They do things differently in the great white north...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071004160914438
Ca: Computer breaches exposed
Thursday, October 04 2007 @ 04:09 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
Security holes at Alberta's government offices and educational institutions contributed to computer network breaches at Alberta Health and Grant MacEwan College, according to the auditor general.
They were the most serious among dozens of security protocol issues at just about every level of government and the education community. In many, the breaches were as simple as not having proper password policies in place.
But in the cases of Mac-Ewan College and the health department, the breaches potentially exposed their networks. MacEwan left unfettered Internet access to private financial documents, while Alberta Health logged unknown, unauthorized connections during occasional security checks.
Source - Edmonton Sun (Props, Flying Hamster)
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20071005033600702
Ca: Privacy breach at MacEwan
Friday, October 05 2007 @ 03:36 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
A city college chose not to inform students and others whose personal credit information was left publicly available through its Internet site, it has confirmed.
MacEwan College was cited in the auditor general’s report this week after a tipster told the AG’s office about the security breach in 2006. It mirrored access problems in 2002-2003, the AG’s report confirmed.
The college chose not to tell those whose personal information was included in the accessible journal entries based on an assessment of risk by its Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy office, said MacEwan spokesman Gordon Turtle.
Source - Edmonton Sun
“We're the government: Let us show you how it should be done!” Who actually chose that setting? Management or an entry level geek?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071004/172528.shtml
Homeland Security Can't Even Configure Its Mailing List Software Correctly?
from the that-makes-me-comfortable dept
Just after the federal gov't screwed up and shut off ca.gov, we find out that the Department of Homeland Security misconfigured its email list software causing a deluge of annoying emails to over seven thousand government employees. The list, normally used to broadcast news summaries of security news, apparently was set up so that any reply messages automatically were broadcast to all members. What happened next is familiar to lots of folks on mailing lists, where the "reply all" button is misused. The one difference, though, was that this wasn't a misuse of the reply all button, but on the mailing list automatically sending out anyone's message to everyone on the list. Many security experts on the list are apparently wondering what that says about Homeland Security's ability to deal with cybersecurity issues. Perhaps it was just a little configuration error, but you would think that the folks at the DHS would be a bit more careful about those things.
Well this is getting a lot of press... Seems we backed the wrong horse. Still, I expect a lot of analysis of the transcripts.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071004/160727.shtml
RIAA Wins Case, Gloats
from the this-won't-help dept
As we expected this morning, the RIAA has won its lawsuit against a woman for sharing files. This is unfortunate in the long run, as the decision is actually going to hurt the companies the RIAA represents more than if it had lost the case. That's because the RIAA will take this as a validation of its "sue our fans" strategy, rather than realizing it's finally time to try a different model. In the meantime, the woman in the case, Jammie Thomas, never should have let the case go this far as there appeared to be plenty of evidence that she actually did break the law. The RIAA often has weak evidence, but in this case the evidence was much stronger. Unfortunately, that distinction won't be made by most, and they'll simply assume that if the RIAA won this case, it should win many others. The RIAA, of course, wasted no time in gloating about the decision and is using this to push others to settle rather than fighting the RIAA lawsuits. This actually is reasonable advice if, as in this case, you were guilty of breaking the law and the RIAA has the evidence to show it. The problem is that's often not the case -- yet, again, that important point will get lost.
...see what I mean?
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9791764-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Four reasons why the RIAA won a jury verdict of $220,000 today
Posted by Declan McCullagh October 5, 2007 12:51 AM PDT
The Recording Industry Association of American got a chance on Thursday to show everyone just how heavy and intimidating the legal club of copyright law can be.
... I've put some recent documents in the case online here for your perusal.
So why did this verdict happen?
1. The RIAA was able to match a username and IP address with Thomas.
2. The RIAA's jury instructions. Both the RIAA and the defense submitted proposed jury instructions (see my link above). Both are pretty similar because of the constraints of 8th Circuit precedent.
The key difference is that the RIAA offered two suggestions, which would eventually become Jury Instructions 14 and 15, which the defense left out. Once U.S. District Judge Michael Davis sided with the RIAA on that crucial point, which he did, and adopted its suggestions, the recording industry had a much easier time of it. Those two crucial instructions are:
JURY INSTRUCTION NO. 14: The act of downloading copyrighted sound recordings on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive reproduction right.
JURY INSTRUCTION NO. 15: The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners' exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.
3. "Making available." Jury Instruction 15 is more important. It says that the RIAA doesn't need to offer any evidence that rapacious Kazaa users actually downloaded songs from Thomas' computer.
... This is not an outlier, by the way. A Pennsylvania judge came up with the same making-available-is-infringement conclusion in February. Marybeth Peters of the U.S. Copyright Office has argued that "making (a file) available for other users of a peer to peer network to download... constitutes an infringement of the exclusive distribution right, as well of the reproduction right." Judge Davis' interpretation of the law may not be the only one, but it's a defensible one. Here's his reasoning.
4. Copyright law is harsh. Once the jury decided that Thomas was behind the IP address in question, there was almost certainly going to be a stiff fine -- of at least $18,000. In this case, the jury was given these instructions:
JURY INSTRUCTION NO. 22: In this case, each plaintiff has elected to recover "statutory damages" instead of its actual damages and profits. Under the Copyright Act, each plaintiff is entitled to a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 per act of infringement (that is, per sound recording downloaded or distributed without license), as you consider just. If, however, you find that the defendant's conduct was willful, then each plaintiff is entitled to a sum of up to $150,000 per act of infringement (that is, per sound recording downloaded or distributed without license), as you consider just.
Related...
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071004/112015.shtml
Chalk One Up For The Armchair Economists
from the getting-it-right dept
Mike Arrington, over at TechCrunch, has written up a post about "The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free" which will sound mighty familiar if you're a Techdirt reader. It's pretty much the same thing I've been saying for almost a dozen years at this point, pointing out the economics and inevitable trends facing the music industry -- and also noting why that isn't necessarily a bad thing. While he's dealing with emotional responses in the comments (again, that'll sound familiar...), it's more interesting to watch an "industry analyst" trash Arrington as an "armchair economist" without backing it up... and then getting his own economics totally screwed up. In this case, we need to chalk one up for the "armchair economists."
The analyst, David Card of Jupiter Research (the same analyst who incorrectly said that Radiohead's new offering would only work because the band was well known), dismisses Arrington's economics as "oversimplified analysis," but doesn't explain why it's actually wrong -- and that's because it's not. Card goes on to say that based on Arrington's analysis "software, filmed entertainment, soda at McDonalds, and the classic example, high-end perfume, should all be free," using that statement as a reason to dismiss the economics. But it's actually Card who's way off on the economics here. Like many of the folks who respond emotionally, Card seems to be confusing what he thinks Arrington is saying with what Arrington is actually saying. Specifically, he's confused "should" and "will." Neither Arrington nor I have been saying that music should be free -- but that it will be free based on the economics at play. People who read the "will" as "should" then get bogged down in moral arguments over "should" or "should not" that don't matter. You can say that companies "shouldn't" pollute, but it doesn't change the fact that they "will" pollute. At that point, whining that they shouldn't is meaningless -- you simply have to figure out how to deal with the reality that they will. If you can then take that reality and figure out ways for musicians to make even more money [Which should explain why the “non-artists defend the current model. Bob] (as the economic research and history suggests is likely) than the whole moral issue goes away.
It's not worth going through each of Card's "examples," but if you look at the economic trends in play for each situation, you can see that Arrington is a lot closer to the mark than Card is. For software and filmed entertainment, the inevitable shift is to a service model rather than a product model (which is the same as music). A services model recognizes that the creation (not the distribution) of content is where the marginal costs are. In reality, they've always been services models -- just disguised as product models. In other words, the trends in both cases support Arrington, not Card. As for soda at McDonald's and high-end perfume, neither is a zero marginal cost good -- and both have a number of different economic factors dealing with them. For example, soda at McDonald's is a complementary good that people drastically overpay for as a convenience. There's value in convenience -- and since customers in McDonald's are a "captive market" for soda, there isn't the competitive market to drive the price down. It's too bad that a supposed industry expert would accuse Arrington of getting his economics wrong, and then clearly show both that he didn't understand Arrington's statements -- nor does he understand the economics of other products and trends. It reflects a lot better on the "armchair" economists than the supposed expert.
This is an awful big bite to take all at once...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/016175.html
October 04, 2007
New Paper on Google's Law
Google's Law, Working Paper (2007), by Greg Lastowka, Rutgers University, Assistant Professor of Law: "Google has become, for the majority of Americans, the index of choice for online information. Through dynamically generated results pages keyed to a near-infinite variety of search terms, Google steers our thoughts and our learning online. It tells us what words mean, what things look like, where to buy things, and who and what is most important to us. Google’s control over “results” constitutes an awesome ability to set the course of human knowledge. As this paper will explain, fortunes are won and lost based on Google’s results pages, including the fortunes of Google itself. Because Google’s results are so significant to e-commerce activities today, they have already been the subject of substantial litigation. Today’s courtroom disputes over Google’s results are based primarily, though not exclusively, in claims about the requirements of trademark law. This paper will argue that the most powerful trademark doctrines shaping these cases, “initial interest confusion” and “trademark use,” are not up to the task they have been given, but that trademark law must continue to stay engaged with Google’s results."
This is quite interesting. I'll clip a few of the points I like...
http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html
The Future of Web Startups
October 2007
... 3. New Attitude to Acquisition
Another thing I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions. As the volume of startups increases, big companies will start to develop standardized procedures for acquisitions, so they're little more work than hiring someone.
... 4. Riskier Strategies are Possible
... 5. Younger, Nerdier Founders
... 8. College Will Change
If the best hackers all start their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college. Most of these changes will be for the better.
Chicago police demonstrate the value of those millions spent on terrorism protection!
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/09/chicago-crime-c.html
Chicago Crime Cams Nab Beer Drinker As Reminder of Big Brother System
By Ryan Singel EmailSeptember 24, 2007 | 4:56:37 PMCategories: Surveillance
Chicago police are constantly monitoring their multi-million dollar surveillance cameras to bust black people drinking beer in brown paper bags on the street, as part of a tactic to remind the city's ethnic neighborhoods that they live in a panopticon, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In contrast, San Francisco's budding network of 248 surveillance cameras is not monitored until after a crime has been reported.
Earl Gardner lounged on the street near his home just west of downtown Chicago, a 24-ounce can of Crazy Stallion beer in his hand.
A mile away, police Officer Al Garbauski slid a computer mouse to maneuver a camera that was perched a block from Gardner. Zooming in tight, Garbauski saw malt liquor meet mouth and sent an officer to arrest Gardner for drinking in public.
"I didn't appreciate it, not one bit," the 55-year-old Gardner said the other day. "The liquor store was closed when I got out (of custody)."
...and this is actually great for Security!
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9791273-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
VMware and the mainframe
Posted by Jon Oltsik October 4, 2007 11:48 AM PDT
Enterprise Strategy Group's resident expert on all things server virtualization, Mark Bowker, tells me that there were 15,000 people at VMworld a few weeks ago. Not a surprise, the industry is gaga over server virtualization as more users look to turn physical servers into consolidated virtual partitions.
The irony here is that while the server virtualization chatter focuses on VMware, Xen, Citrix, and Microsoft, the venerable IBM zSeries (i.e. mainframe) will likely be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this virtualization frenzy.
The reason for this is fairly simple. Server virtualization is all about rationalizing IT assets and costs. Why have a bunch of Intel servers running at 10 percent utilization when you can consolidate them on a single server running at 80 percent utilization?
When things become rare, they become more valuable and therefore more desirable. Or am I wrong?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/04/china-blocking-rss-feeds/
China Blocking RSS Feeds
Duncan Riley October 4 2007
The Chinese Government has added a blanket ban on all RSS feeds, according to a report at Ars Technica.
There have been reports previously that Feedburner feeds have been blocked, but to-date information delivered by RSS feeds has generally gone uncensored, providing Chinese viewers information that would otherwise be blocked if attempting to visit a regular webpage or blog.
A quick test of WebSitePulse’s Great Firewall testing tool indicates that the TechCrunch feed is blocked.
The number of broadband internet users in China will surpass the United States within the next 12-18 months; China is fast becoming one of the most important online marketplaces in the world.
I think this will be both amusing (to us Auditors) and educational (to corporate legal departments)
Qualcomm explains failure to provide evidence
In its court proceedings against Broadcom, Qualcomm didn't disclose more than 200,000 e-mails showing its participation in a standards-setting process
By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service October 04, 2007
Court documents filed by Qualcomm this week describe a disjointed legal team with communication failures and internal engineers who were forgetful and ignorant of basic principles of technical standards-setting procedure.
The documents seek to defend Qualcomm's contention that it wasn't involved in a standards-setting process relevant to a patent infringement case it brought against Broadcom.
Think of my blog as the answers to my “What's happening today” question... (By the way, this is an old argument. Rupert Murdock defines his business as communications – hence TV, Radio, magazines, books and newspapers are products to deliver content.)
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071003/013400.shtml
It's Time To Redefine News
from the about-time dept
Last week, we suggested that newspapers need to stop defining themselves as newspapers. That's defining themselves by a specific product, not the benefits people get from the offering. Instead, we felt that newspapers should start thinking of themselves as news organizations -- more broadly defining what they do. However, that leaves open a really important question about how do you then define "news." We recently covered the somewhat controversial report about how user-curated news aggregation sites tend to highlight different stories, compared to editor-managed news sites -- which really does open up the question of what really is news for people these days. Luckily, Jeremy Wagstaff has taken a fantastic stab at answering that question with a new column on how "news" is being redefined. He notes that the entire concept of "news" no longer fits with what many journalists think news is. It used to be about delivering important information from the source to the people who could make use of that information. News, he notes, is simply information. It's information that is new and/or useful and interesting to each individual. And, in a hyper-connected world with so much information flowing all the time, there's "news" all around, but it's different for everyone and it doesn't involve having a single professional determine what is news.
"What we're seeing with the Internet is not a revolution against the values of old media; a revolution against the notion that it's only us who can dictate what is news. What we're seeing is that people get their news from whoever can help them answer the question they're asking. We want the headlines, we go to CNN. But the rest of the time, "news" is for us just part of a much bigger search for information, to stay informed.
So, if we're redefining newspapers as news organizations and then redefining news itself as the information that's most important to any individual at that time, it starts to open up a lot of possibilities for where newspapers should be headed (though, it doesn't seem like many are looking in that direction).
Why would they assume so much risk? Are the potential profits that great?
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/59667.html
Microsoft's HealthVault Lets Consumers Stash Vital Records Online
By Erika Morphy CRM Buyer Part of the ECT News Network 10/04/07 3:59 PM PT
Microsoft's new HealthVault portal allows consumers to store their health records in one place. It also allows users to research related healthcare information. "It is a completely new way for people to manage their health information and to learn about topics that are important to them," Lee Shapiro, president of Allscripts, told TechNewsWorld.
In its rollout, Microsoft took care to address the natural concerns about privacy surrounding such an initiative. This data could be easily seen as a mother lode of riches by class action attorneys, insurance companies or hackers capitalizing on the growing trend of medical identification theft.
... However, there are a number of potential pitfalls that could send the data into the wrong hands, including unsecure PCs on which the consumers would first store their health data before transferring it to the HealthVault and the question of how much of the data will be accessible to the partners and the steps they will take to protect it.
As a life-long science-fiction fan, this is depressing. When we landed on the moon, the chant was “We're Number One!” Now “We're Number Three!” Unless you add in the EU, then “We're Number 4!” and the Russians? “We're Number 5!” Anyone want to bet we could be knocked out of the top ten by Iceland?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/04/2117217&from=rss
The New Moon Race
Posted by Zonk on Thursday October 04, @06:29PM from the make-the-jump dept. Moon Space Science
An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a pictoral and editorial look at the quickly-heating second race to the moon. A Japanese orbital probe is expected to reach orbit of the satellite sometime today, just one of the dozens of projects now aiming to exploit Earth's orbital partner for scientific and business gains. ' The next lunar visitor may come from China. The Chang'e-1 spacecraft is scheduled to lift off near the end of October. It is slated to study the moon's topography in 3D and also investigate its elements. Chang'e-3 is a soft lunar lander that is scheduled to fly in 2010 ... If all goes as planned, the United States and India [“We're Number 6!” (and we're outsourcing all space exploration to India?) Bob] will have astronauts on the moon by 2020, China by 2022, and Japan and Russia by 2025.'"
Trivial (or at least common) assertion, but the comments are interesting... (It used to be that when “SAS” made comments like this, a new product “solution” followed. I'm waiting...)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/002203&from=rss
SAS CEO Blasts Old-School Schooling
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday October 05, @12:46AM from the stuck-in-the-past dept. Education Communications Technology
theodp writes "What does SAS CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight have in common with 47% of high school dropouts? A belief that school is boring. Marking the 50th anniversary of Sputnik with a call for renewed emphasis on science and technology in America's schools, Goodnight finds today's kids ill-served by old-school schooling: 'Today's generation of kids is the most technology savvy group that this country has ever produced. They are born with an iPod in one hand and a cell phone in another. They're text messaging, e-mailing, instant messaging. They're on MySpace, YouTube & Google. They've got Nintendo Wiis, Game Boys, PlayStations. Their world is one of total interactivity. They're in constant communication with each other, but when they go to school, they are told to leave those 'toys' at home. They're not to be used in school. Instead, the system continues teaching as if these kids belong to the last century, by standing in front of a blackboard.'"
Plan your Christmas shopping...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071004/wr_nm/blackfriday_ads_dc
Black Friday ads already popping up online
By Nicole Maestri Thu Oct 4, 2:52 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Those door busting deals that U.S. retailers are planning for the Black Friday holiday shopping weekend are already starting to appear online.
Numerous Web sites have cropped up in recent years that publish what they claim are copies of the newspaper ads retailers will run for Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving that marks the ultra-competitive launch of the holiday shopping season.
A visit to BlackFriday.info (http://www.blackfriday.info/) shows the scan of an Ace Hardware Black Friday ad, which was posted on September 15.
Something for the talented students at the Art Institute?
http://www.killerstartups.com/Social-Networking/view-5--Digital-Art-Community/
View-5.com - Digital Art Community
View5 Digital Art Community is the first custom built, online community aimed to help digital artists find their way into industry. Designed for digital artists, by digital artists. View5 is a place for artists to display their talent and get tips, advice and all kinds of help in digital design. The users can submit their work to their own profile for everyone to view, leave comments and even rate their art out of 5. They have a recruitment section, which will be filled with the latest job vacancies from top design agencies, and a great forum filled with online talent to socialize with.
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