On iliad you can annotate, but the method ain't perfect. See the end of this article for a review.
Regarding the price.. Iliad has a bigger screen and Wacom style touchscreen. And if you are a Linux user you can install apps that were already ported to Iliad.
"Canada's public broadcast network, CBC, is to adopt DRM free BitTorrent distribution of one of its major primetime shows, Canada's Next Great Prime Minister. What's this ? The Canadian version of American Idol ?
A lot of the former slave states from the USSR seem to have gone out of their way to be pro-Privacy. 7 ranked higher then the US and 3 for the top five were former soviet. Not necessarily pro-privacy; but lack of money. What is cost to create a surveillance system similar to UK (how many cameras are there ? ) ? And concerning health records, they probably are still using paper files which, as long as they are not centralized, are pretty secure. About half of the categories require some big spendings to create the infrastructure.
With normal pen-and-paper voting, all skill you need is being able to count and discriminate between various candidates being chosing on the paper. You don't believe my count? You think I'm trying to fix elections? Here's the ballot, count for yourself.
In my country paper voting is done this way: there is a big list with all the legal voters (mostly... 18+ years), and when you go there, you show your ID and sing next to your name on the list and they give you a paper where you have to tick one of the candidates and put it in an ballot.
There are two problems for this, the guys controlling the voting in some areas could sign for some of the people who didn't show up and add some extra papers in the ballot... count the ballot, no problem !
Another way, during the voting you can be in a different city and you would be pissed off if you weren't allowed to vote; so there are temporary lists; they add you to this temporary list and you swear you didn't vote before. Well, getting all this temporary lists and checking all the names there if they have already vote is some PITA, so I don't think they sweat to much checking this; so there are a lot of reports of this kind of things happening; in some rural area, the party X got a bus full of people and visited all the villages in that area, etc, etc.
So, paper voting can't be accurately audited either.
With e-voting, you face a problem. You need very special skills to actually conduct a recount (if it is possible at all). Don't believe me that I'm not trying to fix elections in my favor? Sucks to be you if you don't happen to have the skills.
What about this.. two separate networks with two kinds of electronic machines run by two different organizations. You go to the first "voting booth" and using buttons or touchscreen you check the candidate, the vote gets automatically sent to server where is counted and the machine prints a piece of paper with the chosen candidate, you take that piece of paper and insert it in the slot of the second machine which runs some simple OCR on that one, shows the selection to the voter asking for confirmation and if ok, the info gets sent to the second server, and the paper stored for auditing. As the paper is standard and it's stacked by a machine it can be stored pretty easy and create baxes which could be feed in a "auditing machine" (think punch-cards).
OK, somebody could hack both machines and make them display something and check something else on the paper and send to the server; but you can also add generate an ID for each vote, print it on the paper and for validating the votes on a machine get some random papers from that machine and check against the databases.. what is printed vs what's in the database. You could also use this id to check for inconsistencies between the two databases.
Considering the fact that the Ubuntu options were launched only 2 weeks ago that's not really a big surprise that the first line is not well informed about this. This offer is pretty different for their usual configurations so at that level this whole ubuntu stuff might have been understood as: "this is linux, is some new thing instead of windows, and we have fewer options for it, less video cards because it has some problems, less software , it doesn't need.. or has an antivirus, whatever:-); etc". So this stuff about CustomerCare, if it was really a glitch, it even suprised them because they didn't knew something specific about it, so they thought it was about ubuntu, just like all the other missing options.
I read a simmilar conversation in the register one or two years ago with the HP online chat about some new obscure PCs with Linux; the customer rep was pretty much in the dark and assumed a lot of things because, otherwise, it would had to go pretty high up the food chain for most of the questions asked until it would reach somebody with information about that offer.
According to Direct2Dell blog post; this was a glitch in the ordering system; it should be solved soon.
Here's the deal: due to an ordering system glitch over the weekend, we inadvertently removed the extended warranty and CompleteCare options associated with Ubuntu systems from the configurator on Dell.com We're working to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible. We expect to reinstate all extended warranty options and Complete Care service for the E1505n notebook later this afternoon. Any orders placed to date will ship with the warranty the customer ordered.
Customers who ordered systems when the extended warranty and CompleteCare option weren't available will have the opportunity to upgrade at original price. More details soon.
This is like suing the post office or the bank who offer safe deposit boxes because somebody got a PO Box/safe deposit box and stored drugs in it and it gave the key to another person to pick them up. Or, let's say that the post office/bank indeed checks the content and does not allow drugs; but you put there some prescription only drugs (medicine) that is illegal to give to somebody else; in this case the post office/bank has to check a list with tens of thousands of drugs to see if the drugs you put there is legal or not ? (the same with mp3; just because is an audio file it doesn't mean it is copyrighted).
You might say that they have strict rules, and by contract you have to respect the law; from what I see at rapidshare they also have rules:
"No files that are not allowed to be shared. (no illegal, pornographic or copyrighted files)"
Madly Causing Slashdot Effect
Microsoft Certified Slave of the Empire
Morons Crudely Simulating Expertise
Maybe Could Suggest Exorcism
more: http://linux.sys-con.com/read/32859.htm#MCSE
"We're going to compete. We're going to be in the online business. We are going to have a core around online. We're going to be excellent.""I'm going to f*cking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f*cking kill Google"
You got me wrong, I was just stating that the sysadmins are pretty under-rated. The CEO is supposed to have this power, anybody can go crazy, etc. Everybody has a degree of power; but at this moment, IT is crucial for almost any business. (and you should note that I belive your code should be tested before sending to customers:-) and if you have access to the company data (in case it is digital) you are also a sysdamin)
http://www.thedryp.com/articles/An%20Ournce%20of%2 0Prevention.asp on BCP:
93 percent that lost their IT (information technology) area for more than nine days had filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, according to the National Archives & Records Administration.
Actualy I was picking on that guy. He looks like the kind of guy that "admin, programmer, whatever.. IT guy, fix my computer". But maybe he really had bad experiences; or most sysadmins really are like that but I either got used to them or I've been lucky so far.
Also, please note that I don't think sysadmins are some Dr. Evil just waiting for the proper moment to kill the company, just as a CEO/COO/accountant/PR/etc. wouldn't.
Quit bugging them about fixing your script that doesn't run like it used to before you made a change.
HUH ? Judging from his message, you should say: "stop bitching about that codec you need installed NOW, because one of the clients sent you an important pr0... aah... video presentation, or you'll tell his boss".
Now really, why do you think that they are "..meaner, the meanest ones resembling SS guards" and still get away with it. No overestimating, but if you think that one's power is judged by the destructions he could cause, trust me.. the sysadmin has A LOT OF POWER. If he decides that the company should go down, IT WILL (at least on it's knees). What can a company CEO can do when the system went down, along with all the data ? OK, call the IT support company; how much will it take for somebody to get there, reinstall the system, restore the backup ? And, usualy the sysadmin is also responsible for the backup:-D. What will the clients do, when the provider's services will be down for.. let's say 1,2,3 days ?
So, before bitching about the sysadmin; just think at how much damage you can cause and how much damage he can cause and you'll have a whole different picture:)
I talked to their legal department and a lawyer friend a few months ago about telus's contract and get this - even if they reduced the level of service, or implemented a drastically lower bandwidth limit, you would still be charged the cancellation fee unless you took them to court.
I don't get this.
From what I understand, they have your credit card details, so they can charge you anytime they want for any amount. Now, you say that they will charge you the cancellation fee (because they have the means to do so) unless you take them to court. So it's very obvious that they don't have the right to charge you the cancellation fee. This means that this is stealing, for which "regular" persons go to jail.
So the key is to create a company, trick people into giving me their credit card details, and take money from their account telling them that if they want me to stop they should take me to court; and then, I'll get away with just a fine or something ?
For this, the company should either be held responsible for fraud, or somebody go to jail !
Also, if they charge you from your Visa credit card, you can file a chargeback request to your bank, which will send it to Visa, which will send it to telco's bank, and the bank should check with the telco (which is their client) if they had the right to charge you that amount. From what I understood, this is the process you have to go thru when you find a weird transaction on your credit card account; but this is usualy used for validating the fact that the person who made that transaction was you (ie. in case of a POS transaction, the merchant should give the the receipt signed by you).
I belive for $50k he could get a very good software. But not hiring or regular outsourcing is the key, but freelancing. It will be quite a hassle, but no more than looking for a corporate solution installing and dealing with installing, consultancy, training ppl for using it (because you'll need one, at least to check the server and stuff) and dealing afterwards with its problems and overbloating. If the requirements aren't very high, a good freelancer could do it pretty easy. If not, a freelancer could customize a OSS solution especially for you; for 50k you can get a lot of programming hours from freelancers (I would go for the east-european ones, not indians).
I used to work for a pretty big ISP which had it's entire ERP built mostly by one programmer; and it was perfect, no bloatware, just what you need, and changes implemented very quick. And it was a very good solution, because if the software is programmed inhouse or it's easy to deal with the ppl who programmed it; a simple modification that could save 10 seconds for you most tickets it's easy to implement, and when dealing with hundreds/thousands of tickets per day, that means a lot of saved time. And when you are using a large scale general purpose solution, the chances to get the modification are near 0; the best would be "ok, it will be implemented in the next version which will be released next year.." (.. and which will require a new implementation, more consultancy costs, and renewal of contract, etc). If you have a custom solution that would be tailored and constantly updated, and it will have a more lengthy "lifetime". At the current job we have Track'It 4.0 which was implemented i belive 3-5 years ago, and it's soooooo outdated; and now we have a "comitee" that it's also looking for a different $50k solution.
The thing with freelancers vs. outsourcing/commercial products is that they have way less overhead. It's usualy individual professionals or small groups; no costs for the executives, secretary, accountant, sales, marketing, nice office, analysts, testers, etc. If you want something changes you will get an answer in minutes/hours, not days/weeks (because it doesn't go thru lengthy flows such as explaining to a stupid account manager what you need, the account manager sending what he understood to the analyst, analyst figuring out what the client might have said from what the acc. manager understood, analyst -> programmer, programmer -> analyst, analyst -> acc. manager, acc. manager figuring out how dumber the client is and how much he could charge, etc). It's a all-in-one solution.
Another good approach is to take a OSS solution and hire one of the developers to custom-tailer the solution for your needs, ofcourse the resulting code most probably will be OSS also and maybe incorporated in the original application, but that's perfect, because if you need to hire somebody else for future mods you will have a lot of developers fammiliar with your application and custom code (at least that parts that got implemented in the original app.).
Bloated commercial apps are pretty dead. It's too much of-the-shelf, and considering the diversity of IT and rate of evolution, they will become obsolete much sooner than OSS solution.
Make a stable API that the binary only drivers can link to and remove any excuse these companies have for their poor support of Linux. This way we can have a better user experience in Linux.
Linux in a binary world
What if.. what if the linux kernel developers tomorrow accept that
binary modules are OK and are essential for the progress of linux.
a hypothetical doomsday scenario by Arjan van de Ven http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/12/5/32
Slashdot Mirror
Have they tried turning it off and on again?
this is the article
On iliad you can annotate, but the method ain't perfect. See the end of this article for a review.
Regarding the price.. Iliad has a bigger screen and Wacom style touchscreen. And if you are a Linux user you can install apps that were already ported to Iliad.
Wikipedia is lynx friendly.
In my country paper voting is done this way: there is a big list with all the legal voters (mostly... 18+ years), and when you go there, you show your ID and sing next to your name on the list and they give you a paper where you have to tick one of the candidates and put it in an ballot.
There are two problems for this, the guys controlling the voting in some areas could sign for some of the people who didn't show up and add some extra papers in the ballot... count the ballot, no problem !
Another way, during the voting you can be in a different city and you would be pissed off if you weren't allowed to vote; so there are temporary lists; they add you to this temporary list and you swear you didn't vote before. Well, getting all this temporary lists and checking all the names there if they have already vote is some PITA, so I don't think they sweat to much checking this; so there are a lot of reports of this kind of things happening; in some rural area, the party X got a bus full of people and visited all the villages in that area, etc, etc.
So, paper voting can't be accurately audited either.
With e-voting, you face a problem. You need very special skills to actually conduct a recount (if it is possible at all). Don't believe me that I'm not trying to fix elections in my favor? Sucks to be you if you don't happen to have the skills.
What about this.. two separate networks with two kinds of electronic machines run by two different organizations. You go to the first "voting booth" and using buttons or touchscreen you check the candidate, the vote gets automatically sent to server where is counted and the machine prints a piece of paper with the chosen candidate, you take that piece of paper and insert it in the slot of the second machine which runs some simple OCR on that one, shows the selection to the voter asking for confirmation and if ok, the info gets sent to the second server, and the paper stored for auditing. As the paper is standard and it's stacked by a machine it can be stored pretty easy and create baxes which could be feed in a "auditing machine" (think punch-cards).
OK, somebody could hack both machines and make them display something and check something else on the paper and send to the server; but you can also add generate an ID for each vote, print it on the paper and for validating the votes on a machine get some random papers from that machine and check against the databases.. what is printed vs what's in the database. You could also use this id to check for inconsistencies between the two databases.
Considering the fact that the Ubuntu options were launched only 2 weeks ago that's not really a big surprise that the first line is not well informed about this. This offer is pretty different for their usual configurations so at that level this whole ubuntu stuff might have been understood as: "this is linux, is some new thing instead of windows, and we have fewer options for it, less video cards because it has some problems, less software , it doesn't need.. or has an antivirus, whatever :-); etc". So this stuff about CustomerCare, if it was really a glitch, it even suprised them because they didn't knew something specific about it, so they thought it was about ubuntu, just like all the other missing options.
I read a simmilar conversation in the register one or two years ago with the HP online chat about some new obscure PCs with Linux; the customer rep was pretty much in the dark and assumed a lot of things because, otherwise, it would had to go pretty high up the food chain for most of the questions asked until it would reach somebody with information about that offer.
Here's the deal: due to an ordering system glitch over the weekend, we inadvertently removed the extended warranty and CompleteCare options associated with Ubuntu systems from the configurator on Dell.com We're working to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible. We expect to reinstate all extended warranty options and Complete Care service for the E1505n notebook later this afternoon. Any orders placed to date will ship with the warranty the customer ordered.
Customers who ordered systems when the extended warranty and CompleteCare option weren't available will have the opportunity to upgrade at original price. More details soon.
What could be the impact on storage ? Should I expect restoring from DVDs (BlueRays/HDDVDs) in 2012 :-) ?
I'm just going to run naked through the streets proclaiming the end of the worldBeta
, all brought to you by Google(tm).
Madly Causing Slashdot Effect
Microsoft Certified Slave of the Empire
Morons Crudely Simulating Expertise
Maybe Could Suggest Exorcism
more: http://linux.sys-con.com/read/32859.htm#MCSE
"We're going to compete. We're going to be in the online business. We are going to have a core around online. We're going to be excellent.""I'm going to f*cking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f*cking kill Google"
e lated&search=ballmer%20dance
Also, check out this video of Ballmar advertising Windows 1.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk&mode=r
You got me wrong, I was just stating that the sysadmins are pretty under-rated. The CEO is supposed to have this power, anybody can go crazy, etc. Everybody has a degree of power; but at this moment, IT is crucial for almost any business. (and you should note that I belive your code should be tested before sending to customers :-) and if you have access to the company data (in case it is digital) you are also a sysdamin)
2 0Prevention.asp on BCP:
93 percent that lost their IT (information technology) area for more than nine days had filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, according to the National Archives & Records Administration.
http://www.thedryp.com/articles/An%20Ournce%20of%
Actualy I was picking on that guy. He looks like the kind of guy that "admin, programmer, whatever.. IT guy, fix my computer". But maybe he really had bad experiences; or most sysadmins really are like that but I either got used to them or I've been lucky so far.
Also, please note that I don't think sysadmins are some Dr. Evil just waiting for the proper moment to kill the company, just as a CEO/COO/accountant/PR/etc. wouldn't.
Now really, why do you think that they are "..meaner, the meanest ones resembling SS guards" and still get away with it. No overestimating, but if you think that one's power is judged by the destructions he could cause, trust me.. the sysadmin has A LOT OF POWER. If he decides that the company should go down, IT WILL (at least on it's knees). What can a company CEO can do when the system went down, along with all the data ? OK, call the IT support company; how much will it take for somebody to get there, reinstall the system, restore the backup ? And, usualy the sysadmin is also responsible for the backup
So, before bitching about the sysadmin; just think at how much damage you can cause and how much damage he can cause and you'll have a whole different picture
From what I understand, they have your credit card details, so they can charge you anytime they want for any amount. Now, you say that they will charge you the cancellation fee (because they have the means to do so) unless you take them to court. So it's very obvious that they don't have the right to charge you the cancellation fee. This means that this is stealing, for which "regular" persons go to jail.
So the key is to create a company, trick people into giving me their credit card details, and take money from their account telling them that if they want me to stop they should take me to court; and then, I'll get away with just a fine or something ?
For this, the company should either be held responsible for fraud, or somebody go to jail !
Also, if they charge you from your Visa credit card, you can file a chargeback request to your bank, which will send it to Visa, which will send it to telco's bank, and the bank should check with the telco (which is their client) if they had the right to charge you that amount. From what I understood, this is the process you have to go thru when you find a weird transaction on your credit card account; but this is usualy used for validating the fact that the person who made that transaction was you (ie. in case of a POS transaction, the merchant should give the the receipt signed by you).
I belive for $50k he could get a very good software. But not hiring or regular outsourcing is the key, but freelancing. It will be quite a hassle, but no more than looking for a corporate solution installing and dealing with installing, consultancy, training ppl for using it (because you'll need one, at least to check the server and stuff) and dealing afterwards with its problems and overbloating.
If the requirements aren't very high, a good freelancer could do it pretty easy. If not, a freelancer could customize a OSS solution especially for you; for 50k you can get a lot of programming hours from freelancers (I would go for the east-european ones, not indians).
I used to work for a pretty big ISP which had it's entire ERP built mostly by one programmer; and it was perfect, no bloatware, just what you need, and changes implemented very quick. And it was a very good solution, because if the software is programmed inhouse or it's easy to deal with the ppl who programmed it; a simple modification that could save 10 seconds for you most tickets it's easy to implement, and when dealing with hundreds/thousands of tickets per day, that means a lot of saved time. And when you are using a large scale general purpose solution, the chances to get the modification are near 0; the best would be "ok, it will be implemented in the next version which will be released next year.." (.. and which will require a new implementation, more consultancy costs, and renewal of contract, etc). If you have a custom solution that would be tailored and constantly updated, and it will have a more lengthy "lifetime". At the current job we have Track'It 4.0 which was implemented i belive 3-5 years ago, and it's soooooo outdated; and now we have a "comitee" that it's also looking for a different $50k solution.
The thing with freelancers vs. outsourcing/commercial products is that they have way less overhead. It's usualy individual professionals or small groups; no costs for the executives, secretary, accountant, sales, marketing, nice office, analysts, testers, etc. If you want something changes you will get an answer in minutes/hours, not days/weeks (because it doesn't go thru lengthy flows such as explaining to a stupid account manager what you need, the account manager sending what he understood to the analyst, analyst figuring out what the client might have said from what the acc. manager understood, analyst -> programmer, programmer -> analyst, analyst -> acc. manager, acc. manager figuring out how dumber the client is and how much he could charge, etc). It's a all-in-one solution.
Another good approach is to take a OSS solution and hire one of the developers to custom-tailer the solution for your needs, ofcourse the resulting code most probably will be OSS also and maybe incorporated in the original application, but that's perfect, because if you need to hire somebody else for future mods you will have a lot of developers fammiliar with your application and custom code (at least that parts that got implemented in the original app.).
Bloated commercial apps are pretty dead. It's too much of-the-shelf, and considering the diversity of IT and rate of evolution, they will become obsolete much sooner than OSS solution.
What if.. what if the linux kernel developers tomorrow accept that binary modules are OK and are essential for the progress of linux.
a hypothetical doomsday scenario by Arjan van de Ven
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/12/5/32