You write custom code for the left over I-Openers. The program presents a series of choices to the voter complete with pictures of the candidates for Florida voters. At the end, the program summarizes your choices and spits out a clearly punched punch card ballot without those damn chads. It also simultaneous keeps an electronic count of the vote.
At the end of the day, you run the punch cards through a machine, compare the results to computer tally, and certify the damn things.
Ok, who's willing to back me with some venture capital?
$170 for a 766 Celeron in bulk? Even if they plan to release the chip on a 100 MHz bus, the price is way out of bounds. Take a look at the current lowest pricewatch numbers on processors:
I'm not trying to start an AMD vs. Intel war but Intel's current release and price point doesn't even fit into their own chip lines let alone compete with AMD. Get real. You can get a 900 MHz Thunderbird for less money.
I believe that this is, in fact, a genuine effort.
Its a genuine effort the part of AOL to leverage three really stunning buzz words to sell their product: Linux, Internet Appliance, and Transmeta.
Unfortunately for them, I think they've really confused their audience. If the customer is actually supposed to get attracted by the idea of Linux and Transmeta, they won't have anything to do with AOL. Conversely, the people attracted to an "Internet Appliance" probably don't have the slightest idea what Linux or Tranmeta means.
What they've created is an internet appliance that opens up the internet to non-tech savy consumers. Sort of an "I-Opener". Wait a minute...
Americans are way behind the power curve on working these ridiculous hours. Europeans have known for quite a while that productivity beyond about 40 hours a week (36 in Germany) goes down. For every hour you spend in the office past 5 PM, productivity doesn't really go up.
How many programmers do you know that fart around their desk all morning, get ramped up around 2:30 PM and end up staying at their desk till 7 or 8 to get their job done.
I'm guilty as charged.
When you know that your boss EXPECTS you to leave by 5PM, you tend to manage your time better to ensure that your job is done by then.
I tell all the folks who work for me that if they're staying past 5, they're not managing their time. Its a sign of weakness, not dedication. They're happier, more productive, and the divorce rate went down;-)
This will not apply to uniformed federal workers, only GS scale civilians. Each military service has the option of budgeting for and paying reenlistment bonuses, etc. for tech workers. For the most part they just don't do it though;-(
One of the major reasons for this action is the aging of the federal workforce. Currently, the federal government has had such a hard time attracting tech employees that the average federal employee is approaching retirement age and there just aren't any younger workers in the pipeline to replace them.
This isn't the first action taken to correct this issue. Up until last year, retiring military officers (young when compared to the federal workforce, around 42-45) lost about half their military pension when they went back to work as federal employees. This was overturned last year to encourage more retirees to take mid grade federal jobs.
The situation is actually pretty bleak for attracting federal tech workers. Programs like internships to attract college graduates are few and far between. Add to that the cumbersome federal hiring system and lower wages and the inflow of new workers becomes a big issue. On top of that, the good workers who do hire on are often forced to worked with some senior employees that have long since reached obsolesence before retiring because its hard to fire a federal employee regardless of performance and letting even a substandard employee go only exaccerbates the problem.
This will help but probably won't solve the problem.
Unlike 1996 when Clinton was free to alienate the left wing of the democratic party, Nader has become the voice of truth.
In 1996, Clinton very shrewdly looked at his consituency and decided to alienate the voters that were sure to vote for him in favor of winning the center vote. He did this by signing the Defense of Marriage Act, a direct slap in the face of the homosexual community, and signing the Welfare Reform Act. Both the poor and the homosexual vote where basically foregone conclusions for the democrats. The strategy worked. Immediately after the election both Clinton and Gore began complaining about the bills that Clinton signed into law only a weeks before.
Nader has become Gore's truth detector. Now the left wing of the party recognizes that Gore, although he is advocating huge increases in the size of government, wants to appeal to the center and they're abandoning him in favor of a candidate who presents a consistent view and actually has some credibility that he means what he says. Gore doesn't. I say vote Nader. At least you can trust the man. You certainly can't trust Gore.
As this election approached, I once again looked at the candidates and looked for a third party. For a while, I thought Harry Browne was it. I've changed my mind.
I lean considerably to the Libertarian point of view. I think the war on drugs wastes resources that could be better spent on treatment programs and prevention. I want a smaller, more constitutional government. I don't believe that the government should be in the business of redistributing wealth from the class that creates it to a class that consumes it. I think that welfare enslaves the people it was designed to help by removing their dignity and encouraging those behaviors that we as a society should discourage.
Harry unfortunately takes it so far that he loses credibility. He takes the all or nothing approach. No income tax. No gun laws. No social security. Hence, no chance of ever becoming law in the world in which we live. Get real Harry.
For heaven's sake can't someone stand up and take the middle ground by embracing Harry's ideals without losing all touch with reality. I'm still waiting for a candidate. I don't like any of them.
Step three: Pay off the national debt with Mr. Gates' money.
Step four: Use the rest of the money to fund after-school prescription hot grits programs for the children and the elderly.
It doesn't scare me that this is rated a 4. What really scares me is that it was rated INSIGHTFUL.
Hey there Mister. Yes. You in the 4th row. Is that a headset you're wearing? It sure looks like one.
Take off those sunglasses please. Bring them up to the front so that I can see them. Just what I thought. Another game of Quake during differential equations.
Simple. It wasn't that "open-source" participants were placed into a smaller pool and scrutinized, it was that the FCC requires brokerage houses to obtain background information from their customers under the "know your customers" rules prior to letting them trade.
Like all brokers who handle IPO's, E-Trade required everyone participating in the IPO to have an account with them. The questionnaire is a normal part of opening an account.
This doesn't excuse E-Trade's actions in this case. I'm extremely pleased they had to pay the restitution. But the implication that "open-source" folks were singled out is incorrect.
We regret the unfortunate situation regarding your claim involving the RedHat IPO. Although we recognize the NASDAQ ruling, we are unable to issue a cashiers check at this time.
If you log on to http://www.etrade.com/ we have established an account in your name to expedite your future investment of these funds.
Some convergence is inevitable due to the very nature of open source development. As good ideas emerge in various distributions, competing distributions can pick up not only those ideas but also the code base to quickly implement identical or similar features. The Mandrake and Redhat distro's are a good example. Mandrake started out as incremental upgrades to Redhat and has since led the way (and I'd suspect done some of the coding) for Redhat's continued developement.
I don't believe it will ever boil down to a single "uber distro" but similarities are inevitable. Unless the various Linux distributions agree on a standard API (or a number of compatible API's), developers will continue to be forced to either develop multiple versions of their software for the ideosyncracies of various distributions or leave the users on their own to make the software work. This directly relates to Linux's ability to become a "mainstream" operating system. While power users and developers may be willing to take on this burden, you can bet that the "Average Joe or Josephine" neither can or will. I know some Linux folks may not intend for the AOL crowd to use their software but it is a viable market with lots of users. Karma be damned, that's my.02.
From the article,
"except for NDAs no contracts were signed"
A few years ago when I was working on my MS, their head of Microsoft Research visited and asked our research group what he could do to help. They were extremely generous with software and documentation but as far was grants went they wouldn't even buy pizza let alone provide meaningful funding without specific strings attached. At one point they actually offered less than $2000 for code that took me an entire summer to write. Ugh...
Finally I get to frag Capt Kirk. I've wanted to blast that SOB ever since he sold out to those Priceline folks. Do you think the Federation pulled his commission.
Until recently I was involved in a number of multinational efforts on the part of the U.S. government to get the countries in central europe to cooperate and share information between their ministries of defense for crisis response etc.
Most nations were long on talent and short on cash. They knew what they wanted but ultimately could not afford a Sun, Oracle or Micro$oft technical solution.
Rather than pushing a U.S. technical solution, it seems the best role for the U.S. could simply be to facilitate an open source effort among the countries to develop the software needed. At the conclusion of the effort, the nations would all have access to the source, free to modify to meet national requirements but with (at least initially) the technical interoperability needed to effectively share information amongst the group. I considered proposing it at the time but feared that it would be shot down because it did not fall within the more traditional programs that have been established for foreign aid.
It may not be suprising that the U.S. gives millions to other nations with the caveat that the money go back to U.S. contractors but it would be difficult to get 500K to support an open source software initiative...
As a Napster user, I admit to some mixed feelings about the ethics of using Napster but I do think its important to consider the point of view of the artists and others that create content.
Our economic system is based on the ability of people to be compensated for their work. In the case of the music industry, we protect the artist's copyright so that they can be compensated for their work. We buy the CD's, the record companies skim off the bulk of the money and pay some remaining portion to the artist. Its not perfect, CD's cost too much, but the artist (at least in theory) gets compensated.
I've travelled around eastern Europe and was pretty amazed to see the rampant piracy of both music and software. Here's the problem, the system doesn't reinforce the value of creative work. All you need is a big CD burning operation and you get the money instead of the original artist or content creator. How different is Napster from what I just described except you don't have anyone profitting monetarily from the process (except maybe Napster.com sometime in the future)
I like the ability to preview music before buying it using Napster and I will admit that I have purchased music that I never would have bought without the access that Napster provided. Unfortunately, I wonder how often that really happens. Ok everyone, when's the last time you went to the record store and purchased a CD even though you had downloaded the same material on Napster? Right.
The big news may have been lost here. Much fewer people will take advantage of 2 GHz than a mobile 500 MHz processor that consumes so little power.
I'm looking forward to (and lots of other folks too) the availability of a mobile processor that doesn't generate so much heat and extends memory life. Don't hold your breath for the Transmeta chip just yet, the products just aren't there yet.
Just for grins, I decided to browse the rest of the site and get a price on it. At about $1500 for an annual license, this toolkit is pretty much out of reach for students, hobbiest, and quite a few open source programmers.
It appears to be a super tool. But at this price, it easily exceeds the cost of Visual Studio, CodeWarrior, etc. I'm sticking with Glide and other open source environments. Heck, I may even be able to afford to contribute to a project now and then.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty simple.
You write custom code for the left over I-Openers. The program presents a series of choices to the voter complete with pictures of the candidates for Florida voters. At the end, the program summarizes your choices and spits out a clearly punched punch card ballot without those damn chads. It also simultaneous keeps an electronic count of the vote.
At the end of the day, you run the punch cards through a machine, compare the results to computer tally, and certify the damn things.
Ok, who's willing to back me with some venture capital?
$170 for a 766 Celeron in bulk? Even if they plan to release the chip on a 100 MHz bus, the price is way out of bounds. Take a look at the current lowest pricewatch numbers on processors:
AMD Duron - 750 $74, 800 $97
AMD Thunderbird 850 $142, 900 $165, 950 $222
Intel Celeron 700 $76
Intel - Pentium III 667 $149, 733 $173,750 $181, 800 $181
I'm not trying to start an AMD vs. Intel war but Intel's current release and price point doesn't even fit into their own chip lines let alone compete with AMD. Get real. You can get a 900 MHz Thunderbird for less money.
Aren't they worried that familiarization will only breed contempt? ;-)
Might as well be given the availability. Maybe we need a new term. Droolware.
I believe that this is, in fact, a genuine effort.
...
Its a genuine effort the part of AOL to leverage three really stunning buzz words to sell their product: Linux, Internet Appliance, and Transmeta.
Unfortunately for them, I think they've really confused their audience. If the customer is actually supposed to get attracted by the idea of Linux and Transmeta, they won't have anything to do with AOL. Conversely, the people attracted to an "Internet Appliance" probably don't have the slightest idea what Linux or Tranmeta means.
What they've created is an internet appliance that opens up the internet to non-tech savy consumers. Sort of an "I-Opener". Wait a minute
Americans are way behind the power curve on working these ridiculous hours. Europeans have known for quite a while that productivity beyond about 40 hours a week (36 in Germany) goes down. For every hour you spend in the office past 5 PM, productivity doesn't really go up.
;-)
How many programmers do you know that fart around their desk all morning, get ramped up around 2:30 PM and end up staying at their desk till 7 or 8 to get their job done.
I'm guilty as charged.
When you know that your boss EXPECTS you to leave by 5PM, you tend to manage your time better to ensure that your job is done by then.
I tell all the folks who work for me that if they're staying past 5, they're not managing their time. Its a sign of weakness, not dedication. They're happier, more productive, and the divorce rate went down
This will not apply to uniformed federal workers, only GS scale civilians. Each military service has the option of budgeting for and paying reenlistment bonuses, etc. for tech workers. For the most part they just don't do it though ;-(
One of the major reasons for this action is the aging of the federal workforce. Currently, the federal government has had such a hard time attracting tech employees that the average federal employee is approaching retirement age and there just aren't any younger workers in the pipeline to replace them.
This isn't the first action taken to correct this issue. Up until last year, retiring military officers (young when compared to the federal workforce, around 42-45) lost about half their military pension when they went back to work as federal employees. This was overturned last year to encourage more retirees to take mid grade federal jobs.
The situation is actually pretty bleak for attracting federal tech workers. Programs like internships to attract college graduates are few and far between. Add to that the cumbersome federal hiring system and lower wages and the inflow of new workers becomes a big issue. On top of that, the good workers who do hire on are often forced to worked with some senior employees that have long since reached obsolesence before retiring because its hard to fire a federal employee regardless of performance and letting even a substandard employee go only exaccerbates the problem.
This will help but probably won't solve the problem.
For insight as to where your views line up with the candidates, try the quiz at:
www.speakout.com
Unlike 1996 when Clinton was free to alienate the left wing of the democratic party, Nader has become the voice of truth.
In 1996, Clinton very shrewdly looked at his consituency and decided to alienate the voters that were sure to vote for him in favor of winning the center vote. He did this by signing the Defense of Marriage Act, a direct slap in the face of the homosexual community, and signing the Welfare Reform Act. Both the poor and the homosexual vote where basically foregone conclusions for the democrats. The strategy worked. Immediately after the election both Clinton and Gore began complaining about the bills that Clinton signed into law only a weeks before.
Nader has become Gore's truth detector. Now the left wing of the party recognizes that Gore, although he is advocating huge increases in the size of government, wants to appeal to the center and they're abandoning him in favor of a candidate who presents a consistent view and actually has some credibility that he means what he says. Gore doesn't. I say vote Nader. At least you can trust the man. You certainly can't trust Gore.
As this election approached, I once again looked at the candidates and looked for a third party. For a while, I thought Harry Browne was it. I've changed my mind.
I lean considerably to the Libertarian point of view. I think the war on drugs wastes resources that could be better spent on treatment programs and prevention. I want a smaller, more constitutional government. I don't believe that the government should be in the business of redistributing wealth from the class that creates it to a class that consumes it. I think that welfare enslaves the people it was designed to help by removing their dignity and encouraging those behaviors that we as a society should discourage.
Harry unfortunately takes it so far that he loses credibility. He takes the all or nothing approach. No income tax. No gun laws. No social security. Hence, no chance of ever becoming law in the world in which we live. Get real Harry.
For heaven's sake can't someone stand up and take the middle ground by embracing Harry's ideals without losing all touch with reality. I'm still waiting for a candidate. I don't like any of them.
No! Its not free as in beer or free as in speech. Therefore its evil, evil, evil !!!
There, I've defended Linux. May I have my Karma please?
It doesn't scare me that this is rated a 4. What really scares me is that it was rated INSIGHTFUL.
SHUDDER.
Hey there Mister. Yes. You in the 4th row. Is that a headset you're wearing? It sure looks like one.
Take off those sunglasses please. Bring them up to the front so that I can see them. Just what I thought. Another game of Quake during differential equations.
Simple. It wasn't that "open-source" participants were placed into a smaller pool and scrutinized, it was that the FCC requires brokerage houses to obtain background information from their customers under the "know your customers" rules prior to letting them trade.
Like all brokers who handle IPO's, E-Trade required everyone participating in the IPO to have an account with them. The questionnaire is a normal part of opening an account.
This doesn't excuse E-Trade's actions in this case. I'm extremely pleased they had to pay the restitution. But the implication that "open-source" folks were singled out is incorrect.
Letter from E-Trade attached:
Dear Sir,
We regret the unfortunate situation regarding your claim involving the RedHat IPO. Although we recognize the NASDAQ ruling, we are unable to issue a cashiers check at this time.
If you log on to http://www.etrade.com/ we have established an account in your name to expedite your future investment of these funds.
Best of luck and happy daytrading.
- It's doubtful this article would have been posted to /. if it hadn't focused on Linux vs. Windows performance.
- With the exception of Nvidia, Linux drivers substantially trailed the windows drivers on any given card.
- The disparity between Windows and Linux performance gets bigger at higher resolutions and texture sizes.
- Certain cards (omitted to prevent flame wars) aren't worth bothering with.
I'm not saying resistence is futile ...
.02.
Some convergence is inevitable due to the very nature of open source development. As good ideas emerge in various distributions, competing distributions can pick up not only those ideas but also the code base to quickly implement identical or similar features. The Mandrake and Redhat distro's are a good example. Mandrake started out as incremental upgrades to Redhat and has since led the way (and I'd suspect done some of the coding) for Redhat's continued developement.
I don't believe it will ever boil down to a single "uber distro" but similarities are inevitable. Unless the various Linux distributions agree on a standard API (or a number of compatible API's), developers will continue to be forced to either develop multiple versions of their software for the ideosyncracies of various distributions or leave the users on their own to make the software work. This directly relates to Linux's ability to become a "mainstream" operating system. While power users and developers may be willing to take on this burden, you can bet that the "Average Joe or Josephine" neither can or will. I know some Linux folks may not intend for the AOL crowd to use their software but it is a viable market with lots of users. Karma be damned, that's my
A few years ago when I was working on my MS, their head of Microsoft Research visited and asked our research group what he could do to help. They were extremely generous with software and documentation but as far was grants went they wouldn't even buy pizza let alone provide meaningful funding without specific strings attached. At one point they actually offered less than $2000 for code that took me an entire summer to write. Ugh...
Finally I get to frag Capt Kirk. I've wanted to blast that SOB ever since he sold out to those Priceline folks. Do you think the Federation pulled his commission.
... annoying dog.
He's just so
Until recently I was involved in a number of multinational efforts on the part of the U.S. government to get the countries in central europe to cooperate and share information between their ministries of defense for crisis response etc.
...
Most nations were long on talent and short on cash. They knew what they wanted but ultimately could not afford a Sun, Oracle or Micro$oft technical solution.
Rather than pushing a U.S. technical solution, it seems the best role for the U.S. could simply be to facilitate an open source effort among the countries to develop the software needed. At the conclusion of the effort, the nations would all have access to the source, free to modify to meet national requirements but with (at least initially) the technical interoperability needed to effectively share information amongst the group. I considered proposing it at the time but feared that it would be shot down because it did not fall within the more traditional programs that have been established for foreign aid.
It may not be suprising that the U.S. gives millions to other nations with the caveat that the money go back to U.S. contractors but it would be difficult to get 500K to support an open source software initiative
I can only imagine what the results would have been if it were taken at an American college campus.
1. Dried Beer Residue (23%)
2. Dried Coffee Residue (15%)
3. Unidentified caffeinated particles (11%)
4. Doritos (6%)
...
As a Napster user, I admit to some mixed feelings about the ethics of using Napster but I do think its important to consider the point of view of the artists and others that create content.
Our economic system is based on the ability of people to be compensated for their work. In the case of the music industry, we protect the artist's copyright so that they can be compensated for their work. We buy the CD's, the record companies skim off the bulk of the money and pay some remaining portion to the artist. Its not perfect, CD's cost too much, but the artist (at least in theory) gets compensated.
I've travelled around eastern Europe and was pretty amazed to see the rampant piracy of both music and software. Here's the problem, the system doesn't reinforce the value of creative work. All you need is a big CD burning operation and you get the money instead of the original artist or content creator. How different is Napster from what I just described except you don't have anyone profitting monetarily from the process (except maybe Napster.com sometime in the future)
I like the ability to preview music before buying it using Napster and I will admit that I have purchased music that I never would have bought without the access that Napster provided. Unfortunately, I wonder how often that really happens. Ok everyone, when's the last time you went to the record store and purchased a CD even though you had downloaded the same material on Napster? Right.
The big news may have been lost here. Much fewer people will take advantage of 2 GHz than a mobile 500 MHz processor that consumes so little power.
I'm looking forward to (and lots of other folks too) the availability of a mobile processor that doesn't generate so much heat and extends memory life. Don't hold your breath for the Transmeta chip just yet, the products just aren't there yet.
Dave
Just for grins, I decided to browse the rest of the site and get a price on it. At about $1500 for an annual license, this toolkit is pretty much out of reach for students, hobbiest, and quite a few open source programmers.
It appears to be a super tool. But at this price, it easily exceeds the cost of Visual Studio, CodeWarrior, etc. I'm sticking with Glide and other open source environments. Heck, I may even be able to afford to contribute to a project now and then.
Dave