As someone working directly on the "Linux" piece of software used in Flanders and part of Brussels, I would like to add a few points to the discussion on electronic-voting (I will not comment on the bug, as I do not work for that company and do not know much about the specifics of the issue). Keep in mind electoral systems vary quite a bit country to country, and what you think you know for your country is not necessarily true for other countries.
It has been said that electronic voting adds nothing compared to paper voting. That is maybe true in some elections, but it is not the case in Belgium. In Belgium, the electoral system is extremely complex. This Sunday, people voting on paper ballots actually had 3 ballots, the largest one of which, in Brussels, was big enough to physically hide behind. Manipulating this piece of paper is very hard, filling it out as well (keep in mind this is being done inside a voting booth, which is relatively small). The reason for this is that voters can select as many candidates as they want in one list among the many lists. It's a logistics nightmare, even just printing the thing.
Due to this complexity, actually counting the ballots, when done on paper, is extremely unreliable. In fact, experiences were made here, where groups of people actually totalized the ballots of an urn. They never found similar results from one group to another, not by a long shot. In "small" elections, a few votes can change who the actual winner is - this would be the case in local elections, such as in 2012 in Belgium, less so this year. On the other hand, the electronic counting of ballots consistently gave the same result, of course. Moreover, it goes MUCH faster to recount. Where paper counts could take up to a few hours, polling place results are instantly available.
Countries which publish results immediately at polling place closing times or prior to a complete count are usually using a mix of exit polls, partial results, etc. This is fine for large elections and when a clear margin is accepted. Is this always the case ? Do the media ever publish results in an anticipated rush for the exclusive report ? Electronic voting gives absolute results, not projections, which are definitive. In tight races, little margin situations, this is actually a huge benefit... when everything works (not the case this Sunday in Belgium, where one of the contractors was unable to totalize some results for a while). In many countries where the results are "known" on election day, the official results are only published a few days later (I don't know about Canada which one slashdotter mentioned however). Electronic voting can give final results on the same day.
I would love to bring up the argument for voters with disability, but for Belgium-specific reasons, this was not implemented here yet. The idea is that electronic voting would allow blind people to have audio voting; there are ways for people who cannot hold a pen or use a touchscreen to vote with large buttons; even some mechanisms to control the voting using a breath-driven controller. This allows a lot of people to vote independently, where paper ballots force breaking the privacy of the vote... But again, not implemented yet here. The touch screen here actually does allow larger fonts to be used than on paper, this helps a lot for people with low vision, so it's still an improvement over paper.
People have brought up transparency and reliability. The system here is very different than the one in the US for instance. Here voters go to a voting machine which prints a paper ballot with a QR code containing their selection of parties / candidates, as well as clear-text of this. The voting machine holds no record of what is voted for. The paper can be scanned by the voter on a separate machine so he can check the QR code actually contains who he thinks he voted for. Once he is satisfied, he goes to the urn, scans the QR code and places the paper ballot in the urn. This final scanning is when the ballot is saved to d
I know that I for one have the same problems. After a few days without closing Firefox, all tabs closed, it still was using 500+Megabytes of memory. Just answering your question though, nothing much more to say.
The passwords were out for everyone to see, provided they did a tiny bit of work. All you had to do was script-kiddie-style own a firewall, redirect a few ICMP packets, use a rootkit to get access on an unupdated (for three entire days!!!!!! unbelievable!) OpenBSD platform, go for an ypcat, run a few john the ripper hours on a decent (i had rewritten it to advantagely use my Bi-Xeon 4GHz) computer, and tadaaaa! Unbelievable how people are unaware!
I would like to point out two things:
-> concerning the argument on "only self defence should allow one to intervene in another's life": it is the State self preserving when it is forbidding designer babies. Why? Because a sex-biased society *is* indeed in lots of trouble: more sex-based discrimination, a form of power given to the necessary minority, etc. In fact, when people start toying with designed babies, mutations which are a KEY factor to evolutionism will be even further reduced, effectively generating a society which doesn't evolve any more. So it is legitimate for a state to forbid designer babies if this tampers with the future of society.
-> in a society where one sex should be more often chosen than the other, and where the average number of children a person has is 1, it is mathematically obvious that the"weak sex" shall disappear (i am NOT calling any sex a weak sex!!). ie: if in China, where couples can have only one baby, let's assume there is a 15% bias for men. Then not only are you dividing the population by two over roughly two generations, there are also many men who cannot mate, causing in fact only the women to reproduce. It is a simple geometric law which means te population will reduce even faster (only 80% of every generation will have offspring. After one generation, 40% left. 2 generations: 16% left. (assuming death comes right after procreation... ok very simplistic, but you get the idea)). Putting aside factors such as the consequent sales of wives, women enslavement, etc., this contributes to drastically reducing the population.
Also, when wives start to be valuable, sold expensively, then parents will want more female babies, thus balancing the sex bias.
why do i get the feeling women are just going to love the way I describe them as objects, valuable, sold, enslaved...
Since you are quoting France:
-> the state does own shares of France Telecom
-> however an independant authority, the ART, decides on what is fair or unfair, and has (again) recently ruled against the former national operator which wanted to change pricing policies. So there is nothing more than a historical advantage to France Telecom, and it is really disappearing fast...
A few things I would like to comment on. Being a dual citizen of both France and the US, I have had the opportunity to check out both telephone systems. And I consider myself as relatively unbiased, as I like to defend whichever nation is being unjustly accused by members of the other...
So here it goes:
- quality of connection. The "five 9's" have been demanded by (land) telephone companies for decades. That is, a call will not fail (with a 99.999% probability). In both Europe and US, this is something which has been verified. However, I have experienced in the US some bad calls (which did not come from the phone but the connection), and never in Europe. As for cell phones, the connection highly depends on quality of reception, all those arguing this point will not convince me based only on self-experienced bad coms.
- coverage: Europe is densely populated. Yet, non dense zones are also incredibly well covered. As I understand this is not the case in the US. "Can you hear me now?" has not been a selling argument for years, as all netwok operators reach a very high percentile of the AREA in Europe.
- prices: Expensive in Europe, cheap in the US. Here, a 10$ will get you roughly an hour a month of outgoing calls. Reception (SMS, calls, etc.) is free, always. I have heard of 40$ buying unlimited calls, out and in, and free roaming in the US. This explains partly for the SMS factor. Of course, being able to send an SMS while in class or in a meeting, or just the fact that you don't want to talk to someone but just send out some info quickly and not be forced to chit chat also counts, but needs a UNIFORM standard, such as the GSM frame provides.
- compatibility: well,here is the strong point for Europe. Anywhere. GSM always works. A same phone worked for me in the 9 different countries I visited with my cell phone in Europe, plus China. Including on desert islands in Greece.
- services: well the ringtones are polluting advertisement time in France, but given how little of it there is compared to the US, I wouldn't really use this as an argument... Now ringtones are stupid, useless, teenage-appealing gadgets, and so are the chat services, etc. But services don't stop there (understand: news/weather, cabs, operator agreements for roaming ALL services (caller ID among others), SMS of course, etc). And things will definitely be going even further with UMTS.
- bias: i love/. But what's with the incredible number of people who can't think objectively? Europe isn't perfect, and the US neither, fat from it. Living at the moment in France, I have the impression chauvinism is a French quality. Good thing I have/. to prove that it is international. Bias: equal for both sides.
To sum up:
Europe has always been slower than the US. Totally free market vs planned standards. Examples are numerous (DSL, GSM among others). And always, the same conclusions: more raw performance and cheaper in the US, better quality and better improvement space in Europe.
If we don't like our government, we can vote them out. If Chinese don't like their goverment, they go to jail.
There is a big difference.
Actually, it's more like:
If we don't like our government, they make us think we can vote them out, and fix the election. Is it still such a big difference?
If you think yes, factor in the you-don't-believe-in-our-values-so-we'll-hold-you- without-charges-lawyer-or-rights improvements to the penal code, a.k.a Patriot Act.
Actually, the law in France is not as permissive as in the US. To comment on previous examples:
-> comparing Coke and pepsi, and saying "coke is cool, pepsi sux" would not be allowed
-> comparing two phone providers' price grids is allowed as it is an undisputed fact (the commercial however needs to be explicit on the data commented, ie: between 8.pm and 8am, it is cheaper to use france telecom or what not)
Therefore, I do understand the call that this is unfair advertising.
...as where I live (France), email is still (maybe not for long) considered as private, even within a company. (Or at least it was last time I checked). ie: in a nearby school, some techies were sued for reading email of a student, as email has the same privacy status as snail mail. Good thing to know this doesn't apply in Canada or the US, which I thought it would!
Slashdot Mirror
As someone working directly on the "Linux" piece of software used in Flanders and part of Brussels, I would like to add a few points to the discussion on electronic-voting (I will not comment on the bug, as I do not work for that company and do not know much about the specifics of the issue). Keep in mind electoral systems vary quite a bit country to country, and what you think you know for your country is not necessarily true for other countries.
It has been said that electronic voting adds nothing compared to paper voting. That is maybe true in some elections, but it is not the case in Belgium. In Belgium, the electoral system is extremely complex. This Sunday, people voting on paper ballots actually had 3 ballots, the largest one of which, in Brussels, was big enough to physically hide behind. Manipulating this piece of paper is very hard, filling it out as well (keep in mind this is being done inside a voting booth, which is relatively small). The reason for this is that voters can select as many candidates as they want in one list among the many lists. It's a logistics nightmare, even just printing the thing.
Due to this complexity, actually counting the ballots, when done on paper, is extremely unreliable. In fact, experiences were made here, where groups of people actually totalized the ballots of an urn. They never found similar results from one group to another, not by a long shot. In "small" elections, a few votes can change who the actual winner is - this would be the case in local elections, such as in 2012 in Belgium, less so this year. On the other hand, the electronic counting of ballots consistently gave the same result, of course. Moreover, it goes MUCH faster to recount. Where paper counts could take up to a few hours, polling place results are instantly available.
Countries which publish results immediately at polling place closing times or prior to a complete count are usually using a mix of exit polls, partial results, etc. This is fine for large elections and when a clear margin is accepted. Is this always the case ? Do the media ever publish results in an anticipated rush for the exclusive report ? Electronic voting gives absolute results, not projections, which are definitive. In tight races, little margin situations, this is actually a huge benefit... when everything works (not the case this Sunday in Belgium, where one of the contractors was unable to totalize some results for a while). In many countries where the results are "known" on election day, the official results are only published a few days later (I don't know about Canada which one slashdotter mentioned however). Electronic voting can give final results on the same day.
I would love to bring up the argument for voters with disability, but for Belgium-specific reasons, this was not implemented here yet. The idea is that electronic voting would allow blind people to have audio voting; there are ways for people who cannot hold a pen or use a touchscreen to vote with large buttons; even some mechanisms to control the voting using a breath-driven controller. This allows a lot of people to vote independently, where paper ballots force breaking the privacy of the vote... But again, not implemented yet here. The touch screen here actually does allow larger fonts to be used than on paper, this helps a lot for people with low vision, so it's still an improvement over paper.
People have brought up transparency and reliability. The system here is very different than the one in the US for instance. Here voters go to a voting machine which prints a paper ballot with a QR code containing their selection of parties / candidates, as well as clear-text of this. The voting machine holds no record of what is voted for. The paper can be scanned by the voter on a separate machine so he can check the QR code actually contains who he thinks he voted for. Once he is satisfied, he goes to the urn, scans the QR code and places the paper ballot in the urn. This final scanning is when the ballot is saved to d
I know that I for one have the same problems. After a few days without closing Firefox, all tabs closed, it still was using 500+Megabytes of memory. Just answering your question though, nothing much more to say.
Apparently Myspace, QC, Penny-arcade are all back online as of now.
Jack Thompson, is that you?
Mailinator is also down.
:'(
Kind of weird, as it all happened when I was trying to build a MySpace mirror of QC using a mailinator address
The passwords were out for everyone to see, provided they did a tiny bit of work. All you had to do was script-kiddie-style own a firewall, redirect a few ICMP packets, use a rootkit to get access on an unupdated (for three entire days!!!!!! unbelievable!) OpenBSD platform, go for an ypcat, run a few john the ripper hours on a decent (i had rewritten it to advantagely use my Bi-Xeon 4GHz) computer, and tadaaaa!
Unbelievable how people are unaware!
I would like to point out two things:
-> concerning the argument on "only self defence should allow one to intervene in another's life": it is the State self preserving when it is forbidding designer babies. Why? Because a sex-biased society *is* indeed in lots of trouble: more sex-based discrimination, a form of power given to the necessary minority, etc. In fact, when people start toying with designed babies, mutations which are a KEY factor to evolutionism will be even further reduced, effectively generating a society which doesn't evolve any more. So it is legitimate for a state to forbid designer babies if this tampers with the future of society.
-> in a society where one sex should be more often chosen than the other, and where the average number of children a person has is 1, it is mathematically obvious that the"weak sex" shall disappear (i am NOT calling any sex a weak sex!!). ie: if in China, where couples can have only one baby, let's assume there is a 15% bias for men. Then not only are you dividing the population by two over roughly two generations, there are also many men who cannot mate, causing in fact only the women to reproduce. It is a simple geometric law which means te population will reduce even faster (only 80% of every generation will have offspring. After one generation, 40% left. 2 generations: 16% left. (assuming death comes right after procreation... ok very simplistic, but you get the idea)). Putting aside factors such as the consequent sales of wives, women enslavement, etc., this contributes to drastically reducing the population.
Also, when wives start to be valuable, sold expensively, then parents will want more female babies, thus balancing the sex bias.
why do i get the feeling women are just going to love the way I describe them as objects, valuable, sold, enslaved...
Since you are quoting France:
-> the state does own shares of France Telecom
-> however an independant authority, the ART, decides on what is fair or unfair, and has (again) recently ruled against the former national operator which wanted to change pricing policies. So there is nothing more than a historical advantage to France Telecom, and it is really disappearing fast...
A few things I would like to comment on. Being a dual citizen of both France and the US, I have had the opportunity to check out both telephone systems. And I consider myself as relatively unbiased, as I like to defend whichever nation is being unjustly accused by members of the other... So here it goes: - quality of connection. The "five 9's" have been demanded by (land) telephone companies for decades. That is, a call will not fail (with a 99.999% probability). In both Europe and US, this is something which has been verified. However, I have experienced in the US some bad calls (which did not come from the phone but the connection), and never in Europe. As for cell phones, the connection highly depends on quality of reception, all those arguing this point will not convince me based only on self-experienced bad coms. - coverage: Europe is densely populated. Yet, non dense zones are also incredibly well covered. As I understand this is not the case in the US. "Can you hear me now?" has not been a selling argument for years, as all netwok operators reach a very high percentile of the AREA in Europe. - prices: Expensive in Europe, cheap in the US. Here, a 10$ will get you roughly an hour a month of outgoing calls. Reception (SMS, calls, etc.) is free, always. I have heard of 40$ buying unlimited calls, out and in, and free roaming in the US. This explains partly for the SMS factor. Of course, being able to send an SMS while in class or in a meeting, or just the fact that you don't want to talk to someone but just send out some info quickly and not be forced to chit chat also counts, but needs a UNIFORM standard, such as the GSM frame provides. - compatibility: well,here is the strong point for Europe. Anywhere. GSM always works. A same phone worked for me in the 9 different countries I visited with my cell phone in Europe, plus China. Including on desert islands in Greece. - services: well the ringtones are polluting advertisement time in France, but given how little of it there is compared to the US, I wouldn't really use this as an argument... Now ringtones are stupid, useless, teenage-appealing gadgets, and so are the chat services, etc. But services don't stop there (understand: news/weather, cabs, operator agreements for roaming ALL services (caller ID among others), SMS of course, etc). And things will definitely be going even further with UMTS. - bias: i love /. But what's with the incredible number of people who can't think objectively? Europe isn't perfect, and the US neither, fat from it. Living at the moment in France, I have the impression chauvinism is a French quality. Good thing I have /. to prove that it is international. Bias: equal for both sides.
To sum up:
Europe has always been slower than the US. Totally free market vs planned standards. Examples are numerous (DSL, GSM among others). And always, the same conclusions: more raw performance and cheaper in the US, better quality and better improvement space in Europe.
If we don't like our government, we can vote them out. If Chinese don't like their goverment, they go to jail. There is a big difference.
- without-charges-lawyer-or-rights improvements to the penal code, a.k.a Patriot Act.
Actually, it's more like:
If we don't like our government, they make us think we can vote them out, and fix the election.
Is it still such a big difference?
If you think yes, factor in the you-don't-believe-in-our-values-so-we'll-hold-you
Actually, the law in France is not as permissive as in the US. To comment on previous examples: -> comparing Coke and pepsi, and saying "coke is cool, pepsi sux" would not be allowed -> comparing two phone providers' price grids is allowed as it is an undisputed fact (the commercial however needs to be explicit on the data commented, ie: between 8.pm and 8am, it is cheaper to use france telecom or what not) Therefore, I do understand the call that this is unfair advertising.
...as where I live (France), email is still (maybe not for long) considered as private, even within a company. (Or at least it was last time I checked). ie: in a nearby school, some techies were sued for reading email of a student, as email has the same privacy status as snail mail. Good thing to know this doesn't apply in Canada or the US, which I thought it would!