boarder8925 writes "Be careful what you read when you fly in the United States. What you read is being monitored by airport screeners and stored in a government database for years. 'Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country, along with cursory answers given to U.S. border inspectors about their purpose in traveling. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore's choice of reading material, and worry over the number of small flashlights he'd packed for the trip. The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government's screening program at the border is actually a survelliance dragnet."

There was lots of little announcements over the course of Sony's TGS keynote ... but nothing earth shattering. For example, the only time a price drop was mentioned was to say there wouldn't be one soon. They're going to be expanding on the remote play capabilities of the PS3, something they've discussed previously. They did confirm the rumble controller, something the blogs were carrying yesterday. They're also going to delay the rollout of Home until next year, to give it a nice long Beta test period. You could say the 'big news' from their keynote was that they plan to work more closely with developers. Woo. "Hirai pointed to Crisis Core, a Square Enix collaboration on the PSP, as a recent example. 'Some of these collaborative endeavors are going on behind the scenes already,' Hirai said, 'largely in terms of development assistance courtesy of Sony Worldwide Studios. Sony is also listening to the opinions of developers whose games are already out.'" Of course, 'work more closely' may be a euphemism for 'buy out third parties'; the company just announced they've acquired the developer of MotorStorm . For further details, both 1up and Kotaku have liveblogs of the event.

Fantastic Lad writes to tell us that journalist Michael Hanlon recently got the opportunity to experience the Army's new not-so-secret weapon, dubbed "Silent Guardian". The Silent Guardian is essentially (even though the creators prefer you not refer to it as such) a ray gun, emitting a focused beam of radiation similar to your microwave tuned to a specific frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. "It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury. But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonizing sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. "

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's much-hyped anti-virus solution, Live OneCare and three other Vista AV products failed to achieve the Virus Bulletin's VB100 certification. The other products are McAfee's VirusScan Enterprise, G DATA's AntiVirusKit 2007, and Norman's VirusControl. All failed to pass a series of tests that are required to display the VB100 badge. 'With the number of delays that we've seen in Vista's release, there's no excuse for security vendors not to have got their products right by now,' said John Hawes, technical consultant at Virus Bulletin."