Thursday, March 1, 2007

Windows for Warships nears frontline service | The Register The Type 45 destroyers now being launched will run Windows for Warships: and that's not all. The attack submarine Torbay has been retrofitted with Microsoft-based command systems, and as time goes by the rest of the British submarine fleet will get the same treatment, including the Vanguard class (V class). The V boats carry the UK's nuclear weapons and are armed with Trident ICBMs, tipped with multiple H-bomb warheads. All this raises a number of worrying issues. First up is basic reliability and usability. Most of us have stared in helpless despair at the dreaded blue screen; how much worse would you feel if that wasn't just your desktop gone but your combat display, and it really was the screen of death? 10:07:50 PM

Windows For Warships Nearly Ready. Windows For Warships Nearly Ready. mattaw writes "The Register is carrying the sanest and balanced article on Windows deployment in UK warships that I have read to date in the public domain. As an ex-naval bod myself we have long considered that this is potentially a REAL problem. The main issues are the huge amount of unrelated code that is imported with the kernel and the need for incredibly fast response times." [Slashdot] 9:59:26 PM

T-Mobile Bans Others' Apps On Their Phones. T-Mobile Bans Others' Apps On Their Phones. cshamis writes "T-Mobile has recently changed their policies and now tell their customers with appropriate data plans and with Java-Micro-App-capable T-Mobile phones: no third-party network applications. You can, of course, still use their incredibly clunky and crippled built-in WAP browsers, but GoogleMaps and OperaMini are left high and dry. Would anyone care to speculate if this move is likely to retain or repel customers?" [Slashdot] 9:53:54 PM

You Can Plead Guilty Here. You Can Plead Guilty Here. The RIAA unveils P2PLawsuits.com, a site that allows people turned in by their universities or ISPs for copyright infringement to settle their cases in advance of due process. In Listening Post. [Wired News: Top Stories] 9:36:31 PM

Castrated RFID Talk at Black Hat. Castrated RFID Talk at Black Hat. Following a lawsuit threat, a security researcher goes ahead with a presentation on vulnerabilities in RFID access cards -- but doesn't demonstrate problems with HID Global's system. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News: Top Stories] 9:29:30 PM

TIA becomes ADVISE | Free Government Information (FGI) Congress killed the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program in 2003 and several new programs have been reported to take its place. (See Total Information Awareness just changed its name FGI, 2006-02-26.) A forthcoming GAO report looks at the use of the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) system. 9:13:23 PM

DHS Proposal for State Driver License Enhancements Posted for Public Comment. DHS Proposal for State Driver License Enhancements Posted for Public Comment. DHS will grant states an extension of the compliance deadline until December 31, 2009. [GT: Security and Privacy] 9:04:53 PM

DOD, Microsoft sign deal to data mine health records The Defense Department has signed an agreement with Microsoft under which the software vendor will help develop tools and methods for analyzing the department's 9.1 million electronic patient records to find better ways to manage the health of DOD beneficiaries. Under the cooperative research and development agreement, Microsoft will work with the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center to extract, store and analyze data stored in DOD's Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application (AHLTA) electronic health record system. The AHLTA clinical data repository (CDR) is "an untapped goldmine of health information, and the ability to draw upon and efficiently use this data will allow us to unleash the true power of AHLTA," said Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs. "This project has the potential to vastly improve our ability to provide both force health protection and population health improvement activities for every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine." Microsoft and the Army center aim to develop a clinical data warehouse (CDW) that provides predefined queries of interest to clinicians and analysts. The warehouse also will support data mining, which uses clustering and pattern recognition techniques to discover previously unknown correlations in the data. Intel and HP are providing support on security, sizing, and scalability testing of the CDW architecture, Microsoft said. Dr. Deborah Peel, chairwoman of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, views the patient information not as a goldmine ripe for exploitation but as a collection of personal and sensitive health information that needs to be zealously guarded and only accessed with express consent by the patient. 7:46:58 PM

Dell Censors IdeaStorm Linux Dissent. Dell Censors IdeaStorm Linux Dissent. thefickler writes "It seems pointless to seek ideas and feedback if you're going to ignore and delete the opinions you don't like. That's exactly what Dell is doing with its IdeaStorm website, which the company set up to solicit such ideas and feedback. Dell deleted a post linking to an article that criticizes its handling of the 'pre-installed Linux' issue." [Slashdot: Your Rights Online] 7:39:34 PM

Manipulating Reputation Systems. Manipulating Reputation Systems. BoingBoing points to a nice pair of articles by Annalee Newitz on how people manipulate online reputation systems like eBay[base ']s user ratings, Digg, and so on. There[base ']s a myth floating around that such systems distill an uncannily accurate folk judgment from the votes submitted by millions of ordinary citizens. The wisdom of crowds, and all that. In fact, reputation systems are fraught with problems, and the most important systems survive because companies expend great effort to supplement the algorithms by investigating abuse and trying to compensate for it. eBay, for example, reportedly works very hard to fight abuse of its reputation system. Why do people put more faith in reputation systems than the systems really deserve? One reason is the compelling but not entirely accurate analogy to the power of personal reputations in small town gossip networks. If a small-town merchant is accused of cheating a customer, everyone in town will find out quickly and [~] here[base ']s where the analogy goes off the rails [~] individual townspeople will make nuanced judgments based on the details of the story, the character of the participants, and their own personal experiences. The reason this works is that the merchant, the customer, and the person evaluating the story are embedded in a complex, densely interconnected network. When the network of participants gets much bigger and the interconnections much sparser, there is no guarantee that the same system will still work. Even if it does work, a large-scale system might succeed for different reasons than the small-town system. What we need is some kind of theory: some kind of explanation for why a reputation system can succeed. Our theory, whatever it is, will have to account for the desires and incentives of participants, the effect of relevant social norms, and so on. The incentive problem is especially challenging for recommendation services like Digg. Digg assumes that users will cast votes for the sites they like. If I vote for sites that I really do like, this will mostly benefit strangers (by helping them find something cool to read). But if I sell my votes or cast them for sites run by my friends and me, I will benefit more directly. In short, my incentive is to cheat. These sorts of problems seem likely to get worse as a service grows, because the stakes will grow and the sense of community may weaken. It seems to me that reputation systems are a fruitful area for technical, economic and social research. I know there is research going on already [~] and readers will probably chastise me in the comments for not citing it all [~] but we[base ']re still far from understanding online reputation. Share This [Freedom to Tinker] 7:25:59 PM

'Electric Slide' Creator Steps on Fair Use. 'Electric Slide' Creator Steps on Fair Use. EFF Lawsuit Battles Bogus Copyright Claims San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against the man who claims to have created the popular line dance "The Electric Slide," asking the court to protect the free speech rights of a videographer who captured a few steps of the dance in a documentary video he posted to the Internet. EFF's client, Kyle Machulis, shot the video at a concert last month. In one ten-second segment, a group of fans in the audience attempts to dance part of the Electric Slide. Machulis later uploaded the video to YouTube. Within just a few days, Richard Silver, owner of www.the-electricslidedance.com, filed a takedown demand under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Silver claimed he owned the copyright to the Electric Slide and that Machulis' video infringed his rights. The removal appears to be part of a broad campaign by Silver to misuse copyright allegations to prevent dancers from performing the dance "incorrectly." "Silver's claim of copyright infringement is absurd and is a classic example of the kind of DMCA abuse that can chill Internet speech," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Even if Silver had a valid copyright in the dance--which is not at all clear--this is a fair use and not infringing." EFF's complaint asks that the judge immediately rule that the video does not infringe any copyright owned by Silver, and that Silver cease his meritless claims towards Machulis. "We spend a lot of time fighting the misuse of copyright law on the Internet, but this situation is particularly outrageous," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. "With thousands of videos being uploaded to sites like YouTube every day, free speech is on the line and needs to be protected." For the full complaint: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/electricslide/complaint.pdf Contacts: Corynne McSherry Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation corynne@eff.org Jason Schultz Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation jason@eff.org [EFF: Breaking News] 7:23:19 PM

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