Diebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.

The program, "Hacking Democracy," is scheduled to debut Thursday, , five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.

This is Diebold's second recent defense of its system. On Sept. 26, Byrd wrote to Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, saying a story written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Will the Next Election Be Hacked?" was "error-riddled" and that readers "deserve a better researched and reported article."

The HBO documentary is based on the work of Bev Harris, the Renton woman who founded BlackBoxVoting.org, which monitors election accuracy. In 2004 the attorney general of California took up a whistle-blower claim filed by Harris against Diebold and settled with the company for $2.6 million in December.

Screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport failed 20 of 22 security tests conducted by undercover U.S. agents last week, missing an array of concealed bombs and guns at checkpoints throughout the hub's three terminals, federal security officials familiar with the results said.

One of the security officials familiar with last week's tests said screeners at Newark missed fake explosive devices that were hidden under bottles of water in carry-on luggage, taped beneath an agent's clothing and concealed under a leg bandage another tester wore.

Additionally, the official said screeners failed to use hand-held metal detector wands when required, missed an explosive device during a pat-down and failed to properly hand-check suspicious carry-on bags. Supervisors also were cited for failing to properly monitor checkpoint screeners, the official said.

"We just totally missed everything," the official said.

What happens when a film studio and a fanbase get into bed? Fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly, and the movie by Universal Studios - Serenity - are not amused. After being encouraged to viral market Serenity, the studio has started legal action against fans (demanding $9000 in retroactive licensing fees in one case and demanding fan promotion stop), and going after Cafepress. The fans response? Retroactively invoice Universal for their services.

A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, etc., etc. He is also respectful of copyrights. Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn an activity patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music.

"Working with the Boy Scouts of Los Angeles, we have a real opportunity to educate a new generation about how movies are made, why they are valuable, and hopefully change attitudes about intellectual property theft," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement Friday.

Scouts also must choose one activity from a list that includes visiting a movie studio to see how many people can be harmed by film piracy. They also can create public service announcements urging others not to steal movies or music.

Mediaservices, the owner of the controversial music download site AllofMP3, will pursue "every avenue" to overturn the decisions of Visa and Mastercard to stop processing payments to the company.

In a statement today, the Russian company said the blacklisting was "arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory". Visa and Mastercard had no authority to judge the legality of AllofMP3's services, and their "determination that the company's activities were illegal is patently erroneous and without legal merit", it said. "AllofMP3 has not been found by any court in the world to be in violation of any law...To disqualify AllofMP3 based on a payment processing company’s whim is irresponsible and sets a bad precedence."

AllofMP3 claims Visa has "misinterpreted the new copyright laws because they do not require AllofMP3 to alter its business model. The new copyright laws do not prevent the online sale of music".

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Spokane, Washington, also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, South Carolina, school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."

California teenager Julia Wilson has dedicated herself to organising student protests against the Iraq war in an act of retaliation against a firm visit from the Secret Service.

US investigators last week pulled the student out of her classroom for questioning about a MySpace page that showed President Bush being stabbed in the hand with the words "Kill Bush" scribbled above the photo. Both Wilson and her parents thought the Secret Service's tactics inappropriate.

According to reports, the Secret Service agents – apparently huge MySpace fans – first stopped by the 14-year-old's house (naturally, they would assume that she was a delinquent). The agents contacted Wilson's mother and then promised to return later when they could interview the lass along with her parents.

Instead, the agents stormed Wilson's school in Northern California and grilled her for 15 minutes.

"They yelled at me a lot," she told the newswire. "They were unnecessarily mean."

The agents also threatened to haul Wilson off to juvenile hall.

Some researchers in London say that tagging every passenger in airports with RFID could help fight terrorism. Well, they could give everybody some chewing gum, and that might help fight terrorism, too, and quite frankly, this plan sounds about as useful.

Without the device somehow being locked to or implanted in people, any potential ne'er-do-well could simply ditch it, or attach it to someone else. Never mind the problem many people would have with this type of surveillance for a moment, and focus instead on the sheer uselessness of the system: it won't stop anybody from actually doing anything dangerous or criminal, it just means that if a person's been flagged as suspicious, they can be identified, and the system can follow them, and then they do something, it might get caught on camera.

Around 655,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of the US-led coalition invasion, according to the largest scientific analysis yet. That is 2.5% of the country's entire population.

Various estimates have been made of Iraqi casualties, ranging from 48,000 to 126,000. But these have been based on reporting by the press, hospitals or the military, and tend to underestimate the dead, the researchers claim.

The death rate before the invasion was a fairly normal 5.5 per thousand people per year. Since March 2003, that figure has averaged 13.2, the researchers found. More worrying, the death rate has risen every year since the invasion: this year reaching 19.8 per thousand people per year, a near-fourfold increase over pre-invasion levels.

They estimate that there were at least 392,976 excess deaths – those that would not have occurred, has there been no war – in Iraq since 2003, and possibly as many as 942,636. The research confirmed the results of the same group’s 2004 study.

Defective by Design is sponsoring a "Day Against DRM" today in an effort to spread the word about the trials, tribulations, and general badness of digital rights management schemes. Folks in hazmat suits (yes, hazmat suits) have dispersed across the globe to spread the gospel of unencrypted media, some of them even spotted by an Ars staffer in front of the Wrigley building in downtown Chicago.

Defective by Design is a project run by the Free Software Foundation, and it exists to protest the use of DRM in all forms. The project website quotes Peter Lee, a Disney executive, who once said, "If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed."

It's worth spreading the word about DRM, but it needs to be done in a thoughtful manner. Plenty of consumers would be fascinated to learn more about why they can't make backups of their DVDs or that they'll need DRM-compliant hardware to watch high-definition movies in Vista. If you've never had a heart-to-heart with friends or coworkers about the downsides of DRM, today's a good day to start.