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Domain: contracostatimes.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to contracostatimes.com.
Stories · 3
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EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal
First time accepted submitter Jody Bruchon writes "The Environment Protection Agency has lowered the amount of fine-particle matter per cubic meter that new wood stoves are allowed to release into the atmosphere by 20%. Most wood stoves in use today are of the type that is now illegal to manufacture or sell, and old stoves traded in for credit towards new ones must be scrapped out. This shouldn't be much of a surprise since more and more local governments are banning wood-burning stoves and fireplaces entirely, citing smog and air pollution concerns." -
CA Proposes Rigorous Voting Machine Testing
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." -
IP Telephony Hardware Stretching Toward Home Users
Banjonardo writes "On today's edition of The Contra Costa Times , there was an interesting article about an actual appliance that replaces the computer in net-to-phone calls. The phone can be connected to an ethernet port, though I imagine DSL users would have to have their PCs on to log in. The company has a nice website dedicated to it. Lately most PC-to-phone programs have been asking for more money for international calls. Netmeeting doesn't cut it for all video needs, but several alternatives are quite acceptable, even for international calls." The phone the article concentrates on requires broadband and a home gateway to set-up; luckily neither of those things is rare any more. A few of the competing devices are mentioned as well; you can almost smell companies like Cisco drooling to own voice transport.