Like, did you know that they're lying to you when they say seatbelts save lives? Why, my cousin didn't wear his seatbelt, was in an accident and lived! And a friend of mine was in an accident, wasn't wearing a seatbelt and he died! s/wasn't/was
Agreed. On top of letting the dolts kill themselves with YouTube [d|m]isnformation, I think we should also eliminate all warning labels. If you're stupid enough to use your hairdryer in the shower because there doesn't happen to be any label on it telling you that it is dangerous, then you deserve to get electrocuted.
Furthermore, we should all start spreading disinformation about other dangerous stuff, too:
Like, did you know that they're lying to you when they say seatbelts save lives? Why, my cousin didn't wear his seatbelt, was in an accident and lived! And a friend of mine was in an accident, wasn't wearing a seatbelt and he died!
or:
Hey, they're lying when they say sniffing paint fumes is dangerous! I do it all the time and look how smart I am!
In other words, you want commodity software that anyone could easily, and cheaply copy/use. Great for citizens & taxpayers, not so good for the manufacturers. And the government's job is to protect the interests of those citizens and taxpayers, not the interests of the manufacturers.
If you RTFA, it's not just WiFi providers the bill applies to, but to ISPs, social-networking sites, e-mail providers and more:
That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection. I just hope this gets stripped down by the courts. I mean, hello?! Isn't policing the job of, oh, I dunno...law enforcement officials, and not ISPs? This is like passing a law requiring the electric company to turn you in should they discover marijuana growing in your backyard when they check the meter!
I think we should do what we did with the CDA. Everyone with a website should turn their pages to black the day this law gets passed.
All communications protocols are authenticated, encrypted and signed.
There are multiple, redundant backups of all data, including a hard copy paper trail that can be authenticated by a unique signature printed on each ballot
Voting machine is all open source -- no binary-only anything, no exceptions. This includes the OS -- so Linux or *BSD. It also includes the firmware, so something like OpenFirmware or whatever.
Source and binaries on each machine are independently verifiable
Ability for independent auditors to audit each machine at hardware level, application level and OS level.
No wireless networks
Machines have airgap security WRT the Internet
Machines use encrypted filesystems.
Machines have tamper-evident seals over everything
Good secure configurations -- no unnecessary services running, secure authentication methods, OS patches kept up to date, software consistently audited for security
All in all, I want a machine that is custom-configured for electronic voting and locked down so tight the NSA would have trouble getting in.
On reading the article the main thing that jumped out at me was the assumption that Sun, or at least Simon Phipps, believes that most open source programming will be done in India. Shit! First they outsource our paying jobs to India, now they want to outsource our hobbies there, too?!
Does anyone know where can I contribute money to help revitalize Pakistan's nuclear weapons program?
Nobody cares about breaking the DMCA. Lots of ordinary people already rip their DVDs to PVRs -- legally or otherwise.
Unless/until they start putting people in prison for criminal violations of the DMCA, it will be ignored by the vast majority of people who simply don't care.
Right. But a lot has changed since the 1990s. Web applications are complicated. We need specialized languages for specialized tasks.
Usually, in developing a Web application, more than one type of specialist is involved. Often you'll find a Web designer come up with the base layout and design of the HTML, another Web developer who specializes in coding the HTML and JavaScript, using the CSS defined by the Web designer, someone else who plugs in the front-end code, and someone else who writes the middleware, and another to write the back-end code. And you have DBAs, systems adminstrators, network administrators, testers, project managers and so forth.
It's unusual in any moderately-complicated Web application to have one person who does the whole thing him/herself these days. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a village to make a Web app.
I dunno, I think getting rid of payphones isn't so bad. If there's a market for them, someone else can provide the service. I really think the market is drying up. Why should any company go to an expense to meet the demands of something there is little to no market for? Doesn't make any sense. Agreed. Try this excercise. Drive or walk to the nearest outdoor payphone and use it. For every point below that you answer 'yes', add 10 points:
Does it even work?
Is the phone in good repair?
Is the phone clean?
Does it work properly? (i.e., can you hear well enough and can the other party here you).
Is it owned and operated by the local incumbent telco, or some 3rd party? (federal law requires it to be posted on the phone) (give yourself 10 points if owned by the ILEC). Subtract 20 points if you've never heard of the company that owns and/or operates the phone.
Does it cost less than $1 to make a local call?
Did you have to travel more than a mile to find it? For every half-mile over 1 mile you had to travel, subtract 5 points from your overall score.
If you're score is much higher than 10-20 points, I'd be pretty surprised.
The problem with DRM isn't that it keeps people from copying books, software, music, videos, etc. illegally.
The problem with DRM is that it keeps you from doing legitimate things with your legitimately-purchased content.
As it says in TFA, when I go out and buy a book, I can read it on any time schedule I want. I can then loan it a friend to read. Or I can give it to my next door neighbor. I can scan the pages in and produce some greppable text from it. (After all, you can't grep dead trees.) I can auction it off on eBay.
The problem with DRM'd e-books is that I can't do any of the above.
So how do we eliminate DRM and have authors still get compensated?
There are several solutions out there already. You can put the book on a website for download and have people pay what they think is fair, as Radiohead as done with their latest album. We'll see how this works. It probably won't.
Then there's the 'try before you buy model'. In the case of books, You can issue your work under a Creative Commons license and hope that people will pay for a dead tree version if they like it. This is something that Corey Doctorow, Eric Raymond(*) and others have done.
There's the 'let people have it for free and make money off of something else" model. For music, there's the 'we only make money from concerts model' practiced by groups like The Grateful Dead for years, officially or unofficially. For software, examples include Red Hat and Canonical and Zope, which sell support and pretty packaging and consulting services. Doesn't work well for books, it seems. For books, I suppose you could offer the book for free, but sell merchandising such as T-Shirts or coffee mugs or the like, but somehow that seems less then perfect.
I dunno. I don't think it's "DRM or content creators don't get paid". I think there are other ways, but nobody wants to change their business model because the 'selling a box of content' model seems to have worked so well for so long.
(*) esr uses the GNU Free Documentation License, actually.
Some years ago, my dad tried to get a software patent on some missle control software. The US PTO guy that they had enlisted to help personally told my dad that "there will NEVER be software patents". I wonder what happened to that guy? Where else? Gitmo.
That means, basically, that the party that's suing or countersuing (LimeWire) has to show reasons why they should get relief (usually money) and that those reason need to be more than just name calling and saying "you owe me money, you owe me money!"
Actually, it works both ways. They did this for a time in some spots at General Motors' Warren Technical Center some years ago -- for all I know they still might be doing it. They called the concept 'employee hotelling'. Essentially, they got rid of cubes in one area, and made big open desk/table space. They installed a wireless router and VoIP and gave everyone laptops and VoIP. They then let everyone in the group telecommute if they wanted. They already had flex time in place for all of their white collar people. Many of the people in this department seemed to like it very much, feeling much less restricted.
At the same time, this enabled workers to organize into groups in order to accomplish specific tasks as a team. This boosted productivity greatly. Some did note that it didn't make it easy for them to 'personalize' their workspace, but being able to move around seemed to be a plus for some.
At the same time, the VoIP saved the department money, they needed less office space and power consumption went down since everyone was using laptops rather than power-hungry desktops.
Google does some of this, too. I seem to remember watching some video showing employees working out in hallways and whatnot with ubiquitous WiFi and laptops.
A trivial amount, if you're capable of working hard and living well within your means you can easily pay it back within a year or two of graduation. 1) Did you go to college in the U.S.? and 2) Did you pay for your college education out of your own pocket?
If the answer to either is "no," then I'd say you probably don't really know what you're saying. $30-50K is about average for a college education from a 4-year accredited private institution these days. A bit less if you go to a public school Unless you're willing/able to live with mom and dad for the first few years following your graduation, paying back that loan is a real bitch, especially when the economy ends up in the crapper following 9/11 and there are no jobs available with sufficient pay to both live on and pay back your loan. Then, when you end up not paying, the loan goes into to default, and you can forget about getting a mortgage on a house, getting a car loan, or anything else that 'normal' people do to make themselves financially stable that involves having good credit. Finally, the collection agencies catch up with you and make all kinds of nasty threats and try to force you into repayment programs you can't afford, so you have a nervous breakdown from all the stress.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. On top of letting the dolts kill themselves with YouTube [d|m]isnformation, I think we should also eliminate all warning labels. If you're stupid enough to use your hairdryer in the shower because there doesn't happen to be any label on it telling you that it is dangerous, then you deserve to get electrocuted.
Furthermore, we should all start spreading disinformation about other dangerous stuff, too:
Like, did you know that they're lying to you when they say seatbelts save lives? Why, my cousin didn't wear his seatbelt, was in an accident and lived! And a friend of mine was in an accident, wasn't wearing a seatbelt and he died!
or:
Hey, they're lying when they say sniffing paint fumes is dangerous! I do it all the time and look how smart I am!
Sound like a plan?
Great for citizens & taxpayers, not so good for the manufacturers. And the government's job is to protect the interests of those citizens and taxpayers, not the interests of the manufacturers.
I think we should do what we did with the CDA. Everyone with a website should turn their pages to black the day this law gets passed.
Isn't this something should have been found in, oh, I dunno....beta testing?
All in all, I want a machine that is custom-configured for electronic voting and locked down so tight the NSA would have trouble getting in.
Wow! It worked! Here, lemme try:
Please mod funny.
Thank you.
For those of you who are not programmers, exceptions in C++ -- and in most other languages, including Python -- pretty much all follow a model of:
try:
something()
except Exception:
something_else()
where something() is executed and if it fails due to the named exception, something_else() gets executed.
I actually didn't get the joke at first until I thought about how exception handling is specified in Python and C++.
Does anyone know where can I contribute money to help revitalize Pakistan's nuclear weapons program?
Please pay me,
--an open source author.
Nobody cares about breaking the DMCA. Lots of ordinary people already rip their DVDs to PVRs -- legally or otherwise.
Unless/until they start putting people in prison for criminal violations of the DMCA, it will be ignored by the vast majority of people who simply don't care.
As if it were an either/or proposition. Steve Jobs is a major shareholder in one of the MPAA's largest members -- Disney.
Right. But a lot has changed since the 1990s. Web applications are complicated. We need specialized languages for specialized tasks.
Usually, in developing a Web application, more than one type of specialist is involved. Often you'll find a Web designer come up with the base layout and design of the HTML, another Web developer who specializes in coding the HTML and JavaScript, using the CSS defined by the Web designer, someone else who plugs in the front-end code, and someone else who writes the middleware, and another to write the back-end code. And you have DBAs, systems adminstrators, network administrators, testers, project managers and so forth.
It's unusual in any moderately-complicated Web application to have one person who does the whole thing him/herself these days. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, it takes a village to make a Web app.
Well, here in Americaland, you can't get even get a passport online. So there! :-P
If you're score is much higher than 10-20 points, I'd be pretty surprised.
The problem with DRM isn't that it keeps people from copying books, software, music, videos, etc. illegally.
The problem with DRM is that it keeps you from doing legitimate things with your legitimately-purchased content.
As it says in TFA, when I go out and buy a book, I can read it on any time schedule I want. I can then loan it a friend to read. Or I can give it to my next door neighbor. I can scan the pages in and produce some greppable text from it. (After all, you can't grep dead trees.) I can auction it off on eBay.
The problem with DRM'd e-books is that I can't do any of the above.
So how do we eliminate DRM and have authors still get compensated?
There are several solutions out there already. You can put the book on a website for download and have people pay what they think is fair, as Radiohead as done with their latest album. We'll see how this works. It probably won't.
Then there's the 'try before you buy model'. In the case of books, You can issue your work under a Creative Commons license and hope that people will pay for a dead tree version if they like it. This is something that Corey Doctorow, Eric Raymond(*) and others have done.
There's the 'let people have it for free and make money off of something else" model. For music, there's the 'we only make money from concerts model' practiced by groups like The Grateful Dead for years, officially or unofficially. For software, examples include Red Hat and Canonical and Zope, which sell support and pretty packaging and consulting services. Doesn't work well for books, it seems. For books, I suppose you could offer the book for free, but sell merchandising such as T-Shirts or coffee mugs or the like, but somehow that seems less then perfect.
I dunno. I don't think it's "DRM or content creators don't get paid". I think there are other ways, but nobody wants to change their business model because the 'selling a box of content' model seems to have worked so well for so long.
(*) esr uses the GNU Free Documentation License, actually.
Have your silly revolution. NOTHING will change in the long run, nor even in the short run.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Dick Cheney? Is that you?
That means, basically, that the party that's suing or countersuing (LimeWire) has to show reasons why they should get relief (usually money) and that those reason need to be more than just name calling and saying "you owe me money, you owe me money!"
Actually, it works both ways. They did this for a time in some spots at General Motors' Warren Technical Center some years ago -- for all I know they still might be doing it. They called the concept 'employee hotelling'. Essentially, they got rid of cubes in one area, and made big open desk/table space. They installed a wireless router and VoIP and gave everyone laptops and VoIP. They then let everyone in the group telecommute if they wanted. They already had flex time in place for all of their white collar people. Many of the people in this department seemed to like it very much, feeling much less restricted.
At the same time, this enabled workers to organize into groups in order to accomplish specific tasks as a team. This boosted productivity greatly. Some did note that it didn't make it easy for them to 'personalize' their workspace, but being able to move around seemed to be a plus for some.
At the same time, the VoIP saved the department money, they needed less office space and power consumption went down since everyone was using laptops rather than power-hungry desktops.
Google does some of this, too. I seem to remember watching some video showing employees working out in hallways and whatnot with ubiquitous WiFi and laptops.
Nope. 26K/year seems a bit exhorbitant, but I've been out of school for more than 5 years.
No, no, no...
You got it all wrong. The joke goes:
In Soviet Russia, noun verbs YOU!
So, in this case, we'd have:
In Soviet Russia, chimps outscore YOU!!!
Or, perhaps, even worse:
In Soviet Russa, college students outscore YOU!!!
In our next Slashdot Memes 101 lesson, we'll cover Beowulf Clusters:
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of chimps?
If the answer to either is "no," then I'd say you probably don't really know what you're saying. $30-50K is about average for a college education from a 4-year accredited private institution these days. A bit less if you go to a public school Unless you're willing/able to live with mom and dad for the first few years following your graduation, paying back that loan is a real bitch, especially when the economy ends up in the crapper following 9/11 and there are no jobs available with sufficient pay to both live on and pay back your loan. Then, when you end up not paying, the loan goes into to default, and you can forget about getting a mortgage on a house, getting a car loan, or anything else that 'normal' people do to make themselves financially stable that involves having good credit. Finally, the collection agencies catch up with you and make all kinds of nasty threats and try to force you into repayment programs you can't afford, so you have a nervous breakdown from all the stress.
Not that I'm bitter or anything.