A Princeton computer scientist said Uncle Sam taught him how easy it can be to hack on the cheap.
Professor and electronic-voting critic Andrew Appel spent only $82 to buy five $5,000 Sequoia electronic voting machines from a government auction Web site last month, according to Wired News. It didn’t take long, he said, for him and his students to find security holes in the AVC Advantage machines — one student picked the lock in only 7 seconds, gaining access to the machine’s motherboard and memory chip.
A Sequoia spokeswoman said Mr. Appel exaggerated the machines’ vulnerability and that they were designed to alert headquarters if manipulated. But Mr. Appel suggested that would-be manipulators were capable of anticipating and disabling alarms. —Sierra Millman
8 Responses to Computer Scientist Takes E-Voting Apart
k_steiner - March 12, 2012 at 8:11 am
I first read this explanation of the origin of OK almost 40 years ago in the 4th edition of Mencken’s “The American Language.” As I recall, the fad for silly abbreviations carried with it some allusions to the not-yet-forgotten Dutch contributions to the language and culture of New York, which might account for the otherwise inexplicable abbreviation for “all correct.” It is a wonderful story about a wonderful word. I believe I have heard it used in every foreign country I have visited.
dank48 - March 12, 2012 at 8:48 am
The spelling, abbreviating, and capping variations are interesting too. I wonder how many words can be “correctly” spelled so many ways, including Raymond Chandler’s (to me, at least, irritating) “okey.” I bet he just came up with that because he could. Oh, well, if people want to introduce variety for its own sake, it’s okay by me.
22057479 - March 12, 2012 at 9:20 am
I find this explanation of the origin of OK very unlikely.
Looking it up in the OED — something Mr Metcalf obviously did too — we find that “O.K.” is cited, without explanation, on April 12, 1839. The readers of this newspaper (Salem Gazette) could not have “learned” the expression from the Boston Morning Post 3 weeks earlier.
The OED also has an 1815 citation, from a diary, which shows that “ok” (no caps, no periods) was in at least colloquial use before that date.
(The OED states that the meaning of “ok” in this citation is “not clear”. Here it is:
“1815
W. Richardson Diary 21 Feb.,
Arrived at Princeton, a handsome little village, 15 miles from N Brunswick, ok & at Trenton, where we dined.”
I submit that “Arrived …ok” is as clear as it can be.)
And this diary citation gives a probable explanation: “ok” was colloquial, not used in formal or printed writing, until 1839.
The OED cites an 1840 source, also from Massachusetts (Lexington) that discusses the origin of the term “O.K.” This also suggests that the expression was widespread enough for people to be wondering about its origin.
So the one thing we can be sure of is that “OK” did NOT originate as late as 1839.
allan_metcalf - March 12, 2012 at 9:39 am
The latest version of the OED says: “From the detailed evidence provided by A. W. Read it seems clear that O.K. first appeared in 1839 (an instance of a contemporary vogue for humorous abbreviations of this type), and that in 1840 it became greatly reinforced by association with the initialism O.K. n.1, O.K. int.2 (see discussion at that entry).”
22057479 - March 12, 2012 at 11:42 am
Dear Mr Metcalf: Yes, it does say that. But that does not mean the OED editors’ interpretation data is correct.
Look at the evidence the OED provides, which I cited above.
The OED is great for collecting data! That does not mean that its editors are infallible in the interpretation of that same data. This is true of historians generally.
I submit that my interpretation, above, of the data provided by the OED, is more plausible. It accounts for the two Massachusetts sources of the expression only 3 weeks apart from one another and the 1915 occurance in a private diary.
In any case: Thanks for a very interesting article!
11182967 - March 12, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Perhaps Metcalf ought to have more accurately referred to the “earliest known use in print of OK in its now common meaning.” I’ve read somewhere that the “o” for “all” originated in a misspelling by Andrew Jackson, no scholar and, as it happened, the mentor of Old Kinderhook–probably originally a slur on Jackson. And surely Metcalf recognizes that oral usage probably came before print (as the diary entry suggests). But much of the utility of the term as it has been more widely adopted lies in the very fact that it really isn’t so much an acronym or a word in a specific language as it is a readily recognizable universal visual icon, much as the diagonal line across a word or icon is an icon for OK’s opposite. Perhaps some enterprising techie will add an OK key to the standard keyboard (and if so, remember that it started here).
Virginia Roberts - March 12, 2012 at 7:42 pm
OK, that’s totally my birthday too. (Pun intended.) Slightly younger though.
Dr_Decay - March 13, 2012 at 9:51 am
” The “Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells,” is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have the “contribution box,” et ceteras, o.k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward. ”
Maybe this is off topic, but can anybody tell me what this sentence means? I think I understand up to “train-band”, but then it turns to gibberish for me. Still, I love seeing original sources. Thanks.