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Jews for Lebanon

Jews for Lebanon is an idea of FON founder Martin Varsafsky. The idea is to bundle jewish contributions for rebuilding Lebanon. The site is live now.

Now Felten announces that the key to their voting machines can be purchased easily on the Internet. It might be possible to still get a trustworthy vote, even when stealing is extremely easy. A couple of measures come to mind. One: Watch every machine around the clock. Assign volunteers for your campaign for every votingContinue reading “Latest Diebold Joke”

Trustworthy Voting (Reprint From February 2003)

Reprint, original post here. Please read Freedom To Tinker: Computer Scientists’ Campaign for Trustworthy E-Voting. I have a few comments. 1. I am not a computer scientist, but as everyone who has taken even a small bite at crypto knows, there can be no trustworthy system that is built on obscurity. The recent trend toContinue reading “Trustworthy Voting (Reprint From February 2003)”

American Software Industry Not Dead Yet

Horns is celebrating a new paper by Berkeley Law School professor Merges “Patents, Entry and Growth in the Software Industry“,which he found here. That paper shows empirical proof that there is still a software industry left in America. From the abstract: “Whatever the effects of patents on the software industry, this paper concludes, they haveContinue reading “American Software Industry Not Dead Yet”

Here We Go Again

TPM quotes a Time article that says that the next illegal war of aggression (this time against Iran) might start in October. That would be before the next American elections. This time, the Americans might use nuclear weapons.

Copyright in Photos

Lessig posts on a possible violation of a Creative Commons license. Someone had published a photo on the web under a non-commercial CC license. Then some magazine used that photo without attribution or compensation. That would seem to be a clear case of copyright violation, if the photo in question is an original work ofContinue reading “Copyright in Photos”

Legalizing Torture

The American government is proposing legislation to legalize their torture programs in violation of the Geneva Convention. That would be unfortunate, but still progress compared to the status quo, where they just do whatever they feel they want, without caring about what the law might require.

Steal More than Your Opponent

Americablog links to an article by Jason Matteson “Texas Bandits – A Study of the 1948 Democratic Primary”. That article is about the Texas Senate primary contest between Lyndon Johnson, who went on to become president, and Coke Stevenson. Johnson “won” by a 87 vote margin, 494,191 to 494,104. The article says: “Johnson not onlyContinue reading “Steal More than Your Opponent”

Pilch Draft

Hartmut Pilch has posted a draft “Toward a Copyright-Centered Paradigm of Intellectual Property”. He has been very active in the FFII, helping to defeat the proposal to legalize software patents in Europe, as a president at the time (he is still a vice president). However, this draft is only a “proposal” for long-term political demands,Continue reading “Pilch Draft”

Phony Seed Bed

for most noxious astroturf organizing and general bamboozlement in contemporary politics.” That’s what Josh Marshall has to say about the DCI Group. He also mentions “dirty tricks” and “slimey opps” in that post. It makes perfectly sense to me that the evil spam empire of Google would hire this kind of outfit for their lobbyingContinue reading “Phony Seed Bed”