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A Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community
About Me :
I'm a grownup nerd living in the Boston burbs. I write computer programs for a living and plays for fun.
I'm married to a wonderful woman, and we share a nice little house with our daughter and our cats.
I'm a humanist, a technologist, an artist, and an idealist. I believe in reason, freedom, love, equality,
and democracy. (Did I mention that I'm
an idealist? I did, OK.)
I'm also a pragmatist and an empiricist. I reject ideology and dogma, especially when they conflict with
practical facts (i.e., pretty much always). I particularly hate willful ignorance, which tends to go hand-in-hand
with ideology and dogma.
Like the alignment of the planets, this blog gets updated as I have the time, inspiration, and inclination to do so.
Like the alignment of the planets, this blog gets updated as I have the time, inspiration, and inclination to do so.
Monday, December 29, 2003
Hack The Vote
Usually I don't do the "ripped from the headlines" thing when I write, but how could I resist the electronic voting story? (Black Box Voting is an excellent source of information on the whole subject) I thought I could write something timely and entertaining which would make my audience aware of the electronic voting machine mess. In the interest of making it dramatically interesting, I made both characters into ex-hackers. I thought I was in danger of straining credibility when I did this, but it works and it is interesting. But as this story from Wired makes clear, truth is stranger than even my fiction. The White Hats are coming! The White Hats are coming!
PS Bev Harris at Black Box Voting thinks there's more to this story than meets the eye, and that it's possible there was no hacking at VoteHere to begin with.
Usually I don't do the "ripped from the headlines" thing when I write, but how could I resist the electronic voting story? (Black Box Voting is an excellent source of information on the whole subject) I thought I could write something timely and entertaining which would make my audience aware of the electronic voting machine mess. In the interest of making it dramatically interesting, I made both characters into ex-hackers. I thought I was in danger of straining credibility when I did this, but it works and it is interesting. But as this story from Wired makes clear, truth is stranger than even my fiction. The White Hats are coming! The White Hats are coming!
PS Bev Harris at Black Box Voting thinks there's more to this story than meets the eye, and that it's possible there was no hacking at VoteHere to begin with.