Posted February 8th, 2010
Filed under: Internet Safety Tips, Social Networking
February 9, 2010 is Safer Internet Day. To mark the occasion, countries around the world are holding a variety of events to raise awareness about how to keep kids safer while online.
The issues of one country rarely match the issues of another as closely as they do regarding children’s online safety. Regardless of where you live, the desire of parents to keep kids safe online are only matched by the desire of the kids and teens to be independent and free to use the Web without hassle.
In the U.K., Safer Internet Day is being marked with an awareness campaign, “Think B4 U Post”. As a part of the campaign, they have several suggested activities that translate into any nation, any area, any neighborhood. Here are a few more.
- Tell the young people you know about why they should think before they post anything online. Then have them tell two friends. Repeat.
- Host a parent’s get together about online safety. There are a lot of resources available on this blog and on saferinternet.org that can help get you started. Training someone else is a great way to learn yourself.
- Help your kids make a video about “Think B4 U Post” using their own examples.
- Encourage local stores that sell technology to highlight safety features on the things they sell, no matter who the customer is.
What are some other ways you can commemorate this day?
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Posted February 8th, 2010
Interesting research:
Target prevalence powerfully influences visual search behavior. In most visual search experiments, targets appear on at least 50% of trials. However, when targets are rare (as in medical or airport screening), observers shift response criteria, leading to elevated miss error rates. Observers also speed target-absent responses and may make more motor errors. This could be a speed/accuracy tradeoff with fast, frequent absent responses producing more miss errors. Disproving this hypothesis, our experiment one shows that very high target prevalence (98%) shifts response criteria in the opposite direction, leading to elevated false alarms in a simulated baggage search. However, the very frequent target-present responses are not speeded. Rather, rare target-absent responses are greatly slowed. In experiment two, prevalence was varied sinusoidally over 1000 trials as observers’ accuracy and reaction times (RTs) were measured. Observers’ criterion and target-absent RTs tracked prevalence. Sensitivity (d’) and target-present RTs did not vary with prevalence. These results support a model in which prevalence influences two parameters: a decision criterion governing the series of perceptual decisions about each attended item, and a quitting threshold that governs the timing of target-absent responses. Models in which target prevalence only influences an overall decision criterion are not supported.
This has implications for searching for contraband at airports.
Posted February 8th, 2010
Three weeks ago, Google announced a sophisticated attack against them from China. There have been some interesting technical details since then. And the NSA is helping Google analyze the attack.
The rumor that China used a system Google put in place to enable lawful intercepts, which I used as a news hook for this essay, has not been confirmed. At this point, I doubt that it’s true.
Posted February 7th, 2010
European court pulls plugs on terror stop and search: “
Another clumsy fail for the Home Office
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK police’s use of stop and search powers granted under terrorism legislation is illegal.…
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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)
Posted February 7th, 2010
Is it art or is it pr0n? Australia decides it’s ALL filth: “
Won’t someone think of the pictures of children?
Australian painters and photographers may soon need to watch their step, as an overhaul of child pornography laws in New South Wales looks set to remove the defence of ‘artistic merit’ from the statute books.…
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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)
