Another “evil doer” fined mere pennys per victim? Couldn't we at least recover the taxpayer (MY!)
money spent investigating them?
"You probably don't remember
the
RockYou fiasco as it happened in late 2009. In case you don't,
social game developer RockYou suffered a serious SQL injection flaw
on its flagship website. Worse, the company was storing user details
in plain text. As a result, tens of millions
of login details, including those belonging to minors, were stolen
and published online. Now, RockYou
has finally settled with the Federal Trade Commission."
Y2K! Y2K! If you wait long enough,
everything that can go wrong will go wrong. “I'm so lost I don't
even know what day it is...”
TomTom
sat-nav devices hit by GPS 'leap year bug'
TomTom
has blamed a "leap year bug" for a fault causing some of
its satellite navigation devices to malfunction.
The firm said that a problem with its
global positioning system firmware - code embedded into the devices -
was causing "a
limited number of models" to fail to identify their
location.
Local
"A federal
court has thrown out a 2010 Colorado law, which had already been
temporarily blocked in federal court last year, meant to spur online
retailers like Amazon to collect state sales tax. 'I conclude that
the veil provided by the words of the act and the regulations is too
thin to support the conclusion that the act and the regulations
regulate in-state and out-of-state retailers even-handedly,' U.S.
District Judge Robert Blackburn wrote in his opinion. The law and
the rules to carry it out 'impose
an undue burden on interstate commerce' and are unconstitutional,
the judge wrote. The tax mainly
affected online sales of out-of-state companies that have in-state
affiliates, usually generating sales through links on their
websites."
I wonder what this means for the
plethora of similar bills in other states. Will Amazon continue
to call for a national Internet sales tax if they are all struck
down?
It occurs to me that TSA allowed this
student to take the science experiment through “security” and
onto the plane without comment. Or (much scarier) TSA never noticed
it being taken through security.
"A group of students and a
professor were detained by TSA at Dallas' Love Field. Several of
them were led away in handcuffs. What did they do wrong? One of
them left
a robotic science experiment behind on an aircraft, which
panicked a boarding flight crew. The experiment 'looked like a cell
phone attached to a remote control car with some exposed wires
protruding.' Of course, the false alarm inconvenienced more than the
traveling academics. The airport was temporarily shut down and
multiple gates were evacuated, causing flight delays and diversions."
e-Extortion (e-Xtortion?) If you did
the same tings without asking for money would you be a hacktivist?
"Crystal Cox, a Montana woman
who calls herself an 'investigative journalist' was slapped with a
$2.5-million judgment last year for defaming an investment firm
and one of its lead partners. Cox had taken control of the Google
footprint of Obsidian Finance and its principal Kevin Padrick by
writing hundreds of posts about them on dozens of websites she owned,
inter-linking them in ways that made them rise up in Google search
results; it ruined Obsidian's business due to prospective clients
being put off by the firm's seemingly terrible online reputation.
After Obsidian sued Cox, she contacted them offering her 'reputation
services;' for $2,500 a month, she could 'fix' the firm's reputation
and help promote its business. The Forbes Article goes on to
describe how she tried to similarly leverage attorneys and
journalistts reputations. Finding some of her targets were too well
established in google rank to pester or intimidate, Cox moved to
family members, reserving
domain names for one of her target's 3 year old daughter. Forbes
columnist Kashmir Hill makes the case that this clearly isn't
journalistm, and establishes a boundary for
free speech online."
Who said IP Law was complicated? All
you have to do is buy a defense after the fact! (If there aren't
already people who call offering the perfect patent or prior art,
there certainly should be!)
Facebook
countersues Yahoo with patent acquired after
being sued by Yahoo
The non sequitur du jour?
They “MAY” contain a cure for the common cold. When users asked
for the return of legitimate files, they probably meant “legitimate”
files. The owners of the child porn are probably too busy relocating
to worry about recovering their files.
"In the ongoing Megaupload
saga, Carpathia, the company that hosted Megaupload, is in a
tough pickle. The EFF wants
the data to remain on the servers so that users can get
legitimate data back, the MPAA doesn't want the servers back, because
it will lead to piracy. Megaupload wants to buy the servers to get
all the data, but isn't allowed to as that would have the servers
leaving the court's jurisdiction. The U.S .Government won't pay
Carpathia for the time that the servers are sitting idle and has
a new song in its repertoire by announcing yesterday that the
servers 'may contain child
pornography,' which would render them 'contraband' and limit
Carpathia's options for dealing with them."
Can we learn? (The developers are
learning how to sell the app even after the controversy.)
How
Location-Based Apps Can Stave Off the ‘Creepy Factor’
Sometimes an app pushes the boundaries
of what’s socially acceptable — and it fails miserably. Such is
the case with the most recent offender, the check-in-based pariah
called Girls Around Me.
… Foursquare pulled its API access
because Girls Around Me was just too creepy (and violated their
terms).
And so enters the controversy: All of
the location data siphoned down by the app was willingly surrendered
by Foursquare users. But the way the app used that data was
inherently
creepy, and highlighted the potential
security risks of broadcasting one’s location across social
media.
“I think it’s anything that allows
somebody who you don’t know, or don’t interact with, or don’t
want to interact with, to retrieve more information about you than
you’re comfortable with,” Kevin Mahaffey, CTO and co-founder of
Lookout Mobile Security told Wired. “That’s the trigger that
borders on creepy in people’s minds.”
Color
was another app that transitioned from cool to ick as users realized
nearby strangers would be able to view their photos on the social
network — and they could potentially get an eyeful of whatever that
person wanted to share, as well
Nick Doty, a Ph.D. student studying
privacy and web standards at UC Berkeley’s School of Information,
pointed out a few themes that arise among “creepy” apps.
“In some cases, it may just be a
sense of surprise. The user isn’t aware information is being used
in a particular way, and when they realize it’s being shared or
used differently, that can feel like a violation,” Doty said. “In
other cases, it can be the context. Information is shared in one
context and reused in another one that’s unexpected or has a
different implication.”
Over-reaching advertising can also
creep us out, Doty says.
… As for Girls
Around Me, after Foursquare revoked access to its API, the
app developers removed it from the App Store. But the
app will be back, apparently. Product lead Vlad
Vishnyakov told Wired via email that his company will be changing the
application name to be gender neutral, and will make the app design
“less provocative,” among other changes to meet Foursquare’s
API requirements.
“Addressing these concerns is an
important part of having a successful business model in the space,”
Uncapher told Wired. “Consumers need to feel comfortable sharing
information or they wont share it.”
Crowd-sourced funding or money from the
cloud, either way it could enable some interesting (and very
non-conventional) projects. I'm going to point my students to
Kickstarter, but I still want 1% of their start-ups....
Gamemakers
Jump on Big-Money Kickstarter Bandwagon
For a while, Kickstarter was the sole
domain of scrappy indie makers looking to scrape up a few thousand
bucks to get a small idea out into the world. Then Double Fine
changed everything.
Although the studio was already
well-established, selling its comedic games to big publishers like
Warner Bros., Electronic Arts and THQ, it couldn't find a publisher
willing to back a classic point-and-click adventure game, the sort of
thing that made its founder Tim Schafer famous in the first place.
So it took
to Kickstarter, asking for $400,000 -- in Kickstarter terms, a
lot of money. The project ended up getting $3.3 million,
illustrating that the crowdfunding model could scale way, way up if
the idea came from an established player with a large fan base.
And then the floodgates opened. Since
Double Fine's Kickstarter triumph, many more makers of niche games
have taken to the crowdfunding site to pitch projects that publishers
won't take a risk on. They're asking for big budgets. Some are
getting far more than they asked for, some are having trouble finding
fans.
Not at all surprising. The invention
of trains marked the start of a tremendous increase in the number of
horses used in transportation (to move goods the short distance from
the farm to the railroads so farmers could reach the new markets a
long distance away)
We’re
Using Way More Paper Than We Ever Have Before
According to The
Economist, worldwide paper consumption has increased by half in
the last 30 years, a puzzling development for an era when "paperless"
and "green" are as buzzy as words can get. You'd think
that with the rise of computers, iPads and smartphones that paper
consumption would shrink, but apparently humans are still ripping
down spruces and pines at an alarming rate. So save a tree—buy a
Kindle.
Interesting look at eBusiness models?
(I find it interesting because it fits my model of “Change” –
that's me saying “I told you so!”)
Why
digital-native media will (almost) always win
Much of the traditional media business
has been in the doldrums for some time now, a victim of declining
circulation and the
free-fall of print advertising that has sucked the oxygen out of
many traditional business models. And yet, many of these companies
still have only taken small steps (if any) towards trying to carve
out a future for themselves by adapting to the digital world. Why is
that? As Paul Smalera of Reuters argued in a recent post, the
biggest issue is not that they can’t see the need to change, it’s
that they are caught between trying to manage their existing
businesses — which in most cases still produce the bulk of
their revenue — and trying to create new ones. In media as in
every other field, the fastest and most successful innovators will
almost always be the ones that have no legacy business to worry
about.
The impetus for Smalera’s post was a
table produced by LinkedIn as part of a
report that looked at which industries and sectors prospered (or
failed to) during and after the recession. At the very bottom of the
list of industries that have shrunk was the newspaper business —
which won’t come as any surprise to those who have followed the
industry’s twists and turns over the past decade, or anyone who has
noticed events like the recent
sale of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News for
about 10 percent of what they fetched in a sale just six years
ago. At the same time, however, Smalera notes that the “online
publishing” sector was one of the fastest-growing industries:
(Related) Is this how “magazines”
will survive? Netflix for print?
Next
Issue Media launches with all-you-can-read pricing model
(Related) Yes, it is change – but is
it enough change? I think not (but I've been spectacularly wrong
before).
With
$25M From Benchmark And Larry Summers Advising, Can Minerva Build An
Online Ivy?
Well, we’ve said it before:
Technology is changing education. It’s
flipping the classroom, bringing instructional
videos to the masses, and dragging online
higher education into legitimacy. Investors have begun to hear
the call, as was evidenced today when Benchmark Capital made its
largest seed investment to date — $25 million — in a
startup/university called The
Minerva Project.
For more on The Minerva Project, check
it out at home here.
Looks like we'll see several
experiments like this one. Might be worth monitoring...
"Today the Polish government
started a Digital School pilot program, which includes distributing
e-textbooks. This came after a years-long effort by the Open
Education Coalition and its members to persuade policy makers, that
Open Educational Resources are the future of education. The last few
months have been especially eventful, as the
free textbooks part of the program was dropped by the Ministry of
Education and reinstated again by the Prime Minister Office."
[Education as “political football” Bob]
(Related) Just like a paint brush
makes your child a Da Vinci...
"With the wide array of
electronic devices available in our everyday lives, it appears that
children
have formed an attachment to a different kind of toy. According
to the latest survey, 77 per cent of polled US, UK parents believe
that iPads and other tablets are good educational tools that boost
kids' creativity. Meanwhile, researchers in this field explain
that it is a matter of balance — and a child's access to tablets
and other similar electronic devices should be monitored.
Specialists warn that using tablets in excess
could cause attention deficit disorder and even autism, particularly
at a very young age." [What
caused these before tablets? Bob]
Search is in flux. Some changes may
actually be useful! Here are a few...
- Autocomplete with math symbols. [launch codename "Blackboard", project codename "Suggest"] When we process queries to return predictions in autocomplete, we generally normalize them to match more relevant predictions in our database. This change incorporates several characters that were previously normalized: “+”, “-”, “*”, “/”, “^”, “(“, “)”, and “=”. This should make it easier to search for popular equations, for example [e = mc2] or [y = mx+b].
- Improvements to handling of symbols for indexing. [launch codename "Deep Maroon"] We generally ignore punctuation symbols in queries. Based on analysis of our query stream, we’ve now started to index the following heavily used symbols: “%”, “$”, “\”, “.”, “@”, “#”, and “+”. We’ll continue to index more symbols as usage warrants.
- Better handling of password changes. Our general approach is that when you change passwords, you’ll be signed out from your account on all machines. This change ensures that changing your password more consistently signs your account out of Search, everywhere.
A new resource for my website class...
Codecademy
is a place where anyone can learn how to write code. The only
problem was Codecademy's early lessons assumed that you already knew
or could figure out some HTML basics. As I learned through Mashable
on Monday, that has changed.
Codecademy
is now offering lessons in basic HTML and CSS. Now even people who
can't code a hyperlink can learn to program. Codecademy's
new lessons in basic HTML start with the very basics of
explaining what HTML is, what it does, and how to write the basics.
There are seven progressively more difficult lessons that students
can work through on their own.
It's definitely not “everything”
but it is a start..
Everything
You Wanted to Know About Data Mining but Were Afraid to Ask
Big data is everywhere we look these
days. Businesses are falling all over themselves to hire 'data
scientists,' privacy advocates are concerned about personal data and
control, and technologists and entrepreneurs scramble to find new
ways to collect, control and monetize data.
This article is an attempt to explain
how data mining works and why you should care about it. Because when
we think about how our data is being used, it is crucial to
understand the power of this practice. Without data mining, when you
give someone access to information about you, all they know is what
you have told them. With data mining, they know what you have told
them and can guess a great deal more. [Please!
“predict with a high degree of certainty” Bob] Put
another way, data mining allows companies and governments to use the
information you provide to reveal more than you think.
… These general forms illustrate
what data mining can do.
Anomaly detection
Association
learning
Cluster detection
Classification
Regression
A handy-dandy little chart, neat!
Last week I had to do a workshop about
WolframAlpha,
and I noticed that there are three different feature sets: not logged
in, logged in, logged in to Pro.
I needed to know which login settings
provided which features (especially for giving workshops and working
with students), so I decided to be thorough about it. You can
download the PDF of this document, Guide
to Wolfram Alpha Features, as well.
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