Sony slaps Dell - - Sony Style!

What was Dell thinking?

Here they are in the #1 spot worldwide and they go off and decide to let Sony supply them with laptop batteries and BAM! - Dell is in big trouble with firebomb laptops which will cost around $300 million to fix. While this may be the amount it will cost to recall and replace the bad Sony batteries, it will cost Dell much more in brand bruising (as I call it).

The bigger insult comes when customers decide to buy a Sony laptop instead of a Dell-- because Sony admits that the bad batteries were only sold to Dell!

I hope Dell will learn a lesson from this sad situation and stay away from Sony products for the manufacturing of Dells. If anything, Dell should be supplying Sony with products! Dell has earned our MightyMica Award 2 years in a row for their superior products.

Please remember that the BAD BATTERIES were from SONY. Dell offers quality products at affordable prices. If you are in the market for a new machine, Dell is worth checking out.

August 14, 2006

By Katherine Albrecht Spychips.com

TSA CONCEPT VIDEO SHOWS FUTURE RFID-ENABLED AIRPORT
Spychips in Passports May be Just the Start, Warn Privacy Advocates

RFID-laced passports may be just the start of an Orwellian airport
experience, warn privacy advocates and authors Katherine Albrecht and
Liz McIntyre as the nation braces for a rollout of the controversial
technology in passports this week.

They point to a U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
concept video created by CompEx Inc. that shows how citizens can be
tracked and monitored throughout an airport terminal -- without their
knowledge or consent.

The animated flash clip is posted on the authors' website at:

http://www.spychips.com/RFIDairport.html

In the video, citizen "Bob" is remotely identified and tracked via Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) devices as he enters an airport and
navigates to his gate. The video ends with chilling frames of a
government agent surreptitiously scanning Bob and his belongings as he
sits in the waiting area.

CompEx Inc. President Aram Kovach, who developed the film as a demo for
the TSA, received a U.S. Patent for the idea he calls "Method for
Tracking and Processing Passengers and their Transported Articles" in
November of 2005. According to company press releases, TSA officials
entertained his ideas twice, once in 2002 and once in 2003, and "offered
to direct CompEx in pursuing a segmented objective within the guidelines
they have set forth."

"This footage raises the specter of Soviet-style government surveillance
creeping onto our free soil," said McIntyre. "People need to know that
our government has actively considered these disturbing and invasive
RFID concepts. With RFID now appearing in our passports, the threat to
our privacy and civil liberties may be more than theoretical."

"RFID passports will do little to keep us safer," Albrecht added. "On
the contrary, by requiring us to carry RFID tags in our travel
documents, the government is jeopardizing our personal information while
doing little to slow down the bad guys."

The new passports are vulnerable to hacking and cloning by criminals.
Last week at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, German
researcher Lukas Grunwald showed how easily a criminal or terrorist
could clone RFID tags like those in U.S. passports using inexpensive and
readily available hardware.

=====================================================================

ABOUT "SPYCHIPS"

Liz McIntyre and Katherine Albrecht are the authors of "Spychips: How
Major Corporations Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID." The book
draws on patent documents, corporate source materials, conference
proceedings, and firsthand interviews to paint a convincing -- and
frightening -- picture of the consumer privacy threat posed by RFID.

Despite its hundreds of footnotes and academic-level accuracy, the book
remains lively and readable according to critics, who have called it a
"techno-thriller" and "a masterpiece of technocriticism."

Two days prior to its release in 2005, "Spychips" flew the top of the
Amazon bestseller charts, hitting number one as a "Mover & Shaker,"
making its way to the top-ten Nonfiction bestseller list, and spending
weeks as a Current Events bestseller. In a nod to the book's focus on
freedom, Spychips was awarded the prestigious Lysander Spooner Award for
Advancing the Literature of Liberty and named "the year's best book on
liberty."

they are watching you!

As part of my job here at M.I.C.A. I have to test lots of different products for our "Product Testing and Mighty Mica Awards" pages. After reviewing different dial up I.S.P.'s (Internet Service Providers) I came across I problem that many consumers have told us about - but we never experienced for ourselves - ENDING OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH AOL!!

I can not believe what I went through and after all of the work, I am sent a email from them explaining how my cancellation date does not mean anything - as stated in the AOL terms of service!

WOW, I cancelled on April 9th of 2006 and they say I must pay for services through June 13th because of pre-billing pratices and the fine print of the AOL's Terms of Service. Even though I stopped my credit card and stopped using the services and notified AOL on April 9th, I must pay for services up to June 13th! I think this is quite wrong and I now know why ANYONE WHO HAS EVER CANCELLED AOL HATES THEM.

I will be adding a review section covering all of the dial ups we tested over at our main site (micaspecialties.org) soon.

I guess "Family for life...until death do us part," applies to AOL as well!!