One of the nice features about using services provided by Google is that features pop up like Christmas presents. Such was the case with Google Reader’s new ability to “Share with Note” button. Now you can add a comment explaining why you are sharing a news item. While we can only dream of one day being as good as Mike Rothman’s Daily Incite, it is a start. In honor of this new feature, I thought I would include a few of my Google Reader Shared Items from today. The format below is not as nice as Google Reader, but it gives you the idea of what Share with Note adds.
International Cybercrime (Of The Horse)
via The Center for Internet and Society on 5/8/08
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A colleague and I were just discussing a new international working group, chaired by the FBI, which has “band[ed] together to fight cyber crime in a synergistic way.” The group is called the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group; it even has a tagline: “Cyber Solidarity: Five Nations, One Mission.”
Warping court memories with subtle suggestions
via Mind Hacks on 5/8/08
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The legal system works on a principal of innocent until proven guilty by the evidence presented in court, but Cognitive Daily covers several studies that shown our memory of the evidence is affected by moral judgements of the person in question.
With their trademark clarity, CogDaily discuss a study [pdf] by psychologist David Pizarro that found if participants were told about man leaving a restaurant without paying, they remembered the unpaid bill being more expensive if they were told he treated the waiters rudely, than if they were told he was generally a responsible person.
The study is reminiscent of a famous experiment by a young Elizabeth Loftus called Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction.
It was simple but elegantly designed. Groups of people were shown clips of cars crashing and then asked how fast the cars were travelling, but with different verbs in the question.
For example, some people were asked how fast the cars were travelling when they “smashed” into each other, others how fast when they “bumped” into each other, others how fast when they “contacted” with each other, and so on.
Loftus found that simply asking the questions with a different verb altered people’s memories of the speed of the crash – like so:
“smashed” : 40.8 miles per hour
“collided” : 39.3 miles per hour
“bumped”: 38.1 miles per hour
“hit” : 34 miles per hour
“contacted” : 31.8 miles per hour
Needless to say, these sorts of tricks have been used by lawyers ever since.
Link to CogDaily on moral blame can change the memory of a crime.
pdf of full-text paper.
Link to Wikipedia page Loftus’s car crash study.
Reducing costs not as easy as security, say ANZ CIOs
via The IT Skeptic’s ITIL Pipe on 5/8/08
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Computerworld New Zealand – Auckland,New Zealand The top five hottest skills, according to respondents, are networking, IT service management, help desk, and enterprise applications. … (more)
Egypt shuts off cell anonymity
via ZDNet Government on 5/8/08
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As protests continue to mount over rising food prices, Egypt is moving to keep close tabs on cellphone users. The government wants cellphone companies to close down anonymous subscribers, Reuters reports.
“Everyone who uses the telephone must be known,” Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid told a news conference, adding that the move was needed for “public [...]
The Art of the Business Card
via How to Change the World on 5/8/08
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A few weeks ago I was in Charlotte to make a speech for Network Solutions, and I met Justin Ruckman. He handed me his business card–which I just loved. For once, a business card that cuts to the chase and is readable. Hallelujah! So I asked him to make business cards for me. Take a look at your business card: Can people really read the 8 point type? If you want Justin to make business cards for you, his site is here.
Web Oriented Architecture Webinar Series
via Real World SOA | David Linthicum on 5/8/08
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I’ve had a number of you who have asked me to bring back the Webinar series I was doing a year or so ago. So, I’m going to start on 5/13, next week, delivering the first of many Webinars around the notion of Web Oriented Architecture, or WOA. The description is below, and you can register here. It’s free, with very little commercial interruption. Come learn about WOA and SOA in the real world. David Linthicum: Delivering Enterprise Data to the Emerging Web Data is the driving force behind the emerging Internet. While the Web used to be a collection… READ MORE
The man who defied Milgram’s conformity experiment
via Mind Hacks on 5/8/08
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Jewish Currents has an interesting first person account from one of the people who took part in Stanley Milgram’s famous conformity experiment where 65% of participants were ordered to fatally shock another participant. This article is written by one of the 15% who refused to continue.
The learner, said the professor, would be in an adjoining room, out of my sight, and strapped to a chair so that his arms could not move — this so that the learner could not jump around and damage the equipment or do harm to himself. I was to be seated in front of a console marked with lettering colored yellow for “Slight Shock” (15 volts) up to purple for “Danger: Severe Shock” (450 volts). The shocks would increase by 15-volt increments with each incorrect answer.
I was very suspicious and asked a number of questions: Isn’t it dangerous? How do you know the learner doesn’t have a bad heart and can’t take the shocks? What if he wants to stop, can he get out of the chair? The professor assured me that the shocks were not painful or harmful since the amperage was lowered as the voltage increased. He let me feel what a 45-volt shock would be like: a slight tickle. I asked the learner if he was willing to do this and why he didn’t have any questions. He said, “Let’s try it.” With some trepidation on my part, we began the experiment.
Link to ‘Resisting Authority’ (via MeFi).
Visualizing Nessus Working Harder For You
via Tenable Network Security on 5/8/08
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Recently, several images were uploaded to the SecViz – Security Visualization web site which visualize how hard the Nessus, Saint and Retina vulnerability scanners actually work. Default scans for each scanner were performed in full view of a Snort sensor and the alerts from Snort were sent to Prelude for visualization with “pig“. The visualization allows understanding of how many different and unique techniques are performed by each scanner. Below are screen shots for the results from each scanner:
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When I first saw these results, I didn’t think they were entirely relevant. The visualization is using Snort events, which means that all of the scanners might be trying techniques that Snort might not detect. For example, when Nessus performs a variety of non-credentialed Windows checks over ports 445 and various Windows RPC services, Snort generates some events, but it does not generate a unique event for every custom probe. However, after the author of these posts to SecViz contacted me and pointed out some of the test results, I thought it was a good blog topic. The raw results for Nessus included 1019 alerts, 166 alerts for Saint and 76 alerts for Retina which was fairly significant.
US State Department Loses 1,000 Laptops
via Liquidmatrix Security Digest on 5/8/08
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Ouch!
From vnunet:
An audit at the US State Department has revealed the loss of over 1,000 laptops, some of which held security information.
Around $30m worth of computing hardware is “unaccounted for”, the bulk of it laptops. These include over 400 from the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, some containing security material.
Nita M. Lowey, a representative on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees State Department operations, told Congressional Quarterly that she is “concerned” about the security revelations.
Sigh.
