Aku Aku

vote

Russell Beattie talks about how some people are trying to discourage others from heading to the polls:

First of all - no matter what state you live in, no matter if you have to crawl through glass on your hands and knees to get to the polling booths, you better vote this year. No excuses. I swear if I meet anyone after November 2nd this year who said they didn't vote for whatever reason I'll punch them in the face. Make sure you tell every one of your friends and family that you'll do the same.

Emphasis mine. Consider them told. This whole election is so depressing. I was thinking of posting a list of all the reports of dirty tricks I've already heard about, but the number was too daunting. Democracy is under attack in America, and I don't think it's going to fare well in this election. If it isn't disenfranchised voters, it's hacked electonic voting machines. I've taken November 2nd off from work this year. Instead I'm going to work at one of the polling places here in San Francisco. I'm not sure why, since I'm so disappointed in the state of democracy in America. I'm forcing myself to participate anyhow, so I'm advocating zero tolerance for non-voters.

murphy's law unleashed

Scientists working for British Gas have created a mathematical formula describing Murphy's Law: NEWS.com.au | How you can break Murphy's Law (October 8, 2004).

...a panel of experts has provided the statistical rule for predicting the law of "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" - or ((U C I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10)). [...] In the calculation, five factors have to be assessed: urgency (U), complexity (C), importance (I), skill (S) and frequency (F), and each given a score between one and nine. A sixth, aggravation (A), was set at 0.7 by the experts after their poll.

So if you want to decrease your chance of failure in any given situation, see which of the variables you can adjust.

j2me bluetooth gps mo-pho-weblogging

I was going to wait to write this up until I actually had something I considered to be of release quality, but I find my self re-telling the story too much so I'll go ahead and type it out once and for all. Quick Version: I've created a system that allows a Nokia camphone to take a photo, attach GPS coordinates obtained from a bluetooth GPS device, and post it to a weblog along with an interactive map showing the location. I wrote it in J2ME, but I plan on rewriting it in C++. Long Version:

brazil to open source java?

Go Brazil! Open-Source Java Brewing in Brazil

The Brazilian government is pushing an effort to deliver an open-source version of Java that could put control of the platform into the hands of grass-roots developers around the globe and add fuel to the debate over Java's ownership. In what is known as the Javali Project, Brazil is seeking to break free of the so-called vendor lock-in and gain control of its own systems technology, said sources close to the effort. Brazil was one of the first to mandate the use of open-source technology, where applicable, in government systems.