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Data Theft Soars to Unprecedented Levels 116

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @09:17PM from the never-been-easier-to-be-someone-else dept.

A Wired article reports on data loss in 2007, and the numbers aren't good. Credit card and social security theft was at an all-time high, with even more losses expected in 2008. Information thieves, it seems, are just one step ahead of IT security. "While companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of data with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, the investment often is too little too late. 'More of them are experiencing data breaches, and they're responding to them in a reactive way, rather than proactively looking at the company's security and seeing where the holes might be,' said Linda Foley, who founded the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center after becoming an identity theft victim herself."

Submission + - Google Products You Forgot All About

Submitted by

Googling Yourself

on Sunday December 30, 2007 @08:43PM

Googling Yourself writes: "Lifehacker has an interesting blog post on the "Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About" that includes stalwarts like Google Trends and Google Alerts and a few others that may not be quite so familiar like Google Personals, Google's WYSIWYG web site creation tool, and Flight Simulator for Google Earth. How many of the ten do you use regularly and what other Google products do you use that everybody else has forgotten all about?"

The City of the Future 274

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:24PM from the heads-up-display-sounds-good-to-me dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "One century ago, many Americans still had not seen a movie or ridden in an automobile. The New York World greeted its readers on January 1, 1908 with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America: 'We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves,' the newspaper said. 'We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need.' Today the NY Times asked ten knowledgeable New Yorkers to imagine New York City a century from today. Their visions include archaeological excavations at the Fresh Kills landfill, the waterfront at Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue, a dome over Central Park, and a virtual reality grid superimposed over the city."

PCWorld Says Firefox is Strong, Vista is Weak 395

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @06:44PM from the not-inaccurate dept.

twitter writes "PC World has released their year in review statistics and 2007 was not kind to Microsoft. IE 6 users are equally likely to move to Firefox as they are to IE7 and no one wants Vista. 'How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first eleven months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002. In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com--more than 250 percent of the usage that Vista has mustered so far.'"

Free Software FPS Games Compared 194

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @05:34PM from the getting-your-frag-on-the-cheap dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction."

Journal SPAM: Digital Astrophotography - Review

Journal by stoolpigeon on Sunday December 30, 2007 @04:39PM

In the 80's there were a series of commercials for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups that revolved around the theme of accidental meetings between chocolate and peanut butter. The individuals would realize that the two tastes that they loved separately were even better together. Two great loves for many card carrying geeks are digital photography and astronomy. "

RIAA Not Suing Over CD Ripping, Still Calling Rips 'Unauthorized' 175

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @04:35PM from the so-it's-only-halfway-evil dept.

An Engadget article notes that the Washington Post RIAA article we discussed earlier today may have been poorly phrased. The original article implied that the Association's suit stemmed from the music ripping. As it actually stands the defendant isn't being sued over CD ripping, but for placing files in a shared directory. Engadget notes that the difference here is that the RIAA is deliberately describing ripped MP3 backups as 'unauthorized copies' ... "something it's been doing quietly for a while, but now it looks like the gloves are off. While there's a pretty good argument for the legality of ripping under the market factor of fair use, it's never actually been ruled as such by a judge -- so paradoxically, the RIAA might be shooting itself in the foot here."

Long Live Closed-Source Software? 676

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @03:36PM from the i-am-something-of-a-fan-of-closed-source-games dept.

EvilRyry writes "In an article for Discover Magazine, Jaron Lanier writes about his belief that open source produces nothing interesting because of a hide-bound mentality. 'Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven't promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they've been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.'"

American Security Firms Collaborate on Chinese Olympics 68

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @02:29PM from the helping-hands-across-the-world dept.

A New York Times story at News.com notes the efforts of American security organizations to help the Chinese government prepare for the coming Olympic games. Critics argue this assistance violates the spirit of Congressional sanctions, and that the technology left behind after the games are over could be used to track dissident elements. "'I don't know of an intelligence-gathering operation in the world that, when given a new toy, doesn't use it,' said Steve Vickers, a former head of criminal intelligence for the Hong Kong police who now leads a consulting firm. Indeed, the autumn issue of the magazine of China's public security ministry prominently listed places of religious worship and Internet cafes as locations to install new cameras. "

Feed Engadget: RIAA not suing over CD ripping, still kinda being jerks about it (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Sunday December 30, 2007 @01:32PM

Okay, so we've done some digging into the RIAA's lawsuit against Jeffery Howell, in which the industry is claiming that ripped MP3s are "unauthorized copies," and it turns out that Jeffery isn't actually being sued for ripping CDs, like the Washington Post and several other sources have reported, but for plain old illegal downloading. As we're all unfortunately aware, that's pretty standard stuff; the big change from previous downloading cases is the RIAA's newfound aggressiveness in calling MP3s ripped from legally owned CDs "unauthorized copies" -- something it's been doing quietly for a while, but now it looks like the gloves are off. While there's a pretty good argument for the legality of ripping under the market factor of fair use, it's never actually been ruled as such by a judge -- so paradoxically, the RIAA might be shooting itself in the foot here, because a judge wouldn't ever rule on it unless they argue that it's illegal. Looks like someone may end up being too clever for their own good, eh?

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Future AMD GPUs To Be More 'Open-Source Friendly' 180

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:23AM from the finally-get-some-good-games-going dept.

skaroo writes "Phoronix is reporting that future AMD GPUs will be more open-source friendly. After AMD started releasing their GPG specifications to the open-source community, questions arose whether there would be information covering the Unified Video Decoder (UVD) found on the Radeon HD 2000 graphics cards. The UVD information is needed in order for hardware-accelerated video playback, but it likely cannot be opened due to DRM. However, an AMD representative said that moving to a modular UVD design is a requirement for future GPUs and that they will be more open-source friendly. They will also be opening the video acceleration information for their earlier graphics cards."

Arguing For Open Electronic Health Records 111

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @05:36AM from the keeping-it-on-the-up-and-up dept.

mynameismonkey writes "openEHR guru Tim Cook, writing in a guest blog at A Scanner Brightly, discusses why Electronic Health Record developers should use open standards. Why are so few doctors using EHR systems? And, as more and more hospital EHR systems come online across the country, what do we have to fear from proprietary databases? It's one thing to find out your social security number was stolen. Now add your mental health and STD results to those records."

Musicians Have Many Money Options Online, Says Talking Head 114

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @03:24AM from the i-want-money-lots-and-lots-of-money dept.

Time Slows Down writes "Scottish born musician and former record label owner David Byrne says the future of music as a career is wide open and identifies six different distribution models now available to musicians in an article in this month's Wired magazine. At one end of the scale is the 360, or equity deal, where every aspect of the artist's career is handled by producers, promoters, marketing people, and managers. At the other end of the scale is the self-distribution model, where the music is self-produced, self-written, self-played, and self-marketed."

iPhone 1.1.3 Update Confirmed, Breaks Apps and Unlocks 412

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @01:41AM from the peak-into-the-itech-future dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has gathered conclusive evidence which confirms that the iPhone Firmware 1.1.3 update is 100% real. It installs only from iTunes using the obligatory Apple private encryption key, which nobody has. The list of new features, like GPS-like triangulation positioning in Google Maps, has been confirmed too. Apparently it will be coming out next week, but there's bad news as expected: it breaks the unlocks, patches the previous vulnerabilities used by hackers and takes away all your third-party applications."

RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs 403

Posted by Zonk on Sunday December 30, 2007 @01:31AM from the because-we-needed-another-reason-to-be-cranky-at-them dept.

mrneutron2003 writes "With this past week's announcement by Warner to release its entire catalog to Amazon in MP3 format with no Digital Rights Management, you would think that the organization that represents them, The RIAA, would begin changing its tune. Instead, they are pressing on in their campaign against consumers by suing individuals who merely rip CDs they've purchased legally. 'The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.'"

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