I heard an expert on the particular voting machines used in Florida. He stated that by law they have to be certified to a certain accuracy, and the machines in Florida are over 99.9% accurate.
Something not mentioned is that this 99.9% accuraccy takes place when the voters are
a: trained by the company to ensure that they use the machine properly
b: have good vision
c: have ballots that make sense and are easy to use.
Do you honestly think the company will have octogenarians testing their machines with butterfly ballots?
The margin of error for the machines is actually around 4% or so. Since the difference between Bush/Gore is 0.3%, it's obvious that a recount is necessary. Manual vs. Machine? Well, let's ask Bush and the law he signed in '97 for Texas.. Hmmm..
It was classified, then the redacting (blacking out) resulted in only unclassified information remaining.
For people wondering why the computer maker (dell?) was blacked out, it's because due to the confidential nature of the operation, there wasn't a public bid made. Hence, the government went with a company without going through the usual process of public bidding. In cases like that, they are not supposed to publicize it, because it might seem like the government is biased to one company over another.
In that case, the kids were told SPECIFICALLY to punch one and only once. As well, the arrows on the ballot were larged and lined up nicely with the holes.
Question: who says we _need_ the internet? IMHO, that'd be stupid. As you say, it would be open to attacks, and based on the ISP I use, most people wouldn't be able to vote because they are "upgrading" the services (yeah, right).
I suggest we take this one step at a time. Instead of punchcards, use computers. But the computers will STILL be in voting booths. The computers would NOT be connected to the internet. Instead, they would be stand alone systems. They each would tabulate their own votes for that booth. At the end of the day, an administrator could go in, copy the results to a floppy. Then it would be a matter of minutes to get the results for that county/precinct/district. As a fail safe, the systems could periodically print out their results. UPS systems would be mandatory, of course.
Yes, it might not be as fast as something interconnected over the internet, but it would STILL BE BETTER. No hanging chads, no nothing. We'd just have to put up with "Are you sure you'd like to vote for (any candidate)?" if the government used M$ software for some reason.
come on, give credit where credit is due.. Poland was the one that initially cracked Enigma. It was only when the Germans took it from 3 encoding wheels to 5+, and the Polish intelligence agency couldn't afford to build the larger Bombes that would crack Enigma, did they give it to the Allies. Then, yes, at Bletchley, Turing was able to break these larger key'd Enigma ciphers. Check out The Code Book by Simon Singh for a great read on cryptology!
IS departments should support the engineers, not the other way around!
Absolutely. I can't stand how most IS/IT depts think they are "King of the world" and think it's a major pain in the ass for them to have to work with you. They feel that it's their systems, and they should have full control of them. Okay, right to an extent, but some of 'em tend to lose tract of their actual goals - to support the end user so that he or she can do what needs to be done for their job! They are in SUPPORT positions, not there to rule all things computer related!
Even worse when they try to pass off their job onto you, cuz they know you can figure it out. One IT guy asked me if i knew how to program, and i'm like "sure, what language?" and he's like "MSDOS batch files". Hrm.
Fewf, I think we can all relax. It's obviously a hoax - the words don't make any sense. I have a feeling they just made a bunch of words up and drew a funny looking picture.
You are completely correct. Them calling isn't even considered as an unsolicited call if you have prior business engagements with them.
So, if you deal with a company, and they keep calling you back and you don't want to deal with them, it's still not unsolicited. It's bad business practice, but most companies don't care.
I do hope that Slashdot DOES get a lawyer.
"Now," you say, "why would Microsoft want to port Office to Linux? Isn't Linux their enemy?"
I'm surprised no one has brought this up before -it's blatantly obvious. Microsoft wants to bring blue screens to Linux. Of course because Linux is so omni-configurable, power users will be able to recompile the kernel to change the color of said blue screens.
Coolfish
Quite simply, they aren't allowed. If you go around telling everyone you work with the NSA, there's a greater chance that someone 'bad' will find out and try to get information out of you. And publishing that info on Slashdot would be like shooting oneself in the head...
There is a difference though. With newspapers, magazines, and all other media aside from the internet, you can't turn off those ads. With the internet, it's simple. Junkbusters (www.junkbusters.com) for linux, and webwasher (www.webwasher.de) for windows people. No more pop-up's, no more banners, no more paying to download advertisements. Get with it, people, it's the 00's, you don't have to see that crap if you don't want to!
Coolfish
Re:Is this Xenophobia, or do people have a real ca
on
Censorship In China
·
· Score: 1
Xenophobia is fear of a different species. As for the rest of your comment, it looks just as silly.
following is a letter I sent them. Since they probably aren't Swedish, I appended an English translation..
Hellu, I joost reed oon sleshdut. Um de hur de hur de hur.oorg vhet yuoor cumpuny hes beee dueeng tu a vebseete-a, http://reenkvurks. Um gesh dee bork, bork!cum/deeelect/. Iff yuoo reed zee erteecle-a oon Sleshdut, efeeeleble-a et http://sleshdut. Um de hur de hur de hur.oorg/erteecle-a.pl?seed=00/05/17/1240227&mude- a=threed , yuoo'll see-a noomeruoos cumments et hoo seelly yuoor insteetooshun is beeeng. Muny veb seetes toorn oozeers intu perudeees (eskjesoos. Um gesh dee bork, bork!oorg) oor trunslete-a zeem (IG vurld. Bork bork bork!eltefeesta.cum). I theenk vhuefer respunseeble-a fur thees mess reelly deedn't theenk tuu mooch, und ves joost tryeeng tu get mure-a cesh intu yuoor levyers puckets. Um gesh dee bork, bork! Thees is bed press fur yuoor bunk, I hupe-a yuoo recteeffy it suun. Bork bork bork! Seencerely, (my name and email)
Not to mention that this "roving judges" concept has a lot of precedence in the English judicial system. During the Victorian era, Judges would roam around, passing sentences and solving problems throughout different villages. They'd meet and discuss the cases they had delt with and talked about the sentences they passed. This helped to make sure that the law was applied evenly to similiar cases.
It's also important to note, for those readers who didn't even read the article before starting to swear that a BSOD would sentence them to death, literally, is that a REAL judge is toting these laptops around, and the REAL judge places the final judgement/sentence. The program merely assists the judge in assigning fair punishments uniformly for certain crimes.
If there are legit, why would they want to associate themselves with the aforementioned likes of spammers? Obviously, any legit company that decides it's time to start spamming (isn't this illegal in many states anyway?) they are going to have a hard time holding on to that 'legit' qualifier.
Any company, legit or otherwise, that stuffs my mailbox (email or otherwise) with junk, I don't support. Telephone marketers, likewise. Whose with me?!
woh, what stations are YOU watching? Most channels in Ontario, Canada, at least, have commercials every 7 minutes or so.
And as for ads on the internet, kiss their oss goodbye with JunkBuster (google for it) or Webwasher. I don't look at ads anymore cuz i block 'em out! As for TV, I record most my programs with my capture card, and then edit out the commercials. One day, I hope to have an adapter to my TV that allows me to block out all commericials. Product placements? So what if Seinfeld DRINKs PEPSI, i can ignore those.
. We're approaching a world where everything is automated for ease of use - College graduates can then sit on their asses and buy computers that do their laundry, their dishes, and jack them off...
err.. most hardware devices, including Keyboards, use drivers. In linux, DOS, winXX, whatever... so the fact that these new keyboards would require new drivers.. well, that's not very surprising, is it.
Note that I didn't say "a true 1GHz" machine but an "effective" 1GHz to play with. Obviously you can't just add 500 and 500 to get 1000, but effectively you end up with 1000 million clock cycles to play with (roundabout). It isn't going to be 2x as a fast, but you do end up with quite a bit more with a true multiprocessor OS. I'd definately say that it'd be better, and cheaper, to get a couple of 500's for what, 100 bucks? (we're talking celeries here), then paying 1000$ or whatever for a true 1GHz processor. I'm no expert on this stuff (yet.;> ). Sorry if it sounded like i implied that my 2 500's truly equalled 1GHz.
*sigh*. I've had an effective 1GHz running for, what, a couple months now. The fastest Uniprocessor systems, no matter how many gigahertz, will be more expensive and not as fast than some standard chips used in a SMP setup. I don't understand why people don't focus on this - creating more SMP systems for the likes of Linux, BeOS (5 is going to be out soon, free!!) , and Win2k. Check out free.beos.com and read their white paper. They talk a lot about SMP vs uniprocessor systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Something not mentioned is that this 99.9% accuraccy takes place when the voters are a: trained by the company to ensure that they use the machine properly b: have good vision c: have ballots that make sense and are easy to use.
Do you honestly think the company will have octogenarians testing their machines with butterfly ballots?
The margin of error for the machines is actually around 4% or so. Since the difference between Bush/Gore is 0.3%, it's obvious that a recount is necessary. Manual vs. Machine? Well, let's ask Bush and the law he signed in '97 for Texas.. Hmmm..
It was classified, then the redacting (blacking out) resulted in only unclassified information remaining.
For people wondering why the computer maker (dell?) was blacked out, it's because due to the confidential nature of the operation, there wasn't a public bid made. Hence, the government went with a company without going through the usual process of public bidding. In cases like that, they are not supposed to publicize it, because it might seem like the government is biased to one company over another.
In that case, the kids were told SPECIFICALLY to punch one and only once. As well, the arrows on the ballot were larged and lined up nicely with the holes.
_completely_ different situtation.
Question: who says we _need_ the internet? IMHO, that'd be stupid. As you say, it would be open to attacks, and based on the ISP I use, most people wouldn't be able to vote because they are "upgrading" the services (yeah, right).
I suggest we take this one step at a time. Instead of punchcards, use computers. But the computers will STILL be in voting booths. The computers would NOT be connected to the internet. Instead, they would be stand alone systems. They each would tabulate their own votes for that booth. At the end of the day, an administrator could go in, copy the results to a floppy. Then it would be a matter of minutes to get the results for that county/precinct/district. As a fail safe, the systems could periodically print out their results. UPS systems would be mandatory, of course.
Yes, it might not be as fast as something interconnected over the internet, but it would STILL BE BETTER. No hanging chads, no nothing. We'd just have to put up with "Are you sure you'd like to vote for (any candidate)?" if the government used M$ software for some reason.
Wow, imagine a beofwulf cluster of these...
oh wait.
re the German Enigma code..
come on, give credit where credit is due.. Poland was the one that initially cracked Enigma. It was only when the Germans took it from 3 encoding wheels to 5+, and the Polish intelligence agency couldn't afford to build the larger Bombes that would crack Enigma, did they give it to the Allies. Then, yes, at Bletchley, Turing was able to break these larger key'd Enigma ciphers. Check out The Code Book by Simon Singh for a great read on cryptology!
Absolutely. I can't stand how most IS/IT depts think they are "King of the world" and think it's a major pain in the ass for them to have to work with you. They feel that it's their systems, and they should have full control of them. Okay, right to an extent, but some of 'em tend to lose tract of their actual goals - to support the end user so that he or she can do what needs to be done for their job! They are in SUPPORT positions, not there to rule all things computer related!
Even worse when they try to pass off their job onto you, cuz they know you can figure it out. One IT guy asked me if i knew how to program, and i'm like "sure, what language?" and he's like "MSDOS batch files". Hrm.
Fewf, I think we can all relax. It's obviously a hoax - the words don't make any sense. I have a feeling they just made a bunch of words up and drew a funny looking picture.
reminds me of the businessman whose ass was a fax machine...
You are completely correct. Them calling isn't even considered as an unsolicited call if you have prior business engagements with them.
So, if you deal with a company, and they keep calling you back and you don't want to deal with them, it's still not unsolicited. It's bad business practice, but most companies don't care.
I do hope that Slashdot DOES get a lawyer.
funny how the guy who points out the article is a dupe is moderated as redundant.. either someone has a sense of humour or is really just stupid. :)
coooolfish
"Now," you say, "why would Microsoft want to port Office to Linux? Isn't Linux their enemy?"
I'm surprised no one has brought this up before -it's blatantly obvious. Microsoft wants to bring blue screens to Linux. Of course because Linux is so omni-configurable, power users will be able to recompile the kernel to change the color of said blue screens. Coolfish
Quite simply, they aren't allowed. If you go around telling everyone you work with the NSA, there's a greater chance that someone 'bad' will find out and try to get information out of you.
:)
And publishing that info on Slashdot would be like shooting oneself in the head...
Security thru obscurity still has a place
There is a difference though. With newspapers, magazines, and all other media aside from the internet, you can't turn off those ads. With the internet, it's simple. Junkbusters (www.junkbusters.com) for linux, and webwasher (www.webwasher.de) for windows people. No more pop-up's, no more banners, no more paying to download advertisements. Get with it, people, it's the 00's, you don't have to see that crap if you don't want to!
Coolfish
Xenophobia is fear of a different species. As for the rest of your comment, it looks just as silly.
coolfish.
following is a letter I sent them. Since they probably aren't Swedish, I appended an English translation..
- a=threed , yuoo'll see-a noomeruoos cumments et hoo seelly yuoor insteetooshun is beeeng. Muny veb seetes toorn oozeers intu perudeees (eskjesoos. Um gesh dee bork, bork!oorg) oor trunslete-a zeem (IG vurld. Bork bork bork!eltefeesta.cum). I theenk vhuefer respunseeble-a fur thees mess reelly deedn't theenk tuu mooch, und ves joost tryeeng tu get mure-a cesh intu yuoor levyers puckets. Um gesh dee bork, bork! Thees is bed press fur yuoor bunk, I hupe-a yuoo recteeffy it suun. Bork bork bork! Seencerely,
Hellu, I joost reed oon sleshdut. Um de hur de hur de hur.oorg vhet yuoor cumpuny hes beee dueeng tu a vebseete-a, http://reenkvurks. Um gesh dee bork, bork!cum/deeelect/. Iff yuoo reed zee erteecle-a oon Sleshdut, efeeeleble-a et http://sleshdut. Um de hur de hur de hur.oorg/erteecle-a.pl?seed=00/05/17/1240227&mude
(my name and email)
what's these "banners" people keep talking about?
www.webwasher.de - decommercialize the internet.
brought to you by Webwasher.
heh.
no seriously, it's a great proggy for all us windows (gasp!) users. gets rid of the ads.
coolfish
Not to mention that this "roving judges" concept has a lot of precedence in the English judicial system. During the Victorian era, Judges would roam around, passing sentences and solving problems throughout different villages. They'd meet and discuss the cases they had delt with and talked about the sentences they passed. This helped to make sure that the law was applied evenly to similiar cases.
It's also important to note, for those readers who didn't even read the article before starting to swear that a BSOD would sentence them to death, literally, is that a REAL judge is toting these laptops around, and the REAL judge places the final judgement/sentence. The program merely assists the judge in assigning fair punishments uniformly for certain crimes.
Coolfish
If there are legit, why would they want to associate themselves with the aforementioned likes of spammers? Obviously, any legit company that decides it's time to start spamming (isn't this illegal in many states anyway?) they are going to have a hard time holding on to that 'legit' qualifier.
Any company, legit or otherwise, that stuffs my mailbox (email or otherwise) with junk, I don't support. Telephone marketers, likewise. Whose with me?!
coolfish
www.desktopvideoworld.com
and
www.matroxusers.com
You'll find a ton of info on these sites - about Pinnacle, Matrox (IE RT1200), and others.
Cheers.
Coolfish
woh, what stations are YOU watching? Most channels in Ontario, Canada, at least, have commercials every 7 minutes or so.
And as for ads on the internet, kiss their oss goodbye with JunkBuster (google for it) or Webwasher. I don't look at ads anymore cuz i block 'em out! As for TV, I record most my programs with my capture card, and then edit out the commercials. One day, I hope to have an adapter to my TV that allows me to block out all commericials. Product placements? So what if Seinfeld DRINKs PEPSI, i can ignore those.
;)
. We're approaching a world where everything is automated for ease of use - College graduates can then sit on their asses and buy computers that do their laundry, their dishes, and jack them off...
all I wanna know is.. WHERE CAN I GET ONE!??!
err.. most hardware devices, including Keyboards, use drivers. In linux, DOS, winXX, whatever... so the fact that these new keyboards would require new drivers.. well, that's not very surprising, is it.
coolfish.
Note that I didn't say "a true 1GHz" machine but an "effective" 1GHz to play with. Obviously you can't just add 500 and 500 to get 1000, but effectively you end up with 1000 million clock cycles to play with (roundabout). It isn't going to be 2x as a fast, but you do end up with quite a bit more with a true multiprocessor OS. I'd definately say that it'd be better, and cheaper, to get a couple of 500's for what, 100 bucks? (we're talking celeries here), then paying 1000$ or whatever for a true 1GHz processor. I'm no expert on this stuff (yet. ;> ). Sorry if it sounded like i implied that my 2 500's truly equalled 1GHz.
*sigh*. I've had an effective 1GHz running for, what, a couple months now. The fastest Uniprocessor systems, no matter how many gigahertz, will be more expensive and not as fast than some standard chips used in a SMP setup. I don't understand why people don't focus on this - creating more SMP systems for the likes of Linux, BeOS (5 is going to be out soon, free!!) , and Win2k. Check out free.beos.com and read their white paper. They talk a lot about SMP vs uniprocessor systems.