In this post about computerized voting (and the frightening possibility that it might be extremely easy to manipulate), Bob Harris writes:

I do have a degree in electrical engineering… from almost 20 years ago. Punchcard systems were just becoming obsolete, we had rotary phones in the dorms, and a modem was still a gizmo the size of a shoebox into which you squooshed the phone receiver itself. In short, we lived like animals.

The instant obsolesence is why I became a writer. The rate of punctuation in a sentence doesn’t double every 18 friggin’ months, and you never have some 22-year-old looming over your shoulder, shaking his head, saying “dude… you’re still using adverbs…?”

Which I found amusing. The computerized voting software, however… Well, I can’t feign expertise either — unlike Harris, I was a writer first and would, I think, make a lousy engineer — but, if implemented in its current form, it looks like it could be the worst thing to happen to American politics since…well, since our current president was “elected”. As Atrios writes: “Can this stuff possibly be the real software?! It’s not some cheesy demo?”