But, police now say a Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center employee, Linda Turner, stole hundreds, possibly thousands, of people’s medical records.

They say she kept the files in the basement of a home she owned. The hospital fired her just last night— this is going beyond a job situation…

Baptist Hospital Employee Charged After Medical Files Found

Wake Forest Baptist medical records found in rental home owned by employee

If your not up on this new trend you may be using Location Based Services without even knowing it. If your using one of these nice new smartphones with built-in GPS are you aware your images may be tagged with the GPS location of the photo. Imagine those pictures of your kids playing in the backyard and you posted those images to Flickr or other sites and in doing so you just posted your home’s location down to the foot. Even with Geo Tagging (the tagging of GPS data to an image) turned off your phone still places a ton of information in the photo such as the phone model, date, time and more, all of which could pass more information than you thought.

Of course other services such as FourSquare are all about posting your current location to the web, I hope I don’t have to say how dangerous this could be. The objective was to allow for meet-ups with your friends or like minded folks that might be in your general area which in the early days worked pretty well but now with millions using the service can you see the downside? I will give you an example of a post I saw a few weeks back:

Just arrived in Winston-Salem, bored and alone. Thank goodness the Hilton has a whirlpool, going down for a good long soak.

I think it’s pretty obvious just how stupid that post was especially since her profile also includes a picture. Unfortunately many people are just to trusting and just don’t give a post like that second thoughts until it’s to late.

So anyway check out the attached PDF put together by Microsoft on this subject.

Antimicrobial Technologies Group makes anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-odor fabrics, fibers, plastics and paints. They are looking for a facility in the 100,000 square foot range however commented that they could easily outgrow such a site within a few years. ATG is a relatively new company derived from the research of a professor at the University of South Dakota.  They had a ribbon cutting of their South Dakota facility just last year at which time they employed just a handful of people. Dr. YuYu Sun discovered a N-Halamine molecule which is claimed to fight germs, fungus, mold and viruses, a very bold claim I would think. ATG holds the rights to that molecule and looks to deploy it in everything from paint to textiles, textiles being where Winston-Salem comes in.

Information on ATG is pretty thin considering how new the company is not to mention their products have more or less not been marketed. For a NPR sound bite on the company you can hear the CEO and VP discuss their products and company below. Their website, http://www.antimicrobial.us/ isn’t much help for providing any more in depth information but it appears they probably have less than a dozen employees at this point.

Ms. Garrou has held the current seat in District 32 for the last 12 years and is seen as one of the major architects of the fiscal problems that plague North Carolina. Over the last ten years increases in spending have been four times greater than increases in population. This shows the clear willingness to spend without regard for fiscal responsibility. As a result taxes on every front across the state have been increased.  In the current session North Carolina was able to close much of their budget deficits only because of billions of dollars that were provided by the Federal government as part of their ill conceived stimulus package. Those funds however, will not be forthcoming next year and North Carolinians will be put in a difficult position as the State Legislature is forced to cut benefits and services to close a multi billion dollar budget gap. Once a resort state that provided a haven for businesses and tourists alike, North Carolina now has one of the highest sales taxes, unfriendly business taxes, and is losing people to neighboring states which have a much more friendly environment.

Nathan enters the race committed to bringing down the rate of unemployment in North Carolina and avoiding any repetition of the mistakes that have led to the current state of affairs. He wants to make sure that the state fosters an environment which attracts investment and promote job growth. Nathan has been clear that his goals if elected are to work diligently to reduce wasteful government spending. He is committed to reducing taxes so that business and industry will once again see North Carolina as a good place to locate their businesses. It is also important that government be limited to its constitutional size and responsibilities to ensure long term economic growth. As a member of the state Senate Nathan Jones will make the people of North Carolina and the proper conduct of their business and representation the business of his Senatorial Office.

Recent labor events in Mexico and problems with PC Electronics component maker Foxconn are likely the cause for this extension.

Amazon seeks a declaration that the DOR’s ongoing demand for information that will disclose the names, addresses and purchasing habits of Amazon’s North Carolina customers violates the rights of Amazon to sell, and its customers to purchase, books, movies, music, and other lawful expressive content free from government intrusion into the customers’ reading, viewing and listening choices.  These rights are secured under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Article I, sections 4 and 5 of the Washington State Constitution, and federal law.  The DOR’s demand for the identity of customers who purchased video material also violates the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, 18 U.S.C. § 2710.  Declaratory relief from this Court is necessary to avoid piecemeal litigation or inconsistent rulings in the event other states make similar demands for customer data.

Of course Amazon has turned around and filed an immediate suit to block this request as it flies in the face of any number of court rulings that such information is private however now guess what, we get to send lawyers and their team to Seattle to argue that North Carolina does have a right to this information. Not only are you being asked to provide the state with Federally protected information but your being forced to pay to argue against your own personal rights in a court clear across the country!

The DOR has no business seeking to uncover the identity of Amazon’s customers who purchased expressive content … let alone associating customers’ names and addresses with the specific books, music, and video content that they have purchased,” Amazon wrote. “The collection and disclosure of the customer data … will link those purchases directly to the customers’ names and addresses, exposing their otherwise private reading, viewing, listening and other personal choices to government scrutiny

Please everyone take the time to read this great post on cnet which highlights exactly why North Carolina has no legal right to this information and contact your Representatives in Raleigh immediately. This is not a Left or Right side of the issue debate this is your personal privacy, protected by multiple Federal laws and court cases which the fools in Raleigh don’t seem to care about. While you have your Representative on the phone ask them who went to Seattle, did they fly coach and at what cost, where did they stay and eat and what was the final tally for hand delivering a letter to Amazon.

ACTION ALERT…NC Gov Bev Perdue Demands To Know What you Bought at Amazon

Amazon: NC bid to track taxes violates free speech

To read the full complaint Amazon has filed click here: Amazon v. Kenneth Lay

“Dell Inc. will spend $3.9 billion for the technology services company Perot Systems Corp. in an attempt to expand beyond the PC business”

“Dell’s purchase of MessageOne, coming on the heels of its acquisition of EqualLogic in November, may signal that the manufacturer is looking to build its own storage brand…”

“Dell Computer has acquired privately-held Plural Inc., a Web application development and services company…”

“Dell has completed the acquisition of Everdream, a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for remote-service management, providing Dell with an expanded presence in the rapidly growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-enabled managed services market….”

I could go on and on posting news snippets from the last two years that demonstrate Dell’s progress out of its core business of providing great PC’s and Servers to businesses. Dell has purchased 10 companies all of which have nothing to do with making a good computer for you.

Dell has also reduced the sales and support for partners like Harbor Computer Services. Whereas, we used to have a team at Dell that was dedicated to helping us get you the best configuration for the specific needs of your business, we no longer have that team. Support for business sales is dismal and is moving in the direction of Dell’s customers support – off shore and disinterested.

Recently Dell moved it’s assembly plant from Texas to Mexico. With this move, Dell is no longer able to provide shipping time estimates for custom products. Our customers have experienced month long wait times and this unfortunately isn’t something that Dell intends to fix. It in in fact part of their plan to move away from providing custom computers for business needs.

Given the problems we have been experiencing, coupled with the news that Dell is moving its focus away from building great PC’s and Servers, we have decided to begin the move away from using Dell products. After significant research and agonizing over loosing a long term supplier, we have made our selection. We have been a HUGE Dell fan in the past, so this decision was not taken lightly or quickly – it has in fact been somewhat painful.

Our new preferred partner is Equus. Equus is an American business with 100% of its assembly, support and service in the USA. They build computers from Intel components. They are Intel’s 7th largest customer. They have been in business for 21 years. They are employee owned. They have an office in Novi and are headquartered in Minneapolis. We are confident that we have found the right hardware supplier. 

Building computers is what Equus does. Support partners like Harbor Computer Services is all that their support department does. They are good at what they do and have been well respected in the industry for many years.

We hope that you will move along with us in the transition from Dell to Equus. We will still be able to obtain Dell equipment for you, but we no longer feel confident in recommending them as the preferred solution. Ted, Diana and Amy can answer any questions and address concerns that you may have. Change is difficult and uneasy but sometimes necessary. This is one of those cases.

Now on to why this has any bearing on your day to day life or business.

The term Net Neutrality in it’s basic form means all traffic on a public network (Internet) must be treat equally. This means your video watching of YouTube and your neighbors online gaming both must travel across the Internet unencumbered by traffic management which places one type of web use above another. Sounds simple and basic enough right? Well ISP’s argue that for one they need to manage their networks to provide quality service to all customers and if one customer or type of use is putting a strain on the system they need to be allowed to adjust that traffic so all users get acceptable access. Well that also sounds reasonable enough doesn’t it? Thus the problem, should all access be equal or should an ISP be able to control the bandwidth so all users get reasonable performance.

Now for the Dark Side. Let’s say ISPs such as Comcast and Time Warner have certain content on the web. As a Road Runner customer I find I can access that Time Warner content extremely fast but when I try to watch something Comcast is providing I find it’s horribly slow, hmm, is it fair for Road Runner to slow down access to competitive services or product? Better yet let’s say a Road Runner calls up Google who owns YouTube and says, “we need you to start paying for the amount of data people are using to view your content or we will start slowing that content delivery down. Don’t forget Google is saying they want to drop fiber in a couple of cities and those cities are bending over backwards to get Google’s money but what if Google did lay fiber in say Winston-Salem then turned around and only allowed high speed access to Google services and slowed down access to everything else? Well I think it would be easy to argue none of us think either of those situations would be a good idea.

So should we be upset that the courts ruled the FCC doesn’t have the right to say no to either of the above thus giving the FCC carte blanche to be the sole authority on how network bandwidth is provided? To steal a movie line from a great movie , “I Think NOT!” and the reason is simple, the so called Fairness Doctrine and it’s new Obama appointed Czar, The Chief Diversity Officer. Now I’m not going to get all political in this however it should be noted that if the court had let the FCC’s argument stand then there is absolutely nothing to stop the FCC from saying there has to be not only equal access to the networks but the content on the web must also be equal in it’s “diversity”. Now this is a very scary thought that a group of unelected officials could in fact determine if you get to listen to Rush Limbaugh online because there would have to be an equal liberal voice so as to keep the Internet “diverse”.  Let’s bring it even further down to the local level let’s say you run a website where you share your political views but to keep things “diverse” you would be forced to have an equal amount of opposing content. Okay you think that’s absurd the FCC could not ever do that however if the ruling had stood they could have in fact done just that. Your church website could have been ordered to put up links to gay websites, local bars, Las Vegas casinos or anything else because everything had to be equal and “diverse”.

Sure, sure the above would have hopefully never happened however by allowing a commission to expand it’s powers beyond what our elected officials have given them we have to assume the worse since who knows what could happen and we would have had no recourse. By the courts stepping in the concept of Net Neutrality is now tossed back to Congress where hopefully we will have public and well as industry input to come up with rules which are fair but more importantly have a system of checks and balances. Should Road Runner be able to slow down Skype because Road Runner sells VOIP or should you be able to watch MSNBC or FOX at equal speeds and who is to be the judge and jury of that is not something we want a few beltway insiders to determine.

Exposure:

Today, Microsoft released two security bulletins describing seven vulnerabilities found in components that ship with Microsoft Office XP and 2003 for Windows, and Office 2004 for Mac. These bulletins do not affect the more current versions of Office, such as 2007 Microsoft Office System or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.

The vulnerabilities affect different versions of Office to varying degrees. Though the seven vulnerabilities differ technically, and affect two different Office components, they share the same scope and impact. By enticing one of your users into downloading and opening a maliciously crafted Office document, an attacker can exploit any of these vulnerabilities to execute code on a victim’s computer, usually inheriting that user’s level of privileges and permissions. If your user has local administrative privileges, the attacker gains full control of the user’s machine.

According to Microsoft’s bulletins, an attacker can exploit these flaws using many different types of Office documents. In one bulletin, Microsoft specifically states PowerPoint documents are vulnerable. However, they also mention any "Office file" in their other alert. Therefore, we recommend you beware of all unexpected Office documents.

If you’d like to learn more about each individual flaw, drill into the "Vulnerability Details" section of the security bulletins listed below:

•  MS10-003: Multiple PowerPoint Code Execution Vulnerabilities, rated Important
•  MS10-004: Microsoft Office MSO.DLL Code Execution Vulnerability, rated Important

Solution Path

Microsoft has released patches for Office to correct all of these vulnerabilities. You should download, test, and deploy the appropriate patches throughout your network immediately, or let the Microsoft Automatic Update feature do it for you.

MS10-003:

•  Office XP w/SP3
•  Office 2004 for Mac

MS10-004:

PowerPoint update for:

•  Office XP w/SP3
•  Office 2003 w/SP3
•  Office 2004 for Mac