If you use an iPad or an iPhone and you're at all technical you'll probably have a love-hate relationship with the default Safari browser. The problem is that Safari does the job but it just seems so, well, simplistic and lacks a certain desirable "nerdiness." You can do all sorts of cool stuff with other browsers on other operating systems, but Safari on iOS? Yawn. But I have an answer!
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Software
Open Source Tools for Worship
Open source is a way of life for a lot of people, maybe even a religion of sorts for others, but that's not the kind of "open source worship" I'm referring to here. First, some background.
Submitted by Rikki Endsley on Mon, 11/28/11 - 4:28pm.
On Thanksgiving, my daughter and I joined my parents for our usual dinner together. This year, the minister of my father's small church and her sister ate with us, too. Over dinner, my father told me that he'd finally installed Ubuntu on his computer at home. Read more
Privacy about to punted again when 'balanced' against need for govt spying
There was talk about balancing privacy against the online spying needs of governments and that this surveillance and tracking should not bother you if you've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide. Balance? Bite me.
Submitted by Ms. Smith on Mon, 11/28/11 - 3:34pm.
With the cyber-world such as it is now, constant breaches because companies are careless and lax about protecting our personal information, it might be true what the Office of Inadequate Security pointed out, "Maybe all companies should add 'check Pastebin' to their daily security to-do list." As if there's not enough personal info dumped about us all to invade privacy, any time there is talk about security and you hear the word 'balance' being used, citizens' privacy is about to be punted. This time it was in regard to online spying Read more
CeBIT Open Source 2012 Call for Projects
Open source projects are invited to apply for free exhibit space at CeBIT Open Source 2012.
Submitted by Rikki Endsley on Fri, 11/25/11 - 6:03pm.
CeBIT 2012 will take place March 6-10 in Hannover, Germany. Open source projects are invited to apply for free exhibit space, and non-commercial projects will have special consideration. The deadline for applications is December 18, 2011. Read more
DARPA to banish “geeky, formal” way code defects are eradicated
DARPA program seeks to make complicated software code verification process into a game
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 11/22/11 - 1:44pm.
For every 1,000 lines of code, one to five bugs are introduced. And getting those bugs out of the millions of lines of software code that run today's complex systems is costly and only performed by highly specialized researchers with deep knowledge of software and mathematical theorem-proving techniques. Read more
Nine successful, effective IT project tips
GAO looks at some successful government projects and finds nine best practices others could emulate
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 11/22/11 - 11:18am.
Most often when the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office are called into to check out an agency, process or project they are looking for something that has gone wrong. This week, however the group took a look at some government IT projects that have gone right and came up with some best practices other government agencies or in public corporations could emulate to achieve success in their own IT projects. Read more
Facebook takes credit for shrinking degrees of separation between people around the world
Studies with University of Milan show 6 degrees of separation now down to 4.74
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Tue, 11/22/11 - 8:48am.
Citing what it calls the largest social networking studies ever, Facebook says the common notion of six degrees of separation between people knowing other people has become outdated. Read more
MalCon: Malware Hacking Conference for Twisted Pen Testers
Twisted pen testers (hackers) and malcoders are meeting at a malware conference to release malware for the Kinect so it secretly spies on you, exploit exploit kits, show off invisible malware for Apple and to get root on Windows 8 with a bootkit.
Submitted by Ms. Smith on Mon, 11/21/11 - 3:03pm.
While most Americans will be lulled into a Turkey coma, or perhaps fighting Black Friday crowds, a MalCon conference in Mumbai will be kicking off with a wicked 'muhahaha' from malware and information security researchers as they dive into twisted pen testing. It's a bit like the anti-antivirus crowd. While MalCon said it does not promote malware creation, it also laughs and answers "no" to the question of if it's a trap to profile malcoders. Read more
Raytheon gets $10.5M to develop "serious games"
US intelligence group wants games that eliminate bias, improve decision-making
Submitted by Layer 8 on Fri, 11/18/11 - 3:18pm.
These aren't your basic video gaming systems here. The US government gave Raytheon BBN Technologies a $10.5 million today to develop what it called "serious games" that result in better decision-making by teaching players to recognize and diminish the effects of their own biases when analyzing information used to make decisions. Read more
Hacker takes aim at Homeland, posts 'proof' of hacking SCADA for Houston's water supply
DHS selects Online Trust Alliance for cyber training to increase awareness and to stem the flood of spear phishing attacks on government agencies meant to steal secrets or wreak havoc on critical U.S. infrastructure. Cyber mayhem strikes as hackers launch digital attack that destroyed a water pump in real time and the physical world of Springfield, Illinois. Unhappy with Homeland Security's response, a hacker took aim at the SCADA system behind Houston's water supply network and posted 'proof of concept' hack.
Submitted by Ms. Smith on Fri, 11/18/11 - 1:21pm.
What would make you nibble, take the bait, and open an email? Because you think you know the sender is trusted, or because it appears to be related to something that happened in real time in our physical world like an earthquake or a hurricane? Read more
Mark's rating: 
Grazing: Better browsing under iOS
By Mark Gibbs on Fri, 11/18/2011 - 12:00am.
Too much social media networking: Paranoia of Big Brother surveillance may destroy ya
The biggest cybersecurity agency in Europe peeked at the future, 2014, to predict the effects of online social media connectivity 24/7 and concluded that too much social networking could make you paranoid and feel like you are constantly under surveillance by Big Brother.
Submitted by Ms. Smith on Wed, 11/16/11 - 12:34pm.
If you think 24/7 connectivity is nothing new for you, and you constantly check in on Foursquare, use location-aware apps, update Facebook or other social media statuses with your geo-tagged photos, then you probably have no location-awareness sharing issues and are not overly concerned if you lose locational privacy. In the year 2014, your futuristic automated smart home can update statuses for you; even more personal data will be logged coming from emerging technology; interaction with the power grid, smart meters, IP TVs, smart appliances, movie theaters harvesting emotions, robots, GPS in cars and smartphones, and products that stalk you will create a life-log. By 2014 there will be a plethora of programs, mobile apps and devices to track you that will create and store records of your movements, activities and behaviors; this is the scene that Europe's biggest cybersecurity agency studied "to predict positive and negative effects of online 'life-logging' on citizens and society." Read more
What 11/11/11 on Twitter looked like
United States brings up the rear on Eleven Day
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 11/16/11 - 8:59am.
Last week we mulled how to cover the coming of Nov. 11, 2011, or 11/11/11, on the pages of Network World's website. We didn't want to bite on vendors' marketing gimmicks tied to the unique date, and hadn't come across any related security threats or Year 2000 type glitches either. We came up pretty darn empty. Read more
"There Would Be No Cloud Without Open Source" - Simon Crosby
XenSource pioneer talks about cloud, security and open source
Submitted by Alan Shimel on Wed, 11/16/11 - 8:20am.
I first became aware of cloud security issues listening to Simon Crosby, fresh off of taking in millions and millions of Citrix dollars when they bought XenSource, speak with my friend Chris Hoff at several conferences, podcasts and blog posts. In many ways Crosby and Hoff brought cloud security and even cloud computing itself to the forefront in many peoples minds. Read more
DARPA calls for powerful, secure wireless system to link space satellites
DARPA wants system that lets multiple small satellites to communicate, act as one
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 11/15/11 - 5:00pm.
Getting a series of small satellites to communicate and act as one unit in space while taking commands from Earth-bound command centers is a gargantuan wireless task. But the researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are looking for technology that does just that. Read more
IBM: Analytics, mobile, cloud, social applications will drive future IT development
IBM survey says cloud applications will outpace virtualization as the top cloud development in the next 24 months
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 11/15/11 - 11:45am.
It's clear by the increasing use of analytics software that companies are struggling to get their hands around the huge amounts of data it takes to run a successful business. But developing social, mobile, cloud computing and other applications are also driving the need for new technical skills. Read more
OpenStack, Cloud Builders And The Future Of The Cloud
Public, Private or Hybrid, OpenStack wants to be your cloud platform of choice
Submitted by Alan Shimel on Fri, 11/11/11 - 11:01am.
Earlier this week I wrote about a new service from Rackspace Cloud Builders division called Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition. It is a cloud management as a service (CM-aaS) offering that allows anyone to set up a private cloud on their own premises, in a Rackspace data center or even another data center. Read more
Google Code-in 2011 Contest Gears Up
Google unveils the 18 open source organizations participating in contest for teens.
Submitted by Rikki Endsley on Thu, 11/10/11 - 3:38pm.
Yesterday Google unveiled the 18 open source organizations participating in the 2011 Google Code-in contest for 13-17 year old students: Read more
- Apertium
- FreeBSD
- GNOME
- Haiku
- Hedgewars
- KDE
- LimeSurvey
- MoinMoin
- OpenIntents
- OpenSUSE
- Parrot Virtual
- PySoy Game Engine
- RTEMS
- Sahana Foundation
- Sympy
- The Perl Foundation
- Tux4Kids
- VideoLAN
Secret Snoop Conference for Gov't Spying: Go Stealth, Hit a Hundred Thousand Targets
Forget passive monitoring; go stealth to hit your target says the Hacking Team which sells hacking techniques and tools for invasive surveillance of the masses. Better yet, hit a hundred thousand targets. As the Police once sang, "Every breath you take and every move you make...I'll be watching you," and that seems to sum up the Italian vendor Hacking Team and what it pimps at Intelligence Support Systems (ISS) conferences.
Submitted by Ms. Smith on Thu, 11/10/11 - 3:21pm.
Forget passive monitoring for government spying; go stealth to hit your target says the Hacking Team which sells hacking techniques and tools for invasive surveillance of the masses. Better yet, hit a hundred thousand targets. We looked at legal means, with a Trojan horse warrant for remote computer searches. But what about those areas of mass surveillance without a warrant that seem shaded grey and lawfully questionable to many of us concerned about privacy? There are interesting conferences in which the doors are locked to Joe and Jane Doe, but thrown wide open for intelligence agencies and law enforcement. So what goes on behind those doors that are shut to the general public? IIS World Americas is open only to "law enforcement, intelligence, homeland security analysts and telecom operators responsible for lawful interception, electronic investigations and network intelligence." There are many vendors of products that assist the government in spying, but the Hacking Team should send an eerie eavesdropping chill up your spine. Read more
DARPA to detail program that radically alters security authentication techniques
DARPA wants technology that jumps beyond strong password protection
Submitted by Layer 8 on Thu, 11/10/11 - 12:17pm.
Researchers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will next week detail a new program it hopes will develop technology to dramatically change computer system security authorization. Read more
Mark's rating: 
Programming in Lua
By Mark Gibbs on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 11:03am.
I haven't talked about programming languages for a while so here goes: We start this week with the free, open source (MIT License) Lua language.
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