I don't think it's wise to assess the security of a system by asking the interested parties whether or not they think it's secure. As we've done in a number of studies here in the U.S., the Brazilian voting systems should be subject to an independent security evaluation that results in a public report. If you click around Halderman's page, you'll see that he's got a paper demonstrating a number of serious attacks on the Indian EVMs which are much simpler that the machines used in most of the U.S.
It's not everyone's cup o' tea... but man, it's a hell of a lot richer than you may think (just independent-label rich). I don't know of anyone else that likes it as much as I do.:)
There already is a service that offers DRM-free mp3 music... and it has a pretty extensive catalog... it's emusic. No freakin' Britney Spears on this service. Although you might not find it up to snuff unless you're heavily into indie and obscure music or if you've got a sense of adventure.
Those are some good points... I've definitely been frustrated by the level of uncooperation between the SoS and Registrars of Voters. And the funding shenanigans are particularly bad considering it was HAVA money... he's going to have to be a very straight arrow from here on out... and that undoubtedly will affect e-voting reform in CA.
(I apologize for my initial patronizing tone... looking back over it)
You obviously have no idea what Kevin Shelley has done for electronic voting reform in California over the past, say, 18 months... check out some of the stuff here:
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/touchscreen.htm
As the other person who replied said, with "works for hire" it doesn't matter how many creators or authors take part... its 99 years past the date of publication or 125 years after it was created (whichever comes first). (I might have the time periods wrong by a bit... but it's comparable)
as I posted above... their news site is out of date. I saw this thing and they have one 2-rack, 250 TB box up and running... which was the big question if they could get that running.
I saw this recently and their news site is not up to date... they had one 2-rack, 250 TB box up and running... three more of these suckers and you've got a PB. The hard part, by far, was making sure that they could put two of these racks together without starting a fire...
Hubble was put in space on the Shuttle... nothing else can put that much stuff in space at once... this is part of our problem these days as the Shuttle is the heaviest lifter we have.
My former advisor here at UC Berkeley, Gibor Basri, has a neat way of discriminating between planets and the lesser (comets, asteroids, etc.). His idea is that if the object has enough self-gravity to force it into a spherical shape, it's a planet... if it doesn't (like Mars' "moons"), it's something less.
Here's a snipet:
How can this be resolved? A consensus is slowly developing (I believe) for the following solution. We can first define what we mean by "planetary mass", and base this only on physical characteristics. Then we can include circumstance into the definition of "planet". I propose the following three definitions:
FUSOR - an object that achieves core fusion during its lifetime.
The following is a draft of an article now published in the Nov/Dec 2003 issue of
Mercury. Draft of Mar. 20, 2003.
Defining "Planet"
by Gibor Basri
Univ. of California, Berkeley
Even before they were civilized, people looked into the sky and
recognized different celestial objects. The Sun defined daytime, and the
stars provided a fixed background of faint, twinkling lights at night.
Among them moved the Moon, and a few special steadier lights. The Greeks
called those which moved "planets" (it is worth noting that the Sun and
Moon were originally included, since motion against the stars was the defining
characteristic). Most cultures have an analogous word for these "wanderers".
Both the stars and the planets were thought to revolve around the Earth.
After the Copernican Revolution, we recognize the Moon as the only body
that orbits the Earth. The Sun is a very nearby example of a star, and
the visible planets are other large bodies that orbit the Sun. We see them
by reflected sunlight, while stars produce their own visible light. This
understanding yields the dictionary (lay public) definition of the word
"planet": a large heavenly body that shines by reflected light and orbits
the Sun. In the past century we gained much understanding of our Solar
System, and even visited most of the planets robotically. Yet today, professional
astronomers find themselves unable to agree upon a succinct definition
of "planet". Replacing "the Sun" with "a star" is obviously necessary now
that many extrasolar planets have been discovered, but the problem goes
well beyond that.
Two recent controversies that found their way to the popular press illustrate
further difficulties. One is the "Pluto controversy". This arose because
of the discovery of a large belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. They are
the outer remains of the original protoplanetary disk. This "Kuiper Belt"
is a natural outcome of incomplete planet formation in the outer Solar
System, and is the source of some of the comets we see. As Kuiper Belt
objects (KBOs) were discovered in increasing numbers in the 1990s, including
a population of "Plutinos" which share Pluto's orbital characteristics
(somewhat different from the other planets), some astronomers began to
suggest that Pluto itself (which shares many properties with, but is the largest
KBO known so far) does not qualify as a planet. The recent discoveries
of Varuna and Quaoar (which are KBOs half the size of Pluto, like its moon
Charon) may presage the time when we find another Pluto-sized KBO.
The current situation is much like that in the early 1800s, when the
first asteroids were discovered. Ceres was originally hailed as the fifth
planet, particularly since one in its position was expected from "Bode's
Law" of planetary spacings. It lost its status within a few years, when
other members of the asteroid belt began turning up. Herschel, who had
been the only person to have discovered a new planet before then, aided
the effort to demote Ceres. The arguments against its planeta
sociologists watch this stuff and research it... NY Times recently ran a piece on danah boyd at UC Berkeley who studies friendster... she's got millions of connections.
militarization of earth orbits is bad...
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 1
Weapons in low-earth orbit (lasers, kinetic weapons, etc.) are easy enough to neutralize... a nation would have to do no more than launch the equivalent of gravel into the orbital path of a space weapon.
If there is ever a war that involves lots of explosions/collisions in earth orbits, we will likely be trapped on the surface of Earth for centuries (until we figure out how to de-orbit a good deal of space junk). Whizzing debris will sheath our planet in a deadly cloud of dime-size debris at an average speed of 27,000 mph... through which it would be very hard to launch anything...
We used to be scared that we'd nuke the human race off of the surface of the Earth... when, in fact, we're much more likely to imprison ourselves on the surface via orbital warfare.
We've forgotten that SCO damn-well better have a serious ace up it's sleeve to attempt a $3 Billion lawsuit against IBM and it's litigators at Cravath... that's not just like David challenging Golliath, it's like David walking up to Goliath, stabbing him in the foot...
I think he means that Linux development needs some serious IP geneology... imagine a "Linux Geneology Project" where you could browse the Copyrights for every line of code in Linux... that would be a way to short-circuit SCO's case without lawyers... just tech.
apologies... I posted in the wrong thread... regular 3D polygons are essentially bent 2D surfaces, right? They may have discontinuties in their derivatives(edges), put they don't have holes. Ellipsoids regular and irregular are bent 2D surfaces, right?
I just had OS X barf yesterday and significantly affect the PRAM to the point that I couldn't log-in!!! Anyway, reset the PRAM + clock and everythings peachy... link.
Sorry if this is redundant... new vulnerability posted to bugtraq... and you got to love the banter ("It appears that parts of MacOSX that didn't come from BSD are not very well written and have significant security issues."):
No one's attempting to create a system that can't be used by the blind... we just want the official ballot (not a receipt that is taken home) to be paper-based and locked away in case a recall or audit is necessary. There is a certain point at which you cannot solve all the problems of the disabled community (what about a blind and deaf person? What do they do?).
We are on the same side as the disabled... we want voter-verified elections just as the disabled do... we want the disabled to be able to voted in confidence and accurately. We need to work together... the interests of the election officials do not currently align with those of the voting public... the think in terms of system complexity and cost...
Cringely's proposal to follow the Canadian system is a good one... and low-tech at that... I like low-tech where it does things well.
But here is the odd part: SCO's lawyers didn't write this manifesto and neither did Darl, judging by the headers on the Word file. Yes, thanks to Microsoft's utter disregard for user privacy, we know who actually wrote this document, or at least whose computer was used. You see, Microsoft preserves such info as metadata, little pieces of info about you in the headers of each document you write in Word. Someone on Yahoo took a look at the document's Properties, and the document records that it was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, who is apparently a tech writer.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's wise to assess the security of a system by asking the interested parties whether or not they think it's secure. As we've done in a number of studies here in the U.S., the Brazilian voting systems should be subject to an independent security evaluation that results in a public report. If you click around Halderman's page, you'll see that he's got a paper demonstrating a number of serious attacks on the Indian EVMs which are much simpler that the machines used in most of the U.S.
not only that... Doug Tygar is no student; he's a well-respected prof. that specializes in security and privacy.
Doug Tygar is a professor, not a student.
It's not everyone's cup o' tea... but man, it's a hell of a lot richer than you may think (just independent-label rich). I don't know of anyone else that likes it as much as I do. :)
There already is a service that offers DRM-free mp3 music... and it has a pretty extensive catalog... it's emusic. No freakin' Britney Spears on this service. Although you might not find it up to snuff unless you're heavily into indie and obscure music or if you've got a sense of adventure.
Those are some good points... I've definitely been frustrated by the level of uncooperation between the SoS and Registrars of Voters. And the funding shenanigans are particularly bad considering it was HAVA money... he's going to have to be a very straight arrow from here on out... and that undoubtedly will affect e-voting reform in CA.
(I apologize for my initial patronizing tone... looking back over it)
You obviously have no idea what Kevin Shelley has done for electronic voting reform in California over the past, say, 18 months... check out some of the stuff here: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/touchscreen.htm
As the other person who replied said, with "works for hire" it doesn't matter how many creators or authors take part... its 99 years past the date of publication or 125 years after it was created (whichever comes first). (I might have the time periods wrong by a bit... but it's comparable)
as I posted above... their news site is out of date. I saw this thing and they have one 2-rack, 250 TB box up and running... which was the big question if they could get that running.
I saw this recently and their news site is not up to date... they had one 2-rack, 250 TB box up and running... three more of these suckers and you've got a PB. The hard part, by far, was making sure that they could put two of these racks together without starting a fire...
The ineffable jim march will be orchestrating a voting fiasco skit starting one hour before the demo (skit at 9am, demo at 10am)... so show up early!
Hubble was put in space on the Shuttle... nothing else can put that much stuff in space at once... this is part of our problem these days as the Shuttle is the heaviest lifter we have.
My former advisor here at UC Berkeley, Gibor Basri, has a neat way of discriminating between planets and the lesser (comets, asteroids, etc.). His idea is that if the object has enough self-gravity to force it into a spherical shape, it's a planet... if it doesn't (like Mars' "moons"), it's something less.
Here's a snipet:
read on for his full article.
sociologists watch this stuff and research it... NY Times recently ran a piece on danah boyd at UC Berkeley who studies friendster... she's got millions of connections.
Weapons in low-earth orbit (lasers, kinetic weapons, etc.) are easy enough to neutralize... a nation would have to do no more than launch the equivalent of gravel into the orbital path of a space weapon.
If there is ever a war that involves lots of explosions/collisions in earth orbits, we will likely be trapped on the surface of Earth for centuries (until we figure out how to de-orbit a good deal of space junk). Whizzing debris will sheath our planet in a deadly cloud of dime-size debris at an average speed of 27,000 mph... through which it would be very hard to launch anything...
We used to be scared that we'd nuke the human race off of the surface of the Earth... when, in fact, we're much more likely to imprison ourselves on the surface via orbital warfare.
if you'd like to read more... check out:
Star Wars Forever? (Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams)
We've forgotten that SCO damn-well better have a serious ace up it's sleeve to attempt a $3 Billion lawsuit against IBM and it's litigators at Cravath... that's not just like David challenging Golliath, it's like David walking up to Goliath, stabbing him in the foot...
My bro has a Karma and loves it... it's damn small... still haven't figured out what the Ethernet port is for though...
I think he means that Linux development needs some serious IP geneology... imagine a "Linux Geneology Project" where you could browse the Copyrights for every line of code in Linux... that would be a way to short-circuit SCO's case without lawyers... just tech.
apologies... I posted in the wrong thread... regular 3D polygons are essentially bent 2D surfaces, right? They may have discontinuties in their derivatives(edges), put they don't have holes. Ellipsoids regular and irregular are bent 2D surfaces, right?
What about sqaures, other 3D regular polygons or ellipsoids?
I just had OS X barf yesterday and significantly affect the PRAM to the point that I couldn't log-in!!! Anyway, reset the PRAM + clock and everythings peachy... link.
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/347578
No one's attempting to create a system that can't be used by the blind... we just want the official ballot (not a receipt that is taken home) to be paper-based and locked away in case a recall or audit is necessary. There is a certain point at which you cannot solve all the problems of the disabled community (what about a blind and deaf person? What do they do?).
We are on the same side as the disabled... we want voter-verified elections just as the disabled do... we want the disabled to be able to voted in confidence and accurately. We need to work together... the interests of the election officials do not currently align with those of the voting public... the think in terms of system complexity and cost...
Cringely's proposal to follow the Canadian system is a good one... and low-tech at that... I like low-tech where it does things well.
check this out (from groklaw):
[...]
But here is the odd part: SCO's lawyers didn't write this manifesto and neither did Darl, judging by the headers on the Word file. Yes, thanks to Microsoft's utter disregard for user privacy, we know who actually wrote this document, or at least whose computer was used. You see, Microsoft preserves such info as metadata, little pieces of info about you in the headers of each document you write in Word. Someone on Yahoo took a look at the document's Properties, and the document records that it was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, who is apparently a tech writer.
[...]