Finally, all those lawyers who were
convinced that Y2K held immeasurable Class Action riches are
vindicated! A major player has a date problem! Dust off those old
Class Action documents you never filed and start editing...
Yes,
Microsoft Azure Was Downed By Leap-Year Bug
Microsoft has confirmed that
Wednesday’s Windows Azure outage that left some customers in the
dark for more than 12 hours was the result of a software bug
triggered by the Feb. 29 leap-year date that prevented systems from
calculating the correct time.
“Look, If we can't see your photos
how do we know to send you ads for services like Divorce Lawyers or
Drug Rehab Centers?
Et
Tu, Google? Android Apps Can Also Secretly Copy Photos
March 1, 2012 by Dissent
Brian X. Chen and Nick Bilton report:
It’s not just
Apple. Photos are vulnerable on Android phones, too.
As Bits reported
this week, developers who make applications for
Apple iOS devices have access to a person’s entire photo library as
long as that person allows the app to use location data.
It turns out that
Google, maker of the Android mobile operating system, takes it one
step further. Android apps do not need permission to
get a user’s photos, and as long as an app has the right to go to
the Internet, it can copy those photos to a remote server without any
notice, according to developers and mobile security
experts. It is not clear whether any apps that are available for
Android devices are actually doing this.
Read more on The
New York Times.
(Related) Machiavelli would be proud!
With a stroke of the pen they have expanded their powers and thereby
increased the number of lobbyists willing to buy them lunch.
EPIC
sues U.S. Dept of Education
March 1, 2012 by Dissent
EPIC has filed suit against the U.S.
Dept. of Education over its recent amendments to the Family Education
Rights Privacy Act (FERPA). The federal complaint,
which was filed in the D.C. District Court yesterday, alleges that
the amendments are not in accordance with the law and exceeded USED’s
authority.
The amendments provided definitions of
terms such as “authorized representative” and “education
program” that would expand the number and type of
entities that would have access to student data. Another amendment
would also broaden the types of information that could be included –
and shared – as “directory information.”
Maybe I'm old fashion (never having
worked for DHS) but I suspect the rubber glove guys may not have the
skills to deal with technology...
DHS,
Not NSA, Should Lead Cybersecurity, Pentagon Official Says
(Related) Would the FBI ever release
plans for secure phones?
"The National Security Agency
has designed a super-secure
Android phone from commercial parts, and
released the blueprints(Pdf)
to the public. The doubly-encrypted phone, dubbed Fishbowl, was
designed to be secure enough to handle top secret phone calls yet be
as easy to use and cheap to build as commercial handsets. One
hundred US government staff are using
the phones under a pilot which is part
of a wider project to redesign
communication platforms used in classified conversations."
Taxpayer funded research.
March 01, 2012
Access
to Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports
Congressional
Research Service (CRS) Reports - Collected by:
Stanford University, Social Sciences Resource Group - Archived since:
Jun, 2008
- "Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a "think tank" that provides research reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) does not provide direct public access to its reports, nor are they released to the public via the Federal Library Depository Program (FDLP). There are several organizations that collect and give access to subsets of published CRS Reports. This collection attempts to bring all CRS Reports together in one place. For more information on CRS, see the Sunlight Foundations CRS Reports backgrounder. Please contact James Jacobs (jrjacobs AT stanford DOT edu) if you know of additional sites hosting CRS reports."
Run the numbers, but remember it's not
just the big, new, professionally written malware that causes
problems.
Is
Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?
Perspective “Delusional is as
delusional does.” F. Gump (Others are far less polite in
Comments)
"After posting a controversial
op-ed in The New York Times saying Wikipedia and Google 'misinformed'
the public about SOPA and PIPA, Cary Sherman, CEO of the RIAA said in
an interview yesterday that he hopes
the SOPA protests were a 'one-time experience.'
He also said that Wikipedia and Google users were duped into
thinking SOPA was a bad bill because they assume "if it comes
from these sources, it must be true." In another hilarious
comment, Sherman blames the Internet for making it impossible for
Congress to get out its side of the story, and for not spreading
information with the same 'clarity and integrity' of broadcast
journalists."
Perspective Perhaps Zuckerberg does
not know best?
Bigger
Than Facebook! Foreign Sites That Outshine the Web’s U.S. Stars
Not that my students would ever waste
time with games...
The next iteration of Microsoft’s
answer to flight simulations, Microsoft
Flight, has finally been released for free on the Games for
Windows platform.
… It won’t cost anything to play,
instead there will be an ever expanding selection of downloadable
content (DLC) that can be purchased to expand the players in-game
options. The first batch of DLC includes a second world war P-51
Mustang ($7.99), the Maule M-7-260C single prop aircraft ($14.99) and
the Hawaiian Adventure Pack ($19.99) which includes the Vans RV-6A
aircraft and some tropical islands over which to stretch your wings.
Download: Microsoft
Flight @ Microsoft.com
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