We all know that countries like China, Singapore, North Korea, as well as organizations such as the U.S. military, the State of Kentucky, and various corporations, local school districts and public libraries censor their Internet users' web surfing. Bennett Haselton of Peacefire has a solution he calls the Circumventor. And to bring in more Circumventor users, Peacefire is paying $10 per IP address to anyone who installs the anti-censorship software and leaves it running for at least a week.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that a hacker broke into one of its databases during the first week of June and may have accessed personal records for up to 26,000 Washington, D.C.-based USDA employees, former employees and contractors, about one fourth of the department's work force.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998 at the behest of the music and movie industries, has done little to benefit anyone except a select group of companies who have used its provisions to establish, maintain and expand a virtual stranglehold on the entertainment industry. The cartel which has arisen after this act does not benefit consumers at all; rather, it gouges them for as much money as they can possibly suck out, corrupts modern technology, and sets back the state of the art. The remainder of this message is encrypted using an algorithm which provides virtually no security, but which (if I were so inclined) would open you up to lawsuits if you decrypted it without my permission.
Last August, Customs and Border Protection computers responsible for processing international travelers entering the U.S. failed for several hours due to a Windows computer virus, resulting in long delays in processing visitors. Now it comes out that the Department of Homeland Security could have prevented it, but decided to let it happen.
Generally I try to ignore President George W. Bush when he makes proclamations. But when he came out today and urged everyone to "use and regularly update their anti-virus software and firewall," I felt I had to say something.
Two separate lawsuits filed in California and Texas on Monday allege that Sony BMG distributed spyware on 52 music CD titles, which compromised the security of buyers' computer systems when the CDs were inserted into Windows PCs, and transmitted data on the computer users' listening habits back to the company.
A while back I wrote about trusted computing and how Microsoft's implementation, the Next Generation Secure Computing Base, was set to impose onerous restrictions on computer owners, such as preventing them from playing legally purchased media with a player not approved by Microsoft. The post got some scathing criticism from some trusted computing practitioners who missed the point. Trusted computing is not the problem; Microsoft is.
A U.S. Customs computer system used for processing passengers arriving on international flights shut down for several hours Thursday, resulting in lengthy delays for arriving travelers.
The DRM (digital rights management) technology to be included in Microsoft's Windows Vista is set to give Hollywood movie studios unprecedented level of control over consumers' PCs, according to a Microsoft white paper.
Consumers rarely have a disaster recovery strategy for their computer systems, and the few who do find it a frustrating experience, according to Larry Seltzer.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.
Video published by this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license.
Bad Behavior has blocked 2976 access attempts in the last 7 days.
