The BSA (Business Software Alliance) is now taken to sending out threatening letters based on the results of a web/ftp spider search for the word “Office”. The RIAA has done similar things in searching for “pirated” music by keyword and then automatically mailing.

yware

Just heard an NPR story on the Santa Clara e-voting saga. A vote today did not decide on whether they would only go with a system with a paper ballot. Only to test such a system.

I heard someone talk about how in the 50’s and 60’s everyone was building bomb shelters for protection against nuclear attack and fallout but now people are being told that some tarp and duct tape are all that is needed.

"In what is believed to be the biggest credit card hacking incident so far, Omaha-based Data Processors International, which processes transactions involving Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Financial Services for merchants, said in a statement that it had “recently experienced a system intrusion by an unauthorized outside party.”

o-tia

Santa Clara County faces key decision on electronic ballots

A study of TCP/IP code of various commercial and open source operating systems found that the defect rate in the Linux implementation was much better than others studied.

From RISKS 25.57.

A 2-17-2003 very short Reuters story reports that Over 5 million Visa/MasterCard accounts hacked into