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United States

U.S. Bars Lab From Testing E-Voting Machines 123

joshdick writes to point out a NYTimes story on the decertification of Ciber Inc. from testing electronic voting systems. It will come as a surprise to no-one here on Slashdot that experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use. From the article: "A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests... The federal Election Assistance Commission made this decision last summer, but the problem was not disclosed then... Ciber... says it is fixing its problems and expects to gain certification soon."
Space

Submission + - Venus's Surface May be 1 Billion Years Old

dptalia writes: "For a while scientists have believed that Venus's surface is fairly young, having recently been covered by lava from 1 to 3 kilometers deep. However, more study into photos sent back by Magellan seems to show that the cataclismic volcano theory is wrong. Now scientists are postulating that Venus's surface may be a billion years old and could be probed to determine the history of the planet."

China - We Don't Censor the Internet 554

kaufmanmoore writes "A Chinese government official at a United Nations summit in Athens on internet governance has claimed that no Net censorship exists at all in China. The article includes an exchange by a Chinese government official and a BBC reporter over the blocking of the BBC in China." From the article: "I don't think we should be using different standards to judge China. In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all."
Security

Submission + - A Security Guide For Non-Technical Users?

kin_korn_karn writes: "Like many of you, I am the family IT department. I cannot convince my parents to follow proper PC security procedures. I'm not talking about enterprise-level things such as card swipes and fingerprint scanners, just simple measures like logging off of the PC when it's not in use. They, like many people of their generation, seem to be willing to sacrifice security for convenience, as long as their real data isn't being impacted. I can't seem to get it through to them that it's only a matter of time until they are.

Since my own arguments aren't working, I need documented proof to back it up.

Does anyone know of a guide to IT security that:

a) Is written for a non-technical audience, but is neither condescending nor overly "soft."

b) Defines the various terminology (trojan, virus, zombie, etc.) clearly

c) Explains what threats each security measure protects the user from

d) Uses cases and examples to demonstrate the before and after scenarios. i.e. "Jane's credit card number was intercepted via a non-encrypted connection. She started looking for the padlock symbol on her browser's status bar. Now, her credit card number looks like this: @*#(!@($)." (That's just an example, by the way.)

This can be either an online document or a print book.

Thanks."

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