Samsung Windows 8 Tablets Surface on eBay

If you're dying to get your hands on a Windows 8 tablet, right now for $2,000 or more on eBay you can pick up several Samsung Series 7 700T tablets running Windows 8. The one-panel slate was handed out for free to all 5,000 developers who attended Microsoft's recent BUILD conference.

Now, at least four enterprising conference attendees are looking to profit off Microsoft's largesse. With all the excitement around Windows 8 right now, these tablets are likely to be popular items. In fact, one was sold while this article was being written.

Nevertheless, you still have time to check these tablets out if you're interested. At the time of this writing, only one of the four Windows 8 tablets included a "Buy It Now" option (for the ridiculous price of $3,500). The others were all being auctioned to the highest bidder, with minimum bids ranging from $2,000 to $2,300 depending on the seller.

The Samsung tablets were first discovered on eBay by WinRumors.

So what do you get for a minimum of $2,000? Well, for starters you'll get a piece of hardware that is similar to what is scheduled to hit store shelves October 2 -- albeit running Windows 7. On top of that, the base 700T running Windows 7 will retail for a suggested $1,100, nearly half what you'd pay on eBay.

So why not just wait a few weeks, buy the Windows 7 tablet and download and install the Windows 8 developer preview for free directly from Microsoft?

Well, it's not clear how much tweaking Samsung and Microsoft did to get Windows 8 running on Samsung's reference model, so perhaps it's worth it to overpay for this version of Samsung's Windows tablet.

But trying to find a bargain on this device is hardly the point. It's the first tablet you'll find that comes preloaded with Windows 8. And, as any technology geek knows, it's always fun to be the first on your block with a flashy new toy.

Image courtesy of eBay

The device

The Samsung Windows 8 tablets for sale on eBay feature an 11.6-inch display with 1366-by-768 resolution, 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5-2467M Sandy Bridge processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB hard drive, USB port, microSD, and HDMI port. The Windows 8 tablets on eBay also come with a Bluetooth keyboard, a dock that includes USB, HDMI and Ethernet ports, and a touch pen. Most sellers, but not all, are offering the free 12 month, 2GB-per-month AT&T data plan that came with the device.

What to expect

Assuming you're lucky enough to get your hands on Samsung's Windows 8 tablet, you'll have a lot to look forward to, but there are also some serious downsides, according to PCWorld's hands-on look at the Windows 8 700T.

You can expect image and text rendering to be better than the iPad and Android tablets such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1. You also get to use Microsoft's intuitive and responsive Metro-style interface, inspired by Windows Phone 7.

But the 700T is much heavier than other tablets, weighing in at about 2 pounds, compared to the 1.35-pound 3G iPad. You can also expect a lot of noise from the device's fan as it tries to cool down what is essentially a PC slapped into a one-panel slate form factor. And you need to keep the charger nearby as current battery life for the device is around 2.5 to 3 hours.

The good news, however, is that Microsoft plans to continually update Windows 8 during the developer preview phase, so battery life and other performance issues may change in the coming weeks.

Samsung's 700T running Windows 8 sounds like an interesting device to own, but is it worth the $2,000 right now? Probably not, but it's fun to check it out anyway.

If you want to give Windows 8 a try right now but can't stomach the Samsung tablet's price, you candownload the Windows 8 developer preview from Microsoft for free.

Facebook Revamps News Feed, Annoying Users

Facebook's F8 Developer Conference just days away but the social network has already debuted a new "smarter" News Feed.

For a couple of years now, Facebook has had a two-tabbed News Feed, one with "Top Stories," or updates Facebook thought you'd be interested in (based on your browsing history), while the other tab had the "Most Recent" updates. Facebook has apparently decided to get rid of this two-tabbed interface and integrate users' Top Stories and Most Recent Stories in one big, smart, News Feed.

Now when you log in to Facebook, you'll see a smart News Feed with all of your updates -- both the "important" and recent ones -- in one place. Facebook will still try to determine which stories will most interest you, and will highlight these "top stories" with a pale blue corner.

Facebook says that the top stories will depend on how long it's been since you've logged into Facebook. In other words, if you haven't visited the site in awhile, your top stories may not be extremely recent (rather, Facebook will try to give you an overview of the important stuff that happened when you were gone). But if you just logged in five minutes ago, your top stories will probably all have happened within the last five minutes.

According to Facebook's Updates to News Feed FAQ page, top stories are determined based on a number of factors. These factors include your relationship to the person posting the update, how many comments and likes the update receives, and what type of update it is. You can still hide updates if you think they're boring or spammy (even if they are from your best friend) by hovering over them and clicking the drop-down menu. This menu gives you the option of hiding the story, hiding all posts by that person, and reporting the story as (real) spam.

Facebook's new News Feed has only been live for a few hours, but people are already voicing their annoyance on PCWorld's Facebook page.

"I don't like this update because now it's a bit more confusing to find recent updates," says PCWorld reader Devon Tourond. "I do like the new update they added to the top of the page, now I can scroll through the page and the header follows me."

"FB should have a simple toggle function between 'recent stories' and 'top stories,' " says PCWorld reader Anthony Nozzi. "Better yet, they should enable a user to prioritize their news feeds by assigning a ranking score to each particular page that provides the news feeds. That way, a user can control which pages get the highest priority in providing news feeds."

Facebook's also added a real-time feed in the upper-right corner of the page. Some readers are concerned that this will adversely affect their privacy, but as far as I can see the updates in the box will not share more than can normally be found on a person's private profile page.

Skype iPhone, iPod Touch App Has Security Hole

Skype is working to fix a security hole in its iOS app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that allows a hacker to steal a person’s entire address book. The vulnerability, located in the app’s chat message window, can be exploited with JavaScript code. It was pointed out by security researcher Phil Purviance of AppSec.

"Skype uses a locally stored HTML file to display chat messages from other Skype users, but it fails to properly encode the incoming user’s ‘Full Name,’ allowing an attacker to craft malicious JavaScript code that runs when the victim views the message," Purviance wrote on his blog.

The heart of the problem, according to Purviance, is an improper definition within the Skype app that allows access to a user's local file system. He says the threat is partially mitigated by protections within iOS itself, but the address book remains vulnerable.

Skype appears to be in no hurry to fix the problem. In a tweet, Purviance said he notified Skype of the vulnerability on August 24, and was told that an update addressing the issue would be released in early September.

A statement from Skype confirms that the company is aware of the issue and will fix it "in our next planned release, which we hope to roll out imminently."

You can watch a demonstration of exactly how the exploit works in this video, created by Purviance:

Facial Recognition Technology: Facebook Photo Matching Is Just the Start

As facial recognition tech moves into law enforcement, military use, and targeted advertising, and onto the streets of your town, will your privacy be a casualty?

The Internet was in an uproar earlier this year following Facebook's launch of facial recognition software for its photo services, enabling users to identify their friends in photos automatically--and without their permission. Though critics described that move as creepy, the controversial technology may now be on the verge of widespread use.

For instance, this month a Massachusetts company called BI² Technologies will roll out a handheld facial recognition add-on for the iPhone to 40 law enforcement agencies. The device will allow police to conduct a quick check to see whether a suspect has a criminal record--either by scanning the suspect's iris or taking a photo of the individual's face.

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the military and Georgia Tech Research Institute had started testing on autonomous aerial drones that could use facial recognition software to identify and attack human targets--in effect, the software performs the assessment that determines who gets killed.

And in yet another development, the Federal Trade Commission announced earlier this week that it will hold a free public workshop on December 8, 2011, to examine various issues related to personal privacy, consumer protection, and facial recognition technology.

[Read: "Facebook Photo Tagging: A Privacy Guide"]

Of course, the government and large private companies have had access to facial recognition software for years. The pressing question today is what happens to privacy when everyone has access to the technology? Already smaller businesses--and even private individuals--are developing sometimes amazing, sometimes very creepy uses for security-focused software.

Tom Cruise encounters facial-recognition-generated ads in a scene from the film Minority Report.In Las Vegas, advertisers have taken a page from Minority Report, the 2002 Tom Cruise movie. The Vegas advertisers use facial recognition to target ads to passers-by. For instance, if a woman in her mid-twenties walks past the advertising kiosk, its built-in software will identify her likely age and gender and then display ads for products deemed appealing to her specific demographic.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a startup called SceneTap links facial recognition technology to cameras in bars and clubs so that users can figure out which bars have the most desirable (in their opinion) ratio of women to men--before they even arrive.

If you think the corporate implications are unsettling, wait until the general population gets deeply involved in using facial recognition technology. One recent instance: In the wake of the August London riots, a Google group of private citizens called London Riots Facial Recognition emerged with the aim of using publicly available records and facial recognition software to identify rioters for the police as a form of citizen activism (or vigilante justice, depending on how you feel about it). The group finally abandoned its efforts when its experimental facial recognition app yielded disappointing results.

Though the members of London Riots Facial Recognition undoubtedly believed that they were working for the greater good, what happens when people other than concerned citizens get their hands on the technology? It shouldn't take too long for us to find out.

Present-Day Reality Check

The use of facial recognition software by governments and online social networks continues to provide headline fodder. A Boston-area man had his driver's license revoked because when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a facial recognition scan of a database containing the photos of Massachusetts drivers, it flagged the man's license as a possible phony. Afterward it emerged that the system had confused the man's face with someone else's.

Scene from the 2011 London riots.In England, law enforcement officials ran photos of August riot suspects through Scotland Yard's newly updated face-matching program, which is under consideration for use during the 2012 Summer Olympics in the UK. In Canada, an insurance company invited Vancouver police to use its facial recognition software to help identify rioting fans after the Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost the seventh game of the NHL championship series.

And of course Facebook endured a hailstorm of criticism in June when it announced its plans be roll out a facial recognition feature for its members to provide semiautomatic tagging of photos uploaded to the social network.

[Read: "Facebook Facial Recognition: Its Quiet Rise and Dangerous Future"]

One Facebook critic was Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, who said earlier this year that the "surprising accuracy" of existing facial recognition software was "very concerning" to his company and that Google was "unlikely" to build a facial-recognition search system in the future.

Indeed, Google seems to have been so concerned by the technology that Schmidt declined to implement it even though his company already had the know-how to make it. “We built that technology and withheld it,” Schmidt said. “People could use it in a very bad way.”

Turn a PC Off or Leave It On?

Call me a tree-hugger if you must, but I see no reason to keep a computer on when it's not in use. That wastes electricity, which is bad for your pocketbook and bad for the planet. And it's probably bad for the computer.

Yes, I have seen occasional arguments that shutting down a computer, then starting it up cold, cause more wear and tear than leaving it on for 12 hours. I just don't buy them. All computers potentially suffer from heat problems, and one that never gets a chance to cool down will suffer from more of them.

Besides, a computer that's off is a computer that can't be infected with malware or behave under orders from afar if it's already infected.

If you don't like starting your computer fresh every morning, you can hibernate it rather than shutting it down. From the hardware and power-consumption points of view, there's no difference between shutting down a PC and hibernating it. But there is a difference in what happens when you boot it again in the morning. A shutdown PC will give Windows a fresh start, clear of any digital cobwebs it acquired since its last boot. A hibernated PC will wake up where you left it, with the same programs, files, and windows open.

Which you prefer is a matter of personal choice, although you should probably shut it down at least once a week to clear those cobwebs.