I'm not sure you receive this - but it's definitely worthwhile. - Alan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:35:15 -0400 (EDT) From: FreeLists Mailing List Manager <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: nethappenings digest users <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: nethappenings Digest V6 #8 ???`????,??,????`????,??,????`????,??,????`????,??,????`???,??,??? Please link to the Educational CyberPlayGround http://www.edu-cyberpg.com Add your SCHOOL OR SCHOOL DISTRICT URL http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/schools/ Please Share and Add Your Song http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ncfr/ Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Mailing List ?1993 ???`????,??,????`????,??,????`????,??,????`????,??,????`???,??,??? ------------------------------------ nethappenings Digest Tuesday, April 10 2007 Volume: 06 Issue: 008 In This Issue: #1: From: Educational CyberPlayGround <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Resources an #2: From: Educational CyberPlayGround <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Newsletter H ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Msg: #1 in digest Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:00:00 -0400 From: Educational CyberPlayGround <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Resources and Greetings everyone, Snow in April and cold outside. Happy reading. best, <Karen> Chicago Public School employees info stolen http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=3Dlocal&id=3D5190814 A huge breach of security has put thousands of Chicago Public School employees at risk. A thief stole two laptop computers containing private information about 40,000 current and former employees. The heist was caught on tape. Investigators say its still unclear if the laptops were stolen for the sensitive information they contained or as a crime of opportunity. Either way, it has some questioning how the school district safeguards valuable information. SECURITY RULES http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/SECURITY.html 1) Cyberbullies, hate and character education. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/safe.html 43% of the youth population say they've been bullied online. In a unanimous decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that school districts are responsible for stopping bias-based harassment of students "Much like employees in a workplace, students have the right to attend school without being subjected to repeated taunts from other children," the court said. Gender and race still an issue for school leaders National survey shows women still far behind in educational leadership http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-04/uom-gar040407.php 2) Gender Bias COLUMBIA, Mo. =AD Women fill the vast majority of=20 classrooms as teachers, but check the=20 administration office, and most of the school=20 leaders are men. A new book details a national=20 survey that reveals a gender gap in America's school systems. "It's shocking to me that in 2007 there is still=20 such a disparity. In 1992, only 5 percent of=20 America's school systems were led by women. Now,=20 that number is 18 percent. I would expect it to=20 be at least 50/50 at this point," said Margaret=20 Grogan, professor and department chair in the=20 University of Missouri-Columbia College of=20 Education's Department of Educational Leadership=20 and Policy Analysis. "It's not about education;=20 it is about society. Despite the fact that gender=20 is considered to be a non-issue today, there is=20 still a gender issue when it comes to leadership and management." The book =AD "Women Leading School Systems:=20 Uncommon Roads to Fulfillment" =AD was published=20 this month and co-authored by Grogan and C. Cryss=20 Brunner. It is based on the first major national=20 survey of all female superintendents in the=20 country. Nearly 1,200 women representing=20 positions of leadership in school districts=20 responded to the survey. The study was=20 commissioned by the American Association of School Administrators. 3) Multi Cultural Views - Teaching Tools http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/Media_Projects.html 4) Hackers Promise 'Nude Britney Spears' Pix To Plant .ANI Exploit http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=3D198800300 There are problems with the patch Microsoft released Tuesday for a critical .ANI vulnerability, and hackers have launched a new spam campaign to take advantage of the flaw by promising nude pictures of Britney Spears to lure users to malicious sites. 5) Vonage Wins termporary reprieve in verizon case http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN0625380920070406 6) Researchers crack WEP WiFi security in record time http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=3D8456 and Hot Spot Finder http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/Web_Sites.html 7) Hackers now offer subscription services, support for their malware http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=3DviewArticleBasi c&taxonomyName=3Dsecurity&articleId=3D9015588 8) Embedded devices open to new attack http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=3D8459 A Juniper Networks security researcher says he's discovered a new type attack that can compromise embedded devices such as routers and mobile phones. The vulnerability lies in the Arm and XScale microprocessors, two chips that are widely used in these devices. "There are interesting quirks in the ARM and XScale architectures that make things very easy for an attacker," said Juniper's Barnaby Jack. The technique he has developed is "100 percent reliable, and it results in code execution on the device," he said. 9) Army considering adding cyberspace to tactical domains http://www.fcw.com/article98157-04-05-07-Web The Army may follow the Air Forces lead in setting up a cyber command. Cyber war is emerging as just as important as kinetic war, some say more important, said Vernon Bettencourt, the Armys deputy chief information officer at the recent AFCEA Belvoir chapter/Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems industry day in Bethesda, Md. 10) IRS still losing laptops http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/05/HNirslostlaptops_1.html Internal Revenue Service has had almost 500 laptop computers lost or stolen over the last three years, many of which were loaded with sensitive taxpayer information. In a memo authored by the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Audit, Michael R. Phillips, investigators maintain that the IRS is not adequately protecting taxpayer data on laptops and other portable electronic media devices. The report contends that between 2003 and 2006 the IRS had some 490 laptops lost or stolen in 387 individual incidents. In the missive, originally filed to IRS leaders on March 23, the auditors said 176 of those incidents did not involve the potential exposure of taxpayer data, but noted that the information of at least 2,300 individuals was stored on the other missing laptops. The investigators said that they were unable to deduce whether taxpayer information was exposed via 85 of the reported device losses, however, it was confirmed that the personal information of at least 3,359 taxpayers was misplaced in the other incidents. While chilling, the report does in fact show signs that the IRS has slowed the loss of computing devices over the last few years. In Jan. 2002, the IRS admitted in a similar audit that it had lost or misplaced some 2,332 laptops, desktops and servers over the previous 36 months. According to the report, a large number of the missing laptops were stolen from employees' vehicles and residences, with an additional 111 of the incidents occurring within IRS facilities. 11) Colleges overspent millions District officials defend loss of time, money, but computer system is still not ready to go http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0404colleges-computers0404.html Maricopa Community Colleges spent 13 years and tens of millions of dollars trying to replace its obsolete student computer network. After three aborted attempts, the new system still isn't in place. "The entire project was a mistake, everything before 2006," said Tom Gleason, a retired district auditor who, along with others, warned the project was "spinning out of control." But in a letter to Maricopa employees, the colleges' chancellor, Rufus Glasper, said the information system should be up and running by October. And he argued that Maricopa's expenditures on the project were in line with what other institutions have spent: Since 1994, the Maricopa Community Colleges have spent a total of $45-million on technology development, with $20-million of that on the current Student Information System project. There is no debate that is a lot of money, yet when you look at the size of our organization (we serve more than 250,000 students per year), and the fact that our systems must accommodate the needs of not one but 10 colleges, Maricopa is well within the range of what has been spent elsewhere. 12) Citizendium's Creator in His Own Words http://news.com.com/Wikipedia+today%2C+Citizendium+tomorrow+-+page+2/2 008-1082_3-6173499-2.html?tag=3Dst.num Why does Citizendium, the peer-reviewed alternative to Wikipedia that went public just about a week ago, require contributors to use their real names when they post to the site? According to Larry Sanger, the site's founder, it's about civility and perception. "Anonymity tends to make people into jerks if they have any tendencies in that direction," he told CNET News in an interview. Mr. Sanger has long criticized Wikipedia, which he helped found, for being too accommodating to trolls and vandals, but he says there are other benefits to removing the veil of anonymity. 13) Biggest threat to Internet could be a massive virtual blackout http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0407/040507tdpm2.htm The most serious threat to the Internet infrastructure in the 21st century is a massive virtual blackout known as a "distributed denial of service attack," an outspoken board member for the group that administers Internet addresses said Thursday at a Hudson Institute briefing. This type of high-tech ambush, which occurs when multiple compromised systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted server to make Web pages unavailable, could be devastating for global online communication, said Susan Crawford of the Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers. The most significant attack in recent years came on Feb. 6, when six of 13 root-zone servers were slammed by an army of "zombie computers," which were compromised by hackers, the Cardozo Law School professor said at the think tank event. 14) Porn swap tied to Aegis info leak http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070405TDY02011.htm Top-secret data on Aegis destroyers obtained by a Maritime Self-Defense Force petty officer 2nd class were found to have been obtained after he copied obscene images to his hard disk from a colleague's computer, without knowing the information contained the secret data, police sources said Wednesday. 15) U. of California at San Francisco Warns 46,000 People After a Security= Breach http://news.com.com/University+probes+possible+data+breach/2100-1029_3 -6173453.html?tag=3Dne.fd.mnbc A possible computer-security breach at the University of California at San Francisco may have exposed the personal information of about 46,000 people, but the university says it has already managed to notify all those who may have been affected. The university discovered the security hole late in March on a server owned by its medical center. The server, which was taken offline immediately, contained the names, Social Security numbers, and bank-account data of students, faculty, and staff at the center. But it did not include any information about patients, according to CNET News. Campus officials say there is no evidence that any of the data stored on the server has been used improperly. 16) Advanced Placement (AP) Test Fee Program competition opens http://www.ed.gov/programs/apfee/ which awards grants to states to enable them to pay AP fees for low-income students. Applications are due April 18. 17) Adult Literacy Assessment NCES' "Literacy in Everyday Life" http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/americanadults.asp presents data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the first assessment of the English literacy of adults (16 and up) in the U.S. since 1992. Three types of literacy were measured: prose (news stories and instructional materials), document (job applications and food and drug labels), and quantitative (balancing a checkbook and figuring out a tip). 18) SPECIAL ED FLEXIBILITY http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/specialed.html On April 4, 2007 Secretary Spellings announced new regulations under the No Child Left Behind Act allowing states to assess certain students with disabilities using an alternate assessment. 19) Science, take teachers to task for spending too much time on basic reading and math skills and not enough on problem solving, reasoning, science and social studies. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-03-29-teacher-study_N.htm The typical child in the U.S. stands only a 1-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience, say researchers who looked at what happens daily in thousands of classrooms. They also suggest that U.S. education focuses too much on teacher qualifications and not enough on teachers being engaging and supportive. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, educational researchers spent thousands of hours in more than 2,500 first-, third- and fifth-grade classrooms, tracking kids through elementary school. It is among the largest studies done of U.S. classrooms, producing a detailed look at the typical kid's day. The researchers found a few bright spots, reports Greg Toppo in USA Today. Kids use time well, for one. But they found just as many signs that classrooms can be dull, bleak places where kids don't get a lot of teacher feedback or face time. For example, fifth-graders spent 91.2 percent of class time in their seats listening to a teacher or working alone, and only 7 percent working in small groups, which foster social skills and critical thinking. Findings were similar in first and third grades. 20) Second Life passes the 5 million-resident mark, long-time members with something of a "we were here first" attitude are getting annoyed about the commercialization and all these new avatars walking and flying around, the Los Angeles Times reports <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-fi-second22feb22,1,72920 4.story> though their message is more about wanting more say in the virtual world's fate. So now there's a "Second Life Liberation Army" blowing up storefronts and saying that "80% of long-term residents support their cause." 20) A list of the most piracy-ridden schools in higher education. http://tinyurl.com/37vxml This is a page straight out of the RIAA playbook. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070222-8900.html Here they are, the schools that made the MPAA's "dishonor roll" and the number of students identified as making=20 unauthorized use of copyrighted materials 21) Recording, movie industries lobby for permission to deceive http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pretext7apr07,1,1936238.story?ctrack= =3D1&cset=3Dtrue Hollywood wants to be exempt from a bill that would ban the use of 'pretexting' to get data. SACRAMENTO =AD The music and movie industries are lobbying state legislators for permission to deceive when pursuing suspected pirates. The California Senate is considering a bill that=20 would strengthen state privacy laws by banning the use of false statements and other misleading practices= to get personal information. The tactic, known as pretexting, created a= firestorm of criticism when detectives hired by Hewlett-Packard Co. used it last year to obtain phone records of board members, journalists and critics. But the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America say they sometimes need to use subterfuge as they pursue bootleggers in flea markets and on the Internet. In recent letters to state Sen. Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), the trade groups said the proposed legislation was written too broadly and could undermine anti-piracy efforts. They said investigators sometimes pose as someone else to obtain bootlegged CDs or=20 movies and to break into online piracy rings. ------------------------------ Msg: #2 in digest Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:00:00 -0400 From: Educational CyberPlayGround <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ECP] Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Newsletter Headlines Hi, Happy reading for today. best, <Karen> 1) Meanwhile, You Don't Know How Lucky You Are http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/03/2007031401c/careers.html I started to think a lot about American libraries and the privileges they offer scholars. Libraries had always been a particularly important but somewhat taken-for-granted part of my life: My mother is a librarian, and I am a scholar with a specialization in the materiality of books, the diversity of print cultures in America, and library history. I should have been well aware of what a precious thing free or cheap interlibrary lending is for virtually every student, scholar, and recreational reader in the United States. 2) National Education Associations, Cybrarians and Librarians find necessary resources http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/INTERESTINGSITES/Interesting_Web_Sites2.html 3) Find free Search Engine databases, Tools, Share Ware, and Data Mining sources. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/search3.html 4) Holocaust Remembrance Day is Monday, April 16, 2007. I posted on my website 162 links to learn about the Holocaust. Site languages include English, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. All 162 links have been reviewed / checked this week. http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/j-holoc.htm The top of the page should be dated April 10, 2007. If the page has an older date, hold the control key and press the F5 key to refresh your browser with the updated page. 5) IRS head: All laptops to be encrypted within weeks http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9016078 After an auditor found serious security problems in the way it handled sensitive data on laptops, the Internal Revenue Service said it will have all laptops encrypted within the next few weeks. Speaking in an interview with National Public Radio over the weekend, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson said his organization was making the effort following a recently released audit that found unencrypted data on a large percentage of IRS laptop computers. 6) PHP bug hunter silences his critics with security project http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1395934823;fp;16;fpid;1 7) The Status of U.S. Counterterrorism and Homeland Security http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200703.ervin.statuscounterterrorismhomelandsecurity.html Clark Kent Ervin heads the Aspen Institutes Homeland Security initiative. Before joining the Institute, he served as the first Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He has been an on-air analyst and contributor at CNN and is the author of Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack (St. Martins, May 2006). This enote is based on his presentation at Five Years After 9/11: What Needs to be Done? a conference sponsored by FPRIs Center on Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Homeland Security, held December 4-5, 2006 in Philadelphia. The Center is supported by grants from the Department of Community and Economic Development and the Department of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I am often asked whether, in my judgment, DHS has made America safer than we were on 9/11. My answer to that question is yes. But, whether we are safer today than we were on 9/11 is not the only question. The key questions are: are we really as safe as the government says we are, are we as safe we need to be, and, are we as safe as we can be. The answer to these questions, ominously, is no. 8) Data on 2.9 million Georgians goes missing http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6174946.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news CD containing Social Security numbers, other personal information on people enrolled in Medicaid or PeachCare is lost. A CD containing personal information on Georgia residents has gone missing, according to the Georgia Department of Community Health. Data on the CD includes addresses, birthdates, full names and Social Security numbers of people who were enrolled in Medicaid or PeachCare, a state health insurance program for children, according to a notice posted Monday on the department's Web site (PDF). http://dch.georgia.gov/vgn/images/portal/cit_1210/19/38/80010015Public_Notice-Missing_Personal_Data.pdf The CD was lost by Affiliated Computer Services, a Dallas company that handles claims for the health care programs, the statement said. The disc holds information on 2.9 million Georgia residents, according to media reports. In response to the loss, the Georgia Department of Community Health has asked ACS to notify all affected members in writing and supply them with information on credit watch monitoring as well as tips on how to obtain a free credit report, it said. 9) P2P downloads at warp speed? David G. Andersen Similarity-Enhanced Transfer SET "This is a technique that I would like people to steal." http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/ Tomorrow the new SET protocol will be released at a conference in Cambridge, Mass. SET http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/technology.php stands for Similarity-Enhanced Transfer. The scientists say their new system is aimed at easier sharing of academic papers.How's it work? In short SET looks around for multiple sources of similar files. Say a movie exists in numerous files that vary only slightly, having only different file names. The system can pull video form one source and audio form another, simultaneously. The scientists say many music files are 99% similar but have different header or artist titles. SET would take advantage of the shared portion of those files and find the fastest download source. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/papers/nsdi2007-set/set-nsdi07.xhtml 10) The Sixteenth Annual List of the Jefferson Muzzle "winners" is out. http://www.tjcenter.org/muzzles/muzzle-archive-2007 The unprecedented degree of political interference in communicating government-funded scientific research to the public has earned the Bush Administration a 2007 Jefferson Muzzle. For the sixteenth straight year, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression is celebrating the April birth date of its namesake by calling attention to some of the more egregious or ridiculous affronts to free expression that occurred in the preceding year. Books play a central role in this year's awards. 11) OLCP One Laptop Per Child http://laptop.org/en/contact.shtml The OLCP Wiki http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Main_Page Educators http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educators Content http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributing_content 12) Oracle patches to fix 37 flaws http://news.com.com/Oracle+patches+to+fix+37+flaws/2100-1002_3-6175041.html Symantec Patches 'High-Risk' Bug http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198900584 Microsoft patches critical Windows, server flaws http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/10/HNmspathceswindowsserverflaws_1.html Crash strike caution http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/09/1175971018555.html IF MICROSOFT'S Windows operating system crashes and gives you the "blue screen of death", it's a pain in the proverbial, but it's hardly life-threatening. In 1998, however, a United States Navy destroyer, the USS Yorktown, was left stranded and vulnerable when its Windows NT-based control system failed. The tale of the stranding of the Yorktown is a true story former White House staffer Richard A. Clarke cites as a warning. "(It) was out on an initial shakedown cruise. The Microsoft software that it was running in its control system went kafluey, and the entire ship stopped dead in the water and they had to send tugs out to pull it back ... (it was running) Windows," Mr Clarke told The Age. 13) Student's Privacy Rights http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/PRIVACY_INFORMATION.html University policies, no matter what they say, "do not eliminate [the student's] expectation of privacy in his computer when connected to the network. Read the decision written by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/5copyright.html 14) Search Engines and the Hidden Net http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/search.html How Google Books is Changing Academic History "...] Time for a professional dialogue about the new kinds of research these texts have opened up. For a very vast vista has erupted before us, and with it, a more serious set of comparative questions as a standard for social history, and new levels of rigor to be expected from the individual researcher. Don't Miss the Research Guide! http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/researchguide.html 15) How does the Brain Work? http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/brain.html 16) Music Makes You Smarter http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/ Are you interested in the research that shows how and why music education makes your smarter? Help teachers integrate music into the classroom. 17) Free Open Source Content http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/OpenSource.html 18) INTEGRATE FOLKLORE, MUSIC, & TRADITIONAL CULTURE http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/folk.html Folk music - sung during the days before there was a music industry when the role of music was about your life - about the life and times that most of us don't experience anymore and when the music was sung because it helped people through it and sustained them. 19) Amazon 1-Click to rule 'em all? Not if Kiwi has his way http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/11/2012224&from=rss http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/15/amazon_patent_reexamination/ 20) The LED - older than we thought http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/led-older-than-we-thought.html If you look in an encyclopaedia, the LED was invented by four independent American research groups in 1962. But the latest edition of Nature photonics reveals that it was actually discovered by a little-known Russian genius around 40 years earlier. ------------------------------ End of nethappenings Digest V6 #8 ********************************* <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Mailing List ?1993 NetHappenings: the largest and oldest K12 Education Mailing List Email Preferences -- Subscribe - Unsubscribe - Digest http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/NetHappenings.html Copyright FAIR USE Statements to be included when reproducing annotations from NetHappenings. The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing any portion of this report, in any format: EDUCATIONAL CYBERPLAYGROUND http://www.edu-cyberpg.com NetHappenings copyright <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>
