    
admin
Board Administrator
Username: admin
Post Number: 565
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 | | Posted on Thursday, June 2, 2005 - 3:34 pm: | |
And now we meet fwiffo the troll...
He shows up after a few posts, from Daily Kos:
by Hummingbird -- Do you really think They FORGOT? Don't be naive.
------------
by Jon Meltzer -- Yes, I do think they "forgot" or never knew in the first place, because the company, trying to maximize its own corporate profits, hired incompetent programmers and gave them obsolete tools.
Try this: The programmers on this bad boy are stockholders and founders that started working on this system in 1987. The tools are obsolete, but deliberately chosen to be obsolete. They selected systems that were already obsolete before they built the system, and we're talking circa 1990.
The 65536 error is the kind of mistake that very inexperienced people make. The programmer didn't have a clue, and no one bothered to test the finished product - because testing costs money, and that expense once again detracts from corporate profit. And everyone expects that the magic code should work all the time, under every condition, without any kind of verification or testing.
Well, actually, no. The programmers are hardly "inexperienced." The system was "tested by Wyle Laboratories" and certified by computer scientists including Dr. Brit Williams.
Every programmer I've talked to about this knows exactly what happened - and all of them know the number without my having to tell them. And none of them think that electronic voting is a proper use of the technology.
--------
by fwiffo -- Natural limit -- 65535 is the natural limit for an unsigned, 16-bit integer. Most small processors and microcontrollers for this type of device at 16-bit proccessors (some are even 8-bit). Each voting machine never counts more than a few thousand votes (most states have a maximum precinct size of like 1500). It's an elementary programming error and a very common one, and is not likely to be found when testing under ordinary circumstances, because you'd never count that high.
It is an error, and an oversight, but by itself, is not evidence of malice. An intentional security flaw (i.e. a back door) would look much different.
fwiffo goes on to come up with these enlightening comments: I see no reason to work with cranks. I don't care if they're on our side. Bev Harris, from all indications, is a quack. You can't work with people like that. They're crazy. ... Dealing with irrational people is too exhausting for me to bother with.
Serious, real concerns about these voting machines have been transformed into tin-foil hatted loonery. I want the machines fixed, and these people are only hurting that cause!}}
He goes on to state that things like printing a zero tape will protect us. Well, here's the point: The memory card provides a mechanism to hack all of the reports, because it contains the executable program that produces the reports. In fact, that's the main point here: You can change the votes, OR you can hack the way the reports are calculated, or you can do both.
Fwiffo, could you please limit your activities to fixing my appliances, not my elections?Thanks! -- Bev |
