Monday, November 30, 2015



Students: How's this for a Computer Security final exam? Tell be everything Vtech did wrong. (Since we only have 5 hours for the exam, I won't actually use this.) A truly damning article.
When children are breached – inside the massive VTech hack




Someone actually read the Privacy Policy?
Rosa Marchitelli reports:
A B.C. man decided to Go Public after discovering Canada’s second-biggest bank can access and collect information on all of its customers’ online activities, even those that aren’t banking-related.
Colin Laughlan is one of thousands of Canadians who had his Visa cards switched from CIBC to TD in 2014 after the Aeroplan rewards program changed banks.
“When I saw this — I really had to read it two or three times to make myself believe I was reading what I was reading,” he said.
He points to two lines in the 66-page Visa cardholder agreement that allows TD to collect details about anything — and everything — customers do online.
Under the privacy section of the cardholder agreement:
“COLLECTING AND USING YOUR INFORMATION — At the time you request to begin a relationship with us and during the course of our relationship, we may collect information including:
  • Details about your browsing activity on your browser or mobile device.
  • Your preferences and activities.
Read more on CBC.ca to learn what happened next when the consumer brought it to the bank’s attention and they promised to delete it from their terms – but didn’t.
And this, kids, is why we need to read the fine print and privacy policies.




Could this have any impact on Kim Dotcom's extradition?
Sweden refuses to order ISP to block Pirate Bay
Sweden’s internet service providers cannot be forced to block file sharing site the Pirate Bay nor be held responsible for copyright infringements by users, a court has ruled.
Stockholm District Court rejected a lawsuit filed by the Swedish Film Industry, Nordisk Film, Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music last year which argued that Sweden’s second-largest internet service provider (ISP) Bredbandsbolaget should be held liable for the copyright infringements of its users should it refuse to block access to the Pirate Bay.
The court said in a statement: “The District Court considers that Bredbandsbolaget’s operation and conduct in the present case does not constitute participation under Swedish law.”
The court blocked the action by a unanimous decision and the film and music rightsholders who filed the lawsuit were ordered to pay Bredbandsbolaget’s costs.
The ruling leaves the door open to further action within the Svea Court of Appeal, where it is possible Bredbandsbolaget could still be ordered to block the Pirate Bay, as is the case for many ISPs across Europe.




Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
7 Search Engines That Rocked Before Google Even Existed
Though the Web became publicly available in 1990, the first web search engine didn’t arrive until 1993. Up until then, all websites were manually tracked and indexed by people.
And while we now recognize Google as the king of web search, Google wasn’t even in the game until 1998.




I need to understand Bitcoins, don't you?
Summary of the Bitcoin Seminar Held at Kaye Scholer in New York on October 15, 2015
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Nov 29, 2015
New on LLRX.comSummary of the Bitcoin Seminar Held at Kaye Scholer in New York on October 15, 2015 – The market quote for Bitcoin on October 15, 2016 at 5:00 pm EST was $255.64 US according to CoinDesk.com on the site’s Price & Data page. At that same moment, Alan Rothman was attending a presentation entitled the Bitcoin Seminar. Rothman expertly documents the facets, vocabulary, instances and key components of the quickly emerging technologies that comprise bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency, and their impact on the financial sector.




Everyone should be able to recognize simple terms like: “Free shipping” ( 免費送貨 )
Learn Chinese with Pleco
This is a guest post from Jennifer Carey (@TeacherJenCarey) of EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site.
In the last few years, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) has become a prominent language in American Classrooms. As learning Chinese requires not only learning the spoken word, but learning a new text and character system, touch screen tools have become incredibly helpful in teaching students how to craft Chinese characters.
One of the best, free tools for students learning Chinese is Pleco, available in both Pleco iOS and Android Pleco. The free dictionary includes over 100,00 entries that are updated regularly. Students can look up words by Chinese characters, Pinyin (spaces and tones), or English and can even hand-write characters to look up information. Students can also cross-reference words by looking up character components and breaking down words into individual characters. Students can also use the Touch to Speak system to hear word pronunciation and sample sentences.
In addition to numerous free resources, there are several add-on purchases, including higher quality text to speech options, Document Reader with OCR recognition (you can upload content with your phone’s camera), and flash card creation. This is an excellent tool to add to your Chinese language learning toolbox.


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