Evidence (like we needed it) that the
state didn't have a clue...
Jeffrey Collins of Associated Press
reports:
The Department of
Revenue was more concerned with keeping employees from accessing
news, sports and social media websites on their work computers than
protecting taxpayer data like Social Security numbers, a former
computer security chief at the agency said Thursday.
Read more on Aiken
Standard.
Tim Smith of Greenville
Online and LaDonna Beeker of WISTV
also cover Scott Shealy’s testimony at a state House of
Representatives hearing on the breach that affected
3.8 million individuals almost 700,000 businesses.
Shealy testified that the state did not
even look for a replacement for him for months after he resigned in
September 2011, and while he was there, he claims he was unable to
convince his bosses that they needed to pay more attention to
security:
Until the breach,
the agency declined free network monitoring of its
servers, did not encrypt all its sensitive data and did not use
multi-password systems to access the data, all defenses
experts have said could have thrwarted the hacker.
...but the government wants to share
everyone's records with every Doc, right?
By Dissent,
January 3, 2013 2:08 pm
Bernie Monegain reports:
Medical centers
that elect to keep psychiatric files private and separate from the
rest of a person’s medical record may be doing their patients a
disservice, a Johns Hopkins study concludes.
In a survey of
psychiatry departments at 18 of the top American hospitals as ranked
by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals in 2007, a Johns
Hopkins team learned that fewer than half of the hospitals had all
inpatient psychiatric records in their electronic medical record
(EMR) systems and that fewer than 25 percent gave non-psychiatrists
full access to those records.
Researchers say,
psychiatric patients were 40 percent less likely to be readmitted to
the hospital within the first month after discharge in institutions
that provided full access to those medical records.
Read more on Healthcare
IT News.
A hot new industry....
The
Booming Business of Drones
Drones are everywhere.
Less than a decade ago, the Pentagon
had about
fifty unmanned combat air vehicles (known as drones or UAV —
unmanned aerial vehicles). It is estimated that they currently have
about
seven thousand of them (and Congress asked for about $5 billion
worth of more drones in 2012).
… The International
Institute for Strategic Studies has identified fifty six
different types of drones being used in over ten countries (and this
data does not include places like China, Turkey and Russia).
Now, drones are moving from the
battlefield to your neighborhood, and it's about to create a brand
new industry right along with it.
“We're not guilty of doing that and
we promise not to do it any more.”
January 03, 2013
Google
Agrees to Change Its Business Practices to Resolve FTC Competition
Concerns
News
release: "Google Inc. has agreed to change some of its
business practices to resolve Federal Trade Commission concerns that
those
practices could stifle competition in the markets for popular devices
such as smart phones, tablets and gaming consoles, as well as the
market for online search advertising. Under a settlement reached
with the FTC, Google will meet its prior commitments
to allow competitors access – on fair, reasonable, and
non-discriminatory terms – to patents
on critical standardized technologies needed to make popular devices
such as smart phones, laptop and tablet computers, and gaming
consoles. In a separate
letter of commitment to the Commission, Google has agreed to give
online advertisers more flexibility to simultaneously manage ad
campaigns on Google’s AdWords platform and on rival ad platforms;
and to refrain from misappropriating online content from so-called
“vertical” websites that focus on specific categories such as
shopping or travel for use in its own vertical offerings."
(Related) Apparently, they settled
something with China too. I wonder what they got in return?
Google
Quietly Removes Censorship Warning Feature For Search Users In China
Google has quietly disabled a feature
that notified users of its search service in China when a keyword had
been censored by the Chinese government’s internet controls,
according to censorship monitoring blog GreatFire.org.
The blog reports that the change was made sometime between December
5 and December 8, 2012, with no official statement from Google to
announce or explain its removal.
As I understand it, this wouldn't rise
to the level of “probable cause” but a tip is a tip – it did
merit a look at the car (not in the garage?) and proceeded from
there?
Teen
Brags On Facebook About Drunk Driving, Gets Arrested
Police made
an example out of a teenager from Oregon who boasted about
driving drunk on Facebook. “Drivin drunk… classic
but whoever’s vehicle i hit i am sorry.
,” wrote the clueless 18-year-old. According
to local news channel KGW, two people tipped the officers via
Facebook about the post. After inspecting the
most-likely-profusely-sweating/hungover teen’s car,
the damage on his vehicle matched that of two other
vehicles hit earlier that New Year’s morning.
but whoever’s vehicle i hit i am sorry.
,” wrote the clueless 18-year-old. According
to local news channel KGW, two people tipped the officers via
Facebook about the post. After inspecting the
most-likely-profusely-sweating/hungover teen’s car,
the damage on his vehicle matched that of two other
vehicles hit earlier that New Year’s morning.
And, with their powers of
deduction…bam! Handcuffs. The suspect was charged with two counts
of “failing to perform the duties of a driver,” but not drunk
driving, because a Facebook post is apparently not sufficient
evidence of intoxication, according to KGW’s report from Deputy
Chief Brad Johnston.
They really don't want to sell you the
game, but they don't want to call it “leasing” or “renting”
either.
silentbrad writes in with a story about
a Sony patent that would block the playing of second-hand games.
"... the patent application was
filed on 9 December 2012 by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, and
will work by linking individual game discs to a user's account
without
requiring a network connection meaning any future attempt to use
this disc on another user's console won't work. The
patent explains that games will come with contactless
tags [RFID
or NFC? Bob] that will be read by your console
in much the same way as modern bank cards. When a disc is first
used, the disc ID and player ID will be stored on the tag. Every
time the disc is used in future, the tag will check if the two ID's
match up and, if not, then the disc won't work. The document goes on
to explain that such a device is part of
Sony's ongoing efforts to deter second-hand games sales,
and is a far simpler solution than always-on DRM or passwords. It's
worth noting that Sony has not confirmed the existence of the device,
and the patent doesn't state what machine it will be used in, with
later paragraphs also mentioning accessories and peripherals. ...
There's also the issue of what happens should
your console break and need replacing, or if you have more than one
console. Will the games be linked to your PSN
account, meaning they can still be used, or the console, meaning an
entire new library of titles would need to be purchased?"
Arthur C. Clarke was right:
First time accepted submitter mromanuk
writes in with a story about scientists at Ludwig Maximilian
University of Munich who have created an atomic gas that goes below
absolute zero.
"It may
sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have
created an atomic gas with a
sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time. Their
technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and
new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological
mystery."
For the toolkit
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Clean
Print is a free browser add-on for Firefox, Chrome, Internet
Explorer, and Safari (including Safari on the iPad). The purpose of
Clean Print is to help you save ink and paper when printing articles
from the Internet. Clean Print allows you to remove
images and advertisements from pages before printing an article.
Clean Print also gives you the option to increase or
decrease font size before printing an article. Learn more about
Clean Print in the video below.
… If Clean Print isn't for you,
give one of these
other ink saving tools a try.
Inevitable, but there should be some
competition, even in “Free” resources. Anyone want to be a Math
star?
"Education officials with
Northwest Nazarene University and
the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson
Foundation say they are arranging to have Khan
Academy classes tested
in about two dozen public schools next fall in Idaho, where state
law now requires high school students to take online courses for
two of their 47 graduation credits. 'This is the
first time Khan Academy is partnering to tackle
the math education of an entire state,' said Khan Academy's
Maureen Suhendra. Alas, the Idaho Press-Tribune reports (alas,
behind a paywall) that next
fall would be too late for film director and producer Davis
Guggenheim (Waiting for Superman, An
Inconvenient Truth), who will be in Idaho in January
filming The Great Teacher Project, a
documentary which will highlight positives of education, like the
Khan Academy pilot in Idaho. Not to worry. For the film, a few
teachers will implement Khan Academy in day-to-day teaching starting
in January, before the entire pilot program launches in fall 2013."
(Related) Online classes (MOOCs) mean
you can take classes from the best teachers in the world for FREE.
What is missing is that piece of paper that says you learned
something...
"Results from the early
application rounds at the nation's best technical colleges indicate
that it will be another excruciatingly difficult year for high school
seniors to get accepted into top-notch undergraduate computer science
and engineering programs. Leading tech colleges reported a sharp
rise in early applications, prompting them to be more selective in
choosing prospective freshmen for the Class of 2017. Many colleges
are reporting lower acceptance rates for their binding early decision
and non-binding early action admissions programs than in previous
years. Here's a roundup
of stats from MIT, Stanford and others."
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