] During the demonstration of the Sequoia machine last
] week, the machine worked fine when the company tested
] votes using an English-language ballot. But when the
] testers switched to a Spanish-language ballot, the paper
] trail showed no votes cast for two propositions.

] "It was our fault for not proofing the Spanish language
] ballot before demonstrating it," Charles said. "We had
] a demo ballot that we designed in a hurry that didn't
] include all of the files that we needed to have the
] machine present all of the voter's selections on the
] screen and the printed ballots. That would never
] happen in an election environment because of all the
] proofing that election officials do."

A lack of QA might pick our next president.

Wired News: Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch

] Yesterday, the Martin Frost (D) campaign chided the Peter
] Sessions (R) campaign for stealing Frost lawn signs. The
] two congressmen are facing each other in a newly
] configured district courtesy of DeLay and his mad power
] grab in Texas.
]
] Sessions was outraged at such baseless accusations! And
] demanded proof of these scurilous charges. Today, the
] Frost campaign responded (in a press release)
]
] ...
]
] The proof?
]
] A police report circa Sessions' 2002 campaign, in which a
] sitting congressman was pulled over for stealing his
] opponents lawn signs.

[ And yes, Sessions is SUSP1 in the police report, and yes, you can see the police report, linked off this memed page.

You can't make up shit this funny. Did he forget about that time two years ago when he was stopped for the exact same shenanigans?

Just, wow, really. -k]

Daily Kos || TX-32: GOP Congressman steals lawn signs

XMMS's Shuffle feature totally sucks. I think they keep using the same seed for the random number generator or something, because out of 155+ hours of music, I keep hearing the same set of songs every time I run the program.

Any one else notice this?

[ Oh yeah, XMMS' "random" is poor. Ok, well, it was the last time i used it, which at this point is probably about a year, but it sounds like it still is. Also, that was on an archive about 7 or 8 times as big, so it's pretty clearly an inherent flaw in the algorithm they're using.

Aside : Holy crap, i've been linux free for almost a year. No wonder i'm less angry than i used to be...

Anyway, have you looked for a plugin? There may be a plugin which randomizes better. I think there's a list of them on the XMMS site somewhere. -k]

I need more Entropy!

] "I'm not willing to show my passport to travel in my own
] country," Gilmore said in an interview. "I am not willing
] to have my rights taken away by bureaucrats who issue
] secret laws in the dead of night."

[ John Gilmore on his fight against mandated ID checks for flights. -k]

Wired News: Flight ID Fight Revived

] Finally, instead of dissembling behind ambiguous notions
] of Gallic joie de vivre, someone in this leisurely land
] has declared outright that the French should eschew the
] Anglo-Saxon work ethic and openly embrace sloth.
]
] Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Paresse," a sort of
] slacker manifesto whose title translates as "Hello
] Laziness," has become a countercultural heroine almost
] overnight by encouraging the country's workers to adopt
] her strategy of "active disengagement" -- calculated
] loafing -- to escape the horrors of disinterested
] endeavor.

[ My hero! ;) -k]

L.A. Daily News - News

] One of the dirtiest words in the economic lexicon is
] making the rounds again: stagflation.
]
] Defined as a noxious blend of stagnant growth and rising
] prices, stagflation last appeared in force in the 1970s,
] when it bedeviled U.S. policy makers and gradually
] degraded the standard of living of average Americans.
] Economists long thought a repeat to be extremely
] unlikely.
]
] But now, they are starting to worry again. The
] fundamental problem: Oil prices are kicking up inflation
] across the world, at precisely the same time that
] economic growth appears to be slowing. If oil prices keep
] climbing, and inflation rates exceed growth rates, some
] economists say the U.S., Asia and other regions could
] face a troubling scenario in which policy makers have to
] fight some of the same demons that plagued the U.S. back
] in the days of disco.
]
] "Oil at $45 a barrel is a stagflation problem," warned
] economists at UBS Ltd. in a recent research report. By
] their reckoning, sustained prices at that level would
] slow global growth rates by almost half a percentage
] point in 2005 and by about one percentage point in 2006.
] Perhaps more important, such prices would push inflation
] up by about the same amount -- giving the world its first
] taste in years of what stagflation can be like.

[ Awesome. Seriously su-par. -k]

WSJ.com - A Central Banker's Nightmare: Inflation and Slow Growth Together

This is shamefully political.

[ I have slightly mixed feelings. I don't for a second think that this hasn't got a major political aspect, but I don't see it as completely so. It really does seem like our overseas deployments are organized around a cold war threat model which is obsolete. I have no problem with them acting to reorganize into a more sensible configuration... wether they're actually *going to* do that remains to be seen, and of course, the timing of this announcement is pretty clearly meant to take up a few news cycles right in front of the RNC.

I.e. i think the basic concept is sound, but the rhetoric and timing surrounding it are, as you say, "shamefully political." -k]

Bush: Moving Troops home to fight terrorism?

] Here is IBM's Redacted Memorandum in Support of Motion
] for Partial Summary Judgment On Breach of Contract
] Claims, filed by IBM on Friday. As you will see, they are
] going for the jugular now. Astoundingly, they say that
] all parties involved in the contract between AT&T and IBM
] have now provided testimony in discovery that IBM has the
] right to do whatever it wishes with its own code,
] contrary to SCO's claims, or as the memorandum puts it,
] they all provided "unequivocal testimony that the
] agreements were not intended and should not be understood
] to preclude IBM's use and disclosure of homegrown code
] and contemporaneous documents reflect this interpretation
] of the licenses".

[ *SMACK*

Bold mine. -k]

IBM Goes for the Jugular vs SCO -- GROKLAW

noteworthy wrote:

] How much does he think the addition of French and German
] soldiers would have improved things?

That, btw, is a very stupid question. Countries like France, Germany, and Canada are not terribly useful in terms of the amount of actual soldiers and military hardware that they provide. The equipment and troops they do provide are not useless, and the sacrifices made by those men and women should be respected as one would respect any soldier's sacrifice. But ultimately, its about money.

Those countries provide significant amounts of financing to cover the operational costs of large U.S. troop deployments that they support. Lack of solid international support for Iraq ][ has significatly increased our national deficit. And an unlikely future scenario (which Al Q certainly hopes for) would be a rift between Europe and the US which was so deep that anti-terror efforts would loose international financial support. The U.S. would have significant difficulty paying for operations without causing major impacts on livelyhood back home. The economy would suffer. Flexibility would be limited.

[ Agreed, but it's not Iraq v2.0 in isolation that boosted the defecit... all those tax cuts we made, concurrent with a vastly expensive war (and much more than projections) that really turned it to 11.

Also, on top of what decius said, I think the involvment of other nations was as important for the issue of credibility as any tangible aid. If the was had been executed under the auspices of NATO, the UN, all of Europe, etc. it'd deflect some of the rampant anti-americanism, even within the region. Just an opinion I have, though, and we'll never know at this stage. -k]

RE: About That Iraq Vote

] Anarchists' Convention Debates Whether Voting Makes You a
] Bad Anarchist

does anyone else see the humor in this that I do?

[ Oh yeah. "Anarchists" are traditionally a rich source of absurdity. Not that there aren't some who get it, but by and large it's a high school sophmore's viewpoint. -k]

Anarchists' Convention Debates Voting