Call Me Black Cloud writes "A Diebold insider is blowing the whistle on the company's continued lack of concern about security holes in its voting software. The insider wrote to Brad Friedman, a somewhat shrill political blogger, claiming the company is instructing technicians to keep quiet about the security flaws. This is despite the vulnerability being listed on the US-CERT website for the last year. A Diebold company rep admits the software can be remotely accessed via modem, but states, "it's up to a jurisdiction whether they wish to use it or not...I don't know of any jurisdiction that does that." The insider disputes that, claiming several counties in Maryland made use of the feature in 2004." This in addition to the fact that Blackboxvoting already hacked the system using a chimp last year.

Call Me Black Cloud writes "And you think your coworker with BO is annoying? In this story carried by Reuters, a man wearing a nylon jacket over a wool shirt built up such a static charge that he left a trail of scorched carpet and melted plastic in his wake. After he melted plastic in his car he sought help from firefighters called to the scene, who measured his static field at 40,000 volts." Obviously, despite the fact that this is carried by Reuters, you should take some of the 'facts' presented here with some NaCl.

Tsar writes "Promethean Personal Software (makers of Sherpa, a code generating tool for db apps) have quietly released ExceptionCollection, a free (as in beer) online service for developers using any SOAP-enabled environment. You sign up on the site, download their component, add three or four lines of code to your app, and any exceptions thrown by your users get logged at ExceptionCollection.com for your later perusal (the last 100 anyway). There are several options, like whether reporting requires user approval. Is this as cool as it looks, or a solution in search of a problem?"

Praxiteles writes "The first cocktail was...grog?! From the article: 'The first cocktail ever was made in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, using wine, beer, apple juice and honey. Patrick McGovern defined the mix as "grog", an archaic drink that in the United States is sold as the Midas Touch'."

ijones writes "Brute Force, by Matt Curtin, is about an event that many Slashdotters will remember: the cracking of the Data Encryption Standard. In June of 1997, a 56-bit DES key was discovered, and its encrypted message decoded, by an ad-hoc distributed network of computers, cooperating over the Internet. Four and a half months earlier, RSA had issued a challenge to the cryptography community, offering $10,000 to the first group to crack a 56-bit DES encrypted message. In Brute Force, Matt Curtin offers his first-hand account of the DESCHALL team's winning effort." Read on for the rest of Jones' review.

Wednesday we requested questions for Jonathan Zdziarski, an open source contributor and author of the recently reviewed book "Ending Spam." Jonathan seems to have taken great care in answering your questions, which you will find published below. We have also invited Jonathan to take part in the discussion if he has time so if your question didn't make the cut perhaps there is still hope.

Steve Nixon writes "Free-flowing beer, live music, karaoke and arcade games kept the party raging at the Googleplex the other night, but the real action was unfolding inside a sterile conference room at Google's headquarters. That's where the cunning internet entrepreneurs who constantly try to manipulate Google's search engine results for a competitive edge were trying to make the most of a rare opportunity to match wits face-to-face with the company's top engineers."

Via Joystiq, N-Philes has an article delving deep into the secrets of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube. A Developer Mode is accessible within the game which allows for battle tweaking, setting changes, and access to dozens of otherwise inaccessible battle maps. From the article: "Notice the stage is completely horizontal. Not only that, it's easily the longest fighting arena in Super Smash Bros. history (with the exception of the Home-Run Contest stage). Along the stage lie several moving platforms and multicolored grounds with different amounts of traction when walked across. It's clear that HAL used this area as a virtual playground to experiment with several different aspects of gameplay. Did you take note of the background? Confused? So is everyone else. The background is a giant picture of a pub. If you look closely you can spot several people enjoying tall glasses of beer atop the bar and tables. Despite the fact that it seems a little strange, it somehow adds to the illustrious prestige of Super Smash Bros. We wouldn't have it any other way."

SFEley (Stephen Eley) writes "Todd Cochrane's Podcasting: The Do-It-Yourself Guide has been heavily pushed in the podcasting community as the first of a wave of podcasting books to be released in the next several months. All of these books will surely cover the same themes, more or less: what podcasts are, how to listen to them, and how to produce your own. The popularity of podcasting is exploding right now, with coverage in every press outlet and Apple hyping it as The Next Big Thing. It's easy to see that there will be a huge demand for these books, even if they don't do much more than state the obvious. So what about this one? Other than being the first, does it offer any compelling virtues for the would-be podcaster or listener?" Read on for Eley's answer to that question.

An anonymous reader points out a project called Drivey, which he describes as "a dark and fascinating example of 2.xD [not quite 3d] graphical rendering. This tiny, free [as in beer] demo gives you an amazingly compelling driving experience. To quote the author, 'It was conceived as a driving simulator for old farts like myself, who are kind of nostalgic for the "old days" [ca. 1985] but are not so thick as to believe that the games from the 80s were actually in any way superior to the games we play today.' Even works fine under WINE!"

Jim Holmes writes "Microsoft's Visual Studio is an elephant of an IDE. It's got tremendous power and adaptability, but it's difficult to dig through all the less-than-helpful documentation. It's also very tough to figure out which of the many available add-on tools are worthwhile to add. Visual Studio Hacks by James Avery is a terrific reference for helping get the most out of Visual Studio." Read on for the rest of Holmes' review.

Doc Ruby writes "The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled to ban off-duty worker 'fraternization,' at the employer's discretion. So getting together for a beer after work can now be prohibited by the boss. With IT workers so commonly producing some of our best work 'after hours,' even at home or in restaurants/bars, will this ruling come back to bite employers in the IT industry? Can they really stop you from talking with your cubicle neighbor on the bus home, if they can't even stop you from reading Slashdot while on the clock?"

Bruce Lawson submits the review below of Stuart Langridge's Excellent guide to creating dynamic web pages; scalable and sensible., writing "Don't be put off by the title: the DHTML here bears no resemblance to the stupid Web tricks of the late 90s that allowed animated unicorns to follow your cursor or silly Powerpoint-like transitions between Web pages." Read on for the rest.

RapDes asks: "I've been a long time Slashdot reader and I've had years of experience working as a computer admin (secondary to my main job title) at a few different companies. I'm constantly being asked by my friends to take a look at their PC's to fix problems or to setup home networks (like I'm sure most of you fellow Slashdot readers are, as well). Anyway, I've decided that I'd like to make a little extra beer money on the side by starting up my own computer service/upgrade/repair business. I'm looking for any input from the readers who've already been down this road. How much do I charge? What should I be focusing on, hardware upgrades? Virus and spyware removal? Home networking? Any advice would be greatly appreciated."

darkonc writes "The CBC has notes and an interview with Dane Rasmus Nielsen who decided to reduce the confusion between 'free as in speech' and 'free as in beer' by making a beer free -- in speech. The result is Vores Oel, an open source beer. The CBC site includes the recipe for the beer which is made with Guarana beans, and gives it a bit of a caffeine-like hit. The danish site downloads include the label for the beer (which is also Open Source)."

neonfrog asks: "Before silicon, before electricity even, what the heck did those of us with geek brains do? Our brains have not evolved appreciably in half an eon (at least mine hasn't, but I may be descended from turtles). What would today's programmers have been doing centuries before the invention of the keyboard? What would an electrical engineer be doing a millennia or three before the concept of resistors and capacitors? What piqued their curiosity? Were their skills esoteric or exotic? They can't all have been Leonardo Da Vincis or court 'magicians', right? Summer's starting and, for some, it's hobby time. I bet the Slashdot community harbors quite a few Journeyman, or even Masters. I know a lot of geeks are beer-makers (and I do so appreciate you folk ... urp!) so there's no danger of that knowledge getting lost. What other ancient tech do you indulge in and keep alive? What are some good resources?"

Xcott Craver writes "We have just announced a new annual contest, the Underhanded C Contest, to write clear, readable, innocent-looking C code that implements malicious behavior. The object is to hide evil functionality that survives visual inspection of the source. The prize is beer."

Slashback is back from vacation with updates on the Apple switch to Intel,a now-fixed glitch in the recent release of Debian 3.1, a hyper-efficient Honda, and the real numbers on online music networks. Read on for the details.

Quantum Jim writes "Kevin Rose, one of the famous contributors and co-hosts of The Screen Savers, is leaving this week to concentrate on a new technology howto show called Systm. The Systm will be an internet-only show distributed free (as in beer AND speech) in a number of formats: Theora, Xvid, WMV, H.264, and PSP (what's that?). There will be bittorrent trackers available too! If only I had broadband..."

coreboarder asks: "Google recently revamped their nifty little Google Mini. It now does 100,000 documents of 220 different formats, makes your bed, and pours your beer. Where I work we have a reasonably large amount of technical data files (~80,000) of varying formats stored on a number of Windows 2000 and 2003 servers. File access is handled by permissions on the containing folder(s). Over time duplication has crept in because people cannot find what they need where they expect it to be. The $3,000 price point on the Google Mini is very attractive but is their a better way of making files and their content easily findable on a 1000 node network while still retaining their security? We also use ht://dig but it cannot handle all the file formats that would be involved here."