Friday, December 28, 2012

Has BYOD become so worrysome that this is their best response? Can't they come up with adequate controls by any other method? I think this is something we need to watch.
December 27, 2012
Companies deploying iPads to employees - no more bring your own devices to work
American Banker: "Barclays recently announced that it has made a bulk order of 8,500 iPads for staff in order to improve customer service and boost sales. The devices are being given to front-office employees in its 1,600 branches — an average of five per branch — in one of the largest uses so far of Apple's tablets in an enterprise. Sovereign Bank and others are following suit... Many banks and other large businesses Tekserve works with are buying iPads for their employees and setting up the devices with recommended apps and personalization, so that the user's email account, VPN access and such are already on the device the first time she uses it. Some companies assign each user an app store login and let them install their own apps... Another corporate customer, CableVision, is deploying 3,000 iPads to field service technicians. When they get the iPad from Tekserve, it has their email, corporate desktop and 30 apps on it."


Holiday reading...
Dec 282012
Below are some articles recently uploaded to SSRN. Clicking on the links will take you to SSRN where you can download the full paper or book.
Drones and Privacy Governance
Gregory S. McNeal Pepperdine University School of Law ; Pepperdine University – School of Public Policy
Law, Dissonance and Remote Computer Searches
Susan W. Brenner University of Dayton – School of Law
Surveillance and the Individual’s Expectation of Privacy Under the Fourth Amendment
Eoin Carolan University College Dublin (UCD) – School of Law
Open Book: The Failed Promise of Information Privacy in America
James P. Nehf Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Online Advertising and Privacy
Alexandre De Corniere, Oxford University and Romain De Nijs, University of California, Berkeley – Haas School of Business and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech


I thought I was safe when wearing my tinfoil yarmulke but now I'm switching to a sombrero and one of those “Mission Impossible” masks of this Law School professor I know...
Security Drones Foil Crooks Who Look Up
Flying drones are big big news. The government uses them to kill people, the cops use them to catch bad guys and, for a moment, anyway, we thought we’d use them to deliver tacos. And now security companies are hoping to cash in with an autonomous eye in the sky to keep you safe.
Japanese security firm Secom announced on Thursday that it will lease security drones to clients beginning in May.
… It sounds like a great plan until you realize the hoodlum must look up in order to be identified. Maybe that won’t be so tough, given that quadrocopters make a lot of noise. That, of course, leads to another issue: keeping the thing in the air. All it takes is a stick or well-thrown rock to disable a drone. You know what happens when the drone hits the ground? It becomes part of the haul. What thief would resist a quadrocopter loaded with the latest camera equipment? [...and a GPS that can “phone home?” Bob]


Fishy from the start...
HP acquired Autonomy for $11.1 billion, only to take an $8.8 billion writedown due to alleged fraud on Autonomy’s part. HP states that Autonomy is guilty of “serious accounting improprieties,” and that it fraudulently inflated its apparent worth to make HP bid accordingly. Now the U.S. Department of Justice has gotten involved, opening an investigation in the matter.
… Rumors that Autonomy was up to no good were circling before HP acquired the company, and according to inside sources, HP wanted out of the deal. The company failed to find any evidence of fraud on Autonomy’s part, however, giving it no legitimate excuse to back out. [They should have hired a lawyer Bob]


Announcing the “Send Bob to New Zealand” fund! (and more on the story the RIAA hoped would die quietly)
Kim Dotcom To Host Mega’s Launch Event At His New Mega Zealand Mansion Next Month
Kim Dotcom doesn’t do things small. The man behind the Megaupload empire is about to launch his next service dubbed simply Mega. But don’t expect a simple press event in a hotel conference room. Nope, on January 20, 2013, exactly one year after his over-the-top takedown, Dotcom is hosting the Mega launch event at his sprawling New Zealand estate — effectively giving the finger to the RIAA, MPAA, and the shady US Justice Department.


Local. All I got was a sweater.
Kid Finds Homemade Porn on Nintendo 3DS He Got for Christmas
OK, so here's a reason to rethink buying refurbished. Five-year-old Braydon Giles popped open a 3DS he just got for Christmas to find about nine photos of people, presumably the previous owners (or the previous owner's parents?), having sex.
… The Colorado Gamestop where Giles purchased the 3DS has of course apologized, and Gamestop has issued a you're-probably-still-suing-us-but-hey-it's-worth-a-try statement about the incident:
"GameStop is currently researching this situation. We have a rigorous quality control process in place [Tip: Every now and the, check to see if it is working... Bob] to ensure that existing content is removed from all devices before they are re-sold. Out of millions of transactions each year, ones like this happen very rarely. [So they do happen? Bob] Our number one priority is to make this right for our customer."

(Related) Doomed to fail.
South Korea planning to block pornography and swear words on teenagers' smartphones
The South Korean government has laid out plans to install software on teenagers’ smartphones that will block "'illegal [and] harmful information." The Ministry Of Gender Equality And Family believes that installing the software will block swear words and slang — as well as prevent cyber-bullying — on social and messaging networks such as KaKao Talk, Facebook, and Twitter. The governmental body will also require a compulsory filtering service for mobile carriers that will block "harmful information" that includes pornography and nudity.


Perspective
… For many people, having a home phone makes no sense when all calls can go to a mobile phone or smartphone that can be on your person at all times. The source of the survey that showed only half of Americans have home phone is rather surprising.
The study was conducted by the Center for Disease Control and is called the National Health Interview Study.


A different way to look at social relationships. (A 3 minute video.)
Three New Networks for the Digital Age
Lynda Gratton, London Business School professor, suggests ways to stay connected in an increasingly mobile world.


Stories I tell my Math students. (I also mention that we are probably failing to identify many Ramanujans, Einsteins, or Mozarts because they don't live in places where it is easy to find them. Like war zones or countries without adequate infrastructure. Shame)
"Another chapter in the fascinating life of Srinivasa Ramanujan appears to be complete: 'While on his death bed, the brilliant Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan cryptically wrote down functions he said came to him in dreams, with a hunch about how they behaved. Now 100 years later, researchers say they've proved he was right. "We've solved the problems from his last mysterious letters. For people who work in this area of math, the problem has been open for 90 years," Emory University mathematician Ken Ono said. Ramanujan, a self-taught mathematician born in a rural village in South India, spent so much time thinking about math that he flunked out of college in India twice, Ono said.'"


Maybe I can learn electronics at last (if they go slow)
Adafruit to Teach Electronics Through Puppets in New Kids’ Show
Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic. So young that they’re enlisting the help of puppets.
Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip.

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