The world according to Sven-S. Porst
« Various •
Main
• Chit-Chat »
Hall of Best Knowledge available as a book!
[Order with amazon in the USA, UK or Germany]
324 words
A couple of things going wrong these days
- While it worked fine for me, Apple's X.2.8 update seems to be more seriously flawed than was obvious so far. Actually I am more than mildly annoyed by this as, once again, quality control seems to be non-existent at Apple. This by far isn't the first broken updater or updated software they distributed recently.
- The whole scrambling thing may only be semi-true or a hoax even. While main facts seem to hold in some way, the circumstances and typos in the text that was widely circulated seem a bit dodgy. So much for trusted circulation of facts on the web.
-
Also read the discussion of the matter by AI people. Interesting points about spell-checkers made there. I have yet to see a spell-checker that appears to be anything close to clever.
-
Californians can to to vote soon 'dimpling' again, or so the courts say. Probably better than the upcoming electronic gear. Having computers involved in voting seems dangerous to me as there won't be a persistent record and systems are too hard to understand to prevent, find out about or even track down fraud. Having ballot papers may be old fashioned, but it surely feels a lot more reliable.
-
German towns defy 'Cross Border Leasing'. This seems to be a nasty little scam: American companies buy local services of towns which lease them back over a long period. Supposedly this is a tax scam where the companies dodge taxes in the US and share profits with the towns. While local governments seem to like it to help them through a financial crisis, people dislike it as their water facilities, say, will technically be owned by some unaccountable company far away due to a contract that no human can understand. So they voted against it. Which should be better for everyone. And which the politicians should have decided for right away.
September 25, 2003, 0:58
