Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.
Anonymous
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Corporations and Facebook datas
Dan Nosowitz at Fast Company reports a Gizmodo news that says “[…] The data collected was public, of course–all of these corporations could have just found this data on Google. But after white hat hacker (the good kind, if your definition of “good” is malleable) Ron Bowles collected all of this public data and smushed it into one massive file, it may have sparked an interest that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Sure, these companies could have found this data elsewhere, at any time–but they likely didn’t. […] [The list of companies, reported by Gizmodo is the one that follows]:
A.C. Nielsen; Agilent Technologies; Apple; AT&T, possibly Macrovision; Baker & McKenzie; BBC; Bertelsmann Media; Boeing; Church of Scientology; Cisco Systems; Cox Enterprises; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Deutsche Telekom; Disney; Duracell; Ernst & Young; Fujitsu; Goldman Sachs; Halliburton; HBO & Company; Hilton Hospitality; Hitachi; HP; IBM; Intel; Intuit; Levi Strauss & Co.; Lockheed-Martin Corp; Lucasfilm; Lucent Technologies; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co; Mcafee; MetLife; Mitsubishi; Motorola; Northrop Grumman; Novell; Nvidia; O’Melveny & Myers; Oracle Corp; Pepsi Cola; Procter and Gamble; Random House; Raytheon; Road Runner RRWE; Seagate; Sega; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; Sprint; Sun Microsystems; Symantec; The Hague; Time Warner Telecom; Turner Broadcasting System; Ubisoft Entertainment; Unisys; United Nations; Univision; USPS; Viacom; Vodafone; Wells Fargo; Xerox PARC. […]” (full article at http://www.fastcompany.com/1675872/major-companies-are-downloading-the-data-from-those-100-million-public-facebook-profiles).
Again is the proof that Facebook is not safe in any way and that, generally speaking, the net is not the safest place to keep datas.
Unfortunately, the internet is a big and complex structure, while Facebook is a privately held company without the basic knowledge on how to safely treat datas (either personal or not).
A company holding informations (sensitive or not) of about 1/12 of world population should not be authorized to do so without a clear proof of their capabilities in safeguarding datas.
But this covers about the half of the problem, because the other part is people putting personal datas everywhere without having theknowledge of the uses and availability the datas.
I think that while a serious action should be taken against Facebook (at least to make them think of the problems they are causing), on users consciousness is a battle lost before starting.
This post as a comment also at http://www.fastcompany.com/1675872/major-companies-are-downloading-the-data-from-those-100-million-public-facebook-profiles
Video game fonts
How to geek publishes some links to download game fonts (full article at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21794/desktop-fun-video-game-fonts/).
Have a look
The closest thing to world power
Rosa Golijan at Gizmodo reports a news presented also by BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8855000/8855460.stm) and Popsci (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-07/order-seven-cyber-guardians-around-world-now-hold-keys-internet) on seven people choosen to have the keys to restart the internet “[…] The basic idea is that in the event of an Internet catastrophe, the DNSSEC (domain name system security) could be damaged or compromised and we’d be left without a way to verify if a URL is pointing to the correct website.A minimum of five of the seven keyholders – one each from Britain, the U.S., Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China, and the Czech Republic – would have to converge at a U.S. base with their keys to restart the system and connect everything once again. […]” (full article at http://gizmodo.com/5597964/seven-people-have-been-entrusted-with-the-keys-to-the-internet).
This is the picture of the keys:
Those persons holding the cards are really those with the biggest power in the world. Though the aim is peacefull and reasonable, is quite scaring to have this concentration of power.
Apple censorship: write or wrong?
Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo reports that Apple seems to have censored the two best sellers of her bookstore. The problem? That they were short stories of erotic content written by Carl East (full article at http://gizmodo.com/5598114/is-apple-censoring-their-book-store-bestseller-list).
While I think that Steve Jobs and Apple have the right to rule inside their market place and platforms as they best like (at the end, rules are known before entering the game,…) until they don’t limit agreed rights, on the other side I have two points:
a) for how many time this chensorhip will be applicable, considering the breaches in apps and books selection that exists (because in my opinion, some very light xxx applications and books are admitted since they don’t become so much visible) and money they bring to App store
b) why is so difficult to have a differentiated offering for those willing to access xxx applications (couldn’t be ethical for someone, but brings a lot of bucks…. 🙂 )
This post as a comment also at http://gizmodo.com/5598114/is-apple-censoring-their-book-store-bestseller-list
Wikileaks pros and cons
The big Wikileaks bombshell happened so fastl and so furious it is difficult to judge the real consequences.
Greg Mitchell at Alternet (http://www.alternet.org/authors/6547/) reports a good walthrough the over 90 thousand documents released (full article at http://www.alternet.org/world/147635/wikileaks_bombshell_on_afghan_war:_what_you_need_to_know_).
I’m not for or against this kind of scoop.
Because on one side I put freedom of speech, on the other the risks that are taken in revealing sensitive informations.
How I see the world 