Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stryke 9 on November 19, 2003, 01:45:08 pm
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Just so's you know what you're getting into, come next election... (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/34051.html)
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If I was to ever become Prime Minister I 'd take the initiative and put a bullet in my head on live TV as my manifesto. Hopefully this would set a precedent that all future leaders would aspire too thus culling the "unfit to run a country" majority of all political parties and allowing YOU the public a decent chance at a decent government.
Vote Me.
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Ah, but you see, by voting you, we'd really be not voting you, in fact subtracting from your total votes, and thus ensuring victory to your opponent. So we'd have to vote against you. However, this can't be trusted to happen every time, and indeed at least on some occasions the machines have proven themselves at least partially accurate, meaning that to really be sure that we'd voted for you we'd have to take advantage of the multiple-vote security hole and vote once for you and once against, which in the end would leave us just where we'd be if we hadn't voted at all- meaning that only voting by not-voting has any real promise of showing a proper outcome.
Wow, voting has become so Zen.
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Wait, when did we start talking about the Matrix?
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Um, I was talking about the new, thoroughly ass-backwards-bordering-on-blatant-automated-fraud voting systems they've got in place here, you picked up on the keyword "election" and went on a random babble against politics in general.
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I didn't pick any keyword, I just happened to write incoherently and it vaguely applied to the topic as opposed to nothing at all like it normally does.
The Matrix thingy was a mild tweak on the aforementioned trilogies "pseudo phillosophical zen bull****" foibles.
My apologies for any confusion caused by this episode.
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Aaaand... there you have it, folks! The reason there are so damn few threads of any political or otherwise significant relevance here!
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The fact that I'm a moron?
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That does factor in, yes. :D
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Ah, I see. My lack of applied intelligence does seem to warrant an inquest. I'll return.
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I wet myself...
Errr, what was this topic about? Being from Florida, I know how embarrassing it is for elections to go wrong. Granted, the new system of electronic voting machines has a lot of problems, but it's because it's new. They'll iron out the bugs soon enough
Now, is the american public and important electoins supposed to forced to be the guinea pigs and the testing of these bugs? No, they shouldn't have implemented these things without it being completely bug-free. They should have continued with the regular, traditional punch card system until a better solution was found, not a rush to get these things out in the public when they obviously have flaws. The future of local and fed government is being mangled as the vote of the people are completely counting...
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Aaaand... there you have it, folks! The reason there are so damn few threads of any political or otherwise significant relevance here!
what, cos' they always break down into personal feuds maybe ?
:nervous:
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Um, I was talking about the new, thoroughly ass-backwards-bordering-on-blatant-automated-fraud voting systems they've got in place here, you picked up on the keyword "election" and went on a random babble against politics in general.
dam straight. Electronic votin machines loose more votes than any other method of voting today, punch card ballots) about %5.2 (thats hellva lot of total votes in a Nat. Election)
plus they are hackable. Just reverse-engineere the .exe and change its code to mess the votes around
BTW: the most accurate way to vote is hand marked ballots
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* points and laughs *
That's simply utter incompetence at work. The latest few elections here used only electronic voting machines, with proprietary hardware and software, and we had no problems at all. In fact, on the last (presidential) election we had a bunch of observers from the United States interested in learning how a proper electronic voting system works...
Election results here are available less than a day after the elections, with fewer problems than the previous ballot system.
Amateurs. :p
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Styxx, I don't think its matter of incompetence, but rather corruption. The system can work, I mean its machines right. Its just counting up ballots, its not quantum physics. But the problem is that certain parties are doing their best to rig the election, and this just enabes them to do so more easily. I mean, Bush stole the election in 2000 (a fact thats not even disputable with all the investigations into the matter), and with this system he could just steal it more easily AND cover his tracks better.
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Originally posted by Rictor
Styxx, *snip*
i dont know how bush coulda stole the electon by rigging the electronic voting machines when they were the least used method of tabulating votes in Florida 2000......
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Styxx: It's really, really damn hard to screw up a freakin' counter. It's quite possibly the simplest computer function in existence- it'd be hard to believe that they managed to screw it up this bad through sheer incompetence.
Especially since, if you look at things like their refusal to leave a paper record, regular unlicensed "updates" to the system that don't seem to improve matters any, and general secretiveness about the whole thing, it starts to look really fishy.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Especially since, if you look at things like their refusal to leave a paper record, regular unlicensed "updates"
expecially the no paper trail; if the prog handles all the backups and printouts there would be no way to positivly verify that the data hasnt been tampered with.
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.......
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Styxx: It's really, really damn hard to screw up a freakin' counter. It's quite possibly the simplest computer function in existence- it'd be hard to believe that they managed to screw it up this bad through sheer incompetence.
Any halfway decent programmer should be able to write a program to do this in under an hour. I really can't see we they had a problem. As you say it is very simple.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Styxx: It's really, really damn hard to screw up a freakin' counter. It's quite possibly the simplest computer function in existence- it'd be hard to believe that they managed to screw it up this bad through sheer incompetence.
Especially since, if you look at things like their refusal to leave a paper record, regular unlicensed "updates" to the system that don't seem to improve matters any, and general secretiveness about the whole thing, it starts to look really fishy.
Then, of course, the problem is many orders of magnitude worse... The idea of making it open source is good, though.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Any halfway decent programmer should be able to write a program to do this in under an hour. I really can't see we they had a problem. As you say it is very simple.
lessee
this is QB, btw:
start:
CLS
input "official code supplied at entering voting place" ; code$
if code$ <> {insert special maths/time gizmo here} then goto cheat
print "press:"
print "1) for Democrat"
print "2) for republican"
print "3) for Green"
print "4) for some other idiot"
input ; vote%
if vote% is 1 then Dem% is Dem% + 1
if vote% is 2 then Rep% is Rep% + 1
if vote% is 3 then Gre% is Gre% + 1
if vote% is 4 then Idi% = Idi% + 1
goto start
cheat:
BEEP
print "you entered the wrong code, try again"
cheater% = cheater% + 1
if cheater% = 3 then goto killer
goto start
killer:
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
print "you have mistyped 3 times, please calll for assistance from the staff"
do while x = x
input ; unlock%
if unlock% = 12312421 then goto start
next x
now, at the end of the day, the results could be counted out rather easily, but i'm too lasy to type file handling stuff.
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Kas: Oh, crap! You've put them out of business!:p
Now, the problems with security I can kinda understand- using unprotected Access files is pretty unforgivable, but at least it's a mistake that could reasonably be a legitimate mistake. A worrisome one, of course, but not so bad as getting the counts wrong in the first place. But the core problems with counting and the refusal to fix them? The willingness to defraud rather than put on a very simple fix? Ugh.
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last I checked Canada still uses the good old "mark an X next to the name you hate the least" system....
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Originally posted by Thorn
last I checked Canada still uses the good old "mark an X next to the name you hate the least" system....
:lol: