May 28
Purchasing a ticket to the opening and closing ceremonies to the Olympics in Beijing comes with more than just admission. In a first-time move for the Olympics tickets will have a chip embedded in the ticket. That chip will contain the ticket bearer’s photograph, passport details, e-mail address, regular address, and telephone numbers.
The organizers of the games say this measure is in place to keep out troublemakers to the National Stadium, which hold 91,000 people. Terrorists, pro-Tibet protesters, and people with the wrong t-shirt on are not welcomed to the Olympics.
Identity theft is also an issue with the $720 top ticket price. Dignitaries and friends of the Olympians make up a majority of the attendees to the ceremonies.
Opinion: Planting RFID tags in a ticket will surely fend off any evildoer with intents of destroying the peace (and freedom) the games bring to us. Terrorists also can’t afford a $720 ticket either. Taking away the privacy of all the attendees will be worth it.
written by tom
May 15
New York, NY – May 15, 2008 – This summer, hackers from around the world will track the movements of thousands of visitors to New York City.
As part of a social experiment, attendees at a hacker conference in July will be issued badges with electronic tracking devices. Large displays will show in real-time where people go, with whom they associate, for how long and how often.
The tracking technology, known as RFID, is fast becoming an unseen part of everyday life. This July, for the very first time, the general public will be able to participate in the transparent operation of a major RFID tracking program.
Conference attendees will participate in games built around the tracking system. Players will seek ways to protect their privacy, find vulnerabilities in the tracking system, employ data mining techniques to learn more about other participants, and choose how much personal information they will disclose in order to play.
This demonstration will be open to the public at The Last HOPE conference from July 18-20 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The first 1500 preregistrants will be guaranteed an RFID badge enabling them to participate in the game. More information and preregistration is available at http://www.hope.net/.
written by tom
May 08
If you’ve bought a Zune and a plan to do a software update you may not be able to play all of the content you’d like.
Through a round-about way it was revealed that Microsoft plans on making non-copyrighted material (specifically video) not be able to play on the Zune.
NBC has announced that they plan on not offering their programming through iTunes for two reasons: Apple’s demand to keep the price of the video at $1.99 and Apple does not plan on building filtering software to not allow pirated videos to be played.
There is one company that does have the rights of these companies in mind. NBC has decided to work with a “broader” base of customers by going with Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace.
NBC plans on offering older shows at a lower price than the new retail price for play on the Zune. As of now the Microsoft filtering software is not in place or fully developed. With the dollars it has behind it with this new NBC deal Microsoft will soon have this available in a software update.
In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member Microsoft’s Zune team mentioned…
We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.
Perhaps it’s purely coincidence, the tradition of Microsoft’s copyright “protection”, and this NBC deal that could cause Mr. Menendez to respond like this. It would be safe to assume that Microsoft already had plans in place to “protect” companies from pirated material.
written by tom