PC Magazine has an in-depth look at the Acer Aspire One this week. The magazine gives the little computer high marks for its bright screen, but low marks for its keyboard. The keyboard is a bit larger than the one on an Eee PC 900, but the reviewer says it feels just as cramped.

The Aspire One is at the head of the class when it comes to expandability thanks to its 2 separate memory card readers (one is a dedicated SD card slot that you can use for additional system storage, while the other is a 5-in-1 card reader for transferring files from one computer to another), but comes with less storage than the Eee PC 900/901/1000, the MSI Wind, or the HP Mini-Note. The computer also has a tiny 24Wh hour battery. That’s nearly half the capacity of the 42Wh battery that ships with the Eee PC.

Probably the best part of th ereview is a nifty chart comparing the Aspire One with several other computes. It wins hands down when it comes to price and processor. But Acer is going to have a hard time making the case for the Aspire One once the similarly priced MSI Wind Linux notebook is available.

Elswhere in the mini-laptop world, Laptop Magazine published a complete review of the Eee PC 1000H today. One thing that surprised me was the revelation that the Eee PC 1000H is a bit larger than the MSI Wind Notebook. Both computers hae a 10 inch screen, but the Eee PC is both larger and half a pound heavier at 3.2 pounds. Sure, I probably could have figured those things out by reading the specs, but sometimes you need a real person with real eyes to look at the thing and report how it looks in real life.null

I want a netbook. Badly!

Netbook review roundup: Eee PC 1000H and the Acer Aspire One

"I need data for my blade server!"

In the curious way of technological evolution, we first had computers that occupied entire rooms, watched them shrink to desktop, laptop and palm-sized devices, and now find ourselves coming full circle, and then some, Alan Benner reports. He tells this MIT class about warehouse-sized data centers, linking processors, and ensembles of processors, in dizzyingly complex hierarchies. These gigantic operations, some with their own power and air conditioning plants, are central to the enterprise of Internet behemoths Google, Amazon and YouTube, but have not yet percolated out to more traditional companies like insurance firms -- a situation Benner and his IBM colleagues would like to remedy.

Benner describes in broad strokes how these data operations are organized into levels of “virtualization and consolidation,” where the hardware is hidden, yet the data is both fully accessible and secure, no matter where the user and the computers are located. These new enterprise data centers aim to maximize efficiency, both in utilization and power consumption. It’s better to have fewer, bigger and well-integrated machines, says Benner, working as much as possible. Since even idle servers use a lot of power, users should share processing time in a manner that keeps the processors occupied. Benner describes computer architecture and software that aims at “statistically multiplexing jobs,” matching peaks in one group’s workload to nonpeaks in another group’s. Ideally, users remain blissfully unaware of this traffic management, and need never worry whether their information is getting crunched next door, or on the other side of the planet.

Benner hopes that companies will see advantages in migrating their data and services to a bigger, shared infrastructure, especially now with the near-ubiquity of high bandwidth networks. Given the rapid rise of energy costs, and the burdens of supporting a growing IT administration, it may save money “to move work to where it can be done most efficiently,” he says.

See also:

I want to stress that last point because there is no denying it: the system failed. The active wrong-doing detailed in the two joint reports was not systemic in that only a few people were directly implicated in it. But the failure was systemic in that the system – the institution – failed to check the behavior of those who did wrong.

A Roadmap for the Edge of the Internet

H-P says it's working on an array of products, including notebooks, that use the very same type of finger-tapping interface popularized by Apple Inc.'s iPhone. H-P's so keen on the idea that it says it's trying to get touch-enabled notebook computers on the market within the next 18 months.

"We're focused on recognizing the potential of touch now," said Phil McKinney, the chief technology officer for the company's laptop-making Personal Systems Group. "We see touch as the almost preferred method for nontechnical users."

Touch Is the Future at H-P

The Transportation Security Administration suspended Verified Identity Pass from enrolling any new passengers in its get-through-security-faster program on Tuesday, after the company lost (and then oddly found) a unencrypted laptop containing personal information of 33,000 people who had applied for the so-called Registered Traveler program.

Well, that didn't take long, did it.

Registered Traveler Company Frozen After Losing Flier Data -- Updated | Threat Level from Wired.com

A security researcher who was set to speak at Black Hat next week on a previously undiscovered flaw in FileVault has canceled his talk, citing confidentiality agreements.

Charles Edge had been slated to discuss his research on a weakness that could be used to defeat FileVault. But sometime last week, Black Hat organizers pulled his name and presentation listing from its schedule of talks.

... Update: Looks like yet another talk about Apple security will be canceled at Black Hat this year. Apple has pulled its security engineering team out of a planned public discussion on the company's security practices.

See also: Leave Steve Jobs Alone!!! (pnsfw audio)

From the archive:

Border searches of laptops; seizure

Unlocking FileVault

Laptop border searches OK'd

Faster PwninG Assured: Cracking Crypto with FPGAs

Circumventing Automated JavaScript Analysis Tools

DOMinatrix - The JavaScript SQL Injector

Richard Clarke leveled the harshest language on the Bush administration. "The Bush administration has systematically reduced the work to secure cyberspace."

Hacker Pranks at Defcon and Black Hat in Las Vegas Emphasize Computer Security, Abaddon causing a ruckus at Black Hat, and Mike Lynn's Glorious Escapades

HID Global statement on IOActive withdrawing their Black Hat presentation

Crime is sport in the US. All the way back to the black hat wearing cowboy to OJ and Scott Peterson, we have a love affair with criminals, and are addicted to punishment. It makes us feel tough and reinforces other false ideals in our culture (morality, justice for all, bravery, etc.).

Black Hat Talk on Apple Encryption Flaw Pulled

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices.

I agree. The policies are linked from this CNET article. Consider this comment:

In the course of every border search, CBP will protect the rights of individuals against unreasonable search and seizure.

It is deeply insulting to see such an obviously frivolous and sarcastic reference made to constitutional rights in official policy. Literally every imaginable kind of search of electronic equipment is authorized by this policy without any individualized suspicion. Exactly what kind of unreasonable searches or seizures are CBP protecting individuals from in this context? The answer is that there are none, absolutely none, and the inclusion of this statement makes a mockery out of the idea!

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy."

Its like these people don't even understand the meaning of the words they are saying.

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border - washingtonpost.com

A DECADE AGO, those monotonous minutes were just a fact of life: time ticking away, as you gazed idly into space, stood in line, or sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Boredom's doldrums were unavoidable, yet also a primordial soup for some of life's most quintessentially human moments.

But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods -- while checking e-mail, while changing lanes on the highway -- to consider whether we are giving up a good thing? We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life's greatest luxuries.

Paradoxically, as cures for boredom have proliferated, people do not seem to feel less bored; they simply flee it with more energy, flitting from one activity to the next. Ralley has noticed a kind of placid look among his students over the past few years, a "laptop culture" that he finds perplexing. They have more channels to be social; there are always things to do. And yet people seem oddly numb. They are not quite bored, but not really interested either.

From the archive:

I believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, ... I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something crucial is missing -- attention. Attention is the key to recapturing our ability to reconnect, reflect, and relax; the secret to coping with a mobile, multitasking, virtual world that isn't going to slow down or get simpler. Attention can keep us grounded and focused--not diffused and fragmented.

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention.

Today, our collective will to pay attention seems fairly weak.

The joy of boredom

Bellovin on Decius's HOPE topic:

There's been a lot of attention paid recently to the issue of laptop searches at borders, including a congressional hearing and a New York Times editorial. I've seen articles with advice on how to protect your data under such circumstances; generally speaking, the advice boils down to "delete what you can, encrypt the rest, hope that Customs officials don't compel production of your key, and securely clean up the deleted files". If you need sensitive information while you're traveling, the usual suggestion is to download it over a secure connection, per the EFF:

Another option is to bring a clean laptop and get the information you need over the internet once you arrive at your destination, send your work product back, and then delete the data before returning to the United States. Historically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) generally prohibited warrantless interception of this information exchange. However, the Protect America Act amended FISA so that surveillance of people reasonably believed to be located outside the United States no longer requires a warrant. Your email or telnet session can now be intercepted without a warrant. If all you are concerned about is keeping border agents from rummaging through your revealing vacation photos, you may not care. If you are dealing with trade secrets or confidential client data, an encrypted VPN is a better solution.

But is it?

FISA and Border Searches of Laptops

I've been loving Amazon MP3 for a couple months now. Its just so damn easy. I can find who I want, move it back and forth between Linux at home, my work laptop, and my iPod with ease.

The only thing that is annoying me is Amazon's MP3 Downloader. When you buy a song without the download you just get an MP3. When you use buy a song with the MP3 Downloader it files the MP3 away nicely into a directory structure in "My Music" and automatically adds it to iTunes. Amazon is doing some kind of detection in the browser and servers you an AMX file for the downloader instead of a raw MP3.

Only it seems that my browsers "forget" about the Downloader after every reboot. Amazon goes back to gives me MP3s. I'm not sure whether the browsers just no longer detect the program or whether the file association is lsot or what. Its gotten so bad I just keep the install file on my desktop and do an uninstall/reinstall everytime I need to shop.

Grrrr. I don't know anyone at Amazon, but if you are reading this, I love your service and please fix this issue.

If Google were the United States government, the data that streams onto Nicholas Fox’s laptop every day would be classified as top secret.

Mr. Fox is among a small group of Google employees who keep a watchful eye on the vital signs of one of the most successful and profitable businesses on the Internet. The number of searches and clicks, the rate at which users click on ads, the revenue this generates — everything is tracked hour by hour, compared with the data from a week earlier and charted.

“You can see very, very quickly if anything is amiss,” said Mr. Fox, director of business product management at Google.

Mr. Fox and his “ads quality” team can also quickly see whether something is working particularly well. His group’s mission, to constantly fine-tune Google’s ad delivery system, has one overriding objective: show users only the ads they are most likely to be interested in and click on.

The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine