Item 1:

"Diebold Global Election Management System (GEMS) Backdoor Account Allows Authenticated Users to Modify Votes BlackBoxVoting.org reported a vulnerability in the Diebold GEMS central tabulator. A local authenticated user can enter a two-digit code in a certain "hidden" location to cause a second set of votes to be created on the system. This second set of votes can be modified by the local user and then read by the voting system as legitimate votes, the report said."

Cool debugging feature, but totally inappropriate in critical software like that. Anyway, Diebold is enjoying good business with various US states and that's all that matters...NOT!
Link to the Diebold story at BlackBoxVoting, Link to Lessig's blog

Item 2:

"Microsoft Patents The Obvious (Again) Looks like Microsoft has yet again patented plainly obvious technologies that have existed for years and years. No, I'm not talking about their patent of the sudo command. This time Microsoft has been granted a patent for nothing less than using your keyboard to navigate a web page!"

Well, the Oz patent office actually gave some fellow a patent on the wheel...quite recently.
Link to the full story