Hardware Hacking

Hacking the Vonage V-Phone

The Vonage V-Phone is a bright orange 256Meg Flash Drive with a built in microphone and headphone socket.



They currently sell for $9.97 plus tax at Radioshack (Model: V256-USB11-VR, Catalog #: 43-117) although they are a little hard to find in the stores. I bought the last one in my nearest store and although the website said they were in stock at several other stores within a 5 mile radius of my apartment none of them admitted to having any after i walked to each in turn (yes i know i should have rung beforehand but it was a nice day outside and I could do with the exercise) so I ended up ordering two more off the RS website and paying the shipping, handling and the tax. This worked out to be $28 and some change. Still you can't go wrong as a quick google showed them to be around $20 to $40 each on Amazon, Best Buy and Circuit City etc.

My original idea was to format the flash drive to wipe out the Vonage software and to install linux and windows versions of Skype and a SIP softphone like Zoiper (probably against the EULA, TOS, License and about every other possible restriction a slimely corporate weasel can devise on something I have paid good money for and by rights should be mine to do as I wish with although they think otherwise but ssshhhhhh I won't tell if you don't) on it however it turns out that the V-Phone has several problems that make it kind of useless for what I wanted to do with it and in fact cause it to not really work as it was intended anyway.

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Deja DooDoo - Just in Time for Another Nail-Biter

3,400 votes vanish from Florida election

Son of Hanging Chad

Florida elections officials are determining whether they can give their counterparts in Palm Beach County more time to certify voting results of an election last week, following the revelation that more than 3,400 ballots have vanished into thin air.

Arthur Anderson, Palm Beach's supervisor of Elections certified the results Tuesday, but that was before at least two members of the county's canvassing board were informed of the discrepancy. The shortfall is creating something of dilemma for elections officials, who are torn between following the schedule mandated for Florida law and ensuring voters aren't penalized by the mistakes of public servants.

This latest episode has disturbing implications for counties and municipalities throughout the country. The ballots were used with new $5.5m optical-scan machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems. Many elections officials, including California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, have held out optical scans as a safer alternative to electronic voting systems.

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