Posted 1:44 PM (0) comments

Much ado about not much

A tempest in a teapot is starting to whirl around a report done over a year ago which appears to be critical of electronic voting machines, or at least their auditing capabilities. The initial story about the report is from the Miami Daily Business Review, but the actual report itself (by Orlando Suarez, division manager of Dade County Florida's Enterprise Technology Services Department) isn't itself available, and that's too bad.

A close reading of the news report, though, shows that Suarez is complaining about a unified audit report, not the individual machine audit reports. As far as I can tell, the individual machines are fine, but the software which consolidates the audit logs appears to have some issues.

Still, nothing in the news story indicates there was any problem with the actual voting or tallying. Since the story begins: "A scathing internal review of the iVotronic touch-screen voting machines...", I would expect everything from the report which reflects poorly on electronic voting to be quoted. And all we got was that the consolidation software was cosmetically flawed. Big woof.

Posted 8:22 AM (0) comments

Maybe we need an IQ test for voters

In a copyrighted story in this morning's San Jose Mercury News [warning: registration required], reporter Elise Ackerman quotes Ed Davis, vice president of Common Cause: "As bad as Florida was, ultimately they could have kept recounting. They had the votes there. With electronic voting machines, there is nothing to recount. Over and over, you are going to get the same answer you got the first time.''

You know why, Ed? Because the votes were counted accurately the first time! Its paper ballots and hand counting which shows different totals every time you go through the pile of votes - because humans are fallible! Provided the tally machines are properly tested (and, since humans are doing the testing, that's not a given) the count will not only be the same each time but it will be accurate each time.

Even candidates (or should I say, especially candidates) become Chicken Luddles when talking about electronic voting. The story ends with this paragraph:

"Candidates who have been through electronic recounts say a larger issue is involved: the legitimacy of an election. 'All the other stuff goes away if you don't know that elections are legitimate,'' said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who requested a recount of digital ballots after losing a 1998 U.S. Senate race by 428 votes. Ensign, who went on to win another Senate race in 2000, said the electronic voting machines merely reproduced the same tally as before, causing him to doubt the outcome."

Evidently, the election isn't "legitimate" until you get different totals every time you count the votes!

Posted 5:53 PM (0) comments

Forget the contract, its not important

Utah's Canopy Group was the major backer of Caldera which became SCO and is suing everybody over alleged copyright violations in Linux. Now GROKLAW reports that Canopy is suing Novell (also being sued by SCO) concerning circumstances surrounding the sale of DR-DOS from Novell to Caldera and the subsequent suit by Caldera against Microsoft concerning actions taken by the Redmond company to stymie DR-Dos. That suit was settled (and sealed) but according to GROKLAW Caldera won "billions" from Microsoft.

This new suit asserts that there were unwritten, oral agreements at the time of the transfer of DR-Dos to canopy which supersede the contract.

Evidently the dreamworld of SCO CEO Darl MacBride has now been extended to all the folks at the Canopy Group.

For now, though, I'd suggest avoiding long stays in Utah - it might be something in the air, or in the water, but it does create a fantasy world for those who linger too long.

Posted 1:00 PM (2) comments

Some people shouldn't be let out alone

Got a mailing on escorted tours from "Vacations to Go" this morning, so went to the web site to see what was on offer. I was surprised not to see Ireland listed separately, so choose "other Europe" from the "by Region" list. I found Spain, Italy, Poland, Scandinavia - but no Ireland!

Hoping they hadn't made a dreadful mistake, I clicked on "Great Britain only". Sure enough - lots of tours of Ireland.

The Republic of Ireland is NOT a part of Great Britain. They fought a war about that. Its like listing the US as part of "Great Britain" because they once were ruled by the same king!

Web design techies once again are proven to be just a tad behind on politics - and geography!

Posted 11:17 AM (0) comments

A Texan, a Republican and a good guy!

Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced on Tuesday that he was strongly in favor of reducing the reach of the Digital millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) saying that consumers should have the same fair use rights for digital data as they do for printed data.

Barton's backing should give strong impetus to Rep. Rick Boucher's (R-Va) bill to scale back DMCA. It's time to stop treating consumers as if they all were criminals by outlawing technology and, instead, focus on outlawing criminal activity. What a concept!

Posted 9:06 AM (0) comments

Get out the magnifying glass

Do you read the copyright notice on web pages? Neither do I. But Microsoft filed a new case against Lindows, the San Diego company which markets a service for Linux that runs Windows programs accusing it of trying to confuse users with the small print "Lindows" on its copyright notices. The company recently changed the name of their product to "Linspire" after losing a number of infringement cases to the Redmond bullies, but corporate name changes take longer (especially when there's really no need to change).

Evidently Bill Gates & Co don't think they've already given enough free publicity to a company which hardly threatens their hegemony!

Posted 11:32 AM (0) comments

Finally!

Finally, there's a semblance of a balanced look at E-voting! Thomas Greene, author of "Computer Security for the Home and Small Office", has written in the Register the pros and cons of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting, aka touch-screen terminals. And, finally, someone in the security establishment notes just how dumb the national fixation on "paper trails" really is. Hallelujah!

Posted 10:50 AM (0) comments

Too much of a good thing?

My Network World colleague Sandy Gittlen has an interesting - and somewhat provocative - take on the state of security on our networks. In "Security: Are we on overload?" she asks if we've spent too much time reacting to threats with piecemeal solutions (which are easily approved, budgeted and installed) leading to the possibility of not seeing the security forest because the band-aid trees are getting in the way. Ultimately, this could make the network less secure as new layers poke holes in earlier ones. I know its led me to take a look at my security services "in toto" rather than one-at-a-time.