For the Veterans

Today is Veteran's Day. We honor those who served in the military, its auxiliaries and the merchant marines. In my career I have had the privilege to work with many retired veterans. I am humbled by their commitment and inspired by their strength.

Last Tuesday after I cast my ballot I went the local McDonalds restaurant where I met a veteran of the Iraq War. We talked about the election and then about our military. I'll never forget him showing me the proper technique in "clearing a room" right there amongst the chairs. Friend, you made my day. Pity that you helped elect the wrong guy.

Deep and Wide

Congrads to Obama for winning the presidency of the greatest country in the world. I am not angry. I am disappointed. The Republicans decided to confront their competition with a mild tone and the promise of compromise. It brought them defeat.

McCain tried to tie Obama to the liberal Congress' massive mistakes but Obama with assistance from the press was able to spin free of it. "Nope, not me." he said. "Ok!" responded the adoring media who added, "Isn't McCain looking a little old?"

I get the feeling that we have been influenced by reality TV shows like American Idol. On them ambition is prized more than talent. Folks root for a contestant because he is an underdog and he wants it badly rather than considering whether or not he has the skills. Of course there is always a clash of personalities where the competitor is demonized.

Obama is already talking about how his plans will require a second term. Heh, Nobama! I wish this were some made-up game show where an announcer would come on and say, "Got ya! We've been fooling you this whole time. A liberal inexperienced pro-abortion tax raiser would be crazy for our country. The dude is too full of himself and believes his own inaccurate statements. Oh how we duped you!"

So far there have been no cries of red states v. blue states or a deeply divided country or post election trauma. I guess Republicans are better losers. Now in order to turn this country around we have a river to cross. I hope Republicans push the reset button on their leadership and return to conservative principles. The river is deep and wide, friends, but it can be crossed with faith and courage.

My brother sent me a message today that lightened my mood: "Lets move to the 57th state. It's called Husseinia!"

War Saves Lives

A man used the medic training he learned in America's Army -- a video game the Army gives away as a promotional item -- to save a life.

It is the same game that the Iraq Veterans Against the War protested last year at the Black Expo in St Louis. There they lined in formation and yelled "War is not a game!"

I am grateful for their service to our country, but in this case, War Saves Lives!

I Could See the Squirrels

I failed to get a job at Google. I am not angry or sad about it. I have been thinking about it lately because they plan to move me to a different cube at work. The situation reminds me of the scene in the movie Office Space where Milton was talking about formerly having a desk from where he could watch the squirrels play. "And they were merry", he noted. I guess Google seemed like a place where I could have an office from which I could watch merry squirrels while tackling some interesting computer science problems.

Sometime last year I was interviewed by Google. Theirs is a consensus-driven decision-making process involving a multitude of interviews. I made it through a total of two telephone interviews. The first was a screening interview where a recruiter asked me some career oriented questions and finished with a quiz of technical questions. The second interview was conducted by an engineer working in the department in which I most likely would have worked and was a technical interview involving low-level networking and Linux operating system details.

Since they do not have any opportunities in the Midwest -- a glaring oversight on their part I might add -- I asked for a position at the Googleplex, its Mountain View, California headquarters. I was told that they might not have a position for me there but they did have openings in Zurich and Dublin. I told the Google people I was not interested in working outside the United States.

Just between us, maybe I'd consider it if Hillary Clinton succeeds in her attempt to become our next president. Speaking of politics, Google is too cozy with liberal politicians. Environmentalist crackpot and failed presidential candidate Al Gore serves as Senior Advisor to Google. Also, in the 2004 federal elections a staggering 98% of employee's campaign contributions went to Democrats. Are they building a culture of innovative engineers or ideological cronies?

According to an article in Forbes magazine Google and its recruiters doubled its head count to 20,000 from 10,000 at the end of last year. The article goes on to say that Google disappointed Wall Street after admitting it overspent on new hires during its latest quarter. So, if you have a copy of your resume online, do not be surprised if you get a phone call from their people. Honestly, I wish you the best of luck. Perhaps you will be a better fit than this conservative computer scientist who loves life in the flyover states.

Is there a job you should have gotten? I would like to hear about it.

Ode to the iPhone

This poem is dedicated to those who possess the iPhone and those who wish they did:

ODE TO THE IPHONE

Twinkling
All that glitters is not
A high-tech surrogate for
Something you cannot do without
This year
Who cares

No keys
Just use pointy fingers
Touch the screen wherever you wish
It will find your important contact
Last year
Who cares

Look there
It rotates quickly
And plays your tunes nicely
Web browser says Democrats win
Evil fools
Nobody cares

Cellphones
A computer and radio
Together in one small package
Is not magic technology
Learn more
I care

Our world
Does not spin around desire
It makes its trek past the red sun
Without the latest gadget
Not that
You care

Hacking Democracy

I finally watched the HBO documentary entitled Hacking Democracy. In short it is, in my humble opinion, a fantasy constructed by a bunch of wild-eyed conspiracy nuts. The filmmaker says at one point that she "wants to take America back". Of course, she means that Democrats are entitled to be the leaders of America and must recapture their power from Republicans. Notice that the cries of voter disenfranchisement and calls for scrutiny quietly disappeared after Democrats retook the Congress this past election cycle. Make no mistake. This woman and her co-conspirators are twisting the facts to fit their agenda and trumpeting some clever computer hacks in order to back her argument.

The premise of this waste of celluloid is that a negative vote count somewhere in Florida was the act of mischievous tampering and not a computer error. A computer error was never ruled out. Instead the film makers constructed a conspiracy theory and attempt to justify it.

All of the anomalies in film were found on paper records. At one point we have to accept the film maker's count as accurate (and the county's records as suspect) without question. After all they are doing the "will of the people". How many "impartial" parties do you know that appear on TV alongside Howard Dean? Let me hear you scream.

The movie did confirm one thing I had already read elsewhere. Diebold, the company that makes the election machines and software, is incompetent. The company they hired to do their testing is also questionable.

A college sophomore could probably design better software security. I mean, it is pretty clear that the software system uses an unencrypted database probably on Microsoft Access. Having code on the memory cards that collect the votes is a miserable security flaw. There are other security flaws I have read about elsewhere. This raises the question though. Could the source code for the software be public and the system still be secure? I think the answer is yes. If it is true that the software swiped from Diebold's public website contained embedded passwords, then the software authors really know little about writing secure software. Pity.

Elections officers were incompetent. They did not handle the loony protagonist very well. Worse, they tried to dispose of public records and tried to do so without shredding them. In scenes that made me feel sleazy the "activists" dived into the dumpster to retrieve trashed documents. I hope the election people do not go on to careers in the banking industry.

The woman responsible skirted the law snatching a trash bag from a public employee, ripping it open and grabbing its contents. She also swiped proprietary documents from Diebold's public FTP site. Don't get me wrong. Leaving confidential source code and documents on a public web site invited the kind of scrunity an independent third party company should have given. But the protagonist should be prosecuted for grabbing and using the software without a license, in my opinion. I mean, if someone were to do the same thing with Microsoft software, which is also secret ohhh, then the BSA would have federal officers knocking on that person's door and confiscating their computer equipment.

So, is there somebody out there rigging elections? Probably not the electronic ones. Is paper a good backup as a record for an electronic system? NO! Watch the film again if don't agree. Can we guarantee a secure system that is a proprietary secret to a private company? I certainly think it's possible. The current system of quality control and testing shows how NOT to do it. Would it be possible to have a secure system based on publicly available source code and design documents? YES! But to be clear the keys used for encryption should be tightly held secrets and changed frequently. I think this is the future of electronic voting. Could a hacker be responsible for a negative vote count? Probably not. The first place I'd look is an overflowed integer. Of course, that wouldn't serve the wild conspiracy theories.

Hide the Beer, the Officer is Here

A recently elected St. Clair County Circuit judge, Patrick Young, was arrested for drunk driving as he was headed home in his GMC Yukon from a St. Louis Rams football game. His passenger was his boss, Chief Judge Jan Fiss. Fiss was spotted by an officer pouring out an open Bud Light beer can on the road and trying to hide it in his coat.

Judge Young refused a Breathalyzer test. It seems the lack of evidence of a person's blood alcohol level makes prosecution difficult. Who knew?

Can they find a sober judge for the trial?

Nice Election You Have

I voted! Sean Puffy Combs did not die. But Citizen's Change, his not-for-profit organization, did.

Post your own picture on your blog! FoXXtail did! Go vote right!

MADtv Kicks Butt!

Did anybody catch the Fox network's MADtv Saturday night? It was hilarious! I haven't laughed out loud to a late night comedy show since Saturday Night Live's lighthearted rap about the Chronicles of Narnia last year. Remember when SNL used to be funny? Me either.

MADtv featured a skit showing a series of children's drawings trying to explain the Michael J. Fox stem cell debacle. The narrator confused Fox with Michael P. Keaton and says that he wants stem cells from aborted babies to make Back to the Future 4. Ha ha! Then, they had a sketch where Condi is a modern day superhero. My favorite line: "I'm gonna stick to you like black on rice! Condoleeza Rice!" Too funny! Then, the crowning skits were a series of spoofs featuring Michael McDonald as Senator John Kerry. Kerry botches his jokes horribly and every punch line was that our troops were stupid. I erupted in laughter. The loser seriously needed to be mocked and MADtv delivered!

Thanks MADtv for making my weekend!

Troops Respond to Democrats

On Monday Democrat Senator John Kerry said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." I have worked with troops and former members of the armed forces for many years. I see intelligent and dedicated professionals. Can you believe John Kerry ever thought he could be our president? These troops responded with a fun banner.

UPDATE: President George Bush called for Kerry to apologize. Kerry issued an apology today.

Noam Chomsky Is an Idiot

Noam Chomsky is not a genius. Further proof? A crackpot dictator promoted one of his books on the floor of the United Nations.

Read Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct instead. He makes the case that language is an instinct breed into humans after years of evolution. This contradicts Chomsky's assertion that language is innate and the same for all humans where differences in languages are accounted for by tweaks to a small set of parameters.

I tend to subscribe to Pinker's theory. Also, reading Pinker won't make you puke.

Computer Science Professor Slams E-Voting

Ars Technica has an article on electronic voting. This prompted me to respond to the author with the following email:

I completely disagree with the premise of your recent article. Paper ballots have horrible "security". When you stated electronic ballots will help us "find out who hackers want to be president." Well, given the 2000 election, is it better to find out who Democratic poll judges in Florida want for president? Having paper as a backup for electric ballot is as brain damaged as having a buggy whip as a backup for an automobile.

The criticism for Diebold stems from paranoid liberal fantasies. No system is perfect or unhackable. If we trust poll judges today with paper ballots, then I believe we can trust an electronic system with the same people.

Devil's Day

Today is 06/06/06. That makes it "6-6-6", or 666, which is the Mark of the Beast. Folks are doing fun things today like releasing a movie about a demon child. Oh, the delicious Ann Coulter is releasing "Godless", her latest tome on the stupidness that is today's liberalism.

I am gonna have a little fun, too. Check out the devilishly funny System Administrator Song from Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

Buy a Flag Flown over the Capitol

I discovered on usflag.org that you can buy a flag that has been flown over the United States Capitol building. It turns out anyone can write their senator or representative and request a flag. For a fee of approximately $28 you will receive an American flag and a keepsake Certificate of Authenticity from the Architect of the Capitol certifying that your flag was flown. Flag ordering information is typically found under "Services" on the Senate or House members' web pages.

American Flag

Thank You, Troops

I first saw this video on the North American Patriot blog. In my current position I have the privilege of working with many military officers. I find them to be intelligent, dedicated men and women. The war in Iraq is necessary to confront the terrorist threat facing the world. This video is for all our troops. My heroes!

Click on the image for a link to the video

Thank You

Underrated Items of 2005

The past year, 2005, brought its share of hype and hero worship. As I did last year I decided to give a select list of underrated items some exposure.

I read an excellent article on podcasting. Would anybody listen to a gazpacho dot net podcast?

Pieces of Paper as Electronic Voting Verification

In a recent New York Times article two politicasters called for a "paper audit" of electronic voting. I think this is misguided. Paper voting has never been a flawless process. The fact that it has come to be trusted has less to do with its security strength than the human ability to accept risk. But demanding a paper trail for electronic voting is equivalent to forcing car drivers to keep a horse and a buggy whip as a backup.

I think the following summary from a keynote address given by a computer scientist outlines the absurdity of the "pieces of paper" argument.

Touch-screen voting machines store records of cast votes in internal memory, where the voter cannot check them. Because of our system of secret ballots, once the voter leaves the polls there is no way anyone can determine whether the vote captured was what the voter intended. Why should voters trust these machines?

Last December, I drafted a "Resolution on Electronic Voting" stating that every voting system should have a "voter verifiable audit trail," which is a permanent record of the vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter, and which is saved for a recount if it is required.

Why should voters trust the current paper system? After all there is no way to verify that any individual's ballot was captured and tallied. How can the voter check his vote today? He can't. We do not get a permanent record of our vote today. Why is it good idea for a new system and not for the current one?

Paper documents are inadequate for recounts. Has everybody forgotten the miserable job done during the recounts of the 2000 elections? I remember poll workers holding paper ballots up to examine the intent of the voter. We were introduced to the wonderful terms "dimpled chad" and "pregnant chad". Friends, the paper system for recounts is broken.

Every change made to an electronic system can be automatically documented and audited. I wonder if the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) surrounding electronic voting is because the old paper system is well understood and can be subverted by people who cannot win elections any other way. How else do Democrats get elected?

A well-designed electronic voting system can be safer and more secure than today's current system of paper ballots. We will not achieve a better voting system if we do not allow it to prove its strength without the fetters of the old paper system.

He Did Not Let Them Go Naked

I've read the same criticism as everyone else about President George W. Bush's supposed lax response to the Hurricane Katrina. That reaction is so fundamentally wrong on so many levels. It is rooted in an unjustified hatred of our President.

But people forget a hurricane hit the Carribean about the same time last year. Didn't John Kerry's wife tell people to go naked? *genius* That's the compassion of the Democratic Party.

"Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. - USA Today 9/15/2004

Deeply Divided, My Eye

I tire of the elite media proclaiming that the United States is "deeply divided" politically. No, we are not. It is just that Democrats and leftist elites have refused to accept their defeat. The country voted in the election. We voted overwhelmingly for Republicans. We voted for conservative ideals! Guess what, Puffy didn't die.

Don't cry, my liberal friends, just accept it. You lost. The American public listened to your lies and saw through them. Your socialist policies and propaganda films failed. We shuddered at the kept man you selected as a Presidential candidate. He wasn't for us. We found that President Bush is actually doing a good job! Sure, we listen to your venom and bile. But the sooner you accept your defeat, the sooner you can heal your dark heart. We after all are the United States.

Underrated Items of 2004

The year 2004 was filled with many overhyped products. I decided to give some exposure to a few items I feel did not receive the praise they deserve.

Good news! My Windows installation is mostly working. Look for the article on quiet PCs soon.

ACM Wrong on E-Voting

News.com is reporting that the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), an organization of which I am part, has taken the position that electronic voting must have a paper trail. I oppose paper-as-verification due to many of the same issues raised by the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). Chief among the reasons is that paper is subject to forgery, tampering and can be mangled. It does not make sense to subject an electronic voting system to the same weaknesses as today's paper ballot systems.

I regret that ACM has sided with the paper-as-verification activists. As a result I am not renewing my membership this year. I cannot understand this stance esp. since there are many clear-headed voices in the ACM. Interestingly, this month's issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM) has a balanced series of technical articles on electronic voting.

I Never Liked Paper Ballots

Isn't it ironic the politicos that were screaming about voter fraud in Florida (while quietly defrauding St Louis elections) are bemoaning tamper-proof electronic voting machines? Stop the madness!

They want a paper record of electronic voting. Paper records?! Those didn't work well in the 2000 election recount. Remember? Time to raise above the democratic FUD and take a balanced look at electronic voting.

They Killed Kenny

It seems great minds think alike. At one time I attempted to start a Quake clan named Killkenny. The name is derived from the cartoon character named Kenny who appears in the popular show Southpark. In every episode (expect one) Kenny meets his demise in sometimes gruesome, sometimes humorous ways.

Today I confirmed that earlier this month somebody registered the domain name killkenny.com. Those bastards!

/me goes back to reading the Starr Report in Eric Cartman's voice.