Entries from October 2008 ↓

by Rhona Mahony. Small, inexpensive laptop computers from Asus, Acer, HP, Dell, and other companies have been selling well. Many people have found that the low price and portability of these Lilliputian machines outweigh the inconvenience of squinting at a seven-inch (18-cm) display and relearning to type on a child-sized keyboard. At least one famous tall person, Stephen Fry, whose hands are presumably large if not Brobdingnagian, has publicly announced his delight with his Asus EEE PC. Those of us with weak eyes and stubbornly unretrainable fingers, however, have been left out of the fun. Why don’t companies offer a tiny, $300, 20-watt, stand-alone computer into which one can plug a comfortable keyboard and the actually legible display of one’s choice? Such computers do exist. Like their tiny laptop cousins, they require honest assessment of one’s computing needs. In return, they offer several unexpected advantages over a conventional desktop PC.
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Since August, well-organized crowds of hundreds of aggrieved debtors have stood at the entrances–and prevented the opening–of courthouses in Northampton, Springfield, Worcestor, Athol, and Great Barrington in western Massachusetts. On the first occasion, a farmer and Army veteran, Luke Day, stood on the courthouse steps holding a petition asking the judges not to execute any more foreclosures or debt processes until the protesters could meet with state legislators to craft relief for borrowers. Fifteen hundred men stood with Day. Most of the police officers accompanying the judges sympathized with the debtors and declined to make arrests. The judges, prudent men, went home. Continue reading →

by Rhona Mahony. I’ve written here (“Water is Precious, Poop is Priceless”) about the advantages of dry toilets. They conserve potable water. They produce organic fertilizer. Those results are good, because many people in the world don’t have clean water to drink. Instead, they get sick. What’s more, many poor countries spend scarce foreign exchange to import synthentic fertilizer. Experiments with different kinds of dry toilets and collection systems can take place anywhere, at many scales. It is possible that advocates of dry toilets might not be merely loony, tree-kissing ascetics trying to take the fun out of our bathrooms. Finding a smart way to dispose of, and even make use of, human manure for the 21st Century could have big pay-offs.

I want to test how practical it really is to lug buckets of sawdust and human manure around the house. My test is easy in one way: I am the only person in my family of five using the dry toilet. That leaves me with one-fifth the lugging. It is harder in one way, though, from the experience of someone whose town is collecting the toilet contents. I am doing my own composting. Continue reading →

by Rhona Mahony. In three weeks, Americans will elect a new President, They’ll also elect new Senators, Congressional representatives, and many state and local officials. Voters in six U.S. states, though, will vote on “direct-recording” electronic (DRE) machines that produce no paper print-out that can be used to double check the accuracy of the machine. Voters in 29 other states may get a paper print-out but, like those in the paperless states, will have no way of knowing how error-prone or easy to manipulate their DRE voting machine is. (See VerifiedVoting.org.) Independent tests of voting machines–done outside the closed labs of the manufacturers–have not been encouraging. Last year, Debra Bowen, California’s Secretary of State, asked computer scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, to help her staff do a “Top-to-Bottom Review” of many of the voting machines that we have been using in California. The result? Ms. Bowen’s team found that machines from Diebold (now Premier Election), Hart InterCivic, and Sequoia were so inaccurate or so insecure or both, that they have “decertified” the machines. If you don’t live in California, you may find yourself looking at one of those duds on November 4.

Better Security with Transparent Software

Should we throw our votes into a black hole? Should we let vote-stealers snicker at us? There may be a better way.

Computer engineer Alan Dechert and his colleagues are offering a system that they call “Open Voting.” It prints out a paper ballot that the voter can read over herself. The ballot has a bar code Continue reading →