There are a number of categories of voters that are disenfranchised in one way or another in the United States, and that's simply unacceptable.  Here's a list of some of the most disenfranchised voters.

The Blind

Guess what... You know those "HAVA Compliant" voting machines that allow disabled persons to vote "independently" and "privately."  Well, there's no such voting machine that allows a blind person to vote completely privately.  The best example is the Automark.  It uses headphones to read a ballot to an individual; the individual then uses a touch pad to place his/her votes; then the machine physically marks a paper ballot.  Then, the voter must remove the ballot and take it to the ballot box.  Guess what, a blind person can't do that last step without assistance.

The Wheelchair bound

A ramp doesn't mean a building is wheelchair accessible.  Are the doors wide enough?  Is there a booth that is wheelchair accessible?

The Mentally Disabled

Any usability person knows that letters in all caps causes serious difficulties for certain types of people, but even still, it is still mandated by law that certain parts of ballots be in all caps.

The Illiterate

Not everyone knows how to read, believe it or not, so why are we forcing people to have to read ballots?  Their vote still counts.

The Military

This is most astounding group of disenfranchised voters.  Those deployed overseas must request an absentee ballot that may or may not get to them in time.  It can take almost 6 months for an absentee ballot to get to our men and women in uniform and back.  Then, the ballots are probably not counted anyway!  To put it mildly -- this pisses me off!  Our most patriotic citizens can't even vote because politicians have yet to get off their asses and put into place ethical election systems!

These will be problems in November, so look out for them.  If you see someone get turned away because the polling place can't accommodate their special needs, call it out, blog about it, twitter it, raise hell! Voter disenfranchisement is not acceptable!  That said, please respect people's privacy.  If they choose not to call it out, they probably want to be left alone, so don't identify them.

Now, how do we fix this in the future?  We have to move to good election technology that is universal.  One machine that accommodates every need with multi-modal interfaces.  Prime III at Auburn University currently uses a touch user interface and a voice user interface which accounts for most disabilities; however, it would also be possible to include a tactile user interface as well.  Then, we have to implement some form of electronic voting for people overseas.  This may sound scary, but it's really not as dangerous as some doomsdayers would have you believe.  Many people pay bills online with zero problems, and just about everyone trusts an ATM... Why is a voting machine different?

Regardless of political affiliation, we all agree the voting system in this country must be fixed.  Honestly, I think it needs a complete overhaul.  The voting system has become a political toy to try and keep certain voters from the other side from being able to vote.  This has to stop, and we have to stop it.  There's a white elephant in the room.  Can you see it, or have I gone insane?

Posted by: Travis
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This video is quite pro-McCain and pro-Republican, but the economic logic is quite sound. I'm in the process of verifying some of the claims that it makes, but I haven't found any inconsistencies or data errors.  Please comment on the video and here if you find any.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o

Posted by: Travis
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POG - Password Operations Gem Version 1.1 Released
--------------------------------------------------
http://pog.rubyforge.org

POG Version 1.1 has been released. This version finalizes the API and
adds a password sanitation feature to remove a password string from
memory.

This release also paves the way for ActiveRecord functionality which
will be released in a separate gem in a couple weeks.

= Calling All Security Experts

We want POG to be as secure as humanly possible. If you find
vulnerabilities in our code or things we could do better, please let
us know by opening up a bug ticket.

= Links

Home
    http://pog.rubyforge.org

API (RDoc)
    http://pog.rubyforge.org/doc

SVN Source
    https://svn.operisnet.us/pub/pog/tags/1.1

Bug Tracking
    http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=4058

-- 
     Travis Warlick (TekWiz)
     Operis Systems
     www.OperisSystems.com

Posted by: Travis
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Ok, there is one thing that I absolutely HATE about Ruby -- Code can end up everywhere!  Yes, this is a wonderful and very powerful piece of functionality in Ruby: you can modify anything and everything to fit your needs.  However, if you aren't careful, you end up with completely unreadable code.

This is one reason I like Java, if I want to know about some detail that isn't in the API (we'll get to that Ruby issue in a second), I know exactly where that method is going to be.  This is something that I do allot.  I like to know exactly what my code is doing.  For many reasons, I just don't trust other developer unless I know them really well.

About Ruby APIs (Note, I'm not talking just about THE Ruby API, but APIs for Ruby in general): DOCUMENT EVERY METHOD -- I don't care if it's a private method or a one liner that simply makes your life easier -- document it!!  Why?  Because I may want to know what it does, and if it's not in your API, I've got to go find it, and that's a pain in Ruby.

So, here are 2 Ruby Best Practices that some Ruby developer forget:

1. Use good file naming conventions and separate code into multiple files.  One module, one class per file.  If you class is named AClass, your file should be named a_class.rb.  If you have AClass inside module AModule, a_class.rb should be inside the directory a_module.
   
2. If you define or redefine it -- document it.  Use the :nodoc: sparingly

 

Posted by: Travis
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I don't cook too much, but one thing I love to cook is Bacon and Eggs.  I learned to do bacon first.  it wasn't too hard.  Throw it in the pan and cook it on low heat.  Oh, and make sure you put something on top of the pan if you don't want to get burned with boiling bacon grease.  The hard part is the eggs.

I first searched Google for "scrambled eggs" and got a hundred different recipes, so I've tried just about all of them, added different ingredients of my own, and played around a bit.  Altogether, I've cooked a bunch of eggs over the past year or so, and every time a little bit different, but I haven't been able to make 'em like my Grandmama's -- yellow, soft, and a little runny.

This past Christmas, I asked her what her secret was.  It boiled down to two things: lots of butter and really low heat.  So, since Christmas, I've tried my darndest to make my Grandmama's scrambled eggs.  I've gotten much closer, but still, no joy.  Although, tonight I came really close.  They were much more yellow and soft this time, but not runny enough.  Maybe next time.

Posted by: Travis
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I just heard something really funny:  Al Gore wants us to be using completely clean, renewable energy in 10 years.  Is this a joke?  Sadly, no.  Al Gore is simply trying to make headlines.  Or at least, if he's serious, he's either misinformed or just plain crazy.  Let me explain why getting away from oil in less than 20 years is impossible (and 20 years is probably a stretch, too):

1. Have you seen how many cars are on the road?  Most of them require gasoline and will all be around for at least 10 more years.
2. Have you seen the state of "electric" cars?  It's not good.  We don't yet have a battery of sufficiently capacity to replace the gas tank, and all the other options are simply far too expensive.
   
3. Have you seen how many semis are on the road?  You can't simply convert a 18-wheeler in an electric car.
4. How much oil infrastructure do we have in the US?  Tons!  Drills, Pumps, Refineries, and, wait for it... GAS STATIONS!!!  How are we supposed to just up and get rid of all this in 10 years?
5. For wind power to be comparable to oil, oil would have to go to $1,000 a barrel.
6. Environmentalists don't like Nuke plants -- they'll hold them all up in court for at least 10 years.
   

The short version is this: we have too much invested in oil.  If we could simply flick a switch and completely change to clean energy, I'd be all for it.  I don't like oil, but we've invested way too much in it, so we're stuck with it for awhile.  Live with it.  Bring on the nuke-plants and the drills!

Posted by: Travis
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From the looks of things, the age of writing 10 completely separate sites for 5 different browsers is coming to a close.  And for us at Operis Systems, we're calling it now.  With the recent release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta, we've officially decided to cease supporting IE 6 in our new websites.  In addition, we've developed an official policy with a list of browsers that we will support.

Why have we done this?  Time -- it's not unlimited you know.  We can spend days debugging IE 5, 5.5, 6, Safari 2, and the plethora of pre-standards browsers.  This takes too much time for too little gain.  W3Schools.com reports that only 1% of their traffic is currently coming from IE 5 and 5.5 combined.

But why have we chosen to stop supporting IE 6?  The answer is simple:  it is a shotily-made browser that was written with absolutely no respect for the web development community at large.  It doesn't support transparency in PNG images, it adds padding and margins seemingly arbitrarily, some Javascript doesn't work, it doesn't support a correct Box-Model, and it's seriously insecure.  Finally, IE 7 is a free, easy upgrade and Mozilla Firefox is a free, easy install.  There is no excuse for still using IE 6. 

Here's what we're going to do for our new sites that won't support IE 6.  When a user using IE 6 logs on for the first time (the "first time" notation will be managed by a cookie) he will get a Javascript popup that says, "Your browser sucks, may I show you a free one that doesn't?"  Well, it'll say it nicer than that, of course.  If they say "yes," then they'll be redirected to a page explaining Mozilla Firefox and how it's better, etc., and then it will recommend they download and install it.

And now for my favorite slogan of all time: "Firefox eats Internet Explorer for Breakfast!!!"

The Firefox name and logo and the Internet Explorer name and logo are properties of the Mozilla Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation respectively.

Posted by: Travis
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You have no idea how good it makes me feel to officially announce that all of our Rails websites are running on Passenger (aka. mod_rails)!  I decided last week to completely make the change (and also to separate our PHP and static websites onto a separate server), so this long weekend was perfect.

In addition to making the switch from Mongrel, I also decided to move all of our production databases to MySQL.  When the Rails team decided to go with SQLite3 as the default database, I decided to give it a try.  I knew it was a bad idea in my gut, but I tried it anyway.  The biggest problem is that SQLite3 is simply not a database application -- it is a database library, so it can't support concurrency.  The second biggest problem, is that I couldn't centralize all my databases and get to all of them quickly and easily like I can with MySQL via CocoaMySQL.

The transfer to mod_rails/MySQL wasn't the hard part.  The hard part was the transfer from Mongrel/SQLite3.  I'll be writing up my experiences in my next few blog posts.  Here's some highlights:

• How to convert SQLite3 databases to MySQL databases
• Deployment with mod_rails
• SSL key passwords
• Writing ruby server scripts to make your life easier.

All in all, the conversion from Mongrel to mod_rails was the simplest and easiet architectural transition I've ever operated.

Posted by: Travis
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