Netizen

The Enemy Knows

Arab Spring [LP] (Photo credit: Painted Tapes)

How Pro-Regime Forces Use Spyware to Target Arab Spring RebelsHow Pro-Regime Forces Use Spyware to Target Arab Spring Rebels

pro-regime forces have been using fake messages to install malware on activists’ computers that would allow them to monitor keystrokes and other activity .... “off the shelf” surveillance products for governments and law enforcement .... Fin Fisher could be installed by “sending fake software updates for popular software.” ..... “Compromised Skype accounts of trusted friends is very popular,” he said, as activists have looked to the Internet telephony service because they don’t trust the state phone systems. ..... “It pays to be especially cautious when downloading files over the Internet, even from links that are purportedly sent by friends”

It is not surprising that the authoritarian regimes would get sophisticated in their use of information technology. After all they have much resources at their disposal. But this just adds to the sort of training the pro liberation forces should subject themselves to. Easier said than done. In countries like the US that are more literate, it is hard to get people to not click on suspicious links.

The regimes use way more sophisticated stuff than this one. Surveillance tools at the disposal of the Chinese authorities, for example, have been manufactured by some of the biggest names in tech.

Just like companies used to be barred from doing business with the apartheid regime in South Africa, tech companies ought to be barred from selling stuff to authoritarian regimes that get used to suppress dissent.

Hello Apple, Hi Samsung

Image via CrunchBase

This fight has to be taken out of the courts and put back into the market where it belongs.

Apple v. Samsung Electronics: The Patent War Claims, Uncut

The gloves have emphatically come off ..... dozens of suits and countersuits around the world involving these two smartphone giants ...... The broad themes of the accusations on each side are well known by now. Apple complains Samsung is a copycat, stealing the product designs and user-experience programming in the iPhone and later the iPad. Samsung replies that Apple is claiming ownership for ideas it may have modified, but certainly did not invent. ...... In February 2006, before the claimed iPhone design was conceived of,Apple executive Tony Fadell circulated a news article that contained an interview of a Sony designer to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and others. In the article, the Sony designer discussed Sony portable electronic device designs that lacked excessive ornamentation such as buttons, fit in the hand, were square with a screen and had corners [which] have been rounded out. Ex. 18(DX 649). Immediately after this article was circulated internally, Apple industrial designer Shin Nishibori was directed to prepare a Sony-like design for an Apple phone and had CAD drawings and a three-dimensional model prepared...... As Mr. Nishibori has confirmed, his Sony-style design changed the direction of the project that yielded the final iPhone designs. ...... When Apple was developing its campaign to promote the first iPhone, it considered – and rejected – advertisements that touted alleged Apple ―firsts with the iPhone. As one Apple employee explained to an overly exuberant Apple marketer, I don‘t know how many things we can come up with that you can legitimately claim we did first. Certainly we have the first successful versions of many features, but that‘s different than launching something to market first.‖ See Ex. 4 (DX 578). In this vein, the employee methodically explained that Palm, Nokia and others had first invented the iPhone‘s most prominent features.

Social Media: Real Impact

McKinsey Says Social Media Could Add $1.3 Trillion to the Economy

things like improved communication and collaboration from social media in four major business sectors could add $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value to the economy..... The value is mostly through added productivity. Improved consumer focus as well as better-functioning teams are two other benefits. .... by 2018 the United States could face a shortfall of 1.5 million data analysts and managers able to cope with the flood of data in their businesses. ..... Social technologies like wikis, broadly accessible instant messaging, content searches and user forums, McKinsey says, are particularly effective among so-called interactions workers..... The main challenges are organizational and personal, as managers have to develop nonhierarchical cultures, where data and knowledge are exposed and shared, not hoarded.

A perfect market is where there is a perfect flow of information, correct? It can be argued there was not a smart market before social media. Consumers were not allowed to talk. And now that there is that enhanced communication where everyone but everyone can talk, the market is performing better.

Gigabit Fast

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Google Unveils Superfast Internet in Kansas City, Mo.

purchasing the gigabit Internet service for $70 a month ..... the current average household broadband speed was only slightly faster than it was 16 years ago .... Google wants to provide such high-speed Internet to flex its muscle in Washington, where policy makers have been criticized for being slow to deliver national broadband ..... “fiberhoods” ..... a free 5-megabit-per-second broadband connection .... Google believed “there’s no need for caps.” ..... “I’ve never met someone who’s said ‘My Internet connection is too fast.’” ...... if two cars left Kansas City for New York at the same time, the one traveling 100 times faster would reach New York before the other car even left Missouri

I wish Google entered the ISP space for good.

Just like Google Search is ad supported, Google Fiber should also be ad supported. Use snooping technology to serve just the right ads. And at gigabit speeds an ISP could serve ads like TV stations do.

There is so much potential.

Good Government, Bad Government

Cerf and Bob E. Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, who really did invent the Internet?

the Internet had its roots in the ARPANet, a government project .... the government-funded ARPANet was very much the precursor of the Internet as we know it today. .... Bob Taylor was the single most important figure in the history of the Internet, and he holds that stature because of his government role. ..... TCP/IP, the fundamental communications protocol of the Internet, was invented by Vinton Cerf (though he fails to mention Cerf's partner, Robert Kahn). He points out that Tim Berners-Lee "gets credit for hyperlinks." ..... Cerf and Kahn did develop TCP/IP--on a government contract! And Berners-Lee doesn't get credit for hyperlinks--that belongs to Doug Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute, who showed them off in a legendary 1968 demo you can see here. Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web--and he did so at CERN, a European government consortium. ...... Private enterprise had no interest in something so visionary and complex, with questionable commercial opportunities. Indeed, the private corporation that then owned monopoly control over America's communications network, AT&T, fought tooth and nail against the ARPANet. Luckily for us, a far-sighted government agency prevailed. ...... It's true that the Internet took off after it was privatized in 1995. But to be privatized, first you have to be government-owned. It's another testament to people often demeaned as "government bureaucrats" that they saw that the moment had come to set their child free.