This is the best video blog I've found so far...this guy is hilarious and smart, every day he's got something worth watching...

the show with zefrank

This blog done by Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen is pretty good at covering all the civil liberties stories going on these days...especially the ones involving technology...

27B Stroke 6

Abstract This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

Felten and friends pown e-voting...again

So recently I've been doing my bi-annual fooling myself into thinking I can/will get back into school and finish my degree...so I'm looking for schools in my area, that means Stanford (heh, yeah right, but I'll give it a shot to even out that chip on my other shoulder), Berkeley (not likely, but worth a try), and then a slew of crap-tastic smaller universities in the area...

At this point all I want an undergrad degree for is so they will let me go to grad school so even a crap-tastic school will do (but I'd rather not)...

anyways, so this has lead to a lot of funny things, like me a grown man (at least in this context) being forced to study for the SATs again (my scores are so old that they are not accepted anymore)...

so the new SAT has a writing component, but aside from that I like my odds (I'm being graded on a curve with high school kids here)...still I'm always on the look out for a way to improve my odds...in this case I've found another good way...sense the last time I took the SAT I've been diagnosed with dyslexia, which really explains a lot (for example I couldn't spell Michael until like the 4th grade)...anyways I can get some extra testing time as a result...

that should be good, historically I havn't tried to use things like this for my disabilities for one reason or another, but I'm through caring about demonstrating that I can compete on an uneven playing field, if they'll give me a legit way to boost my score, I'm doing it...

Getting back into school

So I was chugging along, avoiding doing work (which these days means reading wikipedia) when I deside to do my weekly check to see who has vandalized my wikipedia article when i see a link on the bottom to my blog (on memestreams)...and I'm reminded that I have a blog...

so anyways, I'm here again...

] Dimensions change drastically as your clump grows from a
] fraction of an inch to a monstrous freak of nature.

Boingboing keeps talking about this so I picked up a copy. Its only $20. If you were ever wondering what it would be like to take LSD while Japaneese, this is your chance. Its a happy, non-violent game with great music and interesting, funny worlds to explore. I recommend it. That is unless you have a problem with flashbacks.

Katamari Damacy

It appears that Bush has won. It appears that the Republicans have control of the House and Senate. This is a complete victory for the Reds.

I offer the following predictions:

On the WOT:

Iraq will slowly become an Islamic fundamentalist state. The U.S. will be largely out of there within a year and on to Pakistan. We'll get Bin Laden, but Islamic Fundamentalism will continue to fester and will rear it's head again in a decade or so. Bush will be seen as having won the WoT in the short term. You'll feel safe. You'll focus on domestic issues in the next election.

Domestic:

The economy will improve considerably as the security concerns wane. The social security nightmare looms. You will see safety valves that allow wealthy people to protect their savings from the coming cataclysm. If you are smart you will save as much as you can over the coming years.

You'll see some barking about a flat tax. I don't think it will actually happen in this session. They are setting the stage for 2008.

You'll get faster internet access, from freed RBOCs. You'll see hydrogen infrastructure appear in the odd place like electric car chargers are today.

The health care situation will continue to deteriorate. I do not take the Republican's proposals on this matter seriously. I'm not saying they won't make a serious proposal. This issue is impacting our international competitiveness. I'm saying they haven't made a serious proposal yet.

I predict that you will see an amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed within a year. I believe that several amendments will be passed within 4 years.

Early:
Gay Marriage
Flag Desecration

Later on:
Abortion Ban
Public (Read as Government) Display of Religious Iconography
Prayer in School

Maybe:
Victim's Rights (Which is a misnomer. Read as "Plaintiff Right's" in MOST contexts. FYI this is the only one on the list that is bi-partisan. I say maybe because it has logical flaws you could fly a plane through, and it doesn't have widespread grassroots support.)

You will see federal legislation passed in the next four years which contains a passage which says that its Constitutionality cannot be challenged in a Court. That law will be declared Unconstitutional by a Court. This will set the stage for what I would call the "big one." Once all of these amendments have been passed the amendment machine will be geared up to make significant changes to the way that government works. That change will entail limiting the power of the Courts as a check upon the Legislature and the Executive. I think thats where the vector points. I'm not going to say anything else about that. I don't think that anyone will propose it for several years. We'll talk about it then.

Democrats:

Its over. The Democrats have to significantly reformulate. I haven't figured out how I think they'll do it. One word I heard on CNN last night about what Blues are likely to feel in the face of this was alienation.

On a personal note, I'm not impressed with the widespread support for the Gay Marriage ban amendments. Are we really saying that America hates fags? Why is this a central goal for religious people? Why do Christians focus on homosexuals, as opposed to, say, feeding the poor, or peace, or other things that Jesus was concerned with? Why do we care about this in particular? What does it say about who we are? What does it communicate about the values that are important to us?

Bush wins

curse curse curse curse murder jagermighster

Acidus wrote:
] ] But CrimeThinc continued to ask attendees to deface the
] ] Republican National Committee Web sites, to launch denial
] ] of service attacks against their servers, to harass
] ] delegates in the street, to prevent buses carrying
] ] delegates from running, and so on. "By any means
] ] necessary," he said.
]
] This is not hacking, this isn't protesting, this is anarchy,
] and these jackasses deserve the brutality they get.

I agree, its one thing to protest, its something entirely different to try to fight for your rights, like free assembly, and free speech by denying people at the RNC those exact same rights...

as far as I'm conserned if your free assembly and free speech turns into anarchy designed to limit the free speech and free assembly of others then you are not helping the fight for freedom...

the real thing these people are fighting for isn't freedom, they have it, and they would have republicans striped of those same freedoms because they dont agree with republican politics...no what they're really after is a totalitarian society that they themselves control, where they can deside who has rights and who doesnt...

we dont live in that society yet, and until we do these people have no place telling the republicans, or anyone for that matter which rights they have, and which rights they have to give up...

people like CrimeThinc and Shapeshifter (from HOPE 5) often like to describe the current administration (or anyone they disagree with really) by bringing up Orwell and 1984...Orwell wrote lots of things, almost all in one way or another related to totalitarianism, nationalism, etc...when I hear the tired BS retoric of these guys using the bannor of peace and freedom to make their case I think of something else that Orwell wrote in "Notes on Nationalism" in May 1945...I'll post a link to the full document to my memestream but for now this section sums up these guys pretty well for me...

--snip--

"5. PACIFISM The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: CrimeThinc @ Defcon: Cause chaos at the RNC

These few quotes pretty much summarize all of HOPE 5.

"How are you going to get into Grad school without getting an undergrad?" "Thats a good questions, but I'm working on it!" -Virgil about Grad School.

"That sandwich is the size of my face" -Acidus [repeated line]

"Dumb as a bag of rocks with all the smart rocks removed." -Abaddon

"Fuck you and your adjectives" -Rattle

"How do you lose a black man in Chinatown?" -Stankdawg

"Have you ever worked with smart cards?"
"...no"
"Would you like to work with smart cards?"
"... Yes." -Germans after my magstripe talk

"Come on! Yesterday I saw a bum with a cell phone." "Yeah, we are forcing you into the next store we find and you are buying a phone." - Abaddon And Decius

"Do these posters look, ... I don't know, a little left to you?" - Rattle about HOPE.

"Nick, Door... door... DOOR!" -Acidus, in the car.

"What are you guys doing on this roof?" -Security

"Stop talking, Billy and I are still having a 'Damn!' moment." -Abaddon

Quotes From HOPE 5