If you can prove your vote was correctly recorded, then you might be more easily persuaded to sell it — be it that you receive a pay for it, or you receive the service of not getting your bones broken.

A vote once cast is just a piece of paper among many. Nothing should tie it to a voter's identity. A voter should be unable to prove he voted a particular way.

It might still happen, but many among us will still fight for the population to understand the unavoidable security risks in doing so. We have the duty to do so.

I once asked this to an Estonian government person at a e-voting presentation in my country. Her answer: "We let you vote many times. Only the last one counts."

That would allow you to vote at the workplace, then go home and vote again.

Of course, you can gather people at the election day, two hours before booths close, and have everybody vote for $foo. Then, throw a party and lock them in (or something like that), and secure the vote is "right".

In a small country with 1.3 million inhabitants, a couple tens of thousands of votes can be decisive.

Or: How small the margin for a polemic vote? In Mexico, we have had presidential candidates winning with a (much disputed) 0.55% difference to the second place. How many votes do you need to rig such an election?

I cannot tell you how much I thank questions. All of them, even the dumbest.

I do try to be very clear and dynamic, but some topics... are just hard to grasp, or I have not found the proper way to teach them... But in some subjects, most students won't even realize they are not getting what I teach. There are a few students who are burnt with questions, and cannot stand on a point they don't understand. Some students insist on their questions even if they are sometimes just too easy.

I thank them. And I try to explain, over and over, from different angles. That's what brings back the attention of the rest of the class, and the different angles are in the end good for all of them.

Not precisely.

Yes, they are free. But the scientific world revolves around the notion of the different metrics to your work. And it's not only prestige: Often, your income level will be determined mainly by the impact factor of the magazines you publish in.

But... Guess who dictates the values for said impact factors in the international indexes?

Of course! The publishers of closed sciencie magazines.

I teach "Operating Systems". And yes, I don't expect (I'd love, though!) many from them to have to implement a Second-Chance (Clock) memory page replacement algorithm. But I do expect them to understand how duing professional their lives the programs they write will be treated by the operating system, and how to avoid bad performance resulting from inefficient patterns.

That's also a very striking fact. Practically all of the people I know that work on postgraduate studies in the best universities in the country not only do it without paying tuition, but getting a scolarship (around US$1000-1500 a month, roughly the salary they would get as professionals). The logic is, postgraduate studies do require you to focus full-time on them, and not giving them that attention will lead to failure. The whole society will benefit from masters and doctors, so the whole society pays for them. Of course, academic requisites for permanence are high.

If the society and government do not value having skilled professionals, sick schemes where graduate students have to spend their evenings serving at restaurants, and can devote much less to their studies. That's a losing recipe. And of course, that leads to longer terms because of failed subjects, which means increased debt.

I am a teacher at a public university in Mexico. I know many of my students work (and, of course, many don't) to get enough income to live (maybe because their parents cannot support them, maybe even because they support their family).

What I completely fail to understand is how on Earth can a 22-year-old graduate –as you say– with US$150K in loans. That is just insane. And sick.

In my country, as in most of Latin America, and (as far as I understand) in Europe, all of the best universities are State-run, and tuition is either free or really low — Of course, there are private universities, with first-world scolarships. They have some selling points, but with very few exceptions, they are basically little but diploma mills, and next to no research at all is done in them (just teaching).

Anyway, I cannot understand how the USA cannot have a decent public university system. I know there are *some*, as part of my family have graduated from them. But just the idea of being in such a deep debt as a freshly graduated student... Makes me sick.

You made me immediately think on the poor Lemmings looking at the decreasing counter on the top of their heads, only to grab their heads in distress upon reaching zero... Exploding in a gory feast of blood, leaving their poor mammal corpse for their brethen to remind them of their probable fate.

One of the cruelest games in game history. But, yes, one of the best ones as well.

Oh, come on... I have also lost several items only to find them later, misplaced in the most obvious places. Of course, I have also attributed to theft some of my losses. I guess that I have misplaced my stuff more than once.

So, if thieves were to end up with a useless brick, would people lose less phones?

Do thieves only get phones to resell them (and not, say, take your contacts information, for blackmail and similar stuff?) In my country, there have been countless campaigns telling people not to fall for anybody saying "I have your daughter kidnapped", because they are most usually bluffing (and demanding for expedited money transfers, to which many distressed parents comply without first checking)

I seriously seriously doubt this US$580 million figure would be in any significant way reduced

You mean, like having some nice morning sex? Given the Slashdot famed population statistics, you might be just right.

In the 1860s, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay allied in a war against Paraguay. This war caused the death of ~60% of the Paraguayan population, including ~90% of its adult males. The social effects are still present today, over 140 years later: The country is the most machist in Latin America (which is not an easy feat!), because it became not only normal but positive for a man to have several women. Of course, it also destroyed Paraguayan economy, and to this day, Paraguay is the poorest country in South America.
Of course, this says very little of what would happen by killing all mosquito males or females. But since when does a Slashdot discussion need to stay on topic? ;-)

Please note that "a woman" for the Slashdot demographics most likely includes "mom", and up to a certain point of demographics, "granny". Besides that... I doubt most aunts would trust Slashdotters' color sensibility. I mean... Just look at your desktop!

Expanding a bit from my previous post: Of course, interested kids will get their RPi going, and might end up making magic, just as many of us did with our 8-bit machines 25 years ago. However, the bar the OLPC set to itself was quite different — And might I say, much higher: To come up with a {product, system} that's made for kids. For all kids. To help them to learn about everything, not just about how to do I/O with a computer. An operating environment that's tailored to a constructuvist view of education, allowing them to (easily) understand what's going on in the programs — But even if they don't want to, give them a wide array of programs to hand-hold them through the whole educational process.

Not by far the same task. Both RPi and OLPC set on for extraordinary tasks. But their targets are very far from each other.