The masses? What about business users? My guess is that a lot of corporate IT departments would like the notion of only allowing approved programs to run, for the sake of security. No more of those pesky MP3 players and other bandwith-eating crap, ripe with virii.
And before anyone starts: by "IT department" I do not mean the average digital-rights-advocate geek sysadmin who actually administers the servers, nor do I mean the rare IT manager with a clue about the implications of DRM. I am talking about the average CIO's and managers of the larger IT departments. And they, my friends, have pointy hair.
As someone else already pointed out: the relationship one builds in an MMORPG is a lot less tenuous than relations in 1st person shooters. It is surprising to non-players how much one can learn about another player through the game, and many players who meet their close on-line-friends in real life end up being close friends in real life as well. Some even marry. I'd say I am closer to some in-game friends whom I have never met, than I am to some of my real-life friends. I cannot imagine many gamers feeling the death of an in-game friend merely as the death of their character.
And does one really have to see the grief of the deceased's relatives to make ones own grief more valid or real? At a funeral, one may find comfort in the presence of others that share ones grief. That is the purpose of these virtual funerals. Friends of the deceased gather to share the grief and thereby easing it somewhat, not because it is a k3wl thing to do in-game.
I have lost 2 friends whom I have met only through an online game (Ultima Online). I personally found much comfort in attending their in-game funeral. (incidently, it usually is the person him/herself who is remembered and "buried", not their character). Oh, these friends died over a year ago but yes, I still remember them.
My guess is that the impact of long work days on the quality of the finished product varies from person to person. I have colleagues who can pull 12 hour, 6 day workweeks for a few months and deliver code that still passes rigorous peer reviews with flying colors. As for myself, I am able to work very fast and deliver quality code, but only for 6 hours a day. After that, quality definitely declines.
As for your boss... If my boss would use such language, I'd suggest he speak for his own balls and I'd give him the finger instead. I'll work such ridiculous hours for pay, or if a critical project that is running late requires it. I do have that much loyalty for the company. But I'll be damned to work harder for better profit margins, bigger paychecks for company presidents or increased shareholder value, of which I can expect to see exactly zilch.
It is not flawed... By putting in place anti-copying measures, and outlawing circumvention of these, they have taken away your fair use rights, but they do not do so explicitly but indirectly. I wasn't describing how I think things should be, I was describing what is happening right now
And no, I do not agree to our rights being taken away effectively, in the name of fighting piracy. We stand to lose more than fair use rights; if DRM and these new laws are taking to the extend the RIAA and MPAA want, we will lose the right to determine what we run and not run on our own equipment.
"I DO make copies of my DVD's mr Valenti...and I will fight for my right to do so."
While you have a right to make copies for personal use, equipment and content companies are not obliged to provide the ability to make copies to you. Confused? Take Macrovision. The movie industry has no obligation to provide you with something to circumvent Macrovision so you can make copies for yourself. Macrovision does not take away your rights to make copies, and when you circumvent this copy-protection scheme to make a copy, you are still within your rights.
Now you can see why the battle is fought by the RIAA/MPAA on many fronts. Valenti is fighting a lost war: he wants to take away our fair-use rights. A bit silly of him: there is nothing to gain here and much to lose... much as the general public ignores the copyright issues, this is something they will not stand for.
The RIAA/MPAA are on the case though: they seem to be quite successful in mandating copy-prevention technology in next-generation equipment. Not only that, but they will make it a crime to circumvent these measures. They will say "Hey, we never took away your fair-use rights! You can still make copies, but we have had to put in these anti-piracy devices, oh and by the way: circumventing these will land you in jail. But sure, your fair-use rights still hold".
...that Home Theatre sets and DVD's are selling so well? $1000 or so buys you a DVD and Surround amp/speakers that are good enough for most people, and this will get you close to the Real Deal. Close; the only thing lacking is a big screen, and large LCD's and projectors are becoming cheaper and cheaper.
If I can get the cinema experience at home with some friends, good seats, and palatable popcorn, then like hell will you ever see me again in a cinema with the noisy, inconsiderate knuckledraggers that are my fellow citizens.
"Establishing that Brown had the idea years before coming to DSC would have contradicted the signed agreement and gone a long way toward establishing Brown's credibility."
I am not familiar with Texas laws (other than the one about being allowed to blast anyone off your porch with your shotgun), but this is the crux of the matter, is it not? If he invented this thing before he joined Alcatel, the invention is his. If he came up with it after signing the agreement, it belongs to the company. Now it seems to me that it is not at all clear (as in proven) when this invention was made. For a judge to give a firm ruling on this, one way or the other, without any proof on this crucial point, is rather slipshod justice.
My question is: on whom lies the burden to provide proof about when the invention was made? The burden of proof lies on the claimant usually, and that would be Alcatel.
I've heard this a lot... but is this true? I've always blasted along the autoroutes to the south of France, speeding and not stopping either. I never got a ticket.
The way things were going back then, not obtaining a license for 3G was really not an option for any serious player in the mobile market. The CEO who would have said "I am not spending that much on a frikkin license" would quickly find himself escorted out of the office with his stuff in a cartboard box, and most likely escorted into another building, with nice padded cells.
The governments were aware of this of course, and felt comfortable charging billions for these licenses. They, and the telco's, thought raising the cash would be a simple matter of issuing a bit of stock. Almost like printing money, right?
Megacorp-neutral would mean some sort of governmental involvement. End of story. When they (i.e. some government-sponsored commission *shudders*)will re-design a new Internet from the ground up, you can be sure they will think of ways to do away with all the bad things the current internet has: kiddie porn (and any other material the government deems "unsuitable"), the ability to do whatever you want anonymously (and to keep your private info out of corporate hands), ability to share pirated material (and publish your own material without having to obtain some permission).
A new Euro-internet will be like like AOL or Compuserve in the bad old days.
If they're anything like the Telco's over here, the money goes to:
- acquisitions of bollocksy and overpriced companies
- purchase of outrageously overpriced broadcast licenses for GSM frequencies. Which is just a hidden tax by the government, with which the politicians done a grand job looking good to the taxpayer ("look at all that extra money I got for you people!"), and at the same time stifling the development of the next generation GSM networks by making sure none of the telco's have any money left.
- Taxes.
Interestingly, this is more or less one of the proposals put forward by the RIAA: flood the P2P networks with files named after popular songs, but containing garbage only.
Research and science receive only a very small part of our national budget. Looking at our national (Dutch) budget and the EU one, I can easily point out loads of stupid and/or wasteful things we are spending tax Euro's on, Euro's that would be much better spent on scientific research.
That doesn't mean that Europe would not be better off trying to do different things in space, or joining existing programs, instead of copying the Americans' and Russians' efforts. That is simply good economic sense: do what you are good at, and buy what others are better at. Rather than design their own rocket to get something into space (like the Ariadne), Europe could just use existing and superior Russian Proton rockets or even a Shuttle. The money saved can go towards research in areas that we excel in (don't ask me which those areas are).
In the end, I do not think spending tax money on science is wasteful.
Re:Since when is 9ft/s "moving along quite well"
on
Autonomous Race Cars
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· Score: 2
Feets per second? Why not use Furlongs-per-fortnight as a more fun and confusing speed measure?
But anyway, 6mph is quite shabby. It's okay for an autonomous robot, but the point was to build and autonomous race car, no? Part of the challenge should be to build the controller for the car so that it can cope with high speeds, while guilding the vehicle around the track and (presumably) avoiding the other cars. For a decent platform, they can head to the local hobby shop and pick up any 1/10th scale gas-powered model car, these will do a lot better than 6mph.
Besides, at 6mph these races will hardly be exiting to watch!
Yup. In fact someone once suggested that the most likely cause of death by calamity, on average, is death by asteroid impact. The chance of it happening are small, but when it happens it may wipe out 2/3rds of the earth's population. The net probability, per person, of that happening is higher than dying, say, in a car crash.
I have no clue whether these numbers are actually correct. But it's an interesting point to illustrate the relation between risk in terms of probability and in terms of potential damage.
I never claimed it did... I pointed out that the next logical step after watermarks, would be mandatory DRM hardware. Why? Because watermarks are useless by themselves.
What is the point of watermarks in fighting piracy? You cannot use watermarks to track pirates unless you put individual watermarks on each media, and in that case the pirates will vertainly strip the watermark off. The only possible use I see is that the RIAA/MPAA can set up automatic sniffer bots, looking for files with their watermarks on Kazaa and other file sharing systems. They certainly don't need it to legally establish a certain work as their property, simply looking at or or listening to that will do the trick.
So... once all sanctioned media are properly watermarked, it will be a small step to DRM in our hardware. Illegal copies won't play. Oh, your DVD player will still play the holiday movies you made i.e. your own material, but what about taping shows from TV? You may one day find your VCR or DVD player refusing to record some TV shows or movies. You may find that your own recordings receive a "local" watermark that your equipment recognised, but your computer will not accept, and neither will the neighbors player.
That is what DRM potentially means. Farfetched? Far beyond the scope if this bill? Perhaps, but a complacent attitude by us the voters and comsumers will mean that the rights and possibilities we enjoy today, are eroded away a bill at a time. You can bet there'd be an outcry if DRM was to be implemented overnight, and the proponents of DRM know that full well. They will attempt to bring their ideas of DRM about, step by step, in vaguely or broadly worded bills, packaged together with a bunch of other laws perhaps.
My final piece of advice for when you make a judgement about any proposed bill or law: never assume that the lawmakers have our best intentions at heart. Always assume new laws, rules, and bills will be used to the furthest possible extend they will stretch, not just to the extend most people would deem reasonable. Demand narrowly defined laws.
In order for these watermarks to have any effect, they need to convince or force hardmare manufacturers to make their hardware play only watermarked, approved media. They know this, and they are already actively trying to get the hardware manufacturers to do this. Without the requirement of a watermark to be present, i could simply strip the existing watermark out and play/redistribute as usual. I'm not creating a fake watermark and thus I am not breaking this law.
The result would be that older unwatermarked media you legally own, music produced by garage bands, and other legal but unwatermarked materials, will not play on a newer player that has DRM. This law makes it a felony to place fake or forged watermarks on such media, even if your sole intent is to allow the media to be played on newer DRM-enabled players.
This bill is a step towards forced DRM, and as such we should oppose it. The next step will be to require new hardware to support DRM.
In the article, litigator Megan Gray compares forging watermarks to forging logos on T-shirts:
Gray believes that forging a digital watermark or signature should be just as unlawful as forging a physical watermark or signature. "It's like taking a T-shirt that you've put a design on and then attaching a Disney hologram or the NBA championship hologram, distributing it, and giving people the impression that it's an authorized apparel item from the NBA or Disney," Gray says. "That's a deceptive practice that we have a long history of banning."
They are putting a nice spin on the reasons people would try and circumvent DRM: note how they again portray such people as thieves, and they suggest that the reason they want DRM is to prevent theft. They have other motivations as well, of course.
Why would I circumvent DRM? To steal? Maybe not, and let's take the T-shirt analogy further... suppose I buy some Disney T-shirt in the US, but Disney does not want me to wear the T-shirt in Europe. (Perhaps they've recruited the fashion police to check, or the God of Corporations will smite me with lightning if I do wear the T-shirt). Yet, I want to wear it so I fake a European Disney label and sew it in the T-shirt in place of the US one.
Clearly a crime worthy of a stiff penalty and a jail term
DoS attacks do not have to take the form of network flooding. One form of DoS I hear most about is offering bogus material with filenames/tags of popular movies and music, on P2P networks. Also, there may well be ways to frustrate programs such as Kazaa by opening lots of connections, sending it invalid commands or things like that. That would not have to take up lots of bandwidth, nor would it alter any files, which is one of the provisions in this Bill.
Another thing: doesn't this bill state that they can hack or DoS in order to prevent (suspected) illicit distribution of their works? Does this mean that they can cause collateral damage and side effects, such as preventing you from using the net at all or swapping legit files? Or are they allowed only to stop you from swapping illicit files? To me, the bill isn't clear on this (though IANAL). Of course, the RIAA and MPAA may interpret this bill in the broadest sense, so yes, they will be allowed to DoS your internet connection, and not just the P2P part.
If the machines cannot be audited, what is keeping the manufacturer from electronically altering the outcome? Also, auditing must an ongoing affair, perhaps the machines delivered by the company are not the ones inspected by those responsible for the purchase decision?
All steps of the voting process must be transparent, orr fraud will occur. With paper ballots, overseers cannot see who I vote for but they see me with one valid ballot paper, and see me put it in the locked container. There are people overseeing the counting, and others overseeing the overseers. It is very hard to commit fraud in a paper ballot if the group perpetrating the fraud is small, and the overseers chosen at random, as is the case in most democratic countries
Since the votes are cast truly invisible in ballot machines, the tallying in electronic ballot machines is harder to oversee by humans. For that reason, the inner workings of such machines must be audited on an ongoing basis, and done on each individual machine, by a broad and ever changing group of auditors.
HUH?! I though the RIAA was blamed for everything, from ads on gravestones, the lousy weather, bad crops, the crappy stockmarket, the high number of traffic accidents, and the fact my laptop just had another BSOD.
Produced perhaps, yes... but the various military and civilan design bureaus in Russia can still out-engineer many western top outfits, especially in military and aerospace.
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The masses? What about business users? My guess is that a lot of corporate IT departments would like the notion of only allowing approved programs to run, for the sake of security. No more of those pesky MP3 players and other bandwith-eating crap, ripe with virii.
And before anyone starts: by "IT department" I do not mean the average digital-rights-advocate geek sysadmin who actually administers the servers, nor do I mean the rare IT manager with a clue about the implications of DRM. I am talking about the average CIO's and managers of the larger IT departments. And they, my friends, have pointy hair.
As someone else already pointed out: the relationship one builds in an MMORPG is a lot less tenuous than relations in 1st person shooters. It is surprising to non-players how much one can learn about another player through the game, and many players who meet their close on-line-friends in real life end up being close friends in real life as well. Some even marry. I'd say I am closer to some in-game friends whom I have never met, than I am to some of my real-life friends. I cannot imagine many gamers feeling the death of an in-game friend merely as the death of their character.
And does one really have to see the grief of the deceased's relatives to make ones own grief more valid or real? At a funeral, one may find comfort in the presence of others that share ones grief. That is the purpose of these virtual funerals. Friends of the deceased gather to share the grief and thereby easing it somewhat, not because it is a k3wl thing to do in-game.
I have lost 2 friends whom I have met only through an online game (Ultima Online). I personally found much comfort in attending their in-game funeral. (incidently, it usually is the person him/herself who is remembered and "buried", not their character). Oh, these friends died over a year ago but yes, I still remember them.
Erm, not really, but a lot of other folks do this. Your flower idea is probably already patented.
My guess is that the impact of long work days on the quality of the finished product varies from person to person. I have colleagues who can pull 12 hour, 6 day workweeks for a few months and deliver code that still passes rigorous peer reviews with flying colors. As for myself, I am able to work very fast and deliver quality code, but only for 6 hours a day. After that, quality definitely declines.
As for your boss... If my boss would use such language, I'd suggest he speak for his own balls and I'd give him the finger instead. I'll work such ridiculous hours for pay, or if a critical project that is running late requires it. I do have that much loyalty for the company. But I'll be damned to work harder for better profit margins, bigger paychecks for company presidents or increased shareholder value, of which I can expect to see exactly zilch.
It is not flawed... By putting in place anti-copying measures, and outlawing circumvention of these, they have taken away your fair use rights, but they do not do so explicitly but indirectly. I wasn't describing how I think things should be, I was describing what is happening right now
And no, I do not agree to our rights being taken away effectively, in the name of fighting piracy. We stand to lose more than fair use rights; if DRM and these new laws are taking to the extend the RIAA and MPAA want, we will lose the right to determine what we run and not run on our own equipment.
"I DO make copies of my DVD's mr Valenti...and I will fight for my right to do so."
While you have a right to make copies for personal use, equipment and content companies are not obliged to provide the ability to make copies to you. Confused? Take Macrovision. The movie industry has no obligation to provide you with something to circumvent Macrovision so you can make copies for yourself. Macrovision does not take away your rights to make copies, and when you circumvent this copy-protection scheme to make a copy, you are still within your rights.
Now you can see why the battle is fought by the RIAA/MPAA on many fronts. Valenti is fighting a lost war: he wants to take away our fair-use rights. A bit silly of him: there is nothing to gain here and much to lose... much as the general public ignores the copyright issues, this is something they will not stand for.
The RIAA/MPAA are on the case though: they seem to be quite successful in mandating copy-prevention technology in next-generation equipment. Not only that, but they will make it a crime to circumvent these measures. They will say "Hey, we never took away your fair-use rights! You can still make copies, but we have had to put in these anti-piracy devices, oh and by the way: circumventing these will land you in jail. But sure, your fair-use rights still hold".
...that Home Theatre sets and DVD's are selling so well? $1000 or so buys you a DVD and Surround amp/speakers that are good enough for most people, and this will get you close to the Real Deal. Close; the only thing lacking is a big screen, and large LCD's and projectors are becoming cheaper and cheaper.
If I can get the cinema experience at home with some friends, good seats, and palatable popcorn, then like hell will you ever see me again in a cinema with the noisy, inconsiderate knuckledraggers that are my fellow citizens.
"Establishing that Brown had the idea years before coming to DSC would have contradicted the signed agreement and gone a long way toward establishing Brown's credibility."
I am not familiar with Texas laws (other than the one about being allowed to blast anyone off your porch with your shotgun), but this is the crux of the matter, is it not? If he invented this thing before he joined Alcatel, the invention is his. If he came up with it after signing the agreement, it belongs to the company. Now it seems to me that it is not at all clear (as in proven) when this invention was made. For a judge to give a firm ruling on this, one way or the other, without any proof on this crucial point, is rather slipshod justice.
My question is: on whom lies the burden to provide proof about when the invention was made? The burden of proof lies on the claimant usually, and that would be Alcatel.
I've heard this a lot... but is this true? I've always blasted along the autoroutes to the south of France, speeding and not stopping either. I never got a ticket.
Well duh.
The way things were going back then, not obtaining a license for 3G was really not an option for any serious player in the mobile market. The CEO who would have said "I am not spending that much on a frikkin license" would quickly find himself escorted out of the office with his stuff in a cartboard box, and most likely escorted into another building, with nice padded cells.
The governments were aware of this of course, and felt comfortable charging billions for these licenses. They, and the telco's, thought raising the cash would be a simple matter of issuing a bit of stock. Almost like printing money, right?
Megacorp-neutral would mean some sort of governmental involvement. End of story. When they (i.e. some government-sponsored commission *shudders*)will re-design a new Internet from the ground up, you can be sure they will think of ways to do away with all the bad things the current internet has: kiddie porn (and any other material the government deems "unsuitable"), the ability to do whatever you want anonymously (and to keep your private info out of corporate hands), ability to share pirated material (and publish your own material without having to obtain some permission).
A new Euro-internet will be like like AOL or Compuserve in the bad old days.
If they're anything like the Telco's over here, the money goes to:
- acquisitions of bollocksy and overpriced companies
- purchase of outrageously overpriced broadcast licenses for GSM frequencies. Which is just a hidden tax by the government, with which the politicians done a grand job looking good to the taxpayer ("look at all that extra money I got for you people!"), and at the same time stifling the development of the next generation GSM networks by making sure none of the telco's have any money left.
- Taxes.
Plus, keeping a network going costs a lot.
Interestingly, this is more or less one of the proposals put forward by the RIAA: flood the P2P networks with files named after popular songs, but containing garbage only.
Research and science receive only a very small part of our national budget. Looking at our national (Dutch) budget and the EU one, I can easily point out loads of stupid and/or wasteful things we are spending tax Euro's on, Euro's that would be much better spent on scientific research.
That doesn't mean that Europe would not be better off trying to do different things in space, or joining existing programs, instead of copying the Americans' and Russians' efforts. That is simply good economic sense: do what you are good at, and buy what others are better at. Rather than design their own rocket to get something into space (like the Ariadne), Europe could just use existing and superior Russian Proton rockets or even a Shuttle. The money saved can go towards research in areas that we excel in (don't ask me which those areas are).
In the end, I do not think spending tax money on science is wasteful.
Feets per second? Why not use Furlongs-per-fortnight as a more fun and confusing speed measure?
But anyway, 6mph is quite shabby. It's okay for an autonomous robot, but the point was to build and autonomous race car, no? Part of the challenge should be to build the controller for the car so that it can cope with high speeds, while guilding the vehicle around the track and (presumably) avoiding the other cars. For a decent platform, they can head to the local hobby shop and pick up any 1/10th scale gas-powered model car, these will do a lot better than 6mph.
Besides, at 6mph these races will hardly be exiting to watch!
Yup. In fact someone once suggested that the most likely cause of death by calamity, on average, is death by asteroid impact. The chance of it happening are small, but when it happens it may wipe out 2/3rds of the earth's population. The net probability, per person, of that happening is higher than dying, say, in a car crash.
I have no clue whether these numbers are actually correct. But it's an interesting point to illustrate the relation between risk in terms of probability and in terms of potential damage.
I never claimed it did... I pointed out that the next logical step after watermarks, would be mandatory DRM hardware. Why? Because watermarks are useless by themselves.
What is the point of watermarks in fighting piracy? You cannot use watermarks to track pirates unless you put individual watermarks on each media, and in that case the pirates will vertainly strip the watermark off. The only possible use I see is that the RIAA/MPAA can set up automatic sniffer bots, looking for files with their watermarks on Kazaa and other file sharing systems. They certainly don't need it to legally establish a certain work as their property, simply looking at or or listening to that will do the trick.
So... once all sanctioned media are properly watermarked, it will be a small step to DRM in our hardware. Illegal copies won't play. Oh, your DVD player will still play the holiday movies you made i.e. your own material, but what about taping shows from TV? You may one day find your VCR or DVD player refusing to record some TV shows or movies. You may find that your own recordings receive a "local" watermark that your equipment recognised, but your computer will not accept, and neither will the neighbors player.
That is what DRM potentially means. Farfetched? Far beyond the scope if this bill? Perhaps, but a complacent attitude by us the voters and comsumers will mean that the rights and possibilities we enjoy today, are eroded away a bill at a time. You can bet there'd be an outcry if DRM was to be implemented overnight, and the proponents of DRM know that full well. They will attempt to bring their ideas of DRM about, step by step, in vaguely or broadly worded bills, packaged together with a bunch of other laws perhaps.
My final piece of advice for when you make a judgement about any proposed bill or law: never assume that the lawmakers have our best intentions at heart. Always assume new laws, rules, and bills will be used to the furthest possible extend they will stretch, not just to the extend most people would deem reasonable. Demand narrowly defined laws.
In order for these watermarks to have any effect, they need to convince or force hardmare manufacturers to make their hardware play only watermarked, approved media. They know this, and they are already actively trying to get the hardware manufacturers to do this. Without the requirement of a watermark to be present, i could simply strip the existing watermark out and play/redistribute as usual. I'm not creating a fake watermark and thus I am not breaking this law.
The result would be that older unwatermarked media you legally own, music produced by garage bands, and other legal but unwatermarked materials, will not play on a newer player that has DRM. This law makes it a felony to place fake or forged watermarks on such media, even if your sole intent is to allow the media to be played on newer DRM-enabled players.
This bill is a step towards forced DRM, and as such we should oppose it. The next step will be to require new hardware to support DRM.
Why would I circumvent DRM? To steal? Maybe not, and let's take the T-shirt analogy further... suppose I buy some Disney T-shirt in the US, but Disney does not want me to wear the T-shirt in Europe. (Perhaps they've recruited the fashion police to check, or the God of Corporations will smite me with lightning if I do wear the T-shirt). Yet, I want to wear it so I fake a European Disney label and sew it in the T-shirt in place of the US one.
Clearly a crime worthy of a stiff penalty and a jail term
DoS attacks do not have to take the form of network flooding. One form of DoS I hear most about is offering bogus material with filenames/tags of popular movies and music, on P2P networks. Also, there may well be ways to frustrate programs such as Kazaa by opening lots of connections, sending it invalid commands or things like that. That would not have to take up lots of bandwidth, nor would it alter any files, which is one of the provisions in this Bill.
Another thing: doesn't this bill state that they can hack or DoS in order to prevent (suspected) illicit distribution of their works? Does this mean that they can cause collateral damage and side effects, such as preventing you from using the net at all or swapping legit files? Or are they allowed only to stop you from swapping illicit files? To me, the bill isn't clear on this (though IANAL). Of course, the RIAA and MPAA may interpret this bill in the broadest sense, so yes, they will be allowed to DoS your internet connection, and not just the P2P part.
It goes a bit further than that.
If the machines cannot be audited, what is keeping the manufacturer from electronically altering the outcome? Also, auditing must an ongoing affair, perhaps the machines delivered by the company are not the ones inspected by those responsible for the purchase decision?
All steps of the voting process must be transparent, orr fraud will occur. With paper ballots, overseers cannot see who I vote for but they see me with one valid ballot paper, and see me put it in the locked container. There are people overseeing the counting, and others overseeing the overseers. It is very hard to commit fraud in a paper ballot if the group perpetrating the fraud is small, and the overseers chosen at random, as is the case in most democratic countries
Since the votes are cast truly invisible in ballot machines, the tallying in electronic ballot machines is harder to oversee by humans. For that reason, the inner workings of such machines must be audited on an ongoing basis, and done on each individual machine, by a broad and ever changing group of auditors.
Or maybe the MPAA shares the blame. I see...
In marketing, there's no such thing as bad publicity!
Produced perhaps, yes... but the various military and civilan design bureaus in Russia can still out-engineer many western top outfits, especially in military and aerospace.
It has just become invalid. After you changed it, see if you can book a trip there and see for yourself.