There should be some way to identify a compromised voting machine. But it can't be something so simple as tape on the locks. The voting system should be so secure from the start that the tamper identification system never gets used. And the tamper identifcation is to ensure that no tampering was done. Throwing out all the votes from suspicious machines would be a disaster!
One more "It's our property, and we don't trust you, the consumer, with it." from the big organizations has met consumers who are dissatisfied with their garbage and unwilling to pay for it.
Great!
And I hope the next time they try this it fails just as hard as this venture did. And eventually some executive will say, "Hey, wait a minute. Maybe it's not worth alienating all our customers to squeeze an extra million out of our already 100 billion dollar profits."
Of course that executive will be ignored, and possibly fired for lack of vision. But it's a start.
And again we have the bizarre assertion that people pirating software leads to increased software prices.
I didn't say that. I said that some people (myself included) would pay for the software if it were affordable. The alternatives are pirating it OR not buying it and not using it. Either way, the revenue is not there.
If the number of customers is lower, the revenue per customer must increase to maintain profits. That doesn't sound very bizarre to me.
but it's not like you can go to Best Buy, pick up a scanner on sale, and start counterfeiting money.
I want to BestBuy last week, and sure enough, right there next to those little photograph printers, was an illegal currency printer. The side of the box said,:
HP Illegal Currency Printer (USB)
Plug and Play technology
System Requirements:
Pentium II 200 MHz or better
128 MBytes Ram
Windows 98/NT/2000/XP
Note: Does not work with Adobe Photoshop CS
Don't forget HP Bank Note Paper and Ink Cartridges (HP-ICP-701).
This just in, the GIMP is providing an optional anti-counterfeiting plugin, for people who want it. Seems fair.
Hah ha! If you would like to stop yourself from counterfeiting, download this module and install it for use in Gimp. If you are a counterfeiter, please download and install the module. Then do not attempt to bypass it's security in any way.
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable.
No kidding. And that only starts the downward spiral. Once your software is over a couple hundred dollars a lot of people who would like to pay for it can't afford it. Those people either use it without paying for it, or don't use it at all. Either way, they aren't paying, which leads to a further increase in cost to the remainder who are buying. And on and on...
I almost choke when I see the prices on some of the software bundles, especially Adobe.
Yeah, I don't mind instructions, pictures, and other things that give you ideas. I don't even mind bundled sets that much (as long as I can remember every set had alternate models that could be built and pictures to start your creative juices flowing). I just don't like the idea of a piece that will ONLY fit with one other piece in one way. There is zero flexibility in that. And I don't consider them real legos.
I built a lot of the alternate models too, and I think they were often better than the primary model on the front of the box. Oh, and don't forget building two smaller models from one large set. Or... building one huge model from two or three smaller sets! I have to stop now, I'm drooling on my keyboard.
I have fond memories of building all manner of things with my lego sets.
Me too. I loved having a little stash of hinges and swivels because... what can't you make with legos if you have a few hinges and swivels? You can make darn near anything! And the sound of raking through the box looking for that one specific piece still echos in my mind... I would dig from one end of the box while my sister dug from the other, so that we were effectively filling each other's digging spots.
"Emily, I need a blue 1 by 6."
"Get your own piece, and stop pushing legos on my side, I'm trying to find a piece and you keep covering them up!"
Legos were much better when they were simply blocks and YOUR IMAGINATION was what mattered. I've watched my little brothers put together newer lego sets where most of the pieces are designed to fit together in ONE SPECIFIC WAY. Everything is already planned out, and you are supposed to follow the directions (like a some-assembly-required toy).
I'm all for plain old blocks again. And I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to higher revenues again.
This is a much better approach than Legal or Court based ones. You can always count a crazy judge to screw things up. But good hard encryption and hidden internet paths are a much larger stumbling block to the likes of the RIAA, which is on the whole, technically incompetant.
Even IF they win the court battle with ISP's (they just took a hard knock in the last court case) there won't me much left for them to do if their ability to track is lost.
There's an elegance about punch cards that I just can't get over. The simplicity of physically changing a bit on a piece of paper has been replaced by so many application layers that you couldn't learn them all in your whole life. I can't wait to tell my grandchildren that we used puch chards and jumper wires to program computers when I was young. Heh heh, that should be about as good as not having cars or tv while growing up.
No, it's FIFO. It's a queue. You throw a shirt on top. And you put another one on top, and on and on. Then you eventually take from the bottom - the first dirty shirt - which is now dazzellingly clean!
here's what I meant to write
It would certainly help usability. If you extend the analogy of unsuitable use of hardware to software, what if I click the wrong button or enter an illegal command. This should all be handled by good software.
The problem is that software producers (we can all think of one we hate) are in a rush to make more product and to release new versions. And that rush goes against the idea of quality. In a sense, the software has to be just good enough to get a user's money.
But if that process ever became standard, it might help quite a bit with security. Throw in some bogus data and see if anyone can read it or write to it illegally.
Ultimately, this will never happen unless users demand it, and refuse to buy a product unless it passes such a test. And I don't know if that will happen.
It would certainly help usability. If you extend the analogy of unsuitable use of hardware to software, what if I click the wrong button or enter an illegal command. This should all be handled by good software.
But if that process ever became standard, it might help quite a bit with security. Throw in some bogus data and see if anyone can read it or write to it illegally.
Ultimately, this will never happen unless users demand it, and refuse to buy a product unless it passes such a test. And I don't know if that will happen.
If that isn't enough, we still have assorted Slashdot Merchandise available at ThinkGeek... the more T-Shirts you buy, the less often you need to do laundry.
Not to mention that once you own enough t-shirts, you can start a pile in the corner. As you remove a dirty t-shirt, you through it on top. When you need a new one, you take from the bottom. The weight of all the t-shirts on top pressure cleans the ones toward the bottom. Once you acheive a critical mass of t-shirts in your cleaning queue, you will never have to do laundry again.
Thickheadedness helps the process of moving away entrenched companies. And this case is no different. MS is still very much entrenched, no doubt about that. But hardware manufacturers are now that much more likely to support other standards and filesystems (like ext3) natively, and perhaps as their primary system.
They'll get away with this because they're big enough. And they'll make some money. But this, and similar practices, will work against them in the long run.
My original post already spelled out that I haven't seen the episode yet. It is very doable to roll a real ticker over an animated show as if it were done realtime over regular programming.
And while I don't regularly watch FOX News, they were the only station not to prematurely declare Al Gore the next president of the United States during the last election.
I agree that we have reached that point now. That's not my point. My comment is not so much a how it is statement as how it was and should be statement.
Thanks for the screen shot. Like I said, I haven't seen the episode yet. But that looks like obvious parody in my judgment. They might be able to make a stink about the word "FOX" imprinted on the ticker though.
I was originally under the impression that the ticker had run accross the screen during a regular part of the show, not the news - such that it might appear that Fox was running the news ticker over top of the regular programming.
But the screenshot clears all that up. Really is worth a thousand words.
I beleive that all cases should still be reduced to the person or persons who were damaged suing the person or persons who damaged them, avoiding facades as much as possible. When an entity is involved in a suit, it should be a grouping based solely on the commonality that links them to the suit, such as class-action suit.
That's what I remember from my high school and college government/social studies classes. And all the stuff about average and other judgement calls are left up to, fittingly, a judge. That's for the U.S. anyway. I have no idea about other countries.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still pissed from the time I tried to put my Mario/Duck Hunt cartridge into my friends new SuperNES and it didn't work!
I blew on that cartridge until I passed out. I got nowhere. I turned the SNES on and off a bunch of times too.
If they keep up this type of practice of backward incompatability, there will be a whole new generation of angry, confused kids out there.
Good point!
There should be some way to identify a compromised voting machine. But it can't be something so simple as tape on the locks. The voting system should be so secure from the start that the tamper identification system never gets used. And the tamper identifcation is to ensure that no tampering was done. Throwing out all the votes from suspicious machines would be a disaster!
One more "It's our property, and we don't trust you, the consumer, with it." from the big organizations has met consumers who are dissatisfied with their garbage and unwilling to pay for it.
Great!
And I hope the next time they try this it fails just as hard as this venture did. And eventually some executive will say, "Hey, wait a minute. Maybe it's not worth alienating all our customers to squeeze an extra million out of our already 100 billion dollar profits."
Of course that executive will be ignored, and possibly fired for lack of vision. But it's a start.
And again we have the bizarre assertion that people pirating software leads to increased software prices.
I didn't say that. I said that some people (myself included) would pay for the software if it were affordable. The alternatives are pirating it OR not buying it and not using it. Either way, the revenue is not there.
If the number of customers is lower, the revenue per customer must increase to maintain profits. That doesn't sound very bizarre to me.
but it's not like you can go to Best Buy, pick up a scanner on sale, and start counterfeiting money.
I want to BestBuy last week, and sure enough, right there next to those little photograph printers, was an illegal currency printer. The side of the box said,:
HP Illegal Currency Printer (USB)
Plug and Play technology
System Requirements:
Pentium II 200 MHz or better
128 MBytes Ram
Windows 98/NT/2000/XP
Note: Does not work with Adobe Photoshop CS
Don't forget HP Bank Note Paper and Ink Cartridges (HP-ICP-701).
This just in, the GIMP is providing an optional anti-counterfeiting plugin, for people who want it. Seems fair.
Hah ha! If you would like to stop yourself from counterfeiting, download this module and install it for use in Gimp. If you are a counterfeiter, please download and install the module. Then do not attempt to bypass it's security in any way.
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable.
No kidding. And that only starts the downward spiral. Once your software is over a couple hundred dollars a lot of people who would like to pay for it can't afford it. Those people either use it without paying for it, or don't use it at all. Either way, they aren't paying, which leads to a further increase in cost to the remainder who are buying. And on and on...
I almost choke when I see the prices on some of the software bundles, especially Adobe.
When I posted I was speaking specifically of Lego Bionical. Many of these pieces have limited use, and some only fit one way.
Maybe he was looking for one of those elusive window pieces for his house or something...
Heh heh heh, either that, or he had two of the flat/thin pieces stuck together and he was making a racket trying to get them pried apart.
Yeah, I don't mind instructions, pictures, and other things that give you ideas. I don't even mind bundled sets that much (as long as I can remember every set had alternate models that could be built and pictures to start your creative juices flowing). I just don't like the idea of a piece that will ONLY fit with one other piece in one way. There is zero flexibility in that. And I don't consider them real legos.
I built a lot of the alternate models too, and I think they were often better than the primary model on the front of the box. Oh, and don't forget building two smaller models from one large set. Or... building one huge model from two or three smaller sets! I have to stop now, I'm drooling on my keyboard.
I have fond memories of building all manner of things with my lego sets.
Me too. I loved having a little stash of hinges and swivels because... what can't you make with legos if you have a few hinges and swivels? You can make darn near anything! And the sound of raking through the box looking for that one specific piece still echos in my mind... I would dig from one end of the box while my sister dug from the other, so that we were effectively filling each other's digging spots.
"Emily, I need a blue 1 by 6."
"Get your own piece, and stop pushing legos on my side, I'm trying to find a piece and you keep covering them up!"
"Shut up. Ooh! Are you using that hinge?"
These memories can never be taken from me.
Legos were much better when they were simply blocks and YOUR IMAGINATION was what mattered. I've watched my little brothers put together newer lego sets where most of the pieces are designed to fit together in ONE SPECIFIC WAY. Everything is already planned out, and you are supposed to follow the directions (like a some-assembly-required toy).
I'm all for plain old blocks again. And I wouldn't be surprised if that leads to higher revenues again.
This is a much better approach than Legal or Court based ones. You can always count a crazy judge to screw things up. But good hard encryption and hidden internet paths are a much larger stumbling block to the likes of the RIAA, which is on the whole, technically incompetant.
Even IF they win the court battle with ISP's (they just took a hard knock in the last court case) there won't me much left for them to do if their ability to track is lost.
There's an elegance about punch cards that I just can't get over. The simplicity of physically changing a bit on a piece of paper has been replaced by so many application layers that you couldn't learn them all in your whole life. I can't wait to tell my grandchildren that we used puch chards and jumper wires to program computers when I was young. Heh heh, that should be about as good as not having cars or tv while growing up.
No, it's FIFO. It's a queue. You throw a shirt on top. And you put another one on top, and on and on. Then you eventually take from the bottom - the first dirty shirt - which is now dazzellingly clean!
here's what I meant to write
It would certainly help usability. If you extend the analogy of unsuitable use of hardware to software, what if I click the wrong button or enter an illegal command. This should all be handled by good software.
The problem is that software producers (we can all think of one we hate) are in a rush to make more product and to release new versions. And that rush goes against the idea of quality. In a sense, the software has to be just good enough to get a user's money.
But if that process ever became standard, it might help quite a bit with security. Throw in some bogus data and see if anyone can read it or write to it illegally.
Ultimately, this will never happen unless users demand it, and refuse to buy a product unless it passes such a test. And I don't know if that will happen.
It would certainly help usability. If you extend the analogy of unsuitable use of hardware to software, what if I click the wrong button or enter an illegal command. This should all be handled by good software.
But if that process ever became standard, it might help quite a bit with security. Throw in some bogus data and see if anyone can read it or write to it illegally.
Ultimately, this will never happen unless users demand it, and refuse to buy a product unless it passes such a test. And I don't know if that will happen.
If that isn't enough, we still have assorted Slashdot Merchandise available at ThinkGeek... the more T-Shirts you buy, the less often you need to do laundry.
Not to mention that once you own enough t-shirts, you can start a pile in the corner. As you remove a dirty t-shirt, you through it on top. When you need a new one, you take from the bottom. The weight of all the t-shirts on top pressure cleans the ones toward the bottom. Once you acheive a critical mass of t-shirts in your cleaning queue, you will never have to do laundry again.
Thickheadedness helps the process of moving away entrenched companies. And this case is no different. MS is still very much entrenched, no doubt about that. But hardware manufacturers are now that much more likely to support other standards and filesystems (like ext3) natively, and perhaps as their primary system.
They'll get away with this because they're big enough. And they'll make some money. But this, and similar practices, will work against them in the long run.
My original post already spelled out that I haven't seen the episode yet. It is very doable to roll a real ticker over an animated show as if it were done realtime over regular programming.
And while I don't regularly watch FOX News, they were the only station not to prematurely declare Al Gore the next president of the United States during the last election.
I agree that we have reached that point now. That's not my point. My comment is not so much a how it is statement as how it was and should be statement.
Thanks for the screen shot. Like I said, I haven't seen the episode yet. But that looks like obvious parody in my judgment. They might be able to make a stink about the word "FOX" imprinted on the ticker though.
I was originally under the impression that the ticker had run accross the screen during a regular part of the show, not the news - such that it might appear that Fox was running the news ticker over top of the regular programming.
But the screenshot clears all that up. Really is worth a thousand words.
I beleive that all cases should still be reduced to the person or persons who were damaged suing the person or persons who damaged them, avoiding facades as much as possible. When an entity is involved in a suit, it should be a grouping based solely on the commonality that links them to the suit, such as class-action suit.
That's what I remember from my high school and college government/social studies classes. And all the stuff about average and other judgement calls are left up to, fittingly, a judge. That's for the U.S. anyway. I have no idea about other countries.
I guess Fox'd win the case easily :) I wonder if they'd have to pay themselves damages.
Fox income = damages - lawyer fees
Fox loss = damages
Fox net gain = - lawyer fees
That's one hell of a business strategy.