The Internet of Elsewhere
Cyrus Farivar is a veteran public radio reporter and the author of the new book “The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World.” In it, he examines how the Internet is being handled in four different cultures: Estonia, South Korea, Iran and Senegal.
For instance, Estonia has a national electronic voting system in place. It’s one of many products of a society that collectively decided, after the Soviet Union collapsed, to invest in the Internet as much as possible. Also in the book, Farivar talks about how South Korea has the most citizens with access to broadband Internet access of anywhere in the world.
As for helping countries in the developing world, Farivar says that America’s instincts may be wrong. There’s this idea that if only we expand Internet access,” he says, “If only we make it better, easier to use then countries will be able to develop economically, politically, so forth. What I’m trying to show in this book is that it’s really more complicated than that and, I would argue, more interesting than that.”
Also in this program, we talk to regular contributor Chet Wisniewski from the security firm Sophos about Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday. That’s the company’s update of security flaws. This month’s edition is the biggest ever, addressing 64 issues.
Microsoft offered us a statement about the updates, from Dave Forstrom, director, security and incident response at Trustworthy Computing Group:
Dave Forstrom: It’s important to remember that no software is 100 percent secure and Microsoft diligently works to identify and fix vulnerabilities so customers are protected. This release of security updates is a regular process we follow on the second Tuesday of every month. Microsoft recommends customers ensure that automatic updates are enabled. As long as individuals have automatic updates enabled, all of the security updates will be downloaded, and your system will be fully protected. This is one of the many ways that Microsoft works to protect customers.
We also asked why there are so many bulletins/vulnerabilities this month. Here’s what Forstrom said:
Forstrom: Microsoft is always investigating vulnerabilities and addresses them with security updates. We rigorously test these security updates, and on the second Tuesday of every month we will release the updates that are ready for wide spread release.
Also in this program, an anti-bullying app called Bully Block lets you block messages and record conversations.
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