But really it would seem all of these companies trying to make "Secure" Evoting work are ignoring the most simplistic rules of security. If you Plug it in It becomes Vulnerable.. Simple There is Absolutly nothing you can do about that.. After you Break that rule the only thing you can do is minimize Risk of security of being breached.
1) Do not use anything/platform that there is an abundant amount of information on in the public domain. 2) Secure All Documenation related to structure and operability of your product.
So far from what I have seen everyone involved in Evoting systems scores a 0 so far. I am no genius but these concepts are very simple and are being overlooked. Just starting from that and having a very good set of programmers that have a good historical background in programming secure systems would lead you off into a great start.
Look at a densely populated area Lets just take Japan cuase its crazy dense and can illistrate my point the best because the numbers are Huge:)
With a population desity of 337 people per Square kilometer(Avg based on landmass vs population) thats Aprox 842,500 People (Saying that coverage is 50 Kilometers By 50 Kilometers to make life easy) Now with only 25 bands Available that leaves 33,700 People a Band. Say only one third of those people use this technology.. That Gives each one of them 1 Minitue a day of use of the band without affecting anyone elses use of that Channel...
There are Many other factors that will make the situation get even worse and some that will make it better.. But it all boils down to The range is Far too large to be effective in any Densely populated area.. Not to mention seeing what people do with 802.11x with highgain anntentas I am sure You could easily imagine a 25%-75% decrease in SNR measuements so available bandwidth will have to drop to make up for interfereing signals.
Just start doing the Math and you will see how it will Fail because the range is far too large... some of the most important factors are (How many people can similtanaenously use 1 band), How many hours are in high demand for use (This is By Far the most important one that I Ignored as I imagine you will only see 10-14 Hours of the day in which you have a large demand for use of the bands), Population Density ect..
You will also have to remember thats only if there are 25 BaseStations in the area your looking at.. If there are more then You will either see Basestations competeing for a Band which will either reduce available bandwidth in that band or cause that band to fail. Also since the range is so large the chances of all the basestations having the exact same proximity are near zero instead you will neext to look at about a 75-100 Kilometer area for Basestations that are competeing for bandwidth/Available Bands.
You should see having such a large area of coverage adds is so many Factors on a scale that is immense its hard to make guessimates.. But ultimatly The massive range is its doom.. Thats why it makes the most sense to put the devices into a licenced Band which can be controlled and regulated and properly engineered for effective useage.. Also turning down the range with Greatly inhance this products viability for use in densely populated areas.
Salesmen should be put to the test and fined when when they start yammering about misleading Information. They should be licenced and have it revoked when they push products based on unfactual information.
I was looking for a Fiber to connect my Dvd player to my Reciver (my SPDIF was allready used or else I wouldn't have bothered going fiber cause its got no real reason to use fiber). I asked the sales guy where the Fibers were that weren't gold plated... He told me they don't stock them cause your allready spending a good chunk of money why not get the best?... What the hell does gold plating do for light transmission... not to mention we tested a bunch of gold plated cables at work one day and they all preformed worse then thier ungoldplated counterparts for similar money.. They were more susceptable to noise interferance among other things....
Basically the non tech savvy are at the mercy of salesmen that don't have the slightest clue about the technology they are selling and only care about selling products that have the highest profit margin/comission. It usually never has to do with meeting customer needs.
Not to mention... How the studies are conducted... Mostly when MS is comparing Windows up against its like comparing Apples to Wax Apples... They can apear to be the same... But How they are used are 100% diffrent. The one study goes on comparing multiple windows boxes against a linux mainframe consolidation server... Umm... Well Linux can run on any platform windows can... why not use the same boxes? (Because it wouldn't produce favorable results for MS)
Where as I think most of the linux vs ms studies that get done are alot more closer to real apples vs real apples. But I haven't seen very many studies at all in detail poing linux over windows.. Its just my guess they are alot closer to a direct comparison than what I have seen in windows vs linux with windows on top.
[Darl] Oh Hey One more thing... Make sure the programmers use as many lines of our code as possible in the trojan so we can get licencing fees later on... I am not 100% sure right now how we will be able to convince the courts to let us get the fees when we sue all the people that get infected but Hey!.. Thats never stopped us before from trying! We all can go and get drunk and see what we can come up with... Come on boys!
True to a limited extent.. Higher Freq usualy has less interference there for you can have much more sensitive reciver... Bandwidth has Little to do with Frequency... Bandwidth has more to do with Signal to noise ratio's (The reason why the further your away from a Telco CO the slower xDSL gets)..
Think of it a bit like yelling in a room... The higher tone someone yells doesn't mean he is telling you more information than a person yelling in a lower tone... But if there are a bunch of people yelling in the same room at the same tone (Or even just random noise at the same tone) It very difficult to understand what is being said. But if someone in a room is yelling in a much higher tone than everyone else and if you try hard enough you can make out what they are saying aslong your in close enough proximity to them and everyone else isn't so loud they completely drown them out... There is more to it.. But thats the basic point
Not to mention I can easily Guess that the transcivers are not for deregulated bands aswell. With a ~50K Range It would be nearly impossible to make it available for home use. Even if the Range was cut down to a mere 3K (Aprox 2 Miles) Spectrum congestion would make it unusable.
The Practices they use and their Business model will be their own demise. We are starting to see fewer and fewer new "Hit" Artists evey year.. How long will it be before these arists come togther when thier Recording Contracts Expire and Form their own Internet Related Distribution system That doesn't bend them over and Comepletely Circrumvent the RIAA... The RIAA is shouting at the top of their lungs Its not about the music.. Its about money... Which for the most part alot of artists do not see it that way.. Money is secondary to the music.
There are a Variety of Reasons to reboot a Windows XP Computer... MS Even Says so when you Add a Patch.. and thats Quite often...So 92 days your system has been up.. That means your most likely running a insecure computer on the net.
Other good reason... its 108 in my Apt cause my Air Cond is dead and my Boxen is still overheating even when its not over clocked.
Also I have had Xp Freeze up on me several times (Running a Stable Hardware Platform)... And don't Whine about it being a bad App... Linux can handle Bad apps without a Shutdown.
Its just like McD's and their 100% Pure beef patties... When they have Alot of Soy and other Stuffs in em... As Long as they use some 100% Beef(Lord forbid walking into the Supermarket and seeing some Ground beef made from 15% Pure beef!) They can mislead the public to think that the patty is all Beef when its Actually not..
I do not find this shocking at all. But what I do find shocking is a "Geek" That trusts a Marketing LIne on a product without Doing some homework... Well Thats what the article is about... But There should be 0% Surprize from the reading public.
Coal is Less than a 1$ a Pound... So they would need to figure out how to transport it back for Alot less than 1$ per pound. I don't think the economics to do it are here yet... I think It will be pretty far off in the future.
Atleast They should all change The MAC address on their NIC and hope that the ISP doesn't keep DHCP logs...
Also on another note... For most high-speed Systems its easy to "Steal" an IP address so that it isn't logged in the DHCP server... Realistically they only thing that a DHCP log show is that the IP Lease was assigned to your Mac Address during the Period they have in question.. I am sure Some ISP's may have some hardware and a customish DHCP server that may log the serial # of the Device your using.. But if there is no Prevtion in place to prevent you from using a IP address that wasn't assigned by the DHCP server then the Logs are worthless and the user is Still anon...
If they were to Spend the comeplete Cost of a Court Case to bring a Big Time Spammer down on funding a open source scaleable Alternitive to SMTP that Plugs up the holes Making Laws would be Moot for a large extent... Sure there would still be some spam but Spammers lives would be drastically affected possibly to a point where its too much trouble and not worth the return.
Even if 5% of the money was spent on Fixing SMTP that is being spent on Anti-Spam Filters and Extra hardware to operate under these spamming conditions It wouldn't be long for it to become mainstream...
Still Yet... SMTP is Still Broken with no Real Viable Fix in the future... There have been a few attempts like Yahoo's and SPF and the.. But no Colabertive RFC with a solid foundation to Force Spammers to abandon most of their underhanded tactics...
Hotmail does seem to have finally gotten a Grip on.. My hotmail has gone down to 2 or less spams a day... whih used to be 80+ a few months ago.
Anythign that Can Run Windows CE can Run Linux... I am pretty sure You would be pretty hard pressed to find a Platform that Runs Windows CE that allready doesn't have a good working port of linux.
Come on now.. I have completely Lost Track of How many Virii spread in this manner... All Attachments should be stored at the source with the descrition of the Admin to delete Infected Files to Prevent Infection..
Infected Files should easily be caught as all of a sudden There is a massive demand for this Attached File... Then It would be suspicious and raise a flag...
I can see them Run over the idea of Canceling the lastest and greatest of the Star Trek TV Genre.. But Something tells me it will result in something similar to what Happen when Coke came out with New Coke... It will inspire Grass Roots of "The Product" and we might actually see more of what Real Trekies Want...
So Far I have found Host File Blocking far better than Pop-up blockers... It Eliminates Cookie Tracking and many other Intrusive things these companies do... Pop-up/Unders are Just a tip of the Iceburg.
All these measures are just going to make Downloading Games more apealing... They will never come up witha way to prevent people from Cracking what ever scheme they try to impliment..
P2P needs a good slogan.. like "Resistance is Futile.. Your Media will Be Assimilated and Distributed"
P2P is here to stay... Instead of fight it Change your business model and make it more convient to pay for the Product rather than grab it off a P2P environment...
Many Companies have tried and been squashed by MS's marketing machine.
Linux has the best chance to really compete because it has no "Marketing" to it... It Sells itself (Free).. There is no real Entity to Squash like a bug as MS has done in the past..
No its not... Its Marketing... Its got nothing to do with the French!
Bytes are Binary Base 2
Thats all there is to it.... If Rounding of the numbers would Project a Smaller Number then it would never be done... Its that Simple.. and Just accepting this new "Marketing" Definition just hands over more power to "Corprate Marketing" giving them the right to redefine anything they wish to Boost Product sales through misleading advertising.
Slashdot Mirror
Today we had a Flawless Failure of the Flash ram maintaining our Perfect Record of Flawless Operation.
No-one Votes No errors can be Made.. Simple!
But really it would seem all of these companies trying to make "Secure" Evoting work are ignoring the most simplistic rules of security. If you Plug it in It becomes Vulnerable.. Simple There is Absolutly nothing you can do about that.. After you Break that rule the only thing you can do is minimize Risk of security of being breached.
1) Do not use anything/platform that there is an abundant amount of information on in the public domain.
2) Secure All Documenation related to structure and operability of your product.
So far from what I have seen everyone involved in Evoting systems scores a 0 so far. I am no genius but these concepts are very simple and are being overlooked. Just starting from that and having a very good set of programmers that have a good historical background in programming secure systems would lead you off into a great start.
Look at a densely populated area Lets just take Japan cuase its crazy dense and can illistrate my point the best because the numbers are Huge :)
With a population desity of 337 people per Square kilometer(Avg based on landmass vs population) thats Aprox 842,500 People (Saying that coverage is 50 Kilometers By 50 Kilometers to make life easy) Now with only 25 bands Available that leaves 33,700 People a Band. Say only one third of those people use this technology.. That Gives each one of them 1 Minitue a day of use of the band without affecting anyone elses use of that Channel...
There are Many other factors that will make the situation get even worse and some that will make it better.. But it all boils down to The range is Far too large to be effective in any Densely populated area.. Not to mention seeing what people do with 802.11x with highgain anntentas I am sure You could easily imagine a 25%-75% decrease in SNR measuements so available bandwidth will have to drop to make up for interfereing signals.
Just start doing the Math and you will see how it will Fail because the range is far too large... some of the most important factors are (How many people can similtanaenously use 1 band), How many hours are in high demand for use (This is By Far the most important one that I Ignored as I imagine you will only see 10-14 Hours of the day in which you have a large demand for use of the bands), Population Density ect..
You will also have to remember thats only if there are 25 BaseStations in the area your looking at.. If there are more then You will either see Basestations competeing for a Band which will either reduce available bandwidth in that band or cause that band to fail. Also since the range is so large the chances of all the basestations having the exact same proximity are near zero instead you will neext to look at about a 75-100 Kilometer area for Basestations that are competeing for bandwidth/Available Bands.
You should see having such a large area of coverage adds is so many Factors on a scale that is immense its hard to make guessimates.. But ultimatly The massive range is its doom.. Thats why it makes the most sense to put the devices into a licenced Band which can be controlled and regulated and properly engineered for effective useage.. Also turning down the range with Greatly inhance this products viability for use in densely populated areas.
Salesmen should be put to the test and fined when when they start yammering about misleading Information. They should be licenced and have it revoked when they push products based on unfactual information.
I was looking for a Fiber to connect my Dvd player to my Reciver (my SPDIF was allready used or else I wouldn't have bothered going fiber cause its got no real reason to use fiber). I asked the sales guy where the Fibers were that weren't gold plated... He told me they don't stock them cause your allready spending a good chunk of money why not get the best?... What the hell does gold plating do for light transmission... not to mention we tested a bunch of gold plated cables at work one day and they all preformed worse then thier ungoldplated counterparts for similar money.. They were more susceptable to noise interferance among other things....
Basically the non tech savvy are at the mercy of salesmen that don't have the slightest clue about the technology they are selling and only care about selling products that have the highest profit margin/comission. It usually never has to do with meeting customer needs.
Not to mention... How the studies are conducted... Mostly when MS is comparing Windows up against its like comparing Apples to Wax Apples... They can apear to be the same... But How they are used are 100% diffrent. The one study goes on comparing multiple windows boxes against a linux mainframe consolidation server... Umm... Well Linux can run on any platform windows can... why not use the same boxes? (Because it wouldn't produce favorable results for MS)
Where as I think most of the linux vs ms studies that get done are alot more closer to real apples vs real apples. But I haven't seen very many studies at all in detail poing linux over windows.. Its just my guess they are alot closer to a direct comparison than what I have seen in windows vs linux with windows on top.
You for got one line of Darls!
[Darl] Oh Hey One more thing... Make sure the programmers use as many lines of our code as possible in the trojan so we can get licencing fees later on... I am not 100% sure right now how we will be able to convince the courts to let us get the fees when we sue all the people that get infected but Hey!.. Thats never stopped us before from trying! We all can go and get drunk and see what we can come up with... Come on boys!
True to a limited extent.. Higher Freq usualy has less interference there for you can have much more sensitive reciver... Bandwidth has Little to do with Frequency... Bandwidth has more to do with Signal to noise ratio's (The reason why the further your away from a Telco CO the slower xDSL gets)..
Think of it a bit like yelling in a room... The higher tone someone yells doesn't mean he is telling you more information than a person yelling in a lower tone... But if there are a bunch of people yelling in the same room at the same tone (Or even just random noise at the same tone) It very difficult to understand what is being said. But if someone in a room is yelling in a much higher tone than everyone else and if you try hard enough you can make out what they are saying aslong your in close enough proximity to them and everyone else isn't so loud they completely drown them out... There is more to it.. But thats the basic point
Not to mention I can easily Guess that the transcivers are not for deregulated bands aswell. With a ~50K Range It would be nearly impossible to make it available for home use. Even if the Range was cut down to a mere 3K (Aprox 2 Miles) Spectrum congestion would make it unusable.
The Practices they use and their Business model will be their own demise. We are starting to see fewer and fewer new "Hit" Artists evey year.. How long will it be before these arists come togther when thier Recording Contracts Expire and Form their own Internet Related Distribution system That doesn't bend them over and Comepletely Circrumvent the RIAA... The RIAA is shouting at the top of their lungs Its not about the music.. Its about money... Which for the most part alot of artists do not see it that way.. Money is secondary to the music.
There are a Variety of Reasons to reboot a Windows XP Computer... MS Even Says so when you Add a Patch.. and thats Quite often...So 92 days your system has been up.. That means your most likely running a insecure computer on the net.
Other good reason... its 108 in my Apt cause my Air Cond is dead and my Boxen is still overheating even when its not over clocked.
Also I have had Xp Freeze up on me several times (Running a Stable Hardware Platform)... And don't Whine about it being a bad App... Linux can handle Bad apps without a Shutdown.
Maybe Its just sitting there with a Blue screen sending a Dr Watson Dump :)
Its just like McD's and their 100% Pure beef patties... When they have Alot of Soy and other Stuffs in em... As Long as they use some 100% Beef(Lord forbid walking into the Supermarket and seeing some Ground beef made from 15% Pure beef!) They can mislead the public to think that the patty is all Beef when its Actually not..
I do not find this shocking at all. But what I do find shocking is a "Geek" That trusts a Marketing LIne on a product without Doing some homework... Well Thats what the article is about... But There should be 0% Surprize from the reading public.
Coal is Less than a 1$ a Pound... So they would need to figure out how to transport it back for Alot less than 1$ per pound. I don't think the economics to do it are here yet... I think It will be pretty far off in the future.
Atleast They should all change The MAC address on their NIC and hope that the ISP doesn't keep DHCP logs...
Also on another note... For most high-speed Systems its easy to "Steal" an IP address so that it isn't logged in the DHCP server... Realistically they only thing that a DHCP log show is that the IP Lease was assigned to your Mac Address during the Period they have in question.. I am sure Some ISP's may have some hardware and a customish DHCP server that may log the serial # of the Device your using.. But if there is no Prevtion in place to prevent you from using a IP address that wasn't assigned by the DHCP server then the Logs are worthless and the user is Still anon...
If they were to Spend the comeplete Cost of a Court Case to bring a Big Time Spammer down on funding a open source scaleable Alternitive to SMTP that Plugs up the holes Making Laws would be Moot for a large extent... Sure there would still be some spam but Spammers lives would be drastically affected possibly to a point where its too much trouble and not worth the return.
Even if 5% of the money was spent on Fixing SMTP that is being spent on Anti-Spam Filters and Extra hardware to operate under these spamming conditions It wouldn't be long for it to become mainstream...
Still Yet... SMTP is Still Broken with no Real Viable Fix in the future... There have been a few attempts like Yahoo's and SPF and the.. But no Colabertive RFC with a solid foundation to Force Spammers to abandon most of their underhanded tactics...
Hotmail does seem to have finally gotten a Grip on.. My hotmail has gone down to 2 or less spams a day... whih used to be 80+ a few months ago.
Anythign that Can Run Windows CE can Run Linux... I am pretty sure You would be pretty hard pressed to find a Platform that Runs Windows CE that allready doesn't have a good working port of linux.
Very Simply Install Linux
But For some Odd Reason Its not in the MS KnowledgeBase... Go Figure!
Come on now.. I have completely Lost Track of How many Virii spread in this manner... All Attachments should be stored at the source with the descrition of the Admin to delete Infected Files to Prevent Infection..
Infected Files should easily be caught as all of a sudden There is a massive demand for this Attached File... Then It would be suspicious and raise a flag...
I can see them Run over the idea of Canceling the lastest and greatest of the Star Trek TV Genre.. But Something tells me it will result in something similar to what Happen when Coke came out with New Coke... It will inspire Grass Roots of "The Product" and we might actually see more of what Real Trekies Want...
So Far I have found Host File Blocking far better than Pop-up blockers... It Eliminates Cookie Tracking and many other Intrusive things these companies do... Pop-up/Unders are Just a tip of the Iceburg.
All these measures are just going to make Downloading Games more apealing... They will never come up witha way to prevent people from Cracking what ever scheme they try to impliment..
P2P needs a good slogan.. like "Resistance is Futile.. Your Media will Be Assimilated and Distributed"
P2P is here to stay... Instead of fight it Change your business model and make it more convient to pay for the Product rather than grab it off a P2P environment...
Many Companies have tried and been squashed by MS's marketing machine.
Linux has the best chance to really compete because it has no "Marketing" to it... It Sells itself (Free).. There is no real Entity to Squash like a bug as MS has done in the past..
So Just because an Advert saying the Sky is Hot Pink its makes it true?
No its not... Its Marketing... Its got nothing to do with the French!
Bytes are Binary Base 2
Thats all there is to it.... If Rounding of the numbers would Project a Smaller Number then it would never be done... Its that Simple.. and Just accepting this new "Marketing" Definition just hands over more power to "Corprate Marketing" giving them the right to redefine anything they wish to Boost Product sales through misleading advertising.