Infinium Labs actually caused damage in Texas. Their legal threats were on a business in the state of Texas and therefore subject to Texas law. This is similar to what happens when an anti-spammer sues a spammer in the anti's local jurisdiction. The damage caused by the spammer is to the recipient and therefore is in local court's jurisdiction. [H] sued in the right court.
I was just reading the.mail STLD RFP application and am finding myself suprised by the people associated with the hair-brained idea.
Initial Board of Directors
Steve Linford, founder of Spamhaus.org
Joseph E. St. Sauver, Ph. D, Director, User Services and Network Applications Unv of Oregon
Already consented to be special advisors to
the SO
John Levine, Chairman of the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task
Force (IRTF)
Wietse Zweitze Venema, Ph.D, Postfix author among other things
Other
Justin Mason or Daniel Quinlan of SpamAssassin.org
Eric Allman of Sendmail.org
Ted Galvin of SpamCon.org
Suresh Ramasubramanian of OutBlaze.com
That list amazes me. I can't believe those people would have anything to do with this project. I also can't believe they are intentionally involving Verislime. I wonder if this is an attempt to counter Microsoft's e-stamp proposal...
I can't for the life of my figure out what the hell Steve is thinking.
If a company or provider isn't sending or supporting spam then why the hell would give a damn about someone else's spam filters? That is the only reason for this whitelist. I mean if they aren't sending spam then why should they be concerned about loosing mail to someone else's spam filters? Why would they want to drop $2k per domain for another whitelist? If perhaps I was a company that did mass mail customers like Sears, JCPenny's, or Amazon then maybe I would want to get on a popular whitelist. That said, why in the hell would I as an average joe or I as a typical ISP give a hoot about what someone else's spam filters do with my non-spam? If their filters are mistakenly tagging my mail as spam their customers will bitch and the problem will get fixed. It doesn't concern me.
I really don't see the point in a.mail TLD. Steve is a smart guy. Even at that I absolutely can not see his reasoning here. This is really a dumb idea. I make a point to personally blacklist domains that use tools that break email such as TMDA. I guess I'll just have to add another check to my rules.
I think the parent really was kidding. His comment just flowed the the read up to that point. I don't think he realized what he said was really true. LOL I've always used the doc info page in PDFs I download though, just to see how they were generated. It's always interesting, like today.
PDF Producer: Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh
PDF Version: 1.2 (Acrobat 3.x)
Path:
File Size: 53.96 KB (55,259 Bytes)
Page Size: 11 x 8.5 in
Tagged PDF: No
Number of Pages: 2
Fast Web View: Yes
Microsoft believes in their own products so much that they didn't use any of their own products to create this document. They may as well have created it in OO.
PDF Producer: Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh
PDF Version: 1.2 (Acrobat 3.x)
Path:
File Size: 53.96 KB (55,259 Bytes)
Page Size: 11 x 8.5 in
Tagged PDF: No
Number of Pages: 2
Fast Web View: Yes
That seems to have been the point of Microsoft lending money to keep Apple up and running.
How fucking obtuse can one person get? It was a settlement you idiot! After all these years people like you are still spreading this FUD. The $150mil was for non-voting stocks in Apple. The conditions were that Apple would drop its patent-infringment lawsuits against Microsoft and Microsoft would continue developing Office and IE for Mac. Microsoft doesn't own Apple. Microsoft doesn't own a controlling piece of Apple. Microsoft didn't "lend" Apple money or bail them out. This was six and a half years ago. Can't you idiots get it straight by now?!
I know damned good and well my grocery store's card tracks my purchases AND gives that information to other businesses to spam my USPS box. How do I know? About a month (sometimes less, sometimes more) after making a purchase with that card I'll get coupons from one of any number of companies that are for the exact same things I purchased previously. Now you might be thinking that it's quite common for the average joe to get coupons for Kraft Velveeta, Cheez-Its, Mountain Dew, Hamburger Helper, and hot dogs. What about getting coupons for condomns, AstroGlide, 409 cleaner, and hot sauce one month after you previously bought that combination late one night in the store. (What can I say? She liked a clean apartment and mexican food 8-) ) I know they are collecting and distributing my marketing information because their actions say they are. When I was in college my friends and I used to trade our customer loyalty cards all the time. Heck in our dorm we had a couple stuck to the bulletin board in lobby for anyone to use. I bet that skewed their marketing data: beer, condoms, beer, beer, condoms, beer, jello, beer, Aleve, beer, duct tape, beer, beer, lighter fluid, TP, beer, budweiser, lots and lots of TP....
I have to disagree. Of all the hundreds of Windows machines I've worked on (and I'm a Mac guy) I have yet to find a single one that actually intalled QuickTime that I hadn't installed myself at some point. When I rolled out a new webmail package at my provider the one we went with, Squirrelmail, can popup a small window with a "You have mail!" text blurb and play a wav file to get the user's attention. The helpdesk was inundated with calls about "this window that pops up every few minutes and tells me I need to download something.' Since they didn't have a plugin installed that could handle wav files, their browser would tell them to download a plugin. We never anticipated that problem. We assumed the userbase would have QuickTime or something else installed to take care of it. We were wrong though. I thought I'd add that.
I saw a real neat Mac case mod once. Well, really it was a complete replacement. This guy took an old radio case, the kind with the big round dial on the front and everything, and mounted this old Mac inside of it. The dial was then hinged to allow for a front load CD drive, similar to the 20th Aniversary Mac. It was a pretty neat mod. I wish i still had that link.
Gates gave everyone the finger, and dumped all his stock?" Imagine what would happen to today's economy if Bill was pissed off enough to dump everything?
Well, the answer to that is simple. The SEC wouldn't let him.
Shipping might be possible. To avoid a custom's tax you might have to indicate that the unit isn't new and is being shipped back from a conference for safety reasons. If you did try to get it out of the country with your flight you should definitely not take it in the box. You should mail the paperwork and CDs to your home from the US and put the laptop in a well-worn laptop case. That way they'll be less likely to assume it's new (like they'd think that much anyhow).
Actually ClamAV isn't broken on my box. I broke MIMEDefang and haven't had time to fix it. MIMEDefang is what glues the AV utilities and SpamAssassin to Sendmail. It's still a nice product and will be useful again once I get MIMEDefang fixed. MD is a good product too. I just managed to break it somehow...
"Bring in a receipt showing that you voted for Candidate Moneybags and get $20!"
Ah. Now that would be a problem. Then again it's also illegal. It's an illegal campaign contribution so we're back to the point where that example isn't really a problem. However, I could see a version of your example be an employer wanting his employees to vote a certain way and requiring them to bring their receipts in to prove that they voted the way the company wanted them too. Then again that's also illegal. It would cause more personal problems that the other example but nevertheless it's still illegal. I think I said it before but I can't be sure, there shouldn't be anything on this proposed receipt that says who you are. It would be nice if it says who you voted for but security reasons would be a good reason not to include that. I do however think it would at least be a good idea to give the voter a receipt for the vote in general.
You Voted!
Thank you for your vote.
You are voter number: 9,319 You chose to vote in 4 of 4 elections.
Monday, March 22, 2004 09:26:17 CST
Voting station #5, city of Emerald City, Oz
I wouldn't see any security concerns in a receipt like that. It would give the voters a sense of purpose. "I did something. That's my vote. Wow." Make sense? Back to your example, I would love to see some place give a discount to people that bring in a receipt like this. It would encourage voter turnout. Since the procedes couldn't readily be identified as contributing to any one campaign, it wouldn't be an illegal campaign contribution. Actually, the more I think about this the more I like it.
I remember a while back I heard about a race (running/jogging type of race) to cure cancer. Area business got together and made an offer to all race participants to either 1) give them a discount on something they purchased at their business or 2) donate X funds to the foundation that put on the race. The participants were identified by a button given to them at the start of the race after they registered. I'd liken this race contribution to the example I mentioned above about giving voters a discount based on their "You Voted!" receipt. It wouldn't sway the vote one way or the other and you'd never know who the person for. You'd just know that they participated in their country's election process. I'd think it would be a good thing.
ClamAV is a good tool. It doesn't catch everything but it catches most everything. I use and recommend it. My AV checking is broken at the moment but I hope to get it fixed soon...
Yes mail admins should implement AV solutions at their borders and within the central mail system itself. All outbound/inbound, inbound/outbound, and inbound/inbound mail should be scanned. However, the providers should not bear the full burden of AV filtering by itself.
AV solutions can and do break. Our's did at my provider. We still haven't got it back online. Our users have had to endure the full brunt of infected email for far too long.
No single AV solution can be up-to-date at all times. For starters we can't update our virus definitions within minutes of a newly discovered virus. It just doesn't happen. AV companies couldn't afford the bandwidth without raising our costs beyond what's considered reasonable. Free solutions such as ClamAV certainly couldn't afford it. Also, not all AV companies discover viruses at the same time. F-Prot might find the latest version of MyDoom before Symantec does. The fact that they found it means it's already in the wild as someone has had to analize it, create a patch for the defs to match this virus, get the patch through Q&A, and get it approved for the next release. There could be numerous hours between the virus getting into the wild, being discovered, being analyzed, and being caught in the latest virus defs.
Finally no defense of any kind should ever be one layer thick. One layer thick means you have no backup plan. No backup plan means you have no contingency for failures. No contingency for failures means your DRP (disaster recovery plan) has either been written fraudulently or you don't have one. In today's business world that means you'd better start updating your resume. A provider's mail system should not be the only line of defense from email-based viruses. Every single end-user desktop should have an up-to-date AV tool scanning all mail ahead or as a companion to the MUA. This is the *only* acceptable means of defense. You have to have end to end protection.
Many AV company's licensing scheme take both mail system users and desktops into account. Read the wording carefully because you may very well be able to use the end-user license to cover that user's part of the mail system....
I don't know about the rest of ya'll but this really doesn't surprise me in the least given my experience with them. I subscribe to Sysadm Mag. Ever since I subscribed I've been getting spam for all their other magazines. The spam always comes from email-publisher.com, better known as the spammers at topica.com. Why CMP is using a known spammer's services I have no idea. I've tried unsubscribing to no avail. If it wasn't for Sysadm Mag and a few of their other nice mags I'd tell them to stick it.
It's a "secret ballot" for a reason. The last thing anybody (else, I guess) wants is proof that a person voted a particular way. Voting fraud is a big enough problem already (especially given these new systems); just how bad would it get when sufficiently motivated people start forcing you to "prove" you voted for their candidate?
I'm afraid your question is moot. What's to stop "sufficiently motivated people" from forcing you to prove who you voted for now? People want feedback from any system the interact with. This is an absolute must. This is one reason why people are so afraid to use night deposits (this has always irked me). People are afraid to leave their deposit in an unmaned box because they are afraid their deposit will be lost. They received no feedback to let them know their deposit was successful or even received. This is partly why more and more banks are embracing the ATM deposit and strongly discouraging the use of night deposit boxes. My bank, the second largest US bank, Bank of America does just this. They charge me if I use the time of a teller to interact with my account, including leaving a night deposit for a teller to work on the next business day. BoA wants me to use the ATM deposit method instead. They don't charge for that method as an incentive. If gas pump CC readers didn't offer receipts people wouldn't use them. They want something in their hot little hand that explains the charges. They need that feedback. If you and I as computer users submitted a form such as a PayPal payment form and rather than say the submission was successful the window just closed, you and I wouldn't be very happy. We didn't get out dose of feedback that we were anticipating. Feedback is a very important thing.
The double carbon idea isn't the greatest for sure. It does embrace the concept of feedback though. I think giving the voter something is critical though. At least tell them what voter number they were and that they made a selection in all the possible individual elections. They as simple humans need that much feedback. I think it would be a good idea if they also could see who they voted for on some form of receipt though too. These forms wouldn't contain any sort of personally identifiable number though so you couldn't identify Joe Blow as a person that voted for candidate A if Joe happened to lose his receipt.
I like the other replier's accounting of the system he uses. The voter fills out a Scantron more or less and it's fed into a machine in front of him and the form is archived for auditing if needed. There still needs to be some feedback for the voter but other than that the method is sound.
That sounds like a pretty fair system to me. It sounds like the basic Scantron forms K-State uses for tests. Easy to use really. With only 2-5 questions it could be even easier. That sounds like a good system to me.
I was on a family vacation many moon ago in Tulsa. I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade. The hotel we were staying at had a couple candy and pop machines. I went to load up on sugar one night and found that one of the candy machines was spitting out candy non-stop for free. I had one of those "The Way Things Work" books at about that age and remembered reading about coined-operated machines. I assumed one of the coins got lodged in one of the various types of coin-detecting mechanisms. I had waaaay too much candy that night. Nearly made me sick.
Yes and no. I understand what you're saying but they could have easily bought a cheaper CPU for the job. Why not use a Mot 68000? Why not use an Intel i960? The Mot 68000 has been used in everything from Macs to Cisco routers. The Intel i960 is still used today in most manageable Ethernet switches. The printer drivers only need basc RS-232 capabilities. We don't need anything fancy. They aren't going to hook up an Epson Stylus Photo 870 to this thing. Using an existing consumer platform and OS like x86 and Windows will of course be easier (not cheaper) to implement a solution on but it will not be a better solution in the end. Security and stability problems will haunt you. That we've already seen. I really only wanted to point out the CPU info.
Yeah, but it happend in I believe Georgia a few years back. I read about it. I believe it was the governor's election. If memory serves me correctly the pre-election polls showed that candidate A was leading something like 70 to 30 over candidate B. Early results during the election showed a similar breakdown. However when all was said and done candidate B won by what was supposed to be candidate A's ratio. It was as if the machines simply switched the candidate's names.
I'm ok with electronic voting IF and only if it's done right, which it isn't being done now. I'm not really even opposed to closed-source voting software if it's good and doesn't screw up. What I want however is a means to audit the results with a simple paper trail. When you vote electronically you should be given a simple carbon paper receipt. The yellow copy is your's. The white copy gets handed to the attendant when you leave the both or better yet it gets placed in a ballot box in front of the attendant as you exit the both. That way you can be sure he didn't pocket it. The receipt should clearly spell out the person's name, your voter number (vote since the opening of the polls at that polling station), time and date, and anything else that's useful. Some sort of hash that identifies your vote should also be on there to prevent forgeries. That right there is your proof that you voted. That paper copy in the box is the only valid paper method of auditing the system. This is such a simple feature I have to ask why the hell isn't Diebold not implementing it. You can not tell me that this cheesey little feature will add thousands to the overall per unit cost. That's bullshit. What was that we read a few weeks ago of another case of more votes being recorded that the number of voters in that district? We need an auditing implementation and we need it now.
Slashdot Mirror
Infinium Labs actually caused damage in Texas. Their legal threats were on a business in the state of Texas and therefore subject to Texas law. This is similar to what happens when an anti-spammer sues a spammer in the anti's local jurisdiction. The damage caused by the spammer is to the recipient and therefore is in local court's jurisdiction. [H] sued in the right court.
I was just reading the .mail STLD RFP application and am finding myself suprised by the people associated with the hair-brained idea.
Initial Board of Directors
Steve Linford, founder of Spamhaus.org
Joseph E. St. Sauver, Ph. D, Director, User Services and Network Applications Unv of Oregon
Already consented to be special advisors to the SO
John Levine, Chairman of the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)
Wietse Zweitze Venema, Ph.D, Postfix author among other things
Other
Justin Mason or Daniel Quinlan of SpamAssassin.org
Eric Allman of Sendmail.org
Ted Galvin of SpamCon.org
Suresh Ramasubramanian of OutBlaze.com
That list amazes me. I can't believe those people would have anything to do with this project. I also can't believe they are intentionally involving Verislime. I wonder if this is an attempt to counter Microsoft's e-stamp proposal...
If a company or provider isn't sending or supporting spam then why the hell would give a damn about someone else's spam filters? That is the only reason for this whitelist. I mean if they aren't sending spam then why should they be concerned about loosing mail to someone else's spam filters? Why would they want to drop $2k per domain for another whitelist? If perhaps I was a company that did mass mail customers like Sears, JCPenny's, or Amazon then maybe I would want to get on a popular whitelist. That said, why in the hell would I as an average joe or I as a typical ISP give a hoot about what someone else's spam filters do with my non-spam? If their filters are mistakenly tagging my mail as spam their customers will bitch and the problem will get fixed. It doesn't concern me.
I really don't see the point in a .mail TLD. Steve is a smart guy. Even at that I absolutely can not see his reasoning here. This is really a dumb idea. I make a point to personally blacklist domains that use tools that break email such as TMDA. I guess I'll just have to add another check to my rules.
I think the parent really was kidding. His comment just flowed the the read up to that point. I don't think he realized what he said was really true. LOL I've always used the doc info page in PDFs I download though, just to see how they were generated. It's always interesting, like today.
From the Document Properties for OpenOffice.pdf:
How fucking obtuse can one person get? It was a settlement you idiot! After all these years people like you are still spreading this FUD. The $150mil was for non-voting stocks in Apple. The conditions were that Apple would drop its patent-infringment lawsuits against Microsoft and Microsoft would continue developing Office and IE for Mac. Microsoft doesn't own Apple. Microsoft doesn't own a controlling piece of Apple. Microsoft didn't "lend" Apple money or bail them out. This was six and a half years ago. Can't you idiots get it straight by now?!
I know damned good and well my grocery store's card tracks my purchases AND gives that information to other businesses to spam my USPS box. How do I know? About a month (sometimes less, sometimes more) after making a purchase with that card I'll get coupons from one of any number of companies that are for the exact same things I purchased previously. Now you might be thinking that it's quite common for the average joe to get coupons for Kraft Velveeta, Cheez-Its, Mountain Dew, Hamburger Helper, and hot dogs. What about getting coupons for condomns, AstroGlide, 409 cleaner, and hot sauce one month after you previously bought that combination late one night in the store. (What can I say? She liked a clean apartment and mexican food 8-) ) I know they are collecting and distributing my marketing information because their actions say they are. When I was in college my friends and I used to trade our customer loyalty cards all the time. Heck in our dorm we had a couple stuck to the bulletin board in lobby for anyone to use. I bet that skewed their marketing data: beer, condoms, beer, beer, condoms, beer, jello, beer, Aleve, beer, duct tape, beer, beer, lighter fluid, TP, beer, budweiser, lots and lots of TP....
I have to disagree. Of all the hundreds of Windows machines I've worked on (and I'm a Mac guy) I have yet to find a single one that actually intalled QuickTime that I hadn't installed myself at some point. When I rolled out a new webmail package at my provider the one we went with, Squirrelmail, can popup a small window with a "You have mail!" text blurb and play a wav file to get the user's attention. The helpdesk was inundated with calls about "this window that pops up every few minutes and tells me I need to download something.' Since they didn't have a plugin installed that could handle wav files, their browser would tell them to download a plugin. We never anticipated that problem. We assumed the userbase would have QuickTime or something else installed to take care of it. We were wrong though. I thought I'd add that.
I saw a real neat Mac case mod once. Well, really it was a complete replacement. This guy took an old radio case, the kind with the big round dial on the front and everything, and mounted this old Mac inside of it. The dial was then hinged to allow for a front load CD drive, similar to the 20th Aniversary Mac. It was a pretty neat mod. I wish i still had that link.
Well, the answer to that is simple. The SEC wouldn't let him.
Shipping might be possible. To avoid a custom's tax you might have to indicate that the unit isn't new and is being shipped back from a conference for safety reasons. If you did try to get it out of the country with your flight you should definitely not take it in the box. You should mail the paperwork and CDs to your home from the US and put the laptop in a well-worn laptop case. That way they'll be less likely to assume it's new (like they'd think that much anyhow).
Argh! Looks like I misspelled another one. At least we know where your mind is... :-P
Actually ClamAV isn't broken on my box. I broke MIMEDefang and haven't had time to fix it. MIMEDefang is what glues the AV utilities and SpamAssassin to Sendmail. It's still a nice product and will be useful again once I get MIMEDefang fixed. MD is a good product too. I just managed to break it somehow...
Ah. Now that would be a problem. Then again it's also illegal. It's an illegal campaign contribution so we're back to the point where that example isn't really a problem. However, I could see a version of your example be an employer wanting his employees to vote a certain way and requiring them to bring their receipts in to prove that they voted the way the company wanted them too. Then again that's also illegal. It would cause more personal problems that the other example but nevertheless it's still illegal. I think I said it before but I can't be sure, there shouldn't be anything on this proposed receipt that says who you are. It would be nice if it says who you voted for but security reasons would be a good reason not to include that. I do however think it would at least be a good idea to give the voter a receipt for the vote in general.
I wouldn't see any security concerns in a receipt like that. It would give the voters a sense of purpose. "I did something. That's my vote. Wow." Make sense? Back to your example, I would love to see some place give a discount to people that bring in a receipt like this. It would encourage voter turnout. Since the procedes couldn't readily be identified as contributing to any one campaign, it wouldn't be an illegal campaign contribution. Actually, the more I think about this the more I like it.
I remember a while back I heard about a race (running/jogging type of race) to cure cancer. Area business got together and made an offer to all race participants to either 1) give them a discount on something they purchased at their business or 2) donate X funds to the foundation that put on the race. The participants were identified by a button given to them at the start of the race after they registered. I'd liken this race contribution to the example I mentioned above about giving voters a discount based on their "You Voted!" receipt. It wouldn't sway the vote one way or the other and you'd never know who the person for. You'd just know that they participated in their country's election process. I'd think it would be a good thing.
ClamAV is a good tool. It doesn't catch everything but it catches most everything. I use and recommend it. My AV checking is broken at the moment but I hope to get it fixed soon...
AV solutions can and do break. Our's did at my provider. We still haven't got it back online. Our users have had to endure the full brunt of infected email for far too long.
No single AV solution can be up-to-date at all times. For starters we can't update our virus definitions within minutes of a newly discovered virus. It just doesn't happen. AV companies couldn't afford the bandwidth without raising our costs beyond what's considered reasonable. Free solutions such as ClamAV certainly couldn't afford it. Also, not all AV companies discover viruses at the same time. F-Prot might find the latest version of MyDoom before Symantec does. The fact that they found it means it's already in the wild as someone has had to analize it, create a patch for the defs to match this virus, get the patch through Q&A, and get it approved for the next release. There could be numerous hours between the virus getting into the wild, being discovered, being analyzed, and being caught in the latest virus defs.
Finally no defense of any kind should ever be one layer thick. One layer thick means you have no backup plan. No backup plan means you have no contingency for failures. No contingency for failures means your DRP (disaster recovery plan) has either been written fraudulently or you don't have one. In today's business world that means you'd better start updating your resume. A provider's mail system should not be the only line of defense from email-based viruses. Every single end-user desktop should have an up-to-date AV tool scanning all mail ahead or as a companion to the MUA. This is the *only* acceptable means of defense. You have to have end to end protection.
Many AV company's licensing scheme take both mail system users and desktops into account. Read the wording carefully because you may very well be able to use the end-user license to cover that user's part of the mail system....
I don't know about the rest of ya'll but this really doesn't surprise me in the least given my experience with them. I subscribe to Sysadm Mag. Ever since I subscribed I've been getting spam for all their other magazines. The spam always comes from email-publisher.com, better known as the spammers at topica.com. Why CMP is using a known spammer's services I have no idea. I've tried unsubscribing to no avail. If it wasn't for Sysadm Mag and a few of their other nice mags I'd tell them to stick it.
I'm afraid your question is moot. What's to stop "sufficiently motivated people" from forcing you to prove who you voted for now? People want feedback from any system the interact with. This is an absolute must. This is one reason why people are so afraid to use night deposits (this has always irked me). People are afraid to leave their deposit in an unmaned box because they are afraid their deposit will be lost. They received no feedback to let them know their deposit was successful or even received. This is partly why more and more banks are embracing the ATM deposit and strongly discouraging the use of night deposit boxes. My bank, the second largest US bank, Bank of America does just this. They charge me if I use the time of a teller to interact with my account, including leaving a night deposit for a teller to work on the next business day. BoA wants me to use the ATM deposit method instead. They don't charge for that method as an incentive. If gas pump CC readers didn't offer receipts people wouldn't use them. They want something in their hot little hand that explains the charges. They need that feedback. If you and I as computer users submitted a form such as a PayPal payment form and rather than say the submission was successful the window just closed, you and I wouldn't be very happy. We didn't get out dose of feedback that we were anticipating. Feedback is a very important thing.
The double carbon idea isn't the greatest for sure. It does embrace the concept of feedback though. I think giving the voter something is critical though. At least tell them what voter number they were and that they made a selection in all the possible individual elections. They as simple humans need that much feedback. I think it would be a good idea if they also could see who they voted for on some form of receipt though too. These forms wouldn't contain any sort of personally identifiable number though so you couldn't identify Joe Blow as a person that voted for candidate A if Joe happened to lose his receipt.
I like the other replier's accounting of the system he uses. The voter fills out a Scantron more or less and it's fed into a machine in front of him and the form is archived for auditing if needed. There still needs to be some feedback for the voter but other than that the method is sound.
That sounds like a pretty fair system to me. It sounds like the basic Scantron forms K-State uses for tests. Easy to use really. With only 2-5 questions it could be even easier. That sounds like a good system to me.
I was on a family vacation many moon ago in Tulsa. I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade. The hotel we were staying at had a couple candy and pop machines. I went to load up on sugar one night and found that one of the candy machines was spitting out candy non-stop for free. I had one of those "The Way Things Work" books at about that age and remembered reading about coined-operated machines. I assumed one of the coins got lodged in one of the various types of coin-detecting mechanisms. I had waaaay too much candy that night. Nearly made me sick.
Yes and no. I understand what you're saying but they could have easily bought a cheaper CPU for the job. Why not use a Mot 68000? Why not use an Intel i960? The Mot 68000 has been used in everything from Macs to Cisco routers. The Intel i960 is still used today in most manageable Ethernet switches. The printer drivers only need basc RS-232 capabilities. We don't need anything fancy. They aren't going to hook up an Epson Stylus Photo 870 to this thing. Using an existing consumer platform and OS like x86 and Windows will of course be easier (not cheaper) to implement a solution on but it will not be a better solution in the end. Security and stability problems will haunt you. That we've already seen. I really only wanted to point out the CPU info.
I'm ok with electronic voting IF and only if it's done right, which it isn't being done now. I'm not really even opposed to closed-source voting software if it's good and doesn't screw up. What I want however is a means to audit the results with a simple paper trail. When you vote electronically you should be given a simple carbon paper receipt. The yellow copy is your's. The white copy gets handed to the attendant when you leave the both or better yet it gets placed in a ballot box in front of the attendant as you exit the both. That way you can be sure he didn't pocket it. The receipt should clearly spell out the person's name, your voter number (vote since the opening of the polls at that polling station), time and date, and anything else that's useful. Some sort of hash that identifies your vote should also be on there to prevent forgeries. That right there is your proof that you voted. That paper copy in the box is the only valid paper method of auditing the system. This is such a simple feature I have to ask why the hell isn't Diebold not implementing it. You can not tell me that this cheesey little feature will add thousands to the overall per unit cost. That's bullshit. What was that we read a few weeks ago of another case of more votes being recorded that the number of voters in that district? We need an auditing implementation and we need it now.
Yes but with the bank's contact info, he couldn't have done anything more with it. He could have sent it back to the bank, no questioned asked.
A friend of mine asked for $20 once and got $40. The bills stuck together. Cheap bastard wouldn't even buy supper that night. ;-)