"Building Secure Software cuts to the heart of computer security to help you get security right the first time. If you are serious about computer security, you need to read this book, which includes essential lessons for both security professionals who have come to realize that software is the problem, and software developers who intend to make their code behave. Written for anyone involved in software development and use--from managers to coders--this book is your first step toward building more secure software. Building Secure Software provides expert perspectives and techniques to help you ensure the security of essential software. If you consider threats and vulnerabilities early in the devel-opment cycle you can build security into your system. With this book you will learn how to determine an acceptable level of risk, develop security tests, and plug security holes before software is even shipped."

One of the chapters of this book is entitled "trust management and input." Although the site appears to offer a sample chapter, it is not currently available at the specified URL.

Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way

Drawing on legal, historical, and qualitative research, Corynne McSherry explores the propertization of academic work and shows how that process is shaking the foundations of the university, the professoriate, and intellectual property law. The modern university's reason for being is inextricably tied to that of the intellectual property system. The rush of universities and scholars to defend their knowledge as property dangerously undercuts a working covenant that has sustained academic life -- and intellectual property law--for a century and a half. As the value structure of the research university is replaced by the inequalities of the free market, academics risk losing a language for talking about knowledge as anything other than property. McSherry has written a book that ought to deeply trouble everyone who cares about the academy.

The full text of this Harvard University Press book is available for online browsing in PDF format. (287 pages)

Who Owns Academic Work? Battling for Control of Intellectual Property

Excerpts from the publisher's overview:

Stephen Arnold?s latest book provides a clear statement of the new uses of the Internet and how to take advantage of these remarkable developments. The central argument of the book is that the Internet is not a function, like electronic mail, but a new architecture. This structure can enable functions and data on legacy systems and new peer-to-peer architectures.

This study places equal emphasis on technology and business strategy. [...]

This book provides a balanced view of portals, personalisation, intranets, knowledge management and content management, among other trends.

Search and retrieval has become a ubiquitous service. However, the search-and-retrieval function often disappoints more than it satisfies. Important new developments in indexing, searching and displaying information are moving from test centres to the mainstream. [...]

Pricing services is a key component of a successful business model. As the economic environment undergoes rapid change, online users need guidelines for assembling pricing models. [...]

A wealth of tables, illustrations, examples, a glossary, and pointers to useful Web resources make this a must-have study [...]

The book's table of contents and a sample chapter are available in PDF at the publisher's web site.

New Trajectories of the Internet: Umbrellas, Traction, Lift and Other Phenomena

Continuing the biotech regulation/security theme, here's one from the September 28 issue of _Science_. This was referenced by a letter (and response) in the 4 Jan 2002 issue of _Science_, entitled "A Unified Definition of Biosecurity". (No summary is available; full text at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5552/44a for subscribers only.)

Biological Security in a Changed World
Christopher F. Chyba

The horrifying events of 11 September 2001 serve notice that civilization will confront severe challenges in the 21st century. As national security budgets expand in response, we should recognize that only a broad conception of security will be adequate to meet some of the threats that we may face. Biological security provides a powerful example. It must address both the challenge of biological weapons and that of infectious disease. The right approach should benefit public health even if major acts of biological terrorism never occur. Our thinking about biological security must transcend old misplaced analogies to nuclear and chemical security.

Nuclear security has been based on nonproliferation, deterrence, and defense, with intelligence woven throughout. [...]

Effective biological security requires a different mix. [...]

The transfer of dangerous biological agents should be controlled where possible, and the spread of the technologies and personnel to weaponize them should be impeded. But any biological nonproliferation regime will necessarily be less robust than its nuclear counterpart, [...]

Biological terrorism also challenges requirements for successful deterrence. [...]

In the face of these difficulties, good intelligence is all the more important. [...]

Because of disease incubation times, the first responders to a biological attack may well be health care workers at hospitals and clinics rather than specialized units. The speed and effectiveness of a response will depend on disease surveillance [...]

Disease surveillance and response are not nonproliferation measures, so cannot substitute for an effective verification regime under the Biological Weapons Convention. But biological security requires the developed world, especially the United States, to see that its ongoing self-interest is closely allied with sustainable public health improvements in the developing world. And the explosion of biotechnology, with the weapons implications that follow from it, requires the scientific community to discuss its responsibilities in earnest. [...]

Christopher Chyba is co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, associate professor (Research) in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, and Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute. He served on the staff of the National Security Council under President Clinton.

The article summary is available with free registration; full text available by subscription.

Biological Security in a Changed World

In the ongoing debate that was (re)ignited with Bill Joy's April 2000 article in Wired magazine ("Why the future doesn't need us"), Francis Fukuyama writes about biotech regulation in the Winter 2002 issue of The Public Interest. Abstract/summary/intro included below.

How to Regulate Science
By Francis Fukuyama

Both those who embrace new biotechnologies and those who are wary of them tend to claim that the advance of science is beyond social control. Francis Fukuyama argues that this fatalism is mistaken: Science can be effectively regulated, if we possess the political will to do so. Existing regulatory agencies such as the FDA, however, are not the right organizations for this new and distinctive work.

(Note: this is a temporary URL -- this article will go offline or be moved in Spring 2002.)

How to regulate science | Francis Fukuyama, The Public Interest, Winter 2002

CryptoHeaven ... accelerates wide spread use of ... cryptography ... without restrictions. ... CryptoHeaven is a user-friendly, no-compromise information-heaven crypto system. ... Information is stored in encrypted form on the server as generated by the client, and only the sender and the recipient possess the keys to gain access to the information. ... We use ... AES ... Rijndael cipher, ... public-key cryptography, ... and SHA-256 ...

CryptoHeaven Secure Free Email, Online Storage, File Sharing

SXSW -- basically a new media meet-and-greet networking event. Find work, food, fun, and maybe some money for your projects-to-be.

Larry Lessig (author/lawyer/professor), Steven Levy (author), Jeff Veen (Webmonkey), Bruce Sterling (author, etc.), Cory Doctorow (author/OpenCola/BoingBoing), and numerous others are on the list of speakers.

Here's a promo quote from the web site:

"I was overly impressed with the SXSW conference last year, as in the past I had mostly gone to large conferences with sessions that focused on VPs of companies who were trying to sell their products. At SXSW the sharing of experiences and knowledge by people actually doing the development, design, and/or project management was a blessing."

For the keynote, Doctorow and Sterling will discuss "the death of scarcity."

SXSW Interactive Festival - March 8-12 2002, Austin, TX

Summary excerpted from the Scout report:

Scientists announced Wednesday [December 19, 2001] that they had deciphered chromosome 20, the largest of the three chromosomes to be sequenced thus far. Researchers hope that this latest advance by the Human Genome Project will help explain why some people are more susceptible to diseases such as diabetes or obesity. Also the gene that seems to make some a higher risk for Cruetzfeldt--Jakob Disease, the human version of Mad Cow Disease, is found on chromosome 20.

This page includes links to news coverage from Reuters, AP, and BBC, as well as technical articles published in _Nature_.

Scientists Sequence Largest Human Chromosome

Summary excerpted from the Scout Report:

The library of the United Kingdom's House of Commons has published this research paper entitled The Campaign against International Terrorism: prospects after the fall of the Taliban_, available for download in .pdf format from the Parliament Website. The authors are Tim Youngs, Paul Bowers and Mark Oakes of the International Affairs and Defence Section. Contents of the text include details of fighting and bombing in Afghanistan, the Bonn Agreement and future political arrangements in Afghanistan, the Al-Qaeda in other countries, and measures by the United Nations to counter terrorism. The 65-page report includes the text of the Bonn Agreement and a nicely detailed color map of Afghanistan.

The Campaign against International Terrorism: prospects after the fall of the Taliban [PDF]

Bestselling science author James Gleick (_Chaos_, _Faster_, _Genius_) recalls the many achievements of Claude Shannon, father of information theory and accomplished scientist at Bell Labs and MIT. Shannon died in Massachusetts early in 2001.

Published in the December 30 issue of the New York Times Magazine.

'Bit Player' -- James Gleick on Claude Shannon | NYT