RIAA

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

The woman who was the first to successfully get a jury trial in a RIAA case lost. Even assuming they were able to prove that she had downloaded the files and left them in her share folder, the chances are she didn't know she was sharing what she downloaded and the RIAA has no way to prove actual damages, just theoretical. On that basis, they have no justification for the $200+ thousand award they recieved.

Heck knows they don't need any more encouragement, the crooks.

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If you're a privacy nut and have a health dose of paranoia, you'll like this new website designed by the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG): CyberStreetSmart.org. It's a nicely designed site with easy access to information on major types of online scams. Unlike the paltry efforts of some other organizations, this site is easy to navigate and keeps the information short and simple.

"Often controversial, seldom liked. The FCC."

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Sometimes it seems that the Government Accountability Office is the only one trying to do it's job. In their report on the Federal Communications Commission, they state that the agency favors lobbyists over citizens in that lobbyists are kept up to date on FCC actions while citizen groups were not.

Granted, they need to do more stuff like this on their own instead of waiting to be asked, but at least they aren't towing the same line that all the other corrupt and inept agencies are.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

If you've been on college campuses these days, you'll often see the booths where you get a free shirt or coffee mug for signing up for a credit card. Well, it's pretty obvious that college kids have no idea how to handle credit and the credit card companies know it.

Rhoades took the job and signed up roughly 30 students for cards. He regrets any trouble he caused other students from his actions. Still, his actions may have been most damaging to himself. He ended up with $13,000 worth of debt that he is now struggling to repay.

We don't get any training how to deal with and manage credit, but we get plenty of training on how to get and abuse it.

AT&T

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Now that Congress has officially started to investigate the role of major telcom companies in illegal spying, the question is, "will anything finally come of it?"

At this stage, they've only sent letters asking about their involvement and whether they knowingly broke the law under the promise of protection from litigation from the executive branch. If they actually answer truthfully, things should get interesting.

Apple Corp.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

The iPhone was greatly anticipated as revolution in wireless phones (in some circles, it's been called the "Jesus phone"). As soon as it was released, hackers and tweakers got to work on unlocking it so it could work on other carriers or just be used as a PDA/MP3 player without phone service at all. Soon after that was completed, people were writing custom applications and modifications left and right.

The problem is that AT&T was losing potential customers and Apple was under pressure to make people stop enjoying their iPhones. That said, Apple issued an update to the iPhones that they warned would destroy any phone that had been unlocked or modified. Besides the wicked backlash in press and blogging against Apple for this move (which seems more deliberate than accidental), the new update breaks many legitimate applications that were designed to work with the iPhone as well.

Worst of all, Nokia has just launched their newest product and an ad campaign with the dual slogans, "Phones should be open to anything" and "The best devices have no limits". In the end, if the new Nokia phone doesn't match up to the features of the iPhone, it won't matter, but there's already an in-depth review from an editor at Popular science.

• Nokia has higher data speeds and can be used as a wireless modem for a computer without the clumsy hacks necessary for the iPhone.
• Nokia's are "unlocked" by default. This means they can be used with any GSM cellphone service in the world. No hacks or cracks necessary,.
• Battery life – Inconclusive
• Web browsing – iPhone. No surprise there; the whole phone is a screen.
• 3rd party applications – Nokia wins because Apple is either actively or incompetently blocking 3rd party apps

And many more, but I won't spoil the details, just the results. The Nokia clearly wins in most categories (price and size being detractors). Anyway, iPhone better shape up if they don't want to be left behind.

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Even if a hacker put some code into a music file (for example), the music file player should just try to send the code to the speakers along with the rest of the data, not actually perform any commands (like taking over your computer). For this to be possible, the makers of the player software practically have to write custom code to look for and execute hacker code.

In other words, for a virus to be embedded in a video, music, or text file, there has to be deliberately placed code in the player that watches for commands and acts on them.

It's stupid to think you could ever get a virus from a text document, a music file or video file, but, thanks to sloppy programming practices like this, it happens. Remember not to get distracted by the spin doctors and "damage control" people. If there's a virus in video, music, or text, it's the fault of the player/reader, not because of clever hacking.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

I see noise about "Ron Paul" everywhere. Streets, media, online. It's enough to get on your nerves. But as with all things popular, eventually, you want to see what the fuss is about.

I checked out his website today and if half of the things there are true, he might be our best presidential candidate in a long, long time.

For one, he doesn't hide behind political speech. Is he against abortion? Yes, yes he is. It's not hard to find out his stance on almost anything. And, I for one, can definitely agree with this:

The biggest threat to your privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens’ personal matters.

Damn straight. Maybe if Ron Paul was elected, we wouldn't end up with stupidity like the Presidential ID Theft Task Force that spent over six months analyzing ID theft only to produce an 80 page document that ignored the actual solutions.

It would be nice to actually have a candidate that I believed would do a good job rather than just trying to pick what I hoped was the lessor of two evils only to end up with someone who nearly single-handedly destroyed America during his terms.

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Sprint used any minor changes to service plans to extend customer contracts by up to two years.

“When you receive complaints across the board, from firefighters to lawyers, from retirees to construction workers, all of whom feel they were unfairly manipulated by their cell phone company, you have a problem, ? Attorney General Lori Swanson said. She was joined at a State Capitol news conference by a number of Minnesota consumers who described their problems with the company.

In other words, these aren't people who are not paying attention to the legal agreements and they're most likely not lying to get out of their agreements. In fact, the article says that Sprint has had over 30 thousand complaints against them in the last 3 years registered with the Better Business Bureau.

I knew ATT/Cingular was bad, but I didn't know about Sprint. That doesn't leave many carriers to choose from.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

In the UK, ever the pinnacle of freedom and privacy, you can now be forced to decrypt any data that they believe has bearing on a criminal or terror investigation. Here's the really fun part (emphasis mine):

Individuals who are believed to have the cryptographic keys necessary for such decryption will face up to 5 years in prison for failing to comply with police or military orders to hand over either the cryptographic keys, or the data in a decrypted form.