Tech Risk & Security

There is a new Law effective in China being 1 March 2006. A brief outline is here http://news.xinhuanet.com/it/2005-12/29/content_3986087.htm The full legislation is here 互联网安全保护技术措施规定 . There are some interesting observations from an IT security perspective: 1. This regulation is under the regime of China Police Force. 2. Article 7.1.2 requires ISPs to have disaster recovery ability for vital database and system equipments. 3. Most of the regulation requires ISP or who operate internet services (loosely defined at Article 18) to record and store users login time, IP address, user account information and system logs. 4. ISP has to maintain records if they find any illegal materials being distributed to the public. (“What means by illegal in the China ?” is a mystery). 5. China Police could punish entity if they fail to perform Article 7 to 14. But there is no indication of what kinds of punishment should be. First, as a security professional, I appreciate China go...

I read story(case study) about Britannica transforming from books to CD and their need to change business model in Internet Age. Now the same company face another challenge : Wikipedia, which has been a phenomena now. BBC reported a study comparing their accuracy : Wikipedia study 'fatally flawed' It seems Britannica always face challenges from "new media" and this time they choose to begin a war!

When I go to class at HKU, two separate seminars bring a thinking threads to the current Web2.0 discussion. Professor Bebo White spoke of user empowerments at Web 2.0 and the Future of Social Networking and Online Communities . And this empowerment results in Democratization of Media . Web 2.0 is still in a developingstage but the decentralized publishing is really changing how the society works. My view is once the media is effectively decentralized and people being to information from the democratized media (like blog, wiki and off-line chat) for decision making, the result will be a collaborated decision making. The other think thread is the influence of each individual to the world will be greater since the voice will be heard (either collectively or individually). However, all this has to be based on a trustworthy web. P.S. take a look at www.yackpack.com a offline chat services