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ok I screwed up that link...

try this

The problem is not that service providers pick the route that gets the packet to its destination quickest; it's that they pick the route that gets the packet off their network the fastest. Those two are not the same thing at all. Think about it geographically. Let's say I'm a square network and I receive a packet at the northern end of my western border destined for somewhere to my northeast. I know that the quickest way to get it to its destination is to move it east across my own network and deliver it to my eastern neighbor. However, I also know that if I pass it on to my northern neighbor it will still get there without coming to me again, and my northern neighbor is closer. So, if I'm a selfish bastard, what do I do? I ship it northward, minimizing the time that it spends on my own network but increasing the total time before it reaches its destination. If everyone does this same sort of "hot potato" routing, total load on the network increases for everyone. In fact, my northern neighbor might very well be doing the same for packets lying to our southwest. We'd both be better off if we'd "play nice" but since we're both trying to be selfish we both lose.

Yes, folks, it's an instance of the prisoners' dilemma and these researchers are not the first to notice the fact.

Does anyone have any information on how (and to what extent) voting machines are audited?

Rebecca Mercuri did her CS PhD thesis on this very topic. Here is her summary. She's often quoted on this topic.

Kind of like Prisoners' Dilemma, except that in the end you know no matter what happens the cable company is going to jack up the rates. So yeah, just wget the Internet now and check it out from your hard drives later when the rates go up.

Unlike that 'distance learning' and other quackery, unconscious learning is possible. The brain can so some very wacky things that you aren't always fully aware of.

device drivers, ip-stack, kernel - all need changing to be tuned to your special hardware and features offered. its not only the hardware that's the value-add, it is the software as well.

Ok, I understand that part of what makes people want to buy your product, and be willing to shell out for the price you ask, is that there is good software for it that makes it do what it's supposed to, and fast. What I don't understand is how releasing the source to that software interferes with adding value. Wouldn't it still add value if people could see the source?

I suppose part of your reluctance to release source would be reluctance to help your competitors. However, if you released your source under the (full, not lesser) GPL, your competitors couldn't use it in their product unless they also released their sources. If that happened, then your industry would be a software sharing utopia... :) OTOH, your competitors could look at the source to see how you do things, and then re-implement the good ideas themselves. There would be nothing illegal about that. The real question here is, how hardware-specific is your value-add? Would you be adding value to your competitors products too, if you released the source? If the answer is yes, then we have an example of the tragedy of the commons, or the so-called prisoner's dilemma. Human nature sucks :(

The usual good source of thoughful and insightful comments, is RISKS / comp.risks, and in particular Vol 21 Issue 14.

The tragedy of the commons is not a demonstration of irrationality, quite the contrary, it's a demonstration of rationality and self centeredness. It is an apt demonstration of one of the reasons why socialism and communism fail.

Actually, it is the opposite. It can be summed up in the Prisoners' Dilemma. The best outcome for the prisoners taken together can only happen if they both keep silent. The best outcome for each prisoner individually is if he rats the other out and the other keeps silent. Result: both rat the other out, and both loose collectivly and individually.

Have a look at http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/pd.html for a minor variation involving gold coins. It shows quite clearly that two equal competitors making rational self interested decisions will average 2.5 gold coins each round rather than a certainty of 3/round unless they act collectivly with mutual trust.

A psychologist has tried that in real life (minus the horrible fate) by placing $5 into a bowl each round with 5 players. When the buzzer sounds, they are each free to grab all the money they can out of the bowl. If there is still money in the bowl, he adds another $5 and play continues. He set a maximum payout of $500. He never had to pay out the whole $500. (I may have the amounts wrong, but that's the jist of the experiment).

The problem in all such situations is that if each individual has complete freedom to choose, all it takes is one moron to ruin the game for everyone. There is no shortage of morons out there.

That statement was made almost 20 years ago, when BASIC had devolved into the numbered-line version that was included in most personal computer ROMs of that day. Even BASIC's creator's, Kemeny and Kurtz, denounced such versions and wrote a book called Back to BASIC in which they lambasted these "street BASICs." The BASIC that Dijkstra was talking about is quite different from today's variants, such as Visual Basic or REALBasic.

You might also find the commentary on what Dijkstra said here.