Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Diebold Wow, this is difficult to sort out. I will give it my best shot. There are two parties: , A person investigating the voting machine industry and Diebold, Inc.  a contractor that provides and services touch screen electronic voting machines. The investigator (think Cathy Bates character from Primary Colors), found a whole ton of Diebold memos that seemed to indicate that the voting machines were incredibly unreliable and insecure. She posted them on her web site. Diebold threatened her ISP and her ISP removed the files. I love the google cache because all the stuff taken down can be found there:  I have a really tough time believing that all the information on her web site is true. But, if even 10 percent of it is true, then I wouldn't want my elections handled by this company. So here we are again back at truth. After watching Capturing the Friedmans, renting Rashomon, and thinking about how we can never know the truth because human flaws get in the way, I started to wonder if there was some kind of book I could read about the nature of truth. Turns out, there is an entire branch of science devoted to the subject. It is called Philosophy. More later. 8:03:45 PM    comment []

Tihs stie has a seblamcrr taht pceuodrs rbeaalde slabemrcd stcneeens alaiuctlaotmy Garet for aidnvoig Jhon Ahcrofst and his amry of sponos   This site has another scrambler and a discussion of how cryptographically secure this method would be. 12:39:51 PM    comment []

David Walker, Comptroller General This guy is my new hero.  David Walker is the United States Comptroller General.  He's like our accounting cop, the guy who watches the deficit while we sleep and chases it down endless dark corridors.   I heard some of his speech on the radio last week when he spoke at National Press Club.   The figures he threw out, about how we owe 8 trillion bucks, or $24,000 each or whatever, that was bad enough, but he made the coffee squirt of my nose on I-94 when he said, the U.S government differs from Enron in that it has the power to TAX.  That scared me to the depths of my soul.  For a moment, I visualized the city without the topcoat of deficit financing.    Bridges and water towers rusted, road side plantings disintegrated.  Cell phones and onboard GPS units decayed UBIK-style into vacuum tubed monstrosities.     I can't find the audio version yet, but a PDF transcript of his speech is available. 12:15:49 PM    comment []