Absolutely agree. I was diagnosed with repetitive motion syndrome in 1985, just a couple years after I started using a mouse. (They started calling it RSI a few years later.) The doc told me to either get a track ball, or get 6-months disability. (They didn't have a lot of treatment options back then.) So I got a track ball. Been using trackballs ever since. Once in a while I have to drive someone else's computer using a mouse. Invariably, the wrist aches after those sessions.
I tried at least a dozen track balls. It is amazing how horrible the ergonomics really are on most of the devices that are advertised as being ergonomic. I found the Evolution trackball, made by ITAC about ten years ago. (Sold at www.mousetrak.com, if you want to look.) The thing is huge, ugly, and mechanical. But, it is actually ergonomic, fits my hand, and I don't get wrist problems. And, the moving parts are made of stainless steel with roller bearings. It wants to be cleaned and oiled about once a year, but otherwise has given me no trouble at all. One here, one at home. The one at the office (8+ hours/day) is the 10-year-old PS/2 unit. I might eventually get another USB unit to replace the old PS/2 unit.
I have been looking at optical trackballs, recently. Thinking I might replace the old mechanical units. But, I have not yet found a decent (ergonomic) optical trackball. The little tiny trackballs, and the trackballs that are positioned under the thumb are just injuries ready to happen as far as I'm concerned. There is a market for real ergonomic pointing devices. But they have to be designed by actual ergonomic specialists, and tested by real users, and they have to tell the marketing people where to put their pretty pictures.
We clearly need a law to give the corporations that hold personal information some incentive to prevent theft of that data. The law might set requirements for particular methods that are needed to prevent data theft, but for any particular methods there will be hacks that can get around them. IMO, the key is to hold the officers liable for the theft.
Suppose the officers and directors of a corporation were to be held criminally liable whenever personal data in the custody of that corporation is used to harm the person or steal his money.
That law, by itself, will not stop data theft. But, it will give the officers and directors an incentive. A few dozen corporate officers and directors will go to jail for 20 years each. Then, immediately, all other corporations will do whatever is necessary to prevent data theft.
Firing, or even reprimanding, a university professor (at any rank) because of the contents of an academic lecture is just outrageous. In order for a university to function, the faculty must have significant freedom to research, publish, and teach on just about any topic within their respective subject areas.
Physics professors routinely give lectures that are, essentially, instructions for making a nuclear weapon. Chemistry professors often teach how to create the energetic reactions that most people call explosions. Engineering professors teach the methods that can cause buildings to fall down. No one suggests that these topics must not be taught. Indeed, there is significant intellectual content in each of these topics. Nuclear power, how to avoid explosions, and how to avoid falling buildings, all require knowledge that might be misused.
The idea of a p2p network is useful for many purposes other than distribution of copyrighted material. Distribution of public-domain materials, software upgrades and patches, government documents, and contributed materials are all legitimate. The protocols and technology that are used in current p2p implementations is a legitimate topic of study, so that researchers can design improved versions for future use. Methods to discover and disable the illegal copying of copyright material, without disabling the legal publishing of contributed public-domain material, is another legitimate area for research.
Of course, it is possible that some of the people attending these lectures had the intention of using the material to violate the law. But, it is also possible that some of the students who take physics, chemistry, or engineering courses have the intention of using that material to violate other laws. If we suppress every topic that might be used to do harm, there will not be much left in our universities.
If an employer really needs those skills, then they must be worth more than an average wage. Offering an "average" wage for highly unusual skills is really the problem. If you want really need someone with three PhD's worth of very particular knowledge, you should be willing to pay far more than the current going rate for a BA.
Attempting to regulate the content of job advertising, or of job descriptions, cannot work. If a company really, actually, needs an ML programmer who is fluent in both ancient Ethopian and modern Eskimo languages, then that is the requirement. But, if that is the real requirement, then that job should be worth more than a generic Java programmer with a BA.
The solution, I think, is to set the minimum pay for a H1B or L1 visa holder to double or triple the pay for a regular employee in the same job classification. Then, if the company really needs a particular rare skill, they can get it. But, they will not be able to use those visas just to save money for ordinary work.
Great idea. Oregon would be an ideal place to build a moon base. Not only could we use the lava tubes for potection against solar radiation, but the logistics would be much simpler and cheaper. Putting everything on rockets and sending it a quarter million (or so) miles to the moon would be really difficult and expensive. It would so much easier to just have it delivered to Oregon in the first place. UPS and Fedex even go there, already.
In a science course, we should teach the scientific method, and present some of the theories and results that have been found. One way to teach the scientific method might be to use some examples of competing theories.
Discuss the scientific method. Pay particular attention to the requirement that the theory must be refutable.
Present the theory of creationism (preferably without giggling).
Present the theory of evolution.
Ask: What evidence can we find, or what experiment can we perform, to support or refute each of these competing theories?
Ask: Is the theory of creationism refutable?
Is the theory of evolution refutable?
Are there other refutable theories that we haven't considered?
The resulting lesson might be more valuable than simply having the students parrot the theory of evolution as fact. They might begin to understand the methods of science. They might even begin to think about science.
I have a huge, 1000+ page Betty Crocker cookbook which I hardly ever use. It gives detailed recipes for particular dishes, but nothing that helps me to just throw a dinner together. And nothing that helps me to create anything new.
My very favorite recipe book is a tiny little thing of about 40 pages. For each kind of meat and each kind of vegetable, it lists what spices and sauces go well with it, how long and how hot to cook it, and how to tell when it is done. There is a little section on how to make about a dozen differnet sauces. That's it.
A programming language has syntax and semantics. For regular expressions, Chomsky gave both fully in his original paper on the subject. The added conveniences that some utilities provide are all listed in their respective man pages. The entire subject, if it were collected together, should be about 10 pages. With some explanation of language theory, grammars, and such, the whole might be worth a chapter.
Get out an undergraduate compiler-theory book (such as Aho/Sethi/Ullman). They have less than a chapter on regular expressions, and they cover the topic fairly well.
But, I suppose, there is a difference between a cookbook that is made for cooks to use as a reference, and a cookbook that is made for non-cooks to follow by rote. Learn how to cook.
You will be surprised how seldom you actually refer to the 1000+ page cookbooks.
Even in relatively thin layers, concrete is much more bullet-resistant than any kind of canvas tent.
Bullet-resistance is a very desirable feature for military applications.
Layers of something like gunite (used in swimming pools) might be added to make it thicker, if needed, for particular applications. The combination of very rapid construction with bullet-resistance should be very attractive from a military point of view.
3. Call the combined operation the "Hubble Repair Mission".
4. Send me the extra billion.
Re:Capability Maturity Model
on
QA != Testing
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The major purpose of the CMM is to generate the maximum possible costs. Military contractors are paid on a cost-plus basis. They make money by finding justifiable ways to generate higher costs. They don't make money by selling finished products that are produced efficiently. Similarly, military officers don't get promoted by finishing projects ahead of schedule and under budget. They get promoted by justifying larger budgets and larger staffs, which then require higher-ranking people to run the larger organization. Both sides benefit by finding ways to justify the maximum possible cost for every project.
Having said that, many of the ideas that are in the CMM are good ideas. Each item has some justification, and can be helpful to generate better software systems. After all, the cost-plus contracts are based on justified costs, not just every cost that the contractor can dream up. There has to be some plausible justification for every cost item.
So, for non-military purposes, we can use the CMM model and associated literature. We just have to use them intelligently. We cannot blindly implement every detail, because that will make every project over-budget and late. And, we cannot blindly reject every CMM element just because we think the CMM is bloated and inefficient. We should instead consider which management methods and processes are actually appropriate for the current project at hand. The CMM books provide a good inventory of things that we might want to do. We just have to pick the items that are appropriate for the particular project, in the particular company and business environment.
I am frequently surprised that so many people consider themselves to be an X-Language programmer (for some particular X-Language). I think of myself as a computer scientist, or perhaps as a software engineer, but avoid labeling myself with any particular technology. After learning 40 or 50 languages and forgetting most of them, I have come to realize that I can learn a new language in a few days, and become comfortable with the library and environment in a few weeks.
A carpenter is not a
hammer-er, or a saw-er, or a drill-er. He is expected to be able to quickly learn and use any of those tools, as needed for the project. A new project can use a new tool (language, os, whatever) as needed for the application. When an old program needs maintenence, it may require some re-learning of the old tool, but that should not be difficult.
I suspect the harder problem is preserving the old development systems and tools. If the compiler (or some other tool) hasn't been used in several years, there is a good chance that it won't work. Or, that we can't find it at all because it didn't get loaded onto the new host before the old host was scrapped. Or, that the old hard-copy manuals (how to use the tools) have rotted and/or been discarded in the trash.
if your phone rings, you leave your seat and have your conversation back by the loos, not in your seat
I can see the newspapers now:
"Airplane crashes in Japan after 90 people all move to the back of the plane at the same time."
Seriously! The center of gravity of an airplane
needs to be over the wings. If a plane is too tail-heavy, it can be very difficult or impossible to fly.
The Fundamental Rule of Everything
on
Digital Packrats
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The Fundamental Rule of Everything:
The stuff will expand to fill the storage.
The files will expand to fill the disks.
The clothes will expand to fill the closet.
The junk will expand to fill the basement.
The books will expand to fill the shelves.
The body will expand to fill the clothes.
The project will expand to fill the schedule/budget.
And, of course: The outgo will rise to equal or exceed the income.
This applies to music files, just as well as it applies to everything else.
The article suggests that having 60+ temporary cask sites scattered across the country, many near cities, is less desirable than having one temporary cask site in a central place. Security in many small sites is difficult. Security in a large, remote site would be less difficult. And, if/when a cask does leak, having it far away from population centers would be helpful. Basically, his position is that an improved, temporary solution is still an improvement the current temporary solution.
The Yucca Mt site was originally proposed as a permenent site. But I don't see any particular reason why casks could not be stored there temporarily. The arguments about dry climate and geologically stable structure apply just as well to temporary sites as they do to a permenent site. If we find a better place, the casks could be moved. If we find a better technology, the materials could be removed from the casks and processed using that better technology. We can minimize the badness of the solution by increments, instead of insisting on a perfect solution or nothing.
If we don't find either a better place, or a better technology, then the temporary (secure, dry, and geologically stable) place might turn out to be less temporary than anticipated. But even in that case, it will still be the least-bad of the solutions that are available at that time.
There's no reason any honest American shouldn't demand that these issues be resolved, and refuse to take "shut up at watch TV" for an answer.
Further, there are compelling reasons for every honest American to demand that the problems with elections should be resolved.
Let us suppose, for a moment, that some small group of people has the capacity to rig an election. They would have used that capacity to rig the recent general election. But there is no reason to suppose that they could not also rig primary elections. Now suppose the small group of people want their friends and families to control the country for the next few hundred years. They could simply stand for election, rig the primary election, and then rig the general election. Then, not only is the country controlled by one "party", but the party is controlled by the small group.
They would have to be careful, at first, to avoid being too obvious about it.
Eventually, though, the sham would become apparent. But by then the ruling group would be so entrenched that they would be difficult to overthrow. The oligarchy could continue for several hundred years.
I don't believe it was an error. I do believe it was just their bad luck that they got caught, this time, in this one election. I do believe that they didn't get caught, this time, in many other elections.
The purpose of an election is to collect and count the votes. Anything less than absolute accuracy is, or should be, completely unacceptable. Anything less that total transparency is, or should be, completely unacceptable. The process should produce enough documentatary evidence so that any disputes can be decided, without any doubt at all, in any court of competent jurisdiction.
The problem is not counting.
The problem is trusting the counter.
Any voting system that requires trusting any one counter is inherently flawed. No trust should be needed or expected. The counting process should be fully transparent. The counting of each election should be observed, checked, audited and verified, by people representing each candidate.
A substantial fraction (nearly half) of the USA population is convinced that the last presidential election was rigged. I have a Ph.D. in computer science -- and I am almost certain that this election was rigged. That is a recipe for disaster. It doesn't really matter whether or not the past election was really rigged. What really matters is that it clearly could have been, and many people believe that it was.
For the government to be stable, we need the vast majority of people to believe that the elections are fair and honest. When some of the people believe that the election is rigged, those same people are likely to seek an alternative way to force power away from the people who rigged the election.
We see that happen in other countries, every year. It's called an assasination, or a revolution, or a civil war. Whatever you call it, it is messy and bloody, and there is only one way to avoid it. That way is to make the election process so transparent and honest that everyone can be certain that it is honest.
I have read that there are four boxes to use in defense of liberty:
Soap; Ballot; Jury; Ammo. The first two have now failed. It's time for the third. If the legal process fails to correct the election process in this country, then it may be time for the fourth.
I sincerely hope that the fourth box will not be necessary.
The details of the election process matter, but not nearly as much as the transparency. Paper ballots go a long way to make elections transparent. Paper ballots provide evidence that can be examined if the election is disputed. Registration requirements have been used to disenfranchise people, so registration should be eliminated. Inking the thumb of each voter provides a transparent way of being sure that no one votes multiple times. Electronic machinery can be useful, to provide handicap access or save labor, but only to the extent that it does not reduce honesty or transparency. Other mechanisms may also be useful, but each should be judged by the extent to which it improves honesty and transparency.
Rigging or attempting to rig an election should be a capital crime, even for minor conspirators and accomplices, and even for minor local elections.
"Safe" is a relative term. Some people hold that any risk at all is completely unacceptable. But mining and burning fossil fuels involves risk. Harvesting and burning wood involves risk. Even building and operating solar or wind energy plants involves risk. None of the alternative is completely, absolutely "safe". Given that there is no absolutely "safe" alternative, it really comes down to minimizing and choosing between the risks.
The problem is that giving receipts to the voter allows vote-buying, and even extortion of voters by companies/employers/etc.
Historically, in some districts, each voter was given two tokens (one for each candidate). He put one in the box (as the vote for that candidate), and kept the other. The plantation-owner would just insist on receiving the other token (the one for the candidate that the plantation-owner opposed) as a condition of continued employment.
Are the requested public records (log files, etc.) sufficient to determine if any election-rigging or ballot-stuffing has occurred? That is, assume for a moment that some software in one of the brands of DRE machines has changed some votes before recording them... Will the log files show that some votes were not recorded as they were cast?
We need to determine whether or not vote-rigging or ballot-stuffing has occurred, and obtain conditions for future elections so that election-rigging is not possible in the future.
I suspect that the only way to make that determination will be to obtain the design information (source code, memos, diagrams, schematic drawings, etc.) for the election machinery, and open them to expert examination.
I suspect we could easily find a few hundred PhD's who would be willing to examine the designs.
So what is needed is to get the machinery and the design information into a forum where it can be examined.
I'm not sure how that can be done. Perhaps, a suit could be filed alledging election-rigging. Then, the discovery process could be used to obtain the evidence.
Politics affects technology. Political decisions affect our jobs, our products, and our markets. Indeed, the policies made by governments often have greater effects on technology issues than the policies of companies or universities.
And more importantly, on the occasion that it heats up, it can be quite entertaining.
Slashdot Mirror
I tried at least a dozen track balls. It is amazing how horrible the ergonomics really are on most of the devices that are advertised as being ergonomic. I found the Evolution trackball, made by ITAC about ten years ago. (Sold at www.mousetrak.com, if you want to look.) The thing is huge, ugly, and mechanical. But, it is actually ergonomic, fits my hand, and I don't get wrist problems. And, the moving parts are made of stainless steel with roller bearings. It wants to be cleaned and oiled about once a year, but otherwise has given me no trouble at all. One here, one at home. The one at the office (8+ hours/day) is the 10-year-old PS/2 unit. I might eventually get another USB unit to replace the old PS/2 unit.
I have been looking at optical trackballs, recently. Thinking I might replace the old mechanical units. But, I have not yet found a decent (ergonomic) optical trackball. The little tiny trackballs, and the trackballs that are positioned under the thumb are just injuries ready to happen as far as I'm concerned. There is a market for real ergonomic pointing devices. But they have to be designed by actual ergonomic specialists, and tested by real users, and they have to tell the marketing people where to put their pretty pictures.
Suppose the officers and directors of a corporation were to be held criminally liable whenever personal data in the custody of that corporation is used to harm the person or steal his money.
That law, by itself, will not stop data theft. But, it will give the officers and directors an incentive. A few dozen corporate officers and directors will go to jail for 20 years each. Then, immediately, all other corporations will do whatever is necessary to prevent data theft.
Physics professors routinely give lectures that are, essentially, instructions for making a nuclear weapon. Chemistry professors often teach how to create the energetic reactions that most people call explosions. Engineering professors teach the methods that can cause buildings to fall down. No one suggests that these topics must not be taught. Indeed, there is significant intellectual content in each of these topics. Nuclear power, how to avoid explosions, and how to avoid falling buildings, all require knowledge that might be misused.
The idea of a p2p network is useful for many purposes other than distribution of copyrighted material. Distribution of public-domain materials, software upgrades and patches, government documents, and contributed materials are all legitimate. The protocols and technology that are used in current p2p implementations is a legitimate topic of study, so that researchers can design improved versions for future use. Methods to discover and disable the illegal copying of copyright material, without disabling the legal publishing of contributed public-domain material, is another legitimate area for research.
Of course, it is possible that some of the people attending these lectures had the intention of using the material to violate the law. But, it is also possible that some of the students who take physics, chemistry, or engineering courses have the intention of using that material to violate other laws. If we suppress every topic that might be used to do harm, there will not be much left in our universities.
Attempting to regulate the content of job advertising, or of job descriptions, cannot work. If a company really, actually, needs an ML programmer who is fluent in both ancient Ethopian and modern Eskimo languages, then that is the requirement. But, if that is the real requirement, then that job should be worth more than a generic Java programmer with a BA.
The solution, I think, is to set the minimum pay for a H1B or L1 visa holder to double or triple the pay for a regular employee in the same job classification. Then, if the company really needs a particular rare skill, they can get it. But, they will not be able to use those visas just to save money for ordinary work.
Great idea. Oregon would be an ideal place to build a moon base. Not only could we use the lava tubes for potection against solar radiation, but the logistics would be much simpler and cheaper. Putting everything on rockets and sending it a quarter million (or so) miles to the moon would be really difficult and expensive. It would so much easier to just have it delivered to Oregon in the first place. UPS and Fedex even go there, already.
Discuss the scientific method. Pay particular attention to the requirement that the theory must be refutable.
Present the theory of creationism (preferably without giggling).
Present the theory of evolution.
Ask: What evidence can we find, or what experiment can we perform, to support or refute each of these competing theories?
Ask: Is the theory of creationism refutable? Is the theory of evolution refutable? Are there other refutable theories that we haven't considered?
The resulting lesson might be more valuable than simply having the students parrot the theory of evolution as fact. They might begin to understand the methods of science. They might even begin to think about science.
The fox claims that the hens are not being abused. I, for one, don't believe him.
My very favorite recipe book is a tiny little thing of about 40 pages. For each kind of meat and each kind of vegetable, it lists what spices and sauces go well with it, how long and how hot to cook it, and how to tell when it is done. There is a little section on how to make about a dozen differnet sauces. That's it.
A programming language has syntax and semantics. For regular expressions, Chomsky gave both fully in his original paper on the subject. The added conveniences that some utilities provide are all listed in their respective man pages. The entire subject, if it were collected together, should be about 10 pages. With some explanation of language theory, grammars, and such, the whole might be worth a chapter. Get out an undergraduate compiler-theory book (such as Aho/Sethi/Ullman). They have less than a chapter on regular expressions, and they cover the topic fairly well.
But, I suppose, there is a difference between a cookbook that is made for cooks to use as a reference, and a cookbook that is made for non-cooks to follow by rote. Learn how to cook. You will be surprised how seldom you actually refer to the 1000+ page cookbooks.
Layers of something like gunite (used in swimming pools) might be added to make it thicker, if needed, for particular applications. The combination of very rapid construction with bullet-resistance should be very attractive from a military point of view.
How to get very strict privacy laws passed:
1. Release the personal information of all 535 congress persons, the president, and maybe some federal judges. Distribute it widely.
2. Let them each deal with the consequences of having their own personal information available to thousands of crooks.
3. Watch new, and very stringent, privacy laws get passed, very quickly, and by a nearly unanimous vote.
1. De-orbit the old Hubble.
2. Launch Hubble-2, at about the same date
3. Call the combined operation the "Hubble Repair Mission".
4. Send me the extra billion.
Having said that, many of the ideas that are in the CMM are good ideas. Each item has some justification, and can be helpful to generate better software systems. After all, the cost-plus contracts are based on justified costs, not just every cost that the contractor can dream up. There has to be some plausible justification for every cost item.
So, for non-military purposes, we can use the CMM model and associated literature. We just have to use them intelligently. We cannot blindly implement every detail, because that will make every project over-budget and late. And, we cannot blindly reject every CMM element just because we think the CMM is bloated and inefficient. We should instead consider which management methods and processes are actually appropriate for the current project at hand. The CMM books provide a good inventory of things that we might want to do. We just have to pick the items that are appropriate for the particular project, in the particular company and business environment.
I wonder how long it will take Apple to start making mac minis in flavored colors?
They already make vanilla.
A carpenter is not a hammer-er, or a saw-er, or a drill-er. He is expected to be able to quickly learn and use any of those tools, as needed for the project. A new project can use a new tool (language, os, whatever) as needed for the application. When an old program needs maintenence, it may require some re-learning of the old tool, but that should not be difficult.
I suspect the harder problem is preserving the old development systems and tools. If the compiler (or some other tool) hasn't been used in several years, there is a good chance that it won't work. Or, that we can't find it at all because it didn't get loaded onto the new host before the old host was scrapped. Or, that the old hard-copy manuals (how to use the tools) have rotted and/or been discarded in the trash.
I can see the newspapers now: "Airplane crashes in Japan after 90 people all move to the back of the plane at the same time."
Seriously! The center of gravity of an airplane needs to be over the wings. If a plane is too tail-heavy, it can be very difficult or impossible to fly.
The stuff will expand to fill the storage.
The files will expand to fill the disks.
The clothes will expand to fill the closet.
The junk will expand to fill the basement.
The books will expand to fill the shelves.
The body will expand to fill the clothes.
The project will expand to fill the schedule/budget.
And, of course: The outgo will rise to equal or exceed the income.
This applies to music files, just as well as it applies to everything else.
The Yucca Mt site was originally proposed as a permenent site. But I don't see any particular reason why casks could not be stored there temporarily. The arguments about dry climate and geologically stable structure apply just as well to temporary sites as they do to a permenent site. If we find a better place, the casks could be moved. If we find a better technology, the materials could be removed from the casks and processed using that better technology. We can minimize the badness of the solution by increments, instead of insisting on a perfect solution or nothing.
If we don't find either a better place, or a better technology, then the temporary (secure, dry, and geologically stable) place might turn out to be less temporary than anticipated. But even in that case, it will still be the least-bad of the solutions that are available at that time.
Further, there are compelling reasons for every honest American to demand that the problems with elections should be resolved.
Let us suppose, for a moment, that some small group of people has the capacity to rig an election. They would have used that capacity to rig the recent general election. But there is no reason to suppose that they could not also rig primary elections. Now suppose the small group of people want their friends and families to control the country for the next few hundred years. They could simply stand for election, rig the primary election, and then rig the general election. Then, not only is the country controlled by one "party", but the party is controlled by the small group.
They would have to be careful, at first, to avoid being too obvious about it. Eventually, though, the sham would become apparent. But by then the ruling group would be so entrenched that they would be difficult to overthrow. The oligarchy could continue for several hundred years.
The purpose of an election is to collect and count the votes. Anything less than absolute accuracy is, or should be, completely unacceptable. Anything less that total transparency is, or should be, completely unacceptable. The process should produce enough documentatary evidence so that any disputes can be decided, without any doubt at all, in any court of competent jurisdiction.
Rigging an election should be a capital crime.
Any voting system that requires trusting any one counter is inherently flawed. No trust should be needed or expected. The counting process should be fully transparent. The counting of each election should be observed, checked, audited and verified, by people representing each candidate.
For the government to be stable, we need the vast majority of people to believe that the elections are fair and honest. When some of the people believe that the election is rigged, those same people are likely to seek an alternative way to force power away from the people who rigged the election. We see that happen in other countries, every year. It's called an assasination, or a revolution, or a civil war. Whatever you call it, it is messy and bloody, and there is only one way to avoid it. That way is to make the election process so transparent and honest that everyone can be certain that it is honest.
I have read that there are four boxes to use in defense of liberty: Soap; Ballot; Jury; Ammo. The first two have now failed. It's time for the third. If the legal process fails to correct the election process in this country, then it may be time for the fourth. I sincerely hope that the fourth box will not be necessary.
The details of the election process matter, but not nearly as much as the transparency. Paper ballots go a long way to make elections transparent. Paper ballots provide evidence that can be examined if the election is disputed. Registration requirements have been used to disenfranchise people, so registration should be eliminated. Inking the thumb of each voter provides a transparent way of being sure that no one votes multiple times. Electronic machinery can be useful, to provide handicap access or save labor, but only to the extent that it does not reduce honesty or transparency. Other mechanisms may also be useful, but each should be judged by the extent to which it improves honesty and transparency.
Rigging or attempting to rig an election should be a capital crime, even for minor conspirators and accomplices, and even for minor local elections.
"Safe" is a relative term. Some people hold that any risk at all is completely unacceptable. But mining and burning fossil fuels involves risk. Harvesting and burning wood involves risk. Even building and operating solar or wind energy plants involves risk. None of the alternative is completely, absolutely "safe". Given that there is no absolutely "safe" alternative, it really comes down to minimizing and choosing between the risks.
The problem is that giving receipts to the voter allows vote-buying, and even extortion of voters by companies/employers/etc. Historically, in some districts, each voter was given two tokens (one for each candidate). He put one in the box (as the vote for that candidate), and kept the other. The plantation-owner would just insist on receiving the other token (the one for the candidate that the plantation-owner opposed) as a condition of continued employment.
We need to determine whether or not vote-rigging or ballot-stuffing has occurred, and obtain conditions for future elections so that election-rigging is not possible in the future.
I suspect that the only way to make that determination will be to obtain the design information (source code, memos, diagrams, schematic drawings, etc.) for the election machinery, and open them to expert examination. I suspect we could easily find a few hundred PhD's who would be willing to examine the designs. So what is needed is to get the machinery and the design information into a forum where it can be examined.
I'm not sure how that can be done. Perhaps, a suit could be filed alledging election-rigging. Then, the discovery process could be used to obtain the evidence.
And more importantly, on the occasion that it heats up, it can be quite entertaining.