The main reason not to use real data in
testing is that real data make lousy teat data. It has already been
run through system edits and contains no errors for the new system to
detect and handle.
By Dissent,
October 5, 2011
The Stanford Hospital breach is a
useful reminder of why you shouldn’t use real data sets for
testing. Kevin Sack of the New York Times reports:
Private medical
data for nearly 20,000 emergency room patients at California’s
prestigious Stanford Hospital were exposed to public view for nearly
a year because a billing contractor’s marketing agent sent
the electronic spreadsheet to a job prospect as part of a skills
test, the hospital and contractors confirmed this week.
The applicant then sought help by unwittingly posting the
confidential data on a tutoring Web site.
Read more on Ocala.com
Isn't the alternative, “We are
grossly incompetent?” Which message would you like to send?
"After six days of spotty
service and outages with its online and mobile sites, Bank
of America today said it has not been the victim of a denial of
service attack, hacking or malware. Yet, the bank has set up a new
homepage that it says will help customers navigate to the proper
online service. Internet monitoring service Keynote said the outage
is unprecedented in banking. 'I don't think we've seen as
significant and as long an outage with any bank. And I've been with
Keynote for 16 years now,' said Shawn White, vice president of
operations for web monitoring service Keynote Systems. In the
meantime, a BofA spokeswoman continued to divulge what might be
happening, saying 'We're not going to get into the technical details.
We're not going to comment on the technicalities of what we do.'
Speculation
among experts has been that the site is under attack."
[From the speculation
article:
The outages, which includes the bank’s
hobbled home page as well as delays and difficulty in accessing
online banking, began Friday morning, a day after the
bank announced it would charge a $5 monthly fee for account holders
using their debit cards.
How is “acceptable use” defined and
does management actually try to ensure that unacceptable use is
detected and corrective action taken? I think it will be real
interesting to find out why everyone was looking at this woman,
apparently to the point where she became aware of the scrutiny.
MN:
DVS Database Searches of Woman’s History May Be Data Breach
October 5, 2011 by Dissent
Paul Blume reports:
A recent audit at
the state’s driver and vehicle services division has 18 law
enforcement agencies — including the FBI in Minneapolis — looking
into why one woman’s private data was accessed 400 times within
four years and whether or not it was justified.
There are
currently investigations at multiple state agencies, including the
University of Minnesota Duluth Police Department.
Read more on MyFox9.
In this case, the woman
herself raised the issue that started the ball rolling on
investigating whether there has been improper access. Aren’t
departments or agencies supposed to have audit procedures already in
place that would flag unusual numbers of access requests? I realize
that there are multiple agencies involved here, but if they’re all
accessing the same record, why didn’t that send up a flag?
It's like we've all agreed to
disagree...
October 05, 2011
Cell
Phone and Texting Laws
Governors Highway Safety
Administration, Cell
Phone Laws and Texting, October 2011 "This chart outlines
all state cell phone and text
messaging laws. Some local jurisdictions may have additional
regulations. Enforcement type is shown in parenthesis.
- Handheld Cell Phones: 9 states, D.C. and the Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving. Except for Maryland, all laws are primary enforcement—an officer may cite a driver for using a handheld cell phone without any other traffic offense taking place.
- All Cell Phone Use: No state bans all cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) for all drivers, but many prohibit all cell phone use by certain drivers - Novice Drivers: 30 states and D.C. ban all cell phone use by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: Bus drivers in 19 states and D.C. may not use a cell phone when passengers are present.
- Text Messaging: 34 states, D.C. and Guam ban text messaging for all drivers. 31 states, D.C., and Guam have primary enforcement; the others, secondary. Novice Drivers: An additional 7 states prohibit text messaging by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: 3 states restrict school bus drivers from texting while driving.
- Some states such as Maine, N.H. and Utah treat cell phone use and texting as part of a larger distracted driving issue. In Utah, cellphone use is an offense only if a driver is also committing some other moving violation (other than speeding)."
(Related)
"In a case
explicitly decided to set a precedent, the California Appellate court
has determined police
officers can rifle through your cellphone during a traffic
violation stop. ... Florida and Georgia are among the states that
give no protection to a phone during a search. In particular,
Florida law treats a smartphone as a 'container' for the purposes of
a search, similar to say a cardboard box open on the passenger seat,
despite the thousands of personal emails, contacts, and photos a
phone can carry stretching back years. But after initially striking
down cell phone snooping, California has now joined the list of
states that allow cops to go through your phone without a warrant."
Interesting
additional commentary, too, from UCSD law professor Shaun Martin.
Nein to nine!
Software
Makers Win Big in Supreme Court Copyright Fight
The Supreme Court is refusing to review
a federal appellate panel’s decision that software
makers may use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the
transfer or resale of their wares.
Without comment, the justices on Monday
let stand a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that is another
erosion of the so-called “first-sale” doctrine, which the Supreme
Court began to chip away at last year.
(Related) But I can still digitize my
collection of Louis Armstrong records, right?
Rip
your LPs! Get a USB turntable for $32.99
This is what is possible today. Should
we be content with 2Mbps?
"UK service provider BT has
launched its Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) product, pledging it will
offer downstream
speeds of 300Mbps by spring next year. At present, the service
can hit 110Mbps downstream speeds and will be available in just six
locations from the end of October. More locations will be added and
speeds will rise, however, with a 1Gbps service currently being
trialled in Kesgrave, Suffolk. There may be continuing disputes over
BT Openreach's pricing of fibre products, given the recent industry
in-fighting. Nevertheless, 300Mbps fibre will provide some pretty
speedy downloads for end users."
Now computers are cheaper than a tank
full of gas...
India
launches $35 Aakash tablet computer for students
Commercial version of the tablet,
priced at $60, expected to hit stores later this year
India has launched a touch screen
tablet computer priced at just $35 (£23).
… The laptop -- which features
Internet browsing, 2GB RAM, W-Fi and USB -- has been indigenously
developed with custom-made low-cost motherboards and a 2-watt power
system to make it work effectively in areas that have a poor
power-supply, according to the NYT.
Something for my students
Google
Image Chart Creator: Create Various Charts & Images That Are
Embeddable
Something for my Geeky students
Download
& Try Aurora 9 – A.K.A. Firefox 9 – For Free [News]
It's the start of a new Quarter, so
I'll try to educate my students on e-Etiquette... You know, emails
with subjects, salutations and signatures, punctuation, etc.
eEtiquette:
Learn The Proper Etiquette For The Digital World
Similar tools: Etiquette
Survival Guide and International
Etiquette Guide.
No comments:
Post a Comment