I wholeheartedly agree that the US isn't ready for on-line voting.
But, what I *do* wonder is why the rest of the US doesn't follow Oregon's lead. Why don't we start to move toward a vote-by-mail system? Sure, it makes it difficult for those without an address or those who are moving all the time, but the current system isn't very nice to those people either. The benefits of vote-by-mail are numerous:
Higher voter turnout
No long lines at the polls
No time pressure to complete voting form quickly
No need to round up tons of volunteers on election day
It wouldn't be a perfect system, but I think it would introduce fewer bugs than it fixes. The fact that Oregon actually uses such a system means that it works to some degree. Also, mail is the primary method of data collection for the US Census. I'm sure there is some amount of fraud that goes on there, but it's no where near enough to cause major problems.
> I asume most people in tech industries are
> democratic, so this is Bills last attempt to
> keep them voting on a democrat?????
Actually, I believe that large numbers of techies are Republicans, especially if you include those who cashed in on the recent, money-making startup craze. When you have a few million in the bank, you stop worrying so much about how to save the world and start worrying about how to keep Uncle Sam's dirty hands off your piles of cash.
Note that Bush pulled down a pretty sizable chunk of the Slashdot poll...
I've never seen a bigger hoax in my life! They haven't even produced anything yet and they're already talking about $$$ & marketing potential.
Anyway, no driver in their right mind would get on the track with a "robotic driver" because the robot is not going to be programmed well enough to perform well *and* also avoid crashes. I wouldn't be surprised if they can get a "robot" to drive around a track (why you would need a human-like robot to do that I don't know... just put cameras on the roof and rewire the steering & acceleration), but there is no way that they're going to be able to get it to drive reasonably (i.e. avoid other cars)
Mozilla is a vision. It's a great vision that is coming oh so close to becoming reality, but it's still just a vision.
I downloaded M18, installed it, ran it, tried a few different web sites, played around with the preferences and then found M18 impossible to control in a normal fashion. The "home" button wouldn't work; the "OK" button in the preferences window wouldn't work; not even the "Back" button would work.
The improvements that I see in terms of efficiency and design are tremendous and very impressive. I have visions of a great and wonderful web browser being released from Mozilla some time in the near future. However, for the time being, this great and illustrious web browser is a vision and nothing more.
This story brings out the #1 reason that companies hoard patents. Not so that they can sue other companies. Rather, to protect themselves when other companies get greedy.
For ideas not necessarily worthy of the (semi-)costly patent process, IBM "publishes" (sends copies to a number of major libraries) thousands of articles a year so that if someone else tries to patent an idea and then tries to sue IBM, IBM can go back to an old article and show prior art.
You don't seriously think M$ has put millions into research just so that they could add mr. paper clip to MS Word, did you? Or, to promote general computer science research? Nope. If companies come after them on patent violations, they want some extra oomph (as though they need any) for killing lawsuits before they even get started.
It's all a big game, but not one that is going to be fixed easily (as though it's even possible to fix the patent industry...)
Anyone know what version of XFree86 RH 7.0 has? I have a card that isn't supported by 3.x.x but is supported by 4.0.1. 3.x.x works, but the mouse cursor doesn't come up right (50x50 solid square rather than an arrow head).
Obviously, the journalist for the SF Chronicle just doesn't get it. Google isn't the one that needs to grow up. Google is one of the few mature web sites on the internet. Google has learned that spamming your users with millions of advertisements reduces your user base more quickly than it adds to your profitability. By keeping their site clean and fast, Google saves money and wins over users who are fed up with sites that take tens to hundreds of seconds to load. Being rated #1 by users makes it much easier to win where it counts, in selling their search engine service to portals and other companies.
Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/) coupled with any e-mail client that stores messages in a simple manner on the local file system (e.g. one message per file) works well; EXMH works well. My main store of e-mail (and the location where I get new e-mail) is the MIT AI Lab. I use Unison to synch that repository with local copies at home and at the place where I am working during the summer. Not even an IMAP version of EXMH would convince me to change from my current set up...
I'd hardly consider this news unless you discount all of the other markets out there where consumer products are reviewed. In fact, I would be very willing to bet that the current biases in place concerning Linux are pretty mild. Think about movies! When was the last time you saw a review "This movie sucks" attached to a VHS/DVD box. Reviewers get publicity and are better known and trusted if their names end up on movie boxes. Of course, they can't go too far, or things backfire, but movie reviewers definitely work hard to come up with unique reviews that companies will want to put on marketing material.
Seems like a reasonable way to force Napster and other similar groups to be a little more legitimate in the way that they distribute things. Sure, this means that we can't get free music so easily, but we put in $15+ for each CD that we buy. This thorn will hopefully push digital music to become a more legitimate business rather than the latest "cool" stunt to show up any form of authority.
helarno said: In a sense they are. Pedophiles are so hated and hunted that just logging the IPs should be enough to scare the vast majority of them off the main net. Of course someone will try to use those IP nums to hunt these people down (ye old FBI) and chances are, they will actually find these people. I happen to like the benefits of this approach.
The claims they are making sound a lot like the claims that can be made about the Web. It would take me all of 10 minutes to throw together a web page advertising child porn pictures and to submit it to most of the major search engines. I could then easily track accesses and file downloads and post the IP addresses of those who feel for the kiddie porn links.
What's so new here?
Also, if GNUTella ain't specific to music, why is it so special? Web servers/search engines seem to provide the same functionality. At least with Napster, you don't have to filter through the porn to get to the MP3s that you want...
This is great! I'm quite impressed. Even if mozilla does crash every so often, the feel of the mozilla client is 10x better than Netscape navigator. It also seems to work well enough to be usable. Previous releases of mozilla and the technology previews of Opera were downright sad. I could barely get them started before they would crash. Even if they did hang on for a while, the rendering engine couldn't deal with half of the web pages I went to. Mozilla M14 may be the release that takes mozilla over the top!:-) Jason
I think it is great to see this kind of restriction being put on copying. Emachines blatantly copied the iMac look after seeing that it was a hit with consumers. Macintosh put forth the iMac as a risk and they should be able to reap the benefit of their consumer-friendly design.
It's always nice to see lower priced alternatives, which often makes the consumer's life easier, but there is a fine line which was torn to pieces by Emachines. They didn't even make a minor attempt to produce their own look and feel! I think it's pretty sad that they couldn't even do a bit of their own designing!
The thing about Wal*Mart and other such stores is that they may sell copies, but they aren't selling to the same class of people. The copies are also usually different in some way: cheaper material, different brand name, minor style variations. As a result, I think the big-name designers don't have too much to worry about. Even so, "look and feel" is an important company value these days. If we didn't have any copyright/trademark laws, I think we would be a lot worse off.
I couldn't agree more... About the hardware, that is. I was amazed when I first started using the MS natural keyboard. It's very comfortable, isn't likely to give you carpal tunnel, and the keys (although they don't click) are solid and don't wobble or get stuck at all. Oh, and the space bar is nice and big:)
I also have to give MS brownie points for their intellimouse. You've got to love the added control the wheel mouse adds (to unix/linux). The curved shape is also a comfortable design.
Assuming that 1 AD/CE was the first year of the common era, Jan 1, 2001 is the first day of the new millenium. Of course, that decision is almost entirely artificial and was not decided upon until much later. I think we should simply artificially insert a year 0 AD/CE (even though the people who lived around 1 AD/CE didn't necessarily understand the mathematical concept of zero:-). I don't see what is the point of arguing about such an artificially generated system, anyway...
Btw, shouldn't we be happy to bring in 2000 as the first year of the 3rd millenium? This gives evidence of the most intuitive counting system begining with 0, not 1:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I wholeheartedly agree that the US isn't ready for on-line voting.
But, what I *do* wonder is why the rest of the US doesn't follow Oregon's lead. Why don't we start to move toward a vote-by-mail system? Sure, it makes it difficult for those without an address or those who are moving all the time, but the current system isn't very nice to those people either. The benefits of vote-by-mail are numerous:
- Higher voter turnout
- No long lines at the polls
- No time pressure to complete voting form quickly
- No need to round up tons of volunteers on election day
It wouldn't be a perfect system, but I think it would introduce fewer bugs than it fixes. The fact that Oregon actually uses such a system means that it works to some degree. Also, mail is the primary method of data collection for the US Census. I'm sure there is some amount of fraud that goes on there, but it's no where near enough to cause major problems.> I asume most people in tech industries are
> democratic, so this is Bills last attempt to
> keep them voting on a democrat?????
Actually, I believe that large numbers of techies are Republicans, especially if you include those who cashed in on the recent, money-making startup craze. When you have a few million in the bank, you stop worrying so much about how to save the world and start worrying about how to keep Uncle Sam's dirty hands off your piles of cash.
Note that Bush pulled down a pretty sizable chunk of the Slashdot poll...
Jason
I've never seen a bigger hoax in my life! They haven't even produced anything yet and they're already talking about $$$ & marketing potential.
Anyway, no driver in their right mind would get on the track with a "robotic driver" because the robot is not going to be programmed well enough to perform well *and* also avoid crashes. I wouldn't be surprised if they can get a "robot" to drive around a track (why you would need a human-like robot to do that I don't know... just put cameras on the roof and rewire the steering & acceleration), but there is no way that they're going to be able to get it to drive reasonably (i.e. avoid other cars)
Mozilla is a vision. It's a great vision that is coming oh so close to becoming reality, but it's still just a vision.
I downloaded M18, installed it, ran it, tried a few different web sites, played around with the preferences and then found M18 impossible to control in a normal fashion. The "home" button wouldn't work; the "OK" button in the preferences window wouldn't work; not even the "Back" button would work.
The improvements that I see in terms of efficiency and design are tremendous and very impressive. I have visions of a great and wonderful web browser being released from Mozilla some time in the near future. However, for the time being, this great and illustrious web browser is a vision and nothing more.
Jason
This story brings out the #1 reason that companies hoard patents. Not so that they can sue other companies. Rather, to protect themselves when other companies get greedy.
For ideas not necessarily worthy of the (semi-)costly patent process, IBM "publishes" (sends copies to a number of major libraries) thousands of articles a year so that if someone else tries to patent an idea and then tries to sue IBM, IBM can go back to an old article and show prior art.
You don't seriously think M$ has put millions into research just so that they could add mr. paper clip to MS Word, did you? Or, to promote general computer science research? Nope. If companies come after them on patent violations, they want some extra oomph (as though they need any) for killing lawsuits before they even get started.
It's all a big game, but not one that is going to be fixed easily (as though it's even possible to fix the patent industry...)
Jason
Anyone know what version of XFree86 RH 7.0 has? I have a card that isn't supported by 3.x.x but is supported by 4.0.1. 3.x.x works, but the mouse cursor doesn't come up right (50x50 solid square rather than an arrow head).
Jason
Obviously, the journalist for the SF Chronicle just doesn't get it. Google isn't the one that needs to grow up. Google is one of the few mature web sites on the internet. Google has learned that spamming your users with millions of advertisements reduces your user base more quickly than it adds to your profitability. By keeping their site clean and fast, Google saves money and wins over users who are fed up with sites that take tens to hundreds of seconds to load. Being rated #1 by users makes it much easier to win where it counts, in selling their search engine service to portals and other companies.
Jason
There are people that still find telnet to be a semi-useful service?
Jason
Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/) coupled with any e-mail client that stores messages in a simple manner on the local file system (e.g. one message per file) works well; EXMH works well. My main store of e-mail (and the location where I get new e-mail) is the MIT AI Lab. I use Unison to synch that repository with local copies at home and at the place where I am working during the summer. Not even an IMAP version of EXMH would convince me to change from my current set up...
Jason
I'd hardly consider this news unless you discount all of the other markets out there where consumer products are reviewed. In fact, I would be very willing to bet that the current biases in place concerning Linux are pretty mild. Think about movies! When was the last time you saw a review "This movie sucks" attached to a VHS/DVD box. Reviewers get publicity and are better known and trusted if their names end up on movie boxes. Of course, they can't go too far, or things backfire, but movie reviewers definitely work hard to come up with unique reviews that companies will want to put on marketing material.
Jason
Seems like a reasonable way to force Napster and other similar groups to be a little more legitimate in the way that they distribute things. Sure, this means that we can't get free music so easily, but we put in $15+ for each CD that we buy. This thorn will hopefully push digital music to become a more legitimate business rather than the latest "cool" stunt to show up any form of authority.
Jason
In a sense they are. Pedophiles are so hated and hunted that just logging the IPs should be enough to scare the vast majority of them off the main net. Of course someone will try to use those IP nums to hunt these people down (ye old FBI) and chances are, they will actually find these people. I happen to like the benefits of this approach.
The claims they are making sound a lot like the claims that can be made about the Web. It would take me all of 10 minutes to throw together a web page advertising child porn pictures and to submit it to most of the major search engines. I could then easily track accesses and file downloads and post the IP addresses of those who feel for the kiddie porn links.
What's so new here?
Also, if GNUTella ain't specific to music, why is it so special? Web servers/search engines seem to provide the same functionality. At least with Napster, you don't have to filter through the porn to get to the MP3s that you want...
Jason
This is great! I'm quite impressed. Even if mozilla does crash every so often, the feel of the mozilla client is 10x better than Netscape navigator. It also seems to work well enough to be usable. Previous releases of mozilla and the technology previews of Opera were downright sad. I could barely get them started before they would crash. Even if they did hang on for a while, the rendering engine couldn't deal with half of the web pages I went to. Mozilla M14 may be the release that takes mozilla over the top! :-) Jason
I think it is great to see this kind of restriction being put on copying. Emachines blatantly copied the iMac look after seeing that it was a hit with consumers. Macintosh put forth the iMac as a risk and they should be able to reap the benefit of their consumer-friendly design.
It's always nice to see lower priced alternatives, which often makes the consumer's life easier, but there is a fine line which was torn to pieces by Emachines. They didn't even make a minor attempt to produce their own look and feel! I think it's pretty sad that they couldn't even do a bit of their own designing!
The thing about Wal*Mart and other such stores is that they may sell copies, but they aren't selling to the same class of people. The copies are also usually different in some way: cheaper material, different brand name, minor style variations. As a result, I think the big-name designers don't have too much to worry about. Even so, "look and feel" is an important company value these days. If we didn't have any copyright/trademark laws, I think we would be a lot worse off.
Jason
I couldn't agree more... About the hardware, that is. I was amazed when I first started using the MS natural keyboard. It's very comfortable, isn't likely to give you carpal tunnel, and the keys (although they don't click) are solid and don't wobble or get stuck at all. Oh, and the space bar is nice and big :)
I also have to give MS brownie points for their intellimouse. You've got to love the added control the wheel mouse adds (to unix/linux). The curved shape is also a comfortable design.
Jason
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~jrennie
Assuming that 1 AD/CE was the first year of the common era, Jan 1, 2001 is the first day of the new millenium. Of course, that decision is almost entirely artificial and was not decided upon until much later. I think we should simply artificially insert a year 0 AD/CE (even though the people who lived around 1 AD/CE didn't necessarily understand the mathematical concept of zero :-). I don't see what is the point of arguing about such an artificially generated system, anyway...
:-)
Btw, shouldn't we be happy to bring in 2000 as the first year of the 3rd millenium? This gives evidence of the most intuitive counting system begining with 0, not 1