Microsoft to release Windoz 7

[Doctor X]

From poster JoeP:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/14/swidniw.png

Here's the Linkypoo (http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/14/microsoft-announces-1.html) . . .

--J.D.

[mdnky]

Gotta love it...

[nixgeek]

lawlz! ::ha::

[Satcomer]

That is funny. :)

[Giaguara]

Voting Machine edition... will it have autocorrection if anyone is trying to vote for the [gasp] wrong party?

[fryke]

The opposite of "right" is "left" here, Giaguara, not "wrong". ;)

[Doctor X]

Left is only right if it is your hand. :)

--J.D.

[Giaguara]

fryke, the opposite of "right" wing being "left" wing is not valid if there is no difference in the parties left/rightness.
I meant exactly the wrong party, as in if anyone dares to vote for what they are not supposed to. There are a few examples in the 8 past years of history... voting machines conveniently not working etc.

[Doctor X]

. . . designed by the party that lost.

Have to love irony.

--J.D.

[Giaguara]

.. that lost but got the votes adjusted. So they won.

[Doctor X]

No, they lost.

Never seek a conspiracy when simple incompetence explains it.

--J.D.

[Giaguara]

Well, the voting machine stuff (http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html) was (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11518) just (http://www.oilempire.us/ballot.html) fails (http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7Bfb3c17e2-cdd1-4df6-92be-bd4429893665%7D/MASTERLISTOFMACHINEFAILURES.PDF) either way. Are they still going to use these Diebold devices this time?

I could see the Windows Diebold Edition have the autocorrection, "oh, you voted for the XX candidate. Did you mean to to vote for YY instead?" "Thank you, your vote has been counted [XX being autocorrected as YY and counted the appropriately as YY]"...

Imagine other nice Windows 7 Editions...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/166/348280630_a6bd1a4fa7.jpg

Windows 7 Pilot Edition, ...

[Doctor X]

Someone did do a version of the MS "Annoying Paperclip" asking if you REALLY meant to vote for "______" Unfortunately, I do not have it.

Though I do still have. . . .

[bbloke]

I remember some of the voting issues at the time seeming rather fishy to me.

From a BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm):

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.


From SFGate (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/06/20/ING2976LG61.DTL) (originally in the San Francisco Chronicle):
About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.

...

Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."

By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white- majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.

...

In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter.

...

This "no count," as the Civil Rights Commission calls it, is no accident. In Florida, for example, I discovered that technicians had warned Gov. Jeb Bush's office well in advance of November 2000 of the racial bend in the vote- count procedures.

Herein lies the problem. An apartheid vote-counting system is far from politically neutral. Given that more than 90 percent of the black electorate votes Democratic, had all the "spoiled" votes been tallied, Gore would have taken Florida in a walk, not to mention fattening his popular vote total nationwide. It's not surprising that the First Brother's team, informed of impending rejection of black ballots, looked away and whistled.

...

In America, a simple fix based on paper balloting is resisted because, unfortunately, too many politicians who understand the racial bias in the vote- spoilage game are its beneficiaries, with little incentive to find those missing 1 million black voters' ballots.


There may or may not have been a form of conspiracy regarding the voting machines, but what is very clear is who benefited from the situation.

[bbloke]

Florida:
Florida voters using electronic ballot machines are having persistent problems choosing Democrats in early elections, the Miami Herald reports. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/31/florida_terminals_dont_cooperate/)


West Virginia:
Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates. (http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200810170676)


Texas:
KFDM News has received phone calls from people who say when they tried to vote for a straight Democratic party ticket, the electronic voting machine indicated they had selected a straight Republican party ticket. (http://www.kfdm.com/news/voting_17332___article.html/says_vote.html)

[Doctor X]

Oye.

I get enough of this on skeptical political pages. For what it is worth, it has been done to death by both sides of the political spectrum and the results are . . . nothing.

The stupid tend to blame conspiracies. It is rather like me claiming it was a "hacker" who erased my hard drive when I decided to repartition it by clicking "create partition."

That warning was CLEARLY just a subterfuge. . . .

--J.D.

[fryke]

Giaguara: That one was about Bluetooth only. It sounded much better in the original German heise-magazine "c't". It's not about a _pilot_ configuring the A310. It's about a _passenger_ suddenly finding the airplane as a configurable Bluetooth-device. Would _you_ like to configure the plane you're on as a passenger..? ;)

[Giaguara]

Well, configuring that A310 device as a passenger would not surprise me. With the greatly functional ACLs they probably have in place in Windows...
Only a bluetooth part of it, but probably Windows 7 user friendliness would include BT and try to make it easy to use.

Airbus or Boeing 'gadgets' probably are not made enough Mac friendly for OS XI Elephant to want to synchronize your iTunes playlists with it... (an A380 probably would have a ton of storage though...)

Anyway. They could have added the Pilot version as well...

[bbloke]

Well, outside of the US, the episode did raise quite a few eyebrows, to put it mildly.

The stupid tend to blame conspiracies.I trust you are not labelling anyone here stupid.

That warning was CLEARLY just a subterfuge. . . .What warning are you referring to?

[Doctor X]

Well, outside of the US, the episode did raise quite a few eyebrows, to put it mildly.

Further research would, over time, indicate otherwise.

I trust you are not labelling anyone here stupid.

I am very clear with my words. Regarding conspiracies in general, This (http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=af07) is actually very good primer on your basic conspiracy theory: people "cherry pick" the data to gain the outcome they want--whatever religiopoliticosociocomputero-outcome they want. As I alluded in another thread, in one of the many "PC sucks! NO! Mac SUXORZ" arguments I have been drawn into, a person posted "evidences" that Macs are MORE "insecure" than PCs . . . save his evidence showed the exact opposite.

In that is great wisdom.

What warning are you referring to?

That if in Disk Utility I try to repartition my HD I will erase it first.

--J.D.

[ora]

Reposted the pic to a PC forum, they all laughed a lot!