Ok, let's assume that we're talking about marked paper ballots that are scanned and tabulated by machine, because that's what I'm most familiar with. When the machine was developed, there was one group of engineers designing the hardware and writing the machine control and mark counting software. The programmer doesn't have a clue as to what mark goes with what candidate. If he wanted to cause trouble, he could alter the distribution of the marks, but he could not intellegently change the outcome of an election. His mischef would undoubtably be detected in testing before the unit would ship. The mark positions get related to the current ballot issues by a template that is customized for the particular election, taking into account ballot rotation, vote for 2, vote for 3, write-in and the like. The template is not executable code and can't deflect votes in a surreptitious way. It certainly can be defined wrong and there are many tests to catch such errors. So, can the election count be rigged? Only with a great deal of effort and the collusion of several people.
"do the manufacturers specific an error rate? (for example +/- 0.1 %)?" The Federal Elections Commission standards do, and the states can mandate that the standards are met.
"This seems fairly straightforward - what am I missing here?" Well, just off the top of my head, voter's secrecy. You can't just print the voter's name on his ballot and throw it in a box. One of the prime directives of elections is to prevent the possiblility of associating a ballot with a specific voter.
"How about paper and pencil? During the last Canadian federal election 13 million votes were counted in 4 hours, by hand. "
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Toronto used US made ballot counting machines.
The best of both worlds is machine-scanned paper ballots. The ballots can be machine counted on election night, stored for recounts, and handcounted when the machine count is in question. The technology has been around for years. Google "optech eagle" for an example
"That doesn't answer my question. How do I know that no side-effects occur, in addition to the write-in vote getting kicked out and handcounted?" I did answer your question. A write in for "Joshua" would be kicked out and handcounted. Now you're asking a different question, "How do I know that any write-in vote won't affect the count of the other votes"? And the answer is that the logic and accuracy tests check for that.
Simple. If you attended the logic and accuracy test and asked the election official this question, she would tell you that all write-in votes get kicked out and handcounted.
When did the premise become "shoddy private industry software"? I worked in the elections business for several years and found that the software quality was quite high and the people writing it to be honest and meticuluous with ethics above reproach. Do you know something that I don't?
Right. But nobody said life is fair. Try going into the Pentagon/CIA/NSA/FBA and tell them you want to "independently audit the tools used to enstil the power structure"
Because it's not created by counties with tax dollars. It's created by private industry with their money and then sold to the government. A big difference.
As to why voting is so freaking hard, it's hard because every freaking jurisdiction has different voting laws and procedures. Count up all the states and counties in the US and figure out how long it would take just to research the voting laws in each one.
First a little background. Election software is not trivial. Granted, you can usually do everything fixed point, but that's where the triviality ends. Each state and sometimes each county has different election laws and procedures. The companies supplying election hardware and software have literally spent decades creating the rules and templates for nearly every county in the country (and some for Canada as well). In many cases, they've found it easier to run old elections code under emulation rather than do a rewrite for new hardware. I'm not sure how you could legally require the elections companies to open source all this work and I don't know how it could be duplicated in any reasonable time frame. I submit that if you are interested in the accuracy of your elections, that you call the county clerk and ask to observe the required logic and accuracy tests of the ballot counting equipment before and after each election. It's an interesting process. Generally, the election officials welcome the visit and will be happy to discuss the politics and practicality of open source elections software.
Understood. If you decide to run Peach with Wine or some other win emulator, or for that matter, in Win be aware of a dirty little Peachtree secret. Peach uses the Btrieve database engine and it wants it all to itself. We've been totally unsuccessful at getting Peach and Xilinx design tools (which also need Btrieve with a whole different set of registry entries) to work together. Since the engineers need Peach for bills of materials and part descriptions and Xilinx to design chips, they each need 2 machines.
But what you're asking for is a nearly perfect application for Win98se/Win2000 and Peachtree. Peachtree is robust, Win98 works and nobody other than the slashdot and Apple crowds would find fault with your decision. We've used Peachtree for years and it works just fine. *ANY* accountant or auditor would have no problem reading it's reports or dealing with it's methods. It's nicely extensible, moving from a single-user setup to a peer-to-peer network with zero complications.
If you need to use open source for political reasons, I can't help you. If you want the best return on investment for your group, I would seriously consider the above system.
Except when the bribee is in a foreign country. Then it's a felony. So we're fucked at home and fucked on the international market where everyone else is allowed to bribe.
I built a pair of 16db helical antennas, but the little dishes for about $80 each should work good for you. Post an inquiry to alt.internet.wireless and you'll get all the info you need.
I have 2 WAP 11's bridging a T1 line over 1600 feet. They've worked perfectly for over 6 months and have never been rebooted or reset. Paid for themselves a couple times over. Consistent 1.4Mbps all the time. Sorry about your problems.
I think you're right. But he wanted information about clean rooms and I was hoping the reality of what has to be done would discourage him from building one.
Soldering and any other potentially contaminating work is usually done at a laminar flow bench. Another thing he should budget for.
Clean rooms are rated as class 1, class 10, class 100, class 1000 and class 10,000. The numbers are the maximum count of 0.5 micron sized particles permitted in a cubic foot of air. The old federal standard for clean rooms is FED STD 209E, recently replaced by the international standard ISO 14 644. I'm guessing the ISO standard costs bucks and the FED standard is probably free so pick and choose. A class 1000 clean room would not be that hard to build and maintain. Clean, painted surfaces all around, some sort of air filtration system with positive pressure, no textiles, pencils, powdered gloves allowed. You'd have to wear clean room smocks, booties and bonnet. The room would have to be vacuumed daily (with a vacuum exhausting to the outside) and the particulate count verified daily. An air shower and sticky mat at the entrance would be a good thing.
Now that's just for a class 1000 clean room. Imagine what it takes for a class 1 clean room.
Nothing new about the annoucement. Cheap electrolytic capacitors have been around and been a problem for years. There are other failure modes. i've fixed several old Mac's where the cap has pissed it's electrolyte all over the motherboard. Usually removing the cap, scrubbing the board and installing a new cap fixes the problem. Even worse is when the electrolyte is lost gradually. The product that it's in gets flakey over time and the problem is very hard to find. These problems are all made worse by exposing your gear to high temperatures. Never leave your electronics in the passenger compartment of your car in the summer.
From their website "For fiscal operation, both corporate and public operation is encouraged by the non-exclusive, low cost licensing plan. The license promotes both cooperation and competition."
The New York train was pulled along by a pressure differance between the front and back of the train with atmospheric pressure in the back. This new train has a vacuum both in front and back of the train and uses linear motors for propulsion.
I worked for a time in the security industry with hand scanners, retinal scanners, fingerprint scanners and mantraps that weighed the occupant. To my knowledge, you have no property rights to your biometric data.
Here in California, we're forced to provide a fingerprint to get a license. No negotiation, no substitutions - no fingerprint, no license. I think the reasoning goes like this: We know your hair color, we know your eye color, we can ask your weight, what's the difference if we take an image of the swirls on your fingertip.
Unless you can make the argument that the biometric data is somehow health related and falls under the rather draconian privacy laws of such, you're probably out of luck.
You seem to think that the union has the last word. What happens when the company decides it's cheaper to fire everyone and move the factory to texas/mexico/china. Everyone looses their job with no prospect of local work because of the large number of like-skilled unemployed in the area.
You want unions? Do a little field trip. Visit a union office and talk to the president. Now try to decide if you want this guy to A) take a manditory deduction from your paycheck every month B) negotiate your pay raise C)tell you when you have to take breaks D) tell you what you can and cannot do at your job.
I'd rather keep my money and negotiate myself.
Slashdot Mirror
RPM here.
Ok, let's assume that we're talking about marked paper ballots that are scanned and tabulated by machine, because that's what I'm most familiar with. When the machine was developed, there was one group of engineers designing the hardware and writing the machine control and mark counting software. The programmer doesn't have a clue as to what mark goes with what candidate. If he wanted to cause trouble, he could alter the distribution of the marks, but he could not intellegently change the outcome of an election. His mischef would undoubtably be detected in testing before the unit would ship. The mark positions get related to the current ballot issues by a template that is customized for the particular election, taking into account ballot rotation, vote for 2, vote for 3, write-in and the like. The template is not executable code and can't deflect votes in a surreptitious way. It certainly can be defined wrong and there are many tests to catch such errors. So, can the election count be rigged? Only with a great deal of effort and the collusion of several people.
"do the manufacturers specific an error rate? (for example +/- 0.1 %)?" The Federal Elections Commission standards do, and the states can mandate that the standards are met.
"This seems fairly straightforward - what am I missing here?" Well, just off the top of my head, voter's secrecy. You can't just print the voter's name on his ballot and throw it in a box. One of the prime directives of elections is to prevent the possiblility of associating a ballot with a specific voter.
"How about paper and pencil? During the last Canadian federal election 13 million votes were counted in 4 hours, by hand. " Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Toronto used US made ballot counting machines.
The best of both worlds is machine-scanned paper ballots. The ballots can be machine counted on election night, stored for recounts, and handcounted when the machine count is in question. The technology has been around for years. Google "optech eagle" for an example
"That doesn't answer my question. How do I know that no side-effects occur, in addition to the write-in vote getting kicked out and handcounted?" I did answer your question. A write in for "Joshua" would be kicked out and handcounted. Now you're asking a different question, "How do I know that any write-in vote won't affect the count of the other votes"? And the answer is that the logic and accuracy tests check for that.
Simple. If you attended the logic and accuracy test and asked the election official this question, she would tell you that all write-in votes get kicked out and handcounted.
When did the premise become "shoddy private industry software"? I worked in the elections business for several years and found that the software quality was quite high and the people writing it to be honest and meticuluous with ethics above reproach. Do you know something that I don't?
Right. But nobody said life is fair. Try going into the Pentagon/CIA/NSA/FBA and tell them you want to "independently audit the tools used to enstil the power structure"
Because it's not created by counties with tax dollars. It's created by private industry with their money and then sold to the government. A big difference. As to why voting is so freaking hard, it's hard because every freaking jurisdiction has different voting laws and procedures. Count up all the states and counties in the US and figure out how long it would take just to research the voting laws in each one.
First a little background. Election software is not trivial. Granted, you can usually do everything fixed point, but that's where the triviality ends. Each state and sometimes each county has different election laws and procedures. The companies supplying election hardware and software have literally spent decades creating the rules and templates for nearly every county in the country (and some for Canada as well). In many cases, they've found it easier to run old elections code under emulation rather than do a rewrite for new hardware. I'm not sure how you could legally require the elections companies to open source all this work and I don't know how it could be duplicated in any reasonable time frame. I submit that if you are interested in the accuracy of your elections, that you call the county clerk and ask to observe the required logic and accuracy tests of the ballot counting equipment before and after each election. It's an interesting process. Generally, the election officials welcome the visit and will be happy to discuss the politics and practicality of open source elections software.
Understood. If you decide to run Peach with Wine or some other win emulator, or for that matter, in Win be aware of a dirty little Peachtree secret. Peach uses the Btrieve database engine and it wants it all to itself. We've been totally unsuccessful at getting Peach and Xilinx design tools (which also need Btrieve with a whole different set of registry entries) to work together. Since the engineers need Peach for bills of materials and part descriptions and Xilinx to design chips, they each need 2 machines.
But what you're asking for is a nearly perfect application for Win98se/Win2000 and Peachtree. Peachtree is robust, Win98 works and nobody other than the slashdot and Apple crowds would find fault with your decision. We've used Peachtree for years and it works just fine. *ANY* accountant or auditor would have no problem reading it's reports or dealing with it's methods. It's nicely extensible, moving from a single-user setup to a peer-to-peer network with zero complications. If you need to use open source for political reasons, I can't help you. If you want the best return on investment for your group, I would seriously consider the above system.
Except when the bribee is in a foreign country. Then it's a felony. So we're fucked at home and fucked on the international market where everyone else is allowed to bribe.
I built a pair of 16db helical antennas, but the little dishes for about $80 each should work good for you. Post an inquiry to alt.internet.wireless and you'll get all the info you need.
I have 2 WAP 11's bridging a T1 line over 1600 feet. They've worked perfectly for over 6 months and have never been rebooted or reset. Paid for themselves a couple times over. Consistent 1.4Mbps all the time. Sorry about your problems.
I think you're right. But he wanted information about clean rooms and I was hoping the reality of what has to be done would discourage him from building one. Soldering and any other potentially contaminating work is usually done at a laminar flow bench. Another thing he should budget for.
Clean rooms are rated as class 1, class 10, class 100, class 1000 and class 10,000. The numbers are the maximum count of 0.5 micron sized particles permitted in a cubic foot of air. The old federal standard for clean rooms is FED STD 209E, recently replaced by the international standard ISO 14 644. I'm guessing the ISO standard costs bucks and the FED standard is probably free so pick and choose. A class 1000 clean room would not be that hard to build and maintain. Clean, painted surfaces all around, some sort of air filtration system with positive pressure, no textiles, pencils, powdered gloves allowed. You'd have to wear clean room smocks, booties and bonnet. The room would have to be vacuumed daily (with a vacuum exhausting to the outside) and the particulate count verified daily. An air shower and sticky mat at the entrance would be a good thing. Now that's just for a class 1000 clean room. Imagine what it takes for a class 1 clean room.
Nothing new about the annoucement. Cheap electrolytic capacitors have been around and been a problem for years. There are other failure modes. i've fixed several old Mac's where the cap has pissed it's electrolyte all over the motherboard. Usually removing the cap, scrubbing the board and installing a new cap fixes the problem. Even worse is when the electrolyte is lost gradually. The product that it's in gets flakey over time and the problem is very hard to find. These problems are all made worse by exposing your gear to high temperatures. Never leave your electronics in the passenger compartment of your car in the summer.
From their website "For fiscal operation, both corporate and public operation is encouraged by the non-exclusive, low cost licensing plan. The license promotes both cooperation and competition."
The New York train was pulled along by a pressure differance between the front and back of the train with atmospheric pressure in the back. This new train has a vacuum both in front and back of the train and uses linear motors for propulsion.
I worked for a time in the security industry with hand scanners, retinal scanners, fingerprint scanners and mantraps that weighed the occupant. To my knowledge, you have no property rights to your biometric data. Here in California, we're forced to provide a fingerprint to get a license. No negotiation, no substitutions - no fingerprint, no license. I think the reasoning goes like this: We know your hair color, we know your eye color, we can ask your weight, what's the difference if we take an image of the swirls on your fingertip. Unless you can make the argument that the biometric data is somehow health related and falls under the rather draconian privacy laws of such, you're probably out of luck.
You seem to think that the union has the last word. What happens when the company decides it's cheaper to fire everyone and move the factory to texas/mexico/china. Everyone looses their job with no prospect of local work because of the large number of like-skilled unemployed in the area.
You want unions? Do a little field trip. Visit a union office and talk to the president. Now try to decide if you want this guy to A) take a manditory deduction from your paycheck every month B) negotiate your pay raise C)tell you when you have to take breaks D) tell you what you can and cannot do at your job. I'd rather keep my money and negotiate myself.