Exactly, the performance gains accrued in using Gentoo are negligible if not negative.
Gentoo's only real benefit performance wise would be VERY long distance brute force type work and even then: Whats the point depending on a single OS for that? Better to cluster a number of RPM based boxes together (as many as possible) and not worry about being confined to Gentoo alone.
Still though, Gentoo is a great distro (for its sowtware tools not hardware optimization) in its own right. But if you really want performance - better to have a floppy disk sized distro writen entirely in assembly with no GUI etc.. (that aint Gentoo)
Yeah, I feel for you. I think Politics is wrong in the US. In Ireland, my homeland, our current leadership is a coaltion of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats. Before that it was a coalition of Fine Gael, the Labour party, and thwe green party (I believe) - dubbed the rainbow coalition. No absolute power there. Im hoping for a return to something like the Rainbow coalition in next election. Its not perfect but there are far worse things.
Bare in mind though that the US is massive. It really needs huge parties to run it. How many huge parties can you have? There should be more in the US, not just 2. But I see this as a possible reason for your political makeup. But stillI prefer our political landscape...
two different computer systems.. the other wireless to off-premise,
Sorry, but no way. introducing wireless into e-voting at all will just add to the hysteria. Remember, think like you are a typical person.
*News today* Wireless is not secure.
People: Oh no, our e-voting uses wireless. I have just voted for Cthulhu instead of Kerry. YOU try and explain to them that the wireless element is just a back up and it is used in conjunction with fiber optic. It won't matter. We can't afford to use open sockets of any kind as far as Im concerned. For me its not about what encryption, etc we use, the average person won't get that.
Sadly, yes, there probably needs to be a paper trail, or at least some bit of tangible matter that exists to say "I voted for him" We are still climbing out of a a world of paper books..
Also, there needs to be a security presence around. People need to know:
"Thats the electronic box I registered my vote at."
"Thats the security guard protecting my vote".
Also finally. In my opinion the whole system has to be open source to insure transparency.
Therefore, a third party "technical" group including people from OTHER countries with _no_ political affiliations with government can say:
"yes,this is the ONLY source code used to make the e-voting system.I've inspected the source - nothing malicious".
"Yes, no more source code can be added".
"Yes, this is the open source gcc compiler used to compile that source code. I've inspected the source - nothing malicious".
"Yes, there are no more compilers here."
"Yes this is the open source architecture(computer, I think we should have one) on which the open source e-voting OS runs" - probably some version of linux.
"Yes, it has no ports or drives of any nature other that a DRM type port to connect to the MASTER computer" - no floppy drives, usb ports, anything..
"This is the giant lead safe where the voting computer is stored."
of course, the machine itself should be on _NO_ network. The machine (once voting is complete) should be literally removed from its safe and put into a armoured car and driven by military escort to the third party inspector group. so they can investigate that everything was done properly. The votes coould be counted before it is added to the master (supreme overlord cluster) computer, and again inside the master computer with all the other computers. and the results added up many times to insure accuracy. Then a board would convene to decide that since Cthulhu only got 0.01 % of the vote and the rest was evenly?? distributed between Bush and Kerry, they can assume that their attempt at secure voting may have succeeded.
This is how i think it SHOULD be. This is what people really want. This in a nutshell also reminds us why Open source is the way to go. No chance for paranoia to set in.
x% of.class files -> java bytecode interpreter. y% of.class files -> javah c binary. (In fact if code is in a loop that is used allot it will be y) Java is not slow. It gets faster all the time. Sun are doing a great job on it. They put allot of time and energy into native compilation, and it pays off. And bare in mind also that "y" is precompiled for the specific platform it runs on. I believe this will only get better. There is now a compilation flag especially included for the AMD 64. In fact this is what I would really like to see more of - morespecific java architecture optimizations!
Well you or I are allowed to make these mistakes, but when a mega corporation like MS does this and people keep using the browser, it really ticks me off.
I dont see the point of sudo admin access. You can create a permanent admin account with just one command in term. so whats the point of sudo admin. Ok, a regular user account can be used for administrative purposes by an admin. That is nothing new... My problem with interrupts is that user control is not easy. The MAC decides what does what, and when, its difficult to circomvent. It does it well usually but when things grind to a halt you are stuck. Unless you want to go copying pointer tables and all that nonsense you are stuck with this. Maybe the G5 has improved upon this, but the OS itself is partly to blame.
Thats true, but how far can a prototype really get if the communication between up-to-date requirements and specification of the protype is bad. My feeling is still that this communication link suffers with a voting system demanded by those who are ignorant of the system itself, extremely thrifty with money - too thrifty, and just plain impatient. Its a pity that E-voting seems doomed to be held back when it really shouldn't be. The technology is there. The culture is not quite..
Also, there is a finite amount you can do with an O.S Unix/Linux based O.S.' are catching up and in my opinion ahead in many ways.Too many features makes a system cumbersome and I think MS know this. This is why I am betting that they will stick with Avalon for Longhorn and that it will be a monster of locked down non-backwards compatible convuluted API, and that they will flog Longhorn itself for half nothing. Because if they don't, Linux can turn the desktop tide. Longhorn could be evil though. I really want to see a dedicated opensource d3d renderer (not an emulator like WineX) comparable to DirectX for Unix/Linux. For me thats important. Either that or OpenGL to really take another giant leap in development.
BadGeorgian people with a big brother political agenda, IMO.
I hope things inprove for Georgia, but I don't think that was relevant for our system. If there are crooked people technically, I would say that they are in all industries, not just Politics, and I don't believe for a second that the person who develops an e-voting system is the same person who manipulates that same system for personal gain / power. Thats where power hungry didtators come in. I can try and imagine how tough it is to be optimistic in Georgia, but I think you will find that the mental reasoning used in developping an e-voting system is completely independant of that used for Political corruption. At leat I hope so : )
As to your Mandrake recommendation, I for one positively loathe the colourful kindergarten looks of any distro with KDE. I'm not going to even acknowledge that. Gnome is awful and really just a Winodws clone at the moment. I was apalled to see a WinXP skin for Gnome. Thats not what Linux is about. Though I wouldn't be surprised if people are using Win skins for KDE too - ironic.
As for your other flamebait, I was just trying to win over a few more ppl to Linux. Personally, I like a good terminal but I know thats not what any Windows user wants, they want a functinal GUI amongst many other things, and yes, they are eye candy junkies in need of reassurance, many of them. There's a reason why Apple is so popular. Their desktop looks... just adult. You know. Stylish. Coherent.Haha, you are just trying to get to me now. I like OSX too but I loathe sudo admin access, the way the OS handles interrupts and many other things. It is overall a great OS though. Personally, I honestly don't care about MAC OSX or any OS in terms of looks. I want security, responsivess, performance, and bags of useful features (and I dont care how I get them - preferably from the keyboard alone) ; )
the attacker didn't have priviledged access. But that's the basis of all security. Once you do that, all you have to do is make remote connections a special case of local access.
Come on, I would pick a FreeBSD/Linux based OS every time on principle alone but we live in a completely different world now. Just look at WiFI hacks. Its not as simple as you say,
but you are right. The way permissions is handled by Linux/Unix based O.S.' was a tried and thrusted addition to the development of security on those O.S.'
Question then becomes, how quickly are these problems responded to
I think a more appropriate question is:
If everything is equally secure/insecure, then why pay for something that is no more secure than something you can get for free???????
Also, Im surprised and disappointed they neglected to include/mention other servers like OpenBSD, NetBSD, Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake...
Its not right. Market share means nothing. They should have everything in there : (
I would prefer to see a PGP trail, that shows conclusively it was sent from X machine and not created in the database.
Yep, as I understand it, this was the fumble with our proposed system (Ireland) and it wasn't the engineers that were at fault.
It was the same thing that is always at fault.
Non technicaly educated / uncapable people want to dictate the engineering of something they cannot conceive. When it finally dawns on them, it is too late. The system is ready and the "requirements" have changed.
I imagine a whole new Software Engineering model is needed for E-voting. - The same model as before, only with a million extra iterations of "Are you sure about this? The system will not provide this. We need this.."
I'm playing I don't want to mess with a kvm just to check my email.
You should open your mind about Linux on the desktop. For me its main problem is lack of users - That should change.
Lack of intelligence insulting features - People should change!!!
What distro are you using. I believe you are not the kind of person who wants all the eye candy - no offence. Why not use Mandrake or Red Hat. Especially Mandrake - its a serious Linux distro- ersatile enough for almost any task. I would say only beaten in terms of perfomance, and its stil fast! It also has all the eye candy you want..
Do you recall the ability of IE versions up to 5.5 at least being able to open pages of one domain, while this domain appeared as a completely different one in the address bar via a simple button.
I'm not going to argue withe the definition of design but I would say that when you sit down to decide the conditions by which text appears in the address bar of the browser, you should come up with something better than that.
Thats fair enough but its beside the point. Konquerer, Opera, Firebird (now Firefox), Mozilla, and many other Mozilla based browsers suffer the burden you speak of yet really are better than IE. All I was trying to say was that the website link referred to in the master blog is deceptive. It tries to make you 'click here to see how Firefox is better than IE' and actually turns out to be a refute of IE's security problem on the basis that hacking IE is a more lucrative business. I was merely trying point this out. I do all this just to try and make people aware of the shortcommings of IE. We are on the same side here. You may remember the laughable security bug a few months back where web hosts could use a simple button to redirect clients a bogie site masquerading as a legitimate one. This was the begininning of the end for me. I demonstratedthis to our Admin using a little php server in work. I showed how with one click it could be possible to gather credit cards with the bug. But more than that I was surprised that such a fundamental bud existed, and is no doubt already responsible for mass credit card fraud.. I really dont know how Ms are getting away with this. Almost Everyone (all though it is changing slowly) still uses IE. We use it in work, against my wishes...
I guess thats where your ActiveX controls comes in. I actually got forced to use Active X control today too, as it was required to participate in closed beta testing..ActiveX has its uses, but it could EASILY be substituted with something better...
I'm not sure auditing the security of gigantic projects like mozilla and the linux kernel is an itch that anybody would want to scratch
Come on, do u really think all hackers out there are auditors. Thats not how a typical security bug gets reported..
You exaggerate. And the 2.6 kernel is very fast. Its a new Kernel and any good admin wouldn't rush to implememt it yet until all bugs have been irined out. Give it a year, stop moaning...
I want to iterate the above.. If you read the article (wolf in sheeps clothing) it knocks Firefox because it has fewer users and therefore hacks for IE are far more lucrative than for Firefox - True. Does this mean there are as many potential hacks for Firefoxs - No, False, in my opinion. Why? Because the types of hacks found in Ie are fundamental mistakes in design that would be universal to ANY browser if they were on the same par. They are not. These fundamental mistakes have not been made by the othere -especially the OSS browsers. This is because, as I have always said - OSS software is open to the world and gets more scrutiny. Major problems a re found earlier. However, the makers of Firefox should not rest on their laurels...
Ignore this thread. It was probably started up by an MS buff to use reverse psychology to ttrick ppl to read it. If you read the article it concludes by slating Firefox because it does not have suffient users and is therefore not applicable as a target by virus writers. This assumption is in fact false. There are many underlying attibuted shared by all browsers, many of them which are vulnerable in IE, and guess what - they are not vulnerable in Firefox. In other words, the same problems are likely to occur in both browsers if thety are equals. They do not. They only occur in IE becase though IE has always been a fast browser in my oppionion, it ultimatlely sucks as it is so insecure. Thankyou
Actually i'm not a Star Trek fanatic but, if the principle of First Contact was implemented by Spanish, Portuguess, and those explorers that came after - Dutch, English, Italian.., those parts of the world which were abused (Africa, America, Australia..), would not have been. In fact if my history serves me, and it doesn't always, the first exploration of an UNinhabited island was carried out by the Portuguese. THey managed to infest the island with rabbits, and to this day much of the vegetation as been eaten away by them...
We should not do anything until we have some kind of mechanism of first contact/analysis/non interference in natural development etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, the performance gains accrued in using Gentoo are negligible if not negative.
Gentoo's only real benefit performance wise would be VERY long distance brute force type work and even then: Whats the point depending on a single OS for that? Better to cluster a number of RPM based boxes together (as many as possible) and not worry about being confined to Gentoo alone.
Still though, Gentoo is a great distro (for its sowtware tools not hardware optimization) in its own right. But if you really want performance - better to have a floppy disk sized distro writen entirely in assembly with no GUI etc.. (that aint Gentoo)
Sorry, I lkie SuSE but if they have one weakness, its that they rush. They were the first to have support for the AMD64 too. They should relax a bit!
Yeah, I feel for you. I think Politics is wrong in the US. In Ireland, my homeland, our current leadership is a coaltion of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats. Before that it was a coalition of Fine Gael, the Labour party, and thwe green party (I believe) - dubbed the rainbow coalition. No absolute power there. Im hoping for a return to something like the Rainbow coalition in next election. Its not perfect but there are far worse things.
Bare in mind though that the US is massive. It really needs huge parties to run it. How many huge parties can you have? There should be more in the US, not just 2. But I see this as a possible reason for your political makeup. But stillI prefer our political landscape...
two different computer systems .. the other wireless to off-premise, ,this is the ONLY source code used to make the e-voting system.I've inspected the source - nothing malicious".
Sorry, but no way. introducing wireless into e-voting at all will just add to the hysteria. Remember, think like you are a typical person.
*News today* Wireless is not secure. People: Oh no, our e-voting uses wireless. I have just voted for Cthulhu instead of Kerry. YOU try and explain to them that the wireless element is just a back up and it is used in conjunction with fiber optic. It won't matter. We can't afford to use open sockets of any kind as far as Im concerned. For me its not about what encryption, etc we use, the average person won't get that. Sadly, yes, there probably needs to be a paper trail, or at least some bit of tangible matter that exists to say "I voted for him" We are still climbing out of a a world of paper books.. Also, there needs to be a security presence around. People need to know:
"Thats the electronic box I registered my vote at."
"Thats the security guard protecting my vote".
Also finally. In my opinion the whole system has to be open source to insure transparency.
Therefore, a third party "technical" group including people from OTHER countries with _no_ political affiliations with government can say:
"yes
"Yes, no more source code can be added".
"Yes, this is the open source gcc compiler used to compile that source code. I've inspected the source - nothing malicious".
"Yes, there are no more compilers here."
"Yes this is the open source architecture(computer, I think we should have one) on which the open source e-voting OS runs" - probably some version of linux.
"Yes, it has no ports or drives of any nature other that a DRM type port to connect to the MASTER computer" - no floppy drives, usb ports, anything..
"This is the giant lead safe where the voting computer is stored."
of course, the machine itself should be on _NO_ network. The machine (once voting is complete) should be literally removed from its safe and put into a armoured car and driven by military escort to the third party inspector group. so they can investigate that everything was done properly. The votes coould be counted before it is added to the master (supreme overlord cluster) computer, and again inside the master computer with all the other computers. and the results added up many times to insure accuracy. Then a board would convene to decide that since Cthulhu only got 0.01 % of the vote and the rest was evenly?? distributed between Bush and Kerry, they can assume that their attempt at secure voting may have succeeded.
This is how i think it SHOULD be. This is what people really want. This in a nutshell also reminds us why Open source is the way to go. No chance for paranoia to set in.
Too bad Java runs so slow.
.class files -> java byte code interpreter (slower than executables)
.class files -> java bytecode interpreter. .class files -> javah c binary.
Dont get me started on this again. Popular myth about Java:
Slow beacuse
Reality:
x% of
y% of
(In fact if code is in a loop that is used allot it will be y)
Java is not slow. It gets faster all the time. Sun are doing a great job on it. They put allot of time and energy into native compilation, and it pays off. And bare in mind also that "y" is precompiled for the specific platform it runs on.
I believe this will only get better. There is now a compilation flag especially included for the AMD 64. In fact this is what I would really like to see more of - morespecific java architecture optimizations!
Well you or I are allowed to make these mistakes, but when a mega corporation like MS does this and people keep using the browser, it really ticks me off.
I dont see the point of sudo admin access.
You can create a permanent admin account with just one command in term. so whats the point of sudo admin. Ok, a regular user account can be used for administrative purposes by an admin. That is nothing new...
My problem with interrupts is that user control is not easy. The MAC decides what does what, and when, its difficult to circomvent. It does it well usually but when things grind to a halt you are stuck. Unless you want to go copying pointer tables and all that nonsense you are stuck with this. Maybe the G5 has improved upon this, but the OS itself is partly to blame.
Thats true, but how far can a prototype really get if the communication between up-to-date requirements and specification of the protype is bad. My feeling is still that this communication link suffers with a voting system demanded by those who are ignorant of the system itself, extremely thrifty with money - too thrifty, and just plain impatient. Its a pity that E-voting seems doomed to be held back when it really shouldn't be. The technology is there. The culture is not quite..
Also, there is a finite amount you can do with an O.S Unix/Linux based O.S.' are catching up and in my opinion ahead in many ways.Too many features makes a system cumbersome and I think MS know this. This is why I am betting that they will stick with Avalon for Longhorn and that it will be a monster of locked down non-backwards compatible convuluted API, and that they will flog Longhorn itself for half nothing. Because if they don't, Linux can turn the desktop tide. Longhorn could be evil though. I really want to see a dedicated opensource d3d renderer (not an emulator like WineX) comparable to DirectX for Unix/Linux. For me thats important. Either that or OpenGL to really take another giant leap in development.
Bad Georgian people with a big brother political agenda, IMO.
I hope things inprove for Georgia, but I don't think that was relevant for our system. If there are crooked people technically, I would say that they are in all industries, not just Politics, and I don't believe for a second that the person who develops an e-voting system is the same person who manipulates that same system for personal gain / power. Thats where power hungry didtators come in. I can try and imagine how tough it is to be optimistic in Georgia, but I think you will find that the mental reasoning used in developping an e-voting system is completely independant of that used for Political corruption. At leat I hope so : )
As to your Mandrake recommendation, I for one positively loathe the colourful kindergarten looks of any distro with KDE.
I'm not going to even acknowledge that. Gnome is awful and really just a Winodws clone at the moment. I was apalled to see a WinXP skin for Gnome. Thats not what Linux is about. Though I wouldn't be surprised if people are using Win skins for KDE too - ironic.
As for your other flamebait, I was just trying to win over a few more ppl to Linux. Personally, I like a good terminal but I know thats not what any Windows user wants, they want a functinal GUI amongst many other things, and yes, they are eye candy junkies in need of reassurance, many of them.
There's a reason why Apple is so popular. Their desktop looks... just adult. You know. Stylish. Coherent.Haha, you are just trying to get to me now. I like OSX too but I loathe sudo admin access, the way the OS handles interrupts and many other things. It is overall a great OS though. Personally, I honestly don't care about MAC OSX or any OS in terms of looks. I want security, responsivess, performance, and bags of useful features (and I dont care how I get them - preferably from the keyboard alone) ; )
Haha : )
the attacker didn't have priviledged access. But that's the basis of all security. Once you do that, all you have to do is make remote connections a special case of local access. Come on, I would pick a FreeBSD/Linux based OS every time on principle alone but we live in a completely different world now. Just look at WiFI hacks. Its not as simple as you say,
but you are right. The way permissions is handled by Linux/Unix based O.S.' was a tried and thrusted addition to the development of security on those O.S.'
Question then becomes, how quickly are these problems responded to
I think a more appropriate question is:
If everything is equally secure/insecure, then why pay for something that is no more secure than something you can get for free???????
Also, Im surprised and disappointed they neglected to include/mention other servers like OpenBSD, NetBSD, Gentoo, Debian, Mandrake... Its not right. Market share means nothing. They should have everything in there : (
I would prefer to see a PGP trail, that shows conclusively it was sent from X machine and not created in the database.
Yep, as I understand it, this was the fumble with our proposed system (Ireland) and it wasn't the engineers that were at fault. It was the same thing that is always at fault. Non technicaly educated / uncapable people want to dictate the engineering of something they cannot conceive. When it finally dawns on them, it is too late. The system is ready and the "requirements" have changed.
I imagine a whole new Software Engineering model is needed for E-voting. - The same model as before, only with a million extra iterations of "Are you sure about this? The system will not provide this. We need this.."
I'm playing I don't want to mess with a kvm just to check my email.
You should open your mind about Linux on the desktop. For me its main problem is lack of users - That should change. Lack of intelligence insulting features - People should change!!!
What distro are you using. I believe you are not the kind of person who wants all the eye candy - no offence. Why not use Mandrake or Red Hat. Especially Mandrake - its a serious Linux distro- ersatile enough for almost any task. I would say only beaten in terms of perfomance, and its stil fast! It also has all the eye candy you want..
Do you recall the ability of IE versions up to 5.5 at least being able to open pages of one domain, while this domain appeared as a completely different one in the address bar via a simple button.
I'm not going to argue withe the definition of design but I would say that when you sit down to decide the conditions by which text appears in the address bar of the browser, you should come up with something better than that.
Thats fair enough but its beside the point.
Konquerer, Opera, Firebird (now Firefox), Mozilla, and many other Mozilla based browsers suffer the burden you speak of yet really are better than IE. All I was trying to say was that the website link referred to in the master blog is deceptive. It tries to make you 'click here to see how Firefox is better than IE' and actually turns out to be a refute of IE's security problem on the basis that hacking IE is a more lucrative business. I was merely trying point this out. I do all this just to try and make people aware of the shortcommings of IE. We are on the same side here. You may remember the laughable security bug a few months back where web hosts could use a simple button to redirect clients a bogie site masquerading as a legitimate one. This was the begininning of the end for me. I demonstratedthis to our Admin using a little php server in work. I showed how with one click it could be possible to gather credit cards with the bug. But more than that I was surprised that such a fundamental bud existed, and is no doubt already responsible for mass credit card fraud.. I really dont know how Ms are getting away with this. Almost Everyone (all though it is changing slowly) still uses IE. We use it in work, against my wishes...
I guess thats where your ActiveX controls comes in. I actually got forced to use Active X control today too, as it was required to participate in closed beta testing..ActiveX has its uses, but it could EASILY be substituted with something better...
I'm not sure auditing the security of gigantic projects like mozilla and the linux kernel is an itch that anybody would want to scratch
Come on, do u really think all hackers out there are auditors. Thats not how a typical security bug gets reported..
You exaggerate. And the 2.6 kernel is very fast. Its a new Kernel and any good admin wouldn't rush to implememt it yet until all bugs have been irined out. Give it a year, stop moaning...
I wouldn't pick Opera either. Opera 7 had its share of security problems.
Konquerer, Firefox - thats the way to go!
I want to iterate the above..
If you read the article (wolf in sheeps clothing) it knocks Firefox because it has fewer users and therefore hacks for IE are far more lucrative than for Firefox - True.
Does this mean there are as many potential hacks for Firefoxs - No, False, in my opinion. Why?
Because the types of hacks found in Ie are fundamental mistakes in design that would be universal to ANY browser if they were on the same par. They are not. These fundamental mistakes have not been made by the othere -especially the OSS browsers. This is because, as I have always said - OSS software is open to the world and gets more scrutiny. Major problems a re found earlier.
However, the makers of Firefox should not rest on their laurels...
Ignore this thread. It was probably started up by an MS buff to use reverse psychology to ttrick ppl to read it. If you read the article it concludes by slating Firefox because it does not have suffient users and is therefore not applicable as a target by virus writers. This assumption is in fact false. There are many underlying attibuted shared by all browsers, many of them which are vulnerable in IE, and guess what - they are not vulnerable in Firefox. In other words, the same problems are likely to occur in both browsers if thety are equals. They do not. They only occur in IE becase though IE has always been a fast browser in my oppionion, it ultimatlely sucks as it is so insecure.
Thankyou
Actually i'm not a Star Trek fanatic but, if the principle of First Contact was implemented by Spanish, Portuguess, and those explorers that came after - Dutch, English, Italian.., those parts of the world which were abused (Africa, America, Australia..), would not have been.
In fact if my history serves me, and it doesn't always, the first exploration of an UNinhabited island was carried out by the Portuguese. THey managed to infest the island with rabbits, and to this day much of the vegetation as been eaten away by them...
We should not do anything until we have some kind of mechanism of first contact/analysis/non interference in natural development etc.
You're forgetting the cluster of Alien cities imaged from outer space already by Cassini:
Here