Thursday, July 29, 2004

The July surprise [Salon.com] 7:45:51 PM    comment []

Popularity online. Eric Smalley and Kimberly Patch have written an article for M.I.T's Technology Research News that reports on the work of researchers from Cornell University and the Internet Archive.The researchers "have devised a way to measure users' reactions to an item description: a batting average of the number of users who go on to download the item divided by the number of users who read the description. This mirrors the traditional baseball batting average of the ratio of a player's hits to at bats.The item description batting average is different from just tracking the output of a hit counter, which measures the raw number of item visits or downloads, said Jon Kleinberg, an associate professor of computer science at Cornell University. "The batting average addresses the more subtle notion of users' reactions to the item description as it appears in the fraction of users who go on to download the item."A users' batting average reveals something about the nature of on-line popularity, can make users explicitly aware of shifts in popularity, and allows administrators of large sites to quickly identify sudden and potentially significant effects on the popularity of particular items and prepare accordingly".Further they report that "the researchers found that abrupt shifts corresponded closely to real-world events that drove what was often a new mix of users to view an item's description". Online popularity tracked [Smart Mobs] 7:45:40 PM    comment []

NIST says DES encryption 'inadequate'. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is proposing that the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a popular encryption algorithm, lose its certification for use in software products sold to the government. [InfoWorld: Top News] 5:24:43 PM    comment []

I.R.S. Says Americans' Income Shrank for 2 Consecutive Years. The overall income Americans reported shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst. By By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON. [The New York Times > Business] 5:24:40 PM    comment []

Roll up for PayPal payout. The payment unit of eBay tells wronged customers how to apply for a slice of a $9.25 million class-action settlement. [CNET News.com] 5:20:57 PM    comment []

Lining up the defense. Security experts at Black Hat confab talk RFID, e-voting. Also: Check Point plugs a hole. [CNET News.com] 5:19:59 PM    comment []

White House Considers Role in Wine Case: Supreme Court Dispute Over Internet Sales Ban Splits Bush's Political Allies. By Dana Milbank, Washington Post. 2:33:49 PM    comment []

Virtual Worlds Meet the Real One. How did you spend your summer vacation? These students learned about urban renewal -- by playing video games. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 8:35:49 AM    comment []

Hopes Now Outpace Stem Cell Science. For all the promise, and for all the fervent hopes of patients and their families that cures from stem cells will come soon, researchers say many questions remain to be answered. By By GINA KOLATA. [The New York Times > Science] 8:35:30 AM    comment []

Hacking Netflix. Hacking Netflix is an independent Web site and has no affiliation or association with Netflix, Inc. Netflix is registered trademark of Netflix, Inc. HackingNetflix will not teach you how to lie, cheat or steal from Netflix. Hacking is the desire to fully understand something, and we want to learn as much as we can about this company and share this information. [Learning The Lessons of Nixon] 8:35:24 AM    comment []

Secret of Cyber Defence Exercise 2004 By Doug Mohney. A WEEK before the 2004 Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX) kicked off in April, the National Security Agency abruptly asked the participating military service academies close off the event to the public and the media for "operational concerns." What did "operational concerns" mean? NSA's public affairs office failed to respond via e-mail. Of course, NSA had problems sending e-mail to my primary e-mail account in the first place, so I'm not sure if the response went into a top-secret black hole or I was just ignored. Each academy ultimately made their own call, with Army's West Point and little-heralded United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) choosing to keep their doors open. Perhaps unsurprisingly, USMMA and West Point placed one and two in the CDX contest. The NSA's request was an about-face for an event that had been open and widely promoted by West Point over the last two years. Since the exercise was designed to be unclassified from the ground up, "Red Team" attackers from the NSA and the Air Force's 92nd Aggressor Squadron were only permitted publicly known security exploits and not use any classified "Zero-Day" techniques. CDX is designed to be a defense exercise, the most realistic scenario a military IT officer is going to face in the real world. Each participating team is tasked with setting up and operating a core set of services, keeping them operational in the face of Red Team attacks. The underdog winners at USMMA setup and operated a combination of Windows 2000, XP, and Linux Mandrake machines to resist the best unclassified attacks the U.S. cyberwarfare establishment could dish out. After all, the Red Team - or people just like them - were the folks that wrought havoc on Saddam Hussein's networks, monitoring communications and pulling such tricks as sending e-mail to senior Iraq military commanders asking them to surrender. Maybe sanctions had kept Saddam's people from getting the latest Microsoft security patches, but nobody's saying. USMMA's team used Windows 2000 Advanced Server with service pack 4 to run active directory, primary domain controller, e-mail (Exchange Server 2000 w/ SP3), mail relay, LRA (Local Registration Authority used to issue DoD public key encryption certificates), and web services with IIS 5.0. Workstations ran Windows 2000 Professional with SP1. A video conferencing station used Windows XP because the web camera being used was more stable under that OS. Finally, the heavy network lifting was done with Linux Mandrake 10.0, including the primary firewall and router, backup firewall, external DNS, and IDS. Needless to say, all the latest security patches were loaded and applied. However, USMMA Midshipman Allen Hsiao admits they tweaked things a little within the rules of the guidelines. Workstations were locked down to the point where end-users could only run Outlook, Internet Explorer, and NotePad, with options further tightened down in each of the programs. End users could not save files to any storage medium except for a floppy disk or a USB drive. In a normal, real world network, end users normally require much more functionality from their workstation, said Hsiao. 8:32:50 AM    comment []

Female-Friendly Philosophy Departments. Julie van Camp has a short paper posted about Female-Friendly [Philosophy] Departments. It’s framed as an evaluation of how sensitive the Gourmet Report is to gender considerations, but that part of the paper was fairly inconclusive in its conclusions, and at some points in its arguments. But towards the end there are several good points raised that seem like worthwhile considerations for people wanting to choose grad departments. .... [Thoughts Arguments and Rants] 8:28:12 AM    comment []

campaign ads remixed. "The Integral" has an album of remixed campaign ads called "Campaign Songs," available under a Creative Commons license, and hosted by the Internet Archive. [Lessig Blog] 8:27:02 AM    comment []

Why the US granted 'protected' status to Iranian terrorists. Did the Pentagon, in effect, create a category of 'good terrorists'? [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 8:26:38 AM    comment []

first glance at Opera 7.50. Opera 7.50 has recently been released. For the first time, Opera for Mac is no longer a version behind the Windows version. Opera 7.50 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Of course, Mac users upgrading from Opera 6 will... [explodedlibrary.info] 8:26:11 AM    comment []

Gossip and reputation. Professor Ronald S. Burt is the Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.This presentation of his comes from a Management Conference,held at the University on May 14 2004.These slides come from handouts for the Chicago GSB Executive MBA course, Strategic Leadership.This from the presentation. "Appendix I:Why Don't People Discount Gossip?In other words,why does casual conversation have such a powerful impact?Cognition (mental defect) — We have a preference for information consistent with our predispositions; i.e., people are likely to believe stories about you that are consistent with their preconceptions of you (e.g.,Klayman, 1995, on confirmation bias).Sociability (naiveté) — Gossip is the verbal analogue to grooming among primates. Its purpose is to create and maintain relations, so information obtained is a by-product that feels unintentional, and so unbiased (Gambetta, 1994; Dunbar, 1996).Identity (psychological need) — People define who they are in part with negative stereotypes of people on the social boundary of their group.Insiders believe stories about you that are consistent with stories they know about people like you (e.g., Durkheim, 1893; Elias and Scotson, 1965; Erikson, 1966).Social Construction/Contagion (no absolute truth against which one can discount gossip) — When confronted with an ambiguous decision, we tend to imitate the opinions and behaviors of peers. People in groups who don't know you and have to deal with you will discuss you among themselves, create an image of you, then deal with the image as if it were you (e.g., Festinger, Schachter & Back, 1950; Pfeffer, Salancik & Leblebici, 1976; Zucker, 1977; Burt, 1987; Rogers, 1995)".And this on the peril of "groupthink". "...Irving Janis coined the term "groupthink" in 1971 when he used research on conformity within cohesive groups to explain prominent policy failures (1971 "Groupthink" Psychology Today Magazine, 1972 book "Victims of Groupthink"Houghton Mifflin, expanded edition in 1982). The research from which he drew showed that pressure on individuals to conform to group opinion increased with group cohesion(strong ties inside, weak ties outside, as we discussed with respect to high-performance teams)...." How Gossip Defines Your Reputation and How to Work It workshop on the social capital of trust, information,and gossip in markets and organizations [Smart Mobs] 8:26:02 AM    comment []

Cellphone directory gets hoots, hollers: Privacy advocates cry foul, but are they overreacting? By Paul Davidson, USA Today. The days of searching in vain for someone's cellphone number are almost over. Starting early next year, you'll be able to call directory assistance to get a mobile number. Not every number will be listed in the directory being compiled by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, the trade group that represents wireless carriers. Cellphone customers must give permission, or opt in, to be added. And you'll have to call 411 to get a number: There won't be a directory in print or online. Still, the service is drawing criticism from consumer advocates who say it encroaches on a rare bastion of privacy. These devices are considered much more personal than landline (phones), says Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. People tend to carry them everywhere and answer them when they ring. What's more, cellphone subscribers pay for incoming calls, even unwanted ones. Such concerns prompted Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 wireless company, to keep its 40 million subscribers out of the directory. We believe customers come to us with the expectation of privacy, and it's too early in the process to understand what releasing customer numbers to a database will mean, says Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Brenda Raney. 4:30:06 AM    comment []