If, and I Stress IF, you are right about space weapons having no real advantage you are correct that building them first because someone else might is BS. If you are wrong that makes us second to the party once we realize it was a misjudgement and gives a window of advantage to whoever was right.
In regards to judging the ultimate strategic importance of space? I question many things regarding our armed forces. I do not question their intelligence in identifying that which is of strategic importance. We did not get to be the single most powerfull military force by accident you know. So if the airforce eggheads think the next great form of force application is from space based weapons I say they might just deserve a little benifit of the doubt.
As for a fricken laser??? Well last I checked they were making some serious strides towards creating an airborn laser deffense system mounted in a 747.
Oddly enough, alot of the problems facing that system would be easier to deploy on a space platform. For example, being able to utilize a nuclear power source could remove the reliance on large amounts of chemicals to react for the power needed.
Lasers aside, they are also asking to deploy systems to drop rocks (essentially). And the efficacy of that isn't excactly in doubt. Nuclear Level explosions without the ascociated fall out. Rods from God indeed.
True enough the US developed the Pegasus. Launched from an F-15 doing an Icarus impersenation. Its only test was successfull but was against a dumb sattelite with no manouvering capacity. The warhead was a pure kenetic load with limited ability to alter its course once set. The idea was that if we ever needed to deploy them we would expend enough to cause active sattelites to expend their fuel in efforts to avoid the launches highly limiting their usefulness, actual impacts were a bonus. The window of intercept was extremely narrow and it would have been highly impractical if a sattleite had a less limited means of manouevering... or refuleing capacity. Both highly likely attributes of any militarized space platform.
The russians developed sattelites that essentially did the same thing. They would launch them as innocuous commecial loads or something but their true purpose was to intercept targets in orbit to disable them.
Like anything else of that nature its a move and counter move situation. Generally speaking deffense is easier than attack and I doubt that will fail to hold true for space.
The question of who will guard the guards is one without answer. To have guards or more specifically those with power is to risk that power being abused. Have you the means by which we can continue without them? Until you come up with how we can it reamains that there will continue to be those with power who might abuse it. So would you rather be a guard or be in the position of having to over throw them ? But remember, when you do in fact overthrow them you inherent the exact same problem because voila, your a guard. Can you say Catch 22 boys and girls?
Empires have come and gone. And if history is the end all and be all then yes, sooner or later the fate of the United States of America is to fall from power. That thought warms the cockles of many hearts I have no doubt. But you know, there is another commonality surrounding great historical empires and their demise. An extended period of Chaos following the fall. Witness the USSR for a modern example. The fall of a great Empire has never been a joyous occasion no matter how necesarry the fall. It is an admission of failure. An adimission that we have yet to figure out how to maintain a lasting peace which is fair and just.
Yep, no WMD in orbit on on other celestial bodies, and no military bases on celestial bodies... None WMD ??? Nope, not in there. Though I suppose WMD could be altered to include mass non-nuclear force resulting from kenetic missles. But not in that treaty.
Looks like your right... evidently there is no international agreement at all regarding space weapons. Seems it has largely been a gentlemens agreement. However, I seem to recall space based systems being mentioned in that ABM treaty. As in specifically space based ABM systems.
Dale Brown, yep. I think he did a decent job of showing both the good and the bad with regards to the possibilities.
1) Like it or not the US no longer holds to the no weapons in space treaty. Bush pulled out of that a couple years ago. So everyone stop whining about Bush breaking international treaties. I don't like him either but at least focus on what he is really doing.
2) Space is the high ground making it highly strategic. All in all I think the US is better suited to handling the power of being first more than say China. ESA would be a good candidate too but they are pretty damn happy to sit back and let the US handle all the shit jobs and ensuing flak.
3) Very surprised nobody has put together the other obvious piece in this puzzle with Griffon announcing a major new initiative by NASA to deploy space based nuclear reactors. Lasers in space have to have gigantic sources of power... Solar arrays are not very feasible and they remove darkside firing. Nuclear power will provide both power for weapons and propulsion that does not exist today. At the very least this will bring about serious space based observation platforms. Think AWACS in Geosync over a Theater of operations. One of the military thriller wirters used that for a book a while back... can't remember which one but the title was Silver Tower.
4) for the gravel in space folks. Granted it can be effective... but I am not sure you grasp just how big an area you are talking about. Also, if you grasp orbital mechanics you will understand anything that is a continual problem (ie remains in orbit) you can match orbits with it to remove danger (small relative differences in velocities) or launch clean up efforts.
5) For those that think space is silly considering you need ground troops I suggest you read up on what people thought about air power prior to WWII. A single laser system with a good rate of fire, capable of tracking an air target long enough to destroy it will alter the face of war in a way not seen since the introduction of mechanized assault. If it cost 100 billion to develop and 100 billion to launch it would be cheap. Check out the cost of the air force... then consider such a weapon could theoretically render it obsolete. Make it like mounted Calvary taking on tanks.
Pointless really... would take an obscene amnount of propellent to noticeably increase the damage.... and make it alot more expensive. Other than getting the things up there in the first place this is pretty cheap stuff.
Hey I don't normaly supply refference material because it almost always breaks down into a my source is better than your source debate. As you may have noticed I only use what I am supplied with. However, I think here is a good neutral source regarding the art of root kit detection.
Supplies a very good discussion about how you detect rooted systems. I think we probably had a miscommunication about what constitutes single machine detection. As we have both said, cleaning yourself from the inside of a compromised active kernel is impossible, but this dosn't mean you need another system in order to get 'outside'. Software just controls the beast (hardware) And if you have the power over the plug you have ultimate power over what controls the beast and at that point you just have to be able to verify your system... or wipe it. A problem if you have general use files that are not clean/backed up. Not such a big deal for a single purpose machine. This is not an insane cost activity... really just a day in the life of a sysadmin under fire.
Ok getting close to going in circles here... did have a couple replies regarding how you clean infected systems, and regarding OCR/Optical Scan
I am wondering what level of understanding you have regarding a system boot? The system has to load from somewhere. The start of that chain is the BIOS. You use the BIOS to point to a bootable section of the hard drive. That was why I said worst case you need a fresh drive and a freshly flashed bios. Thus a flashed bios set to boot a ROM cd with a knoppix distro (free) will give you clean access to the infected hard drive (you never boot the infected system that is stored on it and you cleaned the BIOS eliminating its ability to bootstrap itself). The malicious code cannot remain resident in RAM becaue that is volitale memory and is lost when you shut down power. The clean hard drive is just for convienience of mass storage for refference info... can do the same with a bootable DVD in most cases now.
This is not expensive and is one of the more common ways to clean a really nasty infection. No second system needed... a usb hard drive and a knoppix cd. Just as there is always a way to compromise a system, there is always a way to clean it. The principle is the same, only in reverse. IE code can always be compromised, even malicious code!
Also, you are confusing the difficulty of cleaning a general use system against one with a single purpose. Even using a standard PC architecture, if you design the system to be one for a given use (meaning its refference for assuring it is clean never changes) it is very possible to keep tabs on it. Unless there is an avenue of access included in the refference you use to verify the system. Again an added new compromise must change 1's and 0's.
Optical scan and OCR are the same thing... though in the case of reading marked ovals it is a more primitive tech. I was reffering to a process Schenier favored with a printed ballot by the machine after the voter filled out their info on the screen. In some cases it was placed into a box, in some cases presented behind glass to be verrified by the voter.
you said:
"1) User votes on-screen 2) Receipt is printed 3) User verifies and accepts receipt
For optical scan:
1) Ballots are mass-produced 2) User marks ballot 3) Ballot is scanned 4) User verifies and accepts scan results on-screen.
There's no analog-to-digital conversion in the former case at all - just a redundant check that the vote is correct. In the latter case, there is OCR, which is checked on the screen as well."
In both scenarios you did not list the final tally. Voter verfication is all fine and good but it dosn't mean squat till the vote enters the final count.
The former is a lead parachute if there does not exist a way to count the paper receipts. Your margian of error must accept the weakest link in the counting process. In this case a digital - analog - hand count. Or if you use machines to count them as well digital - analog - digital - count. If the printed reciept is just for voter confidence it is meaningless to the final count unless you use it to back up the digital - digital count. Only now you have a system with as high as 5% error that will NEVER corelate one to one with a digital to digital count (ok lottery odds it will). Now your confidence is +-5%. You gained nothing adding computers and introduced your paranoia that someone will then manipulate that 5% error in their favor by compromising the code in use. In otherwords the worst of both worlds.
Now the truly puzzling thing to me is this. You grant that there may be a better solution than paper but do not think there is any reason to find it? To me that is like someone wondering why you would ever try to replace the horse. What is this devotion to wood pulp? I am simply failing to comprehend this view point and I am realy curious as to why. Paper ballots are aything but easy and cheap to deal with, its just a process that has 'always' been there. There are serious scale problems with them which we are encountering and have been for some time. The time to find the next solution isn't when the current one breaks. It is well in advance so we can have a smooth transition.
Self inspection is possible, though I suppose that depends on your deffintion of self inspection. Clean ROM programs loaded instead of from system storage... like a Knoppix boot. Kind of making a seperate system out of the infected system. Think we are just arguing semantics on that. You never trust the information you get directly from an infected system, you must find someway to get clean info. Worst case scenario ? You need a flashed bios and a second hardrive in addition to access to clean refference info.
Now if your talking a single system completely on its own with no means of verifying against a clean refference ? That case is indeed impossible. Like picking yourself up by your shoelaces.
For the printout I was suggesting that the printer creates a small 'error' if you will. Perhaps something that looks like spurious ink, perhaps it just alters a barcode (if utilized) Perhaps it uses a differnt font for the letter o that is is essentially unnoticeable to the eye but which signals the OCR software to interpret differently. Devious Enough ? If someone were then silly enough to add something like a test or calibration flag the ocr software could detect then it could then act nice when in 'testing/calibration' mode. Would make it one hell of a gremlin to chase down.
The power of an audit is undeniable and I have never said you don't need one. I have simply said paper is not the only answer. Your response and those of people like Schneier and those he reffer too simply are saying right now there is no better solution. Can't say I am inclined to disagree with that for the present. I am saying there is probably a better solution. Rome werent built in a day and finding a digital alternative to a technology that has 3000 some odd years of improvements might take a while.
Now if you really like that article you linked to take a moment and apply his logic and you might see why I feel the way I do.
Here is the process of counting an OCR printout. Mark digitally, turn into an analog printout, read analog printout to creat a digital mark in order to tally the vote. To count by hand you mark digitally to creat an analog print out to count by hand. Now in a pure digital system (given you solve the code security issue ) is mark digitally to count digtially. By Schneier's own logic that is the system with the most potential accuracy as it entails the fewest steps and thus fewest chances for error. He also champions digital as the best way to have less voter intent error. He only goes for the compromise because no one has a solution to the integrity problem and we can't go back to just physcial marking and counting. Not because it can't be accurate, but becasue it is just to damn slow for the modern world.
On a side note, I really hope they never go for the national ID tie in. Unless they use it such that it does not store vote history and it cannot be tied to votes in any manner. Giving up the anonymous vote would make it pretty easy to make a secure digital voting system... but I think the cure would be worse than the disease.
Like I said, we have different fundamental assumptions about the problem. Perhaps one day your conclusions will be fully born out, or perhaps one day mine will. Only time will tell.
Perfect (undetectable) rooting can only happen in one of two ways. 1, it happens upstream thus your baseline of comparison is poisoned. 2, it is due to a similar inherent flaw that allows the deviant to come at will and then leave nothing behind. Anything else requires a change in 1's and 0's and thus is detectable. Really that simple... in theory.
Realistic use of a machine dictates that it is a moving target and thus there is a certain amount of noise for an added rootkit/backdoor to hide in. However, that dosn't stop you from vetting the rest of the system via baseline comparison. What can't be vetted is nuked. That leaves you only with how certain you are your baseline is uncompromised.
Back to the printouts... hmmm, I'll be as paranoid as you for a second and claim an essentially undetectable alteration to the printout (via human means) that means the vote is registered in the OCR software differntly than what it 'says';-) Like I said... you can't have it both ways... before you know it your going to be making my arguemnts on this particular issue!!! I conceed a human undetectable alteration leaves an accurate hand recount as a possibility. But in most systems right now if the hand recount and machine recount were seriously out of whack it would just invalidate the election.
K, paranoia aside, a machine which provides all the input error checking and essentially eliminates voter input error along with a printout that they verify against what they entered on the screen and then place in the ballot box seems to satisfy you. For now I'll keep the printed receipt until I can figure out how to improove on it. I'd feel even better if there were some way of validating the printed ballot in the presence of the voter (no poor print job etc...).
My problem with purely paper ballots? They are easy to invalidate (punch a few extra holes, make extra marks), easy to destroy (they didn't vote) and easy to forge. You are not excercising your paranoia here to the same degree you do with code if you think not. Frankly, if none of that were the case then why do we go to such efforts to assure it dosn't happen? You don't trust code cause you don't trust people. Yet you must trust people at every step of the way in a paper system. I find that a very odd stance. Granted election rigging in the modern world tends to be a bit more subtle than ballot destruction/alteration. We have moved the process more upstream. But then that is really nothing new either (poll tax, tests etc...). Hell if you ask me the biggest election fixing method in place right now is the voter registration process. A paperless code based system has the potential to remove people from everything except making the code and inputing the votes. That is its appeal to me. And I think it is more than a worthy enough goal to expend a nickle or two to attain.
What can I say... Huuked on fonix werked fore me;-)
Hmmm new friend to look for now. I wish they had other categories for assigning relationships on Slashdot... I want one for people who I find inteligent and worth a read. Welcome to the list of the few people I encounter on here capable of thinking past their own opinion.
All in all I think it boils down to this.
I think digital only security is obtainable.
You don't.
I didn't feel I had to detail why a paperless system is CAPABLE of counting votes better than paper ballot counting systems. Do you really think the code to actually count is difficult ? I really thought you accepted that, just that ensuring the integrity of the process was to difficult. If you really think you can't even make a system that can count better please say so cause I can address that. That is trivial. Assuring the integrity of the process is the bitch. Counting votes is a hell of alot easier than computing compound intrest.
Detecting a rooted system is hard from the rooted system but not impossible. Fairly easy from an unaffected system capable of monitoring. In short, the code has to alter, the info has to alter and thus there are ways to track it if its something you gaurd properly against. Granted that only works so long as the tracking method remains uncompromised. As for how from a rooted system?? Using something like Knoppix on a rooted windows box is pretty damn handy just for one example...and it works pretty good on Linux boxes as well if you know what your about. Course knowing what to look for is a bitch but worst come to worst you wipe it and start over with a clean backup. As for thinking I wouldn't go to such lengths ??? Poor assumption on your part though in general I know what you mean.
Regarding printouts: If your fear is manipluation of code, and code is responsible for a printout, then the printout is suspect. In other words I am not suggesting un-printing anything, you simply make the printout say what you want it to via nefarious manipulation of the code. Seems to me only a person created mark guarded by opposed and nuetral parties is safe by your standards. For a paper system I couldn't agree more. Paper is easily forged and easily destroyed. Perhaps digital is easier though. However, paper itself is just a technology. It can be improved on like any other. I suppose the possibility exists that paper represents the ultimate in voting integrity assurance technology, but I doubt the odds are in its favor.
Diebold......... *steam from ears* don't get me started on that bunch of Morons/Sleazeballs. Do not judge what is possible by their ineptness... or out right attempt to provide rigable elections.
You and your experts have a very high standard. If a similar level were applied to a paper system I feel it would also fail. Again, the system does not have to be perfect. Only difficult enough to foil that people trust it. Right now I would say we are at the very begining of being able to do so with a paperless system. An honest coder could easily put together a system that counted far more accurately than current systems. As soon as we figure out how to do so safely and securely it can and will be implemented... in fact given the idiocy of the crap put in place by diebold we are going to push it along to fast and the resultant mess will probably keep us saddled with the pain of paper counting for many years to come. Hopefully we can avoid creating another period in which election integrity is highly questionable. However, if it does happen it will be far from the first time and I doubt the last time it happens.
Actually the raw materials in space are indeed worth that and quite a bit more besides. Not that it matters, we don't have the appetite to use them on that level. The other problem of course is that right now it would cost too much to get at them... IE dosn't matter if there is a trillion dollars worth of iron in an asteroid if it costs 2 trillion to harness it.
Though if you want a potential real source of money? He3 is probably the best current candidate. Extrodinarily rare on the Earth it is by comparison plentiful on the moon. It is important becaues its Fusion byproducts when fused with deuterium create a charged result which is then easily contained and harnessed by magnetic fields. H - H or H to other isotopes of He don't. Reduces shielding, raises potential conversion efficiencies etc. If the powerplant can be made to harness it the potential reward for He mining will probably make Middle East oil proffits look paltry by comparison. Though being able to build the ractor is a pretty big stumbling block.
We want to get out of Low Earth Orbit but that can't be done until the CEV is operational and Shuttle is dead and Station declared completed. This is because Shuttle represents a 1/3 to 1/2 of NASAs bottom line budget and ISS another 1/5 or so. Short of a major budget increase, NASA cannot throw real money at a new program until Shuttle is axed and ISS is down to support mode rather than construction. Most every thing else in the budget is penny ante in comparison and the political fallout of axing them is not worth the gain of re-allocating the money.
Key points.
Shuttle Dead in 2010. Before if possible.
ISS final configuration from a shuttle launch standpoint is being re-considered. This is perahaps the biggest driver of a 2010 retirement date. Current requirements mandate that pretty much as a minimum. Robotic launches being considered for completing delivery of components.
CEV developement cycle drasticly reduced. Operational no later than shuttle retirement. Translation: Sounds like if they can get CEV ready Shuttle will die then if a new final config is confirmed for ISS.
Step up Space Nuclear Power. It is a must for manned sapce exploration beyond earth/moon and for any kind of permanent moon outpost of any real scale. If we don't have it ready by the time the CEV is we will have to wait on it before doing much more than flags and footprints again.
Re-evaluate the decision to not service Hubble after RTF missions so that a more informed opinion on the safety risks invovled can be made. Key here really is the decision not to kill budgeting for keeping the service mission an option. (ie the cost is mostly in the parts development and testing, not launch). Thus NASA can't re-appropriate that money for use elsewhere in the budget until the decision is re-afffirmed after return to flight... OR they decide it is a reasonable risk after all at which point all money for anything other than de-orbit will be re-apportioned in the budget. Smart move for money by Griffon. Regardless it keeps the money in for FY 06 as we will most likely not complete analysis of the two RTF missions till after the end of FY'05. So that means the money can't simply be axed off the NASA budget, it can go somewhere else. At 350 million it isn't chump change to a budget starved program.
Keep some other political programs on life support (education etc...) to keep some senetors happy.
Rob Peter to pay Paul. In order to do anything NASA has to cut somewhere. The only major areas of funding are space science, manned space operations and ISS. Already covered that two are pretty secure. Space science fundign is increasing but existing programs are largely getting the shaft for now with a promise to get picked up on the back end. IE thats what it means to delay some programs till after meeting exploration goals in the short term. So my guess is the telescopes are going to take a hit and that is why they are going to re-consider Keeping Huble limping along to possible keep a gap from happening or at least moving the gap already planned a few years farther along.
NASA will bug congress to allow purchasing more Russian launch capacity. Nasa paid for Soyuz missions are about spent and right now we can't give the RSA any more for launches. Not played very large in the statement but that is a big issue in current ISS operations and one that needs to be addressed.
Hell with sci fi... our history argues strongly that there will be eugenics wars. What do you think the Nazi's were about with the final solution ?
Hell for a long time it was accepted that white and black people could not live peacefully together.
As for augmentation. That will happen as soon as the technology is mature enough and there are advantages to be gained. Case in point. Cosmetic surgery. Next step, Cosmetic Genetics. It will happen. They are already looking into implanted eye sight. While nobody in their right mind would opt for that over natural eyesight right now what happens when you can have 20 megapixel resolution with low light capacity and 20X zoom as an implant?
On a side note about the vision implant thing... that is a very very very interesting tech if it ever really works at a useable level. Cause at that point you have a possible brain machine interface because you can put a processor in the loop. So say you see someone, the signal goes to you brain and a processor. Processor recognises the image (say a person) and then displays that information through the interface to the implant. Bingo you have terminator vision. Now lets go one step futher. Are you aware that you can subvocalize voice ? IE without talking you still make the signals to be encoded that can be picked up on by sensors. Voice reconition software is primitive but is farther along than machine vision implants. Advance them several generations down the road (incremental advance not revolutionary) and suddenly you have a real human/machine interface capacity.
/*SARCASM Well obviously if a paper ballot and mechanical/hand counting is so great then there are absolutely no problems with it. SARCASAM*/
Can you at least accept that there are problems with a paper ballot system? Reasons why it might be a good idea to look for a better solution? You think they are good enough and I think they have to much inherrent error. BEFORE you even get to the issue of possible vote manipulation. When there is no alternative the error level is acceptable. However it no longer remains the case that there might not be another alternative.
That an electronic system would have less intrinsic error is a given. It has been proved again and again and again where computers have taken over. I grant that the security of the process is not nearly so cut and dried.
Your fear of single access power is the same thing that has scared people about powerful computer control of numerous enterprises. By and large they have been silly fears. This does not mean they are not real/possible. But overall I place it at a similar sticking point to currency as regards the old gold standard vrs the dollar standard.
It dosn't have to be perfect. Perfection is impossible in ANY system. The process of manipulation simply has to be accepted as reasonably hard enough and reasonably possible to catch that people feel comfortable placing their trust in the system. If you have antilock brakes or have ever ridden in a vehicle with them you place this faith in a computer every time you climb into something that uses them. Anytime you have landed in a commercial airliner in bad weather you have placed your life in the hands of a piece of code subject to all the manipulations of which you are frightened will manipulate a paperless voting system.
Your manipulation system for rootkitting altering and deleting means people who do such things are never caught right? Hmm not quite the case is it. It is also dependent on access. So you can't implement an unconnected sealed voting machine that isn't practical to be manipulated on site ?
Bank system paper trails are largely iron parachutes. They only work to your standard of security so long as the paper generated is out of the control of the computers involved... like checks. But for purely electronic transfers? Your applying a double standard if you think a paper trail generated from an electronicly generated transfer process (printouts) counts. Those can be manipulated as well. Furthermore they are largely meanginless warm fuzzies because realistically the modern banking system (stockmarkets in particular) could not be kept up with at the modern level of transactions if we ever had to backup the computer systems on a one to one level with hand/mechanical counting. In otherwords the process has to be largely trusted at some level in order to be able to spot check it with generated printouts. if the entire system came under suspicion it wouldn't work. They also work because they trust the integrity of their historical data. A major method of capturing alterations (like the addition of a rootkit to a system)
A voting machine tied to the net in a general accessible manner or having standard access ports without observation kept on them would be absolutely silly. You seem to think its the only option. You seem so aware of all the possible areas of threat to an electronic system. Is your imagination also not up to the task of perhaps conceiving solutions to those problems?
A good single write memory system would make for a pretty damn secure kernel and vote storage medium.
A standalone voting communication system not tied to the net would be necesarry... or hell go with sneaker net from the voting halls same as they do with current ballot systems to central counting systems.
No standard voting format. IE democrats always counted from x input on y machine.
I pose you a challenge. I am going to propose a machine and you not only point out weaknesses but also point out how they might be avoided (in an elec
Most of your issues are wrapped up in willingness to accept the current process which is in and of itself a form of technology worship. Technology is not limited to electronic manipulation of 1's and 0's. What we have is just the accepted implimentation of established technology. Before saying I am simply worshiping at the alter of technology I ask you to please step away from the alter of ludite thoughts regarding the implementation of new technology in important areas. I am not suggesting it should be done without all due care, or that we should rush to blindly implement it just because we can. I simply said that decalring electronic voting bad because the possibility for malfeasence exists is silly.
As for your points.
Voter verification happens the exact same way it happens now. By verfying your marks on the ballot. You seem to think verifiable marks can only be a physical hole, or ink mark on a piece of paper. They can just as easily be colored pixels on a display. Obviously malfeasence in the code can render this useless. IE display one thing and register another in the final count. The same problem exists with paper ballots. There is no way short of physically remaining to monitor your vote booth from then to counting to actually seeing your specific ballot tabulated correctly (impossible unless it is marked with some form of identification) by the officialy entered into the deciding tabulation. A paper ballot is not inherently safer than a digital display for verifiation of your vote. It is just a process which we accept to be fairly implemented.
IE I verify that I punched a hole next to my candidates name and therfore I am confident that I voted for my candidate means that you trust your correctly marked ballot will be counted in the way you intend it to be.
Verifying a selection on a screen with trust in the counting process leaves you with just as much possibility to verify your vote at the booth if not more. IE your mark may well be the selection of a name which includes a picture of the candidate you have selected next to the question of who do you want to vote for in a given election.
Transparency of the counting process is so damn important specifically because it is so easy to fake a paper ballot. Swap ballot boxes for stuffed boxes, etc. Again these are risks you are acclimated to and feel adequate measures have been put in place for thus you trust them. More than anything,almost to the point of the results of the damn election regardless of how honestly/accurately the votes are counted, that trust is what is important. If nobody trusts the process then it dosn't matter if it was honestly counted to the last vote. Government by election is ultimately an issue of trust.
Physically altering a paper ballot or substituting a replacement is childs play compared to knowing how to alter code that is protected. Accessing the code probably much more difficult than access to a box. The threat of course is that if you do have such knowlege and access you can affect more than just a single ballot source. Physcial election rigging is a man power intensive operation.
"3. Is a machine recount as trustworthy as a neutral, transparent, observed by all interested parties HAND recount?"
Yes if the program code and data integrity is verified and accepted by all interested parties, nuetral observers etc...
Hand recounting has a margian of error ascociated that cannot be avoided due to simple human error. Also no observation is 100%, it is completely impractical. In fact all observation of a major recount or a major election are fractional by nature.
Can digital voting be manipulated? Yes. Can it also provide a better counting system? Most certainly. In a correctly implemented system purely from a vote counting standpoint it stands to virtually eliminate all margians of errors and provide for more accurate error checking on the fly. Did more votes get counted than are possible due to the number of registered voters ? Trivial to check with a digital system. One which MUST accept some level of counting error in a physcial paper counting process by any means (hand or machine counted).
Please explain, if you would, what are these shockingly obvious bedrock principles to which you are reffering?
Offhand I suppose at least one thing you are reffering to would be the supposed importance of a physical paper trail that allows for an audit and re-count. I fail to see how digital storage fails to allow for an audit or recount. Paper and digital storage both provide the ability to recount and one is near instentaneous, the other requires a machine process with a high (by comparison) margian of error and ballot rejection, a hand recount has even higher inherent rates of failure, not to mention it comes with the possibility of biased counters.
Both systems provide the possibility of malfeasence. BOTH. Ballots can be falsified. Bits can be changed. No matter what you do there is room for foul play so don't just say it can be manipulated and thus is an untennable system. You need to show very clearly how the potential abuse is WORSE than the current system. Current systems are pretty damn open to manipulation... for example it is pretty common for dead people to vote in US elections.
There are positives to digital voting as well. Counting errors would no longer be an issue. No hanging chads, no improperly filled out ballots. No time delays. All efforts at validating the results can be put into verifying the integrity of the data.
That being said I think most of the E-vote systems have be horribly implemented and have been done so in ways such as to maximize the potential for the abuses of which you seem frightened (rightfully so). But that is not to e-voting cannot be safely implemented.
The Clear Channle takeover and FCC overpowering free speech has pretty damn near killed any real future for legacy broadcast radio in the US. What is the future ? I am thinking sattelite really isn't a serious contender barring a major overhaul of space based infrastructure. Its advantage now is badnwidth but I think its disadvantage in the future is bandwidth. Expensive gear and monthly fees etc... What I do see picking up along with WIFI is seeing internet radio's start to creep out into the world away from computers.
It(net radio) has a great deal of the same properties that launched early radio... its highly democratic with low entry requirments. Only now instead of horizon limitations on braodcast capacity and unique tunning capacity you now have all of cyberspace to send a digital stream to. As Wi-Fi gets bigger and constant data connection moves into more and more devices my guess is that internet based and not proprietary sat based radio is going to go big.
We need a domain purely for radio broadcast feeds and build "radio's" that can sort through and request those feeds via wireless connections. It is this requesting process that will ultimately cause sattelite problems... just the same as it does when using sattelites to provide net connectivity. They can broadcast a good fixed stream but they still can't be very responsive to a large number of individual requests. The broacast bandwidth is greater than radio, but selection is still less than the internet. Additionally getting a show carried by sattellite has a pretty high entry requirment.
Off hand for a timeline I would say it will not be far behind VOIP mobile phone solutions. Radio's biggest market is the commute so once you solve handovers from station to station sufficient to carry on conversations via VOIP you create the capacity to listen to a feed from hot spot to hotspot.... only now you can listen to ANY feed provided you have a connection instead of just being limited to what is broadcast withen range.
Actually if this is anything like the one in the RCA Lyra its less to do with idocy and more to do with a real difficult action. I had the chance to take one apart and the battery simply isn't designed to be removed. In the case of the lyra it was firmly adhered to the hardrive in a flexible casing that actually tore when being slowly and very very carfully seperated... to do it right you probably needed some kind of solvent... and that wouldn't have been any more fun trying to keep it off the circut board.
Seeing as the Lyra is like twice the size of a pod I can only imagine how much more packed a Pod is on the inside.
Working all hours of the day personally I think there is a major issue here of how to deal with people working none prime hours. 2am is roughly lunchtime for a lot of people and 7am miller time.
Noise ordinances are pretty sticky things to enforce when you start encountering things like this. Living in an apartment I used to not be able to play my stero above a wisper on my days off if I kept to my night shift routine.... yet people didn't think anything about blasting away during the day when I was trying to sleep even when they knew about my schedule. Then there are things like grounds crew running weed whackers outside my damn window.
Still have the lawn machine problem now that I live in a house but at least I can watch movies with the sound cranked a little now at odd hours.
Neo-confederate spin work or not it is pretty well accepted that upon the signing of the constitution there was a serious question about the balance of power between the federal government and states rights. Most historians seem to agree that a conflict was inevitable. It was simply a question of what issue would be powerfull enough to bring the issue to a head and force a resolution.
Tragicly, though unsurpisingly, that issue was Slavery and it was sufficiently polarizing that it led to blows rather than allowing for a peacfull resolution. I agree so called neo-confedrates do most anything to try and divert attention from the simple fact that the confederate deffense of states rights was inextricably intertwined with a deffense of slavery. However, your not doing much better in asserting to the opposit extreme, that it was all about slavery.
Personally I hold to three views regarding the "War of Northern Agression". One, The South was wrong to maintain slavery in any shape form or fashion. If they had wanted to retain the high ground they should have freed their slaves AND succeeded. Two, the federal government had the trump card in the upholding of the self evident truths laid out in the Decleration of Independence for all people. Three, the federal government did not really use that trump. The north went to war and doggedly maintained it largely because Lincoln was right in that the maintaining of the union was more important than anything... INCLUDING slavery.
It is a well esstablished that Lincoln would have given in on slavery in a heartbeat if it had meant the ceasation of hostilities and re-unification. The concept that the war was only about slavery is pretty damn ludicrous when the man largely responsible for the Unions Resolve decalred it largely a side issue to the task at hand... and it is massively ironic to me that he is perhaps remembered as much, if not more for the emancipation proclimation rather than his resolve to maintain the union. Slavery was a dead end. Whether the South won or lost it would never have survived. The same cannot be said of the Union.
The underlying causes and issues surrounding the Civil War are anything but simple, or cut and dried. Statements to the contrary are just plain troll bait. It is a shame that such a polarizing issue so completely taints the discussion becasue there are some very important issues of government to study in the lead up to and results after the war. Few people ever get past the "black and white" issue of slavery.
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If, and I Stress IF, you are right about space weapons having no real advantage you are correct that building them first because someone else might is BS. If you are wrong that makes us second to the party once we realize it was a misjudgement and gives a window of advantage to whoever was right.
1 999/n19990811_991496.htm e rtech_ABL,,00.html
In regards to judging the ultimate strategic importance of space? I question many things regarding our armed forces. I do not question their intelligence in identifying that which is of strategic importance. We did not get to be the single most powerfull military force by accident you know. So if the airforce eggheads think the next great form of force application is from space based weapons I say they might just deserve a little benifit of the doubt.
As for a fricken laser??? Well last I checked they were making some serious strides towards creating an airborn laser deffense system mounted in a 747.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/news/
http://avstop.com/news/747.html
http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldi
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/abl/
Oddly enough, alot of the problems facing that system would be easier to deploy on a space platform. For example, being able to utilize a nuclear power source could remove the reliance on large amounts of chemicals to react for the power needed.
Lasers aside, they are also asking to deploy systems to drop rocks (essentially). And the efficacy of that isn't excactly in doubt. Nuclear Level explosions without the ascociated fall out. Rods from God indeed.
True enough the US developed the Pegasus. Launched from an F-15 doing an Icarus impersenation. Its only test was successfull but was against a dumb sattelite with no manouvering capacity. The warhead was a pure kenetic load with limited ability to alter its course once set. The idea was that if we ever needed to deploy them we would expend enough to cause active sattelites to expend their fuel in efforts to avoid the launches highly limiting their usefulness, actual impacts were a bonus. The window of intercept was extremely narrow and it would have been highly impractical if a sattleite had a less limited means of manouevering... or refuleing capacity. Both highly likely attributes of any militarized space platform.
The russians developed sattelites that essentially did the same thing. They would launch them as innocuous commecial loads or something but their true purpose was to intercept targets in orbit to disable them.
Like anything else of that nature its a move and counter move situation. Generally speaking deffense is easier than attack and I doubt that will fail to hold true for space.
Why post that anonymously?
The question of who will guard the guards is one without answer. To have guards or more specifically those with power is to risk that power being abused. Have you the means by which we can continue without them? Until you come up with how we can it reamains that there will continue to be those with power who might abuse it. So would you rather be a guard or be in the position of having to over throw them ? But remember, when you do in fact overthrow them you inherent the exact same problem because voila, your a guard. Can you say Catch 22 boys and girls?
Empires have come and gone. And if history is the end all and be all then yes, sooner or later the fate of the United States of America is to fall from power. That thought warms the cockles of many hearts I have no doubt. But you know, there is another commonality surrounding great historical empires and their demise. An extended period of Chaos following the fall. Witness the USSR for a modern example. The fall of a great Empire has never been a joyous occasion no matter how necesarry the fall. It is an admission of failure. An adimission that we have yet to figure out how to maintain a lasting peace which is fair and just.
Hand the reins to Kevin Smith. I honestly think if he were not capable of pulling it off he would turn it down. He just gets StarWars.
Yep, no WMD in orbit on on other celestial bodies, and no military bases on celestial bodies... None WMD ??? Nope, not in there. Though I suppose WMD could be altered to include mass non-nuclear force resulting from kenetic missles. But not in that treaty.
Care to try again ?
Looks like your right... evidently there is no international agreement at all regarding space weapons. Seems it has largely been a gentlemens agreement. However, I seem to recall space based systems being mentioned in that ABM treaty. As in specifically space based ABM systems.
Dale Brown, yep. I think he did a decent job of showing both the good and the bad with regards to the possibilities.
1) Like it or not the US no longer holds to the no weapons in space treaty. Bush pulled out of that a couple years ago. So everyone stop whining about Bush breaking international treaties. I don't like him either but at least focus on what he is really doing.
2) Space is the high ground making it highly strategic. All in all I think the US is better suited to handling the power of being first more than say China. ESA would be a good candidate too but they are pretty damn happy to sit back and let the US handle all the shit jobs and ensuing flak.
3) Very surprised nobody has put together the other obvious piece in this puzzle with Griffon announcing a major new initiative by NASA to deploy space based nuclear reactors. Lasers in space have to have gigantic sources of power... Solar arrays are not very feasible and they remove darkside firing. Nuclear power will provide both power for weapons and propulsion that does not exist today. At the very least this will bring about serious space based observation platforms. Think AWACS in Geosync over a Theater of operations. One of the military thriller wirters used that for a book a while back... can't remember which one but the title was Silver Tower.
4) for the gravel in space folks. Granted it can be effective... but I am not sure you grasp just how big an area you are talking about. Also, if you grasp orbital mechanics you will understand anything that is a continual problem (ie remains in orbit) you can match orbits with it to remove danger (small relative differences in velocities) or launch clean up efforts.
5) For those that think space is silly considering you need ground troops I suggest you read up on what people thought about air power prior to WWII. A single laser system with a good rate of fire, capable of tracking an air target long enough to destroy it will alter the face of war in a way not seen since the introduction of mechanized assault. If it cost 100 billion to develop and 100 billion to launch it would be cheap. Check out the cost of the air force... then consider such a weapon could theoretically render it obsolete. Make it like mounted Calvary taking on tanks.
Pointless really... would take an obscene amnount of propellent to noticeably increase the damage.... and make it alot more expensive. Other than getting the things up there in the first place this is pretty cheap stuff.
Hey I don't normaly supply refference material because it almost always breaks down into a my source is better than your source debate. As you may have noticed I only use what I am supplied with. However, I think here is a good neutral source regarding the art of root kit detection.
t reveal.shtml
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/rootki
Supplies a very good discussion about how you detect rooted systems. I think we probably had a miscommunication about what constitutes single machine detection. As we have both said, cleaning yourself from the inside of a compromised active kernel is impossible, but this dosn't mean you need another system in order to get 'outside'. Software just controls the beast (hardware) And if you have the power over the plug you have ultimate power over what controls the beast and at that point you just have to be able to verify your system... or wipe it. A problem if you have general use files that are not clean/backed up. Not such a big deal for a single purpose machine. This is not an insane cost activity... really just a day in the life of a sysadmin under fire.
Ok getting close to going in circles here... did have a couple replies regarding how you clean infected systems, and regarding OCR/Optical Scan
I am wondering what level of understanding you have regarding a system boot? The system has to load from somewhere. The start of that chain is the BIOS. You use the BIOS to point to a bootable section of the hard drive. That was why I said worst case you need a fresh drive and a freshly flashed bios. Thus a flashed bios set to boot a ROM cd with a knoppix distro (free) will give you clean access to the infected hard drive (you never boot the infected system that is stored on it and you cleaned the BIOS eliminating its ability to bootstrap itself). The malicious code cannot remain resident in RAM becaue that is volitale memory and is lost when you shut down power. The clean hard drive is just for convienience of mass storage for refference info... can do the same with a bootable DVD in most cases now.
This is not expensive and is one of the more common ways to clean a really nasty infection. No second system needed... a usb hard drive and a knoppix cd. Just as there is always a way to compromise a system, there is always a way to clean it. The principle is the same, only in reverse. IE code can always be compromised, even malicious code!
Also, you are confusing the difficulty of cleaning a general use system against one with a single purpose. Even using a standard PC architecture, if you design the system to be one for a given use (meaning its refference for assuring it is clean never changes) it is very possible to keep tabs on it. Unless there is an avenue of access included in the refference you use to verify the system. Again an added new compromise must change 1's and 0's.
Optical scan and OCR are the same thing... though in the case of reading marked ovals it is a more primitive tech. I was reffering to a process Schenier favored with a printed ballot by the machine after the voter filled out their info on the screen. In some cases it was placed into a box, in some cases presented behind glass to be verrified by the voter.
you said:
"1) User votes on-screen
2) Receipt is printed
3) User verifies and accepts receipt
For optical scan:
1) Ballots are mass-produced
2) User marks ballot
3) Ballot is scanned
4) User verifies and accepts scan results on-screen.
There's no analog-to-digital conversion in the former case at all - just a redundant check that the vote is correct. In the latter case, there is OCR, which is checked on the screen as well."
In both scenarios you did not list the final tally. Voter verfication is all fine and good but it dosn't mean squat till the vote enters the final count.
The former is a lead parachute if there does not exist a way to count the paper receipts. Your margian of error must accept the weakest link in the counting process. In this case a digital - analog - hand count. Or if you use machines to count them as well digital - analog - digital - count. If the printed reciept is just for voter confidence it is meaningless to the final count unless you use it to back up the digital - digital count. Only now you have a system with as high as 5% error that will NEVER corelate one to one with a digital to digital count (ok lottery odds it will). Now your confidence is +-5%. You gained nothing adding computers and introduced your paranoia that someone will then manipulate that 5% error in their favor by compromising the code in use. In otherwords the worst of both worlds.
Now the truly puzzling thing to me is this. You grant that there may be a better solution than paper but do not think there is any reason to find it? To me that is like someone wondering why you would ever try to replace the horse. What is this devotion to wood pulp? I am simply failing to comprehend this view point and I am realy curious as to why. Paper ballots are aything but easy and cheap to deal with, its just a process that has 'always' been there. There are serious scale problems with them which we are encountering and have been for some time. The time to find the next solution isn't when the current one breaks. It is well in advance so we can have a smooth transition.
Self inspection is possible, though I suppose that depends on your deffintion of self inspection. Clean ROM programs loaded instead of from system storage... like a Knoppix boot. Kind of making a seperate system out of the infected system. Think we are just arguing semantics on that. You never trust the information you get directly from an infected system, you must find someway to get clean info. Worst case scenario ? You need a flashed bios and a second hardrive in addition to access to clean refference info.
Now if your talking a single system completely on its own with no means of verifying against a clean refference ? That case is indeed impossible. Like picking yourself up by your shoelaces.
For the printout I was suggesting that the printer creates a small 'error' if you will. Perhaps something that looks like spurious ink, perhaps it just alters a barcode (if utilized) Perhaps it uses a differnt font for the letter o that is is essentially unnoticeable to the eye but which signals the OCR software to interpret differently. Devious Enough ? If someone were then silly enough to add something like a test or calibration flag the ocr software could detect then it could then act nice when in 'testing/calibration' mode. Would make it one hell of a gremlin to chase down.
The power of an audit is undeniable and I have never said you don't need one. I have simply said paper is not the only answer. Your response and those of people like Schneier and those he reffer too simply are saying right now there is no better solution. Can't say I am inclined to disagree with that for the present. I am saying there is probably a better solution. Rome werent built in a day and finding a digital alternative to a technology that has 3000 some odd years of improvements might take a while.
Now if you really like that article you linked to take a moment and apply his logic and you might see why I feel the way I do.
Here is the process of counting an OCR printout. Mark digitally, turn into an analog printout, read analog printout to creat a digital mark in order to tally the vote. To count by hand you mark digitally to creat an analog print out to count by hand. Now in a pure digital system (given you solve the code security issue ) is mark digitally to count digtially. By Schneier's own logic that is the system with the most potential accuracy as it entails the fewest steps and thus fewest chances for error. He also champions digital as the best way to have less voter intent error. He only goes for the compromise because no one has a solution to the integrity problem and we can't go back to just physcial marking and counting. Not because it can't be accurate, but becasue it is just to damn slow for the modern world.
On a side note, I really hope they never go for the national ID tie in. Unless they use it such that it does not store vote history and it cannot be tied to votes in any manner. Giving up the anonymous vote would make it pretty easy to make a secure digital voting system... but I think the cure would be worse than the disease.
Like I said, we have different fundamental assumptions about the problem. Perhaps one day your conclusions will be fully born out, or perhaps one day mine will. Only time will tell.
;-) Like I said... you can't have it both ways... before you know it your going to be making my arguemnts on this particular issue!!! I conceed a human undetectable alteration leaves an accurate hand recount as a possibility. But in most systems right now if the hand recount and machine recount were seriously out of whack it would just invalidate the election.
Perfect (undetectable) rooting can only happen in one of two ways. 1, it happens upstream thus your baseline of comparison is poisoned. 2, it is due to a similar inherent flaw that allows the deviant to come at will and then leave nothing behind. Anything else requires a change in 1's and 0's and thus is detectable. Really that simple... in theory.
Realistic use of a machine dictates that it is a moving target and thus there is a certain amount of noise for an added rootkit/backdoor to hide in. However, that dosn't stop you from vetting the rest of the system via baseline comparison. What can't be vetted is nuked. That leaves you only with how certain you are your baseline is uncompromised.
Back to the printouts... hmmm, I'll be as paranoid as you for a second and claim an essentially undetectable alteration to the printout (via human means) that means the vote is registered in the OCR software differntly than what it 'says'
K, paranoia aside, a machine which provides all the input error checking and essentially eliminates voter input error along with a printout that they verify against what they entered on the screen and then place in the ballot box seems to satisfy you. For now I'll keep the printed receipt until I can figure out how to improove on it. I'd feel even better if there were some way of validating the printed ballot in the presence of the voter (no poor print job etc...).
My problem with purely paper ballots? They are easy to invalidate (punch a few extra holes, make extra marks), easy to destroy (they didn't vote) and easy to forge. You are not excercising your paranoia here to the same degree you do with code if you think not. Frankly, if none of that were the case then why do we go to such efforts to assure it dosn't happen? You don't trust code cause you don't trust people. Yet you must trust people at every step of the way in a paper system. I find that a very odd stance. Granted election rigging in the modern world tends to be a bit more subtle than ballot destruction/alteration. We have moved the process more upstream. But then that is really nothing new either (poll tax, tests etc...). Hell if you ask me the biggest election fixing method in place right now is the voter registration process. A paperless code based system has the potential to remove people from everything except making the code and inputing the votes. That is its appeal to me. And I think it is more than a worthy enough goal to expend a nickle or two to attain.
What can I say... Huuked on fonix werked fore me ;-)
Hmmm new friend to look for now. I wish they had other categories for assigning relationships on Slashdot... I want one for people who I find inteligent and worth a read. Welcome to the list of the few people I encounter on here capable of thinking past their own opinion.
All in all I think it boils down to this.
I think digital only security is obtainable.
You don't.
I didn't feel I had to detail why a paperless system is CAPABLE of counting votes better than paper ballot counting systems. Do you really think the code to actually count is difficult ? I really thought you accepted that, just that ensuring the integrity of the process was to difficult. If you really think you can't even make a system that can count better please say so cause I can address that. That is trivial. Assuring the integrity of the process is the bitch. Counting votes is a hell of alot easier than computing compound intrest.
Detecting a rooted system is hard from the rooted system but not impossible. Fairly easy from an unaffected system capable of monitoring. In short, the code has to alter, the info has to alter and thus there are ways to track it if its something you gaurd properly against. Granted that only works so long as the tracking method remains uncompromised. As for how from a rooted system?? Using something like Knoppix on a rooted windows box is pretty damn handy just for one example...and it works pretty good on Linux boxes as well if you know what your about. Course knowing what to look for is a bitch but worst come to worst you wipe it and start over with a clean backup. As for thinking I wouldn't go to such lengths ??? Poor assumption on your part though in general I know what you mean.
Regarding printouts: If your fear is manipluation of code, and code is responsible for a printout, then the printout is suspect. In other words I am not suggesting un-printing anything, you simply make the printout say what you want it to via nefarious manipulation of the code. Seems to me only a person created mark guarded by opposed and nuetral parties is safe by your standards. For a paper system I couldn't agree more. Paper is easily forged and easily destroyed. Perhaps digital is easier though. However, paper itself is just a technology. It can be improved on like any other. I suppose the possibility exists that paper represents the ultimate in voting integrity assurance technology, but I doubt the odds are in its favor.
Diebold......... *steam from ears* don't get me started on that bunch of Morons/Sleazeballs. Do not judge what is possible by their ineptness... or out right attempt to provide rigable elections.
You and your experts have a very high standard. If a similar level were applied to a paper system I feel it would also fail. Again, the system does not have to be perfect. Only difficult enough to foil that people trust it. Right now I would say we are at the very begining of being able to do so with a paperless system. An honest coder could easily put together a system that counted far more accurately than current systems. As soon as we figure out how to do so safely and securely it can and will be implemented... in fact given the idiocy of the crap put in place by diebold we are going to push it along to fast and the resultant mess will probably keep us saddled with the pain of paper counting for many years to come. Hopefully we can avoid creating another period in which election integrity is highly questionable. However, if it does happen it will be far from the first time and I doubt the last time it happens.
Actually the raw materials in space are indeed worth that and quite a bit more besides. Not that it matters, we don't have the appetite to use them on that level. The other problem of course is that right now it would cost too much to get at them... IE dosn't matter if there is a trillion dollars worth of iron in an asteroid if it costs 2 trillion to harness it.
Though if you want a potential real source of money? He3 is probably the best current candidate. Extrodinarily rare on the Earth it is by comparison plentiful on the moon. It is important becaues its Fusion byproducts when fused with deuterium create a charged result which is then easily contained and harnessed by magnetic fields. H - H or H to other isotopes of He don't. Reduces shielding, raises potential conversion efficiencies etc. If the powerplant can be made to harness it the potential reward for He mining will probably make Middle East oil proffits look paltry by comparison. Though being able to build the ractor is a pretty big stumbling block.
We want to get out of Low Earth Orbit but that can't be done until the CEV is operational and Shuttle is dead and Station declared completed. This is because Shuttle represents a 1/3 to 1/2 of NASAs bottom line budget and ISS another 1/5 or so. Short of a major budget increase, NASA cannot throw real money at a new program until Shuttle is axed and ISS is down to support mode rather than construction. Most every thing else in the budget is penny ante in comparison and the political fallout of axing them is not worth the gain of re-allocating the money.
Key points.
Shuttle Dead in 2010. Before if possible.
ISS final configuration from a shuttle launch standpoint is being re-considered. This is perahaps the biggest driver of a 2010 retirement date. Current requirements mandate that pretty much as a minimum. Robotic launches being considered for completing delivery of components.
CEV developement cycle drasticly reduced. Operational no later than shuttle retirement. Translation: Sounds like if they can get CEV ready Shuttle will die then if a new final config is confirmed for ISS.
Step up Space Nuclear Power. It is a must for manned sapce exploration beyond earth/moon and for any kind of permanent moon outpost of any real scale. If we don't have it ready by the time the CEV is we will have to wait on it before doing much more than flags and footprints again.
Re-evaluate the decision to not service Hubble after RTF missions so that a more informed opinion on the safety risks invovled can be made. Key here really is the decision not to kill budgeting for keeping the service mission an option. (ie the cost is mostly in the parts development and testing, not launch). Thus NASA can't re-appropriate that money for use elsewhere in the budget until the decision is re-afffirmed after return to flight... OR they decide it is a reasonable risk after all at which point all money for anything other than de-orbit will be re-apportioned in the budget. Smart move for money by Griffon. Regardless it keeps the money in for FY 06 as we will most likely not complete analysis of the two RTF missions till after the end of FY'05. So that means the money can't simply be axed off the NASA budget, it can go somewhere else. At 350 million it isn't chump change to a budget starved program.
Keep some other political programs on life support (education etc...) to keep some senetors happy.
Rob Peter to pay Paul. In order to do anything NASA has to cut somewhere. The only major areas of funding are space science, manned space operations and ISS. Already covered that two are pretty secure. Space science fundign is increasing but existing programs are largely getting the shaft for now with a promise to get picked up on the back end. IE thats what it means to delay some programs till after meeting exploration goals in the short term. So my guess is the telescopes are going to take a hit and that is why they are going to re-consider Keeping Huble limping along to possible keep a gap from happening or at least moving the gap already planned a few years farther along.
NASA will bug congress to allow purchasing more Russian launch capacity. Nasa paid for Soyuz missions are about spent and right now we can't give the RSA any more for launches. Not played very large in the statement but that is a big issue in current ISS operations and one that needs to be addressed.
Hell with sci fi... our history argues strongly that there will be eugenics wars. What do you think the Nazi's were about with the final solution ?
Hell for a long time it was accepted that white and black people could not live peacefully together.
As for augmentation. That will happen as soon as the technology is mature enough and there are advantages to be gained. Case in point. Cosmetic surgery. Next step, Cosmetic Genetics. It will happen. They are already looking into implanted eye sight. While nobody in their right mind would opt for that over natural eyesight right now what happens when you can have 20 megapixel resolution with low light capacity and 20X zoom as an implant?
On a side note about the vision implant thing... that is a very very very interesting tech if it ever really works at a useable level. Cause at that point you have a possible brain machine interface because you can put a processor in the loop. So say you see someone, the signal goes to you brain and a processor. Processor recognises the image (say a person) and then displays that information through the interface to the implant. Bingo you have terminator vision. Now lets go one step futher. Are you aware that you can subvocalize voice ? IE without talking you still make the signals to be encoded that can be picked up on by sensors. Voice reconition software is primitive but is farther along than machine vision implants. Advance them several generations down the road (incremental advance not revolutionary) and suddenly you have a real human/machine interface capacity.
/*SARCASM
Well obviously if a paper ballot and mechanical/hand counting is so great then there are absolutely no problems with it.
SARCASAM*/
Can you at least accept that there are problems with a paper ballot system? Reasons why it might be a good idea to look for a better solution? You think they are good enough and I think they have to much inherrent error. BEFORE you even get to the issue of possible vote manipulation. When there is no alternative the error level is acceptable. However it no longer remains the case that there might not be another alternative.
That an electronic system would have less intrinsic error is a given. It has been proved again and again and again where computers have taken over. I grant that the security of the process is not nearly so cut and dried.
Your fear of single access power is the same thing that has scared people about powerful computer control of numerous enterprises. By and large they have been silly fears. This does not mean they are not real/possible. But overall I place it at a similar sticking point to currency as regards the old gold standard vrs the dollar standard.
It dosn't have to be perfect. Perfection is impossible in ANY system. The process of manipulation simply has to be accepted as reasonably hard enough and reasonably possible to catch that people feel comfortable placing their trust in the system. If you have antilock brakes or have ever ridden in a vehicle with them you place this faith in a computer every time you climb into something that uses them. Anytime you have landed in a commercial airliner in bad weather you have placed your life in the hands of a piece of code subject to all the manipulations of which you are frightened will manipulate a paperless voting system.
Your manipulation system for rootkitting altering and deleting means people who do such things are never caught right? Hmm not quite the case is it. It is also dependent on access. So you can't implement an unconnected sealed voting machine that isn't practical to be manipulated on site ?
Bank system paper trails are largely iron parachutes. They only work to your standard of security so long as the paper generated is out of the control of the computers involved... like checks. But for purely electronic transfers? Your applying a double standard if you think a paper trail generated from an electronicly generated transfer process (printouts) counts. Those can be manipulated as well. Furthermore they are largely meanginless warm fuzzies because realistically the modern banking system (stockmarkets in particular) could not be kept up with at the modern level of transactions if we ever had to backup the computer systems on a one to one level with hand/mechanical counting. In otherwords the process has to be largely trusted at some level in order to be able to spot check it with generated printouts. if the entire system came under suspicion it wouldn't work. They also work because they trust the integrity of their historical data. A major method of capturing alterations (like the addition of a rootkit to a system)
A voting machine tied to the net in a general accessible manner or having standard access ports without observation kept on them would be absolutely silly. You seem to think its the only option. You seem so aware of all the possible areas of threat to an electronic system. Is your imagination also not up to the task of perhaps conceiving solutions to those problems?
A good single write memory system would make for a pretty damn secure kernel and vote storage medium.
A standalone voting communication system not tied to the net would be necesarry... or hell go with sneaker net from the voting halls same as they do with current ballot systems to central counting systems.
No standard voting format. IE democrats always counted from x input on y machine.
I pose you a challenge. I am going to propose a machine and you not only point out weaknesses but also point out how they might be avoided (in an elec
Most of your issues are wrapped up in willingness to accept the current process which is in and of itself a form of technology worship. Technology is not limited to electronic manipulation of 1's and 0's. What we have is just the accepted implimentation of established technology. Before saying I am simply worshiping at the alter of technology I ask you to please step away from the alter of ludite thoughts regarding the implementation of new technology in important areas. I am not suggesting it should be done without all due care, or that we should rush to blindly implement it just because we can. I simply said that decalring electronic voting bad because the possibility for malfeasence exists is silly.
,almost to the point of the results of the damn election regardless of how honestly/accurately the votes are counted, that trust is what is important. If nobody trusts the process then it dosn't matter if it was honestly counted to the last vote. Government by election is ultimately an issue of trust.
As for your points.
Voter verification happens the exact same way it happens now. By verfying your marks on the ballot. You seem to think verifiable marks can only be a physical hole, or ink mark on a piece of paper. They can just as easily be colored pixels on a display. Obviously malfeasence in the code can render this useless. IE display one thing and register another in the final count. The same problem exists with paper ballots. There is no way short of physically remaining to monitor your vote booth from then to counting to actually seeing your specific ballot tabulated correctly (impossible unless it is marked with some form of identification) by the officialy entered into the deciding tabulation. A paper ballot is not inherently safer than a digital display for verifiation of your vote. It is just a process which we accept to be fairly implemented.
IE I verify that I punched a hole next to my candidates name and therfore I am confident that I voted for my candidate means that you trust your correctly marked ballot will be counted in the way you intend it to be.
Verifying a selection on a screen with trust in the counting process leaves you with just as much possibility to verify your vote at the booth if not more. IE your mark may well be the selection of a name which includes a picture of the candidate you have selected next to the question of who do you want to vote for in a given election.
Transparency of the counting process is so damn important specifically because it is so easy to fake a paper ballot. Swap ballot boxes for stuffed boxes, etc. Again these are risks you are acclimated to and feel adequate measures have been put in place for thus you trust them. More than anything
Physically altering a paper ballot or substituting a replacement is childs play compared to knowing how to alter code that is protected. Accessing the code probably much more difficult than access to a box. The threat of course is that if you do have such knowlege and access you can affect more than just a single ballot source. Physcial election rigging is a man power intensive operation.
"3. Is a machine recount as trustworthy as a neutral, transparent, observed by all interested parties HAND recount?"
Yes if the program code and data integrity is verified and accepted by all interested parties, nuetral observers etc...
Hand recounting has a margian of error ascociated that cannot be avoided due to simple human error. Also no observation is 100%, it is completely impractical. In fact all observation of a major recount or a major election are fractional by nature.
Can digital voting be manipulated? Yes. Can it also provide a better counting system? Most certainly. In a correctly implemented system purely from a vote counting standpoint it stands to virtually eliminate all margians of errors and provide for more accurate error checking on the fly. Did more votes get counted than are possible due to the number of registered voters ? Trivial to check with a digital system. One which MUST accept some level of counting error in a physcial paper counting process by any means (hand or machine counted).
Please explain, if you would, what are these shockingly obvious bedrock principles to which you are reffering?
Offhand I suppose at least one thing you are reffering to would be the supposed importance of a physical paper trail that allows for an audit and re-count. I fail to see how digital storage fails to allow for an audit or recount. Paper and digital storage both provide the ability to recount and one is near instentaneous, the other requires a machine process with a high (by comparison) margian of error and ballot rejection, a hand recount has even higher inherent rates of failure, not to mention it comes with the possibility of biased counters.
Both systems provide the possibility of malfeasence. BOTH. Ballots can be falsified. Bits can be changed. No matter what you do there is room for foul play so don't just say it can be manipulated and thus is an untennable system. You need to show very clearly how the potential abuse is WORSE than the current system. Current systems are pretty damn open to manipulation... for example it is pretty common for dead people to vote in US elections.
There are positives to digital voting as well. Counting errors would no longer be an issue. No hanging chads, no improperly filled out ballots. No time delays. All efforts at validating the results can be put into verifying the integrity of the data.
That being said I think most of the E-vote systems have be horribly implemented and have been done so in ways such as to maximize the potential for the abuses of which you seem frightened (rightfully so). But that is not to e-voting cannot be safely implemented.
The Clear Channle takeover and FCC overpowering free speech has pretty damn near killed any real future for legacy broadcast radio in the US. What is the future ? I am thinking sattelite really isn't a serious contender barring a major overhaul of space based infrastructure. Its advantage now is badnwidth but I think its disadvantage in the future is bandwidth. Expensive gear and monthly fees etc... What I do see picking up along with WIFI is seeing internet radio's start to creep out into the world away from computers.
It(net radio) has a great deal of the same properties that launched early radio... its highly democratic with low entry requirments. Only now instead of horizon limitations on braodcast capacity and unique tunning capacity you now have all of cyberspace to send a digital stream to. As Wi-Fi gets bigger and constant data connection moves into more and more devices my guess is that internet based and not proprietary sat based radio is going to go big.
We need a domain purely for radio broadcast feeds and build "radio's" that can sort through and request those feeds via wireless connections. It is this requesting process that will ultimately cause sattelite problems... just the same as it does when using sattelites to provide net connectivity. They can broadcast a good fixed stream but they still can't be very responsive to a large number of individual requests. The broacast bandwidth is greater than radio, but selection is still less than the internet. Additionally getting a show carried by sattellite has a pretty high entry requirment.
Off hand for a timeline I would say it will not be far behind VOIP mobile phone solutions. Radio's biggest market is the commute so once you solve handovers from station to station sufficient to carry on conversations via VOIP you create the capacity to listen to a feed from hot spot to hotspot.... only now you can listen to ANY feed provided you have a connection instead of just being limited to what is broadcast withen range.
Actually if this is anything like the one in the RCA Lyra its less to do with idocy and more to do with a real difficult action. I had the chance to take one apart and the battery simply isn't designed to be removed. In the case of the lyra it was firmly adhered to the hardrive in a flexible casing that actually tore when being slowly and very very carfully seperated... to do it right you probably needed some kind of solvent... and that wouldn't have been any more fun trying to keep it off the circut board.
Seeing as the Lyra is like twice the size of a pod I can only imagine how much more packed a Pod is on the inside.
Love that sig.... best line in that whole game.
How to deal with shift work ?
Working all hours of the day personally I think there is a major issue here of how to deal with people working none prime hours. 2am is roughly lunchtime for a lot of people and 7am miller time.
Noise ordinances are pretty sticky things to enforce when you start encountering things like this. Living in an apartment I used to not be able to play my stero above a wisper on my days off if I kept to my night shift routine.... yet people didn't think anything about blasting away during the day when I was trying to sleep even when they knew about my schedule. Then there are things like grounds crew running weed whackers outside my damn window.
Still have the lawn machine problem now that I live in a house but at least I can watch movies with the sound cranked a little now at odd hours.
Neo-confederate spin work or not it is pretty well accepted that upon the signing of the constitution there was a serious question about the balance of power between the federal government and states rights. Most historians seem to agree that a conflict was inevitable. It was simply a question of what issue would be powerfull enough to bring the issue to a head and force a resolution.
Tragicly, though unsurpisingly, that issue was Slavery and it was sufficiently polarizing that it led to blows rather than allowing for a peacfull resolution. I agree so called neo-confedrates do most anything to try and divert attention from the simple fact that the confederate deffense of states rights was inextricably intertwined with a deffense of slavery. However, your not doing much better in asserting to the opposit extreme, that it was all about slavery.
Personally I hold to three views regarding the "War of Northern Agression". One, The South was wrong to maintain slavery in any shape form or fashion. If they had wanted to retain the high ground they should have freed their slaves AND succeeded. Two, the federal government had the trump card in the upholding of the self evident truths laid out in the Decleration of Independence for all people. Three, the federal government did not really use that trump. The north went to war and doggedly maintained it largely because Lincoln was right in that the maintaining of the union was more important than anything... INCLUDING slavery.
It is a well esstablished that Lincoln would have given in on slavery in a heartbeat if it had meant the ceasation of hostilities and re-unification. The concept that the war was only about slavery is pretty damn ludicrous when the man largely responsible for the Unions Resolve decalred it largely a side issue to the task at hand... and it is massively ironic to me that he is perhaps remembered as much, if not more for the emancipation proclimation rather than his resolve to maintain the union. Slavery was a dead end. Whether the South won or lost it would never have survived. The same cannot be said of the Union.
The underlying causes and issues surrounding the Civil War are anything but simple, or cut and dried. Statements to the contrary are just plain troll bait. It is a shame that such a polarizing issue so completely taints the discussion becasue there are some very important issues of government to study in the lead up to and results after the war. Few people ever get past the "black and white" issue of slavery.
Yes, but only on THIS timeline. On others its an entirely differnt story.
Damn it man what are you thinking posting Anonymously? Put up a link for the openings at least... sheesh.