I’ve quit. I don’t ever use it. I don’t have a pressing need to be registered at a site for daters and people with “open” marriages. I wasn’t impressed with the CEO throwing Friendster condoms into the audience after giving a talk. I have a problem with the site’s disrespect for the implicit. And then Friendster fired an employee for blogging. Click here to go to the cancellation form, if you’re so inclined. (Thanks to Jeremy Zawodny for the cancellation link. And here’s a great post by Jon Udell.)

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Remember Rael? No, not Rael Dornfest. The French “journalist” and lying clone meister who has been appointed ambassador by the extraterrestials who created life on this planet. In fact, the ET’s dictated a book to Rael to set the planet straight. And yet Rael charges $14.95 to buy it. Why haven’t the aliens cut Rael down with a laser death beam beam for not posting the whole book for free on the Web? Did Isaiah hold out for foreign rights? Did Ezekial hold on to the film rights? Did Jeremiah run blog ads?…

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Don’t you find it ludicrous that the Republicans put forth Arnold as a heartwarming example of how America welcomes immigrants? Ah, yes, Ahnuld who came from Austria as a poor, struggling Mr. Universe, and groped his way to the top.

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David Isenberg circulated by email this morning a snip from Bev Harris at Black Box Voting:

The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole

Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator — 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.

This program is not “stupidity” or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.

*snip*

The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch screen terminals. Think about it: If you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines? Of course, the central tabulator is the most desirable target.

Unfortunately, the site is down at the moment.

It’s back up. So, now you can read how these double sets of books got implemented in the system. The news is very bad. The “feature” was put in by a convicted embezzler who was head of programming at Diebold during a time when … well, here’s what Bev says:

So now we have someone who’s admitted that he’s been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer over the GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen.

And just after he is hired, multiple sets of books appear in GEMS, which can be decoupled, so that they don’t need to match, by typing in a secret 2-digit code in a specific location.

Even the suspicion of fraud, even the possibility of fraud, will throw this country into chaos. Please get word out about this security hole so it can be patched locally.

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Scott Rosenberg writes about the Miami Herald’s absurd code of ethics. Here’s a snip:

For clarity here, let’s distinguish between the unattainable standard of objectivity — a scientific absolute poised as subjectivity’s opposite — and the entirely attainable, and laudable, standards of fairness and accuracy and honesty and transparency that any journalist of good mind and heart will subscribe to. Fairness: If you’re presenting one side of a story, you owe it to your readers, your subjects and yourself to weigh the other side’s case. Accuracy: Observation should always trump preconception, and you just don’t publish something that you know is untrue, even if it helps make an argument you cherish. Honesty: You do your best to present the truth as you have witnessed it and understand it, knowing that your witness and understanding are shaped by who you are, yet also knowing that honesty will sometimes require you to report things that make you uncomfortable or call your own beliefs into question. Transparency: You do your best to avoid financial conflicts of interest, and where you have an unavoidable interest in a story you’re covering, you reveal it up front.

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