Voder-Vocoder

This is how to combine mkisofs and cdrecord. This should be a standard script on all systems, but it’s not.

#!/bin/sh

## /usr/local/bin/burn-dir ##

# Burn-dir. Simple command to burn a
# directory onto a CD-R.  Based off of
# mkisofs man page.  Assumes that
# /etc/cdrecord.conf is correct.
if [ $# -eq 0 ] ; then
  echo -e "Useage:"
  echo -e "  $0 directory \"Volume Name \""
  exit 1
fi
CDROM=/dev/cdrom1

cdblocks=`mkisofs -print-size -quiet -V \
  "$2" -r -J -f $1`

echo "mkisofs -quiet -V \"$2\" -r -J -f $1 |\
  cdrecord -v -pad  tsize=${cdblocks}s -"
mkisofs -quiet -V "$2" -r -J -f $1 | \
  cdrecord -v -pad tsize=${cdblocks}s -

eject $CDROM

When mutt is told to gpg sign an email, it will use Quoted-Printable Content-Transfer-Encoding, which will replace " \n" with "=20\n", an escape sequence of some sort. (ASCII " " is 0×20.)

I’d rather replace " \n" with "\n" anyways. Here’s some elisp code to do just that:

;; ~/.emacs ;;
(defun hal1 () (interactive)
  (auto-mega-replace  " \n" "\n"))
(defun auto-mega-replace (arg1 arg2)
  (save-excursion
    (beginning-of-buffer)
    (while (search-forward arg1)
      (beginning-of-buffer)
      (perform-replace arg1 arg2
        nil nil nil)
      (beginning-of-buffer))))

[edited 2003-02-20]

I left the house to vote today, even though I feel not well.

I don’t think I’ve written anything about voting. See link, link, link for background.

WI has a hybrid paper/electronic system. I mark a very clear paper ballot with a felt-tip pen, then stick the paper into a scanner. The scanner tallies the votes, but the paper ballots are kept as a permanent record.

It is generally believed that this is the best voting system currently in use

Let’s analyze this system for places where it could be potentially abused:

1. A voter can claim to be someone else and vote for them. I did not have to present any identification beyond knowing my street and last name. “McDivitt Rd., Canary.” An evildoer could pretend to be
   • Someone who has died, but was not purged from the rolls
   • Someone not likely to show at the polls
   • Someone who has moved to another precinct, but was not purged from the rolls
   • A person who exists only on paper. A False Identity.
2. An official, or group of officials at the voting location could fill out additional ballots, especially end of day, once they know who did not vote.
3. An official, or group of officials at the voting location could tamper with the machine that tallies the votes. (An audit would catch this, but how often does that happen.)
4. An official, or group of officials at the voting location could tamper with the machine that tallies the votes and destroy ballots to make the numbers come out correctly. (An audit would NOT catch this.)
5. The program that tallies the votes could lie. (OSS would help here.) See Diebold (link, link, link.)
6. Someone up the line (election commission) could falsify data. (Only a large scale audit (statewide) would find this.)

So, what would the perfectly trustworthy system look like? It would require permanent, positive certification of each vote cast. (Permanence allows for auditing.)

Solution: cypherpunk open voting system. Each voter provides positive proof that he is who he says he is and has the right to vote in a particular precinct and is not voting an another precinct. Then that voter hands the election commission a public key. That information: The voter’s name, key, and location is signed by a public servant and published to the Internet and mirrored by anyone who wishes to have a privately controlled version of the election rolls. Then, if keys on the rolls spontaneously change, everyone will know. Each citizen later verifies that his information is correct. At election time, each voter creates a marked-ballot (a machine-created, human readable text document of some kind. It may be producible by way of a ECMAscript program that the voter runs on his own computer) then signs that marked-ballot and sends it to the election commission. The commission publishes all of these ballots. Then the citizen can verify that his ballot is published and corresponds to what he submitted. Any third party can download all of the ballots, verify each signature, and count the votes.

Of course, COVS has drawbacks. The ballot is no longer secret. It requires constant vigilance on the part of every citizen. It requires citizens to safeguard their private key. It would be difficult to authenticate every citizen, but once the system is in place, only new voters need to be authenticated. It requires sophisticated computer literacy on the part of every citizen. (Of course the current system presupposes normal literacy, which was uncommon 500 years ago.)

There’s your tradeoff: privacy vs. auditability.

I just realized that catechism is a synonym for FAQ.

I got into an argument with the physics geeks (term used affectionately; I used to be a physics geek) today. I objected to the assumtion that the term “Christian” implied a belief in the literal interpretation of the book of Revelation, among other things.

Kids today are absolutists. Being a Christian means this. Being an Anarchist means that. This band is cool. That band sucks.

Quit whining you haven’t done anything wrong because frankly
You haven’t done much of anything

—KMFDM

#!/bin/sh
#DTPD#
## ~/bin/wgeto ##
exec wget -o /dev/null -O - "$@"

Then,

$ wgeto http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt \
     | fold -s -w 70 | less 

Explanation for non-unix-literate people: First of all, I wrote a neat script called wgeto. wget is a program that downloads stuff off of the internet, via http or ftp. wgeto calls wget, but tells it to ignore the progress dialog by sending it to the null device, “-o /dev/null”. (See Rule of Silence from The Art of Unix Programming.) wgeto then pipes the document into standard output.

I pipe it through fold to wrap long lines

Then I pipe it into a pager, less, so that I can page through the document.

Now I don’t have to save a copy on the hard disk.

“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

—John Gilmore(link)

I went to a talk on qmail last night. Here’s what I got.

1. qmail is great, but I don’t have any reason to switch from postfix.
2. D. J. Bernstein is some kind of paranoid mad genius.
3. Maildir is an elegant solution to the problem of locking mail spools. I’m going to try it out.

Dean has promised that he’ll drop out if he loses Wisconsin.

Conversely, he has indicated that he’ll stay in until Wisconsin.

That mean that there will be at least two candidates left on the ballot by the time I get to vote. I’m releaved. At the rate they were dropping out, I figured that there’ll be no choice left by the 17th.

Quicksilver: The Deluxe Limited Edition

• Limited to an edition of 1,000 copies-never to be reprinted.
• Completely redesigned from the trade hardcover in a larger format-7" x 10".
• Each book numbered and signed by the author.
• Each volume hand-bound in Japanese silk.
• Each volume housed in a handsome slipcase featuring a die-cut aperture for the Quicksilver icon and covered in the same Japanese silk. The slipcase will also feature a silk ribbon pull for easy removal.
• Matching signed limited editions of the second and third volumes of Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle will be published by William Morrow at six-month intervals.

I’m drooling.

On the subject of whuffie, I just read Eastern Standard Tribe, by Cory Doctorow. It’s availible gratis, so go look at it.

I published a short article last week on rsync.

Maybe I’ll get some whuffie out of it.