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It's mostly off topic now, but I was wondering why (as this article suggests) we are still having problems counting votes. In particular, if the polling place has incomplete or incorrect information about you, you may be stuck with a provisional ballot. After you vote your provisional ballot, you'll never know if your vote was counted; you just have to trust the election authorities. What if we did something like this:

• All ballots have a serial number.
• When you vote, you keep a chit with your ballot's serial number.
• Serial numbers are distributed at random so that your ballot cannot be associated with you solely by knowing the serial number. (Preserves secret ballot.)
• At end of election, elections board publishes a text file that lists each ballot serial number and the votes counted for that serial number. This must be public and can be because serial numbers are anonymous.
• Voters, or organizations acting on their behalf, can verify that their votes have been counted as intended by searching the published list for their serial number.

• A number of organizations that support this behavior could take down your information right outside the polling place (like an exit poll) and verify it later for you automatically. You'd pick an organization that you trust and has some incentive for arguing that your votes were counted.

Wouldn't this solve the provisional ballots problem? Are there any problems with it that I haven't foreseen?

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Dear Other J,

I'm not 100% sure what prevented this from working, but one possibility is that your comments used a frassle.rura.org cookie, while your registration was on frassle.net. Although it's the same site behind these two addresses, your browser will only send the cookie to frassle when you access it via the same name as when the cookie was sent.* But if you want your comments to be merged into your new blog, just let me know the URL of your comment blog and I will be happy to move them into your registered blog.

thanks,
shimon.

* I could have worked around this problem if I had thought of it in time, but it's kinda too late now. Well, kinda.

P.S. It looks like Lena succeeded in upgrading a comment-blog into a registered blog, judging by the timing of her posts.

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For those who don't know: when you comment on frassle it's the same as a blog post on your own blog, along with a link that references the item you're responding to. To make commenting easy for people who aren't registered with frassle, we offer a "comment without registering" option where a user can enter a name, website, and email address along with her comment, much like other blog systems.

The difference is that when she submits her comment and personal information, frassle automatically creates a blog in her name. When she comments later on, frassle will notice a cookie in her browser — a little note we've pinned to your computer that says I'm the person in charge of comment blog #312. Using this cookie, we automatically load her next post into the same automatic blog, so that you can see a history of someone's comments even if they're not a registered frassle user. Provided they are using the same browser and that browser supports cookies, all the user's comments will become part of their (automatic) blog.

Later on, if the same user decides to register for real, frassle will seamlessly "upgrade" their comment blog. In other words, their comments will still be there, but now the user will be able to edit them, make new posts that are not comments, change the title of her weblog, etc. This works because the new user registration also looks for the "I'm in charge of comment blog #312" cookie and upgrades that blog rather than creating a new one.

I rather like this design and wonder why other online community systems don't have something similar.

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The goal in downhill skiing is to move down a slope quickly, but without getting hurt. If not for the latter condition, you could just try going downhill in a straight line. However, if you want to live to see tomorrow, you must incorporate turns into your descent.

I vanished from Boston this blizzardy weekend, and went to Lincoln, NH to learn how to ski at Loon Mountain. I really enjoyed skiing, and although I fell a lot I think I ended up a pretty good skier for two days total experience.

Then we got home and shovelled two feet of snow out of the driveway. Which was nice, because it had been such a lazy, sedentary weekend.

Oh! I took my laptop with me in hope of finishing some of alpha 9's finishing touches, but I only got a little bit done. It's very close, but I think I need some clamoring users to help me overcome whatever bits of programmer's block remain…

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Um, this is weird.

I'm surprisingly excited about taking my car in for service for the first time. It's in the hands of the highly-recommended Colonial Auto Service. It's been having trouble starting, and also needs an oil change and probably new brake pads.

The trouble with starting was illustrated today in the mechanic's driveway. I drove in past a snow plow and parked where I thought he had already plowed. Once the mechanic explained that I had parked in the way, I gave him the keys and… rev rev *click*.

While I went inside to give my information to the other guy, the first mechanic was getting my car started. I think he hooked a jumper battery up to my car's battery, and eventually got the thing started. Then I watched him pull the car around, with the hood still up, with lots of wheel spinning and some sliding.

Now, this would probably scare some people, but I am quite happy to see the experts at work. What's making me feel great right now is the expectation that this evening, my car will once again be running perfectly. Probably with a new starter motor.

Update: The car has been fixed. Turns out it was the battery, not starter motor, which is good. Also, the brakes are in fine shape.

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Did two hundred thousand people download the GIMP because of Microsoft's Windows Marketplace? Even stranger: 1.7 million have downloaded Firefox, whose IE-killer marketing message is reinforced in every user review on that page.

I'm going chalk this up as progress toward fulfilling my prediction that Microsoft will turn its internet channel to Windows users into an iTunes for software. Now they just need the software equivalent of white earphones…

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