Survey reveals nearly 2 million workers spend over an hour per day ‘Facebooking’ at work
http://myjobgroup.co.uk/media-centre/press-releases/social-media-costing-uk-economy-up-to.shtml
Archive for 2010/08/06
Social Media Costing UK Economy up to £14billion in Lost Work Time
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsWe got wind of a new program today that claims to be able to extract passwords from an iPhone’s keychain. (This would also affect other iOS devices.) The company selling this software claims it is a forensic tool, designed for investigators, and, perhaps, network administrators. However, such a tool, which is not very expensive, would allow anyone who “finds” an iPhone to access passwords for e-mail accounts, web sites, and any other software. This means that if you were to lose your iPhone, any passwords you had entered for say a banking site, PayPal, or commercial sites that store your credit card information and allow you to make purchases without entering it again, would be accessible.
http://blog.intego.com/2010/08/06/how-secure-are-passwords-on-an-iphone/
Hillary Clinton: Blackberry Bans Could Infringe On Rights
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyWe are taking time to consult and analyze the full range of interests and issues at stake because we know that there is a legitimate security concern, but there’s also a legitimate right of free use and access. So I think we will be pursuing both technical and expert discussions as we go.
That response, thankfully, is a touch more diplomatic than RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis’ suggestion that these countries should just shut off the internet, “if they can’t deal with [it].”
http://gizmodo.com/5605820/hillary-clinton-blackberry-bans-could-infringe-on-rights
NYT: Google Just Killed Net Neutrality (UPDATING: Google and Verizon Deny Internet Traffic Deal)
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Google, Net NeutralityNYT: We stand by our reporting which is based on information from sources in a position to know about the conversations. Google’s comment about The New York Times story refutes something The Times story didn’t say.
http://gizmodo.com/5605310/google-just-killed-net-neutrality
See also:
Black Hat: Google knows more about citizens than Kim Jon-il
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/11360/black-hat-google-knows-more-about-citizens-than-kim-jonil/
Did Apple Slip An Existing Third-Party App Into A Patent Application?
Posted: 2010/08/06 in CopyrightThree Strikes Bill too wet and woolly, say Kiwi lawyers
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Three StrikesNew Zealand’s Parliament met to discuss the pending Three Strikes legislation this week, with the Law Society chipping in. The amendment is too vague, onerous on the ISPs, and too gentle on serial freetards, the Society’s government liaison Clive Elliott says.
Private browsing modes in four biggest browsers often fail
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsYou’ve been warned
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/06/private_browsing_mode_failure/
South Africa: Childline welcomes pornography law
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, FilteringThe Film and Publication Board has found that despite recent amendments to the law, children are still accessing porn at an alarming rate.
2-Minute Video Shows 5 Ways to Beat Internet Filters – Cymphonix Network Composer – 7 Minute Product Review
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, Tech EvolutionIt’s not just Chinese Internet users who have to route around web restrictions. The Australian government has decided to filter Internet traffic — and many companies do too. So the group Open Internet created the video here to deliver five quick tips on beating content filters.
Network Composer appliances are deep-packet, layer 7 inspection devices that scan, identify, and control Internet traffic-and provide advanced content filtering, reporting, application prioritization, bandwidth management, and threat protection capabilities.
This is a 7 minute demo of Network Composer, how it works, and a quick review of the powerful reporting function.
Apple has issued a ban on the popular jailbreak website JailbreakMe.com inside its stores
if a user tries to visit the site, a DNS forward redirects the user back to the Apple website
http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/08/06/apple-stops-in-store-jailbreaks-blocks-jailbreakme-website/
Former MPAA chief: ‘It is a very difficult job’
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyTHR: Is it tough to get the six member companies to agree?
Glickman: They certainly are competitive in terms of the products they make. They are in competing lines of business. And their parent companies are in multiple lines of business. That’s different than it was 50 years ago, when they were all (only) movie companies.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i33196e5b4822252240de69380ab29af9
Google Buys Slide for $182 Million
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business ModelsRemember last week when Google was negotiating with EA and Disney’s social gaming teams (Playfish and Playdom, respectively) and they invested $100 million in Zynga, the team behind the Farmville epidemic? Well that was just the tip of the iceberg. Google has now bought Slide, Inc., owners of Slide.com, for a whopping $182 million. And to top it off, they threw in an extra $46 million in employee retention bonuses to ensure they keep most of the same team, bringing the total cost of the purchase up to $228 million. That’s a lot of scratch, but hey, Slide does have “the CUTEST virtual pet on the web.”
This is all part of Google’s strategy for world-domination opening some sort of “Google Games” service to compete with Facebook, and with the money they’re throwing around, it looks like they mean business.
http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/81286/google-buys-slide-for-182-million/
Net neutrality is dead (on wireless networks)
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Bandwidth Management, Education / Awareness, Net NeutralityThe telecommunications companies are in the perfect position to use network scarcity–both real and exaggerated–to force the kind of traffic shaping and double-charging that Comcast and Time Warner can only dream of. And they will. Mobile-data usage is likely to be artificially expensive, restricted, limited, and discriminatory for the immediate future and beyond.
And yes, Google’s probably going to agree to it–and pay extra for prioritized delivery of YouTube video on mobile devices. Google can afford to. Too bad about the companies that can’t.
Make no mistake: wireless broadband networks are the new battleground for both profit-taking and content delivery, and whatever Google and Verizon decide will, yes, drive future deals and legislation. The best we can hope for is a little more openness in their negotiations. But make plans to keep a nice fat Ethernet pipe running to your house, if you can get it, because wireless networks aren’t going to be an answer to bandwidth caps, broadband competition, or high broadband prices anytime soon.
The U.S. Defense Department on Thursday formally demanded that Wikileaks return all military records that it possesses, saying they are the “property of the U.S. government.”
Geoff Morrell, the department’s press secretary, said the military “demands that Wikileaks return immediately to the U.S. government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defense databases or records” and permanently delete them.
In addition, Morrell said, the Wikileaks.org Web site “constitutes a brazen solicitation to U.S. government officials, including our military, to break the law” by claiming that leaking confidential or classified information is legal.
The Wikileaks site boasts that “submitting confidential material” is “safe, easy, and protected by law.” That appears to be a reference to legal protections in other countries; the main server, for instance, is located in Sweden.
In a Twitter message, Wikileaks called the Pentagon representative “obnoxious” and the request a “threat,” but it didn’t otherwise respond. A moment later, the group posted another note, saying, “Now is a good time to send Wikileaks all your money!”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20012824-281.html
Previously: http://contentprotection.wordpress.com/?s=wikileaks
And:
Pentagon bizarro-boffinry bureau DARPA is seeking to develop a set of tools for internet users which are nominally intended for some military purpose – but which would seem at least as useful to those determined to get around measures designed to thwart copyright violators and extreme-porn aficionados. Full details on SAFER from DARPA here in pdf.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/21/darpa_vs_block_lists_dpi/
Indonesia has joined Middle Eastern states to put pressure on RIM to provide authorities with BlackBerry interception capabilities
Conficker’s 6m strong botnet confounds security probes
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network SecurityThe unknown crooks behind the infamous Conficker worm may be quietly selling off parts of the huge botnet established by the malware, but virus fighters have no way of knowing because the cryptographic defences of its command and control network have proved uncrackable.
Blocking the registration of domains would thwart such an approach, but a “number of registries” are no longer collaborating with the Conficker Working Group, Joffe warned.
Carphone’s music service to seek and destroy freetards?
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, New Business ModelsThe service uploads the metadata from your music library to Music Anywhere’s servers. Music Anywhere is the service provider for Carphone Warehouse. If a song is licensed and part of Music Anywhere’s catalog of six million songs, you can then hear it streamed to another PC or a mobile device. You can listen to any of the songs on that device. If one of your songs isn’t licensed, or is unrecognized, then it’s still stored in the locker.
So far, so good. The alarming T&C is this one:
“In extreme cases where it becomes apparent that most of a person’s music collection has been fact pirated, Music Anywhere reserves the right to terminate the service.”
So, er… how can they tell that your MP3s have been illegally obtained?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/05/carphone_pirates_beware/
US, EU agree: OK to buy trademarked terms on AdWords
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Google, Jurisprudence, Online advertisingGoogle’s decision to change up its European AdWords policy follows a high profile win in court saying that Google wasn’t responsible for policing trademarks. Luxury retailer Louis Vuitton had originally won a lawsuit against AdWords in France because the search giant had allowed retailers selling fake LV wares to buy keywords like “Louis Vuitton replicas” and “Louis Vuitton fakes.” Google appealed the ruling and took it to Europe’s highest court, and eventually got a ruling in March of this year in its favor.
“Brand owners previously had a monopoly on the ad space,” Google’s European legal division head Yoram Elkaim said in a statement. The new policy is set to go into effect on September 14.
Timed perfectly with Google’s announcement was US District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee’s opinion on a similar case brought by foreign language learning company Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone argued that Google helped competitors and counterfeiters to ride on Rosetta Stone’s good name while advertising through AdWords, and that such behavior was hurting Rosetta Stone’s brand.
In his opinion, Judge Lee said that a number of witnesses who had bought Rosetta Stone-tagged products through Google AdWords were not actually confused about the source of their purchases, but rather about whether the products were genuine—a different issue entirely.
“No reasonable trier of fact could find that Google’s practice of auctioning Rosetta Stone’s trademarks as keyword triggers to third party advertisers creates a likelihood of confusion as to the source or origin of Rosetta Stone’s products,” reads the opinion.
Net neutrality fans cheer as FCC gives up on “backroom” talks
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Net Neutrality, Public PolicyTo the relief of net neutrality supporters, the FCC has thrown in the towel on its controversial stakeholders discussions on net neutrality. No word on what’s next to get the decision making process on track
StarCraft 2: help us mourn the death of content freedom
Posted: 2010/08/06 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Tech EvolutionBlizzard explains the policies that could get your content removed from its servers, but this is just the latest step away from open and free content. Sadly, we now have to look back to see what we’ve lost.
Blizzard has a list of what will get your content removed from its service, including trademarks, advertising, and offensive content
