So yeah, we've seen it all before. Its still not a reason to have 3rd world countries come in and monitor the biggest and most efficient representative republics in the world.
Oh, and here I thought they where coming from EUROPE. You know, that area west of asia that's been industrialised longer than the US?
* Then, the USA did not invade a soveriegn country illegally, against international law. Now it does.
What about the US/Mexican war? US citezens moved into and siezed through military power: Texas, New Mexico, and California. Have none of you ever heard of the "Manifest Destiny" doctrine?
Canadian forein policy in the 1800s was centred around fear of invasion by the US. A driving force behind Canadian independence from england was to make it politicaly harder for the US to invade. A fair number of people viewed leaving the british empire as a protective sacrifice.
The US was historicly a violently expansionist state.
Sucks to be you guys then.;) I'm from Canada where it's paper or nothing. You have my sympathy, your government seems even more dissfunctional than ours.
1. Diebold had a voting system first, then the government bought it.
2. Open Source = Free (as in no money)
I didn't agree or dissagree with either of these in my post. You are missing my point:
1 Cost realy doesn't matter much.
2 Functionality matters a great deal.
I think we should use the best tools, whether they're free or not. I agree that code transparency is better for software in areas like this, but until someone has a piece of software that preforms better than paper ballots we shouldn't be using software at all.
The entire point is, choosing Open Source software is the right choice because of the way it reflects our democratic ideals, not because of the potential to "get it for free."
Paper balots are hardly un-democratic. They are pragmatic though, and I think our government and society needs a good dose of pragmatism. You should pick the best tool for a given job.
Anyone would be allowed to download the voting software for free, but this is irrelevant. This ensures the transparency of the system, and is essential to an application like this.
I agree that transparency is essential, I do not agree that electronic voting software is essential. I think electronic voting is a good idea, and I'll be glad to support using it as soon as I see a good enough implementation to use, be it OSS or not.
Besides as I said in my post: "I do support the idea of spending for voting infastructure improvements, but we need to keep funding the systems that are proven to work until a replacement is finished". I'd like to see a government funded OSS project to make voting software, because there's a very good chance it would eventually be the best tool to use. And if it did become the best tool, I'd support it's use. But until a better solution than written paper balots comes along I will not support their replacement.
Do you want to pay for buggy, easily exploitable software then?
AFAIK there is no OSS voting software to choose. How can you use software that does not exist yet? If you think that a OSS system would be a good idea, make one! And after it's made, we can look at it to see if it's better than Diebold's software or paper ballots.
More importantly, it's not like we have to use Diebold's crap if we don't use an OSS system. I am happy with written paper votes. They're fairly secure, proven technology with a good audit trail. I don't see any point in thinking of switching from written paper ballots til a better solution is made, and then thouroughly tested.
And you are paying for paper voting, recounts, and all the supporting infrastructure. Personally, since money is being spent regardless, I'd like to see it go towards a rock solid solution that will last awhile.
I do support the idea of spending for voting infastructure improvements, but we need to keep funding the systems that are proven to work until a replacement is finished. We should stick with what works til we have something made and tested that works better.
Besides, I don't think elections are the best place to be overly frugal. I want our elections done right, even if it costs us taxpayers a little more.
Actually, this is worse than you suspect. Most modern licences explicitly forbid reverse engineering their code. This sounds like it'd be likely to be caught by those licence terms.
> Also having a much lower population density.
Actually, this is misleading. It's not like we Canadians are spread out evenly across the whole area of our country.
What you need to know is the ratio of rural to urban population, not the population density of the nation as a whole.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle, no matter how hard you wish to. Guns exist and are common throughout the world. Do you think that the government can stop gun running any easyer than drug smuggling?
All that a ban on guns will do is take the guns from law abiding people. Criminals will still have them, and the near assurance that their potential victims are unarmed.
A straw has less weight to area than a tree, so a wind will move it faster than it'll move a tree. It also has an vastly higher weight to surface area. If straw has enough relitive velocity it'll punch into things. For a straw to have enough relitive velocity to punch into a tree the tree has to be still, or at least much slower.
So, the fact that a straw can be driven into a tree proves that straws and trees move at much different speeds in a hurracane. My money is on the light, high surface area stuff going faster.
Besides, most trees and straw are less dense than safes.
>Before you laugh, keep in mind that a few years ago it was possible to purchase and "own" software.
When? If you were purchasing custom made software, you can still do that.
You'd better not get sharp kitchen knives either, or a lawn mowwer, or a stove. Buy a one level house so you needn't worry about stairs.
Or, you could teach your kid what a gun is and not to mess with it. Also, it may be a good idea not to store loaded firearms outside of a child safe container. Or were you assuming the 5 year old forced open/unlocked the gun safe and loaded the gun himself?
Maybe not the wind, but flooding will carry that puppy downstream just fine. (Hint to the poster talking about the freeway... it wasn't the wind or rain that did that, it was the tidal surge and flooding.)
So maybe the trick is to mount that safe above flood level...
Yeah, a hurricane can certainly move the safe. I was contending that the idea of getting a safe moving at 200mph was just plain silly. Safes don't easily move that fast in any direction but down.
It's a function of weight to area, not weight. I'm sure the goodyear blimp weighs more than me, but I'm probably safer in a heavy wind. A safe is denser than a car.
Besides, I didn't say a safe couldn't be moved by a hurricane. It can. But it's not going to move it at 200mph, or even anywhere close to that.
>It's going to be awesome when someone comes up with a virus that locks down all the USB ports and then starts doing things like uninstalling the CD-ROM.
As opossed to flashing the bios with random data? Heck, just nuking the partition tables would do more dammage. Besides, I'm sure you could make USB not work pretty easy just by overwritting the USB drivers with something non-functional. It's usually very easy to make something not work.
Uninstalling the CD drive just means you have to boot from a recovery CD to clean ot the virus then re-install the CD drive's drivers.
No hurracane is going to propell a SAFE at 200 mph. A safe has thick metal walls and a huge weight to surface area ratio. Even if the building it's in collapses, the safe would be in more danger from a fall than from the wind.
Also, If you had bolted the safe to a concrete slab (such as a foundation) why mount the drives to the safe? It's not like they're going to be blown around by the wind inside the closed safe.
The HavenCo/Data Haven idea was more to keep data that is legally questionable (for whatever reason) in an extraterritorial fashion.
It doesn't have to be leagaly questionable: the FBI just has to think it is, then confiscate the hardware to look for proof. It does no less dammage to you just because you where inocent.
Plus: it doesn't have to be your data they're after. If you host websites on a server they can sieze it as evidence against a customer. You are still out 1 server.
Off-site backup might help in case of an FBI raid, but what if FBI has a warranty to intercept your data prior to the raid?
So the night before raid, while you're happily doing a off-site backup, another copy has been acquired by FBI.
So you use the previos days backup then. The point is to have a backup available to you, not to prevent the FBI from getting a copy. If they sieze your computer it doesn't matter if they have a copy of your backup. The out of country backup is there so that you can get your data back onto a new computer quickly instead of waiting months for the FBI to return your possibly still functional computer.
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So yeah, we've seen it all before. Its still not a reason to have 3rd world countries come in and monitor the biggest and most efficient representative republics in the world.
Oh, and here I thought they where coming from EUROPE. You know, that area west of asia that's been industrialised longer than the US?
Canadian forein policy in the 1800s was centred around fear of invasion by the US. A driving force behind Canadian independence from england was to make it politicaly harder for the US to invade. A fair number of people viewed leaving the british empire as a protective sacrifice.
The US was historicly a violently expansionist state.
Actually, the USD is going down in value and the CAD is going up. See this article from the Statistics Canada website.
Sucks to be you guys then.;) I'm from Canada where it's paper or nothing. You have my sympathy, your government seems even more dissfunctional than ours.
1 Cost realy doesn't matter much.
2 Functionality matters a great deal.
I think we should use the best tools, whether they're free or not. I agree that code transparency is better for software in areas like this, but until someone has a piece of software that preforms better than paper ballots we shouldn't be using software at all. Paper balots are hardly un-democratic. They are pragmatic though, and I think our government and society needs a good dose of pragmatism. You should pick the best tool for a given job. I agree that transparency is essential, I do not agree that electronic voting software is essential. I think electronic voting is a good idea, and I'll be glad to support using it as soon as I see a good enough implementation to use, be it OSS or not.
Besides as I said in my post: "I do support the idea of spending for voting infastructure improvements, but we need to keep funding the systems that are proven to work until a replacement is finished". I'd like to see a government funded OSS project to make voting software, because there's a very good chance it would eventually be the best tool to use. And if it did become the best tool, I'd support it's use. But until a better solution than written paper balots comes along I will not support their replacement.
More importantly, it's not like we have to use Diebold's crap if we don't use an OSS system. I am happy with written paper votes. They're fairly secure, proven technology with a good audit trail. I don't see any point in thinking of switching from written paper ballots til a better solution is made, and then thouroughly tested. I do support the idea of spending for voting infastructure improvements, but we need to keep funding the systems that are proven to work until a replacement is finished. We should stick with what works til we have something made and tested that works better.
Besides, I don't think elections are the best place to be overly frugal. I want our elections done right, even if it costs us taxpayers a little more.
>In short, they like Linux when they can make money off it, and will rip it to shreds if they think they can sell you something more expensive.
To be fair, you were talking to sales people. There are few sales people who don't have this kind of attitude.
Actually, this is worse than you suspect. Most modern licences explicitly forbid reverse engineering their code. This sounds like it'd be likely to be caught by those licence terms.
> Also having a much lower population density. Actually, this is misleading. It's not like we Canadians are spread out evenly across the whole area of our country. What you need to know is the ratio of rural to urban population, not the population density of the nation as a whole.
>>And why single out gun deaths?
>Because we're discussing the disadvantages of keeping guns around, not the disadvantages of dying. Please pay attention and stay on topic.
How is it an advantage to be stabbed to death instead of shot to death?
An armed populace keeps the government civil.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle, no matter how hard you wish to. Guns exist and are common throughout the world. Do you think that the government can stop gun running any easyer than drug smuggling?
All that a ban on guns will do is take the guns from law abiding people. Criminals will still have them, and the near assurance that their potential victims are unarmed.
A straw has less weight to area than a tree, so a wind will move it faster than it'll move a tree. It also has an vastly higher weight to surface area. If straw has enough relitive velocity it'll punch into things. For a straw to have enough relitive velocity to punch into a tree the tree has to be still, or at least much slower.
So, the fact that a straw can be driven into a tree proves that straws and trees move at much different speeds in a hurracane. My money is on the light, high surface area stuff going faster.
Besides, most trees and straw are less dense than safes.
>Before you laugh, keep in mind that a few years ago it was possible to purchase and "own" software. When? If you were purchasing custom made software, you can still do that.
You'd better not get sharp kitchen knives either, or a lawn mowwer, or a stove. Buy a one level house so you needn't worry about stairs.
Or, you could teach your kid what a gun is and not to mess with it. Also, it may be a good idea not to store loaded firearms outside of a child safe container. Or were you assuming the 5 year old forced open/unlocked the gun safe and loaded the gun himself?
Excellent article, I wish I had some mod points.
It's a function of weight to area, not weight. I'm sure the goodyear blimp weighs more than me, but I'm probably safer in a heavy wind. A safe is denser than a car. Besides, I didn't say a safe couldn't be moved by a hurricane. It can. But it's not going to move it at 200mph, or even anywhere close to that.
>It's going to be awesome when someone comes up with a virus that locks down all the USB ports and then starts doing things like uninstalling the CD-ROM.
As opossed to flashing the bios with random data? Heck, just nuking the partition tables would do more dammage. Besides, I'm sure you could make USB not work pretty easy just by overwritting the USB drivers with something non-functional. It's usually very easy to make something not work.
Uninstalling the CD drive just means you have to boot from a recovery CD to clean ot the virus then re-install the CD drive's drivers.
Oh no! You mean people can stop me from attaching devices to computers they own and administrate?? Will microsoft's villany never end?!?
No hurracane is going to propell a SAFE at 200 mph. A safe has thick metal walls and a huge weight to surface area ratio. Even if the building it's in collapses, the safe would be in more danger from a fall than from the wind.
Also, If you had bolted the safe to a concrete slab (such as a foundation) why mount the drives to the safe? It's not like they're going to be blown around by the wind inside the closed safe.
Plus: it doesn't have to be your data they're after. If you host websites on a server they can sieze it as evidence against a customer. You are still out 1 server.
Stop trolling.
I don't know about the US, but in canada IIRC larger rocket engies allways required a permit.