The Dilbert Blog has an interesting thought on the possibility that electronic voting machines can get hacked.

I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?

I’ve given that idea some thought, and I’ve realized that in an odd sort of way, I find it reassuring. Weird I know, but he’s right. It isn’t going to be some corporate schmuck that hacks it successfully, but some geek. We could do worse.

IE6 is giving me fits today. Something that seems to have been included in an automatic update last week is causing IE6 to fail on a site that I work on. Pages not loading, forms not loading, freezing up after loading, a whole list of problems. Driving me nuts. It only effects IE6, and not every computer seems to be effected. No idea what’s going on here. If I don’t see a solution soon, something is going out a window.

Sidenote: If you’re less than 150 lbs., and would in some way fit out of a 2′ x 3′ window, you might not want to walk into my office right now.

I see in the news that songwriter Marijohn Wilkin has passed away at 86. The Long Black Veil is one of my favorite songs. I have recordings of it by several artists. Mick Jagger singing it with the Chieftains is my favorite. A great songwriter and a woman of faith.

“It’s OK,” she said. “I have my faith. I am ready to go. Don’t be sad for me.” - CNN

Why does Microsoft include a web browser with their operating system? Due mostly I think to Microsoft’s insistence on making IE an integral part of their operating system, IE is and has been one of their biggest security vulnerabilities, yet they keep including it. Why not let Firefox or Opera, or anybody else have the browser market. What would it cost them? It’s not like they charge for the browser. If they stuck to making a stable reliable operating system, and skipped all of the other junk, I think they’d have a better product. If nothing else, they could split it away from the Windows OS, making it less integral, and therefore less of a security risk.

Just blathering today. I don’t know whether it’s IE7’s release or just a coincidence, but I’ve been dealing with a lot of MS fanatics this week. How do you tactfully explain to someone that MS Word isn’t an appropriate piece of software to design with? I had trouble not using obscenities in my explanation. I know it’s been a long week when my verbal filter isn’t working very well.

In a moderately humorous story, two PETA workers have been charged with abducting a hunting dog. The humorous part is where the owner of the dog was the animal control officer that pulled them over. Try talking your way out of that! They claimed that they thought the dog was lost, but you’ll note that they removed the dog’s radio tracking collar when they picked it up.

A witness alerted the county animal control officer - who happened to own the dog. The officer stopped the vehicle soon after and, finding his dog inside, turned the case over to a colleague, Morris said.

The dog’s radio tracking collar had been removed and was found near where the women reportedly picked up the animal, Morris added.

Now this is something I’ve been waiting for. Firefox 2 Released! I haven’t tried it yet, we’ll see how it goes. Unlike IE7, I haven’t tried any of the Beta versions yet either.

Update: Everything seems to work as expected. They rearranged some things, combined the theme and extension windows in one for instance. Several of my extensions don’t work, but most of those are made obsolete by new features in 2, the spell checker for instance. Didn’t expect a failure, but it’s nice to see that everything seems to work.

A sniper team was caught in Ghazaliya today. It may not seem like much, but it cheered me up to know that one more team isn’t going to be sniping our troops.

Press Releases - IA SOLDIERS FIND, DETAIN SNIPER TEAM IN GHAZALIYA

The soldiers stopped the vehicle with three suspects to conduct a preliminary search, which produced a pistol, expended 7.62mm rounds of ammunition and a video camera mounting bracket.

Guns buyback has no effect on murder rate - National - smh.com.au

“Homicide patterns (firearm and non-firearm) were not influenced by the NFA, the conclusion being that the gun buyback and restrictive legislative changes had no influence on firearm homicide in Australia,” the study says.

“I have been collecting data since 1996 … The decision was we would wait for a decade and then evaluate,” she said.

The findings were clear, she said: “The policy has made no difference. There was a trend of declining deaths that has continued.”

Half a billion dollars and no statistical improvement in the homicide rate. Apparently, criminals don’t believe in complying with gun control laws. I have to admit, that doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me. I predict that this lesson will be entirely lost on American politicians.

h/t Instapundit.com -

Instructivist writes about Dead horses and educationists.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, the educational establishment often tries other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like “This is the way we always have ridden this horse.”
more…

After reading the whole list, can you think of any that he missed? How about “Shoot every other horse in sight, thus lowering the bar for your particular dead horse”? Any others?

I’m not a big fan of Microsoft, but I’ll give them this, their fans are really, really loyal.

Someone I e-mail on an almost daily basis recently suggested I change my e-mail client to MS Outlook from Mozilla Thunderbird. Their reasoning? All of the e-mails she received from me were being flagged as spam and filtered by Outlook.

I suggested she should change her filter settings so that it didn’t filter people in her address book: done. Make sure I’m in the address book: done. No change, I’m still being filtered. I suggested that her Outlook seemed to be having a problem: Can you change to Outlook to stop it from doing this?

Hmm… You software isn’t functioning properly, so you want to alleviate your problem by having me install the same software that’s not working for you on my computer. Let me think… No!

Sad maybe, but very loyal.

Hot Air - Comment registration is now open for those of you who missed the previous opportunity.

(yawn) IE 7 has officially been released. According to a previous post at the IE blog, this will be followed by having IE7 included in an automatic update within a few weeks. I thought I’d be dreading this, but having tested several of the beta versions I’m somewhat ambivalent on the subject. Sure it’s an improvement (yawn), but with Microsoft’s long history of security issues, I won’t be switching away from Firefox any time soon.

How many of you have tested your sites to make sure everything is working in IE7? The clock has started, now would be the time work out any final problems. I’ve tested all of the sites I work on, and so far I’ve only found a few minor bugs that I had to work out. Good luck.

The The Dilbert Blog had an interesting point a couple of days ago. I missed it the first time I read it, but I was reminded of the post again today.

If everyone exposed to a product likes it, the product will not succeed.

The reason that a product “everyone likes” will fail is because no one “loves” it. The only thing that predicts success is passion, even if only 10% of the consumers have it.

That’s a great description of something I’ve thought about before:

Too many people these days try for the middle ground. They try to have consensus. They want everyone to think they are OK. I don’t want everyone to think I’m just OK. I’d rather have a few people think I’m damn good, even if a few think I’m a little nuts in exchange. To me the biggest regret I could have in my life wouldn’t be looking back and saying “I failed”. My biggest regret would be not to have tried.

Aiming for mediocre doesn’t work. It’s virtually impossible to hit a middle ground with anything. Don’t try to please everyone. Strive for passion in whatever you do, and you’ll have success. Not everyone will like what you do. Some though, maybe only a few, will love it!

h/t Creating Passionate Users

Jan Bussey has some photos of her Colorado trip online. Very, very nice. Go and see them. Now. Are you still here? Oh sorry, I forgot the link - CascadeExposures: Colorado Rundown.

h/t to Lady Heather of Suburbia: Getting Revenge On Telemarketers

Three quotes today, all from Terry Pratchett

Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

Give a man a fire and keep him warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he will be warm for rest of his life.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

The second quote is a little weird, but that’s just the mood I’m in today.

Now this idea is genius!

IMAO: Guns, What Can’t They Do?

A blogger was talking about the problem of having to check expensive camera equipment and then having it lost or stolen, and then one of his commenters came up with the solution: Guns!

Check a starter pistol in with your camera equipment! Then the rules say that the case must be locked and the airlines will be extremely careful to make sure you get your case back safely.

Scott Adams at the Dilbert Blog has a few thoughts on airport security.

Dangerous Containers

I was also concerned that they might go all Sherlock Holmes on me and ask why a guy with virtually no hair needs shampoo. I would probably say something like “Have you heard of phantom limb?” And then I’d have a metal detector so far up my ass that my fillings would set it off.

It seems that criticism of the study released by the Lancet medical journal isn’t confined to GOP shills.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy. - Iraq Body Count

Maybe I’m just trying to reinforce my “political/ideological/ego trip*, but it seems the study doesn’t hold up well under criticism.

h/t Say Anything Blog

*In the comments