Notice that if you lay out a square field such that an ox team can plow one furrow across then rest, you get a square with sides of exactly one furlong or 660 ft. The area of that field 43,600 square feet, which is nearly exactly one acre (43,560 ft).
Sorry, but that's off by a factor of ten. A traditional farmers acre is indeed 660 feet long, but only 66 feet wide. (That is, one furlong by one chain). A furlong square field would be ten acres.
Long, narrow fields allow the farmer to plow the field with the minimum number of turns. Turning an ox team around is not quite as easy as you might expect.
The same reason for long-narrow fields still applies to tractors, which also take time to turn. Of course, tractors do not need to rest, so the fields can be longer. Fields of a mile or more in length or not uncommon in the US and Canada.
Try saying "500 milliliters" several times rapidly, after already having drunk several 500 milliliters of ale.
The word "pint" is essential for the economic survival of the pub industry. If the good, steady customers cannot pronounce the name of the product, they establishment will go out of business.
The virus can be installed while the sub is in port. Or it can come aboard with a sailor and get installed from a CD. Or it might even be installed in the shipyard, while the systems are being serviced. There have even been cases of systems being shipped from manufacture with a virus pre-installed.
Once installed, a purpose-built virus might sit there unnoticed until the system is commanded to actually launch a live weapon. If it is able to distinguish between training exercises and real combat, it might be unnoticed for many years.
I'm sure our military people do their best to detect and correct defective weapons systems. But testing whether or not a system will actually launch a real live nuclear missile toward a target Russia or China is not something they can do very often.
An equally challenging alternative is to teach physics to someone else. Then you discover the holes in your learning too.
I think that applies to just about any subject. As a student, you learn enough to write the papers and answer the tests. But as the teacher, you have to know it well enough to take an hour-long oral exam three times a week.
How you can get to Ph.D level in maths and not have at least a working (basic) understanding of them is beyond me.
Simple. Take the "non-applied" mathematics track. The mathematics that is used in physics and chemistry is called "applied". The rest of math, including algebra, logic, algorithms, and many other topics is called "non-applied".
Fair warning and full disclosure: I majored in Mathematics as an undergraduate, and hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science. My dissertation is in algorithms for logic programming.
I don't disagree. You are quite right that philosophy is the root of the tree of intellectual inquiry, and that all subsequent fields started as branches of philosophy. But there is a deeper connection than you may realize.
Mathematics is the language of logic. Without the system of notations that we call mathematics, logic simply cannot be precise. The notations of mathematics denote meanings. Computation is just the process of doing mathematics -- that is, of manipulating the symbols that denote the meanings. And, finally, programs are just the mathematical expressions that precisely denote those manipulations.
The part that I find amusing is that many, perhaps most, "computer scientists" do not even realize that they are doing mathematics, must less that they are doing symbolic logic or philosophical reasoning.
You are quite right that the periodic maintenance and battery-replacement is a serious problem in wireless systems. That's why most wireless systems more than a couple years old don't actually work.
With a wired system, you have one big battery and a charger. The alarm companies sell little 7 amp-hour batteries that fit inside the alarm case. But it's easy to wire in a huge 200+ amp-hour AGM battery if you want it. (That is enough battery to keep the system running through a week or longer of electric utility outage.) The system tests the battery every so-many hours, and detects a 'fault' when the battery eventually fails the test. The battery only needs to be replaced every decade or so.
There is a story about to men being chased by a bear. One of them says to the other "I don't have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you."
You don't have to make your house invulnerable. You only have to make it harder than your neighbors. Unfortunately, a typical "alarm system" doesn't do that. The security "system" needs to be defense-in-depth. An alarm is part of it, but is not adequate.
Most alarm systems do not have full coverage of the entire building envelope surface. And even when they do detect something, it takes at least several minutes for the police to arrive. During that several minutes, a lot of valuable stuff can disappear. So a monitored alarm system, by itself, does not prevent burglary. It only makes the burglar hurry. And, an unmonitored alarm is completely worthless.
Other elements of premises security include sturdy doors and windows, sturdy pick-proof locks, exterior lighting, a safe for valuables, locked drawers and closets for larger semi-valuables, loud dogs, nosy neighbors, and making sure the place always looks and sounds like it's occupied.
I have "impact rated" windows. In Florida, these windows are made to withstand hurricane. But, they are also resistant to burglars. The glass is laminated with a thick layer of tough plastic. You can beat on them with an axe, but you will not get through. Burglars in this area know about these windows, so they don't bother.
The doors should be made of steel, with a steel-reinforced jamb, and installed to the frame of the house with lots of long screws. Again, Florida "impact rated" doors do the trick nicely.
Door locks should be sturdy, pick-proof, and bump-proof. The common "pin-tumbler" locks are basically worthless. Lights and sound help to convince a burglar that someone might be home. An answering machine prevents a burglar from letting the phone ring while he approaches the house. Exterior lighting prevents night-time approach. (But, most burglars actually work during the day when most people are at work.) A dog is a nuisance, and will convince some burglars to go elsewhere. Safes and interior locks slow the burglar down if/when he does get inside.
In the end, burglars shop a neighborhood looking for houses that look both easy to enter and prosperous. If your house is protected better than others in the neighborhood, the burglar will pick one of the others.
It is common in science classes to teach a sequence of theories that attempt to explain the same thing. Each theory is inaccurate in some respect. Each new theory is more accurate than the preceding theory. The scientific method is all about formulating theories and looking for evidence that supports one theory over another. Each time a theory is found not to correctly predict the result of an experiment, we learn that the subject theory is not perfectly accurate. Each time a theory does predict the result of an experiment, we gain evidence to support that theory.
An important part of a science education is learning to design experiments to test proposed theories, and learning to design theories that can be tested. An important feature of a scientific theory is that it can be subjected to testing. That is, that some evidence can be found to either support or refute the theory. Some theories are defective in the sense that evidence, either for or against, is not available. Examining such proposed theories can inform the student, and help the student to understand why it is important that scientific theories can be tested.
The notion that a theory from more than two thousand years ago might be taken seriously is, rather silly. But, it might still provide fodder for the course, just as the the theory that all matter is comprised of fire, water, earth, and air. The ancient Greek theory of matter is often mentioned in physics or chemistry classes. Of course, it is usually followed by a statement to the effect that it is of course not accurate.
There certainly is no technical reason why computer voting machines cannot be made reliable and robust.
But, there are several compelling social, political, legal, and technical reasons why such machines are a profoundly bad idea.
Computer hardware and software is created by people. The people who create the technology can, either unintentionally or intentionally, introduce "bugs" into the implementation. Those bugs can be undetectable by any possible amount of examination, verification, or testing. Those "bugs" can change the election results.
Second, some people have huge incentives to change the election results. A programmer who is in a position to introduce a "bug" into the software might be tempted by a bribe of several million (or billion) dollars. What some people call a "bug", other people call a "feature". The ability to make the machinery report the desired election results instead of the real election results would be quite a "feature" indeed. In fact, there is ample evidence that exactly that has happened, in several different models and brands of voting machinery.
Third, in order to convince ordinary people that their votes have been counted correctly, you have to prove to their satisfaction that the votes are counted correctly. Proof of correctness of any computer software is basically impossible. There are two basic problems: First, the number of logic combinations is too astronomical to actually verify all of them; Second, even if a proof could be written, ordinary people cannot understand it.
Finally, it is not enough for the machines to be merely reliable and robust. To be used for voting, where many trillions of dollars are at stake and could be decided by as little as one vote, they must be absolutely correct, absolutely reliable, and absolutely secure. Any one of those is an impossible requirement. Attempting to meet all three is just ludicrous.
The financial systems are all fully audited by both parties to each transaction. They don't trust each other, and so they each insist on full auditing.
Every military system is developed, tested, and operated by people who really want it to work properly, because they might die if it doesn't.
Voting systems are developed, tested, and operated by the party that is "in power" at the time. If it works properly, they might lose power. They have an incentive to cheat, so they design the system to make cheating possible. In that sense, voting is more like a financial system than it is like a military system.
Because one party to an election (the current government) has both incentive and ability to cheat, the other party (the people) are right to insist on full auditing.
When I see the phrase "didn't see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record", I read that as "already fixed the election, and have no intention of actually counting any votes."
Don't blame this on a the lying sales weasels. It should properly be blamed on the lying elected official weasels.
Nonsense. There cannot ever be a completely free market. In any game, there have to be rules, and referees to enforce the rules. Without rules, someone invariably will do something extremely anti-social. That ruins the game, and then no one else will be willing to play.
Imagine what your neighborhood would be like if robbery and burglary were not illegal, or if there were no police to enforce those laws. I sure wouldn't want to live there.
In an economic market without rules, someone steals the money, and then the game is over. In a securities market without rules, worthless securities will be sold, the sellers will abscond with the proceeds, and then no one will be willing to invest any more. In banking without rules, some bankers will collect lots of deposits, and then just lock the doors and retire. After a few bankers do that, no one will be willing to put their money in a bank.
Rules and referees are essential in any game, including the game we call "investing".
If you read history, you will discover that Europe had a recession every few years and a depression about once a generation, for hundreds of years. That instability was caused by the absence of rules and referees in this game. The Great Depression was the last big depression, during which rules were put in place to help prevent another melt down.
The recent melt down is caused by deregulation. Many of our financial market regulations were repealed after the Republicans gained control of congress in 1994. Most of the rest were repealed after GWB became president. The SEC stopped enforcing the rest of the regulations, and went to a "voluntary compliance" model, in 2004. Three years after enforcement ended, we had another major melt down.
Every game must have rules, and referees to enforce the rules. And, the referees have to be willing to actually blow the whistle. Without rules and effective referees, people get hurt, then the game is not fun any more, and no one will play.
1. This design is clearly unethical, because it violates the TOS of the subject web sites. 2. It may be unlawful, but the company should consult its lawyers on that. 3. The design won't work for long. Web sites change page formats very often, so screen-scrapers require a lot of unscheduled maintenance programming.
So the thing to do is to express your concerns, in written form. The memo should say:
Re the first application: 1. The proposed design appears to violate the TOS of the subject web site. Because TOS agreements are a form of legal contract, we should consult the company lawyers before proceeding. 2. The company that runs the web site may discontinue the site, change the screen formats, or feed invalid/wrong data to the application. This will make our application unreliable and prone to unscheduled outages.
Re the second application: 1. The proposed design appears to violate the TOS of the web hosting site. Because TOS agreements are a form of legal contract, we should consult the company lawyers before proceeding. 2. The cost of developing the distributed application, and maintaining it, will probably exceed the $2000/mo that would be avoided. 3. If we go ahead with this development, the web hosting site may discontinue the free service at any time.
Finally, the memo should ask for a go/nogo decision on each of the two projects.
If the decision is "go", in writing, then don't worry about it. If it is verbal, reply in writing to confirm that verbal communication. In either case, update you resume.
If the decision is "nogo", take credit for saving the company from potential liability. And, of course, propose an alternate design.
The people who run big companies are greedy bastards. They want money for themselves. It doesn't matter to them if they bankrupt the company in the process, as long as they get theirs. They are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and sell their own mothers for a buck. If the computer model tells them something they don't like, they change the inputs, or change the model, or change the geeks who refused to change the model.
Disk mirroring (aka, "RAID 10") is easy to set up on most systems any more. Disks get cheaper every year. The original reason for RAID was to minimize hardware costs while providing some redundancy for failure-recovery, back when a 1 gig disk used to cost upwards of $10,000. As hardware costs have declined, the financial incentive to cut these corners have also declined. With disks well below $1000, there really isn't much reason not to keep online mirrors and offline full image backups.
At home, now, I keep critical data on mirrored disks, and rotate several other full image backup disks offline. All the disks are identical make/model, and all are bootable. The offline disks are stored in a fireproof safe. I periodically send a disk to my brother just in case of fire or flood. When my critical data grows to fill one of those, I will get a half dozen new disks, each 3 or 4 times bigger than the old ones.
If you have multiple ters of personal data, you might want to consider if all of it really needs to be backed up. The quicken file is important. The sixty-fifth five-hour video of the sleeping baby might not be as important.
The first feature of any source control system that matters is "reliable". A source control shall not loose source code. No exceptions.
The biggest part of "reliable" comes from being "idiot proof". There should be nothing that any of my fresh-out new hires can do that can cause loss of code. And, teaching a new hire how to make a working branch and populate a project should only take a few minutes.
Central backup is also a big part of "reliabile". If there is only ONE disk/filesystem that has to be backed up, we can mirror it and journal it, and back it up every night, with no problem at all.
Code maturity is the third big component of "reliable". A source-control system that has been around for less than a decade might still have some important bugs.
All those nifty features are, by comparison, not really very important.
There is no good reason why any software version number should ever be greater than PI.
Consider the TeX typesetting program. After Knuth published version 3.14 (the fourteenth bugfix after version 3) he noticed that the value was getting close to PI. The next two bugfix versions were 3.141 and 3.1415. The current version (roughly 20 years later) is 3.141592.
Public key might be "good enough" to secure something that is only worth a few thousand dollars. The value of breaking a key is just not enough to warrant much effort. And, the people who control the US government have no interest in stealing a few thousand dollars.
But, the people who control the US government have an extremely powerful motive to steal elections. The ability to steal elections would give them permanent totalitarian political power. Because of the possibility that PKS really is broken, it is plainly not good enough to secure something that is worth far more than all the money in the world.
It is a simple matter of risk analysis. For a small risk (some money), it doesn't take much security to mitigate that risk. But, for the largest possible risk (permanent totalitarian political power) there cannot be any mitigation other than completely eliminating any possibility of even one occurrence.
No, I didn't miss that part. It just doesn't address the problem.
First, the vast majority of crypto systems that have been used in the past have been broken. Usually the hole is not disclosed for many years after it is designed or discovered. Having a back door is extremely valuable. This tells me that the current commercial cryto systems are probably broken. The possibility that a crypto system might be broken is enough to disqualify that system from election applications.
Second, how do prove security to a person with zero technical knowledge? You can't. Even if a rigorous proof of security could be given, the person with zero knowledge cannot understand it.
Crypto helps, but I have yet to see any system that is actually secure. Most crypto systems that have been published have been found, often years later, to have holes. The possibility that a crypto system might have a hole that is not yet known is enough to disqualify that crypto system from use in elections. And, that same reason for disqualification applies to every existing crypto system.
But, the other half of the problem is even harder: How do you prove security to a skeptical jury of people who have ZERO expertise. It is easy to prove non-security -- just demonstrate a crack right in the court room. But, it is basically not possible to demonstrate positive security.
One security hole, anywhere in that electronic system, allows the entire system to be rigged. The first security hole is that the vast majority of people cannot tell the difference between a technician repairing a broken voting computer, and a technician rigging a voting computer. Second is that the software that is loaded might not match the software that is scrutinized. There are lots of others.
The security that works to prevent pieces of paper from being manipulated is well understood. Ask any banker.
Slashdot Mirror
Notice that if you lay out a square field such that an ox team can plow one furrow across then rest, you get a square with sides of exactly one furlong or 660 ft. The area of that field 43,600 square feet, which is nearly exactly one acre (43,560 ft).
Sorry, but that's off by a factor of ten. A traditional farmers acre is indeed 660 feet long, but only 66 feet wide. (That is, one furlong by one chain). A furlong square field would be ten acres.
Long, narrow fields allow the farmer to plow the field with the minimum number of turns. Turning an ox team around is not quite as easy as you might expect.
The same reason for long-narrow fields still applies to tractors, which also take time to turn. Of course, tractors do not need to rest, so the fields can be longer. Fields of a mile or more in length or not uncommon in the US and Canada.
Try saying "500 milliliters" several times rapidly, after already having drunk several 500 milliliters of ale.
The word "pint" is essential for the economic survival of the pub industry. If the good, steady customers cannot pronounce the name of the product, they establishment will go out of business.
The virus can be installed while the sub is in port. Or it can come aboard with a sailor and get installed from a CD. Or it might even be installed in the shipyard, while the systems are being serviced. There have even been cases of systems being shipped from manufacture with a virus pre-installed.
Once installed, a purpose-built virus might sit there unnoticed until the system is commanded to actually launch a live weapon. If it is able to distinguish between training exercises and real combat, it might be unnoticed for many years.
I'm sure our military people do their best to detect and correct defective weapons systems. But testing whether or not a system will actually launch a real live nuclear missile toward a target Russia or China is not something they can do very often.
An equally challenging alternative is to teach physics to someone else. Then you discover the holes in your learning too.
I think that applies to just about any subject. As a student, you learn enough to write the papers and answer the tests. But as the teacher, you have to know it well enough to take an hour-long oral exam three times a week.
How you can get to Ph.D level in maths and not have at least a working (basic) understanding of them is beyond me.
Simple. Take the "non-applied" mathematics track. The mathematics that is used in physics and chemistry is called "applied". The rest of math, including algebra, logic, algorithms, and many other topics is called "non-applied".
Fair warning and full disclosure: I majored in Mathematics as an undergraduate, and hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science. My dissertation is in algorithms for logic programming.
I don't disagree. You are quite right that philosophy is the root of the tree of intellectual inquiry, and that all subsequent fields started as branches of philosophy. But there is a deeper connection than you may realize.
Mathematics is the language of logic. Without the system of notations that we call mathematics, logic simply cannot be precise. The notations of mathematics denote meanings. Computation is just the process of doing mathematics -- that is, of manipulating the symbols that denote the meanings. And, finally, programs are just the mathematical expressions that precisely denote those manipulations.
The part that I find amusing is that many, perhaps most, "computer scientists" do not even realize that they are doing mathematics, must less that they are doing symbolic logic or philosophical reasoning.
You are quite right that the periodic maintenance and battery-replacement is a serious problem in wireless systems. That's why most wireless systems more than a couple years old don't actually work.
With a wired system, you have one big battery and a charger. The alarm companies sell little 7 amp-hour batteries that fit inside the alarm case. But it's easy to wire in a huge 200+ amp-hour AGM battery if you want it. (That is enough battery to keep the system running through a week or longer of electric utility outage.) The system tests the battery every so-many hours, and detects a 'fault' when the battery eventually fails the test. The battery only needs to be replaced every decade or so.
There is a story about to men being chased by a bear. One of them says to the other "I don't have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you."
You don't have to make your house invulnerable. You only have to make it harder than your neighbors. Unfortunately, a typical "alarm system" doesn't do that. The security "system" needs to be defense-in-depth. An alarm is part of it, but is not adequate.
Most alarm systems do not have full coverage of the entire building envelope surface. And even when they do detect something, it takes at least several minutes for the police to arrive. During that several minutes, a lot of valuable stuff can disappear. So a monitored alarm system, by itself, does not prevent burglary. It only makes the burglar hurry. And, an unmonitored alarm is completely worthless.
Other elements of premises security include sturdy doors and windows, sturdy pick-proof locks, exterior lighting, a safe for valuables, locked drawers and closets for larger semi-valuables, loud dogs, nosy neighbors, and making sure the place always looks and sounds like it's occupied.
I have "impact rated" windows. In Florida, these windows are made to withstand hurricane. But, they are also resistant to burglars. The glass is laminated with a thick layer of tough plastic. You can beat on them with an axe, but you will not get through. Burglars in this area know about these windows, so they don't bother.
The doors should be made of steel, with a steel-reinforced jamb, and installed to the frame of the house with lots of long screws. Again, Florida "impact rated" doors do the trick nicely.
Door locks should be sturdy, pick-proof, and bump-proof. The common "pin-tumbler" locks are basically worthless. Lights and sound help to convince a burglar that someone might be home. An answering machine prevents a burglar from letting the phone ring while he approaches the house. Exterior lighting prevents night-time approach. (But, most burglars actually work during the day when most people are at work.) A dog is a nuisance, and will convince some burglars to go elsewhere. Safes and interior locks slow the burglar down if/when he does get inside.
In the end, burglars shop a neighborhood looking for houses that look both easy to enter and prosperous. If your house is protected better than others in the neighborhood, the burglar will pick one of the others.
The Constitution isn't just some quaint little document, it is the very foundation of the US government.
According to our last Republican president, that Constitution is "just a damn piece of paper."
If we are lucky, he will be our last Republican president.
It is common in science classes to teach a sequence of theories that attempt to explain the same thing. Each theory is inaccurate in some respect. Each new theory is more accurate than the preceding theory. The scientific method is all about formulating theories and looking for evidence that supports one theory over another. Each time a theory is found not to correctly predict the result of an experiment, we learn that the subject theory is not perfectly accurate. Each time a theory does predict the result of an experiment, we gain evidence to support that theory.
An important part of a science education is learning to design experiments to test proposed theories, and learning to design theories that can be tested. An important feature of a scientific theory is that it can be subjected to testing. That is, that some evidence can be found to either support or refute the theory. Some theories are defective in the sense that evidence, either for or against, is not available. Examining such proposed theories can inform the student, and help the student to understand why it is important that scientific theories can be tested.
The notion that a theory from more than two thousand years ago might be taken seriously is, rather silly. But, it might still provide fodder for the course, just as the the theory that all matter is comprised of fire, water, earth, and air. The ancient Greek theory of matter is often mentioned in physics or chemistry classes. Of course, it is usually followed by a statement to the effect that it is of course not accurate.
There certainly is no technical reason why computer voting machines cannot be made reliable and robust.
But, there are several compelling social, political, legal, and technical reasons why such machines are a profoundly bad idea.
Computer hardware and software is created by people. The people who create the technology can, either unintentionally or intentionally, introduce "bugs" into the implementation. Those bugs can be undetectable by any possible amount of examination, verification, or testing. Those "bugs" can change the election results.
Second, some people have huge incentives to change the election results. A programmer who is in a position to introduce a "bug" into the software might be tempted by a bribe of several million (or billion) dollars. What some people call a "bug", other people call a "feature". The ability to make the machinery report the desired election results instead of the real election results would be quite a "feature" indeed. In fact, there is ample evidence that exactly that has happened, in several different models and brands of voting machinery.
Third, in order to convince ordinary people that their votes have been counted correctly, you have to prove to their satisfaction that the votes are counted correctly. Proof of correctness of any computer software is basically impossible. There are two basic problems: First, the number of logic combinations is too astronomical to actually verify all of them; Second, even if a proof could be written, ordinary people cannot understand it.
Finally, it is not enough for the machines to be merely reliable and robust. To be used for voting, where many trillions of dollars are at stake and could be decided by as little as one vote, they must be absolutely correct, absolutely reliable, and absolutely secure. Any one of those is an impossible requirement. Attempting to meet all three is just ludicrous.
The financial systems are all fully audited by both parties to each transaction. They don't trust each other, and so they each insist on full auditing.
Every military system is developed, tested, and operated by people who really want it to work properly, because they might die if it doesn't.
Voting systems are developed, tested, and operated by the party that is "in power" at the time. If it works properly, they might lose power. They have an incentive to cheat, so they design the system to make cheating possible. In that sense, voting is more like a financial system than it is like a military system.
Because one party to an election (the current government) has both incentive and ability to cheat, the other party (the people) are right to insist on full auditing.
When I see the phrase "didn't see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record", I read that as "already fixed the election, and have no intention of actually counting any votes."
Don't blame this on a the lying sales weasels. It should properly be blamed on the lying elected official weasels.
Nonsense. There cannot ever be a completely free market. In any game, there have to be rules, and referees to enforce the rules. Without rules, someone invariably will do something extremely anti-social. That ruins the game, and then no one else will be willing to play.
Imagine what your neighborhood would be like if robbery and burglary were not illegal, or if there were no police to enforce those laws. I sure wouldn't want to live there.
In an economic market without rules, someone steals the money, and then the game is over. In a securities market without rules, worthless securities will be sold, the sellers will abscond with the proceeds, and then no one will be willing to invest any more. In banking without rules, some bankers will collect lots of deposits, and then just lock the doors and retire. After a few bankers do that, no one will be willing to put their money in a bank.
Rules and referees are essential in any game, including the game we call "investing".
If you read history, you will discover that Europe had a recession every few years and a depression about once a generation, for hundreds of years. That instability was caused by the absence of rules and referees in this game. The Great Depression was the last big depression, during which rules were put in place to help prevent another melt down.
The recent melt down is caused by deregulation. Many of our financial market regulations were repealed after the Republicans gained control of congress in 1994. Most of the rest were repealed after GWB became president. The SEC stopped enforcing the rest of the regulations, and went to a "voluntary compliance" model, in 2004. Three years after enforcement ended, we had another major melt down.
Every game must have rules, and referees to enforce the rules. And, the referees have to be willing to actually blow the whistle. Without rules and effective referees, people get hurt, then the game is not fun any more, and no one will play.
The media is pretending this race is close because the media is a bunch of morons.
No, the media is pretending this race is close because it generates viewers and sells papers.
Close races sell. As soon as the outcome is perceived to be obvious, people lose interest and go on to the next thing.
1. This design is clearly unethical, because it violates the TOS of the subject web sites.
2. It may be unlawful, but the company should consult its lawyers on that.
3. The design won't work for long. Web sites change page formats very often, so screen-scrapers require a lot of unscheduled maintenance programming.
So the thing to do is to express your concerns, in written form. The memo should say:
Re the first application:
1. The proposed design appears to violate the TOS of the subject web site. Because TOS agreements are a form of legal contract, we should consult the company lawyers before proceeding.
2. The company that runs the web site may discontinue the site, change the screen formats, or feed invalid/wrong data to the application. This will make our application unreliable and prone to unscheduled outages.
Re the second application:
1. The proposed design appears to violate the TOS of the web hosting site. Because TOS agreements are a form of legal contract, we should consult the company lawyers before proceeding.
2. The cost of developing the distributed application, and maintaining it, will probably exceed the $2000/mo that would be avoided.
3. If we go ahead with this development, the web hosting site may discontinue the free service at any time.
Finally, the memo should ask for a go/nogo decision on each of the two projects.
If the decision is "go", in writing, then don't worry about it. If it is verbal, reply in writing to confirm that verbal communication. In either case, update you resume.
If the decision is "nogo", take credit for saving the company from potential liability. And, of course, propose an alternate design.
The people who run big companies are greedy bastards. They want money for themselves. It doesn't matter to them if they bankrupt the company in the process, as long as they get theirs. They are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and sell their own mothers for a buck. If the computer model tells them something they don't like, they change the inputs, or change the model, or change the geeks who refused to change the model.
Disk mirroring (aka, "RAID 10") is easy to set up on most systems any more. Disks get cheaper every year. The original reason for RAID was to minimize hardware costs while providing some redundancy for failure-recovery, back when a 1 gig disk used to cost upwards of $10,000. As hardware costs have declined, the financial incentive to cut these corners have also declined. With disks well below $1000, there really isn't much reason not to keep online mirrors and offline full image backups.
At home, now, I keep critical data on mirrored disks, and rotate several other full image backup disks offline. All the disks are identical make/model, and all are bootable. The offline disks are stored in a fireproof safe. I periodically send a disk to my brother just in case of fire or flood. When my critical data grows to fill one of those, I will get a half dozen new disks, each 3 or 4 times bigger than the old ones.
If you have multiple ters of personal data, you might want to consider if all of it really needs to be backed up. The quicken file is important. The sixty-fifth five-hour video of the sleeping baby might not be as important.
The first feature of any source control system that matters is "reliable". A source control shall not loose source code. No exceptions.
The biggest part of "reliable" comes from being "idiot proof". There should be nothing that any of my fresh-out new hires can do that can cause loss of code. And, teaching a new hire how to make a working branch and populate a project should only take a few minutes.
Central backup is also a big part of "reliabile". If there is only ONE disk/filesystem that has to be backed up, we can mirror it and journal it, and back it up every night, with no problem at all.
Code maturity is the third big component of "reliable". A source-control system that has been around for less than a decade might still have some important bugs.
All those nifty features are, by comparison, not really very important.
There is no good reason why any software version number should ever be greater than PI.
Consider the TeX typesetting program. After Knuth published version 3.14 (the fourteenth bugfix after version 3) he noticed that the value was getting close to PI. The next two bugfix versions were 3.141 and 3.1415. The current version (roughly 20 years later) is 3.141592.
Public key might be "good enough" to secure something that is only worth a few thousand dollars. The value of breaking a key is just not enough to warrant much effort. And, the people who control the US government have no interest in stealing a few thousand dollars.
But, the people who control the US government have an extremely powerful motive to steal elections. The ability to steal elections would give them permanent totalitarian political power. Because of the possibility that PKS really is broken, it is plainly not good enough to secure something that is worth far more than all the money in the world.
It is a simple matter of risk analysis. For a small risk (some money), it doesn't take much security to mitigate that risk. But, for the largest possible risk (permanent totalitarian political power) there cannot be any mitigation other than completely eliminating any possibility of even one occurrence.
No, I didn't miss that part. It just doesn't address the problem.
First, the vast majority of crypto systems that have been used in the past have been broken. Usually the hole is not disclosed for many years after it is designed or discovered. Having a back door is extremely valuable. This tells me that the current commercial cryto systems are probably broken. The possibility that a crypto system might be broken is enough to disqualify that system from election applications.
Second, how do prove security to a person with zero technical knowledge? You can't. Even if a rigorous proof of security could be given, the person with zero knowledge cannot understand it.
Crypto helps, but I have yet to see any system that is actually secure. Most crypto systems that have been published have been found, often years later, to have holes. The possibility that a crypto system might have a hole that is not yet known is enough to disqualify that crypto system from use in elections. And, that same reason for disqualification applies to every existing crypto system.
But, the other half of the problem is even harder: How do you prove security to a skeptical jury of people who have ZERO expertise. It is easy to prove non-security -- just demonstrate a crack right in the court room. But, it is basically not possible to demonstrate positive security.
The party that controls the election software also controls the outcome of the election. And, the next election after that one, forever.
Nonsense.
One security hole, anywhere in that electronic system, allows the entire system to be rigged. The first security hole is that the vast majority of people cannot tell the difference between a technician repairing a broken voting computer, and a technician rigging a voting computer. Second is that the software that is loaded might not match the software that is scrutinized. There are lots of others.
The security that works to prevent pieces of paper from being manipulated is well understood. Ask any banker.