Just for laughs

The world’s first hacker probably came out of the academic fraternity – in particular from M.I.T. – sometime in the 1960’s. A hacker sees himself as “a person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.”

There are essentially two kinds of hackers: white-hat hackers who use their skills and knowledge  to learn how systems and networks work and discover and fix security holes; and the black-hat hackers who use the same knowledge to create trojans and virus that intend to harm the systems they infiltrate.

Earlier today, Lulz Security or LulzSec, a hacker group that famously hacked into Sony and Nintendo, Fox and PBS, the CIA and the US Senate, announced that they were disbanding. In their farewell Twitter announcement they claim that their ” planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance …” with the hope that they had a “microscopic impact” on someone, somewhere.

Lulz is a corruption of LOL (Laugh out loud, for the uninitiated) and as their name suggests the group hacked just for laughs. The identity of the six that called themselves LulzSec may not remain anonymous if what a group that calls themselves the “A-Team” say is true. They claim that they know the names, locations and aliases of the LulzSec and despite the high profile success of their 50-day mayhem, the A-Team calls them the “dregs of the Internet“.

“To understand who/what lulzsec/gn0sis are/is you need to understand where they came from.  Everything originates from the *chan (4chan/711chan/etc.) culture.  This internet subculture is pretty much the dregs of the internet.  It’s a culture built around the anonymity of the internet.  If your anonymous no one can find you.  No one can hurt you, so your invincable.  The problem with this idealogy, is it’s on the internet.  The internet by definition is not anonymous.  Computers have to have attribution. If you trace something back far enough you can find its origins.”

To see the full transcript of the A-Team’s scathing revelation, go to http://pastebin.com/iVujX4TR

It remains to be seen if the A-Team manages to sink LulzSec’s boat or if they really do sail away into the distance. But for Nintendo, Sony and all the networks the group hacked into, the last 50 days have been far from funny. For them it’s an unanimous goodbye and good riddance!

 

 

 

How chatter started a revolution

Tunisia is a web-savvy country where 2 million of its 10 million population have Facebook accounts.When Wikileaks, the whistleblower website, released 10 cables written by US diplomats about Tunisia, word spread rapidly via the internet and social networking sites. The diplomatic chatter ranged from corruption in the country to a dinner hosted by El Materi, the son-in-law of Tunisia’s then-President, Zine al-Abidine BenAli for the U.S. ambassador.

The memos from 2006 to 2009, were first published in November 2010 and translated by Al-Jazeera, a popular TV network in the region.   Corruption of Ben Ali’s “Family” was the main theme that ran through the cables, a family that was above the law and ruled the country without restraint or control. See https://tunileaks.appspot.com/

“The WikiLeaks revelations confirmed that people surrounding president Ben Ali were corrupt and spent a lot of money. They lived in mansions and had their food delivered to them directly from France. It was happening at a time when ordinary Tunisians were struggling to find jobs and feed their families,” said North Africa and Mideast expert Mary-Jane Deeb.

The confirmation of this huge disparity between “the Family” and ordinary citizens angered the Tunisians, an anger that boiled over when a young educated but unemployed man, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest when a municipal aide seized his unlicensed vegetable cart and proceeded to harrass and humiliate him. That was the final catalyst that started the 28-day Tunisian Revolution that ousted President Ben Ali and forced him and his family to flee to Saudi Arabia.

And that’s how Wikileaks’ disclosure helped start off a revolution, first in Tunisia and then in quick succession in Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan and Libya. Now the world watches as history unfolds and the spirit of revolution and change of the old guard spreads through the new media of Twitter and Facebook.

Deep penetration

Canadians are mostly a content, low-key bunch who prefer to stay away from the limelight.  But they’re not called crazy Canucks for nothing, and are proving to be crazy in something else other than skiing!

According to measurement company, comScore, 68% of Canada is online, logging in the highest number of hours at 42 hours per month. France comes in second at 62% penetration and Israel with 38 hours per month.

Canadians are crazy about YouTube, too, with the highest per capita consumption of video in the whole world and the 18-24 year olds watching an astonishing 244 videos per month. “It’s just absolutely crazy in terms of how passionate Canadians are about YouTube,” said Chris O’Neill, Canada’s country director for Google.

Canadians were early adopters to Facebook as well.  In the early days, they were second only to the US in terms of users (see my earlier blog, I’m the face, for more on Facebook) and now, at 17 million users, Canada is vying with India for ninth and tenth place for countries with most Facebook accounts. Put that in context with Canada’s current population of a little over 34 million, US’ population of 310 million and India’s at 1.17 billion.

More Canadians check Wikipedia than anyone else in the world, surfing 16 Wikipedia pages per month – one more than Germany, two more than Poland and four more than the US. Canadian users also generate 217,000 edits a month, making it the eighth most productive country.

While Canadians don’t tweet quite as much as others, one prominent Canadian Twitter user have 6.4 million followers. His name is Justin Bieber. Yup, you’ve guessed it … there are more Canadian girls using Twitter than boys!

Here’s Justin Bieber singing, “Pray”. After seeing this my thoughts were, the boy can sing, is kinda cute and his heart is in the right place:

http://www.youtube.com/justinbieber