This should be a good seminar. Drones
are in the news too often and like all new technologies, there are no
“Best Practices” for controlling their use. And where else can
you get a seminar and lunch for a mere $20?
I feel left out. I didn't get a
warning.
Google
Warns Thousands Of Users About Potential State-Sponsored Cyber
Attacks
According to the NYTimes,
tens of thousands of users have seen the following message pop up on
their Gmail, Chrome browser, or Google home page: “Warning: We
believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise
your account or computer.”
To be perfectly clear, this message
doesn’t mean that a successful attack was made on your account. It
simply means that you likely have messages in your inbox containing
malicious links or attachments, that are intended to eventually
capture your password and/or information.
Stupidity is a gift that lasts forever
(or until the courts are done with you)
Florida
AG Confirms PC Surveillance Tool Investigation
October 5, 2012 by Dissent
Mathew J. Schwartz followed up on the
FTC action against
DesignerWare, LLC, and uncovered some interesting details about
the firm’s bankruptcy and legal woes. As this blog was the first
to report, DesignerWare filed for bankruptcy in March 2012.
Schwartz found out, though, that they are facing problems on multiple
fronts:
DesignerWare’s
bankruptcy filing
listed the following creditors as holding the largest unsecured
claims against it: the Florida Office of the Attorney General
Economic Crimes Division, Brian and Crystal Byrd, the California
Attorney General Office, the California Department of Justice eCrime
Unit, the Texas Office of the Attorney General Consumer Protection
Division, and the Federal Trade Commission.
In other words,
DesignerWare appears to be, or to have been, the subject of multiple
states’ investigations, and at least one of those investigations
remains ongoing.
Read more on InformationWeek.
Okay, this isn't working. I think what
we need is “A Hackers Guide to Privacy” If the combined efforts
of DHS, NSA, DoJ, CIA, FBI and M.O.U.S.E. can't find certain hackers,
it is likely the advertisers can't either.
Privacy
Advocates and Advertisers at Odds Over Web Tracking
October 5, 2012 by Dissent
Kevin J. O’Brien reports:
An effort to
develop an easy way for consumers around the world to avoid being
tracked and targeted by Internet advertisers appeared to hit an
impasse Thursday, as privacy advocates and industry representatives
accused each other of scuttling the process.
The closed-door
meeting organized by W3C, the global standards group that promotes
good governance of the Internet, failed to produce a consensus on how
to allow consumers to simply and effectively declare their “do not
track” preferences on Web sites. The talks
foundered on main issues like the extent and types of data that
advertisers could continue to collect even after consumers indicated
they no longer wanted to be followed.
Read more on The
New York Times.
It's hard for anyone (even a Mark
Zuckerberg) to know the global impact of “trivial” changes to
your App. Update: Okay, maybe not a problem...
Some more bad news has hit the Facebook
front today. It’s being reported that Facebook is
scanning its users’ private messages and searching for
links to Facebook fan pages. Once it finds these links, Facebook
supposedly automatically likes the pages for you without asking for
your permission to do so.
… UPDATE:
Facebook has reached out to us and commented about this issue:
“Absolutely no private information has been exposed and Facebook is
not automatically Liking any Facebook Pages on a user’s behalf…
Many websites that use Facebook’s ‘Like’, ‘Recommend’, or
‘Share’ buttons also carry a counter next to them. This counter
reflects the number of times people have clicked those buttons and
also the number of times people have shared that page’s link on
Facebook. When the count is increased via shares over private
messages, no user information is exchanged, and privacy settings of
content are unaffected. Links shared through messages do not affect
the Like count on Facebook Pages.”
(Related)
Can
you be jailed for a Facebook 'Like' in the Philippines?
… Yet those who fear that this
Cybercrime Act might be a nasty piece of work suggest that under it,
it's possible for even a Facebook "Like" to be construed as
libel and bring on a 12-year jail penalty.
An attempt at “Here's what you should
do” is better than “Here's what you didn't do” any time...
European
Data Protection Supervisor Issues New Opinion On Proposed European
Regulation Of eIDs And Trusted Services
October 5, 2012 by Dissent
Mark Young writes:
In a new opinion
on the Commission’s proposal
for a Regulation on electronic identification (“eID”) and trusted
services, the European Data Protection Supervisor (“EDPS”) has
called, amongst other things, for security measures that trust
service providers must apply to their services to be
specified directly in legislation rather than left to the Commission
to define at a later stage. The EDPS has also called for
additional data privacy safeguards, higher security controls to apply
to authorities that issue eIDs, more detailed mechanisms on how to
ensure that eIDs and trust services are interoperable at EU level,
and for data breach notification requirements under this proposal to
be aligned with requirements under the e-privacy Directive and
proposed new data protection Regulation.
Read more on InsidePrivacy.
A paper on ISO27001 (Best Practices for
Security Management)
IT
Governance Publish Cyber Security White Paper To Coincide With
European Cyber Security Month
To coincide with the European Cyber
Security Month, IT Governance (the European governance, risk
management and compliance experts) have published a white paper on
cyber security, which is now available to download from
http://www.itgovernance.eu/t-iso27001.aspx.
Looks like they don't want to spend the
time and money after all...
Google
Says It Won’t ‘Manually’ Review YouTube Vids for Infringement
Google-owned YouTube on Thursday
corrected a statement it made the day before, and now says the
company will not manually review copyright-infringement claims before
its system automatically blocks disputed footage.
The mishap
occurred when Thabet Alfishawi, rights management product manager for
YouTube, wrote in a YouTube blog post: “We’ve improved the
algorithms that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these
claims from automatically affecting user videos and place
them in a queue to be manually reviewed.”
But what he meant to say was that some
of the automatic matches will be sent to be reviewed “by the
content owner” — not by Google, the search giant said Thursday.
...and this continues to amuse me.
Apparently this isn't the slam-dunk the RIAA thought it was.
The case against Kim Dotcom and his
website Megaupload continues to confuse and astound
many people who are following the trial. The New Zealand Herald
claims to have obtained details showing that telecom engineers
working for a technology services company called Gen-I have found
evidence that Dotcom’s Internet connection at his mansion in New
Zealand was being monitored weeks before the New Zealand Government
Communications Security Bureau admits to.
… During Dotcom’s quest to achieve the number one ranking in
the game, staff at Gen-I began an investigation looking into the
amount of time it took the Internet signal from the mansion to reach
offshore Xbox servers.
The amount of time that it took data from Dotcom’s Xbox to reach
the Xbox server increased from 30 ms to 180 ms, which
is a huge increase for a gamer.
Engineers for the ISP used a Trace
Route search and discovered that the Internet signal from Dotcom’s
home was being diverted inside New Zealand. During the course of the
investigation engineers determined that where the Internet traffic
had previously needed two hops to reach the servers, it was now
taking five. The indication from the investigation is that
authorities in New Zealand may have been spying on Dotcom for longer
duration than it has previously admitted to sparking new cries for
investigation into the government’s surveillance efforts in the
case.
(Related) Please ask: “How much did
the RIAA pay you?”
MegaUpload
users will get their day in court
U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady will
hold another hearing to help him determine what to do with the
digital files owned by MegaUpload users.
… O'Grady has already
heard arguments from MegaUpload, the U.S. Attorney, Goodwin, and
the Motion Picture Association of America about what should be done
with the files. The MPAA and the government have argued that much of
what is stored on MegaUpload's servers is pirated movies, music, and
other media.
The judge appears to be stumped about
what to do with the data.
"Upon thorough review of the
arguments before the Court," O'Grady said in court documents,
"and careful consideration of the applicable law, the Court
finds that it is unable to reach a conclusion as to this matter
without an evidentiary hearing."
Ira Rothken, the Silicon Valley
attorney in charge of MegaUpload's worldwide defense told CNET that
he believes this will present an opportunity for
MegaUpload to call select U.S. officials to testify.
"Megaupload will be filing papers
with the court to specially intervene," Rothken said,
"considering that it is only the Internet service provider that,
under applicable privacy laws, is the only party that can access the
data and coordinate return to consumers."
Perspective Computers (at least
computing) is cheap!
"Readers of Entertainment
Weekly might be shocked to find their magazine is a good
bit heavier than normal this week. US-based broadcaster CW placed an
ad in Entertainment Weekly which uses a
fully-functional 3G Android device, a T-Mobile SIM card, and a
specialized app to display short video advertisements along with the
CW Twitter feed. Writers at Mashable were willing to geek out with a
Swiss Army knife and a video camera to give us all the gory details
as they tore it down piece-by-piece to discover the inner workings of
CW's new ad."
Making the world safe for pancakes!
"Remember the tragic maple
syrup heist? Police have seized
more than 600 barrels of maple syrup they say are related to the
missing syrup. It was transported back to Quebec via a 16 tractor
trailer, heavily guarded (and presumably heavily armed) convoy
Wednesday."
For my Math (and other) students...
But mostly Math...
Friday, October 5, 2012
Back in May I wrote about a start-up
company called Backpack
TV. Backpack TV is a video site that is creating libraries of
free academic videos arranged according to subject area, topic, and
video length. This week they added a bunch of new libraries.
Backpack TV now offers videos aligned to commonly used Algebra,
Biology, and Calculus textbooks. And according to the email I
received from them, there are plans for more topics and textbooks to
be added in the future.
If you're looking for some video
content to support the textbooks that you have in your mathematics or
science department, take a look at Backpack
TV.
Might be a useful “handout”
creator...
Collect a number of Wikipedia articles
and create your own eBook.
… There’s absolutely no need for
you to create a Wikipedia account, and in addition to PDF and ODT you
can download a reflowable EPUB or a Kiwix
file.
The process really couldn’t be
easier, so there’s no reason not to try it out. Right now. Open a
second browser window and play along at home.
This seems to match my opinions (bias?)
so it is not likely to be correct. Still, I'd like to find similar
studies...
Union
Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm,
announced yesterday that it was opening
up its research and sharing some of its hypotheses about tech
startup markets and by extension its investment-making decisions.
… And most importantly
in this case, educators should pay attention here because the first
sector that USV has opted to open its research into is education.
USV’s Hypotheses about
the Business of Online Education
USV has published both a
Google Doc with its “overview
of online education” as well as a list of its hypotheses about
the sector. These are:
1.
We’re skeptical a business model that charges for content will work
at scale and in the long run.
2.
We expect education platforms that offer vertical content and/or
specific education experiences will be more successful than
horizontal platforms, though we think credentials and careers offer
two opportunities for horizontal aggregation
3.
Without credentialing or careers, online education seems aspirational
and removed from the day-to-day of many people.
While the US is trying to figure out
why Johnny can't pass standardized tests...
Estonia
Drives Robotics and Coding Education With Smartlab Hobby Groups,
Backed By Microsoft
The Baltic country of Estonia — known
as the birthplace of Skype and a go-to market for tech companies in
the U.S. and elsewhere needing developers — is making another IT
investment so that younger generations can keep growing that
reputation. Today, it announced Smartlab, a public/private
partnership with companies including Skype’s now-owner Microsoft,
which will see the creation of hobby groups for 10-19 year olds to
get instruction in robotics, programming and mobile app and web
design.
… This follows on from another
program announced in September, in which the Estonian government said
that it would start teaching students to code from first grade (aged
seven).
… Estonia, a country of 1.3 million
people, has numbers to back up that programs like this could help its
economy. It’s produced stats that indicate that each IT job
creates “twice the added value for Estonia compared to the average
in other economic spheres.”
No comments:
Post a Comment