Sites like ours that take Paypal (see the donation link at the bottom of each of our pages) have long suffered from a misperception that we do not take credit cards. In fact, Paypal has for a long time permitted people without paypal accounts to complete there transaction using just a credit card — so go ahead and donate here if you wish :-). Anyway, a story on story on News.Com unveils a new plan by Paypal to offer a virtual merchants account that would allow buyers on a merchant site to complete a Paypal/Credit Card transaction without leaving the merchant’s site. The cost for the transaction is the same as the current cost, but there is apparently going to be a $20 per month charge for that. For any kind of volume at all, it just might be worth it.

Rep. Rick Boucher is on a crusade to stop Hollywood and the recording industry from stifling tech innovation and reducing consumers “fair use” rights. Wired has an interview with the good senator which you can find here and it’s well worth a read considering how rare it is to find folks in power looking to defend consumers (the little guys) over companies (the 800 pound Gorillas).

Not that this is likely to surprise anybody, but Fairfax has a report from security expert Bruce Schneier that details that Windows is still the favourite OS of malicious parties everywhere and that DCOM and RPC appear to be the favoured attack vectors used when writing malicious code. Not to mention flaws in web browsers like Internet Explorer. The prediction of future attacks being “blended” in that they target specific software flaws with exploit code and can therefore spread without human interaction is nothing new either since it’s happened several times already. So apparently we can expect more of the same except for the likelihood that such code is going to be able to target several different exploits in the same Virus/Worm package. Interestingly he also predicts that peer to peer networks will be used more in the future as a distribution mechanism for malicious code and that more of them will use search engines to target specific hosts in an effort to hide their presence better.

SecurityFocus has an article that is well worth the read for anybody interested in security and privacy. Specifically how does one balance the need for privacy with the requirement of security? When your library asks for your fingerprints before letting you use their systems, or local councils ask for the same thing, you find yourself wondering just who can get hold of the information about you that is stored away in multiple databases. As the article points out, the Patriot act may make your information available to people you’d perhaps prefer didn’t have access, and there isn’t much you can do about it either. Well worth the read.

In yet another cell phone caper, a phone belonging to Jimmy Buffet is reported to have been found and used to call former President Bill Clinton, according to the Smoking Gun Website. The memory card from the cell phone is still missing.

If you have a cell phone with any sensitive information you should immediately enable a user password that locks the phone against outside use. In addition, consider using coded names or nicknames for your aquaintences so that any Tom, Dick or Marvin could be dialing your friends and selling your contacts. With the advent of pda type of phones, even more sensitive information is often saved in them including financial information.

Mike Industries got a new Casio camera … and now I want one too. His Casio EX 2750 boasts basically zero shutter delay ( a big advantage over my Sony), 220 photos with a $69 memory card, and 7.2 mega-pixels. The video sample and photo sample he shows on his site are awesome. It is time for all of us to go digital.

There has been numerous accounts of how MSN has had to tone down the China MSN portal to eliminate such evil words as “democracy” and “freedom” and “human rights” in order to keep the powers that be over there happy, and as much as I’d like to jump on the bandwagon and condemn Microsoft for it, I can’t bring myself to do it. The reason I can’t is pretty simple, MSN are not the first, and they won’t be the last. China is a massive potential market for all of these big companies, and China is rigidly communist controlled. The Chinese government has a long standing tactic of controlling (or trying to control) everything their people see, hear and read. The Internet is a much less “many and varied thing” in China. Sites over there that run counter to the government’s views have seemingly disappeared and external sites are often blocked from access by the people. So Microsoft wants into China for the potential profits, but they have to play nice with the government in order to do it, so they did. Google and Altavista have been blocked by China in the past for linking to forbidden sites, and search engines that have a presence in China have had to tow the official line. The fact that Microsoft blocked a few words is hardly surprising in light of their history and apparent desires. They are a public company, they are in it for the money, and there is big money in China.

To get an idea of how much effort China puts into making sure their people don’t see anything untoward, opennetinitiative has an interesting technical summary of the systems in place and how they work. Protesting that sites should make no allowances for the Chinese government is not going to achieve anything useful. Some information for the people is better then none at all and hopefully one day the lack of information freedom in the country will be abolished. But criticizing any company that has to make allowances to be heard in that country serves no purpose at all. Having said that, sites that propagandize the party line are another matter entirely.