It could be leakage from the Saudi
malware (very unlikely). It could be someone trying to drive up the
price of natural gas. It could be someone like Syria, angry at
states that aren't supporting them.
Qatari
Gas Company Hit With Virus in Wave of Attacks on Energy Companies
The Qatari natural gas company commonly
known as RasGas has been hit with a virus that shut down its website
and e-mail servers, according to news reports.
Qatar is the world’s largest producer
of liquified natural gas. RasGas, a joint operation of Qatar
Petroleum and ExxonMobil, distributes about 36 million tons of the
resource annually.
(Related) We do need a scorecard.
A
who's who of Mideast-targeted malware
For the Security/Privacy toolkit
Supports Firefox, IE, Chrome and
Safari.
Texans certainly know RFID. Those tags
attach to the ears of livestock are a common sight. Perhaps this is
merely a reaction of parents concerned that their children will
pierce their ears and wear the RFID as “Orwellian bling”
Rebellion
Erupts Over School’s Student-Chipping Plan
It may not be the Alamo, but some
Texans are taking a stand for student privacy with the support of a
number of organizations.
Bob Unruh reports:
A rebellion is
developing in Texas against a plan by a school district in San
Antonio that would monitor the exact location and activities of all
students at all times through RFID chips they are being ordered to
wear.
Katie Deolloz, a
member of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and
Numbering, told WND today that parents and students from San
Antonio’s Northside Independent School District confronted the
school board last night, stating their concerns about privacy and
other issues “clearly and passionately.”
If truancy is a problem, chipping kids
isn’t a solution. Finding out why they don’t care about classes
and making education more important to them is. And if a school
district can’t manage to keep accurate attendance figures without
technology, the parents should be raising questions of competence.
PogoWasRight.org supports the students
and parents who are fighting mandatory chipping. They’re our
children, not merchandise on a pallet or sheep. Yes, schools have a
responsibility to keep schools safe, but chipping students is no
substitute for teaching them responsibility. Kids have always cut
school. Good schools know how to deal with that without dehumanizing
children by chipping them.
As my friends in New Jersey would say,
“Good luck wid dat,”
EFF
Sues to Get Secret Court Rulings Showing Feds Violated Spy Law
… Specifically the EFF wants the
government to make public a secret court ruling that found that the
feds had broken a 2008 wiretapping law that was intended to legalize
President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.
The public first learned of that ruling
thanks to three damning statements U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
obtained national security clearance to make public. Wyden, a member
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, presumably learned of the
lawbreaking in briefings from the intelligence community.
Un-humor. How else do you reward
campaign contributors?
Army
Doubles Down on ‘Garbled, Ineffective’ Next-Gen Radios
… The radio in question: the
General Dynamics Manpack, a backpack-portable version of the
Pentagon’s ambitious Joint Tactical Radio System. Voice traffic
from the Manpacks was “garbled” and “unintelligible,”
according to Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester.
In a memo dated July 20, Gilmore declared the Manpack “not
operationally effective.” In other words, it didn’t work in mock
combat — and it probably won’t work in real combat,
either.
“We are not delaying, we're
incompetent! We don't do anything deliberately.”
TSA
Denies Stonewalling Nude Body-Scanner Court Order
… On July 15, 2011, the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
set
aside a constitutional challenge brought by the Electronic
Privacy Information Center trying to stop the government from using
intrusive body scanners across U.S. airports. But the decision also
ordered TSA “to act promptly” and hold
public hearings and publicly adopt rules and regulations about the
scanners’ use, which it has not done, in violation of federal law,
the court ruled.
For those times when I'm hinting that
my lawyer friends should pick up the check? (Okay, that's every
time) Mostly, this is to make them drool into their keyboards.
Court
filing provides peek at Apple's massive legal bill
… All told, the bill for just that
motion rings up to $116,668.50 for nearly 232 hours of work, a figure
that could come out of Samsung's pocket. [a mere $500 per hour Bob]
… Update at 8:24 p.m. PT:
Not to be outdone, Samsung's firm Quinn Emanuel has filed its own
similar paperwork detailing how much work went into preparing for
three separate motions pertaining to sanctions the company wanted
against Apple.
All told, Samsung's attorneys say they
spent $258,200.50 working to prepare just the three motions.
… The highest paid among the group
was Quinn Emanuel partner Marc Becker, who was billed $1,035 an hour,
a third more than Apple's top paid attorney from the above filing.
Nonetheless, the firm notes that its hourly rates are "consistent
with prevailing market rates for attorneys of similar skill and
expertise," as well as "rates charged by Apple's outside
counsel."
My Blog, apparently... (No real value,
but it might illustrate something about SEO)
Ask any website owner or SEO specialist
what the most important aspect of owning a website is, and they will
probably tell you that it is to get on to the first page of search
results – and stay there. In fact, since search engines rank all
pages based on relevance and popularity, many people, when searching
for something, rarely go past the first or second page. But have you
ever wondered what you would be presented with, if the top one
million results were automatically removed? That is what Million
Short offers to show you.
If you haven't tried RSS Feeds, you
should.
RSS is one of those web technologies
that boomed many years ago but isn’t a top priority anymore. With
the advent of widespread social networking, many users end up getting
their updates through emails and site-specific news feeds. But for
blogs, which are still on a popularity rise, RSS is one of the best
ways to aggregate news updates.
… For web-based RSS aggregation, my
go-to site is
Google
Reader. But just as some people prefer to use Outlook and
Thunderbird instead of Gmail’s web interface, it may please you to
use a desktop client instead of a web-based solution. For that,
Omea
Reader is one of the best on Windows.
Social Math! Might have potential!
Wolfram
Alpha Launches Personal Analytics Reports For Facebook
… The company plans to expand these
reports with new features over time, but they already give you a
pretty deep look at your Facebook habits.
The report, for example, shows which
words you use most in your status updates, who likes your updates the
most, when you use Facebook the most, your app activity and how your
friends are connected to each other.
The report also gathers a good amount
of data about your friends, including, for example, their marital
status, age and gender distribution and lists of the most common
names among them. You can also see a specialized report that just
focuses on your friend by searching for ‘
facebook
friends.’
… To see your own personalized
report, just head over to Wolfram Alpha and search for ‘
facebook
report.’ You’ll then be prompted to connect to Facebook and
create a (free) Wolfram Alpha account. After that, Wolfram will
gather all your data and compile your report within a few seconds.
