Some perspective from a long time Sprint customer (6 yrs) in the DFW area of TX.
1. Service varies..some days I get lots of dropped calls, others none. They don't know why.
2. They lose payments and can't find them but then they refund them to my bank account.
3. #2 happens about every other month and when I call to complain they have no record of the prior incidents.
4. The CSRS barely speak English. When I asked to be sent to someone who spoke English well I was promptly disconnected.
5. When I told them I was moving my business they attempted to get me to stay. I said OK and listened to the pitch. The first thing
out of the "retention consultant" was how my bad experience was all my fault. Not a damn word about how they would work to keep me.
6. Today I will be moving to another company. Maybe Cingular.
I got to disagree with this "Also don't allow your self to become too specialized, you want a broad skill-set. Excessive specialization is leads to trouble." This is EXACTLY what I have done in my 24 yrs in IT and Software by working at a number of places and a lot of contracts. What employers want now IS Specialization, say.NET with C# and SQL and Exchange, etc. or J2EE with a certain Java server and certain appplication types. I see a LOT less jobs for folks like me who know software, hardware, networks, Project Management, Sales, different methodologies, 25yrs of IT technologies and I also hold an Advanced degree. I suppose my downfall is I'm not a Java or.Net "pro" as I was in Management and Architecture when these technolgies were emerging and never practiced them. I would say find a solid progrgramming niche and MASTER it but beware of the things that are coming to replace what you know. Today's hot stuff is tomorrow's warmed over crap.
Major fallacy..we are not sending citizens, we are sending citizens who VOLUNTERED to join the military knowing full well they could go to Iraq.
Billions wasted? Maybe..yut when you don't hear the stories that most Iraqis are quite happy we are there, it is easy to say that! The bad area is really only Baghdad which is a small part of a large country, and they are killing each other a hell of lot more than Coalition soldiers. We have also learned a great deal about terrorist tactics and urban warfare, facts that can't be learned except via experience. Another fact is the Sunnis and Shiites have been at one another's throat for 100's of years, the "power vacuum" in Iraq (which is a poltical problem) has given them ample options to continue killing each other.
We have won the war but we are losing the peace which I ascribe to not having a solid plan for the peace. Maybe Iraq fell too quick for that plan to come fully together, but we should have anticipated the issues we now face. The ease of which explosives are available for IEDs is just frigging amazing, were we not supposed to bomb hell out of supply depots? Or were these stored in small caches tough to get to? Or is there a supply from Syria and/or Iran.
Afghanistan is stable, sure there are uprisings of the Taliban in spots which are quickly put down. They have had several elections. However you have to realize Afghanistan has always been more of a feudal system of warlords than a strong central Government. We can't bring these folks into the a modern political system in just a few years. All we can do is give them the chance to do it themselves which we have done. We have had one hell of a lot more success than the Soviets did!
I really don't think we would have much issue with NK if it came to a traditional military engagement except if they really do have nuclear weapons. NK can't even FEED the troops or fuel them for any sort of long engagement. That is why they were so damned determined to develop nukes which offsets a lot of the disadvantages they had.
NK getting nukes should have NEVER been allowed to happen. Our Gov't (Clinton AND Bush) screwed that pooch. And they are doing it again on Iran. One of the key factors of going to war in Iraq was to prevent Hussein from funding terrorists (with UN money) and possibly giving them advanced weapons. If that factor was so god awful important then, why isn't it now with the NKs and the Iranians? Shouldn't we be doing something to disrupt thier programs???
I'm not sure about that. Truman was strongly anti-communist. What you may have seen was a US/UK vs Russia for control of post-Nazi Germany. Interesting alternative history theme for a sci-fi novel perhaps. As I recall the Alternate History that Harry Harrison? did was based on the Nazi's winning the war.
500M is a small amount of funding for medical research. It is estimated the cost to get a new drug to market can be upwards of $1B. The latest figures I can find on Google say medical research spending in was $95 billion in 2003 with a 57/43 mix of private to public funds. So 500M is about 1/2 of 1% of 2003 levels. If the 500M in question was 100% spent on NIH projects it would be less than 2% of the NIH's 2005 budget. Spent wisely on targeted diseases or problems the money could be helpful but just tossing it onto the pile isn't significant.
No the invasion was VERY sucessful, the occupation and "mop-up" has been very tough going. I still wouldn't call it a military boondoggle, because we are engaging most of the enemy (terrorists) in that fight and we have not been attacked on US Soil. The biggest military boondoggle that comes to mind was Hitler not allowing the Armor he had in Reserve to be applied to repelling the Normandy (D-Day) invasion as he didn't think it was real. Releasing the armor would likely have crushed the invasion and the war would have continued longer (don't think the Nazi's would have won though).
Obviously you know very little about Hardware. Faster CPUs these days are comsuming LESS Power, Memory is consuming less but not as much so as CPUs, Hard Drives are smaller and use less energy (smaller = less mass = less energy to get to speed), video uses LCD flat screens which pull a hell of a lot less power than a CRT. Go look at the Power Consumption of a PIII and of say an Athlon or Opteron and I think it will show you what I mean.
Power Management while in operation is an entirely different subject.
Cost/benefit of upgrading could be better warranty, better vendor support, both of which may mean lower support costs. Support costs are big factors in what gets chosen. How about less power use by the newest generation of CPUs and hard drives, when a company has 1000's of Desktops that power bill is a factor. Also products reach End-Of-Life where they are no longer supported by the vendor. Those would be my Top 3 reasons to upgrade.
I too don't see a lot of Apps (except Windows bloatware) forcing upgrades. Which I hope is good news for Linux on the Corporate Desktop. With GNOME and other GUIs, OpenOffice and various other open source "office" applications you can have the same functions as a Windows PC but need a lot less CPU and Memory. And the cost to "license" Linux and the apps is a heck of a lot lower than MS products not to mention the GPL (and CDL) and not nearly as bad as the MS shrinkware licenses.
The UAE does a pretty good job of sharing resources among the 7 "Kingdoms" of that country. Several "Kingdoms" don't have crap. So the idea COULD work if they would all give it a shot. Of course then the countries formerly known as Iraq would probably sooner or later all be at "war" with each other.
Not to mention how the Iranians and Kurds might view this idea. It wouldn't be too far fetched for either of them ( for "security" reasons) to kick the ass of a small country (say Fucktardistan) versus the combined Iraq. I doubt each of these "countries" would enter into a mutual defense treaty to protect each other from Iran/Turkey.
IMHO, the only cure is really either a democratic republic where the power is shared and the sect of your Islam religion is SECONDARY or Plan b) a benovolent dictatorship aka the Shah of Iran, c) a "King of Iraq" d) a Islamic theocracy (bad) or may favorite option...just nuke them all and rid the world of the problem;)
90% of the shit happening in Iraq is in happening in Baghdad. Thats a VERY small part of the country. Occasionally things happen elsewhere. Lots of good things to report, power is on about 18 hours a day, fresh clean water is available, oil production is up, new businesses are opening, etc. But no one reports this! They only tell you XX people (civilians by the way) died from a car bomb in Baghdad.
Gee where did the Sunni and Shia "Death Squads" come from then? Seems like there are "radicals" in each group that for some reason want to kill the other. I'm beginning to think "Peaceful Islam" is an oxymoron!
The Russians didn't do house to house fighting in Afghanistan, in fact they pretty much avoided any population centers. That's how the Taliban got them out, they recruited and trained where the Russians wouldn't go.
The Taliban took over 1 tiny hamlet and the next day they were run out and about 100 of them killed. They haven't tried again.
The current type of War in Iraq is a type of war NO ARMY has ever fought. There was some urban fighting in WWII but it wasn't full of IEDs, everyone looking the same, religous sectarian wars, etc. So, it's a learning experience. Learning has occured but tactics change daily which requires real-time learning by the military which is not something they do well. Keeping the peace is really being caught between two 13th Century religous fanatic groups equipped with 21st century weapons. Iraq really needs to get it's Internal shit together and they can keep the groups apart. Unfortunately what they told the US they wanted and what they would do to establish democracy hasn't happened, that has been totally unexpected.
Everyone I have heard who has come back from Iraq says that things ARE improving, just not as fast as they wish. And the "normal" Iraqi's really appreciate the help. Unfortunately we don't hear about that, we hear about the soliders getting killed by the extremists but the real facts are that Iraqi civilian and security forces deaths from the "Holy Wars" outnumber ours 20 to 1. Funny thing is the Koran says to "kill the unbelivers" and as far as I can tell both of these groups ARE beleivers! To me it would be like the Baptists fighting the Methodists!
NO. Go back and look at the current DEFICIT. It's been cut in half even with increased spending. Democrats have NEVER been fiscally conservative. Who spent us into the huge National Debt? The Republicans have only held Congress and the White House the last 6 yrs, before that we had 8 yrs of Clinton. Even Reagan didn't have both houses of Congress all eight years. Until 1992 Democrats controlled one or both houses of Congress for 30+ years.
Socially conservative? You must be drunk or high. No one in thier right mind thinks Welfare is socially conservative, nor is denying support for our troops even if you oppose the war, nor is gay marriage, nor is support for terrorists to use OUR court systems.
Gay marriage and Abortion are MORAL issues. If the Republican party stands for traditional morals I'm 100% with them.
Yea, and if you don't vote Democrat you Mom will get Alzheimers, your kid paralyzed in a car wreck, and you'll lose yout job. These premises are in a Democratic TV ad in Missouri...I'm NOT making this up,m they say exactly that.
If Democrats would CLEARLY state where they stand on the key issues no one would vote for them so they resort to these emotional attempts which are despicable.
Deeper investigation ( you trust the drive-by media?) is this reports isnt really correct. In fact several people today said they were getting calls this weekend at 10PM to 3AM in MA and PA asking them to vote Republican. No smart campaign is going to annoy people that way!!!
If you vote Democrat you are NOT going to like it unless of course you want us to cut and run in Iraq (and let another Saddam come to power..or worse), ignore the NK threat, pay higher taxes (1st thing Dems will do is repeal the Bush tax cuts, especially the child tax credit), see Wall Street go DOWN, increase the chance for another 9/11, see all progress on illegal immigration stop (they want illegals..another class to keep down with handouts from the Democrats..the second chance at the Great Society ideal that has not worked for 40 yrs). Bite your tounge on such a minor disagreement and go vote for the RIGHT candidate.
Bad assumption. If I hire a consultant to work on Security issues in my firm, I want him/her to tell me the problems (INCLUDING legal issues that may happen) and suggestions how to correct the problems. The legal matters brought to light by the consultant I will discuss with my legal counsel who may need to talk to the consultant or may tell me he/she was full of crap. The legal counsel will know what laws apply and what the company is obligated to do.
I would also suggest the person who discovered the mess find a good attorney to consult with. There may be requirements incumbent on the consultant to report the breaches to law enforcement even if the company does not, IF a crime has been committed. He/she does not want to be an accessory after the fact by helping to cover up the breach. Officers of the company have a fiduciary duty to report information that can affect shareholders, but since you mentioned this is a private firm the reportingrules are different, however IMHO it is still unethical to withold the information from customers. Witholding info has worse consequences (i.e. many lawsuits, worse publicity, etc.)if it is ever found out. The consultant is in a no-win situation. I just hope they CYA so they don't get any of the blame that will eventually happen.
Yes it could be done, but change is difficult! And changing something like ballot order would require an act of the State Legislature which is not a given. They are going to come up with all types of reasons not to randomize. So, it's not a technical problem, it's a political problem.
Bad assumptions. 1) Ballot Choices in all states are NOT Randomized. Some use National, State, Local and within that alphabetical order, some incumbents first, etc. so for someone to know your vote from the A,B,B, A receipt they just have to know the order. Many states also print up Sample Ballots which could also be used to check up on someone based on the choices on the receipt. 2) Someone else posted that Ohio does associate your ballot number with your name so your secrecy is gone already that way.
I would think some form of PKI could be used to insure the security and anononimity of your ballot. I don't want to post the idea here until I'm more sure it'll work (and also if it DOES work so no one steals it!!)
Mod points are being handed out, I just got some last Friday. I get some about every 10 days. I think there is some formula based on
posting frequency, karma level and scoring of posts but I can't prove it.
Chicken and the Egg...the Strong AI is made up of VERY COMPLEX software which has been reused from other AIs.
Oh, and when you get a Strong AI let me know. I've been waiting on one for over 20 yrs. I did AI work in the early 80's and back then such a thing was "just around the next corner". That's been a LONG corner.
SOA does not require everything to be made into a web service to be useful and accessible. A service-oriented architecture is NOT tied to a specific technology and may be implemented using interoperability standards including RPC, DCOM, ORB or WSDL or anything else for that matter as long as the interface is defined and published. An application that wants to use the services just builds a contract with the service and off you go. The implementation of the interface is hidden so it could be in.NET, Java, C++, etc. Web Services was the baby steps of SOA, now vendors are talking about doing it with entire applications (EAI).
For those of us who have been around software for the last 25 yrs, this is just a re-working of the 1980's Software Engineering where we called it abstraction, modular, encapsulation, and loose-coupling. Reference the programming models for Ada and Ada95 for example. The evolution is in the generalized definition and acceptance of a set of industry standard mechanisms for defining and implementing the interface contracts versus one-off versions written for a specific application.
The premise of the Sci-fi story is already beginning to come true. In fact, if you look at a lot of the older sci-fi a LOT of those suppositions about technology (and some about society) have come true.
That price sounds high unless you are talking the full Oracle Suite. Oracle has very good performance, is very stable, is well supported, has a clustering and failover (RAC) capabilities, built in messsaging for DB-to-DB communications, fully supports ODBC and JDBC connections, runs on almost any OS from mainframe to desktop, conforms almost 100% to the Relational DB model, supports high volume transaction rates, has row and column locking, supports encryption, can store binary large objects (BLOBs), and has a long history of success in the Enterprise. Downsides are it's hard to install correctly right out of the box, it is so flexible it is hard to "tune" for best performance, it is not something you can just "play around with" it takes some learning to handle it so good DBAs are not cheap, and it is expensive although discounts can be negotiated.
YMMV...
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Some perspective from a long time Sprint customer (6 yrs) in the DFW area of TX. 1. Service varies..some days I get lots of dropped calls, others none. They don't know why. 2. They lose payments and can't find them but then they refund them to my bank account. 3. #2 happens about every other month and when I call to complain they have no record of the prior incidents. 4. The CSRS barely speak English. When I asked to be sent to someone who spoke English well I was promptly disconnected. 5. When I told them I was moving my business they attempted to get me to stay. I said OK and listened to the pitch. The first thing out of the "retention consultant" was how my bad experience was all my fault. Not a damn word about how they would work to keep me. 6. Today I will be moving to another company. Maybe Cingular.
I got to disagree with this "Also don't allow your self to become too specialized, you want a broad skill-set. Excessive specialization is leads to trouble." This is EXACTLY what I have done in my 24 yrs in IT and Software by working at a number of places and a lot of contracts. What employers want now IS Specialization, say .NET with C# and SQL and Exchange, etc. or J2EE with a certain Java server and certain appplication types. I see a LOT less jobs for folks like me who know software, hardware, networks, Project Management, Sales, different methodologies, 25yrs of IT technologies and I also hold an Advanced degree. I suppose my downfall is I'm not a Java or .Net "pro" as I was in Management and Architecture when these technolgies were emerging and never practiced them. I would say find a solid progrgramming niche and MASTER it but beware of the things that are coming to replace what you know. Today's hot stuff is tomorrow's warmed over crap.
Thanks for making my point, 25% is not a majority of a population.
Major fallacy..we are not sending citizens, we are sending citizens who VOLUNTERED to join the military knowing full well they could go to Iraq. Billions wasted? Maybe..yut when you don't hear the stories that most Iraqis are quite happy we are there, it is easy to say that! The bad area is really only Baghdad which is a small part of a large country, and they are killing each other a hell of lot more than Coalition soldiers. We have also learned a great deal about terrorist tactics and urban warfare, facts that can't be learned except via experience. Another fact is the Sunnis and Shiites have been at one another's throat for 100's of years, the "power vacuum" in Iraq (which is a poltical problem) has given them ample options to continue killing each other. We have won the war but we are losing the peace which I ascribe to not having a solid plan for the peace. Maybe Iraq fell too quick for that plan to come fully together, but we should have anticipated the issues we now face. The ease of which explosives are available for IEDs is just frigging amazing, were we not supposed to bomb hell out of supply depots? Or were these stored in small caches tough to get to? Or is there a supply from Syria and/or Iran. Afghanistan is stable, sure there are uprisings of the Taliban in spots which are quickly put down. They have had several elections. However you have to realize Afghanistan has always been more of a feudal system of warlords than a strong central Government. We can't bring these folks into the a modern political system in just a few years. All we can do is give them the chance to do it themselves which we have done. We have had one hell of a lot more success than the Soviets did! I really don't think we would have much issue with NK if it came to a traditional military engagement except if they really do have nuclear weapons. NK can't even FEED the troops or fuel them for any sort of long engagement. That is why they were so damned determined to develop nukes which offsets a lot of the disadvantages they had. NK getting nukes should have NEVER been allowed to happen. Our Gov't (Clinton AND Bush) screwed that pooch. And they are doing it again on Iran. One of the key factors of going to war in Iraq was to prevent Hussein from funding terrorists (with UN money) and possibly giving them advanced weapons. If that factor was so god awful important then, why isn't it now with the NKs and the Iranians? Shouldn't we be doing something to disrupt thier programs???
I'm not sure about that. Truman was strongly anti-communist. What you may have seen was a US/UK vs Russia for control of post-Nazi Germany. Interesting alternative history theme for a sci-fi novel perhaps. As I recall the Alternate History that Harry Harrison? did was based on the Nazi's winning the war.
500M is a small amount of funding for medical research. It is estimated the cost to get a new drug to market can be upwards of $1B. The latest figures I can find on Google say medical research spending in was $95 billion in 2003 with a 57/43 mix of private to public funds. So 500M is about 1/2 of 1% of 2003 levels. If the 500M in question was 100% spent on NIH projects it would be less than 2% of the NIH's 2005 budget. Spent wisely on targeted diseases or problems the money could be helpful but just tossing it onto the pile isn't significant.
No the invasion was VERY sucessful, the occupation and "mop-up" has been very tough going. I still wouldn't call it a military boondoggle, because we are engaging most of the enemy (terrorists) in that fight and we have not been attacked on US Soil. The biggest military boondoggle that comes to mind was Hitler not allowing the Armor he had in Reserve to be applied to repelling the Normandy (D-Day) invasion as he didn't think it was real. Releasing the armor would likely have crushed the invasion and the war would have continued longer (don't think the Nazi's would have won though).
Obviously you know very little about Hardware. Faster CPUs these days are comsuming LESS Power, Memory is consuming less but not as much so as CPUs, Hard Drives are smaller and use less energy (smaller = less mass = less energy to get to speed), video uses LCD flat screens which pull a hell of a lot less power than a CRT. Go look at the Power Consumption of a PIII and of say an Athlon or Opteron and I think it will show you what I mean. Power Management while in operation is an entirely different subject.
Cost/benefit of upgrading could be better warranty, better vendor support, both of which may mean lower support costs. Support costs are big factors in what gets chosen. How about less power use by the newest generation of CPUs and hard drives, when a company has 1000's of Desktops that power bill is a factor. Also products reach End-Of-Life where they are no longer supported by the vendor. Those would be my Top 3 reasons to upgrade.
I too don't see a lot of Apps (except Windows bloatware) forcing upgrades. Which I hope is good news for Linux on the Corporate Desktop. With GNOME and other GUIs, OpenOffice and various other open source "office" applications you can have the same functions as a Windows PC but need a lot less CPU and Memory. And the cost to "license" Linux and the apps is a heck of a lot lower than MS products not to mention the GPL (and CDL) and not nearly as bad as the MS shrinkware licenses.
Which raises the question..are there AUTHORIZED porn videos for work? Maybe if you work for a porn website?
The UAE does a pretty good job of sharing resources among the 7 "Kingdoms" of that country. Several "Kingdoms" don't have crap. So the idea COULD work if they would all give it a shot. Of course then the countries formerly known as Iraq would probably sooner or later all be at "war" with each other.
...just nuke them all and rid the world of the problem ;)
Not to mention how the Iranians and Kurds might view this idea. It wouldn't be too far fetched for either of them ( for "security" reasons) to kick the ass of a small country (say Fucktardistan) versus the combined Iraq. I doubt each of these "countries" would enter into a mutual defense treaty to protect each other from Iran/Turkey.
IMHO, the only cure is really either a democratic republic where the power is shared and the sect of your Islam religion is SECONDARY or Plan b) a benovolent dictatorship aka the Shah of Iran, c) a "King of Iraq" d) a Islamic theocracy (bad) or may favorite option
90% of the shit happening in Iraq is in happening in Baghdad. Thats a VERY small part of the country. Occasionally things happen elsewhere. Lots of good things to report, power is on about 18 hours a day, fresh clean water is available, oil production is up, new businesses are opening, etc. But no one reports this! They only tell you XX people (civilians by the way) died from a car bomb in Baghdad.
Gee where did the Sunni and Shia "Death Squads" come from then? Seems like there are "radicals" in each group that for some reason want to kill the other. I'm beginning to think "Peaceful Islam" is an oxymoron!
The Russians didn't do house to house fighting in Afghanistan, in fact they pretty much avoided any population centers. That's how the Taliban got them out, they recruited and trained where the Russians wouldn't go.
The Taliban took over 1 tiny hamlet and the next day they were run out and about 100 of them killed. They haven't tried again.
The current type of War in Iraq is a type of war NO ARMY has ever fought. There was some urban fighting in WWII but it wasn't full of IEDs, everyone looking the same, religous sectarian wars, etc. So, it's a learning experience. Learning has occured but tactics change daily which requires real-time learning by the military which is not something they do well. Keeping the peace is really being caught between two 13th Century religous fanatic groups equipped with 21st century weapons. Iraq really needs to get it's Internal shit together and they can keep the groups apart. Unfortunately what they told the US they wanted and what they would do to establish democracy hasn't happened, that has been totally unexpected.
Everyone I have heard who has come back from Iraq says that things ARE improving, just not as fast as they wish. And the "normal" Iraqi's really appreciate the help. Unfortunately we don't hear about that, we hear about the soliders getting killed by the extremists but the real facts are that Iraqi civilian and security forces deaths from the "Holy Wars" outnumber ours 20 to 1. Funny thing is the Koran says to "kill the unbelivers" and as far as I can tell both of these groups ARE beleivers! To me it would be like the Baptists fighting the Methodists!
NO. Go back and look at the current DEFICIT. It's been cut in half even with increased spending. Democrats have NEVER been fiscally conservative. Who spent us into the huge National Debt? The Republicans have only held Congress and the White House the last 6 yrs, before that we had 8 yrs of Clinton. Even Reagan didn't have both houses of Congress all eight years. Until 1992 Democrats controlled one or both houses of Congress for 30+ years.
Socially conservative? You must be drunk or high. No one in thier right mind thinks Welfare is socially conservative, nor is denying support for our troops even if you oppose the war, nor is gay marriage, nor is support for terrorists to use OUR court systems.
Gay marriage and Abortion are MORAL issues. If the Republican party stands for traditional morals I'm 100% with them.
Yea, and if you don't vote Democrat you Mom will get Alzheimers, your kid paralyzed in a car wreck, and you'll lose yout job. These premises are in a Democratic TV ad in Missouri...I'm NOT making this up,m they say exactly that.
If Democrats would CLEARLY state where they stand on the key issues no one would vote for them so they resort to these emotional attempts which are despicable.
Deeper investigation ( you trust the drive-by media?) is this reports isnt really correct. In fact several people today said they were getting calls this weekend at 10PM to 3AM in MA and PA asking them to vote Republican. No smart campaign is going to annoy people that way!!!
If you vote Democrat you are NOT going to like it unless of course you want us to cut and run in Iraq (and let another Saddam come to power..or worse), ignore the NK threat, pay higher taxes (1st thing Dems will do is repeal the Bush tax cuts, especially the child tax credit), see Wall Street go DOWN, increase the chance for another 9/11, see all progress on illegal immigration stop (they want illegals..another class to keep down with handouts from the Democrats..the second chance at the Great Society ideal that has not worked for 40 yrs). Bite your tounge on such a minor disagreement and go vote for the RIGHT candidate.
Libs..flame away..I got Karma to burn.
Bad assumption. If I hire a consultant to work on Security issues in my firm, I want him/her to tell me the problems (INCLUDING legal issues that may happen) and suggestions how to correct the problems. The legal matters brought to light by the consultant I will discuss with my legal counsel who may need to talk to the consultant or may tell me he/she was full of crap. The legal counsel will know what laws apply and what the company is obligated to do.
I would also suggest the person who discovered the mess find a good attorney to consult with. There may be requirements incumbent on the consultant to report the breaches to law enforcement even if the company does not, IF a crime has been committed. He/she does not want to be an accessory after the fact by helping to cover up the breach. Officers of the company have a fiduciary duty to report information that can affect shareholders, but since you mentioned this is a private firm the reportingrules are different, however IMHO it is still unethical to withold the information from customers. Witholding info has worse consequences (i.e. many lawsuits, worse publicity, etc.)if it is ever found out. The consultant is in a no-win situation. I just hope they CYA so they don't get any of the blame that will eventually happen.
Yes it could be done, but change is difficult! And changing something like ballot order would require an act of the State Legislature which is not a given. They are going to come up with all types of reasons not to randomize. So, it's not a technical problem, it's a political problem.
Bad assumptions. 1) Ballot Choices in all states are NOT Randomized. Some use National, State, Local and within that alphabetical order, some incumbents first, etc. so for someone to know your vote from the A,B,B, A receipt they just have to know the order. Many states also print up Sample Ballots which could also be used to check up on someone based on the choices on the receipt. 2) Someone else posted that Ohio does associate your ballot number with your name so your secrecy is gone already that way.
I would think some form of PKI could be used to insure the security and anononimity of your ballot. I don't want to post the idea here until I'm more sure it'll work (and also if it DOES work so no one steals it!!)
Mod points are being handed out, I just got some last Friday. I get some about every 10 days. I think there is some formula based on posting frequency, karma level and scoring of posts but I can't prove it.
Chicken and the Egg...the Strong AI is made up of VERY COMPLEX software which has been reused from other AIs.
Oh, and when you get a Strong AI let me know. I've been waiting on one for over 20 yrs. I did AI work in the early 80's and back then such a thing was "just around the next corner". That's been a LONG corner.
SOA does not require everything to be made into a web service to be useful and accessible. A service-oriented architecture is NOT tied to a specific technology and may be implemented using interoperability standards including RPC, DCOM, ORB or WSDL or anything else for that matter as long as the interface is defined and published. An application that wants to use the services just builds a contract with the service and off you go. The implementation of the interface is hidden so it could be in .NET, Java, C++, etc. Web Services was the baby steps of SOA, now vendors are talking about doing it with entire applications (EAI).
For those of us who have been around software for the last 25 yrs, this is just a re-working of the 1980's Software Engineering where we called it abstraction, modular, encapsulation, and loose-coupling. Reference the programming models for Ada and Ada95 for example. The evolution is in the generalized definition and acceptance of a set of industry standard mechanisms for defining and implementing the interface contracts versus one-off versions written for a specific application.
The premise of the Sci-fi story is already beginning to come true. In fact, if you look at a lot of the older sci-fi a LOT of those suppositions about technology (and some about society) have come true.
That price sounds high unless you are talking the full Oracle Suite. Oracle has very good performance, is very stable, is well supported, has a clustering and failover (RAC) capabilities, built in messsaging for DB-to-DB communications, fully supports ODBC and JDBC connections, runs on almost any OS from mainframe to desktop, conforms almost 100% to the Relational DB model, supports high volume transaction rates, has row and column locking, supports encryption, can store binary large objects (BLOBs), and has a long history of success in the Enterprise. Downsides are it's hard to install correctly right out of the box, it is so flexible it is hard to "tune" for best performance, it is not something you can just "play around with" it takes some learning to handle it so good DBAs are not cheap, and it is expensive although discounts can be negotiated. YMMV...