Seriously, I shoot panoramas with a Canon 1Ds. I can fill up 3 1 Gig cards in an hour with ease. I only HAVE 3 1 gig cards. I had a digital wallet which would download in the camera bag, but it was a POS and the battery would die after three cards... and the LCD was unreadable. I'm desperate for a solution and a decent card reader for the iPod would be the business.
Great -- so let's get this straight. I should carry around with me:
-- a 120Gb HD in a USB 2.0 enclosure, plus a mains cable, plus some shockproofing, plus a mains converter in case I need to use it in the car -- a supply of CDs, which I must remember to burn every time any of my data changes, and which I have to stuff in my overstuffed wallet -- my iPod, which I carry around with me anyway
I always have it with me, and it has my emergency backup documents plus it functions as an emergency boot disc. It also has all my contacts, registrations, passwords etc. Obviously it functions as a transfer disc too. The only thing it doesn't do well is function as a card reader, which would be the icing on the cake. Oh yeah and it plays music.
I have a nice SAK that I use for back country camping, during which time the USB drive does not get much of a workout.
A huge scandal is exactly what this Diebold fiasco needs, and nothing is going to happen until it does. Every ambitious local journo in the country should be assiduously courting sources in the local elections offices. Eventually someone will Watergate it. That's the only way it's going to change.
I know this because I was once an investigative journalist. You would happen upon a story that seemed so shocking it was unbelievable, and when you asked around, everyone involved would say "Oh, yeah, that's right, everyone knows about that".
In one case (abuse at a psychiatric hospital) there were 600 documented allegations of abuse which had been investigated. Not one had been upheld, because the evidence of psychiatric patients was held to be unreliable. When we exposed it, it became national headline news for several days and resulted in year long government inquiry and, finally, change.
But everyone already knew about it.
Diebold is going to blow up horribly and sad to say the sooner it does the better. People are not interested in potential vulnerabilities, only post-facto scandals.
That's such a fucked up point of view. I don't mind things being complicated, but I do mind people fooling themselves that they're simple when they're not. Unless you are using some definition of the word 'simple' that I was previously unaware of?
For anyone who isn't a Unix-head, installing packages like mySQL and then configuring all of the environment variables to get your PHP-driven website working on a remote server is *extremely* difficult.
You think it's easy because you've done it many times and you're familiar with the gestalt: well, guess what? I think using a large format camera is pretty easy, but I wouldn't be arrogant enough to call it simple, or patronise someone who'd never used one by telling them 'Now, dear, you better stick to snapshots, hadn't you?'
The lack of good install scripts or instructions for many packages is a sign of a failure on the part of the developers, not the users.
I didn't say they should switch to Unix. I just said that they have to move away from their current codebase, and that that is extremely difficult while maintaining backwards compatibility.
You may be right about the NT kernel but the problem resides in the layer above that.
I think it's very hard for Microsoft wrt Longhorn. If they re-use code from win32, then it's more of the same; if they write new stuff then I seriously worry about the quality control.
To put my point a different way: Longhorn ships in 2006, say. It will take many corporate users 12-24 months to make a decision to commit to an upgrade path (and many of them longer than that!). So around 2008 is a reasonable ballpark for the upgrade.
Meantime essentially the same functionality, in an environment whose security is if not guaranteed, at least not fundamentally compromised, is available on *nix based platforms which have another four years to eat Microsoft's lunch before they face real competition.
Maybe Longhorn will be an unmitigated triumph. But past history is the best guide to the future. I'm not shorting my Microsoft stock (actually I don't own any) but I wouldn't be buying right now either.
The other weight round Microsoft's neck is the architecture of the PC itself but let's not go there.
The iPod's core functionality for me is as a data repository. That includes music, so it plugs into my car stereo. But it is also one of my backup drives, and emergency boot disk, plus it has all my contacts and calendars on it. Mine is one of the old ones so it doesn't record audio, but if it did I would certainly make use of that functionality.
I could care less if I can watch movies on it -- I think the portable movie-player market is tiny anyway. Functionality that WOULD be great for me would be a firewire CF card-reader that was fast enough to transfer 1GB microdrives while I'm shooting with my 1Ds. The current Belkin adapter is simply too slow to be of use.
It makes sense to add wireless to the iPod because as I say its core functionality seems to be data storage and data streaming. It does NOT want to be a portmanteau data-display device. I really hope they don't go there.
Of course once it has some wireless capability, you're gonna be able to check email with it, right?
I wasn't criticizing absentee ballots which I agree are necessary and can be done well. I was criticizing the idea of using e-voting to increase the levels of democratic participation.
The problem with using absentee ballots to route around black box voting is that it doesn't remove the problem of the black boxes themselves.
One great aspect of paper ballots is that most frauds are quite hard to commit. There's no equivalent of adding 350 votes with a few keystrokes. You actually have to either compromise the physical security of the system -- bust some locks, steal a ballot box -- or vote fraudulently 350 times, which is hard to organize since there are real people who may see you doing it, or know that you aren't the person you represent yourself as.
Moreover, the more people required in a conspiracy, the harder it is to (a) commit and (b) keep quiet. Paper ballots are quite human-intensive and so there are many opportunities to spot frauds, which require physical, non-remote, observable actions.
I didn't say that paper ballots were fraud-immune. However a paper ballot IS a very good solution to the voting problem because it provides a simple audit trail. Particularly in the case of democracy, we should follow the precautionary principle and not replace one system with another until the new system has been proved to be better.
You know, only the US (of developed Western democracies at least) makes such a big fricken' mess out of the whole voting process. Pieces of paper and ballot boxes actually work. They may be slower, they may be more expensive, but they WORK and they are transparent. They are scaleable and the hardware is cheap. Recounts are easy and verifiable.
Prediction: the US will be convulsed over the reliability and fairness of its elections procedures every four years for the forseeable future.
Countries using ballot papers and boxes will get their results a bit slower, but will not be convulsed.
As for the argument that e-voting makes it easier for people to vote, thus increasing democratic participation, all I can say is, if you care so little about your vote that you can't be bothered to leave the house to cast it (I"m assuming those who are housebound are catered for) you don't deserve to vote.
Sheesh. I have used up my 'fricken' quotient for today but it was worth it.
Some old technology is very good. Like the bicycle. When I worked in TV we used to bike tapes around rather than using the internet, because as our tech director used to say, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a man on a motorbike".
Well, it's been running for a while over in Cupertino, you can guarantee that.
The only way that Mac OS could ever survive in an x86 environment would be on a tightly specified hardware platform (just as the Apple hardware platform is tightly controlled). One of the reasons the Mac OS works as nicely as it does is that the range of target hardware platforms is VERY small.
So my guess is you'd still have to buy an Apple computer, only it would be an Apple PC. This of course is what Apple would want to do anyway, since they view themselves as a hardware manufacturer.
I think they're biding their time. At some point it may make sense. That's why they keep the x86 version running.
Unix-like systems will win because the problem is already solved. There is no percentage in any corporation going through the horrendous pain of developing and debugging and securing a new OS when they can just license BSD or something similar. Unix will last until a new computational paradigm emerges, which could be a long while.
I don't *want* them to ditch compatibility. I could care less. I use a Mac mainly and only fire up the PC for games and the odd app I need to use. However if they *don't* ditch compatibility they are doomed to inherit all or at least most of the insecurities and stupidities of the current Windows codebase.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that if Microsoft does what you suggest, it is a suicide note because users *will* migrate to more modern systems. Windows will become the computational equivalent of a steam car.
Yes, it will still run on firewood and water. But we no longer drive steam cars, and there's a reason.
What Microsoft REALLY needs is a next-gen OS. The current codebase isn't going to hack it. The delays on Longhorn are an absolute giveaway. If Longhorn had come out in 2004, it would already have been out of date. 2006? Don't make me laugh.
Unix-like systems are going to win out in the end. That is why Mac's OS X looks like a smarter move every day.
Microsoft has so much cash and so much clout that it will take a long time to die, but it is doomed to do so unless at some point it ditches backwards compatibility and the current codebase and does something new.
OK, the first thing you should know is that FPS gamers like me have a whole different take on the mouse thing. We want insanely high resolution, massless, frictionless mice with lots of buttons we can map to ordinance.
You know, the thing about mice is that the technology advances in spurts. Optical was a big spurt, at least when the resolution started to improve. However, wireless was a big BACKWARDS spurt since the mice are now heavy as hell and gobble batteries at a ridiculous rate. I retired my wireless and went back to the wiry MX500 which is great.
However it still requires an exotic mousepad (currently a large dinnermat from Habitat which my friend Rick discovered was the slickest and most trackable mousing surface ever invented). Continuing the culinary theme, my desk is an acid-etched glass dining table from Ikea (awsome desk, by the way -- and I use their kitchen cabinets as office storage) which would be a ROCKING mousepad if an optical mouse which actually track on it. But it won't.
So, is this a dodo or a turkey vulture (very successful in these parts)? Only time and money will tell.
...isn't this a very long-winded way of saying 'the internet will soon have a substantial wireless component'?
I can't see what's new here at all. Yes, there will have to be a few more technologies for managing ad-hoc networks. But that's about it.
As for us all sharing our resources in one warm fuzzy anarcho-syndicalist wireless IT hive, dream on. (Or, more precisely, give T-Mobile your first-born).
If the maker of a P2P network should be held accountable for piracy committed with their software, why can't gun manufacturers be held responsible for murders committed with their guns?
If the 'induce' principle is worth a damn, it should be a general legal principle rather than a single piece of legislation aimed at a particular target.
Okay, I'm not with the MPAA or the RIAA but I am a professional screenwriter and director, and I've recorded a few CDs as a musician, too, so my entire livelihood relies on people paying for my shit.
The problem is that both the music and movie industries have consistently focused on notional lost revenues instead of revenues gained. During the last 25 years the penetration of CD, DVD and MP3 players has massively increased but instead of using the net to leverage this opportunity, the industry has instead focused on the entirely bogus idea that people who pirate would otherwise have paid for what they pirated.
Imagine if, five years ago, the movie studios and big music recording companies had aggressively pursued digital distribution via the internet for their content instead of leaving it to Napster and subsequently iTunes.
iTunes in particular has shown that the public is totally willing to pay a dollar a song to download high quality music free of malware. I believe the same is going to be true of movies for those who have the bandwidth. By concentrating on the notional lost revenue and forming their wagons into a circle, the companies with most to gain from the net have instead consistently cast themselves as the bad guys. If they had instead embraced digital distribution and implemented a responsible, rational and reasonable DRM strategy they would have won the PR battle and made a lot of money into the process.
The most ridiculous aspect of this is the idea that there was some 'golden age' before piracy. There never was. It was exactly the introduction of easily copiable media -- the audio cassette in fact -- that really opened up the way that the public consumed music (Walkman, anyone?). The MP3 (and MP4) format could, if handled properly, have enormously leveraged the business operations of the audio and movie companies, at the risk of a certain amount of leakage -- the digital equivalent of what happens at Walmart every day.
It baffles me that it is STILL not straightforward to download a legal copy of a song or movie from the distributor's website. (Here in Canada, still no iTunes).
The movie and music industries formula for business success in the internet age would appear to be: point gun at foot; shoot; repeat.
They should make the phone get fatter, uglier and hairier as it gets older, until you can no longer bear to be seen with it and are forced to trade it in for a newer, more expensive model.
Of course if you just want to make a quick call, one of the old models will probably be fine.
Let's not even get into public payphones.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I mean like the guy who spends a year knocking on doors and tracking down people who don't want to be found.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003164/
Thanks -- you're right -- I wasn't really thinking about that.
How much democracy is enough? Or too much? There's an interesting question.
Keep the faith, you'll get there.
Seriously, I shoot panoramas with a Canon 1Ds. I can fill up 3 1 Gig cards in an hour with ease. I only HAVE 3 1 gig cards. I had a digital wallet which would download in the camera bag, but it was a POS and the battery would die after three cards... and the LCD was unreadable. I'm desperate for a solution and a decent card reader for the iPod would be the business.
Great -- so let's get this straight. I should carry around with me:
-- a 120Gb HD in a USB 2.0 enclosure, plus a mains cable, plus some shockproofing, plus a mains converter in case I need to use it in the car
-- a supply of CDs, which I must remember to burn every time any of my data changes, and which I have to stuff in my overstuffed wallet
-- my iPod, which I carry around with me anyway
thanks! you PC guys are great!
Yeah, but the Belkin reader is WAY too slow to be functional when you are trying to download 1 Gb microdrives.
...storage devices.
I always have it with me, and it has my emergency backup documents plus it functions as an emergency boot disc. It also has all my contacts, registrations, passwords etc. Obviously it functions as a transfer disc too. The only thing it doesn't do well is function as a card reader, which would be the icing on the cake. Oh yeah and it plays music.
I have a nice SAK that I use for back country camping, during which time the USB drive does not get much of a workout.
A huge scandal is exactly what this Diebold fiasco needs, and nothing is going to happen until it does. Every ambitious local journo in the country should be assiduously courting sources in the local elections offices. Eventually someone will Watergate it. That's the only way it's going to change.
I know this because I was once an investigative journalist. You would happen upon a story that seemed so shocking it was unbelievable, and when you asked around, everyone involved would say "Oh, yeah, that's right, everyone knows about that".
In one case (abuse at a psychiatric hospital) there were 600 documented allegations of abuse which had been investigated. Not one had been upheld, because the evidence of psychiatric patients was held to be unreliable. When we exposed it, it became national headline news for several days and resulted in year long government inquiry and, finally, change.
But everyone already knew about it.
Diebold is going to blow up horribly and sad to say the sooner it does the better. People are not interested in potential vulnerabilities, only post-facto scandals.
There's a javascript demo of the Diebold Election System on the Diebold site.
e n1.html
Guess what? In Safari 1.3 at least, it doesn't work.
(Try voting for one candidate on each ballot, then on the next page, you appear to have cast no votes, confirmed by 'review').
Try it here: http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/OnLine_Demo/scre
Which of the steps you described was not scriptable?
If it was not scriptable, how come you glossed over that in your explanation?
If it WAS scriptable, how come an install script would 'create problems?'
That's such a fucked up point of view. I don't mind things being complicated, but I do mind people fooling themselves that they're simple when they're not. Unless you are using some definition of the word 'simple' that I was previously unaware of?
For anyone who isn't a Unix-head, installing packages like mySQL and then configuring all of the environment variables to get your PHP-driven website working on a remote server is *extremely* difficult.
You think it's easy because you've done it many times and you're familiar with the gestalt: well, guess what? I think using a large format camera is pretty easy, but I wouldn't be arrogant enough to call it simple, or patronise someone who'd never used one by telling them 'Now, dear, you better stick to snapshots, hadn't you?'
The lack of good install scripts or instructions for many packages is a sign of a failure on the part of the developers, not the users.
For feck's sake. That's the SIMPLEST install?
Simple to me means 'double click the installer, then type your password when it asks for it'.
I didn't say they should switch to Unix. I just said that they have to move away from their current codebase, and that that is extremely difficult while maintaining backwards compatibility.
You may be right about the NT kernel but the problem resides in the layer above that.
I think it's very hard for Microsoft wrt Longhorn. If they re-use code from win32, then it's more of the same; if they write new stuff then I seriously worry about the quality control.
To put my point a different way: Longhorn ships in 2006, say. It will take many corporate users 12-24 months to make a decision to commit to an upgrade path (and many of them longer than that!). So around 2008 is a reasonable ballpark for the upgrade.
Meantime essentially the same functionality, in an environment whose security is if not guaranteed, at least not fundamentally compromised, is available on *nix based platforms which have another four years to eat Microsoft's lunch before they face real competition.
Maybe Longhorn will be an unmitigated triumph. But past history is the best guide to the future. I'm not shorting my Microsoft stock (actually I don't own any) but I wouldn't be buying right now either.
The other weight round Microsoft's neck is the architecture of the PC itself but let's not go there.
The iPod's core functionality for me is as a data repository. That includes music, so it plugs into my car stereo. But it is also one of my backup drives, and emergency boot disk, plus it has all my contacts and calendars on it. Mine is one of the old ones so it doesn't record audio, but if it did I would certainly make use of that functionality.
I could care less if I can watch movies on it -- I think the portable movie-player market is tiny anyway. Functionality that WOULD be great for me would be a firewire CF card-reader that was fast enough to transfer 1GB microdrives while I'm shooting with my 1Ds. The current Belkin adapter is simply too slow to be of use.
It makes sense to add wireless to the iPod because as I say its core functionality seems to be data storage and data streaming. It does NOT want to be a portmanteau data-display device. I really hope they don't go there.
Of course once it has some wireless capability, you're gonna be able to check email with it, right?
Your points are well taken.
I wasn't criticizing absentee ballots which I agree are necessary and can be done well. I was criticizing the idea of using e-voting to increase the levels of democratic participation.
The problem with using absentee ballots to route around black box voting is that it doesn't remove the problem of the black boxes themselves.
One great aspect of paper ballots is that most frauds are quite hard to commit. There's no equivalent of adding 350 votes with a few keystrokes. You actually have to either compromise the physical security of the system -- bust some locks, steal a ballot box -- or vote fraudulently 350 times, which is hard to organize since there are real people who may see you doing it, or know that you aren't the person you represent yourself as.
Moreover, the more people required in a conspiracy, the harder it is to (a) commit and (b) keep quiet. Paper ballots are quite human-intensive and so there are many opportunities to spot frauds, which require physical, non-remote, observable actions.
I didn't say that paper ballots were fraud-immune. However a paper ballot IS a very good solution to the voting problem because it provides a simple audit trail. Particularly in the case of democracy, we should follow the precautionary principle and not replace one system with another until the new system has been proved to be better.
You know, only the US (of developed Western democracies at least) makes such a big fricken' mess out of the whole voting process. Pieces of paper and ballot boxes actually work. They may be slower, they may be more expensive, but they WORK and they are transparent. They are scaleable and the hardware is cheap. Recounts are easy and verifiable.
Prediction: the US will be convulsed over the reliability and fairness of its elections procedures every four years for the forseeable future.
Countries using ballot papers and boxes will get their results a bit slower, but will not be convulsed.
As for the argument that e-voting makes it easier for people to vote, thus increasing democratic participation, all I can say is, if you care so little about your vote that you can't be bothered to leave the house to cast it (I"m assuming those who are housebound are catered for) you don't deserve to vote.
Sheesh. I have used up my 'fricken' quotient for today but it was worth it.
Some old technology is very good. Like the bicycle. When I worked in TV we used to bike tapes around rather than using the internet, because as our tech director used to say, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a man on a motorbike".
Well, it's been running for a while over in Cupertino, you can guarantee that.
The only way that Mac OS could ever survive in an x86 environment would be on a tightly specified hardware platform (just as the Apple hardware platform is tightly controlled). One of the reasons the Mac OS works as nicely as it does is that the range of target hardware platforms is VERY small.
So my guess is you'd still have to buy an Apple computer, only it would be an Apple PC. This of course is what Apple would want to do anyway, since they view themselves as a hardware manufacturer.
I think they're biding their time. At some point it may make sense. That's why they keep the x86 version running.
Unix-like systems will win because the problem is already solved. There is no percentage in any corporation going through the horrendous pain of developing and debugging and securing a new OS when they can just license BSD or something similar. Unix will last until a new computational paradigm emerges, which could be a long while.
I don't *want* them to ditch compatibility. I could care less. I use a Mac mainly and only fire up the PC for games and the odd app I need to use. However if they *don't* ditch compatibility they are doomed to inherit all or at least most of the insecurities and stupidities of the current Windows codebase.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that if Microsoft does what you suggest, it is a suicide note because users *will* migrate to more modern systems. Windows will become the computational equivalent of a steam car.
Yes, it will still run on firewood and water. But we no longer drive steam cars, and there's a reason.
What Microsoft REALLY needs is a next-gen OS. The current codebase isn't going to hack it. The delays on Longhorn are an absolute giveaway. If Longhorn had come out in 2004, it would already have been out of date. 2006? Don't make me laugh.
Unix-like systems are going to win out in the end. That is why Mac's OS X looks like a smarter move every day.
Microsoft has so much cash and so much clout that it will take a long time to die, but it is doomed to do so unless at some point it ditches backwards compatibility and the current codebase and does something new.
You know, the thing about mice is that the technology advances in spurts. Optical was a big spurt, at least when the resolution started to improve. However, wireless was a big BACKWARDS spurt since the mice are now heavy as hell and gobble batteries at a ridiculous rate. I retired my wireless and went back to the wiry MX500 which is great.
However it still requires an exotic mousepad (currently a large dinnermat from Habitat which my friend Rick discovered was the slickest and most trackable mousing surface ever invented). Continuing the culinary theme, my desk is an acid-etched glass dining table from Ikea (awsome desk, by the way -- and I use their kitchen cabinets as office storage) which would be a ROCKING mousepad if an optical mouse which actually track on it. But it won't.
So, is this a dodo or a turkey vulture (very successful in these parts)? Only time and money will tell.
I can't see what's new here at all. Yes, there will have to be a few more technologies for managing ad-hoc networks. But that's about it.
As for us all sharing our resources in one warm fuzzy anarcho-syndicalist wireless IT hive, dream on. (Or, more precisely, give T-Mobile your first-born).
If the maker of a P2P network should be held accountable for piracy committed with their software, why can't gun manufacturers be held responsible for murders committed with their guns?
If the 'induce' principle is worth a damn, it should be a general legal principle rather than a single piece of legislation aimed at a particular target.
Okay, I'm not with the MPAA or the RIAA but I am a professional screenwriter and director, and I've recorded a few CDs as a musician, too, so my entire livelihood relies on people paying for my shit. The problem is that both the music and movie industries have consistently focused on notional lost revenues instead of revenues gained. During the last 25 years the penetration of CD, DVD and MP3 players has massively increased but instead of using the net to leverage this opportunity, the industry has instead focused on the entirely bogus idea that people who pirate would otherwise have paid for what they pirated. Imagine if, five years ago, the movie studios and big music recording companies had aggressively pursued digital distribution via the internet for their content instead of leaving it to Napster and subsequently iTunes. iTunes in particular has shown that the public is totally willing to pay a dollar a song to download high quality music free of malware. I believe the same is going to be true of movies for those who have the bandwidth. By concentrating on the notional lost revenue and forming their wagons into a circle, the companies with most to gain from the net have instead consistently cast themselves as the bad guys. If they had instead embraced digital distribution and implemented a responsible, rational and reasonable DRM strategy they would have won the PR battle and made a lot of money into the process. The most ridiculous aspect of this is the idea that there was some 'golden age' before piracy. There never was. It was exactly the introduction of easily copiable media -- the audio cassette in fact -- that really opened up the way that the public consumed music (Walkman, anyone?). The MP3 (and MP4) format could, if handled properly, have enormously leveraged the business operations of the audio and movie companies, at the risk of a certain amount of leakage -- the digital equivalent of what happens at Walmart every day. It baffles me that it is STILL not straightforward to download a legal copy of a song or movie from the distributor's website. (Here in Canada, still no iTunes). The movie and music industries formula for business success in the internet age would appear to be: point gun at foot; shoot; repeat.
Ha ha! Fastseduction.com is slashdotted.
They should make the phone get fatter, uglier and hairier as it gets older, until you can no longer bear to be seen with it and are forced to trade it in for a newer, more expensive model. Of course if you just want to make a quick call, one of the old models will probably be fine. Let's not even get into public payphones.