Slashback: Electioneering, Blimps, Shuffling

Slashback is back after a long absence being devoured by gnomes. Read on below for updates on past Slashdot stories about the continuing Washington election brouhaha, the FBI's latest hunt for server logs, Photoshoppified GIMP, and more.

Let's get the politics out of the way.

The Washington state Republican Party has been working to prove that the election of November 2, between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi, was too fraudulent to be trusted, given the small margin of victory by Gregoire (129 votes), and they want a new election. Hundreds of alleged fraudulent votes (mostly felons, but also out-of-state, duplicate, and deceased voters), uncounted ballots, unaccounted-for absentee ballots, and illegally counted provisional ballots comprise the bulk of the GOP's case. The trial begins May 23, and the judge expects it to last two weeks. The hearing to decide the burden of proof standard will be May 2.

Unctuous politicians relive their student-council glory days:

Jackson West writes "As it stands, two versions of the Electronic Engineering bill (discussed earlier on Slashdot) presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have passed their 'first reading.' This means both the first, unamended piece of legislation, and an amended version that will "specifically exclude web logs, forums, opt-in email lists and postings on general web pages." The Rules Committee will consider the amended bill on Monday, with a final vote on both bills on Tuesday."

How to get attention, part IIVVIVIVM.

SanLouBlues writes "On March 30th, Slashdot reported on the FBI request for the logs of several radical-leaning sites. The Washington Post has an article about the man who was responsible for the posts which resulted in the FBI request. He claimed to have killed a cop in several forum posts."

Now on to the fun stuff!

Matt Omori writes to say that GimpShop, the recently mentioned version of The GIMP hacked to feel more familiar to users of Photoshop, isn't just for Linux and Mac OS X. "Yes, it's finally been coded for Windows XP. After lots of hard work, some people devoted to a website, plasticbugs.com, have coded GimpShop for Windows."

To use it, you'll need Windows XP, GTK+, and a reboot. However, I'd also like to point out a BigSven's comment about the themeability of The GIMP; it would be great to see GIMPersonalities of all sorts -- and it sounds like this can be accomplished with some XML editing.

Still looks actionable to me.

MrToast writes "The iPodLounge is reporting that LuxPro's Super Shuffle is back, but this time with slight alterations. The Super Tangent, as it is being called, has a slightly different button area and also has new headphones. Otherwise it appears to be identical to the iPod shuffle."

(The SuperShuffle disappeared from the Web site, and was reported as a hoax, shortly after it was mentioned in mid-March.)

Let's close on some uplifting news. Vaeske writes with more on my favorite futuristic means of broadband delivery, region-covering airships. "GlobeTel Communications Corp announced that they will be showing their prototype of the Sanswire One on April 12th. This "Stratalite" as they call it, will float in the stratosphere at 65,000 feet and provide line of sight communications to approximately 300,000 square miles, providing two-way high-sped communication. This project has attracted many high-profile NASA engineers to leave their posts for a position with GlobeTel. The military has also shown interest and was present at the GlobeTel Summit."

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[Carnildo]

And if you lived here, you'd be getting reports on the *exciting* hijinks:
1) At least half of those "felon voters" who shouldn't have voted were juveniles when they were found guilty, and thus never had their voting rights stripped. Many of the others had their rights restored after serving their sentences.
2) Someone is challenging the votes of around 15,000 voters on the grounds that they are illegal immigrants. The evidence? Their last names don't sound American enough.

A Word of Warning

[ewhac]

Adobe likes to think it has software patents on certain user interface elements of Photoshop. Macromedia was sued not long ago for emulating some of these elements in their Flash authoring tool (no idea how that suit resolved). Adobe are also litigious so-and-sos who are all too willing to harass people in defense of their intellectual "property".

So if Adobe feels even the slightest bit threatened by it, expect the project to receive a nastygram.

Schwab

Re:What the..

[rzebram]

I believe pudge (Chris Nandor, http://sourceforge.net/users/pudge/ [sourceforge.net]) is one of the Slashdot programmers (if you look in the slash CVS you can see he has commit access). As for why he was removed, your guess is as good as mine.

Sorry, but this was a couple of years ago.

[ptbarnett]

"On March 30th, Slashdot reported on the FBI request for the logs of several radical-leaning sites. The Washington Post has an article about the man who was responsible for the posts which resulted in the FBI request. He claimed to have killed a cop in several forum posts."

The Washington Post article was about a murder committed in November, 2002. The subsequent postings were six days later. The FBI is likely to have been disappointed if they just now made requests for server logs, after two years have elapsed.

I remember this particular incident, because I got a call from the FBI about it. The perpetrator sent his "manifesto" to an email address associated with a website I no longer maintain, apparently from an outdated list. The address got so much spam that I was simply using incoming messages to train SpamAssassin's Bayesian filter, then dumped them into the bit-bucket.

But, someone else forwarded it to the FBI (as I would have done, if I actually received it). Since my contact info was available for my domain name, I got a call from an agent who was trying to find any link between the recipients and the sender.

Re:You're proablly trolling but in case you aren't

[pudge]

Basically all the politicians are rich white men. They got their wealth from inheritance.

One of the people in this race was a woman, and the other was a lower class guy who worked his way through college.

Washington in his farewell address warned of political parties and named them one of three things that could break the American system. And guess what...they are.

We've had two-party rule since Washington left office. If it hasn't "broken" the American system in the last 200+ years, what makes you think it will happen now?

We're the ones who let this happen and what more most people voting don't vote based on issues.

Actually, this was one of the most issues-oriented campaigns in many years in WA. It focused primarily on the size of the government budget and taxation.

But hey, don't let me dispel your illusions ...

Re:GimpShop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wilber the GIMP [wikipedia.org] was designed by TigerT.

Re:Sloppy reporting

[murphj]

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 4, 2005; Page C01

Section C in the Post is the Style section. This is a feature story, not a news story. Feature stories frequently contain prose like that. It would not have appeared in a story in the A section.

Re:What the..

[pudge]

I started the article and handed it off to timothy, who then forgot to change the ownership to himself. And as I've edited hundreds of stories on Slashdot, I am not that mysterious ...

Re:You're proablly trolling but in case you aren't

[pudge]

No, it's been two parties. There were short periods, such as before the Civil War, where one party declined while another gained power. First the Republican-Democrats and Federalists declined while the Democrats and Whigs gained power, in the early 19th century. Then the Whigs declined while the Republicans gained power. But apart from those short transitions, it's always been two parties in control.

That's also not to say a third party candidate never had a chance at the Presidency: Roosevelt nearly pulled it off in 1912. But he was like Perot: the party had no power in Congress, just a charismatic leader.

Re:GTK+ on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

DUH!!!! WOW, are you guys really so illiterate that you cant figure out how to install GTK+ for windows? Or, did i correctly understand the OP which states, basically, that the OP doesnt know how to install ANY software on windows?!?!?! amazing. whats wrong with you guys?

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html [sourceforge.net]

directions for all you asshats:
1-go to above link
2-click on GTK+
3-watch as it magically "downloads"
4-click on it again to magically "unzip it"
5-click on it ONE MORE TIME to magically "install it"

yes, installing software on windows is so mysterious and magical isnt it? CLICK ON IT!!!!!

More votes found...

[kwietman]

In King County, another 95 votes have been recently "discovered," which were not counted in the November election. By themselves, not enough to change the outcome of the race, but enough to fuel the fires of those (myself included) who feel we deserve another election. In another note, special election ballots sent to servicepersons overseas last week apparently contained everything except the actual ballot. Once again, the soldier gets screwed out of his or her vote, either by sending absentee ballots out too late or by simply not being given one.

Close Elections Suck

[Old VMS Junkie]

The only way to ensure a valid result is a blowout. Then no matter how much fraud there is (and there is always some on both sides) you can be pretty sure that the right guy (or girl) won. I highly recommend "Stealing Elections" by John Fund for those who want to read more about the depths to which politicians will sink.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[pudge]

I was making no value judgments of any kind about whether recounts or having a new election is good or evil. In fact, I never had a problem with having recounts, either in WA or in FL (in FL I merely had a problem with the uneven recounts, which seven of the nine Supreme Court justices also thought was wrong). I supported the right of the Democrats in WA to have their second recount, even though I thought the recount itself was poor.

Further, I never said trying to nullify the election through a lawsuit is a good thing. I have since the beginning had mixed feelings about it. I think the case is very strong, but I am unconvinced it is the appropriate course of action. How to fix unreliable elections is a problem we don't have a good solution too, and this cure might be worse than the disease, even if it is justified.

I made no value judgments, I merely corrected someone when they said it was about recounts, as I will do with you: the GOP never tried to change any result in this election with a recount, despite your implication to the contrary.

I don't know why you and other people keep thinking and saying they did. The Democrats are the ones who did that, holding two recounts until they finally pulled ahead. There was never any recount when Rossi and the Republicans were behind.

In other words, your entire post is a misrepresentation both of the facts and of what I've said and thought about them.

Re:Let's get the politics out of the way

[Phillup]

The evidence? Their last names don't sound American enough.

You forgot the punchline. Dude's last name is: Ringhofer.

Man says votes from illegal immigrants
He culled list of voters for names that 'appear' foreign
Jim Camden
Staff writer
March 31, 2005

A Soap Lake man is challenging the voting credentials of hundreds of Washington voters, saying he thinks they're illegal immigrants who registered and cast ballots illegally.

But Martin Ringhofer may have a hard time proving the challenges he has filed in Spokane and 10 other Washington counties.

For one thing, there's the methodology of his research. Ringhofer said he obtained a list of people who registered to vote when they obtained or renewed a driver's license, then culled the list for names "that appear to be from outside the United States," particularly those that appeared to be Hispanic or Asian.

"We eliminated names that clearly sounded American-born, like John Smith, or Powell," he said Wednesday.

For another, there's the fact that many of the people on his list are citizens. In fact, The Spokesman-Review contacted a dozen of the 161 people on Ringhofer's Spokane County list, and all of them are citizens.

...

"I was well aware of the fact that there would be errors," he said.

But he doesn't see that as a problem because people on the list who are citizens can simply tell county officials that they are citizens and provide some proof. It's not his responsibility to correct those mistakes, he insisted, but the job of county elections officials.

...

original article [spokesmanreview.com]

full text in this thread [soundpolitics.com]