Re:Does it have to do with the type of information
on
The Memory Masters
·
· Score: 1
I was just thinking that for the "thousands of 1s and 0s" it would be a lot easier to convert the string into it's 8 bit ASCII equivalent and memorize that, and then decode it back when its time to perform.
The problem is that the two actors involved here, the public (government) and Diebold, each have two completely different aims. The public want a secure, easy to use, verifiable, non-bullshit voting system to ensure fair elections. Diebold wants to maximize shareholder value. A closed process will NEVER produce the desired result under those circumstances. Diebold will say "sure it works, trust us." Trusting them assumes they're not maximizing shareholder value: big mistake.
It would be sort of like fully privatizing mail delivery. Sure you could set it up as a viable company, if you are willing to entire A) drastically raise postage or B) cut vast swaths of rural mail delivery. When you get down to it the aims of the public are not compatible with running postal service as a completely private venture. The aims of the public are also not compatible with running elections as a completely private venture.
That would mean treating electronic election machines, no matter who produces them, as an extension of public service. Almost as a utility, perhaps. Political parties are heavily regulated as would be a utility, why not the very machines we use to vote?
Oh, sure, the stories have been run everywhere, including, as you point out, Slashdot. I didn't mean the story would be a good instead-ran for Slashdot, simply that it would be a more appropriate story for the media to report on for some sort of "human interest" fluff piece on Valentine's Day. Instead they perpetuate mistruths and misperceptions.
My point is that this story arises now for two reasons: 1) It is Valentine's Day, and diamonds and Valentine's Day go hand in hand, and 2) Diamonds are considered particularly valuable and special in our society. Both of which tap into the public's complete and utter lack of acceptance that diamonds are a scam that they willingly allow to be perpetuated against themselves.
Besides, this is also the same public of which 3/4ths believed (and I'm speaking fairly anecdotally here, but this sort of thing has been demonstrated time and again) that Iraq had nuclear weapons. The truth may have been reported upon, and a majority of people may have heard it at some point, but all it takes is one DeBeers commercial (or one more misleading headline) and they're right back to thinking they're worth the moon.
My understanding is that the vast majority of a diamond's "sparkle" is the result of careful cutting and controlling where the light enters the diamond. Slicing through an otherwise uncut diamond would not be too impressive, I'd imagine. Especially considering the lack of a strong light source.
Maybe a more worthwhile story would be on the fact that the entire diamond industry is created by incredibly strict control of the supply, which is kept artificially low to dramatically inflate price. If people knew, and accepted, the truth this wouldn't be considered that much more special than the fact that some other planets are just big, big versions of rocks. Gasp!
Well, I will tentatively say you're wrong, at least in this instance. The issue with the patents here isn't that they are trivial or "portfolio" blanks that are only used as leverage. A "submarine" parent is a patent that is delayed intentionally by the applicant so that they can revise it over the approval span as technology progresses, even if they didn't necessarily invent the revised technology. This allows them, 40 years later, to say "hey look, we have a patent on this, and we filed for the patent 40 years ago". One could infer that it is a "submarine" patent because it is kept submerged by the applicant intentionally for their gain.
I'm not entirely sure I'm correct, but I'm going to comment anyway.
A lot of people like to pull the "ah hah, it is not a state, it is a commonwealth!" semantic twist, to be clever and all. But I'm not so sure that's how it is, necessarily.
The way our system of governance works, ours is a federalist structure. While the entire nation is sovereign as a whole, so are the individual "states". Now what I will venture that means is that this arrangement, much as that of a family, allows for multiple titles and relationships between the actors involved.
IE, there is no reason that a state is a "state" to the exclusion of all other titles (necessarily) or a "commonwealth" a "commonwealth" to the exclusion of other titles (such as state). To use my prior analogy, there is no reason a "son" can not also be someone's "father". Or "brother" for that matter.
Now, IANAL, but considering A) any actor with relations with more than one other actor can have multiple relationships and titles and B) that the Constiution doesn't recognize the differentiation between a commonwealth and a state... I will offer my conclusion.
In relation to themselves and their people, Virginia, Pennyslvania, Massachusetts, and Kentucky are commonwealths. That is their sovereign right to determine their own form of governance and collectivity (within the bounds of a "republican form of government"). However, within their relation to other states and to the Union, they are states. They are both commonwealths and states, at the same time. Yes, Virginia, it is possible.
Though once again IANAL so I'm not taking into account what are no doubt tons of cases and laws and treaties etc establishing the final "legal" outcome of the discussion.
I believe VB-I is the guarentee that they will pay any judgement, not necessarily just legal cost. The LDF seems to just be for the cost of lawyers. Then again, IANAL and I didn't RTFA.
I remember back before 'yahoo.com' when they were on Berkeley's server ( I think... I could look it up but the school isn't important ) and I had to rummage around for the address when I wanted to use it... nowadays I'd just google for it and have it immediately. Back then it was actually useful... almost no commercial content, the database was smaller (more accurate checking) and younger (not so full of crap). Nowadays they have everything under the sun, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds it useless as a result. Even something simple like a stock price lookup I won't go to Yahoo for anymore, because whatever I want is buried amongst movie times and online games and auctions, etc. To me Yahoo spread its wings too far and they were melted by the sun (or am I mixing a few parables together...)
See, that's whay I hate it when people grumble about liberal arts programs and how they don't need this class or that requirement or whatever for their career. If it was set up how they apparently would like, and they only had to take classes in their chosen field, what happens when the bottom of the industry drops out? Suddenly your degree is useless. Liberal arts provides a safe harbor in a potential see of gambles.
As long as the virus does nothing else but propogate itself, then this really isn't a security issue, its an issue of people CHOOSING to run what they want on their computer. If they're dumb enough to click 'open' on anything that downloads without knowing what it does (and indeed if what it does isn't necessarily harmful) then it is not a security problem, its a user problem. If people choose to run a program that messages itself to everyone on their MSN list, then who is Microsoft to stop them? At some point the user has to take responsibility for what he or she runs.
"If they cared they'd go there" is a pretty bad standard to use when you're trying to form a representative sample. At least scientifically speaking the point of a poll sample is to make it match as closely as possible the broader population. You can't blame an individual population for not being adequately represented in the sample. In fact, pollsters aren't even looking specifically for people that care, because people that care probably for any variety of reasons are biased collectively, even if slightly. (IE, they might read about the topic more, have certain political stances which effect what exactly they care about, etc)
Who's to say that web polls would be less susceptible (sp) to manipulation? At least in a phone poll *they* call you, and can make damned sure they only call you once. On an Internet poll any one person has a variety of tricks up his sleeve to make sure his vote is counted more than once. At least on the phone you are directly interacting with the person, for most people even if they would be inclined to make up some bullshit just to fuck with the pollster the fact that they are interacting directly with them and the effort it takes to come up with a beleivable amount of bullshit is too much. Either way, one "bad egg" only puts one bad result into the mix, as opposed to on the internet when one "bad egg" could put hundreds or thousands of bad results in.
Telephone polls are meaningless...
Alright, let's try this one on for size
Let's say there is a close race going on, and one of the candidates is "actively and happily" married. The other candidate is single.
If a polling firm was to call a lot of voters and ask this question
"If you were told that one of the candidates in the upcoming [office] race was a homosexual, would that impact your decision?"
Now let's say that this race is taking place in Alabama.
This is called push polling. It can have a very real impact on races, depending on the severity of the suggestion ("if you found out that [candidate x] used crack/crack cocaine.." etc).
I imagine the law regarding that particular clause of the constitution is ambiguous. Regardless, it is very clear that it would not apply to American citizens that had never held public office. Perhaps it is based on the capacity in which one is acting. For instance, Mayor Giuliani was acting in his capacity as Mayor of New York when he undertook the actions which provoked his knighthood. Thus it could be argued that he can not, even when out of office, accept a title conferred for actions he made in his capacity as Mayor.
Certaintly this is the most plausible explanation of why the initials KBE (or whichever) can still be appended to one's name, but the title Sir can not be prepended. Other explanations abound, but they make no sense. One I've heard is that you can't use the title outside of the British isles (or the commonwealth), which makes no sense since the use of titles is always at the discretion of the holder. Another, which is repeated somewhere else in this thread, is that only subjects of the crown or British citizens can use the title 'Sir'. Does this make any sense? Alright, we're going to make you a KNIGHT OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, but uh-oh, no you can't use the title 'Sir'. Naughty naughty.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just thinking that for the "thousands of 1s and 0s" it would be a lot easier to convert the string into it's 8 bit ASCII equivalent and memorize that, and then decode it back when its time to perform.
No, no, you have it wrong, the correct phrase is:
This is the same reason why Apple is dying.
Let's keep it together, people.
It starts to get a bit more contentious when they get into the human sacrifice
The problem is that the two actors involved here, the public (government) and Diebold, each have two completely different aims. The public want a secure, easy to use, verifiable, non-bullshit voting system to ensure fair elections. Diebold wants to maximize shareholder value. A closed process will NEVER produce the desired result under those circumstances. Diebold will say "sure it works, trust us." Trusting them assumes they're not maximizing shareholder value: big mistake.
It would be sort of like fully privatizing mail delivery. Sure you could set it up as a viable company, if you are willing to entire A) drastically raise postage or B) cut vast swaths of rural mail delivery. When you get down to it the aims of the public are not compatible with running postal service as a completely private venture. The aims of the public are also not compatible with running elections as a completely private venture.
That would mean treating electronic election machines, no matter who produces them, as an extension of public service. Almost as a utility, perhaps. Political parties are heavily regulated as would be a utility, why not the very machines we use to vote?
George W. Bush won the democratic primary in 7 of the 10 states
I think slashdot covered something along these lines before, at least involving trojan pipeline control software (and a resulting explosion).
4 3&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/11532
That could probably be a slashdot mantra, "I didn't RTFA, but I DID look at the pictures."
Nah, it'll be a PlayStationWagon.
Nothing beats ducttape and a trashbag
Oh, sure, the stories have been run everywhere, including, as you point out, Slashdot. I didn't mean the story would be a good instead-ran for Slashdot, simply that it would be a more appropriate story for the media to report on for some sort of "human interest" fluff piece on Valentine's Day. Instead they perpetuate mistruths and misperceptions.
My point is that this story arises now for two reasons: 1) It is Valentine's Day, and diamonds and Valentine's Day go hand in hand, and 2) Diamonds are considered particularly valuable and special in our society. Both of which tap into the public's complete and utter lack of acceptance that diamonds are a scam that they willingly allow to be perpetuated against themselves.
Besides, this is also the same public of which 3/4ths believed (and I'm speaking fairly anecdotally here, but this sort of thing has been demonstrated time and again) that Iraq had nuclear weapons. The truth may have been reported upon, and a majority of people may have heard it at some point, but all it takes is one DeBeers commercial (or one more misleading headline) and they're right back to thinking they're worth the moon.
My understanding is that the vast majority of a diamond's "sparkle" is the result of careful cutting and controlling where the light enters the diamond. Slicing through an otherwise uncut diamond would not be too impressive, I'd imagine. Especially considering the lack of a strong light source.
Maybe a more worthwhile story would be on the fact that the entire diamond industry is created by incredibly strict control of the supply, which is kept artificially low to dramatically inflate price. If people knew, and accepted, the truth this wouldn't be considered that much more special than the fact that some other planets are just big, big versions of rocks. Gasp!
Well, I will tentatively say you're wrong, at least in this instance. The issue with the patents here isn't that they are trivial or "portfolio" blanks that are only used as leverage. A "submarine" parent is a patent that is delayed intentionally by the applicant so that they can revise it over the approval span as technology progresses, even if they didn't necessarily invent the revised technology. This allows them, 40 years later, to say "hey look, we have a patent on this, and we filed for the patent 40 years ago". One could infer that it is a "submarine" patent because it is kept submerged by the applicant intentionally for their gain.
I'm not entirely sure I'm correct, but I'm going to comment anyway.
A lot of people like to pull the "ah hah, it is not a state, it is a commonwealth!" semantic twist, to be clever and all. But I'm not so sure that's how it is, necessarily.
The way our system of governance works, ours is a federalist structure. While the entire nation is sovereign as a whole, so are the individual "states". Now what I will venture that means is that this arrangement, much as that of a family, allows for multiple titles and relationships between the actors involved.
IE, there is no reason that a state is a "state" to the exclusion of all other titles (necessarily) or a "commonwealth" a "commonwealth" to the exclusion of other titles (such as state). To use my prior analogy, there is no reason a "son" can not also be someone's "father". Or "brother" for that matter.
Now, IANAL, but considering A) any actor with relations with more than one other actor can have multiple relationships and titles and B) that the Constiution doesn't recognize the differentiation between a commonwealth and a state... I will offer my conclusion.
In relation to themselves and their people, Virginia, Pennyslvania, Massachusetts, and Kentucky are commonwealths. That is their sovereign right to determine their own form of governance and collectivity (within the bounds of a "republican form of government"). However, within their relation to other states and to the Union, they are states. They are both commonwealths and states, at the same time. Yes, Virginia, it is possible.
Though once again IANAL so I'm not taking into account what are no doubt tons of cases and laws and treaties etc establishing the final "legal" outcome of the discussion.
I believe VB-I is the guarentee that they will pay any judgement, not necessarily just legal cost. The LDF seems to just be for the cost of lawyers. Then again, IANAL and I didn't RTFA.
Someone mod this guy funny...
I remember back before 'yahoo.com' when they were on Berkeley's server ( I think... I could look it up but the school isn't important ) and I had to rummage around for the address when I wanted to use it... nowadays I'd just google for it and have it immediately. Back then it was actually useful... almost no commercial content, the database was smaller (more accurate checking) and younger (not so full of crap). Nowadays they have everything under the sun, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that finds it useless as a result. Even something simple like a stock price lookup I won't go to Yahoo for anymore, because whatever I want is buried amongst movie times and online games and auctions, etc. To me Yahoo spread its wings too far and they were melted by the sun (or am I mixing a few parables together...)
See, that's whay I hate it when people grumble about liberal arts programs and how they don't need this class or that requirement or whatever for their career. If it was set up how they apparently would like, and they only had to take classes in their chosen field, what happens when the bottom of the industry drops out? Suddenly your degree is useless. Liberal arts provides a safe harbor in a potential see of gambles.
As long as the virus does nothing else but propogate itself, then this really isn't a security issue, its an issue of people CHOOSING to run what they want on their computer. If they're dumb enough to click 'open' on anything that downloads without knowing what it does (and indeed if what it does isn't necessarily harmful) then it is not a security problem, its a user problem. If people choose to run a program that messages itself to everyone on their MSN list, then who is Microsoft to stop them? At some point the user has to take responsibility for what he or she runs.
I'll go out on a limb... something to do with SCO?
A revocation of citizenship would require a constitutional amendment.
"If they cared they'd go there" is a pretty bad standard to use when you're trying to form a representative sample. At least scientifically speaking the point of a poll sample is to make it match as closely as possible the broader population. You can't blame an individual population for not being adequately represented in the sample. In fact, pollsters aren't even looking specifically for people that care, because people that care probably for any variety of reasons are biased collectively, even if slightly. (IE, they might read about the topic more, have certain political stances which effect what exactly they care about, etc)
Who's to say that web polls would be less susceptible (sp) to manipulation? At least in a phone poll *they* call you, and can make damned sure they only call you once. On an Internet poll any one person has a variety of tricks up his sleeve to make sure his vote is counted more than once. At least on the phone you are directly interacting with the person, for most people even if they would be inclined to make up some bullshit just to fuck with the pollster the fact that they are interacting directly with them and the effort it takes to come up with a beleivable amount of bullshit is too much. Either way, one "bad egg" only puts one bad result into the mix, as opposed to on the internet when one "bad egg" could put hundreds or thousands of bad results in.
Telephone polls are meaningless... Alright, let's try this one on for size Let's say there is a close race going on, and one of the candidates is "actively and happily" married. The other candidate is single. If a polling firm was to call a lot of voters and ask this question "If you were told that one of the candidates in the upcoming [office] race was a homosexual, would that impact your decision?" Now let's say that this race is taking place in Alabama. This is called push polling. It can have a very real impact on races, depending on the severity of the suggestion ("if you found out that [candidate x] used crack/crack cocaine.." etc).
I imagine the law regarding that particular clause of the constitution is ambiguous. Regardless, it is very clear that it would not apply to American citizens that had never held public office. Perhaps it is based on the capacity in which one is acting. For instance, Mayor Giuliani was acting in his capacity as Mayor of New York when he undertook the actions which provoked his knighthood. Thus it could be argued that he can not, even when out of office, accept a title conferred for actions he made in his capacity as Mayor.
Certaintly this is the most plausible explanation of why the initials KBE (or whichever) can still be appended to one's name, but the title Sir can not be prepended. Other explanations abound, but they make no sense. One I've heard is that you can't use the title outside of the British isles (or the commonwealth), which makes no sense since the use of titles is always at the discretion of the holder. Another, which is repeated somewhere else in this thread, is that only subjects of the crown or British citizens can use the title 'Sir'. Does this make any sense? Alright, we're going to make you a KNIGHT OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE, but uh-oh, no you can't use the title 'Sir'. Naughty naughty.