We've tried to replace the dollar with coins three times so far, and it's failed.
The problem is the size and shape of the old dollar coins. They're very close to quarters in size and weight. In our first attempt, the dollar coins were also silver like the quarters. So it was hard to quickly identify which coins are dollars and which are quarters.
In my mind, the big failure was that we didn't replace the dollar with coins, we added new dollar coins and kept the dollar bill in circulation. Inertia was enough to doom the changeover.
The benefits of the change mostly accrue to the government - coins last an order of magnitude longer, but aren't that much more expensive to produce. From the consumer perspective it is not obvious that one is preferable to the other, so why bother to switch?
Mass production of food just never ends well in general. The vegetables I eat now neither taste as good as those from 40 years ago nor do they even have the same nutrient value.
Don't forget that over the last 40 years your taste buds have been - we'll say changing, because that sounds better than deteriorating - so even identical foods today probably don't taste like they did 40 years ago.
The problem there are too many obvious patents out there, for cases most semi-competent developers would recreate when the issue comes across them. If the patent system ran correctly people wouldn't accidentally violate someone else's patent very often.
I am in complete agreement that there are many bad patents out there. But at the same time, many novel and non-obvious patents become completely obvious once you see them. If you see the solution and immediately know how to recreate it yourself, that does not says that the initial implementation of it was obvious.
There are no shortage of automated systems perfectically capable of (re)formatting code. For this reason personal choices with regards to tabstops, bracing, spacing and general layout simply does not matter.
Until source control systems work on semantics and not textual diffs, it is not as simple as that. If I get your code, reformat it to my style, change 2 lines and check it back in, I have completely polluted it as far as a diff goes.
If you want to have a rule that says all code gets run through a formatter prior to check-in, that would work, but it would mean that everyone would spend lots of time converting to and from the approved check in style.
Disclosure: I used to work for a company owned by Pearson.
$120 for a test is very much the reality of clinical testing. The research, norming and validation of the test are not cheap, and while I don't know anything about this particular test, instruments like this are normally developed and refined over multiple years of research. You are talking about lots of administrations in clinical settings, and follow ups to determine the eventual outcome of the patient. And research papers in peer reviewed journals to convince people in the industry that you have statistically valid results.
And any clinical test has a small market, since the number of people that can use it is relatively small. And usually getting paid by health insurance to boot.
It doesn't really even matter if they somehow manage to get this accepted and into the 3D printers, once the hardware is in the hands of the hacker security is a moot point. There is no such thing as fool-proof hardware security, and anyone who things they have it is probably either incompetent or a scam artist. Granted, something like this might deter the average 'user' from screwing around with the 3D printer, but the people who would really use these things to print illegal items are going to find a way around the security anyways.
I doubt anybody has any illusions that it is foolproof. Same as DRM in music/video/software isn't expected to stop everything. The intent is to put enough roadblocks in front of people that the average person doesn't bother to circumvent them. Total compliance isn't necessary. iTunes and Amazon sell MP3 tracks that could easily be found on line, but it is cheap enough and easy enough that people still buy from them. Consoles can be modded to play cracked games, but it is enough of a pain that most people don't bother.
It's kind of risky on Google's part, but if they succeed they'll break Microsoft's key stranglehold on the whole text editing market. Let's face it, it's ridiculous that such a basic piece of software as MS Office not only sells at the outrageous price they have it at, but is also considered mandatory by most computer users who use their computer for actual work.
Reducing Office suites to text editing is ridiculous. For most people in an office setting, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are utterly core technologies, and spending a few hundred dollars per seat is a complete non-factor for any medium to large business.
If Unix ran MS-Office, I that many businesses would find it easier to switch away from Windows but still keep Office.
My assumption is that an organization that doesn't have source control doesn't have a deployment process. So yes, he is doing shipping builds on his workstation. If you aren't checking code in, chances are you don't have a build machine either.
What you need to do is start using it, and ensure that everyone *else* who contributes uses it, too. That's a policy detail and needs someone to enforce it.
Bingo. Source control is an unalloyed good thing, but only if everyone is using it. All it takes is one influential holdout to bollix it up. Suppose that in an effort to get everything into a repository you do lots of work to ensure that the current production code is checked in. But a very senior, highly trusted developer has no interest in using it, so continues developing code from his personal workstation, never committing changes. Now he is on vacation, a bug pops up, someone else innocently goes to the repository, fixes and deploys the code, and loses a bunch of changes that the aforementioned highly respected engineer has already deployed. Customers are screaming, and the engineer blames the source control system (totally unfairly). Now the seed of doubt is planted in managements mind, and everybody is yelling at everybody else.
Source Control is an easy thing to sell to developers once you use it at all. But it only works if everybody is on board.
I agree with what you're saying, but the morons in TFS are actually talking about putting that beginner code into production!
Perhaps so that the non-coder gets to feel that special cold sweat that comes right as a deployment happens and you start to wonder about all the test cases that weren't in your test plan.
Or perhaps part of this is to give the non-coders an appreciation of how their testing and promotion process prevents buggy code from hitting production, and why changes can't be turned around in a day.
As opposed to what you get when your official policy is to reject the "invisible friend in the sky".
20 million of one's own citizens dead by the leaders' own hands and intention, per probably the best test case we'll get, the Soviet Union. Recent, explicitly atheist by policy, large-scale data, what better test-case could you hope for?
A case of correlation not causation, but even if it is causation, so what? Say Stalin murdered 20 million people in the name of Atheism - how does that in any way constitute an argument for against the existence of god/gods?
If you want to compensate for that, you could produce what I expect would be some easy statistics to demonstrate your point, such as, that the average level of self-reported satisfaction with life is better with your worldview, as an overall -performance result-, rather than anecdotes. Don't have that either?
Again, so what? I see debates about god get bogged down into non-sequiters like this all the time. Even if we could prove that if everyone believed in God we would all fart rainbows and live happily ever after, that is an argument about the beneficial impact of believing in a god, not a logical argument for the existence of a god.
Wait a minute. So, let's say for a moment that he did some stuff like his own blood transfusion and such.
1) If everyone does this, and when done professionally it is not dangerous, and it's not detectable by any real means, then why is that exactly wrong?
You make very valid points about where training/equipment crosses the line into cheating, but the part about "when done professionally it is not dangerous" is incorrect. A number of pro cyclists have died from heart issues, and there is at least some belief that EPO use is implicated. I don't know how credible the allegations are regarding EPO, but certainly overuse of steroids comes with very serious side effects.
Agreed, I will never buy a game that operates the way D3 did. D3 showed us that this method won't work. Sure people bought it this time, but we all know better for next time.
How can D3 possibly show that this does not work? Major publisher releases highly anticipated sequel, discloses in advance that an always on connection would be required, and despite raging flamewars and trollfests on gaming forums everywhere, sells millions of copies. And so far as I have heard, nobody has cracked it yet so Blizzard's piracy rate is roughly zero.
If I were a game publisher/developer/designer, and my game had a piracy problem, I would latch on to that model in a heartbeat.
That's the main thing. Devices that are irrelevant to essential system services, like sound systems, climate control, phone and WiFi, should be kept apart from the central processor.
If they need to communicate at all (I would argue no), it should be in one direction only: control signals from the main processor outward, with nothing in the other direction except for hard-wired feedback such as "Yes, I am turned on."
Seems more complicated in real life - my car has a very nice display in the dash, primarily for the nav system. But that is also where I check the oil, and the tire pressure, and change various settings. So the display and its associated controls are shared devices. To keep the isolation you want the interface between the devices has to be broader, increasing the attack surface, or you need to find room for a whole bunch of controls, instead of using the very nice display already in the vehicle.
I agree. If you can't add, subtract, multiply, divide and use algebra, then you won't last.
The usual way I explain it to students/non-technical outsiders is that much of my job consists of solving what we used to call "word problems" or "story problems". So nobody tells me that I need to solve 3x + x = 12, but in the course of analysis I discover what that is indeed one of the equations involved.
Boolean logic and basic algebra (and arithmetic of course) are absolute requirements in most programming jobs in my experience, but anything beyond that is more of a specialty requirement.
No kidding! If it takes 10 million lines for QuickBooks, then it is probably stored in a.txt file using the decimal number ASCII representation of the letters in the code instead of the letter itself.
...
So in summary, their case study should be titled "How NOT to manage program code"
The article is actually very interesting. It is not trying to justify the size of the code base, it is discussing the mechanisms they use to make a code base of that size manageable. I've never tried to manage anything bigger than 750KLOC, but even at that size build times and broken builds were a constant problem. So talking about the techniques that let people productively work on a code base 13x that size is interesting.
I disagree. I think that most people are happy to act on rational, substantiated and objective criticisms. I am, you are, and so is the OP. If you're the sort of person that thinks that everyone else is an ignorant idiot, maybe the problem isn't with everyone else.
Bingo. I think HR always considers the source in an exit interview. If you hated the company and can't wait to leave, the feeling is probably mutual, and they won't find your observations all that compelling. If you are leaving on good terms (and there are many reasons that can happen), they will probably be more receptive to what you have to say.
Where HR will take a keen interest is if a department or group suddenly experiences a bunch of turnover. New manager of a 10 person team all with 5+ years tenure, followed by 3 departures in 1 year sends up a big red flag and they will be looking for a reason.
Food for thinking: If a Public official working on behalf of the public has nothing to hide, why are they hiding? It should be illegal for them to do business with no trail in my opinion. The whole idea of "Public" official and "Public" offices are that these people work for the "Public".
Surely you are joking. Have you never written an email that could be quoted out of context, or exposed your ignorance about a topic? Or even ranted about what a huge PITA somebody was?
If you think government is ineffective and bloated now, wait until you get to a world where every conversation and email has to be treated like a press release.
Once a judge goes from "What did they mean?" to "What could it mean?" he is an activist judge.
Depends who you ask. An originalist interprets the text by "What did they mean?". A strict constructionist goes by "What does it say?". Typically both are more acceptable to conservatives than someone who interprets the text by "What is the most reasonable way to read this in current society and based on other precedents?". But to a strict constructionist, asking "what did they mean?" is irrelevant.
But I disagree that these will appeal to the rich or to high end car owners. You don't buy a high end car to NOT drive it. If there is no environmentalism goodie-two-shoes angle, the rich won't buy this to park in the garage next to the unused Prius.
Commuters. People who can put the commute time to good use, are the likely target market. Especially where that commute time is an hour or more.
I agree that commuters are the likely target market,but that includes a huge number of high end car owners - at least I see lots of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Lexus, Acura and Infinity on the road when I am commuting. My normal commute is about 30 minutes, and typically has at least 10 minutes of stop and go traffic a day. If I could trade that for an average commute of 35 or 40 minutes where I could be reading, working or surfing instead of driving, that would be a no brainer to me, and I suspect that many of the drivers of those high end cars I see would feel the same.
If you RTFA (no really), one of the conclusions is that the goal of the censorship is to provide a form of safety value. Let the people criticize the party/government, and even let that root out corruptions and law breaking. But when the discussion turns to protest or other forms of mass action, start censoring and nip it in the bud.
Not in favor of censorship, but I have to admit it is a pretty effective strategy.
Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, and less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance.
We also have no credible evidence of any organized tampering of the vote, either in mechanical or electronic forms. The systems may be wrong, but they are probably no worse than they have ever been, and I haven't seen any smoking gun saying that the machines were tampered with.
I do see 3 forms of election fraud/dirty tricks commonly alleged:
1. Fraudulent registrations. Indicated by people with no valid address or suspicious numbers of people residing at the same address. Not something an electronic voting system can address. 2. Felons voting while still on probation. Not clear that felons vote for one party vs another, but even if it is organized, not something that e-voting would address. 3. Dirty tricks along the lines of too few ballots or machines delivered to certain precincts causing long lines. Or making precincts inconveniently large. These are potentially done by one party or the other, but a certain number of these snafus are certainly due to incompetence or unexpectedly high voter turnouts. Also not something that changing the voting machines would address.
So what is the problem that we are trying to solve again?
I'm not saying I feel this way myself, but if anyone ever wondered why Americans are often stereotyped as self-centred and oblivious to the fact they are only a part of an international community, it's stuff like this which doesn't help them. However, I acknowledge that DNS and the Internet was originally just an American thing and wasn't initially conceived to service the entire planet, but still, we are living in the world we live in, regardless of the intent or lack there of.
As an American, I think that the reason we are stereotyped as self-centered and oblivious to the international community is that we are oblivious to the international community.
There are some extenuating circumstances. Compared to most countries, the US is really, really, big. So you can take a 2 week driving vacation, spend thousands of miles on the road, and never leave the country. So even people who have the disposable income to travel internationally may not have the inclination, because there is lots of stuff in the country to explore.
Second, the worldwide reach of the US entertainment industry and the prevalence of the rest of the world learning English as a second language means that we tend to assume that everyone speaks English, and that everyone is at least aware of our culture.
Third, there is a significant percentage of the population that subscribes to what is called "American Exceptionalism", which is the belief that the US is unique in all history as a force for good in the world. To suggest that the US follows it own self interest and that we are not always the white knight is viewed as unpatriotic and America bashing.
So you have people that rarely leave the US, think of themselves as better than everyone else, and expect that everyone else will learn English and conform to our culture.
Slashdot Mirror
If it is a publicly traded company, you can see the salary of the CEO and other highly compensated individual in the annual reports.
Salary of Congressmen is public knowledge (though not necessarily their outside income).
Chairman of the FED is a quasi public position, and I bet the salary is publicly disclosed.
Scientologists and lobbyists I can't help you with.
We've tried to replace the dollar with coins three times so far, and it's failed.
The problem is the size and shape of the old dollar coins. They're very close to quarters in size and weight. In our first attempt, the dollar coins were also silver like the quarters. So it was hard to quickly identify which coins are dollars and which are quarters.
In my mind, the big failure was that we didn't replace the dollar with coins, we added new dollar coins and kept the dollar bill in circulation. Inertia was enough to doom the changeover.
The benefits of the change mostly accrue to the government - coins last an order of magnitude longer, but aren't that much more expensive to produce. From the consumer perspective it is not obvious that one is preferable to the other, so why bother to switch?
Mass production of food just never ends well in general. The vegetables I eat now neither taste as good as those from 40 years ago nor do they even have the same nutrient value.
Don't forget that over the last 40 years your taste buds have been - we'll say changing, because that sounds better than deteriorating - so even identical foods today probably don't taste like they did 40 years ago.
Aging sucks, and your taste buds are not exempt.
The problem there are too many obvious patents out there, for cases most semi-competent developers would recreate when the issue comes across them. If the patent system ran correctly people wouldn't accidentally violate someone else's patent very often.
I am in complete agreement that there are many bad patents out there. But at the same time, many novel and non-obvious patents become completely obvious once you see them. If you see the solution and immediately know how to recreate it yourself, that does not says that the initial implementation of it was obvious.
There are no shortage of automated systems perfectically capable of (re)formatting code. For this reason personal choices with regards to tabstops, bracing, spacing and general layout simply does not matter.
Until source control systems work on semantics and not textual diffs, it is not as simple as that. If I get your code, reformat it to my style, change 2 lines and check it back in, I have completely polluted it as far as a diff goes.
If you want to have a rule that says all code gets run through a formatter prior to check-in, that would work, but it would mean that everyone would spend lots of time converting to and from the approved check in style.
Disclosure: I used to work for a company owned by Pearson.
$120 for a test is very much the reality of clinical testing. The research, norming and validation of the test are not cheap, and while I don't know anything about this particular test, instruments like this are normally developed and refined over multiple years of research. You are talking about lots of administrations in clinical settings, and follow ups to determine the eventual outcome of the patient. And research papers in peer reviewed journals to convince people in the industry that you have statistically valid results.
And any clinical test has a small market, since the number of people that can use it is relatively small. And usually getting paid by health insurance to boot.
It doesn't really even matter if they somehow manage to get this accepted and into the 3D printers, once the hardware is in the hands of the hacker security is a moot point. There is no such thing as fool-proof hardware security, and anyone who things they have it is probably either incompetent or a scam artist. Granted, something like this might deter the average 'user' from screwing around with the 3D printer, but the people who would really use these things to print illegal items are going to find a way around the security anyways.
I doubt anybody has any illusions that it is foolproof. Same as DRM in music/video/software isn't expected to stop everything. The intent is to put enough roadblocks in front of people that the average person doesn't bother to circumvent them. Total compliance isn't necessary. iTunes and Amazon sell MP3 tracks that could easily be found on line, but it is cheap enough and easy enough that people still buy from them. Consoles can be modded to play cracked games, but it is enough of a pain that most people don't bother.
It's kind of risky on Google's part, but if they succeed they'll break Microsoft's key stranglehold on the whole text editing market. Let's face it, it's ridiculous that such a basic piece of software as MS Office not only sells at the outrageous price they have it at, but is also considered mandatory by most computer users who use their computer for actual work.
Reducing Office suites to text editing is ridiculous. For most people in an office setting, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are utterly core technologies, and spending a few hundred dollars per seat is a complete non-factor for any medium to large business.
If Unix ran MS-Office, I that many businesses would find it easier to switch away from Windows but still keep Office.
My assumption is that an organization that doesn't have source control doesn't have a deployment process. So yes, he is doing shipping builds on his workstation. If you aren't checking code in, chances are you don't have a build machine either.
What you need to do is start using it, and ensure that everyone *else* who contributes uses it, too. That's a policy detail and needs someone to enforce it.
Bingo. Source control is an unalloyed good thing, but only if everyone is using it. All it takes is one influential holdout to bollix it up. Suppose that in an effort to get everything into a repository you do lots of work to ensure that the current production code is checked in. But a very senior, highly trusted developer has no interest in using it, so continues developing code from his personal workstation, never committing changes. Now he is on vacation, a bug pops up, someone else innocently goes to the repository, fixes and deploys the code, and loses a bunch of changes that the aforementioned highly respected engineer has already deployed. Customers are screaming, and the engineer blames the source control system (totally unfairly). Now the seed of doubt is planted in managements mind, and everybody is yelling at everybody else.
Source Control is an easy thing to sell to developers once you use it at all. But it only works if everybody is on board.
I agree with what you're saying, but the morons in TFS are actually talking about putting that beginner code into production!
Perhaps so that the non-coder gets to feel that special cold sweat that comes right as a deployment happens and you start to wonder about all the test cases that weren't in your test plan.
Or perhaps part of this is to give the non-coders an appreciation of how their testing and promotion process prevents buggy code from hitting production, and why changes can't be turned around in a day.
As opposed to what you get when your official policy is to reject the "invisible friend in the sky".
20 million of one's own citizens dead by the leaders' own hands and intention, per probably the best test case we'll get, the Soviet Union. Recent, explicitly atheist by policy, large-scale data, what better test-case could you hope for?
A case of correlation not causation, but even if it is causation, so what? Say Stalin murdered 20 million people in the name of Atheism - how does that in any way constitute an argument for against the existence of god/gods?
If you want to compensate for that, you could produce what I expect would be some easy statistics to demonstrate your point, such as, that the average level of self-reported satisfaction with life is better with your worldview, as an overall -performance result-, rather than anecdotes. Don't have that either?
Again, so what? I see debates about god get bogged down into non-sequiters like this all the time. Even if we could prove that if everyone believed in God we would all fart rainbows and live happily ever after, that is an argument about the beneficial impact of believing in a god, not a logical argument for the existence of a god.
Wait a minute. So, let's say for a moment that he did some stuff like his own blood transfusion and such.
1) If everyone does this, and when done professionally it is not dangerous, and it's not detectable by any real means, then why is that exactly wrong?
You make very valid points about where training/equipment crosses the line into cheating, but the part about "when done professionally it is not dangerous" is incorrect. A number of pro cyclists have died from heart issues, and there is at least some belief that EPO use is implicated. I don't know how credible the allegations are regarding EPO, but certainly overuse of steroids comes with very serious side effects.
Agreed, I will never buy a game that operates the way D3 did. D3 showed us that this method won't work. Sure people bought it this time, but we all know better for next time.
How can D3 possibly show that this does not work? Major publisher releases highly anticipated sequel, discloses in advance that an always on connection would be required, and despite raging flamewars and trollfests on gaming forums everywhere, sells millions of copies. And so far as I have heard, nobody has cracked it yet so Blizzard's piracy rate is roughly zero.
If I were a game publisher/developer/designer, and my game had a piracy problem, I would latch on to that model in a heartbeat.
That's the main thing. Devices that are irrelevant to essential system services, like sound systems, climate control, phone and WiFi, should be kept apart from the central processor.
If they need to communicate at all (I would argue no), it should be in one direction only: control signals from the main processor outward, with nothing in the other direction except for hard-wired feedback such as "Yes, I am turned on."
Seems more complicated in real life - my car has a very nice display in the dash, primarily for the nav system. But that is also where I check the oil, and the tire pressure, and change various settings. So the display and its associated controls are shared devices. To keep the isolation you want the interface between the devices has to be broader, increasing the attack surface, or you need to find room for a whole bunch of controls, instead of using the very nice display already in the vehicle.
I agree. If you can't add, subtract, multiply, divide and use algebra, then you won't last.
The usual way I explain it to students/non-technical outsiders is that much of my job consists of solving what we used to call "word problems" or "story problems". So nobody tells me that I need to solve 3x + x = 12, but in the course of analysis I discover what that is indeed one of the equations involved.
Boolean logic and basic algebra (and arithmetic of course) are absolute requirements in most programming jobs in my experience, but anything beyond that is more of a specialty requirement.
No kidding! If it takes 10 million lines for QuickBooks, then it is probably stored in a .txt file using the decimal number ASCII representation of the letters in the code instead of the letter itself.
...
So in summary, their case study should be titled "How NOT to manage program code"
The article is actually very interesting. It is not trying to justify the size of the code base, it is discussing the mechanisms they use to make a code base of that size manageable. I've never tried to manage anything bigger than 750KLOC, but even at that size build times and broken builds were a constant problem. So talking about the techniques that let people productively work on a code base 13x that size is interesting.
I disagree. I think that most people are happy to act on rational, substantiated and objective criticisms. I am, you are, and so is the OP. If you're the sort of person that thinks that everyone else is an ignorant idiot, maybe the problem isn't with everyone else.
Bingo. I think HR always considers the source in an exit interview. If you hated the company and can't wait to leave, the feeling is probably mutual, and they won't find your observations all that compelling. If you are leaving on good terms (and there are many reasons that can happen), they will probably be more receptive to what you have to say.
Where HR will take a keen interest is if a department or group suddenly experiences a bunch of turnover. New manager of a 10 person team all with 5+ years tenure, followed by 3 departures in 1 year sends up a big red flag and they will be looking for a reason.
Food for thinking: If a Public official working on behalf of the public has nothing to hide, why are they hiding? It should be illegal for them to do business with no trail in my opinion. The whole idea of "Public" official and "Public" offices are that these people work for the "Public".
Surely you are joking. Have you never written an email that could be quoted out of context, or exposed your ignorance about a topic? Or even ranted about what a huge PITA somebody was?
If you think government is ineffective and bloated now, wait until you get to a world where every conversation and email has to be treated like a press release.
Once a judge goes from "What did they mean?" to "What could it mean?" he is an activist judge.
Depends who you ask. An originalist interprets the text by "What did they mean?". A strict constructionist goes by "What does it say?". Typically both are more acceptable to conservatives than someone who interprets the text by "What is the most reasonable way to read this in current society and based on other precedents?". But to a strict constructionist, asking "what did they mean?" is irrelevant.
But I disagree that these will appeal to the rich or to high end car owners. You don't buy a high end car to NOT drive it.
If there is no environmentalism goodie-two-shoes angle, the rich won't buy this to park in the garage next to the unused Prius.
Commuters. People who can put the commute time to good use, are the likely target market. Especially where that commute time is an hour or more.
I agree that commuters are the likely target market,but that includes a huge number of high end car owners - at least I see lots of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Lexus, Acura and Infinity on the road when I am commuting. My normal commute is about 30 minutes, and typically has at least 10 minutes of stop and go traffic a day. If I could trade that for an average commute of 35 or 40 minutes where I could be reading, working or surfing instead of driving, that would be a no brainer to me, and I suspect that many of the drivers of those high end cars I see would feel the same.
If you RTFA (no really), one of the conclusions is that the goal of the censorship is to provide a form of safety value. Let the people criticize the party/government, and even let that root out corruptions and law breaking. But when the discussion turns to protest or other forms of mass action, start censoring and nip it in the bud.
Not in favor of censorship, but I have to admit it is a pretty effective strategy.
Another election year is upon us, and our vote is less secure, less reliable, and less meaningful than ever. To reference the last article, we still have no open source voting, no end-to-end auditable voting systems and no open source governance.
We also have no credible evidence of any organized tampering of the vote, either in mechanical or electronic forms. The systems may be wrong, but they are probably no worse than they have ever been, and I haven't seen any smoking gun saying that the machines were tampered with.
I do see 3 forms of election fraud/dirty tricks commonly alleged:
1. Fraudulent registrations. Indicated by people with no valid address or suspicious numbers of people residing at the same address. Not something an electronic voting system can address.
2. Felons voting while still on probation. Not clear that felons vote for one party vs another, but even if it is organized, not something that e-voting would address.
3. Dirty tricks along the lines of too few ballots or machines delivered to certain precincts causing long lines. Or making precincts inconveniently large. These are potentially done by one party or the other, but a certain number of these snafus are certainly due to incompetence or unexpectedly high voter turnouts. Also not something that changing the voting machines would address.
So what is the problem that we are trying to solve again?
I'm not saying I feel this way myself, but if anyone ever wondered why Americans are often stereotyped as self-centred and oblivious to the fact they are only a part of an international community, it's stuff like this which doesn't help them. However, I acknowledge that DNS and the Internet was originally just an American thing and wasn't initially conceived to service the entire planet, but still, we are living in the world we live in, regardless of the intent or lack there of.
As an American, I think that the reason we are stereotyped as self-centered and oblivious to the international community is that we are oblivious to the international community.
There are some extenuating circumstances. Compared to most countries, the US is really, really, big. So you can take a 2 week driving vacation, spend thousands of miles on the road, and never leave the country. So even people who have the disposable income to travel internationally may not have the inclination, because there is lots of stuff in the country to explore.
Second, the worldwide reach of the US entertainment industry and the prevalence of the rest of the world learning English as a second language means that we tend to assume that everyone speaks English, and that everyone is at least aware of our culture.
Third, there is a significant percentage of the population that subscribes to what is called "American Exceptionalism", which is the belief that the US is unique in all history as a force for good in the world. To suggest that the US follows it own self interest and that we are not always the white knight is viewed as unpatriotic and America bashing.
So you have people that rarely leave the US, think of themselves as better than everyone else, and expect that everyone else will learn English and conform to our culture.
Stand in line - if you RTFA, 3 people are already vying for .sucks.