As we lose more and more independent bookstores, Amazon becomes less like a regular business and more like a monopoly. Monopolies DO have more legal responsibilities than regular businesses, because they become many people's only realistic option for obtaining some particular service. When they don't meet their responsibilities, they get (well, they once got) broken up by the government.
Your.sig was never more appropriate than in a story of SGI's final breath. "If anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds."
Personally, I'll be very curious to see how much this story gets in American mainstream media, as compared with, say, this story: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6995.
You know, I live in a rural area about five miles from a very low traffic airport, and 300 miles from San Francisco. The drive to SF takes five hours, to SFO airport takes six, and the airlines charge as much to get from here to SFO as they charge to get from SFO to New York. If I had $200,000, I'd be in line now.
The internet is now critical infrastructure, becoming more so with every passing day.
Microsoft is profiting by selling software.
Because that software is broken by design, it makes it easy for unskilled kids to deploy networks of computers that can deny service on that critical infrastructure. Microsoft apparently understands how to prevent this, because posts here say Windows 7 security is a step back from Vista security.
I honestly don't understand why this isn't considered criminal behavior or, at the very least, a source of dangerous civil liability for Microsoft.
I honestly believe the internet needs some mechanism to prevent connections from machines running easily compromised software.
Perhaps the solution is for a standards body to announce that starting n years from today, it will deploy software that will actively hunt out compromisable machines and run programs on them that will disconnect them from public networks.
People need to start developing ways to prevent Windows 7 systems from connecting to the internet.
I'm serious. Is there any international standards body that can recognize this for the problem it is?
Microsoft continues to use its status to put code on gazillions of computers that allows easy creation of herds of denial-of-service botnets.
This is as criminal as if AT&T, when it was a monopoly, distributed telephones that failed half the time on calls to 911. We accept it only because we're used to it.
The difference is simple. If you hack a paper election, evidence is left behind. If you skillfully hack an election with computers, you can do it and leave no evidence.
Once a tree is cut another one can never be regrown in the same spot! That's why we have to save trees... right?
Every time you take a "crop" of trees, what you are doing is mining the topsoil. This idea that trees are renewable is at best a half-truth. Yes, given centuries to recover between takings, forests would be renewable. Anybody expect the forest product companies to let "their" forests take a few centuries to recover? The joke's on you.
Not only does the guy sound sane, it sounds as though he's got grounds to sue the folks who are trying to prosecute him. TFA suggests these incompetents were upset to find (1) a modem that had been in the admin's office since before he started working there, and (2) a modem set up to page him on any problems, and (3) a modem set up to handle emergencies.
Obviously, this was not handled well by either side, but I'm inclined to believe the guy in jail over the clearly incompetent managers.
Yes, I agree that paper and pencil are the best way to vote. But tested open-source software, backed up by the ability to hand count the ballots themselves if necessary, is probably a better way to count than hand counting.
If a lot of equipment began to be returned to manufacturers, under warranty, because it had been "accidentally" plugged into enough voltage to fry it, I'll bet the manufacturers would decide that they could pass on the high-margin replacement power supply business.
I bet no one in your land is ever arrested without being guilty of a crime, and no one will ever abuse their access to private information about you. You lucky dog!
All you wussy pussy thieves who fear the law closing in on you !! Don't want your DNA known? Don't shoplift. Goddamn that seems simple enough even for slashdot lusers !!
Slashdot Mirror
As we lose more and more independent bookstores, Amazon becomes less like a regular business and more like a monopoly. Monopolies DO have more legal responsibilities than regular businesses, because they become many people's only realistic option for obtaining some particular service. When they don't meet their responsibilities, they get (well, they once got) broken up by the government.
E-voting has had more lives than a cat. It should be over, done, kaput. An experiment that failed.
plasticsquirrel,
Your .sig was never more appropriate than in a story of SGI's final breath. "If anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds."
RIP, SGI.
Personally, I'll be very curious to see how much this story gets in American mainstream media, as compared with, say, this story: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6995.
Imagine if 0.1% of the time and energy that has been put into airport shoe check theatre were devoted to problems like this.
"no practical application to the field"
Try management.
These WERE optical scan ballots! The problems were in the counting system
You know, I live in a rural area about five miles from a very low traffic airport, and 300 miles from San Francisco. The drive to SF takes five hours, to SFO airport takes six, and the airlines charge as much to get from here to SFO as they charge to get from SFO to New York. If I had $200,000, I'd be in line now.
The post reads: "By abstracting out the substance from the content, it becomes possible to focus heavily on the writing..."
Abstracting out the substance from the content?
You're one of those humanities folks, aren't you?
The internet is now critical infrastructure, becoming more so with every passing day.
Microsoft is profiting by selling software.
Because that software is broken by design, it makes it easy for unskilled kids to deploy networks of computers that can deny service on that critical infrastructure. Microsoft apparently understands how to prevent this, because posts here say Windows 7 security is a step back from Vista security.
I honestly don't understand why this isn't considered criminal behavior or, at the very least, a source of dangerous civil liability for Microsoft.
I honestly believe the internet needs some mechanism to prevent connections from machines running easily compromised software.
Perhaps the solution is for a standards body to announce that starting n years from today, it will deploy software that will actively hunt out compromisable machines and run programs on them that will disconnect them from public networks.
People need to start developing ways to prevent Windows 7 systems from connecting to the internet.
I'm serious. Is there any international standards body that can recognize this for the problem it is?
Microsoft continues to use its status to put code on gazillions of computers that allows easy creation of herds of denial-of-service botnets.
This is as criminal as if AT&T, when it was a monopoly, distributed telephones that failed half the time on calls to 911. We accept it only because we're used to it.
The difference is simple. If you hack a paper election, evidence is left behind. If you skillfully hack an election with computers, you can do it and leave no evidence.
Once a tree is cut another one can never be regrown in the same spot! That's why we have to save trees... right?
Every time you take a "crop" of trees, what you are doing is mining the topsoil. This idea that trees are renewable is at best a half-truth. Yes, given centuries to recover between takings, forests would be renewable. Anybody expect the forest product companies to let "their" forests take a few centuries to recover? The joke's on you.
Not only does the guy sound sane, it sounds as though he's got grounds to sue the folks who are trying to prosecute him. TFA suggests these incompetents were upset to find (1) a modem that had been in the admin's office since before he started working there, and (2) a modem set up to page him on any problems, and (3) a modem set up to handle emergencies.
Obviously, this was not handled well by either side, but I'm inclined to believe the guy in jail over the clearly incompetent managers.
Yes, I agree that paper and pencil are the best way to vote. But tested open-source software, backed up by the ability to hand count the ballots themselves if necessary, is probably a better way to count than hand counting.
For one person's funny take on hand-counting (not mine), look 3 hours and 57 minutes into this meeting of the Humboldt County CA Board of Supervisors.
Geeks have a tendency to underestimate the difficulties involved. If geeks were doing the hand counts, I'd be all for them.
(Full disclosure: I do free, open-source ballot counting software.)
Paper and pencil ballots still need to be counted, either by hand or by machines.
Hand counts are time consuming and, in tests, rarely match one another.
Machine counting has meant relying on companies like Diebold: see www.bradblog.com/?p=6733
If a lot of equipment began to be returned to manufacturers, under warranty, because it had been "accidentally" plugged into enough voltage to fry it, I'll bet the manufacturers would decide that they could pass on the high-margin replacement power supply business.
They deserve it.
I bet no one in your land is ever arrested without being guilty of a crime, and no one will ever abuse their access to private information about you. You lucky dog!
All you wussy pussy thieves who fear the law closing in on you !! Don't want your DNA known? Don't shoplift. Goddamn that seems simple enough even for slashdot lusers !!
This idea is awful for the same reasons that I don't want the local police department entering my home to show me how easy it is to pick my locks.
The idea smells of John Ashcroft appointees.
What were the experts' odds on Chernobyl?