BuzzBites: Lord of the Leaks

Lord of the Leaks

We know competition drives business, but organizations today are engaged in a perverse contest: to see who can lose the most confidential data. Case in point: Financial services company ING said 13,000 customer records might have been compromised by a stolen laptop. But insurance giant AIG recently crushed that meager tally; a server with personal data of 930,000 customers was stolen from an AIG office.

And it's not just the private sector. Both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Agriculture have suffered breaches, as have countless universities.

If organizations are intent on this competition, let's give them an award. Call it "The Leaky" and build it in the shape of a busted water pipe. It's now up to someone to wrest it from the hands of current champ CardSystem Solutions, which may have disclosed 40 million credit card accounts to intruders. Game on!

American Idle

Fewer and fewer Americans visit national parks today and, according to a new study, 98% percent of that decrease is attributed to electronic media; people would rather surf the Web, watch TV or play videogames than be outdoors. Researchers say it may be evidence of a profound shift from an appreciation of nature to 'videophilia,' an inclination toward sedentary interaction with electronic media.

Combine this with the record ratings for "American Idol," and a frightening picture emerges: We are destined to become big blobs with questionable musical taste who never see a ray of sunlight. Hey, at least we'll be able to look at photos of the Grand Canyon on Flickr as we download the latest Taylor Hicks song. --Andrew Conry-Murray, [email protected]