disLEXia

Tuesday, 15. October 2002

Internet Again

10 Minutes ago the "SYNC" LED on our ADSL modem switchd from red to green. So we are on the net again. Theoretically we where before connected via an Apple Airport with Modem but some confusing Interactions between the ISDN-to-analog converter in our PBX and the Airport resulted in a transferrate of ca. 800 b/s and RTT latency of up to 22000 ms (22 seconds!). So basically Internet was unusable.
11:10 | permanent link | mail this

Pensioner gets five years for German cashpoint scam

A German pensioner who failed to sell banks his encryption scheme for ATM machines has been convicted of counterfeiting credit and debit cards.

The 71-old (nicknamed 'The Professor') was sentenced last Friday by Munich's State Court to four years and ten months in jail for creating 671 fake cards, which he used subsequently used to make illegal withdrawals, AP reports. Among his victims was a judge working on the case, who stepped down after discovering he had attempted to defraud her.

Three years ago, the professor developed an encryption system for use by ATM cards which banks rejected as too expensive. Stung by this rejection, the pensioner turned his hand to crime. And look where it got him. [The Register: Security]

See also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2084579,00.html
12:42 | permanent link | mail this

USA PATRIOT Act & Related Issues

The USA PATRIOT Act has been on my mind recently for a number of reasons. First, while at AALL in July, I wrote an article about the Hot Topic presentations on the Act. This article, Hot Topic Sparks Better Understanding of USA PATRIOT Act, has been published in AALL Spectrum, Vol. 7, Sept. 2002, at 16 and is finally available on the web. It's on page 12 in the online PDF version.

Second, I recently gave a presentation on the USA PATRIOT Act for a class of library science students. The PowerPoint version is here and an html version is here. I want to give credit to the ALA's Washington Office for their presentation, Libraries and the USA PATRIOT Act: Access, Openness, and Confidentiality, which I used as the basis for mine. I modified this to provide some basic legal information for the library students and to go into more detail on FISA, pen registers/trap & trace, etc. I also prepared a resource list, USA PATRIOT Act & Related Issues. Out of the 30 students, at the beginning only one acknowledged that she'd heard of the Act before. Between my presentation and the instructor, we had them fairly riled up by the end of the 2.5 hour class. They seemed to realize that librarians need to become advocates for the issues they believe in. I felt like I'd actually accomplished something.

Finally, on a somewhat related note, Bibliolatry pointed to this article today on the impact the removal of government information from the web is having on researchers. Several of the slides from the ALA (and my) presentation deal with how to determine what should be removed and who should determine it. No one has a handle on this issue, really, and it's hard to say who should. I'm just glad there are folks like OMB Watch and others who are keeping track of what's been removed.

[Leah's Law Library Weblog]
21:28 | permanent link | mail this

Microsoft Skins a Knee on the Astroturf

A grass-roots campaign orchestrated by a PR department is commonly called "astroturf." What shall we call Microsoft's embarrassing sally at Apple's successful "Switchers" campaign? Let's consider "paid testimonial." ...

No one expects Apple's ads to swing much market share, but perhaps Microsoft was feeling their sting. On Monday the company posted a Web page, "Confessions of a Mac to PC convert," supposedly written by a young woman who had switched from Apple to Windows XP. Her name was not given. Her picture, as Slashdot posters quickly discovered, was a stock image available for purchase from Getty's Photodisc. (Why the agency did not use an image from the competing Corbis service, owned by Bill Gates, is another mystery.)

http://newsletter.mediaunspun.com/index000021694.cfm#a100869 ["Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 31]
22:03 | permanent link | mail this

disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif