Pfizer lost data, blah, blah, blah. All these reports do is strengthen the arguments for credit freezes and against data brokering. If we could freeze our credit reports, this wouldn't be a problem and if they didn't rape us for our data, this wouldn't have happened (oversimplified, yes, but it's the basic idea). Tags: Identity Theft

Because it's neat: MIT is working on a new suit that is far more flexible and lighter than the current puffy things. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined

One defendant of the RIAA inquisition has just been awarded attorney’s fees against the RIAA. The article does a good job of summarizing the history of this case and includes links to articles about more resistance from defendants and the courts againts their unethical practices. It’s worth a read.

Under the guise of security, the Iraqi people are being cataloged into a US database. First, I want to make it clear that I do not necessarily oppose this move in that it's possible that it will be used properly to target terrorist while leaving innocent people alone. As with all the various privacy concerns here, though, the problem is in what else they plan to do with the data. And let's face it, the US governement has a sad, sick, history of abusing our data and privacy. JTAG ERROR: No privacyorg_ht index defined Tags: Big Brother

I don't know a lot about this game other than it's very violent and has been banned from the UK. Reading about it doesn't make it any better: Wow, you couldn't make it more real if you tried. Parental groups in the US aren't necessarily determined to ban it and would be satisfied with just giving it an Adult rating. While this is a completely reasonable request and, as far as I'm concerned, a blatantly obvious decision, Take-Two (the game's producer) is fighting this for purely monetary reasons: Tags: Families, Gaming, Police, Well Duh!

I just want to remind everyone about this so here’s a list of printers that print yellow “Tracking dots” on everything you print. The dots can be used to trace a print directly back to your printer in case of a crime or if something you printed is anywhere near a crime thus possibly involving you. Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew

A Slashdot user warns us not to use the “Try before you buy” deal based on his experience with the same deal and Office 2003. He said it changed all the file types to 2003 so when the trial was over, he wasn’t able to access any of his files. Usually, the program will warn you before updating the format, but it won’t warn you that anything you create from scratch during the trial will be locked into the newer program. And as you can read in the comments, most people agree that it’s ridiculous that Microsoft refuses to make the files backwards compatible. Tags: Microsoft

Apparently, a recent update to Vista has disabled program uninstall. That sounds like a big problem to me, but so far, no word from Microsoft on the issue. Tags: Windows

Let’s hear it for the winning team! Yeah! Tags: Microsoft

Two things today: This and this. I didn’t have the strength to summarize these, but check them out if you’re a fan of watching the RIAA scum writhe.