According to an article from Wired, the US government is planning to insert RFID tags into our passports starting in 2005. Whereas more secure passports is a fine idea, I'm struck be the choice of RFID over a contact-based mechanism that would offer security without the ability to read over …

I'm not sure what it means, but I'm guessing it isn't good for users of Retrospect. Dantz announced on October 12 that they have been acquired by EMC, the storage manufacturer. There is an FAQ from Dantz, which says basically nothing about the issue. However, an article from Bynkii.com …

I don't do a lot of real book reviews, because I do a lot of my "reading" on my iPod. However, when I heard about Churchill's Folly:How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq by Christopher Catherwood and heard the author interviewed, I was intrigued. Now, up front I'll state that …

I have suspected for some time that there was an ulterior motive afoot with the sloppy no-fly list, but there are more direct signs of this today in an article from the Washington Post. The article details faults in the no fly list, but those are well known. The part …

You know me, I can't resist an attempt at a pun. However, BBC News reports in this article that researchers in New Zealand have found a way to help out coral using a titanium mesh and some electric current. Basically, they use the current and the mesh to create a …

Earlier this year, I wrote an article extolling the virtues of having a unique name so that you didn't end up confused with somebody on the US No Fly List. However, if you're from Denmark, that might be a problem. According to this article from the International Herald Tribune, the …

A detailed article from AFP548.com (Macintosh server administrator's website) gives a pretty disturbing description of a problem that has been around in OSX for a while. The good news: it was finally fixed in the September 30, 2004 security patch. Those of you doing insecure management of OSX Servers …

According to an article from Wired, the state of Virginia (of which I am currently a resident) is considering using a combination of biometrics and RFID technology to make driver's licenses more difficult to counterfeit and steal. Whereas the biometric aspect makes a certain amount of sense when attempting to …

A cute story this morning from BBC News about an exhibit by photo-journalist Robbie Cooper which shows gamers side-by-side with their avatars (for the uninitiated, that means their online persona). The exhibit is at the Proud Gallery in London until the 28th of October, 2004; and an online version of …

Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have talked about outsourcing as a problem. Bush wants to keep business taxes low and regulation under control in order to keep jobs in the US; Kerry wants to penalize companies for taking their jobs overseas. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Lou Gerstner …

CNet has an article this morning about a company named ParkingTicket.com that makes money by helping you fight parking tickets. And, if you can't fight it, they at least let you pay it online (in many jurisdictions). The service automatically generates dismissal letters for you and then you can …

MacWorld has an excerpt of an article from MDJ about Adobe's attempt to take the confusion out of the raw formats from various digital cameras by creating a standard. The proposed standard, called DNG (for Digital Negative) is an add-on to the TIFF and TIFF-EP formats that Adobe owns (courtesy …

IBM has announced a contest designed to encourage the development of Linux applications for the PowerPC architecture. Among the prizes are a Toyota Prius, 100 G5's and some cash. Total value of the prizes is over $365,000. Not bad.

Another company is reevaluating its Windows-based desktop requirements and is looking at Apple's MacOS X and Linux as alternatives. Of particular interest in the article from Cnet is the comment from the AT&T CIO stating "There's competition; there's choice now. Any CIO would not be doing due diligence if …

OK, I'm far from impartial when it comes to Chicago, the city of my birth and the city upon whose outskirts I spent many of my most formative years. But, it's always nice when people outside of Chicago notice its wonder and promise, and here is a nice article from …

Useful, no. Cute, perhaps. Somebody out there in mod-land has decided to take emulation to the limit and has posted instructions for getting Apple's OS X to run on an X-Box. The process takes about 10 hours and results in a relatively useless installation of OSX, but it is definitely …

The New York Times has an interesting article that previews the potential problems of Pixar (creators of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. and others) as it approaches it's most ambitious film feat yet, animating human characters. Pixar's upcoming film, The Incredibles, due out this November, will be their first …

So, what does this mean for you? If you're a T-Mobile Hotspot user, it means you can avoid the annoying login launch page by directly entering your security information using 802.1X. An article from WiFiNetNews.com indicates that T-Mobile will be running both networks in tandem during the interim …

For those curious, President Elect is a site that contains information about the electoral college, including the popular and electoral vote counts from as early as 1824 (with a couple of missing years) as well as the individual state vote counts for each election (where available). There are some interesting …

An article from GROKLAW details a recent win by Kodak against Sun in a lawsuit related to... ah, heck, who can figure this out these days. The lawsuit involved some patents that Kodak bought a few years ago and now they think they should have $1.06B for their troubles …