You may or may not have seen some recent articles mentioning Zune’s that seem to be malfunctioning at an alarming rate. So far there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer as to why this is happening but there is some speculation that it is caused by a recent firmware update. There is no fix either at this moment.
“the City of Decatur, Georgia is evaluating the use of a virtual world interface to “encourage community networking, improve civic engagement, and promote economic development””
I don’t want to be the one saying this wont work but this wont work. People don’t just go online and spend their free time walking a virtual world for no reason. The reason WoW and games like that work is because not only are they interactive, they are competitive as well. You have to have a reason for people to get into these places and usually it has to be fun. Not to mention many of these virtual world’s are actually falling to pieces recently as funding is diminishing as well as a lack of people playing them, although not in the case of WoW which is actually seeing a huge increase in the number of players.
Anyways, sorry but this is not going to work.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
Some security researchers have been examining just how big of a deal hacking financial information has become. You can check out this article for more information. It might be too technical for most people to understand because of the terminology involved. I will sum up some of the more important aspects here.
“stolen identities, bank accounts and credit card numbers are sold in bulk every day in shadowy online forums, often for pennies on the dollar. In its analysis, Symantec found in 2007 that the going rate for the keys to assuming someone else’s identity was between $14 and $18 per victim.”
This is big business.
“33 gigabytes worth of purloined data from more than 170,000 victims. Included in those troves were more than 10,700 online bank account credentials, 149,000 stolen e-mail credentials, 5,682 credit card numbers, and 5,712 sets of eBay credentials.”
This was just a small sample of what was available using only two different points of access. What this means is that the actual numbers would be staggering and probably includes information about almost everyone. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions but I think I have a pretty good idea of how many different ways there are to get information like this. What is even more disappointing is that large companies are required by law to disclose if they have had a security break but they rarely do and hardly ever specifically identify who had what stolen. I really suggest reading the entire article, not to scare but to make aware.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
That question is probably something that you don’t normally ask yourself when you own a business. But in the age of technology and computers this is something to seriously consider. According to this story a man in Winnipeg had $52,000 added to his bill after a hacker(s) gained control of his voice mail. While this seems out of the norm it actually seems very easy to do and it doesn’t look like most phone systems have any sort of prevention for this sort of thing. With only a 4 digit code protecting you how safe can you be?
I would definitely read the article and if you or your business has a similar phone system I would check into this. The ironic part is this guy’s business is networking and security. This may or may not be something new but it is definitely something to keep an eye on.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
Yes you heard me right. Some ass in Dubai decided to further wreak havoc on the planet and install pipes under the sand that contain a refrigerant. Frankly the story makes me so angry that it was difficult to even read it.
One thing to note is that if you can actually get through the article there are some good quotes by someone who apparently thinks this is ridiculous as well.
““Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles,” she said.
Aided by cheap oil and gas, Middle Eastern nations have poured enormous resources into controlling temperature. About 60% of Dubai’s huge power bill is for air-conditioning; each person living there has a carbon footprint of more than 44 tons of CO2 a year.”
To me this is one of those articles that doesn’t “make me think” it just makes me sick.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
I know everyone gets freaked out when it comes to genetics. I frankly don’t see why. Yes we can manipulate genes and it works great. There are ethical issues involved such as creating monsters, super human soldiers, and countless other scenarios that people have been dreaming up since work first began in this field. But I think most people can see the practical applications that are involved.
In the case of this story it is rather urgent that something be done about breast cancer. “Women in three generations of her husband’s family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s.”
Anyways the story is a pretty good read and I for one look forward to eliminating these sorts of diseases if we can.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
A Canadian student at Carleton University in Canada has developed a very revolutionary prototype that significantly increases battery life in popular phones and I would think could see its way into other devices as well. The problem with these devices is a significant portion of energy is wasted transferring through wires. So what did he do different? Got rid of the wires! By putting a wireless transmitter in the device it seems to save a tremendous amount of energy and works great so far.
I came across this article and thought it was pretty interesting. I think changing out city lights for LED lights makes perfect sense. Not only will it pay for itself it will save the environment by using less energy. The bulbs also last longer. Now if we could only swap them out for solar lights maybe I would be even more enthusiastic. Maybe they can be converted later once the technology gets better?
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
The problem Mozilla is having with Google specifically is competition with it’s new browser, Chrome. You see, “Mozilla is dependent on Google for the vast majority of its revenue and has previously worked closely with the search king’s engineers on the development of Firefox.” With Firefox taking 1/5 of the world’s browser users things could really heat up. With no financial backing the company would seem doomed. It will be interesting to see what happens but I really wouldn’t want to see anything happen to Firefox.
I came across this article the other day. Apparently high school students in Maryland are faking out traffic cameras using their teachers’ license plate information on the cars and purposely speeding past the cameras. What this does is automatically send a ticket to the offending plate owner and the cameras cant seem to tell the difference between a real plate and the faked ones. All it takes is some glossy paper.
To me this not only shows traffic cameras do little or nothing to actually enforce laws, they seem more harm than good. Personally I don’t want us to be moving towards a surveillance society like the UK seems headed.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001today or send me an email.
