Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

A "CYBER cold war" is developing as international web espionage and cyber attacks become the biggest threats to internet security, according to a report. Computer security firm McAfee said governments and government allied groups were engaging in increasingly sophisticated cyber spying, with many attacks originating from China. Some 120 countries could be developing the capacity for such activities. In the past 12 months, there have been reports of cyber attacks against government targets in the US, Germany, India, New Zealand and Australia. What started as probes to see what was possible have become well-funded and well organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage, the report said, with perpetrators aiming to cause havoc by disrupting critical national infrastructure systems. Targets include air traffic control, financial markets, water and sewer- age systems, electricity, payrolls, intensive care units and even traffic lights. In September:...

Although we credit Google, Yahoo , and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex. But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine: Ted Nelson Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Ted's project Xanadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off, much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Ted...

Reuters: A New Jersey man was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Friday for helping send spam e-mails to more than 1.2 million America Online subscribers. Todd Moeller, 28, was sentenced 27 months in prison in a federal court in New York after he was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the profits, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan said. Moeller and Adam Vitale of New York pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaking antispam laws and defeating AOL's filter system by using a variety of computer servers and changing the header information on e-mails to ensure they could not be traced, court papers said. Moeller told the informant via instant messaging he could conceal the source of the e-mails through his access to 40 different servers and had profited $40,000 a month from other spam e-mail scams that promoted stocks, prosecutors said. In one week in August 20...

By Corinne Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - If you are at work, chances are you are probably doing it right now. Walk into any large office, and you will most likely hear the telltale computer bleeps of chat programs and online games, accompanied by furious mouse-clicking. Employees may seem busy, but many are wasting time on the Internet, or " cyberslacking ". Studies worldwide suggest employees spend about a fifth of their work shifts engaging in personal activities. Their favourite time waster? The Internet. Patricia Wallace, author of the 2004 book "The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology Is Transforming Work", said employees have always found ways to avoid working too hard. "The issue is now you have something that seems to be genuinely irresistible because it's such a gateway to the whole planet that's right there on your desk and easily concealed to people passing by," said Wallace, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Balti...

Inveterate note takers cum net browsers can now make use of a new product available online Google notebook. It accompanies you unobtrusively when you browse the Net and is at hand when you want to note down, clip or paste anything. You can do it without leaving the site you are browsing. The notebook may prove to be useful for students, researchers and those diligent types who like to scribble. The content can be organised in terms of subjects. It all looks very neat and tidy. You can also decide to share it online with your friends or publish it as a webpage after a while. And there is no need to worry about losing the notebook, since it is kept secure in a Google server.

San Francisco: Google has expanded its popular mapping technology to allow users to create their own personalised maps complete with their own pictures and locations. The new features launched on Thursday allow creators to share maps, giving them the possibility of creating localised maps of points of interest in specific neighbourhoods. Users can choose whether to make their maps public or private. Maps can be further customised by specify ing the scale of the map, the order the landmarks appear in the sidebar, and even the design of the landmark icons on the map. They can also be toggled between map and satellite views. The Silicon Valley company is hoping the simplicity of the new features will generate millions of highly specialised maps to be stored in its search index. Google Maps is currently the thirdmost popular map site, after AOL’s Mapquest and Yahoo Maps.

Glenn Chapman, San Francisco: Google is in behind-the-scenes talks with film and music studios trying to make newly acquired video-sharing website YouTube a gold mine, and not a lawsuit-generating black hole. While some analysts questioned the sanity of Google buying YouTube in a 1.65-billion-dollar stock deal, Internet insiders contend that Google is shrewdly manoeuvring on solid ground. “The Internet offers real opportunities for media companies to reach a wider, global audience and to interact more directly with users,” Google said. On the day the online search powerhouse bought superstar start-up YouTube it also announced deals with CBS, Sony, BMG, Vivendi Universal Music and Warner Group to feature their videos on the Internet. A number of studios have contacted Google to explore ways to cash-in on their shows, films or songs becoming Internet sensations. Google can shield itself from lawsuits by taking down copyrighted videos after the owners complain, according to attorney Jason...

Intelligence sleuths are planning to use sniffer software to trace the activities of Maoists, their sympathisers and ISI agents on the Internet. The sleuths have decided to go snooping in the Internet after realising that the Maoists and their sympathisers have turned cyber-savvy and were using emails and chat to transmit key messages. Police had also come across several instances of ISI suspects using cyber cafes to communicate with their bosses in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Intelligence agencies have now decided to scan Internet traffic at the local gateways of service providers to sniff out the cyber communication of extremists. A committee of cyber forensic experts has been set up to filter emails, coded messages, chat and other communication. The sniffer software will also help intelligence agencies track extremists and their operatives in the city. Special Intelligence Branch (that deals with the Maoists) is in fact the first State police agency to go for sniff...