Science Addiction

First, take a look at this graphic at Washington Post sensationally titled How to Steal an Election. It compares Nevada laws regarding slot machines with state and federal laws regulating electronic voting machines. The comparison is stark and eye-opening. For example, the Nevada Gaming Commission has access to all software for gaming electronics but the voting machine code is a trade secret. Yes, and so are the inner government workings of China.

And then there is the most famous of the voting machine manufacturers, Diebold. In addition to being a closed system that even the government is not allowed to know about, it is a company that fundamentally misunderstands electronic voting in particular and security in general.

For example, this came from a Diebold spokesman [via Schneier]

“For there to be a problem here, you’re basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software,” he said. “I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.”

Ah yes, the head-in-the-sand form of security. I hear it is very popular in the real world and effective in utopian societies.

The fun and games do not end there. A major vulnerability was found in the voting machines:

This newspaper is withholding some details of the vulnerability at the request of several elections officials and scientists, partly because exploiting it is so simple and the tools for doing so are widely available.

Of course, the report appeared later on with parts redacted, and it is tremendous.

A few days ago, a Janet Meyer article on Apple Matters sparked a phenomenal discussion for and against Apple’s DRM policies. If you are not aware, Apple has a Digital Rights Management [DRM] system that “protects” the music it sells from the iTunes music store: it determines where you can play it, how you can play it, how many machines you can play it on and so on. It is proprietary, so if Apple controls the online music market, Apple also automatically controls how, where, why, when we listen to music we buy from them.

To cut a long story short, Janet was making the point that Apple may have a closed music format but as long as consumers have no trouble with it, consumers have a choice to buy CDs instead, the market will decide what is best.

Ah yes, the market. That all-knowing, all-seeing, all-singing, all-dancing market. It knows. In a perfect society with fully informed consumers who have true choices, the market knows. Elections would be marvellous with fully informed voters with true choices as well Read more »

By way of Radio Open Source I discovered this cool new company called GreenFuel.

GreenFuel has algae that consumes CO2 and converts in to a biofuel. The idea is that their algae would consume emissions from smokestacks and become algae biomass. Algae biomass can be used as ethanol, biodiesel, and other stuff. The first bioreactor was attached at MIT and more have been installed elsewhere since. This one is being funded by a VC run by Robert Metcalfe, the guy who invented Ethernet at Xerox PARC. That’s right, Ethernet.

Profitable venture-capital backed companies that can spin the current system on its head- that is, making it cool and profitable to turn your emissions clean- are fantastic ideas to urge a transition from our present system to a better one. Of course, lower government mandated emissions standards or credits for lower emissions would make this technology a lot more lucrative.

aka What is this * of which you speak?

For many months or years or decades- I am not sure- I have used to the phrase “What is this * you speak of?” to great humorous (my opinion) effect. It has usually been greeted with chuckles and makes me feel all warm and superior on the inside.

Maybe you don’t understand the context in which you would use this phrase; let me illustrate. Let us say people are talking about the NSA wiretaps. Someone says that they think it might be legal to which someone else replies that it is not in-keeping with the constitution. At this point, I will interject with the classic line, “Constitution? What is this constitution you speak of?” and will be treated by chuckles all around. If you don’t get the joke- and I’m sure it loses some lustre in written text- it means that people at the NSA or in government seem to not be aware of the existence of the constitution. Ha ha, funny, right?

Maybe not. I like to make myself laugh more than I do others, so I succeed. It is a low bar I set for myself.

The trouble, however, is that I do not like to use lines without knowing their roots. Where does this phrase come from? Surely, it is not my own creation- though I may admit as much in lesser company- so where does it come from? I hate using quotes or phrases that are in common use without knowing the source- you know those people who spout lines from Monty Python or SNL or Abe Lincoln without knowing where they came from? They irritate me. So what are the origins of my pet line? Off to the all-knowing search engines for that answer… Read more »

Scientific American has an interesting article by Michael Shermer on how he has been flipped from being a skeptic- that is, not entirely trusting the environmentalist’s take on global warming- to becoming a believer based on overwhelming and undisputable facts.

Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians—the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon—issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for “national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions” in carbon emissions.

Then I attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, Calif., where former vice president Al Gore delivered the single finest summation of the evidence for global warming I have ever heard, based on the recent documentary film about his work in this area, An Inconvenient Truth. The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance.

I saw An Inconvenient Truth last weekend and it is a fantastic film. It is a powerful film and has the urgency that this tragedy demands.

If you do doubt that global warming is real, then let me put it to you this way: even if it was not true, would you rather not be prepared for the chance that it is? Are you so convinced that it is not true, that you would bet the future of the planet on it?

On a related note, TreeHugger has a great piece on the four stages of global warming denial- from theory not fact to what about the bottom-line. Well put together.

While junk email is harder to deal with, the much older problems of junk mail are slightly more within our control in the US. While the steps below will not reduce your junk mail load to zero, it will make a difference. It has for me and the Federal Trade Commission recommends them as well.

• If you receive tons of unsolicited credit card offers in the post, the trouble is that the credit reporting agencies have sold your information to whoever would pay. The government has had them set up a web site to opt out of all such offers forever (or opt-in, if you have lost your mind). The strange thing is that the agencies actually commissioned a study [pdf] – for the benefit of the FTC and consumers, I suppose- that demonstrates that the unsolicited offers are actually beneficial to consumers and more importantly, beneficial to corporations. If you are skeptical of giving your information to that web site- and you should be- know this: the FTC recommends it and make sure the URL says ‘optoutscreen.com’ and has ‘https://’ preceding it instead of a regular ‘http://’.
• The rest of the junk mail is trickier. While it is impossible to stop it all, you can make a dent. Among the direct mail marketing companies, some of them have chosen to self-regulate themselves; probably in fear of government intervention. The have formed the Direct Marketing Association and allow you to opt out of all direct post that is sent by their members. This is clearly not all junk mail, but a significant amount. So, you can go to the DMA web site and get yourself off the list. Except, there is a catch. You have to do it by post, if you want to do it for free. If you want to do it online, they charge you $5. Outrageous, but at least it is possible to do it at all. Enjoy! [thanks to Get Rich Slowly]

Last June, I started this blog to talk about the things I was interested in: technology, science, some politics (mainly concerning technology and science). Maybe it is a sign of the times, but the focus has been fine-tuned towards civil liberties, privacy, open standards and new energy while still introducing the occasional geek project or humorous outburst.

Two Slashdots and a Digg later, the blog is older and wiser. I am learning to focus on fewer things in more detail as I try to build a repeat readership. So far, a vast majority of the readership surfs in and out through links found on Digg, Slashdot, other blogs and mainly, search.

So thanks to all those who have surfed in; even more thanks to those who stick around. Add SA to your RSS reader and come back often.

I just added The Energy Blog to my Blogroll in the sidebar. This is a great blog run by James Fraser, a veteran of the energy industry and energy-related arms of the government. The emphasis of his blog is on technologies that can replace oil. Unlike many on the Internet, he knows his subject matter extremely well. In his own words, The Energy Revolution has begun and will change your lifestyle.

This is one of the great videos in the history of Internet viral videos- the fountains of Bellagio recreated using Diet Coke and Mentos mints (required Quicktime).

The controversy started- for those not paying attention- when CMP served a cease-and-desist letter to an Irish non-profit for using the term “Web 2.0” in the name of their conference. Bad move- the blogosphere went in to attack mode and O’Reilly (who runs the conference and is associated with CMP) will never have quite the same reputation again. Before the blogosphere outrage over CMP’s claim of Web 2.0 as a service mark for conferences dies down, I have a few things to say. Read more »

After my article reviewing GMail for Your Domain a lot of people were wondering about support for GMail Notifier. The short story is that it works for me. Read more »

Iowa State University researchers have discovered a method for using mold to break down corn fibers in to simple sugars that can be fermented to create Ethanol. Apparently, the process is not a simple one; corn fibers are very tough and do not degrade easily. Corn fibers are a byproduct of the wet milling process that produces corn syrup. And we all consume gallons of corn syrup mixed with caffeine (aka Coca-Cola) every year so this is good stuff and precisely the kind of thinking that seems to be required. Of course, the process only works on a small scale at the moment but mix a little venture capital or government money in and things become interesting.
[via The Energy Blog]

Newsday has a fantastic animated cartoon song on the NSA wiretaps set to Stevie Wonder’s I Just Called to Say I Love You. This one goes, You Just Called and We Were Listening. Good stuff.

Google added Hebrew and Arabic to GMail on the same day. Now that is not being evil on an international scale.