The Longest Now

Aaron Brown on the scary prospect of using Diebold electronic voting machines in the upcoming recall election in Berkeley:

Berkeley uses the Diebold Accuvote DRE machine. Somehow the source code to these machines leaked onto the Internet… several well-respected security researchers took a look at it, and found it riddled with flaws. Without any access to the code, voters could vote multiple times, view partial election results, or even close the polling station. Poll workers could do far more damage. And the machine doesn’t authenticate the remote server when reporting results, meaning that an ISP on the path between the voting machine and the backend vote tabulator could manipulate ballots, results, etc. 

Pretty damn scary.

After Rubin’s paper came out, Diebold wrote a hasty hand-waving rebuttal, and then spent some time publicly ridiculing the academics who wrote the paper, hoping to mollify their clients.  As a result, they produced some incredible propaganda which includes, among other gems (emphasis mine):

It was most unusual to find the industry leader [Diebold] being discredited by a couple of Johns Hopkins University graduate students… [in] a report that directly contradicts information provided by Robyn M. Downs, elections administrator of Prince George’s County, Md., for a story on her implementation of electronic voting….  We believe Ms. Downs. Like most Black people in high-profile jobs, she is not in a position to make mistakes and survive.

I guess that settles it then.

Here’s what I’m wondering:

Mike up in Portland takes up the gauntlet and prepares to map every wireless node in his town.  You know the FCC is loving this.

1. Does anyone have a decent small yet sensitive antenna that I can borrow?


2. We have a GPS installed in the plane that should be able to connect to the laptop via an rs-232 port, But I’m wondering if a handheld is recommended that would work well with NetStumbler for Win98. If so, does anyone have one I can borrow?

In exchange I would definitely offer the logs and lat/long data to the project. I’m hoping that we can pick up almost every detectable wifi  etwork in the Portland area within 2 hours at 120MPH!

Man.  How often does this happen around here, I want to know.

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We have our box now; I took a candid shot as we popped in a new main board – a Soyo Dragon.  Now we have only to install and tweak our fave tools… if you have a fave tool, or some advanced build suggestions, let me know.

… controlled by, say, a program executed remotely via a browser.  highly frequency-dependent, suggesting a resonance effect; depends on the monitor; can induce a number of different reactions, including ptosis, clenched stomach, visual field distortion, and arousal.  An excerpt from the patent [one in a string of similar patents by the same inventor]:

Certain monitors can emit electromagnetic field pulses that excite a sensory resonance in a nearby subject, through image pulses that are so weak as to be subliminal. This is unfortunate since it opens a way for mischievous application of the invention, whereby people are exposed unknowingly to manipulation of their nervous systems for someone else’s purposes. Such application would be unethical and is of course not advocated. It is mentioned here in order to alert the public to the possibility of covert abuse that may occur while being online, or while watching TV, a video, or a DVD.

Well, tie me up and call me Daisy.  Did someone say Snowcrash?

Direct brain stimulation by monitor pulses …

We need much better channels of communication b/t government and citizens, particularly right here in the old U. S. of A.  Everyone should have some firsthand experience of what their country is striving and fighting for, and some experience of performing serious public service for their nation in the company of a mob of others and directed by people who have chosen to devote their lives to the same.

I think a manadatory year of government service, following high school or naturalization and preceding gaining the right to vote, would make a great deal of sense.  Including intense physical and civics training in this service, regardless of whether it went on to involve the armed forces, wouldn’t be a bad idea either. 

People have been talking recently about the possible reinstatement of ‘the draft‘, or something quite different from drafts last century.  Here are some thoughts from a recent tacitus post:

What we need is two-three years of service between high school and college or directly after accepting US citizenship… combat vocations could remain volunteer… within that system.  For example, I’m uncomfortable with the reserves, but if service were a given, I would volunteer for combat in an instant. I’m sure there are other young men out there like me.

Those with particularly specific intelligence could serve out their time in the NSA or something, and those with a [pacific] conscience could serve their time in a supportive non-combat agency (work with NGO relief organizations in post-combat areas, etc).

The positive externalities associated with such a draft could be enormous–habitualized fitness, assimilation of immigrants, etc.  — Chris

And I can’t agree with this more: if we are to have a military, it should be a most honorable occupation, for people of all backgrounds and talents.

What needs to happen is an increase in recruiting. And I don’t mean just more ads. I mean an increase in aggressively promoting the Armed Forces as a honorable occupation.    — Rook

there’s a lot more to be said, and I don’t think a draft is what we need, even to solve the comparitively simple problem of an overextended military, but this is a good conversation to be having.

Skilled at high-level meta-analyses of the world?  Full of ideas about how the state of medicine should develop? Submit a Grand Challenge to direct the $200M that the B&MGF has allocated to global health innovation.

A Grand Challenge is neither the statement of the global health problem itself (e.g., malaria or AIDS) nor the request for a specific health intervention (e.g., a drug or vaccine), but the call for a discrete scientific or technological innovation which will break through the roadblock that stands between where we are now and where we would like to be in science, medicine, and public health.

Here is a pdf of the Call for Ideas.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Medical Challenge …

For those of you who have never visited more than the link-lined homepage of Jorn Barger’s RobotWisdom (sidebar: Robot! link), take a minute to scan his sitemap. It highlights many of the marvels on the Web, along with his resource pages for [further looking into] some of them.

Extra Wisdom …

Into NYC instead of asking useful questions at Berkman tonight.  TMBG concert I thought was tomorrow is in fact today.  Alack!  Should be awesome, though.  Mike Doughty is covering some of their songs…

alright, so he covered just one song. yet it was awesome, and we had a killer view of the stage. over at the Bowery when it was time to go, I met noone in the springtime at that rock and roll show; nor kissed her on the subway in the middle of the night… everyone was my friend, and everything looked beautiful.