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China subjects something like an order of magnitude more people to execution than we do in the USA per capita and actually had to institute a system of death vans to efficiently kill people because executions were becoming a drain on resources. The strongest speculation is that the Chinese are organlegging; they lower the bar for execution, and then they carve the people they kill up so that they can sell their internal organs. They don't permit even the family to see the body after execution and whatever they haven't sold on the black market is cremated to destroy any evidence...

The question is who did the people of Florida actually intend to be president. I don't care if it "would take a long time", the point is to accurately reflect the will of the people. We need to trust that the system is working correctly. The hasty intervention of the Supreme Court needlessly opened a deep wound in this country. Many felt that it was justice denied not "sparing" us anything.

Now as to who the people of Florida actually intended to elect it is pretty clear that it was Gore. Check out this summary from USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-10 -recountmain.htm. It is interesting to note that there we a lot structural issues that were working against Gore.

So why are we even talking about this? Because until we have a voting system that everyone can trust we are not really living in a democracy.

Too bad There won't be any fish left by the time the virus mutates!

I would choose option E or a combination of D and E.

E) Remove the ability for pork/"special projects" to be funded with NASA's budget.

This article references 2006 figures but the principle idea is the same. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-06 -11-nasa-pork_x.htm?POE=TECISVA. Pork/"special projects" cripple NASA's budget on unrelated projects. Some of those projects may yet be important to other things (not NASA) but perhaps they should be funded another way.

This is a lame excuse.
Here is the logic behind this: SOX punishes CEOs and CFOs for false financial statements. If we deliver something after the customer has paid, we can not recognize all the revenue when we receive the cash. Since we want to recognize the revenue right away because it boosts our earnings, we can't deliver you the update or else we will commit a fraud. Hence, we make you pay for it separately.
The controversy started at the end of the '80s, early '90s, when Circuit City had to restate its earnings because of FASB 90-A that regulates accounting for extended warranties and service contracts. M$ used that rule to decrease earnings in the wake of the antitrust case by postponing recognition on Office sales and also built cookie jar reserves to smooth earnings.

Old news in US...

From URL http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife /2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm :

> PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A 15-year-old girl has been arrested for taking nude photographs of her self
> and posting them on the Internet, police said.

(Found via the English Wikipedia article on Child Pornography, found via Google.)

• "John Ashcroft is not a patriot." -- Howard Dean
• "I don't think it's patriotic to put on a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for a photo op." -- Wes Clark
• "We hear them in the cries of the false patriots who bully dissenters into silence and submission. These are familiar fights. We've fought and won them before. And with John Kerry and John Edwards leading us, we will win them again" -- Ted Kennedy
• "The policy that the administration is following in Iraq is ... anti-patriotic at the core..." -- Sen. Graham
• "we deserve a president who stands up for patriotism and its real definition, which is doing what makes our country stronger and safer and more secure." -- John Kerry
• "a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States." -- Howard Dean

Scary amounts of americans think that saddam was behind 9/11. I remember the numbers being terrifying, around 90+% at times. Here is the first link (showing 70%) I found

It got so lame. I remember Bush giving a vague uncommittal denial of any link, and the next week polls showed a majority of americans still believed Saddam had a personal responsibility for 9/11. It really doesn't help that to this day Bush et al talk about Iraq and the war on terror as if they were inseperable.

People aren't owning their homes now, they are getting longer and longer term mortgages, as I pointed out, they own larger debts. Before the globalism push 30 year to 50 year to interest only mortgages were mostly unheard of., you just didn't see it. And inflation? You believe the official numbers when they removed the *critical* M3 stats last year? Why would you believe that? Why would they do that other than to help hide the fact the printing presses are roaring? Independent analysts have done their best to come up with some real numbers and they are findng it is (roughly)twice as high as the government claims. Here, check it out. And the jobs? Huh? They reclassified burger flipping as manufacturing, and stuff like that. They count the loss of a 20$ an hour job with full complete and robust bennies manufacturing with a swap in to walmart at 7$ with toy bennies as "still a job".

I don't. It's a job maybe, but not the same. that's cooking the books to make it look the same or better when it isn't.

I take the long view, because I've been around. I just don't fall for three card monte stuff.

Sorry, it's still hooie. I am not tryng to flame or be mean but it's hooie. They are cooking the books and calling debt wealth, when it is not. Globalism as they are practicing it, not academic theory as it is somehow taught but as it is on the ground, is serving mostly to increase the bottom line of the top 1% while they push credit on everyone else, give it to them, and try to convince them more credit=produced wealth. Sorry, that is the magic beans for the cow scam. It really is. Credit created out of thin air with the central bankers and printing press money and fractional reserve is not the same as produced wealth, nor will it ever have the same impact as using actual work that leads to produced wealth then being traded.

Sorry, it's a scam for the rubes. As for other nations in a similar situation per debt and trade imbalances? Yes,hell yes, they are in potential future deep doo doo as well unless they stop the huge manufacturing shift.

You can NOT printing press your way to "wealth". You have to work for it by producing true tangible wealth. You can't just reshuffle around what is already produced and call it "more". You can dump the same 5 gallons of water back and forth with many buckets, and I don't care how many buckets you wind up using (analogy is with paper financial "products" here), you'll still only have 5 gallons. You can reclassify how much is in a gallon, you still won't have any more.

And if you still want to argue,you need to argue against some powerful folks who know what is what. I could point you to a Fed governor who said the same thing just a few months ago, or perhaps the GAO office, and other top economists, they saw the credit exposure globally is pretty risky right now. And if you recall, it wasn't too many weeks ago the US sent a huge economic delegation to china basically begging them to do something with the yuan, and the chinese told them to *get stuffed* because they are calling the shots now because they *produce wealth*, they don't just talk about it and manage it and bring up powerpoint slides, they manufacture it. They also said they have "enough dollars now".

"Enough". Let that sink in a scosh.

Wealth is grown, mined, or manufactured from the previous two. That's it. Everything else is paperwork shuffling or wealth rearranging and servicing. Servicing wealth does not produce more wealth, that's a variation on the broken windows economy. Extending more layers of credit paper on top of already produced wealth does not increase the pool of wealth, it just makes more credit and dilutes the produced wealth. Printing up more money using numbers picked out of thin air doesn't make your money more valuable, it makes it less valuable. Yes, you can "free trade" in it,and trade is a wonderful

Actually, I've come to the conclusion that this is impossible, that the backlash from consumers against the iPhone and money lost from 3rd party developers would be too great to not allow 3rd party applications.

I simply can not believe any company would be this stupid in this day and age. It's like coming out with a game system but not allowing 3rd party developers to make games for it. What if the PSP or DS only ran games made by Sony or Nintendo? You'd have what, 5 titles each maybe? How many millions of dollars would they lose?

They're trying to corner the top 1% of gadget geeks, those select few willing to blow $500 on a glorified cellphone. Gadget geeks will not be happy using only the few apps that are included. Apple will be forced to sweeten the pot, and doing means millions of dollars of profit in licensing fees.

I only have this to say: if Apple doesn't allow 3rd party developers on their cellphone than I'm sure either Microsoft or Google will.

It's a well known fact that liberals have fewer children than conservatives.

Ethanol and biodiesel from algae.

Actually, I believe it is now illegal to melt US-minted coins.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-12-14-melting-b an-usat_x.htm/

Wiki is NOT pure knowledge. Wiki is known as "collective knowledge" which, in itself can be utterly wrong .
Advertising, a 175 billion USD a year enterprise is evil ONLY as an opinion. A wrong one at that (if it didn't benefit both parties in some way, would it really even exist anymore?)
Corporations are only very rarely faceless and in all facets of the word, art = some form of advertisement (for the artist, for a cause, for what it represents...) I'd sure as hell rather play a Burger King Xbox game than see a statue of the Virgin Mary with shit spread on her face...

Oh yeah, and are YOU going to front the bandwidth and storage bill? Maybe it's just me, but I personally don't have >$400,000 floating around.....

I totally agree with you about what you said about job skills, valuing yourself, and putting your own interests first.

However, while the economy as a whole is improving, only a small percentage are seeing a benefit. The middle class is shrinking and the jobs that are being created are low-paying jobs without benefits, and they are replacing high-paying union jobs with benefits. Bankruptcies are at an all-time high. It's not just people buying flat-screen TVs and 16" rims, but families paying for cars to get to work, housing, and their children's school.

When the middle class shrinks, most people go into poverty, while a few become wealthy. I fear the US might look like most South American countries in 50 years, with a dozen or so families owning most of the country while most everyone else lives in near poverty.

I know there are problems with unions, and as a young person, a lot of my friends who have had union jobs have complained that it allows slackers to slack. But, I view them as a necessary evil, like government, as a check and balance against corporate power. Business people had slaves and serfs 150 years ago; there's nothing special about today that would stop them from instituting slavery again if it were possible. Perhaps one solution to have competition between unions in a workplace.

Nice little whoring there, but I'd reconsider that advice unless your planning the trip for very soon: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-01-01-pas sport_x.htm

P.S.: I'm from Quebec and maybe it's because my native language was designated as "freedom" in the U.S. at the time, but my experiances at the border have been much less than perfect.

What I meant was, surprise amongst surprises, no Democrat has ever found voting irregularities in races they lost.

And the same for the Republicans, which is as surprising as the fact that professional atheletes never point out fouls by their own team that the refs have missed.

Provide any hint of evidence of anyone suggesting that a Democrat winning was caused by voting irregularities in a recent election.

Sure: the Republicans challenged the last gubernatorial election in the state of Washington for seven months.

The Hubble repair mission is tentatively scheduled for May 2008, and has been labeled STS-125.

> We can all tell the difference

There is opinion and then there is fact.

> An ad placed by google has opportunity cost associated with it.

A tip does not.

compared to legal video sales. The largest target continues to be adult oriented content and TV shows,

Pirated TV shows, eh? Anyone surprised? It's the content provider's fault, and its their problem. No sympathy here. The reason it's pirated so much is that there's no viable alternative. VERY few shows, except a few tokens available on iTunes (The Office, etc), can't be bought legally until the season finishes and the DVD comes out. If it comes out. Months later.
So let's say the DVDs come out. Most shows are $40 a season!! The few episodes available for download cost a whopping $1.99. So however I buy it, chances are, I'm looking at $2 per episode, for something I'm probably only going to watch once. What a ripoff! I mean, I really like Lost, but once you find out what happens in the end, there really isn't much value in rewatching it (IMO). Therefore, it's not quite comparable in value to me purchasing one of my favorite movies on DVD that I'll likely watch over and over again. Sure I could rent it, but that's kind of a pain in the ass. And that doesn't even address technical issues.
I buy my favorite music online, I can buy it in a format that doesn't suck. With mp3, it Plays for Sure (tm) on my iPod, or God forbid off-brand mp3 player. Let's say I decide to buck up for a DVD of one of my favorite TV Shows. Now I have to deal with DVD player region crap. Can I just put it on my PSP/iPod Video, etc? Apparently not. That seems to be illegal under the DMCA. Well, maybe if I pay extra money for it at the time of purchase. Sounds like a crappy deal to me.

So let's recap. I'm a (relatively) honest consumer looking to watch my favorite show because I missed it on TV. It's overpriced, I have to wait as long as months to get it, it's overpriced, I'm probably only going to watch it once, it's overpriced, it comes in a crappy format, and I can't copy it (legally), and I can't put it on my mobile device. Piracy to the rescue! Any questions?

The CEO's of big oil come first, the cogs that make the machine work should remember that it's the giving that's important, not the receiving.

Ah right, because censorship and oppression is all fun and games until someone gets killed?

I hope you don't call any TSA officials an idiot. Wouldn't want to have the cops come and "inconvenience" you.

I'll bet there's nothing keeping you from placing all those pennies on railroad tracks and having a train stomp those suckers flat.

And stop linking New York Times, you [expletive deleted]s. I don't want to fucking register nor do I want to have to take the goddamn time to go to bugmenot.com to get a NY Times uid & pwd. Here's some links that don't require registration to read: here , here , here , and here . Anyway, now that they said don't melt those coins, guess what they are going to do? Melt those coins.

(Current Health Care Status) * (Government Efficiency) = Big Disaster

Except that is wrong. The best (most efficient) Health care system in the world is one run by the US Government.... You'll never believe where. The Veterans Administration!

"Why don't they ban "tag" while they're at it, a game which encourages *actual* attacking of another human being in the game." We're one step ahead of you... http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-06-26-rec ess-bans_x.htm http://www.washtimes.com/national/20061018-114713- 2243r.htm http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/art icles/2006/10/18/attleboro_elementary_school_bans_ tag/

"How are content creators supposed to support themselves? I mean writers, actors, singers."

Well, apparently the first thing is to avoid being associated with record companies that belong to the RIAA:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-15 -artists-rights_x.htm

That's probably 90% of the battle right there.

We give local police guns and other equipment to protect the public, but we can't trust them with cellular-jamming equipment?

From 1975 to 2006 they made a lot of stuff for the U.S. market in their factory in Enfield, Connecticut. (Which apparently was quite the state-of-the-art operation when it was constructed.) You can read the local paper's article about the first round of layoffs here.

Ultimately, their plan is to offshore everything including manufacturing and logistics. The Enfield operations will mostly go to Mexico and China, where the production is being subcontracted out to Flextronics; about a third of their headquarters factory in Denmark is being cut, with production moving to the Czech Republic.

Apparently they're going to keep making some of the Bionicle parts in the Billund factory, but the writing is pretty much on the wall: it's all headed East eventually.

As for the apparent decline in quality, I can't find any information on whether they've started to ramp up production from Flextronics or the Czech factories yet, or if they have, how long it would take those parts to get into circulation (the layoffs in CT only started in 3Q2006) so I'm not sure that the decline is attributable to offshoring quite yet. It could just be that simultaneous with or prior to the decisions to move production, they attempted to cut costs by reducing QC expenditures, and that's why things have slipped.

"lets say the article is right does it matter?"

It does in that people will be wary of doing online commerce and that will hit the bottom line.

"so far as i know, neither I, nor any member of my family, nor anyone i know, has actually been seriously hurt by malware"

You must be the only one on the planet then.br>
"as we know, the whole id theft thing is a media exaggeration"

"An Emmy-winning film producer whose life was disrupted after hackers stole her Social Security number"

was Re:does it matter

so they could take over the Iraqi Oilfields

I seem to recall a few years back when Bush was claiming that the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil. Of course, now that the cost of the war is expected to pass one or maybe two trillion dollars, Iraqi oil couldn't pay for it, so it's easy to backpedal on that claim.

You are correct sir.

No, he is wrong, there are two programs. One which tapped calls internationally as the grandparent posted, and a second one that collected phone records on nearly every single American's domestic calls. Did you call in for pizza? Did a terrorist call in for pizza (God forbid that terrorists actually run the pizza delivery place, mafia style)? Does it matter? Who knows! Nobody knows what the NSA is going to use such an enormous block of data for, since the vast majority (99.999999999999%?) of the calls have nothing to do with terrorism. Google other articles about Qwest's refusal to participate to see the millions in juicy taxpayer dollars they passed up that the other telecoms were apparently all too happy to suck out of your tax dollars for this service.

is infested with many of the same moonbat types

It's a shame the infestation hasn't managed to drive out the infestation of ignorant Bush supporters who can't even keep track of what their president is doing. Maybe we need to swallow a cat to get the spider now?

I honestly hope we don't enact restrictions like Europe (and elsewhere) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-02-26-euro pe-free-speech_x.htm.

"If the Constitution doesn't protect scum like me, it doesn't protect anybody."---Larry Flint.

They are relying on the so-called Voter Vault, a computer at GOP headquarters loaded with voting history and consumer information that can be used to "micro-target" voters. By analyzing such bits of data as what magazines the members of a household subscribe to, how many children they have, what types of cars they drive and what churches they attend, the program can pinpoint who is most likely to be open to a Republican appeal.

I only expressed my opinion

whereas you attempted to force your viewpoint upon me

That doesn't make me believe that you come from a dissimilar culture to the one that you show such disdain for.

As far as the Freudian slip you mention, well you caught me. I do consider myself to have a high standard of living.

I really wonder wherever you had a shitty day you feel to get defensive, that wasn't my intention.

I presume that the courts consider tasers as occupying the same rung in the ladder of escalating force guidelines as pepper spray.

Considering that stunguns are potentially lethal, I hope not.

If you want consciencious yet capable officers, you have to pay for them. Force your local politicians to fire and prosecute consistently and have them pay officers enough to attract educated individuals who want to positively affect their communities.

Absolutely (as I recently argued here); and I would add, get rid of laws that educated and intelligent individuals will find odious to enforce.

But isn't that why we have judges and jury. So they can make the proper distinctions within the spirit of the law? I mean, it's bad enough that typos are causing various problems. But there has to be some leeway for the judge to go by the spirit of the law.

Put the tinfoil hat away. Those numbers come straight from Sony exec interviews over the past week.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-11-16-ps3 -mania_x.htm

Let's see, Sony announces 600k more PS3s are about to be shipped to the US. eBay PS3 prices drop.

I wonder if there is some sort of connection...

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-11-14-ps3 -problems_x.htm

TOKYO (Reuters) -- Sony said on Tuesday its new video game console, the PlayStation 3, does not run about 200 PlayStation and PlayStation 2 software titles properly, the latest problem the electronics maker has run into in its cash-cow game business.
The PS3, which Sony calls its most important strategic product of the year, went on sale in Japan on Saturday, setting the stage for a three-way showdown with Microsoft's already available Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii.

Sony said audio features do not work on some software titles when played on the PS3, which is supposed to be compatible with games designed for its previous models, while some other titles do not work on the latest machine at all.

He believes that it is a moral issue but can not give up his three houses (including one 10,000 sq ft monster), nine cars, zinc mine, and travel by private jet? What a saint.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/20 06-08-09-gore-green_x.htm

1. Someone will argue that the RealClimate article says that CO2 lag is only at the start of interglacials, and the rest of the time it is the driving force of climate change. This ignores the fact that they never explain a mechanism for this reversal, or explain how it isn't a continuous feedback process that results in run-away greenhouse. Nor do they explain how a constantly climbing amount of CO2 suddenly causes the next ice age...
2. Someone will argue that the second article comes from USA Today, hardly a credible source, without bothering to spend two minutes with Google http://www.google.com/search?q=co2+release+from+pe rmafrost finding the dozens of scientific papers.
3. Someone will claim I work for the oil companies (I don't.)
4. My post will be modded down as -1 Flamebait to make sure no one reads it.

This article has good descriptions of the types of stuff being thrown out. Also a picure that shows just how bad the problem is. Trash is stored all over the ISS, reducing the room for real work and making non-trash hard to find! http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-06 -26-clutter-iss_x.htm Source: USA Today 6/27/2006 2:57 PM ET

According to this the ban has been softened. You can now buy chewing gum with a prescription.

Here are some other references to the chewing gum ban.

After the entire rodney king video was put out there, it was clear that he earned his beating. he struck first, twice

Rodney King lunged at the cops, but he did not hit them. He earned himself a jolt with a taser, but not a 57 strike beating.

If you know your rights and don't break laws, cops will not treat you badly.

This is simply not true. I have personally been the subject of bad treatment and verbal abuse from cops.

Tazers are making that job much more humane. A quick jolt to burn off all the energy in the violent suspect saves beating like this.

I submit that, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

LK

The PS2 didn't reach 40 million until September 2002, 2.5 years after it went on sale in March 2000. It took it until November 2005 to reach 100 million. I couldn't find any reference to the PS2 hitting 150 million. All I could find was a cite from this month saying the entire "installed base" for all gaming number 150 million.

So I really don't forsee this as being a coup for Sony. It might be, but I don't think so. I bought an N65 and then a Playstation. I bought a Playstation2 and then a Gamecube. I would have bought an original Xbox if any of my friends had them.

At $600, I will never buy a PS3, regardless of the fact that I've already pre-ordered a Wii. Ken was right - at that price, it's not a gaming machine anymore. If I buy a second console, it will be an Xbox 360, even though I loathe Microsoft.

With the high price of the PS3, the initial install base will grow very slowly. This will cause a low volume of game sales, which will further cause fewer games to come out, which will cause fewer people to buy a PS3. It will just snowball from there. Sony simply does not have the first party games to pull this off. I think Nintendo MIGHT be able to do it, but it would take a radical marketing and focus shift. But their first party titles would guarantee an initial install base to get the ball rolling. Microsoft might be able to get it going due to Halo and its penchant for just buying up game developers. Sony would have a small chance of doing it based on games that tend to be exclusive to it (at least initially), but with the pricing they have just guaranteed it will not happen.

It really just comes down to a VERY simple fact - $600. Even at $500, it's a bad deal. $500 is right around the price for a lot of people where purchases move from "do I want this?" to "do I need this?". And when you add on the price of a game and an extra controller, bumping it up around $100, most people will decide they don't need it. I think this would be true even if the Xbox and Wii were launching two years later than the PS3.

And Blu-Ray will do absolutely nothing to help sell more than a few million or so PS3s. Studies have shown that the average household income for HDTV owners is nearly $90k. The people with that kind of money would probably have bought the PS3 anyway. But the people at the lower end of the scale who really stretched their finances to buy the HDTV to begin with will be hard put to shell out for the PS3. And if you look at that study, only about half the people watch HD programming on their HDTVs. These people aren't exactly clamoring for higher quality video.

So while I could completely be wrong, I predict this could be a complete catastrophe for Sony. This opinion doesn't come from fanboism. Nintendo cured me of that with the N64 debacle. Since then I have been fairly platform neutral. Even my disgust with Microsoft wouldn't have kept me from buying an Xbox if I could have convinced my brother to get broadband so we could play online.

My prediction for hitting the different milestones are:
5 million sales in the first 9 months
30 million sales three years from launch
50 million sales five years from launch

I was reading the USA Today this morning, and they had an interesting outlook on the PS3 vs. the Wii vs. the XBox 360. It basically came down to:

PS3: You're not getting one. Ha!
Wii: Risky, but inexpensive.
XBox: Just fork over the cash for instant gratification.

I think that says a lot about the mainstream views on this generation of console.

The article can be read online here:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-11-09-con sole-cover_x.htm

You know, perhaps we'd have the patience to see things out in Iraq if we hadn't been feed lines such as "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." (Rumsfeld) or " I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." (Cheney) (these quotes from http://www.usatoday.com/educate/war28-article.htm) .

It's clear that this administration had no idea what it was getting into, and is trying to pretend that they know what's going on. They don't. It's quite time for the blame game - this thing has been bungled and if we don't start holding people responsible, no effort will be made to try to do things correctly. As W says, "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

The problem most states have is that they do not have a large pre-existing and non-partisan based bureaucracy in place with a tech background, that possesses an understanding of the potential pitfalls with electronic voting machines, along with vast experience in enforcement. These States should look for help from one that has a long history of dealing with honest and transparent auditing from electronic devices.

In Nevada, Dean Heller, the Scretary of State, decided to tap the knowledge of the Nevada Gaming Control Authority when deciding upon a system to choose. They rejected Diebold machines, judging them to be easily tampered with, and instead went with Sequoia Voting Systems, but only after a paper trail model, which was satisfactory to the state had been implemented. Sequoia's name for this version seems to be, AVC Edge® with VeriVote Printer.

Nevada was the only state in 2004 to require a paper trail in their electronic voting machines, and the election was smooth. Here's the current URL for The Clark County, Nevada(Las Vegas)Election Department's voting machine guide.

Today was my second use of the machine (I didn't vote in the primary-it tends to be pointless for non-partisan voters like me), and I have a fairly high degree of faith in its veracity. This faith is contingent on believing that any tampering from the government side would require too large of a group of individuals to keep it quiet, and that Nevada Gaming Control Authority values its integrity higher than short term partisan interests. The vote begins with signing a registered voter print-out next to my name, then a card with a programmable magnetic strip is given to me whereupon I go to a machine and insert it. Then I make my election choices using a touch screen screen. After finishing those, I am given an onscreen recap of my intended vote, and if acceptable, the vote is then printed on a continuous register tape that can be viewed behind a glass barrier, and if it is the same as my vote, I finalise my vote.

Perfect? Hardly, but it fewer problems than the punch card balloting, and the old lever voting machines that were in use before those.

Here are a few links:

• Rachel Konrad-AP, "'Paper trail' voting system used in Nevada Electronic ballot machines equipped with printers", MSNBC, September 7, 2004
• Marsha Walton, "Nevada improves odds with e-vote: Slot machine experts consulted on voting technology", CNN, October 29, 2004
• Jim Drinkard, "High-tech voting accessory: Paper", USA Today, August 8, 2005
• Associated Press, "Nevada's Seamless E-Vote", Wired, September 13, 2004

There is at least one dissenter in Nevada though:
Martin Griffith, "Citizen activist sues provider of electronic voting machines", Tahoe Daily Tribune, October 30, 2006.
Maybe a grain of salt would be a proper prescription with this link though, as 'activist' does seem to be used properly in this headline, and it is the only complaint of this nature I am aware of.

I thought the Republican Party was already fined heavily and some members arrested and imprisoned for performing denial of service attacks against Democratic phone pools trying to contact voters on election day during the 2004 election? If I had not read the multiple testimonials about this robo-calling illegality already, I would have a hard time believing the Republicans would break the law again in this way. Politics in America has become shameless under this administration. It is time to throw the lying bums out.

Typo, not meters but feet. Forgot to transpose for US audience. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/ 2004-11-21-melting-polar-ice_x.htm

The USA sweated this year through its hottest summer in 70 years, with temperatures not seen since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, according to a government report.

From June 1 to Aug. 31, as summer is defined by the National Climatic Data Center, the continental USA had an average temperature of 74.5 degrees, based on readings from hundreds of weather stations nationwide. It was the second-hottest summer temperature the government has recorded since it started keeping track in 1895. The only one warmer -- by about two-tenths of a degree -- was in 1936.

Ok, seriously, what made it so hot back in 1936? Was it just a natural occurrence, or was it man made way back then?

Transporter_ii