Its the same problem with testing software -- you can only prove the existence of bugs, not their absence.
In ordinary software, its reasonable to assume everyone in a company is working towards the same goal, of removing all bugs, and still it is hard to trust testing to get rid of all bugs.
With voting machines, its reasonable to assume some will intentionally insert bugs in order to control these machines when the time comes.
No amount of testing will ever catch malicious bugs meant to allow control of these machines.
The only way these machines have any hope at all of becoming reliable for controlling democracy, is if the entire production process, from the bottom/hardware up to the top is open, certified (via proof and very intensive peer review, and not via testing), and closely monitored.
Since this is probably not practical at all, its best to just vote with paper.
I agree that the password prompts are not the brightest idea, but at least they're conveying some new information to the computer (The User is indeed an administrator).
Clicking "Yes, its me", however, conveys no new information to the computer.
If you look at the computer as a whole, it is incredibly stupid that after the user selects some option, the computer will pop up a dialog asking the user if he is indeed the one who selected this option.
I realize the series of historic accidents that led to this absurd situation - but couldn't they figure out a better way that does not make the computer behave so incredibly stupidly?
While I believe that open source will eventually win out, closed-source software currently has the huge advantage of utilizing far more resources.
Many programmers are wasting their time re-implementing the same algorithms and frameworks in every software project, because they cannot use the already existing ones (which are closed-source), but there are simply so many of them, because copyright allows this waste to be hugely funded.
If copyrights are abolished, Opensource/Free Software will find far more funding, so open source software (the only kind that doesn't bitrot, and thus the only kind that matters in the long range) will progress far faster.
I find it laughable that you think there's little remaining to research about software, or that software is in any meaningful way "mature".
Software research in core fields such as OS's and languages has been going on well up to 1979, and then there was a long pause with no progress for about 15-25 years, and now we're seeing some renewal of interesting software research (EROS-OS and Coyotos, Haskell and related languages, Erights) made possible by the Internet and Free Software movement.
But I am pretty confident that the reason software progress almost halted for a few decades is because software copyrights consolidated a big and powerful closed-source industry that did everything it could to lock everyone into their platforms by making interoperability difficult, which also makes progress and change difficult.
I disagree. Unix is far from the "right way" to create OS's. Various research projects prove that. However, the copyright regime has pretty much subsidized a huge industry that has everything to benefit from locking you to the current platforms (the various closed-source Unix clones and Windows).
Without copyrights, OS research could have continued and not be virtually abandoned due to "no hope to catch on in a Unix/Windows world".
Your experience is very different to that of the rest of us.
Closed nvidia and ATI drivers break all the time and cause infinite pain to kernel developers. They're also a big source of kernel crashes and makes them highly un-debuggable.
If corporations and other profit-seeking entities were not involved, free and open source software wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
You are ignorant and wrong. Software up to 1979 was not copyrighted (it was an "innovative" use of copyright by Bill Gates at the time that started this trend).
Many interesting software advances: OS design (Multics, Unix, etc), programming language design (Lisp, C) were all done without software copyrights and were really "open source" or "Free Software" by today's definitions.
If anything, the involvement of for-profit corporations using closed-source has crippled the progress of software, as you would expect exponential progress in a field such as software, but arguably software progress has slowed down since 1979.
Then you should be thankful that he does CARE that it is free as in freedom. Because if everyone did what you did, we'd be stuck with free-as-in-beer crap (i.e: Crappy closed-source drivers, flash plugins, OS's) with no interoperability, tuned for the corporates' benefit rather than your benefit, etc.
Only caring about getting your immediate work done, and not caring at all about encouragement of the right kinds of software in the future is short-sighted and actually damaging to the causes.
The government is not using flat taxation, so its already "spreading the wealth around".
Obama used that phrase to mean that that instead of taking from lots of the low-income, you can take a little more from high-income and wealth will "spread around" to many low-income people by virtue of them having to pay less taxes. This wealth will allow them greater buying power which will mean more customers for Joe.
That's one point the "I, Robot" film everyone loves to hate does make (It may not be original, I have not read the book, but the film still makes that point).
Saying its the "ultimate authority on morals" is not enough to explain why they should care about what he thinks. Why should they accept, rather than reject morals?
Its not enough to have a god that cares about life so that life would have value. You have to accept that god's values as your own, to inherit the view that life has value.
So why not skip the god part, and accept the view life has value without all the god mumbo jumbo?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, most computer security experts agree that computer systems are not secure for voting.
I am all for using computers in most areas of life, but the paper voting system has worked for a long time, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Computer-based voting systems are too open to manipulations, whereas paper ballots are easier to reasonably secure.
No need for pens, by the way (e.g: See Israel's voting system).
Its the same problem with testing software -- you can only prove the existence of bugs, not their absence.
In ordinary software, its reasonable to assume everyone in a company is working towards the same goal, of removing all bugs, and still it is hard to trust testing to get rid of all bugs.
With voting machines, its reasonable to assume some will intentionally insert bugs in order to control these machines when the time comes.
No amount of testing will ever catch malicious bugs meant to allow control of these machines.
The only way these machines have any hope at all of becoming reliable for controlling democracy, is if the entire production process, from the bottom/hardware up to the top is open, certified (via proof and very intensive peer review, and not via testing), and closely monitored.
Since this is probably not practical at all, its best to just vote with paper.
Why does anyone want voting machines anyway?
Yeah, we also need to benchmark how hard it is to run apt-get and Synaptic on both of these.
Its pretty quick on Ubuntu, but Windows doesn't have them.
Once Windows has apt-get out of the box, surely it might become less of a pain to use.
I agree that the password prompts are not the brightest idea, but at least they're conveying some new information to the computer (The User is indeed an administrator).
Clicking "Yes, its me", however, conveys no new information to the computer.
If you look at the computer as a whole, it is incredibly stupid that after the user selects some option, the computer will pop up a dialog asking the user if he is indeed the one who selected this option.
I realize the series of historic accidents that led to this absurd situation - but couldn't they figure out a better way that does not make the computer behave so incredibly stupidly?
You won't find many non-Zionist Jews in Israel.
Non-Zionists believe Israel has no right to exist, and that creating a refuge country for persecuted Jews around the world is not worth the trouble.
Its equivalent to Google having a "donate to google" box.
People who choose to donate do so willingly.
That is irrelevant. What's relevant is that Walmart have every right to do so if they fully enclose that they take the ideas without any compensation.
How could this be illegitimate, if it does not intend to hide or mislead Google's intentions?
While I believe that open source will eventually win out, closed-source software currently has the huge advantage of utilizing far more resources.
Many programmers are wasting their time re-implementing the same algorithms and frameworks in every software project, because they cannot use the already existing ones (which are closed-source), but there are simply so many of them, because copyright allows this waste to be hugely funded.
If copyrights are abolished, Opensource/Free Software will find far more funding, so open source software (the only kind that doesn't bitrot, and thus the only kind that matters in the long range) will progress far faster.
I find it laughable that you think there's little remaining to research about software, or that software is in any meaningful way "mature".
Software research in core fields such as OS's and languages has been going on well up to 1979, and then there was a long pause with no progress for about 15-25 years, and now we're seeing some renewal of interesting software research (EROS-OS and Coyotos, Haskell and related languages, Erights) made possible by the Internet and Free Software movement.
But I am pretty confident that the reason software progress almost halted for a few decades is because software copyrights consolidated a big and powerful closed-source industry that did everything it could to lock everyone into their platforms by making interoperability difficult, which also makes progress and change difficult.
Software did advance more and more rapidly before software copyrights were involved.
I disagree. Unix is far from the "right way" to create OS's. Various research projects prove that. However, the copyright regime has pretty much subsidized a huge industry that has everything to benefit from locking you to the current platforms (the various closed-source Unix clones and Windows).
Without copyrights, OS research could have continued and not be virtually abandoned due to "no hope to catch on in a Unix/Windows world".
Your experience is very different to that of the rest of us.
Closed nvidia and ATI drivers break all the time and cause infinite pain to kernel developers. They're also a big source of kernel crashes and makes them highly un-debuggable.
You are ignorant and wrong. Software up to 1979 was not copyrighted (it was an "innovative" use of copyright by Bill Gates at the time that started this trend).
Many interesting software advances: OS design (Multics, Unix, etc), programming language design (Lisp, C) were all done without software copyrights and were really "open source" or "Free Software" by today's definitions.
If anything, the involvement of for-profit corporations using closed-source has crippled the progress of software, as you would expect exponential progress in a field such as software, but arguably software progress has slowed down since 1979.
Then you should be thankful that he does CARE that it is free as in freedom. Because if everyone did what you did, we'd be stuck with free-as-in-beer crap (i.e: Crappy closed-source drivers, flash plugins, OS's) with no interoperability, tuned for the corporates' benefit rather than your benefit, etc.
Only caring about getting your immediate work done, and not caring at all about encouragement of the right kinds of software in the future is short-sighted and actually damaging to the causes.
You keep the meme of kuro5hin alive... :-)
The code was already found on a public FTP site by the founder of blackboxvoting.org
The code is totally insecure, and has many vulnerabilities.
Rest assured, there are multiple ways to rig the voting machines.
I heard they were looking for people can correctly count electronic ballots in Ohio :-)
I just had to reply to your signature, sorry...
While I agree IPv4, TCP and UDP are pretty great, what's robust or good about SMTP?
Its a horrible protocol.
Why does everyone try to divert attention from his claim that the internet does not scale well, to attacks on his own works?
If his claims have no merit, refute the claims. Do not attempt to instead discredit the source.
The government is not using flat taxation, so its already "spreading the wealth around".
Obama used that phrase to mean that that instead of taking from lots of the low-income, you can take a little more from high-income and wealth will "spread around" to many low-income people by virtue of them having to pay less taxes. This wealth will allow them greater buying power which will mean more customers for Joe.
Ehh, these laws don't really work out.
That's one point the "I, Robot" film everyone loves to hate does make (It may not be original, I have not read the book, but the film still makes that point).
Pita bread is the tastiest bread ever.
Saying its the "ultimate authority on morals" is not enough to explain why they should care about what he thinks. Why should they accept, rather than reject morals?
Its not enough to have a god that cares about life so that life would have value. You have to accept that god's values as your own, to inherit the view that life has value.
So why not skip the god part, and accept the view life has value without all the god mumbo jumbo?