losses

Say What? A do-it-yourself hearing test CD

If you occasionally experience "ringing in the ears" after exposure to loud sounds or concerts, you may be losing your hearing. To find out where you stand check out Digital Recordings' hearing test CD. It can be used to set a baseline of your hearing, and if you're geeky enough, retest yourself the day after attending a loud concert, working with power tools, or riding a snowmobile. A few hours or even a day later your hearing acuity will be significantly reduced. It's kinda like a preview of what's to come, if you don't stop abusing your ears.

That short-term deafness is sometimes referred to as Temporary Threshold Shift (TTS). But repeated episodes of temporary hearing loss, with insufficient recovery times between exposures will eventually lead to permanent hearing loss. At that point there's no need to keep reading the Audiophiliac blog. … Read more

Stealing without taking

Verdasys CTO Dan Geer says one of the problems with data theft is that it has nothing in common with our current attitudes toward possession and loss. I recently talked with Geer about protecting your computer assets, and at one point he started quoting that famous Joni Mitchell line, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

(Data theft) is one place where our intuition about physical objects and our intuition about data can't be the same.

If I steal your car, you are likely to notice. Or putting it differently, if I … Read more

Report: Apple working on auto-volume control for iPods

Apple is developing a volume control device for its iPods that would automatically calculate how long a person has been listening and at what volume, before gradually reducing the sound level, all in an effort to protect users' hearing, according to the London-based Daily Mail.

Citing a new patent application, the report--to which Apple declined to comment--says the "device will also calculate the amount of 'quiet time' between when the iPod is turned off and when it is restarted, allowing the volume to be increased again to a safe level."

In February 2006, a Louisiana man filed a class action suit against Apple, … Read more

Symantec becomes instant leader in data loss prevention

Just last week I wrote a blog that described the ongoing market consolidation around data loss prevention (DLP) and its effect on market leader Vontu.

The blog titled, "High noon for Vontu?", was generally accurate but I got the details wrong. Rather than high noon, it turned out to be midnight on New Year's Eve for the Vontu team: investors got to party like it was 1999 this week when Symantec acquired Vontu for $350 million.

It was a pretty sure bet that Symantec would buy a DLP company, but why Vontu? After all, other security leaders--for … Read more

High noon for Vontu?

There is absolutely no question that large organizations are growing more and more concerned about data privacy and security. In fact, a recent ESG Research survey reveals that security professionals rate "protecting confidential/private data" as the biggest influence on their security management needs--more important than regulatory compliance or corporate governance. The survey was based on a recently released Enterprise Strategy Group report titled "Security Management Matures," which I co-authored.

Obviously, product demand should be healthy but suppliers may be facing a tougher market because of growing consolidation in the data loss prevention market. The market … Read more

HAL 9000 meets Weight Watchers

"Open the donut box and pass me a glazed, Hal."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."

Keeping your diet in check and working out is a great way to lose weight, but robotic assistants are always a huge help.

The weight maintenance sociable robot project at the always fascinating MIT Media Lab has one goal: to help you shed pounds. The talking, face-tracking, eye-contact-making weight-loss coach is designed for in-home use.

The MIT Media Lab site has a video of the robot in action.

Daily and long-term exercise patterns and eating habits are … Read more

McAfee's one-two punch

McAfee delivered a one-two punch Tuesday, introducing its McAfee Data Loss Prevention security appliance and a statistic-laden "Datagate" report on potential fallout from corporate data loss.

McAfee teamed up with Datamonitor to crunch the numbers on over 1,400 corporate users worldwide. The highlights include: 67 percent of companies surveyed experienced the loss of confidential data in the past year that brought serious damage to their brand - with 33 percent of them noting a major security breach could potentially put them out of business. The report notes that companies spent an average of $1.82 million to … Read more

Dance Dance Revolution: Industrial Ironclad Edition

Okay, I might like Dance Dance Revolution, but I'm not this hardcore about it by any means. Nevertheless, apparently some people are. JustDDR.com is selling a souped-up DDR deck called the "Metal Pad DDR Platinum Pro." The foot pads on this luxe dance machine are made of stainless steel, so that you can bring your home arcade a major notch above the norm. The pricing information is in Japanese, so I'm not positive how much it costs, but I'm sure it ain't cheap.

Now that's heavy metal.

(Via Red Ferret)

4,096 lights for your playlist

We're not terribly fond of gadgets that change colors just for the sake of doing so--some Cravers are downright indignant, in fact--but this one may be an exception. If nothing else, Aigo's "Omnisphere" deserves at least some credit for its sheer number of colors: 4,096 of them in "high-illumination LED," according to Gadget Candy.

Like so much raver chic gear we've seen, this one has a brightness control that can be set to the beat and volume of the music. Not only that, but it will play the songs from an iPod … Read more