Best quote from the NYT: ‘“We have experienced three wars before,” Ahmed Ali, a supporter of Mr. Maliki, said in Ur, “so it was just the play of children that we heard.”’

Well I’m glad the bad children didn’t stop them from voting.

The fact of the matter is, most people have very obvious usage patterns that can be tracked across login sessions. In order to get useful information out of a transaction, the vendor doesn’t need to actually know your private details. If they know that “computer A” bought x, y, and z products, then they have a pretty good model of who the user of “computer A” is, even without having a name and address. Then the next time “computer A” logs in to do some shopping at their web site, the vendor can splash the appropriate ads across the screen. I think the real trick here is the ability to fund transactions without giving actual funding source information to the vendor. They will still know who you have as your credit card vendor of course, but at least they won’t be storing your card number on their server to have it stolen. And this is what the Microsoft technical information mostly talks about, but everything I have read on the web is talking about “privacy”, which seems like it will kill it for all the wrong reasons.

One very useful tool for this election is the sample ballot generator that the trib has made available. You can read about each candidate and pick the one you want, then print it out. Very handy.

Enough with the preaching, on with the elections.

State/National Positions

Senate: Hoffman and Giannoulias are the front runners in this race. The links are to the Trib profiles and I have to say that I pretty much agree with them. Hoffman is someone who I think would be a good anti corruption candidate, and I worry about Giannoulias not only in terms of his experience, but also in terms of skeletons that might be hiding in his closet. The union and the 49th also endorse Hoffman. Plus I have to hand it to anyone who can survive as the IG as well as Hoffman did.

Governor: Hynes and Quinn are the front runners. The trib didn’t even make an endorsement, but the Sun Times and the 49th have called for Quinn. I’m not sure I can agree with that assessment, however there were a few good steps forward that Quinn made that Hynes fought against as comptroller. In general I like Hynes as comptroller because he was an advocate for reigning in spending which this state sorely needs, but this action stands out against that record. In the end I’m siding with the union and going with Hynes on the “throw out the old guard” ticket. I’ll be heppy either way though.

Lt. Governor: Heh, I couldn’t find anything about any of the candidates here, but the trib endorses Art Turner with a single sentence. I don’t think the Sun Times even has that much. I got a polling phone call about all the different candidates yesterday, but nothing from any of them. The 49th endorses Boland and the Union doesn’t endorse anyone. In the end I’m going with the Trib on this one. (Update: the Sun Times endorses Turner now as well.

Secretary of State, Attorney General, our US congress rep and state rep are all running uncontested in the primary.

Comptroller: Reading Krishnamoorthi’s responses to the Trib’s questionnaire is like a breath of fresh air. I don’t know if he’ll be able to win a statewide office, but it would be exciting if he could. Both the Trib and Sun Times seem happy with the other candidates as well, but both and the 49th endorse him. The union endorses Miller.

Treasurer: Neither one stands out to me, but Kelly is endorsed by both the Trib and the Sun Times, as well as the 49th ward democrats. The union makes no recommendation.

Cook County Positions

President: This is the one we have all been waiting for. I swear, if Stroger is still on the ballot after this primary I will cry myself asleep at night with a bottle of gin. In that vein I am going with Preckwinkle. I think she is by far the mostly likely to be able to beat Stroger, and thus she gets my vote. This is why you are going to go vote in this election. GO VOTE! And if you are really thinking of voting for Stroger, remember he is going to thank himself if he wins. This man is insane. (All three cook county endorsers endorse Preckwinkle.)

MWRD: Spyropolous, Connor & Steele. Everyone agrees on this.

Assessor: Unfortunately Houlihan dropped out of this race. He has done an amazing job making the process more transparent, as well as acting to help the general, non connected, population. I really believe that Berrios will roll back many of those changes. The problem is neither of the other two candidates running for the position seem to be the clear heir for continuing Houlihan’s work. The Shaw family is a little too well connected for my tastes though and I have to go with Figueroa. Plus he says all the right things. All three county endorsing parties agree with me, with the Sun Times making a particularly strong plea. I really am sorry to see Houlihan go though, and am somewhat scared to be a homeowner in Cook County without him in charge of assessments.

Board Member: I’ve liked Suffredin in the past, and at other times he’s made me so mad I could spit. I’m really sad I missed the debate in Evanston, because it sounded really good, and all my knowledge about it is second hand. But given what I have heard, and given that I always prefer the challenger, I have to go with Keefe over Suffredin. Obviously the 49th is going to disagree with me, the sun times argues for him as well, oh man and the trib endorses him now as well. This is a tough one, do I still hold the tax hike and his name was on that letter backing Stroger in the last general election against him? Will it actually matter? There is no way on God’s green earth that Keefe is going to win, but I really like what he has to say, and this vote will be cathartic for me. When Suffredin goes on to win, I can go back to liking him as my rep on the county board.

Sheriff: I can’t find anything at all about Baker, so I’m going to need to go with Dart. Everyone endorses him anyway.

Judges:

I know the 49th ward has some recommendations coming out stemming from a meet and greet that they recently held, however I can’t wait for that so I am left with the green guide (large pdf). The Trib also has some recommendations from the sample ballot as well. I know some of you have direct contact with these people, if you have strong thoughts about some of them, let me know! Rather than repeat what you can read for yourself in those places, I simply offer up my choices: (ed to add: now I have the 49th ward endorsements and have updated appropriately.)

Appellate Court

McNulty Vacancy – Epstein
O’Malley Vacancy – Hogan
South Vacancy – Rochford

Circuit Court

Berland Vacancy – Hooks
Bronstein Vacancy – MacCarthy
Dolan Vacancy – Pauel
Hayes Vacancy – Mitchell
Kelley Vacancy – Callahan
(McCarthy and O’Malley Vacancies only have one candidate in the primary.)
Riley Vacancy – Stokes

9th Sub Circuit

Otaka Vacancy – Kull
9A Vacancy – Bender

Basically the main complaints I have heard are “it’s not an iPhone” and “it’s not a laptop”. Yes, that is true. If you want to work at the corner coffee shop, you still need a laptop. If you want the internet anywhere, you still need an iPhone. However, if you want the internet in your living room, then this is for you. This is the real way to surf. You don’t need a keyboard to surf. You don’t need 3G access in your living room. You don’t need a camera or multi tasking or any of those things. You do need a pretty powerful CPU, which is provided. And if you are really spending some time on the net, instead of just looking something up, you need a big screen. Which the iPad has. This is the internet on your coffee table.

Will it kill the kindle? Perhaps, but that is not the point. Will it replace laptops? No, it is not a device to get work done on, though you can do a little if you need to. (The one exception to that might be giving slide presentations, but I really think that a laptop is still a better platform for that.) And finally, the iPhone is the perfect form factor for a phone, so I have no idea why people think that this would even try to replace that. The best review I saw called it the beginning of “casual computing”. That seems correct to me.

Long term, probably the most interesting sign of the future is actually the chip inside it. An independent retailer designing their own chip? I have no idea where that is going to lead.

It is a cover of both of them. I had to listen to the Dylan and Zep versions one after the other for my brain to categorize them as the same song, and I still don’t quite believe it. Seriously, I must have listened to the Led Zeppelin version about a thousand times in Jr. High School, and the Dylan version a hundred in High School, and my brain just never connected them before.

Dylan and Zep now are higher up on the iPod playlist. Guess I don’t “know that highway like I know my hand” after all.

I’m just hoping and praying that the violence doesn’t pick up too much before the election to really interfere with it. I think an election with less of a visible US troop presence will be able to have a lot more support from the general public.

As a citizen of the state of Illinois, home to Abraham Lincoln, I would be proud to accept any and all prisoners from our current conflicts in Illinois prisons. For too long our country has operated outside the rule of law with respect to those who have wronged us. We have laws in place with which to punish them, and if we ever hope to regain the trust of the world we must use them. The first step is to find a place within the bounds of the US to house our most dangerous criminals, and we have at our disposal an empty maximum security prison. The citizens of that town seem happy to help out. Once in place we can bring them to trial and finally have justice done. This country has waited for too long, and the rest of the world begins to doubt our sincerity.

Thank you for your attention in this matter,

Moonglum

p.s. Ignore Mark Kirk, he seems to prefer keeping one prison empty while the rest are overcrowded, when opening this one, while providing local jobs could also relieve some of the overcrowding in the rest of the prisons in Illinois. How this reduces our safety I have no idea.