If You Want Your Vote to Count, Do Not Cast it with a Diebold Machine!

Speaking of E-Voting, Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org has uncovered an exploit in the software that counts votes from Diebold electronic voting machines. This is a centralized "Tabulator" computer that receives tallies from polling stations across a state, and then sums up the votes for the final tally. Black Box Voting has found that if a two-digit code is entered into a hidden field in the Tabulator program, then the vote counts are copied into an editable buffer, where the operator may secretly change their values. The final count reported will be from the editable (and possibly edited!) buffer, not the actual vote counts. There would be no indication that this change had occurred.

It's important to note: this "double booking" exploit is not a bug, it was purposefully inserted by Diebold, and it exists in a number of versions of the Tabulator program. Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson are going to demonstrate the exploit to the U.S. Congress on Sept. 22nd.

The afffected Diebold voting machines are used in over 30 states, and will count tens of millions of votes in the upcoming Presidential election. It's unfathomable that Diebold has not been brought up on criminal charge of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and election tampering. Until that happens, I recommend finding out whether your precinct is using these machines. If they are, vote with an absentee ballot.

Good News From Florida

As I argued in a previous YDO entry, paperless "E-voting" machines are dangerous to democracy because they are very prone to fraud, they leave no verifiable ballot record, and their manufacturers refuse to allow audits of the top-secret internal software.

I noted in that entry that some states like California are taking action to prevent the blind acceptance of these machines. Well, you can now count Florida on that list as well. A judge there has ruled that touch-screen voting machines are not exempt from the requirement that manual recounts must be possible at all polling places. Unbelievably, the Division of Elections in Florida had given touchscreen machines a pass on recounts. Even more bizarre, the Florida Secretary of State (who is no longer Katherine Harris...sorry Auntie Kathy!) has vowed to appeal the ruling. Why would she oppose a requirement that all votes must be recountable? I guess she must Hate America (TM).

Anyway, it's a good thing that Florida of all states is acting to ensure it can hold a legitimate election, because the upcoming Presidential vote is shaping up to be a real nail-biter there once again. (The linked site, www.electoral-vote.com, provides a very cool map of all 50 states and their current polling numbers and what it all means for the electoral vote count. You can click on any state to get its polling history, as linked above for Florida).

Fear of a Free Planet: Part 1

(In Which Microsoft Acts Directly To Counter The Linux "Threat", With Not Much Success)

First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

It's safe to say that Microsoft is no longer ignoring Linux. Nor are they laughing, anymore, but because I want to present Microsoft's Linux strategy in its entirety, let us return to the halcyon days of 1998, when the tech bubble was still in full swing. At this time, Microsoft was definitely laughing, referring to the Linux community in December 1998 as "Robin Hood and his Merry Men". At the same time, an internal Microsoft memo (the now-infamous "Halloween Document" leaked to Open-Source evangelist Eric S. Raymond) at least privately accknowledges the strengths of the Linux system, and the looming threat it represents.

By January 2001, CEO Steve Ballmer had publically identified Linux as the #1 threat to Windows, and their public statements about Linux started to turn from dismissive ridicule to indignant mudslinging. We can actually witness them shift from step 2 to 3 in Gandhi's list:

• Ballmer himself called Linux "a cancer" in June 2001
  
• Referring to its alleged voracious appetite for intellectual property, founder Bill Gates called the GPL "Pac-man-like" in the same month.
  
• Jim Allchin (Chief of Operating Systems) called Linux "un-American" in August 2001. As we will see in a later chapter, this theme will be updated for the post-9/11 world, when a Microsoft proxy makes the claim that Linux aids terrorists.
  

Unfortunately for Microsoft, by the fall of 2002 it has become clear that none of these FUD tactics have worked. In another memo leaked to Eric S. Raymond, Microsoft privately acknowledges that FUD is all but useless against Linux.

The gist of the memo is that the FUD campaign should be abandoned, and that Microsoft should instead concentrate on a "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) argument against Free Software. The mantra will be "Linux is only free if your time is worthless", and the campaign will highlight Microsoft's advantage in ease of use and maintainability.

This is a perfectly respectable way for them to compete in the marketplace. Even if most (all?) of the so-called "independent" research that shows Windows has a lower TCO than Linux was actually funded by Microsoft. That's okay, it all comes out in the free market of ideas known as the internet, and let the best OS win. This could have been a happy ending to the story.

But, alas, alas. Microsoft apparently decided that the reason its FUD backfired was that people are overly suspicious of what a convicted monopolist has to say about its competitors. If only someone else would tell the world how awful Linux (and in particular, the GPL) is! In 2004, two different entities took up the gauntlet of attempting to destroy Linux on Microsoft's behalf. These will be the subject of the next two chapters of this series.

The final chapter will focus on a war that hasn't yet begun, but the storm clouds are indeed gathering. Up until this final battle, we can tell the Microsoft-vs-Linux story with a smug grin on our faces, because Microsoft's efforts (and that of its proxies) have been laughably ineffective so far. However, I will argue that Microsoft is posied to wipe the collective grins off of our faces. Stay tuned.

Corporate America's True Believers

Okay, I know I owe you part one of the "FUD Wars", but before I get to that, a quick vignette.

Every once in a while, I make a post on slashdot that provokes some "free market" True Believer. Unintentionally, I assure you! Anyway, attached to this story about possible patent violations in the Linux kernel, the conversation turned to patents on life-saving drugs held by pharmaceutical companies. I made the following reply (the italics are part of the post to which I replied, by user "dfenstrate"):

The drugs protected by patents wouldn't even exist to save anyone if the pharmaceutical companies didn't think they could profit from developing them.

Perhaps. But should we not question the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in existence? Profit motive, okay. But at some point, they are fleecing people and unethically manufacturing a false scarcity of something that could save people's lives. Besides, buried in the industry's inflated cost estimates is their hugely aggresive advertising campaigns. Personally, I think it should be illegal to market prescription drugs, and the "payola" that goes on between pharmaceuticals and doctors is totally unethical, IMHO.

And I am going to bring up public funding. The companies' research is heavily assisted by university researchers who use NIH grants. NIH research consistently plays a critical role in developing important drugs, which are then given over to pharmaceutical companies to "bring to market". This is one of the worst exampes of corporate welfare.

To which dfenstrate replied:

I do not claim the system is perfect. I do claim, however, that it is better than a completely state funded medical research endevour with no patent rights to worry about.

The effective NIH subsidies could be argued as compensation for the FDA raising the standard for permissible medicines to ridiculously high levels, or the roll of the dice when it comes to litigation down the road when a drug may be considered to be imperfect.

I would personally like to see the standards for new medicines lowered by the FDA, and you and your doctor can decide if a particular medicine's side effects are worth it's benefits, and at the same time, a little more sanity return to our courtrooms. I'm talking about allowing personal decisions as to what risk is acceptable, and then people taking responsibility for those risks they chose should things go sour. This would bring more drugs all the way to market, so each successful drug would only have to support a dozen drugs that failed in trial, rather than two dozen (those numbers are wild-assed guesses.)

Doing those two things, we could easily eliminate NIH grants and the market would continue to develop drugs. Even better if the US wasn't the only market were companies could charge what they want, so we wouldn't have to support all the research with our dollars (both in NIH-spent taxes and drug purchases) while socialized medicine countries barely let drug companies charge the marginal cost.

Maybe we could even eliminate NIH subsidies now. Not really sure.

Now, in general, wether or not an industry is the most profitable in existance- this doesn't matter to me. I say good for them. Some industry has to be, and I'm not one to run around tearing down giants just because they're giants.

Could the system use a good deal of reform? Absolutely. Is a capitilist driven system superior to a state run system? Most definately.

Me again:

So, as an apparent free-marketeer, what is your opinion on the situations where what is good for the pharmaceutical company is bad for humanity?

For example, pharmaceuticals are currently making a huge profit on "drug cocktails" which do a very good job of removing the symptoms of AIDS, but without actually curing the disease.

Now, let us suppose that some researcher somewhere (say, in a public university) is making very promising progress toward a bona fide cure for AIDS, and that if her research pans out, the revenue stream of the drug cocktails will dry up, and the much cheaper (one-time cost) cure will take over the "market" of AIDS patients.

Would it not be in these companies' best interest to use their formidable influence in government and over the research budgets of universities to suppress this research? By law, would these companies not be *required* to do everything in their power to see that the true cure was not developed and brought to "market"?
After all, a corporation *must* do everything it can to maximize its profits. Any other consideration could get the executives sued by the shareholders.

This is just an example; it can easily be generalized. Don't you think that the inherent amorality and narrow-mindedness of corporate entities must be taken into consideration when we're dealing with something as important as the development of life-saving medications?

Let's not focus on the marginal increase in efficiency provided by private-sector research, and lose sight of the fact that we may not be getting what we want from the total privatization of everything. Particularly when there's a disconnect between the corporations' goals and the goals of society, as is so obviously the case in medical research.

Now user "bani" joins the conversation to defend the corporations' sacred honor:

Would it not be in these companies' best interest to use their formidable influence in government and over the research budgets of universities to suppress this research?

yep, that's exactly why iron lung manufacturers were successful in stopping the polio vaccine.

and the pony express was very successful in stopping the telegraph, don't you think?

gotta admire the horse & buggy manufacturers success in stopping the automobile.

and just look at all those evil film processing companies supressing digital cameras!

I wasn't going to reply, but what the heck:

What, exactly, is your point? You give four examples where a corporation did not or could not block a new development that would kill their business. Are we to conclude from these examples that corporations are incapable of doing so, or that they at least would refrain from doing something so selfish or "evil" as you put it, even if they could?

First of all, I remind you again that corporations are required by law to behave selfishly, in a manner that increases their own profit. This is a fact.

Second of all, I'd like to ask why you omitted the well-known cases in history where a corporation has tried to block the "greater good", often with what can only be described as exuberant success. I can only assume you are either unaware of such cases, or are willfully withholding them because it makes your untenable opinion more palatable. Here are three examples. There are many more.

• Cigarette companies repeatedly presented their pseudoscience to congress over decades of effort to keep their addictive poisons on the market
  
• Lead companies used their influence to shut down research labs at public universities which were finding disturbing effects of lead on the health and development of children
  
• A consortium of automobile, tire, and gasoline companies bought out the electric trains operating in 45 U.S. cities, and immediately shut them down, replacing them with less efficient, far-more-polluting, internal-combustion buses. For this conspiracy, they were convicted in court and fined: $5000. We get to choke on diesel fumes the rest of our lives, and they get fined $5000.
  

When Asimov imagined powerful, artificial beings living among us, he invented The Three Laws, because without such a fundamental regulation on their behavior, how could we avoid being subjugated and enslaved by our mechanical superiors?

Well, we have invented artificial entities of our own (the corporations), but I fear our regulations over them are not as foolproof as Dr. Asimov's Three Laws.

I just don't understand why these corporate apologists believe that the answer to every problem is to "let the market decide". Some things are too important to be left in the hands of the one group among us which is mandated to behave selfishly. It makes no sense.

Fear of a Free Planet

Imagine this: thousands of intelligent, motivated people from all over the world gather together to combine their creative effort in a grand project. This project is hugely complex, and extremely powerful. The creators have mutually decided to make their invention freely available for all the world to use, and any who are able are welcome to join in the effort. Almost all contribute as volunteers, motivated by the sheer joy of creation, the camaraderie of the development group, or simply to be a part of something so big, and so worthwhile.

Sound like a fantasy? It's happening, right now.

The grand project is called Free Software. Here "Free" means "freedom", not "without cost" (although most of it is free in the financial sense also, but this is of secondary importance). Users of Free Software are free to use it in any way that they like. They are invited to copy it and give it to whomever they choose. They are guaranteed the right to examine the software's source code, and even to modify the code, or incorporate it into new programs. However, with freedom comes responsibility: if one chooses to modify the code and distribute the modified program, the modified program must also be Free; in other words, you cannot refuse others the rights that you have been granted.

The community of Free Software developers has been wildly successful, far beyond any reasonable expectations. Our primary accomplishment is the GNU/Linux system, an extremely powerful unix-like operating system that runs on just about any kind of hardware you can think of, from wristwatches to mainframes.

Unfortunately, Linux's success has earned it some powerful enemies; most notably Microsoft. Pity poor Microsoft, who for decades has lorded over the world of software, unchallenged. Whenever a possible competitor came along, Microsoft simply bought them out, or wielded its monopoly power to drive them out of business (a crime for which they have been convicted and wrist-slapped in both the US and EU).

But here comes Linux, owned by no one, and owned by all. It can't be bought or bribed, because there's no one to pay. It can't be driven out of business, because it's not a business. What's a poor monopoly to do?

In the forthcoming series of posts, we'll see what Microsoft's solution to their Linux Problem is shaping up to be. Buckle up, gentle reader, it's going to be an ugly ride.