Google Sharing
January 20th, 2010I’m not saying to use (or not use) his plugin, but I like this summary of the threat.
Via: Google Sharing:
Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged in to a Google account or not, they know everything you’ve ever searched for, what search results you clicked on, what news you read, and every place you’ve ever gotten directions to. Most of the time, thanks to things like Google Analytics, they even know which websites you visited that you didn’t reach through Google. If you use Gmail, they know the content of every email you’ve ever sent or received, whether you’ve deleted it or not.
They know who your friends are, where you live, where you work, and where you spend your free time. They know about your health, your love life, and your political leanings. These days they are even branching out into collecting your realtime GPS location and your DNS lookups. In short, not only do they know a lot about what you’re doing, they also have significant insight into what you’re thinking.
Google Postpones Release of Android Phones in China
January 20th, 2010Via: BBC:
Google says it has postponed the launch of two Android based mobile phones in China following a dispute with the government over censorship.
The formal launch was due to take place on Wednesday, a spokesperson said.
The announcement came as the Chinese government said Google and other foreign firms must obey the country’s laws and traditions.
Google said last week that it had been targeted in a sophisticated cyber attack thought to originate in China.
The attacks were thought to target the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.
As a result, the company said that it would no longer censor search engine results in China even if it meant it had to shut down operations in the country.
Google had planned to launch two handsets running its Android operating system in cooperation Samsung and Motorola.
“The launch we have been working on with China Unicom has been postponed,” said a Google spokesperson.
China Unicom is a network provider in the country.
PENTAGON DISASTER RELIEF EXERCISE FOR HAITI WENT LIVE AFTER EARTHQUAKE HIT
January 20th, 2010Via: NextGov:
As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernment agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.
On Monday, Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday, Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday, DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.
France Alarmed Over Anthrax-Tainted Heroin in Europe
January 20th, 2010Via: AFP:
The French health ministry issued a warning on Tuesday after eight people died and seven fell sick in two European countries from using heroin contaminated by anthrax.
“Since December 6, there have been 15 confirmed cases of anthrax among heroin users, 14 in Scotland and one in Germany,” the ministry’s General Directorate for Health (DGS) said in a statement.
“Eight people died,” it said. “The likeliest source is heroin contaminated by anthrax spores.”
Most of the casualties had injected the heroin, but others also inhaled it or smoked it.
Anthrax is a potentially lethal bacterium that exists naturally in the soil and can also occur among cattle. It is also, more notoriously, a potential bio-terror weapon.
The ministry said the contaminated drug may also be circulating in France and other European countries.
“There is no outward sign or colour enabling the user to tell whether the heroin has been contaminated by anthrax, and contaminated heroin dissolves or is used in the same way as uncontaminated heroin,” it said.
Can You Do This With Your Tap Water?
January 19th, 2010Via: GaslandMovie:
When filmmaker Josh Fox discovers that Natural Gas drilling is coming to his area—the Catskillls/Poconos region of Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, he sets off on a 24 state journey to uncover the deep consequences of the United States’ natural gas drilling boom. What he uncovers is truly shocking—water that can be lit on fire right out of the sink, chronically ill residents of drilling areas from disparate locations in the US all with the same mysterious symptoms, huge pools of toxic waste that kill cattle and vegetation well blowouts and huge gas explosions consistently covered up by state and federal regulatory agencies. These are just a few of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND.
Haiti: Dubya and Clinton to the Rescue?
January 19th, 2010FBI Broke Law for Years in Phone Record Searches
January 19th, 2010* pfft *
But rest easy, citizen, “FBI officials said they are confident that the safeguards enacted in 2007 have ended the problems.”
Conveniently, the article doesn’t mention domestic NSA intercept operations.
Via: Washington Post:
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
Japan Airlines Files for Bankruptcy Protection
January 19th, 2010Via: AP:
Japan Airlines filed for bankruptcy Tuesday in one of the nation’s biggest corporate failures ever, entering a restructuring that will shrink Asia’s top carrier and its presence around the world.
Staggering under a $25.6 billion debt mountain, the carrier applied for protection from creditors under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law — Japan’s version of Chapter 11 — with the Tokyo District Court.
Japan’s flagship airline will slash nearly 16,000 jobs, reduce pensions for retired staff, cut routes and shift to more fuel-efficient aircraft as part of its restructuring.
Some $10 billion of government cash will keep JAL’s planes in the air during the reorganization. Lenders will forgive $8 billion in debt, and JAL shares will be removed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Feb. 20, wiping out investors.
There was no word on the outcome of a fierce tug-of-war between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines for a slice of JAL’s business. Despite its woes, the airline’s access to Asia is a mouthwatering prize for foreign airlines.
A state-backed turnaround agency pledged 900 billion yen ($10 billion) in financial support for JAL — 600 billion yen in credit lines and a 300 billion yen cash infusion. The bankruptcy is the fourth-largest in Japan, according to figures from Teikoku Databank, which tracks corporate failures.
One in Seven U.S. Mortgages In Foreclosure or Delinquent
January 19th, 2010Green shoots. Recovery.
Via: Reuters:
A record one in seven U.S. mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter, according to fresh data signaling the recovery in the housing market will be tepid at best.
U.S. mortgage delinquency rates and the percentage of loans that entered the foreclosure process also jumped to records from July to September, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday.
Rising job losses were behind the increasingly bleak portrait of the housing market in a trend that will continue into next year, the group said in data that adds to recent evidence of a still-struggling housing market.
Housing and related business account for about 20 percent of the economy and recovery is essential to bring unemployment down from a 26-1/2-year high and kick-start economic growth.
Yet record foreclosures will add to the growing supply of unsold homes, sapping the housing market as it attempts to recover from the worst slump since the Great Depression.
Three-Year-Olds with Iphones?
January 19th, 2010Via: TheAppleBlog:
My three year old daughter now has her own iPhone, though without service so it is effectively an iPod touch. And how did I create a monster, you might ask? Easy. Her first words upon waking from sleep are “Where’s my iPhone?” Her reaction to her parents call to come to the dinner table, head upstairs for a bath or get ready for bed is to clutch her iPhone and cry. Even though I loaded her iPhone with some of her favorite apps from her mom’s phone (by re-downloading to our black Macbook, as I couldn’t get iTunes Home Sharing to work with my wife’s Macbook Air), she only really uses it to watch a small handful of videos that I ripped or downloaded. And she uses it constantly: sitting in a chair, laying on the floor, walking from room-to-room… head down, focused on the iPhone screen, it can be a challenge to get her to disengage with the device and engage with us.
So how can this be a good thing, or at least not bad? For one, I long ago read “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Steven Berlin Johnson, and take solace that her use of the iPhone at this early stage is at least teaching her some valuable skills, including human-computer interaction (for example, she is still mastering the art of touching a video then touching again on the appropriate icon to pause or play it). The videos I loaded are generally good quality educational content, so there are learning moments in them. And her ability to use the iPhone or not has quickly become the “carrot” and “stick” motivation we’ve long needed: she responds to our threats to take it away or promise to let her use it as with nothing that came before it.
As the novelty of watching videos begins to wear off, I expect our daughter to explore all of the possibilities that her iPhone offers. We’re already using the built-in clock to learn to tell time, Camera to take pictures, and Weather to see if it will snow today. I can imagine using apps like Best Camera to learn more about art and photography, or Vocabulearn Tagalog to learn her mom’s families native language (which I need to do before we go to the Philippines in a year or two). In the meantime, she’s already started to use some of the toddler apps I installed, like Kid Art, Voice Toddler Cards, and the Curious George Coloring Book.
The real challenge will be to help our daughter use her iPhone as an educational device, and avoid the trap of becoming too immersed to the detriment of social, motor, and other skills development. The real question is whether I’m a bad dad for giving a three year old an iPhone. What do you think?
