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OnlinePrimary: a Showcase of Naivete

Somebody wake me up: I can’t believe that anybody, especially ReadWriteWeb would buy this:  OlinePrimary.us,  an effort to to provide a simple, Internet-based system to demonstrate how the US presidential primaries, and later the elections can be handled easily:

“I don’t understand why the straightforward process of casting and tallying votes should require special-purpose machines costing tens of thousands of dollars each, from companies so suspect of fraud and incompetence that they have to change their names (as Diebold Election Systems recently did) to hide from the shame.”

Richard at ReadWriteWeb is somewhat doubtful himself, noting:

In my tests, OnlinePrimary turned out to be a basic website form and still a little buggy (an SQL error popped up after I entered my selections)

Richard, it’s really not about the bugs; it’s the very concept itself.  Anyone can create a webform to collect data – it does not demonstrate anything.  The issue with electronic voting is not how to capture data.  I am by far not an expert, but I think the critical issues all boil down to these points:

  • Identification / Verification of who votes (did not ask for any)
  • How many times can you vote (I just voted twice)
  • Can your vote be tampered with (sure…)

Plain and simple.  Not so plain and simple to resolve. And this simple webform does not attempt to address any of these issues.  This is what we ended up with at an event with much smaller scale… I’m sure you as co-host of the Crunchies also experienced some issues… would the Presidential elections invite a thousand times more fraud attempts?

Update (2/5): Not that there’s much verification in real life, either…

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Election Humor

Techmeme’s political sister-site, Memeorandum is full of speculation on how the New Hampshire polls could be so wrong. As usual, conspiracy theories abound, amongst them speculation on the role Diebold’s voting machines  played in the results.  I’m not joining the speculation, nor can I completely ignore it; after all, we’re hearing about voting machine problems all the time, several states decertified them… but I simply don’t have enough facts to take sides in this debate (although I wrote about the issue in the past)  That said, a little laugh does not hurt … and you have to admit these posters are just hilarious:

 

There’s more where they come from: Diebold Variations, (c)2004-06 Rand Careaga/salamander.eps.

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Happy New Year

The Land of Oz is already in 2008. Too bad they ring in the new year with a controversy over government censorship. Good intentions aside, letting Big Brother grow on people is never a good idea. Governments can not, and should not take over the family’s responsibility. It’s a slippery road… governments by their very nature tend to expand: porn filtering today, political views tomorrow – we know where it leads.

If you are a parent, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, YOU (and not the government) have the joy and responsibility of bringing the children to a safe and better world. That’s my parting thought for 2007, and I wish you a prosperous, peaceful, Happy New Year with a shot of the NYE fireworks from the beautiful city of Sydney:

(photo credit: Christopher Chan)

Update: enjoy this video of the Sydney NYE 2007/08 Fireworks (it’s a two-part clip, please wait a few seconds at the end of the first):

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2.0 in Argentina

Vinnie talks about The Web 2.0 Confusion Cycle. There’s a 2.0 of everything.. we’re used to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0… next week there’s a Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. But if you think that’s stretching it, wait … here’s the Sex 2.0 Conference.

So, in the spirit of “everything 2.0”, I claim Evita 2.0, before someone else does:smile_wink

First lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner swept to victory in Argentina’s presidential vote on Sunday to become the first woman elected to lead the country, television exit polls showed. (Reuters)

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Windows-less Computers? Is it Really a Good Idea?

CNet reports that “the Globalization Institute, a Brussels-based European Union think tank, has recommended the EU require all PCs to be sold without preloaded operating systems such as Microsoft Windows.”

The recommendation is for PCs and Operating Systems to be sold separately, breaking Microsoft’s monopoly, increasing competition. I’m not exactly a Microsoft-fan, in fact just recently responded to Robert Scoble who asked: Why doesn’t Microsoft get the love?:

…just look at the examples above. There are a lot more. They all show a corporate culture that does not have the customer in focus. It’s hard to love such a company, no matter how great many of the individual employees are.

So, I guess it’s time to celebrate, the EU would finally break the monopoly. And we’ll be free to buy our hardware, OS, Software all separately, trying to get it all work together. No big deal … after all, no-one ever had to hassle with non-working device drivers even with the pre-installed, pre-configured systems? But wait, it gets better:

There is no reason why computer operating systems could not follow the same model as computer hard drives and processors, which comply with standards that allow for broad compatibility as well as competition in the market.

Now, this is a pretty poor analogy: as far as I know, the hard drive and processor come installed in the computer – or are they suggesting the EU mandate unbundling those, too? We could just buy the PC components separately, and assemble it ourselves. Hey, I have a friend who never buys complete systems, he loves building them. Oh, and he fixes his car, too.

But me, well, I happen to be the lazy consumer type, expecting these things to work out-of-the-box. Preferably one box. Answering my own questions: yes, selling windows-less computers is probably a good idea, but only to the extent there is a market demand for them. Certainly not mandated by governments.

Related posts: Michael Gartenberg, Geek Speaker, BetaNews, TECH.BLORGE.com , Macsimum News

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Iraqi WMD are Found After All – in New York

It doesn’t get more bizarre then this: Iraqi chemical weapons were discovered, of all places, in the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in downtown Manhattan.

Apparently they were brought back from Iraq after the previous war, stashed away in storage and forgotten. They were now rediscovered only as the Comission were closing their offices. (full story: The New York Times)

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VP Cheney: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire

I’ve never thought I would agree with Dick Cheney in anything, but in this video he is right:

Too bad he said that in 1994 …

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Sunday Morning Newsbytes

China: 20,000 police surveillance cameras will be installed in the city of Shenzhen, reports the New York Times. But that’s not all:

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.


Germany
: A so far unpublished Stasi order was found from 1973, explicitly ordering East-German border guards to shoot citizens trying to escape:

Do not hesitate with the use of a firearm, including when the border breakouts involve women and children, which the traitors have already frequently taken advantage of,” the order instructed.

Happy Sunday, everyone.

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"American Taxpayers are Paying you to Stonewall…"

This does not require any comment – White House deputy political director Scott Jennings, dodging  Sen. Patrick Leahy’s questions.  smile_zipit

 

 

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NASA’s Bad Hair Day: Drinking, Sabotage, Theft

NASA is having a certified Bad Hair Day: Sabotage, Drunk Cosmonauts, Theft – what else should we expect?

Several sources reported that a computer that is supposed to fly aboard shuttle Endeavour in less than two weeks, was sabotaged.

A NASA panel reported that drunk astronauts were allowed to fly despite warnings about their alcohol consumption. I guess no cops can catch them for DUI up there.

Compared to this the loss of $94M in office equipment is just petty theft. Here’s my favorite explanation, this one referring to a missing laptop, valued $4,265:

This computer, although assigned to me, was being used on board the International Space Station. I was informed that it was tossed overboard to be burned up in the atmosphere when it failed.

Your tax money at work. smile_sarcastic

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