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You're paranoid.

I've never had or even seen anyone having their laptop searched. They only do it if they feel you are being incredibly suspicious in the first place.. what these criteria are, we don't know (and won't ever know..) but it's safe to assume that 99.999% of people take their laptops through without incident, unless you're going through Newark, in which case you don't need to be under any suspicion.

After reading that news story I actually made sure all the stuff I had in my luggage when I came through Newark this August was ACTUALLY there (I just dumped it on a shelf and didn't bother to even untangle the cables) and it was so maybe I just missed him.

All in all, I'd be more worried about theft, or even the aircraft not plummeting from the sky because you have wireless turned on in-flight, than privacy.

OK, so where do you plan to get enough money

Same way governments get money for anything else: taxes.

I know those on the far right like to believe that somehow if we keep cutting taxes we'll raise government revenue - sort of like how internet bubble entrepreneurs would lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume. But it doesn't work that way.

Now, later, maybe some of that expense can be made up with lawsuits against the companies that provided the defective voting machines. And maybe money will have to be moved out of other expenditures to balance the books. But right now, in the next month New Jersey must take on this expense of replacing those defective machines; hand-counted paper ballots are the cheapest way to do so.

The Constitution guarantees each state a republican (small-r!) form of government; accurate balloting is a necessary precondition for that. If necessary, then, the federal government must provide emergency funding (probably in the form of a loan).

Reliable voting is not an option, it is a necessity. The money can be raised.

to 1) print all the ballots, on machines we don;t have to print them on

What, the state government doesn't have fscking laser printers? Or couldn't get a rush order done at a commercial printer? C'mon.

and get them to all the polling centers.

What, the state government doesn't have fscking cars and trucks? Or couldn't get FedEx to do the deliveries? C'mon.

Then, we'd have to manually recount all those ballots, twice.

So? Canada does it; if a nation of 33 million can do it, a state of 8 1/2 million can too.

Of course, all this is what what happen in a sane and democratic society. In our crazy corporate plutocracy, I expect that New Jersey will somehow end up giving more money to the vendors and will go ahead and conduct a meaningless, unreliable election.

Much easier if we know the machines faults, can take the elction on existing equipment, then cross check the machine's security

Cross-check them against what? If we had verifiable receipts to validate the machines against, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

Besides, there's not enough certified election officials to handle it, and we could not get enough volunteers in time trained and ready to handle the counting.

Nonsense. Counting ballots hardly requires extensive training. Hire a bunch of teenagers at a bit above minimum wage. Or, does NJ have a "volunteer" hour requirement for high school students? I'm opposed to them, but if it's in place, this would be a great opportunity for the kids to burn that off.

These machines are not centrally networked, so to have en effect on even 5% of the election total, someone would have to hacke dozens of machines each at hundreds of polling sites.

The problem is not, or at least not just, "hackers" messing with these machines. The problem is that they are broken when they leave the factory, as New Jersey's past experience with them shows.

The money can not be raised. You do not understand not only the costs, but the logistics involved. You also don;t understand taxes. They have to HAVE the money to spend it. We can pass a bill to collect this money and spend it later, but if it's not in the budget, they can't do it. Not in NJ anyway. They'd need to get approved for disaster releif, for which elections do not qualify.

Ballots require not only special printers to provide authenticity certifications (lest you think paper is more secure than a computer,

Before long, someone will blame this on GlobalWarming.

Mention of this split WILL show up in someone's eco-speech.

And ideally they will get publicly called out on their idiocy

Here's another article on the Afar region
http://www.nj.com/south/index.ssf/2008/10/post.html
(they cite this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4512244.stm )

An 8-meter wide, 60-kilometer long rift (...) developed in the Afar desert region of north-eastern Africa in just 3 weeks. An earthquake on the 14th of September is said to have sparked the growing tear in the African desert, followed up by moderate tremors and then, finally, a volcanic eruption.

OK, so where do you plan to get enough money

Same way governments get money for anything else: taxes.

I know those on the far right like to believe that somehow if we keep cutting taxes we'll raise government revenue - sort of like how internet bubble entrepreneurs would lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume. But it doesn't work that way.

Now, later, maybe some of that expense can be made up with lawsuits against the companies that provided the defective voting machines. And maybe money will have to be moved out of other expenditures to balance the books. But right now, in the next month New Jersey must take on this expense of replacing those defective machines; hand-counted paper ballots are the cheapest way to do so.

The Constitution guarantees each state a republican (small-r!) form of government; accurate balloting is a necessary precondition for that. If necessary, then, the federal government must provide emergency funding (probably in the form of a loan).

Reliable voting is not an option, it is a necessity. The money can be raised.

to 1) print all the ballots, on machines we don;t have to print them on

What, the state government doesn't have fscking laser printers? Or couldn't get a rush order done at a commercial printer? C'mon.

and get them to all the polling centers.

What, the state government doesn't have fscking cars and trucks? Or couldn't get FedEx to do the deliveries? C'mon.

Then, we'd have to manually recount all those ballots, twice.

So? Canada does it; if a nation of 33 million can do it, a state of 8 1/2 million can too.

Of course, all this is what what happen in a sane and democratic society. In our crazy corporate plutocracy, I expect that New Jersey will somehow end up giving more money to the vendors and will go ahead and conduct a meaningless, unreliable election.

Much easier if we know the machines faults, can take the elction on existing equipment, then cross check the machine's security

Cross-check them against what? If we had verifiable receipts to validate the machines against, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

Besides, there's not enough certified election officials to handle it, and we could not get enough volunteers in time trained and ready to handle the counting.

Nonsense. Counting ballots hardly requires extensive training. Hire a bunch of teenagers at a bit above minimum wage. Or, does NJ have a "volunteer" hour requirement for high school students? I'm opposed to them, but if it's in place, this would be a great opportunity for the kids to burn that off.

These machines are not centrally networked, so to have en effect on even 5% of the election total, someone would have to hacke dozens of machines each at hundreds of polling sites.

The problem is not, or at least not just, "hackers" messing with these machines. The problem is that they are broken when they leave the factory, as New Jersey's past experience with them shows.

When did MC Hammer become a restaurant? You do know that trademarks are industry-specific, right?

Yeah, tell that to M$ or any other bigcorp. You mean, they were industry-specific before the creation of the internet. But nowadays, their marks apply anywhere: the larger the company, the less they are hindered by their product being "in a different industry. See:

• UPS accuses Lakewood lawyer of infringing `Brown' trademark (over www.sambrownlaw.com)
• Firestone sues over trademark infringement
• M$ sues a dentist
• French television presenter sues M$ over the Vista name
• Intel sues disk jockey for diluting its trademark
• ESPN sues QuickSilver, Inc., Alleging trademark violation

"I don't do cowering," he said.

You mean like how he stood up to President Bush on domestic surveillance and telcom immunity?

Yeah, he's my hero.

The latest news on this is that Judge Feinberg denied Sequoia's attempt to avoid the outside review of the machines. "Feinberg said she was confident ... that the attorneys for the opposing sides could draft a 'protective order' that would safeguard all concerns," says the news story.

Interestingly, the story doesn't list Felten as the one doing the review, but rather Andrew Appel, a different Princeton computer science professor.

(replying to self)

I've found a few more stats.

Until recently, the US Army required that 90% of its enlistment class be high school graduates. In 2003, 94% percent of new recruits did have a high school diploma. That's fallen steadily since the war began though. In 2007, it's fallen to to about 71% of new recruits. So the army used to have a better high school graduate rate than the general population, but that is no longer the case. It is still better than the rate from the 17 worst US cities, which is lower than 50%, but again - why use the worst possible case for comparison, when the average seems a more natural one?

And an Update: Sequoia's intimidation has worked , the state won't be sending Felten a machine.

Sequoia'a threat succeeded.

I'm not familiar with the situation, but Brad came to the rescue. Apparently, these machines screwed up during another vote. As you read the rest, it seems to be a total train wreck ... perhaps the state can sue?

It was Union County, NJ that was planning to send sample machines to Dr. Felten. They were threatened by Sequoia and have backed down from their plan as a result. The whole thing happened because several counties in NJ reported errors with the Sequoia machines in the February primary election. Sequoia reviewed these and just said that it was "user error" and not a problem. The counties understandably didn't find this an acceptable response, and Union County wanted to get an outside opinion. All the details can be found in this NJ Star-Ledger story.

EFF Twists Truth?

David Weeks, an attorney representing Manalapan, says the foundation is twisting a routine legal request in a local lawsuit into a First Amendment case.
"We're not asking to interfere with anyone's right to speak," Weeks said.
Instead, Manalapan's attorneys are simply asking Google to establish whether Moskovitz was telling the truth when he denied he was the blogger in court papers related to the land deal lawsuit.
"I don't know one way or the other if it's him," Weeks said. "It could be him."

So, some facts:

a) The guy getting sued is being sued because he didn't file EPA paperwork on a land deal. In NJ, that's pretty dumb, so he could be guilty of malpractice.
b) The guy getting sued is actually the former mayor of the same county that is suing him.
c) Yes, NJ is crooked.

However, with that said, if DaTruthSquad is the former mayor, and he is posting on about stuff, he could be violating various other things, compromising a sealed case, who knows, and therefor, the government -does- have an interest in knowing if it is him.

Note that the point is, Google isn't getting sued to see -who- DaTruthSquad is. Google is getting sued to reveal if the guy is the former mayor. Not to say that everyone is angelic, but, in all probability, DaTruthSquad is probably a crook himself.

As Bob Dylan wrote: "In Jersey everything's legal, as long as you don't get caught."

Yes, Virginia, America did lose a war.

In 1965, the immigration laws were liberalized (Hart-Celler Act). In 1969, the US government went into deficit spending. In 1981, the federal debt accelerated beyond control. Today, there exist political infrastructures that have successfully defeated border control. Potentially hostile nations now hold significant fractions of the federal debt. Hate crime laws passed by nearly all the 50 US states have been shown to protect terrorist supporting communities. Never forget the loophole that lets the H1B visa holders jump the track to the citizenship process.

The US military is currently comprised of those of european, african, and latino origin. These are the defenders of American opportunities. With no thanks to unchecked meritocracy especially in relation to college scholarships and a curious quirk in civil rights jurisprudence, those who are benefiting therefrom are Asian. These are woefully underrepresented in our military. These see America as nothing more or other than a money machine. They see themselves as 'too educated to get their hands dirty' i.e. top caste of the system. Their conduct states "Let the big-nosed barbarians defend our properties, enterprises and investments, for it is the recompense for centuries of colonial abuses."

Why should they assimilate? It is unlawful to compel their assimilation, for it has been demonstrated to be a violation of their 'civil rights'. Millions have already been naturalized, their children alreadly having been born here. They are raised to have political savvy to vote as if their minds were still overseas, thanks to 'community centers' that negate the assimilation process in the public schools and the media.

Check this out: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/08/indian_tr icolor_replaces_ediso.html/ . IMHO Verizon has a moral obligation to require IDDD (complete with CCITT5/R1 MF dialling in the background to demonstrate how foreign it has become) to call Edison, NJ: +91 732 NXX XXXX. Perhaps passports should be presented when entering and exiting there as well.

Economic sovereignty, political sovereignty, and cultural sovereignty are in a rock-scissors-paper relationship and the civil rights movement disrupted cultural sovereignty.

Kinda how New Jersey is going to be doing things.

It won't be in place until 2008, but it will be there.

"We noticed most of the dead hives are close to cornfields. ... And when we asked other beekeepers what was the principle crop near their hives, they said corn, corn, corn."

A lot of the die-offs have been near corn fields, and a pesticide that coats some of the GM corn is a neurotoxin that causes disorientation in bees, even at low doses. There was a similar issue in France a number of years ago, apparently. Honey production was cut in half for several years. The Star-Ledger here in NJ ran an article about it today. Some are speculating that this might be a factor.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news -11/1176611470205100.xml&coll=1

Yes you can argue of a relationship between majority and dictatorship. A simple majority implies an active opposition. A majority of say 60% implies many people are for a particular issue. Chavez won with 68% of the vote. This is 68% of the popular vote and it is extremely difficult to get. This does imply a lack of opposition through intimidation, rampant populism, or some other ways and means.

I consider America, Canada, and most European countries as true democracies. Take a look at election results and you will rarely see a 2/3 victory. In most countries 2/3 of the vote is necessary to make constitutional changes because usually it is very very difficult to get 2/3 of the vote.

Since Chavez and his cronies have over 2/3 of the vote they can do whatever they please and do not have to ask anybody for permission. Up to this point Chavez was a populist leader, now he is becoming a populist dictator, and in four years when he suppresses the opposition he will have become an official dictator.

Here are the things Chavez is doing that can be construed as dictator:

Price Controls:

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news -11/1175232470107850.xml&coll=1

- He used to take home $930 a month from his butcher shop at the Guacaipuro Market. But that ended when the Venezuelan government cracked down on butchers and grocers who were selling products above price controls.

Nationalization:

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr00 4=o9k4jttqk2.app7b&page=NewsArticle&id=6573&news_i v_ctrl=1261

- On Jan. 8, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez sent tremors through the international capitalist market when he announced a new wave of nationalizations. These nationalizations would eliminate foreign control over the country's largest telecommunications and electricity companies.

Freedom of the press:

http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/03/23/en_ing_a rt_press-freedom-is-det_23A848043.shtml
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/03/17/ap352649 9.html

- Venezuela is intensifying a campaign against the media criticizing President Hugo Chávez' attempts at seizing freedom of expression for his self-proclaimed socialist revolution, the Inter-American Press Association said on Monday.
- Press freedom watchdogs have accused Chavez of using the judiciary and new legislation restricting broadcast content to silence critics. Chavez denies threatening press freedoms and accuses Venezuela's privately owned media of conspiring to topple his government.

Yes Chavez is moving into dictatorship!

Massive investigations and threats of jail time if you don't help them cover up how ineffective their screening is.

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1 164091705151690.xml?starledger?ntop&coll=1\ The other one automtaically prints from the browser which can be annoying for some users, especially those without a printer or a slow machine.

cheers,

ben
http://www.webexperts.co.nz

By giving up liberty, we may be safer from terrorists, but we are less safe from our government, causing us to have neither Liberty nor Safety.

From http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/index.ssf?/base/ne ws-0/1154154297217660.xml&coll=3

Patrick Ricciardi, the city's information technology officer, who took over at the garage after Robotics left, said codes used to operate several dozen components were inexplicably changed overnight.

Workers then had to manually reassign numbers to each module because Robotics did not leave a manual behind.

"This is usually done through the computer, but since we don't have a manual, we can't do it that way," Ricciardi said.

Dennis Clarke, general manager of Robotics, said the city has no right to an operating manual.

"If you own the copyright, you have a right to use it," Clarke said. "They are not entitled to our source codes. This is very critical proprietary information covered under contract law and intellectual properties."

Hmmm, sounds like someone has been taking lessons from Darl McBride ...

And from http://www.hudsonreporter.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=12 91&dept_id=523585&newsid=16980856&PAG=461&rfi=9

When the 916 Garden St. Garage - a unique automatic facility - opened in Oct. 2002, it was years late and already millions of dollars over budget.

Problems during construction created deeply embedded professional, legal, and personal animosity between the city and Robotic Parking. The city blamed Robotic for the delays, while Robotic blamed the city and another contractor.

Since the opening, there have been highly publicized problems at the garage. Two vehicles were totaled after they fell inside the garage. In October, 2005, Corea posted a letter to patrons warning that if they decide to keep using the automated garage, they would "have to accept the fact that there may be many future delays."

Robotic counters that Corea is overstating any malfunctions as part of a smear campaign against Robotic. Clarke said that the garage has a "reliability rating of 99.99 percent" and that the garage had been down less than total of 30 hours since it has opened. ...

The HPU's current contract with Robotic Parking is $23,250. Corea told the council that on June 22, Robotic officials made a demand to increase the fee to $27,900 per month, which the City Council has said that it will not accept. Robotic contended that a $4,650 is a reasonable moderate monthly increase.

I guess 99.99% reliability means only one in 10,000 cars gets totaled.

Congress either fiddles with the rate of growth, or adds a multi-billion-dollar "Part D" program

It might look like they haven't screwed with Medicare, but that ignores the fact that they're now pushing the costs onto the States.

http://www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/ business-3/1144385793100320.xml&coll=1

The names and purchase information of smokers who bought cigarettes online are being relinquished by the Web-based purveyors, after prodding by the state Di vision of Taxation.

The Taxation Division cited a 1949 federal law, the Jenkins Act, to obtain lists of New Jersey buy ers. The law requires remote sellers of cigarettes to provide names of buyers to state tax authorities, said Tom Vincz, a spokesman for the state Treasury Department.

In the past year, several other states, including New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Oregon, also have used the Jenkins Act to crack down on residents who buy cigarettes over the Internet but don't pay state taxes.

New York City announced in March that through a settlement with eSmokes.com, the company is surrendering 12,500 names of customers from 2000 to 2003, when a New York state ban on Internet cigarette sales took effect. It was the largest list of names obtained by the city.

From the New Jersey paper which is close to the invesigation:

(you need to pop in your date of birth, just lie)
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/ba se/news-2/113903194211860.xml&coll=1

Freedom of speech isn't freedom from criticism or consequences. They just booted a guy for being a right-wing neo-Nazi nut. Does the left get an exemption? http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/index.ss f?/base/columns-0/1137649957316870.xml&coll=1 Frankly, I'm amazed anyone can argue against this, because it amounts to basically recording and repeating what the professors are saying. A classroom is a public domain; you can't reasonably expect political views expressed in a lecture to have some right of privacy.

The issue, ultimately, was a corporate parent that pursued a broad "Internet strategy" that completely pissed away any chance for its individual newspapers to build their own web sites and learn the lessons Robin has just summarized so well. Instead, they jammed content from numerous papers into a single web portal they believed might have enough critical mass and page views to attract national advertisers.

Now those local papers have no Internet infrastructure of their own, no dedicated Internet staff, and no way to build a web site that focuses on their own community. Even if they read and understood what RobLimo has shared, I don't believe they're in any position to act on that knowledge.

I think history will view the consolidation of the news business into chain ownership as a fundamental mistake that moved key decisions further away from the readers and advertisers - the customers - who used the product and paid the bills.

I guess it's hard to make good sarcastic remarks when the world has gone bonkers.

What butthole did the democrats have there heads up when let this scam be part of the 2004 election?

Maybe they were just too busy digging up dead people. (thanks fark)

Seriously though, there is no outrage, because there was no disaster. The election wasn't close enough for people to blame it on the machines (well, the ones that do are just tossed in the conspiracy theorist bin). And as for a system with problems, well, every system has problems. To the general public computers are supposed to be buggy and insecure anyway, so this really isn't raising the concerns it should.

Really only gonna get fixed in one of 3 ways:
1) A visionary with some power gets behind the cause to fix the system
2) Someone sucessfully raises the 'terrorists can change our votes' alarm
3) Something really bad happend, and an election is directly affected by the flaws

http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/xclude/11 26861942142880.xml?jjournal?xclude&coll=3

yeah but After recent crackdowns at Columbia and Princeton , i2hub users might twice about the use of the P2P Direct Connect hub. With letter's of intent to subpoena having been received at several other universities including Carnegie Mellon, many questions are being raised targeting the source of the crackdown. How did the RIAA gain access to a Internet2 connection. Are universities cooperating in the access. How will the long hidden Direct Connect community respond?

$750G bail is set for second suspect in bodega killing

Give me a break, the system is not lenient toward violent criminals.

but this is just bullsh!t no matter which side you are on

How is that any different than this?
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news -17/1096003906320890.xml

In one case, the GOP is saying something that while technically true --liberals might ban the Bible --is almost certainly false. In the other case, the DNC is saying something that while technically true --Republicans might reinstate a draft --is almost certainly false. How is one better or worse than the other?

In fact, at the risk of changing the subject, I dare say that the GOP is on ever so slightly more solid ground here than the Democrats. While Democrats have repeatedly acted to remove references to God, the Bible and Christianity from public life, precisely zero Republicans have said anything, either officially or unofficially, in support of a draft. So while they're certainly both wrong, the Democrats are, in my opinion, even more wrong than the Republicans on this one.

So where's your outrage at the Democrats?

Are you sure it is Trollkore? Considering his subject line, it might be NJ governor Jim McGreedy

Apparently, you wouldn't stay in jail for very long at all.

[...] You don't understand the purpose of RICO or how it's used anymore, so stop claiming it can be used against SCO or the RIAA or anybody else for that matter.

SCO did nothing illegal. The RIAA did nothing illegal.[...]

sPh

I think thermal printers are under fifty bucks (probably well under) and I don't see why this couldn't be added to any voting system.

In fact, it has.

Don't take the overabundance of Slashdot stories about Diebold to mean that they're the only company selling computerized voting systems in the U.S....

And Dan Rather raises funds for the Democratic party. Your point?

experience working at Fox news does not exactly enhance your resume when applying for a job with the real media.

Maybe you better put down "lying liars" and read today's news

Fox News does well in the ratings but very poorly with advertisers. The problem is that its core democratic of poor middle aged southern white racist men do not have much in the way of buying power.

The average Fox News viewer has an income between $50,000 & $75,000, 4+ years of college and holds a professional-managerial position.

Remember that Daniel simply wrote an MP3 search engine; he didn't distribute MP3s himself.

According to this --

Peng's site, dubbed "wake," only appeared responsible for about 27,000 infringements by others, he said. But the Princeton sophomore also is accused of offering hundreds of MP3 song files for illegal downloading.

Oh yeah smart guy? Well what about the plaques that plague society?

Lets not forget the young NJ school boy (13 yr) who committed suicide
because he was suspended and allegedly threatened, by the his school
principal, to be incarcerated for breaking into his school's computer
system.

The slashdot story here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/14/0129236.shtm l

Actual article here:
http://www.nj.com/news/times/index.ssf?/news/times /05-13-CCQR1VHB.html

This is a prime example of the effects of sever punishment laden on
young children. Instead of channeling their blackhat energies into
something constructive and leaving the punishment in the hands of the
school system, Torricelli, indirectly, wants to build more prisons so
that we can now through more young children into them.... which, by
the way, do a poor job at rehabilitating and sometimes making the
child even worse when he comes out.

Being a NJ resident I am definitely going to write Senator Torricelli
and offer the above story as a prime example of where this type of
legislation could lead too. You should to.

---

Bigup Brick City

The site www.firstgov.gov provides a central location for finding information from almost all U.S. local, state or federal sites. I have found it to be a well organized and useful site and I have generally been able to find answers, forms or sites that I seek with minimal effort.

In fact, I used it to find a link to the New Jersey Rail Schedules.