As much as I appreciate the joke, GP is right - and it has nothing to do with the OS the system is running, even though I'd wager Linux to still be more secure choice in that front. It's about who do you suppose is going to keep the system up-to-date? Following security news about the latest remote exploit in $HTTP_SERVER, or other parts of the system?

Giving a typical home computer user a "plug-and-play" server machine to host his/her own web pages at home and expecting anything like responsible and competent administration is silly. By trying to make it super simple to set up a server, they seem to be catering to the crowd that uses "password" as password, leaves their wifi just because that's the way it came from ISP, etc etc etc.

If they are trying to make their security idiot-proof, I sincerely wish them all the luck. Not holding my breath on that one though...

Right now, all the details are up to evaluation whatever seems most feasible.

Taken from project's website, the most likely way forward now is a USB-bootable live Linux distro on a laptop that has been maximally gutted in its ability to access anything else but a predefined server and the USB stick it boots on. Like, not having hardware drivers for the hdd etc. There also won't be any other programs except those needed to do the test installed, and the exam participant's user account won't have privileges to install anything else either, of course. The systems are most likely going to be booted by the administrators before test begins, (and the laptops, if owned by the students, have to be turned in for checks -- although if it's done in the same spirit as checks for graphing calculators are, the actual checks are randomly done. No school has enough manpower to do a sweep checks for every machine). There most certainly won't be any virtualization software included with the programs the exam taker can run.

The problem would at that point to prevent the student to boot into another OS in the middle of exam, accessing whatever, and then booting back test system again. Maybe they'll include constantly home-calling ping to some central server which will notify the local admins that "exam taker #34234 is up to something no good. Go look over his/her shoulder constantly for a while". Also, rebooting the whole computer would most likely be visible enough for the exam administrators (who are, or should be, on constant outlook for cheaters in any case).

That being said... a entrepreneuring (and skilled) exam taker could, with some hardware hacking, overcome many of these blocks in order to bring unauthorized materials into the exam and maybe even succeed in going unnoticed. That's why I'd really think the school districts (or the state) should just scrap the BYOD idea and shell the cash for bunch of cheap (around €200 or so) laptops. Since they would be usable for many years only for this purpose with tailor-made OS, it won't have to be *that* powerful anyway.

What does Netcraft have to say about it?

Journal subscription fees (and scientific publishing business models) have nearly nothing to do with pharmaceutical research and safety/effectiveness testing costs. Troll harder, please.

When you need the stuff bad enough, pretty much anything goes. http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/02/diy-weapons-of-the-syrian-rebels/100461/

Even if the submitter kinda implies he or she wants to learn by doing (or, "the hard way"), I can't get a feeling out of my chest that all this learning by doing would be much more effective with at least some reading homework before and/or during the doing. For that, I recommend at least skimming through this: http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO/index.html

Yeah, there's some stuff the submitter probably already knows or isn't all that interested about for now... and that's why it's a good idea to skim through first.

Actually, nevermind the "shortage of IT workers/cheap labor" issue, I think it would be very beneficial for humanity and geeks in general if most people had a passing knowledge how the magic boxes are instructed to do fancy stuff. Maybe such knowledge would help citizenry at large understand things like why DRM is fundamentally broken concept, that an ability to give general purpose computer your own instructions should count as one of the most important features and an important form of expression and self-determination, which would help us make sure stuff like "Trusted Computing" never sees any significant success in its owner/user-hostile form.

My personal pet peeves about Unity:

1) Half-assed implementation of application switching - especially / mostly when dealing with multiple windows from same application (TERMINALS!!)

2) System-wide menubar (and I'm a long-time Mac user, for chrissakes!)

Now, let me elaborate on both of these. I admit I haven't yet mucked around with settings, and I'm actually using unity on a University lab computers where BOFHs are mostly responsible for the state of things, so reality might not be the same for you:

1 - application switching: Previously, every window of an application was a "program" in it's own right for alt-tab switching. I could switch to whatever window I exactly wanted to, quickly. That quickly is a keyword here. Because now, if I want to get that-one-terminal-I-directly-want, I have to raise the application switcher on screen, alt-tab on it, WAIT FOR A SECOND, and only THEN I get to actually choose the exact terminal I want up.

On Mac (up to 10.6 at least), cmd-tab raises all of the windows of a single app up. Even THAT would be preferable to Unity, because then I at least I get the terminal I want quickly and smoothly. That wait, as short as it is, is infuriatingly jarring and I can't fathom how anyone claiming to be UX engineer would come up with it. App switching happens all the fucking time and introducing a jarring delay onto it is unbelievably stupid. They also decided to get rid of the win95-style application switcher, so I can't even choose my exact program instance from there. Gee, thanks a lot.

Then there's the fact that this stuff doesn't play nice with multiple workspaces/virtual desktops. Try launching an instance of a program on another workspace when you already have one open on somewhere else, you'll see what I mean.

2 - System-wide menubar: Well, I kind of get what it wants to do. But let me say it, it's a stupid idea. It was and is a stupid idea on Mac, and it is stupid idea here. It really only works on a premise you always use every program in maximised window. On Unity, it's made even more stupid by the fact that it's hidden by default and you only get to see the menu by moving your mouse there. So if I want to select something from the menu, I need to move my mouse over there even before I can move my mouse over the exact menu I want to use! I know, this is a small issue, but still. When you're mucking around with user interfaces, these small things MATTER.

Well, it has worked for Apple well enough...

Signing is easy, it can be done over internet as in Finland, people have been conditioned to use their e-banking for identification.

These days, president of Finland has been mostly stripped of his power other than to talk in grave voice about problems and visit other heads of state occasionally.

Apples and oranges, as parliament elections are divided by voting districts and this citizen's initiative thing is national.

I do know this is pedantry, but wasn't Webkit originally KHTML fork?

(not that this makes GP's point any clearer...

Well... if I own the company, I should be able to do quite whatever I want with it, no? Because the Board is elected in our out by the shareholders, right?

Maybe you meant if I'm a CEO of a company?

ahh.. pedantry. Part and parcel of being a slashdotter. ;)

Paper ballots are a system that can be verified as "working as it should" by any adult layman.

Go ahead and try to offer a firmware+machine code+source code bundle and motherboard schematics of a electronic voting machine to a layman for verification.

And better yet, try to find a viable way for the layman (who just happens to be a tech professional and able to understand the above) to verify that the box of electronics in the voting booth is actually the same as the infodump he just read. Preferably without breaking it apart, also it should be done to a significant fraction of units in use, if not all of them.

I believe that within Apple, it's called "Real artists ship"?