The point is that these machines, while far superior to the Diebold machines in America, still have a fundamental flaw: The operation of the machines is not transparent, and the vote counts are not verifiable. A malicious insider, or even a poll worker with extended access to a machine could accomplish anything. This is completely unacceptable.
from TFA: "Insufficient thought has been given to the large number of implicit trust relationships that come with DRE systems, such as the near infinite trust placed in the entities building and certifying the systems. In addition, one has to consider the possibility that outside attackers have surreptitious access to one or more devices. Insider attacks are generally thought to be more prevalent, and they are harder to prevent and/or detect. The latter is especially true in systems of which only insiders know how they work."
"Without exaggeration, even a brain-numbingly insecure system(19) would would meet Dutch legal requirements..."
And the text of footnote 19? "For the sake of the argument let us assume an unpatched Windows 95 machine with an always-on unencrypted wireless Internet connection, no virus scanner and an early Internet Explorer web browser to cast votes on an ASP script running on an internal unpatched IIS 1.0 webserver."
I would have specified that file and print sharing be enabled on the win95 box, and that the IIS server not be restricted to connections from localhost, but I think their example is good enough.
Why use only the first letter of each word? Most systems allow passwords sufficiently long that you can just use the whole sentence, spaces, punctuation, and all. More secure, AND easier to remember than other complex passwords.
I only use complete sentence passwords for priveliged accounts on my production machines.
My DSL provider charges me only $5 extra per month for not having a land line telephone. Even the telcos will give you DSL-only packages these days for similar prices. Your quoted prices are from the ancient past.
Well, the Wii will be significantly smaller than the Gamecube - I believe they said it would be about the size of two DVD cases stacked together.
If they couldn't fit something which is supposed to be that small in a GCN case at this stage of development, they would seriously have something to worry about.
I found the vote tally, but not on any.gov - I had to google for it. That link also contains the office phone numbers for every committee member - not that changing their minds will help at this point, but a scolding could be in order.
Americans should probably look this list over and see if their rep is on it. Mine is not. The vote was pretty much along party lines, with 5 Dems crossing over and voting against the Markey amendment (Gonzalez - TX, Green - TX, Rush - IL, Towns - NY, Wynn - MD), and only 1 Republican voting for it (Wilson - NM)
Smaller components such as stereos tend to vary a lot depending on the location where the vehicle was assembled -- they're certainly not provided by or branded by the car maker.
Not the case in the USA, which accounts for 1/4 of all automobile and truck sales worldwide. Every vehicle sold comes with a stereo provided by and branded by the car maker. "Premium" stereo options offered by the factory or dealer are also branded (or re-branded) by the car maker, or in some rare cases, co-branded by the car maker and the actual stereo maker. Junkyards and aftermarket stereo installers will typically resell the used "factory" stereos for $5 or less, because they are such garbage.
In some cases (the 96-00 Taurus comes to mind) the stereo is not only branded, but integrated into the dashboard so that replacing it requires major surgery on interior of the car. Aftermarket kits are generally availiable for these cars to rearrange the dashboard to accommodate an aftermarket stereo with a minimum of fuss, though.
Surely Dell will sell a low-end machine that might not have the hardware to run Vista? Or worse yet, they sell a machine that meets the minimal requirements, and performs like a dog. I wouldn't think that they'd want that perception, right?
You must not recall that most of Dell's basic consumer-level line shipped for quite a while with both Windows XP and only 128MB of ram. Try using XP with 128MB of ram sometime. It's painful. Then install a boxed antivirus suite, and a couple dozen malware infections and see how it performs. Those were typical PC's for at least 1/3 of XP's life, and it didn't seem to hurt Windows's popularity much.
"a computer that doesn't take me 6 hours to install an app because I don't have to download source, configure, make, make install, and HOPE that nothing goes wrong on the way"
You mean that installing software compiled specifically for your machine is easier on Windows than on *nix? Well, hell, I have GOT to get me some of that Windows, then!
Most people have only one or two choices for ISPs, and MAYBE three if they're lucky.
It has nothing to do with luck. Move out of the sticks already and live somewhere where you can get reasonable broadband. I have at LEAST 5 choices. Sadly, I'm on the wrong side of a hill to get WiMax, though.
But that's not really a fair comparison. Firefox has a huge advantage, just because of the way open source software works. People were downloading Firefox 1.5 source and nightly builds long before it hit release candidate or beta status, so a fair number of bugs never survived to be shown in the beta. Microsoft doesn't get the same opportunity to find this stuff ahead of time, so they have to deal with a bug report zerg rush when they actually release a beta. Or a beta preview.
You can discuss this and play armchair robbery victim all day, but the simple reality is that when faced with the choice of handing over a wad of cash, or entering a battle of lethal force, the smart choice is to hand over the cash. What your chances of winning this battle are is inconsequential.
I work as a delivery driver for Domino's Pizza. At Domino's, up on the notice board is a list of all the crimes perpetrated against Domino's employees in the past week. Usually it's a list of events which end in statements like "42 dollars + hot bag and cell phone taken. Driver suffered minor bruises." Every few months, however, one goes up on the list that ends in "Driver killed." We all know exactly what happened. They decided to fight for it.
When a mugger threatens you with lethal force, you give him the money and walk the fuck away. I'm not dueling some crazy-ass dude over a days pay and my cell.
I have been mugged twice, I still have all my cash, and I have never been threatened with lethal force. The most agressive thing I, personally, have had to do to keep my money is hitting someone with my car at 10 mph. The muggers in Redmond, WA don't generally put up much of a fight. I now deliver in Seattle, and I've never been mugged here. But all my co-workers and I agree, when someone pulls a gun, you do the smart thing: give them the cash and GTFO. You stand a much better chance of living to call the police.
> This is simply not true. Dynamic friction (skidding) is lower than static friction.
However, this does not take into account the effect that the skid has on the tire rubber.
On a dry, clean road, at a relatively high speed, the heat generated in the tires by locking the brakes softens the rubber, quickly raising the coefficent of friction by a significant amount. For this reason, cars without ABS have slightly quicker straight-line stopping times on dry, clean roads than cars with. This of course comes with the price of loss of control, negating any safety advantage provided by the faster stop.
Actually, the Explorer and Expedition both use the same frame as the F-150. The Explorer just has the bed section shortened, the rails are the same thickness and just as rigid.
It was the old Bronco-II that used the Ranger frame. Ford has not made an SUV based on the Ranger frame for around 15 years. Seeing as their new small SUV is unibody, they probably never will base one on the Ranger again.
I'm so sorry that you have to pay $200 to license your car.
Tell you what, as a gesture of goodwill towards one of my newest neighbors in the city, I will trade you my car for yours, straight up. You'll then only have to pay $40 a year for the Monorail tax.
Sound Transit, however, is a system to connect the southern suburbs to Downtown Seattle. The Monorail was supposed to be rapid transit internal to the city - Ballard to West Seattle in <15 minutes. They serve completely different purposes.
I will probably never ride Sound Transit's light rail system, as I almost never have any need to leave the City. However, I would ride the monorail all the time, if they build it.
The only people who need to get in and out of Seattle are the ones who don't live here. That's why Seattle residents approved the Monorail on 4 different ballot measures, and scoff at Sound Transit.
Your numbers are kind of right, but kind of wrong. The actual construction costs of the original line were well under 3 billion, however it was to be financed over ~50 years, which brought the total, with interest, to 11 billion.
No public transit system in the country, possibly in the world, supports itself with fare collection, with the exception of the current Seattle Monorail. That's why it's called public transit; the government pays for it. Seattle doesn't even collect fares on their downtown buses during normal business hours. And they're fantastically popular.
Providing cheap, goverment subsidized public transportation is significantly less expensive and more effective than attempting to build the obscene number of roads that would otherwise be required.
And we have to keep the monorail tax - the monorail project has already purchased a lot of land to build the line, so we're pretty far in debt. Until the land's sold and everything's paid off, we're going to have to pay 30-40 bucks extra on our car tabs.
As much as it pains me to say it, this would never have happened to a Microsoft product. Microsoft has never taken kindly to any 3rd party distributing their binaries for them, even if they're friendly 3rd parties. Remember when there was that torrent of SP2?
Does anyone know how many copies of the trojaned installer were downloaded before it was discovered?
Slashdot Mirror
You've obviously missed the point.
The point is that these machines, while far superior to the Diebold machines in America, still have a fundamental flaw: The operation of the machines is not transparent, and the vote counts are not verifiable. A malicious insider, or even a poll worker with extended access to a machine could accomplish anything. This is completely unacceptable.
from TFA:
"Insufficient thought has been given to the large number of implicit trust relationships that come with DRE systems, such as the near infinite trust placed in the entities building and certifying the systems. In addition, one has to consider the possibility that outside attackers have surreptitious access to one or more devices. Insider attacks are generally thought to be more prevalent, and they are harder to prevent and/or detect. The latter is especially true in systems of which only insiders know how they work."
From TFA:
"Without exaggeration, even a brain-numbingly insecure system(19) would would meet Dutch legal requirements..."
And the text of footnote 19?
"For the sake of the argument let us assume an unpatched Windows 95 machine with an always-on unencrypted wireless Internet connection, no virus scanner and an early Internet Explorer web browser to cast votes on an ASP script running on an internal unpatched IIS 1.0 webserver."
I would have specified that file and print sharing be enabled on the win95 box, and that the IIS server not be restricted to connections from localhost, but I think their example is good enough.
trustno1
Why use only the first letter of each word? Most systems allow passwords sufficiently long that you can just use the whole sentence, spaces, punctuation, and all. More secure, AND easier to remember than other complex passwords.
I only use complete sentence passwords for priveliged accounts on my production machines.
My DSL provider charges me only $5 extra per month for not having a land line telephone. Even the telcos will give you DSL-only packages these days for similar prices. Your quoted prices are from the ancient past.
Well, the Wii will be significantly smaller than the Gamecube - I believe they said it would be about the size of two DVD cases stacked together.
If they couldn't fit something which is supposed to be that small in a GCN case at this stage of development, they would seriously have something to worry about.
Well, we answered that question. Mission accomplished!
From TFA:
"We only support self-compiled releases from latest CVS."
"It's not alpha, what we put out are releases. And CVS is stable as well."
I found the vote tally, but not on any .gov - I had to google for it. That link also contains the office phone numbers for every committee member - not that changing their minds will help at this point, but a scolding could be in order.
Americans should probably look this list over and see if their rep is on it. Mine is not. The vote was pretty much along party lines, with 5 Dems crossing over and voting against the Markey amendment (Gonzalez - TX, Green - TX, Rush - IL, Towns - NY, Wynn - MD), and only 1 Republican voting for it (Wilson - NM)
Not the case in the USA, which accounts for 1/4 of all automobile and truck sales worldwide. Every vehicle sold comes with a stereo provided by and branded by the car maker. "Premium" stereo options offered by the factory or dealer are also branded (or re-branded) by the car maker, or in some rare cases, co-branded by the car maker and the actual stereo maker. Junkyards and aftermarket stereo installers will typically resell the used "factory" stereos for $5 or less, because they are such garbage.
In some cases (the 96-00 Taurus comes to mind) the stereo is not only branded, but integrated into the dashboard so that replacing it requires major surgery on interior of the car. Aftermarket kits are generally availiable for these cars to rearrange the dashboard to accommodate an aftermarket stereo with a minimum of fuss, though.
The grandparent's analogy is quite valid.
WTF?
Better ban cordless phones, too, and everything else that uses 2.4 Ghz.
Surely Dell will sell a low-end machine that might not have the hardware to run Vista? Or worse yet, they sell a machine that meets the minimal requirements, and performs like a dog. I wouldn't think that they'd want that perception, right?
You must not recall that most of Dell's basic consumer-level line shipped for quite a while with both Windows XP and only 128MB of ram. Try using XP with 128MB of ram sometime. It's painful. Then install a boxed antivirus suite, and a couple dozen malware infections and see how it performs. Those were typical PC's for at least 1/3 of XP's life, and it didn't seem to hurt Windows's popularity much.
"a computer that doesn't take me 6 hours to install an app because I don't have to download source, configure, make, make install, and HOPE that nothing goes wrong on the way"
You mean that installing software compiled specifically for your machine is easier on Windows than on *nix? Well, hell, I have GOT to get me some of that Windows, then!
Most people have only one or two choices for ISPs, and MAYBE three if they're lucky.
It has nothing to do with luck. Move out of the sticks already and live somewhere where you can get reasonable broadband. I have at LEAST 5 choices. Sadly, I'm on the wrong side of a hill to get WiMax, though.
I invite you to find this many bugs in Firefox 1.5 beta 2
But that's not really a fair comparison. Firefox has a huge advantage, just because of the way open source software works. People were downloading Firefox 1.5 source and nightly builds long before it hit release candidate or beta status, so a fair number of bugs never survived to be shown in the beta. Microsoft doesn't get the same opportunity to find this stuff ahead of time, so they have to deal with a bug report zerg rush when they actually release a beta. Or a beta preview.
You can discuss this and play armchair robbery victim all day, but the simple reality is that when faced with the choice of handing over a wad of cash, or entering a battle of lethal force, the smart choice is to hand over the cash. What your chances of winning this battle are is inconsequential.
I work as a delivery driver for Domino's Pizza. At Domino's, up on the notice board is a list of all the crimes perpetrated against Domino's employees in the past week. Usually it's a list of events which end in statements like "42 dollars + hot bag and cell phone taken. Driver suffered minor bruises." Every few months, however, one goes up on the list that ends in "Driver killed." We all know exactly what happened. They decided to fight for it.
When a mugger threatens you with lethal force, you give him the money and walk the fuck away. I'm not dueling some crazy-ass dude over a days pay and my cell.
I have been mugged twice, I still have all my cash, and I have never been threatened with lethal force. The most agressive thing I, personally, have had to do to keep my money is hitting someone with my car at 10 mph. The muggers in Redmond, WA don't generally put up much of a fight. I now deliver in Seattle, and I've never been mugged here. But all my co-workers and I agree, when someone pulls a gun, you do the smart thing: give them the cash and GTFO. You stand a much better chance of living to call the police.
> This is simply not true. Dynamic friction (skidding) is lower than static friction.
However, this does not take into account the effect that the skid has on the tire rubber.
On a dry, clean road, at a relatively high speed, the heat generated in the tires by locking the brakes softens the rubber, quickly raising the coefficent of friction by a significant amount. For this reason, cars without ABS have slightly quicker straight-line stopping times on dry, clean roads than cars with. This of course comes with the price of loss of control, negating any safety advantage provided by the faster stop.
Actually, the Explorer and Expedition both use the same frame as the F-150. The Explorer just has the bed section shortened, the rails are the same thickness and just as rigid.
It was the old Bronco-II that used the Ranger frame. Ford has not made an SUV based on the Ranger frame for around 15 years. Seeing as their new small SUV is unibody, they probably never will base one on the Ranger again.
"would not be any faster than that bus line"
WRONG. So incredibly wrong.
Show me one bus along that line that goes 50 mph. Show me one bus that gets you from Ballard to West Seattle in 15 minutes.
I'm angrier than you, but I'm angry because the project's being killed, and this city, yet again, is going to have no internal rapid transit plan.
I'm so sorry that you have to pay $200 to license your car.
Tell you what, as a gesture of goodwill towards one of my newest neighbors in the city, I will trade you my car for yours, straight up. You'll then only have to pay $40 a year for the Monorail tax.
No need to thank me, it's the least I can do.
Sound Transit, however, is a system to connect the southern suburbs to Downtown Seattle. The Monorail was supposed to be rapid transit internal to the city - Ballard to West Seattle in <15 minutes. They serve completely different purposes.
I will probably never ride Sound Transit's light rail system, as I almost never have any need to leave the City. However, I would ride the monorail all the time, if they build it.
The only people who need to get in and out of Seattle are the ones who don't live here. That's why Seattle residents approved the Monorail on 4 different ballot measures, and scoff at Sound Transit.
Your numbers are kind of right, but kind of wrong. The actual construction costs of the original line were well under 3 billion, however it was to be financed over ~50 years, which brought the total, with interest, to 11 billion.
No public transit system in the country, possibly in the world, supports itself with fare collection, with the exception of the current Seattle Monorail. That's why it's called public transit; the government pays for it. Seattle doesn't even collect fares on their downtown buses during normal business hours. And they're fantastically popular.
Providing cheap, goverment subsidized public transportation is significantly less expensive and more effective than attempting to build the obscene number of roads that would otherwise be required.
And we have to keep the monorail tax - the monorail project has already purchased a lot of land to build the line, so we're pretty far in debt. Until the land's sold and everything's paid off, we're going to have to pay 30-40 bucks extra on our car tabs.
As much as it pains me to say it, this would never have happened to a Microsoft product. Microsoft has never taken kindly to any 3rd party distributing their binaries for them, even if they're friendly 3rd parties. Remember when there was that torrent of SP2?
Does anyone know how many copies of the trojaned installer were downloaded before it was discovered?