When I was involved in election monitoring in SoCal, they tallied neither the write in candidates nor the third party candidates on the ballot which had the beneficial effect as far as the two major parties are concerned of making sure the Libertarians and Greens and other third parties would have to requalify for the ballot for every election.

As far as write in candidates, as far as I know they have to qualify for the ballot ahead of time just like any other candidate in order to be counted.

And as someone else pointed out, the electors can choose whoever they want.

Part of the change at least for BIOSes stored in Flash EEPROM was that later Flash EEPROM memories implemented internal charge pumps so they could generate their own high voltage source for erasing and programming. Earlier ones required an external high voltage supply and it was that supply which a jumper could control.

Early PCs with programmable Flash BIOSes often supported this via a jumper which was needed to enable the high voltage programming supply.

As described you can't rootkit early PCs which still supported a rewritable Flash BIOS and had a jumper to enable the high voltage programming supply.

I assume you meant "companies", not "countries", but even this seems really strange to me, at least as an American - under our antitrust laws, they'd have to be insane to put something like that into writing.

That sure stopped Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and eBay from discussing and agreeing to do this in a tangible medium. All they had to put up with is a civil lawsuit.

Most people that work on Laptops spend a lot more then 1K on a system. For a work laptop 1.8-2.5K isn't unreasonable. And they usually last a long time ( >5years ) before they quit working.

Having had an expensive Futitsu Lifebook fail three times during the warranty period and then immediately after as well as all of the design defects in laptops since like inadequate cooling, all I can say is never again. I could have built 3 small form factor desktops with removable storage for the price of that laptop and I would still have them.

If I did have to buy a laptop, I would either go with a refurbished Toughbook or similar or pick up something used from a computer swap meet.

Oh, good. Now we can have new and improved negative connotations.

Having AT&T U-Verse and no better options in a major metropolitan area, streaming almost anything is useless. NNTP and Bittorrent work great though.

So we can just build more dams in all of the available locations and they will not get tied up in litigation like nuclear power. Oh, wait . . .

Solar is displacing fossil energy, so the remaining fossil plants run fewer hours and at lighter load, so there is less opportunity to recoup capital and finance costs.

This goes double for nuclear power plants since they have no incremental fuel costs. One of the reasons utilities are forced to buy from renewable energy sources is to deliberately force nuclear power plants to operate at lower load capacity making them uneconomical.

5 seconds later, he'd be arrested for revealing classified information. Then the American people would vilify him as a traitor for letting the terrorists know how they're being watched, and he'd be put on trial for treason. In the end, it would make no difference. Nothing will until the majority of the people actually care and desire to not be spied on.

That would be quite a trick:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

But an arrest record seems to be a big deal in the US and is tracked? Unlike in many other common law countries where an arrest, even with a charge, means *nothing* whatsoever if you are not convicted or charges are dropped, and it cannot be used against you in any way.

Yes, arrest records are tracked and a job application may specifically ask about arrests.

Or, hell, transfer over my wifi network. Since my phone supports USB3 (Note 3) I actually use that, but my girlfriend's phone doesn't, and transferring over a low-interference 5ghz wireless N network seems roughly as fast as USB2, without having to mess with plugs that wear out.

I will be looking for wireless data transfer in the next camera I purchase just for this reason. Right now I can either wear out the mini-USB connector or wear out the SD card slot. It is too bad that optical like IRDA never become commonly available.

This also nullifies the Origination Clause in the Constitution. Why was in included if it has no meaning?

More like challenge accepted - how long do they retain their data while unpowered?