Saturday, February 23, 2013

In the Cloud, even a “minor” problem is a Big Deal!
Microsoft’s Cloud Goes Dark Across the Globe
Microsoft’s cloud crashed on Friday. Big time.
Just before 2 p.m. Pacific time, Microsoft reported worldwide problems with its Windows Azure cloud computing platform. The problem has to do with the security certificate used by Azure’s storage service, which in turn affected a number of other Azure services.
That meant that web developers who tried to connect to Azure securely over the internet in order to run their programs weren’t getting through. Instead, they were greeted with error messages.
… The company didn’t identify the root cause of the problem or respond immediately to an inquiry from Wired. According to this post in Microsoft’s Azure community forums, the SSL, or secure sockets later, certificate used by Microsoft had been set to expire on Friday.


Something for my Ethical Hackers...
At last year's RSA security conference, we ran into the Pwnie Plug. The company has just come out with a new take on the same basic idea of pen-testing devices based on commodity hardware. Reader puddingebola writes with an excerpt from Wired:
"The folks at security tools company Pwnie Express have built a tablet that can bash the heck out of corporate networks. Called the Pwn Pad, it's a full-fledged hacking toolkit built atop Google's Android operating system. Some important hacking tools have already been ported to Android, but Pwnie Express says that they've added some new ones. Most importantly, this is the first time that they've been able to get popular wireless hacking tools like Aircrack-ng and Kismet to work on an Android device."
Pwnie Express will be back at RSA and so will Slashdot, so there's a good chance we'll get a close-up look at the new device, which runs about $800.


Push it! Push it!
The Most Terrifying Button On Facebook
… searches are "Only Me" by default, and clicking that button on your profile doesn't mean anyone else can see them. We should know by now not to feel shocked that Facebook knows whose profile we've looked at or that what we search for is stored in some server in a data center at the bottom of a volcano or something. Yet it's a surprise that this information is actually sitting there on your profile this whole time, visible if you want it.
While this information is private, imagine if someone had access to your account from your computer, which isn't a totally unreasonable circumstance. Young people even have a name for it: "frape," for Facebook rape, a term that isn't appropriate, but endures nonetheless


Are we back to the National ID Card? It can't be just for immigrants, since if you dispose of your “I'm an immigrant” card you must be a citizen, right?
Fox News Latino reports:
In a move that could split a coalition of eight Democratic and Republican senators discussing comprehensive immigration reform, a number of lawmakers want to explore the possibility of issuing U.S. workers high-tech identity cards that use fingerprints and other identifiers to prove a person’s legal status to work.
In hazily worded language [What else would we expect... Bob] from the senators, the ID cards would also track Americans at airports, hospital and other public spaces – worrying a number of privacy advocates and others concerned with being tracked by the federal government.
Read more on Fox News Latino. The report is based on a report by Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal.
That my senator supports this plan is troubling. Very troubling.
[From FOX:
The cards would allow lawmakers to quickly obtain the information of a prospective employee and would be similar to the E-Verify system now in place.
E-Verify uses social security numbers and other information to screen prospective employees, but can be fooled by undocumented immigrants who use false names or other information.


Why do I suspect this (totally unbiased) group will find that drones were mandated in the Constitution?
Declan McCullagh reports:
A Homeland Security office says it plans to review the privacy implications of using drones to monitor U.S. citizens.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has created a working group that will “clarify any misunderstandings that exist” about DHS’s drone program, as well as make an effort to “mitigate and address any outstanding” privacy concerns.
Read more on CNET.
[From the article:
It isn't clear how rigorous the review will be. The department's privacy office lacks key investigative powers, and last fall it blessed the controversial practice of monitoring social media as perfectly acceptable. In 2006, however, it did slap down the Transportation Security Agency for "privacy missteps" when collecting details on millions of air travelers.
… Some legal scholars and civil libertarians say they're worried that the Obama administration has not explicitly ruled out the possibility of assassinating U.S. citizens inside the country using armed drones. In a written response to the Senate (PDF) this month, John Brennan, Obama's nominee for CIA director, declined to answer this question: "Could the administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?"

(Related) With a drone, they could have simply nuked it... Can you say, “Streisand Effect” Look at the number of Comments on this latest DHS kerfuffle.
"Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, lives near Seattle and bought a boat there. He ordered it from a company based near him, but across the border in Canada. Yesterday, the company tried to deliver it to him, and it had to clear customs. An agent for the Department of Homeland Security asked him to sign a form. The form contained information about the boat, including its cost. The price was correct, but it was in U.S. dollars rather than Canadian dollars. Since the form contained legal warnings about making sure everything on it is true and accurate, Arrington suggested to the agent that they correct the error. She responded by seizing the boat. 'As in, demanded that we get off the boat, demanded the keys and took physical control of it. What struck me the most about the situation is how excited she got about seizing the boat. Like she was just itching for something like this to happen. This was a very happy day for her. ... A person with a gun and a government badge asked me to swear in writing that a lie was true today. And when I didn't do what she wanted she simply took my boat and asked me to leave.'"


Run about! Scream and shout! The sky is falling!
"Starting next week, most U.S. Internet users will be subject to a new copyright enforcement system that could force them to complete educational programs, and even slow their Internet speeds to a crawl. A source with direct knowledge of the Copyright Alert System [said] the five participating Internet service providers will start the controversial program Monday. The ISPs — industry giants AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon — will launch their versions of the CAS on different days throughout the week. Comcast is expected to be the first, on Monday."
Of course, there are many ways around the Copyright Alert System, so it probably won't be terribly effective.


Before justice comes understanding. Definately worth a read...
Close, But No Privacy
A computer is more like:
  1. A safe
  2. A file cabinet
  3. A suitcase
  4. A garbage can
  5. A computer
The answer to this question will determine whether you spend a lengthy period of time as a guest of the federal government at one of their lovely vacation spots. When it comes to technology, the question of which precedent to apply is based largely on which analogy a judge prefers, which in turn is based on either a judge's grasp of technology, which is not always the same as, say, more attuned users, or the analogy that produces the desired result.


An interesting legal questions with implications for website operators?
That’s a question that came up recently after a famous Banksy work in London was ripped out of the side of a building, shipped across the Atlantic, and put up for auction with an estimated final price of over half a million dollars.
The piece in question (shown above) is titled “Slave Labour,” and first appeared on the side of a discount store in North London in May 2012. CNN reports that many residents grew quite fond of the piece and the attention it gave the neighborhood.


Tools for “sexting?” There's an App for that.
… Well it seems that a very popular iPhone and Android app called Snapchat might be a simple solution for texting your kinky photos without them being released to the wider public.
… Snapchat, as with similar self-destructing emails and text message apps, is not foolproof, although it can still be fun to use.
… if recipients know how to do so, they can take a screenshot of your photo or video before the time expires. Snapchat tries to address this issue by requiring recipients to keep their finger pressed down on the capture in order to view it. With a three second time limit, it is very difficult for a recipient to keep his or her finger pressed down while also taking a screenshot – which requires pressing both the on/off and Home buttons on the iPhone at the same time. [Of course, you could turn on “video screen capture” before viewing – I'm sure there's an App for that too Bob]


For when you get serious about backup.
Being able to sync from our many devices to the Cloud is an awesome benefit of modern computing. We’re able to take our files with us on mobile devices, access them from other computers without the need of a device like a flash drive or SD card, and it’s an excellent solution for backing up that data that we can’t live without.
Speaking of backing up that data, one of the best, but seldom used, ways to use cloud storage services is to create a redundancy backup system. Basically this means you would use two or more cloud storage services to sync your data between them and to your computer, without creating duplicate files on your computer system.


Tools for my Website class...
For website developers, they need to make sure that their websites are ready to adapt to the tablet’s smaller screen. iPad Mini Website Simulator is a cool website that will show any URL on a screen that’s the same size as an iPad Mini, so you will know exactly what your website will look like when the device hits the market.


I have mentioned this one before, but now is a good time to review what it can do...
… Symbolab hopes to help soften the blow a little by offering a semantic search engine for equations. What’s a semantic search? It means it does more than just show links; it actually shows the equations on the screen as well as links. It’s like one part Google, one part Wolfram Alpha, all math.
The search engine has the tools you need to enter complex formulas. It has every type of modifier from the most basic to most advanced, which makes it easy to find what you are looking for. Once you search, it shows you the forumla on a graph, or how it’s solved. It also shows you information about the formula from various sources on the web. This makes it so you can actually learn more about the formula and not just find the answer.


For my students. Still feel like dropping out?
gh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement for getting even the lowest-level job. Many jobs that didn't require a diploma years ago — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — increasingly requiring a college degree. From the point of view of business, with so many people going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable. 'When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,' says Suzanne Manzagol. A study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce found that more than 2.2 million jobs that require a minimum of a bachelor's degree have been created (PDF) since the 2007 start of the recession. At the same time, jobs that require only a high school diploma have decreased by 5.8 million in that same time. 'It is a tough job market for college graduates but far worse for those without a college education,' says Anthony P. Carnevale, co-author of the report. 'At a time when more and more people are debating the value of post-secondary education, this data shows that your chances of being unemployed increase dramatically without a college degree.' Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, young graduates say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given. 'It sure beats washing cars,' says Georgia State University graduate Landon Crider, 24, an in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and his company's office."


For my amusement...
… edX, the non-profit MOOC platform funded initially by MIT and Harvard, announced a major expansion this week, adding six new schools to its consortium: The Australian National University (ANU), Delft University of Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), McGill University, the University of Toronto, and Rice University. According to documents obtained by The Chronicle of Higher Education, edX plans to offer participating institutions two choices regarding revenue-sharing: one based on a self-service model and one based on an “edX-supported model.” It’s still not clear, however, where exactly this “revenue” is going to come from.
… Coursera also added more universities — 29 new ones — to its MOOC platform this week: California Institute of the Arts, Case Western Reserve University, Curtis Institute of Music, Northwestern University, Penn State University, Rutgers University, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, UC Boulder, University of Rochester, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Wisconsin Madison, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Ecole Polytechnique, IE Business School, Leiden University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Muenchen, Sapienza University of Rome, Technical University Munich, Technical University of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, University of Geneva, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, National University of Singapore, and University of Tokyo.
… Wordpress.com unveiled a new education vertical to encourage teachers to use the blogging platform.


Why take any course from someone who is not the absolute best person in the world to teach that course?
You Can Now Take Classes From the Most Selective College in the Country on Coursera
The most selective college in the country -- the hardest school to get into -- isn't in the Ivy League or West Point, NY. It's not an engineering college or a medical school. It's the Curtis Institute of Music, a tiny conservatory of classical music in Philadelphia which can boast, according to US News and World Report, an admission rate of 3.2 percent.
And which, starting soon, will offer courses on Coursera.
… The school only enrolls enough students to fill an orchestra and an opera company (that's 166, at the moment), and all students attend for free.


Might be useful...
WordPress.com Launches Education Vertical For Students And Teachers
WordPress.com just rolled out a new education vertical that is meant to help educators easily create good-looking websites for their classes.
… With this launch, WordPress.com is also introducing a new theme, Chalkboard, that it will highlight in addition to the other education-focused designs in its gallery.
… Given that not every school and parent will be comfortable with all the class information being freely available on the web, WordPress.com’s announcement also stresses that these sites and/or individual pages can always be hidden behind passwords.
The launch of all of these verticals over the last few months is clearly meant to highlight the fact that WordPress is not just a basic blogging platform anymore. Thanks to its flexible theming engine and the addition of custom post types, WordPress has now become a pretty capable content management system that can be used for far more than basic blogging.

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