You’ve Been Warned

Warning: Google Warming

Disclaimer: Despite the title above, I don’t know of any relationship between these two stories.

California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, US energy secretary warns

California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama’s cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration’s plans to combat it.

Whoa! And woe! This is coming from a physicist. And one that won a Nobel Prize at that. Pretty impressive.

Five paragraphs later, though, this: “Chu is not a climate scientist. He won his Nobel for work trapping atoms with laser light.”

Oh.

So what about Google? Well, this:

Google Offers “Latitude” to Track People

Google is releasing free software Wednesday that enables people to keep track of each other using their cell phones.

CNET got a sneak peek at it, and CNET-TV Senior Editor and The Early ShowNatali Del Conte explained how it works on the show Tuesday.

She says “Latitude” uses GPS systems and what’s called cell tower triangulation to do the job. The software seeks the closest three cell towers and, with GPS, combines the data to show where someone is.

It is designed to work on any phone with Internet capabilities, except the iPhone.

“Latitude” is being marketed as a tool that could help parents keep tabs on their children’s locations, but it can be used for anyone to find anyone else, assuming permission is given.

What’s the history and rationale behind their name choice for this new “tool”?

Your Stuff on Facebook

So you have a Facebook account.

What rights do you have regarding what you post (comments, photos, and such)?

I don’t know.

But according to what this fellow found in their terms of use…

…putting any of your work up on Facebook you are giving them carte blanche to use your photos, artwork or writings for anything they want including, advertising, promotion etc…

So they’re excluded from any copyright protections, eh?

In my view, chalk up another negative in the Facebook column.

HT: Dunker Journal

Possibly the Biggest Virus

Nasty worm wriggles…into your computer?

A nasty worm has wriggled into millions of computers and continues to spread, leaving security experts wondering whether the attack is a harbinger of evil deeds to come.

US software protection firm F-Secure says a computer worm known as “Conficker” or “Downadup” had infected more than nine million computers by Tuesday and was spreading at a rate of one million machines daily.

The malicious software had yet to do any noticeable damage, prompting debate as to whether it is impotent, waiting to detonate, or a test run by cybercriminals intent on profiting from the weakness in the future.

“This is enormous; possibly the biggest virus we have ever seen,” said software security specialist David Perry of Trend Micro.

[…]

Perry urges people to harden passwords by mixing in numbers, punctuation marks, and upper-case letters. Doing so makes it millions of times harder for passwords to be deduced, according to Perry.

OK, it’s time for me to start methodically (or is it methodicly?) changing and hardening more of my passwords…starting the with the one in my browser.

You should, too!

Mexico on the Verge?

I was stunned to see the red headline on Drudge a couple mornings ago: US military report warns ‘sudden collapse’ of Mexico is possible.

Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command’s “Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)” report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. “In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

That matters to me. Not just because Mexico shares a long, relatively-porous border with the US, but because I grew up there as an MK. And because I served as an adult missionary there for some five years. And because the Mission Board I chair presently has workers there. As you might imagine, I have lots of friends there.

Oh, the news story ends with this interesting sentence:

The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present.

So there you are.

Space Stuff

Never mind Y2K. Or even global warming.

NASA: 2012 ‘space Katrina’ may cripple U.S. for months

A recently released NASA report warns that the U.S. has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to massive infrastructure damage from solar storms.

The study, carried out for NASA by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, doesn’t predict some new solar or environmental disaster. Instead, it studies the effects of the sun’s normal, cyclical behavior upon modern technology.

Professor Daniel Baker is director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado and chaired the panel that prepared the report.

“Whether it is terrestrial catastrophes or extreme space weather incidents,” writes Baker in a statement released with the report, “the results can be devastating to modern societies that depend in a myriad of ways on advanced technological systems.”

According the report, the U.S. has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it’s risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services meltdowns.

Maybe they’re picking up the approach of Solarcane Katrina:

Mystery Roar Detected From Faraway Space

Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

Of course, sound waves can’t travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can’t very efficiently. But radio waves can.

[…]

There is “something new and interesting going on in the universe,” said Alan Kogut of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

[…]

“The universe really threw us a curve,” Kogut said. “Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted.”

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

[…]

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

We report. You decide. Or deride. Or HangOnForAWildRide.

PC Privacy

Police look to hack citizens’ home PCs

Police and state intelligence agencies from several countries may soon be working together to secretly hack into private citizens’ personal computers without their knowledge and without a warrant.

According to a London Times report, the police hacking process, called “remote searching,” enables law enforcement to gather information from e-mails, instant messages and Web browsers, even while hundreds of miles away.

Furthermore, the Times reports, a new edict by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels has paved the way for international law enforcement agencies to begin remote searching and sharing the information with each other. According to the Times, the United Kingdom’s Home Office, the nation’s lead government department for immigration, drugs and counter-terrorism enforcement, has already quietly adopted a plan that would enable French, German and other European Union police forces to request remote searching be done on UK citizens’ computers.

I haven’t much to say here except this: If you have DSL or some other form of “always on” broadband, disconnect your computer when you’re not online.

Above all, love God!
Private