[Tfug] Let's play "ID this code"! (serious issue actually)

[Jim March]

On the whole "interpreted code" thing: as near as we can tell, this
rule in the Federal Election Commission rulebook on the issue is there
to make it at least a bit more difficult for county elections people
to modify the code "in the field".

The hash-check process goes to the same place: somebody who is an
independent election observer (say, a tech hired by political parties)
should be able to get the hash numbers from the test lab that checked
this stuff out and run it against the program to make sure it's legit,
unmodified.  Mixing data and code the way they appear to have pulled
eliminates that possibility.

As to the code I showed you: that was just a tiny snippet of a bigger
whole.  WAY bigger...literally thousands of lines of stuff.
Unfortunately, the text editor had problems even copying stuff out
because if any block of selected text had a "<null>" in it, the block
wouldn't paste into anything else.  Sigh.

OK.  I'm working on getting it into MS tools now.  I may also try an
import into mysql.  I'll report back on progress.

Jim