Voting should be transparent, trustworthy and verifiable, something that electronic voting in its current state does not yet offer opines Mark Rotenberg in A Vote Against the Computerized Ballot.
He also points to verifiedvoting.org's resolution which states:
Computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. It is therefore crucial that voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable audit trail, by which we mean a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked. Many of the electronic voting machines being purchased do not satisfy this requirement. Voting machines should not be purchased or used unless they provide a voter-verifiable audit trail; when such machines are already in use, they should be replaced or modified to provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. Providing a voter-verifiable audit trail should be one of the essential requirements for certification of new voting systems.
Without transparency and verifiability, there can be no trust in the election process, even if the equipment works properly. Imagine such a system with a repeat of Florida's 2000 election. Two candidates in a statistical deadheat, and votes stored in a computerized database. Even though the votes could be quickly and easily retallied to certify the election results, no one could prove the database accurately stored the votes originally cast or that it was free from tampering. So the election results would probably have to be thrown out, and how many people would show up for a second election using the same equipment? Or trust the results?
Samba 3 beta release candidate 4 is out. Whoohoo. Eyeballing the list of features shows two of particular interest to my workplace: LDAP/Kerberos authentication and support for storing SID to uid /guid mappings so we can avoid manually reconnecting each user and account to the network in case of failure. (See network headache from this spring.)
Also found an effort afoot to manage Windows patches through a Samba share and Windows logon script. No files to test with yet, alas.
In response to media hysteria over a hurricane, I stowed the garbage can and potted plants in the garage, and checked some loose screens on the windows, and plucked most of the basil for pesto. And even put away the garden hose; not that it was really needed this year. Went out and made sure to have a decent supply of ice cream and a bottle of wine in the house. Oh yes, and acquired dog food and a good chef's knife along with a cup of coffee and conversation with some friends. Read a book. And sacked out early.
But the storm decided to go through Charlottesville, instead. The rain had clearly ended more or less by 8 pm in the district, the time when I bothered to notice.
Other than the morning's annoyance of sweeping away ginko branches with their reeking berries, really there wasn't much to fear or fuss over in my area. The neighborhood's misfortune was one car stabbed in the back windshield by a falling branch. Truth be told, the damage was pretty similar to many of the other summer thunderstorms.
And for this, the federal government closes for two days. Sure, prevention has its place, but DC isn't Cape Hatteras, an island exposed to the ocean's fury. We faced at worst, winds, rain and flooding and inconvenience from power outages. Grocery and other retail businesses were open most of yesterday; surely if their employees were working, the rest of us could have managed as well.
Without music, my life would be unimaginable. Yet this peculiarly human trait —no culture appears without music — is poorly understood. The NYT reports today that PET scans of musicians' listening to self-selected music, “activated similar neural systems of reward and emotion as those stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs.”
Certainly that provides the short answer to why we like music. But still unanswered is whether the response to music is a bit of evolutionary serendipity or provides some evolutionary benefit, such as courtship. Or group dynamics. Music releases endorphins cued to social bonding and coordinating large groups of people. The answer of whether chance or evolved design is more accurate depends on determining if the brain contains a structure specific to music.
Another fascinating point is the commonality of certain musical elements: the prevalence of the octave and the preference for perfect fifths or fourths, which some researchers have tied to the human voice and its auditory properties.
In a shameless effort to put up a blog entry, I am snagging the neat bit from Ad Rem where research reveals the numbers used by the Greeks were adopted from the Egyptians. Per the BBC, Greek alphabetical number to be markedly similar to the demotic numbers Egyptians used between the 8th century BCE until around AD 450. Researchers believe Greek merchants may have adopted the numbering system during the the 6th century uptick in trade between Egyptians and Greeks.
More proof that trade routes always carry more than just goods. Or that cultural exchanges are as old as humankind.
Some noxious weed has been polluting the air for the last week or so. I've succumbed to medication in order to breathe, with the unhappy side effect that I walk around slightly dazed and my sleep cycle is disrupted. So I'm dazed and tired, but breathing and not feeling sick to my stomach. It's called progress, I guess. Harrumph. I much prefer the thinking and breathing combined, as it is the whole point of having a head to begin with.
Of course, no matter how verifiable the promises, are, the work still needs doing.
Maybe if I spent less time chasing down extra sets of housekeys, I'd get more done.