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...

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/11/01/HNhackwatersystem_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/11/01/HNhackwatersystem_1.html

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...

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

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.”

Okay, you're a US citizen, but if you ain't from Colorado, you're an alien. Or maybe even a Californian!

http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=997bf13b-0abe-421a-0115-2abd3dc8e092&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

Passport not sufficient ID for Colorado DMV

posted by: Sara Gandy Web Producer Created: 10/30/2006 6:50 AM MST - Updated: 10/30/2006 7:09 AM MST

DENVER (AP) - A U.S. issued passport is fine for travel around the world, but not for driving around the block.

The Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles says it won't accept a federally-issued passport without a second form of identification when it comes to issuing a driver's license.

The reason? The state says the feds will issue a passport to someone under their nickname, or even without a birth certificate. That's not good enough when it comes to issuing a legal identification document.

Federal officials say the U.S. Passport is among the most secure personal identification documents in the world and they can't understand Colorado's stance.

This after Google gained so much praise for resisting earlier government requests for search records? I hope they are careful... They have so much to lose.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061030-8105.html

Google actively aiding intelligence agencies?

10/30/2006 11:10:59 AM, by Nate Anderson

Former intelligence officer Robert David Steele recently appeared on the Alex Jones show to make the provocative claim that Google is currently cooperating with secret elements in the US government, including the CIA.

Steele, who now runs OSS.net and is a proponent of open source intelligence, said that "Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government—that is a huge mistake and I'm hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off." In his view, Google's attempt earlier this year to avoid turning over information to the Department of Justice was little more than a hypocritical charade.

Steele has made these claims for some time; back in January, he said the same things at a conference organized by his company at which several sources came forward and spoke about the alleged cooperation. According to security site HSToday.us, which had a reporter in attendance at the conference, one unnamed security contractor "said three employees of an intelligence agency he declined to identify are in Mountain View, Calif. where Google is based, working with the company to leverage the search engine company's user data monitoring capability in the interests of national security."

No hard evidence for these claims was presented, and those in a position to have direct knowledge of such an arrangement have been unwilling to speak about it on the record. Google traditionally prefers not to comment on such allegations, and did not respond to our requests for comment by press time.

It's clear that the company is not opposed to working with the intelligence and defense communities in principle. [Of course not. But how? Bob] Products such as Google Earth are explicitly marketed to such industries, with Google claiming that its products allow "analysts and operatives to get the job done effectively and in record time."

Whether the famously idealistic company is actively assisting the CIA and NSA is a different question, though, and one that remains unanswered. If the allegations have any merit, then it's no great stretch to imagine that other leading search engines have attracted the government's interest. Will major Internet companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google turn out to be as involved in surveillance as the telecommunications companies? Or did all these shadowy sources get the story wrong?

Here's a statistic I bet was made up...

http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/30/1529208&from=rss

An Argument Against Software Patents

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 30, @02:10PM from the share-the-software dept.

clndnng writes "Roughly 90% of web content consists of discussions of software patents, so it's a little surprising that Ben Klemens has written what may be the first dead-trees book analyzing their validity. It has a lot of ground to cover: you could approach the topic from the perspective of the geeks, the lawyers, the economists, or the businessmen. Klemens is equal-opportunity, addressing every perspective."

Read the rest of the review.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/30/HNfrenchjoingooglesuit_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/30/HNfrenchjoingooglesuit_1.html

French publishers join Google booksearch lawsuit

Groups say Google illegally copied works

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service October 30, 2006

An association representing 400 French book publishers has joined La Martinière Groupe in its lawsuit to stop Google Inc. from digitizing books for its Google Book Search service.

La Martinière filed suit against Google and its French subsidiary in a French court on June 6, accusing the search engine of counterfeiting. It asked the court to stop the search engine from scanning its books, and demanded €1 million (US$1.3 million) in damages. The publisher said Google had illegally copied at least 100 of its copyright works and included them in its Google Book Search without permission.

They did?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012870.html

October 30, 2006

How the United States Institutionalized Privacy Oversight After 9-11

Rotenberg, Marc, "The Sui Generis Privacy Agency: How the United States Institutionalized Privacy Oversight After 9-11" (September 28, 2006). Available at SSRN.

• "This article looks at the Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security, the President's Civil Liberties and Privacy Oversight Board, and the Civil Liberties Protection Officer of the Office of the National Intelligence Director. The article explores the circumstances under which the agencies were established and their legislative mandates. It reviews their activities to date and concludes that, measured primarily against their statutory responsibilities, only the DHS Chief Privacy Officer has had any meaningful impact on the privacy practices of the federal government."

Very clever... Possibly illegal?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061030/181219.shtml

Record Labels Not Planning On Sharing YouTube Windfall With Musicians

from the it's-all-for-the-musicians,-huh? dept

Sure, YouTube might have a good legal defense to anyone who sued them for copyright infringement, but the lawsuits would still be pretty pricey. Not surprisingly, that was part of the sticking point in the negotiations between YouTube and Google before Google finally finally pulled the trigger. In order to make that issue go away, we already noted that YouTube did questionable deals with most of the major record labels the morning before they signed the Google deal -- effectively cutting them in on the deal. Now Mark Cuban is posting an email from an anonymous industry insider that provides a few more details while making the whole deal even more questionable. As the earlier article noted, YouTube was told to negotiate with effectively a blank check (signed by Google) with the record labels to get them to lay off YouTube for a while. But, here's where it gets interesting.

• The deal was an investment, not a licensing agreement, meaning all that cash the labels got they don't actually need to share with the artists they always claim they're trying to protect. This was done on purpose.

• While Google and YouTube have apparently put $500 million in escrow to deal with copyright lawsuits from smaller players, handing over cash to the labels came with a promise that the labels wouldn't sue YouTube for at least six months.

• At the same time, they would sue other players in the space -- which we've already seen from Universal Music.

Add it all up, and you get the music labels effectively taking a bribe to cause trouble for Google/YouTube video competitors, ignoring YouTube to let it grow for a while, and pocketing all of the money without giving it back to the artists they supposedly represent. The claim is anonymous, but the pieces certainly fit together nicely. It would be nice to see an alternative explanation, as this whole thing reads pretty sleazy.

I'm not sure this is the next killer app, but it is in the area where most of the innovators are playing.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2006-10-29-brightcove_x.htm

Brightcove to take Web video to next level

Updated 10/29/2006 11:14 PM ET By David Lieberman, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Brightcove will try to take Internet TV into the media mainstream Monday by unveiling a suite of services to help consumers find what they want — while easing the way for content providers to create slick-looking videos and generate revenue from them.

"It's going to open the floodgates of really interesting programming and a depth of media like what people have experienced in the text-Web world," says Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire. "We're right at the tipping point where broadband video goes from an experimental phase to a more mainstream phase."

Another angle on Internet video...

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/domino-effect.html

The Domino Effect

10/30/2006 10:55:00 AM Posted by George Strompolos, Google Video Team

A good viral video sets off a chain reaction that continues until nearly everyone has seen it, including your mom. The mad scientists known as EepyBird know a thing or two about chain reactions. They first rocketed into viral video fame by turning the explosive act of mixing Diet Coke and Mentos into an art form. Today they're back with a chain reaction like none other: 500 liters of Diet Coke and 1500+ Mentos, all triggered by the pull of one string.

Don't miss The Domino Effect -- a Google Video exclusive. In addition to being very fun, it demonstrates another interesting application of our Sponsored Video program -- this time with user-generated content. This helps producers like EepyBird earn revenue by pairing them up with our advertising partners.

We're excited to help compensate these independent producers for their creativity, and we can't wait to see who the next stars will be. If you have very compelling videos and are interested in this program, please get in touch.

http://www.physorg.com/news81346069.html

Generation of online libraries is born

Online book buffs can select from an array of Internet libraries, with hosts such as Google and Open Content Alliance, that promise to fetch written works at the clicks of computer mice.

While imperfect, the websites and their search engines have already opened extraordinary possibilities to readers and researchers in online communities worldwide.

- Google Book Search (http://books.google.com). By far the most known online library to date, the Google book project has scanned the pages of "thousands" of works into digital format.

Text from classics in the public domain is available in full. Summaries or snippets of books still under copyright are provided of books still under copyright protection.

A search engine taking the place of library card indexes makes it possible to seek authors' names, publication dates, or words or expressions in the texts or titles.

The oldest book in the Google virtual library to date was a Latin work from 1521. The number of books of the data base has remained secret. The collection contained many books from the 18th and 19th centuries and the majority were in English.

By typing a key word, the Net surfer gets a set of pages showing matching text highlighted in yellow. Editors can dictate whether portions or all the pages of works are made available online.

If the publisher or author has not given permission regarding copyrighted works, the search engine shows only the passages where the key words were found along with information about the book and where it can be bought or borrowed.

Classic works such as Dante's Inferno and the Encyclopedia of Diderot are available in their entirety, sometimes for download in printable format. Google does not put advertising in the works.

- Open Content Alliance (http://www.archive.org/details/texts): Most open.

For the moment the library has 35,000 scanned books, mostly in English. All of the works are not copyright protected -- often more than 50 years old -- and downloadable, printable, and free to be re-used for commercial purposes. The search engine is less sophisticated than that of Google Books but can scout out reference words if the quality of the scanned pages is sufficient.

- Windows Live Search Books, an online literature search engine being developed by Microsoft Computer, is slated for release "later this year."

The Windows Live Search Books Publisher Program website (http://publisher.live.com/) invites authors and publishers send their books to be scanned.

- Gallica, the site of the national Library of France. Lists 90,000 digitized books available in "image mode" but does not feature scanning by key words wihin page text.

- Specialized websites: offer text versions of digitized works, usually classics, that can be downloaded for reading or printing and allow searches by key words.

For example the site of "complete works of Shakespeare" (http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/) created in 1993 or the site of Molière (http://www.site-moliere.com/). Other sites highlight poetry, essays, books or other themes.

“Excuse me citizen, didn't you mean to say it this way?” (Amusing comment from England that “revokes” our independence...)

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/31/0429256&from=rss

Pentagon Reveals News Correction Unit

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday October 31, @04:16AM from the propaganda-juggernauts dept. The Media Politics

Jonas Wisser writes "BBC is reporting [US media has already been “corrected” Bob] that a newly created Pentagon unit has a mandate to fight 'inaccurate' news stories. From the article: 'The Pentagon has set up a new unit to focus on promoting its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet. [...] A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record". A spokesman said the unit would monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.'"

Other than that, how'd we do?

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71999-0.html?tw=rss.index

Ohio Election Portends Trouble

By Kim Zetter 02:00 AM Oct, 31, 2006

Six years ago the world watched dumbfounded as the Florida 2000 fiasco exposed the messy underbelly of U.S. election administration. Since then states have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new electronic voting equipment to ensure that the nation would never experience such mishaps again.

But two recent and lengthy reports examining this year's May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio -- a pivotal state where the electoral votes gave President Bush his second win in 2004 -- make it clear that Florida-like fiascos are far from behind us.

The reports, totaling more than 500 pages, paint a disturbing picture of how million-dollar equipment and security safeguards can quickly be undone by poor product design, improper election procedures and inadequate training. From destroyed ballots and vote totals that didn't add up to lost equipment and breaches in security protocols, Cuyahoga's primary is a perfect study in how not to run an election.

The findings have ominous national implications. Cuyahoga County could play an important role in deciding two races in next week's election that will help decide which party controls the Senate and House. But one of the reports concluded that problems in the county were so extensive that meaningful improvements likely could not be achieved before that election, or even before the 2008 presidential election.

Moreover, few voting activists and election experts believe the problems are unique to Cuyahoga.

"I suspect that Cuyahoga County may be below average (in terms of how well it ran its election), but if you lift up the rock and look at election administration across the country, you'll see the same thing elsewhere," says David Dill, Stanford computer scientist and founder of VerifiedVoting.org, a proponent of paper-verified elections.

The problems in Cuyahoga County, a heavily Democratic county that encompasses Cleveland, began with a glitch in the design of the optical-scan ballots -- black lines separating sections of the ballot were too thick, and the fill-in bubbles were in the wrong place, preventing scanners from reading them.

The gaffe caused a six-day delay in election results, but wasn't insurmountable. The county hired an army of office temp workers to recast the votes from the 18,000 optical-scan ballots onto touch-screen machines -- both types of voting machines, made by Diebold Election Systems, were used in the county for the first time in the primary.

On the surface, that seemed to solve the problem. But a post-election audit of votes and election procedures revealed deeper issues in the way the state's most populous county ran its primary -- problems that, if not fixed, could open the state to serious legal challenges from candidates and voters in a close election.

Among the findings in one report (.pdf) prepared by the Cuyahoga Election Review Panel:

• Due to poor chain of custody for supplies and equipment, 812 voter-access cards (which voters place in touch-screen machines to cast their ballot) were lost, along with 215 card encoders, which program the voter-access cards. Three hundred thirteen keys to the voting machines' memory-card compartments, where votes are stored, also went missing.

• Officials set up two user accounts on the computer running vote-tabulation software, then assigned one password to both accounts and allowed multiple people to use them, thwarting any effort to identify individuals who might access and alter the system.

• Sixty Board of Election employees took touch-screen machines home a weekend before the election to test a procedure for transmitting data on election night.

• The election board hired 69 taxis to transport observers to precincts to collect memory cards and paper rolls on election night. But many cab drivers ended up gathering the materials themselves, and about half the cabs returned to the warehouse with election data, but no observer.

• In at least 79 precincts the number of voters who signed the poll books didn't match the number of ballots cast. At least eight precincts had more ballots cast than registered voters. Because some polling places served several precincts, some of the discrepancies are explained by voters being directed to the wrong machines, an error that did not result in uncounted votes. But even when investigators tallied ballots and signatures for all precincts in a polling place, 15 locations still had mismatches. In one case investigators found 342 more voters than ballots.

There were also problems with tracking the voting machines themselves, according to a second report (.pdf) produced by the California-based Election Science Institute. ESI was hired before the election by Cuyahoga's Board of Commissioners to audit the election and measure the accuracy, reliability and usability of the county's new voting machines.

Out of 467 touch-screen machines assigned to 145 precincts that ESI audited, officials couldn't locate 29 machines after the election, despite days of searching. And 24 machines that were found had no data on them. "All their paperwork says (the machines) were deployed to polling locations but we can't figure out why there's no election data on them," says ESI founder Steve Hertzberg.

It's possible the machines were sent to polls but never used -- perhaps they malfunctioned or voter turnout was so low the machines weren't needed. But so far no explanation has been forthcoming. Cuyahoga County election director Michael Vu responded to initial questions from Wired News, but did not respond to follow-up questions about the missing machines and data

Experts say the chaos in Cuyahoga is a bellwether of broader election-administration problems nationwide.

"It should be a general wake-up call for all states and localities to make sure they have addressed these problems in their statutes and procedures to make sure that they don't run into the same problems," says Thad Hall, a political science professor at the University of Utah who assisted with the ESI report. "People should be taking all of this very seriously."

Beyond sloppy procedures, the ESI report found technological problems with the printers installed on the county's 5,000 new Diebold touch-screen machines. The printers produce the voter-verified paper audit trail, or VVPAT, mandated by a new Ohio law.

The printer problems turned up when the ESI team set out to examine the accuracy of the touch-screen machines. The team compared four sets of vote data from a sampling of 145 precincts. The data included electronic votes recorded on removable memory cards (used to tally the official count); electronic votes on flash memory inside the touch-screen machines; individual ballots on the paper-audit trail rolls; and a summary total of those ballots printed at the end of the paper roll.

Although the majority of the paper rolls were easy to read, 40 rolls contained ballots that were physically compromised in some way: Rolls were crumpled accordion-style due to paper jams; ballots were printed atop one another, making them illegible; rolls were torn and taped. Eighty-seven rolls were missing entirely.

The compromised ballots and missing paper rolls demonstrate that the paper trails voting activists spent three years pressuring states to mandate could be useless in a recount. Per Ohio's recount law, and laws in 14 other states that mandate paper trails, the paper roll is the official ballot in a recount.

But the law doesn't address what to do when paper records are illegible. An administrative rule from the secretary of state says the official ballot would revert to the electronic record if the paper trail were illegible or destroyed, which, in theory, would get every vote counted.

VerifiedVoting.org's Dill cautions that if just 10 percent of an election's paper rolls are compromised, the purpose of the paper is defeated, and a door is once again open for someone to rig an election.

"If someone wanted to fix an election they could program the machine to produce a certain number of faulty paper ballots so that (officials) had to count the electronic ones instead," Dill says.

The machines should be designed to shut down if the printer jams or poll workers load the paper improperly, says Dill.

Dan Tokaji, assistant professor of law at Ohio State University, says the issue of illegible ballots and conflicting recount laws clearly weren't well thought out in advance by Ohio lawmakers.

"It's quite possible we could see litigation over this issue in the event of a close election," he says, noting that the same problem could arise in other states. "We know about the problems with paper trails in Cuyahoga, but in other counties both in and out of Ohio we really haven't done a careful assessment. So I don't think we know how widespread the problems with the VVPAT system are."

And unfortunately, he says, most people don't worry about the problems or fix them until after there's a blowup similar to what occurred in Florida.

Vote discrepancies also turn up in the ESI audit, and voting activists seized on this aspect of the investigation as evidence that there were problems with Diebold's software. On about 80 paper rolls, the votes totaled from the individual ballots didn't match the summary of votes at the end of the roll. In most cases the count was off by one to five votes, but in some it was off by more than 25.

Here, too, paper jams were the culprit, says Gary Smith, director of elections in Forsyth County, Georgia, who led the paper count for ESI. Printer problems led to missing and illegible ballots, causing the final numbers to be higher than the sum of the individual ballots. When his team printed fresh paper records from the memory cards, the totals from individual ballots matched the summaries at the end of the rolls.

The ESI audit also uncovered mismatches between paper-vote totals and the digital totals from the memory cards, and 13 cases in which the removable memory cards and the flash memory inside the machines didn't match up.

Diebold said there are innocent explanations for why memory card totals didn't match flash memory totals. Eleven of the discrepancies were a side effect of election workers' transference of botched optical-scan votes onto touch-screen machines. Because they failed to also add the optical-scan votes to the flash-memory data from those machines, the two sets of data didn't match when ESI compared them.

The other two discrepancies occurred when poll workers placed memory cards in the wrong machines, then moved the cards to the correct machines after voters had already cast a few ballots on the machines -- a switch that did not affect the voting tally, but seriously complicated the audit afterward. When election staff gave ESI data for those machines, they were unaware that some votes on these memory cards were backed up on the flash memory of other machines.

Cuyahoga County election director Vu says his staff has verified Diebold's conclusions but ESI has not had a chance to independently verify the explanations. However, all these issues point to the most important finding from Cuyahoga County, says Hertzberg: it was so difficult for ESI to get accurate and complete data to conduct its recount.

ESI had been assured by Vu's office that the data ESI was auditing did not include optical-scan votes, says Hertzberg. In fact, ESI had to request data from Vu's office six times because it kept getting the wrong data, or data that was tainted with optical-scan votes.

Vu's staff also had a dozen different versions of the same vote data but no file-management system or naming conventions to keep track of them or explain why so many versions existed, says Hertzberg. "So these guys were sitting there trying to search for which data set to give us and they couldn't figure it out," he says.

Political scientist Michael Alvarez of the Caltech/MIT Voting Project, who helped with the ESI report, agrees: Although many people focused on the vote discrepancies, the fact that ESI found it so difficult to conduct an audit is the biggest problem, and it doesn't bode well for what could happen in November or in a close presidential race.

"An independent entity, be they ESI or be they anybody else ... should be able to walk in and very easily replicate that election outcome," Alvarez says. "That's the sort of thing that is what induces voter and candidate and media confidence in the process."

Vu says his office was overwhelmed with the task of adjusting to new procedures and equipment. His staff also never anticipated that poll workers would swap memory cards between machines; they're addressing this issue in poll worker training for November. "For the most part," he says, "the majority of the county did relatively well."

Hertzberg worries that things could be worse Nov. 7 because turnout is expected to be larger than in the primary. Cuyahoga has 1 million registered voters. Hertzberg urged Vu to develop and practice a manual count procedure before Election Day, but says there's been no movement.

"It's going to take time," Vu says. "You can't go from having problems in one election to perfection in the next election." Vu says he has made some changes for November, but mentions only issues with poll worker training, pay and recruitment.

The county Board of Elections and Board of Commissioners did recently appoint The Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University to monitor progress in the implementation of reforms recommended by the two reports, and the group will monitor the county's actual conduct during elections.

Another legal tool...

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061030/232327.shtml

Abusing The DMCA To Shut Up Critics

from the what-a-wonderful-law dept

There are plenty of problems with the DMCA, that are highlighted here often enough, but one that doesn't get very much attention is the fact that, beyond the standard "notice & takedown" procedure, anyone who claims that their content has been infringed online can then file a claim to reveal who posted/provided/uploaded the content in question. No lawsuit needs to be filed. No proof needs to be in place to show that there was actual infringement. For obvious reasons, that has the potential to be widely abused. Three years ago, there was a case where a porn site used this provision to subpoena ISPs to find out the identity of those who visited its site. This was also at the core of the nasty court battle between various ISPs (headed up by Verizon) against the RIAA, which eventually meant that the RIAA actually had to file John Doe lawsuits before demanding the identity of people. Considering how many takedown notices are improper, it seems only reasonable that you should be required to actually, you know, prove that something wrong happened before you can find out the names of people online. Unfortunately, it's still not the case. The EFF is fighting back against a company that has used this aspect of the DMCA to try to unmask the names of people who uploaded a video documentary critical of them. Obviously, the organization in question (a very controversial group) does not own the copyright. However, that doesn't stop them from using the DMCA to try to find out who uploaded the documentary. The organization is claiming that they can make a DMCA claim, based on the fact that some of their copyrighted content appears in the film -- though, the EFF points out that this is clearly fair use (which is allowed for the purpose of criticism). The EFF claims, and seems to have considerable support, that this is a case where the DMCA is being abused to go after critics of an organization, rather than for any real effort to protect copyrights.

If you act like a cartoon character...

http://www.xboxic.com/news/1882

Thompson to Midway: “cease and desist immediately”

Posted in Games, Xbox by Chris Benoit23 on October 29th, 2006 at 20:38

Playstatic user Jack Thompson, a lawyer from Florida who became fairly well known last year during the GTA: San Andreas “scandal”, has requested that the developer of Mortal Komat: Armageddon, Midway Games, “…cease and desist immediately from the distribution of this game…”.

“It has today come to my attention that the newly recently Mortal Kombat: Armageddon contains an unauthorized commercial exploitation of my name, photograph, image, and likeness within the game.”

“You are commanded to cease and desist immediately [emphasis Thompson’s] from the distribution of this game because of this unauthorized, illegal content…”

Geek stuff

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/cheat-sheets-static.html

Cheat Sheet Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, LaTeX, Ruby…

October 30th, 2006

Whether you’ve forgotten the name of a function or the property of a cascading style sheet - handy cheat sheets deliver the information you are looking for - immediately. Most cheat sheets are available as .pdf or .png-files, so you can print them and use them every day for whatever projects you’re currently working on. We present an extensive overview of useful cheat sheets we’ve found in the Web.

Flying pig alert! Temperature dropping in Hell! I didn't think MS could spell F-R-E-E

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/30/HNmssmb_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/10/30/HNmssmb_1.html

Microsoft offers free small-business software

Company offers two versions of accounting software

By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service October 30, 2006

Microsoft Corp. has turned its accounting suite for small businesses into two separate offerings, one of which users can download for free starting Monday.

Office Accounting Express 2007, an updated version of Office Small Business Accounting 2006, will be available here for free, said Rajat Taneja, a Microsoft general manager for small business applications and services.

Microsoft also will begin offering a slightly higher-end version of the software, Office Accounting Professional 2007, from retailers early next year.

The professional edition of the software has more robust features than the free version for handling inventory management, budgeting, cash flow and other tasks mature small businesses require, Taneja said. Office Accounting Express 2007 is aimed more at small businesses that are just getting off the ground and need help starting up.

... Microsoft also has expanded the Web-based offerings that are available through the software from two to seven. These are services from Microsoft partners -- such as eBay Inc.'s auction and eBay's PayPal payment services, Verisign Inc. security services, Automatic Data Processing Inc.'s payroll service and Equifax Inc.'s credit-check service -- that small businesses may find useful.

The services cost extra, and range in price depending on the provider and the service, Taneja said. They are available in both the express and professional editions of the software.

Patriot Act now Okay?

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/30/0337236&from=rss

ACLU Drops Challenge Over Patriot Act

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 30, @07:44AM from the declare-victory-and-withdraw dept. The Courts United States Politics

An anonymous reader writes, "The ACLU announced on Friday that they were dropping their case against the US Government over the highly contested section 215 of the Patriot Act. ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson stated: 'While the reauthorized Patriot Act is far from perfect, we succeeded in stemming the damage from some of the Bush administration's most reckless policies. The ACLU will continue to monitor how the government applies the broad Section 215 power and we will challenge unconstitutional demands on a case-by-case basis.'"

No worries! Elections in the banana republics have be remarkably honest... Haven't they?

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/29/1921226&from=rss

Venezuelan Interest In U.S. Voting Software

Posted by kdawson on Sunday October 29, @02:29PM from the just-what-we-needed dept. Security Politics

A number of readers wrote in about a U.S. federal investigation into the Venezulean ownership of Sequoia Voting Systems, which makes voting machines used in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States wonders whether the anti-U.S. government of Hugo Chávez could be trying to influence the U.S. midterm elections.

From the article: "Government officials familiar with the Smartmatic inquiry said they doubted that even if the Chávez government was some kind of secret partner in the company, it would try to influence elections in the United States. But some of them speculated that the purchase of Sequoia could help Smartmatic sell its products in Latin America and other developing countries, where safeguards against fraud are weaker."

I can see the editorial board meeting: “How late can we hold this story? We don't want anyone fixing this before the elections...”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1552054,00.html

Can This Machine Be Trusted?

The U.S.'s new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. Which is why next week could be interesting

By MICHAEL DUFFY

Tools for winning friends and influencing people... I can't wait until the 976 crowd get hold of this one!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/29/1938226&from=rss

How To Make Your Friends Call You More

Posted by kdawson on Sunday October 29, @05:26PM from the not-funny-mcgee dept. Communications

B0bReader writes, "Simply sign up to something called jajah (a VOIP service that connects real telephones) using your friend's number (mobiles included), then log in and dial your own number. Your friend's phone will ring and after they hear a brief 'Jajah is connecting your call' they will be calling you and incur all charges. As an added bonus you will quite probably receive your friend's latest voice-mail message as your own (at least on Irish networks), which you may or may not wish to hear. There is even a Jajah Firefox extension — which at the time of writing is the Firefox featured add-on — so you can do it right from your browser.

This is about the best example of a bad idea, with terrible implementation, that I have seen all day. And with the wonderful publicity the Firefox page offers it should reach a wide audience in no time."

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72019-0.html?tw=rss.index

Feds Leapfrog RFID Privacy Study

By Ryan Singel 02:00 AM Oct, 30, 2006

The story seems simple enough. An outside privacy and security advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security penned a tough report concluding the government should not use chips that can be read remotely in identification documents. But the report remains stuck in draft mode, even as new identification cards with the chips are being announced.

Jim Harper, a Cato Institute fellow who serves on the committee and who recently published a book on identification called Identity Crisis, thinks he knows why the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee report on the use of Radio Frequency Identification devices for human identification (.pdf) never made it out of the draft stage.

"The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report," Harper said. "There's such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do."

... But critics argue that hackers can skim information off the chips and that the chips can be used to track individuals. Hackers have also been able to clone some chips, such as those used for payment cards and building security, as well as passports.

The draft report concludes that "RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity" -- a finding that was widely criticized by RFID industry officials when the committee met in June.

If you have only a million readers, and they contribute only a dollar a year, are you poor?

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/meganiche.html

Tiny Slice, Big Market

Now that a billion people are online, even sites aimed at a narrow slice of the Web audience can attract huge crowds. Make way for the meganiche!

By Clay Shirky

... I define a meganiche as a thin slice of the Web that nonetheless represents roughly a million users. The meganiche is something new, and it will have a lasting impact on online business and culture.

When did Choicepoint become the NCIC?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20061027/185311.shtml

Arrested Due To A Database Error

from the doesn't-sound-like-fun dept

Well, here's a story that combines a few different things we've seen lately, from police (and star basketball players) raiding the home of the wrong person due to a faulty IP address to the fact that all these big data mining companies often have wrong info about you, including incorrect criminal records. In this case, a guy who got a job as a security guard as a retailer ended up spending a week in jail after the company did a background check on him and data mining firm Choicepoint (whose name became well known when they sold info to a group of identity theft scammers) incorrectly found that there were arrest warrants out for this guy for child molestation and rape. The problem was that the guy had been a victim of identity theft earlier, and while he had reported it, Choicepoint didn't take that into account. It's somewhat amusing (if disturbing) that a firm that had sold data to identity thieves later was unable to fix the false data in someone's file that was due to identity theft. Still, at what point do people realize that a single piece of data from these unreliable sources just isn't enough to arrest someone?

http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-6130354.html?part=rss&tag=6130354&subj=news

Revver puts money where its talent is

The video-sharing site has landed YouTube stars through revenue sharing. Is this the future for online clips?

By Greg Sandoval Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: October 30, 2006, 4:00 AM PST

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--When it comes to profits, there's no sharing in the video-sharing sector.

Not enough, anyway, fumes Steven Starr, a former talent agent, Bob Marley devotee and now the impresario of Revver.com, the video-sharing site he co-founded in 2005.

... By sharing advertising revenue with makers of popular clips, Revver has begun shaking things up in the burgeoning sector. The industry, where amateurs post homemade movies to the Web, is looking for the next rising star now that YouTube has gone corporate. An heir apparent has yet to emerge, but Josh Martin, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said that paying top video makers is "where the sector is headed."

If this was used in Italy, would the furniture be sexy?

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/29/1540241&from=rss

Sketch Your Furniture in the Air

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday October 29, @11:10AM from the thats-just-a-neat-idea dept. Graphics

justelite writes "Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialize free hand sketches."

This could work for any subject. Want to be “The Expert?”

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Want_to_Learn_Some_Basic_Economics_the_Easy_Way_Try_this

Want to Learn Some Basic Economics the Easy Way? Try this..........

Rhiannon1214 submitted by Rhiannon1214 21 hours 36 minutes ago (via http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0503g.asp )

The wonderful Walter Williams, Professor of economics at George Mason Univ. has put together a ten-part series entitled "Economics for the Citizen". Williams uses plain language, common-sense examples and his special brand of humor to make the whole thing easy to understand. It's evident that Williams loves to teach and that he's a master at it.

Free is good, but cheap is okay too.

http://digg.com/tech_deals/Bugmenot_com_launches_collaborative_coupon_code_site

Bugmenot.com launches collaborative coupon code site

bufferout submitted by bufferout 2 days ago (via http://www.retailmenot.com/ )

Bugmenot.com has launched a similar service where users can find and share discount coupon codes for online stores. It's cunningly named RetailMeNot.com. How long until someone writes a firefox extension for it?

The future?

http://digg.com/tech_news/Free_Video_email_requiring_no_download_installation_or_registration

Free Video email requiring no download, installation or registration!

webtech submitted by webtech 18 hours 40 minutes ago (via http://freegabmail.com/ )

Free, Incredibly Simple Video e-mail!

...and you wonder why we have a second amendment.

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/28/1934208&from=rss

Bush Signs Bill Enabling Martial Law

Posted by kdawson on Saturday October 28, @04:42PM from the maybe-sweden dept.

An anonymous reader writes to point us to an article on the meaning of a new law that President Bush signed on Oct. 17. It seems to allow the President to impose martial law on any state or territory, using federal troops and/or the state's own, or other states', National Guard troops.

From the article: "In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law. It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions." Here is a link to the bill in question. The relevant part is Sec. 1076 about 3/4 of the way down the page.

Note: the site hosting the article is already sluggish; I was unable to prime the CoralCDN cache with it. Please consider mirroring this article if you are able.

This is what happens when you show that the people responsible for “Security” have no idea what they are doing. Expect this to keep getting more interesting. (If you print two copies of you boarding pass, have you committed a criminal act?)

http://digg.com/security/FBI_Visits_PhD_student_A_2nd_Time_About_NWA_Ticket_Ordeal

FBI Visits PhD student A 2nd Time About NWA Ticket Ordeal

Recuso submitted by Recuso 14 hours 14 minutes ago (via http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/ )

Chris, the PhD Student that created the NWA Ticket Generator has been visited by the FBI a second time. This time he found his home ransacked and all of his equipment completely absent on the eve of an upcoming conference. They carried out a search warrant at 2:00AM Indianapolis time, taking all of his electronic posessions. Copy of warrant posted.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/28/166245&from=rss

UK Banks Dump Credentials in Bin Bags

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday October 28, @12:55PM from the airing-the-trash dept. Privacy Security

Plutonite writes "BBC news is reporting that several UK banks face 'unlimited fines' [How much is that in Dollars? Bob] for careless handling of sensitive client information. This apparently came after investigators found account details while rummaging through the trash outside the banks involved. In this age of online banking and related security problems, and in light of this scandal, where can we expect to find the greatest threat of ID theft?"

Some interesting quotes...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/27/discriminatory_borders/

EU moots 'deep background' checks for racist-free border controls

The biometric meritocracy

By Mark Ballard Published Friday 27th October 2006 17:39 GMT

Europe plans to avoid the routine discrimination against foreigners at border controls by using deep background checks of individual people to manage immigration.

... The Europeans are aware of the negative connotations, which is why their solution to the problem, the Trusted Traveller Programme, was recently renamed the Registered Traveller Programme. The implication of the old name was that European border controls intend to become more suspicious of people who are not fully paid up members of the omniscient state, which it does.

... The idea is what some people call "positive discrimination" in immigration: taking people who do not suffer discrimination and making their lives even easier at immigration. It's what John Reid, the British Home Secretary, is calling "a revolution in border control", necessary to discriminate between those people likely to commit another 7/7 terrorist attack and those likely to do lots of shopping in Harrods.

If you have a strategy, stick to it. Here's what happens when you don't. (Remember, these are SciFi fans – they probably run your IT department.)

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/28/1253206&from=rss

Firefly Fans Fight Back Against Universal

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday October 28, @09:11AM from the back-lashes dept. Sci-Fi Television Movies The Almighty Buck

Gossi writes "What happens when a film studio and a fanbase get into bed? Fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly, and the movie by Universal Studios — Serenity — are not amused. After being encouraged to viral market Serenity, the studio has started legal action against fans (demanding $9000 in retroactive licensing fees in one case and demanding fan promotion stop), and going after Cafepress. The fans response? Retroactively invoice Universal for their services."

Shouldn't we be concentrating on Courts that are still not accepting electronic filings? How will we ever replace all those judges with computers?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012857.html

October 27, 2006

Links to Courts Accepting Electronic Filings as of October 2006

Courts Accepting Electronic Filings as of October 2006

A tool to help you identify this year's Florida!

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012851.html

October 27, 2006

Voting Systems 2006

From electionline.org, this chart, current as of 9/26/06, includes each state and D.C., with a description of the voting system used, the name manufacturer (the majority use Diebold), and a link (s) to documentation about each respective system (often includes a photo of the unit) or a press release describing same.

Always good for a laugh?

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012855.html

October 27, 2006

Symantec Releases New Internet Security Threat Report

"The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report offers analysis and discussion of threat activity over a six-month period. It covers Internet attacks, vulnerabilities, malicious code, phishing, spam, security risks, and future trends. The tenth version of the report, released September 25, is now available."

• Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Volume X: September 2006 (120 pages, PDF)