I concur. A development methodology ("open source") will not address any of the deficiencies (when viewed from the voter's perspective, the perspective that should matter most) of voting. No matter how much one trusts a voting program, there's no way to be sure that the computer used for voting is running only software one trusts. No electronic system can compete with the simplicity and recount-friendly approach of what is called for here: voter-verified paper ballots.

So address to the question in the /. summary: You never should have stopped using voter-verified paper ballots.

There are computers one can purchase that do as the parent post specified—the voter feeds in a blank ballot (one which they could have filled out manually if desired) and the computer (which has a scanner and printer attached) will scan the ballot, help the voter by showing the choices on a screen, reading the ballot aloud, or reading the ballot text to headphones, and then collect votes from the voter. Then the computer's printer will print the voter's votes on the paper ballot, and eject the printed paper ballot to let the user inspect that printed ballot. At this point the voter can choose to carry the voter-verified paper ballot to be counted or spoil that ballot and start again. The voter can also feed in a marked up ballot (marked by hand or by computer) and let the computer summarize the votes which that ballot specifies. These features let the blind and/or illiterate vote without losing their privacy by forcing them to find & bring in someone else to mark up their ballot for them. This is as close to computers used in voting as one should want to get.

Concur that my initial Googling for R topics was sometimes frustrating. But lately I've had little difficulty. Stackoverflow or the R mailing list archive are usually the top results. Not sure if I've adjusted or what.

My experience is that if you have any experience programming, R makes far more sense than other common packages, like Stata or SPSS. After all, it's an actual programming language. My biggest adjustment was learning how to not use loops.

Don't even get me started on SAS.

Why are people so quick to go to the sci-fi stories of the army of robots rising up to destroy humanity when there's still ample room for exploration of the robot's masters subjugating Earth to their will (a far likelier prospect, to boot?)

Weak. Cliché.

So wait, we're assuming that they're all criminals to begin with?

Yes, browsers have indeed become so complicated. It's not just Mozilla, Google's putting even more resources on Chrome than what Mozilla can afford. A browser is now essentially an operating system (see FirefoxOS) that can do pretty much everything *and* needs to do it in a way that's secure against untrusted code (JS). On top of that, Mozilla is involved in projects that reach beyond just the web, like the Opus audio codec and the Daala video codec that I'm personally involved in (there's many more of course).

Not necessarily. I've no idea about remote starters; the window deal could probably be accomplished with basic electronics, though sounds like a pain. But you can get RPM readouts and many other stats through the ODB II interface required for all normal cars in the U.S. since 1996. There are bluetooth and USB adapters available; I imagine you could probably put together a project with an Arduino that would display RPM readout on whatever display device you want. It's probably already been done.

Prion diseases?

Because different faces, or parties for that matter, tend to pursue similar policies?

Right! If we'd elected McCain instead of Obama in 2008, the Affordable Care Act as we know it today would still be more or less intact, we'd still have withdrawn American forces from Iraq on the same schedule, and we'd still be shaking hands with China over a miniature climate agreement. In smaller matters, the Keystone pipeline would still be in limbo (just because that's easier than killing it explicitly). Et cetera et cetera.