And you thought Facebook’s Beacon was intrusive? How about Beacon for the real world? While I agree that there are many good and valid uses for RFID I am not in agreement that the regulations or security are in place for it just yet. Point?

According to a Press Release from Rep. Jeff Morris (D - Mount Vernon) a new law in Washington will hereby may malicious RFID scanning illegal (this seems like a no brainer to me) such as for the purposes of identity theft. The law states that it would be a Class C felony to “intentionally scan another person’s identification remotely without his or her knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose”.

The bummer side? The opt-in requirements for retailers to provide consumer protection by not scanning a customer, their ID, credit card, shoes, products, or whatnot without their expressed permission has been left out of the language due to heavy lobbying by corporations.

I find this completely unacceptable and think the consumers need to do a little mass lobbying of their own. Please consider contacting Rep. Jeff Morris or his staff to voice your support of the opt-in measure even if you aren’t in Washington. His contact information is available on the original press release.

Additional Reading:

• RFID Hack Hits 1-Billion Digital Access Cards Worldwide
• RFID Position Statement of Consumer Privacy and Civil Liberties Organizations

Flickr image from midnightcomm under CC

I have owned NixNews.com for some time and until the last few days it has existed purely as a Linux news river. Originally built on WordPress with RSS aggregator plugins, NixNews grabbed Linux and open source from all over the internet and compiled the links in one place while linking back to the original posting site for reading. The downside to this form factor was that it was nearly impossible to moderate and duplicates appeared more often than not in the river with large streams of posts from one site or another resulting in an uneven mix of news.

After initial testing and tweaking, NixNews.com has been reborn into a user voted Linux news and article site. I have tagged it beta, and it just that, an early beta service that will still have bugs to be worked out. I have taken the testing as far as I can go on my own and am opening it up and announcing it’s release. Please take the time to visit, register, vote/bury the stories, and submit new posts. I would like to see NixNews grow in it’s niche as a valuable resource for information to the Linux community. I welcome your bug reports as well as any suggestions you might have for it’s function, interface, design, or feed aggregation.

As the tax deadline in the US draws near those rushing to meet the deadlines are probably well aware now of exactly what your financial status is from the last year. Tax time for me usually means that I reevaluate my spending and savings and look at revitalizing my budget. There are some excellent cross-platform apps that I think work even better than the clunky old standards. Here is a quick rundown (that is by all means not a comprehensive list) of a few apps you can use to manage your budget and your finances:

• GnuCash - GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income, and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. It is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system. GnuCash has also released a Windows binary. GnuCash is open source and free.
• Buddi - Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background. Buddi will run on almost any computer which has a Java virtual machine installed. This can include Windows, Macintosh OS X, Linux, and many other operating systems. Buddi is released as an open source application and is free (donations accepted).
• PearBudget - Free while in beta, PearBudget is a simple system that helps you build a clear spending plan and track your spending record.  It removes all the overkill in other financial apps and just helps you track a budget. A wizard interface and simple language takes the frustration out of planning (and sticking to) a budget. Multiplatform.

Image "Money Rose“ from Flickr by distinguish 

Beauty :)

VMware Education Services has popped several VMware Server how to videos up on YouTube. As of the time of this post there are currently five videos ranging from how to download VMware Server and get a license to how to add a disk to a virtual machine. VMware Server is a free virtualization product offered by VMware. The current production version is 1.0.4 with 2.0 currently in beta. VMware Education Services has setup their own channel page at YouTube and you can subscribe to their videos and keep track of new additions.