But in the end these people have already agreed to have lots of people access their site by simply posting a public web site. They've already agreed to play the game; there's no reason to re-ask.
Sorry, but weren't WMDs what this invasion was supposedly about?
Only to the myopic people who let the superficial media think for them.
This was also about much larger, much more important things including the impotence of the UN, the sanctity of international agreements, stability in the region, brutality to citizenry, etc...
WMD were just one more justification, and from the beginning it was clear that the weapons might never be found even if they did exist.
OF COURSE paper is responsible for ballot errors. It HAS to be. You even brought up hanging chads, which is just one specific example of how paper ballots are naturally imprecise.
no hanging chad ever managed to create -15,000 votes for a candidate from a precinct with only a few hundred voters
This has nothing to do with electronic voting; any voting system could have done the same. Errors that can cause this is just as present in paper systems.
We'll use the necessarily inaccurate count from necessarily failable paper methods to check the potentially perfect results from the electronic methods.
Keep paper out of it. It can easily be done and verified electronically; paper only reintroduces the significant margins of error that harm the process in the first place.
Proper application of such thoughts would rule that privacy is NOT a right, as privacy rules by nature infringe upon others' abilities to use their private property as they wish.
This is a much more direct potential infringement, and therefore is the one which would be granted by such argument.
it's my opinion, so I don't really have a great answer for that.
If you cannot backup your opinion you should seriously reconsider it, especially when the opinion has such large implications.
but if you accept that we have a right to be private people [...], then you should logically have control over anything that compromises this privacy, such as data that describes you.
First you need to justify your statement that "we have a right to be private people" with respect to this situation. I mean, where is this right specified?
But then the entire statement has a huge jump of logic. How does being private people imply that you must own the data the describes you? I can see how you'd suggest that, how you'd move in that direction, but that's not enough. It MUST be rationally proven for such a significant charge.
It's one thing to demand that nobody be able to invade youre privacy to extract informaiton, but it's an entirely different thing to assign ownership to that information.
As for ownership of data, it is my personal opinion that ANY data belongs to the person or entity which it describes. Therefore, if a company has data which describes me, I should be considered the sole OWNER, and they are permitted to use such data only insofar as I deem it permissable.
On what do you base this opinion?
I mean that's a serious claim you're making; you should have some rock solid argument to back it up.
And what would be the least bit wrong with the situation you describe?
If the corporation (or the guy next door!) collects some information then great, it doesn't harm me at all. If he then uses the information in a way benefiting him, then that's not really a bad thing.
Sure in the end it may be bad for you, but hey, sometimes the truth hurts.
#1 How can punching a button on a screen be any more accurate than conpleteting an arrow on a card, when the card is then verified before being accepted?
Who said the electronic record wouldn't be verified before being accepted? All paper voting methods in use today are less dependable than the flipping of a bit in a digital computer.
Waiting a few hours after poll closing is fine with me.
How about waiting years to even approach the same accuracy of a digital computer? You'll never get there, but you'll certainly not get even close within an acceptable time frame.
They can be recounted, by hand or by machine. A thousand sheets all the same with be suspicious, while adding 1345 to some total will not be detectable.
You're comparing apples and oranges. To make this comparison accurately you'd have to throw out all of the paper ballots and add 1345 to the paper count. It's silly for paper, and it's silly for electronic methods.
#4 The paper system we use in Wisconsin has one ballot verifying machine per precinct, each voting booth is just a folding table with a curtain. This solution is much cheaper than computers
Superficially much cheaper, but you get nowhere near the same accuracy, accountability, speed, oversight...
Humans are in the loop, either way.
Again: different loop
It's better to have a system where you can't just edit the total.
Not all counting rooms have large numbers of people watching to verify that the counting is going according to rules.
In electronic systems you CAN make fraud, etc, impossible, while you cannot do the same for the human counters. It's simply not true that it's impossible to create a secure voting system.
And then you begin talking about the frailty and lack of redundency that comes with paper ballots; with these systems you don't even HAVE to try to miscount the votes. It's guaranteed!
And then you get to precision of paper ballots, which itself is absolutely not good enough using any current technology.
Calling paper more secure and more archival than digital is simply backwards.
You can falsify paper just as you can electronic records; the difference is that paper has built in margins of error while electronic methods can be computed precisely.
If you have a record on paper signed by me you have to safeguard that single piece of paper, plus verify all of the hardware and "software" that is ever involved with making that record, just the same as with electronic records.
The difference is that while the verificatino of the electronic system may be a little more difficult, the information itself can immediately be duplicated what extremely high precision an unlimited number of times. This extreme redundancy alone puts electronic auditing leagues ahead of paper, and when the processing phase is also considered there ends up being just no contest as to the superior medium.
We don't need to keep these votes secret. That may be one of the keys. So long as the goal is "secure the integrity without worrying about secrecy", the digital realm is hands down the correct way to go, and using the flawed paper system as a check is as silly as testing the standard kilogram against an approximate kilogram of sand.
Slashdot Mirror
...except that his handling of economic matters has arguably already fit a significant portion of the bill...
Ha, of course all of the current polling data would tend to indicate otherwise...
Well it IS offtopic and arguably flame bait.
But in the end these people have already agreed to have lots of people access their site by simply posting a public web site. They've already agreed to play the game; there's no reason to re-ask.
Actually, subversion went beta before Christmas.
Sorry, but weren't WMDs what this invasion was supposedly about?
Only to the myopic people who let the superficial media think for them.
This was also about much larger, much more important things including the impotence of the UN, the sanctity of international agreements, stability in the region, brutality to citizenry, etc...
WMD were just one more justification, and from the beginning it was clear that the weapons might never be found even if they did exist.
No, the analogy would be that by swallowing the pill you are accepting both halves of the pill.
Um...
By participating in email you ARE agreeing in advance to accept email...
OF COURSE paper is responsible for ballot errors. It HAS to be. You even brought up hanging chads, which is just one specific example of how paper ballots are naturally imprecise.
no hanging chad ever managed to create -15,000 votes for a candidate from a precinct with only a few hundred voters
This has nothing to do with electronic voting; any voting system could have done the same. Errors that can cause this is just as present in paper systems.
Don't base argument on existing law. You'll be just as incorrect as the law itself.
You SHOULD be able to build a slaughterhouse next to my beach resort, so long as you don't actually degrade my beaches.
Yeah, there's a great idea:
We'll use the necessarily inaccurate count from necessarily failable paper methods to check the potentially perfect results from the electronic methods.
Keep paper out of it. It can easily be done and verified electronically; paper only reintroduces the significant margins of error that harm the process in the first place.
Proper application of such thoughts would rule that privacy is NOT a right, as privacy rules by nature infringe upon others' abilities to use their private property as they wish.
This is a much more direct potential infringement, and therefore is the one which would be granted by such argument.
I always hated the way IE displays error information in the browser window, as if it's an actual webpage.
Well, actually it is an actual webpage.
But no webpage loaded because of the error.
This behavior pisses me off.
Wow, this was a vapid reply.
I can assure you that the reason we have governments and laws is not because people can do things that are bad for them.
Nice skirting of the question.
it's my opinion, so I don't really have a great answer for that.
If you cannot backup your opinion you should seriously reconsider it, especially when the opinion has such large implications.
but if you accept that we have a right to be private people [...], then you should logically have control over anything that compromises this privacy, such as data that describes you.
First you need to justify your statement that "we have a right to be private people" with respect to this situation. I mean, where is this right specified?
But then the entire statement has a huge jump of logic. How does being private people imply that you must own the data the describes you? I can see how you'd suggest that, how you'd move in that direction, but that's not enough. It MUST be rationally proven for such a significant charge.
It's one thing to demand that nobody be able to invade youre privacy to extract informaiton, but it's an entirely different thing to assign ownership to that information.
Read the law, not the errant analysts.
Plenty of people out there are just as misguided as these guys.
I think a case could be made that Illegal search and seizure was largely legalized in the Patriot Act.
Anyone actually informed about the act and the state of law enforcement before and after its passing would know that this line is a load of BS.
The rest of your post contains a number of inaccuracies that are simply flat out the opposite of what's in the PATRIOT Act.
As for ownership of data, it is my personal opinion that ANY data belongs to the person or entity which it describes. Therefore, if a company has data which describes me, I should be considered the sole OWNER, and they are permitted to use such data only insofar as I deem it permissable.
On what do you base this opinion?
I mean that's a serious claim you're making; you should have some rock solid argument to back it up.
And what would be the least bit wrong with the situation you describe?
If the corporation (or the guy next door!) collects some information then great, it doesn't harm me at all. If he then uses the information in a way benefiting him, then that's not really a bad thing.
Sure in the end it may be bad for you, but hey, sometimes the truth hurts.
Scantrons have precision far inferior than the rest of the system, and often not sufficient to call close elections.
What you've done here is nothing but adding a layer of guaranteed inaccuracy.
More importantly, how is Bu$h supposed to get re-elected with a fair, impartial, secure and verifiable voting system?
Perhaps by having people vote for him, as in the last election?
I mean, I don't study voting for a living, but it seems to me like this would be how it would happen...
#1 How can punching a button on a screen be any more accurate than conpleteting an arrow on a card, when the card is then verified before being accepted?
Who said the electronic record wouldn't be verified before being accepted? All paper voting methods in use today are less dependable than the flipping of a bit in a digital computer.
Waiting a few hours after poll closing is fine with me.
How about waiting years to even approach the same accuracy of a digital computer? You'll never get there, but you'll certainly not get even close within an acceptable time frame.
They can be recounted, by hand or by machine. A thousand sheets all the same with be suspicious, while adding 1345 to some total will not be detectable.
You're comparing apples and oranges. To make this comparison accurately you'd have to throw out all of the paper ballots and add 1345 to the paper count. It's silly for paper, and it's silly for electronic methods.
#4 The paper system we use in Wisconsin has one ballot verifying machine per precinct, each voting booth is just a folding table with a curtain. This solution is much cheaper than computers
Superficially much cheaper, but you get nowhere near the same accuracy, accountability, speed, oversight...
Humans are in the loop, either way.
Again: different loop
It's better to have a system where you can't just edit the total.
Absolutely; same for paper ballots.
Massive amount of oversight... maybe...
Not all counting rooms have large numbers of people watching to verify that the counting is going according to rules.
In electronic systems you CAN make fraud, etc, impossible, while you cannot do the same for the human counters. It's simply not true that it's impossible to create a secure voting system.
And then you begin talking about the frailty and lack of redundency that comes with paper ballots; with these systems you don't even HAVE to try to miscount the votes. It's guaranteed!
And then you get to precision of paper ballots, which itself is absolutely not good enough using any current technology.
Calling paper more secure and more archival than digital is simply backwards.
How can one have this assurance with paper?
You can falsify paper just as you can electronic records; the difference is that paper has built in margins of error while electronic methods can be computed precisely.
If you have a record on paper signed by me you have to safeguard that single piece of paper, plus verify all of the hardware and "software" that is ever involved with making that record, just the same as with electronic records.
The difference is that while the verificatino of the electronic system may be a little more difficult, the information itself can immediately be duplicated what extremely high precision an unlimited number of times. This extreme redundancy alone puts electronic auditing leagues ahead of paper, and when the processing phase is also considered there ends up being just no contest as to the superior medium.
We don't need to keep these votes secret. That may be one of the keys. So long as the goal is "secure the integrity without worrying about secrecy", the digital realm is hands down the correct way to go, and using the flawed paper system as a check is as silly as testing the standard kilogram against an approximate kilogram of sand.