While playing online games like World of Warcraft and similar, you find advertisements for people who will get you rare items or in-game money (gold) for a fee. These so-called "gold-farmers" are often employed in different countries like China.

Well, China took note and passed a ban on gold farming based on the idea that the economy of large online games could affect the real economy negatively.

Whatever the reason, I think that getting rid of the farmers will have a positive effect on the games themselves and I hope we see more of this in the future.

According to CNET, Firefox 3.5 is twice as fast as Firefox 3 which puts it above most of the browsers on the market (right behind Google's Chrome browser).

Over as Popular Science, they have an article about electronic devices that capture and devour bugs and even mice. They use fuel cells to digest the animals and use them for power. I can't tell yet if I think that's awesome or highly disturbing.

I can't think of a reason why this isn't a good idea. Who needs large kitchen knives to have pointed ends anyway. I hate carrying the things around for the risk of turning around and someone standing there. Granted I can just be very careful to point the thing down when I'm in the kitchen, but then when I drop it, the pointed end is aimed right at my foot.

Regardless of how unrealistic you think my scenarios are, an anti-stab knife would reduce the risk significantly. It's interesting at the least.

(H/T to Schneier's Blog for the link)

This is a great description of a lot of the dirty tricks credit card companies pull. Remember that a credit-free lifestyle is possible.

Whether this Acai berry has any useful properties or not, when people purchased the "risk-free trial offer" ended up getting charged for tons of extras based on the sneaky way that the company set up their online purchasing system. Customers had to actively find and de-select options for upsell products and add-ons that were selected by default. Anyone that failed to notice them was charged.

Be careful when dealing with infomercial and snazzy website ads for products that claim much, but deliver little. Particularly in the case of food, drinks, or medicines where you won't be able to see the truth of the claims for years (if ever).

Check out this story:

A Tennessee man is facing charges of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor for what authorities say are three pictures — none of them featuring an actual child's body.

Instead, according to testimony presented at Michael Wayne Campbell's preliminary hearing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Wednesday, the photos feature the faces of three young girls placed on the nude bodies of adult females, CNN affiliate WDEF reported.

The supreme court has already ruled that when no child is actually harmed, it's not a crime and I agree with that ruling. As distasteful as I may think it is, what someone does in their own home that harms absolutely no one and has no potential for harming anyone isn't really any of my business.

If this kind of thing continues should we start prosecuting people who look at other types of extreme porn even if there's no victim? Should anyone looking at porn who's married be prosecuted for adultery? There is an argument that sometimes it's hard to tell the age of the participants and in extreme porn whether or not someone is actually getting hurt (ala the film 8mm), but there have even been cases of people getting in trouble for cartoon and computer generated porn where there's no possibility of a live person being hurt. I won't say that I'm completely decided on this issue, but right now I think that this trend is going just a little too far into the "thought police" arena.

Here is an excellent short essay on how to fix airport security and restore a bit of our dignity and rights at the airports:

Fixing Airport Security

Also be aware that the TSA is making significant strides backwards when it comes to whole body imaging. Where they used to be looking at technology that wasn't as privacy invasive, they've now started making a major push for what some are calling a digital strip search. The most important issue here is that the scanners are being planned as a replacement for metal detectors which means you'd have no choice but to bare all for the TSA.

Bring on the tinfoil underwear…

This is so wrong, I barely know what to say. I sure hope this trend doesn't start to catch on, because a lot of people would give up the information when they're pressured instead of doing the right thing and refusing.

"Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc." the form reads. But Bozeman isn't simply interested in finding out where to look for potentially embarrassing personal details; the city wants full disclosure, since the form demands username and password information for each.

This is way worse than all those sickening social networking sites asking for your e-mail address password.

Update

Here is the contact information for the relevant people in the city if you want to ask them why they thought this would be a good idea.

And just in case someone were to change the form, here's a copy of the original found on their website:

This is for real... they actually expect you to give up your account details!

A mother of 4 who was hit with a massive fee for sharing music online a while back finally won a new trial, but somehow ended up with a fine almost 10 times as high!

Even though there was no proof of any harm done to the recording companies since there's no way for them to show that anyone actually downloaded any music from her, she was slapped with a nearly 2 million dollar fine for her immense crimes (which were never proven).

Even if 100,000 people had downloaded each of the 24 songs she supposedly shared online (which probably wasn't even intentional as filesharing software generally shares what you download by default), that JTAG ERROR: http://the-great-copyright-holder-lie-music doesn't appear to be a post_name, link_note, or url! This is a tragedy and I don't understand it. At best, it might be a judge's way of getting attention on the issue by pushing the verdict to absurd extremes.

The most important part of this story is that there was notice provided to customers of the resubscriptions, but because it was buried in the license agreement, the courts determined that the subscriptions were charged without consent.

The investigators found that "information about automatic renewal charges was not clearly disclosed, but was instead hidden at the bottom of long web pages or in the fine print of license agreements".

The companies have now agreed to provide electronic notification both before and after the renewal of subscriptions. Customers will also be allowed to apply for refunds for up to 60 days after being charged.

Just because it's in a contract, doesn't mean someone understands it. Companies have enormous leverage against regular people and it's nice to see that courts are standing up for the little guy.

In today's afternoon session, a privacy commissioner from Canada gave a talk about the importance of "Privacy by Design" which refers to the concept of building privacy technologies into systems and devices during the design phase. Only then can things like surveillance cameras be implemented safely because they have been rendered incapable of collecting data or details that would be privacy invasive.

Her concept is similar to the concept of building security into devices during design instead of later after they've been fully created and it's a very good point.

The panel this morning consists of members of the FTC, Google, and Microsoft and the subject is profiling people online.

There are so many questions I want to ask such as why Google stores data for so long (which they've avoided answering before) and why the FTC doesn't promote credit freezes (which they've avoided answering before).

In the meantime, there's talk about the different types of data collection each group does and the standard rigamarole about customizing and targeting advertisements as if that's helpful to the end user. Granted having ads that are more appropriate are more useful than less, but I see that as the same as having a neighbor down the street that you hardly know bring you a box of your favorite beef jerky. It's nice, but damned creepy when someone knows that much about you when you don't know who they are, what their intentions are, and how much else they know about you.

I stood up to lecture the panel on the fact that personalized ads aren't necessary for small sites to exist if they use the product recommendation method versus random ad policy like me, opt-out is an unfair business practice since it requires that people become very knowledgeable about ads and how to stop them which is near impossible for regular people, and opt-in is not only necessary, it's easy.

I doubt the information I shared will have any positive effect on the industry, but it was still worth a try.

This week, I'm attending the 2009 CFP conference at the George Washington University in DC. So far, I found out that there's still far too few people that understand privacy when it comes to social networking sites.

Even more interesting was the information about Cross site scripting and worse and just how easy attacks like that (and others) are to use. If I were to put a certain code on this page and you still had Facebook or your bank open in another window, just by viewing this page I could manipulate your accounts.

It's really interesting stuff, but the lesson for the day is to never stay logged into services when browsing around in other windows or tabs.

I was working on some new domain ideas and found this when I did a search for "Geek.com":

So I guess when they talk about geek is a good work now for computer experts and such, this is what they really think and call us behind our backs.

The RIAA has been suing people for filesharing for years, but a Harvard law professor is making the argument that not only is file-sharing not illegal, but that the RIAA should have to return ALL of it's legal winnings for the last many years.

That bill that everyone's been talking about a while just passed with most of the good protections still in tact (go figure). Essentially, the bill is a shinging example of regulation at its best and industry at its worst as it mandates that credit companies stop doing things that are dishonest and one-sided.

Wow. Who knew that without laws to prevent it, companies would stoop to one-sided and dishonest policies for the sake of money… hmmm.

Some of the major points:

It's so very obvious that health record systems should not be accessible online and any such system should have rock-solid security or not be put together at all… obvious to everyone except Virginia that is. What is it with that state? First the public records online and now health records? Are they TRYING to destroy the lives of everyone that lives there?

I'm not a Trekkie… at least, I think I'm not. Today there's a webcomic about some friends waiting in line for the movie and trying to pass the time by doing Trek Trivia. Not only is the question about one of my favorite episodes, but I know the answer to the question! Do I need help?

I've heard stories about people who've used remote login features to take pictures of the people who stole their laptops or at least identify their location. If you're lucky, you might get back your stuff or catch the creep that does it, but you might at least have some fun messing with the guy.