E-voting, more P2P, and storage

Three from ZDNet:

1) California's Governator signs a bill requiring paper receipts after e-voting. As I said before, this only makes sense. You can get a receipt at an ATM or a gas station, right? One report (on television last night) said that the e-voting machine manufacturers claim the cost of adding printers to the machines would be over $1,000/machine. Ha! You can't tell me banks didn't take that into consideration. By the way, why aren't we voting at ATMs? Couldn't the manufacturers just make a deal with Dell and get the printer thrown in for free? *smirk*

2) The movie and music dictators have bought the House of Representatives who have passed a bill giving the FBI and federal prosecutors more power in tracking down file swappers. (Note, I'm not going to use the phrase "illegal file swappers" because, in the minds of these dinosaurs, any file swapping - sometimes even amongst computers in your own home - is "illegal"). Great, they are trying to get the feds to do their legal work at a cost to the taxpayers. Hey, FBI, work on the file swappers instead of corporate fraud (known as bait and switch) or terrorists. Next up? A how-to-manual for federal agents describing applications of the Patriot Act to stem the tide of P2P. I suggest we flood the net with Muslimgauze files.

3) A new DVD format was announced that can store up to 1 terabyte of data on a single disk. New technology allows it to hold 250 gigbytes of data in each of 4 layers on the DVD. While the format is about 5 years away from production, experts say that it could now hold the entire collection of The Simpsons on one disk. In 5 years time, we're likely to see compression technologies improve as well, meaning I could almost hold my entire music collection on one disk. Take that, RIAA! To my mind, home users will be easing into this sort of capacity as they record HDTV television (assuming broadcasters allow such a thing) and home movies. Where this capacity really has a market is in enterprise data storage, miniature home technologies, and, of course, gaming and porn (two drivers of technology from the dawn of time).