Yeah, It's official - I'm opting out of Full Body Xray Scanners

Yeah, I've thought and read about it, and I'm not into the civil disobedience thing, but I had skin cancer, and I don't want more x-rays. The Government officially knows I'm not a threat, they can pat me down or whatever.  They already know I won't do something bad for crying out loud.

Will I print and bring this letter? that I found in this blog?

Maybe...

Will I send a letter to my Congress people?   Yes!

Perry

I am *really* glad I didn't buy a ps3

Seriously? Sony thinks it's a good thing to take their users to court for jail breaking their own equipment?

Sony is just plain bad.

Update:  Sony is really, really bad - they've got a restraining order against someone who broke into his own device!

Update 2: Now, it's not enough that they load malware into their customers computers, now they're selling ( or updating ) PS3's with SOFTWARE THEY CAN USE AS A BACK DOOR!  How nice.  Buy a toy from Sony, give them unlimited access to your LAN!

Perry

Geek Pr0n!

Good News! Xilinx prototyping kit, holds 2-16 Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs, up to 12GB memory! w00t!  

Bad news - Where are the 10GB Network IO ports?
Price too, probably, blah.  Case is available, network daughter cards too?

Extra credit:  Can you find the easter egg in the spec sheet?  Hint: it's there twice (sorta)!



Full spec sheet can be found here

Perry

Facebook Places - You might not want other people to tag you

Facebook has a new feature called "Places", which lets people update their physical location, in real time.

The idea is to let friends find each other while out and about. 

Unfortunately, as usual with Facebook, it's enabled by default - even if you don't enter your location, someone can do it for you.

Think about it - you're across the country, or globe, on vacation or a business trip, and a friend runs into you, and not only posts "Hey - I just ran into Perry in San Antonio".  Now they can put my location right into my Facebook page.

I don't think I want that.

Well, Gawker Media shows how to turn it off

Perry

What is Fake Antivirus?

Don't know? Watch this podcast.

A relative recently acquired "Security Tool" and I'm still working on getting rid of it.

I'm now going to train them on the use of NoScript and running as a user, not an administrator

Wish us luck!

Perry

OK OK - All Cell Phone providers are Just Plain Evil

All their charges have always been completely impossible to figure out.

Verizon Lobbied for laws to eliminate community-based competition

AT&T, well just plain sucks if you own an iphone.

Now, all in the same day:

• AT&T claims that FCC deciding to reclassify them as a Title 2 carrier will cost economy $62 Billion
• 
  
• Verizon charges thousands of users $1.99 a month for data they can't possibly use
• 
  
• Sprint charges 4G phone owners $10 per month even if they don't ( or can't)  use it.
• 
  
• Now AT&T charges you for your own data network.

What can they possibly think of next?  I know - sending me a bill when I don't even have their phone?   Wait?  There's a letter here for me?

OK Everybody - Do you believe it yet? Facebook HAS NO PRIVACY

From a Wall St Journal Article - Even after Facebook is in huge hot water for continually changing their privacy policies without telling their users, or even promising the opposite, they broke their own policies by giving out usernames to doubleclick.  Yes, the face of evil ( almost ).

Facebook privacy policies = Facebook morals = NOTHING

Only post items on Facebook that you'd put out in the open on the Web - It's the same thing!

From Slashdot...

Microsoft Says, Don't Press the F1 Key In XP

I guess there's a bug in XP that lets a bad guy take over your computer.  They have to send you a dialog box that says something like "Computer error - hit your F1 key".

So Don't hit the F1 key in XP ( especially if your computer tells you to ).  

Ugh.  Well, I've realized a while ago that Windows 7 ( Or Mac or Linux ) has replaced XP ( or should for everybody ), and Microsoft might make it happen faster, even unintentionally, with things like this.  How fast will they fix it?  Will there be some subtle ( or not-so-subtle ) nudges to change?  Maybe it's time to go for a Mac? 

 Apropos of nothing in particular, Did you know there's an expression called The Sony Timer?

Oh I just got a Sony Blue-Ray BDP-460 (w00t!), and an Optoma HD-20 projector (Double W00t!)

Perry