It's all about the Benjamins
If you believe that following the dollars is more important than listening to what people say, you too may be amazed by the response to Move On's Voter Fund. They're raising money to run ads criticizing the administration, and as of this writing, less than three days into the campaign, they've pulled in over 1.5 million dollars. If this effort is like their previous ones, that sum came from thousands of smaller contributers, not the few captains of industry that old-skool politicos employ. I've long been a big believer in the democratizing potential of the internet, but I'm amazed that this volume of actual money is being collected by what are, to my understanding, a handful of folks organizing through the net.
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Mass sez: open software is better
Great news, flawed article - while the overview of the big picture is not bad, there are a number of incoherent claims, such as "[Microsoft]'s products are just too essential, and many open source alternatives too ineffective for many of the kinds of big database jobs governments require". Surely these big database jobs are not using SQL Server, or Oracle running on NT; one wonders where the reporter's impression of Microsoft's presence in this area could be from, if not their advertising campaigns. The closing quote about Massachusetts' move is equally questionable: "Politically, there are only pros, but in terms of government employee productivity there are quite a few cons". This quote comes from a Forrester researcher, whose opinions should theoretically be concerned with the productivity and not the politics of such a decision, since that is ostensibly the function of Forrester's. However, it seems from the article that the substance of his jabs against this initiative are political.

Surely part of the article's focus on the political implications is due to the relative simplicity for reporter and audience of briefly covering political implications, which require less background knowledge than evaluating the cost and productivity advantages and disadvantages of competing models of software development. Unfortunately this allows groups such as Forrester to advance their agendas (in this case, politicization of what may well be a very pragmatic decision) without a critical examination.

For more, see a more technical article at linuxplanet, and a relevant snippet from the Secretary of Administration & Finances' budget review.
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Somebody has finally looked at the track record of Diebold voting machines
and it certainly wasn't a US paper. It's funny how the national press has been reluctant to look closely at election results for the last three years or so. I will concede that state-level coverage isn't always as bad - I thought that the Minnesota press did a decent job of looking at the actual post-election voting numbers last November. Fat lot of good that will do us when the numbers are generated by crappy programs written by Republicans, though. I'm very pleased that much of the country will not be afflicted with these touch-screen fraud machines; Minnesota has had OCR for years and will hold onto it, and Massachusetts recently evaluated the available technology and picked OCR. Short of outright corruption, one wonders why other states could possibly be choosing touch screens over alternative technologies that leave a paper trail.
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The Problem with the Ease of Publishing to the Internet
is that whenever you want to cover a topic, somebody's probably beat you to it. A few days ago I was ready to opine on Bill Oreilly's self-embarrassment on Fresh Air, but while doing some background research I found that dozens had already covered the points I had in mind. Today I was set to rip into Columbus day - it's an easy target after all - only to find that, not only has it been done, but with exactly the same quotes I had planned on using (the ones from Chris' journal). Maybe this is why sharp people like Philip Greenspun often resort to making strained connections: all the semi-obvious points have been made.
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Hey Mozilla / Firebird - using web developers
This very handy toolbar just was brought to my attention. While I am usually leery of this sort of third-party addition, the recommender had personally taken it apart and reordered a bit for the project we're working on, and was thus able to vouch for it. A good chunk of it is just documentation that I already have links to, but the automatic validation and layout tools are great time savers. Go Mozilla platform!
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What is a 'Homeland' any how?
I've just been listening to a discussion of the United States' use of the term 'homeland' with regards to Israel's need to launch raids on Syria, and it's reawakened my curiosity about the word. The administration's use of the term 'homeland' has disturbed me ever since they started referring to the problem of Homeland Security, and somehow the discussion of the topic in the context of Israel made me realize that the word has strong suggestions of empire. After all, referring to your country as the 'home' land implies that you also have responsibilities over lands that are not your home.

If the administration didn't see America's role in the world as an imperial one, you'd think that they would refer to our defense as National Security or something like that. Of course, that might put the creation of a huge new branch of government like the Office of Homeland Security into doubt, since we already have the world's largest military, intelligence, police, and diplomatic services. If, however, you believe that America's dominion extends across the globe, and that the protection of our nation requires significant resources to be expended beyond the borders of our nation, then it becomes possible to argue that security within our borders is just a small piece of our national defense, one that we've somehow ignored for the last two hundred years.
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