Avi Rubin, an expert on electronic voting systems, worked as a judge in two elections in 2004, and he worked the chaotic Maryland primary election yesterday. His blog article about a day spent with Diebold voting machines gives impressions from the trenches of electronic voting. From the article: "The least pleasant part of the day was a nagging concern that something would go terribly wrong, and that we would have no way to recover. I believe that fully electronic systems, such as the precinct we had today, are too fragile. The smallest thing can lead to a disaster... I can't imagine basing the success of an election on something so fragile as these terrible, buggy machines... As far as I'm concerned, the 'tamper tape' does very little in the way of actual security... I hope that we got it right in my precinct, but I know that there is no way to know for sure. We cannot do recounts."

Nrbelex writes "Mere hours after iTunes 7's release, QTFairUse6 has received an update which enables it to continue stripping iTunes songs of their 'FairPlay' DRM. Some features are experimental but at least it's proof that the concept still works."

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist are running an article about a system which tailors the ads displayed on a screen according to what BlueTooth gadgets people are carrying. A bit like the billboards in Minority Report ." Awkward situations created by devices like this will be scenes in the sit-coms of tomorrow.

zokiii writes "This list represents the top camera makes and models used to create photos uploaded to Flickr. The list is generated automatically by periodically sampling the EXIF data from the stream of recent uploads." This is actually an incredibly simple idea, but a really useful one when considering a new camera to buy. Score three points for scrapers.

An anonymous reader writes "The Original Star Wars is available on DVD. Sure it's more moola in Lucas's pocketsess (Gollum accent). But he did finally release the original version for a limited time. But which Original Star Wars, I bet Episode IV is in the opening titles. " Also apparently the original versions are basically non-anamorphic transfers from the laser discs. So basically, they look terrible.

Largecranium writes, "I-names, the only globally unique, resolvable namespace in parallel to the DNS system and compatible with OpenID, are being introduced during Digital ID World in Santa Clara. I-Names are only as useful as the services they enable; the services that are available today are interesting but not life-changing. The ones that are coming in the next 6-12 months could change the way people interact online. I-names and their value (today and tomorrow) are casually explained at iwantmynamenow.com." I-names are the lineal descendant of the technology that began as XNS and continues evolving today as XDI.

wubo writes, "Microsoft is apparently stepping up its anti-piracy measures by publishing the locations and specifics of their pending lawsuits. Check out the snazzy map — warms me heart and soul." And to even the scales of justice, one of the last remaining class-action antitrust lawsuits filed against Microsoft in a state court is set to go to trial in Iowa later this year. An anonymous reader writes, "Iowa consumers who purchased Microsoft products in the last 12 years are being represented in a class action anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. The jury trial begins on November 13 and is expected to last 6 months." Bill Gates is on the witness list.

An anonymous reader writes, "Travelpost has a new guide to Wi-Fi in 141 U.S. airports. The chart includes pricing information and multiple service provider info for many of the airports — something you rarely see. A good, comprehensive resource for travelers who are constantly online."

PreacherTom writes, "We've all connected a myriad of useful things to USB ports: flash drives, printers, webcams. How about a vacuum cleaner? Pair of heated gloves? Anti-cubicle missile system? Joseph Pisani offers a listing of some of the most creative USB-controlled gadgets available, and includes a slide show of the most popular."

An anonymous reader writes, "Apple's Showtime event was all well and good, but the big news today was on Anandtech.com. They found that the two dual-core CPUs in the Mac Pro were not only removable, but that they were able to insert two quad-core Clovertown CPUs. OS X recognized all eight cores and it worked fine. Anandtech could not release performance numbers for the new monster, but did report they were unable to max out the CPUs."

mytrip writes, "The Democratic rival to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged that his aides were responsible for obtaining a controversial audio file, in which the Governator was heard disparaging members of other races, in a move that has led to allegations of Web site hacking. A source close to Angelides told CNET News.com that it was possible to 'chop' off the Web links and visit the higher-level 'http://speeches.gov.ca.gov/dir/' directory, which had the controversial audio recording publicly viewable. No password was needed, the source said." And jchernia notes, "As an aside, the California Highway Patrol is running the investigation — maybe the Internet is a truck after all."

ThinSkin writes, "ExtremeTech has an extensive performance roundup across the entire line of Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD AM2 CPUs, from the cheap to the ultra-high end. Both companies bring five processors to the table, ranging from $152 to $1,075, with the mid-range CPUs boasting the best in price/performance. From the article: 'It's clear that Intel's Core 2 Duo lineup offers superior performance across the product line when compared with AMD's Athlon 64. In some applications, even a lower-cost Core 2 Duo can outperform some of the higher-end Athlon 64s.'" The ExtremeTech article is spread over 10 ad-laden pages. You can read it all on the printer-friendly page, but you'll miss out on the pretty graphs.

dthomas731 writes, "After reading Ed Foster's blog about how the Embroidery Software Protection Coalition (ESPC) is suing grandmothers over using pirated digitized designs, I thought you might want to call your own grandmothers and tell them they are going to be needing a lawyer. And the ESPC is very serious. On the ESPC faq page they scare these grandmothers by telling them even if they didn't know the software was pirated, that 'Unfortunately, when it comes to copyright violations, ignorance is no defense.'"

br_sjrpreto_sp writes to clue us to an article on Foodnavigator. Agro giant Bayer Crop Sciences has petitioned the US Department of Agriculture to approve a genetically modified rice variety that has been at the heart of a recent contamination scandal. From the article: "Marketed under the brand name LibertyLink, these [varieties] were engineered to tolerate the toxic herbicide glufosinate ammonium. The company in July notified the US regulatory body that it had discovered trace amounts of an unapproved GM rice in samples of commercial rice seed." After the contamination scare, the market for US rice tanked as European countries imposed import limitations. When rice producers sued Bayer, the company responded with this request to the USDA. The petition is open to public comment until October 10. Comments may be submitted via the Internet at www.regulations.gov — search keyword APHIS-2006-0140."

jfleck writes with news that researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have released a paper on a technique they have developed for passively fingerprinting wireless device drivers (PDF). The researchers comment, "This technique is valuable to an attacker wishing to conduct reconnaissance against a potential target so that he may launch a driver-specific exploit." They sketch the loose language in the 802.11 standard describing the way client devices should probe for access points. Because probing is not spelled out in any detail, the authors say, "...implementing active scanning within wireless drivers [is] a poorly guided task. This has led to the development of many drivers that perform probing using slightly different techniques. By characterizing these implementation-dependent probing algorithms, we are able to passively identify the wireless driver employed by a device." This technique beats Wi-Fi Fingerprints by a country mile.