If you're interested in the future of the Web -- and it's fair to assume that, as a Datamation reader, you are -- I recommend you check out our new blog, Web3Beat.

It's written by Dan Grigorovici, who penned a couple of columns for us in June, around the time Jupitermedia was running the LinkedData Planet conference in New York. (The columns are here and here.)

Dan is vice president of data strategies and analytics at Tacoda, a division of AOL that runs behavioral targeting advertising networks. Dan has assumed an evangelizing role regarding semantic technology because he recognizes that in order to move Web 3.0 out of the "geek ghetto" and into the commercial mainstream, a strong business case must be made to investors and corporate executives.

And while most techies may pay lip service to the importance of "selling the suits," comparatively few have the chops to pull it off. This guy does. So much so that we've asked Dan to put together our next event on semantic technology, the Web 3.0 Conference & Expo, which runs from Oct. 16-17 in Santa Clara, Calif.

Or at least Redmond is trying to please what possibly may be the Internet's largest demographic -- pornmongers privacy advocates.

Microsoft Corp. today spelled out new privacy tools in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that some have dubbed "porn mode" in a nod to the most-obvious use of a browser privacy mode. ...

Slated to appear in IE8 Beta 2, which Microsoft's former chairman, Bill Gates, promised will release this month, the three new tools share the "InPrivate" name, which Microsoft filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office several weeks ago.

The most intriguing tool, and the one that has prompted the "porn mode" label, was dubbed "InPrivate Browsing" by Microsoft. When enabled, IE8 will not save browsing and searching history, cookies, form data and passwords; it also will automatically clear the browser cache at the end of the session.

According to the Times article, Mozilla also is working on browser features designed to satisfy pornmongers privacy advocates. But at least one Mozilla spokesman urges us to get our minds out of the gutter:

"To lock everyone into a 'porn bucket' makes people who have alternate privacy needs think that they're doing something wrong," said [Mike] Beltzner.

Two things:

1) There's a "porn bucket"?

2) Beltzner's quote doesn't even make sense. Why would someone using the privacy features for non-porn reasons feel as if "they're doing something wrong" because other people are in the porn bucket?

Whatever your reasons for wanting more browsing privacy, you may not have to wait long. Microsoft intends to unveil a beta of IE8 this month, with the final product slated to roll out by year's end. Mozilla hasn't committed to a release schedule yet, but since the privacy features were slated to be included in Firefox 3.0, which was released in June, it should be sooner than later.

The last time the British government succumbed to a reality distortion field aimed at them from the U.S., they believed coalition forces would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqis. Looks like they've learned some lessons  about RDFs. ...

The U.K. has banned the current set of iPhone ads from appearing on TV in the country.  It says its Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the government entity in charge of regulating television, received two complaints that Apple's claims in the ads that its phone could access all of the internet were misleading due to its lack of Java or Flash support, essential to accessing much of the internet.

Remember the post from yesterday, the one where I wondered whether Apple was taking customer loyalty for granted? I don't think they read it in Cupertino...

Apple complained back that it was unreasonable to expect it to ensure compatibility with every third party plug-in or technology on the internet.

Because, as you know, hardly anyone uses obscure technologies such as Java or Flash. Just people with "browsers" and weird stuff like that. 

Over at Slate, tech writer Farhad Manjoo enumerates the missteps made by Apple in the past few months and asks:

Why don't consumers seem to care about Apple's problems?

In part, Manjoo writes, it's because the company has worked hard to construct its thick teflon coating:

Years of savvy brand advertising and a string of genuinely great products have helped Apple build up a well of good-feeling; as a result, people are more willing to overlook the company's occasional failures.

Further, many of these people also are more than willing to vigorously and publicly defend Apple's honor against the haters, dolts and Windows whores who dare criticize the House That Jobs Built, as anyone who has ever printed anything negative about Apple or its products can attest.

Given this level of loyalty, Manjoo thinks Apple's grudging response to complaints about its products and services is bad business, if not yet bad for business:

[W]hen it does screw up, [Apple] prefers secrecy over full disclosure, and it expects customers to quickly forgive any slight. Its response to the MobileMe meltdown was a classic example. For several days after the site's rocky launch, Apple refused to disclose what had gone wrong. It wouldn't say why MobileMe was down, and it wouldn't say when MobileMe would be fixed. Only after the New York Times' David Pogue and the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg published critical columns did Apple change its tune. ...

Apple is dealing with iPhone problems in much the same way -- grudgingly. Apple-focused blogs recently reported that Jobs fired off one-line e-mail replies to two different customers upset about iPhone difficulties; in each case, he said Apple was working on the problems.

Of course, it's worth pointing out that not many CEOs of major corporations would personally respond to a complaint from a retail customer. And it wasn't even a "What do you mean, problems, you ingrate?" kind of email. It was short and polite.

The bottom line, Manjoo writes, is that Apple's market share and customer base is growing "beyond longtime Mac fanatics -- people who give the company a pass because they regard it as an underdog." No doubt. The thing is, though, Apple's new customers will expect the company's products to be as great and stupendous as their overbearing Apple-user friends have been telling them they are for years. And when things go wrong, they may not be so forgiving.

There's a good article in the Sunday New York Times about SAP's increasing emphasis on higher profits and the gradual change in top leadership designed to achieve that goal:

Henning Kagermann, the longtime chief executive of SAP, the giant maker of complex computer applications for business, is in the middle of a slow transition in which he will yield the top job entirely to Léo Apotheker, now the co-chief executive, in March. Mr. Apotheker rose through the ranks of the SAP sales force, a notably different career path than Mr. Kagermann, a former physics professor who made his name as a developer.

The handover has fed an irresistible narrative in financial markets: the software egghead who shoveled cash into new projects is yielding to the uncompromising money maker. ...

The company is indeed shifting toward more of a focus on the bottom line, and less on the multibillion-dollar investments in technology that helped make it the market leader in the lucrative field of business software.

The goal, it seems clear, is for SAP to show that it can not just produce sophisticated software that companies depend on to run their businesses but also do as well as its American archrival, Oracle, in satisfying the demands of investors.

Oracle achieved a pretax profit margin of about 35 percent last year, well ahead of the 26.7 percent operating margin that SAP managed in 2007. That is one reason SAP’s stock price has languished in spite of years of sales growth.

I understand that it's hard to resist pressure from shareholders to increase profits. But when increasing profits becomes the overriding goal, it often comes at a cost, usually to quality control as the company cuts corners to reduce expenses. One of those potential corners, the Times article points out, is the company's payroll:

SAP is betting that it can raise its profit margins without conjuring up, as is often the case in Germany, the specter of mass layoffs to contain costs.

It'd be a shame if SAP, a company with a solid industry reputation for understanding and responding to its customers' needs by delivering quality business software, eventually undermines itself by forgoing quality in pursuit of higher net profits. After all, SAP already is profitable and has been for a long time. Even worse, though, would be if the company's new strategy was being fueled by share-price envy. For if you look at the 10-year stock charts for SAP and its main rival, Oracle, it's hard to tell a difference. And below are the prices for each company's stock at the beginning of three years I chose since 2000 (the height of the '90s tech stock market boom) and last Friday's market close:

             Oracle         SAP

2000       31.16         52.56

2003       10.94         20.22

2006       12.25         45.61

8/22        22.52         55.88

Interestingly, SAP is slightly ahead of its share price of Jan. 3, 2000, while Oracle is down 28 percent. Only since 2006 has Oracle's stock outperformed SAP's.

Finally, from the Hey, I Know That Guy! Dept.: The Times article features a quote from longtime Datamation columnist Josh Greenbaum of Enterprise Applications Consulting. Here's a recent column by Josh about SAP and Oracle.  

Brilliant column over on Datamaion by the elegant one, Mike Elgan, on so-called "green" gadgets, and whether the reality lives up to the hype.

Elgan feels the same way I do. I'm pro-environment and pro-product improvement, but I'm getting tired of all the B.S. surrounding supposedly "green" products.

Here are some of the examples he cites of "greenwashing:"

Recently, there has been a sudden surge in "green" consumer electronics products. But is the surge working?

• A Chinese company called Hoshino announced this week a bio-degradable USB disk. The external plastic is a corn-based polylactide. (I haven't conducted lab tests, so I don't know if it actually *tastes* like corn.)
• Costco is selling another "green" flash drive: The ATP 8GB EarthDrive, which the manufacturer claims is made using "a maximum amount of bio-recycled material." (How much is "a maximum amount"?)
•  Dell recently unveiled its stylish Studio Desktop, which Dell calls its "greenest, most power-efficient consumer desktop." The PCs, which come with a choice of fruity colored sleeves or even a real bamboo sleeve -- have 75% less paper documentation and use 70% less power than a "typical desktop." (They also appear to have 70% less room for expansion.)

Elgan makes two excellent points toward the end of the piece. 1) All consumer electronic devices are bad for the environment. 2) If you really want to help Mother Earth, "then buy consumer electronics that are super high-end and built to last," Elgan writes.

If I can go off topic for a minute and channel Andy Rooney, you know what bugs me about little USB drives? Sure, they're small. Sure, they can fit on your key chain if you need your data close by while you drive. What bugs me is that you never know what's on a little USB drive without plugging it in (or writing extremely small). I've got five on my desk and I have no idea which one contains my invoice master list.

Remember Zip drives, or writeable CDs, or for God's sake floppy disks, where you could write the names of the files on the outside of the disk for all the world to see? Those were the days.

Maybe someone out there has solved this somehow and I haven't heard about it. If so, someone drop me a line.

You know you have plenty of 'em, stuffed in drawers, closets and that lower desk drawer: old gadgets. Maybe it's a digital camera that was forgotten after you splurged on a newer model, or an iPod bought in a moment of sheer gadget lust, only to be replaced when you picked up the super-duper video model.

Another data breach is making headlines, this time concerning tens of thousands of students in Florida and Virginia.

The New York Times reported the news Monday, which involved the Princeton Review, a test-preparatory firm, and a portion of its web site.

The Times reported that the firm ...

"... accidentally published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students on its Web site, where they were available for seven weeks.

A flaw in configuring the site allowed anyone to type in a relatively simple Web address and have unfettered access to hundreds of files on the company's computer network, including educational materials and internal communications.

Another test-preparatory company said it stumbled on the files while doing competitive research. This company provided The New York Times with the Web address of the internal files on the condition that it not be named. The Times informed the Princeton Review of the problem on Monday, and the company promptly shut off access to that portion of its site."

To get some perspective on this latest data debacle, I talked to Charlotte Dunlap, a senior analyst covering Information Security at Enterprise Strategy Group. She's also my wife.

"This is the latest illustration of an ongoing problem where companies are causing breaches in security of people's privacy through the use of the Internet without proper use of security technology," Dunlap said. "It highlights an ongoing chain of similar events first brought to the public's attention through the T.J. Maxx incident."

(Between 2003 and 2006, T.J. Maxx was hit by hackers, who took the credit and debit card information of a "limited number" of customers, as Internetnews.com reported.) 

Dunlap said the Princeton Review debacle also plays up the growing importance of emerging security technology such as data loss prevention (DLP). "This is why companies like Vontu fetched $350 million through an acquisition by Symantec," she said. Vontu is the leader in DLP technology.

A slew of other DLP providers have been snatched up by security and infrastructure companies over the last couple years, including McAfee's recent acquisition of Reconnex.

"We'll begin to see integration of DLP technology into the network infrastructure as a result of increased legislation throughout the country which requires companies to notify customers of such breaches," Dunlap said. Clearly, companies are concerned about brand reputation following such breaches.

She said another thing driving DLP is the potential loss of intellectual property and the competitive advantage rivals receive when they get their hands on IP.

The Princeton Review incident should trigger companies to take stock of their own data protection strategy. Too often, it takes a train wreck like this one to get companies to change.

Andy Patrizio over at Internetnews.com has a great take on the emerging details of Microsoft's upcoming operating system, called "Windows 7" for now.

Two senior vice presidents, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, have started a blog about the OS, which Microsoft hopes to launch in late 2009 or in 2010. As Patrizio writes, "they will reveal the first engineering details about Windows 7 on Oct. 27 at the Professional Developers' Conference in Los Angeles. Additional talks will take place at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) scheduled for Nov. 5-7, also in Los Angeles.

Patrizio further writes:

Microsoft seems determined to get more feedback from the community this time around than it did with Vista, one of the many knocks on the beleaguered operating system. Sinofsky and DeVaan said their goal was to make sure "not to set expectations around the release that end up disappointing you--features that don't make it, claims that don't stick or support we don't provide."

Windows 7 was first discussed at the beginning of this year, when Microsoft executives promised a long gap between OS releases like the one between Windows XP (2001) and Vista (2007), would not occur. Given the relative dissatisfaction with Vista, considerable talk abounds about how IT shops are just holding on and waiting for the new OS rather than an upgrade to Vista.

What is known so far about Windows 7 is that it will be based on Windows Server 2008 kernel, which is an updated version of the Windows Vista kernel. The current driver model will be retained. In short, the internals won't change much.

My first impression of the article was, uh, yeah, right, good luck with that. 2009 or 2010? Why do I get that sinking feeling that Microsoft will push that back 10 times? And that the Redmond software giant will STILL pack "Windows 7" with tons of bloatware, no matter how much feedback from developers they get.

As usual, as a non geek who still needs Microsoft in my daily life (I think), I'll try to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on Windows 7 and continue resisting a switch to Linux.

 

The vulnerability of Wi-Fi networks has been much on my mind lately. I spend a lot of time in internet cafes, pouring a lot of swill down my gullet, and I usually have this nagging feeling that I'm not being smart securitywise, or I get paranoid my anti-virus isn't up to date.

The mind races: Am I really connecting to a safe network? What about AdAware and SpyBot? How often do I need to run those? And what about all these pop-up messages from Microsoft, telling me my system needs updating? I really need to get my head around what the story is on all those pop-ups. Do I really need to switch to decaf?  Well, that's for another blog.

On the wireless security front, a couple of my colleagues at Jupitermedia have done great work lately easing my over-caffeinated mind. If you have any of the same worries, check out these two articles.

In, How to Prevent a Coffee Shop Wi-Fi Attack, Kenneth van Wyk: of Internetnews.com shows how merely logging on using your mobile device allows hackers to steal your password unless you take basic precautions.

In the second article, How to Prevent Parking Lot Attacks, Jim Geier of Wi-Fi Planet makes many good points, including this one: One approach to reducing the risk of "parking lot" attacks on your WLAN is to reduce exposure by using shielding products, such as specialized paint, to attenuate RF signals.

 

This New York Times article detailing the coordinated cyberattack on Georgia immediately prior to Russia's invasion of its neighboring country portends an ominous new weapon in the arsenal of warring nations:

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia.”

Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers. ...

As it turns out, the July attack may have been a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Russia. According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a known cyberattack had coincided with a shooting war.

But it will likely not be the last, said Bill Woodcock, the research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that tracks Internet traffic. He said cyberattacks are so inexpensive and easy to mount, with few fingerprints, they will almost certainly remain a feature of modern warfare.

So we've crossed a new threshold in war, and there's no turning back. What a depressing prospect. Oh, wait...

Initial information suggests that Internet attacks on Georgian Web sites over the last two weeks are the work of kids, according to one researcher, while another says the intensity of these attacks is short-lived when compared with attacks in Estonia last year.

In an e-mail to CNET News, Gadi Evron, founder of the Zero Day Emergency Response Team, said that "although the impact on their Web sites is clear, I believe this may end up being just some kids who got overexcited, with Georgia being ill-prepared to say the least."

War is hell. Teen-age boys, more so.

DefCon and BlackHat -- two of the years' most entertaining and biggest security conferences -- were their usual rockin' selves in Las Vegas this year.

Thousands of hackers, security professionals, journalists, and analysts attend the shows. Federal agents roam the isles looking to recruit the best hackers in the fight against  cybercrime. (Maybe they don't really "roam the isles," but it sounds good.)

Debbie Gage of the San Francisco Chronicle, with an assist from the Associated Press, 
filed an excellent report on what the hackers were up to this year:

For the second year in a row, reporters at the BlackHat and DefCon security conferences in Las Vegas have been kicked out for, well, hacking.

This year, three French reporters from Global Security Magazine, one of BlackHat's sponsors, had their badges seized after they siphoned user names and passwords off the press room's network from reporters for Cnet in San Francisco and the technology magazine eWeek in New York.

Their goal was to get victims' credentials posted on the conferences' "Wall of Sheep," where people who access the wireless network at the conference without taking security precautions are publicly exposed.

"Potentially everyone in the room had been a victim," wrote one target, Robert Vamosi of Cnet, in his first-person account, describing how other reporters reacted to the news. "And as such, we rallied around each other for support."

Reporters weren't so supportive of each other last year, when a producer from "Dateline NBC" tried to attend DefCon undercover but was found out. Videos of her fleeing the conference as other reporters taped her exit are still posted on YouTube.

Another big security story revolved around MIT students exposing a flaw in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority e-ticketing system. The students had planned to share their hack in Vegas -- and in fact they did share some details -- but they were slapped with a temporary restraining order to prevent them from presenting the full story.

But you can't put the genie back in the bottle and the details have indeed surfaced. Check the presentation in .pdf form, entitled "Anatomy of a Subway Hack."

Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to appeal the court order. It's a hot topic on Slashdot. The way I see it, the MBTA should be looking to hire these hackers, not take legal action against them.

With the popularity of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, our Linux guru Matt Hartley takes a step back to review the Linux landscape.

Sure, Ubuntu has created some buzz. It's an important part of a growing open-source movement with several popular distributions. Readers of my site, Intranetjournal.com -- and other Jupitermedia sites -- flock to stories about Ubuntu.

But what if you need an even easier-to-use Linux version? Or what if you're wondering if you should finally forsake Microsoft or Apple and jump in the open source pool? Or what if you want a Linux distro that's more feature-rich that Ubuntu?

Hartley explores these questions in his latest article, where he test drives OpenSuSE, PCLinuxOS, Freespire, and Linux Mint.

If you're a Linux lover, or just wondering if you should switch OSes, Hartley brings a nuts-and-bolts user perspective, as well as his depth of knowledge on the subject, to the proceedings.

From the Whose Phone Is It, Anyway? Dept.:

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has confirmed that a mechanism exists within the iPhone to let the company unilaterally remove software from the smartphone.

Jobs revealed the "kill switch" in an interview published Monday in the Wall Street Journal. Jobs said the function was necessary to allow the company to remove malicious software that might be downloaded onto users' phones.

The apps-killing mechanism was first discovered by hacker Jonathan Zdziarski, who urged others not to immediately conclude the worst even as Apple was refusing to respond to questions about the purpose of the switch.

Despite opening-weekend glitches, the iPhone 2.0 has been a big success, and the online App Store store even more so. But I suspect many loyal Apple product users won't take kindly to being spied on or having their iPhones tampered with, even by the Great Jobs.
 

10. Unveil design for steam-powered Internet

9. Propose MacArthur grant to inventor of digital watch

8. Become MySpace friend with Dane Cook

7. Finally learn to master handheld "calculating machine"

6. Photo op with Uhuru from original Star Trek

5. Surprise campaign stop at Wang Laboratories

4. Post topless pix of wife on official web site

3. Daring promise to reach moon in this decade

2. Tax break for online avatars of the wealthy
 
1. Will name "the Google" as running mate

It's sad when you have to read a web site called Young Famous and Fashionable to keep up on the government's sinister plan to seize control of the Internet. But we have little choice, since the "serious," mainstream media thus far has ignored what appears to be a Very Important Story.

I don't have access to Lexis-Nexis, but a search of Google News reveals that a paltry few web sites reported on Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig's comments at a conference in July (which I blogged about yesterday) that there is "an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works."

Among the sites were:

examiner.com

RINF.com (UK alternative news site)

Campaign for Liberty Blog (a Ron Paul site)

Slashdot

Scoop.co.nz

Tom's Hardware (in Italian)

Young Famous and Fashionable

The only "mainstream" media outlet to cover this was Fortune, back on July 23, the day after the panel was held. And it was Fortune's conference!

One can well understand the traditional media's reluctance to allocate resources to this story when such a move might detract from their coverage of Paris Hilton's response to John McCain's campaign ad (nearly 11,000 Google News hits), or the continuing saga of Brett Favre (31,000 Google News hits), or John Edwards' alleged "love child" (2,845 Google News hits), or how much Mary Kate Olsen may have known about Heath Ledger's death (2,600 Google News hits). And you never know what that crazy Amy Winehouse might do!   

Still, can we get someone from the Washington Post, say, or New York Times on this? I'm sure Richard Clarke, who Lessig said informed him of the government's "i-Patriot" plan, will return their calls. I can keep checking back on YFF, but the thing is, I'm really not part of their target demographic. (Though I fully endorse their site tagline: We Live YFF 365: Be Fly. Be Fun. Be Fit. Be Forward-Thinking. Be Yourself.)

No way around it, this is troubling:

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that "There's going to be an i-9/11 event" which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an "i-Patriot Act" if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

Notice the article doesn't say, "A mentally disturbed conspiracy theorist wearing a tin-foil hat told an audience..." It says "a respected Law Professor from Stanford University". Note also that Lessig had dinner not with "an angry socialist blogger who lives with his mother in Massachusetts and never leaves his bedroom," but "former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke," who, last I saw, hasn't been called a raving lunatic, even by right-wingers angry at him for writing books critical of the Bush Administration's efforts in combating terror and coping with other national emergencies.

Here's some of what Lessig told the Brainstorm Tech audience:

"The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

"Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said, 'Of course there is.'"

In case you're wondering if this is a prank or an Onion story, this link has a video of Lessig making his comments during the panel discussion. They begin right after the 4:30 mark and go about 90 seconds. Then the video is edited and Lessig is talking about Second Life, so I don't know what got cut out -- or even how there's anything else to talk about after hearing the government is waiting to seize control of the Internet. Sort of puts your Second Life avatar's adventures in perspective.

Remember news reports that United Airlines was close to unveiling wi-fi service for air passengers? That was way back in June 2005. Unfortunately, between defaulting on its employee pension plans and struggling with Chapter 11 bankruptcy, UAL's wi-fi plans were placed on the backburner.

Finally, more than three years later, it appears surfing in the sky is almost a reality for U.S. domestic travelers:

Delta Air Lines said it will begin offering broadband Internet service on domestic flights as early as October. Delta is trying to outmaneuver rival JetBlue, known for outfitting planes with satellite TV, and American Airlines, which is planning to launch Internet service later this year. Other airlines, including Continental, Southwest and Virgin America, are planning tests or have them underway.

While I greeted the UAL news three years ago with enthusiasm, my initial joy over the prospect of accessing important male enhancement product information at 30,000 feet has been diminished by the strong suspicion that I won't be reading alone.

Without trying to sound paranoid, is there a more security-conscious industry today than the airlines? If your bottle of mouthwash exceeds 3 ounces, a hostile TSA worker will confiscate it. And your snow globe. And forget about a cricket bat. Does anyone really believe the National Security Agency will be able to resist eavesdropping on the w-fi connections of airline passengers, at least selected ones?

So enjoy your airborne Internet access. But don't assume you'll be surfing solo.

Looks like the Bush Administration is starting to see electronic surveillance in a different light:

A senior White House official says staffers accompanying President Bush to China have been told to leave their BlackBerries at home, reports CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer.

The mobile e-mail blackout is the latest sign of U.S. concerns over Chinese cyber-spying.

And valid concerns indeed. You know the Chinese government. It probably even spies on its own people.

Last week I blogged about a quarterly security report from Secure Computing that revealed to us the seasonal nature of spam. Something else in the report caught my eye, though, and I wanted to bring it up.

Here, according to Secure Computing, are the top categories of spam distributed on the Internet in Q2:

Male Enhancement         39.5%

Product Replica Spam     22.9%

Prescription Drug Spam   16.5%

Gambling Spam                 9.7%

Porn Spam                        7.9%

A couple of things stand out. First, almost all spam is confined to five major categories. It boggles the mind that, in an infinite universe, the world's spammers collectively display the creative daring of an American Idol contestant singing Free Bird. C'mon people, let's brainstorm here! There are niche markets to exploit explore. Some enterprising spammer could own the medieval-literature demographic, for example, if only they would take a chance.   

Secondly, I find it hard to believe that porn spam is mired in fifth place. I'm not challenging the data, I'm just saying that using another zeitgeist barometer, I get a different picture.

A quick check of Google Trends shows that user searches for the word "porn" have been rising steadily since 2004 (with an acceleration over the past year), while searches for the term "male enhancement" shows not only a much lower volume than those for "porn," but a flat trend.

Fun fact: Which are the leading countries for Google searches of the word "porn"? No, not the United States, which places a disappointing eighth (so much for American exceptionalism!). They are:

1. South Africa

2. Ireland

3. United Kingdom

4. New Zealand

5. Australia

Another fun fact: The top language for "porn" searches on Google is, not surprisingly, English. But check out the runners-up:

Turkish

Finnish

Italian

Swedish

The Turks? I didn't see that one coming.

9. Seriously, I wouldn't change anything.

8. I wish Carl Icahn were here. We need a peacekeeper.

7. Steve Jobs told me he recommends only one man to run this show: John Sculley.

6. This company started going downhill when we got rid of Jeeves, that cool
butler guy.

5. I always felt bad about how that thing with Terry Semel ended. Let's
give him another chance!

4. Well, at least it's not like our stock is down.

3. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce our new secret weapon in our
battle with Microsoft. A young man named Bill Gates.

2. Jerry Yang, you continue to kick ass. Props, bro.

1. Never mind profit and loss and all that. I wanna know how our employees are doing.