The vulnerability, which is still being kept mostly secret, appears to let someone upload new software to the machines with just a few minutes at the machines -- potentially allowing them to change voting results on the machine. This is, clearly, a major issue -- and certainly not the first one found on Diebold machines. In the past, we've seen reports about weak security, putting ballots online and unprotected, a default easy password used on all machines across the country, reports of miscounts on the machines, evidence that Diebold employees purposely hid security problems, claims that Diebold made last minute changes to voting machine software (in violation of election laws), evidence that other machines were easily hacked and a number of other problems with both the machines and people who worked at Diebold (such as the convicted felons who ran the unit that wrote the voting machine software).

In some cases, even when serious issues have been shown, the company has publicly laughed them off and then made life difficult for elections officials who are required by law to buy electronic voting machines, by doing things like making them sign contracts that won't allow these types of security tests. In fact, the whole reason this new serious vulnerability came to light was because of a security test done on the machines for a county elections official in Utah in March. You remember... that was the case where Diebold claimed such tests were a violation of their warranty, and they demanded $40,000 to "recertify" the machines.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans - most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

In the case of the NSA's international call-tracking program, Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed.

Dr. Jonathan Spanier from Drexel University has come up with a novel way to greatly increase data storage density: water. Specifically, they propose using hydroxyl ions to stabilize minute ferroelectric wires. These wires could be many times smaller than what is possible today, enabling data densities in the neighborhood of 12-13 PB per cubic centimeter. While there are still many problems to be resolved before drives using these can be manufactured this technology does seem promising. For one thing, it would be non-volatile, but could apparently be made to act as RAM. The fact that this is coming out of a university gives me hope that this technology won't turn out to be just so much vapor.

A small-time DVD pirate has gone on record as attempting one of the most risky sales of all time.

The unnamed peddler approached the Malaysian Consumer Affairs Minister Shafie Apdal as he sat at a popular restaurant and tried to flog him a selection of titles.

Shafie is currently heading Malaysia's crack-down on piracy as the country tries to set up a free trade agreement with the US.

Big oil company Shell suspended chip-and-pin payments at 600 petrol stations in the UK after it discovered that customers' accounts had leaked around £1 million.

According to our source, a team of shysters has been turning up at petrol stations posing as engineers and taking the Trintech Smart5000 Chip and Pin units away for repair. They have then bypassed the anti-tamper mechanisms and inserted their own card skimmer.

The hoods then return the unit, again posing as an engineer. Once the units begin collecting card details these are sent abroad and used to withdraw cash.

To get around the anti-tamper mechanisms, the fraudsters might have had access to a reset program that would allow them to reset the alarm or they were able to engineer their way round it by using different parts from previous versions of the Smart5000 unit. "Either way," said our mole, "they were very clever."

Alarm usually accompanies changes to Google's algorithms, as the new rankings can cause websites to be demoted, or disappear entirely. But four months on from the introduction of "Big Daddy," it's clear that the problem is more serious than any previous revision - and it's getting worse.

"Some sites have lost 99 per cent of their indexed pages," reports one member of the Webmaster World forum. "Many cache dates go back to 2004 January." Others report long-extinct pages showing up as "Supplemental Results."

With creating junk web pages is so cheap and easy to do, Google is engaged in an arms race with search engine optimizers. Each innovation designed to bring clarity to the web, such as tagging, is rapidly exploited by spammers or site owners wishing to harvest some classified advertising revenue.

Online file-sharing service BearShare, along with operators Free Peers Inc., is packing it up due to a $30 million settlement with the recording industry. The conditions of the settlement were agreed to by the P2P company to avoid further copyright infringement litigation.

BearShare was among several P2P service to receive cease-and-desist letters from the RIAA in September of last year. Others include Warez P2P, Limewire, eDonkey, and Soulseek, all of whom have not yet reached a settlement.

The FCC released an order yesterday that requires all broadband providers and all "interconnected" VoIP providers to implement CALEA — in other words, law enforcement can snoop on your online conversations, both voice and text. While this is no surprise, it makes encryption for VoIP even more urgent.

Jeffrey Toback, a representative in New York's Nassau County Legislature, charged in a complaint filed Thursday that Google has been taking in billions of dollars by allowing child pornography and "other obscene content" operators to advertise their sites through sponsored links, which are tailored to a user's search terms and automatically accompany search results.

"Defendant is willing to accede to the demands of the Chinese autocrats to block the search term 'democracy,'" the complaint states, "but when it comes to the protection and well-being of our nation's innocent children, Defendant refuses to spend a dime's worth of resources to block child pornography from reaching children."

Toback, the politician backing the action, describes himself in his biography on Nassau County's Web site as a "quality of life guy" who has focused on legislation promoting open space and recreational areas. He has also co-sponsored a law designed to protect teenagers from tanning beds and has planned this year to pursue a ban of toy guns in the area.

The supreme leader of the software giant Microsoft, Sir William Gates III, has complained to a telly reporter that he hates being dubbed the richest man in the world.

He said that generally he hates publicity and does not like the attention that having huge wodges of cash seems to give him.

Gates may be one of the world's biggest philanthropists, but complains he gets more visibility from the cash he has rather than the stuff he gives away.