Hide or protect?

One of the fairly traditional ways of concealing information from the eye, for which it is not intended to be its banal wrapping in a "black box" which will be tucked into the farthest on a shelf in the hope that under a mountain of other stuff nobody is interested. Oddly enough, this method is popular today in the protection of electronic documents...

By thinking about how perfect modern system of information protection, I was prompted recently occurred an incident involving U.S. military agencies, important documents which were made public site WikiLeaks.org. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that "the consequences of disclosure of these documents may be difficult and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners. They can damage our relationships and reputation in this key part of the world. Now, intelligence data collection methods, as well as military tactics and techniques will be known to our competitors".

That is, as you can see, the situation is more than serious - and certainly the data that has flowed from the Pentagon, were well protected, which, however, did not save the U.S. military from the machinations of insiders. In this case, it seems, an insider who has passed a scandalous site secret documents, had acted out of lust does not receive compensation for them, but because of some ideological reasons. Apparently, it did not work so the policy of secrecy, well protect such information from those who are willing to sell it to foreign intelligence.

The main question is how could an active defense documents fail in this case is better than mere secrecy? Under the active protection here refers not simply limit access to documents, but also monitor the actions of employees (which is realized DLP-system), and even encrypted information. Obviously, each new level of protection all the more ideological fervor cools to an insider, especially a big credit for this belongs to the DLP-system - in fact, receiving the key, can retrieve secure cryptographic media. At the same time avoid DLP-system is not so easy - for it is not always a silent code, and the employee responsible for ensuring information security, which has all the powers to report on insider activity superiors. Of course, to ensure absolute protection against leaks of information to make just a Herculean effort, but certainly the number of utekshih documents on WikiLeaks would be much smaller.

Someone else's mistakes, we replace our own experience "to step on a rake", and a wise decision to learn from the mistakes of the Pentagon. Large-scale leakage of information, which ultimately will cost the U.S. government simply astronomical sum in dollars, allows anyone who underestimates the danger of leakage of information and the importance of utilizing DLP-systems, learn from someone else's bitter experience what can cause neglect of issues of information security . I think that after her many could learn and benefit from high-quality software products to protect their confidential information.

Game developers bullied.

Many suspect that the games in social networks - it is something from the category of silly fun. The developer Ian Bogost decided to prove it in practice. He created a deliberately dull game Cow Clicker and published it on Facebook. At this point in the game Cow Clicker There are about 20 thousand active users, the rating of 4.5 out of 5.

Each player receives a cow and have to click the mouse on it every six hours. To get the right call more often, you can purchase additional credits for money. The social element is implemented through the neighboring cows, which can manage you invite users. If you have neighbors, your click is also added to their rating.

In his blog, Ian Bogost explains that this game was created as a result of a dispute that broke out at the recent Game Developers Conference 2010 between creators normal appearances and those working in the niche social networks. According to the first, the company Zynga and others like her are using design philosophy "F*** the Users", ie make the game, the main functionality which - draining money from the players.

Holograms in night clubs.

Since U.S. laws make it difficult maintenance of a normal strip club with girls dancing on the table, the club owners begin to think about using modern technology. For example, the company Digital Illusions has opened the world's first strip club with extremely holographic women. Club Lolita's Cantina began work on July 22 in Las Vegas.

Owners of clubs have already anticipate when the holographic technology can be translated as musicians, entertainers and other artists appearing on stage and demanding exorbitant fees. Nothing to be done, high technologies continue to raise the level of unemployment in developed countries - that's up to strippers have arrived.

Facebook can be purchased for $65 per share.

Trading Platform SecondMarket published statistics of trade in shares of private companies in the 2 quarter. 2010. This includes information about buying and selling shares, which are not traded on the open market. Seller was mostly former employees of companies.

In 2 quarter. 2010 turnover on the Stock Exchange fell to $51 million (though only in March, were sold at $70 million), but the average value of the shares continued to rise. For example, shares of Facebook have already offered for $65, while in April they can be bought for $50.

Shares Facebook constitute 64% of all traffic on the closed markets. Second place at Zynga (12%), followed by LinkedIn, Bloom Energy, and Silver Spring Networks (6%), Twitter and MobiTV (3%).

In the second quarter in the list to purchase the application appeared in the action eGarmony, Groupon, Skype and Mozilla Corporation, although the supply of shares in these companies is absent.

Is there a "Balmer discount" on shares of Microsoft?

Rumours that the top management of Microsoft began discussing the shift from his post Steve Ballmer CEO. The reason for this was a bad Dynamics Microsoft shares recently, because of which even Apple has pulled ahead in terms of capitalization.

Microsoft has a good financial results: an increase in revenue from Xbox, record sales of Windows 7, accumulating more than $20 billion in cash in the bank, but shares some reason feel worse than the market. According to some shareholders, capitalization effect "Balmer discount", which crushes the course. If the CEO will leave, the market may perceive it positively.

Talk about leaving Ballmer appeared after the recent corporate conference Microsoft Global Experience in Atlanta, which brought together 10 thousand employees Microsoft. Many of them had the impression that Steve is not the one he had lost his inspiration, and his speeches do not light as before. Some participants wrote about it in twitter, and other privately shared their impressions that Steve is the last conference of Microsoft Global Experience. The next year it will be gone.

Experts on condition of anonymity, said that with its products such as Kin, Bing and Zune, Microsoft looks "is not relevant in Silicon Valley".

Many agree that Ballmer is under pressure. However, his departure, there are several obstacles. In the first, Steve enjoys the unconditional trust of the Board of Directors. Secondly, in his place has not yet seen a worthy candidate. After the departure of Bill Gates was a lot of options, but now they do not, and post-CEO Microsoft, according to some, more like a dictatorship. It is also connected with a specific style of leadership inherent Ballmer, who is known for its rigidity and expressiveness. There is reliable evidence that in 2005, Ballmer threw a chair and used obscene language in his office when he learned that one of the programmers moving to Google.