Monthly Archive for November, 2004

To AT&T Wireless

Published
by
John
on 11/23/2004
in general
. 1 Comment

I don’t know who is advising you, but your security model SUCKS. It is RIDICULOUS to use a “secret question” to keep my account secure. Yes it’s true that a lot of answers will be very unique. But [a] it’s difficult for a user to remember exactly what they put, since they are all subjective questions [b] do a little audit of your database, I bet a solid 1% or more of the selected questions were “who would you most like to meet” with the answer being “jesus”.

Furthermore, I honestly do not have an answer to any of the questions!! I didn’t have any pets as a child, I didn’t have a hero, and I don’t have superlative feelings for ANY member of ANY of those categories. I am going to have to basically make something up, and then WRITE MY ANSWER DOWN SOMEWHERE.

What ever happened to date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and email verification with forced password change? I know there is still a small cleartext hole in that system. Maybe you have statistics that show that your system is more secure than what I propose. If so I apologize for my hurtful, ignorant criticism.

Thank you for your time,
John Joseph Bachir

secret question options

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Romans 12

Published
by
John
on 11/22/2004
in general
. 3 Comments

Romans 12

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”

Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

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PLT Web Server

Published
by
John
on 11/22/2004
in general
. 2 Comments

WOW, it sure was difficult to find any information about the PLT Web Server. Go ahead, google all you want. You’ll see what I mean. Anyway, here is the documentation.

Update: Okay well now it is the first hit on google. It wasn’t like that before, I swear…. maybe being featured on my blog brought it up in the rankings??? heh heh

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Overview of 6 voting methods

Published
by
John
on 11/18/2004
in general
. 1 Comment

The Creative Math Behind Elections

A very interesting overview of 6 voting methods. Approval voting is kind of a cute concept… you just put a mark next to any and all candidates of whom you approve, and whoever has the most approval wins. Brilliant.

Funnily, the only one that I found confusing was my favorite voting method, Instant Runoff Voting! Does anyone know what they mean by “Mathematical models prove that ranking a candidate lower can cause that person to climb in the overall rankings.”? I’ll have to look into this further.

Instant Runoff
Promise: Voters rank the candidates, and their top picks are tallied. If that doesn’t yield a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped, and his supporters’ ballots are recounted and allocated to the second choice. The process continues until there’s a winner.

Precinct: Australia, Ireland, and San Francisco

Problem: This is a strong challenger to plurality, but it isn’t flawless. It fails the monotonicity criterion - the principle that voting for your favorite candidate should always benefit that candidate. Mathematical models prove that ranking a candidate lower can cause that person to climb in the overall rankings.

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Here is how ignorance works

Published
by
John
on 11/18/2004
in general
. 0 Comments

Excerpt from:

Why Americans Hate Democrats—A Dialogue
The unteachable ignorance of the red states.
By Jane Smiley

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don’t believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.

Next, they tell you that you are the best of a bad lot (humans, that is) and that as bad as you are, if you stick with them, you are among the chosen. This is flattering and reassuring, and also encourages you to imagine the terrible fates of those you envy and resent. American politicians ALWAYS operate by a similar sort of flattery, and so Americans are never induced to question themselves. That’s what happened to Jimmy Carter—he asked Americans to take responsibility for their profligate ways, and promptly lost to Ronald Reagan, who told them once again that they could do anything they wanted. The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do—they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable.

Third, and most important, when life grows difficult or fearsome, they (politicians, preachers, pundits) encourage you to cling to your ignorance with even more fervor. But by this time you don’t need much encouragement—you’ve put all your eggs into the ignorance basket, and really, some kind of miraculous fruition (preferably accompanied by the torment of your enemies, and the ignorant always have plenty of enemies) is your only hope. If you are sufficiently ignorant, you won’t even know how dangerous your policies are until they have destroyed you, and then you can always blame others.

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switched to wordpress

Published
by
John
on 11/15/2004
in general
. 4 Comments

I’ve switched my blog software from blosxom to wordpress. Everything is much happier now.

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How instant runoff voting works

Published
by
John
on 11/10/2004
in general
. 3 Comments

Not as much character as the muppets presentation, but a lot slicker:

http://www.chrisgates.net/irv/

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Election reform legislation

Published
by
John
on 11/10/2004
in general
. 0 Comments

Three pieces of legislation you should know about:

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/jacksonirvbill.htm

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., today introduced H.R. 5293, the Majority Vote A
ct of 2004 that would require States by 2008 to conduct general elections for F
ederal office using an instant runoff voting system. It also directs the Electi
on Assistance Commission to make grants to States to defray the costs of admini
stering such systems.

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/jacksonelectoralcollegebill.htm

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., today introduced legislation House Joint Resolu
tion 109, which would add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution eliminating the
Electoral College and allowing the American people to directly elect their Pre
sident and Vice President. Jackson stated, “It’s time the American people did t
o the election of their President and Vice President what they did by adding th
e 17th Amendment with respect to U.S. Senators - let the American people elect
them directly instead of having state legislatures select them for us. Similarl
y it’s time the American people, our republican form of government and our repr
esentative democracy were allowed to elect their President and Vice President d
irectly instead of indirectly through the Electoral College.

http://thomas.
loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.J.RES.28:

House Joint Resolution 28 is an amendment Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D- IL)
has introduced to ensure the right to vote in the U.S. Constitution — and als
o require IRV (or another majority system) for allocating electoral votes in st
ates. As of October. 13, 2004, the amendment has 41 co-sponsors including the m
ajority of the Black Caucus and prominent Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich and
Luis Guitterez.

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Alberto Gonzales

Published
by
John
on 11/10/2004
in general
. 0 Comments 
Date: 10 Nov 2004
From: Ryan Clark
Subject: I was wrong

Some of you might have heard my recent speculation that our new
attorney general, whoever he turned out to be, would surely be no
worse than John Ashcroft.

I was wrong.  

CNN just told me HOW wrong.

According to an unnamed official, our new attorney general will be
Alberto Gonzales, author of the infamous "Gonzales Memo."
(http://tinyurl.com/5h9rx)

With the media fawning over “the first Hispanic Attorney General”
(http://tinyurl.com/53kff), we might be
tempted to overlook his
attempt to justify the TORTURE OF PRISONERS.
(http://tinyurl.com/6ramp)

We might also be tempted to overlook his fondness for secret military
tribunals in place of public trials. (http:/
/tinyurl.com/5sblp)

An attorney general who sees the judicial branch as a quaint
anachronism… isn’t that just exactly what we need?

In short, this guy is really really bad, and he should NOT be our
attorney general.

-Ryan

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Imagine Kerry saying this in 2004

Published
by
John
on 11/9/2004
in general
. 0 Comments

http://www.votenader.org/media_press/index.php?cid=289%20class

We have taken the bold step of taking John Kerry’s 1971 testimony and replacing the word “Vietnam” with “Iraq.”

For those in the Kerry campaign who object, if Mr. Kerry wants to edit Ralph Nader’s 1966 testimony and substitute ‘Halliburton’ (or any other corporation) for ‘G.M.,’ they’re more than welcome to do so!

Follow the link to listen to the edited versions of the speech in Windows Media or Quicktime.

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