Avi Rubin vs. Diebold

by

Avi Rubin, one of the primary authors of a highly critical look at Diebold’s electronic voting machines, decided to answer some of his critics, put his money where his mouth is, and spend a day as an election judge, working with the very machines about which he had expressed strong security concerns. In his very interesting recap of his day, he admits that some of his concerns may not be as much of a worry as he thought — but others may be far worse.

In our paper, we described how the smartcards used by these machines had no cryptography on them, and we made the widely criticized claim that a teenager in a garage could manufacture smartcards and use them to vote 20 times. I now believe that this particular attack is not a real threat — at least not in the primary I worked today. […] In general, multiple voting attacks during the election are not likely to work in a precinct such as the one where I worked.

[…]

There were also some security issues that I found to be much worse than I expected. […] The security risk I saw was that Diebold had designated which machine would be the zero machine, and at one point, all of the vote tallies were loaded onto that one machine in memory. That would be the perfect point to completely change the tallies. There is no need to attack all of the machines at a precinct if someone could tamper with the zero machine.

[…]

I continue to believe that the Diebold voting machines represent a huge threat to our democracy. I fundamentally believe that we have thrown our trust in the outcome of our elections in the hands of a handful of companies (Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S) who are in a position to control the final outcomes of our elections. I also believe that the outcomes can be changed without any knowledge by election judges or anyone else. Furthermore, meaningful recounts are impossible with these machines.

I also believe that we have great people working in the trenches and on the front lines. These are ordinary people, mostly elderly, who believe in our country and our democracy, and who work their butts off for 16 hours, starting at 6 a.m. to try to keep the mechanics of our elections running smoothly. It is a shame that the e-voting tidal wave has a near hypnotic effect on these judges and almost all voters. I believe that after today’s experience, I am much better equipped to make the arguments against e-voting machines with no voter verifiability, but I also have a great appreciation for how hard it is going to be to fight them, given how much voters and election officials love them.

(via Jason Kottke)

Omoshiroi kedo, kankei ga nai

by

Two Japanese phrases I need to remember (and possibly eventually learn to pronounce…):

Omoshiroi kedo, kankei ga nai.
Interesting, but nothing to do with me.
Missetsuna kankei ga aru.
I’m intimately related to this.

Both found in the midst of Jonathon Delacour’s return to weblogging, wherein he explores some of the dissatisfaction that has been creeping through many weblogs of late, and reminds us that there’s more to all this than just the echo chamber.

…the spirit of this thing we were all so in love with—which for me, in its best moments, has always been a celebration of the beauty and sadness of everyday life—is indestructible (as long as the dabs of grit keep seeping into the oyster shells).

Training fun

by

My current employer has a set of required training courses that all employees have to take, ranging from the standard sexual harassment training to machine-specific courses. Not a terribly big deal, generally.

Except right now, when I’m working my way through a course on Internet Explorer — a course that has an expected time to finish of three and one half hours. I just learned what an “address bar” is, what a “link” is and what happens when I click on it, and how to resize and move a browser window around on my screen.

I think I can feel my brain dribbling out of my ears.

On the bright side, these courses at least allow you to turn off the audio narration, so I can just click through the steps as quickly as possible. Hopefully, this will allow me to finish in something less than the expected time.

[Update:]{.underline}

A quick clarification on one issue that was pointed out to me. The training sessions offer audio narration, but even when you turn that off, all steps must be followed before one can advance through the course; after the course, there is a quiz to ensure that the testee has retained the information given. While turning off the audio allowed me to progress at a far faster rate than I could have otherwise, I didn’t entirely skip or disregard the training. I also passed the quiz with flying colors — yay me! :)

Now that I’m done whining, it’s back to training, where I’m currently learning all about how to search for information on the ‘net via MSN Search and Yahoo!

Wheeeeeee!

(Of course, the really ironic part to all this is that it’s web based training. On how to use the web. Hilarity ensues.)

The movie alphabet quiz

by

This is really, really evil — identify the movies whose logos were used to create this alphabet.

So far, I’ve got A, B, D, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, V, W, Y, and Z (mouse over each letter to see the answer).

I’m missing C, E, F, J, O, S, T, U, and X, and it’s driving me up the wall…some of them look so familiar.

(via D, who deserves a special circle of hell for subjecting me to this) ;)

I’m 100 percent British!

by

I'm 100 percent British!

Jolly good, wot! Anyone for tennis? That’ll be ten ponies, guv. You’re the epitome of everything that is english. Yey :) Hoist that Union Jack!

How British are you?
This quiz was made by alanna

Incidentally, I think I’m going to have to come up with some special prize for the first ‘net quiz I run across that gives you “Put this in your blog!” code that is actually well-written, doesn’t use unnecessary tables, properly opens and closes paragraph tags, uses proper break tags (<br />, not <br>), and so on. I always have to re-write the tag soup they give me before I can post the results here…

Getting closer!

by

It’s still not Seattle, but it’s at least closer than San Francisco…

PORTLAND, ORE. – It has happened in Massachusetts, San Francisco and now it is happening in Portland.

The Multnomah County Clerk’s office plans to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples starting tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. at their office located at 501 S.E. Hawthorne.

Oregon’s marriage law states that marriage is a civil contract entered by males who are at least 17 years old and females who are at least 17 years old.

A statement issued by the county said simply: “Based on a legal opinion released today by the County Attorney, a majority of the Board of County Commissioners supports a policy change to allow the county to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.”

Congratulations, all you Portlanders!

(many thanks to Pops for pointing this out in the comments here!)

Toilet tourism

by

Ever wanted to use a public toilet? Usually, they’re items to be avoided, not sought out. Seattle looks to be trying to change that, though, with our new high-tech public lavatories…

The doors open and close like those on an elevator. You step in. They softly seal shut behind you.

“Welcome to Seattle’s public toilet,” says the kind of voice you might hear as you board a space ride at Disneyland.

[…]

Tour the potties at Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, Hing Hay Park in the International District, Victor Steinbrueck Park at Pike Place Market, Waterfront Park at Pier 59 and the 1800 block of Broadway on Capitol Hill.

I just may have to check one of these things out at some point…just because. ;)

(via Pops)