Friday, October 3, 2008

Homer dies voting for Obama

Someone leaked a clip from the Nov. 2 episode of the Simpsons, which is probably the annual Tree House of Horrors episode.



This is a brilliant comment on electronic voting machines. Without a paper trail, there really is no way to protect against potential hackers. I once asked a representative of a company that makes these machines (it may have been Diebold). This person looked at me like I had three heads and assured me that it is impossible to hack into this proprietary software. Okaaaay....

Three points:

1) What if the machines are flawed from the start? Remember Man of the Year? (Just one quick rant about the movie. Tom Dobbs was on the ballot in 13 states in the movie. However, a candidate needs to win the largest 17 states at a minimum to win the presidency.)

2) Apple claimed that it was impossible to unlock the iPhone, allowing any company (not just AT&T) to activate it. That was a challenge and it took somepeople all of about three days to unlock one. Okay. It was more like a month and a half. The iPhone launched July 12, 2007 with a bunch of glitches and it was late August when someone unlocked it. Anyway, Here's how to do it.

3) I don't have three heads.

Chris

Update: For the sake of complete accuracy, I need to clarify something from point two. No matter how hard you try, Verizon will not activate an iPhone. This is because AT&T and T-Mobile and some smaller companies run on a technology called GSM. Verizon and Sprint operate on CDMA. If anyone wants the long version of the explanation, let me know. The short version is that Verizion cannot (not will not) activate a phone from AT&T. That also explains why Verizon gets service in the Metro stations and AT&T does not.

2 comments:

Nick Starks said...

Saw that clip this morning on Reddit and LOL'd.

NOTHING is hacker-proof.

Nick Starks said...

...and you do too have three heads. What kind of Druid god would you be otherwise?