[ECP] NetHappenings Headlines and Resources
- From: Educational CyberPlayGround <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: nethappenings@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:33:33 -0400
Greetings All,
Happy reading for today.
best,
<Karen>
1)
Super Evil MySpace MalWare Bait
I just ran into a fake MySpace profile that aims to trick you into
downloading a Trojan Horse binary, playing on the fact that this is
Patch Tuesday.
I almost fell for this, until I wondered why there was only one
update, and looked at the domain name closely:
"windowsupdates.microsoftfdserver.cn". AVG also alerted, thankfully.
I'm a pretty sophisticated user, and I can count on one hand the
number of times I've been fooled even to this degree. In contrast,
I'm certain a ton of other less sophisticated people are going to
fall for this trick, until MySpace gets around to nuking the
account. ... but they provide no way of notifying them of urgent
issues like this. Not good. These services need a "back door" for
sophisticated folks like myself to alert them to major security
issues. The Web 2.0 world moves too fast to do otherwise.
Image of bait at URL below:
<http://www.thomasleavitt.org/images/evilevilevil.JPG>
Don't visit the actual page listed in the image if you don't have
realtime A/V protection installed (if you're running Windows).
Thomas Leavitt
2)
Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801434_pf.html
Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette
Square last month.
"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from
New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They
looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are
not insects."
Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.
"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said.
"They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that
alive?' "
That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar
sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the
insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the
Department of Homeland Security.
3)
"Illegal music downloading is at an all-time high and set to rise further,"
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2137465,00.html
citing the 4th-annual digital-music survey by Entertainment Media Research.
Forty-three percent of respondents said they're downloading illegal
songs, up from 36% last year and
40% in 2005. Meanwhile, fear of being caught has lessened. "This year
only 33% cited the risk of being
prosecuted as a deterrent against unauthorised downloading, compared
with 42% in 2006."
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/FREE.html
4)
Telemarketing: The good news for people who hate telemarketing
calls is that the industry may finally be dying; the bad news is
that it may take a while. Telemarketing has been hit hard by the
national Do-Not Call list that was established five years ago, and
sales have been stagnant, but the industry still managed to bring
in $393 billion in revenue last year. Some of this is due to clever
marketing. This includes holding raffles at shopping malls; when
you sign your information, you agree to accept calls from the
company running the contest and its partners. Cell phones are
exempt from automated telemarketing calls, but not from individuals
calling. Then there are occasional windows of opportunity: The
national Do-Not Call list is set to expire in 2008, unless you
remember to register again.
5)
Why google wants your genes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2007/10/06/dlgoogle06.xml
DNA fingerprinting could turn the titan of web-searching into a
medical behemoth, says Emma Hartley
As if gauging the nation's receptiveness to new technology, Lord
Justice Sedley suggested recently that the UK's whole population
and its visitors should have their DNA added to a Home Office
database that already holds genetic information about four million
people - five per cent of the UK population, and the highest
proportion of any state in the world.
Sedley is known for his progressive views and has a record on the
bench of upholding civil liberties, so this was electrifying stuff.
Not only would the measure confer obvious advantages on the police,
while getting around the objection by civil libertarians that
ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented on the
database, it also promised a practical use for a technology so new
that the four million sets of data were collected before most of us
even knew it was happening.
6)
To commemorate National Chemistry Week (October 21-27)
at Iowa State University (ISU), I've decided to use the blog format
as a 'venue' for a virtual 'exhibit'.
The blog is located at [ http://nationalchemistryweek2007.blogspot.com/ ]
Over the coming weeks I plan to post a variety of items relating to
***Biosketches of notable Iowa State University
Chem/ChemE/MatSci/FoodSci/Biochem/Etc. faculty
***Chemistry-related databases
***Highlights of ISU Special Collections chemistry-related resources
***Major chemistry-related publishers/journals
***Major professional chemistry-related association and societies
***Profiles of ISU Science and Technology Librarians and their
respective chemistry-related responsibilities
***SciFinder Scholar 101
Where possible I plan to use relevant copyright-free
images/audio/video to illuminate the postings.
BTW-1: I would appreciate Any and All suggestions for other
appropriate content for this blog.
BTW-2: The Blog has a Feedburner Webfeed
[ http://feeds.feedburner.com/NationalChemistryWeekOctober21-272007 ]
BTW-3: Information About National Chemistry Week is available at
[ http://tinyurl.com/64vap ]
7)
Excerpts from the "Really Modern Library" blog entry:
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/10/the_really_modern_library.html
"The goal of this project is to shed light on the big questions about
future accessibility and usability of analog
culture in a digital, networked world."
"Our aim with the Really Modern Library project is not to build a
physical or even a virtual library, but to stimulate
new thinking about mass digitization and, through the generation of
inspiring new designs, interfaces and
conceptual models, to spur innovation in publishing, media,
libraries, academia and the arts."
The blog entry also mentions "plans for a major international design
competition calling for proposals, sketches,
and prototypes for a hypothetical 'really modern library.' " The blog
entry goes on to describe this competiton as follows:
"The call for entries will go out to as broad a community as
possible, including designers, artists, programmers,
hackers, librarians, archivists, activists, educators, students and
creative amateurs. Our present intent is to raise
a large sum of money to administer the competition and to have a pool
for prizes that is sufficiently large and
meaningful that it can compel significant attention from the sort of
minds we want working on these problems."
8)
Lessig video on ending corruption
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/05/lessig-video-on-endi.html
In this YouTube, Larry Lessig appears on Danish TV to explain his new
cause, devoting the next ten years to ending government corruption.
Lessig is downright inspirational on the subject, calling on us to
set aside our cynical instinct that tells us that money will always
control government and use technology to expose corruption and rally
citizens to end it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jkZFIwmc-8&eurl=http%3A%2F
9)
Eggheads: How bird brains are shaking up science
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/16/eggheads
THE NEW CALEDONIAN crow is surprisingly smart about its food. Its
favorite insects live in tiny crevices that are too narrow for its
beak. So the crow takes a barbed leaf and, using its beak and claws,
fashions a primitive hook. It then lowers the hook down into the
cracks, almost like a man fishing, and draws up a rich meal. Some
scientists even suggest that crows are more sophisticated tool
builders than chimps, since they can transmit their knowledge on to
successive generations and improve the tools over time. These birds
have a culture.
10)
Child Development Timeline Progress Chart 1 month - 5 years old
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/time.html
Baby Development Chart
Every child is different. This chart gives general milestones in a
child's development.
11)
Kindergarten Music - Keeping a Steady Beat
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/kindergartenmusic.html
Kindergarten skills check list
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/kindersite.html
12)
Free Coloring books published by the Government
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Arts/color.html
13)
Mexico for Kids
http://www.elbalero.gob.mx/index_kids.html
This website for children explores the history, culture, government,
geography, and biodiversity of
Mexico through essays, games, recipes, and other activities. Learn
about indigenous groups, music,
holidays, food, traditions, myth and stories, rulers, branches of
government, and more.
Also available in Spanish, Italian, and French. From the website for
the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico.
14)
Hacker breaks into eBay server, locks out users
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/08/Hacker-breaks-into-eBay-server-locks-out-users_1.html
15)
Make Textbooks Affordable
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/hypertxt.html
Website for a national student campaign to reduce college textbook costs.
Features a discussion of why textbooks are expensive (such as new
editions and supplementary material),
suggestions for finding cheaper books and saving money (such as
buying or renting online), reports on topics
such as publishers' pricing tactics, and links to news about
legislative activity. A joint campaign of various
student organizations throughout the U.S.
15)
Qaeda Goes Dark After a U.S. Slip
http://www.nysun.com/article/64163
WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly
gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's
September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had
penetrated the enemy's system.
16)
Cybercriminals Could Steal Elections,Security Researcher Warns
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202401113
17)
The Element Song
One of the funniest pages on the net for learning the periodic table
<share widely>
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/IEC/elementsong.html
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