"The damage extends beyond the direct victim, too. My children were molested by a family member. Now the family is split into three groups who don't speak to each other."
While I condolence you, it has nothing to do with paedophylia being good or bad. Your family is broken because paedophylia is *considered* being bad, not because it *is* bad.
"Now, please tell me again how the pedophile is the real victim here"
Whenever society blinds itself to rationalization we all are victims in a way or other.
"I did used to think that they should be treated, and looked after, until I found out what it's really like."
Again, do not be confused about which part of responsibility each and all sides have.
"You wouldn't want to replace you centralized on-site backup system with it."2
Provided is doable I certainly would want to replace my near-line centralized backup with it. For the most part backup incidents are of the kind "I deleted by mistake..." and "can you recover some document I thought I wouldn't need anymore..." or "could you store this gigabunch of data for a while? My team will only need it some few weeks". At least on my enviro, near line is not part of the "enterprisey" backup/restore procedure but a convenience for end users (a *big* convenience, by the way) if (yes, a big "if") we could better manage that dispersed underused storage it certainly would be a very intersting gain (hey, dream is for free, isn't it?).
"Fault tolerant distributed storage using employees computers. Hang on, I'm laughing to hard to type."
You are laughing at it? It must be out of ignorance.
-Fault tolerant: Of course, they will be desktop computers -Distributed: Of course, eack employee has his own desk -Storage: Of course, it's about all this free space what we are talking about.
Or what did you think to bring some benefit out of all that spare space? Fault-intolerant centralized storage? *That* would be laughable!
"Assuming a recent CPU with hardware virtualization, could you have one partition (say, 20GB) with Windows for the user, and another partition running something else to serve up the remaining hard drive space, with a hypervisor running them both at the same time, invisible to one another?"
So in order to take advantage of some gigs of data that costs peanuts you are going to sacrify expensive RAM and CPU cycles? That indeed would be "Not So Intelligent (TM)".
"trying to make a hundred computers serve up a lot of bitty disk space is really silly in terms of the cost-benefit."
Only if there's no "prepacked solution" since the disk space is *already* payed for. The problem is not "I'm going to buy a lot of desktops with 80GB disks while local clients only will use 10GB so I can use the spare space" but "I can't get desktops with less than 80GB despite the fact they'll only use about 10GB, is there any way I can leverage my already payed for infrastructures?". It might be no proper solution, but the question seems quite legitime nevertheless.
"The first problem is someone power cycling their computer or disconnecting it."
Problem solved some decades ago: the solution is named "RAID".
"Then there's the slow access over a long cable."
Unless his LAN uses some kind of ADSL for local transit, it can't be a problem, since the bandwith usage for "using a lot of resources from my desktop that are on a central server" is just the same than "offer a lot of resources from my desktop to a central server".
"Already that's cause for lots of running around making sure the computers are up"
Only if there's no RAID over the solution; only if you try to use that spare space as "live speedy mass storage". What if that space is used for "near-line" backup storage or old data rarely needed? The service can even be coupled with some WoL environment so if the data is on a turned off system it will be automatically powered-on.
"Then there's the problem of someone just moving a computer somewhere else, and you could spend days trying to find out what happened"
Of course nobody says such a solution will be "as easy as turn on you recently bought computer with Windows Vista Home Edition". As any other "Enterprisy Solution" it will need to be properly engineered but, again, problems don't seem to be unsurmountable at first glance, let's see a simple operational flux: 1) Space-locators recieve a unique ID, so you can move computers and, as long as they are reacheable through the network, you can move them all you want. 2) The box cannot be connected; it might be turned off; WoL will try to start up it. 3) The box won't turn on even with the aid of WoL; well, no problem: data is RAIDed so it will be served out of checksums and the "lost" node will be replicated somewhere else. See? All of this would be absolutly transparent to the sysadmin as long as the solution is properly engineered.
"Further keep in mind that the small drives are getting to be old drives and liable to zonk out."
That's again an already assumed problem. For one, "server" drives will be old, small and flakey in the near future too, so you better already have a plan for this situation; for two, ask Google or any other corporation with massive volumes of data in a "grid": even if they were "server quality" once you got a lot of disks you have to plan -and engineer, not for the case a drive dies but for an environment where a significative percentage of disks are continously off-line (due to breakeages, power out or whatever).
"The only other relevant thing I can think of is that some (all?) linux distros randomize MAC addresses of network cards on boot..."
Wow, man, that one was really great.
At the same time it explains why religion is so pervasive in human race: people have a *very* strong tendency (I'd even say a *perverse* tendency) to fullfill their ignorance out of the most absurd "explanations". 'Horror vacui', I think.
"...what kind of response involves getting the example backwards...?"
One based on negating your assertion and see what happens since, in order for a biunivocal relationship to be if A->B, then !A->!B.
All in all it's very obvious that in your example the vendor is able to drain money from the client in the form of a service subscription *because* the vendor successfully has locked-in the client, the contrary being plain absurd: you don't undesiringly pay money to enter a lock-in situation, you undesiringly pay money because you are locked-in.
"The former products are simpler and have less to break whereas the latter products have better features, but more can go wrong."
While I think you have a point, I don't think you got the point. I'd say the critical point is not that more features makes it more fragile (while everything else being equal, it's true) but that first wave technologies try to make a point and then they are built quite "overspec'd". Look at an old console, but then look at an old VCR, or photo camera, or mobile telephone or refrigerator, it doesn't matter: they all look sturdy and *are* sturdy. But then, when a technology is already stablished market forces push the designs to the limits: it's not only that making a gadget less sturdy is cheaper to make (thus, more benefits) but that once the market has accepted it producers want a fragile gadget so it breaks on time and you go buying the next generation thingie: after all nobody wants you to buy one gadget for your whole life; they want you to buy this season's gadget and then the next.
"This is one of those things that's painful only until you've crossed a certain threshold of information, then it never bothers you again."
For the most part then it's too late.
There are *a lot* of people that started their days on DBs by their own or as another issue clogged to their back. Then they go opensource just because it's easier to start with (no provisions, not a dozen calls to a provider, just an "apt-get install" and you are on your way). Then you look for Postgres; it has a fame of a serious, reliable full-featured database, you start toying with it, having a light look at the manuals (remember: you are either a neophyte or burdened with other tasks; no time or ability to spend the time on a dense manual and start seeing the results next week)... and you go nowhere. Let's try the next one, you say, so you go with MySQL; you install it and within five minutes you get your first "show databases" and "select * from table"; you smile, you feel the strong feedback and there you go. Of course, after a year using MySQL you understand some basic concepts and you could give another try to Posgres, but who cares now? MySQL has the work done for the most part, you know its nuisances and you have invested a lot of time on it.
"One President. One Congressman. One Senator. One Governor. One state Senator. One state assemblyman. Three or four county councilmen. One sheriff. One (or more) judges. Four or five School Board members. Possibly more local officials as well. In the more referendum-happy states, maybe a dozen or more of those. It does add up..."
Then again you are shifting the problem. On one hand, can't it be more of a concern the ability of the voter not to make a mistake than the ability for a fast counting? Then you shouldn't overburden the election day: having one per year instead of one each two years surely won't sink your economy not even a significant fraction of a 1% but it would cut in half complexity. On the other hand mere cuantity aggregation doesn't mean more complexity. In my country there is about 2000 registered per voting box, about five to ten boxes per college and as many colleges as needed. Officers usually end their countings within two hours from closing the boxes. I remember one ellection at the same time for major, regional, national and european government, and a new law on some regions. So say in the USA you double it up. That just means you need to double the number of boxes or allow for people being counting for about four hours instead of two. Neither of both options seem specially unfeasible.
"You don't have to reveal who you voted for unless you want to"
Or unless you are *forced* to.
"and someone can be coerced just as easily without such means"
Bullshit. Noone can coerce you with current standards because the one who tried perfectly knows in advance his intent is moot (you can say whatever and the other party knows that has no means to know if you lied or not). But try it once there's a method to know for certain.
"One can also prove how they voted by using a cell phone with a built-in camera to take a picture of their ballot."
A picture wouldn't be enough, you would need a camera record, and probably it would be a bit suspicious.
"what I think you are suggesting here with making it mandatory to participate in being an election judge... the rest is semantics on how it happens"
Yes gunpointing citizenship no less and no more than about being a jury in a trial, paying taxes or having all your paperwork in order if you want to start a company. That's called Res Publica. You don't need to accept it, you always can go and buy your own lonely island. I think you are a bit out of proportion here unless you are a liberal anarchist in which case you would probably be better off without presidential elections at all.
"It works for us"
Are you sure? Why this very thread then? Why the two latest presidential elections have been "a bit" contested?
"What you see now in America is the end result of those centuries of tradition."
So what? Those centuries of tradition, be it of the brightest example of citizenship participation or of the horridest absolute governance of course *explain* the current 'statu quo' but I don't really find them of any value as an excuse (My country was a democracy while yours was an absolute monarchy? Well, yes, but my father is stronger than yours and will through an asteroid over your head and your pa's... What kind of an argument is that?)
"In many ways, the voting machines are in place to help make it cheaper and to concentrate labor to where the real problems are at: voting fraud detection and verification of voter status."
The very issue with voting machines is that NOBODY has offered reasonable proof that a) There's a fraud problem with current counting by hand procedures as they are stablished in most civilized countries, so voting machines would be nothing but a solution looking for a problem b) There's any advantage a voting machine can offer regarding fraud problem while there are *a lot* of obvious problems with them that should be addressed that would immeditely lead to a *real* fraud problem at a scale never seen before c) While costs are always an issue and it certainly seems that voting machines *could* really make it cheaper (I say *could* because voting machines seems to be a market niche where there will be a real danger for a company to become a monopoly -Diebold anyone? and if so it's still to be seen if it would be cheaper... or even more expensive), I don't think there's anybody that have a real issue with current voting system being too expensive (not the campaign, not the marketing involved but the voting-and-count fact itself) and certainly I'd say people wouldn't have a problem deciding between a voting system at current costs and a cheaper system (certainly a meagre percentage of overall costs involved) but orders of magnitude more cuestionable regarding transparency.
"Here's what frustrates me about QT: You have to know what license you are going to use before you write any code."
Sorry but you are terribly misinformed. You have to know what license you are going to use before you *USE* any third party code. That's valid for Qt, for Gtk, for WxWidgets for Motif and for *ANY* toolkit you may use.
"If you download the free version of their library and start writing code, that code can never be part of the same product as the proprietary version of their library, even if you never distribute the code until you purchase a proprietary license"
That's not only false; that's stupidly false. I beg you share your mind paths to reach such a surpresive conclusion to our fair enlightment.
"I understand that if they didn't do this, people would develop proprietary applications internally"
You just CAN'T develop such a beast as a "internally propietary application". If it is not distributed, it can hold any distribution agreement or license, it's that simple.
"then only purchase a proprietary license when they were ready to release."
Again, I kindly ask what's your basis for such an astounding idea that you just can't download the freely avaliable Qt libraries then start developing and if you want to distribute the result of your hard work under a privative license buy *then* a license from Troll Tech and start distribution by the terms of the license Troll Tech has agreed to you (not that you really need it, but the worst case scenario *if* Qt privative license was entangled to some specific binaries from Troll Tech would be that you would need to recompile your source code -the same you already developed in-house, against the blessed libraries -not that you really need it, mind you, but that would be the worst case).
"There is some irony in the fact that it is more legal to prototype your undecided-licence QT application internally either using free GTK or "free" Microsoft UIs than it is to prototype using the free version of QT itself."
I find terribly difficult to believe you are so clueless. Certainly, specially considering you publish as an "anonymous coward", it's easier to believe that you are a troll.
"I'm telling you that the process to vote in America is at least an order of magnitude more complicated than a typical Brazilian experience"
Then the problem is in the process, not in the hand counting. At the end of the day you end up with one president, one congressman, some local officers and maybe some legislations casted. That's not away from other countries' standards and still, they seem to manage it more efficiently.
"Having the federal government do it wrong for everyone is much worse than having some local communities doing it wrong for themselves."
The problem being here that they are not "doing it wrong for themselves" but "doing wrong for everybody". Specially with your "winner takes all" system, the *whole* voting process is flawed as soon as some states (or even some counties) have it wrong, so there's no added "penalty" on taking the risk of doing it wrong at the whole country level. And it is not an argument either saying that "well, this way we can test two dozen systems and then take the best one". Ballots is not quantum mechanics, almost everything is already invented here: you just have to look how other countries manage the problem to see your way.
"This job does tend to be skewed for the elderly."
There's absolutly *nothing* in the "counting by hand" process that biases it towards the elderly: just make it mandatory, like being a jury in a trial and it's done.
"This is a tough problem. I asked my wife.... "How long would it take for you to process a Presidential general election with your crew by hand counting?""
Believe it or not, that's pure nonsense as clearly demonstrates the fact that greatest parts of civilized world make it by hand and manage to survive. I'd tell you about my country but then, since it's only 40M people you'd say it's not the same scale forgetting counting ballots is a highly parallelizable problem (you just manage for each voting district to have as many people as two people are able to count in two hours -or four, or six, or what seems convenient, and you are done), so I'll point you to EU ellections. They are as many people as the USA; the ellection day is as complex as yours (since concur local, regional and even national ellections at the same time), you have the results in no more than 12 hours from closing (ellection day ends at 8PM and you read the results in next morning's newspapers) and still we do it by hand, so don't tell me it's not doable.
"But a GPL library is not very useful in a proprietary application, so you'll have to get the library under a proprietary licence, which costs money."
So, in order for you to be able to sell licenses of your program, some library asks for license money in order for you to use it, while it is open/free if you will deliver your program open/free. I call it fair play.
"Open Source is not actually a solution to the age-old problem of "Quis custodiet custodes ipsos"."
Yes, it actually is. The key (read Iuvenal) is not needing for a custodio in first place: no custodio, no need to watch over him. So, when the husband is at home, there's no problem; it is when he must travel that he needs a guardian over his wife but, hell, who watches over the guardian not to be himself his wife's lover? (no: having an eunuch for a guardian is not the solution, as Iuvenal states on this very satire).
That means that it's only the software you can't directly see (like the travelling husband) the one that needs a guardian. Open Source allows you to see the code just as the husband can see his wife when he's at home and the 'quis qustodiet' problem disappears. Of course, there're husbands blind enough for their wives to engage lovers even if they not travel but this definetly is not the 'quis custodiet' problem.
"It just has to be proved trustworthy"
By who's word? This *is* the very 'quis custodiet' problem, just as Diebold clearly demonstrates.
Slashdot Mirror
"The damage extends beyond the direct victim, too. My children were molested by a family member. Now the family is split into three groups who don't speak to each other."
While I condolence you, it has nothing to do with paedophylia being good or bad. Your family is broken because paedophylia is *considered* being bad, not because it *is* bad.
"Now, please tell me again how the pedophile is the real victim here"
Whenever society blinds itself to rationalization we all are victims in a way or other.
"I did used to think that they should be treated, and looked after, until I found out what it's really like."
Again, do not be confused about which part of responsibility each and all sides have.
"those who practice it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
That certainly explains why Socrates was forced to commit suicide.
"You wouldn't want to replace you centralized on-site backup system with it."2
Provided is doable I certainly would want to replace my near-line centralized backup with it. For the most part backup incidents are of the kind "I deleted by mistake..." and "can you recover some document I thought I wouldn't need anymore..." or "could you store this gigabunch of data for a while? My team will only need it some few weeks". At least on my enviro, near line is not part of the "enterprisey" backup/restore procedure but a convenience for end users (a *big* convenience, by the way) if (yes, a big "if") we could better manage that dispersed underused storage it certainly would be a very intersting gain (hey, dream is for free, isn't it?).
"Does your average office drone really need the whole power of a modern processor to bang out documents in Word?"
Yes. Of course they won't need the CPU on a 100% basis, but they certainly need from time to time, like when the open said word documents.
" The most basic computer you can get from Dell or Lenovo or some other OEM has lots of RAM and CPU cycles to spare."
I don't think so. Specially RAM; office computers are not usually on spare of it.
"Fault tolerant distributed storage using employees computers. Hang on, I'm laughing to hard to type."
You are laughing at it? It must be out of ignorance.
-Fault tolerant: Of course, they will be desktop computers
-Distributed: Of course, eack employee has his own desk
-Storage: Of course, it's about all this free space what we are talking about.
Or what did you think to bring some benefit out of all that spare space? Fault-intolerant centralized storage? *That* would be laughable!
"One you don't backup your enterprise level database to some random pc in a cube."
You probably missed the *second* part in "second on-site decentralized backup".
"There's no such thing as a "lowest common denominator"."
Yes there is. And it even has the advantage of being truly common.
It's "1".
"Assuming a recent CPU with hardware virtualization, could you have one partition (say, 20GB) with Windows for the user, and another partition running something else to serve up the remaining hard drive space, with a hypervisor running them both at the same time, invisible to one another?"
So in order to take advantage of some gigs of data that costs peanuts you are going to sacrify expensive RAM and CPU cycles? That indeed would be "Not So Intelligent (TM)".
"trying to make a hundred computers serve up a lot of bitty disk space is really silly in terms of the cost-benefit."
Only if there's no "prepacked solution" since the disk space is *already* payed for. The problem is not "I'm going to buy a lot of desktops with 80GB disks while local clients only will use 10GB so I can use the spare space" but "I can't get desktops with less than 80GB despite the fact they'll only use about 10GB, is there any way I can leverage my already payed for infrastructures?". It might be no proper solution, but the question seems quite legitime nevertheless.
"The first problem is someone power cycling their computer or disconnecting it."
Problem solved some decades ago: the solution is named "RAID".
"Then there's the slow access over a long cable."
Unless his LAN uses some kind of ADSL for local transit, it can't be a problem, since the bandwith usage for "using a lot of resources from my desktop that are on a central server" is just the same than "offer a lot of resources from my desktop to a central server".
"Already that's cause for lots of running around making sure the computers are up"
Only if there's no RAID over the solution; only if you try to use that spare space as "live speedy mass storage". What if that space is used for "near-line" backup storage or old data rarely needed? The service can even be coupled with some WoL environment so if the data is on a turned off system it will be automatically powered-on.
"Then there's the problem of someone just moving a computer somewhere else, and you could spend days trying to find out what happened"
Of course nobody says such a solution will be "as easy as turn on you recently bought computer with Windows Vista Home Edition". As any other "Enterprisy Solution" it will need to be properly engineered but, again, problems don't seem to be unsurmountable at first glance, let's see a simple operational flux:
1) Space-locators recieve a unique ID, so you can move computers and, as long as they are reacheable through the network, you can move them all you want.
2) The box cannot be connected; it might be turned off; WoL will try to start up it.
3) The box won't turn on even with the aid of WoL; well, no problem: data is RAIDed so it will be served out of checksums and the "lost" node will be replicated somewhere else.
See? All of this would be absolutly transparent to the sysadmin as long as the solution is properly engineered.
"Further keep in mind that the small drives are getting to be old drives and liable to zonk out."
That's again an already assumed problem. For one, "server" drives will be old, small and flakey in the near future too, so you better already have a plan for this situation; for two, ask Google or any other corporation with massive volumes of data in a "grid": even if they were "server quality" once you got a lot of disks you have to plan -and engineer, not for the case a drive dies but for an environment where a significative percentage of disks are continously off-line (due to breakeages, power out or whatever).
"The only other relevant thing I can think of is that some (all?) linux distros randomize MAC addresses of network cards on boot..."
Wow, man, that one was really great.
At the same time it explains why religion is so pervasive in human race: people have a *very* strong tendency (I'd even say a *perverse* tendency) to fullfill their ignorance out of the most absurd "explanations". 'Horror vacui', I think.
"Do you still have servers with IDE drives?"
Oh! so you are one of those that still own in operating conditions half-inch open-reel tapers?
Or else, your argument is moot, you know...
"...what kind of response involves getting the example backwards...?"
One based on negating your assertion and see what happens since, in order for a biunivocal relationship to be if A->B, then !A->!B.
All in all it's very obvious that in your example the vendor is able to drain money from the client in the form of a service subscription *because* the vendor successfully has locked-in the client, the contrary being plain absurd: you don't undesiringly pay money to enter a lock-in situation, you undesiringly pay money because you are locked-in.
"The former products are simpler and have less to break whereas the latter products have better features, but more can go wrong."
While I think you have a point, I don't think you got the point. I'd say the critical point is not that more features makes it more fragile (while everything else being equal, it's true) but that first wave technologies try to make a point and then they are built quite "overspec'd". Look at an old console, but then look at an old VCR, or photo camera, or mobile telephone or refrigerator, it doesn't matter: they all look sturdy and *are* sturdy. But then, when a technology is already stablished market forces push the designs to the limits: it's not only that making a gadget less sturdy is cheaper to make (thus, more benefits) but that once the market has accepted it producers want a fragile gadget so it breaks on time and you go buying the next generation thingie: after all nobody wants you to buy one gadget for your whole life; they want you to buy this season's gadget and then the next.
"This is one of those things that's painful only until you've crossed a certain threshold of information, then it never bothers you again."
For the most part then it's too late.
There are *a lot* of people that started their days on DBs by their own or as another issue clogged to their back. Then they go opensource just because it's easier to start with (no provisions, not a dozen calls to a provider, just an "apt-get install" and you are on your way). Then you look for Postgres; it has a fame of a serious, reliable full-featured database, you start toying with it, having a light look at the manuals (remember: you are either a neophyte or burdened with other tasks; no time or ability to spend the time on a dense manual and start seeing the results next week)... and you go nowhere. Let's try the next one, you say, so you go with MySQL; you install it and within five minutes you get your first "show databases" and "select * from table"; you smile, you feel the strong feedback and there you go. Of course, after a year using MySQL you understand some basic concepts and you could give another try to Posgres, but who cares now? MySQL has the work done for the most part, you know its nuisances and you have invested a lot of time on it.
"How does Wikipedia manage to run on MySQL, then?"
Because it doesn't end up requiring the sort of thing described in the title of Codd's original paper?
"One President. One Congressman. One Senator. One Governor. One state Senator. One state assemblyman. Three or four county councilmen. One sheriff. One (or more) judges. Four or five School Board members. Possibly more local officials as well. In the more referendum-happy states, maybe a dozen or more of those. It does add up..."
Then again you are shifting the problem. On one hand, can't it be more of a concern the ability of the voter not to make a mistake than the ability for a fast counting? Then you shouldn't overburden the election day: having one per year instead of one each two years surely won't sink your economy not even a significant fraction of a 1% but it would cut in half complexity. On the other hand mere cuantity aggregation doesn't mean more complexity. In my country there is about 2000 registered per voting box, about five to ten boxes per college and as many colleges as needed. Officers usually end their countings within two hours from closing the boxes. I remember one ellection at the same time for major, regional, national and european government, and a new law on some regions. So say in the USA you double it up. That just means you need to double the number of boxes or allow for people being counting for about four hours instead of two. Neither of both options seem specially unfeasible.
"You don't have to reveal who you voted for unless you want to"
Or unless you are *forced* to.
"and someone can be coerced just as easily without such means"
Bullshit. Noone can coerce you with current standards because the one who tried perfectly knows in advance his intent is moot (you can say whatever and the other party knows that has no means to know if you lied or not). But try it once there's a method to know for certain.
"One can also prove how they voted by using a cell phone with a built-in camera to take a picture of their ballot."
A picture wouldn't be enough, you would need a camera record, and probably it would be a bit suspicious.
"what I think you are suggesting here with making it mandatory to participate in being an election judge... the rest is semantics on how it happens"
Yes gunpointing citizenship no less and no more than about being a jury in a trial, paying taxes or having all your paperwork in order if you want to start a company. That's called Res Publica. You don't need to accept it, you always can go and buy your own lonely island. I think you are a bit out of proportion here unless you are a liberal anarchist in which case you would probably be better off without presidential elections at all.
"It works for us"
Are you sure? Why this very thread then? Why the two latest presidential elections have been "a bit" contested?
"What you see now in America is the end result of those centuries of tradition."
So what? Those centuries of tradition, be it of the brightest example of citizenship participation or of the horridest absolute governance of course *explain* the current 'statu quo' but I don't really find them of any value as an excuse (My country was a democracy while yours was an absolute monarchy? Well, yes, but my father is stronger than yours and will through an asteroid over your head and your pa's... What kind of an argument is that?)
"In many ways, the voting machines are in place to help make it cheaper and to concentrate labor to where the real problems are at: voting fraud detection and verification of voter status."
The very issue with voting machines is that NOBODY has offered reasonable proof that
a) There's a fraud problem with current counting by hand procedures as they are stablished in most civilized countries, so voting machines would be nothing but a solution looking for a problem
b) There's any advantage a voting machine can offer regarding fraud problem while there are *a lot* of obvious problems with them that should be addressed that would immeditely lead to a *real* fraud problem at a scale never seen before
c) While costs are always an issue and it certainly seems that voting machines *could* really make it cheaper (I say *could* because voting machines seems to be a market niche where there will be a real danger for a company to become a monopoly -Diebold anyone? and if so it's still to be seen if it would be cheaper... or even more expensive), I don't think there's anybody that have a real issue with current voting system being too expensive (not the campaign, not the marketing involved but the voting-and-count fact itself) and certainly I'd say people wouldn't have a problem deciding between a voting system at current costs and a cheaper system (certainly a meagre percentage of overall costs involved) but orders of magnitude more cuestionable regarding transparency.
"Here's what frustrates me about QT: You have to know what license you are going to use before you write any code."
Sorry but you are terribly misinformed. You have to know what license you are going to use before you *USE* any third party code. That's valid for Qt, for Gtk, for WxWidgets for Motif and for *ANY* toolkit you may use.
"If you download the free version of their library and start writing code, that code can never be part of the same product as the proprietary version of their library, even if you never distribute the code until you purchase a proprietary license"
That's not only false; that's stupidly false. I beg you share your mind paths to reach such a surpresive conclusion to our fair enlightment.
"I understand that if they didn't do this, people would develop proprietary applications internally"
You just CAN'T develop such a beast as a "internally propietary application". If it is not distributed, it can hold any distribution agreement or license, it's that simple.
"then only purchase a proprietary license when they were ready to release."
Again, I kindly ask what's your basis for such an astounding idea that you just can't download the freely avaliable Qt libraries then start developing and if you want to distribute the result of your hard work under a privative license buy *then* a license from Troll Tech and start distribution by the terms of the license Troll Tech has agreed to you (not that you really need it, but the worst case scenario *if* Qt privative license was entangled to some specific binaries from Troll Tech would be that you would need to recompile your source code -the same you already developed in-house, against the blessed libraries -not that you really need it, mind you, but that would be the worst case).
"There is some irony in the fact that it is more legal to prototype your undecided-licence QT application internally either using free GTK or "free" Microsoft UIs than it is to prototype using the free version of QT itself."
I find terribly difficult to believe you are so clueless. Certainly, specially considering you publish as an "anonymous coward", it's easier to believe that you are a troll.
"I'm telling you that the process to vote in America is at least an order of magnitude more complicated than a typical Brazilian experience"
Then the problem is in the process, not in the hand counting. At the end of the day you end up with one president, one congressman, some local officers and maybe some legislations casted. That's not away from other countries' standards and still, they seem to manage it more efficiently.
"Having the federal government do it wrong for everyone is much worse than having some local communities doing it wrong for themselves."
The problem being here that they are not "doing it wrong for themselves" but "doing wrong for everybody". Specially with your "winner takes all" system, the *whole* voting process is flawed as soon as some states (or even some counties) have it wrong, so there's no added "penalty" on taking the risk of doing it wrong at the whole country level. And it is not an argument either saying that "well, this way we can test two dozen systems and then take the best one". Ballots is not quantum mechanics, almost everything is already invented here: you just have to look how other countries manage the problem to see your way.
"This job does tend to be skewed for the elderly."
There's absolutly *nothing* in the "counting by hand" process that biases it towards the elderly: just make it mandatory, like being a jury in a trial and it's done.
"This is a tough problem. I asked my wife.... "How long would it take for you to process a Presidential general election with your crew by hand counting?""
Believe it or not, that's pure nonsense as clearly demonstrates the fact that greatest parts of civilized world make it by hand and manage to survive. I'd tell you about my country but then, since it's only 40M people you'd say it's not the same scale forgetting counting ballots is a highly parallelizable problem (you just manage for each voting district to have as many people as two people are able to count in two hours -or four, or six, or what seems convenient, and you are done), so I'll point you to EU ellections. They are as many people as the USA; the ellection day is as complex as yours (since concur local, regional and even national ellections at the same time), you have the results in no more than 12 hours from closing (ellection day ends at 8PM and you read the results in next morning's newspapers) and still we do it by hand, so don't tell me it's not doable.
"But a GPL library is not very useful in a proprietary application, so you'll have to get the library under a proprietary licence, which costs money."
So, in order for you to be able to sell licenses of your program, some library asks for license money in order for you to use it, while it is open/free if you will deliver your program open/free. I call it fair play.
"The subtlety is that just because something is closed doesn't mean it's less secure."
The subtlety is that because it's closed you must take the word of others regarding its security.
And that's exactly the 'quis custodiet custodes ipsos' problem.
Are you going to take Diebold's word for it?
Are you going to take some congressman word for it?
As long as someone has a secret on you, you are open for *at least* the secret holder to use it against you.
"Open Source is not actually a solution to the age-old problem of "Quis custodiet custodes ipsos"."
Yes, it actually is. The key (read Iuvenal) is not needing for a custodio in first place: no custodio, no need to watch over him. So, when the husband is at home, there's no problem; it is when he must travel that he needs a guardian over his wife but, hell, who watches over the guardian not to be himself his wife's lover? (no: having an eunuch for a guardian is not the solution, as Iuvenal states on this very satire).
That means that it's only the software you can't directly see (like the travelling husband) the one that needs a guardian. Open Source allows you to see the code just as the husband can see his wife when he's at home and the 'quis qustodiet' problem disappears. Of course, there're husbands blind enough for their wives to engage lovers even if they not travel but this definetly is not the 'quis custodiet' problem.
"It just has to be proved trustworthy"
By who's word? This *is* the very 'quis custodiet' problem, just as Diebold clearly demonstrates.