Wednesday, November 23, 2011


Crying wolf means you get less press coverage next time... Right?
Feds: No hacking in Illinois water pump failure
By The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Federal authorities say reports that hacking caused a water pump failure in Illinois' capital city aren't true.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Chris Ortman says initial reports over the weekend about the failure in Springfield were based on raw and unconfirmed data.
He said in a Tuesday statement that detailed analysis by DHS and the FBI found no evidence of a cyber intrusion or any malicious activity. Homeland security officials have said in the past that they investigate every piece of intelligence that comes into the agency.


With apologies to Steve Allen, This Could Be the Start of Something Big (Brother)
Malls track shoppers’ cell phones on Black Friday
November 22, 2011 by Dissent
Annalyn Censky reports:
Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.
Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.
Read more on CNN Money.


Hey, I like it. They don't have a “Privacy” or “Security Breach” section yet, but I'll follow the Technology feed for a while...
November 22, 2011
FindLaw Legal Pulse is launched - aggregates topical news and social media
News release: "FindLaw.com is introducing FindLaw Legal Pulse, a new content area that offers continuously updated legal headlines from around the world, along with news, photo feeds and analysis from such sources as Reuters, the Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post. The content covers a broad range of law-related topics -- everything from Supreme Court decisions to legislative updates, everyday legal issues and even sports and celebrity news. FindLaw Legal Pulse offers tangible user benefits -- the news is up-to-date, comes from a rich variety of sources, and is tailored to audiences with legal interests."


Who says America has lost its sense of humor? How come this stuff gets to market and my brilliant idea for an “anti-social” network (Buttfacebook) didn't make the cut?
Tired Of Facebook? Try Facedrink Energy Shot Before Zuck Sues
“It gives you social energy. It gives you taste of friendship.” It’s Facedrink! And you better go buy some because it will be sued out of existence any minute now. Following in the footsteps of the unofficial Mark Zuckerberg action figure, some dude named Barry Moustapha (ROFLCOPTER) has created a lawyer-magnet energy drink. It’s themed with Facebook colors and proudly displays an “Add as Friend” button on the label. I’d be suspicious this was a hoax, but there’s a photo of a real bottle and reviewers confirm it leave a worse taste in your mouth than getting Poked by your dad.


How to be well read, the military version... (General reading?)
November 22, 2011
DOD Reading Lists Aim to Promote Personal, Professional Growth
Reading Lists Aim to Promote Personal, Professional Growth, By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service:
"Legend has it that Alexander the Great slept with a copy of The Iliad, Homer's epic tale set during the Trojan War, under his pillow. Almost 2,500 years later, professional reading remains an important part of the military culture. Every service, most professional military schools and an increasing number of geographic and combatant commands offer up reading programs and reading lists as part of their professional development efforts. In fact, many have multiple reading lists, aimed at different groups within the military at different ranks and stages of their careers. Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, recently took this initiative to a new level with an online video encouraging all of his command to check out the Eucom reading list. The list is divided into sections with books about different phases of European history, culture and languages, as well as works of literary fiction that provide insight into European culture."


Quantitative measure of “Bragging Rights!”
November 22, 2011
Google Scholar Citations Open To All
Google Scholar Blog: "A few months ago, we introduced a limited release of Google Scholar Citations, a simple way for authors to compute their citation metrics and track them over time. Today, we’re delighted to make this service available to everyone! Click here and follow the instructions to get started. Here’s how it works. You can quickly identify which articles are yours, by selecting one or more groups of articles that are computed statistically. Then, we collect citations to your articles, graph them over time, and compute your citation metrics - the widely used h-index; the i-10 index, which is simply the number of articles with at least ten citations; and, of course, the total number of citations to your articles. Each metric is computed over all citations and also over citations in articles published in the last five years."


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