U.S. Decides to Relax Restrictions to Export Internet Technologies to Iran and Cuba

Google executive welcomed on Tuesday a U.S. decision to relax restrictions on exporting Internet communications services to Iran, Sudan and Cuba according to press reports.

Bob Boorstin, Google’s director of policy communications, said the Web search company would now be able to offer some of its other products in those countries, such as the mapping satellite software Google Earth, photo management program Picasa and Internet chat client Google Talk.

“This is a great accomplishment,” Boorstin told a human rights meeting in Geneva. “We are hopeful this will help people like yourselves in this room and activists all over the world take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead.”

The U.S. Treasury Department said the change to existing trade sanctions was intended to help people “exercise their most basic rights” with the help of instant messaging service and e-mail.
Google itself has come under fire recently in countries where it operates.

Workers aged 50+ are more likely than their younger counterparts to be self-employed or small business owners.

According to the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College the findings of a recent survey include:

Workers 50 and older are more likely than younger workers to be independent, self employed workers (17% of older workers vs. 12 % of younger workers).

Older workers are also less likely than their younger counterparts to be wage and salaried employees who work for someone else (74% vs. 83%).
From 2007 – 2008 workers ages 54-64, experienced the largest increase in entrepreneurial activity, making it the age group with the highest entrepreneurial activity rate.

Only 11% of small-business owners in 2008 said they planned to retire and stop working in their businesses in the long run: 40% “will continue to work as long as their health allows,” while 47% will “eventually plan to cut back on the work they do, but maintain their involvement in their businesses.”
After retirement or a job layoff, some older workers plan to start a business or work for themselves, but do not credit the inability to find employment with doing so. However, one study reported that 23% of older workers who had been laid off and could not find a job considered starting their own business.

Figure 1. Employment Situations of U.S. Workers of Different Ages in 2002
Source: McNamara, T. (2009). Unpublished data analysis. Chestnut Hill, Sloan Center on Aging and Work.

Are older workers more likely to be involved in entrepreneurship than younger workers?

“Workers, 50 or older, are significantly more likely than younger workers to be independent self-employed workers (17% of older workers vs. 12% of younger workers) or small business owners (9% of older workers vs. 5% of younger workers) and thus, less likely than younger workers to be wage and salaried employees who work for someone else (74% of older workers vs. 83% of younger workers),” according to a 2005 analysis of the National Study of the Changing Workforce.1

Workers aged 50+ are significantly more likely than their younger counterparts to be self-employed or small business owners. Rather than retire, most small business owners plan to continue working indefinitely, cutting back on their work hours if needed. Some older workers anticipate starting a business or working for themselves part-time or full-time after retirement or a lay-off. But among those who have started their own businesses, few say that inability to find traditional employment was a factor in doing so.

According to a 2009 analysis of data from the Kauffman Foundation, individuals aged 55-64 “experienced the largest increase in entrepreneurial activity from 2007-2008 (0.31% to 0.36%), making it the age group with the highest entrepreneurial activity rate.” In comparison, “the 20-34 and 35-44 age groups experienced slight increases in entrepreneurial activity” (from 0.25% to 0.26% and 0.33% to 0.35%, respectively), while such activity remained constant for the 44-55 age group (0.35%).2
“In every year from 1996-2007, Americans aged 55—64 had “a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20—24. For the entire period, the 55—64 group averaged a rate of entrepreneurial activity roughly one-third larger than their youngest counterparts,” according to a 2009 Kauffman Foundation analysis.”3

How does entrepreneurship affect plans for retirement?

“Only 11% of small-business owners say they plan to retire and stop working in their businesses in the long run,” according to a 2008 Gallup survey. Fully 40% say they “will continue to work as long as their health allows them to do so.” Another 47% say they “eventually plan to cut back on the work they do but maintain their involvement in their businesses.”4
According to a 2008 AARP survey of older workers, “11% of older workers anticipate starting a business or otherwise working for themselves in retirement.”5

“Nearly 7 in 10 workers expect to continue to work full time or part time following retirement from their main job, including 15% who expect to start their own business,” according to the 2005 A Work-Filled Retirement survey. “Only 13% expect to stop working entirely.”6

Has the current economic crisis contributed to an increase in new entrepreneurial activity among older workers?
According to a 2009 survey, “of mature workers who were laid off in the last 12 months and did not find a job, 23% are considering starting their own business.”7

In a 2009 survey from the Kauffman Foundation, “80.3% of respondents stated that inability to find traditional employment was not at all a factor in starting their own businesses. Only 4.5% said this was an important factor.”8

A 2009 analysis of data from the Health and Retirement study shows that for workers unemployed in 1992, almost one-third of those who remained in the labor force were self-employed by 1994. For workers unemployed in 2006, shortly before the economic downturn, comparatively few remained in the labor force and among those who did, only 12% were self-employed two years later.9

According to a 2009 report from the Global Entrepeneurship Monitor, “with respect to the Early Stage Entrepreneurial Activity, the data indicate marked decreases in the activity rate for the 18-24 age group (10.5% vs. 14%) and the 35-44 age group (20.2% vs. 25.1%), but increases in the older age groups (45- 54 years, 27.7% vs. 21.8%; 55-64 years, 10.5% vs. 9.5%; 65-99 years, 4.3% vs. 3.4%). However, “Opportunity continues to be the main driver for entrepreneurs in the United States; 87% started their businesses due to an opportunity, opposed to 13% who started their businesses out of necessity.”10

Microsoft CEO: Google merits regulatory scrutiny

Recent press reports reflect that CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google as his company strives to lessen its rival’s dominance of Internet search stating that Google merits regulatory scrutiny.

According to AP, In an appearance Tuesday at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. He didn’t specify the alleged misconduct.

“We are expressing some of the issues and frustrations we see” with antitrust regulators, Ballmer said. “Sometimes (it’s) unsolicited, sometimes because we have been asked.” Google declined to comment Tuesday. But it has said its actions are aimed at providing better experiences for Web surfers and advertisers.

Yahoo Inc., which is about to team up with Microsoft in search, seems less inclined to get regulators involved as the two companies gang up on Google. “I am actually not interested in government intervention in anything,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told reporters during a Tuesday lunch to celebrate the company’s 15th anniversary. “I think for the most part markets work. I don’t wish antitrust on anyone.”

Reports from the event Microsoft already has helped convince U.S. regulators that Google would break antitrust laws in two proposed deals: a search advertising partnership with Yahoo that was scrapped in 2008 and a digital books settlement that still needs federal court approval. Yahoo also lobbied regulators to oppose the agreement that would give Google the electronic rights to millions of hard-to-find books.

Ciao, an online shopping comparison service owned by Microsoft, has filed an antitrust complaint against Google in Europe. Regulators there say they are looking into those allegations and similar ones made by two other sites, Foundem and ejustice.fr.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, has had its own troubles with regulators. Its bundling of personal computer software triggered a court dispute with the U.S. Justice Department that forced the company to change the way it packages software with its Windows operating system. Microsoft later tussled with EU regulators, too.

Since Microsoft’s own antitrust showdown started in the late 1990s, more people have been relying on their computers chiefly as a conduit to the Internet. The evolution has turned Google’s Internet gateway and other online services into a major threat to Microsoft, which has tried to respond by investing billions of dollars in search technology.

Microsoft has made little headway. Even with some progress since unveiling an upgraded search engine called Bing nine months ago, Microsoft remains a distant third in the U.S. search market.

Ballmer is counting on Microsoft’s 10-year search partnership with No. 2 Yahoo to help close the gap. Regulators cited Google’s 65 percent share of the U.S. search market as one of the reasons for allowing Microsoft and Yahoo to work together.

When the alliance kicks in late this year, Microsoft will start processing search requests on Yahoo’s Web site and pay most of the ad revenue to its new partner. As Microsoft fields more search requests, Ballmer expects the company to collect more data that it could analyze and use to help improve search results. That, in turn, could help the company lure away Google users.

“There is an advantage to having the power of two, as opposed to the power of one,” Ballmer told the crowd at the Search Marketing Expo.

When asked whether he thought Microsoft would overtake Google in Internet search, Ballmer indicated it probably will be a long time before there’s a changing of the guard.

“I don’t know how old I will be when that will happen,” said Ballmer, 53.
As part of its efforts to challenge Google, Microsoft has sought help from Twitter and Facebook — two popular services for sharing information and photographs.

Microsoft, like Google and Yahoo, pays an undisclosed sum for better access to Twitter’s index of short messages. In a bigger partnership, Microsoft spent $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook and processes search requests on that site.

Responding to questions, Ballmer played down the possibility of Microsoft buying Twitter or Facebook, which are both privately held.

Shares of Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., fell 56 cents, or 1.9 percent, to close Tuesday at $28.46. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., gained $8.37, or 1.6 percent, to $541.06, while Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo lost 6 cents to $15.73.

Judy Woodruff, PBS News Hour takes a look at how the millennial generation — people born after 1980 — fits into the current political and economic spectrum. The Pew Center’s Paul Taylor and Amanda Lenhart discuss their new report.

They are 18 to 29 years old. There are some 50 million of them, and they’re often called the millennial generation.

Today, they were the subject of a conference at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The event, for which PBS served as moderator, coincided with the release of a comprehensive national study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Among its findings: Millennials are the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Only 61 percent are white, 19 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, and 5 percent Asian. That contrasts with those 30 and older, a group that is 70 percent white.

The study also found that millennials are voracious users of new technologies, from smartphones to social networking sites. When respondents were asked if they sleep with their cell phone nearby, 83 percent of millennials said they did, far more than their parents or grandparents.

WorldFocus.org takes a look beyond the headlines at increasing concerns over cyber-security, a problem that was recently highlighted by an online assault on Google from China.

This event added to fears of a digital attack that could cripple the information superhighway. In Washington, former security officials have met to role-play how the government would cope with such an attack.

For more, Martin Savidge interviews James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Lewis discusses the readiness of the government to deal with an attack and the likelihood of one taking place. He also talks about how this issue could impact U.S.-China relations.

Recent press reports reflect that a significant number of corporations, govt agencies infiltrated by `botnet,’ according to news announcements.

According to Wikipedia, a Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, that run autonomously and automatically. The term is often associated with malicious software, but it can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing software. While botnets are often named after their malicious software name, there are typically multiple botnets in operation using the same malicious software families, but operated by different criminal entities.

While the term “botnet” can be used to refer to any group of bots, such as IRC bots, this word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised computers (called zombie computers) running software, usually installed via drive-by downloads exploiting web browser vulnerabilities, worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command-and-control infrastructure.

A botnet’s originator (aka “bot herder” or “bot master”) can control the group remotely, usually through a means such as IRC, and usually for nefarious purposes. Individual programs manifest as IRC “bots”. Often the command-and-control takes place via an IRC server or a specific channel on a public IRC network. This server is known as the command-and-control server (“C&C”). Though rare, more experienced botnet operators program their own commanding protocols from scratch. The constituents of these protocols include a server program, client program for operation, and the program that embeds itself on the victim’s machine (bot). All three of these usually communicate with each other over a network using a unique encryption scheme for stealth and protection against detection or intrusion into the botnet network.

A bot typically runs hidden and uses a covert channel (e.g. the RFC 1459 (IRC) standard, twitter or IM) to communicate with its C&C server. Generally, the perpetrator of the botnet has compromised a series of systems using various tools (exploits, buffer overflows, as well as others; see also RPC). Newer bots can automatically scan their environment and propagate themselves using vulnerabilities and weak passwords. Generally, the more vulnerabilities a bot can scan and propagate through, the more valuable it becomes to a botnet controller community. The process of stealing computing resources as a result of a system being joined to a “botnet” is sometimes referred to as “scrumping.”

Botnets have become a significant part of the Internet, albeit increasingly hidden. Due to most conventional IRC networks taking measures and blocking access to previously-hosted botnets, controllers must now find their own servers. Often, a botnet will include a variety of connections and network types. Sometimes a controller will hide an IRC server installation on an educational or corporate site where high-speed connections can support a large number of other bots. Exploitation of this method of using a bot to host other bots has proliferated only recently as most script kiddies do not have the knowledge to take advantage of it.

Several botnets have been found and removed from the Internet. The Dutch police found a 1.5 million node botnet and the Norwegian ISP Telenor disbanded a 10,000-node botnet. Large coordinated international efforts to shut down botnets have also been initiated.[4] It has been estimated that up to one quarter of all personal computers connected to the internet may be part of a botnet.[5]

According to recent press reports, security experts have found a network of 74,000 virus-infected computers that stole information from inside corporations and government agencies. The unusual thing about the incident is not that it happened but that it was discovered, and it is a reminder of the dangers of having computers with sensitive data connected to the open Internet.

More than 2,400 organizations, including financial institutions and energy companies and federal agencies, were infiltrated by the “botnet,” according to the NetWitness Corp. security firm, which discovered it.

NetWitness didn’t name the companies or agencies whose computers were compromised. The Wall Street Journal said the affected companies included Merck & Co., Cardinal Health Inc., Paramount Pictures and Juniper Networks Inc. Merck and Cardinal Health said in statements Thursday that one computer in each company was among those in the botnet but no sensitive information was taken.

The victims don’t appear to have been specifically targeted, unlike the recent computer attacks on Google Inc. that prompted the Internet search leader to threaten to pull its business out of China. That’s an important distinction, because it shows how online secrets can fall into the wrong hands even when criminals aren’t necessarily looking for them.

“This kind of stuff is out there and it’s pervasive,” said Amit Yoran, CEO of NetWitness and former cybersecurity chief at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Parts of the botnet discovered by his firm likely are still active. He said the network appears to be run from computers in Eastern Europe and China, but it’s not certain the perpetrators are there.

Botnets are networks of poisoned PCs that are remotely controlled by hackers and behave like their criminal robots. The PCs are often infected when their owners visit bad Web sites or open malicious e-mail attachments.

Botnets are a major tool for cybercrime. They help criminals amass troves of stolen data that they can sell on the black market or use for their own schemes, such as yanking money from victims’ bank accounts.

The biggest on record is the one created by the Conficker worm. That infected anywhere from 3 million to 12 million PCs running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system and is still active.

The botnet NetWitness discovered used malicious software called “ZeuS” that steals passwords and other online credentials. It’s primarily focused on poaching Internet banking credentials and is well known in the security community.

The fact that so many companies and government agencies were hit generally appears to have been incidental. Yoran said the attackers were targeting specific information rather than specific organizations.

Still, they were very successful, snatching more than 68,000 credentials over four weeks. Most of those credentials were login details for Facebook and Yahoo and other personal e-mail services. On the face of it those aren’t the most sensitive pieces of information, but they can hold the keys to unlocking other types of online accounts and private data.

Security experts who weren’t part of the NetWitness report said the findings illustrate the growing risk from the ZeuS software, whose authors are constantly updating it to evade detection by antivirus software and other security measures.

A bigger concern, Jackson said, is a new version of ZeuS that has appeared in the last few months and is more powerful and even harder to detect.

Report: Internet, broadband, and cell phone statistics

Internet users tend to skew young, with a sharp drop-off in online activity among 65 and older.

Best and Worst Super Bowl “Internet Co.” Commercials: GoDaddy.com minus 10 & Google plus 10

Historically speaking, I tend to stay neutral when it comes to critiquing internet companies that support Web professionals. That said, its time to weigh in and voice an opinion on several of the Internet centric ads that ran yesterday during the super bowl.

Results:

* GoDaddy.com – 10 (very bad)
* Google plus + 10 (very good)
* Monster.com + 5 (good)

Here’s the ads and my two cents:

From a practicing Web professional perspective, T&A is so yesterday. The Web and the Web profession has a lot more to offer and we need better representation team GoDaddy.

First class! Way to go team Google.

Very well done and a little bit of hot tub can go a long way!

Who will design the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Logo? It Could Be You.

Last week, the N.E.A. and Mr. Landesman, its chairman, announced that proposals are being sought for a new logo to represent the phrase “Art Works,” which Mr. Landesman has previously described as the agency’s “guiding mission.” In a statement Mr. Landesman said the logo, which will be used in print and online promotions, should represent the three meanings of the phrase: the creations of artists, the effect of art on audiences and the contribution of artists to the economy. Proposals for the design must be submitted by e-mail to the endowment by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Feb. 26. The author of the proposal selected will receive a government grant of about $25,000. Instructions and requirements for submissions are at arts.gov.

Web Design Trends for 2010 – A Web Designer and Blogger Perspective

Today’s podcast is an interview with Sneh Roy, Web designer and content developer regarding Web Design Trends for 2010.

Sneh writes for the Little Box Of Ideas, a design and inspiration blog with a strong focus on branding, illustrations, web design, social media and typography. In this seven minute interview for the Web Professional Minute, Sneh summarizes her perspectives and a dialogue that she had with a number of designers and followers of her blog.