BuzzardsBay writes "And you think your boss is a jerk? Check out this VARBusiness story about a tech CEO the feds say was using his employees' personal information to apply for loans and credit cards to the tune of $1 million. Somewhere a whole lot of businesses who bought this guy's managed-services pitch are cringing with the thought of who is taking care of their data now. And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs. Now that's a lousy boss!"

Richard L. James writes "The BBC are reporting that Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, a 58-year old Microsoft billionaire software engineer is set to become the first 'nerd in space' on board the Soyuz TMA-10 when the spacecraft launches on Thursday 09th March 2007. Charles oversaw the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel among many other achievements. He has launched a website detailing the 3 goals he wishes to achieve on the trip: advance civilian spaceflight, assist space station research, and involve kids in space sciences. Jó szerencse pölö Charles!"

Flying Wallenda writes "Did Adobe make a tactical blunder when it complained to the European Union about Microsoft including support for its XML Paper Specification (XPS) in Windows Vista and Office 2007? Now that Microsoft has decided to submit its 'PDF killer' to a standards-setting organization, Adobe may be regretting its decision. 'Microsoft is looking again at its license in order to make it compatible with open source licenses, which means that the "covenant not to sue" will likely be extended to cover any intellectual property dispute stemming from the simple use or incorporation of XPS. The end result is that using XPS may be considerably more attractive for developers now that the EU has apparently expressed concerns over the license.'"

mrraven writes, "According to Ronald Reagan's former deputy secretary of the treasury in this article in Counterpunch, globalization is destroying US I.T. jobs. From the article: 'During the past five years (January 01 – January 06), the information sector of the US economy lost 644,000 jobs, or 17.4 per cent of its work force. Computer systems design and related work lost 105,000 jobs, or 8.5 per cent of its work force. Clearly, jobs offshoring is not creating jobs in computers and information technology.'" Paul Craig Roberts quotes a number of formerly pro-globalization economists who are now seeing the light of the harrowing of the US middle class. It's not limited to I.T. Roberts quotes one recanting economist, Alan Blinder, as saying that 42–56 million American service-sector jobs are susceptible to offshoring.

javathut writes "Perhaps an alternate title for this book could have been "understanding your audience." For any Sony PS3 execs out there wondering why their technological masterpiece is being ridiculed by customers months before it's even released, or what the long-term repercussions of their DRM policies will be, Convergence Culture is a must read. Drawing upon case examples of how a variety of user communities adopt digital technologies, sometimes in ways completely opposite from what the designers intended, Jenkins offers numerous insights on how technology and media professionals can forge better relationships with their customers." Read the rest of Ravi's review.

An anonymous reader writes "A French start-up created to build autonomous, easily programmable, affordable humanoid robots expects to ship its first product — a humanoid household service robot running Linux — in early 2007. The walking, talking, WiFi-enabled Nao household robot will stand 21.6 inches tall, and will feature 23 "degrees of freedom" of motion — three more than the 14-inch tall Choromet android announced earlier this week by four Japanese companies. Nao's extra degrees of freedom appear to come in the form of gripping hands."

John Dvorak writes on CSS after working on redesigning his weblog, the article ended up being extremely funny. From the write-up:

As we move into the age of Vista, multimedia's domination on the desktop, and Web sites controlled by cascading style sheets running under improved browsers, when will someone wake up and figure out that none of this stuff works at all?!

NerdForceMaster writes "HP has unveiled a new alternative to standard RFID technology, a chip the size of a tomato seed that has 500KB of memory and can communicate at 10mbps. Lets hope this one is commercially availible soon." We beg forgiveness; dupe etc etc.

mattsucks writes to tell us that according to AdAge, retail behemoth WalMart is trying desperately to target the MySpace demographic with a new, and highly sanitized, site designed to appeal to teens. From the article: "It's a quasi-social-networking site for teens designed to allow them to 'express their individuality,' yet it screens all content, tells parents their kids have joined and forbids users to e-mail one another. Oh, and it calls users 'hubsters' -- a twist on hipsters that proves just how painfully uncool it is to try to be cool."

osxpetition writes "As noted in a News.com article, Symantec researchers have been testing the latest Microsoft Windows Vista build (Beta 2), and have found that the code is 'complete with new corner cases and defects' in the networking component. Symantec describes how Microsoft scrapped the old networking stack code from Windows XP in favour of newer, rewritten code. 'Microsoft has removed a large body of tried and tested code and replaced it with freshly written code.' Since January 2002, Microsoft has put a stronger emphasis on protecting PCs by attempting to implement stable, secure code into Windows XP and their new operating system. This latest report from Symantec brings attention to Microsoft's trustworthy computing campaign, and shows how it will be a long way before it is ready for the mainstream."

Chris Reimer writes "The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that McAfee fixed a serious design flaw months ago in their enterprise product without notifying businesses and U.S. government agencies until today." From the article: "McAfee said its own engineers first discovered the flaw, which lets attackers seize control of computers to steal sensitive data, delete files or implant malicious programs. McAfee produced a software update in February but described it only as offering new feature enhancements. Many corporations and government agencies are reluctant to update software unless necessary because of fears that doing so might introduce new problems."

An anonymous reader writes "The MacTech Journal of Macintosh Technology has released MacTech 25, a list of top 25 most influential people in the *Technical* Mac community. According to the magazine 'The MacTech 25 is designed to recognize the technical contributions of developers writers, bloggers, problem-solvers and personalities to the Macintosh technical community.' The people were chosen by popular voting during June. Bios and pictures of the people on the list will be published in the printed MacTech magazine in time for WWDC."

nsrCZ writes "The Skype core protocol has been reverse-engineered by a Chinese company. The interesting thing is, that although the protocol is closed, it is not patented and thus it is not against the law to crack it. If it's true, then it could affect the whole eBay/Skype business in many ways, including that they might not get their piece of the emerging Chinese cake." From the article: "By cracking the Skype protocol, the company claims it can also block Skype voice traffic, Paglee said. 'They could literally turn the lights off on Skype in China very, very quickly,' said Paglee, who is also a lawyer and engineer, speaking from California on Friday. The company could transfer the technology to the Chinese government, which has continually sought ways to tighten its filtering and control over the Internet. So far, the company doesn't have any plans to market its blocking capabilities, Paglee said."

Krishna Dagli writes to mention a News.com article about a just-passed Congressional initiative. On Wednesday the House passed legislation instructing Americans to make energy efficiency a priority when purchasing computer servers. From the article: "Washington politicians voted 417-4 on Wednesday to tell American purchasing managers that it's in their 'best interests' to pay attention to energy conservation. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, also directs the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a three-month study 'of the growth trends associated with data centers and the utilization of servers in the federal government and private sector.'" Well, at least if they're doing this they're not passing 'real' laws, right?

theodp writes "'You can't sit a child in front of a computer and expect him to learn things he needs to succeed in society,' said unimpressed Chicago Teachers Union president Marilyn Stewart of the Chicago Virtual Charter School, which will open to Chicago elementary school students this fall if approved by the state board of education."