Mail votes can be secret to. The Swedish vote system uses the same voting envelopes as for normal voting, but then you need to send them in packaged in a special outer envelope (and with a few exception, this is done at special stations at that, not in private). These are opened under the same scrutiny and together with the voting boxes, unless there are voters who voted both by mail and at the station to (e.g. for changing their mind). Then the mail vote is discarded.

Darn you beat me. And yes, anyone building medical devices should have learnt the Therac-25 lesson!

"Red means stop, with no exceptions."

Except in Germany with a fixed green arrow.

Just as in the above Canada case, there is similar regulation in Sweden. There is a special board which examines the problem (which may not need to be fraud, it does include regular screwups like just "losing" votes, e.g. if election logistics are screwed up which occasionally happens). If the board determines that a different actual election outcome would have been likely (not even the highest plausibility), a re-election occurs. The rules say this should happen if the difference would just be for a single seat, and even if it is only likely (50%).

For the last election, there were such re-elections occuring at several places on the local level, and even in one of the biggest regions (VÃstra GÃtalands lÃn). There were actually a maths professor from my university involved in doing the probability analysis for the board, to find the likelihoods of impact on the result. A few other local and regional elections were not deemed to be as flawed (1% probability) and were not redone.

impose a transaction tax (eg 0.01%) on every trade of any kind performed on the stock markets

Have they properly understood the implications of introducing a Tobin tax? Especially the unintended ones, such as flight to foreign or otherwise unregulated markets, added bureaucracy, etc?

If only those web browsers wouldn't be so dawn expensive....

On really old computers, new browsers tend to be more sluggish than old ones. Add to that: new versions of some browsers (especially IE) are not available for older operating systems, e.g. XP or 98/ME.

Oops, typo. Fix:

Your peripheral (with a squarish USB type B outlet) would instead expect power...

> if you plug a powered USB port into the thing to be able to have multiple peripherals, then you could likely get power from the hub.

No. Only USB outlets of type A (rectangular, the type you have on the back of your PC) supply power. Your peripheral (with a squarish USB type A outlet) would instead expect power...

>Whilst I don't live in Sweden (I'm in the UK), I have to ask quite what your point is?
I do live in Sweden. Let's check your claims...

>The Swedes may pay more in taxes, but in return get free healthcare
Untrue. Low cost only (there are small fees). And (sometimes very long!) queues...

>good roads
Questionable, depends a lot on where you drive! Many smaller roads and streets in towns have suffered badly during the last decades from reduced maintenance.

>low crime free schooling and university
Probably both correct (at least the crime rate is not high)

>(i believe) free (or heavily subsidised) childcare
Heavily subsidised. Very costly for society...

>efficient public transport, and much more.
Questionable, in Stockholm it's great, in most medium cities it's okay, anything more rural it's often quite spotty.

>They're also very highly rated in terms of their low wealth disparity (road fines for example are based on a percentage of your annual income so that a rockstar in a ferrari feels the same sting in their speeding ticket as does a poor person in a skoda)
No, fixed amounts for speeding tickets etc. Fines for "normal" (non-road) crimes (ordered by court) use the day-fine system you describe though.

>, and human development index.

No, but usually you'd put your WiFi router inside your house. Hence, the house would work as a Faraday cage around the rest of the world, keeping all WiFi signals within the house (might be a good idea for tinfoil-hat wearers, btw)