Facial recognition is known to produce false positives. Identification of suspects by witnesses is well known to be notoriously unreliable and easily influenced by the interrogator. All I can hope is that this method will not be used to convict without corroborating evidence.
Everything in the world is a double-edged sword. Another example is DNA evidence.
For over a century, fingerprints have been the gold standard by which suspects were positively identified. Today, the reliability and uniqueness of an individual's fingerprints has been called into question. The one saving grace when a positive match can be found is that it is very difficult to falsify fingerprints found on a weapon or at the scene of a crime.
Ah, but DNA is another matter altogether. We are being taught that individuals matched via DNA evidence leaves very little doubt, is it 1 in 7 Million, that the DNA found on the scene is that of the perpetrator. But what if the DNA is planted on the scene to frame an innocent patsy? Leaving a hair or blood sample is very easy to do. Couple that with the government and police compiling DNA databases of the citizenry and an entire new danger emerges.
Every time there is a political protest or, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a good example -- what was ubiquitous at all those sites? Cameras recording facial metrics of those involved. Now I suspect the US government has a massive database of photographs processed to extract the necessary metrics to identify other photographs of the same person. False positives could create mayhem in a system where too many are already falsely convicted of crimes.
I had been running Easy Peasy on my Asus Eee 1000H, but I was having trouble maintaining a connection via 803.11n. To fix the problem, I fell back to Windows XP, but from the very beginning I was having troubles using Windows Update from even before the expiry date.
I installed this hack and was able to fix all my problems and my Asus is almost back and up to date. The final problem was Microsoft Security Essentials that refused to operate after April 18th, 2014. I uninstalled it and installed the free version of Avira -- problem solved. Plus, I have some applications that will not run on Windows 7, so this hack was a great boon.
The original Star Wars was simply a good, swashbuckling tale that just happened to take place in a future time far, far away. The ideas and representation of that future were novel and ground-breaking at the time, but its an excitement that simply could not be repeated today. The SFX have improved exponentially in films since then and the franchise has become tired and worn.
The answer, IMO, is simple to express but may be impossible to execute. Good story, less reliance of special effects, good and interesting characters that have good chemistry on the screen can still make a good movie and great experience. They could do like Star Trek and mirror current political and mortal dilemmas in their world where the subjects can be examined as a commentary on the current day.
It is clear that the United States must mobilize its scientists and behavioral psychologists. We are facing a widening monkey-gap ith the Communists and we must be able to respond in kind should the need arise.
On a related topic, I would like to be the first to welcome our new Chinese monkey overlords.
First the results were suspect because the margin was so high. Now the results are suspicious because they were not as originally reported, but here a plurality (55% of those who voted) was only a minority of Crimea's population. The bottom line, of course, is we are to mistrust the results no matter what.
What percentage of Ukraine's population was necessary to take to the streets and overthrow the elected government and appoint their own oligarchs?
The shrill nature of US media reporting on the issue and the aggressive pushing of the narrative that Russia's "invasion" of Crimea fomented the crisis is very suspicious. They act as if the crisis began in February, 2014 when the people had been in Maidan square for months.
It ignores the role played by Victoria Nuland, wife of the co-founder of PNAC Robert Kagan, who was caught on tape on 28 January 2014 discussing who should be in charge of an interim government after a coup. Coincidentally, the chips fell exactly as planned. The media ignores the pressure put on Ukraine to accept a deal from the EU (and IMF) rather than the better deal proposed by Russia and accepted by Yanacovych.
The media is acting, in my opinion, in a fashion reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq War debacle.
I think the point was that had the US Supreme Court not intervened, stopping the recount and then declaring it was too late to continue, the recount of ALL ballots order by the Florida Supreme Court would have declared Gore the winner.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
This was based on the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations. Not that it matters. It seems clear that the US establishment was determined to have Dubya as president, and they were forced to use their reliable 5-4 Supreme Court majority as a final ploy.
I'll vote for the crotchless number in muted mauve. I like the suit, but could not care less about its decorative appearance.
How about an orbital craft that takes off from and lands on a runway? I have my priorities, after all.
I agree, and the sooner that America gets rid of their biggest government clusterfuck, the US Military, the sooner the entire world will be better off. American exceptionalism - we're number one in terrorizing the weakest and most pathetic countries in the world. More torture and more drones. Perhaps Accenture could be put in charge of the Military Industrial Complex so with the resulting disaster after disaster military effectiveness could be reduced to the size where it could be drowned in a bathtub.
And allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines is what the industry has been salivating for and the Republicans have been working hard to pass. Tha same thing happened with the banking industry with credit cards. That is why all credit card companies are based in South Dakota. When the government allowed all banks to operate across state lines, the race to the bottom began and South Dakota won. Whichever state has the loosest regulatory structure is the one that will be chosen and every consumer pays the price.
Plus, there was tremendous scope creep. The healthcare.gov website was designed to only front end the entire qualification/enrollment process. After determining if the customer was qualified and in which state the party lived, the work for the government website was done. Then the user was passed to the website for the state.
The Supreme Court then came along and increased the task by ruling that individual states could opt-out of the program. Now healthcare.gov had to be able to apply rules from the 26 states that chose to deprive their less fortunate citizens of reasonably priced health insurance. That increased the complexity of the project at the last minute but the deadline was fixed. I know I've been in those sort of projects and the roll-out isn't pretty.
How common were the adverts for Xray Specs in the back of the DC comics I read as a child. Give me my Xray Specs and a Mr. Microphone and I could be the life of the party.
Hey good lookin'! I'll be back to pick you up later.
Conversely, could it not be said that the nuclear crisis in Iran was manufactured to, in fact, raise the price of oil thereby making fracking economically feasible?
If one is a stock investor, money is made in the churn. The corporate-dominated media trumpets each failure and then investors can buy stock at a lower cost. Then they make money after it recovers. I wish I could buy a significant amount if the stock is down, eventually it will be like IBM and Xerox.
By coincidence, I was looking for a better option to read/edit office files on my Galaxy s3. I almost bailed the minute I read that storage was in the Google Cloud. Why in bog's name should I continue to give my personal data to Google? Look, I know there is no privacy on The Internet, but I refuse to give my assent.
In any case, I started the install and backed out again when it stated that network access was required. Then I figured, maybe it is only required if I CHOOSE to accept their offer of 15GB of cloud storage. I installed and opened Quickoffice.
On the first screen it was asking me to specify the account I would use for Google.
Evaluation period over, uninstall. Sewer rat might taste like punkin' pie but I'll never know 'cause I'll never eat the bastard.
I'm sure 90% of the crimes for the last 50 years involved a telephone. Meaningless statistic.
The flatfeet are more aware of the "computer related" crime because they are not well equipped to deal with them. It's clear that there are too many laws.
100% of the crimes they deal with involve laws. Get rid of 50% of the laws and crime rates will plummet.
For the past 34 years I've been an IT professional working on diverse hardware from mainframes to minis to PCs. I was a programmer long before I was a user.
For all that time, printing has been the bane of my existence. Anyone who believes that computers are aware and have malevolent intent have had severe disagreements with printing hardware/software over the years. The time it takes to print a document (a real document for business, not just a screenshot or receipt) is inversely proportional to the time available to complete the task to get to that meeting where its presence is crucial.
I suffered with text-based DOS and WYSIWYG word processors and dot matrix, laser, inkjet, what have you. I have inevitably ended up shouting at the hapless device that will not produce the output in a usable form without exhausting both my patience and paper.
When I saw this post, I picked up my Samsung Galaxy S2 and did something I'd never had the occasion to do -- I brought up the Gallery to print a photo.
I have a wireless HP Photosmart 390a I'd bought for the business a couple of years ago that happens to have Bluetooth capabilities. Within seconds I had paired with the printer and about 20 seconds later the printer started printing the selected photo. I should have been flabbergasted however I reacted with the aplomb that any would display when an electronic device just friggin' does what you ask it to do.
One thing I noticed when reading the article was the fact that the headline did not reflect the entire issue. Since it was from the Telegraph, I have learned to parse the words with care.
"They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance."
As well as preventing a decrease in performance. That seems a bit more than claiming their bottled water can reduce the risk of dehydration. Preventing a decrease in performance almost sounds like a health claim.
In any case, I agree with the ruling (what can I say, I live in Brussels) in the sense that the claim does imply that bottled water has some special property other than coming in a convenient reusable container. I used to buy bottled water (carbonated) but got sick of the amount of plastic recyclable waste I was creating.
Now I drink tap water.
Great, now the NY Times can supress stories that displease their corporate masters and cut out the middleman.
There was a time in the not so distant past that led people to believe if only a story could be taken to the New York Times or the Washington Post that the minions of the press would then work tirelessly to get the storty out and expose the corrupt evil-doers.
We now know, in the case of Judith Miller's coverups at the NYTimes that helped the re-election of George Bush in 2004 and the Post's meetings with policy makers to provide them access to WP's reporters to manufacture friendly stories that the corporate owned for profit media organizations will do whatever is necessary to avoid biting the hand that feeds it.
I support an independent organization like WikiLeaks with a proven track record over the easily corrupted state news organs any day. It's a trick -- they will bury the story if it suits them or expose the leaker if they're pressured.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- Ben Franklin
- or -
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
I'm thinking that the whole concept of a "receipt" or paper trail is being taken too literally.
I agree that a record that the voter takes out of the polling place is an item subject to abuse. In addition, it's totally useless.
What is going to be done with these receipts? Are all the voters in a precinct going to meet in a local pub and re-tally their votes? Will one voter try to determine after the fact that their individual vote was counted by doing a database match on their receipt.
Well, that's a non-starter. There goes the secret ballot - each vote marked with a key that can be traced back to the receipt holder.
No, the paper trail should be a human-readable ballot that can be stored away by the election board to resolve any future recounts/disputes.
How about this for a voting machine with combines the best of both. There is already existing technology, currently used in many districts, that read paper/cardboard ballots that where selections are marked by connecting two arrows (via marker pen)and subsequently tallied by an OMR (optical mark reader).
Your "computer" voting process could then be the following:
- enter the polling place and receive a paper/cardboard ballot - your name gets crossed off the voting list as having received the ballot - you walk up to the voting machine and pop the ballot into the machine (the machine would validate that the form is oriented properly) - the voter operates the touch-screen thereby gaining all of the advantages of having the computer enforce the voting rules to prevent undervoting/overvoting, etc. - the voter finishes and his vote is tallied on the online voting system - the ballot is filled in by the printer and popped out to the voter - the voter can verify the vote on the paper ballot - the ballot is slipped into the optical mark reader and processed, providing an immediate and automatic check against the online count - the voter's name is crossed off the list controlling the exit from the polls
What a simple system. Small districts could even decide to simply skip the computer altogether and have voters mark the ballots directly.
If the online and OMR counts don't match -- dig out the paper ballots and recount as many times as you want. If it scanned the first time, it will scan during the recount.
Pretent that you are tasked with protecting American lives from Islamic terrorists on your own soil. How would YOU do it?
I certainly wouldn't launch into an entire program of ridiculous new inspections and intrusive measures. The people that came up with this bunch of rules had something in mind far beyond protecting airline passengers and restoring confidence in the air transport system.
On September 11th, a group of determined men gained control of several American airliners and launched an unprecidented but predictable attack on a New York landmark thereby murdering thousands. What were the mistakes in the rules that allowed such a tragedy to occur?
I posit the following:
1. while guns, baseball bats, swords, and other obvious weapons were easily and efficiently prohibited from the airline passenger area; other less threatening objects such as swiss army knives or box cutters were not
2. ever since the first aircraft was highjacked to Cuba in the early 1960s, it was the established policy of airline crews to fully cooperate of those that would attempt to take control of an airliner.
Now, as far as number one goes, this was not universally true. Back in 1995 when I was flying in and out of Brazil on American Airlines, there was an airline attendent stationed at the rope barrier in from of the check-in desk. Her job was to ask if you had anything like a pen knife or swiss army knife in your carry-on luggage.
If so, she would request that you transfer it to your check-in bag, otherwise they would later detect it and you would be detained. As a matter of fact I used to carry my swiss army knife in my carry-on bag at this time and on subsequent trips made sure that it was packed in my check-in luggage.
So, the technology and the knowledge of one of the rules necessary to prevent the 9/11 tragedy was not only in place but operative in a country served by an American carrier. I don't know for a fact, but I suspect, that that was an addendum to transport law added by the Brazilian government since I was never asked a similar question in any other country in South America nor Europe.
Another interesting anecdote; at Heathrow in London, the police would randomly ask the question about whether someone had given you something to take take on-board. This was years before it was the norm on domestic US trasport.
In any case, IMHO after 9/11 all that was required to protect the safety of airline passengers was to change rule number 2 as well! Job done.
No idiotic, million-dollar xray machines that misidentify fruit cakes as explosives. No draconian and intrusive background checks -- nada.
We would still be just as safe flying as we are today and it would be less of an annoying procedure.
Slashdot Mirror
Facial recognition is known to produce false positives. Identification of suspects by witnesses is well known to be notoriously unreliable and easily influenced by the interrogator. All I can hope is that this method will not be used to convict without corroborating evidence.
Everything in the world is a double-edged sword. Another example is DNA evidence.
For over a century, fingerprints have been the gold standard by which suspects were positively identified. Today, the reliability and uniqueness of an individual's fingerprints has been called into question. The one saving grace when a positive match can be found is that it is very difficult to falsify fingerprints found on a weapon or at the scene of a crime.
Ah, but DNA is another matter altogether. We are being taught that individuals matched via DNA evidence leaves very little doubt, is it 1 in 7 Million, that the DNA found on the scene is that of the perpetrator. But what if the DNA is planted on the scene to frame an innocent patsy? Leaving a hair or blood sample is very easy to do. Couple that with the government and police compiling DNA databases of the citizenry and an entire new danger emerges.
Every time there is a political protest or, the Occupy Wall Street movement is a good example -- what was ubiquitous at all those sites? Cameras recording facial metrics of those involved. Now I suspect the US government has a massive database of photographs processed to extract the necessary metrics to identify other photographs of the same person. False positives could create mayhem in a system where too many are already falsely convicted of crimes.
No sir, I don't like it.
I was operated on for a hernia at about 6 weeks of age. In 1954, I would be really surprised if general anesthesia was not administered.
I have no memory problems, as a matter of fact, I am renowned for my ability to remember facts and details. I guess I'm not a rat.
I had been running Easy Peasy on my Asus Eee 1000H, but I was having trouble maintaining a connection via 803.11n. To fix the problem, I fell back to Windows XP, but from the very beginning I was having troubles using Windows Update from even before the expiry date.
I installed this hack and was able to fix all my problems and my Asus is almost back and up to date. The final problem was Microsoft Security Essentials that refused to operate after April 18th, 2014. I uninstalled it and installed the free version of Avira -- problem solved. Plus, I have some applications that will not run on Windows 7, so this hack was a great boon.
The original Star Wars was simply a good, swashbuckling tale that just happened to take place in a future time far, far away. The ideas and representation of that future were novel and ground-breaking at the time, but its an excitement that simply could not be repeated today. The SFX have improved exponentially in films since then and the franchise has become tired and worn.
The answer, IMO, is simple to express but may be impossible to execute. Good story, less reliance of special effects, good and interesting characters that have good chemistry on the screen can still make a good movie and great experience. They could do like Star Trek and mirror current political and mortal dilemmas in their world where the subjects can be examined as a commentary on the current day.
Also, please god, REAL science fiction authors!
If one of the perks of funding is not, at the very least, a 5MW container-sized fusion reactor to stick in my backyard, where's the incentive?
Seesh!
It is clear that the United States must mobilize its scientists and behavioral psychologists. We are facing a widening monkey-gap ith the Communists and we must be able to respond in kind should the need arise.
On a related topic, I would like to be the first to welcome our new Chinese monkey overlords.
First the results were suspect because the margin was so high. Now the results are suspicious because they were not as originally reported, but here a plurality (55% of those who voted) was only a minority of Crimea's population. The bottom line, of course, is we are to mistrust the results no matter what.
What percentage of Ukraine's population was necessary to take to the streets and overthrow the elected government and appoint their own oligarchs?
The shrill nature of US media reporting on the issue and the aggressive pushing of the narrative that Russia's "invasion" of Crimea fomented the crisis is very suspicious. They act as if the crisis began in February, 2014 when the people had been in Maidan square for months.
It ignores the role played by Victoria Nuland, wife of the co-founder of PNAC Robert Kagan, who was caught on tape on 28 January 2014 discussing who should be in charge of an interim government after a coup. Coincidentally, the chips fell exactly as planned. The media ignores the pressure put on Ukraine to accept a deal from the EU (and IMF) rather than the better deal proposed by Russia and accepted by Yanacovych.
The media is acting, in my opinion, in a fashion reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq War debacle.
I think the point was that had the US Supreme Court not intervened, stopping the recount and then declaring it was too late to continue, the recount of ALL ballots order by the Florida Supreme Court would have declared Gore the winner. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... This was based on the post-election review of the existing ballots by the major news organizations. Not that it matters. It seems clear that the US establishment was determined to have Dubya as president, and they were forced to use their reliable 5-4 Supreme Court majority as a final ploy.
I'll vote for the crotchless number in muted mauve. I like the suit, but could not care less about its decorative appearance. How about an orbital craft that takes off from and lands on a runway? I have my priorities, after all.
I agree, and the sooner that America gets rid of their biggest government clusterfuck, the US Military, the sooner the entire world will be better off. American exceptionalism - we're number one in terrorizing the weakest and most pathetic countries in the world. More torture and more drones. Perhaps Accenture could be put in charge of the Military Industrial Complex so with the resulting disaster after disaster military effectiveness could be reduced to the size where it could be drowned in a bathtub.
And allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines is what the industry has been salivating for and the Republicans have been working hard to pass. Tha same thing happened with the banking industry with credit cards. That is why all credit card companies are based in South Dakota. When the government allowed all banks to operate across state lines, the race to the bottom began and South Dakota won. Whichever state has the loosest regulatory structure is the one that will be chosen and every consumer pays the price.
Plus, there was tremendous scope creep. The healthcare.gov website was designed to only front end the entire qualification/enrollment process. After determining if the customer was qualified and in which state the party lived, the work for the government website was done. Then the user was passed to the website for the state. The Supreme Court then came along and increased the task by ruling that individual states could opt-out of the program. Now healthcare.gov had to be able to apply rules from the 26 states that chose to deprive their less fortunate citizens of reasonably priced health insurance. That increased the complexity of the project at the last minute but the deadline was fixed. I know I've been in those sort of projects and the roll-out isn't pretty.
I know of at least one project bunged up by Accenture. That why they're called Accidenture: http://accidenture.com/
How common were the adverts for Xray Specs in the back of the DC comics I read as a child. Give me my Xray Specs and a Mr. Microphone and I could be the life of the party. Hey good lookin'! I'll be back to pick you up later.
Conversely, could it not be said that the nuclear crisis in Iran was manufactured to, in fact, raise the price of oil thereby making fracking economically feasible?
If one is a stock investor, money is made in the churn. The corporate-dominated media trumpets each failure and then investors can buy stock at a lower cost. Then they make money after it recovers. I wish I could buy a significant amount if the stock is down, eventually it will be like IBM and Xerox.
By coincidence, I was looking for a better option to read/edit office files on my Galaxy s3. I almost bailed the minute I read that storage was in the Google Cloud. Why in bog's name should I continue to give my personal data to Google? Look, I know there is no privacy on The Internet, but I refuse to give my assent. In any case, I started the install and backed out again when it stated that network access was required. Then I figured, maybe it is only required if I CHOOSE to accept their offer of 15GB of cloud storage. I installed and opened Quickoffice. On the first screen it was asking me to specify the account I would use for Google. Evaluation period over, uninstall. Sewer rat might taste like punkin' pie but I'll never know 'cause I'll never eat the bastard.
I'm sure 90% of the crimes for the last 50 years involved a telephone. Meaningless statistic. The flatfeet are more aware of the "computer related" crime because they are not well equipped to deal with them. It's clear that there are too many laws. 100% of the crimes they deal with involve laws. Get rid of 50% of the laws and crime rates will plummet.
For the past 34 years I've been an IT professional working on diverse hardware from mainframes to minis to PCs. I was a programmer long before I was a user.
For all that time, printing has been the bane of my existence. Anyone who believes that computers are aware and have malevolent intent have had severe disagreements with printing hardware/software over the years. The time it takes to print a document (a real document for business, not just a screenshot or receipt) is inversely proportional to the time available to complete the task to get to that meeting where its presence is crucial.
I suffered with text-based DOS and WYSIWYG word processors and dot matrix, laser, inkjet, what have you. I have inevitably ended up shouting at the hapless device that will not produce the output in a usable form without exhausting both my patience and paper.
When I saw this post, I picked up my Samsung Galaxy S2 and did something I'd never had the occasion to do -- I brought up the Gallery to print a photo.
I have a wireless HP Photosmart 390a I'd bought for the business a couple of years ago that happens to have Bluetooth capabilities. Within seconds I had paired with the printer and about 20 seconds later the printer started printing the selected photo. I should have been flabbergasted however I reacted with the aplomb that any would display when an electronic device just friggin' does what you ask it to do.
Who would have thought it possible?
A vegetable stops being a vegetable when, in reality, it is a fruit.
One thing I noticed when reading the article was the fact that the headline did not reflect the entire issue. Since it was from the Telegraph, I have learned to parse the words with care. "They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance." As well as preventing a decrease in performance. That seems a bit more than claiming their bottled water can reduce the risk of dehydration. Preventing a decrease in performance almost sounds like a health claim. In any case, I agree with the ruling (what can I say, I live in Brussels) in the sense that the claim does imply that bottled water has some special property other than coming in a convenient reusable container. I used to buy bottled water (carbonated) but got sick of the amount of plastic recyclable waste I was creating. Now I drink tap water.
Great, now the NY Times can supress stories that displease their corporate masters and cut out the middleman. There was a time in the not so distant past that led people to believe if only a story could be taken to the New York Times or the Washington Post that the minions of the press would then work tirelessly to get the storty out and expose the corrupt evil-doers. We now know, in the case of Judith Miller's coverups at the NYTimes that helped the re-election of George Bush in 2004 and the Post's meetings with policy makers to provide them access to WP's reporters to manufacture friendly stories that the corporate owned for profit media organizations will do whatever is necessary to avoid biting the hand that feeds it. I support an independent organization like WikiLeaks with a proven track record over the easily corrupted state news organs any day. It's a trick -- they will bury the story if it suits them or expose the leaker if they're pressured.
How about:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- Ben Franklin
- or -
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
- Martin Niemöller
I'm thinking that the whole concept of a "receipt" or paper trail is being taken too literally.
I agree that a record that the voter takes out of the polling place is an item subject to abuse. In addition, it's totally useless.
What is going to be done with these receipts? Are all the voters in a precinct going to meet in a local pub and re-tally their votes? Will one voter try to determine after the fact that their individual vote was counted by doing a database match on their receipt.
Well, that's a non-starter. There goes the secret ballot - each vote marked with a key that can be traced back to the receipt holder.
No, the paper trail should be a human-readable ballot that can be stored away by the election board to resolve any future recounts/disputes.
How about this for a voting machine with combines the best of both. There is already existing technology, currently used in many districts, that read paper/cardboard ballots that where selections are marked by connecting two arrows (via marker pen)and subsequently tallied by an OMR (optical mark reader).
Your "computer" voting process could then be the following:
- enter the polling place and receive a paper/cardboard ballot
- your name gets crossed off the voting list as having received the ballot
- you walk up to the voting machine and pop the ballot into the machine (the machine would validate that the form is oriented properly)
- the voter operates the touch-screen thereby gaining all of the advantages of having the computer enforce the voting rules to prevent undervoting/overvoting, etc.
- the voter finishes and his vote is tallied on the online voting system
- the ballot is filled in by the printer and popped out to the voter
- the voter can verify the vote on the paper ballot
- the ballot is slipped into the optical mark reader and processed, providing an immediate and automatic check against the online count
- the voter's name is crossed off the list controlling the exit from the polls
What a simple system. Small districts could even decide to simply skip the computer altogether and have voters mark the ballots directly.
If the online and OMR counts don't match -- dig out the paper ballots and recount as many times as you want. If it scanned the first time, it will scan during the recount.
Simple, accurate, and human-verifiable.
Boy, this would NEVER catch on.
I certainly wouldn't launch into an entire program of ridiculous new inspections and intrusive measures. The people that came up with this bunch of rules had something in mind far beyond protecting airline passengers and restoring confidence in the air transport system.
On September 11th, a group of determined men gained control of several American airliners and launched an unprecidented but predictable attack on a New York landmark thereby murdering thousands. What were the mistakes in the rules that allowed such a tragedy to occur?
I posit the following:
1. while guns, baseball bats, swords, and other obvious weapons were easily and efficiently prohibited from the airline passenger area; other less threatening objects such as swiss army knives or box cutters were not2. ever since the first aircraft was highjacked to Cuba in the early 1960s, it was the established policy of airline crews to fully cooperate of those that would attempt to take control of an airliner.
Now, as far as number one goes, this was not universally true. Back in 1995 when I was flying in and out of Brazil on American Airlines, there was an airline attendent stationed at the rope barrier in from of the check-in desk. Her job was to ask if you had anything like a pen knife or swiss army knife in your carry-on luggage.
If so, she would request that you transfer it to your check-in bag, otherwise they would later detect it and you would be detained. As a matter of fact I used to carry my swiss army knife in my carry-on bag at this time and on subsequent trips made sure that it was packed in my check-in luggage.
So, the technology and the knowledge of one of the rules necessary to prevent the 9/11 tragedy was not only in place but operative in a country served by an American carrier. I don't know for a fact, but I suspect, that that was an addendum to transport law added by the Brazilian government since I was never asked a similar question in any other country in South America nor Europe.
Another interesting anecdote; at Heathrow in London, the police would randomly ask the question about whether someone had given you something to take take on-board. This was years before it was the norm on domestic US trasport.
In any case, IMHO after 9/11 all that was required to protect the safety of airline passengers was to change rule number 2 as well! Job done.
No idiotic, million-dollar xray machines that misidentify fruit cakes as explosives. No draconian and intrusive background checks -- nada.
We would still be just as safe flying as we are today and it would be less of an annoying procedure.
That's just my opinion -- I may be wrong.