Symbian OS Goes Open Source

Proves Steve Jobs didn’t invent smartphones

The Symbian platform, which has been developed over more than 10 years and has shipped in more than 330 million devices around the world, is now completely open and the source code is available for free. According to the Symbian Foundation, an industry group; the transition from proprietary code to open source has been the largest such project in software history.
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Less completely wasted space

IDF 2009: New 2.5in SSD drive standard

EVERYONE KNOWS that Solid-State Drives (SSDs) are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts, which makes them faster and more reliable than hard-disk drives (HDDs). SSDs can also be manufactured in physical formats that are much smaller and thinner than their old-fashioned HDD counterparts. Nevertheless, the shape of the connectors that SSDs use to interface with devices has remained the size and shape of the traditional HDD form-factors.
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Process Control Network Security: New Problems

Is obscurity really enough?

THIS WEEK AT BLACK HAT, and starting today at Defcon, the buzz around process control and power grid hacking has been quite noticeable. Mike Davis and Tony Flick each presented talks on power grid security issues, whilst Travis Goodspeed discussed the latest vulnerabilities in the wireless radio networking hardware. Informal hardware hacking tutorials have abounded, so I decided to take a closer look.
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IBM Fights Identity Theft With Biometric Passport.

Try to change your eye color or height!

BEING A VICTIM of identity theft is no fun, but it is still possible to change your account numbers, it is a whole lot more difficult to change your eye color or height! Because of this, protecting biometric data is a particularly serious issue. Biometrics (physical measurements, voice or image and more) are used by many entities to improve authentication of the identity of passport and other ID holders.
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A look at the TJ Maxx Data Security Fiasco

The banks win.

The TJX retail chain has agreed to pay $9.75 million to the states after a huge data breach that exposed the personal information of millions of cardholders to identity thieves. They have also agreed to implement and maintain a “comprehensive information security program”, supposedly designed to safeguard consumer data at TJX. Since they already attested that they were complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standards, why should consumers believe them now?
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IBM releases new Tivoli identity manager

A step backwards?

IDENTITY MANAGEMENT and role-based access management have traditionally required several separate software tools, but now, IBM is blurring that line. They’ve just announced the release of the latest version of Tivoli Identity Manager, which includes an integrated role management system and embedded provisioning system. The question is: Is this really an improvement?
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