Centennial Man

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Is this likely to spread to other government entities?

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=13154

VA Data Breaches Go Live

August 11, 2010 by admin

Bob Brewin alerts us to another new resource on data breaches:

Today the Veterans Affairs Department started posting online its monthly data breach reports as part of its ongoing transparency thing, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker told a press briefing this morning. He said the latest report (for July) might not make it to the Web until Thursday

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Ever wonder how those skimmers seem to be everywhere? It seems there is a madness to this method.

http://www.databreaches.net/?p=13130

CO: Waitress charged with felony possession of skimmer

August 11, 2010 by admin

Making possession of tools a felony opens up new prosecutorial possibilities:

A Greeley waitress from China, arrested last week for allegedly “skimming” customers’ credit cards, has been charged with a felony — possession of identity theft tools.

Yu Lin, 22, was arrested last week and released on $5,000 bond. She was arrested after the owners of the Ambrosia Asian Restaurant in west Greeley first videotaped Lin, then reported the skimming incident to police.

[...]

This case has a bit of a twist to it, it seems:

Lin allegedly purchased the device from a company that promised to raise her credit limit if she used the device to copy credit card information and then return the device to the company.

Although police said she admitted copying 50 to 60 customers’ cards in July, none of the information was passed on to other devices.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

It could be worse, and likely will be.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024905.html

August 09, 2010

DOE Estimates 10 Million Cyberattacks Daily

Forbes: "The U.S. Department of Energy is in a class by itself, though. The agency receives more than 10 million attacks every day, according to Tom Pyke, the DOE's former CIO. That includes everything from simple scans all the way up to phishing attacks that attempt to use malicious code to take over. And it can be as sophisticated as any attacker--think government--can make it."

(Related)

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12735

Germany bans BlackBerrys and iPhones on snooping fears

Should be an interesting read...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/08/10/1221229/Google-Secret-Privacy-Document-Leaked?from=rss

Google Secret Privacy Document Leaked

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 10, @08:50AM

"A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. 'vision statement' shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities? Should it tap more of what it knows about Gmail users? Should it build a vast 'trading platform' for buying and selling Web data? Should it let people pay to not see any ads at all?"

[This is an interesting Interactive Graphic:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413553851854026.html#project%3DWTKGOOGLE%26articleTabs%3Dinteractive

The economics of e-crime. Yes, I do share these little tidbits with my Ethical Hackers.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/09/204223/FTC-Busts-Domain-Name-Scammers?from=rss

FTC Busts Domain Name Scammers

Posted by Soulskill on Monday August 09, @05:08PM

"The Federal Trade Commission said today it had permanently killed the operations of a group that it said posed as domain name registrars and convinced thousands of US consumers, small businesses and non-profit organizations to pay bogus bills by leading them to believe they would lose their Web site addresses if they didn't. As with so many of these cases however, the defendants get off paying back very little compared to what they took. With today's settlement order, entered against defendants Isaac Benlolo, Kirk Mulveney, Pearl Keslassy, and 1646153 Ontario Inc., includes a suspended judgment of $4,261,876, the total amount of consumer injury caused by the illegal activities. Based on what the FTC called the inability of the settling defendants to pay, they will turn over $10,000 to satisfy the judgment."

As it becomes ever more difficult to eek out that next percent of increased productivity, your efforts shift from the tactical (technology) to the strategic (law)

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024912.html

August 09, 2010

Google and Verizon offer joint policy proposal for an open Internet

Official Google Blog: "The original architects of the Internet got the big things right. By making the network open, they enabled the greatest exchange of ideas in history. By making the Internet scalable, they enabled explosive innovation in the infrastructure. It is imperative that we find ways to protect the future openness of the Internet and encourage the rapid deployment of broadband. Verizon and Google are pleased to discuss the principled compromise, Verizon-Google Legislative Framework Proposal, our companies have developed over the last year concerning the thorny issue of “network neutrality."

New York Times: Web Plan From Google and Verizon Is Criticized

[From the NYT article:

The proposal, however, carves out exceptions for Internet access over cellphone networks, and for potential new services that broadband providers could offer. In a joint blog post, the companies said these could include things like health care monitoring, “advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options.”

Define your criteria creatively enough (e.g. Best party school) and anyone can be ranked in the top ten.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024907.html

August 09, 2010

ABA Report Examines U.S. News & World Reports Law School Rankings

Report of the Special Committee on the U.S. News and World Report Rankings Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar

"On February 17, 2010, ABA President Carolyn Lamm asked the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to examine rankings of law schools. She did so to follow through on a Resolution of the ABA House of Delegates that the ABA “examine any efforts to publish national, state, territorial, and local rankings of law firms and law schools.”... We commissioned a professional law librarian, Dorie Bertram of the Washington University School of Law, to prepare a comprehensive annotated bibliography on the ranking of law schools. We attach a copy of that extensive bibliography to this report to assist the ABA in considering this subject. As a review of that document shows, there is now a wide array of rankings of law schools in the United States. Each rankings scheme employs idiosyncratic criteria and methodology to compare law schools. No law school performs at the top or bottom of all rankings schemes. Nevertheless, the scholarship indicates that the U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of law schools overwhelmingly dominates the public discourse on how law schools compare to one another. As a result, U.S. News rankings have assumed ever increasing importance to any law school that wishes to attract students and faculty and to retain support from alumni and university leaders. The criteria U.S. News uses for rankings now has a powerful influence over the management and design of American legal education. That influence is not entirely benign, as is indicated in the scholarship."

[From the report:

J. Robert Brown, Of Empires, Independents, and Captives: Law Blogging, Law Scholarship, and Law School Rankings (Univ. of Denver, Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-04, 2008), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1094806.

Suggests that blogs can be useful in improving faculty reputations. [Told ya! Bob]

Who is in charge? What was their strategy? What senior manager was unable to put things in strategic context? “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/09/1856219/Discovery-Threatens-Fan-Site-It-Also-Promotes?from=rss

Discovery Threatens Fan Site It Also Promotes

Posted by Soulskill on Monday August 09, @03:33PM

"It seems the lawyers and the marketing people at The Discovery Channel don't talk to each other much. The marketing people behind the show 'The Deadliest Catch' have been supporting a fan community called DeadliestCatchTV.com for a while now. They've regularly sent the site info, free clips, previews and information about the show. On top of that, they link to it from the official site, including it in a list of 'fan sites' as a part of the 'Discovery Network,' and even will frame the site with the show's own dashboard for those who click through. Discovery's lawyers, on the other hand, have threatened to sue the site out of existence and have demanded that the owner hand over the domain name — which he is going to do, because he doesn't have the money to fight this. While there may be a trademark issue (which could be easily resolved with a free license), the lawyers are also making the ridiculous argument that posting the videos Discovery sent him to post are copyright infringement. They're also claiming that embedding the official Discovery Channel YouTube videos (which have embedding turned on) is copyright infringement. This is exactly how you turn lots of fans into people who hate your entire channel."

(Related) In that here's another contradictory management of technology.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/10/0213234/MP-Wants-Official-Email-Address-Kept-Private?from=rss

MP Wants Official Email Address Kept Private

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 10, @01:42AM

"An MP in the UK has had his official email address removed from the parliamentary website, because he's tired of getting 'nuisance' emails via online campaign websites. MP Dominic Raab's parliamentary.uk email is currently not listed on the House of Commons' website following a spat with online campaigners 38 Degrees. 'Just processing the emails from your website absorbs a disproportionate amount of time and effort, which we may wish to spend on higher priorities, such as helping constituents in real need or other local or Parliamentary business,' he said, threatening to report the group to the government's data and privacy watchdog if they didn't remove the details from their own website. 38 Degrees says Raab gave them his personal email address during the election: 'it's only since he became a member of parliament with a taxpayer funded email address that he's now said he doesn't want to hear from people,' unless they're willing to shell out for a stamp to write him a letter. The lobby group said Raab likely averaged fewer than two emails from their site each day."

An interesting idea.

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/walnote-com-a-simple-way-to-store-notes-online

Walnote.com - A Simple Way To Store Notes Online

http://www.walnote.com/

Walnote is a free Internet tool that lets you store any quick note that you have taken but that has a certain sensitivity or personal poignancy, and that you can’t just leave lying in any old site that could be freely accessed by others.

Walnote guarantees the privacy of what you store by the use of state-of-the-art encryption coupled with the entire absence of names or emails in order to sign up. And the fact that the data is hosted at Amazon gives you the assurance that what you have written won’t be wiped out accidentally.

What are the main uses something like this will be put to? Well, that obviously depends. But I daresay that people who need to keep an online copy of all their usernames and passwords might give it a try. So will people who want to store sensitive information such as credit card details. These are two uses that spring immediately to mind, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people came up with others that are every bit as vital themselves.

Sounds like they found a niche... Since I'm unaware of a way to run this on a PC, it also suggests that a PC clone would find an instant market (as would an iPad emulator!)

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/07/when-you-are-the-editor.html

When You Are the Editor

http://www.flipboard.com/

This tiny company (19 employees) launched its first iPad app in July, and so many people wanted to download it that within 20 minutes Flipboard’s servers were maxed out. Engineers scurried around trying to fix the problem, but after 36 hours, the only thing Flipboard could do was put people on a waiting list.

… What’s the big deal? Flipboard has found a way to take the news feeds that you get from friends on Facebook and Twitter and turn them into what McCue calls “the world’s first social magazine.” Instead of the ugly little links to articles you have on Twitter, on Flipboard you get a glimpse of the original articles and photos, laid out the way they might be in a magazine. To browse, you just flip with your fingertip, the way you would turn the pages of a magazine. I follow film critic Roger Ebert’s Twitter feed, for example. Ebert sends out a stream of links to eclectic articles and photos. Reading him on Twitter is a pain because you have to click on each link. But reading Ebert on Flipboard is amazing—suddenly you’ve subscribed to this wonderful little magazine run by a really smart, funny editor.

I think this has wider application than mere teachers...

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/11-techy-things-for-teachers-to-try.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29

Monday, August 9, 2010

11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year

If you've set the goal of trying something new in your classroom this year (shouldn't that always be one of our goals), here are eleven techy things teachers should try this year.

4. Create Videos Without Purchasing any Equipment

Monday, August 09, 2010

After reading the DoE's explanation, I think this is merely a case of failing to understand what the results of the change would be. Will they correct it? Stay tuned.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/08/isnt-this-what-orwell-predicted.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Isn't This What Orwell Predicted?

In the state of Maine, all high school and middle school teachers are issued a MacBook by the state department of education. This morning I was using mine (I alternate between it and another computer in my house) to check Twitter. Someone posted a link to an interesting ebook creation service called ePub Bud. I clicked the link, visited the ePub Bud homepage thought, "I could use this," and clicked the "create" link. Instead of being taken to the creation page on ePub Bud, I got this:

[Screenshot of web page denying access due to “Parental Controls” Bob]

I had seen that message before on other teachers' computers (it was actually a problem at a recent state conference), but it was the first time I had personally experienced it. Now I do have administrative rights to override this restriction, but most teachers in the state do not. What this tells me is the state doesn't trust its teachers to make good choices for themselves. Or am I just being paranoid? What do you think about the state's parental controls on the computers they want teachers to use?

Update: Thanks to Crystal Priest I now have some clarification on this issue. Apparently this filtering setting wasn't entirely intentional on the part of the D.O.E. or anyone else at the state level. The filtering problem arose with way the new image was constructed. You can read the details here. If you read the documentation you'll find this phrase which still reflects the issue I bring up in the post below: "the default behavior is to log all web page requests."

Great! Perhaps we can extend this to rate crimes from “Stone Cold Killer” all the way down to “Oops!”

http://articles.mcall.com/2010-07-03/news/mc-northampton-murder-parole-20100703_1_parole-board-second-parole-inmates

Parole Board wants to forecast who will kill again

A year rarely goes by when the Pennsylvania parole board doesn't come under fire because someone it let out early has killed again.

… University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Berk believes his computers can succeed where members of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole have sometimes failed.

"This system can forecast which inmates will kill again," Berk said. "With the help of years of computer data, I can separate the really bad guys being released from the people who probably won't re-offend."

If images taken from hundreds of miles overhead was good, and images from a car driving by were even better, think how cool it will be to blanket the earth with drones that give you real-time video – perhaps you can even steer the drone to follow your favorite stalking victim!

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/08/2054200/Google-Testing-an-Airborne-Camera-Drone?from=rss

Google Testing an Airborne Camera Drone

Posted by kdawson on Sunday August 08, @05:13PM

"The Blogoscoped site carries news that Google has purchased a German 'Microdrone' for evaluation (here is the original German version). These devices can take off, fly a mission, and land automatically using GPS. They can carry night-vision cameras or even 'see-through-walls' Far IR cameras. Of course, the maker of these drones assures us that they cannot be a 'Big Brother in the sky' because that is 'verboten.' Is it just me, or is Google entering dangerous airspace here? It seems like the ruckus from a backyard-after-dark addition to Street View could completely overshadow the legal tussles Google has already encountered with its street-level photography."

Reader Jaymi clues us to another airborne effort a couple of Google employees are mounting with some help from NASA Ames: the NexusOne PhoneSat project — to determine if low-cost mobile phone components can withstand space travel.

Now this is interesting! If it works for Verizon, why not all the telecoms? After all, that way Google won't need to buy them to control them. Comments are valuable...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/08/08/1353239/What-Are-Google-and-Verizon-Up-To?from=rss

What Are Google and Verizon Up To?

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 08, @11:00AM

"Robert X. Cringley has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he contends that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon without actually compromising net neutrality, by beginning to co-locate some of their portable data centers with Verizon network hubs. 'With servers so close to users, Google could not only send its data faster but also avoid sending it over the Internet backbone that connects service providers and for which they all pay,' writes Cringley. 'This would save space for other traffic — and money for both Verizon and Google, as their backbone bills decline (wishful thinking, but theoretically possible). Net neutrality would be not only intact, but enhanced.' So why won't Google and Verizon admit what they're up to? 'If my guess is right, then I would think they're silent because it's a secret. They'd rather their competitors not know until a few hundred shipping containers are in place — and suddenly YouTube looks more like HBO.'"

Yes, they're early adopters, but I can't get several disturbing images out of my imagination. DUCK!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100808/wl_asia_afp/hongkongjapanchinafilmpornography;_ylt=AmvD_pEJg1_adbwSK7ZtrM.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJ2ZW9uaHNnBGFzc2V0A2FmcC8yMDEwMDgwOC9ob25na29uZ2phcGFuY2hpbmFmaWxtcG9ybm9ncmFwaHkEcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDaG9uZ2tvbmdmaWxt

Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film

Interesting. Would he be saying this if he hadn't dropped out of Harvard? (Do we teach our students to believe the traditional ways are the only ways?)

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/08/08/168229/Forget-University-mdash-Use-the-Web-For-Education-Says-Gates?from=rss

Forget University — Use the Web For Education, Says Gates

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 08, @01:31PM

"Bill Gates attended the Techonomy conference earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future of education. He believes the Web is where people will be learning within a few years, not colleges and university. During his chat, he said, 'Five years from now [Geeks tend to use “Five years” when they have no real idea when something will be possible. Bob] on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.'"

Of course, the efficacy of online learning is still in question; some studies have shown a measurable benefit to being physically present in a classroom. Still, online education can clearly reach a much wider range of students. Reader nbauman sent in a related story about MIT's OpenCourseWare, which is finding success in unexpected ways: "50% of visitors self-identified as independent learners unaffiliated with a university." The article also mentions a situation in which a pair of Haitian natives used OCW to get the electrical engineering knowledge they needed to build solar-powered lights that have been deployed in many remote towns and villages.

(Related) All kinds of useful tools – and I only picked a couple them.

http://teachingcollegemath.com/2010/08/twitter-weekly-link-roundup-for-2010-08-08/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TeachingCollegeMath+%28Teaching+College+Math%29

Random But Organized Thoughts (8-8-2010)

Tracking student tweets has been a thorn in my side for the last 10 weeks, so I thought 60 Tools to Track Tweets (via @rkiker) would be pretty useful. Although it’s an interesting list, only a couple of the items are particularly useful and there are some twitter tools that were (IMHO) surprisingly missing. In particular, I didn’t see TwapperKeeper on the list, which is the only way I know of to save up a collection of tweets from a particular hashtag in one place. Intriguing and odd: Qwitter (tells you who has unfollowed you), TwitterCharts (see when a user is most active so that you can better stalk them for conversation, here’s mine), TweetEffect (it’s supposed to tell you which tweets gained and which tweets lost you followers, however, I don’t think it’s very accurate based on my own stats). If you haven’t visited the browser-based twitter page in a while, I quite like this “who to follow” suggestion box on the right side. It’s got some great suggestions.
This is cool, a search engine that searches for mindmaps on a particular topic: http://www.mindmapsearch.org/ #

Sunday, August 08, 2010

In case you thought computer crime was dis-organized.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/08/07/2222237/Ringleader-of-RBS-WorldPay-Heist-Faces-Charges-in-US?from=rss

Ringleader of RBS WorldPay Heist Faces Charges in US

Posted by kdawson on Saturday August 07, @08:23PM

Late in 2008, the most sophisticated and well-coordinated international e-crime yet pulled off netted $9 million for its perpetrators. We discussed the RBS WorldPay heist when news about it emerged, and the indictments some months later. Now one of the accused ringleaders has been extradited from Estonia to face charges in the US.

"...in the span of 12 hours around Nov. 8 [2008], the group hit 2,100 ATM terminals in 280 cities spanning the world, from the United States to Russia to Italy to Japan. ... Despite the technical and international challenges of the case, US investigators believe they were able to trace the scheme back to its origin. On Friday they brought one of the accused ringleaders from Estonia to Atlanta to face arraignment on several fraud charges — a rare appearance in US courts for an accused international hacker. Sergei Tsurikov, 26, of Tallinn, Estonia, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment to conspiracy to commit computer fraud, computer fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The increasing scope of foreign attacks comes as college students around the world are focusing heavily on technology degrees only to emerge into a difficult job market with low pay, officials said."

Privacy in the US. Should we add another column titled “Best Practice?”

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12709

What’s the Diff? CDT Comparison Chart on Current Privacy Bills

August 8, 2010 by Dissent

Justin Brookman writes:

Two weeks ago, CDT President Leslie Harris testified before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection on the two privacy bills currently being debated in Washington: the BEST PRACTICES bill from Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush and a draft bill from Congressmen Rick Boucher and Cliff Stearns. During her testimony, Harris promised that CDT would publish a comparison chart on the two bills. Today, CDT is releasing that chart, which analyzes both bills in detail and provides recommendations for reconciling them.

Centennial Man

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Monday, August 09, 2010

Sunday, August 08, 2010

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