In an article for CXO, Wayne Beekman describes Cloud Computing as three kinds of resources: cloud-based development (you write your application from scratch; but you don't worry about keeping track of the hardware, the operating system, the database and the web servers), cloud-based infrastructure (the provider supplies the raw hardware environment, such as servers and storage, as an on-demand service and you provide the software stack), and cloud-based applications (service provider offers a set of software programs that you can use and you just run your application). Beekman thinks that it is the responsibility of IT professionals to take advantage of the strengths of cloud computing. Speaking only for myself, I think the economics of it will overwhelm everything else.

Michael Daconta trashed agile development in an article for Government Computer News:

Agile development is a programmer's fantasy and a manager's nightmare. In my more than 20 years of software development experience, I have never met a government program manager who is available on a daily or even weekly basis to help design an application on the fly. Extreme iteration and pair programming are almost exclusively programmer perks and not in the best interests of government IT. Please don't build the next space shuttle that way.

Some readers seem to think that agile development is just a new buzz word for an old concept, but one defended the method:

Obviously Mike is not from Silicon Valley these days. Cisco now has a six-week development cycle for many products. BTW, if you recall, the traditional way also lead to a very expensive spacecraft hurling into a planet at high speed instead of landing on it due to a metric conversion error. May be the wisdom of the crowds approach would have prevented this.

Up Set the Set Up has an interesting post on how hip hop artists have been able to get around the lack of of major-market media exposure and how they have taken advantage of the Internet to spread their music:

The internet and personal technology fundamentally changed the game during the 2000s. Artist and labels could now produce infinite quantities of promotional MP3s and send them out to the college radio and mixtape DJs themselves. Meanwhile, the promotional 'entrepreneurs' were still willing to to sell access to their contacts and manufactured chart listings - but as the decade progressed this model of promotion dwindled. With an infinite supply of promos, artists and labels could now give out their music to the masses and not just limit themselves to a few hundred underground 'taste-makers' scattered in low-power FM studios on college campuses.

I see a similar process with open source software developers. The phenomenon has implications for every variety of marketing communications.

Tertium Quids reports that, "The Virginia General Assembly passed a law in 2007 requiring that certain public records be posted online, even those containing your Social Security number, date of birth, signature, or other sensitive information."

Putting aside the question of public welfare, you would think that politicians would have a better regard for their own privacy and that of their families, because they would be exposed along with everyone else. It seems you would be wrong.

Writing for the Financial Times, Christian Engström points out what many at Slashdot have been saying; copyright laws threaten our online freedom.

In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.

I don't see how the industry can persuade us that their profits are more important than our privacy. Nor do I think that their proposal to, in effect, treat everyone like a criminal suspect, is sustainable. The new business model can't come soon enough.

The Washington Post reports that President Obama will seek public comment for ways the government can improve the rules by which records are classified and later opened to the public.

Beth Noveck, head of the White House's open government project, said yesterday that a blog dedicated to suggestions about the classification process will be set up on WhiteHouse.gov, where the open government project has been accepting ideas over the past month for how agencies can be more transparent. Suggestions from the blog will be considered for the final recommendations sent to the president.

My favorite quote came from Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists:

"But we don't know if the public comments will be useful, and we don't know if they will be influential," he said. "Just because somebody has a good idea doesn't mean the government is going to accept it. I would not confuse the process with the outcome."

In his appearance on David Letterman, Michael Moore quoted Karl Rove as having admitted to having watched a bootleg edition of Fahrenheit 9/11, which as we know, is a felony. Moore suggested that we just add it to the list. Maybe the MPAA should sue Rove.

Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

Deep packet inspection is not just an Iranian problem.

Deadline Scotland reports that a T-Enterprise has hired a former inmate, Moazzam Begg, to advise them on the design of the game. Anyone who thinks this issue is going away anytime soon is in for a big disappointment.

The European Union has issued privacy recommendations for the use of RFID. Consumes should have control whether they shop in stores that use RFID and chips should deactivated at time of purchase. Consumers should be given clear information as to how their information will be used, consumers need to be informed when a product contains an RFID, and Companies and public authorities should conduct privacy and data protection impact assessments before using smart chips.

Outsourcing firm shut down for using pirated software

The Anti-Fraud and Commercial Crimes Division (AFCCD) of the Philippine National Police's Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) seized a total of 173 computers during a raid against Pinoy Data Capture Inc. in Makati City last week, putting the latter's operations to a virtual standstill.

The National Business Review of New Zealand reports that:

The National government will freeze any further changes to the Copyright Act with an eye to throwing the whole thing out and rewriting it from scratch.

Bruce Schneier

Do you know what your data did last night? Almost none of more than 27 million people who took the RealAge quiz realized that their personal health data was sold to drug companies, who in turned used that information for targeted e-mail marketing campaigns.

There's a basic consumer protection principle at work here, and it's the concept of "unfair and deceptive" trade practices. Basically, a company shouldn't be able to say one thing and do another: sell used goods as new, lie on ingredients lists, advertise prices that aren't generally available, claim features that don't exist, and so on.

Bad as it is to sell it to drug companies, it would be even worse to sell it to health insurance companies.

Rapidshare Shares Uploader Info with Rights Holders

Pretty much all torrent sites keep track of the IP-addresses of their (.torrent) uploaders, and if the rights holders can get the IP-address of people who upload to file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, they can easily extend this to BitTorrent sites hosted in Germany. A dream come true for copyright holders, but a nightmare for the privacy of Internet users.

Privacy will be the next killer app on the internet. The company that solves the privacy problem will be sitting on a mountain of money.

House Seeks Accounts of File-Sharing Curbs

A House committee is showing fresh concern over peer-to-peer file sharing applications following reports that the service that allows Web users to trade pirated movies and music is also being used to obtain bank records, health files and other sensitive information.

Fellow Slashdotters, what do you think? Legitimate concern? Or fear-mongering?