blog.benschumacher.com

Normally I tend to ignore the silliness that pops up on April Fool’s Day, but I thought this bit from the EFF was just too good to let pass. Check it out:

Alpharetta, GA - Diebold Election Systems and Choicepoint, Inc., today announced a joint venture that could revolutionize the voting market. The concept is simple: combine Diebold’s demonstrated expertise in voting systems with Choicepoint’s superior data-mining techniques to produce PredictaVote™ – the first 100 percent voter-free, predictive voting system.

“The beauty of this approach is that it is self-correcting,” explained Choicepoint CEO Derrick Sithe. “If someone wants to increase the chances that his or her vote will be counted correctly, the voter simply needs to open up more of his or her life to our data-collection methods. Apply for more credit cards. Register for more grocery loyalty cards. Purchase more subscriptions. Fill out more warranty cards. Compare that to today’s paperless e-voting machines, where voters have no way to determine whether votes are accurately counted. There’s really no comparison.”

There’s more here. (I figured you’d appreciate this one, Jon.)

So I’ve replaced Rublog with some home grown blogging software based on Ruby on Rails, and I’m pretty excited about it. It’s mostly Rails based, but I didn’t want to go through the trouble (which probably wouldn’t be that much trouble… really) of converting my old Rublog content from its currently CVS -based storage to being backended by a database, so I created a Rails model that can read files from a CVS store and gives me an object with an interface that is mostly compatible with the model I use for the SQL -based storage. Fun stuff that.

Now what’s really cool is that Rails is even going to allow me to maintain the validity of my old permalinks. To acheive this, I had to add some custom (and somewhole thing takes a little bit of routing magic in Rails, and a couple lines of code in my controller. And one thing I am fairly proud of is that I turned the directory structure from my Rublog CVS repository into tags for categorizing entries (see navigation bar on the right). Swell, eh?

Downsides? Currently no support for comments, but I’m working on that.

This weekend I bought an Apple AirPort Extreme to replace my old Linksys Access Point. The main reason I switch to the AirPort Extreme is that it has a USB port, so I can connect my printer to it and print from anywhere it the house. Here's some details of the project:

1. Buy AirPort Extreme at Apple Store in Cherry Creek Mall
2. Go home
3. Drink some water (I was thirsty)
4. Unpack AirPort Extreme
5. Plug AirPort Extreme into network and power outlet
6. Configure AirPort Extreme from my Powerbook (really straight forward)
7. Unplug Linksys AP
8. Plug printer into AirPort Extreme
9. Test printing via network
10. There's no step 10!

That's it. It was a pretty straight forward process. Really quite simple in the end.

This is awesome news:

LOS ANGELES - A consumer watchdog group sued three cell phone companies on Monday for "locking" their phones to make it harder for customers to switch carriers.

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights filed suit accusing AT&T Wireless Services Inc., T-Mobile USA Inc. and Cingular Wireless, of using software in their handsets that prevents them from being used on a competitors' network.

from Consumer Group Challenges 'Locking' Phones

I sure hope they win. I've been wishing for years that U.S. mobile carriers sold unlocked phones. I think it would force them to compete more on pricing structures and features, since it wouldn't be as expensive to switch carriers (having to get a new phone sucks). After all, that's the reason GSM was designed to use smart cards.

Just read a column on Security Focus that caught my eye. It's an interview of FBI Assistant Special Agent Dave Thomas, of the St. Louis Division. The article spends a lot of time on the various internet scams that illegally seperate folks from their money, but them it drops this little tidbit:

Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware. Are you listening, Apple? The FBI wants to buy your stuff. Talk to them!

Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them.

from A Visit from the FBI

There you have it... the FBI believes that OS X is more secure, and more versitile than Windows, despite Bill Gates' claims to the contrary. Who are you going to trust? The FBI, or the CEO of the software company that's repeatedly needed to defend itself from charges of poor security.