#26 Boba Fett Diop: No, polls are not an exact science; however, taken on aggregate they are a good predictor of the election outcomes. Not a perfect indicator, but a good-enough predictor if you take into consideration the margin of error. Where interpretations can go wrong is in reading too-close-to-call races as straightforward wins for one candidate; I don't agree with that and I am careful not to base my decisions on a +/- 5% polling number.

While I agree that polls may have an undue effect on election outcomes, I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon, and people aren't going to ignore them because we want them to. The more rational approach is to use the polls to our advantage. I linked to DemocraticSPACE before, and they provide an important service (to me, at least). They have 3 principles they follow when recommending strategic voting:

1. It must be a close 2-way race (i.e. the two other parties must be within 5%)
2. The [party of choice] chances of winning riding are remote (i.e. [party of choice] support less than 25%)
3. Small number of [party of choice] votes will make a difference (i.e. less than 1 in 3 voters)

I think those are fair criteria for voting strategically. Essentially, if your vote has no chance of counting, vote with your heart. If the race is close and you have a preference between the top two parties, vote your preference to tip the scales.

I generally vote for one of the third parties in elections; I've used this system for three elections, and so far I have yet to cast a vote for the Libs or Cons (probably because the ridings I have occupied in the Greater Toronto Area have either been overwhelmingly Lib or Con).

#10 Ironix, while in principle that sounds like a wonderful proposition---voting your heart---it doesn't always work out the way you expect.

For example, it makes absolute sense to vote for your favourite party in uncompetitive ridings (i.e. ridings in which one party is assured the win); however, there are cases when strategic voting has a much better outcome than voting for who you actually want.

Suppose you are an NDP supporter in a riding where the NDP is polling at 5%, while the Conservatives and Liberals are polling at 45%. Now suppose that of those two parties, you are most against Conservative policy. Because the polls are so close, it would only make sense to vote Liberal because your vote would actually count towards the outcome and might make the difference between a Conservative MP and a Liberal MP (and possibly the formation of the government).

This is obviously not an ideal situation, but I don't see any sort of proportional representation on the horizon for Canada.

During recent elections, I have followed the DemocraticSPACE strategic voting guide, which aggregates polling data and produces recommendations based on your first and second preferences.

The biggest problem with the Oyster card with regards to privacy is that it stores data on the card itself (how much data, I'm not sure, but they have to store enough to perform transactions on a bus), and, on top of that, the cryptographic algorithm they use, crypto-1 (proprietary) has been broken. This leaves your data open for access by anyone with the desire and know-how.

On the bright side, there might be a scheme to add money to your card.

For the cryptographically-inclined, the Cryptocracy podcast had an episode with an interview with one of the crackers of the crypto-1 algorithm, including some interesting talk about the privacy implications of the vulnerability.

@16 The principal idea behind encryption schemes like PGP is that, without the decryption key, it takes a discouragingly-long amount of time to brute-force decrypt the files.

As long as the accused was careful not to write down the passphrase (or otherwise compromise the security of the key itself) and the particular encryption scheme does not have any usable holes, then the chances are slim that the investigators could brute-force the files before a sixth amendment argument could be made.

This past summer, I went to the British Houses of Parliament and they didn't allow photography at all in there.

My suspicion is that it had less to do with tradition and more to do with merchandising, considering that on our way out, we were able to buy merchandise with photos of those very places we were prevented from photographing. This after spending far too much on a ticket for admission.