Cory over at BoingBoing posted about what he ably describes as an "Insane plan to let military vote using insecure email". I think that fairly sums it up. Here is a direct link to the press release from Matt Blunt, Missouri's Secretary of State who describes critics of the plan as "people who should be directing their time and resources on encouraging, not suppressing absentee voting". I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty confident that it's only potentially inaccurate or fraudulent absentee votes which are worrying the critics.

I usually don't stoop to bashing commercial products, but the hip-e has got my goat (and I don't mean Greatest of All Time).

Pandering to kids (and their parents) is nothing new, but the folks at Digital Lifestyles seem to think putting some fur on a on the monitor and keyboard (huh?), including a prepaid debit account for the kids (double huh?), and putting up "displays in malls where pop star Ashlee Simpson is performing" (double-double huh?) will somehow get parents to fork over nearly $1700 for a 1.5Ghz machine with a 17 inch display. Good luck running the latest games, such as Doom3 or Half-Life2. You'll need it.

A quick check at places like Tiger Direct or CompUSA shows it's possible to get a much more powerful machine at a fraction of the cost. Spend more than 30 seconds online and you'll find even better deals.

Kids aren't stupid, but even their dumb parents will quickly realize that they can take the money saved by buying a lower priced, higher powered machines and customize them to meet the kid's wishes.

I mean really. 1.5Ghz! Heck, my 1.7Ghz home machine is years old now.

Insane marketing indeed.

Here's an idea for the RNC convention suggested by TBogg: Photograph the elephants as they visit strip clubs, massage parlors or otherwise carouse with people they aren't married to. Then post the digital photos to the web!

So-called hackers are reportedly organizing "a massive electronic civil disobedience campaign" targeting the upcoming Republican Convention in NYC. Let's hope they don't bring the heavy hand of the law down upon the rest of us.

Continuing a grand tradition, various government agencies, including the FBI, are reportedly questioning anti-GOP types, making unannounced visits to people's homes, monitoring Web sites and even attending meetings of activists they don't like. In a CNN story, John Young of Cryptome describes personal visits by the feds, and a "tremendous number" of hits to his web site which seem to come from government agencies, something he says "certainly is chilling".

The time for auto-generated mendacious messaging has arrived! Cingular Wireless is reportedly going to offer an "Escape-A-Date" service, where you can schedule a call to your cell phone. The call would offer you a fake scenerio (eg. a family emergency) which would provide an opportunity to leave your companion without that messy "I don't really like you" part.