TFA goes on about Microsoft's problems supporting "a tangle of versions and upgrades" which is almost as funny given when you consider how well DOSBox, Wine and virtual machines deals with all the same problems with none of the inside information. No, it's not new because IBM did Win3.1 inside OS/2 very well. Me thinks the "support" issue is created rather than natural.
Microsoft made the tangle themselves, and continue to propagate it. If Vista had been a logical upgrade to XP most people would have upgraded before now, but they are continuing with the bad practices that got them where they are.
Why not? Generally the reasons that people use Windows when they know there is Linux is because of legacy apps, if they don't work in Vista there is no need to move from XP and not move to Linux/OS X. On most other OSes unless there has been a major change (Like 9X to NT, major changes in scripting languages such as python, PPC to x86) you should expect backwards compatibility.
Absolutely. Backward compatibility is always blamed as the problem, but these legacy apps cost MONEY for new versions (if they are even available). This is one thing that always irritates me about Microsoft. Even on products they don't make any money on, like IE, they have to re-invent the wheel every time they release it.
With Linux you don't have that problem, most apps written 3 years ago for the first Ubuntu will work fine with 8.04 or any other distro. With OS X the OS had such a major change from PPC classic mac based to x86 Unix-based you can't make a claim of backwards compatibility but in general there's no reason to expect that NT X App shouldn't run on NT X+1. MS killing backwards compatibility is killing the entire MS monopoly and moving people to OS X or Linux.
Absolutely. The other great thing about Linux, if you are using FOSS, you can probably just download a version that works with your distro. A pain in terms of time, but at least it's not cash out of your pocket. If that doesn't work out for you, you next option is to modify the source code and recompile under the latest OS. Again, doesn't always work, and can be difficult for some apps, but in general a viable solution.
In general, Microsoft is an incredibly wasteful company. They spend millions of man-hours re-inventing products with minimal improvement. I have heard very little about Vista that is an improvement on XP, yet they spent a ton of work on it. Their whole business model is banking on the idea that software is continually obsolete, and that just isn't the case. A Word Processor is a Word Processor. An OS, as long as it's compatible with the hardware, is an OS. I can write a letter in Word 95 just as easily as I can in Word 2007, gets the same job done. Why would I spend thousands of dollars on all of the upgrades between now and then if Microsoft didn't periodically break all the backward compatibility.
The Patriot Act is just another method to keep people safe. Until the average Joe decides he would rather be free than safe, the oppression will continue.
I would prefer terror to tyranny.
Me too, unfortunately other American Citizens don't seem to agree.
But really, you could decrease bombings, high-school shootings, and all of that shit, by not actively trying to destroy governments of foreign countries, and by instead spending that amount of money on fighting poverty and uneducation. People being too little educated as they are, they are easily convinced to believe the "let's invade and stop terrorism" stuff they are told.
Hmm... I won't argue that there are better ways to improve our society than foreign wars and warrantless wiretaps, but I fail to see how fighting poverty and uneducation would change the number of shootings and bombings. Most of the most recent, high-profile shooting incidents involved college students. It wasn't an education issue. Sure, maybe gang violence could be stopped, but really, everyone in this country that wants it has very good access to AT LEAST a high school education, and a college degree isn't that difficult to achieve. Terrorists don't blow up buildings because they are poor or uneducated.
As for "how cultures survived", I am not sure if you can give me the name of a culture that traded freedom for oppression that survived in a healthy way.
Not sure what you mean by "healthy", but I can't think of one historical culture that didn't trade liberty for oppression at some point in their history. The Chinese had their emperors. All of the European states were ruled by kings at some point. Even the Romans with their great democracy ended up with guys like Nero. Actual implementations of democracy and freedom on a widespread basis are a couple hundred years old at best, and we are seeing those ideals be eroded away at an astonishing rate. The Europeans are consolidating power on a continental level, the British become more socialist every day, the US is subjected to the Patriot Act, Putin has Russia by the throat, many people think Islam is headed to a new caliphate, etc...
I think the problem is assuming that Congresscritters are patriotic on the whole or that they have any thoughts outside of ensuring their own re-election.
I really think most people in Congress try to do the right thing. A police state, in theory, is SAFER than a free society. If we all lived in a supermax prison, had our nutritional balanced meals fed to us every day, had a mandated exercise program, forced healthcare and bars on the door we'd probably all live a lot longer.
Problem is this country was based on liberty, but freedom comes with a lot of risk and responsibilities. When people are free to do what they want there are a certain segment that will abuse those freedoms by blowing up buildings or shooting people in college classrooms. Unfortunately, most people don't want to be free, they want to be safe, and Congress tries to do what the people want. Historically, this is how cultures survived. Rulers came to power because they could protect their citizens. Sure, they got rich and powerful in the process, but why shouldn't they. They were protecting their people.
The Patriot Act is just another method to keep people safe. Until the average Joe decides he would rather be free than safe, the oppression will continue.
That's essentially my original point. Why should the government be excused from something that they were supposed to do (maybe they don't have a strict legal responsibility, but nonetheless that's a social responsibility) simply because they had a contract telling them not to do those things? They shouldn't be excused - but they should not violate the contract either, at least not without legal council and an accounting of the potential cost. What they SHOULD do is ship all of those machines back to the manufacturer and demand they be let out of their contract.
The original discussion was if Sequoia should be hit with the "if you don't have anything to hide..." argument that is used with the Patriot Act, etc... Thing is, there is no legal requirement, AFAIK, for Sequoia to submit their product to an independent third party review. If they was legal cause, and maybe this would fall under terrorists trying to subvert our election process, the contract should definitely be negated. If there is no legal precedent to break the contract, the State of NJ should stay within the bounds of the contract and find a resolution that way. The "if you don't have anything to hide" argument doesn't hold water, when they obviously stated they have intellectual property concerns and the State of NJ knew up front that this was the issue.
No government should make laws just to randomly get them out of a bad contract they shouldn't have agreed upon to start with. The guy that made this deal should be sacked, and Sequoia should stand behind their product.
Oh, then I'll just contract with my dad that no third party will be allowed to log my internet connection, wiretap my phone conversations, and track my physical and "cyberspace" habits...
My point is that doing something wrong, and pointing to a contract doesn't make it a moral excuse. If your argument is right then by similar lines I could contract with a friend to piss off every person I see on the street, and when reprimanded I could point to the contract to say that "hey, I didn't do anything wrong I have a contractual duty to piss you off!"...
No, you couldn't. You could contract with a friend in your imaginary scenario, and then, after you were hauled to jail for assault and decided pissing off every person you meet, he could sue YOU for breach of contract. Probably wouldn't win because it's silly, but he would have standing. Creating such a contract with your friend wouldn't be smart, just like this voting machine contract wasn't smart. You can't point to the contract to justify your actions, but you are liable when your actions don't fulfill the terms of the contract.
And I'll contract with you that no third party will be allowed to log my internet connection, wiretap my phone conversations, and track my physical and "cyberspace" habits.
Contract isn't law...
No you won't, or more appropriately, no I wont. Contracts have to be agreed on by both parties. They may not be law, but they are defensible in civil court.
Bottom line here, it's not good for governments to just pick and choose which parts of a contract they want to honor. It's not good in terms of costs to the taxpayers when they get sued. It's not good the next time they want to purchase something from an independent contractor. I'm not saying the contract isn't flawed, and they shouldn't do something about it. I'm just saying somebody should have thought about this before they agreed to the terms of the contract.
Actually, I don't think that's true either. They can arrest you, and hold you for 48 hours, for anything. They just can't charge you or try you for the crime.
Thing is, from all the horror stories I've read and heard, they can confiscate your property for an indefinite amount of time, and you have no idea what condition it will be in when you get it back. I would have a big problem running my business and retaining my livelyhood if the cops took my computer for three months.
Certainly, from a legal standpoint, the door being unlocked doesn't matter. I never said that it did. But your post made me chuckle. Most minor thefts get no investigation at all, so it's somewhat ridiculous to suggest that the door being locked or not matters. I'm just saying that the cops would give you a hard time for not locking your door.
Yeah, well it's one of my pet peeves. They can give me a $150 traffic ticket for not using a turn signal, but don't really care when someone steals the radio out of my unlocked truck. Locked or unlocked brings up an interesting argument about who is responsible for crime. Should we blame the victim for making it too easy? But let's not stray too far from the topic.
And it is theft if someone uses your network without your consent, in my mind. It's a particularly minor form of theft, given that it's almost impossible to measure the inconvenience caused to access point's owner. It may be no inconvenience at all. But, if I logged on to your network and ran a Bit Torrent client to download a few gigs of Linux distros at the exact same moment that you were trying to upload a term paper, I could cause you rather substantial inconvenience. What is that if not theft? I know, you said "unless of course you are abusing the connection"... who decides what constitutes abuse? It's not theft as long as I just check my email? Does it become theft if I visit Youtube? Where is the line? You're on shaky ground, imho.
No, it's only theft if it causes a noticeable inconvenience. I use my connection heavily, work from home, downloads, youtube, etc... Still, I probably only saturate my connection MAYBE 10% of the time. If someone uses a portion of that other 90% at a level where it does not impact my usage, that person has not taken anything from me. I decide what constitutes abuse - as long as I'm not impacted, there has been no theft.
If I came on to your property and took a lemon from your lemon tree without asking, is that not theft? Suppose that you were not going to eat the lemon, but rather let it fall to the ground and rot. It's still theft, by the letter of the law.
Sure, because technically I was no longer in possession of that lemon. Using unused bandwidth does not result in anything leaving my posesion.
I'm just saying that the law proposed in TFA is silly. It's essentially impossible to enforce, unless far more resources were invested than the crime warrants. Rather than any government wasting time or money on such a thing, it's better if people just secure their networks, if they care about strangers having access.
Actually, it's worse than that. It's probably just a ploy to give law enforcement yet another trumped up charge to use against people that they cant indict under current laws. I agree, it is better if people secure their networks. In fact, they should just run a couple PSAs about how people can hack in through your wireless connections - probably give all those IT consultants out there a lot of side work.
It's especially silly when the access point is unsecured. If someone took the time to hack my encryption, that would piss me off. But if I leave it unsecured...
Could you imagine summoning the police to your house to report theft of physical property, and then telling them that you left the door unlocked and open? I can just imagine what those cops would have to say. I'm sure they would not investigate the crime with the usual rigor, which isn't much for minor theft anyhow.
I don't like your analogy there. There is nothing in the penal code that specifies theft is OK if the item stolen wasn't secured. If law enforcement investigates a theft where the premises weren't secured in any different manner than if they were it's just professionalism on their part. More to the point, using someone's wireless connection isn't 'stealing'. There is no loss of property. Just because you are using my wireless doesn't mean I can't - unless of course you are abusing the connection. The only loss involved is bandwidth to the service provider or a potential loss of a paying customer.
Are you sure that it isn't? Ask yourself, why did the Maryland government feel a need to address this issue at all? Because they had been flooded by emails from constituents who were furious over their stolen bandwidth? Or because telcos/cablecos/ISPs realized how easy wireless makes it to share a connection with your neighbor? I can't say for sure either way, but I know which of the two groups has more pull with most politicians.
That is really the root of the issue. Why would we pass criminal laws to protect corporate monetary interests. I don't live in Maryland, but I can't imagine the average MD citizen wants their tax dollar spent investigating and prosecuting people who 'steal' wireless connectivity. If this is prompted by public outcry, so be it. Make it illegal. If this is just a random tactic by ISPs to make more money, kill it.
I am not a lawyer, but I play one on the internet. I am almost certain that you will find that contracts that are contrary to the public interest are not enforceable.
Perhaps, but it will still cost money and time to determine if that's the case. The citizens of NJ will have to pay for their inept public officials.
When it comes to elections and verifying voting machines, the state has every right to verify, the clause on the contract is irrelevent. Proper voting is more important than a contract between business and government.
The relevancy of the terms of the contract is for the courts to decide - which is what will happen if NJ sends the machine to an independent review source, but I can't say I agree with you.
A state, or any entity, cannot, and should not, sign a contract and then just ignore the provisions of the contract. Proper voting is very important, and it's up to State authorities to ensure the voting is correct. This decision should have been made PRIOR to signing the contract. If the terms of the licensing did not allow for proper voting the contract should not be signed. Now NJ will spend months or years in litigation and spend millions of dollars if they violate the licensing terms.
A government violating the terms of a contract at will is as tyrannical as improper voting is - maybe worse.
But when an independant third party wants to verify that an important piece of hardware used in our political process can actually do the very simple math that it's required to do, the corporation who produces is has laws that it can throw in one's face to prevent verification of data. Shouldn't someone be pressing Sequoia with the "if you don't have anything to hide..." mantra?
Yes and no. It appears that this is a contractual issue. The State of New Jersey signed licensing terms that does not allow an independent party to review the code. The state should not violate that contract.
Thing is, there is a limited market for voting machines in the US. There are only 50 states, it seems to me the states are in a pretty good position to negotiate the licensing terms. Why is it that New Jersey didn't specify in the terms that the code and hardware had to be reviewed by independent sources? This isn't an issue so much of "if you don't have anything to hide" as it is simple economics. Abide by my terms or I won't purchase your product. Instead NJ bought a pig in a poke and now they are stuck with these machines.
The idea that the machines workings have to be secret for security reasons is a complete fallacy. Sooner or later one of these voting machine companies is going to break ranks and allow independent security reviews - just so these problems go away.
There's that excellent quote about AI's, "The question of whether a computer thinks like a person is as relevant as whether a submarine swims like a fish."
Not sure exactly what you are getting at with that comment, but IIRC, there were some significant advancements made when submarine designers started studying fish. Early subs were designed as surface boats, but in the 50s, with the advent of the nuclear power plant, subs were redesigned with lessons learned from marine animals, resulting in much more efficient performance underwater.
To get a truly accurate measure of that vehicle's worth in comparison to modern vehicles, you need to compare it to its contemporaries and draw parallels that way. That thing was $2200 give or take. A Ford Model T was $360. About 1/6th the cost of that thing. If you liken the Model T to the kind of car that the average person is likely to have today (I've got a 2007 Chevrolet Aveo LT, for example, that cost $16,500), then you need to liken the electric car from TFA to something that costs 6X as much. The $100,000 Mercedes-Benz. It was not a car for the proletariat.
Not even that is enough. A $26K individual these days is much more likely to purchase a used vehicle, in the 1920s the number of autos in the secondary market was extremely limited, buying used probably wasn't much of an option. You also have to weigh in the fact that an automobile filled a much different role in the 20s. A model T was not only used as transportation, they were also used as farm machinery, power units in industrial applications and any number of other commercial and industrial uses. A family typically only owned one auto at the time and were most likely to purchase the one that was most versatile. Electricity wasn't all that available at the time, while gasoline was much more portable and suitable for someone who didn't live in a city. The total cost of ownership of an electrical car at that time would have been significantly more than a comparable Model T - further moving it's accessibility away from the working man.
Of course, that's probably why the company failed in the first place.
Different economics... $30k is closer to the low end, when you consider that high end includes cars worth well over $100,000. You need to consider brands like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Maserati, Ferrari and the like when you're talking about the "high end". The luxury you get in a $30k Toyota is about par with the luxury you get out of a $30k Mercedes. It doesn't even compare to what you can get from a $100k Mercedes. The original comment was $30K is a reasonable cost for a low-mid end car new.
$30K is midrange. Medium to High midrange.
I would break it down like this:
$0-$15K - Low end
$15K - $40K - Midrange
$40K+ High end
You have to throw out the $100K Mercedes, Ferrari, etc... These aren't consumer cars, they are special interest, and only purchased by a VERY small number of people. Above $40K you get close to Escalade, Navigator, Corvette territory - what can be considered high end for most real people.
$30K is definitely getting toward the higher end of the midrange. Sure, not easy to buy a Lexus for that amount, but when you can buy a top of the line Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Pontiac or Dodge for that price, you are talking the top of the midrange. Not many people I know purchase cars that expensive NEW on a regular basis.
Problem I had with the analysis is the idea that someone making an average wage of $26K/year, or even $48K/year/household would purchase new a low-mid range car at $30K. I would say such a person would be more likely to purchase a low-mid range car at $20K, Kia, Hyundai, Chevy, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't trust anything that hard to pronounce.
TFA goes on about Microsoft's problems supporting "a tangle of versions and upgrades" which is almost as funny given when you consider how well DOSBox, Wine and virtual machines deals with all the same problems with none of the inside information. No, it's not new because IBM did Win3.1 inside OS/2 very well. Me thinks the "support" issue is created rather than natural.
Microsoft made the tangle themselves, and continue to propagate it. If Vista had been a logical upgrade to XP most people would have upgraded before now, but they are continuing with the bad practices that got them where they are.Absolutely. Backward compatibility is always blamed as the problem, but these legacy apps cost MONEY for new versions (if they are even available). This is one thing that always irritates me about Microsoft. Even on products they don't make any money on, like IE, they have to re-invent the wheel every time they release it.
With Linux you don't have that problem, most apps written 3 years ago for the first Ubuntu will work fine with 8.04 or any other distro. With OS X the OS had such a major change from PPC classic mac based to x86 Unix-based you can't make a claim of backwards compatibility but in general there's no reason to expect that NT X App shouldn't run on NT X+1. MS killing backwards compatibility is killing the entire MS monopoly and moving people to OS X or Linux.
Absolutely. The other great thing about Linux, if you are using FOSS, you can probably just download a version that works with your distro. A pain in terms of time, but at least it's not cash out of your pocket. If that doesn't work out for you, you next option is to modify the source code and recompile under the latest OS. Again, doesn't always work, and can be difficult for some apps, but in general a viable solution.
In general, Microsoft is an incredibly wasteful company. They spend millions of man-hours re-inventing products with minimal improvement. I have heard very little about Vista that is an improvement on XP, yet they spent a ton of work on it. Their whole business model is banking on the idea that software is continually obsolete, and that just isn't the case. A Word Processor is a Word Processor. An OS, as long as it's compatible with the hardware, is an OS. I can write a letter in Word 95 just as easily as I can in Word 2007, gets the same job done. Why would I spend thousands of dollars on all of the upgrades between now and then if Microsoft didn't periodically break all the backward compatibility.
The Patriot Act is just another method to keep people safe. Until the average Joe decides he would rather be free than safe, the oppression will continue.
I would prefer terror to tyranny.
Me too, unfortunately other American Citizens don't seem to agree.But really, you could decrease bombings, high-school shootings, and all of that shit, by not actively trying to destroy governments of foreign countries, and by instead spending that amount of money on fighting poverty and uneducation. People being too little educated as they are, they are easily convinced to believe the "let's invade and stop terrorism" stuff they are told.
Hmm... I won't argue that there are better ways to improve our society than foreign wars and warrantless wiretaps, but I fail to see how fighting poverty and uneducation would change the number of shootings and bombings. Most of the most recent, high-profile shooting incidents involved college students. It wasn't an education issue. Sure, maybe gang violence could be stopped, but really, everyone in this country that wants it has very good access to AT LEAST a high school education, and a college degree isn't that difficult to achieve. Terrorists don't blow up buildings because they are poor or uneducated.As for "how cultures survived", I am not sure if you can give me the name of a culture that traded freedom for oppression that survived in a healthy way.
Not sure what you mean by "healthy", but I can't think of one historical culture that didn't trade liberty for oppression at some point in their history. The Chinese had their emperors. All of the European states were ruled by kings at some point. Even the Romans with their great democracy ended up with guys like Nero. Actual implementations of democracy and freedom on a widespread basis are a couple hundred years old at best, and we are seeing those ideals be eroded away at an astonishing rate. The Europeans are consolidating power on a continental level, the British become more socialist every day, the US is subjected to the Patriot Act, Putin has Russia by the throat, many people think Islam is headed to a new caliphate, etc...I really think most people in Congress try to do the right thing. A police state, in theory, is SAFER than a free society. If we all lived in a supermax prison, had our nutritional balanced meals fed to us every day, had a mandated exercise program, forced healthcare and bars on the door we'd probably all live a lot longer.
Problem is this country was based on liberty, but freedom comes with a lot of risk and responsibilities. When people are free to do what they want there are a certain segment that will abuse those freedoms by blowing up buildings or shooting people in college classrooms. Unfortunately, most people don't want to be free, they want to be safe, and Congress tries to do what the people want. Historically, this is how cultures survived. Rulers came to power because they could protect their citizens. Sure, they got rich and powerful in the process, but why shouldn't they. They were protecting their people.
The Patriot Act is just another method to keep people safe. Until the average Joe decides he would rather be free than safe, the oppression will continue.
Classic.
They shouldn't be excused - but they should not violate the contract either, at least not without legal council and an accounting of the potential cost. What they SHOULD do is ship all of those machines back to the manufacturer and demand they be let out of their contract.
The original discussion was if Sequoia should be hit with the "if you don't have anything to hide..." argument that is used with the Patriot Act, etc... Thing is, there is no legal requirement, AFAIK, for Sequoia to submit their product to an independent third party review. If they was legal cause, and maybe this would fall under terrorists trying to subvert our election process, the contract should definitely be negated. If there is no legal precedent to break the contract, the State of NJ should stay within the bounds of the contract and find a resolution that way. The "if you don't have anything to hide" argument doesn't hold water, when they obviously stated they have intellectual property concerns and the State of NJ knew up front that this was the issue.
No government should make laws just to randomly get them out of a bad contract they shouldn't have agreed upon to start with. The guy that made this deal should be sacked, and Sequoia should stand behind their product.
Hell's business model has blown through $40 billion in three years. Looks like a loser to me.
Maybe, but it's made Gates a LOT more money than that over the years - and it's always been the same.Buy something that works and screw it up while breaking everything else.
Hell of a business model, isn't it?My point is that doing something wrong, and pointing to a contract doesn't make it a moral excuse. If your argument is right then by similar lines I could contract with a friend to piss off every person I see on the street, and when reprimanded I could point to the contract to say that "hey, I didn't do anything wrong I have a contractual duty to piss you off!"...
No, you couldn't. You could contract with a friend in your imaginary scenario, and then, after you were hauled to jail for assault and decided pissing off every person you meet, he could sue YOU for breach of contract. Probably wouldn't win because it's silly, but he would have standing. Creating such a contract with your friend wouldn't be smart, just like this voting machine contract wasn't smart. You can't point to the contract to justify your actions, but you are liable when your actions don't fulfill the terms of the contract.
Contract isn't law...
No you won't, or more appropriately, no I wont. Contracts have to be agreed on by both parties. They may not be law, but they are defensible in civil court.
Bottom line here, it's not good for governments to just pick and choose which parts of a contract they want to honor. It's not good in terms of costs to the taxpayers when they get sued. It's not good the next time they want to purchase something from an independent contractor. I'm not saying the contract isn't flawed, and they shouldn't do something about it. I'm just saying somebody should have thought about this before they agreed to the terms of the contract.
Actually, I don't think that's true either. They can arrest you, and hold you for 48 hours, for anything. They just can't charge you or try you for the crime.
Thing is, from all the horror stories I've read and heard, they can confiscate your property for an indefinite amount of time, and you have no idea what condition it will be in when you get it back. I would have a big problem running my business and retaining my livelyhood if the cops took my computer for three months.
Maybe we need a Rate-A-Judge website.
Yeah, well it's one of my pet peeves. They can give me a $150 traffic ticket for not using a turn signal, but don't really care when someone steals the radio out of my unlocked truck. Locked or unlocked brings up an interesting argument about who is responsible for crime. Should we blame the victim for making it too easy? But let's not stray too far from the topic.
And it is theft if someone uses your network without your consent, in my mind. It's a particularly minor form of theft, given that it's almost impossible to measure the inconvenience caused to access point's owner. It may be no inconvenience at all. But, if I logged on to your network and ran a Bit Torrent client to download a few gigs of Linux distros at the exact same moment that you were trying to upload a term paper, I could cause you rather substantial inconvenience. What is that if not theft? I know, you said "unless of course you are abusing the connection"... who decides what constitutes abuse? It's not theft as long as I just check my email? Does it become theft if I visit Youtube? Where is the line? You're on shaky ground, imho.
No, it's only theft if it causes a noticeable inconvenience. I use my connection heavily, work from home, downloads, youtube, etc... Still, I probably only saturate my connection MAYBE 10% of the time. If someone uses a portion of that other 90% at a level where it does not impact my usage, that person has not taken anything from me. I decide what constitutes abuse - as long as I'm not impacted, there has been no theft.
If I came on to your property and took a lemon from your lemon tree without asking, is that not theft? Suppose that you were not going to eat the lemon, but rather let it fall to the ground and rot. It's still theft, by the letter of the law.
Sure, because technically I was no longer in possession of that lemon. Using unused bandwidth does not result in anything leaving my posesion.
I'm just saying that the law proposed in TFA is silly. It's essentially impossible to enforce, unless far more resources were invested than the crime warrants. Rather than any government wasting time or money on such a thing, it's better if people just secure their networks, if they care about strangers having access.
Actually, it's worse than that. It's probably just a ploy to give law enforcement yet another trumped up charge to use against people that they cant indict under current laws. I agree, it is better if people secure their networks. In fact, they should just run a couple PSAs about how people can hack in through your wireless connections - probably give all those IT consultants out there a lot of side work.
Could you imagine summoning the police to your house to report theft of physical property, and then telling them that you left the door unlocked and open? I can just imagine what those cops would have to say. I'm sure they would not investigate the crime with the usual rigor, which isn't much for minor theft anyhow.
I don't like your analogy there. There is nothing in the penal code that specifies theft is OK if the item stolen wasn't secured. If law enforcement investigates a theft where the premises weren't secured in any different manner than if they were it's just professionalism on their part. More to the point, using someone's wireless connection isn't 'stealing'. There is no loss of property. Just because you are using my wireless doesn't mean I can't - unless of course you are abusing the connection. The only loss involved is bandwidth to the service provider or a potential loss of a paying customer.
That is really the root of the issue. Why would we pass criminal laws to protect corporate monetary interests. I don't live in Maryland, but I can't imagine the average MD citizen wants their tax dollar spent investigating and prosecuting people who 'steal' wireless connectivity. If this is prompted by public outcry, so be it. Make it illegal. If this is just a random tactic by ISPs to make more money, kill it.
Perhaps, but it will still cost money and time to determine if that's the case. The citizens of NJ will have to pay for their inept public officials.
The relevancy of the terms of the contract is for the courts to decide - which is what will happen if NJ sends the machine to an independent review source, but I can't say I agree with you.
A state, or any entity, cannot, and should not, sign a contract and then just ignore the provisions of the contract. Proper voting is very important, and it's up to State authorities to ensure the voting is correct. This decision should have been made PRIOR to signing the contract. If the terms of the licensing did not allow for proper voting the contract should not be signed. Now NJ will spend months or years in litigation and spend millions of dollars if they violate the licensing terms.
A government violating the terms of a contract at will is as tyrannical as improper voting is - maybe worse.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1981-VOLKSWAGON-RABBIT-LS-4-dr-DIESEL-MANUAL-RESTORED_W0QQitemZ320228558143QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item320228558143
Yes and no. It appears that this is a contractual issue. The State of New Jersey signed licensing terms that does not allow an independent party to review the code. The state should not violate that contract.
Thing is, there is a limited market for voting machines in the US. There are only 50 states, it seems to me the states are in a pretty good position to negotiate the licensing terms. Why is it that New Jersey didn't specify in the terms that the code and hardware had to be reviewed by independent sources? This isn't an issue so much of "if you don't have anything to hide" as it is simple economics. Abide by my terms or I won't purchase your product. Instead NJ bought a pig in a poke and now they are stuck with these machines.
The idea that the machines workings have to be secret for security reasons is a complete fallacy. Sooner or later one of these voting machine companies is going to break ranks and allow independent security reviews - just so these problems go away.
Freshness
Not sure exactly what you are getting at with that comment, but IIRC, there were some significant advancements made when submarine designers started studying fish. Early subs were designed as surface boats, but in the 50s, with the advent of the nuclear power plant, subs were redesigned with lessons learned from marine animals, resulting in much more efficient performance underwater.
Not even that is enough. A $26K individual these days is much more likely to purchase a used vehicle, in the 1920s the number of autos in the secondary market was extremely limited, buying used probably wasn't much of an option. You also have to weigh in the fact that an automobile filled a much different role in the 20s. A model T was not only used as transportation, they were also used as farm machinery, power units in industrial applications and any number of other commercial and industrial uses. A family typically only owned one auto at the time and were most likely to purchase the one that was most versatile. Electricity wasn't all that available at the time, while gasoline was much more portable and suitable for someone who didn't live in a city. The total cost of ownership of an electrical car at that time would have been significantly more than a comparable Model T - further moving it's accessibility away from the working man.
Of course, that's probably why the company failed in the first place.
$30K is midrange. Medium to High midrange.
I would break it down like this:
$0-$15K - Low end
$15K - $40K - Midrange
$40K+ High end
You have to throw out the $100K Mercedes, Ferrari, etc... These aren't consumer cars, they are special interest, and only purchased by a VERY small number of people. Above $40K you get close to Escalade, Navigator, Corvette territory - what can be considered high end for most real people.
$30K is definitely getting toward the higher end of the midrange. Sure, not easy to buy a Lexus for that amount, but when you can buy a top of the line Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Pontiac or Dodge for that price, you are talking the top of the midrange. Not many people I know purchase cars that expensive NEW on a regular basis.
Problem I had with the analysis is the idea that someone making an average wage of $26K/year, or even $48K/year/household would purchase new a low-mid range car at $30K. I would say such a person would be more likely to purchase a low-mid range car at $20K, Kia, Hyundai, Chevy, etc...