22:24 Microsoft is 5th most spam-friendly ISPSpammers are abusing Microsoft’s online services at such an alarming rate that a non-profit spam fighting group now lists Microsoft as the world’s 5th most spam-friendly ISP (Internet Service Provider).
The latest update of Spamhaus.org’s list of the world’s worst spam networks shows Microsoft at #5 because of 26 “current known spam issues” surrounding Nigerian (419) [...] >>>
Three directors of digital currency firm e-gold avoided a spell behind bars on Thursday after earlier pleading guilty to offences for money laundering and running an unlicensed money transfer business.
17:29 Verizon snoops peek at Obamas cell phone recordsNosy Verizon employees improperly accessed and peeked at Barack Obama’s personal cell phone records, the company said in a statement acknowledging the privacy breach.
In the statement, Verizon Wireless chief executive Lowell McAdam apologized to the President-elect and vowed that the errant employees will be disciplined. The Associated Press reports no voicemails or e-mails were accessed [...] >>>
16:51 iPhone update kills 12 security bugsApple has released iPhone OS 2.2 with patches for 12 documented security flaws, some very serious.
The vulnerabilities covered by the patch (which also affect iPod Touch) could allow remote code execution, information theft, software crashes and weakened encryption settings.
The skinny on this batch of updates:
CVE-2008-2321: CoreGraphics contains memory corruption issues in the processing of [...] >>>
Computer systems at three major London hospitals are largely back online on Friday morning, three days after a major computer virus outbreak forced staff to disconnect the network.
Analysis One week after rogue ISP McColo was shut down spam levels have yet to return to normalcy. But security experts are under no illusions that this represents anything more than a temporary reprieve, which will probably come accompanied by a change in tactics by spammers.
Child-safety activists charge that some of the age-verification firms want to help Internet companies tailor ads for children. They say these firms are substituting one exaggerated threat -- the menace of online sex predators -- with a far more pervasive danger from online marketers like junk food and toy companies that will rush to advertise to children if they are told revealing details about the users.
It's an old story: protecting against the rare and spectacular by making yourself more vulnerable to the common and pedestrian.
Since 9/11, more than three dozen federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct, an investigation by ProPublica, a non-profit journalism organization, has found. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.
The meta-problem is that the kind of person who wants to be federal air marshal is the exact kind of person we don't want for the job.
Before 9/11, the Air Marshal Service was a nearly forgotten force of 33 agents with a $4.4 million annual budget. Now housed in the Transportation Security Administration, the agency has a $786 million budget and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 air marshals, although the official number is classified.
And 3,000 to 4,000 is a lot of people to hire quickly; it's hard to weed out the bad eggs.
At the centerof the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History's gleaming new Sant Ocean Hall lies a preserved giant female squid -- the arresting, spineless star among the vibrant exhibition's animal specimens. Tentacles menacingly outstretched and seemingly frozen in time, the 24-foot squid embodies humans' fascination with the briny deep. But this squid also symbolizes something else: an ongoing experiment in the chemistry of preservation, without which the Smithsonian's new exhibition would not have been possible.
To create the exhibit, the Smithsonian had to work around post-9/11 rules restricting flammable materials, while maximizing the lifelike appearance of the squid for public display. They turned not to formalin or ethanol, but to a new fluorinated chemical called Novec, developed by 3M.
If we give up our preserved giant squids, then surely the terrorists have won.
You might think that a Lego safe would be easy to open. Maybe just remove a few bricks and you're in. But that's not the case with this thing, the cutting edge of Lego safe technology. The safe weighs 14 pounds and has a motion detecting alarm so it can't be moved without creating a huge ruckus.
