| Good News: Jammie Thomas’ File-Sharing Verdict Is Reduced By 97% |
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Bad news: it’s still more money than she can afford — $54,000. (But it’s better than $2 million.) Anyway, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said in his ruling: “The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music. Moreover, although plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must bear some relation to actual damages.” Thomas, always ready to provide us with a good soundbite — back in June she talked about squeezing blood from a turnip — said she appreciates the effort but still can’t pay: “It’s not like I have a money tree in the backyard.” Link via Wired. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (1)January 21, 2010
| A-B-C, It’s Easy As 1-2-3 |
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When it comes to online security, we’re just not very creative. Here are the 5 most popular passwords you, me and our fellow Web surfers employ, according to an analysis by security firm Imperva (love the name!) of 32 million login credentials stolen from social networking site RockYou.
(Number 10 on the list is abc123, hence the title of this post. And now you have the Jackson 5 running through your head, right? You can thank me later.) Anyway, you can’t say these passwords are very tricksy. It’s easy to take down a whole company if only one employee uses a weak password. (I’m looking at you, Twitter!) Imperva quantifies it for us: “[T]he combination of poor passwords and automated attacks means that in just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account on every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts.” So is the takeaway this: humans are lazy and stupid? Not really, according to the NY Times, which quotes Jeff Moss, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council: “Nowadays, we have to keep probably 10 times as many passwords in our head as we did 10 years ago. Voice mail passwords, A.T.M. PINs and Internet passwords — it’s so hard to keep track of.” So how should you cope with password overload? Imperva gives us 3 suggestions:
I’ve got some tips for how to create a strong password. And may I recommend using a password manager such as KeePass? It installs on your USB drive, stores all your passwords in an encrypted database, and even auto-types them for you. All you have to remember is the master password for the database. I go over these topics and more in our Internet Ethics CLE class. Cue the ending music: … as simple as do-re-mi [not in the top 20] |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 20, 2010
| 50 is a Milestone |
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(And one that I’ll experience personally come August.) Anyway, Jenkins is offering 50 CLE classes during the January-April compliance period — beginning with Basic Westlaw a week from today — as well as one non-CLE class, Business Development 101. That’s the most classes we’ve ever offered during any compliance period in the 10+ years I’ve been at Jenkins. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 19, 2010
| New York Times to Start Charging Soon? [UPDATED] |
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New York Magazine reports that the NY Times “appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations.” The decision wasn’t an easy one: “After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall [Dan interjects: it's $100/year] and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles [Dan interrupts again: 10 articles/30 days] before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.” I’m saddened by this. As I said previously, I rely on The Christian Science Monitor, the NY Times, and Wall Street Journal (which I’d pay for even if Jenkins didn’t have a sub) for my serious news.” I can afford maybe one online newspaper subscription, but I can’t hack two. Having said that, I totally understand why they have to start charging. If they don’t they’ll disappear eventually. Columnist Thomas Friedman sums it up well: “My own feeling is, we have to do anything we can to raise money. At some point we gotta charge for our product … We’re in a megatransition. It hasn’t ever felt like anyone has the answer. My macro feeling is that I’m glad I had this job at this time. It was great working at the paper when it was on dead trees and could pay for itself.” UPDATE, January 20: Here’s the announcement from the Times. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Eight Days and Counting |
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Apple’s invited all the tech elite — apparently, I didn’t make the cut — to a special event on January 27 to “Come see our latest creation”. Most likely they’re referring to the iSlate (or whatever they decide to call it). Stay tuned. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Skype Now Has Double-Digit Share of International Phone Traffic |
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Skype accounted for 12% of international calling minutes in 2009. That’s 54 *billion* minutes of yakety-yack, folks. I bet Skype’s new owners are happy about that. Link via TechCrunch. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Only Microsoft Could Create a Bug Like This |
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Lifehacker alerts us that there’s a 30-second delay in the login process in Windows 7 if you have a solid-color background. It’s a bug that Microsoft is aware of. Sigh. Why does this not surprise me? |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 15, 2010
| McDonald’s Offers Free Wifi Starting Today |
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Just thought you’d like to know. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| China Hack Was “Highly Sophisticated” |
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Wired reports that the intrusion of Google (and others) by Chinese hackers exploited a previously-undiscovered flaw in (what else?) Internet Explorer versions 6 through 8. Microsoft has issued an advisory; here’s their take on the matter: “At this time, we are aware of limited, active attacks attempting to use this vulnerability against Internet Explorer 6. We have not seen attacks against other affected versions of Internet Explorer. We will continue to monitor the threat environment and update this advisory if this situation changes. On completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs.” Or, as Wired puts it: “There is no existing patch for the memory-corruption flaw that causes the browser to internally misfire in a way that allows the hacker to inject malware onto the user’s computer.” I have a suggestion: drive a stake through Jason Voorhees’ heart and switch to Google Chrome. (Eight months later, my Chrome-only netbook is still virus-free.) Do it now. Seriously. Or use Firefox, if you prefer. Anything but IE. According to another Wired article, the hackers who exploited that there hole provided by Microsoft weren’t yer typical script kiddies: “According to [Dmitri] Alperovitch, [a researcher at McAfee anti-virus], the attackers used nearly a dozen pieces of malware and several levels of encryption to burrow deeply into the bowels of company networks and obscure their activity. ‘The encryption was highly successful in obfuscating the attack and avoiding common detection methods,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen encryption at this level. It was highly sophisticated.’” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Help for Haiti |
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If you want to learn how to help the people of Haiti, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all have pages you’ll want to visit. Google has pledged $1 million for disaster relief, while Microsoft has committed $1.25 million. Google’s page also features post-earthquake satellite imagery. If you want, you can also text a donation. So far, more than $5 million has been raised for the Red Cross by this method. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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