Reply #71: Third Summary of Progress so Far [View All]

[petgoat]

The Big Picture: lots of people were willing to share their ideas,
but only a few put any work into developing them. No one but me was
willing to work on any one else's vision.

This is not what I expected. I thought we'd soon settle in on a
consensus armature, and soon start some bitter debates about which way
it should go, and then splinter off into alternate versions.

My own vision was something along these lines:

It's a vacation period in early 2005 in some podunk midwestern
college--a between-semester reading period or perhaps Spring vacation
in the far north. Over-worked and under-compensated academics are
preparing for the new session--informally dressed. It's kind of a
"Big Chill" scene. They get to talking about the election. The
statistician is seriously disturbed about the exit poll discrepancy.
The computer scientists is concerned about the voting machines. The
sociologist is concerned about the voter suppression. The historian
is concerned about the Bushites' fascist agenda.

A couple of them who went to the same college get to talking and one
says, "what ever happened to what's his name, Rodney's room-mate at
Wilson Hall. That computer genius? Didn't he go to work for one of
the voting machine companies?"

So they share a few stories about this guys's exploits--
phone-phreaking and hacking and how he was this close to being
indicted. His philosophy was "If you can hack it you should hack it."

So the other guy, (or the other guy's wife) makes a few phone calls
and finds out that yes, he did go to work for the voting machine
companies.

So somebody takes a vacation and goes to visit the guy. Finds out
he's disappeared. Keeps on the trail and finds where he's hiding out.
Talks to him. Why's he hiding? The geek says he didn't hack the
system, but he knows who did. It was the janitor--switched the master
memory card from which all the other memory cards were copied.

It was something like that. I've got my notes on another computer.

I haven't heard from anyone in a while, so I'm guessing we're through with this.