Netizen

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Cyber Security: Growing Challenges

So much is happening online. There's much behind firewalls, but hackers have ended up everywhere before. Worms come down to your desktop, and if you are lucky you get to retrieve your work. Recently a teen spread a worm on Twitter. What's next? Gmail? So it is not like the cloud is sacred territory. There is no sacred territory.

There are rogue individuals, pranksters, spammers, spam spewing companies. Then there are the evil ones. They want your computer down. They want your system down. They want to steal your password, your credit card number. They show up in your inbox hoping to lure you to click on something or the other. It is a numbers game for them. They are counting on very few people to click, and those very few routinely do.

But what about hostile states and terrorist organizations? If the Al Qaeda wants to explode a dirty bomb, does it not fantasize of cyber attacks? It has recruited smart doctors before. Could it recruit hackers? What could a cyber cold war look like? What about a hot one?

For the most part we are counting on the good people in the information technology sector to stay numerous and to always stay one step ahead of the evil ones. We are counting on the market forces. But when it comes to global law enforcement coordination, we are as ill-prepared as on a host of other global issues. People in finance talk of tax havens. There are hacker havens all over the world. We count on hackers being not smart enough to create and spread the next deadly worm. But they routinely do. We keep building up the immune system, we keep finding cures for diseases, kind of like for the biological types over history.

And safety is not all about technology. It is also about criminals going high tech to commit crimes they were already committing before the internet came along.

Just like for global finance, for global terrorism, for global warming, there is ultimately only a global solution to cyber security. Cyber security has to be approached from many different angles if it is to be meaningfully tackled.

In The News

The Cold War moves to cyberspace CNet shadowy foes that prefer to cloak their identities. the United States is "under cyberattack virtually all the time, every day" ...... The Wall Street Journal reported that cyberspies had breached the DOD's Joint Strike Fighter project and also had penetrated the Air Force's air-traffic-control system. ..... Chinese hackers attacked private and government Web sites in the U.S. in retaliation after NATO accidentally struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo crisis. ....... Russia defines cyberwar as a force multiplier while China views cyber war as a way to get control of an enemy without the need for engaging on a physical field of battle. "It's straight out of Sun Tzu" ........ In March 2007, Estonian Web sites got knocked out after the regime decided to move a Soviet statue from one park to another. Last August, when Russian tanks rolled across the border, Georgia's government ministries also got overwhelmed by a coordinated cyberattack. ....... defenders of Russia attribute the brief cyberwar to nationalists acting independently.
Bill Clinton: Business is the key to climate change
Apple soars during economic gloom
Microsoft opens up its answer to Google AdSense
Would a ratings system improve Craigslist?
IBM puts Oracle to the sword with EnterpriseDB
Report: Kindle 2 costs $185.49 to build
No surprise here: Oprah huge for Twitter
Firefox 3.0.9 targets 12 security vulnerabilities
Security flaw leads Twitter, others to pull OAuth support
Face recognition comes to Flickr
Gates: Cyberattacks a constant threat hackers stole information about $300 billion fighter jet program.
'60 Minutes' video: Cold fusion is hot again

Camelback Displays: Every Type Of Portable Display

Every type of portable display under the sun, that's the idea.

Aren't you glad every type of portable display under the sun is all under one roof? Does that not make your life easier? Camelback Displays got your back alright.

By the time you have made your purchases you will realize there are many, many different ways of putting together your displays to have the maximum impact on your audience. Many permutations and combinations can be imagined. But not before you have made your basic purchases of the essential display items.

(This is an advertisement.)

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter

InRev TwitIn
TopFollowed
MyTweetFollowers

I only follow about 200 people on Twitter now, and it is not like I read every tweet by every person I follow. You log in, and most of the time you skim through that first page. You spend some time in the stream. So the best way to have a more representative stream might be to follow a large number of people.

But I also like the idea of having a smaller group of people. For that I think I got TweetDeck. There I can create a group for the current 200 people. That way I can get the best of both worlds: TweetDeck to follow a small, intimate group, or two, or three - I also have a group with only 20 people there - and Twitter as a marketing tool.

I am also driven by a desire to jack up the traffic for this blog.

A few minutes back I read this article by my friend in Bangalore Bhupendra Khanal, the top Tweet in that city measured by the number of followers he has - he is also from Nepal like me - and he kind of made me think.

Tweeters: Here's The Growing Formulae! go to a mass follower .... and follow his followers
http://help.twitter.com/forums/10713/entries/14959

Enter Guy Kawasaki: Looking For Mr. Goodtweet: How To Pick Up Followers On Twitter

Kevin Rose: 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Twitter Is Not Micro
The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter

Monday, April 20, 2009

Stephen Hawking Has Taken Sick

I was not around when Newton was around, I was not around when Einstein was around, I missed those dudes by a few centuries combined in passing, but I have been around when Stephen Hawking has been around, and the thought gives me tickles.

My introduction to Hawking was through his book, A Brief History Of Time. I first read it during my Class 10 year, which ordinarily would have been the sophomore year of high school in the American system, except I went to this school in Kathmandu founded by the British, and we did both the Nepali high school thing - high school ended after 10, not 12 years - and the British O and A Levels (a guest speaker one day talked of "A Levels and B Levels," this top doctor dude), long story short, we would end up having 13 years of school. We got told that really prepared us for college. And the O and A Levels came by way of the Cambridge University Board. Hawking was a professor there. That's stretching it, but still. (My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher)

I understood the book during the first reading. It read like a novel, I was able to follow all its concepts: that same year I also read Ted Sorensen's Kennedy, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I have been claiming my physics smarts ever since. Around the same time I came face to face with the anti-Madhesi prejudice warps that existed and exists to this day in Nepal and when it came my way by way of the school administration, it felt like waking up to gravity, something fundamental, something that had been around a while, something now whose presence I felt acutely, but lacked any vocabulary to express, more, lacked any power to do something about it. The power was to come two decades later when I threw myself into the Madhesi Kranti in Nepal from the safety of New York City.

I acquired a physics like fascination for social reality. Before I got hit by the social gravity, I wanted to be a medical doctor, that was the first thing I wanted to be in life. Then I realized I don't need a microscope to see germs, I could see them with my naked eyes.

I feel like I am both a high school and a college dropout. I was emotionally absent the final three years of high school, and the final four years of college: I did five years, it is called changing your major too many times.

Group Dynamics

And Hawking speaks to me more today than ever before. Well, I am a tech startup guyperson.

NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama

China’s Influence Grows Along With Its Car Sales After a century in which American tastes largely set the course of the global automotive market, China is poised to increasingly take on the role of global trendsetter.
The Twitter Revolution The company is hiring like crazy -- it expects to double its size in the next month or two .... Even faster than Google, Amazon and eBay in their days, the three-year-old Twitter has become deeply embedded in the culture.
Twitter & LSD - 25 Similarities LSD alters users’ perceptions of time. What seems like a minute can actually be hours....... Just as mundane experiences can appear fantastic-plastic while on LSD, so too can the experience of otherwise trivial bits of information appear mind-expanding.
Stephen Hawking Very Ill Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks
Oracle Buys Sun ..... deal halts a downward spiral for Sun ... marks a continuation of Oracle's half-decade-long acquisition tear
History Of Silicon Valley plucky entrepreneurs who start from nothing and against all odds, build a successful company.
Bush And The Rule Of Law The use of torture is part of the laws of war and only Congress has the constitutional authority
Heat Advisory For San Francisco
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write Every genuinely revolutionary technology implants some kind of "aha" moment in your memory
29 Years Of Robert Mugabe The once prosperous, successful nation has since devolved into a lawless state under the rule of the same man who fought for independence nearly 30 years ago.
Iran's President Slams Israel, Prompts Walkouts Ahmadinejad described the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians
Facebook's Recruiting Problem, Explained Facebook's people problem isn't limited to executive retention. The hot startup with over 200 million users also has a surprisingly hard time recruiting new employees -- from top executives to college grads to star Googlers.
Crowd Forms Against an Algorithm On Monday, Amazon.com confessed to “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that caused thousands of books — a large proportion of them gay and lesbian themed — to lose their sales rankings, making them difficult to find in basic searches.
Obamaism: Charm and Disarm The Barack Obama global charm offensive continues unabated as he returns to Washington from Trinidad and Tobago where he spent two days as the main attraction and the great hope at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. In a single weekend, Obama completely transformed the diplomatic landscape of the region, by saying the most reasonable, middle-of-the-road things—We are interested in a different kind of relationship with Cuba. Venezuela is no threat to us; why not be courteous?

FranchiseAdvantage: Computer Franchise, Internet Franchise

FranchiseAdvantage.com connects you to the right franchise, be it computer franchise, or internet franchise, among many other franchise opportunities.

You can launch your own franchise, buy an existing one, or buy an individually owned and operated business. The site helps you with all of the three. The reverse is also true. If you want to sell a franchise you have, the site helps you with that as well, obviously.

FranchiseAdvantage.com is also in the recycling business, only it recycles businesses and franchises. The site makes it possible for you to "search, research, and contact." It is "middle man." I found listings from all over the country at the site. Some have called it "the best site for buying a franchise."

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NexGen: Solvent Recovery System, Waste Recovery System

NexGen is located in Lindenhurst, New York, and is a leader in providing solvent recycling equipment to factories in a large variety of industries. It has over 8,000 customers in both public and private sectors, small and big companies. It helps reduce waste and re-use expensive solvents. It helps protect the environment in the process. It is a leader in waste solvent handling solutions.

NexGen is well positioned as a company as we become more conscious environmentally as a population, and it feels like we might be on the cusp of a green tech revolution. A company like NexGen makes environment sense, but then it also makes business sense. It helps with cost reduction.

NexGen offers the following: Solvent Recovery, Solvent Recovery System, Waste Recovery System.

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