Tech Brief

On Tech Brief today: Oprah versus Gaga, Sony versus the USAF and Nelson versus Napoleon.

• There's no doubt that Twitter can be seen as a way to show off and that some Tweets have the air of "envy me" about them. Interesting then to see Mashable's list of who people were trying to make it look like were following them using the accept bug that recently plagued Twitter. According to RowFeeder, Oprah topped the list:

"The new guard of Twitter celebrities as revealed by the bug is pop-culture heavy. Although Bill Gates and Barack Obama made the cut, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber scored much higher for follower-happy users. And celeb blogger Perez Hilton ranked as the fifth most popular Twitter account for the exploiters of the 'accept' bug."

• Pity the poor student, especially those attending Northern Arizona University. It has decided to make attending classes contribute to grades. So far, so what. And it is planning to use RFID tags that can interrogate the ID cards students carry so they know who is learning and who is sleeping in. NAU says students who go to classes do better than those who don't. Govtech says the students are not impressed:

"A student-created Facebook page opposing the plan, 'NAU Against Proximity Cards,' had nearly 1,500 members as of Wednesday, May 5. 'I feel it violates our rights as students to choose whether or not to go to class and control our own success,' the page's description reads. 'Plus, it allows the school to keep track of our whereabouts in a 'Big Brother' way'."

• It's not just open source fanboys and coders who were put out by Sony axing the ability of the PlayStation 3 to run Linux. The US Air Force is upset about it too. Arstechnica reports that the future of a 53 Teraflop computing cluster built by USAF boffins in New York built of PS3s has been thrown into doubt by the decision too:

"We will have to continue to use the systems we already have in hand,' the lab told Ars Technica, but 'this will make it difficult to replace systems that break or fail. The refurbished PS3s also have the problem that when they come back from Sony, they have the firmware (gameOS) and it will not allow Other OS, which seems wrong. We are aware of class-action lawsuits against Sony for taking away this option on systems that use to have it."

• Who doesn't like tall ships? The smell of the sea, the canvas cracking in the breeze and the ability to blow your enemies to kingdom come. Channel 4 Education wants to give those experiences to youngsters with a game that simulates Napoleonic era naval warfare. Keith Stuart says in the Guardian that the game is addictive:

"I only meant to play for a few minutes last night, but ended up spending two hours sailing through the tutorial missions, then tackling the historical encounters, each based on genuine face-offs between the English, French and Spanish navies."

• Cyber criminals are busy people and some are proving busier than others. The Anti-Phishing Working Group claims that one hi-tech crime gang called, appropriately enough, Avalanche was behind 66% of phishing attacks in the latter half of 2009. Tim Wilson says in Dark Reading that the good news is that the success of Avalanche has dented its ability to pull off the big scores:

"In mid-November 2009, members of the security community affected a temporary shut-down of the Avalanche botnet infrastructure," the report continues. "This lasted about a week before the criminals behind the attacks re-established their network. After this event, Avalanche's activities changed significantly."

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Links in full

•Jolie O'Dell | Mashable | The 20 Most Popular Twitter Users
•Karen Wilkinson | GovTech | University Plans to Install Electronic Sensors
•Nate Anderson | Ars Technica | Air Force may suffer collateral damage from PS3 update
•Keith Stuart | Guardian Games Blog | 'Trafalgar Origins' takes teens to sea
•Tim Wilson | Dark Reading | Two-Thirds Of Phishing Attacks Generated By One Criminal Group