Sex offenders, felons on probation and school children. Actually, it's all about the money!
Kids Who Skip School Get Tracked By GPS
"Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and the Anaheim Union High School District are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class. The six-week pilot program is the first in California to test GPS. Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone. Five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m."
[From the article:
Students and their parents volunteer for the monitoring as a way to avoid continuation school or prosecution with a potential stay in juvenile hall.
… Overall, the six-week program costs about $8 per day for each student, or $18,000.
… Because schools lose about $35 per day for each absent student, the program can pay for itself and more if students return to class consistently, Miller said.
Lots of links to other 'proposals,' little detail.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20033126-281.html
NSA chief wants to protect 'critical' private networks
SAN FRANCISCO--The head of the National Security Agency said today that the U.S. military should have the authority to defend "critical networks" from malware and other disruptions.
Gen. Keith Alexander, who is also the head of the Pentagon's U.S. Cyber Command, said at the RSA Conference here that the NSA's "active defenses" designed to defend military networks should be extended to civilian government agencies, and then key private-sector networks as well.
It looks awfully spotty west of the Mississippi...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026548.html
February 17, 2011
National Broadband Map Launched
"The National Broadband Map is a searchable and interactive website that allows users to view broadband availability across every neighborhood in the United States. The NBM was created by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in collaboration with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and in partnership with 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. The NBM is a project of NTIA's State Broadband Initiative. The NBM will be updated approximately every six months and was first published on February 17, 2011."
A difficult and expensive process, but the threat is real?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20033133-261.html
'Hurt Locker' lawyers launch nationwide copyright fight
After several setbacks, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, the law firm that last year filed copyright suits against thousands of accused illegal file sharers on behalf of independent filmmakers, has made good on promises to push on with the cases.
Dunlap has begun to refile lawsuits across the country against people accused last year of pirating movies via peer-to-peer networks. To do that, Dunlap established a network of lawyers who are licensed to operate in different federal districts.
Won't this just clutter things up?
Google Search Finally Going Fully Social With Shared Twitter Links And Even Quora Data
What Google is sort of downplaying as just an “update” to social search, is actually much more. Google is taking those social circle links at the bottom of the page, pumping them with social steroids, and shoving them towards the top of results pages. For the first time, social is actually going to affect Google Search in a meaningful way.
We had a chance to speak with Mike Cassidy, Google’s Product Management Director of Search, about the updates yesterday. He outlined three key things Google is focusing on: blending the results, increasing the social coverage, and giving users more control. The first two are the meat, and the third is simply overdue.
By “blending” results, Cassidy means that Google is now going to be showing social results in the regular search results stream. The link itself will look the same as every other link — blue, underlined — but it will say something like “YOUR FRIEND’S NAME shared this” below it, along with that user’s profile icon.
… And it’s not just tweets that Google is taking into account for this new social push. Flickr and Quora content is included as well. The latter is somewhat surprising because the startup is relatively new.
… Interestingly enough, Google’s full push into this arena comes just a day after Greplin, a startup in the social search space that we like a lot, finally opened its doors to all.
Greplin has many more social hooks than Google right now (they ask you to authorize third-party services whereas Google, again, is just going after public data), but the search giant promises that today’s rollout is just one step in the move towards social. There is more to come.
Good news for students at a “Technical University?” Lot's of categories defined, if rather loosely...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026549.html
February 17, 2011
WSJ: Technology is eating jobs
Is Your Job an Endangered Species? - "Technology is eating jobs—and not just obvious ones like toll takers and phone operators. Lawyers and doctors are at risk as well... Forget blue-collar and white- collar. There are two types of workers in our economy: creators and servers. Creators are the ones driving productivity—writing code, designing chips, creating drugs, running search engines. Servers, on the other hand, service these creators (and other servers) by building homes, providing food, offering legal advice, and working at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Many servers will be replaced by machines, by computers and by changes in how business operates. It's no coincidence that Google announced it plans to hire 6,000 workers in 2011."
[An example from the article:
But eDiscovery is the hottest thing right now in corporate legal departments. The software scans documents and looks for important keywords and phrases, displacing lawyers and paralegals who charge hundreds of dollars per hour to read the often millions of litigation documents. Lawyers, understandably, hate eDiscovery.
For my Computer Security students. (and for me to teach them...)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026546.html
February 17, 2011
OPM Issues Competency Model for Cybersecurity
"The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council and the Chief Human Capital Officers Council's Workforce Development Subcommittee identified cybersecurity related occupations as high priorities for Governmentwide competency models. In November 2009, OPM initiated a Governmentwide study to identify critical competencies for cybersecurity work, working with the CIO Council and the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE). Subject matter experts provided key insights, and employees and supervisors across the Government completed surveys to paint a comprehensive picture of cybersecurity work. We are pleased to provide the attached Cybersecurity competency model to support your human resources initiatives. The competencies identified may be used in such agency efforts as workforce planning, training and development, performance management, recruitment, and selection. When used for selection, the competencies must be used in conjunction with the appropriate qualification standard."
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