My secret e-Voting company would like to invite your election board for a two week all expenses paid informational seminar at one of the convention centers at Disney World. We will include free Disney Visa gift cards for your convenience on or off the resort property. We can show you two point four million reasons why you should choose our voting systems.
(yes, Disney World in Orlando has very nice facilities for large business events like a company Christmas party. Such facilities would work equally well to be rented for the kind of event described above.)
But we, at least in the US, already have secret laws, secret interpretations of laws, secret courts, secret court orders, secret warrants, secret arrests, secret evidence not available to the defense, secret convictions, secret prisons, and secret torture.
So why should we be worried about secret democratic election software?
With so much secret surveillance, can you be sure your vote is a secret?
* Open Source * Only 'key' parameters (eg, pure data nonexecutable) are secret * Electronically records your vote, to a local and off site archive * Each ballot recorded in the electronic archive is digitally signed by the machine with a sequence number, and includes the hash of the previous ballot. (and the previous ballot included the hash of its previous ballot, etc. thus ensuring a verifiable chain of ballots.) * Prints a paper record into a local archive. (eg, a machine that has a bin gradually accumulating a stack of small ballot cards which would be similar to a paper ballot) * The voter can see an on-screen image of the 'paper' ballot after they have confirmed and submitted their vote -- that way the voter knows that their vote was correctly 'recorded'.
Both electronic and human recounts are possible because of both the electronic and paper archive of ballots.
The paper and electronic archives can be audited to ensure the two archives exactly match. The local electronic and remote electronic archive can also be audited to ensure they match.
The paper ballots that are archived in a card stack would be designed to be human readable, but also easily machine readable such that the machine can read the same thing that a human reads (eg, not a barcode along with a printed indication of what the vote is which is two separate things.)
Now, even if the e-Voting software were closed source, it would be possible to ensure that its behavior is correct. None of this business where the only record is an electronic record -- and it is a correct and true record of what voters voted! I swear! No, really. I promise! Trust me.
Voting results could be instantly available online so that people in Western longitudes know that it is pointless for them to go out and vote.
How how many thousands of dollars an hour does it cost to operate a helicopter? And how many million is the acquisition cost of a helicopter? How difficult are they to learn to fly safely? What is the maintenance cost? How densely can helicopters be flown in an urban area for people to get to work? How much ground parking space does one require?
Supposing you could produce hydrogen at scale. Assuming it could be compressed into high pressure vessels, and be safe for widespread every day use for refueling vehicles with an extremely low statistical amount of leakage resulting in fueling station explosions . . .
What would be the mechanism of flight? Would you be burning the hydrogen as in a rocket or jet engine such that expanding gas from the engine provides thrust for lift? Sort of like the space shuttle main engines, except using oxygen out of the air? The space shuttle main engines use pure oxygen, so they probably burn hotter than the 21 % oxygen in the air; but I'll point out this. The reaction burns at about 6000 °. That the temperature where iron turns to gas. Not liquid -- but the temperature at which iron evaporates. Even if using the air with hydrogen for a jet engine type combustion, we're talking high temperatures. How would you keep the engine from either melting or evaporating. (The shuttle pumps the cryogenic fuels through small plumbing that lines the exhaust nozzles and other engine parts, which cools them, and pre-heats thus further pressurizing the propellants.)
Or would you attempt to somehow rapidly turn hydrogen / oxygen into enough electricity to use electric propellers? That would have to be a pretty massive and likely hot reaction either from some kind of jet or internal combustion engine / generator, or some kind of massive output fuel cell that wouldn't melt.
Someone will be disadvantaged by any technology innovation and will fight to maintain the status quo.
PTE's
Patent Trolling Entities will come out of the woodwork with some paper patent covering some aspect of flying cars.
Trademarks
There is probably no way to describe the new invention without using some common words which should be trademarks by then.
Copyright
Hey, why not. Copyright is already used to censor speech, or take down embarrassing things (having nothing to do with actual copyright). Copyright is used to stifle innovation -- innovations that would become the next big money maker to legitimate copyright owners if they had any vision. When all else fails, Copyright is the universal tool to reach for to stop something.
One of the biggest problems with backup ages ago was that it was either: 1. expensive and somewhat convenient 2. inexpensive and highly inconvenient
Today it can be inexpensive and fairly convenient.
Today a 2 TB pocket hard drive, which can be disconnected, labelled and then locked in a fire safe, costs less than what once was an expensive, slow, and inconvenient sequential access backup tape that required a very expensive tape drive. And usually required overnight backup. And probably various differential or partial backups in order to not use up too much backup capacity.
Today, you can back up, well, probably everything, to one or two pocket drives in a fairly short time. The more clever can rsync to a backup drive.
For what you once invested in 14 days worth of backup tapes, you can now spend on 14 days worth of pocket hard drives that are easy to use.
With databases, things are more complex. But you could have automated backups to a specified folder. And that folder could get backed up to other storage (like pocket drives) which go in a fire safe. Databases could also be replicated across multiple machines. And with backups.
Databases could be dumped to text SQL scripts that can reconstruct the database, and those are *extremely* compressible.
These schemes are easy to verify. And at least once in a while you should set up a VM with a database server and try doing a restore of the database. Maybe yearly. And you could just keep a snapshot of that VM (before the restore) to practice doing the restore with again next year. In fact, that VM is worth backing up because it is what you use to do your annual testing of your restore procedure. What handier way to know that you can restore, but even if software changes, you've got a VM that less than a year ago was able to restore the backed up media.
These days with clusters, if you can automate builds and deployments of systems, you could automate backups, and restores to separate systems just to prove every night's backup actually can restore and simply get daily reports on the success.
I could go on, but I agree with your basic premise. This is either extreme incompetence (not surprising for government work) or a conspiracy to cover up something (also not surprising).
Well, yes. But I was addressing a different point.
Whatever it happens to be, at the moment, that is today's choice for censorship, the problem is scalability.
Suppose tomorrow all LOLCat videos are to be censored? Do you think GooFaceTwit can just magically locate them all?
Couldn't subversive people who want to exchange evil and unpatriotic LOLCat videos find a way to do so, despite US laws against, and GooFaceTwit policies against such monsterous things?
Then what about the next day when the new bogeyman is dog shaming videos? Or beer recipies which don't even require videos and can be exchanged as text, even using code words and euphemisms to describe what they are doing?
Even if you have a Report button on GooFaceTwit, how could you handle the scale of the problem? Shouldn't GooFaceTwit be protected even when people post illegal LOLCat videos once they become unlawful?
Re: Re: Why would anyone believe anything a politician says?
Uh, No.
Politicians are so widely hated because it is widely recognized that they sell out the public interest to corporate interests in exchange for cash. Bribery to favor a few while hurting the vast majority.
Everyone recognizes this.
There are plenty of people who do not see this as a reflection of themselves. People who would never seek to get into a position where they could do this traitorous thing.
Why can't GooFaceTwit simply find all the ${ terrorist | piracy | communist | Streisand } content and remove it?
How hard can that be?
The real problem is scalability. GooFaceTwit cannot have one human censor for each of its human users. (BTW, then we really would have the situation in Romania where half the population actually was constantly spying on the other half.)
If you scale back to a system where users report abuse, and those reports are investigated, and even if every single one of them is genuine and results in removal, you are still never going to find all of the ${ terrorist | piracy | communist | Streisand } content.
On the post: Beijing Regulators Block Sales Of iPhones, Claiming The Design Is Too Close To Chinese Company's Phone
Live by the Patent, Die by the Patent
Patent trolling works both ways? Who knew!
I hope you enjoy the Asians doing what you taught them how to do.
On the post: Australian Electoral Commission Refuses To Allow Researchers To Check E-Voting Software
Re: Why Electronic Voting is a BAD Idea - Computerphile
It just depends on what your definition of 'work' is.
On the post: Australian Electoral Commission Refuses To Allow Researchers To Check E-Voting Software
Re: I'm still amazed
(yes, Disney World in Orlando has very nice facilities for large business events like a company Christmas party. Such facilities would work equally well to be rented for the kind of event described above.)
On the post: Australian Electoral Commission Refuses To Allow Researchers To Check E-Voting Software
Re:
So why should we be worried about secret democratic election software?
With so much secret surveillance, can you be sure your vote is a secret?
The NSA
Is Your Friend!
Trust The NSA!
On the post: Australian Electoral Commission Refuses To Allow Researchers To Check E-Voting Software
Requirements for an e-Voting system
* Only 'key' parameters (eg, pure data nonexecutable) are secret
* Electronically records your vote, to a local and off site archive
* Each ballot recorded in the electronic archive is digitally signed by the machine with a sequence number, and includes the hash of the previous ballot. (and the previous ballot included the hash of its previous ballot, etc. thus ensuring a verifiable chain of ballots.)
* Prints a paper record into a local archive. (eg, a machine that has a bin gradually accumulating a stack of small ballot cards which would be similar to a paper ballot)
* The voter can see an on-screen image of the 'paper' ballot after they have confirmed and submitted their vote -- that way the voter knows that their vote was correctly 'recorded'.
Both electronic and human recounts are possible because of both the electronic and paper archive of ballots.
The paper and electronic archives can be audited to ensure the two archives exactly match. The local electronic and remote electronic archive can also be audited to ensure they match.
The paper ballots that are archived in a card stack would be designed to be human readable, but also easily machine readable such that the machine can read the same thing that a human reads (eg, not a barcode along with a printed indication of what the vote is which is two separate things.)
Now, even if the e-Voting software were closed source, it would be possible to ensure that its behavior is correct. None of this business where the only record is an electronic record -- and it is a correct and true record of what voters voted! I swear! No, really. I promise! Trust me.
Voting results could be instantly available online so that people in Western longitudes know that it is pointless for them to go out and vote.
On the post: Will We Ever Really Get Flying Cars?
Re: Not if BMW, Audi, MB, Dodge drivers get to. ..
On the post: Will We Ever Really Get Flying Cars?
Re: Dolls and Planes
1. practical every day flying cars
2. practical every day male contraceptives
On the post: Will We Ever Really Get Flying Cars?
Re: Don't we already have flying cars?
How how many thousands of dollars an hour does it cost to operate a helicopter? And how many million is the acquisition cost of a helicopter? How difficult are they to learn to fly safely? What is the maintenance cost? How densely can helicopters be flown in an urban area for people to get to work? How much ground parking space does one require?
On the post: Will We Ever Really Get Flying Cars?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Assuming it could be compressed into high pressure vessels, and be safe for widespread every day use for refueling vehicles with an extremely low statistical amount of leakage resulting in fueling station explosions . . .
What would be the mechanism of flight? Would you be burning the hydrogen as in a rocket or jet engine such that expanding gas from the engine provides thrust for lift? Sort of like the space shuttle main engines, except using oxygen out of the air? The space shuttle main engines use pure oxygen, so they probably burn hotter than the 21 % oxygen in the air; but I'll point out this. The reaction burns at about 6000 °. That the temperature where iron turns to gas. Not liquid -- but the temperature at which iron evaporates. Even if using the air with hydrogen for a jet engine type combustion, we're talking high temperatures. How would you keep the engine from either melting or evaporating. (The shuttle pumps the cryogenic fuels through small plumbing that lines the exhaust nozzles and other engine parts, which cools them, and pre-heats thus further pressurizing the propellants.)
Or would you attempt to somehow rapidly turn hydrogen / oxygen into enough electricity to use electric propellers? That would have to be a pretty massive and likely hot reaction either from some kind of jet or internal combustion engine / generator, or some kind of massive output fuel cell that wouldn't melt.
On the post: Will We Ever Really Get Flying Cars?
More reasons Flying Cars will never happen
Someone will be disadvantaged by any technology innovation and will fight to maintain the status quo.
PTE's
Patent Trolling Entities will come out of the woodwork with some paper patent covering some aspect of flying cars.
Trademarks
There is probably no way to describe the new invention without using some common words which should be trademarks by then.
Copyright
Hey, why not. Copyright is already used to censor speech, or take down embarrassing things (having nothing to do with actual copyright). Copyright is used to stifle innovation -- innovations that would become the next big money maker to legitimate copyright owners if they had any vision. When all else fails, Copyright is the universal tool to reach for to stop something.
On the post: Air Force, Lockheed Martin Combine Forces To 'Lose' 100,000 Inspector General Investigations
Re: Heads need to roll
On the post: Air Force, Lockheed Martin Combine Forces To 'Lose' 100,000 Inspector General Investigations
Re:
One of the biggest problems with backup ages ago was that it was either:
1. expensive and somewhat convenient
2. inexpensive and highly inconvenient
Today it can be inexpensive and fairly convenient.
Today a 2 TB pocket hard drive, which can be disconnected, labelled and then locked in a fire safe, costs less than what once was an expensive, slow, and inconvenient sequential access backup tape that required a very expensive tape drive. And usually required overnight backup. And probably various differential or partial backups in order to not use up too much backup capacity.
Today, you can back up, well, probably everything, to one or two pocket drives in a fairly short time. The more clever can rsync to a backup drive.
For what you once invested in 14 days worth of backup tapes, you can now spend on 14 days worth of pocket hard drives that are easy to use.
With databases, things are more complex. But you could have automated backups to a specified folder. And that folder could get backed up to other storage (like pocket drives) which go in a fire safe. Databases could also be replicated across multiple machines. And with backups.
Databases could be dumped to text SQL scripts that can reconstruct the database, and those are *extremely* compressible.
These schemes are easy to verify. And at least once in a while you should set up a VM with a database server and try doing a restore of the database. Maybe yearly. And you could just keep a snapshot of that VM (before the restore) to practice doing the restore with again next year. In fact, that VM is worth backing up because it is what you use to do your annual testing of your restore procedure. What handier way to know that you can restore, but even if software changes, you've got a VM that less than a year ago was able to restore the backed up media.
These days with clusters, if you can automate builds and deployments of systems, you could automate backups, and restores to separate systems just to prove every night's backup actually can restore and simply get daily reports on the success.
I could go on, but I agree with your basic premise. This is either extreme incompetence (not surprising for government work) or a conspiracy to cover up something (also not surprising).
On the post: Air Force, Lockheed Martin Combine Forces To 'Lose' 100,000 Inspector General Investigations
Headline error?
On the post: Twitter, Facebook & Google Sued For 'Material Support For Terrorism' Over Paris Attacks
Re: Re: Re: Re: The solution SEEMS so simple
On the post: Twitter, Facebook & Google Sued For 'Material Support For Terrorism' Over Paris Attacks
Re: Re: The solution SEEMS so simple
Whatever it happens to be, at the moment, that is today's choice for censorship, the problem is scalability.
Suppose tomorrow all LOLCat videos are to be censored? Do you think GooFaceTwit can just magically locate them all?
Couldn't subversive people who want to exchange evil and unpatriotic LOLCat videos find a way to do so, despite US laws against, and GooFaceTwit policies against such monsterous things?
Then what about the next day when the new bogeyman is dog shaming videos? Or beer recipies which don't even require videos and can be exchanged as text, even using code words and euphemisms to describe what they are doing?
Even if you have a Report button on GooFaceTwit, how could you handle the scale of the problem? Shouldn't GooFaceTwit be protected even when people post illegal LOLCat videos once they become unlawful?
On the post: Google's Arbitrary Morality Police Threaten Us Yet Again; Media Sites Probably Shouldn't Use Google Ads
I'm confused now
Whatever
On the post: The Cable Industry Trots Out Mitch McConnell To Fight Against Cable Box Competition
Re: Re: Why would anyone believe anything a politician says?
Politicians are so widely hated because it is widely recognized that they sell out the public interest to corporate interests in exchange for cash. Bribery to favor a few while hurting the vast majority.
Everyone recognizes this.
There are plenty of people who do not see this as a reflection of themselves. People who would never seek to get into a position where they could do this traitorous thing.
On the post: Twitter, Facebook & Google Sued For 'Material Support For Terrorism' Over Paris Attacks
Re: Re:
On the post: Twitter, Facebook & Google Sued For 'Material Support For Terrorism' Over Paris Attacks
The solution SEEMS so simple
How hard can that be?
The real problem is scalability. GooFaceTwit cannot have one human censor for each of its human users. (BTW, then we really would have the situation in Romania where half the population actually was constantly spying on the other half.)
If you scale back to a system where users report abuse, and those reports are investigated, and even if every single one of them is genuine and results in removal, you are still never going to find all of the ${ terrorist | piracy | communist | Streisand } content.
On the post: The Cable Industry Trots Out Mitch McConnell To Fight Against Cable Box Competition
Re:
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