On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 07:41:48AM -0400, Walter Landry wrote: > It's not that contrived [1]. In any case, are you saying that you > don't care whether people can use software to do extreme ironing? > Debian makes sure that terrorists, nuclear bomb makers, wall street > analysts, and the IRS can use the software, but we suddenly don't care > about elections and extreme ironing?
The question is not whether simple-interface voting machines are plausible or useful or posses some other virtue. > [1] http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/vtp_WP2.pdf I don't see anything in that report indicating that the voting machines should be tuning or creating the file system underlying the files. More generally, I do believe that there are practical problems created by the "must display credits" license. For example, consider a general purpose OS environment designed for the deaf (where reducing the number of phonemes spewed by programs is a driving issue). The problem with the voting machine example is that voting machines are special purpose devices -- they should have any file systems (possibly redundant file systems) created before they're deployed, and if something goes wrong with the file system it should NOT be manipulated in the field. That kind of manipulation could lead to fraud, and so should be conducted in a highly controlled and auditable environment. -- Raul
