The issue here isn't that companies structure themselves to minimize their tax burden, but the way taxes themselves are collected.
There is such a regulatory morass that goes with any tax code, and a never ending list of things to be taxed. The reams of paperwork devoted not only to the code, but the army of accountants to ensure compliance, and lawyers to finesse the gray areas of the code.
Isn't it fun how the same big companies that are responsible for much of the tax complexity(*) are now using it as an excuse for their tax evasion?
(*) Some examples: taxes on ISPs to help finance movies and public television; taxes on portable hard drives to help finance the movies and music industries; lower taxes on diesel to keep taxis, truckers and farmers happy; reduced VAT on various products to help the companies producing them, etc.
I know that people call him racist, but he has been against "illegal" (which is not a race) and urges caution in terms of Islam (once again, not a race, but a religion that creates more than 90% of terrorists).
Has he said something else that I have missed?
Donald Trump: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." So being a Mexican immigrant means you're either a drug dealer or a rapist according to Trump. That's racism.
Donald Trump: "But you have people coming in and I'm not just saying Mexicans, I'm talking about people that are killers and they're coming into this country." And that's xenophobic.
Donald Trump: "Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border." Linking a community with disease. Where did I hear this before?
Donald Trump: "I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan. The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” Treating hispanics like dogs he can throw a bone to, that's racist too.
Donald Trump: "No surprise that China was caught cheating in the Olympics. That's the Chinese M.O. - Lie, Cheat & Steal in all international dealings." Note how he said it's the "Chinese modus operandi", not the "Chinese *government* M.O.". Claiming 1+ billion people are liars, cheaters and thieves, just for their ethnicity or the country they live in is racism.
Has Trump ever actually issued a call for violence? If so, I must have missed it.
Well he certainly did against protestors at his rallies.
But more importantly, "Donald Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." and "Donald Trump said that he would 'absolutely' institute mandatory registration." So he says he will use the force of law to discriminate on the basis of religion. In other words he is against freedom of religion and against the bill of rights.
While those are not direct threats of violence, it's already too much for someone who wants to be the chief of the world's most powerful army.
Great, so if I buy a top of the range computer, I can make it work just like a poor relation of Windows. Awesome. And no VM support. And I expect sound, graphics and input support suck compared to Windows. Remix is better suited as a replacement for ChromeOS, firmware resident OS or a bootable USB key. Indeed, this appears to be exactly their focus at present.
I did not say Remix OS is meant to be a one-for-one Windows replacement. It's meant to compete and drive it and others out of the market for the sizable chunk of users who have relatively simple needs (hint, that chunk does not know what a VM is). But getting compatibility with at least some popular Windows applications will certainly help to achieve that.
Getting games to run on Wine is completely hit and miss. If you're lucky they work. If you're not (most of the time) they fall over in a heap or suffer serious performance / graphical problems that render them unplayable. And even when software runs on Wine it is usually necessary to install chunks of Microsoft and other's binaries of one sort or another. Front ends like PlaysForSure have to grab pieces from all over the place.
So you're saying the developers of any imperfect piece of software should just give up and go do something else? Well then Microsoft, Apple and Linux developers would all be out of a job! Wine and CrossOver work really well in a lot of cases and if it doesn't for you then too bad. It does not mean that they are useless as you imply.
Undoubtedly many recompile against winelib or are using portable libraries in the first place. But they're native.
Nobody uses WineLib for porting and far from all ports are native.
A less palatable alternative but one which produces better results is to port each application with winelib or some commercial derivative so it runs natively on the host OS even if its internally using Win32 APIs. It requires somebody to have the source for the application but they can compile, test, debug and if necessary, modify the code to make it work on the host, e.g. commenting out copy protection or some feature that isn't supported.
None of that requires recompiling the source code with WineLib. All it requires is cooperation of the game editor to get modified binaries that play well with Wine. Note also that WineLib is no more native than Wine and will not provide better performance.
This is how most Windows games get ported to OS X or Linux - some 3rd party does a port using Cedega or similar.
Really? So then why does Wikipedia say about Cedega that "In some cases it closely mimics the experience that Windows users have (insert disc, run Setup.exe, play)". Clearly not every Cedega port is a source port. Furthermore isn't Cedega a bit dead nowadays? Anyway, even if you don't go through the standard setup.exe that does not mean you have a source port, as demonstrated by CrossOver's many ports.
Android devices don't have hard disks, don't have virtual memory, don't have much RAM, don't have have very powerful CPU or GPUs, don't have sophisticated support for input devices or controllers.
Did you miss the part where the article said CodeWeavers got Steam running on Remix OS, a version of Android that can run on regular PCs, which, if you so desire can be cnfigured with hard disks, gigabytes of RAM, top-of-the-line i7 CPUs, GPUs, real keyboards, mice, etc?
Windows applications & games also have dependencies on runtimes like DirectX,.NET, COM / ActiveX controls, proprietary fonts (even Arial is proprietary) etc. so it's not enough to fool the game but also satisfy these dependencies. And many games would use copy protection libraries that require drivers or background processes to function.
Wine provides DirectX,.NET, COM, ActiveX and event lets you install the freely downloadable Arial fonts. In fact CrossOver, which is based on Wine, already runs many of the games you say it cannot run.
But then again, what's to stop Valve just throwing streaming onto their existing Steam app for Android?
The goal of Remix OS is to replace Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on regular PCs by providing users with the Android GUI they are already used to on their smartphone. They cannot do that if buying a second PC with Windows and streaming is their only answer to providing compatibility with legacy applications.
that's what I was thinking...running a launcher is a lot different then running one of the games.
Steam is actually quite a pain to get running, quite often more so than the games it then starts. So getting the Steam GUI to work is an achievement that should not be underestimated. It will also likely be the most practical way of getting games on the platform.
I imagine the vast majority of them won't play, and even if they did, would probably crush a mobile processor (though it sounds like it requires x86 Android, which would mean Atom chips...though those aren't exactly renowned for their gaming performance either).
RemixOS can run on regular PCs so you can also run it on top-of-the-line i7 CPUs and I imagine they either already support NVIDIA and AMD cards or will do so soon.
True, Steam offers a broad selection of genres and titles, but I really can't see surviving past the loading screen in an intense FPS or MMO.
Cute anime panda games, maybe.
Steam is actually quite a pain to get running, quite often more so than the games it then starts. So getting the Steam GUI to work is an achievement that should not be underestimated.
I mean, really, Company of Heroes 2 on a damn telephone?
CodeWeavers got Steam running on RemixOS, a version of Android targeted at Intel PCs, which means it's meant to be run with a real keyboard, mouse, screen, etc. so there is none of the GUI issues presented by smartphones. Obviously since it has not been released yet it's not clear how much market share it will get. As their site says "This is just the beginning". But being able to run Windows applications could help
Perhaps you should learn the difference between simple incompetence and scamming.
You implied the salesman knowingly sold an insecure system when you said he "should win salesman of the year". Otherwise he was simply incompetent, the buyer was incompetent, and neither should win any prizes.
"Whoever sold this system to the hotel needs to be outed and publicly shamed."
No, they should win salesman of the year. The shaming should go to whoever at the hotel didn't do due diligence, and bought the system.
I hope this is sarcastic because otherwise it sounds like you think every scam should be legalized and the blame put squarely on the victims.
I understand that the DMCA makes no provision for penalties for a bogus claim. But couldn't these bogus claims be considered to be Tortious interference?
These claims cause all the revenue to be sent to the entity filing the bogus claim instead of the video author. Thus they prevent the author from receiving revenue as per his contract with YouTube (the contract here being whatever determines what money he will receive). That's interference. Now it may also be necessary to prove that the interference was intentional (apparently this is not universal). That may be hard but the revenue capture at least provides motive and showing there is a pattern may be enough to seal the deal.
Those calculators only need a few milliwatts of power to operate, so can be quite inefficient and still get the job done. Indoor solar cells would have to be pretty efficient to be worth the cost of installation.
But then they mention using this graphene breakthrough "to power smart sensors and IoT devices without the need for batteries or wired connectivity". Why would sensors and IoT devices use more power than a calculator of old?
That's a huge stretch to claim adding safety markings reduces crashes.
I'd expect drivers are speeding up because the road looks more safe with the lines, and are adjusting their speed to take advantage of the extra safety factor. So they are making a somewhat arbitrary adjustment to increase road safety, expecting people not to respond by making an equally arbitrary counter-adjustment. How they figure +x-y ends up being a lower value when x and y are completely unknown, is astonishing.
At the very least, they are creating a more hazardous condition in the hopes that random drivers react by not over-compensating to create a net improvement in safety. I sure don't want to be on that road when someone in oncoming traffic says "screw it I'm speeding up" and significantly increases the odds of me colliding with them. Given that people have a reason to go faster or at least maintain their speed (to stay on time) and have essentially no reason to slow down unless you give them one, this is a setup for failure.
I feel bad about not being able to say much more than "this is fundamentally flawed". I want to say more, but it's just too simple to expand on. How they don't understand this is beyond me.
In even better conditions, an electric plane can "recharge" batteries on descent.
Unfortunately on commercial flights the planes pretty much only go down when they are about to land. At that point recharging the battery really does not help the autonomy. Plus once the plane is on the ground recharging the battery is a non-issue so landing with a somewhat charged battery isn't worth much.
The people who do the actual counting are supervised by representatives from the major parties. This should suffice for the precinct counts.
There is still no valid reason to prevent regular voters from watching the recount. So why prevent it?
As far as the overall total goes, it's the sum of the precinct votes, and that's transparent.
As for the overall total it is indeed public which makes it trivially easy to handle, which is why one never talks about it. Not having to deal with the secrecy and anonymity issues enables use of all sorts of computers or schemes without drawbacks.
The box is sealed and stored, except that spot audits are conducted in random precincts.
If Joe random voter cannot overview the selection of the precincts to audit, you have no guarantee do you have that they are really random.
It fundamentally depends on enough people being willing to work towards a fair election, but that's true of all voting systems. If the system is sufficiently corrupt, the elections will be rigged, no matter what the mechanics.
It also depends on transparency. Without it there is nothing to keep the few people involved with the actual counting in line.
Voting around here is generally 6 AM to 8 PM to give as many people as possible the opportunity. (I normally vote on the way to work.) This is November,
Eh eh. True, you always hold your elections in November (and on a Tuesday even!), here they can happen at any time of the year, but always on a Sunday so people are available.
The fact that you voted would not be secret, nor is it secret now (at least in the USA). Only how you voted is secret. You could use a private key to verify that the vote recorded was how you actually voted.
Please explain how you would use a private key to hide your vote from everyone except the people who need to actually count your vote. Also explain what would then prevent them from publicly disclosing how you voted.
Dunno how things are done in the US, but ballot boxes are sealed here (with actual lead / hard to change seals). The boxes are then couriered (with several different people accompanying the box) to a central location. There are various different registers that show who has attended the vote, what papers have been used. ie. Double Entry. with different people responsible for each register. Usually with a completely separate observer overseeing the ballot box.
Lead is not hard to find and if securitykeys can be replicated from a photograph then a standard seal should not be much of a challenge. Who picks the people accompanying the box to the central location? Can the person picking them be trusted? Is a single team carrying a significant fraction of the ballot boxes? And if they constantly have people supervising the ballot boxes, how can they forget them at the polling station? And recounts don't always happen immediately (at least in the US) so the issue is not just transport, it's also storage. Who picked the storage area? Who has access to it? Is a team posted 24/24 to verify nobody enters that room? Who picked that team?
The room is sealed / guarded.
The room is sealed? Why? Do they want to prevent the general population from overseeing the counting?
It would take an amazing level of conspiracy and corruption to rig a count in the UK.
From what you've said I'd say on the contrary that all the conditions are met for tampering.
There are no volunteers, these people are usually paid (and paid well enough) for their role in the ballot and count.
Who picks these people?
Consequences for interfering with the vote in any way are harsh and will include criminal charges as well as most likely loss of employment (staff typically are Local Government staff).
The consequences for murder are even harsher. And yet that has never prevented them.
If you've ever been at a count or worked with the people at the polling stations you would understand.
I've been at a count many times but here it happens right at the polling station, as soon as voting is closed so that the ballot box never goes out of the voters control. The counting is done by teams of four voters who volunteered at the polling station during the election, in the open. The count also happens in the presence of party representatives of course and any one who wants to oversee it (which I've done many times too). If you wanted you could arrive in the morning (done that too, was first to vote), see the ballot box being prepared, see that the box is empty (it's transparent), gets locked with two padlocks using different keys, handed out to separate persons, and stay all day until the results are announced after the count. In other words anyone can control everything from the start to the end.
I totally agree that paper voting can be much more secure and reliable than electronic voting. And even with the flaws of the process you described it probably is (mass tampering would be harder for one). But 'paper' is not a magic bullet. It still has to be done right.
Any system that leaves a physical trail, paper or otherwise, allows for the luxury of a physical recount if voting tabulations are in question.
Recounts are useless: by the time they are performed the ballots have been taken out of view of the voters for so long that there's no way to tell if they are still the same as those that once were in the ballot box. Counting must happen in the polling station, by voter volunteers, as soon as the election is closed.
This is also why any electronic voting system is bad: it purports to make manually counting the votes something that's optional so that when you do want to do it there is no one to do so when the polling station closes.
Apparently you've never seen how computers in the field are treated, or had to account for the volume use of computers.
More importantly regular computers are way too complex for the task at hand, making it even more impossible to verify they are not hacked (either at the hardware or software level).
Besides, if you use a paper ballot you can still have an election even if the power is out, even if people are filling in ballots in the dark by flashlight or candle.
Or you could hold your elections during the day instead of in the dead of the night;-)
Voting is too important to hand-over to machines entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh for fucks sakes.
The issue here isn't that companies structure themselves to minimize their tax burden, but the way taxes themselves are collected.
There is such a regulatory morass that goes with any tax code, and a never ending list of things to be taxed. The reams of paperwork devoted not only to the code, but the army of accountants to ensure compliance, and lawyers to finesse the gray areas of the code.
Isn't it fun how the same big companies that are responsible for much of the tax complexity(*) are now using it as an excuse for their tax evasion?
(*) Some examples: taxes on ISPs to help finance movies and public television; taxes on portable hard drives to help finance the movies and music industries; lower taxes on diesel to keep taxis, truckers and farmers happy; reduced VAT on various products to help the companies producing them, etc.
Considering all the wealth they create ends up in their own pockets.
This is a common misconception and you know it.
Not so much when that pocket is an offshore account in some tax haven.
I know that people call him racist, but he has been against "illegal" (which is not a race) and urges caution in terms of Islam (once again, not a race, but a religion that creates more than 90% of terrorists).
Has he said something else that I have missed?
Donald Trump: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." So being a Mexican immigrant means you're either a drug dealer or a rapist according to Trump. That's racism.
Donald Trump: "But you have people coming in and I'm not just saying Mexicans, I'm talking about people that are killers and they're coming into this country." And that's xenophobic.
Donald Trump: "Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border." Linking a community with disease. Where did I hear this before?
Donald Trump: "I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan. The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” Treating hispanics like dogs he can throw a bone to, that's racist too.
Donald Trump: "No surprise that China was caught cheating in the Olympics. That's the Chinese M.O. - Lie, Cheat & Steal in all international dealings." Note how he said it's the "Chinese modus operandi", not the "Chinese *government* M.O.". Claiming 1+ billion people are liars, cheaters and thieves, just for their ethnicity or the country they live in is racism.
Has Trump ever actually issued a call for violence? If so, I must have missed it.
Well he certainly did against protestors at his rallies.
But more importantly, "Donald Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." and "Donald Trump said that he would 'absolutely' institute mandatory registration." So he says he will use the force of law to discriminate on the basis of religion. In other words he is against freedom of religion and against the bill of rights.
While those are not direct threats of violence, it's already too much for someone who wants to be the chief of the world's most powerful army.
Great, so if I buy a top of the range computer, I can make it work just like a poor relation of Windows. Awesome. And no VM support. And I expect sound, graphics and input support suck compared to Windows. Remix is better suited as a replacement for ChromeOS, firmware resident OS or a bootable USB key. Indeed, this appears to be exactly their focus at present.
I did not say Remix OS is meant to be a one-for-one Windows replacement. It's meant to compete and drive it and others out of the market for the sizable chunk of users who have relatively simple needs (hint, that chunk does not know what a VM is). But getting compatibility with at least some popular Windows applications will certainly help to achieve that.
Getting games to run on Wine is completely hit and miss. If you're lucky they work. If you're not (most of the time) they fall over in a heap or suffer serious performance / graphical problems that render them unplayable. And even when software runs on Wine it is usually necessary to install chunks of Microsoft and other's binaries of one sort or another. Front ends like PlaysForSure have to grab pieces from all over the place.
So you're saying the developers of any imperfect piece of software should just give up and go do something else? Well then Microsoft, Apple and Linux developers would all be out of a job! Wine and CrossOver work really well in a lot of cases and if it doesn't for you then too bad. It does not mean that they are useless as you imply.
Undoubtedly many recompile against winelib or are using portable libraries in the first place. But they're native.
Nobody uses WineLib for porting and far from all ports are native.
A less palatable alternative but one which produces better results is to port each application with winelib or some commercial derivative so it runs natively on the host OS even if its internally using Win32 APIs. It requires somebody to have the source for the application but they can compile, test, debug and if necessary, modify the code to make it work on the host, e.g. commenting out copy protection or some feature that isn't supported.
None of that requires recompiling the source code with WineLib. All it requires is cooperation of the game editor to get modified binaries that play well with Wine. Note also that WineLib is no more native than Wine and will not provide better performance.
This is how most Windows games get ported to OS X or Linux - some 3rd party does a port using Cedega or similar.
Really? So then why does Wikipedia say about Cedega that "In some cases it closely mimics the experience that Windows users have (insert disc, run Setup.exe, play)". Clearly not every Cedega port is a source port. Furthermore isn't Cedega a bit dead nowadays? Anyway, even if you don't go through the standard setup.exe that does not mean you have a source port, as demonstrated by CrossOver's many ports.
Android devices don't have hard disks, don't have virtual memory, don't have much RAM, don't have have very powerful CPU or GPUs, don't have sophisticated support for input devices or controllers.
Did you miss the part where the article said CodeWeavers got Steam running on Remix OS, a version of Android that can run on regular PCs, which, if you so desire can be cnfigured with hard disks, gigabytes of RAM, top-of-the-line i7 CPUs, GPUs, real keyboards, mice, etc?
Windows applications & games also have dependencies on runtimes like DirectX, .NET, COM / ActiveX controls, proprietary fonts (even Arial is proprietary) etc. so it's not enough to fool the game but also satisfy these dependencies. And many games would use copy protection libraries that require drivers or background processes to function.
Wine provides DirectX, .NET, COM, ActiveX and event lets you install the freely downloadable Arial fonts. In fact CrossOver, which is based on Wine, already runs many of the games you say it cannot run.
But then again, what's to stop Valve just throwing streaming onto their existing Steam app for Android?
The goal of Remix OS is to replace Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on regular PCs by providing users with the Android GUI they are already used to on their smartphone. They cannot do that if buying a second PC with Windows and streaming is their only answer to providing compatibility with legacy applications.
that's what I was thinking...running a launcher is a lot different then running one of the games.
Steam is actually quite a pain to get running, quite often more so than the games it then starts. So getting the Steam GUI to work is an achievement that should not be underestimated. It will also likely be the most practical way of getting games on the platform.
I imagine the vast majority of them won't play, and even if they did, would probably crush a mobile processor (though it sounds like it requires x86 Android, which would mean Atom chips...though those aren't exactly renowned for their gaming performance either).
RemixOS can run on regular PCs so you can also run it on top-of-the-line i7 CPUs and I imagine they either already support NVIDIA and AMD cards or will do so soon.
True, Steam offers a broad selection of genres and titles, but I really can't see surviving past the loading screen in an intense FPS or MMO.
Cute anime panda games, maybe.
Steam is actually quite a pain to get running, quite often more so than the games it then starts. So getting the Steam GUI to work is an achievement that should not be underestimated.
I mean, really, Company of Heroes 2 on a damn telephone?
CodeWeavers got Steam running on RemixOS, a version of Android targeted at Intel PCs, which means it's meant to be run with a real keyboard, mouse, screen, etc. so there is none of the GUI issues presented by smartphones. Obviously since it has not been released yet it's not clear how much market share it will get. As their site says "This is just the beginning". But being able to run Windows applications could help
Perhaps you should learn the difference between simple incompetence and scamming.
You implied the salesman knowingly sold an insecure system when you said he "should win salesman of the year". Otherwise he was simply incompetent, the buyer was incompetent, and neither should win any prizes.
"Whoever sold this system to the hotel needs to be outed and publicly shamed." No, they should win salesman of the year. The shaming should go to whoever at the hotel didn't do due diligence, and bought the system.
I hope this is sarcastic because otherwise it sounds like you think every scam should be legalized and the blame put squarely on the victims.
I understand that the DMCA makes no provision for penalties for a bogus claim. But couldn't these bogus claims be considered to be Tortious interference?
These claims cause all the revenue to be sent to the entity filing the bogus claim instead of the video author. Thus they prevent the author from receiving revenue as per his contract with YouTube (the contract here being whatever determines what money he will receive). That's interference. Now it may also be necessary to prove that the interference was intentional (apparently this is not universal). That may be hard but the revenue capture at least provides motive and showing there is a pattern may be enough to seal the deal.
Disclaimer: IANAL
Those calculators only need a few milliwatts of power to operate, so can be quite inefficient and still get the job done. Indoor solar cells would have to be pretty efficient to be worth the cost of installation.
But then they mention using this graphene breakthrough "to power smart sensors and IoT devices without the need for batteries or wired connectivity". Why would sensors and IoT devices use more power than a calculator of old?
I'd expect drivers are speeding up because the road looks more safe with the lines, and are adjusting their speed to take advantage of the extra safety factor. So they are making a somewhat arbitrary adjustment to increase road safety, expecting people not to respond by making an equally arbitrary counter-adjustment. How they figure +x-y ends up being a lower value when x and y are completely unknown, is astonishing.
At the very least, they are creating a more hazardous condition in the hopes that random drivers react by not over-compensating to create a net improvement in safety. I sure don't want to be on that road when someone in oncoming traffic says "screw it I'm speeding up" and significantly increases the odds of me colliding with them. Given that people have a reason to go faster or at least maintain their speed (to stay on time) and have essentially no reason to slow down unless you give them one, this is a setup for failure.
I feel bad about not being able to say much more than "this is fundamentally flawed". I want to say more, but it's just too simple to expand on. How they don't understand this is beyond me.
Fixed that for you.
In even better conditions, an electric plane can "recharge" batteries on descent.
Unfortunately on commercial flights the planes pretty much only go down when they are about to land. At that point recharging the battery really does not help the autonomy. Plus once the plane is on the ground recharging the battery is a non-issue so landing with a somewhat charged battery isn't worth much.
Considering that long distance jets fly in the jetstream, we might be able to use the air flow to generate quite a bit of energy.
The Jet Stream speeds are between 90 and 400km/h, airplane speeds are 800 to 900km/h. So the energy balance will still be negative.
Interestingly Smartflix has gotten quite a bit of press in France recently...
The people who do the actual counting are supervised by representatives from the major parties. This should suffice for the precinct counts.
There is still no valid reason to prevent regular voters from watching the recount. So why prevent it?
As far as the overall total goes, it's the sum of the precinct votes, and that's transparent.
As for the overall total it is indeed public which makes it trivially easy to handle, which is why one never talks about it. Not having to deal with the secrecy and anonymity issues enables use of all sorts of computers or schemes without drawbacks.
The box is sealed and stored, except that spot audits are conducted in random precincts.
If Joe random voter cannot overview the selection of the precincts to audit, you have no guarantee do you have that they are really random.
It fundamentally depends on enough people being willing to work towards a fair election, but that's true of all voting systems. If the system is sufficiently corrupt, the elections will be rigged, no matter what the mechanics.
It also depends on transparency. Without it there is nothing to keep the few people involved with the actual counting in line.
Voting around here is generally 6 AM to 8 PM to give as many people as possible the opportunity. (I normally vote on the way to work.) This is November,
Eh eh. True, you always hold your elections in November (and on a Tuesday even!), here they can happen at any time of the year, but always on a Sunday so people are available.
The fact that you voted would not be secret, nor is it secret now (at least in the USA). Only how you voted is secret. You could use a private key to verify that the vote recorded was how you actually voted.
Please explain how you would use a private key to hide your vote from everyone except the people who need to actually count your vote. Also explain what would then prevent them from publicly disclosing how you voted.
Dunno how things are done in the US, but ballot boxes are sealed here (with actual lead / hard to change seals). The boxes are then couriered (with several different people accompanying the box) to a central location. There are various different registers that show who has attended the vote, what papers have been used. ie. Double Entry. with different people responsible for each register. Usually with a completely separate observer overseeing the ballot box.
Lead is not hard to find and if security keys can be replicated from a photograph then a standard seal should not be much of a challenge. Who picks the people accompanying the box to the central location? Can the person picking them be trusted? Is a single team carrying a significant fraction of the ballot boxes? And if they constantly have people supervising the ballot boxes, how can they forget them at the polling station? And recounts don't always happen immediately (at least in the US) so the issue is not just transport, it's also storage. Who picked the storage area? Who has access to it? Is a team posted 24/24 to verify nobody enters that room? Who picked that team?
The room is sealed / guarded.
The room is sealed? Why? Do they want to prevent the general population from overseeing the counting?
It would take an amazing level of conspiracy and corruption to rig a count in the UK.
From what you've said I'd say on the contrary that all the conditions are met for tampering.
There are no volunteers, these people are usually paid (and paid well enough) for their role in the ballot and count.
Who picks these people?
Consequences for interfering with the vote in any way are harsh and will include criminal charges as well as most likely loss of employment (staff typically are Local Government staff).
The consequences for murder are even harsher. And yet that has never prevented them.
If you've ever been at a count or worked with the people at the polling stations you would understand.
I've been at a count many times but here it happens right at the polling station, as soon as voting is closed so that the ballot box never goes out of the voters control. The counting is done by teams of four voters who volunteered at the polling station during the election, in the open. The count also happens in the presence of party representatives of course and any one who wants to oversee it (which I've done many times too). If you wanted you could arrive in the morning (done that too, was first to vote), see the ballot box being prepared, see that the box is empty (it's transparent), gets locked with two padlocks using different keys, handed out to separate persons, and stay all day until the results are announced after the count. In other words anyone can control everything from the start to the end.
I totally agree that paper voting can be much more secure and reliable than electronic voting. And even with the flaws of the process you described it probably is (mass tampering would be harder for one). But 'paper' is not a magic bullet. It still has to be done right.
Any system that leaves a physical trail, paper or otherwise, allows for the luxury of a physical recount if voting tabulations are in question.
Recounts are useless: by the time they are performed the ballots have been taken out of view of the voters for so long that there's no way to tell if they are still the same as those that once were in the ballot box. Counting must happen in the polling station, by voter volunteers, as soon as the election is closed.
This is also why any electronic voting system is bad: it purports to make manually counting the votes something that's optional so that when you do want to do it there is no one to do so when the polling station closes.
Apparently you've never seen how computers in the field are treated, or had to account for the volume use of computers.
More importantly regular computers are way too complex for the task at hand, making it even more impossible to verify they are not hacked (either at the hardware or software level).
Besides, if you use a paper ballot you can still have an election even if the power is out, even if people are filling in ballots in the dark by flashlight or candle.
Or you could hold your elections during the day instead of in the dead of the night ;-)
Voting is too important to hand-over to machines entirely.
Absolutely.
V for Vendetta, great comic, great movie and so very relevant to today's society.
You're a bit inconsistent with your accounting. Not that it really matters but for accuracy's sake it should either be
When a woman has a baby, she continues to live. So 2 doesn't become 2. 2 becomes 3.
or
When a woman has a baby, she continues to live. So 1 doesn't become 1. 1 becomes 2.