Honestly, I'm not sure open source voting machines make a big difference either way. Don't get me wrong: the present Diebold mess (and others) is a disaster. And I agree with the parent, transparency matters.
But process transparency matters even more than open-source transparency. Why? Because open-source systems have bugs and are eminently hackable. It might well be that open-source systems indeed have fewer bugs, and are more easily fixed.
But an open-source system that isn't transparent in process is a disaster waiting to be hacked.
Here's a specific example.
First, let's consider a closed-source, process-transparent system. A closed-source system that lets you fill in a paper ballot with a pen. You walk over to someone and hand them your ballot. It gets scanned in in front of your eyes, and seamlessly deposited in a locked ballot box in one step. (This is actually the system used for local elections in parts of Canada).
Now: we have instant results, so no one can 'cheat' by holding back precincts the way even Robert Kennedy Jr. admitted the Daleys used to do in Chicago. We also have a fully human-readable ballot as a backup to be counted.
There are no 'hanging chads', butterfly ballots, etc.
Contrast the non-process transparent, we have an open source system that is touch-screen based.
You click the candidate of your choice, and leave the voting booth. And hope there are no bugs in the system and that no one's hacked it or loaded alternative software. You've got no physical verification of your vote.
Purely electronic touchscreen systems -- whether open or closed source -- are a disaster from a process transparency perspective.
I believe, if you have a sufficiently robust and transparent process, it's relatively irrelevant to the general populace and the stability of Democracy whether or not the system is closed source or open source.
Personally? Of course I prefer closed-source. I'm posting on Slashdot at 1am on a Friday night, am I not?
But I've no desire to see open-source touch-screen voting systems with no paper ballots. Just a bad idea. In every way.
Why dont they stop the silly special software crap and simply make the dang things play from a SMB share
Here's the awesome thing about open source. You want it to play from an SMB share? Go ahead and write it or ask someone to! I know, I know. Linux is obviously "silly special software crap" to you. Fair enough.
Now, why would you not want it to only play from SMB shares? Other people may want to be able to plug in their iPods, or FAT32-flash cards, or whatever. Personally, having to dump all my holiday photos to a remote server in some other room to have a slideshow is annoying for me; I'd much rather just plug in my camera or its memory card.
Indeed, other people may want to hook up to youtube without requiring other specialized hardware in the house.
I am so tired of this media appliances that require "special" software or use the stupid Upnp protocols that simply suck to high heaven.
OK. You're tired of open source linux, because that's "silly special software". Fair enough. You're tired of any custom firmware in general. If I'm to take you at your word, you're tired of media PC's, ApplesTVs, iPods, MP-3 players, TV's (they have firmware too), PVR's, modern stereos. Sorry about "special software". Again, if you're really being sincere, I suggest you try an old TV from the 1970's; it might not have any software in it. Add an 8-track player and a sweet 60's solid-state amp, and you'll have no "silly special software" to worry about.
As for UPnP protocols, I can cheerfully agree with you there.
Is SMB that fricking hard?
For you? I'd have to say yes, based on the above.
Now, to other readers (and sorry, perhaps I should have ignored the guy, but when someone was modding him insightful and others were replying in the same tone... well, it made the discussion worse than useless)... He was saying stuff that was flatly false and being applauded for it.
Back to the general concept: does this device actually make sense? A $249 embedded Linux device with some nice features that is upgradeable and open-sourced (on the software side)?
Maybe. It probably doesn't make sense if you have a MythTV device hooked up. Or a Tivo/really good PVR. Or, as others have mentioned, an XBMC (Xbox Media Center). Or are HD.
Personally, I'm intrigued, but a potential deal breaker for me is the presumed lack of upscaling in the device. It's doubtful it has the spare cpu capacity to process that in software. Apart from that, with the network connectivity, and extendability, it's tempting.
I just have to admit I'm a bit dismayed. We all talk about Open Source here and slam MS (often rightly so). When a company comes out that is Open Source and is doing something rather unique and interesting -- not just letting its users hack the hardware, but inviting them to, guys like this jump up and down about "silly special software" and get modded insightful.
"however USSR never "tried" to make its own Star Wars hardware."
Well, at the time it was widely believed that they did.
See "Soviet Star Wars", Time Magazine, Monday October 14, 1985:
"While few people doubt that the Soviets have an aggressive program comparable to SDI and have scored impressive advances in basic technology, some critics -- even within the Pentagon -- point out that translating those achievements into battle-ready equipment is a very long step."
and
"Soviet efforts to develop laser beams as warhead-killing weapons 'would cost roughly $1 billion per year (to duplicate) in the U.S.'"
This doesn't mean that the Soviet Union was actually doing all these things; it does mean that the CIA believed they were. Of course, with the CIA's track record on predictions... (and sure, some of that could well have been to boost US willingness to spend. Absolutely).
It might well be that some people pushed SDI/Star Wars to bankrupt the Soviet Union, but I tend to doubt that's why Reagan backed it. (It also sounds a bit like post-hoc justification, to be honest).
Reagan was a 'big idea' guy. It seemed pretty clear at the time that he really thought nuclear weapons were evil, and wanted to eliminate them if he could. I remember conservatives quietly fuming at what they regarded as strategic naivete on his part.
The graphics for WoW are fairly primitive, with low polygon counts, and, yes, cartoony.
The art for WoW is fantastic.
The decision to go with great art and fairly modest graphics was brilliant. The game stays fresh as parent says, and also (importantly) runs well on older hardware.
I started playing WoW about 3 years ago during one of the betas. I was struck by how well it played on my aging PC. I tried EQ2 at release (around the same time as WoW's general release), and lasted about a week. With WoW I'd get 30-40 fps. With EQ2? Maybe 10-15 fps.
Worse yet, though EQ2's graphics were more 'sophisticated', the game (IMHO) just didn't have the art that WoW did.
Now Vanguard, which someone above mentioned?
Yes, much better graphics than WoW, though seemingly quite poorly implemented. Art that's as good as WoW, perhaps even better in some places (and worse in others). (They had the late Keith Parkinson as Art Director, and it shows in parts of the game).
Deeper game play than WoW, though less elegant and less tested. (The entire sphere of Diplomacy is a great example).
And generally horrible performance on release and even today. Frequent crashes, framerates slowing to 0.2 fps and even freezing up for seconds at a time on high-end machines with the latest graphics hardware.
Result?
WoW, with its cartoony but endearing graphics that run on any half-decent machine sold in the last 4-5 years has nearly 10 million players with fairly modest churn.
Vanguard hit perhaps 200,000 subscribers, and lost perhaps three quarters of them after people had played for a month or three.
Everyone coming out with an MMO is going to be looking at those numbers, for good or ill. Delivering a polished title that runs well on the actual base of hardware that's out there is what matters.
This comes up now and then in the closed source world, especially with smaller vendors, but even with huge ones. The solution is generally that the code is put in escrow. Failure to update/repair as per contract then triggers a legal process for the customer to access the code.
Of course, this does nothing to help the individual user/customer, but can be of substantial assistance in certain circumstances.
None of these have been attacked in the slightest way? I have to ask what planet you've been living on for the last ten years. Pick up a newspaper sometime, you might be surprised. I have trouble believing this is a serious post.
But even leaving that aside, your assumption seems to be that because preventative actions have succeeded in some parts of the world, that that counts as "not an attack".
And what country are you talking about? If you view the US as the only country worth worrying about on the planet, then that's your lookout, but the rest of us live on earth, which is composed of many countries, many of which also have a terrorism problem. Many of these locations have been attacked by terrorists all over the world. (See Beslan (school), see schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia, stores (many in Israel, many elsewhere, in prior decades in the UK), Richard Reid (airplanes, fortunately an unsuccessful attack), Kaithadi Bridge, ports in Sri Lanka, factories in Indonesia, power plants and grids in the far east... I could go on, but really, 20 seconds of googling is enough.
But let's ignore the fact that attacks have occurred. (and in many cases thwarted; again, see Richard Reid). Let's ignore the fact that the US is not the only country in the world. Are you seriously suggesting that if you harden a whole series of vulnerable targets, that terrorists will not look for non-hardened targets? This is fascinating thinking.
And I'll repeat -- I don't think the solution is to brute-force the situation. That's a static defense and in war, sports and history such defenses don't do so well against a determined adversary.
"But the worst part is that the "failure of imagination" wasn't the reason that 9/11 happened. It was the failure to prevent people from smuggling weapons onto planes and hijacking"
Is this really possible though? Can we really 100% guarantee stopping every weapon getting onto a plane? After all, post 9/11, Richard Reid the infamous shoe bomber got on with explosives that might well have downed the plane. He was stopped by alert passengers, not by the bureaucracy.
In many cases, the weapons are already onboard the plane -- e.g. seatbelt extenders.
Far better to change the protocols and assume that a hijacked plane will try and be suicided into a building. Have the passengers be alert and on the lookout for the Richard Reids. (Yes, you'll get false alarms. And our present security system wastes countless hours in airports for every passenger. Both are painful prices).
"if you're spending time and effort in trying to prevent hollywood movie-style terrorist attacks instead of the routine, more effective (and much more likely) types of attacks, then you're probably wasting your time and resources."
I agree in part. Where I disagree is the view that you shouldn't be paying attention to both, with (I think we'd agree) most attention focused on the latter. Keep in mind, though, that terrorists seem to like the 'spectacular'. It wasn't Glasgow's transport system, or Barcelona's that were targeted in Europe, it was London and Madrid. It wasn't Peoria's school buses, but airplanes that headed to New York and Washington.
To repeat; I'm not sure that SF writers are the way to go, but I'd rather have a broader more expansive look at the problems we face than a narrow one with solely the same beltway bureaucratic filtered through a partisan political prism. Provided of course that we're still doing the detailed thinking about how to respond to exactly the kinds of smaller-scale terrorism that you quite rightly suggest we need to focus on.
The way to improve security is to have well-trained guards in vulnerable places
Well, this is certainly a good brute-force approach. The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of vulnerable places. Schools, shopping malls, stadia, airplanes, hospitals, large buildings, bridges, factories, food processing plants, ports, power plants, electrical grid, network control centers... and the list goes on. So that means millions of guards. Possibly tens of millions. Assuming you're actually going to protect vulnerable places with well-trained guards. In a modern technological densely-populated society, that's a lot of places to protect.
Now if you want well-trained, highly competent guards, you're going to have to pay them more than the typical rent-a-cop rates. That'll be expensive. You'll have to arm them (with at least non-lethal weapons).
Let's say you only need 2.5 million guards in North America. (well under 1% of the population). Of course, they only work 40 hours a week, so you're looking at just over 4 shifts. OK, 10 million guards. Well-trained, highly competent, so you'll probably have salaries of around 50k, and support infrastructure and overhead that doubles that. 100k/year. That's a trillion dollars a year.
Is that really the best way to improve security? I can think of a lot of ways other than spending a trillion dollars on 'well trained guards in [all] vulnerable places'.
And you'll have something much closer to a police state -- either they'll be government guards or corporate guards.
And if you miss just one vulnerable place, then the approach fails. No, I'd rather apply intellect and thought to the problem rather than try and brute force it. I'm not sure the SF writers are the way to go, but I think it's a lot better than going the police state road and spending a trillion a year for the privilege.
Leaving aside the Terminator suggestion, the SF writer involvement in suggesting government policy isn't actually quite as crazy (or as unprecedented) as it sounds.
One of the requirements for this group is that the individual has to have a PhD in a technical area (physics, engineering, etc.). These aren't just random writers off the street.
As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.
As for precedent, both Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (coauthors of Footfall, and the Mote in God's Eye amongst other works) were a significant part of the push in the 80's to develop what is now National Missile Defense.
(Of course, that may or may not be a good program, but it's certainly an example of educated SF writers influencing public policy).
I'd say both of these companies, off the top of my head, are quite good. Or do you and I mean something different by the term CRPG -- are you for instance limiting it to the D20 ruleset?
You're certainly right about Troika, and it's worth noting that Bethsoft also semi-died before being absorbed and resurrected.
This is an excellent point. Yes, much of Greenland was still covered by ice, some of which is over 100k years old at least. That said, parts of it were certainly greener and warmer. Ditto parts of Labrador and Newfoundland, for example. True, I didn't mean to imply that Greenland as a whole (or any of Greenland) was a sub-tropical paradise with Hawaiian hula dancers, and saying "Greenland was green" was careless wording, especially on Slashdot. Nor was Newfoundland a great grape-growing region for all the 'marketing' name of "Vinland"
If I could change it, I'd write "greener". To the parent, well said. To others... well, you're certainly very literal. Well done. Thanks for missing my point entirely.
And rising CO2 levels means higher plant growth. Yes, TFA notes concerns with water supply and ground level air pollution, but the former is partly independent, and the latter is independent of global warming (i.e. one can have cleaner air and rising (or falling) CO2.
As for the posts below which respond with "yes, warmer in the age of the dinosaurs", well, there's a reason why Greenland was named Greenland. It was green, merely a few centuries ago.
On the whole, that set of articles actually makes a decent case (for me) that global warming will be beneficial for wealthy northern regions with plenty of fresh water and limited exposure to rising water levels. (Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia in particular. Russia... maybe, with oil money to adapt crops). The US South, including Texas (irony of ironies) maybe not so much.
No, even assuming their arguments and that conclusion (above) is correct, I don't suggest that we therefore ignore global warming if we live in one such region. We're one world after all. But I do find it ironic that the countries that may actually benefit from such changes are amongst the most concerned about the problem, while regions that could suffer serious harm seem to be far less concerned.
There is public access, via the Freedom of Information Act. The problem is, that's too slow and cumbersome for most researchers. From the post there,
The relevant DOE procurement clause is DEAR 970.5204-3 "Access to and ownership of records" and it is in the LANS contract by reference in I-78.
...
It DOES NOT require that the general public have access to either Government-owned or Contractor-Owned records in the possession of the contractor.
It's not entirely clear whether this is the contractor doing this on its own initiative, or, more likely, the contractor legitimately concerned about being accused by the government of giving someone improper access. So, LANS seems to be playing it safe by directing everyone to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) which is of course all but useless for students and many archival researchers.
A very unfortunate state of affairs, but I'm not certain privatization is exactly what's to blame.
Well, the US objective was also to stop the Royal Navy from impressing US sailors. (The RN was pretty desperate for manpower during the Napoleonic wars). They succeeded in that latter objective.
Moreover the US did win the last major battle of the war (after the peace treaty was signed, but before news of its having been signed had spread to North America), the Battle of New Orleans.
That said, the US started a war by invading Canada; three years into the war, the war was being fought along the east coast of the US. Not exactly what one would call a victory.
There's actually very little that occupies the market niche of devices with sufficient resolution to read websites without reformatting them (say a minimum of 800x480) at a reasonable price (say under $500).
The iPhone -- while it will likely be an innovative and fascinating device -- won't have the resolution to comfortably read larger documents or non-reformatted/horizontally scrolled webpages. That's not of course its primary purpose.
There are a very small number of PDA's that are 640x480, but most devices are 320x200 or 320x400. As others have mentioned, the Nokia N800 is one of the few that fits the bill in price and resolution.
Of course, is there need for such devices? It's hard to say. The Nokia internet tablets have been successful, though not wildly so, and are generally held to lack polish and reliability.
Obviously Intel thinks they have a shot at higher resolution low cost devices. They could be right.
According to Opera's CEO (interviewed here) Opera has around 10-15m active desktop users, 40m people with Opera on their phones, and 7m users of "Opera mini" on other devices. Other figures note 50m phones with Opera have been 'shipped', but presumably not all of these are in use.
So, yes, the non-desktop market increases Opera's base by a factor of 4-5, assuming every phone with Opera on it is being used to browse the web.
That's still a modest share of the overall market, even when you measure by installed base, rather than actual usage. Indeed, likely substantially less than Firefox (Supposedly circa 100m desktop users from not terribly good sources).
Indeed. The anonymous coward who posted as the GGP never stated that ignorance was a defence. Indeed, conscious and wilful violation of certain laws can bring even greater penalties.
The same holds in many countries/jurisdictions in civil law in general, beyond just patent law; often, if you're made aware that you're violating a legal agreement, or breaching your duty, the penalties may be heightened if you continue in the breach/violations.
(This is why many EULAs have clauses specifically declaiming such liability).
This entire point is quite distinct from "ignorance is no excuse".
I don't think we need characterize all anti-abortion groups as terrorists, despite there being anti-abortionists that have been terrorists. Similarly I don't think we need characterize all animal activists as terrorists, well, for the same reason. And, dare I say, we need not characterize all Muslims (or Christians) as terrorists even though there have been both Muslim and Christian terrorists.
I've spent most of my life living under socialized health care systems. (Canada, Europe).
These are very good for routine situations when the population is very healthy and the society (and hence government) is wealthy. They are ok for catastrophic situations when everything is well-funded.
They are, I grant, dreadful in other circumstances.
That said, the idea that 'federal regulation' is the only problem with US healthcare is decidedly simplistic -- with respect to the parent.
To simply pick one problem that doesn't have an easy left/right solution -- lawsuits (and threat of same) are a serious problem in the US. Legal compliance costs and malpractice insurance eat up a huge percentage of a good physician's income.
You want to ban lawsuits against physicians? Very bad idea for obvious reasons.
And yet looking at political manipulation of the health care situation: right-wing protection of drug patents MAY drive innovation, but definitely drives up drug costs. Left-wing protection of trial lawyers drives up the cost of certain procedures and the practice of medically irrational procedures (e.g. C-sections), though it in turn MAY protect some people.
On simple public health grounds a purely freemarket solution seems imprudent (consider what a pay for treatment approach would do to a poor person with some contagious plague?).
Yet the statists don't have it right either. All I can say is that this area merits considerable thought and care.
"For example, why shouldn't everybody's tax returns be a part of the public record?"
You really want everyone -- that woman who might be looking at dating you, the person phoning you up to get a charity contribution, the telemarketer, the guy who just needs your address, SSN, dob to steal your identity, your co-workers, your kids asking you for a raise in their allowance, the 16-year-old with a drug problem and a crowbar, someone who slipped on a sidewalk outside your house -- to know how much you made every single year? To know all your investments? To know your dob, SSN, and address?
You're very unusual. All I can say is that most people don't feel as you do.
As for public corporations having to operate under full public scrutiny, not all corporations are public, and even of those that are, public scrutiny hasn't proven very successful to date. Adding on layers of laws, regulation, and bureaucracy to attempt to safeguard unnecessary information collection rather than just stopping collecting the information seems a strange way to go about things to me.
As they said in the 60's, 'the personal is the political'. I don't think our two concerns are infinitely far apart.
I admit, my mindset in responding to your question was shaped by TFA -- namely, wide access to lots of information gathered on you.
Nope, I don't like the uses governments have historically found for such information.
I would again point out something that you haven't addressed -- perhaps because you took it as read -- the combination of search engines and datamining seems to raise the stakes. Being able to readily collate disparate data on a single individual is... disturbing.
About 15-20 years ago, IIRC, someone in Ottawa, Canada, dumped a shoebox containing microfiche tax records for 16 million Canadians. That'd be the equivalent of perhaps 150-some million American citizens' tax records.
It got turned in to a journalist. Today? It'd probably be sold for identity theft -- and the records would be digital and would spread like wildfire.
Couple that with an HMO/HCP dataleak and a VISA/MC/Eurocard dataleak... and you've got everything you want to know about millions of people, potentially up to the level of blackmail if your datamining is good enough.
Sure, I agree with you we need to be skeptical -- and very worried -- about what governments are doing. But that isn't the only thing.
I also don't like the idea of some bureaucracy's picture of me defining me, especially if it's distorted.
I lean, slightly, to a libertarian perspective. Your mileage may vary; fair enough.
I really don't like the idea in our hyper-sensitive culture of some one (say) being able to look up (and granted, not all of these can be looked up -- at present) my ethnicity, my voting history, or every letter/report/form I've had to file with the government, whether or not I belonged to a gay/straight alliance in high school, or a Christian fellowship club in university. Or whether I asked for the Kosher or the Halal meal on my last airline flight.
These, frankly, are no one's business but my own, my family's and close personal friends.
I see data-mining as an expanding source of derivative information about people, to a disturbing degree.
There certainly are legitimate things (in my personal view) for people to know about. Does someone have a criminal record? Are they a sexual predator? Child molester? Have they been disbarred? What is their credit history (if a lender).
But I don't see increasing governmental information -- even if its universally accessible -- on us all as a uniform positive.
Let me now turn the question back on you. Do you? If so, can you please elucidate?
The above poster has it exactly right. I'll amplify. We shouldn't be worrying about governments redacting personal information, or even it being accessible via search engines; we should be worried about them collecting it in the first place.
Sure, the IRS needs to know your income, and the DMV should know whether or not you have 10 recent speeding tickets.
But I find the number of pieces of information that State, Federal, state-funded bodies, and legislative mandates (e.g. corporate information gathering and disclosure pursuant to governmental affirmative action directives) require from you seems to be going up and up.
This is rather disturbing.
Redacting, as the article suggests, is merely a half step. Setting a sunset on how long most information about you is available is a full step, and not collecting the information in the first place is better yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, I'm not sure open source voting machines make a big difference either way. Don't get me wrong: the present Diebold mess (and others) is a disaster. And I agree with the parent, transparency matters. But process transparency matters even more than open-source transparency. Why? Because open-source systems have bugs and are eminently hackable. It might well be that open-source systems indeed have fewer bugs, and are more easily fixed. But an open-source system that isn't transparent in process is a disaster waiting to be hacked. Here's a specific example. First, let's consider a closed-source, process-transparent system. A closed-source system that lets you fill in a paper ballot with a pen. You walk over to someone and hand them your ballot. It gets scanned in in front of your eyes, and seamlessly deposited in a locked ballot box in one step. (This is actually the system used for local elections in parts of Canada). Now: we have instant results, so no one can 'cheat' by holding back precincts the way even Robert Kennedy Jr. admitted the Daleys used to do in Chicago. We also have a fully human-readable ballot as a backup to be counted. There are no 'hanging chads', butterfly ballots, etc. Contrast the non-process transparent, we have an open source system that is touch-screen based. You click the candidate of your choice, and leave the voting booth. And hope there are no bugs in the system and that no one's hacked it or loaded alternative software. You've got no physical verification of your vote. Purely electronic touchscreen systems -- whether open or closed source -- are a disaster from a process transparency perspective. I believe, if you have a sufficiently robust and transparent process, it's relatively irrelevant to the general populace and the stability of Democracy whether or not the system is closed source or open source. Personally? Of course I prefer closed-source. I'm posting on Slashdot at 1am on a Friday night, am I not? But I've no desire to see open-source touch-screen voting systems with no paper ballots. Just a bad idea. In every way.
How is this insightful? Did you even spend 10 seconds looking at the article or the device?
No, the product is Linux based, as in:
(see http://www.neurosaudio.com/osd/osd.asp [neurosaudio.com])Here's the awesome thing about open source. You want it to play from an SMB share? Go ahead and write it or ask someone to! I know, I know. Linux is obviously "silly special software crap" to you. Fair enough.
And... guess what? Someone did.
http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/OSD_PrNow, why would you not want it to only play from SMB shares? Other people may want to be able to plug in their iPods, or FAT32-flash cards, or whatever. Personally, having to dump all my holiday photos to a remote server in some other room to have a slideshow is annoying for me; I'd much rather just plug in my camera or its memory card.
Indeed, other people may want to hook up to youtube without requiring other specialized hardware in the house.
OK. You're tired of open source linux, because that's "silly special software". Fair enough. You're tired of any custom firmware in general. If I'm to take you at your word, you're tired of media PC's, ApplesTVs, iPods, MP-3 players, TV's (they have firmware too), PVR's, modern stereos. Sorry about "special software". Again, if you're really being sincere, I suggest you try an old TV from the 1970's; it might not have any software in it. Add an 8-track player and a sweet 60's solid-state amp, and you'll have no "silly special software" to worry about.
As for UPnP protocols, I can cheerfully agree with you there.
For you? I'd have to say yes, based on the above.
Now, to other readers (and sorry, perhaps I should have ignored the guy, but when someone was modding him insightful and others were replying in the same tone... well, it made the discussion worse than useless)... He was saying stuff that was flatly false and being applauded for it.
Back to the general concept: does this device actually make sense? A $249 embedded Linux device with some nice features that is upgradeable and open-sourced (on the software side)?
Maybe. It probably doesn't make sense if you have a MythTV device hooked up. Or a Tivo/really good PVR. Or, as others have mentioned, an XBMC (Xbox Media Center). Or are HD.
Personally, I'm intrigued, but a potential deal breaker for me is the presumed lack of upscaling in the device. It's doubtful it has the spare cpu capacity to process that in software. Apart from that, with the network connectivity, and extendability, it's tempting.
I just have to admit I'm a bit dismayed. We all talk about Open Source here and slam MS (often rightly so). When a company comes out that is Open Source and is doing something rather unique and interesting -- not just letting its users hack the hardware, but inviting them to, guys like this jump up and down about "silly special software" and get modded insightful.
-Holmwood"however USSR never "tried" to make its own Star Wars hardware."
Well, at the time it was widely believed that they did.
See "Soviet Star Wars", Time Magazine, Monday October 14, 1985:
"While few people doubt that the Soviets have an aggressive program comparable to SDI and have scored impressive advances in basic technology, some critics -- even within the Pentagon -- point out that translating those achievements into battle-ready equipment is a very long step."
and
"Soviet efforts to develop laser beams as warhead-killing weapons 'would cost roughly $1 billion per year (to duplicate) in the U.S.'"
This doesn't mean that the Soviet Union was actually doing all these things; it does mean that the CIA believed they were. Of course, with the CIA's track record on predictions... (and sure, some of that could well have been to boost US willingness to spend. Absolutely).
It might well be that some people pushed SDI/Star Wars to bankrupt the Soviet Union, but I tend to doubt that's why Reagan backed it. (It also sounds a bit like post-hoc justification, to be honest).
Reagan was a 'big idea' guy. It seemed pretty clear at the time that he really thought nuclear weapons were evil, and wanted to eliminate them if he could. I remember conservatives quietly fuming at what they regarded as strategic naivete on his part.
-Holmwood
I partially disagree with parent and Grandparent.
You guys are talking about two different things.
The graphics for WoW are fairly primitive, with low polygon counts, and, yes, cartoony.
The art for WoW is fantastic.
The decision to go with great art and fairly modest graphics was brilliant. The game stays fresh as parent says, and also (importantly) runs well on older hardware.
I started playing WoW about 3 years ago during one of the betas. I was struck by how well it played on my aging PC. I tried EQ2 at release (around the same time as WoW's general release), and lasted about a week. With WoW I'd get 30-40 fps. With EQ2? Maybe 10-15 fps.
Worse yet, though EQ2's graphics were more 'sophisticated', the game (IMHO) just didn't have the art that WoW did.
Now Vanguard, which someone above mentioned?
Yes, much better graphics than WoW, though seemingly quite poorly implemented. Art that's as good as WoW, perhaps even better in some places (and worse in others). (They had the late Keith Parkinson as Art Director, and it shows in parts of the game).
Deeper game play than WoW, though less elegant and less tested. (The entire sphere of Diplomacy is a great example).
And generally horrible performance on release and even today. Frequent crashes, framerates slowing to 0.2 fps and even freezing up for seconds at a time on high-end machines with the latest graphics hardware.
Result?
WoW, with its cartoony but endearing graphics that run on any half-decent machine sold in the last 4-5 years has nearly 10 million players with fairly modest churn.
Vanguard hit perhaps 200,000 subscribers, and lost perhaps three quarters of them after people had played for a month or three.
Everyone coming out with an MMO is going to be looking at those numbers, for good or ill. Delivering a polished title that runs well on the actual base of hardware that's out there is what matters.
-Holmwood
This comes up now and then in the closed source world, especially with smaller vendors, but even with huge ones. The solution is generally that the code is put in escrow. Failure to update/repair as per contract then triggers a legal process for the customer to access the code.
Of course, this does nothing to help the individual user/customer, but can be of substantial assistance in certain circumstances.
Holmwood
None of these have been attacked in the slightest way? I have to ask what planet you've been living on for the last ten years. Pick up a newspaper sometime, you might be surprised. I have trouble believing this is a serious post.
But even leaving that aside, your assumption seems to be that because preventative actions have succeeded in some parts of the world, that that counts as "not an attack".
And what country are you talking about? If you view the US as the only country worth worrying about on the planet, then that's your lookout, but the rest of us live on earth, which is composed of many countries, many of which also have a terrorism problem. Many of these locations have been attacked by terrorists all over the world. (See Beslan (school), see schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia, stores (many in Israel, many elsewhere, in prior decades in the UK), Richard Reid (airplanes, fortunately an unsuccessful attack), Kaithadi Bridge, ports in Sri Lanka, factories in Indonesia, power plants and grids in the far east... I could go on, but really, 20 seconds of googling is enough.
But let's ignore the fact that attacks have occurred. (and in many cases thwarted; again, see Richard Reid). Let's ignore the fact that the US is not the only country in the world. Are you seriously suggesting that if you harden a whole series of vulnerable targets, that terrorists will not look for non-hardened targets? This is fascinating thinking.
And I'll repeat -- I don't think the solution is to brute-force the situation. That's a static defense and in war, sports and history such defenses don't do so well against a determined adversary.
Holmwood.
"But the worst part is that the "failure of imagination" wasn't the reason that 9/11 happened. It was the failure to prevent people from smuggling weapons onto planes and hijacking"
Is this really possible though? Can we really 100% guarantee stopping every weapon getting onto a plane? After all, post 9/11, Richard Reid the infamous shoe bomber got on with explosives that might well have downed the plane. He was stopped by alert passengers, not by the bureaucracy.
In many cases, the weapons are already onboard the plane -- e.g. seatbelt extenders.
Far better to change the protocols and assume that a hijacked plane will try and be suicided into a building. Have the passengers be alert and on the lookout for the Richard Reids. (Yes, you'll get false alarms. And our present security system wastes countless hours in airports for every passenger. Both are painful prices).
"if you're spending time and effort in trying to prevent hollywood movie-style terrorist attacks instead of the routine, more effective (and much more likely) types of attacks, then you're probably wasting your time and resources."
I agree in part. Where I disagree is the view that you shouldn't be paying attention to both, with (I think we'd agree) most attention focused on the latter. Keep in mind, though, that terrorists seem to like the 'spectacular'. It wasn't Glasgow's transport system, or Barcelona's that were targeted in Europe, it was London and Madrid. It wasn't Peoria's school buses, but airplanes that headed to New York and Washington.
To repeat; I'm not sure that SF writers are the way to go, but I'd rather have a broader more expansive look at the problems we face than a narrow one with solely the same beltway bureaucratic filtered through a partisan political prism. Provided of course that we're still doing the detailed thinking about how to respond to exactly the kinds of smaller-scale terrorism that you quite rightly suggest we need to focus on.
Holmwood
Well, this is certainly a good brute-force approach. The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of vulnerable places. Schools, shopping malls, stadia, airplanes, hospitals, large buildings, bridges, factories, food processing plants, ports, power plants, electrical grid, network control centers... and the list goes on. So that means millions of guards. Possibly tens of millions. Assuming you're actually going to protect vulnerable places with well-trained guards. In a modern technological densely-populated society, that's a lot of places to protect.
Now if you want well-trained, highly competent guards, you're going to have to pay them more than the typical rent-a-cop rates. That'll be expensive. You'll have to arm them (with at least non-lethal weapons).
Let's say you only need 2.5 million guards in North America. (well under 1% of the population). Of course, they only work 40 hours a week, so you're looking at just over 4 shifts. OK, 10 million guards. Well-trained, highly competent, so you'll probably have salaries of around 50k, and support infrastructure and overhead that doubles that. 100k/year. That's a trillion dollars a year.
Is that really the best way to improve security? I can think of a lot of ways other than spending a trillion dollars on 'well trained guards in [all] vulnerable places'.
And you'll have something much closer to a police state -- either they'll be government guards or corporate guards.
And if you miss just one vulnerable place, then the approach fails. No, I'd rather apply intellect and thought to the problem rather than try and brute force it. I'm not sure the SF writers are the way to go, but I think it's a lot better than going the police state road and spending a trillion a year for the privilege.
-Holmwood
Ha!
Leaving aside the Terminator suggestion, the SF writer involvement in suggesting government policy isn't actually quite as crazy (or as unprecedented) as it sounds.
One of the requirements for this group is that the individual has to have a PhD in a technical area (physics, engineering, etc.). These aren't just random writers off the street.
As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.
As for precedent, both Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (coauthors of Footfall, and the Mote in God's Eye amongst other works) were a significant part of the push in the 80's to develop what is now National Missile Defense.
(Of course, that may or may not be a good program, but it's certainly an example of educated SF writers influencing public policy).
Holmwood
Bethesdasoft (Elder Scrolls series).
Blizzard (Diablo series).
I'd say both of these companies, off the top of my head, are quite good. Or do you and I mean something different by the term CRPG -- are you for instance limiting it to the D20 ruleset?
You're certainly right about Troika, and it's worth noting that Bethsoft also semi-died before being absorbed and resurrected.
Holmwood
This is an excellent point. Yes, much of Greenland was still covered by ice, some of which is over 100k years old at least. That said, parts of it were certainly greener and warmer. Ditto parts of Labrador and Newfoundland, for example. True, I didn't mean to imply that Greenland as a whole (or any of Greenland) was a sub-tropical paradise with Hawaiian hula dancers, and saying "Greenland was green" was careless wording, especially on Slashdot. Nor was Newfoundland a great grape-growing region for all the 'marketing' name of "Vinland"
If I could change it, I'd write "greener". To the parent, well said. To others... well, you're certainly very literal. Well done. Thanks for missing my point entirely.
And rising CO2 levels means higher plant growth. Yes, TFA notes concerns with water supply and ground level air pollution, but the former is partly independent, and the latter is independent of global warming (i.e. one can have cleaner air and rising (or falling) CO2.
... maybe, with oil money to adapt crops). The US South, including Texas (irony of ironies) maybe not so much.
As for the posts below which respond with "yes, warmer in the age of the dinosaurs", well, there's a reason why Greenland was named Greenland. It was green, merely a few centuries ago.
On the whole, that set of articles actually makes a decent case (for me) that global warming will be beneficial for wealthy northern regions with plenty of fresh water and limited exposure to rising water levels. (Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia in particular. Russia
No, even assuming their arguments and that conclusion (above) is correct, I don't suggest that we therefore ignore global warming if we live in one such region. We're one world after all. But I do find it ironic that the countries that may actually benefit from such changes are amongst the most concerned about the problem, while regions that could suffer serious harm seem to be far less concerned.
There is public access, via the Freedom of Information Act. The problem is, that's too slow and cumbersome for most researchers. From the post there,
It's not entirely clear whether this is the contractor doing this on its own initiative, or, more likely, the contractor legitimately concerned about being accused by the government of giving someone improper access. So, LANS seems to be playing it safe by directing everyone to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) which is of course all but useless for students and many archival researchers.
A very unfortunate state of affairs, but I'm not certain privatization is exactly what's to blame.
Well, the US objective was also to stop the Royal Navy from impressing US sailors. (The RN was pretty desperate for manpower during the Napoleonic wars). They succeeded in that latter objective.
Moreover the US did win the last major battle of the war (after the peace treaty was signed, but before news of its having been signed had spread to North America), the Battle of New Orleans.
That said, the US started a war by invading Canada; three years into the war, the war was being fought along the east coast of the US. Not exactly what one would call a victory.
It's the nature of human beings to compete for things. Be they worthwhile or somewhat reprehensible.
Moreover even evil capitalists like at least the idea of doing good.
I don't find it at all surprising that there'd be competition to address this need. I find it somewhat surprising that it took so long.
There's actually very little that occupies the market niche of devices with sufficient resolution to read websites without reformatting them (say a minimum of 800x480) at a reasonable price (say under $500).
The iPhone -- while it will likely be an innovative and fascinating device -- won't have the resolution to comfortably read larger documents or non-reformatted/horizontally scrolled webpages. That's not of course its primary purpose.
There are a very small number of PDA's that are 640x480, but most devices are 320x200 or 320x400. As others have mentioned, the Nokia N800 is one of the few that fits the bill in price and resolution.
Of course, is there need for such devices? It's hard to say. The Nokia internet tablets have been successful, though not wildly so, and are generally held to lack polish and reliability.
Obviously Intel thinks they have a shot at higher resolution low cost devices. They could be right.
According to Opera's CEO (interviewed here) Opera has around 10-15m active desktop users, 40m people with Opera on their phones, and 7m users of "Opera mini" on other devices. Other figures note 50m phones with Opera have been 'shipped', but presumably not all of these are in use.
So, yes, the non-desktop market increases Opera's base by a factor of 4-5, assuming every phone with Opera on it is being used to browse the web.
That's still a modest share of the overall market, even when you measure by installed base, rather than actual usage. Indeed, likely substantially less than Firefox (Supposedly circa 100m desktop users from not terribly good sources).
Indeed. The anonymous coward who posted as the GGP never stated that ignorance was a defence. Indeed, conscious and wilful violation of certain laws can bring even greater penalties.
The same holds in many countries/jurisdictions in civil law in general, beyond just patent law; often, if you're made aware that you're violating a legal agreement, or breaching your duty, the penalties may be heightened if you continue in the breach/violations.
(This is why many EULAs have clauses specifically declaiming such liability).
This entire point is quite distinct from "ignorance is no excuse".
Yes, I'm inclined to agree with this, and think you need to be modded up. It's a start.
I don't think we need characterize all anti-abortion groups as terrorists, despite there being anti-abortionists that have been terrorists. Similarly I don't think we need characterize all animal activists as terrorists, well, for the same reason. And, dare I say, we need not characterize all Muslims (or Christians) as terrorists even though there have been both Muslim and Christian terrorists.
I've spent most of my life living under socialized health care systems. (Canada, Europe).
These are very good for routine situations when the population is very healthy and the society (and hence government) is wealthy. They are ok for catastrophic situations when everything is well-funded.
They are, I grant, dreadful in other circumstances.
That said, the idea that 'federal regulation' is the only problem with US healthcare is decidedly simplistic -- with respect to the parent.
To simply pick one problem that doesn't have an easy left/right solution -- lawsuits (and threat of same) are a serious problem in the US. Legal compliance costs and malpractice insurance eat up a huge percentage of a good physician's income.
You want to ban lawsuits against physicians? Very bad idea for obvious reasons.
And yet looking at political manipulation of the health care situation: right-wing protection of drug patents MAY drive innovation, but definitely drives up drug costs. Left-wing protection of trial lawyers drives up the cost of certain procedures and the practice of medically irrational procedures (e.g. C-sections), though it in turn MAY protect some people.
On simple public health grounds a purely freemarket solution seems imprudent (consider what a pay for treatment approach would do to a poor person with some contagious plague?).
Yet the statists don't have it right either. All I can say is that this area merits considerable thought and care.
"For example, why shouldn't everybody's tax returns be a part of the public record?"
You really want everyone -- that woman who might be looking at dating you, the person phoning you up to get a charity contribution, the telemarketer, the guy who just needs your address, SSN, dob to steal your identity, your co-workers, your kids asking you for a raise in their allowance, the 16-year-old with a drug problem and a crowbar, someone who slipped on a sidewalk outside your house -- to know how much you made every single year? To know all your investments? To know your dob, SSN, and address?
You're very unusual. All I can say is that most people don't feel as you do.
As for public corporations having to operate under full public scrutiny, not all corporations are public, and even of those that are, public scrutiny hasn't proven very successful to date. Adding on layers of laws, regulation, and bureaucracy to attempt to safeguard unnecessary information collection rather than just stopping collecting the information seems a strange way to go about things to me.
As they said in the 60's, 'the personal is the political'. I don't think our two concerns are infinitely far apart.
I admit, my mindset in responding to your question was shaped by TFA -- namely, wide access to lots of information gathered on you.
Nope, I don't like the uses governments have historically found for such information.
I would again point out something that you haven't addressed -- perhaps because you took it as read -- the combination of search engines and datamining seems to raise the stakes. Being able to readily collate disparate data on a single individual is... disturbing.
About 15-20 years ago, IIRC, someone in Ottawa, Canada, dumped a shoebox containing microfiche tax records for 16 million Canadians. That'd be the equivalent of perhaps 150-some million American citizens' tax records.
It got turned in to a journalist. Today? It'd probably be sold for identity theft -- and the records would be digital and would spread like wildfire.
Couple that with an HMO/HCP dataleak and a VISA/MC/Eurocard dataleak... and you've got everything you want to know about millions of people, potentially up to the level of blackmail if your datamining is good enough.
Sure, I agree with you we need to be skeptical -- and very worried -- about what governments are doing. But that isn't the only thing.
Best,
-Holmwood
Fair question. I like privacy.
I also don't like the idea of some bureaucracy's picture of me defining me, especially if it's distorted.
I lean, slightly, to a libertarian perspective. Your mileage may vary; fair enough.
I really don't like the idea in our hyper-sensitive culture of some one (say) being able to look up (and granted, not all of these can be looked up -- at present) my ethnicity, my voting history, or every letter/report/form I've had to file with the government, whether or not I belonged to a gay/straight alliance in high school, or a Christian fellowship club in university. Or whether I asked for the Kosher or the Halal meal on my last airline flight.
These, frankly, are no one's business but my own, my family's and close personal friends.
I see data-mining as an expanding source of derivative information about people, to a disturbing degree.
There certainly are legitimate things (in my personal view) for people to know about. Does someone have a criminal record? Are they a sexual predator? Child molester? Have they been disbarred? What is their credit history (if a lender).
But I don't see increasing governmental information -- even if its universally accessible -- on us all as a uniform positive.
Let me now turn the question back on you. Do you? If so, can you please elucidate?
The above poster has it exactly right. I'll amplify. We shouldn't be worrying about governments redacting personal information, or even it being accessible via search engines; we should be worried about them collecting it in the first place.
Sure, the IRS needs to know your income, and the DMV should know whether or not you have 10 recent speeding tickets.
But I find the number of pieces of information that State, Federal, state-funded bodies, and legislative mandates (e.g. corporate information gathering and disclosure pursuant to governmental affirmative action directives) require from you seems to be going up and up.
This is rather disturbing.
Redacting, as the article suggests, is merely a half step. Setting a sunset on how long most information about you is available is a full step, and not collecting the information in the first place is better yet.