That's not true (not in Canada). My wife worked for Election Canada a couple of months ago as a scrutineer. She was the one who handed the blank paper ballot to the voters and who gave them instructions, and at the end of the day, she was the one responsible of counting the votes by hand. For that, her and her assistant (who was adding the score everytime she showed a ballot) got paid by the government.
Among the witnesses, the people representing their parties were not paid by the government, maybe they were being paid by their party, I don't know. The other officials acting as witnesses were also being paid by the government. All those people took oaths, and it was all done in a very strict manner.
And yes, people from the public were allowed in the room (up to a certain limit) during the counting.
Sometimes, the old fashioned way is the best way. We had a federal election a couple of months ago in Canada, and it was all paper & pens.
People could come from 9AM to 9PM to take the piece of paper, go behind the curtain over there, mark the paper with the pen (make an X in a cirle next to the one you want to vote for... not all that complicated), and put the little piece of paper in the sealed box.
At the end of the day, human beings opened the sealed boxes, with several witnesses (at least one representative of each party, plus other government officials), and hand-counted each ballot. Take one paper, show it to everybody, add 1 to the score of the guy on that ballot, put the ballot in a pile. Repeat the process about 500 times per box, for each of the thousands and thousands of boxes around the country. The whole process of counting takes about an hour, and there's very very few occurences of a party requiring a recount, because everything has been done in front of at least 10 witnesses.
Where's the need for all that electronic voting stuff? Maybe it goes faster, and maybe the paper-way requires the hiring of more people (thus costing more in salaries), but consider the cost of buying the electronic stuff, then the cost of all the judicial stuff that happens because votes are missing or something got hacked or so.
Go back to plain ol' paper & pens, and let democracy reign.
Maybe people don't hack into the old unpatched NT box because there would be no valuable reason to do so. Or maybe it does get hacked but when the hacker sees there's nothing of interest, he leaves and hunts for another target.
But election tampering, *now* you've got something valuable. Being able to bypass democracy and nominate (in opposition to elect) the guy who has the power to say "Let's bomb Iraq some more", now you've got a good reason to worry about security.
I have a little server at home that basically only runs to gather high-scores from a little amateur online game I made. There's no reason for me to patch it ad-nauseum since I don't really care if the machine crashes or gets hacked or anything. Just as a hacker would care about somebody's high score when he sees my server.
Being paranoid is trying to secure something nobody would want to tamper with. Making sure nobody can hack into the e-voting system that will elect the next president is *not* being paranoid, it's plain ol' common sense.
Sometimes I think Sun could announce they found an affordable and easily accessible cure for cancer and the slashdot crowd would harp on them for contributing to the overpopulation problem.
Are you saying that overpopulation is good??? Cause if you are......... *annoyed grunt*
Definately not... The story header here claims that "70% of anti-virus activity in the first half of this year can be blamed on Sven Jaschan", that makes a good headline for sure, but the FA itself says "Sven Jaschan, teenage author of the Sasser worm and member of Skynet, the gang responsible for distributing Netsky, confessed in May".
So 70% of the virus activity has been done by one group of hackers, not by a single hacker.
I definately wouldn't want cursor focus to always be where I'm looking at... how many times have I been reading something while typing something else in another window... or speaking to some guy beside me while looking at him and continuing typing what I started, without looking at what I'm typing...
By brain kinda got split in 2 somehow, and my hands *know* what they type, and when they make a typo. I don't have to look at what I'm typing half the time, and the hands will go hit the backspace key when they need to. If cursor focus left the slashdot comment box everytime I look away, then this comment would never have been written...
however I feel the knowledge, experience and technological advancements are well worth it
If knowledge, science and technological advancements are involved, then it's all ok. We must fund research to move forward. You missed the point though. What I said is that if the only purpose to space exploration is is adventure (which is what the article states, since people in space just don't have time to conduct any real experiments), then the general public should pay for one man's adventure. When science and improvements arrive, then it becomes mankind's adventure, and everybody is involved.
Walking on the moon was a great scientific achievement (a giant leap for mankind), but going up there and spend almost all of your time maintaining the spaceship alive and not doing any significant research, then it becomes a one man adventure (a very, very small step for a man).
How it feels to jump around on the face of the moon with 1/5th (or whatever) the gravity?
So a single person gets to experience that, hundreds of millions of taxpayers have to invest billions of dollars. And when the guy who jumped around dies, what is left to humanity? No scientific evidence that is of any use, only a log entry saying "Dude, it's cool to jump around on the moon!".
I'm ok for adventure as long as the guy doing the adventure is also paying for it.
Ok, so let's even pretend that a mp3 is a software program. How does it change how the law applies to it :
Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 117(a) (quoted from great-great-grand-parent post)
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
AFAIK, converting an audio CD to mp3 format is far from being an essential step in the utilization of the computer program. If your machine has a CD-ROM, then it can "execute" the "software program" directly from the CD. I suppose that I would be correct to use the computer as an intermediate for transferring the audio CD onto an mp3 player, since the mp3 player requires the mp3 file ("essential step"), but then you'd have to delete the mp3 from the computer as soon as the transfer is done.
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
Archive : A long-term storage area, often on magnetic tape, for backup copies of files or for files that are no longer in active use.
If you listen to the mp3 file, then it is in active use, and therefore cannot be considered as a backup copy.
So even if a mp3 file is considered being a software program, it is still not "fair use" to listen to mp3'd version of your music on your computer of on any other device that can play the original CD's (stereo, car radio, CD-mp3 player, computer, etc.)
You wanna play on words, then let's play on words.
The software is the mp3 player (be it Windows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, WinAmp or anything else). The mp3 file itself is nothing but data that the software uses. A mp3 file definately doesn't qualify as a software, and much less as a computer program.
Now, what is your definition of a "computer"? A mp3 file cannot be understood only by a computer. It can be understood by a portable mp3 player, is that a computer too? It can be understood by a car radio system, is that a computer?
If I have a text document as a text file. Is the text file a software? That's the same for an mp3.
Plus, when you bought a music CD in your favorite music store, chances are the music on the CD was not in an mp3 format. So, whatever you do with the mp3, it was the making of the mp3 that was not "fair use".
I remember reading of a patent granted for an "invisibility cloak" that would refract light around you so you couldnt be seen [...] One day in the future perhaps some brilliant technician will actually invent this device
The future is Japan, and in Japan, you can have an invisibility cloak. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.
On the flip side, you could also be blamed for not keeping your computer patched, so it's your own fault for not securing your bank info.
From the article: was sophisticated enough to take advantage of three flaws in Microsoft products. Microsoft was able to come up with fixes for two of them, but not the third one.
Hard to keep a system patched when there is no patch...
Did you even RTFA? early enough in its development so that it is not presented as a "fait accompli" that would be difficult to change.
Instead, the settlement gives computer makers and users the ability to mask the presence of certain Microsoft applications if they want to use or showcase competing programs. The Justice Department is particularly concerned that this mandate be followed in Longhorn.
But that is exactly how one can measure how good a game is. If a game can survive the test of time, then it is a good game.
What actually makes (most) people want to play a certain game is the design and the gameplay. That's what provides entertainment. Cool graphics is just a bonus.
When game makers (whatever the console) decide to publish a game solely because it will have cool graphics, then the game stinks... badly... The best games of all rarely have the best graphics of all.
Ok... I agree that it was really horrible to see... but from a commercial point of view, it's about the biggest success there ever was in the video game industry.
I find it funny how Nintendo is never mentionned in the console war, it's always about PS2 and Xbox (or PS3 and Xbox2).
A very big part of the gaming market is located in Asia, and that market it fought for by Nintendo and Sony. Xbox doesn't succeed very well over there, and I doubt Xbox2 will do any better.
As far as exclusivity goes, about 95% of games that are on either PS2 or Xbox are also on the GameCube, and now that SquareEnix is back on the Nintendo platform (both GameCube and GameBoy), Sony lost one of its best exclusivity there.
Meanwhile, Nintendo keeps on creating and maintaining very popular brands that are exclusive to them. EVERYBODY (under 30) has played a Mario game at least once in its life, and Mario is still very popular. Add Donkey Kong and Zelda to that, and you got a pretty good range of exclusive games. And if Nintendo pulls another Pokémon-like mania...
A car costs $20,000. If it died after 2 years, it means it cost you $10,000 a year to use, which is ridiculously high, and is why there are guarantees and such.
A CDR on which you store data costs less than 1 dollar. If it dies after 2 years, it will have cost you 50 cents per year. If you're going broke from using something that costs you 50 cents a year, why do you even own a computer at all?
A DVD movie costs $20. If it dies after 2 years, it'll have cost you $10 a year to use (watch the movie). Unlike the CDR, you did not pay only for the plastic disc, you also paid for the entertainment it provided you. It cost you $10 a year to be entertained. Seeing a movie in the theater costs $10, and it lasts for 3 hours.
Don't expect something you paid a couple of bucks to last for decades.
Slashdot Mirror
Among the witnesses, the people representing their parties were not paid by the government, maybe they were being paid by their party, I don't know. The other officials acting as witnesses were also being paid by the government. All those people took oaths, and it was all done in a very strict manner.
And yes, people from the public were allowed in the room (up to a certain limit) during the counting.
People could come from 9AM to 9PM to take the piece of paper, go behind the curtain over there, mark the paper with the pen (make an X in a cirle next to the one you want to vote for... not all that complicated), and put the little piece of paper in the sealed box.
At the end of the day, human beings opened the sealed boxes, with several witnesses (at least one representative of each party, plus other government officials), and hand-counted each ballot. Take one paper, show it to everybody, add 1 to the score of the guy on that ballot, put the ballot in a pile. Repeat the process about 500 times per box, for each of the thousands and thousands of boxes around the country. The whole process of counting takes about an hour, and there's very very few occurences of a party requiring a recount, because everything has been done in front of at least 10 witnesses.
Where's the need for all that electronic voting stuff? Maybe it goes faster, and maybe the paper-way requires the hiring of more people (thus costing more in salaries), but consider the cost of buying the electronic stuff, then the cost of all the judicial stuff that happens because votes are missing or something got hacked or so.
Go back to plain ol' paper & pens, and let democracy reign.
But election tampering, *now* you've got something valuable. Being able to bypass democracy and nominate (in opposition to elect) the guy who has the power to say "Let's bomb Iraq some more", now you've got a good reason to worry about security.
I have a little server at home that basically only runs to gather high-scores from a little amateur online game I made. There's no reason for me to patch it ad-nauseum since I don't really care if the machine crashes or gets hacked or anything. Just as a hacker would care about somebody's high score when he sees my server.
Being paranoid is trying to secure something nobody would want to tamper with. Making sure nobody can hack into the e-voting system that will elect the next president is *not* being paranoid, it's plain ol' common sense.
Too late... 4 of the 7 first posts imply crashing :-P
Brings a whole new meaning to "System crash"...
But if they're still working on it, they're still adding stuff to it... they can make it up to 300MB compressed if you ask them to...
The game is rated M for mature... gamer kids shouldn't even play the game in the first place.
Are you saying that overpopulation is good??? Cause if you are... ... ... *annoyed grunt*
Definately not... The story header here claims that "70% of anti-virus activity in the first half of this year can be blamed on Sven Jaschan", that makes a good headline for sure, but the FA itself says "Sven Jaschan, teenage author of the Sasser worm and member of Skynet, the gang responsible for distributing Netsky, confessed in May".
So 70% of the virus activity has been done by one group of hackers, not by a single hacker.
Facts people, we want facts!
I definately wouldn't want cursor focus to always be where I'm looking at... how many times have I been reading something while typing something else in another window... or speaking to some guy beside me while looking at him and continuing typing what I started, without looking at what I'm typing...
By brain kinda got split in 2 somehow, and my hands *know* what they type, and when they make a typo. I don't have to look at what I'm typing half the time, and the hands will go hit the backspace key when they need to. If cursor focus left the slashdot comment box everytime I look away, then this comment would never have been written...
If knowledge, science and technological advancements are involved, then it's all ok. We must fund research to move forward. You missed the point though. What I said is that if the only purpose to space exploration is is adventure (which is what the article states, since people in space just don't have time to conduct any real experiments), then the general public should pay for one man's adventure. When science and improvements arrive, then it becomes mankind's adventure, and everybody is involved.
Walking on the moon was a great scientific achievement (a giant leap for mankind), but going up there and spend almost all of your time maintaining the spaceship alive and not doing any significant research, then it becomes a one man adventure (a very, very small step for a man).
So a single person gets to experience that, hundreds of millions of taxpayers have to invest billions of dollars. And when the guy who jumped around dies, what is left to humanity? No scientific evidence that is of any use, only a log entry saying "Dude, it's cool to jump around on the moon!".
I'm ok for adventure as long as the guy doing the adventure is also paying for it.
Consulting : If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 117(a) (quoted from great-great-grand-parent post)
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. -
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
AFAIK, converting an audio CD to mp3 format is far from being an essential step in the utilization of the computer program. If your machine has a CD-ROM, then it can "execute" the "software program" directly from the CD. I suppose that I would be correct to use the computer as an intermediate for transferring the audio CD onto an mp3 player, since the mp3 player requires the mp3 file ("essential step"), but then you'd have to delete the mp3 from the computer as soon as the transfer is done.
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
Archive : A long-term storage area, often on magnetic tape, for backup copies of files or for files that are no longer in active use.
If you listen to the mp3 file, then it is in active use, and therefore cannot be considered as a backup copy.
So even if a mp3 file is considered being a software program, it is still not "fair use" to listen to mp3'd version of your music on your computer of on any other device that can play the original CD's (stereo, car radio, CD-mp3 player, computer, etc.)
You wanna play on words, then let's play on words.
The software is the mp3 player (be it Windows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, WinAmp or anything else). The mp3 file itself is nothing but data that the software uses. A mp3 file definately doesn't qualify as a software, and much less as a computer program.
Now, what is your definition of a "computer"? A mp3 file cannot be understood only by a computer. It can be understood by a portable mp3 player, is that a computer too? It can be understood by a car radio system, is that a computer?
If I have a text document as a text file. Is the text file a software? That's the same for an mp3.
Plus, when you bought a music CD in your favorite music store, chances are the music on the CD was not in an mp3 format. So, whatever you do with the mp3, it was the making of the mp3 that was not "fair use".
Watch the videos, they're pretty impressive.
The future is Japan, and in Japan, you can have an invisibility cloak. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.
As long as they can hit Microsoft, it's fine by me.
(Yes, that was free Microsoft-bashing, but what are you gonna do?)
From the article :
was sophisticated enough to take advantage of three flaws in Microsoft products. Microsoft was able to come up with fixes for two of them, but not the third one.
Hard to keep a system patched when there is no patch...
Did you even RTFA?
early enough in its development so that it is not presented as a "fait accompli" that would be difficult to change.
Instead, the settlement gives computer makers and users the ability to mask the presence of certain Microsoft applications if they want to use or showcase competing programs. The Justice Department is particularly concerned that this mandate be followed in Longhorn.
I got you beat... I still have my 1,700,000 number :-P
But that is exactly how one can measure how good a game is. If a game can survive the test of time, then it is a good game.
What actually makes (most) people want to play a certain game is the design and the gameplay. That's what provides entertainment. Cool graphics is just a bonus.
When game makers (whatever the console) decide to publish a game solely because it will have cool graphics, then the game stinks... badly... The best games of all rarely have the best graphics of all.
Ok... I agree that it was really horrible to see... but from a commercial point of view, it's about the biggest success there ever was in the video game industry.
I find it funny how Nintendo is never mentionned in the console war, it's always about PS2 and Xbox (or PS3 and Xbox2).
A very big part of the gaming market is located in Asia, and that market it fought for by Nintendo and Sony. Xbox doesn't succeed very well over there, and I doubt Xbox2 will do any better.
As far as exclusivity goes, about 95% of games that are on either PS2 or Xbox are also on the GameCube, and now that SquareEnix is back on the Nintendo platform (both GameCube and GameBoy), Sony lost one of its best exclusivity there.
Meanwhile, Nintendo keeps on creating and maintaining very popular brands that are exclusive to them. EVERYBODY (under 30) has played a Mario game at least once in its life, and Mario is still very popular. Add Donkey Kong and Zelda to that, and you got a pretty good range of exclusive games. And if Nintendo pulls another Pokémon-like mania...
A car costs $20,000. If it died after 2 years, it means it cost you $10,000 a year to use, which is ridiculously high, and is why there are guarantees and such.
A CDR on which you store data costs less than 1 dollar. If it dies after 2 years, it will have cost you 50 cents per year. If you're going broke from using something that costs you 50 cents a year, why do you even own a computer at all?
A DVD movie costs $20. If it dies after 2 years, it'll have cost you $10 a year to use (watch the movie). Unlike the CDR, you did not pay only for the plastic disc, you also paid for the entertainment it provided you. It cost you $10 a year to be entertained. Seeing a movie in the theater costs $10, and it lasts for 3 hours.
Don't expect something you paid a couple of bucks to last for decades.