First Bond, now The Hobbit: MGM's instability spreads further

Main production on The Hobbit has not been greenlit because of MGM and their potential insolvency. They're well along in designing sets, effects, makeup, and costumes, but apparently everything's on hold. The article implies that they can begin production as soon as they get the OK, there's just no telling when that will be.

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/movies/2010/05/28/14173166-wenn-story.html

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/10/05/28/2049209/The-Hobbit-On-Hold?art_pos=11

Use Google Maps when committing a crime in Louisianna, get a year added to your sentence!

They passed a law that if you make a "virtual street map" onine before you commit a crime, you can get a year added to your prison term. If it's an act of terrorism, it can be 10 years.

Yep, that'll stop them terrorists cold!

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/05/house_oks_bill_to_strengthen_p.html

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/28/1821200/High-Tech-Burglars-May-Get-Longer-Sentences-In-Louisiana?art_pos=14

UK cancels the use of biometric national ID cards

They estimate saving 800 billion pounds ($1.1US trillion) with the cancellation since the program has not been nationally deployed yet. The sucky element is that it cost taxpayers 30 pounds (about $43US). There's a lot of commentary that the UK government had no specific goal and kept changing the announced purpose for the card.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8707355.stm

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/28/0230259/UK-Home-Office-Set-To-Scrap-National-ID-Cards?art_pos=9

Now, interestingly there's a lot of people who like the cards and don't want them to go away. Apparently a lot of EU countries have no problems accepting the cards for ID.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8707112.stm

Have a PIN on your iPhone? Ubuntu can walk right past it.

If you're running Lucid Lynx v10.04, plugging your iPhone mounts it as a USB device and you have total access to the data on the phone.

"This, quite honestly, is a staggering flaw. It basically allows anyone capable of driving a Linux PC to copy data off of an iPhone without the owner of the phone having any idea whatsoever that this has happened.

What’s more worrying is that Marienfeldt and Herbeck think that write access to the iPhone is only a buffer overflow away, which means serious access."

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/ubuntu-lucid-lynx-1004-can-read-your-iphones-secrets/8424

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/05/27/1826207/iPhones-PIN-Based-Security-Transparent-To-Ubuntu?art_pos=24


There was a recent article about smartphones being seized by law enforcement organizations (LEO) and the potential for the phone to be remotely ordered to wipe itself. I know iPhones and Blackberries can do this. So they're talking about LEOs using needing to use Faraday Cage bags and rooms to examine the phones after they make sure to remove the battery when they seize the phone. Of course, the iPhone is a sealed unit and the battery cannot be removed.


Apple claims: "iPhone 3GS protects data through encryption of information in transmission, at rest on the device, and when backed up to iTunes."

In the past I used a Palm Pilot extensively and had a program called CryptoPad that used Blowfish encryption and I knew the backup was also encrypted which required a desktop version of the program to access the backups. I've been looking for an encryption product for the iPad Touch which has become my daily use PDA, so this really bothers me that I can't encrypt things and have confidence that they're secure.

Apparently Apple's encryption and business-level security is badly flawed. And that sucks.

http://marienfeldt.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/iphone-business-security-framework/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/iphone-encryption/

Apple is now the #2 biggest capitalized tech company in the USA

"As of Wednesday, Wall Street valued Apple at $222.12 billion and Microsoft at $219.18 billion. The only American company valued higher is Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $278.64 billion."

Probably pushed over the top by the iPad sales, they're apparently moving 200,000 units a week. It'll be interesting to see if this continues. It's also going to be quite interesting by the end of the year when Google Android slate machines start hitting the street.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/technology/27apple.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1275235226-YDtql5rarhbl1HwLc4cV8A

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/05/26/228232/Apple-Surpasses-Microsoft-In-Market-Capitalization?art_pos=13