What Are They Afraid Of?

So what the hell is with Florida officials opposing an audit? This is friggin' rediculous. How can they honestly say that the previous election went "flawlessly" when there was absolutely no verification and all the data is now gone? What bothers me the most about this whole thing is the fact that the data was lost during two seperate computer crashes. Two computer crashes, seperated by months, are being blamed for the data loss. Now, any IT person worth half a grain of salt does routine backups of their systems. That's a no-brainer. So, the fact that there were no backups being performed when the first crash caused data loss is rather disturbing. But the fact that backups were still not done until after the second crash several months later says that the backend system is being maintained and monitored by complete and utter imbecils, who don't know the first thing about data storage or IT. How can we possibly trust a system that has not been independantly audited, has not been fully and comprehensively tested, and is being supported by major jackasses who don't even do routine backups? And this is going on in Florida, no less . . . a battleground state that is more than likely going to have yet another extremely close race in an extremely close Presidential election, and could very well once again be the deciding factor.

It just amazes me how pig-headed our leaders can be . . . these morons are putting unwavering trust in a system that hasn't been tested, has demostrated repeated flaws, hasn't been properly shielded from tampering or even simple error. And they're doing so for the plain and simple "reason" that it's high tech, and that the manufacturers are assuring them it's reliable. Newsflash: Microsoft continuously assures the public that their Windows OS is the most secure & stable OS out there, and we all know that's a load of horse piss. Now, I'm not against updating our voting system, nor am I against touch screen & e-voting in general--so long as it is properly implemented after real testing & verification through independant code reviews and QA. Let's face it people . . . allowing this sham of a system to be forced down our throats will only result in giving away our democratic elections system. We will be turning over the keys of the kingdom to unscrupulous e-vote machine manufactures, hackers and random e-gremlins that we will be completely unable to track down and/or correct.

At the risk of sounding like a movie review blog

Okay, so now that I'm taking a break from work, I've got a bunch of free time on my hands.  And, since this is the summer blockbuster season (as pointed out in an earlier blog entry) I've been seeing a new movie about once per week. Spiderman 2 rocked, plain and simple. Great movie, surpassing even the original. I was a little distracted by the Spidey cgi, though, as they made him a bit too lankey for an actual human being. I know that was to make it look more like the comic, but it just didn't look right, IMO.

Next up was King Arthur, which I wasn't all that impressed with. Sure, Keira Knightley was gorgeous as usual, but there was a ton of overacting (not by Ms. Knightley, of course), a lackluster storyline, absolutely forced "romance", historical inaccuracies, and not to metion the previously stated erroneous advertising campaign. This was not, in any way, the "true" story of Arthur . . . they based that statement a limitted collection of evidence that some of the exploits attributed to Arthur may have been carried out by a man named Ambrosius, a Roman officer in England during a strong Saxon push for conquest about the time of the fall of the Empire. But, enough ranting about that one.

Today, was I, Robot's turn. Very nice flick. I've been told it doesn't follow Azimov's storyline that much, but I really didn't care . . . Will Smith gave a great performance, excellent special effects, intriguing and compelling storyline. All in all, it was a great movie, and one that is destined to join my DVD collection once available.

Well, if I'm able to afford to keep up the pace, I'll drop some brief reviews of other movies in the coming weeks . . .