JusTalkin

Feds push for tracking cell phones | Politics and Law - CNET News

More and more privacy disappearing.  Obama says we have no expectation of privacy when using our cell phones.  I wonder if he feels the same about his expectation of privacy.

OhGizmo! » Archive » [CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals.

How cool is this?  I, for one, will have one as soon as they come out.

This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.

The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.

Sprint Turns Over User GPS Data to Police 8 Million Times a Year | Maximum PC.

Are you worried about your rights being violated?  You are in the minority apparently if you answered yes.

Sprint, it turns out, has been routinely handing over GPS information on its customers to law enforcement for some time. So commonplace is the practice that Sprint has setup an automated system for law enforcement to check on subscriber whereabouts (apparently even without a court order).

Sprint coughed-up GPS information to law enforcement eight million times last year. Not on eight million users, Sprint is quick to point out. Rather law enforcement can request GPS information on any particular user every three minutes for up to 60 days. (After that Sprint doesn’t say what happens.)

And Sprint isn’t the only one handing out information about you.

Yahoo and Verizon also provide law enforcement access to customer information. Neither company will discuss the nature or extent of law enforcement surveillance for fear their customers would be “shocked” or “confused” by what types of surveillance law enforcement is permitted. Verizon further justifies its secrecy in the matter saying it doesn’t want to commit resources to dealing with customers that might be concerned with its practices.

The willingness, if not eagerness of companies, such as Yahoo and Verizon, and Comcast and Cox Communications, to ‘rat’ you out is easily explained: they get paid for the service they provide. Comcast, for example, in 2007 charged $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 each month after. Cox Communications charges $2,500 for a 60-day pen register/trap-and-trace order, with each successive 60-day interval going for $2,000. Yahoo wouldn’t divulge its pricing scheme, claiming it was “confidential commercial information.” All-in-all, it’s better than 30 pieces of silver.

(Law enforcement’s activities here may well be legitimate. But how can we be certain if, as it appears, there is no system for accountability?)

Climate Skeptics See ‘Smoking Gun’ in Researchers’ Leaked E-Mails

The Telegraph has posted some of the more scathing excerpts from these emails, which the newspaper suggests points to manipulation of evidence and private doubts about the reality of global warming, though the much of the scientific language in the e-mails is esoteric and hard to interpret.

Computer Security Company Takes Out Enormous Botnet | Maximum PC.

Pretty Awesome if you ask me:

Security firm FireEye has reportedly struck a massive blow against spam. The so called “Mega-D” or “Ozdok” spam botnet was effectively dismantled by these intrepid security researchers. After studying the beast, FireEye launched an attack by notifying ISPs, having command and control (CnC) domains removed, and then registering unused CnC domains.

Almost immediately, the spam ceased. No small feat, considering Ozdok was probably responsible for one third of the world’s spam. This takes the load off ISPs which were forced to filter the spam from this botnet. Individual users probably won’t notice much difference.

Whether reality or not,  is sure seems that I always get sick on Friday and feel like crap on the weekend.  Same this week.  I’ve gotten a bug from my kids (hand, foot, and mouth disease) earlier in the week that didn’t affect me nearly as badly is it did them, now I have a chest cold.  No fun at all on a weekend.

Is it me, or has President Obama already taken more vacations since taking office than most people take in 20 years?  He seems to be picking nice vacation spots to travel - with his family in tow - to push his takeover of healthcare (and take away our freedoms).

Do that many people really drive their kids to school?  My summer 13 minute drive to work becomes a 30 minute drive the day school starts back for kids.  Maybe it’s a Greenville, SC thing.  I don’t know.

When did we become entertainment directors for our children?  If you don’t have something planned for when their plans don’t pan out, they whine and complain about being bored.  Maybe I should get them a job working on a farm somewhere every time they complain about that.  It sure kept me busy when I was a kid.

Why do people buy lottery tickets expecting to win eventually while never believing they will be in an auto accident or struck by lightning when the former is much more likely than both the latter?

Is there anyone left in government who doesn’t believe that it’s the government’s job to run every aspect of our lives?

Does anyone except those claiming to be improving the economy actually see the economy improving any?

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet | Politics and Law - CNET News.

CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID!  This administration and the Democrats are doing their best to remove free speech from every aspect of American life.  They are making more moves every day to make it a reality.

If this weren’t enough, the FCC now has a “Diversity Officer” in charge of what?  Making sure that the Left’s views are heard and everything else is censored.

How 10 digits will end privacy as we know it | Security - CNET News.

Americans in particular are so used to freedom that we freely give out information that can very easily be used against us.  For instance, security questions to change email passwords can be found on most people’s personal websites or blogs or even just by asking them.  Hey, what’s your mother’s maiden name, etc…

Be careful out there.

Windows 7 Review: XP vs Vista vs 7 in 80+ Benchmarks | Maximum PC.

Windows 7 is coming and I will actually upgrade to it… Probably about 3 months after hit comes out so that most of the bugs will be out of it.

It looks pretty good.  I’m running a copy of the Release Candidate on a virtual machine right now and it’s pretty solid but then that is on fake hardware.  I’ll be interested to see how it operates on actual hardware.

I’m still running XP on everything that I have, but in reality Vista is pretty solid now as well.  The problem is, as you can see in the linked story, that Vista is still slower than it should be.

We’re off to the technological races again.

This is pretty awesome. If you have Vonage as I do, you can already do most of this, but the difference is that this is free.  You can also set it up to ask who is calling before it lets them through, which means that if it’s an automated call it won’t get through.  Another cool feature is that you can block certain numbers if you wish.  Check it out.