Google goes to Washington

Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, Senior Policy Counsel


It seems that policymaking and regulatory activity in Washington, D.C. affect Google and our users more every day. It’s important to be involved - to participate in the policy process and contribute to the debates that inform it. So we’ve opened up a shop there. The first member of our Washington team is Alan Davidson, a veteran thinker and advocate for issues we care about.


Our mission in Washington boils down to this: Defend the Internet as a free and open platform for information, communication and innovation. OK, that sounds a little high and mighty, so let me break it down into something a bit wonkier with a sampling of the U.S. policy issues we’re working on:


Net neutrality. As voice, video, and data rapidly converge, Congress is rewriting U.S. telecommunications laws and deregulating broadband connectivity, which is largely a good thing. But in a country where most citizens have only one or two viable broadband options, there are real dangers for the Internet: Should network operators be able to block their customers from reaching competing websites and services (such as Internet voice calls and video-on-demand)? Should they be able to speed up their own sites and services, while degrading those offered by competitors? Should an innovator with a new online service or application be forced to get permission from each broadband cable and DSL provider before rolling it out? Or, if that’s not blunt enough for you, what’s better: [a] Centralized control by network operators, or [b] free user choice on the decentralized, open, and astoundingly successful end-to-end Internet? (Hint: It’s not [a].)


Copyrights and fair use. Google believes in protecting copyrights while maintaining strong, viable fair use rights in this new digital age. We support efforts by the U.S. Copyright Office to facilitate the use of orphan works (works whose rights-holders can’t be found), while fully respecting the interests of creators. We applauded the Supreme Court’s carefully calibrated decision in the Grokster case, but worked to defeat legislation that would have created new forms of liability for neutral technologies and services like Google.
read more »

Technology Quotes and Proverbs:

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.



Peter Drucker


read more »

150 computer one-liners

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.


Computers can never replace human stupidity.



It works! Now if only I could remember what I did...


read more »

Key Volunteer Network - Home Page:

The Key Volunteer Network is an integral part of a Marine Corps unit family readiness program and is the primary communication link between the commanding officer and the unit families for the enhancement of mission readiness.

The Key Volunteer Network supports the spouses of the unit Marines by providing communication from the command, serving as a source for information and referral services and by helping foster a sense of community within the unit. Learn more

How the Red Cross Began

Humanitarian relief, 19th-century style

The full extent of the Hurricane Katrina disaster is starting to become clear. It hasn't been a pretty picture, and people are asking hard questions about what might have been done differently by government and local citizens.

One thing is sure: private charities and relief workers are on the scene in force. The American Red Cross, one of the nation's largest private relief services, has mobilized its largest-ever response to a national disaster. As people open their wallets to support these volunteers, we're opening the books to look at the 19th-century Swiss humanitarian who helped start the Red Cross itself.

Stock Market News and Investment Information | Reuters.com:

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, acknowledging the initial federal relief effort for Hurricane Katrina was unacceptable, said on Saturday he will send 7,000 additional troops to storm-ravaged region.

"Today I ordered the Department of Defense to deploy additional active-duty forces to the region. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, more than 7,000 additional troops from the 82nd Airborne, from the 1st Calvary, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Second Marine Expeditionary Force, will arrive in the affected areas," Bush said.

Katrina - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:# Hurricane Katrina (2005, Atlantic) - catastrophic storm that devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast

• Hurricane Katrina (2005, Atlantic) - catastrophic storm that devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast

The Case for Modeling and Simulation of Information Security:

“When I hear I forget. When I see I remember. When I do, I learn.” Confucius

Abstract

A challenge that stands before the security community is to better prepare management, system administrators, and users to respond appropriately to information security crises while simultaneously reducing the anxiety associated with them. One clear approach to achieving this goal is to use modeling and simulation for education, training, and testing. This paper will present the available range of modeling and simulation capabilities in Information Assurance. It will also establish some principles for extending these capabilities into the community. It will do this by establishing a case for utilizing more simulation in our discipline, reviewing past modeling & simulation efforts within information security, reviewing the traditional types of modeling and simulation methodologies, addressing capability and experiences in computer modeling within other areas such as telecomm and economics, and providing a framework for future computer based modeling and simulation efforts in Information security.

Introduction

bad storm

CRASH TEST DUMMIES LYRICS

"Superman's Song"


Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man
He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm
Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle
But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent
He would not be caught sittin' around in no
Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

[Chorus:]
Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
Folks said his family were all dead
Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself
To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane."

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home


[Thanks to kevin_c4@hotmail.com, sean_ee@hotmail.com for correcting these lyrics]

[ www.azlyrics.com ]

Molly.com That's why it's Called Beta:

I WOKE UP this morning to find countless emails and IMs pouring into my accounts asking me about the IE 7 beta.

Some developers are expressing relief at seeing some of the bug fixes and improvements, but of course as I’ve been expressing all along, this is a process with which we have to be patient. Expecting full bug fixes and implementation in any beta software is ridiculous, as is expecting that WaSP / Microsoft Task Force can perform retroactive miracles. more »

E-Mail Wiretapping' Prosecutions Could Increase in the Future

By Gene J. Koprowski

A federal appeals court ruling in Boston last week on e-mail wiretapping is reverberating throughout the Internet community-and legal world-with a consensus emerging that there may be prosecutions in the future for what today is considered normal business practice by ISPs.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals, voting 5-2, ruled that an e-mail service provider that supposedly read e-mail, intended for customers only, could indeed be tried on federal criminal charges.

This is True: The Lord Giveth, the Feds Taketh Away:

When William H. Irvin III received a government check for $836,939.19 in June, 1992, he considered it a gift from God since he had recently prayed for self-sufficiency. A federal court jury in Kansas City, Mo., was unmoved: it was a computer error, they said, not God, which boosted his $183.69 check to the higher amount. Convicted of knowingly spending government money, filing a false tax return and money laundering, he faces 43 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine. (AP) ...Then his prayers have been answered: he won’t have to buy food or shelter for 40 years.

Plug-and-play bots worming and warring among Windows systems

More than a dozen different worms have been created from the latest Microsoft Windows vulnerability and readily available bot software and have started attacking each other's compromised systems, security experts warned on Wednesday. “ These guys have been pretty desperate for a new exploit for a while. They had been using LSASS for too long, and been scraping the bottom of the barrel for exploits, so now everyone and his mother is now going to use this instead. ”


Joe Stewart, senior threat researcher, Lurhq The worms--which appear to come from three families of code dubbed Zotob, Botzori and IRCBot--started spreading on Sundaywithout much fanfare. However, on Tuesday, computers at CNN and the New York Times became infected by one or more variants of the worm, and the public profile of the programs increased a notch. more »

Lost in Translation - Government Technology:

As the U.S. population becomes more diverse and the number of non-English speaking residents grows, the more difficult communication between local law enforcement and residents become.

This January, two handheld voice translation devices -- the Phraselator developed by VoxTec, and the Voice Response Translator (VRT) developed by Integrated Wave Technologies -- were tested by the Chula Vista, Calif., Police Department in conjunction with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego. read more »

IE7 nukes Google, Yahoo! search

Update Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 went on a limited beta release today and contains a nasty surprise for some users.

Users with search toolbars from Yahoo! and arch-rival Google have discovered that these vanish. Other third-party toolbars designed to block pop-ups or aid with form filling appear to be working normally, according to reports from Reg readers. read more »

NASA says Discovery looks safe to fly home - Return to Flight - MSNBC.com:

RELATED STORIES

• NASA grounds future shuttle flights
• Graphic: Where the foam was flawed
• Vote: What should NASA do next?

Yemeni cleric jailed for 75 years

A Yemeni cleric who once called himself Osama Bin Laden's spiritual adviser has been sentenced to a maximum 75 years in prison in New York.

Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad was convicted on charges of conspiring to support the al-Qaeda network and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

At a meeting with two FBI informants in Germany, he was recorded promising to funnel more than $2m (£1.1m) to Hamas.

He was arrested by German police in January 2003 and extradited to the US.

For each of five counts, he received 15-year sentences, each to be served consecutively.

He was also fined $1.25m in a federal court in Brooklyn.resd more »

Al and Terry

Gabe's Grandparents

EXIT MUNDI: A COLLECTION OF END-OF-WORLD SCENARIOS:

Isn't life a bitch? The world is going to end. You don't even have to be a religious fundamentalist to see that's true.

Some people collect postal stamps; Exit Mundi collects scenarios of what could go wrong with the world. Sure, our planet could get hit by an asteroid. But hey, that's nothing. Did you know we could all be munched away by hungry molecules? Or that our physicists could unintentionally wipe us all out while tinkering with particles? `Oops, sorry...'

Exit Mundi isn't in it for doom preaching, but strictly for fun. It's a fascinating thought: if that &*%#-comet didn't wipe out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, we wouldn't be here pondering about apocalypses and armageddons in the first place. The dinosaurs roamed our planet millions of years longer than we did. If it wasn't for the comet, they still would.

That's why this site is a tribute to floods, quantum explosions and awfully big chunks of space rock falling out of the sky. If there's a lesson to be learnt, it should be that within every end looms the dawn of a new beginning.
Sounds good, doesn't it?