An anonymous reader writes, "In a just-published report (PDF, in English, cached here), the Dutch we-don't-trust-voting-computers foundation (Dutch and English) details how it converted a Nedap voting machine, of a type used in Holland and France, to steal a pre-determined percentage of votes and reassign them to another party. The paper describes in great detail how 'anyone, when given brief access to the devices at any time before the election, can gain complete and virtually undetectable control over the election results.' As a funny bonus, responding to an earlier challenge by the manufacturer, the researchers reflashed a voting machine to play chess. The news was on national television (Dutch) last night and is growing into a major scandal. 90% of the votes in the Netherlands are cast on these machines and national elections will be held in a month." Please create mirrors for the 8.1-MB PDF and post their URLs. You might also try John Graham-Cumming's l8r.org service to tell you when the slashdot effect subsides from any of the mirrors.

PreacherTom writes, "Former Hewlett-Packard Chair Patricia Dunn, along with 'ethics chief' Kevin Hunsaker and others, was indicted yesterday on four felony counts by the California Attorney General. The charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy, carry a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison and $30,000 in fines. The indictments follow on the heels of an HP investigation of internal leaks that conducted "bugged" emails to C-Net reporter Dawn Kawamoto, illicitly obtained hundreds of phone numbers, and spied on HP board members." One of the indictments was for a private investigator retained by HP. The article has links to the complaints and warrants.

derek_farn writes, "Google now has a page that supports source code searching. I hope they extend it to be more programming-language aware (e.g., search for identifiers and functions) like the specialist code search sites (Krugle, Koders, and Codease), who probably now have very worried investors. I don't see any option to search for Cobol. I guess there is not a lot of Cobol source available on the Internet, even although there is supposed to be more Cobol source in existence than any other language (perhaps that statement is not true in the noughties)." From the Cnet.com article: "Google engineers, many of whom participate in open-source projects, already use these code searching capabilities internally. Since it is a Google Labs project, the company is not yet seeking to monetize searches through ads."

mdf356 asks: "It's been 5 years since I left graduate school and started designing and writing software for a living. After 5 years of writing operating systems code, I feel like I've forgotten some of the more advanced data structures I used to know. The next time an interesting problem arises, I'd like to have more in my toolbox than hashes, linked lists, heaps and various binary and n-way trees. I'd like something short and sweet, more in the line of the standard C book. Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos looks likely to be too basic, but I haven't read it (I'd like to avoid paying $90 for something that won't meet my needs). CLR is far too large and almost exclusively covers basic territory. Tarjan's Data Structures book looks like it has potential, but seems focused on network algorithms, which are unlikely to be applicable to the kernel programming I do. What are some good reference books on more advanced data structures and algorithms, particularly ones with potential applicability to an operating systems kernel?"

pestario writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about a service which can give the probability of the accuracy of statements made by politicians, among other things. From the Reuters article, Schmidt says: "We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability." Can Google's 'truth predictor' bring an end to sound bites and one-liners? I'm not holding my breath...""

An Ac writes, "By coating 30-nanometre-long chunks of tobacco mosaic virus with platinum nanoparticles, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have created a transistor with very fast switching speed. They say it could eventually be used to make memory chips for MP3 players and digital cameras. A device fitted with such a virus-chip would access data much more quickly than one using flash memory."

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "From the InfoWorld article: All French government publications should be made available in OpenDocument Format (ODF), according to a report commissioned by the French prime minister. The new report also suggests that France ask its European partners to do likewise when exchanging documents at a European level. It is recommended that the government will fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security as well, adds the article."

qirtaiba asks: "Synchronous discussion software (in simple terms, chat) allows discussions to take place instantly and interactively, but asynchronous software (discussion boards, a la Slashdot) have the advantage that they allow people from different timezones to participate equally. Does anyone know of a hybrid? The closest thing I have found is a proprietary 'Commons Console' offered as a service by Conflict Lab. This is not just an idle question. The Internet Governance Forum (or IGF — you can find more information here) is meeting for the first time in Athens from October 30th to the 2nd of November, this year. A lot of people who might like to participate aren't going to be able to make it to Athens, so the IGF has asked for ideas on how best to enable remote participation. Can Slashdot help?"

An AC writes,"NewScientistTech has a story about robotic whiskers capable of sensing shape and texture in a similar way to those belonging to rats and seals. The 'bending moment,' or torque, exerted at the base of each whisker is used to extract feature information. The artificial whiskers could be used on interplanetary rovers, or allow underwater vehicles to track moving objects by their wake. Check out the slightly creepy video of them stroking a sculpted face."

Donkey Konga writes "In the latest round of the ongoing debate on the effect of video games and TV on academics, a new study in Pediatrics says that any amount of gaming is too much if if happens on a school night. '"On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said study coauthor Dr. Sharif. Weekends were another matter, with gaming and TV watching habits showing little or no effect on academic performance, as long as the kids spent no more than four hours per day in front of the console or TV." Of course we all know that correlation does not equal causation, but the study is sure to get many parents thinking about how much time in front of the Xbox and idiot box is too much."

Walter C. writes "Anyone who watches the evening news with any regularity knows that it's not a bastion of substance. However, a new study conducted by researchers at Indiana University reports that The Daily Show has just as much substance to it as the broadcast news. 'The researchers looked at coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions and the first presidential debate of the fall campaign, all of which were covered by the mainstream broadcast news outlets and The Daily Show... There was just as much substance to The Daily Show's coverage as there was on the network news. And The Daily Show was much funnier, with less of the hype — references to photo ops, political endorsements, and polls — that typically overshadows substantive coverage on network news, according to the study.'"

Krishna Dagli writes From the BBC,"Tens of thousands of unsolved crimes could be cracked with a new forensic technique, it has been claimed.The Forensic Science Service (FSS) is piloting a computer-based analysis system which can interpret previously unintelligible DNA samples.It claims the technique is a world first which will boost its crime detection rates by more than 15%.The method is being tested by the West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Northumbria and Humberside police forces."

jayintune writes "2old2play has up an editorial about our love affair, as gamers, with sequels." From the article: "Sequels make us feel comfortable. Control schemes and gameplay doesn't need to be totally relearned. If you train to be a sniper in Halo 2, hopefully you will still be a good sniper in Halo 3. I still remember the disappointment I felt when they totally changed the light saber controls when Jedi Outcast came out. For an 'old school' player like me with many hours of practice, a new control scheme was just too much to relearn. A good sequel will retain mechanics to retain the existing user base and hopefully add new players as well."

An anonymous reader asks: "Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-. We thought were prepared to pay the price for OSS products, but then we got a price sticker shock. Now behold: QT is $3300 per seat. We have dropped the development and rewrote everything to C# (MSVS 2005 is ~$700). Embedded Linux from a reputable RT vendor is $25,000 per 5 seats per year. We needed only 3 seats. We had to buy 5 nevertheless. The support was bad. We will go for VxWorks or WinCE in our next product. Red Hat Linux WS is $299. An OEM version of Windows XP Pro is ~$140. A Cygwin commercial license will cost tens of thousands of dollars and is only available for large shops. We need 5 seats. Windows Unix services are free. After all, we have decided that the survival of our business is more important for us then 'do-good' ideas. Except for that embedded Linux (slated for WinCE or VxWorks substitution), we are not OSS shop anymore." Why are commercial ports of OSS software so expensive, and what would need to happen before they could be competitive in the future?

An anonymous reader writes "MySQL's Brian Aker has a good commentary on the big news in acquisitions today that Fonality has acquired Trixbox, the Linux Telephony distribution." From the article: "So why is this big news? Trixbox is the distribution for telephony on Linux today. They have put together a vertical Linux distribution dedicated to telephony. It combines Asterisk with a web based interface backed by MySQL, integrated into the SugarCRM solution. As Redhat today is the LAMP of the IT Enterprise and Web Framework, (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP), Trixbox is the LAMP stack of the Telephony market, Linux , Asterisk, MySQL, Perl/PHP."