[Quote:]

Any fan of the NFL can almost recite the warning by memory: “This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent is prohibited.” The legitimacy of that broad claim may be determined by the Federal Trade Commission after the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a lengthy complaint with the FTC this morning. The CCIA is a trade group with members such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, RedHat, and others that promotes “open markets, open systems, and full, fair, and open competition.” Those companies believe that the overly broad copyright claims “cast a pall” over the tech industry.

The CCIA’s complaint fingers the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBC Universal, Morgan Creek, DreamWorks, Harcourt Inc., and Penguin Group (USA) for deceptive trade practices, accusing them of systematically mispresenting the rights of consumers to use copyrighted material. “These warnings that we have been seeing for decades are false,” CCIA spokesperson Jake Ward told Ars Technica in a Monday interview. “They are a misrepresentation of the law and a violation of consumers’ rights.”

[..]

According to the complaint, such warnings “materially mispresent” US law. Fair use is given short shrift, and as a result, consumers are left with the impression that any use that the rightsholders do not expressly approve is illegal. “Consumers have the right to use the content in legal, noninfringing ways,” Ward said. “Putting these warnings on broadcasts, videotapes, and DVDs is both misleading and threatening.”

[Quote:]

A German security researcher who demonstrated last year that he could clone the computer chip in an electronic passport has revealed additional vulnerabilities in the design of the new documents and the inspection systems used to read them.

Lukas Grunwald, an RFID expert who has served as an e-passport consultant to the German parliament, says the security flaws allow someone to seize and clone the fingerprint image stored on the biometric e-passport, and to create a specially coded chip that attacks e-passport readers that attempt to scan it.

Grunwald says he’s succeeded in sabotaging two passport readers made by different vendors by cloning a passport chip, then modifying the JPEG2000 image file containing the passport photo. Reading the modified image crashed the readers, which suggests they could be vulnerable to a code-injection exploit that might, for example, reprogram a reader to approve expired or forged passports.

“If you’re able to crash something you are most likely able to exploit it,” says Grunwald, who’s scheduled to discuss the vulnerabilities this weekend at the annual DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas.

Normaal flikker ik dit soort dingen gewoon direct in de prullenbak, maar dit is de derde keer dat ik lastig gevallen wordt door het Nivel, dus wat mij betreft staat het me daarom vrij ze even flink te roosteren.

Het Nivel is het “nederlands instituut voor onderzoek van de gezondheidszorg”, en is volgens het briefpapier “iso 9001 gecertificeerd”. Als je het nodig vindt dat soort dingen op je briefpapier te zetten ga je er kennelijk van uit dat je publiek onder de indruk is en niet weet dat het eigenlijk alleen betekent dat je netjes gedocumenteerd hebt op welke manier je alles fout doet, zodat je het elke keer op exact dezelfde manier fout kunt doen.

Afijn, de brief:

Twee weken geleden hebben wij u voor een tweede keer een vragenlijst gestuurd over de ervaringen van consumenten met de zorg en hun zorgverzekeraar. Met deze brief willen wij u voor een laatste maal vragen mee te doen aan het onderzoek door deze vragenlijst in te vullen

Het Nivel is kennelijk te stom om te bedenken dat iemand die twee keer de lijst in de papierbak dondert wellicht helemaal geen zin heeft om mee te doen.

En waar is dit onderzoek voor bedoeld?

De informatie van het onderzoek is bestend voor de rubriek “service” van de keuzegids Zorgverzekeringen op de internetsite (goh, zijn er ook sites die niet op internet zijn waar ik bij zou moeten kunnen?) www.KiesBeter.nl van het Ministerie van VWS. Op deze internetsite kunnen mensen zorgverzekeraars vergelijken op onder andere de premie, dekking, en service en dienstverlening (kennelijk voor het geval het lezen van folders en tarieven te ingewikkeld is). Met behulp van het huidige onderzoek wordt de mening van verzekerden over de kwaliteit en de prestaties van de verschillende zorgverzekeraars vastgesteld.

Nou heb ik de nodige statistiek in m’n opleiding gehad, en als ik dit zo lees zie ik maar één faktor die invloed zou kunnen hebben op de kwaliteit van dit onderzoek waar ik iets mee te maken zou kunnen hebben: steekproefgrootte. En als mijn meedoen zo belangrijk is dat daar drie brieven aan gewaagd worden, hebben de onderzoekers dus de steekproefgrootte volstrekt verkeerd ingeschat, en zijn het dus gewoon incompetente kwijleballen. Het alternatief is dat ze veel nadrukkelijker in mijn mening geinteresseerd zijn dan het beschreven onderzoeksdoel doet vermoeden, en in dat geval liegen ze dus gewoon. Verderop in de brief:

Alle informatie waardoor iemand u of uw familie zou kunnen herkennen wordt vertrouwelijk gehouden en wordt na afloop van het onderzoek vernietigd. Het Nivel zal uw persoonlijke gegevens niet zonder uw toestemming met iemand delen. U kunt ervoor kiezen om deze vragenlijst in te vullen of niet. Als u ervoor kiest om het niet te doen, heeft dit geen invloed op uw verzekering. Wij vragen u om de vragenlijst in dat geval oningevuld terug te sturen in de eerder toegezonden antwoordenvelop.

Geen invloed op de verzekering? GEEN INVLOED? What. de. fuck. hebben jullie gesnoven? Eerst ga je me vertellen dat je met de resultaten een website gaat maken waarmee mensen beter geinformeerd worden over verzekeringen, en nu beweren jullie dat er geen invloed is? Is het concept “marktwerking” jullie zo vreemd dat jullie dat werkelijk met droge ogen durven te beweren? Jullie hele fucking doel is om invloed te hebben op de verzekeringen, en dus op de mijne! Is zo glashard liegen iets dat ook in jullie iso-9001 documenten beschreven staat?

Zoals u kunt zien, is er een nummer op de voorpagina van de vragenlijst gedrukt (linksonder, overdwars). Met dit nummer kunnen wij alleen bepalen of u de vragenlijst heeft teruggestuurd zodat we u geen herinneringen hoeven te sturen. Na afloop van het onderzoek worden uw adresgegevens vernietigd. Uw antwoorden zullen strikt anoniem behandeld worden.

En denken jullie nu werkelijk dat ik na de eerdere stukjes die ik geciteerd heb hier nog maar een woord van geloof?

Als u nog vragen heeft, dan kunt u contact opnemen…

Nee. Als ik niet mee wil doen, flikker ik de bende gewoon in de prullenbak, leer er maar mee te leven. Als ik al contact met iemand ga opnemen, dan met het ministerie dat ongetwijfeld een lieve som heeft moeten betalen om dit onderzoek gedaan te krijgen. Ik denk dat ze best geinteresseerd zijn in incompetentie bij de toeleveranciers.

[Quote:]

Everybody has already taken their whacks at today’s Times Op ed by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, which argued that we “just might win” the war and that the political debate in Washington is “surreal” and out of touch with the progress being made there.

But here’s an amusing postscript to this whole saga. It turns out that this assessment by O’Hanlon today is in some key ways strikingly at odds with…

…the Brookings Institution’s own Iraq Index, a meticulous and regularly updated compilation of stats designed to paint as realistic a portrait as possible of the situation on the ground.

And guess who oversees the Brookings Iraq Index?

Yup — it’s overseen by Michael O’Hanlon.

[Quote:]

He is public transportation’s loudest cheerleader, boasting that he takes the subway “virtually every day.” He has told residents who complain about overcrowded trains to “get real” and he constantly encourages New Yorkers to follow his environmentally friendly example.

But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s commute is not your average straphanger’s ride.

On mornings that he takes the subway from home, Mr. Bloomberg is picked up at his Upper East Side town house by a pair of king-size Chevrolet Suburbans. The mayor is driven 22 blocks to the subway station at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he can board an express train to City Hall. His drivers zip past his neighborhood station, a local subway stop a five-minute walk away.

[..]

Mr. Bloomberg’s use of the subway to get to work appears to have declined over time. In January 2002, he reported taking the train all but one day of his first three weeks. Nowadays, it appears, the S.U.V. is his primary mode of transportation. Based on the reporters’ observations, the mayor took the subway to work about twice a week.

Mr. Loeser said the mayor “walked to the subway when he first started as mayor, and he stopped doing it when cameras staked out his house every morning and walked with him.”

Informed that reporters never noticed any photographers milling outside of the mayor’s town house over the past five weeks, Mr. Loeser replied, “So you’re saying the solution worked.”

[Quote:]

It has long intrigued me why the German people supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. After all, every schoolchild in America is taught that Hitler and his Nazi cohorts were the very epitome of evil. How could ordinary German citizens support people who were so obviously monstrous in nature?

Standing against the Nazi tide was a remarkable group of young people known as the White Rose. Led by Hans and Sophie Scholl, a German brother and sister who were students at the University of Munich, the White Rose consisted of college students and a college professor who risked their lives to circulate anti-government pamphlets in the midst of World War II. Their arrest and trial was depicted in the German movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, which was recently released on DVD in the United States.

[..]

A contrast to the Scholl movie is another recent German movie, Downfall, which details Hitler’s final days in the bunker, where he committed suicide near the end of the war. Among the people around Hitler was 22-year-old Traudl Junge, who became his secretary in 1942 and who faithfully served him in that capacity until the end. For me, the most stunning part of the film occurred at the end, when the real Traudl Junge (that is, not the actress who portrays her in the film) says,

All these horrors I’ve heard of … I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse…. And at that moment I actually realized … that it might have been possible to get to know things.

So here were two separate roads taken by German citizens. Most Germans took the road that Traudl Junge took — supporting their government in time of deep crisis. A few Germans took the road that Hans and Sophie Scholl took — opposing their government despite the deep crisis facing their nation.

Why the difference? Why did some Germans support the Hitler regime while others opposed it?

Each American should first ask himself what he would have done if he had been a German citizen during the Hitler regime. Would you have supported your government or would you have opposed it, not only during the 1930s but also after the outbreak of World War II?

Those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it. So read it, and learn.

Many more great pictures here.

[Quote:]

What is it about reporting on pot that makes people so Puritanical? Today I read in the Guardian Cannabis joints damage lungs more than tobacco – study.

A single cannabis joint may cause as much damage to the lungs as five chain-smoked cigarettes, research has found.

Is that so? Let’s take a look at the data.

Click the link for all the numbers!

[Quote:]

At first glance, next year’s Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.

Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes—votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.

[Quote:]

BS: Let’s move on. Air travelers think you’re capricious. Remember in April when the story went around about the Princeton professor being on a no-fly list because he spoke out against President Bush? His claims were easily debunked, but the real story is that so many people believed it. People believe political activity puts them on the list. People are afraid to complain about being mistreated at checkpoints because they’re afraid it puts them on a list. Is there anything you can do to make this process more transparent?

KH: We need some help on this one. This is the biggest public pain point, dwarfing shoes and baggies.

First off, TSA does not add people to the watch-lists, no matter how cranky you are at a checkpoint. Second, political views have nothing to do with no-flys or selectees. These myths have taken on urban legend status. There are very strict criteria and they are reviewed by lots of separate people in separate agencies: it is for live terror concerns only. The problem comes from random selectees (literally mathematically random) or people who have the same name and birth date as real no-flys. If you can get a boarding pass, you are not on the no-fly list. This problem will go away when Secure Flight starts in 2008, but we can’t seem to shake the false impression that ordinary Americans get put on a “list.” I am open for suggestions on how to make the public “get it.”

Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick, how daft can you be? Let me spell it out:

Transparency

Accountability

Start with those two words, and once you understand what they mean, we’ll move to more difficult concepts like redress, which you clearly fail to understand as well.

[Quote:]

Veel mensen die in de buurt van deze masten wonen, maken zich zorgen over de sterkte van de straling. Sommige gemeenten werken daarom al niet meer mee bij de plaatsing van masten.

Voor gsm gelden limieten van 41 tot 58 volt per meter en voor umts 61 volt per meter. In verreweg de meeste gevallen (198 keer) vonden de onderzoekers een waarde van 2 volt per meter. Eén keer werd 10 volt gemeten. De rest zat daartussen in.

[..]

Het Nationaal Platform Stralingrisico’s is niet onder de indruk van het onderzoek. Volgens hen richtte het onderzoek zich op volwassenen, hoewel bekend is dat ‘jongeren in hun hoofd veel meer straling opnemen dan volwassenen’. “Dat de norm niet wordt overschreden is te verwachten, omdat die in Nederland hoger ligt dan waar ook ter wereld”, stelt het platform. Het blijft er daarom voor pleiten geen masten te bouwen in de buurt van verzorgingshuizen en scholen.

De aanhalingstekens rond het woord ongevaarlijk in de titel heb ik overgenomen van RTL. Je zou er bijna door gaan denken dat er van alles aan de hand is… dat is ook wel zo, maar het onderzoek is prima. De rapportage zuigt.

[Quote:]

Het wordt langzamerhand bijzonder storend dat het journalisten alpha’s zijn die niet door een wetenschappelijk meetverslagje heen kunnen komen, zelfs niet als het onderzoek betreft naar een fenomeen waar ze vrees voor hebben. Als je de moeite neemt om te zeggen dat je twijfelt aan een onderzoek, moet je ook de moeite nemen om het verslag ervan even helemaal te lezen en niet alleen een samenvattinkje.
Ik heb dat pdfje (netto 5 pagina’s tekst en 1 tabel) dus wel even gelezen. Er zijn een paar zaken die rechtgezet dienen te worden. De modale zender geeft 0.7 V/m, niet 2 (modus = 0.9). 98% van de Nederlands zenders voldoet zodoende ook aan de veel strakke Belgische limiet van 3 V/m. Maar die uitschieter van 10 V/m… wilt u nog weten wat dat was? Dat is op verzoek gemeten in een kerktorentje, pal achter de zender die daar aan hing, op 20 cm afstand van het montagemateriaal. En toch scoort die zender ruim onder de Nederlandse norm!

Dat een zendmast slapeloosheid, hoofdpijn, oversekste buurmeisjes en/of impotentie veroorzaakt geloof ik graag; het maakt alleen geen moer uit of die zender nu aan of uit staat.

[Quote:]

OS X’s commercial credentials recently got a major boost from the Open Group. Thanks to the efforts of Apple’s OS boss Kevin Van Vechten and his team, Leopard has cleared all of the hurdles required to attain UNIX 03 certification. That places Apple in elite company. Only Sun, IBM and HP are certified, so OS X turns the Big Three into the Big Four.

Here’s Apple’s Open Group brand certificate, which entitles Apple to use the UNIX brand. I suggest printing this on high rag content paper, framing it and hanging it in your server room or your Mac-graced cubicle. There are UNIX pretenders, and there is the real thing. Mac users, realize that qualifying for UNIX is no small feat, especially for an open source, BSD-based OS. The Open Group standards, the PDFs for which are idiotically marked as free but blocked from PDF download unless you buy your way into a membership, are rooted in System V. Apple is to be commended.

[Quote:]

Everything from detergent to computer discs is packaged with the Sunday newspaper. So why not Bibles? A Christian ministry wants to deliver custom-designed New Testaments to newspaper subscribers around the country as part of an effort to find innovative ways to spread a Christian message. But even in the Bible Belt, not everyone thinks that’s a good idea.

International Bible Society-Send the Light is planning on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to distribute Bibles with 11 newspapers during 2007 and 2008. New Testaments would be packaged in pouches on the outside of newspapers, much like soap or other sample products.

[..]

One reader wondered if he could halt other newspaper ads he doesn’t like.

“Please note on my account that I want to receive the New Testament and ‘opt out’ of all other forms of unwanted solicitation and advertising. I want no toxic hair cream, no aspartame-filled gum or any other form of unwanted advertising and solicitation,” he wrote.

The only way the newspaper will honor that request is by simply cancelling your subscription…

I could put hamburgers in the mailbox of my vegetarian neighbors to help spread the message of carnivorism. I’m absolutely certain they’ll see the light and come to my next Sunday morning BBQ service.

[Quote:]

The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.

According to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

[..]

The aggressive push for more secret informants appears to be part of a new effort to grow its intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. Other recent proposals include expanding its collection and analysis of data on U.S. persons, retaining years’ worth of Americans’ phone records and even increasing so-called “black bag” secret entry operations.

To handle the increase in so-called human sources, the FBI also plans to overhaul its database system, so it can manage records and verify the accuracy of information from “more than 15,000″ informants, according to the document.

Perhaps we should give the FBI a new name.

[Quote:]

Abu Zubaydah was a mess. It was early April 2002, and the al-Qaeda lieutenant had been shot in the groin during a firefight in Pakistan, then captured by the Special Forces and flown to a safe house in Thailand. Now he was experiencing life as America’s first high-value detainee in the wake of 9/11. A medical team and a cluster of F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents stood vigil, all fearing that the next attack on America could happen at any moment. It didn’t matter that Zubaydah was unable to eat, drink, sit up, or control his bowels. They wanted him to talk.

A C.I.A. interrogation team was expected but hadn’t yet arrived. But the F.B.I. agents who had been nursing his wounds and cleaning him after he’d soiled himself asked Zubaydah what he knew. The detainee said something about a plot against an ally, then began slipping into sepsis. He was probably going to die.

The team cabled the morsel of intelligence to C.I.A. headquarters, where it was received with delight by Director George Tenet. “I want to congratulate our officers on the ground,” he told a gathering of agents at Langley. When someone explained that the F.B.I. had obtained the information, Tenet blew up and demanded that the C.I.A. get there immediately, say those who were later told of the meeting. Tenet’s instructions were clear: Zubaydah was to be kept alive at all costs. (Through his publisher, George Tenet declined to be interviewed.)

Zubaydah was stabilized at the nearest hospital, and the F.B.I. continued its questioning using its typical rapport-building techniques. An agent showed him photographs of suspected al-Qaeda members until Zubaydah finally spoke up, blurting out that “Moktar,” or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had planned 9/11. He then proceeded to lay out the details of the plot. America learned the truth of how 9/11 was organized because a detainee had come to trust his captors after they treated him humanely.

It was an extraordinary success story. But it was one that would evaporate with the arrival of the C.I.A’s interrogation team. At the direction of an accompanying psychologist, the team planned to conduct a psychic demolition in which they’d get Zubaydah to reveal everything by severing his sense of personality and scaring him almost to death.

This is the approach President Bush appeared to have in mind when, in a lengthy public address last year, he cited the “tough” but successful interrogation of Zubaydah to defend the C.I.A.’s secret prisons, America’s use of coercive interrogation tactics, and the abolishment of habeas corpus for detainees. He said that Zubaydah had been questioned using an “alternative set” of tactics formulated by the C.I.A. This program, he said, was fully monitored by the C.I.A.’s inspector general and required extensive training for interrogators before they were allowed to question captured terrorists.

[..]

The tactics were a “voodoo science,” says Michael Rolince, former section chief of the F.B.I.’s International Terrorism Operations. According to a person familiar with the methods, the basic approach was to “break down [the detainees] through isolation, white noise, completely take away their ability to predict the future, create dependence on interrogators.”

Interrogators who were sent for classified training inevitably wound up in a Mitchell-Jessen “shop,” and some balked at their methods. Instead of the careful training touted by President Bush, some recruits allegedly received on-the-job training during brutal interrogations that effectively unfolded as live demonstrations.

Mitchell and Jessen’s methods were so controversial that, among colleagues, the reaction to their names alone became a litmus test of one’s attitude toward coercion and human rights. Their critics called them the “Mormon mafia” (a reference to their shared religion) and the “poster boys” (referring to the F.B.I.’s “most wanted” posters, which are where some thought their activities would land them).

The reversed sere tactics they originated have come to shatter various American communities, putting law enforcement and intelligence gathering on a collision course, fostering dissent within the C.I.A., and sparking a war among psychologists over professional identity that has even led to a threat of physical violence at a normally staid A.P.A. meeting. The spread of the tactics—and the photographs of their wild misuse at Abu Ghraib—devastated America’s reputation in the Muslim world. All the while, Mitchell and Jessen have remained more or less behind the curtain, their almost messianic belief in the value of breaking down detainees permeating interrogations throughout the war effort.

“I think [Mitchell and Jessen] have caused more harm to American national security than they’ll ever understand,” says Kleinman.

[..]

The sere tactics aren’t just morally and legally wrong, critics say; they’re tactically wrong. They produce false leads and hazy memories. “[Mitchell and Jessen] argue, ‘We can make people talk,’” says Kleinman. “I have one question. ‘About what?’” As one military member who worked in the sere community says, “Getting somebody to talk and getting someone to give you valid information are two very different things.”

Take a look at this building. In a just world, that’s where Mitchell and Jessen would testify about their work, and following that, it’s where Bush and Cheney would defend their actions. It’s the International Criminal Court where currently The Special Court for Sierra Leone is scheduling a case against Charles Taylor for the exact same thing: crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Here is an old joke, slightly adapted. There is a yearly competition between US intelligence forces, featuring the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the CIA. The first task is that each agency pick its best agent. They will each be given a pen knife and sent into the woods of Colorado, to kill a bear.

After an our, the FBI agent returns with the paws of a bear, to prove he has done it. After three hours, the NSA agent returns with the ears of a bear, to prove his accomplishment. But it is seventeen hours before the CIA agent returns, and, when he does, he is wearing the skin of a squirrel around his neck like a scarf.

The officials go to discover what has happened. “That’s not the skin of a bear you have,” they tell him. “It’s a squirrel you’ve killed.”

“Trust me,” The CIA agent says. “After 17 hours, he admitted he was a bear.”

[Quote:]

The state of California conducted a security review of their electronic voting machines earlier this year. This was a serious review, with real security researchers getting access to the source code. The report was issued last week, and the researchers were able to compromise all three machines — by Diebold Election Systems, Hart Intercivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems — multiple ways. (They said they could probably find more ways, if they had more time.)

Final report and details about the audit here. Good blog entries here and here. We don’t know what California will do now.

This is no surprise, really. The notion that electronic voting machines were somehow more secure every other computer system ever built was ridiculous from the start. And the claims by machine manufacturers that releasing their source code would hurt the security of the machine was — like all these sorts of claims — really an attempt to prevent embarrassment to the company.

Not everyone gets this, unfortunately. And not everyone involved in voting:

Letting the hackers have the source codes, operating manuals and unlimited access to the voting machines “is like giving a burglar the keys to your house,” said Steve Weir, clerk-recorder of Contra Costa County and head of the state Association of Clerks and Election Officials.

No. It’s like giving burglars the schematics, installation manuals, and unlimited access to your front door lock. If your lock is good, it will survive the burglar having that information. If your lock isn’t good, the burglar will get in.

[Quote:]

Fewer businesses are now planning to move to Windows Vista than seven months ago, according to a survey by patch management vendor PatchLink Corp., while more said they will either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X.

In a just-released poll of more than 250 of its clients, PatchLink noted that only 2% said they are already running Vista, while another 9% said they planned to roll out Vista in the next three months. A landslide majority, 87%, said they would stay with their existing version(s) of Windows.

Those numbers contrasted with a similar survey the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based vendor published in December 2006. At the time, 43% said they had plans to move to Vista, while just 53% planned to keep what Windows they had.

I wonder who paid for these surveys.

[Quote:]

What’s in your wallet?

If it were up to ExxonMobil, it might be more than 2,000 gas credit cards.

Manhattan accountant Frank Van Buren, who has carried an Exxon gas card for his business for 17 years, called customer service recently to say his card was near its expiration date, and requested two new ones.

He got them – followed three weeks later by a box from Texas. Inside were 1,000 credit cards, all with his name and account number.

He called customer service to complain and was told to destroy the cards.

“Believe me, we shredded them,” Van Buren said, adding that the process took about three hours. “Anybody could have taken those cards – they were in front of my door.”

He thought that was that. Until another box arrived this week.

“How could you send me 2,000 cards by mistake?” Van Buren said he asked customer service after the second plastic payload arrived.