Video: El Niño Turns Ugly

We’ve had a lot of stories on this issue like this one and this one and this one. Looks like Diebold’s boss won’t be able to “deliver” any more votes to his friends.

Feds to Toughen E-Voting Standards?

A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.

DREs are currently used by more than 30 percent of jurisdictions across the U.S. and are the exclusive voting technology in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina.

According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.

In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.

The machines currently in use are “more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code,” according to the paper.

The NIST paper also noted that, “potentially, a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”

It recommends “requiring SI [software independent] voting systems in VVSG 2007.”

Death And Disease In The Next 25 Years

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Eideard in General

20 Comments

In 1993, the World Bank sponsored the 1990 Global Burden of Disease study carried out by researchers at Harvard University and the World Health Organization. This study provided the first comprehensive global estimates of death and illness by age, sex, and region. It also provided projections of the global burden of disease and mortality up to 2020. The study and its projections have been crucial in national and international health policy planning. Colin Mathers and Dejan Locar have now updated the projections based on 2002 data on mortality and burden of disease and published their results in the international open-access journal PLoS Medicine.

They predict that between 2002 and 2030 under all three scenarios life expectancy will increase around the world, fewer children under the age of 5 years will die, and the proportion of people dying from non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer will increase. Although deaths from infectious diseases will decrease overall, HIV/AIDS deaths will continue to increase. Despite this increase, 50% more people are predicted to die of tobacco-related disease than of HIV/AIDS in 2015.

By 2030, the three leading causes of illness will be HIV/AIDS, depression, and ischemic heart disease in the baseline and pessimistic scenarios. In the optimistic scenario, road-traffic accidents (which increase with socioeconomic development) will replace heart disease as the number 3 killer.

Is there any possibility [1] people will get better at driving — [2] get bright enough to stop smoking?

Zune sells well in its debut, but not as well as the iPod

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Smartalix in General

23 Comments

Considering the promotional hype and heavy marketing that went into this launch, I’d have been surprised if the Zune hadn’t sold relatively well. I still maintain that it will never beat out the iPod in its current iteration

Immigrant Test To Become More Meaningful

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Uncle Dave in General

23 Comments

Better questions with provide a in-depth understanding of their new country.

Could The Latest From RIAA Shut Down the Internet — With US Gov Help?

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Uncle Dave in General

18 Comments

More idiocy.

$2 million to victim of FBI blunder

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Eideard in General

12 Comments

The U.S. government agreed Wednesday to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by an Oregon lawyer who was arrested and jailed for two weeks in 2004 after the FBI bungled a fingerprint match and mistakenly linked him to a terrorist attack in Spain.

Texas To Allow Legally Blind Hunters To Use Frikin’ Laser Beams

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Uncle Dave in General

19 Comments

Zap!

Town poses nude in pothole protest

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Eideard in General

6 Comments

People in a small town in Western Canada are so fed up with the rotten state of their main road that they came up with an unusual form of protest — a calendar that shows them posing nude in the potholes.

Violent video games leave teenagers emotionally aroused

Published in November 30th, 2006

Posted by Eideard in General

7 Comments

A new study has found that adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit lingering effects on brain function, including increased activity in the region of the brain that governs emotional arousal and decreased activity in the brain’s executive function, which is associated with control, focus and concentration.