No! No! And Hell no! This is wrong
on so many levels.
"According to reports, which
were confirmed
Friday by ICS-CERT (PDF), there has been an active cyber attack
campaign targeting the natural gas industry. However, it's the
advice from the DHS that should raise some red flags. 'There are
several intriguing and unusual aspects of the attacks and the U.S.
response to them not described in Friday's public notice,' Mark
Clayton wrote. 'One is the greater level of detail in these alerts
than in past alerts. Another is the
unusual if not unprecedented request to leave the cyber spies alone
for a little while.' According to the source, the companies were
'specifically requested in a March 29 alert not to take action to
remove the cyber spies if discovered on their networks, but to
instead allow them to persist as long as
company operations did not appear to be endangered.'
While the main motive behind the request is likely to gain
information on the attackers, letting them stay close to critical
systems is dangerous. The problem lies in the complexities of our
critical infrastructures and the many highly specialized embedded
systems that comprise them."
It's
a miracle! Mere months after the entire Internet became aware
of this gaping hole in the “Full” body scanners, DHS wakes up.
Homeland
Security Concedes Airport Body Scanner ‘Vulnerabilities’
Federal investigators “identified
vulnerabilities in the screening process” at domestic airports
using so-called “full body scanners,” according to a classified
internal Department of Homeland Security report.
… Exactly how bad
the body scanners are is not being divulged publicly, but
the Inspector General report made eight separate recommendations on
how to improve screening.
… Meanwhile, an unclassified
version of the Inspector General report, unearthed Friday by the
Electronic
Information Privacy Center, may give credence to a recent YouTube
video allegedly showing a 27-year-old Florida man sneaking a metallic
object through two different Transportation Security Administration
body scanners at American airports.
A lesser miracle. “We can't handle
it” is budget speak for “We'd like more money.”
Congress
Funds Killer Drones the Air Force Says It Can’t Handle
… The Pentagon asked Congress for
only around $4 million for the MQ-1 Predator drone and about $1.7
billion for the next-generation MQ-9 Reaper over the next year. The
House Armed Services Committee, which on Tuesday finished its
version of next year’s defense bill (.pdf), decided that wasn’t
enough for either program. If the committee’s version of the bill
makes it through the legislative process, the Air Force will get
about $23 million more for the Predators, and an extra $180 million
for the Reapers.
A case we all should follow. Is there
justification beyond the anti-dragon argument (Since we've been doing
[____] there have been no dragon attack! So it must work.”
Americans’
Challenge to No-Fly List Gets Day in Court
About a dozen U.S. citizens and lawful
permanent residents who cannot fly from the United States because
they are on the so-called “no-fly
list” will finally have their case heard by a federal appeals
court Friday.
The two-year-old
suit claims the plaintiffs, who include two retired U.S. military
veterans once stranded in Egypt and Colombia, have been
unconstitutionally barred from flying without being told why or
provided a meaningful chance to clear their names.
“A secret list that deprives people
of the right to fly and places them into effective exile without any
opportunity to object is both un-American and unconstitutional,”
ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said in a
statement.
The next big case?
Privacy
Lawsuit Against Apple Moves Forward
May 7, 2012 by Dissent
Wendy Davis reports:
Consumers who
filed a class-action privacy lawsuit against Apple can proceed with
their case, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District
Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California set a trial
date of Sept. 16 in the case, which was brought by iPhone and iPad
users who allege their privacy was violated when their devices’
unique identifiers — 40-character strings of letters and numbers —
were transmitted to app developers and their affiliates.
Read more on MediaPost.
Well, it's a start.
1
in 4 Facebook users purposely lie on profile - Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports found that one in four
Facebook users lie on their profile.
The study suggests Facebook liars are
just trying to protect their privacy and post false information to
guard their identity.
People who lie on Facebook also use
incorrect or incomplete names to hide from employers and list fake
birthdates to foil potential identity thieves.
Can anyone shut down any site by
“asserting” a connection to piracy? Or is that power limited to
large campaign donors?
Seized
Hip-Hop Site Lashes Out At Feds, RIAA
The hip-hop music site the authorities
shuttered for more than a year without explanation lashed out Monday
at the recording industry and the federal government, likening the
taking of the site to a “digital Guantanamo.”
“Seizing a blog for linking to four
songs, even allegedly infringing ones, is equivalent to seizing the
printing press of The New York Times because the newspaper,
in its concert calendar, refers readers to four concerts where the
promoters of those concerts have failed to pay ASCAP for the
performance licenses,” Andre Nasib, the site’s owner, wrote in a
blog post on the popular dajaz1.com site.
Nasib had originally declined comment
when Wired disclosed
the backstory of the seizure on Thursday.
According to court records obtained by
Wired, federal authorities seized the dajaz1.com
site based on assertions from the Recording Industry Association of
America that it was linking to four “pre-release” music tracks in
November, 2010. The authorities gave it back nearly 13 months later
without filing civil or criminal charges because of apparent
recording industry delays in confirming infringement, according to
the court records, which were unsealed by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition and Wired.
The
records illustrated a
secret government process in which a judge granted
the government repeated time extensions to build a civil or criminal
case against Dajaz1.com, one of about 750 domains the government has
seized in the last two years in a program known as Operation in Our
Sites.
Perspective The device of choice is
hand-held and allows you to text or talk.
Report:
Smartphones, Not Computers, Drive the Most Facebook Use
According to comScore’s new Mobile
Metrix 2.0 report released Monday, Facebook’s mobile usage is on
the rise. In fact, the report revealed that Facebook users spent
more time accessing the social network on smartphones than on
computers in March.
Facebook users spent an average of 441
minutes — or 7 hours, 21 minutes — accessing the social network
via smartphones during the month. By comparison, users spent 391
minutes — or 6 hours, 31 minutes — checking out Facebook on PCs.
(Related)
May 07, 2012
Pew
- Just-in-time Information through Mobile Connections
Just-in-time
Information through Mobile Connections by Lee Rainie, Susannah
Fox, May 7, 2012
- "The rapid adoption of cell phones and, especially, the spread of internet-connected smartphones are changing people’s communications with others and their relationships with information. Users’ ability to access data immediately through apps and web browsers and through contact with their social networks is creating a new culture of real-time information seekers and problem solvers. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has documented some of the ways that people perform just-in-time services with their cell phones. A new nationally representative survey by the Pew Internet Project has found additional evidence of this just-in-time phenomenon. Some 70% of all cell phone owners and 86% of smartphone owners have used their phones in the previous 30 days to perform at least one of the following activities: Coordinate a meeting or get-together; Solve an unexpected problem that they or someone else had encountered; Decide whether to visit a business, such as a restaurant; Find information to help settle an argument they were having; Look up a score of a sporting event -- 23% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days; Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere; Get help in an emergency situation."
For my Risk Management class. Both
Micro and Macro considerations... (and some 'solutions' that have
zero change of being adopted)
"There are
good reasons to think web services like Facebook won't be around
forever. If Facebook ever were to go down there would be potentially
huge costs to its users. We can all take individual steps to
protect our data and social network, but is
there anything we can do to our economy to mitigate the costs of the
failure of these services? The Red Rock looks
at the role open source, open standards, consumer cooperatives, and
enterprise reform can play. The author concludes that all is not
lost, and that there's a lot we can do to reduce both the cost and
frequency of failure."
His suggestions are pretty radical:
"The first is draw up an Open Data Bill and pass it into law.
This would (where applicable) mandate the use of open standards by
firms, and also mandate that all data held about a user is
downloadable by that user, in an open standard. ... The second is to
reform the corporate structure of larger companies to include some
directors elected by consumers, rather than just shareholders. Not
all the directors, like in the Cooperative Group, and not even a
majority, but just a small portion of the board — say one third."
Another downside of Student Loans...
(The next Class Action?)
"Dave Lindorff writes in the LA
Times that growing numbers of students are discovering their old
school is actively blocking them from getting a job or going on to a
higher degree by refusing
to issue an official transcript. The schools won't send the
transcripts to potential employers or graduate admissions office if
students are in default on student loans, or in many cases, even if
they just fall one or two months behind. It's no accident that
they're doing this. It turns out the federal
government 'encourages' them to use this draconian tactic,
saying that the policy 'has resulted in numerous loan repayments.'
It is a strange position for colleges to take, writes Lindorff, since
the schools themselves are not owed any money
— student loan funds come from private banks or the federal
government, and in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are
not on the hook in any way. They are simply acting as collection
agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection.
'It's worse than indentured
servitude,' says NYU Professor Andrew Ross, who helped organize
the Occupy Student Debt movement last fall. 'With indentured
servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got
to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students
who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability
to work or to finish their education so they can repay their
indenture.'"
I'm telling you there is money to be
made here. Anyone want to join me at the University of Bob?
Pathwright
Launches Platform To Let Anyone Create, Sell Branded Online Courses
Online education has been around for
years, but they were largely viewed as experiments. Over the last
year, things have changed. Elite universities are not only taking
online education seriously, they’re building it into their 10-year
plans. Harvard
and MIT’s EdX is one example, Coursera
another, while startups like CodeAcademy,
Treehouse, StraighterLine,
Khan Academy, Lynda.com,
Udacity, and Udemy
(among others) are carrying the torch for the flipped classroom.
Interestingly, what unites these
platforms, aside from the fact that that they’re all in some way
educators, is that each has built their own custom software and
infrastructure to deliver their content. Are any using traditional
learning management systems, like Blackboard or Moodle? Nope.
That’s because viable, interactive online education requires
software that can meet a new generation of demands: Social, mobile,
rich multimedia, flexibility, and scale.
Yet, while these well-funded startups
have the resources and capital to build custom platforms, there are
thousands of traditional schools, education providers, learning
coaches, etc. producing stellar learning content that lack the tools
necessary to share their awesome content with the masses.
That’s where Pathwright
comes into play. Greenville, South Carolina-based Pathwright was
founded by a team of hackers (and educators) who have set out to
build a platform for “the next wave of educators” — a simple,
DIY content management system that lets any and all educators create,
distribute, and sell online courses under the banner of their own
branded, online schools.
For Pete's sake, don't tell my wife.
She already tells me I'm “warming” the house and she thinks I'm a
dinosaur. God help me if she see's this connection...
Dinosaur
gases 'warmed the Earth'
British scientists have calculated the
methane output of sauropods, including the species known as
Brontosaurus.
By scaling up the digestive wind of
cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs - as a whole -
produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually.
They suggest the gas could have been a
key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago.
Thing of this as a follow-up on one of
the most amusing articles I have ever posted. I don't know how many
readers went out an purchased a pair, but let this be a warning to
any who did: Don't drive east of the Mississippi with them
(especially if you don't have a drivers license).
A South Carolina man was released from
jail Monday after being held overnight for an arrest that was sparked
by the fake testicles displayed on the back of his truck.
Joe Cervantes-Rodriguez, 31, was
driving Sunday evening in Spartanburg when he was stopped by a
sheriff's deputy who noticed an "obscene object" hanging
from the truck's rear bumper.
An arrest report obtained by the
website The Smoking Gun described the object as "a pair of large
fleshy testicles" that were "flesh colored, anatomically
correct, approximately the size of a softball, and in clear view of
the public."
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