From cyber criminality to cyber war?

For a few month, conflits in the world seem to have reach a new dimension. Attacks are nowaday not just comited with weapons and missils, but also with computers and Internet. During the war between Lebanon and Israel for example, the israelian army used hackers to hit the Hezbollah numerical structures, and anti-war hackers did the same against Israelian’s system.  

Here is a new stategic fact we will have to consider for every war coming. The cyber attacks can even become the war itself, when no other weapons are used. As when Russia attacked Estonia last year, hiting the websites of two banks, of few newspapers, and of some important ministeries, because Estonia decided do remove a Russian statue from its capital Tallin. Of course, Estonia decided to counter attack, and used also cyber pirate to hit Russian websites.

That new kind of conflict, and the avenment of the “cyber soldier” is significant, and bring a lot of new questions. Is that evolution fair, and will a war without blood replace the violent conflicts we use to know? Or will that new strategy become only a an additional weapon, and a new way for the civilians to be hit by States conflicts?

What a WEI!

During this weekend happened one of the funniest events of the school year: the WEI (Week End of Integration). For 3 days, all the new students of the school meet eacheother somewhere in France (this year, it was not far from Niort) to discover their new colleagues and make parties.

Before this week end, my Original Audio Visual Pole of the school (PAVO) maked a “teaser” to promote the event, and encourage the new students to take un place for the WEI.  And obviously, the PAVO was there during the week end: to film the activities, but also to bring good ideas. For instance we decided to build a kind of “confessional” during the saterday night party. We just put a camera in a cupboard we had decorated, and allowed everybody to go in the “confessional” during the party and to say whatever he/she wanted to say. This had a great succes, and a lot of people came to talk to the camera. Many came to thank the organisators of the WEI, others came to do gags, others to do funny confessions, etc…

Actually, this confessional was a very good experience, and we wish we will finalize the video as soon as possible, because everybody wants to see it!

What an RSS is

RSS is a Internet language for some kind of adress that you can put in an RSS application. Consequently, these applications give you the informations (often articles) that you want to have. That is why we call RSS “aggregators”, because with it, you can aggreg exactly the informations you want. For example, if you want to have information on a very precise subject, like the media economy in Germany, you can get the RSS on that on the website of the AFP, and directly receive thses articles.   

Netvibes, one of the greatest web innovation of last years

 

According to me, one of the most innovating application of last years remains Netvibes, even if it is clearly not new anymore. Because the issue of nowaday Internet is not just to create new applications, but to make the use of these applications easier. That is exactly what Netvibes do, allowing you to put all your favorite website, applications or RSS on the same page. That avoids you to loose your time going on each websites you want, and it alloow  everyone to have a very personal approach of Internet informations.  

 

 

 

 

 

The characteristics of E-Culture

Talking about an “e-culture” is not a mistake, because the Internet, since its begining at the end of the sixties, has always been developed with a part of ideology on its side. Of course, we could say the same thing for every invention: a creator always wants to reach a goal, he always wants his invention to make to world or the life better, or at least easier. But the case of Internet is clearly special, because the web has been created by two differents families of developers who both had strong and varius idiologies and utipias: university teachers and “hackers”.

Developping the Internet system, american university teachers have, since the begining, tried to create in the same time an utopy ok studies and work. Everything had to be done together, there should be in that process individual working. Consequantly, every teacher always gave his results to his collegues, and that’s how the “sharing” ideology of Internet was born. An ideology very powerful today, with the share of information on the web.

The second family, “hackers”, has quicly adopted the technology of Internet, and has brought its wishes and utopias in it. These persons were often linked to the “contre-culture” of the seventies, and made the Internet a system which ad to help the community. They also perceived the web as a free way of communication, a vision never such present than today.