Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Princeton, Terror, Farscape
"Frankly, sometimes the guy just ... says things." An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Slashdot article, it was reported that Howard Strauss, manager of technology and outreach at Princeton University, wrote a paper bashing the open source community. Princeton has now publicly denounced this article and stated its official policy towards open source."
(I don't know that it's fair to call Princeton's response a denunciation, but the school makes clear that a) Strauss was speaking on his own, not on behalf of the university and b) that Princeton uses, likes, supports, and develops plenty of open source software.)
Oh, they're only votes! tklancer writes "Remember the voting machine failures earlier this month? Well, now Fairfax County is going to investigate the failures in (hopefully) a bit more depth. Now if they'd only start talking about adding a paper trail ..."
Lik-Sang and Microsoft, back on merely uneasy terms. D4rkUnderlord writes "For those who forgot, Lik-Sang was taken down last year by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for selling "Modification devices" (see CNN.com December 16, 2002). Lee sent us this article coming from a HK newspaper: [QUOTE] Have Found this tuesday in the South China Morning Post. Microsoft always get what it want Lee [/QUOTE] Read it here (scan of newspaper article). Note that lik-sang.com has been sold and put under new management last year, so nothing of these trials can or will affect lik-sang.com"
I wish people'd been this worked up about Northern Exposure. calethix writes "There's a news post over at Save Farscape regarding the return of Farscape as a 4 hour mini-series. There aren't a lot of details yet but it's supposed to air next year and has been confirmed by a solid source."
Much as I loathe and mock online petitions ... Hey, if it worked for Farscape, a television show with Alf at the wheel ... Dagrush writes "As you know, there was a slashdot story about how Saruman wa being cut from LotR:RotK. Now there is a petition to put the 7 minutes of Saruman back in the film. You can go here to add your name to the petition, as well as you comments. There are over 17000 signatures right now."
Follow the money, just don't say "terror." Best ID Ever! writes "CNN is reporting that the Policy Analysis Market is set to return, albeit without futures on 'violent events,' and without DARPA or other government involvement. As you may remember, the former DARPA project, under retired admiral John Poindexter's office, was shut down after being roundly condemned by politicians on both sides, leading to Poindexter's resignation. There seems to be a lot of interest in such 'information markets' lately, from the recently announced MIT Market to the long running Iowa Electronic Markets."
Next time they get tied to dingos. An anonymous reader writes "Australian University students Peter Tran, Charles Kok Hau Ng, and Tommy Le avoided jail when they were sentenced today. Charged with Internet piracy for running a file trade site the three copped a plea to reduced charges. Tran gets an 18-month suspended sentence and a $5,000 (Australian) fine. Ng got an 18-month suspended sentence and 200 hours community service. Le was only given community service. Needless to say the Australian record industry is complaining the three should do time, which could have meant five years behind bars. The judge ruled prison was not called for."
Do they actually do anything? I'm sure there's lots of instances where there was an online petition and changes were made but I doubt those changes were because of the petitions. Do decision makers even pay any attention to these petions or do they figgure that because an online petition is much easier to put a name to than any other type of feedback the names are fairly worthless and they just ignore the petition. It could even do damage if people who feel they want to do something just put their name to an online petition feeling they've made a difference and don't take any furthur action that could of actually had an effect.
I stole this Sig
I like this bit from one of the piracy articles:
"Ironically, the sentencing came on the same day as a survey revealing many music industry professionals are active music pirates and believe current copyright laws are unfair and should be changed.
Of 200 artists, managers and record company staff who anonymously responded to an Australian survey, over three-quarters owned CD burners and almost half used them to illegally burn copies of CDs they had purchased. Of the 45 per cent who download music, 50 per cent never pay for it."
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Of course, go too far to the side of vagarity, and it suddenly becomes useless - or a matter of simple wagering rather than the complex interplay that the system's proponents claim.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I would think that the fall freshman CS class would be better qualified to write an article than Howard Strauss based on the completely erroneous comments he gave in his editorial.
/. readers.
Yeah, but he'd probably argue that they don't count, because they are a tiny minority, and they're all the sort of weirdos that modify source code.
But then, I probably shouldn't be allowed to comment, either. After all, I get paid to modify source code. I do this nearly every day. Sometimes I even write source code from scratch.
I'd bet there even a few others like me among the
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If the card cannot be read, it is destroyed, and the machine shuts down until someone can service it.
There's a good way to bring an election to a screeching halt.
Just stick unreadable cards into voting machines all over a precinct containing lots of voters whom you disagree with.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Possibly one of the single most misreported stories in the history of journalism. A potentially valuable and brilliant analysis tool was scrapped becase mankind is composed of mainly ignorant, spewing pustules masquerading as evolved bipeds. Most people I talked to thought it was an actual market for betting on terrorism. When I told them I knew one of the guys who did some early work on the idea, and that it was just a tool to try and predict the ever elusive human threats, they simply would not listen. Everyone just followed their ideological bias, and the truth be damned, as usual.
We have the most unrestrained press in civilization's history, and we're lucky if we can find an actual scrap of truth with a magnifying glass.
--- Ban humanity.
Well, you can visit savefarscape.com and go into their forums to see all the things that the group has done. But I'll give you a short list from memory, some of which I chipped in to pay for (and many others made FAR more impressive donations than I did):
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
The last season is not to be mentioned by the True Hardcore fan lest it taints his memory of the other great seasons.
In that scenerio (machine punches card, varifies punch, stores card) there are two flaws:
1) [trivial but obvious] proving that the physical card path works and "never" experiences an error. "Oh looky, I got it wrong, but the same internal corruption made the 'wrong' card not get diverted to the shreader so it went into the "good vote" box. I'll print another card, still wrong, repeat misroute. RESULT: 20 voters and 3000 ballots in recount box.
1a) [Same thing] but valid votes are lost because little paper routing thing gets stuck sending everything to shreader. RESULT: 20 voters but no ballots in recount box.
Lesson 1: printers *JAM* all the time, paper path handling is one of the *MOST* falable tasks in all of computer science.
2) [Earthshatteringly serious] If the error/exploit is in the code *BEFORE* the card punch activity, then the gaming of the election cant be caught because both the recount and the electronic version were tampered with uniformly. The recount box is just a double-thick lie.
Lesson 2: unless the person can see and check the recount tidbit via low-tech means (e.g. by reading it in daily human language), there is no *real* paper trail.
===
The answer that works:
0) All components must be open source so the equipment, and the recount equipment can be verified.
1) Full (touch screen/whatever) automated voting interface.
2) Said interface prints a card-stock ballot that has the name/issue voted for written/spelled out in english (spanish, whatever) in no uncertian terms and presents that card to the voter IN THE BOOTH.
2a) The card stock ballot also contains a bar-code/dot-region/magnetic ink/whatever machine-readable and key-signed representation of the entire ballot *with* a serial/uniquely generated number, and the voter station software version and checksum in the signature.
2a) THE BALLOT SIGNATURE WILL CONTAIN THE CHECKSUM FOR THE BALLOT INPUT FILE. (we don't want to see "well of course Bush won, in one third of the machines in half of florida, the ballot source datafile didn't mention Gore so they couldn't vote for him on those machines.")
3) The interface asks "is your ballot correct?"
3a) if you say no, the ballot is recorded with its number in the "disparaged ballot at this station" database and the IN BOOTH SHREDER (or at least disposal slot) is used (preferably with scanner to validate that the ballot was, in fact, discarded.)
3b) If you say yes, the machine directs you to take the ballot to the ballot box and stores the ballot information in the "valid ballot from this station" database.
4) Over at the ballot box, the valid ballot is scanned into the "valid ballot at this box" database and then deposited into the locked box.
5) A voter may return to any voting station prior to actually casting their vote into the ballot box, with that ballot printed but not cast and scan-and-shred it, which will make the necessary disparaged ballot record and allow the voter to make their new ballot.
WE THUS BENEFIT FROM THE FOLLOWING CHECKS AND BALANCES:
A) Total number of ballots printed should match total number of ballots disparaged plus total number of ballots cast.
B) Valid Vote tallies from the individual stations should match Valid Vote tallies from the ballot boxes.
C) Each paper ballot is key-signed so its contents can be veried as valid at the machine readable level.
D) Simple recounts would consiste of rescanning, a full audit recount would consist of scanning the ballots in a machine which is programmed to recreate on the display what the ballot should have printed on it. (So a human can read both the screen and the paper to verify that what was printed in words matches what was printed in machine readable format.)
E) While there will end up being some irregularities because of things like a person voting at the station but then not depositing their ballot, and some slack will be added to the system, anyth
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Online petitions did *NOT* work for farscape. Certainly there were online petitions, but, dude, give scapers some credit.
SaveFarscape.com raised almost $100,000 in funds directed at convincing Sci-Fi and whoever else that they *would* spend money for farscape. That's not counting any labor, and all of the money spent on postage, paper, and envelopes of the THOUSANDS of letters sent to network exec's.
SaveFarscape has even gone so far as to do things like get a complete set of Farscape DVD's (about $450) into at least one library in every major metropolitan area in the U.S. - Over 80% of the U.S. has access to Farscape DVD's for free. Not to mention wacky things like BraScape, where female scapers mailed network exec's their netherwear to show that the demographic did, indeed, include female viewers. Or, how about working out a deal with the U.S. military to have DVD's at home bases for soldiers to watch at leisure?
Online petitions may have some relevance, but they certainly aren't what brought farscape back. Scapers put their money where their mouths were, and made a difference. In person, on paper, on the phone, and on the internet, they worked relentlessly.
~Will
sig?