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NEW YORK The most widely used electronic-voting systems all have flaws that can be addressed relatively easily, but few states and counties have actually implemented recommended security measures, researchers concluded Tuesday. Even the printing of paper records widely seen as a countermeasure to hacking and other attacks on ATM-like touchscreen machines does little good if audits aren't routinely and automatically performed, researchers said. While California and 11 other states require audits in addition to paper trails, more than half of the 26 states requiring paper records don't do so. The report, based on interviews with elections officials and analyses of...

Astronomers announced today the discovery of a frigid extrasolar planet several times larger than Earth orbiting a small red dwarf star roughly 9,000 light years away. The finding alters astronomers' perceptions of planetary system formation and the distribution of planets in the galaxy, suggesting that large rock-ice worlds might outnumber gas giants like Jupiter. The newfound planet is about 13 times more massive than Earth and likely has an icy and rocky but barren terrestrial surface, and it is one of the coldest planets ever discovered outside of our solar system. It orbits 250 million miles away from a red...

FORT HUACHUCA - It's a small unit with a big job. That's what an Army colonel said about the Intelligence Electronic Warfare Test Directorate. As the war on terrorism continues, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers are being provided new systems, some of which have not been through he normal vetting process prior to being sent to the field. That is when the directorate's soldiers and civilians are called upon to team with others from the Operational Test Command to deploy and evaluate how well equipment is doing in actual field environments. "We do operational testing of all intelligence-related systems...

The work will also train local operators on site in the technology and maintenance of the water systems. BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 18, 2005 — Three governorates will soon see an upgrade in treated potable water, according to an announcement today by a team of Iraqi and U.S. government entities. From the $18.4 billion allocated for the total Iraq Reconstruction Program, about $3 million is budgeted to bring treated potable water to approximately 25,000 Iraqi citizens in the Dahuk, Babylon, and Wassit governorates. The projects will upgrade 15 systems each, including water wells, compact potable water treatment plants and pumps. The...

Computer worms may soon wriggle around the early warning systems that detect an impending attack, a study by US scientists has revealed. John Bethencourt and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison discovered that carefully probing network addresses can reveal the location of hidden sensor networks that alert network operators to an impending attack. Armed with this information, the creator of a computer worm could create code that bypasses these traps and infects more computers as it spreads. The researchers say the same principle could enable troublemakers to bypass other forms of network defences, including blocks against intruders probing...

System Administrator Appreciation Day - A special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning.

WHAT'S the point? In the wake of the latest terrorist attacks in London, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD announced plans to conduct random searches of packages and backpacks carried by subway riders. "Random," of course, is a synonym for blind. And we all know what it means when you put blind bureaucrats in charge of homeland security: Grannies and toddlers, prepare to be on heightened grope alert. Reassuring al Qaeda operatives everywhere, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly pledged that his officers would not engage in "racial profiling." He also emphasized that passengers would be free to "turn around and leave" instead...

A number of years ago I discovered a root cause of America's culture war. It came to me as I debated professor Alan Dershowitz about issues of Jewish concern before a 1,000 Jews at the 92nd Street "Y" in New York City. With the exception of support for Israel, Dershowitz, a Harvard liberal, and I agreed on nothing, political or religious. Toward the end of the evening I came to understand why. "Ladies and gentlemen," I announced, "the major difference between Alan Dershowitz and me is this: When professor Dershowitz differs with the Torah, he assumes that he is right...

Importance Of India Underscored By Historic Perot Systems Board Meeting Company’s Strategic Land Banking & Recruitment Focus To Provide Scalability for Future Growth March 14, 2005, Bangalore: Perot Systems (NYSE:PER), the Plano, Texas-based IT, BPO and consulting concern, is expected to underscore the importance of India and the Asia-Pacific region to its long-term growth strategy at a meeting of its Board of Directors in Bangalore later this week. The meeting is historic, as it is probably the first Board meeting of a major U.S. multinational IT corporation in India. In bringing the Board to India to review its corporate strategy,...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Dispute: A heralded linguistic deciphering of an extinct hieroglyphic script accomplished in the 1990s is under attack by two researchers. FOR LINGUISTS, it's like hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win the World Series. Terrence Kaufman and John Justeson struck that blast in 1993 when they cracked one of the planet's few remaining undeciphered writing systems - a hieroglyphic script from the mysterious Isthmian civilization, which occupied southern Mexico 2,000 years ago.

Terri's Threads on FreeRepublic.com - 18 Nov 2003 0351 PST I've got good news and I've got bad news................ THE GOOD NEWS There are now five hundred seventy-four ( 574 ) 'Terri' threads containing a total of sixty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-five ( 67,525 ) posts....that could be counted...I couldn't find eight of the threads previously posted.) THE BAD NEWS The blog I used seems to have nullified the URL's I pasted to each thread. If one of you is a wizkid and can tell me how overcome this situation - without having to do the whole thing over...

Terri's Threads on FreeRepublic.com - 13 Nov 2003 1035 PST Today, as of 1035 PST, a total of four hundred and ninety-five threads (495!!!) related to the Terri Schiavo life or death struggle taking place in Florida have been posted by one hundred and seventy-two (172) FReepers!!! Given the astonishing and incredible number of threads which focus on a wide variety issues all reated to the same subject, I thought it might be helpful to the FR membership, and those who occasionly review FR commentary, to have a source from which they could more easily access a particular item of...

A new worm takes a different twist by trying to repair systems infected by Blaster and patch the vulnerability it exploits, antivirus vendors said Monday. The worm, called Nachi or MSBlast.D, tries to delete Blaster from some infected systems and install patches, according to Trend Micro. Last week's Blaster worm, also called MSBlast and Lovsan, infected hundreds of thousands of systems by exploiting a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) flaw in Microsoft Windows. Nachi exploits the same flaw but can delete the MSBlast.exe file left by Blaster on machines running Windows 2000 and Windows XP and download Microsoft patches to fix...

Russian Connection No Surpriseski March 24, 2003 At Ari Fleisher's Monday press briefing, Fleischer answered a question on whether finding Russian missiles dated 2002 in Iraq means Russia is our enemy. Of course not. We all know that Vlad Putin, the French and Germans didn't want us going into Iraq because this is what we'd find. I told you months ago that the Russians were selling GPS jamming equipment and night-vision goggles to the evil Baghdad regime. I'm not shocked or awed by this. Look, the Russian empire is gone and the Soviet Union and communism have swirled down the...

Two volcanic systems 'connected deep beneath surface' Geologists say an outpouring of lava from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii that began last May may have stemmed from activity beneath neighbouring Mauna Loa. The statement revives a decades-old debate over whether the two volcanic systems are connected. "We have detected a correlation between these events at a very short time scale," scientists reported in the current issue of the journal Nature. The scientists have long believed that Mauna Loa, the world's largest volcano, and Kilauea are connected deep beneath the Earth's surface. But the new study suggests there is a shallow...

There's a joke that says that it's 99 percent of politicians who give the rest a bad name. Mac users may feel this way upon hearing that a Wired article reveals that Macs are the ugly stepchildren in our nation's capital. The story reports that the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms (SAA), which makes technology recommendations to senators, is strongly anti-Mac. The SAA has eliminated almost all Macs on Capitol Hill with the exception of three offices: Kennedy's, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) and the office of the Democratic Policy Committee. "The SAA's recommendations aren't mandatory, but those...