Yes. But to make an impression on creationists, one would have to convince them to do two things neither of which is likely to happen:
A) Read something other than the Bible.
B) Acknowledge that the Bible is not a book of science.
but my 2 year old is very fond of anything with animals in it.
- Planet Earth was very, very good.
- Prehistoric Park & Walking with Dinosaurs are favorites as well.
My son now wants to be Nigel Marven when he grows up.
These shows also hold up over time for adult viewers. I consider that something of a bonus. Those of you who have had a 2 year old ask to see something again and again and again know what I mean.
And, to boot they actually missed a very significant hidden cost in their evaluation - machine testing just prior to an election.
With both optical scan machines and touch screen machines, you program the election on a central server, you download the election metadata to each voting machine.
Once you do this, you have to actually hands-on test each machine to make sure the data was loaded correctly. That is, you do this if you are a responsible elections administrator...:-)
With an optical scan machine, testing is simple. You prepare a deck of test ballots, you zero-total the machine, you ram the ballots through and you check the voting totals. If the actual total matches expected you are good to go. The process for each box is pretty fast.
With a touch screen machine, you need to do the same exercise to be properly confident that the machines are programmed correctly. To do that you have to manually monkey the GUI & it takes, far, far, far, far longer to execute the testing.
BTW - I know this because I've done it & my wife administers elections.
Companies like Diebold will tell you that you don't have to test each machine. That's bullshit. The reality is that getting the election programmed right takes weeks and weeks. It is hard. It has to be 100% correct. Then you download the data to the machine. There are lots of problems that can happen. Most significantly - did I remember to machine 'x' since the last change? Did the upload succeed? How to know? You actually have to monkey it.
I had some experience last night that I thought I'd share. My spouse runs elections for an unnamed government agency that uses Diebold voting equipment.
Although they do 95% of their voting using a more reliable technology (optical scan machines and paper ballot cards), they use the Diebold touchscreen units for accessibility reasons - it supports audio-only voting for visually impaired voters using a numeric key pad for navigation, etc.
So, here's how a Diebold engagement works for the touchscreen units. They send a representative up to program the units with the appropriate races, candidates, etc. They use a plain old windows workstation and an application that appears to be Visual Basic. This application stores election metadata in a MS Access or SQL Server database. This metadata is then transferred to the touchscreen units over a LAN. It appears to me that the touchscreen units are Microsoft CE boxes. Can't be sure about the database format they use on the touchscreen unit to store this metadata and the actual votes but I suspect they use Microsoft Access.
The Diebold staff provide a few hours of training for the staff who have to manage the machines. During the election, Diebold staff are not on hand, although they do show up at the end, when it is time to aggregate results from all of the touchscreen units. Diebold staff download the data from all of the touch screen units to a central aggregation point for which takes on the responsibility of totaling the results. Now, I know what all of you conspiracy theorists are thinking but note that election supervisors can print paper aggregate totals from each machine before this happens.
My observations:
The touchscreen units do not have an administrators manual that election supervisors can use for the purpose of understanding how to manage these machines. When prompted about this, the Diebold representative replied that there were no manuals and that you shouldn't need them - "the machine is intuitive."
One of the things that the Diebold representative expected was within the realm of capability for non-technical staff:
Put a PCMCIA Network card in the touch screen units & attach the appropriate ethernet cabling
Assign the touchscreen unit an IP Address (FYI: DHCP was mispelled in their UI, I think it was 'DCHP')
Specify the network address of the host machine (i.e., the workstation that has the election metadata)
Provide the path name on the host machine to the election metadata file
Download the election meta data to the touchscreen unit
I didn't actually fully execute this use case - it wasn't clear to me how this part would work & I wasn't prepared to do anything serious without a manual. Anyway, that, in my opinion, goes way beyond what a non-technical person is capable of doing themselves without a manual.
That matter aside, my view is that machine is in general, not intuitive, as the Diebold rep claims. Although machine only supports somewhere in the neighboorhood of 9 use-cases for the supervisor user and none them involves more than a 2 step flow, it took me about an a couple of hours to figure out how to manage an election on it. Further, I wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't for some of the cryptic notes that one of the election workers scribbled down about programming voter cards when the Diebold rep was running the training session.
My point: We need to trust election results. One important factor is that we have to have confidence that election supervisors are capable of properly administering this equipment. My view: limited training + no manuals + non-technical administrators = potential for disaster.
It occurs to me that such a device might be useful for people who want a desktop and a laptop without the expense buying both separately. If you could use this 3x5 card as a home pc attached to a docking station, why couldn't you buy a laptop shell that fits around this card, too?
Instead of paying big bucks for a laptop that duplicates all of the hardware of the home PC, only smaller, we could simply buy laptop shells with a display and keyboard and plug this little bad boy into it.
The shell would certainly be much less expensive than a full-fledged laptop. Plus, it would have the effect of making it easier to choose a laptop with a particular keyboard and mouse style because laptop shells would essentially be a fairly standard commodity.
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Yes. But to make an impression on creationists, one would have to convince them to do two things neither of which is likely to happen: A) Read something other than the Bible. B) Acknowledge that the Bible is not a book of science.
but my 2 year old is very fond of anything with animals in it. - Planet Earth was very, very good. - Prehistoric Park & Walking with Dinosaurs are favorites as well. My son now wants to be Nigel Marven when he grows up. These shows also hold up over time for adult viewers. I consider that something of a bonus. Those of you who have had a 2 year old ask to see something again and again and again know what I mean.
And, to boot they actually missed a very significant hidden cost in their evaluation - machine testing just prior to an election. With both optical scan machines and touch screen machines, you program the election on a central server, you download the election metadata to each voting machine. Once you do this, you have to actually hands-on test each machine to make sure the data was loaded correctly. That is, you do this if you are a responsible elections administrator... :-)
With an optical scan machine, testing is simple. You prepare a deck of test ballots, you zero-total the machine, you ram the ballots through and you check the voting totals. If the actual total matches expected you are good to go. The process for each box is pretty fast.
With a touch screen machine, you need to do the same exercise to be properly confident that the machines are programmed correctly. To do that you have to manually monkey the GUI & it takes, far, far, far, far longer to execute the testing.
BTW - I know this because I've done it & my wife administers elections.
Companies like Diebold will tell you that you don't have to test each machine. That's bullshit. The reality is that getting the election programmed right takes weeks and weeks. It is hard. It has to be 100% correct. Then you download the data to the machine. There are lots of problems that can happen. Most significantly - did I remember to machine 'x' since the last change? Did the upload succeed? How to know? You actually have to monkey it.
Although they do 95% of their voting using a more reliable technology (optical scan machines and paper ballot cards), they use the Diebold touchscreen units for accessibility reasons - it supports audio-only voting for visually impaired voters using a numeric key pad for navigation, etc.
So, here's how a Diebold engagement works for the touchscreen units. They send a representative up to program the units with the appropriate races, candidates, etc. They use a plain old windows workstation and an application that appears to be Visual Basic. This application stores election metadata in a MS Access or SQL Server database. This metadata is then transferred to the touchscreen units over a LAN. It appears to me that the touchscreen units are Microsoft CE boxes. Can't be sure about the database format they use on the touchscreen unit to store this metadata and the actual votes but I suspect they use Microsoft Access.
The Diebold staff provide a few hours of training for the staff who have to manage the machines. During the election, Diebold staff are not on hand, although they do show up at the end, when it is time to aggregate results from all of the touchscreen units. Diebold staff download the data from all of the touch screen units to a central aggregation point for which takes on the responsibility of totaling the results. Now, I know what all of you conspiracy theorists are thinking but note that election supervisors can print paper aggregate totals from each machine before this happens.
My observations:The touchscreen units do not have an administrators manual that election supervisors can use for the purpose of understanding how to manage these machines. When prompted about this, the Diebold representative replied that there were no manuals and that you shouldn't need them - "the machine is intuitive."
One of the things that the Diebold representative expected was within the realm of capability for non-technical staff:
- Put a PCMCIA Network card in the touch screen units & attach the appropriate ethernet cabling
- Assign the touchscreen unit an IP Address (FYI: DHCP was mispelled in their UI, I think it was 'DCHP')
- Specify the network address of the host machine (i.e., the workstation that has the election metadata)
- Provide the path name on the host machine to the election metadata file
- Download the election meta data to the touchscreen unit
I didn't actually fully execute this use case - it wasn't clear to me how this part would work & I wasn't prepared to do anything serious without a manual. Anyway, that, in my opinion, goes way beyond what a non-technical person is capable of doing themselves without a manual.That matter aside, my view is that machine is in general, not intuitive, as the Diebold rep claims. Although machine only supports somewhere in the neighboorhood of 9 use-cases for the supervisor user and none them involves more than a 2 step flow, it took me about an a couple of hours to figure out how to manage an election on it. Further, I wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't for some of the cryptic notes that one of the election workers scribbled down about programming voter cards when the Diebold rep was running the training session.
My point: We need to trust election results. One important factor is that we have to have confidence that election supervisors are capable of properly administering this equipment. My view: limited training + no manuals + non-technical administrators = potential for disaster.
It occurs to me that such a device might be useful for people who want a desktop and a laptop without the expense buying both separately. If you could use this 3x5 card as a home pc attached to a docking station, why couldn't you buy a laptop shell that fits around this card, too? Instead of paying big bucks for a laptop that duplicates all of the hardware of the home PC, only smaller, we could simply buy laptop shells with a display and keyboard and plug this little bad boy into it. The shell would certainly be much less expensive than a full-fledged laptop. Plus, it would have the effect of making it easier to choose a laptop with a particular keyboard and mouse style because laptop shells would essentially be a fairly standard commodity.