Up Front: Ballmer says Bing may be worth investing 10% of Microsoft's income
Friday's tech headlines
Wired
• Remember the TJX breach? The "hacker" accused of masterminding the thing lived large on the proceeds, but his trusty programmer -- the guy who coded the notorious "blabla" sniffer -- is broke, banned from touching computers, and awaiting sentencing. Poor pookie.
• In other breach-aftermath news, the 11th Circuit has dismissed most of a class-action suit filed by veterans whose data was on a hard drive stolen from the Veterans Administration back in 2007.
• Bruce Schneier has an essay on how science-fiction writers can provide insight on potential security risks to the Department of Homeland Security. Turns out that it's related to how we analyze risk-management data.
Ars Technica
• The city of Bozeman, Montana is requiring that job applicants hand over information on any site for which they have an account -- not just usernames, but passwords.
• The lawsuits may rage around it, but Google Books is still attending to details such as usability. A nice assortment of upgrades makes searching and direct linking much easier.
Guardian (UK)
• A recent ruling by a UK court allowed The Times to reveal the identity of an anonymous blogger -- a policeman who'd written an award-winning blog about the travails of the job. The information meant a written reprimand for the officer and the deletion of his blog from the Net. Jean Seaton, who chaired the Orwell Prize committee that gave Detective Constable Richard Horton that award, comments on the distressing implications for blog anonymity. To illustrate the value of anonymous work blogs such as (the late) NightJack, Alexandra Topping compiles a list of six gripping examples; get 'em while you can.
• Twitter and other non-linear, multi-thread content systems are changing our outlook on narrative. In other words, if you think movies like Duplicity and Memento were confusing, you're not going to like where things are headed. Paul Schrader backs that up with further examples.
• Keith Stuart has a nice look at the "virtual community" -- specifically, the folks who flipped out when the keepers of Left 4 Dead announced a swift sequel. Ranting, perspective-impaired people can form a community too. Or, you know, so we've heard.
New York Times
• PC manufacturers say that while China may be backing off the requirement that its citizens use the Green Dam filtering software, they're cutting PC manufacturers no slack on including it on systems sold ther.
• The Flip camera made shooting video easier for anyone capable of pushing one button and lifting their arm; Ashlee Vance looks at a fun new Windows program called Super LoiLoScope MARS that promises to do much the same for the video-editing process.
Wall Street Journal
• Tor for the democracy win! The venerable onion-routing anonymizer lends a hand in Iran.
• The battle over taxing online sales continues. Just two days ago Amazon told affiliates in North Carolina that if their state government didn't drop the idea of having the site collect the state's 4.5% sales tax, they'd drop all the affiliates. Amazon believes the taxation to be unconstitutional.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• You say you're interested in this Twitter craze but you don't know where to jump into the fray? You'd read it if you could find anything useful in there? A couple of former Microsofties have a new site that might be able to help, called CrowdEye. Nick Eaton has details.
• Speaking of Twitter, users are having way too much fun mocking Congressman Pete Hoekstra's tin-eared comparison of various House political antics with the uproar in Iran. Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera picks some choice examples from Pete Hoekstra Is A Meme.
DaniWeb
• During his campaign, President Obama called on all Americans to volunteer in our communities. If you're ready for "the summer of service" but aren't sure where you might be of assistance, that "CraigsList for service" he was talking about has finally come to pass.
• Online advertisers get their shorts in a bunch over clickthrough, but a new study indicates that clickthrough matters less than engaging content that's related to the rest of the page. Ron Miller has more.
• Ken Hess, who apparently ran into some annoyance with community managers for certain Linux distros, gets a little feisty and suggests a whole new business model.