Step Two (after shooting a few protesters)
Libya Blocks Internet Access As Citizens Protest
"As protests rage across the Middle East, in particular gaining strength in Libya, Djibouti, Iraq, Bahrain, and Yemen over the past two days, Libya has taken the lead role in blocking internet access to its citizens. Residents of Tripoli, Libya are reporting wide-spread internet blockage for most sites, and access to circumvention tools like OperaTor and VPN is also being blocked."
(Related) Step Two in the US? Would that include shutting off Twitter, for example? Or New York City?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20033717-281.html
Internet 'kill switch' bill gets a makeover
A Senate proposal that has become known as the Internet "kill switch" bill was reintroduced this week, with a tweak its backers say eliminates the possibility of an Egypt-style disconnection happening in the United States.
As CNET reported last month, the 221-page bill hands Homeland Security the power to issue decrees to certain privately owned computer systems after the president declares a "national cyberemergency." A section in the new bill notes that does not include "the authority to shut down the Internet," and the name of the bill has been changed to include the phrase "Internet freedom."
… But the revised wording (PDF) continues to alarm civil liberties groups and other critics of the bill, who say the language would allow the government to shut down portions of the Internet or restrict access to certain Web sites or types of content.
… One big change: Earlier versions of the bill barred companies from filing a lawsuit objecting to being placed on that list. The revised version explicitly permits judicial review as long as the lawsuit is filed in the District of Columbia.
Interesting statistics
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/026560.html
February 18, 2011
UK Cabinet Office Report: The Cost Of Cyber Crime
The Cost of Cybercrime: A Detica Report in Partnership with the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance in the Cabinet Office, February 17, 2011
"Few areas of our lives remain untouched by the digital revolution. Across the world, there are now nearly two billion internet users and over five billion mobile phone connections; every day, we send 294 billion emails and five billion SMS messages. Over 91 per cent of UK businesses and 73 per cent of UK households have internet access and £47.2 billion was spent online in the UK alone in 2009. Our society is now almost entirely dependent on the continued availability, accuracy and confidentiality of its Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We need it for our economic health, for the domestic machinery of government, for national defence and for our day-to-day social and cultural existence. As well as significant benefits, the technology has also enabled old crimes to be committed in new and more subtle ways. In its National Security Strategy4, cyber threats are recognised by the Government as one of four ‘Tier One’ risks to the UK’s security. But estimates of the cost of cyber crime have until now not been able to provide a justifiable estimate of economic impact and have failed to address the breadth of the problem. Therefore, the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA) worked with Detica to look more closely at the cost of cyber crime in the UK and, in particular, to gain a better appreciation of the costs to the UK economy of Intellectual Property (IP) theft and industrial espionage. Further developments of cyber crime policy, strategies and detailed plans will thus benefit from this insight."
Is “the future of the music industry” already here?
Radiohead’s Day Early Online Release Of ‘The King Of Limbs’ Goes Viral
It’s as if Radiohead got the lion’s share of Internet awareness, leaving the rest of the music industry completely clueless. Pretty much all anyone can talk about right now is Radiohead’s The King of Limbs, for a number of reasons (not least of which is because it’s amazing) but primarily because Radiohead mirrored the patterns of digital album leaks, generating major buzz.
… The band surprised everyone this morning by tweeting out “It’s Friday… It’s almost the weekend… You can download ‘The King of Limbs’ now if you so wish,” which led to coverage from Pitchfork to tech blogs , over 2000 retweets and #thekingoflimbs hashtag surpassing Queen Gaga to an impressive position at the top of Twitter trending topics.
… Having primed the digital sales pot with “the pay what you will” model of 2007 release In Rainbows, which “sold” 3 million copies, this time fans have to pony up a fixed amount of cash, $9.00 for MP3s and $14.00 for higher quality WAV files. Further driving in the nail in the coffin of physical music sales, Radiohead is releasing what it is calling a “Newspaper Album” three months from now which will include 625 pages of artwork, a MP3 ($48) or WAV ($53) version of the album and two, 10-inch vinyls — More a collector’s item than anything else.
For my Computer Security students.
National Security Jobs To Rival Silicon Valley Over the Next 10 Years?
"The Capital reports on a new cyber curriculum at a Maryland high school to feed the ever growing needs of the NSA and Cyber Command. A quote from Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) about job growth in the local national security sector stands out: '... in 10 years, there are going to be more tech jobs than Silicon Valley.' Could the new funding for the expansion of the National Security Agency and the Army's new Cyber Command be the next big growth area for the US?"
Because sometimes a snippet of popular culture gets a concept across better than a textbook...
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-videos-hulu-easy/
How To Download Videos From Hulu The Easy Way
Every once in a while, you come across a video that you think is so great that adding it to your favorites just isn’t good enough, so you seek to download it. This is relatively easy if you’re on YouTube. There are dozens of apps out there capable of getting the job done (YouTube Downloader is my personal favorite).
… Hulu‘s an entirely different story. They’ve gone to great lengths to protect their videos from downloaders, primarily because Hulu is home to a lot of television episodes and clips, rather than user-uploaded content. Is it impossible to download videos from Hulu? No, but a lot of the time, it’s just frustrating enough to cause you to give up prematurely – until now at least.
… You’re going to need two programs to start downloading and watching Hulu videos on your computer. The first is StreamTransport, the program you will use to locate, capture, and download the videos you’re looking for. The second, which you should have anyway, is VLC Player, because, well, it plays everything.
(Related)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Embed Plus - Clip & Annotate YouTube Videos
Embed Plus allows you to start a video at any point you specify. You can also use Embed Plus to skip scenes in a video, play it in slow motion, zoom into an area of a video, and annotate a video.
For my students – because a picture is worth a thousand words (except in assigned research papers)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Use Your Own Data in the Google Public Data Explorer
Last spring Google launched the Public Data Explorer. The Public Data Explorer allows anyone with a Google account to create visualizations of public data sets. Until this week, the only data you could visualizer was the data from Google's preferred providers (World Bank, US CDC, US Bureau of Labor, and others). This week Google announced that you can now upload and create visualizations of your own datasets in the Public Data Explorer. To do this you need to use the new Data Set Publishing Language (DSPL) developed by Google. The process of upload data in the DSPL format isn't something you'll learn in minutes, but if you're really interested in doing it Google does have a step-by-step tutorial for you to follow.
Again for my students – introducing them to alternatives...
Digler.com - The Best Web Services
For every web service that you use, there are at least a couple more that can get the very same job done every bit as well. And maybe even better. The question is, how do you find out about these services? And the answer is found on a site such as Digler.
In a nutshell, Digler is a very encompassing aggregator that brings all the best sites on the Web under the same roof. You will be able to access all these sites that are known to perform nothing short of excellently, all from the same page. Providers of webmail, video portals, search engines... they are all found on Digler
These sites are obviously arranged by category, and the eight top sites within each area are highlighted in each and every case. And by clicking on the flags that are provided on the right-hand side of the screen you will be able to swap the country at will. The US, the UK, Canada, Spain, Italy, Brazil... these are just some of the many countries that are already supported.
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