Phone records are 2rd-party records that are kept for a long time and accessible with one subpoena.
Email records are kept for an indeterminate amount of time, if at all, and the records you are most interested in - the ones at the SENDERS servers, are maintained by the sender.
When you require a fax, you create additional verification in the form of a record of a phone call placed between the originator and receiver of the fax transmission. That way, after the fact, it's fairly easy to show that at least the fax originated from a fax machine in the office of the person who sent it.
With email, the person sending the signed document could be doing so from Nigeria and there's no good way to know that they're not.
They wanted me to tell you that the NEW Motley Crue single is not 80's music. Something about how it's 2008 now, and the 80's doesn't want anything to do with that crap.
I assume that Physics majors at your university are required to take some level of math classes.
Excel is not sufficient instruction in programming any more than Algebra is sufficient instruction in math. So if someone suggests that all students need to learn is Excel, you may ask why the students are required to take more advanced math classes.
There are programs that write sports articles. There's only so many ways to write a short article relating the results of an athletic contest, so newspapers have programs that do it.
Can't imagine it would be too difficult for a NASA engineer to write a program that automates political blogging to the point that you can get a new post out with a few clicks. Especially considering the 'quality' of some of the blogs out there....
But even setting that aside for a minute, you're not making an equal comparison.
Going to Google and searching for Google is, at the start, a stupid example, because you're already there. You're USING the very product you're searching for! Try finding an ad for USA Today in the Wall Street Journal. Or see how many NBC television shows are advertised during the Super Bowl on Fox.
A better analogy would be I go to Best Buy, and I ask to look at a Kenmore. They say 'Hey, look at this Whirlpool instead!' Nothing wrong with that.
Google runs advertising. They're not going to run advertising for competitors. But we should expect that they are going to run advertising for other companies, and even expect that, if you pay them to, if you come to Google looking for a particular product, they might also refer you to a competing product. That's the whole point of advertising!
Trademarks are to identify the source of goods. Trademarks are not to protect your good from competition. Nor are the copyrights to protect your trademark from use by others outside of identifying the source of goods.
You don't provide emergency services to illegal immigrants necessarily because you think they deserve them. You provide them because a medical emergency is no situation in which you want to be trying to figure out if someone is or is not an illegal immigrant.
If there were a way to quickly and accurately determine whether someone was an illegal immigrant or not, there would not be any shortage of people who would advocate not rendering treatment.
I have researched. That's why I know the 1.5 million number is bullshit.
The 1.5 million number includes any circumstance in which someone who had a gun felt that their possession of the gun prevented a crime.
But the number of crimes prevented by guns is NOT EQUAL to the number of times someone with a gun thinks they prevented a crime. It is only equal to the number of times a person with a gun prevented a crime they could not have prevented without a gun.
The unfortunate reality of the situation is that we simply do not have good numbers to compare how bad guns are vs. how good guns are. Lots of anti-gun people have BS numbers to support their postiion. But the "1.5 million crimes prevented" is an equally BS number.
And you can't really attack me for making up numbers (and I was certainly making them up, thus my use of 'let's say') when you proceed to make up numbers assuming that the ratio of crimes prevented via gun possession is 2:2:3. (That was a made up number.)
You're comparing accidental deaths to crimes prevented.
That's like comparing fatal car accidents to broken tail lights.
Let's say I have a household with myself, my wife, and my two kids. Now, I have the option of purchasing a handgun to 'protect my home'. In the next year, let's say there's a one in 10,000 chance that I will successfully use my handgun to prevent a criminal from stealing my stuff. But there's a one in 50,000 chance that my gun will accidentally kill someone.
Is the life of someone in my family worth 5 televisions?
Also, consider this:
You can protect your home just as well with no gun. Your 1.5 million crimes prevented count every instance where a person with a gun feels they prevented a crime. But lets be realistic. Was it the gun that prevented the crime? Or just the mere presence of a witness?
If a criminal is breaking into your home, and you wake up, that criminal is going to leave. Criminals don't want head-to-head confrontation any more than you do. They want to steal from unoccupied homes. Just being awake will chase most criminals from your home.
I want to be clear that I'm not anti-gun. This is America, and people should be able to own the things they want to own. But we also have to be realistic about the dangers of certain things. We don't let just any schmuck drive a car, and we need to have some reasonable regulation with regards to firearms. The rights of the American citizen to own a firearm need to be balanced with the right of the American citizen to not be shot by one.
In other words, we should just let anyone come into our house and do whatever they want. That kid is a less likely to break into your house and steal your TV if he sees a gun. And even if comes anyway, the worst he will probably do is make off with your TV.
Uh, no. In other words, it is preferable to catch the kid when he attempts to sell the TV, or after he has fled the scene, or at some other point, or, just let him have the freaking TV and get him the next time. That's the thing with criminals. They don't steal just once; and even if you miss them 9 times out of 10, you'll get the bastard on the 10th attempt.
And society is better off if we don't kill kids for stealing TVs.
That kid is more likely to break into your home and do worse than stealing your TV if he knows you don't have a gun.
Actually, depending on the kid, if he knows you have a gun in your home, he's MORE LIKELY to break into your home IF YOU HAVE A GUN, to steal your gun. He'll just wait until you're not home.
Hope you don't mind watching your wife and daughters be raped.
What kind of pansy are you? You, your wife, and your daughters are home, and ONE KID with a gun, in the close quarters of your home, is going to keep you at bay with a gun AND rape your wife and daughters at the same time?
Look, if a guy with a gun can screw your wife AND fight you at the same time, having a gun in your house is not going to do you any good, because you apparently have no arms.
Even if your ridiculous rhetorical question had any truth to it, wouldn't it also considerably increase the criminal's chances of getting killed?
Sure. But it's still not worth it. You know what your real problem here is?
The situation you're trying to use a gun to protect yourself from almost NEVER HAPPENS. Criminals don't buy guns and then invade homes and attempt to use guns against the home owners. Hell, they don't NOT buy guns and invade homes and attempt to do anything with homeowners.
When criminals invade homes, they try REALLY REALLY HARD to invade homes that are either EMPTY, or so freaking large that they can move around the home and never encounter the home owner.
A criminal breaking into your home has one of two purposes: to do you harm or to make off with your stuff. Any criminal wanting to make off with your stuff probably values his life a lot more than your stuff. If you both have guns, he's probably going to run before starting a firefight - and if he doesn't at least you have equal odds.
Ah, stupidity continued. A criminal who is going to make off with your stuff is GOING TO WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE NOT HOME, rendering your firearm useless - at least to you. If you do have a gun in your house, you've just let the criminal make more money by stealing that too.
A criminal breaking into your home to do you harm won't care if you have a gun or not. The gun helps you even the odds assuming he has a gun and if he doesn't, he's completely screwed.
How is fantasy land treating you?
Did guns become magic when I wasn't looking? A criminal is screwed if you have a gun and he doesn't if and only if:
- You're awake when the criminal gets to you. - You're awake and aware enough to understand that the criminal is, indeed, a criminal, and understand this in enough time to get your gun, point it at the criminal, and shoot the criminal, all before he gets within arms reach of you, in which case you're engaged in a 50-50 struggle over the gun. (Actually, since the criminal is probably fully awake, less than 50-50 odds for you.)
Guns are a range weapon, and your house is NOT A RANGE ENVIRONMENT! You'd be better off with a knife in many cases.
Of course. Who would say differently? Why would you imperil those around you - even the mugger - over a few bucks?
People who are excellent at programming are like people who are excellent at a lot of other things - they started doing it well before college.
How many athletes do you know who started playing a sport in college? How many musicians? Even things like Chemistry, Math, Medicine, Law - you started learning the basics of those careers in junior high and high school.
Programming isn't any different. People who are going to be great at programming started doing it in high school (or earlier) and are going to get a more structured education out of college. I already knew how to program before I got to college, but I learned a lot of stuff I would not have learned on my own by going - and I wasn't even in a straight CS program.
Someone who shows up at college with no programming experience is likely not going to be a GREAT programmer. It's too late. They're competing against people who have been programming for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. It's too much of a head start.
But, there are also plenty of people who do not go to college who are SHITTY programmers. Oh, sure, they learned how to do some things on their own, but there's also a big pile of stuff they never learned. And worse, they don't even realize how much they don't know.
Education is a good thing. You learn a lot faster when information is given to you than by discovery.
So, to the topic at hand...
Go to the liberal arts school. Learn the theory. Anybody who isn't an idiot can learn software syntax. As far as employment goes, most people who get great CS jobs out of college get them based on the projects/open source work/internships they did in college. Education teaches you how to work better, but you prove you can work well by working.
Anyone who thinks "DRM is always bad" is an idiot, a zealot, or both. There is nothing inherently wrong with DRM itself.
The problem is POOR IMPLEMENTATIONS of DRM.
People are willing to accept DRM on their game systems because when people buy a game for their game system, they expect that the game will work on their game system, or any other game system of the same model. And it does. Nobody expects to take their Nintendo CD and pop it into their PC or Mac or to rip the bits off the CD and run it on their iPod. So the DRM that inhibits people copying games is fine, because nobody expects to be able to do it.
DRM on the CD you bought is a different beast. It's not that DRM is bad, it's that when people buy a song, they expect to be able to, and have a right to, play it on ALL of their song-playing equipment. It's not that DRM is bad, it's that the DRM is a poor implementation that interferes with people's ability to use the item they bought they way they expect and have a right to.
The vast majority of people are willing to accept DRM that only prevents them from doing illegal things and possibly things they don't want to do anyway. And why shouldn't they accept that?
1) Create online auction site 2) Buy largest processor of auction payments 3) Wait for Google to roll out competing payment service (Google Checkout) 4) Use your auction site monopoly to create an unfair advantage for your auction payment processor. 5) Lawsuit!
7) I call BS on the statement that 10 touchscreens are needed for the job of a single optical scanner. Why would a county be willing to have a single optical scanner during an election? What if it failed? Those people wouldn't be able to vote that day? I think 2-3 is a more legitimate answer to account for quick processing and/or machine failures.
Well that one at least is easy.
EVERY voter must use a touch-screen to vote, and if your touch-screen goes down, nobody can vote. You only need one optical scanner to count the votes, and if it fails, you just wait for it to be fixed or borrow one from the next county over.
Also:
1) They appear to be comparing projected costs of optical scanners with actual costs of touchscreen machines.
Since touch-screens were purchased and optical scanners were not maintained, no actual numbers for optical scanners are available.
2) Can't they hire the same project managers for the touchscreen rollout as for the optical? People management is people management, no real difference.
Not when you have wildly different numbers of people involved, and wildly different things to train them on.
With optical scanners, your front-line employees only need to be able to teach the voter how to fill in a circle with a pen. With touch-screen machines, you need people who set up touch screen machines, and can fix the touch-screen machines when they break.
3) Warehousing costs - aren't they storing the equipment at a state run facility? No reason why there should be a huge capital payment associated with that.
Even state-run warehousing isn't free - that warehouse costs money. And when you have 10x the equipment, you then have 10x the warehousing costs.
4) Transportaion costs fluctuate wildly on the touchscreen actual costs page, but are unwaveringly cheap on the optical page. The same equipment would always have to be moved to the same place, so I don't see that assumption as valid.
I don't have anything to say with regards to the actual costs, but your statement that the same equipment would always have to be moved to the same place is itself a bad assumption. With optical scanners, it's quite possible that you never move them at all (although you'd have to factor in moving around ballots). However, ballot movement is a lot easier I would imagine than certified electronic voting machine movement.
5) Voter outreach is 2x more for touchscreen as it is for the optical assumptions. I don't see how that cost would be different.
Not sure what voter outreach means. If it means training voters, there's probably more expenses with getting the voters familiar with new tech (and getting them to trust new tech) than there is with good ol' paper ballots.
If it means providing certain people the ability to vote - like those that are home bound - probably easier to incorporate paper absentee ballots into an optical scan system than into a touch-screen voting system.
6) I don't see a line item for absentee ballot printing on the optical page at all.
Maybe because Maryland doesn't print separate absentee ballots, so that's just covered by general ballot printing?
8) What exactly are the optional services that Diebold provides that account for almost $28M. That's a third of the overall total cost. There's no breakdown of what the services are, so there's no way to compare them with line items on the optical scanner costs.
Most likely, any of those services are not comparable to optical scan systems anyway.
As for the fairness of the comparison - it seems the entire point of the comparison is that there are a bunch of expensive items that apply to touch-screen voting that do not even exist in the optical scan process.
You're basically saying "It's not fair to include the $28 million in fees paid to DieBold for touch-screen voting when there are no fees paid to Diebold for optical scan voting!" Well, yeah, I suppose you could exclude all of the extra costs to show that there aren't really any extra costs....
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe he should next try and find the minimum number of edits to fix the grammar in a Slashdot article submission.
After that, solve for the max number of edits a Slashdot editor will actually do before just posting the article anyway.
More is not better.
Phone records are 2rd-party records that are kept for a long time and accessible with one subpoena.
Email records are kept for an indeterminate amount of time, if at all, and the records you are most interested in - the ones at the SENDERS servers, are maintained by the sender.
When you require a fax, you create additional verification in the form of a record of a phone call placed between the originator and receiver of the fax transmission. That way, after the fact, it's fairly easy to show that at least the fax originated from a fax machine in the office of the person who sent it.
With email, the person sending the signed document could be doing so from Nigeria and there's no good way to know that they're not.
They wanted me to tell you that the NEW Motley Crue single is not 80's music. Something about how it's 2008 now, and the 80's doesn't want anything to do with that crap.
I assume that Physics majors at your university are required to take some level of math classes.
Excel is not sufficient instruction in programming any more than Algebra is sufficient instruction in math. So if someone suggests that all students need to learn is Excel, you may ask why the students are required to take more advanced math classes.
There are programs that write sports articles. There's only so many ways to write a short article relating the results of an athletic contest, so newspapers have programs that do it.
Can't imagine it would be too difficult for a NASA engineer to write a program that automates political blogging to the point that you can get a new post out with a few clicks. Especially considering the 'quality' of some of the blogs out there....
No, that would be begging for a question. The begee only becomes the questioner if they actually ask you a question.
I'd like to live in a society where high-income individuals are prohibited from 'contributing' to popular culture.
Nobody should take your cultural influence seriously unless your rent is a couple months late.
Google doesn't mean 'search the internet'.
Google means 'Use Google to search the internet'.
Hoover, in the UK, means 'vacuum'.
But even setting that aside for a minute, you're not making an equal comparison.
Going to Google and searching for Google is, at the start, a stupid example, because you're already there. You're USING the very product you're searching for! Try finding an ad for USA Today in the Wall Street Journal. Or see how many NBC television shows are advertised during the Super Bowl on Fox.
A better analogy would be I go to Best Buy, and I ask to look at a Kenmore. They say 'Hey, look at this Whirlpool instead!' Nothing wrong with that.
Google runs advertising. They're not going to run advertising for competitors. But we should expect that they are going to run advertising for other companies, and even expect that, if you pay them to, if you come to Google looking for a particular product, they might also refer you to a competing product. That's the whole point of advertising!
Trademarks are to identify the source of goods. Trademarks are not to protect your good from competition. Nor are the copyrights to protect your trademark from use by others outside of identifying the source of goods.
Creative didn't rip anybody off, but some snarky lawyer thought he could make some legal fees by suing them for using standard definitions.
So they decided to make some lemonade and sell some units.
Not losing much is only fair when they didn't do anything wrong to begin with.
You don't provide emergency services to illegal immigrants necessarily because you think they deserve them. You provide them because a medical emergency is no situation in which you want to be trying to figure out if someone is or is not an illegal immigrant.
If there were a way to quickly and accurately determine whether someone was an illegal immigrant or not, there would not be any shortage of people who would advocate not rendering treatment.
I have researched. That's why I know the 1.5 million number is bullshit.
The 1.5 million number includes any circumstance in which someone who had a gun felt that their possession of the gun prevented a crime.
But the number of crimes prevented by guns is NOT EQUAL to the number of times someone with a gun thinks they prevented a crime. It is only equal to the number of times a person with a gun prevented a crime they could not have prevented without a gun.
The unfortunate reality of the situation is that we simply do not have good numbers to compare how bad guns are vs. how good guns are. Lots of anti-gun people have BS numbers to support their postiion. But the "1.5 million crimes prevented" is an equally BS number.
And you can't really attack me for making up numbers (and I was certainly making them up, thus my use of 'let's say') when you proceed to make up numbers assuming that the ratio of crimes prevented via gun possession is 2:2:3. (That was a made up number.)
You're comparing accidental deaths to crimes prevented.
That's like comparing fatal car accidents to broken tail lights.
Let's say I have a household with myself, my wife, and my two kids. Now, I have the option of purchasing a handgun to 'protect my home'. In the next year, let's say there's a one in 10,000 chance that I will successfully use my handgun to prevent a criminal from stealing my stuff. But there's a one in 50,000 chance that my gun will accidentally kill someone.
Is the life of someone in my family worth 5 televisions?
Also, consider this:
You can protect your home just as well with no gun. Your 1.5 million crimes prevented count every instance where a person with a gun feels they prevented a crime. But lets be realistic. Was it the gun that prevented the crime? Or just the mere presence of a witness?
If a criminal is breaking into your home, and you wake up, that criminal is going to leave. Criminals don't want head-to-head confrontation any more than you do. They want to steal from unoccupied homes. Just being awake will chase most criminals from your home.
I want to be clear that I'm not anti-gun. This is America, and people should be able to own the things they want to own. But we also have to be realistic about the dangers of certain things. We don't let just any schmuck drive a car, and we need to have some reasonable regulation with regards to firearms. The rights of the American citizen to own a firearm need to be balanced with the right of the American citizen to not be shot by one.
In other words, we should just let anyone come into our house and do whatever they want. That kid is a less likely to break into your house and steal your TV if he sees a gun. And even if comes anyway, the worst he will probably do is make off with your TV.
Uh, no. In other words, it is preferable to catch the kid when he attempts to sell the TV, or after he has fled the scene, or at some other point, or, just let him have the freaking TV and get him the next time. That's the thing with criminals. They don't steal just once; and even if you miss them 9 times out of 10, you'll get the bastard on the 10th attempt.
And society is better off if we don't kill kids for stealing TVs.
That kid is more likely to break into your home and do worse than stealing your TV if he knows you don't have a gun.
Actually, depending on the kid, if he knows you have a gun in your home, he's MORE LIKELY to break into your home IF YOU HAVE A GUN, to steal your gun. He'll just wait until you're not home.
Hope you don't mind watching your wife and daughters be raped.
What kind of pansy are you? You, your wife, and your daughters are home, and ONE KID with a gun, in the close quarters of your home, is going to keep you at bay with a gun AND rape your wife and daughters at the same time?
Look, if a guy with a gun can screw your wife AND fight you at the same time, having a gun in your house is not going to do you any good, because you apparently have no arms.
Even if your ridiculous rhetorical question had any truth to it, wouldn't it also considerably increase the criminal's chances of getting killed?
Sure. But it's still not worth it. You know what your real problem here is?
The situation you're trying to use a gun to protect yourself from almost NEVER HAPPENS. Criminals don't buy guns and then invade homes and attempt to use guns against the home owners. Hell, they don't NOT buy guns and invade homes and attempt to do anything with homeowners.
When criminals invade homes, they try REALLY REALLY HARD to invade homes that are either EMPTY, or so freaking large that they can move around the home and never encounter the home owner.
A criminal breaking into your home has one of two purposes: to do you harm or to make off with your stuff. Any criminal wanting to make off with your stuff probably values his life a lot more than your stuff. If you both have guns, he's probably going to run before starting a firefight - and if he doesn't at least you have equal odds.
Ah, stupidity continued. A criminal who is going to make off with your stuff is GOING TO WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE NOT HOME, rendering your firearm useless - at least to you. If you do have a gun in your house, you've just let the criminal make more money by stealing that too.
A criminal breaking into your home to do you harm won't care if you have a gun or not. The gun helps you even the odds assuming he has a gun and if he doesn't, he's completely screwed.
How is fantasy land treating you?
Did guns become magic when I wasn't looking? A criminal is screwed if you have a gun and he doesn't if and only if:
- You're awake when the criminal gets to you.
- You're awake and aware enough to understand that the criminal is, indeed, a criminal, and understand this in enough time to get your gun, point it at the criminal, and shoot the criminal, all before he gets within arms reach of you, in which case you're engaged in a 50-50 struggle over the gun. (Actually, since the criminal is probably fully awake, less than 50-50 odds for you.)
Guns are a range weapon, and your house is NOT A RANGE ENVIRONMENT! You'd be better off with a knife in many cases.
Of course. Who would say differently? Why would you imperil those around you - even the mugger - over a few bucks?
Ok, so, few bucks no, television yes?
In real life people prey on
There's going to be a GIRL there. And she's not deflatable. It's going to be the best math nerd party EVER!
People who are excellent at programming are like people who are excellent at a lot of other things - they started doing it well before college.
How many athletes do you know who started playing a sport in college? How many musicians? Even things like Chemistry, Math, Medicine, Law - you started learning the basics of those careers in junior high and high school.
Programming isn't any different. People who are going to be great at programming started doing it in high school (or earlier) and are going to get a more structured education out of college. I already knew how to program before I got to college, but I learned a lot of stuff I would not have learned on my own by going - and I wasn't even in a straight CS program.
Someone who shows up at college with no programming experience is likely not going to be a GREAT programmer. It's too late. They're competing against people who have been programming for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. It's too much of a head start.
But, there are also plenty of people who do not go to college who are SHITTY programmers. Oh, sure, they learned how to do some things on their own, but there's also a big pile of stuff they never learned. And worse, they don't even realize how much they don't know.
Education is a good thing. You learn a lot faster when information is given to you than by discovery.
So, to the topic at hand...
Go to the liberal arts school. Learn the theory. Anybody who isn't an idiot can learn software syntax. As far as employment goes, most people who get great CS jobs out of college get them based on the projects/open source work/internships they did in college. Education teaches you how to work better, but you prove you can work well by working.
And, as mentioned elsewhere, bonus: Girls.
But I don't work at Google.
Women at the technical college will be hotter. But then again, fantasy women always are.
Anyone who thinks "DRM is always bad" is an idiot, a zealot, or both. There is nothing inherently wrong with DRM itself.
The problem is POOR IMPLEMENTATIONS of DRM.
People are willing to accept DRM on their game systems because when people buy a game for their game system, they expect that the game will work on their game system, or any other game system of the same model. And it does. Nobody expects to take their Nintendo CD and pop it into their PC or Mac or to rip the bits off the CD and run it on their iPod. So the DRM that inhibits people copying games is fine, because nobody expects to be able to do it.
DRM on the CD you bought is a different beast. It's not that DRM is bad, it's that when people buy a song, they expect to be able to, and have a right to, play it on ALL of their song-playing equipment. It's not that DRM is bad, it's that the DRM is a poor implementation that interferes with people's ability to use the item they bought they way they expect and have a right to.
The vast majority of people are willing to accept DRM that only prevents them from doing illegal things and possibly things they don't want to do anyway. And why shouldn't they accept that?
1) Create online auction site
2) Buy largest processor of auction payments
3) Wait for Google to roll out competing payment service (Google Checkout)
4) Use your auction site monopoly to create an unfair advantage for your auction payment processor.
5) Lawsuit!
Fill it with garbage?
7) I call BS on the statement that 10 touchscreens are needed for the job of a single optical scanner. Why would a county be willing to have a single optical scanner during an election? What if it failed? Those people wouldn't be able to vote that day? I think 2-3 is a more legitimate answer to account for quick processing and/or machine failures.
Well that one at least is easy.
EVERY voter must use a touch-screen to vote, and if your touch-screen goes down, nobody can vote. You only need one optical scanner to count the votes, and if it fails, you just wait for it to be fixed or borrow one from the next county over.
Also:
1) They appear to be comparing projected costs of optical scanners with actual costs of touchscreen machines.
Since touch-screens were purchased and optical scanners were not maintained, no actual numbers for optical scanners are available.
2) Can't they hire the same project managers for the touchscreen rollout as for the optical? People management is people management, no real difference.
Not when you have wildly different numbers of people involved, and wildly different things to train them on.
With optical scanners, your front-line employees only need to be able to teach the voter how to fill in a circle with a pen. With touch-screen machines, you need people who set up touch screen machines, and can fix the touch-screen machines when they break.
3) Warehousing costs - aren't they storing the equipment at a state run facility? No reason why there should be a huge capital payment associated with that.
Even state-run warehousing isn't free - that warehouse costs money. And when you have 10x the equipment, you then have 10x the warehousing costs.
4) Transportaion costs fluctuate wildly on the touchscreen actual costs page, but are unwaveringly cheap on the optical page. The same equipment would always have to be moved to the same place, so I don't see that assumption as valid.
I don't have anything to say with regards to the actual costs, but your statement that the same equipment would always have to be moved to the same place is itself a bad assumption. With optical scanners, it's quite possible that you never move them at all (although you'd have to factor in moving around ballots). However, ballot movement is a lot easier I would imagine than certified electronic voting machine movement.
5) Voter outreach is 2x more for touchscreen as it is for the optical assumptions. I don't see how that cost would be different.
Not sure what voter outreach means. If it means training voters, there's probably more expenses with getting the voters familiar with new tech (and getting them to trust new tech) than there is with good ol' paper ballots.
If it means providing certain people the ability to vote - like those that are home bound - probably easier to incorporate paper absentee ballots into an optical scan system than into a touch-screen voting system.
6) I don't see a line item for absentee ballot printing on the optical page at all.
Maybe because Maryland doesn't print separate absentee ballots, so that's just covered by general ballot printing?
8) What exactly are the optional services that Diebold provides that account for almost $28M. That's a third of the overall total cost. There's no breakdown of what the services are, so there's no way to compare them with line items on the optical scanner costs.
Most likely, any of those services are not comparable to optical scan systems anyway.
As for the fairness of the comparison - it seems the entire point of the comparison is that there are a bunch of expensive items that apply to touch-screen voting that do not even exist in the optical scan process.
You're basically saying "It's not fair to include the $28 million in fees paid to DieBold for touch-screen voting when there are no fees paid to Diebold for optical scan voting!" Well, yeah, I suppose you could exclude all of the extra costs to show that there aren't really any extra costs....
I can assure you I'm not a 'math is hard' type person. I'm a 'completely memorizing a table I can have a hard copy of' is a waste-of-time type person.
For the record, I got a 8 and a 5...the dealer had 16 and busted because I took the 5.
You took the 5, AND the 8. If you'd just stayed on the 20 like you were 'supposed' to, dealer would have gotten the 8 and busted anyway.