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Comment Voter-verified paper ballots trump "open source" (Score 3, Insightful) 127

by jbn-o (#48471393) Attached to: Voting Machines Malfunction: 5,000 Votes Not Counted In Kansas County

I concur. A development methodology ("open source") will not address any of the deficiencies (when viewed from the voter's perspective, the perspective that should matter most) of voting. No matter how much one trusts a voting program, there's no way to be sure that the computer used for voting is running only software one trusts. No electronic system can compete with the simplicity and recount-friendly approach of what is called for here: voter-verified paper ballots.

So address to the question in the /. summary: You never should have stopped using voter-verified paper ballots.

There are computers one can purchase that do as the parent post specified—the voter feeds in a blank ballot (one which they could have filled out manually if desired) and the computer (which has a scanner and printer attached) will scan the ballot, help the voter by showing the choices on a screen, reading the ballot aloud, or reading the ballot text to headphones, and then collect votes from the voter. Then the computer's printer will print the voter's votes on the paper ballot, and eject the printed paper ballot to let the user inspect that printed ballot. At this point the voter can choose to carry the voter-verified paper ballot to be counted or spoil that ballot and start again. The voter can also feed in a marked up ballot (marked by hand or by computer) and let the computer summarize the votes which that ballot specifies. These features let the blind and/or illiterate vote without losing their privacy by forcing them to find & bring in someone else to mark up their ballot for them. This is as close to computers used in voting as one should want to get.

Comment Home grown is the best (Score 3, Interesting) 189

by spaceyhackerlady (#48470675) Attached to: I prefer my turkey ...

My sister used to raise her own turkeys. Up close they looked like something from a paleontology textbook, but they were still good-natured, very curious creatures. They would always come up to you and inspect you, talking all the time. Maybe they were just demanding food. Dunno.

They ate good stuff, they had a big enough pen that they could run around to their heart's content, they were basically happy turkeys. And it showed: they had a wonderful flavour and a nice texture.

...laura
Build

Video Fly With the Brooklyn Aerodrome (Video) 22

Posted by Roblimo from the it's-not-a-drone-it's-just-a-model-plane dept.
A bit of housing insulation material, a battery, a motor and propellor, a radio receiver and transmitter, and servos to control the motor and a pair of ailerons, and you're ready to fly the Brooklyn Aerodrome way. This isn't a tiny radio-controlled paper airplane, but a big bruiser with a 1:1 power to weight ratio (which means it can climb like a bat out of hell) and enough guts to fly in reasonably windy conditions while carrying a camera -- except we'd better not mention cameras, since Brooklyn Aerodrome creations, whether kits or plans, are obviously intended tohelp you build model airplanes, not drones. Timothy ran into project proponent Breck Baldwin at a maker faire near Atlanta, surrounded by a squadron of junior pilots who may someday become astronauts on the Moon - Mars run -- or at least delivery drone controllers for Amazon. (Alternate Video Link)
Power

WaveNET – the Floating, Flexible Wave Energy Generator 90

Posted by Soulskill from the making-bernoulli-work-for-us dept.
Zothecula writes: Scotland's Albatern is putting a new, modular spin on renewable energy generation. WaveNET is a scalable array of floating "Squid" generator units that harvest wave energy as their buoyant arms rise and fall with the motion of the waves. Each Squid can link up to as many as three others, effectively creating a large, floating grid that's flexible in every direction. The bigger this grid gets, the more efficient it becomes at harvesting energy, and the more different wave movements it can extract energy from. Albatern's 10-year target is to have 1.25 kilometer-long floating energy farms pumping out as much as 100 megawatts by 2024.
Transportation

Auto Industry Teams Up With Military To Stop Car Hacking 114

Posted by Soulskill from the feel-free-to-stay-on-top-of-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A team of hackers is collaborating with military and industry groups to develop cyber security defenses for commercially available cars, in response to a growing threat from criminals and terrorists. In the U.K., hackers are now responsible for a third of car thefts in London and there are fears that while technology is progressing, older models will remain vulnerable to attack. Although there have been no reported instances of a car being completely commandeered outside of controlled conditions, during tests hackers come out on top every time – unlocking car boots, setting off windscreen wipers, locking brakes, and cutting the engine.
The Courts

Hacker Threatened With 44 Felony Charges Escapes With Misdemeanor 219

Posted by Soulskill from the my-days-of-not-taking-you-seriously-are-certainly-coming-to-a-middle dept.
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret that prosecutors usually throw every charge they can at an alleged criminal, but the case of Aaron Swartz brought to light how poorly-written computer abuse laws lend themselves to this practice. Now, another perfect example has resolved itself: a hacker with ties to Anonymous was recently threatened with 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyberstalking, each with its own 10-year maximum sentence. If the charges stuck, the man was facing multiple lifetimes worth of imprisonment.

But, of course, they didn't. Prosecutors struck a deal to get him to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, which carried only a $10,000 fine. The man's attorney, Tor Eklund, said, "The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice's prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."

Comment Re:Flip Argument (Score 1) 1128

by roman_mir (#48467383) Attached to: Officer Not Charged In Michael Brown Shooting

Machismo has nothing to do with it, a person has the right to protect himself with deadly force when attacked and should not hesitate once it's a full frontal attack, do not leave the attacker capable of returning, coming from behind, coming after you later, take care of it once and for all right there and then and be done with it. Yes, taking another man's life is better than losing your own.
Ruby

Is Ruby On Rails Losing Steam? 291

Posted by Soulskill from the only-among-left-handed-geriatric-haberdashers dept.
itwbennett writes: In a post last week, Quartz ranked the most valuable programming skills, based on job listing data from Burning Glass and the Brookings Institution. Ruby on Rails came out on top, with an average salary of $109,460. And that may have been true in the first quarter of 2013 when the data was collected, but "before you run out and buy Ruby on Rails for Dummies, you might want to consider some other data which indicate that Rails (and Ruby) usage is not trending upwards," writes Phil Johnson. He looked at recent trends in the usage of Ruby (as a proxy for Rails usage) across MS Gooroo, the TIOBE index, the PYPL index, Redmonk's language rankings, and GitHut and found that "demand by U.S. employers for engineers with Rails skills has been on the decline, at least for the last year."

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