Scrap Heap - Change is Coming

Scrap Heap - the last stand for Drummer Mike Hobson. I took time out from dancing to take a couple of videos.
let's start with "Brown Sugar".

Forgery - the Launch of a new Band

One of those moments- the launch of a new band. As the compere said "remember who was here at this moment".

Fantastic Online Spy network Uncovered - 103 Countries

The New York Times has reported on an amazing Spy Network targeting Political  Government and Diplomatic Computers.

TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.

In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved......

...

Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York.

The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama, the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
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The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities.

Conficker now a Global threat to National Security And the Internet

Conficker Cabal fights threat to security, Internet | ZDNet Government | ZDNet.com

ICANN is leading the white hats in an “extraordinary behind-the-scenes struggle” against the forces behind the Conficker malware, John Markoff reports in the Times.

Dancho Danchev noted recently that:

Among the key innovations of the Conficker worm (W32.Downadup) was the pseudo-random domain generation algorithm used for the generation of dynamic command and control locations in order to make it nearly impossible for researchers and the industry to take them down.

How to be less stupid in 2009

How to be less stupid in 2009 | Irregular Enterprise | ZDNet.com

2009 is reality check year. 2008 was a lot of fun but this is the year when IT really needs to look at itself and ask what it can do best to deliver value back to the business. It has been doing so in pockets here and there. Business needs to stop treating IT like a bunch of journeyman plumbers and realize that without many of these people, we wouldn’t have the ability to be faster and smarter.

Social versus Pipeline Communication - what fits?

Cafe-Shaped Conversations | chrisbrogan.com

Chris Brogan has written and linked to some very interesting discussions about what social sites can and cannot do.

The thing with all this talk about social media and how it changes marketing is that I don’t think you’re going to like it. I don’t think the end state is what most companies are thinking about. Google doesn’t buy other companies because they seem neato. Pepsi doesn’t want to talk with a few hundred people at a time, do they? It’s just that all these businesses have built huge platforms, huge sales funnels, huge marketplaces, and I think what social software is setting us up for are cafe-shaped conversations.

Twitter makes $1Million for Dell

Digitalmedia has picked up a story about Twitter making $1Million for Dell this last year and a half by notifying twitterers of special sales. Many web sites are now using Twitter as a supplement to RSS to get notifications of change out.

Twitter has made Dell $1 million in revenue » VentureBeat

Everyone loves talking about Twitter’s business model — because there isn’t one yet, and they’ll keep talking about it until there is one. But it’s becoming more clear that while a business model is of course important, Twitter is perhaps the perfect example of a company that can afford to take its time in finding the one that is perfect for it. That’s because other businesses are building so much on top of the micro-messaging service and using it for their own services. If worst came to worst, and Twitter had to sell, there would probably be a bidding war of a magnitude that would make it seem like this country wasn’t in the midst of a recession.

InternetNews has a good rundown of the Twitter/business phenomenon. Buried in it is this gem:

Less altruistically, some businesses have discovered that Twitter is an effective way of communicating with consumers. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.