[Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (11/11/2000)
David Jacoby
jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu
Sat, 11 Nov 2000 11:00:02 -0500 (EST)
Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ )
News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Registrations Now Accepted For Asian Domain Names
A articles article from the "aju-massi-sumnidad" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/1357253
Eric Sun was among the first to point out that as
of Thursday evening, VeriSign has begun accepting
Chinese, Japanese and Korean domain names. "This
increases the possible characters from 37 (26
letters, 10 numerals, and hyphen) to 40,282. Find
more information [see this AP story]." snrsamy
points to the same story as featured on C|Net .
jamie suggests reading the technical lowdown at
VeriSign.
--------------------
Embracing Insanity
A books article from the "history-of-OS-development" department
sent by JonKatz
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/25/2233200
--------------------
New Optical Disk That Holds 140GB
A articles article from the "looks-like-vapor-smells-like-vapor" department
sent by CmdrTaco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/150251
NoCashValue writes "There is an article on Wired
News about a new optical disk that can hold up to
140GB of data on a disk the size of a CD ROM."
Still pretty vaporouus, but they claim a demo is
forthcoming at Comdex.
--------------------
eLection '04
A articles article from the "not-too-close-to-call" department
sent by jamie
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/0011233
Until this week, I've been unconvinced by those
who say the U.S. election process needs to be
conducted with computers instead of paper, pencil,
and punchcards. I've changed my mind. It's time to
take a good hard look at our ancient voting
system, and bring it up to date. When today's
14-year-olds go to vote in the 2004 elections,
will they still take the pencil from the
volunteer, slide the punchcard into the molded
plastic, and turn the weird knobs? Or will they
use the technology they've grown up with? My
change of heart came while listening to an NPR
story last night. Election results for one county
in Michigan were held up for two hours because
some volunteers with ballots were barricaded in
the building by a bear. A bear! What century is
this? There are some fair concerns about moving to
a more-than-just-dead-trees voting system. We have
to consider what the impact will be on voter
enfranchisement. A change that makes it possible
for the rich to vote by telepathy, for example,
while the poor have to drive a hundred miles
uphill both ways (to access a non-telepathic
voting booth) would not be exactly democratic.
Would it have been fair, in 2000, for the middle
class to be able to vote from the comfort of their
homes and jobs, while the poor and homeless had to
get to a voting booth? I don't know. But my best
guess is that, by 2004, this won't be a question
anymore. Plot the percentage of lower-income homes
with internet access from 1996 to 2000, and then
extrapolate another four years. So if it should be
done, how can it be done? There are five key
issues to solve: authorization, anonymity, data
confidence, UI, and security. I propose a system
in which each voting booth runs a webserver which
logs votes (without identification) to two
internal media (hard disk and floppy would be
good, see below). Once the polls close, each
booth's computer can be totalled and sent over the
internet to the state's central server. Meanwhile,
any computer that speaks https on the internet
would become a voting booth of its own, running
slightly different software. Each state's official
results could be in an hour after its polls close.
Which beats the ten-day waiting period we have now
for our overseas ballots. Authorization isn't
really that hard: When you register to vote, you
(by default) get a password delivered by
snail-mail a week before the election. Tampering
with that mail is a federal offense, of course. On
election day you use secure http to sign in from
anywhere with your name, address and password.
Lose the password? Sorry, you don't get the
comfort of home/work; you go to the voting booth
with everyone else. Anonymity is trivial; any logs
with identifying information either don't get
stored, or get wiped immediately. Computers crash.
Data confidence means the servers write the votes
to multiple media: network, hard drive, flash RAM.
A dot-matrix printer makes a good emergency backup
medium. This system also needs a dirt-simple GUI
for voters connecting from home or work. No
butterfly webpages necessary; click a name, and
get a confirmation screen that shows you name,
party, (importantly) photo, and big "yes" and "no"
buttons. At the voting booth it can be even
simpler, using touch-screens. Security is, of
course, always a problem. Secure http effectively
eliminates the man-in-the-middle attack, so the
main worry are that an attacker will be able to
run unauthorized code on a government computer
which could (read) correlate my name with my vote
or (write) change my vote. I'm going to go out on
a limb and say that a completely open-sourced
system, from the kernel up, combined with
clean-room installations at a secure location, can
make these concerns minor by comparison to
existing vote-fraud concerns. (My vote would go to
OpenBSD, Apache, and Mozilla, though of course
good luck predicting what will be best four years
from now.) Also, net admins overseeing the effort
need to have enough access to track and lock out
attackers, but obviously they can't have access to
change the election results. Lock them in a room
for the day with a hundred video cameras tracking
everything they do, like the officers on
missile-launch duty. Many net admins will find
this a relaxed and enjoyable work environment
compared to their current jobs. There are many
problems that have to be solved -- please bring up
the ones I haven't mentioned here, let's start the
debate! My hunch is that they can be solved. And
the overriding question must be, will it be an
improvement over the current system? Given that
Florida's election is being decided by a 400-vote
difference, with 19,000 botched votes thrown out,
I'd say the impossibility of clicking on two
presidential choices at the same time makes this
system a huge win. The broken user interface on
our existing punch-cards system is probably going
to give us the wrong President of the United
States. How much worse could a digital system
really be? I don't claim to have all the answers,
but I know what century it is, and the time for
Little House on the Prairie nonsense is over.
Let's make this happen for 2004. I'll give my last
word to Andre Uratsuka Manoel, a partner at the
internet firm Insite, in Brazil. (Props to TBTF
for putting Andre and me in touch.) Brazil has a
100% electronic election. On election day I go my
"electoral section," identify myself, sign my
name. The "section president" then types in my
code and I walk to the booth which is in a corner
of the room where no one can see my vote. I then
type the number of my candidate, see his/her photo
and press "confirm." The voting machines store the
votes in at least three different places: a floppy
disk (which is locked), a flash card and the
internal hard disk. There are written procedures
for any kind of failure I could think of and
back-up machines readily available. Those machines
can connect to a phone line and send their results
to the Election Court of the state. The results
are proclamed extremely fast. On the mayoral
run-off elections that happened 2 weeks ago,
results were out 2 hours after the election in the
city I live in (Sao Paulo, with about 6 million
voters) and 6 hours after it in the last city in
which there was a run-off. In my home city the
results came out a little after the election sites
closed and the result was proclamed with the
winner having 40 thousand votes more than the
second place (0.4% of 1 million votes). In the
first round of elections in Sao Paulo, the third
place contestant lost the ticket for the run-off
elections by less than 0.1%. The one who lost
didn't even think of contesting the results
because no one thought there were any kind of
frauds. In the first round, 100 million voters
(about the same as the active voters in US) in 5
thousand cities chose their mayors and councelors.
All the results were proclaimed 30 hours after the
voting closed. This happens in a country that has
a much lower level of literacy, technology-savvy
and of money as the U.S. Remember that some mayors
were chosen in places hours away from anyplace
else (even by plane), i.e. in the middle of the
rain forest. Those places don't have electricity.
Of course there were complaints, but not because
of the electoral process. Mostly they were due to
campaigning on the election day, voter
transportation and coercion. (Updates: Dave Riesz
mentioned Riverside County, California, which has
an electronic voting system already in place.
Their 2000 primary turnout was the highest in 20
years, which may or may not mean anything. That
led me to the California Internet Voting Task
Force which looks interesting. Don Wegeng pointed
me to RISKS thoughts by Douglas Jones. Brian
Dunbar points out "Hurrah for Slow Recounts" by
the always-interesting Ellen Ullman. Lee Coursey
passes along Elizabeth Ferrill's Discussion of
Electronic Voting. James McCann, a programmer at
VoteHere.net, says my description is "not terribly
far off but very incomplete" -- I'll take that as
a compliment -- check out his site and
SecurePoll.com too. And finally, a story in Salon
that makes my point better than I could:
"Confessions of a Florida Poll Worker." If you
have more links or information, email me.)
--------------------
The Net As New Jerusalem, Part Two
A features article from the "last-days-of-politics-(cont.)" department
sent by JonKatz
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/31/2251226
--------------------
Buy Your CDs From Your PCS Phone
A articles article from the "interesting-commericial-application" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/1457203
guido_sst writes: "SprintPCS has inked a new deal
with *CD to allow its users to buy CDs with their
PCS phones. Basically, you hear a song on the
radio, dial *CD (*23) on your PCS phone, type in
the station's call letter and your credit card
number, and viola, you just bought that band's CD.
The service is also available for wireless members
of the 3Com Palm family. Read more at starcd.com."
--------------------
AOL/Transmeta/Gateway Internet Appliance Launch
A articles article from the "coming-at-you" department
sent by Hemos
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/1539238
A reader writes "America Online and Gateway are
launching their Linux/Transmeta internet appliance
today. The webcast can be seen here." The webcast
is in Real Audio - you can also find our original
coverage of this, back in late May 2000.
--------------------
Say Goodbye To The Netpliance i-opener
A articles article from the "b'bai!" department
sent by timothy
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/188210
HiyaPower writes "Netpliance announced that they
have thrown in the towel and will no longer
produce their internet appliance. This follows the
failure of web appliances by Virgin, and a number
of others. It looks like even grandma wants a good
isp when she logs on the net and that bundling
cute hardware with inferior service just doesn't
cut the mustard. This will be a sad note to all of
those who have yet to buy the unit that cost $400
to produce for a fraction of that amount. Get'm
while you can, cuz they don't make'm no more..."
CEO John McHale says in that announcement: "We
plan to reposition Netpliance from a direct
consumer Internet appliance service provider to an
enabling infrastructure and managed services
company." Perhaps there will be some closeouts?
jensend sent in this C|Net coverage as well.
--------------------
Florida Court Overturns AT&T Cable Ordinance
A articles article from the "we-love-florida-in-so-many-ways" department
sent by michael
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/0347224
jothenull writes: "A Florida judge ruled that a
"Broward County ordinance requiring cable giant
AT&T to allow rival Internet access to their
systems violated the First Amendment."" Available
wherever AP articles are found. Since cable
systems get a monopoly from local municipalities,
it only seems fair that they be required to
fulfill certain requirements - carrying a
diversity of programming, permitting access to a
variety of ISPs - but the cable services are
fighting their part of the bargain tooth and nail.
--------------------
Fast-moving Neutron Star from Hubble
A science article from the "tides" department
sent by michael
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/058258
CEHT writes: "Recently, the Hubble discovered a
fast moving neutron star which is 10 trillion
times denser than steel, 100 times faster than a
supersonic jet. Here is the article from CNN.com."
If we had a General Products hull, we could send a
probe to investigate.
--------------------
Future of Journalism
A articles article from the "nostradamus" department
sent by michael
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/0417237
rhysweatherley writes: "This year's Andrew Olle
Lecture was presented by Eric Beecher of Text
Media, and deals with the current and future state
of "real" journalism, including the impact of the
online world on traditional journalism (not all of
it good). It is a good insight from one of the
media's insiders in Australia. More information on
the Andrew Olle Lecture series can be found here."
I thought this was interesting. A little different
than the usual Slashdot fare, but good reading
nonetheless.
--------------------
Microsoft is Indoctrinating Children, Shouldn't We?
A askslashdot article from the "getting-the-tools-in-the-hands-of-the-next-generation" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/1955217
wildgift writes: "This is probably not news to
some young people, but some of the older people
here should be aware that Microsoft runs a wide
ranging IT/Programming curriculum project, called
Mainfunction, that teaches young people to program
using Microsoft tools. The obvious issue is: is
anyone leveraging the education-friendly Unix
environment to create a similar program? This is a
huge opportunity. So far, I've only found this
Python article." If Microsoft is getting their
tools in the hands of the programmers of the
future, what can we do to achieve the same?
Wouldn't it be much better if kids could take a
look at development on several different platforms
so that they can better use the technology when
they are professionals rather than settling on
"what they know"?
--------------------
Fast-Moving Neutron Star From Hubble
A science article from the "tides" department
sent by michael
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/058258
CEHT writes: "Recently, the Hubble discovered a
fast moving neutron star which is 10 trillion
times denser than steel, 100 times faster than a
supersonic jet. Here is the article from CNN.com."
If we had a General Products hull, we could send a
probe to investigate.
--------------------
Future Of Journalism
A articles article from the "nostradamus" department
sent by michael
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/11/0417237
rhysweatherley writes: "This year's Andrew Olle
Lecture was presented by Eric Beecher of Text
Media, and deals with the current and future state
of "real" journalism, including the impact of the
online world on traditional journalism (not all of
it good). It is a good insight from one of the
media's insiders in Australia. More information on
the Andrew Olle Lecture series can be found here."
I thought this was interesting. A little different
than the usual Slashdot fare, but good reading
nonetheless.
--------------------
Microsoft Is Indoctrinating Children, Shouldn't We?
A askslashdot article from the "getting-the-tools-in-the-hands-of-the-next-generation" department
sent by Cliff
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/11/10/1955217
wildgift writes: "This is probably not news to
some young people, but some of the older people
here should be aware that Microsoft runs a wide
ranging IT/Programming curriculum project, called
Mainfunction, that teaches young people to program
using Microsoft tools. The obvious issue is: is
anyone leveraging the education-friendly Unix
environment to create a similar program? This is a
huge opportunity. So far, I've only found this
Python article." If Microsoft is getting their
tools in the hands of the programmers of the
future, what can we do to achieve the same?
Wouldn't it be much better if kids could take a
look at development on several different platforms
so that they can better use the technology when
they are professionals rather than settling on
"what they know"?
--------------------
The info is Rob Malda's
The code is mine
MOTD: -----------------------------------
I am no longer associated with Purdue, except for being a former
student, former employee, and active member of the Linux Users Group.
As such, I'll either be moving this service to another server or
killing it entirely. Your input is requested as to what you'd like.
Then again, when was the last time I changed the MOTD? And when was
last time it was read?