I do believe that absentee ballots take care of this situation. They can simply have a trusted person fill out their ballot for them.
Seriously, e-voting is no better. I'm sure that some of those "trusted" individuals will take advantage of the situation and vote for who they will. The blind choose who they will trust. Statistics will make the errors irrelevant.
In the case of Diebold, your putting all the trust in Diebold. In this case, Diebold can skew the results any way it likes. No one can observe their code. They could statistically record a certain number of votes the way they like and make it virutally undectable in a black box scenario.
For example, I could program the machine to work correctly for the first 50 votes. That would take care of all the "start up" validation. After that, the code could randomly record votes any way it wants and no one would be the wiser.
When the election is over, the malevolent code could simply erase itself. No post election audit would reveal a problem.
Plus, taking advantage of this on a national scale would require a rather elaborate conspiracy, and I don't believe that the conspirators would trustworthy enough to keep quiet about it...
Under pain of poverty, yes they can keep quiet about it. Only one of the Florida conspirators has come fessed up about Florida erasing black folks from the roles under pretense of their being "felons".
BTW, An official with ChoicePoint/DBT (the third party that did the role cleansing) mysteriously died in an aviation accident. Pain of death is even more severe of a punishment.
Seriosly, people who want power bad enough to fix elections are not above having squeelers killed. People who get involved with shit like this know who they are dealing with and know the consequences to themselves if they turn rat.
I would say that the only gaurantee of accuracy is tht the process needs to be transparent enough for anyone to observe, understand, and validate.
I don't think the "paper receipt" concept solves anything. The counting is still done ELECTRONICALLY. If the receipt is held by the voter, there is no practical way to go back and audit the election. Sure I can give the voter a form saying WHO they voted for, but any audit would require users bringing their receipts back. Somehow, I think they as likely to end up in the trash as ATM receipts are.
The only PRACTICAL solution is to PRINT the ballot in human readable form. There would be no pure electronic count. The voter would verify their choices using the printout, NOT the screen. An incorrect ballot would be shredded and the voter could then change their selections.
Should the printed ballots utilize barcodes????
NO. People cannot read barcodes. They have no way to validate that their choice was properly registered.
You could print BOTH. But again, the voter has no way to gaurantee that the bar code matches what is printed. If the reader uses the bar code, then votes can be effectively stolen without being noticed. An "error" in the software would effectively spoil a vote since there would be no way to determine which candidate the voter actually chose.
Should the printed ballots utilize bubble arrays????
No. Again the voter cannot validate which of the bubbles is THEIR choice without a crib. An incorrect crib could be swapped in and out of a voting booth with little notice*. Strategically doing so in the stronghold of someone else's county would effectively steal votes for another party.
Should ballots be serialize?????
Yes, ballots should be serialized so that each vote is unique. In this scenario, it would be more difficult to falsify ballots if you keep track of which ballots came from where.
Should ballots be digitally signed?????
Obviously, voters will not be able to authenticate digital signatures. That would be a machine function in the case of an audit (or recount).
But digital signatures would provide additional security when paired with: 1) The unique ballot numbers. 2) Unique key codes assigned to individual voting machines. 3) A Unique random key generated externally and entered into a machine on election day. Such a procedure for each machine could be filled as part of audit material for an election. 4) A hash of the voters choices. The hash would be part of a "receipt" that voters are issued to keep with them. It would also be part of a master list of votes that are printed as part of a machines output. During an audit, the signatures could be cross checked to detect any fraud.
How should the votes be tallied??????
The votes should be tallied using Optical Character Recognition or plain old manual counting.
Printed ballots would use standardized formats to enable easier OCR. ALL machine Unreadable ballots would be hand counted by law. Since they were printed by machines, they would NOT as ambiguous.
What if ballots turn up missing?????
If ballots are missing or mangled beyond recognition, anyone casting those votes would be able to "re-vote". The receipt containing the unique codes would be proof of when and where they voted so you would not end up with double votes. This does not violate privacy since the original vote was effectively destroyed.
Should the receipts identify the voter????
No, not explicitley. The receipts would identify the time and place voted. The voters ID would be concealed in a one way hash code that produced LOTS of duplicates. In this way, you could verify that a receipt holder did cast that vote (due to statistic inprobability).
Third parties could not collect discarded receipts and use them to revote in the event of spoiled or lost ballots. An election official could not regenerate hash codes and find out who voted for whom. The system would produce too many duplicates to match any ballot directly with the voter.
Having said all this, I think the Canadiens and Europeans are right on this issue. Plain old paper and supervision probably is the best answer.
If they have fusion, they have no need of humans for power. Shit, if they had fision (I would assume that the Architect was smart enough) they wouldn't need humans.
BTW, if the earth was as cold as they claimed, it would be COMPLETELY covered by glaciers.
In think they're saving this stuff for the extended edition. They made extra sure to portray the Palintir with Pippin. I'd look forward to seeing more Palintir action in the extended edition.
The thing about the movie that peaved me a bit was Denethor's portrayal. They made him look like an ignorant, arrogant, stuck-up, lazy fool. Denethor had a fair amount of wisdom and knowledge. They really short-sold this character. His downfall had no meaning because he was portrayed as a COMPLETE moron.
Tolkien writes about how Sam starts having delusions of grandeur. He imagines himself as a great lord, etc...
Even Sam was influenced by the ring.
As soon as the Ring "accidently" slips on Frodo's finger in Bree, Sauron sees him.
The fact that the mithril shirt is NOT delivered to the Mouth of Sauron in the movie covers a problem in the story. Sauron is scouring the world for a hobbit. Then, poof a halfling shows up in Cirith Ungol accompanied by an "elf warrior".
In lightly populated areas, roads are indeed more efficient than rail.
In heavily populated urban areas like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, trains whoop up on roads. Every lane of road they build just gets filled up with more cars.
You have a massive volume of people going effectively to the same place. This begs seriously for mass transit.
I live in NorthWest Indiana. About ten years back there was a serious argument about ending the South Shore lines which links the NW Indiana with Chicago by via light rail.
Flash forward ten years. Many Chicagoans have moved here because it's just plain cheaper. A large portion of them use the South Shore, now it's overcrowded and there are parking problems at the rail stations.
Mind you, there are already two distinct interstate highways linking the regions 80-94 (freeway) and 80-90 (toll road). Collectively, it's about 7 lanes going both ways. The toll-road is usable during rush hours. The freeway is a parking lot. They are adding an additional lane in both directions, it will STILL be a parking lot when they're done.
Economically, there is an excellent case for an advanced rail line being put in place between Chicago and South Bend. An elevated line isn't in danger of collision with vehicles.
I would also argue for regional rail liks (mag-lev) between major cities. Chicago-Milwaukee, Chicago-South Bend-Detroit, Chicago-Indianapolis, Indy-Cleavelend, etc...
Have you people ever heard of ships???? There is little economic incentive to build highways across vast stretches of ocean.
Why???? The ocean IS a highway!!!!!! You just use hulls and screws instead of wheels. Short routes like the Chunnel make sense because you have to figure in the time needed to embark and disembark on a ferry. It makes no sense for long haules since that time in negligible when your crossing an ocean.
BTW, unless there is currently ferry traffic between Morroco and Spain, their undersea rail link will be a serious failure. We call that demand side economics. Boats do the job, if there isn't serious boat traffic, no one wants to take the trip.
Supply siders would argue "If you build it, they will come". Whatever, try writing that in a business plan for a bank loan, see what happens.
I've seen it. I was always astounded that someone would propose a Gibralter suspension bridge without any economic analysis.
I'm glad to see that some people have sense enough to put a rail link underneath the sea instead of in the way cargo ships.
Oh yeah, that Bearing Straight bridge looks like a real loser project as well. Your linking two locations with very LOW population densities. Why would someone drive from California to Alaska in order to get to Siberia??? Why not just hop on a ferry and go straight to Russia???
The other giant pipe dream project was a transatlantic rail tunnel suspended near the ocean bottom. In order to be fast enough to compete with plains, the tunnel would have to be de-pressurized. I hope all those welds hold because that sucker will be sucking air. It would also need a giant series of airlocks (as would a Spain-Gibralter undersea route) to contain any possible flooding.
But, I'm not suggesting that Maglev trains float in the air. The trains themselves are light so the whole system is elevated. Think Chicago EL without all the reinforced concrete.
Putting up magline rails is like putting together legos with cranes. It's all prefab and there are NO road intersections.
There is ZERO chance for a head on collision in a maglev systems since trains only go ONE way on a track.
With the insane resistance to nuclear power (check out France meeting its power needs beautifully and cleanly for a case study as to why to use it), electrical train designs fell by the wayside. The resistance to nuclear power gave birth to the Oil Mafias of today (and the subsequent cartels, OPEC, and undesirable cash flow to undesirable regions), and these trains fell by the wayside.
Speaking of subsidies, garbage is the other great subsidized industry. That is, the cost of the goods we buy do not reflect the cost of their ultimate disposal. Of all garbage subsidies, nuclear garbage tops the list as the most expensive trash EVER.
When we can figure out how to handle nuclear waste efficiently, then nuclear power will be cost efficient. Hopefully, we will eventually figure out a way to reprocess it into more nuclear fuel.
I've heard all this crap lately about spending trillions to go back to the moon because the Chinese want to build a moon base. It's a bunch of horse shit.
However, I would be happy to engage the Chinese in a "maglev race". We get effective transportation as a side effect. After a while, we may even begin to stop subsidizing new airport construction.
The beauty of MagLev is that it's completely elevated. This makes collisions with vehicles impossible. Because collision is impossible, the vehicles can be made VERY light.
True they have to nail down some of the technology. But 16 million is NOTHING in terms of building a transit system.
They really heightened the sense that Faramir has been treated like shit by his father. They also showed him to be as mentally deductive as his father.
What they did NOT show is that he is much gentler and more compassionate than his father. I agree, having him simply let Frodo go did NOTHING for the story. The Osgiliath thing really gave us a chance to be introduced to Gondor and find more things about Faramir and Denethor.
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Well said. We have THREE national holidays dedicated to honoring those who died so we can practice democracy (Independence, Memorial, Veterans).
We have ZERO holidays dedicated to practicing democracy (Election Day).
I do believe that absentee ballots take care of this situation. They can simply have a trusted person fill out their ballot for them.
Seriously, e-voting is no better. I'm sure that some of those "trusted" individuals will take advantage of the situation and vote for who they will. The blind choose who they will trust. Statistics will make the errors irrelevant.
In the case of Diebold, your putting all the trust in Diebold. In this case, Diebold can skew the results any way it likes. No one can observe their code. They could statistically record a certain number of votes the way they like and make it virutally undectable in a black box scenario.
For example, I could program the machine to work correctly for the first 50 votes. That would take care of all the "start up" validation. After that, the code could randomly record votes any way it wants and no one would be the wiser.
When the election is over, the malevolent code could simply erase itself. No post election audit would reveal a problem.
Plus, taking advantage of this on a national scale would require a rather elaborate conspiracy, and I don't believe that the conspirators would trustworthy enough to keep quiet about it...
Under pain of poverty, yes they can keep quiet about it. Only one of the Florida conspirators has come fessed up about Florida erasing black folks from the roles under pretense of their being "felons".
BTW, An official with ChoicePoint/DBT (the third party that did the role cleansing) mysteriously died in an aviation accident. Pain of death is even more severe of a punishment.
Seriosly, people who want power bad enough to fix elections are not above having squeelers killed. People who get involved with shit like this know who they are dealing with and know the consequences to themselves if they turn rat.
I would say that the only gaurantee of accuracy is tht the process needs to be transparent enough for anyone to observe, understand, and validate.
I don't think the "paper receipt" concept solves anything. The counting is still done ELECTRONICALLY. If the receipt is held by the voter, there is no practical way to go back and audit the election. Sure I can give the voter a form saying WHO they voted for, but any audit would require users bringing their receipts back. Somehow, I think they as likely to end up in the trash as ATM receipts are.
The only PRACTICAL solution is to PRINT the ballot in human readable form. There would be no pure electronic count. The voter would verify their choices using the printout, NOT the screen. An incorrect ballot would be shredded and the voter could then change their selections.
Should the printed ballots utilize barcodes????
NO. People cannot read barcodes. They have no way to validate that their choice was properly registered.
You could print BOTH. But again, the voter has no way to gaurantee that the bar code matches what is printed. If the reader uses the bar code, then votes can be effectively stolen without being noticed. An "error" in the software would effectively spoil a vote since there would be no way to determine which candidate the voter actually chose.
Should the printed ballots utilize bubble arrays????
No. Again the voter cannot validate which of the bubbles is THEIR choice without a crib. An incorrect crib could be swapped in and out of a voting booth with little notice*. Strategically doing so in the stronghold of someone else's county would effectively steal votes for another party.
Should ballots be serialize?????
Yes, ballots should be serialized so that each vote is unique. In this scenario, it would be more difficult to falsify ballots if you keep track of which ballots came from where.
Should ballots be digitally signed?????
Obviously, voters will not be able to authenticate digital signatures. That would be a machine function in the case of an audit (or recount).
But digital signatures would provide additional security when paired with:
1) The unique ballot numbers.
2) Unique key codes assigned to individual voting machines.
3) A Unique random key generated externally and entered into a machine on election day. Such a procedure for each machine could be filled as part of audit material for an election.
4) A hash of the voters choices. The hash would be part of a "receipt" that voters are issued to keep with them. It would also be part of a master list of votes that are printed as part of a machines output. During an audit, the signatures could be cross checked to detect any fraud.
How should the votes be tallied??????
The votes should be tallied using Optical Character Recognition or plain old manual counting.
Printed ballots would use standardized formats to enable easier OCR. ALL machine Unreadable ballots would be hand counted by law. Since they were printed by machines, they would NOT as ambiguous.
What if ballots turn up missing?????
If ballots are missing or mangled beyond recognition, anyone casting those votes would be able to "re-vote". The receipt containing the unique codes would be proof of when and where they voted so you would not end up with double votes. This does not violate privacy since the original vote was effectively destroyed.
Should the receipts identify the voter????
No, not explicitley. The receipts would identify the time and place voted. The voters ID would be concealed in a one way hash code that produced LOTS of duplicates. In this way, you could verify that a receipt holder did cast that vote (due to statistic inprobability).
Third parties could not collect discarded receipts and use them to revote in the event of spoiled or lost ballots. An election official could not regenerate hash codes and find out who voted for whom. The system would produce too many duplicates to match any ballot directly with the voter.
Having said all this, I think the Canadiens and Europeans are right on this issue. Plain old paper and supervision probably is the best answer.
If they have fusion, they have no need of humans for power. Shit, if they had fision (I would assume that the Architect was smart enough) they wouldn't need humans.
BTW, if the earth was as cold as they claimed, it would be COMPLETELY covered by glaciers.
I would suspect that the fell beasts were likely residents of Mordor for quite some time.
Gandalf knew it was A ring of power, he didn't know which one it was. Likely, he originally suspected it of being one of the "lesser rings".
In think they're saving this stuff for the extended edition. They made extra sure to portray the Palintir with Pippin. I'd look forward to seeing more Palintir action in the extended edition.
The thing about the movie that peaved me a bit was Denethor's portrayal. They made him look like an ignorant, arrogant, stuck-up, lazy fool. Denethor had a fair amount of wisdom and knowledge. They really short-sold this character. His downfall had no meaning because he was portrayed as a COMPLETE moron.
Actually,
Tolkien writes about how Sam starts having delusions of grandeur. He imagines himself as a great lord, etc...
Even Sam was influenced by the ring.
As soon as the Ring "accidently" slips on Frodo's finger in Bree, Sauron sees him.
The fact that the mithril shirt is NOT delivered to the Mouth of Sauron in the movie covers a problem in the story. Sauron is scouring the world for a hobbit. Then, poof a halfling shows up in Cirith Ungol accompanied by an "elf warrior".
In the book it's ten years between the time Bilbo leaves for Hobbiton and Frodo leaves the Shire.
Well said, in the book he is stung in the back of the neck.
In lightly populated areas, roads are indeed more efficient than rail.
In heavily populated urban areas like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, trains whoop up on roads. Every lane of road they build just gets filled up with more cars.
You have a massive volume of people going effectively to the same place. This begs seriously for mass transit.
I live in NorthWest Indiana. About ten years back there was a serious argument about ending the South Shore lines which links the NW Indiana with Chicago by via light rail.
Flash forward ten years. Many Chicagoans have moved here because it's just plain cheaper. A large portion of them use the South Shore, now it's overcrowded and there are parking problems at the rail stations.
Mind you, there are already two distinct interstate highways linking the regions 80-94 (freeway) and 80-90 (toll road). Collectively, it's about 7 lanes going both ways. The toll-road is usable during rush hours. The freeway is a parking lot. They are adding an additional lane in both directions, it will STILL be a parking lot when they're done.
Economically, there is an excellent case for an advanced rail line being put in place between Chicago and South Bend. An elevated line isn't in danger of collision with vehicles.
I would also argue for regional rail liks (mag-lev) between major cities. Chicago-Milwaukee, Chicago-South Bend-Detroit, Chicago-Indianapolis, Indy-Cleavelend, etc...
Have you people ever heard of ships???? There is little economic incentive to build highways across vast stretches of ocean.
Why???? The ocean IS a highway!!!!!! You just use hulls and screws instead of wheels. Short routes like the Chunnel make sense because you have to figure in the time needed to embark and disembark on a ferry. It makes no sense for long haules since that time in negligible when your crossing an ocean.
BTW, unless there is currently ferry traffic between Morroco and Spain, their undersea rail link will be a serious failure. We call that demand side economics. Boats do the job, if there isn't serious boat traffic, no one wants to take the trip.
Supply siders would argue "If you build it, they will come". Whatever, try writing that in a business plan for a bank loan, see what happens.
I've seen it. I was always astounded that someone would propose a Gibralter suspension bridge without any economic analysis.
I'm glad to see that some people have sense enough to put a rail link underneath the sea instead of in the way cargo ships.
Oh yeah, that Bearing Straight bridge looks like a real loser project as well. Your linking two locations with very LOW population densities. Why would someone drive from California to Alaska in order to get to Siberia??? Why not just hop on a ferry and go straight to Russia???
The other giant pipe dream project was a transatlantic rail tunnel suspended near the ocean bottom. In order to be fast enough to compete with plains, the tunnel would have to be de-pressurized. I hope all those welds hold because that sucker will be sucking air. It would also need a giant series of airlocks (as would a Spain-Gibralter undersea route) to contain any possible flooding.
Well I am crazy.
But, I'm not suggesting that Maglev trains float in the air. The trains themselves are light so the whole system is elevated. Think Chicago EL without all the reinforced concrete.
Putting up magline rails is like putting together legos with cranes. It's all prefab and there are NO road intersections.
There is ZERO chance for a head on collision in a maglev systems since trains only go ONE way on a track.
With the insane resistance to nuclear power (check out France meeting its power needs beautifully and cleanly for a case study as to why to use it), electrical train designs fell by the wayside. The resistance to nuclear power gave birth to the Oil Mafias of today (and the subsequent cartels, OPEC, and undesirable cash flow to undesirable regions), and these trains fell by the wayside.
Speaking of subsidies, garbage is the other great subsidized industry. That is, the cost of the goods we buy do not reflect the cost of their ultimate disposal. Of all garbage subsidies, nuclear garbage tops the list as the most expensive trash EVER.
When we can figure out how to handle nuclear waste efficiently, then nuclear power will be cost efficient. Hopefully, we will eventually figure out a way to reprocess it into more nuclear fuel.
I've heard all this crap lately about spending trillions to go back to the moon because the Chinese want to build a moon base. It's a bunch of horse shit.
However, I would be happy to engage the Chinese in a "maglev race". We get effective transportation as a side effect. After a while, we may even begin to stop subsidizing new airport construction.
Actually MagLev doesn't have a driver. It's like a scale tyco train.
That frees up a person to do full time security.
One could use it to ship super-fast cargo during off-peak travel hours.
MagLev wouldn't suffer speed limits. The reason??? Maglev is always elevated. There is no risk of collisions with cars and tractor-trailers.
We subsidize car and airline travel VERY heavily. This is why trains aren't economically competitive.
The beauty of MagLev is that it's completely elevated. This makes collisions with vehicles impossible. Because collision is impossible, the vehicles can be made VERY light.
True they have to nail down some of the technology. But 16 million is NOTHING in terms of building a transit system.
For your information, I don't read comic books, just Slashdot and novels ;-)
You haven't read the books.
Thats why you don't know.
They really heightened the sense that Faramir has been treated like shit by his father. They also showed him to be as mentally deductive as his father.
What they did NOT show is that he is much gentler and more compassionate than his father. I agree, having him simply let Frodo go did NOTHING for the story. The Osgiliath thing really gave us a chance to be introduced to Gondor and find more things about Faramir and Denethor.