Humans are stil the weak point in security
http://www.newsreview.info/article/20070513/NEWS/105130126
Glitch misdirects 10,000 statements
JOHN SOWELL, jsowell@newsreview.info May 13, 2007
A computer glitch led to a Roseburg woman being mailed a state child support statement meant for another recipient, state officials said Friday.
A private contractor that provides monthly statements to child support recipients may have sent up to 10,000 of them to the wrong person, said Stephanie Soden, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Justice.
The unnamed printing company noticed the mistake itself and contacted officials with the state Child Support Division, operated under the Department of Justice. The contractor was asked to send out corrected statements and a letter to recipients mailed the wrong ones.
Probably more common than we know. How would you recover these computers?
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660220231,00.html
Data found on surplus computers
Deseret Morning News, Sunday, May 13, 2007
By Bob Bernick Jr. Deseret Morning News
Utah State Auditor Auston Johnson conducted a "sting" operation a year ago that found important information — including Social Security and credit card numbers — on a handful of state surplus computers that were heading toward public sale.
But Johnson decided to write what is known as "letter audits" to the seven state department heads on whose computers such sensitive information was found, instead of issuing a normal public audit, because Johnson didn't want to alert owners of state surplus computers that such sensitive information may be on their machines' hard drives.
... Still, there was a clear problem last spring when Johnson's auditors inspected 23 computers waiting to be sold by the state's Surplus Property Division and found important information on 17 of them.
Considering that the state surpluses hundreds of computers each year, having nearly three-fourths of them containing sensitive information is not a good situation.
... One or two Social Security numbers were found on six of the seven departments' surplus computers — not a large number, but still a clear violation of the state's own internal information security rules. And sensitive information was found on 74 percent of the computers checked.
Look for more of this, state supported or not.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9163598
A cyber-riot
May 10th 2007 From The Economist print edition
Estonia has faced down Russian rioters. But its websites are still under attack
FOR a small, high-tech country such as Estonia, the internet is vital. But for the past two weeks Estonia's state websites (and some private ones) have been hit by “denial of service” attacks, in which a target site is bombarded with so many bogus requests for information that it crashes.
The internet warfare broke out on April 27th, amid a furious row between Estonia and Russia over the removal of a Soviet war monument from the centre of the capital, Tallinn, to a military cemetery (pictured below). The move sparked rioting and looting by several thousand protesters from Estonia's large population of ethnic Russians, who tend to see the statue as a cherished memorial to wartime sacrifice. Estonians mostly see it rather as a symbol of a hated foreign occupation.
The unrest, Estonia says, was orchestrated by Russia, which termed the relocation “blasphemy” and called for the government's resignation. In Moscow, a Kremlin-run youth movement sealed off and attacked Estonia's embassy, prompting protests from America, NATO and the European Union. Perhaps taken aback by the belated but firm Western support for Estonia, Russia has backpedalled. Following a deal brokered by Germany, Estonia's ambassador left for a “holiday” and the blockade ended as abruptly as it began.
Bad strategy. This, I will contact my congressman about!
Defense Dept. Blocking MySpace, YouTube
By ROBERT WELLER Associated Press Writer May 14, 7:53 AM EDT
DENVER (AP) -- Soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army official said would take effect Monday.
The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.
The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.
"This recreational traffic impacts [true, but trivial Bob] our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge,” [Nonsense! Bob] the memo said.
The armed services have long barred members of the military from sharing information that could jeopardize their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other means.
The new policy is different because it creates a blanket ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends.
Members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers and networks, but Defense Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall, and the Army recently began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis.
But the new rules mean many military personnel won't be able to watch those videos - at least not on military computers.
If the restrictions are intended to prevent soldiers from giving or receiving bad news, they could also prevent them from providing positive reports from the field, said Noah Shachtman, who runs a national security blog for Wired Magazine.
"This is as much an information war as it is bombs and bullets," he said. "And they are muzzling their best voices."
The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365; and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.
Several companies have instituted similar bans, saying recreational sites drain productivity.
--- Army memo: http://tinyurl.com/2x2qka
I hope this find the next Mozart – we don't look hard enough for Einsteins or Shakespeares or Picassos or..(fill this one in yourself)
Software for kindergarten Beethovens
By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: May 14, 2007 4:00 AM PDT
Child prodigies are rare in any artistic pursuit, but new music composition software is making it easier for parents and teachers to raise a little Beethoven.
Sibelius, a well-known maker of software that's used by musicians as well as composers on Hollywood films like Casino Royale, last week released the latest in a line of music software designed for children ages five to 11. With a game-like design and graphics, the software teaches children the basics of instruments, music theory, notation and composition, and then lets them create their own songs by dragging and dropping musically infused shapes, instruments, characters or animations.
It's so easy that a kindergartner can compose a song, say educators, and that's something they believe will go far to make music aficionados of kids. That shift could have ripple effects on an already transformed music industry thanks to the digital age. Instead of downloading pirated music, more kids may begin to create their own sounds, educators say.
"Students are able to do things now that were all but impossible before except for the truly gifted and talented, which is to compose their own music," said Sandi MacLeod, coordinator for the Vermont MIDI Project, a 12-year-old music composition project involving more than 7,000 students grades two to 12 from 40 schools in the state that use Sibelius and its kids software, Groovy.
Science Fiction stretches the mind. When it snaps back, it hurts!
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/14/0635211&from=rss
The Shape of the Future
Posted by Zonk on Monday May 14, @06:31AM from the just-a-little-bit-connected dept.
Last week, Sci-Fi writer Charlie Stross was invited to speak at a technology open day at engineering consultancy TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. He's posted a transcript of his discussion on his website, which features a fascinating analysis of where technology is going in the next 10-25 years. Instead of envisioning outlandish future developments, he looks at what the impact might be on society from very reasonable iterations of today's SOTA. "10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year -- there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. [31,536,000, but who's counting.. Bob] That's enough to store a live DivX video stream -- compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution -- of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry -- a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send -- onto that chip, while I'm awake ... Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it's all indexed and searchable. 'What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?' Think of it as google for real life. "
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