Why hack attacks are becoming increasingly common

The Sony hack has again raised interest in the question of internet security. The Sony attack comes on the heels of other attacks on big corporations and they stem from a variety of motives, with many of them seeking to get credit card information and other data that enable fraud. The motives of the people behind the Sony attack seem less clear though the damage done to the privacy of large numbers of people is extensive. For most of us, the main concern is whether such attacks can be prevented so that we avoid having the private data we share with corporations compromised.
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The fickle world of retail malls

When you live in a single area long enough, you notice changes in the environment and one significant one in my area is the shifting of retail centers. When we moved here in 1989, it was the era of the large indoor shopping mall. The Randall Park mall nearby was, when it opened in 1976, the largest in the country, and its opening was graced by the presence of many celebrities. We used to go there regularly and the holiday season would see it packed with attractions for children like little trains.
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The role of satire in politics

It is a source of increasing concern to the establishment media that younger people are tuning in to comedy shows like The Daily Show that skewer the supposedly serious news shows and not tuning in to them, causing the demographic of their viewers to steadily inch upwards and well into retirement ages. This has naturally discomfited the people who host those shows and caused some of them to argue that this satirical attitude is making younger people more cynical about the political system and the media.
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Salmon cannon

It is well known that salmon return to their old spawning grounds, a journey that requires an arduous journey upstream, and that they somehow manage to overcome the huge hurdles involved. But what happens when human beings build dams that put that goal out of reach for even the most intrepid fish?

John Oliver says that some people are resorting to technology to help the salmon out.
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Behind the New York City police slowdown

Matt Taibbi has an interesting article about the surreal aspects of the work slow down organized by the New York City police, where they have stopped arresting and ticketing people for minor offenses or what are often called offenses against the ‘quality of life’ which is part of the controversial ‘Broken Windows’ theory of policing. As a result, those arrests and citations have dropped by a staggering 94%. He says that it exposes an underlying issue about the proper use of police.
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Hell and Rob Bell

Over three years ago, I wrote about Rob Bell, the head of one of the Mars Hill evangelical megachurch in Michigan that had an estimated 10,000-strong congregation. He was once touted as the next Billy Graham but then had some kind of epiphany that he expounded in a book Love Wins in which he argued that hell may not exist and that heaven may be open to everyone, not just those who accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior, the usual standard for admission among evangelicals.
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Should blackmail be illegal?

We know that blackmail, the attempt to extort money from someone by threatening to reveal some secret about them if they don’t cough up, is illegal. It is viewed as a particularly despicable crime that usually preys on the weak and defenseless. It seems self-evident that blackmail is wrong and should be punishable by law. But this website brought to my attention something that I had not considered before and that is that it is not clear why blackmail should be illegal at all.
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The US propaganda system on full display in Sony hack story

Glenn Greenwald looks at how rapidly the US media accepted and spread the US government’s story (confidently affirmed by president Obama) that North Korea was behind the Sony hack without any evidence being presented in support. Those of us who follow the news almost minimally know how the government has brazenly lied in the past and some may marvel that the media could have such short memories or be so obtuse as to accept these claims at face value. While there is a small possibility that North Korea was behind the attack, the fact that a week has gone by since the supposedly offending film The Interview was shown and the promised apocalypse still hasn’t occurred suggests that a non-state actor was behind the original hack and other players later exploited the situation and sowed confusion for who knows what reason.
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