Free Republic

Did Voting Machines Play a Role in Alvin Greene's Win?Jun 15 2010, 5:09 PM ET It's an explanation that's been proposed by some: that South Carolina's electronic touch-screen voting machines had something to do with Alvin Greene's victory in the state's Democratic Senate primary. The vast majority of South Carolina's votes are cast on ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machines; paper ballots are used for absentee ballots and in emergency cases (like when poll workers are locked out of a polling place early in the morning and can't let voters in), but every polling station uses touch-screen machines to record the vast...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will ask Congress to improve childhood nutrition by ridding school vending machines of sugary snacks and drinks and giving school lunch and breakfast to more kids. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the administration will seek changes when Congress overhauls the Childhood Nutrition Act. "Our children deserve better nutrition, and our country's better and brighter future depends on it," Vilsack said. "And with the reauthorization of the Childhood Nutrition Act scheduled this year, there won't be a better time than now to act boldly."

Shedding Light on the Protein Big Bang Theory March 13, 2009 — The precise three-dimensional structure of a typical protein molecule is so complex, its origin would seem hopeless by chance. What if evolutionary biologists were to discover a whole host of proteins literally exploded into existence at the beginning of complex life? We can find out what they would think by looking at an article on the “protein big bang” found on Astrobiology Magazine...

So this has been picked up by most of the Dallas-area print and online media. It's grown from a half-joking blog post I made this morning to a full-on uprising. We're turning this joke of a buy-back program into an open air gun show. Any Dallas-area gunowner Freepers want to join in? ------------ Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway’s plan is to give $50 Kroger gift certificates to anyone who turns in an unloaded, functioning firearm. The program commences at 9 a.m. on Saturday at Reunion Arena. My plan is to be there with envelopes containing $65 in cash each,...

Retired bank president Christine Jennings of Sarasota, Fla., is optimistic about her chances in the 13th District congressional race. Polls show her ahead, but she is worried about those electronic voting machines that a third of the country is using this year. "There are too, too many things that can go wrong with them," she told "20/20." She's skeptical because two years ago, Jennings ran for and lost the same congressional seat. She got the most votes, but the machines in her hometown recorded thousands of ballots that registered no vote on election night. She lost by a razor-thin margin....

Ohio is an election battleground state with perennial problems at the polls. So what have election officials in some precincts of the state been doing to keep their voting machines safe from tampering?Taking the machines home with them and stashing them in their garages in the days before a big election.If it sounds like something pulled straight out of an episode of Saturday Night Live, or Borat for that matter, it’s not. The practice has become so widespread that it even has a nickname, “sleepovers.”Ohio, you may remember, has plenty of reason to be particularly vigilant about the security of...

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges. The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold. The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, July 10, 2008 – Afghan and coalition forces, in conjunction with a local women’s center, distributed more than 130 sewing machines to women in the Gereshk district of Afghanistan’s Helmand province July 5 and 6. A representative of the Afghan government’s Department of Women's Affairs was present to speak with the local women and to encourage the economic empowerment of Afghan women. The sewing machines will allow women to provide income for their families, especially widows who were dependent on their husbands for support. Some of the women travelled from villages more than 65 kilometers away, officials...

Devices made of heart tissue could screen drug candidates and be used to power implantable robots. In a fourth-floor lab at Harvard University, Adam Feinberg is peering through a low-magnification microscope and using a scalpel to cut out triangles and rectangles from a thin polymer. What's impossible to see with the naked eye is a one-cell-thick layer of heart tissue coating each shape. When Feinberg connects the petri dish holding the triangles and rectangles to a pacemaker, the tissue begins to rhythmically contract, and the shapes come alive--twisting, pinching, and even swimming through a solution. The pieces of "muscular thin...

Colorado's top election official decertified electronic voting machines used in many of the state's largest counties Monday, calling into question equipment used in past elections in a move he said could have national implications. Electronic voting machines used in Denver, Arapahoe, Pueblo, Mesa and Elbert counties cannot be used in the next election because of problems with accuracy or security, Secretary of State Mike Coffman said. A number of electronic scanners used to count ballots were also decertified, including a type used by Boulder County as well as more than three dozen small to mid-size counties around the state. His...

Source: Harvard University Date: October 2, 2007 Even Without Math, Ancients Engineered Sophisticated Machines Science Daily — Move over, Archimedes. A researcher at Harvard University is finding that ancient Greek craftsmen were able to engineer sophisticated machines without necessarily understanding the mathematical theory behind their construction. Recent analysis of technical treatises and literary sources dating back to the fifth century B.C. reveals that technology flourished among practitioners with limited theoretical knowledge. "Craftsmen had their own kind of knowledge that didn't have to be based on theory," explains Mark Schiefsky, professor of the classics in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences....

Pa. Sued Over Electronic Voting Machines Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop Pennsylvania counties from using "paperless" electronic voting machines, saying that such systems leave no paper record that could be used in the event of a recount, audit or other problem. The suit asks the state's Commonwealth Court to decertify machines used in 58 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The other counties use optical scanning systems, in which voters fill in bubbles on paper forms that are counted in scanning machines; the plaintiffs say such systems should be in use statewide. "Whatever the initial promise may have...

Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a "dangerous" security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines. The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide. Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable...

I was giving blood today at work. For those of you who haven’t given blood recently, there are some major changes in how the blood is collected. It used to be that blood was taken by swabbing your arm with rubbing alcohol, and then a needle was placed into the vein in your elbow, and the blood was collected in a sterile bag. That part is still the same. However, there is now a choice of how one gives blood: the conventional way, or a new way called “power red”. This involved a complex machine which takes a portion of...

PLANS to install 500 condom vending machines in the capital of one of India's worst HIV/AIDS-affected states have angered Muslim groups so much they have taken to the streets to protest a "condom culture". Critics of the plan by the Tamil Nadu government and India's National Aids Control Organisation to put 500 machines in the capital of Chennai and 1000 more across the state later said it would degrade women and corrupt the young. "We must fight AIDS, but these machines at public places will only promote sex outside marriage among the younger generation," said MH Jawahirullah, who heads Tamil...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California election officials have rejected an electronic voting machine by Diebold after tests revealed unacceptable levels of screen freezes and paper jams. Three counties already have purchased the TSX voting machine, which was found to have a failure rate of 10 percent. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said that was too high a risk and he notified company officials in a letter sent Wednesday. In a mock election held last week to test the 96 touch-screen machines, McPherson noted in the letter that his staff encountered "problems with paper jamming on the ... printer module," he said...

Nikola Tesla: Unsung genius or raving loony? The history of technology is populated with a marvellous cast of characters. On the one hand you have the colourful, hard-working inventors like Thomas Edison who slaved away morning, noon and night to produce many of the wonders that we take for granted such as the incandescent light, the telephone, and the garlic peeler. On the other you have the moonbat crazies who show up at the patent office with a cardboard box stuffed with wires and a torch battery claiming that they've made contact with John Kerry's charisma. And then there is...

Please be aware that there are restrictions in the use of ovens and stoves on the Sabbath and Holidays. If you are unfamiliar with the laws of keeping food warm on the Sabbath or cooking on the Holidays, please call your Rabbi. Please note that when the Holiday and Sabbath coincide, the Sabbath laws prevail. See your owner's manual for instructions on operating the Sabbath mode. Before first use of a new oven be sure to wash the racks and interior of the oven thoroughly with warm water and soap to remove any coating oil. COOKTOPS: On the Sabbath, a...

More than a year after his death, Aaron Huth continues to haunt those who knew him. His profile on the behemoth six-degrees-of-separation Web site Friendster.com still lets people know that in May of 2003 he was listening to bands like the Birthday Party and the Postal Service and reading Nietzsche. His likes and interests were frozen for posterity on May 26, 2003, the last time he logged into the site. While Huth’s 12 listed Friendster friends haven’t heard from him since May 29, the day he passed away, each time they log on to the site they are simultaneously reminded...

In the aftermath of Election 2000, angry partisan Democrats vowed to do everything in their power to make the Bush presidency a failure and to defeat him in 2004 "by whatever means necessary." In the process, they've managed to undermine voter confidence in our election system to the degree that the State Department has asked the Europeans to monitor this election for fairness. They've managed to convince voters that the election isn't fair because the voting machines are suddenly too complicated for old people and minorities. There have been endless stories about Florida this year and how to avoid a...