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Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote!

It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object.

This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

Highlights of Cheats, Bugs and Easter Eggs (Illustrations are here)

The Dumbold Voting Machine is programmed with cheats, bugs and easter eggs, which you can discover and read about by playing around with it. It demonstrates and simulates some alarming problems with real world electronic voting machines, with many surprising effects and subtle interactions:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log. When you put the voting machine into debug mode and clear the votes, you will see a dialog with the hillarious picture and story of Baxter the Chimpanzee. In your web browser, you can watch the funny monkey movie showing Baxter erasing the voting log! Now your Sims can monkey around with the electronic Dumbold Voting Machines, go bananas hacking the system, fling poo and corrupt the election results just like the pros!

Vote or Die! P. Diddy, lately a.k.a. Citizen Combs, says: "'You all are the X-factor, the wild card," Combs said. "`History is being made here. Our revolution has begun." "Young voters in this country are throwing away their power to have a say about education, healthcare, and any issue that affects them." Combs explains. "These things affect your life, so - Vote or Die!" (If you select Vote, you live. If you select Die, you either get electrocuted, or burst into flames, then you die.)

You punched out the screen! Hey!!! You're supposed to touch the screen, not punch it! Next time, please don't take out your frustration with the lousy choice of candidates by punching the screen. That's not the way to get your vote counted. (Your Sim breaks the voting machine screen. You can repair it if you're skilled enough, but you might want to keep a handyman on call during the election!)

Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!! Osama Bin Laden wants to scare you into voting for George W Bush, because Bin Laden is grateful to Bush for outsourcing the job of hunting him down to Osama's good friends, the Afghan warlords. Bush's policies have strengthened Bin Laden's cause, and George W Bush says he's not worried about Osama Bin Laden. Bush and Bin Laden both want you to vote in response to your of fears, not in pursuit of your hopes. "Americans all know that Osama Bin Laden doesn't pick our president. The Supreme Court does." -Bill Maher (Your Sim empties their bladder, pisses their pants, and then runs away screaming!)

Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan. When you select one of the four official candidates, sometimes it "accidentally" pops up an illustrated dialog asking for confirmation that you want to vote for Pat Buchanan! If you foolishly select "Yes", the voting machine breaks!

News about Black Box Voting.

News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.

News about Diebold

Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote!

It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object.

This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

Highlights of Cheats, Bugs and Easter Eggs (Illustrations are here)

The Dumbold Voting Machine is programmed with cheats, bugs and easter eggs, which you can discover and read about by playing around with it. It demonstrates and simulates some alarming problems with real world electronic voting machines, with many surprising effects and subtle interactions:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log. When you put the voting machine into debug mode and clear the votes, you will see a dialog with the hillarious picture and story of Baxter the Chimpanzee. In your web browser, you can watch the funny monkey movie showing Baxter erasing the voting log! Now your Sims can monkey around with the electronic Dumbold Voting Machines, go bananas hacking the system, fling poo and corrupt the election results just like the pros!

Vote or Die! P. Diddy, lately a.k.a. Citizen Combs, says: "'You all are the X-factor, the wild card," Combs said. "`History is being made here. Our revolution has begun." "Young voters in this country are throwing away their power to have a say about education, healthcare, and any issue that affects them." Combs explains. "These things affect your life, so - Vote or Die!" (If you select Vote, you live. If you select Die, you either get electrocuted, or burst into flames, then you die.)

You punched out the screen! Hey!!! You're supposed to touch the screen, not punch it! Next time, please don't take out your frustration with the lousy choice of candidates by punching the screen. That's not the way to get your vote counted. (Your Sim breaks the voting machine screen. You can repair it if you're skilled enough, but you might want to keep a handyman on call during the election!)

Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!! Osama Bin Laden wants to scare you into voting for George W Bush, because Bin Laden is grateful to Bush for outsourcing the job of hunting him down to Osama's good friends, the Afghan warlords. Bush's policies have strengthened Bin Laden's cause, and George W Bush says he's not worried about Osama Bin Laden. Bush and Bin Laden both want you to vote in response to your of fears, not in pursuit of your hopes. "Americans all know that Osama Bin Laden doesn't pick our president. The Supreme Court does." -Bill Maher (Your Sim empties their bladder, pisses their pants, and then runs away screaming!)

Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan. When you select one of the four official candidates, sometimes it "accidentally" pops up an illustrated dialog asking for confirmation that you want to vote for Pat Buchanan! If you foolishly select "Yes", the voting machine breaks!

News about Black Box Voting.

News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.

News about Diebold

-Don

So part of the game is figuring out how to manipulate the objects and people into the right state to enable the menu items you want.

Since The Sims game design requires that the menu items do change over time, that trumps the rule of thumb that pie menus should be used for static menus. User interface design involves weighing conflicting rules and making trade-offs according to the application and user requirements, so it's ok to break a few rules for good reasons.

An inactive TV set just has a "Turn On" menu item. When you activate it, the "Turn On" item disappears and is replaced by a bunch of items like "Turn Off", "Watch TV", "Change Channel," etc.

If you click on another Sim character, you get a menu of interpersonal interactions that the currently selected Sim can perform with the other Sim you clicked on. Those can change according to their relationships and moods.

The Dumbold Voting Machine is a free downloadable Sims object that lets your Sims vote using pie menus. The voting machine can be in different states: turned off, turned on and booted, and election started and voting. The items on the pie menu change according to the state. It also has other state variables like Printer Enable, Network Enable, Debug Mode, Voter Roll, and the Votes themselves, which you can change by monkeying around with the voting machine.

The items can vary according to the selected character: Each Sim can only vote once (unless some monkey reset the voter roll or left it in debug mode). After a Sim votes, when you click on the voting machine again, instead of getting a pie menu of candidate names, you just get an item that thanks you for voting, and reminds you can only vote once.

Pie menus are easier to use when they have eight or fewer items. But the game design requires that more than eight items be displayed some times.

So pie menus must be able to handle situations with more than eight items, and still be easy to use. The pie menus in The Sims cope with that situation in two ways: overflow items and paging. If you have more than eight items, the overflow items are put above and below the pie menu, so you can select them by pointing at them, but they're not selected as part of the pie. You have to actually move the cursor inside of the label to select the overflow items, while the pie items can be selected anywhere in their wedge shaped slices that extend to the edge of the screen.

If there are even more items than will fit in the top and bottom overflow areas, then it puts the extra items on another page that you can browse by hitting the tab key.

It's obvious how to use the overflow items, but the paging is quite obscure, with no visual indication that it's possible. It is documented in the manual and in faq's, but not many people know about it or use it, because it's rarely necessary.

The paging feature is badly designed and was put in as a last resort, more like an easter egg that can hide the last few items in overpopulated menus. But most menus don't have enough items to require paging (because that's a bad design in its own right), so it's rare that paging is ever necessary. Objects tend to put the most important menu items first, and paging was really only useful during game development when many extra debugging items were enabled.

-Don

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote! It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object. This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

The Dumbold Voting Machine web page describes and illustrates some of the easter eggs, including:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log. Vote or Die!
You punched out the screen!
Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!!
Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan.
News about Black Box Voting.
News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.
News about Diebold.
News about EFF.
News about Verified Voting.
Dumbold Voting Machine Operating Instructions.

-Don

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote! It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object. This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

The Dumbold Voting Machine web page describes and illustrates some of the easter eggs, including:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log. Vote or Die!
You punched out the screen!
Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!!
Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan.
News about Black Box Voting.
News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.
News about Diebold.
News about EFF.
News about Verified Voting.
Dumbold Voting Machine Operating Instructions.

-Don

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote! It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object. This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

The Dumbold Voting Machineweb page describes and illustrates some of the easter eggs, including:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log.
Vote or Die!
You punched out the screen!
Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!!
Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan.
News about Black Box Voting.
News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.
News about Diebold
News about EFF.
News about Verified Voting.
Dumbold Voting Machine Operating Instructions
Instructions

-Don

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote! It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object. This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

The Dumbold Voting Machineweb page describes and illustrates some of the easter eggs, including:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log.
Vote or Die!
You punched out the screen!
Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!!
Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan.
News about Black Box Voting.
News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.
News about Diebold
News about EFF.
News about Verified Voting.
Dumbold Voting Machine Operating Instructions
Instructions

-Don

The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote! It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object. This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.

I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.

A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.

Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).

At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!

The Dumbold Voting Machineweb page describes and illustrates some of the easter eggs, including:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log.
Vote or Die!
You punched out the screen!
Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!!
Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan.
News about Black Box Voting.
News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.
News about Diebold
News about EFF.
News about Verified Voting.
Dumbold Voting Machine Operating Instructions
Instructions

-Don