Google has begun a practice of flagging Google accounts that are being accessed from unusually parts of the world. Typically, you access your Google account from a relatively small geographic area. Home, work, and areas around your city are areas where you are most likely to log in. In response to an attack on Google’s Gmail servers in January, presumably by the Chinese government, the search company has started flagging users’ accounts if they are being accessed from abnormal parts of the world for that user.
This practice is nothing new. If your credit card information has been stolen and big-ticket items are being purchased rapidly, the credit card company will put a hold on that card and contact you. This is no different.
This is a generally positive development and should help to discourage at least a few attacks on Google’s mail servers. However, according to the Ars Technica article linked to earlier in this post, there is still a backdoor into Google’s systems via ActiveSync. Citing a blog post from Gabriel Landau at Independent Security Evaluators, it is possible to circumvent the Gmail access logs, which is how Gmail knows where it is being accessed from. One only needs proper credentials for the account in question to read and send emails with that account and no one can stop it because ActiveSync cannot be disabled like IMAP or POP can.
Assuming Google patches that gaping hole in its fence soon, I think that it is doing better to protect the security of its users from unauthorized access than it was before the Chinese attack. Call me a Google fanboy, but I was happy to see Google take action after the attack and work to make its users safer.
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis is an urban campus shared by Indiana University and Purdue University, two large, well-funded public education institutions. There are Schools of Computer Science, Computer Information Technology, and Informatics. IU’s University Information Technology Services does an excellent job of supporting students on all of IU’s campuses. (I am not just saying that because I work for UITS.)
However, despite all the up-to-date computer labs with dozens of computers, free software deals from Microsoft and Adobe, and 24/7 technical support, IU seems to be lacking one thing: open source. There is some Linux/UNIX software available through IU’s software site, IUWare. However, the amount of Linux software there is far outmatched by the software available for Mac and Windows.
Indiana University has deals with several software vendors, in particular Microsoft and Adobe. These corporations provide free software to faculty and students in the hopes that they will continue to use their respective software after graduation. A copy of Adobe CS5 Design Premium can cost as much $1,900. A Microsoft Office 2008 license can cost at least $150. OpenOffice may not be as feature-rich as Microsoft Office, but it would certainly get the job done for 99% of users and it’s free.
Unless it is detailed in IU’s agreement with Microsoft and Adobe that it not push open-source options too hard, I do not see why it should not become a bit more open about open source. At the very least, it is free software that the University will not have to haggle over every few years.
There. That was my first rant over open source. I will get hate mail.
I had to write about this. This may piss off some iPhone case makers. Apple’s newly-announced iPhone 4 is using the same scratch-resistant tempered glass on the back as it is on the front.
Any iPod or iPhone owner could tell you that the polished backs of all of these devices have had a difficult time with tiny scratches. These devices always look so shiny and beautiful when they come out of the box for the first time, but then they are tarnished by life in the real world, (just like people).
I do not think this blog post exists for any reason beyond my excitement that I may own an iPhone 4 (or possibly iPhone 5) and that it will not need a case the way my 3GS does now.
There is little controversy when discussing the need for more renewable energy sources in the United States’ energy mix, with emphasis on solar and wind power. The controversy begins when it comes to deciding where the physical infrastructure for these energy sources will be placed.
This has led to the (somewhat derogatory) term “NIMBY,” which stands for “Not in my Back Yard.” It describes people who may be enthusiastic about the prospect of the renewable energy industry but do not want its associated physical infrastructure in a place where it will affect the appearance of their properties.
An unfortunate consequence of renewable energy developers being pushed to put more and more wind farms on the grid is that they have become a bit overzealous. Plans and permits are issued quickly and residents who will live nearby these windmill farms ultimately complain. Not all complain, just a few.
This makes it extremely important to get feedback from residents who live near proposed wind and solar farms before beginning any planning on the placement of windmills or solar panels begins. Since we are installing infrastructure that will likely be in place for decades, these windmills and solar power plants will not just be infrastructure – they will be neighbors. It is important to get along with your neighbors, especially when you are trying to improve the public perception of renewable energy nationwide.
If a windmill needs to take a slight performance hit in order to not make a serious impact on the appearance of the landscape, then that is a fair compromise. Saving an unnecessary fight with local residents in exchange for a slight drop in efficiency is not really a drop in efficiency.
Having comprehensive public participation would probably be of more importance in the northeastern states, where population density is much higher than in areas such as the midwest and the southwest. More people would be affected by a new windmill in rural Vermont than in rural Illinois simply because the states are smaller and there is a higher overall population density in Vermont.
If you ever find yourself faced with a “NIMBY,” get them all together and tell them where to put the windmill. They will figure it out.
I realize that this bit of sage wisdom a little late in coming from me, but it must be said. If there is something you do not want others to know or see, do not put it on the internet. It is especially risky to put personal information and incriminating media on a site owned and operated by an “amoral, Asperger’s-like entrepreneur,” as Jason Calacanis described him.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, has developed a reputation as of late for not caring about others’ privacy. Examples would be Facebook’s new, cryptic privacy settings that automatically expose all of your information to the world or attempting to screw over its number-one game developer, Zynga, the creator of Farmville.
If there is one lesson to be learned by end users from all of this, it is to always watch what you put on the web, regardless of how secure or sophisticated the service in question might seem. There are certain details of your life that you would not want to get out into the open and the best way to ensure your private information remains to private is to never share it on the web.
For example, I am comfortable sharing the location where I live. There are nearly 2 million people living in the Indianapolis metropolitan area and it is unlikely that anyone could find me and threaten my personal safety. I imagine it will give someone reading it an idea about my background and who I am, which is a primary goal of social media. I do not share my AIM screen name, mailing address, email address, or phone number anywhere, as these are pieces of personal information that I would not feel comfortable strangers having. Also, Facebook’s ads hook into profile information and target ads appropriately. I do not like to think about who else sees that data. Therefore, I do not share anything vital.
There will always be people like Mark Zuckerberg out there and it is important to guard what you share online very carefully. It can be very easy and satisfying to fill out all those fields, but it could come around to bite you in the end. Show restraint and do not share too much about yourself on the web.
There is a debate growing over the rights of Internet users and network neutrality. Users, on one hand, are demanding that the Internet be completely free and open, without any regulation or traffic throttling. Internet service providers (ISPs), on the other hand, contend that the web has never been totally free and that a certain amount of interference is necessary to ensure all users get a decent web experience.
The reason that this issue has become more important is that more and more of the Internet’s traffic is being shifted to cellular data networks, which are much less robust. European cellular carrier Vodaphone routinely shapes Internet traffic in response to users using too much bandwidth on its network.
The director of Spanish carrier Telefónica’s European regulatory policy, Robert Mourik insists that they are not looking at content when they restrict traffic. Mourik stressed that they are only trying to manage network traffic so that everyone gets a good web experience and not censor anyone.
If I were to throw in my own opinion, I would say that this is an excellent reason for cellular carriers to build out their physical infrastructure so that it can handle the rapidly increasing amount of mobile data traffic. With better hardware and more towers, it may become less necessary to modify Internet traffic in this way.
Source: NY Times
Earlier this year, Google announced that they would stop filtering their Internet search results for the Chinese market, a request made by the Chinese government. This came after a massive attack on Google’s US-based Gmail servers which was likely an attempt by the Chinese government to get information about Chinese dissidents and human rights activists.
In the past few days, Google has moved its operations and personnel from mainland China to the less restrictively-governed Hong Kong. Google.cn will now redirect to google.com.hk.
Naturally, the Chinese government is not too thrilled about this move and even called it “the wrong choice.” Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not really your decision, is it? If Google doesn’t really want to put up with filtering results in your country while at the same time trying to sell themselves as one of the greatest research tools in history, then that is their call. The decision that the Chinese government made is to censor the Internet. They can block Google at any time.
What I found truly bizarre in all of this is that the Chinese people, at least according to the general portrayal of events in the media, actually feel sorry for Google, which confused and frustrated me a bit. Google is going out on a limb here and trying to provide uncensored material to you and feel sorry for them? I do not get it.
Good for Google. I completely agree with their decision here. The Internet was never meant to be censored by anyone, individual or government. A free and open Internet benefits everyone. Hopefully, the Chinese government will someday see the light and lift its restrictions on freedom of speech and information.
I know that this has been done to death, but I felt that I should persist in beating a deceased horse. When I am at work and don’t want it to be obvious that I am on Twitter, I use this nifty little Terminal trick that lets me send out tweets. On my laptop, I took it a step further and wrote a command-line Ruby script that does that and more.
Here are the basics of posting to Twitter through the Terminal. Somewhere on your computer, create a new shell script file. In my case, I will call it twitter.sh. Type this into the new file:
#!/bin/bash
curl -u username:password -d status="$1" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
echo Message sent.
Now it is as simple as running a shell command with your message attached.
./twitter.sh "Hey, I am screwing around at work!"
It is as simple as that. You can create shortcuts that make using this even easier. The most common thing I do when I write this script is to alter the .bash_profile file to save myself the trouble of typing out ./twitter.sh.
Open a new terminal window (or tab) and enter “nano .bash_profile”. (It is not necessary that you use nano, I just prefer it for quick text editing in the Terminal.) Add the following to a new line to the file with the path in quotes being the path to your twitter.sh file and save.
alias tw="~/path/to/twitter.sh"
Now close that Terminal tab and open a new one. That is the only way to get the newly edited .bash_profile to load and your new alias to take effect. To send a message use your alias in place of ./twitter.sh.
tw "I am screwing around at work more efficiently!"
You’re welcome.
News broke on Ars Technica, among other fine tech news sources, that several wireless carriers announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that they are coming together to create their own, unified, somewhat open mobile application store that will provide third-party software to people using their networks. Among this group of carriers is Vodafone, Verizon, Sprint, China Mobile, Orange, and AT&T. Handset manufacturers LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson are also getting in on this deal, presumably because their hardware will be running these applications.
Several of these carriers are already carriers for the iPhone in their respective markets. They claim that this store is not meant to compete head-on with Apple’s App Store directly, but to simply offer third-party software to everyone who does not own a iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android OS smartphone. Apple does not make much money on the App Store, with most of its money coming from hardware sales driven by Apple’s 140,000-application store.
The carriers do not care about Apple’s sales. To them, Apple is just another hardware manufacturer that they do not have a problem slighting in order to increase their own revenue.
It does not seem likely that Apple will allow applications from this other store to run on their phones, opting to retain their locked-down walled garden of applications custom-built for the iPhone OS and interface. It will be interesting, however, how the presence of an application store that will support LG, Samsung, and Ericsson phones will affect sales of the iPhone or even Android-enabled phones.
Patrick Proctor was here 