95% of web users don't understand a lot of things, but if someone they trust tells them its OK then they will be happy.
I don't really understand how SSL works, but I trust my browser (a bit) and when I see https in the URL then I'm comfortable with that. Not because I fully understand SSL, but because I listen to the opinions of people who do.
So if it became accepted practice that pressing the Randomize button on your browser (why not build it into the browser) made your response anonymous then nobody needs to understand it any more than they do SSL.
Actually, why not have a new http method: POST-RANDOM instead of POST so the server knows that the data has been randomized.
Umm...wouldn't this technique be useful for a Voting Machine? See Unauditable Voting Machines. If every vote is randomized then anonymity can be guaranteed while at the same time maintaining a complete audit of the poll.
You vote for candidate B, this is randomized to be candidate E. The voting machine has a record that shows that you voted for E. This can be inspected by you to determine that your (ramdomized) vote was not tampered with.
The outcome of the election is determined simply by removing the randomizing bias...
This is how it would work: You have a web page that asks you for your age (see 1 below). On the web-page is a JavaScript function that adds a random modifier. The value you entered is displayed as a non-input field to the right and the value you entered in the input field is replaced by the randomized version (see 2 below).
1 Age [28] *Will be randomized* 2 Age [56 (Randomized)] *28*
The value 56 gets submitted to the server, not the value 28 - which is my real age;).
This is auditable because I can inspect the source code which is part of the web-page, and I can even monitor the network packets if I'm really paranoid.
Now I could still lie, or mess with the algorithms in the Javascript, but what would be the point?
Wi-Fi Public Access Networks - UK News Report
on
Wireless Internet Co-Ops?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A UK newspaper, The Guardian published a story on June 20 about various groups creating wi-fi hot-spots for public access via satellite based broadband connections.
Assuming you could count the results of a ballot with 100% accuracy, suppose out of 10,000 votes the margin was 25 votes. Statistically that is not a significant difference.
There would have been enough people who accidentally puched the wrong chad, missed the bus, got lost on the way to the polling booth, etc, etc to mean that 25 votes out of 10,000 is not meaningful. Its not totally about the people who did vote its also about the people who didn't.
Why, when you are quite happy to apply statistics to every other activity, does the same principle not apply to voting?
Back in days before PCs the PDP-11 had a row of 16 or so LEDs that showed the state of the processor. When the Operating System was running its idle loop, the creative people from DEC had programmed it so that a repeating pattern was displayed on the LEDs.
Each Operating System displayed a different pattern, so sometimes you could walk up to a computer and immediately know what OS was running without touching it. This was a very useful skill for impressing the gullable.
RSTS - displayed a pattern that cycled from left to right.
DSM - displayed a pattern that went from the sides to the center.
RSX - I can't remember what this one did, can anyone else recall?
When are we going to realize what the real problem is here?
If you have a ballot that is so close that multiple recounts don't give a consistent result then the difference in votes must be statistically insignificant. In other words the election that caused this problem was a draw!
It's customary, when you have a draw, to split the spoils 50-50, so each candiate should have got 13.5 votes each (OK so that means that Bush wouldn't have won - but thats not my point).
The fact is, those high court judges are so ignorant of statistical methods that they couldn't see a dead-heat when it was staring them in the face.
Democracy promises that every citizen has a right to vote (except those in Prison, under age, miss the bus, on vacacation, those who forget, etc...) and people think that means that every vote is sacred (reminds me of a song from Life of Brian). Anyone who understands the least bit of statistics will know that this is total bull.
The BBC's Radio channel 'Radio 4' featured CDT in their 'Material World' programme on 11 July.
It can be heard here using a Real Audio player.
The web-page summarising this transmission is here.
At least service between the U.S. East Coast and Tokyo would be cut from the current 11 hours on ANA [fly-ana.com] down to a much more tolerable 6 hours.
That would be the East Coast that is on the Pacific, would it?;)
I recall a TV documentary that interviewed the developers of Concorde. I remember them saying that getting the design right was more of an art than a science.
The tricky bit, I think, was to get a shape that was both slippery enough(?) at supersonic speeds and also capable of generating enough lift at low speed to get it off the ground.
The interviewee said that they pretty much just lucked out rather than solving some particular set of mathematical equations.
Apparently the Tupolev TU-144 was essentially just a copy of the Concorde but relied on retractible canard wings to give it the lift at take-off, as they couldn't figure out how to get the wing shape right (Good picture here).
Slashdot Mirror
80N
80N
I don't really understand how SSL works, but I trust my browser (a bit) and when I see https in the URL then I'm comfortable with that. Not because I fully understand SSL, but because I listen to the opinions of people who do.
So if it became accepted practice that pressing the Randomize button on your browser (why not build it into the browser) made your response anonymous then nobody needs to understand it any more than they do SSL.
Actually, why not have a new http method: POST-RANDOM instead of POST so the server knows that the data has been randomized.
80N
You vote for candidate B, this is randomized to be candidate E. The voting machine has a record that shows that you voted for E. This can be inspected by you to determine that your (ramdomized) vote was not tampered with.
The outcome of the election is determined simply by removing the randomizing bias...
80N
1 Age [28] *Will be randomized*
2 Age [56 (Randomized)] *28*
The value 56 gets submitted to the server, not the value 28 - which is my real age ;).
This is auditable because I can inspect the source code which is part of the web-page, and I can even monitor the network packets if I'm really paranoid.
Now I could still lie, or mess with the algorithms in the Javascript, but what would be the point?
80N
80N
80N
Assuming you could count the results of a ballot with 100% accuracy, suppose out of 10,000 votes the margin was 25 votes. Statistically that is not a significant difference.
There would have been enough people who accidentally puched the wrong chad, missed the bus, got lost on the way to the polling booth, etc, etc to mean that 25 votes out of 10,000 is not meaningful. Its not totally about the people who did vote its also about the people who didn't.
Why, when you are quite happy to apply statistics to every other activity, does the same principle not apply to voting?
80N
Each Operating System displayed a different pattern, so sometimes you could walk up to a computer and immediately know what OS was running without touching it. This was a very useful skill for impressing the gullable.
RSTS - displayed a pattern that cycled from left to right.
DSM - displayed a pattern that went from the sides to the center.
RSX - I can't remember what this one did, can anyone else recall?
If you have a ballot that is so close that multiple recounts don't give a consistent result then the difference in votes must be statistically insignificant. In other words the election that caused this problem was a draw!
It's customary, when you have a draw, to split the spoils 50-50, so each candiate should have got 13.5 votes each (OK so that means that Bush wouldn't have won - but thats not my point).
The fact is, those high court judges are so ignorant of statistical methods that they couldn't see a dead-heat when it was staring them in the face.
Democracy promises that every citizen has a right to vote (except those in Prison, under age, miss the bus, on vacacation, those who forget, etc...) and people think that means that every vote is sacred (reminds me of a song from Life of Brian). Anyone who understands the least bit of statistics will know that this is total bull.
Don't try to fix the machines, fix the system.
CDT won the 2002 MacRobert award for innovation in engineering for this technology. Details here.
The BBC's Radio channel 'Radio 4' featured CDT in their 'Material World' programme on 11 July. It can be heard here using a Real Audio player. The web-page summarising this transmission is here.
That would be the East Coast that is on the Pacific, would it? ;)
Maybe I'm being picky, but wouldn't that mean that it would be a sub-sonic cruiser.
The tricky bit, I think, was to get a shape that was both slippery enough(?) at supersonic speeds and also capable of generating enough lift at low speed to get it off the ground.
The interviewee said that they pretty much just lucked out rather than solving some particular set of mathematical equations.
Apparently the Tupolev TU-144 was essentially just a copy of the Concorde but relied on retractible canard wings to give it the lift at take-off, as they couldn't figure out how to get the wing shape right (Good picture here).
I've got a dollar bill with www.omegapunx.org written on it. Do I win something?