Has anyone figured out the ballots-per-second (bps) transmission rate for
the ballots that travelled in a Ryder truck from Palm Beach County to
Tallahassee? &;-)
Seriously, do we recognize how ridiculous this situation is? With current
technology, the data should have arrived in seconds. We seem to have
scraped by the year 2000 without any major disasters caused by Y2K bugs.
However, the year 2000 election is a victim of ancient, buggy punch-card
readers. I call this the E2K problem.
The punch card readers in Miami-Dade County were unable to detect a vote
for president on 10,000 ballots. That's outrageous! Regardless of any
political wrangling about the significance of this problem, as computer
professionals, we should be asking ourselves, how could this happen?
We now have two kinds of proof (Y2K and E2K) that we need to take a more
active role in working with our users to dump ancient systems and upgrade
to newer and less buggy solutions. That's not an easy task, of course.
Finances, office politics, and risk aversion are just some of the many
reasons that users don't upgrade. But what are we doing to be more
proactive? Are we monitoring our systems to determine their fragility? Are
we taking action when we recognize potential problems? Are we designing
reliable systems that can adapt to changes? Or are we hiding behind our
21-inch monitors and praying that nothing bad will happen on our shift?
I'd like to see the computer industry get serious about developing less
buggy systems and upgrading legacy systems that are failure-prone. I'd
welcome a technical (non-political) discussion on this topic. Thanks for
listening to my ravings. &;-)
Priscilla
________________________
Priscilla Oppenheimer
http://www.priscilla.com
_________________________________
FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html
Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
