Every Macintosh laptop owner (like me) needs to know one thing purely by memory: resetting your laptop's PRAM. If your computer starts behaving very strangely... you'll want to first try resetting your PRAM according to the instructions here on the Apple site "Macintosh: How to Reset PRAM and NVRAM" (for Powerbook and iBook owners, "PowerBook and iBook: Resetting Power Management Unit (PMU)").
You'll need to commit these instructions to memory as you may not be able to consult the Internet for your answer when strange problems strike... read on for what just happened to me and how I recovered.
What's PRAM? Unless you're a tech-savvy type, don't worry about it. But, know that it includes some basic information that allows your laptop to boot (read: that means it's important stuff!). If you are a tech-savvy type... check this OSXFAQ entry out.
From time to time, you should "reset your PRAM" to keep your computer in good health. The information stored in PRAM can change... whether due to chance or a bad piece of code freakin' out... this makes the behavior of your laptop unpredictable.
For example, I came home from a meeting and started up my laptop... but something was different... I couldn't tell what at first. Then, I noticed that the little screw at the very top of the keyboard was lit up. That was weird. It had never done that before. Then when I tried to type, the type on the screen was totally wacky with only one out of five keys actually printing to the screen. For example, typing "joebeone" came across as "6*1." That was fucked up!
Okay, I thought, "I can solve this problem by borrowing a skill I learned from my PC days: I can reboot." (My Mac never needs rebooting, of course) After booting, at the login screen, I typed my login name and... HOLY SHIT!... the keyboard was still misbehaving. Doing the same kind of weird-substituion thing... I couldn't even friggin' log-in!!!
All the nights of nursing my Linux box in undergrad. came rushing back... I remembered the nights of frustration... the week or so before my specific problem could be diagnosed and trouble-shot by crack mailing lists like bug-grub (for GRUB) and the like. This was not happening. My Mac was jacked.
Then I remembered... what about resetting the PRAM? I did that once and it solved something... maybe I should try that again.
And, exactly five minutes later, I had reset my PRAM and my computer had booted... without the little screw at the top of the keyboard lit up! I retried the log-in screen... and it was fixed!
Every Mac user should know how to reset their PRAM. If the contents of your laptop are as dear to you as mine are to me... you might even want to get it tattooed somewhere you can consult easily; that is, not on your ass, wise-guy!).
Happy new year... next up on N.Q.B. ... my top ten album list of 2003 (as will be in Clink)... I guarantee that most of you will know exactly zero of the bands... but I do my research, I know what is good and what I like... maybe you'll like some of it.
You saw it here first, folks... AC Transit seems to be testing fuel cell buses in the East Bay... or, at least, buses that have signs on them that say they're powered by fuel cell technology. (the pictures below were taken at Durant and Telegraph near the UC Berkeley campus)
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This sorta sums up my feelings towards the holiday season this year... overhyped and gussied-up.
Maybe... maybe not. I'm still pissed I haven't been able to connect my Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3 to my Mac... as soon as Apple came out with the iPod, the relationship between the companies got colder than sitting naked in a bathtub full of ice burning money. Those bastards... I've got 20GB of music that will never see my Mac or Musicmobs!
I've slowly started to become more aware of social networks... I think my first introduction was the oracle of Bacon... then I come to find myself at UC Berkeley's SIMS department with folks like zeph who are up to their eyeballs in social network research.
Now I've found a social network that I'm actually willing to contribute to... imagine that. Specifically, another SIMS student, Parker, turned me on big time to Musicmobs... it's a site where any iTunes user can upload and share their iTunes library XML file[1]. Why is this so cool? Because you can -- at the click of a mouse -- see what other people that like what you like, like. Further, you can browse their librarys and see what they like that you may not have a clue about. You can leave comments for people about other things they may like... in short, this is exactly the community that any self-respectiing listener of music should be part of.
To see what I'm listening to... check me out here: joebeone.
Why am I willing to contribute to this social network and not others? Because I firmly believe that music is an inseparable part of one's soul... what you listen to and the extent to which you research and seek out artists that move your booty is a big part of how you think, behave and interact. Other networks seem so contrived... musicmobs is something from which I feel I get an instantly beneficial network effect.
[1] If you have iTunes, go to "File" -> "Export Library" and upload the resulting .xml file to musicmobs
Two cool things from Yuri... Adding geourls to Movable Type (duly noted by zeph a/k/a danah) and a slick CDDB-like PDF citation database.
The Geourl ability in Movable Type allows you to let people know from what latitude and longitude you're posting. The PDF database, "pdfdb", aims to be a CDDB for PDF files... that is, all you have to do is query the pdfdb and it will return the citation information for that file (in BIBTEX or XML [If you don't know what either of these are, feel free to continue to enter citations manually in your papers!])... this is very handy if you have trouble organizing your citations and use PDF files a lot.
Decatur Jones has given PJ at Groklaw permission to publish their recent analysis of SCO's financial future. Here's a great excerpt that puts recent news in perspective in a clear, cogent manner:
"Our major concern has still not been addressedWe believe SCOs latest claim will have limited impact on end-users
contemplating purchase of a SCOSource license. Recall that these are
the licenses that allow end-users to use Linux without fear of
litigation for potential violation of SCOs intellectual property
rights. One of our ongoing criticisms of SCO is that they have
provided little clear evidence of copyright infringement. If
IP-violations do exist then we believe SCO will need to provide more
convincing evidence or produce a court victory to win significant
IP-related licensing revenue. As we see it, the fact that only three
to four customers have signed up to date supports this assertion.New claims provide greater specificity
Yesterday in conjunction with its earnings release, SCO announced that
it would send notice to 6000 Unix licensees of potential Linux
infringement issues and ask for certification from the various
licensees that they were protecting SCOs intellectual property. The
letters also contained a list of 65 files that SCO claimed were in
Linux and infringed their copyrights....but still not the clear-cut enough to win end-users
The files listed were generally what are known as header files that
define certain variables. For example, a problem with a input/output
device like a mouse might produce an error called EIO for Input-Output
Error. This in itself is not proprietary. What SCO is claiming is
proprietary is assigning EIO as error code 4. The assignment of
certain values to variables is what allows interoperability between
different software programs so changing these codes could be
burdensome. Whether or not SCO can claim EIO=4 as proprietary is
disputed."
This is just one example of the high quality of images that the newly renamed Spitzer Space Telescope (a/k/a Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility) has recently produced:
See this Diebold press release.
The skinny:
Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI), is announcing a complete restructuring of the way the company handles qualification and certification processes for its software, hardware and firmware. This restructuring includes the creation of an executive-level position dedicated to meeting compliance and certification requirements. "We are committed to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the procedures we employ to address certification issues, and to communicate with the respective governing and certification authorities and our customers," said Bob Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems.[...]
read on for specifics...
[...]The following actions will be taken immediately to improve compliance:
Creating Compliance and Certification Officer Position
DESI is reorganizing how it administers qualification and certification processes internally. A new department, headed by a Compliance and Certification Officer, will have oversight for all compliance and certification responsibilities. In the past, these responsibilities were managed on a regional basis because of the geographical diversity of our customer base.
Immediate Compliance Review of all Software, Firmware and Hardware
DESI has instituted a thorough internal compliance review of all hardware, firmware and software across its customer network covering more than 30 states. The Compliance and Certification Officer has direct oversight responsibility for the review.
Formalize Compliance and Certification Process
All issues concerning qualification and certification compliance will be administered by the Compliance and Certification office. DESI has implemented stringent internal controls and procedures that formalize the compliance processes it employs with the respective governing and certification authorities and its customers. This will include specific procedures to manage requests for upgrades from customers.
Clarifying Notification and Certification Requirements with Customers and States
DESI is drafting new provisions for all current and future contracts that will specifically delineate duties and responsibilities related to notification, qualification and certification requirements for upgrades, product changes, etc. These provisions will apply to all upgrades whether required by state law or regulation, or requested by one of its customers.
[...]
As reported by the Independent, Cheryl Stearns plans to skydive from 25 miles (130,000 ft or 39,640 m) up! Her mission is not just for glory against her competitors (Michel Fournier (France) and Rodd Millner (Australia)):
"Shuttle crews do not have much time to prepare for bail-out emergencies," said Ms Stearns. "Our mission will be to help researchers understand how pressure suits, and humans, react at 130,000ft. Nothing has been tested above 102,800ft."
The last guy to do this was US Air Force Colonel Joseph Kittinger in 1960. I've got a great research paper somewhere where his jump is discussed from a physics-point of view... it turns out that if you enter the atmosphere going very fast, you asymptotically approach terminal velocity from above... instead of what we normally experience where one asymptotically approaches terminal velocity from below.
According to this press release, UC Berkeley had 33,076 enroll in Fall of 2003 (23,206 undergraduates and 9,870 graduates)
The uber-techie Yuri has pointed out that Movable Type displays commentors email addresses by default. Even with the little bit of obfuscation that MT employs (which is ineffective in the current spam arms race), this opens up commentors to tons of spam.
So, if you enable comments in MT, it is your duty to make sure that email addresses are not displayed (the following will display commentors websites, not their email addresses... this is adapted from this post by Dan Hersam at Admist a tangled web):
1) Log-in to your blog in Movable Type.
2) Click on the "Templates" button on the left of your screen.
3) Scroll down and find the "Edit comment listing template" button and click it.
4) This is the small hard part: Find the part of the template a ways down that says:
<$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect="1"$>5) Delete the spam_protect and add a show_email so that it looks like this:
<$MTCommentAuthorLink show_email="0"$>6) Save the template.
I just felt the weirdest earthquake... after living in California for a few years, you're bound to feel one or two small ones. This one felt like something exploded very far away (so that I couldn't hear the explosion) and the subsequent blast wave very briefly (much less than one second) rattled my apartment complex. I checked the USGS' Latest Quake Info page and sure enough, it was a magnitude 3.1 quake. Here's a picture... and, for reference, I live right smack dab in the middle of that red square! (click on the image below for a larger picture that will pop-up in a new window... or click here).
Two patents, two important technologies: streaming and web applets. One of the patent bad guys is my own institution, University of California. From The Age in a story, "The harsh reality of royalties":
Two cases in the United States this year highlight a dilemma which over the next decade could redraw the IT industry map. One is the upholding of a patent filed by the University of California, with an award for $US520 million ($A700 million) in royalties. This was for embedded applets in webpages and is still under appeal. The other case involves an intellectual property (IP) company hitting US universities with royalty claims for using streaming video, even though no action has been taken since their first patent was filed - back in 1992.
A great summary of a recent Umberto Eco talk called "Vegetal and Mineral Memory: The Future of Books" has been posted on kuro5hin.org (which is a massively open source, peer-reviewed news article site). A particularly choice quote:
Grammars, dictionaries and encyclopaedias are systems: by using them you can produce all the texts you like. But a text itself is not a linguistic or an encyclopaedic system. A given text reduces the infinite or indefinite possibilities of a system to make up a closed universe... A text castrates the infinite possibilities of a system. The Arabian Nights can be interpreted in many, many ways, but the story takes place in the Middle East and not in Italy, and it tells, let us say, of the deeds of Ali Baba or of Scheherazade and does not concern a captain determined to capture a white whale or a Tuscan poet visiting Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.All these physically moveable texts give an impression of absolute freedom on the part of the reader, but this is only an impression, an illusion of freedom. The machinery that allows one to produce an infinite text with a finite number of elements has existed for millennia, and this is the alphabet. Using an alphabet with a limited number of letters one can produce billions of texts, and this is exactly what has been done from Homer to the present days. In contrast, a stimulus-text that provides us not with letters, or words, but with pre-established sequences of words, or of pages, does not set us free to invent anything we want. We are only free to move pre-established textual chunks in a reasonably high number of ways.
For a journalist, Bev Harris sure as hell lacks tact... for example here is the executive summary (no permalinks means we can't link to the damn thing directly!) of yesterday's big announcement:
We’ve got the state election director misstating when versions were certified, somebody at the secretary of state’s office signing off on software with no NASED number, and when we try to find out what software is actually authorized, we get the buffalo shuffle. We’ve got a convicted drug dealer printing our ballots, a 23-count embezzler programming our voting system, and our absentee ballots are being funneled through a private company that hires mainly immigrants but also people straight out of prison.We’ve now documented 10 states that are using unauthorized software, and internal memos that indicate that five Diebold programmers uploaded these unauthorized programs, knowing that this was not allowed.
I haven't had the chance to read the documents she has prepared... you might want to if you've got a minute: one, two, three.
From the San Jose Mercury News, "Voting machine maker dinged":
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Tuesday that Diebold Elections Systems could lose the right to sell electronic voting machines in California after state auditors found the company distributed software that had not been approved by election officials.The auditors reported that voters in 17 California counties cast ballots in recent elections using software that had not been certified by the state. And voters in Los Angeles County and two smaller counties voted on machines installed with software that was not approved by the Federal Election Commission.
[...]
Diebold President Bob Urosevich told the six members of the Voting Systems Panel, which advises Shelley, that his company had been negligent in notifying the state about changes in its software. He explained the lapse as a result of conflicting state and federal certification processes.
Karl Dolk, of the auditor R&G, said he and two other independent consultants spent two weeks examining the hardware and software used by the 17 California counties who are Diebold customers. None of the counties was using state-certified versions of the election management software to tally votes. In addition, software used in Los Angeles, Trinity and Lassen counties had not been federally certified.
From RAIN, "Webcaster group to fight bill expanding RIAA power":
The EnFORCE Act would expand the existing antitrust exemption to cover all compulsory mechanical licenses under section 115 of the Copyright Act. Under the act, record companies and music publishers would enjoy greater antitrust protection in negotiating royalty rates for new forms of physical music products. The bill was introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah, pictured at left), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and cosponsored by Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and John Cornyn (R-TX).Fighting passage of the bill may prove tough, however, as one provision of it is designed to step up the battle against online pedophiles and sexual predators.
Doc on presenting: "The Problem With Presentations"
I've got a lot to blog... so I'll be light on the commentary.
Sun will be funding the second generation of SETI@Home, which will fit into a new technology called Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). This aims to open the doors to inexpensive, shared computing to a diverse range of academic computing projects, including the search for aliens. This also means participants will be able to share their computing resources among different projects.
The Bush administration cannot ignore this: The American Geophysical Union -- the pre-eminent society for geologists, earth and planetary scientists -- has released this consensus statement entitled, "Human Impacts on Climate". Here's the instrumental quote (this is a consensus statement of approximately 40,000 scientists people!):
Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.
Read on for a few more choice quotes...
A particular concern is that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide may be rising faster than at any time in Earth's history, except possibly following rare events like impacts from large extraterrestrial objects.It is virtually certain that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will cause global surface climate to be warmer.
AGU also urges that the scientific basis for policy discussions and decision-making be based upon objective assessment of peer-reviewed research results.
AGU is committed to improving the communication of scientific information to governments and private organizations so that their decisions on climate issues will be based on the best science.
The global climate is changing and human activities are contributing to that change.
Here's the weekly traffic to all my pobox.com/~jhall/ pages... I wonder who the hell is reading this shit, anyway?
From volokh... I can't seem to read Eugene's long entries. not ... enough ... brain ... power. That's why this one was perfect for me:
Texas is one of only three states (Colorado and Kansas are the others) that actually has the word "dildo" occurring in its state statutes (Penal Code sec. 43.21, part of the definition of vibrator).
Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson (running for SoS of Washington) have called a press release for tomorrow as they plan to reveal that "A new security concern has surfaced which may eclipse the software holes in the Diebold voting system found by Johns Hopkins and Rice University scientists in July."
Read the full press conference announcment below (gives a location for the event if you happen to be in Seattle tomorrow). A few quotes especially stand out:
These security breaches affect both the optical scan systems (fill-in-the-dot or draw-the-line) and touch screen voting systems, and may also indicate significant security problems with absentee voting procedures.
Read: this is a problem with Diebold's GEMS voting database (If you'd like to play with one of these files, see this blog entry of mine).
[...] Whereas electronic voting concerns have focused on complex issues like cryptographic security and computer source code, the new security flaws uncovered by Harris and Stephenson are more serious and also easier to explain.
I'm not sure what this is really. Any speculation out there? (Feel free to comment below). It could be the password to all Diebold GEMS database files, or a networking problem...
...either way, this sounds good for the verified-voting cause. Why? because that's been consistently the hardest part about getting people to care about this problem. As is so true with much in the digital age, it's a pain in the ass to explain the heights of nerd- and geekdom to regular people like my friend joe six-pack... even in the voting context, which should be the easiest to get people to care about.
"What we have are two intertwined security breaches which deserve immediate attention from the U.S. Congress," says Stephenson. "We need to address procedural safeguards as soon as possible to put a halt to these problems and prevent them from ever happening again."A 20-page dossier will provide the specific U.S. locations affected, as well as the details on multiple security breaches which may have compromised the integrity of at least two dozen elections.
Hmmm... this seems to be related to cryptography or networking or both. I wonder... you gotta love the suspense.
Full text of press conference announcement:
______ [FWD- original message ] ________ Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 08:59:31 -0800 (PST) From: Andy Stephenson Subject: NEWS CONFERENCE - BREAKING To:Contact:
Bev Harris
Bevharriscontact@aol.comOr
Andy Stephenson
stephenson_for_sos@yahoo.comNEWS CONFERENCE - BREAKING - Voting Systems Security Concerns Rise to
New LevelPress Conference in Seattle at 2 p.m. Tuesday December 16
16 DEC 2003, Seattle WA -- This is of national interest. A new
security concern has surfaced which may eclipse the software holes in
the Diebold voting system found by Johns Hopkins and Rice University
scientists in July. Bev Harris, author of "Black Box Voting" and Andy
Stephenson, democratic candidate for Washington secretary of state,
have uncovered new holes in the electoral system in King County and in
as many as 14 additional states.These security breaches affect both the optical scan systems
(fill-in-the-dot or draw-the-line) and touch screen voting systems,
and may also indicate significant security problems with absentee
voting procedures.At the Tuesday press conference, Harris and Stephenson will distribute
a packet of documents to support their allegations. Whereas electronic
voting concerns have focused on complex issues like cryptographic
security and computer source code, the new security flaws uncovered by
Harris and Stephenson are more serious and also easier to explain.
Because the subject matter is sensitive, reporters will want copies of
the original documents to substantiate the allegations, and these will
be released at the news conference.The news conference will be held in Seattle at 2 p.m. in a location to
be disclosed Monday morning on the front page of this web site:
www.BlackBoxVoting.org [It's actually listed below. -jlh]"This information is significant enough to merit a trip to Seattle for
members of the press who don^Yt live here," says Harris. It affects
four counties in Washington State and locations in Florida, Georgia,
Kansas, Kentucky, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas,
Maryland and Virginia."What we have are two intertwined security breaches which deserve
immediate attention from the U.S. Congress," says Stephenson. "We need
to address procedural safeguards as soon as possible to put a halt to
these problems and prevent them from ever happening again."A 20-page dossier will provide the specific U.S. locations affected,
as well as the details on multiple security breaches which may have
compromised the integrity of at least two dozen elections.Press conference location:
Seattle Labor Temple
1800 First Ave.
Seattle, WA 98181
206-441-7582
The EFF has added a new feature to it's EFFector newsletter along the lines of the EFF staff calendar: The EFF court Docket. Read on for the docket.
* EFF Court Docket~ January 12 -
Newmark v. Turner
U.S. District Court, Central California
225 East Temple street
Los Angeles, CA.
10:00 a.m.~ February 3 -
MGM v. Grokster
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
125 South Grand Avenue
Pasadena, CA.
9:00 a.m.~ February 9
OPG v. Diebold
U.S. District Court, Northern California
280 South 1st street
San Jose, CA.
9:00 a.m.
I've got tons to do today so this will be curt. Courtesy of the amazing Jim March, an authentic, legitimate Diebold GEMS database (*.GBF, Global Backup File) file has surfaced during court discovery in Shelby County, Tennessee. Here is the file for those of you with DB skills:
http://www.equalccw.com/memphis%20municipal%20election%20090603final.gbf
Here are some practical notes if you plan on playing with the file:
http://www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html
Note: I'm not sure if you can legitimately claim DMCA 1201 exemption for bypassing the password protection in this file... I welcome comments as I haven't had much time to work with or think about this.
I, for one, am going to attempt to minimize my use of the bullet-point slide presentation. Read more about how PowerPoint is making digital civilization dumber and probably contributed to the downing of the shuttle in this column by the NY Times' Clive Thompson entitled, "PowerPoint makes you dumb":
PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: December 14, 2003In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ''slideware'' program.
[...]
PowerPoint is the world's most popular tool for presenting information. There are 400 million copies in circulation, and almost no corporate decision takes place without it. But what if PowerPoint is actually making us stupider?
This year, Edward Tufte -- the famous theorist of information presentation -- made precisely that argument in a blistering screed called The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. In his slim 28-page pamphlet, Tufte claimed that Microsoft's ubiquitous software forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension. For example, the low resolution of a PowerPoint slide means that it usually contains only about 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading. PowerPoint also encourages users to rely on bulleted lists, a ''faux analytical'' technique, Tufte wrote, that dodges the speaker's responsibility to tie his information together. And perhaps worst of all is how PowerPoint renders charts. Charts in newspapers like The Wall Street Journal contain up to 120 elements on average, allowing readers to compare large groupings of data. But, as Tufte found, PowerPoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements. Ultimately, Tufte concluded, PowerPoint is infused with ''an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.''
[...]
That wascaly wabbit. I'll wager it will be exactly one week before someone attempts to break his ass out...
Just got this in an email... from the tireless Jody Holder.
Heller mandates Nevada become first state to require voter verifiable receipt for 2004 electionCarson City -- Secretary of State Dean Heller announced at news conferences today in Reno and Las Vegas his decision to purchase for all Nevada counties Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. In an unprecedented move, he also announced he is mandating a voter verifiable receipt printer be included on all newly purchased DRE machines for the 2004 election. In doing so, Heller becomes the first state election official to demand a voter verifiable receipt before the 2006 election. He added that all existing machines statewide must add the printer technology by 2006. Heller also read a proclamation decertifying all punch-card voting machines in Nevada as of September 1, 2004.
[...]
Here's a neat story entitled "Diebold e-mail discusses price gouging Maryland" from the Maryland Gazette that shows the Diebold email archive is proving more misdeeds (here are others). Apparently one email says that Diebold should charge Maryland "out the yin-yang" to fit already-purchased machines with the ability to produce a paper record for voter-verification.
The last quote from MD congressmember Karen S. Montgomery in the below excerpt is too funny: "I'd really like to have [yin-yang] explained to me anatomically, with the assumption that almost any place it would be would be painful." Here's the skinny:
Diebold e-mail discusses price gouging in Maryland
by Steven T. Dennis [Staff Writer]
Dec. 11, 2003ANNAPOLIS -- An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang," if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased.
The e-mail from "Ken," dated Jan. 3, 2003, discusses a (Baltimore) Sun article about a University of Maryland study of the Diebold system:
"There is an important point that seems to be missed by all these articles: they already bought the system. At this point they are just closing the barn door. Let's just hope that as a company we are smart enough to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules now and legislate voter receipts."
"Ken" later clarifies that he meant "out the yin-yang," adding, "any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive."
The e-mail has been cited by advocates of voter-verified receipts, who say estimates of the cost of adding printers -- as much as $20 million statewide -- have been bloated.
"I find it appalling," said Del. Karen S. Montgomery (D-Dist. 14) of Brookeville, who plans to file a bill mandating a voter-verified paper trail.
"I'd really like to have [yin-yang] explained to me anatomically, with the assumption that almost any place it would be would be painful," she said.
[...]
There's no telling what other information lies in that email archive that someone with an elections, software and political background could bring into perspective.
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They've done it... they've memorialized Eddan Katz's "Revolution is not an AOL keyword" poem by making it an official computer geek shirt. Too bad they couldn't go the extra step of making the links clickable! |
UPDATE (2003-12-16 16:00:29): The jinx shirt is now being advertised on Kuro5hin.org... which is a kick-ass, open source, peer-reviewed news source. Screenshot below.
Robert X. Cringely is right on with this second installment on voting technology (here's the first one). If you can't read the whole article, read this:
[...]My model for smart voting is Canada. The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off. They think we are crazy, and they are right.
Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as "scrutineers," are present all day at the voting place. If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers. To vote, you write an "X" with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box. Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate. If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home. If they don't, you do it again. Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology. The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale. In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours. Why does it take us 30 days or more?
[...]
We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines. Canada just prints ballots.
[...]
Word.
Two bands, one guitar lick. The Bands (pictures courtesy of Virgil Porter):
 Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater |  Gogogoairheart | For more of Virgil's pictures: GC&ST, GGGAH, others. |
What the hell am I talking about? I've been thinking a lot lately about how humans think... and information tools that might someday assist such thought. Specifically, I've become increasingly surprised at how much my brain works like a game of concentration. Remember that game? You'd take two identical card decks, lay them all out face down on the floor after shuffling them together, and then the object of the game was to turn over the same card from both decks for a match... the person that 'concentrates' harder and turns over more matches, wins.
Listening to my music collection turns out to be just such a game and I dare say I've found my first match. If you've got the bandwidth, download these two snipets of songs:
Glass Candy & the Shattered Theater Nite Nurses "Love, Love, Love" | GoGoGoAirheart Reaction Atria (Pts. 1 & 2) "Love My Life Hate My Friends" |
Those guitar licks are almost exactly the same! If AMG is to be believed (and I know at times, it is not), the Gogogoairheart album was out in 1998... a full five years before the Glass Candy album. It doesn't really matter, though... both these records are hot as hell and will get your booty movin'.
This started me thinking about what caused my brain to realize that these two licks were so similar and make the connection. So often I don't make such connections... I sit around saying, "jeez, I know I saw/heard/felt that before... but where?" I suspect my method of listening to digital music is the culprit... I don't listen to specific albums or tracks on purpose... I have one playlist with all my music that's massively shuffled by iTunes (few pieces of software actually have good shuffling algorithms). This allows me to listen to what I want if I'm in the mood and statistically speaking I eventually hear everything.
I suspect that listening to music like this sharpens your associative and recall skills. Of course, it would be nice if information tools existed that allowed me to do this with other materials... and not necessarily have to use my brain to make the connection. We need more tools that assist the human brain in the manner it thinks. I don't see a lot of those out there... tools like Google are increasingly changing how we think instead of allowing us to think more efficiently. So collegues, get on it!
Much news on the SCO v. IBM front. SCO has been ordered to produce evidence (code) within 30 days (more specifically, they have to answer IBM's interrogatories 1, 2, 4, 12 and 13... included below) and all other document discovery has been suspended until they do.
Another notable development as determined from a transcript from a Groklaw volunteer attendee (Cody) at today's hearing is that SCO will "be filing a copyright infringement case in a few weeks."
Oh, Yeah... almost forgot... Do any of the lawyers out there find it strange that SCO's legal team, Boies and Schiller LLP, now own 3% of SCO and are set to receive 20% of the proceeds from the settlement or of 'a sale of SCO during the pendancy of litigation'?
UPDATE (2003-12-06 09:24:12): I've included the text of the interrogatories SCO will be spending its holidays on below. (1, 2, 4, 12 and 13).
INTERROGATORY NO. 1:
Please identify, with specificity (by product, file and line of code, where
appropriate) all of the alleged trade secrets and any confidential or
proprietary information that plaintiff alleges or contends IBM misappropriated
or misused, including but not limited to as alleged in ¶ 105 of the Complaint.
INTERROGATORY NO. 2:
For each alleged trade secret of any confidential or proprietary information
identified in response to interrogatory No. 1, please identify: (a) all persons
who have or have had rights to the alleged trade secret or confidential or
proprietary information; (b) the nature and source of the rights; and (c) all
efforts by any persons to maintain the secrecy or confidentiality of the alleged
trade secrets and any confidential or proprietary information.
INTERROGATORY NO. 4:
For each alleged trade secret and any confidential or proprietary information
identified in response to Interrogatory No. 1, please describe, in detail, each
instance in which plaintiff alleges or contends that IBM misappropriated or
misused the alleged trade secret or confidential or proprietary information,
including but not limited to: (a) the date of the alleged misuse or
misappropriation; (b) all persons involved in any way in the alleged misuse or
misappropriation; (c) the specific manner in which IBM is alleged to have
engaged in misuse or misappropriation; and (d) with respect to any code or
method plaintiff alleges or contends that IBM misappropriated or misused, the
location of each portion of such code or method in any product, such as AIX, in
Linux, in open source, or in the public domain.
INTERROGATORY NO. 12:
Please identify, with specificity (by file and line of code), (a) all source
code and other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel,
any Linux operating sytem and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has
rights; and (b) the nature of plaintiff's rights, including but not limited to
whether and how the code or other material derives from UNIX.
INTERROGATORY NO. 13:
For each line of code and other materials identified in response to
Interrogatory No. 12, please state whether (a) IBM has infringed plaintiff's
rights, and for any rights IBM is alleged to have infringed, describe in detail
how IBM is alleged to have infringed plaintiff's rights; and (b) whether
plaintiff has ever distributed code or other material or otherwise made it
available to the public, as part of a Linux distribution or otherwise, and, if
so, the circumstances under which it was distributed or otherwise made
available, including but not limited to the product(s) in which it was
distributed or made available, and the terms under which is was distributed or
made available (such as under the GPL or any other license).
Interrogatories 1-9 are available here:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2003111102212930
12 and 13 come from here:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031205161348100#c31193
Buzz Aldrin displays the kind of thinking that NASA and the U.S. in general need more of in this Op-Ed in the NY Times entitled, "Fly Me to L1": collaborative and cooperative policy as opposed to pre-emptive and confrontational policy. He suggests two important middle-grounds:
A great quote from the Aldrin piece:
[...]Unfortunately, NASA has limited its $135 million orbital space plane development contracts to a few giants: proposals by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. As a result, the space agency has shut the door on the smaller, entrepreneurial companies that are responsible for some of the most innovative current thinking on space technology. The farther reaching scope of an L 1 effort calls for collaboration and competition — two qualities that should be part of the cultural change NASA pledged to undertake after loss of the Columbia.
In addition, NASA might even look at a new competitor as a possible partner. The modernized, Soyuz-like manned capsule that China sent into orbit in October is potentially safer and seems technologically more robust than the Russian version. Working jointly with China would not only fill a needed gap when America's agreement with Russia on using Soyuz runs out in 2006, but it would also make a potentially important political alliance. China and America are on the verge of a new space race — with economic competition expected from Japan, Europe and perhaps India — and it is better to start off with cooperation than with confrontation.
[...]
Chris Barton, the IT editor for the New Zealand Herald, delivers this story entitled, "Copyleft may become the new copyright". I'll post comments when I have time.
Diebold has started sending retraction letters to those of us C&D'd... I'll post mine when I get it.
UPDATE (2003-12-04 09:06:56): I've received my retraction letter and the text is posted below.
(via a preponderance of evidence via Tech Law Advisor)
Diebold Election Systems, Inc.
1611 Wilmeth Road
McKinnney, TX 75069
972 542-6000
fax 972 542-6044
www.dieboldes.com
December 3, 2003
Dear Ms. [UC Berkeley's listed copyright authority] Craig:
As President of Diebold Election Systems, Inc., I wish to inform you
that our company is withdrawing the notification recently issued under
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Diebold has decided not
to sue ISPs or their subscribers now or in the future for copyright
infringement for the non-commercial use of the materials posted to
date, even though the uses may not qualify as "fair use" under the
law.
From the outset, I want to emphasize that Diebold's overarching goal
is to assist voters in exercising their most fundamental
constitutional right: the right to vote. We believe that our touch
screen and other electronic voting technologies are a major leap
forward in helping more Americans vote with increased accuracy and
accessibility. Touch screen technology eliminates "overvoting" and
significantly reduces "undervoting." In addition, our touch screen
technology offers multi-lingual ballot capability and enables the
visually impaired to vote without assistance for the first time in
their lives.
We recognize that how America votes is a matter of intense public
interest, as it should be, and we support the electorate's right to
participate in an open and robust debate on that topic. I want to
assure you that my company's use of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act in response to the theft of internal information and development
materials does not diminish our commitment to the constitutional
values of our country.
No company-whether an ISP, a software developer, or any type of
company-wants its internal conversations openly broadcast, and I am
sure your internal business correspondence includes information
involving the unique capabilities and insights that you feel are
important to the successful operation of your company. The
correspondence between individuals within our company often contains
information concerning unique software, features and capabilities that
provide Diebold with a potential advantage in a competitive
marketplace. This type of information constitutes Diebold's work
product and important intellectual property.
With that background, here is what led to the current situation. In
January of this year, some software and other material was
inadvertently exposed through a website of a predecessor company. In
March, a hacker broke into one of our servers and stole a considerable
quantity of our documents including a significant archive of
information which is proprietary to Diebold. As you can imagine, the
issue for Diebold, as for any other company in a similar circumstance,
was what to do about the theft of its property in which it had a
copyright interest, especially given the ease and quickness with which
the stolen material could and did spread around the Internet.
In order to protect its intellectual property rights, Diebold chose to
notify ISPs, as expressly permitted by the DMCA, that stolen material,
in which Diebold has a copyright interest, was being hosted on or
linked to websites under the ISP's control. Although we believe our
legal position was and continues to be correct, we recognize that our
DMCA efforts have become the story, and may be influencing the debate
on how America's votes can be recorded and tallied most accurately.
To help refocus the public debate on that central issue, and
recognizing that a considerable amount of the stolen email archive is
now widely available on the Internet, Diebold has decided not to sue
ISPs or their subscribers for copyright infringement for the
non-commercial use of the materials. We are also withdrawing the DMCA
notifications previously sent to you and other ISPs.
In taking this action, we are underscoring Diebold's commitment not
only to provide the best voting systems in America, but to contribute
to a robust public debate on how to record and tally the vote most
accurately and efficiently. We welcome your input and suggestions
concerning how we as citizens can further enhance the election
process. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments
concerning our position.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Urosevich
President
Via Volokh... Barabara Streisand's lawsuit against the California Coastline project was thrown out (opinion) on first amendment grounds. This means I am less likely to be sued for this...
Go to Google, type "miserable failure" and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. See below for a screen shot of what I saw at 2003-12-03 08:01:18.
President Bush will soon announce a new U.S. space policy vision that has been a while in the coming since the Columbia accident. Unfortunately, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld seem to be the ones directing the efforts on the drafting of this plan. If the unofficial reports are to be believed, the language of the vision will follow much of what the U.S. military has been pushing in their policy documents.
SpaceRef has a great piece of insider reporting on this by Frank Sietzen, Jr. entitled "Bush to Charge NASA with Implementing Broad Space Vision to Dominate Cislunar Space"... some pertinent quotes:
[...]NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe will be tasked with leading the effort, aimed at presenting Vice President Dick Cheney and the president with a roadmap to what some are calling "renewed U.S. space dominance" during 2004.
[...]
The return to the Moon by U.S. astronauts possibly by the end of the next decade became "by default" the least expensive and risky of the paths proposed for the U.S. space program.
[...]
Military use of space and military test beds were also key elements in gaining acceptance of the renewed space plan. Testing of the Prometheus atomic rocket would also be a part of the plan.
The existing space shuttle fleet will play a crucial role in the plan by use of its heavy lifting capabilities in an unmanned form.
[...]
NASA's budget will annually rise "no more" than seven percent, beginning in 2006, according to the source.
[...]
Contrast that with quotes from this op-ed by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in the Washington Times entitled "NASA misses the mark":
[...]America is now at a vital crossroads, struggling with choices, but with no quality vision on which to base those decisions.
[...]
Even now, as despair is evident in our public-sector space program, the commercially-focused space sector is confident and gearing up.
[...]
Individuals like Burt Rutan, Dennis Tito and Elon Musk are pushing the boundaries, building affordable space hardware and investing where no investor has gone before. They are also changing the rules when it comes to the economics of space travel. If not dragged down by our own space bureaucracy, the new space entrepreneurs will no doubt make major advances toward affordable access to space. Their goals are not so grandiose: taking tourists into space and bringing them home alive. These private-sector endeavors will spawn spinoff technologies that will help our government efforts, especially in defense. There's a role reversal for you.
[...]
So, what must be done? Let's get government out of the way of space entrepreneurs and put in place policies that encourage such private-sector space initiatives.
[...]
The Clementine mission, brought about by a group of rebels in the space community, discovered evidence of water at lunar poles in 1996.The Lunar Prospector project demonstrated that commercial lunar exploration missions are feasible. With evidence of water on the moon, we can make oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for fuel. The Moon/Earth arena beckons us.Helium-3, a rare isotope found on Earth, is in abundant supply on the Moon.Some believe that this element may in the future provide the basis for a clean-burning fuel if and when fusion reactor technology becomes a reality.
So, let's quit talking about sending a person to Mars, and look a little closer at what we can do with water on the moon. Let us focus on this vast stretch of the near universe, and make sure we can use it to better the lives of our people and make them safer and more prosperous.
[...]
I must point out that the Clementine findings have been cast into serious doubt by a recent set of observations made with the Arecibo telescope. There is likely not ubiquitous water at the poles and anything that is there is in a permafrost form (from the study's abstract):
[...] We find that areas of the crater floors at the poles that are in permanent shadow from the Sun, which are potential cold traps for water or other volatiles, do not give rise to strong radar echoes like those associated with thick ice deposits in the polar craters on Mercury. Any lunar ice present within regions visible to the Arecibo radar must therefore be in the form of distributed grains or thin layers.
So, a good chunk of the rationale for Lunar activity has just dissappeared with further scientific investigation. Not to mention that Mars has dozens of other reasons for exploration... you might want to pick up a copy of Bob Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" if you aren't familiar with the case for Mars.
The one-and-only Paul Krugman (New York Times) gives the Diebold issue a stab in an article entitled "Hack the Vote":
[...]Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story — not as a potential political scandal.
This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting issues, like the Florida "felon purge" that inappropriately prevented many citizens from voting in the 2000 presidential election. The attitude seems to be that questions about the integrity of vote counts are divisive at best, paranoid at worst. Even reform advocates like Mr. Holt make a point of dissociating themselves from "conspiracy theories." Instead, they focus on legislation to prevent future abuses.
But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks. Indeed, given the intensity of partisanship these days, one suspects that small dirty tricks are common. For example, Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently announced that one of his aides had improperly accessed sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.
[...]
The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?
I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.
Well, Mr. Krugman, unfortunately it will probably take just what the title of your column suggests to get this on to front pages. Specifically, if someone were to hack the vote--modify the tally in some manner (and then prove it) or to unleash a virus specifically targeted at a vendor's election machines--in an important, national election, this would be bigger than the Florida 2000 fiasco. Unfortunately, this is likely only a manner of time... ho hum... poor democracy.
This article by Jan Libbenga at the Register reports that the U.S. is trying to affect the accuracy of the forthcoming European GPS--Galileo.
Talks are underway between the US and the European Union to ensure that the [Galileo] navigation satellite system will operate with - not interfere with - the present U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). In practice this would mean the US can jam frequencies if desired (without consulting the Europeans first), but it also wants control over the accuracy of the system for security purposes, according to Tagesschau. This would be a serious blow to the $3.7 billion project, which is designed to deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to the metre range - unprecedented for a publicly-available system.
Galileo is planned to be a civilian-controlled service with a commercial aspect. In order to make the business case, Galileo needs to offer improvements that normal GPS users (the U.S.'s GPS, that is) don't currently have. One of those is resolution... improved resolution could mean a lot for innovation in GPS-mediated activity. The U.S. is so security concerned that I am starting to believe that innovation and scientific rationality are the "war on terror's" most profound casualties.
There's a great article by Richard Shim on ZDNet that highlights some of the policy considerations for open (unencrypted) WiFi networks. It does a good job discussing some of the policy problems with open networks; that is, open intentionally or left open by default. Specifically:
Although Wi-Fi law is still largely unsettled in the United States and Canada, people who run open Wi-Fi hubs could conceivably be held accountable for activities carried out on their networks by unauthorized users, according to Joseph Burton, an attorney with law firm Duane Morris."Is it possible a home owner can be liable for a lack of security on a wireless network? Yes, if they are negligent in setting up security," Burton said.
[...]
That could pose a legal risk if someone were to suffer damages as a result of activities conducted on an open Wi-Fi hub, Burton said. Individuals that gain unauthorized access to a wireless network that's providing a broadband connection can not only download illegal material [e.g., copyright infringement near the tort end of the spectrum and downloading child pornography near the criminal end. -jlh], but they could also use a hijacked network to launch spam, distribute a virus or steal data from resources on the network. In all these case, it would look like the owner of the connection had performed the acts.
That may not be enough to trigger liability, counter other legal experts, who note that the law is still largely unformed. Internet service providers in the United States have long enjoyed some protection from lawsuits related to the activities of their customers, and courts might extend that same principle to cover Wi-Fi providers. Still, the providers might find themselves on the wrong side of the law in some cases--for example, if they refuse to secure their network after repeated attacks.
[...]
"Networking can still be a complicated process, and what we're trying to do first is make it as easy as possible for consumers to set up the networking," Eaton said. "Then they can work on enabling security."
I'm not so sure that last quote embodies much in the way of wisdom. It seems like saying, "We'll make sure that everyone in the world can pass on a disease before beefing up their immune systems." (I know, that's a pot-shot).
UPDATE (2003-12-01 14:42:28): Ernest Miller blogs about similar issues here.