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Paul Merrell

Google Gadget Ventures - 0 views

www.google.com/gadgetventures

google gadgets venture grants

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Develop new gadgets with support from Google. Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful gadgets. Inspired by the success of iGoogle, which has been driven by the creation by 3rd-party developers of a broad range of gadgets, Gadget Ventures provides two types of funding: Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve developed a gadget that’s in our gadgets directory and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page proposal detailing how you’d use the grant to improve your gadget. Seed investments of $100,000 to developers who’d like to build a business around the gadgets platform. Only Google Gadget Venture grant recipients are eligible for this type of funding. Submitting a business plan detailing how you plan to build a viable business around the gadgets platform is a required part of the seed investment application process. It’s our hope that Google Gadget Ventures will give developers the opportunity to create a new generation of gadgets to benefit users. How to apply This program is restricted to people who have developed a Google gadget in our gadgets directory that generates at least 250,000 weekly page views. If you’re eligible and interested in this program, please email us your one-page proposal. Recipients of these grants are then eligible to apply for a seed investment.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

European Commission Plans for All-Out War Against Sharing | La Quadrature du Net - 0 views

www.laquadrature.net/...or-all-out-war-against-sharing

European Commision war against sharing stop abuse participate open consultation

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jan 11
     
    [ The European Commission just launched a new consulation on its disastrously dogmatic report on IPRED, a directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, adopted by the EU in 2004. The report -- whose logic is similar to ACTA -- is based on an analysis of the application of IPRED. It calls for the massive filtering of the Internet to tackle file-sharing: according to the Commission, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should "cooperate" in the war against sharing to avoid the threat of litigation. You can participate in the analysis by commenting both texts on co-ment: the IPRED report and the analysis of the application of IPRED **Citizens and NGOs have until March 31st, 2011 to sent a submission to answer the consultation. ]
Gary Edwards

Breaking the Web: The Document War between HTML+ and OOXML - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12558-0.html

html OOXML Microsoft Open-Web

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 25 Jun 09
     
    Microsoft to the world: Outlook's not broken and we aren't 'fixing' it! Mary Jo has an interesting article over at ZDNet. She points out that Microsoft is refusing to restore support for HTML editing in Outlook. Instead, Microsoft intends on using the MSWord editor. I think that means a Microsoft desktop future based on Office OpenXML (OOXML). We shall see. But if this is the case, then i also think we are looking at how Microsoft will break the Web. I've left an extensive comment to Mary Jo's article in the Talkback section, linked to above. ".... This is for all the marbles. The future of the Open Web is at stake. If Microsoft is successful at carving out and encoding an MS Web based on a document format specific to their platforms, applications and services, the Web will break. "
    "Looks like a plan to me."
    continued here
Gary Edwards

What Oracle Sees in Sun Microsystems | NewsFactor Network - 0 views

www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml

openoffice java sun oracle ibm da-vinci massachusetts

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Citigroup's Thill estimates Oracle could cut between 40 percent and 70 percent of Sun's roughly 33,000 employees. Excluding restructuring costs, Oracle expects Sun to add $1.5 billion in profit during the first year after the acquisition closes this summer, and another $2 billion the following year. Oracle executives declined to say how many jobs would be eliminated.
  • Citigroup's Thill estimates Oracle could cut between 40 percent and 70 percent of Sun's roughly 33,000 employees. Excluding restructuring costs, Oracle expects Sun to add $1.5 billion in profit during the first year after the acquisition closes this summer, and another $2 billion the following year. Oracle executives declined to say how many jobs would be eliminated.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Apr 09
     
    Good article from Aaron Ricadela. The focus is on Java, Sun's hardware-Server business, and Oracle's business objectives. No mention of OpenOffice or ODf though. There is however an interesting quote from IBM regarding the battle between Java and Microsoft .NET. Also, no mention of a OpenOffice-Java Foundation that would truly open source these technologies.

    When we were involved with the Massachusetts Pilot Study and ODF Plug-in proposals, IBM and Oracle lead the effort to open source the da Vinci plug-in. They put together a group of vendors known as "the benefactors", with the objective of completing work on da Vinci while forming a patent pool - open source foundation for all OpenOffice and da Vinci source. This idea was based on the Eclipse model.

    One of the more interesting ideas coming out of the IBM-Oracle led "benefactors", was the idea of breaking OpenOffice into components that could then be re-purposed by the Eclipse community of developers. The da Vinci plug-in was to be the integration bridge between Eclipse and the Microsoft Office productivity environment. Very cool. And no doubt IBM and Oracle were in synch on this in 2006. The problem was that they couldn't convince Sun to go along with the plan.

    Sun of course owned both Java and OpenOffice, and thought they could build a better ODF plug-in for OpenOffice (and own that too). A year later, Sun actually did produce an ODF plug-in for MSOffice. It was sent to Massachusetts on July 3rd, 2007, and tested against the same set of 150 critical documents da Vinci had to successfully convert without breaking. The next day, July 4th, Massachusetts announced their decision that they would approve the use of both ODF and OOXML! The much hoped for exclusive ODF requirement failed in Massachusetts exactly because Sun insisted on their way or the highway.

    Let's hope Oracle can right the ship and get OpenOffice-ODF-Java back on track.

    "......To gain
Gary Edwards

Sun pitches new cloud as 'Open Platform' * - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/...sun_cloud_platform

Cloud-Computing Cloud-API sun tim-bray

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Apr 09
     
    Sun takes on the problem of interoperability and portability of applications in a world where there will be many many clouds. At the roll out of the Sun Cloud, key executives explain Sun's implementation of Open Cloud API's and what they see as a pressing need for management tools that will allow some standardization across clouds.

    Sun's Open Cloud API plan is a clean reuse of existing Open Web API's.

    "..... The underpinning of the Open Cloud Platform that Sun will be pitching to developers is a set of cloud APIs, the creation of which is focused under Project Kenai and which has been released under a Community Commons open source license. Sun wants lots of feedback on the APIs and wants these APIs to become a standard too, hence the open license. These APIs describes how virtual elements in a cloud are created, started, stopped, and hibernated using HTTP commands such as GET, PUT, and POST...."

    "...... The upshot is that these APIs will allow programmatic access to virtual infrastructure from Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby and that means system admins can script how virtual resources are deployed. The APIs, as co-creator Tim Bray explains in his blog, are written in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), not XML. The Q-Layer software is a graphical representation of what is going on down in the APIs, and you can moving virtual resources into the cloud with a click of a mouse using the dashboard or programmatically using the APIs from those four programming languages listed above. (PHP support is not yet available, but will be)....."
  • David Corking on 08 Apr 09
     
    I can see why Sun picked those four languages first. Can I assume that with a bit of work, this API will be usable from any language with a C "foreign function interface", such as Perl, Common Lisp, Bourne shell, Squeak Smalltalk, and others that your server application might be written in?
  • David Corking on 08 Apr 09
     
    I read this comment that largely answers my question at: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/03/16/Sun-Cloud "So right now JSON out of a shell tool is not so good. More things like this will create pressure for development of tools to change that, but years of widespread XML/HTML deployment have only produced a few oddly maintained tools. Perhaps that's because you can scrape quite a bit of the web with a couple sed passes, and if I were to have to deal with the mentioned tools, that's probably the route I'd take." (seth w. klein) In other words, with a bit of work, _anything_ that can talk text over HTTP can do this with a bit of work, but an object-oriented is likely to be more at home with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
Paul Merrell

Microsoft begins paving path for IT and cloud integration | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld - 1 views

www.infoworld.com/...h-it-and-cloud-integration-674

Microsoft cloud Azure

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 09
     
    Microsoft last week launched its first serious effort to build IT into its cloud plans by introducing technologies that help connect existing corporate networks and cloud services to make them look like a single infrastructure. The concept began to come together at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference. The company is attempting to show that it wants to move beyond the first wave of the cloud trend, which is defined by the availability of raw computing power supplied by Microsoft and competitors such as Amazon and Google. Microsoft's goal is to supply tools, middleware, and services so users can run applications that span corporate and cloud networks, especially those built with Microsoft's Azure cloud operating system.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

OECD Work on Digital Content - 0 views

www.oecd.org/...34223_32160190_1_1_1_1,00.html

OECD Digital Content information not mnipulation

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Apr 11
     
    OECD Working Party on the Information Economy (www.oecd.org/sti/digitalcontent) Work Plan on Digital Broadband Content OECD Recommendation on Public Sector Information OECD Policy Guidance for Digital Content The OECD's Working Party on the Information Economy (WPIE) is undertaking analysis of the digital delivery of content. This work recognises that the rapid development of high-quality "always on" broadband Internet services is transforming high-growth industries that provide or have the potential to provide digital content. Specifically, this work includes stocktaking studies in the following areas: scientific publishing, music, on-line computer games, mobile content, user-created content, digital content and the evolution of the film and video industries and public sector information and content.
Paul Merrell

Court Approves F.C.C. Plan to Subsidize Rural Broadband Service - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-rural-broadband-service.html

broadband roll-out rural-broadband litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 May 14 - No Cached
  • A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the Federal Communications Commission’s effort to convert its $4.5 billion program that pays for telephone service in rural parts of the country into one that subsidizes high-speed Internet service in high-cost areas.The program, known as Connect America, is the largest portion of the $8 billion Universal Service Fund, which pays for a variety of efforts to provide telecommunications links to schools, low-income families and others.In October 2011, the F.C.C. approved an overhaul of the fund. Soon after its approval, however, the effort was challenged in court by dozens of phone companies. Many were small carriers that provided service in rural areas and that stood to lose annual subsidies because of the changes.The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Denver, rejected the phone companies’ arguments because their claims were “either unpersuasive or barred from judicial review.”
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Dark Reading - 10 Strategies To Fight Anonymous DDoS Attacks - 0 views

www.darkreading.com/...1102699

howto prevent DDoS attacks internet security both ways

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 21 May 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 21 May 14
     
    "10 Strategies To Fight Anonymous DDoS Attacks Preventing distributed denial of service attacks may be impossible. But with advance planning, they can be mitigated and stopped. Learn where to begin."
Paul Merrell

Bankrolled by broadband donors, lawmakers lobby FCC on net neutrality | Ars Technica - 1 views

arstechnica.com/...rs-lobby-fcc-on-net-neutrality

net neutrality campaign contributions corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 May 14 - No Cached
  • The 28 House members who lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to drop net neutrality this week have received more than twice the amount in campaign contributions from the broadband sector than the average for all House members. These lawmakers, including the top House leadership, warned the FCC that regulating broadband like a public utility "harms" providers, would be "fatal to the Internet," and could "limit economic freedom."​ According to research provided Friday by Maplight, the 28 House members received, on average, $26,832 from the "cable & satellite TV production & distribution" sector over a two-year period ending in December. According to the data, that's 2.3 times more than the House average of $11,651. What's more, one of the lawmakers who told the FCC that he had "grave concern" (PDF) about the proposed regulation took more money from that sector than any other member of the House. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) was the top sector recipient, netting more than $109,000 over the two-year period, the Maplight data shows.
  • Dan Newman, cofounder and president of Maplight, the California research group that reveals money in politics, said the figures show that "it's hard to take seriously politicians' claims that they are acting in the public interest when their campaigns are funded by companies seeking huge financial benefits for themselves." Signing a letter to the FCC along with Walden, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, were three other key members of the same committee: Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI), Robert Latta (R-OH), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Over the two-year period, Upton took in $65,000, Latta took $51,000, and Blackburn took $32,500. In a letter (PDF) those representatives sent to the FCC two days before Thursday's raucous FCC net neutrality hearing, the four wrote that they had "grave concern" over the FCC's consideration of "reclassifying Internet broadband service as an old-fashioned 'Title II common carrier service.'" The letter added that a switchover "harms broadband providers, the American economy, and ultimately broadband consumers, actually doing so would be fatal to the Internet as we know it."
  • Not every one of the 28 members who publicly lobbied the FCC against net neutrality in advance of Thursday's FCC public hearing received campaign financing from the industry. One representative took no money: Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV). In all, the FCC received at least three letters from House lawmakers with 28 signatures urging caution on classifying broadband as a telecommunications service, which would open up the sector to stricter "common carrier" rules, according to letters the members made publicly available. The US has long applied common carrier status to the telephone network, providing justification for universal service obligations that guarantee affordable phone service to all Americans and other rules that promote competition and consumer choice. Some consumer advocates say that common carrier status is needed for the FCC to impose strong network neutrality rules that would force ISPs to treat all traffic equally, not degrading competing services or speeding up Web services in exchange for payment. ISPs have argued that common carrier rules would saddle them with too much regulation and would force them to spend less on network upgrades and be less innovative.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Of the 28 House members signing on to the three letters, Republicans received, on average, $59,812 from the industry over the two-year period compared to $13,640 for Democrats, according to the Maplight data. Another letter (PDF) sent to the FCC this week from four top members of the House, including Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), argued in favor of cable companies: "We are writing to respectfully urge you to halt your consideration of any plan to impose antiquated regulation on the Internet, and to warn that implementation of such a plan will needlessly inhibit the creation of American private sector jobs, limit economic freedom and innovation, and threaten to derail one of our economy's most vibrant sectors," they wrote. Over the two-year period, Boehner received $75,450; Cantor got $80,800; McCarthy got $33,000; and McMorris Rodgers got $31,500.
  • The third letter (PDF) forwarded to the FCC this week was signed by 20 House members. "We respectfully urge you to consider the effect that regressing to a Title II approach might have on private companies' ability to attract capital and their continued incentives to invest and innovate, as well as the potentially negative impact on job creation that might result from any reduction in funding or investment," the letter said. Here are the 28 lawmakers who lobbied the FCC this week and their reported campaign contributions:
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Encrypt All The Things - 0 views

encryptallthethings.net//

encrypt things all security privacy right citizen against mass sourveillance government enterprises freedom

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 05 Jun 14
     
    "Robust encryption is the next step toward protecting our networks and data from unauthorized surveillance. The Data Security Action Plan offers 7 security- enhancing steps that every internet platform should take to safeguard our data. "
Paul Merrell

FCC Chairman Moves Toward Real Net Neutrality Protections | Free Press - 0 views

www.freepress.net/...eal-net-neutrality-protections

net-neutrality FCC regulations common-carrier FCC-plans

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • In an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated that he will move to protect Net Neutrality by reclassifying Internet access under Title II of the Communications Act. The chairman plans to circulate a new rule in early February. The agency is expected to vote on it during its Feb. 26 open meeting. Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron made the following statement: “Chairman Wheeler appears to have heard the demands of the millions of Internet users who have called for real Net Neutrality protections. The FCC’s past decisions to put its oversight authority on ice resulted in Net Neutrality being under constant threat. Wheeler now realizes that it’s best to simply follow the law Congress wrote and ignore the bogus claims of the biggest phone and cable companies and their well-financed front groups. “Of course the devil will be in the details, and we await publication of the agency's final decision. But it’s refreshing to see the chairman firmly reject the industry’s lies and scare tactics. As we’ve said all along, Title II is a very flexible, deregulatory framework that ensures investment and innovation while also preserving the important public interest principles of nondiscrimination, universal service, interconnection and competition.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 15
     
    Title II is for "common carriers." See http://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf pg. 35. Under Section 202: "(a) It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons, or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage. (b) Charges or services, whenever referred to in this Act, include charges for, or services in connection with, the use of common carrier lines of communication, whether derived from wire or radio facilities, in chain broadcasting or incidental to radio communication of any kind. (c) Any carrier who knowingly violates the provisions of this section shall forfeit to the United States the sum of $6,000 for each such offense and $300 for each and every day of the continuance of such offense. 
Gary Edwards

Box, Dropbox rethink future in midst of price war - San Jose Mercury News - 0 views

www.mercurynews.com/...rethink-future-midst-price-war

wordSDK Office-365

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • "Right now there is a huge arms race between Apple, Google, Microsoft, and now Amazon has thrown their hat in the ring," said Vineet Jain, co-founder and CEO of Egnyte, a Mountain View company that sells software that allows companies to store data both in the cloud and on premise. "These four guys are capable of making it free or nearly free, and the price points that you're seeing from these vendors such as Box will have to come down, or they will have a shrinking user base. You cannot out-compete Microsoft and Google on price -- you just can't."
  • For Box and Dropbox -- and the investors who have poured millions of dollars into them -- there's a lot of money on the line. In 2013, cloud storage companies raised $1.2 billion from venture capitalists, compared to $427 million in 2010 and $185 million in 2009, according to the Dow Jones. Silicon Valley cloud storage companies accounted for 14 of the top 20 venture-backed deals, with Box leading with more than $350 million in funds raised; Dropbox raised $250 million.
  • "The problem is pricing on storage has just been collapsing," said Randy Chou, CEO and co-founder of Panzura, which sells hardware and software that allows businesses to collaborate on massive documents, and counts Electronic Arts and the U.S. Department of Justice among its customers. "Whatever anyone is paying today, they'll pay half next year, and half the year after that."
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 14
     
    Commentary on the expected Box and Dropbox IPO, which are being delayed. The author explains the delay, but misses the incredibl eimpact Office 365 is having on the mobile Cloud Productivity platform. And this is the platform war of all wars. It is the race to dominate the 3rd Wave of computing. "It wasn't long ago that cloud storage companies such as Box and Dropbox were among the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, blessed with vast amounts of venture capital and poised to go public in blockbuster IPOs. But now, thanks to a price war launched by Google, Amazon and other tech giants, almost anyone with a laptop or tablet can get cloud storage for less than the price of a latte. That means Box and Dropbox, which sell software for businesses and consumers to store and use files on the Internet rather than a machine, are confronting a precarious future: They must figure out how to go head-to-head with the world's most powerful tech companies. The jockeying has forced both startups to rethink their plans to go public -- Box filed for an IPO in March, but has delayed trading, and Dropbox, once poised to be one of the biggest tech IPOs of the year, may not have a public offering in its immediate future."
Paul Merrell

The Newest Reforms on SIGINT Collection Still Leave Loopholes | Just Security - 0 views

justsecurity.org/...lection-leave-plenty-loopholes

surveillance state NSA-reform DNI Clapper voluntary-reforms

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper this morning released a report detailing new rules aimed at reforming the way signals intelligence is collected and stored by certain members of the United States Intelligence Community (IC). The long-awaited changes follow up on an order announced by President Obama one year ago that laid out the White House’s principles governing the collection of signals intelligence. That order, commonly known as PPD-28, purports to place limits on the use of data collected in bulk and to increase privacy protections related to the data collected, regardless of nationality. Accordingly, most of the changes presented as “new” by Clapper’s office  (ODNI) stem directly from the guidance provided in PPD-28, and so aren’t truly new. And of the biggest changes outlined in the report, there are still large exceptions that appear to allow the government to escape the restrictions with relative ease. Here’s a quick rundown.
  • National security letters (NSLs). The report also states that the FBI’s gag orders related to NSLs expire three years after the opening of a full-blown investigation or three years after an investigation’s close, whichever is earlier. However, these expiration dates can be easily overridden by by an FBI Special Agent in Charge or a Deputy Assistant FBI Director who finds that the statutory standards for secrecy about the NSL continue to be satisfied (which at least one court has said isn’t a very high bar). This exception also doesn’t address concerns that NSL gag orders lack adequate due process protections, lack basic judicial oversight, and may violate the First Amendment.
  • Retention policy for non-U.S. persons. The new rules say that the IC must now delete information about “non-U.S. persons” that’s been gathered via signals intelligence after five-years. However, there is a loophole that will let spies hold onto that information indefinitely whenever the Director of National Intelligence determines (after considering the views of the ODNI’s Civil Liberties Protection Officer) that retaining information is in the interest of national security. The new rules don’t say whether the exceptions will be directed at entire groups of people or individual surveillance targets.  Section 215 metadata. Updates to the rules concerning the use of data collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act includes the requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (rather than authorized NSA officials) must determine spies have “reasonable, articulable suspicion” prior to query Section 215 data, outside of emergency circumstances. What qualifies as an emergency for these purposes? We don’t know. Additionally, the IC is now limited to two “hops” in querying the database. This means that spies can only play two degrees of Kevin Bacon, instead of the previously allowed three degrees, with the contacts of anyone targeted under Section 215. The report doesn’t explain what would prevent the NSA (or other agency using the 215 databases) from getting around this limit by redesignating a phone number found in the first or second hop as a new “target,” thereby allowing the agency to continue the contact chain.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The report also details the ODNI’s and IC’s plans for the future, including: (1) Working with Congress to reauthorize bulk collection under Section 215. (2) Updating agency guidelines under Executive Order 12333 “to protect the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons.” (3) Producing another annual report in January 2016 on the IC’s progress in implementing signals intelligence reforms. These plans raise more questions than they answer. Given the considerable doubts about Section 215’s effectiveness, why is the ODNI pushing for its reauthorization? And what will the ODNI consider appropriate privacy protections under Executive Order 12333?
Paul Merrell

Remaining Snowden docs will be released to avert 'unspecified US war' - ‪Cryp... - 1 views

www.theregister.co.uk/..._release_to_avert_war_cryptome

surveillance state Snoden-docs bulk-release Cryptome

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • All the remaining Snowden documents will be released next month, according t‪o‬ whistle-blowing site ‪Cryptome, which said in a tweet that the release of the info by unnamed third parties would be necessary to head off an unnamed "war".‬‪Cryptome‬ said it would "aid and abet" the release of "57K to 1.7M" new documents that had been "withheld for national security-public debate [sic]". <a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x250%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33U7RchawQrMoAAHIac14AAAKH&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26unitname%3Dwww_top_mpu%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0" target="_blank"> <img src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x250%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33U7RchawQrMoAAHIac14AAAKH&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26unitname%3Dwww_top_mpu%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0" alt=""></a> The site clarified that will not be publishing the documents itself.Transparency activists would welcome such a release but such a move would be heavily criticised by inteligence agencies and military officials, who argue that Snowden's dump of secret documents has set US and allied (especially British) intelligence efforts back by years.
  • As things stand, the flow of Snowden disclosures is controlled by those who have access to the Sn‪o‬wden archive, which might possibly include Snowden confidants such as Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. In some cases, even when these people release information to mainstream media organisations, it is then suppressed by these organisations after negotiation with the authorities. (In one such case, some key facts were later revealed by the Register.)"July is when war begins unless headed off by Snowden full release of crippling intel. After war begins not a chance of release," Cryptome tweeted on its official feed."Warmongerers are on a rampage. So, yes, citizens holding Snowden docs will do the right thing," it said.
  • "For more on Snowden docs release in July watch for Ellsberg, special guest and others at HOPE, July 18-20: http://www.hope.net/schedule.html," it added.HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is a well-regarded and long-running hacking conference organised by 2600 magazine. Previous speakers at the event have included Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak and Jello Biafra.In other developments, ‪Cryptome‬ has started a Kickstarter fund to release its entire archive in the form of a USB stick archive. It wants t‪o‬ raise $100,000 to help it achieve its goal. More than $14,000 has already been raised.The funding drive follows a dispute between ‪Cryptome‬ and its host Network Solutions, which is owned by web.com. Access to the site was bl‪o‬cked f‪o‬ll‪o‬wing a malware infection last week. ‪Cryptome‬ f‪o‬under J‪o‬hn Y‪o‬ung criticised the host, claiming it had ‪o‬ver-reacted and had been sl‪o‬w t‪o‬ rest‪o‬re access t‪o‬ the site, which ‪Cryptome‬ criticised as a form of cens‪o‬rship.In resp‪o‬nse, ‪Cryptome‬ plans to more widely distribute its content across multiple sites as well as releasing the planned USB stick archive. ®
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jul 14
     
    Can't happen soon enough. 
Paul Merrell

The Digital Hunt for Duqu, a Dangerous and Cunning U.S.-Israeli Spy Virus - The Intercept - 1 views

firstlook.org/...stuxnet

surveillance state cyberwar Stuxnet

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • “Is this related to what we talked about before?” Bencsáth said, referring to a previous discussion they’d had about testing new services the company planned to offer customers. “No, something else,” Bartos said. “Can you come now? It’s important. But don’t tell anyone where you’re going.” Bencsáth wolfed down the rest of his lunch and told his colleagues in the lab that he had a “red alert” and had to go. “Don’t ask,” he said as he ran out the door. A while later, he was at Bartos’ office, where a triage team had been assembled to address the problem they wanted to discuss. “We think we’ve been hacked,” Bartos said.
  • They found a suspicious file on a developer’s machine that had been created late at night when no one was working. The file was encrypted and compressed so they had no idea what was inside, but they suspected it was data the attackers had copied from the machine and planned to retrieve later. A search of the company’s network found a few more machines that had been infected as well. The triage team felt confident they had contained the attack but wanted Bencsáth’s help determining how the intruders had broken in and what they were after. The company had all the right protections in place—firewalls, antivirus, intrusion-detection and -prevention systems—and still the attackers got in.
  • Bencsáth was a teacher, not a malware hunter, and had never done such forensic work before. At the CrySyS Lab, where he was one of four advisers working with a handful of grad students, he did academic research for the European Union and occasional hands-on consulting work for other clients, but the latter was mostly run-of-the-mill cleanup work—mopping up and restoring systems after random virus infections. He’d never investigated a targeted hack before, let alone one that was still live, and was thrilled to have the chance. The only catch was, he couldn’t tell anyone what he was doing. Bartos’ company depended on the trust of customers, and if word got out that the company had been hacked, they could lose clients. The triage team had taken mirror images of the infected hard drives, so they and Bencsáth spent the rest of the afternoon poring over the copies in search of anything suspicious. By the end of the day, they’d found what they were looking for—an “infostealer” string of code that was designed to record passwords and other keystrokes on infected machines, as well as steal documents and take screenshots. It also catalogued any devices or systems that were connected to the machines so the attackers could build a blueprint of the company’s network architecture. The malware didn’t immediately siphon the stolen data from infected machines but instead stored it in a temporary file, like the one the triage team had found. The file grew fatter each time the infostealer sucked up data, until at some point the attackers would reach out to the machine to retrieve it from a server in India that served as a command-and-control node for the malware.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Bencsáth took the mirror images and the company’s system logs with him, after they had been scrubbed of any sensitive customer data, and over the next few days scoured them for more malicious files, all the while being coy to his colleagues back at the lab about what he was doing. The triage team worked in parallel, and after several more days they had uncovered three additional suspicious files. When Bencsáth examined one of them—a kernel-mode driver, a program that helps the computer communicate with devices such as printers—his heart quickened. It was signed with a valid digital certificate from a company in Taiwan (digital certificates are documents ensuring that a piece of software is legitimate). Wait a minute, he thought. Stuxnet—the cyberweapon that was unleashed on Iran’s uranium-enrichment program—also used a driver that was signed with a certificate from a company in Taiwan. That one came from RealTek Semiconductor, but this certificate belonged to a different company, C-Media Electronics. The driver had been signed with the certificate in August 2009, around the same time Stuxnet had been unleashed on machines in Iran.
Gary Edwards

Is Linux dead for the desktop? - 1 views

www.cio.co.uk/...is-linux-dead-for-desktop

Linux-desktop wordSDK Office-365

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Linux never had the apps
  • Charles King, an IT analyst who follows enterprise trends, says the big change is in IT. At one time, executives in charge of computing services were mostly concerned with operating systems and applications for massive throng of traditional business users. Those users have now flocked to mobile computing devices, but they still have a Windows PC sitting on their desk.
  • Today, Microsoft's lock (on the desktop, anyway) remains secure, even in the face of Apple's surge," King says. "Ironically enough, though, the open source model remains alive and well but mostly in the development of new standards and development platforms."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • David Johnson
  • What corporate end users really need is familiarity, consistency and compatibility - something Apple, Microsoft and Google seem more adept at offering."
  • Can desktop Linux OS be saved? Johnson says the best example of how to save Linux OS is the Chrome OS, an all-in-one laptop and desktop offering available through major consumer electronics companies such as LG (with their Chromebase all-in-one) and the Samsung Chromebook 2
  • The problem is that Chrome OS and Android aren't the same as Linux OS on the desktop. It's a complete reinvention. There are few Windows-like productivity apps and no knowledge worker apps designed for keyboard and mouse.
  • All of experts agree - Windows won every battle for the business user.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Oct 14
     
    "For executives in charge of desktop deployments in a large company, Linux OS was once hailed as a saviour for corporate end users. With incredibly low pricing - free, with fee-based support plans, for example - distributions such as Ubuntu Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise offered a "good enough" user interface, along with plenty of powerful apps and a rich browser. A few years ago, both Dell and HP jumped on the bandwagon; today, they still offer "developer" and "workstation" models that come pre-loaded with a Linux install. Plus, anyone who follows the Linux market knows that Google has reimagined Linux as a user-friendly tablet interface (the wildly popular Android OS) and a browser-only desktop variant (Chrome OS). Linux also shows up on countless connected home gadgets, fitness trackers, watches and other low-cost devices, mostly because OS costs are so low. The desktop computing OS for end users has failed to capture any attention lately, though. Al Gillen, the programme vice president for servers and system software at IDC, says the Linux OS as a computing platform for end users is at least comatose - and probably dead. Yes, it has reemerged on Android and other devices, but it has gone almost completely silent as a competitor to Windows for mass deployment. As they say, you can hear the crickets chirping."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

AT&T's plan to watch your Web browsing-and what you can do about it | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...g-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

ATT watch your web browsing habits private life For Sale

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Mar 15 - No Cached
    • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.
      Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 30 Mar 15
       
      # ! Your Private Life For Sale. # ! Future and Present of Telecommunications in the 'Democratics' World...
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Anti-Piracy Education Enters UK Classrooms - TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/on-enters-uk-classrooms-160104

antipiracy anti-piracy education enters UK classrooms when anti-abuse media entertainment industry

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 05 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 05 Jan 16
     
    " By Andy on January 4, 2016 C: 78 News A new component of the Creative Content UK initiative is set to discourage Internet piracy via the classroom. Encouraging students to think about who will pay for Vin Diesel's socks if everyone pirates movies, the UK government, The Industry Trust and Federation Against Copyright Theft have a lesson plan up their collective sleeves."
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