Depending on the actor, would this
qualify as an “incident short
of war?” Is the security of legal files that bad? (Do
they have backups for everything?)
Guantanamo
legal files mysteriously disappear from PCs
In an institution already cloaked in
mystery, puzzling happenings seem to be afoot at Guantanamo Bay
prison.
Not only have many legal files suddenly
disappeared from the defense team's computers, but also hundreds of
thousands their documents have landed on the prosecution's computers,
according to Reuters.
… In the incident involving the
missing files, lawyers representing suspects housed in Guantanamo say
that their confidential files have been disappearing
from Pentagon computers since February, according to
Reuters. They also say that they have evidence that third parties
might have monitored their e-mails.
… In the other incident, about
540,000 defense e-mails landed on prosecutors' computers, according
to the Washington Post. Within those e-mails were confidential
attorney-client communications. It's unclear if these e-mails had
anything to do with the missing files or involved the same cases.
This isn't the first time that
classified Guantanamo files have been leaked. In 2011, WikiLeaks
released
nearly 800 secret dossiers from the U.S. prison in Cuba. In this
data dump, sensitive information on Guantanamo detainees was released
along with questionable activity carried out by the U.S. military.
Also seems to allow for a living will.
(e-living?)
Online social profiles typically do not
offer enough customizability to help users prepare for death. Of
course, you can trust Google to pick up the gauntlet: the Inactive
Account Manager is a brand new Google account feature that can help
you keep your data out of the wrong hands when
you die.
In summary, the Inactive
Account Manager allows you to tell Google what to do with your
information after your account has been unused for a certain
period of time. With that said, Google really hasn’t beat
around the bush while explaining the true purpose of this new
feature.
“Not many of us like thinking
about death — especially our own. But making plans for what
happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you
leave behind,” said a Google Public Policy Blog post. “So
today, we’re launching a new feature that makes it easy to tell
Google what you want done with your digital assets when you die or
can no longer use your account.”
Shakespeare said, "The
lady doth protest
too much, methinks."
I say, “Damn! We're doomed!”
April 11, 2013
"Subcommittee
Affirms United States’ Commitment to Internet Freedom"
News
release: "The Subcommittee on Communications and Technology,
chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), today advanced legislation to
promote a global Internet free from government control.
The bill, approved by voice vote, contains the same language that
unanimously passed the House and Senate last year, elevating it to
official U.S policy rather than merely a sense of the Congress in
light of continued international efforts to regulate the Internet.
“Governments’ hands-off approach has enabled the Internet to grow
at an astonishing pace and become perhaps the most powerful engine of
social and economic freedom and job creation the world has ever
known. Under the current multi-stakeholder governance model,
non-regulatory institutions manage and operate the Internet by
developing best practices with public and private sector input,"
said Chairman Walden. During the proceedings, Chairman Walden also
clarified the intent of the legislation and agreed to continue to
work with the minority to seek bipartisan consensus. Click here
to view Walden’s full remarks. On February 5, 2013, the
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology and the Foreign Affairs
Subcommittees on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and Africa,
Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations
held a joint hearing to discuss efforts by some countries to expand
international regulation of the Internet. In the 112th Congress, the
House and Senate adopted resolutions with overwhelming bipartisan
support opposing efforts at the World
Conference on International Telecommunications to drag the
Internet within the purview of the International Telecommunications
Union, a U.N. agency."
Of course he is correct. Nice to see
not all judges are infinately patient.
"Faced with an Apple vs.
Motorola lawsuit that involves 180 claims and counterclaims across 12
patents, a judge in Florida has thrown
up his hands and accused both companies of acting in bad faith.
Claiming the parties' were engaged in 'obstreperous and cantankerous
conduct', he said that the lawsuit was part of
'a business strategy that appears to have no end.'"
[From the article:
Setting a Markman hearing for Sept. 20,
the judge said he expected the two companies will use the time to
narrow the case to a manageable scope themselves. "If the
parties cannot make this case manageable, the court forewarns them
that it intends to stay the litigation while the Markman issues
are pending and issue a decision as expeditiously as the parties
deserve," he added.
I see this as confirmation of my “Any
content + rabid fans = gold” hypothesis...
Rob
Thomas on His $5M Veronica
Mars Kickstarter and
the Future of Fan-Funded Film
Nearly six years after the
cancellation of the whip-smart television show about a teenage
private eye in a California town deeply divided by class (and
murder!), the
Kickstarter
for the Veronica Mars
movie ends later today, after breaking fundraising records and taking
in over $5 million on the crowdfunding platform. The tremendous
success of the crowd-funding effort, launched a month ago by creator
Rob Thomas and actress Kristen Bell, has even inspired
talk that this could change the way films get made
— particularly for properties with devoted followings willing to
put their money where their fandom is.
A question I have been asking for
years... Also something for my Intro to IT students.
Does
it still make sense to buy music?
… I've been all about ownership.
Yet in recent months I've spent very little money on music. Know
why? Apps.
You know the ones I mean: Pandora.
Rdio. Slacker. Songza. Spotify. For free or cheap I can stream
pretty much every song on the planet, discovering new music as I go
or just queuing up favorites on-demand.
… Songza streams playlists bases on
your chosen mood or activity, and does so without interruption. Oh,
sure, you see ad banners within the app, if you bother to look at it,
but the music plays on.
… Pandora and Slacker, of course,
focus more on specific artists and genres, which is great, and for a
few bucks monthly you can dispense with commercials and enjoy more
features and higher-quality audio. And for 10 bucks a month, the
likes of Rdio and Spotify let you listen to whatever songs and albums
you want, on-demand, without limits. … (For more on music
services, check
out this post.)
For my Statistics and my Intro to IT
students. Look at change as a search for a better way...
krygny sends this quote from The
Economist:
"The
internet browser you are using to read this blog post could help
a potential employer decide whether or not you would do well at a
job. How might your choice of browser affect your job prospects?
When choosing among job applicants, employers may be swayed by a
range of factors, knowingly and unknowingly. ... Evolv, a company
that monitors recruitment and workplace data, has suggested that
there are better ways to identify the right candidate for job. ...
Among other things, its analysis found that
those applicants who have bothered to install new web browsers on
their computers (such as Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome)
perform
better and stay in their posts for 15% longer, on average."
For my Statistics students. (5
students out of four won't understand...)
The
Modern Data Nerd Isn’t as Nerdy as You Think
Data scientists are fast becoming the
rock stars of the 21st century. Thanks in part to Nate Silver’s
eerily accurate election predictions and Paul DePodesta’s
baseball-revolutionizing Moneyball techniques, math nerds
have become celebrities. It’s debatable how much their work
differs from what statisticians have done for years, but it’s a
growing field, and many companies are desperate to hire their own
data scientists.
The irony is that many of these math
nerds aren’t as math nerdy as you might expect.
Some of the best minds in the field
lack the sort of heavy math or science training you might expect.
Silver and Paul DePodesta have bachelor’s degrees in economics, but
neither has a PhD. Former Facebook data scientist and Cloudera
co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher — who helped define the field as it’s
practiced today — only has a bachelor’s in mathematics. The top
ranked competitor at Kaggle — which runs regular contest for
data scientists — doesn’t have a PhD, and many of the site’s
other elite competitors don’t either.
… Data scientist John Candido
agrees. “An understanding of math is important,” he says, “but
equally important is understanding the research. Understanding why
you are using a particular type of math is more important than
understanding the math itself.”
Social media as a learning tool?
My
Social Media Story
Here’s the story about how I came to
use social media and why. If you’ve had trouble understanding why
on earth people use social media, this might be helpful. I used
social media to track my dissertation progress and develop a network
of interested colleagues. I used social media to learn how to become
a digital game designer. I use social media to stay connected to and
learn from a fascinating collection of futurists, math education
colleagues, social media experts, and data visualization folks from
around the world. This is something I put together for my Social
Media MOOC.
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