I am absolutely terrible at delaying gratification (ADHD side effect), but I have been very pleased to note that my 3 year-old does it routinely. When given a treat, he'll often have a nibble, and store the rest away for later. I suspect it's a fairly natural stage that kids go through, but it requires encouragement to become established for life. Similarly, kids will go through stages where they exhibit pretty negative traits, and parents should respond by discouraging those behaviors (don't hit your sister!).
For people not connected to the technological world, heavy use of electronic devices might appear to be some kind of addiction. I feel sorry for those people, because when the singularity comes, they will be unfortunate casualties. Games are merely an alternate reality in which people can live quite happily as long as it's sustainable. Once we're connected to the 'net through myriads of implanted devices to have those devices disabled would be devastating.
This is a fight that cannot be won. There's no way businesses can successfully wage war on personal activity at work. What they can do is clearly define what is expected out of each employee, and have a process to handle situations where employees are not meeting expectations.
You are not unusual, but you are at an end of the spectrum far from me. I have no qualms about using my true identity for almost all Internet activity. The Internet great because it provides a wonderful way for people everywhere to express themselves, however they may choose. The Internet is a reflection of our online lives. As people reveal more aspects of their lives on the Internet it becomes a more accurate reflection of humanity. If we create false persona's and create false images of ourselves online, we betray the potential and value of the Internet. I think teenagers have an innate understanding of this, which is why they seem to have no shame in what they choose to share. So what if I'm seen with drunk transvestites or taking drugs, or being a dick. Look on the 'net, and you'll see I'm completely normal.
Whatever the record of yourself on the 'net, it is never a complete picture of you, and it can never (due to the observer effect) reveal who you are right at this moment.
You have nothing to be afraid of, so don't fear the future.
I completely agree. Gone are the days of monopolizing what people buy and hear, fake ratings, and astonishingly low standards. It's got little to do with piracy. Rather their entire portfolio has gone from completely dominating the market to disappearing into a blip of quaint obscurity against to the vast universe of music available on the Internet. Their attitude towards their customers hasn't helped them either, but that's what you get when you allow assholes to run the show instead of the artists. Hopefully soon that blip will vanish completely, and the cynical shit-peddlers can go make their millions somewhere else.
I don't think I needed to say anything other than to encourage people to read the actual story and discover for themselves. Do you really think the difference between what Slashdot said and what the article actually says is really so subtle that people would benefit from my 'analysis'? I had something to say (Slashdot editors have slumped to a new low) and I said it. Like most posts on this site, mine was my own opinion. I would expect intelligent people to read the article and either agree or disagree with my criticism.
Slashdot just took a severe dive with this lie. The headline is a lie. The brief is a lie. Read the article and discover the truth for yourself. If this site continues to head down this complely disreputable path, I'll go somewhere else. It's not like there aren't good and honest alternatives out there.
For crying out loud editors, put aside your greed (for that's the most likely motivation for this) and get some integrity.
The owners of this site might do well to consider just firing the editorial staff for FUD-mongering in the worst form.
And before you mod this out of existence, consider that I've probably been a Slashdot member for a hell of a lot longer than you, and I may just know what I'm talking about when I express my disgust at this slide into mediocrity and irrelavance.
This might be practical for simply preventing happy snappers from taking photos of things you'd rather not, but I fail to see how this will prevent determined people from getting the pictures. For starters, a long tight baffle attached to the lens of a conceiled camera would be very difficult for the system to pick up on, *and* it would be very difficult for the light beam to get to the lense as well.
The more practical and up-front approach would be to x-ray everybody and take their cameras off them.
Well you assume I'm basing my opinions only on the mass-media. Also I think there is a knee-jerk reaction to views such as my own, which is to say that I, or my sources of information, are inherently "anti-American", and therefore without merit.
It is not surprising that the U.K., being a partner-in-crime of the U.S. has a similar disregard for privacy and personal liberty, and Iran is just one of many other countries with extremely bad governement. I fail to see how pointing to Tony and Mahmoud and how naughty they are too makes the actions of the U.S. government any less dispicable.
You might be able to say that things aren't so bad now, but what I and many other people are seeing is a decline into something terrible. The U.S. government knows better than to introduce draconian measures without some considerable marketing and fear-mongering. We must be able to spy on you, they say, so that we can catch the terrorists that lie in our midst, the terrorists under your bed. The real truth is that terrorism is relatively harmless by itself, but so shocking that it provides the perfect justification for war and conquest, and for stripping away the principles prescribed in the U.S. constitution.
(Nandor (the pot-smoking politician) is still there in parliament, and there are still concerns over the 'brain-drain', as they call it. It's mostly related to prior government's brilliant idea to abandon our formerly free tertiary education system in favour of a user-pays system that leaves graduates with huge debts even before they start their careers. That, combined with pretty heavy taxes (when the governement has a massive budget surplus), gives many people pause, and some just pack up and leave.)
As much as we in New Zealand make regular fun of the United States and it's people (and the monkey in charge), and as much as we feel disgust and anger over the war-mongering and bullying tactics of your corrupt government, I am beginning to feel genuinely afraid for the welfare of the American people. This is a tradgedy, to see decline of the land of the free, and the birth of this new and frightening empire.
I truly hope the economic and political abomination which is now emerging falls much faster than Rome. I have little hope that the American people will do anything, or will even try. They are too sucked in by the corporate happy-face, too poorly educated in the true nature of the world, and too overwhelmed with fear at the hand of the war-maker's spin.
There was a time when I aspired to live in the United States. A land of opportunity as they used to say. Now it's the land of the spied upon, the land of continual corporate, military and religious conquest, the land of the un-free, the land of delusions.
They 'fell' for it because the real people in power (that's *not* Bush and *not* Blair) pushed an agenda through their various influences which would make them richer and more powerful. The erosion of human rights in the name of 'terrorism' is a sure sign that their strategies are working well. Terrorist acts are about the most pathetic and least effective way for anyone to attack a country. Even the 9/11 incident had a very low direct effect in real terms on the lives of U.S. citizens, and yet the government, with the compliance of the U.S. media (which is a complete joke) has used it to justify war, breaking international law, domestic spying, torture, removal of civil liberties, huge increases in military spending, etc., etc. Who's worse - terrorists who kill a few thousands, or the tens of thousands killed by the U.S. and U.K. governments and all the other evil they commit?
Yay! It's YetAnotherAppleProductLaunch time. Why aren't we bored yet? Moore's Law should have been something like "Every eighteen months twice as many product launches will occur". You might be interested now, but will you still be interested when there are a thousand product launches a day? Sooner or later people will turn their attention to the more interesting genuine innovations which occur more and more regularly (but which will inevitably be surpassed by something else). Leave the who-makes-what in the past and concentrate on the inventors who make it all possible. It's scary to think how so few young people are aware of what is happening in front of them. The trend towards ever-faster technological innovation has sufficient credence now to at least acknowlege that humanity as a whole is going to drastically change during in even short lifetimes. Why are so few young people aware of how much things will change during their life? I think the problem is always that the previous generation instills their own expectations onto the next. Most parents can't quite get to grips with just how different their children's life will be. Or not, as it is conceivable that some people well into parenting age may have no idea what their life expectancy is likely to be. It will be interesting to witness the loss of appeal of consumer product launches as their frequency surpasses our ability to keep track of it, and to see where people's attention will then turn. I hope our society is mature enough to adapt and come out healthier as a result. But already we see increasing numbers of people turn to old reassurances: war, religious fundamentalism, commercial and territorial expansionism. And little wonder we have so many people medicating themselves 24 hours a day just to cope with the demands of modern life. I have to go now. I've heard AMD is about to announce a new chip...
I think the fundamental omission you are making here is the role the U.S. (along with France, Britain, and others) has had in creating and perpetuating the turmoil in the Middle East.
Get together with others who feel similarly. Get out there on the streets, on your cell phones, on the Internet, with a consistant message. Tell people they need to find the truth, and tell them how to find the truth. Tell people how to stage a peaceful revolution, and show courage. If the few in the U.S. who really care stand up and show how the American people are being cheated of the good and responsible government they all deserve, then things can change.
But if you do nothing, perhaps hoping that things will improve by themselves, or that someother brave revolutionary souls will stand up on your behalf, you will grow old and die in sadness.
Well I'm a pacifist so no I don't think weapons will do anybody any good. For starters violence by the people usually takes the form of riots, which is usually good justification for the government to bring in the army. It is also makes good media spin, showing the government doing everything possible to save the country from falling into chaos.
> If the votes are rigged, then how do you know anyone even voted for him?
Well my take on this is that if a people do little or nothing about rigged elections, they are still responsible for who's in government. George shouldn't have won the first election, but you, as a country, let him get in anyway, as if you voted him in. There could have been enormous civil unrest (strikes, vigils, rallies, etc.), but you did nothing. And look at the mess this half-wit has got you into.
That's right, I'm saying that it's not a disease. Beating your wife or kids isn't a disease. Driving to a bar to get drunk and then driving home again isn't a disease. Doing something because you find it hard not to is not a sign that you have some kind of disease, it's merely a sign that you are lacking in self-control and are neglecting your personal responsibility. There are all sorts of causes of this behaviour, but in most cases the way to get back on track is to take personal responsibility for your actions, plain and simple. The sad thing about kids today, very much the world over, is that they are not taught the right skills for dealing with all of the distractions and temptations which are part of modern life. Too much television, too little responsibility, too lax and cowardly an education system, a warped sense of values, etc., etc. There are millions of young adults out there who can't even look after themselves, let alone handle drugs and sex.
Anyway, back to pot smokers as criminals. I smoke pot. My friends smoke pot. In fact around 30% of my country's population smoke pot. That would make, under our laws (which are basically the same as those in the U.S.) 30% of the population criminals. This to me is nuts. I have a job, I have a wife, I have a kid. I smoke when the time for smoking is right, usually on a friday or saturday night. I like to make music when I'm irie. It's something I do in my own time, in my own home, without causing trouble or harm to anybody else. I've been smoking pot for twenty years now. I'm not a 'stoner', I just prefer it over alcholol. If this is a crime, then the law that makes it a crime is a stupid one and it should be abolished.
To say that someone is a criminal is to say they should be reviled, or punished, or treated. Pot smoking should not be a crime, because pot smokers deserve none of the stigma of the criminal label.
Well from the perspective of most people outside the U.S.A., Americans seem to be happy with a powerful, corrupt government controlled by corporate and military interests. You voted one of those space monkeys from the 60's in as President, and seem to be a country to be utterly sucked in by the lies you are told, no matter how laughable they are.
Your take on democracy is a joke, and you don't seem to care while your over-inflated military launches illegal invasions against countries with oil or strategic significance. Your secret service and other agencies and corporations prop up dictators while it suites them (e.g. Saddam Hussein, Pervez Musharraf, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the Teliban), giving them power, sophisticated weapons of mass destruction (missiles, illegal armaments, fighter jets), all while turning a blind eye to their various crimes (genocide, drug trafficking, torture, etc.), and of course giving them lots and lots of money.
You don't care about corruption at home (e.g. Florida vote rigging), you don't care about inaction at home (e.g. New Orleans), you don't care that you have a completely insane attitude to firearms (everybody should have one (which the rest of the world sees as ludicrous)), drugs (the war on drugs can be won, all pot smokers are criminals, drug abuse is a disease (for crying out loud)), etc., etc.), and you actually voted in George W. Bush. Is that guy really the very best example of humanity you could find to be your surpreme leader?
To the rest of the Western world, and then some, the U.S. is a country of lazy, fat, stupid, nut jobs who are too pathetic to question their leaders, question their government, or question the U.S. democratic system which keeps things as bad as they are. You are quite simply hopeless. All (a very few of) you do is winge and wonder how your rights could be slowly ebbing away and why nobody cares. Well *YOU* don't care, or you'd be protesting in the streets, you'd be throwing down your governement, you'd be routing out corruption, you'd curtail the corporations who would otherwise bleed the world dry for the sake of their shareholders' greed.
A polling application is just the kind of problem you could see in a programming competition. Why doesn't someone with some whoopass cred and some cash put together a competition. You'd get a bunch of people working towards a great goal (correct implementation of an important part of the democratic process), transparency and public input (after the functional framework is complete). I know that the software is only part of the problem, but perhaps a competition would stimulate a bit more public participation.
What a mess that is. No doubt, just like previous versions of Window$ the most crippled version will have the exact same code base as the most-featured version. Won't be long before the hacks are out for turning one type of Window$ into another.
And talk about confusion! Linux vendors are all going to be saying "Gnome", "KDE" or "both", and M$ is going to try to sell six different options. Are consumers going to know the difference? Will they get the version that supports the X-Box just in case they get one? Why doesn't everybody get improved encryption and security? Surely Mom and Pop's banking information is worth protecting just as much as company data...
Microsoft has really screwed up this time. They've had too many brain-storming sessions by the look of it:o)
Slashdot Mirror
I am absolutely terrible at delaying gratification (ADHD side effect), but I have been very pleased to note that my 3 year-old does it routinely. When given a treat, he'll often have a nibble, and store the rest away for later. I suspect it's a fairly natural stage that kids go through, but it requires encouragement to become established for life. Similarly, kids will go through stages where they exhibit pretty negative traits, and parents should respond by discouraging those behaviors (don't hit your sister!).
For people not connected to the technological world, heavy use of electronic devices might appear to be some kind of addiction. I feel sorry for those people, because when the singularity comes, they will be unfortunate casualties. Games are merely an alternate reality in which people can live quite happily as long as it's sustainable. Once we're connected to the 'net through myriads of implanted devices to have those devices disabled would be devastating.
This is a fight that cannot be won. There's no way businesses can successfully wage war on personal activity at work. What they can do is clearly define what is expected out of each employee, and have a process to handle situations where employees are not meeting expectations.
You are not unusual, but you are at an end of the spectrum far from me. I have no qualms about using my true identity for almost all Internet activity. The Internet great because it provides a wonderful way for people everywhere to express themselves, however they may choose. The Internet is a reflection of our online lives. As people reveal more aspects of their lives on the Internet it becomes a more accurate reflection of humanity. If we create false persona's and create false images of ourselves online, we betray the potential and value of the Internet. I think teenagers have an innate understanding of this, which is why they seem to have no shame in what they choose to share. So what if I'm seen with drunk transvestites or taking drugs, or being a dick. Look on the 'net, and you'll see I'm completely normal.
Whatever the record of yourself on the 'net, it is never a complete picture of you, and it can never (due to the observer effect) reveal who you are right at this moment.
You have nothing to be afraid of, so don't fear the future.
I completely agree. Gone are the days of monopolizing what people buy and hear, fake ratings, and astonishingly low standards. It's got little to do with piracy. Rather their entire portfolio has gone from completely dominating the market to disappearing into a blip of quaint obscurity against to the vast universe of music available on the Internet. Their attitude towards their customers hasn't helped them either, but that's what you get when you allow assholes to run the show instead of the artists. Hopefully soon that blip will vanish completely, and the cynical shit-peddlers can go make their millions somewhere else.
Surely the manner in which he obtained his information was illegal.
I don't think I needed to say anything other than to encourage people to read the actual story and discover for themselves. Do you really think the difference between what Slashdot said and what the article actually says is really so subtle that people would benefit from my 'analysis'? I had something to say (Slashdot editors have slumped to a new low) and I said it. Like most posts on this site, mine was my own opinion. I would expect intelligent people to read the article and either agree or disagree with my criticism.
Slashdot just took a severe dive with this lie. The headline is a lie. The brief is a lie. Read the article and discover the truth for yourself. If this site continues to head down this complely disreputable path, I'll go somewhere else. It's not like there aren't good and honest alternatives out there.
For crying out loud editors, put aside your greed (for that's the most likely motivation for this) and get some integrity.
The owners of this site might do well to consider just firing the editorial staff for FUD-mongering in the worst form.
And before you mod this out of existence, consider that I've probably been a Slashdot member for a hell of a lot longer than you, and I may just know what I'm talking about when I express my disgust at this slide into mediocrity and irrelavance.
This might be practical for simply preventing happy snappers from taking photos of things you'd rather not, but I fail to see how this will prevent determined people from getting the pictures. For starters, a long tight baffle attached to the lens of a conceiled camera would be very difficult for the system to pick up on, *and* it would be very difficult for the light beam to get to the lense as well.
The more practical and up-front approach would be to x-ray everybody and take their cameras off them.
Needs Another Seven Astronauts...
Well you assume I'm basing my opinions only on the mass-media. Also I think there is a knee-jerk reaction to views such as my own, which is to say that I, or my sources of information, are inherently "anti-American", and therefore without merit.
It is not surprising that the U.K., being a partner-in-crime of the U.S. has a similar disregard for privacy and personal liberty, and Iran is just one of many other countries with extremely bad governement. I fail to see how pointing to Tony and Mahmoud and how naughty they are too makes the actions of the U.S. government any less dispicable.
You might be able to say that things aren't so bad now, but what I and many other people are seeing is a decline into something terrible. The U.S. government knows better than to introduce draconian measures without some considerable marketing and fear-mongering. We must be able to spy on you, they say, so that we can catch the terrorists that lie in our midst, the terrorists under your bed. The real truth is that terrorism is relatively harmless by itself, but so shocking that it provides the perfect justification for war and conquest, and for stripping away the principles prescribed in the U.S. constitution.
(Nandor (the pot-smoking politician) is still there in parliament, and there are still concerns over the 'brain-drain', as they call it. It's mostly related to prior government's brilliant idea to abandon our formerly free tertiary education system in favour of a user-pays system that leaves graduates with huge debts even before they start their careers. That, combined with pretty heavy taxes (when the governement has a massive budget surplus), gives many people pause, and some just pack up and leave.)
As much as we in New Zealand make regular fun of the United States and it's people (and the monkey in charge), and as much as we feel disgust and anger over the war-mongering and bullying tactics of your corrupt government, I am beginning to feel genuinely afraid for the welfare of the American people. This is a tradgedy, to see decline of the land of the free, and the birth of this new and frightening empire.
I truly hope the economic and political abomination which is now emerging falls much faster than Rome. I have little hope that the American people will do anything, or will even try. They are too sucked in by the corporate happy-face, too poorly educated in the true nature of the world, and too overwhelmed with fear at the hand of the war-maker's spin.
There was a time when I aspired to live in the United States. A land of opportunity as they used to say. Now it's the land of the spied upon, the land of continual corporate, military and religious conquest, the land of the un-free, the land of delusions.
They 'fell' for it because the real people in power (that's *not* Bush and *not* Blair) pushed an agenda through their various influences which would make them richer and more powerful. The erosion of human rights in the name of 'terrorism' is a sure sign that their strategies are working well. Terrorist acts are about the most pathetic and least effective way for anyone to attack a country. Even the 9/11 incident had a very low direct effect in real terms on the lives of U.S. citizens, and yet the government, with the compliance of the U.S. media (which is a complete joke) has used it to justify war, breaking international law, domestic spying, torture, removal of civil liberties, huge increases in military spending, etc., etc. Who's worse - terrorists who kill a few thousands, or the tens of thousands killed by the U.S. and U.K. governments and all the other evil they commit?
Yay! It's YetAnotherAppleProductLaunch time. Why aren't we bored yet? Moore's Law should have been something like "Every eighteen months twice as many product launches will occur". You might be interested now, but will you still be interested when there are a thousand product launches a day? Sooner or later people will turn their attention to the more interesting genuine innovations which occur more and more regularly (but which will inevitably be surpassed by something else). Leave the who-makes-what in the past and concentrate on the inventors who make it all possible. It's scary to think how so few young people are aware of what is happening in front of them. The trend towards ever-faster technological innovation has sufficient credence now to at least acknowlege that humanity as a whole is going to drastically change during in even short lifetimes. Why are so few young people aware of how much things will change during their life? I think the problem is always that the previous generation instills their own expectations onto the next. Most parents can't quite get to grips with just how different their children's life will be. Or not, as it is conceivable that some people well into parenting age may have no idea what their life expectancy is likely to be. It will be interesting to witness the loss of appeal of consumer product launches as their frequency surpasses our ability to keep track of it, and to see where people's attention will then turn. I hope our society is mature enough to adapt and come out healthier as a result. But already we see increasing numbers of people turn to old reassurances: war, religious fundamentalism, commercial and territorial expansionism. And little wonder we have so many people medicating themselves 24 hours a day just to cope with the demands of modern life. I have to go now. I've heard AMD is about to announce a new chip...
I think the fundamental omission you are making here is the role the U.S. (along with France, Britain, and others) has had in creating and perpetuating the turmoil in the Middle East.
Replace your leadership with worthy individuals. The rest will follow.
Get together with others who feel similarly. Get out there on the streets, on your cell phones, on the Internet, with a consistant message. Tell people they need to find the truth, and tell them how to find the truth. Tell people how to stage a peaceful revolution, and show courage. If the few in the U.S. who really care stand up and show how the American people are being cheated of the good and responsible government they all deserve, then things can change.
But if you do nothing, perhaps hoping that things will improve by themselves, or that someother brave revolutionary souls will stand up on your behalf, you will grow old and die in sadness.
I completely agree with your sentiment. Keep talking :o)
Well I'm a pacifist so no I don't think weapons will do anybody any good. For starters violence by the people usually takes the form of riots, which is usually good justification for the government to bring in the army. It is also makes good media spin, showing the government doing everything possible to save the country from falling into chaos.
> If the votes are rigged, then how do you know anyone even voted for him?
Well my take on this is that if a people do little or nothing about rigged elections, they are still responsible for who's in government. George shouldn't have won the first election, but you, as a country, let him get in anyway, as if you voted him in. There could have been enormous civil unrest (strikes, vigils, rallies, etc.), but you did nothing. And look at the mess this half-wit has got you into.
That's right, I'm saying that it's not a disease. Beating your wife or kids isn't a disease. Driving to a bar to get drunk and then driving home again isn't a disease. Doing something because you find it hard not to is not a sign that you have some kind of disease, it's merely a sign that you are lacking in self-control and are neglecting your personal responsibility. There are all sorts of causes of this behaviour, but in most cases the way to get back on track is to take personal responsibility for your actions, plain and simple. The sad thing about kids today, very much the world over, is that they are not taught the right skills for dealing with all of the distractions and temptations which are part of modern life. Too much television, too little responsibility, too lax and cowardly an education system, a warped sense of values, etc., etc. There are millions of young adults out there who can't even look after themselves, let alone handle drugs and sex.
Anyway, back to pot smokers as criminals. I smoke pot. My friends smoke pot. In fact around 30% of my country's population smoke pot. That would make, under our laws (which are basically the same as those in the U.S.) 30% of the population criminals. This to me is nuts. I have a job, I have a wife, I have a kid. I smoke when the time for smoking is right, usually on a friday or saturday night. I like to make music when I'm irie. It's something I do in my own time, in my own home, without causing trouble or harm to anybody else. I've been smoking pot for twenty years now. I'm not a 'stoner', I just prefer it over alcholol. If this is a crime, then the law that makes it a crime is a stupid one and it should be abolished.
To say that someone is a criminal is to say they should be reviled, or punished, or treated. Pot smoking should not be a crime, because pot smokers deserve none of the stigma of the criminal label.
Well from the perspective of most people outside the U.S.A., Americans seem to be happy with a powerful, corrupt government controlled by corporate and military interests. You voted one of those space monkeys from the 60's in as President, and seem to be a country to be utterly sucked in by the lies you are told, no matter how laughable they are.
Your take on democracy is a joke, and you don't seem to care while your over-inflated military launches illegal invasions against countries with oil or strategic significance. Your secret service and other agencies and corporations prop up dictators while it suites them (e.g. Saddam Hussein, Pervez Musharraf, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the Teliban), giving them power, sophisticated weapons of mass destruction (missiles, illegal armaments, fighter jets), all while turning a blind eye to their various crimes (genocide, drug trafficking, torture, etc.), and of course giving them lots and lots of money.
You don't care about corruption at home (e.g. Florida vote rigging), you don't care about inaction at home (e.g. New Orleans), you don't care that you have a completely insane attitude to firearms (everybody should have one (which the rest of the world sees as ludicrous)), drugs (the war on drugs can be won, all pot smokers are criminals, drug abuse is a disease (for crying out loud)), etc., etc.), and you actually voted in George W. Bush. Is that guy really the very best example of humanity you could find to be your surpreme leader?
To the rest of the Western world, and then some, the U.S. is a country of lazy, fat, stupid, nut jobs who are too pathetic to question their leaders, question their government, or question the U.S. democratic system which keeps things as bad as they are. You are quite simply hopeless. All (a very few of) you do is winge and wonder how your rights could be slowly ebbing away and why nobody cares. Well *YOU* don't care, or you'd be protesting in the streets, you'd be throwing down your governement, you'd be routing out corruption, you'd curtail the corporations who would otherwise bleed the world dry for the sake of their shareholders' greed.
IBM created a Linux watch *with* Bluetooth now...
_ e.htm/
http://www.research.ibm.com/trl/projects/ngm/wp10
A polling application is just the kind of problem you could see in a programming competition. Why doesn't someone with some whoopass cred and some cash put together a competition. You'd get a bunch of people working towards a great goal (correct implementation of an important part of the democratic process), transparency and public input (after the functional framework is complete). I know that the software is only part of the problem, but perhaps a competition would stimulate a bit more public participation.
What a mess that is. No doubt, just like previous versions of Window$ the most crippled version will have the exact same code base as the most-featured version. Won't be long before the hacks are out for turning one type of Window$ into another.
:o)
And talk about confusion! Linux vendors are all going to be saying "Gnome", "KDE" or "both", and M$ is going to try to sell six different options. Are consumers going to know the difference? Will they get the version that supports the X-Box just in case they get one? Why doesn't everybody get improved encryption and security? Surely Mom and Pop's banking information is worth protecting just as much as company data...
Microsoft has really screwed up this time. They've had too many brain-storming sessions by the look of it
you don't actually have to land on the moon?