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I voted last night (we even brought Ivan along, although he slept through the whole voting process), which means that I'm allowed to complain about the results. So complain, I will.

A Conservative majority? Really? Canada, what were you thinking?!?! The Conservatives have shown contempt for parliament, shut down the house twice to avoid dealing with issues, broke their own election law (if not the letter of the law, at least the spirit of it), among other things, and you give them a majority? (Granted, over 60% of Canadians who cared enough to vote voted against the Conservatives.)

The winners

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives: Harper got the majority he wanted, and proved to Canada that he is the Teflon man. His FUD campaign worked, and he spooked people with the coalition boogey man. He somehow managed to convince people that he had something to do with Canada's economic recovery. He now has free reign for four years.

Elizabeth May and the Green Party: won in her riding, so we finally have a Green Party MP. It will be interesting to see what she does in Parliament. Maybe the Broadcasting consortium will have a harder time ignoring her next time.

The NDP: Official Opposition status, and the best election result they've ever had.

The Liberals: Michael Ignatief was probably the worst thing to happen to the Liberals for a long time. With the loss, Ignatief has resigned. Liberal Party of Canada, please pick someone good to lead you this time.

The losers

The Green Party: even though they finally have a seat, they dropped in the popular vote, but then, that's to be expected in a tight race, with first-past-the-post: the less-popular parties lose support as everyone votes for the lesser of two evils.

Michael Ignatief and the Liberals: the first time they ended up in third place. Nothing they attacked the Conservatives on would stick, and they were unable to make an issue out of anything. Ignatief even lost his own seat.

Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc: at one point, they were the official opposition, and now they don't even have official party status. Duceppe lost his own seat as well. Is this the beginning of the end for the Bloc? Or did Québec just get charmed by the NDP this time? If he wasn't a separatist, Duceppe would have probably made the best Prime Minister out of all the party leaders.

Canada: the Conservatives pulled off some stupid things when they were held in check by a minority. What will happen now that they don't have to care about what anyone else says?

Electoral reform

Electoral reform is dead for the next four years. The NDP will push for it, but the Conservatives will ignore them. They've benefited a lot from the current system. Why would they change it?

Although Proportional Representation gets the most attention, I think that there is one major flaw with most PR systems: it gives independents a harder time. I would prefer a system in which voters rank candidates by preference. Condorcet would be my preference. STV/IRV would be my second pick. Even Approval voting would be an improvement. Note that these systems are not necessarily mutually exclusive with Proportional Representation. But I think that the calls for PR would be lessened if we used one of the above systems.

Shenanigans

Someone has been telling people that their polling station has moved. Nobody knows who is behind it, yet, but it's quite a serious offence, and I hope that whoever it is gets found out.

No, not that kind of hash. The NIST is holding a contest for a new cryptographic hash function. Vulnerabilities have been found in the most commonly used hash functions, MD5 and SHA-1, and the contest is for the new SHA-3 standard. The deadline for submissions was last Friday, so if you missed it, too bad.

Schneier et al. have submitted their algorithm, called skein, and Rivest et al. have submitted MD6.

The NIST held a similar contest several years back for encryption algorithms, which resulted in Rijndael being officially named as the Advanced Encryption Standard. That contest took 5 years. We'll see how long this one takes. Hashing is generally less well-understood, and harder to do, than encryption.

As usual, my news pile is backing up (but not bad as my photo pile — I still have my summer photos to put up). So here's a dump of some of the articles.

First of all, don't take pictures of the police, or you might get arrested. (/., /. followup) (Even if you are fully within your rights to do so.)

Also, don't play in trees if you are a 12-year old child. You'll get arrested, and put your DNA on record. (/.)

If you're in an American airport, don't say that the TSA Director Kip Hawley is an idiot, even if he really is an idiot. (KHIAI, /.) If you do that, you may get detained. Because apparently freedom of speech doesn't apply inside an airport.

OK, enough sarcasm. (What? Hubert being sarcastic? Never...)

Electronic voting machines are becoming more commonly used in the US. But it seems like every month, there's a new problem that's found with them. The Open Voting Foundation took apart a Diebold machine, and found that it just takes flipping a single switch, and you can make the machine load your own software, instead of the (supposedly) certified software. (/.) The electronic voting machines also wreaked havoc in Maryland elections. Ed Felten et al. have shown how to infect a Diebold voting machine with a virus and change election results. (Dr. Dobbs, /.)

As Canada considers implementing their own version of the DMCA legislation, Professor Michael Geist, ran a series called 30 Days of DRM, which outlined 30 issues that need to be considered in anti-circumvention legislation. (A brief background: DRM, or “Digital Rights Management”, also called “Digital Restrictions Management”, is a term that refers to technologies used to limit access to digital media, such as music and movies. Anti-circumvention legislation makes it illegal to bypass DRM, aimed at preventing unauthorized duplication, but which also prevents legitimate use of the media.)

Despite claims of security, the new e-passports have been cloned. (/.) While this is not the same as creating a new, fake passport, it is still a significant hole. Some security is gained by embedding a chip inside a passport, but the new passports are generally viewed as unforgeable, giving people a false sense of security.

And the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the US's warrantless wiretapping. (/.) Because who needs judicial oversight? (Whoops. There I go with the sarcasm again.)

A Toronto judge has ordered that a Christmas tree, which used to be displayed at the Ontario Court of Justice be removed, and relocated to a back hallway. Judge Marion Cohen wrote that she didn't think it appropriate that when people enter the courthouse, the “first thing they see is a Christian symbol.”

Sorry, try again. The tree is not a Christian symbol; it actually has various cultural origins, and somehow got incorporated into the Christian celebration of Christmas.

So remove the tree if you must, but don't blame the tree on the Christians. We weren't responsible for it.

Or just incorporate the tree into your own cultural celebration. After all, that's what the Christians did.