BigConna.com

(Computerworld) -- Looking for a perfectly good reason to buy a Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) game system? How about this: Starting at the end of this month, PS3 users can help researchers at Stanford University find a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

My boss in the IT department here at UT sent me this article detailing the recent RIAA lawsuits brought against 28 of our students for downloading music. In addition to practically being sworn to silence when interacting with these students, we were also encouraged to memorize the list of alleged offenders. We're the only organization that knows who these students actually are.

(Computerworld) -- Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.'s chairman, was the world's richest person for the 14th consecutive year, Forbes announced yesterday as it released its mogul rankings for 2006.

Mark Benjamin | FORT BENNING, Ga. -- "This is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins, who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a spine problem that doctors say would be damaged further by heavy Army protective gear. "This whole thing is about taking care of soldiers," he said angrily. "If you are fit to fight you are fit to fight.

Brice Bible, the interim Chief Information Officer at OIT where I work, has recently been hired by Ohio University as their new CIO. In the past year, the school has been hit by major data breaches that revealed the personal information of approximately 173,000 users and damaged the reputation of the school's IT group. Basically Brice is going up to clean house and show them how it's done.

(Computerworld) -- A freshly installed copy of Firefox is a great software package, but what makes this open-source browser so special is the ability to customize it via extensions and themes to really make it yours. The problem is, there are so many available add-ins, it's tough to know what's worth installing and what's just going to junk up your system.

(IDG News Service) -- A security expert has cracked one of the U.K.'s new biometric passports, which the British government hopes will cut down on cross-border crime and illegal immigration.

The attack, which uses a common RFID (radio frequency identification) reader and customized code, siphoned data off an RFID chip from a passport in a sealed envelope, said Adam Laurie, a security consultant who has worked with RFID and Bluetooth technology. The attack would be invisible to victims, he said.

"Gr8Apes writes with a just-breaking AP story reporting that the FCC is wrapping up a settlement in which four major broadcast companies would pay the government $12.5 million and provide 8,400 half-hour segments of free airtime for independent record labels and local artists. The finish line is near after a 3-year investigation. An indie promoter is quoted: 'It's absolutely the most historic agreement that the independent community has had with radio. Without a doubt, nothing else comes close.'"

read more...
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/06/1640224.shtml

Concert dates provided by DiscExchange.com:
January 15, 2010 Dirty Guv'nahs Square Room
January 16, 2010 Brian Regan Tennessee Theatre
January 16, 2010 The Necks Bijou Theatre
January 16, 2010 Greencards/Infamous String Dusters Square Room
January 19, 2010 Alejandro Escovedo Bijou Theatre

Not really, j/k.

J/k again! This blog is about, precisely, what blogs were born to be about: whatever in the hell I want.