Stony Stevenson writes "Citing recent highly publicized corporate data breaches that have beset major companies like Ameritrade, Citigroup, and Bank of America, McAfee CEO David DeWalt, said that cyber-crime has become a US$105 billion business that now surpasses the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide. Despite the increase in government compliance requirements and the proliferation of security tools, companies continue to underestimate the threat from phishing, data loss, and other cyber vulnerabilities, DeWalt said. 'Worldwide data losses now represent US$40 billion in losses to affected companies and individuals each year, DeWalt says. But law enforcement's ability to find, prosecute, and punish criminals in cyberspace has not kept up: "If you rob a 7-11 you'll get a much harsher punishment than if you stole millions online," DeWal remarked. "The cross-border sophistication in tracking and arresting cyber-criminals is just not there."'"

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With the New York Times finally realizing (two years too late) that paywalls don't make sense for online newspapers, the one major remaining holdout is still the Wall Street Journal. So, it should come as little surprise that reporters wasted no time in tracking down new owner Rupert Murdoch to see if he stood by earlier comments suggesting that he'd make the Wall Street Journal free online. It certainly sounds like he's still leaning in that direction, saying that he doesn't see how making it free would hurt the paper, and that, if done right, it could help make the paper a lot more money. Indeed, though, we're still waiting for an explanation for why it's taken the pre-eminent business newspaper in the world this long to understand the larger picture.

• Cane with a Pull-Out Map of Boston Link • Fujitsu LifeBook U810 Tablet UMPC Reviewed (Verdict: Needs EV-DO) Link

• World's *est: Olympus' Microscopic Questionnaire Link

• Official Star Wars Lightsaber Simulation Coming to the Wii Link

• Tetsuya Nakamura's Technocolor Basins Link

• Creative Aurvana X-Fi Noise-Canceling Headphones Introduced Link

• Video: Boston Dynamics LittleDog Robot Link

• Motorola ROKR E8 Music Phone's Trick Backlit Keypad Link

• Lemon Squeezer Screw Link

• Wes Anderson's AT&T Commercials Link

• Morning Tech Deals Highlights Link

We've seen stories over the years about how applications like Microsoft's Flight Simulator not only are attracting a new generation of pilots to take up flying, but are getting them started with many more skills than those who haven't used Flight Simulator. It appears other industries may be taking notice. Apparently the industrial heavy equipment maker Caterpillar is pushing simulators of its earth movers, excavators and dump trucks as a way to better train miners to use that equipment. Using simulators to train people is nothing new, obviously -- but what's interesting is the undercurrent to the promotion, noting that there just aren't enough skilled operators of the equipment these days. However, by making it more fun via the simulators, perhaps they can attract more people to become skilled operators. The article notes how much fun a bunch of "hardened miners" were having playing with the simulators at a mining convention, to the point that they were "giggling like children." So perhaps we'll start seeing more "fun" simulations of other jobs that are having trouble attracting skilled practitioners.

An anonymous reader writes "Canada has been the home to a growing debate on counterfeiting with politicians, law enforcement, and copyright lobby groups all pushing for stronger copyright and anti-counterfeiting laws. Writing in the Toronto Star, Michael Geist reports that the claims are based on fatally flawed data. The RCMP, Canada's national police force, has been claiming that counterfeiting costs Canadians $30 billion per year. When pressed on the issue, last week they admitted that the estimate was not based on any original research but rather on 'open source documents found on the Internet.'"

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klubar writes "Another milestone of online communications has been reached. The smiley turns 25, according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman who says he was the first to use three keystrokes. 'Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect. Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.'"

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klubar writes "Another milestone of online communications has been reached. The smiley turns 25, according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman who says he was the first to use three keystrokes. 'Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect. Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While you have lobbyists, consultants and politicians claiming that the internet is on the verge of collapsing due to running out of bandwidth, it seems that the techies would beg to differ. We already pointed out that the report put out by D&T consultants was later refuted by the folks who run the nodes that D&T insisted were at risk of being overwhelmed. Now we have Andrew Odlyzko adding more weight to the idea that the bandwidth crunch that so many lobbyists and telco execs seem to be screaming about is something of a myth. Odlyzko, of course, is also the guy who pointed out that Worldcom was lying back during the dot com boom when it insisted that internet traffic was doubling every 100 days. Now he's noting that internet traffic growth is slowing -- which very few of the doomsday estimates take into account. Internet traffic is still growing, of course, but not at nearly as rapid a pace. That isn't surprising, after all. The internet is starting to reach maturity in terms of the number of folks who are joining in the developed world. Certainly, those people are using more and more bandwidth, but not at an overwhelming pace, and there appears to be plenty of capacity to keep up with the pace of growth. Once again, it looks like those warning of the imminent death of the internet are basing it either on faulty data or are extrapolating based on data that doesn't take into account slowing growth. Either way, it is interesting that the actual technologists never seem all that worried about running out of capacity. Hell, even when any telco exec breaks the party line and admits that the threat of a bandwidth crunch is completely overstated, it's always been the CTO who says so. Somehow, I get the feeling that the technology guys have a lot better handle on this than the lobbyists and the politicians...

Meshach writes "There is an interesting story at CBC which claims that Google loses one billion dollars per year to fraudulent ad clicks. The article contains an interesting description how how the company determines if a click is false. 'The company explained that it determines which clicks are invalid through a three-stage system. Most of the illegitimate clicks are automatically detected analyzed and filtered out in the first stage ... The second part uses automatic and manual analysis of the AdSense network to weed out false clicks before they are logged to an advertiser's account.'"

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Sean Collins of Fantagraphics got a bunch of comic artists to draw renditions of David Bowie in his sketchbook and compiled them into a Flickr set. At far left, Adrian Tomine's Bowie. At immediate left, Charles Burns's Ziggy Stardust. Link to Sean's blog post, Link to the Flickr set (via Fantagraphics Flog!)

Other themed sketchbooks held by Fantagraphics folks include Jacob Covey's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle book and Mike Baehr's Yoda book. Link

Lucas123 writes "Facebook has quietly started offering beta testers access to the latest version of a new storage service, according to Computerworld's Brian Fonseca. The wiki does warn users that the page is still in development and that users should make sure that data used in testing the service is properly backed up. Nick O'Neill, creator of the blogsite AllFacebook.com, said it would be "revolutionary" if the service is free."

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The original Sex Pistols will reunite for a one-off London gig to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols. The November 8 show will take place at Brixton Academy. A seven-inch vinyl of God Save The Queen will also be released as part of the anniversary. From the NME:

Speaking about their return to the London gig scene for the first time since 2002, Sex Pistols' frontman John Lydon explained: "Maybe it's because we're all Londoners, but there would be no Sex Pistols without dear old London town."

He added: "See you all at Brixton with proper feelings and proper people all around. From London Bridge to The Rose And Crown, all of Britain is welcome so come on down."

Link

In honor of this news, here's the infamous December 1, 1976 appearance of the Sex Pistols and their punk pals (including Siouxsie Sioux!) on Bill Grundy's Today TV show.
Link

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, neurologist and science writer Oliver Sacks tells the incredible story of Clive Wearing, an accomplished musician and musiciologist who in 1985 suffered a brain infection that ruined his memory, limiting his recall to just the previous few seconds. Amazingly though, Wearing is able to remember two incredibly important things: how to make beautiful music and that he loves his wife. Wearing's wife Deborah wrote about her experiences with her husband in the book Forever Today: A True Story of Lost Memory and Never-Ending Love. He has also been the subject of documentary films. I'd imagine that Sacks's forthcoming book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, includes more on Wearing along with other similarly extraordinary stories. From the New Yorker article:

When I asked Deborah whether Clive knew about her memoir, she told me that she had shown it to him twice before, but that he had instantly forgotten. I had my own heavily annotated copy with me, and asked Deborah to show it to him again.

“You’ve written a book!” he cried, astonished. “Well done! Congratulations!” He peered at the cover. “All by you? Good heavens!” Excited, he jumped for joy. Deborah showed him the dedication page: “For my Clive.” “Dedicated to me?” He hugged her. This scene was repeated several times within a few minutes, with almost exactly the same astonishment, the same expressions of delight and joy each time.

Clive and Deborah are still very much in love with each other, despite his amnesia. (Indeed, Deborah’s book is subtitled “A Memoir of Love and Amnesia.”) He greeted her several times as if she had just arrived. It must be an extraordinary situation, I thought, both maddening and flattering, to be seen always as new, as a gift, a blessing.

Link to The New Yorker, Link to Mind Hacks post for more background, Link to buy Wearing's Forever Today, Link to buy Sacks's Musicophilia

ahess247 writes "When the leaked photos of the 3rd-gen iPod nano first hit the Web it quicky took the nickname 'little fatty,' but fat could be better used to describe Apple's profits on the project. BusinessWeek reports that a teardown analysis by iSuppli finds that it costs Apple only $58.85 to build the 4-gig iPod nano, and $82.85 for the 8GB version. The analysis also reveals some of Apple's suppliers, about which its usually very tight-lipped. Synaptics is back as the supplier of the click-wheel technology, beating out Cypress Semiconductor which had it previously. Also of note: The same Samsung CPU chip that powers the video and audio in the nano is being used in the iPod Classic as well."

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Back on June 29th, when the iPhone launched, we had some of the experts in the Techdirt Insight Community give their thoughts on how competitors should respond. There were, as per usual with the experts in the community, some really insightful and interesting responses. From that, we've been able to sign new business helping companies formulate and execute on their latest strategies. However, it seems that not everyone is taking a proactive approach to responding to the iPhone (or, at least they're not willing to admit it publicly). Gizmodo points us to an unintentionally amusing article where Laptop Magazine tried to get four competitors to give their thoughts on the iPhone. Rather than admitting that the iPhone has really shifted how many people view mobile phones and what they can do, all of the companies basically toe the corporate line, look the other way on iPhone questions and make sure to mention their own phones as many times as possible. Given the market response, however, it seems pretty clear that Apple is delivering what the market wanted, while these other guys have not. Insisting that you do have what it takes when the market is shifting elsewhere isn't going to be a winning strategy. Of course, we're here to help. If companies want to formulate a real strategic response to the iPhone, they might want to give us a call.

Linnen writes "CNET News.com writer, Anne Broache, reports that the head of the US Copyright Office considers the DCMA to be an important tool for copyright owners '"I'm not ready to dump the anticircumvention," [Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters] said in response to a question from an audience member who suggested as much. "I think that's a really important part of our copyright owners' quiver of arrows to defend themselves." The law also requires that the Copyright Office meets periodically to decide whether it's necessary to specify narrow exemptions to the so-called anticircumvention rules. (Last year, the government decided it's lawful to unlock a cell phone's firmware for the purpose of switching carriers and to crack copy protection on audiovisual works to test for security flaws or vulnerabilities.)'"

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Mint sounds like something I've been waiting for.

Like something everyone will want.

Now, should I trust them with my data??

BTW, it's refreshing that someone, whoever they are, saw their way through the maze of BS products that Silicon Valley keeps coming up with and made something obvious and widely useful. That's the kind of stuff I like to see.

PS: I did a search and found out that Mint is one of the 40 products announced at TC40. It should win the $50K award, if the execution is anything more than passing. Best idea at the show, by far.

"Again With the Comics" has a scan of Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and adapted for Drawn and Quarterly in 2000 by R. Sikoryak. Link (Via Laughing Squid)

saudadelinux writes "I was held up at gunpoint in July, and my laptop was stolen. There are companies out there which, for a fee, install tracker software on your laptop. If it's stolen or lost, they track its whereabouts whenever it gets on the 'Net and work with local law enforcement and ISPs to find the machine. I'm wondering: has anyone used one of these services? Does anyone have a recommendation for which company to go with? My new laptop is a a dual-boot Ubuntu/XP machine, and the couple of companies I've looked at do Windows-only. Are there Linux options?"

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