Thursday, January 10, 2013

It's the damage after the breach you should worry about.
Christine Dobby reports:
Drake International, the Canadian-based job placement firm, confirmed Wednesday that it has been the victim of a hacking scheme by a group seeking to extort payment in exchange for not releasing the personal information of people who have used Drake’s services.
Source: Financial Post.


It's been over ten years now, so we should probably start thinking about considering holding a few planning sessions to kick around some ideas related to developing a process for eventually figuring out how we should be spending all those billions we are spending. Maybe...
January 09, 2013
Defining Homeland Security: Analysis and Congressional Considerations
CRS - Defining Homeland Security: Analysis and Congressional Considerations, Shawn Reese, Analyst in Emergency Management and Homeland Security Policy. January 8, 2013
  • "Varied homeland security definitions and missions may impede the development of a coherent national homeland security strategy, and may hamper the effectiveness of congressional oversight. Definitions and missions are part of strategy development. Policymakers develop strategy by identifying national interests, [I want to be stripped, probed and xrayed at airports bus and train stations! Bob] prioritizing goals to achieve those national interests, and arraying instruments of national power to achieve the national interests. Developing an effective homeland security strategy, however, may be complicated if the key concept of homeland security is not defined and its missions are not aligned and synchronized among different federal entities with homeland security responsibilities. This report discusses the evolution of national and DHS-specific homeland security strategic documents and their homeland security definitions and missions, and analyzes the policy question of how varied homeland security definitions and missions may affect the development of national homeland security strategy. This report, however, does not examine DHS implementation of strategy." [Or lack thereof... Bob]


Fired for stating the obvious? Welcome to Politics young man.
"Tim Lee over at Ars Technica recently interviewed Derek Khanna, a former staffer for the Republican Study Committee. As reported on Slashdot, Khanna wrote a brief suggesting the current copyright law might not constitute free market thinking. He was rewarded for his efforts with permanent time off of work. Khanna continues to speak out about the need for copyright reform as well as its potential as a winning electoral issue and, according to Lee, he's actually beginning to receive some positive attention for his efforts. 'I encourage Hill staffers to bring forth new ideas. Don't be discouraged by the potential consequences,' Khanna told Ars. 'You work for the American people. It's your job, your obligation to be challenging existing paradigms and put forward novel solutions to existing problems.' Would that more in both major parties thought like this."


That's why I have degrees in both computers and business...
January 09, 2013
Internet Users May Search, Pin, Tweet and Like - But Don’t Know How Their Favorite Sites Turn a Profit
"The Search Agency, a global online marketing firm and the largest independent U.S. search marketing agency, today announced wave II results of its 2012 Online User Behavior and Engagement Study, conducted online by Harris Interactive among 2,006 U.S. online adults from August 14-16, 2012. In addition to other findings, the study shows that, while Americans may be tweeting, searching and pinning to their hearts delight, they can’t pinpoint how some of the web’s most popular sites make a dime. Findings Include:
  • We Know How to Post, but Not How They Profit - 70% of U.S. online adults know how to post on someone’s wall, but only 54% understand how Facebook makes money. Males demonstrated a higher understanding around Facebook’s monetization strategies at 57%, vs. females at 51%.
  • Men Tweet, Women Pin - More online men know the character length of a tweet (37%) than online women (27%). When it comes to Pinterest, more women know what it means to “pin” something online (48%) than men (42%).
  • Who is Padding Google’s Pockets? - 22% of U.S. online adults overall reported that they click on search engine ads (e.g. paid search links), but results showed great behavioral variances by region and age. U.S. online adults in the South showed the highest propensity to click on paid links (29%), nearly ten full percentage points greater than any other region: Northeast (20%), West (19%) and Midwest (17%). 30% of Americans ages 18-34 indicated they click on search engine ads, which is almost double the rate of Americans age 35 and older (18%)."


'cause it's the Duke!
… Wayne died in 1979 but his legacy lives on, himself having starred in more than 170 movies. 21 of these movies have been lovingly hosted on the Internet Archive and YouTube, where they can be downloaded, streamed and enjoyed by a new generation of wannabe cowboys.


Backup, backup, backup!
Cobian Backup is a free backup software for Windows.


If it's good enough for Harvard maybe it's good enough for me?
Work Smarter with Evernote
35 pages. Publication date: Dec 18, 2012.


So (in theory) you could move this Blog to your Kindle. Or Kindle for PC?
… Send To Kindle by Klip.me, is a simple browser extension that allows you to easily send articles from your browser to your Kindle.
… In addition to it working for Chrome (here’s the Web Store link), it is currently available as an extension for Safari as well. There is also a bookmarklet, which is compatible with IE, Firefox, Opera, as well as Chrome and Safari.

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