...more recent posts
It's mid-month time, so that means the new crypto-gram is out. This month Bruce Schneier (the encryption and computer security guru) talks about voting and technology (plus a bunch of other stuff.) He points to this site by Rebecca Mercuri, calling it "...*the* web site on electornic voting...." As I thought, the experts are all horrified at the thought of computer (and especially internet based) voting schemes. As Schneier puts it:
"Online voting schemes have even more potential for failure and abuse. We know we can't protect Internet computers from viruses and worms, and that all the operating systems are vulnerable to attack. What recourse is there if the voting system is hacked, or simply gets overloaded and fails? There would be no means of recovery, no way to do a recount. Imagine if someone hacked the vote in Florida; redoing the election would be the only possible solution. A secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers."This is a really hard problem to think of a solution for.
Lots of people seem impressed by the new google toolbar which plugs into Internet Explorer 5.x running on Windows. If I ran Windows I would probably check this out. There are some privacy concerns, but Google is very upfront about what it is tracking, and they have such a good reputation that it's hard even for someone usually suspicious (like me) to get too worried about this case. And anyway, you can turn off certain features that work by knowing your surfing history and the toolbar will still be useful without any sort of tracking (even anonymous) going on. Let me know if anyone tries this out.
Magical weather day here in NYC.
This site is very cool. Inspirational even. Sort of like a jodi.org creation (is it?) It's amazing what can be done with so very little (bandwidth-wise) if your stuff is good. Or maybe all that dancing is going to my head. (via metascene)
I don't know if it's the holiday season or what, but these are some strange days indeed. I keep finding myself at dance parties. How does this happen?