Sometimes it is better to look good than to feel good.
Sony names product safety chief
Company continues to deal with the fallout of two recalls in recent weeks of laptop batteries
By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service September 01, 2006
Sony has appointed one of its presidents to oversee product quality and safety, the first time such a high-level member of staff has taken that position at the company.
The new role for Makoto Kogure's, who was president of Sony's TV division, came as the company deals with the fallout of two recalls in recent weeks of laptop computer batteries that included Lithium Ion cells that it produced.
A guide for those suing the leakers of personal data?
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/08/31/1538217.shtml
"Security Engineering" Is Now Online
Posted by kdawson on Thursday August 31, @01:06PM from the security-just-got-cheaper dept. Security
An anonymous reader writes "Ross Anderson, author of 'Security Engineering', notifies in a message to comp.risks that he just got permission from Wiley to let anyone download the full content of his book for free. This is one of the best books on computer security and it is used as textbook in many University courses (I teach two of them)."
I'll be teaching PowerPoint this month...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/1848240&from=rss
Continued Opposition To Laptops in Schools
Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 31, @03:56PM from the grinding-for-faction-in-math-class dept. Education Portables
theskeptic writes "The WSJ has an article about opposition to programs that provide laptops to 6-8th grade kids. Detractors say that the kids are wasting too much time online browsing dangerous sites, instant messaging friends, and posting to Myspace. Parents are worried that serious learning is being neglected in the quest to 'dazzle up presentations with fancy fonts instead of digging through library books.' Some parents however are 'enthusiastic laptop proponents,' one saying the laptop has helped her twelve-year-old son 'master critical professional skills like how to compile a PowerPoint presentation.'"
Gaaah.
Gosh Mr. Peabody...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/2029243&from=rss
Wayback Machine Safe, Settlement Disappointing
Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 31, @06:08PM from the get-me-out-of-here-mr-wizard dept. The Courts The Internet
Jibbanx writes "Healthcare Advocates and the Internet Archive have finally resolved their differences, reaching an undisclosed out-of-court settlement. The suit stemmed from HA's anger over the Wayback Machine showing pages archived from their site even after they added a robots.txt file to their webserver. While the settlement is good for the Internet Archive, it's also disappointing because it would have tested HA's claims in court. As the article notes, you can't really un-ring the bell of publishing something online, which is exactly what HA wanted to do. Obeying robots.txt files is voluntary, after all, and if the company didn't want the information online, they shouldn't have put it there in the first place."
“All that is not forbidden is mandatory, all that is not mandatory is forbidden.” The Once and Future King
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/31/2347201&from=rss
Vista Startup Sound to be Mandatory?
Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday August 31, @09:24PM from the any-sound-you-want-as-long-as-it's-this-one dept. Windows IT
Toreo asesino writes "There has been lots of debate in the past few days over Microsoft's plan to make the startup sound in Windows Vista something that can't be specifically silenced by changing the sound settings in the control panel. Users would be able to avoid hearing it by manually turning down the speaker volume, but then they would have to turn that volume back up to hear anything else."
[This comment is brilliant! “wait until everyone learns that the new start up sound is the microsoft eula, read out loud, in nonrepeating segments”
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/01/0452217&from=rss
Internet Not the Social Hinder it Was
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 01, @04:39AM from the come-together dept. The Internet Communications
imjustatomato writes "A 1998 study showed that the Internet causes declines in social relationships and isolation, similarly to how television causes social disengagement and bad moods. This is the 'Internet Paradox' because while the internet is heavily used for communication, it makes people lonelier. However, a more recent study shows that now the internet has a positive effect on social and psychological well-being. This is even more so for those who have more social support and are extroverted in nature. Interestingly, frequent Internet use is associated with a decline in local knowledge and interest in living in the local area."
Anytime, anywhere
CBS Unit Launches Web Sports Channels
By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer Aug 31, 8:02 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- Football and other sporting events from dozens of colleges and universities will be available live over the Internet through a service launching Friday.
Notre Dame games will be free, while Navy, Stanford and other schools will charge $4.95 to $9.95 a month each for an "All-Access" broadband channel that includes live audio and video feeds of some games, news conferences, highlights, play-by-play animation and other features.
http://www.wfsb.com/education/9770937/detail.html
Terrorist Hunters Sifted Student Data
POSTED: 3:23 pm EDT August 31, 2006 UPDATED: 4:04 pm EDT August 31, 2006
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For the past five years an office in the Education Department has scanned through its databases of millions of students' federal financial aid and college enrollment records in search of terrorist names supplied by the FBI.
The effort, dubbed "Project Strike Back," was created by the Education Department's Office of Inspector General after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to expand the office's mission to include counterterrorism.
I'm not sure this is what you want to do...
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/52667.html
Attention IT Managers: Malware Is Not Your Biggest Threat
By Dr. Todd Brennan TechNewsWorld 09/01/06 4:00 AM PT
Automatic graylists can be an ideal approach to managing today's dynamic desktop environments. Graylists take a holistic view of desktops, acknowledging that a great deal of software that enters the enterprise does so without the approval of the company's IT staff.
... To combat this Catch-22, a new desktop management approach called "automatic graylists" is enabling IT professionals to re-establish the integrity and reliability of their computing environment by enforcing software policies at the desktop. Software solutions providers utilize graylists to provide IT with the ability to control exactly which software can and cannot run on the desktop, proactively ensuring a desktop's conformance to a desired state. As a result, support, compliance and security problems that derive from unauthorized software -- typically addressed through reactive means -- can be limited or eliminated altogether.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012320.html
August 31, 2006
National Criminal Intelligence Resource Center (NCIRC) Now Available on Secure Networks
"...the National Criminal Intelligence Resource Center (NCIRC) Web site...sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) for the purpose of providing a secure Web site developed to serve as a "one-stop shop" for local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement to keep up with the latest developments in the field of criminal intelligence. You will find information regarding law enforcement intelligence operations and practices. Criminal justice professionals now have a centralized resource information bank to access a multitude of criminal intelligence resources in a secure environment."
This was one source Peter Drucker used to see the future of business...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/012323.html
August 31, 2006
America's Dynamic Workforce 2006
Press release: "The U.S. Department of Labor today released America's Dynamic Workforce 2006, a new report highlighting major trends in the American labor market and the importance of education and skills training to maintaining the competitiveness of America's workforce."
The full text version includes extensive discussion and additional data and analysis beyond the basic charts presented. (48 pages, PDF)
The chart book version features larger format charts for easier reading and summary text extracts related to each chart (72 pages, PDF)
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6110525.html?part=rss&tag=6110525&subj=news
Police blotter: Judge OKs text message use in drug case
By Declan McCullagh Story last modified Fri Sep 01 04:56:33 PDT 2006
"Police blotter" is a weekly CNET News.com report on the intersection of technology and the law.
What: A man accused of involvement in a Washington, D.C., cocaine-distribution ring objects to his text messages being handed over to police.
When: U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled on Aug. 10.
Outcome: Huvelle lets text messages be used as evidence.
What happened, according to court documents:
Broadband companies tend not to save copies of people's e-mail. That means snoopy divorce lawyers and curious FBI agents who show up with a subpoena or search warrant generally will be out of luck.
But text messages sent on one's cell phone are a different story, as one alleged drug dealer in the Washington, D.C.-area learned firsthand.
On Oct. 24, 2005, federal police raided a home on Potomac Drive in Fort Washington, Md.--just south of the Washington Beltway. They allegedly seized about 213 pounds of cocaine and about 6.5 pounds of crack cocaine. Antoine Jones and four other men were caught up in the raid.
The raid represented the culmination of an extensive amount of surveillance that the FBI and other federal police had conducted--both physical and electronic.
Part of the electronic surveillance was done by obtaining logs from two unnamed wireless providers. According to federal authorities, the logs contained archived text messages that were sent by Jones and alleged co-conspirator Lawrence Maynard.
In the words of the court: "On Aug. 10, 2005, and again on Aug. 18, 2005, Magistrate Judge Alan Kay issued search warrants to two electronic communication service providers for stored text messages that had been transmitted over cellular telephones used by Jones and Maynard."
Jones, who is awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and use of a communication facility to traffic in drugs, filed a brief claiming that the search warrants violated the federal Wiretap Act.
Huvelle ruled on Aug. 10 that the search warrants were permissible "because the Wiretap Act does not apply to the government's acquisition of text messages held in storage at electronic communication service providers."
Translation: The Wiretap Act only applies to live intercepts, not archived e-mail or SMS messages. In general, a lower legal standard applies to archived messages. (As an aside, the government claims that technology to capture the contents of text messages had "only become available to law enforcement within recent weeks.")
Jones also was wiretapped, which Huvelle concluded was done in compliance with relevant federal law.
In addition, his movements were monitored through a GPS tracking device placed on his Jeep Cherokee. While the feds obtained a court order for the GPS tracker, they kept it on Jones' truck after the order expired, claiming that no court approval was necessary anyway. ("Even in the complete absence of a court order," it is legal, the U.S. Justice Department claims.)
This is not a new debate. A CNET News.com article published in January 2005 shows that courts are divided about whether a court order is required to install GPS trackers. Huvelle split the difference, saying that no court approval was necessary when the Jeep Cherokee was on a public road.
Excerpt from Huvelle's opinion:
Jones' argument that the text message affidavits lacked probable cause also misses the mark. The task of an issuing magistrate, when assessing probable cause for search warrants is simply to make a practical, common-sense decision whether, given all the circumstances set forth in the affidavit before him, including the "veracity" and "basis of knowledge" of persons supplying hearsay information, there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place...The court easily concludes that the information contained in Special Agent Yanta's supporting affidavits was sufficient to establish probable cause for the text message warrants.
The 29-page Aug. 10 affidavit, which served as the foundation upon which subsequent affidavits submitted in support of wiretap and search warrant applications were based, references information provided by three confidential sources who had firsthand knowledge of Jones' illicit activity...The affidavit further provides the basis for investigators' belief that Jones and Maynard were using text messaging in an attempt to conceal their alleged narcotics trafficking activities.
First, analysis of pen register data indicated that several weeks prior to Aug. 10, 2005, the target cellular telephones showed an increase in text messaging from 50 percent of all activations to 90 percent. And second, the technology to capture the contents of text messages had "only become available to law enforcement within recent weeks."
In summary, the court finds that the affidavit clearly establishes probable cause to believe that Jones operated a conspiracy to distribute narcotics and that Jones and Maynard were using text messages on their phones to further that conspiracy. Because the Aug. 18 affidavit contained all of the foregoing information, the court likewise finds that it is sufficient.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2011151,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594
IRS Sets Refund for Individuals from Phone Tax
By Reuters August 31, 2006
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Long-distance telephone customers can receive refunds of between $30 and $60 on their 2006 taxes to reimburse them for a now defunct telephone tax, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Thursday.
The U.S. Treasury Department in May announced it would end its legal fight to keep a 3 percent federal excise tax on long-distance telephone service that dates back to 1898, when a luxury tax on wealthy Americans who owned telephones was imposed to help finance the Spanish-American war.
... Under the plan outlined by the IRS, an individual who claims one exemption would be entitled to a $30 refund; two exemptions would receive $40; three exemptions would get $50; and four exemptions would receive $60.
"These amounts save taxpayers from locating 41 months of old phone bills and analyzing these bills to determine the taxes paid," IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said in a statement. "We believe the standard amounts are both reasonable and fair."
Do you suppose this was decided by some entry-level IT geek?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20060831/111504.shtml
Cox Decides Your Outbound Mail Is Spam, Doesn't Tell You
from the oops dept
ISPs that have overactive spam filters where they don't allow users a chance to get around them are nothing new. Remember two years ago when Verizon was blocking almost all European inbound mail? When people complained, Verizon told them that if they really wanted to communicate with people, they should use the phone. That didn't go over that well, and Verizon ended up having to pay up in a class action suit. However, the latest reports suggest that cable broadband provider Cox may have gone a step further. Rather than blocking inbound email as spam, they're now blocking outbound email as spam. Actually, not blocking... deleting. And, even better, not informing you that the emails you sent are gone, never to be delivered. And (yes, it gets better), Cox refuses to admit they've done anything. Trying to protect you from inbound spam is one thing, but having your own provider deleting your own outbound emails as spam without even letting you know or giving you a way around it is going way too far. As you might imagine, Cox customers are not amused.
http://www.solutionwatch.com/501/tracking-the-web-with-single-page-aggregators/
Tracking the web with Single Page Aggregators
Thursday August 31st 2006, 3:12 pm
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