Hotmail Deletes Attachments to Save Bandwidth?
It has long been suspected that there is a silent policy that makes Hotmail automatically delete the majority of attachments to save on bandwidth and internal disk space. Therefore it really doesn't matter if every client has access to 2GB of storage since they don't deliver the attachments to fill that space up anyway. If that truly is the case, then Microsoft may be liable for .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]Bush is at it Again – Issues Order Allowing Asset Freeze With No Trial
Because of the new presidential order allowing for the freeze of assets of anyone that "interferes with Iraq policies", some people are getting nervous and even predicting a police state. Most importantly, here's a bit of logic I didn't have the political black heart to think of myself:
Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]UK Police Authorized to Tap Traffic Cameras at Will
In the UK, they're allowing the police to use the toll camera network to track vehicles. The cameras are used to enforce a toll and have software that analyzes license plates to match them with the car's owner.
But they will only be able to use the data for national security purposes and not to fight ordinary crime, the Home Office stressed. FBI Uses Virus to Nap Bomb-Threat Teen
This is actually pretty clever. This kid was making bomb threats to his school and was doing a pretty good job at hiding his tracks until the FBI got involved. By sending a small program to his Myspace page, they somehow managed to infect his home PC with a monitoring program that collected evidence of his crime:
...if the Bureau could get the CIPAV installed on the user's .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]California E-Vote To Be Nullified
People don't seem to realize that e-voting needs to be an extremely air-tight system with a strong set of procedural controls to work. If you don't treat it like the crown jewels, you're going to have problems like this. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined
Microsoft to Browse Your Personal Files, Send You Spam
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 .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: MicrosoftBush Beats Down Science – Silenced Surgeon General
This is hardly surprising, but it's nice to see more of this kind of story surface. Bush has been pressuring the surgeon general to not do his job.
Carmona, whose four-year term as surgeon general expired in 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last week that he was constantly at odds with Bush administration political minders. They told him not to speak out on .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]How to Cancel Your Cell Contract Without a Fee
I think that many service contracts are bogus and designed to take unaware consumers to the cleaners. Fortunately, clever people have found loopholes that actually work against the companies who are themselves so fond of using legalities to their advantage. Whether true or not, someone also suggests that you can cancel the contract while keeping the service (in the comments). If you want out of your contract, check out the .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Good StuffHarry Potter Book Leaked Online
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 .... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Another Day, Another Hidden Data Breach Exposed
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)..... [Click here to read the rest of this post]
Tags: Identity Theft