If Google get it, they have nothing to lose by releasing Linux and OSX versions. Especially if they can fork everything else into it as an upgrade to Google Desktop. One application, all your Google stuff, why should they not release Linux and OSX?
I'm also looking forwards to the response from MS if Google use this as a web-based frontend to WinFS.
Digital TV in the UK did this kind of customisation a while back before it became Freeview. You paid your base subscription for the base channels, plus any 6 of the 'extra' channels. You could then buy more 'extra' channels one-by-one, or buy a package with another 6, or buy a package with them all.
It actually worked quite well, except for the fact we ended up with 50 auction channels as base channels:(
This is my argument in favour of single ID. It doesn't have to be part of some big national privacy scandal, or part of anti-terrorism, it just makes life easier. Use my NINo (National Insurance Number, similar to SSN) as my new universal ID number since they are allocated at birth, and then tie everything to the one record of 'me'. NHS, drivers details, organ donor, student ID, they can all be tied onto a single system. If there's a public API, things like my BCU (Canoeing) membership could also be linked to it. One card to carry.
Why should you trust the computer, why should you trust people, why should you trust punchcard machines? I would personally place more trust in a well designed system which by definition cannot do something it is not programmed to do than a human which is far more susceptible to mistakes. Computers are based on logic and maths, barring hardware error there is no way they can do something against their program. And even the most rudimentary error checking will deal with hardware issues.
The whole national ID thing I don't personally see a big problem with other than "OMG BIG BROTHER WILL KNOW EVERYTHING!!!", but it's largely irrelevant to the whole votes thing providing some other system can be found to make sure it really is one man, one vote. Incidentally, carry a cellphone? Much more of a privacy risk than an ID card.
Cost seems to be not much of a problem to the current administration, just find a way to fob it off under national security and nobody will even count it.
Your constitutional issue seems to be the biggest problem, in which case the solution is simple. Votes are counted on a state's own system, the only national bit has to be the ID network so you can't hop across a border and vote again in another state.
If there was a single, countrywide ID (Based on something such as your SSN in the US, or your NINo in the UK) augmented by biometrics then the whole 'someone else may use my vote' thing becomes a none issue - if the system to support the ID normally is secure then there is no room for fraud.
You put your ID into the reader, run through a biometric check, and place your vote. Your card is checked for previous usage to vote in that election, and if it's all OK (ie not used already) then your vote is counted (and paper trail generated, at least for the first couple of elections). Once the frontend gets the 'vote counted OK' from the totals system it runs a seperate command on the ID system to flag the card as already used. You get your card back, and walk out. Vote counted, ID flagged as 'used to vote', no link between the two except for a very tenuous timestamp on the transaction logs (Network latency means tens if not hundreds of votes could have been placed between the stamps on the vote network and the ID network).
End of the day, a quick polling of the ID network gives the percentage turnout. Checking the totals on the vote system gives you the result. Since the whole thing is computerised you can even do interesting things like vote for your home state regardless of where you are at the time. The flagging for your ID is on a national system, so no worries there. Your vote can easily be passed to another state's total.
ATMs are merely a frontend for another system which does its own auditing - A bank knows how much money is put into an ATM, and if what's in the ATM at the end of the day isn't the money at the start of the day minus the money the machine says it's handed out, then there's a problem. Likewise if a machine turns out to be giving out less money than it's subtracted from an account, someone is going to complain.
Votes, on the other hand, are abysmally audited. There is no totally seperate system keeping accurate tabs on what's happening.
Perhaps Diebold should make frontends, someone like Google should design the infrastructure, and IBM designs the central tabulator architecture. Each of the three pieces keeps their own audits, and if the numbers don't match then there's a problem.
Or how about you send each registered voter a voting card, which they hand in at a polling station on election day. They get given a voting paper, go into a booth, mark and seal their paper, then drop it into a black box. Votes are then counted by hand later. Say, that could work...
Mildly detached from the worms here, but if such a genetic modification for the human genome could be placed in a virus- or bacteria-like carrier would it not form a pretty lethal biological weapon?
I know I'm quite attached to things like wounds healing themselves, how about you?
TLDs *used* to be worthwhile,.co.* was for a specific country..gov.* (Government),.mil.* (Military),.edu.* (Education),.org.* (Non-profit organisation) and.net.* (Network provider) were all you needed. Newer domains like.info and.museum should be strictly country based imho, for example london.info.uk for tourist info on London, or royalarmouries.museum.uk for the Royal Armouries.
TLDs, if enforced, provide structure. It should be a strict name.type.country OR a name.type for international groups and not the abysmal mess we have today. Sadly something went wrong a while back, and now the whole thing is just a mix of country codes used as descriptors (.tv for example), domains sold to every Tom, Harry and Dick who asks for them even if they don't have a damn good reason for being in that TLD or SLD (Charities in.com? They should be in.org or.org.*), and haphazard reselling of subdomains (Such as go.to, where.to is in fact the TLD for Tonga).
Re-downloads are, to be perfectly honest, a negligable cost. I pay my 79p (UK), download the track, and it stays on my hard-disk until something catastrophic happens (My HDD falls over or my system is stolen, for example). I may re-download it once or twice a year.
Napster does a good job of this. Purchases are stored centrally, and can be re-downloaded to any one of my three authorised machines. The major draw of Napster seems to be that the music is in fact streaming unless specifically downloaded, and the application is very closely tied with the service. A while back they increased the bitrate of all streams and downloaded files, and the application updated everything for me.
If iTunes offered that, maybe with an 'all you can eat' subscription (Again, Napster has one) then it would become an ideal music store for me. I don't give a damn about DRM to stop me copying the file, as long as I can get hold of my music anywhere.
Joking aside, it does show that a thorough showering (Air shower probably) facility should be placed in an intermediate airlock to stop as much dust as possible from getting into a station.
A DS, however (Touchscreen) may have an advantage here. Release one with a wireless headset and a Skype interface (WiFi, remember?) and there may be a winner.
Re:Nothing new under the sun.
on
Podcasting Hacks
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'll bite...
Live-to-tape had been available to download for years, much as news has been available on websites for years.
RSS meant that you could aggregate news in one place without needing to browse through 20 different sites to see anything new. Likewise, podcasts mean you can get new episodes of content without needing to check manually and download.
As it happens, I quite like the fact that I pick up my iPod in the morning and some news is 'just there' for me to listen to. If you can tell me why manually checking for, downloading and copying a broadcast to your device is preferable to just letting an application automatically aggregate (Ooh, alliteration) 3 or 4 different feeds then I'm all ears.
Unique IDs, national ID cards, RFID tags... they don't suddenly let people track you. I've just turned 18, and currently carry so many things which I can be traced with / be profiled on it's obscene. Phone, debit card, ID, drivers licence, BCU member card, Connexions card, student card and more. I have tens if not hundreds of different ID numbers and all I want is one bloody card to carry around instead of the usual 20.
Whilst privacy nuts may shout and scream about single ID, all it does is make life easier for 99.9% of the population without introducing anything else which can be tracked.
So, TiVo. Why are they using yet another bloody ID tag when they could just make it read something you already have? Fingerprint scanner on the remote, facemapping camera, anything which means I don't have another thing to carry around just to tell my TV who I am.
Re:Backgrounds of the PHP developers.
on
PHP 5.1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
But on the plus side of PHP it's a nice convenient stepping stone between plain HTML and the godawful mess of punctuation that is Perl.
I code in PHP because I can quickly roll out powerful scripts, but the namespaces really need an overhaul.
But if Google calls you, then calls the company, then connects the two all the company will get is Google's phone number. Voila, no chance of calling back unless te caller explicitly gives their phone number.
Mine is stable, except for when an extension which modifies the rendering engine is loaded. Web Developer toolbar, GreaseMonkey, they all cause havoc when closing the browser.
Slashdot Mirror
Single contact list such as with Exchange - everybody in the company is automatically on the 'common contacts'.
If Google get it, they have nothing to lose by releasing Linux and OSX versions. Especially if they can fork everything else into it as an upgrade to Google Desktop. One application, all your Google stuff, why should they not release Linux and OSX?
I'm also looking forwards to the response from MS if Google use this as a web-based frontend to WinFS.
Numbers are easy, you remember phone numbers don't you?
130300820 - I haven't used that IRC number in years but I still remember it.
Because IP isn't real-time. I don't know about you, but I really am not a big fan of streaming video. Especially Real (Shudder)
Digital TV in the UK did this kind of customisation a while back before it became Freeview. You paid your base subscription for the base channels, plus any 6 of the 'extra' channels. You could then buy more 'extra' channels one-by-one, or buy a package with another 6, or buy a package with them all.
:(
It actually worked quite well, except for the fact we ended up with 50 auction channels as base channels
This is my argument in favour of single ID. It doesn't have to be part of some big national privacy scandal, or part of anti-terrorism, it just makes life easier. Use my NINo (National Insurance Number, similar to SSN) as my new universal ID number since they are allocated at birth, and then tie everything to the one record of 'me'. NHS, drivers details, organ donor, student ID, they can all be tied onto a single system. If there's a public API, things like my BCU (Canoeing) membership could also be linked to it. One card to carry.
Why should you trust the computer, why should you trust people, why should you trust punchcard machines? I would personally place more trust in a well designed system which by definition cannot do something it is not programmed to do than a human which is far more susceptible to mistakes. Computers are based on logic and maths, barring hardware error there is no way they can do something against their program. And even the most rudimentary error checking will deal with hardware issues.
The whole national ID thing I don't personally see a big problem with other than "OMG BIG BROTHER WILL KNOW EVERYTHING!!!", but it's largely irrelevant to the whole votes thing providing some other system can be found to make sure it really is one man, one vote. Incidentally, carry a cellphone? Much more of a privacy risk than an ID card.
Cost seems to be not much of a problem to the current administration, just find a way to fob it off under national security and nobody will even count it.
Your constitutional issue seems to be the biggest problem, in which case the solution is simple. Votes are counted on a state's own system, the only national bit has to be the ID network so you can't hop across a border and vote again in another state.
If there was a single, countrywide ID (Based on something such as your SSN in the US, or your NINo in the UK) augmented by biometrics then the whole 'someone else may use my vote' thing becomes a none issue - if the system to support the ID normally is secure then there is no room for fraud.
You put your ID into the reader, run through a biometric check, and place your vote. Your card is checked for previous usage to vote in that election, and if it's all OK (ie not used already) then your vote is counted (and paper trail generated, at least for the first couple of elections). Once the frontend gets the 'vote counted OK' from the totals system it runs a seperate command on the ID system to flag the card as already used. You get your card back, and walk out. Vote counted, ID flagged as 'used to vote', no link between the two except for a very tenuous timestamp on the transaction logs (Network latency means tens if not hundreds of votes could have been placed between the stamps on the vote network and the ID network).
End of the day, a quick polling of the ID network gives the percentage turnout. Checking the totals on the vote system gives you the result. Since the whole thing is computerised you can even do interesting things like vote for your home state regardless of where you are at the time. The flagging for your ID is on a national system, so no worries there. Your vote can easily be passed to another state's total.
ATMs are merely a frontend for another system which does its own auditing - A bank knows how much money is put into an ATM, and if what's in the ATM at the end of the day isn't the money at the start of the day minus the money the machine says it's handed out, then there's a problem. Likewise if a machine turns out to be giving out less money than it's subtracted from an account, someone is going to complain.
Votes, on the other hand, are abysmally audited. There is no totally seperate system keeping accurate tabs on what's happening.
Perhaps Diebold should make frontends, someone like Google should design the infrastructure, and IBM designs the central tabulator architecture. Each of the three pieces keeps their own audits, and if the numbers don't match then there's a problem.
Or how about you send each registered voter a voting card, which they hand in at a polling station on election day. They get given a voting paper, go into a booth, mark and seal their paper, then drop it into a black box. Votes are then counted by hand later. Say, that could work...
Yep, but Verisign runs the root DNS servers for .com and .net.
To summarise (I think):
Not knowing what a piece of software does is no excuse if you distribute it, since it should be your problem.
Not knowing what patents cover your software is acceptable (within reason), since nobody has a clue anyway.
Thanks, now I can't stop laughing at the idea of my CD tray dancing to Mambo #5.
Real Ales have many of the same health benefits for your heart and digestive system as red wine.
As always, enjoy in moderation.
Mildly detached from the worms here, but if such a genetic modification for the human genome could be placed in a virus- or bacteria-like carrier would it not form a pretty lethal biological weapon?
I know I'm quite attached to things like wounds healing themselves, how about you?
They hired a business management geek early on, who made sure that Google wasn't driving itself into the ground.
TLDs *used* to be worthwhile, .co.* was for a specific country. .gov.* (Government), .mil.* (Military), .edu.* (Education), .org.* (Non-profit organisation) and .net.* (Network provider) were all you needed. Newer domains like .info and .museum should be strictly country based imho, for example london.info.uk for tourist info on London, or royalarmouries.museum.uk for the Royal Armouries.
.com? They should be in .org or .org.*), and haphazard reselling of subdomains (Such as go.to, where .to is in fact the TLD for Tonga).
TLDs, if enforced, provide structure. It should be a strict name.type.country OR a name.type for international groups and not the abysmal mess we have today. Sadly something went wrong a while back, and now the whole thing is just a mix of country codes used as descriptors (.tv for example), domains sold to every Tom, Harry and Dick who asks for them even if they don't have a damn good reason for being in that TLD or SLD (Charities in
Re-downloads are, to be perfectly honest, a negligable cost. I pay my 79p (UK), download the track, and it stays on my hard-disk until something catastrophic happens (My HDD falls over or my system is stolen, for example). I may re-download it once or twice a year.
Napster does a good job of this. Purchases are stored centrally, and can be re-downloaded to any one of my three authorised machines. The major draw of Napster seems to be that the music is in fact streaming unless specifically downloaded, and the application is very closely tied with the service. A while back they increased the bitrate of all streams and downloaded files, and the application updated everything for me.
If iTunes offered that, maybe with an 'all you can eat' subscription (Again, Napster has one) then it would become an ideal music store for me. I don't give a damn about DRM to stop me copying the file, as long as I can get hold of my music anywhere.
Joking aside, it does show that a thorough showering (Air shower probably) facility should be placed in an intermediate airlock to stop as much dust as possible from getting into a station.
A DS, however (Touchscreen) may have an advantage here. Release one with a wireless headset and a Skype interface (WiFi, remember?) and there may be a winner.
I'll bite...
Live-to-tape had been available to download for years, much as news has been available on websites for years.
RSS meant that you could aggregate news in one place without needing to browse through 20 different sites to see anything new. Likewise, podcasts mean you can get new episodes of content without needing to check manually and download.
As it happens, I quite like the fact that I pick up my iPod in the morning and some news is 'just there' for me to listen to. If you can tell me why manually checking for, downloading and copying a broadcast to your device is preferable to just letting an application automatically aggregate (Ooh, alliteration) 3 or 4 different feeds then I'm all ears.
*Applauds common sense*
Unique IDs, national ID cards, RFID tags... they don't suddenly let people track you. I've just turned 18, and currently carry so many things which I can be traced with / be profiled on it's obscene. Phone, debit card, ID, drivers licence, BCU member card, Connexions card, student card and more. I have tens if not hundreds of different ID numbers and all I want is one bloody card to carry around instead of the usual 20.
Whilst privacy nuts may shout and scream about single ID, all it does is make life easier for 99.9% of the population without introducing anything else which can be tracked.
So, TiVo. Why are they using yet another bloody ID tag when they could just make it read something you already have? Fingerprint scanner on the remote, facemapping camera, anything which means I don't have another thing to carry around just to tell my TV who I am.
But on the plus side of PHP it's a nice convenient stepping stone between plain HTML and the godawful mess of punctuation that is Perl.
I code in PHP because I can quickly roll out powerful scripts, but the namespaces really need an overhaul.
But if Google calls you, then calls the company, then connects the two all the company will get is Google's phone number. Voila, no chance of calling back unless te caller explicitly gives their phone number.
But when they do, people won't buy a CD for their car, a CD for home, and a CD for portable players. They will take their money elsewhere.
Mine is stable, except for when an extension which modifies the rendering engine is loaded. Web Developer toolbar, GreaseMonkey, they all cause havoc when closing the browser.
And yes I have submitted a bug report.