turker.out.printlnMy two cents on technology, life and anything else

This Blogspotting post brought to my attention that Flickr has started reclassifying everyone’s photos to “all rights reserved”. Stephen Baker is worried that Yahoo is kinda withdrawing Flickr from the blog world since it will not be possible to link to photos from one’s blog without asking the photographer’s permission.

Although, I have not practiced posting other people’s photos to my blog from Flickr, I can see how this steals away some convenience from Flickr and its openness. It is not hard to see Yahoo’s point in this case. In today’s web, the difference between commercial sites and noncommercial sites is so vague since one’s blog with Adsense ads is considered to be commercial. The funny thing is that I never thought my site would be considered commercial because of the Adsense ads that do not bring me any earnings.

It is worth noting that photo owner’s can reset their copyright settings which still gives the user the power. Let’s hope that Yahoo will not take away more openness from Flickr.

AP reports that CIA is kicking off an internet war game that will last for 3 days. The goal of this secretive war game called “Silent Horizon” is to practice defending against an electronic assault. The exercise is set to take place in Charlottesville, Va. according to the article. It also seems that there is industry involvement in addition to the government. However, the participants are not disclosed. Below are some excerpts from the article:

The simulated attacks were carried out five years in the future by a fictional alliance of anti-American organizations, including anti-globalization hackers. The most serious damage was expected to be inflicted in the war game’s closing hours.

The national security simulation was significant because its premise – a devastating cyberattack that affects government and parts of the economy with the same magnitude as the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings – contravenes assurances by U.S. counterterrorism experts that such far-reaching effects from a cyberattack are highly unlikely. Previous government simulations have modeled damage from cyberattacks more narrowly.

….

The government’s most recent intelligence assessment of future threats through the year 2020 said cyberattacks are expected, but terrorists “will continue to primarily employ conventional weapons.” Authorities have expressed concerns about terrorists combining physical attacks, such as bombings, with hacker attacks to disrupt communications or rescue efforts.

[Via Software Marketing Resource Blog]

• Google’s War on Hierarchy, and the Death of Hierarchical Folders – - Microcontent News, a Corante.com Microblog
  An interesting read about the histroy of hierarchical folders
  (tags: article toblog google)
• Mass Hysteria
  (tags: podcast)

I finally get my hands on David Allen’s Getting Things Done after I checked it out from the library. From what I have read so far, the methodology seems to be working. Actually, I have been trying the Outlook add-in before reading the book and it seems promising even though I do not have insane amounts of emails to manage and create tasks from. Nevertheless, the add-in is useful to organize tasks and priorities and being able to tie these to specific emails is great. However, I will most probably not continue to use the add-in. The reason is simple: the cost. I think it is very expensive despite the functionality (some of which I do not really need to get my things done on my level). I am planning to go down the road of emulating the add-in’s functionality somehow. I will definitely write about it if I manage to do that. I will also wite my take on the methodology after I read the book.

An email from the Graduate School today brought to my attention the Video Seminars for Graduate Students put together by University of Georgia Graduate School.

Some titles from the series:

• Developing and Maintaining Relationships with Your Faculty Advisor and Committee Members: A Recipe for Success

• Documenting Your Graduate Experience for the Job Search

• Presentation Skills for Graduate Students

I have not yet watched any of the videos but this sure sounds like a useful resource. The videos are in real format, though. Let me know what you think, if you watch any of the videos.

I just received an email from Paypal (!) with the subject line: “Account compromised: billing information moved or changed”. As we should all know by now that these are classical phishing attempts, I hovered my mouse over the link that is given in the email message and saw that the link would actually take me to the paypal subdomain on a homeip.net domain. A quick glance to the text also revealed some typos like “seams” instead of “seems”.

As lame as this is, I am sure there are still a lot of people who click on the links blindly taken by the message’s resemblance to a legitimate message.