Last Tab
Next month, I'll take a look at the human side of the voting-machine mess. As you might expect, nothing is simple.
A button on the 1994 BMW 535i's RF keyfob activated a double-lock feature that could only be canceled by inserting the key in the door lock. Too bad if you were inside the car with the windows rolled up.
Cell phones use the same misleading metaphors as PCs and their deleted messages remain in flash memory, as described at www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/08/30/betrayed.byacellphone.ap/index.html.
Cuyahoga County produced a massive report on its electronic voting experience. Read it and weep at www.votingintegrity.org/pdf/cerp_rpt06.pdf. The minibar key incident is described in Felten's blog at www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1064.
Analyze the Diebold hardware at itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf and www.bbvdocs.org/reports/BBVreportIIunredacted.pdf. A reliability study for some machines: www.votetrustusa.org/pdfs/DRE_Reliability.pdf. Avi Rubin's day at the polls: http:// avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-day-at-polls-maryland-primary-06.html.
Info on my local Dutchess County Verified Voting group is at www.mhvv.org. Legislative gridlock maybe a Good Thing, see www.newscopy.org/voting_machines/index.html.
The NASA Lessons Learned database I mentioned in the last column has moved to www.nasa.gov/offices/oce/llis/home.
The local LUG mailing list provided some numbers for operating systems found on a local arts-and-sciences college campus network: Windows 90 percent, Macintosh 9.6 percent, Linux and UNIX 0.4 percent. However, a friend reports a local liberal-arts campus has Apples at 30-40 percent and yet another reports 60-70 percent. None of that seems relevant to the real world.
Rich Marvin, Onset Computer's Education Manager, ran my e-mail up the flagpole and reports that Onset will be tracking requests for a Linux version of its data logger software. Now it's up to you: Vote early, vote often!
