Giving it all you've got - 11 August 2007

Today was lazy and restful and I continued to try and fight off my cold, which seems to want to take up residence in my nostrils and migrate down to my chest with a cough. I think I’m in the drainage phase, though, so hopefully, the nose drips stop soon and I’ll be able to see whether the cough leaves of its own accord.

A high-level security warning, courtesy of thewayne - a DBA walked off with 2.3 million consumer records and sold them. The material stolen would be more than enough for an identity thief to assume your identity, and the records were sold to a “data broker”, which could mean that a lot of people just got a hold of that data. There aren’t any reported cases of identity theft, but that’s not to say they couldn’t happen. computerstuff talks about how such a theft could have been prevented, even with a thief having physical access to the database files.

A different kind of theft has happened with Google at the helm, according to BoingBoing, who reports purchased and downloaded Google Video units with DRM are expiring in the middle of this month. Haha, joke’s on you. So, will iTunes be following suit, if the record companies really do decide to back out of having the music available for download?

A related tech article, of interest to persons following the dealings of the SCO group - Groklaw reports a decision that Novell is the sole owner of the copyright over UNIX, and asks for the other judges to reinterpret their findings based on this decision. He also said that the SCO group must respect Novell’s waivers. Groklaw says that it might also mean they owe some big bucks to Novell for licenses to Sun and Microsoft.

A corporation in Indiana has decided to charge its employees $30/month if they should fail to hit company benchmarks. The company says it is to help cover insurance and to encourage people to take advantage of the company-sponsored services.

Upping the potential cute factor here, a squirrel has taken to stealing Kinder Surprise eggs from a store in Finland. Don’t quite know why, but the squirrel apparently prefers the Kinder Surprise. If you’re a potter fan, perhaps some of the cast drawn in tiny style will also induce the “awww, so cute” reaction. Something significantly less cute is the account of a man being bitten by the severed head of a snake - perhaps one last vestige of life still stuck in it, or a reflex - even dead, snakes are deadly.

Those who live in glass buildings shouldn't make parabolic mirror-style fronts. I’ll bet the glare looking up at that is fantastic. In more intelligent sorts of science, an experiment launched next month will provide evidence for or against the theory that life on earth came from another planet. admittedly, it’s only twelve days out in the vacuum, but it might give us a clue. Something also spending time out in the vacuum is the Space Shuttle, which has suffered damage to the thermal tiles on the underside. Even more potentially disturbing, though, is the admission that space shuttles tend to suffer this kind of damage regularly. So long as it’s not fatal, sure, it happens, but there have been fatalities. And with plans to open up a "space hotel" by the year 2012, making sure you can get your guests up and back home safely again is something to keep in mind.

Going political and religious, Liberal Eagles notes conservatives take pride in wishing mass deaths on their fellows so that they can be proven right, while accusing the liberal stance of wishing mass deaths on their fellows so that they can be proven right. Dave at Orcinus takes a similar whack at Christian fundamentalists, who believe that freedom of religion means freedom for them to actively attack other religions and try to deny them the freedom of religion. Sara takes this theme and runs with it, describing in more detail how churches became corporations intent on crushing their opposition, the wall of separation is both slated for destruction and used as a shelter, and how ideas about the superiority of Christians to everyone else translates into a strong desire to see only Christians in power in all places. I think we’re beginning to see what happens when you put God-obsessed people in power, though. I don’t think it’ll take 95 theses this time.

And last, a capsule summary of Kogepan, which is a very cute short anime that people should watch.

So, being as sick as I am, I think I’m going to try and get restful sleep and kick out the last of this cold.