CNN has a political piece that really ticks me off: Democratic candidates trying to reach religious voters.

This is insulting on so many levels. First off, the only “religious voters” that anyone seems to be concerned with are evangelicals who are wildly over represented in the media and politics. There are huge numbers of religious people who vote for Democratic candidates, and no one wants to recognize they exist.

Adherents.com has the numbers for religion in the US and if you look at them carefully you will notice that the groups that Amy Sullivan and others keep insisting that Democrats pander to, are the groups in decline.

The largest Christian denomination in the US is the Catholic Church. Where is the specialized outreach to Catholics, if you are targeting religious voters?

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At Ars Technica Nate Anderson has a nice little article: Harry Potter and the Serial Number of Doom.

It would appear that an individual got their hands on an early copy of The Deathly Hallows and decided to spread it around by taking a digital photograph of every page and putting it out over BitTorrent. No doubt s/he will be asked about their motive when this gets to court, as the publisher, Scholastic, is seriously annoyed.

Nate explains why it was a incredibly stupid thing to do and provides the warning that all of your equipment will rat you out. Digital cameras include their make, model, and serial number in the file with the picture. The individual who did this is one subpoena to Canon away from a very major law suit.

If you didn’t know it, all Microsoft products include more information than anyone should know about you computer with every file you save. That’s how the contractor who was working at ATT when he spread the Melissa virus was found – the information was contained in the file.

Anonymity is not an easy thing to achieve these days. It takes work and knowledge.

According to the cable industry only 58.8% of US households had cable in December 2006. In that number not every cable system carries CNN. Even among those that carry CNN, it is in the second tier of choices, and not everyone is willing to pay for it. Even if they wanted to watch the debate last night, having it on a cable channel meant a large number of people couldn’t. Oh, broadband Internet access is even more limited, so even people who have access to cable, don’t all have access to a fast Internet connection.

Most polls are conducted by landline telephone. Fewer and fewer people every year have a landline telephone, so the percentage of the population that can participate in polls is declining.

Obviously the group most heavily impacted by these facts are the poor, and that number has been growing. Not even the 70¢ per hour minimum wage increase that took effect today is going to help the poor get connected.