Jack Spine writes "A Vodafone exec has admitted the company handed communications data to the Egyptian police following riots over food shortages last year, to aid the identification of suspects. Egyptian law enforcement has a habit of torturing and murdering detainees, or of having them 'disappear.' This is similar to Yahoo handing details of Chinese dissidents over to the authorities in 2005. It's nice to have it confirmed that multinational service providers shelve morals in the pursuit of cash."

An anonymous reader writes "The real estate bubble is long gone. Oil prices are sliding down. Are we in an education bubble? The author of Beating the College Bubble says so. He's written a short, simple guide to avoiding the crushing college debt that he thinks is about to bankrupt all of us. Just as easy loans encouraged people to dream big and buy a McMansion, big college loans are tempting students with too much Comp Lit and Frat Parties. When they graduate, the debt is so hefty that the students are stuck living in their parents' basement for 10 years until they've paid it all off. I can tell you from personal experience that there's some real truth to the hangover. The beer headache is gone after a week, but the monthly payments just keep going." Read below for the rest of cdog40's review

An anonymous reader writes "The folks at NASA, obviously looking for new ways to explore the universe, are planning to crash a two-ton probe into the moon. The goal? To find water." From the article: "NASA plans a series of robotic precursor missions including the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, which will plow into the crater, and the mapper, called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. When LCROSS strikes the crater, it is expected to create a hole 16 feet deep and send up a 2.2 million-pound (998,000-kg) plume of debris for sensors and cameras stationed on a second spacecraft to monitor. Dozens of ground-based telescopes, as well as possibly space observatories, such as the Hubble telescope, will be trained on the plume as well."

Ant writes to mention an SFGate article about the increase in laptop theft in the world of ubiquitous wifi. From the article: "San Francisco police statistics show a disturbing trend. Just 18 laptop computer robberies were logged in 2004, but the figure jumped to 48 last year. There were 18 as of the end of March, a pace that could surpass 70 crimes this year. 'It's a changing culture, and crime is following it'"

Moby Cock writes "Jason O'Grady has posted a story on his ZDNet blog detailing the state of the current legal trouble he is embroiled in with Apple. He views it as another salvo in Apple's efforts to stamp out rumour sites posting 'trade secrets' prior to the official announcements. The discussion becomes rather pointed and goes as far as to suggest that the case is really a case in support of freedom of the press." From the article: "At issue was a series of stories that I ran in October 2004 about an upcoming product that was in development. Was it the next great PowerBook? Maybe the a red hot iPod? Maybe a killer new version of the OS? Nah. The stories about a FireWire breakout box for GarageBand, code-named 'Asteroid.' Yawn."

Anonymous writes "A Florida county is posting the Social Security numbers, bank account info and other sensitive data of hundreds of thousands of current and former residents on its public Web site, Computerworld is reporting. A county official says there's no problem, since the postings are in compliance with state law requiring public availability of records." From the article: "The breach stems from the county's failure to redact or remove sensitive data from images of public documents such as property records and family court documents, Hogman said. Included in the documents that are publicly available are dates of birth and Social Security numbers of minors, images of signatures. passport numbers, green card details and bank account information."

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on a protestation by Dell's CTO, Kevin Kettler, who says quite loudly that they are not Microsoft and Intel's puppet." From the article: "Essentially, Kettler argued, Dell was responsible for selecting, if not necessarily developing, many of the technologies in today's desktop computers and servers. Among standards for which he said Dell deserves credit are 802.11 wireless networking, PCI Express communications technology and 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 line of processors."

dylanduck writes "Good news for rover fans - Spirit is safe for the winter. It had been heading for a north-tilting spot to make sure its solar panels got enough sunlight during the imminent winter to survive, when a sand trap appeared. But, despite its busted wheel, it scooted round and is now sitting pretty. From the article: 'We've got a safe rover,' says principal investigator Steve Squyres. 'That's huge news for us.'"

bbsguru writes "How much do we know that we still don't know? A story in The Register points out that little has changed since Francis Bacon proposed combining knowledge to learn new things 400 years ago, despite all the computer power we now have. Scientific (and other) data is still housed in unrelated collections, waiting for some enterprising Relational Database Programmer to unlock the keys to understanding. Is RDBMS still a Brave New Frontier, or will Google make the art obsolete once they finish indexing everything?"

mjdroner writes "CNN has a story on an employment consulting firm report showing job cuts in the tech sector are down 40 percent." From the article: "Despite the inevitable job-cutting that typically follows mergers, the job market picture for the nation's tech workers is definitely improving. Many job seekers in high-demand fields such as storage systems administration and information security are probably finding themselves in the driver's seat when it comes to negotiating employment terms"

vitaly.friedman writes to mention an Ars Technica story on the ABC's newest bid to stay relevant in the Information Age. As of the end of this month the network will be airing certain popular television shows on the ABC website, starting the morning after their first broadcast. From the article: "All programs will be shown in their entirety, including commercials which cannot be avoided. That's a smart move on ABC's part, as it ensures that advertisers will get another shot at hawking their wares to an audience that might otherwise change channels during commercial breaks or fast-forward through them if recorded. Aside from being unable to avoid commercials, watching the programs will be similar to watching timeshifted content in that viewers will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind."