The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Rants

And kvetching, too

  • Electronic Voting Machines: Another Reason for Distrust Thereof

    Voting Machine LCD Touchscreen Miscalibration
    Voting Machine LCD Touchscreen Miscalibration

    This is on the “control panel” side of the Sequoia ImageCast Ballot Marking Device voting machines used in Dutchess County. I put my finger in the middle of the CLOSE POLL button and the panel misread a press on the REPORTS button.

    That’s one of several misreadings of the day. Earlier, while setting up the machine for the day, it misread horizontally and gave me a STATUS report instead of a ZERO report.

    Last year the same sort of thing happened. It’s always explained as “being out of calibration”, which makes me wonder just exactly when the panels are calibrated and what the criteria for success might be.

    One of the few good things to come out of having a totally dysfunctional State Legislature is that New York has managed to delay and stall and fumble around until other states demonstrated the utter stupidity of direct-recording, no-paper-trail electronic voting machines. The ImageCast machines are a spectacular boondoggle, but far less catastrophic than what we’ve seen in Florida, Ohio, California, and …

    Oh, and after a 16-hour shift as a BMD Election Inspector, exactly zero handicapped voters (actually, any voters) took advantage of the machine to cast their vote. A report from someone who’s in a position to know says that in the last election, the bottom line was $250 per vote on the ImageCast machines. I think that’s probably low.

    My tax dollars at work, fer shure!

  • More Firefox Update Restart Foolishness

    Guess what? Update Firefox to 3.0.15 in Xubuntu and we’re back to the continuous restart reminder situation I mentioned there.

    Same fix applies this time, too.

  • Why Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Windows For Embedded Systems

    OK, this is shooting the low-hanging fish right off the barrel (or some such mixed metaphor), but why does anybody still use Internet Explorer and Windows for embedded systems?

    cimg4138 - IE Was Unable to Link to Web PageThe proximate cause is a dead Internet link, but somebody obviously didn’t take that problem into account during the design phase. I’m sure there’s a keyboard hidden inside the box, wherever the box might be, but the rest of us are left to snicker at a jammed display.

    The problem resolved itself (or somebody plugged in the cable) by the time we walked past the display again.

  • Do Not Push The Button

    Do Not Push
    Do Not Push

    Found this in a church restroom, which is pretty much a benign public environment.

    If you put a pushbutton control at the usual place for a light switch and give it a light-switch affordance, then you shouldn’t be surprised when people push it.

    Now, if the pushbutton happens to both turn off the light and disable the automatic light function, well, that’s hardly the user’s fault, is it?

    Methinks it should be an automatic light switch with a manual override tucked inside a cover that doesn’t look at all like a pushbutton. Of course, the IR lens over the sensor would then require some up-armoring, as it’d look a lot like a button.

  • The Decline of Literacy: Part Two

    Saw this in a somewhat downscale grocery store while chaperoning a Marching Band event.

    Hand Dryer Graffiti
    Hand Dryer Graffiti

    I’d give him (it’s a mens’ restroom) some bonus points, as I think he caught and corrected the error, but then there’s that “to”. Ouch.

    I ask you, though, what grade were you in when you learned how to spell “much”? I doubt you’ve had any trouble spelling it since then.

  • Credit Card Privacy Choices

    Just got a new credit card, which arrived with the usual “Privacy Policy” flyer describing how they’ll keep our sensitive bits safe & secure. Except, of course, that by default they’ll share those bits with nearly any organization that asks, if there’s even the least bit of money to be made in the process.

    The flyer explains how we can tell them of our privacy choices. Oddly, in this Internet Age, none of the banks have figured out how to put our privacy policy choices on their websites. Maybe that would be entirely too efficient.

    Anyhow, we’re supposed to either:

    • Pick up the phone to deal with their customer service apparat or
    • Pick up a pen, fill out a form, cut it out, and mail it to them

    For our joint accounts, if I forget to say “And this also applies to my wife”, well, then they’re free to share her sensitive bits.

    I’m sure they know that when they make “choosing” difficult enough, nobody will bother.

    Ya think?

    For the record:

    • Chase: press 0 to short-circuit the account info blather and get to a rep
    • Citi: press 6 for that purpose. Why not 0? Huh…

    The Chase folks tell me this may require up to 90 days to take effect. Wow, do they fill out forms and hand-carry the paperwork to Galactic HQ for further transcription?

    Memo to Self: Remember to tell the nice voice…

    • This applies to both account holders
    • Turn off all information sharing options
    • Turn off “convenience checks” (is anybody stupid enough to use those things?)
    • Turn off automatic credit line increases

    This takes about four minutes for each account on a Sunday morning.

  • Verizon FiOS: Wheeling and Dealing

    So Verizon seem determined to spend as much money as it takes to bury us in FiOS Triple Play mailings. For the last few months, we’ve been getting at least one mailing a week with exactly the same offer. Perhaps they think we’ll eventually get fed up and buy the damned thing, although rumor has it that the offers keep coming even after you do that.

    Anyhow, I called the number (877-896-3354 this week) to ask:

    • How about selling us FiOS 15/5 Internet and Freedom Essentials (unlimited US residential VOIP) for $60/month for two years with no installation fee?
    • Failing that, put us on the Do Not Solicit list to shut off the junk mail

    Come to find out that:

    • Nope, the nice voice can’t dicker on the monthly price, but…
    • They’re willing to waive the installation fee ($50) without blinking
    • The fact that we don’t have a TV and aren’t interested in the Triple Play is a dealbreaker for them
    • The DNS list is just a checkbox on their display of my account: done!

    At this point we’re spending $50 for Optimum Online cable 13/2 (more or less) internet and nigh onto $30 for a Verizon landline phone without “long distance” calling (which we do by VOIP these days). They can do a bundle for something like $80/month with a brief teaser discount, but no better than that. So we’d wind up paying more for basically the same thing.

    After a pleasant conversation he asked if I would recommend Verizon to my friends & relations. I said “Absolutely not” and he asked if I wanted to talk to a Quality Assurance representative. Figuring it’d be good for a laugh, I said yes… and then went directly to the usual interminable wait-on-hold.

    The QA guy asked why I wouldn’t recommend Verizon, so I gave him a few reasons:

    • Their phone menu system is impenetrable
    • I often get mysteriously disconnected during intra-Verizon handoffs, particularly if I’m asking difficult questions
    • Nobody in their “customer support” phone tree can explain how much the “Other charges, taxes & terms” might add up to on a bundle deal: they can’t tell me what their service will cost!
    • Nobody at Verizon can explain the random charges / credits / debits / adjustments on my buddy Aitch’s wireless + Triple Play bill. He’s a smart guy; if he can’t figure it out, I certainly can’t.
    • Their pricing is not competitive; it’s more than we’re paying now for basically the same thing. Why switch?

    He actually tried to claim that I can’t get FiOS speeds from cable. I pointed out that the difference between 15/5 and 13/2 isn’t “This is FiOS. This is BIG!”, it’s just barely discernible and not guaranteed anyway. Oddly, in the last few months, Verizon has quietly bumped the base FiOS speed from 12/2 to 15/5, which I infer means they found that trying to sell a slower speed to cable customers wasn’t working out that well.

    I also infer this whole FiOS thing still isn’t going as well as they’d like. If it was, the incessant offers would stop.

    The QA guy said he’d call me back if they could do anything about the price; there’s evidently a New & Better Deal coming out in a few weeks. Of course, since we’re on the DNS list, we’ll never know…

    I told him here’s what it would take to get me to switch: paying less than $80/month for internet + phone. I figure $60 (plus the mystery charges) would save me maybe $10/month. I’ll geek for that if they don’t screw me over for installation and suchlike.

    Failing that, we may just shoot the landline in the head and go with the cheap prepaid cellphone deal. Google Voice seems to be a reasonable solution; I got a local number that’s very close to our current landline, so maybe it’s time to print up a stack o’ cards and send out some notices.