How the hell was this ever modded insightful. This is meant as an augmentation to the scrolling function of the mouse, not a replacement for the mouse/cursor movement.
How about a Windows key to get in your way every time you go to use the left control?
Lay off the coffee, and learn the keyboard layout. The windows key is a very well designed key, imo. Aside from providing quick access to the taskbar and start menu, the windows key shortcuts provide access to core windows functions without confusing applications or users. Win+D: Show Desktop, Win+F: Find, Win+Break: System Properties, Win+L: Lock Station, and there are several more. These shortcuts do not work using the Ctrl+Esc substitute for the Windows key.
With respect to WWW and Email buttons, if they can be reconifigured, these buttons can serve as a keyboard quick launch bar. I had an IBM keyboard with launch buttons and volume controls and it was great until they decided not to write a Win2k driver for it.
Human Interfaces will *always* be a hardware problem, and in many cases, will require a hardware solution. It's just the nature of the beast.
ROFL! The point of the scroll wheel is so that you don't have to move the mouse to the scroll bar! Your software solution does not achieve the same result which the hardware solution does, hence, a new piece of hardware.
As mentioned, that feature is not as ubiquitous as the up-down function of the scroll wheel. I think this is because pressing the scroll wheel can be sent to some applications as a 3rd button press, so Windows does not automatically convert a scroll wheel press into the "scroll all directions thing" unless the program wants to.
So, that's why the manufacturers (and probably even municipalities) are opposed to paper. I don't agree with them -- I believe there SHOULD be paper verification.
There has been no paper verification in my district as long as I have been alive. We used mechanical systems, and switched to electronic voting systems about 4 years ago. Why is paper verification suddenly a neccessity for most people here?
Voting by computer terminal might make it faster to count the votes, but it is more akin to walking up to a sheet and telling the person behind the sheet who you are voting for. You lose the physical evidence of the vote unless there is some direct physical recording made. Regardless of how you desing the system, it is essentially relaying the vote without any direct physical evidence of the vote. Any subsequent recording of the vote is at least once removed from the actual person casting the vote. Unlike with paper ballots or even those horrible punch cards where the ballots are direct physical evidence of the vote.
Why are people so concerned with a copy or record of their vote? Before my district got computer systems for voting, we used huge mechanical beasts. You turned levers for your candidate in each row, then turned a master lever to 'record your vote'. This incremented a counter in the back of the machine, similar to an odometer. You got no paper record. You got no other verification. The only paper used is a small slip with a serial number on it which is used to verify the total votes taken by the machine. Then if Total votes recorded > Total votes taken, you know you have a problem. In fact, the electronic systems work exactly the same. You push a "button" (touch screen) for the candidate you want in each row, then touch the button to submit your vote. The electronic systems also use the paper slip to audit the total number of votes recorded.
Electronic Voting is a bad toy. It delivers one and only one improvement over our existing ballot system: instant returns. That's it. There are no improvements in reliability, security, or oppertunity inherent in electronic voting. I for one am sick of election night being covered like sporting events.
There's a few ideas floating around which are just dead wrong.
1. 'Elections are currently "secure" and "reliable"'. As we saw in Florida, this is far from the case. Also, most people here are ignoring the fact that most election 'rigging' is done outside of the actual voting and counting process. It is done by controlling who is eligible to vote, and who is on the voter registration rolls at the time of voting.
2. 'Instant returns only serve the media frenzy'. If we ever want to move away from a 'representative democracy' or 'constitutional republic' and more towards true democracy, we need to upgrade our infrastructure to allow for more public referenda. The main reason referenda are not used more commonly is because the facilities used to collect the will of the people, voting, are incredibly expensive to setup and count. If we had a system which would allow you to turn a computer on, collect 10,000 votes, and (download them to disk | upload them somewhere | print out a totals sheet | etc.), and then shut the machine off and have the outcome of the vote, we would be able to cut down on the labor cost of elections, and we could more easily shape our government to the will of the people. We may also be able to cut down the run-up time to special elections, such as the California Recall.
The process of democracy wins regardless of which candidate is elected.
The manual printout in the grandparent's case is to provide a paper trail in case of suspected tampering. Then, persons can go back and count the printouts for a verified count. The printout, imo, should not act as a "did the computer read my choices correctly" (as this is a trivial task and is currently not done on electronic voting systems already in place), but should act only as an alternative voting record. In 99.99% of the cases, the computer would still keep the original, electronic, vote tally, and no manual counts would be done.
For how often elections are held, it probably is less work to keep on doing all this stuff by hand than it is to put the safeguards in place that would make machine voting trustworthy.
Actually, you've got it backwards. The reason elections and public referendums are held so infrequently is because of the massive work required to collect and count votes. Without a system which can tally and verify votes quickly, we will never be able to move towards a more "true democracy" which includes increased public referendum.
The simple fact is that you have to trust someone (or some group of people) along this chain, which is very difficult because the incentive to cheat in elections is huge.
The incentive to cheat in elections is the same incentive to cheat in the business world, or if you programmed a racetrack betting system. It's illegal, and people get caught and go to jail.
Everyone around here is talking about rigging elections like it's something that both happens all the time, and something that people take lightly. This just isn't the case! You've all fooled yourself into thinking elections are rigged so that you have an excuse to be lazy and not GO VOTE.
By rigging elections in this post, I mean those types of actions that could be taken on the voting system. There are other forms of rigging, such as mass de-registering minority voters, that will disenfranchise voters whether or not you use a paper ballot or a fancy computer. In fact these are the most common voting abuses, because they are much easier to carry out. This is because the act of voting is strictly audited and witnessed. The act of registration is not as tightly checked, and that allows "mistakes" to occur.
Exactly why won't this work again? Because "people will hack it"? We've had software running tons of mission critical applications, like financial institutions, and people don't seem to be ultra wary of using the ATM. They don't seem to be wary of using online stock trading services. They don't seem to be wary of online loan and housing realtors. What do you bring to back up the statement "a lot of people won't"? My voting district already uses a computer touch-screen system and I am not aware of any polling problems where people were unwilling to use the electronic machines.
You know, that really is going to depend on how the software works. The programmers should have no access to the actual machines to be used (obviously for testing purposes they will need to use the machines). The source code should be reviewed by another agency or company, and some sort of verification procedure (like md5sum) implemented (even if the code is open source, it should be reviewed by an agency or company with documented auditing procedures). A separate group should be loading the software onto machines and verifying the integrity of loaded software. A further separate group (local elections board) should be in charge of configuring the machines for individual elections.
This would not remove all problems of course, but would make it much more difficult to be able to bribe one person or one company and suddenly have full access to this software. We currently have computer programs which do very, very important tasks. We trust these programs with our lives constantly. Auditing, testing, and implementing mission-critical code has been done before, and this is no different.
If you're lazy and wanted to transfer ICQ information between sites, you might just toss it up on some webspace you have, download it from where you wanted it, and then forget about it forever.
That's because you need to fly somewhere soon, not because you're in business. If you had to fly somewhere tomorrow for personal business, you'd be gouged the same way.
1. As said below, the current versions really aren't that great.
2. We like to be able to look away from the screen. If you're working on editing a document, or watching tv at the same time, or have 2 monitors... there are hundreds of situations I can sit here and list where you want to be able to look away from the screen instantly. Video glasses just don't allow us the same flexibility as a monitor does right now. The only application I would use them for now is privacy.
Your points against this system would all be ironed out if it were to be used professionally. All of the equipment would be upgraded above "hobby" level. Small wireless broadcast quality cameras exist - CART uses one inside a driver's helmet. The view is spectacular. AFAIK though, these cameras, and a similar system used in F1, are all LOS. The systems used in auto racing shoot the signal up to TV chopper above. Of course, if the point of using such a system is to eliminate a chopper, then the signal may be able to be broadcast to a trailing vehicle. Last year, when the F1 Digital system was in place, they used trackside recievers for video.
I understand what you're saying.. I still think it's unreasonable. What if we had made such a regulation based on the vinyl lp or magnetic tape? What makes DVD so special? It's just the flavor of the next 5 years.
Why not? Current DVD players already accept CDs. Just take the current DVD writer as a standard and design all new devices to be backwards compatible
Why not? Way too demanding. We cannot predict where data storage technologies will be even 25 years from now. Why tie ourselves into a medium when something which blows it away 1,000 times may not be too far down the line.
Of course if you want to blanket the 9th to everything, you could argue that there's a right to murder too! But alas, my right to murder ends where someone else's right to live begins. It is the same way in the profit vs. privacy argument.
The difference in your situation is public/private. If you want to setup a system to bet on world events, I don't care. If the government wants to setup a system to bet on world events, then it makes a difference.
I'm sick of people comparing this to insurance. In insurance, there are no "put calls" (betting that something bad will happen). Insurance companies do not make money when they have to pay out. They bet solely hoping for nothing bad to occur, so that they can keep collecting premiums. This futures system would allow people to 'negatively speculate', hoping for the next war or assassination.
In order for traffic enforcement to become affective again they have to bump up the fines. When people break the law, most smart ones way the consequences. If the consequence is a small fine then they will risk speeding.
In some states in the US, the true fines aren't small. For most speeding offenses in New Jersey, the base fine is ~100$ (fines are doubled in 65mph and construction zones). This sounds low, but for a 1-15mph offense, you recieve 2 points on your licence (15-30, 4 points, 30+, 5 points). The state does not bother you for having points unless you get over 12, in which case your licence is suspended. On the other hand, insurance companies love licence points. It gives them an excuse to raise your rates. If you recieve a 4+ point offense, the insurance company can add a surcharge of up to $250 per point per year, for up to 3 years after the offense. Points bleed off your licence at 3 per year without an offense, and you can take a defensive driving course to immediately remove 2 points. The course can only be taken once every 5 years. If you do the math, you see that the insurance companies can charge you for points that have been wiped off your record.
For offenses under 4 points, the insurance companies generally do not charge the same type of fees, but legally they still can.
NJ is widely regarded as one of the worst states for auto insurance in the nation. Insurers are lined up at the regulatory offices attempting to leave the state, wishing to just drop their current customers. The companies that are staying don't want any new customers, and laws had to be enacted to force insurers to take customers with clean driving records. Of course, the most minor driving offense in the past 3 years, even if you have no points, makes an "unclean" record.
I, for one, would love to see the points system tossed out the window (or disallow the insurance companies to charge based on it), and have traffic fines be ~300-500$. It would make getting a ticket much easier, as once you paid the fine, you wouldn't be hit 6 months later when the insurance bill comes. It would also free up municipal courts because many people will attend court to plea to a lesser charge. Until recently, there was a blanket law that allowed prosecutors to charge large fines (~$300) with no points. This guaranteed the money went to the state/municipality and not the insurance companies. The insurance lobby had this law repealed so that almost all convicted moving violations would be guaranteed points.
But calls from people telling me, Vote for Dayton/Coleman/Ventura/ whoever else is running are the worst kind.
No they aren't. Political calls don't happen all year round, and depending on your area, may not even happen in a given year due to lack of a closely contested race. Marketers, on the other hand, want your money every day.
The timeframe of IPv6 rollout people are talking about extends past where any sane business would still be using the 9x product line. In fact, I would say even today that no sane business should be using the 9x product line.
Slashdot Mirror
How the hell was this ever modded insightful. This is meant as an augmentation to the scrolling function of the mouse, not a replacement for the mouse/cursor movement.
How about a Windows key to get in your way every time you go to use the left control?
Lay off the coffee, and learn the keyboard layout. The windows key is a very well designed key, imo. Aside from providing quick access to the taskbar and start menu, the windows key shortcuts provide access to core windows functions without confusing applications or users. Win+D: Show Desktop, Win+F: Find, Win+Break: System Properties, Win+L: Lock Station, and there are several more. These shortcuts do not work using the Ctrl+Esc substitute for the Windows key.
With respect to WWW and Email buttons, if they can be reconifigured, these buttons can serve as a keyboard quick launch bar. I had an IBM keyboard with launch buttons and volume controls and it was great until they decided not to write a Win2k driver for it.
Human Interfaces will *always* be a hardware problem, and in many cases, will require a hardware solution. It's just the nature of the beast.
ROFL! The point of the scroll wheel is so that you don't have to move the mouse to the scroll bar! Your software solution does not achieve the same result which the hardware solution does, hence, a new piece of hardware.
As mentioned, that feature is not as ubiquitous as the up-down function of the scroll wheel. I think this is because pressing the scroll wheel can be sent to some applications as a 3rd button press, so Windows does not automatically convert a scroll wheel press into the "scroll all directions thing" unless the program wants to.
So, that's why the manufacturers (and probably even municipalities) are opposed to paper. I don't agree with them -- I believe there SHOULD be paper verification.
There has been no paper verification in my district as long as I have been alive. We used mechanical systems, and switched to electronic voting systems about 4 years ago. Why is paper verification suddenly a neccessity for most people here?
Voting by computer terminal might make it faster to count the votes, but it is more akin to walking up to a sheet and telling the person behind the sheet who you are voting for. You lose the physical evidence of the vote unless there is some direct physical recording made. Regardless of how you desing the system, it is essentially relaying the vote without any direct physical evidence of the vote. Any subsequent recording of the vote is at least once removed from the actual person casting the vote. Unlike with paper ballots or even those horrible punch cards where the ballots are direct physical evidence of the vote.
Why are people so concerned with a copy or record of their vote? Before my district got computer systems for voting, we used huge mechanical beasts. You turned levers for your candidate in each row, then turned a master lever to 'record your vote'. This incremented a counter in the back of the machine, similar to an odometer. You got no paper record. You got no other verification. The only paper used is a small slip with a serial number on it which is used to verify the total votes taken by the machine. Then if Total votes recorded > Total votes taken, you know you have a problem. In fact, the electronic systems work exactly the same. You push a "button" (touch screen) for the candidate you want in each row, then touch the button to submit your vote. The electronic systems also use the paper slip to audit the total number of votes recorded.
Electronic Voting is a bad toy. It delivers one and only one improvement over our existing ballot system: instant returns. That's it. There are no improvements in reliability, security, or oppertunity inherent in electronic voting. I for one am sick of election night being covered like sporting events.
There's a few ideas floating around which are just dead wrong.
1. 'Elections are currently "secure" and "reliable"'. As we saw in Florida, this is far from the case. Also, most people here are ignoring the fact that most election 'rigging' is done outside of the actual voting and counting process. It is done by controlling who is eligible to vote, and who is on the voter registration rolls at the time of voting.
2. 'Instant returns only serve the media frenzy'. If we ever want to move away from a 'representative democracy' or 'constitutional republic' and more towards true democracy, we need to upgrade our infrastructure to allow for more public referenda. The main reason referenda are not used more commonly is because the facilities used to collect the will of the people, voting, are incredibly expensive to setup and count. If we had a system which would allow you to turn a computer on, collect 10,000 votes, and (download them to disk | upload them somewhere | print out a totals sheet | etc.), and then shut the machine off and have the outcome of the vote, we would be able to cut down on the labor cost of elections, and we could more easily shape our government to the will of the people. We may also be able to cut down the run-up time to special elections, such as the California Recall.
The process of democracy wins regardless of which candidate is elected.
Ha.
The manual printout in the grandparent's case is to provide a paper trail in case of suspected tampering. Then, persons can go back and count the printouts for a verified count. The printout, imo, should not act as a "did the computer read my choices correctly" (as this is a trivial task and is currently not done on electronic voting systems already in place), but should act only as an alternative voting record. In 99.99% of the cases, the computer would still keep the original, electronic, vote tally, and no manual counts would be done.
For how often elections are held, it probably is less work to keep on doing all this stuff by hand than it is to put the safeguards in place that would make machine voting trustworthy.
Actually, you've got it backwards. The reason elections and public referendums are held so infrequently is because of the massive work required to collect and count votes. Without a system which can tally and verify votes quickly, we will never be able to move towards a more "true democracy" which includes increased public referendum.
The simple fact is that you have to trust someone (or some group of people) along this chain, which is very difficult because the incentive to cheat in elections is huge.
The incentive to cheat in elections is the same incentive to cheat in the business world, or if you programmed a racetrack betting system. It's illegal, and people get caught and go to jail.
Everyone around here is talking about rigging elections like it's something that both happens all the time, and something that people take lightly. This just isn't the case! You've all fooled yourself into thinking elections are rigged so that you have an excuse to be lazy and not GO VOTE.
By rigging elections in this post, I mean those types of actions that could be taken on the voting system. There are other forms of rigging, such as mass de-registering minority voters, that will disenfranchise voters whether or not you use a paper ballot or a fancy computer. In fact these are the most common voting abuses, because they are much easier to carry out. This is because the act of voting is strictly audited and witnessed. The act of registration is not as tightly checked, and that allows "mistakes" to occur.
Doom and Gloom! Doom and Gloom!
Exactly why won't this work again? Because "people will hack it"? We've had software running tons of mission critical applications, like financial institutions, and people don't seem to be ultra wary of using the ATM. They don't seem to be wary of using online stock trading services. They don't seem to be wary of online loan and housing realtors. What do you bring to back up the statement "a lot of people won't"? My voting district already uses a computer touch-screen system and I am not aware of any polling problems where people were unwilling to use the electronic machines.
You know, that really is going to depend on how the software works. The programmers should have no access to the actual machines to be used (obviously for testing purposes they will need to use the machines). The source code should be reviewed by another agency or company, and some sort of verification procedure (like md5sum) implemented (even if the code is open source, it should be reviewed by an agency or company with documented auditing procedures). A separate group should be loading the software onto machines and verifying the integrity of loaded software. A further separate group (local elections board) should be in charge of configuring the machines for individual elections.
This would not remove all problems of course, but would make it much more difficult to be able to bribe one person or one company and suddenly have full access to this software. We currently have computer programs which do very, very important tasks. We trust these programs with our lives constantly. Auditing, testing, and implementing mission-critical code has been done before, and this is no different.
If you're lazy and wanted to transfer ICQ information between sites, you might just toss it up on some webspace you have, download it from where you wanted it, and then forget about it forever.
How is business class travel an example? You pay more, you get more, usually in the form of more personal space or better in-flight amenities.
That's because you need to fly somewhere soon, not because you're in business. If you had to fly somewhere tomorrow for personal business, you'd be gouged the same way.
So why the total lack of demand?
2 reasons:
1. As said below, the current versions really aren't that great.
2. We like to be able to look away from the screen. If you're working on editing a document, or watching tv at the same time, or have 2 monitors... there are hundreds of situations I can sit here and list where you want to be able to look away from the screen instantly. Video glasses just don't allow us the same flexibility as a monitor does right now. The only application I would use them for now is privacy.
Your points against this system would all be ironed out if it were to be used professionally. All of the equipment would be upgraded above "hobby" level. Small wireless broadcast quality cameras exist - CART uses one inside a driver's helmet. The view is spectacular. AFAIK though, these cameras, and a similar system used in F1, are all LOS. The systems used in auto racing shoot the signal up to TV chopper above. Of course, if the point of using such a system is to eliminate a chopper, then the signal may be able to be broadcast to a trailing vehicle. Last year, when the F1 Digital system was in place, they used trackside recievers for video.
I understand what you're saying.. I still think it's unreasonable. What if we had made such a regulation based on the vinyl lp or magnetic tape? What makes DVD so special? It's just the flavor of the next 5 years.
Why not? Current DVD players already accept CDs. Just take the current DVD writer as a standard and design all new devices to be backwards compatible
Why not? Way too demanding. We cannot predict where data storage technologies will be even 25 years from now. Why tie ourselves into a medium when something which blows it away 1,000 times may not be too far down the line.
Yes, but I wasn't the one that said there wasn't.
Of course if you want to blanket the 9th to everything, you could argue that there's a right to murder too! But alas, my right to murder ends where someone else's right to live begins. It is the same way in the profit vs. privacy argument.
The difference in your situation is public/private. If you want to setup a system to bet on world events, I don't care. If the government wants to setup a system to bet on world events, then it makes a difference.
I'm sick of people comparing this to insurance. In insurance, there are no "put calls" (betting that something bad will happen). Insurance companies do not make money when they have to pay out. They bet solely hoping for nothing bad to occur, so that they can keep collecting premiums. This futures system would allow people to 'negatively speculate', hoping for the next war or assassination.
In order for traffic enforcement to become affective again they have to bump up the fines. When people break the law, most smart ones way the consequences. If the consequence is a small fine then they will risk speeding.
In some states in the US, the true fines aren't small. For most speeding offenses in New Jersey, the base fine is ~100$ (fines are doubled in 65mph and construction zones). This sounds low, but for a 1-15mph offense, you recieve 2 points on your licence (15-30, 4 points, 30+, 5 points). The state does not bother you for having points unless you get over 12, in which case your licence is suspended. On the other hand, insurance companies love licence points. It gives them an excuse to raise your rates. If you recieve a 4+ point offense, the insurance company can add a surcharge of up to $250 per point per year, for up to 3 years after the offense. Points bleed off your licence at 3 per year without an offense, and you can take a defensive driving course to immediately remove 2 points. The course can only be taken once every 5 years. If you do the math, you see that the insurance companies can charge you for points that have been wiped off your record.
For offenses under 4 points, the insurance companies generally do not charge the same type of fees, but legally they still can.
NJ is widely regarded as one of the worst states for auto insurance in the nation. Insurers are lined up at the regulatory offices attempting to leave the state, wishing to just drop their current customers. The companies that are staying don't want any new customers, and laws had to be enacted to force insurers to take customers with clean driving records. Of course, the most minor driving offense in the past 3 years, even if you have no points, makes an "unclean" record.
I, for one, would love to see the points system tossed out the window (or disallow the insurance companies to charge based on it), and have traffic fines be ~300-500$. It would make getting a ticket much easier, as once you paid the fine, you wouldn't be hit 6 months later when the insurance bill comes. It would also free up municipal courts because many people will attend court to plea to a lesser charge. Until recently, there was a blanket law that allowed prosecutors to charge large fines (~$300) with no points. This guaranteed the money went to the state/municipality and not the insurance companies. The insurance lobby had this law repealed so that almost all convicted moving violations would be guaranteed points.
But calls from people telling me, Vote for Dayton/Coleman/Ventura/ whoever else is running are the worst kind.
No they aren't. Political calls don't happen all year round, and depending on your area, may not even happen in a given year due to lack of a closely contested race. Marketers, on the other hand, want your money every day.
Is there a constitutional right to privacy that I missed?
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Yes.
The timeframe of IPv6 rollout people are talking about extends past where any sane business would still be using the 9x product line. In fact, I would say even today that no sane business should be using the 9x product line.