Over the last few years, there has been quite a bit of news about electronic voting machines. Almost all of the press seems to be negative. The media usually highlights security problems.
I am not an experienced programmer by any means, but I am capable of writing code that could perform the task of a voting machine. I realize that this isn’t the big issue, but I still don’t understand what can go wrong.
First of all, I am not talking about internet voting, which does have obvious security flaws that would be impossible to eliminate. I am primarily questioning direct-recording electronic voting machines. These are voting machines that electronically get user input and store the vote in computer memory. There is no paper involved. Activists and security experts claim voting fraud can occur if a third party modifies the software. Obviously this can happen, but the risk is no greater than with paper voting.
I think the bigger problem here is that people are still scared of technology and don’t trust it. No matter what kind of voting system is used, there are always going to be methods of modifying the results.
So, do you think that electronic voting machines are safe????
Ok, I’m not actually getting a tattoo, but I’m pretty tempted after seeing the science tattoos flickr set. These are tattoos from the readers of The Loom. It’s always good to see people dedicated to science.
As a spicy food addict, the capsaicin tattoo is my favorite:
The most useful science tattoo was this human ruler:
First off, I apologize to my non-Apple-fan readers, who are going to have to bear with another Apple related post. If you don’t like apple, you can look at my previous post and admire some broken Apple hardware.
Before Leopard, iCal used to have a static date, July 17th, as its icon. In Leopard, the icon is now dynamic and displays the current date. I have made an amazing discovery. As seen below (click for full-size), the iCal icon in the recent applications stack still displays the static date. It was feared that iCal day would fade away into history and be forgotten, but this will keep the holiday alive, which is good news for those who celebrate July 17th.
My MacBook power cord is dying. It has a really bad short just past the transformer that is extremely temperamental. I did not take a picture of the short because I was too scared to remove the tape, but it is very ugly. There are only a few strands of wire left to transmit power. Any tiny movement shorts it out and cuts power to my MacBook. As you can see, I have fixed the problem by securing the transformer to the desk to stop any movement. (click for a larger image)
Mine is very similar to this one, whose owner cut it open and fixed the short. I have not been forced to do this yet, as I do not wander too far from my desk. Eventually I am going to have to repair it as per these instructions on Flickr.
Besides giving Hockey Canada a wake-up call, the Turino Olympics was also the public debut for a promising technology. The substance, d3o, is similar to silly puddy at rest, but instantly hardens on impact, thus creating flexible body armour. This material was incorporated into the ski suits of Canadian and American racers. It is created by the British based d3o labs.
There was a lot of hype about this product during the last Olympics, but news has died down. The wikipedia entry is lacking and is still considered a stub. I am guessing that this is because the product is still under heavy development and d3o labs does not want to release details until all of their patents are secured.
The best application of d3o that I can think of is a flexible laptop sleeve that hardens on impact (patent pending). It would be awesome!
d30 labs, where is my d3o laptop sleeve?????
Here is a video demonstrating the awesomeness of d30:
I have blogged about the Livescribe Smartpen previously, naming it my most anticipated product of 2008. It is a newcomer to the smartpen market, and boasts several features not available on competing products. Along with some new product demos, Livescribe has recently released detailed stats for their newly dubbed Pulse Smartpen.
There are 2 different models:
1GB $149
2BG $199
The ship date has been pushed back to march and pre-ordering is still only available to US citizens.
Check out the Livescribe Blog for updates.
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