Entries from February 2007
Online voting systems might increase efficiency and accuracy in terms of vote tallying, but they also increase the chances for vote tampering as well as an easier, faster, or hi-tech way of doing “dagdag-bawas” (vote padding/shaving) as far as integrity and security are concerned. An article by Mohen and Philips discussed that “Internet voting may offer a cloak for vote theft, voter coercion, and lost public confidence in the outcome.” It also included that remote internet voting could be employed to exploit the outcomes of elections since the access is limited only to those who are connected to the Internet.
Not only from the voter’s side do problems exist, but also throughout the Internet and up to the voting system’s server and application. We all know that the Internet is a very open architecture wherein numerous kinds of attacks (such as Denial-of-service or DoS) go every millisecond of the day. Not only the server should be noted for vulnerability but also the voting platform as well. There might be no perfect programming language or framework that exists but we can always consult benchmarks to validate arguments on it. In addition, a documentation of the voting system and the underlying framework should exist to facilitate its users, especially for the system administrators who want to deploy it on their own. Based from the World Usability Day event I had attended before, a system is usable enough if a new user barely consulted its documentation and is able to do tasks completely. However, if the user consults it, the documentation should be effective enough to leading the right path. Actually, I have encountered a system (an operating system to be specific) in which the help feature is not very helpful at all. Guess what?
With regard to online voting systems, there is always the issue of privacy and transparency. Privacy or ballot secrecy in terms of having the vote as confidential information whereas transparency is the clarity of the voting process. In Peter Neumann’s article on Communications of the ACM, it declared that voting systems were prone to error and posed a greater security risk. If voters do not have real assurances that votes submitted are properly processed, then the system is not trustworthy. However, on the other side of the fence, it is assumed that the system processes the ballots and discards voter-ballot relationships.
So will there be a way to know if a counter fails at some point in time? And if a re-count is requested, will there be a way to show the entries being processed correctly while protecting the voter’s privacy? It might be too late and that will only make the “losers” to go for endless blabbing. It can be overwhelming too to experience social networking services such as blogs creating the same noise.
And who says that tampering is limited to the source code of such systems? A Turing lecture by Ken Thompson said that “tampering can also occur even without any source-code changes” and that “code examination is not enough“. In this case, software engineering and cryptography become very significant parts of looking over a system’s functionality and security. This simply tells us that as we move on with the advancement of technology, we should also be ready not only for its benefits but also for its disadvantages and consequences.
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…and this is my summary for the case on the usability of online voting systems. Obviously, I did my research mostly in the ACM Digital Portal. Well, I still have X hours to go to finish my RRL for my thesis on usability testing. Ohnoes.
Categories: General
It is yet another rant of cramming again!
Can you imagine a situation where you’re cramming for a paper to be submitted today where the sources to do it were just uploaded yesterday that were supposedly 2-3 days ago? Yes, this is one of the situations where I really get pissed off seriously. Why? I don’t think there’s an excuse for it to be uploaded late. There’s no excuse if wifi exists in the location; laptops are almost everywhere. If no laptop is available, the computer lab is always open for such purposes. The mere fact that the report is already over means that all of the stuffs that the reporter presented in class is expected to be consistent to the softcopy that will be distributed in the mailing list. The audience will not expect that there will be revisions on the uploaded softcopy although it’s much better if there are modifications.
Oh, don’t even think of having the university’s bandwidth as an excuse! There are lots of internet cafes out there with a better, faster connection. Oh well, I think this is enough to cool off myself for now and stop my head from generating a migraine. I still have a report for Tuesday and *amazingly*, a thesis proposal presentation on Wednesday. Don’t even dare to ask me about its progress. Ironically, this is not my ideal art of cramming.
*rests hands to avoid RSIs*
Categories: Academe · Personal · rants
…gave me the chills. The recent LOVE@UP program (Launch of Office 2007 and Vista, an Event@UP) was the 2nd launch I had attended to (the 1st was at the PSITE Convention) but this time, I have completed the whole program and one of its speakers was from UPACM.
You can just imagine my reaction on the presentation of Vista’s features – are the technologies new or it’s just that Microsoft’s products are too slow in catching up?
If I remember correctly, the ones who participated in the Vista Q&A on the 9th PSITE Convention 2007 received freebies which made me excited when the LOVE@UP demo was almost over. (Yeah, I’m in only for the freebies!) At the end of the demo, the speakers told the audience to complete the evaluation form which includes a space for questions, suggestions, comments, etc. It made me think that the speakers will try to answer the questions or maybe have a short Q&A after receiving all of the forms – but in the end, there was none! Also, my friend noticed that the hardware requirements were not mentioned in the product launch. Weird, because for me it was a sign of evasion.
In one of my forums, the Vista upgrade decision flowchart was mentioned.
For me, its bottom line’s simple: you need money, money, and lots of money to get Vista. You might wanna read the cost analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection too.
Also, here’s the list of questions in the evaluation form that I have submitted in the Love@UP (in case you’re interested):
- Can a system monitor (cpu, memory, etc) be placed in one of its taskbars/”widgets”? If so, why not show it while demonstrating the applications so that the consumer will know its performance (and cpu/memory usage of each candy feature)?
- Will the Vista give me an out-of-the-box desktop system experience or do I still need Office 2007 for making office documents?
- How helpful is the Help function? Does Vista have an intuitive logging utility?
- Can Vista run up to 30 days with no reboots?
- How functional is the new command line?
Being a multitasking user, having good system utilities is a must. Imagine if a crash happens in a session filled with massive downloading, watching videos, multitabbed browsers, chatting, and some minor compile-make-make-install stuff and in the end is a BSOD? I had heard some rumors too that BSOD is now RSOD (red screen of death) in Vista so that it will be *more pleasant* to the eye.
Lastly, the weird thing in the demo was the Ubuntu logo lookalike inside Office 2007:
Weird huh? Does this mean that Microsoft promotes Open Source too? 
Categories: Academe · Communities · Events · Microsoft · Software
The title really says it all. Last week was so terrible and very stress-inducing to the point that some of my friends noticed that I became thinner in the process. The week consisted of a day where I was not allowed to enter in my secondary school’s premises. I tried to go visit the campus since it was near one of my appointments and I was planning to eat there because it was almost lunchtime. Unfortunately, it was all to nothing.
When I was about to enter its gate, the guard stopped me saying that visiting hours start only by 4pm. Even though I was an alumnus, it was the first time that such a thing happened to me. Actually, there was also another alumnus that day in the same situation. The guard also stated that there were exams going-on and that’s why we’re not allowed to enter yet. At that moment, there were parents entering the campus to check for exam results but were treated lightly as compared to my situation. The guard simply let them through and asked for their IDs instead. So perhaps, if I had the same agenda, I’d be able to enter the campus too. Now, is this the way they treat their alumni? At the end of the day, I just hailed a taxi to go to SM North instead.
The following day was a loser’s day. Obviously, it was not a happy valentine’s day for me but a happy single’s awareness day instead. The loss here is not due to the season’s madness but it’s for starting a chess game with an empty stomach. The funny thing about the game was that I have a chess piece that was already a giveaway but my opponent didn’t capture it for some crazy reason. In fact, it was more of a suicidal step than a sacrificial move. This only proves that it’s hard to fight when you’re handicapped. The same thing happened to me 2 days later but it’s a lot worse.
Finally, the only good thing about the week was the accomplishment of my Ergonomics report in one of my medicine/health electives. It was fun delivering a topic of my interest although the process of making the presentation was somewhat complicated. At least, I was able to exhaust all of the types of references that includes the ACM Digital Library, now exceeding one million entries.
Yesterday, I felt a sense of achievement after printing the document versions of my presentations as a written report to be submitted this week. In reality, it doesn’t end here yet for these are just the beginnings of the Feb-March hellweeks. Now, I’m just hoping for the best to come and as you can see – I’m back on track again here, blogging.
Categories: Academe · Personal · rants
