Posted 9:21 AM (0) comments

Recall the Recounters

CNET takes a good luck at the controversy surrounding electronic voting ("E-voting: Nightmare or nirvana?") by lining up a panel of four experts, pro and con, security experts and civil rights proponents one of each on the "pro" side and one of each on the "con" side. And the "con" security guy really does try a "con job." David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and founder of VerifiedVoting.org, a group that advocates mandatory paper-based audit systems for electronic ballots, has a bee in his bonnet about re-counts, of all things. But, as most unbiased experts in computer tabulation will tell you, there's no need for a recount with a computer-based election! Well, depending on how the votes from multiple machines are counted (manually?) or how there data is entered into an accumulator (by hand?) there may be a need to re-do the math. But neither of those scenarios require a paper trail!

As Carnegie-Mellon University professor Michael Shamos rightly points out: "...in absolutely every other walk of life where we use machines, we verify them by testing and inspecting them. If it were really true that computer systems couldn't be tested, we would be fools to rely on them for electronic banking, lotteries, medical imaging, launching nuclear weapons, etc."

The recount issue is a sham issue and the proper government authorities should investigate to see why this red herring is constantly dragged across our path to easier, more efficient, user-friendly, more accurate elections.

Posted 9:10 AM (0) comments

Schrodinger's database

The Center for Public Integrity reports that the US Department of Justice has denied a "Freedom of Information" request for a copy of the Foreign Agent Registration Database. Not because the data is secret, though, since you can request copies of specific items (at 50 cents a page), but because "simply attempting to make an electronic copy of the database 'could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating'."

Yep, copying the db could destroy it. Its what one wag has dubbed the "quantum database", while Network World's Adam Gaffin calls it "The Heisenberg-uncertainty database," after the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, postulated by Werner Heisenberg and generally rendered as "you can't measure both position and motion of an object.

I'd rather call it Schrodinger's database (after Erwin Schrodinger) because of the seeming relationship to the theory which postulates that the observation and/or measurement of an object affects the state of the object ("Schrodinger's Cat"). Trying to "measure" the database (by copying it) will allow us to observe directly that it has been destroyed - evidently some years ago.

Posted 10:55 AM (0) comments

Urban PC Legends

PC World this week has an interesting story about the tall tales (maybe we should call them "old admins tales") associated with computers, called Busting the Biggest PC Myths. But it isn't just about "busting" myths, rather its about assigning a "truth factor" (ranging from 1 to 5, with 1 being true and 5 being totally false) on the "bogus-o-meter". We all know those stories that "everybody" says is true (except we can't find any qualified person to say so) such as "Saddam Hussein bought PlayStation 2 consoles to use in Iraq's weapons program." But is it, could it possibly be true? What about these "everybody knows" items:

*Magnets zap your data.
*Cell phones interfere with systems on aircraft.
*Cookies track everything you do on the Internet.
*Opting out of spam gets you even more spam.
*The government reads everyone's e-mail.

You'll need to read the article to find out.