Corporate Hacker Tries to Take Down WikiLeaks
by ilene - February 28th, 2011 2:20 am
Stephen Colbert reports on technothriller going on between Wikileaks, Anonymous (a "global hacker nerd brigade") and Aaron Barr. H/t Ron. – Ilene
Corporate Hacker Tries to Take Down WikiLeaks
A corporate hacker tries to take down WikiLeaks by faking documents and blackmailing American journalists.
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Why Did the U.S. Military Buy 500 Fake Internet Personas?
by ilene - February 20th, 2011 5:19 am
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
The answer to the question "why does the government need software to create a bunch of fake Internet "people?" is probably quite simple, and while Daily Kos seems to feel it has to do with attacking progressives, I’m afraid the aim of the purchase is far more subversive and far-reaching. Leave it to libtards to take it personally and ignore the fact that there is an ongoing war against Americans, waged by their own government, that has so far claimed our privacy, freedom and now our economic well-being.
I also remind Daily Kos here that the American progressive is already an extinct creature, replaced by leftist maniacs too drunk on their own perceived invincibility to realize that they’re the ones holding the torches as Rome burns. I have no problem with progressives and could probably play one on TV as I believe in crazy ideas like advancing knowledge and equal rights and am fascinated by the sociology of economics, all matters progressives tend to say they are into. I believe gays should be allowed to marry but churches should be allowed to say they refuse to marry them (that’s the whole separation of church and state we seem to have forgotten about). Just as the true conservative has been replaced with a holier-than-thou army of Christian fundamentalist freaks who obviously haven’t read a Bible lately since the one I read said something about "love your brother" and "judge not lest ye be judged," we are once again losing the battle by fighting amongst ourselves over semantics instead of attacking the true enemy.
But what if the enemy could replicate itself to infinity and invade our most sacred space of information exchange, the Internet? Worse, what if they already have?
We have known for a long time this happens. It’s why sketchy IP addresses show up in my stats and comments appear on politically-charged websites that seem to paint the OP as a kook or set up a critical mass of straw men to otherwise discredit the point of the article. I’ve seen it in practice and it’s usually more sad than frightening. Real commenters get so caught up in their feelings they let their emotions bleed through the keyboard. Real commenters are idiot Americans who were churned through our sub-par public school system and don’t know…
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The Internet Makes me Pee LESS
by ilene - September 6th, 2010 4:01 pm
What is the internet doing for you lately? Tell me. Or just think about it. – Ilene
The Internet Makes me Pee LESS
Courtesy of Howard Lindzon
There is a useless debate on Le Web over Le Years whether the internet makes you smarter or dumber . Let me chine in on that:
COULD. CARE. LESS
I know what Le Web does for me. I hold my pee in longer. It could be my age and gynormous prostate but I think it’s engagement. I sit, I read, I am engaged, I hold in a pee.
Clay Shirky has the important stuff on the subject of ’smarter or dumber’:
The past was not as golden, nor is the present as tawdry, as the pessimists suggest, but the only thing really worth arguing about is the future. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity. We are now witnessing the rapid stress of older institutions accompanied by the slow and fitful development of cultural alternatives. Just as required education was a response to print, using the Internet well will require new cultural institutions as well, not just new technologies.
What Does the Internet Make You do more or Less of…
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An Age of Miracles and Wonders
by ilene - July 10th, 2010 4:42 am
An Age of Miracles and Wonders
Courtesy of Tim at The Psy-Fi Blog
S-t-r-e-t-c-h
Stretch your arms out to either side and imagine you’re looking at the economic growth of the human race over its entire four thousand year documented history. From the fingertip on your right hand to the first wrinkle on its index ftinger more or less covers the first three thousand eight hundred years. From there to the end of the index finger on your left hand represents growth over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
We truly live in an age of miracles and wonders. Medical advances have ensured more people live longer than ever before, scientific achievements have created a world in which we’re surrounded by astonishing labour saving creations and inventions which allow us to waste the time we’ve saved and the extra years of life we’ve been granted. Meanwhile our economic understanding of how this happened has, well, gone nowhere very interesting really. How did we achieve this state of grace?
Science and Medicine
One thing’s perfectly clear – the massive economic growth seen over the last couple of hundred years doesn’t have an awful lot to do with economics. Perhaps the prevalence of capitalist doctrines has prevented excessive government intervention in free markets at too early a stage, but otherwise we’ve veered about wildly while booming and busting our way to a greater level of wealth and health than ever before seen on the planet.
On the other hand this has had a lot to do with medical advances. Medicine has ensured that our useful lives are greatly extended – although a lot of the increase in average lifespans so often discussed is down to vast decreases in infant mortality. Still, we no longer die en-masse of septicaemia. Better, though, improvements in healthcare have extended the useful working lives of people: imagine a world in which most people were dead by 45. Heck, no politicians.
From Third World to First
Along with this we’ve seen incredible advances in science and engineering. In my father’s living memory he recalls the arrival of electricity, sewage disposal and tarmac to his home village. My grandmother was born before the Wright Brothers took flight and outlived – by far – the Apollo program. Yet her grandfather lived in a world virtually unchanged for a millennium: a world of hard…
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The Truth About Your Email Domain
by ilene - June 29th, 2010 2:52 am
The Truth About Your Email Domain
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
This is hilarious and totally true.
I love.
You have to click over for the rest (below)
Source:
What Your Email Address Says About Your Computer Skills (The Oatmeal)
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The Coming Apple iOS – Android Wars
by ilene - June 9th, 2010 6:55 pm
The Coming Apple iOS – Android Wars
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
In my last technology post, I wrote that we are moving to an Internet-centric world where your computing device or operating system are less important because your data will live and breathe in the Internet cloud. Google, in particular, is preparing for this world because it has a dominant role in the Internet through search. But everyone is moving to an Internet-centric service and content delivery strategy.
The telecom providers understand that their networks make them gatekeepers who can extract rents from content providers. Having paid handsomely to build these networks, they are fighting to not become dumb pipes and resisting net neutrality in order to keep that gatekeeper role. This is one reason Google is trying to build its own network and circumvent the telcos. Eventually, I think the land-based telcos will lose and the battle will move to one between mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Android. Although mobile phone operators may still be able to extract rents for a while longer than the fixed-line telcos.
The PC OS landscape
In the past, the operating system has been important in computing because it allowed the same software to be run on different computing devices, permitting users of those devices to transfer data easily as they were using the same software. But, the OS also benefitted as the more installed users one OS had, the more developers created software for the operating system. These network effects made achieving critical mass a defining factor. Going forward, network effects will also be important in monetizing OS-proprietary e-Commerce platforms like iTunes and Google’s new iTunes competitor.
One reason Apple was near bankruptcy before Steve Jobs re-appeared on the scene is because Apple’s Macintosh’s installed base had shrunk. I used a Macintosh from the mid-1980s but was forced to switch to a PC when I bought a laptop in the mid-1990s that I used both at home and for work. As the PC gained sway, millions of users like me were forced to give up the Mac. And, of course, that meant software developers gravitated to the PC platform and the Mac became a niche product.
The Move to the Internet-centric Model
As Internet bandwidth increased, more and more of what had to be done locally or over a local area network on…
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Search No More: Google’s a Value Stock
by ilene - May 29th, 2010 8:50 pm
Search No More: Google’s a Value Stock
[H/t to John at Wall St. Sector Selector]
Courtesy of Ockham Research
Google’s (GOOG) stock has been punished thus far in calendar 2010 falling more than 20% from its 52-week high. Some of that can be blamed on the recent correction, but with the broad market indexes just about even for the year there is obviously something more. Much of the pessimism towards the internet search giant is related to its pull back from the lucrative Chinese market after a throw down over censorship, and Google’s pain has been Baidu‘s (BIDU) gain as their shares have grown nearly 80% already this year. Some of this shift in valuation is certainly warranted, especially for Baidu, however we think that the reaction has created an opportunity to pick up shares of the global leader in search advertising.
A recent info-graphic provided through Barry Ritholtz’s blog shows the degree to which “googling” has gone global (all statistics are as of February 2010). In the US, Google claims an impressive 72% percent of search market share despite established competition. However, to the south Google’s market share is stronger with Mexico and all of South America hovering around 90%. Google has all but squeezed out the competition in such European countries as the Netherlands, Belgium, Latvia, Lituania, Hungary, Romania, and Poland all with greater than 95% share. Interestingly, as of the time of the report, Google only claimed 26% of Chinese searches, but 81% from India.
A recent report out of Google claims the company generated $54 billion in US economic activity in 2009, apparently this tabulation accounts for revenues generated through ads placed by on Google search results (as opposed to being Google’s own revenue). The report laid out the value proposition for using their platform, “We conservatively estimate that for every $1 a business spends on AdWords, they receive an average of $8 in profit through Google Search and AdWords.” It would seem to me profit is the wrong term to use in this case, but you get the idea; the platform works.
Clearly, internet search advertising is dominated by Google, and we have seen spending return as the economy has rebounded. We believe this trend will continue as keyword targeted advertising has become a key medium for small business ad campaigns, and economic recoveries are a time when many small businesses get…
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THE IPAD WILL SAVE PRINT? YEAH RIGHT!
by ilene - April 5th, 2010 2:47 pm
A watched iPot never runeths over.
THE IPAD WILL SAVE PRINT? YEAH RIGHT!
Courtesy of Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds
With all of the iPad hype going on this week, I was surprised that so few pundits were saying what I felt was glaringly obvious: No way in hell is the iPad going to save the ailing magazine and newspaper industry. Did anyone really believe that for a single second anyway?
Gimme a break! I already get more than enough distractions for free—no, really guys, my infotainment cup has been runneth overing for a very, very long time now—that there is no way, not a chance—none—that I’m going to subscribe to your magazine or newspaper now that a device I never asked for in the first place has been caused to exist by Steve Jobs. I don’t care what your new iThingee is or how great your marketing people are telling me it’s going to be. If you think what you’ve got is so unique and must-read that I should pay for it, I’ve got news for you, it’s not. It’s a very big Internet out there and as long as 99.99999 percent of it is free, your subscription fee is a self-imposed death sentence, and will not even constitute a revenue trickle let alone a stream.
Witness the recent paywall experiment at New York Newsday. It did not go very well. During the first three months of the paywall, exactly 35 people opted to pay for what they had been previously getting for free. Raise your hands, readers in Long Island, NY, how many of you who plan to buy an iPad also have plans to tap the digital ass of New York Newsday for a monthly fee?
About what I thought: None of you.
Every morning I scan dozens of newspapers around the world for my job at the…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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