One obvious safeguard to help address concerns about the Diebold voting machines would be to add voter-verified printouts to the process. Apparently Diebold isn’t too keen on the idea, unless it can make a hefty profit:

An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems’ internal database recommends charging Maryland “out the yin-yang” if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased.
The e-mail from “Ken,” dated Jan. 3, 2003, discusses a (Baltimore) Sun article about a University of Maryland study of the Diebold system:
“There is an important point that seems to be missed by all these articles: they already bought the system. At this point they are just closing the barn door. Let’s just hope that as a company we are smart enough to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules now and legislate voter receipts.”
“Ken” later clarifies that he meant “out the yin-yang,” adding, “any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive.”
The e-mail has been cited by advocates of voter-verified receipts, who say estimates of the cost of adding printers — as much as $20 million statewide — have been bloated.
. . .
State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone told The Gazette last month that Diebold had given a preliminary estimate of $1,000 to $1,200 per machine to add printouts, or up to $20 million for the state’s more than 16,000 machines. She said last week that she could not recall whether she got the figure from Diebold or media reports.
. . .
The issue of voter-verified paper receipts continues to gain momentum nationally, with California’s secretary of state announcing that all electronic voting machines there must include paper printouts by 2006. The cost cited by one of Diebold’s competitors, according to news reports, was about $500 a machine.

So Diebold is talking about charging double its competitors’ rates to add something that should have been included on their machines in the first place. Wonderful.
Via Atrios.

Despite supposed signs of an economic recovery, it may continue to be a long, hard slog for those seeking jobs in the high tech sector, says one study:

A separate UCLA study of the Bay Area economy, released simultaneously with the statewide forecast, said that slow recovery will be especially pronounced in the nine-county region. “It will be years, not months, before the Bay Area’s economy regains its luster,” the report cautions.
The subdued outlook reflects UCLA’s assessment of the national economy. The university’s forecasters expect moderate growth over the next few years, but few new jobs, a dynamic they have dubbed “the Twilight Zone economy.”
Although the nation’s output of goods and services is growing — it rose at a sizzling 8.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter — greater production is not translating into many more jobs. “Humans don’t seem to be making all this stuff,” UCLA economists quip.

Another factor, outsourcing:

[T]he most important explanation for slow job growth involves changing patterns of corporate hiring, especially in technology, the sector that dominates the Bay Area economy.
Technology hardware and software companies are already experiencing a rebound in demand for their products. But when companies add to their workforces to meet rising demand, they often hire in India or China rather than California.

The good news is that displaced workers can find high-paying jobs elsewhere:

The restaurant industry has gone on a hiring spree over the last four months, suggesting that broader gains in the job market could be on the way.
Since the beginning of August, the restaurant business, which includes everything from McDonald’s to corner bars to four-star restaurants, has accounted for 18 percent of the 300,000 jobs created in the nation.
Some economists say that an increase in low-wage jobs, which include most restaurant work, indicates that the job market over all will soon bounce back

Dine in or carry out?

Big Stupid Tommy has a “Festivus Edition” of the Volunteer Tailgate Party.
Speaking of which, there’s been some discussion of Google Bombs, like this one.
Would this be a benign form of RTB search term rank manipulation?

A nice thought:

The Inuit people of Canada and Alaska are launching a human rights case against the Bush administration claiming they face extinction because of global warming.
By repudiating the Kyoto protocol and refusing to cut US carbon dioxide emissions, which make up 25% of the world’s total, Washington is violating their human rights, the Inuit claim.
For their campaign they are inviting the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit the Arctic circle to see the devastation being caused by global warming.
. . .
The Washington-based commission, which is the Americas’ equivalent of the European court of human rights, will be asked to rule against the US government but has no power to enforce any action. However, the Inuit believe the publicity the case will provide, particularly with hearings in Washington, will embarrass George Bush’s government and educate US public opinion about the consequences of profligate ways of living.
“Europeans understand this issue but in America the public know little or nothing and politicians are in denial,” Mrs Watt-Cloutier said. “We are hunters and we are trained to go for the heart. The heart of the problem is in Washington.”

It would be nice if America would wake up to this so we could do something about the problem next November.

If the Super Bowl, as usual, fails to live up to expectations, the evening need not be a total waste. For only $19.95 you can add scantily-clothed female players to your gridiron lineup during half time of the big game.
Nothing like some “good, clean fun.”