed by extend and extinguish steps as they revert to type.
The people who know me are swayed directly by how much they respect my knowledge in a given field. The regulars here know me and either respect or disrespect my opinions based on their experience. We've been at this like I said for over eight years and my record is pretty good. The undecided are welcome to subscribe and read every post I've ever made in context these past eight years and make up their own minds. Frankly in the last eight years I've said a few things here I regret.
I've said quite a few things here. Some of them were prophetic and a few didn't come true yet and may never. Some few were completely wrong. I'm doing better than some.
I have a bias. It's an anti-Microsoft bias. I don't like them and I never will. It's well documented in nearly five thousand posts on this blog that you can research if you're a subscriber. If you want to know why, read Groklaw's Comes archive or the Halloween documents.
So why, if I hate them so much, would I point you toward their stuff? It's because despite my obvious, declared, and well documented historical bias, I think this might be some good stuff. If I would set aside my own bias this much, then if it's possible for me to sway you, you could have a look.
For someone to think that I had converted to the Redmond cult, well it's more plausible my account has been hacked. Frankly that's more likely than I might propose that the devil I've been fighting these eight years might have some interesting candy. But my account's not hacked and this is really me, and the candy looks tasty. Let's be careful about the terms though. The Devil likes to charge a LOT for his candy.
So if you think I'm not crazy, haven't reached my dotage, and aren't a Microsoft tool, have a good neutral look at The Fine Article and see if there isn't something useful in it.
I only put that to disarm the Astroturfer Defense Brigade (of which group I'm a proud member), not to brag. Lots of people post more, and have been longer than me. But we can't delete our comments so any subscriber need only dig back through that bulk of output and find a comment where I said that before to prove me a liar - and they can throw it in my face ever after. But they can't, because it didn't happen. I'm really, really not a Microsoft fan. I don't like their business practices at all. I haven't used Microsoft products on my personal PC ever, and I've owned a personal PC since 1983. I was a Unix guy until I was a BSD guy until I was a Linux guy, where I've been ever since. And Dammit but writing your own serial print drivers in Linux early on was a pain in the butt. Yeah, I work Windows for money, but it has never been my choice. BTW, I'm nearing 2^8 +5 posts as well. OK, that was bragging.
I may have had a role in killing the Kin, if that's any evidence of my anti-Microsoft credibility.
So when I ask, out of the depth of my experience and with the strength of my reputation here for people to look at this it's against my better judgement. It's against my experience. It's alien to me. But this one time I think it's so important to foil this particular trap and extract the bait that if we lose a few in the trap, it was worth it. This bait is that good.
This is key innovation. It looks like an important new step we've needed for a long time. It looks like they have done well with it.
Of course it should be inspected for traps. From these folks there are always traps. But this particular time I think this is important enough that we look closely at it to see if there isn't something useful we can safely extract, while being mindful for the traps.
I've been here a long time. I've posted nearly 5,000 comments here over 8 years. Never once before have I said this about a Microsoft technology: This deserves a look.
I've been there when they buried the cables on the i5 corridor and the Oregon Trail. I've held these cables in my hand. They're as thick as your arm, with many thousands of fiber optic links. I've no reason to believe other trunks aren't as well provisioned. That's the way of these things: digging the trench and negotiating the rights of way costs far more than the cable, so you may as well put as much cable in the ground as you can when you have the chance.
End point technologies have advanced quite a bit since they buried these glass links. One single link is more than sufficient to carry all the Internet there is, with 10x redundancy. The rest of those links remain mostly unlit and wasted.
The Internet is awaiting core switching tech to support this, but the physical links are in place. There's more than enough bandwidth in the ground to carry 1000 times the Internet we have now, or more. The switching tech is 20x current demand. The difference from what you have and what it costs is pure profit. The funny thing is that the tech to put data across a single fiber is moving faster than our use of it, so those dark strands may be dark forever.
Scarcity of bandwidth is a myth perpetuated to make you pay more for bandwidth. In Boise, Idaho on the Oregon Trail I've met CIOs that believe that 512Kbps is a good bandwith to pay many thousands of dollars a month for. And the 50Mbps I pay $50/month to Comcast (100x their bandwidth) passes directly beneath the street in front of them on its way to Europe when I download the latest ISO image for Mandrake.
Apart from providing the common defense, the purpose of governments is to deplete the surplus productivity. Ours is exceptionally good at the latter. Let's hope they don't let go of the former.
I'm afraid we can't lay the blame for slashdot's "creative" site style on Google. There are other browsers available on the thing. Maybe one of them will suit you better for slashdotting. Slashdot doesn't work well for me on nearly anything. It's kind of like HP's websites: you feel that by struggling through it you've earned experience points.
I imagine the larger, heavier high-def Android tablets are on the way. Probably Christmas. They'll also have some way to use multiple HDTVs as wireless monitor extensions I imagine - which would solve all of your problem except the keyboard and Wacom tablet. We're almost there.
The transformer is $100 less than the cheapest iPad2. It's got MicroSDHC slot for up to 32GB of additional storage, 10.1" widescreen display, and Android 3.1 - all of which are a step up from the iPad2 to some people. It's thin and light, goes all day on a battery. There's even an optional keyboard dock with extra battery and genuine USB slots. Performance on the dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor with 1GB RAM is really sweet. There are some games on here I didn't expect to fare well on a tablet, but they're beautiful. They're flying off the shelves.
So those entry conditions that needed to be met before we could talk about serious competition: they're met now. Let's talk. Apple makes a good bit of money on every iPad2, and a little more after the sale with iTunes and the App Store and accessories and whatnot. Other vendors not really as much. They will ramp production of their products as fast as they can, but that won't be as fast as Apple can, probably. It will be a while before the iPad botherers actually take significant share. Eventually though, Apple can't out-compete and out-design every tech company on Earth and they don't intend to try. They will continue to make good money on a limited range of products while exploring even more new realms to conquer.
The fall brings quad-core Android versions with more advanced graphics, and dedicated gaming tablets, so the platform seems to have legs. The phones go well with the tablets - the ecosystem of apps and services is what adds the most value to the end user, not the widget itself. This means that folks who have iPhones are likely to choose the iPad, and Android phone people are likely to go with the Android tablets when they can get them.
Slashdot Mirror
RSA key theft much? Nothing is unbreakable. Trust is a personal thing.
It's easier to compromise the standard computer than all the guys who use them. Cheaper too.
The fundamental problem with the US electoral system is that citizens don't respect their vote. This is a fundamental issue with democracy in general and is a self-correcting problem, but some unpleasantness will cyclically occur to remind citizens of their duty if the underlying democratic principles survive the education process, which is never certain. Democracy remains a Great Experiment.
Democracy is the worst possible political structure, except for all the others that have been tried. Its failure is in its self-defeating nature. It's dynamic so when by chance it achieves Utopia, it's a transitional state.
I think the problem with Democracy isn't with democracy itself, but with Men. Our nature isn't amenable to living in a Utopia so when we find ourselves there, we find our way out.
If a citizen deliberately miscounts my vote and gets caught they go to prison. I don't foresee a computer being concerned about that issue.
The Diebold CEO guaranteed the 2004 election to Bush in Ohio. That's all you need to know about that.
Actually Ken Thompson, first author of the Unix C compiler, did just this - not as a bribe or trick, but just to dissuade people from putting too much trust in the compiler. The more you know, the less you trust - which is the point of this exercise. Trust is for suckers. Also: we've forgotten long ago more things than we know now.
Um, I was hacking Scantrons in the 1980s. You got anything more current?
Never mind. If you believe in this you'll buy into anything automated and there's nothing I could say to convince you.
I have to say this though: fastest and least expensive are not the key values we're looking for.
You're not really familiar with the nature and uses of tyranny, are you? I'm guessing you didn't post this from Syria.
When computers are granted suffrage as full citizens then they ought to be allowed to record and count votes. Until then this work should be performed by citizens potentially familiar with the nature of the responsibility and conscious of the potential personal consequences of failure.
Don't call me a Luddite. I'm an IT pro with over three decades experience, and tech is the side my bread has butter on. I'm not opposed to computer programs as citizens as long as someone comes up with a credible way to implement that, which doubtless would involve a constitutional amendment. Until then some few things are just too important to compromise on for the sake of timeliness, efficiency and cost. Voting is one of those things. Votes ought be taken and counted by citizens and nobody else. We should not be so impatient that we cannot wait for citizens to record our votes; to count and tabulate them. To be so impatient is to surrender the responsibility and power of franchise in bulk and will end in trouble of the worst sort.
There is no way around the fact that machine recording, counting and reporting violates the precept of "One citizen, one vote." Anybody who's passed Introduction to Programming would know that. The output of any program is determined first by the programmer, second by the operator, and only then by the inputs as those two permit if the process isn't otherwise compromised. To say there exist some citizens who can audit the machines and code is to create a class of supercitizen qualified to do so and affect the votes of citizens in the main - it places too much trust in the code auditors and grants them more power in the body politick than "One citizen, one vote." Given the advanced state of modern technology it's also a false confidence. Anyone sufficiently skilled to audit the code knows that the underlying hardware can be compromised at the silicon or firmware levels.
Just don't do it. Groups of citizens should count votes at the most local level with diverse interests represented among them and watching each other. At each higher level interested and claimed neutral citizens should tabulate and aggregate them. Everyone participating faces the personal risk of prison or tyranny if cheating is detected or involved undetected. It's that important. It's not a perfect system but if we citizens fail in it at least it's our own fault. To surrender the power of voting through trust to machines crafted by unknown entities running code written by unknown entities audited by special citizens is just to surrender our franchise entire. Trust is for suckers. We may as well not vote.
Machines aren't citizens and they ought not count votes.
OK kids, let's see if we can help JayJayAarh find the flaw in his cunning plan.
It's probably going to aggravate your condition, but they did that deliberately for three reasons. First, it gives their server side frameworks a leg up on the competition because they have the secret map and you don't. Second, once their server side tools are adopted, they promote Microsoft browser because the to deliberately misserve other browsers. Third, it traps you in that once you have adopted either the server or browser side you have to take the other because migrating away is too painful.
The good news is it screwed them too. People who signed up for this theater of pain found themselves so locked in they couldn't even migrate away to the next version of any of OS, browser, or server side tools. There was no way forward at all - no migration path. This may have something to do with their recent discovery of W3C and HTML5. Given the history I hold little hope but that this embrace step will be followed by extend and extinguish steps as they revert to type.
The fact that IE9 doesn't run on xp might be a bigger upgrade headache. At least FF5 runs on the commonest OS.
Like customers for your apps, for example.
It seems unlikely that any ruling that Google must not put something on their website is going to survive appeal on first amendment grounds.
Yeah, being better than Google is really hard. That's not fair. And they give all that stuff away. That's not fair either.
You mean like Google Talk?
You are right. This tech is more about being the choreographer than being the dancer. There might still be some pain in it.
The people who know me are swayed directly by how much they respect my knowledge in a given field. The regulars here know me and either respect or disrespect my opinions based on their experience. We've been at this like I said for over eight years and my record is pretty good. The undecided are welcome to subscribe and read every post I've ever made in context these past eight years and make up their own minds. Frankly in the last eight years I've said a few things here I regret.
I've said quite a few things here. Some of them were prophetic and a few didn't come true yet and may never. Some few were completely wrong. I'm doing better than some.
I have a bias. It's an anti-Microsoft bias. I don't like them and I never will. It's well documented in nearly five thousand posts on this blog that you can research if you're a subscriber. If you want to know why, read Groklaw's Comes archive or the Halloween documents.
So why, if I hate them so much, would I point you toward their stuff? It's because despite my obvious, declared, and well documented historical bias, I think this might be some good stuff. If I would set aside my own bias this much, then if it's possible for me to sway you, you could have a look.
For someone to think that I had converted to the Redmond cult, well it's more plausible my account has been hacked. Frankly that's more likely than I might propose that the devil I've been fighting these eight years might have some interesting candy. But my account's not hacked and this is really me, and the candy looks tasty. Let's be careful about the terms though. The Devil likes to charge a LOT for his candy.
So if you think I'm not crazy, haven't reached my dotage, and aren't a Microsoft tool, have a good neutral look at The Fine Article and see if there isn't something useful in it.
But you admit that there might be something interesting in it. That something is worth investigation.
I only put that to disarm the Astroturfer Defense Brigade (of which group I'm a proud member), not to brag. Lots of people post more, and have been longer than me. But we can't delete our comments so any subscriber need only dig back through that bulk of output and find a comment where I said that before to prove me a liar - and they can throw it in my face ever after. But they can't, because it didn't happen. I'm really, really not a Microsoft fan. I don't like their business practices at all. I haven't used Microsoft products on my personal PC ever, and I've owned a personal PC since 1983. I was a Unix guy until I was a BSD guy until I was a Linux guy, where I've been ever since. And Dammit but writing your own serial print drivers in Linux early on was a pain in the butt. Yeah, I work Windows for money, but it has never been my choice. BTW, I'm nearing 2^8 +5 posts as well. OK, that was bragging.
I may have had a role in killing the Kin, if that's any evidence of my anti-Microsoft credibility.
So when I ask, out of the depth of my experience and with the strength of my reputation here for people to look at this it's against my better judgement. It's against my experience. It's alien to me. But this one time I think it's so important to foil this particular trap and extract the bait that if we lose a few in the trap, it was worth it. This bait is that good.
This is key innovation. It looks like an important new step we've needed for a long time. It looks like they have done well with it.
Of course it should be inspected for traps. From these folks there are always traps. But this particular time I think this is important enough that we look closely at it to see if there isn't something useful we can safely extract, while being mindful for the traps.
I've been here a long time. I've posted nearly 5,000 comments here over 8 years. Never once before have I said this about a Microsoft technology: This deserves a look.
I've been there when they buried the cables on the i5 corridor and the Oregon Trail. I've held these cables in my hand. They're as thick as your arm, with many thousands of fiber optic links. I've no reason to believe other trunks aren't as well provisioned. That's the way of these things: digging the trench and negotiating the rights of way costs far more than the cable, so you may as well put as much cable in the ground as you can when you have the chance.
End point technologies have advanced quite a bit since they buried these glass links. One single link is more than sufficient to carry all the Internet there is, with 10x redundancy. The rest of those links remain mostly unlit and wasted.
The Internet is awaiting core switching tech to support this, but the physical links are in place. There's more than enough bandwidth in the ground to carry 1000 times the Internet we have now, or more. The switching tech is 20x current demand. The difference from what you have and what it costs is pure profit. The funny thing is that the tech to put data across a single fiber is moving faster than our use of it, so those dark strands may be dark forever.
Scarcity of bandwidth is a myth perpetuated to make you pay more for bandwidth. In Boise, Idaho on the Oregon Trail I've met CIOs that believe that 512Kbps is a good bandwith to pay many thousands of dollars a month for. And the 50Mbps I pay $50/month to Comcast (100x their bandwidth) passes directly beneath the street in front of them on its way to Europe when I download the latest ISO image for Mandrake.
Apart from providing the common defense, the purpose of governments is to deplete the surplus productivity. Ours is exceptionally good at the latter. Let's hope they don't let go of the former.
I'm afraid we can't lay the blame for slashdot's "creative" site style on Google. There are other browsers available on the thing. Maybe one of them will suit you better for slashdotting. Slashdot doesn't work well for me on nearly anything. It's kind of like HP's websites: you feel that by struggling through it you've earned experience points.
I imagine the larger, heavier high-def Android tablets are on the way. Probably Christmas. They'll also have some way to use multiple HDTVs as wireless monitor extensions I imagine - which would solve all of your problem except the keyboard and Wacom tablet. We're almost there.
The transformer is $100 less than the cheapest iPad2. It's got MicroSDHC slot for up to 32GB of additional storage, 10.1" widescreen display, and Android 3.1 - all of which are a step up from the iPad2 to some people. It's thin and light, goes all day on a battery. There's even an optional keyboard dock with extra battery and genuine USB slots. Performance on the dual-core 1GHz Tegra 2 processor with 1GB RAM is really sweet. There are some games on here I didn't expect to fare well on a tablet, but they're beautiful. They're flying off the shelves.
So those entry conditions that needed to be met before we could talk about serious competition: they're met now. Let's talk. Apple makes a good bit of money on every iPad2, and a little more after the sale with iTunes and the App Store and accessories and whatnot. Other vendors not really as much. They will ramp production of their products as fast as they can, but that won't be as fast as Apple can, probably. It will be a while before the iPad botherers actually take significant share. Eventually though, Apple can't out-compete and out-design every tech company on Earth and they don't intend to try. They will continue to make good money on a limited range of products while exploring even more new realms to conquer.
The fall brings quad-core Android versions with more advanced graphics, and dedicated gaming tablets, so the platform seems to have legs. The phones go well with the tablets - the ecosystem of apps and services is what adds the most value to the end user, not the widget itself. This means that folks who have iPhones are likely to choose the iPad, and Android phone people are likely to go with the Android tablets when they can get them.