I didn't quite know whether to put this in Technology or Privacy, since it's a bit of both.USA Today has an interesting article on the upcoming use of RFIDs in consumer goods for inventory tracking, price tagging, and other uses. It correctly raises the privacy concerns as well. Of …

CNet has an article on Microsoft's announced DRM platform toolkit for media companies and producers. The Data Session Toolkit (so-named because the intention is to store the DRM'd content in a second "session" of the CD with Data only flags) contains licenses for Microsoft's Media Player format and allows labels …

An excellent, in-depth article appears at the Real World Tech web site. If you want to see a comparison of the different technologies at play in the world of 64-bit computing, this is a great resource. There's information here about MIPS, Alpha, Sparc, Itanium, PowerPC, and PA- RISC.

Not surprisingly, after last week's worm, security experts are faulting Microsoft for not providing enough active security measures and quality in their software. Over the past few years, Microsoft has increased their public statements about security, but most of them have focused on how users can cope with security problems …

In a positive move, the Parliament of Finland has turned back the controversial European counterpart to the US's DMCA. As reported by Electronic Frontier Finland in their news release, this keeps Finland from becoming only the third member state of the EU to adopt the convention. According to EU policy …

I had to post the following quote from this week's Perl.com's This week in Perl 6 report: "Dan reported that examples/assembly/mops_p.pasm was running slower with JIT optimization than without under OSX, which doesn't seem right. Daniel Grunblatt pointed out that JIT cores that don't optimize …

ZDNet (MSN) has an article detailing the latest steps by filmmakers and Hollywood to control exactly what you see when you play a DVD. As far as they are concerned, if you buy a DVD, you should only have the rights to see what they want you to see and …

In a break from our usual fare, we go to Australia, where New Scientist reports in an article that an Australian has invented a new underwater jet engine that uses steam and a unique new airflow system to generate substantially more thrust than its competitors.

In an article in InfoWorld, the reporter covers a debate between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft officials over the relative merits of each other's next generation programming tools. Read more for some background... .Net Microsoft's .Net architecture is based on the use of a Common Runtime Library (referred to as the …

I read with interest an article posted about the Norwegian browser manufacturer Opera giving up on the Macintosh market after the release of Safari. The Opera claim is that they can't compete with Apple's nameplate in the Macintosh market and that because of that, they are going to bow out …

Norwegian news site InfoSync offers this article about an upcoming GPS device from Navman which will feature Bluetooth as its key communication protocol. Now, you'll be able to put your GPS where it receives a good signal without having to drape lengthy cables all over the place to reach your …

MacCentral is reporting in an article that AT&T Wireless is teaming up with Wayport and building out their own network to provide 802.11b service (note: not a). The new service is called GoPort and will cost $69.95/mo unlimited at all locations (comparable to T-Mobile's HotSpot service …

Well, according to an article on CNet, Microsoft fell prey to their own problems with the MS SQL product (exposed this weekend through the latest internet worm). I can't say this is entirely related, but I installed XP (yeah, don't talk to me about it) on Saturday and it took …

OSNews has a great parody of the "It's time for Linux on the Desktop" articles seen appearing from time to time.

The summary: the card is probably too hot and noisy to justify incremental performance improvement over the comparable ATI 9700 Pro card. Of particular concern is the apparent performance degradations that occur as resolutions increase. Of course, as you expect from Tom's Hardware, the review has excruciating detail (including MP3's …

Wired Magazine has a more in-depth article on the selection process for Adnan Osmani's project to build the world's fastest web browser. Apparently full access to the source and the ability to actually test the speed of the software were two tools not employed in the determination of the wining …

In an effort to assuage fears that the DMCA would stifle creativity (ahem), the Copyright Office is required to review the DMCA every 3 years to find exemptions that should be added to the law (or at least how it is applied). The comment period for this three year period …

Although there are many people out in the business community who think that solidified international standards are the end-all and be-all of existence (especially in Europe, as this article from ZDNET UK shows), the history of the Internet shows us that innovation occurs before standards are solidified. I understand the …

A news release from NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research) outlines a new program that they are running with the FHWA (the Federal HighWay Administration) to put real-time highway and highway-related weather information on the internet for drivers and for coordination amongst organizations that maintain the roads.

The Register has an article discussing some frightening .mil vulnerabilities, including a publicly available site for registering .mil domains.