Ahh, but VA isn't losing nearly as much as they used to. In fact, they lose less every quarter and are poised for a turnaround. It'll be interesting to see if they pull it off.
I am not bashing MS, but it seems from what I have seen that XP is incredibly vulnerable to attack.
What you have seen? Which of the two do you use? Neither? Speculation is one thing. Making an argument is another. I've seen much the opposite. Granted, there have been issues, and SP2 threw in some additional kinks, but the ones complaining the loudest appear to be those that don't even use Windows!
Okay. I know that this is probably going to be going against the grain here since many of you jump at every attempt to bash MS, but Windows 2000 was released on Feb 17th, 2000. That's over five years ago. The latest Linux kernel was 2.3.45, released the day earlier.
I myself am a Windows/*nix systems administrator, and forced to use Windows at work. I wouldn't work there if they expected me to use 2000 as my client, and all but one individual is on Windows XP in our office. The only reason is a subjective one. XP is a far superior operating system, and ironically, less bulky than 2000.
Linux kernel support goes back a lot further than 5 years, but which individuals are so proud to own Windows 2000 that they are willing to berate Microsoft for not releasing a crappy browser for one of their current crappy operating systems? Pick your arguments wisely.
I see these articles on a regular basis, with the editors chiding Microsoft for failing to support Windows 2000. I'd like to address them now: If you don't have a stake in Windows support, please refrain from commenting about it. You're semi-journalists, just let the users and those who actually have to support it make your argument.
This, while annoying, isn't the real problem. I like to think of myself as one of these smarter individuals. The problem is that I don't have the focus to see something through to completion. I start 15 projects and finish none of them. I'll do some really interesting stuff, and when an employer asks why it wasn't completed, I say, "Well, X came out and they already have a good UI, so I figured I'd drop that one" or "This tweak here actually fixed X application, so we don't need a brand new one for that."
The only reason we need middle-level management is because of this sole reason. The rest of the time, we have the technical experience to know what's industry standard and what operates quicker and etc. We just have problems COMPLETING the projects we're given.
Not a bad idea. In fact, you could sell tangible packages of open source software for 5 bucks, and suggest the retail markup be another 5 bucks. Granted, that might seem ridiculous to people like you and I, but whatever works. You'd think there'd be some non-profit out there taking advantage of this right now with big retailers like Walmart and etc. Some people just don't have the time or willpower to download open source, but wouldn't mind spending ten bucks to get it.
I work at a large public university (25,000+ students and faculty). I'm also a moderator of a 14,000 user government & public institution security forum. I'm well versed on what can and cannot be done.
You're an IT security sophomore. It shows.;) I'm still quite surprised you care about karma.
From his blog: If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that browsers that are redistributions of the official Mozilla releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Mozilla will itself for its supported products.
The above statement is: True.
From the 10 immutable laws of security: Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore.
The above statement is: True.
Either of these could be viewed as FUD, because it requires the reader have a level of paranoia or fear. It is whether or not someone chooses to believe them that makes the FUD different.
IMHO, this shouldn't even be newsworthy enough for Slashdot to cover. As stated by others, this guy isn't even part of the Mozilla Foundation and this is more an attack on one person's comments than the foundation as a whole.
They make a very good point, Firefox contains the latest code and the latest security updates. AOL and Netscape can use their code, but ultimately, if a user's top priority is security, they should probably be using the browser first to be updated.
The only reason why someone should use Netscape or the AOL browser is if they *have* to, or if those browsers offer some feature that Firefox doesn't currently have.
There's a lot of FUD slung from both commercial and open source developers, I don't see why this term has become *the* definition of "evil" on/. For example, let me ask you this: Are global warming activists spreading FUD? The history of some would seem to indicate so. Does it make it any less of an argument for them to make it?
Uhm, then how would you legitimately send out e-mail?
Simple; you wouldn't. Email is one of those protocols that is so flawed it shouldn't be used. Since Windows zombies make up 90% of the spam and only maybe 10% of users don't use webmail on those stations, there'd be a few complainers.
Now blocking the Outlook mail engine would be difficult or damn near impossible to do, esp on a corporate level, so yeah, there wouldn't be anything stoping a virus from using Outlook.
The different with *that* is that Outlook at least lets you force authenticating, so that a virus wouldn't be able to spoof who it is or who it is from. Looking at who is sending the spam would tell you the culprit.
Yes, this seems like an answer to the problem, but what I've never understood is that ISPs have the capability to determine when someone is sending spam and when someone isn't. Just monitor egress port usage. If someone is sending out 50 emails per second then block them. If they are sending one every 2 minutes, then don't.
Or, when a user signs up, give them the option! Why ISPs haven't provided this yet is beyond me. Have a simple web form that lets users sign in and turn off port blocking, the only ones smart enough to know they need to turn it off are also the ones that most likely need to.
For that matter, why hasn't Microsoft implemented this as a "feature" of windows XP? If they are turning off raw socket access, they might as well also turn off sending from port 25 by default. It'd upset some of us who host websites on our XP workstations, but if they really want to promote Windows 2003 Server, then this would seem like a viable option.
Or maybe, just maybe, we could abandon the ridiculous email protocol altogether, and move to something that is built with trust in mind. Or we could all start implementing greylisting and actually increase the cost of spam.
In his defense, the interviewer probably asked a stupid question in which he repeated it in his answer. For example:
Interviewer: "So the software demands money. Doesn't that seem malicious?"
If that was the case (and knowing the kinds of journalists that cover these stories, it most likely is) then his reponse isn't really all that ridiculous. I mean, c'mon, the author even wrote: "attack software". What respectable computer user calls a virus "attack software"? The same one that would call a firewall "defense software"?
Is that what this Internet thing is all about? Fighting wars online as cyberpunks, criminals, internet cops, etc.?
Just think how easy it'll be for theives to steal our identities when the national id card is implemented. And they said that social security numbers should never have been used to ID people.
You have no audience yet you pine so much for attention. You're doing google searches to try to justify a ridiculous statement. Perhaps you missed the point, Tripwire *is* sufficient. Yes, I am aware of rootkits. Your "decade" estimate is a bit off, but I'm not going to complain. If you truly knew the intracies involved in developing and deploying a rootkit on an NT system, (where these votes are held), you'd realize two things: first, a person who can develop a rootkit to get past Kaspersky Anti-Virus, for example, still has to compromise the system. This is not easy and requires internal access unless you're assuming they are hopping around from the web to some internal voting machine that may or may not even be on the county network. What is so inherently flawed about that?
It probably frustrates you to know I work in the IT security field and make a salary. I'll give you a hint, I didn't make it there by spreading FUD or letting my political frustrations over who is elected president get in the way.
Physical security cannot be guaranteed. In fact, it's very costly to do so. And that's the whole point. Electronic security is not all that costly, and can be implemented easily. There are just as many individuals that could break into a courthouse, muck with a paper voting system, and walk out without setting off an alarm as there are individuals making rootkits. Possibly even more. You won't concede this point. Why not?
Electronic storage of votes is not inherently riskier. Those that don't have a grasp of the measures involved would probably fall for a fearmonger talking about elite hax0rs that can compromise systems.
The real question is, who would do that to a voting machine?
Please tell me where the disk drive, cd drive, or usb port is so I can compromise these voting machines.
Listen to the low-karma slashdot troll Sheepdot
Karma matters to you? I state my mind and get -1s and 5s all the time. Do you really care what your karma rating is?
The voting machine software was compromised before it is ever rolled out to the polling place. The votes are not changed after the fact, they are never recorded properly in the first place.
By who?
Physical security is vastly easier and cheaper than electronic security.
LOL. Okay...
Your guy, the lightning fast safecracker, who breaks into secure locations all over the state all night. Did he wear gloves?
That's the point. This is a county by county basis. It is *even in an electronic format*.
AT LEAST I PROVIDED A SCENARIO. I'm not pumping FUD.
I'm saying it's impossible to secure these systems. You can't tell if they're secure, you can't tell if they've been hacked.
OMG! Some hax0r did it! I swear! That's why Kerry lost! It's totally feasible.
(Let's make up a complex story that is plausible and yet horribly unbelievable and see who falls for it!)
Tripwire will never raise any alarms if no checksums ever change.
That's all I needed to hear to confirm my suspicions. Not only are you incomptent, you're ignorant. Good luck in your campaign to uncover the fallacies of the electronic voting system.
Wow, you really have no clue about how electronic voting is different. I'm glad your verbatim repeating of sensationalized arguments from the media is working for you. Don't let anyone tell you FUD doesn't work, it's obviously been working for you so far!
Apparently you have never heard of Tripwire or even considered some of the obvious problems with the paper system. Let me give you two examples.
Scenario 1: John breaks into the voting system. Maybe he works at the county courthouse, maybe he broke into their webserver and somehow figured out their system to compromise the computer storing the votes. We'll ignore the fact that the law dictates they have no less than two copies, one hardcoded to a media that cannot be altered (like cd). SOMEHOW, they compromise the computer that is storing the voter database. It's the day after the vote, so they hack in, change the votes, find the MD5, SHA1, other complicated hash and somehow change it so that it looks as if the data hasn't been altered. Don't worry that they have the CDs/DVDs to fall back on, you're right, the data was changed and no one really noticed.
Scenario 2: John breaks into the courthouse. It wasn't difficult, because he got the key from a janitor two months before and duplicated it. He walks over to where the stack of papers from his precinct is and loads up on fake ballots, which he obtained the night before when he was helping with the vote (they actually pleaded with him to help them out they were so short-staffed). He adds maybe 500 new ballots, takes out about the same size stack, and walks out of the building.
Which of these is more secure? Neither.
BTW, I personally know people who have voted more than once in counties that I have lived in, and the fact that it is a paper system meant nothing.
You'll also want to take note that even in a paper system, a good deal of the time, the votes are automatically counted and stored by a machine. No one will ever see those papers, and they'll be destroyed before anyone has.
The whole issue comes down to trust. The folks that can most easily change votes, the county auditors, are the ones that security is entrusted to. If you don't like that, change your auditor.
You'll be hard pressed to find a single instance where a vote was changed by a "hacker". Instead, all cases of voting fraud have been laid, appropriately, on those in charge that were either corrupt, or made a really stupid mistake.
Refute my points. Don't speculate. Electronic systems *do* create logs. Paper logs & electronic logs can be tampered with by the same people. I've yet to see any document by these supposed "ivy-league experts" that indicates anyone is messing with logs that wouldn't also have access to paper logs.
Security has very little to do with it. In fact, every argument with regard to security in a computer-aided voting system also exists in a paper system. Think about it.
The biggest argument I've heard (in fact, the only real one) is that people can *change* the stored electronic data. That's right, just like those with access to the "recorded count" from a paper system can misreport how a precinct voted. You cannot argue that an electronic system is inherently flawed because a county auditor was corrupt; that flaw also exists in a paper system.
I've also heard that electronic voting software can be rigged to allow someone to add more than one vote for an individual. Okay, so assuming so, the software has to pass audits. Not only that, but source code can be examined and reverse-engineering binaries can and has been done. That's not to say it couldn't be cracked/patched when the software arrives at the local precincts, but if that's the case, see above.
Anyone can download and print fake ballots. They could even be made reasonably legit. Moving to an electronic system doesn't make anything inherently less secure, it just changes the ways that an election can be rigged.
I saw a video of a monkey deleting votes. Oh give me a break. A monkey could just as easily shit all over paper ballots if you gave him access. The biggest argument: that county and state auditors cannot be trusted, exists in ANY system. You can't fault electronic voting for that.
What if someone *intentionally* breaks open a car battery? What if someone *intentionally* points a gun at someone? What if someone *intentionally* uses a flashlight to beat a baby's skull?
You can gauge the "dangerousness" of something based on human intentions. The kinds of people that would purposely commit mischevious acts are going to do it anyway, and if you deny them one method of doing it, they'll just find another.
It's intentions we try to curb by creating the "nanny state". How good has it been working so far?
Lots of "bling-bling" and preteens screaming to see 15 seconds of footage from their latest favorite vide... err... Xbox game.
I like how not a single person I know (including my teenage sisters, and the friends of theirs that I *do* know) watches any MTV, yet they still haven't changed programming back to music videos yet. Which begs the question, who *is* watching it?
And, based on the principles I've just outlined, the company should not and will not take a position on most other public policy issues, either in the US or internationally.
So... uh... I gotta ask Steve, why such a big interest in *this* issue? Just cause it's a feel-good policy to support?
If anything, people should be judged on merit alone, not skin color, not race, not religion. I'd expect a Christian like myself to work on Sunday (10 commandments are Jewish law, in case you forgot) if I needed them to. This kind of stuff is something we've generally accepted for around a decade already, yet we're still fscking talking about it. Only now it's a PR move
This legislation was created late on purpose, so that when the legislative session ended, it'd be canned. There's no real activity, yet you'd get to see all the big-name companies hurting for diversity in their ranks talk heartily about their positive steps toward diversity. And now none of them actually have to do a damn thing.
If you really want to see real improvements in diversity: QUIT TALKING ABOUT IT.
Instead, judge people on the work they do (wow, what a concept!). If someone of the same race or religion as you gets fired for slacking off, don't fscking defend them! Don't encourage them to sue for discrimination. Tell them they were slacking off and are using a pitiful excuse to make your life worse.
Now we have employers that are afraid to hire someone of another color or rare religion because they are liable to sue when they *do* have to fire them. How the hell is that helping those of us of various skin color or religion trying to get jobs based on MERIT alone? "Oh, don't hire the Norwegians, they slack off and then complain about discrimination!"
Yes, there is *still* discrimination in the workplace, but it's more based on neptitism and favoritism than racism and gender issues. We don't live in the sixties anymore, the people that are doing the hiring got sprayed with fire hoses and attended peace rallies when they were kids. The people that focus on discrimination like it's a huge problem are often the most vile, unethical, and least work-hardy individuals I know.
If race or religion is an issue to you when I'm doing the hire, I'm going to move on to someone whose thinking about impressing me to get the job instead. You don't say things like: "I noticed that you don't have a lot of people of X color/religion, what are you doing to improve that?" Work is work, you become part of the "family" based upon what you can do for us.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, but VA isn't losing nearly as much as they used to. In fact, they lose less every quarter and are poised for a turnaround. It'll be interesting to see if they pull it off.
I mean, seriously, how can you not believe in UFOs when they are so prevalent that the Illuminati can't keep them out of Google maps?
This isn't exactly news. Nor is it really news that Iran is ordering its military to shoot them down.
That's not it at all. In fact, after XP was announced, business didn't upgrade their 2000 clients in anticipation of waiting to upgrade to XP.
XP incinerated previous records and sold 17 million copies in its first two months.
I am not bashing MS, but it seems from what I have seen that XP is incredibly vulnerable to attack.
What you have seen? Which of the two do you use? Neither? Speculation is one thing. Making an argument is another. I've seen much the opposite. Granted, there have been issues, and SP2 threw in some additional kinks, but the ones complaining the loudest appear to be those that don't even use Windows!
Okay. I know that this is probably going to be going against the grain here since many of you jump at every attempt to bash MS, but Windows 2000 was released on Feb 17th, 2000. That's over five years ago. The latest Linux kernel was 2.3.45, released the day earlier.
I myself am a Windows/*nix systems administrator, and forced to use Windows at work. I wouldn't work there if they expected me to use 2000 as my client, and all but one individual is on Windows XP in our office. The only reason is a subjective one. XP is a far superior operating system, and ironically, less bulky than 2000.
Linux kernel support goes back a lot further than 5 years, but which individuals are so proud to own Windows 2000 that they are willing to berate Microsoft for not releasing a crappy browser for one of their current crappy operating systems? Pick your arguments wisely.
I see these articles on a regular basis, with the editors chiding Microsoft for failing to support Windows 2000. I'd like to address them now:
If you don't have a stake in Windows support, please refrain from commenting about it. You're semi-journalists, just let the users and those who actually have to support it make your argument.
Just a suggestion.
This, while annoying, isn't the real problem. I like to think of myself as one of these smarter individuals. The problem is that I don't have the focus to see something through to completion. I start 15 projects and finish none of them. I'll do some really interesting stuff, and when an employer asks why it wasn't completed, I say, "Well, X came out and they already have a good UI, so I figured I'd drop that one" or "This tweak here actually fixed X application, so we don't need a brand new one for that."
The only reason we need middle-level management is because of this sole reason. The rest of the time, we have the technical experience to know what's industry standard and what operates quicker and etc. We just have problems COMPLETING the projects we're given.
Or so I would like to think.
Or my favorites:0 .1
help@127.0.56.2
autoresponder@127.0.
i-know-you-fsckers-have-a-catch-all@localhost
Not a bad idea. In fact, you could sell tangible packages of open source software for 5 bucks, and suggest the retail markup be another 5 bucks. Granted, that might seem ridiculous to people like you and I, but whatever works. You'd think there'd be some non-profit out there taking advantage of this right now with big retailers like Walmart and etc. Some people just don't have the time or willpower to download open source, but wouldn't mind spending ten bucks to get it.
Let's imagine you're a CEO and you're running a sales force. How can you get your sales force to generate more revenue?
Tell them to call up CowboyNeal and ask them where the "Google Story for the Day" is and why it wasn't posted before 5:00pm EST.
I work at a large public university (25,000+ students and faculty). I'm also a moderator of a 14,000 user government & public institution security forum. I'm well versed on what can and cannot be done.
;) I'm still quite surprised you care about karma.
You're an IT security sophomore. It shows.
From his blog:
/. For example, let me ask you this: Are global warming activists spreading FUD? The history of some would seem to indicate so. Does it make it any less of an argument for them to make it?
If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that browsers that are redistributions of the official Mozilla releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Mozilla will itself for its supported products.
The above statement is: True.
From the 10 immutable laws of security:
Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore.
The above statement is: True.
Either of these could be viewed as FUD, because it requires the reader have a level of paranoia or fear. It is whether or not someone chooses to believe them that makes the FUD different.
IMHO, this shouldn't even be newsworthy enough for Slashdot to cover. As stated by others, this guy isn't even part of the Mozilla Foundation and this is more an attack on one person's comments than the foundation as a whole.
They make a very good point, Firefox contains the latest code and the latest security updates. AOL and Netscape can use their code, but ultimately, if a user's top priority is security, they should probably be using the browser first to be updated.
The only reason why someone should use Netscape or the AOL browser is if they *have* to, or if those browsers offer some feature that Firefox doesn't currently have.
There's a lot of FUD slung from both commercial and open source developers, I don't see why this term has become *the* definition of "evil" on
Uhm, then how would you legitimately send out e-mail?
Simple; you wouldn't. Email is one of those protocols that is so flawed it shouldn't be used. Since Windows zombies make up 90% of the spam and only maybe 10% of users don't use webmail on those stations, there'd be a few complainers.
Now blocking the Outlook mail engine would be difficult or damn near impossible to do, esp on a corporate level, so yeah, there wouldn't be anything stoping a virus from using Outlook.
The different with *that* is that Outlook at least lets you force authenticating, so that a virus wouldn't be able to spoof who it is or who it is from. Looking at who is sending the spam would tell you the culprit.
Sorry, in my haste I mistyped that, good catch. Hopefully the part about "egress port usage" trumps the typo.
Yes, this seems like an answer to the problem, but what I've never understood is that ISPs have the capability to determine when someone is sending spam and when someone isn't. Just monitor egress port usage. If someone is sending out 50 emails per second then block them. If they are sending one every 2 minutes, then don't.
Or, when a user signs up, give them the option! Why ISPs haven't provided this yet is beyond me. Have a simple web form that lets users sign in and turn off port blocking, the only ones smart enough to know they need to turn it off are also the ones that most likely need to.
For that matter, why hasn't Microsoft implemented this as a "feature" of windows XP? If they are turning off raw socket access, they might as well also turn off sending from port 25 by default. It'd upset some of us who host websites on our XP workstations, but if they really want to promote Windows 2003 Server, then this would seem like a viable option.
Or maybe, just maybe, we could abandon the ridiculous email protocol altogether, and move to something that is built with trust in mind. Or we could all start implementing greylisting and actually increase the cost of spam.
In his defense, the interviewer probably asked a stupid question in which he repeated it in his answer. For example:
Interviewer: "So the software demands money. Doesn't that seem malicious?"
If that was the case (and knowing the kinds of journalists that cover these stories, it most likely is) then his reponse isn't really all that ridiculous. I mean, c'mon, the author even wrote: "attack software". What respectable computer user calls a virus "attack software"? The same one that would call a firewall "defense software"?
Is that what this Internet thing is all about? Fighting wars online as cyberpunks, criminals, internet cops, etc.?
Just think how easy it'll be for theives to steal our identities when the national id card is implemented. And they said that social security numbers should never have been used to ID people.
Listen to the low-karma slashdot troll Sheepdot.
...
Yes, ladies and gentlemen,
You have no audience yet you pine so much for attention. You're doing google searches to try to justify a ridiculous statement. Perhaps you missed the point, Tripwire *is* sufficient. Yes, I am aware of rootkits. Your "decade" estimate is a bit off, but I'm not going to complain. If you truly knew the intracies involved in developing and deploying a rootkit on an NT system, (where these votes are held), you'd realize two things: first, a person who can develop a rootkit to get past Kaspersky Anti-Virus, for example, still has to compromise the system. This is not easy and requires internal access unless you're assuming they are hopping around from the web to some internal voting machine that may or may not even be on the county network. What is so inherently flawed about that?
It probably frustrates you to know I work in the IT security field and make a salary. I'll give you a hint, I didn't make it there by spreading FUD or letting my political frustrations over who is elected president get in the way.
Physical security cannot be guaranteed. In fact, it's very costly to do so. And that's the whole point. Electronic security is not all that costly, and can be implemented easily. There are just as many individuals that could break into a courthouse, muck with a paper voting system, and walk out without setting off an alarm as there are individuals making rootkits. Possibly even more. You won't concede this point. Why not?
Electronic storage of votes is not inherently riskier. Those that don't have a grasp of the measures involved would probably fall for a fearmonger talking about elite hax0rs that can compromise systems.
The real question is, who would do that to a voting machine?
Please tell me where the disk drive, cd drive, or usb port is so I can compromise these voting machines.
Listen to the low-karma slashdot troll Sheepdot
Karma matters to you? I state my mind and get -1s and 5s all the time. Do you really care what your karma rating is?
The voting machine software was compromised before it is ever rolled out to the polling place. The votes are not changed after the fact, they are never recorded properly in the first place.
By who?
Physical security is vastly easier and cheaper than electronic security.
LOL. Okay...
Your guy, the lightning fast safecracker, who breaks into secure locations all over the state all night. Did he wear gloves?
That's the point. This is a county by county basis. It is *even in an electronic format*.
AT LEAST I PROVIDED A SCENARIO. I'm not pumping FUD.
I'm saying it's impossible to secure these systems. You can't tell if they're secure, you can't tell if they've been hacked.
OMG! Some hax0r did it! I swear! That's why Kerry lost! It's totally feasible.
(Let's make up a complex story that is plausible and yet horribly unbelievable and see who falls for it!)
Again, the expert on modern information assurance and security speaks:
Tripwire will never raise any alarms if no checksums ever change.
Good luck in your campaign to uncover the fallacious, deceitful, and corrupt barons of the electronic voting system.
Tripwire will never raise any alarms if no checksums ever change.
That's all I needed to hear to confirm my suspicions. Not only are you incomptent, you're ignorant. Good luck in your campaign to uncover the fallacies of the electronic voting system.
Wow, you really have no clue about how electronic voting is different. I'm glad your verbatim repeating of sensationalized arguments from the media is working for you. Don't let anyone tell you FUD doesn't work, it's obviously been working for you so far!
Apparently you have never heard of Tripwire or even considered some of the obvious problems with the paper system. Let me give you two examples.
Scenario 1:
John breaks into the voting system. Maybe he works at the county courthouse, maybe he broke into their webserver and somehow figured out their system to compromise the computer storing the votes. We'll ignore the fact that the law dictates they have no less than two copies, one hardcoded to a media that cannot be altered (like cd). SOMEHOW, they compromise the computer that is storing the voter database. It's the day after the vote, so they hack in, change the votes, find the MD5, SHA1, other complicated hash and somehow change it so that it looks as if the data hasn't been altered. Don't worry that they have the CDs/DVDs to fall back on, you're right, the data was changed and no one really noticed.
Scenario 2:
John breaks into the courthouse. It wasn't difficult, because he got the key from a janitor two months before and duplicated it. He walks over to where the stack of papers from his precinct is and loads up on fake ballots, which he obtained the night before when he was helping with the vote (they actually pleaded with him to help them out they were so short-staffed). He adds maybe 500 new ballots, takes out about the same size stack, and walks out of the building.
Which of these is more secure? Neither.
BTW, I personally know people who have voted more than once in counties that I have lived in, and the fact that it is a paper system meant nothing.
You'll also want to take note that even in a paper system, a good deal of the time, the votes are automatically counted and stored by a machine. No one will ever see those papers, and they'll be destroyed before anyone has.
The whole issue comes down to trust. The folks that can most easily change votes, the county auditors, are the ones that security is entrusted to. If you don't like that, change your auditor.
You'll be hard pressed to find a single instance where a vote was changed by a "hacker". Instead, all cases of voting fraud have been laid, appropriately, on those in charge that were either corrupt, or made a really stupid mistake.
Refute my points. Don't speculate. Electronic systems *do* create logs. Paper logs & electronic logs can be tampered with by the same people. I've yet to see any document by these supposed "ivy-league experts" that indicates anyone is messing with logs that wouldn't also have access to paper logs.
Security has very little to do with it. In fact, every argument with regard to security in a computer-aided voting system also exists in a paper system. Think about it.
The biggest argument I've heard (in fact, the only real one) is that people can *change* the stored electronic data. That's right, just like those with access to the "recorded count" from a paper system can misreport how a precinct voted. You cannot argue that an electronic system is inherently flawed because a county auditor was corrupt; that flaw also exists in a paper system.
I've also heard that electronic voting software can be rigged to allow someone to add more than one vote for an individual. Okay, so assuming so, the software has to pass audits. Not only that, but source code can be examined and reverse-engineering binaries can and has been done. That's not to say it couldn't be cracked/patched when the software arrives at the local precincts, but if that's the case, see above.
Anyone can download and print fake ballots. They could even be made reasonably legit. Moving to an electronic system doesn't make anything inherently less secure, it just changes the ways that an election can be rigged.
I saw a video of a monkey deleting votes. Oh give me a break. A monkey could just as easily shit all over paper ballots if you gave him access. The biggest argument: that county and state auditors cannot be trusted, exists in ANY system. You can't fault electronic voting for that.
No, but these guys might.
What if someone *intentially* breaks one open?
What if someone *intentionally* breaks open a car battery?
What if someone *intentionally* points a gun at someone?
What if someone *intentionally* uses a flashlight to beat a baby's skull?
You can gauge the "dangerousness" of something based on human intentions. The kinds of people that would purposely commit mischevious acts are going to do it anyway, and if you deny them one method of doing it, they'll just find another.
It's intentions we try to curb by creating the "nanny state". How good has it been working so far?
.. oh wait... its MTV what else could you expect?
Lots of "bling-bling" and preteens screaming to see 15 seconds of footage from their latest favorite vide... err... Xbox game.
I like how not a single person I know (including my teenage sisters, and the friends of theirs that I *do* know) watches any MTV, yet they still haven't changed programming back to music videos yet. Which begs the question, who *is* watching it?
And, based on the principles I've just outlined, the company should not and will not take a position on most other public policy issues, either in the US or internationally.
So... uh... I gotta ask Steve, why such a big interest in *this* issue? Just cause it's a feel-good policy to support?
If anything, people should be judged on merit alone, not skin color, not race, not religion. I'd expect a Christian like myself to work on Sunday (10 commandments are Jewish law, in case you forgot) if I needed them to. This kind of stuff is something we've generally accepted for around a decade already, yet we're still fscking talking about it. Only now it's a PR move
This legislation was created late on purpose, so that when the legislative session ended, it'd be canned. There's no real activity, yet you'd get to see all the big-name companies hurting for diversity in their ranks talk heartily about their positive steps toward diversity. And now none of them actually have to do a damn thing.
If you really want to see real improvements in diversity: QUIT TALKING ABOUT IT.
Instead, judge people on the work they do (wow, what a concept!). If someone of the same race or religion as you gets fired for slacking off, don't fscking defend them! Don't encourage them to sue for discrimination. Tell them they were slacking off and are using a pitiful excuse to make your life worse.
Now we have employers that are afraid to hire someone of another color or rare religion because they are liable to sue when they *do* have to fire them. How the hell is that helping those of us of various skin color or religion trying to get jobs based on MERIT alone? "Oh, don't hire the Norwegians, they slack off and then complain about discrimination!"
Yes, there is *still* discrimination in the workplace, but it's more based on neptitism and favoritism than racism and gender issues. We don't live in the sixties anymore, the people that are doing the hiring got sprayed with fire hoses and attended peace rallies when they were kids. The people that focus on discrimination like it's a huge problem are often the most vile, unethical, and least work-hardy individuals I know.
If race or religion is an issue to you when I'm doing the hire, I'm going to move on to someone whose thinking about impressing me to get the job instead. You don't say things like: "I noticed that you don't have a lot of people of X color/religion, what are you doing to improve that?" Work is work, you become part of the "family" based upon what you can do for us.