airports

A laptop with information on prescreened travelers, which was reported stolen, has been found, and the incident may be relabeled the case of the misplaced laptop.

Late Monday, the Transportation Security Administration had announced that a laptop containing data on about 33,000 travelers who had applied for a national airport security fast-pass card was believed to have been stolen from a locked office at the San Francisco Airport in late July.

Early Tuesday, however, the computer was found in the same company office from which it was supposedly stolen on July 26, Allison Beer, senior vice president for corporate … Read more

Updated 1:30 p.m. PDT with laptop being found.

The perils to consumer privacy are getting greater day by day.

In a recent headlines, nearly 130 workers at UCLA Medical Center are accused of prying into the medical records of celebrities and other patients. One woman is even accused of selling information about Farrah Fawcett's cancer treatment to tabloids, according to the Los Angeles Times.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose wife, Maria Shriver, is believed to have had her records snooped on at the hospital, has endorsed legislation that would impose penalties on hospitals and workers for patient … Read more

On July 25, 2000, an Air France Concorde ran over a piece of titanium debris while taking off from Charles de Gaulle International Airport. Minutes later 113 people perished in a ball of fire.

Most airports rely on visual inspections to keep runways clear of foreign objects and prevent what happened in France, but Heathrow International Airport, the world's busiest, has now installed a permanent dual radar system called the Tarsier, which scans 3,658 meters of runway in search of junk 24 hours a day.

The Tarsier uses networked high-frequency, high-resolution radar and integrated digital signal processing to … Read more

Linksys today announced its one-step-further support for Mac by releasing its OS X version of the Linksys EasyLink Advisor (LELA) setup wizard. LELA is a desktop application that helps take away the hassle and complexity of setting up a router by using easy-to-understand terminology and illustrations to guide consumers through the process.

This is great news for Mac users, especially those who are used to setting up routers using a desktop application rather than the Web-interface. I personally have met a lot of Mac users who somehow believe that Mac computers only work (well) with Apple's AirPort products because … Read more

Are you one of those people who always holds up the security line at the airport, struggling to get your laptop out of its case? (Or like us, do you cast dirty looks at those people, while cooling your heels in line behind them?)

The LapStrap is an idea that's either pure genius or the most ridiculous thing we've ever seen. It's a padded nylon shoulder strap, like the kind found on most laptop cases, that attaches directly to your laptop. The company's pitch is, "Security lines...made easy!"

The bottom part of the … Read more

The wireless backup feature that disappeared from Apple's promotional copy for its Leopard operating system has snuck in through the back door.

Macworld did a little poking around with the recently released Mac OS X software update for "Time Machine and Airport" and realized that Time Machine now recognizes a generic USB hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme base station, allowing Airport Extreme users to wirelessly back up their notebooks with Leopard's Time Machine. You need to mount the external hard drive using Finder to make sure Time Machine can see it, according to Macworld.… Read more

Apple released on Wednesday a security update for the AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n.

The Firmware 7.3.1 update addresses the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) vulnerability detailed in CVE-2008-1012.

Apple said there is an input validation issue in the way AirPort Extreme Base Station validates AFP requests. A maliciously crafted AFP request may cause file sharing to become unresponsive. This issue does not affect Time Capsule or AirPort Express.

The update for the Fast Ethernet version of Airport Extreme and the Gigabit Ethernet editions is available on from Apple support. Earlier this week Apple released an update … Read more

I've been hunting for a good network-attached storage device for my home wireless network for several years. I've come close to buying one several times (though there haven't been many from which to choose), but always ended up deciding not to because of cost and poor integration with my Mac.

I was therefore very excited to learn about Apple's new Time Capsule. Time Capsule doubles as a wireless router and network-attached storage. Once you have it set up, it automatically backs up your hard drive using Mac OS X's Time Machine software.

By automatically, I do mean "automatically." It is the most seamless, easy to use backup system I've ever seen. At $299 (for the 500GB version) it's not cheap, but considering that you get a great a rock-solid wireless router along with a large hard drive for that price, it's definitely worth it.… Read more

Birds are a perennial nuisance at many airports, but removing them can be a labor-intensive and potentially dangerous affair when winged raptors are trained to chase them away. So a European company called Bird Raptor has taken live hunters out of the equation altogether by creating an unmanned air vehicle that serves as a "gregarious bird removal system," according to FlightGlobal, or "GBRS."

The "Falco"--not to be confused with the '80s Euro-pop star--is the product of 11 years of development, a life-size mechanical replica of a female goshawk with a 5.25-foot … Read more