Interesting article on the Sony hacking. It's likely MS is watching this story with great interest.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-15/sony-attack-shows-amazon-s-cloud-service-lures-hackers-at-pennies-an-hour.htmlAR

Thanks for posting this. While I use many of the latest tech toys, I have always been leery of "the cloud". On a side note, I think that if online entities want me to use the web than I ought to be able to have access to free AV that works. Even paid AV does not work all that well. I know lots of folks will say that their AV works great. But there are things that get in that disguise themselves (and may or may not get triggered) and most AV does not catch them.Bob

Thanks for posting this. While I use many of the latest tech toys, I have always been leery of "the cloud". On a side note, I think that if online entities want me to use the web than I ought to be able to have access to free AV that works. Even paid AV does not work all that well. I know lots of folks will say that their AV works great. But there are things that get in that disguise themselves (and may or may not get triggered) and most AV does not catch them.Bob

Bob - My simple rule: NEVER EVER conduct ANY business over the I/net. If you can't talk to a human to discuss the transaction, forget it. They need me more than I need them. And never keep personal or financial information on a computer that has a net connection.Guess that leaves me out for FLIGHT! Their loss.AR

And now it seems, it's the turn of Lockheed Martin!http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-28/lockheed-martin-s-computer-network-security-may-have-been-hacked-nyt-says.htmlAR

Oops. Ignore.

Bob - My simple rule: NEVER EVER conduct ANY business over the I/net. If you can't talk to a human to discuss the transaction, forget it. They need me more than I need them. And never keep personal or financial information on a computer that has a net connection.Guess that leaves me out for FLIGHT! Their loss.AR

Sad part is that just being on the net exposes you to problems. Maybe the bad guys don't get data from you, but they can sure mess things up. I haven't followed the FLIGHT talk much. There's so little information on it that it's hard to get too excited yet.Bob

Sad part is that just being on the net exposes you to problems. Maybe the bad guys don't get data from you, but they can sure mess things up. I haven't followed the FLIGHT talk much. There's so little information on it that it's hard to get too excited yet.Bob

Quoting today's Financial Post, Reuters reports that personal information of more than 283,000 customers of Honda Canada has been breached. "Honda Canada said the stolen data included names, addresses, vehicle ID numbers and in some cases financing account numbers".The 'net seems to get more porous daily.AR

It doesn't matter if you use the internet or not, your whole life is already on the internet.

It doesn't matter if you use the internet or not, your whole life is already on the internet.

YUCK.I can't think of more boring reading.Bob

YUCK.I can't think of more boring reading.Bob

Until you are the target..... Right now there is a good chance that some enterprising social misfit is collecting data in small chunks from the internet and building files on those that begin to emerge as interesting possibilities. Same thing the NSA does but with tax money.From what I have read the lasted breaches seem to be mostly from people who stupidly bite on a phishing email and fill in their info on a bogus web site. Now the hacker has the keys he/she needs to get around all the fancy anti-virus and firewall stuff. These hackers are professionals who make real money selling the stuff they glean. It is almost impossible to find them since they never actually use the stolen info. Even if the buyer of it is caught, and squeals, the trail back to the hacker is cold. Phishing looks like the best way to gain access since the victim gives the hacker the ID and Password voluntarily. All the hacker has to do is find the email addresses of some key people and the game is on.

I personally like the idea of the cloud, but I really like Apple's iCloud idea. If it works, I'll never, ever have to connect my devices to all different computers in the house, just to make sure all music is synchronized everywhere. It would take a load of work out of my hands.