Passengers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage beginning January 1, 2008 as new federal safety rules take effect. The new regulation, designed to reduce the risk of lithium battery fires, will continue to allow lithium batteries in checked baggage if they are installed in electronic devices, or in carry-on baggage if stored in plastic bags.

Common consumer electronics such as travel cameras, cell phones, and most laptop computers are still allowed in carry-on and checked luggage.  However, the rule limits individuals to bringing only two extended-life spare rechargeable lithium batteries, such as laptop and professional audio/video/camera equipment lithium batteries in carry-on baggage

The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours:

• Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.

• You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
• For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.
• Almost all consumer-type lithium metal batteries are below 2 grams of lithium metal. But if you are unsure, contact the manufacturer!

Indeed this regulation will first be applicable on US registered aircrafts but as usual we may see this new regulation applicable on all International flights. 

Usually all electrical devices, including batteries, are subject to safety certification so either their are considered to be safe or manufacturer has to review quality and safety of its products. 

I really wonder on which basis these new rules are made from. Did anyone saw any incident statistics, reports etc.. (apart Sony made laptop batteries) or is it just one additional constraints air travel passengers will have to deal with.

After lighters and matches in 06, liquids in 07, 08 will add batteries to the restriction list.

All details are here as well as the complete list of items with air travel restrictions

British secret services MI5 warned UK businesses about Chinese hackers.

MI5 director-general wrote to 300 UK firms including Banks and law firms to warn them about "electronic espionage attacks" conducted by "Chinese state organizations".

IT Security company Sophos reports that 30 per cent of malware are "made in China". Trojan horses are designed to rob login credentials of anything including email and games. 

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) was already blamed in September 2007 for attacking governments computers of France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and United States, including Pentagon systems.

Trojan horses often target computers with unpatched vulnerabilities and without proper level of security deployed.  

The Chinese government has denied any involvement in the attacks and pointed its finger to unidentified hackers.

The question is now to discover if malware "made in China" are really powerful and smart of if attacked computers were the result of a serious lack of security and preventive protection measures.

Source: The Register 

To take advantage of the potential of Google's Search engine, it's important to know some of its basic tricks

• Keywords: Quality of the responses depends on the quality of the words chosen. For example, "computer" does not give the same results as "PC".
• Typing words in lowercase give you every opportunity not to miss any important reference.
• Quotation marks (" ") make sure that the search engine takes into account all the words.
• Signs "+" and "-" add constraints to your search.
  For example, you can search for documents on George Lucas who only speak of Star Wars (george lucas + star wars) or on the contrary who do not speak of the film (george lucas star wars)
• Wildcards: Google accepts the use of a wildcard (*) for the location of a missing word in a phrase.
• The tilde (~) allows Google to display not only a word but also its synonyms, in a broad sense, that is to say, beyond the true grammatical synonyms, related terms.

More searching options:

• "site: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". Returned results will be only from the selected site.
• "author: xxxxx xxxxxx". Identifies latest articles published by the author in question.
• "insubject: xxxxx" Results show the articles on related requested subjet.
• "location: xxxxx" Displays information bearing to the specified eyes.
• "source: xxxxxx" Results extracted from any source.
• "allintitle: xxxxxx" Results show the articles where all searched keywords are available in the title

The search bar includes also a calculator. Type the calculation directly in your search bar and press enter to have the result displayed.

More about Google seach engine: Google Help

As previously announced on this site, Adobe released earlier this week, Lightroom 1.3 as well as Camera Raw 4.3.

At the same time Adobe Labs offers a public prerelease of its Software Development Kit (SDK) Lightroom 1.3 export. This kit allow developers to enable communication with Lightroom 1.3 and 3rd party tools, web sites and devices. More plugins will certainly available soon on Lightroom Exchange site.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 Export SDK comes with two very useful plugins: 

• FTP Export
• Flickr Upload.

Once dowloaded and uncompressed, plugin modules have to be installed on your computer on locations where Lightroom can find and load them.

• Windows XP: ..\Documents and Users\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules
• Mac OS: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
• Windows Vista:..\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

I just quickly tried the Flickr upload module and found it easy to use and indeed very convenient as it avoids to export files on a local folder and then upload them using Flickr Uploader page or tools.

Something tells me that these plugins will become very popular  

I found the article below on "The Register" site and asked myself the following question: 

If connecting to Internet using an open and unsecured wifi access point is considered as a crime, why authorities do not apply the same principle to other services (mainly electricity and water) we often use without any formal agreement of the owner ?

 " More than half of computer users have illegally stolen Wi-Fi connections, according to The Times – but only 11 alleged offenders have been arrested in the UK, as the police seem to think those deploying Wi-Fi should be more careful about securing their connections.

The data was collected from a "Have Your Say" survey on the website of security-specialist Sophos: apparently 54 per cent of the 560 people who responded admitted nicking bandwidth from insecure Wi-Fi routers.

This might say more about Sophos customers than the general population, and extrapolating the results to every computer user in the country is probably a crime against statistics: so that's exactly what The Times has done.

…

Anyone caught stealing a Wi-Fi connection can be fined up to a grand, even if it's left unsecured, so make sure you ask nicely next time you're looking to log on, and if the person next to you has never stolen a Wi-Fi connection then we have to assume that you have. "

What is your opinion about accessing open wifi ? Do you think it is a crime ?

Source: The Register

Searching the web, I found several online photo editors, and among there some which provide the possibility to upload your photos directly to your favorite site where you can share them.

It was not a surprise to discover that sites such Flickr and Facebook are the most integrated with these online photo editors, closely followed by Picasa and Photobucket. If all online photo editors propose basic editing tools such resize, crop, color balance, etc.. it's difficult to find one which propose all available options. Some tried to be as close as possible from Photoshop, proposing layer tools or distortion tool.

Fine tuning and precise corrections are difficult to obtain but at the opposite these tools, specially when you can edit an already published photo, give you the possibility to adjust your photos from any computer without having to purchase/install software on computers.

My 3 preferred ones are:

• Splashup (formerly Fausto) which is certainly the most complete one. Photoshop looks alike, so you feel comfortable with only if you have some knowledge about Adobe products. Loading a photo may be very slow from time to time (my ISP fault or are they victim of their success ?)

• PicNik which proposes an user friendly interface and does not require Photoshop knowledge. Advanced editing tools, touch-up tool, frames etc.. are only available with the Premium version which cost 25 USD/year. This editor seems to be the easiest and fastest editor available.
• Phixr is a simple one but fast and well integrated too with most usual image sharing sites but not providing preview of the photo you want to edit is a real problem if you do not have title on your photos.
• Some other solutions to may want to give a try : Cellsea, Pixer.us, Snipspot, Fotoflexer, Pikfix, Fanstudio, Online Phototool,  Flauntr, Fotocrib, etc..

  Soon, Adobe will also release an online version of its flagship software "Photoshop". Adobe Photoshop Senior Product Manager John Nack published on his blog earlier last month few lines about "Photoshop Express".

My 1st post about Flickr tools is here

The world of data storage is constantly moving. With more and more data to store and carry, the market propose some interesting solutions.

Time to upgrade ? 

• What is the capacity of your USB stick already? Patriot Memory proposes a 32GB (150x writting speed) USB key for about 580.- USD.

• Western Digital has released a Scorpio 2.5'' SATA hard drive with 320 GB (transfert 300 MB/s) capacity for 290 USD.
• Harsh living condition? I-O data proposed HDMC a 2.5 x 2.5 cm hard drive with up to 12 GB capacity which is shock and water proof. Price 180 USD.

With the possibility to carry-on such storage capacity (e.g 32GB USB stick) could we imagine to have computers installed only with operating system and let's say "standard application" and let users to connect removable media that contains not only their personal data but as well their user profile as well as their usual software (individual software licence vs. per computer ones) ?

What do you think ?

The attacks on Swiss financial institutes with the aim of unjustified enrichment and the threat of the targeted industrial espionage via the internet are the main topics of the fifth semi-annual report of the Reporting and Analysis Centre for Information Assurance.

The report assesses the situation of the first half of the year 2007 in Switzerland and is now available online and clearly shows that the human factor remains the weakest point of ICT security.

Focus areas of issue 2007/I

• Attacks on Swiss financial services
  "Classic" phishing attacks by e-mail with password requests have decreased substantially in Switzerland. Moreover, all such attacks have been unsuccessful. On the other hand, successful attacks with malware have increased. Two-factor authentication systems (e.g. transaction authentication numbers, SecurID, etc.) do not afford protection against such attacks and must be viewed as insecure once the computer of the customer has been infected with malware.

• Industrial espionage and data theft
  The threat posed by targeted state or private industrial espionage continues. Not only the operators of critical infrastructures, the armament industry, or public authorities are threatened. Medium-sized industrial companies as well as manufacturers of luxury articles and fashion are also being targeted. The attacks are carried out by sending targeted e-mails to individual employees which contain malware in their attachments or links to bogus websites.
• Attacks on web servers:
  malware distribution, phishing, data theft Compromising of web servers has increased. The purpose is to use web servers to distribute malware, such as by drive-by infection, to steal data (especially on commercially used servers), to carry out (interim) storage of data (e.g. in connection with phishing), or to distribute messages that are generally political in nature.
• Malware / attack vectors
  Malware is still usually distributed through e-mail attachments or e-mails with links to bogus websites. Using clever social engineering techniques, the victim is deceived into opening the attachment or clicking on the link. Websites installing malware on the computer without any action by the user (drive-by infections) have heavily increased as an infection vector. Vulnerabilities in the operating system, the browser, or other applications are exploited. For a long time now, this no longer only happens on dubious sites, but also on (compromised) serious and well-known sites. Rates of recognition of malware by anti-virus software remain low.

The complete report is available on Melani website in italian, german, french and english.

A complete and useful list of all Internet risks and related protection measures is also available.

Cory Doctorow wrote this Creative Commons-licensed fiction story for Radar Online magazine.

  Une version française est disponible ici

“Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.” –Cardinal Richelieu

“We don’t know enough about you.” –Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Greg landed at San Francisco International Airport at 8 p.m., but by the time he’d made it to the front of the customs line, it was after midnight. He’d emerged from first class, brown as a nut, unshaven, and loose-limbed after a month on the beach in Cabo (scuba diving three days a week, seducing French college girls the rest of the time). When he’d left the city a month before, he’d been a stoop-shouldered, potbellied wreck. Now he was a bronze god, drawing admiring glances from the stews at the front of the cabin.

Four hours later in the customs line, he’d slid from god back to man. His slight buzz had worn off, sweat ran down the crack of his ass, and his shoulders and neck were so tense his upper back felt like a tennis racket. The batteries on his iPod had long since died, leaving him with nothing to do except eavesdrop on the middle-age couple ahead of him.

“The marvels of modern technology,” said the woman, shrugging at a nearby sign: Immigration–Powered by Google.

“I thought that didn’t start until next month?” The man was alternately wearing and holding a large sombrero.

Googling at the border. Christ. Greg had vested out of Google six months before, cashing in his options and “taking some me time"–which turned out to be less rewarding than he’d expected. What he mostly did over the five months that followed was fix his friends’ PCs, watch daytime TV, and gain 10 pounds, which he blamed on being at home instead of in the Googleplex, with its well-appointed 24-hour gym.

He should have seen it coming, of course. The U.S. government had lavished $15 billion on a program to fingerprint and photograph visitors at the border, and hadn’t caught a single terrorist. Clearly, the public sector was not equipped to Do Search Right.

The DHS officer had bags under his eyes and squinted at his screen, prodding at his keyboard with sausage fingers. No wonder it was taking four hours to get out of the god damned airport.

Read the rest of this entry »

76% of 1200 American consumers who participated to Digital Life America – Holiday 2007 Edition survey have included at least one digital lifestyle product on their wish list.

1. flat screen high definition TV set – 35% (men 37% – women 33%)
2. laptop (windows) – 20% (21% – 19%)
3. digital camera – 17% (16% – 18%)
4. desktop PC – 14% (13% – 15%)
5. GPS navigation unit for the car – 10% (11% – 10%)
6. cell phone – 10% (9% – 12%)
7. digital video camera – 9% (8% – 11%)
8. Nintendo Wii – 9% (8% – 9%)
9. Sony PS3 – 7%
10. Blu-ray or HD-DVD player – 6%

First Apple product (laptop) is on rank 11 (9 among women) buzz maker iPhone is 15. Survey participants clearly prefers laptop to desktop computers.

Unfortunately the survey doesn't reveal details about the type of cell phone ("simple" ones or smartphone) and I'm surprised to not ear anything about MP3 players nor PDA. Not trendy anymore or everybody already has one ?

What your wish list would be made of ?

source: Solutions Research Group.