RAM prices stayed high long after production costs dropped. It took government action - overseas, I recall- to punish the collusion and price-fixing and force the prices to drop. There ain't no such thing as a free market.

Disney not two weeks ago fired their IT department and replaced them with H1B workers. They just didn't want to pay American salaries to American workers. The arguments is over.

I think the idea is that it would eventually render bad cops uninsurable, and thus, unemployable.

Really, though, these are all suggestions to get around the central issue; cops look out for their own, even in the face of blatantly criminal behavior. It's a cultural issue, more than anything.

If we can get Blackboard, Inc. to adopt it, we could have Rusty Rails on a Blackboard. We'd be just one letter away from perfection.

Of course not all bugs will be labelled correctly,

Don't worry. Somebody is keeping track of that on 3 by 5 index cards in a shoe-box.

The NSA ain't god, and this is *me* saying this. The NSA is an API for the governments's paranoid would-be supergovernment. They just do what they're told, being Slashdotty geeks, and then they go home. Hacking the evoting machines would be... problematic even for their kind of organization.

Much easier if billionaires just buy the voting machine companies and tell a few trusted IT people to install backdoors on the main accumulation points. Auditing is useless if the original votes are uncountable because of anonymity requirements. We trust the accumulated totals. And if you think the Koch bros. and others like them aren't capable of that, then you ain't paying attention.

Canada DID had (last I heard) a nationwide paper voting system. You draw an "X" with a pencil next to your candidate. They counted each card on a table with both parties looking on (It works if one side is not constantly contesting the reading to slow it down intentionally so their boy can win by running down the clock). They finish the count nationwide in three hours. Works, and you can recount in less than a day, if you have to (if one side isn't trying to delay, delay, delay).

I understand the Harper Government is rapidly shoving e-voting down Canada's throat.

Guess why. Go on, guess. Why replace a system that works and can't be cheated with a series of black boxes that can't be trusted? Why would you possibly want to do that. Golly. I can't. Why would they do that... it's like they *want* a system that can be hacked to win, esp. since their side owns the companies, one way or another. Nah, that can't be right. That would be dishonest, and plays to the public's idea that computers are always awesome and better than people.

If a company has a person who has access to the accumulated counts, then that person can change the vote, downstream, upstream, or final destination. The individual computers don't matter; there are no ways, given the constraints, the verify who voted for what - yes, there are established, effective ways of controlling the data, but if you can't audit the entire chain, it doesn't matter. The code, the counts, the data are owned by private companies, and they have established that all of that are their protected trade secrets. Past lawsuits show us that they refuse court orders and countersue, and that they destroy the data, such as it is. Puttering around with geeky analysis of the browsers and malware isn't addressing the problem which is: they who control the machines control the elections. Worrying about the "hackers" on the outside is specious. It's the hackers on the inside.

I'm not going on a fishing expedition for new music. That's probably part of being middle-aged and having priorities. It's also not my job to wade through all the crap and get to it. I qualified "died" with "virtually" because I still get exposed to interesting things through musician friends (Jazz) and community radio, where "the last DJ" is still allowed to "play what he wants to play".

Not being a Christian isn't a provable health hazard. Not being vaccinated is.

Put this another way:
If measles goes through a small town public school with a thousand kids, three of those kids will die. Several will have life-long aftereffects.

If you vaccinate every human being in a large city, *1* will have *some sort* of adverse effect.

If 'reducing possible harm to children' is actually your end goal, there's no way in hell you'd argue against vaccines.

The problem, really, is that there are entire generations who've never seen a playmate die of measles, or have the polio leg braces, or the like.

Sorry, but that's all on the level of pointing out that dihydrogen monoxide is a universal solvent, causes horrible burns in it's gaseous state, induces tissue necrosis in it's solid state, will suffocate you in it's liquid state, and that excessive doses will cause seizures, among other problems.

He means Judas Priest's first album, Rocka Rolla.