Recent Comments

1. over 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Crawl in a hole you can afford to own and when you die you’re buried inexpensively… (?)

2. over 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

   westiewestaz: You’re welcome. It’s rather disheartening to believe people we’ve entrusted with power would abuse it but, nonetheless, since it’s an historically consistent pattern of behavior that can become extreme, it’s necessary for we, the people, to keep it in check. We must maintain the legal power to do so or we’ll wake up and find out we can’t fix it, and we’re pretty close to that right now.

   Comix Rawk!

3. over 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

   westiewestaz: Well, I’m not sure how commenting on the need to consider the greater good translates to hedonistic interpretation of societal rules (other than I denounced the explicit actions of the Bush administration and touched a nerve) but more importantly, beyond the name calling and the assumption that I am uninformed or uneducated, how could I be a ‘liberal who doesn’t think for himself’, as Leonard says, and simultaneously “… read their stories and quotes, instead of using your own opinion.” Hmmm…. think for myself but DON’T form an opinion.

   Anyway, if what you say is true, then the Bush administration should have nipped the root cause of the current financial situation when he first took office because the exact same circumstances led to the Savings and Loan debacle in the 80’s, and hardest hit was Texas. Today their large banks are mostly fine because they learned their lesson from the S&L bailout and practiced prudent financial behavior. Why was our financial cancer allowed to flourish? Because fiscal responsibility was never high on the Bush agenda; the unregulated market will take care of itself (even though history had proven otherwise) – but expanded executive powers and expanded control of oil were on his agenda from day one.

   So, based on your previous remarks, you probably assume I’m stating unfounded opinion to ‘win’ a discussion, and that’s probably the kind of discussions you’re used to, with name-calling and escalating voices, but if you’ve been keeping yourself informed through reputable sources, then you’d be citing facts to make your points.

   As an example, if you’re like the majority of the populace kept too busy treading water after having your financial back broken by high gas prices that can’t be explained by any market forces, then you are probably unaware (I can’t imagine you simply wouldn’t care), that Cheney is trying to circumvent the Constitution by not complying with the Presidential Records Act…

   http://citizensforethics.org/node/34664 (is just ONE source of this information)

   … and why would he want to do that? A thoughtful man might infer he’s got something to hide, just like Nixon did, which was why the Act was established.

   But maybe it’s simply, as he states, that according to HIS interpretation “it’s within his rights.”

   And THAT, according to your definition, would make him a Liberal.

   Oh, and check out the new No-Constitution Zones that Homeland Security has established that affect about 200 million out of our 300 million people.

   peace out

4. over 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

   I agree for the most part (hence my username), and I see one facet of your argument, I think that the legal system needs better resistance to ‘gaming’ that allows exploitation, but I submit that our country was not founded so much on economic parity as it was on liberty from leadership that hindered individual rights; rights that the outgoing administration has done its utmost to undermine (and will have much farther reaching consequences) than a simple economic concept of attempting to ‘raise all ships to save the fleet’ by applying another strongly American principle: we help others in times of need and, rich or poor, we all need each other right now. When was Social Security devised? When did labor unions form and eventually gain sufficient strength to battle corporate exploitation (i.e. financial success to the detriment of workers/others)? After the 1st great depression, when America realized we NEED to take care of each others mothers and children on a large scale, just like a small community must, or the community fails. I think this is what our founders really had in mind when seeking freedom from oppression; LET me create a healthy community that serves our NEEDS and not just those of the powerful, and I think this fundamental component of “being American” can be undermined only by those who do not consider themselves to be part of the community, regardless of political affiliation.

   rants-R-us.org 8-)

   On a lighter note, the graphic novel ‘V for Vendetta’ is a great metaphor for how we allowed ourselves to be put into this position (not a great movie but worth the watch if you’re not familiar with the novel). Another movie is ‘Idiocracy’ (again, not great, but a scary extrapolation of Western societal trends you’re seeing and also worth the watch).

   Note: the word bigot is an antonym of liberal.

5. over 15 years ago on Non Sequitur

   Wow. By lumping all liberals in with non-critical-thinkers, Mr. Watson’s political bigotry underscores exactly what he professes to detest. He forgets the ‘comics’ venue is rooted in efforts to spur discourse, thereby letting each other see the other person’s point of view. … and apparently he did not follow the DailyKos link to one who exploits the massive scientific ignorance in our society today.

   http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/25/01849/495/116/641613

6. over 15 years ago on Chris Britt

   Moratoriums on e-voting

   from the UK We have the responsibility to stop e-voting updated 19 December 2006

   A shorter, edited version of this article was published as “A vote of no confidence for electronic ballots” in Computing 14th December 2006, a longer version was simultaneously published on the British Computer Society website.

   At first blush electronic voting sounds like a good idea. To a web-surfer voting online appears no different to shopping on the Internet. But in fact the two are poles apart, when people become more aware of the problems with e-voting, they tend to be much more suspicious. This change in perspective has recently been happening around the world. As the vulnerabilities of their e-voting systems are made clear, countries who had introduced e-voting without much thought or debate have begun to see doubt engulf their electoral systems.

   Ireland has a complete moratorium on e-voting following an independent commission’s investigations; troubled elections in the province of Quebec led to an indefinite moratorium on the use of e-voting; the Netherlands withdraw one model of e-voting machine after researchers revealed major flaws in a competing model; Italy have just announced that they will no longer pursue e-voting after doubts were raised over the results of their last general election. In the United States, the home of introducing technology to elections, citizens are reeling from a cascade of disclosures over the insecurity and vulnerability of their systems. The film “Hacking Democracy” broadcast by the HBO network just before the US mid-term elections took the frenzy of citizen outrage to a new high. Following the elections the influential National Institute of Standards and Technology released a firm report which said that electronic voting machines “in practical terms cannot be made secure.”

   E-voting is a very difficult technical challenge because, unlike with e-commerce, the vote must be secret and the voter must be anonymous (unless revealed by a court order due to an old requirement in UK election law). In e-commerce transactions we willingly tell the vendor who we are and where we live to help mitigate fraud. With elections, votes need to be secret to protect us from vote buying, coercion and invasion of our privacy. But when the votes are secret how do we know the system has stored the vote as we intended? It would be trivial for an e-voting system to change votes. We would never be able to see what had happened. Even worse, the opportunity to remotely change huge numbers of votes undetectably is for the first time made possible by e-voting.

   Paper has properties that we know and understand. It is very hard to carry around one million pieces of paper. Changing the marks on a piece of paper leaves evidence. Once the paper is in the sealed and watched ballot box we can be confident that our ballot will remain unchanged until the count. It is because of these properties that recent postal vote fraudsters in Birmingham and Blakckburn were caught.

   Elections and so democracy works because our society has faith in the integrity of the electoral system. Electronic voting’s many problems, which I cannot hope to cover in the limited space of this column, provide ample opportunity for growing doubt in the electoral system and its results. So instead of increasing political engagement introducing e-voting risks having even more people lose faith in our democracy.

   As IT professionals we have to be clear when new technology isn’t appropriate or could be done much better. Using technology to improve NHS care is a good idea, but perhaps how it is being implemented needs work. In the case of e-voting it’s a bad idea and we need to call for a stop. The Government has announced plans for e-voting pilots in the May 2007 local elections. We are waiting for the Department for Constitutional Affairs to announce which authorities have been approved to go ahead with which vendors. While we wait it is important that this issue, which runs to the very heart of our democracy, is raised with politicians who are often blissfully unaware of what is happening with the voting system.

   You can act now by writing to your MP using WriteToThem.com raising the problems with e-voting as detailed on the Open Rights Group’s e-voting page http://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/Electronic_Voting

   Jason Kitcat researches e-government and e-democracy at the University of Sussex. He is the e-voting campaign co-ordinator at the Open Rights Group.