NetSuite gets the boot, E3 nixes birthday suits

So it turns out that hacking a Diebold touchscreen voting machine is just slightly harder than opening a box of Cracker Jack and stealing the prize inside. All you need is a PC Card, a little know-how, and a few minutes alone with the machine to change how it counts votes. A Diebold spokesbot said such a hack would require election officials to be “evil and nefarious” — and, of course, such people simply don’t exist. So everything’s hunky-dory. Isn’t it great to live in country where anyone can grow up to fix an election?

How suite it ain’t: NetSuite planned to host an SAP-bashing cocktail reception across the street from the German software giant’s SAPPHIRE show in Orlando, Fla., until SAP found out about it and pulled the plug. The on-demand CRM vendor claims SAP forced the hotel to cancel NetSuite’s reservation and then called all the other hotels in town to do the same. SAP spokesdude Steve Bauer called NetSuite’s guerilla marketing ploy a “desperate attempt to be disruptive.” This spat gives new meaning to the phrase “cocktail wienies.”

Skin deep: At long last modesty has come to the game industry. At this year’s E3 show, booth babes were asked to display a little less skin than usual. Apparently, E3’s sponsors were afraid the show might be mistaken for one of those “poker parties” popular with U.S. congressmen. The good news: Fans of bimbos past can visit e3girls.com, which is bursting with pages of archived photos. Not that I would ever waste much time at such a site (although I have to say pages 167, 293, and 423 are particularly uplifting).

X’dout: After months of playing hard to get, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has rejected the advances of hopeful .xxx domain registrar, ICM Registry. ICANN declared that pornsters must continue to peddle flesh on .com and .net. I hear the U.S. Department of Justice was disappointed by the decision; it was hoping the .xxx domain would make it easier for them to find Net porn without having to issue subpoenas to search engines.

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