SASSIT

"One thing is certain, and is unlikely to be news that's welcomed at Facebook HQ. There is a growing perception out there that Facebook isn't the safest of places to be," wrote Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley in a recent blog post. Some of the key threats recently highlighted by Sophos are rogue applications or survey scams that pop up from users' own Facebook friends who have been tricked into clicking on an interesting looking news headline or YouTube video that then duplicates to everyone in their friend's list. It then directs them to click on a website or survey, or inadvertently download malware. One of the offenders now doing the rounds is a fake application that promises to let you see who has been viewing your profile.

In a sense, we've set up a paradox: We want others to lap up our online presence, but we feel slightly skeeved out when they indicate that they do.

Last week the Federal Labor Government's Special Minister of State, Gary Grayannounced the revised Federal Government policy on open source procurement.

"Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track ofwhere you go - and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the devicewhich is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised." "Apple can legitimately claim that it has permission to collect the data:near the end of the 15,200-word terms and conditions for its iTunes program,used to synchronise with iPhones, iPods and iPads, is an 86-word paragraphabout "location-based services""

I think Scratch →Greenfoot → Eclipse is a good path for Scratch users who want to get deeperinto programming. And many Scratch users may not go on to learn Java ormajor in computer science, just as most of us who took music lessons did notgrow up to become professional musicians.[SC] This is something I really like about Scratch (and its fail-soft strategy).In a sense, I think this had been one of the original goals of Alice; I don't listin my article largely because it became challenging to realize in practice (3D issomewhat of a culprit here). I do agree that the transitions Scratch → Greenfoot, Alice → Greenfoot, and Scratch → Alice → Greenfoot wind up making agreat deal of sense in terms of what gets exposed to the student.

With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience.

Google Open Source YouTube channel

In 1994, a 30-year-old Jeff Bezos was looking for "extremely talented C/C++/Unix developers to help pioneer commerce on the Internet." This was when his company was called Abracadabra, not yet Amazon, and before the developer whizzes he did hire would indeed pioneer commerce on the internet. Would you have answered this ad?

People need to adapt and have business models that work with the new technologies.  This is an example. By the end of Scott Sigler's 20-episode podcast series, EARTHCORE, he had gained 10,000 followers. From there, he engaged the small publisher, Dragon Moon Press, to issue ANCESTOR. Its success on Amazon got the attention of Crown Publishing, which signed him for a five-book deal.

Web2.0 means that people who traditionally did not have a voice can now have a say and influence what is going on. The Gaza youth manifesto is very direct.

The Japanese motor company, Honda, today issued an alert to U.S. customers concerning a security breach resulting from a hacked database. The database that was managed by a third-party marketing group contained confidential information, including names of car owners, personal e-mail addresses, and even Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN).

In April 2007, the Baltic republic of Estonia became the first country in the world to experience cyberwar. Government, financial and media computer networks were paralyzed by a series of attacks, which authorities ultimately concluded originated in Russia. In the years since that cyberassault, Estonia has distinguished itself once again: Now it is a model for how a country might defend itself during a cyberwar. The responsibility would fall to a force of programmers, computer scientists and software engineers who make up a Cyber Defense League, a volunteer organization that in wartime would function under a unified military command.

A 1TB hard drive that sells for as little as $60 today would have been worth $1 trillion in the 1950s, when computer storage cost $1 per byte, according to Dag Spicer, senior curator of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. And a modern-day 4GB stick of RAM would have cost $32 billion

It's simple: instead of radio waves or cables, these ceiling lights are transmitting information via flickering binary code (basically) at a special photosensitive modem.

Has article that looks at the major security risks posed to organisations by ICT. Most of these are framed in terms of risks to private businesses

"A man awaiting trial in Pennsylvania was arrested by Federal agents on Jan. 4, and accused of exploiting a software 'glitch' within slot machines in order to win payouts. The exploit may have allowed the man to obtain more than a million dollars from casinos in Pennsylvania and Nevada, and officials say they are investigating to see if he used the method elsewhere. The accused stated that 'I'm being arrested federally for winning on a slot machine. Let everybody see the surveillance tapes. I pressed buttons on the machine on the casino. That's all I did.' Apparently, slot machine software errors are fairly common. The lesson here seems to be that casinos can deny you a slot machine win any time they wish by claiming software errors, and if you find an error that you can exploit, you may find yourself facing Federal charges for doing so

High-frequency trading networks, which complete stock market transactions in microseconds, are vulnerable to manipulation by hackers who can inject tiny amounts of latency into them. By doing so, they can subtly change the course of trading and pocket profits of millions of dollars in just a few seconds

Using Scratch to program household devices

Microsoft, along with McDonald's, Mazda and CBS have been named in a class action suit filed in Federal Court for working in concert with behavioral advertising specialist Interclick. The companies allegedly used their ads as a "cover for data-mining, to identify the websites people visit, invading people's privacy, misappropriating their personal information and interfering with the operations of their computers."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin [cq] has ordered government agencies there to open-source software by 2015, according to translated documents. Putin's order, signed this month, follows news reports from October saying the Russian government was planning to drop Microsoft products in favor of a national open-source operating system based on Linux.