Sure, just as soon as web development consultancies and inhouse IT departments stop hiring 21-year-old "web developer" Ook-ers who just finished "Learn ASP in 28 days" to develop critical applications with no oversight, peer review or input from security.
Hear, hear! I'd love an answer to a related question: have you any personal experience of pen-and-paper voting systems? If so, do you think electronic voting or paper votes are best, all things considered?
I have to add my personal experience -- I'm in the UK and I've voted perhaps half a dozen times, in elections for local parish council, the local area authority, the county and the national General Election. (I missed voting in 1987 due to being underage by a few weeks, but spent some time when I should have been revising for my A levels canvassing, and was a polling monitor on election day, which was a very interesting experience. ) Of course these were all done with the trusty "stub of pencil plus quarter-square of cheap A4 with a photocopied ballot, posted into a big metal box" technique. I still enjoy staying up until 3 or 4 am watching the results come in. There are a few very large constituencies (the Scottish Highlands and western isles for example) which don't declare until the following day but there's generally a national result by 3 or 4am. Personally I never understood the idea of machine voting, let alone evoting. ) I know the argument is that in the US there are huge ballots with dozens of races. Fine, so use separate ballots for those, or hold them on different dates, or even (wild idea!) try appointing judges, sheriffs, school board commissioners and such like administrative posts on the basis of merit. Seems to work pretty well most of the time over here... (Not that we don't get the odd bent judges now & then, but the education system at present is at least a ferocious meritocracy. If you don't get the exam results, you get sacked!)
Corollary to the old saw about "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Call it Arlen's Corollary... "Today's terrorist might be tomorrow's government". Witness the IRA, the ANC, Danny whatsisname who ended up in the Bundestag, and then there's Israel... (Enough, already!;)
hard to bring this up without being seen as flamebait, but... I noticed US military using the term "terrorists" to describe what the BBC might call "militants" or "insurgents" (or possibly "fighters") - that is, people attacking US military forces. Now I want to be clear that in general I think killing people is BAD, be they civilian, soldier, Iraqi, American, whatever. I have no problem with the term 'terrorist' to describe those people involved in the deathsquads kidnapping random people and torturing them with electric drills, or planting bombs in mosques, or blowing themselves up in a market square. But if the word is to mean anything, it must be a definition that is consistent across many times, places, and situations. Consider the French anti-nazi resistance in WW2. What about the killing of Heinrich Heydrich in Prague? If you say "Ah, but those people in iraq are leaving IEDs beside roads and detonating them by remote control" -- you are defining your word by dint of a particular method of killing people; how are IEDs different from zapping targets with laser guided bombs designated by a drone? Come to that (going back to WW2) what about the German blitz on London? What about the Allied thousand-bomber raids? What about Hiroshima, Nagasaki? "They were military targets!" - so are Coalition soldiers. "They (the attackers) were wearing uniform!" the French resistance (and special forces all over the world) weren't. And so on.
Anyone like to descend into this maelstrom of semantics?;)
Mars is indeed a better candidate for terraforming than Venus, but then my arse painted blue would make a better President than Bush; what's your point?
Terraforming Mars is utterly, utterly impractical; not quite into the 'interstellar travel' level of physical impossibility, but well on the way and with the kids bouncing on the back seat going "are we there yet? Are we theerrrreee yeeeeetttttttt????"
Where to start. Let's suppose it were possible, with some fantasy Star Trek gizmo that you've abracadabra'd up, and that the world's population is prepared to pay for you to indulge your fantasty. Ala-shazam! Mars now has an Earth-like atmosphere, and earth-like water levels (oh BTW, that's just flooded the northern hemisphere; that reduces your land area to approximately that of South America, but WTF, the flooded craters look cool.) Now what happens? Well first all the water boils into water vapour. Can't be bothered to work it out but at a first hand-waving approximation, that takes about a week. Over the next 10-100 years your atmosphere leaks away into space (along with any UV-blocking ozone you'd also shazam'd up.) Meanwhile, any humans are going crazy from sheltering from the incredibly toxic environment outside, and getting cabin fever and chronic depression caused by the low light levels out there. (You realise how dim the sun is out there, right?) Within a century humans can't live outside underground hermetically sealed capsules (like Dubya's never-gonna-happen-either man-on-Mars people will have to, if they ever get there that is.) Within a millennium Ares has rolled back down the entropy gradient most of the way towards it's natural rest state equilibrium, which is - who'd a thunk it? - exactly what it's like today.
Take a look at the typical chemistry found by the MER rovers. check out those nice thick drifts of magnesium salts just below the surface (both rovers have ploughed into soft talc-like drifts of white salts of various sorts. ) Nah, if there's microbes still living on Mars they're much more likely to be way below the surface. (There's also the UV and high-energy cosmic rays to contend with, oh and water subliming away immediately... )
Here's an amusing song that was recently broadcast on a popular satirical BBC radio programme. It's a shame you can't enjoy Mitch Benn's accurate rendition of crappy MOR rawk. Enjoy.
Crap your pants for America
We live in troubled times
Our enemies surround us
We must be vigilant
To the dangers all around us
There's evil little furr'ners
And perverts here as well
It's your patriotic duty
To be as scared as hell
So crap your pants for America
Foul yourself for freedom
Soil your shorts for the USA
Crap your pants for America
Only Dubya can save us
And we'll hide beneath our beds, and quake and pray
It could happen any minute
It could happen any place
So gaze with deep suspicion
In every stranger's face
Your government is struggling
They've run out of ideas
They've run out of excuses
All they've got left is fear
So crap your pants for America
Foul yourself for freedom
Soil your shorts for the USA
Crap your pants for America
The land of the paranoid
The panic-stricken, jittery, and free
Close, but no cigar. SUS is so old it's actually just about to (or has just has) reach the end of support. Microsoft have other.... solutions... for you now.
The McMurdo pan has been compiled over the last six months or so. The raw data is always up on the web almost as soon as it arrives on earth (thanks to the enlightened attitude of Steve Squyres, PI:) and lots of people grab these and make their own images. There's even a dedicated software app: google for "Midnight Mars Browser". There are a couple of forums dedicated to this stuff which I shall refrain from linking to (Google around, if you're interested enough you'll soon find 'em) that produce really superb (so-called) "amateur" work, often before the official JPL releases.
That comment was modded flamebait because it asserted that Space Elevators will never be a practical proposition, and further suggested that many people seem to assume that technologies seen in science fiction are merely a matter of time. These ideas are antithetical to a certain subset of Slashdotters, the ones who post to stories about space elevators, Mars colonisation, interstellar spaceships and the like in particular. They really don't like the idea of hard limits imposed by physics. It seems to upset their notions of Manifest Destiny...
Son, I'm sorry to break it to you, but just because something can be imagined doesn't mean it can be built. Yes, Veronica, that means that science fiction is not necessarily a cast-iron guarantee of new technologies that will be invented real-soon-now. In fact when it comes to Space Elevators I'd bet every penny I have that they will never happen.
This is a major change in the security model of the OS. As such it means the security model must be reviewed and re-evaluated. If Vista is released on the current schedule, that will mean that Microsoft have not done this essential work, which will mean the whole security model of the OS is invalid and (heh heh!) "untrustworthy". Not to mention the knock-on effects of this change on all those comingled applications (Internet Explorer, etc) - their security models are now b0rked as well, as the OS will no longer be behaving as it was expected when the app was designed...
So either there are another 6-9 months' delay (at least), or Vista will be released with it's security fundamentally compromised. Your call, Billy-boy!
what would the term "private school" refer to in England?
- personally I use the term to mean specifically fee-paying, non-State schools. The term "independent" is also used to mean the same thing.
And how is it that something which is privately owned is called a "public school", in contrast to publicly (state) owned schools? This has always confused me. What does the "public" in that term refer to, and in contrast to what?
America (well the USA anyway) really is a unique case. In some ways it's the most developed nation on earth, the richest, the only remaining global superpower, the strongest militarily and so on and on. And yet in others, it is practically a third world country (and I mean this objectively, not as simple anti-Americanism --- flamers please note!:) For instance look at income distribution, life expectancy, equality, quality of healthcare and education, disparity of legal outcomes between rich and poor (and black and white)... and so on, even before getting into the more lefty topics about ownership of capital. And yet they still maintain this incredible myth of "America, the land where anyone can make it". Actually that's the LAST thing USA is leading the world in. Social mobility is higher all over the world, even in the supposedly rigid class system of the UK, before Tony Blair every Prime Minister (both tory and labour) from about 1962 onwards (Wilson, Heath, Thatcher,.. and the leaders of the opposition, too) went to (state-funded) "grammar schools", the same sort of institution that I attended. In fact it's something held against Blair, that he went to the highly prestigious, expensive & "posh" public school, Fettes.
Mandriva 2006.1 on an IBM Thinkpad here, the touchpad was correcty id'd during installation.
My pet peeves with Mandriva are:
the amazing disappearing update sources;
trying to fix the intel wifi drivers I managed to break it so thoroughly it complains "intewl 2200 card not found, will be started later" at boot time. Oh, and the network hotplugging doesn't have profiles; I had to write a little shell script to turn DHCP on & off, and add the correct IP, mask & gateway. Oh and every so often the PPTP config goes down at the remote end, the client doesn't notice (though DNS breaks and henc sod does everythng else) and, if you don't shut the client down in the right order with teh appropriate incantations it somehow crashes and takes X with it. Very frustrating, and I've had to get back into the ^s habit for the first time since using Windows 9x. However, agree with PP - almost everyhing is very slick, consistent and reasonably intuitive to use.
Oh yeah, and I've tried to give them money (by joining that stupid "mandrake club" thing) no less than THREE TIMES, but their ecommerce application refused to take my credit card (which was accepted everywhere else without probs.)
Slashdot Mirror
Flamebait> ?? How is that flamebait???
Sure, just as soon as web development consultancies and inhouse IT departments stop hiring 21-year-old "web developer" Ook-ers who just finished "Learn ASP in 28 days" to develop critical applications with no oversight, peer review or input from security.
...and Dolphin's an acquired taste.
>
Sure they do. You didn't really think they paid $10000 for a toilet seat did you? $500 for a hammer?
This story is shamelessly ripped from this morning's BoingBoing version, published at 5am.
I have to add my personal experience -- I'm in the UK and I've voted perhaps half a dozen times, in elections for local parish council, the local area authority, the county and the national General Election. (I missed voting in 1987 due to being underage by a few weeks, but spent some time when I should have been revising for my A levels canvassing, and was a polling monitor on election day, which was a very interesting experience. ) Of course these were all done with the trusty "stub of pencil plus quarter-square of cheap A4 with a photocopied ballot, posted into a big metal box" technique. I still enjoy staying up until 3 or 4 am watching the results come in. There are a few very large constituencies (the Scottish Highlands and western isles for example) which don't declare until the following day but there's generally a national result by 3 or 4am. Personally I never understood the idea of machine voting, let alone evoting. ) I know the argument is that in the US there are huge ballots with dozens of races. Fine, so use separate ballots for those, or hold them on different dates, or even (wild idea!) try appointing judges, sheriffs, school board commissioners and such like administrative posts on the basis of merit. Seems to work pretty well most of the time over here... (Not that we don't get the odd bent judges now & then, but the education system at present is at least a ferocious meritocracy. If you don't get the exam results, you get sacked!)
Scary thought.
Corollary to the old saw about "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Call it Arlen's Corollary... "Today's terrorist might be tomorrow's government". Witness the IRA, the ANC, Danny whatsisname who ended up in the Bundestag, and then there's Israel... (Enough, already! ;)
Anyone like to descend into this maelstrom of semantics? ;)
Terraforming Mars is utterly, utterly impractical; not quite into the 'interstellar travel' level of physical impossibility, but well on the way and with the kids bouncing on the back seat going "are we there yet? Are we theerrrreee yeeeeetttttttt????"
Where to start. Let's suppose it were possible, with some fantasy Star Trek gizmo that you've abracadabra'd up, and that the world's population is prepared to pay for you to indulge your fantasty. Ala-shazam! Mars now has an Earth-like atmosphere, and earth-like water levels (oh BTW, that's just flooded the northern hemisphere; that reduces your land area to approximately that of South America, but WTF, the flooded craters look cool.) Now what happens? Well first all the water boils into water vapour. Can't be bothered to work it out but at a first hand-waving approximation, that takes about a week. Over the next 10-100 years your atmosphere leaks away into space (along with any UV-blocking ozone you'd also shazam'd up.) Meanwhile, any humans are going crazy from sheltering from the incredibly toxic environment outside, and getting cabin fever and chronic depression caused by the low light levels out there. (You realise how dim the sun is out there, right?) Within a century humans can't live outside underground hermetically sealed capsules (like Dubya's never-gonna-happen-either man-on-Mars people will have to, if they ever get there that is.) Within a millennium Ares has rolled back down the entropy gradient most of the way towards it's natural rest state equilibrium, which is - who'd a thunk it? - exactly what it's like today.
Zubrin fanboys make me puke ;p
Take a look at the typical chemistry found by the MER rovers. check out those nice thick drifts of magnesium salts just below the surface (both rovers have ploughed into soft talc-like drifts of white salts of various sorts. ) Nah, if there's microbes still living on Mars they're much more likely to be way below the surface. (There's also the UV and high-energy cosmic rays to contend with, oh and water subliming away immediately... )
Crap your pants for America
We live in troubled times
Our enemies surround us
We must be vigilant
To the dangers all around us
There's evil little furr'ners
And perverts here as well
It's your patriotic duty
To be as scared as hell
So crap your pants for America
Foul yourself for freedom
Soil your shorts for the USA
Crap your pants for America
Only Dubya can save us
And we'll hide beneath our beds, and quake and pray
It could happen any minute
It could happen any place
So gaze with deep suspicion In every stranger's face
Your government is struggling
They've run out of ideas
They've run out of excuses
All they've got left is fear
So crap your pants for America
Foul yourself for freedom
Soil your shorts for the USA
Crap your pants for America
The land of the paranoid
The panic-stricken, jittery, and free
Close, but no cigar. SUS is so old it's actually just about to (or has just has) reach the end of support. Microsoft have other.... solutions... for you now.
I have to ask... was it a "only waffer theen"? Run away!!
The McMurdo pan has been compiled over the last six months or so. The raw data is always up on the web almost as soon as it arrives on earth (thanks to the enlightened attitude of Steve Squyres, PI :) and lots of people grab these and make their own images. There's even a dedicated software app: google for "Midnight Mars Browser". There are a couple of forums dedicated to this stuff which I shall refrain from linking to (Google around, if you're interested enough you'll soon find 'em) that produce really superb (so-called) "amateur" work, often before the official JPL releases.
My comment is a dupe of your comment.
That comment was modded flamebait because it asserted that Space Elevators will never be a practical proposition, and further suggested that many people seem to assume that technologies seen in science fiction are merely a matter of time. These ideas are antithetical to a certain subset of Slashdotters, the ones who post to stories about space elevators, Mars colonisation, interstellar spaceships and the like in particular. They really don't like the idea of hard limits imposed by physics. It seems to upset their notions of Manifest Destiny...
(no body)
Now, turn that TV off and go and tidy your room.
Hmmmm, something must be different, because this time it's made all the major mainstream news outlets. The Beeb even mentioned it on the evening news.
This is a major change in the security model of the OS. As such it means the security model must be reviewed and re-evaluated. If Vista is released on the current schedule, that will mean that Microsoft have not done this essential work, which will mean the whole security model of the OS is invalid and (heh heh!) "untrustworthy". Not to mention the knock-on effects of this change on all those comingled applications (Internet Explorer, etc) - their security models are now b0rked as well, as the OS will no longer be behaving as it was expected when the app was designed...
So either there are another 6-9 months' delay (at least), or Vista will be released with it's security fundamentally compromised. Your call, Billy-boy!
...will Wii become WEE?
- personally I use the term to mean specifically fee-paying, non-State schools. The term "independent" is also used to mean the same thing.
Yeah, me too
Anyway, asbestos on and checked, flame away ;)
My pet peeves with Mandriva are:
Oh yeah, and I've tried to give them money (by joining that stupid "mandrake club" thing) no less than THREE TIMES, but their ecommerce application refused to take my credit card (which was accepted everywhere else without probs.)