Benlog

Bush today:

I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English [...]

Fantastic.
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Woohoo, I’m now a published genomics scientist. My work from last summer with Zak Kohane of the Harvard Medical School is now available as a preliminary abstract at BMC Genomics.

We built the GenePING software, which extends the existing PING system to provide secure storage of large genomic data sets. So now you can get your [...]

Peter Ryan, Ronald Rivest, and David Chaum are organizing the Workshop On Trustworthy Elections - 2006. I’m on the program committee. Send in your research! There’s much exciting work left to do in the voting field, and as the press begins to understand that neither touch-screens nor paper-trail machines are panaceas, there will emerge an [...]

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk on interoperable metadata at the Semantic Technologies conference. I give a number of talks about various technology topics covering web, semantic web, crypto and voting, but this is one of the few times that I actually received formal, written feedback and ratings. Feedback is a fantastically useful [...]

So the French are opposed to genetically modified crops. And to some degree, I understand the concerns they have regarding the unknown consequences of genetic manipulation of the food supply. It’s a complicated issue, of course. Genetically modified crops could help stem serious issues of famine in Africa, reduce the use of harmful pesticides in [...]

Dan Tokaji points to a recent opinion by Black Box Voting’s Bev Harris and concludes that we may be converging on the idea that VVPAT is a placebo. This is a very interesting development.
One has to be very careful when making statements like “VVPAT is a placebo,” because the folks pushing VVPAT have the best [...]

In case my previous post a week ago didn’t make it clear, the situation in France makes me incredibly sad and angry.

I’m sad that not enough of the French youth understands that, without an economic incentive to hire young employees, companies simply will not do it when they might be stuck with someone who has [...]

Netflix is suing Blockbuster for “stealing their idea” of online DVD rentals for a fixed monthly price. Nothing like a business method patent to throw a wrench into this whole idea of competition and free markets, eh? So it got me thinking about the patent system again, and how patents are so French. Allow me [...]

George Clooney is upset at the Gawker Stalker web site for tracking celebrities by collecting information from the public. Clooney suggests Data Poisoning their site by submitting hundreds of bogus celebrity sighting reports.

I’m a big fan of Clooney’s latest films, but I didn’t realize he was this savvy about the Internet: its greatest strength — [...]