The company co-founder and his star deputies are trying to root out bureaucracy and rediscover the nimble moves of youth
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_06/b4214050441614.htm
Archive for 2011/01/28
In the 1970s, before Twitter, Facebook or Friendster, two men electronically arranged to transport a helicopter motor using an Apple computer and modem Steve Jobs gave one of the men. From that interaction, a community called The Well was born
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / AwarenessThe Well turned into a place where hackers, writers and hippies alike throughout the San Francisco Bay Area would dial in and share thoughts on technology, politics and philosophy. Furthermore, Grateful Dead fans—Deadheads—would login to connect with other fans and discuss the band. And often, these electronic interactions would lead to real life meetups.
But this wasn’t the only community of its type; there was a place where you could post an electronic message for others to read and respond to. It’s location? A record shop in Berkeley, Ca circa-1973. Leopold’s records on the famous Telegraph Avenue had one of the first computers available to the public.
Previously:
John Perry Barlow (born October 3, 1947) is an American poet and essayist, a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, and a cyberlibertarian political activist who has been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He is also a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Since May 1998, he has been a Fellow at Harvard University‘s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
In 1986, Barlow joined The WELL online community, then known for a strong Deadhead presence.
Sourceforge: Yesterday our vigilant operations guys detected a targeted attack against some of our developer infrastructure. The attack resulted in an exploit of several SourceForge.net servers, and we have proactively shut down a handful of developer centric services to safeguard data and protect the majority of our services
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data ProtectionA research project under way in Europe aims to develop systems to help people protect and share their personal digital information
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Future Developments?, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Tech EvolutionABC4Trust will use IBM’s Identity Mixer and Microsoft’s U-Prove technologies, which will be meshed together using other technology from Nokia Siemens Networks Research.
The project, which started last fall, will run for four years. The European Union contributed €8.85 million (US$12.1 million) for the project, which is budgeted at €13.5 million.
More:
http://www.itworld.com/security/135104/europe-undertakes-privacy-and-security-research
The Facebook Setting You Should Change as Quickly as Possible
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / AwarenessThe Massively Intimidating Size of the Internet Visualized
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionMPAA shuts down 50+ torrent sites
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Public PolicyThe Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), with the cooperation of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, has quietly shuttered 12 torrent websites in the U.S. and at least 39 sites abroad by filing copyright violation complaints with the sites’ hosting providers.
The names of the sites themselves remain unknown; so far, however, the major players seem to be unaffected.
The specific URLs are not being released because frequently the affected sites will spring up elsewhere online under a different TLD (e.g., TorrentMovies.com becomes TorrentMovies.info).
Releasing the names of the sites would make it much easier for users to find their new URLs in the future.
More:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/01/28/mpaa.torrent.sites.sting.mashable/
See also:
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-takes-a-dozen-torrent-sites-offline-110127/
Microsoft hits autistic Xboxer with cheat evidence – Boy’s mum confesses to ‘mistake’
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, EnforcementIndeed, Stephen Toulouse, Director of Police and Enforcement at Microsoft, emailed the boy’s mother, Jennifer Zdenek, with what it claimed was clear evidence of her’s son’s malfeasance.
Zdenek now admits her son gave his Gamertag to an online pal so he could get “Recon Armour” in Halo 3. She says she even warned him about it at the time worried the other gamer may have been phishing for bank account details.
A red-faced Zdenek still claims her son didn’t intend to cheat. Now, she said, she and her son would just like to put the episode behind them.
Microsoft has offered Julias a free month of Xbox Live to start fresh with a new Gamertag.
More:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/01/28/autistic_boy_did_cheat_on_xbox/
UK ISPs Moot Anonymous Internet Solution to Circumvent New Data and Piracy Laws
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Privacy / Data ProtectionA Swedish ISP that is also responsible for hosting WikiLeaks, Bahnhof, has this week triggered a fresh debate into internet privacy by announcing its intention to avoid the new European Data Retention Directive and stick all of its customers behind an effectively anonymous Virtual Private Network (VPN).
Timico’s CTO, Trefor Davies, added:
“It would be a pretty costly project for all ISPs to implement such a system. It would also bring with it risks – suddenly it becomes a lot easier for governments to start monitoring all your traffic because it all goes through a single point (or at least a few points) on the network. In the UK the Data Protection Act if applied to an ISP would also prevent them from offering such an anonymizing service because legally they would be obliged to provide the logs.
This doesn’t stop us from aspiring to a scenario where there is an internet out there which protects your right to privacy. Unfortunately, regardless of the technical issues involved, Big Government and Big Business are likely to get in the way. Governments love to control and business wants as much information about you as it can lay its hands on.”
Simon Davies, IDNet UK’s Director, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“We piloted this a while ago but found that most of our customers want a real, static, routable IP address. We may offer it as an opt-in for customers in the future which might appeal to those who are unable to migrate to IPv6.”
European Digital Rights Group singles out the Internet Watch Foundation ( IWF ) and its internet filtering (website blocking) system as one example of a service, that most UK consumers ISPs have adopted, which could allegedly be counterproductive to solving the underlying problem
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsThe report – ‘The slide from “self-regulation” to corporate censorship‘ (PDF) – describes the blocking of websites to tackle banned content, such as child sexual abuse images, as “an increasingly pointless endeavour” and one that distracts governments from devoting significant resources to tackling the real culprits; those who post such material in the first place.
You can easily arrest individuals, but you cannot arrest an ideology. We are united by a common objective and we can and WILL cross any borders to achieve that. So our advice to you, the UK government, is to take this statement as a serious warning from the citizens of the world. We will not rest until our fellow anon protesters have been released.
http://www.inquisitr.com/96815/anonymous-declares-war-on-the-u-k/
FBI executes search warrants on 40 ‘anonymous’ WikiLeaks defenders
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Organized CrimeThe FBI announced today that they executed more than 40 search warrants in conjunction with the UK’s Metropolitan Police against participants in the DDoS’ing of WikiLeaks “enemies”.
Unlike the Met Police, the FBI did not release many details as to who they may executed the warrants against, or specifically what they were looking for. It is likely they were intending on seizing the computers used during the attacks to look for logs related to the planning and execution of the attacks.
The FBI’s press release implies that the attackers created the tools to attack Mastercard, Visa and others.
Facebook URL security flaw can provide full access to non-friend’s photo album
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data ProtectionBy manipulating the URLs of a picture on Facebook, anyone can view the associated album, even if the pictures are ‘protected’.
The URL of a tagged photo contains an ID number. This ID number can be used in combination with another number to gain access to the picture and the entire photo album as a non-friend. Unfortunately it will cause other personal details to leak too.
English language explanation:
http://i.imgur.com/d44kb.jpg
Dutch language article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2432564/afgeschermde-facebookfotos-zichtbaar-truc.html
German language information:
http://www.dnews.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/421237/facebook-exploit-macht-alben-nicht-freunden-einsehbar.html
US Government Pushing Pro And Anti-Privacy Internet Rules At The Same Time
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Litigation, Public Policywithout realizing the two are in fundamental conflict
Spanish Film Academy President May Be Fired For Listening To Fans Who Don’t Like New Copyright Law
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Legislation, Public PolicyApparently, the president of the Spanish Film Academy, Alex de la Iglesia announced his plans to resign as president of the Academy in a couple weeks (after the Goya awards — the equivalent of the Oscars) in protest of the new law. He initially supported it, but was convinced otherwise after talking to people on Twitter about it
Swedish ISPs To Thwart EU Data Retention Law – ISP Bahnhof says they will give you the option to opt out of VPN, but giving up your privacy will cost extra
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Tech Evolution
http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/27/0320209/Swedish-ISPs-To-Thwart-EU-Data-Retention-Law
See also:
Wikileaks ISP Anonymizes All Customer Traffic To Beat Spying
http://torrentfreak.com/wikileaks-isp-anonymizes-all-customer-traffic-to-beat-spying-110127/
Google Search: major porn engine. And it’s WIDE open to kids
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsWhen the Federal Communications Commission gave the green light to “white space” devices—unlicensed wireless gadgets that can create broadband connections in prime, unused television bands—it also required these services to use a geolocation system to determine whether a specific TV frequency is in use in that location
Posted: 2011/01/28 in Bandwidth Management, Education / Awareness, Future Developments?, New Business Models, Tech EvolutionThe system will constantly update a database of all TV signals and unlicensed devices.
See also:
A vision to turn the unused white space of wireless airwaves into a “Super WiFi” is one step closer toward becoming reality
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-push-toward-super-wifi-continues/2763
