Facebook legal twists

Today's article on cnet news tells about the outcome of a year-old class lawsuit filed against Facebook by 20 discontented users in the U.S. (filed August 2008).

Basically, the lawsuit centers around FB's advertising engine: "Beacon". Which --before it was shut down-- collected information from user-profiles, user surfing habits, user shopping habits and generally monitored FB-users' surfing-activities while logged-in to FB.

( I used keyword-blockers and/or router URL filtering to block this collector engine )

Not that it was difficult to block this monitor-service with simple browser plugins, but then again, if you don't know WHAT is monitoring you, or HOW it is monitoring you, how can you stop it?

The plaintiffs argued that Beacon was gathering information illegally and hidden from users. But the thing is, it was announced and described in Facebook's Statement of Rights and Policies when launched a couple of years ago. I can even remember it being mentioned in the early Privacy Policy.

Anyway, the lawsuit got settled, and Beacon is history. However, Beacon has evolved over the last two years, into what is now known as Facebook Connect. Which is FB's centralized authorization system, developed in collaboration with other major service-providers online, to provide a SSO (Single Sign-On) solution. Thus providing Facebook, and it's partners the web-habits of users using the SSO-system by collecting pagehit statistics collectively through all sites joined in the collaboration effort on Facebook Connect.

I just don't think people read statements, policies or user-agreements anymore. Everybody just expects everyone (including web-companies and the like) to abide to 'normal' society standards and rules with regards to privacy.

But the Internet is a completely open and public community network, you cannot expect to post personal information out there, and NOT expect anyone or anything to misuse this information to the fullest extent. And Facebook is by no means an exception, it is a PUBLIC social-port! Then again, it IS set-up to prevent people from seeing information you don't want certain people to see. But there are ways of obtaining this information without even visiting facebook.

You'd be surprised at how easy it actually is to get a decent amount of personal data via a search engine like Google...

In my opinion, if you're dumb enough to upload photography, personal information, and other sensitive data and/or information online, and *NOT* limit access policies on the content, you're garantueed a world of hurt and/or annoyances.

Good Luck Dumbasses...

Link:

http://news.cnet.com/

The corporate environment

I'm sorry to say (not really, but I'll get into that later) that this looks like the last month I'll be working @ my current job.

I can honestly say I'm sick and tired.., nay, PISSED OFF at people with over-exaggerated opinions of themselves, driven only by their enormous power-seeking egoes...

Every time I have started work @ new office/business over the last 5 years, I almost certainly ended up working for these kind of people, which lately started to directly affect my work. And as a tragic turn of events, ended up giving the bastards more than one valid reason for discharging me, but they did not do so... Instead, they saw an opportunity to take major advantage of the situation and abuse my abilities to the fullest extent, while threatening with a dishonourable discharge if I don't comply.

---

It's not that I'm ungrateful for the advantages I've been given or anything like that, but being told I'm not that devoted to my work, when all I've done for my employers is sacrifising my free time and also giving 110% at the same time.

Not being devoted enough? For Fuck's Sake!

Firstly, while I was given "flex-hours" (governing your own work schedule), I was stripped of the opportunity to work overtime, which in turn meant a fixed-rate salary every month.., no matter how much I worked! B.S.!

Then, in the 1st Q of 2009, my boss hired a P.R. consultant. This in itself did not do much in terms of working arrangements or anything. But, eventually, it became clear to me (and the lead programmer of the company) that this P.R. consultant was in fact, quite incompetent in our area of expertise.

And, as if this wasn't enough, he was endowed with the title "Staff Manager", and why you ask? Because he had managed a pizza-shop full of teenagers before he ended up at our offices.

Yes, a pizza-shop manager ended up staff manager at an IT company specializing in business-2-business, business-2-customer and electronic invoicing. Go figure...

---

So, to show how much he appreciated my work, Mr.PR had kept an eye on me, the six months he had spent @work, noting non-standard conduct on my part, compiling a massive offensive. In my opinion, this is not showing respect. And not showing respect, yields nothing in return as a result, period.

You cannot expect to recieve respect, if you do not show any on your own part, *moan*-*sigh*, some people are just absolute fucking morons... no matter what.

---

Just to clearify, I'm not whining because I might not have a job in 30 days. I'm generally pissed off because you'd think that grown men over 40-50yrs would be more fourthcoming and blunt about the whole mess.

But instead, they're fussing about what I'm costing the company in these unstable times, and that they cannot afford to keep my position any further.

So, either they had planned this all along, over a whole year! Or, they're just serving me bullshit to try and scare me to do something stupid to push me off the edge of my career, which is *NOT* going to happen.

I'll keep on showing up in the mornings to come, smiling ear-to-ear, tearing THEM down, day by day...

P.S. (14.08.2009 12:20)

I am not trying to act out a fit, or deliberately pissing them off with a clear conscience. Rather, I'm playing them at their own game. They can't fire me because they need me, and I can't quit because I need the cash.

Coincidentally, I've already been to a few job interviews, and to my surprise, this time around it wasn't really that hard to get them like so many times before. What with my newly appended CV, stronger and longer working experience and better understanding of business in general. Actually I find my self-entitled "unemployed period" to be quite tempering.

Kind of a blessing in disguise if you think about it =)

Oppsiktsvekkende samarbeid

http://www.digi.no/813870/linux-foundation-i-seng-med-%ABfienden%BB

At Microsoft og Linux Foundation skulle samarbeide om et felles mål var nok ikke i tankene til folk for tiden. Hverken i Linux-miljøet eller hos programvare-giganten Microsoft.

Samarbeidet skyldes et lovforslag som skal legges frem i USA som omhandler programvarekontrakter.

Lovforslaget foreslår bl.a. at det innføres en garanti-ordning hvor programvare leveres uten materielle defekter.

Dette motstrider mange programvare lisenser som brukes av både Microsoft og Linux-miljøet, og de har derfor skrevet et brev sammen til ALI (American Law Institute), som kan lastes ned her.

Poenget Microsoft og Linux Foundation vil få frem er at hvis underforståtte garantier innføres, vil det føre til unødvendig mange rettstvister som kan ødelegge for deling av teknologi.

I-og-med alle rettsakene rundt IT de siste årene virker ikke dette urealistisk, og vil garantert ødelegge mer for IT industrien enn det vil hjelpe.

N.B.: I åpen kildekode miljøet slår dette ut på selve GPL-lisensen, fordi den avkaster alle garantier og gir brukeren av nevnt lisens rettigheter og valgmuligheter til å bestemme selv. Microsoft og andre aktører innen kommersiell datavirksomhet taper også på dette, fordi de ikke kan bruke programvare/kode gitt ut under slike lisenser, hverken for å forbedre på teknologien og gi tilbake, eller tjene penger på det. Lovforslaget reflekterer ikke realistiske virkninger på normale kommersielle lover i bruk idag

Computer illiterates are dangerous!

Seriously? FFS!!!

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious

On Friday, EFF and the law firm of Fish and Richardson filed an emergency motion to quash and for the return of seized property on behalf of a Boston College computer science student whose computers, cell phone, and other property were seized as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay. The problem? Not only is there no indication that any crime was committed, the investigating officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself supported a finding of probable cause to seize the student's property.

The whole problem started because the computer science student was using a command-line interface, of which the arresting officer did not understand. Quotes from the arresting officer's report say:

"Mr.Carlixte uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompts on"

I mean.., c'mon! Seriously!? Are all computer hobbyists to be considered "crackers" until proven otherwise? FFS!!!

"GhostNet" linked to the "Waledac" botnet

Conficker.C-infected computers have shown activity recently, according to security analysts and software/network engineers, so it seems the threat is not over...yet.

It's main activities (identified activities, that is), are:

• downloading (malware from other botnets, mainly the spammer-botnet "Waledac", better known as the re-animated Storm DeadNet "Valentines e-mail spammer botnet")
• linking (assumably to other malicious botnets)
  
• communicating (assumably with it's creators).

It is also reported to flash rogue anti-viral software ads directed at users of these infected machines.

Darknet.co.uk had this article to explain (excerpt from article below):

“Fear is used, universally, as a means to control people,” said Sendio CTO Tal Golan. “Governments use it. Large businesses use it. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that ‘cyber-bad guys’ use it.”

At the moment, the rogue anti-virus software comes from sites located in the Ukraine (131-3.elaninet.com.78.26.179.107) although the worm is downloading it from other sites, according to Kaspersky Lab.

Hmm. No, not surprising at all if you ask me.

Like I said...

Like in my previous post, a lot of IT professionals are also realizing the global network threat that is upon us.

Crackers (like everybody else) are now able to hookup to a decent Internet-connection with "broadband"-sufficient bandwidth, which also means; crackers are now globally able to take down multi-national corporation networks without too much hassle (provided they're not secured too much, not that it can't be bypassed, it just takes a lot longer to do it).

While researching how to protect my domain and network @ home, I discovered this article @ computerworld.com, entitled "100% Cure for Conficker": http://blogs.computerworld.com/100_cure_for_conficker

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Cyber Critic) advises people to jump over from traditional DNS systems, to OpenDNS. After switching my static DNS adresses in my router(s), I found some interesting features in OpenDNS, like the ability to stop phishing-attack attempts, or advanced adress-filtering. They've gone through the works and secured the OpenDNS system to be as secure as can be, without crippling day-to-day performance.

For example, you have to be a registered OpenDNS user with a/multiple registered and confirmed IP-adress(es) to use name resolving through OpenDNS.

E-warfare

The time has come...

Fellow IT crowd: electronic espionage and malicious takeovers are upon us.

The following article-link takes up the subject about cyber espionage on a global scale: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13731776/Tracking-GhostNet-Investigating-a-Cyber-Espionage-Network

A 10-month investigation uncovered what seems to be a Chinese cyber-spy network crossing the globe. Further investigation through fieldwork, technical scouting and laboratory testing uncovered that the "GhostNet" can consist of as many as 1.295 individual computers residing in 103 countries. At least 30% of these can be considered high-value political, diplomatic, economic and military targets.

Some malicious crackers are surely having fun harvesting quite the bot-farm I must say...

And if the technical advisors are right, the Chinese can do ALOT more damage than just steal sensitive information.

We are now living the nightmare a lot of sci-fi literature predicted years ago...

Ph34r!

I'm not saying this affects everyday people at the moment.., but it's a wake-up call to remind us that we're not totally 100% secure online, what-so-ever...

Restrictions, copyright, modification

After watching the NUUG's webcast video of RMS's (Richard M. Stallman, FSF) 2009 Oslo copyright speech, I had a lot of ideas and opinions floating around.

What he said about proprietary software vendors implementing backdoors, malicious functions and spy-features did not surprise me, but what he said about Microsoft's latest systems DID.

I knew that they have always put in security-features making them able to update and/or fetch debug information about crashes and bugs.

But having the ability and non-authorized access to modify personal computer systems without the user knowing, pissed me off. You can definitely assume I'M not going to use neither Windows 7 or any of the Vista-flavours.

I use Windows XP Professional @ work, because I have to, not because I prefer to. That's it. My netbook runs Xandros (modified Debian), my server/desktop @ home runs Slackware Linux (-Current). And, as soon as it hits the electronics stores, I'm going for an Android-powered smartphone ;)

OSS is getting international recognition

At least SOMEONE understands the new world of technology we're approaching. The British Minister for Digital Engagement (-Tom Watson-) released a new 'plan-of-action' yesterday, entitled: "Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan".

(Click here for a PDF version of the paper.)

A little intro-excerpt:

"Open Source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades: it has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations; it has shown how giant corporations themselves, and Governments, can become more innovative, more agile and more cost-effective by building on the fruits of community work; and from its IT base the Open Source movement has given leadership to new thinking about intellectual property rights and the availability of information for re-use by others."

The new action plan adds to the old plan published in 2004, but the new one includes circumstances and agreements that can make it difficult for proprietary software vendors to compete in government IT deployment.

He states among a lot of things that the new era in IT development demands re-usage of code. (Securing government rights to special custom code and re-usage of the code within internal departments.)

So, basically, it looks very promising for OSS in the time to come regarding government software deployment, software costs and national IT system expansion.

OSS participation!

A 30-page ebook on how to participate in the Open Source community; whom to talk to, where to go for info, etc. =) A recent addition to open source development, following the beta release of the brilliant testing program 'AppChecker'.

http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/

Anti-Piracy?

Think Free

Richard's Dream

An open book on the subject of freedom.

The book is entitled "Free as in Freedom", and is an interesting read about the hacker who started it all; computer ethics, software freedom, freedom of choice, open standards, open sharing of computer knowledge...

 RMS (Internet alias) is both loved and hated in the open source and free software camps. He has strong beliefs, and does not compromise about his 'freedom'.

MIT AI lab hacker; Richard M. Stallmann's crusade for free software. http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/

"Unquestionably, one of the great seminal figures of the hacker culture" -- Eric Raymond, open source evangelist and author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"

Operating Systems & area's of use

I'm getting quite fed up about reading articles discussing and comparing GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. A lot of the people writing these articles are missing the big picture. The systems are NOT similar, they are NOT based on any same principal or guideline what-so-ever...

Now, just to mention it; yes, they ARE based off some common UI (User Interface) guidelines. Most Operating Systems dating before the 80s did not incorporate any graphical user interface.



If you have seen the TV-movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", you know that the whole GUI-idea was a rip-off from Xerox in the early 80s. As was the mouse peripheral device. A lot of the standards we enjoy today, were at first experimental projects at big companies that weren't all that comfortable about releasing any new technology, thinking it wouldn't appeal to the computer industry which had a reputation of being very conservative since the 70s.

To clear up about these different systems:

GNU / Linux:
Was developed as a hobby project by a software engineer student from Finland; Linus Torvalds. It was never supposed to become as big as it has. This is mostly thanks to the many computer hobbyists, gamers, professors, nerds and geeks around the world that endorsed development of an Open Source Operating System. For those of us that DO understand computers enough to be able to use a POSIX-system on a regular basis, it was a matter of choice: do we want a system that tells us what we need, can have or do? *OR* do we want a system that gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want? and even gives us the ability to modify/improve any part of the system at will?

GNU/Linux is, and will still be for some time; a system for specially interested.

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MS Windows / Mac OS (X):
Were developed as alternatives to IBM's business systems that were dominant at the time. Most computer systems at the time were very expensive "business machines". UNIX mainframes and super computers running at universities and big companies.

But in the latter part of the 70s and early 80s, Bill Gates from Microsoft, and Steve Wozniak from Apple Computers realized that normal people could benefit from owning a personal computer.

Steve began developing an affordable computer machine in his garage. While Bill Gates and fellow MS-colleague Paul Allen were buzy rolling out their founding product "Altair BASIC". When Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs revealed their machine at a local computer convention, Bill and Allen were gobsmacked. Someone had beat them to the punch. After setting up a meeting with Apple Computers, they *borrowed* the GUI and peripheral device technology, and basically did what a lot of people accuse GNU/Linux communities of doing now; copying the user interface and input technology that had landed Apple on the map.

---

Both companies were basically trying to do the same thing; bring a business-only solution to the consumer masses. Only, they stepped on each others toes in the process. Not to mention quite a lot of commercial sabotage and espionage.

Today though, the companies have different goals. And Microsoft owns quite a large part of Apple.

Apple changed their focus from being just a personal computer manufacturer, to become something of a cult icon instead. Bringing the movie, music and image industries together to worship the Apple Macintosh as the de-facto standard for audio/visual compositioning and editing.

Microsoft on the other hand paved along with their same goal of putting personal computers in the hands of the common man. Succeeding in having almost 90% of all computers running a MS product to this very day.

To quote a software engineering friend:

"Most of the average users I know would rather buy a new PC than upgrade Windows"

This says a lot about how normal computer users want to get their hands dirty with software handling. Most people get others to do it for them, or they do as quoted above. How things work, and how they should be set up, are not appealing to most non-tech-savvy people.

So it's not a question of which is better than the other. They have different areas of expertise, and so also different areas of usage.

To quote once more from my friend:

"The average consumer just wants to be able to pop a CD into his optical drive, wait 10-15mins and have a working system."

With popular open source operating systems, this is not actually an idiot-proof option yet. You still have to know what an MBR is, what a bootloader does and have some basic knowledge about different filesystems.

You really have to pocess a fair amount of advanced computer handling knowledge to be able to install a *nix-system on your PC. Let alone getting it working without any headaches or special considerations.

There ARE user-oriented Linux distributions which simplify a lot of the administration-tasks when maintaining a Linux-box. But these are usually quite bleeding-edge compared to older (matured with rock-solid stability) distro's, and tend to be buggy and unstable.., unless, you have prior experience handling difficult Linux-boxes / POSIX-systems like I have ;P

P.S.:
*nix = general acronym for POSIX-based operating systems (UNIX,Linux,BSD,Solaris).

SCO lives again... unfortunately.

After suing IBM and Novell for inserting their licensed, and copyrighted Unix code into Linux, SCO gained major infamy, and not only did they loose their cases, they also saw some Unix copyrights solidified under Novell as a result. Now it seems they are due for a comeback, recieving 100 billion USD from Stephen Norris Capital Partners and "its partners from the Middle East". http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/02/14/sco.receives.100.million/


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