Looks like good ole social engineering was behind the oh sooo publicized T-mobile sidekick hack of Ms. Hilton.

Computer security flaws played a role in the attack, which exploited a programming glitch in the Web site of Hilton's cell phone provider, Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile International. But one young hacker who claimed to have been involved in the data theft said the crime only succeeded after one member of a small group of hackers tricked a T-Mobile employee into divulging information that only employees are supposed to know.

The young hacker described the exploit during online text conversations with a washingtonpost.com reporter and provided other evidence supporting his account, including screen shots of what he said were internal T-Mobile computer network pages. Washingtonpost.com is not revealing the hacker's identity because he is a juvenile crime suspect and because he communicated with the reporter on the condition that he not be identified either directly or through his online alias.
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In the months leading up to the Hilton incident, the hacker group freely exploited a security glitch in the Web site of wireless phone giant T-Mobile, according to the hacker, who described himself as the youngest member of the group. The group had found that a tool on the T-Mobile site that allowed users to reset their account passwords contained a key programming flaw.

By exploiting the flaw, the group's members were able to gain access to the account of any T-Mobile subscriber who used a "Sidekick," a pricey phone-organizer-camera combination device that stores videos, photos and other data on T-Mobile's central computer servers.

Paris Hilton Hack Started With Old-Fashioned Con

Just wait until the p0rn industry gets a hold (no pun intended) of this technology.

Researchers have developed a cybernetic system to allow physical interaction over the internet. The system allows touching and feeling of animals or other humans in real time, but it's first being tried out on -- chickens.

Built by a wacky group of researchers at the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore, the Touchy Internet works as follows:
You walk into your office, where a hollow, chicken-shaped doll sits on a mechanical positioning table close to your computer.

The doll whirs to life as soon as you switch on the system, duplicating the motion of a real chicken in the backyard whose movements are being captured by a webcam.

Fondling the doll translates into touching the real fowl.

Touch sensors attached to the doll convey tactile information to a nearby PC through radio signals. The data is sent over the internet to a remote computer near the chicken; the remote computer triggers tiny vibration motors in a lightweight haptic jacket worn by the fowl.

Eggheads Invent Tele-Petting

I'll try to feign surprise here...

As Mozilla and Microsoft executives argue about which browser - Firefox or Internet Explorer - is more secure, fans of the former have numbers on their side, says a security firm.
By Gregg Keizer

As Mozilla and Microsoft executives argue about which browser -- Firefox or Internet Explorer -- is more secure, fans of the former have numbers on their side, a Belgian security consultancy said this week.

According to Brussels-based ScanIT, users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) were "unsafe" 98 percent of the time during 2004, while Mozilla users -- which would include those using Mozilla and Firefox -- were "unsafe" only 15 percent of last year.
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IE was vulnerable all but seven days of 2004, or 98 percent of the year. "There was only one period in 2004 when there were no publicly known remote code execution bugs," said ScanIT's report. "Between the 12th and the 19th of October. That means a fully patched Internet Explorer installation was known to be unsafe for 98 percent of 2004."

During 200 days (54 percent of the time), there was a worm or virus on the loose that exploited one of the unpatched IE vulnerabilities. (ScanIT's IE vulnerability timeline can be found here.)

In comparison, Firefox (and the other Mozilla browsers) was vulnerable only 56 days in 2004 (15 percent of the time) during off-and-on stretches starting in May. At no time in 2004 were worms or viruses circulating that exploited one of the unpatched Firefox vulnerabilities.

IE 'Unsafe' 98 Percent Of 2004, Says ScanIT

When Gartner talks, CIO's listen.

Outsourced customer service operations can cost almost a third more than those retained in-house, according to a new study by Gartner.

The research firm found that outsourced operations are 30 percent more expensive than the top quartile of in-house customer service operations.

Alexa Bona, research director at Gartner, said businesses often fail to take hidden costs, such as in-house backup support to the outsourced function, into account.

"The outsourced service is often more efficient, but then outsourcers need to make a profit too," she said.

Gartner also said 80 percent of organizations that outsource their customer management operations purely to cut costs will fail to do so, while 60 percent of those who outsource parts of the customer-facing process will have to deal with customer defections and hidden costs that outweigh any potential savings offered by outsourcing.
"If all you are trying to do is save money, you are not going to be successful," Bona said.

Gartner: Outsourcing costs more than in-house

Not new but still pretty kewl.

Industrious Clock - Cool HTML Clock Page

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
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Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Two Words Bill... Babel Fish.

Lost in Translation?

SMS is pretty much ubiquitous in Europe, Asia and Australia. Why hasn't it caught on yet in the US?

LONDON, England (CNN) -- It is great for organizing meetings, to tell someone a piece of information and even voting for your favorite "Big Brother" housemate.

Now, text messaging is increasingly being used by UK hospitals to remind patients about outpatient appointments -- and could potentially save the National Health Service millions of pounds every year.

Hospitals embrace SMS technology

Canute grew weary of the hype and decided to cut it short with a graphic demonstration of the limit of his powers. He had his chair placed at the edge of the sea, and as the tide rolled in, he commanded it to stop. No luck, of course, on stopping the tide, but Canute managed to gain a respite from the clamoring of the crowd.
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In the meantime, however, RealNetworks is proving to be a real pain in Apple's side. In April, Real approached Apple about making the iPod compatible with Real's RealPlayer Music Store (RPMS). Request denied. This week Real announced the release of Harmony, a digital rights management translation service that will enable RPMS customers to play those songs on an iPod.
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Apple needs to recognize, as Canute did, that it can't stop the tide, and get back to ruling its digital music kingdom wisely.

Excellent analogy... Steve Jobs' ego has dominated Apple's direction for a long time. Most of it has been dead-on w/ well timed choices and directions but I think he now needs to realize that to try to keep it all means to have none of it in the end.

Real vs Apple

Bahahahahaha! I'm about as likely to downgrade to their mp3 player as I am to go back to a PC. Ain't gonna happen Mikey...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL - news) is running a promotion that gives customers $100 off on some of its Dell Digital Jukebox music players if customers send in to the No. 1 personal computer maker their old Apple iPods to be recycled, the company said on Wednesday.
The mail-in rebate offer applies to Dell's 15-gigabyte music player, which carries a regular price of $199, said the Round Rock, Texas, company. The player has a battery life of about 20 hours, about two times that of Apple Computer Inc.'s (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) market-leading iPod, Dell said.

Dell Offers $100 Rebate for Old Apple iPods

wilpig wrote:
] ] The truth--as we all so bitterly know--is that
] ] the IT world is filled with certified, credentialed and
] ] accredited idiots. I bet you've hired a few. I know I
] ] have. The fact that someone has an aptly named BS from
] ] Harvard topped off with a misleadingly named master's
] ] from MIT does not a good developer (or employee) make. We
] ] have to ask ourselves why we make the assumptions we do
] ] about individuals with "elite" credentials.

Certs and degrees are no substitute for experience. Never have been, never will be. Good test takers are not necessarily good problem solvers. Unfortunately, we have tended to blindly give them carte blanche acceptance for a very long time.

RE: Hiding Behind Certification - Making I.T. Work - CIO Magazine Jun 15,2004