Really? You haven't see my polling station now that we have those stupid readers. There is no curtain any more and the taller you are, the easier to look at what others are putting down on their ballot.

False. Prove that the ballot in the photo was actually cast. Prove that the lever was actually pulled. Prove that the ballot went through the reader. Prove that I didn't rip up said ballot and filled out a new one.

When one or two firemen are electrocuted fighting a blaze this stuff will be gone - or the flipside, no insurance company will cover your home as the fire department will not go up on the roof. Heck, that may happen even with more traditional panels sooner than later.

With earlier model panels, it was sufficient to have a cutoff near ground level as they were not efficient enough to still be a major risk. Apparently not any more. Firefighters are also nervous about going up on a roof that is overweighted.

I am not a fireman but have spoken to quite a few in an effort to make policy for my HOA after we were legally mandated to allow solar installations. Too little thought is put into the many ramifications of solar panels, especially in attached homes.

All this hyperventilating about "vote buying" and "undermining the election" is utter crap. Unless you can show a printed receipt of exactly who you voted for, any photo is meaningless. Old style machine - until you pull that handle to open the curtain your vote is not recorded and may be changed. Scanned ballots? Oops! I made a mistake, rip this one up and give me another please, thanks!

I honestly do not recall the last time I got an Amazon package via UPS (and never FedEx). And this is in a decent sized suburbia. For at least two years now, probably longer, everything arrives by USPS and frankly they are just as reliable as was UPS, perhaps more so.

There is no legitimate reason for spending 10s of billions of dollars on manned missions to Mars, unless you count aerospace/defense corporate bottom lines.

Having something that 'just works' is not really the prime consideration. Any rewrite has the potential to introduce unknown errors - whether from language constructs, compilation or hitting some odd use case not reached before. Older Fortran (it like that now) and COBOL are extremely well understood programs. The risk/reward of replacement in the new shiny is just not there.

Also, most people (read those not using it) don't know that Fortran has progressed from FOTRAN IV or 77. The current Fortran has just about all the modern language features (if not more) that you could want.

And people forget what COBOL means - common business oriented language. COBOL is all about data in and data/reports out. It is not about pretty, new shiny.

Snobol 4 forevers!

Because any corruption to files is instantly mirrored on the "backup" drives in the array.

and chased down by the government (rather than in civil court by those holding the copyright) but one never hears the same government actions against trademark violation?

Was one of the first things I remember making it to the web, was Scott's list. Though technically the list was first posted to bulletin boards,ftp servers and yes, finger.

For the young ones, here is what the internet looked like in 1993 The list itself was available by html in 1994, if not earlier
Copyright 1994 "http://www.cs.uwm.edu/~yanoff/yanoff.html" Scott Yanoff

And some background:

The Yanoff List: meeting the demand for a concise list of ``what's out
there''

In September 1991, Scott Yanoff, a computer science student at the
University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, created a list of six items---
telnet addresses of Internet information services. He posted the list
to internet and service related newsgroups like alt.bbs.internet and
news.answers. According to Scott, ``I posted my list one day and next
thing I knew people were writing to me with things to add to the list''
(Yanoff, 1993a). After that, Scott added the list to the University's
ftp site, gopher, and set up an email list to reach people who could
not access the list by those methods. Scott describes how the list
grew from contributions from other people, ``I owe most of the list to
OTHER people . . . that's what is great about the Internet . . . I
decided to share my list, and everyone else shares their knowledge in
helping to contribute to the list'' (Yanoff, 1993a). Today, the list,
popularly known as ``The Internet Services List,'' (Yanoff, 1993b)
contains listings for more than 135 separate services accessible
through telnet, ftp, finger, gopher, and email. Daniel Dern (1994)
calls Yanoff's list ``one of the most frequently cited or referenced
documents on the Internet.''

don't..don't believe the hype!

A very troubled, costly program trying to generate some positive spin.

so... you voted for Kodos the Executioner? Striking that Trump seems like he could follow in the footsteps of Kodos (but never fill them)

In 2246, Kodos served as governor of the planet Tarsus IV, who had seized power and declared martial law when an exoitc fungus destroyed the colony's food supply. He earned the name "Kodos the Executioner" when he rationed the remaining food supply by condemning some 4000 colonists to die, selected according to Kodos' personal theories of eugenics. Kodos was believed to have died at the colony shortly thereafter, but he actually escaped persecution and assumed a new identity, as Shakespearean actor Anton Karidian.

For as long as there have been touchscreen sigs I have signed "X" Only once, at Home Despot paying for $10 in flowers was it ever questioned.