links for 2010-01-27

On Monday, Australia's Daily Telegraph reported that a woman had been the victim of an "online sexual assault" while playing the Playstation game, Home. The story broke after her roommate complained on the game's online forum: "This morning I learned that my roommate was sexually assaulted near the Festive Tree ... She would move and the harasser would follow. Each time trying to get behind her and use the crouch gesture ... The harasser was warned multiple times and laughed at the thought that someone might report him for his actions, which was eventually done." The woman's roommate went on to suggest that Playstation institute everything from virtual restraining orders to Home Jails to "automatic tomato guns" to deal with virtual assaults.

On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s power grids, its communications systems or its financial networks.

The results were dispiriting...

In the latest clash of copyright law and instructional technology, the University of California at Los Angeles has stopping allowing faculty members to post copyrighted videos on their course Web sites after coming under fire from an educational media trade group.

The policy, enacted earlier this month, has been planned since last fall, when the Association for Information and Media Equipment — a group that protects the copyrights of education media companies — charged the university with violating copyright laws by posting the videos to the password-protected course Web pages without the proper permissions.