It's here... almost, about 10 days left.

The new regulations, established by federal law in 1996, govern patient privacy rights that affect the release of medical information to family and friends, the media and clergy.

Under HIPAA, patients must authorize the release of specific medical information. Should someone request anonymity during hospitalization, a hospital is not permitted to release any patient information – to the media, and even to family members. Only members of the clergy have some leeway.

The aim of the legislation is to standardize the protection of patient privacy – an initiative that reflects privacy standards in other industries and which is familiar to anyone who owns a credit card.

posted by mt at 12:10

Orwell's Newspeak redifined for the 2000's.
Scary stuff if you think about it:

Indeed, if you were wearing your Google-goggles, and the search engine was your primary view of the world, you would have a hard time believing that the phrase "Second Superpower" ever meant anything else. To all intents and purposes, the original meaning has been erased. Obliterated, in just seven weeks.
You're especially susceptible to this if you subscribe to the view that Google's PageRank™ is "inherently democratic," which is how Google, Inc. describes it.

posted by js at 10:21

A warning from the government:

Chinese hacker groups are planning attacks on U.S.- and U.K.-based Web sites to protest the war in Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security warned in an alert that it unintentionally posted on a government Web site today.

The hackers are planning "distributed denial-of-service" attacks, which render Web sites and networks unusable by flooding them with massive amounts of traffic. They also are planning to deface selected Web sites, according to the alert, though the government said it did not know when the attacks would occur.

I think such attacks would have taken place by now, if they were going to happen at all. Nevertheless, feel free to review my intro to DDoS and overview of mitigation techniques.

To be on the receiving end of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is a nightmare scenario for any network administrator, security specialist or access provider. It begins instantly, without warning, and continues relentlessly: machines down, jammed bandwidth, overloaded routers. An effective, immediate response is often difficult and may depend on third parties, such as ISPs. With these challenges in mind, this article will explore some techniques that systems administrators and security professionals can employ should they ever find themselves in this rather undesirable situation.

posted by mt at 08:20