Inspector General Fine found that the FBI overreached its authority by heavily using the National Security Letter system. The report has not been denied by the administration and has, in fact, been acknowledged as a "serious problem" by FBI Director Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Thanks to CNet for …

If the decision written about in this article in the Washington Post stands on appeal, the folks at Vonage will be crying while Verizon laughs all the way to the bank. The ruling by the jury was that Vonage infringed upon 3 patents that Verizon has for VOIP calling, including …

An article in Fortune today goes to the heart why Apple's seemingly ill-advised move into the retail world has succeeded. Interesting read.

Microsoft announced at the PMA 07 conference the beta release of their new image file format HD Photo. The company says that it creates smaller file sizes, while producing better output than JPEG and can offer lossless and lossy image compression while retaining full dynamic range and color gamut data …

According to an article from the Washington Post, the US Patent an Trademark Office (USPTO) is preparing to allow internet users to review patent applications and leave their comments. The idea looks interesting. We'll have to see what comes of it, but the pilot program will begin soon and is …

Fortune Magazine is out with their America's Most Admired Companies 2007 report and you-know-who made it in the list at #7 overall. They were bested by: GE, Starbucks, Toyota, Berkshire Hathaway, Southwest, and FedEx and managed to squeak by Google for the top tech/computer spot in the overall competition …

Check out the lunar eclipse picture by Ed Parsons (former CTO of Ordnance Survey) shot in England. Similar shots available all over the net (thanks to digital cameras), but here are a few others I found: Austin, TX via Weather Underground Enid, OK via Weather Underground Minneapolis, MN via Weather …

Those of us who have had to either give or receive customer support, here's a posting by Manton Reece (author of a Mac software package called "Wii Transfer") about how to provide good support (and at least one example of how not to). None of this is rocket science, but …

The US patent system is under fire again this week (this time by an article in Wired) for putting the rights of patent holders above the research and security implications thereof. In this particular case, the issue is HID Global (ironically self-tagged as "The Trusted Brand") going after a security …

Not surprising, and not necessarily for a "good" reason, the US Department of Transportation and the FAA have issued "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrade to Microsoft's Vista OS , Internet Explorer version 7, and Microsoft Office 2007, according to an article from Information Week. The moratorium was placed because there …

After all the complaining about the power used by the nation's computers, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a study(admittedly commissioned by a computer chip manufacturer, AMD) indicates that the use is close to 1.2%. Not small, but nowhere near the 13% touted by some sources. It …

Based on this press release from United Airlines, the company will be requiring that you fly on their airline (or a partner airline, but use your United FFN) every 18 months to keep your account active, instead of the 36 months it was prior to the release. There are other …

For a much more thorough description of the intricacies, check out this post on CNet about the issue. As some have pointed out in private correspondence, there is, in fact, no requirement that this be done exactly the way Apple is doing it. However, it is a requirement that the …

It appears that Sarbanes- Oxley is having some more unintended side-effects. This time, you'll be paying $5 for 802.11n to be enabled on your Core 2 iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, because this was not a stated feature of the system before it shipped and therefore would …

Everyone's favorite computer company (pardon me, after the removal of the word "Computer" from Apple Computer Corp's name, it should read "everyone's favorite company") has announced their FY1Q numbers (4th quarter 2006 calendar year) and they're huge. $1B in profit, $7.1B in revenues, 21M iPods sold, and 1.6M …

Lawrence Lessig has an article in Wired this week where he theorizes that municipal WiFi may be the Linux that keeps the Phone and Cable companies from dominating the last mile. Does he make sense?

Maybe not applicable to everyone, but for those with network monitoring needs, the folks in Australia at Lithium Corp. are showing a nice commercial client-server network monitoring system. What's the big deal? There are a ton of these and most of them are free? Well, this one has an XML-based …

Cisco Systems's general counsel has stated online that the company is suing Apple over the name "iPhone". Sounds reasonable, as we all know that Cisco's iPhone has been shipping (most recently) for the past 9 months or so (after an hiatus in the previous five years or so). But …

For those curious about high-speed wireless connectivity, you can check out Apple's 802.11 FAQ where they inform us that all Core2 Duo machines (except the 17" 1.83GHz iMac) are capable of N.

Carol and I had a chance at the OWC booth to speak to the CEO of Axiotron, the German manufacturer or the ModBook, about the new device. In short, it's going to be a great portable tablet for people who need or want one. If you are even thinking about …