Monday, January 10, 2005

Seahawks win!

I often wonder why a one touchdown margin is considered a decisive win in football but a 20 state victory margin in presidential politics or two winning recounts in a gubenatorial election is not. Evidently DJ over at Polipundit.com was thinking the same thing.

"The play on the fielded ended with St. Louis ahead on the scoreboard, 27-20. But because the margin was only one score, King County filed suit to review the play results, and because (in the opinion of the WSSC) the Seahawks “clearly intended to score a tying touchdown..."


Heh

Let's give 'em Ohio

Okay, I think it is time to let Kerry have the entire 118,775 votes by which Bush purportedly won Ohio. It was just so close, the state had to be stolen. So Kerry gets those 20 electoral votes. But hold on, does that give Kerry the Presidency? In the spirit of fair play, I would suggest that the Democrats give Bush all the states where, by the same logic, Kerry must have stolen a state from Bush:

These would include the following "Blue" states with winning margins less than Ohio:

Minnesota with a 98,444 vote margin (10 electoral votes switched to Bush)
Wisconsin with a 11,813 vote margin (10 electoral votes switched to Bush)
Oregon with a 67,488 vote margin (7 electoral votes switched to Bush)
Hawaii with a 37,209 vote margin (4 electoral votes switched to Bush)
New Hampshire with a 9,171 vote margin (4 electoral votes switched to Bush)
Maine with a 65,046 vote margin (4 electoral votes switched to Bush)
and Delaware with a 28,356 vote margin (3 electoral votes switched to Bush)

So let's do the math:

Official '04 electoral college tally:

Bush 286
Kerry 252

Then:

Bush concedes Ohio to Kerry due to the close margin of victory:

Kerry 272
Bush 266

But then Kerry necessarily concedes those states he won by even a tighter margin than Bush won Ohio:

Bush 308
Kerry 230

But we don't even need to switch the electors in all the states with a tighter margin than Ohio. Another way to slice this is if we just say to Kerry, "okay, take Ohio's 118K votes and the 20 electors. In return we'll take no more than 118K combined votes from those states you "won."

So we take:

Wisconsin, Oregon, Delaware, and New Hampshire which garnered only a 116,828 margin of victory for Kerry between the four of them - 1,947 votes to spare!

Bush 290
Kerry 248

So let 'em win their argument. Ohio was stolen. Fine, by that logic, Kerry stole 7 states from Bush. So instead of Bush country encompasing 30 states, it apparently encompasses 36!

Friday, January 07, 2005

They Cheat and STILL Can't Win

I'm amazed at how many people decry the Ohio election results as being invalid because of alleged errors in counting. The critics and partisans point to the banking industry where companies can process millions of transactions with near perfection (they say) and try to draw a corollary. "If something like check transactions can be done right every time why can't voting for the leader of the free world be done just as well?" they ask.

Let me put it like this:

How many banks allow you to withdraw money without identification?

How many banks allow you to make a withdrawal of all your funds in absentia and then allow you to go into the branch and withdraw those same funds a second time?

How many banks allow a check to be cashed when they can't tell if you wrote the check for $10 or $1,000?

How many banks cash checks signed by Micky Mouse?

I could go on but the point is, the banking industry is HIGHLY regimented with very strict rules that are specifically intended to prohibit cheating. It is also overseen by federal regulatory agencies who have zero tolerance for funny business.

On the other hand, elections in this country are largely based on an honor system where the dishonest can quite easily game the system. There is no federal regulation, there is no effort to enforce strict voter registration rules, or to prevent voters from being bussed from precinct to precinct, no effort to card them when they walk into a precinct to vote, no serious effort to even keep illegals from voting.

The banking industry is a little hard to demagogue:

BANK: "Sir, you have insufficent funds in your account to cover that check".
MAXINE WATERS: "Bank of America is trying to disenfranchise it's minority banking customers, they should be allowed to withdraw as much money from the bank as they need without being forced to keep funds in their accounts."

The hard, cold fact is that the voting process in this country has, in many places, been hijacked by the left. If that level of corruption and laxity were the norm in the banking industry the whole financial system in this country would collapse. But the Democrats would be the last to want the regimentation of the banking industry to be imposed on the election process.

It is a testament to how hard the GOP got out its vote this last time to overcome the huge level of cheating undertaken by the Democrats. The grandstanding in the House and Senate about Ohio was pure demagoguery and nothing more. The Democrat leadership is about as interested in reform of the election process as they are in seeing Condi run for President in '08. If we tightened up our registration and voting process in this country they would rarely win a national election.

Can you imagine them voting for reform that would institute the following?:

- 30 day advance registration requirement (to give election officials a chance to check the authenticity of the registration),
- National voter registrant database to assure that the voter was registered in only one state, was alive, was not a felon, was a legal citizen, and of voting age.
- Social Security Card (or other national ID) required to register (no driver's licenses allowed).
- 2 forms of ID required to actually vote.
- No provisional balloting
- No dead people, pets, cartoon characters, or illegals would be allowed to vote.
- Optical card voting only (no punch cards, no touch pads, no lever pulling). Optical (fill in the bubble) scan cards are the most reliable voting methodology and, while largly an electronic process on the counting side, leaves a paper trail.
- Only ballots correctly filled out are counted, PERIOD. If the voter makes a mistake (fills in too many bubbles, forgets to fill in a bubble, marks the wrong bubble, etc.) then the ballot is considered "soiled" and is discarded, no ifs, ands, or buts.
- No hand recounts allowed. Hand recounts are subject to gaming (c.f. State of Washington guber race).

That is the kind of reform that would make sure that voters were not disenfranchised by having their votes nullified by cheaters. This is, in fact, the current situation. The last election, I voted in California, a state where election fraud is rampant on the Democrat side. Nobody makes a big deal out of the fact that my and thousands of other GOP voters are disenfranchised because California is considered a "blue" state. The GOP can't win here, the conventional thinking goes, so who cares if the Democrats pad their margin by a few hundred thousand votes?

One has to wonder how "red" California would go if we instituted the election reforms listed above.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Whither the iPod Revolution?

What makes the iPod unique is that it embraces a delicate balance of features, functionality, style, size, and price. No other manufacturer has been able to achieve this balance. Apple designers are exceptional in their approach to the inevitable compromises of industrial design. It's all about prioritizing capabilities:

1. Hardware interactivity
No other player has the ease of use of the iPod. NONE. It's not just the scroll wheel but display, ease of one-handed operation, and its large, easy-to-operate buttons.)

2. Software (OS, syncing, PC interface via iTunes).
No other player has as intuitive of interface as the iPod or the ease of interoperability with its PC software counterpart. It is staggeringly easy to move from song to song, album to album, etc. on the iPod and even easier to keep music synced via iTunes. In the end, it is the vertical integration of desktop to iPod via iTunes and the ITMS that makes this player second to none. The masses appreciate ease of use and techs should even more so. The average tech might be able to make his kludgy mp3 player work but the WISE tech knows his time is worth something and will always opt for the more elegant solution.

3. Size.
Who wants a big clunky thing in their pocket? For example, people want to run with their mp3 player strapped to their arm. The iPod is amongst the smallest HD players made (maybe the smallest, it's hard to keep track). The importance of this design feature cannot be overstated.

3. Style.
Yes, the iPod is trendy but in a way that is highly unusual in the world of tech marketing. It is a product that is also the best at what it does. Personally, I wish Apple would advertise it more.

4. Price.
Compare product pricing and you'll find that the iPod is competitive. Go out and look at a comparable player from, say, Rio. The Kharma is the same price! Why would one spend $299 for a Rio when one can get an iPod for the same money?

As for things like battery life and missing features? This is the place where Apple shows its design genius. The battery is the same technology used in the other players and is not made by Apple. However, Apple does want the smallest player possible and since size is more important to the customer than battery life, they usually choose size. Meanwhile, the mp3 bricks that have 20-50% more battery life simply don't sell as well. Why? Because people prioritize their needs. They do the research and make a choice.

The same philosophy is true of extra features. Extra features could be part of the iPod lineup but they aren't. Why? Does Apple not know how to include them? Will it make the iPod too expensive to market? Of course not. Extra features that very few people use simply get in the way of the iPod's primary selling point: user friendliness. For those not paying attention, this is a core Apple (no pun intended) design philosophy across their entire product line. Apple prefers to produce elegant technology solutions. They eschew feature bloat because it gets in the way of the user experience. This is the bottom line with all of their products.

Oh, and as a technology manager at a major university, I've seen every desktop computer and mainstream media playback device ever made. When all is said and done, I recommend Apple products up and down the product line because they cause me the least support problems. Does that make me selfish? Maybe. But my time is valuable and recommending products that are hard to use is just mean.