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Voting Machines Vs. Slot Machines
dmh20002 writes "Being a Nevada resident and knowing people who write code for slot machines, I was aware of the stringent measures the state of Nevada uses to vet the security of slot machines. The Nevada Gaming Control Board audits everything about them, both physical and soft, for unintentional and intentional security holes. Hearing the hoopla on voting machines, the contrast was obvious. Slot machines are about money, which is more important than votes, apparently. Now the state of Nevada is looking at electronic voting machines and plan to apply some of the same safeguards. Just applying the Nevada technical standards for gaming machines and vendors to voting machines would be a start, since there don't seem to be any standards for voting machines. A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
We can just put slot machines in voting booths and rather than running on a "Republican" or "Democrat" ticket, candidates can run as "Cherry," "Gold Bar," etc.
Hey, you might even get to vote for three different candidates, or WIN a triple vote.
lysergically yours
When I go to vote, will the voting machine make cheesy bloops and bleeps, and when I pull the lever down will three lemons with George Bush's face slide down, causing alarms go off?
And will I have to pay three quarters to vote?
Isn't it one of the Nevada rules that convicted criminals can't have anything to do with the gambling industry?
:)
Which would remove nearly half the politicians & lobbyists
Only you put the money in in April and are screwed no matter which button you press.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
no matter how valuable your point, and believe me, the parallel you have drawn is striking and insightful, i just can't help myself:
you've permanently fixed in my mind an image of going into the voting booth, pulling the big lever, and seeing three bars with the faces of gw bush, howard dean, al sharpton, etc. spinning before my eyes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i'm actually programming scratch tickets... we dream of programming slot machines. *sigh*
2 1337 4 u!
Gambling... The voting system in the US...
They have a lot in common.
Let's just hope that gambling addicts don't sit at the booths pulling the lever for 24 hours straight...Bush could win again!
From the article:
That study also found the system had a "high risk of compromise."
The state [Maryland] decided to buy the system anyway and Diebold is working on fixes for the security problems identified in that report.
Yea! Way to go Maryland! You know, if I went to buy a new car, and the windshield was broken, the locks didn't work, the engine was hanging by two mounts, and it stalled every 100 miles, I don't think I'd say "oh what the heck" and buy it just because it looked real snazzy and drive it around while the company worked on the problems after the fact.
How idiotically negligent do you have to be to look at a MACHINE THAT WILL HELP IN THE PROCESS OF DECIDING OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POSITIONS and say "well, it's broken, but we'll buy it anyway"!? People like this need to be jailed immediately. That's absolutely innexcusable.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Then, we'd only be paying off one set of crooks.
C:\>tracert life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
Unable to resolve life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
No wonder with Larry, Moe, and Currly running for office next year...
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
If engineers can't figure out how to make money from rigging elections, the world is in a lot of trouble.
No, but I'll check the sex shop next time I'm in the area, they sound fun.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Slot machine integrity is not verified solely by government oversight. Individual members of the community also make an invaluable contribution. People like William Bennett, who selflessly use their own funds to check, recheck and check yet again the accuracy of these machines' odds. Here is someone who has a real passion for testing these machines, who has the guts to trust his own resources to the integrity of the system, who is willing to invest the time it takes to make huge random samples, and who has the clout to make sure that any irregularities would be duly addressed.
Without people like this who provide major resources to help the gaming industry and the Nevada economy in general, we would all be worse off. The next time you walk down the Las Vegas strip enjoying the stunning display of neon lights, take a moment to think about the dedicated people that provide the funds to pay for them, and be thankful.
So government oversight of casino machines is a good thing. Obviously, the solution to our diebold problems is casino oversight of our voting system. You know, ilke some 80-year-old lady can't read the text, so she's escorted to the back room to get some "assistance" by a guy named Tiny... and George Clooney will organize a team of eleven or twelve guys to steal 150,000,000 votes for his father's congress run.
I have the perfect solution. To be allowed to vote, enter a quarter and pull the lever, if you get three pictures of George Bushes face in a row then you loose your quarter, if you get any other presidential candidates face in a row you win $10,000 and cast a vote for that candidate at the same time. This is a perfect way to vote and pay of the giant deficit that lunar Bush has created. If your desired candidate's face does not appear 3 times in a row then keep playing. Odds of not getting George Bushes face in a row are 1 in 8,000,000. Good luck and be sure to bring lots of quarters to the next election!
...they use a security enhancement and validation program which is remarkably unknown to a large part of the computer security community.
It's called "The Soprano Security Management Program", and can be summed up in the following simple decision-diagram:
1) Build a system
2) Make money
3) In case of a situation arises in step 2 which is proving to be detrimental to the main objective of Making Money, two things can be done :
*) Fix bug in system. This is by experience detrimental to the Making Money objective since there will always be bugs, and so this is the wrong decision to make.
*) Find offending individual(s). Apply excessive and lethal violence. Loop to 2.
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines.
;)
OTOH, every four years a president gets elected for exploiting voting machines.
...they're pretty much both designed so that you lose no matter what.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You should see this one from a mile away.
Life's a beach and then you die.