Alexander’s Blog

Google, the search engine giant, is once again caught in another controversy. This time it’s a privacy issue that have people up in arms. Google recently started the new “Street View” feature, to go along with its other views, such as satellite, hybrid, and map view. The street view is little too close for comfort for some because it allows Web users to see people not only on street but also in their homes and backyards. You can easily zoom into people’s cars in their driveways and read the license plate numbers. You can even rotate the view 360 degrees to see it all. The view is amazingly clear. The Street View is available for several major cities, such as New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Miami and Denver.

Check out this guy, is he breaking in or just entering his own apartment? Read the entire story here.

At least 10 bizarre sights in Google Street View are already posted on the Internet. Next time you step in your own private backyard, just smile because you could be showcased on Google’s street view (without your permission, of course).

The Seattle Time reports:

“A notorious spammer once sued by Microsoft was arrested in Seattle this morning, a week after a federal grand jury indicted him under seal for allegedly illegal — and prolific — spamming. Robert Alan Soloway, 27, is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in U.S. District Court on 35 counts of mail and wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and fraud in connection with electronic mail. The indictment was unsealed after Soloway’s arrest just before 8 a.m.” The Seattle Times.

This guy was sued by Microsoft in 2005 because he allegedly sent e-mails that appeared to come from Hotmail and MSN. The e-mails were sent under his company Newport Internet Marketing. Soloway also had a $10 million judgment against him when a businessman from Oklahoma sued him in 2005 under the federal CAN-SPAM act.

Feds are saying that you may find less spam on your computer since his arrest. If there were a top 10 list for America’s Most Wanted spammers, this guy would have been on the list. I am not too sure if his arrest would make such a significant reduction in spam. In July 2005, Christopher Smith of Minnesota, one of the world’s most prolific spammer was arrested on his arrival in United States from Dominican Republic. He moved around his operation to China, Malaysia, and other countries. It doesn’t seem that his arrest put any major dent in the spam business. Unfortunately, there are way too many spammers around. And the fight goes on…

A classic science-fiction scene shows a person wearing a metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out to detect the person’s thoughts. Another sci-fi movie standard depicts robots doing humans’ bidding. Now the two are combined, and in real life: University of Washington (UW) researchers in Seattle, WA can control the movement of a humanoid robot with signals from a human brain.

Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering, and his students have demonstrated that an individual can “order” a robot to move to specific locations and pick up specific objects merely by generating the proper brain waves that reflect the individual’s instructions. The results were presented recently at the Current Trends in Brain-Computer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, B.C.

“This is really a proof-of-concept demonstration,” Rao says. “It suggests that one day we might be able to use semi-autonomous robots for such jobs as helping disabled people or performing routine tasks in a person’s home.”

The controlling individual — in this case a graduate student in Rao’s lab — wears a cap dotted with 32 electrodes. The electrodes pick up brain signals from the scalp based on a technique called electroencephalography. The person watches the robot’s movements on a computer screen via two cameras, one mounted on the robot and another above it.

Right now, the “thought commands” are limited to a few basic instructions. A person can instruct the robot to move forward, choose one of two available objects, pick it up, and bring it to one of two locations. Preliminary results show 94 percent accuracy in choosing the correct object.

Objects available to be picked up are seen by the robot’s camera and conveyed to the user’s computer screen. Each object lights up randomly. When the person looks at the object that he or she wants to pick up and sees it suddenly brighten, the brain registers surprise. The computer detects this characteristic surprised pattern of brain activity and conveys the choice back to the robot, which then proceeds to pick up the selected object. A similar procedure is used to determine the user’s choice of a destination once the object has been picked up.

Click here for the entire story.

The California assembly committee recently passed a bill which will affect all companies doing business in California. Among other businesses, it will have a serious impact on credit card companies, banks, and financial institutions who handle users’ personal data. The bill will move to the Assembly Business and Professions Committee for a hearing on April 24. According to

The Data Breach Notification Bill, Assembly Bill 779, was approved Tuesday by the state Assembly Judiciary Committee with an 8-2 vote. The bill, authored by committee chairman Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento), seeks to improve data security by requiring accountability and reimbursement of affected parties if a data breach occurs. [Source: BizJournals]

It’s interesting that the California Credit Union League supports the bill, while California Bankers Association, California Mortgage Bankers Association, and the state’s financial services, grocers, retailers and restaurant associations all oppose the bill. Of course, these businesses don’t want to be held responsible for their lack of security and would prefer to continue to do business the way they have been doing for decades.

Here’s a portion of the Assembly Bill (AB 779).

Any person or business that conducts business in California, and that owns or licenses computerized data that includes personal information, shall disclose any breach of the security of the system following discovery or notification of the breach in the security of the data to any resident of California whose unencrypted personal information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by an unauthorized person.

You can read the entire bill here.

In one of the biggest attacks against the Internet since 2002, hackers yesterday overwhelmed at least three of the 13 root servers that manage global Internet traffic. The attack on UltraDNS, the company that manages servers for .org suffixes, lasted about 12 hours but went unnoticed by most Internet users. Some of the targeted servers are operated by the US Department of Defense. Although the hackers disguised their origin, experts traced a large amount of rogue data to South Korea.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it was monitoring what it called “anomalous” Internet traffic. They don’t believe there’s any imminent threat to the homeland at this point.