This is “Do no evil?”
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070613090920247
Want Off Street View? Google Wants Your ID and a Sworn Statement
Wednesday, June 13 2007 @ 09:09 AM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
EFF privacy advocate and unhappy Street View model Kevin Bankston made good on his vow to try out Google's take-down policy after THREAT LEVEL found a picture of his unwitting mug stalking the sidewalks near EFF's offices. What he learned: Google is happy to remove you from Street View ... provided you give them a wealth of additional information, including a photo of your driver's license.
Source - Threat Level (blog)
First use of IM?
Police Blotter: Teenage murderers convicted through IM logs
By Declan McCullagh Story last modified Wed Jun 13 19:19:14 PDT 2007
What: A teenage girl, her boyfriend, and a mutual friend jointly murder girl's mother, who was opposed to the relationship.
When: California's Court of Appeal, Fourth District, rules on June 8.
Outcome: Convictions upheld, based in part on a series of incriminating e-mails and instant messages.
What happened, according to court documents:
... What makes this case relevant to Police Blotter is that detectives unearthed a series of e-mail and instant-message exchanges between the then-teenagers and used them as evidence in the trial. In them, Bell referred to himself as a potential murderer and said he would do anything for DeMola, including "kill'n for you."
Circumstantial evidence that you “have something to hide?”
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/13/2236255&from=rss
Companies That Clean Up Bad Online Reputations
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 13, @10:02PM from the it-never-happened dept. The Internet
Radon360 writes "As the ever-increasing amount of information available online becomes indexed and searchable, more and more people find themselves potentially at risk of having unwanted personal information revealed or their names incorrectly associated with inflammatory topics. The are several firms that now sell their services of trying to remove or bury such information that their client deems offensive or troublesome. Companies, such as ReputationDefender and DefendMyName will, for a fee, do the legwork to find content that negatively impacts your reputation and have it removed or buried deeper in search rankings. However, some of these efforts can backfire, as the act to get it taken down can sometimes draw more attention than the offending content in the first place."
Who could use that service you ask?
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070613183532128
Site Exposed More Than Paris Hilton
Wednesday, June 13 2007 @ 06:35 PM CDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
The operators of an X-rated Paris Hilton web site exposed the credit card numbers and identities of about 750 subscribers who signed up after the site recently returned online in the face of a federal court injunction, The Smoking Gun has learned. After a tip from a visitor who read TSG's June 11 story about the re-launching of the site, parisexposed.com, a reporter was able to easily access the subscriber list by changing a few characters in the web address for the site's sign-up page. [I'm shocked! Imagine, a porn site using technology poorly! Bob] Included in the lengthy list are a subscriber's name, e-mail address, password, phone number, mailing address, and credit card number.
Source - The Smoking Gun
Well, DUH!
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/015129.html
June 13, 2007
Paper Addresses Legal Education and the Promise of New Technology
Koo, Gene, New Skills, New Learning: Legal Education and the Promise of New Technology (March 26, 2007). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2007-4, via SSRN. [thanks Darlene Fichter]
"Today's legal workplace demands technology-related skills that the traditional law school curriculum does not cover. The original research conducted for this white paper finds that these skills include organizing complex distributed teams, exploiting data and information on the Web, and "meta-lawyering" (establishing systems of practice). The study also finds that traditional methods of training such as apprenticeship have eroded in recent years and that law schools often overlook skills education, leaving a large gap in training of all skills and not just technology-related ones. The paper discusses how thoughtful use of pedagogical technology can address these needs, arguing for integrated and authentic learning experiences rather than "teaching technology" in the abstract."
A direct consequence of the “long tail!” If there is a market (one person in ten million) you can build a business around them.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070613/112508.shtml
Online Patient Groups Demonstrate The Power Of Coordination And Information
from the feeling-better dept
Groups of patients advocating for more research on specific diseases are nothing new. But thanks to the internet, these groups are rapidly growing in clout. Not only are they able to push for more research on a given disease, but they are able to do things like share information with members and raise funds together. They're also taking a proactive role in medical innovation, as patients can coordinate ad-hoc drug trials among themselves (e.g. everyone keeps track of their side effects and shares them with each other) or find individuals for studies in need of volunteers. One of the things the internet is great at is lowering the costs of coordination among widely dispersed groups. Projects like Wikipedia are an obvious example of this phenomenon, but as this story demonstrates, online coordination can also serve an offline purpose. And it often does; even sites like Facebook and MySpace tangibly help young people, ahem, "hook up". More professional networks are there to help people land jobs or fill vacancies. A site for film photography enthusiasts helped establish an actual factory for making a certain kind of film that had gone out of production. In addition to the obvious connection between these examples, they also underline the point that the "information economy" isn't about selling information, but about using it to create value in other things.
Interesting trend. Will “national” currencies be replaced? (Isn't that a Euro?) Could games launder money? Or hold value during a domestic economic disruption?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070612/075400.shtml
Could In-Game Currencies Substitute For The Real Thing During A Crash?
from the WoW-gold-to-the-rescue dept
There's been a lot of discussion about the fact that currencies and goods in virtual worlds have become quite valuable in the real world. This has prompted lawmakers all over the world to address the economic implications of these currencies, as existing regulations aren't designed to handle in-game economies. But perhaps lawmakers should be looking to the past for clues. Dave Birch discusses a period during the Great Depression when the US literally ran out of currency, and private organizations had start printing their own currency for local use. One such printer was Parker Brothers, which used their Monopoly money printing presses to help out their hometown of Salem, Mass. Technically, they weren't printing Monopoly money itself, but the company was able to take advantage of the fact that it had experience printing out bills. Hopefully, we won't have another collapse again, but if we were to, you might want to hold onto your Linden Dollars.
Would this be illegal if Apple was a monopoly?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132851-c,pdacellphonehybrids/article.html
IPhone Requires iTunes, Apple Says
Customers will need an iTunes Store account to activate the iPhone--separate from the wireless contract.
John Blau, IDG News Service Wednesday, June 13, 2007 6:00 AM PDT
... The move will allow Apple to create its own billing relationship with iPhone customers, rather than collecting payments for any iTunes purchases they make via the mobile operator.
Not California!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070613/154904.shtml
California Looking To Pervert The Meaning Of Trademark Law
from the tragic dept
We've always tried to highlight how trademark law is quite different than copyright and patents, in such a way that it shouldn't even be considered under the same "intellectual property" umbrella. Both copyright and patents were designed as limited monopolies to provide incentives to creators of content or ideas. That is, it's a "necessary evil" for the sake of promoting content and ideas. Trademark law, on the other hand, is supposed to be about consumer protection. The idea is that Bob can't pretend that Bob's Cola is really Coca-Cola and mislead you into buying a different product than the one you thought you were buying. In other words, it's not about the incentives for the ownership of rights -- but about making sure consumers aren't misled. Unfortunately, ever since people started incorrectly lumping trademark law into the "intellectual property" bucket with copyrights and patents, plenty of people have tried to change the meaning and purpose of trademark law to make it more like those others (with similarly damaging results). One of the key ways to do this is to focus not on the consumer confusion aspect, but on claiming that trademark law is really about preventing "dilution" of the trademark. This is twisting the purpose of trademark law, but it's increasingly becoming an accepted aspect of trademark law -- though, the stronger it becomes the worse off we'll be.
In fact, it appears that legislators in California have been convinced that trademark needs to be a lot more like copyrights, and have put forth a bill that would greatly expand the power of trademark law along these lines. Even worse, it would remove many of the fair use protections that people get, that are supposed to protect intellectual property law from being abused. The law would also add liabilities to sites like eBay if trademark infringing goods are sold on the site -- even though it's impossible for eBay to recognize what's infringing and what isn't. Basically, this is a law (at the state level) that makes trademark law much worse than the worst points of copyright law. Considering just how badly copyright law is already abused, just imagine how badly this trademark law would be abused if passed?
I'm not sure how to take this. 1,000,000 victims and three arrests?
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel07/botnet061307.htm
Over 1 Million Potential Victims of Botnet Cyber Crime
June 13, 2007 Washington D.C. FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691
Today the Department of Justice and FBI announced the results of an ongoing cyber crime initiative to disrupt and dismantle “botherders” and elevate the public’s cyber security awareness of botnets. OPERATION BOT ROAST is a national initiative and ongoing investigations have identified over 1 million victim computer IP addresses.
... “The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited,” said FBI Assistant Director for the Cyber Division James Finch. [So will the FBI let us know? Do we need a law requiring someone (our ISP) to tell us? Bob]
From the same guys...
http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/967137/new_fbi_guidelines_aim_to_curb_abuse/index.html
New FBI Guidelines Aim to Curb Abuse
By LARA JAKES JORDAN Posted on: Thursday, 14 June 2007, 00:03 CDT
WASHINGTON - The FBI is warning its agents to carefully review all personal data collected from Americans in terror investigations to protect their privacy rights and not to expect the evidence to remain secret.
The warning came in draft FBI guidelines made public Wednesday to be issued to correct abuses of so-called national security letters that were revealed in a Justice Department audit three months ago. The letters allow investigators to subpoena records, without court approval, in terrorism and spy cases.
Under the 24-page guidelines, which are effective immediately, investigators must request specific information - and justify its need - before the demand for data is sent.
What did J. Edgar know and when did he know it? (No doubt genealogists will find this useful as well.)
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Get_Grandpa_s_FBI_File
Get Grandpa's FBI File
"Find out now by ordering a copy of their FBI files and learn a bit more about your family history. Best of all, it's free! (Well, except for the cost of a postage stamp.)"
http://www.getgrandpasfbifile.com/
Would this be tolerated in any other department?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2145815,00.asp
31 Days Lost Each Year Putting Out IT Fires
By Deborah Perelman June 13, 2007
Business managers in the United Kingdom lose 31 working days—more than 10 percent of the year—putting out fires that result from bad management of IT systems, according to a study released June 4 by Partners in IT, a U.K.-based service management company.
Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of non-IT business managers surveyed said they spent, on average, 12 percent of their time each week dealing with problems caused by their IT systems. Eighty percent admitted IT system downtime was a productivity issue, and 90 percent of IT respondents in large companies admitted that downtime was such an issue that half (51 percent) cited it as a serious problem for them and their colleagues.
Isn't this more important than the Paris Hilton saga? Why nothing on the evening news?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1932106.ece
Kim Jong Il has 'heart surgery'
June 14, 2007 Leo Lewis in Tokyo
Kim Jong Il, the enigmatic despot who runs communist North Korea, may have undergone major surgery last month in a secret operation performed by German doctors.
News of Kim’s alleged heart bypass operation and failing health has reportedly thrown intelligence agencies in the US, China and South Korea into a state of high-alert as the region contemplates the spectre of a leaderless, but still nuclear-armed, North Korea.
Another great marketing tool: Angry (and ignorant) politicians!
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1120AP_Landfill_Ice_Cream.html?source=mypi
Politician offended by landfill ice cream
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- One Staten Island politician apparently doesn't have a sweet tooth for a locally-made vanilla ice cream with brownie chunks and cherries.
That's because the ice cream in question, marketed under the moniker "Staten Island Landfill," is "insulting and derogatory," borough president James Molinaro wrote in a letter on his Web site, in which he calls for a boycott of the treat, which is also packed with heart-shaped chocolate "crunchies" and fudge.
... Kim and Scott Myles, the Queens couple who founded 5 Boroughs Ice Cream, which produces "Staten Island Landfill," said they intended no harm with the moniker.
... The company markets other city-based ice cream flavors, including "Jackson Heights Mangodesh," "South Bronx Cha Cha Chocolate" and even "Upper East Side Rich White Vanilla."
... Those who tried the Landfill ice cream said the name wasn't a big deal.
"It's not like we'll be expecting to see a syringe or a rubber boot in there," said Joe Melendez, an ironworker from Brooklyn.
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