Incite

AT&T Concedes - Accepts Net Neutrality for 30 Months

This is the good news.  The bad news is this "consession" is not binding in any way - AT&T can ignore it completely if it wants to.  Hopefully a Net neutrality Bill will be passed before this becomes an issue.

Net neutrality advocates celebrated this week after AT&T said it would pledge to maintain a "neutral network" in exchange for US government approval of its proposed acquisition of BellSouth Corp.

AT&T has offered a net neutrality concession – saying it will not prioritise or degrade network traffic based on "source, ownership or destination" for two years after its merger – as an incentive for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to break a deadlock on whether to approve the deal, now worth more than $85 billion.

Net neutrality advocates called the concessions a victory.

Net neutrality advocates cheer AT&T concessions - Business - Macworld UK

technorati tags:AT&T, net, neutrality, FCC

"Social" Bookmarks Always With You - FURL and Del.icio.us

These two free services save and organize your browser bookmarks online so you can access them wherever you are! Social bookmarking means sharing them and seeing what sites others have found. They're great for classes too.

Does Your Car Key Pose a Security Risk?

I've talked about RFID tags in the new passports and some states' new drivers licenses and how they will be able to broadcast your data to identity thieves. I thought that would be a problem in the future. Apparently, the future is now. Johns Hopkins University and RSA Laboratories have done some tests on Mobil Speedpasses and car keys with RFID chips in them. They found that they were extremely easy to hack - get the information out - and clone. The security is very weak.

Undoubtedly, passports and drivers licenses will have stronger security - we hope - but that only means it will probably take a little longer for thieves and terrorists to learn how to break the security and clone the IDs. And remember, they broadcast your information, so the thieves don't need to touch you or your keys or cards or passports - they just have to be in the same area as you are. They transmit all the time. You won't even know anything has happened.

So far, the only way to protect your RFID keys, passports and drivers licenses ... is to wrap them in aluminum foil until you need to use them. :-)

I feel more secure - how about you?

With just "a few hundred dollars worth of equipment," Rubin says his team was able to wirelessly interact with car keys and payment tags at close range, and obtain enough information to crack their security system. They could then create a clone of the device, he says. This clone would allow someone to purchase gas on a victim's key-tag or disable a car's alarm system, but would not allow you to unlock a car's doors, Rubin says.

The chips tested during the study were more advanced than those that exist in older cars, Rubin says. "The one that we broke is the latest and greatest," he says, adding that older cars have weaker security systems that could be easier to hack into.

Read more: PCWorld.com - Does Your Car Key Pose a Security Risk?

In Texas, 28,000 Students Are Tracked

They're trying an experiment in Texas to try to prevent kidnapping of children. The kids are wearing ID tags with RFID chips in them that broadcast their information to sensors on the bus and at the school doors. They track them from home to school and back again. So far, it seems to be working with the little kids, but the teenagers are not amused.

It is "naïve to believe all this data will only be used to track children in the extremely unlikely event of the rare kidnapping by a stranger," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the A.C.L.U.

Mr. Steinhardt said schools, once they had invested in the technology, could feel compelled to get a greater return on investment by putting it to other uses, like tracking where students go after school.

Advocates of the technology said they did not plan to go that far. But, they said, they do see broader possibilities, such as implanting RFID tags under the skin of children to avoid problems with lost or forgotten tags. More immediately, they said, they could see using the technology to track whether students attend individual classes.

...

In a variation on the concept, a Phoenix school district in November is starting a project using fingerprint technology to track when and where students get on and off buses. Last year, a charter school in Buffalo began automating attendance counts with computerized ID badges - one of the earliest examples of what educators said could become a widespread trend.

Read more: The New York Times - In Texas, 28,000 Students Test an Electronic Eye

'Podcasting' brings personalized audio programs to your iPod

This is really great. I've been trying it for the last couple of days. You get some very simple - and currently mostly free - software that downloads audio programs automatically and puts them into iTunes automatically so that when you sync your iPod you get all this personally chosen audio to listen to. A lot of guys are starting to make "PodCasts" that you can subscribe to and professional broadcasts like Leo Laporte's KFI radio show and WGBH in Boston are testing the waters as well. This allows automatic time- shifting of audio. This could be big.

The technology is simple to use - anyone can get and listen to the programs painlessly. The technology to create the broadcasts is relatively simple and cheap, so almost anyone can create their own "radio station" and "PodCast" it over the internet. It also means that bands can make their music available free, directly - without using peer to peer networking - so they have another outlet for getting their music heard. Very cool.

"'Podcasting' is a term that is probably unfamiliar to most people, but it represents a real potential change in the radio landscape. A small group of enthusiasts has begun cobbling together a way to easily share homemade radio shows, eventually allowing people to reach large numbers of listeners by completely bypassing the current structure of radio," Rick Ellis reports for IBS. "Here is the non-technical explanation: Podcasting allows you to subscribe to feeds, which...

Link: 'Podcasting' brings personalized audio programs to your iPod

Panther Maintenance Tips

Yes, Mac OS X is incredibly stable, but here's a comprehensive list of tips to keep it that way for the duration of your OS install. What? You don't do any maintenance at all? Well, read on. That might change.

Continue reading Panther Maintenance Tips

Cell phone erases lateness?

From the New York Times:

Restaurateurs, hairstylists and friends and family of the unpunctual have suspected it, but now research is providing evidence: As cell phones have become more prevalent so too has lateness.

Cell phones have enabled more people to fall behind schedule, and provided a new crutch for the chronically tardy.

Researchers who study the effect of cell phones on society talk of a nation living in "soft time" -- a bubble in which expectations of where and when to meet shift constantly because people expect others to be constantly reachable.

Eight-thirty is still 8 o'clock as long as your voice arrives on time -- or even a few minutes after -- to advise that you will not be wherever you are supposed to be at the appointed hour.

Continue reading Cell phone erases lateness?