Recently my PIII cpu went flakey on me due to an accumulation of dust on the heatsink/fan... I can attest to the fact that GNU/Linux *will* reboot when it is run on flakey hardware!
That's not a hardware issue, but a maintenance one. There is nothing physically wrong with either the CPU or the heatsink/fan, and there is no problem with Linux controlling these things.
In fact I've had the exact same problem in the past. The difference was that Windows would decide it had overheated and would reboot without any warning whatsoever. In Linux (FC3), I would get a whole bunch of kernel errors telling me the CPU was overheated and the system was responding by underclocking. Eventually it would restart itself but only if I completely ignored all the warnings and kept trying to drive the CPU.
In other words, Windows would fail without warning or explanation while Linux would fail only after reporting the problem, reporting what it was doing to try to solve the problem, and giving a very good indication of how to fix things.
There is no flakey hardware here, and the comparison you draw is much like saying that a BMW is no better than a Yugo since both cars fail to start when submerged in water.
Ahhh. But only the player key can be revoked, not the title key for discs already in the wild. They could use different keys on all subsequently pressed discs of the same title, but that doesn't affect the titles already cracked. And they can't expect to do a recall of cracked titles.
Or they could revoke the device key for the software player, which would mean the software player gets upgraded with a new key, and newer discs can be cracked using the exact same technique. Otherwise anyone selling software players would be faced with the massive liability of having sold something that doesn't work as advertised.
Since this technique relies on using the title and/or volume key and not the player key, it will not be so easy to fix through the device key revokation system that's a part of AACS.
Round one definitely goes to the good guys. And I don't see how it's anything but a matter of time before AACS is as completely broken as CSS is. Even with device key revokation, it's just a cat and mouse game with newer titles and newer devices. And how will the MPAA and the device manufacturers react when people who pay out the nose for players and films are no longer able to use them?
'Cannot' is a word. It is contracted to 'can't'. This is perfectly acceptable grammar. 'Ain't' is an accepted grammatical form, although the word itself in nonstandard and should not be used formally.
Punctuation goes inside of quotation marks when the punctuation is part of the passage being quoted, and outside the marks if not -- e.g. Malolm X asked, "What did we do, who preceded you?"; Did Churchill really say, "In the morning I'll be sober, but you'll still be ugly"?
You're also using quotation marks incorrectly. To set off a key concept you should use 'single quotation marks' or italics. You never use double quotation marks for "emphasis".
Famicom is not a contraction. It was a brand name for the NES in Japan. It is a trande name and a proper noun; that's why it's capitalized.
Bad grammar usage makes the writer look ignorant. Arguing in defense of bad grammer usage makes the arguer look ignorant and obtuse. If something is worth saying, it is worth saying correctly.
but then you prolly dont cair about you're grammer cuz their always corecting them and besides who rilly needs all theese rediculous rules any way ha ha ha LMAO
the USA needs Russia more than Russia needs the USA...
Why do you say that? Russia might be good at cheap space launches but their economy is appalling.
Ahhh yes. But Russia is still willing to buy US products and finance US debt. That makes them very, very impotant to the US economy. For Russia, the US is just another market, and one that is becoming more difficult and more problematic day by day. They have a larger and wealthier trading partner next door in the EU, and another market with vastly superior growth opportunities on the other side in China.
You may not realize it yet, but the US does indeed need Russia far more than Russia needs the US.
Anyone from the outside investing in Russia should know full well that it is a high-stakes gamble.
Not just people from outside Russia. Anyone who's born and raised in Russia needs to know that great success is a high-stakes gamble. Remeber Boris Berezovsky or Mikhail Khodorkovsky?
The 'new' Russia is very much like the 'old' Russia in that if you piss off the people at the head of the table, you'd better run or you'll wake up in prison or dead.
The logic and accuracy testing is a joke. It does not do any testing at all to see if the system is secure or easily manipulated. They simply use it, enter a known set of votes and check that the reported totals are correct.
Logic and Accuracy testing is just that -- logic and accuracy. They check that the machine's logic gates work as intended and that the machine accurately completes operations. That's it. They don't look at security, as that's not part of the test. Neither do they look at the code's elegance, effieciency, or skill at singing, dancing, playing the piano, or wearing a swimsuit. They test for logic and accuracy.
Which has little to do with the original point that the code, while it may be closed-source and regarded by the copyright holder as a trade secret, is already known and has already been examined by a licensed, independent third party. A judge can deny a petitioner the request to see source code for a voting machine, but can just as easily allow it without having to consult or compensate the company that owns it.
This is commercial code which the vendor hopes to sell in other locations. Which leads me to a separate question for all of those advocating open source code: What should be the compensation model for using the code?
The question is irrelevant. Voting machine vendors already have to submit machines and source to certification agencies for Logic and Acciracy testing and certification. For any machine in use on election day, the source code (and/or mechanical parts) have already been disected, examined, and certified.
The state already has the right to examine source code, and has already done so. What the judge decided (wrongly, IMHO) is that this right does not extend to parties involved in a disputed election where the primary claim hinges on whether or not the machines and code functioned as they were supposed to.
NIST has recently recommended requiring the effective open-sourcing of voting machine code, but these recommendations (Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines) won't go into effect until 2009. Previously, and in the current VVSG, NIST recommends keeping certified source code in escrow so it is available for examination in case of dispute.
Everybody gets the shits. And everybody's mama too.
But I guess you didn't get your PS3.
Or did talk of the PS3 remind you of a shit story?
Speaking of shit stories, this one time when I was hitch-hiking . . .
Or maybe you just didn't get that Wii you wanted. Which is why you're writing pointless shit stories on Slashdot instead of fiddling with your Wii.
I didn't get a Wii either.
Happy Christmas.
"Click to call" is no innovation -- all it does is move the call from a telephone to a PC, which is not much of a step forward as far as most people are concerned. It will still mean dealing with telephone menus and sitting around on hold until someone gets around to picking up on the other end.
What I'd rather see is something like "Click to get a call back" after putting all the appropriate data into a web form (i.e. English language, existing customer, reason for call e.g. service change etc). Basically input all the information you would normally put into a telephone menu before getting stuck on hold. Instead of having to wait for them, they call you when they're ready.
As far as Skype charging for what they had been doing for free, well it's not like they said it would be free forever. I've used Skype for calling US phones quite a bit since it's free and easy. I could just as easily use my cell since I never come close to my minute allowance (which doesn't apply outside business hours anyway).
But still, I won't be signing up for $30, or even $15 per year, though I will still use Skype extensively for international calls.
I'm not very optimistic about the switch either, from Skype's POV. The 'give it away until they think they need it' strategy is a double-edged sword. You may get some people who think it's a good service at the right price and will happily pay. But I suspect that even more people will question the value of it -- why pay for something that was free, that likely will be free from another provider(s) in the near future, and that I'm already paying for anyway.
I thought then, and I still think that ebay paid a ridiculous sum for Skype, but maybe they will be able to monetize it eventually. But I think it's much more likely that Google, MS, or someone we haven't heard of will put out something soon that matches or exceeds Skype's famous frugality with bandwidth, and does it for free (at least until next year when we'll have this conversation all over again).
Were they "hard questions" or were they loaded questions, two very, very different things, and it seems pretty obvious he wasn't all that interested in a real dialog with answers but more interested in doing the "neener neener, I got ya" child thing.
Well, why don't we look at the actual questions?
Why [should] I trust a company whose CEO consistently threatens to sue me and other Linux users over unspecified patent violations.... "I was referring to some comments Steve Ballmer made just a week or two ago," I said.
Fair question. Microsoft officials have stated over and over again that they regard Linux and its users as 'cancer' and 'communists'. As recently as a few weeks ago Ballmer declared that Linux was chock full of Microsoft IP, and the Novell deal gave them a way to monetize that "stolen" IP.
Not only is this a good question, but one that demands an answer.
I asked whether Vista's hardware hunger, combined with the hardware hunger of the video editing software I use (my only personal use of Windows is video editing) might not force me to make a major investment in new hardware to run Vista. In fact, I wondered aloud, might not the extra hardware investment I'd need to run Sony Vegas or other pro-level video editing software on Windows suddenly make Apple hardware cheaper than hardware that could run Vista for video editing?
Fair question. He identifies a specific use for the hardware and sofware, and asks if the elevated hardware requirements and associated costs make Vista less price competitive compared to Apple hardware and software. I don't see how you can find anything loaded in this -- it's either an Apple-based video editing system is cheaper or a comparable Vista-based system is.
I asked about charges leveled recently on Slashdot about how Microsoft Research's primary purpose often seemed to be producing patents the company could use as weapons against competitors. Chitsaz's answer was, "The lawyers make all the patent decisions."... I asked whether software patents in general were a good idea.
Again, a fair question especially in light of Ballmer's recent comments on Linux and alleged infringements of Microsoft's alleged IP. It may not be a question that a marketing manager can answer, but it's certainly one he should be prepared for, especially when speaking to a group of Linux users and supporters. The one about software patents is particularly apt given that Microsoft has as much to lose as anyone from loose application of patents.
He first spoke up when I asked why Microsoft's Virtual Earth had been made totally dependent on DirectX instead of using OpenGL or another cross-platform alternative, and was therefore useless to anyone not running Windows (and, as it turned out, Explorer as well).
A fair question. Microsoft has made a pretty nifty little app but designed it deliberately to run only on their operating system and browser. Why lock users of other OSs and browsers out when there's no real technical reason for doing so (not to mention when the product being copied works just as well on Mac and Linux as it does on Windows)?
None of the Microsoft people I met had anything to say about their deal with Novell, working with the Open Document Format (ODF), acceptance of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as a legitimate software license, how DRM built into Vista may anger users, or other topics I thought might interest you.
All fair questions, and all questions that should be answered. They are certainly questions I want answered before I consider purchasing Vista or advising anyone else to.
"Tell me when insurgents have won a single battle in Iraq. In every case insurgents are overrun, overpowered and out-thought. No, I'm not saying they're stupid or that the fight has been easy, but they don't engage our forces head on anymore. They'd all die and they know it."
That's just the point, isn't it. The outcome of 'battles' is a metric for conventional war, and a bad measuring stick for uncoventional/asymetric war.
One side can claim all the battle victories they want, but if the other side is not fighting battles (nor has any interest in doing so) then the claim of victory is meaningless. How many conventional battles did Geronimo win? Is he revered as a tactical genius because fought on his enemy's terms or because he tied up massive numbers of troops while continuing to raid and elude capture for 30 years?
The greatest mistake the US makes about Iraq (other than being there in the first place) is thinking that it is about battles and direct confrontations, or imagining that once troops are in a town then that town is 'held'.
American troops can raise all the flags they want in all the provincial outposts they want but it will do very little good when the 'enemy' simply melts away, returning sporadically to disrupt supply lines and make actual administration impossible. Raising a flag only means something when the local population recognizes the flag as symbolic of control and submits accordingly. Geronimo did not, Ho Chi Minh did not, and the internecine groups in Iraq do not
As long as the US keeps thinking that this fight in Iraq is about territorial control (particularly when the US military cannot even control Bagdhad), they are destined for failure. The insurgents don't need to control cities. They don't need to win or even fight battles. As long as they disrupt the business of running a military occupation and survive, they achieve their goals. Strike and evade, strike and evade. There's no need to hold any particular ground since they have far more ground on which to hide than the occupier can possibly cover.
And the harder the US tries to hit them, the more collateral damage is done; the more collateral damage, the stronger the insurgent groups are supported. The more support they have, the more sophisticated their attacks become and the easier it becomes to melt away and evade the counterattack (which of course does more collateral damage and begins the cycle anew).
If insurgent groups in Iraq were dumb enough to stand together and fight the occupying US Army head on, of course they would be obliterated. But the situation is far more analogous (though by no means akin) to that of competing gangs -- their real beef is with each other. One or another side may try to use the police (the occupiers or their puppets) as intermediaries to get at their enemy but only as a means to an end, and without trust. The intermediaries are disposable, and subject to attack at any time.
Such is the nature of occupations, and why they rarely work out.
Note: My sympathies go out to all those in uniform in Iraq. I truly believe that the vast majority of you are good people (and those that aren't weren't before they were sent there). You have sacrificed far beyond what you were asked to, and have served well and admirably. I only wish that those who sent you were compelled to learn from your experience, and forced to undergo the same danger and hardships to at least understand and appreciate your stories.
Manual recount doesn't mean that you don't use machines. And ballot printers do print barcodes.
As far as the butterfly ballot issue goes -- this is a $0.10 problem with a $0.10 solution. Design ballots that aren't confusing. Go for optical scan machines rather than punch-card machines (which have been know to be problematic for decades). Substituting a DRE machine in this case is a $3,000 solution to a $0.10 problem.
Paper can be mangled out of sight of the voter. You may not buy it, but it's happened, most recently in Chicago which does treat the printout as the ballot of record. Fortunately there were no races close enough for this to be a factor.
Electronic voting done right works in many places, most notably Brazil. [...] Not to mention Brazil is HUGE country. Its almost 200 million. We're at 300 million and we dont even have compulsory voting.
Unfortunately, this is not an apt comparison. Electronic voting does indeed scale well. But as far as elections are concerned, the US is not a country of 300 million -- it is 50 different states each of which has its own laws and practices regarding the conduct of elections, and each of which is made up of dozens or hundreds of different jurisdictions, some of which have their own rules regarding elections.
There are no national elections in the US. Every election, even for Federal office, is held by the counties, cities, townships, etc, and ultimately certified by the state in which it is held.
A voting system (ie machines and processes) that is designed for Florida, for example, may work wonderfully there but may not meet the needs of North Dakota. A system designed for Wyoming may bog down under the massive ballots in places like Maricopa County, AZ or Los Angeles County, CA.
The main problem I see with DRE voting in the US is that the machines don't really add anything to the process, don't make voting easier or more convenient, don't make counting votes faster or more accurate, but they do make elections a whole lot more complicated and expensive.
There are a number of problems with paper trails besides their cost.
1) The paper record is a roll that records votes sequentially. This can potentially compromise the secrecy of the ballot.
2) The printer itself malfunctions -- the paper jams, ink runs out, paper runs out, paper is damaged or destroyed while advancing, etc. This would be especially problematic in jurisdictions where the paper trail is the ballot of record -- i.e. any disputes or recounts have to be based on the paper rather than the electronic results. If the paper was unreadable, a dispute would be impossible to resolve legally.
3) The paper record is read differently by a human and by a machine -- the human reads the alphanumeric printout while a machine reads a barcode. As long as humans can't read barcode, each ballot would have to be checked by both human and machine to make sure the two records are identical.
4) According to Federal law, all records and materials from an election have to be kept by the states for 22 months. But most paper-trail printers use thermal paper on which printing degrades after a few months even in normal conditions. If exposed to excessive heat or temperature swings, the paper can be rendered completely unreadable in a very short time.
The problem with electronic machines isn't that they have or don't have paper trails. The problem is the machines themselves. Paper trails are not a solution to the problem of badly designed, ridiculously expensive, and completely uneccessary electronic voting machines. Just as inherently flawed electronic machines are not a solution to the problem of poorly designed ballots, which is the problem of Florida 2000 that DREs were meant to solve in the first place.
I posted this elsewhere in this thread but I'll repeat it. NIST is onto something that no one else has seemed to pick up on yet. Federal law requires that states keep election materials, including paper trails from DREs, for 22 months. But most DRE paper trails are recorded on thermal paper, which degrades after a few months.
If found quickly enough, a faded thermal paper can still be read accurately with specialized equipment, but it is not a simple matter and is completely ineffective after an extended period.
I know this because of a horse race -- I left the track before a race, had a winning ticket (printed on thermal paper), and had it fade on me either because it sat in direct sunlight or because it was in my pocket, either of which exposed it to enough heat to render it unreadable to a person. I wasn't too hopeful about redeeming it, but I explained the situation the next time I was at the track, two weeks later. They managed to read the ticket (and pay me my $8 on a $2 bet) but needed a special reader to do so. They also explained that given another month or two they wouldn't be able to read it.
The point is that any given election official who next summer checks the DRE paper trails from the November election may just find a cabinet full of blank rolls. Unreadable in less that half the time that Federal law requires the records be kept. This is a big problem.
I don't understand why I can walk up to any bank ATM in the world, withdraw or deposit money with or without a paper receipt and have nearly absolute confidence that my account has been altered accordingly but nearly identical technology can't be deployed to capture my vote.
Because an ATM is designed to 1) identify and authenticate a user; 2) retrieve an authenticated user's account information over a network; 3) record a transaction that is identifiable and verifiable, and that connects a user to an account and a given transaction; and 4) produce a receipt that identifies the user, the account, and the transaction.
A voting machine cannot and must not 1) identify or authenticate a voter -- that is the job of the election judges at the polling place; 2) be connected to any sort of network while recording votes; 3) record anything that could connect an individual voter to that person's vote; or 4) allow a voter to take anything from the polling place that indicates how that person voted.
Although ATMs and voting machines might look similar, the actual requirements are quite different.
What's an (R) or (D) ballot? If I vote for a republican governor, but a democratic senator, does it meet halfway and become a (K) ballot?
These are ballots from primary elections. In most states, you can only vote in a primary for one party, hence you tell the election judge whether you want a Republican, Democrat, or Independent ballot. I haven't yet seen Hacking Democracy, but I understand that major parts of it are about the problems in the 2006 Ohio primary.
The reason for e-voting is simple. It avoids the cost of having to design and print paper ballots. It saves money, period. Any suggestion that it is to improve or simplify the election process ignores how government works.
Ummmm. No.
Nobody has ever suggested that electronic voting saves money or is even intended to. Costs related to designing and printing ballots are miniscule compared costs associated with electronic machines, including designing the electronic ballot (programmers are significantly more expensive than graphic designers). Even jurisdictions using only electronic machines spend orders of magnitude more on design and printing for voter information literature than they ever spent on ballots.
The reason for electronic voting is actually HAVA Section 301, which requires that blind voters have the ability to vote, review their choices, and cast a ballot without assistance. And the fact that the Federal government is giving away gobs of money to the states to buy machines that make this possible (and comply with other HAVA requirements).
When have you ever known the Federal government to do something in order to save money?
I cannot emphasize enough that any machine voting system that does not track with a proper receipt system and with other major controls is simply a machine to steal elections more efficiently.
Actually, there's another problem with paper trails that nobody seems to have yet picked up on. Federal law requires voting records, including paper trails, be kept for 22 months. But most of the ballot printers on the DRE machines use thermal paper rolls for the paper trail. The printing will degrade on these after a few months, or if the paper is exposed to heat they will become entirely illegible.
Either way, this could turn out to be a major problem if next summer some election official goes to check the paper trails from this past eletion and finds a cabinet full of blank rolls.
Apple does the same thing with Safari. Or does that not count? If bundling is bad, hold everybody to the same standard.
Not quite. Apple ships an OS that has a browers already installed. However, Apple has never claimed that Safari is an integral part of the OS, that it cannot be removed, that the web browser and file browser are the same thing, or that allowing competing products equal access to system resources will somehow prevent innovation.
Microsoft claimed all of this things, which is partly why they were charged with and convicted for antitrust violations.
If there's a "both of you can go to hell" option, people who wouldn't vote can vote
Actually there's a number of jurisdictions that have a 'none of the above' option on theitr ballot. This is mainly to deal with constitutional problems leading from local laws that require write-in candidates to 'register' as write-ins so that their votes to be counted (in itself, a measure to prevent jurisdictions from having to tabulate votes for Mickey Mouse, James Bond, etc -- it happens, and there are always lawyers willing to argue that Mickey's votes need to be counted).
So what's the point of an electronic machine if the votes are counted manually? Seems like it would be a lot cheaper just to improve the paper ballots.
Yes, yes, yes.
You, sir, have realized what any sensible person would, and what virtually all coutry clerks, recorders, registrars, directors of boards of elections, and every other person who works with matters of election administration have long realized: It's much cheaper and more sensible to have human-readable ballots that can also be read by machine than to have machine-readable ballots that can't be read by humans.
If we're going to require our voting machines to produce human-readable ballots and these will be the ballots of record, then our fancy new machines are really nothing more than ballot printers. Well, what's the damned point in that?
Have a look at how much the Feds have allocated and distributed for HAVA as of FY2004. This is an absurd amount of money to throw at a technical fix to something that will not be fixed with technology. (I only mean that election trickery has been around as long as elections have, and neither HAVA nor other well-meaning Acts of Congress will solve that problem. Generally, they only make it more complicated by establishing a legal basis for behavior they sought to end. But that's another rant).
The problem with this idea is the same problem with all electronic machines: It's a colossal expense to do something that would be handled just as well with $0.10 marker.
There are problems with any voting system. Here's the basic rundown:
1) Mechanical lever, paperless: a machine in which the voter sees the whole ballot, sets switches to indicate their vote, and pulls a master lever to cast the vote, which mechanically adjusts a counter mechanism that is recorded by hand after voting has closed. Problem: the gears can jam. This has happened before, and officials can generally identify jammed machines by an anomolous number of 9s -- the machine fails to advance beyond 9 in a given column because that requires the turning of two counting wheels rather than one, Trust me it's happened, and this is why mechanical levers countinue to be used in only a very few jurisdictions.
2) Punch card, paper: the voter indicates their choice by putting the ballot into a machine which makes a physical hole in the ballot that can then be read and counted by machine. Problems: There is no chance to correct a mistaken vote except by spoiling the ballot. An incomplete puch can lead to incorrect tabulation (hanging chads). Perforations that were not voted can still fall out before tabulation, meaning an overvote and an invalid ballot. Florida 2000. This is why virtually no jurisdictions still use punch cards.
3) Optical scan, paper: the voter indicates their choice by marking a paper ballot -- generally by making a mark in a given area of the ballot. Problems: Voters fail to follow directions and make marks other than where they're supposed to (eg circling names rather than checking boxes). Optical scanners identify stray marks as votes (or overvotes), or fail to identify votes. Folded or damaged ballots (particularly in the case of absentee ballots) cannot be read by machine. Optical scan ballots are still very popular, and probably the best solution now being used.
4) DRE - direct recording electronic, paperless or optionally with a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT): A voter makes their selection through a touchscreen, keypad, or audio interface and the vote is recorded digitally onto a removable storage unit -- generally a PCMCIA card. Some units feature a simultaneous paper record to present the voter with a hard copy representing their vote. Problems: No transparency between the casting and counting process. No software independence -- the tabulation of votes is dependent on the same software that records the votes. No independent auditability -- there is no way of verifying that the voting and/or tabulation software has not been compromised. No physical record of the vote when there is no VVPAT, and no dependable physical record when there is a VVPAT.
Paper trails are the most failure-prone parts of the machine and offer no effective protection of the process -- printers can fail, paper loaded incorrectly, ink runs out, paper jams, paper runs out, etc, etc, etc. If it can happen it will, especially in a machine whose hardware is little tested and whose software is engineered on short notice (due to election law that often changes dangerously close to elections), and a machine designed to be used only a couple times per year.
5) All-mail: this is a system that is being pioneered by Washington State -- all voters vote by absentee ballot delivered through the mail. Eliminates the need for polling places, poll workers, etc. Problem: Opens the door widely to massive vote fraud.
6) Colored Stones Cast into an Urn, paperless: A very effective system used in ancient republics wherein voters would indicate their choices by placing stones of different colors into given vessels to indicate their vote. No question of hanging chads, hacked machines, misunderstood ballots, etc. Problems: Not machine readable, somewhat impractical for large precincts and long ballots, expensive and difficult to transport and verify stone counts. Very, very few governments or municipalities have used this me
Is there any strong evidence that Microsoft was actually behind the SCO incident?
Sort of.
It's been known for a while that to help out with the lawsuit SCO recieved a massive cash injection to the tune of $40 million or so from Baystar Capital. Baystar is a VC company that controls a lot of Microsof money.
Since the time of the investment until a few weeks ago, the offical line was that Baystar acted on its own, and the fact that it was Microsoft capital being used to bankroll SCO's legal team was a mere coincidence.
But then maybe a month ago, the court heard testimony that not only did Microsoft know about Baystar's investment into SCO, but that the investment was at least encouraged (at worst, ordered) by Microsoft.
You can find all the relevant court documents, commentary, and links on Groklaw.
Not quite a smoking gun, but very compelling evidence that Redmond was putting its money where its mouth was, at least in a roundabout and obfuscatory way. There are no serious suggestions that what Microsoft did is actionable, yet it is pretty clear that they were up to their same old dirty tricks
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That's not a hardware issue, but a maintenance one. There is nothing physically wrong with either the CPU or the heatsink/fan, and there is no problem with Linux controlling these things.
In fact I've had the exact same problem in the past. The difference was that Windows would decide it had overheated and would reboot without any warning whatsoever. In Linux (FC3), I would get a whole bunch of kernel errors telling me the CPU was overheated and the system was responding by underclocking. Eventually it would restart itself but only if I completely ignored all the warnings and kept trying to drive the CPU.
In other words, Windows would fail without warning or explanation while Linux would fail only after reporting the problem, reporting what it was doing to try to solve the problem, and giving a very good indication of how to fix things.
There is no flakey hardware here, and the comparison you draw is much like saying that a BMW is no better than a Yugo since both cars fail to start when submerged in water.
Ahhh. But only the player key can be revoked, not the title key for discs already in the wild. They could use different keys on all subsequently pressed discs of the same title, but that doesn't affect the titles already cracked. And they can't expect to do a recall of cracked titles.
Or they could revoke the device key for the software player, which would mean the software player gets upgraded with a new key, and newer discs can be cracked using the exact same technique. Otherwise anyone selling software players would be faced with the massive liability of having sold something that doesn't work as advertised.
Since this technique relies on using the title and/or volume key and not the player key, it will not be so easy to fix through the device key revokation system that's a part of AACS.
Round one definitely goes to the good guys. And I don't see how it's anything but a matter of time before AACS is as completely broken as CSS is. Even with device key revokation, it's just a cat and mouse game with newer titles and newer devices. And how will the MPAA and the device manufacturers react when people who pay out the nose for players and films are no longer able to use them?
'Cannot' is a word. It is contracted to 'can't'. This is perfectly acceptable grammar. 'Ain't' is an accepted grammatical form, although the word itself in nonstandard and should not be used formally.
Punctuation goes inside of quotation marks when the punctuation is part of the passage being quoted, and outside the marks if not -- e.g. Malolm X asked, "What did we do, who preceded you?"; Did Churchill really say, "In the morning I'll be sober, but you'll still be ugly"?
You're also using quotation marks incorrectly. To set off a key concept you should use 'single quotation marks' or italics. You never use double quotation marks for "emphasis".
Famicom is not a contraction. It was a brand name for the NES in Japan. It is a trande name and a proper noun; that's why it's capitalized.
'Alot' is not a word (unless you're speaking of Adaptive Large Optics Technologies), nor is it a contraction.
Bad grammar usage makes the writer look ignorant. Arguing in defense of bad grammer usage makes the arguer look ignorant and obtuse. If something is worth saying, it is worth saying correctly.
but then you prolly dont cair about you're grammer cuz their always corecting them and besides who rilly needs all theese rediculous rules any way ha ha ha LMAO
Ahhh yes. But Russia is still willing to buy US products and finance US debt. That makes them very, very impotant to the US economy. For Russia, the US is just another market, and one that is becoming more difficult and more problematic day by day. They have a larger and wealthier trading partner next door in the EU, and another market with vastly superior growth opportunities on the other side in China.
You may not realize it yet, but the US does indeed need Russia far more than Russia needs the US.
Not just people from outside Russia. Anyone who's born and raised in Russia needs to know that great success is a high-stakes gamble. Remeber Boris Berezovsky or Mikhail Khodorkovsky?
The 'new' Russia is very much like the 'old' Russia in that if you piss off the people at the head of the table, you'd better run or you'll wake up in prison or dead.
Logic and Accuracy testing is just that -- logic and accuracy. They check that the machine's logic gates work as intended and that the machine accurately completes operations. That's it. They don't look at security, as that's not part of the test. Neither do they look at the code's elegance, effieciency, or skill at singing, dancing, playing the piano, or wearing a swimsuit. They test for logic and accuracy.
Which has little to do with the original point that the code, while it may be closed-source and regarded by the copyright holder as a trade secret, is already known and has already been examined by a licensed, independent third party. A judge can deny a petitioner the request to see source code for a voting machine, but can just as easily allow it without having to consult or compensate the company that owns it.
The question is irrelevant. Voting machine vendors already have to submit machines and source to certification agencies for Logic and Acciracy testing and certification. For any machine in use on election day, the source code (and/or mechanical parts) have already been disected, examined, and certified.
This is the reason why Diebold machines were decertified in California -- not, as is often claimed, because they are insecure, but because Diebold updated certified firmware with code that had not gone through certification.
The state already has the right to examine source code, and has already done so. What the judge decided (wrongly, IMHO) is that this right does not extend to parties involved in a disputed election where the primary claim hinges on whether or not the machines and code functioned as they were supposed to.
NIST has recently recommended requiring the effective open-sourcing of voting machine code, but these recommendations (Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines) won't go into effect until 2009. Previously, and in the current VVSG, NIST recommends keeping certified source code in escrow so it is available for examination in case of dispute.
Everybody gets the shits. And everybody's mama too. But I guess you didn't get your PS3. Or did talk of the PS3 remind you of a shit story? Speaking of shit stories, this one time when I was hitch-hiking . . . Or maybe you just didn't get that Wii you wanted. Which is why you're writing pointless shit stories on Slashdot instead of fiddling with your Wii. I didn't get a Wii either. Happy Christmas.
"Click to call" is no innovation -- all it does is move the call from a telephone to a PC, which is not much of a step forward as far as most people are concerned. It will still mean dealing with telephone menus and sitting around on hold until someone gets around to picking up on the other end.
What I'd rather see is something like "Click to get a call back" after putting all the appropriate data into a web form (i.e. English language, existing customer, reason for call e.g. service change etc). Basically input all the information you would normally put into a telephone menu before getting stuck on hold. Instead of having to wait for them, they call you when they're ready.
As far as Skype charging for what they had been doing for free, well it's not like they said it would be free forever. I've used Skype for calling US phones quite a bit since it's free and easy. I could just as easily use my cell since I never come close to my minute allowance (which doesn't apply outside business hours anyway).
But still, I won't be signing up for $30, or even $15 per year, though I will still use Skype extensively for international calls.
I'm not very optimistic about the switch either, from Skype's POV. The 'give it away until they think they need it' strategy is a double-edged sword. You may get some people who think it's a good service at the right price and will happily pay. But I suspect that even more people will question the value of it -- why pay for something that was free, that likely will be free from another provider(s) in the near future, and that I'm already paying for anyway.
I thought then, and I still think that ebay paid a ridiculous sum for Skype, but maybe they will be able to monetize it eventually. But I think it's much more likely that Google, MS, or someone we haven't heard of will put out something soon that matches or exceeds Skype's famous frugality with bandwidth, and does it for free (at least until next year when we'll have this conversation all over again).
Well, why don't we look at the actual questions?
Fair question. Microsoft officials have stated over and over again that they regard Linux and its users as 'cancer' and 'communists'. As recently as a few weeks ago Ballmer declared that Linux was chock full of Microsoft IP, and the Novell deal gave them a way to monetize that "stolen" IP.
Not only is this a good question, but one that demands an answer.
Fair question. He identifies a specific use for the hardware and sofware, and asks if the elevated hardware requirements and associated costs make Vista less price competitive compared to Apple hardware and software. I don't see how you can find anything loaded in this -- it's either an Apple-based video editing system is cheaper or a comparable Vista-based system is.
Again, a fair question especially in light of Ballmer's recent comments on Linux and alleged infringements of Microsoft's alleged IP. It may not be a question that a marketing manager can answer, but it's certainly one he should be prepared for, especially when speaking to a group of Linux users and supporters. The one about software patents is particularly apt given that Microsoft has as much to lose as anyone from loose application of patents.
A fair question. Microsoft has made a pretty nifty little app but designed it deliberately to run only on their operating system and browser. Why lock users of other OSs and browsers out when there's no real technical reason for doing so (not to mention when the product being copied works just as well on Mac and Linux as it does on Windows)?
All fair questions, and all questions that should be answered. They are certainly questions I want answered before I consider purchasing Vista or advising anyone else to.
That's just the point, isn't it. The outcome of 'battles' is a metric for conventional war, and a bad measuring stick for uncoventional/asymetric war.
One side can claim all the battle victories they want, but if the other side is not fighting battles (nor has any interest in doing so) then the claim of victory is meaningless. How many conventional battles did Geronimo win? Is he revered as a tactical genius because fought on his enemy's terms or because he tied up massive numbers of troops while continuing to raid and elude capture for 30 years?
The greatest mistake the US makes about Iraq (other than being there in the first place) is thinking that it is about battles and direct confrontations, or imagining that once troops are in a town then that town is 'held'.
American troops can raise all the flags they want in all the provincial outposts they want but it will do very little good when the 'enemy' simply melts away, returning sporadically to disrupt supply lines and make actual administration impossible. Raising a flag only means something when the local population recognizes the flag as symbolic of control and submits accordingly. Geronimo did not, Ho Chi Minh did not, and the internecine groups in Iraq do not
As long as the US keeps thinking that this fight in Iraq is about territorial control (particularly when the US military cannot even control Bagdhad), they are destined for failure. The insurgents don't need to control cities. They don't need to win or even fight battles. As long as they disrupt the business of running a military occupation and survive, they achieve their goals. Strike and evade, strike and evade. There's no need to hold any particular ground since they have far more ground on which to hide than the occupier can possibly cover.
And the harder the US tries to hit them, the more collateral damage is done; the more collateral damage, the stronger the insurgent groups are supported. The more support they have, the more sophisticated their attacks become and the easier it becomes to melt away and evade the counterattack (which of course does more collateral damage and begins the cycle anew).
If insurgent groups in Iraq were dumb enough to stand together and fight the occupying US Army head on, of course they would be obliterated. But the situation is far more analogous (though by no means akin) to that of competing gangs -- their real beef is with each other. One or another side may try to use the police (the occupiers or their puppets) as intermediaries to get at their enemy but only as a means to an end, and without trust. The intermediaries are disposable, and subject to attack at any time.
Such is the nature of occupations, and why they rarely work out.
Note: My sympathies go out to all those in uniform in Iraq. I truly believe that the vast majority of you are good people (and those that aren't weren't before they were sent there). You have sacrificed far beyond what you were asked to, and have served well and admirably. I only wish that those who sent you were compelled to learn from your experience, and forced to undergo the same danger and hardships to at least understand and appreciate your stories.
Manual recount doesn't mean that you don't use machines. And ballot printers do print barcodes.
As far as the butterfly ballot issue goes -- this is a $0.10 problem with a $0.10 solution. Design ballots that aren't confusing. Go for optical scan machines rather than punch-card machines (which have been know to be problematic for decades). Substituting a DRE machine in this case is a $3,000 solution to a $0.10 problem.
Paper can be mangled out of sight of the voter. You may not buy it, but it's happened, most recently in Chicago which does treat the printout as the ballot of record. Fortunately there were no races close enough for this to be a factor.
Unfortunately, this is not an apt comparison. Electronic voting does indeed scale well. But as far as elections are concerned, the US is not a country of 300 million -- it is 50 different states each of which has its own laws and practices regarding the conduct of elections, and each of which is made up of dozens or hundreds of different jurisdictions, some of which have their own rules regarding elections.
There are no national elections in the US. Every election, even for Federal office, is held by the counties, cities, townships, etc, and ultimately certified by the state in which it is held.
A voting system (ie machines and processes) that is designed for Florida, for example, may work wonderfully there but may not meet the needs of North Dakota. A system designed for Wyoming may bog down under the massive ballots in places like Maricopa County, AZ or Los Angeles County, CA.
The main problem I see with DRE voting in the US is that the machines don't really add anything to the process, don't make voting easier or more convenient, don't make counting votes faster or more accurate, but they do make elections a whole lot more complicated and expensive.
There are a number of problems with paper trails besides their cost.
1) The paper record is a roll that records votes sequentially. This can potentially compromise the secrecy of the ballot.
2) The printer itself malfunctions -- the paper jams, ink runs out, paper runs out, paper is damaged or destroyed while advancing, etc. This would be especially problematic in jurisdictions where the paper trail is the ballot of record -- i.e. any disputes or recounts have to be based on the paper rather than the electronic results. If the paper was unreadable, a dispute would be impossible to resolve legally.
3) The paper record is read differently by a human and by a machine -- the human reads the alphanumeric printout while a machine reads a barcode. As long as humans can't read barcode, each ballot would have to be checked by both human and machine to make sure the two records are identical.
4) According to Federal law, all records and materials from an election have to be kept by the states for 22 months. But most paper-trail printers use thermal paper on which printing degrades after a few months even in normal conditions. If exposed to excessive heat or temperature swings, the paper can be rendered completely unreadable in a very short time.
The problem with electronic machines isn't that they have or don't have paper trails. The problem is the machines themselves. Paper trails are not a solution to the problem of badly designed, ridiculously expensive, and completely uneccessary electronic voting machines. Just as inherently flawed electronic machines are not a solution to the problem of poorly designed ballots, which is the problem of Florida 2000 that DREs were meant to solve in the first place.
I posted this elsewhere in this thread but I'll repeat it. NIST is onto something that no one else has seemed to pick up on yet. Federal law requires that states keep election materials, including paper trails from DREs, for 22 months. But most DRE paper trails are recorded on thermal paper, which degrades after a few months.
If found quickly enough, a faded thermal paper can still be read accurately with specialized equipment, but it is not a simple matter and is completely ineffective after an extended period.
I know this because of a horse race -- I left the track before a race, had a winning ticket (printed on thermal paper), and had it fade on me either because it sat in direct sunlight or because it was in my pocket, either of which exposed it to enough heat to render it unreadable to a person. I wasn't too hopeful about redeeming it, but I explained the situation the next time I was at the track, two weeks later. They managed to read the ticket (and pay me my $8 on a $2 bet) but needed a special reader to do so. They also explained that given another month or two they wouldn't be able to read it.
The point is that any given election official who next summer checks the DRE paper trails from the November election may just find a cabinet full of blank rolls. Unreadable in less that half the time that Federal law requires the records be kept. This is a big problem.
Because an ATM is designed to 1) identify and authenticate a user; 2) retrieve an authenticated user's account information over a network; 3) record a transaction that is identifiable and verifiable, and that connects a user to an account and a given transaction; and 4) produce a receipt that identifies the user, the account, and the transaction.
A voting machine cannot and must not 1) identify or authenticate a voter -- that is the job of the election judges at the polling place; 2) be connected to any sort of network while recording votes; 3) record anything that could connect an individual voter to that person's vote; or 4) allow a voter to take anything from the polling place that indicates how that person voted.
Although ATMs and voting machines might look similar, the actual requirements are quite different.
These are ballots from primary elections. In most states, you can only vote in a primary for one party, hence you tell the election judge whether you want a Republican, Democrat, or Independent ballot. I haven't yet seen Hacking Democracy, but I understand that major parts of it are about the problems in the 2006 Ohio primary.
Ummmm. No.
Nobody has ever suggested that electronic voting saves money or is even intended to. Costs related to designing and printing ballots are miniscule compared costs associated with electronic machines, including designing the electronic ballot (programmers are significantly more expensive than graphic designers). Even jurisdictions using only electronic machines spend orders of magnitude more on design and printing for voter information literature than they ever spent on ballots.
The reason for electronic voting is actually HAVA Section 301, which requires that blind voters have the ability to vote, review their choices, and cast a ballot without assistance. And the fact that the Federal government is giving away gobs of money to the states to buy machines that make this possible (and comply with other HAVA requirements).
When have you ever known the Federal government to do something in order to save money?
Actually, there's another problem with paper trails that nobody seems to have yet picked up on. Federal law requires voting records, including paper trails, be kept for 22 months. But most of the ballot printers on the DRE machines use thermal paper rolls for the paper trail. The printing will degrade on these after a few months, or if the paper is exposed to heat they will become entirely illegible.
Either way, this could turn out to be a major problem if next summer some election official goes to check the paper trails from this past eletion and finds a cabinet full of blank rolls.
Not quite. Apple ships an OS that has a browers already installed. However, Apple has never claimed that Safari is an integral part of the OS, that it cannot be removed, that the web browser and file browser are the same thing, or that allowing competing products equal access to system resources will somehow prevent innovation.
Microsoft claimed all of this things, which is partly why they were charged with and convicted for antitrust violations.
Actually there's a number of jurisdictions that have a 'none of the above' option on theitr ballot. This is mainly to deal with constitutional problems leading from local laws that require write-in candidates to 'register' as write-ins so that their votes to be counted (in itself, a measure to prevent jurisdictions from having to tabulate votes for Mickey Mouse, James Bond, etc -- it happens, and there are always lawyers willing to argue that Mickey's votes need to be counted).
Yes, yes, yes.
You, sir, have realized what any sensible person would, and what virtually all coutry clerks, recorders, registrars, directors of boards of elections, and every other person who works with matters of election administration have long realized: It's much cheaper and more sensible to have human-readable ballots that can also be read by machine than to have machine-readable ballots that can't be read by humans.
If we're going to require our voting machines to produce human-readable ballots and these will be the ballots of record, then our fancy new machines are really nothing more than ballot printers. Well, what's the damned point in that?
Have a look at how much the Feds have allocated and distributed for HAVA as of FY2004. This is an absurd amount of money to throw at a technical fix to something that will not be fixed with technology. (I only mean that election trickery has been around as long as elections have, and neither HAVA nor other well-meaning Acts of Congress will solve that problem. Generally, they only make it more complicated by establishing a legal basis for behavior they sought to end. But that's another rant).
The problem with this idea is the same problem with all electronic machines: It's a colossal expense to do something that would be handled just as well with $0.10 marker.
There are problems with any voting system. Here's the basic rundown:
1) Mechanical lever, paperless: a machine in which the voter sees the whole ballot, sets switches to indicate their vote, and pulls a master lever to cast the vote, which mechanically adjusts a counter mechanism that is recorded by hand after voting has closed. Problem: the gears can jam. This has happened before, and officials can generally identify jammed machines by an anomolous number of 9s -- the machine fails to advance beyond 9 in a given column because that requires the turning of two counting wheels rather than one, Trust me it's happened, and this is why mechanical levers countinue to be used in only a very few jurisdictions.
2) Punch card, paper: the voter indicates their choice by putting the ballot into a machine which makes a physical hole in the ballot that can then be read and counted by machine. Problems: There is no chance to correct a mistaken vote except by spoiling the ballot. An incomplete puch can lead to incorrect tabulation (hanging chads). Perforations that were not voted can still fall out before tabulation, meaning an overvote and an invalid ballot. Florida 2000. This is why virtually no jurisdictions still use punch cards.
3) Optical scan, paper: the voter indicates their choice by marking a paper ballot -- generally by making a mark in a given area of the ballot. Problems: Voters fail to follow directions and make marks other than where they're supposed to (eg circling names rather than checking boxes). Optical scanners identify stray marks as votes (or overvotes), or fail to identify votes. Folded or damaged ballots (particularly in the case of absentee ballots) cannot be read by machine. Optical scan ballots are still very popular, and probably the best solution now being used.
4) DRE - direct recording electronic, paperless or optionally with a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT): A voter makes their selection through a touchscreen, keypad, or audio interface and the vote is recorded digitally onto a removable storage unit -- generally a PCMCIA card. Some units feature a simultaneous paper record to present the voter with a hard copy representing their vote. Problems: No transparency between the casting and counting process. No software independence -- the tabulation of votes is dependent on the same software that records the votes. No independent auditability -- there is no way of verifying that the voting and/or tabulation software has not been compromised. No physical record of the vote when there is no VVPAT, and no dependable physical record when there is a VVPAT.
Paper trails are the most failure-prone parts of the machine and offer no effective protection of the process -- printers can fail, paper loaded incorrectly, ink runs out, paper jams, paper runs out, etc, etc, etc. If it can happen it will, especially in a machine whose hardware is little tested and whose software is engineered on short notice (due to election law that often changes dangerously close to elections), and a machine designed to be used only a couple times per year.
5) All-mail: this is a system that is being pioneered by Washington State -- all voters vote by absentee ballot delivered through the mail. Eliminates the need for polling places, poll workers, etc. Problem: Opens the door widely to massive vote fraud.
6) Colored Stones Cast into an Urn, paperless: A very effective system used in ancient republics wherein voters would indicate their choices by placing stones of different colors into given vessels to indicate their vote. No question of hanging chads, hacked machines, misunderstood ballots, etc. Problems: Not machine readable, somewhat impractical for large precincts and long ballots, expensive and difficult to transport and verify stone counts. Very, very few governments or municipalities have used this me
Sort of.
It's been known for a while that to help out with the lawsuit SCO recieved a massive cash injection to the tune of $40 million or so from Baystar Capital. Baystar is a VC company that controls a lot of Microsof money.
Since the time of the investment until a few weeks ago, the offical line was that Baystar acted on its own, and the fact that it was Microsoft capital being used to bankroll SCO's legal team was a mere coincidence.
But then maybe a month ago, the court heard testimony that not only did Microsoft know about Baystar's investment into SCO, but that the investment was at least encouraged (at worst, ordered) by Microsoft.
You can find all the relevant court documents, commentary, and links on Groklaw.
Not quite a smoking gun, but very compelling evidence that Redmond was putting its money where its mouth was, at least in a roundabout and obfuscatory way. There are no serious suggestions that what Microsoft did is actionable, yet it is pretty clear that they were up to their same old dirty tricks
Seems like flaccid is a pretty apt description to me, particularly the second meaning in each definition.
/flæksd, flæsd/ -adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
flaccid
1. soft and limp; not firm; flabby: flaccid biceps.
2. lacking force; weak: flaccid prose.
[Origin: 1610-20; L flaccidus flabby, equiv. to flacc(re) to grow weak, languish + -idus -id4]
--Related forms
flaccidity, flaccidness, noun
flaccidly, adverb
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary -
flaccid (flsd, flksd)
1. Lacking firmness, resilience, or muscle tone. See Synonyms at limp.
2. Lacking vigor or energy: flaccid management.
[Latin flaccidus, from flaccus, flabby.]
flaccidity (-sd-t) or flaccidness n.
flaccidly adv.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.