My pig

Dave Rosenberg dishes up “Software, Interrupted” with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @dr138.

Conan O'Brien ribs 'nerds' at Intel science fair

How do I calculate the size of meatballs?–O'Brien asks.

A project of note was a “See Through Camera Jammer.” “So if someone has a see-through camera, your device stops them from seeing through people’s clothing?” O’Brien asked. “Why would you make this?” The response from the high school kid who did the project: “Because it’s illegal.” And Conan responded: “But I paid a lot of money for that thing.”

He ended the segment with a visit to the meatball size-measuring project. “Of course, not everyone here is a genius. ‘How do I calculate the size of meatballs?’ This was a $13 million study commissioned by Chef Boyardee,” he joked.

“Even though Intel is one of the world’s largest corporations and they could crush me like a fly, they were nice enough to let me go visit their science fair in Reno, Nev.,” O’Brien said.

The link to “The Tonight Show” replay is here. Note that the Intel segment begins at about the 6:30 marker into the show.

“How do I calculate the size of meatballs?” That was the title of one of the seminal Intel science projects that late-night comedian Conan O’Brien covered in a segment last night on NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”

O’Brien was at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, billed as the world’s largest pre-college science fair. Intel is one of the sponsors of the “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien,” which launched recently with the retirement (from that show) of Jay Leno.

Conan O'Brien interviews science fair participants

(Credit:The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien)

Commercializing social media: Yes or no?

Last week, CNET News’ Stephen Shankland related the story of how the Scion public-relations team added me as a contact in Flickr. As he noted, “I thought it might be a marketing move, given that the Detroit auto show was under way, and indeed, a little digging showed that to be the case.”

This is, if anything, pushing the boundaries of an ill-defined boundary between public and private, between commercial and noncommercial. And the reality is, that boundary never will get better defined, unless people push it from time to time.

News.com Poll

That said, I’m inclined to put this in the “OK this time, but don’t make a practice of it” bucket. In part, it’s a matter of numbers; I didn’t mind this one contact, but I’d hate to be deluged with Flickr contact requests from all manner of people with nonobvious commercial purposes.

This seems a good opportunity to ponder the appropriate uses of social media for commercial purposes.

What do you think?

I likewise contacted the Flickr user, and here’s the reply that I received (via the Yahoo.com address in their profile):

Using Flickr in this way also seems to go a step too far into the personal space. My public and personal personas may well be blurred together, but my Flickr account is pretty obviously not related to the technology writing I do. It feels a little bit like someone calling my home number on a business matter.

The PR agency wasn’t really hiding its identity, but it wasn’t advertising it, either. For example, they used a Yahoo.com e-mail address. We’re also not talking about a highly focused PR contact by way of Flickr; I may write about technology, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever written about cars specifically.

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April 2nd, 2010

6wkm Conference- ‘Rolling Back Militarism- A Task

Conference: 'Rolling Back Militarism: A Task for the Global Movement'

At this time of global economic and environmental crisis, join activists from International &US based NGOs to find the opportunity -this conference is an invitation to engage in a strategic process, to examine our campaigning priorities and options, to explore new ways to challenge the militarism we see around us, and to build international connections and partnerships.

• Learn ways to help constituents begin to break with the culture and practice of militarism that is now a U.S. legacy
• Set strategies to achieve more collaborative, peace-oriented policies from the Obama administration.
• Rebuild relations between US peace movement(s), partners abroad, &key leaders from sister organizations.
• Forge new alliances and exchange proposals for future joint work.

CC and the Halos vs ;Mgmt. - Halos Heaven

Catching up with MySpace Music

It’s been more than five months since MySpace launched MySpace Music–so how’s it doing?

“Our traffic is huge,” MySpace Music President Courtney Holt told CNET News in an interview. “Our usage is very high. People are doing a lot of different things with music on our platform.” There are currently more than 5 million bands with music on the streaming-and-discovery music service, and more than 100 million playlists have been created, and it was a matter of days before MySpace Music hit its billionth stream.

MySpace Music, currently only available in the U.S., also has international markets on the agenda. “We don’t have a timetable yet, but what I’ve been saying is we’re trying to launch mid-year, and we’re trying to pick key markets now and we’re doing the work to prepare for that,” Holt said.

But the service is still evolving, Holt said, and is willing to change in response to user feedback and criticism. Recently, it’s improved a number of search features, tweaked its music player, and added an “activity feed” to artist pages, among other things. There are also “album pages” that not only give users a hub for purchasing albums, but which also serve as surrogate MySpace pages for artists that may not have created their own.

Regulations and potential legal spats aside, there are plenty of competitors to MySpace Music–Imeem, Apple’s iTunes, and Last.fm (owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive) all compete in one way or another. But the real nemesis would be a music offering from Facebook, the social network that snuck up from behind to surpass MySpace in global traffic. That’s a rumor that’s arisen from time to time and refuses to go away.

Recently, digital music in the U.K. has been in the news because of disputes between Google’s YouTube and PRS For Music, the country’s royalty collection group. Holt said that MySpace Music has already started talks with PRS. “I met with PRS when I was in Europe and we’re hoping to form a deal with them…we’d like to get a deal done and be in-market when it makes sense.”

What we can expect down the road: a do-it-yourself tool for small-time artists to add their content to MySpace Music, perhaps. More music videos, and more music-centric video programming. And more revenue streams, including merchandise and ticketing. “We’re going to be doing that in a big way in the near future,” Holt said. Obviously, it’s a tricky business, considering the concert world is dominated by huge players like Ticketmaster and Live Nation (which have made plans to merge) and MySpace Music would invariably have to negotiate with them. “It’s hard to do that (independently) because Ticketmaster, LiveNation, AEG–they’ve got control of venues and they’re locking in tours,” Holt explained.

MySpace, acquired by News Corp. in 2005, got its start as a hub for all things independent music before it turned into the world’s largest social-networking site–only to be usurped by Facebook last year. Since midway though 2008, we’ve seen a lot of signs that MySpace has changed its strategy to reflect a return to its music and media roots. The biggest of these, obviously, was the launch of MySpace Music, a joint venture with the major record labels.

Cash for Clunkers could raid renewable-energy loans

The money to fund an extended Cash for Clunkers program could come at the expense of renewable energy companies.

The Renewable Fuels Association, the main lobbying organization for the ethanol industry, put out a statement on Friday to indicate it is “concerned to see the program paid for by depleting the renewable energy loan guarantee program.”

The House on Friday overwhelmingly passed a bill to extend the program which gives consumers up to $4,500 for trading in old cars for new, fuel-efficient ones with an additional $2 billion. The initial $1 billion set aside is said to be already or nearly exhausted.

Speaking on the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi also voiced her concern and said that she hoped those renewable energy loan guarantee funds would be restored.

But the iPhone app has a few advantages. Per the Globe: “The application, which will be free to download from Apple, will allow residents to use the Global Positioning System function on their iPhones to pinpoint the precise location of the problem for City Hall. After submitting a complaint, users will get a tracking number, so they can pester city officials if the problem persists.” Ooh! Pestering city officials sounds like fun!

Or, as one blogger has pointed out already, the system could easily get flooded with photos accompanied by captions like “Please send a cop over to make these Yankees fans leave this bar.”

Beware, Citizen Connect: complaints about this ‘Aqua Hunger Teen Force’ ad campaign turned into a huge mess for Boston two years ago.

Citizen Connect has been submitted to Apple but hasn’t made it into the iTunes App Store just yet. When it does, it will be free.

That said, the idea of a complaint-filing iPhone app for Boston is particularly hilarious: the most famous instance of Boston municipal complaints in recent history happened when people started calling in concerns about suspicious-looking devices that turned out to be an ad campaign for the cartoon flick “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” This fact, however, did not come to light until the city had already shut down all traffic on the Charles River.

Boston to launch complaint-filing iPhone app

The city of Boston is set to launch an officialiPhone application for residents to file complaints about “neighborhood nuisances–nasty potholes, graffiti-stained walls, blown street lights,” according to The Boston Globe.

Called Citizen Connect, the app will let Bostonians send pictures and tips right to City Hall.

The Boston Globe said Citizen Connect is the first app of its kind, but other cities have also been turning to new technology to make the minutiae of municipal government run more smoothly. New York’s 311 nonemergency hotline for residents now has a presence on Skype and Twitter. New York also now accepts photo and video submissions for 911 and 311.

Botnet worm in DOS attacks could wipe data out on infected PCs

For more information listen to CNET blogger Larry Magid’s podcast on the subject.

Researchers are finding that the botnets launching the attacks are infected with several types of malware. The MyDoom worm is being used to spread infections between computers via e-mail, Symantec and other antivirus vendors have reported.

South Korea officials told reporters on Friday that the DOS attacks used 86 IP addresses in 16 countries, including South Korea, the U.S., Japan, and Guatemala, but not North Korea, according to an Associated Press report.

The denial-of-service attacks against Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea that started last weekend may have stopped for now, but code on the infected bots was set to wipe data on Friday, security experts said.

There are only about 50,000 infected PCs around the world being used in the attacks, which is relatively small compared to the millions that were infected withConficker, he said.

The Dozer Trojan serves as a backdoor and connects to IPs through certain ports, allowing it to update itself and to receive instructions on sites to attack, according to Symantec. It’s unclear if the DOS attacks will happen again because the infected PCs can receive new instructions at any time, Egan said.

The attacks started over the July 4 weekend launching distributed DOS attacks on dozens of government and commercial sites in the U.S. and South Korea. The attacks, which resurged during the week at least twice, affected sites including the White House, the Federal Trade Commission, the Secret Service, and The Washington Post.

One of the files dropped on infected PCs is programmed to wipe out files on the PC, including a master boot record, which will render the system inoperable when the PC is rebooted, Symantec said. “Basically, your system is in trouble if this executes,” Egan said.

“There is nothing new or novel in the technology,” he said. Judging by the high-profile sites attacked it’s likely the attackers are just trying to get attention, he added.

A dropper program called W32.Dozer that contains the other components is sent by W32.Mytob!gen to e-mail addresses it gathers from the compromised computer, the Symantec Response Blog says. If a user executes the attachment, W32.Dozer drops Trojan.Dozer and W32.Mydoom.A@mm on the system.

Botnet expert suggests hitting cybercriminals in pocket book

SAN FRANCISCO–Technology is not enough to help the security industry keep botnets from stealing peoples’ money and committing denial-of-service attacks, a top botnet researcher said on Wednesday. His suggestion? Stop the flow of money to their coffers.

Computers can be infected in any number of ways, but typically they get a Trojan or other malicious program downloaded onto them without the owner’s knowledge, which happens either from visiting a Web site with malicious code on it or opening malicious attachments in e-mail.

Once infected, depending on the attack, a computer can be controlled by remote attackers who are able to steal data or instruct the computer and other so-called zombies into sending spam or launching distributed denial-of-service attacks to shut down Web sites.

“Right now, it’s risky to surf the Internet with a PC,” he said. “I would like to see us return to a time when you could surf the Internet and trust that your computer wasn’t going to get infected.”

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.

Meanwhile, national CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) organizations should be given authority to fight botnets, by ordering Internet service providers to shut down hosting providers, Stewart said. In South Korea, for example, malicious Internet activity dropped drastically when the CERT three got teeth, he added.

“We need to disrupt their business model and make it hard for them to carry out their attacks and make money,” Joe Stewart, a security researcher at SecureWorks, said in an interview at the RSA 2009 security conference here.

Researchers have focused on trying to stop attacks, but once they get a botnet operator kicked offline by shutting down its hosting provider it’s usually not long before the botnet cranks back up with its command-and-control server at a different location, he said. For example, four months after a major botnet hoster, McColo, was shut down in November, the spam volumes were back up to normal levels.

The organization would need funding, which could possibly come from the companies that seem to be impacted the most from cybercrime, like credit card processors, he said.