Its Mid-2008. The Pentagon Finally Gets Around to Defining CyberSpace

You can only imagine how long this meeting was.  After decades of wrangling, the big brains at the Department of Defense finally got around to defining exactly what is meant by the term “cyberspace.”  This was distributed in an official memorandum at the Pentagon. All I can say is “It’s about time!”

The definition:

I have a copy of the DoD Memorandum here.  It references Presidential directives for Homeland Security and National Security and helpfully clarifies the term for secretaries of the military departments.  And this is why contractors make the big bucks in Washington, DC.



The new web campaign of the day

By Mark O’Neill

I often find it amusing about some of the pointless website campaigns that people start up but this one that I found today is one that I whole-heartedly support. I have a lot of email buddies who send me lots of “forwards” – jokes, pictures, video clips, weblinks and much more. Which is all fine and good but these buddies still haven’t learned the concept of email BCC – Blind Carbon Copy.

All being geeks here, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how BCC works. But there’s a lot of people out there who still haven’t worked it out yet. I’m sure you know a few people like that too. So when you get a forwarded email, you normally have to scroll past scores of email addresses first which is a spammer’s wet dream. I keep telling my friends that those email addresses should be in the BCC column but do they listen? Nope.

So I think I’ll now be sending them the BCC Please website and asking them to read it. If you know anyone who mass pastes email addresses in plain sight, maybe you should send along the page to them too? Hopefully they might finally get the message!



Spiceworks 3.0: Taking Network Management to the Next Level

By Rob Dunn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

If you already are familiar with Spiceworks, then you can skip ahead to “Brief History” – but if not, read on.

Network Inventory for the budget-crunched masses

If you are a systems administrator or IT manager who maintains a small to medium sized shop, you probably don’t have a lot of money to spend (heck, who does these days?) on proactive network monitoring and inventory tools. So, any company that puts out an inexpensive high-quality tool to help you manage your network is a welcome sight.

Of course, if it is a free high-quality tool… well, that’s even better!

Continue reading ›

Steve Ballmer getting egged in Budapest

Yes folks, Mr. Ballmer can finally join his buddy Bill in the “getting food trown at me” club. In the following video, you’ll see steve about to start talking at a conference at the Hungarian University of Economy in Budapest, when suddenly, an angry student gets up and start throwing eggs at him while yelling something completely unintelligible.

And as a bonus, here’s the video where someone smashes a cream pie on Mr. Gates’ face. Enjoy!

Web games to help computers get smarter

By Mark O’Neill

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have introduced a website with games designed to make peoples computers get better at doing certain tasks.

It’s one of those “for the common good” things, where you play the games and the researchers collect the results together and then use them to improve existing applications for everyone.

To give you an example, one of them is a game where you are shown a picture and you have to give words to describe that picture – you may know it better as Google Image Labeler. So these aren’t silly little league games. Some big money is involved here!

There’s only five games at the moment but I’m sure more will be added in the future.   If anyone criticises you for playing the games, just tell them you’re “doing your bit to improve the internet”.

Via SF Gate TechBits

The Underwear of the Future?

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Boxers, briefs, or high-tech underwear that can monitor your health?

No joke, gentlemen: Scientists have just filed a new patent for underpants that monitor your blood pressure.

The special skivvies come equipped with waistband sensors that use conductive rubber to measure how fast your blood is pulsing through your body.

“Electrodes are so arranged as to measure the passing of pulses of the central artery, and the left and right femoralis, as well as the ECG,” the patent says.

“The system may also be arranged to monitor the temperature, the posture, and the level of activity of the subject.”

Hmm. No word what the system indicates if you happen to be in the midst of viewing Tila Tequila pictures on the internet.

Open Culture – one of the best sites on the internet

By Mark O’Neill

There are a lot of crap websites on the net that I wouldn’t miss for an instant if they disappeared. But if Open Culture vanished, I would be really hacked off. This is one website that I monitor constantly for updates because everything they post is interesting.

I mean, look at what they have right now.   A recording of what is supposedly Walt Whitman reading his poem “America” (which then makes you wonder if the recording is real or not).   Then a rare early recording of the human voice (which made me comment that it isn’t really a recording of a human voice at all but more a recording of static!).

They also collect together essential jazz albums, books you should be reading, YouTube videos you should be watching, free podcasts you should be listening to, blogs you should be reading, and much more.    I am still wading my way through a free Mozart symphony that I found on iTunes thanks to Open Culture pointing it out to me.

This is definately one website you should have in your RSS reader.    You could easily waste an entire day going through Open Culture’s archives.