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| Sub-Issue: Testing the Proper Equipment | ||
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Q: What is a software "patch"? |
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General Reference (not clearly pro or con) The National Academy of Sciences' 2005 report Asking the Right Questions About Electronic Voting states:
"A vendor may uncover a potentially problematic issue in software that has been previously certified and address the issue in a program patch... [A patch] is any change to a software program."
U.S. Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) explained in the May 23, 2003 Congressional Record:
"A 'patch' [is] a modification to the voting machines' software program."
Ellen Theisen, CEO of the Vote-PAD Company, states in her May 12, 2004 paper "Voter-Verified Paper Ballots Are Not Enough to Fix DRE Problems" (available at the VotersUnite! website):
"'Patch' is an innocuous word, like 'glitch.' But a patch means that the code has been changed to fix a bug."
Oracle Corporation, an information technology company, includes the following definition in their online glossary (accessed 6/29/2006):
"Patch - A software update designed to repair known problems or 'bugs' in previous software releases."
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