Report: TSA Site Exposed Travelers To ID Theft - Security Fix

"The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform began its investigation into security lapses at the TSA's Traveler Redress Web site last year, after Security Fix and other media outlets pointed out that the site accepted Social Security numbers and other sensitive information from travelers without encrypting the data, potentially allowing hackers to intercept the data. Wired.com noted in its coverage that the site was so laden in spelling errors that it resembled a phishing Web site, the sort typically set up by scammers to lure people into giving away personal and financial data."

Mini-Microsoft Cutting Room Floor

Who da'Punk must have really liked my comments on the Windows Control Panel, he posted it three times!

HD DVDs Fall Like Dominoes

"Nothing has been announced, but Variety is reporting that the last two major studios backing HD DVD — NBC Universal and Paramount — are opening the door for a switch to Blu-ray. These studios have commitments to release some discs this year in HD DVD, but both have ended their exclusive commitment to that format, which is backed by a group led by Toshiba."

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): The "open" social graph on the horizon

"And that's the reason why I think Facebook has joined the Data Portability Workgroup. By joining the workgroup, they haven't committed themselves to opening up their social graph. I admit, this is a potentially a pipe dream because anyone who is in the position of power -- like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn -- have little incentive to open up their social graph vaults for start-ups to exploit. But Facebook et. al. are smart, and know that unless they participate, they can't influence the outcome to of the open social graph to their benefit."

Or just totally screw it up.

Programs take advantage of open technologies but department needs to develop policies on use

“If the project is of a sufficient scale, you cannot get there without an open-source approach,” said Dewey Houck, a senior engineer at Boeing, who spoke at a conference last month about DOD’s use of open source, sponsored by the Association for Enterprise Integration.

“On the battlefield, the enemy gets a vote,” said Brig. Gen. Nickolas Justice, Army program executive officer for command, control and communications tactical. “The software has to change if the business changes. We want young sergeants and captains to be able to change things in their battle command applications as conditions change.”

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Paramount in HD DVD blow

"Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers’ recent backing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end."

Official Google Blog: The flow of information at the Googleplex

I have no idea what this is about.

Time, the guys who were out in the parking lot smoking dope instead of attending class.

Got the link above as an example from here (click anywhere):

But I'm not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored.

The Physical World as a Virtual Reality

"This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter."

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Clarkson stung after bank prank

"TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column."

He should have put it on Facebook, it would have been much safer as I think it is in fact not only against the law but also a Facebook TOS violation, which some people seem to think is more important.

Sony's Hirai eyes PS3 profit as costs decline | Reuters

"gaming chief Kaz Hirai hopes to turn a profit on the PlayStation 3 console business in the entertainment conglomerate's next fiscal year, fuelled in part by falling costs for the parts used to make the device."

Some of my "I-told-you-sos" are so old I can't remember them straight.

Here is what I remember: PS/2s were profitable from almost the beginning. XBoxes have never been. Whoever is making PowerPC chips is the winner since 100 percent of game consoles now use them, until they switch to something else, which doesn't seem to be in the near-term cards.

The rest, still not so obvious to some: Apple making their "PC" indistinguishable from all the others allows for a graceful exit from the business. Jobs, following Gates, Ballmer and others will finally move on to the rest of his life leaving the company to be run by luminaries such as Al Gore! And others.

The end is nye! Really. Get used to it.

An Interface of One’s Own

"Oh, Word. For 20 years, you have supported and tyrannized me. You have given me a skimpy Etch A Sketch on which to compose, a cramped spot on the sentence-assembly line — and then harangued me with orders to save or reformat as you stall and splutter and assert points of ludicrous corporate chauvinism (“Invalid product key”! “Unrecognized database format”!)."

Intel Resigns From Board Of One Laptop Per Child - WSJ.com

Alternate Headline:

Bully Takes Toys, Goes Home

"Corp. says it has dropped out of a non-profit project to sell millions of low-cost laptops in the developing world, citing disagreements with the organization's founder, Nicholas Negroponte."

Free the Scoble 5,000!! | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

"As goofy as it seems, it looks like Scoble has aimed perfectly at the Achilles’ heel of Facebook–the testy issue of data portability and how much control you should have over your own information online."

Record Number Of Data Breaches Reported In 2007 -- Security -- InformationWeek

"Foley reluctantly characterized 2007 as the worst on record from a statistical perspective, but cautioned that the T.J. Maxx breach skews the statistics. 'I don't know whether we're seeing more breaches because there's mandatory reporting or because there are more,' she said, adding that 39 states and the District of Columbia now require organizations to report data breaches."