] In fact, only 10 percent of the drives I purchased had
] been properly sanitized.
]
] Much of the data we found was truly shocking. One of the
] drives once lived in an ATM. It contained a year's worth
] of financial transactionsrom - including account numbers and
] withdrawal amounts — from a organization that had a legal
] requirement to not divulge such information. Two other drives
] contained more than 5,000 credit card numbers—it looked as if
] one had been inside a cash register. Another had e-mail and
] personal financial records of a 45-year-old fellow in Georgia.
] The man is divorced, paying child support and dating a woman
] he met in Savannah. And, oh yeah, he's really into pornography.

This is another yet another problem caused by technology becoming more and more of a black box. People don't understand how a technology works, thus people don't understand how it exposes them, and people get screwed.

[rant]
I fairly sure this lack of knowledge is a bad thing, and I don't know how to fix it. It even effects techno-junkies, like me. I like understanding technology. However there are some things I really don't care about, such as my car. I just want it to run. I understand how engines work, catalytic converters, etc, but beyond an oil change, fixing a flat, or rotating my tires, I'm sunk. So basically I'm to cars like Joe Sixpack is to Computers. I just want it to work. Of course the difference is my car doesn't have any personal information in it. Or does it? I can think of at least one care of the top of my head that has a hash of the owners fingerprint and voiceprint. Granted its just a hash, but still.

And I think this is a problem thats only going to get worse: How do you explain to people enough about technology to protect themselves? Especially when they don't want to learn they just want it to work. My dad is a perfect example. The man has virus software over 60 months old. Adaware found 45+ *registry* entries of spyware. Viruses, crashes, everything. And everytime time something happens I try to explain to him what I'm doing so he can learn. (ie Explaining boot order so he knows to remove a floppy disk when getting an "invalid system disk" error, instead of calling me at 5:30am). Only dad couldn't give two shits. He doesn't remember what I've said. He wants his computer working again. Its not that dad is losing his mind, its just not important to him. The computer is an appliance, and I stop being the son and start being the Maytag man.

The irony of this is mature folks should get this. My dad was someone who spend time babying a car, changes fluids, tuning the engine when he was young. He should get that a computer is not an appliance, but a finely tuned and powerful piece of equipment. That if he needs to take the responsibilty to learn about the computer if he wants the utilize the power of the machine.

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Hard-Disk Risk + RANT

] Unemployed, but not for lack of style! Retro letters are
] in cool felt for a fabulous velvety feel. Casual cotton
] is very soft, with short sleeves and rib-knit crew neck.

Nice, should get one of these.

Oldnavy.com -- Men's 'Unemployed' Tees

] On Friday, March 12, 2004, a group of several dozen
] Internet addicts from Israel and abroad, gathered in the
] large grass yard of the Ohalo Center near the Sea of
] Galilee. The purpose of the gathering was to view a live
] experiment sending 3 homing pigeons, each carrying tiny
] memory cards containing, in total, 4 GB of data.
]
] According to the planners of the experiment, the idea was
] to improve on a similar experiment carried out several
] years ago in Bergen, Norway and to show that, unlike
] previous experiments, usage of pigeons enable to transfer
] data faster than ADSL. The upcoming of April Fools' Day
] seems to be a proper timing to take the challenge.

!!!

÷öä - MARGIN - Ami Ben-Bassat's Blog

] Y'see, Dennis Miller isn't the genius he pretends to be,
] he's that asshole you see at parties who's always making
] obscure references in the hopes that nobody every calls
] him on it. He's the guy who quotes poetry to girls and
] then feigns embarrassment for showing his "sensitive
] side". He's the guy who reads the Cliff's Notes and
] pretends he read the whole book. Miller knows that 98% of
] the time, he can confuse people with "witty" remarks that
] mean nothing like "Howard Dean reminds me of what happens
] when Steve from Blue's Clues pulls an all-night Red Bull
] and absinthe binge with the Marquis de Sade and Snoop
] Doggy Dog." Miller's shtick worked well when we was
] giving softball interviews to celebrities once a week,
] but now that he's got five hours of per week to fill on a
] news channel, he's clearly out of his league.

You should actually go to this site and click the link to Eric Alterman (liberal writer) wrecking Dennis Miller on his new show.

The Talent Show:

] More than 27,000 defense contractors owe the federal
] government about $3 billion in unpaid taxes as of
] September 2002, the watchdog agency concluded in a new
] report, "DoD Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System
] with Little Consequences (GAO-04-95)."

Ryan said some contractors stay in existence just for a short time to get a government contract, and then dissolve and change names to get another contract. He said one contractor used magnetic signs on trucks so it could quickly change names.

In some cases, the tax evasion was flagrant. The owner of one contractor with $10 million in unpaid taxes used corporate funds to buy a home in the Caribbean and a luxury boat. Another owner took $1 million from his company to buy a large home and a luxury car.

Ryan: Corruption at its finest. Sound familiar to anyone?

Government Executive Magazine - 2/12/04 Defense contractors owe billions in unpaid federal taxes

] Use the location search (on your home address) to find
] those who live near you that have made presidential
] campaign contributions. You can also search for friends
] or celebrities by name.

This is a neat little tool. Clearly needs to be updated, but still has some valuable info in it.

Neighbor Search

] I'm in a rental car with Al Franken, and we're driving
] across New Hampshire on the Sunday before the nation's
] first primary, heading to a John Edwards rally. The
] Democrats are in a kooky mood following the sudden
] collapse of Howard Dean in Iowa, and Franken -- comedian,
] celebrity, scourge -- is spending two days in the state
] not in any official capacity but as a sort of good-will
] representative from the party's satiric wing. He is not,
] as you might think from the outrageous trappings of his
] comedy, an extreme lefty but rather a devout party man,
] one who says, for example, that the Democratic Leadership
] Council is a moral force for good. He believes in the
] process; he's friends with several of the candidates as
] well as many members of the press corps; he's here to
] soak it all up.

Pretty good article in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine about Al Franken and his new radio network Air America. Good Read.

Al Franken, Seriously

] When ATMs go bad by Carla Geisser

CMU students managed to crash an ATM on campus to the XP desktop. Fantastic.

photo sharing system

] Texas Safe Voting reviewed the videotapes of the January
] 2004 closed meetings used to review voting systems for
] certification (the videos were acquired by open records
] requests).
]
] What we saw may shock you. Here's a two minute clip, in
] Windows and Quicktime format. The clips show how the
] state of Texas examines voting machines for
] certification.
]
] A group of examiners reviews voting systems, and makes
] certification recommendations to the Secretary of State.
] You might think that these examiners would conduct a
] comprehensive testing process, assessing the voting
] machines against a set of detailed critieria and
] discussing the underlying code.
]
] But there was nothing on the videotapes that resembled a
] testing process. The examiners didn't start with a set of
] criteria to test against. They didn't even start with a
] comparison the new machines to the older versions.
] Instead, the Diebold representatives gave a demo.
] Reviewers voted on the machines and looked at the final
] output. A few of the committee members watched closely,
] while others chatted together.

This is a _must_ see.

Texas Safe Voting - Leaked Video of Texas Certification of Diebold Machines

] The average collegian in the U.S. isn't graduating into a
] world of boundless opportunity, but rather is
] $20,000-plus in the hole thanks to student loans and
] credit cards. So begins the snowball effect: The most
] desirable entry-level jobs often pay wages too low for
] the indebted, who must fork over a large percentage of
] their salaries to Sallie Mae or Citibank.

This problem affects me and practically everyone I know. Very insightful article about the problems that trouble Generation X and Y.

Ryan: Absolutely. There are tons of jobs I would really like to do. However, none of them can provide me with the $60k/yr paycheck that I need to *break even*. sigh.... Here's to someday being able to do what I want-- and yes, I understand that this is a position of relative luxury but still....

Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young: The Ambition Tax