This is a cool idea... one problem will be how often the information is updated.
The regular maps get outdated, but they can be fixed relatively quickly. Pictures of a place--whether 3D, 2D or satellite--would take longer to update.
For an example of this, look at Highway 87 in San Jose, which was recently upgraded to a freeway for its whole length. The regular map view shows the freeway as it is today, passing over a road (Hedding) with no direct access to 87. When you switch to the satellite view, though, you see the old intersection. The satellite view has not kept up with the map.
I imagine it might be more problematic for the surface level 3D view because instead of just dealing with changing roads, you might pick a landmark that no longer exists--the little corner market that you were going to turn at is suddenly a Wal-Mart.
It's not an inherent problem with the idea--there is nothing stopping Google from keeping their images up-to-date, and a reasonable user would know that they might get thrown for a loop and to not rely entirely on the video (just as people now know not to rely entirely on the map view since they can also be outdated--such as the 87/101 interchange which had some significant changes that aren't yet reflected.)
And, of course, it would be cool just to see the video.:)
This is an interesting idea that I hadn't heard before...
I wonder where exactly the punitive damages would go, though. If it went to the government in some form, then the argument could be made that the government (in this case, the judge) would have a conflict of interest.
(Though if punitive damages are taxable today, this would already be an issue...)
Perhaps the defendant should have to put all of the punitive damages in a pile and then burn it...:)
I just bought a new computer from Dell, and, since I am a California resident, $8 was added to the price for the environmental impact fee. This fee was from just the LCD monitor I bought, which was $700 or so. That's a 1.1% fee.
When I buy a coke for 50 cents, I pay a 4 cent environmental fee, or 8%. The difference is that I can get that 4 cents back if I return the bottle--though in reality, it's just easier for me to drop the bottle in my recycle bin each week.
When customizing a system in which I decided to spend several hundred extra bucks for a slightly better processor and a couple more for more memory, this fee just seemed insignificant. It was lower than tax, and much lower than even shipping. I hate being "nickled and dimed" with government (and pseudo-government) fees (comprising 20% of my mobile phone bill for example), but in this case it just didn't matter to me.
I'm curious, though... since Dell already offers its own recycling program, why do they need to pay the fee? Or does California pay them part of the fee when they recycle the monitor?
GPS would be useful in some situations (if you want to know about a general area), but for the example of taking a "photo of a city building to see its history", GPS itself would not be sufficient.
GPS can provide a location, but it can't pinpoint what you are looking at. This is the case even with compass data indicating which direction you are pointing your device--what if there are two things in your line of site from that perspective? (Do you want information about the building, or do you want information on the kiosk in front of the building?)
Also, this is more generic than these examples anyway. What if I want information on the building and then on a street performer in front of the building? I could take a picture of the building, read about it, then take a picture of the street performer and read about him/her. GPS wouldn't be sufficient to tell me about the street performer, because he or she might move around the area.
In California, there are no annual inspections. (In some states, you have to get your car inspected to make sure the lights work, etc., but not here.)
There are smog inspections that happen every two years after your car is more than four model years old.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/smogfaq.htm
The main problem with your idea is that adding one extra Representative per state makes the problem of small states being over-represented even more exaggerated.
Look at Wyoming and California. As of 2000, each representative represents the following number of people:
Wyoming: 493,782 people (493,782 people/1 representative) California: 639,088 people (33,871,648 people/53 representatives)
After adding an extra representative, you end up with each representative representing the following number of people:
Wyoming: 246,891 people (493,782 people/2 representatives) California 627,252 people (33,871,648 people/54 representatives)
So, those 246,891 people in one Wyoming district would get the same say in the House that the 627,252 people in a California district get. That is, the voting power of someone in Wyoming would be roughly 2.5 times the voting power of someone in California.
Since the House is supposed to be the part of Congress where representation is based on population, this is problematic.
I would suggest that you modify your "draft" idea to add the extra person as a Senator--perhaps as a senator for only two years. Since the Senate is already set up to represent each state equally regardless of population, having three senators from each state does not conflict with the purpose of the Senate.
(Take it one step further... Maybe each state should only get one vote in the Senate--the senators from each state must decide amongst themselves how their state will vote. Since there are three senators from each state, you'd have a tie-breaker.:))
Prop 62 (pdf) in California would do the same thing. All of the major political parties in California are against it--the Dems, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc. The main supporters seem to be business groups and John McCain.
I brought this up in a diary about this over at Daily Kos a couple weeks ago, and there were some pretty good arguments against the proposition. Some worry that it can lead to extremist candidates (because in a crowded race, fringe candidates that can each get 10% of the vote would end up in the final two).
It seems like a better solution would be some sort of approval voting or instant runoff voting.
You have to be a US Citizen to vote, obviously. The thing is, if you look at the form, the oath that you have to sign also says "I am a U.S. Citizen." So by signing, you are swearing that you are a citizen, regardless of what the checkbox says.
It looks like that is the number one frequently asked question.:)
http://www.sixdegreesofvoting.com/faq.php
Q: Uh, where's Alaska and Hawaii?
A: Umm, we're working on it, our art department went on strike after finishing the 48 contiguous states. Please choose your second favorite state and it'll be up shortly.
Billboards in Minneapolis have sprung up recently, saying "Don't Vote".
Some people are concerned because some of the billboards are in areas with high minority concentrations.
Clear Channel, the owners of the billboards, say that it is a teaser for a "non-product" ad campaign that will be revealed October 11th.
My guess: this is actually part of a pro-vote campaign. Get people riled up by telling them not to vote, then post new billboards with some consequences of what happens if you don't vote. (Like the prov-vote ad on the radio where the guy gets his car painted lilac by a body shop who "made the decision for him".)
It is not just that people would have voted strategically, but the campaigns themselves would have had a different focus. Instead of focusing on just the swing states, the campaigns would have been much more focused on "get out the vote" in the strong, safe areas.
So, while the submitter's work is interesting as a curiosity, it does not really reflect what would have happened if this mechanism had been in place in 2000.
For that matter, I've always been uncomfortable with people who emphasize that "Gore won the popular vote in 2000!" I fully supported Gore and will vote for Kerry this year. I think that the majority of Floridians vote for Gore. But the fact that he won the popular vote is not that significant, because if it really had been an election by popular vote then the campaigns would have used different tactics, and the results would have been different. (Maybe Gore would have won the popular vote, maybe not; we just don't know.)
The candidates may not ask each other direct questions, but may ask rhetorical questions.
Basically, this is where one politician tries to be dramatic by saying "I pledge today that I will never X; will my opponent be willing to agree to this pledge also?"
A famous example was in the Hillary Clinton/Rick Lazio debate for Senate from New York in 2000. Rick Lazio came with a written pledge to not taken any soft money. He literally demanded that Hillary Clinton sign it right then, during the debate. She offered to "shake on it" instead.
It's dramatic enough so that it gets mentioned on the news, and in theory it's supposed to make people think "that pledge sounds reasonable, why won't the other candidate approve it?" The danger is that the person insisting on the pledge will look like an aggressive, petty jerk.
In theory, since the rules for these debates state that the candidates can't ask each other questions, they couldn't ask them to sign a pledge anyway. They could say "I have a signed pledged here for X; I wonder if my opponent will be willing to sign the same pledge." It's technically not a question...
I'd like to see a system where the candidate gets each elector based on which congressional districts they win the popular vote for.
This is how the electoral college votes are determined in Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1996). However, neither state has split its electoral votes yet.
If this plan was used in other states (like California), I'm sure it would lead to splits in the electoral college vote.
The main problem with this approach is that it will make political gerrymandering even more prevalent than it is today. The party in power has even more incentive than it does today to carve out districts that favor that party, be it California Democrats or Texas Republicans. (One solution to this problem would be to use independent commissions to determine the electoral map based on population and not political considerations.)
It's a minor point, but they've actually changed their name to "just" SBC, since they no longer cover just the Southwest.
This is like America On-Line becoming "just" AOL to make it more international, and Kentucky Fried Chicken becoming "just" KFC to de-emphasize the fried part (or, if you are inclined to believe such things, because what they serve is not really chicken.:))
For a while, they kept regional names whenever they bought out a phone company, but they've dropped those too now. So when they bought Pacific Bell, they kept it as "SBC Pacific Bell." Now it's all just "SBC." This will be familiar to anyone who paid attention when they changed PacBell Park in San Francisco to SBC Park.
I fail to see how this is different from advertising the price of your goods non-inclusive of sales tax
The difference is that the state government charging the sales tax doesn't let the company charge whatever they think is "reasonable" for a sales tax. The sales tax rate is the same across all companies in a given area.
Because of this, a customer can easily compare the prices from, say, Fry's and Best Buy. If Fry's advertises $18 for a DVD, and Best Buy charges $20 for the same DVD, I know the DVD will be cheaper at Fry's (even including the sales tax).
When Sprint advertises a plan for $48 and Verizon advertises a plan for $50, there is no easy way for me to compare these two plans. Both plans will charge me the same tax, but since they are free to set the regulatory fees to anything "reasonable," I can't be sure that Sprint is the better deal. Sprint may decide that $6 is a reasonable fee, but Verizon might decide that $3 is reasonable.
Of course, you could argue that Verizon should then match Sprint's fees and then lower their "advertised price," but that is exactly the problem. The companies would be competing on who could most conceal the real cost of their service.
These "hidden fees" may be less of an issue if the government set the actual fee (like they set the percentage of a tax). Then, you would know that all of the phone companies were charging the same rate, and you could actually compare advertised prices.
It's possible that the presence of the cameras actually made the abusers more harsh.
How many times do you do stupid things in pictures that you wouldn't normally do? When someone points the camera at you and you make a stupid face--would you make the stupid face at that person if they weren't taking the picture?
The same thing may have happened here. The abusers likely got caught up in the idea "this is funny! let's pose them THIS way! hahaha... now let's pose them THAT way!" If the cameras weren't there, the abuse still might have happened--but the abusers may have lost interest in it much more quickly--and thus spared some of the prisoners the abuse.
I stopped ordering from Domino's because the founder (Thomas Monaghan) is an extremely anti-gay right winger. He uses the millions he has earned to fund a lot of organizations that support his beliefs. He has every right to his opinion, but why should I give him money and indirectly support causes that would see people like me repressed?
Re:League Women Voters Opposes Paper Trails
on
Evoting in the News
·
· Score: 1
One of the arguments the League of Women Voters makes on this page is that people with disabilities and people who cannot read English will not be able to verify the paper trail, so it will disenfranchise them.
While this argument makes sense, your analogy with the ATM can be extended to counter their argument. Modern ATMs use braille and headphones to let blind people use them. Just because they cannot read the receipt that ATMs provide, does that mean that no ATM should provide paper receipts?
The situation is the same for the voting machines. Assuming the machine is required to produce a paper record for each individual's vote, a blind person would not be able to read it. Does that mean that NO ONE should be able to verify their vote?
Their argument is that since blind people cannot verify the paper, we should ALL trust the machines to record the votes electronically. It would make more sense for the LARGE MAJORITY of people who can verify their votes to ensure that the machines are accurate.
If the machine is spitting out ballots that do not match the intention of the voters, the majority of people who can verify their ballots would notice there was a problem, and this problem could then be corrected. In this way, even though not everyone is able to verify the paper ballot, a sufficient number are able to verify that the machines are producing valid paper ballots. (This holds true unless the machines are misrecording the votes of only blind people.)
Alternatively, how about the idea I've seen mentioned by others on slashdot before. One machine produces a ballot the user can read in a standard format. The blind/illiterate voter takes this paper ballot and puts it into another machine (made by another vendor) that reads the ballot to the blind/illiterate voter.
Sony seems to have realized that this is a problem... the Sony DSC-F828 digital camera includes both a Memory Stick slot and a Compact Flash/MicroDrive slot.
This gives you two things: (1) you can now consider the Sony if you already have CompactFlash and (2) if you don't own CompactFlash, you can buy this camera without worrying about locking yourself into Memory Stick technology.
One problem, though--I believe writing to the memory stick pro is much faster, so you need the memory stick pro to create the highest resolution movies that this camera produces. If you're buying the camera for stills, though, it shouldn't be an issue.
They must have realized that there are a lot of people like you out there who would rather use something more standard.
If you ever visit the Lick Observatory, they have pictures that show how the tiny town of San Jose that existed when the Observatory was built has grown so large. Of course, this causes problems with light pollution. Part of their solution was an agreement with the city in 1980 to use low-pressure sodium lights that the observatory can more easily filter out.
Everyone who visits me notices that the lights in San Jose are "different" and "weird;" it took visiting the Observatory to find out why.
By the way, if you want to visit the Lick and look through the telescopes, they have summer tours that I recommend. Not only do you get to look through the telescopes and learn a lot about astronomy and the history of the Observatory, there are amazing (and even romantic) night-time views of the Bay Area. (They normally discourage night-time visits because the car headlights interfere with the telescopes.) There's a lottery for it because it is so popular:
Slashdot Mirror
David Lazarus, the guy who wrote this article, discussed exactly that back in 2003 when BofA first indicated it was setting up a subsidiary in India.
This is a cool idea... one problem will be how often the information is updated.
:)
The regular maps get outdated, but they can be fixed relatively quickly. Pictures of a place--whether 3D, 2D or satellite--would take longer to update.
For an example of this, look at Highway 87 in San Jose, which was recently upgraded to a freeway for its whole length. The regular map view shows the freeway as it is today, passing over a road (Hedding) with no direct access to 87. When you switch to the satellite view, though, you see the old intersection. The satellite view has not kept up with the map.
I imagine it might be more problematic for the surface level 3D view because instead of just dealing with changing roads, you might pick a landmark that no longer exists--the little corner market that you were going to turn at is suddenly a Wal-Mart.
It's not an inherent problem with the idea--there is nothing stopping Google from keeping their images up-to-date, and a reasonable user would know that they might get thrown for a loop and to not rely entirely on the video (just as people now know not to rely entirely on the map view since they can also be outdated--such as the 87/101 interchange which had some significant changes that aren't yet reflected.)
And, of course, it would be cool just to see the video.
This is an interesting idea that I hadn't heard before...
:)
I wonder where exactly the punitive damages would go, though. If it went to the government in some form, then the argument could be made that the government (in this case, the judge) would have a conflict of interest.
(Though if punitive damages are taxable today, this would already be an issue...)
Perhaps the defendant should have to put all of the punitive damages in a pile and then burn it...
I just bought a new computer from Dell, and, since I am a California resident, $8 was added to the price for the environmental impact fee. This fee was from just the LCD monitor I bought, which was $700 or so. That's a 1.1% fee.
When I buy a coke for 50 cents, I pay a 4 cent environmental fee, or 8%. The difference is that I can get that 4 cents back if I return the bottle--though in reality, it's just easier for me to drop the bottle in my recycle bin each week.
When customizing a system in which I decided to spend several hundred extra bucks for a slightly better processor and a couple more for more memory, this fee just seemed insignificant. It was lower than tax, and much lower than even shipping. I hate being "nickled and dimed" with government (and pseudo-government) fees (comprising 20% of my mobile phone bill for example), but in this case it just didn't matter to me.
I'm curious, though... since Dell already offers its own recycling program, why do they need to pay the fee? Or does California pay them part of the fee when they recycle the monitor?
GPS would be useful in some situations (if you want to know about a general area), but for the example of taking a "photo of a city building to see its history", GPS itself would not be sufficient.
GPS can provide a location, but it can't pinpoint what you are looking at. This is the case even with compass data indicating which direction you are pointing your device--what if there are two things in your line of site from that perspective? (Do you want information about the building, or do you want information on the kiosk in front of the building?)
Also, this is more generic than these examples anyway. What if I want information on the building and then on a street performer in front of the building? I could take a picture of the building, read about it, then take a picture of the street performer and read about him/her. GPS wouldn't be sufficient to tell me about the street performer, because he or she might move around the area.
In California, there are no annual inspections. (In some states, you have to get your car inspected to make sure the lights work, etc., but not here.) There are smog inspections that happen every two years after your car is more than four model years old. http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/smogfaq.htm
The main problem with your idea is that adding one extra Representative per state makes the problem of small states being over-represented even more exaggerated.
:))
Look at Wyoming and California. As of 2000, each representative represents the following number of people:
Wyoming: 493,782 people (493,782 people/1 representative)
California: 639,088 people (33,871,648 people/53 representatives)
After adding an extra representative, you end up with each representative representing the following number of people:
Wyoming: 246,891 people (493,782 people/2 representatives)
California 627,252 people (33,871,648 people/54 representatives)
So, those 246,891 people in one Wyoming district would get the same say in the House that the 627,252 people in a California district get. That is, the voting power of someone in Wyoming would be roughly 2.5 times the voting power of someone in California.
Since the House is supposed to be the part of Congress where representation is based on population, this is problematic.
I would suggest that you modify your "draft" idea to add the extra person as a Senator--perhaps as a senator for only two years. Since the Senate is already set up to represent each state equally regardless of population, having three senators from each state does not conflict with the purpose of the Senate.
(Take it one step further... Maybe each state should only get one vote in the Senate--the senators from each state must decide amongst themselves how their state will vote. Since there are three senators from each state, you'd have a tie-breaker.
Jim McGreevey, governor of New Jersey. He came out, admitted having an affair, and then resigned.
Prop 62 (pdf) in California would do the same thing. All of the major political parties in California are against it--the Dems, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc. The main supporters seem to be business groups and John McCain.
I brought this up in a diary about this over at Daily Kos a couple weeks ago, and there were some pretty good arguments against the proposition. Some worry that it can lead to extremist candidates (because in a crowded race, fringe candidates that can each get 10% of the vote would end up in the final two).
It seems like a better solution would be some sort of approval voting or instant runoff voting.
Speaking of checking boxes, it looks like Florida is disqualifying anybody who forgot to check "I am a US Citizen" on their registration form.
You have to be a US Citizen to vote, obviously. The thing is, if you look at the form, the oath that you have to sign also says "I am a U.S. Citizen." So by signing, you are swearing that you are a citizen, regardless of what the checkbox says.
I thought about that... but it turns out that in Minnesota, you can register on election day.
http://www.sixdegreesofvoting.com/faq.php
Billboards in Minneapolis have sprung up recently, saying "Don't Vote".
Some people are concerned because some of the billboards are in areas with high minority concentrations.
Clear Channel, the owners of the billboards, say that it is a teaser for a "non-product" ad campaign that will be revealed October 11th.
My guess: this is actually part of a pro-vote campaign. Get people riled up by telling them not to vote, then post new billboards with some consequences of what happens if you don't vote. (Like the prov-vote ad on the radio where the guy gets his car painted lilac by a body shop who "made the decision for him".)
It is not just that people would have voted strategically, but the campaigns themselves would have had a different focus. Instead of focusing on just the swing states, the campaigns would have been much more focused on "get out the vote" in the strong, safe areas.
So, while the submitter's work is interesting as a curiosity, it does not really reflect what would have happened if this mechanism had been in place in 2000.
For that matter, I've always been uncomfortable with people who emphasize that "Gore won the popular vote in 2000!" I fully supported Gore and will vote for Kerry this year. I think that the majority of Floridians vote for Gore. But the fact that he won the popular vote is not that significant, because if it really had been an election by popular vote then the campaigns would have used different tactics, and the results would have been different. (Maybe Gore would have won the popular vote, maybe not; we just don't know.)
Sorry, wrong quote... I meant to quote this: The candidates shall not address each other with proposed pledges.
The candidates may not ask each other direct questions, but may ask rhetorical questions.
Basically, this is where one politician tries to be dramatic by saying "I pledge today that I will never X; will my opponent be willing to agree to this pledge also?"
A famous example was in the Hillary Clinton/Rick Lazio debate for Senate from New York in 2000. Rick Lazio came with a written pledge to not taken any soft money. He literally demanded that Hillary Clinton sign it right then, during the debate. She offered to "shake on it" instead.
It's dramatic enough so that it gets mentioned on the news, and in theory it's supposed to make people think "that pledge sounds reasonable, why won't the other candidate approve it?" The danger is that the person insisting on the pledge will look like an aggressive, petty jerk.
In theory, since the rules for these debates state that the candidates can't ask each other questions, they couldn't ask them to sign a pledge anyway. They could say "I have a signed pledged here for X; I wonder if my opponent will be willing to sign the same pledge." It's technically not a question...
This is how the electoral college votes are determined in Maine (since 1972) and Nebraska (since 1996). However, neither state has split its electoral votes yet.
http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/reform.htm#Cong
If this plan was used in other states (like California), I'm sure it would lead to splits in the electoral college vote.
The main problem with this approach is that it will make political gerrymandering even more prevalent than it is today. The party in power has even more incentive than it does today to carve out districts that favor that party, be it California Democrats or Texas Republicans. (One solution to this problem would be to use independent commissions to determine the electoral map based on population and not political considerations.)
It's a minor point, but they've actually changed their name to "just" SBC, since they no longer cover just the Southwest.
:))
This is like America On-Line becoming "just" AOL to make it more international, and Kentucky Fried Chicken becoming "just" KFC to de-emphasize the fried part (or, if you are inclined to believe such things, because what they serve is not really chicken.
For a while, they kept regional names whenever they bought out a phone company, but they've dropped those too now. So when they bought Pacific Bell, they kept it as "SBC Pacific Bell." Now it's all just "SBC." This will be familiar to anyone who paid attention when they changed PacBell Park in San Francisco to SBC Park.
I fail to see how this is different from advertising the price of your goods non-inclusive of sales tax
The difference is that the state government charging the sales tax doesn't let the company charge whatever they think is "reasonable" for a sales tax. The sales tax rate is the same across all companies in a given area.
Because of this, a customer can easily compare the prices from, say, Fry's and Best Buy. If Fry's advertises $18 for a DVD, and Best Buy charges $20 for the same DVD, I know the DVD will be cheaper at Fry's (even including the sales tax).
When Sprint advertises a plan for $48 and Verizon advertises a plan for $50, there is no easy way for me to compare these two plans. Both plans will charge me the same tax, but since they are free to set the regulatory fees to anything "reasonable," I can't be sure that Sprint is the better deal. Sprint may decide that $6 is a reasonable fee, but Verizon might decide that $3 is reasonable.
Of course, you could argue that Verizon should then match Sprint's fees and then lower their "advertised price," but that is exactly the problem. The companies would be competing on who could most conceal the real cost of their service.
These "hidden fees" may be less of an issue if the government set the actual fee (like they set the percentage of a tax). Then, you would know that all of the phone companies were charging the same rate, and you could actually compare advertised prices.
It's possible that the presence of the cameras actually made the abusers more harsh.
How many times do you do stupid things in pictures that you wouldn't normally do? When someone points the camera at you and you make a stupid face--would you make the stupid face at that person if they weren't taking the picture?
The same thing may have happened here. The abusers likely got caught up in the idea "this is funny! let's pose them THIS way! hahaha... now let's pose them THAT way!" If the cameras weren't there, the abuse still might have happened--but the abusers may have lost interest in it much more quickly--and thus spared some of the prisoners the abuse.
Monaghan did sell Domino's, in that he no longer controls it. But he still controls 27% of the company, so he still makes a lot of money from it.
: money.cnn.com/2004/04/14/news/midcaps/dominos_ipo. reut/+%22Thomas+Monaghan%22+Domino%27s&hl=en
There's a Google cache of a cnn article here:
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:KenjkJXJQ8QJ
I stopped ordering from Domino's because the founder (Thomas Monaghan) is an extremely anti-gay right winger. He uses the millions he has earned to fund a lot of organizations that support his beliefs. He has every right to his opinion, but why should I give him money and indirectly support causes that would see people like me repressed?
_ story06.htm
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/032003
One of the arguments the League of Women Voters makes on this page is that people with disabilities and people who cannot read English will not be able to verify the paper trail, so it will disenfranchise them.
While this argument makes sense, your analogy with the ATM can be extended to counter their argument. Modern ATMs use braille and headphones to let blind people use them. Just because they cannot read the receipt that ATMs provide, does that mean that no ATM should provide paper receipts?
The situation is the same for the voting machines. Assuming the machine is required to produce a paper record for each individual's vote, a blind person would not be able to read it. Does that mean that NO ONE should be able to verify their vote?
Their argument is that since blind people cannot verify the paper, we should ALL trust the machines to record the votes electronically. It would make more sense for the LARGE MAJORITY of people who can verify their votes to ensure that the machines are accurate.
If the machine is spitting out ballots that do not match the intention of the voters, the majority of people who can verify their ballots would notice there was a problem, and this problem could then be corrected. In this way, even though not everyone is able to verify the paper ballot, a sufficient number are able to verify that the machines are producing valid paper ballots. (This holds true unless the machines are misrecording the votes of only blind people.)
Alternatively, how about the idea I've seen mentioned by others on slashdot before. One machine produces a ballot the user can read in a standard format. The blind/illiterate voter takes this paper ballot and puts it into another machine (made by another vendor) that reads the ballot to the blind/illiterate voter.
Joey
Sony seems to have realized that this is a problem... the Sony DSC-F828 digital camera includes both a Memory Stick slot and a Compact Flash/MicroDrive slot.
There's more info at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydscf828/.
This gives you two things: (1) you can now consider the Sony if you already have CompactFlash and (2) if you don't own CompactFlash, you can buy this camera without worrying about locking yourself into Memory Stick technology.
One problem, though--I believe writing to the memory stick pro is much faster, so you need the memory stick pro to create the highest resolution movies that this camera produces. If you're buying the camera for stills, though, it shouldn't be an issue.
They must have realized that there are a lot of people like you out there who would rather use something more standard.
Joey
If you ever visit the Lick Observatory, they have pictures that show how the tiny town of San Jose that existed when the Observatory was built has grown so large. Of course, this causes problems with light pollution. Part of their solution was an agreement with the city in 1980 to use low-pressure sodium lights that the observatory can more easily filter out.
p eration2.html
http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/public/lighting/Coo
Everyone who visits me notices that the lights in San Jose are "different" and "weird;" it took visiting the Observatory to find out why.
By the way, if you want to visit the Lick and look through the telescopes, they have summer tours that I recommend. Not only do you get to look through the telescopes and learn a lot about astronomy and the history of the Observatory, there are amazing (and even romantic) night-time views of the Bay Area. (They normally discourage night-time visits because the car headlights interfere with the telescopes.) There's a lottery for it because it is so popular:
http://www.ucolick.org/public/sumvispro.html
Joey