The obvious question is...

Post #171,112 by ChrisR 8/26/04 5:36:18 PM Reply	The obvious question is... ...what brand of Linux you're using these days? And which GUI toolkit? And can I get one of them there touchscreens real cheap? :-)
Post #171,131 by broomberg 8/26/04 7:16:16 PM Reply	Debian [link\|http://viewtouch.com/poshome.html\|http://viewtouch.com/poshome.html]
Post #171,316 by Reporter 8/27/04 2:34:59 PM Reply	Re: Debian Boy, we could do just about any distribution, actually. Except Red Flag. My chinese is not that good.
Post #171,288 by Reporter 8/27/04 2:10:29 PM Reply	Re: The obvious question is... Yep, Debian, although there are lots of FreeBSD POS systems out there, too. ViewTouch is the GUI toolkit, by the way. It's specially designed to be used with x terminals. We're getting a very nice Mini-ITX product from [link\|http://www.lex.com.tw\|http://www.lex.com.tw] The US dealer is synertrontech. It boots from compact flash or micro hard drive and has built in PXE, plus lots more, like 3 network interfaces & a wireless option. The box is a lot smaller than anyone else's mini-ITX box, too. In the office we have four of them in a single 1U rackmount. The basic one we're using is $223. You have to add RAM & a CF card or Micro hard drive. Very good deal if you're selling a solution like we are. LCD touchscreens run around $500 these days. The touchscreen controller companies have finally gotten squarely behind Linux. Anyone who doubts whether GNU-Linux will ever overtake Microsoft should not worry about it happening. Now that the equipment manufacturers are supporting X, and now that X is alive & vibrant again, it's just a question of when. Wait till the world finds out that Citrix & Windows Terminal are just expensive proprietary attempts to do X. Those of us who use X are on cloud 9 these days, especially if we use it for remote network computing. I'm hoping one day soon to see an x terminal SoC. You don't need a PC to watch TV, of course, and you don't need a PC to be a remote network computer user, either. What's a Signature
Post #171,331 by ben_tilly 8/27/04 3:31:55 PM Reply	So how hard would it be... to design election systems that actually count the vote fairly and demonstrably, rather than the insecure PoS manipulation tools put out by Diebold etc running on WinCE? Curious, Ben To deny the indirect purchaser, who in this case is the ultimate purchaser, the right to seek relief from unlawful conduct, would essentially remove the word consumer from the Consumer Protection Act - [link\|http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1246&Page=1&pagePos=20\|Nebraska Supreme Court]
Post #171,333 by pwhysall 8/27/04 3:36:38 PM Reply	It's dead easy. It's a piece of paper and a pencil. Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #171,384 by Reporter 8/27/04 5:49:12 PM Reply	Re: So how hard would it be... My starting point for any system design is that any user needs only a display with rich input, a network connection and an X server. That's an x terminal. In the case of voting you also need user verification, and that would need to be addressed. But the interactive display is only something that uses the network to eliminate distance as a factor, and is never something that implies/requires a local PC. It's not a technical issue anyway - it's a political issue, a control issue. If I had time for it I'd try to deal with it, but I don't have the time. I would contribute my stuff in a heartbeat if somebody told me it would make a difference. I invented the restaurant software paradigm and it's been picked up by the retail industry in general now, too, so I have no doubt that I could help put a voting software paradigm together pretty easily that could be trusted and that would be easy to use. Will the political powers, the people who obsess about control, allow it? Highly doubtful.

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