What you're looking for is called a system administrator. Any server on the Internet requires one. Either you're willing to spend the time to learn how to be that person, or you should be paying someone else to do it. There is no piece of software that can do it for you. Believing there is will result in downtime and, sooner or later, someone hacking your server.
Automation and user-administration leads to a more productive systems administrator.
Last I checked that means if I put recyclables in the recycle bin the community is effectively stealing 9 pence (or whatever that is in real money) from me. It isn't like they have a right to any of it. They ought to be crediting my bill.
Not really. They're providing the infrastructure and volume to do this properly. If you want to save up your recyclables until you have a garage packed with cans and then sell them, that's up to you. However, that's impractical. The only way to do this is to have a large group of people in on it and trucks, processing plants, etc.
So financially and environmentally, it is good to fight the push for ethanol.
No, not environmentally. Environmentally, ethanol is a zero-sum polluter(for carbon dioxide anyway). The CO2 emitted by vehicles is sucked up by the next crop of corn so the pollution stays even. The only problem is figuring out what to do with the dinosaur byproducts we already put out.
Name one, just one person who has been been sent a nastygram for ripping CDs for strictly personal use. Then I'll accept what you say as something other than tiresome, ignorant histrionics.
How about everyone who's ever ripped a bunch of MP3s. Have you heard of DRM? That assumes we're all pirates and prevents us from putting the music where we want it. Granted nobody has been sued for ripping a CD but we're all penalized for trying it. And on top of that, the DMCA prevents us from bypassing DRM techniques to make MP3s for our portable music devices.
Those were the good ol' days, when we actually used the command line (UNIX). The bosses started demanding that everything be automated as a "push button" program that anyone could use.
That was the second to the last bit of fun in IT. When we were programming the scripts to automate: passwd reset, archive data, cleanup/tmp. The actual last bit of fun was using our own automation.
Every DMV tester I know of would fail someone who backed up using their mirrors. Check your driving handbook from your local DMV. Dollars to donuts it says to physically turn around and look while backing up.
I used the mirrors in my test, didn't get penalized.
That's still besides the point. After your test, it's a whole new world buddy. There's no law telling you how to back up your car.
doesn't sound right. you shouldn't be using your mirrors for backing up unless you're driving something 25ft long and have a CDL and so forth. Turn your head instead.
I for one find it much easier to get a feel for the car's dimensions using mirrors and not half-breaking my neck trying to look backwards. It's all preference really but don't go trying to say using mirrors are an incorrect way to do it.
I understand that there is an argument that people should vote strategically.
To take a quote from a recent documentary I saw: Strategic voting forces you "...to pick the lesser of two evils. All you end up with at the end is evil." I think people need to start thinking about the long-term goals instead of the short term. In the short term, yes, you can have a slightly better party but at the heart, they still both suck and you don't want them to both keep getting worse.
So, I don't seek out and vote for some tiny, green, socialist party. For all their pretty rhetoric today, I believe they will be just as bad as a Bush, Blair or Pol Pot tomorrow.
True, when one party rises to the top and keeps power for an extended ammount of time, they will turn bad, if there's no other options. However, if you can keep a handfull 5-10 viable parties in the mainstream, they will constantly compete for your vote. Right now, in the US(and a lot of places), you have a very small ammount of mainstream parties to choose from. They know 'you' will not take your vote elsewhere. They know you are thinking strategically and that you will choose the lesser of two evils.
Now, if they realize that 'you' will take your vote elsewhere, they will be required to change what they do and do the bidding of the voter.
No republic can represent the people when they don't care what you think and I believe the fix to that is a multi-party system. And until people get away from the lesser of two evils bit, it will never happen.
I have never voted. No party respects the values of equality, freedom and democracy that I have.
I'm sure there's a party out there that fits you well. Do a little research. There are hundreds of political parties in the US, not just two.
Now, you can help these parties by providing votes to them. If they get enough in certain states, they will be put on the ballot for next year. Abstaining from voting does no good for anyone.
So you defend Windows because you have no choice but to use it for PC games. That's a great defense. Think about it. You are defending the company that limits your choices and forces you to use their OS to play your PC games. YOU are defending them for it. Are you getting me?
I am not defending Windows or Microsoft. I'm defending my use of it. I'm stating that I have a very valid reason for using Microsoft windows and so does everyone else that shares my situation.
Would I like to see the graphics cards manufacturers open source their drivers? Hell yeah
Would I like to see game companies start developing cross-platform games? Hell yeah
I'm far from a Windows 'fanboi' but I fully agree with him. Playing games on a PC gives you hella more accuracy then on a console and they can pack more information in a monitor that's 10 inches from your face that you can actually read. The PC is a far superior game system then a console for games that require those two benefits.
Well, good for the UK. Pornography wastes huge globs of time and ruins many marriages.
How does it waste time? Okay, if someone is excessive about it, I can understand that. But I still think you're overgeneralizing.
As with marriages, that's up to interpretation. I for one would require a wife to look at some form of porn daily. heh
It has no advantages to society whatsoever.
I totally disagree. Here's some advantages I can pull out of my ass...
Provides an escape for people with unusual fetishes that can not participate in them in reality
Provides a nice 'release' for those of us without a female. Much easier to choke the chicken with a little mental 'lube'.
It's good entertainment
Most of this can be excused as opinion, but, I do think it has some value to society(including myself).
And that's the problem with quantum encryption: it's far too susceptible to DOS attacks.
Which is why the tech should only be used on networks that value confidentiality more then service. Quantum Cryptography is NOT a technology for the internet and if anyone tries to convince you of that, they're wrong.
Would it not be a failing of 'law' to punish people for doing things that where deemed wrong by the community...
Like witchcraft?
I do understand your point, it would be kind of nice to be able to have such a system, however, there are some pretty large penalties.
1) You end up with police picking people up because they think their behavior could be considered a crime. Imagine walking down the street say... skateboarding. A police officer really hates skateboarding and has an inkling that you could be convicted of a crime by doing so. He picks you up and imprisons you until your case is heard, which could be months.
So, you end up loosing your job, being thrown into a cage with some seedy characters all because a cop didn't like what you were doing.
2) You also end up with some far fetched problems where the 'community' may consider it harmful when it's really not. For instance, imagine if you liked to dress up as some fantastical character and play real-life Dungeons and Dragons. The community may not like seeing you do that or may even think you were trying to put a pox on them all. So, the community gets together and calls the police or makes a citizen's arrest or whatever.
So, you end up loosing your job, being thrown into a cage with some seedy characters all because your 'community' didn't like what you were doing.
For this to actually work, all humans involved in the system must be of sound mind and be very tolerant. However, with the current system, you need a multitude of individuals to actually agree to what's on the books.
The federal government could fairly easily create a webserver with logins for 300 million people.
Federal government doesn't, and probably shouldn't handle elections. I'd much prefer to leave that to state and counties.
I don't like the internet solution very much. You have an anonymity problem that people have already mentioned, you have fairly serious security concerns too, and the computer access issues. Just like what Hugh mentioned above. A central server containing all this information has the flaw of being an entrance to mass fraud.
I just don't see security being a huge problem. Every single voter could self-monitor that their vote counted by logging back in to make sure that no hacker had changed their vote.
And what happens when something does go wrong with counting? They report it and have to give up their anonymity to allow the recount of their ballot.
And of course you end up with alienating people who don't own computers or don't know how to use them. The purpose of the current system is to allow full accessibility. And if you have trouble using a machine, guess what, there's attendants there to assist you.
It's really not that hard to walk a few blocks to your polling place. So far, atleast in my state of Pennsylvania, they've done a great job of making our process accessible and easy. If there's a problem in your state/county, I'd recommend sending a letter to your DoE but I don't think internet voting is the way to go.
Just look at the 2000 election: the networks call the state of Florida (prematurely and incorrectly) for Gore, then when the ballots are counted it ends up going to Bush.
And this is one of the biggest reasons why people think that the election in Florida in 2006 was fixed.
For 50 years(or however long they've been doing it), exit polling has been an excellent indicator of how people actually vote. Now why, after 50 years(?) would the system all of a sudden fail? And we're talking multiple pollsters, not just one.
Add on top of that other suspicious behavior and election tampering, you've got yourself a pretty solid conspiracy theory.
Though the same could be said of the current Bar Codes and Magnetic Stripes, they're not actually just sitting there broadcasting.
RFID tags do not broadcast. In fact, they are totally passive and have no power source. They react to broadcasted signals from an RFID reader and then it returns a processed signal from what it recieves.
Still, this is a case in which the use of a non Microsoft system for pre-loading the iPods would be the appropriate solution at the manufacturing end. Since all that's needed is the ability to create and write to a FAT32 filesystem, I don't see why Linux isn't used; it can even be done automatically on a headless machine that does the loading upon USB insertion.
How do you know this is what the machine was used for? Maybe it was used as a QA/Testing machine to make sure the iPod works with all systems. Fact is, you don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
True, when one party rises to the top and keeps power for an extended ammount of time, they will turn bad, if there's no other options. However, if you can keep a handfull 5-10 viable parties in the mainstream, they will constantly compete for your vote. Right now, in the US(and a lot of places), you have a very small ammount of mainstream parties to choose from. They know 'you' will not take your vote elsewhere. They know you are thinking strategically and that you will choose the lesser of two evils.
Now, if they realize that 'you' will take your vote elsewhere, they will be required to change what they do and do the bidding of the voter.
No republic can represent the people when they don't care what you think and I believe the fix to that is a multi-party system. And until people get away from the lesser of two evils bit, it will never happen.
Now, you can help these parties by providing votes to them. If they get enough in certain states, they will be put on the ballot for next year. Abstaining from voting does no good for anyone.
Very interesting post. Thanks.
Would I like to see the graphics cards manufacturers open source their drivers? Hell yeah
Would I like to see game companies start developing cross-platform games? Hell yeah
Do I currently have a choice? Not really.
- Provides an escape for people with unusual fetishes that can not participate in them in reality
- Provides a nice 'release' for those of us without a female. Much easier to choke the chicken with a little mental 'lube'.
- It's good entertainment
Most of this can be excused as opinion, but, I do think it has some value to society(including myself).I do understand your point, it would be kind of nice to be able to have such a system, however, there are some pretty large penalties.
1) You end up with police picking people up because they think their behavior could be considered a crime. Imagine walking down the street say... skateboarding. A police officer really hates skateboarding and has an inkling that you could be convicted of a crime by doing so. He picks you up and imprisons you until your case is heard, which could be months.
So, you end up loosing your job, being thrown into a cage with some seedy characters all because a cop didn't like what you were doing.
2) You also end up with some far fetched problems where the 'community' may consider it harmful when it's really not. For instance, imagine if you liked to dress up as some fantastical character and play real-life Dungeons and Dragons. The community may not like seeing you do that or may even think you were trying to put a pox on them all. So, the community gets together and calls the police or makes a citizen's arrest or whatever.
So, you end up loosing your job, being thrown into a cage with some seedy characters all because your 'community' didn't like what you were doing.
For this to actually work, all humans involved in the system must be of sound mind and be very tolerant. However, with the current system, you need a multitude of individuals to actually agree to what's on the books.
I don't like the internet solution very much. You have an anonymity problem that people have already mentioned, you have fairly serious security concerns too, and the computer access issues. Just like what Hugh mentioned above. A central server containing all this information has the flaw of being an entrance to mass fraud. And what happens when something does go wrong with counting? They report it and have to give up their anonymity to allow the recount of their ballot.
And of course you end up with alienating people who don't own computers or don't know how to use them. The purpose of the current system is to allow full accessibility. And if you have trouble using a machine, guess what, there's attendants there to assist you.
It's really not that hard to walk a few blocks to your polling place. So far, atleast in my state of Pennsylvania, they've done a great job of making our process accessible and easy. If there's a problem in your state/county, I'd recommend sending a letter to your DoE but I don't think internet voting is the way to go.
For 50 years(or however long they've been doing it), exit polling has been an excellent indicator of how people actually vote. Now why, after 50 years(?) would the system all of a sudden fail? And we're talking multiple pollsters, not just one.
Add on top of that other suspicious behavior and election tampering, you've got yourself a pretty solid conspiracy theory.
Sorry, I explained that a little weird.