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here:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/custom/space/o rl-asecdelta22122204dec22,0,1977640.story?coll=orl -home-headlines

Dude, that is SO 20th Century!

Actually, I agree with you completely. I was listening to a thing on the radio about some woman who moved into a tent in her yard because her kids wouldn't take out the garbage, or pick up when they spilled something. And I thought to myself, "Self, WTF? What happened to, 'No TV.'? What happened to, 'You're grounded.'?"

I mean, holy crap, she's living in a tent! Because her _children_ apparently control her household!

Of course, it is in Florida...

The 2004 election revealed many problems with electronic voting: lost votes, undervotes, overvotes, and votes rolling over into negative numbers. These links are taken from the group blog E-voting experts:

• Broward Co., FL - ESS software on their machines only reads 32,000 votes at a precinct then it starts counting backwards: http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.ht ml
• Wichita Co., TX - Nearly 6,900 of 26,000 total early votes had 'undervote' for President. Human error to blame. County has software problems that need ESS to fix before they can run ballots: http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/local_news/arti cle/0,1891,TRN_5784_3303816,00.html
• Lancaster Co., SC - Unilect Patriot voting machines were used and failed. Printouts of votes had to be taken from the machines memories and hand-counted: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/1 0094349.htm
• Mecklenburg Co., NC - More votes registered than voters: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/politi cs/10094165.htm
• Volusia Co., FL - Diebold optical-scan machines had another failure with 6 machines having memory card failures. "Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor in Leon County, said officials with Diebold told him that the new, higher-capacity memory cards tend to have more glitches than older cards.": http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/elections/orl- asecvolusiaglitches04110404nov04,1,3289659.story?c oll=orl-news-headlines
• Craven Co., NC - Software glitch forces a recount which changes the outcome in one race.: http://www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Templat e=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfmStoryID=18297Section =Local
• San Francisco, CA - A glitch in the new tabulation software made by ESS to handle IRV/RCV voting (more here) stoped the counting and forced a recount of 81,000 ballots.: http://www.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=52200321
• Sarpy County, NE - 3000 phantom votes show up after an audit reveals that some tabulation equipment counted votes twice. (Im not sure if this is optical scan or some other system they used optical scan in 2002): http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1161971.html
• Willacy County, TX - Human error in reading results reports causes presidential votes for John Kerry to be counted twice and subsequently misreported to the Texas Secretary of State.: http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/101 23432.htm?1c
• Columbus, OH - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,25

If Gore had won in Florida, it would have been because all the unambiguous votes in Florida were counted. That never happened.

(And Gore's team never fought for that, not that it would have made any difference if they had; the Supreme court disallowed anything resembling a full count.)

The Orlando Sentinel (not exactly a bunch of radical lefties) was among a group of news organizations that did real substantive work on what the results of a full vote count would be; for example, here and here. You do the math.

Ancient history now, I suppose, but those that do not remember history... :-)

If Gore had won in Florida, it would have been because all the unambiguous votes in Florida were counted. That never happened.

(And Gore's team never fought for that, not that it would have made any difference if they had; the Supreme court disallowed anything resembling a full count.)

The Orlando Sentinel (not exactly a bunch of radical lefties) was among a group of news organizations that did real substantive work on what the results of a full vote count would be; for example, here and here. You do the math.

Ancient history now, I suppose, but those that do not remember history... :-)

For some reason Florida still manages to shock me.

Um, yeah. With judges like this, anything's possible:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/yahoo/orl-asec mjudge26a082604aug26,0,2266263.story?coll=orl-news aol-headlines

Still working on the Y1K problem down there, apparently...

Women get something more practical; The Boyfriend Arm Pillow

That's a nice posting and all, except for the fact that a 13 year study by University of Pittsburg found there was no statistical increase in occurrences of cancer around the Three Mile Island plant in Harrisburg PA.

Secondly, the reason you cite for not touching the Challenger fragments was because of (1) the temperature of the metal on re-entry and (2) the hazardous fumes from the aforementioned burning material. Although a local Texas sheriff claimed there was "radioactive material on board" (picked up by reporters with little fact checking), NASA has since said that the only radioactive material on the shuttle at the time were in the smoke detectors.

How do you check for deaths by radiation? By measuring the increase in cancers with respect to a "control group" of those that were not exposed to the radioactive source. For example, population of Seattle vs Chernobyl. If cancer rate is statistically higher, then you're golden.

Oh, and we have a great way to store radioative waste, it's called Yucca Mountain. Find a mountain of volcanic minerals, surrounded by more mountains and deserts, with an non-existent water table in a non-populated area, on government land with a 110 mile radius. Seal the crap underground, and post a guard for the next 6,000 years.

Hell, in another 100 years, we may find methods to "refine" the nuclear waste for more fissionable material, much like we do now in extracting uranium from ore. Just as we aren't going to run out of oil, we're going to run out of cheap oil, then we retool for more extraction. Our children's childeren will be thanking us for taking the time to concentrate all the material into one site for easy processing, just as we build trash-to-steam generating plants (sorry, "reclamation centers") at trash dumps today.

"I consider them my friends," he says. "They're not criminals."

While the National Review article might be news to most Slashdotters, this is not news for those who have been following the ongoing space policy review by the Bush Administration. In late October SpaceRef.com first reported that a likely outcome of the policy review would be a call for resuming human flights to the Moon, with a Presidential statement on the issue coming as early as the Wright Brothers centennial speech at Kitty Hawk. On Monday SpaceRef.com followed up that original report with a new one, stating that "the return to the Moon by U.S. astronauts possibly by the end of the next decade" had become the "default" position of those planning the new policy. The National Review article doesn't add anything these two SpaceRef reports already provided.

There is no guarantee, though, that these reports are accurate. On Sunday the Orlando Sentinel reported (alternate link) that any new national space policy would differ little from current plans. This report was based on an analysis of internal NASA documents obtained by the newspaper along with interviews with those in the know. This report is actually not necessarily contradictory with the new SpaceRef report: if you're not planning to send people back to the Moon until the end of the next decade, there's little you need to do differently in the near term.

If you're curious about the current interest (or obsession) some have with crafting a new "vision" for NASA, I recommend the articles "The vision thing" and "Vision revision" at The Space Review. (Disclaimer: I'm the author. :-) This should give you an idea that while many in Washington believe there needs to be a new national space policy or vision, there is little consensus about what that should be. Thus, don't expect any major changes soon.

Maybe you could open for the Tampa, FL band Hell on Earth. They are promising to have an onstage suicide next month. Jump on board!

"I just find is pathetic that the U.S. can't find $600m to refurb the HST. We're spending about twice that EVERY DAY on operations in Iraq.

Just pull the troops out two days earlier and there you have it... enough cash to service the Hubble twice!" -gerardrj

"The number is 4B per month." -glrotate

"Congress in April passed an initial $62.4 billion measure to pay for the fighting. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently put the cost at $3.9 billion a month. Also, L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator of Iraq, last week said $29 billion will be needed just to repair Iraq's electricity and water systems."
July 26th - Associated Press

"At the onset of war, Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, said postcombat operations were expected to cost about $2.2 billion a month. By early June, he adjusted that forecast to $3 billion."
July 13th - Orlando Sentinel

"Mr. Dorgan (Senator [D]) said the administration knows it's spending $4 billion a month in Iraq and it makes little sense to pretend the costs do not exist."
July 17th - Associated Press

Any questions?

A quick check on Spacetoday.com points to several good articles ...

SpaceFlightNow article
Florida Today article and it has three video's of the test
Orlando Sentinel article
Washington Post article
Houston Chronicle article

1. The guy is convicted on conspiracy charges and receives this $500/month fine until some ridiculous amount of money is paid to companies that he didn't end up ripping off yet. I understand that he broke the law by making the device and conspiring to sell it, so he goes to jail and pays a fine. But why pay that money to companies that didn't take any financial hits beyond legal costs. Shouldn't the money go to pay for the criminal investigation and locking the guy up as opposed to these companies. I can understand if the guy has to pay for the any legal fees the companies paid, but I can't believe they are THAT high. Is this punative damages or something? Are the companies mentally scarred knowing that someone almost ripped them off?

2. The way this punishment is handed down strikes me as a bit odd because it sounds like the companies wanted some formula applied to $900M and the fine total ends up being only *smirk* $180M. Regardless of how ridiculous either of those numbers are, the actual fine is considerably less than the $900M the company claims it would have lost. So is the message from the judge that the money wasn't the point? I guess we'd have to be privy to this formula that was used.

3. Why is the fine ordered to be paid off in such a way that no one will ever see very much of the money anyway? I can't figure out what point this makes, especially with a 5 year federal prison term attached?

4. An estimated 3 million people illegally watch satellite television using devices that unscramble satellite TV signals. The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue. [excerpt from the Orlando Sentinal article] Maybe this huge fine for a crime that didn't do any monetary damages yet, is somehow covering the costs of other similar crimes that are actually being committed? Like some sort of twisted subsidies? Perhaps thats why its so high? Shouldn't all the companies getting ripped off have to split it then? Something is fishy here, maybe its just the way I interpret the article...

Comments? Explanations from any legal brains out there?

I'll admit, I have trouble feeling sorry for any of those companies when I'm paying $50/month for "basic" cable that sucks and they are cleaning up on my addiction to Iron Chef....

WBGG

Yeah, but Challenger had nothing to do with it being a plane design instead of a capsule; it was a launch failure that was related to a problem with the solids. And shuttle's death toll is higher because the program was a mess pre-Challenger, and there are 7 on board instead of 1-3. Even Columbia was largely a launch problem, although little noticed until re-entry. Of course, if the TPS of the capsule/ shuttle is not exposed at lift-off, then it can't be damaged.

And yeah, capsules are probably safer, although less versatile. Doesn't mean the approach of a space place should be abandoned. It has a lot of advantages. And note Soyuz is not perfect, as have been 2 re-entry failures, out of about 200, although that number may be off. But it's a similar rate compared to the shuttle re-entry experience.

They did, several years ago. But they had a small supply of old tanks (with the old foam) in their inventory. Columbia's flight used the second last of these old tanks.

In fairness, the issue of falling foam was known, but it wasn't considered to be a danger, just an annoying bug. Heck, even a month *after* the accident, the best minds on the planet still can't figure out how the foam drop could have done enough damage to threaten the orbiter.

Here are some links, found by looking for the reporter's name

• Tallahassee Democrat
• Orlando Sentinal, (last item)
• PDF of the court Ruling
• Lawsuit Website, with a link to video report by TV station of their victory.
• Information clearing house
• Info on video network.com

First off, some are saying they will force retailers to pay the tax to their state, others say they want to force the retailer to pay the tax to the buyers state. Bwaaa hahahha!

Second, the federal exemption for internet sales tax doesn't run out until 2004. I admit, they can speed that one up if they pull for it.

Third, and last, is that this crosses state lines. Do you think states are going to sit down and divide the pie fairly?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! *gasp* *gulp*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* *choke*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! *gasp* *choke* *chortle* *THUD!*
Quick, some one show Michael Powell how to use e-bay!

*Boat tax, 6th paragraph

When I turned to the editorial page of the Chicago Tribune this morning, I was greeted by this column by Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel. Always a voice of measured rationality, she sums up the whole thing quite tidily.

or maybe...

LEARN 3H DOWSING - Access your intuition for true answers to any issue. Be your own healer, then help heal others. Free 2 hour workshop. 12 hr class w/workbook $135. 407-301-0348

It wouldn't say I know more than most kids my age, but at least it would show I have a personality.

Links will require searches.

or maybe...

LEARN 3H DOWSING - Access your intuition for true answers to any issue. Be your own healer, then help heal others. Free 2 hour workshop. 12 hr class w/workbook $135. 407-301-0348

It wouldn't say I know more than most kids my age, but at least it would show I have a personality.

Links will require searches.

• link one
  
• link 2
  

WE'RE AT WAR!

Yeah, when we shouldn't be. We should find and "remove" all terrorists but treating terrorists as an entity that can have something so simplistic as a war combat them is ridiculous. It's much worse than trying to win Vietnam by bombing it - bombing or invading Afghanistan will accomplish even less, except that we will be hurt even more in retribution and it will again be on our land where we are most hurt. Vietnam, by comparison, was straight-forward. Stopping airplanes from being made into bombs is one thing but, for instance, do you realize how many double-bed semi's carrying gasoline or lethal chemicals (e.g. chlorine) are on the road in the U.S. at any one time? You know how easy it would be to hijack, say 30 of them in a day and coordinate a massive set of explosions across the country? Are we going to have armed guards on all semi's (and no, a truck driver high on Black Cadillacs with a gun under the seat doesn't help.)

/.ers seem to be just as affected by the arrogance and immediate patriotism as the heads of gov't. If you notice, other countries such as Russia, France and Italy, and people such as the Dalai Lama and Pope John Paul II are already telling us to rethink our strategies. Many countries are already prepared for us to overstep our bounds and are starting to send signals that after a certain point (which seems imminent) we will be left alone in our cycle of violence with terrorists. Our "amazing patience considering" is really not so amazing from the perspective of people outside this nation; IMO I am somewhat impressed that Bush is waiting until he gets enough proof before he continues the cycle of retribution that started with Israel and Palestine. Is it possible, just possible, that we're not quite as level-headed, calm and rational as we think we are? We need to allow for some minor infringements of privacy, sure. If I go to an airport I'll have no problem with them opening up my luggage and checking by hand every item from my shirts to my dirty magazines for anything suspicious. Same if I'm going in to an important gov't. building. If I'm sitting at home and writing to my friend or my mom, the gov't. can back the fsck off. It's not like unencrypted email is the preferrred choice of communications for terrorists.

But it doesn't get reported because, bzzzt, the global media (including those based outside of the US) are mostly owned by the very people who benefit from our stolen election. Why don't you see what these folks have to say about it?

This is a load of bullshit. For those of you who still think the election was "stolen," please consult this AP (that's ASSOCIATED PRESS, not MEDIA CONGLOMERATES) article available from the Orlando Sentinel website:

http://orlandosentinel.com/news/sns-heraldrecount. story

The Sentinel largely printed stories indicating that Bush would have lost until this final story came out.

The truth is we will never know FOR SURE who would have won, but it wasn't because the election was "stolen," it was because many parts of Florida used incredibly outdated voting equipment.

P.S. And just so you don't think I'm biased, I voted for Harry Browne, not Bush.

Here is one time line. This one is written and not a visual time line. This is also interesting. The only problem is that their is is a gap from 1975-90. This is the my favorite site This site starts in 1980 but it is very indepth about DOS, widows, and Microft itself! This is a nice time line also. It covers 1975-2000.

There is this nice Microsoft Timeline, covering 1975 till 2000, right over here. It is not exactly what you asked for, but its a M$ Timeline. Enjoy.



You're tired of Slashdot ads? Get junkbuster now!

The reason I ask if you read the article in detail is that it states one thing, but cites facts which imply another. It is an impressive achievement of spin, but little else. Bush did not win a statewide recount, he won the recount based on undervotes in the counties Al Gore tried to have selectively counted (according to the article you cited). The article implies Bush won the state, when in fact they only discussed a subset of the existing data and ignored a large portion of the data gleaned from recounts in other, more republican areas which surprisingly favored Gore.

Specifically, recounts conducted by the Orlando Sentinal and further discussed in the Kausfiles indicate that the overvote in largely republican counties, ignored by both sides, would have resulted in a win by Al Gore by several thousand votes, even using the most stringent recount standards. The reason turns out to be the unambiguous votes by many first time voters, who voted for Al Gore, then wrote in Al Gore and marked the write-in box as well. As unambiguous votes they would have, by law, been counted for Al Gore. Apparently many people misunderstood the write-in box as a "confirmation" box, a sort of check to make sure the vote was counted correctly (and is a strong indication that voters really do need to be educated in exactly how the ballotting process works).

The upshot is this: If Al Gore had gotten his way (selective recounts of Democratic counties) Bush would have been declared the winner. However, if the entire state had been recounted correctly, current data indicate that Al Gore would have won handsomely. It is an interesting ethics lesson, both that, had Al Gore done "the right thing" he would have won and no one could have reasonably denied him a recount.

By all indications, Al Gore won the election, both in Florida and in the US as a whole. The Bush camp knew (or at least suspected) that this was the case and pressed ahead, taking the presidency without a full and proper accounting of the votes in the state (contrary to every other close election in the country, where recounts were in fact conducted, including hand recounts of ballats unreadable by machine).

The fact that the opposing side behaved in a disengenous manner by not requesting a statewide recount and trying to select particular counties instead does not in any way diminish the fact that the Bush camp has usurped the electorial process and taken office in opposition to the explicit will of the American people. That makes him a usurper as far as I am concerned, and I strongly suspect history will, in time, agree, no matter the amount of spin his supporters may put on the issue in the short term.

Finally, I should note that my point in referring to Dubya as the Usurper is not intended to somehow "drive him from power", but to be in his face that he doesn't belong there, he has no mandate, and he'd better tread softly and not attempt to shove his right-wing agenda down our unwilling throats. It is important that we as a people show as much backbone as we can, in a peaceful manner, lest such behavior be repeated in the future (perhaps next time by the democrats). Our democracy is more important than either of those clowns (and for the record, I didn't vote for either of them), and it does not serve our democracy at all for us to take this sort of thing without comment, nor for our so-called "fourth estate" to curry favor in an effort to enhance their access to public figures by promoting such blatently biased spin.

It depends on your definition of "won" and "lost."

If your definition is, who was legitimately chosen by the American people, then according to the presse's recount, Gore won Florida handilly by any recount standard (save that which allows only machine recounts and thereby propogates systemic errors such systems entail, with no possible check or balance).

The Usurper, George W. Bush, is in office because of a supreme court willing to throw the constitutional process to the wind in order to pay back political favors 7 of the 9 justices owed the Republicans in general and the Reagan/Bush/W faction in particular.

By the "democratic" definition George W. Bush and the GOP lost, resoundingly.

Now, if you define victory as he who assumes power by whatever means then, yes, The Usurper won, just as Milosevic won (until recently), just as Stalin won, just as Idi Amin won.

The problem with accepting such a nondemocratic outcome without complaint is that it encourages future such actions by one or the other party. It is important for us, the people (who were the only real losers in the last election), to be in the Usurper's face, to call him such to his face and make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that we know what he did, that he is illegitimate, and that he'd better not even think of trying to shove his right wing agenda down our unwilling throats unless he wants to face widespread, vocal, and disruptive discontent.

The alternative is to encourage both parties to rely on increasingly undemocratic means to subvert the electorial process, until the behavior becomes so outrageious and so eggregious that people do rise up in violent reaction, which is the last thing any sane mind would want. Far better to voice our discontent loudly now and strongly discourage any such future behavior on the part of either party.

Be sheeple and lose your democracy, be a vocal, nominally free citizen, and at least you have a chance, however small, of preserving it.

It's time for the U.S. Congress to debate the privacy issue and make some real reforms.

There is really nothing to debate, from the point of view of either the people or congress.

We the people know we should have privacy, and that the practice of selling our personal data without our explicit permission (for each and every sale individually) should be illegal, with penalties containing some real bite, including heavy fines and jail time for the offendors. There is really little if anything to debate.

Likewise, on the congressional side, members of both parties have whored themselves out to their campaign contributors (not just their personal campaigns, but to those who contribute large sums of soft money to their party's funds). Present among these in no small number are the very firms who make so much money at our expense, selling our privacy at wholesale rates to whomever comes their way. So there is nothing for them to debate: they aren't going to turn around and screw those who pay them so well.

Now, there is reason for a boistrous debate between congresses position and that of the people, but alas, since congress makes the laws, and the people have such a short attention span that they need have little fear of voter backlash for ignoring us, it is unlikely that the poeple would win such a debate in anything more than an abstract and theoretical way.

The only thing government truly fears are masses in the street, protesting, day after day, week after week. The only reason they fear this is because such actions represent the clearly implied threat of "shape up or face a toppled government or, worse, armed revolt."

Unfortunately, we the American people have been indoctrinated for thirty years that protesting is "stupid," "uncool," "pointless," "ineffective," and even "counter productive." None of this is true, of course, but it is almost universally beleieved. This makes it hard to get people on the street for issues they do care about in large numbers. Doing so day after day, week after week, for a period long enough to effect real change in policy, has become next to impossible.

Add to that that both The Usurper and his erstwhile opponent, Al Gore, as well as our previous president, Bill Clinton, all persue equally reprehensible policies when it comes to encryption, privacy, search and seizure, and consumer rights in general. While the Usurper is shoving his right wing agenda down our collective throats and taking actions which will probably ignite a new cold war and thereby benefit the bottom line of numerous defense companies who have him in their pocket (against the express will of the American people as the, mostly unreported, press conducted recount has demonstrated), it should be noted that, with respect to the issues most important to the technical community, such as privacy, freedom of speach, and intellectual property, Ralph Nader was indeed correct in saying that the only difference between Al Gore and The Usurper is the speed with which their knees hit the ground when in the presence of their corporate paymasters.

If hand recounts are less accurate than machine recounts, why are hand recounts ordered by law in case in dispute in both Florida and Texas, as well as most of the other states?

Not true. What the Texas law does say is that if both a hand and machine recount are requested, only one, the hand recount is performed. Under Texas law, one may not have multiple recounts. In Florida, it is up to each county, provided they have the results in by deadline. Furthermore, as the Washington Post found, most states don't count dimples.

How easy is it to stuff the ballot box when you're in a roomful of extremely partisan observers from the other side? Do you think the Dem's are ripping out chads right under the Republicans noses?

Not conclusive at all. After all, the Republicans did complain about the interpretations of dimpled chads that Broward County came up with. The Republican judge on the Broward County board disagreed with tons of the calls, and one Republican observer was thrown out for disagreeing with a call. So, just because the Republicans were there didn't mean they didn't object to the calls. They just didn't control the process.

How can Gore have "clearly lost" the hand recount when the recount wasn't allowed to finish? Do you think shipping in goons to harass election canvassing boards into calling off recounts is an acceptable outcome in a Western democracy?

Because the race is over after either the arbitrary deadline the Florida Supreme Court made, or the original deadline in the statute the Legislature passed before the election. As for the "goons" complaint, the Democratic election supervisor in Miami-Dade County told the Los Angeles Times that the demonstration was peaceful, and did not intimidate him. He would have made the decision anyway, as there wasn't enough time. Don't forget that the Democrats on the County board originally voted not to have a manual recount, until the Gore campaign threatened to sue them. As a Democrat, it would have been easy for him to claim he was intimidated; he didn't.

The woman who certified this vote, and who has consistently attempted to block all attempts at hand recounts, is Bush's co-campaign chair in Florida. How can this be allowed to happen? Do they not have conflict of interest laws in Florida? Further, her job is due to be slated out of existence at the end of her term, which means she's looking for work. She'll get a plum appointment in a Bush administration, maybe even an Ambassadorship. Is this the way we do elections in America? Sounds more like one of those new Russian states making it's first attempt at democracy.

She does have an obvious defense, that it is her job and she was following the law. After all, the Attorney General for Florida jumped in the dispute, and he managed Gore's campaign in Florida. The judges and workers in Broward County and elsewhere who judges the dimpled ballots voted for Gore, and some of them contributed to his campaign, had stickers for him on their cars, and are members of the DNC. (Evidence, as though it matters: here) Surely there were conflicts of interest there too? At least her job had very straightforward deadlines in law, and later dictated by the courts-- the local Democratic officials were interpreting dimples and stray marks, which has much more room for bias. She certified all recounts that came before the legislated deadline. She then certified all recounts before the Florida Supreme Court imposed deadline.

Why are most of the optical counting machines in Florida in Republican areas, where the shitty old punchcard systems are in place in Democratic strongholds?

Not true. The Orlando Sentinal published a list of spoiled ballots for counties and electoral systems. It lists tabulation systems used, and who won each county. There's also a link to a map. Note that optical systems and punchcard systems are distributed proportionally in counties the each candidate won, although Gore did have slightly more spoiled ballots in counties he won.

About the only area on which we differ is "who squandered whose lead" during the campaign - this election was IMHO the Dems' to lose the day Bush got the nomination, and I'm amazed it wasn't a Dem landslide.

(And thanks for correcting me on whether the Dems actually sued Broward or not.)

On the subject of who's more likely to benefit from manual recounts, that's likely a function of whether the Optiscan or the punch-card system was used, and that varies on a county-by-county basis.

It appears from this report that it may be a moot point - my initial reading is that most of the punch-card counties are heavily-Democratic, and that Gore could therefore reasonably have been expected to win a statewide manual recount. (Background: My hunch is that the optiscan system is less subject to "valid, but uncounted vote" error, whereas the chad problem with punch cards has been rehashed time and again).

So that may be the real reason for the Republicans' initial and current reluctance (which we've both interpreted as a tactical error on their part) to call for hand recounts in heavily-Republican counties.

As for the guns and the fact that most of the world's population is scrounging for food instead of worrying about politics, true enough - though if you really wanna split hairs, India has a history of electoral violence, China probably would have civil unrest, except that their elections are pretty much open-and-shut cases, and most of the countries in Africa, where people arguably ought to be most concerned with eking out a living (and least about politics) has a long and bloody history of political unrest.

I found this on a post in a kuro5hin.org story which has since been killed. I reposted it in another kuro5hin story and repost it here again. References for these statements are to be found in a link at the end of the FAQ.

----------------------------

[This draft #4 was prepared by Rich Cowan (rcowan@lesley.edu) with help from Paul Rosenberg, Dan Kohn, Jonathan Prince, Marc Sobel, subscribers to the Red Rock Eater News Service and the electronic mail discussion florida-recount-discuss@egroups.com, and the Yale Law School Student Campaign for a Legal Election, 127 Wall Street New Haven, CT 06511 -- spin@pantheon.yale.edu]

1) Myth: Al Gore has a responsibility to concede the election.

Fact: A 330 vote margin out of 6 million votes cast in Florida is incredibly close! It is roughly equivalent to a 1-vote margin in a city with 40,000 people and 18,000 voters. It is extremely rare for an election this close NOT to be contested for several weeks until a manual recount can take place, with observers from both sides taking part and inspecting ballots. This kind of detailed recount has not yet taken place.

According to the US Constitution and the Laws of Florida, it is the responsibility of officials in Florida to certify the election results. November 17 is the deadline for absentee ballots sent from overseas to arrive. Since the election is close enough in Florida, Oregon, and New Mexico to be affected by absentee ballots, the results in those states cannot be certified before that date.

2) Myth: the number of "spoiled ballots" in Palm Beach County was typical. In a press briefing televised live on all networks on 11/9/00, Karl Rove of the Bush campaign compared the 14,872 invalidated ballots in the 1996 Presidential race to 19,120 ballots for President that were spoiled in this election.

Fact: the Bush campaign was comparing apples and oranges. There were actually 29,702 invalidated ballots this year in Palm Beach County. This is almost twice the number in 1996. "19,120" refers to only those 2000 ballots which were thrown out for voting for two Presidential candidates. The remaining 10,582 ballots had no choice recorded for President.

According to the Palm Beach County elections office (http://www.pbcelections.org), voters this year were not confused at all by the rest of the ballot. For example, less than 1% of U.S. Senate votes were invalidated because of multiple punches, compared with over 4% in the Presidential contest.

3) Myth: The Palm Beach ballot is definitely illegal due to the presence of punch holes to the left of some of the candidates.

Fact: According to the Secretary of State's office, there is a loophole in Florida law that may allow ballots used for voting machines to deviate from the rules governing paper ballots. This view has been contested by hundreds of Florida voters. The final decision on the legality of the ballot is likely to be made in court, as long as this issue could have an effect on the election.

It is possible that the ballot could be ruled illegal on other grounds, such as the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act or the Americans With Disabilities Act.

4) Myth: "The more often ballots are recounted, especially by hand, the more likely it is that human errors, like lost ballots and other risks, will be introduced. This frustrates the very reason why we have moved from hand counting tomachine counting." -- Former Sec. of State James Baker, speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign at a press briefing televised by all networks on 11/10/00.

Fact: In 1997, George W. Bush signed into law a bill stating that hand recounts were the preferred method in a close election in Texas. The bill, "HB 330", mandated that representatives of all parties be present to prevent fraud. Laws establishing rights and procedures for handrecounts also exist in Florida (see Title IX, Chapter 102). In fact, the Orlando Sentinel, (orlandosentinel.com) reported that a partial hand count of Presidential ballots this year was ordered by Republicans in Seminole County, where Bush led Gore. This count took place on 11/9 and 11/10, widening Bush's lead by 98 votes. The Bush campaign did not complain about this hand count; nor did it complain about the hand count on 11/11/00 which put Bush slightly ahead of Gore in New Mexico.

There do exist machine voting systems which are fairly accurate, but antiquated punch card systems are notoriously inaccurate. They were outlawed in Massachusetts in 1997 by Secretary of State William Galvin after a Congressional primary that was also "too close to call". The problem is that if the punched-out pieces of cardboard are not completely removed from the punch card, they can obstruct the card reader and the votes will not be counted. A manual recount of such cards can clearly reveal the voter's intentions.

5) Myth: The process is unfair because hand recounts were held only in liberal areas of Florida, where Gore stands to pick up the most votes.

Fact: It is true that a statewide recount would be more fair, and the Bush campaign has every right to request one. According to Florida law, hand recount requests must come from the campaigns, not from the state. To fail to request what is commonly referred to as a "defensive recount" in conservative areas of Florida, they may be making a tactical blunder that will cost them the election.

It is also true that there were voting irregularities in the counties where the Gore campaign requested recounts.

6) Myth: "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3407 votes there. According to the Florida Department of State, 16,695 voters in Palm Beach County are registered to the Independent Party, the Reform Party, or the American Reform Party, an increase of 110% since the 1996 presidential election" -- Ari Fleischer of the Bush Campaign, 11/9/00. The 2,000 votes received by the Reformparty candidate for Congress indicate that party's strength in Palm Beach County (James Baker on Meet the Press, 11/12/00).

Fact: Of those 16,695 voters, only 337 (2 percent) are in the Reform Party according to Florida state records. The Reform party candidate for Congress, John McGuire, is connected to a more centrist wing of the Reform Party, predating Buchanan's involvement. An analysis of his support indicates that it came largely from reform-minded Ralph Nader voters.

Regarding Buchanan's vote total, the Washington Post reported that his vote percentage in Palm Beach county was four times as high at the polls as in absentee voting. Even Buchanan himself admitted on 11/8/00 on the Today Show that many of his votes actually "belonged to Al Gore". So did his campaign manager, Bay Buchanan.

7) Myth: If Gore (or Bush) ends up winning the popular vote, he really should win the election even if he loses Florida and other states.

Fact: This is not the way the U.S. Constitution is written. The Electoral College decision, imperfect as it may be, is the only one that matters. It may be possible to reform or eliminate the electoral college in the future, so that small states would no longer receive extra electoralvotes out of proportion to their population. But until this change is made by Constitutional amendment, the Electoral College is still the law of the land.

8) Myth: The Cook County, Illinois ballot from the home district of Gore campaign chair Richard Daleyis similar to the "butterfly" ballot used in Palm Beach County (reported by Don Evans, 11/8/00)

Fact: According to the Chicago Daily Herald on11/10/00, the ballots in Chicago which had"facing pages" were referendum questions which only had two punch holes, Yes and No.

9) Myth: The election process in Florida outside of Palm Beach County was fair.

Fact: Actually, thousands of irregularities in over a half-dozen categories have already been reported:

-Ballots ran out in certain precincts according tothe LA Times on 11/10/00.

-Carpools of African-American voters were stopped by police, according to the Los Angeles Times (11/10/00). In some cases, officers demanded to see a "taxi license".

-Polls closed with people still in line in Tampa, according to the Associated Press.

-In Osceola County, ballots did not line up properly, possibly causing Gore voters to have their ballots cast for Harry Browne. Also, Hispanic voters were required to produce two forms of ID when only one is required. (source: Associated Press)

-Dozens, and possibly hundreds, of voters in Broward County were unable to vote because the Supervisor of Elections did not have enough staff to verify changes of address.

-Voters were mistakenly removed from voter rolls because their names were similar to those of ex-cons, according to Mother Jones magazine.

-According to Reuters news service (11/8/00), many voters received pencils rather than pens when they voted, in violation of state law.

-According to the Miami Herald, many Haitian-American voters were turned away from precincts where they were voting for the first time (11/10/00)

-According to Feed Magazine, the mayoral candidate whose election in Miami was overturned due to voter fraud, Xavier Suarez, said he was involved in preparing absentee ballots for George W. Bush. (11/9/00)

-According to tompaine.com, CBS's Dan Rather reported a possible computer error in Volusia County, Florida, where James Harris, a Socialist Workers Party candidate, won 9,888 votes. He won 583 in the rest of the state. [11/9/00] County-level results for Florida are available at cnn.com.

-Many African-American first-time voters who registered at motor vehicles offices or in campus voter registration drives did not appear on the voting rolls, according to a hearing conducted by the NAACP and televised on C-SPAN on 11/12/00.

10) Myth: "No evidence of vote fraud, either in the original vote or in the recount, has been presented." -- James Baker, representing the Bush campaign on 11/10/00, in a Florida briefing.

Fact: The election was held just last week, so of course many instances of fraud have not yet been substantiated. Even so, authorities have already uncovered clear evidence of voter fraud involving absentee ballots.

In Pensacola, Florida, Bush supporter Todd Vinson never received the absentee ballot he requested. According to the Associated Press on 11/9/00, it was determined after an investigation that this ballot was received by a third party, filled out with a forged signature, and then sent in. Assistant State Attorney Russell Edgar, when asked if other absentee ballots might had been intercepted, said, "I agree there may well be many more than just this one".

Much media attention on the issue of voter fraud has been focused on Wisconsin where cigarettes were offered to homeless people who were casting absentee ballots, presumably for Gore. The Gore campaign claims the cigarettes were not used to "buy" votes. On Monday 10/13, the London Times reported a suspected pro-Bush vote fraud operation in Miami involving over 10,000 ballots.

11) Myth: It is highly unusual for judges to intervene after an election. Since the designer of a disputed ballot in Florida is a member of the party contesting the election, a legal challenge is impossible.

Fact: The most fundamental right of a democratic society is the the right to vote, and to have one's vote correctly counted. The legal system exists to ensure that people's rights are not violated. Whether the person committing a violation is a Democrat or a Republican does not affect how that violation should be treated.

Elections are ultimately struggles for political power so it should not be surprising that disputes are often resolved in court. Of course judges can be biased. That is why they must explain their decisions and why bad arguments can be overturned on appeal.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1998, in connection with a disputed Volusia County election, that if there is "substantial noncompliance" with election laws and a "reasonable doubt" about whether election results "expressed the will of the voters" then a judge must "void the contested election, even in the absence of fraud or intentional wrongdoing." (source: Wall St. Journal, 10/10/00). The Journal indicated that there was little legal precedent for a revote in just one area where an election occurred. It would be more likely for a court to order a new election or to overturn the result.

These issues have arisen in other states as well. In a Massachusetts Democratic primary in 1996 for the US House, the election was so close after recounts that a judge had to make the final decision after examining some of the ballots that were incompletely punched, to determine the intention of the voter. The law clearly dictated that it was the will of the voter that mattered, and the candidate who was behind, William Delahunt, went on to win the final election. Call the Capitol Switchboard if you have any doubts at 202-225-3121.

12) Myth: Richard Nixon's party in 1960 did the honorable thing in not contesting the results of the election.

Fact: According to a column in the Los Angeles Times, 11/10/00, "on Nov. 11, three days after the election, Thurston B. Morton, a Kentucky senator and the Republican Party's national chairman, launched bids for recounts or investigations in not just Illinois and Texas but also Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, NewJersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. A few days later, Robert H. Finch and Leonard W. Hall, two Nixon intimates, sent agents to conduct what they called "field checks" in eight of those 11 battlegrounds. In New Jersey, local Republicans obtained court orders for recounts; Texans brought suit in federal court. Illinois witnessed the most vigorous crusade. Nixon aide Peter Flanigan encouraged the creation of aChicago-area Nixon Recount Committee. As late as Nov. 23, Republican National Committee general counsel H. Meade Alcorn Jr. was still predicting Nixon would take Illinois." Recounts continued into December, but did not succeed in overturning the result of the election.

13) Myth: "Governor Bush is still the winner, subject only to counting the overseas ballots, which traditionally have favored the Republican candidates" -- James Baker, Press Briefing, 11/10/00

Fact: The number of yet-to-be-counted overseas military ballots is likely to be in the range of 500 to 2000, based on the 1996 election in which there were 2,300 oversees absentee ballots overall, with roughly 60% of them coming from people enlisted in the military. According to CNN [11/10/00], the military overseas ballots that arrived before the election were already counted.

The biggest difference from 1996 is that Clinton -- who avoided the draft -- was running against Dole, a decorated military veteran.

In 2000 George W. Bush -- who avoided service in Vietnam and actually lost flying privileges in the Texas Air National Guard -- is running against Al Gore, a veteran who served in Vietnam.

It is just as possible that Gore will gain a few hundred votes from veterans as the other way around. It is also possible that the Gore ticket will pick up votes from Democratic diplomatic appointees, or temporary residents and dual citizens of Israel.

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Obviously one of the big headlines will be the role of the Nader vote in this squeeker. Nader has a pretty substantial following here in Gainesville and particularly at the University of Florida. He generated lots of enthusiasm (and cinched my vote) when he came to UF an October 12th rally (including Q & A).

Monday, October 30th (or 23rd, I can't remember which), the UF Speakers Bureau was talking with Gore's camp abous bringing Gore to an on-campus rally that Thursday. For a while it looked like it was going to happen, but in the end Gore chose not to come.

If Gore really does lose Florida by a couple of hundred votes, I wonder if he will think back on his decision to pass on UF. On a campus of over 40,000 students, he definitely could have swayed a couple hundred votes from our large undecided population.

I'm the hall director in a residence hall of about 500 students, mostly freshmen. The overwhelming feeling here is utter disgust that Bush and Gore both completely failed to address the concerns of the nation's college population (especially its large progressive faction). Now either Bush or Gore is going to pay for that negligence. Hopefully the major parties will jump on the clue bus before the next election cycle.

Maybe Gore and Bush should have spent more of their mis-spent youths listening to The Doors ("...they've got the guns, but, we've got the numbers...")

we will be needing some heavy metal along the lines of an SMP Sun or SGI box. We need a system that can support (at max) about 100 simultaneous users working on large image files stored on the server.

The newspaper I work for has 75-85 ad builders (30 or so a shift) working on Macs. They regularly work with full page ads that are more than 70 meg each (color doubletruck runs 230 meg or so). For the past four years, they've been using a single processor (486DX-66) Novell server (hardware by Tricord) with 270 gig of SCSI disk space and 512 meg of RAM. It has a pair of 10mbps NICs. It has an uptime of more than two years. This machine is probably half of what you need. It's slow but rock solid.

We're replacing it before the end of the year with a big IBM Netfinity with four PIII processors, 320 gig of disk space, four 100mbps NICs (one per ad subnet and a hot spare) and a gig of RAM. I suspect that this would do what you need it to do and then some.

We also need cataloging software that will allow PC/Mac users to browse documents via thumbnails and job numbers.

CCI's AdDesk is your overall solution. We (the Orlando Sentinel who I am not speaking for) have used it for several years now. If you look at the top 25 newspapers in the world, more than half will be using CCI's products for either Editorial or Advertising.

AdDesk ain't great but it's the best available in terms of a full-featured, highly-expandable, highly-customizable solution. It's built on top of standard applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) held together by common (Oracle, TCL, etc.) running on either AIX or Solaris.

What do you guys think?

I think you have two choices. You can go cheap, buy some heavy hardware and put an operating system on it. Or, you can go with an AdDesk-like solution, spend a bunch of money and have a real advertising creation environment. It all depends on the size of your budget.

InitZero

The title of an editorial by syndicated columnist Charley Reese