I STILL don’t have a digital camera. Can you blieve this crap? I have all kinds of stupid toys but no digital camera. I figured I’d go buy one before the holiday season but I realized I’m supposed to buy stuff for other people, not myself. I know one of you good samaritans out there will hook me up though… right?

Note: I’ve used Zippy’s leet camera for all my photohaxoring.

Blayne & I were chatting on IRC unanimously agreeing that the old Compaq server hardware was pretty reliable. I was mentioning how I enjoyed using an old Compaq Proliant dual Pentium server for the last 4 years or so as the backup fileserver running BSD. Of course within a week of mentioning that the server has given up on life. I don’t know how long it acted as a windows based file server before I got a hold of it. I know it’s probably been running non-stop for the last 6 or 7 years at least. Only a couple times in the last 4 years has the power gone out long enough to kill the UPS & the Server.

I think it’s about time to retire the old monster and it’s array of nine 10gb SCSI hard drives anyway. Rowdy & I are putting together a new rack mount for the job. It will clean up the server room anyway. I think the replacement will be a 64Bit AMD w/a gig of ram, a slew of SATA & IDE HDD’s yadda yadda yadda. I can only hope it lasts as long and performs as well as the Proliant did.

I was trying to make Apache2, PHP 5.x, & Mysql 5.x colaborate on my server at home and ran into a problem I can’t seem to fix. No matter what I tried I couldn’t seem to get a Shared Object Library for Mysql to allow PHP to support it (mysql.so or php_mysql.so). I know PHP 5 doesn’t come with built in MySQL support although I’m not quite sure why. I did however
./configure –with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql
I had to manualy install Mysql since the ports collection refused to do such a thing. Mysql runs fine on it’s own but won’t let PHP 5 colaborate. I also ran
./configure –with-mysqli
which is supposed to allow the newer mysql functions to be compiled in. It of course failed as well. Both “seemingly” pretended to work though. I got the /path/to/mysql wrong a time or two which stopped it but after I got that right it almost made me think it was going to work. Wrong…

I tried to make this happen on FreeBSD 5.x .. Since all failed I went ahead n’ dropped MySQL 4.x in which must have come with a complimentary bottle of KY. I had no trouble at all. Anyone have suggestions for my MySQL 5.x problem?

I had an individual approach me today with a question I’ve been waiting to be asked because this rumor is spreading like wildfire and keeps getting more off track. This will be a relatively long post about how it is not feasible to alter an election via a phone call.

Here is the comment I got from an Anti-BBV follower: “I had a friend tell me that it was possible to botch the results of an election with a phone call to one of these touch screens and I want to know what Diebold is doing to prevent such a situation from happening”.

First off, I’m insulted. How does anyone get off asking me about a problem they have no logistical understanding of? Anyway…

Here we go. The Accu-Vote TSX unit does not accept incoming calls during an election so there is no possible way to “call” these machines. Aside from that minor detail the TSX is never connected to a phone line unless it’s sending results to the server, which takes a whole 30 seconds. Getting to the base of this fictitious problem would be the possibility of dialing into the result server with fake results (Not the TSX or OS machine itself). Instead of telling you it is not possible I’m going to take through the whole process step by step.

1) First you have to have a memory card programmed by the software running on the result server. This memory card is used in the TSX machine & stores the results of the voters as they vote. You can’t just have a copy of the software and make the memory cards; you have to have the exact election database used on the result server.
2) You must have a TSX machine to put this card into, make fake votes, and then send results from. Even in the event you steal one of these machines you must have the latest update otherwise the odds are very high that your card will not work in it. Every time the state demands a new level of certification a new update is put in place which is generally not compatible with previous versions since the previous version would be illegal to use at that point. Maybe someday a wizard leet haxor guy will create some software to take the database information and make a laptop act as a fake TSX but as of yet I am to believe that doesn’t exist.
3) In order to Dial-In you must know the numbers each county uses as it’s dial-in lines. Most counties I visit have a working partnership with the local phone company to acquire a few lines the day of the election. These numbers may not be impossible to acquire but are definitely not everyday bits of information
4) You have to know some specific numbers. You would have to know the number of registered voters in any given precinct and the average turnout for that given election otherwise you would throw an immediate red flag of obviousness. To be more specific your number of votes would have to match the numbers the judges bring in at the end of the day. No County relies solely on the results dialed in. Dialing in results is only a method to get results fast. If results are dialed in you will immediately print out reports for each precinct & when those results don’t match the tape taken from the machine there will be a huge red flag thrown.

I’m done trying to develop the logistics behind this fictitious hack. Unless you’re the one in charge of making sure the election goes smoothly there is no possible way to “successfully” pull this off. At least 90% of all the BBV crap I see on the net is a hoax but none of that matters because people that don’t know a darn thing about elections (and probably don’t even vote for that matter) will religiously spread rumors on topics they have absolutely no understanding of. It’s great that people are out there trying to make voting 100% perfect but spreading rumors & speculation does no good. I’m completely appalled with Bev Harris’s site blackboxvoting.org. What good is truth if it’s hidden amongst speculation & conspiracy theories?

I’m doing a PUBLIC demonstration of the Accu-Vote TSX today in Lawrence, KS. I will be setting up in building 21 at the Douglas County 4-H Fairgrounds. The demonstration will be held from 3.pm to 6.pm tonight. If you live in Kansas City, Lawrence, Overland Park or anywhere near there, Stop by!

I hope there will be a slew of people interested in the new voting equipment even if they are for or against it. This demonstration won’t be a “full” demonstration like I would do for a clerk but it will be a more fun demo. Everyone is invited to come & play with the accuvote and ask as many questions as you can come up with.