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Archive for 2012/07/29
Why Rop Gonggrijp Needs A New Country & His Favorite Books
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsI need a new country. This one is lost. To illustrate this I’d like to translate an article about a major current political issue in the Netherlands for you. It’s about the maximum speed on a newly upgraded highway.
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First off, here’s a selection of some of the books I have been reading in the past 6 months or so. (The book title is a link to the Wikipedia article for the book. If the author’s name is a link, it’s a TED talk by the author dealing with the same subject matter.
- Anatomy of an Epidemic – Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America - Robert Whitaker – (amazon)
- Griftopia – Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids and the Long Con That Is Breaking America – Matt Taibbi – (amazon)
- Vultures Picnic – In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores – Greg Palast – (amazon)
- The Big Short – Inside the doomsday machine – Michael Lewis – (amazon)
- Drift - The Unmooring of American Military Power – Rachel Maddow – (amazon)
- Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air - David MacKay FRS – (free PDF)
- Limits to Growth – The 3o-Year Update – Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers – (amazon)
- The Great Disruption – Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the birth of a New World – Paul Gilding - (amazon)
- The Long Emergency – Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophies of the Twenty-first Century – James Howard Kunstler – (amazon)
- The Rational Optimist – How prosperity evolves – Matt Ridley – (amazon)
More:
http://rop.gonggri.jp/?p=596
Previously:
http://vrritti.com/?s=gonggrijp&submit=Search
WifpiLeaks Saga Continues: IFPI Tutorial On How To Stop Pre-Release Music Leaks
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsFollowing the inadvertent leak of several IFPI and RIAA reports this week and our subsequent articles, today we wind up with perhaps the most ironic of the series. It covers a presentation by the IFPI’s head of anti-piracy operations to industry insiders on how to prevent leaks. It explains how individuals gain access to pre-release music, how to set up honey-traps to ensnare them, and also hints at why the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency targeted the RnBXclusive blog earlier this year.
It seems appropriate that we should augment this anti-leaking advice from IFPI with some security guidance of our own.
In order to prevent reports on global anti-piracy strategy, offline vs online swapping, and another on the ineffectiveness of SOPA leaking out in public, please ensure that your Intranet doesn’t have a public-facing Internet webpage, even if it is only for a few minutes.
Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/leaked-ifpi-tutorial-on-how-to-stop-pre-release-music-leaks-120729/
A throwaway comment in the Netflix results, suggesting that the Olympics will impact everyone’s TV watching, including Netflix customers – has the company in PR trouble once again
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionAfter an innocuous set of results which looked like it had almost done enough to keep Netflix out of trouble, this comment has now shaved $1.1bn off the share price, taking its value to $3.3bn in a single day.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/29/netflix_scores_own_goal/
Hackers steal 8 million KT subscribers’ data
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsAccording to the National Police Agency, a telemarketing business operator and his coworker in February created a computer program that could penetrate KT’s firewalls. From then through July 15, the hackers harvested information related to mobile phone users and took advantage of the list in telemarketing activities, encouraging subscribers to switch to another mobile phone or pricing program.
The stolen information included the name, mobile phone number, membership number, personal identification number and mobile phone serial number of each subscriber.
The suspects also reportedly sold the information and the program to other telemarketers.
Seven people reportedly paid 2-3 million won ($1,785) a month for the hacking program, using it to pilfer the personal information of 2 million subscribers between April and July 15. The buyers were booked without detention.
The telemarketing firm operator reportedly inserted malware into the hacking software he supplied them to get hold of information that his buyers gathered on their computer hard drives.
He is reported to have raked in more than 1 billion won ($890,000).
“(The operator) disguised himself as a local KT branch manager when accessing the database and took the information gradually rather than conduct a simultaneous and large-scale hacking. Had he conducted some mass leak, he would have been caught a long time ago,” an NPA officer said. The police confiscated the telemarketing operator’s computers and all information he stored.
Investigators have also asked the other telecommunications companies, LG and SKT, to check their databases. Officers said they would study KT’s liability.
This is the sixth time in five years a large company has been reported a huge data leak. A total of 10 million people’s private information was leaked when http://www.auction.co.kr was hacked in 2009, followed by GS Caltex’s 11 million in 2010, Cyworld’s 35 million, Hyundai Capital’s 1.75 million and Nexon’s 13.2 million in 2011.
More:
http://view.koreaherald.com/kh/view.php?ud=20120729000405&cpv=0
Study: Microsoft repeatedly ranks as top U.S. spammer
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsForget about the ripped-and-rugged sprinters and shot-putters, bring on the gold-medal geeks
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThe opening ceremony of this summer’s London Olympics obliged that sentiment, as Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee got the star treatment during the extravaganza.
A hip-hoppy dance routine gave way as a stage-set suburban house rose from the ground to reveal a lone keyboard jockey surfing away in solitude.
None other than Berners-Lee it was, and with a flick of his wrist, he lit up the stadium with a grandly flashing tweet: “This is for everyone.”
More:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-57481867-235/berners-lee-web-take-bow-at-olympics/
Washington state online sex ad law stopped in its tracks. Conflict with law or conflict with economic interests?
Posted: 2012/07/29 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Legislation, Litigation, Online advertising, Public Policy, Stats / reportsLack of liability of internet intermediaries equals more business opportunities (at the expense of …)
On Friday, a federal judge in Washington State imposed a preliminary injunction blocking the implementation of a new law that aimed to impose stronger ID requirements for online sex ads, as a way to combat child prostitution. The law cannot be enforced until the court hears the case further.
Among other arguments, both Backpage and the EFF argued that the state law conflicts primarily with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” it states.
In his order, Judge Ricardo Martinez wrote that the state law was in conflict with this federal law, and that the federal law takes precedence.
More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/washington-state-online-sex-ad-law-stopped-in-its-tracks/
