New High Tech Passport

The NY Times reviews the new U.S. e-passport today (if you didn't want one, apparently you're too late). It mostly focuses on how ugly the pastiche of American iconography is, but it mentions the new embedded RFID chip holding all of your biographical info and "a digital image of the passport photograph, which will facilitate the use of face recognition technology at ports-of-entry," according to the State Department's website.

While the gold bars and circle marking your passport as a magical "e-passport" are on the front cover, the chip is embedded somewhere on the back page. To alleviate fears of skimming the chip's info, it only works within four inches of a reader—the cover contains shielding material—and the passports use Basic Access Control, which requires a printed PIN to read the chip, which seems like a pretty good idea.

That said, no one can skim my plain paper passport, which is thankfully good for another seven years.

Windows XP GONE as of 2008

Microsoft will stop selling Windows XP to PC makers such as Dell, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard by January 31, a company representative confirmed Thursday. The software maker will stop selling XP to system builders, the smaller custom PC makers, a year later, the representative said.

"This has been the practice at Microsoft for some time, and this process provides a gradual transition away from a previous version of an OS, from full availability, to availability only through a distributor, and finally availability via downgrade rights," the Microsoft representative said in an e-mail.

Windows Vista, the successor to XP, became broadly available at the end of January. Microsoft has worked hard to promote Vista as a safer, easier to use, better connected and more entertaining version of Windows than any of its predecessors. However, there s still a lack of Vista-compatible applications and hardware drivers, hurdles for broad adoption.

Despite those words of caution, many PC shoppers already have no choice beyond Vista. PC makers have already moved almost everything they sell to consumers--and some businesses--over to Vista, both in stores and online.

Verizon Wireless Gets its Mitts on BlackBerry 8830 World Phone

Being a Verizon customer, I'm always complaining about their lack of phones, but it looks like the boys in red just got first dibs on RIM's BlackBerry 8830 (aka the Cyclone), which is a CDMA/GSM hybrid. In other words, it'll work here in the States and overseas on GSM networks. It's Verizon's second phone with that super feature. Personally, I think Verizon needs more "hybrid" models like that.

The 8830 looks like the 8800 and will pack a QVGA screen, microSD slot, and 3G EV-DO support. The bad news is that there's no camera. Even though I don't take a lot of cell phone pics, that's a deal-killer for me. Otherwise, corporate types should fair well with this baby in their pocket

Zune 2.0 Details Leaked

So we knew the red (and pink and orange) Zunes were coming, but surprise surprise, the red Zune will include some interesting sports content to cater to the sports nuts out there, or so the rumor hounds at Crunchgear say. Supposedly you will be able to select your favorite team and the Zune will be able to download games as podcasts, which could be handy if you miss a game or don't live in the area of your favorite team and miss all of the regional broadcasts on TV.

There are definite perks to something like this, especially for sports fans, but there are all kinds of problems that could be associated. Is it full games or just highlights? I don't see myself wanting to actually download a three hour baseball game and then proceed to watch it on a Zune screen. The jury is still out, but I'll try to give it a shot as soon as I can, given these rumors are correct.

Inspector Lists Computers With Atomic Secrets as Missing

WASHINGTON, March 30 — The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday.

This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose national laboratories and factories do most of the work in designing and building nuclear warheads, has lost control over computers used in working on the bombs.

Aside from the computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory, and one computer listed as destroyed was in fact being used, the audit said.

“Problems with the control and accountability of desktop and laptop computers have plagued the department for a number of years,” the report said.

In January, Linton F. Brooks was fired as the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Agency, the Energy Department agency in charge of bombs, because of security problems. The agency was created in the 1990s because of security scandals.

When the most recent audit began, the Counterintelligence Directorate was unable to find 141 desktop computers. In some cases, documents were found indicating that the computers had been taken out of service.

Previous incidents of wayward computers have also involved nuclear weapons information. But the office involved in this breach has a special responsibility, tracking and countering efforts to steal bomb information. Its computers would have material on what the department knew about foreign operatives and efforts to steal sensitive information.

The report includes a response from the security agency that generally agrees with the findings. But the inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, noted in his report that “the comments did not include planned corrective actions with target completion dates.”

A spokesman for the department, Craig Stevens, said Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman “recognizes that we need to manage this place better.”

The counterintelligence office was recently merged with the intelligence office to improve operations, Mr. Stevens said.