Doonesbury Say What?

"Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I'll go a step further. The people that went to school with him, they never saw him; they don't know who he is. It's crazy."
— Donald Trump

"Look, I didn't say that...If he was three years old or two years old or one year old and people remember him, that's irrelevant."
— Donald Trump, after CNN played him documentary clips of Hawaiians reminiscing about the schoolchild Obama

ROFLMAO! He really needs to give up this line. And will politicians, in general, ever learn that if they knowingly lie or speak falsely that it can be discovered almost instantly and rebroadcast all over the blogsphere for which we shall ridicule them?

More data breaches in 2010 but fewer records compromised

Verizon does an annual study of data breaches. It would appear that the larger repositories may have improved security, forcing would-be attackers to smaller, more vulnerable targets. Of course, the Epsilon breach may reverse the trend when 2011 statistics become available. The report also postulates that with the Heartland data breach that the market for stolen credit card numbers has become flooded and thus devalued.

The H-Online article is a very good read and links to Verizon's report.

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Report-more-breaches-but-fewer-records-compromised-in-2010-1230732.html

RIP: Sarah Jane, Doctor Who's Companion

Elisabeth Sladon passed away, she'd been battling cancer. She started with Doctor #3, John Pertwee, then continued with Tom Baker and got a spin-off show with K-9. She was definitely one of the more fun and interesting companions.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/04/elisabeth-sladen-obit/

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/19/135553513/elisabeth-sladen-doctor-who-actress-dies-of-cancer?ft=1&f=1001

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/04/20/0321204/Doctor-Whos-Elisabeth-Sladen-Sarah-Jane-Dies-at-63

Remote control car runs on soda can tabs!

This is an awesome video. Aside from the fact that it's a cool project, the video has excellent editing and a Chemical Brothers soundtrack! Sadly, the car as built would cost around 2400 Euros, just a bit out of my price range. I guess I'll stick with rechargeable NiCads or LiOns if I get in to the sport.

It was made by two scientists from Barcelona and the car will run for 40 minutes at 20 MPH.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/17/radio-control-car-runs-on-soda-can-rings-doc-brown-approves-vi

http://www.dalh2orean.com/dAlH2Orean/Blog/Entradas/2011/4/15_Press_Conference.html

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/04/20/0312210/An-RC-Car-That-Runs-On-Soda-Can-Rings

Awesome! Destroying compact discs with 150,000 volts!

Me want! The Slashdot article links to an awesome YouTube video. I'd like to see how DVDs and Blu-Ray discs handle this. For that matter, hard drive platters...

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/04/19/2037225/Erasing-CDs-By-Using-150000-Volts-of-Electricity

Michigan State Police have a device that can suck your cell phone in seconds

and they use it at routine traffic stops. The ACLU is suing them for Fourth Amendment violation.

"A US Department of Justice test of the CelleBrite UFED used by Michigan police found the device could grab all of the photos and video off of an iPhone within one-and-a-half minutes. The device works with 3000 different phone models and can even defeat password protections.

"Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags," a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device's capabilities. "The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps.""

Man, I hope the ACLU wins on this one. This is entirely too much power too easily used without having reasonable suspicion and a proper search warrant. I'm also curious how well this works against a fully-encrypted Android OS phone.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3458.asp

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/04/19/2231240/Michigan-Police-Could-Search-Cell-Phones-During-Traffic-Stops