California Restricts Voting Machines

New York Times:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California's secretary of state placed rigorous security conditions on voting equipment used in dozens of counties and limited the use of two of the most widely used machines statewide....

University of California computer experts found that voting machines sold by three companies -- Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems -- were vulnerable to hackers and that voting results could be altered.

Bowen said she had decertified the machines for use and then recertified them on the condition they meet her new security standards. When asked what would happen if the companies failed to do so, Bowen responded, ''I think they will.''...

The additional security requirements she imposed included banning all modum or wireless connections to the machines to prevent them from being linked to an outside computer or the Internet. Each machine that must be recertified also has a lengthy list of additional conditions it must meet, many of them highly technical.

She also required a full manual count of all votes cast on Diebold or Sequoia machines to ensure accuracy.

Bowen said the study revealed some vulnerabilities that would allow hackers to manipulate the systems ''with little chance of detection and with dire consequences.'' Her review also found that the machines posed problems for disabled voters.

Google Pushes for Rules to Aid Wireless Plans

New York Times: By MIGUEL HELFT and STEPHEN LABATON

If Google succeeds with federal regulators, it could change the way millions of Americans use their cellphones and how they connect to the Internet on their wireless devices.

In the Internet giant’s view of the future, consumers would buy a wireless phone at a store, but instead of being forced to use a specific carrier, they would be free to pick any carrier they wanted. Instead of the wireless carrier choosing what software goes on their phones, users would be free to put any software they want on it. ...

There might even be a Google phone.

That vision, according to several analysts, is the reason Google said yesterday that it would bid upward of $4.6 billion for a swath of the nation’s airwaves, which are set to be auctioned by the federal government next year — as long as certain conditions are met.

But Google’s efforts to position itself on the side of the consumer are also part of a fierce lobbying battle that pits it and other tech companies against wireless carriers, who oppose conditions that Google wants to set on the winners of the auction. Verizon Wireless has called the conditions “corporate welfare for Google.” And AT&T rejected Google’s latest effort, calling it an “all or nothing ultimatum.” ...

“When you go to Best Buy to buy a TV, they don’t ask whether you have cable or satellite,” said Blair Levin, a former F.C.C. official who is now an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Company. “When you buy a computer, they don’t ask what kind of Internet service you have, and the computer can run any application or service. That doesn’t exist in the wireless world. That’s where Google wants to go with this auction.”

So not everyone out there loves or trusts Google. But given a choice between Google and the existing cell phone companies?

Machinist: On Cell Phone Contracts

Salon:By Farhad Manjoo

But the iPhone, [Congressman Ed] Markey said, 'highlights both the promise and the problems of the wireless industry today.' The phone sells for full price, yet owners get essentially no rights over how to use it; the phone forces you to sign a two-year contract with poorly ranked AT&T service, at pain of a $175 early-termination fee. 'Many consumers feel trapped having bought an expensive device or having been locked into a long-term contract with significant penalties for switching,' Markey said. And it's not just iPhone owners. Nobody likes their cell provider; people are sick of the fees, they're sick of the stringent contracts, they're sick of the bad cell signal. But what are you going to do? There are four large cell carriers in the U.S. -- AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint -- and none has customers who are particularly happy. ...

Last year, Jennifer Granick, an attorney who directs Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office -- the arm of the Library of Congress responsible for administering the copyright system -- to exempt people from DMCA penalties when they try to unlock their phones. She won. The Copyright Office ruled that it's legal for people to unlock their own cellphones. It's also legal to sell or buy a phone that has already been unlocked.

But there's a complication, Granick told me: The Copyright Office only exempted the act of unlocking your phone, not the act of providing tools to unlock all such phones. Thus you may violate the law if you provide software, hardware and perhaps even instructions to help other people unlock their cellphones. ...

At last week's hearing, consumer advocates and telecom representatives clashed over proposed regulations surrounding early-termination fees. A representative for Verizon asked Congress to prohibit individual states from imposing rules on what kind of terms cell firms can offer in their contracts. Consumer advocates, meanwhile, pressed legislators to force a national rule prohibiting early-termination fees.

"I can get out of a lease for an apartment or a home for about one month's rent," Consumer Union's Chris Murray said. "Why does it take the cost of nearly half a year's service to end my wireless contract?"

The Six Stages of E-Mail

New York Times: By NORA EPHRON

Help! I’m drowning. I have 112 unanswered e-mail messages. I’m a writer — imagine how many unanswered messages I would have if I had a real job. Imagine how much writing I could do if I didn’t have to answer all this e-mail. My eyes are dim. I have a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. I have a galloping case of attention deficit disorder because every time I start to write something, the e-mail icon starts bobbing up and down and I’m compelled to check whether anything good or interesting has arrived. It hasn’t. Still, it might, any second now. And yes it’s true — I can do in a few seconds with e-mail what would take much longer on the phone, but most of my messages are from people who don’t have my phone number and would never call me in the first place. In the brief time it took me to write this paragraph, three more messages arrived. Now I have 115 unanswered messages. Strike that: 116.

On the Internet and the Embrace of Miscellanea

The Chronicle:

David Weinberger is perhaps best known as a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a document, written in 1999, that urges businesses to treat the Web as a “global conversation.” Now Mr. Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, says it’s time to shed “the idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world.”

In Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, a new book published last month, Mr. Weinberger argues that the Internet breaks down information so that people can reorganize it as they see fit. “Lots of people have seen lots of ways in which things are related, and we can express that on the Web,” says the author in an interview with the blog 10 Zen Monkeys. “We don’t have to minimize it.”

When a librarian files a book, he or she is forced to choose just one shelf through which to categorize the volume. “That’s not a natural restriction,” says Mr. Weinberger. The beauty of the Internet, he argues, is that physical space no longer dictates how detailed categorization and organization can become. —Brock Read

I agree with the concept (as any reader of this blog and its highly idosyncratic index would recognize immediately), but my librarian spouse would cause me harm if I didn't include the following comment, quickly posted to The Chronicle site:

The point about filing a book in only one spot is correct, but it is only part of the story. For years libraries have assigned multiple subject headings, author names, and secondary titles to catalog records. These additional access points enable a catalog user to find a book or other library resource in many different ways. The Internet clearly opens up access to library materials, but the basic concepts have been there all along.

Microsoft Surface Video - Touchscreen

From Popular Mechanicshttp://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid932579976/bclid932553050/bctid933742930