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Is Blogger saying all closed source programmers are Republicans?

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by dennisbyron

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

A blogger on TechRepublic has started the quadrenniel complaint by the open source fringe that U.S. elections are won or lost because of the politics of technology. A common whipping boy is Diebold (DBD).

I personally don't really care what kind of software is used inside U.S. voting machines but I hope people from outside the U.S do not get the impression from these conspiracy theory wackos that software -- open or closed source -- caused the voting problems in the U.S. in 2000 and 2004.

Just to refresh everyone's memory:

-- the problem in Fla in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 (to the extent there really was a problem in Ohio) was a turn of the century (as in 1900) technology called punched cards, not software.

-- In New Mexico in 2004, the problem was allegedly a matter of ballots not being counted at all, not in their being misread by embedded software

Of course, to really buy into the Diebold conspiracy theories you have to assume one of two things happens.

-- Either all the Diebold voting machines are rigged by Diebold executives in the middle of the night after the working stiff programmers go home.
-- Or you have to assume that the working stiff programmers are also Republicans.

Maybe because they write closed source software, they must be, huh, Jack?

3 replies

by charliespencer

Instead of starting a new topic, why not post your disagreement with Jack Wallen as a reply to his blog post? By failing to do so, you're providing only your side of the issue and depriving others of the change to weigh both opinions equally. It also makes you appear unsure you can counter Jack's positions and instead must seek refuge in a separate thread.

For everyone else, here's the link to the original article. I encourage you to continue this debate where it began.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=277

by dennisbyron

If I was trying to seek refuge or was unsure of my position, why would I give my real name? Did you take the same logic course as the other guy?

(For the record, it is probably a system error but when I tried to post a comment at the original post it provided the following error message: "Thread 275017 could not be loaded from the database.")

-- Dennis Byron

by charliespencer

It appears there is no way to start a discussion on Jack Wallen's 'open source and voting' web log entry referenced in my post above. Would someone please take a look at it?

Dennis, as regards my logic skills, I employed them to figure out how to use the 'Contact' link at the top of the web log entry to alert Jack directly about this problem.

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