I know 2 guys that have done quite well for themselves off of one or two dumb ideas, and another who's on the verge.
My in-laws neighbor is the only one I would call "rich", but I don't know how rich he is. I know he owns a Dodge Viper and a fair amount of heavy equipment (Steamroller, bulldozer, etc.) which he keeps at his house for personal use, and I know he bought a Honda(?) dealership because he was buying new Quads, jet skis, snowmobiles, etc so often that he figured it would save him money in the long run (not a Honda car dealership, obviously). I don't even know what his origional dumb idea was, just that he and his brother built a company around it and sold it.
Another guy owns a kite string factory. He doesn't actually make string, though rumor has it he was involved in the developement of Spectra, but he does have patents on a couple of machines which put usable lengths of it on handles/spools/etc that are more convenient for kite flyers. Now, these machines are just plywood benches with timer controlled electric motors on them and some sort of custom clamping mechanism to hold the handle (often also plywood). I wouldn't call him rich, but he's been able to support his family and grow his business over 25 years to where he has about 10 full time employees and maybe another 20-30 during the "on" season.
The last guy invented a motorized wheelbarrow (which has been done before, but he's come up with several improvements which he patented). He's just starting up his company now, but things are promising enough that he was able to quit his old job and focus on that.
None of these guys are really rich, in the sense that they're able to live the extravagant lifestyles that you see on TV, but they're doing quite well, and they likely won't have to worry about retirement or if there'll be anything left to pass on to their kids.
I wouldn't say that being worth a few million makes someone rich, though. My grandmother's estate turned out to be worth something like $7M, but a lot of that was tied up in investments. She was able to live comfortably off the dividends and even do some travelling, but I don't think anyone would have really considered her "rich".
That said, I'll be a happy guy if I'm able to live as well when I'm that age.
and then as the parent suggested, present them with rebuttals from the other side that they can then try and rebut.
That's the opposite of what the parent suggested. The parent doesn't suggest presenting the arguements of the other side at all, but rather asking "how?" and "why?" and forcing each side to explain/defend/justify its position on its own ground without having to respond to the rebuttals from the other side.
My strong suspician is that both sides are based on circular logic, and will be equally prone to falling apart under this sort of scrutiny.
(built opon the initial explorations in this field by Wahabi'ists of Saudi Arabia to justify the mass murder of Americans and Israelis through terrorism)
This part was totally unnessecary, and seriously detracted from an otherwise very funny post. Do you seriously think the radical muslims of the 20th century invented that concept? Have you never heard of the Crusades? I'm not saying the popes of the middle ages invented it either, but the modern islamic fundamentalists haven't come up with anything new, even compared to the Crusades.
Actually, it really isn't as hard as you think to put that kind of mileage on a car. When I was going to a JC full time, and living at home so I could afford to do so, my commute was about 60 miles. That's 120 miles round trip, which I got to do 5 days a week since I was taking a bunch of lab classes (Physics, Chemistry, etc). That only took up 2-3 hours of my day, depending on traffic.
Just about everyone I know has been in a similar situation at one time in their lives. Yeah, 60k miles in a year is a little more than that, but it doesn't really seem that absurd to me.
I don't think anyone ignores it, the problem is that every new package format has it's own strengths and, more importantly, it's own weaknesses. There isn't one that so clearly better than the others that there's no reason not to switch.
Now I'm sure there're plenty of people who will read this and scream "You idiot, the package system I use is so much better it's rediculous!" The problem is, they'll all be talking about a different system, and they'll all be right.
We have the same "problem" with desktops, text editors, etc (I like haveing the choice, since, for example, I prefer vi and WindowMaker, so I don't really see it as a problem, but I understand the arguement that it is).
The solution is not to standardize on a format, but to standardize on a package manager that can handle all of them in an integrated fashion.
This really is more of a desktop-level problem than a distro-level problem
I definately have to disagree with you here.
Linux is not Windows. The desktop isn't an integral part, it's merely another optional application. If you make package management desktop-level, you basically leave out Linux's strongest market, since most admins who know what they're doing don't even have a monitor hooked up to their Linux server, let alone X or a DE.
I agree with the basic premise, but it needs to be done as a CLI tool with all the DEs making interfaces for it.
The problem is that things don't always work right, and when they don't work right, getting them fixed is usually much more difficult on Linux than it is on Windows.
That may have been true at one time, and it may be true now for some distros, but certainly not all. Since Suse 8.0 I've found Linux MUCH easier Windows.
IMNSHO, a better comparison would be to the Mac. Stuff just works, as long as it's supported.
The thing is, though, how often do regular people have to deal with this kind of stuff? Hardly ever, and most of the time when they do run into problems they call somebody who knows computers rather than deal with it themselves regardless of OS! For that reason, the conclusions the article draws are NOT bullshit.
I don't know that it's a problem with a solution. I do know that what somebody declares war on you (as OBL did) you don't give into them -- you hunt them down and you kill them. It's that simple.
Of course you don't think there's a solution, because the only solution you can think of is a proven failure. Here's a tip for you: the world is not black and white. Fight or surrender are not the only options. Why don't you try getting some information from somewhere other than Fox News, and maybe try actually thinking about what's going on in the world?
Ive read parts of the Koran and I dont see how they justify that stance,
That's easy, it's the same as the Crusades: most of the people can't read, and so they simply take the word of the power hungry clerics.
A good example is Arafat. This is a man who really doesnt care about the people he purports to lead and protect. His actions continually point to the fact that he just wants power. He is a terrorist against the Israili peple and the Palistinian people. What the US needs to do in this situation is tell him that he has a month to bring the terrorists under control before the US takes the gloves off of Isreal and gives them a free hand to take care of the problem up to and including killing him. I would be willing to bet that he would bitch and complain and yell bloody murder but at the end of that month there would be peace or he would be dead and another leader would come up and take his place and take control of the terrorist organizations. As for Isreal, they are dependent on US support so just threaten to remove it if they sabotage the peace process.
I'm sorry, but you clearly haven't been paying attention to the situation in Isreal/Palestine for the last few years. Sharron has been the problem, not Arafat. Arafat has already proven that he wants to work for peace. It's when Sharron took over on the Isreali side and began aggresivly reversing the gains that had been made that the process started falling apart.
The Zapatistas? Can you name a single person killed, or even injured, in a Zapatista attack? Do you actually know anything about them, or were you just grabbing names of revolutionary groups randomly?
The problem with these space based weapons is that they produce no terror. They serve absolutely no deterrent purpose. They are useless unless fired and appear as a "bolt from the blue" to the affected parties. There is little or no warning or "Callback" involved.
It seems to me that we have several thousand years of evidence that a "bolt from the blue" is indeed an effective deterrent, even though hardly anyone has ever seen anyone stricken down by God. This is exactly the sort of thing that IS effective in the sort of environments of festering ignorance that produce terrorists.
I prefer old fashioned Nukes for terror. That big hot mushroom cloud tends to get into the immagination and work quite well. You have to shoot one at somebody every now and then for this to work. The concept of you or your devices being suddenly destroyed without apparent cause or warning just doesn't come into mind very well especially for those not so aware.
I don't see how a nuke is really any different in this regard from a space-based beam weapon. I very much doubt that the general populace was living in fear of the atomic bomb before we dropped a couple on Japan. I think it's unreasonable to expect instant fear of a new weapon when its capabilities haven't been demonstrated.
That said, a nuke isn't a particularly good terror weapon either, at least for the purposes of terrorism (deterrence is a different thing entirely). If you want to cause terror, you need to (a) have survivors, and the more the better, and (b) have the survivors witness something truely horrific. I'm sorry, but dismemberment is more horrific than vaporization. Think 9/11. Not that many people were killed, but it was still an extremely effective terror attack.
(which still doesn't look at the direct corelation that where guns are banned, gun related crime is tiny in comparison to the US)...which in turn doesn't look at the direct corelation that where all citizens are required to own guns, and trained in their use, gun related crime is also tiny in comparison to the US.
Now, if someone would implement the Reveal Codes feature in OpenOffice, every WP user could switch and I could be completely happy with OpenOffice.
You mean like the button on the left sidepanel of OOo with the paragraph symbol on it? I haven't used WP since 5.1, but it seems to me that OOo button does exactly what I remember Reveal Codes doing.
So then why aren't their Desktop PCs and Laptops reasonably priced too?
You mean Apple? If so, I think you'll find that the iBooks are very reasonably priced. The last time I did a comparison I found the iBooks actually beat x86 laptops in my price/feature comparison. I'll agree that Apple desktops are overpriced though. (Yes, even the "super-duper-dirt-cheap" eMacs the Mac lovers love to point to).
Disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever, owned anything made by Apple.
Yeah, but the thing they try and make big noise about is how singles sales are being hit
Not just singles, CASSETTE singles. As everyone knows cassettes are going the way of the 8-track, so sales of cassette singles SHOULD be declining. There has been relatively little decline of CD singles.
Since I refuse to support the RIAA, I had to drive acrooss town to find the albums, and only the admittedly sleazy used-cd store made any money. I wish I could have supported the band - the music's quite good.
Bands don't make money from album sales anyway, so it's pretty much a moot point. If you want to support them go see them live and/or buy a t-shirt or some other merchandise. The majority of ticket and merchandise sales goes directly to the band, whereas with CDs the band gets 2% or less split up among the whole group, but only after they've paid off the advance they got to record it in the first place.
In addition to the excellent points made by tgma and DaHat, you are missing the fact that monopoly is the entire point of copyright, and has been since its inception in American law (yes, I'm familiar with the full history of copyright, and it's irrelevant here).
The whole point of copyright is that it gives the creator of a work a monopoly on that work. They can then assign it, sell it, license it, etc as they see fit. Record companies have based their businesses on getting rights to those monopolies in whatever way they can, but there is nothing inherently illegal about that, even though some of their methods are extremely sleazy.
Furthermore, calling the RIAA a monopoly is like calling the American Bar Association a monopoly. Both are simply industry associations, not really businesses in and of themselves. Actually, it would be more appropriate to call the ABA a monopoly, since they actually exert some control over who can practice law in the US, whereas anyone can start up their own record company without any input or permission from the RIAA at all.
The only thing the RIAA members have done that falls under anti-trust law is price fixing, which they've already been nailed for.
If you look at Microsoft and the stiff - yes, stiff - competition they face in the marketplace you'll see that there are many good free and commercial alternatives - nobody is locked in to Microsoft.
I love Linux as much as the next/.er, but can you honestly say that Linux, or OSX, is a viable replacement for someone who's been using Windows + MS Office for the last 5-10 years? I can't, and I've been using Linux exclusively at home for going on 2 years now. Yes, the transition is possible for almost anyone, but it's far from painless, and as long as everybody else is doing business in.doc MS is going to be necessary for the vast majority of businesses.
Their falling stock price reflects the real world.
Bullshit. Their falling stock price repflects the fact that their core products are mature, so their customers don't feel a need to stay on the upgrade treadmill.
IBM and Linux are attacking them strongly in the small business segment.
Only if you're talking about servers, but then, MS has never had a monopoly on servers, so that obviously isn't what we're talking about here.
There is competition, and there are choices.
There may be choices, but there is decidedly NOT competition. If there was, MS wouldn't own 90+% of the desktop market.
The man was wrongly imprisoned for 12 years. He shouldn't be billed for it period. How much he was awarded in compensation is completely irrelevant.
I think we have a new definition of chutzpah here (formerly "the character of a man who would murder his parents, then plead for the mercy of the court because he's an orphan").
* OCR scanning can be made more accurate by making the print nice and big ( think "BUSH" in huge letters on a 3x5 card), and by limiting the possible matches (don't allow "JOE" to be a possibility if Joe wasn't a canidate).
Bzzzt, wrong! You MUST allow write-ins. Any system that doesn't is broken far beyond the niggling complaints you're bringing up here.
The trouble there is that you're using the system that is suspect to verify itself and also that election fraud is not a random, statistical process.
Only if you're an idiot.
Seriously, you can pick up a cheap barcode scanner and hook it up to any random PC and it'll change barcode into plain text. From there you can either have a human verify it, or you can go the automated OCR route if you want to verify more than just a random sample.
I could build a working prototype of such a system for under $10k, and once production ramped up I could probably sell them for a few hundred each.
The real key is that barcode scanners are cheap, so you use that in the machine(s) at the polls. Each district would probably only need one verification machine. The real reason for the human readable part is so the voter can verify it themselves at the poll.
1) There are only two people to pick from anyway, so it's not like they're going to be able to elect Charles Manson for president.
How ironic that someone with an id like yours would be so remarkably ill-informed.
There is ALWAYS a space for a "write in", in which case you, me, and everyone else can quite easily cast a vote for anyone we choose. In fact, I actaully know a woman who has voted for Mickey Mouse in the last 15 presidential elections.
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I couldn't agree more.
I know 2 guys that have done quite well for themselves off of one or two dumb ideas, and another who's on the verge.
My in-laws neighbor is the only one I would call "rich", but I don't know how rich he is. I know he owns a Dodge Viper and a fair amount of heavy equipment (Steamroller, bulldozer, etc.) which he keeps at his house for personal use, and I know he bought a Honda(?) dealership because he was buying new Quads, jet skis, snowmobiles, etc so often that he figured it would save him money in the long run (not a Honda car dealership, obviously). I don't even know what his origional dumb idea was, just that he and his brother built a company around it and sold it.
Another guy owns a kite string factory. He doesn't actually make string, though rumor has it he was involved in the developement of Spectra, but he does have patents on a couple of machines which put usable lengths of it on handles/spools/etc that are more convenient for kite flyers. Now, these machines are just plywood benches with timer controlled electric motors on them and some sort of custom clamping mechanism to hold the handle (often also plywood). I wouldn't call him rich, but he's been able to support his family and grow his business over 25 years to where he has about 10 full time employees and maybe another 20-30 during the "on" season.
The last guy invented a motorized wheelbarrow (which has been done before, but he's come up with several improvements which he patented). He's just starting up his company now, but things are promising enough that he was able to quit his old job and focus on that.
None of these guys are really rich, in the sense that they're able to live the extravagant lifestyles that you see on TV, but they're doing quite well, and they likely won't have to worry about retirement or if there'll be anything left to pass on to their kids.
I wouldn't say that being worth a few million makes someone rich, though. My grandmother's estate turned out to be worth something like $7M, but a lot of that was tied up in investments. She was able to live comfortably off the dividends and even do some travelling, but I don't think anyone would have really considered her "rich".
That said, I'll be a happy guy if I'm able to live as well when I'm that age.
and then as the parent suggested, present them with rebuttals from the other side that they can then try and rebut.
That's the opposite of what the parent suggested. The parent doesn't suggest presenting the arguements of the other side at all, but rather asking "how?" and "why?" and forcing each side to explain/defend/justify its position on its own ground without having to respond to the rebuttals from the other side.
My strong suspician is that both sides are based on circular logic, and will be equally prone to falling apart under this sort of scrutiny.
(built opon the initial explorations in this field by Wahabi'ists of Saudi Arabia to justify the mass murder of Americans and Israelis through terrorism)
This part was totally unnessecary, and seriously detracted from an otherwise very funny post. Do you seriously think the radical muslims of the 20th century invented that concept? Have you never heard of the Crusades? I'm not saying the popes of the middle ages invented it either, but the modern islamic fundamentalists haven't come up with anything new, even compared to the Crusades.
Actually, it really isn't as hard as you think to put that kind of mileage on a car. When I was going to a JC full time, and living at home so I could afford to do so, my commute was about 60 miles. That's 120 miles round trip, which I got to do 5 days a week since I was taking a bunch of lab classes (Physics, Chemistry, etc). That only took up 2-3 hours of my day, depending on traffic.
Just about everyone I know has been in a similar situation at one time in their lives. Yeah, 60k miles in a year is a little more than that, but it doesn't really seem that absurd to me.
I don't think anyone ignores it, the problem is that every new package format has it's own strengths and, more importantly, it's own weaknesses. There isn't one that so clearly better than the others that there's no reason not to switch.
Now I'm sure there're plenty of people who will read this and scream "You idiot, the package system I use is so much better it's rediculous!" The problem is, they'll all be talking about a different system, and they'll all be right.
We have the same "problem" with desktops, text editors, etc (I like haveing the choice, since, for example, I prefer vi and WindowMaker, so I don't really see it as a problem, but I understand the arguement that it is).
The solution is not to standardize on a format, but to standardize on a package manager that can handle all of them in an integrated fashion.
This really is more of a desktop-level problem than a distro-level problem
I definately have to disagree with you here.
Linux is not Windows. The desktop isn't an integral part, it's merely another optional application. If you make package management desktop-level, you basically leave out Linux's strongest market, since most admins who know what they're doing don't even have a monitor hooked up to their Linux server, let alone X or a DE.
I agree with the basic premise, but it needs to be done as a CLI tool with all the DEs making interfaces for it.
Nice!
I would make one change, though: "Coders" should be "Copyright Lawyers". Other than that, very well done!
The problem is that things don't always work right, and when they don't work right, getting them fixed is usually much more difficult on Linux than it is on Windows.
That may have been true at one time, and it may be true now for some distros, but certainly not all. Since Suse 8.0 I've found Linux MUCH easier Windows.
IMNSHO, a better comparison would be to the Mac. Stuff just works, as long as it's supported.
The thing is, though, how often do regular people have to deal with this kind of stuff? Hardly ever, and most of the time when they do run into problems they call somebody who knows computers rather than deal with it themselves regardless of OS! For that reason, the conclusions the article draws are NOT bullshit.
I don't know that it's a problem with a solution. I do know that what somebody declares war on you (as OBL did) you don't give into them -- you hunt them down and you kill them. It's that simple.
Of course you don't think there's a solution, because the only solution you can think of is a proven failure. Here's a tip for you: the world is not black and white. Fight or surrender are not the only options. Why don't you try getting some information from somewhere other than Fox News, and maybe try actually thinking about what's going on in the world?
Ive read parts of the Koran and I dont see how they justify that stance,
That's easy, it's the same as the Crusades: most of the people can't read, and so they simply take the word of the power hungry clerics.
A good example is Arafat. This is a man who really doesnt care about the people he purports to lead and protect. His actions continually point to the fact that he just wants power. He is a terrorist against the Israili peple and the Palistinian people. What the US needs to do in this situation is tell him that he has a month to bring the terrorists under control before the US takes the gloves off of Isreal and gives them a free hand to take care of the problem up to and including killing him. I would be willing to bet that he would bitch and complain and yell bloody murder but at the end of that month there would be peace or he would be dead and another leader would come up and take his place and take control of the terrorist organizations. As for Isreal, they are dependent on US support so just threaten to remove it if they sabotage the peace process.
I'm sorry, but you clearly haven't been paying attention to the situation in Isreal/Palestine for the last few years. Sharron has been the problem, not Arafat. Arafat has already proven that he wants to work for peace. It's when Sharron took over on the Isreali side and began aggresivly reversing the gains that had been made that the process started falling apart.
The Zapatistas? Can you name a single person killed, or even injured, in a Zapatista attack? Do you actually know anything about them, or were you just grabbing names of revolutionary groups randomly?
The problem with these space based weapons is that they produce no terror. They serve absolutely no deterrent purpose. They are useless unless fired and appear as a "bolt from the blue" to the affected parties. There is little or no warning or "Callback" involved.
It seems to me that we have several thousand years of evidence that a "bolt from the blue" is indeed an effective deterrent, even though hardly anyone has ever seen anyone stricken down by God. This is exactly the sort of thing that IS effective in the sort of environments of festering ignorance that produce terrorists.
I prefer old fashioned Nukes for terror. That big hot mushroom cloud tends to get into the immagination and work quite well. You have to shoot one at somebody every now and then for this to work. The concept of you or your devices being suddenly destroyed without apparent cause or warning just doesn't come into mind very well especially for those not so aware.
I don't see how a nuke is really any different in this regard from a space-based beam weapon. I very much doubt that the general populace was living in fear of the atomic bomb before we dropped a couple on Japan. I think it's unreasonable to expect instant fear of a new weapon when its capabilities haven't been demonstrated.
That said, a nuke isn't a particularly good terror weapon either, at least for the purposes of terrorism (deterrence is a different thing entirely). If you want to cause terror, you need to (a) have survivors, and the more the better, and (b) have the survivors witness something truely horrific. I'm sorry, but dismemberment is more horrific than vaporization. Think 9/11. Not that many people were killed, but it was still an extremely effective terror attack.
(which still doesn't look at the direct corelation that where guns are banned, gun related crime is tiny in comparison to the US) ...which in turn doesn't look at the direct corelation that where all citizens are required to own guns, and trained in their use, gun related crime is also tiny in comparison to the US.
Not so much silence as speachlessness, I think.
Now, if someone would implement the Reveal Codes feature in OpenOffice, every WP user could switch and I could be completely happy with OpenOffice.
You mean like the button on the left sidepanel of OOo with the paragraph symbol on it? I haven't used WP since 5.1, but it seems to me that OOo button does exactly what I remember Reveal Codes doing.
So then why aren't their Desktop PCs and Laptops reasonably priced too?
You mean Apple? If so, I think you'll find that the iBooks are very reasonably priced. The last time I did a comparison I found the iBooks actually beat x86 laptops in my price/feature comparison. I'll agree that Apple desktops are overpriced though. (Yes, even the "super-duper-dirt-cheap" eMacs the Mac lovers love to point to).
Disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever, owned anything made by Apple.
Yeah, but the thing they try and make big noise about is how singles sales are being hit
Not just singles, CASSETTE singles. As everyone knows cassettes are going the way of the 8-track, so sales of cassette singles SHOULD be declining. There has been relatively little decline of CD singles.
So really, even that arguement is complete BS.
Since I refuse to support the RIAA, I had to drive acrooss town to find the albums, and only the admittedly sleazy used-cd store made any money. I wish I could have supported the band - the music's quite good.
Bands don't make money from album sales anyway, so it's pretty much a moot point. If you want to support them go see them live and/or buy a t-shirt or some other merchandise. The majority of ticket and merchandise sales goes directly to the band, whereas with CDs the band gets 2% or less split up among the whole group, but only after they've paid off the advance they got to record it in the first place.
Am I missing something here?
You are.
In addition to the excellent points made by tgma and DaHat, you are missing the fact that monopoly is the entire point of copyright, and has been since its inception in American law (yes, I'm familiar with the full history of copyright, and it's irrelevant here).
The whole point of copyright is that it gives the creator of a work a monopoly on that work. They can then assign it, sell it, license it, etc as they see fit. Record companies have based their businesses on getting rights to those monopolies in whatever way they can, but there is nothing inherently illegal about that, even though some of their methods are extremely sleazy.
Furthermore, calling the RIAA a monopoly is like calling the American Bar Association a monopoly. Both are simply industry associations, not really businesses in and of themselves. Actually, it would be more appropriate to call the ABA a monopoly, since they actually exert some control over who can practice law in the US, whereas anyone can start up their own record company without any input or permission from the RIAA at all.
The only thing the RIAA members have done that falls under anti-trust law is price fixing, which they've already been nailed for.
If you look at Microsoft and the stiff - yes, stiff - competition they face in the marketplace you'll see that there are many good free and commercial alternatives - nobody is locked in to Microsoft.
/.er, but can you honestly say that Linux, or OSX, is a viable replacement for someone who's been using Windows + MS Office for the last 5-10 years? I can't, and I've been using Linux exclusively at home for going on 2 years now. Yes, the transition is possible for almost anyone, but it's far from painless, and as long as everybody else is doing business in .doc MS is going to be necessary for the vast majority of businesses.
I love Linux as much as the next
Their falling stock price reflects the real world.
Bullshit. Their falling stock price repflects the fact that their core products are mature, so their customers don't feel a need to stay on the upgrade treadmill.
IBM and Linux are attacking them strongly in the small business segment.
Only if you're talking about servers, but then, MS has never had a monopoly on servers, so that obviously isn't what we're talking about here.
There is competition, and there are choices.
There may be choices, but there is decidedly NOT competition. If there was, MS wouldn't own 90+% of the desktop market.
The man was wrongly imprisoned for 12 years. He shouldn't be billed for it period. How much he was awarded in compensation is completely irrelevant.
I think we have a new definition of chutzpah here (formerly "the character of a man who would murder his parents, then plead for the mercy of the court because he's an orphan").
I agree, but I think the punch-card systems are bad for their own reasons. In my county we use scantron, which seems like a much better solution.
* OCR scanning can be made more accurate by making the print nice and big ( think "BUSH" in huge letters on a 3x5 card), and by limiting the possible matches (don't allow "JOE" to be a possibility if Joe wasn't a canidate).
Bzzzt, wrong! You MUST allow write-ins. Any system that doesn't is broken far beyond the niggling complaints you're bringing up here.
The trouble there is that you're using the system that is suspect to verify itself and also that election fraud is not a random, statistical process.
Only if you're an idiot.
Seriously, you can pick up a cheap barcode scanner and hook it up to any random PC and it'll change barcode into plain text. From there you can either have a human verify it, or you can go the automated OCR route if you want to verify more than just a random sample.
I could build a working prototype of such a system for under $10k, and once production ramped up I could probably sell them for a few hundred each.
The real key is that barcode scanners are cheap, so you use that in the machine(s) at the polls. Each district would probably only need one verification machine. The real reason for the human readable part is so the voter can verify it themselves at the poll.
1) There are only two people to pick from anyway, so it's not like they're going to be able to elect Charles Manson for president.
How ironic that someone with an id like yours would be so remarkably ill-informed.
There is ALWAYS a space for a "write in", in which case you, me, and everyone else can quite easily cast a vote for anyone we choose. In fact, I actaully know a woman who has voted for Mickey Mouse in the last 15 presidential elections.