Microsoft Changes Verification on College Office Products

For all of you ‘non-student’ students who have been hanging on to educational-use-only versions of Office products, it’s looking like the cheap ride is just about over. Microsoft has replaced the old standard software with Microsoft Office University 2010 which has a much tougher verification procedures. End of another era….it took you long enough, Microsoft.

Office University 2010 does not come with a product key. Your eligibility will be verified online before completing purchase. This product will not work without successful verification as you will not have a product key.

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Hacker Says He Nabbed Porn Site's Users’ Data

A lone hacker with ties to Anonymous has gained access to over 350k porn site users’ personal information. Samples of the information were posted on the Internet as proof of the breach and to draw attention to the vulnerability of the porn site. There is nothing worse in this world than an overexposed porn user.

Emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords were divulged, and in some cases it was possible to infer porn users' full names and country of origin.

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Fake Twitter Account Grabs Microsoft's Attention

Microsoft has a sense of humor about on the level of Disney when it comes to all things corporate. The latest stick in their corporate craw is a fake Steven Sinofsky Twitter account which is promising free Windows 8 upgrades for HP Touchpad owners among other things. Microsoft is probably getting a little edgy about its upcoming intro of Windows 8 and doesn’t want any negative fallout from the fake Twitter account.

"@StevenSinofsky please see guidelines on parody and impersonation. Your account is not following them and has been reported."

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Mozilla Patches 'Critical' Firefox Security Hole

If you are running Firefox 10, you need to download an ‘urgent’ security update to prevent hacker attacks. Mozilla seems to be on a mission here to get the word out because the browser is vulnerable to attack from just normal browsing.

The open-source group said Firefox 9 and earlier browser versions are not affected by this vulnerability.

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US Air Force Eyeing 18K iPads

The US Air Force is looking to lighten the loads carried in plane’s cockpits, where the iPad would replace up to 40 pounds of maps and charts. The Air Force is looking to purchase an unknown amount of tablets from several vendors, but specifically mentioned Apple’s iPad, ranging from a low of 63 units to a high of 18k. The wide range of the number was not explained, but since we are talking about the military here, there must be a good reason.

The information came from a notice on a government procurement website and mentioned the iPad by name. However, the notice also stated that the USAF would consider similar devices.

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Valentine’s Day Gift Suggestions for Geeks and Nerds

Some of you may need a little reminding that Tuesday is Valentine’s Day which traditionally means you get a gift for your significant other, but then again, this is nerd central. If the term clueless comes to mind right now, check out the post on Tumblr for last minute ideas other than the humdrum chocolate or flowers.

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MIT Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Spacewar Video Gamejoh

Spacewar is considered by some to be the granddaddy of all of the video games, paving the way for the industry we know today. The game was created by four students at MIT way back in 1962 and was made to reflect the ongoing space race of the times. To put the game’s age in perspective, John Kennedy was President of the US.

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Kodak to Stop Making Digital Cameras

For the first time in its 130 year history, Eastman Kodak will no longer manufacture its trademark cameras. The discontinuation of the Kodak digital camera will happen sometime in the first half of 2012. The production of film cameras and process film ended in 2004 and 2009, respectively. Kodak will now turn its production to commercial and consumer printers.

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Steve Jobs Awarded Posthumous Grammy

At the Special Merit Awards portion of the Grammy presentations held on Saturday, Steve Jobs was presented a posthumous award for his contributions to the music industry. The award was accepted in his behalf by Eddie Cue, Senior Vice-President, and longtime friend of Jobs.

Accepting this award means so much to me because music meant so much to him. He told us that music shaped his life...it made him who he was.

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NASA Cutting Funding on Mars Projects

Budget cuts will have an impact of space exploration in the near future with NASA proposing a $300m reduction in funding. The cuts will have a direct effect on the proposed joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency in 2016 1nd 2018.

NASA spokesman David Weaver said that, just like the rest of the federal government, the space agency has to make "tough choices … and live within our means."

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Scientists Print Cheap RFID Tags On Paper

A team of researchers from the University of Montpellier in France have found a method of printing RFID chips directly onto paper. The process utilizes a thermal evaporation process using aluminum, making it not only universal in application, but cheap to produce.

Unlike barcodes, they use radio signals, which can be detected over a short range, without a visual contact between the tag and the reader device.

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Microsoft Readies Valentine's Day Windows Patches

Microsoft has a little something for all of its sweethearts on Valentine’s Day: It’s nine security patches. Four of the patches are critical in nature, with one of those deemed highest priority. I feel bad now, I didn’t get Microsoft anything.

Tuesday's upcoming patch will bring the total number of security bulletins in 2012 to 16. In comparison, Microsoft had issued 14 combined patches in the first two months of 2011, following a light, two-patch month in January 2011.

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Apple Seeks U.S. Ban on Galaxy Nexus

Steve Jobs may be gone, but his legacy of patent infringement lawsuits lives on. The latest is against the Galaxy Nexus to ban the sale of the smartphone because it allegedly violates four Apple patents.

Apple's Steve Jobs thought Android was a knock-off of his company's iOS operating system and famously said Apple was "going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product.

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Sony UMD Passport Program Not Coming to North America

On the upcoming release of Sony’s Vita on February 22nd in North America, potential owners of the new devices were looking forward to the accompanying UMD Passport program to transfer PSP discs to the handheld Vita. According to Kotaku, Sony has informed them that the Passport program will not be available in North America. No further explanation was given for the announcement.

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Amazing Videos of Earth at Night from Space

Lately NASA has been providing some excellent night time imagery from space, which makes me wonder what they are up to. It must be time to petition Congress for a budget increase. In any case, we are receiving the benefits of their ongoing efforts. Check out the entire series, paying attention to the Northern Lights.

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Trade Your Driving Privacy for a Free TomTom GPS

TomTom is partnering with Motoquote, a UK based insurance company to provide the company with your personal driving habits. TomTom will provide free GPS units with specialized software to record your driving habits and provide the insurance company with the results. Small start to what may become a trend.

It’s an interesting step, and one that the bigger insurance players are no doubt very hesitant to try. But it could be a sign of things to come.

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Facebook Teen’s Father Shows Some Tough Love

The video has already received about 3M views and hundreds, if not thousands of comments on his particular brand of parenting. Regardless of how he gets results, you can bet he does gets results. Hell hath no fury like an IT professional scorned. R.I.P. poor little lappy.

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Report: iPad 3 to be Announced in First Week of March

If the rumors are true, those of you waiting for the release of the iPad 3 are getting close to the magic moment. Word has it that Apple will make the release announcement in the first week of March with the actual product shipping a week later.

So while every rumor or report which is based on mysterious, unnamed sources should be taken with some salt, we have a hunch that the odds are good that this one will pan out.

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Anonymous Knocks CIA Website Offline

It looks like Anonymous is branching out a bit from attacking sites like the FBI and Department of Justice. In its latest campaign, Anonymous claims to have taken down the CIA website, the mother lode of government agencies.

The CIA website had become unresponsive likely due to a distribute denial of service (DDoS) type of attack that the hacker group commonly launches against its targets

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Call of Duty Elite Reaches 1.5 Million Subscribers

Last September we reported on Activision’s creation of CoD Elite for what was thought to only appeal to hard core gamers. Either there is an abundance of hard core gamers out there or the monthly fee doesn’t deter as many gamers as once thought. Since September, the membership in Elite has grown to over 1.5 million monthly subscribers.

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AT&T Doubling Its Upgrade Fee to $36 on February 12th

What do you do after reporting "blow-out" earnings and instituting larger, pricier, data plans? If you're AT&T, why not go for the jugular by doubling upgrade fees? That's exactly what Ma Bell plans to do come February 12th, upping the existing $18 fee to a new high of $36. That might sound familiar, as it's much in the same vein as cross-town rival Sprint, who went through the same kerfuffle back in September.

" This fee isn't unique to AT&T and this is the first time we're changing it in nearly 10 years".

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Spray-On Antenna Technology Revealed at Google Conference

Last week, Chamtech Enterprises introduced a spray-on antenna that is capable of boosting signal strength 10% at Google’s Solve for X symposium. The uses are potentially all across the board, but most consumers would immediately think of better coverage for cell phones. The company will be addressing the private sector market in 2012.

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Hard Drive Prices Soar 28 Percent After Thai Floods

The analyst’s predictions for a shortfall of hard drives have come to pass and are now beginning to wane. Prices increased 28%, peaking around the middle of the fourth quarter and are now beginning to stabilize as the HDD manufacturers’ production slowly comes back online in flood ravaged Thailand.

"The recovery of global HDD manufacturing has begun and will continue during each quarter of 2012," said Fang Zhang, a storage analyst for IHS, in a statement. "However, the recovery will be prolonged for at least two more quarters".

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Chrome 17 Launches, Upcoming Updates Focus on Speed

For those of you using Google’s Chrome Browser, you may have noticed the upgrade to Version 17 several days ago. This version addresses pre-rendering, increased security and better GPU utilization. Google seems bent on keeping to its six-week cycle releases of new versions on schedule.

Testers that located eleven bugs during the process were paid figures ranging from $500 to $2000 and an additional nine bugs were squashed as well.

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[H]ard|OCP Week in Reviews

Today is Friday and you know what that means! It is time once again for the [H]ard|OCP Week in Reviews! For anyone that might have missed them, we like to take a quick look back on the hardware evaluations and articles we posted earlier in the week. We kicked the week off with our evaluation of the Corsair Enthusiast Series Modular PSUs followed by our GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7970 OC video card review. Finally, we wrapped things up with our ASRock X79 Extreme9 LGA 2011 motherboard evaluation.

Respecting Users and Their Privacy

Respecting users and their privacy? Pfft, what a stupid idea. Who do these EFF guys think they are?

Regardless of whether practices like checking addresses for friend-finding are "industry standard" in social apps, users expect and deserve respect from the providers of the services they use, and that means protecting personal data needed to use the service. Hiding behind the rationale that a certain functionality is commonplace among similar apps is not sufficient, the process must be proper whether it’s the uploading of data in the first place or its long-term storage.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

Piracy Doesn’t Affect U.S. Box Office Returns

Another study that claims piracy doesn't have an impact on movie ticket sales in the U.S. was published today. The reason? Pirates weren't going to pay to see the movie in the first place. Oddly enough, the study DID find that piracy abroad hurt ticket sales.

In a paper titled ‘Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales’ researchers from the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College examine the link between BitTorrent piracy and box office returns. As hypothesized, they find that international movie piracy losses are directly linked to the delay between US and foreign premieres. In other words, the longer it takes before a movie is released internationally, the more box office revenues are impacted through piracy.

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Stupid Facebook Criminal of the Day

Everyone knows that, when it comes to trying to hook up on the internet, the hot chick/guy you are talking too is a fat old bald dude or the cops. This story involves both.

A married father used phony Facebook profiles to pose as two different Florida surfers to solicit sexually graphic messages and photos from seven teenage girls in western Pennsylvania, and two of the girls eventually agreed to meet for sex with the surfers' middle-aged "friend" — yet another fake persona he used, the state attorney general said Friday.

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Iran Cuts Off Internet Access

Breaking news: Iran cuts off Internet access to the entire country. Not breaking news: Workplace productivity is up 1000%.

An individual inside the country confirmed this morning that Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo email are no longer available. Ditto for Facebook. So far, the government has not made any announcement about the service interruption.

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