Mr. Know-It-All: Emailing China, Ordering Absinthe, Informing Your Kids
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Mr. Know-It-All sheds light on emailing friends in China, ordering absinthe from Europe and how to tell your twins that fertility drugs caused the multiple birth.
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The Obama Express. My latest piece on Huffington.  If you like it, please feel free to pass it on.  "cheesecake"
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Plus: Are you having an identity crisis? [News.com Extra]
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The search engine company gets ready to unveil a program to do just that. Also: Make CDs while you order at Starbucks & hellip;. Nokia takes a Wall Street hit & hellip;. and more.
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In the beginning, there was BlackBerry. A delicious fruit, yes, but also a clever way to get your e-mail on a pager-like device. Then there was BlackBerry: a clever way to get your
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In the latest call, Best Buy offers important insight into its China biz.
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The United States seeks to tip the scales in China. Plus: China curbs the spread of virtual money... the Turks turn off the 'Tube... and more.
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By Tom Angleberger   tomangleberger@yahoo.com
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GADFLY ALREADY the internet age has given us 'phishing', when criminals use emails to persuade you to give them your bank details.  Now it seems we have the less crooked but nonetheless enraging online experience of 'philfing'  an acronym for 'purposely hiding what I'm looking for'.
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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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Also: NASA officials to make historic trip to China. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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roundup Plus: Gmail delivered to desktops...Chinadotcom mobile services suspended...Maker of disposable RFID tags gets millions...Mitsubishi expands solar production.
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Also: The truth about shopping engines. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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Blog: Is Google gearing up to offer online personal health records? One consultant and author in the electronic healthcare industry says the tea leaves point that way.
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IBM will donate 500 patents for free use. Also:  Yahoo joins Google with hard drive search engine & hellip;.  Inconclusive report on cell phones: Are they a health hazard? & hellip;. and more.
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Six Apart and LiveJournal combine to boast 6.5 million users and a growing business. Also: Microsoft unveils antivirus software.... Canada may stop internet drug sales to America.... and more.
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Google buys a mapquest of its own. Also: Sharp takes us to the future of television in 3-D & hellip;.  PayPal finds a way to make amends for mistakes & hellip;. and more.