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NY Legislature Rejects "Microsoft Amendment"
An anonymous reader writes "Finally, some good news on electronic voting. The New York state legislature rejected an amendment proposed by Microsoft's lobbyists which would have gutted New York's requirements for voting machine vendors to turn over their source code to the state Board of Elections. Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton commented: 'The voting machine vendors have known for two years what our laws said. Now they're saying that those parts of their systems using Microsoft software have to be proprietary? It's just wrong.'"
Please. "Illegal collusion"? Have you ever actually worked for the New York State Government, in an IT role or otherwise? I had an internship for a while (in a department that will remain nameless, since I don't know if I'm supposed to be talking about this). It isn't collusion, so stop the conspiracy theory bullshit. It's pure laziness. The desktop stuff has been running on Windows since before Linux was a viable platform. They pretty much rely on Lotus Notes because it would be too much work to shift anything over to a better system, and there's a whole bunch of little windows-specific custom programs that nobody wants to re-code.
"Illegal collusion". Right. Pull your head out of your ass and stop assuming malice when incompetence combined with apathy is the obvious answer.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Complete bullshit.
If that was the concern, Microsoft wouldn't trust its OWN employees. The "web of trust" MUST be extended to electoral overseers.
And, if Microsoft doesn't want the software 'vetted, the election machines simply cannot be based on Microsoft software.
In order to maintain secrecy -- all copies of the source can be tagged (an example is to add a pattern of whitespace to the code). If a copy leaks, it can be traced back to the source. At that time, damage can be assessed.
So, whatever.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061