Month: February 2009
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NJ Voting-machine trial update
Earlier this month I testified in Gusciora v. Corzine, the trial in which the plaintiffs argue that New Jersey’s voting machines (Sequoia AVC Advantage) can’t be trusted to count the votes, because they’re so easily hacked to make them cheat. I’ve previously written about the conclusions of my expert report: in 7 minutes you can…
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The Future of Smartphone Platforms
In 1985, I got my very first home computer: a Commodore Amiga 1000. At the time, it was awesome: great graphics, great sound, “real” multitasking, and so forth. Never mind that you spent half your life shuffling floppy disks around. Never mind that I kept my head full of Epson escape codes to use with…
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Federal Health IT Effort Is Making Progress, Could Benefit from More Transparency
President Obama has indicated that health information technology (HIT) is an important component of his administration’s health care goals. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have lauded the potential for HIT to reduce costs and improve care. In this post, I’ll give some basics about what HIT is, what work is underway, and how…
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Hulu abandons Boxee—now what?
In our last installment, I detailed the trials and tribulations of my attempt to integrate legal, Internet-sourced video into my home theater via a hacked AppleTV, running Boxee, getting its feed from Hulu. One day later (!), Hulu announced it was all over. Later this week, Hulu’s content will no longer be available through Boxee.…
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TiVo, AppleTV, Boxee, and the future of HD television delivery
I don’t watch as much TV as I once did. Yet, I’m still paying Comcast every month, as they’re the only provider who will sell me HD service compatible with my TiVo-HD. Sadly, Comcast is far from ideal. I’m regularly frustrated at their inability to debug their signal quality problems. (My ABC-HD and PBS-HD signals…
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New Internet? No Thanks.
Yesterday’s New York Times ran a piece, “Do We Need a New Internet?” suggesting that the Internet has too many security problems and should therefore be rebuilt. The piece has been widely criticized in the technical blogosphere, so there’s no need for me to pile on. Anyway, I have already written about the redesign-the-Net meme.…
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Final version of Government Data and the Invisible Hand
Thanks to the hard work of our patient editors at the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, my coauthors and I can now share the final version of our paper about online transparency, Government Data and the Invisible Hand. If you have read the first version, you know that our paper is informed by a…
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The Future of News: We're Lucky They Haven't Tried Macropayments
Regular readers will know that the newspaper industry is in dire shape: revenues off by 20% in just the last year, with more than 15,000 jobs lost in that period. This map tells the story better than any writing could. The market capitalizations of newspaper firms, which reflect investor expectations about future performance, have fallen…
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Rethinking the voting system certification process
Lawsuits! Everybody’s filing lawsuits. Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold) is suing SysTest, one of the EAC’s testing authorities (or, more properly, former testing authorities, now that the EAC is planning to suspend their accreditation). There’s also a lawsuit between the State of Ohio and Premier over whether or not Premier’s voting systems satisfy Ohio’s requirements.…
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Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL)
With this post, I’m launching a new, (very) occasional series I’m calling YANAL, for “You Are Not A Lawyer.” In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system). I start with something from criminal law. As you…