I thought Kim Dotcom was broke and not even able to pay his lawyers? http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30209067

Or if you live in a state like I do that has no sales tax. I don't want a new federal tax imposed on my purchases, which is one of the ideas floating around. Having the feds collect a tax and redistribute it is a tempting angle to avoid certain sticky issues of state tax collection across state lines. People who already are used to paying sales taxes might be ok with this, but what about states like mine that are quite opposed to a sales tax? Would my state have an exemption along with due recourse to fight the collection on merchants who might falsely collect it?

Cost-Benefit.

Your stated advantage is loss of paper ballots.

Your stated negative is "to get electronic voting done securely and properly"

I think paper ballots win. More security staff is a much larger payout than developing a fully trusted and accountable complex computer system.

How does a blind person see the touchscreen? How is this an improvement over a paper ballot with fixed braille next to each option?

Ballots must be anonymous to guarantee an uncompromised election. Preventions against stuffing the ballot box is a local check and balance. It's hard to lose a paper ballot once they are in the lock box.

Darn, right link, wrong text. Wish I could recall my post for a few seconds to make a quick edit.

It should be Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode: or, How Not to Design Authentication

Verified by VISA didn't succeed because:
1) It looked like a scam site complete with redirection to a 3rd party asking for personal details like portion of social security number. Nowhere does it display security credentials.
2) Real phishing scams exist using the name and similar form layouts.
3) Yet Another Password. Hopefully not the same one used to log into the shopping site.
4) If you forget your password, all you need is the card information to reset it, plus a birthday. Not exactly a big secret.
5) It never worked for me because I disable third party cookies, run ABP, disable javascript, etc. I had to use IE the one time I tried to use it.

Here is a paper that describes the flaws in Verified by Visa. Gross Domestic Product Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment

I am glad not everyone shares your viewpoint. This is an entire industry still in its infancy. Using a strategy like selling rich people seats so they can be the first ones up there is perfectly satisfactory to get the technology developed and bring costs down an open it up to a wider audience. It's not a zero sum game.

The goal of commercial manned spaceflight was already achieved decades ago? Odd. I seem to have missed it.

Is that loss just the tobacco sales, or does it include the loss of all sales by smokers? There is a difference.

Part of the US credit card fee of ~3% or so is to cover fraud. When your banks switched to EMV, did they reduce the fees at all to compensate or are they taking the reduced risk of fraud as profit?

In the name of progress:

In the beginning people counted out change in chickens and goats, or other favors.
Then came currency, where change was counted out in pennies and dollars.
Then came bank checks, which were convenient, but took time to write out.
Then came credit companies with a mechanical swipe tool in carbon copy. Too slow: add convenient swipe and sign. Gosh, who uses checks, they take forever!?
Finally comes touchless. Precious seconds are saved! No swipe, no sign, no finding a pen - just touch phone/device and authenticate with it.

This probably saves a few seconds, and potentially adds important network security. Hopefully your phone doesn't run out of power or criminals don't find a loophole through the extra third parties.

Personally, I still prefer cash wherever possible with credit card as secondary. Lots of small companies give a cash discount if you ask...

7) In the US, at least, a credit card company provides certain financial protections that banks do not. Generally it is far easier to recover funds stolen by theft if a credit card was used than a bank account debit. A credit card expenditure is not your money and federal law prohibits companies from passing on unauthorized transactions to you (there is a minimum that may vary depending on credit company no more than $50, I believe). Fully-paid credit accounts generally have zero fee/interest, as well.

Credit theft has happened to me a few times (one stolen and used at a gas station, another series of foreign transactions, incorrect charge at a restaurant, etc) and I paid $0 of the contested amount, without any reduction of my existing/liquid funds. If I had used a debit card, I don't even know the recovery process but it certainly wouldn't be free in the short term. Liquid money at a bank is spent until refunded, unable to be spent on other things in the interim.

XP still works for me. There is no downside. Snazzy new features don't improve my efficiency at work.

I agree, when a computer breaks and we have to get Windows 7 because we are forced to, a painful upgrade period occurs because the software never seems to work on the new OS. There is no advantage except for the newer hardware computation power. Who cares about Windows 9?

What about industrial businesses? My company is just finally minimizing XP to only a handful of lab computers and ones necessary for legacy support such as our single remaining Windows 2k system. We are struggling to get one more system moved to Windows 7 (under the guise of a faster computer and therefore less time waiting on the computations) and the application just doesn't work on that OS yet. The vendor is working with us to find a solution, but it may take several months (if ever) because they licensed the software from someone else.

The computer is a tool to do RF measurements and calculations and prepare presentations. I just got my first VNA with no floppy drive and more than one USB port! That is a big event.