Don't confuse the mission with the spacecraft. We send nuclear submarines on six-month missions but they don't sink at the end. Same with spacecraft - the mission may be over in 3 months, but the spacecraft may still be available for more work.
Distance, power, weight restrictions and harsh environments make spacecraft much more likely to fail over time than something designed to stay on Earth. Add the very high cost of these missions and there is always a question of value. Since politicians do the funding the complexity of the missions (and the time it takes to complete them) clearly have to have a political component. Funding for an agency with a string of successful 3-month missions is much easier than for one with a string of "failed" 1-year missions, even though the spacecraft would function the same length of time and get exactly the same amount of work done in both cases.
For that reason NASA wisely tends to keep the complexity of their missions at an achievable level, with any extra time treated as icing on the cake.
I RTFM for my new Powerbook, and it specifically states that towels, pillows, blankets and other soft squishy things interfere with the intake ports on the bottom corners of the machine, causing it to possibly overheat.
I don't want to get a flame war going, but what happened to all that superior design and engineering that is supposed to come from Apple? Designing a laptop where the maker knows it will get hot enough to burn the user AND putting the vents on the bottom of the case where they will be blocked if the user tries to keep from getting burned by using insulation seems to be monumentally bad design to me.
Most of the time excellent photos aren't about being good, they are about getting lucky.
You are clearly at Stage 1 of picture taking. I was there once and thought as you do that getting a good image is is more a matter of quantity than quality. I suspect that 99% of all those pictures you call excellent are really snapshots professionals would throw away.
Stage 2 is where you will learn to start visualizing your photos before taking the pic to cut down on all those really bad throw-aways.
Stage 3 is where you will start to realize what an excellent photograph is and you will start using your tools intelligently to maximize the chance of getting one. You will "see" your photo before you trigger the shutter.
I now use medium format which precludes all that random picture-taking that even 35mm cameras allow, and there is one thing I know - excellent photos have very little to do with quantity of film processed.
I will agree with one idea you have - that an bad photographer who can take 500 frames will likely have a better "best" photo than a bad photographer who can take only one frame. But I do not agree that the bad photographer will have even one image close to the quality of what a talented pro will get with his one image.
I'm open to a serious non-hostile discussion... What a joke. Let me quote from your previous posts:
"Why don't you use a little brain power"
"...every time I read idiotic replies like yours"
"Thank you Captain Fucking Obvious."
"nobody has the balls to use their nick"
"I was trying to convince people to stop posting these...ignorant replies"
"...don't be a jerk."
Is that what you consider serious non-hostile discussion? I did not call you names. No one called you a jerk, ignorant, obvious, idiotic, cowardly or dumb - but those are just some of the names you called all those who expressed an opinion different from yours.
I really hate when people get modded up for saying "do it the old fashioned way!" So sorry that everyone does not look at solving a problem the same way you do. Why don't we just get everyone to stop posting and then we can save time by simply reading what you have to say on the matter.
Why don't you use a little brain power to help this guy... The original poster was looking for a possible solution to a problem. It may very well be that he has already found the best solution with paper and pen. In spite of your own techno-bias I suspect paper and pen may actually be the best solution in this case. I have found that the people who actually have the most brain power are those willing to consider all possibiliites, including the traditional. Recommending paper and pen IS helping the guy. It is helping him to not spend hours of his vacation time typing in text on a keyboard and hunting for batteries DURING his vacation.
Not only is it not the nerd/geek way, but it's also a cheap shot at gaining a +5 Insightful. Thank you once again for a definitive statement about what others should be doing and thinking. As for karma whoring, you are the only one who seems to be overly concerned about karma points.
By the way, "legal" paper (8.5" by 14") is the size it is so that you can photocopy "letter"-sized paper and then affix signatures and legal stuff at the bottom.
I find that explanation suspicious since there was legal-sized paper long before photocopiers.
Why did we invade Iraq? Because we had just cause to do so, and because it made the world a safer place.
We attacked Iraq because GW Bush thought that when he became President he had his own personal army to do his bidding and morons like you went along with it. Bush attacked Iraq for three reasons: 1)there was incredible amounts of money to be made, 2) he is a closet zealot, and 3)Saddam had tried to assasinate his father. Iraq posed absolutely no threat to the US or to the US economy. If you think the world is a safer place than a year ago you must be living in a parallel universe.
Although personally I think we're gonna need to put boots on the ground in Damascus before this is all over.
And who's boots are those going to be? Not yours I take it. Our military is stretched beyond its capabilities as it is. Hasn't the screw-up in Iraq gotten through to you that we are not omnipotent? We are on the point of getting our asses kicked in Iraq and our economy backrupted because of the hubris and ego of the Bush administration and you want to do MORE! Are you nuts!... no don;t answer that question, I know the answer already.
I don't know where you thought you got your environmental engineering knowledge but I hope you didn't pay real money for it.
Your statement that an car engine running at constant speed emits only carbon dioxide is absurd and dumb.
As a simple example, there is an inverse-relationship between CO and NOx emissions, so it is impossible for both to be zero simultaneously. There is no free lunch and there is no magic internal combustion engine that only produces CO2.
You belong to the most irritating and pathetic group on slashdot: those who call other people idiots while at the same time managing to be morons about the topic under discussion.
This is sadly a horrid abuse of our justice system. I keep hoping someone whose life was ruined in a case like this will turn around and sue their accuser and the media for it
Richard Jewel, so-called suspect in Atlanta Olympics bombing sued the FBI/Justice Department and the media companies (including CNN) that fingered him as the bomber. He won all his cases.
What has it changed? The government now simply takes people into custody without releasing their names at all, with no evidence required. If the so-called Patriot Act had been in effect at the time, the innocent Mr. Jewel would still be in a tiger cage in Guantanimo.
Baloney... everything in your original post was aimed specifically at the latest Iraq war. It was not a general comment about war, but a specific list of justifications for this particular war. Did you forget - we can just go back and read it.
Your current argument is the typical trick to re-state the opposition's position in an extreme way and then try to make it look ridiculous. No one said anything about NEVER going to war - you made that up out of whole cloth and then tried to attribute it to the other person. That has been the main debating tactic of the right wing for years and frankly I am getting very, very tired of it.
You are correct that there are two types of depression, but your labels are incorrect.
Clinical depression is a simply a legal/medical term that means it has been diagnosed by a physician (or perhaps a psychologist), and is on your medical record somewhere. It has nothing to do with chemical imbalances per se.
Situational depression is the normal depression that occurs after a negative life-event such as the death of a loved one. It is normally temporary.
I think what you really mean to say is that there is chronic depression (often caused by chemical imbalances) and situational depression (caused by life-events). Situational depression can trigger or exacerbate chronic depression.
...if your cleaning product kills 99% of bacteria, then it's probable that some of the the 1% that survived have some genetic trait that can make them resistant to your germ killer. As that fraction of the bacteria reproduces, you've helped, using Darwinian survival of the fittest, to grow a stronger germ.
This developed immunity happens with antibiotics, but we don't use antibiotics to disinfect surfaces. Disinfectants like alcohol kill bacteria by mechanical means (alcohol actually dries out the bacterial cell wall causing it to break). An analogy would be that because you missed some roaches you were stamping on some super-roach might evolve that is immune to combat boots - won't happen.
...your immune system needs to know what to defend itself against. If you kill all the germs in your environment and don't get exposed to them regularly, then your immune system is weakened and you become more susceptible to bacterial infection
True, but I doubt it would be possible to kill enough of the bacteria in your environment to seriously effect your immune system. However, it has been shown that children who grow up in immaculately clean houses develop many more allergy-related illnesses than children who are raised in normal "dirty" environments. Children with the usual compliment of dust-bunnies under the bed have significantly more robust immune systems. Children raised on farms faire even better.
I see two problems with your criticism: First, you don't know the difference between science and magazine articles; and second, you only look at the study from your own limited experience - and because you, personally, have had no problem with surface bacteria you conclude that there is no problem.
What's sorely missing from this article is any sense of journalism.
This was a scientific study, NOT journalism. The study, albeit reported in a popular article, reports the facts. YOU are the one who sees a "the sky falling" article. The problem is that you are not imaginative enough to see that the world does not revolve around you. You erroneously conclude that since you don't have a problem then there just must not be one. True, bacteria on a shower curtain will not be a problem for most people, but there are subgroups, perhaps those in hospitals, who could find it a serious problem. It is the same as a day of poor air quality - most healthy people are unaffected but there are some (the very young, the very old or the very sick) that suffer or die.
Knowledge of this possible route of transmission of infection can be important for people with wounds or for people with compromised immune systems. Just because you do not have an open wound on your leg that could become gangrenous does not mean that awareness of high bacteria levels on shower curtains is unimportant to those who do have such wounds. Just because you do not have a compromised immune system from chemotherapy does not mean that the possibility of aerosolized bacteria is unimportant to those who have. Just because you do not have HIV or AIDS does not mean that this potential source of fatal infections is not important to those that do. Burn patients, for example, would be particularly susceptable to this type of contact exposure.
No, this study was not BS at all. Your comment, however, is a different matter.
Kelkoo really irritates me and I don;t even live in Europe. Whenever I google for "review of Whatever" I get tens of links to Kelkoo sites that are all incestuous. And then there are the Kelkoo pages that show up in the search as "Review of Whatever" only to find the site just says "No review of Whatever available. Be the first to post a review of Whatever"
Kelkoo is deceitful and brazenly greedy. Not the characteristics of a company I want to do business with.
And you think I'm from Kansas and don;t know what i am talking about? I live in Manhattan as well, and it isn't the taxis you have to look out for - its the cars with Jersey plates, the limo drivers and the US Mail trucks you have to look out for. Taxis are pretty safe.
Bonaparte did a pretty good job of conquering the world and was a bear to stop, and the French army did a damned fine job in WWI, the French helped us a lot in our own Revolution, and the Gauls were a terror to the Roman legions so I can't jump on that 'cowardly frenchman' jingoist bandwagon.
I realize this is in the fine old tradition of NYC bashing, but if you really must play frogger try it on the streets of Paris where NOBODY will stop for you - really.
why is it the people see greed as a vice when its really a virtue? the people without greed are the people who don't want things from life.
You are describing "ambition", not greed. Ambition is good and is a major driver of a creative society. Greed, on the other hand, is defined as the accumulation of wealth to the detriment of all others and without regard for anyone other than one's self. Greed is a rich person taking a dollar from poor person and feeling good about it.
If Americans had followed your logic then miners would still be slave labor spending all their wages at company stores and for company housing. Companies in the US would still be allowed to play starving (and I literally mean "starving") workers against starving workers to save money as they did during the Great Depression.
What companies are doing today in outsourcing is the same thing that they did prior to the 30's. The great labor movements grew out of that greed.
Companies cannot pit American workers against American workers to get the absolute cheapest labor in this country any more, so now they are going overseas where they are exempt from the labor laws that created the American middle class. It is just a replay of the robber barons' tatics for making their personal fortunes on the backs of others who can't afford to feed their families.
The American worker has never had an easy life and for most of the history of this country it was barely better than slavery. It is only in the past 75 years that American workers have managed to gain a decent living wage for their efforts that have made others obscenely rich.
Florida did not scrub all the voters who shared birthdays with felons. They scrubbed all voters who shared names AND birthdays from any felon, FROM ANY STATE! Therefore if John Jones was a convicted felon in New York then ANY John, Jonathan, Johnny Jones with the same birthday in Florida was prohibited from voting. To make sure this disenfranchised more Democrats than Republicans, this rule was only applied to black Floridians with similar names and birthdays. White voters with similar names were not scrubbed.
Florida did scrub voters as felons who had only had misdemeanor convictions.
Florida scrubbed voters who had been convicted of felonies in other states. This was not legal as only Florida felons could be prohibited from voting in Florida.
Rural votes in the poorer counties (presumably more Democratic) had a rejection rate of 1 in 8 for "spoiled ballots" while more conservative counties only had rejection rates of 1 in 100. In the conservative counties ballots were run through the optical readers many times until they were accepted while the poorer counties only had the ballots run through once before they were invalidated.
Here is a summary: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?art id=217&row =2
Very, very wrong. It is actually quite difficult to make voting a)fair, easy and available to all voters while at the same time making the process tamper proof. With incredible amounts of power and money at stake all the creativity of cheaters is focused on the voting system to sway elections. Voting boxes have been switched, "lost", or stuffed since ancient Greece.
Your argument that the current crop of mechanical voting machines is inexpensive is also wrong. These machines are very labor intensive to maintain, have to be verified, checked and repaired prior to each election.. Their advantage is that they are a proven concept that has most of the bugs worked out and take relatively few skills to see if they are counting votes incorrectly. They are also difficult to modify to throw an election without being blatantly obvious they are screwed up.
Paper ballots are fool-proof you say? Have you forgotten all the official skullduggery in the last Florida election where thousands of ballots were not counted because they were disqualified because of trivial technicalities? Do you really think it was a coincidence that most of the disqualified ballots came from Democratic counties and few from primarily Republican counties?
Computer voting is the future and should make elections more fair than they hae ever been, but they are not there yet by a longshot.
Bush was not elected. Bush was effectively appointed by the Supreme Court who stopped the recount of votes in Florida. Their absurd reasoning was that it was more important to get the election certified quickly than to get the votes counted accurately. It was just really, really convenient that at that time Bush was apparently ahead in the count.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't confuse the mission with the spacecraft. We send nuclear submarines on six-month missions but they don't sink at the end. Same with spacecraft - the mission may be over in 3 months, but the spacecraft may still be available for more work.
Distance, power, weight restrictions and harsh environments make spacecraft much more likely to fail over time than something designed to stay on Earth. Add the very high cost of these missions and there is always a question of value. Since politicians do the funding the complexity of the missions (and the time it takes to complete them) clearly have to have a political component. Funding for an agency with a string of successful 3-month missions is much easier than for one with a string of "failed" 1-year missions, even though the spacecraft would function the same length of time and get exactly the same amount of work done in both cases.
For that reason NASA wisely tends to keep the complexity of their missions at an achievable level, with any extra time treated as icing on the cake.
I RTFM for my new Powerbook, and it specifically states that towels, pillows, blankets and other soft squishy things interfere with the intake ports on the bottom corners of the machine, causing it to possibly overheat.
I don't want to get a flame war going, but what happened to all that superior design and engineering that is supposed to come from Apple? Designing a laptop where the maker knows it will get hot enough to burn the user AND putting the vents on the bottom of the case where they will be blocked if the user tries to keep from getting burned by using insulation seems to be monumentally bad design to me.
Most of the time excellent photos aren't about being good, they are about getting lucky.
You are clearly at Stage 1 of picture taking. I was there once and thought as you do that getting a good image is is more a matter of quantity than quality. I suspect that 99% of all those pictures you call excellent are really snapshots professionals would throw away.
Stage 2 is where you will learn to start visualizing your photos before taking the pic to cut down on all those really bad throw-aways.
Stage 3 is where you will start to realize what an excellent photograph is and you will start using your tools intelligently to maximize the chance of getting one. You will "see" your photo before you trigger the shutter.
I now use medium format which precludes all that random picture-taking that even 35mm cameras allow, and there is one thing I know - excellent photos have very little to do with quantity of film processed.
I will agree with one idea you have - that an bad photographer who can take 500 frames will likely have a better "best" photo than a bad photographer who can take only one frame. But I do not agree that the bad photographer will have even one image close to the quality of what a talented pro will get with his one image.
Your write, Ill re-pear it. :-)
The technology is almost here for cost-effective robotic delivery vehicles.
Sorry, but this discussion is limited to issues effecting planet Earth.
I'm open to a serious non-hostile discussion...
What a joke. Let me quote from your previous posts:
"Why don't you use a little brain power"
"...every time I read idiotic replies like yours"
"Thank you Captain Fucking Obvious."
"nobody has the balls to use their nick"
"I was trying to convince people to stop posting these...ignorant replies"
"...don't be a jerk."
Is that what you consider serious non-hostile discussion? I did not call you names. No one called you a jerk, ignorant, obvious, idiotic, cowardly or dumb - but those are just some of the names you called all those who expressed an opinion different from yours.
I really hate when people get modded up for saying "do it the old fashioned way!"
So sorry that everyone does not look at solving a problem the same way you do. Why don't we just get everyone to stop posting and then we can save time by simply reading what you have to say on the matter.
Why don't you use a little brain power to help this guy...
The original poster was looking for a possible solution to a problem. It may very well be that he has already found the best solution with paper and pen. In spite of your own techno-bias I suspect paper and pen may actually be the best solution in this case. I have found that the people who actually have the most brain power are those willing to consider all possibiliites, including the traditional. Recommending paper and pen IS helping the guy. It is helping him to not spend hours of his vacation time typing in text on a keyboard and hunting for batteries DURING his vacation.
Not only is it not the nerd/geek way, but it's also a cheap shot at gaining a +5 Insightful.
Thank you once again for a definitive statement about what others should be doing and thinking. As for karma whoring, you are the only one who seems to be overly concerned about karma points.
By the way, "legal" paper (8.5" by 14") is the size it is so that you can photocopy "letter"-sized paper and then affix signatures and legal stuff at the bottom.
I find that explanation suspicious since there was legal-sized paper long before photocopiers.
Why did we invade Iraq? Because we had just cause to do so, and because it made the world a safer place.
We attacked Iraq because GW Bush thought that when he became President he had his own personal army to do his bidding and morons like you went along with it. Bush attacked Iraq for three reasons: 1)there was incredible amounts of money to be made, 2) he is a closet zealot, and 3)Saddam had tried to assasinate his father. Iraq posed absolutely no threat to the US or to the US economy. If you think the world is a safer place than a year ago you must be living in a parallel universe.
Although personally I think we're gonna need to put boots on the ground in Damascus before this is all over.
And who's boots are those going to be? Not yours I take it. Our military is stretched beyond its capabilities as it is. Hasn't the screw-up in Iraq gotten through to you that we are not omnipotent? We are on the point of getting our asses kicked in Iraq and our economy backrupted because of the hubris and ego of the Bush administration and you want to do MORE! Are you nuts!... no don;t answer that question, I know the answer already.
I don't know where you thought you got your environmental engineering knowledge but I hope you didn't pay real money for it.
Your statement that an car engine running at constant speed emits only carbon dioxide is absurd and dumb.
As a simple example, there is an inverse-relationship between CO and NOx emissions, so it is impossible for both to be zero simultaneously. There is no free lunch and there is no magic internal combustion engine that only produces CO2.
You belong to the most irritating and pathetic group on slashdot: those who call other people idiots while at the same time managing to be morons about the topic under discussion.
This is sadly a horrid abuse of our justice system. I keep hoping someone whose life was ruined in a case like this will turn around and sue their accuser and the media for it
Richard Jewel, so-called suspect in Atlanta Olympics bombing sued the FBI/Justice Department and the media companies (including CNN) that fingered him as the bomber. He won all his cases.
What has it changed? The government now simply takes people into custody without releasing their names at all, with no evidence required. If the so-called Patriot Act had been in effect at the time, the innocent Mr. Jewel would still be in a tiger cage in Guantanimo.
Baloney... everything in your original post was aimed specifically at the latest Iraq war. It was not a general comment about war, but a specific list of justifications for this particular war. Did you forget - we can just go back and read it.
Your current argument is the typical trick to re-state the opposition's position in an extreme way and then try to make it look ridiculous. No one said anything about NEVER going to war - you made that up out of whole cloth and then tried to attribute it to the other person. That has been the main debating tactic of the right wing for years and frankly I am getting very, very tired of it.
You are correct that there are two types of depression, but your labels are incorrect.
Clinical depression is a simply a legal/medical term that means it has been diagnosed by a physician (or perhaps a psychologist), and is on your medical record somewhere. It has nothing to do with chemical imbalances per se.
Situational depression is the normal depression that occurs after a negative life-event such as the death of a loved one. It is normally temporary.
I think what you really mean to say is that there is chronic depression (often caused by chemical imbalances) and situational depression (caused by life-events). Situational depression can trigger or exacerbate chronic depression.
This developed immunity happens with antibiotics, but we don't use antibiotics to disinfect surfaces. Disinfectants like alcohol kill bacteria by mechanical means (alcohol actually dries out the bacterial cell wall causing it to break). An analogy would be that because you missed some roaches you were stamping on some super-roach might evolve that is immune to combat boots - won't happen.
True, but I doubt it would be possible to kill enough of the bacteria in your environment to seriously effect your immune system. However, it has been shown that children who grow up in immaculately clean houses develop many more allergy-related illnesses than children who are raised in normal "dirty" environments. Children with the usual compliment of dust-bunnies under the bed have significantly more robust immune systems. Children raised on farms faire even better.
I see two problems with your criticism: First, you don't know the difference between science and magazine articles; and second, you only look at the study from your own limited experience - and because you, personally, have had no problem with surface bacteria you conclude that there is no problem.
What's sorely missing from this article is any sense of journalism.
This was a scientific study, NOT journalism. The study, albeit reported in a popular article, reports the facts. YOU are the one who sees a "the sky falling" article. The problem is that you are not imaginative enough to see that the world does not revolve around you. You erroneously conclude that since you don't have a problem then there just must not be one. True, bacteria on a shower curtain will not be a problem for most people, but there are subgroups, perhaps those in hospitals, who could find it a serious problem. It is the same as a day of poor air quality - most healthy people are unaffected but there are some (the very young, the very old or the very sick) that suffer or die.
Knowledge of this possible route of transmission of infection can be important for people with wounds or for people with compromised immune systems. Just because you do not have an open wound on your leg that could become gangrenous does not mean that awareness of high bacteria levels on shower curtains is unimportant to those who do have such wounds. Just because you do not have a compromised immune system from chemotherapy does not mean that the possibility of aerosolized bacteria is unimportant to those who have. Just because you do not have HIV or AIDS does not mean that this potential source of fatal infections is not important to those that do. Burn patients, for example, would be particularly susceptable to this type of contact exposure.
No, this study was not BS at all. Your comment, however, is a different matter.
Kelkoo really irritates me and I don;t even live in Europe. Whenever I google for "review of Whatever" I get tens of links to Kelkoo sites that are all incestuous. And then there are the Kelkoo pages that show up in the search as "Review of Whatever" only to find the site just says "No review of Whatever available. Be the first to post a review of Whatever"
Kelkoo is deceitful and brazenly greedy. Not the characteristics of a company I want to do business with.
Think about it - you normally WOULDN'T see it if it is broken down somewhere.
And you think I'm from Kansas and don;t know what i am talking about? I live in Manhattan as well, and it isn't the taxis you have to look out for - its the cars with Jersey plates, the limo drivers and the US Mail trucks you have to look out for. Taxis are pretty safe.
Bonaparte did a pretty good job of conquering the world and was a bear to stop, and the French army did a damned fine job in WWI, the French helped us a lot in our own Revolution, and the Gauls were a terror to the Roman legions so I can't jump on that 'cowardly frenchman' jingoist bandwagon.
I realize this is in the fine old tradition of NYC bashing, but if you really must play frogger try it on the streets of Paris where NOBODY will stop for you - really.
why is it the people see greed as a vice when its really a virtue? the people without greed are the people who don't want things from life.
You are describing "ambition", not greed. Ambition is good and is a major driver of a creative society. Greed, on the other hand, is defined as the accumulation of wealth to the detriment of all others and without regard for anyone other than one's self. Greed is a rich person taking a dollar from poor person and feeling good about it.
As soon as you cried "racism," I immediately tuned you out...I have the college degree, got a fine education, am a member of Mensa...
As soon as you cried "mensa", I immediately tuned you out.
If Americans had followed your logic then miners would still be slave labor spending all their wages at company stores and for company housing. Companies in the US would still be allowed to play starving (and I literally mean "starving") workers against starving workers to save money as they did during the Great Depression.
What companies are doing today in outsourcing is the same thing that they did prior to the 30's. The great labor movements grew out of that greed.
Companies cannot pit American workers against American workers to get the absolute cheapest labor in this country any more, so now they are going overseas where they are exempt from the labor laws that created the American middle class. It is just a replay of the robber barons' tatics for making their personal fortunes on the backs of others who can't afford to feed their families.
The American worker has never had an easy life and for most of the history of this country it was barely better than slavery. It is only in the past 75 years that American workers have managed to gain a decent living wage for their efforts that have made others obscenely rich.
Florida did not scrub all the voters who shared birthdays with felons. They scrubbed all voters who shared names AND birthdays from any felon, FROM ANY STATE! Therefore if John Jones was a convicted felon in New York then ANY John, Jonathan, Johnny Jones with the same birthday in Florida was prohibited from voting. To make sure this disenfranchised more Democrats than Republicans, this rule was only applied to black Floridians with similar names and birthdays. White voters with similar names were not scrubbed.
t id=217&row =2
Florida did scrub voters as felons who had only had misdemeanor convictions.
Florida scrubbed voters who had been convicted of felonies in other states. This was not legal as only Florida felons could be prohibited from voting in Florida.
Rural votes in the poorer counties (presumably more Democratic) had a rejection rate of 1 in 8 for "spoiled ballots" while more conservative counties only had rejection rates of 1 in 100. In the conservative counties ballots were run through the optical readers many times until they were accepted while the poorer counties only had the ballots run through once before they were invalidated.
Here is a summary:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?ar
Election counting is and always has been simple.
Very, very wrong. It is actually quite difficult to make voting a)fair, easy and available to all voters while at the same time making the process tamper proof. With incredible amounts of power and money at stake all the creativity of cheaters is focused on the voting system to sway elections. Voting boxes have been switched, "lost", or stuffed since ancient Greece.
Your argument that the current crop of mechanical voting machines is inexpensive is also wrong. These machines are very labor intensive to maintain, have to be verified, checked and repaired prior to each election.. Their advantage is that they are a proven concept that has most of the bugs worked out and take relatively few skills to see if they are counting votes incorrectly. They are also difficult to modify to throw an election without being blatantly obvious they are screwed up.
Paper ballots are fool-proof you say? Have you forgotten all the official skullduggery in the last Florida election where thousands of ballots were not counted because they were disqualified because of trivial technicalities? Do you really think it was a coincidence that most of the disqualified ballots came from Democratic counties and few from primarily Republican counties?
Computer voting is the future and should make elections more fair than they hae ever been, but they are not there yet by a longshot.
Bush was not elected. Bush was effectively appointed by the Supreme Court who stopped the recount of votes in Florida. Their absurd reasoning was that it was more important to get the election certified quickly than to get the votes counted accurately. It was just really, really convenient that at that time Bush was apparently ahead in the count.