OK, I want to inform you guys about these Diebolt and other Windows based voting machines.
Allot of us techies are fucking a little nerved about how flimsy and sloppy they are setup, and you should be too.
1. Most use Windows as their primary operating system.
Windows has always been essentially junk when it comes to pushing a lot of data, and for voting Machines, this is not good.
Problem is that if the resources of the machine are pushed really hard, they lock up. (You've seen that yourself I'm sure)
Imaging tons of data input being pushed to a machine and it starts to slow down because it needs time to catch up and BOOOM! It locks up.
If there was some data in the process that needed to be recovered, there isn't a a way to do it. It would just be erased once the system was restarted.... That means if this happens to you on election day, your vote would not be counted.
What these systems should of been running.....
The only system that allot of techies - I mean serious techies can all agree on that works like a work horse and has a build in system are SUN Microsystems. Many of the new model systems have whats called a Domain controller.
This is a separate operating system that is independent from the system running. For instance - say the hard drive kicks over, or the memory goes bad... It stores the very last amount of information of transactions to a temporary system, which can be dumped on a CD or disk for review later while the system is down.
The new systems now have also allot of fault tolerant backups too.
For instance - The drives are hot swappable and so are the CPU's and memory. What this means is that they are essentially a dual motherboard system with at least 6 to 16 processors and gigs of ram and 4 to 12 disks that mirror each other.
What's great about this setup is that the system could have a failure on any a portion of it, but someone can go in and replace the memory, RAM, or CPU with out needing to shut that damn thing down! So without any knowledge , allot of work can keep chugging while it is being worked on. That's a KICK ASS SERVER!
I have experience with these systems... Many of the older models are up over 2 to 5 years with out ever being shut down, and passing tons of data a day. the dumb asses of these companies are too stupid to realize this and the people in charge of picking a company responsible of making a voter machine should of talked with many Internet and security firms on how to make this crap work. They I am sure would say "Go with SUN!"
My co workers all agree, this would of been the best out of all the current systems out there. We are talking about not just 2 or 3 people, but like 25 to 45 people in my industry.
Our companies already figured out the bugs on handling huge things like this. We know what works and doesn't. This latest election is going to be a serious fuck up if these companies don't get serious about redundancy and fail over.
2. Security - Allot of techies have stated how stupidly easy it is to hack these systems. I mean so crappy that a 15 year old with the know how to find hack ware on line could ruin thousands of peoples votes with a push of a button! On a SUN system... Kids don't know much about it or how it works. It's kind of a rare knowledge system, which helps in reducing the possible attacks on the system. Also allot of these systems cannot be hacked on a UNIX SUN OS setup, unless your right at the PC itself with an install CD which again cuts the danger down even more!
Listen, I don't work for SUN, but so far, no body is ahead as they are when it comes to being reliable. Sun knows this, and costs a pretty penny compared to others, but in the end, they know their shit!
Please take a camera with you to the polls. 50% of us are going to be using these systems and want to make sure ALL of our votes count!
Allot of us techies are fucking a little nerved about how flimsy and sloppy they are setup, and you should be too.
1. Most use Windows as their primary operating system.
Windows has always been essentially junk when it comes to pushing a lot of data, and for voting Machines, this is not good.
Problem is that if the resources of the machine are pushed really hard, they lock up. (You've seen that yourself I'm sure)
Imaging tons of data input being pushed to a machine and it starts to slow down because it needs time to catch up and BOOOM! It locks up.
If there was some data in the process that needed to be recovered, there isn't a a way to do it. It would just be erased once the system was restarted.... That means if this happens to you on election day, your vote would not be counted.
What these systems should of been running.....
The only system that allot of techies - I mean serious techies can all agree on that works like a work horse and has a build in system are SUN Microsystems. Many of the new model systems have whats called a Domain controller.
This is a separate operating system that is independent from the system running. For instance - say the hard drive kicks over, or the memory goes bad... It stores the very last amount of information of transactions to a temporary system, which can be dumped on a CD or disk for review later while the system is down.
The new systems now have also allot of fault tolerant backups too.
For instance - The drives are hot swappable and so are the CPU's and memory. What this means is that they are essentially a dual motherboard system with at least 6 to 16 processors and gigs of ram and 4 to 12 disks that mirror each other.
What's great about this setup is that the system could have a failure on any a portion of it, but someone can go in and replace the memory, RAM, or CPU with out needing to shut that damn thing down! So without any knowledge , allot of work can keep chugging while it is being worked on. That's a KICK ASS SERVER!
I have experience with these systems... Many of the older models are up over 2 to 5 years with out ever being shut down, and passing tons of data a day. the dumb asses of these companies are too stupid to realize this and the people in charge of picking a company responsible of making a voter machine should of talked with many Internet and security firms on how to make this crap work. They I am sure would say "Go with SUN!"
My co workers all agree, this would of been the best out of all the current systems out there. We are talking about not just 2 or 3 people, but like 25 to 45 people in my industry.
Our companies already figured out the bugs on handling huge things like this. We know what works and doesn't. This latest election is going to be a serious fuck up if these companies don't get serious about redundancy and fail over.
2. Security - Allot of techies have stated how stupidly easy it is to hack these systems. I mean so crappy that a 15 year old with the know how to find hack ware on line could ruin thousands of peoples votes with a push of a button! On a SUN system... Kids don't know much about it or how it works. It's kind of a rare knowledge system, which helps in reducing the possible attacks on the system. Also allot of these systems cannot be hacked on a UNIX SUN OS setup, unless your right at the PC itself with an install CD which again cuts the danger down even more!
Listen, I don't work for SUN, but so far, no body is ahead as they are when it comes to being reliable. Sun knows this, and costs a pretty penny compared to others, but in the end, they know their shit!
Please take a camera with you to the polls. 50% of us are going to be using these systems and want to make sure ALL of our votes count!