So you regurgitate press releases for a living, then?
I don't know you, your work, or the outlet for your work, but the amount of lazy journalism I see in the tech sections of the dailies just beggars belief. It's probably gone down a little now that the volume of tech articles has decreased, but, still, it's pretty woeful. The specialist tech press is a different issue. It's still got serious problems, mind you.
But then, I am a grad student studying software testing (so I have a better-than-average idea of the difficulty of verifying a computer system has an acceptably low error rate), have read reasonably widely about computer security, and have read some of Rebecca Mercuri's stuff in the past, so I'm hardly a typical reader of the article.
The key issue I raised in my comment remains. Why leave the key point up in the air? Why blather on about an irrelevancy (what the manufacturers say the public thinks about the new systems)? If questions don't get on-topic answers, ask more specific ones.
This strikes me as a classic example of how "getting quotes from both sides" does not a fair and accurate article make.
The key points that opponents of electronic voting make are that a) there might be flaws in the system either by error or by design, b) that the machines cannot be easily inspected to check their operations, and c) that without a paper trail there is no way to check after the fact whether the votes were correctly counted or not.
The response from a voting machine manufacturer, however, is classic obfuscation:
"I think the concerns being raised are 100 percent valid," Mr. Terwilliger said. "However, they're being raised by people who have little idea about what actually goes on."
At this point, the question arises - why are these critics wrong? What are they not understanding about the system?
Rather than following up on this point, though, the reporter takes a completely different, and totally irrelevant tack, discussing public confidence in the machines. So what? Lots of people probably think that Microsoft invented the Internet. It doesn't make it true. The only conclusion I can come to is that the journalist did not take the time to understand the issue properly, and just got quotes from "both sides" and that was good enough.
Do experts in other fields (if I may be so bold as to count myself an "expert" in it) get as frustrated with journalists, or is it just a particular problem with science and tech journalism?
Take your signature away, please, no, not John Farnham, and not that song...Christmas 1986, sister's new boombox, compilation tape with "You're the Voice" on it, played at least 27 times...never, ever, refer to that song in public again or my reincarnations will hunt down yours for all eternity...:)
The first Matrix did have some ideas that were distinctly philosophical in nature - to (poorly) summarise "how do I know what is real, and what does 'real' mean anyway"? However, the questions have been asked, and answered, pretty much the same way in a great deal of other fiction. It's philosophical, sure, but it's well-trodden ground.
On a couple of visits to the US, my impression was that "Mom and Pop" stores were already gone. Every single retailer seemed to be a franchise operation. Even in Manhattan, it seemed like you walked past the same sequence of retailers selling the same stuff you'd find in Anyville, USA.
Franchised retailing and chain stores do exist pretty much everywhere in the developed world, but the franchise and chain store is far more pervasive there than it is elsewhere.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. The efficient logistics of big retail probably means stuff is cheaper in the US under such a system than it is with more chaotic retailing. It also leads to staff who know nothing about the goods they sell, and a conspicuous sameness about the goods on offer. But then again, is eclectic, funky, and individual shops really the best thing creative people could do with their lives?
If Mr. Robertson really wants a financial app that can do online banking, the easiest way to do so is to fund GnuCash development and, equally importantly, help persuade some financial institutions to work with the GnuCash developers so that they can get online banking support up and running.
Back in the day where some of the GnuCash developers (myself included) were employed by a company, we considered where to focus our efforts. Basically, we had to concentrate on business stuff because that's where we thought there was going to be cash (it didn't turn out that way, but that's another story and not really mine to tell). If somebody had have come along and said - "here's $BIGNUM (or even $MODERATELY_BIG_NUM), we'll schmooze some financial institutions for ya, now go implement online banking and make it work seamlessly", we could have done it (as some of the other developers have demonstrated in Germany with their online financial transaction standard).
The opportunity still exists if somebody wants to take the ball and run with it.
The opportunity, and probably the motive, required for the September 11 attacks has been available for decades, but it took a while for the right people to get the idea and put it into action.
There's been no shortage of other things terrorists could possibly have done to the US, many of them equally destructive and of similar complexity to achieve, and most quite obvious to anybody who sits down and thinks about it for a while. They haven't managed to do it yet. Why?
Terrorists want to kill as many Americans/Israelis/whomever as possible.
Anybody with access to the internet, basic levels of clue, and moderate amounts of cash, can screw together cruise missiles, dirty bombs, chemical weapons, etc etc, in complete secrecy.
Chemical weapons, cruise missiles etc. are an effective way of killing people.
Intelligence/police agencies are incapable of preventing such attacks before they occur.
Therefore, given the above, lots of people should be dead through cruise missile/chemical weapon/insert diabolical nasty weapon here attacks by terrorists.
But the above hasn't happened. With the spectacular exception of September 11 (which wasn't achieved through high-tech means), the best terrorists have been able to do is conventional bombing, and they haven't been able to kill that many people, even Israelis.
The pulsejet ain't going to be quiet. The motorboat sound of pulsejet engines are going to be dead giveaways of its presence. It'll be better to use a small RC jet engine with careful exhaust design to muffle the jet engine sound or a modified RC piston engine that drives a multibladed propeller so the engine runs at a lower speed to reduce engine noise.
If you check the guy's website, he's proposed a variety of methods to reduce the sound from pulsejets. However, even if it can be heard, that's still a fair way from being able to *do* anything about it.
Guiding the DIY cruise missile is going to be a very tricky proposition. While GPS will get the missile to the general target area, the lack of the ability to avoid obstacles and to fly very low to avoid most radars means the missile will have to cruise at about the same altitude as the V-1 (about just over 1,000 meters off the ground), which means it can be intercepted by modern ground AA systems.
Huh? Over rural areas or suburbia it wouldn't have to fly any higher than 100 metres, surely - and you could surely add a radar altimeter to the plane to allow it to do some basic terrain-following. If there's a big mountain in the road, program the GPS with the coordinated and make the thing fly higher over that section. Not to mention that you could probably equip the thing with a video camera and use that as terminal guidance. In any case, how many cities have "modern ground AA systems" anywhere near them?
"The Linux community would have me publish it now, (so they can have it) laundered by the time we can get to a court hearing. That's not the way we're going to go."
Is he arguing the "linux community" is somehow going to make millions of copies of older versions of the kernel source on the various squillions of CD-ROM's out there disppear so SCO can't prove its case? Or is he worried that any piece of code allegedly pinched from UnixWare can have its functionality duplicated so quickly that the arguments about Linux the bicycle are disproven? Either way, it's entirely ludicrous.
Nobody really knows what the best way to design a cheap reusable space launcher is, so it's probably a good thing that a bunch of people are trying different approaches, and, besides, the thrill of competition should spur the various groups to achieve more.
If they start trying to tackle more ambitious goals, then the amount of capital required would probably require a bit more cooperation.
The Electoral College forces the presidential candidates to concentrate their efforts on the "swing states" - that is, those where it's possible the majority could go either way. Any state, mostly rural, mostly metropolitan, or somewhere in between, that has a likely big majority one way or the other gets ignored. How much attention did Bush or Gore pay to, say, Utah (where Bush had over a 2-to-1 advantage), or rural upstate New York?
The electoral college doesn't favour rural areas over metropolitan. It favours *some* states over other states arbitrarily. And rural areas would *not* be ignored under a simple first-past-the-post system. Candidates would need to seek votes whereever they could find them.
Oh, and if you think rural Americans are hard done by, you're quite deluded. The fact is that these days, most of inland America, including all the farmers, survive on subsidies generated by those evil rotten Democrat-voting city-dwelling pagans on the coasts. Deal with it.
For fsck's sake, did you even bother to follow the basic plot of the movie? Ah-nuld's character is a cyborg, made by the robots in 2029. He is identical (except for his orders) to the bad guy in the original Terminator film. The robots in 2029 presumably have a factory where they churn out Arnies by the dozen.
By the way, isn't Arnie getting a little bit old to be playing an invulnerable robot?
There was an interesting article in Popular Science about potential Shuttle replacements. According to the article, one of the problems is that NASA has extremely ambitious cost and safety goals for a next-generation launcher, which they haven't been able to achieve with the designs examined so far. Hence, they've decided to stick with what they have and keep researching various advanced technologies until they can build the wonder vehicle they want.
However, there comes a time when NASA should probably just bite the bullet and build a new vehicle, and accept the factor of two or three improvements in cost and safety it can realistically achieve rather than the hundredfold cost improvements it seeks in the longer term.
They'd finally caught up with him in Texas, and he got three years of jail (he's only 19).He's getting off light...
What kind of whacky world do you live in? On the basis of your discussion, this kid has basically vandalised property. That's it. And now he's going to spend three years in jail? Three years? Imagine that. Three years, locked in a cell for much of it, being in constant fear of being a) beaten up or b) raped, many of your companions being violent, mentally ill thugs, only seeing and speaking to your family on an irregular basis, being subjected to various petty humiliations by prison guards.
Not to mention three years where this kid should be in college getting an education so he has a change to be a productive citizen.
Sorry, but I don't see how the punishment comes even close to fitting the crime here. A couple of months in jail? Possibly. Three years? Ridiculous.
but I do get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about the shithead being attacked in the showers.
This is ludicrous. Do you believe judges should have the power to impose sentences of regular homosexual rape? If not, why do you think it's acceptable that such things are acceptable to go on in prison?
Slashdot Mirror
And does it make a sound when a tree falls on her?
So you regurgitate press releases for a living, then?
I don't know you, your work, or the outlet for your work, but the amount of lazy journalism I see in the tech sections of the dailies just beggars belief. It's probably gone down a little now that the volume of tech articles has decreased, but, still, it's pretty woeful. The specialist tech press is a different issue. It's still got serious problems, mind you.
Care to comment?
The key issue I raised in my comment remains. Why leave the key point up in the air? Why blather on about an irrelevancy (what the manufacturers say the public thinks about the new systems)? If questions don't get on-topic answers, ask more specific ones.
The key points that opponents of electronic voting make are that a) there might be flaws in the system either by error or by design, b) that the machines cannot be easily inspected to check their operations, and c) that without a paper trail there is no way to check after the fact whether the votes were correctly counted or not.
The response from a voting machine manufacturer, however, is classic obfuscation:
At this point, the question arises - why are these critics wrong? What are they not understanding about the system? Rather than following up on this point, though, the reporter takes a completely different, and totally irrelevant tack, discussing public confidence in the machines. So what? Lots of people probably think that Microsoft invented the Internet. It doesn't make it true. The only conclusion I can come to is that the journalist did not take the time to understand the issue properly, and just got quotes from "both sides" and that was good enough.
Do experts in other fields (if I may be so bold as to count myself an "expert" in it) get as frustrated with journalists, or is it just a particular problem with science and tech journalism?
If you're going to fantasise about American Pie girls, could you at least have the decency to choose one could can sorta kinda act?
How about an excerpt from Ben Harper's With My Own Two Hands"?
I (along with probably many others) emailed the on-line editor about this, and when the story appeared the links had been removed...
Take your signature away, please, no, not John Farnham, and not that song...Christmas 1986, sister's new boombox, compilation tape with "You're the Voice" on it, played at least 27 times...never, ever, refer to that song in public again or my reincarnations will hunt down yours for all eternity... :)
The first Matrix did have some ideas that were distinctly philosophical in nature - to (poorly) summarise "how do I know what is real, and what does 'real' mean anyway"? However, the questions have been asked, and answered, pretty much the same way in a great deal of other fiction. It's philosophical, sure, but it's well-trodden ground.
Franchised retailing and chain stores do exist pretty much everywhere in the developed world, but the franchise and chain store is far more pervasive there than it is elsewhere.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. The efficient logistics of big retail probably means stuff is cheaper in the US under such a system than it is with more chaotic retailing. It also leads to staff who know nothing about the goods they sell, and a conspicuous sameness about the goods on offer. But then again, is eclectic, funky, and individual shops really the best thing creative people could do with their lives?
Back in the day where some of the GnuCash developers (myself included) were employed by a company, we considered where to focus our efforts. Basically, we had to concentrate on business stuff because that's where we thought there was going to be cash (it didn't turn out that way, but that's another story and not really mine to tell). If somebody had have come along and said - "here's $BIGNUM (or even $MODERATELY_BIG_NUM), we'll schmooze some financial institutions for ya, now go implement online banking and make it work seamlessly", we could have done it (as some of the other developers have demonstrated in Germany with their online financial transaction standard).
The opportunity still exists if somebody wants to take the ball and run with it.
How long will it be till Wi-Fi is built into every motherboard? Not very long, I expect.
There's been no shortage of other things terrorists could possibly have done to the US, many of them equally destructive and of similar complexity to achieve, and most quite obvious to anybody who sits down and thinks about it for a while. They haven't managed to do it yet. Why?
It seems we have a bit of a paradox here:
But the above hasn't happened. With the spectacular exception of September 11 (which wasn't achieved through high-tech means), the best terrorists have been able to do is conventional bombing, and they haven't been able to kill that many people, even Israelis.
So, what's the problem with the above argument?
If you check the guy's website, he's proposed a variety of methods to reduce the sound from pulsejets. However, even if it can be heard, that's still a fair way from being able to *do* anything about it.
Huh? Over rural areas or suburbia it wouldn't have to fly any higher than 100 metres, surely - and you could surely add a radar altimeter to the plane to allow it to do some basic terrain-following. If there's a big mountain in the road, program the GPS with the coordinated and make the thing fly higher over that section. Not to mention that you could probably equip the thing with a video camera and use that as terminal guidance. In any case, how many cities have "modern ground AA systems" anywhere near them?
Is he arguing the "linux community" is somehow going to make millions of copies of older versions of the kernel source on the various squillions of CD-ROM's out there disppear so SCO can't prove its case? Or is he worried that any piece of code allegedly pinched from UnixWare can have its functionality duplicated so quickly that the arguments about Linux the bicycle are disproven? Either way, it's entirely ludicrous.
IBM's court filing would seem to be public information. Has anyone managed to locate a copy of it on the web somewhere?
Seriously, MS has had years to redesign MS Office, Outlook, and so on, to make it hard for viruses. Why is this still an issue?
At least, when he's making a fool of himself, he's definitely from New Zealand. Of course, if he gets an Oscar, he's Australian...
If they start trying to tackle more ambitious goals, then the amount of capital required would probably require a bit more cooperation.
The electoral college doesn't favour rural areas over metropolitan. It favours *some* states over other states arbitrarily. And rural areas would *not* be ignored under a simple first-past-the-post system. Candidates would need to seek votes whereever they could find them.
Oh, and if you think rural Americans are hard done by, you're quite deluded. The fact is that these days, most of inland America, including all the farmers, survive on subsidies generated by those evil rotten Democrat-voting city-dwelling pagans on the coasts. Deal with it.
For the same reason a cop pretending to be a kindergarten teacher acting like a cop did :)
For fsck's sake, did you even bother to follow the basic plot of the movie? Ah-nuld's character is a cyborg, made by the robots in 2029. He is identical (except for his orders) to the bad guy in the original Terminator film. The robots in 2029 presumably have a factory where they churn out Arnies by the dozen.
By the way, isn't Arnie getting a little bit old to be playing an invulnerable robot?
However, there comes a time when NASA should probably just bite the bullet and build a new vehicle, and accept the factor of two or three improvements in cost and safety it can realistically achieve rather than the hundredfold cost improvements it seeks in the longer term.
What kind of whacky world do you live in? On the basis of your discussion, this kid has basically vandalised property. That's it. And now he's going to spend three years in jail? Three years? Imagine that. Three years, locked in a cell for much of it, being in constant fear of being a) beaten up or b) raped, many of your companions being violent, mentally ill thugs, only seeing and speaking to your family on an irregular basis, being subjected to various petty humiliations by prison guards. Not to mention three years where this kid should be in college getting an education so he has a change to be a productive citizen.
Sorry, but I don't see how the punishment comes even close to fitting the crime here. A couple of months in jail? Possibly. Three years? Ridiculous.
This is ludicrous. Do you believe judges should have the power to impose sentences of regular homosexual rape? If not, why do you think it's acceptable that such things are acceptable to go on in prison?