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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 25 2012 @ 05:20 PM EDT |
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http://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/armstrong_obit.html
---
<
a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong"> Neil Armstrong
Wikipedia [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 25 2012 @ 06:33 PM EDT |
There are 3 newspicks about the sorry state of US voting
machines.
I would like to refer you USAmericans to two well-tested
mechanisms, which have been very successful and accurate to
date:
The Greek yes/no ceramic ballots
Used more than
2000 years ago, these are used for voting
issues with only two possible
answers, such as yes/no. They
work even for blind people and are easy to check
while
giving an instant result.
Each voter is given two identically
looking balls each
with a half inch flat surface on one side, one heavy and
massive with no dents in the flat surface, the other hollow
with an easily
felt hole about a quarter inch showing the
hollow interior and easily felt with
the fingers.
The voter jumbles the two balls, covering the flat
surface
(and thus her vote) with a finger or handicapped
stump, then puts the heavy
ball into the sound proof ballot
box for the desired outcome and the light ball
in the other
ballot box.
At the end of the vote, the ballot boxes are
simply
veighed to determine which result got the heaviest vote,
then a
subsequent check verifies that the two boxes contain
the same number of balls
and that none of the weights are
off. If a voting location shows ball
tampering, that voting
location gets to recast its votes. If the check only
shows
tampering with the veighing mechanism, the votes are simply
veighed
again with a better weight.
The balls are made of a material that
doesn't retain
fingerprints and voters are allowed to wear
gloves.
Classic paper ballots with bypartisan
counting
This system is used in many places. It is so secure that
during WWII Nazi occupation, the occupied Kingdom of Denmark
still managed to
hold a multi-party election which the Nazi
party lost by more than 10 to 1.
When an attempt was made
to rig a similar procedure in Zimbabwe a few years
ago, the
fraud and the correct count was instantly visible to all
observers
(locally witnessed counts did not add up to the
national count).
The
voter is given a paper ballot where they are allowed
to make one X mark and
nothing else (additional marks could
be misused to confirm to a
vote-buyer/coercer that a
particular paid voter obeyed). The voter then
deposits it
in an opaque box typically a converted card-board box or a
converted trash can.
Before the vote a bipartisan volunteer committee
is
appointed/accepted for each voting station. Party lawyers
and candidates
are welcome to volunteer, convicted
fraudsters and professional magicians are
not. This
committee is the entire election staff with the possible
exception
of voting booth carpenters.
The first voter at each box personally
verifies in front
of all those present that the ballot box is empty before it
is sealed. The ballot box then remains in public view
throughout the process,
TV-crews and other observers are
welcome.
After the vote ends, a
national radio broadcast confirms
when all voting stations have accepted the
last vote. Then
still in public view, the ballot boxes are opened and a
quick
count is taken, with each stack of ballots handled by
two opposing side
volunteers. Partial and local tallots are
physically posted on a wall as the
count progresses,
providing a data source so good and quick it makes exit
polls almost worthless. To speed things up, the quick count
does not include
less-likely-to-matter details such as
distinctions amongst candidates within
parties or outside
top-2 U.S. presidential candidates (So the quick result
might be "Republicans 43%, Democrats 42%, Other 15%")
Leaving the
quick-counted ballots and counts visible
through a window, the committee then
locks the room and gets
a good nights sleep before doing a detailed count the
next
day, covering all details and a closer inspection of
potentially invalid
ballots. This is technically not a
recount, but a mandatory step to determine
exact counts,
actual elected party members etc.
Finally, the counted
and sorted ballots are kept
available for 3 weeks, then burned before the newly
elected
take office to prevent abusive searches for voter
fingerprints
etc.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 25 2012 @ 09:39 PM EDT |
That's what the full page ads are offering for $80 x 24mth contracts.
Yup, same carriers that were offering $0 iphones on $120 plans.
And these ads were placed and paid for well before this verdict.
I'm watching to see if there's any splash from Apple's Sep. 13 event.
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| Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 08:00 AM EDT |
Cant find a link on line atm.
This is on The Times smartphone app on
android... Law
Spreadex Ltd v Cochrane
ah found a
link:
England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court)
Decisions---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 10:59 AM EDT |
"The behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the
protocols that control traffic on the Internet."
http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-biologist-computer-scientist-disco
ver-anternet
"Ants have evolved ways of doing things that we haven't thought up, but
could apply in computer systems. Computationally speaking, each ant has limited
capabilities, but the collective can perform complex tasks.
So ant algorithms have to be simple, distributed and scalable – the very
qualities that we need in large engineered distributed systems, I think as we
start understanding more about how species of ants regulate their behavior,
we'll find many more useful applications for network algorithms." --
Deborah Gordon, biology professor, Stanford
I smell patents !!![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Not Pat-ents - Authored by: stegu on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 05:49 PM EDT
- ANTERNET - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 27 2012 @ 05:41 AM EDT
- ANTERNET - Authored by: Wol on Monday, August 27 2012 @ 04:29 PM EDT
- ANTERNET - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 28 2012 @ 12:28 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 01:53 PM EDT |
| Jury foreman in Apple vs Samsung case admits they didn't consider prior art:
"it was bogging us down".
http://www.reddit.com/ links to this article
Jury in Apple v. Samsung Goofed, Damages Reduced -- Uh Oh. What's Wrong With
this Picture? ~pj Updated 3Xs [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: IMANAL_TOO on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 04:34 PM EDT |
From Extremetech.com
"Se
curity researcher and blogger Nadim Kobeissi has uncovered evidence that Windows
8 doesn’t just keep a local log of installed programs — it phones home to tell
Microsoft every time you install an application. This is a significant expansion
of a technology Microsoft introduced in Internet Explorer 9, called
SmartScreen."
Is this really legal?
Why would they need
to know if I install a (random) program?
Are they allowed to do this
everywhere?
---
______
IMANAL
. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 11:13 PM EDT |
A Journey called Life
A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to
see the farmer and his wife open a package.
"What food might this contain?", the mouse wondered. He was
devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.
Retreating to the farmyard,
the mouse proclaimed this warning :
"There is a mousetrap in the house!
There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The chicken clucked and scratched,
raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is
a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me.
I cannot be bothered by it."
The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in
the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The pig sympathized, but said,
"I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse,
but there is nothing I can do about it but pray..
Be assured you are in my prayers."
The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap
in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin
off my nose." So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected,
to face the farmer's mousetrap
. . . Alone.. .. .
That very night
a sound was heard throughout the house -- the sound of a mousetrap
catching its prey.
The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught.
In the darkness, she did not see it.
It was a venomous snake
whose tail was caught in the trap.
The snake bit the farmer's wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital.
When she returned home she still had a fever. Everyone knows you
treat a fever with fresh chicken soup. So the farmer took his
hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient:
But his wife's sickness continued.
Friends and neighbors
came to sit with her
around the clock.
To feed them,
the farmer butchered the pig.
But, alas,
the farmer's wife did not get well...
She died.
So many people came for her funeral
that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat
for all of them for the funeral luncheon.
And the mouse looked upon it all
from his crack in the wall
with great sadness.
So, the next time you hear
someone is facing a problem
and you think it doesn't concern you,
remember ---
When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved
in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another
and make an extra effort to encourage one another.
Got this in an email today.
Thought it seem familiar and decided to share.
ejraka32[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 27 2012 @ 04:10 AM EDT |
According to Jeffries, 170 million global smartphone subscribers
will be coming out of
contracts in the second half of 2012. In 2013, 450
million more will be free of their contracts, and the
firm believes that
approximately 30 million iPhone users will finish their contracts in the second
half
of 2012.
ibtimes.com A few hard(ish) facts in a piece
reflecting the low atmospheric pressure in
the iOSphere.
I don't see
why coming off a contract should be the signal to rush out and buy a new phone.
The article
drools at the prospect of "infinite" sales in China. Those buyers
will hang on to their old phone until there
are no parts left to hold together
with gaffer tape...[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: jplatt39 on Monday, August 27 2012 @ 10:38 AM EDT |
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http://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/marketplace-morning-
report-monday-august-27-2012 it's interesting as much for who is saying
it.
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| Authored by: jplatt39 on Monday, August 27 2012 @ 12:21 PM EDT |
| My great-nephew is a Nigerian-American Muslim though still learning talk and
this video looks FAR different to me than it seems to to you:
McNealy's
twitter
The idea that African-American culture is divisive -- which
is what you are saying -- is profoundly offensive. African American culture is
a reality for a good part of this country. Maybe it's just I'm so used to
America as defined by -- given where I live -- Ukrainian Greek Cape-Verdean and
Franco-American festivals which I enjoy going to (I'm sure there are even Diwali
celebrations in your area). Yes this stuff goes on -- has for more than 200
years -- and there is nothing wrong with it. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, August 27 2012 @ 05:35 PM EDT |
isc.sans.edu
I shouldn't ask how many victims, at both ends,
of this rubbish know or care to logout, purge cookies
then test their "public"
facing info. Those who have FB as a startup item of course deserve everything
they get...
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