Please note the word "independently" in my comment. True accessible voting means that I don't have to "trust" someone else. In this scenario, I'm trusting that Billy-Bob is going to mark the ballot the way I want.
Let's see... trust Diebold or Billy-Bob... Diebold... Billy-Bob... How is that any different, other than I may know for certain that Billy-Bob is an idiot, and just suspect this to be the case for a voting machine vendor?
What if all my relatives are Republican and I'm the lone Libertarian? How do I *know* that my vote is cast the way I want? Well, for THAT to happen, you have to have bipartisan review of the Billy-Bob-marked ballot with me.
Now I've lost privacy.
"Hey Frank! The blind guy wants to make sure that we've correctly recorded his vote for Pat Paulsen. Can you come over here and witness this with me?" Fortunately, I've not seen this first-hand. Sadly, I've heard horror stories similar to this.
Now, on top of that, you've got voters will other accessibility needs too. What about the person who can't hold a pencil, but has can use a "sip and puff" device or other means to mark it? There's a whole raft of people that are in this boat, and even if you discount them, the blind population is a pretty big boat.
If you think independence and privacy are not big deals for disabled-access communities, you should try building and selling a product geared toward them. We regularly trivialize the needs of people with any number of disabilities. Whether you meant to or not, saying "all you have to do is..." just trivializes their needs even more.
There are many other problems with paper ballots, as implemented today. Paper ballots suffer from (among others): Inconsistent (and expensive) implementation of ballot rotation, cross-endorsed candidate voting errors (blocking/detecting someone voting more than once for the same person in a vote-for-N contest), variations in straight-party voting, and a whole range of problems detecting voter intent.
Electronic voting (as implemented today) unfortunately replaces those problems with a set that is (frequently) much worse, such as counting errors, security-through-obscurity, and the potential for fraud.
At the same time, you have the complication (in the U.S.) of each state determining local election law. There isn't one global set of rules (outside of HAVA and guidelines for federal certification, which not all states use) for a vendor to go by. There are 50.
As long as any voting mechanism provides a voter-verifiable paper trail (VVPT), all is good. In theory, electronic voting *could* provide this, along with better security than we get with paper. In practice, it's not there yet.
How then do you suggest that we handle voters with accessibility needs? If I'm blind, how will I get to vote independently and privately? Why is it that someone who has normal vision gets that right, but I (if I'm blind) do not?
For all the stupidity that surrounds it, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) at least tries to address the fact that a large percentage of Americans have been denied a basic right in voting since... well, since we started counting votes.
Come up with a way to handle this without technology, and people might listen. Now, that doesn't suggest that all the dorky things that are out there make sense, but it does suggest that solving this problem will likely require *some* level of technology.
And yes, I work in this industry, but no, not for one of the "big guys."
If a reviewer likes the movie but intentionally drives people away, that's just as unethical as record companies pushing crappy music through payola. How does that reviewer benefit from doing this more than by giving an ethical and accurate review? Unless he's an investor in a competing studio, he doesn't, and your argument falls flat on its face.
As for competition resulting in fewer sales being a relevant comparison... good gosh man, you've got your Cory Doctorow impersonation down pat! "Help me, I'm bein' repressed... they won't let me have everything my heart desires for free."
<Brain voice> Mr2001, I must compliment you on your incredible parody of the Anti-DRM crowd. You should do Vegas with this act... it's wonderful! Together, we will take over the world! </Brain voice>
<Pinky voice> Brilliant! NARF!
Oh... no... wait. You'll lose your shirt in Vegas because somebody with a video camera will buy one ticket and tape the show. You'll pocket one admission fee, and all those years of preparing your act will go down the freely accessed YouTube.
Yes, I ignored the differences in ways that the mediums are used. It's not relevant to the issue at hand.
Return to the question of a PDF of my book. No doubt, you would look at downloading that across a P2P network exactly the same way, regardless of whether or not you were going to read it once, or read it daily. Is a Bible different because many people crack it open every day? Using your argument, any fixed document that's read and re-read regularly would be purchased exactly once.
This is the same "change the game so my argument holds water" technique that Cory uses all the time. It's the kind of thing that makes it impossible to have a reasonable discussion with him, because he bases his position on a proposition that isn't relevant. Unfortunately, most people don't stop him at that point, because he's always carrying the banner of "information wants to be free," and pretending to be Thomas Jefferson.
Ultimately, Cory wants to "possess" music (and other electronic data that is similarly protected) without paying the content creator for their work and he wants to get away with it. Whether you call it stealing or something altruistic, he wants the benefit without cost, and without renumeration to the artist or legitimate owner of publication/distribution rights. It's as simple as that.
Tim
P.S. Your argument also suggests that there is no value in owning books. I own them specifically so I can go back and re-read them when I choose to, and not when they're available at the public library. I buy music (principally CD's) for the same purpose. My gripe with online music is that the license doesn't follow the physical model that a CD allows.
Well, presuming that you can't listen to the song while your friend is "borrowing" it, I think you've got a legitimate beef. On the other hand, if you bought a copy of a book that I wrote, photocopied all 1500 pages, and I didn't get a royalty hit, I'd be appropriately annoyed. Likewise if you had a PDF version of the book, and used file-copy to "borrow it," I'd want to know why you didn't buy it.
Handing a book to a friend and copying a file are two different things. Cory (and others) need to "wake up" to this fact.
What many fail to realize is that the nature of the US is that we are a federation of states. Each state makes it's own rules about how elections will be handled, so straight-party-voting is legal in one state, but not in another.
Per the FEC regs, I believe you also have to provide them with source code, explain to them all the tools and steps necessary to produce the object code from the source code, identify all libraries and such, and more or less allow them (if they choose to) to do their own builds and compare the object code you submit for certification with what they get when they compile.
If you were going to do a code review to check for coding mistakes, security errors (buffer overflows & whatnot), and so on... which would you rather review? A bunch of obfuscated C/C++, or VB (especially when raw performance is RARELY an issue in this context)?
I know which source I'd rather review, and it's not the code that I've got the most experience in (C/C++ & Delphi). The fact of the matter is that it's hard to write VB and VB.NET in a manner that a reasonably intelligent reviewer can't spot the logic *and* coding errors, and the nature of the language is that a whole range of security related attacks (such as buffer overflows) are almost impossible.
VB may be a "toy language" for a lot of applications, but this is an industry where the public is better served by the transparency of the source code, and isn't helped in any way by using something exotic and/or error prone.
Part of the problem is, per system design guidelines (which is what they test against), the paper has to maintain the printed image for a specific period of time. Ever noticed how quickly the print on your bank balance fades in your wallet?
I missed the part where I said that bundling Windows was price fixing.
Wait...
I guess you made that part up.
I was implying that some level of price fixing had already been done, in much the same way that the anti-competitive practice of bundling the OS had already been done. BTW, if you're wanting to insult someone, at least use a barb that hasn't been tossed at me lately, such as:
- You, sir, are a T1 line of pure stupid. - You, sir, must be a brain transplant donor. - You, sir, have a boot ROM with a bad checksum. - You, sir, have an eight-bit stack.
Tim
P.S. Explanations of these insults are available upon request.
Or, imagine Microsoft and some PC manufacturers agreeing to always bundle Windows with every machine, regardless of whether a consumer wants to buy it or not.
Fair enough, but the discussion tab has the details of the relevant research. In short, if you aren't quite sure of the sources quoted, you can go back and "look over the shoulder" of the writer. Also, in this case, the bulk of the articles was by "wikinewsies," and not just your average Joe (Biden, or otherwise).
It amazes me that the Islamic extremists aren't the only ones who don't bother to check the rest of the story before they start inflaming the masses.
From WikiNews:
The investigation showed the vast majority of edits from Senate IPs were beneficial and helpful to Wikipedia. Examples include the creation of the articles on Click Back America, which organizes students to promote microfinance in the developing world, and Washington's Tomb, which was designed to hold the body of first U.S. President George Washington within the White House Capitol building; and significantly expanding the article on closed sessions of the United States Senate in November. Dozens of small corrections have been made to grammar, spelling, or small facts -- many of them related to the Senate.
Senators' staff members have sometimes had to fight to correct inaccuracies. An edit to Jay Rockefeller's article by his staff removed information which may have been biased or untrue. The staff member who edited said, "Apologies, I was new to using Wikipedia, and I didn't fully realize the workings of the website," after other users continuously reinserted the information. The staffer removed the suspect paragraphs 12 times until another Wikipedia user finally removed the information. Four days later, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales got involved.
In other words, the edits were SOMETIMES bad, but were generally helpful. The entire tone of this story suggests that they were all trying to line the pockets of their senators (no doubt a popular sentiment), but WikiNews itself suggests that this is true only in a small number of cases.
It would appear that there are at least 3 moderators who have no idea what a Troll is. Off Topic? Yes. Funny? Debatable.
Troll? Hardly.
I suppose I should have engaged the debate about whether or not AMD has a 65nm process, and what the percentage yield would be should they be successful at going further than this. That way, it wouldn't matter if I had a clue or not, somebody would probably mod it up.
Another reason that Slashdot seems to get less relevant every day.
P.S. I'm even less likely to be trollling when there are two iPod Mini's, a Nano, and a 4G model under my roof. If I were moaning about battery life or somesuch, I would be speaking from knowledge and not trolling.
And we also found that applications that aren't yet Intel-native--which must run using Apple's Rosetta code-translation technology--tend to run half as fast as the same applications running natively on the iMac G5.
I think another pronunciation, other than "half fast" may be in order.
Slashdot Mirror
Please note the word "independently" in my comment. True accessible voting means that I don't have to "trust" someone else. In this scenario, I'm trusting that Billy-Bob is going to mark the ballot the way I want.
Let's see... trust Diebold or Billy-Bob... Diebold... Billy-Bob... How is that any different, other than I may know for certain that Billy-Bob is an idiot, and just suspect this to be the case for a voting machine vendor?
What if all my relatives are Republican and I'm the lone Libertarian? How do I *know* that my vote is cast the way I want? Well, for THAT to happen, you have to have bipartisan review of the Billy-Bob-marked ballot with me.
Now I've lost privacy.
"Hey Frank! The blind guy wants to make sure that we've correctly recorded his vote for Pat Paulsen. Can you come over here and witness this with me?" Fortunately, I've not seen this first-hand. Sadly, I've heard horror stories similar to this.
Now, on top of that, you've got voters will other accessibility needs too. What about the person who can't hold a pencil, but has can use a "sip and puff" device or other means to mark it? There's a whole raft of people that are in this boat, and even if you discount them, the blind population is a pretty big boat.
If you think independence and privacy are not big deals for disabled-access communities, you should try building and selling a product geared toward them. We regularly trivialize the needs of people with any number of disabilities. Whether you meant to or not, saying "all you have to do is..." just trivializes their needs even more.
There are many other problems with paper ballots, as implemented today. Paper ballots suffer from (among others): Inconsistent (and expensive) implementation of ballot rotation, cross-endorsed candidate voting errors (blocking/detecting someone voting more than once for the same person in a vote-for-N contest), variations in straight-party voting, and a whole range of problems detecting voter intent.
Electronic voting (as implemented today) unfortunately replaces those problems with a set that is (frequently) much worse, such as counting errors, security-through-obscurity, and the potential for fraud.
At the same time, you have the complication (in the U.S.) of each state determining local election law. There isn't one global set of rules (outside of HAVA and guidelines for federal certification, which not all states use) for a vendor to go by. There are 50.
As long as any voting mechanism provides a voter-verifiable paper trail (VVPT), all is good. In theory, electronic voting *could* provide this, along with better security than we get with paper. In practice, it's not there yet.
Cheers,
Tim
How then do you suggest that we handle voters with accessibility needs? If I'm blind, how will I get to vote independently and privately? Why is it that someone who has normal vision gets that right, but I (if I'm blind) do not?
For all the stupidity that surrounds it, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) at least tries to address the fact that a large percentage of Americans have been denied a basic right in voting since... well, since we started counting votes.
Come up with a way to handle this without technology, and people might listen. Now, that doesn't suggest that all the dorky things that are out there make sense, but it does suggest that solving this problem will likely require *some* level of technology.
And yes, I work in this industry, but no, not for one of the "big guys."
Tim
Argghh! Ye be them Canadian pirates? What be wit' ye "aboot" in thar pirate talkin'?
Yar!
Bloody Tom Flint
Perhaps he meant that the point is so obvious that it doesn't need to be spoken aloud? :-D
Tim
"...with-in a year or two."
This presumes Vista will be done by then... right?
Tim
If a reviewer likes the movie but intentionally drives people away, that's just as unethical as record companies pushing crappy music through payola. How does that reviewer benefit from doing this more than by giving an ethical and accurate review? Unless he's an investor in a competing studio, he doesn't, and your argument falls flat on its face.
As for competition resulting in fewer sales being a relevant comparison... good gosh man, you've got your Cory Doctorow impersonation down pat! "Help me, I'm bein' repressed... they won't let me have everything my heart desires for free."
<Brain voice>
Mr2001, I must compliment you on your incredible parody of the Anti-DRM crowd. You should do Vegas with this act... it's wonderful! Together, we will take over the world!
</Brain voice>
<Pinky voice>
Brilliant! NARF!
Oh... no... wait. You'll lose your shirt in Vegas because somebody with a video camera will buy one ticket and tape the show. You'll pocket one admission fee, and all those years of preparing your act will go down the freely accessed YouTube.
Poit!
</Pinky voice>
Tim
"(Of course, I don't think there's anything immoral about depriving someone of a potential sale...)"
This sentence states the difference between our positions more clearly than anything else.
Tim
Yes, I ignored the differences in ways that the mediums are used. It's not relevant to the issue at hand.
Return to the question of a PDF of my book. No doubt, you would look at downloading that across a P2P network exactly the same way, regardless of whether or not you were going to read it once, or read it daily. Is a Bible different because many people crack it open every day? Using your argument, any fixed document that's read and re-read regularly would be purchased exactly once.
This is the same "change the game so my argument holds water" technique that Cory uses all the time. It's the kind of thing that makes it impossible to have a reasonable discussion with him, because he bases his position on a proposition that isn't relevant. Unfortunately, most people don't stop him at that point, because he's always carrying the banner of "information wants to be free," and pretending to be Thomas Jefferson.
Ultimately, Cory wants to "possess" music (and other electronic data that is similarly protected) without paying the content creator for their work and he wants to get away with it. Whether you call it stealing or something altruistic, he wants the benefit without cost, and without renumeration to the artist or legitimate owner of publication/distribution rights. It's as simple as that.
Tim
P.S. Your argument also suggests that there is no value in owning books. I own them specifically so I can go back and re-read them when I choose to, and not when they're available at the public library. I buy music (principally CD's) for the same purpose. My gripe with online music is that the license doesn't follow the physical model that a CD allows.
Well, presuming that you can't listen to the song while your friend is "borrowing" it, I think you've got a legitimate beef. On the other hand, if you bought a copy of a book that I wrote, photocopied all 1500 pages, and I didn't get a royalty hit, I'd be appropriately annoyed. Likewise if you had a PDF version of the book, and used file-copy to "borrow it," I'd want to know why you didn't buy it.
Handing a book to a friend and copying a file are two different things. Cory (and others) need to "wake up" to this fact.
Tim
What many fail to realize is that the nature of the US is that we are a federation of states. Each state makes it's own rules about how elections will be handled, so straight-party-voting is legal in one state, but not in another.
Tim
And here I was going to toss out my personal favorite:
The Uninstaller
Tim
Per the FEC regs, I believe you also have to provide them with source code, explain to them all the tools and steps necessary to produce the object code from the source code, identify all libraries and such, and more or less allow them (if they choose to) to do their own builds and compare the object code you submit for certification with what they get when they compile.
Tim
If you were going to do a code review to check for coding mistakes, security errors (buffer overflows & whatnot), and so on... which would you rather review? A bunch of obfuscated C/C++, or VB (especially when raw performance is RARELY an issue in this context)?
I know which source I'd rather review, and it's not the code that I've got the most experience in (C/C++ & Delphi). The fact of the matter is that it's hard to write VB and VB.NET in a manner that a reasonably intelligent reviewer can't spot the logic *and* coding errors, and the nature of the language is that a whole range of security related attacks (such as buffer overflows) are almost impossible.
VB may be a "toy language" for a lot of applications, but this is an industry where the public is better served by the transparency of the source code, and isn't helped in any way by using something exotic and/or error prone.
Tim
Part of the problem is, per system design guidelines (which is what they test against), the paper has to maintain the printed image for a specific period of time. Ever noticed how quickly the print on your bank balance fades in your wallet?
Thermal printers are not acceptable.
Tim
I missed the part where I said that bundling Windows was price fixing.
Wait...
I guess you made that part up.
I was implying that some level of price fixing had already been done, in much the same way that the anti-competitive practice of bundling the OS had already been done. BTW, if you're wanting to insult someone, at least use a barb that hasn't been tossed at me lately, such as:
- You, sir, are a T1 line of pure stupid.
- You, sir, must be a brain transplant donor.
- You, sir, have a boot ROM with a bad checksum.
- You, sir, have an eight-bit stack.
Tim
P.S. Explanations of these insults are available upon request.
Or, imagine Microsoft and some PC manufacturers agreeing to always bundle Windows with every machine, regardless of whether a consumer wants to buy it or not.
Wait...
Tim
:-D
Fair enough, but the discussion tab has the details of the relevant research. In short, if you aren't quite sure of the sources quoted, you can go back and "look over the shoulder" of the writer. Also, in this case, the bulk of the articles was by "wikinewsies," and not just your average Joe (Biden, or otherwise).
Tim
Tim
Tim
It would appear that there are at least 3 moderators who have no idea what a Troll is. Off Topic? Yes. Funny? Debatable.
Troll? Hardly.
I suppose I should have engaged the debate about whether or not AMD has a 65nm process, and what the percentage yield would be should they be successful at going further than this. That way, it wouldn't matter if I had a clue or not, somebody would probably mod it up.
Another reason that Slashdot seems to get less relevant every day.
Tim
You got it. Sadly, the moderator didn't.
Maybe his went 45 minimeters.
Tim
P.S. I'm even less likely to be trollling when there are two iPod Mini's, a Nano, and a 4G model under my roof. If I were moaning about battery life or somesuch, I would be speaking from knowledge and not trolling.
The best distance achieved in the "Frustrated iPod Owners Tossing Contest"?
Tim
...who thinks it's ironic that we'll see Blue Movies on a medium dubbed Blu-Ray?
Tim
...via the WMF Backdoor?
Tim
I think another pronunciation, other than "half fast" may be in order.
Tim