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Interestingly, they really didn't meet any of the conditions you stated!

A couple of bits from the first link:

The passage in the Defcon show guide describing their talk begins, "Want free subway rides for life?" That line was removed from the description of the talk posted at the Defcon Web site.

Can't see that as not causing trouble (at least from the MBTA's perspective...)

The researchers refused to give the transit authority information about security flaws in its system ahead of the talk, the filings state.

Which is not particularly polite - and in fact definitely takes them out of any resonable definition of "White Hat"...

And while hacking around on a smartcard they bought shouldn't be illegal (as long as they don't actually use it for free rides), this bit:

[snip]

From another FA

The students said they tried to contact the MBTA around July 20 through their professor Ron Rivest, who teaches in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, but did not actually connect with the agency until around July 30.

It's been a crazy week for Anderson, who looked haggard -- he said it took him 18 hours to travel by air to Defcon and he had not slept since Thursday.

And another:

Mahoney [the MBTA attorney] praised a security analysis the students had prepared for the agency, saying the information in it convinced them of the vulnerability.

Looks like you're wrong, or one of TFAs is wrong anyway.

Why is it so difficult to understand that Google's Dalvik - an implementation of Java being used for free by mobile phone manufacturers - is a direct threat to Sun's J2ME? This is not some secret conspiracy theory - professional business analysts, who actually make a living from watching these kinds of things, have noticed the same thing.

"However, Google's move threatens Sun's business strategy, Mazzocchi said. He believes that Sun sees a bright future in the mobile market and hopes to earn revenue off the use of the Java virtual machine by phone makers. Google's plan diminishes that opportunity for Sun." source

"But with this you'll need to develop a separate application that's not standard. Unless Android becomes main stream and kills J2ME ..." source

This blog post from over a year ago proposes that JavaFX Mobile is just the next stage for J2ME to compete with Android.

Why is it so difficult to understand that Google's Dalvik - an implementation of Java being used for free by mobile phone manufacturers - is a direct threat to Sun's J2ME? This is not some secret conspiracy theory - professional business analysts, who actually make a living from watching these kinds of things, have noticed the same thing.

"However, Google's move threatens Sun's business strategy, Mazzocchi said. He believes that Sun sees a bright future in the mobile market and hopes to earn revenue off the use of the Java virtual machine by phone makers. Google's plan diminishes that opportunity for Sun." source

"But with this you'll need to develop a separate application that's not standard. Unless Android becomes main stream and kills J2ME ..." source

This blog post from over a year ago proposes that JavaFX Mobile is just the next stage for J2ME to compete with Android.

Nope, you're just a shill.

http://www.itworld.com/mac-hacked-first-in-contest-080327

I think people here have a very narrow definition of "software", taken to mean roughly: (a) operating systems, and (b) some productivity apps that business-types use.

Think about software more broadly. Note that console videogame software sales grew 35% in October, compared with October 2007. And this is in spite of a global recession. Can somebody paint a reasonable future scenario where the majority of console games like GTA IV are open-source projects?

My point: You need to adjust your vision of what the software industry is, and where the value is being created. If you want to make money, stay away from commodities like operating systems and word processors.

Well your other post said basically Lisp is for interesting people, all the other who cares about syntax doesn't matter, what do you expect me to answer to this??

Fair enough. I didn't mean to imply anything like that but perhaps I went to far when I mentioned 80s perms. ;-)

Lisp is probably very good for research as it free the researcher from syntax, but for the other 99% of developpers who don't do language research but who maintain existing programs in C, C++ or Java, I doubt that you would convince them that syntax doesn't matter.. That's why the next big programming language may be one of those: D, Scala, Ruby or Python but not Lisp.

Well, I am one of the bulk of those programmers maintaining an existing system. At least, that's what I do for my day job. And I doubt that is likely to change anytime even within the next decade, if I continue to stay with the same company. Our system is simply not going to be rewritten in any new language unless it is the first to introduce something amazing like a DWIM feature. In fact, if you listen to some of the pundits, the next big programming language just might be COBOL. Legacy inertia can often be the immovable object standing in the way of the unresistable force of the Next Big Thing. And I've personally gotten so sick of the YASL family breeding like rabits that I won't bother looking at another one unless it does something significantly different from all of its cousins.

But it seems I am guilty of having thrown another shovel full on the steaming pile of myth that Lisp is only good for research. Practical Common Lisp is full of excellent examples of using Lisp for "normal" problems. My personal favorite exmaple is the way he uses macros to help with the task of parsing ID3 tags in MP3 files. Having had to deal with things like ASN.1 compilers in the past, I immediately fell in love with the way he basically did the same thing as is done with ASN.1 but without ever leaving Lisp.

I currently use Common Lisp (mostly SBCL and sometimes Clisp) everyday for the kinds of tasks for which I would have reached for Perl in the past. An Emacs user, I'm merely a "M-x slime" away from wherever in Lisp I may want to be, including the entire mush of elisp floating out there in the tubes of the internets. CL-PPCRE already gives me in Lisp most of what I might have missed from Perl. Implemented entirely in Common Lisp, it even out performs Perl's regular expression engine for some benchmarks. But what I love about using Lisp for these kinds of "write once" "scripting" tasks is that I have full access to all of Lisp's features if I find it useful. For example, I've been able to use Allegro Prolog for an install script of somewhat limited intelligence. (I'll try posting code after this because I'm having problems with /. formatting rules.)

As for AOP, personnaly I've never liked it (seems like a mess for anything but logging), [...]

Okay, but the point wasn't so much AOP as it was how unnecessary it is introduce a whole new programming language tool to get the same functionality from Lisp. To introduce AOP into Java required mucking about with the core of the Java language. In Lisp, "all" one needs to do is crank out some macros and perhaps a few new meta-objects.

And so much of all of this is made possible by Lisp's macros which are, in turn, so useful because of the very syntax which is what so many people love to hate.

i probably shouldn't feed trolls, but i'll humor you...

• good Samaritan faces up to 10 years in prison for exposing security flaw in university's computer system.
• Schoolboy hacker faces 38 years in prison for changing his grades.
• an Asperger sufferer faces 60 years for looking for government info on UFOs on military computers.
• and let's not forget Kevin Mitnick who spent 5 years in prison and 8 months of it in solitary confinement.
• while a spam king who committed malicious acts against tens of millions of average computer users only gets 47 months after making millions.

seems like greed-driven malware writers, spammers, and other digital bottom-feeders go free with a slap to the wrist while harmless teenage hackers get the book thrown at them. from a ZDNet article, "US bill would treat all hackers as terrorists":

A major anti-terrorism bill now being considered by the US government has been criticised for disproportionately targeting low-level computer intruders, making small crimes punishable by a penalty of life in prison.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the main civil liberties group in the US focussing on the digital world, condemned parts of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) now in Congress, which would treat all computer trespass as terrorism. "Treating low-level computer crimes as terrorist acts is not an appropriate response to recent events," said EFF executive director Shari Steele in a statement. "A relatively harmless online prankster should not face a potential life sentence in prison." ...
In the US, the EFF criticised the portion of the new bill that adds low-level computer intrusion -- which could be something as innocuous as a teenager having a look around a commercial Web server -- to the list of "federal terrorism offences". Such offences carry penalties of up to life imprisonment, and give investigators broad powers of asset seizure, as well as threatening those who "harbour" offenders.

meanwhile violent offenders face much lighter sentences:

• Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban convicted of killing severely wounded 16-year-old Iraqi during fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. Sentenced to one year's confinement, demoted to private and given bad-conduct discharge.
• Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr. pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in same case as Alban. Sentenced to three years in prison, had rank reduced to private and given dishonorable discharge. Horne's prison sentence later reduced to one year.
• Cpl. Dustin Berg convicted and sentenced to 18 months in military prison for shooting death of Iraqi police officer.
• Spc. Rami Dajani convicted of making a false statement following fatal shooting of Iraqi translator. Sentenced to 18 months' confinement and given a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.
• Spc. Charley L. Hooser convicted of involuntary manslaughter in same case involving Dajani. Hooser sentenced to three years in prison and given a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.
• Capt. Rogelio "Roger" Maynulet convicted of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter in shooting death of wounded Iraqi. Dismissed from armed forces.
• Marine Maj. Clarke Paulus convicted of dereliction of duty and maltreatment in case stemming from death of Iraqi prisoner who was dragged out of holding cell by the

It's called "wu wei," action through inaction. If you prefer, knowing when inaction is the best action.

Maybe our government is going Taoist?

Actively opposing a bill is not inaction.

The other reason Bush's Administration is opposing this bill was left out of TFA
http://www.itworld.com/government/55331/us-doj-copyright-protection-bill-flawed

The legislation would also require the U.S. president to create an intellectual property enforcement office in the White House, and it would expand some civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringement. The requirement to create a new office in the White House would be a "legislative intrusion into the internal structure and composition of the president's administration," the letter said.

Bush & Cheney would never allow a precedent like that to be set.
It would be an enormous step back for their Unitary Executive Theory [TM].

If you think Bush's Administration is going to "wu wei" themselves through this, you've got it all wrong.

The summary implies that TradElect was responsible for the shutdown, but according to the stock exchange itself, it wasn't the case. They say instead it was a network problem.

http://www.itworld.com/print/54718

88% of IT Admins Would Steal Anything to get Laid

But that's exactly what the link to the original story is! http://www.itworld.com/security/54579/survey-it-staff-would-steal-secrets-if-laid

right... here http://www.itworld.com/print/54579

http://www.itworld.com/print/54088

posting ac to avoid Karma Whoring

You're correct I must have copied the wrong link.. here ya go:

http://www.itworld.com/google-ad-network-080529

Oh, and due to the incredibly large scope of the copyright infringement going on at Youtube, it does not surprise me in the least that mistakes get made. That still have anything to do with Viacom's track record regarding the collection and use of personal information compared Google - which is in fact what you implied in your earlier post.

Cheers

It seems to me (reading the responses at +2) that sshuber and other posters are experiencing the effects of an economic downturn, while others are not. Having recently returned from a road trip to Washington State (from British Columbia) I only saw a few overt indications economic problems, which is not to say that they don't exist.

However we have all seen troubling reports of layoffs in the tech industries. The tech sector does seem to be suffering less in the current situation than say, the real estate or banking industries.

Coming back to the original topic, I am most interested in these questions: Does a slowdown in the tech industry benefit or hurt FOSS projects? Does it free up more talent to work on these projects, or do these people end up purely focused on getting the next job? Do FOSS projects rely too much on corporations that can be kicked out from under them by the economy?

Personally, when I've been unemployed, it has been a blow to my self esteem, and I associate that with being perhaps selfish in that I did not even consider working on FOSS. Not saying that was the best move on my part. Anybody else?

It seems to me (reading the responses at +2) that sshuber and other posters are experiencing the effects of an economic downturn, while others are not. Having recently returned from a road trip to Washington State (from British Columbia) I only saw a few overt indications economic problems, which is not to say that they don't exist.

However we have all seen troubling reports of layoffs in the tech industries. The tech sector does seem to be suffering less in the current situation than say, the real estate or banking industries.

Coming back to the original topic, I am most interested in these questions: Does a slowdown in the tech industry benefit or hurt FOSS projects? Does it free up more talent to work on these projects, or do these people end up purely focused on getting the next job? Do FOSS projects rely too much on corporations that can be kicked out from under them by the economy?

Personally, when I've been unemployed, it has been a blow to my self esteem, and I associate that with being perhaps selfish in that I did not even consider working on FOSS. Not saying that was the best move on my part. Anybody else?

Thrust: Carl Icahn's letter to Roy Bostock Parry: Yahoo tells Icahn that its own board knows best

Thrust: Carl Icahn's letter to Roy Bostock Parry: Yahoo tells Icahn that its own board knows best

What I find more interesting than the "main story" is the article at the last link in the summary.

Microsoft could walk away from Yahoo deal Precisely. If investors had wanted to entrust their dollars with Microsoft management, they would have invested in Microsoft stock, not Yahoo! stock.

Of all the web companies, Yahoo! is actually in one of the best positions to capitalize on changing standards, even moreso than Google, I think; the key word in the previous sentence being "capitalize". Perhaps one of the reasons Microsoft was/is so eager to get its hands on Yahoo is the intangible and intellectual properties, many of which currently adhere to open or freely-researchable standards. Microsoft doesn't generally tend to be a purporter of open or freely-researchable standards unless it can get its brand name or the Microsoft logo in there somewhere.

The contest was also sponsored by the likes of Google, Cisco, Adobe, some security folk... They must all have it in for Apple, oh no Apple is screwed! Plus if you read how the contest was run, it's hard to make the case that this was all pro-MS.

Get the facts... Up to the point where they support your agenda and then punt.

Mac OS X gets hacked first in a contest to hack 3 notebooks, running Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Vista, earning the hacker $10,000. Network attacks failed against all three yesterday causing the $20,000 offered to go unclaimed, today browser attacks were tested and Mac OS X failed in 2 minutes, Vista running IE7 and Ubuntu running Firefox managed to deflect all attacks. Tommorow 3rd party applications will be added into the mix to increase the attack surface of the remaining contestants.

http://security.itworld.com/5013/mac-hacked-first-in-contest-080327/page_1.html

Just goes to show the culture of the alternate OS types. Anything that proves them wrong is covered up and denied.

The article is just a string of unrelated generalisations that may strike a chord when you first read it, but as soon as you think a bit longer it doesn't hold up. First, as many previous reactions have pointed out, Microsoft was never really liked in tech circles, starting with Bill Gates' letter against copying, even when it stood up to IBM. It was more popular in business circles and still is, despite decades of ridicule of BSODs, using the "Start" button to shut down a computer, and Microsoft's business practices. Apple has been loved and hated ever since it was founded around the same time as Microsoft.

Reisinger relies on people having a poor memory or being too young to remember the eighties and nineties to make a point that doesn't hold up and since his initial premise is faulty, the rest of the piece is no longer worth reading. To add to that, he puts in sentences like "[a]s I've shown, popularity and success breeds jealousy and disdain" even though he hasn't demonstrated that at all - in fact, it's the first time he mentions it. Apparently he has "shown" this in another column in this series, in which he merely claims that Google's popularity and success bred jealousy and disdain in Microsoft, which may be true but hardly supports the point he's making, whatever it is. But anyway, I should have known that I could stop reading when he said "going forward" and didn't refer to a vehicle.

Here's a another link to the same story. http://security.itworld.com/4357/casino-security-080310/page_1.html

Everything I have ever heard in the past and everything I could find from looking around just now indicated that they have no bizarre "save your receipts" requirement.

In an interview, OLPC President Walter Bender said that Intel's resignation will have 'no impact' since they didn't contribute much and made only a 'seemingly half-hearted effort' to build a version of the XO based on one of its microprocessors since joining the group in July.

Sun take that code and open source it as well.

On 13 November 2006, Sun released much of Java as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On 8 May 2007 Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code open source, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright.

http://wireless.itworld.com/4267/071114iphonetypos/page_1.html Nifty on screen keyboard which impairs actual keying no less. But Shiny. Oh so shiny.

Not so -- until recently MS kept very quiet about the release date of SP1 -- the tech jouranls & blogs were all over MS for not announcing the date.
 

This is the only factual thing in your post.
 

Not to sound too much like a troll or anything, but until it is downloadable, I for one will not consider it "near".

SP1 was scheduled for release this past summer (from MS announcements shortly after Vista Consumer release).

SP1 was then delayed to "by the end of the year" (from comments made a month ago)

SP1 (from MS's latest comments which you can find here: http://www.itworld.com/Comp/2218/071115vistaskip/ ) is now scheduled for release in Q1 2008.

I guess "near" is a subjective thing... but as of right now, it seems they really have no real release strategy... until it is done, I am not betting on "near" or even "sometime soon"

What really interests me is that they are quite well aware of the need to address these issues quickly if they want to see a greater adoption of Vista by businesses and/or home users considering upgrading - yet the release date, for a Service Pack that only addresses some of the issues, keeps slipping.

Yes, I agree it is a good thing that they don't release the SP till it's ready - but it kinda scares me that they need to put in so much time to fix the issues that they are addressing - and scarier still, that in trying to do so, their release date keeps slipping... it kind of makes me think that when they looked at the issues and underlying code, they collectively said "Wow, this is really a mess... we need a LOT more time than we thought if we are gonna fix this" (well, I think doubling the release time is a LOT more time... though considering their recent OS release schedule, they may disagree).

It makes me seriously wonder how severely wrong some of their programming decisions (or "push it out the door, ready-or-not" decision) with Vista really were - and how adequately a Service Pack can really address those issues. (is this gonna be just another band-aid?)

The title of this Slashdot thread is FUD.

Much to my surprise, this time the FUDsters aren't the slashdotters; the FUD (including the title) is in the FA, which, probably being new here, I did read. The whole article (available here)is pretty much a lot of BS, but it sounded anti-MS enough that it was picked up and dumped on the first page by the crack team of /. editors.

Netscape Communicator 4.5-4.8 had roaming profiles which sync'ed your bookmarks with a LDAP server and your address book, cookies too. This feature kept me using Netscape long after it was really dead, for some reason people seem to have forgotten about this great feature. http://www.acns.colostate.edu/aspx/www.acns/bulls/ nsroaming_whatsroaming.html http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1411/LWD990901netsca pe/ http://www.geocities.com/petru2/netscape_roaming.h tml

print friendly version for those who prefer to read TFA that way.

You are (depending on how you count) between about 3 and 9 months out of date.

Xbox target numbers They're not off by 3%. Xbox 360 sales are well over 20% below their previous estimates.

No , don't be silly. They will be calling us for tech support. http://www.itworld.com/Man/2701/070612offshore/

Finally they will know how we feel when we call them for support.

I really doubt it's 40M retail licenses. So yeah, I'd give the credit to cutting off OEM licenses of XP. Even though build-to-order OEMs like Dell can still install XP for now, every retail computer has Vista.

Yup. You just have to look at the numbers. "HP's worldwide PC market share grew to 17.6 percent in the first quarter of 2007 with sales of just over 11 million units, according a preliminary report from Gartner Inc." (source). Do the math. The same article says that Gartner and IDC define 'PC' in a slightly different way, so their numbers are different, but they report worldwide sales of 67 million and 58.9 million, respectively. That's in a single quarter. If that sales pace has continued, that can easily account for a huge chunk of Vista sales.

According to this article - The governments that have committed to buy laptops for their schoolchildren include Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay.

So it sounds like governments are starting to put their money on the table.

"Apple launches the iPhone, aiming for one percent of the global mobile market." - 1/10/2007

Study: Consumers aren't willing to pay $500 for iPhone "only 1 percent said they'd pay US$500 for it" - 2/23/2007

Wow. In only six weeks they've managed to estabilish exactly what Apple already said and, in a sensationalist bid, are framing exactly what was predicted as a terrible failure.

As another poster's written: Most people would buy Ferraris for $18,000 but less than 1% will at their current price... and Ferrari is absolutely fine with that.

In exactly the same way, Apple created a flagship brand that's not supposed to be owned by everyone but is supposed to increase brand awareness, move more people to iTunes and sell a hell of a lot of iPods to people who'd like to be able to upgrade "one day." Apple doesn't want the $50, minimal to no profits, tied to carriers for subsidies market. They chose their market, went after it, and all this article does is confirm their estimates were apparently exactly right. Given most companies over-estimate, 0.5% would have been a more realistic expectation based on a 1% prediction. That independent research supports 1% too is the shocking part.

I have a story from the NY Times (reg now required) in my journal which talks about this very issue. One of the solutions? Use software packages to 'soften' the images. In other words, film the movie in HD format then turn down the resolution so it is similar to that of what is on video tape or film.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) has whittled down the cost of the green and white computer they hope to deliver to school children in developing countries to about 100(euro) (US$130) so far, and hope to reach the target price of US$100 in 2008, a project leader said Monday.

If things keep going like this they'll end up patenting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

Where are you getting this information? MS just recently changed their sales forecast to 15 million by the end of their fiscal year. They previously forecasted 5.5 by June of 2006, which they were able to meet.

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/5051/060721xbox/

Your information is outdated.

This article, previously linked here does refer to HW costs and such (I was ready to denounce the post as a dupe).

. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

10. Diebol

You mean like, for instance, this bug: http://security.itworld.com/4352/020620apache/pfin dex.html

My Apache server was hacked via this (or some similar) exploit. The attacker installed an IRC bot in /tmp. I didn't notice it for a while until I saw some suspicious entries in my logs. Of course, since Apache runs chrooted as an unprivileged user, there wasn't much else the attacker could do.

For now I solved the problem by creating a group with write privileges to /tmp that excludes the Apache user. Next time around I'll just give /tmp a separate partition with noexec enabled.

http://www.itworld.com/Man/2688/061012eudatavote/i ndex.html

Franco Frattini, the European Commissioner in charge of justice issues, criticized Parliamentarians for being anti-American. "It's terrorism that is the problem, not the United States of America," he said.

The 9/11 terrorists used stolen passports. Passenger data, credit card reports as well as any secret no-fly lists would have been useless in stopping the terrorist attacks.

Breaking EU privacy laws and giving EU passenger data, credit card histories, Credit Card numbers and credit histories to CIA against the wishes of passengers and EU parliamentarians shows extreme contempt for the EU law and the European court's decision, our legal system and values.

If the EU laws are not respected and enforced by our own government, and respected by the companies who should abide by them, then what good are they?

Why should American law supercede EU law? We are not a part of United States. If USA fines European airlines, EU can fine American airlines double the amount.

Why should CIA's excuses for right-to-spy on EU citizens supercede our right to privacy that is stipulated in EU law?

Why is an EU commissioner advocating for the rights of CIA spies at the cost of EU citizens rights?

20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex

Good point, and more than that, can anyone give me one example where a software developer allowed external companies to do the patching of their software for them, that wasn't merely a subcontractor of said developer? I personally don't see the big deal, whether Microsoft does it or [insert any company here] does it, so long as my computer can run that's all that matters (to me AND to the 95% of everyone else out there that are merely basic computer users).

I can't wait for Vista. It makes me laugh to see everyone complaining about security in software that's still in Beta. And for all those complainers, how many will own at least one piece of equipment running Vista in 5 years? My bet would be well over 50%... (look at XP's number's now!)