Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:35 AM

Remember the warnings I've posted in the past about the risks of computerized voting machines with no paper trails -- how easily and undetectably vote totals might be hacked? Well, author Bev Harris has uncovered an amazing Scoop: Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program that's so incredible it's unbelievable.

• It stores the data in MS Access format
• The manual, available on the ftp site, tells that the default password in a new installation is "GEMSUSER."
• It's trivially easy for intruders to overwrite the admin password
• The audit log can also be easily edited to remove suspect entries

There's much much more in the article, but it has to be read to be believed. [So what are you waiting for? If you haven't already read it, go here, right now!]

This is big folks. Several past elections that used such machines have been suspect (vote results way out of whack compared to the exit polls) and we'll probably never know for sure, much less be able to make restitution. [Not just to the candidates who were cheated out of their offices, but think of all the votes that swung the other way, the legislation they never got to submit. This abuse of the system hurts us all.]

I only hope (a) the US news media gives this story the attention it deserves and (b) we have enough time to pull these systems out of circulation before the primaries. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:43 PM

And to top that off, LiveJournal reported that their "syndication cluster will be unavailable for about an hour, while we do some maintenance on it." However, since they brought it back up, it's done nothing with my feed but give parse errors. And each time LJ gets a parse error on an RSS feed, they stop checking that feed for 3 hours. So none of my posts from this afternoon or evening have yet reached LJ users.

And isn't it funny how Atrios' feed doesn't have these parse errors, even though it's generated from Blogger using exactly the same parameters as mine.

There are many times when I really hate the way LJ handles syndicated feeds. I have no control or notification of comments, it checks at annoyingly odd intervals, and if it happens across any problem (even if it's their fault) it won't check again until at least three hours. If they're overloaded as far as feed-checking is concerned, why not use Weblogs.com as a signal for when to update...

And thanks to these computer problems, once again I didn't get done tonight what I wanted/needed to get done. I am not a terribly happy camper right now.

Good night!

Added 11:55 PM: And just how did Blogger spontaneously change my time stamp to include seconds!? I certainly didn't modify that setting. I am not amused.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:19 PM

I don't know what happened, but somehow my hard drive lost all the headlines for my Feedreader aggregator and my browser history file with months and months and months of links. [I save them indefinitely so (a) I can find old sites again, and (b) for help in updating my bookmarks.] And now, months of data gone with no rhyme, reason, or explanation.

This morning, my hard drive made some funny noises and then froze. So I turned it off to let it cool off and rest. When I got home, everything seemed okay. I noticed the Feedreader headlines were missing (and it didn't even list a recently added feed, only my original two), so I shut the program off until I could deal with it. Minor nuisance -- or so I thought. Around 10, I noticed the browser history was missing when I was trying to find a recent site with a hard-to-spell URL. Everything before I got home from work was GONE.

And, of course, I haven't actually backed up my hard drive in months...

I've got a free copy of WinHex, searching through the deleted data, I can actually find some of my Feedreader files (not too hard since I can look for XML tags) and copy those clusters into new text files. [One at a time, since this is only the evaluation copy and not the full-blown version.] However, Feedreader is really less important than my Opera history file, and I really have no idea how to bring that back. Not only was it massively huge, far larger than my feedreader file, but I don't know of any distinguishing characteristics to even search on. And installing Norton or other undeletion software runs the risk of overwriting even more of the data.

<Sigh>Right now, I'm writing this in notepad and going to post it by telnetting to my shell account and lynx-ing from there. Ideas and suggestions welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:56 PM

Okay, on to the next personal update, which comes in two parts:

1. We've got a new (used, but new to us) car to replace our beloved but dying current vehicle, and
2. to pick it up, we're taking a brief vacation to Florida.

The car is a 2000 Toyota Camry LE... in purple. I still haven't seen it yet, but everything I've read and heard sounds marvelous. My grandfather can get into the car auctions down in Florida. He and my dad picked it out, and I owe them more than I can say here.

I think it hits all the criteria we gave them, and when Ian worked out a short list of models to look at/for, the Camry was on it. It's apparently in great condition (and my dad & grandpa had them check over the everything this morning and, quoting my dad's IM to me, "Every belt that showed the least bit of wear was replaced, all the fluids, everything was gone over. It's basically in "like-new" condition. According to ___ that engine is good for 300,000 miles if maintained. His comment is that the body will rust out before the engine wears out. It's a good solid car, and will be a good performer" For those as unfamiliar with cars as I am, here's the specs from cars.com, a 360 degree view of the interior, Car Talk's reviews of the 1997 and 2002 models, and another review which seems to capture what we're looking for in a car: "You want a reliable family sedan at a reasonable price? Buy a Camry. You don't like flash? Buy a Camry. You like decent, mainstream, everyday styling? Buy a Camry."

Ian already blogged his comments on the deal a few days ago. [See, if you're interested in our lives, you should read his journal, too. Especially since he often has more time to post than I, and he writes about different things. He's even got an RSS feed through LiveJournal, at http://xiphias.livejournal.com/rss for those who don't have LJ accounts and/or prefer to use other aggregators.]

Anyway, the car's down in Florida, which means ROAD TRIP!!!

I saw my parents at my graduation, but it's been far too long since I've seen other members of my family down in Florida. Perfect excuse for a short visit.

And, as long as we're going to be driving up from Florida, we may as well enjoy ourselves and possibly take the opportunity to see some sights along the way. My first thought, since we're driving past DC was to explore the Supreme Court Building. Then I discovered that the Folger Shakespeare Library's exhibit on Elizabeth I will still be open through August 2nd. Glee! I've been interested in seeing this for over a year. [From the site: "Among the 85 treasures on display will be the Sieve portrait, letters to and from the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth's bible, the Queen's New Year's Gift Roll" I'm psyched.]

So, our current plans are to fly down to Florida on Friday the 25th (in time for Shabbos dinner) and spend Saturday with my family. Start driving north on Sunday morning. Stay overnight somewhere south of DC. On Monday, we do touristy stuff in DC. Tuesday, we finish the drive to Boston, and Wedensday I go back to work. [Thus frugally requiring only 3 days vacation for a 5 day trip.]

It's a tight schedule, which we'll largely be playing by ear, but especially for folks in and around DC, we might be able to get together for a quick meal or something. [Hey, Josh Marshall, you reading this?]

Of course, this trip does mean added hassles, including registration & plates & insurance for our new car (with the decision whether to keep our old one as a backup until it truly falls apart), arranging a cat sitter for Boopsie (who will have to deal with her new meds), etcetera, etcetera...

But for now, that's my big news.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:45 PM

Last week, between calls, I started posting some of my backlog of news links. Then work got insanely busy again and I haven't had a chance. I'll try to get back to these eventually, but not for a while yet.

I figure it's been a while since I've posted any personal updates, and thought folks might be curious on how things are standing.

Boopsie's health:
(Previous updates June 9 and June 10)

Boopsie is still somewhat sick. No accidents of late, but the last test from the vet revealed she still has the urinary tract infection and we have to give her antibiotics for six weeks. Fortunately, instead of prescribing pills or that horrid banana-scented liquid (I assume it's banana-flavoured, but didn't feel inclined to taste), we've got chewable tablets, which smell rather neutrally yeast-like. We've been crushing them into a powder and mixing them into other food-like substances.

So now our latest challenge is figuring out what she will eat that hides the flavor. Thus far, the only thing that's been an unqualified success is the liquid drained out of tuna cans. But we can't go through six weeks worth of cans, just for her. And as far as I can tell, nobody sells tuna juice. We bought clam juice, but she wouldn't touch it even without the meds. She also hasn't shown any interest in the meat-flavored baby food we bought. She likes both cheddar-spread and cream cheese lox spread, but apparently not enough to eat much of it once we mixed in the medicine. We're going to pick up some gefilte fish balls and see if she won't eat the meds smooshed up in one of those.

Since the workday is now over and I'm waiting on Ian to pick me up, I'll post more updates on other parts of my life later. [I could just bring this partially-completed entry home and finish it tonight, but "that trick never rarely works" and posting this much is something, at least.] Hopefully tonight, but if not tonight then I'll try to squeeze them in over the next several days.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:00 PM

As I wrote in my final paper for Content Analysis, one of the problems of using search engines to find entries in weblogs is that "search results only link to the web page, leaving it up to the users to find the specific entry."

A while back, a LiveJournal friend pointed me to FreeFind, which has an option called data search, allowing users to designate portions of a page (such as blog posts) as separate entries, appearing separately on the search results.

Out of curiousity, I added their tags to my template. Here's my new search screen. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think. Maybe I'll add this to my site more permanently.

I'm undecided at the moment. Both Atomz and Freefind have their relative advantages:

I don't know yet; I'm still playing with them both. However, any search engine on this site/journal is as much for you, my readers, as it is for me. [Though based upon Atomz reports, I have my doubts that anybody besides me is using it. Simple search is at the bottom of every journal page; advanced search on the archive page.] Anyway, let me know what you think...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

Every now and then, I get curious who might be linking to me. So I've started compiling a list from some of the aggregators and blog search engines:

• Alexa (Amazon)
• All Consuming (for books)
• Blogdex (MIT Media Lab)
• The Blogosphere Ecosystem (Truth Laid Bear)
• Blogrolling (generated blogrolls)
• BlogShares (fantasy stock market)
• DayPop
• Popdex (website popularity index)
• Technorati
• Google
• AllTheWeb (which is actually more thorough than Google; when using the link: connector, Google only searches pages above a certain PageRank. Meaning that smaller sites -- such as many weblogs -- may not be included.


• Added later:
  • BlogMatrix (via Elayne)
  • Daypop Blogstats

Any others I should know of?

For curiousity's sake, here's what ads Google would serve to my site if I chose to use their advertising system. Rather interesting what it thinks my readers might be interested in, and how the selection has changed since I first discovered this link. Right now, it's pulling up pages & merchandise related to the Founding Fathers. Last week's archive yields ads for romantic civil unions. Before that, it was sites supporting Gov. Dean, and when I first tried it, I got info on brainstorming and a reproduction of Monet's Magpie. [via http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000984]

BTW, if you're interested in this info for your own site, you can just edit any of these URLs and replace osmond-riba.org with your address...

And, as long as so many strangers are reading this journal, I figure I ought to tell you all a bit about myself.

That's probably about as good an introduction as I can provide on this spur-of-the-moment. You can get a further idea of what I'm like by just reading what I've written in this journal and elsewhere on my site.

Anything else you'd like to know about me at the moment?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:00 AM

All-in-all a good weekend. We got together with family, Saw a couple movies at the drive-in, and I read Gin: the much lamented death of Madam Genevra about the Gin Craze and Gin Scares in the early 18th century. Fascinating book -- and so much sounded so familiar, not just of the 1920s Prohibition, but of the current War on Drugs. Here's what I've distilled:

In each case, it's cyclical. There's a period of rapid change, overthrowing the current social order. Speculation and gambling are rife, throwing the class system into upheaval with lots of nouveau riche (and some nouveau poor). There's a sense of bohemianism among the young, with free love and more outspoken women. And part of this scene is a new drug (and I'm including alcohol as a drug) that doesn't fit into the existing traditions (gin wasn't served in alehouses; drugs aren't (officially) served in bars).

Needless to say, the conservatives are upset and threatened by this. Eventually, something sensational shocks the system enough to get mainstream media attention. The media starts covering the drug's links to crime, poverty and health risks, and pressure the politicians to do something about this "crisis." And the conservative zealots (who have been working on this for a while) push through a prohibition. However, the general public disapproves of this attempt to change popular behavior through legislation and ignores the law, continuing to drink or drug as they had been.

At this point, instead of being sensible and realizing that they can't legislate against the popular will, the government looks on the continuing civil disobedience as a challenge to their authority. They can't let people get away with flouting the laws, because such disrespect is dangerous and could undermine the whole system of government. So, instead of recognizing that the problem is in this one bad law and repealing it, the government digs in its heels and takes an even harder-line stance.

Not only does criminalizing these kinds of behaviors make otherwise law-abiding people criminals, but it reduces government control over the entire system. It gives organized crime a foothold in manufacturing and distributing. Those charged with enforcement of the law become corrupted, further diminishing respect for the law. Quality goes way down as unscrupulous types adulterate it, making it more dangerous, and people die from ingesting poisons. Also, these laws inevitably come down harshest on the poor; with loopholes for the rich that feed a sense of inequity and injustice that fuels disobedience. [Gin Acts banned gin, drunk by the poor, but not touching the upper-class drinks; before Prohibition, the Yale Club bought a 14-year supply of booze so they wouldn't run out; and look at modern crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparities.]

Eventually, someone in the government recognizes the merry-go-round they're on and suggests they find a better solution. There's a lot of public handwringing over how dare the government condone or even profit off of vice (by taxation). But eventually prohibition is repealed and the substance is truly controlled by the government, through taxes and licensing restrictions. And these regulations actually, more effectively, reduces consumption than prohibition ever did.

It's terribly simplistic to look at one drug and blame it as sole cause for the poverty and crime and other problems in society. And its even more simplistic to assume that eliminating the drug will eliminate the other problems. The better question -- the one that really put the nail in the coffin of "Madam Genevra" -- is "how can we improve the lives of the poor so they won't need to drug themselves to insensibility to get through their day?"

Sound at all familiar?
The 1740s press even has equivalents to "crack babies" and, interestingly enough, that's also where the myths of spontaneous human combustion date from.

After I finished that book, I started reading a library copy of Forever Amber. I was inspired & intrigued by this Salon article about the book, and so far it's meeting my expectations. Forever Amber was a best-selling women's novel from 1944, a sensational blockbuster like Gone with the wind. I'm about 200 pages into it (it's a 750 page book) and it is fascinating. GWTW is an apt parallel, as Amber is very similar to Scarlett O'Hara. Both books feature a social-climbing heroine armed only with beauty and wit and a strong will, alone in the world during a turbulent period in history, who uses men and abuses other women in her quest to survive and thrive. [A incredibly spoiler-laden Guardian review (I mean it! Don't read it if you want any surprises! I'm disappointed by what it reveals!) calls FA a "bonkbuster"]

Reading Forever Amber makes me intersted in doing a further survey of popular women's novels throughout history. I suppose it would start with East Lynne and Lady Audley's Secret from the 1860s as some of the earliest [I took a college class on the Victorian sensation fiction, which included these two.]. There's a gap in my knowledge until Gone with the wind and Forever Amber (from the late 1930s and early 1940s). I believe Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls might qualify for this list, but I'm not certain. The most modern equivalent I can think of in terms of public response might be The Bridges of Madison County, which interestingly enough is the only one on this list written by a man. However, I haven't actually read it so don't know whether it really fits as far as being shocking and socially transgressive. [arguments pro and con are welcome.]

Anybody care to help me out in suggesting other titles for this list, and possibly joining me in a book-club to read and discuss them? I'm looking for books that were surprise bestsellers among women, even though they were often considered shocking or transgressive among the mainstream, even inspiring public outrage. The books had female leads and inspired a lot of reader identification, so the books didn't have much crossover appeal to men, and were media sensations, quickly translated to stage or screen (and for movies, inspiring a lot of interest over which actress would play the lead and whether any film could capture what readers loved about the books). I'm definitely looking for more titles to add to this list, so any assistance would be appreciated.

Finally, a reminder: I won't necessarily see comments to my posts that are written anywhere other than the comments link on osmond-riba.org. Past experience has shown that LiveJournal does not retain syndicated posts indefinitely as it does with user journals. When I happen to find comments in LJ, I try to copy them over here, but comments have been lost in the past. The only surefire way to ensure I see comments (and to hopefully spark further discussion) is by posting the response to the comments link on osmond-riba.org. Thank you.