eVoting: Are you an academic, or do you know any academics, working in the field
of computer science in Ireland? If so, you should consider signing, or
collecting signatures, on
this ICTE statement.
It’s eminently reasonable — ‘since computers are inherently subject to
programming and design error, equipment malfunction, and malicious
tampering, we join with (the ACM) in recommending that a voter-verified
audit trail be one of the essential requirements for deployment of new
voting systems.’ (thx for the pointer, Simon!)
Justin's Linklog Posts
Open Source: Clemens
Vasters: Where do you want to go, Aiden? Sadly, Clemens misses the
point dramatically.
Spam: filster: Linking reputations networks to email whitelists. Very interesting — a tool to use the social network data from Orkut, FOAFweb, Reputation Research Network, and CPAN to whitelist email senders in SpamAssassin. Only problems I can see:
Radio: Community Projects at Moertel Consulting: My new Radio VCR. That is so cool.
Insults: Tom takes issue with my assumption that ‘anyone not living in a hole would know that SpamAssassin includes a probabilistic classifier’. Hmm. OK, I should have made it clear I meant anyone following anti-spam filter development. Henceforth I’ll over-qualify every statement on this weblog accordingly.
Green: There’s been a bit of chat on the intarweb recently about a new high-tech fuel source that avoids the fossil-fuel trap, namely thermal depolymerization. Here’s a couple of links that are relevant:
Spam: the Caller-ID specs are now up on www.microsoft.com. Note patent license.
Funny:
Craigslist: wanted: web designer (why this phrase may get your ass beat)
. ‘sneakily trying to advertise for a web designer to make you a
porn site is weak. just say in your ad that you want to show naked
pictures of women fucking dogs so i can decide, before i apply, if i want
to see that sort of thing, and not AFTER you’ve sent me a mentally and
emotionally scarring photo of a maybe-blonde (it was hard to tell, at that
angle) and a great dane, and THEN ask me if i am comfortable with that
kind of content.’ (via swhackit!)
Spam:
Slashdot: This will fail because… Tick the boxes to produce
a generic slashdot comment on a new anti-spam proposal. Very funny.
Code: Berkeley DB, the de-facto std for open-source high-performance database files on UNIX, is displaying some odd behaviour — it appears to be sleeping for 1 second inside the database library code, under load, for some versions of libdb. If you’re curious, there’s More info here.
eVoting: Lore Brand Comics on e-voting. (thanks, Ben!)
eVoting: Highly recommended — Adrian Colley’s Lies, Damn Lies, and Six Independent Consultancies. Adrian debunks in a very clear, step-by-step fashion, the spin being produced by Ireland’s government on the e-voting furore. If you’re following the issue, don’t miss this page.
Work: Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks, Danny O’Brien’s ETech talk.
Net: Great NYTimes article interviewing Bram Cohen about BitTorrent (u: sitescooper p: sitescooper). Good to see that it landed him a job with Valve, but let’s hope that’s not the last piece of free software from Bram…
Web: More on the Firefox crappy-movie-now-web-browser thing, from Chris Blizzard:
Linux: 
Doing my backups — it’s a good feeling to know your data
will (probably) be safe if your computer suddenly carks it.
Web: Donncha notes that Mozilla Firebird has been renamed ‘Firefox’. Retro cruddy 80’s Cold War movie reference? check!
eVoting: One of the desired features for new voting mechanisms is that they will increase voter ‘turnout’, encouraging people to vote who are too busy (or too unmotivated) to visit a polling station.
Web: I watched a hilarious Rob Corddry segment from The Daily Show last night, repeated from earlier in the week. Having not seen The Daily Show in a while, since dropping everything but basic cable, I went looking through The Daily Show video archives to see if I could find a few more good ones — with no luck.
Funny: The Beeb reports that ‘Baywatch star David Hasselhoff is griping that his role in reuniting East and West Germany has been overlooked.’
Software: OK, one of my current UNIX pet peeves, perfectly illustrated by the new RPMs for KDE 3.2.
Spam: Gary Schrock on the SpamAssassin-talk notes:
eVoting: ‘Spoiling your vote’, e.g. writing in ‘none of the above’ on a ballot paper, is a legally-permitted response to a ballot in Ireland and many other countries. Secrecy in how you vote is constitutionally required.
Media: ever wondered why SCO is being targetted by the MyDoom virus?
Travel: Maciej writes up a few reasons why he likes Poland. Aside from the hilarious description of day-to-day formality in speech, there’s this snippet:
Iraq: Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it was a ‘crock of shit’. Gotta love that no-holds-barred style…
Spam: Ever seen this in referrer logs, and wondered if the International Atomic Energy Agency really had linked to your site? Sourcefrog has.
Law: Darius Whelan at UCC writes, ‘my colleague Louise Crowley and I are involved in drafting an Irish version of the Creative Commons licence‘.
Admin: Well, it worked — twice ;)
Admin: taint.org has moved to a new server. Let’s see if it works!
Culture: Five killed in separate road crashes. Donncha notes ‘There were 2 terrible road accidents this morning. One of them was just outside Cahir, in Co. Tipperary. I drove past there dozens of times in the past and I was shocked to hear the news.’
Funny: The IKEA Walkthrough: ‘IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized. … with practice (and this IKEA Walkthrough!) you will soon be able to muster the sense of numb resignation necessary for victory.’ (defectiveyeti)
Bizarre: OK, OK, Google, I’m planning to! Geesh, all I wanted was a search engine, not health advice. They’re not even my ads!
