Stories by: Todd R. Weiss

For more than a decade, Aviel "Avi" Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and an e-voting activist, has been a vocal critic of e-voting systems across the nation. In 2006, Rubin wrote the book, Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting, which heavily criticized e-voting machines for security and reliability shortcomings. https://secure.idg.com.au/admin/index.php?jid=1&l=1Rubin talked with Computerworld about the recent presidential primary election cycle and his thoughts on e-voting going into the November elections. The following is an edited version of that interview.

In a move aimed at consolidating their efforts to support Linux use on mobile phones, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum is merging into the LiMo (Linux Mobile) Foundation.

Ubuntu Linux Tuesday released the first developer's version of its new Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition 8.04 operating system, which is aimed at device manufacturers building Internet-ready handheld devices based on Intel's Atom processors.

French open-source data integration vendor Talend Monday unveiled its data-profiling application, which will allow companies to assess their data quality as a key part of data integration projects.

Online constituent services, security, privacy, data integrity and 24/7 operations are already on the lengthy to-do lists of busy government IT workers. Should Web 2.0 features be added to those lists and become another integral part of the online services government provides?

Scouts honor, the 98-year-old Boy Scouts of America (BSA) organization is adopting open source software as a path to building better software that supports the almost 3 million scouts and 1.1 million adults who make up the group.

E-mail collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange has released beta software that adds an enterprise-critical feature to Apple's popular iPhone -- the ability to receive calendar and contact updates wirelessly instead of plugging the device into a computer.

To keep up with the growing popularity of the recent wave of low-cost, flash drive-equipped, wireless, small form factor "netbook" computers, Ubuntu Linux this week announced its own specially modified Linux operating system that can run on the machines.

The Phoenix has landed.

After a nine-month, 422-million-mile trip from Earth that began last August, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander will catch up to the red planet within hours to begin its three-month science mission.

Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell's SUSE division Wednesday unveiled updates for their enterprise Linux operating systems, adding new capabilities and hardware support in between the next major releases of their products.