"Since when did you have the rights and freedoms to take something you did not pay for? If nobody pays for music and movies, there won't be many movies and music works worth taking. Want proof? Just look at any third world economy where IP laws are lax. Very little talent comes out of those sort of countries."
Do you know why 'very little talent comes out of those... countries'? Because Big Fucking Who's-Your-Daddy-Now Media doesn't like them.
Original, independant music is more alive in the developing world than the average North American could ever imagine. It's just that they don't play by mass-market rules.
I've visited a number of places wa-ay off the beaten track, and what I inevitably find is that music is far more important to the people I meet. The difference is, they don't just plug the songs they like into an iPod and listen to them once a month or so when the playlist repeats.
They love their songs. Do you have any idea how it feels to be have a bus full of people spontaneously start to sing along when a local hit comes on the radio? And no, it's not the cacophonous school trip crap you might be imagining. I'm talking spontaneous 3 part harmonies, sung simply but in perfect pitch. It was one of the most joyful things I'd ever experienced.
So what happens when big-media protectionism arrives in these locales? Here are a couple of examples:
A musician from a developing nation visited a friend of mine before Christmas. He asked him to make a copy of his band's new CD for a girl he knew. One of the songs he'd written on it was about a girl he knew and he wanted her to have a copy. He wanted to make a copy of it because he couldn't afford the price of his own CD. Imagine how my friend felt when he had to explain to the musician that he couldn't do it because the CD was copy-protected!
I mentioned to another musician friend of mine that I would like to make an MP3 of one of his songs so I could let my friends back in North America here it. He was absolutely thrilled at the idea, and immediately realised that free distribution is free promotion in a market that he himself could never afford.
"In the charter if the BBC wants to provide services outside the UK they must be self-funding."
That's very interesting. Is that self-funding requirement limited in any way? I ask because the BBC World Service, a spectacularly good news radio service, heard in parts of the world many people have never heard of, actually pays local carriers to provide their service.
I know this because a tiny little (i.e. 5W briefcase transmitter) community FM station on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu plans to use the money the BBC gives them to buy a stronger transmitter.
The BBC has been at the forefront of information technology since before the term 'IT' existed. It comes as no surprise to me that they are the most effective and successful content carrier on the Web.
You misunderstand me. I was saying that Perl is good, but is often found buried deep in, uh, gunk.
I wrote perl for a living for years. It's still my favourite language. You say above that it can practically be English. That's true, but the thing I like best about it is that it can practically be poetry, too. 8^)
The reason that many in the US Armed Forces don't like Seymour Hersch, besides the facts that he has some of the best sources in the business, is that he was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, where US soldiers murdered hundreds of innocent men, women and children.
That story marked a seminal moment in US journalism, demonstrating the power of the media by uncovering the truth and the lies of the Viet Nam conflict. It was Hersch's work that more or less guaranteed the end of US involvement in Viet Nam due to the huge outcry when the details came out.
Given that you don't appear to know that tiny bit of your own history, it might also surprise you to learn that a young officer named Colin Powell was assigned to investigate the massacre. He claimed to find no credible evidence that the massacre ever occurred. Hersch made a fool of Powell and many others in the military when he convinced one of the soldiers present during the mass murder to go public with his story.
Now tell me that Tommy Franks and others don't have an axe to grind.
Hersch is known to everyone who works in the business as one of the best informed correspondents in the US media. His research is impeccable. Read his columns in the New Yorker if you don't believe me. His writing is clear, and extremely well documented.
My biggest regret these days is that there's no new generation of independant reporters with the skills and determination that Hersch is still showing. I'm glad that someone broke the Abu Ghraib story; I'm only sorry that Hersch is still the one doing the ground work.
Now, to bring this post back on topic *grin*: It's precisely because of threads like this that I like Wikipedia and Wikinews. Someone makes wild-assed claims, backs it with weak evidence from a tainted source, and call it fact. On Fox and CNN, this goes unchallenged. In a wiki environment, it can be corrected and refined quickly and efficiently, and the public get the truth, rather than some shill's doublethink. Hopefully Wikinews will provide the training ground for a few more Seymour Hersches. We need them now more than ever.
"Tim Hortons is still a part of Canadian culture, and relatively unknown in the US...."
Yep, in fact, when Mike Myers (a Torontonian) made his leap from SNL to screen with Wayne's World, he had to change the name to American hockey legend Stan Mikita, and put a HUGE hockey stick outside.
We Canadians, needless to say, actually found it funny, because we possess the bittersweet knowledge that the highlight of suburban youth can be the hours spent at Tim Horton's.
Now take another look at the scene where Dana Carvey meets the 'Wild Thing' babe, and realise the soul-destroying despair that leads him to this flight of self-deception. Mike Myers is truly one of the prophets of our time. 8^)
Re:Good luck building a military when you need it
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
"... I don't think any future big wars will last six years. Heck, maybe not even 2 weeks."
I agree that on the face of it, six years looks like a long time. I guess the best response I can offer would be to suggest that you look closely at how the Iraq conflict plays out. I suspect that in 4 more years or so, you'll see a strongly established and effective military opposition the to US or whatever proxies remain.
Conflicts typically do last years, whether the Pentagon planners want them to or not. Ignoring the bellico-theatrical invasions of Panama and Grenada, I'd challenge you to point out a major conflict that has not lasted 6 years or more. You will find some, but I suspect you'll discover that they are the extreme minority.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Clearly the U.S. was being belligerant and arrogant when Russia put its nukes on Cuba."
I'm no historian, but yeah, the Cuban Missile Crisis is widely perceived to have resulted from escalating threats/counter-threats, set off by US tactical nuclear build-up. Wikipedia thinks so, too.
But don't trust just me and a bunch of amateur editors, go read the history yourself, and supplement the flag-waving pap that schools dish out these days, when they do at all.
Re:Good luck building a military when you need it
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"The main problem with that idea is that it takes many years to build (outfit, train, etc) a military."
That may be true in cases where the state has no resources of its own. In the years between 1939 and 1945, Canada went from having 3 ships in its navy to possessing the 3rd largest navy in the world. In the first world war, it had over 1,000,000 men and women in uniform - that's 10% of the total population at the time. Every time it's felt the need, Canada has managed to go to a war footing in a remarkably short period of time.
... And that's why I'm skeptical when Americans proclaim that they're protecting us. In major conflicts[*], we've always done a fine job of protecting ourselves, with a fair amount left over to help our neighbours.
[*] It's more than a little ironic that the only foreign invasions Canada has ever faced have come from its southern border. 8^)
"True. But telling this to somewone who already has AIDS doesn't help alot, either."
That's not the point at all. We're talking about the vector, not the victim. MS buying an anti-spyware company is a little bit like a mid-price prostitute saying, "Sure, I've got the clap, but the first 5 condoms are free!"
"The one thing I'd like to see is a spelchkr and grammer checkar build right into the browser."
Heh, yeah, that'd be cool, but what'd be really cool is if the spelling/grammar-checker had a flag that wouldn't let you post to anything but your own blog site until you learn to write without making stupid mistakes. Think of it as an Internet wading pool.
Are you basing this assertion on experience? I've been living outside of North America for a while now, and don't know whether Lenovo sells PCs there. I know they didn't when I left.
My experience with their PCs was surprisingly good. I was asked to configure several PCs given as a gift by the Communist Party of China to some local dignitaries in the Pacific Islands nation where I live. When I saw that they were designed and manufactured in China, I was prepared to deal with anaemic, poorly configured machines of slipshod construction.
I was quite surprised to find out that the opposite was true. The machines were built with quality components, solid cases and performed better than many name-brand PCs I've used in the past *cough*Gateway*cough*.
I looked at two laptops and three PCs altogether, and didn't find much to complain about.
That said, I'll add two strong provisos:
1)If I'm asked for tough consumer PCs that are going to last, I typically recommend IBM. I don't think I would place the Lenovos I saw in that same category. Not until 4 years have passed anyway. 8^)
2) The PCs I looked at were 'special' presents for visiting dignitaries. It could well be that they were constructed according to a higher spec and standard than the off-the-shelf offering.
From TFA: "It's not like we're trying to hire Tolstoy."
It's a damn good thing, too. The last thing corporate America needs is a 2000 page corporate org chart in which Alexei Sergeyevich has dotted line responsibility for Sergey Alexeyevich, and both of them are in love with Anya Lamentova (who is referred to half the time as Anyushka, making it look like these two are chasing different women so what's the problem?), and by the time Napoleon finally retreats from Moscow and Sergey Alexeyevich
has recovered from the duel with Alexei (Sasha) Sergeyevich we haven't even come close to our quarterly projections and don't give a shit about any of it any more and spend our entire day checking the want ads.
I think they do. I strongly suspect that either somebody's throwing out a red herring to discredit attempts to properly count the votes, or that this guy just likes the spotlight.
He made available what he claims was his demo program and the VB source for it, but when I downloaded the source to investigate, the form containing the actual program code was not there. Now why would a programmer trying to break such a huge story place a zip file online as evidence to support his whistle-blower stance... and leave out the actual code?
I've also downloaded the binary and plan to run it through a VB decompiler to see if I can find out what he's up to.
But the most important thing to remember here is that the even if his code works, all we've got is a guy making unsubstantiated claims. They bear penalty of perjury if they're wrong, but these claims have not been substantiated in any way yet.
Full disclosure: I do believe there were systematic abuses of the voting system. I just don't think this guy's 'evidence' is very strong.
I deliberately chose two photos taken under less than perfect conditions, in order to compare the shortcomings. Each one is shot with the same telephoto lens at about the same distance, using ASA 100 film under poor lighting conditions. While neither one is optimal, there is a clear difference between the two. The colours in the first one look washed out, and as you astutely point out, the contrast is much poorer.
The second photo has much more saturated colour and contrast. While it's still grainy, it's much better than the first. Whatever fuzziness exists is because of optics and film.
For reference, here is a studio shot that shows what kind of quality you can get with the same film scanner. The actual print is 20" high by about 14" wide. At 300 dpi, it gives continuous tones that are almost indistinguishable from photographic prints.
"Using a flatbed scanner with Slide Adapter just doesnt produce great results."
Indeed. I've used both flatbed and slide scanners, and the differences are pretty clear. Here's a photo taken with a Nikon F80 using a 70-300 zoom lens that I scanned with a fairly expensive HP flatbed scanner and slide attachment.
And here's one that I took using the same camera and lens, but scanned using a CanoScan FS 2710, a slide scanner that I got on sale for less than USD 400.
Note also that the FS 2710 scans at very high optical resolution, meaning that I can print a 20" x 14" print at 300 dpi without enlarging the image. All these 150+ MB files do make storage an issue, but I'm happy to live with that in exchange for significantly better quality.
Re:Education is definitely not stressed enough.
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"The problem is getting the third world (where the epidemic is most serious) to accept western medicine."
I won't argue your central point, that people from under-developed nations often don't trust western medicine. You have to remember, though, that this judgement is largely based on experience. Hospitals in many parts of the world are where you go to die.
Health care is so thin on the ground in most nations that hospitals simply cannot afford provide the kind of care that North Americans take for granted. Staff are under-trained and over-worked, materials are antiquated or absent, and as a result, treatment is often poor.
This is of personal interest to me, as I'm currently working in a developing nation. I've seen the son of a close friend crippled because of a little scratch that got infected; I've seen the child of a friend of mine die because a boil in his nose went septic. I've been to the hospital myself, and I can testify that it this was my only experience with western medicine, I wouldn't have any faith in it either.
A vaccine that can be easily administered in the field would have a huge effect in mitigating the damage being done by HIV/AIDS. It is not, however, a solution. Public education and lifestyle changes are also essential. Long-term, they're more important because prevention doesn't cost nearly as much as treatment. The nations most afflicted by HIV/AIDS are those who can least afford to fight it.
"Funny historic fact, Kazaa (the software) "fled the country" to avoid these lawsuits."
They were set up from the beginning as a shell. Sharman Networks is incorporated in Vanuatu, a tax-haven island nation in the South Pacific where I'm currently living. They're actually quite prominent here, supporting a number of cultural and sporting events including a golf tournament. One can see their truck driving around the capital all the time.
I find it amusing that, in a country whose main claim to fame is as a jumping-off point for cruise ship tourists who wander the streets of the capital buying up Chinese knock-off clothes and CDs, Kazaa is one of the few companies who actually invest in Vanuatu culture and sports.
"It's this willingness to say "Localised error. That's all. Nothing to see here" that gives IT it's bad reputation."
Hear hear. Any software solution that makes it possible to affect 60,000 machines in one go is simply, frighteningly wrong. It's a bit like mistakenly scheduling 100% of police staff to attend the same two days of training, then being suprised when the crime rate skyrockets. That's not an oopsie - that's felony stupid
"It IS harder to do nasty things to linux and macs -- but not impossible. No OS is hackproof unless you simply pull the plug."
I keep seeing this line of reasoning getting trotted out here at slashdot as a means of 'keeping things in perspective'. It's a great example of mis-reason.
I'm not saying the statement isn't objectively true - it is, and has value in technology discussions. Unfortunately it's almost never presented in the proper context to provide it with any value.
The problem with the statement is that it uses 'hackproof' in a binary context, in order to state that no computer is 100% hackproof. But that's a facile analysis. No effort is made to express the relative levels of hackability of the different OSes. Unless that quantification is provided, it's a pointless rhetorical device.
Of course no computer is hackproof. But Microsoft OSes have historically demonstrated very high hackability, and Linux-based OSes the opposite. IE has demonstrated absurdly high hackability; whereas Firefox has demonstrated that it's more secure by design.
Please let's stop using facile metrics when we're talking about online security. It's not useful. Let's focus on quantifiable, useful data. Don't let's ask 'is Firefox hackable?' Of course it is. Let's ask instead, 'Firefox is hackable how? How are we going to address the specific problems we've found?'
The FOSS community has demonstrated its ability to respond to online security issues quickly and effectively, because it phrases its challenges usefully. I only wish that Microsoft would graduate from the blame game and take the same approach.
I normally don't feed trolls, but I'm going to leave this reply hanging around just in case anyone actually bothers to slog through the karmic sludge to read your silly slur. For the record, I worked for seven and a half years designing and administering Windows-based data management systems. I *really* tried to like MS. Truth be told, NT 3.51 didn't suck. For the time and the purpose, it was okay. Since then, however, they have never delivered decent, stable, secure software. Never.
That's my experience. When I realised things weren't going to change, I decided to stop building or supporting Microsoft systems. And except for legacy systems, I still don't.
And I am emphatically *not* stuck in a 'sad little IT job'. But if you had half a brain, you'd know that already. 8^)
Slashdot Mirror
"Since when did you have the rights and freedoms to take something you did not pay for? If nobody pays for music and movies, there won't be many movies and music works worth taking. Want proof? Just look at any third world economy where IP laws are lax. Very little talent comes out of those sort of countries."
Do you know why 'very little talent comes out of those ... countries'? Because Big Fucking Who's-Your-Daddy-Now Media doesn't like them.
Original, independant music is more alive in the developing world than the average North American could ever imagine. It's just that they don't play by mass-market rules.
I've visited a number of places wa-ay off the beaten track, and what I inevitably find is that music is far more important to the people I meet. The difference is, they don't just plug the songs they like into an iPod and listen to them once a month or so when the playlist repeats.
They love their songs. Do you have any idea how it feels to be have a bus full of people spontaneously start to sing along when a local hit comes on the radio? And no, it's not the cacophonous school trip crap you might be imagining. I'm talking spontaneous 3 part harmonies, sung simply but in perfect pitch. It was one of the most joyful things I'd ever experienced.
So what happens when big-media protectionism arrives in these locales? Here are a couple of examples:
A musician from a developing nation visited a friend of mine before Christmas. He asked him to make a copy of his band's new CD for a girl he knew. One of the songs he'd written on it was about a girl he knew and he wanted her to have a copy. He wanted to make a copy of it because he couldn't afford the price of his own CD. Imagine how my friend felt when he had to explain to the musician that he couldn't do it because the CD was copy-protected!
I mentioned to another musician friend of mine that I would like to make an MP3 of one of his songs so I could let my friends back in North America here it. He was absolutely thrilled at the idea, and immediately realised that free distribution is free promotion in a market that he himself could never afford.
"In the charter if the BBC wants to provide services outside the UK they must be self-funding."
That's very interesting. Is that self-funding requirement limited in any way? I ask because the BBC World Service, a spectacularly good news radio service, heard in parts of the world many people have never heard of, actually pays local carriers to provide their service.
I know this because a tiny little (i.e. 5W briefcase transmitter) community FM station on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu plans to use the money the BBC gives them to buy a stronger transmitter.
The BBC has been at the forefront of information technology since before the term 'IT' existed. It comes as no surprise to me that they are the most effective and successful content carrier on the Web.
"The Observer is what one might call 'The Guardian on Sunday' ".
Man, you scared me there, I thought you were going to say it was like The Guardian on Acid.
My brane almos' 'sploded. 8^)
You misunderstand me. I was saying that Perl is good, but is often found buried deep in, uh, gunk.
I wrote perl for a living for years. It's still my favourite language. You say above that it can practically be English. That's true, but the thing I like best about it is that it can practically be poetry, too. 8^)
"So, I would like to remind Linus that I will be very useful in rounding up workers to toil in the underground Perl mines."
Actually, they're perl divers.
And before you say, 'Oh, that okay then,' I'd recommend you consider what they're swimming in. 8^)
Does nobody know who Seymour Hersch is any more?
The reason that many in the US Armed Forces don't like Seymour Hersch, besides the facts that he has some of the best sources in the business, is that he was almost single-handedly responsible for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, where US soldiers murdered hundreds of innocent men, women and children.
That story marked a seminal moment in US journalism, demonstrating the power of the media by uncovering the truth and the lies of the Viet Nam conflict. It was Hersch's work that more or less guaranteed the end of US involvement in Viet Nam due to the huge outcry when the details came out.
Given that you don't appear to know that tiny bit of your own history, it might also surprise you to learn that a young officer named Colin Powell was assigned to investigate the massacre. He claimed to find no credible evidence that the massacre ever occurred. Hersch made a fool of Powell and many others in the military when he convinced one of the soldiers present during the mass murder to go public with his story.
Now tell me that Tommy Franks and others don't have an axe to grind.
Hersch is known to everyone who works in the business as one of the best informed correspondents in the US media. His research is impeccable. Read his columns in the New Yorker if you don't believe me. His writing is clear, and extremely well documented.
My biggest regret these days is that there's no new generation of independant reporters with the skills and determination that Hersch is still showing. I'm glad that someone broke the Abu Ghraib story; I'm only sorry that Hersch is still the one doing the ground work.
Now, to bring this post back on topic *grin*: It's precisely because of threads like this that I like Wikipedia and Wikinews. Someone makes wild-assed claims, backs it with weak evidence from a tainted source, and call it fact. On Fox and CNN, this goes unchallenged. In a wiki environment, it can be corrected and refined quickly and efficiently, and the public get the truth, rather than some shill's doublethink. Hopefully Wikinews will provide the training ground for a few more Seymour Hersches. We need them now more than ever.
"Tim Hortons is still a part of Canadian culture, and relatively unknown in the US...."
Yep, in fact, when Mike Myers (a Torontonian) made his leap from SNL to screen with Wayne's World, he had to change the name to American hockey legend Stan Mikita, and put a HUGE hockey stick outside.
We Canadians, needless to say, actually found it funny, because we possess the bittersweet knowledge that the highlight of suburban youth can be the hours spent at Tim Horton's.
Now take another look at the scene where Dana Carvey meets the 'Wild Thing' babe, and realise the soul-destroying despair that leads him to this flight of self-deception. Mike Myers is truly one of the prophets of our time. 8^)
"... I don't think any future big wars will last six years. Heck, maybe not even 2 weeks."
I agree that on the face of it, six years looks like a long time. I guess the best response I can offer would be to suggest that you look closely at how the Iraq conflict plays out. I suspect that in 4 more years or so, you'll see a strongly established and effective military opposition the to US or whatever proxies remain.
Conflicts typically do last years, whether the Pentagon planners want them to or not. Ignoring the bellico-theatrical invasions of Panama and Grenada, I'd challenge you to point out a major conflict that has not lasted 6 years or more. You will find some, but I suspect you'll discover that they are the extreme minority.
"Clearly the U.S. was being belligerant and arrogant when Russia put its nukes on Cuba."
I'm no historian, but yeah, the Cuban Missile Crisis is widely perceived to have resulted from escalating threats/counter-threats, set off by US tactical nuclear build-up. Wikipedia thinks so, too.
But don't trust just me and a bunch of amateur editors, go read the history yourself, and supplement the flag-waving pap that schools dish out these days, when they do at all.
"The main problem with that idea is that it takes many years to build (outfit, train, etc) a military."
That may be true in cases where the state has no resources of its own. In the years between 1939 and 1945, Canada went from having 3 ships in its navy to possessing the 3rd largest navy in the world. In the first world war, it had over 1,000,000 men and women in uniform - that's 10% of the total population at the time. Every time it's felt the need, Canada has managed to go to a war footing in a remarkably short period of time.
... And that's why I'm skeptical when Americans proclaim that they're protecting us. In major conflicts[*], we've always done a fine job of protecting ourselves, with a fair amount left over to help our neighbours.
[*] It's more than a little ironic that the only foreign invasions Canada has ever faced have come from its southern border. 8^)
"True. But telling this to somewone who already has AIDS doesn't help alot, either."
That's not the point at all. We're talking about the vector, not the victim. MS buying an anti-spyware company is a little bit like a mid-price prostitute saying, "Sure, I've got the clap, but the first 5 condoms are free!"
"The one thing I'd like to see is a spelchkr and grammer checkar build right into the browser."
Heh, yeah, that'd be cool, but what'd be really cool is if the spelling/grammar-checker had a flag that wouldn't let you post to anything but your own blog site until you learn to write without making stupid mistakes. Think of it as an Internet wading pool.
Love,
Spelling/Grammar Nazis for Slashdot Literacy
8^)
"To say Bill Gates did nothing or little for computing is a joke"
No, to say Bill Gates did little or nothing to computing is a joke. The first statement is axiomatic.
*grin*
"... especially compared to a non-human-readable one (MS)"
Don't you mean 'inhuman-readable'? We are talking about Microsoft, after all 8^)
It's worse than that, I spent the first hundred pages wondering 'what the heck is a patronymic?!?'
Let's just be glad the quote didn't mention Dostoyevski or Checkov. 8^)
Are you basing this assertion on experience? I've been living outside of North America for a while now, and don't know whether Lenovo sells PCs there. I know they didn't when I left.
My experience with their PCs was surprisingly good. I was asked to configure several PCs given as a gift by the Communist Party of China to some local dignitaries in the Pacific Islands nation where I live. When I saw that they were designed and manufactured in China, I was prepared to deal with anaemic, poorly configured machines of slipshod construction.
I was quite surprised to find out that the opposite was true. The machines were built with quality components, solid cases and performed better than many name-brand PCs I've used in the past *cough*Gateway*cough*.
I looked at two laptops and three PCs altogether, and didn't find much to complain about.
That said, I'll add two strong provisos:
1)If I'm asked for tough consumer PCs that are going to last, I typically recommend IBM. I don't think I would place the Lenovos I saw in that same category. Not until 4 years have passed anyway. 8^)
2) The PCs I looked at were 'special' presents for visiting dignitaries. It could well be that they were constructed according to a higher spec and standard than the off-the-shelf offering.
From TFA: "It's not like we're trying to hire Tolstoy."
It's a damn good thing, too. The last thing corporate America needs is a 2000 page corporate org chart in which Alexei Sergeyevich has dotted line responsibility for Sergey Alexeyevich, and both of them are in love with Anya Lamentova (who is referred to half the time as Anyushka, making it look like these two are chasing different women so what's the problem?), and by the time Napoleon finally retreats from Moscow and Sergey Alexeyevich has recovered from the duel with Alexei (Sasha) Sergeyevich we haven't even come close to our quarterly projections and don't give a shit about any of it any more and spend our entire day checking the want ads.
"Do they mean this fella?"
I think they do. I strongly suspect that either somebody's throwing out a red herring to discredit attempts to properly count the votes, or that this guy just likes the spotlight.
He made available what he claims was his demo program and the VB source for it, but when I downloaded the source to investigate, the form containing the actual program code was not there. Now why would a programmer trying to break such a huge story place a zip file online as evidence to support his whistle-blower stance... and leave out the actual code?
I've also downloaded the binary and plan to run it through a VB decompiler to see if I can find out what he's up to.
But the most important thing to remember here is that the even if his code works, all we've got is a guy making unsubstantiated claims. They bear penalty of perjury if they're wrong, but these claims have not been substantiated in any way yet.
Full disclosure: I do believe there were systematic abuses of the voting system. I just don't think this guy's 'evidence' is very strong.
Some explanation seems to be in order.
I deliberately chose two photos taken under less than perfect conditions, in order to compare the shortcomings. Each one is shot with the same telephoto lens at about the same distance, using ASA 100 film under poor lighting conditions. While neither one is optimal, there is a clear difference between the two. The colours in the first one look washed out, and as you astutely point out, the contrast is much poorer.
The second photo has much more saturated colour and contrast. While it's still grainy, it's much better than the first. Whatever fuzziness exists is because of optics and film.
For reference, here is a studio shot that shows what kind of quality you can get with the same film scanner. The actual print is 20" high by about 14" wide. At 300 dpi, it gives continuous tones that are almost indistinguishable from photographic prints.
"Using a flatbed scanner with Slide Adapter just doesnt produce great results."
Indeed. I've used both flatbed and slide scanners, and the differences are pretty clear. Here's a photo taken with a Nikon F80 using a 70-300 zoom lens that I scanned with a fairly expensive HP flatbed scanner and slide attachment.
And here's one that I took using the same camera and lens, but scanned using a CanoScan FS 2710, a slide scanner that I got on sale for less than USD 400.
Note also that the FS 2710 scans at very high optical resolution, meaning that I can print a 20" x 14" print at 300 dpi without enlarging the image. All these 150+ MB files do make storage an issue, but I'm happy to live with that in exchange for significantly better quality.
"The problem is getting the third world (where the epidemic is most serious) to accept western medicine."
I won't argue your central point, that people from under-developed nations often don't trust western medicine. You have to remember, though, that this judgement is largely based on experience. Hospitals in many parts of the world are where you go to die.
Health care is so thin on the ground in most nations that hospitals simply cannot afford provide the kind of care that North Americans take for granted. Staff are under-trained and over-worked, materials are antiquated or absent, and as a result, treatment is often poor.
This is of personal interest to me, as I'm currently working in a developing nation. I've seen the son of a close friend crippled because of a little scratch that got infected; I've seen the child of a friend of mine die because a boil in his nose went septic. I've been to the hospital myself, and I can testify that it this was my only experience with western medicine, I wouldn't have any faith in it either.
A vaccine that can be easily administered in the field would have a huge effect in mitigating the damage being done by HIV/AIDS. It is not, however, a solution. Public education and lifestyle changes are also essential. Long-term, they're more important because prevention doesn't cost nearly as much as treatment. The nations most afflicted by HIV/AIDS are those who can least afford to fight it.
"Funny historic fact, Kazaa (the software) "fled the country" to avoid these lawsuits."
They were set up from the beginning as a shell. Sharman Networks is incorporated in Vanuatu, a tax-haven island nation in the South Pacific where I'm currently living. They're actually quite prominent here, supporting a number of cultural and sporting events including a golf tournament. One can see their truck driving around the capital all the time.
I find it amusing that, in a country whose main claim to fame is as a jumping-off point for cruise ship tourists who wander the streets of the capital buying up Chinese knock-off clothes and CDs, Kazaa is one of the few companies who actually invest in Vanuatu culture and sports.
"It's this willingness to say "Localised error. That's all. Nothing to see here" that gives IT it's bad reputation."
Hear hear. Any software solution that makes it possible to affect 60,000 machines in one go is simply, frighteningly wrong. It's a bit like mistakenly scheduling 100% of police staff to attend the same two days of training, then being suprised when the crime rate skyrockets. That's not an oopsie - that's felony stupid
"It IS harder to do nasty things to linux and macs -- but not impossible. No OS is hackproof unless you simply pull the plug."
I keep seeing this line of reasoning getting trotted out here at slashdot as a means of 'keeping things in perspective'. It's a great example of mis-reason.
I'm not saying the statement isn't objectively true - it is, and has value in technology discussions. Unfortunately it's almost never presented in the proper context to provide it with any value.
The problem with the statement is that it uses 'hackproof' in a binary context, in order to state that no computer is 100% hackproof. But that's a facile analysis. No effort is made to express the relative levels of hackability of the different OSes. Unless that quantification is provided, it's a pointless rhetorical device.
Of course no computer is hackproof. But Microsoft OSes have historically demonstrated very high hackability, and Linux-based OSes the opposite. IE has demonstrated absurdly high hackability; whereas Firefox has demonstrated that it's more secure by design.
Please let's stop using facile metrics when we're talking about online security. It's not useful. Let's focus on quantifiable, useful data. Don't let's ask 'is Firefox hackable?' Of course it is. Let's ask instead, 'Firefox is hackable how? How are we going to address the specific problems we've found?'
The FOSS community has demonstrated its ability to respond to online security issues quickly and effectively, because it phrases its challenges usefully. I only wish that Microsoft would graduate from the blame game and take the same approach.
I normally don't feed trolls, but I'm going to leave this reply hanging around just in case anyone actually bothers to slog through the karmic sludge to read your silly slur. For the record, I worked for seven and a half years designing and administering Windows-based data management systems. I *really* tried to like MS. Truth be told, NT 3.51 didn't suck. For the time and the purpose, it was okay. Since then, however, they have never delivered decent, stable, secure software. Never.
That's my experience. When I realised things weren't going to change, I decided to stop building or supporting Microsoft systems. And except for legacy systems, I still don't.
And I am emphatically *not* stuck in a 'sad little IT job'. But if you had half a brain, you'd know that already. 8^)