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Democrats

Submission + - Obama's Massive MySpace Martyr

DoTheRightThingBarack writes: This is unbelievable. Obama's campaign staff has been successful is killing-off the biggest political fansite on MySpace. The fansite is going to be deleted this morning! 160,000 friends, gone! The crazy thing is, the fansite had been in support of Obama. How smart is that?! For a political candidate to kill-off their biggest fansite?!?! Have any other political campaigns been dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot like this? (mirror link) More info is available on techPresident, Technorati, and Joe Anthony's site.
Media

PS3 Price Cut To Follow End of Blu-ray Laser Shortage? 147

Via Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog, a DigiTimes article reports that the shortage of Blue-ray lasers is ending. Back in April Sony Shiroishi Semiconductor, a maker of the blu-violet laser diodes needed to make the PlayStation 3, ramped up production to fully meet the needs of production for Sony's new console. As a result of more readily available components, the article theorizes that a price cut may be possible sometime later this year. "Until now, the question has been: how could Sony afford it? If the Blu-ray supply chain is indeed poised to pump out Blu-ray PUHs, perhaps this is the first major step to seeing $50 to $100 shaved off the cost of the console. Would $100 off the cost of the PS3 bring in more buyers? I don't think this can even be considered a serious question. With few exceptions, and leaving aside a handful of loyal fanboys, the PS3's biggest problem is its price. We look for a Sony price cut later this year if sales stay ho-hum."
IBM

Submission + - IBM to announce faster/efficient chips....

mattatwork writes: "According to the NY Times, IBM is set to announce a major advance in how it makes it chips. Using an unnamed substance, IBM expects faster and more energy efficient semiconductors. They also are using a newer technique of self-assembly, which has previously been used on the biological, Molecular (nano- and micro-scale) and Supramolecular. Instead of drilling holes (like in traditional chips), heat is used to create holes for substance X to be put through. Very cool process...though it does give me a headache thinking about it...."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Cheapest way to setup 150 computers temporarily?

justanotheritguy writes: We need to provide a web-browser, keyboard, and mouse to 150 people at a convention every so often. Currently we rent laptops and set each one up on a wireless network and they all run IE and access a webserver running on the internal network. Renting all the laptops is expensive and not very reliable.

With all the new technology out there, I'm guessing there are new options for doing something like this we're unaware of. What alternatives are there to getting a webbrowser in front of several hundred people for just a few days before everything's torn down? I'm figuring some smart slashdot reader will have a really clever idea we haven't considered.
Censorship

Censoring a Number 1046

Rudd-O writes "Months after successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, an unprecedented campaign of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices by the MPAA, has hit the Net. For example Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15,500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorship go on, in the name of economic interest?" How long before the magic 16-hex-pairs number shows up in a comment here?
Security

Ohio Audit Reveals More Diebold Problems 222

armb writes with a link to a Wired Blog entry about irregularities found in Diebold databases from the state of Ohio. The election in question here is November 2006, and the corruption of the entries may raise doubts about accurate tabulations. "Vote totals in two separate databases that should have been identical had different totals. Although Diebold explained that this was part of the system design for separate vote tables to get updated at different times during the tabulation process, the team questioned the wisdom of a design that creates non-identical vote totals. Tables in the database contained elements that were missing date and time stamps that would indicate when information was entered. Entries that did have date/time stamps showed a January 1, 1970 date. The database is built from Microsoft's Jet database engine. The engine, according to Microsoft, is vulnerable to corruption when a lot of concurrent activity is happening with the database, such as what occurs on an election night when results are uploaded and various servers are interacting with the database simultaneously."
Republicans

Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers 688

goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Brains!

Crow T. Trollbot writes:
  • Brains!
  • Brains!
  • Braaaaaiiinnnssss!
  • BRAAAAAINNNNNNSSSSSS!
  • Send more CowboyNeals
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Neil Gaiman One Step Closer to Sainthood

Lawrence Person writes: "Locus Online is reporting that bestselling fantasy writer, comics god, and all-around cool guy Neil Gaiman had officially been beautified, bringing him one step closer to Sainthood. "Vatican spokesman Cardinal Bertoli insisted that Gaiman had met the church's stringent requirement of three miracles necessary for sainthood, saying 'Truly the Holy Ghost works though the Venerable Gaiman's hands.'""
United States

CA Proposes Rigorous Voting Machine Testing 172

christian.einfeldt writes "During her successful campaign for California Secretary of State, newly-minted California Elections Czar Debra Bowen spoke repeatedly of the need to use free open source software in voting machines to ensure the integrity of California's elections. Now that Secretary Bowen is acting on that campaign pledge, closed-source voting machine vendor Diebold worries aloud that rejecting its black-box voting machines could snarl California's elections. Diebold's concerns come at the same time that it is suing Massachusetts for declining to purchase those same voting machines." Quoting: "California's elections chief is proposing the toughest standards for voting systems in the country, so tough that they could [have the result of banishing] ATM-like touch-screen voting machines from the state. For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with 'red teams' of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes."
The Courts

Diebold Sues Massachusetts for "Wrongful Purchase" 422

elBart0 writes "Diebold has decided to sue the commonwealth of Massachusetts for choosing a competitor to provide voting machines for the disabled. Diebold wants to force the state to stop using the machines immediately, despite the upcoming municipal elections in many towns. The commonwealth chose the competitor based on an open process that included disabled groups. Diebold executives appeared confused when encountering election officials who made an intelligent choice."
Biotech

Genetically Modified Maize Is Toxic — Greenpeace 655

gandracu writes "It appears that a variety of genetically modified maize produced by Monsanto is toxic for the liver and kidneys. What's worse, Monsanto knew about it and tried to conceal the facts in its own publications. Greenpeace fought in court to obtain the data and had it analyzed by a team of experts. MON863, the variety of GM maze in question, has been authorized for markets in the US, EU, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. Here are Greenpeace's brief on the study and their account of how the story was unearthed (both PDFs)."

Sony Keynote Offers Hope For PlayStation 3 Fans 361

Once again, the stage was set for Sony to try to get some good will directed towards its next-gen console. Recent weeks especially have seen PR frustrations and setbacks for the company. Today was Sony's day to deliver: and in my opinion they did with flying colours. By the end of the keynote attendees were laughing and clapping with glee at the goodies that the company is going to be bringing to the PlayStation 3. Finally, finally, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for the console. Read on for my notes on the keynote, as well as links to other coverage of the event. Note the first: There may finally be a great reason to buy a PlayStation.
Biotech

Submission + - Anti-Matter's Potential in Treating Cancer

eldavojohn writes: "The BBC is taking a look at how atomic physicists are developing cancer treatments. A step past radiotherapy, the CERN institute is publishing interesting results: "Cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, causing intense biological damage leading to cell death." The press release from last year is finally sparking interest in the medical community."

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