Specifications

H
ere I am on family vacation, with two
computers, three guitars, an electric bass,
and two amps. Obviously we’re not back-
packing through Europe, and we didn’t
get on a plane. We drove to a rented
beach house with our gear, plus the requisite shorts,
bathing suits, and sand chairs—and a stack of books.
Vacation is a time to kick back, but it’s not a time to
do nothing. I have two books/
CDs on jazz chords and
progressions and am looking forward to learning how
to twist my fingers into interesting new shapes and
making (I hope) cool new sounds. I’ve got one laptop
with all my work stuff on it, but for some reason I’ve
been unable to get this machine to play
MIDI files, de-
spite having reinstalled the operating system and dri-
vers. So my second machine handles music synthesis
and recording, in case I get inspired.
This vacation is also a chance for me to give
thanks for Web sites that are bandwidth-conscious,
since I’m busted back to a dial-up connection that
can do no better than 28.8 Kbps. Yeah, yeah, I know:
What am I doing surfing Web sites on my vacation?
For me, it’s all about doing exactly what I want to do,
when I want to do it.
SKETCHUP 3D
Beach time is also for good for reflecting on some of
the downloads and e-mails I’ve set aside for further
investigation or contemplation. One of my regular
correspondents, Jon Bondy, always has interesting
recommendations. One of his latest is SketchUp 3
D,
a drawing program aimed primarily at architects that
lets you sketch in 3-D.
Unlike in most drawing programs, you’re working
in 3-D right from the start, instead of the usual ex-
truding from 2-D shapes or building up from primi-
tives; a wireframe mode lets you check your geome-
try if necessary. The Web site, www.sketch3d.com,
has numerous examples of SketchUp 3
D drawings,
enthusiastic testimonials, and a free trial download
that’s operable for 8 hours. You can actually learn
enough about SketchUp 3
D in that much time to de-
cide whether it’s for you or not.
SketchUp isn’t
CAD, but it’s a far faster way of val-
idating design ideas that may eventually be rendered
in
CAD
. It’s a powerful aid if you’re artistically chal-
lenged, and it offers familiar tools, such as a pencil,
ruler, and protractor for creating dimensionally ac-
curate drawings. But the heart of SketchUp is that it
renders with colors, textures, and shadows that are
architecturally or artistically appropriate.
You can go with the defaults or make them as wild
as you like. You can include people in your drawings,
too, to give a sense of proportion. Wizards help you
create objects quickly and painlessly. The only
painful part is the price; $495 makes it a profession-
al tool, not one for duffers like me.
HACK THE VOTE
An interesting battle is taking shape between Diebold
Election Systems and researchers at Johns Hopkins
University and Rice University. The Diebold Accu-
Vote -
TS electronic voting machine, used in 37 states,
apparently has
PC-type innards, a touch screen, and
a smart card to forestall potential fiascoes such as the
2000 presidential election in Florida.
Researchers have been investigating some source
code, ostensibly that of the AccuVote-
TS, and have
found it wanting. They discovered ways to hack into
the system, monitor the progress of an election, vote
multiple times, and do all the things that highly mo-
tivated, morally deficient people with a political bent
have been doing since time immemorial.
You can find the charges and analysis at www
.blackboxvoting.org/access-diebold.htm and http://
avirubin.com/vote.pdf. You can read Diebold’s rebut-
tal at www.dieboldes.com. As you look at both sides,
you may find some of the attacks unrealistic or at
least unlikely. You may also find Diebold’s defenses
somewhat idealistic, and the technical rebuttal is
anything but technical.
I won’t claim that Diebold’s voting machines are
deficient, but I think that building a voting machine
(or a medical machine or a space probe) on
PC hard-
ware and the Windows operating system is a terrible
idea. Give me a microcontroller and burned-in code
that can’t do anything but what I program it to do,
not a general-purpose environment that is univer-
sally and routinely hacked.
Enough thinking for one vacation—surf’s up!
BILL MACHRONE
The Vacation Column
Building a
voting machine
or a medical
machine or a
space probe on
PC hardware
and Windows
is a terrible
idea.
Bill Machrone is VP
of editorial development for Ziff Davis
Media. Visit his digs at www.extremetech.com. You can
also reach him at [e-mail].
www.pcmag.com SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 PC MAGAZINE
51
ExtremeTech
www.extremetech.com •