Special Blog Post:
Open Thread, Blog Maintenance, and a Note on Neo-Con Disingenuity
Most of you have politely declined to point out that this blog is loading with all the speed of a Republican politician coming to grips with how stupid the President and his policies are. While the GOP can take nearly five-and-a-half years to finally understand the nature and consequences of imbecility in high office, we in the Blogosphere haven't the luxury of responsive sloth. A blog can deliver quality content, but if it loads with the speed of a dead dog chasing a wrecked car, only the most dedicated will visit.
I ask that you, good readers, let me know if the blog is loading perceptibly faster.
And while I am working on this project over the next 24 hours, consider this bit of stunning news from the Cabinet Officials on Good Meds file: In its semi-annual report on international trade, Bush Administration Treasury Secretary John Snow declares that China is not—and let me repeat that: not—manipulating its currency against the greenback to gain trade advantage over the United States.
China, I shall simply point out, has for years been pegging its exchange rate with the dollar. It does this by printing billions and billions of yuan and using them to purchase greenbacks. This makes the Chinese yuan artificially and ridiculously cheap, and it makes the dollar artificially and ridiculously expensive. That makes Chinese goods in the U.S. artificially cheap and American goods in China artificially expensive. This, in turn, provides the Chinese with huge amounts of American currency that can then be used to invest in U.S. assets, including (and most importantly) Treasury debt instruments to feed the Bush Administration's insatiable appetite for budget-busting expenditures and low-low taxes on the rich.
Ah. The Bush Administration is cool with China doing this exchange rate manipulation because it's the only way the Republicans can live beyond the country's means in federal expenditures.
Say something here. No purpose is served by holding your tongue: most details of your life are already in one or more government databases, and it's only a matter of time before you pay dearly for your willfully defiant thoughts and actions.
So you might as well speak your peace.
The Dark Wraith is cruising through the template code tonight.
Published 5/10/2006 06:05:00 PM
<< 38 Comments Total
Dark Wraith,
Can you please post on the House Bill 4297 that just passed??
good afternoon dark wraith: of course china isn't manipulating its currency. things in iraq are going quite well, thank you for noticing. just now, i noticed that the page loaded significantly faster. but i am using my laptop, watching a glorious sunset, getting ready to go man a violin on some bach for a friend who directs the orchestra at our local j.c. i've been seeing some disturbing climbs in prices of things like gold, diamonds, other hard, portable media. . .makes me edgy
mr. benson will now go perform one of his favorite roles that of "ringer"
Dark Wraith: I saw this and commented on it through my own blog. Although your own explanation on this story is so nicely done.
It worries me that we are still playing this game of China selling cheap goods to the American consumer in order to prop up the Chinese economy. How much longer can this go on? How many more dollars are the Chinese willing to take in--especially if the prospects of rising inflation would cause all those dollars floating in Chinese hands to lose their value? Another problem I have is the outsourcing of American jobs, and this "jobless" recovery. If high wage white collar, and professional jobs in the U.S. are being outsourced to low wage countries such as China and India, we could see the American consumer cutting back on their spending--especially their spending on cheap Chinese goods. If demand for Chinese imports in the U.S. slows, then Chinese manufacturers are going to have an excessive supply of goods that they may not be able to sell on the world market. Worst case scenario, we could see a recession occur in the U.S. as a result of the outsourcing of jobs, higher interest rates, inflationary pressures, and even the extreme amount of debt. This U.S. recession could spread both to China, which has a large amount of dollars, and their manufacturers pretty much supply the U.S. market, and perhaps spreading this recession to the rest of the world.
Or am I being just a mad lunatic for thinking such dire predictions?
Good evening, Lizzy. I shall probably go after this at length in a post at some point, but the main irritants to me are these as follows.
First, the measure extends the cut in the tax rate on dividends and capital gains by another two years. We cannot—and I emphasize, cannot—afford this. It's killing us. The fantasy world of supply-side economics that claims cutting taxes will boost tax revenues has been roundly and repeatedly repudiated by the empirical results: putting "more money" in the pockets of investors does not significantly increase revenues, certainly not even close to one-for-one, much less more than one-for-one. Why in God's name would an investor use money from a tax break to generate income that would result in more taxes?
Deeper into this point, money in the pockets of the wealthy does not create jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Even if it could be reasonably argued that money in investors' pockets leads to more investment, that is in no way, shape, or form a guarantee that such investments will, first, be capital investments and, second, that those capital investments will cause business expansion that leads to job formation.
On this second point, the entire thrust of modern business growth is toward physical capital as a substitute for labor. The dream that, once the physical capital is in place, a labor supply will form to act as a complement in production is theoretical, at best, in recent times. It all depends upon the technology under consideration (is it labor intensive? physical capital intensive?) the relative costs of factors of production, and the relative returns on investment to various of the production factors.
Think of it like this, Lizzy. Suppose OddJob is a wealthy investor, and he has just saved a bundle on his capital gains taxes. OddJob says to himself, "I need to use this money."
He can either use it on immediate consumption, or he can forego that immediate consumption and invest his money.
Let's say he uses the money for immediate consumption. Likely as not, a fair portion of the money will be spent on goods and services where labor and capital are employed in relatively low-order goods. Although some of his consumption would be for very high-margin items, that's not where the thrust of immediate consumption lies. The jobs that might be created because OddJob is spending more money are much more likely than not to be at the lower end of the pay scale.
Let's say OddJob, instead of using his money immediately, decides to invest it. He can do that in one of two ways.
The first way he could do it is to put the money in the bank, which will subsequently lend the money to consumers and businesses. He will expect a return on his saved money, and in exchange, the bank will be able to lend the money out to people who want to build homes and to businesses that want to expand production. In the former case, his money will to some extent sustain jobs for home builders, but the house price impounds that factor cost, as well as all the others that go into the building of homes. Ultimately, the purchaser of the home eats the cost, which then shows up in the principal amount of the mortgage, which is then assessed the interest costs that the home buyer will pay over the duration of the mortgage loan. OddJob expects his return on saved money at the bank to keep going, which means the home-building spree has to keep going in order for the capital transfer from home buyer/mortgagees to maintain the pace of return. But even at that, the bank is going to take its cut of the mortgage interest... except that it's not really going to be the bank taking that cut; it's going to be the massive investors who buy up the secondary mortgage market paper that is the aggregate of large numbers of those loans.
So if OddJob wants to play for the serious returns on investment, he's probably better off in the secondary mortgage market buying Ginnie Maes.
Let's say OddJob uses his money to directly invest in a business. The business expands based upon the financial capital provided by risk-taking investors. First and foremost, those investors anticipate a reward commensurate with the risk they are bearing. In fact, they'll beat down the doors of the company demanding ever higher returns. In other words, as investors—owners, in fact—they, themselves, are a factor of production, and they're going to expect their reward prior to any reward accruing to other factors of production.
Now, given that, let's talk about what the company does with the money. Obviously, the company must consider what technology will require the mix of labor, physical capital, and land that will minimize cost while maximizes productive output. When we think about it that way, we must be very careful when it comes to factors of production because some of those factors are far, far more likely to represent long-term liabilities to the company than others.
Lizzy, which do you think is a greater risk of long-term liability: a machine or a person? If you chose 'machine', give yourself a cigar (provided you like cigars, anyway; otherwise, give yourself a latté.) Workers are killers as far as long-term cash drain is concerned. For God's sake, workers expect things like health benefits, time off, and worst of the worst, retirement benefits. When was the last time you saw a machine that, after it could no longer work, you still had to give it money on a regular basis?
To the modern industrialist, workers are desirable only when they are cheap, and that's not only because of the low immediate cost; it's also because future expected cash outflows to workers are almost always correlated with current cash outflows to them. That means, if a worker is expensive to pay now, the long-term liability arising from employing him will be staggering over the remainder of his life even when he is no longer productive to the firm.
Machines aren't that way. They just aren't; and as long as tax policy in this country lays a phony veil of neutrality on the choices that companies make about whether to use labor- or capital-intensive technologies, businesses are going to substitute physical capital for labor to the fullest extent possible.
After all, the owners of the firm have to be rewarded, and so do the decision makers at the executive level. If workers want anything at all, they get to suck hind teat in this factor heirarchy.
In other words, OddJob gets his first, and he's going to expect that other factors are employed at minimum cost (both present and future) so his gain is maximized. Then the executive ranks will get rewarded (and they might even confiscate their reward before the investors get theirs). Physical capital will get rewarded to the extent that its producers can absorb savings they generate as a substitute for labor.
And where does that leave labor in this grand scheme? If you recall Anatomy 101, hind teat is just a stone's throw from the ass of most animals.
Supply-side economics be hanged. The only place where tax cuts generate more taxable income is at the level of the entrepreneurs and executives: the entrepreneurs are the continuing beneficiaries of lowered capital gains taxes in the supply side scheme, and the executives are the beneficiaries of lower marginal tax rates on ordinary income in that scheme.
So where's all the extra revenue going to come from?
Apparently, it's supposed to come from Heaven; but as our spiraling federal deficits seem to indicate, the gates of Heaven are closed, now.
At least for the blesséd American experience, anyway.
The Dark Wraith isn't actually sure if any of this rant actually made sense.
DW,
I had some trouble noticing the difference in loading from 12 to 16 milliseconds but that could be due to absinthe comsumption.
Anyway, this might solve our money problems with China. They can’t possibly match this:
To facilitate the new and rapid decline of the U.S. Dollar, I propose renaming the devalued dollar based on the following
Coins
$.01 = 1 Coulter
$.05 = 1 Malkin
$.10 = 1 Limbaugh
$.25 = 1 O’Reilly
$.50 = 1 Scalia
Bills
$1.00 = 1 Bush
$2.00 = 1 Powell (Obsolete)
$5.00 = 1 Cheney
$10.00 = 1 Rumsfeld
$20.00 = 1 Rice
$50.00 = 1 Rove
$100.00 = 1 Murdock
The old basis for the dollar was gold. The new base should be based on 1 ounce per 1 dollar (or Bush) of pure Republican Bullshit; current value 1 Bush; henceforth known as Bushit. This value is subject to change due to foreign markets.
The British pound Sterling would now be worth about 1.25 ounces of Bushit or I Blair.
Of course, China could counter with piles of Yuans backed by Dung but I think in the long run, the Bushit is stronger.
Gas prices can now be more readily determined. 1 gallon of regular is worth 3 ounces of Bushit or simply 3 Bushes.
I’m sure many more examples could be found.
I ask that you, good readers, let me know if the blog is loading perceptibly faster.
To me, your site seemed to load quicker, but then, I haven't been consuming absinthe. :)
Whoa! It now loads so fast I got whiplash! Oh, and thanks for the Cliff Notes version of US-China economic relations.
My lawyer will be contacting your lawyer. Well, if I had a lawyer, he/she would be contacting your lawyer. If you have one. If you don't, oh well.
Good evening, Guy Andrew Hall.
I worry when lawyers contact each other: that's the first step in breeding, which leads to yet another generation of their kind.
It's not really the thought of their offspring that bothers me; it's just the thought of them breeding.
The Dark Wraith hates visualizations that include expensive leather briefcases and carnal acts in dry-clean-only suits.
Good Morning DW...
Rule #1 Don't Visualize
Rule #2 REALLY Don't Visualize
Rule #3 Follow Rules one and two.
You broke the rules. Now you pay the consequenses.
***********************************
THe Blog loaded a bit faster for me, but still fairly slow(but then, the 55k modem we got used has yet to go above 30.3kbps). The sidebar was much better than recently-it loaded all at once, rather than s-l-o-w-l-y getting there. It's the lag between body and sidebar I tend to notice.
Lastly, since we are on an open thread, any computer wizards who know XP out there who can tell me where are found the "webclient/publisher" files mentioned in disk clean-up? Clean-up has ceased deleting them on my say-so, and there's 32k of the buggers in some unknown location on my hard drive, which would be okay if I had ANY frickin' clue what exactly was in them.
As an aside, China will continue to sell cheap goods to us, come what may. Why? Consider the fact that the economic times have sent me downstream from WalMart and I now do the bulk of my spending in Dollar Tree and Dollar General....just about everything made in China, except the stuff from India and Taiwan. Heck, I don't do WalMart anymore because they are too expensive(well, that and the rednecks who act in the aisles like drivers in a trailerpark...you pass your buddy and stop in the middle of the road to hold a conversation, make sure to glare at anyone who might need to pass). Wally World's crowds and sheer distances between the things I want to get keep me away except in case of emergency.
Honey - you're the only person I know who can make economics amusing. Why in hell you didn't win that Koufax is beyond me. And what is this obsession with absinthe tonight? It’s a topic of discussion over at Blondsense as well. Hey - I've tried it folks and take my word for it - Pernod is yards better! For one thing - you can actually have a second glass - if you're still standing after consuming the first, that is. As for your site – I never really had an appreciable problem with it loading slowly. By the way – where do you find the time to work on all this stuff, Dark Wraith? I usually work on my book during the day and hours can pass without my having finished editing even half of a chapter. You move like lightening. How many classes do you teach per day?
Good evening, Fat Lady Sings.
Yes, I've noticed this keen interest today in absinthe. I am comforted at least in the fact that no one is reminiscing about Ripple, and so far no one has brought up the nuanced delight of Mad Dog.
My obsessive personality is coming back into full gear right now after one of the extended vacations it takes from time to time. Last week, I began a two-week regimen of a combination of two amino acids that have a reasonably good chance of kicking me out of those lulls. The notable effect is just beginning to start, but it will be a few days before I'm running on all cylinders again.
Of course, I suppose those cylinders would fire more efficiently if I had an oil change and maybe a tune-up, but I'll have to put all that off until after I buy those fuzzy dice for my rear-view mirror.
The Dark Wraith has his priorities, y'know.
Good evening, Wild Clover.
I suspect those files no longer exist on your computer. The diagnostic is picking up "ghost files" whose entries didn't get eliminated properly from the file allocation table or from the registry.
You probably need to get a decent registry clean-up utility that can go through, tighten up the registry, clear out dead short-cuts, deal with the computer's Internet cache, delete old temporary files and dead Activex controls, and do some other things. I strongly urge folks who aren't real computer geeks to avoid the clean-up utilities that have tons of bells and whistles, and I also urge people not to go with the very rock-bottom cheapest utility, either.
And by the way, I do appreciate you letting me know not just about the loading speed for this blog, but also about the frame loading speed. I had AJAXed large portions of the sidebar, and what was happening was that I had made two errors: I broke up the AJAX into nine separate files, and I had made a subtle error in a declaration in those files. Actually, it wasn't an error; it was a mismatch of those declarations with the declaration in the main code. I've reduced the number of AJAX calls from nine to five, and I know I can consolidate two more. Beyond that is unknown territory, but I'm going to make one try to bring the entire sidebar down to two calls, a trick that makes me want to start barking like a worried poodle every time I think about doing it.
However, even at five, it sounds from your account like the sidebar is now no longer locking up the load like it was before, and bringing the number of calls down to four should drop the loading time down by another 10 percent or so. If I can bring the calls down to two, I'll have loading speed at commercial server level, which is what I want to accomplish without commercial server cost.
We'll see how that goes. I'm starting to feel that urge to bark just writing about what lies ahead.
The Dark Wraith goes to the cupboard to see if he has any dog biscuits.
My computer did something inexplicable this afternoon (but any glitch is inexplicable as far as I'm concerned). All of a sudden in mid-afternoon the Google search page and several of the blogs I read (including this one, but mostly ones using a blogspot template with little custom design) suddenly defaulted to a font for the visually impaired.
Most annoying in its way.
- oddjob
Good evening, OddJob.
That sounds to me like a fault was occurring in the loading of the cascading style sheets. I have been getting more than a little annoyed with a so-called "server side include" Blogger does. Google seems to be fascinated with SSIs, and they have a tendency to be disruptive, especially when they're poorly coded. It looked to me like, about a week ago, the Blogger folks and Google, itself, were playing with their SSIs, and the effect of some of their experimentation was downright disastrous for certain blogs.
Now, Blogger shouldn't be doing SSIs on this blog, but because I use the Blogger interface to publish articles and comments, Blogger actually loads that stupid Blogger SSI, but then deletes it in the middle of the load. It drives me crazy because that SSI starts its loading cycle every time a reader of this blog scrolls too far down and then goes back up. (Watch the lower, left-hand corner of the browser frame, and you'll see a bunch of files re-loading if you've gone down the blog and then back up.)
I'm so tempted to put in a script to completely block that SSI, but another script would slow my loading time down unacceptably. I might play around with it to see if I can figure out another way to block that script.
But anyway, it sounds like one of those temporary glitches that are the result of someone's experiment that wasn't all that great an idea. If you see this effect again, please let me know. It might just give me the incentive to go ahead and install the script to stop that stupid server side include in its tracks.
The Dark Wraith has enough problems with his own bad code.
Good Morning, Dark One.
I can see some difference in the loading time. For me it really does not matter how long it takes to load. I've learned to wait. And will continue to be in corner, cotton out of my ears and in my mouth, listening and chain smoking, drinking my Joe out of my lovely Dark Wraith Forums Pulp Econmomics mug.
Somethings are worth the wait.
DW--you're coming very very fast for me--I'll have to pause, take a deep breath, before I click on your link, knowing that I'm about to be swept into the darkness almost too fast for my mind-body reactive capacities to handle.
Yes on npr I heard about the tax break on dividends extension and thought this can't be good--must seek out the dark one. Sure 'nuf. You're on it and the China currency too.
Great blog!! Have a good day.
OH OH I saw a beaver today!! I hope that makes everyone happier.
Dear God.
The Dark Wraith is going to go teach a class, now.
Good morning, Dark Wraith.
The page loads a little faster than before; but it wasn't a big deal to wait a few extra seconds.
The things happening with China and their trade surplus with us are pretty disturbing. I would write more, but I hear somebody needs some lunch right now, or bad things will happen.
Good afternoon Mr. Wraith,
Seems to be loading quickly for me, but my status bar now constantly shows Waiting for blogscream.dark-wraith.com...
Must be the good old US of NSA routing your news through their screening servers.
It is somewhat faster, but for me with a streched piece of nylon staging for a connection I never paid much attention. I'm lucky to have electricity here. Sometimes I check the shirt button in the coffee can to make sure the amplifier is really working. Tomorrow I go to help out my DoD down at Pepper's lake and tend to some family business. I sorta look forward to that. On Saturday, it's NPR. Peace to all, and to the DW, thanks.
Where are the NeoCons going to live after they finish flusing America down the sewer?
Some private Island somewhere?
Monaco's supposed to have a nice climate, isn't it?
- oddjob
Dark Wraith,
With the revelations of questionable doings in the Bush Administration; with the press briefings releasing less and less information; with the press less and less inclined to ask any questions let alone tough ones; what is the possibility of the White House simply ignoring the public, the press; going totally black? No briefings, no explanations, no information on anything, no photo ops (he’s a lame duck and doesn’t care about polls). Total lack of anything outgoing. No briefings with Congress, either. What could we do? And why hasn’t he done it? Or is that the last refuge of utter corruption?
One other point. If the Democrats win back the house and Senate and there’re investigations into Bush and literally everyone associated with him, wouldn’t it be with some mind-blowing, incredible, indescribable irony if they all took the Fifth Amendment claiming Constitutional Protection?
Good evening, Father Tyme.
Interesting to me is that the Fifth Amendment plea is largely dismissed by the Bush Administration people in favor of the far more powerful claim of "national security." Many are the situations at the level of grand juries where presiding judges will simply throw witnesses in jail until they back off their right against self-incrimination, but I see an utter absence of any jurists willing to openly challenge the secrecy veil the Executive Branch is using to protect itself these days. That, to me, is simply appalling: the law enforcement arm of government—the Executive Branch—has effectively constructed a means by which it can shield itself from the constitutionally planned check of the judiciary.
That, of course, leaves only the Legislative Branch.
Whether it be controlled in majority by Republicans or Democrats, that doesn't leave us with much.
The Dark Wraith hasn't been impressed by the Democrats in their recent role as the far-too-loyal opposition.
Evenin DW,
Never have had a problem with your pages loading, but my kids and husband would be the ones who know of such technicalities. Yet they never mentioned to me they were aware of AJAX.
Hmmm, methinks they know it can clean the sink as well and choose not to divulge their knowledge to me!
Boy are they in trouble now!!
Good evening, elf.
Asynchronous javascript and XML (AJAX) might not work very well on tough sink stains, but it sure can clean an old dinosaur tech geek's cobwebs out trying to master it.
The Dark Wraith feels unplanned obsolescence setting into his higher cognitive skills.
good evening dark wraith: the tax cuts are passed and on their way to the decider guy. he'll sign, he signs everything. i was watching a pbs thing on john ford and john wayne last night. there was one point in their relationship where wayne came out all rock ribbed conservative, naming names to HUAC, campaigning for eisenhower, all that stuff. john ford fixed him with a gaze and said "i don't understand you guys, you all became millionaires under roosevelt and now you want to dismantle the engine of your success." supply side? fuagh! trickle down, well, i felt something warm and wet on the back of my neck, rove was talking about the rain. . .regarding the chinese, one of my favorite anecdotes from kissenger was the one where he was talking to chou en lai, who was asked about the effects and results of the french revolution on european economics and politics. chou smiled and said "it's really too soon to tell, isn't it?"
mr. benson decided while walking to teach intermediate strings in 102°ree heat that there are few better places to find oneself than a college campus in southern california during the summer.
didn't need the "ree" part of degree on that tag. . .hmmmmm, use it and learn i guess.
"OH OH I saw a beaver today!! I hope that makes everyone happier." -- meEE
PoLT presumes that when meEE hunts for beaver that he abides by gentleman's rules:
"Ya' gotta eat what ya' shoot".
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
Ripple - ah those were the days.
As to the current state of the economy, the good Congresswoman from Carolina (can't recall if it was North or South) explained it all on C-Span tonight. The economy is great, it's just that the American people are un-necessarily worried because the media is only focusing on the negative instead of reporting the positive.
I was tempted to call her to explain that my view of the economy is based more on my observations of the rising price of necessities and my lack of funds to purchase them.
I'm sure she wouldn't have been impressed with this bit of common wisdom. After all, she had carefully prepared charts to bolster her points and all I have is bitter experience.
Good morning, Auntie Roo.
I'll tell you, that disconnect between the government's data and many people's current experience is just stunning. I've never seen anything like it.
Now, I do recall times when I was personally in shabby financial shape and the economy was doing pretty well according to the government, but I could see that, overall, things were okay and it was just me. But this—this is just ridiculous. I'm all for taking personal responsibility for my own lot in life: I'm making less than twenty grand a year teaching more courses than I would have taught ten years ago, and that's my problem. In my own case, I'll take what the Classical economists said: All unemployment is voluntary.
But that personal issue doesn't change at all the fact that so many people I know are really, really struggling now. The government's inflation figures just don't cut it, the job growth figures don't smell right, and the overall expansion of the economy looks like it's all tied up in pretty buildings and nice houses a whole lot of people will never work or live in.
An old fellow—quite conservative as far as I can tell from our many conversations—who teaches where I do said to me early this week something to the effect, "This mess in going to end in revolution. The haves are just going too far, and there are too many have nots." That nearly floored me. The man was talking Marxist theory, and he meant it.
What's funny about that story is that this guy had always made me uncomfortable when he used to start in about how great Bush was. He didn't do that too often or to an extreme, so I never made much of a fuss with him; but he always made me uncomfortable when he put in one of his plugs for this President. Now, though, he starts ranting about class warfare, and I'm really uncomfortable.
Weird, huh? I think I liked him better when he was a reactionary.
The Dark Wraith isn't sure what that's all about.
"An old fellow...had always made me uncomfortable when he used to start in about how great Bush was....Now, though, he starts ranting about class warfare..."
Some possibilities:
1) He's beginning to pull his head out of the sand.
2) He still thinks it's okay for a country to kill whoever gets in their way, but NOT at the cost of impoverishing its own countrymen.
3) He always more or less agreed with you on a philosophic level, but he was just 'jackin' with ya' to try and get a rise out of you. Old farts have a tendency to do that with whippersnappers sometimes, you know.
Good morning, Peter of Lone Tree.
You talk like you know what it's like to be an old fart. Well, I know differently. Word has it that you're still in your prime breeding years, and were it not for your marital status, you'd be the life of the party.
That's what the Dark Wraith has heard, anyway.
PoLT via DW,
Gasp!! Shoot 'em, first??? Why, that's positively Lectorish!
Not to mention a waste of time trying to find another! But it does make 'em so happy!
DW, have you seen this? The good thing about it is that it's being reported publicly.
(Hat tip, HuffPo.)
- oddjob
OddJob, although everyone involved is being ultra hush-hush about what this "security flaw" is, I'll bet it's related to the macros I talked about here that I have my students write to alter voting results in Access database voting routines.
If it is, all I can say is, "DUH?!" Software jockeys have been talking about this for several years, now, and all the media did was bob its head up and down like some bobble-head dog riding in the back of a 1968 Chevy already well past the border and into the state of 21st Century cyber-crime.
That one computer scientist in The New York Times article said he didn't want to even talk about the gaping security flaw for fear of giving some hacker a "roadmap." Well, I'd like to tell the guy that, not only do hackers already know about the "roadmap," they've already got GPS installed in their little hackmobiles to crack on security flaws like the one in the Diebold Election Systems routine (which, I should point out, is pretty lame but pretty standard among companies that really know computer science only to the extent that they've read Microsoft Office for Imbeciles before they read Marketing Crap to State Administrators Who Are Actually Stupider Than Us).
Grr.
It's taken five-plus years for the media to finally take note of what some guy on a morning TV talk show demonstrated three years ago?!
Maybe I'm wrong; maybe this is another gaping hole. I certainly hope so. Perhaps two gaping holes will convince a few states that the dream of electronic voting is every bit as sound as the fantasy that most students don't cheat in online courses.
Double grr.
Thank you, OddJob. I was feeling kind of lethargic tonight.
The Dark Wraith is running on 180 proof adrenalin, now.
"The Dark Wraith is running on 180 proof adrenalin, now."
Only 180? Sounds like you need some "Everclear".
Now that's real booze.
http://www.webtender.com/db/ingred/71
Goes well mixed with Mad Dog and Wild Irish Rose also.
PoLT has not explored those countries beyond "Everclear" which involve straining hot Sterno through a (preferably snotty) handkerchief and then consuming; but a jug of Gallo muscatel left to stand for two hours in the August noonday sun is said to be a close approximation.
Quoth the Dark Wraith
New epitaph on Stalin's tomb:
"We won after all."
Now THAT was good! :)