bucy wrote:
] ] Israel has asked the United States for $9 billion in loan
] ] guarantees aimed at jumpstarting its economy which has
] ] been damaged by nearly three years of violence.
] ]
] ] The United States had threatened to reduce the package by
] ] the amount Israel spends on a security barrier cutting
] ] through the West Bank. Israel and the United States
] ] disagree over the course of the barrier, with Washington
] ] trying to minimize the amount of West Bank land included
] ] on the ``Israeli'' side.
]
] Finally, the US is starting to take a harder line against
] Israel. I think its fair to say that a lot of our troubles
] with the Islamic world are directly attributable to our
] (totally bogus) policy towards Israel.

Yeah, it's a nice gesture, but I don't have any hope of the threat being acted upon. This same threat came up a few weeks ago when they started building the wall east of Jerusalem but it was quickly retracted. Israel receives roughly 25% of the US foreign aid budget as it is. They are even allowed to subsidize their domestic arms industry with US funds. No other nation gets to do that, they have to buy US equipment. (Nice racket, eh?)

Israel has become a middle east proxy state for US global hegemony. As long as they are serving to protect US interests, a blind eye will be turned to the occupation of Palestinian territory. The blowback for these policies will not be pretty.

RE: U.S. Threatens to Cut Aid to Israel Over Barrier

Decius wrote:
] Oh great. They are postponing the California election so they
] can get computerized voting machines installed in time. If
] they think the old technology is bad, wait until they see
] this...

They have to have a good trial run before the next Presidential election, ya know? So which electronic machines will they be using? Hope it's not Diebold. Doesn't matter though, the whole electronic voting landscape is crooked and corrupt beyond repair. We are entering a phase in this society where voting will mean nothing but couting votes will mean everything.

-----

From the 8/27/03 edition of the Port Clinton News Herald:

Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold Inc., this week sent out letters to central Ohio Republicans asking them to raise $10,000 in donations in time for a Sept. 26 Ohio Republican Party event at his home.

His company, which specializes in security and election machinery, is one of three under consideration to supply new, electronic voting machines to replace punch card machines still in use in 71 Ohio counties.

In his invitation O'Dell states his support for the Republican Party and notes he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."

RE: Yahoo! News - Appeals Court Delays Calif. Recall Vote

Rattle wrote:
] Do some DNS queries that end with .net for some nonexistent
] domains.. They are all being responded to with an A record
] pointing to 64.94.110.11, which is a VeriSign search engine.
]
] This is complete bullshit. This must not be allowed.

Hahah, VeriSign, "The Value of Trust" my ass. I noticed that yesterday. Looks like it's dead this morning though but I did see the attempted redirect to that IP.

How do you think ICANN will react to this?

RE: VeriSign Rerouting .net DNS queries

A $46 million high school dazzling with the latest technology - from interactive digital textbooks and computerized tablets to electronic play diagrams for the basketball team - will be built by the Philadelphia School District in partnership with the Microsoft Corp., officials announced today.

...

Microsoft's contribution will not be monetary, but services worth millions of dollars, including a full-time on-site project manager, planning and design expertise, staff training and ongoing technology support. It plans to bring in other technology partners.

The company's reward is the opportunity to design a school using technology in every way possible from the ground up - a prototype it could then market.

...

"They will be in an advisory capacity. We're still running the school," said Ellen Savitz, the district's chief development officer. "There's no fear of a corporation somehow overtaking the educational focus."

...

Could be good, could be bad. This seems like Internet Explorer vs. Netscape Navigator all over again. Open source alternatives on cheap hardware versus Microsoft's offering. The game this time is technology in schools. Microsoft does NOT want kids learning any alternatives, I know that much. Teach them early that Microsoft is how you interface with information technology.

I think their definately should be a healthy fear of Microsoft having too much of a focus in education.

Microsoft to design city high school

Good analysis of Scoop's allegations and Diebold's rebuttal:

------

Allegation #53 (p. 16):
"Physical access to the voting results may not even be necessary to acquire the voting records if they are transmitted across the Internet."
Diebold Response:
... Results are not transmitted over the Internet.
My Added Comment:
But we know that result transmission uses telephone, PPP, and a username and password, from Page 14 of the Hopkins report, quoted in Allegation #40. Therefore, it is quite possible that election central will have a LAN connected using Internet protocol, perhaps used to connect a modem bank with a single PC. This LAN may not be as vulnerable as the public Internet, but it is vulnerable to packet snooping and several other attacks, and must therefore be carefully secured. Furthermore, if an adversary can dial into the PPP host and await connections, Trojan horse applications on the voting system could communicate with the adversary using PPP without talking to the GEMS system at all.

Allegation #54 (p. 16):
"The Diebold voting machines cannot work in isolation ..."
Diebold Response:
This is false. ... The primary form of output for the Ballot Station is the result tape ...
My Added Comment:
Diebold is wrong. Just because communication is accomplished using hand carried media such as the PCMCIA cards used to program the machine before the election and the printout used as the official election record does not mean that the machine is isolated. See my response to allegation #16! Hand carried PCMCIA cards need just as much protection as network communications. Furthermore, the printout from the machine is not necessarily the final result unless we make this printout before we make any modem connection that could admit an intruder; here, the Diebold system, because of its weak security, relies unnecessarily on strict adherence to correct polling place procedures. Not only that, but we are under increasing pressure to use the electronic record for canvassing, generally the one in the hand-carried PCMCIA card taken from the voting machine, but in the not-too-distant future, we may be pressured into using the result from the modem! That paper record wasn't even an option with Global's system when it was offered for sale to Iowa in 1997, and today, I gather that many jurisdictions don't look at it unless there's a call for a recount.

The Diebold FTP Story

] Want undeniable proof of press culpability, compare a google
] news search for "Walden O'Dell" with "Avi Rubin votehere" Not
] all of the Avi Rubin stories are critical, but we're talking
] about 63 to 9 here. Furthermore, consider the impact that the
] blaster worm stories have had on the American mindset. We may
] not say "this kid created the blaster worm" but we build that
] association in your head anyway.
]
] The AJC: "Furor over the report was partly defused when the
] lead researcher acknowledged this week that he failed to
] disclose that he had stock options in VoteHere, a company that
] competes with Diebold in the voting-software market, and was a
] member of VoteHere's technical advisory board."
]
] From ABC: Diebold officials said they were "shocked and
] disappointed" by Rubin's admissions.
]
] "Diebold Election Systems has consistently questioned the
] conclusions drawn by the Johns Hopkins-issued report," the
] company said in a statement. "It is now clear, by Mr. Rubin's
] own admission, that questions of bias must be considered."

I like this quote the best:

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."

- Wally O'Dell, CEO Diebold

Yes, he really said that. Here's a good resource for this whole scam: www.blackboxvoting.com

RE: Diebold appears to have conflict

In 1983, Tommy Boy Records held a remix contest to promote G.L.O.B.E. & Whiz Kid's "Play That Beat (Mr. DJ)." The unanimous winner was Steve "Steinski" Stein & Douglas "Double Dee" DiFranco's "Lesson One: The Payoff Mix." Two more Lessons soon followed: "Lesson Two: The James Brown Mix" and "Lesson Three: The History of Hip-Hop."

"Lesson One" became an urban radio hit within days, but was never commercially released because of its extensive and eclectic samples. Clearing the sound clips -- a diverse collection ranging from Mae West and Humphrey Bogart to Ed McMahon and Herbie Hancock -- would have been a legal nightmare under copyright law.

Made entirely with double-cassette decks and Steinski's extensive vinyl collection, these three tracks paved the way for current cut-and-paste turntablist experimentation. Countless basement DJs were influenced by The Lessons, including DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, who both released unofficial tributes called "Lesson Four." It was way ahead of its time, and deserves to be heard beyond vinyl bootlegs traded by DJs.

The Lessons

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

...

Blogger from Iraq.

The Promise and the Threat

If there was ever an example of an unholy alliance between government and industry, this is it. If there was ever an example of the failure of necessary regulation by the government of an investor-owned utility, it is found in the government's failure to regulate FirstEnergy, because now, according to published reports by the Associated Press, CNN, and ABC News, the blackout which affected an estimated 50 million people began in the FirstEnergy system.

...

Interesting words from a Democratic hopeful that spoke up against deregulation many moons ago.

Lights Out On Deregulation

Decius wrote:

] If you are interested in the grid failure, everything you need
] to know is here.

Deregulation is what happened. They started to regard "excess capacity" as "massive glut" and trimmed the fat. That and investing in profits instead of quality of service. Oops...

Very good collection of links BTW...

RE: Special Report: IEEE says I told you so (re: the grid)