Voting by computer could well be a risk to democracy. Thankfully there are no plans to try this in Australia. Yet. But if there were, even if the hardware and software was audited, how would you know the software running on the machine on election day is the same as that which was audited? This video shows how easy it is to hack. The software can be replaced in just 60 seconds.
Weekly Poll: Who’s most disconnected from voters?
As we approach the half-way mark in the federal election campaign, energy is starting to flag. Some politicians and commentators are starting to lose the plot. Who do you think is now most disconnected from the voters?
Is it Tony Abbott, who yesterday slagged off a dying man? Arch-monarchist and oddly right-wing David Flint? Or one of our other choices? Have you any other suggestions? Go to the website to vote!
[poll id=”12″]
Last week’s results: Well OK the last poll was online for much longer than a week. Nevertheless, the results were precisely as predicted by the Snarky Platypus. Our new national animal is indeed the “lying rodent”.
And they still get a vote…
Global warming — no, I won’t cave into the Neo-Con’s re-branding of “climate change” — may be an important election issue. But, as with so many big issues, most voters wouldn’t have a clue.
Yesterday the Daily Telegraph asked people a multiple-choice question to see whether they knew what the Kyoto Protocol was. Nearly half got it right.
Respondents were asked to select a description of Kyoto from a set of multiple options: (a) A Korean car, (b) The treaty that ended WWII, (c) An agreement on carbon emissions and (d) A Japanese banquet dish.
Almost half of the people surveyed answered correctly… But close to half of those who answered correctly admitted guessing the response.
38% thought it was the treaty ending WWII.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Back when I was working for ABC Radio I did a vox pop the morning after a state cabinet re-shuffle, asking people to name any cabinet member, old or new. 80% didn’t know what a “cabinet” was, let alone any names.
PodCamp Perth 2007: Social Media and the Federal Election
Here’s a video of my presentation from PodCamp Perth 2007.
Thanks to Stewart Greenhill for the video work. As Stephen says:
I’ve put them on Viddler because it supports long videos and has some nifty tagging and commenting features. Feel free to be social: if you see something fun or interesting just click on the green “+” button and add a comment. That way, if people don’t have time to watch the whole thing at least we can check out the highlights. If you see the word “PROGRESSIVE” in the bottom left, click on it to switch to STREAMING mode. You can skip to any point in the movie by clicking in the seek bar, or on a comment point.
Alas, the very end is missing thanks to a flat camera battery. Mind you, Stephen wasn’t the only one to “experience technical difficulties”.
[Update 15 January 2007: I believe I have a complete audio recording of the session. If there’s enough interest I’ll combine it with my slides and this video, and/or generate a transcript.]
Global Warming: analysing the risk
Yesterday Crikey reminded me about this video. I’d seen it before, but it’s worth seeing it again — particularly during the election campaign — and showing it to as many people as possible.
The message is simple. Perhaps we can never be 100% sure that global warming is primarily caused by human activity. However the risk of this being the case and us doing nothing about it far outweighs the risk of changing our behaviour and then finding out it wasn’t necessary.
Yielding to Temptation
Spotted at Perth’s Belgian Beer Cafe on Sunday afternoon, some excellent philosophy from Oscar Wilde.
The crappy pimple-cam photo is made moderately acceptable by converting it to black and white.