House of the rising Moonglum

I don’t normally post items about work here, but this is just too much to let go by…

The RSNA runs a group called the IHE who is making standards that I have some expertise in at this point. One of my clients hires me on an irregular basis to help them integrate with those standards. The end goal of this work is the “Connectathon”. In order to go to the Connectathon, your program has to pass a number of tests. The tests are due December 1st. Yes, one week after Thanksgiving. And when is the Connectathon? How about one week after New Year’s?

This has led me to believe two things: First, the RSNA has no soul and likes working through their holidays. Second, they are somewhat sadistic and like making people from all over the country come to Chicago in the middle of winter.

So, I just thought I would share that little bit of pain with you. The tomorrow due date meant that I have been working non-stop since Thanksgiving thus, among other things, a severe lack of posts. Also much crabbiness (just ask the wife). So, how about a punch-line?

After working through my Thanksgiving to get all my tasks done for tomorrow (which by they way, they are) they send out an email today stating that the deadline for the initial tests has been extended two weeks.

Time for some Guitar Hero.

There is a lot of stuff going on in Lebanon right now. The news has some detail, but I seem to prefer blogs right now… Most of these are March 14th or Future Movement, or at the very least secular nationalists. I don’t think that Hizbollah is really that interested in publishing their thoughts in English. So, continuing from yesterday, The current government is calling for a mass protest for the assassinated MPs funeral tomorrow. They were supposed to vote to ratify the UN tribunal tomorrow, but that has now been delayed until Friday or Saturday. And most disturbingly, with Hizbollah’s MPs leaving the government and one of the remaining MPs assassinated, Syria only needs to kill one more MP in order to make the government collapse and not be able to vote on the tribunal which implicates Syria. Talk about tampering with the Jury!

Feel free to follow along on your own: Beruit expat living in DC Very professional news type blog out of lebanon Lebanese expat in SF and my favorite a lively group blog that doesn’t keep their opinions hidden.

I don’t know how many of you are keeping up with news from lebanon. Ever since the Israelis invaded, I have been reading lebanese blogs as well as Iraqi blogs to get a bit of an inside view. The more I learn about Lebanon the more I am enraptured with the country. It is an interesting place filled with many different people with many different views. It is also a much more educated country than some in the region. I’m afraid that this may be the beginning of the end for Lebanon though.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, lebanon has many different cultural divisions, but one particularly visible slice is controlled by Hizbollah and Syria. Syria directly ruled the country for years until their assassination of a popular anti-syria leader caused a popular uprising which forced the syrian military out of Lebanon and a new government into power. More recently, many of the other slices blame Hizbollah for instigating the war with Israel and want them to keep their noses out of politics. Very recently a tribunal came back basically blaming Syria for the assassination. Of course the government wants it validated and Hizbollah doesn’t. The problem is Hizbollah is the major military power in Lebanon currently. So the government has been spending huge amounts of time trying to figure a way through this mess, and the president (Saad Hariri) was delivering a conciliatory speech when one of the Christian ministers was assassinated. He paused the press conference to receive the news and then came back on and said, “There is nothing left to discuss with the killer Syrian regime. The international tribunal is between us, and let whatever happens happen.”

So much for peaceful negotiation. I am just afraid for the Lebanese people and what Hizbollah will do to them.

Update: Oh good, CNN has finally deemed this news worthy.

So I’ve been driving this thing around for a while and figured it was time for a car update post. When I was looking for a car, I was comparing the versa, fit and yaris. The yaris is a bit goofy, and I was never able to test one. I think I probably would have liked the fit ok, but again I never got to try it. The cars I did get to try were the ford focus, the vibe, the matrix and the mazda 3. The three was the nicest of those, but is truly in a different class. By that I mean not something I was willing to spend the money on. The matrix and the vibe were nice, but compared to the versa, it is unclear how much more you are getting for the extra money. And the ford just felt cheap. The matrix and the vibe are getting pretty good reviews, and top out the reliability charts. It is a little disconcerting to not see the versa on there at all, but at least that means it isn’t on the bottom either. In the final analysis though, I see the matrix and vibe all over the place, but I almost never see a versa, so it’s nice to be driving something a bit more unique. (I mean it’s no dodge omni, but…)

So the best things about the versa are: 27 mpg city. Oh yeah. I’ve only filled the gas three times since I bought it. Two months ago. It looks like the winter might be taking a toll on that mileage, but we will see. The seats. I still can’t get over how nice it feels to sit in that car. Sure it might not be as zippy as the fit or the vibe, but I feel like I have so much more room, and the only time I drove the vibe I felt oddly claustrophobic. The mass. I feel like I can move around in the car, and have good situational awareness. That was the thing I loved most about the omni, and NONE of the other cars I test drove let me feel this safe in terms of visibility. The ABS helps too. I have driven this thing through some horrible thunder/wind storms and felt perfectly safe. The seats. Don’t mess with the versa seats. They are awesome.

Things I like the least about the versa: The high end. In order to make it have impressive pickup, they gave up on acceleration at the high end. Given that I almost never drive over 45 mph it doesn’t affect my day to day life, but I have noticed it on the freeway. Uneven back storage floor. Hasn’t bit me yet, but I know it will at some point in the future. Center console corner. This is annoying only if you have long legs and keep your seat forward. Like I do. I’ve taken to tapping it with my knee while I drive. Dumbest recall ever. So I get this recall for the vera in the mail. Apparently they didn’t get the wording on a fluid cap correct. So they sent me a new one. It says to not get the fluid dirty. I think I’ll not replace the cap giving dirt a chance to get in there. (More to the point I’ll let them do it next time I get the oil changed.)

And I still haven’t come up with a name for it. I’m thinking Mjolnir, but that could just be because I was listening to Led Zeppelin when driving through the aforementioned thunder storm. “The hammer of the gods, will drive our car to new lands” … or Lakeview anyway.

The trib notes that it was human error, and not electronic error that caused problems in Kane county. That is completely missing the point, in general, humans are bad at running complicated machines. When I was at my polling place someone was having trouble with the electronic machine and I heard a judge say, “let me go get the screwdriver, it is with the other machine”. We have a hard enough time running elections without injecting another layer of complexity. These tradeoffs need to be carefully studied _before_ trying it out during an election.

The silver lining is that (at least in cook county) they were doing a trial run with the electronic voting machines, only sticking one or two in each of the precincts. Hopefully they were doing a well formed study on this test case so we can know the effectiveness of these systems for future elections.

For more on election issues, the latest issue of Bruce Schneier’s crypto-gram newsletter has two articles on voting machine security, one on the random nature of elections, and one that I disagree with somewhat on the idea of professional election judges.

One of my favorite lebanese bloggers, Raja, is back online after a short hiatus. He is to lebanon’s political scene what jade is to the mac tech scene. One recent article in particular though grabbed my attention. He talks about how all the political parties are lords over the serfs, but in reality the “lords” are just doing external powers’ biddings. I love this imagery, and I think that it is appropriate for the US as well. Just take away “foreign powers” and replace it with “corporate interests”. Or perhaps “lobbyists”.

So now that they have won, the question is will the Dems actually be able to step up to the plate. Will they be able to effect change for the better, or will it just be time for revenge, making the next two years pointless from a leadership perspective and assuring the republicans the white house in 08? (The living room in roger’s park has has a pretty good analysis of this and the local races that I pretty much agree with.)

President Bush gave a nice speech which looks like he might have really realized that “the people” (whoever that is) are asking for change. Then we get pushes on things the Dems don’t like. And for some reason the lead in to this CNN article tickles me pink:

This is probably not what President Bush had in mind when he stressed bipartisanship after the Democratic Party’s midterm elections sweep. A key Senate Republican has joined Democrats in opposing one of Bush’s initiatives for the lame-duck Congress: John Bolton’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

It’s a new world, can they make it work?

Update: Nancy steps up to the plate, can she hit it out of the park? “Pelosi also has said that in the first 100 hours of her speakership she will push for action implementing all 9/11 Commission recommendations on national security, raising the minimum wage to $7.25, eliminating corporate subsidies for oil companies, allowing the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices, imposing new restrictions on lobbyists, cutting interest rates on college loans and supporting embryonic stem cell research.” (I assume she meant days not hours.)

Life Rule: You can complain about your own family as much as you want, but when somebody else does, Watch Out!

I haven’t lived in Rogers Park for that long so it is unclear how much of a claim I have to being part of “the family”. However, it is pretty clear that I am not all that interested in Joe Moore. And then I see an article in the trib talking about how there is a business association that is going to work to bring him down, and all of a sudden I get all defensive. What is up with that? 49th warders can tell me all day long who to vote for and I’ll listen, but someone downtown? Forget it.

I am in the software industry and have had to deal with issues of computer security on a number of occasions. This in no way makes me an expert. However, with even that limited knowledge, I have seen it is clear that there are problems with the current way electronic voting is done. To read a real expert, go read Bruce Schneier’s excellent article on the problem of e-voting. My take on it:

Voting is a difficult problem on many levels. People can be prevented from getting to the polls, miscounting can happen, ballot stuffing can happen. However it is a system, and as a system it can be understood. If it is understood and open, it can be watched, and fraud can be discovered. Adding complexity to that system makes understanding the system more difficult, and thus policing the system more difficult.

For example, each voter is handed one ballot, that ballot is marked and put into a box. In order to defraud the system, the voter must take more than one ballot, and then must insert more than one ballot into the box. Both ends of this process are protected by watchful eyes. Now add in a scantron reader to the inbox. This will total the votes and forward them to be counted. This added layer of complexity is unable to be watched, and thus is a straightforward attack vector, or a catastrophic location for a bug. If fraud or an error is suspected, the results can be checked against the original ballots, however it must be suspected.

This is just an example, but the more complexity you put into the system the more difficult it becomes to watch the different attack vectors. The attack vectors on paper systems are well understood, and judges know what to look for. The attack vectors on electronic systems are not well understood (and in many cases hidden) and thus the judges do not know what to look for. A voter verifiable paper trail is an excellent first step, but it is just that.

The other problem is that these are closed systems. There is a term for this in the security word, it is called “security through obscurity”. This is a smokescreen. A good lock will work, whether or not you know how the internals function. Closed systems are inherently insecure because they do not benefit from the scrutiny of experts which could close potential holes in the system. The other problem with the closed systems is that all software has bugs. The scrutiny provided by opening these systems up would hopefully allow more bugs to be found and fixed before an election, but would also allow post hoc forensics to be done in the event of an election time error. Finally closed systems require you to trust the people who made them.

The fact of the matter is, elections are hard. We’ve been working at getting them right for centuries, and still don’t have it down. We still get people turned away at the polls for invalid reasons, ballot boxes stuffed, registrations lost, voters intimidated… But the key to keeping the system as good as possible is to keep it as transparent as possible. At any step along the way a judge or voter needs to be able to say “I don’t think it is supposed to happen that way.” Electronic machines hide steps from the stake-holders. They have many advantages, but those must be weighed against the disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage right now, in my opinion, is that the vendors don’t even understand the threat model. We are giving away transparency to companies that don’t even understand the basics of security. What if their software development is just as bad?

I hasten to add, the advantages of electronic voting are many. From a user design standpoint alone they can solve many voter to ballot problems that have plagued recent elections. The relative benefits of these systems must be weighed against the negatives to make a good decision about what to use. The problem is we don’t have a good handle on the negatives now. We just have people who stand to make a lot of money telling us to trust them.

So, I wonder were they waiting for the election to happen to announce this, or was this a result of the election? I just finished a book called Not A Good Day To Die, it is a pro military book, but comes down hard on Rummy and Franks. That book combined with my existing views on the US going to war, and our war in Afghanistan in particular[1] I think it is a very good thing that Rumsfeld is stepping down. I only wish it could have happened a long time ago.

[1] War is to be avoided, but when unavoidable it must be executed swiftly and completely, without anything holding our troops back. Dying for your country is one thing, dying for bureaucratic nonsense in another thing all together. We should have poured all our efforts into Afghanistan and finished there before looking for other fights.

So you want to know how it turned out? The chicago election comission has all the information for the next 12-24 hours. Why only that long I wonder? There are also county wide results. They keep updating them as they get more info. But it looks like for all the hemming and hawing, the dems sweep county and state government anyway. My only hope is that Stroger realizes that all the other county democrats won by 4:1 margins and that given that he only won by a 1.5:1 margin there were a lot of people upset. Maybe he will step up to the plate like Lisa Madigan did. (Historical note, I was annoyed when she ran too, but she has proven her worth to the voters, and I had no problem voting for her this time.) So Todd: listen up! You have a chance to make a difference, don’t let your handlers own you!

Unfortunately I can’t really have the same hope for the Dark Lord Blago. He did win by an outstanding margin, and while it was the smallest margin of the state officers it was still pretty clear. The voters of Illinois have spoken. Bring on economic insanity, nasty attack ads, and corruption! More of the same! It’s what we want! UPDATE: I used the city stats to come up with the above statement. Statewide it was much much closer. I still don’t have any faith that Blago will see that as anything other than a request for more of the same.

Other elections…. I think that only the people who want to vote yes make it to the referenda. Having said that, 10.44% of cook county residents hate “the children”. Interestingly more than 90% voted to raise the minimum wage. I find that actually somewhat shocking and heartening. 480,000 out of 608,000 voters in cook county voted for that. And finally, Cook County, this bastion of liberalism only voted 80% for pulling the troops out now. I really expected that to be much closer to the 90% of the other two. Of course none of them mean anything since they have no binding authority.

And finally. The judges. Clearly I need a higher readership. I assume those of you who read this didn’t vote yes for all the judges. Well it appears, a full 244,000 people did!!! People! It looks like about 40,000 people voted no on all of them which leaves a slim margin of only 50,000 people who actually voted differently for the different judges. (Note: this means, as usual, the worst any judge did was 244k yes 90k no.) I have to say, given what a PitA filling all those arrows in was I’m shocked that many people voted for all the judges. Also, it would make it a lot easier if they ALPHABETIZED the judges on the ballot. I go to all that effort to figure out which judges I am going to vote for, and then I have to go through the whole list for each name?!

I’m just glad that our “electronic” voting is scantron style instead of all touchscreen. From a user interface standpoint, this is the best system I have seen yet. From a vote security standpoint, this is about as good as you can get using electronic tallying.

Oh and I forgot, Whitney passed the 5% threshold, so they are on the ballot next time!

Can someone please explain to me why the tornado/air raid sirens are going off? That is a somewhat disconcerting thing to hear in the middle of your work day.

Multiple people have asked me for a concise list of who I decided on, so here you are, with short explanations where appropriate.

State Positions

Governor

Whitney, he’s crazy, but my kind of crazy, plus he’s not the other two. And besides when the union gives “no recommendation” it is time to go third party.

Attorney General

Madigan, she seems to actually be able to do something about the corruption.

Secretary Of State

White, DMV actually seems to work.

Comptroller

Hynes, he loud about the problems he sees.

Treasurer

Radogno, both the trib and the union like her, slightly favored over Giannoulias

US Congress

Schakowski, this is my democratic hack vote.

State Rep

Lou Lang, the only one.

(How odd, I just realized that I voted the entire union slate…)

County Races

County Clerk

Orr

Sheriff

Dart

County Treasurer

Pappas

County Assessor

Houlihan, extremely strong candidate. The vote I feel best about in this election.

Commissioner

Larry Suffredin, only candidate running.

Metro Water

All three, you get three votes, and three people are running. *sigh*

President of the Board

Tony Peraica, hard choice, this really is the lesser of two evils. Do you want a continuation of a corrupt regime, or the instigation of a new one? I’m still angry about the primaries, and this is the only way I know to give voice to that anger.

Judges

THESE ARE IMPORTANT!!!

No judge has ever been voted out of office. Do NOT blindly vote yes to everyone. Use this list to vote no, or do your own research, but no NOT vote yes to all. If you feel the need to vote blindly, mathematically it is better to vote no to all.

Appellate Court

Yes to all unless you don’t like Patrick Quinn.

Circuit Court

Yes to all but:

Brim, Cynthia
Brooks, Rodney Hughes (CCL)
Chiola, Tom (CCL)
Donnoly, Christopher (CCL, LAGBAC)
Flanagan, Kathleen (CCL)
Hayes, Marsha (CCL)
Kowalski, Robert
Lipinski, Marcella (CCL, LAGBAC, Trib)
Lopez Cepero, Robert (CCL)
Murphy Gorman, Joyce (CCL)
Preston, Lee (CCL)
Riley, Daniel (LAGBAC)
Riley, Ronald (CCL)
Terrel, Lawrence (CCL)
Toney, Amanda

OK, this is clearly a sign of reading way too much news. Last night I had a dream that I was visiting Colorado Springs, and was discussing recent local events with a waitress at a local pancake house. She decided that Haggard’s accuser was the worse sinner, because he tempted a good man (Haggard) away from his moral life.

I countered that in fact Haggard was the sinner because he was not only dishonest to his wife and family, but also to an entire congregation to which he argued from a position of moral authority. His accuser’s choices hurt no one that we know of, however his choices hurt many many people. But of course we are all sinners, and while it is for Haggard’s family to find their own healing, I let the waitress know that it was my hope that this incident would open the eyes of some in the New Life parish that no one speaks with complete authority. In particular you can’t rely solely on religious hierarchy for your moral compass. Life is difficult and you need to your God given ability for critical thought to make it through. You can’t just say some magic words and make it all better.

And then I woke up with a killer headache and a craving for pancakes and the fresh mountain air. And now that I wrote this down, I am realizing that my subconscious is indoctrinating me with modern Lutheran theology. I think I am getting stranger as I get older.

So, in addition to sticking the alderman elections in early, I also forgot to add in the referenda that will appear on the ballot. There are three county-wide and one ward wide referenda on the ballots. The county wide ones follow:

For the health and safety of children and the entire community, shall the state of Illinois enact a comprehensive ban on the manufacture, sale, delivery and possession of military-style assault weapons and .50 cal rifles?

This is a poorly worded referendum. Does this mean that our police are not allowed to use assault-weapons? What is military style? I agree that a city is no place for a gun, but the entire state? This just seems ill-conceived. For the children.

Shall Illinois enact legislation in 2007 to increase the minimum wage from $6.50/hour to $7.50/hour?

Unlike the big box ordinance, this seems like a reasonable way to help out those at the bottom, without driving business out of the city. Although it is unclear to me why the entire state would listen to cook county?

Shall the United States government immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal of all of its military personnel from Iraq, beginning with the National Guard and Reserves?

Again, why are we wasting our time legislating things that we have no control over. The governor trying to keep NG troops in state makes sense, a general referendum on the entire military operation though? Useless. In some world one county might get say in this, however in our world we have a representative democracy and our representatives in the national government deal with issues like this.

And our local ward item:

Should the City of Chicago, State of Illinois, and Federal Government prohibit any lakefront development from Hollywood Avenue to Evanston which includes extension of Lake Shore Drive, or establishment of any other roadways, marinas or harbors, housing, major landfill, or commercial development?

Egads! Why do they word stuff like this? I guess they feel that since it is a non-binding referendum it just doesn’t matter that it is completely unenforceable. If they had stopped at the City of Chicago, this would be a great one, but why does the Federal Government care what one ward has to say? Apparently the wording was even tweaked some. And isn’t Hollywood Ave south of the 49th ward? Oh well, I’m probably going to say that I simply haven’t lived in this ward long enough to have an educated opinion on this issue.

I’ve been watching the daily show a bit lately (last night’s interview with Borat was amazing) and sometimes I will stay up a little later and suffer through the Colbert Report. It is rough, because he never breaks character. This will really throw people. The first one I ever saw, he was interviewing an aethiest writer, and it just hurt. So I was particularly drawn to an article in slate that talks about how to survive a Colbert Report interview. I have to say it makes a lot more sense now.

And the two best interviews I have seen thus far: David Kuo saying “no Jesus and George Bush are not the same person”, and Penn of Penn and Teller just going crazy, and throwing all of Colberts notes at the audience.

First the letter from local politicians telling us to vote for Stroger. I understand that, you are part of a party, you want your party to win. But now national democrats are getting in on the action? Oh Obama, I hold you in higher regard than this! But, the democratic machine must be getting nervous if they are pulling out the senatorial plug.

Also, Rockford Endorses Whitney the Green party candidate, and you can meet him at Don Gordon’s office this Sunday.

I’m not used to seeing lectures in fortune magazine! At the bottom of an article on the current quarters car buying patterns, fortune magazine notes how quickly americans forget the $3 gas from the summer. For an article that is ostensibly just talking about sales figures, it does an amazing job evangelizing the problems of gas guzzling cars and ripping americans for our short lived memory. It ends with this gem:

The supply of oil is not limitless but apparently the current generation of Americans is all too willing to exhaust it by buying more vehicle than they need and letting their children and grandchildren fend for themselves.

Oh, and … Happy Halloween!

I posted a few days asking if anyone else noticed an increase in the amount of spam coming in. Well it turns out that I am not the only one who noticed it. A security focus article points out a definite increase in spam over the past few months. Mainly from bot-nets, which stymie ip blocking anti-spam services.