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This article is about a man in Tokyo who sent many mass killing threats to a comic book event and many schools. Each threat would be followed by a riddle. The man hacked computers and sent messages to newspapers and broadcasters saying that details of a computer virus used to send the threats were strapped to a cat living on an island near Tokyo. Police found the cat and with it found a message that said that no more messages will be sent. Police analyzed the memory card and footage taken by security cameras and suspect that Katayama -a resident of Tokyo- was responsible for the hacking campaign. This article is a prime example of the dangers of computing and shows that the security of our computers is still not perfect and can be breached. I see this man's act as a childish call for attention and believe that this man should grow up and "get a life" as some would say. I don't understand how a grown man could have the heart to threaten the lives of many innocent children; I hope that there is retribution for such an offense.

CISPA (cyber intelligence sharing and protection act) is back into congress and threatens to internet privacy if passed. The bill allows the government, private security agencies, and private companies to access about a "cyber threat". These cyber threats are defined by any attack on government systems and networks, and the "Theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information." This can mean things such as music, programs, games, etc. With this bill, the government and companies can anonymously take your information without any legal consequences. Your information can then be shared or sold. This is a direct violation of the 4th amendment, as it is similar to a search without a warrant. In summary, this bill grants the government and companies access to your information without any cost or legal risk.

This article is basically about physcist developing a system in witch they use the suns energy to destroy or redirect asteroids from space. The earth at this period of time can easily be destroyed but a random asteroid from outer space. Asteroids are roughly the size of five football flieds long. The earth has recently dodged two asteroid threats on its own but may not be so lucky in the future. This is why Physicists Philip Lubin of University of California, Santa Barbara and Gary Hughes of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo started working on the DE-STAR proposal a year ago. Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids, an exploRation (DE-STAR). This system will use the suns solar energy to power a laser beam that can be used to shoot to destroy or redirect future asteroids that have been predicted to come and are a threat to human survival. For example asteroid 2012 DA14-a medium sized, 150 ft (50 m) rock weighing 143,000 tons-was closing in on us. They knew that it would miss us too, by 17,200 miles (27,700 km

As the title states, hacking will soon be a top threat over terrorists. Hacking is a big deal because the people who do hack are able to take data - especially important data - from their sources and use it for their own benefit. For businesses, this is highly critical because just like that, any ideas you may have stored on computers could be gone and in the hands of others. Also, hacking might not be just for stealing data but also inputting viruses into other computers. In the US, two bills are being set to beef up the security of government networks to be protected from any cyber attacks. 

scary, but true

The game Flappy Bird, created by Dong Nguyen was a rapid success. However it also followed with a rapid downfall. This article details how the game began to what it started as, an indie game created for a small nostalgic audience. It then grew to something way bigger. Dong was making more than $50,000 a week for his money. Flappy Bird was also number 1 on the app store for days straight, even then, Dong Nguyen was receiving death threats and rude remarks regarding his game. These threats and remarks kept happening so Dong was forced to remove his game off of the apple store. He is continuing to make other indie games though. Dong Nguyen said he will keep making games, and he wants to be a respected Indie game developer, not just another viral episode of the app store. Dong though, has been noticed by the indie developer that created Super Hexagon. I inferred, that a collaboration will happen between the developers. In my opinion I believe the cancellation of Flappy Bird was a publicity stunt to provide more coverage on Nguyen's other games.

thoughts/opinions on this?

Need a post related to careers

With Christmas slowly approaching, many of us will be shopping for presents online. For scammers, this means there will be more unsuspecting victims to scam. McAfee knows the risk of being scammed is present and has set up a list of 12 scams seen during the holiday season. These include fake charities, malicious mobile apps, too-good-to-be-true offers, and fake gift cards. As online shopping gets more popular, the threat from scammers increases as well so we have to know how to protect ourselves and keep our information secure. While shopping online is more convenient and cheaper in some cases, it isn't as secure as shopping in person at a store. Despite the lesser security in shopping online, people still would prefer it because of its convenience. I think it is good that McAfee released this list of scams to look out for because it will make sure more consumers during the Christmas season and everyday will have knowledge of what to look out for when shopping online. Though I doubt many people will see the list, McAfee has possibly saved many people from having to deal with being scammed, besides even if you can't help everyone you should help anyway.

JavaScript is a well known programming tool that has been around for quite awhile. Many up and coming programmers start out with JavaScript based on it being flexible, maintainable, powerful, and very easy to use. However, once these startups start becoming larger and larger, many lines of coding are needed, and this is where the issue arrives. When being used on a larger scale, JavaScript is in no way the main performer as it is on the smaller scale. JavaScript's features previously stated are what attract programmers to using the engine. However, now that larger companies are using it, the limitations are becoming evident. Being described as an 'iron triangle', JavaScript's issues lie in the fact with an improvement in one area. another area suffers. If you want high flexibility and performance, it's going to be harder to maintain the code. If you want great performance and maintainability,  the flexibility and ability to adapt to change will be reduced. Big budget companies don't have time to be messing around with JavaScript's shortcomings, which is keeping them attracted to lesser engines, such as Flash. The article then continues to discuss whether or not JavaScript is on it's death bed. Some argue that a total revamp is required to keep JavaScript afloat, while others believe that the death of JavaScript will allow newer, more optimized engines to be developed and brought to the world's attention. I tagged this article as economics simply for that last point. Browser engines such as JavaScript and Flash have been around for quite awhile, with no threats to their status in sight. JavaScript is in no way broken, and it is still a very viable tool for web development. However, it may take the death of JavaScript and perhaps Flash for companies to be inspired to build from the ground up a new engine that will pick up all the short comings of the past years and completely rid of them. At the end of the article, JavaScript variants and languages are seen a

Space rocks as much as 100 feet wide are estimated to hit a hundred years or so. But, there are rare " killer asteroids" that can wipe out a city the size of Moscow and kill 30,000 in an instant. But the university of Hawaii's new meteor tracking systems come online, we'll be able to forecast meteor strikes as accurately as predicting when a blizzard is coming.  This device is known as ATLAS ( Asteroid terrestrial-impact Last Alert System). This device consists of a pair of observatories located about 60 miles apart, each equipped with four, 10-inch telescopes with 100 MP cameras. Together, these observatories would scan the sky 2 times a night. The telescope may be very small  but will be sensitive enough to spot and estimate an incoming threat in the exact location and time.  This project started since 2012 but got a a jump start with a $5 million grant by NASA.

As the title says, Twitter is suing several spamming sites that make it easier for people to spam on Twitter. These sites are in violation of "The Twitter Rules" and are being charged for doing so. While I, myself, do not use Twitter, I still understand the actions that are being put here. Spamming is definitely an annoying thing but when it comes to happening constantly, like what Twitter is facing, I find it understandable that they are taking action here.

I think it is important that Twitter puts a stop to spammers. Spam clutters the user's  timeline and ultimately slows it down. Since Twitter is becoming increasingly popular, it is essential that it controls and persecutes spammers who try to bring it down. Twitter shows that it is serious about maintaining an efficient and updated social network by punishing the spammers with lawsuits. Twitter takes action towards spammers and other potential threats and proves to its users and potential users that it is in control and will do whatever it takes to stay on top. 

In September 2012, the Pakistani government passed an order to ban the access to YouTube because of a single video that slashed their control and decisions for their country. Although I'm pretty sure that there are far more offensive videos shared and posted on that site about other countries, their government has decided to to block everyone in their country from potentially seeing that video and went for drastic measures (surprise, surprise). It is not just YouTube that one country has boycotted, but others have requested content take down on Google as well with the threat of banning all of Google if they do not comply. The act of banning these sites may not be such a big deal, but I see it as placing filters, surveillance, censorship and controlling what people see.

In British Colombia a research team with the help of satellite-imaging companies are able to monitor changes in the environment such as forestry. This satellite imaging will help detect threats to forests such a Wildfires, insect infections, and deforestation. I really like how today's technology is being used to help the environment rather than just creating pollution from CO2 and old computer parts. Also I believe that this kind of work is really important especially with the kind of deforestation we see in the Amazon. Also I believe that the money governments put into things that benefiting our environment should be research projects like this rather than final products. All in all I believe that this a great way to aid the planet and further our technology.

By now, everyone who is the slightest bit technologically inclined - or just interested in the news - has heard of the 'questionable' activities of the NSA. The National Security Agency, for the uninitiated, is a United States government agency that deals with national security and recently became the object of scrutiny after leaked information showed the massive data collection effort of the agency. This included: recording phone calls, ingoing and outgoing call identities, computer browsing, emails, key-logging and much much more. Needless to say, this was perceived as a tad scandalous and independent panels were brought in to assess the agencies spying program. Recently, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that the metadata collected by the NSA was obtained through illegal means. Before you cheer, however, this sort of conclusion has been reached before and has only resulted in a promise to limit spying. This is bad because its merely a promise; a promise from a government who lied repeatedly, committed perjury, knowingly covered its tracks, and chased a citizen away with the threat of life in prison. Unfortunately, many people have since stopped caring because its no longer new news, but we need to stand up for our right to privacy and demand legal action to prevent such breaches of trust in the future.

Nowadays many of us go online believing that we are safe and that we have our own privacy in our own home while we chat with our friends or while we do research, but not in this instance. In some German states authorities admitted to using spyware in the form of a Trojan. These authorities are allowed to use spyware to keep track on criminals but are only allowed to use these to allow for a smooth capture not for pleasure as they were doing. This Trojan takes control over your computer this Trojan gives the creator access to your email, monitor your keystrokes, turn on the microphone, and the webcam. What would your reaction be if you found out that this was going on to you and our computer?

If you send anything to people that could be illegal through cloud email, you might have an encounter with something called cops. Yes, the law enforcement have access to your cloud emails to help them with cases or anything else, beware.

So if your illegally downloading anything and have Skype, watch out because they found a way to fish you out to see if you are using torrents.

Researchers have released an attack tool that tests their websites to when they connect through secure connections, not so secure now huh? They call it "The Hacker Choice"

In this article it talks about how computers are a bigger threat to the enviroment than SUVs! They say that because a lot of computers are not very energy effeicient and they waste a ton of electricity. And in the report, An Inefficient Truth it says that with mopre than 1 billion computers on the planet they are responsable for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions. In the article it says that one of the biggest issues is the fact that with SUVs you can clearly see that it damages the enviroment but with computers nobody really sees it as a problem so nobody tries to fix it. I can certainly see that computers are a problem for the enviroment and the biggest issue is that they can only grow in size.

Previously, Twitter, Apple, and Facebook have been on the list of tech companies hacked within the last couple of weeks. As of March 2nd, 2013, Evernote also joins this list when their network is breached by an attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service. Evernote has notified users via  e-mail, blogs, and social media to change passwords so that users personal information can remain safe on the Evernote network. The hackers had successfully accessed usernames, e-mail adresses and encrypted passwords, however, they were stopped before any damage could be done. This relates to the "Privacy & Security" category because users data and personal information is being accessed without authorization. Obviously, this can cause many problems for users especially because their work and information can be stolen or deleted. Evernote encourages creating a strong password to ensure that an account remains secure, however, this is a questionable matter because the website should also consider upgrading their system in order to keep users safe. As part of the eLifestyle, many users rely on cloud storage to store information, especially on Evernote. The recent hacking just proves how reliable cloud storage really is. When saving data, it is important to consider the possibility of it being stolen or deleted. With this in mind, one shouldn't depend on cloud storage for saving all of their work or important material as it hasn't proven to be very reliable. And if you are using cloud storage, it would be smart to backup important files on a USB or Computer.

States in the US have been slowly gaining traction that allows gambling to be completely legal online. This would mean that anyone over 18 can sign onto an account which allows them to gamble away all the money they have. Nevada was the first state to legalize online gambling, and more states are estimated to follow suit. Although the article doesn't give an opinion on the newly legalized gambling, I believe that this news is terrible. More and more people will become addicted to gambling, and now it's very easy and very comfortable to lose your life earnings. These new rulings will eventually run into some legal issues, as people under 18 WILL find a way to gain access to these operations. There is no proper way that rules can be enforced in online gambling. People will become addicted, kids will gain access, and people will go bankrupt. Gambling is alright, in moderation, but these new laws will allow anyone with an internet connection to gamble away everything they own without even realizing it. Good thing we live in Canada.