This isn’t a business rant, except that businesses seem perfectly happy to sell their services in undermining the democratic process.
This video of a congressional oversight witness testifying that he actually wrote vote machine tampering software for a congressman in 2000.
Those of us who care about vote tampering have known for a long time that there’s no way to secure electronic elections. In fact, in the video, the witness says that the only way to make sure voting machines were accurate is to review the source code.
Actually, even that isn’t good enough. A good programmer can design an algorithm that will do the required tampering as a by-product of seemingly necessary code. An even better programmer can hide the code completely in a way that is completely, utterly undetectable even by a very, very careful source code review.
In short, voting machines aren’t secure unless they’re backed up by a complete paper trail that is independently tabulated. And if we’re going to back them up with an independently counted paper trial, why not just use paper ballots to begin with?
… and by the way, if your business engages in such shinanegans, shame on you. You have the ability to do business in this country only because the system has worked to provide the world’s most stable economic development platform. If you’re tampering with that out of greed, you don’t need more money, you need a good ten years in therapy for sociopathic behavor …
Posted by Stever as Misc at 1:07 PM EDT
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I’ve been reading about rising gas prices, falling home values, and the rest of the sad story we’re currently in. (Note: virtually all of it could have been avoided with wise forethought and appropriate action on our part. But it seems to be human nature that regardless of level of civilization, we’re just not hardwired to think more than a few days into the future.)
I notice a relentless sense of optimism surrounding the discussions. “Wah, gas prices are bad, until supply recovers…”
But wait… Our American infrastructure, our roads, our houses, our markets, our food production and distribution systems, all physically embody the assumption of cheap oil forever. It’s not just buying a more fuel efficient car; it’s about living in a subdivision that’s 50 miles from work. Even a fuel efficient car will start to cost.
The reality is that if gas prices go up, so does everything. Everything is transported, manufactured, or made out of petroleum. So oil costs more, everything costs more. We’ve never before been in a situation where everything just got more expensive, fundamentally. It’s tough to imagine what that might look like.
Some more food for thought:
- What if there’s no way to bring back oil supply, much less cheap oil? What happens then?
- What if we can’t develop and deploy alternative energy soon enough to replace oil?
- What if global warming can’t be slowed or stopped (and there are already 40 years’ worth of greenhouse gasses still working their way to the upper atmosphere, so a total reversal of CO2 production today would take 40 years before it would have any slowing impact on global warming)?
My early training was as an engineer. We were trained to think up all possible contingencies, plan for the worst, and hope for the best.
As far as I can tell, human civilization is facing several potentially catastrophic trends, all at once. And not only are we not planning for the worst, we’re not even mentioning it.
So in the interest of stimulating discussion, here are some thought questions:
- Assume a falling global production capacity as oil rises in price. (And currently, no alternative source can replace all uses of oil for anywhere near as cheaply.) What would an economic system look like when we can’t assume more production each year? Would growth still be considered the basic measure of health? If not, what would?
- Assume oil at $8/gallon, with wages falling in buying power across the board as oil gets scarce and basic commodities cost more. What kind of physical infrastructure would we have to create to continue to survive?
- During the transition period, when we’re shifting from the cheap-oil infrastructure to the new-way-of-living infrastructure, all our money and energy will be going into a shift to new infrastructure that doesn’t directly create new goods and services. (Remember: wages are stagnant, so people can’t afford to pay for all this on their own.) How do we fund the transition?
- What if global warming causes sea levels to rise 20 feet? Would our rescue busses wait, as they did during Katrina, for someone to pay them to help people escape? If not, how would our economic system provide for such a massive dislocation? And if it couldn’t, how would the survivors dispose of several million decomposing bodies?
Just a few thoughts…
Posted by Stever as Community, Oil, Misc at 8:16 PM EDT
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