Monday, February 06, 2012


This is news?
More breaches caused by staff than hackers
February 6, 2012 by admin
From InfoSecurity:
The 2012 data protection survey undertaken by the Irish Computer Society (ICS) shows that a higher number of data breaches are the result of internal failures and lack of awareness than are the result of external theft.
The survey involved more than 300 Irish IT administration and management staff and was undertaken in advance of the fourth annual ICS Data Protection conference on 9 February 2012.
Read more on InfoSecurity.


I vote for “Let it expire.” Otherwise the phrase, “I told you so!” loses its impact.
"Two months after authorities shut down a massive Internet traffic hijacking scheme, the malicious software that powered the criminal network is still running on computers at half of the Fortune 500 companies, and on PCs at nearly 50 percent of all federal government agencies. Internet Identity, a Tacoma, Wash. company that sells security services, found evidence of at least one DNSChanger infection in computers at half of all Fortune 500 firms, and 27 out of 55 major government entities. Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan's DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web. The FBI is currently debating whether to extend the deadline or let it expire."


Here's my Business Model, which I will now expand to include emails: I will analyze your political ads for $1000 per ad. Just call any of the numbers listed on my Do Not Call Political Analyst list to initiate this service. Call more than one number for our $10,000 “Analysis of Scope!”
[Like to be an analyst? Sign up for free. Records the ads. Get 90% of the fee.]
Move over robo-calls, states sell email addresses for campaigns to reach voters
February 6, 2012 by Dissent
Legal but annoying as heck? Kathleen Foster reports:
If your email inbox starts overflowing with messages from political campaigns this election season, it could be because your state sold you out.
A Fox News study has found 19 states plus the District of Columbia, now ask for an email address on voter registration cards. In nine of those states, email addresses from the cards are then sold to political parties, organizing groups, lawmakers and campaigns who can use them to send unsolicited emails.
Read more on Fox News.
Bottom line: if you’re registering to vote and are asked to provide an e-mail address, use a throwaway address or self-expiring address if you don’t want to be bothered with political e-mails. [Does failure to provide an email address mean you can't register to vote? Bob]
[From the article:
States that ask for email addresses on voter registration forms:
Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming
 States that sell email addresses listed on voter registration forms:
Arkansas, California, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oregon, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin


If I capture the crooks breaking into your house, can I sell you the tape? And then sell it to the local TV station? And to the Defense Attorney? And Comedy Central? And “Cops? ” (the TV show, not the local boys in blue)
Public surveillance from private property questioned
February 6, 2012 by Dissent
Andrea Noble reports:
When D.C. police began installing surveillance cameras in neighborhoods more than five years ago as crime-fighting tools, privacy concerns voiced by civil liberties groups limited their scope and use.
Now a less-formal agreement from a citizens association planning to expand the Metropolitan Police Department’s watchful eye in Georgetown over the next few months is hitting a similar hurdle.
[...]
The Georgetown group’s cameras will tape public spaces such as streets and sidewalks, and video that could be used to solve a crime will be turned over to police, the group’s members said. The cameras will be located on private property, such as in residents’ yards, and as a result they will skirt the stringent rules imposed on the police department’s closed-circuit camera system.
Read more on The Washington Times.


Isn't this inevitable when companies hire every law firm in town?
"Google is at daggers end with a law firm it's been using since 2008, after discovering that lawyers in the law firm, named Pepper Hamilton LLP, were representing a patent licensing business that sued Google's Android partners last month. Google has claimed that Pepper Hamilton LLP never provided notice that it was hired by Digitude Innovations LLC, the firm that filed patent infringement complaints against Google's business allies."


Perspective
iPhone soaks up 75 percent of all mobile phone profits
Though it holds only around 9 percent of the global mobile phone market, Apple raked in 75 percent of all profits across the industry last quarter, according to Asymco analyst Horace Dediu.
That left rival Samsung with 16 percent of the profit pie, RIM with 3.7 percent, HTC with 3 percent, and Nokia rounding out the list of 1.8 percent. All together that pie represents around $15 billion in profits for the final quarter of 2011.


Perspective Who (beside Homeland Security) reads that fast? (Of course, it could be 9,900 tweets of “Wow!”)
Twitter: In The Final 3 Minutes Of The Super Bowl, There Were 10,000 Tweets Per Second
… the Japanese continue to be avid tweeters, as the premiere of Japanese movie “Castles In The Sky” set the all-time record in December for tweets per second, at 25,088.
… Clearly, we are getting a glimpse of the increasing relevance and popularity of Twitter during important events, as Twitter’s official Twitter account (head explosion) announced tonight that, in the final three minutes of Super Bowl 2012, there was an average of 10,000 tweets per second. Obviously, this is less than half the tweet frequency (I’ll coin the “TF” acronym) of the Castles In The Sky premiere, but by all accounts this is the record for TF during a live sporting event.


Because I'm sure my students were too busy studying to watch...
Super Bowl 2012 Commercials - Watch, Laugh, Share

(Related) Okay, maybe they had a browser tab open...
First Legal Streaming Super Bowl A Success, But Audience Still Denied The Real Show
Lately, we’ve been seeing more and more big television events come with an online streaming counterpart. Sporting and televised events are showing up online with increasing frequency, with the 2010 Olympics seeming to be one of the first big global events where both viewers and media publicly recognized the power and potential of carrying an event like that online.
This year, for the first time in history, the Super Bowl is being shown online, for free. And it’s completely legal


My first 3 computers came without hard drives – floppy or cassette tape only....
… You’ll need a Windows Live account to start making full use of SkyDrive. For those too lazy to read – there’s 25gb of storage, web-based versions of popular Office apps; collaborative editing that doesn’t require everyone to login; and an iPhone app you should probably avoid for now.
… In SkyDrive, you now have access to cut-down versions of popular Office apps, to both create and edit documents without the need for a full offline Office suite (though you can at any point open your SkyDrive files in regular Office apps, then seamlessly save back again).
… so if your documents are predominantly MS formats and you’d like to move into the cloud without the hassle of importing and exporting etc, this is a great solution – and free.
… One really cool feature is that you don’t need a Windows Live account to edit the documents if someone sends you a link, so it’s a fantastic tool get anyone’s input without complicated sign ups.
… Even if you don’t need collaborative features, SkyDrive’s free 25gb is a generous cloud storage locker. It doesn’t sync with your files, so you can offload files totally to the cloud if you want, or just use it for backup. The interface is very Explorer-like so Windows users will feel right at home, but it also works just fine on a Mac.


For my students who are writing their own textbooks...
DotEPUB.com is a website that offers the free service of converting any text you find on the web into an e-book format which may be read on e-readers like Kindle or Nook among many others. The software which allows this conversion is based directly on the cloud, and requires no download whatsoever. And you don't have to worry either about having the latest version or not, because it will always be updated automatically.
… If on the other hand you have your own website and would like to let visitors save your texts as e-books, at DotEPUB.com you'll find a widget to include in your web which will give users this possibility.

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