Medical records of Colorado residents compromised

from Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin

Jon Gordon from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) says,

On MPR's wavLength blog and American Public Media's Future Tense program, there's a story about how we came across personally identifiable medical records for thousands of residents of Colorado (and some from Illinois) on an FTP server that required no username/password to view the data. Data was sensitive, and some records included SSNs.

Read More...

Summary only...

Why English is Hard

Big difference between "attendee" and "attendant" -- one attends, the other attends to. :-)

Read More...

Summary only...

Brother's RL-700S prints out RFID cards

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless

It's just too fitting that a company dubbed Brother would unleash a printer that enables even the little guy to become a Big Brother, but the RL-700S printer can indeed pop out IC tag labels with embedded RFID by the dozen. Presumably marketed towards businesses who need to keep better track of personnel, this machine also sports an RFID reader to keep a digital eye on those passing by, and even laminates the cards so that your dutiful subordinates will never suspect that their hard-earned "Employee of the Month" card is actually an undercover tracking device. Additionally, users can even pick up an optional PS-9000 module that enables network printing, and while we're not savvy on the price, it looks like it'll only be available in the oft surveyed nation of Japan anyway.

Read More...

Summary only...

Dell's ultra-thin LCD concept with DisplayPort going retail?

from Engadget by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Displays

Remember that super swanky Dell monitor concept we went ga ga over back at January's CES? Yeah, we still find it hard to believe it's a Dell design. Well, it'll apparently be up for sale later in the year. What's more, it features the new VESA approved DisplayPort 1.1 interface which allows Dell to keep the panel depth to a crazy thin 0.5-inches. Although DisplayPort is said to support a resolution 4x that of today's HDTV resolutions, the panel on this pup was only pumping an estimated 1920 x 1200 when we saw it. No specs or price but we expect good things given Dell's past performance in delivering top-notch displays on the cheap.

Read More...

Summary only...

Researchers tout better, brighter LEDs

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Displays

A pair of researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science seem to think they're well on their way to building a better LED -- one that's not only brighter than existing LEDs, but more energy efficient and less expensive to boot. According to Physorg, the team's biggest success so far is red phosphorescent LED (or PLED) that delivered a record-breaking 18 lumens per watt (compared to an average of 12 lumens per watt with current red LEDs). The key to that, it seems, was to simplify the LED as much as possible, which they did by adding a polymer powder and liquid mixture to a "previously top-secret material" developed by Canon. The resulting "paint-like product" was then used to coat a layer of glass, with a charge then added to get the whole thing going. From the sound of it, these new wonder LEDs should be making their way into consumer products sooner rather than later, with Canon (naturally) reportedly already having licensed the technology and the first commercial products expected in "about three years."

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...