Just because it's cool: an image resizing technique that doesn't stretch or skew the important features. It's a little hard to describe, but the point is that when you resize a webpage, images either get cut off or stretched. No longer. Think, desktop wallpaper. Not only can it be shrunk, it can be expanded. Neat neat neat. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined

This is actually kind of cool. If you are handed one of these remotes and someone is being loud and obnoxious or if the picture/sound quality is off in a movie, you can just hit the button instead of having to leave the movie to find someone to deal with it. Of course, these remotes don’t have microphones so the management will have to guess what your problem is. Either way, it’s kind of a cool concept.

Besides being annoying and costing you money, errors at RFID toll booths can get you into all kinds of interesting spots. One girl was refused a job for having 30 outstanding tickets for going through the pass in her jeep without paying. The problem is, she’s never owned or driven a jeep. Is anyone surprised by this?

Someone suggested that Google could save a lot of energy around the world if they used black as their background color (because white is the most intense color that a monitor can produce where black is the absense of light). So some company created Blackle (which is powered by Google though not RUN by Google). Their “about” page says that they’re all about saving electricity and being green, but I’m wondering if they don’t modify the ads that you see thus making their focus about a completely different kind of green…

Here’s a great summary of both deep packet inspection and net neutrality and why they’re important. The short of it is that if a company can inspect your internet packets, they can figure out what you’re doing. This lets them charge more for certain types of traffic than others. The companies will be able to use their vast resources of technical and number crunching experts to find the best way to nickel and dime you while keeping you from getting just angry enough to do anything about it. If you can’t imagine what this would be like, think of how Internet service is charged on cell phones now (per minute, or by over-all download) or remember what it was like before AOL changed the landscape by going to unlimited access for a single monthly fee (which was a major reason many people started to use the Internet). History shows that people don’t like having to worry about how they use a service and what the charges will be. Who has the time? What if every cable channel was unlocked and you get charged by how long you stay on any station, but you don’t know what the fees are (sure they’re in an agreement or pricelist somewhere, but you don’t memorize these things). That’s pretty much what the Internet will be like if Net Neutrality doesn’t pass.

Some supermarkets now have fingerprint readers in lieu of credit card payments. You have to supply your fingerprint and attach your credit card to it, but then you can pay just by touching your finger to the reader. There are many problems with this: 1) In theory, they’re promising only to take the “data points” not the fingerprint, but if they use the same data points as other companies, then the data points are the same as your fingerprint. If every company uses different data points, as data from each breach is combined, it create a better and better picture of your actual fingerprint. 2) Unlike a credit card that can be re-issued or changed, fingerprints can’t. 3) You don’t leave impressions of your credit card everywhere you touch like you do with your finger. Fingerprints can be used for tracking and accountability that you shouldn’t have to be responsible for unless you’re a criminal. 4) There was nothing wrong with the system that was there before. Swiping a credit card is actually easier and faster than putting your finger on a reader and entering a PIN. 5) The more people that use the system, the more problems they will have with false matches (where your finger and someone elses are too close to distinguish. Granted that the PIN solves this problem to a degree, but these companies will have to add more and more data points to the algorithm to make the system work. The more data points they use, the closer to storing your actual fingerprint. This is bad, bad news. I wonder when the first “fingerprint data breach” will happen. Tags: Utter Failure

A virtual credit card is a short term working credit card that has restrictions such as payout amounts, time of use, or merchants who are allowed to debit it. Using these, if the company you're buying from data-brokerings you for your card number, it won't matter because the number they have is worthless after the set period of time or number of transactions etc. JTAG ERROR: No lifehacker_ht index defined Tags: Identity Theft

Ever send an e-mail and then have second thoughts? What about wanting to make sure that the e-mail you send doesn’t get shared beyond your original recipient. Using the same technique that spammers do to bypass filters and verify e-mail accounts, BitString uses images for the content of messages. Since the reader has to load the image (which is stored on the BitString server) to view the message, if the sender wants to take it back, all they have to do is ask BitString to delete the image. As long as the image is destroyed before the reciever opens the e-mail, they can be assured that it’s never been read. Also, since BitString can track how many accesses are made for the image and what IP is requesting it, you can lock it to one individual either by specifying that after the first read of the image, it will be deleted. That will prevent forwarding of the message to your recipients friends. That’s pretty cool.

I've blogged about how Microsoft has a wealth of spyware on your computer (Vista) for "piracy" reasons, but this is altogether far more sinister. Feel free to read the article itself, but this is bad, bad news. What they're going to do is scan the content of your files, e-mail, music, and system status alerts to profile you and target you with ads. Penny Arcade covered this concept in one of their comics titled "Advertising in the Future". That was last October. (For non-gamers, the comic describes a situation where two guys are playing a game, but see different in-game advertising based on the contents of their Internet browser history). Tags: Microsoft

This isn't that surprising. Rather than type in every word, someone photographed every page which makes for a hard read, but it can be done. I'm actually against this practice. I think that leaking TV shows, music, movies, and such before they're released hurts the authors far more than is tolerable. It also creates headaches for the people who want to wait and get the real experience (because more and more people start talking about it thus increasing your odds of having the story spoiled). The reason I bring this up is that I don't want to give people the impression that I'm a copyright hater (due to my hate for the business practices of the RIAA and mpaa. Let's keep this in perspective shall we? What I'm against is DRM and abusive business practices (like the RIAA lawsuits).