On November 3rd, the Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey issued a directive, well covered in the media, permitting storm-displaced New Jersey voters to vote by e-mail. The voter is to call or e-mail the county clerk to request an absentee ballot by e-mail or fax, then the voter returns the ballot by e-mail or fax: […]
Oral Arguments 12/4 in NJ Voting-Machine Lawsuit
November 3, 2012 by
Note new date and time! This election day, New Jersey voters will vote–if electricity is restored and if they can get to the polls after the hurricane–on a model of voting machine that I have personally demonstrated how to hack. My hack is simple: prepare fraudulent vote-stealing software on a memory chip, make thousands of […]
Broken Ballots
April 23, 2012 by
A important new book has just been published on the technology and policy of elections. Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count by Douglas W. Jones and Barbara Simons, covers voting systems from the 19th century to the present, with particular focus on the last two decades. The authors describe the strengths and weaknesses of the […]
Contract hacking and community organizing
April 18, 2012 by
I discussed community discontent with copyright terms of some scholarly publishers, and I proposed an economic analysis. Now let’s consider two other approaches. Contract hacking I have published quite a few scholarly papers, and with each one I am invited to sign a copyright form. This is a contract between author and publisher, which which […]
Modest Proposals for Academic Authors
April 17, 2012 by
In the scuffles over copyright policies on scholarly articles, what is the academic author to do? First, inform yourself. Find and read the copyright policy of the journals (or refereed conferences) to which you submit the articles describing research results. Find out the subscription price (dead-tree-edition or online) that the publisher charges individuals and institutions, […]
