I hope you don't drive a car. The average person probably kills a dozen or so flies on the way to work. In the South during lovebug season, its probably more like a few hundred insects massacred per trip.
Also, I'd like to thank you for all the work you've been doing to expose what Diebold has been up to. Please keep up the great work, and good luck in your efforts! Hopefully it'll be enough to keep us from getting disenfranchised in a couple of months.
Is there anything that the rest of us can actually do to help?
After skimming around some more, I found this page which has links to voting machine executables and some election results which Diebold inadvertently made public. You can actually run the software on your home computer to try it out.
Also on the page is Election Support Guide for Diebold staff pulling support duties at the elections. It includes such gems as:
The AccuFeed is often sensitive to the orientation, size, and print quality of the ballot.. AccuFeed units tend to reflect varying behavior in terms of speed and quality of processing. Familiarize yourself with the functioning of the AccuFeed before the election if it will be used in the election. Do not offer information as to the AccuFeed's shortcomings to the jurisdiction, even where obvious.
While reading through news items on the various Diebold electronic voting controversies, I came across this page showing step-by-step screenshots of how to secretly alter the votes on the central tabulator machines, as mentioned in a previous slashdot story.
If we can't get remove these systems (or give them paper trails) by November, perhaps we can instead follow the steps ourselves? Actually, we wouldn't even need to click through MS Access as shown above -- a quick little Visual Basic script would do the trick. It'd be neat if the US had Michael Badnarik and Ralph Nader as President and Vice President for the next four years.
Has anybody tried talking to non-computer people about electronic voting? I've tried it a few times, even toning down things, but people often either don't understand what's at stake or assume I'm exagerrating.
I think this is quite possibly the most important US domestic issue this year, and feel that the word needs to get out about this, so we can try to fix what we can before it's too late. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful thus far. Has anybody else had better luck?
Actually, if they were on active duty we could've just launched them up in advance of the hurricane, and take care of two birds with one stone. The shuttles could then land in California, and be kept there until after the hurricanes.
Is it truly beyond comprehension that perhaps the discovery was deliberately derailed in order for the established concerns to further develop their schemes?
Um, yeah. Why expend so much effort to derail a discovery when you can just buy it out?
We spent millions of dollars and then threw it away because it tipped over? What the hell happened to putting the wheels farther apart and continuing?! Sounds to me like it damn well was Bush's fault!
Except that it was cancelled in 1996, during the Clinton administration.
Seriously, the DC-X was very promising, and was only cancelled because it lacked the sex appeal of having loads of futuristic technologies crammed into it. Armadillo Aerospace is in many ways the intellectual descendant of it's design, and hopefully we'll see lots of great things coming from them soon.
Not only that, but the US manned space program shouldn't necessarily be limited to government efforts. Besides the great suborbital work being done by the X Prize contestants, SpaceX is looking very promising.
In a couple of months, SpaceX will start launching their Falcon I vehicle, which can carry about 500 kg of payload to low earth orbit for $6 million, a fraction of what it currently costs. Next year they're scheduled to launch their Falcon V, which will be considerably larger, carrying about 4000 kg to LEO. This is all being done without government funding.
Notably, the maiden flight of the Falcon V will carry a prototype of the inflatable space station module being produced by Bigelow Aerospace. Additionally, the Falcon V is planned to be man-rated, the first spacecraft to have such a rating since the space shuttle.
There are places like that which will not take you cash, you have to go buy their little fake currency and use it, the vendors won't take dollars directly.
When I was in Thailand last year, the food courts in most of the malls we visited were like that. You'd go to a separate booth to buy food coupons, which you would exchange at the eateries. The only reason I can think of for them was to make it so each eatery didn't need a cash register.
Sure, us nerds on slashdot find it completely obvious that these systems are insecure. Have you tried talking to "normal people" about this, though? The average American isn't even aware that there's any sort of controversy over electronic voting.
Because the code isn't stable yet. Scary as it sounds, in some California elections Diebold was updating the software on the computers at the last minute.
The Scene: Carnegie Mellon University The Event: A newly installed Diebold Opteva 520
ATM crashes, then reboots. Suprizingly, it's vanilla-style Windows XP operating system initialized without the actual ATM software. The Result: A desktop computer with only a touch screen interface is left wide open for the amusement of the most wired university in the U.S.
Eschewing more malicious schemes, the first move was to connect to the Internet. This plan proved unsuccessful as there seemed to be no network capability. The situation was complicated in that even typing proved extremely difficult due to the lack of a keyboard. The Character Map program was used to enter text by copy-and-pasting, yet the most that was accomplished by doing so was making the text-to-voice program say, "What, do you think I'm made of money?" Windows Media Player was set up to loop a series of Beethoven, Jazz, and Talking Heads (the sample sound files included with XP) while running a full screen visualization. Finally, an annoyed faculty member in an adjacent office unplugged the machine and dispersed the crowd. The story is humorous until one realizes that Diebold is the leading producer of electronic voting machines. We can all look forward to playing Minesweeper while exercising our citizenship.
Back when I was at Carnegie Mellon, our Online Gaming Society would often run tournaments on the huge lecture hall projection screens. Tourneys included games like Soul Calibre, Smash Bros, and Halo. We even played DDR once or twice, although the slight video delay and having to stare up at the huge screen got a little annoying.
>People might not think they would use video, but they'd be surprised if they actually had the opportunity, as I do on my Treo.
Wait a sec... out of curiousity, what are you using to do this? I'm posting from a Treo 600 right now, and wasn't aware such software was available for this.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you don't drive a car. The average person probably kills a dozen or so flies on the way to work. In the South during lovebug season, its probably more like a few hundred insects massacred per trip.
That's some great information. Thanks!
Also, I'd like to thank you for all the work you've been doing to expose what Diebold has been up to. Please keep up the great work, and good luck in your efforts! Hopefully it'll be enough to keep us from getting disenfranchised in a couple of months.
Is there anything that the rest of us can actually do to help?
After skimming around some more, I found this page which has links to voting machine executables and some election results which Diebold inadvertently made public. You can actually run the software on your home computer to try it out.
Also on the page is Election Support Guide for Diebold staff pulling support duties at the elections. It includes such gems as:
The AccuFeed is often sensitive to the orientation, size, and print quality of the ballot.. AccuFeed units tend to reflect varying behavior in terms of speed and quality of processing. Familiarize yourself with the functioning of the AccuFeed before the election if it will be used in the election. Do not offer information as to the AccuFeed's shortcomings to the jurisdiction, even where obvious.
While reading through news items on the various Diebold electronic voting controversies, I came across this page showing step-by-step screenshots of how to secretly alter the votes on the central tabulator machines, as mentioned in a previous slashdot story.
If we can't get remove these systems (or give them paper trails) by November, perhaps we can instead follow the steps ourselves? Actually, we wouldn't even need to click through MS Access as shown above -- a quick little Visual Basic script would do the trick. It'd be neat if the US had Michael Badnarik and Ralph Nader as President and Vice President for the next four years.
Has anybody tried talking to non-computer people about electronic voting? I've tried it a few times, even toning down things, but people often either don't understand what's at stake or assume I'm exagerrating.
I think this is quite possibly the most important US domestic issue this year, and feel that the word needs to get out about this, so we can try to fix what we can before it's too late. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful thus far. Has anybody else had better luck?
Actually, if they were on active duty we could've just launched them up in advance of the hurricane, and take care of two birds with one stone. The shuttles could then land in California, and be kept there until after the hurricanes.
If I could get VoIP using my Treo's unlimited data rates, then I'd be a very happy camper. I don't Sprint would like that very much, though.
That story regards NASA's tentative approval to design and send a robot to fix hubble, rather than simply sending over the shuttle.
Screw this, I want the Star Wars Holiday Special on DVD! Preferably with additional footage of Chewbacca's family speaking gibberish to each other.
Happy Life Day, everybody!
Is it truly beyond comprehension that perhaps the discovery was deliberately derailed in order for the established concerns to further develop their schemes?
Um, yeah. Why expend so much effort to derail a discovery when you can just buy it out?
It will result in larger tax cuts to wealthy donors...
Wealthy donors like Paul Allen, Elon Musk, and John Carmack? Fine by me.
Name one.
SpaceX
We spent millions of dollars and then threw it away because it tipped over? What the hell happened to putting the wheels farther apart and continuing?! Sounds to me like it damn well was Bush's fault!
Except that it was cancelled in 1996, during the Clinton administration.
Seriously, the DC-X was very promising, and was only cancelled because it lacked the sex appeal of having loads of futuristic technologies crammed into it. Armadillo Aerospace is in many ways the intellectual descendant of it's design, and hopefully we'll see lots of great things coming from them soon.
Not only that, but the US manned space program shouldn't necessarily be limited to government efforts. Besides the great suborbital work being done by the X Prize contestants, SpaceX is looking very promising.
In a couple of months, SpaceX will start launching their Falcon I vehicle, which can carry about 500 kg of payload to low earth orbit for $6 million, a fraction of what it currently costs. Next year they're scheduled to launch their Falcon V, which will be considerably larger, carrying about 4000 kg to LEO. This is all being done without government funding.
Notably, the maiden flight of the Falcon V will carry a prototype of the inflatable space station module being produced by Bigelow Aerospace. Additionally, the Falcon V is planned to be man-rated, the first spacecraft to have such a rating since the space shuttle.
I second that. If you could put the text file up someplace it'd be greatly appreciated.
There are places like that which will not take you cash, you have to go buy their little fake currency and use it, the vendors won't take dollars directly.
When I was in Thailand last year, the food courts in most of the malls we visited were like that. You'd go to a separate booth to buy food coupons, which you would exchange at the eateries. The only reason I can think of for them was to make it so each eatery didn't need a cash register.
Sure, us nerds on slashdot find it completely obvious that these systems are insecure. Have you tried talking to "normal people" about this, though? The average American isn't even aware that there's any sort of controversy over electronic voting.
Indeed. Does anybody know if BlackBoxVoting, or a similar organization, has been sending out press releases about this?
Because the code isn't stable yet. Scary as it sounds, in some California elections Diebold was updating the software on the computers at the last minute.
From this page:
The Scene: Carnegie Mellon University
The Event: A newly installed Diebold Opteva 520
ATM crashes, then reboots. Suprizingly, it's vanilla-style Windows XP operating system initialized without the actual ATM software.
The Result: A desktop computer with only a touch screen interface is left wide open for the amusement of the most wired university in the U.S.
Eschewing more malicious schemes, the first move was to connect to the Internet. This plan proved unsuccessful as there seemed to be no network capability. The situation was complicated in that even typing proved extremely difficult due to the lack of a keyboard. The Character Map program was used to enter text by copy-and-pasting, yet the most that was accomplished by doing so was making the text-to-voice program say, "What, do you think I'm made of money?" Windows Media Player was set up to loop a series of Beethoven, Jazz, and Talking Heads (the sample sound files included with XP) while running a full screen visualization. Finally, an annoyed faculty member in an adjacent office unplugged the machine and dispersed the crowd. The story is humorous until one realizes that Diebold is the leading producer of electronic voting machines. We can all look forward to playing Minesweeper while exercising our citizenship.
But come on. Are we so ADHD in this country we can't vote on paper and wait for real people to count them?
Yes.
Apparently he manages to get kicked out of Anime Expo (annual anime convention in LA) just about every year.
That's amazing. Thanks for mentioning it!
Back when I was at Carnegie Mellon, our Online Gaming Society would often run tournaments on the huge lecture hall projection screens. Tourneys included games like Soul Calibre, Smash Bros, and Halo. We even played DDR once or twice, although the slight video delay and having to stare up at the huge screen got a little annoying.
>People might not think they would use video, but they'd be surprised if they actually had the opportunity, as I do on my Treo.
Wait a sec... out of curiousity, what are you using to do this? I'm posting from a Treo 600 right now, and wasn't aware such software was available for this.