Sometimes you couldn’t make it up: It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked “top secret.” And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls. You read it and ponder it and wonder what [...]
As every fule kno, once data is on your computer, it is surprisingly hard to ensure that it has been removed. Even if you ask your computer to delete your data, or tick boxes provided by Microsoft that reassuringly suggest that details of your browsing habits might be removed, the data is unlikely to have [...]
Stolen passports amount for a good deal of fraud, but it is now possible for fraudsters to seal all the important data from your passport, without even opening the envelope in which it is delivered. The technical details can be found at the Register, while the Express reports that the Home Office has already admitted [...]
Anyone with a laptop and wireless access could commit a terrorist act, police warn. More details here. This timely warning was the brainchild of the Vancouver Police.
Real-time man in the middle attacks have made current online banking security measures inadequate, at least in the UK. I’m impressed, though, that American banks make some effort to counter this sort of ploy. While I’m fairly certain that they don’t have the complete solution, here is information about Bank of America’s system.
Here’s a real world example: if you have a high-end video card that doesn’t offer DRM support you might have to disable that card before playing back your shiny new Blu-Ray disc. That’s right, folks, Microsoft has deliberately designed an operating system that will not make you the best use of your hardware. You might [...]
You can have your technology quickly, or you can have it built to military specs. There’s a debate on this subject on slashdot.
There is a rather excellent video that has been created by M. Wesch and Kansas State University about the development of the web and the way it is changing or might change our approach to text and information.
Man was able to go to the moon with a computer that had more in common with a calculator than a desktop PC. That, of course, was when computers were used for real work, as opposed to transferring “digital media” around the world.
Google News is a wonderful service that lets you search a huge number of (relatively reliable) news sources quickly – that is to say, it searches places like BBC News and the websites of newspapers around the world. The Belgian newspapers have taken against this sort of thing, and are telling Yahoo and Google to [...]