ePassports 'at risk' from cloning
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The hi-tech ePassport could make forgery and identity theft easier, BBC Click discovers.
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In 1980, I signed a deal with a company to market a product I was developing. The contract required me to turn over the source code, which I did. One day I went to a meeting at the office of the company, and there on the product manager's desk, right next to a door that opened to the outside, was a floppy labeled "Dave Winer's source code" in big letters.  If you own a Mac you may soon find out what that felt like. It's amazing to me that the tech blogosphere doesn't treat Apple's policy re broken hard disks as the huge gaping security hole that it is.  Think about it. We worry about bad people getting their hands on little pieces of data that, when added together, give them the power to be you in banking and credit transactions.  Think about what you would do if your laptop was stolen. Well, if you own a Mac and its hard disk goes bad, and you make the mistake of bringing it to Apple for service, you will turn over all that data to Apple. Not "may" or "might" but "will." What Apple in turn does with that data is none of your affair. They don't sign anything or offer any guarantees that they won't sell the disk to a data miner. Think it can't happen or that it's unlikely? I don't gain much comfort from your feeling of security. I've been writing about this issue since December 22. Usually when I write something critical of Apple, the results are mixed. Some people are supportive, but far more people attack. This time the ratio is very different. Almost everyone who has commented gets that there's a huge problem here. Can we solve this problem? Of course we can.  Some say that other vendors do this too. That gives me less comfort, not more. That means there's no escaping this crazy way of treating user's confidentiality. Ultimately it hurts the vendors because people can't use their computers for things the manufacturers say we can.  Further, it's got to be an issue for the banks, brokerage firms, credit agencies. If you are a newspaper and you employ reporters and they use a computer, how exactly are you guarding the confidentiality of your sources? If you're a confidential source, don't you have an interest when the reporter gives their computer manufacturer all their data to do with as they please? Imagine what you would do if it turned out there was a bug in a Netgear or Linksys router that allowed, under special circumstances, a mailicous person to gain access to the full content of your hard disk at any time. Would you have a problem with that? This is worse than Microsoft's neglect of malware that got me to stop using their computers. In that case it was Microsoft being neglegent. This time Apple itself is the cause of the problem. It's as if they planted a virus in their operating system that entitled them, under special circumstances, completely out of the user's control, to gain access to everything on your disk, with as much time as they want, with no way for you to prevent or even detect the intrusion.  See also: My letter to Steve Jobs.
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New rule creates potential security flaw for domain name transfers.
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Batches of human embryonic stem  cells available under the strict policies of the U.S.  government are contaminated with an animal molecule and are  probably no good for using to treat people, scientists reported  on Sunday.
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Stem cells from human embryos are seen as the future of medicine, but a major ethical question surrounds the research: Should federally funded scientists be allowed to extract the cells from embryos, a process which destroys them? Current U.S. laws clearly say &ldquo;no.&rdquo;  Ian Wilmut, who made history when he cloned  Dolly the sheep in 1996, is now calling on scientists to inject human DNA into animal egg cells as a workaround to ethical and legal roadblocks. His commentary appears in Nature Reports Stem Cells, an online stem cell resource created by the journal Nature. ...
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Almost everything that can be said has been said about the latest moves by Microsoft to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Linux. Countless pundits and analysts have pointed out that Microsoft threats are toothless. Some have noted that Microsoft has singled out Linux and OpenOffice, the biggest threats to its monopoly on operating systems and office suites. Surely Microsoft could claim that the *BSDs infringe on similar patents if not the same ones. But the *BSDs do not pose as great a threat to the company. Others have pointed out that Microsoft would be insane to pull an SCO and sue its own customers. Still others have noted that IBM and/or OIN could respond to a patent war with a massive retaliation in patent infringement claims. I have no doubt that Microsoft has lifted a lot of GPL code (more likely algorithms) for Windows, which would prevent Microsoft from following through with its threats. To do so would require that Microsoft open its own code to scrutiny. The list goes on, and others have covered the angles very well. There is one perspective I haven't yet seen, at least not the way I propose to deal with it. This perspective follows below.
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Officials in Ecuador are worried about the discovery of foreign species on the remote Galapagos Islands.
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Britain&#39;s leading academic institution is backing an international campaign to stop the US securing an international ban on all forms of human cloning.
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Users who fear that their Windows XP software might be counterfeit could get free legitimate replacements from Microsoft under a scheme announced last week.
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By Ben Goldby; James Green  Internet shoppers in the West Midlands have been warned to be on their guard after an investigation into eBay found the popular auction site is a prime target for counterfeiters.
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A California company says it has cloned two human embryos. Will someone please tell us what the big deal is?
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Experts say the move could lead to suits against the U.S. or private companies.
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Cloneburgers won't come with warnings. When the government approves food from cloned animals, expected in the next year, the Food and Drug Administration doesn't plan special labels. Government scientists have found no difference between clones and conventional cows, pigs or goats.
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It goes against the current scientific conventional wisdom. But a suprising new study suggests that therapeutic cloning may be more successful using the most mature adult cells
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The human embryonic stem cells available for research are contaminated with nonhuman molecules from the culture medium used to grow the cells, researchers report.
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CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy Aug. 22, 2004 - Pope John Paul II warned in a statement released Sunday that humanity&#39;s speedy progress in science and technology risks overlooking moral values, citing with particular concern experiments in human cloning.
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Rogue copying software lets users clone anything or anyone they want in the virtual world. By letting its community respond, Linden Labs sets the stage for a bold experiment in alternatives to U.S.-style copyright. Commentary by Jennifer Granick.