A recent news report from the Associated Press further illustrates the dangers of posting one’s personal information on social networking Web sites and other parts of the Internet designed to make life easier for consumers. According to the story, a scheme was uncovered, revealing that hundreds of thousands of people who posted their resume and other personal information on the employment Web site Monster.com might have been victims of identity theft, even phishing.

Apparently, these con artists have stolen user names and passwords from recruiters who use the Web site to find job candidates. Using these data to access into the Monster.com system, the hackers then got naughty, even creating e-mail messages that look like they came from legitimate recruiters. Instead, these messages brought spyware and other malicious programs into jobseekers’ computers.

Pretty neat, Genghis Khan and Hitler combined could not have come up with a scheme more nefarious than that.

220-Megapixel Computer Display

Too bad that this computer display system, which comes with up to 220 million pixels in screen resolution, is destined to be used solely by scientists requiring stratospheric levels of megapixels. I can imagine what die-hard gamers would give up just for an hour of Halo 3 engagement with the Highly Interactive Parallelized Display Space, more simply and confusingly known as the HIPerSpace (I guess, it rhymes with hyperspace).

The display system, which links up two computer screens located at the University of California in San Diego and the university system’s Irvine campus, boasts of a combined 420-megapixel displaying power.

UC engineers and scientists, however, are aiming to create a display system with half a billion pixels, or a gigapixel resolution combined.

Sirs and madams, if I did promise to help you secure funding for such a project, would you then let me use the display system with my PlayStation?

Google Flies You to the Moon

After allowing its users to virtually tour anywhere on Earth, Google now wants us to have a virtual peek at the rest of the Universe. In a partnership with the Baltimore, Maryland-based Space Telescope Science Institute, the agency in charge with science operations for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the leading search engine company now offers the Sky in Google Earth.

Modeled after Google Earth, the program (a free, downloadable browser available at http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html) allows users to see images from outer space as seen by the space telescope.

So if you have wanted for quite sometime to see moons, stars, galaxies, comets, and other space images ala Captain Kirk, what are you waiting for? Go ahead, download that browser and go bravely where nobody else has gone before…virtually, that is.

Rambus Gets EU’s Goat

It would seem that lately the European Union is bothered by any business enterprise that finds itself at an advantageous position. Intel, Microsoft, even Apple, well these companies are not exactly shining examples of benevolence to competitors. And honestly, I find comfort in knowing that some government agencies do exert efforts to protect consumers and disadvantaged business enterprises.

Still, I worry sometimes that the EU might be overstepping some boundaries. I am afraid that that its interpretation of protecting consumers and business might be too rigid, or overzealous perhaps.

Recently, the European Commission sent a formal “statement of objections” to American technology firm (again, another US-based corporation) Rambus, detailing the agency’s opinion that the company is violating the EU’s fair trade rules. The complaint focuses on Rambus’ alleged demands for “unreasonable royalties for the use of certain patents for Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAMS) chips.”

Well, I guess people or companies that invent or develop new technologies are reasonably entitled to earn from those technologies. Unless, there are clear and well-defined instances of abuse, I suppose government agencies should keep their hands clear of it and let market forces decide.

Otherwise, we might end up killing the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs. What sane corporations would spend billions of dollars or euros in research and development, if they could not enjoy the fruits of their investments?

That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.