The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: June 25, 2006

Official News - page 10

WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

I was going to tell you that this week's issue was just a short one, because we are in the middle of moving over to new servers with all the disruption that entails. In the event this issue came out as nearly as long as the regular editions.

Topics that didn't make it included research from IDC and LogicaCMG to the effect that 36% of major outsourcing deals that include transfers of staff run into problems because organisations fail to understand social factors. What a surprise!

Forrester Research discovered that although nearly a third of Europeans have access to the Internet via their mobile phones, only 12% of that third actually use their phones to access the Internet. There's a lesson there for phone companies...

Also according to Forrester Research the main reason that the two thirds of Internet users on dial up have not upgraded to broadband is because a large chunk of them - about a third - can see no benefit to having high speed connections at home. There's also the matter of the greater cost of broadband connections...

Finally, some time back I recommended readers take a look at an interview with John Markoff in the ACM's Ubiquity on-line magazine. I've just finished reading Markoff's fascinating book about how the ideas that were to become central to personal computing and the Internet were created in the 60s and early 70s in the San Francisco area. You can read my review of the book.

Shorts:

Microsoft issued its June security patches this week. There were a round dozen patches updating something like 21 security holes of varying severity. The holes patched include ones in Internet Explorer 5 and 6, image rendering, bugs in JScript, security problems with Windows Media Player, network routing, and more graphics problems which could allow remote code execution. Microsoft Word also came in for security patches, as did Power Point.

As regular readers know, I normally urge people to apply patches as soon as possible. Since one of Microsoft's patches recently slipped in its 'Microsoft Genuine Advantage' spyware program unannounced, I find myself no longer able to unreservedly recommend that Microsoft patches be applied. I think you will have to make up your own minds about whether the danger from the security holes outweighs the problems that could be caused by Microsoft slipping in new spyware.

http://newsletters.zdnetuk.cneteu.net/t/123308/921984/192517/0/

This weeks 'Personal Losses' Section details an unacceptably large number of government employees in the US who've had their personal details compromised. However, based on the information creeping out over here in the UK, they may be the lucky ones.

I've mentioned before the problems EDS's botched computer system caused for the Revenue and Customs service over here. Now it looks like they might have lost the national insurance records for at least half a million people. This means that those affected might not get their full pensions or other benefits to which they should be entitled. EDS were kicked out by an exasperated Revenue and Customs service some two years ago, but the sheer scale of the EDS incompetence is only slowly coming to light.

At least the US government departments had the details of their employees available to be stolen!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/19/hmrc_ni/

It's been obvious for some time that the US government considers itself to be the enforcement arm of the big media companies, but this week news emerged about just how far they are prepared to go. A few weeks ago the Swedish police raided Sweden's 'Pirate Bay' file sharing company. This was unusual, because the issue of file sharing in Sweden is not as clear cut as elsewhere. File sharing in Sweden is a popular issue. There have been demonstrations about it, and it was an issue in the recent elections, with various parties coming out in favour of a levy on blank media.

However, it transpires, according to information published in the 'Washington Post', that representatives from the US Department of Commerce, the State Department, and the US trade representative's office met with officials from the Swedish Ministry of Justice and urged them to take action against 'Pirate Bay', shortly before the raids.

US lobbyists have also tried to blackmail Russia over file sharing sites that are quite legal under Russian law, by threatening implying that Russia's entry to the World Trade Organisation could be at risk if the sites weren't shut down.

Frankly, I would have thought that the US government had more pressing problems to address at the moment - budget deficits, Iraq, Afghanistan, oil prices, hurricanes and the 'war' on terror, to name but the most obvious. Silly me, stopping file sharing is obviously more important than any of those issues.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/19/us_pushes_sweden/

Google has just unveiled an interesting service - a site that makes it easier to search content of US federal, state and local government web sites. This is a very interesting move, both in and of itself, and for what it bodes for the future.

Being able to efficiently search government web sites for information is a big plus. The governments of the world, and especially that of the US, make a tremendous amount of information available through the Internet, but it often gets drowned in irrelevant information with the same keywords. This new site will definitely help citizens obtain information about issues that could affect them, both now and in the future.

Google has already indicated that over time they will be extending the service to other countries, though they haven't given any timetable, or stated what countries will be first on the list. This could presage interesting things. In particular, it suggests that Google may be moving from just a single humungous search site to augmenting it with a series of specialist sites. There are plenty of specialist sites out there already, of course, but, of course, none of them are Google. Could this mark the first move into the new (for Google) territory of the specialist site? I strongly suspect so, although being Google, if could merely mean that their chef is interested in federal government web sites...

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12B2A6D:1F69382


Personal Losses:

US - 2,000 Oregon taxpayers had their personal details - names, addresses, social security numbers, etc - lifted when a porn-surfing Department of Revenue employee downloaded a trojan program. The trojan promptly whisked the details off to an unknown destination. Since this little escapade cost the employee his job, one can only hope that the pictures were worth it!

US - Earlier this month a hacker broke into the US Agriculture Department's computer system. The personal details of anything up to 26,000 Washington area employees may well have been compromised.

US - Personal data belonging to 17,000 Medicare beneficiaries was also compromised earlier this month. A gormless insurance company employee called up the information through a hotel computer and then failed to delete the file. Sheesh! What an idiot.

US - A laptop containing personal data for 13,000 District of Columbia employees was stolen this week from the home of an employee of ING US Financial Services. The company, which administers the district's retirement plan, took several days to notify affected employees, because they weren't sure what was on the computer. I wonder if they store their money in the same sort of lackadaisical way as they store their digital information?


Geek Toys:

Ok all you guys who like to show off multi-monitor kit - Matrox has just the display card for you! Its new TC4 card runs with a resolution of 6,400 x 1,200 and spreads this over no less than four screens. Perfect to make your garret-based command module look ultra cool. The only problem is that Matrox hasn't released a price, which is usually a sign that you are going to have to pay through the nose for it... Still, think of the impression you can make with it!

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06/21/matrox_ships_epica/

On the other hand, if you want to impress people outside your home, then you will undoubtedly want to take a look at Parvus's Zypad Wl 1000 wrist computer. Well, actually, looking at the pictures, I would have described it more of a forearm mounted computer, than a wrist mounted one. Nonetheless, it is a real computer. It runs either Linux or Windows CE and features hands free operation, wireless networking and GPS tracking. I'm not sure whether this is a practicable proposition, - take a look and see what you think.

http://ct.enews.deviceforge.com/rd/cts?d=207-123-2-28-255-10411-0-0-0-1


Scanner - Other Stories:

US government agencies look to efficiently convert old data
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12B2A6C:1F69382

Trojan forwards details of Oregon taxpayers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/19/oregon_security_breach/

Hacker breaks into Agriculture Department computer system
http://www.physorg.com/news70197763.html

Laptop with DC employees' data stolen
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/18/dc.data.theft.ap/index.html

Too many chefs in Microsoft's kitchen?
http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=2664546-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0

Apple sweatshop charges highlight China issues
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=12B2A6E:1F69382

How do I transfer music from the iPod
http://www.physorg.com/news70033241.html

Microsoft sacks FUD czar
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsID=6274&pagtype=samechan

Novell names Ron Hovsepian to succeed Jack Messman as CEO
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/22/novell_sacks_messman/

Acknowledgements: Thanks to readers Barbara, Fi, Steve and Paul for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
24 June 2006

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.


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