Our Head Voter Guy (Office of Registrar) said that it would cost San Diego County $10 million to equip the country with computers for election purposes. He estimated a cost of $4k/$5k per computer. I wonder which outfit is offering the 200% markup? I can't believe that computers still can not take a more active role in tabulation of votes, at the polls and after the election. -----Original Message----- From: Bradley J. Wilson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 3:07 AM To: cisco Subject: Re: O/T ballots-per-second musings Priscilla for President '04! ;-) (Of course, you'll be running against Hillary... ;-) ----- Original Message ----- From: Priscilla Oppenheimer To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 10:14 PM Subject: O/T ballots-per-second musings 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] _________________________________ FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________ FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: O/T ballots-per-second musings
Montgomery, Robert WARCOM Contractor Fri, 01 Dec 2000 12:42:28 -0800
- O/T ballots-per-second musings Priscilla Oppenheimer
- RE: O/T ballots-per-second musin... Chuck Larrieu
- RE: O/T ballots-per-second m... Priscilla Oppenheimer
- RE: O/T ballots-per-second m... William Gragido
- Re: O/T ballots-per-seco... Donald B Johnson Jr
- RE: O/T ballots-per-... William Gragido
- Re: O/T ballots-per-second musin... Bradley J. Wilson
- RE: O/T ballots-per-second musin... Taylor, Don
- Cost of Design issues: WAS: O/T ... Montgomery, Robert WARCOM Contractor
- Cost of Design issues: WAS: ... Chuck Larrieu
- RE: O/T ballots-per-second musin... Erick B.