"neat" is a lot of fun, and cool, and geeky, but this is basic civics. We don't need electronics to vote efficiently, and in a trust worthy way.
Where is the value add? Have more fun voting? Increase turnout?
Well, VBM does that, and it's cheap, it's auditable, and most importantly, the record of the vote can be verified against the intent of the vote by the voter, with no enabling technology required.
That is provably not true for any electronic system, because it must interpret the intent of the voter, and as such, is a active participant that forces the voter to trust it.
We don't need that burden in the system to get our civics done.
That system does not directly record voter intent.
When we make a physical record, we do record voter intent, because the chain of trust from the intent of the voter, through to the actual vote record is intact.
With a machine --any machine, it's not. There is absolutely no way for the voter to know their vote intent is reflected in the record of their vote. It is a vote by proxy.
If that's the worst problem we have, I'll take it. Oregon and Washington doesn't have that issue at all.
What is worse is clogged lines, reboots, challengers, intimidation, and movement of polling places, too few polling places, and I could go on and on.
VBM is efficient, high turn out, voters can help one another, there is time to consider the issues, and the "election" happens over a period of about two weeks, distributing all that activity nicely in time and space.
It's very hard to abuse, largely because it's very well distributed.
When we use media, we capture the voter intent perfectly. There is a chain of trust between the voter intent, and the record of the vote, because that record only passes through the voter.
Making a mark on a piece of paper, voting by mail like we do in Oregon, is cost effective, and verifiable, and trustworthy. Recounts are possible too.
I know my intent was correctly recorded, and if there is a issue with the counting, we can all go into a room, and visibly verify every vote, getting a correct tally.
With a machine, it's a vote by proxy. We fail to record the voter intent, because the electronics only record what the machine thought the intent was, not the intent itself.
Because of this, no electronic system makes sense. I like counting them electronically, with scanners and such. We can audit that, verify, recount.
I don't like a touch screen, because we fail to actually capture the intent, only the machine record of what it thought the intent was.
And it's rather primitive tech by the standards of today.
Carburetor fuel / air delivery to engine, 2200 pound chassis, etc...
I've had that car a very long time, and it will get that performance even after 300K+ miles. I've only done the recommended maintenance, timing chains and such to prevent catastrophic failure, along with the usual assortment of regular replacements, not including the carb, but including alternator, fuel filter, etc... No major work, other than the timing chain replacement.
Driving that car has easily saved me 50K, over what I would have spent doing the newer car dance over time.
That car was designed, at the time, to seriously compete with the rather heavy and clunky American cars. Some American cars...
Recently, I drove a Ford Focus and was able to get between 40 and 50 mpg on a long drive in CA. It's the first of the fuel injected cars, that are ordinary consumer cars, able to reach a nice low fuel cruise state like my old car will. Liked it, and it's sort of clunky, like our cars generally are.
Good for Mazda. IMHO, it's not earth shaking, just a well executed, modern design, optimized for fuel economy. When that's done, we generally get a very frugal product for the time. Problem is, it's just not often done, because people want the zoom! (and they will pay for the zoom, with less value added, than otherwise)
FYI, a old 78 Chevette, modified to a much longer gear ratio, easily got 35 - 45, and I drove that for years. 4 speed, first good to 25, second good through nearly 45, third 70-80 or so, with fourth gear being more or less overdrive. That car had plenty of torque, and was geared horribly low. Typical GM. Great car, shitty execution.
For our US car makers to compete, they need to look at that kind of stuff. Not sure why they won't do it, or will only do it on vehicles sold in the EU. Probably a greed / cost thing, where they can give us the shaft, so they do.
Well, I guess that speaks to the overall state of Slashdot these days. Go look through my long comment history as back support for that comment.
The core point I was making is that overall share doesn't mean much in the open desktop world. Never has, never will.
I use a Linux desktop all the time. I do MCAD on it, and I program on it, and I know many, many others that do the same.
Who the fuck are you kidding indeed?
What? Did we offend the delicate sensibilities of the new up and comers here on Slashdot?
I think I'll e-mail that one to Rob. Bet he gets a kick out of that troll rating!
Just know it's not dead, until the base of users says it's dead. That's the big difference between closed, proprietary desktops, and Linux. Ask around some of the older schoolers, who will set you straight.
Cheers everyone, and yes! My karma is still Excellent! (though with this trend, it may not be, and that's deffo not my issue)
When we had lots of little ISPs, they knew their users, and this kind of thing would be easy cheezy. Now that we've got big, "who gives a fuck" ISPs, it's some kind of dilemma, related to somehow making more money by doing less, and scale.
My smaller ISP simply called me on my cell, when it happened. We had a short conversation that went like this:
Hey user, it's Joel.
Hi Joel, what's going on?
User, I think one of your machines has been hacked.
Jesus! Really? What is it doing?
Right now, it's fetching a lot of data, and sending SPAM.
Crap!
What do you want to do?
Ok, pull the plug, wait three hours, then put it back in. I will have arrived home, taken the box offline to start the work of getting it all sorted.
No sweat, do I start right now?
Yeah, thanks.
*click*
So I went home, pulled the machines off line and waited for a time. Net came back up, and I powered on the machines, looking for the offending one. Found it. Bastards! Sent a quick note to Joel about the state of things, asking if he would keep a close eye out for the next day or two. Done.
Now I realize the average Joe is probably going to handle that poorly. I got my stuff sorted, and brought my Internet stuff back up, happy chappy.
I've since moved, and am just out of range for that ISP. My current one, big ass, ugly, ISP with a name you all would recognize, and cringe at, wouldn't give two shits. They would pull the plug, not tell the support people, and ask for a "reconnect fee", well just because they can.
Not sure what the real answers are here, but somehow I prefer a world where I can get that phone call, maybe be clueless, and know the folks on the other end are just trying to limit the damage, as opposed to it just not working, followed up DAYS later with a nasty-gram, and charges, but that's just me.
Yeah, it's analog, yeah it's noisy like analog is, but it has a great, simple, warm sound.
When talk / news / sports are broadcast in AM Stereo, the impact in your car is really sweet! In car listening to that kind of programming is pleasant, and the lack of higher frequencies, combined with the separation possible on AM, makes for a very unobtrusive and comfortable listening experience.
Technically, digital is better. In terms of "sounds better", that's arguable, and completely dependent on the tastes of the listener.
There is often a nice distortion that happens on vinyl, and people crave it. Sounds better to them, and where music is concerned, perception is reality.
IMHO, this educational experience is totally worth it for perspective.
When all the constraints are tight, it forces one to consider all the elements of the computer. That's easy to avoid at higher levels of both programming language access, and overall computer capability.
I don't think it's a necessary thing for everybody, but I also don't think we can avoid this stuff entirely. The wizards, who understand real computing at the lower levels are needed to boot-strap new technology innovations.
Without them, we won't have those innovations, or if we do, they will be built on other things and limited in their potential.
Besides all of that, it's the most fun! Older machines rock! It's possible for one person to completely understand them. They are accessible in that way.
Most importantly, it's possible for one to write code and know every detail about it, not depending on other code. That experience is worth a lot, because it shows people the scope of problem areas. They can understand what they don't know, and then work to resolve it. Very valuable skill, largely denied to people working only at higher levels of things.
I'm really not all that interested in a closed thing, however well designed, that I know I'll be fighting with the former owner of, just for the right to actually use it.
Really, Apple needs to just give it up. Don't sell the damn things at all. Just make it the iRentalPad, that way they can continue their onerous culture, and take care of the iRecycling at the same time.
That's probably the primary reason for making the batteries so damn tough to replace, if you think about it. Since they actually are trying to sell the things, despite wanting to continue owning them, making sure they come back for "repair" and "service" just completes the deal, with no iFool the wiser...
Major league issues should be full on democracy. Those things take time, debate, and need to be executed with the higher levels of trust. A Presidential election as opposed to some city measure would be examples of the extremes.
I've no problem with electronic counting and such. My primary issue is the trusted record of voter intent. Electronics really can't do that, and they cannot be audited with a level of discussion suitable for a court of law. It is possible, through a chain of testimony and direct examination of the record of the vote on paper, to establish a trustworthy, just and true decision regarding the voter intent, or of criminal manpulation.
These things are not possible electronically, without having to first trust an enabling, proxy technology. That proxy is at issue.
If we use machines to help with the counting, the actual vote record exists to sort issues, failures, etc... out.
Some elements of what you describe are desirable. I don't think we are suffering for lack of them, and I'm also not sold on all matters being improved with them.
If we can settle on the record of the vote issues, I'm inclined to go a ways down this road to see what it brings.
However, we do not have good consensus on what makes an election trustworthy, and without that being well established in law, enforced and taking seriously, e-voting is a distraction that is highly likely to do more harm than good.
All we get for electronic voting is some speed. There isn't much else.
My core problem with the e-vote happens to be that the vote record is not verifiable without a human having to trust enabling technology. When elections end up in the court room, those human readable records happen to matter. If we e-vote, it's going to be impossible to discuss voter intent, because no direct record of the voter intent will exist.
Those of us, who do take the civics seriously, happen to be concerned about that.
There is a chain of trust between voter and the record of the vote used for the tally. With physical media, this chain of trust is unbroken. Voter can see the record and verify it against their intent. We then have an enduring record of the voter intent.
With an electronic proxy, this chain of trust is broken. Voter cannot directly see the record of the vote used for the tally, and therefore is forced to trust the electronic proxy, because the use of enabling technology is a required element of the process. The record we have then is what the machine though the voter intent was, not an actual record of the voter intent. Secondly, the voter then must trust the feed back given to them as being one and the same as the vote record itself.
Where there is a proxy, there can and will be abuses.
Sorry. I see absolutely no value add coming from e-voting. The speed is nice, but arguably it's not something preferable.
There are paper systems, such as the Oregon and Washington Vote By Mail system that act as a hybrid. Counting is done electronically in one central location, where all the physical vote records are aggregated. Challenges, audits and all the other classic election doubt remedies, up to and including a physical hand count, under the public eye, remain possible, meaning disputes can be settled in a court of law in a verifiable and trustworthy way.
The core problem we have with e-voting is the requirement that votes not be personally identifiable after being collected for the tally. Financial systems are trusted because they are personally verifiable, meaning we can go back and query the participants in the transaction to verify the record. With e-voting this is not going to be possible, without either being forced to trust a proxy technology, or by making the votes personally identifiable.
Neither of these two is an acceptable trade-off for the speed, which is the only significant advantage e-voting has.
Well designed physical media based voting systems are capable of convenience, enough speed to be useful, and are verifiable and auditable to the highest degree.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for open source, etc... but this is one area where we simply don't need computers and code. The core civic process is a people based one, and should consist of those classic, time tested and verifiable things so that a court of law can render a decision, without the parties being forced to trust enabling technology.
Trustworthy elections embody these four ideas to the maximum possible:
Transparency -- humans need to be able to follow a vote from it being cast to tally. It's not important that they actually do so, only that it is completely possible to do so. E-voting systems do not allow this, and depend on a layer of secrecy to bring security. This is in contradiction to what makes elections trustworthy.
Oversight -- The law and record of the vote and the process must be visible and known to all. Open Source voting systems do bring more oversight to the e-vote process, but it's still not enough for the actual record of the vote to be tallied under the public eye.
Ideally, nothing but the personally identifiable nature of a vote should be secret or done by proxy, unless no other means exist. Handicapped people, may require a proxy, for example.
Freedom -- Any citizen may choose to vote or not as they see fit.
Anonyminity -- no enduring record of the vote may be personally identifiable back to the pers
The paper is better because it's verifiable, and does not require trusting enabling technology to run an election. No electronic system meets this criteria, unless it's voting record is written to physical media in a human readable, enduring way. So then, why bother?
Doing it with paper gets people involved in their civics too.
I'll give them top marks for open source, but a FAIL for it just not being a necessary thing.
That's a new (small) magazine that will be covering the retro / homebrew / indie scene. Atari 2600 has seen a ton of releases since about '95, many of them written in full view online and self-published with great art and manuals and such. Several people even do boxes. That's my favorite scene, just because it's simple and fun.
Sega Genesis, NES, of course Dreamcast, ColecoVision and others are seeing new games produced. Most of these rival or even exceed the commercial quality efforts of the time.
Also up and coming is retro gaming type games on micros. The Propeller has seen a few great ports and some original titles. You can play those for $30 or so and an evening soldering, or buy one of several boards that can run the games easily enough. That chip has NES - Genesis quality graphics built in --with multi-display capability and VGA / NTSC / PAL outputs no less!
Got told all the usual stuff: not-professional, signatures needed for legal reasons, faster, etc...
My cursive sucked ass. I worked on it, and it really sucked ass. So I quit.
Everything after about the middle of that year was printed --and I also tossed the lower case too. Just make the caps bigger than the lower case, and everything is golden. Fewest number of shapes, round a thing here and there, and it's quick and always legible.
This was such a deal in my school, they actually had some kind of minor league intervention! Was hilarious! My concerned parents, teachers and some other people, who I to this day don't know why they were in the room, all tried to convince me I was making a mistake.
By the time I left High School, a very large chunk of the student population had abandoned cursive.
With printing, there are some variations too. Standard block lettering looks nice, but can be slow. I've noticed an evolution in printing with lower case over the years. An extra stroke here and there can pretty much keep the pen moving to make marks, and it's fast, and it's neat. Women tend to do this more, but it's not a gender specific thing. Just depends on one's style and inclinations.
I feel the same way about simple written structure and texting as the old guard does about cursive. Being 40 now (and for the record, getting old sucks), It's easy to see this as the passing trend that it is. We will adapt, nothing material will be lost, and we all move on.
Besides, those text happy souls all get bitch slapped in professional life, where those of us who just decided to print actually came out pretty good. The advent of computers meant much greater acceptance of printing, and the transition was natural.
Texting might go somewhat that way, but not the same. We actually need solid writing for many professions, so there will be push back.
One thing I do miss with the change is handwriting analysis. That's a fun hobby of mine for years. Always entertaining, not quite scientific, but fun all the same. Script has lots of elements to work with. Printing much less so.:(
Slashdot Mirror
And it is not needed.
"neat" is a lot of fun, and cool, and geeky, but this is basic civics. We don't need electronics to vote efficiently, and in a trust worthy way.
Where is the value add? Have more fun voting? Increase turnout?
Well, VBM does that, and it's cheap, it's auditable, and most importantly, the record of the vote can be verified against the intent of the vote by the voter, with no enabling technology required.
That is provably not true for any electronic system, because it must interpret the intent of the voter, and as such, is a active participant that forces the voter to trust it.
We don't need that burden in the system to get our civics done.
That system does not directly record voter intent.
When we make a physical record, we do record voter intent, because the chain of trust from the intent of the voter, through to the actual vote record is intact.
With a machine --any machine, it's not. There is absolutely no way for the voter to know their vote intent is reflected in the record of their vote. It is a vote by proxy.
I would manually count as well, but we've got a good split in VBM.
Optical scan + statistical audits + mandatory hand counts when it's close.
There is a lot of time to do a ballot. Almost two weeks! People can get help, double check their ballot, etc...
You have no idea how seriously they take that job.
Also, any voter can return their ballot to a supervised drop site, and or return it directly to the elections division in their county.
They can also ask to know their vote was received as well.
Doesn't happen.
If that's the worst problem we have, I'll take it. Oregon and Washington doesn't have that issue at all.
What is worse is clogged lines, reboots, challengers, intimidation, and movement of polling places, too few polling places, and I could go on and on.
VBM is efficient, high turn out, voters can help one another, there is time to consider the issues, and the "election" happens over a period of about two weeks, distributing all that activity nicely in time and space.
It's very hard to abuse, largely because it's very well distributed.
When we use media, we capture the voter intent perfectly. There is a chain of trust between the voter intent, and the record of the vote, because that record only passes through the voter.
Making a mark on a piece of paper, voting by mail like we do in Oregon, is cost effective, and verifiable, and trustworthy. Recounts are possible too.
I know my intent was correctly recorded, and if there is a issue with the counting, we can all go into a room, and visibly verify every vote, getting a correct tally.
With a machine, it's a vote by proxy. We fail to record the voter intent, because the electronics only record what the machine thought the intent was, not the intent itself.
Because of this, no electronic system makes sense. I like counting them electronically, with scanners and such. We can audit that, verify, recount.
I don't like a touch screen, because we fail to actually capture the intent, only the machine record of what it thought the intent was.
And it's rather primitive tech by the standards of today.
Carburetor fuel / air delivery to engine, 2200 pound chassis, etc...
I've had that car a very long time, and it will get that performance even after 300K+ miles. I've only done the recommended maintenance, timing chains and such to prevent catastrophic failure, along with the usual assortment of regular replacements, not including the carb, but including alternator, fuel filter, etc... No major work, other than the timing chain replacement.
Driving that car has easily saved me 50K, over what I would have spent doing the newer car dance over time.
That car was designed, at the time, to seriously compete with the rather heavy and clunky American cars. Some American cars...
Recently, I drove a Ford Focus and was able to get between 40 and 50 mpg on a long drive in CA. It's the first of the fuel injected cars, that are ordinary consumer cars, able to reach a nice low fuel cruise state like my old car will. Liked it, and it's sort of clunky, like our cars generally are.
Good for Mazda. IMHO, it's not earth shaking, just a well executed, modern design, optimized for fuel economy. When that's done, we generally get a very frugal product for the time. Problem is, it's just not often done, because people want the zoom! (and they will pay for the zoom, with less value added, than otherwise)
FYI, a old 78 Chevette, modified to a much longer gear ratio, easily got 35 - 45, and I drove that for years. 4 speed, first good to 25, second good through nearly 45, third 70-80 or so, with fourth gear being more or less overdrive. That car had plenty of torque, and was geared horribly low. Typical GM. Great car, shitty execution.
For our US car makers to compete, they need to look at that kind of stuff. Not sure why they won't do it, or will only do it on vehicles sold in the EU. Probably a greed / cost thing, where they can give us the shaft, so they do.
Well, I guess that speaks to the overall state of Slashdot these days. Go look through my long comment history as back support for that comment.
The core point I was making is that overall share doesn't mean much in the open desktop world. Never has, never will.
I use a Linux desktop all the time. I do MCAD on it, and I program on it, and I know many, many others that do the same.
Who the fuck are you kidding indeed?
What? Did we offend the delicate sensibilities of the new up and comers here on Slashdot?
I think I'll e-mail that one to Rob. Bet he gets a kick out of that troll rating!
Just know it's not dead, until the base of users says it's dead. That's the big difference between closed, proprietary desktops, and Linux. Ask around some of the older schoolers, who will set you straight.
Cheers everyone, and yes! My karma is still Excellent! (though with this trend, it may not be, and that's deffo not my issue)
It's possible to get some nice applications, including CAD, Arch, Mech, and Electrical CAD, CAE, and lots of other good stuff on a Linux Desktop.
A well confugured Ubuntu system will work for a Rocket Scientist as well as some kids wanting to surf the net.
How many times did we hear, "Apple is dying" in reaction to their small share?
Exactly.
Now a few percent means a LOT of users, and that fierce ideology means those users can use it for as long as they want to, share or not.
Funny how that works, isn't it?
I do.
When we had lots of little ISPs, they knew their users, and this kind of thing would be easy cheezy. Now that we've got big, "who gives a fuck" ISPs, it's some kind of dilemma, related to somehow making more money by doing less, and scale.
My smaller ISP simply called me on my cell, when it happened. We had a short conversation that went like this:
Hey user, it's Joel.
Hi Joel, what's going on?
User, I think one of your machines has been hacked.
Jesus! Really? What is it doing?
Right now, it's fetching a lot of data, and sending SPAM.
Crap!
What do you want to do?
Ok, pull the plug, wait three hours, then put it back in. I will have arrived home, taken the box offline to start the work of getting it all sorted.
No sweat, do I start right now?
Yeah, thanks.
*click*
So I went home, pulled the machines off line and waited for a time. Net came back up, and I powered on the machines, looking for the offending one. Found it. Bastards! Sent a quick note to Joel about the state of things, asking if he would keep a close eye out for the next day or two. Done.
Now I realize the average Joe is probably going to handle that poorly. I got my stuff sorted, and brought my Internet stuff back up, happy chappy.
I've since moved, and am just out of range for that ISP. My current one, big ass, ugly, ISP with a name you all would recognize, and cringe at, wouldn't give two shits. They would pull the plug, not tell the support people, and ask for a "reconnect fee", well just because they can.
Not sure what the real answers are here, but somehow I prefer a world where I can get that phone call, maybe be clueless, and know the folks on the other end are just trying to limit the damage, as opposed to it just not working, followed up DAYS later with a nasty-gram, and charges, but that's just me.
Probably not.
I enjoy the broadcast experience for some programs. The lower b
Yeah, it's analog, yeah it's noisy like analog is, but it has a great, simple, warm sound.
When talk / news / sports are broadcast in AM Stereo, the impact in your car is really sweet! In car listening to that kind of programming is pleasant, and the lack of higher frequencies, combined with the separation possible on AM, makes for a very unobtrusive and comfortable listening experience.
There isn't anything else like it.
Well, you lose.
Technically, digital is better. In terms of "sounds better", that's arguable, and completely dependent on the tastes of the listener.
There is often a nice distortion that happens on vinyl, and people crave it. Sounds better to them, and where music is concerned, perception is reality.
found in many audio programs.
You zoom in to where the pop is, then draw in your approximation of what the wave would look like without the pop.
You will be close enough to get many of the frequencies right, and that preserves the time component. Arguably it's small, but it's still there.
IMHO, this educational experience is totally worth it for perspective.
When all the constraints are tight, it forces one to consider all the elements of the computer. That's easy to avoid at higher levels of both programming language access, and overall computer capability.
I don't think it's a necessary thing for everybody, but I also don't think we can avoid this stuff entirely. The wizards, who understand real computing at the lower levels are needed to boot-strap new technology innovations.
Without them, we won't have those innovations, or if we do, they will be built on other things and limited in their potential.
Besides all of that, it's the most fun! Older machines rock! It's possible for one person to completely understand them. They are accessible in that way.
Most importantly, it's possible for one to write code and know every detail about it, not depending on other code. That experience is worth a lot, because it shows people the scope of problem areas. They can understand what they don't know, and then work to resolve it. Very valuable skill, largely denied to people working only at higher levels of things.
Somebody had to say it, right? Right.
I'm really not all that interested in a closed thing, however well designed, that I know I'll be fighting with the former owner of, just for the right to actually use it.
Really, Apple needs to just give it up. Don't sell the damn things at all. Just make it the iRentalPad, that way they can continue their onerous culture, and take care of the iRecycling at the same time.
That's probably the primary reason for making the batteries so damn tough to replace, if you think about it. Since they actually are trying to sell the things, despite wanting to continue owning them, making sure they come back for "repair" and "service" just completes the deal, with no iFool the wiser...
In fact, a hybrid would be appealing to me.
Major league issues should be full on democracy. Those things take time, debate, and need to be executed with the higher levels of trust. A Presidential election as opposed to some city measure would be examples of the extremes.
I've no problem with electronic counting and such. My primary issue is the trusted record of voter intent. Electronics really can't do that, and they cannot be audited with a level of discussion suitable for a court of law. It is possible, through a chain of testimony and direct examination of the record of the vote on paper, to establish a trustworthy, just and true decision regarding the voter intent, or of criminal manpulation.
These things are not possible electronically, without having to first trust an enabling, proxy technology. That proxy is at issue.
If we use machines to help with the counting, the actual vote record exists to sort issues, failures, etc... out.
Some elements of what you describe are desirable. I don't think we are suffering for lack of them, and I'm also not sold on all matters being improved with them.
If we can settle on the record of the vote issues, I'm inclined to go a ways down this road to see what it brings.
However, we do not have good consensus on what makes an election trustworthy, and without that being well established in law, enforced and taking seriously, e-voting is a distraction that is highly likely to do more harm than good.
seriously.
All we get for electronic voting is some speed. There isn't much else.
My core problem with the e-vote happens to be that the vote record is not verifiable without a human having to trust enabling technology. When elections end up in the court room, those human readable records happen to matter. If we e-vote, it's going to be impossible to discuss voter intent, because no direct record of the voter intent will exist.
Those of us, who do take the civics seriously, happen to be concerned about that.
There is a chain of trust between voter and the record of the vote used for the tally. With physical media, this chain of trust is unbroken. Voter can see the record and verify it against their intent. We then have an enduring record of the voter intent.
With an electronic proxy, this chain of trust is broken. Voter cannot directly see the record of the vote used for the tally, and therefore is forced to trust the electronic proxy, because the use of enabling technology is a required element of the process. The record we have then is what the machine though the voter intent was, not an actual record of the voter intent. Secondly, the voter then must trust the feed back given to them as being one and the same as the vote record itself.
Where there is a proxy, there can and will be abuses.
Sorry. I see absolutely no value add coming from e-voting. The speed is nice, but arguably it's not something preferable.
There are paper systems, such as the Oregon and Washington Vote By Mail system that act as a hybrid. Counting is done electronically in one central location, where all the physical vote records are aggregated. Challenges, audits and all the other classic election doubt remedies, up to and including a physical hand count, under the public eye, remain possible, meaning disputes can be settled in a court of law in a verifiable and trustworthy way.
The core problem we have with e-voting is the requirement that votes not be personally identifiable after being collected for the tally. Financial systems are trusted because they are personally verifiable, meaning we can go back and query the participants in the transaction to verify the record. With e-voting this is not going to be possible, without either being forced to trust a proxy technology, or by making the votes personally identifiable.
Neither of these two is an acceptable trade-off for the speed, which is the only significant advantage e-voting has.
Well designed physical media based voting systems are capable of convenience, enough speed to be useful, and are verifiable and auditable to the highest degree.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for open source, etc... but this is one area where we simply don't need computers and code. The core civic process is a people based one, and should consist of those classic, time tested and verifiable things so that a court of law can render a decision, without the parties being forced to trust enabling technology.
Trustworthy elections embody these four ideas to the maximum possible:
Transparency -- humans need to be able to follow a vote from it being cast to tally. It's not important that they actually do so, only that it is completely possible to do so. E-voting systems do not allow this, and depend on a layer of secrecy to bring security. This is in contradiction to what makes elections trustworthy.
Oversight -- The law and record of the vote and the process must be visible and known to all. Open Source voting systems do bring more oversight to the e-vote process, but it's still not enough for the actual record of the vote to be tallied under the public eye.
Ideally, nothing but the personally identifiable nature of a vote should be secret or done by proxy, unless no other means exist. Handicapped people, may require a proxy, for example.
Freedom -- Any citizen may choose to vote or not as they see fit.
Anonyminity -- no enduring record of the vote may be personally identifiable back to the pers
That's it really.
The paper is better because it's verifiable, and does not require trusting enabling technology to run an election. No electronic system meets this criteria, unless it's voting record is written to physical media in a human readable, enduring way. So then, why bother?
Doing it with paper gets people involved in their civics too.
I'll give them top marks for open source, but a FAIL for it just not being a necessary thing.
Seriously.
I've nearly bagged on modern gaming. Every so often, there is a great title and I'll play, but usually I don't.
http://www.classicvgm.com/
That's a new (small) magazine that will be covering the retro / homebrew / indie scene. Atari 2600 has seen a ton of releases since about '95, many of them written in full view online and self-published with great art and manuals and such. Several people even do boxes. That's my favorite scene, just because it's simple and fun.
Sega Genesis, NES, of course Dreamcast, ColecoVision and others are seeing new games produced. Most of these rival or even exceed the commercial quality efforts of the time.
Also up and coming is retro gaming type games on micros. The Propeller has seen a few great ports and some original titles. You can play those for $30 or so and an evening soldering, or buy one of several boards that can run the games easily enough. That chip has NES - Genesis quality graphics built in --with multi-display capability and VGA / NTSC / PAL outputs no less!
Guess that works better these days.
Man, they were pissed too!
Got told all the usual stuff: not-professional, signatures needed for legal reasons, faster, etc...
My cursive sucked ass. I worked on it, and it really sucked ass. So I quit.
Everything after about the middle of that year was printed --and I also tossed the lower case too. Just make the caps bigger than the lower case, and everything is golden. Fewest number of shapes, round a thing here and there, and it's quick and always legible.
This was such a deal in my school, they actually had some kind of minor league intervention! Was hilarious! My concerned parents, teachers and some other people, who I to this day don't know why they were in the room, all tried to convince me I was making a mistake.
By the time I left High School, a very large chunk of the student population had abandoned cursive.
With printing, there are some variations too. Standard block lettering looks nice, but can be slow. I've noticed an evolution in printing with lower case over the years. An extra stroke here and there can pretty much keep the pen moving to make marks, and it's fast, and it's neat. Women tend to do this more, but it's not a gender specific thing. Just depends on one's style and inclinations.
I feel the same way about simple written structure and texting as the old guard does about cursive. Being 40 now (and for the record, getting old sucks), It's easy to see this as the passing trend that it is. We will adapt, nothing material will be lost, and we all move on.
Besides, those text happy souls all get bitch slapped in professional life, where those of us who just decided to print actually came out pretty good. The advent of computers meant much greater acceptance of printing, and the transition was natural.
Texting might go somewhat that way, but not the same. We actually need solid writing for many professions, so there will be push back.
One thing I do miss with the change is handwriting analysis. That's a fun hobby of mine for years. Always entertaining, not quite scientific, but fun all the same. Script has lots of elements to work with. Printing much less so. :(
the core of the issue is that they have the control over YOUR stuff. Kindle users are just on a rental program.
Good grief!
I think making sure a rave is safe is a good idea, after what happened to the people with the lasers a while back, but otherwise, what's the harm?
NONE, ZERO, NADA.
Between the US and UK, what the fuck is going on?