http://www.phiprivacy.net/?p=2013
FL: Man wracks up $100,000 in medical expenses with fake identification
By Dissent, February 16, 2010 1:04 pm
A man who twice checked himself into the hospital and wracked up more than $100,000 in medical expenses with a fake insurance identification has been arrested.
Police said Giovanni Mangino has been charged with organized scheme to defraud, committing fraud to a healthcare provider, grand theft, and identity theft.
Read more on CBS12 News.
Interesting numbers, to say the least.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023536.html
February 16, 2010
Security Labs Report Jul 2009-Dec 2009 Recap
Security Labs Report Jul 2009-Dec 2009 Recap - "This report has been prepared by the M86 Security Labs team. It covers key trends and developments in Internet security over the last six months, as observed by the security analysts at M86 Security Labs. M86 Security Labs is a group of security analysts specializing in Email and Web threats, from spam to malware.
Key Points of this report:
Spam volumes increased dramatically in 2009, to over 200 billion per day with the vast majority sent through Botnets of infected computers. In the second half of 2009, 78% of all spam originated from the top 5 botnets alone by volume.
Malicious spam dramatically increased in volume, reaching 3 billion messages per day, compared to 600 million messages per day in the first half of 2009.
Even with adequate protection from Antivirus software, Zero Day Vulnerabilities left users vulnerable to potential attacks 40% of the time (in the 2nd half of 2009)."
My students love me!
Student’s Facebook Tirade Against Teacher Is Protected Speech
By David Kravets February 16, 2010 5:02 pm
… The latest ruling, which supports the student, concerned a former Florida high senior who was reprimanded for “cyberbullying” a teacher on Facebook. Katherine Evans, now 20, was suspended two years ago after creating a Facebook group devoted to her English teacher.
The group was called “Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met!,” and featured a photograph of the teacher and an invitation for other students to “express your feelings of hatred.”
“It was an opinion of a student about a teacher, that was published off-campus, did not cause any disruption on-campus, and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior,” Magistrate Barry Garber of Florida ruled Friday.
They had all that research backwards!
Driving Distracts Cellphone Users
By Bruce Bower, Science News February 16, 2010 7:28 pm
No matter what the actual composition of their employees, someone is going to cry foul.
Google, Apple Call Workers' Race & Gender Trade Secrets
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 16, @11:24PM
theodp writes
"The Mercury News reports that Google, whose stated mission is to make the world's information universally accessible, says the race and gender of its work force is a trade secret that cannot be released. So do Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials. The five companies waged a successful 18-month FOIA battle with the Merc, convincing federal regulators who collect the data that its release would cause 'commercial harm' by potentially revealing the companies' business strategy to competitors. Law professor John Sims called the objections — the details of which the Dept. of Labor declined to share — 'absurd.' Many industry peers see the issue differently — Intel, Cisco, eBay, AMD, Sanmina, and Sun agreed to allow the DOL to provide the requested info. 'There's nothing to hide, in our view,' said a spokesman for Intel. Some observers note it's not the first time Google has declined to put a number on its vaunted diversity — in earlier Congressional testimony, Google's top HR exec dodged the question of how many African-American employees the company had."
The new, long-tail economics.
New Riddick Movie Made Possible By Games?
Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday February 17, @01:37AM
Hugh Pickens writes
"Scott Harris writes on Moviefone that the economics of Hollywood are often baffling, as DVD sales, broadcast fees and merchandising tie-ins balance against advertising costs and pay-or-play deals to form an accounting maze. The latest example is the untitled sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick, released in 2004 to a slew of negative reviews and general viewer indifference. Despite its hefty $105 million budget, most of which was spent on special effects, the film topped out at a paltry $57 million domestically. So how can a sequel be made if the movie lost money? The answer has to do with ancillary profits from revenue streams outside the box office. While the combined $116 million worldwide probably still didn't cover distribution and advertising costs, it likely brought the film close to even, meaning DVD sales and profits from the tie-in video game franchise may have put the movie in the black. In addition, Riddick itself was a sequel to Pitch Black, a modestly budgeted ($23 million) success back in 2000. Extending the franchise to a third film may help boost ancillary profits by introducing the Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick DVDs and merchandise to new audiences, meaning that the new film may not even need to break even to eventually turn a profit for the studio."
For my Computer Security students
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9157098/Hackers_at_Pwn2Own_to_compete_for_100K_in_prizes
Hackers at Pwn2Own to compete for $100K in prizes
Contest targets to include iPhone, Droid and BlackBerry, IE, Firefox and Chrome
By Gregg Keizer February 16, 2010 07:06 AM ET
Computerworld - A hacking contest next month will award cash prizes of $15,000 to anyone who can break into an iPhone, BlackBerry Bold, Droid or Nokia smartphone.
(Related) It's not like it hasn't been done before.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10454364-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Apple bans hackers from App Store
by Dong Ngo February 16, 2010 2:16 PM PST
After a long battle with hackers who have been successful at jailbreaking the iPhone from one version of the OS to another, Apple is now taking a more personal approach to locking down the device. It's been reported that known iPhone jailbreaking/unlocking hackers have had their Apple IDs banned from Apple's App Store.
For my Computer Security class.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/internet/
Do You Know What The Internet Knows About You?
By Tina on Feb. 16th, 2010
… Are you curious to find out What The Internet Knows About You? Then visit that link and see whether the information displayed is vaguely familiar. My result revealed that I had visited 65 of the 5,000 most popular internet websites.
… And there is more. Did You Watch Porn? If your significant other checks your browser(s), he’d better find this:
I'm fairly certain this is a logical conclusion, but one I don't see explained in the literature. How much water will be held in the atmosphere? Enough to off-set the rise of sea levels? Will the increase in clouds (water in the atmosphere) reflect enough sunlight to cause global cooling?
A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 16, @09:31PM
Ponca City, We love you writes
"NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. 'The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there's about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was... in the 1970s,' says Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist. 'So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming.' Increased snowfall also fits a pattern suggested by many climate models, in which rising temperatures increase the amount of atmospheric moisture, bringing more rain in warmer conditions and more snow in freezing temperatures."
(Related)
Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Denying Climate Change
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 17, @08:14AM
cowtamer writes
"The Utah State Assembly has passed a resolution decrying climate change alarmists and urging '...the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its "Endangerment Finding" and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.' Here is the full text of H.J.R 12."
The resolution has no force of law. The Guardian article includes juicy tidbits from its original, far more colorful, version.
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