Diebold makes their voting machines hackable for two relatively legitimate reasons:
1: Saves engineering time and money to use commodity components, both hardware and software.
2. Easy to upgrade/update/patch in the field is a good selling point. In this case, "hack" is s synonym of "upgrade", so hacking is possible, too.
ATMs are more secure because the customers (banks) demand more security. Paper tape transaction logs are an excellent audit tool in case something goes wrong, whether intentional or accidental. If your voting machine had such an audit trail, we wouldn't need to place as much faith in the integrity of the equipment. Of course the equipment's reliability would probably also increase, since an audit trail would eventually catch defective or subversive systems -- a voting machine manufacturer wouldn't like to be in a position of having to explain discrepencies where a paper trail was present.
I know this is not exactly what you meant by "proprietary", but much of the trouble that Diebold is having is in fact becuase their systems are not proprietary. The reliance of "security through obscurity" in the electronic voting machine business is aggravated by Diebold's extensive use of non-proprietary hardware and software.
One of Diebold's competitors, ES&S, has their own troubles, but their machines are far more prorprietary and thus more obscure. You would need more specialized software and equipment to hack the iVotronic.
NB: This is not an endorsement of obscurity-based security. Even if a voting machine is not tampered with by outsiders it is still subject to deliberate and accidental errors introduced by those with legitimate access, up to and including the manufacturer.
As to Federal legislation . . . the source code for voting machines is supposed to be run by independent third-party auditors to ensure that the machines operate as intended. I'm sure everyone here can think of many ways this process could be circumvented, e.g. programming the machine with firmware compiled from non-reviewed source.
Perhaps you prefer a more suitable homeland, such as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea?
Alabama Student: "My education is substandard"
blcamp: "Maybe you'd prefer the Mississippi schools"
Partygoer: "Keystone! This beer sucks."
blcamp: "Perhaps Stroh's would be more to your liking."
Patient: "Leeches! Isn't bleeding discredited as a medical treatment for high fever?"
blcamp: "You should consider yourself lucky we're not burning people like you at the stake anymore!"
Presumably you want to go somewhere that freedom and liberty are held in high regard, right? But you need more than that, because individual bad-apple politicians can appear anywhere. You need a commitment to freedom and liberty codified in that country's legal principles, so no power hungry leader can take them away . . . like a constitution or something that clearly limits government power. That way you'll be safe from opression. Even if a politican starts a war and declares unbridled power, 'cause it's war. Because you still have your inalienable rights.
Well, the question was serious. My comment is dripping with sarcasm, though.
I read that GW Bush was saying how wonderful a president Jeb Bush would make. The man that botched the Florida election in 2000
You call it "botching", but W calls it "leadering", or "decidering", or something. Sure it looks like Jeb screwed up the Florida presidential election of 2000. But did he? He helped secure the office for his brother. If I was W, I don't think I'd call that a failure.
No, in the eyes of the government, we are all assets, and are protected as such. Any asset or group of asset wishing to upset the status quo is moved to the basement, the same way I had to move my circa 1970 pole lamp because it clashed with, well, everything.
Retro is hot these days. That pole lamp, like witch hunts and covert surveillance, is coming back in style.
Yes, there are irrational and stupid people throughout the world, but I am guessing that your friend's crime was not simply "making comments about weak airline security to his coworkers and boss", but doing something, saying something, and/or having personality traits that rang alarm bells with a bunch of people.
This comment suggests that the method of reporting security "bugs" and the personality or temperament of the reporter are more important than the report itself. Do you mean personality traits like "kind of paranoid"? Do you expect idealistic, highly trusting people to be the ones reporting potential security holes?
I know, I know, that's the world we live in. My response is no better. I never report bugs, I never find problems in anything I'm working on. If you ask me specifically, "Is there s flaw of type X in product W?" then I'd tell you. But I never point out other problems. Well, not except for sniping from a distance at them, like I'm doing in this comment. People bearing good news are more well-liked than those reporting problems.
This kind of trend is only gonna end when something catatrophic happens and it's traced back to someone that could have said something but didn't out of fear of losing their job or prosecution.
then the sun will set on the usa, defeated not from without by terrorism, but defeated from within by rapacious greed consuming american ingenuity and therefore economic growth
Those evil greedy bastards already got your shift key. And period. Corporate bastards.
There is no way in hell I can find affordable health insurance on my own
The Health Savings Account was supposed to help out folks like you and me, but it's not such a good idea for someone with a chronic condition -- or someone who might develop a chronic condition. I guess that's almost everyone except those with "Affective Disorder (Polyanna type)". I work at a small company, that provides health insurance only for the owner/president. Health insurance is a deductible expense for a company. It's more difficult to deduct personal health insurance costs in US. (I am not a tax advisor, this is not tax advice)
Given your 'nym, it's a shame you can't start your own business. Maybe things will improve after enough highly skilled people leave the country. I doubt it, though. If you do emmigrate, tell me how you like New Zealand.
the majority of my american coworkers . . . eat a kilo of steak every day
of course this is not representative, might be strange co-workers here
If this insn't hyperbole, then yes, they are not representative. Please tell me they don't do it in a single sitting.
If you eat that much steak (1 kg/day), you're not gonna feel too good.
[I] noticed something the last time i was in new york when i watched TV ads: i have never travelled to a country where there are dozens of tv ads every hour for products to reduce heartburn
Oh, by the way, my boss has it somehow set to default that it's urgent and he needs a response once I've read it. Same with his secretary. Urge to kill rising... rising...
Actually, the sender-assigned priority thing works pretty well. I just assume that anyone who sets their own message's priority for me is an idiot or ass-clown and I read those last, if at all.
If you're re-installing the same version of Windows, you get to go through a little scavenger hunt on the Dell site, download a driver, maybe extract it to floppy(!), install, reboot, repeat. If you're installing a different version of Windows, God help you. Dell doesn't like that, and often doesn't have drivers for versions of the OS that weren't initially installed. I understand why it's good for them, but it's a value-reducing feature for me.
Unfortunately, most cellphones aren't gonna support that profile. They usually use Headset and/or Handsfree, and maybe Object Push for phonebook syncing and Serial Port Profile because it's already in the chipset firmware.
If they use SPP (the lowest level useful profile), all PC Bluetooth adapters have that profile, so you could control it from a custom app on your computer or PDA. Or a terminal program for true masochists.
I have found the coffee powder we get in the market contain over 40% chicory
That's just wrong, man. I don't know where you are, but that's a cruel trick they're playing on you. My folks used to tell me about using chicory blends they had to use during WWII, and how bad it was. I tried it myself, and they were right.
For me, coffee may not be the yes-bean, but no-coffee is certainly the no-bean.
At some point if the power of the executive branch isn't checked, the presidential office itself, could become a threat to the country.
Either way, the country is screwed.
One possibility is that Congress or Supreme Court move to check presidential power. Clearly, restraints more robust than those created after Watergate are in order. This necessarily weakens the presidency. Or perhaps the people act to restrain the President, working "around" the courts and Congress instead of through them.
Or . . . Congress and the courts do nothing. The people do nothing. Or perhaps they attempt to restrain the president and fail. Now the president has unlimited power.
Dubya has done a terrible thing, one that damages the country either through a substantial weakening or an unlimited strenghening of the presidency, destroying the three-way balance of power.
You ever wonder why password fields don't echo the actual characters back to the screen?
I used Lotus Notes for a while, and it had a "cool" feature of echoing seemingly-random numbers of heiroglyphics when you typed each character of a password. You never knew if your finger slipped or if you did just type bird-bird-eye-"guy going like this"-bird-ankh-ankh-ankh. Worse then single stars, worse than nothing, really.
The best and most effective solution is: HAVE NO CHILDREN.
I am so all over that, man. I'm on Slashdot, I've got a Linux PDA, and I just dug out my talking watch from junior high. There will be no fruit from these loins, brother!
Lastly, note that the name of the agency still reflects an old way of thinking - It ain't the Bureau of Native American Affiars, a symptom of what little regard is given to the North American Natives.
I've worked with a number of "Native Americans", and each one told me that he/she preferred the term "Indian". I didn't argue the point, I just referred to my colleagues as they wished to be referred to. I'm just saying that not every single Native American prefers that appelation. Maybe it's regional, I don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
I know you were being funny, ES&S has one, but they shelved the project.
1: Saves engineering time and money to use commodity components, both hardware and software.
2. Easy to upgrade/update/patch in the field is a good selling point. In this case, "hack" is s synonym of "upgrade", so hacking is possible, too.
ATMs are more secure because the customers (banks) demand more security. Paper tape transaction logs are an excellent audit tool in case something goes wrong, whether intentional or accidental. If your voting machine had such an audit trail, we wouldn't need to place as much faith in the integrity of the equipment. Of course the equipment's reliability would probably also increase, since an audit trail would eventually catch defective or subversive systems -- a voting machine manufacturer wouldn't like to be in a position of having to explain discrepencies where a paper trail was present.
One of Diebold's competitors, ES&S, has their own troubles, but their machines are far more prorprietary and thus more obscure. You would need more specialized software and equipment to hack the iVotronic.
NB: This is not an endorsement of obscurity-based security. Even if a voting machine is not tampered with by outsiders it is still subject to deliberate and accidental errors introduced by those with legitimate access, up to and including the manufacturer.
As to Federal legislation . . . the source code for voting machines is supposed to be run by independent third-party auditors to ensure that the machines operate as intended. I'm sure everyone here can think of many ways this process could be circumvented, e.g. programming the machine with firmware compiled from non-reviewed source.
Alabama Student: "My education is substandard"
blcamp: "Maybe you'd prefer the Mississippi schools"
Partygoer: "Keystone! This beer sucks."
blcamp: "Perhaps Stroh's would be more to your liking."
Patient: "Leeches! Isn't bleeding discredited as a medical treatment for high fever?"
blcamp: "You should consider yourself lucky we're not burning people like you at the stake anymore!"
Here's an equally serious question: Where?
Presumably you want to go somewhere that freedom and liberty are held in high regard, right? But you need more than that, because individual bad-apple politicians can appear anywhere. You need a commitment to freedom and liberty codified in that country's legal principles, so no power hungry leader can take them away . . . like a constitution or something that clearly limits government power. That way you'll be safe from opression. Even if a politican starts a war and declares unbridled power, 'cause it's war. Because you still have your inalienable rights.
Well, the question was serious. My comment is dripping with sarcasm, though.
You call it "botching", but W calls it "leadering", or "decidering", or something. Sure it looks like Jeb screwed up the Florida presidential election of 2000. But did he? He helped secure the office for his brother. If I was W, I don't think I'd call that a failure.
Retro is hot these days. That pole lamp, like witch hunts and covert surveillance, is coming back in style.
This comment suggests that the method of reporting security "bugs" and the personality or temperament of the reporter are more important than the report itself. Do you mean personality traits like "kind of paranoid"? Do you expect idealistic, highly trusting people to be the ones reporting potential security holes?
I know, I know, that's the world we live in. My response is no better. I never report bugs, I never find problems in anything I'm working on. If you ask me specifically, "Is there s flaw of type X in product W?" then I'd tell you. But I never point out other problems. Well, not except for sniping from a distance at them, like I'm doing in this comment. People bearing good news are more well-liked than those reporting problems.
I'm afraid that such catastrophes happen all the time. And we don't learn even if they are particularly spectacular or heart-rending, like this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/j anuary/28/newsid_2506000/2506161.stm.
Those evil greedy bastards already got your shift key. And period. Corporate bastards.
The Health Savings Account was supposed to help out folks like you and me, but it's not such a good idea for someone with a chronic condition -- or someone who might develop a chronic condition. I guess that's almost everyone except those with "Affective Disorder (Polyanna type)". I work at a small company, that provides health insurance only for the owner/president. Health insurance is a deductible expense for a company. It's more difficult to deduct personal health insurance costs in US. (I am not a tax advisor, this is not tax advice)
Given your 'nym, it's a shame you can't start your own business. Maybe things will improve after enough highly skilled people leave the country. I doubt it, though. If you do emmigrate, tell me how you like New Zealand.
If this insn't hyperbole, then yes, they are not representative. Please tell me they don't do it in a single sitting.
If you eat that much steak (1 kg/day), you're not gonna feel too good.
US pharmaceuticals manufacturers are locked in an arms race of advertising. See this article in Forbes, e.g.:http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2006/05 08/094a.html?_requestid=1078 (free reg. or BugMeNot required).
You might consider including a "contribution". They consider requests made without cash to be shoplifting (or worse, piracy).
My Rep's web page implies the opposite: he suggests that your snail mail may be substantially delayed due to increased mail "security".
Actually, the sender-assigned priority thing works pretty well. I just assume that anyone who sets their own message's priority for me is an idiot or ass-clown and I read those last, if at all.
If you're re-installing the same version of Windows, you get to go through a little scavenger hunt on the Dell site, download a driver, maybe extract it to floppy(!), install, reboot, repeat. If you're installing a different version of Windows, God help you. Dell doesn't like that, and often doesn't have drivers for versions of the OS that weren't initially installed. I understand why it's good for them, but it's a value-reducing feature for me.
I think that the Bluetooth HID profile would be a good choice. It is intended for:
(From Bluetooth.org)
Unfortunately, most cellphones aren't gonna support that profile. They usually use Headset and/or Handsfree, and maybe Object Push for phonebook syncing and Serial Port Profile because it's already in the chipset firmware.
If they use SPP (the lowest level useful profile), all PC Bluetooth adapters have that profile, so you could control it from a custom app on your computer or PDA. Or a terminal program for true masochists.
That's just wrong, man. I don't know where you are, but that's a cruel trick they're playing on you. My folks used to tell me about using chicory blends they had to use during WWII, and how bad it was. I tried it myself, and they were right.
For me, coffee may not be the yes-bean, but no-coffee is certainly the no-bean.
It's not a stasis device, man. You keep aging while playing games.
Either way, the country is screwed.
One possibility is that Congress or Supreme Court move to check presidential power. Clearly, restraints more robust than those created after Watergate are in order. This necessarily weakens the presidency. Or perhaps the people act to restrain the President, working "around" the courts and Congress instead of through them.
Or . . . Congress and the courts do nothing. The people do nothing. Or perhaps they attempt to restrain the president and fail. Now the president has unlimited power.
Dubya has done a terrible thing, one that damages the country either through a substantial weakening or an unlimited strenghening of the presidency, destroying the three-way balance of power.
Well, if the government hasn't done anything wrong, then they certainly won't object to us having a little look . . .
I used Lotus Notes for a while, and it had a "cool" feature of echoing seemingly-random numbers of heiroglyphics when you typed each character of a password. You never knew if your finger slipped or if you did just type bird-bird-eye-"guy going like this"-bird-ankh-ankh-ankh. Worse then single stars, worse than nothing, really.
I am so all over that, man. I'm on Slashdot, I've got a Linux PDA, and I just dug out my talking watch from junior high. There will be no fruit from these loins, brother!
I think this poster http://despair.com/motivation.html is exactly what you need.
I've worked with a number of "Native Americans", and each one told me that he/she preferred the term "Indian". I didn't argue the point, I just referred to my colleagues as they wished to be referred to. I'm just saying that not every single Native American prefers that appelation. Maybe it's regional, I don't know.
BTW, the American Indian Movement still goes by that name. http://www.aimovement.org/