But in this day and age, the authorities in many places have access to those techniques and technologies, as the incidence of cyber-crime has risen. And if a bully is making threats against or harassing a child, that can be reported to the authorities and be made a legal matter. I think in many cases, if some juvenile delinquent gets called out for his/her bullying and is brought before the police or a judge, they might suddenly get the idea that what they're doing isn't worth the effort. The fact is it's time-consuming and tedious to have to do these things, but if our children are in fact worth as much as we think, then why aren't we doing these things, or at least exhorting the proper authorities (school administrators, police, etc.) to do more?
What about legitimate mass marketers. The company I work for contracts with advertisers to send out bulk mailings to our opted-in users. Now, we don't spit out emails by the millions, but we certainly do send out large chunks of emails from a common source. Is this kind of thing going to interfere with legitimate mailings to opted-in customers?
Shouldn't they be stopping *real* bullying, where someone gets beat up, before they try to tackle "cyber" bullying?
Define "real." Whether physical, psychological, or emotional, bullying is bullying. It is one person attempting to dominate another, based on completely arbitrary social/physical boundaries ("I'm bigger than you," "I'm smarter than you," "I'm richer than you"). The fact is, schools have never come up with concerted efforts to stop bullying, and frankly, without constant surveillance, it's nearly impossible. A bully isn't going to do something to someone in proximity to someone in authority; that's why "cyber-bullying" is the new rage, because it's more "anonymous" than doing it to someone's face. The only way they will be caught is the the person being bullied reports it, and that's the point of the bullying: to make them hesitate to tell anyone, so they can continue to be used as someone else's form of entertainment.
What I don't think the cyber-bullies understand is that because it's technology-driven, they can be tracked. The hoops they would have to jump through to cover their tracks is probably beyond the grasp of the vast majority of bullies. Mind you, you are now seeing the ascendancy of the "techno-savvy" bully, who bullies other because he/she has superior technical skills/knowledge.
A vast majority of the world's servers are in countries not named the People's Republic of China. Therefore, to do as he insists, he would have to take control of those servers. I suspect, that even given the large number of people at his beck and call, that is a task beyond his capacity. At some point, every person is possession of sole authority in some organization gets delusions of grandeur.
I seem to remember having one of those... Someone nagged me when I was upgrading our router... but the memory is dim... Anyway, the food miraculously appears and somehow the children get to bed, so I suspect someone is in the house doing these things...
The change is going to be that the Internet is going to finally resemble a Möbius loop, where once you click on one content link and keep clicking, you will eventually wind up back where you started. People will be trapped in infinite loops of marketing and commerce will collapse because no one will actually be able to buy anything, because they can't break out of the loop.
But studies seem to show that most of that biological pressure is actually situational.
I'll attest to that. Having two boys from my wife's previous marriage coupled with my not-quite 2-year-old daughter racing around the house, tearing off her clothes, and turning off the TV when I'm trying to watch it, I can honestly that the biological imperative to reproduce has been sufficiently eradicated in my case that we won't be having any more hellions anytime soon.
The General Accounting Office, the federal government's internal watchdog agency, took the FCC to task (PDF) last May for the way it prepared these reports. The GAO's own examination of Form 477 data found that the median number of broadband options in a particular ZIP code was two, not eight as the FCC claimed.
CPI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FCC on August 24. After the statutory 20 business days had passed without any word from the agency, CPI filed suit on September 25, 2006. That apparently got the FCC's attention; the FOIA request was officially denied the next day.
The matter is now in the hands of a federal judge, and the FCC is trying to have the case dismissed. The agency argues that the material in the reports is confidential business information and that the release of it could damage the companies involved. In a court filing, Alan Feldman of the FCC tells the court how this might work. "For example," he says, "information about how a company's number of lines has increased or decreased in a particular area over time provides competitors with insights into how that company is focusing its investment and marketing efforts." He also notes that most filers requested confidentiality for their data.
When the GAO says you did something wrong, you generally did something wrong and need to fix it.
The FCC's behavior is pretty brazen; the CPI isn't a broadband service provider, so I suspect that other than verifying the FCC's results (or disproving them), the data is in pretty good hands. The fact is the FCC is playing politics and trying to stay on the good side of industry -- for what reason I can't say. It would surprise me if there's more going on here, and if they keep stalling, the FCC could end up being threatened with a Congressional investigation, which I think they'd like to avoid.
Wrong. If for some reason there are laws blocking my ability to use/modify the Internet, I simply build my own network. What do you think Google has really been doing all these years, building enormous data centers and acquiring dark fiber? Google knows they would be the first target of all the ISPs, given the ubiquity of their searches.
The Internet is not the be all and end all of communications -- it's only the most recent step. Innovation will continue whether there are roadblocks in place or not, simple because someone will always think of a better way to do things.
Most of the push for music unencumbered by digital rights management, or DRM, systems over the past six months has come from technology, electronics and Internet companies. In part, it is because these companies have been largely unsuccessful in their efforts to produce digital locks that are simple and flexible for the consumer, foolproof to the hacker and workable on numerous makes and models of players.
Which is why DRM is quite useless. Come on -- if worse came to worse, people would play the music on the stereos and record it using digital recorders then run it through their favorite piece of audio manipulating software and have just about the same quality recording. The music industry cannot hope to stop the myriad of innovative ways of copying music and they are fooling themselves if they think they can make DRM "unbreakable." If this report is true, perhaps some in the industry are finally coming to their senses.
That's a whole different thing. If the child knows he/she is doing something that would entice the predator, then perhaps that would be a mitigating factor, but somehow I doubt it.
Well, I hate being taxed even more than the next guy, and I'm not suggesting this set-up has to be funded by government mandate. Like anything in the free market, given enough time, advertising, and demand, market forces will reduce the price of solar systems and make them affordable enough. Heck, someone down the road from me had one installed, didn't spend all that much, and the upshot is, he has no electric bill. Heck, the best way to promote this would be to offer bigger property and income tax cuts to people who willingly convert to solar power.
In the end, if you see this as just another way to be taxed, then you are missing the point. It is possible for this to be done by the average consumer, though right now it's prohibitively expensive. But this was true of cars, and homes, and TVs, and now look at them. In the end, market forces can be used to help break the grip of foreign oil and slow the acceleration of global average temperature rise, and that seems like a good investment to me.
An interesting thought. Could the perpetrators sue the parent's for entrapment?
IANAL, but I believe the answer is no. That defense seldom works when the police actual try entrapping people -- I doubt it would even apply here, since the child would probably have very little knowledge of how their behavior would affect the predator's legal status, i.e. the commission of a crime. The fact is, these predators have intent to take the actions they take, knowing full well in most cases that there are laws protecting minors.
Mind you, MySpace I believe cooperates with law enforcement agencies to trap people like this. But it is not their job to do the policing themselves. They can write disclaimers about providing personal information on-line and caution people against revealing information which is normally private, but in the end, it's the user that has the responsibility to use good judgement. In these cases, I think it's safe to say good judgement was not used, mainly because the kids were not taught good judgement by their parents.
The difference is, if I am drunk and I get into a car and drive, I can kill or injure others. If I go on MySpace and get lured in by a predator, only I am injured. The two are not comparable.
Let me add, the State should not be in the business of raising our children -- that's our responsibility. The State has enough trouble balancing the budget and fixing potholes without claiming they are "thinking of the children." If I need their help, I'll ask.
Of course there is no free lunch; survival costs time, life, and eventually money. But I'm willing to bet with continued instability in oil producing nations, the increase in average global temperature rise, the dwindling of oil reserves, and the continued resistance to nuclear power, that solar will become a more cost-effective alternative as time passes. I may in fact pay more now that I would 25 years from now for a solar set-up, but I don't measure the cost in monetary terms alone. If I'm not on the grid, that's one less house that needs electricity generated from non-renewable sources. I can potentially switch to electric heating and perhaps lower my energy use further by reducing my dependence on natural gas. If in fact I can use the power to crack hydrogen or provide electricity for an alternative fuel vehicle, that's even less non-renewable resources used. Not a lot for one household, but multiply that over millions...
As to being in a sunny part of the country, while long periods of direct sunlight are better for generating power, solar cells have been getting better at converting even lower grade sunlight, the result being more power for longer periods. And with storage batteries, I can take advantage of long periods of bright sunshine to "stock up," to weather dimmer periods. There are up-front costs that have to be factored into all this, but I also look at what it might to do to the resale value as well. After all, if the cost is factored in to the price of the house, it may very well pay for itself.
I find his critisism of the eco-efficiency movement as lacking anything that can motivate people quite interesting.
Case in point: that dumb new show on HGTV "Living With Ed," where we have Ed Begley, Jr. trying to convince his wife that using renewable resources is a good thing. First off, he and his wife seem to spend an awful lot of the show in tiffs over one thing or another (I can't see why she married him). Second, it makes the whole "living renewably" idea seem like more of a joke than a lifestyle. It's done more for kitsch value than anything. What's really needed is a show like "This Old House" doing a project where they retrofit an older home to use renewable technology.
Caminiti argues that the cost of the hydrogen/solar setup works out at about $4,000 a year when its $100,000 cost is spread over the anticipated 25-year lifespan of the equipment. That's still a lot higher than the $1,500 a year the average U.S. homeowner spends on energy, according to the federal government. Even if gasoline costs averaging about $1,000 per car annually are included in the energy mix, the renewables option is still more expensive than the grid/gasoline combination.
Mind you, once you've bought the equipment, there are only the maintenance costs over that 25 years, where as the price of energy will undoubtedly continue to increase. And the price of solar cells is dropping, so the cost may go lower than $100,000. I for one would love to have solar -- not having to pay for electricity, being able to run my Christmas lights 365 days a year, and not losing my power in a blackout. Also, if you generate excess electricity, you can sell it to the utility companies, and actually make a buck when you have excess power.
When you think about it, the lack of standards is probably what has caused the current crop of voting machines to be such dismal failures. While I'm not sure I trust Diebold anyway, given their political connections, they probably would have done at least a halfway decent job on their machines if there were a set of standards to measure them against. It's not enough for the US Government to send out a Request For Proposals outlining what they are looking for, unless the functionality and security can be defined against some kind of standard. If the standards had existed first, maybe the machines would not have all the loopholes and omissions which make them such trash currently.
I have a home because it beats living on the streets. I have children (2 of whom are not mine by birth), because some day I will be unable to take care of myself. My wife and I both work and due to the times and our expenses, cannot make ends meet. I am verging on bankruptcy because I have been struggling for years to ensure that my family has a roof over its head, food in their bellies, and clothes on their back. If I had the resources of your average pharma CEO, I suspect I wouldn't be struggling so mightily. Mind you, my struggles are not because my home is luxurious and I am surrounded by fancy cars and expensive gadgets.
But apparently, no matter what my actual situation, it's easier for you to sit there and judge me, knowing very little of my life. I realize that response is hypocritical to some extent, given what I am saying about CEOs, but the lifestyles of CEOs are splashed all over business magazines, while my life, and the life of most working-class Americans, is kept in obscurity.
Survival, above all else comes first. If I do not survive, I cannot contribute anything to society. I must provide for myself and my family. Life would be so much easier and cheaper of course if we stopped procreating, but then human life on Earth would take on a tone of finality (I recommend seeing "Children of Men" if you want to know what a world without children would be really like) that would be hard to swallow. I procreate in order to ensure the survival of my species, the survival of my line, and to provide new life to take up the challenges left incomplete. I will never apologize or seek approval of the decisions I make, and will do what I must to ensure that everyone has a voice. In the end, each person must decide if they are doing enough on every level. It is a question that only the individual can ask and answer -- it is not for society at large to enforce.
And why single out "typical" CEOs? There's certainly a poverty-stricken, suffering demographic out there that's just as poor relative to you as you are to a typical CEO. Why do you insist on hoarding your time and money, and talking about what little you have to give to those who need more?
And why are you assuming I am so well off? Because I post on Slashdot? Because I work in it? Automatically I have money and time to spare? I have three children, a wife, a home, and a two-hour commute, and while I sympathize and empathize with all those in this world who are poor, I've been poor myself, and nobody came along and simply poured money on me and made my poverty go away.
And the point is not how much money I have to spare, which is virtually none after taking care of the necessities of survival for myself and my family, but the fact that there are those who incomes are so far above what is necessary to live a normal, simple life who do not seek to use their wealth to help others (e.g. Warren Buffet, Bill & Melinda Gates, etc.) but squander it on excess. If I do what I can, when I can, why shouldn't I expect others to do what they can? More to the point, simply because I have this expectation does not mean they have to do it. They have the right as free people to do what they wish, as long as what they do harms no one else. We're not talking law here, but morality, and the two are not synonymous.
I maintain that there are those in the pharmaceutical industry that could be doing more if they wanted to, and the resources are there if their business practices are altered. I'm not saying that we should force them to do it, only that they could if they wished. It's not my intent to tell people what they should be doing, but to ask if they could be doing more. That's the question we all can ask, even those of us teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Do not presume for a minute that your morality has any higher place in this world than mine -- in the end, one good asteroid could render both our points of view moot.
Think of the paper as being something behind glass; the user looks at it, validates that it says what they want it to say, and then press "yes" or "no". Press yes? It's deposited in a lockbox which can be secured via traditional methods.
And if someone can reprogram the machine to record votes a certain way, why can't they program it to dispense the correct paper audits as well? And a lock-box? Secure? You're right back to the same problem you have with paper ballots. Locks can be picked, boxes lost... so you end up with all the safeguards you have now plus those required to secure the computers and electronics from tampering. The only way you could be sure that the paper audit would work is the voter retained it, thereby confirming that this was the way they voted, although it does bring up all the problems you outlined.
In the end, there's going to have to be a quantum leap in voting technology to try and remove most of the simple methods of falsifying voting records while maintaining the anonymity of the system.
Slashdot Mirror
We have a new world's record in the Jump to Conclusions!
Anybody got a "Troll" mod point to spare?
But in this day and age, the authorities in many places have access to those techniques and technologies, as the incidence of cyber-crime has risen. And if a bully is making threats against or harassing a child, that can be reported to the authorities and be made a legal matter. I think in many cases, if some juvenile delinquent gets called out for his/her bullying and is brought before the police or a judge, they might suddenly get the idea that what they're doing isn't worth the effort. The fact is it's time-consuming and tedious to have to do these things, but if our children are in fact worth as much as we think, then why aren't we doing these things, or at least exhorting the proper authorities (school administrators, police, etc.) to do more?
What about legitimate mass marketers. The company I work for contracts with advertisers to send out bulk mailings to our opted-in users. Now, we don't spit out emails by the millions, but we certainly do send out large chunks of emails from a common source. Is this kind of thing going to interfere with legitimate mailings to opted-in customers?
Define "real." Whether physical, psychological, or emotional, bullying is bullying. It is one person attempting to dominate another, based on completely arbitrary social/physical boundaries ("I'm bigger than you," "I'm smarter than you," "I'm richer than you"). The fact is, schools have never come up with concerted efforts to stop bullying, and frankly, without constant surveillance, it's nearly impossible. A bully isn't going to do something to someone in proximity to someone in authority; that's why "cyber-bullying" is the new rage, because it's more "anonymous" than doing it to someone's face. The only way they will be caught is the the person being bullied reports it, and that's the point of the bullying: to make them hesitate to tell anyone, so they can continue to be used as someone else's form of entertainment.
What I don't think the cyber-bullies understand is that because it's technology-driven, they can be tracked. The hoops they would have to jump through to cover their tracks is probably beyond the grasp of the vast majority of bullies. Mind you, you are now seeing the ascendancy of the "techno-savvy" bully, who bullies other because he/she has superior technical skills/knowledge.
A vast majority of the world's servers are in countries not named the People's Republic of China. Therefore, to do as he insists, he would have to take control of those servers. I suspect, that even given the large number of people at his beck and call, that is a task beyond his capacity. At some point, every person is possession of sole authority in some organization gets delusions of grandeur.
In plain English: he's FOS.
Why do you think we fund cloning research?
I seem to remember having one of those... Someone nagged me when I was upgrading our router... but the memory is dim... Anyway, the food miraculously appears and somehow the children get to bed, so I suspect someone is in the house doing these things...
The change is going to be that the Internet is going to finally resemble a Möbius loop, where once you click on one content link and keep clicking, you will eventually wind up back where you started. People will be trapped in infinite loops of marketing and commerce will collapse because no one will actually be able to buy anything, because they can't break out of the loop.
I'll attest to that. Having two boys from my wife's previous marriage coupled with my not-quite 2-year-old daughter racing around the house, tearing off her clothes, and turning off the TV when I'm trying to watch it, I can honestly that the biological imperative to reproduce has been sufficiently eradicated in my case that we won't be having any more hellions anytime soon.
CPI filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FCC on August 24. After the statutory 20 business days had passed without any word from the agency, CPI filed suit on September 25, 2006. That apparently got the FCC's attention; the FOIA request was officially denied the next day.
The matter is now in the hands of a federal judge, and the FCC is trying to have the case dismissed. The agency argues that the material in the reports is confidential business information and that the release of it could damage the companies involved. In a court filing, Alan Feldman of the FCC tells the court how this might work. "For example," he says, "information about how a company's number of lines has increased or decreased in a particular area over time provides competitors with insights into how that company is focusing its investment and marketing efforts." He also notes that most filers requested confidentiality for their data.
When the GAO says you did something wrong, you generally did something wrong and need to fix it.
The FCC's behavior is pretty brazen; the CPI isn't a broadband service provider, so I suspect that other than verifying the FCC's results (or disproving them), the data is in pretty good hands. The fact is the FCC is playing politics and trying to stay on the good side of industry -- for what reason I can't say. It would surprise me if there's more going on here, and if they keep stalling, the FCC could end up being threatened with a Congressional investigation, which I think they'd like to avoid.
Wrong. If for some reason there are laws blocking my ability to use/modify the Internet, I simply build my own network. What do you think Google has really been doing all these years, building enormous data centers and acquiring dark fiber? Google knows they would be the first target of all the ISPs, given the ubiquity of their searches.
The Internet is not the be all and end all of communications -- it's only the most recent step. Innovation will continue whether there are roadblocks in place or not, simple because someone will always think of a better way to do things.
From the article:
Most of the push for music unencumbered by digital rights management, or DRM, systems over the past six months has come from technology, electronics and Internet companies. In part, it is because these companies have been largely unsuccessful in their efforts to produce digital locks that are simple and flexible for the consumer, foolproof to the hacker and workable on numerous makes and models of players.Which is why DRM is quite useless. Come on -- if worse came to worse, people would play the music on the stereos and record it using digital recorders then run it through their favorite piece of audio manipulating software and have just about the same quality recording. The music industry cannot hope to stop the myriad of innovative ways of copying music and they are fooling themselves if they think they can make DRM "unbreakable." If this report is true, perhaps some in the industry are finally coming to their senses.
And soon you too will be able to use your camera-phone to stop crime in its tracks!
That's a whole different thing. If the child knows he/she is doing something that would entice the predator, then perhaps that would be a mitigating factor, but somehow I doubt it.
Well, I hate being taxed even more than the next guy, and I'm not suggesting this set-up has to be funded by government mandate. Like anything in the free market, given enough time, advertising, and demand, market forces will reduce the price of solar systems and make them affordable enough. Heck, someone down the road from me had one installed, didn't spend all that much, and the upshot is, he has no electric bill. Heck, the best way to promote this would be to offer bigger property and income tax cuts to people who willingly convert to solar power.
In the end, if you see this as just another way to be taxed, then you are missing the point. It is possible for this to be done by the average consumer, though right now it's prohibitively expensive. But this was true of cars, and homes, and TVs, and now look at them. In the end, market forces can be used to help break the grip of foreign oil and slow the acceleration of global average temperature rise, and that seems like a good investment to me.
IANAL, but I believe the answer is no. That defense seldom works when the police actual try entrapping people -- I doubt it would even apply here, since the child would probably have very little knowledge of how their behavior would affect the predator's legal status, i.e. the commission of a crime. The fact is, these predators have intent to take the actions they take, knowing full well in most cases that there are laws protecting minors.
Mind you, MySpace I believe cooperates with law enforcement agencies to trap people like this. But it is not their job to do the policing themselves. They can write disclaimers about providing personal information on-line and caution people against revealing information which is normally private, but in the end, it's the user that has the responsibility to use good judgement. In these cases, I think it's safe to say good judgement was not used, mainly because the kids were not taught good judgement by their parents.
The difference is, if I am drunk and I get into a car and drive, I can kill or injure others. If I go on MySpace and get lured in by a predator, only I am injured. The two are not comparable.
Let me add, the State should not be in the business of raising our children -- that's our responsibility. The State has enough trouble balancing the budget and fixing potholes without claiming they are "thinking of the children." If I need their help, I'll ask.
Of course there is no free lunch; survival costs time, life, and eventually money. But I'm willing to bet with continued instability in oil producing nations, the increase in average global temperature rise, the dwindling of oil reserves, and the continued resistance to nuclear power, that solar will become a more cost-effective alternative as time passes. I may in fact pay more now that I would 25 years from now for a solar set-up, but I don't measure the cost in monetary terms alone. If I'm not on the grid, that's one less house that needs electricity generated from non-renewable sources. I can potentially switch to electric heating and perhaps lower my energy use further by reducing my dependence on natural gas. If in fact I can use the power to crack hydrogen or provide electricity for an alternative fuel vehicle, that's even less non-renewable resources used. Not a lot for one household, but multiply that over millions...
As to being in a sunny part of the country, while long periods of direct sunlight are better for generating power, solar cells have been getting better at converting even lower grade sunlight, the result being more power for longer periods. And with storage batteries, I can take advantage of long periods of bright sunshine to "stock up," to weather dimmer periods. There are up-front costs that have to be factored into all this, but I also look at what it might to do to the resale value as well. After all, if the cost is factored in to the price of the house, it may very well pay for itself.
Case in point: that dumb new show on HGTV "Living With Ed," where we have Ed Begley, Jr. trying to convince his wife that using renewable resources is a good thing. First off, he and his wife seem to spend an awful lot of the show in tiffs over one thing or another (I can't see why she married him). Second, it makes the whole "living renewably" idea seem like more of a joke than a lifestyle. It's done more for kitsch value than anything. What's really needed is a show like "This Old House" doing a project where they retrofit an older home to use renewable technology.
From the article:
Caminiti argues that the cost of the hydrogen/solar setup works out at about $4,000 a year when its $100,000 cost is spread over the anticipated 25-year lifespan of the equipment. That's still a lot higher than the $1,500 a year the average U.S. homeowner spends on energy, according to the federal government. Even if gasoline costs averaging about $1,000 per car annually are included in the energy mix, the renewables option is still more expensive than the grid/gasoline combination.Mind you, once you've bought the equipment, there are only the maintenance costs over that 25 years, where as the price of energy will undoubtedly continue to increase. And the price of solar cells is dropping, so the cost may go lower than $100,000. I for one would love to have solar -- not having to pay for electricity, being able to run my Christmas lights 365 days a year, and not losing my power in a blackout. Also, if you generate excess electricity, you can sell it to the utility companies, and actually make a buck when you have excess power.
When you think about it, the lack of standards is probably what has caused the current crop of voting machines to be such dismal failures. While I'm not sure I trust Diebold anyway, given their political connections, they probably would have done at least a halfway decent job on their machines if there were a set of standards to measure them against. It's not enough for the US Government to send out a Request For Proposals outlining what they are looking for, unless the functionality and security can be defined against some kind of standard. If the standards had existed first, maybe the machines would not have all the loopholes and omissions which make them such trash currently.
100 years is probably excessive -- one night might be sufficient...
Inmate: What'cha in for, buddy?
Spammer: I... uh... sent people spam emails... about... male enhancement...
Inmate: That so?!? Hey fellas! Meet my new b*tch... [grinning]
Spammer: GUARD!!!!!!!!
I see now.
I have a home because it beats living on the streets. I have children (2 of whom are not mine by birth), because some day I will be unable to take care of myself. My wife and I both work and due to the times and our expenses, cannot make ends meet. I am verging on bankruptcy because I have been struggling for years to ensure that my family has a roof over its head, food in their bellies, and clothes on their back. If I had the resources of your average pharma CEO, I suspect I wouldn't be struggling so mightily. Mind you, my struggles are not because my home is luxurious and I am surrounded by fancy cars and expensive gadgets.
But apparently, no matter what my actual situation, it's easier for you to sit there and judge me, knowing very little of my life. I realize that response is hypocritical to some extent, given what I am saying about CEOs, but the lifestyles of CEOs are splashed all over business magazines, while my life, and the life of most working-class Americans, is kept in obscurity.
Survival, above all else comes first. If I do not survive, I cannot contribute anything to society. I must provide for myself and my family. Life would be so much easier and cheaper of course if we stopped procreating, but then human life on Earth would take on a tone of finality (I recommend seeing "Children of Men" if you want to know what a world without children would be really like) that would be hard to swallow. I procreate in order to ensure the survival of my species, the survival of my line, and to provide new life to take up the challenges left incomplete. I will never apologize or seek approval of the decisions I make, and will do what I must to ensure that everyone has a voice. In the end, each person must decide if they are doing enough on every level. It is a question that only the individual can ask and answer -- it is not for society at large to enforce.
And why are you assuming I am so well off? Because I post on Slashdot? Because I work in it? Automatically I have money and time to spare? I have three children, a wife, a home, and a two-hour commute, and while I sympathize and empathize with all those in this world who are poor, I've been poor myself, and nobody came along and simply poured money on me and made my poverty go away.
And the point is not how much money I have to spare, which is virtually none after taking care of the necessities of survival for myself and my family, but the fact that there are those who incomes are so far above what is necessary to live a normal, simple life who do not seek to use their wealth to help others (e.g. Warren Buffet, Bill & Melinda Gates, etc.) but squander it on excess. If I do what I can, when I can, why shouldn't I expect others to do what they can? More to the point, simply because I have this expectation does not mean they have to do it. They have the right as free people to do what they wish, as long as what they do harms no one else. We're not talking law here, but morality, and the two are not synonymous.
I maintain that there are those in the pharmaceutical industry that could be doing more if they wanted to, and the resources are there if their business practices are altered. I'm not saying that we should force them to do it, only that they could if they wished. It's not my intent to tell people what they should be doing, but to ask if they could be doing more. That's the question we all can ask, even those of us teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Do not presume for a minute that your morality has any higher place in this world than mine -- in the end, one good asteroid could render both our points of view moot.
And if someone can reprogram the machine to record votes a certain way, why can't they program it to dispense the correct paper audits as well? And a lock-box? Secure? You're right back to the same problem you have with paper ballots. Locks can be picked, boxes lost... so you end up with all the safeguards you have now plus those required to secure the computers and electronics from tampering. The only way you could be sure that the paper audit would work is the voter retained it, thereby confirming that this was the way they voted, although it does bring up all the problems you outlined.
In the end, there's going to have to be a quantum leap in voting technology to try and remove most of the simple methods of falsifying voting records while maintaining the anonymity of the system.