BIRMINGHAM - We have had eleven days to absorb the implications of wide spread Chinese supported attacks against Google and thirty or so other organizations. The US Secretary of State made one of the most affirmative statements on Internet freedom yet articulated by a government. Various policy analysts have chimed in as well. Some thoughts
BIRMINGHAM - Last month, I related communications I had with The Jester, an individual who has decided to express his outrage at Jihadist organizations by systematically taking down their web sites. A week later, we learned that engineers at Google had been engaging in their own form of cyber vigilantism by hacking into a command
BIRMINGHAM - I had an interesting demonstration in January from a hacker who goes by the handle "The Jester" or in so-called l33t speak, th3j35t3r which is his Twitter ID. Since January 1, The Jester has been systematically wreaking havoc with several websites he associates with Al Quiada and Jihadists via a Denial of Service
STAMFORD - A lot has happened in a year within the social software and collaboration space. And analyst firm Gartner says companies quickly need to develop best practices for embracing social networking with a maximum of safety. "The growing use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by business users has resulted in serious enterprise
BIRMINGHAM - The attacks against Google emanating from China and the subsequent speech by the US Secretary of State on Internet Freedom have exposed cyber security issues to a wider audience in recent weeks. Perhaps predictably some old ideas are creeping up that should be slapped down quickly. Myth number 1. The US engages in
BLOOMFIELD HILLS - During the summer of 2008, gas prices went through the roof, and the United States refocused on renewable energy. Americans say they desire energy independence from foreign nations and environmentally sound renewable energy sources. To that end, the federal and state governments have enacted a number of alternative energy laws, including the
STAMFORD, Conn. - IT budgets will essentially be flat in 2010, increasing by a weighted global average of 1.3 percent in nominal terms, Compared with 2009 levels where IT budgets declined 8.1 percent, that's not bad at all. These are among the results from the 2010 CIO survey by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP). 2009 was
BIRMINGHAM - Last Tuesday Google announced that they had been hacked by sources in China. The target was email accounts of Chinese activists and bloggers. An outraged Google threatened to discontinue censoring search results at the Google China search engine google.cn. Yahoo chimed in support of Google. Yahoo of course is another Internet company with
ANN ARBOR - After four years and hundreds of miles of fiber-optic cable, Merit Network engineers lit the fiber-optic cable between Mount Pleasant and Big Rapids on December 12, 2009, to complete the "Blue-Line" portion of the Merit backbone network. Merit Network, America's longest-running research and education network is thrilled to have achieved this important
ANN ARBOR - Cloud computing technology made a lot of progress in 2009 but it wasn't without its problems. Reliability and security issues surfaced as the young service struggled with the widespread media coverage and rapid growth. Reflecting on the year that was dominated by the IT buzz word, cloud computing, Online Tech CEO Yan