Daily Archives: June 2, 2006

More from the annals of dumb ideas

This entry was posted in cars on by

Back the late 1970’s the US Army began looking for a replacement for Jeep utility vehicles that they had been using since world war 2. Out of this was born the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (aka HMMWV or Humvee). In the late 80’s Humvee builder AM General developed a civilian version dubbed the Hummer for those with more money than brains. As it turned out, not that many people actually needed or wanted a really large, heavy, fuel hungry vehicle with only 4 seats, and a four foot wide tunnel between the seats. In the 90’s General Motors decided they wanted an off-road brand to compete with Jeep (owned by Chrysler). AM General was apparently more than happy to sell them the rights to market the Hummer brand. The original Hummer became known as the H1 and GM proceeded to develop somewhat smaller, cheaper Hummer. They took a Chevy Tahoe chassis and put a on new body with H1 styling cues (if you can call it styling). Thus was born the H2. They sold like hot-cakes. For about 6 months anyway until all the poseurs had one. at which point the sales of H2s went into a steady decline that continues to this day.

So GM went back to the parts bin and took the Chevy Colorado compact pickup truck platform and added a Hummer-like body. The result is the Hummer H3, perfect for the wannabe poseur (you know the guys who don’t quite come up to the level of poseur). Rumor has it that an even smaller H4 is currently in development. Back to the H3, this vehicle is a little bigger on the outside and smaller on the inside than a Ford Escape or Jeep Liberty. If you know these vehicles, you will understand that the H3 is not a particularly large vehicle.

I drive past a place that rents limos on my way to work every day. Typically stretch limousines are built up from larger vehicles as the base such as big Lincolns, Cadillacs or Suburbans. Imagine my surprise a couple of weeks ago when I saw the latest addition to their fleet. A stretched Hummer H3! Here are a couple of pics I found on-line. h3 limoh3 limoThe H3 is not particularly wide so it doesn’t really seem like it would be very suitable as a limo. Check out the interior shot to see how narrow the seat cushions are. Sign me up for one of these!

Open source voting 1

This entry was posted in politics technology on by

Voting, what could be simpler? You get some choices and you pick one. Then you add up all the votes for each choice. A voting system doesn’t have to do much. Present a list of choices, and tally the number of votes cast for each choice. In the past this was done by printing the names of the candidates on a paper ballot, then people would mark their choice and put the ballot in a box. People would them read each ballot and tally the results. Pretty simple Huh? So step into the twenty-first century where everything must use computer technology. The requirements have not changed. Present a list of choices, select one from the list, tally the results. A computer program to do that is really very simple. So what could one possibly add to such a program that meets those requirements that could require protecting trade secrets? Frankly , I don’t believe anything that requires secrecy should be added to such a system. Secrecy like that is inherently dangerous to a democratic system. There is nothing innovative required to be added to a voting system to meet the requirements. Since a reliable voting system is a necessary to the proper functioning of a democracy all such systems should be open and accessible for complete review and auditing. Manufacturers of electronic voting systems such as Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia have absolutely no justifiable excuse for keeping there code secret. These systems are bought and paid for by taxpayer dollars. They are used for a public purpose. Anyone and I mean anyone should be able to look at and evaluate the code. If a company is not willing to provide all source code they should not be allowed to provide systems. No arguments. These are the rules, follow them or walk away. Manufacturers of voting systems should be nothing more than systems integrators. Get a pile of computer components, assemble them and install the same software.

The software that comprises a voting system should be completely open source and owned by the public. No private company should be controlling anything so critical as voting system software. Especially a company like Diebold that was until recently run by a corrupt republican political hack like Walden O’Dell. There is only one thing about voting that should be kept secret and that is who any individual voted for. Other than that everything should be completely open and transparent. If it had been in 2004, we might have already consigned George Bush to the history books. To read more on the subject of electronic voting go to Black Box Voting.