Adam Fields (weblog)

Why does the Attorney General not have a computer that’s considered secure? I know this security stuff is hard…

MSNBC – John Aschroft resignation letter

I love the Rayovac 15-minute charger. 15 minute charging crossed the threshold that if I didn’t remember to charge batteries the night before, I still have time to do so before I leave the house. But it only works with Rayovac (or radio shack) special batteries. They’re actually really good, but not particularly cheap. This new charger works with any NiMH rechargeable:

http://www.metaefficient.com/metaefficient/archives/rechargeable-batteries/new-energizer-15-minute-nimh-charger.html

"BREAKING — SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it."

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Please consider donating money to their effort:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html

Heh.

http://www.wonkette.com/archives/a-country-of-mapmakers-ii-025272.php

http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002282.shtml

It’s an extensible desktop widget manager, now available for Windows and Mac.

A "widget" is a little free-floating thingee that does something. Weather reports, internet health, clock, calendar, web search, battery meter, that sort of thing. You can write your own.

Nice.

http://www.konfabulator.com/

Keith Olbermann, of MSNBC, has posted a story (and had a broadcast, apparently) about the voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio.

The article is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240

The main focus is on Florida, but there’s this little gem, which I hadn’t heard before:

"Interestingly, none of the complaining emailers took issue with the remarkable results out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 29 precincts there, the County’s website shows, we had the most unexpected results in years: more votes than voters.

I’ll repeat that: more votes than voters. 93,000 more votes than voters."

And he then goes on to explain why he thinks the media hasn’t been covering this story, and closes with this, which I think is extraordinary:

"There’s a third element to the reluctance to address all this, I think. It comes from the mainstream’s love-hate relationship with this very thing you’re reading now: The Blog. This medium is so new that print, radio, and television don’t know what to do with it, especially given that a system of internet checks and balances has yet to develop. A good reporter may encounter a tip, or two, or five, in a day’s time. He has to check them all out before publishing or reporting.

What happens when you get 1,000 tips, all at once?

I’m sounding like an apologist for the silence of television and I don’t mean to. Just remember that when radio news arose in the ’30s, the response of newspapers and the wire services was to boycott it, then try to limit it to specific hours. There’s a measure of competitiveness, a measure of confusion, and the undeniable fact that in searching for clear, non-partisan truth in this most partisan of times, the I’m-Surprised-This-Name-Never-Caught-On "Information Super Highway" becomes a road with direction signs listing 1,000 destinations each.

Having said all that – for crying out loud, all the data we used tonight on Countdown was on official government websites in Cleveland and Florida. We confirmed all of it – moved it right out of the Reynolds Wrap Hat zone – in about ten minutes.

Which offers one way bloggers can help guide the mainstream at times like this: source your stuff like crazy, and the stuffier the source the better.

Enough from the soapbox. We have heard the message on the Voting Angst and will continue to cover it with all prudent speed.

Thanks for your support.

Keep them coming … Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com"

The main mozilla site is totally swamped, but the ftp server seems fine:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0/

Use bittorrent if you can.

“On November 2 Americans blew their only chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world.”

VDARE.com: 11/05/04 – An Election That Will Live In Infamy

http://www.livejournal.com/users/wayfairer/456769.html

"When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat."

The rest of the article goes on to describe a number of irregularities in the vote counts – discrepancies between exit polls and final numbers, differences between number of registered voters and number of
votes cast, and high swings across party lines in certaing counties (lots of registered democrats, but republicans win big). There’s some correlation to electronic voting machines (optical scanners), and then a long rehash of how to hack a Diebold machine.

The evidence is not mentioned in the article, but I’m curious to see what it is.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

The Amazon Simple Queue service is a web-services based general messaging queue, which you can use for your own distributed web applications.

Interesting…

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=sc_fe_c_1_3435361_6/102-1730435-1636927?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=13584001