Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a dangerous
security hole found in Diebold Election Systems’s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines. 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 it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways — via Bruce Schneier
Australians will legally be able to record TV and radio programs and transfer material from CDs to mp3 players, under proposed copyright changes
New Zealand is not for sale, despite somebody in Australia trying to offload the nation of 4 million to the highest online bidder. With a starting offer of just one cent, brisk bidding for the prime chunk of South Pacific real estate quickly boosted the price to AU$3,000 before eBay pulled the plug on the auction this week
According to his official biography, Richard Kelly is the director of the acclaimed Donnie Darko, the writer of the less acclaimed Domino and a contender for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival. According to the Department of Homeland Security he is a suspected terrorist who may now be prevented from travelling to Cannes next week after the morons appear confused him with another man, James Kelly
, who is on the terrorist watch list. Kelly’s full name is James Richard Kelly — via Warren Ellis
Believing that god created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed. He has also said that the idea of papal infallibility had been a PR disaster
. What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority
. It’s not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear,
he said — via Warren Ellis
The National Security Agency’s goal to create a database of every call ever made inside the USA. Aided by the cooperation of US telecom corporations, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans; the vast majority of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. Only Qwest refused to give the NSA information because they were uneasy about giving information to the government without the proper warrants. The usefulness of the NSA’s domestic phone call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear
A strange-looking bear shot last month by a moronic American sports hunter, Jim Martell, turned out to be half polar bear, half grizzly. Officials seized the creature after noticing its white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly. Now a DNA test has confirmed that it is indeed a hybrid
The OpenStreetMap project to create a copyright-free map of the Isle of Wight was a success, so they’re taking on Manchester next — via Boing Boing
Google has unveiled several new offerings — Google Notebook, Google Co-Op Beta, Google Trends and Google Desktop 4 Beta — that could help searching become more of a group activity
Warner Bros is to sell movies over BitTorrent. Disappointingly, the pricing is set to be about the same as the DVD, even though the download will only become available at the same time as the DVD release and can only play on one machine, which all goes to prove that Warner Bros just don’t get it
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping programme because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance
Dr Jonathan Spanier from Drexel University has come up with a novel way to greatly increase data storage density: water. Specifically, they propose using hydroxyl ions to stabilise minute ferroelectric wires. These wires could be many times smaller than what is possible today, enabling data densities in the neighborhood of 12-13 PB per cubic centimeter. While there are still many problems to be resolved before drives using these can be manufactured this technology does seem promising. For one thing, it would be non-volatile, but could apparently be made to act as RAM. The fact that this is coming out of a university gives me hope that this technology won’t turn out to be just so much vapour — via Slashdot
Advances by CSIRO in material sciences are creating second skin technology that can protect the body against wounds and major traumas
After more than a century in business, it would be understandable for a company to run out of fresh ideas. But 3M, the manufacturing conglomerate, is still at it, at age 104. The manufacturing conglomerate — an abrasives maker that broke out by inventing masking tape in 1925 — is introducing new products as if it were a startup
The UMass Lowell research group has joined groups from five other institutions and secured funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to pursue the possibilities of causing a limb to re-grow in an adult mammal. One form of newt, the Eastern or red-spotted newt‚Äîcapable of limb regeneration, will be studied — via digg
Usually the only alcohol-powered muscles are the ones in barroom brawls, but one scientist is adding alcohol to artificial muscles to power robots and more. Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed artificial muscles
— science’s best attempt at mimicking natural muscles. But they’re not made with the hydraulics or gears that power most of today’s big, strong machines. These muscles are made of an elastic metal called shape memory wire
Internet telephony is moving beyond small-scale pilots at the big end of town as large operations tackle 5000-plus handset rollouts
Signals from mobile phone masts have been used to measure rainfall patterns in Israel. The University of Tel-Aviv analysed information routinely collected by mobile networks and say their technique is more accurate than current methods used by meteorological services. The data is a by-product of mobile network operators’ need to monitor signal strength. If bad weather causes a signal to drop, an automatic system analyzing the data boosts the signal to make sure that people can still use their mobile phones. The amount of reduction in signal strength gave the researchers an indication of how much rain had fallen
Apple Computer is entitled to use the apple logo on its iTunes Music Store, a judge has ruled, rejecting a suit filed by Apple Corps Ltd, the guardian of The Beatles’ commercial interest
After being told by banks and lenders across the UK that Chip and Pin is safe to use and provides better security (it doesn’t, it just shifts financial liability for loss to the consumer instead of the lender) Shell have announced that they’re suspending Chip and Pin at 600 of their Petrol stations in the UK after £1 million of customer money was stolen through a Shell Petrol station — via Snake Oil Labs
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