Seems the personal data of Googlers hired prior to 2006 were stolen during a May 26 burglary at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, a financially troubled human resources outfit Google (GOOG) once used to administer employee benefits. The data, which astonishingly were not encrypted, thankfully did not include driver’s license, credit card or bank account numbers. It did, however, include employee names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, and addresses–everything an identity thief would need to open a credit card account under another’s name.

It’s unclear how many Googlers are affected by the breach, but it could be quite a few. CBS’s (CBS) CNET Networks was also affected by the burglary, with details from about 6,500 employees stolen.

“We take the security of our employees very seriously and require outside vendors to meet appropriate security standards. We review and update these standards on an ongoing basis,” a Google representative said. “Google is not currently using Colt’s services and had made this decision long before this incident.”

If that’s the case, what was Colt doing with that data in the first place?

It was tremendously monotonous.”

–Billy Mitchell explains what it was like achieving a perfect score on Pac-Man.

Obviously, that’s why they’re dial-up users.

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are surfing the net via dial-up connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (PDF), most of them by choice. And 62 percent of dial-up users reported no interest whatsoever in upgrading to broadband.

Price was obviously an issue for some (about a third) and access an issue for others (24 percent), but 19 percent said that nothing can convince them to get broadband. Which means broadband growth in the states may be nearing a plateau. “… Solving the supply problem where there are availability gaps is only going to go so far,” said John Horrigan, the study’s author. “It’s going to have to be a process of getting people more engaged with information technology and demonstrating to people that it’s worth it for them to make the investment of time and money.”

And until then, the percentage of adult Americans with home broadband connections will continue to hover around 55 percent.

The federal judge presiding over Viacom’s (VIA) $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google (GOOG) and YouTube denied a motion for the pair to produce their source code Wednesday. “YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation,” U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton wrote.

Apparently he didn’t feel quite as strongly about the privacy of YouTube users because he felt entirely comfortable turning that over to the media company. And so he ordered Google to provide Viacom with YouTube’s Logging database, which contains:

…for each instance a video is watched, the unique “login ID” of the user who watched it, the time when the user started to watch the video, the internet protocol address other devices connected to the internet use to identify the user’s computer (“IP address”), and the identifier for the video. That database (which is stored on live computer hard drives) is the only existing record of how often each video has been viewed during various time periods.”

To Stanton such data isn’t a “vital asset,” although the authors of the Video Privacy Protection Act and anyone else with an interest in personal privacy would likely disagree. Said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “The Court’s erroneous ruling is a setback to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. We urge Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users.”

And Google will almost certainly do that. But it may have its work cut out for it, because in this case it’s fighting not just Viacom and the presiding court, but itself. You see, in granting Viacom’s request for YouTube’s Logging database, Stanton cited Google’s own argument that IP addresses aren’t always personal data. “Defendants argue that the data should not be disclosed because of the users’ privacy concerns, saying that ‘Plaintiffs would likely be able to determine the viewing and video uploading habits of YouTube’s users based on the user’s login ID and the user’s IP address,’ ” Stanton wrote. “But defendants cite no authority barring them from disclosing such information in civil discovery proceedings, and their privacy concerns are speculative. Defendants do not refute that the ‘login ID is an anonymous pseudonym that users create for themselves when they sign up with YouTube,’ which without more ‘cannot identify specific individuals,’ and Google has elsewhere stated:

We … are strong supporters of the idea that data protection laws should apply to any data that could identify you. The reality is though that in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot.”

–Google Software Engineer Alma Whitten, Are IP addresses personal?, GOOGLE PUBLIC POLICY BLOG (Feb. 22, 2008)

Ironic, no?

And now it’s creating a bit of a stir again, this time thanks to the iPhone. Apple plans to buy 50 million 8Gb-equivalent NAND flash chips from Samsung. That’s an awful lot of NAND–so much, in fact, that the chip manufacturer has been forced to reduce its supply to other customers to fulfill its obligation to Apple.

Ugly news for any Samsung customer not headquartered in Cupertino, Calif. That said, the deal’s impact on the NAND market could be a reduction in prices for all. Something to look forward to, after the drought, I suppose.

This afternoon, Microsoft (MSFT) officially announced “Equipt,” a new package of low-end productivity software and hosted services. Essentially a subscription version of Microsoft Office, Equipt includes the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, as well as Office Live Workspace, Windows Live OneCare and an assortment of Windows Live tools. The price? $69.99 per year.

But you have to make a trip to Circuit City, which will begin offering Equipt exclusively on July 5 (great choice of partners, guys).

A trip to the local big-box retailer? Interesting way to transition software users from a purchase-to-own model to a subscription-based one. Then again, $200+ worth of software for $70 is a pretty compelling proposition. Assuming you’re not already using OpenOffice and NeoOffice, which are, you know, FREE.

A reassuring profession of altruism, but one that the Justice Department isn’t buying. The agency has opened a formal antitrust investigation into the deal and will soon begin issuing civil investigative demands to the companies’ competitors, customers and potential partners in the hopes of determining whether it will further tighten Google’s near-monopoly grip on the search advertising market. “This is a complicated situation, but one of the key questions is very simple,” said David Balto, an antitrust lawyer who was competition policy director at the Federal Trade Commission during the Clinton administration. “What is Yahoo’s incentive to continue to compete?”

Good question.

Helpfully, Google and Yahoo have already agreed to delay implementing their new alliance for three and a half months so the DOJ can answer it.