Weird O'Puns - Slashdot User

Comment Re:What's the margin of victory? (Score 1) 159

by Weird O'Puns on Sunday February 01, 2009 @08:28AM (#26683543) Attached to: Finnish Court Accepts E-Voting Result With 2% Lost

The article you linked has couple more points that are in my opinion more important than the problems with the interface:

Additionally, there is risk of a breach of the anonymity of the votes, because the electronic ballot box has been archived with information on who voted and how. The e-voting project had been strongly criticised by Effi from its inception for the lack of transparency both in the process and software.

First, the system is not anonymous. Right people can see from the archives who voted for who. In fact, right after the election they were telling those who asked if their vote had been cast or not.

Secondly, the system is completely closed. There was an audit, but the auditors were forced to sign a NDA. There is also no paper trace. The voter has no guaranties that his/hers vote has been cast to the right candidate.

Comment Re:Let me get this straight... (Score 1) 159

by Weird O'Puns on Sunday February 01, 2009 @08:15AM (#26683501) Attached to: Finnish Court Accepts E-Voting Result With 2% Lost

The EFF says the system is flawed because it requires people to verify their vote once they selected it?

No, they criticize that it was possible to stop the voting process unintentionally. This could have been solved using card readers that took whole card inside the reader, so it wouldn't have been possible pull it out without voting. Other solution would have been to display clear message that the voting process was interrupted and no vote was cast.

You also don't yank out your card until you're told to.

ATM won't give you any money if you yank out the card too early. That means that there is a clear feedback when the transaction has happened correctly. With voting machines there was no such feedback.

A 2% spoilage rate although higher than the typical rate, isn't incredibly high.

Why spend money to switch to a system that is worse?

Comment Re:Usability Glitch? (Score 1) 366

by Weird O'Puns on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @11:46AM (#25556123) Attached to: Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes

One of the biggest issues on the Finnish system is that you can connect the vote to a voter. Basically, a vote is stored in to the main database with voter identification. The database is encrypted, but anybody with right password and key can check who voted for who. The database, keys and passwords will be stored for years.

Compared to this the user interface glitch is just a minor issue.

More detailed criticism can be found from Effi's e-voting report.

Submission + - ACLU: Ohio voting switch may be illegal

Submitted by phorest on Friday December 28, 2007 @10:54AM

phorest writes: Oh the irony! Lawmakers decide to go one way, then the new ones take over and the fun begins! With so many decidedly against electronics in our elections, who would've thought the ACLU is looking to potentially sue the state of Ohio for switching away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals.

CLEVELAND — The American Civil Liberties Union urged the elections board in the state's most populous county on Thursday not to make a switch to a new voting system for the state's March presidential primary, warning that the move could violate state law.

It appears to me that we'll never again get in our beds after the sweet feeling of democratic voting as when we awake from our slumber, the elections will be tainted from any lame excuse available. Go ACLU!

Submission + - iD and Valve violating GPL

Submitted by frooge on Saturday August 04, 2007 @09:54PM

frooge writes: With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release.

Submission + - Linus says new GPLv3 draft not a total disaster

Submitted by lisah on Monday June 11, 2007 @11:13AM

lisah writes: Though Linus Torvalds isn't exactly tripping over himself to endorse the GPLv3 draft, he continues to warm up to it little by little and says the newest version is 'a hell of a lot better than the disaster that were the earlier drafts.'

Submission + - Sony sued for Blu-Ray Patent Violation

Submitted by Jaidan on Friday May 25, 2007 @07:44AM

Jaidan writes: According to a gamespot article, a California-based company named Target Technology is suing Sony over patents it allegedly holds for silver based reflective surfaces. The suit claims that products marketed under the Blu-ray name infringe on a patent it owns for reflective layer materials in optical discs. Target is seeking a permanent injunction preventing Sony from violating its patent rights in the future, as well as damages with interest, multiplied due to what it characterizes as deliberate and willful infringement.

Submission + - CERN Collider ready; get ready for data deluge

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:27AM

slashthedot writes: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists.
At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever.
The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.
By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.
More at: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1572567.html"

Submission + - Microsoft, Sue Me First

Submitted by corigo on Sunday May 20, 2007 @10:22PM

corigo writes: Supporters of Free Open Source, Oasis Open Document, and other Free and Open Source solutions have asked Microsoft to throw down the guantlet. Sue Me First says Christian Einfeldt of Digital Tipping Point and he's not alone. More and more people are signing up and challenging Microsoft to put there lawyers where there mouth is. It sounds to me like the open source community is far from running scared. Will Microsoft have the cajones to step up to the plate, or is Microsoft just continuing to use a scare campaign with no real faith in their ability to leverage the patent control they claim the open source is infringing on?

Submission + - Jobs to Labels: Lose the DRM & We'll Talk Pric

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday May 07, 2007 @08:06AM

eldavojohn writes: "Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been talking smack about DRM and has recently issued a verbal offer to major music lables stating that if they are willing to loose the DRM, he'd be willing to raise his 99 cent price for those iTunes songs. These tracks (such as the recent EMI deal) would also have better sound quality & cost about 30 cents more."

Submission + - New AACS crack. This one is undefeatable.

Submitted by Tuoqui on Wednesday May 02, 2007 @09:09PM

Tuoqui writes: With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number people may be ignoring the biggest weakness in the AACS armor. Apparently some hackers have figured out how tocrack AACS in an undefeatable way that revoking all the keys would not protect against.

Submission + - New Algorithms Improve Image Search

Submitted by

bc90021

on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @09:47AM

bc90021 writes: "Electrical engineers from UC San Diego are making progress on a different kind of image search engine — one that analyzes the images themselves. At the core of this Supervised Multiclass Labeling (SML) system is a set of simple yet powerful algorithms developed at UCSD. Once you train the system, you can set it loose on a database of unlabeled images. The system calculates the probability that various objects or "classes" it has been trained to recognize are present — and labels the images accordingly. After labeling, images can be retrieved via keyword searches. Accuracy of the UCSD system has outpaced that of other content-based image labeling and retrieval systems in the literature."

Submission + - Viacom Says "YouTube Depends on Us"

Submitted by

Anonycat

on Saturday March 24, 2007 @09:39PM

Anonycat writes: "Michael Fricklas, a lawyer for Viacom, has an opinion piece in the Washington Post that asserts that YouTube is responsible for damages in the $1B lawsuit initiated by Viacom. Fricklas attacks on several fronts, including that the DMCA's "safe harbor" provisions don't apply because YouTube is knowledgeable to infringement and furthermore derives financial benefit from it, that putting the burden of spotting infringement on the content providers is an undue burden to them, and notably that "Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws" in defending the relevance of the IP sector. Whether you agree with the case being made or not, it's a nice look into the minds on the pro-Viacom side."

Submission + - Open Office - what's the downside?

Submitted by

cclangi

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @02:46AM

cclangi writes: "Hi. I'm a current MSOffice user. I run a small business as a consultant (mining). I've read about Open Office and all the good things about it, but what about the downside? As a small business owner and semi-literate in things computer-ese (as a user, not as a developer or administrator), what support limitations are there for Open Office. I'm particularly interested in/concerned with compatability of software for reports, spreadsheets and database apps that I might need to send to/receive from clients, etc. As I've said, I've read the good stuff, and "how easy it is", but what are things I need to be aware of before considering switching completely to Open Office. Comments and experiences would be welcomed. Regards, Chris"

Submission + - Hewlett Packard's Dunn Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud

Submitted by GogglesPisano on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @02:45PM

GogglesPisano writes: CNN reports that former HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn will plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent wire communications stemming from her involvement in last year's corporate eavesdropping scandal. The original charges, four felony counts, were reduced to misdemeanors in exchange for a plea bargain. Her three co-defendents are expected to receive 96 hours of community service; in Dunn's case this sentence is likely to be waived due to illness.
So, apparently Dunn will face no punishment for her disgraceful role in orchestrating this debacle. Another case of separate legal standards for the rich and powerful?

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