Subscribe to this blog in Radio:
Didn't find what you were looking for?
E-mail this blog's author, Bruce Umbaugh:  |
|
 |
Friday, May 13, 2005 |
Naval Academy knows its cybersecurity,
by Dawn S. Onley,
GCN Staff.
The United States Naval Academy beat out the four other
service
academies in the annual Cyber Defense Exercise, designed to equip
students with the ability to protect the nation's critical information
systems.
Sponsored by the National Security Agency, CDX challenges each academy
team to design, build and configure a real-world computer network
simulating a deployed joint service command. A network operations
"red" team, composed of NSA and Defense personnel, then identifies the
vulnerabilities and attempts to hack each network over a four-day
period.
The teams are evaluated on how well they maintain services, as well as
on efforts to detect, respond to and recover from network security
breaches.
. . .
The United States Air Force Academy and the United States Military
Academy tied for runners-up. Other participants were the United States
Merchant Marine Academy, last year's winner, and the United States
Coast Guard Academy.
Coverage of last year's CDX
2:07:19 PM 
|
|
Fortune Cookie Has Got Their Numbers [Washington Post: Top News]
A bunch of folks all hit five of six in a lottery, yielding big payouts to each. Those running the lottery were surprised at the (highly unlikely, duh!) result. Turns out they all played numbers from a fortune cookie.
In reponse, the cookie manufacturer is going to move from having employees select the numbers to be printed that day to having some random selection.
7:31:10 AM
|
|
Decoding Bees' Wild Waggle Dances. Scientists strap radar rigs onto honeybees to test a theory about the buzzing insects' bizarre method of communication. Turns out those complicated dance steps really do tell a story. By Wendy M. Grossman. [Wired News]
7:31:06 AM
|
|
Karaoke CD Label Sues Rivals Over Issue of Licensing, by Jeff Leeds, NYT (but not evident in my NYT RSS feed this a.m.).
I want a level playing field for my business, [Jan Stevens, of Sybersound] said. It's not fair that the other companies are undercutting our prices by stealing.
Executives at two of the companies named in the lawsuit, the UAV Corporation and the Singing Machine Company, declined to comment. The other defendants, the Madacy Entertainment Group, Audio Stream Inc., Top Tunes, Compass Productions Inc. and BCI Eclipse, could not be reached.
The turmoil in the karaoke world represents a twist on the industry's piracy troubles. While the major record corporations are fighting an uphill battle against theft on the Internet, where MP3 files trade free on far-flung networks, they have been largely missing, or ignoring, evidence of a different sort of piracy on standard karaoke CD's readily available on the shelves of the nation's best-known retailers. Sybersound has collected rivals' CD's featuring songs by U2, Abba and Bon Jovi, who all prohibit licensing of their music for karaoke, the company said.
7:25:51 AM
|
|
Scott: Tracking bugs with the Times.
The response to my idea in January that newsrooms borrow a page from the open-source playbook and adopt bug-tracking systems wasn't exactly thunderous (not that I had any reason to expect anything else!). But I was pleasantly surprised -- while reading the New York Times' recent internal report recommending a variety of smart moves the paper should take to combat the erosion of readers' trust -- to see that the flagship paper of American journalism is talking about taking a step in this direction. The Times committee proposes that the paper begin to use a database to track errors:
| |
Last year we published almost 3,200 corrections. We can do better. Our goal should be to eliminate error, beyond acknowledging it and correcting it.
The proposed database would track the types and causes of errors that lead to corrections. The data would come from a mandatory form filled out by the individual(s) responsible for an error. It would include a draft of the proposed correction, with an explanation of how the mistake happened and how it could have been avoided. |
This is OK, as far as it goes, but notice that the responsibility for entering the error falls on the party least motivated to do so -- the "individual responsible for an error." The resulting system may help the Times notice patterns of errors that it can try to remedy. But it won't fundamentally improve the feedback loop between the paper and the world it is trying to cover -- unless and until the database goes public. Why not open it up and let readers file "bugs" against stories? As I wrote in a follow-up post in January, "I think this approach would pay off best for a newsroom that is having difficulty convincing readers that the publication is actually listening to them. If you showed the public that you were recording and responding to the issues they raised -- whether you end up publishing a correction or simply saying, 'We don't think that needs correcting, and here's why' -- I think you'd start to bank some confidence and trust pretty quickly."
The difference between a private database and a public bug-tracker is the difference between a management tool and an open channel of communication. The former isn't a bad thing, but the latter is what you want if you really intend to restore public trust.
. . .
[Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]
7:21:41 AM
|
|
Paranoia or prudence? Useful tips on anonymous blogging.
Great resources on how to blog anonymously:
- a guide to blogging anonymously from the Electronic Frontier Foundation;
- criticism and comments on EFF's guide from fantomNews, with further tips on the difficult job of blocking search engine spiders from archiving or indexing your pages, including a 'cache buster script';
- additional information from EFF supplementing their guide and responding to criticism of it;
- a 'technical guide' to accompany EFF's guide, including sources for encryption tech and lists of proxy servers.
It's an interesting irony that the Web gives an illusion of anonymity to those carrying on 'private' e-mail correspondence, or using pseudonyms to blog or post to bulletin boards, when in fact much of this activity is vulnerable to surveillance by governments or other entities with sufficient resources, i.e. expertise, technology and time. Another irony is that use of some privacy tools such as encryption can backfire - as the technical guide notes, the mere use of encryption to cloak e-mail messages could lead authorities to scrutinize an individual's Internet activity more closely.
[via this post on beSpacific]
By the way, on the subject of privacy, an interesting analysis by Fantomaster of how search engines like Google and vendors like Amazon use records and analysis of users' searches to 'data-mine' commercially valuable patterns and trends.
[Life Tenant]
7:16:25 AM
|
|
hoder: Outcome of my London trip: One weblog, one news website.
The London trip was not only wonderful, but also very fruitful.
First, I suggested the openDemocracy people to start a blog about the Iranian presidential elections in June. They liked the idea and made it possible. So today we lunched Iran Scan 1384 with the help of oD staff, especially their New York office.
Secondly, only two days before leaving, I received an offer to make a complete news website which is run by exile Iranian journalists. It's titled Rooz and was actually lunched last Tuesday. The neat thing about Rooz is that, in addition to the web version, they also make a front page similar to one of a real printed newspaper, hoping that one day they could actually publish a print version of it.
As far as I know, it's funded by a Netherlands organization as a smart way to support Iranian journalists who have recently left Iran due to the unbearable pressure by the regime's judiciary and security apparatus.
[Editor: Myself (English)]
7:15:51 AM
|
|
|
