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In November 2008, a worm quietly sounded the geek alarms as it set about to infect millions of personal computers around the internet -- to date, estimated at 6-7 million. It was christened Conficker by MS security staff. It exploited a flaw in MS Windows operating systems -- got into the computer, closed the flaw, and went about replicating itself. It communicates to its home base with an encryption level that is so powerful, it's still in the lab -- and is one of the contenders for a new security standard to be published in 2013. It is part of a powerful botnet that was used only once, in what looks to have been designed to test its viability. Ever since then, it has sat dormant. Waiting. Not much is known about it's purpose or who controls it. What is known however is scary, because there is no way to stop it, and it can be used to cause severe disruption if needed. The good guys put up a good fight, but may have lost to the bad guys on this one -- but no one knows ...

In our first world democracies, the general population nestles under the comfort of apathy, trusting that what our government does, is in our best interest -- in the best interest of our nation, our democracy and the world. Wish that was true. As with most power, the benefits pour to the self-interested -- and caters to the few close our elected officials -- including those elected to serve us. At the end of the day, we're sheep, making the rich, richer -- and the powerful, more powerful, and above the laws that govern the rest of us. That is why, entities such as Wikileaks , exist. In fact, it is one of the few, where the powerful can be challenged and brought to their knees. And you know the powerful self-interest are afraid, when they've declared an open war on Wikileaks. The US government, along with the governments of China, North Korea and Iran -- as well as others, such as Australia and Britain -- are seeking to bring Wikileaks to its knees. Not only have their b...

Google loaded $2M in cash into the tubes, and sent it over to Wikimedia , the nonprofit that oversees Wikipedia . The donation, which matches the donation from Pierre Omidyar's from six months ago, will go the distance to ensuring Wikipedia will continue to hum along in 2010. Despite the recession, people have apparently been loosening the purse strings and sending cash Wikimedia's way. Over 240,000 have given so far this fiscal year (July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010). While we're on the subject of giving, another worthwhile organization to give to, is the Sunshine Press -- the nonprofit that is the custodian of Wikileaks -- the organization that specializes in shining the light in darkest recesses of censorship around the world. Wikileaks provides a forum for whistle blowers to get classified, censored and otherwise lost truths, into the open. Wikileaks has been attacked by many governments, including those of the free, democratically elected type. In response, Wikilea...

MilkyWay@Home, the distributed computing project using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform, is now the fastest computing project on that platform -- and probably the second fastest public distributed computing program, behind Folding@Home. MilkyWay@Home, using volunteer computing power from home users across the planet, has achieved 1,382 TFlops, as of January 12. Just for context -- that's just behind Jaguar, the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that has performed at 1,759 TFlops and uses 224,162 Opteron cores -- compared to the 45 thousand users volunteering on MilkyWay@Home. For more on the MilkyWay@Home project, click here . in reference to: PCs around the world unite to map the Milky Way ( view on Google Sidewiki )

Today, Google unveiled a lot of Canada to the world. Street View went live with 130 additional cities and towns across Canada, on Google Maps. Now, you can plan your road trip across Canada from the comfort of your home computer! And special, just for Vancouver 2010, Google also took the slopes. Can't make it to the Olympics? You can now surf the slopes! How awesome is that? in reference to: "The 360-degree, slope-level imagery of Whistler Mountain is the first collected by the newest experimental Street View system, a snowmobile equipped with state-of-the-art photographic and GPS technology. Winter Games fans, skiers and snowboarders around the world can now pan across several Whistler runs as if they were there, and wind through Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside at the bases of Whistler-Blackcomb mountains." - Announcement / Nouveauté (Google Street View Canada) ( view on Google Sidewiki )

As much as I admire Google, they can be friggin' scary. Just take a gander at these little tidbits. While not the biggest, the Google Web Server today runs 13% of all active websites. Google has 40 data centres scattered around the world, all of them custom built to their specifications, running lots of custom-built tools -- including the Google File System, the number crunching MapReduce and the replication tool, Spanner. All of this on their own custom built hardware that is said to use a special Intel chip, and leveraging their own custom built routers. Heck, Google is also connecting their data centres across the world via its own underwater cables. Awesome power, eh? Microsoft is up to the same tricks as well, building out data centres, etc., and they have their own secrets too. The big secret with Google? Much of the aforementioned is proprietary. It's not available to anyone, other than Google, and pretty much amounts to a private internet. When Google's net...

Bruce Schneier makes a point that you may not want to hear. By giving up our freedoms to fight terrorists, child pornographers and other malcontents, we, the people, have handed the perfect weapon to those who want to eavesdrop on every electronic communication we make. Schneier places the blame not on China, for being able to hack Gmail, but on the western governments, led by the United States, that have passed laws that require technology companies to provide law enforcement officials a backdoor into our email accounts and phone lines. It is no secret that the telecoms in the US corporate with the US government to allow the surveillance of telephone calls across their lines and airwaves -- but what may not be widely known, is that the same is required of Internet services companies. Your email account is not secret from a curious law enforcement official. Ever wonder what else isn't totally secure? If there's a backdoor built to allow anyone access to your private inform...

After Google made their announcement to lift their censorship in China, regular Chinese folks from Beijing started arriving at Google.cn HQ, and leaving flowers behind. Apparently, local security guards didn't take too kindly to the act, and that led to an Internet meme and phrase "illegal flower tribute" being censored in China. Yes, this has now gotten stupid. in reference to: "subsequent visitors were arriving only to discover that the flowers donated by previous visitors had been promptly removed by the alleged "security guards", and one security guard from the neighbourhood was reported saying that, in order to deposit flowers people would need to apply for permits at the related departments; otherwise without approved permits, they would be conducting an "illegal flower tribute"." - Illegal flower tribute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ( view on Google Sidewiki )

Google continues to generate news. This time, it's European publishers and regulators looking to corral its business practices. Some of the accusations are ... well ... to put it politely, stupid. The Germans are upset because Google generates more ad revenue than them -- and suggest that Google is manipulating its search results to make more money. Italians are upset that they want to opt out of Google News, but still want high ranking in Google Search. Belgians want Google News to stop linking to them, as they see no value. As I see it, Google is making a lot of money by directing people to what it thinks are relevant search results, news and placing ads to entice people to click. Other than search, how is that different from any other website that provides external links? Am I missing something? in reference to: Google Encounters Antitrust Complaint From German Publishers - NYTimes.com ( view on Google Sidewiki )

With Google.cn lifting censorship of searches, some Chinese netizens have been going crazy with the searches while the going is good. They know it won't last, and they're enjoying the last days of Google.cn. The Financial Times article (linked below) looks at the issue with some broader context, and asks if the placating approach western businesses and countries have taken with China, has been the right one. Are we doing the average Chinese citizens any favours by playing by the Chinese government's rules? And what happens in the long run when China doesn't actually liberalize? Interesting points to speculate on. in reference to: ""I've been doing all sorts of crazy searches, really distracting myself from my work," says one. "I've done Tiananmen Square, the love affairs of national leaders, the corruption of leaders' children. Everything. "Another internet user says the buzz of illicit abandon is reminiscent of the mood in Tiana...

If this report is true, whoever orchestrated this attack -- industrial espionage or just hunting for information about political dissidents -- has caused a huge embarrassment for the Chinese government. While the Chinese government continues to tell the world to stay out of its internal affairs, it has gone to pains to engage the world as an equal to the US. While the US spies -- even on its friends -- it's usually not industrial espionage -- or it's good enough to hide its trail well. Whoever did this got caught, and that can't bode well for his head. I expect if there's any mea culpa from China, it will come from a scapegoat, who will shortly lose their head after an expedient trial. in reference to: "If the report's findings are correct, it suggests that the government of China has been engaged for months in a massive campaign of industrial espionage against US companies." - Researchers identify command servers behind Google attack ( view on Google...

Google is now in the process of reviewing its China operations, and will be discussing with Chinese authorities the how they can remove all filters from their searches and still operate within the law. This all came to head, after Google has been censoring itself for years, after a concerted effort from hackers from China to gain access to Gmail accounts that belong to human rights activists. Google didn't say, but by implication, I'm assuming it was Chinese human rights activists. I've never been too comfortable with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft censoring themselves to operate in China. When I was there recently, I ran a little experiment myself -- nothing that would get me in trouble -- but I used Bing and Google to search in different cities. Amazingly, Google allowed me to find, more or less, some questionable content -- whereas Bing just told me that the search term was restricted and didn't give any results. This move by Google, if taken to its logical end, is ...

You may have noticed that I've started using Google's Sidewiki in the past few weeks. I started using it more for my own purposes at first. It allows easy posting of blog entries; and allows me to quickly annotate a site I've found, that I may wish to refer to later on. (I'm not a bookmark freak -- there are too many of them, and I can never find what I'm looking for.) I figure I could simply search Sidewiki when I'm looking for something relevant. I wish however, that Google would further integrate Sidewiki with some of its other services. Blogger integration is nice, but only in its infancy. There is no integration with tags for instance, and the editor is basic. I'd also like to see the ability to add or edit html to Sidewiki entries -- that way, rich media or code could be added to posts. Google could also clear up some of the confusion with Notebook. I would like the ability to cross-post certain Sidewiki entries to Notebook -- and integration...

Well, this is neat. Without much lifting of the finger, the blog has now been audio enabled. Under each post title, you should find a little Odiogo button that will open a little podcast player and read the post to you. If this sort of thing turns you on, you can subscribe to the podcast of the blog and take it on the road in your very own mp3 player. Totally cool!

Businesses are pouring over the detritus of your online life in hopes of finding meaning in your silly one-liners to each other. The end goal -- to sell you more -- to target you for advertising -- to entice you to part with cash. What they haven't realized yet it seems, is that targeting you with online ads just doesn't work. How many of us actually see the ads on websites? Even the intrusive ones. The real question here however, is are you OK with what is being done with your personal interactions with your friends? You're no longer being captured by CCTV cameras anymore. Now, every keystroke is being monitored. Read more at BusinessWeek .

When you think you've seen it all ... there comes RunPee.com ... a site that tells you when it's safe to make a bathroom run during a movie, cause really, you're not going to miss much when run to pee.

The CRTC wants to hear your voice on the topic of ISP's Internet Traffic Management. In case you don't know, ISPs today monitor your online activities. They know where you go, what you do, how long you do it -- and in case where you're interacting with someone else, they also know who you're doing it to. All great stuff to know if you were living in a dictatorship -- or you were a criminal -- but if you're a freedom loving, law abiding citizen -- well, you're being monitored, so mind where you go and what you do, as one of the goons at Rogers or Bell, is being a voyeur. If you like the internet, and the content that's readily at your fingertips, you'll probably be shocked to know that the ISPs want the ability to degrade your service, if they think you're having just a little too much fun. Translation: that YouTube video you're watching just became very jerky, unless you stay up after midnight to watch it. Rogers and Bell are already thrott...

Google Labs has done it again -- this time, with Similar Images -- capability that puts a Similar Images link below relevant thumbnails in Google's image search results. By clicking the Similar Images link, Google then provides a fairly accurate refinement of your image search. Totally cool!

The coppers may have gotten to the pirates, but Google plans on freeing your torrents . Take that MPAA and RIAA! Now if only there was something worth pirating from Hollywood. On a related note, I read that some bad souls have launched Operation Public Pirate. It's UK-based, as the culprits have decided to target the music industry by pirating all the number one UK singles from 1952-2007. They've prepared a torrent with all of the songs, and are asking public pirates to download the music, buy a big spindle of DVDs, then burn the music on all the DVDs, and leave them in public places for people to take -- for free.

Last week, the German police raided Wikileaks related buildings, after the site exposed secret government censorship lists for a bunch of countries, including Thailand, UAE, Australia and Germany. The plans put Australia and Germany in good company -- like China and Saudi Arabia -- who restrict the freedoms of their people. If all the sites that were censored were those belonging to child molesters, no one would raise an eyebrow. But they're not. You have to wonder about the secret lists as well. Why secret? If the sites are to be blocked to protect the public, then why isn't the public being notified? Why isn't the criteria for blocking sites made public? Why are legitimate and perfectly legal sites also on the list? What legal basis is there for censorship, in free and open democracies? Most troubling is the fact that in order to censor sites, the government must intercept internet communication -- which allows it to record the surfing habits of its citizens. ...