The program reads:
If vote=BUSH add 1 to BushTotal.
If vote=GORE add 1 to BushTotal.
http://digg.com/politics/Voting_machines_in_Texas_change_Democrat_votes_to_Republican
Voting machines in Texas change "Democrat" votes to "Republican"
shark72 submitted by shark72 1 day 1 hour ago (via http://www.kfdm.com/engine.pl?station=kfdm&id=17343&template=breakout_dayportvideo.shtml&dateformat=%M+%e,%Y )
Friday night, KFDM reported about people who had cast straight Democratic ticket ballots, but the touch-screen machines indicated they had voted a straight Republican ticket.
Business models that work! This could work in other media as well...
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061031/084653.shtml
Shocker: Radio Station That Gives Listeners What They Want Grows Its Audience
from the are-you-listening dept
The WSJ has an interesting story looking at the success a Los Angeles-based public radio station, KCRW, has had by embracing the internet and new media. It reads like the antithesis of super-sized commercial radio companies who, like their record-industry cousins, have been dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. KCRW offers a large number of its shows as podcasts, the most popular of which attracts more than 1 million downloads per month. This has helped drive listeners to its online streams and -- would you look at that -- the number of listeners has shot up. So much, in fact, that it gets more online visitors than it does terrestrial listeners. Some are quick to say that public stations like KCRW can do things like this more easily than commercial stations, because they're under less pressure to turn a profit. [Larger audiences mean higher ad rates. What part of that don't they understand? Bob] "They have less to lose," as one analyst puts it, sounding a lot more like a big-radio exec, since it's really a matter of radio stations -- commercial or public -- having a lot to gain from the internet. While it's true that the likes of KCRW don't have the profitability demands of commercial stations, they still have costs to cover and a business model to support. KCRW relies on listener donations for about half its budget, and estimates that just about 6 percent of those come from online listeners. But it understands that a far better way to generate revenues from online listeners is from underwriting, or advertising, as it's called in the commercial world. And as its online audience grows not only in size, but in geographic scope, as well, it's turning its attention to securing national underwriters, rather than just local ones. The station's not resisting the internet, it's embracing it and realizing that growing its audience, even if listeners are outside its local market, is a good thing. And that seems like a lesson that could very easily translate to the realm of commercial radio.
Sony is demonstrating that they can screw up in multiple business areas at the same time!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/31/1439206&from=rss
Sony Under Investigation by DOJ
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday October 31, @10:31AM from the can't-a-megacorp-get-a-break dept. Sony The Courts Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "As the DOJ continues its investigation into RAM price fixing, it has started looking at Sony's operations. With all the negative press Sony has been getting, this couldn't come at a worse time."
From the article: "The Japanese company received a subpoena from the Justice Department's antitrust division seeking information about Sony's static random access memory, or SRAM, business, company spokesman Atsuo Omagari said. 'Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry,' the company said in a short statement."
Will these laws spread?
http://www.govtech.net/magazine/story.php?id=102015
New York ID Theft Laws Become Active This Week
October 31, 2006 News Release
... About New York Identity Protection Laws (Active November 1, 2006)
The Security Freeze Law: Allows consumers, who are either identity theft victims or are concerned that they might be at risk of having their identities stolen, to cut off an identity thief's access to credit, loans, leases, goods and services by placing a "freeze" on their consumer credit report.
The Disposal of Personal Records Law: Requires any business to properly dispose of records containing personal information or risk a civil penalty of up to $5,000.
The Anti-Phishing Act of 2006: Prohibits the deceptive solicitation of personal information through electronic communications, including sending e-mails to Internet users, falsely claiming to be a legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information.
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/31/2129222&from=rss
FTC's Game Teaches Social Networking Skills
Journal written by narramissic (997261) and posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 31, @05:59PM
from the just-say-no dept. The Internet United States User Journal Politics
narramissic writes, "Your tax dollars at work. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an online quiz-show style game called Buddy Builder to test young users' abilities to spot potential threats on social networking Web sites. Naturally, the teen audience this is intended to reach is not going to go near the game except as a joke."
[From the comments: It's more likely to be a how-to for perverts and pedophiles than anything else since children won't go near it. ]
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/53889.html
Holiday Scammers' E-Greeting Card Tactics
By Jennifer LeClaire TechNewsWorld 11/01/06 4:00 AM PT
"Previous e-card attacks and resulting infections have been slanted more toward denial of service, spam relay and virus propagation -- this one is much more dangerous to users because their financial information is at risk," Minoo Hamilton, senior vulnerability researcher for nCircle, told TechNewsWorld.
... Researchers at Exploit Prevention Labs recently uncovered a major cyber criminal ring operating in Australia using what appear to be Yahoo Greetings e-cards to infect thousands of computer users with malicious keylogger malware. Attackers used the malware to steal credit card numbers, bank account usernames and passwords and other personal information.
Why was this computer connected to both the Water system control and the Internet at the same time? Could have been a Nuke plant...
Hackers break into water system network
Attackers believed to be operating outside the U.S. gain access to computers at a Pennsylvania water treatment plant
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service November 01, 2006
An infected laptop gave hackers access to computer systems at a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, water treatment plant earlier this month.
The plant's systems were accessed in early October after an employee's laptop computer was compromised via the Internet, and then used as an entry point to install a computer virus and spyware on the plant's computer system, according to a report by ABC News.
The incident is under investigation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, but no arrests have been made in the matter, said Special Agent Jerri Williams of the FBI's Philadelphia office. The attackers are believed to have been operating outside of the U.S.
Williams said that the hackers do not appear to have targeted the plant. "We did not believe that they were doing it to compromise the actual water system, but just to use the computer as a resource for distributing e-mails or whatever electronic information they had planned," she said.
Still, the FBI is concerned that even without targeting the system itself, this malicious software could have interfered with the plant's operations, Williams said.
Had the breach targeted the water plant, it could have had grave consequences, according to Mike Snyder, security coordinator for the Pennsylvania section of the American Water Works Association. "It's a serious situation because they could possibly raise the level of chlorine being injected into the water... which would make the water dangerous to drink."
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, computer security at U.S. water systems was beefed up, but water systems may still be tied to administrative networks that are connected to the Internet, Snyder said. "Sometimes if a hacker is pretty good, he can get into the computer via the administrative network," he said.
In the Harrisburg case, a laptop computer was apparently the source of the intrusion. Synder said that laptops are used in the industry because water systems often have many different locations that need to be monitored. "Because of the way the water systems work, it is convenient to be able to use a laptop to check tank levels."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency knows of no other similar incidents occurring in the region, said Rick Rogers, the chief of the agency's drinking water branch for the mid-Atlantic region.
Rogers was not able to comment directly on the matter, since the breach is under investigation. "We are looking into it and working with the state and the water utility industry," he said. "But it is a concern that somebody was able to get into a system like this."
Includes some “Accessibility” guidelines too. Good source of non-copyright material.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012886.html
October 31, 2006
HHS and GSA Announce Updated Web Design and Usability Guidelines to Improve Government Web Sites
Press release, October 30, 2006: "HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt today announced the publication of the 2006 edition of the popular Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines. Based on the latest research, the Guidelines now include over 40 new or updated guidelines and have become a primary resource for government and other Web communicators. The updated guide is being published by HHS in partnership with the General Services Administration (GSA)."
See, even the government understands...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012881.html
October 31, 2006
U.S. Intel Community Using Innovative Tech to Expand Homeland Security
U.S. News reports on a range of new programs sponsored by DHS that leverage innovative technology applications (wikis and blogs) and educational programs to expand and improve the effectiveness of homeland security goals and objectives.
More on the people we are trusting with our votes.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20061101/010635.shtml
Diebold Trying To Stop Documentary On E-Voting Problems; Complains About Wrong Film
from the opening-the-dialog,-huh? dept
On Monday, we wrote about how it suddenly appeared that e-voting concerns were going mainstream, not even realizing that HBO was preparing to show a documentary called "Hacking Democracy." In that post, I linked to a Fortune article that is actually somewhat more encouraging about e-voting's number one target: Diebold. Beyond giving the history of the company, it suggested that the company more or less recognized that they had been both "stupid" and "naive" in getting into the e-voting business, without understanding anything about it. It also noted that almost all of the companies top execs have recently been replaced -- and even said that the company is considering getting out of the e-voting business altogether. All of these suggest that the company actually recognizes that they've screwed up big time. That's a big step forward, since every time a new problem comes up they react by brushing it off (often with outright lies), attacking their critics or simply cracking jokes about their security problems. And, by now, it should be clear that the security problems are very, very real.
So, with all of that, perhaps it was wishful thinking to hope that the new Diebold management would be a bit more willing to engage in discussion over issues, rather than just attack. Of course, given all of the recent problems the company has had, followed by the same old, same old response, it seems clear that the company hasn't learned a thing. To make that clear, rather than dealing with the problems, they're working hard behind the scenes (and failing) to convince HBO to cancel the documentary. They claim that the documentary is filled with false and inaccurate statements -- which would be more believable if (a) the company ever owned up to any of its mistakes and (b) they had actually seen the movie (which they haven't, apparently). In fact, the points that Diebold raised in their letter apparently refer to an entirely different film called Voter Gate, which has nothing to do with the documentary HBO will be showing. Diebold claims it's by the same people, but it's not. Now, isn't that a surprise? Diebold can't even accurately figure out who's involved in a movie about them.
Useful geek stuff?
http://digg.com/software/The_Windows_File_Shredder
The Windows File Shredder
digitalgopher submitted by digitalgopher 17 hours 10 minutes ago (via http://www.lifehacker.com/software/hard-drives/the-windows-file-shredder-211357.php )
Here's a tip for creating a simple file shredder to permanently and securely delete files from your hard drive.
[If you want to wipe the entire drive...
What is Eraser?
Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Windows 2003 Server and DOS.
Eraser is Free software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.
No doubt people will be lining up to swim it...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061031/ap_en_tv/al_jazeera_2
Al-Jazeera to start English channel
Tue Oct 31, 2:00 PM ET
DOHA, Qatar - Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television announced Tuesday that it would launch its long-awaited English language channel Al-Jazeera International on Nov. 15.
If nothing else, some interesting quotes for your next sermon from the waterfountain...
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2041437,00.asp
Web 2.0: How High-Volume eBay Manages Its Storage
October 27, 2006 By Chris Preimesberger
... The site averages more than 1 billion page views per day.
... The site currently has about 600 million listings and about 204 million registered users.
... This one, in particular, is striking: 1.3 million people make all or part of their living selling on eBay.
... eBay's storage engineering team (numbering "in the teens," Strong said) utilizes 2 petabytes of raw digital space on a daily basis to run the site and store its data, yet has to add about 10 terabytes of new storage every week to cover new transactions, Strong said.
... eBay maintains four copies of most of its databases, according to Strong.
Perhaps there is one you can use?
http://www.crmchump.org/2006/10/in_a_world_wher.html
October 31, 2006
50 Open Source success stories in Business, Education, and Government
... Today, we present a rundown of success stories from all spheres that open source touches. Whether through profit margins, spreading the technology to areas thought well outside its reach (check out stories regarding the open-source car project and the open-source film production), or just simply generating greater public awareness, the success of this truly world-changing technology is everywhere.
... An open-source course? Of course
Popular blogger Scott Granneman recently reported that those revolutionary folks over at University of California at Berkeley has begun a course entitled “Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information: Technical, Economic, Social and Legal Perspectives. The course is cross-listed for the Informatics Systems major as well as an elective for law. Granneman recommends checking out the syllabus’ book list, because “for those of you just interested in the open source movement as a whole, this is a great compendium of readings that'll keep you busy for a while.”
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