It's up to the network owner to decide who is abusing the system, not some network user. It's not his system, not his decision who gets to do what.

So you honestly thought that they would elect a new pope who would didn't agree with long standing church teachings? What is interesting is that the new pope is a non European. As for what it means, or what will change, that has yet to be seen.

It would be cryptographically possible to ensure your vote was correctly counted without reviling who you voted for. With a one way function you could generate a hash of your vote, which would be compared with a second hash generated at counting time.

I don't think the point was to create something directly usuefull. The point is to produce a machine that makes things with solar power to learn about solar powered machines. Often many usless machine's are made before one makes a usueful one. I beleive they are called prototypes.

The goal here is to sidestep the electoral college, if all states send all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote then the winner of the popular vote wins. It's an interesting idea, but I think that if you get enough support to pass this in most states, then you could just amend the constitution. But it's a good way to get the ball rolling and it's nice to see someone taking the issue seriously.

These results to me really underscore how important it is to get out and vote. If 300 people who already wanted Gore to win had gone out and bothered to vote, then the country might be in a very different place now. While this is somewhat dishartening, it's also empowering, every vote really does matter.