Diebold and GEMS: R U 4 Real?

Gambling against the spread has never been good for most people. Heck, if you can hit 68% you're a player; anything over 70% and you're God-like or a manic idiot savant. "Take the road dog and six. Take the road dog and six. Take the road dog and six." I hit 72 for a season and I looked like Dustin Hoffman on an acid binge when I collected at the end of the year. Montana to Taylor ... touchdown! ... and the Bengie's still covered. The rush was pure heaven, and I swore off gambling from that day forward - I knew it couldn't get any better than that.

"Wapner at seven. I have to watch Wapner at seven."

You see, point spreads are rigged. They're based not on what team is better, but how the money is laid out. One of the big secrets is watch out for the West Coast and Tri-State money late, which means the Raiders, Jets, Eagles, Giants and Niners are always playing with a short or long spread. They could be favored by seven-and-a-half over the Fins, but in reality it's a five point game if you played it by the numbers. If you had a full education on sliding the spread, you, too, could have half of New Jersey reporting to you for White Slavery duty.

Here's a sample primer: The way a money line is established is first the bookmaker uses his best judgment to determine the probability that the favorite will win. For example let's assume 60%. He then converts this to a fair money line with no house edge. If the probability is p then the money lines are +/- 100*p/(1-p). If p is 60% then the fair money lines would be +150 and -150. Then the bookmaker will take a constant and add it to the amount the favorite better must bet and subtract is from the amount the underdog better can win. A common constant is 10 points. In this example the bookmaker would adjust the money lines to +140 and -160. This is referred to as a 20 cent line, referring the total line movement from the theoretical fair line. For games with a strong favorite the numbers of points will increase.

If the two money lines are x and y (for example x=+140 and y=-160) then the house edge taking odds (or betting on the underdog) is (x+y)/(200+x-y). The house edge on the laying odds (or betting on the favorite) is -100*(x/y+1)/(200+x-y). In the +140/-160 example the house edge on the taking odds is 4.00% and laying odds is 2.50%. If the player must lay odds on either team (for example x=-105 and y=-115) then the house edge on x is ((20000/x)+x-y+200)/(x-y+400) and on y is ((100/y)*(x-y+200)+200)/(x-y+400). In this example the house edge on x is 4.76% and on y is 4.24%.

The simple truth about point spreads is that it's chaos theory for degenerates. In the case of an arbitrage, it's the same way with buying and selling currencies, but lose out and you don't have a guy with a vowel at the end of his last name breaking your door down.

All of which leads me to voting machines - specifically the Diebold GEMS software.

A lovely little organization - Black Box Voting - Bev Harris - BlackBoxVoting.org - has taken the time to illustrate just how retched this new Diebold voting system is. In about 90 seconds she teaches Howard Dean - on Topic[A] with Tina Brown - to rig a vote using the Diebold GEMS program that is being used in 30% of this nation's precincts.

Think I'm kidding? Take a look over here or Google it for yourself.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Windows-based PC with 150megs free disk space and 128megs RAM (minimum). You also need MS-Access2000 or a later variant in order to severely circumvent the passwords and security - the whole point here is that MS-Access is basically a "hack tool" and once used, there's NO security on this "high security voting product" whatsoever!

Bobo's people aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, but I think they've heard of Office XP. Still even more disturbing is that Diebold is using a basic database program file without encryption, no reasonable security measures, and leaving it in the hands of blue haired folk who typically have the computer savvy of a chimp. A simple query against the company's news index left me even more reassurred:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]General network error. Check your network documentation.
/news/newsdisp.asp, line 119

Check your network documentation. I have and it's all over the internet.

Of course, Diebold Withdrew Legal Threats " ... against ISPs for hosting users who publish or link to corporate documents suggesting there are flaws in its equipment and irregularities with certifying the systems for elections. Nor will it issue additional cease-and-desist notices concerning these corporate documents, US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel heard today. Diebold has until this point waged an intimidation campaign to repress circulation of employee e-mails that raise concerns about the security of its electronic voting machines. This move came after widespread public protest and requests to hold a hearing to investigate abuses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by Diebold."

So, in the long and perverted tradition of gambling against the spread, we are left with another Rethug named Walden O'Dell who has actually guaranteed the Ohio electoral votes to Bobo. And that was after "Sweetheart Wally" donated $5,965 to the RNC while Diebold gave the RNC $95,000 in 2002. O'Dell claims to be "agnostic" on the necessity of providing voters with evidence that their choices are the ones reflected in the count. But the possibility that a future president can attain office mounted on a Trojan horse isn't a philosophical issue like campaign contributions. It's nice to know that Wally is no longer working to elect one candidate in particular. It would be even nicer to know, beyond any doubt, that his voting machines weren't, either.

And in case you missed it: RNC PROPAGANDA APPEARS ILLEGALLY ON U.S. TREASURY MEMOS

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's polices are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation

You can find it on RNC Website and mysteriously again at JS-1313: April 15th Tax Day Reminder: Treasury and IRS Work To Make Paying Taxes A Little Easier as a cute little footnote. The exact same quote, falsely extolling the president's fiscal policies, in violation of federal law.

Given the news of the day Big John is a five point favorite, but Bobo is playing as fourteen point home underdog. Guess who pays out at the window?

Halliburton.